One of the Adjustors in the front row snickered at Topper's rant. He walked to him and asked. "I'm sorry, did you say something?" Before the man could answer, Topper slammed the heavy weight of the pistol into his crotch. The Adjustor collapsed into a fetal position on the floor, moaning in pain.
"That's what I thought you said. Okay, any of you other assholes got a question?"
None of them moved.
"Okay, then. Jerry, c'mon, we're getting out of here."
BANG.
Jerry fell to the floor. Topper froze, wide-eyed. He turned slowly and saw Daniel pointing a handgun directly at him. The black hole of the barrel seemed like it was big enough to swallow the whole world. Topper let his arm drop so his pistol rested on the floor. No one was more surprised at this than Topper. He always thought he was the go-out-in-a-blaze-of-glory kind. He heard himself, as meek as a lamb, asking, "E? Is this really how I go out?"
"Daniel, put the gun away," Edwin said in a tone of voice that suggested he found all of this tiresome. Edwin walked over to his friend. "No, Topper. This is not how you go out. But there are rules. And they apply to everyone. And now they apply to you most of all. Do you understand?"
Topper swallowed and chose his next words very carefully. "Yeah, Edwin. I understand.”
"Good. Supervise the men as they clean up the mess." Edwin turned and walked out into the night.
CHAPTER TEN
The interrogator pushed a plastic cup filled with water across the table. Hard as he tried to see the man behind the questions, Topper could only make out his hand and a little bit of his sleeve. Topper drank greedily, slurping and spilling a little bit. The water rolled off the skintight, unflattering material of his costume. When he was done he wiped at the corner of his mouth with a bit of his torn cape.
Topper coughed and continued, "I mean what the hell? Who was this guy? This wasn't Edwin. Edwin would never kill anybody. Enslave them and work them to death, maybe, but kill? No, it just wasn't efficient. So the next day I ask him about it. I figure he's calmed down, y'know? Hard to tell with that guy, he's always so friggin calm. But I thought he might feel different.
"Nah. He tells me that the rules are different now. He has to keep the rabble in line. He has to let them know. He tells me this story about Genghis Khan and the uh, uh, uh"
"Mongols?"
"Oh, so you've heard of them. Yeah, anyway, Genghis Khan sends a buncha guys into the Middle East. They trot up to the gates of Baghdad on their ponies and say, 'Open up, please.' The, uh, Baghdaddies or whatever, take a look at this army and say 'screw off!' Then the Mongols knock the gate in and wipe out the whole city. They kill absolutely everybody.
"I'm like, gee, that sounds a little harsh. Edwin says, but wait there's more. After killing everybody, they saddle up and ride their ponies to another city. Knock knock. Who's there? Mongol. Mongol who? We're gonna Mongol your whole friggin' family if you don't let us in!
"Well, once again they say, screw off. So, same trick, Mongols kill everybody. And I mean everybody, men, women, children, houseplants, everything dead. I'm like E? That sounds like a lotta work. They gotta be tired right?
"No, says Edwin, they ride on to the third city. And the third city is like, 'Hey guys, c'mon in. Whatever you need.' And nobody ever attempts to resist them again. That was his point, it was efficiency on a bigger scale. Uh, uh, Economies of Scale is what he said."
"And what did you think?" asked the voice in the dark.
"Oh, c'mon! Killing Jerry? It was the wrong thing to do. And I'll tell you. All those Adjustors. I could see it on their faces. Sure, they loved Edwin, but they knew, right? The whole time they're thinking, maybe next time it's me. It's one thing to have a fanatical drive—but he can't expect everybody (and by ‘everybody’ I mean ‘anybody else’) to have that kinda drive.
"And that's when I get it. Right then and there. I mean, I knew: somebody has got to stop this guy. Somebody has got to free these poor people. And that somebody is me. I gotta be the hero. Jeeze..." Topper shook his head from side to side.
"Jeeze what?"
"Well naturally, imagine my surprise, right? I mean, I turn out to be the good guy! I mean, after all this time, it's me? Little old me? 'Cause clearly, the tall guy is right off his frighteningly large-scale rocker. And I can see it. More importantly, I can see them. All these people. The closest thing to a family I've ever had. I mean sure, they're a shitty family right? But that's everybody's family. And these people they're hurting. I can feel their pain."
"What did you do then?"
"I was afraid. Look, I'm a lotta things. But Edwin? You gotta understand. He was the smartest, most thorough guy I've ever met. Genius doesn't even come close to describing what this guy is capable of." Topper hung his head and looked at his pudgy little stomach for a moment, "Was capable of. He was Edwin Windsor. And I'm just me. How was I supposed to outwit a mastermind? Overcome him? It's ridiculous. And worst of all, how was I supposed to do it without him knowing? Without getting myself killed? 'Cause believe me, sunshine, subtle ain't my strong suit.
"So I asked myself, what would Edwin Windsor do? What genius move would he come up with? Untraceable, sinister, elegant. What could I do that he would never in a million years think came from me? How do I get somebody else to do what I need done, without them knowing about it."
"That sounds like Windsor."
"He called it the Richelieu Gambit, after some French guy. Seems that this one time when France didn't have much of an army, this Richelieu got somebody else to start a fight with his enemy. I dunno, must have been the Germans right? Aren't they always the bad guys? But the point is, why fight a battle when you can get somebody else to fight it?"
"So what did you do?"
"It's not what I did, sunshine. It's what I undid. You know how you keep somebody in a coma? And before you answer, it's not 'bash them in the head with a hammer every once in a while to make sure they stay down.' That's what I thought, but I was wrong. You give them a drug, a steady drip of it, every day. The beauty part is, you can just slip it into their saline and nobody ever knows, or checks. If you've got 'em in your private hospital, well, forget about it. You can keep somebody on mothballs for as long as you want.
"As long as they get their drip, they're under. And when you stop giving it to them, then they wake up."
"Undid?"
"Yeah. I changed somebody's prescription."
"I don't get it."
"I pulled on one tiny little thread and the whole thing unraveled."
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The duty nurse's station. Terminal ward. Where the people with money came to die. And nothing attracts friends and family to a hospital like a sick relative with money. Most of the time this disgusted Nurse Kim. All that fighting and scrabbling. But that was the odd thing about the man in room number three. He had the finest treatment that money could buy, but no family ever came to visit him. He was listed as John Doe. How had John Doe gotten such good insurance coverage?
Nurse Kim didn’t know why visitors came here. It wasn’t like it mattered. There’s a saying that floats around hospital wards: don't screw up so bad that you kill a dead person. And that described everybody in this ward, dead, but kept alive through the miracle of medical science.
It wasn’t like the gentleman in room three was breathing for himself or pumping his blood on his own. Even his assisted vitals were crappy. So when Kim finished her round, she didn’t give him another thought.
Then the alarm went off. The gentleman in room number three was crashing. She called a code and went to save him. She hurried, but she didn’t run. There was no point. The monitor had told her that the man's heart had stopped, so they would have to defib him anyway. Most of the patients were vegetables, so there was no harm in a little extra brain death. It wasn’t like he was really alive anyway. Unplug the machines and he would be gone. In fact, the most likely explanation for all this was that one of the machines had failed.
But when Kim
reached the doorway, she stopped dead in her tracks. The dead man in room number three was sitting up in his bed. He was pulling the last of his ventilation tube free. He looked at Kim and spat a wad of blood and phlegm on the floor.
"Where is he?" the man asked.
"Who?" said Kim, because she couldn’t think of anything else to say to a man risen from the dead.
"Excelsior."
"You mean the hero? He's dead. They had a funeral and everything. The president was there."
"Bullshit. Was there a body?"
"W-w-what?"
"Did they find a body?"
"N-n-no."
The man swung his legs out of the bed and tried to stand. His legs had atrophied and wouldn’t hold him. He slid onto the floor. "Well, yippie ki-yay," he said, disgusted at his weakness.
"Take it easy," said Nurse Kim, "You've been in bed for a long time." She checked his chart rather than going to help him. This man had a crazy light in his eye that she wasn’t comfortable with. "Three months."
The man cursed and struggled to get to his feet. After a minute he clawed his way back onto the bed. As Nurse Kim watched this, she asked, "Where do you have to be in such a hurry, Mister Doe?"
"Heh, John Doe, huh? My name's Augustus, but all my lady friends call me 'Gus.'"
"Well, why are you in such a hurry, Gus?"
"I'm going to go find him. I'm going to find Excelsior."
"But he's dead."
"If they didn't find a body, he's still alive. Being a hero is not the kind of thing you get to quit." Gus said this with an air of disgust. He scanned the room. "Where are my boots?"
"You don't have any personal effects, Mr. Doe. Besides, you couldn't possibly leave in your condition."
"Can't do anything else," he said. He fell back onto his pillow in exhaustion. "There's rules you know."
Nurse Kim had no idea what he was talking about, but his voice was so raspy it caused her pain. "Can I get you a glass of water?"
"The bad guys don't get to win. No matter what. It's not over. It's never over." Gus was wracked by another coughing fit.
"Please, Mr. Doe, calm down. A man in your condition, you'll kill yourself."
"No," croaked Gus, growing weaker by the second. "Not yet. I've got a funeral to go to. A tall man. A man so tall, they'll have to build a custom casket."
"You're delirious. Let me get you some water."
"Water? Yeah. And find me some cigarettes. I could just about kill for a cigarette," said Gus as he passed out.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Topper had a long-standing policy with his brain. During work hours, he expected it to be sharp and functional. Spitting out ideas, crossing all the t's, dotting all the i's, and most of all, noticing the dangerous and precise things he didn't want to deal with. That's how a good brain was supposed to work. While your eyes were busy looking at the pretty's girl’s legs, your brain was supposed to be saying things like, "Look out for that oncoming bus!" Or husband, or whatever.
But after hours, when its work was done, it was time for the brain to punch out. After all, the mind was a terrible thing. Sure, you had to use it, like a lawnmower or a flamethrower or a chainsaw, but if you overused it—if you got excited and played around with it too much—you were gonna hurt yourself. That's just the way it was.
That was how Topper understood Edwin. Something, many things in Edwin’s life had caused him pain, and he tried to run away from it by thinking. Topper was okay with running away from painful and unpleasant things, but running by thinking? That was the worst trap of all.
Tonight, though, Topper's brain just didn't know when to quit. He was smack in the middle of a full-tilt evening of hedonistic mind-annihilation—celebrities to the left, hookers to the right—when he realized it wasn't working. It wasn't working at all. No matter how much he drank, his brain wasn't turning off. He just couldn't enjoy himself.
Why did this keep happening? This was wrong. In fact, doubly wrong for Topper. He was a professional. He was better at enjoying himself than anyone else he knew. People genuinely liked and admired him for it. Topper was so good that, when he was in full swing, it was hard not to have a good time around him. Only Edwin seemed to be able to resist his powers.
So it was that fateful night that Topper said something he never thought would come out of his mouth, "I gotta go. I can't hear myself think."
Outside, he had to pound on his car window to wake up Stevie. "What's wrong?" he asked.
"Nothing?" said Topper.
"You just want to go home?" asked the chauffeur.
"No."
"You just wanted to talk?"
"Nah, just drive."
"Where to?"
"The office."
"Burning the midnight oil there, boss?"
"Just shut up and drive," slurred Topper. This worried Stevie. He had never before seen Topper when he wasn't in a mood to joke around.
By the time they got to Omdemnity Building One, the cumulative effect of all the substances Topper had put in his body was peaking. He was a little man who was wrecked in a big way. As he staggered through the lobby clutching a bottle of bourbon, the security guard said, "Sir, you're not allowed to have alcohol on the corporate campus."
"Well, why the hell not?"
"Sorry, sir, I don't make the rules," the security guard said, invoking the procedurally strong, yet morally weak, I-was-only-following-orders defense.
"Do you know who I am?" Topper asked.
"Yes, sir, you're Mr. Haggleblat, Vice President."
"Vice President of what?"
"Uh..." The security guard furrowed his brow and his law-enforcement-issue bushy mustache in concentration. Topper held up his plastic access card. Even worse than he hated the card, he hated the little retractable cords everyone in this monstrous insurance company/extortion racket seemed to use to carry them around. Maybe if you could garrote someone with them, but other than that, they were just the wrong end of the leash.
The guard read from the card, "V.P., Extraordinary Operations."
"That's right, Extraordinary Operations," Topper said waving his arms wide and stumbling a little bit. "And you know what this is?" he said, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. In spite of himself, the guard was drawn in by this ploy.
"EXTRAORDINARY!" yelled Topper with an expulsion of boozy fumes. Not only was it loud enough to make the security guard jump, it was loud enough that Topper hurt his own head. He held up a finger and repeated the salient point, "Extraordinary. It means the rules don't apply to me, you get it?"
"I'm sorry, sir. Rules are rules."
Topper rubbed his eyes. Rules! Security Guards! He was in no mood for this. For the first time since he could remember, he didn't want a fight. But what to do? When you'd fought every step of the way, how to do something else? Topper sought inspiration in a slug of bourbon. "Come on, it's not serious, it's only like 80 proof. I got shoe polish that's stronger than this."
"I can't let you upstairs in this state, sir."
And there was the loophole. Topper dove for it. "That's okay, I'm not going upstairs."
"What?"
"Above your pay grade, sunshine. Is it okay if I use the bathroom before I go?"
The guard gave him a stern, slightly-above-minimum wage look.
"Hey, I promise, I won't do anything extraordinary in there. Just take care of business and be on my way. No more hassle."
The guard gave a stern nod that made Topper want to break the bottle of liquor over his head. But, instead, he walked around the corner towards the bathroom. Where a normal person would have taken a left turn into the restroom, Topper made a right turn into a solid stone wall. He pressed three or four indentations in the correct sequence (having to jump to reach one of them) and a section of the wall slid open to reveal a waiting elevator. He stepped into the compartment and disappeared into the earth.
There were a precious few people who knew about the secret complex below Omdemnity Building One. Pret
ty much all the rule-following schleps were left out of the secret. Most of the Adjustors didn't even know.
When the elevator doors opened, Topper stepped out into a concrete hallway bathed in a gentle red light. It was always like this down here. Cool and easy on the eyes. No loud noises. A nice quiet place to come and think. This was where they kept all their secrets.
Lately, Edwin had done a pretty thorough job of tidying up the secrets between people's ears. Omdemnity didn’t have a non-compete agreement so much as they had a non-quit-your-job-and-walk-away-alive policy. It would probably prevent them from ever making the list of Best Companies in America to Work For—but Edwin didn't like publicity, so he wouldn't care.
They kept the Cromoglodon down here, in a pit deep in the earth. It was in this pit that Topper now stood, with a pain in his heart and a quickly evaporating bottle of booze. When the rest of the world looked at this creature, they saw only a relentless engine of destruction. But as Topper watched him sleep, all he saw was Barry. A strange, sad creature who didn't fit in the world.
Barry slept on the large foam mattress that was thrown on the floor of his pit. It would have seemed more ordinary to keep him in a cell, but there was a good reason to keep him here. Giant electrical cables ran into the pit and attached to the Cromoglodon. If ever Edwin decided that Barry had outlived his usefulness, he would have the monster quietly electrocuted in the darkness beneath the earth.
Topper loved to see the Cromoglodon tear things apart. He loved that strength and savagery that he possessed in his own heart but would never possess in his body. And he felt a strange, sad kinship with Barry.
Topper took a pull from the bottle and felt the angry butterfly of liquor open its wings in his chest.
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