Gruefield 18 (Tarnished Sterling Omnibus)

by Robert McCarroll

  "So much for Texas," I said.

  "I'm not sure how to reach anyone else, so I came looking for you or Nora."

  "How did he find Cupric?"

  "I don't know. How does a guy in a bright yellow coat go undetected in a city looking for him specifically?" Ben's eyes went wide and he stumbled back. "Ack! What the Hell?" I turned to see Xiv looking over my shoulder at the Polaroid.

  "Oh, Ben, this is Xiv. Xiv is a half-dragon clone."

  "Hi," Xiv said.

  "You get weirder every time we meet."

  "What? Xiv needed someplace to stay."

  "Who's the bad guy?" Xiv asked, pointing at the picture.

  "The guy in yellow is Masquerade, he's very dangerous. He's also very unstable."

  "You mentioned him. He's working with Doctor Omicron, right?"

  "Yes. Now, the guy in green is Cupric. He's one of the good guys, and he's in trouble."

  "So where are they?"

  "We have no idea."

  "Actually," Ben said, "He plans for bad contingencies like this. There's a homing device in his uniform. We just need someone who can handle Masquerade."

  I pulled out my phone and dialed. "Hello," Jack said.

  "This conversation is in your capacity as Astroborn," I said.

  "Something serious?"

  "Masquerade is in town again. He beat up and took Cupric."

  "Well crap," Jack said.

  "We can track Cupric, but we need backup, and I don't have a uniform."

  "Aside from the class-threes and some sidekicks, Cupric and I were holding down the fort here. Everyone else is off in Minnesota getting ready to strike back at the aliens."

  "Okay. Head to my hideout, I'll see if I can get a bead on the homing device."

  "Call your sister while you're at it."

  "Sure," I said. It didn't sound like a good idea. Nora was fast but fragile. I didn't want to be responsible for calling her into a fight that got her hurt. On the other hand, she could be fast enough to unmask Masquerade without him being able to touch us. It was a gamble. Jack hung up and I turned back to Ben. "I need information about that homing device. Frequency?" Ben pulled a piece of paper from his pocket.

  "It isn't much of contingency plan if that isn't written down somewhere," he said.

  "Right," I took the paper and went to the wrist computer. Pulling up the tracker program, I entered the information from Cupric's note. He looked to have something for every field, probably because it was the same tech. Once I'd entered it all, the screen briefly said "scanning" before coming up with a dot on a wireframe map.

  "That's three blocks away," Ben said.

  "Technomation," I said.

  "Why drag him back there?"

  "Why grab him at all?" I called Nora. Her phone rang in the next room. I shared a glance with Ben, then checked the room. No Nora, but her cell sat on the floor, plugged into the wall outlet, charging. "Well double crap."

  "I need to get into costume," Ben said.

  "I need to get into something." We split up, and I searched my wardrobe. The only thing I turned up that came close to being suitable were the BDUs I'd stashed in the closet. I donned them and my goggles. Returning to the workshop, I strapped the orange computer to my left wrist.

  "You look like you dressed yourself at a rummage sale," Ben said.

  "I ordered a new uniform and the correct case for this just before you showed up."

  Jack let himself in through the front door. "Where's your sister?"

  "She left her phone charging in her room. We haven't been able to reach her."

  "Great," Jack said, "Where's Cupric?"

  "Believe it or not, Technomation."

  "That's three blocks away."

  "We were waiting for you so we could go in with a plan."

  "How about, I keep him busy while you unmask him, and he," Jack pointed at Ben, "Moves Cupric to safety."

  "I guess that works."

  "I thought you weren't supposed to take people's masks away," Xiv said.

  "This is a special case, Xiv," I said, "He gets his powers from wearing other people's masks. He already took mine. With anyone else, you're completely right."

  We hurried out the door and headed south. The sun had set and the sepia-toned sky colored the overripe moon a rusty brown. Even in an area largely bereft of streetlights, the moon still gave ample light to see by. Even as we rushed towards the Technomation compound, Jack gained altitude. I checked the computer. The signal hadn't moved. Turning down Eighteenth, we made for the gate. The yellow police tape had been torn down and lay tangled on the asphalt. The gate stood open, unguarded. Detecting my proximity to the homing beacon, the computer put up a directional arrow. It pointed towards the river and a concrete quay.

  A single figure in a long yellow coat stood there, arms folded over his face. From the bandoliers of faces, it was obvious who it was. Ben and I skidded to a halt on the damp grass. "Why's he just standing there?" Ben asked.

  "I don't know, but that's usually a very bad sign. Especially when they're alone."

  Masquerade giggled, a little, coquettish, girlish giggle. "Ayame wants to play. I told her she could come out if she made nice with the king."

  "What king?" Ben asked.

  "Songs that the Hyades shall sing, where flap the tatters of the King, must die unheard in dim Carcosa," Masquerade chanted in a high pitched voice. The shrill cackle that pierced the air made my skin crawl. "Not-Sharky wants you dead. Masquerade doesn't want to, but he has to make Not-Sharky happy again, so I need the king. But first, Ayame gets to play." He lowered his arms, a deranged gargle of a chuckle clawing its way out of his throat. On his face were two halves of different masks, stitched to each other using still-bloody scraps of skin. One was a pigtailed schoolgirl, the other was a pallid visage marked with a sigil that was painful to look upon.

  "Am I supposed to be on the verge of wetting myself?" Ben asked.

  "Just hold it," I said, removing the computer from my wrist. "Find Cupric." I handed him the computer. Jack plunged out of the sky fist-first at Masquerade. He jerked to a stop just feet-shy of his target. A thick tentacle had wrapped itself around his calf. Bearing mouthed suckers and an irregular collection of languid eyes, the slime-coated member pulled Jack towards a bruise-purple tear in space. Mottled with spots of pus green, burn pink, and frostbite black, the massive limb oozed a foul miasma.

  "Ayame fears not tentacles, for now she commands them," Masquerade said, "And what has more tentacles than a Great Old One?" Masquerade threw his arms wide, and more bruise-purple tears ripped through the fabric of space around him. More disgusting, warped tendrils probed the gaps, ranging in size from whipcord thin to thick as redwoods. Uneven, lamprey-like suckers suckled futilely at the air as the unfocused, milky eyes looked about. The limbs groped around, seeking something to take hold of. A forked bundle of tentacles dripping with slime wrapped about Jack.

  "This is going to suck," Jack said as it pulled him through the rip in space. The sound that emerged was a mix between a scream of terror and a war cry. I charged forward, ducking and weaving through the reaching mass of twisted tendrils. I choked on the putrid vapors rising from the unnatural limbs that passed within inches of me. As I swung at Masquerade, he dodged, bending only at the waist, his hands held balled up near his armpits. He avoided each punch and kick almost effortlessly.

  "Oh such piteous efforts," he said, blood trickling from behind his split mask. "It is time to unmask?"

  Jack burst from a different tear than the one he'd been dragged into, trailing the tattered, putrescent remnants of one or more tentacles behind him. Masquerade glanced at the streak of slime as he crashed to the ground. It was enough of an opening to seize the split mask and pull it from Masquerade's face. Ripping it
apart, I tore the skin sutures holding the grotesque visage together. To my horror, the tentacles didn't disappear. The rifts closed, cutting them off like a guillotine. Spilling red-black ichor, they fell to the ground, writhing and spasming. Jack vomited, his eyes unfocused. "My Star, it's full of Gods!" He collapsed with a wet splat.

  "I wear no mask," Masquerade said, his brown eyes wide, "No mask? No mask!"

  I didn't want to point out that he carried at least a dozen other masks on his bandoliers. His psyche seemed even more fractured from the sudden dislocation of this warped subversion of his power. I reached for his wrists to restrain him. He kicked. Reflexively, I managed to catch his ankle before his oversized boot connected with my groin. He held up his hands, showing the bloody tissues where he'd torn the skin off to bind his previous face covering. "Not-Sharky's not happy!" he shouted. Smearing blood on his face, he painted a crimson domino mask around his eyes. "Chancellor Du Sang gets a turn!" The blood dripping from his hands formed into scimitar blades, slashing for my face the moment they congealed.

  Scrambling back, I tripped over a severed, still wriggling tree trunk of a tentacle. It's noisome breath washed over me as its grasping mouths tried to take hold. Kicking it in an eye, I drew a gout of thick jelly. Masquerade's blood-blades carved through the tentacle as he advanced on me. "Can you hear them? The heartbeats of a city, a nation, a world!" Masquerade threw his arms wide, the blades dripping a disquieting admixture of blood, slime and ichor. I leapt into the opening he gave me with an uppercut to his chin. Masquerade tumbled back, but regained his footing. "There's blood in you too," he said. I wondered if this was the prelude to some special attack, but Masquerade just laughed. "Du Sang can't manipulate other people's blood, only smell it."

  "You've got problems," I said, looking for an approach that would avoid his blades. "You know that?"

  "Tsk, tsk, Shadowboy, your banter needs work."

  "Why take Cupric?"

  "I didn't do that, you did. Ask yourself." I almost swore at myself. Nothing about his mind worked normally. I had to frame things in terms of the fractured reality that was his mind.

  "Where's 'Not-Sharky'?"

  "With the cursed dragon man," Masquerade said. He made a few quick slashes to test my defenses. I stayed out of reach, having seen what the blade did to the abnormal flesh of the tentacle.

  "And where is that?"

  "Pfft, in the holocom, of course," he said, "Are you stupid?" Bumping into the tentacle again, I had a twisted idea. Scooping a handful of ocular jelly from the eye I'd kicked, I waited. As Masquerade lunged, I threw the jelly at his eyes. It struck with a squishing noise as I rolled aside. Rolling off of his face, it carried the blood mask away, causing the blades to disintegrate. Before he could find a replacement mask, I lunged at him, taking hold of both arms. "No, no, no!" he cried, trying to wriggle free. Masquerade was powerful, but Ron White II was a physical weakling, and I twisted his arms behind his back. Taking a suspender that hung seemingly unused from his belt, I bound his wrists.

  "Where's Cupric?"

  "Please, no, any face but this!"

  "Where is he?"

  "I don't know, I don't know. Please, don't make me keep this face." I removed his bandoliers, tossing the strings of masks aside. Masquerade began sobbing. "I can't be him! Anyone else!" He ran, bolting for the river. I tackled him about the knees, bringing him down mere yards from the edge of the quay. "Not this face!" he moaned as I searched his pockets for anything mask-like he might use against us. I turned up two, mine and Cupric's.

  "Where is he?" I asked, holding out Cupric's green mask.

  "In your hand," Masquerade said, as if it were obvious. I pocketed Cupric's mask, and in a moment of grim satisfaction, I switched my goggles for my old mask. Then I made doubly sure his hands were tied tightly enough to keep him from escaping. Ben approached, gingerly holding the computer by the wrist straps to avoid frying it.

  "I found him," Ben said. From his tone, it was not promising. I hauled Masquerade to his feet. He tried to bury his face in his armpit, but couldn't bend that way.

  "Where?" I asked.

  Ben led us to the hole Omicron had battered out of the lab. We descended down the rubble-strewn passage. The glass specimen tubes and some of the hardware had been removed, but the remains of the lab were mostly as I remembered them. Cupric lay along the tangled remains of the catwalk where he'd fought Masquerade before. Several of the bent pieces of metal had been hammered through his body. Masquerade's eyes went wide and his lip trembled as if looking upon a nightmare given flesh. He shook his head.

  "The shell is broken, someone else has to wear his face."

  Ben seized the bloody front of Masquerade's shirt. "Listen here, you sick--" he was cut off as I pushed them apart.

  "Hey! Is this what he taught you?"

  "No," Ben said, casting his gaze down in shame.

  "Right now, we need to check on Astroborn, get this bastard to the authorities and..." I looked over at Cupric's body, letting out a sigh, "Let the community know he's fallen."

  Part 15

  A hero's funeral was an odd affair. His family got one service with a cover story to account for the closed casket. They'd never know they were putting an empty box in the ground, or the crematorium. There was another memorial within the community, where we remembered all he did for his community, and what sort of guy he was. We didn't get the body either. That went on ice and got shipped to a government lab investigating where powers came from. Rage boiled within me at the indignity of it. The others had grown to accept it as part of our lot in life. Some lot. There wasn't even a public acknowledgment that he was dead. With all the preparations for another raid against the Ygnaza, only a few of us could even show up for the memorial.

  One of the rooms in the hideout was set up as a trophy room. I hadn't had cause to use it before, and it was a bittersweet moment as I put the split halves of the "King/Ayame" mask as the first item on the shelves. We hadn't heard from Ben since the memorial, but that wasn't much of a surprise. A relatively new sidekick thrown into that kind of situation was going to look long and hard at their life. Not to mention mourn their mentor. We got lauded on the news for taking down Masquerade, but the victory seemed hollow. Not only had we lost Cupric, but White's fragmented mind was resistant to interrogation. He could babble for hours and say nothing coherent. It was enough to damage the sanity of anyone trying to piece together clues from the logorrhea. Speaking of sanity, Jack had gone into therapy for what he'd seen after being pulled through the tear in reality.

  "Why do I have to tell my family that Jack's in rehab?" Fae blurted out.

  "Because if they knew he'd checked himself into a sanitorium for powered individuals, they'd start asking questions. The sort of questions that put them at risk."

  "It's not fair!" she yelled, "He saves lives, he saves the world! But I have to tell them he's some kind of junkie?"

  "Our existence isn't fair. Only our code names get the credit. Our secret identities are anonymous, often wretched people overlooked by the world."

  "And you just put up with it?"

  "It's part of the sacrifice."

  "What?"

  "Have you ever heard of Morton Ward?"

  "No."

  "For decades he protected the people of the lower west side. Saved countless lives, deterred criminals and watched out for their well being. Recently, he was murdered by a madman, and the people he watched over were not told. He had no wife, no kids, just some cousins in Topeka and a sister in Trenton. He gave up everything to keep that part of town as safe as he could make it. Those cousins and his sister were told he died in a car crash. His contribution was anonymous, because he wasn't in it for the recognition. It's not what we do it for."

  "You make a lot of speeches," Fae said.

  "If you want to be pedantic, I c
onfer a lot of anecdotes."

  She turned and started to storm off in a huff, then stopped and turned back. "Wait a minute. You are the one who should be leaving, this is Jack's place."

  I gave a sarcastic bow and headed for the elevator. The concierge turned up his nose at my passing, but I ignored him. Taking the bus was less surreal this time, though I realized I should probably apply for a learner's permit at some point. Not that I could afford a vehicle, but public transit isn't always an option. I almost laughed at the mental image of me riding the bus in full costume.