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Duality

Super Burger

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“Welcome to Super Burger, home of the Super Burger, can I take your order?”

“Uh. Yes. One Amazing Burger. No cheese. No bacon. To go. That’s it.”

With half lidded eyes, I punched her order into the computer. It was, truly, a mind numbing profession. There was an older man, a Dennis, who had been working between the front counter and the kitchens for over twenty years. I could not fathom how he came into work every day with a smile on his face. Six months of this job and I was ready to burn the place down. I hadn’t, obviously, but after a few irate customers, the idea was always tempting.

I would have left in an instant if I had thought I could find another job. That was the biggest problem. The real reason I hadn’t done anything rash. We needed money. Neither I, nor Ares, nor Toxx, Dice, or Thoth had identities. Real, regular, human identities. We had no social security numbers. No birth certificates. I knew of the concept of illegal aliens and I knew that there were large groups of such people who lived in the United States, but I hadn’t the slightest idea how they went about finding work or providing for their families.

Super Burger had let me work with the flimsiest of personal identification. A work visa Thoth had provided. Forged, of course. It limited the kind of work that I could do and was temporary, but would work until we figured out a more permanent method of acquiring money. For that, I was grateful to the Hero-themed fast food place.

“And, uh, can I add a-uh… High Wind kids meal to the order?”

She didn’t have any kids with her. It was technically against the rules to give out kids’ meals to adults, but who honestly cared? I hit the button to add it to her order. “One Amazing Burger without bacon or cheese and a High Wind kids’ meal.”

“No pickles on the Amazing Burger too.”

It took a force of will to keep from rolling my eyes. “Anything else?”

“I think that’s it.”

“Then your total will be—”

“Oh! Except can I get a large Snow Queen?”

“The ice cream machine is broken.”

The woman’s expression turned pained, like I had hopped over the counter and stomped on her foot. “It was broken last week!”

And it will still be broken next week. But I couldn’t say that. Company policy. “Super Burger would like to apologize for any inconvenience,” I said, trying to inject something of an apologetic note into my tone. I doubt it came out much different from my usual words. This job just sucked all inflection from my voice.

Her lip thinned out as she crossed her arms. “Fine. Cancel my order. I’ll go to the store on Second. They’ll get me a Snow Queen. Their machine always works.”

I doubt it, I thought, actually rolling my eyes. But she was already halfway out the door. “Thank you for coming. Next.”

There was only one other customer in the store. A man in a hooded sweatshirt. It wasn’t cold inside the restaurant, but he still had it up. Being early enough in the morning that the sun hadn’t even risen, it was probably a little chilly outside, so maybe he was still warming up.

“Welcome to Super Burger, home—”

“J-Just what’s on this list, p-please.” He stuttered as he handed over a wrinkled scrap of paper.

I picked it up, read the single line, and sighed. Today was going to be a long day. I could tell already.

“Sir, we opened like forty-five minutes ago. There isn’t even forty dollars in the register.”

His eyes turned wide as saucers. Maybe it was shock at how little fear was in my voice. Maybe he was surprised that I had talked back at all. His note had said that he was armed. But really, if I could convince him to just leave, I was more than willing to pretend like nothing had happened. Dealing with a robbery was sure to be a pain.

Were I in his position, I would have run away right then and there. The plan already went to hell when I spoke aloud to him, calling him out on it. Apparently, common robbers weren’t the most intelligent of people.

He pulled out a pistol. A little snub-nosed revolver. His hand shook as he stared at me. “S-Shut up! Just do it!”

His shout must have drawn the attention of my coworker who had been working the drive-thru, guessing by her sudden scream. Her scrambled footsteps took her into the kitchens, leaving me alone to face the gunman.

Gee, thanks. If I had been anyone other than me, I probably would have been a lot more annoyed that she had just left me. But I was me. And I wasn’t too worried. I had never killed myself with a gun before, but I couldn’t imagine it would be more painful than tearing out my throat with a knife.

“What the h-hell are you waiting for, man? You wanna die?”

“Sometimes,” I mumbled, mostly to amuse myself. But I did comply. A button press had the cash drawer knocking against my stomach. With practiced motions, I pulled out the cash. “Twenty-three fifty-three. Would you like fries with that?”

He clearly didn’t appreciate my joke. Or maybe he didn’t hear it. His eyes were glued to the cash in my hand. “T-That’s it?”

“I told you, we just barely opened. Most people pay by card too. The majority of this money is what we keep on hand for change for the initial customers.”

“T-That one!” he said, snatching the money with one hand while waving his pistol to the second register.

“It hasn’t even been used today.” That didn’t mean it was empty. It should have fifty dollars divided up into various bills and change. Some people liked to buy a dollar item to break a twenty down into smaller bills.

But he slumped, panicked and clearly not thinking about that. “Wh-What am I going to do?” After a shrug from me, he perked up. Thoth often had a light bulb appear above her head when she got a good idea. Even though this guy wasn’t a cartoon, I could almost see the bulb above his head flick on. “The back room. There’s like a safe or something right? Go get everything from it,” he said waving his gun.

“There is, but only the general manager has the key. She isn’t going to be in until noon.”

That momentary spot of hope vanished. The robber looked like someone had spat on his mother’s grave. I almost felt bad for him. Not that he wasn’t having any success robbing the place, but rather that he had been born such an idiot. He had done so many things wrong. First, robbing this store. Second, robbing at this hour in the morning. Third, not realizing that the drive-thru window had its own register and had seen far more customers given that it had opened a full hour before the doors. And lastly, I wasn’t sure that pistol was even loaded.

With the angle he held it at, I could clearly see down two of its barrels. Neither had anything in them. It was irritating. If he lacked the conviction to shoot someone, he shouldn’t be waving a gun around in the first place.

While he was stunned at his unsurprising lack of success, I was tempted to throw a punch. But my body was skeletally thin. The muscles had atrophied to the point where moving normally was something of a chore. I could run a bit, but would tire in minutes. That would be endurance, however. A punch was all strength, of which I had none. Even if I did catch him off guard, there wouldn’t be enough power behind my fist to take him out in the first blow and, after that, he would easily be able to overpower me.

Besides that… is it me, or is it getting colder in here?

I could see my breath. It was far too cold for just the freezer door to have been left open or the air conditioning being turned up a notch.

And I hardly had the worst of it.

The robber was shaking. Trembling. Flecks of ice coated the skin around his hand, locking his fingers in place and keeping him from pulling the trigger. His sweat-soaked sweatshirt had frozen completely solid, making him look like he was wearing a shirt made from iron. The most movement he managed was the clatter of his teeth.

The door swung open, though it didn’t make the usual sound. The ice covered the bell.

A leotard that showed far too much skin around her chest. A short skirt that did little to hide her bare thighs. A spiked crown of ice atop her silver hair.

The Snow Queen’s blue eyes flashed with cold anger as she stared at the robber. “How many fools must I put away before you idiots take a hint?”

The robber couldn’t even turn to face her. Like his shirt, his pants were stiff and hard. I couldn’t see them, but I wouldn’t be surprised if his shoes had been frozen to the ground. All I could see were his eyes widening in obvious fear.

I was a bit surprised too. An actual hero had shown up. For one single armed robber. One of my coworkers had obviously called the emergency line, but I had been expecting police. This was hardly a bank robbery. Then again, who knew what my coworkers had reported. Whatever it was, it had probably been exaggerated.

The Snow Queen stepped across the lobby, high heels of her thigh boots not slipping on the ice in the slightest. Blue fingernails dug underneath the robber’s hand, prying the gun loose. His skin cracked and broke around the joins, but no blood dripped out. That didn’t stop him from making high pitched squeaks in the back of his throat. She ignored the pained noise. The gun went into a clear bag. An evidence bag. The Snow Queen’s outfit lacked pockets as far as I could see, so where it came from was a mystery. It probably came from the same place that she had pulled handcuffs from.

Dragging him back to the little divider wall between the counter and the seating area, she snapped one half of the cuffs around his wrist and the other to the decorative bars. They were just that: decorative. Any moderately fit man could probably break them without too much effort. But the robber didn’t look like he would be putting up any such effort anytime soon.

I had heard about the Snow Queen’s captures requiring treatment for frostbite. Seeing the effects in person for the first time, I had to wonder if that wasn’t a drastic understatement. I wasn’t even her target and my nose was running. My lungs burned from the cold. Even my fingers had gone numb.

“You think about what you’ve done,” she said, patting him on the head. His hood cracked like an eggshell. “The police will be here in fifteen minutes, if they aren’t being lazy. In the mean time…”

My heart rate spiked. She looked at me. Those eyes that could put ice on the sun looked at me. Her boots clicked against the ice as she stepped closer. I could feel the sweat forming on my palms instantly freezing over.

Ironically, I found myself far more comfortable with a robber waving a gun in my face than I did with a hero walking over, eying me like I was a meat popsicle. All the robber could have done was kill me. And I had taken Thoth’s advice. I was here at work, in a fairly surreal situation. But I was also home, running a plate under the faucet, trying to get a bit of grime off with a sponge. So even killing me wouldn’t actually kill me. It would destroy my job, of course. I couldn’t very well just walk in the next day after getting a bullet through my head and my body turning to dirt. Ultimately, that wouldn’t be that big of a deal. I would just have to find a new job. Perhaps with a new face.

A hero was another matter entirely. They were nosy. Investigative. The smarter ones were, anyway. I wasn’t so sure about Amazing, but he—they all seemed like they had a sixth sense for things going wrong. That was how they found crime. Crime that wasn’t reported by over exaggerating coworkers, anyway. Amazing had ignored anything strange about me the other week ago, but I had been perfectly normal at the time. There had been only one of me. And he was egotistical to the point where I doubted he would notice anything anyway.

The Snow Queen was his polar opposite. Cold and ruthless. Calculating.

She would know. She would find out.

At home, I set the plate down on the counter, mind racing. The Snow Queen was going to find out. About me. About my family. The girls were down in the basement, having their sessions. Ares was in his room. Thoth’s television was on. She had been working on something, but now she was looking at me. A word would alert her, but then what? What were they supposed to do?

“Janus. Your heart rate is dangerously high. What’s going on?”

I sucked in a breath. Both of me sucked in a breath. One was cold and stifling, the other warm and soothing. “The Snow Queen is staring at me.”

“The Snow Queen?” Thoth lifted up her goggles. The lines that made up her eyes jittered and trembled. “Hero. Part of The Amazing Company, but prefers to work alone. Powers: Control over temperature and moisture in the air. It is unknown if she raises humidity though matter creation or if she gathers the water from the surrounding area through a secondary telekinetic ability. The end result manifests as ice and snow.” Her eyes calmed slightly as she focused on me. “But what does she want with you?”

“I don’t know. I was being robbed.”

“Maybe ask?”

Ask? Right. Ask. Of course. Distract her with a conversation. I hadn’t done anything wrong. Unless she counted the forged documents I had, but surely she wouldn’t ask for those.

“C-Can I help you?” My breath formed ice crystals in the air as I spoke. Hopefully, my stutter would be ignored because of the cold air.

“Are you alright, uh—” her eyes flicked down to my name tag. “Harry?”

I blinked twice over. Not having expected that, I asked Thoth, “Am I alright?”

Her eyes changed art style to two half moons as she gave me a flat look. “I don’t know, are you?”

“Just a bit shocked,” I said through the cold air. I tried to smile, but I doubt it came across properly. “Not every day you meet a hero. Or get robbed, for that matter.”

“I suppose. If you’re alright, then…”

Then? Then what? She noticed something. Did I not look properly human to a trained and experienced hero?

“Do you mind getting me something? I haven’t had a chance to eat yet.”

“Get? Eat?” I blinked. It took a minute for my mind to catch up. When it did, my eyes widened. “Eat!”

Now she was looking at me like I was a bit slow in the head. After all my panic, maybe she wasn’t wrong.

“Sorry,” I said quickly. “Our ice cream machine is broken.”

The Snow Queen’s face flickered to a grimace before her cool mask fell back in place. “Just a muffin and a hot chocolate.”

“Hot chocolate?” I couldn’t help but ask.

“The cold makes my teeth ache.”

“Ah.” I… wasn’t quite sure how to react to that, so I didn’t. Looking down at the register, I considered punching in her order. She probably wouldn’t appreciate being made to pay for it though. And I highly doubted that she had a wallet or card somewhere on her person. Her outfit did not have any pockets as far as I could see. Not wanting to be caught staring, I quickly turned away. “I’ll get started right away,” I said, glad that she was just hungry and not about to take my life apart.

But when I got to the hot drink machine and pulled the lever… nothing happened. There was some groaning within the machine, but no hot milk. No chocolate. Even the whipped cream dispenser was locked up. Fiddling with it, it didn’t take long to identify the problem.

I turned back to the Snow Queen with a shaky smile. “Sorry for the inconvenience, but it looks like our equipment has frozen over.”

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