6 Superhero Stories

 

By

 

Robert T. Jeschonek

 

 

*****

 

More Superhero Tales by Robert T. Jeschonek

7 Comic Book Scripts

7 More Comic Book Scripts

Mr. Sandman: The Dream Lord Awakens

The Masked Family – a novel

 

*****

 

Forced Retirement

 

Hericane was pursued by her murderously psychotic super hero father, Epitome, for over an hour before she finally realized that he thought he was chasing himself.

It was something he said that finally tipped her off, and it was not exactly hard to interpret. “You don’t think I’ll kill you because you’re me?” he screamed as he flew after her at lightning speed. “Then you’re dead wrong!”

This just brought up another question. Instead of asking herself, “Why is my father trying to kill me?” Hericane now wondered, “Why is my father trying to kill someone he thinks is himself?”

She asked herself this question as she felt Epitome’s hand close around her ankle, catching her in mid-flight. As he hurled her out of the sky with a mighty swing, sending her plunging toward the city below.

It was a fall that her cape would not survive. With a great effort, Hericane managed to spin around and shoot back up, narrowly missing the lofty spire of the Scalzi Building...but an antenna on the spire snagged her white cape and ripped it from her shoulders. Not for the first time, she was glad that she had designed the cape as a tearaway piece; otherwise, it might have yanked her back to slam into the building.

The delay from such a collision would have given Epitome that one extra heartbeat he needed to catch up and pounce on her.

As powerful as she was, Hericane knew that once her father pounced on her, she might not survive for long. Hericane was easily one of the five mightiest super-powered people on Earth...but she had had a non-powered mother, so she was one generation diluted from the pure source of her father’s blood. Epitome was the apex of the pyramid, the strongest of the strong, the king of the superhuman gods.

And he had lost his mind. The man who had defeated such super-criminals as Heat Death, RNA, Noble Rot, and the Walking World War had fallen victim to his greatest enemy.

Alzheimer’s disease.

Hericane flew as fast as she could away from the Scalzi Building and her father, though her seventeenth sense alerted her that he was following at high speed. Frantically, she tried to think of a strategy to escape him...but she drew a blank.

As often as she had succeeded in high-stress situations before, whipping the bad guys with ingenious impromptu battle plans, this time was different. This time, her opponent was her father, who was incredibly powerful even at the age of seventy-two...and even if she did come up with a plan to beat him, the last thing that she wanted to do was hurt him.

Hericane’s hands were tied, while Epitome had the complete freedom of a disease which, in him, had led to something like insanity.

A sudden, sharp pain struck the middle of Hericane’s back, knocking her from her beeline flight path. She recognized the effect of Epitome’s “dagger eyes” power, which had already hit her at least ten times that day.

The key to neutralizing “dagger eyes,” she knew, was to break out of Epitome’s line of sight. Hericane did so by flashing down and hard to the left, putting a tall office building between her and her father. The pain stopped immediately.

Spotting an opportunity to escape more than just the “dagger eyes,” Hericane stopped suddenly on the far side of the building and ducked back against the wall. Her costume—-a head-to-toe one-piece with chameleonic properties—immediately changed color and texture to match the brick surface against which she was flattened.

Epitome shot past in a streak of red and gold and kept going, as if Hericane were flying between the skyscrapers somewhere up ahead.

As she watched Epitome fly off, Hericane wanted to let out a big sigh of relief...but she remembered how acute his hearing was and puffed out a few tiny breaths instead.

Hericane was by no means convinced that Epitome would not see through her ruse and come back for her. Nevertheless, she took the opportunity to rest for a moment, regaining her strength while she tried to come up with a plan.

And tried not to think about her roommate, Mardi...otherwise known as the super heroine, Mardi Gras. Mardi Gras, who had taken the first hit when Epitome had blown down the wall of their apartment. Mardi Gras, last seen trapped under debris and bleeding from a head wound.

Mardi Gras, the woman Hericane loved.

Hericane’s stomach twisted, and her heart hammered harder. She had to get back to Mardi fast, had to make sure that she was all right.

But before she could do that, Hericane had to stop her father. If she headed for the apartment, and Epitome followed her, she would just be endangering Mardi further. Mardi’s powers enabled her to bombard people’s senses with riots of noise and color and smell and texture...but indestructible, she was not.

Epitome, on the other hand, was indestructible. He had the strength to bench press North America, and he had hair follicles that could jump right off his body and drill through concrete or snip chromosome chains on command. He could fly like a jet fighter plane, just an eyeblink slower than Hericane in his old age. Then there was his trademark “Bonus Round,” an adrenaline-burst crisis state in which he surfed the gamut of way-out powers, a new one every five seconds, as if he were surfing channels on a TV set.

With all that he had going for him, Epitome would have been unstoppable even if he had been in his right mind. Now that he had lost it to Alzheimer’s—or most of it, anyway—Hericane had lost the option of talking sense into him, making him less controllable and more deadly than ever.

Epitome did not even have any weakness, other than whatever had brought on the Alzheimer’s. His enemies had only ever managed to hold him at bay with threats against innocent civilians. Even if Hericane had been willing to employ such threats, she had a strong feeling that they would now be useless against her father. If he was delusional enough to try to kill his own daughter, what were the chances that he would stop his rampage to protect bystanders or hostages?

Not that he had ever seemed to care much for his daughter in the first place.

Hericane detached from the wall and decided to head for help. If she could make it to the Power Structure headquarters in nearby Paratown, the heroes stationed there would surely race to her rescue. Apparently, the heroes who were based in her own home turf of Isosceles City were all away on business or home sick in bed, as none of them had popped up to lend a hand.

Unfortunately, just as Hericane drew a bead on the route that would lead her to Paratown, she heard the telltale nails-on-a-chalkboard screech that heralded her father’s approach.

The screech was a by-product of his use of certain powers simultaneously...in this case, flight and electro-breath. He had tried to have it “fixed” years ago, without success, but the truth was, it never interfered with his crimefighting.

By the time a target heard the screech, it was too late for the target to get out of the way.

This time was no exception for Hericane. Even expecting (dreading) that sound’s recurrence if (when) her father figured out her ruse and doubled back for her, she still did not have time to get out of the way of the bolt of lightning bursting out of Epitome’s wide-open mouth. Even possessing the gifts of super-fast reflexes and high-speed flight, she could not evade the sizzling electrical strike.

Searing current burned through her body like wildfire. Hericane stiffened and dropped like a stone, eyes fixed on the bright blue sky above her as she fell.

She saw her father plunging after her, fists bunched forward and face etched with fierce determination.

Sunlight reflected from his golden breastplate, throwing spots in Hericane’s eyes. She had always thought that the breastplate had made Epitome look noble and powerful, like a Roman centurion...but now, it made him look mechanical and menacing to her.

The red fabric of Epitome’s costume, which once had stretched tightly over bulging muscles, rippled in the wind over his shrunken, old man’s body.

Shrunken, but nearly as powerful as ever. Nearly as deadly.

And his own daughter did not see even the faintest flicker of recognition in his eyes as he glared down at her.

 

*****

 

Hericane soon realized that there was a positive side to Epitome’s not remembering anything about her. Thanks to his memory gap, he was not prepared for the super-powered trick or two that she had up her sleeve.

Like the one that she called “the big breakup,” which is what saved her life this time.

Fifty feet or so above the ground, Hericane had the presence of mind to trigger “the big breakup.” In mid-fall, at the flip of a mental switch, she blew her entire body apart into its component cells. A fountain of red and pink leaped upward, streaming around and past plunging Epitome as he howled in surprise and anger.

Epitome was blinded for an instant, which was just long enough for him to crash into the street pavement below. Before he could rocket back out of the impact crater, Hericane’s cells rushed back together, coalescing in their original form, and she bolted off toward Paratown.

As Hericane flashed across Isosceles City, she wondered yet again if Mardi was all right...and she dug deep for ideas on how to deal with Epitome. The only idea that kept coming back to her again and again was that Epitome would be impossible to deal with this time.

Not that that would be any different from any other time.

Hericane had only ever known him to be distant. Cold and remote. At best, he had been an unreadable, occasional presence in her life, unable or unwilling to make any but the most perfunctory connection with her.

She had guessed that it was because of her sexual preference for women, though that would only have applied to her in an obvious way since her teenage years. She did not have a similarly logical reason for why he had acted ambivalently toward her as a child.

Then again, he had not exactly been willing to make connections with anyone else, either. He had always been known as the greatest super-powered hero in the world, but he likewise had a reputation—especially in the hero community—as the unfriendliest guy in the business. He had never gone out of his way to socialize with colleagues or try to improve his image, and he had never seemed to care what anyone thought of him.

The truth was, he had never had to care. He was the mightiest man alive. No one could tell him how to act or what to do.

That was why, at first, Hericane had almost been grateful for the Alzheimer’s. The intermittent memory loss of the disease’s early stages had softened Epitome’s sharp edges, even occasionally made him seem vulnerable. For the first time in years, he had phoned Hericane out of the blue and shown up at her apartment unexpectedly; though he had done so by mistake and had not seemed entirely certain whom he was talking to or visiting, Hericane’s heart had still quickened at the sound and sight of the father who was finally turning to her in his hour of need.

Hericane had not been the only one to notice and appreciate the difference in Epitome. His super-heroic peers had noticed changes in him as well: overt friendliness; eagerness to partner with other heroes for adventures; and an unprecedented (for Epitome) willingness to let others take the lead in dangerous situations. None of this had been characteristic of the old Epitome. Behind his back, people had even joked that they had liked the new Epitome better than the old one...though some had not seen his changes as a laughing matter. Some heroes had realized early on that Alzheimer’s and the mightiest man alive would be a volatile combination.

And they had turned out to be right.

Epitome had begun to have outbursts of anger in public. He had said and done inappropriate things without explanation or apology. He had begun to make mistakes, serious mistakes that would have killed civilians if not for the intervention of other superhuman heroes. Twice, he had forgotten who the bad guys were and had turned against his partners. Beduin, Haiku, and Mr. Séance all had broken limbs to prove it.

By the time that the super community had seen enough and staged an intervention to convince Epitome to retire, it had been too late. He had become almost completely irrational. From the look on his face that day, Hericane had wondered if he had even understood a word that was said to him.

It was then that the super heroes had learned the answer to a question that they had never before thought to ask:

Who can make the most powerful man in the world retire?

Answer: Nobody but the most powerful man in the world.

 

*****

 

Since Epitome’s disappearance after the failed intervention, the super heroes had wondered what his next move would be. None of them had guessed that it would be to try to kill his daughter...and that he would seem to think, in some crazy way, that she was him.

Hericane had not guessed it, either...though, today, she had correctly predicted that she had not seen the last of him while slipping out of his crosshairs via “the big breakup.” Even as she had been rocketing toward Paratown, she had known that eventually, Epitome would catch up to her again.

He did so just as Hericane crossed the city limits.

The instant she heard her father’s trademark warning screech, Hericane veered hard to the left. Unfortunately, as always, hearing that screech meant that it was too late to avoid whatever attack it signaled.

This time, the attack came in the form of a nerve-wrecking synaptiquake and a two-fisted sledgehammer blow to her back. As soon as they hit, Hericane screamed in pain and shot straight down like a cannonball dropped from an airplane.

She plunged forty or fifty feet before shaking off the shock and rolling out of her fall. Swooping upward, she sprang into a fighting stance and spun around, looking for her father.

She could not see him anywhere. As she turned and scanned the heights, training all twenty-one senses on her surroundings, she wondered if Epitome had activated his Bonus Round of unpredictable powers, and one of those powers was a stealth mode.

Just as Hericane was thinking that, she felt waves of compressed air buffeting her from behind, pushed ahead of a dozen approaching, airborne objects. She whipped around in time to see twelve bricks hurtling toward her and pulverized each of them with a hyper-fast chop of her hand.

Hericane did not react quickly enough, however, to deflect or dodge the next mass to fly toward her. The bricks had been a diversion.

Epitome came next.

He blasted shoulder-first into her midsection, knocking the wind out of her and blowing her back and down. Before Hericane could catch her breath and retaliate, he slammed her at high speed against what felt like a slab of solid granite.

Then through it.

Looking out from her haze of pain, Hericane saw that Epitome had driven her through a power plant smokestack and kept on going. He was still propelling her backward, toward who knew what obstacles.

Toward who knew what pain.

“I won’t let you kill me!” said Epitome. “I won’t let you do what I did!”

Then, suddenly, the clear blue sky turned psychedelic.

Hericane squinted at the flashbulb bursts of light and the riotous swirls of pulsing color that bloomed all around her. A cacophony of discordant sounds, like an orchestra the size of a city tuning up all at once, exploded from nowhere at what felt like ear-bleed level.

Hericane’s heart pounded, but not from shock or pain. Her heart pounded because she knew at once who was responsible for the chaos.

As Epitome let go of Hericane, snapping his eyes shut and clamping his hands over his ears to try to block the sensory assault, Hericane relaxed and let herself fall.

As she expected, Mardi Gras was there to catch her. Mardi Gras, who had let loose the storm of light and color and sound that had shaken mighty Epitome.

The instant she landed in Mardi’s arms, Hericane threw her own arms around Mardi’s neck and hugged her hard. The bells on Mardi’s red and gold jester’s costume jingled as Hericane squeezed.

“Thank God you’re all right,” Hericane whispered in Mardi’s ear. “I was scared that he’d hurt you.”

“He did,” said Mardi, “but I still got your back, baby. And I got help, too. Look there.”

Hericane turned and followed Mardi’s gaze to a glowing disk of energy that was whirling nearby. As she watched, though the disk was flat, and no one hovered in the air behind it, a black-gloved hand punched out of the disk’s center. The hand was followed by an arm strapped with timepieces from wrist to shoulder, and then a face emerged.

A face that Hericane recognized.

“Overtime!” said Hericane, watching as the familiar costumed hero slid out of the disk. The insignia on his chest was a stylized image of clockwork gears, representing his particular super-powered specialty: time travel.

When a second man began to emerge from the disk after Overtime, however, Hericane did not at first know who he was.

The newcomer was younger than she or Mardi or Overtime...in his early twenties, perhaps. He wore a gleaming white costume with ruby trim and a crimson cape.

The most striking thing about him, though, at first, was his hair. It was bright blonde, shining like spun gold, and cascaded in a perfect, smooth fall all the way to the middle of his muscular back.

“Who’s he?” said Hericane, her eyes glued to the new arrival as he cleared the disk.

“A new recruit,” said Mardi. “Courtesy of Overtime’s latest time-chute. He’s a real Epitome expert, you might say.”

Hericane continued to stare at the long-haired newcomer...and then, suddenly, her attention was snatched away by a familiar blaze of pain in her side. Even as she realized what it was, she knew that there would be worse to come.

When “dagger eyes” struck, she knew that her father would not be far behind.

Sure enough, just as Hericane tried to twist away from the painful beam, Epitome flashed up from below and snatched her from Mardi’s arms like a football. On his way past, Epitome cuffed Mardi on the side of the head, sending her spinning away toward the ground.

As Epitome clasped Hericane against the hard metal of his breastplate and carried her off, she hauled back one fist and hammered it into his jaw with all her strength. Epitome responded with a head butt that knocked Hericane senseless.

As Hericane struggled to regain control of herself, he raised her high overhead. He looked as if he were ready to hurl her to the ground below.

“I won’t let you kill me!” he said, visibly shaking. “I won’t let it happen again!”

Then, just as suddenly as Epitome had snatched her from Mardi, someone grabbed Hericane from Epitome.

It was the newcomer who had followed Overtime through the chute. He flashed Hericane a blinding smile as he swept her away from her father.

Though Hericane had thought that he had looked handsome from a distance, she decided that he looked stunning up close. The smile, the bright green eyes, the creamy skin, the golden hair...all of it mingled in artful perfection, as impossibly ideal as a retouched photo or a painting.

He turned to her, and she was lost in his gaze. She was held firmly by his intense personal magnetism...and something else. Only after he had set her down on the roof of a factory where Mardi was waiting did she know what it was.

Familiarity.

The man leaped away before Hericane could say a word to him. He headed straight for Epitome, who hovered some distance away with a frown of deep confusion on his face.

“I know him from somewhere, don’t I?” said Hericane.

“You might say that,” said Mardi Gras.

At that moment, Hericane heard the familiar screech of her father’s powers in action...and everything fell together. Her eyes widened and a chill raced up her spine as she figured out who the long-haired man really was.

Because her seventy-two-year-old father was not the one using his powers at that moment.

But the long-haired newcomer was.

“Oh my God,” Hericane said in a hushed voice. “It’s him.”

Mardi Gras put a hand on Hericane’s shoulder and squeezed gently. “Yeah, it is,” she said. “We figured it was the only way.”

“My father’s younger self,” said Hericane. “Overtime brought him from the past.”

Mardi nodded solemnly. “He’s the only one powerful enough to stop Epitome.”

The sky flared as the young Epitome blasted his older counterpart with a bolt of electro-breath. The old man fell back fast, then caught himself and pressed forward against the crackling stream of energy.

The confused look was gone from his face, replaced by grim determination. “How many times have I put you down today,” he snarled, “and you just keep coming back for more.”

Young Epitome cut off his electro-breath to answer. “This is the first time we’ve met,” he said. “You don’t remember because you’re sick.”

When she heard this exchange, Hericane understood another of the day’s mysteries for the first time. Throughout Epitome’s attacks, she had wondered why he had thought she was him...and further, why he was trying to kill her if he believed that she was him.

Now, she knew.

“He never kept pictures around the house,” she said. “I never knew he looked so much like me when he was young.”

“He sure did,” said Mardi.

Hericane nodded slowly. “When he came after me, he didn’t think I was him as he is today,” she said. “He thought I was him from years ago. He remembered coming forward in time as a young man to fight himself as an old man.”

“He knew this would happen all along,” said Mardi, “but he ended up making it happen. By attacking us to try to head it off, he forced us to get help from the only person who could stop him.”

“Himself,” said Hericane.

As she and Mardi watched, old Epitome drove a fist at young Epitome’s stomach, then another at his chin. Both blows glanced off seemingly without impact, as young Epitome hovered calmly in place without so much as a wince.

The next time that old Epitome took a swing, young Epitome caught his fist with one hand and held it effortlessly in place.

“Listen to me,” said young Epitome. “You are sick. You need help. Let me help you.”

Old Epitome struggled against his young counterpart’s grip, working to free his captured hand. “You’re a liar,” he said. “You won’t help me. I remember how this all ends.”

“You have Alzheimer’s disease,” said young Epitome. “You don’t know what you remember anymore.”

“I remember!” said old Epitome, still straining to wrench his hand free.

Without a twitch of effort, young Epitome steadily pushed his older self’s fist away from him. “You almost killed your own daughter because you thought she was me!” he said. “Still think you’re in your right mind?”

For an instant, old Epitome looked down at Hericane and Mardi on the factory rooftop. Even from a distance, Hericane thought that she glimpsed a flicker of clarity in his eyes.

Then, it was gone, if it had ever truly been there. Old Epitome started to glow with an aura of hazy, golden light.

“No!” shouted Hericane, launching herself off the rooftop toward the action. “Don’t do it, Dad!”

She knew exactly what that golden aura meant.

Old Epitome was not going to surrender. Instead, he was pulling out all the stops.

He was going into the Bonus Round.

So was young Epitome. With his older self activating a rapidly changing sequence of unpredictable powers, what else could he do?

For a moment, the young and old Epitomes hung in the sky, their combined auras swelling and brightening. Then, the auras shifted from gold to red, and the men exploded away from each other.

They charged back together immediately, each glowing with a different light and surging with a different power as the Bonus Round fully engulfed them.

Hericane intended to hurl herself between them and cut the battle short, but Overtime rocketed up to block her path. When Hericane tried to swerve around him, he grabbed hold of her and froze her in place with the Pause Inducer mounted in his gauntlet.

“I’m sorry,” he told her. “That’s a fight you don’t want to be in the middle of.”

Hericane wanted to correct him, tell him that she had to try to save her father, but she was on pause and could not speak. All that she could do was watch helplessly as the young and old manifestations of her father battered each other with a stream of destructive powers.

Both Epitomes changed powers in the blink of an eye, switching from one to the next every few seconds. It was a dizzying whirl of fire and ice and cyclones and explosions and body parts that multiplied and distended and vibrated faster than the eye could see. Even Hericane, who knew her father’s abilities well, did not recognize some of the transformations and emissions on display in the heart of the duel.

One man grew to five times his original size, and the other man shot purple rays from his fingertips. Clouds of scalding steam hissed out of one man’s nose, while the other man split into a dozen razor-sharp slices.

While Hericane watched, the two Epitomes flashed from nightmare vision to ink blot blasts, from plague breath to laser fists to slave rays to spike skin. Young Epitome’s limbs disappeared, then punched back in from another dimension, glowing orange and seemingly detached from their owner, to pummel old Epitome from different directions. Old Epitome turned into a sheet of malleable golden metal and wrapped around young Epitome’s head, sealing it in a sphere without a single opening.

Young Epitome thrashed in the air, pulling at the sphere, trying unsuccessfully to wedge his fingers between the golden skin and his throat. His body turned to rock, then steel, then ice, but he could not break open the sphere from within. He expanded and shrunk and stretched, but the sphere changed size and shape along with him.

Young Epitome wrestled with the smothering helmet for one more moment. Then, he stopped fighting it.

And became a blinding ball of energy like a new sun flaring to life in the sky.

Because Hericane was on pause and could not blink or shield her eyes, Overtime threw a hand over them to block the burst of light. When Overtime pulled his hand away, Hericane saw a single figure hovering in the sky, silhouetted against a pulsing rainbow nimbus.

For an instant, Hericane thought it was the seventy-two-year-old version of Epitome, because his hair was little more than stubble, and his costume was red with a gold breastplate instead of red and white fabric.

But as the halo faded, and the man drifted toward her, she saw that he was not the old man after all. He was not quite the same young man who had come from the past, either.

For one thing, the blinding smile was gone. “I’m so sorry,” he said grimly, looking lost. He stared down at his costume, brushing it with his fingertips.

Hericane felt sick. She had always wondered how the impenetrable golden breastplate of her father’s costume had been created, with its unearthly properties and unique, pebbled texture. It must have been forged in the heart of a volcano or a star, she had thought, or in another dimension where the laws of physics were different from those she knew. How else could an indestructible metal be shaped into body armor for a super hero?

Now, she knew. In addition to burning his long hair down to stubble, Young Epitome’s nova blast had liquefied the metal sphere that had nearly smothered him. The metal had oozed down over his chest and adhered to his costume.

For fifty-odd years, Hericane’s father had worn a costume sheathed in his own remains.

“Sorry,” said young Epitome. The confusion on his face shifted to horror. Tears rolled out of both eyes. He drifted close to Hericane as if he knew her, as if she could help or reassure him in some way.

Hericane felt a mild zap like static electricity as Overtime took her off pause mode. Her body jerked as she regained the power of movement in her native time frame.

Even when she was able to move and speak again, however, she did not know what to say to young Epitome.

He continued to hover in front of her, alternately meeting her gaze and staring down at his newly minted breastplate. His expression shifted quickly, like super-powers in the Bonus Round, switching from anguish to disbelief to horrified rage to blank shock...though the overriding visible emotion was deep confusion.

“I think I owe you an apology,” he said slowly, returning his gaze to Hericane. “I’m sorry for killing your father.” He said it like a question, raising his voice on the last syllables.

“I only wanted to help him,” said Epitome. His eyes narrowed and shunted to one side, staring into space. “I wanted to stop him from hurting people...but God knows I didn’t want this to happen.”

Tears rolled down his face, and his shoulders shuddered. He hung his head, then caught sight of the breastplate and quickly looked up again.

Hericane drifted forward and took him in her arms. She stroked the stubble on his scalp as he sobbed silently into her shoulder.

“I’m sorry he hurt you,” said the man who was or had been or would be her father, trembling against her. He was younger now than she was, and she did not know him though she had known him all her life, and it was almost too strange for her to bear.

At that moment, Overtime bobbed into view behind Epitome and pointed to one of the fifty watches strapped onto his right arm. Then, he turned and waved at the rainbow disk of a newly opened time chute spinning in midair behind him.

‘Time’s up,’ he signaled. ‘Time to send him back.’

Hericane shook her head and held on to her father.

“How can I live with this?” said Epitome. “Knowing I did this to myself? Knowing this is what’s in store for me?”

“Don’t close yourself off,” whispered Hericane, giving him the only advice that she could think of...the advice that she had wanted to give him for decades. “Don’t be afraid to reach out to other people. Maybe things will be different for you next time.”

Overtime tapped Epitome on the shoulder then, and he drew back from Hericane. “I don’t know if I can take that chance,” he said, wiping the tears from his eyes. “I don’t want to hurt you again.”

He reached out then and ran his fingertips softly down the curve of Hericane’s cheek. She had never known that he could be so gentle. His eyes widened and sparkled as he gazed at her wonderingly.

She felt tears of her own begin to fall.

Finally, she understood why he had pushed her away all her life. Not because of her sexuality. Not because he did not love her.

He had pushed her away because he had wanted to protect her from himself.

“I love you, Dad,” said Hericane, her voice catching. It was the last time in her life that she would say those words to Epitome...though, from his point of view, it was the first time that she said them to him.

Then, Overtime took young Epitome by the hand and guided him into the swirling disk of the time chute.

Hericane should not have been happy, she thought, because, after all, she had lost her father that day. He had died right before her eyes.

And yet, her heart was full and her tears were tears of joy, for just before Epitome slid headfirst into the chute, he looked back over his shoulder and said the one thing that she had never heard him say to her before.

“I love you, too,” he said. And then he was gone.

 

*****

 

 

Heroes of Global Warming

 

Freeze-Dry, Floater, and Bottlenose catch up with me near the Times Square Sea, itching to bring me in after what I did to their buddy, Sunblock. Never mind that I used to be their buddy, too, a long time ago. Back before I went from being a superhero...

...to kicking superheroes' asses. Not that Freeze-Dry and his pals think they're the ones about to take a beating. Not when they've got me outnumbered three to one like this.

"Stand down, Skillet!" Freeze-Dry skates up on an elevated track of frozen water vapor, ten feet above the lapping waves of Times Square Sea. The track expands forward as he skates, responding to his freeze-inducing powers. "I won't tell you twice!"

"You heard the man!" Floater swoops up like a deflating balloon and holds steady at twenty feet away from me, drifting past the ruined buildings of the Square on the late morning air currents. His voice sounds like a cartoon chipmunk's, like he's just sucked a lungful of helium. "Don't make us hurt you."

Bottlenose, who's half man, half dolphin, spins up from the water below and triggers his antigravity harness, joining the rest of us hovering in midair. His gleaming gray head bobs as he lets loose a stream of clicking dolphin language, which I don't understand.

So now I'm surrounded. The forces of justice encircle me in the heart of the sunken city of New York, drowned five years ago by the rising sea levels of global warming.

The lights of Times Square are long dead. The giant screens on which videos once played for throngs of tourists are gray and shattered; even the highest is half-submerged.

Maybe if I didn't remember what this place used to be like, it wouldn't make me sick to the stomach now. The same goes for the whole damn world these days. Rising temperatures, rising sea levels, crazy weather. Manhattan has turned to shit, and the whole planet has gone with it.

The smell of salt water and dead sea life fills the air. The city is mostly deserted, but a few spectators weave between towers in sputtering motorboats. They know the score.

There can be only one outcome. The three noble heroes will defeat me in battle and take me in. My year-long struggle is at an end; Earth's most wanted is goin' down.

At least that's what they think.

I hang there a moment, held aloft by the pillar of rising steam gushing up from the water below. My powers keep the steam flowing, generated by the waves of intense heat I radiate.

Turning slowly in my red-orange costume trimmed with flames, I give each of my former pals a long stare from behind my red-tinted goggles. Bottlenose chatters some more and flips me the bird with one of his hybrid flipper/hands. His purple harness bears the insignia of America's premiere super-team, the Castigators: a stylized letter "C" that looks like it's been sculpted out of ice.

Floater, also purple-clad with the Castigators' emblem on his chest, looks like a human water-skimmer. His pipe-cleaner body flutters on errant breezes; he floats on his caved-in belly like he's part of a mobile, dangling over an infant's crib.

Then there's Freeze-Dry. "Well, Skillet?" He's got a good-sized paunch these days, filling out his silver parka. Global warming has been good to him; lots of demand for a guy who can cool things off with a wave of his hands. "Going to come quietly and answer for what you've done?"

Not as much demand for someone like me, though. Someone who's all about the heat. "Funny thing, Rick." Reaching up, I run an orange-gloved hand over my bright red shock of hair. "I was just going to ask you the same question."

"No civilian names!" Freeze-Dry swings up both hands, pointing all twelve of his fingers right at me. "You're not one of us any more."

"Sure I am." I nod and give him a wiggling double thumbs-up. "Once a Castigator..."

"Don't even joke!" says Floater in his helium chipmunk voice. "Not after what you did to Sunblock!"

The three of them move in a little when he mentions that. I can see how there'd be some hard feelings.

But the fact is, there's something they don't know. Something that puts a different spin on the whole mess.

"Listen." I pump out a little more heat to push them back again. "You'll never know how much I didn't want to hurt Sunblock."

"You didn't let it stop you, did you?" squeaks Floater, and Bottlenose chatters in agreement.

"But it wasn't supposed to be that way." The fire of regret wells up within me, followed by the fire of pain. "I didn't have any choice."

 

*****

 

It all started with the clinking of beer bottles, a year ago to the day. We started down this road with a toast to the future, to setting it right, my partner and I.

Make that Sunblock and I.

Neither of us was smiling as we tipped back the bottles and drank. The occasion was hopeful, the plan was worked out, we were committed...

But the price would be steep.

"Are you sure you can do this?" Sunblock raised his eyebrows. Tiny beads of sweat stood out on his dark forehead, the effect of sitting across a table from me with my two-hundred degree body temperature.

"Of course not." I swigged some more beer, which was already warm from my hand. "But I'm willing to try."

"Shit." Sunblock shook his head slowly. "Are you sure you don't want to switch places?"

"And be the double-crossing mole?" I touched the big "C" on my chest; back then, I was still wearing a Castigators' uniform. "Having to hide my true purpose from America's premiere super-team while secretly manipulating them from within?"

Sunblock sighed and put down his beer. "I've gotta ask, Mike. This isn't because of the critics, right? You're over that, aren't you?"

I laughed, though it wasn't a laughing matter. "I'm not doing this because I won the Droopy Long-John." It was true. Receiving the critics' award for most useless hero was just one of the things that was motivating me, one part of a miserable life.

Sunblock reached across the table and put his hand on top of mine, which I knew made him uncomfortable. Fresh sweat popped out on his forehead and ran down his face. "What about the R-word? I hate to bring it up, but..."

"Retirement?" I bumped his hand aside. "How many times do I have to tell you, this isn't some mid-life crisis."

"I know, I'm just..."

Lunging forward out of my chair, I grabbed the front of his purple costume. "This is about the future, Joe! Making things right for everyone!"

"Except two dozen super-heroes." Sunblock hissed the words in a harsh whisper. "Tricked into a cape-and-cowl death trap."

I held on to him for a moment, locking my gaze to his ebony eyes. As always, they were full of understanding and friendship. Like any good friend on the brink of a big leap, he was simply conducting one last sanity check. He was backstopping me, as always, because he cared.

And I was holding out on him, as always, for the same reason. Holding back something he needed to know.

"Thanks." I released him and settled back into my chair. "Yes, I'm sure I can do this."

I watched as he smiled calmly and raised his beer. "Well all right then." What if he did know? What if I told him? "So we do this thing." Those questions always hung between us like a cloud of cigarette smoke.

And like always, they remained unanswered. "We start tomorrow, Sunblock." But for how much longer? Another week? Another year? "One year from now, the world as we know it will cease to exist."

 

*****

 

There's been a lot of water under the bridge since then. After what I did to Sunblock, I'm on my own. No cavalry to charge to the rescue.

On the other hand, I've still got an advantage. Because Freeze-Dry, Floater, and Bottlenose have no idea what's really at stake.

Or what I'm willing to do to make it happen.

"One last chance to come quietly." As he says it, Freeze-Dry's already revving up his flash-freezing powers. His twelve fingers glow bright blue and crackle with energy. "As your friend, I advise you to surrender."

He doesn't wait for me to answer. Bolts of freeze-force burst from his hands and race toward me, screaming through the air.

I thrust one hand in front of me, casting a wave of focused heat at Freeze-Dry's blast. The opposing forces crash together and swirl for a moment, heat versus cold. Then, I pump out a booster surge that breaks the clinch and fries the stream of freezing power right back to Freeze-Dry's fingers, sending him spinning.

I'm expecting an attack from the other two next, and I get it. A wave of sound plows into me from behind, a deafening, modulated roar like amplified whalesong. I know it's Bottlenose's work; I twist as it flings me forward, and I see him swimming toward me, distortion ripples pulsing from his open mouth.

I fire a blast of heat at the water behind me, pulling up a funnel of steam that stops my flight. Pushing off with another jet of steam, I rush headlong toward Bottlenose, hands glowing cherry red like twin branding irons. He can't get out of my way in time, and I bash both fists straight into his snout, sending him reeling. So much for the ear-splitting whalesong.

It's then that I make a mistake. I figure Freeze-Dry's the bigger threat, so I turn when I hear his voice.

But what I should be doing is watching for Floater. Never underestimate someone just because they don't seem to contribute much.

It's the same lesson I've worked so hard to teach the Castigators about me.

 

*****

 

Eleven months and three weeks ago today, Concertina and Swiftboat of the Castigators went out on a routine rescue call to Point Scranton, one of the new coastal towns at the edge of the rising Atlantic Ocean. The call came in over their belt radios—something about a capsized ferry on the way to Jersey Island.

They should've been surprised when all they found at the rescue coordinates was me...but they were too busy being assholes, as usual.

Swiftboat did his patented running on water bit, moving so fast as he zipped toward me that his feet never had time to sink. "What the hell, Skillet? You make a wrong turn on the way to the weenie roast?"

Concertina chuckled on her blood-red jet ski. "Where's the ferry? Did you already set it on fire? Was that your solution to the sinking problem?"

I just floated on a curtain of steam and shook my head. The stupid jokes had been rolling for years, ever since global warming's impact had gone off the charts. Really funny stuff, right? All based on the premise that someone with heat powers is about as useful as tits on a bull in a world that's too damn hot.

"You're supposed to save the passengers, not melt them." Swiftboat kept running in circles to stay afloat. "I thought we talked about this."

I just shrugged. "Everyone's disappeared. Either that, or the rescue coordinates are wrong."

"Well gee, if you say so." Concertina smirked. "Did you scan the area with your crispy critter vision?"

I can't say I was used to the jokes, but I did get used to ignoring them. "Maybe you could run a grid search, Swiftboat. Call us in when you reach the actual site."

Swiftboat was used to ignoring me, too. "Say, 'Tina." He pretended I hadn't said a word. "I just decided to go run a grid search. I'll call when I've found the actual site, 'kay?"

"Good idea, Swifty. I'll wait here." Looking up, she made a face at me. "Would it kill you to cut back on the thermal emissions? You're just making the global warming worse, y'know."

I nodded. "Thanks for the input."

As Swiftboat dashed off across the water, Concertina patted her hair and frowned. "You're ruining my hair, too, didja know that? Frying the body right out of it."

"Sorry to hear that." I shook my head like I felt for her. "Shaving it off's always an option."

Concertina clucked her tongue and threw the jet-ski in reverse. "Talk about being part of the problem." She scowled with disgust as she backed away from me. "Might as well call my hairdresser now." As the jet-ski continued bobbing backward, she pulled a cell phone out of her barbed-wire bustier and hit speed-dial.

"Hey Trish, can you squeeze me in tomorrow morning?" At first, she was too busy talking to realize the jet-ski had stopped moving. "That's right. Yes, I know I was just in yesterday. Tell it to Captain Burnout here." She laughed. "Yes, that Captain Burnout, Trish!"

The fact that I was heating up and moving closer didn't seem to register with Concertina. She was too busy yukking it up with her lowlife hairdresser.

Another big laugh. "The things you say, Trish!" She fixed her eyes on me so it was clear whom they were talking about. "What? What?" She let loose a big, honking hoot. "You think so? Oh my God!" And another. "No, I'm not going to ask him that!"

Suddenly, her phone stopped working. Because I melted it in her hand.

With a shriek, she flung the smoking blob into the water, then plunged her hand down after it to cool off. "Oh my God! Oh my God! Oh my God!"

As the initial shock wore off, she looked up at me, and understanding flowed into her eyes. Then anger. "What'd you do that for, Burnout?" With her undamaged hand, she grabbed the wire gun from its holster on her left boob. "Think you're cute or somethin'?"

As she swung the wide-bore barrel in my direction, I raised my hands. She pulled the trigger, and a gleaming length of razor-sharp concertina wire shot from the muzzle, slashing toward me.

Before she could use her metalkinetic power to bring the wire to life, wrapping it around my throat or balls or what have you, I pulsed out a wave of blistering heat. The wire turned to silver rain in midair, drizzling down on the water's surface. Then, I melted the gun, too.

And the jet-ski.

The look on Concertina's face finally changed from disgust and anger to fear. "Hey, I'm sorry, all right?" She winced up at me as she treaded water to stay afloat. "I was just kidding around, Mike!"

I shrugged. "Whatever."

Her expression shifted back to anger. "Swiftboat'll be back here any second now, you know. He isn't gonna be happy, not one bit."

"Shhh." I placed my finger against my lips. "Did you hear that?"

Just then, a sound like thunder cracked in the distance.

I smiled down at her and hiked a thumb over my shoulder. "Sonic boom. That's him."

"That's right." She tossed her head and sneered. Her running mascara had given her raccoon eyes. "Now you're gonna get it, Burnout. Just wait."

"Think so?" I pointed at a distant stretch of coastline. "Watch this."

Suddenly, a wave of blackness surged out of the distance, racing toward us over the water. It fell upon us fast, shrouding us in total darkness, as if someone had switched off the sun.

The darkness held a moment. Concertina screamed.

And then it rolled away. The mid-afternoon light reappeared all around us.

"What the hell?" Even as she said it, I knew she'd recognized the darkness effect. She'd seen it in action often enough; all the Castigators had.

Because it was the trademark of one of our own.

"S-Sunblock?" Concertina's lips quivered as she said it. "But he wasn't on the duty roster."

I shot her a wink. "Good to know you're paying attention, 'Tina."

She frowned, thinking it over...and then she tried to turn it to her advantage. "Swiftboat must've called him in to deal with you. Now you're screwed!"

I laughed at her. "Here." Super-heating the water around her, I turned it into a cushion of steam that raised her out of the sea. "I'll take you to him."

Her brown eyes widened. "To Swiftboat?"

"You betcha." I raised my eyebrows and nodded. "We got you matching stasis tubes. You'll never leave his side."

Before she could say another word, I turned up the temperature, giving her a sudden case of heatstroke. She passed out, slipping into a comatose state.

Which is where she has stayed to this day. She and all the others we've rounded up.

 

*****

 

They underestimated me, every last one of them. Just like I underestimate Floater today in the Times Square Sea.

I write him off as a minor threat and turn my back on him. Freeze-Dry's shouting something, and I focus on him instead.

Which is exactly when Floater does his deflating balloon trick and crashes into me from behind at a high rate of speed.

The impact slams me out of my supporting pillar of steam. My overheated body hisses like a hundred snakes when I hit the water face-down, casting up billowing clouds of vapor.

Before I can get my bearings, something lands on my back, knocking the breath out of me. The weight pushes me down faster than I can turn the water to steam, and my empty lungs inhale. Next thing I know, they're filling with water.

I'm drowning. Now wouldn't that be something, if I came all this way, with three Castigators left to capture, and drowned to death?

My first instinct is to thrash like a fool, trying to dislodge whatever's pushing me down...but that doesn't work. Then, in one of the last seconds I have left, I remember I'm a super-hero. I have a super power.

Time to pull out the stops.

Choking, plunging deeper under the sea, I gather my strength, reaching into my fiery core. And then, every cell tingling, I let it explode.

A shockwave of intense heat bursts out of my body in all directions, instantly boiling the water around me. The weight on my back falls away, dropping past...and it's only then I see for sure it's Bottlenose who's been trying to drown me.

Flipping around, I shoot toward the surface. My lungs ache as I race for the light, praying I won't black out before I reach the open air. Praying also that Bottlenose isn't dead, because all my hopes will die with him.

The instant I break the surface, I focus my power inward, concentrating on my lungs. I feel the heat suffusing the tissue, radiating into the sacs, turning the water into steam. When I open my mouth, it rushes out of me in a sizzling jet.

And then, when my lungs are clear, I suck in what feels like the deepest breath of my life. The best breath of my life.

I enjoy the feeling for exactly ten seconds.

"Noooo!" Then, Floater's anguished cry kills my buzz. "Bottlenose, noooo!"

Looking around, I catch sight of it. The glistening gray body bobbing on the waves thirty feet away...skin blistered from boiling sea water. Half man, half dolphin...

All dead.

And so, too, is the plan I've so carefully nurtured for the past year. Because I don't need just some of the Castigators to succeed.

I need all of them.

 

*****

 

Two years ago, my buddy Brain Fart laid it out for me over a steak dinner.

His big blue eyes were wide with excitement as he spun his theory. "So you see, the amalgamated essences of all those heroes, concentrated in a single beam, should..." A shadow swept over his face, and he frowned. His big bald head shrank as if someone had let the air out of it. "Uh...duh..." It was gone, all of his genius, just like that. He was reduced to a moron...but not for long.

That was his power: bursts of brilliance alternating with bursts of stupidity. Hence the name. "Oh, dear." He cleared his throat and picked up where he'd left off. "The amalgamated essences, concentrated in a single beam, properly directed, should destroy the excess carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere, returning it to a pristine state."

"Seriously?" Halfway through my ribeye, I'd stopped eating. Brain Fart was considered a twelfth-rate hero, but he'd always been a friend of mine...and he had my undivided attention. "You could do that?"

"Oh, yes." Brain Fart grinned and nodded. "We could turn back the clock to before the Industrial Revolution. Give the world a clean...a clean..." His head deflated, and his eyes crossed. "Duh..." He raised his fork and stared at it like it had suddenly grown wings and a face. "This for eating?" He put it in his mouth and gnawed on it a moment, gazing blankly into space.

A waiter paused at our table, looking concerned, and I waved him away. Brain Fart pulled the fork from his mouth and tossed it after him.

Then, the change occurred once more. The head inflated, the blue eyes brightened. "Slate. We could give the world a clean slate." He lifted his glass and swirled the ruby red wine, then sipped it. "Sadly, this hypothesis can never be tested."

"Why not?" I liked the sound of that clean slate he was offering. I loved it.

"Because they'll never go along with it, my dear fellow. The Castigators."

"You don't think so?" I scowled. "But saving the world is their job, isn't it?" Already, I was talking about the Castigators as if I wasn't one of them. I still wore the purple uniform under my red flannel shirt and jeans, but in my heart, I'd moved on long ago from that fraternity of abusive assholes.

Brain Fart seemed to understand, because he didn't mention it. "Do you really think they're prepared for the level of sacrifice that will be required? Not to mention...not to..." His face blanked, his head dwindled, and his jaw fell slack. "Duh...doy..." And then, a moment later, he was back. "Not to mention, this would be an experimental process with no guarantee of success."

"What level of sacrifice, Tony?" I leaned forward, wholly focused on his every word. "Would this deplete their powers? Would it drain them permanently?"

"Most certainly." He faded, mindlessly played with himself a little, then returned. "Because, you see, it would drain their lives."

This time, it was my jaw that fell open. I gaped at him as the meaning of what he'd said took hold.

"What I'm proposing here is quite more extensive than a power drain. What we're really talking about...uh..." Deflation. "Duh..." Inflation. "...is the murder of twenty-four super-heroes."

Instinctively, I cast a furtive glance around the restaurant. "Murder?" I hushed my voice.

"Come now." Brain Fart cocked his head and narrowed his eyes. "Would it really be such a bad thing? Would it really be such a loss?"

I slumped back in my chair. My head was spinning.

"Seriously, Mike. You can't tell me you love those people. The way they treat you." Brain Fart raised his glass again and looked at me through the shimmering wine. "The things they say to you."

I sat there, reeling...and then a thought clicked into place. The mental math had finished running in the back of my mind.

I understood. "Oh my God." I gaped at him. "There are twenty-four Castigators."

Brain Fart drifted off, then perked up again. "Correct."

"That's twenty-four...counting me."

"Correct again." His expression hardened. "Which leads me to the inevitable question at the end of this primrose path, dear Skillet.

"Would you do your part to reverse global warming, if you wouldn't be around to enjoy the result?"

 

*****

 

The question's moot now that I've killed Bottlenose. His blistered gray body bobs in the dirty water, mute testament to the failure of my efforts. All my personal commitment and sacrifice were for nothing. There will be no turning back the clock on global warming.

Should I even bother bringing in Freeze-Dry and Floater? According to Brain Fart's equations, they won't be enough. Twenty-four is the magic number, the perfect balance for his climate change contraption.

Maybe it's time to give up. Time to accept the state of the world and my life and give myself over to whatever suffering they still have in store for me.

As if I'm not suffering enough already because of what I did to Sunblock. The memory of his cries still echoes in my mind.

 

*****

 

It happened the night before, on the observation deck of the Empire State Building. He wanted to meet to give me the news in person.

"There's a new recruit." Sunblock was grinning from ear to ear. "A new Castigator. Someone with powers."

At first, I didn't see the importance. I walked to the railing, raised my goggles to my forehead, and gazed out over the drowned city. The tops of the tallest buildings stood out like islands in the dark sea. Cookfires flickered in scattered windows as a few survivors struggled to hang on. Not exactly the Big Apple I'd once loved. Not exactly the City That Never Sleeps.

"Don't you get it?" Sunblock grabbed my shoulder and shook me. "No one on Earth has manifested powers and come forward in years. Now there's a twenty-fifth Castigator! Brain Fart's device only needs twenty-four."

I shrugged...but then it clicked. I saw where he was going with this. I knew what he was going to say.

"You don't have to die." He shook me again. "This new guy can be number twenty-four!"

Slowly, I turned from the view to face him. The contours of his dark brown face reflected the cherry-red glow from my super-heated body. His skin was slick with sweat from being too close to my perpetual fire.

"Isn't that great news?" He couldn't stop smiling. "You can live, Mike! You can live to see the new world dawning!"

I, on the other hand, wasn't smiling at all. "This new hero, who is he?"

"Calls himself Floater," said Sunblock. "Some kind of levitational powers. Not a major threat."

"Great." I turned away. "I can grab him up with the last two tomorrow."

Finally, Sunblock's smile faded. "You mean both of us can bring him in, don't you? Like we have the other twenty Castigators?"

I pulled my goggles into place and shook my head. "You're staying home, Joe. I've got it covered."

Sunblock scowled. "No way. We started this together, we finish it together."

"I'm sorry, but no." I pointed a finger at him. "Floater's going to take your place, not mine."

"Screw that." Sunblock grabbed my wrist. "You can take your self-sacrificing altruistic bullshit and shove it up your ass." A cloud of his patented dark matter flowed out of his body and began to wrap around me. "I'm stashing you somewhere safe till this all blows over."

The situation was racing out of control. Sunblock's dark matter could open up portals into shadowy places. Already, I felt the cloud tugging at me, starting to pull me into a dark space somewhere on the other side of the world.

He wasn't leaving me with any options. I knew what I was going to have to do next, and I already hated myself for it.

But there was no way I was going to let him keep me alive.

I knew he wouldn't understand, because he didn't know all the facts. There was something I'd always held back from him, something I was afraid he wouldn't want to know...and without that puzzle piece, he wouldn't get it. All he would see was this:

Me heating up suddenly and lashing out at him.

He was surprised at the flash of power that burst out of me, burning away his dark matter cloud. The next blast of thermal energy threw him back to the floor of the observation deck.

Intensifying my core temperature, I prepared to put him under by quickly inducing heatstroke. But before I could strike, he shot up his hands and let loose a bubble of darkness that bolted toward me.

I couldn't evade it in time. The bubble lunged at me, locking me in its embrace of icy pitch blackness. Then, it began to draw inward, collapsing.

I'd seen him use this trick many times before. If I didn't manage to break free, the dark matter would encase me like shrink-wrap and cut off my air supply, rendering me unconscious...then filter in just enough air to prevent suffocation. It was his technique of choice for capturing Castigators destined for death in Brain Fart's contraption; how ironic that he was using it now to keep me alive.

Reaching deep, I gathered and stoked my heat, building it quickly into a raging bonfire. As the darkness pressed around me, I coaxed the fire higher and hotter, until it was straining to get out.

Then, I threw open the furnace door.

Like a nuclear firestorm, the wave of heat and flame rushed out of me, burning away the darkness in an instant. Freed from the trap, I fell to my knees, gasping for breath.

And only then did I realize the terrible mistake I'd made. I'd shaped the charge to cook off the dark matter and quickly dissipate...but I hadn't realized how close Sunblock had been standing. I hadn't known he'd moved within the blast radius.

If he'd been a few feet farther away, he would've been fine...singed but fine. But the full force of the firestorm had caught him.

He lay crumpled in a fetal ball, smoking and shivering. The heat had been so intense, it had blown right through his defenses and fried his flesh.

"God, no." I reached out, then drew back instantly. The smell of cooked meat was overwhelming. "Oh, Joe..."

His only response was a whimper.

Tears rolled down my cheeks. How could I have let this happen?

Sunblock shuddered and groaned. His charred hide looked like the blackened skin of a marshmallow held in a campfire too long. I could only imagine the pain he was experiencing.

"Please, no..." I reached out again, longing to hold him, to comfort him. Wishing with all my heart that things could have been different. Wishing I'd never gone there that night.

Suddenly, he convulsed and cried out. Twitched like a live wire on a wet street...and then he fell still.

The breath hissed out of him into the night air. His last breath, fled because of me, because I'd wanted to save his life.

And the terrible thing was, I'd wanted that more than anything. But he couldn't have known it, because of that last puzzle piece I'd always held back, that one thing I'd never told him.

The one thing it took him dying to make me say, though it would do neither of us any good ever again.

"I love you!" I wailed it over his unmoving body, my tears splashing his smoldering flesh. "Oh God, I love you, Joe!"

 

*****

 

Where could I go from there? What could I do? Give up and let all our work have been for nothing? Take away the last hope we had to set the world right?

Better to move forward, I thought. Better to play out the string and balance the scales with my own personal sacrifice. Bring into being a new world where my mistakes could be forever forgotten.

At least that was the plan until I screwed up again and killed Bottlenose.

As I float in the Times Square Sea and gaze at his body, I realize my choices from this point on are meaningless. The door has slammed shut on our plan for the world's salvation.

Even if I bag Freeze-Dry and Floater and haul them to Brain Fart's lab, it won't change a thing. The global warming reverser requires twenty-four super-powered subjects...and even with Freeze-Dry, Floater, and myself, we'll only have twenty-three. Brain Fart's out of the picture because he has to operate the equipment.

So global warming is here to stay. And my life, for all intents and purposes, is over.

Not only have I failed the world, killed the man I love, and killed Bottlenose, but I've pounded the last nail into my own personal coffin.

As I bob in the filthy water, Freeze-Dry and Floater stare at Bottlenose's corpse, their expressions grim. Then, they turn my way.

"What are you waiting for?" Freeze-Dry aims his twelve fingers in my direction. "Let's get this over with."

I don't say a word or make a move.

Freeze-Dry extends his ice ramp toward me and skates closer. "Death by super-hero, right? Isn't that what monsters like you do when you're cornered? Get yourself killed so you won't have to go to prison?"

I seriously consider his proposal as I watch him approach me. I've lost everything that mattered to me. Why prolong the agony?

"'Bring 'em back alive' is the Castigators' policy," says Freeze-Dry. "But accidents happen, don't they? And Floater will back me up, won't he?"

Floater nods. I can almost feel the heat from the hatred in his eyes.

Swallowing hard, I make up my mind. Death is what I deserve. Why not get it over with?

The water around me steams as I start building a charge. Freeze-Dry smiles as he realizes I'm going to do exactly what he wants.

"Thank you." His fingertips sparkle and crackle as his own power charges up. "I'll make it quick, for old times' sake."

This is it. Steeling myself, I raise an arm from the water, preparing to fire.

"Stop!" Freeze-Dry's fingers glow bright blue, ready to cut loose. "Stop, or I'll shoot!"

I continue to raise my arm, which is glowing cherry-red now. I think of Joe, and a smile flits over my face.

End of the line.

Then, suddenly, a bubble of darkness plunges down and envelopes Freeze-Dry. He screams as it tightens around him, swiftly adhering to the contours of his body.

Floater whips around and tries to flee, but another bubble catches him, too. He fights it, but the inky substance sucks tight in seconds, clinging like spray-on black latex to every inch of him.

It can't be.

Frantically, I look up, and at first the sky is empty. I look right, then left...and then I feel a hand touch my shoulder.

I twist around to see an arm wrapped in bandages, hanging down. A familiar form is stretched out above me, buoyed on a carpet of dark matter, silhouetted against the sun.

"Hello, Mike."

My heart hammers when I hear that familiar voice. "J-Joe?" I take his hand.

He draws me up with him, rotating us both to stand above the water, face to face. Though his face, like his arm, is covered in bandages.

His whole body is swaddled in white bandages under his purple uniform. Only his eyes remain uncovered; his eyelids are the only patches of exposed skin anywhere on him.

A pang of guilt shoots through me to see him like that, damaged because of what I did to him. But the guilt is balanced by equal parts wonder and surprise.

The last time I saw him, on the observation deck of the Empire State Building, he was silent and still. I assumed he was dead. I activated the distress signal in the belt buckle of his Castigators' uniform and left him there, expecting his teammates to retrieve the body.

Now here he is, alive.

"H-how?" There are tears on my face as I stammer the words out. "How d-did you...?"

He wipes the tears with one bandaged finger. "Darkness heals, Mike. It transforms." He runs the tip of his finger along the side of my face. "And I had something to come back for. Something that wouldn't let me go."

I cock my head, staring at his bloodshot eyes between the bandages. Hoping he means what I want him to mean. Hoping he'll say what I want him to say.

And he does. "I love you, too, Mike."

Then, he tips his head toward me. I feel his lips moving against mine through the bandages, kissing me.

And when I close my eyes, I can imagine the bandages aren't there at all.

 

*****

 

As soon as we fly in through the open window of the 77^th floor of the Chrysler Building, Brain Fart starts hurrying us. He needs the darkness-shrouded captives we carry—Freeze-Dry and Floater—put in place immediately. According to his calculations, our odds of success will diminish the longer we wait. Something to do with sunspot activity and pollen counts.

He leads us through the room, which he's tricked out like a mad scientist's lab. There are wires and coils of metal tubing everywhere, all sparking with energy. Laptop computers flicker and flash on every bench and surface.

The place smells like copper and ozone and melting plastic. Everything's humming and beeping and hissing and whistling. Above all the ruckus, Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries" blasts from a hardcore speaker system.

The floor is littered with tools and little scuttling robots with wrenches for hands. There are lots of toys, too, for Brain Fart to play with when he switches from genius to simpleton; I nearly trip over a toy fire engine and a blue rubber ball.

The middle of the place is dominated by a huge carousel of gleaming silver and glass. Spokes radiate from a central hub, each ending in a transparent pod occupied by a frozen Castigator. As we walk the perimeter, I see Swiftboat and Concertina, Waterlog and Glacier, Climate Slut and Strange Agent. They're all here, every Castigator rounded up by me and Sunblock, sleeping in misty sockets in a world-changing machine.

"Right there." Brain Fart gestures at an empty pod and nods at the bundle of unconscious Freeze-Dry in my arms. "Put him there."

The canopy of the pod is open. I lay Freeze-Dry inside and step away.

"Duh...wha?" Brain Fart wobbles for a moment as his head shrinks and his wits leave him. "Doy..." Just as he starts gnawing on the open canopy of the next pod over, his head reinflates. "Shit." He gives the canopy a whack and points at Sunblock. "Put Floater in there, Joe."

Sunblock lays his burden in the pod, then straightens and turns. His gaze fixes on the next two pods on the carousel, which are also empty with canopies open. "I guess those are for Mike and me."

Brain Fart smacks buttons on the control panels of Freeze-Dry and Floater's pods, and their canopies hiss shut. "We have a full house, today, gentlemen." Puffing, he hurries over and checks the controls on the last remaining empty pods. "Good thing you made a reservation."

Sunblock takes my hand and leads me between the two pods. We stand there a moment, gazes locked, painfully aware that this is it. The end of the line.

We've only just connected, and now it's time for us to separate forever.

Brain Fart punches commands on a tablet computer and watches the screen. "Time's up, my friends." He doesn't comment on our closeness; did he know we belonged together all along? "Places, everyone."

Sunblock lets go of my hand. He turns toward his pod.

But then I catch hold of his shoulder. Because I don't think I can do it. I can't bear to be without him, especially now.

"Wait." Maybe there's a way. "Tony, I need to ask you a question."

 

*****

 

No. That's Brain Fart's answer. No, it will not upset the balance.

That's why, as the canopy closes, sealing me in the pod, I am not alone.

All that matters is that all twenty-four Castigators are present and accounted for.

As the device rumbles and whines and starts to spin, I have someone to hold.

It won't matter if one pod is empty...

I have someone to love.

...and another has two occupants.

The global warming reversal device turns faster, and the whine gets louder. Sunblock and I cling to each other, bodies wrapped together in our last embrace.

It makes a difference as the spinning accelerates and the countdown begins. As fear digs its gnarled claws into my heart.

The numbers boom over the speaker in the pod, with "Ride of the Valkyries" in the background.

Ten...nine...eight...

"I love you, Joe." Sunblock reaches up to smooth my hair. "I'm glad you finally wised up."

"Better late than never." I laugh softly.

...seven...six...five...

"Here's to the end of global warming," says Sunblock.

I touch my forehead to his. "Here's to us."

...four...three...two...

He tightens his embrace. We both tense in anticipation.

...one...zero.

There is a pulling sensation coming from all directions which quickly increases, and then I scream in white-hot agony as my body is torn asunder. I dissolve in a shower of sparks, swirling in waves of scintillating light.

Just as I realize my body is gone, just as I spin through a cascade of terror and loneliness, I feel it. The sparks of another, of Sunblock, dancing through me, mingling with me. The two of us flowing together, becoming one commingled current of life and light.

The device holds us there for an instant like a handful of fireflies. We whirl and toss and flicker, a tingling perfect oneness.

Then, suddenly, we are sucked through the spoke into the central hub, where we merge with twenty-two other sparkling showers. The device squeezes us all together, weaving us into a single matrix of coruscating, incandescent power...mashing us, kneading us, building up pressure.

And then it releases us all at once, straight up, from the giant antenna atop the Chrysler building.

As we race up into the atmosphere, I am truly not afraid, not despairing, not confused. Because as long as I can still feel him, I will be all right.

And as much as we have changed, I can still feel him.

When we reach the greatest heights, we explode in all directions. The sky ripples with curtains of rainbow light, a vast aurora spreading swiftly around the globe. Then that explodes too, in countless flares of color, the greatest fireworks display ever seen, burning off excess carbon dioxide with each burst.

Red and green and blue and yellow and white, the flares go off everywhere at once. Everyone down below stops what they're doing and watches in awe as the world changes.

And we are part of every burst, he and I, every beautiful blazing firework filling the air with shimmering sparks like the moments of a lifetime or the precious heartbeats of someone you love.

 

*****

 

 

Forced Betrayal

 

The murdered super-hero's apartment smells like cotton candy and popcorn.

And blood. Lots and lots of blood.

I pad around the place in the blue plastic booties that the crime scene investigators make me wear. I'm trying not to step on any evidence, but it's almost impossible. The poor girl's remains are splattered everywhere.

Suddenly, I hear a voice from a few feet behind me. "You didn't waste any time gettin' here, didja, Bonnie? Mardi Gras bites it, and presto, here you are."

I don't bother turning. Why give the douche the satisfaction? "Somebody dies, I don't piss around."

"Somebody super dies, you mean." The douche is Lieutenant Tank Driscoll, Isosceles City P.D. Don't let the scrawny 5'3" frame fool you; this guy will roll over you like a tank if you let him. "Something happens to one of your own, and you come a-runnin', right, fox?"

I don't argue with him, because I can't. It's all true. I work internal affairs for the Superhuman Protectorate, investigating crimes involving super-powered suspects or victims.

And yes, I'm super-powered, too.

But the fact that there's a superhuman corpse splattered all over this apartment isn't the only reason I rushed over here. See, I happen to know the shit's about to hit the fan in a big way on these premises. A giant way.

"You might want to move your people out of here." I look at the balcony window, where I see my image reflected against the darkness outside: 5'8", slender, short brown hair in a bob with wispy bangs--not bad for a thirtysomething woman. (Okay, fortysomething.) Next, I look up at the ceiling, wondering when the shaking will start. "Moving 'em out might be a good idea. Just for a while."

"Why? So you can poop all over my crime scene?" Tank snort-laughs like the greasy little prick he is. "No thanks, fox."

Again with the fox. It's the nickname they have for folks like me--superhumans charged with oversight of the superhuman community. As in "the fox guarding the henhouse."

As in we can't be trusted to watch over our own. Which is bullshit.

At least in my case.

The douche doesn't know who else lives here. How could he? I'll bet the only way he figured out this is Mardi Gras' place was because her torn-up costume's hanging from the ceiling fan, red jester's cap and all.

"Somebody's coming." I turn and glare at him. "Trust me, you don't want to be here when they get here."

Tank sneers and strokes his thin black mustache, which makes him look like a villain out of an old silent movie. "Why's that? Did you call and give 'em a heads-up?"

"No, dingleberry." Too late now. I feel the floor vibrating under my feet. "It's because Mardi Gras has a girlfriend."

Tank scowls. He's about to say something to the effect of "so effing what," but then he does the mental math and wises up. Because he feels the floor vibrating, too.

Putz that he is, he still doesn't pack it in. He's still standing there with his metaphorical dick in his hand when the girlfriend roars up and crashes through the wall. I'm guessing she sneaked a peek with her x-ray vision en route, or she might've come through the front door instead.

So Tank finally gets a look at Mardi Gras' girlfriend, who I tried to warn him about. You should see the look on his face.

Because standing in the rubble of the wall is none other than Hericane, the most powerful woman on the face of the friggin' planet.

Maybe the most powerful human being, period.

 

*****

 

I hate myself at times like this. Because this poor woman just lost someone she loved, this is one of the worst days in her life...and all I can do is watch her reaction for signs of guilt. A high percentage of murders are committed by domestic partners, it's a fact. Whether it's Joe Blow from Kokomo, Jane Doe from Buffalo...

...or Hericane, the mightiest woman on Earth.

So what's the verdict? Hard to say. Only thing I'm sure of so far is that the rest of us in this room are lucky we're still alive.

Girl's going through some changes, to say the least.

"Oh my God." Her eyes are flared wide as she stands there in her white costume with the red piping and looks around at the terrible scene. "When did this...how did this..." Her voice trails off.

"Hericane. I'm Bonnie Taggart of the Superhuman Protectorate." How many times have I been in a similar moment? Dozens, at least...not counting the one time I was on the other side of the equation. The one time I was the one losing the loved one. "I'm so sorry for your loss."

She doesn't bother trying some doubletalk B.S. to protect her secret identity. She doesn't deny that this is where she lives. She just squints at me, and I'm tempted to flinch. One jot from her lightning vision, and I'm toast.

But I don't flinch. Hardcore's my middle name.

"No." She shakes her head. "I just talked to her on the phone. This can't be her."

"How long ago did you talk to her?" says Tank, that douche, with all the tact of a bull elephant stomping through a cream pie factory.

"Twenty minutes." Hericane's gaze fixes on the tattered costume hanging from the ceiling fan. "I got held up at a Power Structure meeting in Paratown."

The douche starts to say something else--something stupid, I'm sure--and I give him a look that'll freeze his balls off. Not that that's my super-power, mind you.

He gets the message.

"This isn't her." Hericane shakes her head confidently. "It's an elaborate ruse by one of my enemies. Bitch Slap or Old Maid, maybe. They're both in the wind, aren't they?"

When she looks at me this time, I feel worse than ever. She reminds me of a scared kid, not the mightiest woman in the world. She just wants me to take away the pain so bad.

I wish I could. Especially because I know about the other tragedy she's suffered. I know she lost her dad, Epitome, a few months ago. The greatest, most powerful hero of all time, and he lost his mind to Alzheimer's. He would've killed Hericane and God knows how many others if he hadn't been put down by the only person who could do it: himself. His younger self, brought forward from the past, that is.

Most of the world never knew any different...but I do. I had to investigate that whole nightmare. I'll never forget it.

And neither will she. And now this.

"Mardi would've used her powers." She shakes her head as she says it, her long, blonde hair sliding up and down her shoulders. "If someone came at her, she would've fought back with her light and sound storms. She would've blown out their senses and left them drooling on the floor."

"Okay." I know the state she's in. I totally get it. Been there, done that.

But the clock is ticking. Whoever did this gets a little farther out of reach with each passing second.

So I swallow hard and walk over to her. My palms are a little damp, because she can kill me in a hundred different ways if she decides to lose it right now. Don't think it can't happen; I've seen it happen more than once with grieving superhuman types.

But Hericane doesn't lose it. "Mardi's not dead." She's not entirely rational, but she doesn't go berserk, either. "They must be holding her somewhere."

I nod once and reach for her hand. "Then let's find the people who did this, okay?"

Her bright blue eyes harden. This is good, this makes sense. "Okay." It makes more sense than her girlfriend being torn to shreds while she was out. It makes more sense than the second person she loves being killed in less than a year.

She extends her hand, and I wrap my own around it. Doesn't feel any different than any other hand, if you ask me. Doesn't feel bulletproof or super-hard or anything.

That's the thing about superhumans...the one thing that hasn't changed in all my twenty years of investigating them.

Up close, they're just like everyone else.

 

*****

 

As Hericane and I share a moment, guess who jumps in front of us.

The douche, of course. "Hold on, you two." Time to wave the badge around a little. "I'm gonna need to talk to Hericane down at the station."

I shake my head firmly. "This is a superhuman case. I've got jurisdiction."

Tank spreads his feet and plants his hands on his hips. So now it's officially a pissing contest. "I see no definitive proof of superhuman involvement. She says this isn't even Mardis Gras dead in here." He nods at Hericane. "For all I know, this is a straight-up non-super civilian homicide."

Whose is bigger? That's what it always comes down to with guys like this. Well, guess what? "You want to try and bring her in for questioning? Be my guest." Mine is.

I look at Hericane, and Tank does, too. I can practically see the beads on the abacus lining up in his head as he adds it up.

I don't even have to say it, do I? You really want to get in her way right now?

But apparently, he's still a few beads short. "I need to question you," he tells Hericane. "If you respect the law, you'll come with me."

Before she can answer, I play the card up my sleeve. Time for a shot of my own super power.

I focus my mind on Tank and his people--crime scene scientists, detectives, patrolmen, the whole shebang. Then, I concentrate on sending out a signal--a wave of urgent purpose rushing into their bodies and brains. I give them all a push, nudging their adrenal glands, tickling the deep-seated back-brains where primitive instincts reside.

Like fear.

I can feel them getting jittery around me, the lot of them. Eyes widen and dilate, palms sweat, bowels twist. Pulses pound in their ears; shivers course along their spines. Muscles galvanize, priming for action.

This is my power. This is why they called me Panic Attack back in the day, when I used to fight crime on the street. Because I can do this.

It ain't bouncing bullets off my chest or stopping speeding trains or changing reality with a snap of my fingers. It ain't catching nuclear bombs or growing to giant size or melting steel with my voice. But you'd be surprised how useful this power can be.

For example.

"Uh, listen. Change of plan." Tank takes a step away from us. His eyes are shifting from side to side, and his hands are shaking. "Could we question you later, Hericane? Would that be all right?"

Hericane frowns and nods. "That's fine."

"Okay, great." Tank's backing toward the door. The rest of his team is already out of the apartment, elbowing each other in their hurry to push down the stairs. "Why don't you just come by when you're ready?"

"I'll do that," says Hericane.

"Awesome." On that note, Tank turns and scrambles out the door. He forces his way down the hall through his men, in a bigger damn hurry than any of them.

Douche.

With that, I walk over and slam the door behind him. We've got work to do. None of it good.

"We need clues to what happened here." As I say it, I look around at the mess in the room. "We need some kind of lead."

Hericane nods. "We need to find the people who took Mardi Gras, before they do something to her."

Denial is a powerful thing. I guess I should set her straight...but I'm not going there yet. "Time is definitely running out." As I say it, I squat down beside a yellow evidence frame on the floor, left behind by a crime scientist. There's a splotch of blood in the middle of the frame's right angle, with the edge of a footprint stamped in red.

It looks like a bare footprint...and small. No bigger than the print of a nine- or ten-year-old child on the undersized side.

I pull out my smart phone and snap a photo of the print. Then, Hericane clears her throat. "I've got something."

Good for her. Maybe the unhealthy denial will at least let her help with the case.

She's staring into space, frowning. "Mardi generates fields of light, sound, and color. Her power leaves behind faint electromagnetic traces." Slowly, she moves her hand through the air in front of her. "I can see those traces."

I get up and pick my way over to her through the mess. "I don't see anything."

"That's because you don't have 21 senses like I do," Hericane walks around whatever's hanging there in midair, then slowly drifts away from it. No need for protective booties as she wanders through the crime scene, though; she floats two inches above the floor the whole time.

I stand and watch, keeping my distance so I don't interfere with her process. "What do the traces tell you?"

"There are several big bursts around the room." Hericane drifts lazily past the splatters of blood and bits of tissue, keeping her eyes focused on invisible patterns in the air. "Lots of smaller bursts, too. She fought hard, she gave it her all." Hericane turns and stares at the far corner of the room, where the walls are covered with an excess of blood and tissue. "That's where the biggest struggle happened."

I'd already guessed that from the remains on the walls, but I don't mention it. "What do you see?"

Hericane drifts over there and hangs suspended for a long moment, just staring. Then, she shakes her head hard and looks back at me. "The energies expended here were so intense, they seared the electromagnetic field around her attacker. They left an outline, like a silhouette, right here..." Her hand flows around the image that only she can see, tracing a roughly human form--head, shoulders, arms. Roughly human and short in stature.

I move closer, trying to picture the complete outline. "Can you describe it for me, please?"

She pauses and frowns. "Someone little. A child, maybe?"

Instantly, I think of Little Lord Fauntleroy, the shrinking wonder. What about Kid Cannibal or Crib Death, the baby-killing baby?

"Wait." Hericane holds up her hand. "Not a child after all. Same height, different build. Bulkier." She leans down, scowling. "Hairier." She slowly moves around the space where the unseen image resides. "An animal?"

A human-like animal the height of a child. I think I see where this is going. "An ape. That fits with the bloody footprint." So much for the possible kid culprits. Moving on to a whole other list...a much shorter one. "We've got a lead."

"Then let's go." Hericane turns to the whole she blew in the wall, as if to leap through it.

"This way." I head for the door instead, waving for her to follow. I figure there's a fifty-fifty chance she'll go off on her own; after all, she knows as well as I do that there's only one criminal genius ape in Isosceles City. She knows just where to go to find him, or a clue to his whereabouts.

But she doesn't fly off alone, which I count as a victory. She follows me out the door instead, and I'm relieved.

There's no way I can keep her out of this, not with Mardi Gras involved. Not with Mardi Gras dead, which she knows damn well underneath all that denial.

Best I can hope for is to keep her close, put her to use, stop her from melting down the city in a fit of rage and sorrow.

In other words, stop her from doing all the things I wished I could have had the power to do back when I lost Jimmy and the kids.

 

*****

 

Hericane's pretty jumpy during the drive across town--not just because she's used to flying, I'm sure. Nothing like a little quiet time in a car for harsh reality to sink in a little deeper.

As for me, I'm jumpy, too, for a different reason: I hate hate hate going to The Zoo. It is by far one of the sleaziest places in Isosceles City.

There it is now, up ahead, bathed in blazing pink neon--the strip club, not the animal park. Though truth be told, I don't see much difference between the two most nights.

I get the valet parking, plus I slip the guy an extra twenty. You think getting out of a car with Hericane's gonna decrease your car's chances of getting broken into? Think again.

Especially when the strip joint you're walking into is full of grade A certified animal-based super-villains.

As soon as we walk through the door, we're bombarded by deafening dance music and swirling lights. Dozens of pairs of eyes swoop around and lock in on us, most of them only partly human.

I spot at least seven known felons at a glance: Doggy Style, Pale Horse, Cucaracha, Lab Rat, Coral Snake, Lena Hyena, Killer Zebra. Every one of them's some kind of mutated creature--part human, part beast.

All nasty.

But I don't see the one we're looking for. "Any sign of him?"

Hericane emits a softly pulsing golden glow as she scans the place with her 21 senses. "Nothing." She shakes her head. "Chimpanzero is not in the house." Then she points at the far side of the room. "But his mate is."

I pat the gun under my jacket just to make sure it's there. Not that I'm worried with Hericane by my side, but...there's something about these bestials. They make me nervous.

As Hericane and I cross the room, all those roving pairs of eyes follow us. The only one who doesn't seem to be looking our way is the ape in question, Chimpanzero's mate. She's too busy stuffing twenties in the G-string of a jackalope dancer--a cottontail bunny type with horns like a buck deer.

As we draw up beside our target, I step out in front and tap her black-furred shoulder. "Sick Little Monkey?" I hate using the dumbass code name, but I don't know what her birth name is, if she even has one. "Bubbles" or something?

Sick Little Monkey looks at me and grins, peeling her rubbery chimpanzee lips away from her massive white teeth. "Well all right! That pig roast I ordered is here! Somebody toss it in the pit!" With that, she screech-laughs and jumps up and down like the chimp she is.

I feel Hericane start to move, and I hold up a hand to stop her. "Where's your boyfriend?" I ask the chimp.

"Why do you care?" Sick Little Monkey hops up so her face is in my grill. Talk about bad breath.

"I gotta tell him he won the lottery," I say. "Think of me as the prize patrol."

"Pig patrol is more like it." Sick Little Monkey screeches and jumps around some more. "You got zero authority down here, dipshit! Animal kingdom ain't part of your super-prick protectorate!"

She's right, and I could give a crap. Time to start pushing her panic buttons, making her squirm. "Just tell us where he is." As I say it, I push hard in her adrenal gland and back-brain, working up a major fear response. Enough of this tough-talking, stripper-loving monkey bitch.

I watch her face as the changes take hold. Her eyes widen, her nose twitches, her lips tremble.

How ya feeling now?, I want to ask her. Where's all the bravado, you piece of garbage?

I give Hericane the nod, and she steps forward, reaching for the chimp. But before she can lay hands on her, Sick Little Monkey reacts badly.

"Help! Help!" Her chimpanzee screams pierce the pounding techno music. "Don't let 'em take me back to the lab!"

Shit.

There's a moment before it all breaks loose. I see all the bestial heads turn toward us, and I know what's coming. A damn nightmare, that's what.

I start to reach out with waves of panic that will stave off the drama...but I'm too late. Everyone's already in motion. The whole damn Zoo is moving in on us. The room fills with the roars, howls, screeches, chatters, and shrieks of a hundred-some enraged bestials looking for a fight. More than, looking for dinner, I'm sure.

Shit.

 

*****

 

The mightiest woman in the world is standing inches away from me, less than an hour after her live-in girlfriend was murdered. Could there be a better person to have by your side when a roomful of mutated bestials rises up and comes after you?

No way.

Right before my eyes, she jolts into action mode. Her jaw clenches, her gaze turns to steel. Every muscle in her body tenses under her skintight white costume.

Part of me feels sorry for this horde of yipping, chattering idiots. They picked the wrong day to get froggy at The Zoo.

With a casual flick of her finger to Sick Little Monkey's head, Hericane knocks the chimp unconscious. She could fly us right out of here now, if she wanted to--just gather us up in her arms and blast through the ceiling.

But she doesn't want to. I can see it in her face when she looks at me. "Watch the monkey for me, wouldja?"

I nod and draw my gun--a .45 semi with laser sights. "Don't be long, okay?"

Hericane smiles coldly and holds up an index finger. "Right back," she says, and then she turns to the onrushing mob.

And then she goes after them. Like a buzz-saw.

There are superhuman heroes on the hardcore side of the crimefighting scene, characters who aren't afraid to administer the death penalty in the field. Hericane isn't one of them. Even tonight.

But these bestial idiots are probably wishing she was one of those types about now. You should see how she tears 'em apart, ripping and breaking and mangling--all without killing.

I admire her even more. Because this is Hericane on one of the worst days of her life. And she still doesn't compromise her code.

Not yet, anyway.

As I keep my .45 trained on the unconscious chimp on the floor, I steal glimpses of Hericane in action. I watch as she uses a bear-person as a club to bowl over a snarling mob of creatures. I see her tear the fins off a shark-person and use them to slice up the tough hide of a rhino-man. She breaks the legs of a wolverine-woman and drives her gnashing maw into the crowd, chewing up a cluster of hawk-people, wolf-girls, lizard-men, and some kind of praying mantis thing with laser eyes.

Fur, feathers, shells, and scales fly everywhere. Blood and bone and all manner of organic goo splatters the walls, floor, and ceiling.

It's a ballet of barely controlled violence. I consider using my power to break it up and send the bestials running for the hills...but I hold back. Nobody's dying, and Hericane needs this to let off some steam. Better this than bottle it up and go crazy later. Better this than lose it bad and drink so hard to kill the pain that you drunk drive headfirst into a utility pole and put yourself in the hospital for three months.

Like I did, after Jimmy and the kids.

Briefly, I feel a pinch of jealousy. I wish I'd had her power back then, when my family was murdered. I wish I could've beaten the shit out of an army of bestials like Hericane.

Or maybe I'm better off that I didn't. Because my code isn't the same as Hericane's, not by a long shot. Not since the day I lost my family.

 

*****

 

As the dust settles, Hericane flies over the twitching bodies of her beaten foes and lands on the nearest stripper stage. "You'd never guess I used to want to be a veterinarian, would you?" She dusts off her flared white gloves, which are stained with blood that no amount of dusting off will ever remove.

"How 'bout we get what we came for." I wave the muzzle of the .45 at Sick Little Monkey, who's still out cold at my feet.

Hericane hops off the stage, grabs the chimp by her shoulders, and lifts her like she's a pillow. "Hey, banana breath." She shakes the monkey hard, trying to wake her. "Rise and swing."

Reaching out with my power, I give Sick Little Monkey a gentle nudge, just enough to break her sleep. It does the trick. Her eyes flutter open, and she smacks her lips softly, coming back to life.

"Where's your man, poop-flinger?" snaps Hericane, shaking her some more. "Where the hell is Chimpanzero?"

"Stick it," mumbles Sick Little Monkey, drifting back to slumberland. "Got nothin'...to say...to you..."

I nudge her harder this time, and her eyes shoot wide open. So does her ugly yap, which proceeds to screech like a cop siren.

Hericane smacks her across the face, and that's the end of the screeching. Instead, the bitch chimp starts struggling in her grip, fighting to break free. As if that's even remotely possible. She might as well have meat hooks stuck in her shoulders; Hericane's grip can't be broken.

"So you want me to dump you at the Filipino restaurant in Paratown?" says Hericane. "The one where they eat monkey brains?" She hauls the chimp up close and snarls the next words in her ugly kisser. "You know they serve 'em live, don't you? Crack the skull like an eggshell and scoop 'em out with a spoon?"

The chimpette screeches again, spraying Hericane's face with slobber. Hericane responds by calmly snapping the monkey's right arm at the elbow with a jab of her finger.

This time, the monkey's screaming in pain for real. I add to her distress by giving her back-brain a kick, ramping up the sheer terror knifing through her.

"Where is he?" shouts Hericane. "In case you haven't noticed, I'm not fooling around here."

When my next zap sets off a fresh round of screeches instead of a confession, I decide to apply a different form of inspiration. Specifically, I swing up the .45 and stick the muzzle in the chimpette's nose.

Suddenly, she stops screaming. Her eyes cross as they lock on the barrel of the gun.

"For the last time." I shove the muzzle in a little deeper. "Chimpanzero. Where?"

 

*****

 

I have to beg Hericane not to break down the doors. I know she wants to--I do, too--but we're on tricky turf.

Sick Little Monkey knew it, which is why she sneered when she broke down and told us. "You can't touch him there!" she screamed. "He's safe!" After which, Hericane knocked her unconscious again and tossed her aside like a used piece of gum.

But the chimp bitch wasn't far wrong. I've been to this place before, I've dealt with its guardian, and it's never been a walk in the park.

"We can't just blast in there," I tell Hericane on my way up the front steps.

"Sure we can." Hericane snaps her head to one side and stares at the big double doors, then slowly lowers her gaze. The pulsing golden aura appears around her, signifying the use of her powerful senses. "I see him inside there, in the basement. All we have to do is blast in, grab him up, and shoot out of there."

"Can't." I shake my head. "You know that. You know what this place is. We're not at The Zoo anymore."

"I don't care." Hericane glowers as I draw up beside her. "We're wasting time."

"We'll do it by the book." I reach up and knock hard on the oak door in front of me. "At first, anyway." I give her a meaningful look.

She just nods. Message received.

I knock again. Without warning, the door creaks inward. A heavyset man peers out at us, blinking under his thatch of brown hair. "Yes?"

"Father Obregon?" I do my best to keep my tone even and courteous. "May we come in? I'd like to speak with you, if I may."

"Why certainly, Bonnie." He smiles as he opens the door wider and waves for us to enter. "Mi casa es su casa."

He bows his head as the both of us walk inside. The politeness is an act; I know that all too well.

I know how this guy operates and the games he can play once he's got you inside the confines of St. Frances Cabrini Church.

 

*****

 

"To what do I owe the pleasure?" says Father Obregon as he pulls the door shut. "What can I do for you, Bonnie?"

Our footsteps echo as he leads us down the center aisle of the big, gray church. As far as I can see and sense, we're the only ones in the place.

"It's a rather urgent matter, Father," I tell him. "My friend here..." I gesture at Hericane. "She lost a close friend tonight." No need to mention the fact that she was a romantic interest of Hericane's. Father Obregon wouldn't approve.

"I'm sorry to hear that." Father Obregon stops midway to the front of the church and gestures at a pew, indicating that we should sit. "Does she require counsel?"

I don't sit. "She needs to talk to someone you know."

Father Obregon's expression is hard to read as he stares at me in the shadowy space. Even with the lights on and racks of votive candles flickering in the wings, it's a dark and murky cave of a church.

"Who would this be?" he asks, as if he doesn't already know.

"Chimpanzero," I tell him. "We need to ask him some questions."

"Ah, yes. Questions." Father Obregon rocks back and forth of the balls of his feet. "I have seen how you ask questions."

Here we go again. I knew he was going to screw with me. "We've had our differences, Father. I won't deny that."

"Good." He raises a thick index finger and grins through his brown goatee. "Because that would be a lie, my child."

"We know he's in here." Hericane scowls and points at the floor. "We know you're hiding him."

Father Obregon raises his eyebrows. "Then you also know that if he's here, he's been granted superhuman sanctuary. This is a rescue parish, after all."

Ever want to punch a priest in the face? Me, neither--but this guy makes me come close. He's the first to put a superhuman spin on the rescue parish concept, providing sanctuary to refugee superhumans just as other churches do the same for illegal immigrants. Does he do it out of some spiritual devotion or deeply held theological principle? Is he such a devout man of God that he can't turn away a superhuman in need? Or is he such a total contrarian ass that he just does it to get a rise out of people and have a laugh at the shit-storms he whips up?

I guess you know which theory I subscribe to. "Please, Father." So I try to appeal to his ego, which I believe is pretty twisted. Desperate times call for desperate measures. "Can't you help us? We have nowhere else to turn."

Father Obregon folds his hands over his ample belly and seems to give my plea serious consideration. Then, he purses his lips and shakes his head. "Sanctuary is sanctuary. For all I know, your mission here is a wicked one."

"Wicked?" So much for appealing to his ego. "You do know your charge is a violent criminal, don't you? He's a danger to the superhuman community and the community at large as well."

"All are equal in God's sight," says Father Obregon--and that's when I see it. The glint in his eye. He's enjoying this. He'll never give in.

Then, all of a sudden, the glint is gone. Just like that.

Because guess who just dropped through the floor beside me?

"Help!" cries Hericane as she descends to the sound of smashing floors and furniture. "I'm falling!"

Which of course she isn't falling, she's drilling her way to the basement, as we all know. Father Obregon doesn't even look surprised.

Just pissed. "Now that's a real shame." He wags his head slowly from side to side. "If you can't get what you want, you take it."

"That floor collapsed." I toss off a shrug on my way to the stairs. "You might have a lawsuit on your hands, if you're not careful."

 

*****

 

When I get to the church basement, the room is full of foul-smelling green smoke. I guess Chimpanzero must have had a secret weapon handy for just such an occasion...and it must not have worked out too well, judging from the sound of his screeching.

Father Obregon is hot on my heels as I follow the sound of the chimp. He'll be registering his objections right down the line, I'm sure.

Like I care. My only concern is putting this effing case to bed while the trail is still warm...giving Hericane the one thing I still don't have to this day. The one thing I maybe could have had if I'd gotten this kind of help right after Jimmy and the kids were murdered.

Closure.

When I find Hericane in the heart of the rancid green cloud, she's holding Chimpanzero up off the floor by the scruff of his neck. His feet pedal helplessly at the green gas drifting around them, and he's screaming his head off.

Pissing himself, as well. Urine's running right down the albino white fur of his left leg.

Poor thing's terrified.

Rightly so. "Why'd you do it?" snaps Hericane, giving him a hell of a shake.

He stops screeching and slumps in her grip. The pee keeps running down his leg to the floor. "I didn't do nothin'."

"Put him down!" barks Father Obregon. "That chimp has been given sanctuary in this rescue parish! I demand you respect his rights!"

I shoot Obregon a look of utter disdain. "What rights? The right to throw his own feces? He's a monkey."

"With a genius I.Q.!" Chimpanzero thrashes when he says it. "I'm the equal of any human!"

Who does he think he's fooling? "Any human moron." I shake my head in disgust. Chimpanzero's nothing but a ten time loser, and everyone knows it. Even Father Obregon. Brains don't mean much when you've got the common sense of an ape.

Not that Father Obregon will let that keep him from beating the drum. "That's enough." He whips a phone out of his pocket and starts snapping photos. "I'm calling PETA and the Pope, in that order."

Rays of golden light shoot out of Hericane's eyes and fry the phone. "Tell the Pope I said hi," she says innocently as the priest juggles the super-heated phone and drops it.

Should I bother apologizing? Should I take the time to explain to him why it's so important we question the monkey and close the case? Why it's so important not just to Hericane, but to me? Do I think he'd understand?

Understand, maybe. Give a crap, no way.

Keep moving. "As we were saying." I step up to the chimp, keeping just out of reach of his brawny albino arms. Damn things can have the strength of five men--plenty powerful enough to kill me with a single blow. And based on what I saw at the crime scene, this particular monkey's got a lot more strength than that. "We know you were in Mardi Gras' apartment tonight. We know what you did."

"I'm telling you, I didn't do it!" Chimpanzero kicks and thrashes, then slumps again. "Please, I swear it!"

"You're full of it," says Hericane. "We know you're lying." She shakes him violently, making him scream.

Father Obregon clears his throat. "Would you like me to step out of the room while you torture this poor soul? I wouldn't want to make you feel like you have to hold back."

I completely ignore him. "Why did you do it?" I inch closer to Chimpanzero--but not too close. "You've got one way out of this--tell us."

"No, please, no." Chimpanzero flails weakly. His pale eyes are bloodshot, his fur smeared red.

"Where is she?" says Hericane. "Where did you take her?"

Chimpanzero scowls. "Take who? I didn't take nobody nowhere."

So Hericane's still in denial. But I can't play along or the monkey won't take me seriously. "Mardi Gras, stupid! You went to her apartment to murder her, didn't you?"

"All right, that's enough." Father Obregon puts a hand on my shoulder and tries to pull me away. I shrug him off and shoot a little panic buzz into his back-brain. "I mean, uh..."

"Talk, you piece of shit!" I pull out my .45 and point it at the chimp. Meanwhile, I pump up the priest's panic enough to send him retreating through the green fog.

Chimpanzero's eyes flare wide with sheer terror at the sight of the gun. "She was dead when I got there! I swear!"

"And why were you there in the first place?"

"I was there for a job!" says Chimpanzero. "I got a call from a fight promoter!"

What the hell? "A promoter? You mean you're a palooka now?"

The monkey nods, then bows his head, looking embarrassed. "I need the cash. I'm desperate."

I shouldn't be surprised. Chimpanzero's always been a ten-time loser. Makes sense he'd look for work as a palooka--paid by a promoter to go up against super-heroes who need a reputation boost. There's plenty of demand for guys like him, lots of so-called heroes who need a couple of showy bouts to get 'em in the papers. A good palooka needs to be just tough enough to go a couple rounds in the jewelry store or bank or whatever, but not so tough that the headliner can't drop him in high style when the time comes. Chimpanzero's worthless against someone of Hericane's caliber, but I can see him holding his own against some lower tier crusader like Partycrasher or Rx, the Prescription for Crime.

So he gets a call and shows up at the apartment, expecting a bout--only there's no bout. Dumb son of a bitch missed the action, and now he's square in the frame.

I lower the gun. "Which promoter was it?"

Chimpanzero swallows hard. "Fizz Dixon down at Punch-'Em-Ups."

Shit. I hate that guy. "And who ordered the bout? Who's the money?"

"I don't know." Chimpanzero shakes his head. "You'll have to ask Dixon."

"Who?" Hericane rattles him around some. "Who paid Dixon to hire you?"

The monkey's just limp at this point, like a sack of tapioca. He stares at the floor with his bloodshot eyes, looking miserable. "Please, I'm begging you..."

Then, suddenly, a gunshot blasts through the basement.

And one red hole pops into being on Chimpanzero's forehead, dead center between his eyes.

 

*****

 

I bring the .45 up as I whirl and crouch, instantly looking for a shooter. But the damn green gas is still too thick for me to see further than ten feet away.

"Hericane!" Even as the word leaves my lips, the red beams of three laser gun-sights zip over and land on my chest.

A man's voice booms from across the room. "Nobody move!" He's a smart guy, targeting me instead of bulletproof Hericane. Now he's got all the leverage he needs.

"Don't worry, Bonnie." I hear Hericane drop the dead chimp behind me. "I got this."

One of the laser sights hops off my chest, and a warning shot blows past my left ear. "I repeat, do not move!" says the same guy as before.

At which point, I recognize his voice. "Watt?" And I can't believe it.

Booted feet scuff toward us, and three dark figures come into view through the green gas. Three men in head-to-toe black bodysuits and goggles--first class stealth gear, plus some serious effing rifles.

And the one in the middle, the leader, I know all too well. When he peels back his goggles and hood, I see the same bald head and long, angular features I've seen almost every day for the past five years.

Because the son of a bitch is my boss.

"Bonnie." He nods once and lowers his rifle--but the other two guys don't. "Are you all right?"

"Other than almost getting shot by you?" I intentionally take a step toward him. "Fine and dandy."

Watt raises his hand, and the other two laser sights flick away from me. "We got word Chimpanzero was hiding out here. When we arrived, we saw he was about to kill you."

He's so full of shit, I'm surprised he said it with a straight face. But I'm sensing I'm up to my ass in alligators here, so I play the game. The mere fact that Watt McBride, director of the Internal Affairs Division of the Superhuman Protectorate, just marched in and assassinated a suspect right in front of me, tells me I'm in over my head or close enough.

"Thanks for the backup." That's what I say to him. "Doesn't take much for a situation to get out of hand."

I'm hoping Hericane takes my cue and dummies up, too. So far, so good; she isn't saying a word.

Watt gestures, and one of his men runs over and leans down to examine the dead chimp. He comes up with a thin, silver blade, about four inches long.

Which I'm sure he brought with him and only pretended to find on the body.

"That's what he was going to use on you," says Watt. "He could've cut you up good, Bonnie."

"Son of a gun." I stare at the blade, then meet Hericane's eyes. She looks calm and in control, thank God.

"So what brought you here, exactly?" Watt raises his eyebrows. "I thought you were working the Mardi Gras case."

"I was, until I got the tip for this one." I look down at the dead chimp on the floor.

"What about you?" He casts his gaze at Hericane. "I thought you'd be helping the cops with the Mardi Gras investigation by now."

"She agreed to help with this first." I keep doing the talking for both of us. "We had reason to believe Chimpanzero was holding hostages, and time was running out."

"Which it wasn't." Watt nods. "You say this tip was anonymous?"

"Something like that," I tell him. Good thing he doesn't have a lie-detecting power. He's in the Protectorate, so he's superhuman, but his power's limited to controlling the growth of fungi. "Maybe the same tipster called us both. Plenty of folks aren't fans of the rescue parish."

"So what did he say to you?" asks Watt. "Did Chimpanzero give you any intel before he died?"

"Zero," I tell him. "Absolutely nothing."

Watt watches me carefully, taking my measure. Then, he shakes his head. "Maybe it's just as well. That chimp was a notorious liar."

I nod once and slip the .45 back in my shoulder holster. "Nothing worse than a liar, sir."

 

*****

 

It takes a while to get clear of Watt and his men. At least we don't have to sweat Father Obregon; Watt answers his threats and demands by locking him in a confessional.

When Watt insists on taking me back to the Protectorate offices, I make up an excuse about having to escort Hericane to the police station.

"The most powerful woman on the planet needs an escort?" That's what the asshole says to me.

"She needs a shoulder," I tell him. "Now that the action's over, things are starting to catch up to her."

And so we get a pass--mostly because Hericane is the most powerful woman on the planet. We get in my car and drive off in the direction of the police station, as if we have any intention of going there.

As if we aren't going to double back and head straight for Fizz Dixon the promoter's place instead.

What do we talk about on the way? It sure ain't the weather, let me tell ya.

"Holy shit." My hands are shaking on the wheel. "My own people are in on this. The Superhuman Protectorate's covering this up."

"Why would they do that?" Hericane frowns from the passenger seat. "It doesn't make any sense."

I take a deep breath and let it out slowly, trying to steady my hands. "It has to." Another deep breath. "Maybe we'll see the connection after we talk to Dixon."

Hericane's frown deepens. "You think the SP took Mardi?"

Her denial continues. I'll let it go a little longer. "I don't know what's going on anymore. All I know is, my world just turned upside-down."

Hericane watches me for a moment, then looks out the window. "I know the feeling."

 

*****

 

I half-expect to find Fizz Dixon dead. Things seem to be heading in that direction.

But he's alive and kicking and burning the midnight oil in his storefront office down on Claremont Street. He doesn't look up when we walk in, but that's not because he's dead; it's because he's sitting behind his big, red desk hunched over his smartphone, texting like a lunatic with his mangled fingers.

"Fizz?" I weave around the boxes of memorabilia stacked all over the floor. Dixon's got a hot sideline selling souvenirs online from the bouts he promotes--bullets that have bounced off chests, gun barrels twisted into pretzels, that sort of thing. When it comes to super-heroes, he's got all the angles figured out.

Which he should. Because ol' Fizz Dixon used to be a hero himself before the accident.

"Be right with ya." He's got a Southern drawl, as you might expect from a guy who used to dress in a Confederate flag costume and call himself Dixieman. He was the premiere super-hero of the Deep South, based in Birmingham, till he overestimated his indestructibility and got chewed up by an out-of-control power plant turbine he was trying to stop from exploding. "All right then." His fingers make one last flurry over the onscreen keyboard, and then he drops the phone in his lap and smiles up at me with his disfigured features. "What can I do you for?"

"I'm Bonnie Taggart with the Protectorate." I nod politely, then gesture at my companion. "This is Hericane."

Dixon turns his wheelchair and slides a wider smile in Hericane's direction. "Of course I know you, Ms. Hericane." His face is a mess of gnarled scars and lumps, like the knobby surface of a glazed fritter. He wasn't indestructible enough to escape damage from a power plant turbine, but his hide was too tough for plastic surgeons to repair with conventional instruments or even lasers. "Does this mean my wildest dreams have come to pass? Would you consent to be recruited for one of my bouts?"

"No, thanks," says Hericane.

"Maybe you'll change your mind." Dixon's features twist around in what might be his version of a wink. A bubbled eyelid drifts halfway down over his one visible eye, then pops back up. One thing's for sure: there's a wicked glint in that eye of his. "Just think of all the money you'd make."

Hericane shrugs. "If I want money, I can just compress some coal into diamonds."

"Another business venture I'd very much like to discuss with you, ma'am," says Dixon.

Enough with the pleasantries. "We're hoping you can provide some information, Mr. Dixon. Information about one of your clients."

"Wish I could, Bonnie." His features roll into an expression that's either a smirk or a grim frown. Hard to tell with all that scar tissue. "But that'd be covered by a li'l somethin' called promoter-client privilege."

There's no such thing, but I'm not going to argue about it. "I hope you'll make an exception," I say. "Seeing as how one of your palookas got framed for murder because of you."

His smirk or frown changes, shifting into a look like a fist clenched around one dirty eyeball. "Which palooka?" His voice is more serious all of a sudden.

"Chimpanzero," I tell him. "You made the call that set him up. When he got to the site of the bout, he found himself in the middle of a murder scene."

"Shit." He reaches down for the big wheels on either side of his chair, then slowly rolls out from behind the desk. "Where's the monkey now?"

"Dead." Hericane says it tonelessly.

While that sinks in, I step over and stand in front of Dixon's chair, blocking him. "So you see why you might want to help us?"

I can't read his expressions too well, but I'm guessing he's racing through the mental math in record time. If they killed Chimpanzero to shut him up, how long till they come for him, too?

Dixon's eye slides from me to Hericane and back. "I don't know anything. I swear to God."

I raise my palms in front of me and shake my head. "We're not here to hurt you. We're here to help. We want to stop these people before they go any further."

Dixon burps softly--from nerves, maybe? His eye locks on me, flicking up and down in its socket. "I meant what I said. I don't know who hired Chimpanzero. It was all done anonymously, by e-mail."

I fold my arms over my chest and narrow my eyes. "Somebody paid you, didn't they?"

Dixon burps again. I think he farts a little, too. "The funds were wired from an offshore account."

Shit. I don't think he's lying. "You're telling me you've had no direct contact with the client?"

Dixon shakes his head. "Nope. I get an e-mail saying there's a need for an opponent on such and such a day at such and such a place at such and such a time. I set up the fighter, and the money's wired to my account."

"Wait a minute." I frown. "Sounds like you're saying this has happened more than once."

Dixon shrugs. "Well, twice. Second time happened just before you got here, in fact."

So maybe this isn't such a dead end, after all. "A second request came in from the same e-mail account?"

"Yes, ma'am," says Dixon. "Client wants an opponent for a job one hour from now, in fact. I haven't gotten back to him yet."

I turn and look at Hericane, who's standing silently with hands on her hips. "Mr. Dixon, you're in luck. My friend here might be interested in a bout, after all."

Hericane scowls. "I would?"

"Hot dog!" says Dixon. "Hericane working a contract bout for me? My business will go through the roof!"

I shake my head and place an index finger against my lips. "No names, Mr. Dixon. Just say you've got someone lined up. Give a fake name if they press you."

"Whatever you say." Dixon makes with the maybe-it's-a-wink again. "Everyone'll still know who it was after the fact. They'll know Hericane is working for me."

I sigh and point at the phone in his lap. "Just answer the e-mail and tell us when and where, Mr. Dixon." Then hide in a very deep hole till this is all over, I should tell him. If we found you, the Protectorate can't be too far behind.

But I think he already knows all that.

 

*****

 

Hericane and I drive to the location Dixon gives us--the downtown construction site where the new sports stadium is being built. We park a few blocks away, and then she flies us in over the high fence bordering the property.

We land around back, in the shadows away from the security lights. I check my watch and see we're twenty minutes early. The bout's due to begin at 1AM sharp.

And that is all we know--the when, the where, but not the who or how or anything else. We're coming in blind, and we've got no backup. If one of us wasn't the most powerful woman on the planet, I'd be seriously sweating right now.

Even so, I know this is risky. Last time Dixon arranged a bout on behalf of an anonymous player, the fighter-for-hire ended up neck-deep in a bullshit murder frame-up.

I keep wondering what the surprise is gonna be this time.

"All right." I draw my .45 and check the clip. "You ready?"

Hericane nods. She's been pretty quiet since we left Dixon's place. I'll bet the reality of Mardi's death is finally setting in...and with it, the grief she's been delaying.

Or not. "Do you think we'll find Mardi in time?" She looks vulnerable as she tucks her long, blonde hair behind her ears. "Do you think we'll be able to save her?"

What the hell do I say to that? I need the girl fired up big time, but if I manage to force her to see the truth, will it push her over the edge?

Frankly, I'm kind'a stunned that she still doesn't get it after what we've been through. How many more times does she have to hear people talk about the murder before she finally figures out it's for real?

Or is there another reason for her prolonged denial? Her father suffered from extreme dementia. For the first time, I wonder if maybe she's got a touch of it, too.

If she does, it won't do any good to try to shock her out of it just now. "We're trying our best." I reach out and give her arm a squeeze. "That's all we can do."

Hericane shakes her head and stares off into space. "I tried to get her to quit, you know. To give up crimefighting. Shepherd's Pie and Do Si Do nearly killed her last month. Did you know that?"

"Yes." The case came through the Internal Affairs Division of the Protectorate, though I wasn't the one who caught it. "I know Overtime saved her."

"I should've been there." She clenches her jaw. "I should've done something."

Does she mean she should've been there a month ago, or earlier today? "No one can be everywhere at once," I tell her. "Not even you." I give her arm another squeeze.

"I just want to see her one more time." She brushes a tear from her cheek. "I want one more chance to show her how much I love her."

The clock is ticking. I need to snap her out of it. "You want to help Mardi? You want to do right by her?" I wave the gun at the skeletal bulk of the vast stadium towering over us. "Then get out there and take down whoever shows up for this fight. Get 'em to tell us what they know about the people who got Mardi."

Hericane brushes aside another tear. "Will do."

I check my watch and give her the nod. "Time to rock 'n' roll. Time to do what you do best."

She bobs her head from side to side. "Bad guys." A flash of a smile flickers across her face. "Kicking the asses of."

"Go get 'em," I tell her, and then she leaps up into the sky and vaults over the lofty walls, heading for the heart of the stadium.

 

*****

 

With my .45 firmly in hand, and all my senses focused intently on my surroundings, I jog along the cement concourse leading under the stands. I see no one in the broad beams of the security lights arranged along the curving concourse to either side of me. It's Friday night, so work's stopped for the weekend; whatever guards are ranging around, they're nowhere nearby. That saves me some inconvenience.

I cast quick glimpses all around as I follow the concourse, aiming for the field. Three months from now, this place will be finished and thrumming with life--people moving in all directions, vendors hawking beers, lights flashing, food cooking. The blast of a rock band performing a concert, the crack of a baseball bat on the field. I can practically hear them now.

And then I do hear a blast from the field, a loud, echoing crack that rattles the bare metal beams around me.

Game on.

Tightening my grip on the gun, I break into a run. There's an access point up ahead, on my left, and I charge full-tilt toward the opening.

As I run, light flares from the opening, illuminating the concourse--then fading. Who showed up, I wonder? Who is it out there, on the field, fighting Hericane?

When I get the answer, I don't like it.

Bolting left, I dash through the access-way, emerging into the cool night air. My feet touch down in the dirt at the edge of the plain where the field will be, and I stop. I look to the sky just in time to be blinded by a burst of bright white light.

The blindness fades, and I finally see who showed up. I see the opponent we've come here to face.

Make that opponents, plural.

The blood runs ice cold in my veins. I knew I'd be surprised, I couldn't guess who'd show up for the bout. But this.

Holy shit.

But this throws me into a state of a shock. I literally freeze in place as the situation and implications soak through me. As I realize how much shittier my life has just gotten.

Because those people up there, swarming around Hericane? And the ones down on the field, firing their powers and weapons up at her? Those thirteen people?

They're all heroes. They're all top-percentile heroes in the Superhuman Protectorate.

Not the bad guys. The good guys. The best of the best. And it looks to me like they're trying their best to kill her.

That's Red Baron up there, strafing her with explosive projectiles as he swoops by. Sputnik whips past to follow up, zapping her with crackling beams of intense radiation. Then Concorde rams her at high speed, plowing dead on into her belly, driving her back across the sky.

I know all three of them well. Until now, I thought they were decent human beings. Same goes for all the rest of the attackers out there.

I never knew how wrong I was until now.

Concorde breaks away, leaving Hericane reeling through the air. That's when the bunch on the ground cut loose with their latest barrage. Party Rocker casts up a wall of sonic force that sends Hericane tumbling in the opposite direction. Geyser shoots up streams of high-pressure water that blast her in the face...then Homewrecker, the expanding woman, grows to a 60-foot height and catches her. She holds Hericane in her fist as the airborne heroes converge and pummel her with one mighty blow after another.

Holy shit.

Hericane might be the mightiest woman on the planet, perhaps the mightiest human being period, but she looks like she's on the ropes right now. They took her by surprise, and there are just so many of them--thirteen against one. She could wreck any one of them--hell, any three or four of them--but that's a lot of A-listers to handle at one time.

She gathers her strength and bursts free of Homewrecker's grip, then slugs her way through the flying circus...only to find herself clamped in the jaws of Sky Shark. As soon as she fights her way loose, King David nails her in the head with a blazing nuclear pellet from his holy slingshot. She flounders like a fly stung by a swatter, drifting in off-kilter loops--until Old Glory wraps her in the suffocating folds of his stretchable star-spangled banner body.

Meanwhile, down on the sidelines, I get over my shock and come back to life. I let the .45 fall at my side; it won't do me any good against this crowd. This is a job for Panic Attack.

Quickly, I assess the battlefield and devise a strategy. Should I send out a general wave of panic, or use surgical strikes to focus on key individuals? A general wave means each person gets a lower dose; but zeroing in on key targets requires more finesse.

Whatever I do, I have to do it now. The bucking and thrashing within Old Glory's wrapped flag cocoon looks like it's lessening. Hericane is mega-powerful and nearly indestructible, but she's still susceptible to lack of oxygen.

So my choice is obvious. Start there, with the American Flag Hero.

Concentrating with all my might, I reach out to Old Glory, beaming panic-inducing currents into his mind and body. When at first he fails to release her, I really pour it on. As I've learned from experience, high doses of panic can have an undesirable effect--making Old Glory suddenly contract, for instance, and lock up around his captive. Major panic can make people do the opposite of what you want them to; it's not an exact science.

But it's not like I've got a choice in the matter. Hericane's fighting less and less with each passing second.

So I intensify my effort. I give it all I've got.

Finally, Old Glory unwinds and frantically flutters off on the breeze, leaving Hericane to fall...but she doesn't hit the ground. Trampolina dives underneath her, letting her infinitely elastic body bounce Hericane back up into the sky.

Homewrecker reaches to catch her, but I snag her giant back-brain with a bolt of terror. It makes her stop and back off, looking horrified, as Hericane shoots past her.

For a few precious seconds, no one is pounding on Hericane. Shishkabob flings up a few interdimensional skewers, which bounce right off her, but my panic blasts keep everyone else away. I fire them at every A-lister who makes a move toward Hericane or even looks at her funny. I buy her a few more seconds of recovery time.

That's all Hericane needs. When she's 70 feet in the air, she stops her upward motion and hovers there, looking down at her foes. Several start to move toward her at once...but then I blanket the lot of them with a wave of general panic. So much for surgical strikes.

Only one of the Protectorate's soldiers overcomes the wave and rockets toward Hericane: Gestalt, the heroine who taps the power of humanity's group unconscious. She blasts her way toward Hericane with fists extended, ready to land her trademark power-of-the-people hammer-punch.

I quickly focus in on her, but it's too late. She's moving too fast.

At the last second, Hericane dodges left--but Gestalt still manages to connect with the side of one fist. It's enough to send Hericane spinning across the sky.

For a moment, I think it might be all over. I struggle to keep the panic flowing, but other so-called heroes shrug it off and head for Hericane. Gestalt turns around for another run at her, too.

Hericane stops spinning and slumps in midair. Maybe she was hit harder than I thought.

Meanwhile, all the other airborne heroes zoom toward her from all directions. It happens sometimes, like a chain reaction; one brave person inspires others to resist panic.

I use every last bit of willpower to try to pull those people back, but I can't. They keep up the charge, all cruising toward her at once like a flight of missiles zeroing in on her heat signature.

And she just hangs there, limp and defeated as a puppet whose strings have been cut. She's already taken so much punishment. Can she possibly withstand the incoming assault by so many powerhouses?

The panic attacks aren't working, so I stop trying--and I raise the .45. Maybe I can distract them, at least.

I aim well away from Hericane and crack off a shot...but the heroes keep flying. All I accomplish is draw the attention of the earthbound contingent.

Suddenly, the airborne attackers plunge at their target. Hericane disappears in the pile-on.

But only for a moment. Next thing I know, Sky Shark's hurtling away from the pile, screaming. Next comes Red Baron and Gestalt, followed by Concorde. Sputnik plummets down after that, crash-landing in the midst of the heroes on the ground. That just leaves Old Glory, Ball Lightning, and Air Marshall, who wrestle their prey a moment longer, straining to hold on.

Only to fly off in all directions as Hericane flexes her mighty muscles.

What an incredible woman.

While the thirteen heroes are down, Hericane flashes across the field and scoops me up in her arms. Then, she soars up out of the stadium and races into the night.

Only when we're up there do I realize how shaky she is. Only when I see her up close do I notice how bad she looks.

She's in worse shape than I knew.

"We need to go somewhere." She coughs. "We need to get off the radar."

"Okay." Her flying's wobbly, and it's making me nervous. I wish I had the power to remove fear, in which case I'd use it on myself right now. "I know a place."

 

*****

 

We hole up in a decrepit old house in the woods, out past the city limits. I know the place well--well enough that I have a key to the front door on my key ring. Well enough that I hesitate on the threshold before stepping inside.

Too well.

But it's secluded, and I don't think they'll look for us here. At least not for a while. I hope.

Though the truth is, I've sorely underestimated the Protectorate lately. So who the hell knows?

I guide Hericane inside and shut the door. She goes straight to the dust-infested couch and throws herself down on it without a word.

She really did take a pounding back at the stadium. Her hair's a tangled mess, her white costume is torn and smeared with dirt, and her cape is gone. Believe it or not, she even has some bruises on her face. Those A-listers really did a number on her.

I slump in the moldy matching chair across from her and rub my eyes hard. I don't turn on the lights, because there's no juice in here. Place has been shuttered and empty for seven years now.

This effing place.

"So." I blow out my breath in a big, tired gust. "Another set-up."

"No shit." Hericane's voice is hoarse, exhausted. I wonder if she's up for any of this anymore.

I should probably leave her the hell alone, but...the clock's ticking. Now more than ever. Whatever window of opportunity we have in which to act, it's closing too damn fast.

So I keep the ball rolling. "The Protectorate set us up. I'm guessing they set up Chimpanzero, too. They were behind all of this from the get-go."

Hericane's silent for a very long moment. I wonder briefly if she's dozed off...and then she speaks. "But why? Why would they want to kill Mardi Gras?"

Her words land with the impact of a bomb in the dark and dusty room. I stop rubbing my eyes and look at her, a figure in tattered white arrayed on the couch.

She knows. She knows her lover is dead.

Maybe she knew from the start. Maybe pushing it back was the only way to keep going and deliver the justice Mardi deserved. Or maybe the shock of it all threw her into genuine denial or delusion, and she only just now snapped out of it. Either way, one thing is suddenly clear.

She knows.

Not that I'm going to belabor the obvious. "Do you know what Mardi was working on most recently?"

Hericane shakes her head. "She kept me out of the loop since I started trying to get her to quit."

"Damn." I rub my eyes again. I need to get out of this shithole, we need to get moving, time's running out...but we've got nothing. This investigation is dead in the water.

We're dead, too, if we don't find a way to bring it back to life.

We sit in silence for a while, thinking our private thoughts. I keep expecting to hear her doze off, but the snores never come. Does she even need to sleep?

Eventually, her hoarse voice rises from the shadows. "Did you used to live here?"

I guess it was obvious since I had the key to the front door. "Yes," I tell her. "A long time ago."

"So what happened here?" She has a quick mind. Already figured out something bad happened, otherwise why would the place be empty? And why would it have a hold on me, such that the key is still on my key ring? If I'd gotten it in a divorce or inheritance, I'd still be living here, or I'd have sold it or rented it out.

So what happened here? What happened to make my stomach ache and my eyes burn with tears just from being inside these walls?

Tell her, Bonnie. Just tell her.

"Home invasion." The words stick in my throat. "My husband and two little boys..." I wasn't here, I didn't see it happen, but I see it play out before me for the hundred millionth time, just the way I imagined it from reading the police reports. There's Jimmy now, opening the front door, getting clubbed in the head with the butt of a shotgun. There are the two maniacs, pushing their way into the house with duct tape and coils of rope. The knives, they get from the kitchen counter--ceramic blades, a wedding gift.

My two little boys run into the room crying. The butchers hogtie Jimmy and slice him up while they watch. Then they...

Oh God, why them God, why not me, God? You could have had me a thousand times over and a million times worse. I would give myself freely to those maniacs if only you'd spare my beloveds.

I feel the tears. Rolling down my cheeks.

"I'm sorry." Hericane says the words softly. "I'm so sorry."

"I was working late," I tell her. "If only I'd been here..."

Hericane clears her throat. "Were they superhumans?"

"No." Of course not, of course they weren't. I couldn't even console myself with that, with knowing that I couldn't have stopped them if I'd been here when they invaded. "Just a pair of thrill-killing lunatics passing through."

"So they were caught. By the police?"

I shake my head, wiping away tears. Right there, in the middle of the room, I see it again, just as it's happened every day and night in my imagination. Every minute, every minute of my life, it plays back on some level, in a never-ending loop. The boys, my brave little boys...

They try to fight back.

"A vigilante caught up with them," I tell Hericane. "A superhuman called Deathalyzer. He killed them on the spot. Turned them inside-out." That piece of shit, that son of a bitch. He cheated me. Not because I care that much about justice or the legal system, not in that situation.

I hated him because he robbed me of the chance to do what I wanted to do to those animals.

Hericane turns her head to look at me. "Did you hire him? Deathalyzer, I mean?"

I shake my head.

She looks back at the ceiling. "How long ago did this happen? How many years?"

"Seven." The word emerges through clenched teeth. A deep wellspring of emotion surges inside me, fighting to get out. I thought I could handle coming here given the circumstances, given that I'm running for my life, but surprise. I can't.

"Does it get better?" says Hericane. "After seven years, does it get any better?"

I know what she needs to hear, I know what will help her through her own private hell...but I can't say it. I won't bullshit her. I hated when other people did that to me, and I'm not going to do it to her.

"No." That's what I tell her. "It never gets better."

Hericane lies still on the dusty couch, hands folded over her belly, knees drawn up. "That's what I figured." There's a tightness in her voice that wasn't there before, like her vocal cords are tied in a knot. Like she's going down the road that I've been traveling, watching the mental movie unspool in her head. Watching Mardi Gras answer the door of her apartment and then what she imagines came next.

But this is the worst movie of all, because she doesn't know what came next, no one does except the killer. So she fills in the blanks with the worst possible details, the greatest amount of suffering, the foulest cruelty imaginable.

Somebody has to stop her before she sinks any deeper. There'll be time enough for that later, but right now the border between her and her dead lover is perilously thin.

I need to get her back on task. "Did Mardi Gras keep any kind of record of her activities?"

"Like a casebook?" Hericane shakes her head. "Not that I know of. We were both worried about leaving proof that would compromise our secret identities." The tightness is gone from her voice. I have a hunch she's glad for the change of subject.

"There must be something." I see my kids dying in the middle of the room again, and I force myself to look away. All that does is shift my attention to the front door, where Jimmy's getting clubbed with the butt of the shotgun again.

So I close my eyes. I try to block it out. Because something's nagging at me. Something to do with the case.

I put myself back at the crime scene and reach deep, straining to unearth what's bothering me. I see Mardi's shredded costume hanging from the ceiling fan, slowly turning. I see the blood stains splattering the walls, floor, ceiling, and everything in between. I see the bits of blown-apart tissue sticking everywhere, the hundreds or thousands of pieces of what had once been a vibrant human being, a genuinely good-hearted super-hero from what I'd seen and heard, a woman who was full of fun and surprises and...

Holy shit.

That's it. That's what's been nagging at me.

I get up out of the chair and stretch. "How are you feeling?"

"Like shit. Total effing shit," says Hericane. "Why?"

I pull out the .45 and check the clip. A-OK. "I think we need to go back to the evidence. I think we missed something."

Slowly, Hericane rolls over and hauls herself up to a seated position. "Like what?"

"I don't know." I shove the gun back into its holster. "But there has to be something." I hesitate, reluctant to say what's next. I don't want to bring it all back to her in all its fresh agony--but I know in my heart she's already reliving it anyway. "The way we found her. Why would someone kill her like that?"

Hericane grunts and scowls as she gets to her feet. "Sending a message?" She bobs her head from one side to the other, cracking her neck. "Eliminating any margin for error?"

"I think there's a third possibility." I head for the door, ignoring my weeping little boys as they watch their father being cut to ribbons. "Let's get out of here."

"And go where?" says Hericane. "The entire Protectorate's going to be hunting us. Not to mention the citizens' auxiliary."

"We're going where the evidence is." I open the door to the sight of the two home invaders with their duct tape and rope. "The one place where a group of legally sanctioned individuals with resources and an arsenal would just love to stick it to the Protectorate."

Hericane stops in the doorway and stares at me. "The police department? We're going to the cops?"

I hear my family screaming in the living room behind me. "You bet your ass." I'm sorry, so sorry I wasn't here that night for you. Sorry I couldn't hold you in my arms and make it all better.

But maybe I can make it better for her. For Hericane.

Goodbye, my loves. That's what I think as I walk out to the sound of their shrieks. Goodbye for now.

And then I slam the door on them and turn my back on that place, glad to leave it. Hating myself for feeling that way for even an instant.

 

*****

 

"Let me see if I've got this straight," says Lt. Tank Driscoll, a.k.a. the douche. "You're telling me you're not here for questioning?"

Words cannot express how much he's loving this right now. Hericane and I standing in his station with hat in hand, asking for his help. After the way we made him and his buddies scamper away from the Mardi Gras murder scene like frightened mice.

Now he gets to humiliate us in front of those same buddies. And we have to take it.

Open mouth, insert shit.

"That is correct," I tell him. "We're here because we need a favor."

"A favor." Tank's feet are planted far apart, and his hands are on his scrawny hips. His cheap navy sports coat is spread open wide as if to spotlight his package, as if to rub in the fact that he's won the biggest-dick contest. "Because you've done so many favors for me?"

I start to get pissed, but then I back it off. I knew what we were in for when we walked into this place. I pretty much knew word-for-word how this shit would play out. "We'll have to make it favors to be named later," I tell him.

Tank takes a look around the big office, leering like he's getting a blank check for special favors. His fellow cops cheer and whistle and roar with laughter, even the three women standing around. It's not so much a sexist thing. These people have no love for super-humans, and they hate "foxes" like me even more. They figure we're obstructing justice and covering for our own kind.

Which doesn't seem like such a stretch to me after today, I gotta be honest.

"So what's this favor you need from me?" Tank narrows his eyes and strokes his waxy mustache. "What's important enough to make you waltz in here--after the shitty way you treat me 99.99 percent of the time--and ask for my help?" He looks around at his buddies and shakes his head at how brazen and stupid I am.

I shake my head right back at him. "I can't tell you here. Not in front of everybody."

"So you two want to get me alone?" The douche smirks like a twelve-year-old smart-mouthing his teacher in front of the class. "Just the three of us in a room together?" His tone oozes innuendo, and the crowd responds with a round of whistles, howls, and laughter.

Hericane takes a step forward, and I throw out my arm to hold her back. I warned her how it would be with Tank, but I guess she's had her fill.

Too bad. If either of us effs up even the slightest bit, the douche will shut us down and cuff us. He'd be within his rights, and he knows it.

"You've got some big balls, you know that?" He paces in front of us, glaring like a drill sergeant. "Walkin' into my house after treatin' me like your bitch for how many years, expecting me to kiss your ass!" He stops in front of me and shoves his face up to mine so our noses are a hair's breadth from touching. "Well guess who's the bitch now?" He makes sure he says it loud enough for everyone in the office to hear.

And they do. They go wild with laughter and cheering.

But while they're doing that, I grab the collar of his sports coat and yank him toward me. Then I whisper in his ear, just loud enough for him to hear me over the ruckus.

"How would you like to be the cop who takes down the Protectorate?" That's what I tell him. "Because that's the war we're fucking fighting right now. And if you help us, you get the glory."

I let him go then, and he bobs back from me. His eyes lock with mine, and I watch his expression change from surprise to disbelief. He's wondering if he heard right; he's wondering if I'm serious. Because I just told him I'm going to give him his dream come true.

I nod without the slightest flicker of hesitation.

At which point his expression changes to a grin.

"All right then." He raises his eyebrows. "Let's go somewhere a little more--private--" The crowd hoots and howls again. "--and see what you ladies have to offer." Again with the whistles and catcalls.

So he leads us out of there, strutting like king of the pimp daddies, and we follow, two super-humans--one the mightiest woman in the world--giving control to a mere mortal douche. As if we have any choice. As if we have anyone else to turn to in this desperate hour.

Which probably makes this the sweetest moment of his life, I'll just bet.

 

*****

 

The douche never stops posturing, so it takes a while to tell him the story. But he's interested, I can see it in his eyes. He's drooling like Pavlov's dog.

He'll give us what we want. Later, if we live through this, it will suck to be us, because he'll milk it for all it's worth...but here and now, he'll take us where we want to go.

The morgue, in other words.

"So I was right all along about the Protectorate. And you were wrong." That's what he says as he leads us downstairs. "I love it."

"Congratulations." I'm staying close to Hericane, keeping my eyes peeled. I know how I'd react to what we're about to see.

She just walks along with a blank expression on her face, unreadable. If there's any turbulence going on inside, she doesn't show it.

"I always knew those so-called heroes were dirty pieces of shit," says Tank when we get to the bottom and start down a dark hallway.

I know we're at his mercy, but enough's enough. "You do realize one of us is a hero, right?"

Tank stops and looks back at Hericane like he forgot she was there. "Well, present company excluded, of course."

I get up in his face and lock eyes with him. His breath smells like putrid bacon. "And you do remember what it is we're about do, right?" I push a little closer; I need him to get the message. "Maybe you could show a little sensitivity for once in your life?"

His eyes drift, and I start to think I'm gonna have to paint him a picture. Then he focuses back in on me with a tough glare, and I think he doesn't have any sensitivity to begin with.

But he surprises me. "Sorry." He leans around me and looks at Hericane with an actual sincere expression on his greasy face. "Sorry." Then he whips around and marches off down the hallway. "This way, please."

I shrug at Hericane and follow him. An apology from the douche. Will wonders never cease?

He stops at a door midway down the hall and pushes it open. Surprise again, he actually holds it for us as we walk through.

"Charlie?" He wanders off across the room and disappears through a doorway.

Leaving us to look around.

I've been here many times in my career, but this time is different. Everything is very familiar to me--the silver tables draped with sheets, the trays of equipment, the power tools. The wall of cold storage drawers, each big enough to hold a lifeless human body.

But the feeling is all wrong--darkly personal instead of all business. Painful instead of clinical.

It reminds me of the one time, seven years ago, when I was down here for Jimmy and the boys. The one time they had to drag me kicking and screaming out the door, knocking shit over right and left.

Here we are again. Only she's taking it a lot better than I did.

At least on the outside.

Still, something needs to be said before this goes any further. "Hey." I turn and meet her gaze. "If you need to step out, you step out, all right?"

Hericane frowns and shakes her head. "I'm okay."

"Be that as it may, you got nothing to prove here." I raise my eyebrows. "Nothing to prove to anyone. You understand?"

She looks past me at the middle table, where vague outlines of parts and pieces are visible under the draped white sheet. She blinks once, then twice, then nods. "Sure."

"This will suck. I don't care who you are, this will suck." Reaching out, I give her invulnerable arm a squeeze. Feels just like any other arm to me. "But you got a friend right here. Okay?"

Hericane nods, eyes locked on the middle table.

I give her arm a shake. "Okay?"

Her eyes dart away from the table and back to me. "Okay."

"Okay, ladies." Just then, Tank strolls back in, clapping his hands together. "Let's get this show on the road."

The coroner walks in behind him--an old guy named Charlie Abernathy. Sweetest guy you could ask for, been with the department since Eve ate the apple. More grandkids than there are ants in an anthill.

"Hello, Bonnie." He looks up from his stooped shuffle, peering over his Coke bottle glasses. "So very good to see you, dear."

"You, too, Charlie." Guy oughtta make me cringe, he autopsied Jimmy and the kids...but instead he makes me smile every time. What's he doing working with trash like Tank?

"Lieutenant Driscoll has filled me in." Charlie shuffles to the middle table and stops, looking at Hericane. "He says you're the victim's next of kin?"

Hericane bites her lip and nods. "Mm-hm."

Charlie touches a corner of the sheet on the table and clears his throat. "I guess you know she was pretty well obliterated. Her remains were dispersed throughout the apartment." He clears his throat again. "We, uh...we gathered her up as best we could. I doubt you'll see much that you recognize."

Hericane nods. Her eyes are locked on that sheet.

"But maybe that's a blessing, in a way." Charlie manages the faintest smile, and then it's gone. He pulls up the corner of the sheet and keeps going, peeling it away as he shuffles from one end of the table to the other.

"Ready?" I ask Hericane.

She nods.

"Let's get this over with." I walk over to the table as Charlie flicks on the bright lights above it.

He wasn't kidding about not recognizing much. Instead of a body, there's a pile of bloody bits oozing over the length of a black plastic trough. It looks like what you'd get if you put a person through a wood chipper.

Don't know how much of a blessing it is, though.

As Hericane draws up beside me, she covers her nose and mouth against the stench, which is atrocious. Her eyes glisten with tears as she stares down at the mess in the trough--all that's left of someone she adored.

And then the mightiest woman on Earth turns away. She turns her back on the sight and sobs.

I see the douche open his mouth to say something, and I shoot him a warning glare. Don't you dare. Ninety-nine percent of what comes out of your mouth is poison, so don't you dare.

Let's stick with the business at hand. Give her time to come around.

"Have you found anything?" I ask Charlie. "Any relevant trace evidence?"

Charlie shakes his head. "Honestly, I'm not sure where to start. We've got nothing bigger than a fingertip to work with." He hesitates and looks at Hericane, then continues. "No fingernails, though, mind you. Even her dental fillings were torn out."

"Overkill," says Tank. "Big time. Payback's a bitch."

"I don't know." I crook a finger against my lips as I gaze into the mess in the trough. "I've been thinking about that. Maybe they were looking for something."

Tank screws up his face in a scowl so deep, it pulls his right eye shut. "Something inside her?"

"Why else would they tear her to pieces like this?" I say. "To send a message? Then where's the message?" I shake my head. "To make sure she's gone for good?" I shake my head again. "She wasn't invulnerable. A bullet to the brain would've accomplished the same thing."

Tank unscrews his scowl and shrugs. "Say you're right, and the killer was looking for something. It doesn't matter. We'll never know what it was."

"Does it look like they found it?" I gesture at the trough. "Maybe it's still in there."

"If so," says Charlie, "how will we ever find it?"

Suddenly, Hericane stops sobbing and turns to face the table. "I'll bet the killer didn't have 21 senses." Her voice is steady and cold, her face tear-stained but stony. "Unlike me."

I give her my best "are you sure you're ready for this?" look, and she doesn't flinch. Heroine that she is, she's pulled herself together to deal with the crisis at hand.

No matter how awful it will be.

"Excuse me," she says to Charlie. "Can you give me some kind of--instrument--to, uh..." She moves her hand back and forth over the trough.

Charlie shuffles over to a tray of tools on a nearby metal counter. He fishes around for a moment, clattering things together, and comes back with a clawed, silver utensil. He hands it over without comment.

"Thank you." Hericane looks at me like she wants me to move, so I do. She steps in to take my place alongside the trough.

Then she hesitates. Looks up at the ceiling and takes a deep breath. Like she's bracing herself.

My hand twitches. Maybe she's not ready for this after all. I start to reach for her, to keep her from doing this thing no one should ever have to do.

But before I can make contact, she leans down over the remains and begins her work.

In the field of blazing bright light cast down from above by Charlie's lamps, she gazes at the contents of the trough. Wrinkles her nose once, and then never again.

Gently, she dips in the clawed instrument and stirs the mess, moving it around. I watch over her shoulder as she turns over the lumps, training her 21 senses on them at what has got to be maximum intensity.

She rakes the tool through the bloody mush for a long time with no sign of finding anything or even coming close. She doesn't linger over a particular bit or lift anything up out of the ooze. She just keeps looking, aiming her 21 senses invisibly at the gruesome slop that used to be her lover.

After a while, it seems like nothing will ever come of this. Charlie pulls up a wheeled stool and takes a load off. The douche paces the floor, scratching his head. Even I begin to lose hope.

But not Hericane. She just keeps patiently combing the instrument through the remains, silently searching for some kind of revelation.

Would I have been able to do this, I wonder? If it was Jimmy or one of the boys in that trough? Could I have done what she's doing for even a single moment, let alone an hour?

No fucking way. I would've snapped at the first glimpse of that mess. But not Hericane.

My admiration for her grows with each passing second.

After a while longer, Tank stops pacing. "I gotta hit the head. Be right back."

He's halfway out the door when Hericane finally stops raking. "Hold on."

Tank returns to the table. Charlie gets up off his stool. And all of us lean closer to the mush, straining to see what's gotten her attention.

"Okay." Carefully, she steers a stubby object, a half-inch long, to the edge of the trough. "Forceps, please."

Charlie shuffles to a nearby tray and hurries back with a fresh instrument. He gives it to her handle-first.

"Thanks." Hericane slips her thumb and forefinger through the looped handles and cranks them apart, scissoring the hinged forceps open. Then she lowers the instrument to the trough and clamps the ridged jaws around the object she has found.

As she lifts it out, Charlie brings over a small metal basin without being asked and holds it under the forceps. Hericane opens the jaws, and the stubby object drops into the basin.

"What the hell is it?" says Tank.

Hericane raises the basin under the bright lights. Charlie hands her a pair of tweezers--again without being asked--and she uses them to prod at what she's found. "The tip of a left pinky finger."

"Without the nail," says Tank, stating the obvious.

"Which I think was what the killer was looking for." Hericane turns over the fingertip and pokes the tweezers at the area once covered by the missing nail. "Mardi Gras must have had a microchip planted under there. Which tells me that whatever she was investigating, it was pretty huge."

"Like a cover-up by the Protectorate, maybe?" says Tank.

I notice Charlie perk up a little when he hears that one. Apparently, Tank didn't fill him in on all the details before our private autopsy.

"So the killer got the chip." I start to lose hope again. "So we're back to square one."

Hericane shakes her head and pokes the fingertip again. "The chip left an imprint on the nail bed. An imprint I can read with my twelfth and sixteenth senses." She squints as she gazes at the fingertip. "Can somebody point me to a computer? There's a bunch of code we need to transcribe."

 

*****

 

Tank gets us an IT guy with a smokin' laptop, and we put him to work. Hericane reads off endless streams of numbers, and Gary the IT guy types them into his machine as fast as he can. Hericane could do it faster, of course, but her hyper-speed typing would melt the keyboard.

"This is ASCII code," says Gary. "It converts to simple text."

I stare at the laptop screen and shake my head. "I didn't know Mardi Gras was such a computer whiz."

"She had help," says Gary. "The one and only King Crypto. Dude signed his work." He taps the screen and smiles.

"An old boyfriend of hers." Hericane frowns. "I didn't know they were still in touch." Her voice trails off.

There's a moment of awkward silence. Hericane stares at the fingertip in the basin. Gary watches the screen, keeping his hands poised over the keyboard. The douche, who's sitting with his feet up on a stool, snores.

Then, Hericane shakes her head, clears her throat, and keeps reading code from the nail bed of her dead lover's pinky finger.

And Gary keeps typing like a maniac.

 

*****

 

When Hericane finishes reading code, we head for a conference room upstairs. Only Charlie stays behind; I give him a quick hug on the way out.

Once we get resettled, Gary converts the ASCII code to text on his laptop. There's a projector on the big conference room table, and he uses it to display the results on the wall.

What we see is not a revelation at first. Just a jumble of names, places, and dates.

But holy shit. Does it become a revelation.

Tank brings in another laptop, shrugs off his sports coat, and rolls up his sleeves. Then he goes to work, searching police databases for anything related to what's up on the wall.

And a picture begins to form.

Each name identifies a missing person or a victim of an unsolved murder. Each date corresponds with a victim's death or disappearance. Each place represents a location in or near Isosceles City.

There are so many of them--name after name after name. Men, women, children, all ages, all races, all social strata. Some date back ten years or more. Others are as recent as last week. Some are known to me from coverage in the media; others, I've never heard of.

And all of them have one thing in common, one thing that jumps out at me so far. "No superhumans." If any superhumans were on that list, I would recognize them at least. Though I guess I should qualify that. "No known superhumans."

"Fifty-seven names." Gary whistles and flops back in his chair. "That's a long list."

"Jody Lynne McIntyre. Son of a bitch." Tank scrolls through a record on his laptop screen. "What a little cutie. My first case when I made detective five years ago." He stops scrolling and looks at me. "All we ever found was her head."

I never thought it would happen, but my heart goes out to him.

Gary puts all the information in a table, along with photos of the victims. When I see them on the wall like that, all those people, I burn with pity and rage.

"They're not superhumans." I walk up close to the wall, blocking the projector so the victim's faces appear on my back.

"Probably," says Tank.

"And they're all missing persons or victims of unsolved murders," I say, moving out of the projector's beam. "So what else do they have in common? What's so important about them that Mardi Gras would put all their names on a secret chip the Protectorate was willing to kill for?"

Gary keeps typing away on his laptop. "I've got nothing so far. None of the cases is cross-indexed with any of the other cases in any law enforcement database."

"Wait a minute." I point at what's bothering me--a lone street address at the bottom of the table, entered twice. "What's this?"

"Unmatched data point," says Gary. "It was presented that way without comment in the code. Every other address accompanies a person's name and a date."

"It's up here twice." I point at each of the two versions in turn. "Mistake?"

Gary shakes his head. "Not by me." He looks at Hericane.

She's been pretty quiet since she finished reading the code off the fingertip. She isn't ready to talk yet, either; she just folds her arms over her chest and casts a steely glare at him without saying a word.

So what then?" says the douche. "Why was it in there twice?"

"Because it's important." I run my finger down through the list of 57 and stop at the bottommost address. "Everything else is leading up to it." I smack my palm against the wall over the duplicated address. It reappears on the back of my hand. "It's like she put it in boldface and circled it with red ink. It's the most important thing on the chip."

Gary taps and types on his laptop, and the view on the wall changes. He's called up a search engine and is entering the address. "So where is this place?"

Tank scowls. "Beats me."

I think hard and come up empty. "Doesn't ring a bell."

Gary's search delivers zero results. "Nothing. Let me run that again."

"Don't bother," says Hericane.

All eyes swoop over and land on her at once.

"Why not?" says Tank.

"Because I know where it is," says Hericane. "I know exactly where it is."

I take a step toward her. "Then why don't the rest of us know?"

"Because." Hericane sighs. "You're not supposed to."

Gary's still typing furiously on the laptop. "And why do all my Internet searches keep coming up empty?"