by S. J. Delos
“Senator Gordon? Your close personal friend and ally? He’s Nightfall.”
He blinked at me, dumbfounded. “Do what?” he asked again.
“Nightfall,” I repeated. “Senator Gordon is Nightfall.”
Hank whirled around to look at his long-time friend, then turned back to me, shaking his head. “That’s ridiculous, Karen. No one knows what Nightfall looks like under his mask. Just like Doctor Maniac.”
I shrugged. “I do,” I said. “I’ve been around him before.”
“Without his mask on?”
The memory came back as if I were watching it on video. Standing next to Martin while he discussed the details of an idea on which the two of them were collaborating. Not really listening to their words since I was more focused on the featureless black mask completely covering Nightfall’s face. I wondered if he were scarred or disfigured beneath it because while he might not be the only villain to wear a mask, he was the only one to be allowed to continue wearing it in Martin’s presence.
I sighed. “No, he never took it off.” I held up my finger to stop the protest he was about to counter. “However, I recognized his voice, which I have heard many times. Plus, that thing he said about the roses and thorns? Nightfall used to say the same thing to Doctor Maniac all the time.”
“That’s not exactly proof, Karen,” he said. “If you try to accuse Senator Gordon of being Nightfall, without any actual evidence, you’ll end up Unsanctioned. Your heroic career will be over faster than Hyper-Sonica’s last marriage. Even if you remain sanctioned, you can pretty much forget about getting the Hero of the Year award.”
I gave him an incredulous stare. Did he really think that mattered to me? “I don’t give a shit about that award, Henry. I never did.”
I started to walk toward the senator, but Hank moved back in my way.
“Just stop,” he said, pointing at me. “You want to go over and accuse the man who’s fought harder than anyone else for Enhanced Rights, who has been our staunchest supporter, of being a super-villain in league with Doctor Maniac? Are you crazy?”
“No, Major Freedom,” I said softly, keeping my eyes trained on his. “I’m a superhero. I’m supposed to stop the bad guy.”
I feared for a second that I was going to have to make Henry get out of my way. I wanted to be discreet, and throwing him across the crowded ballroom would be the exact opposite of that. Instead, an idea popped into my head so I pressed on the com unit in my ear.
“Hannah? You there?”
“Reading you, loud and clear,” the genius replied. “What can I do for you?”
I kept my gaze on Henry. “Run a cross check comparing any connection between Delgado Corporation and Senator Simon Gordon.”
“Senator Gordon?” There was no mistaking the confusion in her voice. “You think Simon had something to do with the Delgado thefts?”
“Just do it, Hannah,” Major Freedom cut in, crossing his arms over his chest. The look in his eyes all but screamed that the job offer from ten minutes earlier had evaporated as easily as a glass of water in Vaporizer’s hands. “Run the data.”
“Hold on,” she said. A second later, her voice came back to us far less amused. “That can’t be right.”
Hank’s stern expression morphed into something much less stony. “Did you find something?”
“Sir, Senator Gordon has a half-sister, Lora Packard, née Johansson. Mrs. Packard is the Chair of Delgado Corp’s Board of Directors.”
“Richard said that their CEO was behaving oddly when he confronted him about the thefts in Charlotte,” I said. “He could have been getting pressure from the Board to keep quiet about it.”
Henry shook his head. “That still doesn’t prove that Simon’s Nightfall.”
Hannah broke in. “Hold up. You think Senator Gordon is… Nightfall? The mysterious super-villain that no one has ever seen?”
“I don’t think that, Hannah.” Hank insisted. “Karen does.”
“Well, considering that I’ve actually been in a room with Nightfall, and you haven’t. Not to mention,” I added, narrowing my eyes at my childhood idol, “I’ve experienced firsthand having someone you trust working against you. I understand how hard it is to accept.”
His jaw tightened hard, and I knew the last bit of respect between us was slipping away.
“Are you talking about Power Brain’s betrayal of the Good Guys?” he asked, his voice a knife’s edge. “Or your betrayal of Doctor Maniac?”
Hannah’s gasp in my ear came at the exact moment a similar cry of surprise emerged from my own throat. Hers probably came from hearing her teammate, always known for his calm demeanor and pleasant nature, talking to a fellow hero in such a manner.
For me, it was the sudden pain of having someone actually say aloud what I had been thinking for years. Regardless of the whys or reasons, I took someone’s trust and used it against them. The fact it was a homicidal sociopath like Martin didn’t matter, the deed was still just as dirty.
I shook my head, then stepped around Henry. The only way I was going to prove that I knew what I was talking about was to confront Simon.
I spotted him near one of the doors that opened onto the hallway outside the ballroom. He was talking with another man, this one wearing the same uniform as the rest of the service staff. Even though I was too far away to hear what they were saying, it was obvious that it wasn’t about the quality of the hors d’oeuvres.
I slipped between a pair of winged heroes comparing stories about airplane near-misses, increasing my pace to a fast march. Whatever diabolical plot Nightfall had in store was probably about to begin, hence his hasty exit.
He glanced up from his conversation to look my way. He smiled, and when he did, the man next to him moved between us. I didn’t know who he was; it really didn’t matter. What did matter was the fact that, due to his shorter stature, the top of his head covered the bottom three-fourths of Senator Gordon’s face.
The dark hair of the smaller man, coupled with the swatch of shadow falling across Gordon’s forehead, left only his eyes in view. Eyes that I recognized even more vividly than his voice. Those same eyes had stared eagerly at me once before.
Not in the lair of Doctor Maniac, but in the infirmary of The Max.
I froze, rooted to the spot as another memory, previously fuzzy and faded, swam back into my mind with high-definition clarity and theater-quality surround sound.
The room was total pandemonium due to the fact that I was ten days early. The specialist who was supposed to be in the delivery room was still in Okinawa. The prison’s Chief Medical Officer, sweating like crazy in his black scrubs, leaned over me, yelling louder than my own panicked screaming.
“Dammit! You have to stop pushing, Karen! Stop pushing right now! If you don’t, you’re going to kill the baby!”
I could hear the urgency in his words. But it hurt so bad, I just wanted to get it over with. Every instinct kept telling me to bear down to squeeze the life inside me out into the world. The metal of the bed rails, cast from solid durasteel, bent and warped under my hands as another painful contraction rolled through me.
The doctor shook his head. “Shit. We’re going to have to do a C-section,” he said to someone standing behind me. “Get the atomic blades and prepare the anesthesia. Stat!”
I screamed through another cycle of agony as the delivery team rushed around the bed, hastily preparing for emergency surgery. I fully believed that, somehow, my super-strength wouldn’t be an issue during labor. After all, I wasn’t the first pregnant lady with enhanced muscles.
A nurse with beautiful yellow eyes placed a hissing, clear plastic mask over my face.
“Just breathe normally,” she said. “We can’t give you an epidural, so this will have to do.”
I nodded, trying to not let my fear take control. I had to trust that everything would be alright. That the little girl growing inside me over the past ten months would be alright. As I inhaled the gas, my perception of the wor
ld inside the delivery room became distorted.
“Okay folks, this is going to be a little tricky.” The doctor’s voice was hollow, like coming through a tin can connected to my ear by a frayed string. “She’s Class Five Invulnerable, so we’ll need both the atomic blade and the laser scalpel to cut through to the womb.”
The world around me grew dimmer, dark halos taking up most of my field of vision. I hovered on the precipice of going completely under, but blessed unconsciousness eluded me. The commotion in the room echoed, seemingly taking place miles away. When the doctor spoke again, I thought for a moment he was talking to me.
“If we have to choose between the baby and the mother?”
Choose? What choice? Just cut me open. Take her out. It wasn’t the sort of decision that needed a damned debate, right?
Another man stepped closer, stopping right beside the surgeon. I hadn’t noticed him before, due to excruciating labor pains taking up nearly all of my attention. However, now that modern pharmaceuticals made me float weightlessly in my own body, I became hyper-aware.
“Both, if possible,” the man said, looking at the doctor. “However, of the two, the mother is the more valuable. She’s extremely… special.”
Then he turned his nearly-obscured face to me, steel blue eyes peering at me from between the opening between his black cap and matching surgical mask. His gaze was full of malice and madness, and looking into it produced a twinge of fear that easily cut through the heavy anesthetic fog.
Those same calculating eyes stared at me from across the ballroom floor.
The expression on my face must have revealed that I remembered him because his mouth formed a little smirk, followed by a tipping of his head in a jovial nod of acknowledgment Then, with an honest-to-God wink, he vanished through the doorway.
I clenched my jaw, rushing forward through the people in front of me, determined to catch the head of the EAPF before he could get too far away. I was going to shake some goddamned answers out of his sorry ass. I didn’t give a damn how much of a “friend” he was to Hank or the rest of the Justice Brigade. Nightfall was going down tonight.
I burst out of the ballroom into the corridor, nearly knocking down a couple of heroes who happened to be in my way. The hallway in front of me was villain-free, but the door at the far end, the one leading to the stairway, was just closing. Bingo!
I took off running toward the exit in pursuit. However, I managed to take all of four steps when my brain exploded.
Starburst flashes of light appeared in my vision as if I were at a front-row seat to a Fourth of July celebration being put on by a god. I stumbled sideways, fighting both the sudden urge to vomit and the desire of my legs to dump me on the carpet. I reached up, pressing my palm against the side of my head, almost sure that my fingers would discover a gaping hole in my skull.
I hit the wall shoulder first, putting a small dent in the plaster before I bounced in the other direction, still trying to reach the door I suspected Nightfall of departing through. Despite the fact that some invisible phantom was stabbing me repeatedly just behind my left ear, I wasn’t giving up on catching him.
My hand brushed against the bar of the door’s handle, but before I could push it open, the fireworks in my brain surged to a new level of agony. It was like sitting in a darkened theater watching a movie going from grainy black and white to the full IMAX experience with Dolby Digital sound.
The world tilted around me as I staggered back, unable to cry out or scream through the electrical thunderstorm short-circuiting the lump of meat between my ears. I fell down, landing in a splayed-out heap on the floor. Darkness swam over my awareness, but right before it claimed me, I glanced back toward the ballroom.
Everyone in the hall with me had either collapsed or was in the process of doing so.
Then the blackness overtook everything, including the pain.
CHAPTER 31:
BALLROOM MASSACRE
Consciousness returned to me, creeping along, bringing with it a temple-throbbing, Godzilla-sized migraine. Unlike the sharp, stabbing sensation which knocked me out, this was an all-over agony that made every strand of my hair ache.
I opened my eyes, blinking several times as the ceiling came back into focus. Then I rolled over onto my hands and knees. Vertigo swam through my head, causing my stomach to cramp twice before emptying its contents on the expensive carpet under me.
I’ve had food poisoning, stomach flu, morning sickness, and once—right after my Activation—I decided to test the invulnerability of my insides by drinking almost a half-gallon of the homebrewed liquor Johnny Moroni’s dad cooked up in his basement still. None of them came anywhere close to the upchuck factor created by pain coming from inside my skull.
I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand, dry heaved a couple more times, then got to my feet, using the wall for support as I stood.
The throbbing between my ears increased in intensity once I was upright, turning from a slow golf clap to thunderous applause worthy of a symphony orchestra. I closed my eyes again, waiting for another wave of nausea to pass, before reopening them to a horrible sight.
Several heroes, the ones I saw fall down with me, were still lying on the floor. Unmoving.
I took a few unsteady steps, focusing on not dropping over again. The percussion beat taking place in my skull threw my sense of balance out of whack. A part of me looked at the half dozen or so bodies spread out on the carpet where they’d landed and thought they looked really comfortable. I considered going back to doing that.
Staggering several more steps in the direction of the ballroom, I spotted Hank slumped limply against a wall. He must have been chasing me out of the room when he collapsed. His head was tilted down, chin resting on a chest rising and falling in a slow, rhythmic motion.
I reached out, placing two fingers against the side of his neck. The thumping I felt beneath the skin was slow, but steady. Then I moved my fingers around to peel open one of his eyelids. The pupil that stared back at me was barely a pinprick.
Asleep, I thought. They’re all asleep. I tried to think of what could have knocked out every hero at the party. A gas wouldn’t have affected someone like Monolith, since he didn’t breathe. A villain named Sinister Sleep used a ray that would send you to dreamtime faster than you can say ‘goodnight’, but it operated by line of sight. Whatever did this had hit everyone all at once.
Then the answer came to me, and I slapped my forehead in the realization of my own stupidity. Which didn’t do my migraine any favors.
The Delta Inducer! Nightfall must have found some way to amplify its effects to broadcast the signal over a large area. Of course, that didn’t explain why I wasn’t still snoozing face down on the rug like everyone else. Was I immune?
The pounding in my head, as well as the lethargy that kept trying to creep back into my body, seemed to hint that, any resistance I had to the slumbering signal wasn’t a hundred percent.
I shook the unconscious hero’s shoulder. “Henry. Wake up.”
The only result I got for my efforts was making him slide sideways along the wall to the floor.
“I hate to say I told you so,” I whispered to the sleeping man. “Well, actually, I don’t hate it, but saying it to someone who’s passed out isn’t nearly as much fun.” I grabbed the wall to stand up, fighting another urge to vomit.
I jumped as the crack of something discharging a lot of energy echoed from the open ballroom doorway. I looked in that direction just in time to hear the sound again, this time accompanied by a brief flash of light.
Somebody in there was either taking pictures with a really noisy camera, or else they were shooting a plasma weapon.
I held onto the wall as I crept down the corridor to the doorway, pushing against the nausea and sleepiness. Thankfully, it seemed the longer I remained standing, the less intrusive the effects of the Delta Inducer seemed to be. Perhaps my resistance to it increased the more I was exposed to the field. I stopped just ou
tside the entrance of the ballroom, tilting my head to listen.
“What about this one?” someone in the room asked.
I stuck my head around the corner of the doorway, trying to see inside the ballroom without getting spotted.
A couple of yards away from where I stood, I saw two men wearing some kind of high-tech body armor. The front of their helmets were mirrored faceplates. Their posture belied some type of disciplined training, meaning they were either former military or EAPF. They looked completely out of place among a sea of passed out party-goers in formal wear, like they were on their way to stop an Enhanced riot.
“Let’s see,” said one of them, looking from the hero at the other man’s feet to the tablet in his hand. “That’s Hyper-Sonica. She’s a Speedster, Class Three.” He glanced up at his associate, waving his free hand. “Not invulnerable.”
“Too bad,” commented the other. “She’s kind of cute.”
He pointed a rather large weapon at the blonde on the floor, and I watched—horrified and immobile—as the brilliant white burst of a plasma bolt jumped out of the end of the gun. The beam vaporized her head.
“Or … at least, she was,” he said with an amused laugh. Then he waved the pistol around, looking from the body before him to his associate. “Next!”
I closed my eyes, leaning back against the wall out of sight. What I just witnessed cut through the headache and residual drowsiness, fury shoving me back to full alertness. Hyper-Sonica was dead. Gone.
With all the fanfare of emptying a wastebasket.
I peeked around the corner again. From my vantage point, I could see that Hyper-Sonica wasn’t the duo’s first victim. There were at least ten other bodies with plasma holes in them. Was that Nightfall’s grand scheme? The cold-blooded murder of over a hundred unconscious and defenseless heroes? Ordinary murder?
“Hey, look,” one of the killers said with dangerously abundant joy. “It’s Captain I’m So Fucking Awesome.”
