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    Andromeda Snow, Superhero
    Andromeda Snow, Superhero
    Andromeda Snow, Superhero
    Ebook94 pages1 hour

    Andromeda Snow, Superhero

    By Jamie Lackey

    ()

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    About this ebook

    When Andromeda Snow wakes up from a two-year coma, she finds the world changed. Her fiancé is marrying her sister, she's paralyzed from the neck down, and she's got superpowers.
    She finds herself assigned to a super team, fighting supervillains and picking up the pieces of her life. Oh, and one of her new teammates is a world famous tennis player/actor who's been named sexiest man alive at least three times, and he wants to be her date to her sister's wedding.
    Overall, it's a lot. But Andromeda's a superhero now, and that's pretty cool.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherJamie Lackey
    Release dateJul 4, 2022
    ISBN9781005591076
    Andromeda Snow, Superhero
    Author

    Jamie Lackey

    Jamie Lackey lives in Pittsburgh with her husband and their cat. She has had over 160 short stories published in places like Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Apex Magazine, and Escape Pod. Her debut novel, Left-Hand Gods, is available from Hadley Rille Books, and she’s created three successful crowdfunding campaigns to self-publish a novella and two flash fiction collections. She also has a novella and two short story collections available from Air and Nothingness Press. In addition to writing, she spends her time reading, playing tabletop RPGs, baking, and hiking. You can find her online at www.jamielackey.com.

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      Book preview

      Andromeda Snow, Superhero - Jamie Lackey

      Copyright © 2021 Jamie Lackey

      All rights reserved

      The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

      No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

      ISBN-13: 9798985021608

      Cover design by: Todd Sanders

      Andromeda Snow, Superhero

      by Jamie Lackey

      I woke up in a small, unfamiliar room, feeling indescribably weird. Some kind of succulent was wilting on the bedside table next to a dusty old picture of me and my sister. Various intimidating machines loomed over the bed, beeping and whirring. The walls were an industrial beige, the lights buzzing florescent. But it was the smell that let me know for sure that I was in a hospital—bulk cleaning products just barely overpowering a whole battery unpleasant human scents.

      I stood up.

      A nurse came in with a cup of coffee.  She closed the door and leaned against it with a sigh.  Then she saw me.  She dropped her coffee. 

      I started to say hello. 

      The nurse screamed and ran.

      I tried to follow her, and that's when I noticed that my arm was too thin, that I couldn't feel my feet against the floor, or the doorknob when I tried to turn it. And then I freaked out and threw the bed out the window with my brain.

      ***

      When I woke up again, I was in a tiny room lit with a single lightbulb dangling on a long wire. I glanced down at my body and saw that I was still wearing just the hospital gown, and that I was strapped to a chair. But couldn't feel anything. I did have a sense of my body, in a way, sort of a kinetic awareness, but I couldn't feel the chair pressing against my legs or the cold metal under my fingers. I touched my nose with my tongue.  I could feel that.

      It wasn't much, but it was something.

      A woman with a clipboard and a stack of folders walked in. She was like a living stereotype, every pretty librarian ever all crammed into one spectacled brunette. I'm Dr. Vivian Sherman. I'm in charge of this facility. 

      Hi, I said, trying to keep my voice calm. They probably wouldn't untie me if I was hysterical. I'm Andromeda Snow. But you probably know that. 

      Yes.  She flipped through a folder. What is the last thing you remember? 

      I blinked at her. The hospital. The bed. The window. 

      She nodded, then walked behind me. Well, that's good. And before that? 

      The memory came to me, burned into my brain. I reminded myself that I couldn’t be hysterical.  "I was driving. It was cold, had just started snowing. A deer darted into the road. I braked, but there was an oncoming car. They swerved. I think they missed the deer, but they hit me. My car went off the road, down over the hillside. It rolled a few times.

      I was trapped in the car. I couldn't move. It was cold. I thought I was going to die. Then nothing. I must have passed out.  I remembered hanging upside down, tangled in my seat belt, my head pounding and blood dripping into my ear.

      I hoped the deer was okay.

      Yes, Dr. Sherman said, still behind me. You did pass out. The other driver called 911, but you were unconscious when the paramedics arrived. And you've been in a coma for just over two years. 

      Two years?  That can't be right. 

      Your spinal cord was severed. You're completely paralyzed from your C5 vertebrae down. 

      No, I said, shaking my head. I can move.  To prove it, I wiggled my fingers. I knew they were moving, even without looking, even though I couldn't feel them drumming against the arm of the chair.

      Yes, well. From what we can tell, that's telekinesis. It seems like you've automatically replaced your normal sense of proprioception with your power. 

      Telekinesis isn't real, I said.

      It is now. It's been an... eventful couple of years. 

      This is insane, I said. I took a deep breath, then let it out. Calm.  I was calm.  I was a mountain pond.  Maybe I was dreaming. 

      Where are we? I asked. It was a distraction—I didn't want to think about being paralyzed or missing two years of my life. I really didn't want to panic, but it was getting difficult. I focused on my breathing.

      We're in a secure government facility. We needed to be able to contain you, since we weren't sure if you were cracked.  

      Cracked?

      Superpowers can be hard to deal with. About one out of every five people who gain powers go crazy. About half of those are violent. 

      And what happens to those people? 

      A door opened, and Jeff fricking Appleton—international superstar, former tennis pro and Academy Award nominee, named sexiest man alive at least three times—walked in the room. He was wearing navy blue tights and navy and yellow shirt that could have been painted on.

      I couldn't help noticing that his eyes were just as blue in person as they were on all of the magazine covers.

      If people are cracked, we deal with them as humanely as possible, he said.

      As humanely as possible, I repeated. What does that even mean? 

      Usually, lifetime detention, Dr. Sherman said.  

      And that was the moment that the reality of it all hit me.

      I was telekinetic.

      I was paralyzed.

      It had been two years.

      The superstar in the tights was a superhero.

      And I was going to be a superhero, too, damn it.

      ***

      Joining a super team meant signing a lot of paperwork. Dr. Sherman escorted me out of the holding cell, and we were in a small, windowless conference room. So, Jeff Appleton is a superhero now? I asked.

      Yes. He's the team leader. He's in charge of training and decisions on the ground. I keep the whole facility running and deal with the larger-picture issues. 

      She looked at me over the rim of her glasses. Try not to be too star-struck. You'll be working fairly closely with him. Do you think you can handle it? 

      I nodded. He was incredibly attractive, but I was engaged. Or at least, I had been. I wasn't wearing my ring, but maybe it has fallen off my weirdly skinny fingers.

      Dr. Sherman slid a tablet toward me. Here are some ideas for possible costumes. 

      Half of them seemed to involve miniskirts. You have to be kidding, I said.

      Dr. Sherman shrugged. I know, some of them are pretty silly. We're given a set of standard designs. 

      The color schemes were all yellow and navy blue—our super team's colors—and mostly spandex.

      I want Kevlar, I said. "Or chain mail. I

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