Chapter 549 | Go Be A Symbol

Chapter 549: 549 | Go Be A Symbol

The green room at KVRN smelled like hairspray and burnt coffee, and Arthur Vance sat in the makeup chair as Radiant, seven feet two inches of sun-bleached marble crammed into a space designed for people his true size.

The costume held. That was the part that mattered. Red and white and blue caught the vanity lights and threw them back gold, and his hair sat in its horn-shaped bangs, and his teeth in the mirror were the teeth America knew from lunchboxes. He had been transformed for forty-one minutes. His internal count told him he had two hours and ten minutes left before the number ran out and Arthur Vance came crawling back into his own ruined body.

Two hours and ten. Down from two-fifty this morning.

He kept the smile fixed and did not let the number touch his face.

"You look like a man about to walk into a firing squad," said Nancy from the couch behind him.

She had been his assistant for six years, and she read him the way other people read weather reports. Small and sharp and dressed in a charcoal suit that cost more than most people’s cars, she had a tablet balanced on one knee and a coffee she had not offered to share.

"I look magnificent," Radiant said. "It’s in the contract."

"You look magnificent and terrified. Those aren’t the same thing." She swiped something on the tablet. "Sabrina wants to open with the students. Get the human angle before she pivots to the Twilight Society, then close on institutional confidence. Standard rehabilitation arc. She sent the beats over an hour ago."

"She sent them because she knows I won’t follow them."

"She sent them because she’s a professional." Nancy looked up. "Which is more than I can say for some symbols in this room."

From the far corner, a third voice cut in, warm and flat and completely without ceremony.

"He’s not going to follow the beats, Nancy. He never follows the beats. It’s the only interesting thing about him."

Marlene Cho sat with her feet up on the coffee table, ankles crossed, a paper cup of the burnt coffee in one hand. She was Arthur’s age, forty-eight, with silver threading through black hair she had stopped dyeing five years ago and a face that had never once needed his approval to know what it thought.

She had gone to college with Arthur back when he was still learning what Aegis was, back when he was nineteen and terrified and pretending he wasn’t, and she had watched him become a symbol from a seat close enough to see the man underneath it.

"Marlene," Radiant said. "You’re supposed to be moral support."

"I’m being extremely supportive. I drove here. I brought you gum." She held up a pack, waggled it once. "I also think you should cancel this and go to a hospital, but I’ve been saying that for two years, so."

"I have a job."

"You have a body that’s held together with spite and Voss’s schedule." She sipped the coffee and made a face at it, the kind of face that said the coffee was doing exactly what she expected and she had paid for it anyway. "But sure. Job."

Nancy’s tablet chimed. She glanced at it, sighed, and looked at Radiant. "Sabrina wants to know if you’re bringing the cape."

"I’m not bringing the cape."

"She’s going to ask you to explain why you’re not bringing the cape."

"Then she can ask," Radiant said, and the makeup artist stepped back, dusting his jaw with a brush that was mostly ceremony, and mumbled that he was ready. Nobody needed to powder a face that generated its own light, but the network liked the ritual, so Radiant sat still and let her, the way you let someone perform a service you have already paid for and do not actually need.

A production assistant with a headset leaned into the doorway. "Five minutes, Mr. Radiant. Sabrina’s already at the desk."

"Wonderful," Radiant said, and stood, and the chair exhaled with relief.

Nancy was up before him, tablet under her arm, already moving. "Students first. Their names, not their badge numbers. You know them?"

"I know them."

"Say them. Sato, Mendoza, Ortega, the Belmont kid." She said the last name the way you set down something breakable. "The internet’s already made him a movie. Don’t add to it. Don’t confirm anything about output or classification. If she asks about the gold footage, you deflect to the collective. It was a class. It was a team. Nobody’s the main character."

"Nobody’s the main character," Radiant repeated.

"I mean it, Arthur."

She only used the real name in green rooms. He looked at her, and for a second the smile slipped, just at the edges, and she saw it, and her mouth flattened.

"I know you mean it," he said quietly.

Marlene got up, unhurried, and came to stand in front of him. She had to tilt her head back a long way to meet his eyes, and she did it without any of the awe that everyone else brought into the room with them. She reached up and straightened the collar of his costume, which did not need straightening.

"You’re going to walk out there," she said, "and you’re going to be the strongest man in the country, and you’re going to make forty million people believe everything is fine. And I’m going to sit in the wing and watch you lie, because that’s the job, and somebody who loves you should be in the room when you do it."

His chest did the thing it did when Aegis pushed against the container. He ignored it.

"That’s very grim, Marlene."

"You have blood on your handkerchief and a hole where your left lung used to be. I’ve earned grim." She patted his chest, right over the scar the costume hid, gently enough that it did not hurt. "Go be a symbol. I’ll be here when you stop."