Overlord Forever, Apparently

The first time Miles Harper tried to tell Captain Triumph that he was secretly the Supreme Overlord of Evil, they were dangling upside down from a helicopter.

"There's something important I need to tell you," Miles shouted over the wind.

Captain Triumph grinned.

"I knew it!"

"You do?"

"You finally want a cape."

"What? No."

"Trust me. You're ready."

Before Miles could answer, Captain Triumph let go of the strut and dropped sixty feet to punch a giant robot in the face.

The conversation never recovered.

That was twenty-three years ago.

In fairness, Miles had tried since. Attempt #47 came at a charity gala. Attempt #103 came during an alien invasion. Attempt #211 was interrupted by a surprise promotion. Attempt #348 ended when Captain Triumph scheduled a parade in his own honor in the middle of the confession.

Miles had eventually stopped counting. He'd written the attempts down, at first, in a little notebook, the way his mother had kept her grocery lists and her worries and the names of everyone who'd ever been kind to her. He'd inherited the habit and not much else. The notebook was full now. He kept it anyway.

The real problem wasn't Captain Triumph. The real problem was that every time Miles tried to quit, someone promoted him. The heroes promoted him. The villains promoted him. The city promoted him. At one point the mayor promoted him.

Miles still wasn't sure what that one was about.

What had started as a harmless spreadsheet had somehow become the largest criminal organization on Earth.

That wasn't an exaggeration. It had literally started as a spreadsheet.

Twenty-five years earlier, recurring supervillains had become a logistical nightmare. Nobody knew who was robbing what. Insurance companies were furious. Hero response times were terrible.

Someone needed a system. Miles liked systems. So he built a database. The database became a registry. The registry became a network. And now Miles owned a volcano.

It was a very nice volcano.

That wasn't the point.

The point was that this morning, for the first time in twenty-five years, someone had handed Miles a way out instead of another thing to carry.

The envelope was cream-colored and embossed. The Vanguard Coalition, the largest hero syndicate on the eastern seaboard, was reorganizing its operations division, and they wanted a Director of Strategic Logistics. Legitimate. Salaried. Pension. His name on a door, on the right side of the law for once.

All he had to do was walk away from the volcano.

Which is why, on a gray Thursday afternoon, he marched into Captain Triumph's office carrying three banker boxes and the cream-colored envelope.

Captain Triumph looked up from his sandwich. "Hey, Miles."

Miles set the boxes down. Photos fanned across the desk. Blueprints. Org charts. Lair permits. He set the envelope on top.

"I'm the Supreme Overlord," Miles said. "And I'm taking the Vanguard job. I'm out. Effective today."

Captain Triumph nodded. "I know."

Miles blinked. "Which part?"

"Both parts." Triumph took another bite. "The Overlord thing, since the volcano. The Vanguard offer, their HR called me Tuesday for a reference."

Miles stared. "What did you tell them?"

Triumph was quiet a second longer than the joke would have needed. "That they'd be lucky to have you," he said. "Most organized mind I've ever fought. Best I ever worked across from."

He didn't say it like a man landing a punchline. He said it like a man reading something off a wall he'd been looking at for twenty years.

Miles sat down hard. The cushion exhaled under him. "You gave me a reference. You — twenty years, you've known what I am, and the day I finally get a door out, you hold it open for me."

"Yeah."

"Why?"

Outside, thunder moved through the building like something heavy dragged across the floor above.

Triumph set the sandwich down on its wax paper and lined the edges up square. The grin was gone, and what was under it was older than the grin.

"You remember the bridge."

Miles nodded. Everyone remembered the bridge.

"Your mom was in the third car," Triumph said. "After, she had me over for dinner. A lot of dinners, those last couple years. She kept a list of everybody who was ever kind to her. I found out later I was on it." He turned the cream envelope a quarter-turn with one finger, the way you'd move something fragile. "She was the only one who ever asked if I was sleeping."

Miles went very still. His mother had been gone nineteen years. He had not known the two of them had ever spoken — but he knew the list. He had one too. He hadn't known he'd gotten it from her dinners with a man in a cape.

"She talked about you," Triumph said. "Not the way people brag. The way you talk about something you're worried about." He paused. "She made me promise that if the day ever came you could set it all down, I'd help you set it down. Wouldn't be the thing standing in your way."

He nodded at the envelope.

"That's the day, Miles."

He held Miles's eyes the way you'd hold a door open with your whole arm shaking.

The rain ran down the glass in long gray ropes.

Miles looked at the envelope. At the embossed letters. At the way out he'd wanted for twenty-three years, held open by the one man in the world who'd be most alone if he took it.

He picked it up.

He looked at it for a long moment.

Then he folded it in half and put it in his pocket.

Triumph's hand stopped halfway to the sandwich. "Miles. I made her a promise. Take the —"

"You promised to help me set things down if I wanted to." Miles stood and smoothed the front of his jacket, where the envelope made a small square against his chest. "I don't want to."

"You've been trying to quit for twenty-three years."

"I've been trying to quit the secret." Miles almost smiled. "Turns out that wasn't the heavy part. Who'd run the evacuation routes anyway. Squid days. Siege days. There's never anyone else."

Triumph looked at him for a moment. Whatever he'd been bracing to give up, he set it back down, careful, like the sandwich.

"There's never anyone else," he agreed.

Neither of them said the rest.

Alarms went off through the whole building. A screen on the wall lit red: GIANT SPACE SQUID, DOWNTOWN.

Miles sighed. Captain Triumph sighed. Neither of them moved.

Then Miles stood the rest of the way and buttoned his jacket. "I'll handle the routes."

Miles stopped at the door, hand on the frame. "Hey."

Triumph looked up. "Yeah?"

For twenty-three years there had been something Miles needed to say, and he'd always thought it was the secret. It wasn't the secret.

"Thank you," Miles said, "for keeping her company."

Triumph didn't answer. He just nodded, once, and reached for his cape.

An hour later, the world's greatest superhero and its most feared supervillain were locked in combat atop a downtown skyscraper. Helicopters carved circles in the rain. The crowd cheered every blow.

Nobody noticed the choreography notes clipped to the railing.

Nobody noticed two old men, between throws, arguing about where to get lunch.

And nobody noticed the folded Vanguard envelope in the supervillain's breast pocket, the door he'd been handed, and hadn't walked through.