Masked (2010) (54 page)

“Besides, my usual guardians are all busy elsewhere,” he added.

Damn. I’d come prepared to fight robots. I’d even borrowed one of Saint George’s area-effect nullifiers. My plan for the day was to take a crowbar to millions of dollars worth of suddenly inanimate plastic and metal, and basically hit Strangeface where it really hurts—his wallet.

“Good-bye, child,” he said. “I’d stay for the traditional battle, but I’m late for an important meeting.” Then he touched his belt and was gone. Not even a wink of light.

Foiled again.

I spent some time snooping around the place, looking for clues, a diary, a hastily scrawled note near the telephone, or a dropped matchbook. No luck. Then, just for spite, I spent a couple of hours smashing stuff. Some of the machinery did look expensive, after all. But my heart wasn’t in it. Then I called Animal Control about the lions and went home.

I’d been up for days, tracking Strangeface to his latest in a long line of hideouts, and then doing the actual assault. I still wasn’t
tired, but if I didn’t let myself get that way soon, I’d be working up a big debt. Better to take care of it now and not have to be out of commission for a month or more.

I entered my apartment through the secret passage, stripped, and locked away my costume and equipment. I spent an hour typing after-action notes on the secure computer and sent them off to the usual folks: Achilles, Saint George, Doc Jerusalem, and anyone else in our business who might be better than I at figuring out what Strangeface was up to. Then I ate a bowl of Cheerios and went to bed. As soon as I lie down I opened the mental gates and let all of the deferred fatigue wash over me.

I’d be asleep for a long time. Days at least. But eventually the snoozing Dormouse will wake up again to this mad tea party that is our life, our world. And then we’ll see what we see.

E is for Eleanor

She Loves the Knight

Eleanor Eastman, three-time Pulitzer Prize–winning star reporter for the
Liberty Crier
, was lovely in the way that supermodels and Hollywood celebrities could only hope to be. She was blonde, unblemished, full of lips, curved but sleek, refined and graceful. Her smile could light a ballroom. Her erudition charmed the rich and powerful, from Washington to Beijing. Her writing, sparse, unadorned, and merciless, could bring down a mighty potentate. Every man wanted her, but all knew by now that her heart belonged to one man alone. It was the romance of the century. On second thought, better make that plural—the romance of this century as well as the one recently retired.

Saint George, the gleaming Rocket Knight, came out of the sky, settling slowly onto the building’s rooftop helicopter pad. His boot jets cut out just in time so as not to scorch the pad’s concrete-over-steel surface. Eleanor was there waiting for him.

“You called?” Saint George said—rather, the electronic speakers on either side of his helmet said. He was covered head-to-toe by his powered armor, painted green and gold, shined bright. No part of the man within was exposed.

“You look different,” she said. Clipped tone. Almost dismissive. She was in a mood again.

“No, I look the same. The suit looks different. I’m always modifying it. Improving it. I added new point defense modules since the last time I saw you.”

“And how would I know that?” she said.

“Excuse me?”

“You said, and I quote, ‘No, I look the same,’ but how would I know? I’ve never actually seen the man under the suit. I wonder what the world would say if they knew our famous love affair was a sham? Strictly platonic at best, an entire fabrication if we’re really going to be candid.”

“Oh, so it’s this again,” he said.

“My God! Don’t you dare take that tone with me!”

“It’s not a tone, Eleanor. It’s just the speakers. I have to sacrifice some of the subtleties of voice quality in exchange for durability of the equipment. I get in a lot of battles, after all.”

“Sometimes you’re so sweet and attentive, and—what’s the word I’m looking for? Flirtatious! You’re positively flirtatious, really pouring on the charm. And I begin to think you’re sincere and that you really do want this to go somewhere. But then the next time I see you, you’re so goddamn aloof I could scream. So which is it? Do you just get off on the mind games, toying with the one woman anyone else would be happy to be with, or do we actually have something?”

“It’s complicated.”

“Not anymore, because this time I want a simple answer. I think I’ve earned it, waiting so many years for you to shit or get off the pot. Are you scared to reveal yourself to me because I’m a journalist? Because of what happened to Sergeant Liberty? Remember, it wasn’t anyone at the
Crier
who burned him, it was
those fuckers at the
Post
! We’re not all alike. Some of us actually have standards.”

“That’s not it at all.”

“Then what?”

Saint George didn’t answer for a long moment. He looked out over the downtown Liberty skyline, huddled along the riverfront. There was a giant billboard on the rooftop directly across the way that read,
PLEASE COME BACK, SERGEANT LIBERTY. PLEASE FORGIVE US
.

After a while he said, “Have you ever considered the sole reason you’re attracted to me might be because I’m the one man you can’t have with a snap of your fingers?”

“How dare you!”

“It’s a common psychological condition,” he said. “There’s even a name for it, though it escapes me at the moment. You disdain what you have, or can have, and only place value on what’s unavailable.”

She opened her purse and took out a pack of cigarettes, but her hand was shaking too violently when she tried to shake one cigarette from the pack, causing a number of them to spill out all over the rooftop. She crumpled the empty pack and started to toss it away, then thought better of it and put the crumpled ball back into her purse.

“How can you do this?” she said, once some measure of composure had been restored. “How can you be so incredibly cold, after the way you’ve treated me so many other times?”

“When you called you said you had some vital information for me. Was this it?”

She felt like screaming then, but didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of seeing her entirely lose control. So she turned away instead, walking back toward the building’s small heliport lobby in a controlled stomp. Without turning back to face him, she said, “I received an anonymous tip that something big was going to happen in Liberty, in the next day or two. Something cataclysmic. The caller insisted on speaking to me because he knew I’d be able to get the word out to the superhero community, me being your special
sweetheart and all.” The door into the glassed-in waiting vestibule was on a sensor, opening and closing automatically, robbing Eleanor of the ability to slam it behind her.

Saint George rose from the rooftops on a flair of boot jets, quickly disappearing into the crystal blue sky.

F is for Fast Johnny

Always First to the Fight

Three days later, when the Public Safety Building in Liberty blew up, Fast Johnny was in Morocco, clearing out a newly discovered nest of the Demon League. Before the rubble had finished falling to the ground, Fast Johnny had arrived on the scene. Most of the delay was due to the thirteen long seconds it took for his earpiece, a gift from Underman, to decide this was news that merited his immediate notification.

G is for Gunslinger

Marksman Extraordinaire

The gutted hulk of the Public Safety Building continued to burn. A dark column of smoke marched defiantly into the sky. Bits of ash and burning debris drifted down from the sky. A blue and scarlet blur whipped and danced all around the destroyed building, sometimes disappearing into it for a second or two, after which it would emerge again, carrying someone out to safety.

“He has to slow down every time he brings a survivor out,” Professor Hell said, from one of the undamaged buildings across the way. “That’s when you take the shot.”

“Don’t tell me my business,” Gunslinger said.

“But you don’t even have your gun out yet.”

Gunslinger took his attention off the blurred image of Fast Johnny across the street and fixed his cold gray eyes on Professor Hell. “I appreciate you giving me this opportunity, Professor. I sincerely do. I haven’t had a real challenge to my abilities since—well, since never. But if I can take down Fast Johnny while he’s in motion, that would be the shot of a lifetime. Only don’t tell me my business. Back off, shut up, and let me work.”

“Don’t you forget who’s boss, kid. I was in the original Cryptera, taking on the biggest, baddest heroes of the day, while you were still in diapers.” Emil hated trying to talk tough. He was no good at it. Everything he said came out sounding like an absurd cliché from B-movie gangster flicks. But he felt he needed to constantly reinforce his dominance over these people. Every one was a powerful and wild creature of anarchy and chaos. This new generation of supervillains wasn’t like the previous one. They couldn’t always be relied upon to act in their own best interest. Absolute dominance was his only hope of controlling them. He thought about using some of Hark’s moondust on the kid, but he didn’t want to do it in front of the others. He didn’t want them to realize how most of them had been convinced to accept his leadership. Plus, he didn’t know how the enthrallment of moondust might affect Gunslinger’s incredible marksmanship.

“Go right ahead and be the boss,” Gunslinger said. “Boss anyone you like. You told me who to shoot and that’s what bosses do. But telling me how to go about it won’t work, because you don’t know how to do what I know how to do. Make sense? Go bother one of the others. Tell them the rest of your ingenious plan. Make all the noise you want. I won’t be distracted as long as you don’t talk to me.”

What to do? Was this an act of insubordination, and if so, was it worth dealing with? Would the others think he was weak if he let it drop? What would Bad Moon do in the same situation, or expect him to do? Certainly, he could destroy the boy with a single spoken word. Since being forced back into the life, he’d made certain to always have just such an emergency spell at the ready. But he needed
the kid. The plan required him. It was essential that they take out Fast Johnny first. His impossible speed made him the most deadly of the heroes. And Bad Moon in his wisdom had determined that Gunslinger—this puppy who couldn’t even shave yet—was the only way to make sure of the speedster.

“Then get it done,” Emil said, leaving it at that, while leaving his place beside Gunslinger at the fourth-floor window. He walked deeper back into the commandeered office space, where the others were gathered, affecting a calm he didn’t feel.

“So, since the kid brought it up, what is the rest of the plan?” Max said. He was idly tossing his nearly invisible swiftblade from hand to hand. There were faint traces of red on the blade. Max had been the one to single-handedly remove the office’s former occupants. There was still the smell of blood and dead secretary in the air.

“Once Fast Johnny is down, the rest is relatively simple,” Emil said. He was wearing the old mask, the cloak, and the slouch-brimmed hat. If he had to be Professor Hell again, he was going to go all the way. Maybe then, if this went bad, he could claim it had to have been someone else posing as him. “We lure all of the other heroes to Liberty and kill them.”

“That’s it? That’s your plan?” It was Strangeface speaking this time.

“In broad strokes, yes,” Emil said. “That’s always the plan.”

“You’re insane,” Strangeface said. “It’s never worked before. It’s insanity to suppose it’ll work now.” Strangeface was one of the few surviving members of the old Cryptera. It was true they’d tried to destroy the world’s superheroes en masse many times before, always without success. And that was back when there was still only a relative handful of them.

“In the past we didn’t have the cooperation of The Ordinary Man,” Emil said.

“Are you shitting me?” Max said.

“He’s really on board?” Dirty Bomb said. She’d managed to reincorporate her body sometime in the past few minutes, while
Emil’s attention had been on Gunslinger. Truth be told, she was still a bit misty around the edges.

“The Ordinary Man should be arriving on the six o’clock commuter express from Philadelphia any minute now,” Emil said, with no small degree of pride. “In fact, someone should probably head out to pick him up. Someone who can pass as human,” he added, looking at Thunderhead. “I promised him we’d meet him at the train.” The others couldn’t entirely hide their newfound admiration.

That was the moment when Gunslinger drew and fired his pistol in one smooth motion. One shot. Then he holstered it again. Everyone in the room saw it except Emil, who was facing the wrong way.

Outside, the single 230-grain bullet traveled toward Fast Johnny at a paltry 885 feet per second. However, Fast Johnny was traveling toward the bullet at a more respectable 54,000 feet per second, having just put on a burst of speed after depositing the latest bomb blast survivor with the emergency medical technicians. When the bullet impacted the man, both velocities combined to release a truly impressive amount of energy inside an enclosed space—that being the hero’s chest cavity.

Fast Johnny vanished in a red mist.

H is for Holocaust

Heroes Beware

Building by building, the downtown area of Liberty blew up in a fiery holocaust, each consecutive explosion greater than the last. Just as she’d done with the Public Safety Building, Dirty Bomb moved from one structure to the next, exploding herself into atoms, waiting for her body to reform, and then doing it again. Civilians died by the thousands.

“I’m beginning to get the impression she reincorporates in a
random spot after each explosion,” Visionary said. “I don’t think she has control over it. But that isn’t the disadvantage one might assume at first. It makes it impossible to anticipate where she’ll appear next. Three times in a row now, by the time I’ve spotted her, she’s already detonating herself again. Frustrating, to say the least.” He stood on a low rooftop nearly a mile outside of the bleeding and burning downtown area. Dormouse crouched near him. They were both in the shade of a billboard that read: “Sergeant Liberty Come Home. We’re Sorry.”