by Nick Svolos
“Hang on.” I stood up for a better look. “Do you see that?”
She snapped to alertness. “What?”
“Over there.” I pointed. “Flying between those buildings.”
“Egress. Nice catch!” She licked a bit of chili off her fingers. “Let’s go get her.”
We took off in pursuit of the flying woman. Herculene leaped from rooftop to rooftop, and I flew high above to track Egress and call out her position. The villain’s movements seemed furtive. She changed directions at random. I wasn’t sure why. I swooped down for a closer look.
It was a rookie mistake. Egress spotted me and went into a power dive to get away.
“Dammit, she saw me. Heading east on Waring.”
“Roger. I’ll try to cut her off.”
I willed myself forward as fast as I could go. It was just enough to keep up with Egress, but I couldn’t close the distance. Herculene was a lot faster, though, and bounded to a rooftop in the clawed flyer’s path. She threw herself at Egress, but missed as the villain twitched her wings, cut right at the last moment. Herculene hurled past, crashing into a dumpster.
“Stay on her,” she called out. “I’ll catch up.”
I did as ordered. I followed Egress as she flew down Vine Street, across Melrose, and into a Catholic church. I relayed the information and Herculene was soon standing beside me outside the building. “Damn. This could get messy.”
“Yeah. Mind if I try something? There’s a chance I can de-escalate this.”
“Sure. I’ll cover the back in case she runs again.”
I walked through the big wooden doors to the sanctuary. Egress was standing up front, by the altar, looking around desperately for a way to escape. “Take it easy, Egress. I’m not here to fight.”
She spun, swept up a lidded metal container, and made ready to throw it at me. “Stay back!” she yelled. It would have been comical, if it wasn’t for the fear in her eyes. She was scared and desperate.
“Easy now.” I kept my voice slow and calm. “Truce, OK? I just want to talk.” I motioned to a pew. “Mind if I sit?” I took a seat. Like I’ve said, sitting people are less threatening. It’s an element of our primal programming. You have to be on your feet to throw a decent punch. Egress relaxed a little.
“What do you want to talk about?” she asked, suspicious that this was all part of some trap. “Where’s your girlfriend?”
“Herculene’s outside. Look, we don’t want a fight, certainly not in here.”
“Why not? What, is there some kind of rule about holy ground?”
“No, but in a few hours, a bunch of people are gonna show up here for morning mass, and I’d rather they had a church to do it in than a pile of rubble surrounded by police tape.”
She looked around at the church and then back at me. “You’re serious? No tricks?”
“No tricks. Let’s just talk.”
“OK, so talk.” She relaxed a bit but still held the container above her head, ready to throw it at me.
“Sure. For starters, would you mind setting that bowl back on the altar?”
“Why?”
“That’s the Ciborium. It’s the thing they keep the Host in. You know, the little wafers for communion? Catholics take it pretty seriously. If their God wins, you’ll have a lot of explaining to do.”
Her eyes went wide, and she tentatively lifted the lid, peering inside. She quickly closed it, placed it gently back on the altar table, and backed away, crossing herself.
“Thanks. You know who I am?”
“Yeah,” she said. “You’re that reporter, right?”
I nodded to cut her off. “That’s me. No names, OK? Never know who’s listening.”
She nodded. “Sure. How’d you know all that stuff? You Catholic?”
“No. I’m kinda non-denominational. I just read a lot. You?”
“Yeah,” she nodded. “Guess you could say I’m lapsed. Didn’t know you had powers.”
“I didn’t. I wound up with them the same way you did. It’s been a bizarre week. You know, there’s one thing that’s been bugging me since we met. Why’d you pick the name ‘Egress’?”
“It’s better than what Schadenfreude wanted to call me.” She shrugged. “He wanted to call me ‘The Harpy’. Like it’s not bad enough I’m stuck looking like this, but now I gotta run around with a name like that? I decided I was gonna try to turn it around. Make it something positive. I thought, eagles are awesome, right. They got wings and claws, just like me. So, female eagle. Egress.”
On the other side of a stained glass window, outside of Egress’ field of vision, I saw Herculene clamp her hands to her mouth, stifling a laugh. I rubbed my chin, trying to figure out how to put this. “I see. Here’s the thing. You ever hear of P.T. Barnum?”
“Sure. From the circus, right?”
“Right. He liked to trick people, especially if he could make a buck doing it. There’s a story about him where he put up a sign, ‘This way to the Great Egress’, and charge people to have a look. People would buy a ticket, go through the door and find themselves back in the parking lot.”
“I don’t get it.”
“Not many people did. See, it turns out that ‘egress’ means ‘exit’.”
Realization crossed her face. She sat down heavily on the steps, buried her face in her hands and started crying. “Oh god, I’m so bad at this.”
“Hey, hey, don’t be so hard on yourself. It’s kind of an obscure word. Doesn’t sound like what it really is. Barnum thought those people were suckers, but really he just had a better vocabulary. He used that to take advantage of people. He was kind of a bully, when you think of it.”
“Yeah, I guess so,” she sniffed. “It’s kind of a dick move, doing people like that.”
“Exactly. Bullies seek power so they can take advantage of the powerless. At least, that’s how I define it. Anyhow, that brings me around to why I wanted to talk to you. You see, when I met the rest of the SchadenForce, ridiculous name, by the way, they were all jerks. Bullies, in one way or another. Sledge was a drug dealer. Polymer has a rap sheet a mile long: embezzlement, fraud, white-collar stuff like that. Bongo was basically a video game troll, according to the people I’ve talked to. Don’t even get me started on Jezebel. I didn’t get that from you, though. I could look at the rest and know exactly why they were there. But you, all I could see was an extremely unhappy woman, trapped in a bad situation. So, it’s been eating at me. How’d you get mixed up in this?”
She forced a laugh as she wiped the last of her tears from her face. “You’ll never believe it.”
“In the last seven days, I’ve been captured by giant robots, beat up a dictator, and run a successful con on a mad scientist with an IQ over three hundred. Try me.”
“I wanted to be able to fly. You know, to experience that kind of freedom, going wherever I wanted to. So, I met this guy, you know him, Sledge. He came into the restaurant where I worked, and we got to talking. He told me there was a way to make that happen. The rest is history. But, now that I think about it, there was something more. I think, this is gonna sound stupid, but I think I wanted to be important. Special. Does that make any sense?”
It was a good, honest answer. I knew how she felt. “Yeah. I know the feeling. It makes sense now. But you missed something.”
“What’s that?”
“You already were important.” She gave me a disbelieving look, and I took a second to order my thoughts. “Give me a second to explain. Did Schadenfreude lay his rap about the angel DNA on you?”
“Yeah, he thought people had powers because fallen angels came down from Heaven, or Hell, I guess, to mate with humans, right? Do you believe that?”
“No, but in my line of work you have to chase things like that down. Had to keep my mind open, research the hell out of it before I could write it off as crazy. Spent a lot of time reading stuff on the internet, checking various translations of the bible against each other to see how they lined up, stuff like that.”
“What did you find?” she asked, interested in the subject.
“There’s a lot of contradiction. The ‘Sons of God’ reference itself is tricky. Maybe it was angels, but that’s not something you’d call the rebels who followed Satan, so it would have to be the loyalists, if you want to go down that road. It could have been the sons of Seth, one of Adam and Eve’s boys. They were called ‘Sons of God’, too. And then you have similar legends from other tribes at that time. Could be it was just their stories working their way into the pre-Hebraic canon. But, I don’t buy it.”
“You think they were real?”
“Yeah, but not the part about the angels. You see, Schadenfreude screwed up. He misinterpreted the reason for the flood. That’s important, because the story of Noah is really the point of that part of the scriptures. Schadenfreude thought the flood’s purpose was to wipe out the angels from the human gene pool. But the Bible’s pretty clear on the matter. It was to punish Man for his wickedness. If Dr. S. was right, then God’s gotta be a screw-up, because it obviously didn’t work. There are references to the Nephilim long after the flood. And, of course, we’ve still got supers running around today. We’re living proof.
“Now, I gotta believe, if God exists at all, he’s gotta be infallible. I mean, the alternative is just too scary. Might as well join a Cthulhu cult, if that’s the case. So, based on that, it either rules out the whole angel DNA thing, or it tells us maybe God doesn’t have a problem with it. Which would mean it’s all part of his design.”
Egress looked confused. “So ... you do think it was angels.”
“Not at all. I think the powers were wired into us from the beginning. Maybe it’s always been there, just waiting for an inspiration to wake it up. Let me tell you a secret, and this is just between you, me and the preacher hiding over there.” I waved at the clergyman I’d spotted, hiding behind a doorway off to the side of the chancel. “Hi, Father. How long we got before people start showing up?”
The preacher stepped out a little, waved and said, “Plenty of time. No rush.”
“Thanks.” I looked at Egress. “You’ll keep this under your hat, right?” She nodded eagerly. “Did you know that Ultiman couldn’t fly until the 1920s? He spent two thousand years walking around like everyone else. Never even considered the possibility until he saw some biplanes flying overhead during the war. Then, he looks up, starts wondering what that must be like, and suddenly, there he is, up in the air, with no idea how to get back down.”
“Inspiration!” Egress exclaimed.
“That’s my take. So, I got a little off-track. The point I was trying to make was, if I buy any of this, the point I gotta walk away with is, if God is real, he has to know what he’s doing. I started out by saying you’re important. I believe that’s true. Everyone, you, me, the padre over there, the homeless guy sleeping on the grate outside. And I mean, not just important, but fundamentally important. Part of the design of the universe. Maybe I’m just on a religious rant brought on by the mind-boggling craziness of the last couple of weeks, but I gotta wonder. There’s plenty of other places we could have had this conversation. Why here?” I waved my arm in a wide arc, taking in the architecture of the sanctuary. “And then it hit me. Wow, that’s the point of this place, isn’t it? The people who come to this place worship a God who turned himself into a human being and died, just to make that point. You don’t think you were important, Egress, but you’re wrong. You’re important enough for God to die for. Superpowers have nothing to do with it.”
She just sat there, silently staring at the floor, eyes watering. Occasionally, one of her wings would twitch. “That’s crazy,” she finally said. Her voice was soft and quiet. “So, what am I supposed to do, now?”
“Whatever you want. I do have a couple of options I can offer, though.” She looked up at me. “Well, if you still want to fight, we can go outside. I hope you don’t choose that. You seem like a good person. I like you.”
She waved it off. “No, I don’t want to fight. What’s the other option? Jail?”
“I hope not. Have you committed any crimes?”
She looked away. “Other than working for Schadenfreude? I had to steal some food. I couldn’t go home. Not looking like this. I didn’t hurt anybody, though.”
“All I heard was ‘no’. Let me run option two by you. When we took down the Doctor, I looted his Force extraction stuff. They’re over at the Tower. We could make you normal again, if that’s something you’re interested in.”
Her head snapped up, and I saw something in her eyes that filled me with a strange warmth. Hope. “You’d do that?”
“In a heartbeat. Whenever you’re ready.”
She grinned like she’d just won the lottery. “Let’s go.”
***
The procedure worked. After a few minutes of agony, Egress disappeared, replaced by the charming twenty year old Margarita Castro. Herculene found her some clothing, and the priest from the church met her downstairs to offer her a ride home.
Herculene and I still had two hours left on our patrol shift and we rode the elevator to the Tower’s roof, ready to get back to work. Before I took off, she stopped me.
“Rube, there’s something I’ve always wanted to try, but I’ve always been too embarrassed to ask.” She must have spotted something in my look, because she punched me on the shoulder. “Get your mind out of the gutter! Look, I’ve always wanted to fly, too. I was wondering if you’d be willing to, you know, take me up there?” She looked up at the stars.
“My love, nothing would give me more pleasure.”
She hopped on my back and we surged into the night sky. “Yeehaw! Ride’em, cowgirl!”
I took us up about three thousand feet, leveled off and sent us on a lazy trajectory around the city that kept us well clear of the aircraft flight paths Ultiman had made me memorize.
“Oh, my God! Look at that view!” she laughed with joy.
That wasn’t the view I wanted to see. I repositioned us so I was looking up at her, flying along on my back. She narrowed her eyes at me, trying to be stern, but couldn’t quite hide her grin. “Don’t you get any ideas, mister.”
“Madam, my intentions are entirely honorable,” I protested. “I just wanted to see that look on your face.”
“Aw,” she said, bending down to give me a quick smooch. “You know, we never finished our conversation.”
“Which one?”
“About giving up your powers. After seeing how you handled that situation, I’m more convinced than ever. You’re right for this job. You’re good at it. In that letter, Doughboy says there’s tough times ahead. We’ll need you. History doesn’t hand out hall passes. It makes me sad to think you’d throw your potential away.”
“It really bugs you, doesn’t it?”
“Well, yeah. Like, maybe you think there’s something wrong about all this. What we do. What I do.”
“Not on your life. Not for a second. If it wasn’t for the immortality thing, my decision would be a lot harder. Sure, the responsibility worries me, but I trust your instincts. Maybe I could live up to it. It’s immortality that’s the deal-breaker.”
“You know, there’s a lot of people who would kill for that.”
“Not me. The price is too high. Immortality looks good on paper, but I can’t imagine anything worse. You’ve seen what it’s done to Ultiman. Watching everyone you love wither and die. Eventually, you give up on finding people to love. You can’t take the pain. Then it’s nothing but a long, lonely trudge through eternity. I can handle a lot, but I don’t think I could handle that.”
“Hmmm. I see what you mean.”
“So,” I continued. “Say I’ve got someone in my life. Someone I’m thinking of building a life with. Having kids, watching them grow up, getting old together. Yeah, that’s gotta come to an end someday, but that’s the price you gotta pay for a life like that. An immortal can never have that.”
“Yeah,” she said. A look of realization
flashed across her face. “Oh!”
“Yeah. We haven’t talked much about it, but yeah. I’ve been inspired. By you. If we got a shot at that life, I’ll take mortality any day of the week rather than miss out.”
“Oh, Reuben, I don’t know what to say.” She looked like she was having trouble breathing.
“Are we too high up? You look like you’re not getting enough oxygen.”
She laughed. “No, you chucklehead. You’re what’s taking my breath away.”
I grinned. “Ah, well that’s alright then.”
“You know, I’ve been thinking a lot of the same things,” she said. “You know, about us. I was afraid to bring it up. You always want to take things so slowly.”
“Yeah. Maybe you’re rubbing off on me.”
She traced a lazy finger across my chest. “So, are you asking?”
I chuckled. “When I ask, you won’t need to ask if I’m asking. Anyway, shouldn’t I meet your folks first?”
“Yeah, that would be nice. Thanksgiving’s only a couple weeks away. Think you could get the time off?”
“I already put in for it.”
“Ooh, you’re so devious.”
“That’s me,” I said, tapping my head. “Always thinkin’.”
Our patrol forgotten, we flew along like that, making plans and dreaming dreams, until the sun came up. I don’t want to sound biased, but I’m pretty sure it was the prettiest sunrise in history.
The End
Reuben Conway will return in The Temporary Hero
This isn’t the end
The adventure continues in The Temporary Hero.
Eight months ago, a mad scientist’s device gave reporter Reuben Conway superpowers. Now, a flame-wielding burglar has come to Los Angeles, and it’s up to Reuben to take him down. But, when a mysterious organization frames him, he finds himself at the center of a scheme to destroy the city. As the terrorist plot storms toward its murderous goal, Reuben discovers that he’s been caught in a trap. One from which no hero can escape.
The third installment in the popular Conway Report series, The Temporary Hero is a pulse-pounding ride through the noir world of secret identities, mind-boggling superpowers, desperate gambits and shadowy conspiracies that will leave fans of potboilers and superheroes screaming for more.
