Other People's Heroes (The Heroes of Siegel City) (24 page)

The broken pool table had been replaced and the only sign that there had been a scuffle at all was a white patch on the wall that hadn’t been painted yet. Morrie’s repair crews were even faster than
Powerlines
’. Still, staring at the new pool table, I found myself desperately praying the Copycat action figure would be a top seller -- there was going to be a big hole in my royalty checks until that thing was paid for.

“Still, why talk to Flambeaux? The guy’s practically a vegetable.”

“He was trying to tell me something back there, Ted, before he blanked out on me. Maybe if I can snap him out of his... trance, whatever it is, he can finish.”

“I still don’t know what you hope to find out. Icebergg is gone, Deep Six is still in a block of ice in the morgue -- case closed. Come on, stick around here and help me break in the new table.”

“Very funny.”

“Josh, think about this. Morrie’s got the best doctors and psychiatrists in Siegel City on his payroll. What makes you think you can snap him out of it where they all failed?”

I went down to the infirmary with my recent purchase resting comfortably in my hands. It was a bonsai tree -- one of those little things people could trim and shape. I remembered how Flambeaux said working on the topiary garden somehow helped him to concentrate -- clear his head. Since I couldn’t bring him to the garden, I figured this would be the next best thing.

The on-call nurse simply waved me through to Flambeaux’s room. “Who knows?” she said. “Maybe you can get a rise out of him. It certainly can’t hurt.”

I sat next to Flambeaux’s bed and placed the bonsai on his nightstand. Except for some beard stubble, he looked very much like he had when Hotshot brought him in -- cold, empty and not really there. His eyes were still orange, but even moreso now, as though it were fluid gushing around inside the vitreous humor and not just an energy build-up.

“Hey man,” I said. I glanced down at his chart to remind myself of his real name -- Benjamin Costanza. And his brother, Deep Six, was Lance. I wondered if they had any family besides each other. I wondered if the rest of the family knew.

“Hey, Ben. I brought you something.” I slid the bonsai closer to him, hoping at least
some
part of his vacant brain could see it. “I realize it’s no giant topiary giraffe, but when I tried bringing
that
bad boy in, the nurse gave me such a dirty look... I tell you, it’d chill your blood to
ice,
man.”

I found this joke considerably funnier than Flambeaux did.

“Look, I know you’re probably busy and all, but I was wondering if maybe you could shed a little light on the whole ‘find him’ thing we were talking about the other day. Ring any bells? Wanna share anything else? Come on, Benny, who is
‘he’
? Who do I find? Who do I
stop
? Who do I
save
?”

Flambeaux just lay there, beeping periodically through a monitor. It was like watching the world’s most boring pinball machine. In exhaustion, I buried my face in my hands and groaned. “I give up. I could have a more meaningful conversation with the Goop.”

“Josh?”

The voice was slow and soft, like someone learning to speak the language, but it was
there
. My ears pricked and my head shot up. Flambeaux had turned his head and was staring at the bonsai tree. His eyes
looked
the same, like an orange hurricane was playing itself out in there, but all the same there was a presence, a
consciousness
, that wasn’t there before.

“It’s nice.” He raised an arm in a slow, tortured movement. It was in the air just long enough for him to brush a leaf with a fingertip before he had to drop his arm to the bed again.

“Thank you.”

“Hey, any time, man. Just glad I could help. So come on, can you talk? How do you feel?”

“Scared,” he said. I hadn’t heard him sound so totally
sane
since before his brother died. “Is
he
still out there?”

“I don’t know, Ben. I don’t know who he
is
. You’ve got to tell me.”

His eyes fluttered and his face contracted in on itself, down his neck, as though he were trying to cough up something. “Gha,” he said. “Glarg.” His face relaxed and he exhaled with a long, low moan. “Can’t tell you. He won’t let me.”

“Then how can I possibly find him?”

His head rolled to the side again. “Tree?”

“Huh?” I looked at the small plant, wondering how there could be a clue
there
, but when he whispered “Tree?” again, I realized he was
asking
for it. I took it from its spot on the nightstand and placed it on his bed, near his hand. With Herculean effort, he lifted his hand and began to burn off a leaf here, a branch there, giving the tree its shape.

“See... my brother,” he said clearly.

“Your brother? Ben, your brother is--”

“
See him
. And
not
the costume. See
him.
See th’
truth.
”

I shuddered as I realized what he was asking. He wanted me to go examine a corpsesicle.

“Ben, are you sure? Isn’t there some other way?”

“
No
way! Can’t
say
it, even now, even with a clear head. You’ll see. You’ll
know.
”

The look in his eyes had changed dramatically. It had gone not only from vacant to occupied, but now conveyed a wealth of emotions ranging from terror to grief to desperation.

“Okay, Ben,” I said. “I’ll go to your brother.”

His eyes shifted to relief in the split-second before they closed and he slumped back against the bed, exhausted. He waved at the bonsai tree with a finger, asking me to take it away, and I returned it to the nightstand.

“He’s
here
,” he whispered. “Part of him. With
you
?”

“What?”

“
Look
,” he said. Then his eyes rolled back in his head and the expression of sanity was gone. Flambeaux was empty again.

“Get some rest, man. You’ve done your part.”

Three hours later I was sneaking into the Simon Tower morgue.

THE FIRST BAR

An interesting thing about Morrie Abadie was that as much as he liked to splurge on certain amenities like the lounge or the gym, there were other things he didn’t spend a nickel more than he had to on. At 9 p.m. not only was there nobody at the morgue, but there wasn’t even a fancy security system in place, just a deadbolt.

Even the few lessons I’d gotten in subterfuge from Nightshadow were enough to get me into the morgue and to find the drawer Deep Six was in. I steeled myself as I gripped the handle, took a deep breath and slid it open.

He was literally still a corpsesicle -- they hadn’t even bothered to thaw him out before the put him in the drawer. They just chipped away enough of the ice to fit the poor guy in there. “I’m gonna regret this,” I mumbled to myself. I dug around until I found a screwdriver to use as an icepick and a paper towel to wipe off the ice chips that would undoubtedly spatter my face.

The body was closest to the surface of the ice around the head and, even with the helmet cracked, it would still keep me from accidentally jabbing into... well... anything
soft.
There was a scarlet cloud in the ice surrounding Lance Costanza’s head, where his blood had leaked out of the broken helmet and frozen. Of course, it was right where I would be chipping.

I raised the screwdriver into the air and jabbed it into the ice. Shards flew everywhere and I wiped the water from my face. The towel was still white then.

I kept chipping, kept wiping. The towel was getting wet but it wasn’t changing color. Once I started chipping into the crimson, I stopped looking at the towel.

Finally I heard a clang as the screwdriver impacted the helmet. It didn’t really take as long as I’d thought it would. I used that point of contact and chipped outwards, finally exposing the crack in the armor. I wondered how so much blood could flow through such a small crack.

I’d decided to just pry open the crack and hope I could see, through that mess, whatever it was Flambeaux had sent me after. The screwdriver fit into the split easily and prying it open it was not difficult, but when I looked in all I could see was a mass of red with vaguely skull-like shadows at the core.

In frustration I grabbed the towel and wiped at my face again, trying to ignore the bloody orange stains and --

Orange?

Why were Deep Six’s blood-stains
orange?

I chipped out a hunk of red from the ice and cupped it in my hands. The red ice was melting, not into blood, but into a gooey orange slime. The orange looked
exactly
like the bodies of a certain pair of monsters. While frozen it
did
look like it could be blood, but it also looked like the same color
my
flesh had been when I froze myself during the battle with Icebergg. The same color as--

People usually compare solving a mystery to putting together a puzzle -- finding all the pieces and teaching yourself how they go together. I suppose some mysteries are solved that way, but for me this was more like hitting the jackpot on the slot machine -- first one BAR slides into place, then the second. Then, as the last roller spins, the wait is intolerably long -- until finally it hits and everything becomes clear.

The first BAR came when I reached into my belt-pouch there in the morgue. I’d had my costume cleaned but I hadn’t bothered to replenish my supply of smoke-bombs. I remembered how cold the glass case was during my rumble with Hotshot and how I pocketed a shard of Carnival’s blood-red armor and forgot about it.

I slid my fingers into that canister, hoping I’d wrap them around a hunk of red crystal, but instead I dipped them into a puddle of orange goo at the bottom of the compartment.

The glass case had been refrigerated. Carnival’s armor had been made of frozen Gunk-flesh.

“I thought I saw you slip down here.”

I jumped straight up when I heard the voice, half-expecting the Gunk to be waiting to decapitate me, but it was only Nightshadow. I should have known -- not only did he have the stealth skills to get in unnoticed, but only someone with no powers could have snuck up on me without my feeling it.

“Thank God you’re here,” I said. “You’ve got to see this.”

“What the hell have you
done
?”

“It’s not what it looks like--”

“First that stupid, pointless, destructive fight with Dr. Noble and now
this
? You’re
insane,
Josh.”

“No! It’s not like that!” I rushed past the frozen body and grabbed Nightshadow by the cape. “You’re not leaving until you hear me out!” I shouted, getting a sensation of
deja vu
.

“Get off me, you psycho!” He spun and kicked me in the side, but somehow it didn’t hurt. In fact, his foot kind of collapsed that side of my body, like he was hitting a water balloon. My flesh was melting and turning orange and my brains began to scramble.

I think Nightshadow tried to say something, tried to get away, but at this point my head was so messed up I wouldn’t have recognized Annie kissing me full on the mushy lips. I just wanted to be
me
again,
solid
again.

I grabbed Nightshadow around the ankle and moaned, writhing in confusion. He cursed and tried to kick me off, but I held on. Then I tried, again, to do what I’d done while we fought Icebergg -- I pushed
out
, trying to become solid.

My limbs hardened and my torso filled out my costume again. My face stopped dripping through the mask. I was
me.

I wish I could have said the same for Nightshadow.

He was standing there, trying to hold himself together, gushing through his costume as an orange fluid. He finally collapsed in an orange puddle, nothing more than a skeleton in a costume. He never even had time to scream.

That’s when I heard the clapping.

I looked up at the doorway to the morgue to see the Gunk standing there, applauding with all three sets of limbs.

“Very nicely done, my boy. Do you have
any
idea how interesting your powers are?”

“What’s going on here, Gunk? What
is
this?”

“It’s quite simple -- my powers build up on me. Every so often they build up so much I need to dispel some of the energy by transforming some lout into an orange behemoth who -- once he manages to pull himself together -- will obey any command I give him.”

I was dumbstruck. Whatever was going on (and I was starting to believe I
knew
what) was
not
an unusual practice for him.

“What really
astounds
me is the fact that you were able to transfer my excess energy
for
me. It had been quite some time since I’d duped poor Deep Six over there, and I was starting to get a bit addlepated. Thank you.”

“Then... the Goop?”

“Oh, the good Dr. Plante? Once I transformed him I thought it would be useful to keep a ‘sidekick’ around. The ruse was pleasant for a while, but it’s grown tiresome. Time for a new ruse, I think.”

“How could you
do
this?”

“It’s quite easy, actually, especially when you consider that I don’t need to wait for an energy buildup to capture someone’s
mind.
I have several drones out there that will obey my commands -- although I
will
have to punish Flambeaux for alerting you to me.”

“Who else have you...
taken
?”

“Oh, the odd Cape and Mask. Icebergg, obviously. And Flambeaux and Deep Six. Mental Maid has been particularly difficult to keep a hold of -- it must be the nature of her powers. Her brother, though,
he’s
so simple that he doesn’t even realize he’s been enthralled.

“Her
brother
? Who’s her
brother?
”

Gunk knelt down by Nightshadow’s still form. There was a strange cracking, gushing sound and his four extra arms fell off. He placed the bones next to Nightshadow, then turned his remaining hands into shears and began cutting Nightshadow’s costume off the skeleton. “Oh, didn’t you know?” he said sweetly. “Mary Abadie, and her amazing brother Morris. They used to be quite well-known as ‘mentalists,’ had a stage show together.” He absorbed Nightshadow’s costume into his body. “On to the next game, eh?”

“And what’s
that
?”

“Oh, please, Joshua. I’ve seen far too many spy movies to give away my master plan at the bottom of act two. Suffice it to say, it won’t matter to
you
. You’ll be on a prison planet in a few days, serving hard time for the murder of the Gunk.”

It was a good ruse. Lying there in a pool of slime, a skeleton with four extra arms, Nightshadow didn’t even enter my mind.