Herokiller

by Paul Tassi

  2

  MARK WOKE UP AN unknown number of hours later under his coffee table. The afternoon sun had set, meaning it was time to flip a switch and becoming something slightly better than a total waste of life. He didn’t remember his car dumping him at home, nor the elevator ride to get to his penthouse condo in the Loop, but somehow he’d made it. Christ, he hoped Brooke hadn’t been his crutch inside. The poor girl had been making eyes at him for three years, despite the fact that he’d embarrassed himself in front of her more times than he could remember, and probably a few times he couldn’t. Hopefully today wasn’t one of those. She was a sweet girl, cute too, but that part of his life was over. And it was entirely possible he was hallucinating her stolen glances and she was really just a nice person.

  Mark yelled at his coffee machine until it stopped pretending it couldn’t hear him and began brewing, and he stumbled into the bathroom where he hacked at his face with a straight-edge until he could see his jawline again. He pulled on some loose mesh workout gear and stuffed his bag full of the necessarily protein globules and vitamin inhalers. By the time he was done, the coffee machine had proudly announced the completion of his macchiato. His TV automatically turned on, meant to sync with the coffee being done, but he waved away the screen before he could be assaulted by genitalia.

  The thirtieth-floor penthouse would have been gorgeous if Mark had even remotely attempted to keep up with the housework. Dusting and vacuuming were ancient rituals he couldn’t even comprehend anymore. Sometimes he picked up pizza boxes and organized them into a skyscraper in the kitchen, but that was the extent of his attempt to pick up the place. Mark had a high-end robo-cleaner that made a valiant attempt at sweeping the floors for crumbs and dust creatures, but it had been unceremoniously killed in the line of duty after inhaling a sweat-drenched sock. It now stood as a monument in the corner that was now ironically also collecting dust. A German woman named Olga was the nuclear option who used to come in to make the place spic and span once a week, but a recent string of personal budget cuts made her services no longer required. The condo and car he’d bought with cash, so those could stay, but the money pile was starting to dwindle and sacrifices had to be made. Last on the chopping block was his bar tab, obviously.

  At the time, three million dollars had seemed like a fortune, and it was certainly an outrageously large severance compared to what most poor saps in the Army or Air Force could hope to get. But he also saw how fast it could blow into the wind after you bought a few toys, made a few bad investments, and had no desire to supplement it with a new job. The only skills Mark had were ones he never wanted to use again. He drank to forget them, yet each night he remembered, drawn back to an eternal fitness and training regimen that was as much a part of him as breathing. It was the only reason his mind hadn’t completely turned to mush after about three thousand gallons of rum. Nor did he weigh the five hundred pounds you’d expect from someone who had a cardboard tower of empty pizza boxes threatening to collapse in their kitchen.

  He drained the last of his coffee before exiting his condo, at least somewhat less inebriated than when he’d entered. In the stairwell he found Brooke, glistening from a recent run, desperate to avoid becoming the 60 percent of the country that was morbidly obese. She was certainly winning that war.

  “Hey Mark!” she said, loosening a ponytail of curly blonde hair.

  “Hey Brooke,” he said, continuing to descend, but he suddenly ground to a halt.

  “Did I … see you earlier?” he asked, failing to properly phrase the question in a way that didn’t sound strange.

  “Where?” she said, clearly confused. “Were you at the grocery store?”

  “Nope, nevermind, must have been someone else,” he said quickly. So she hadn’t hauled him upstairs. That was good. She smiled all the same. Mark wasn’t sure he’d seen her do anything but smile the past few years. But hers was genuine and reassuring, not forced and horrifying like the one he’d seen plastered on Crayton earlier. Her eyes were a blue pretty enough that Mark wasn’t sure why someone would divorce her. But perhaps it had been the other way around, he guessed. He could snoop on the Deepnet for all the information about her he could hope for, but he just didn’t care. Or he could have a single conversation with her somewhere other than a hallway or staircase. But again, why bother? He hadn’t felt much need for human attachment before it all happened. But after? Never again.

  He didn’t even realize he’d stopped talking to her until he found himself downstairs. I’m such a dick, he thought to himself. But then he remembered the clown car of frat boys from the bar and felt a little bit better about himself by comparison.

  As he leaned back in the driver’s seat, his head spinning, Chicago was alive with cars going exactly the prescribed speed limit. No one honked. Not anymore. A few years ago self-driving was made explicitly illegal and auto fatalities took a nosedive. Granted, deaths from heart disease and stroke were at all-time highs, and joining a professional sports team in this day and age was no way to extend your lifespan, but hey, at least driving was safe now.

  It was nearing midnight, right on schedule for Mark’s bizarre not-quite-nocturnal life schedule. He spent about six hours abusing himself down at Rayne’s bar, The Blind Watchman, and then passed out for a few hours before waking up for what was usually the better part of an all-night workout session in the only gym in the area that would accommodate such a thing.

  After his car self-parked and opened its gullwing doors, Mark got out into the mostly empty lot nearly all the way sober. Inside the gym was the usual ghost town, with it being technically morning on a Wednesday, but that’s how Mark liked it. He was so used to being alone in every other aspect of his life, he wasn’t itching to work out somewhere with two hundred buzzing human gnats swarming the equipment. He’d accidentally wandered into the place during the daytime on a few occasions, and it had given him nightmares for a long while after.

  First up was a nine-mile run, punctuated by bathroom breaks where he puked up the sins of the afternoon. Only two visits this time meant he was doing better than usual. He sweated through his clothes in about four minutes, the nearly silent treadmill content to absorb the deluge of droplets that could no longer be sucked into the fabric.

  Then came two hours of weight training, both body resistance and with as many metal slabs as he could fit on the bar. Mark’s solitude extended to not needing or wanting a spotter, not that there were many around at this hour who would have a prayer of helping him with the amount of weight he was pressing. Carlo could, but Carlo was always in the ring upstairs.

  Mark was simply too bored to punch a bunch of misshapen bags over and over, so he adopted a sparring partner in the form of Carlo. The kid was only nineteen, but one of the top middleweight prospects in the region, with big dreams of UFC. Thankfully he’d avoided TV matches, which were engineered to produce injury and accidental death, but who knew how long that would last. Mark constantly tried to talk him out of pursuing a future in the league, and to date had done nothing but solidify the kid’s resolve.

  “What else am I going to do? Work at Boxmart?” Carlo said as he danced around the ring in front of Mark, clad in long black trunks. Tattoos curled out of his waistband like snakes, and he didn’t just have a crucifix on his muscled chest, he had an entire goddamn stained glass window, complete with demons threatening to bite Christ’s ankles as angels tried to lop their heads off with flaming swords. It was a little silly, but mostly terrifying, and the mural continued on his back as well.

  “Boxmart won’t get you killed,” Mark said.

  “Nah, fuck that,” Carlo replied, waving a gloved hand. “I’m goin’ straight to the top. My manager says he ain’t never seen talent this young before.”

  “Well so long as you’re humble about it,” Mark said, lashing out with a strike that purposefully missed Carlo’s jaw.

  “Man, you hear about Prison Wars?” Carlo said, raising his eyebrows. Mark just rolled his eyes. “That’s
some serious censorship bullshit right there,” Carlo continued.

  “Do not get me started,” Mark said, and let one of his kicks connect to Carlo’s leg. Carlo winced, but pressed on.

  “But for real though, those fools don’t know how to fight, just beatin’ on each other with pipes and shit. You think some child molester knows how to throw a proper punch? Bitch, please.”

  “Oh, and you’d show them?” Mark said, dodging a pair of uppercuts from Carlo, bouncing backward off the octagonal cage.

  “Sure. They’d call me ‘The Needle’ for how many of those Death Row fools I’d smoke.”

  “Seriously Carlo, Boxmart isn’t so bad.”

  “Fuck that,” Carlo repeated, and Mark let him connect with a side kick to his ribs. He swore and rubbed the spot.

  Carlo stopped dancing and grabbed a plastic waterbottle from the corner of the ring. He sprayed most of it on his face and a few drops made it into his mouth.

  “I don’t get you,” he said, turning to Mark. “You come in here, drunk as shit half the time, and still manage to put up a fight. But it only feels like you’re goin’ ten percent at most. Are you a fuckin’ Terminator or something?”

  “Something like that,” Mark said, actually cracking a rarely seen smile. He wiped it away as quickly as it had come.

  In truth the cycle was just Mark’s way of punishing himself. He drank himself half to death then spent all night pummeling his body until the toxins ran away screaming with tears in their eyes. He was a mess, but each night the gym pulled him back from complete collapse. His body itched for sparring sessions like these more than it did for alcohol. He drank out of boredom, not necessity. At least that was what he’d convinced himself.

  And with that six-hour torture session, Mark dragged himself back into the car, ribs aching and stomach empty of everything but water and protein. This time he remembered the elevator ride upstairs, and he collapsed in his bed instead of a random piece of furniture or his rug.

  He dreamed of them, as he always did.

  WHEN CONSCIOUSNESS FOUND HIM again, the projected readout on his wall said 10:03. Four hours of sleep was enough, he supposed, and he’d survived on far less. His sheets were wrapped around his limbs like anacondas from his thrashing around. He untangled his arm enough to stretch out and reach for the thin clear bit of plastic folded up on his nightstand. He rested it on his chest. He unfurled the bendable screen and watched it flicker to life, the only light in the room as thick curtains suffocated whatever trace of the sun tried to come in.

  This was the worst aspect of his surreal daily cycle of existence. The most addictive too. He could give a shit about having a drink all day if he really had to give it up, but not one morning passed without his glassy eyes staring at the translucent screen.

  Mark remembered when he was young and his grandmother showed him pictures of her when she was little. They were old photos, and the pieces of fading paper that chronicled her entire youth barely even filled a single shoebox.

  Now? Contact lenses had cameras that would start recording when you uttered a codephrase. Practically every moment of your life could be documented if you had the drive space to save it all. When a hard blink took a photo, there were few moments you couldn’t save forever.

  His fingers flittered over the long list of files. Mark’s living space was complete chaos, but the digital videos here were all meticulously organized, titled, and dated. He finally landed on one: “Spade Karaoke Bar, Okinawa - March 18, 2024.”

  This was before they were even together. Before the program. Less than a year after he got there.

  The video quality wasn’t great—just shot on a phone, not an S-lens, since it was over a decade ago. But it was good enough. The audio was serviceable, though his flexscreen had some trouble translating the ancient filetype.

  At first it was only the backs of people’s heads and the sharp chattering of regional Japanese, but soon the music kicked in. Mark didn’t recognize the beat, but as soon as she started singing, it all came back to him. A ten-year-old classic pop-country song, sung in perfect English by a girl who had been born and raised in Japan. Though he wouldn’t know that until later.

  The camera panned around and there she was. She wore her hair down in long, wrist-thick braids that almost reached her waist, the style at the time. Her eyes were jade, barely visible through her bangs. In a high-neck sweater, she was more conservatively dressed than the vast majority of the other bar patrons, with the possible exception of a skirt and heels that made her legs look like a Scandinavian runway model’s. She was gorgeous, which is why Mark had started recording as soon as she took the stage, but what had most impressed him was her voice.

  The pretty girls who ended up singing onstage at bars like this were either failed pop stars who were lost without autotune, or were so shy their musical whispers could barely be heard over the beat as they stared meekly at the audience.

  But not her. She sang with natural talent and raw confidence that somehow didn’t approach arrogance. She was simply having fun, a smile on her face for the duration of the song, stomping her daggered heel in time with the music. He and everyone else were singing along with her, and Mark never sang. He remembered wondering if it was some sort of prank where a J-Pop star invaded a local podunk bar incognito, and then surprised everyone with a rousing performance.

  BUT SHE WAS A regular girl with a magnetism Mark had never seen before, or since.

  She was just Riko.

  It was the first time he ever saw her.

  AFTERWARD, THERE USED TO be another segment to the ritual. One where he’d reach under his bed and pull out the thing from its box. He’d stare at it, feel the cold weight of it in his hand. Wonder why he shouldn’t do it. He took it out every day for the first two years, but the answer was always the same.

  “She’d be so fucking mad,” he’d whisper, and he’d put it away until the next morning. One day, he simply didn’t take it out again, and hadn’t for two years since. The answer was always going to be the same, he realized. No matter how much pain he endured, he couldn’t dishonor her like that. Though the state of his everyday life wouldn’t exactly thrill her either, he supposed. One thing at a time.

  3

  IT WAS AROUND NOON when Mark finally escaped from his condo and walked briskly for three blocks until he reached The Blind Watchman. Between the pancake house, the 7-Eleven, and the bar, he really never needed to leave a half mile radius outside his building during the day, and rarely did. As he approached the bar, he saw Rayne outside the door smoking.

  “Hey, you want to go grab a coffee?” she asked, flicking away ash. “Before the uh, day’s festivities begin?”

  “A coffee?” Mark said, dumbfounded. “I, uh …”

  “It’s not a date, you loser. But you should get some caffeine in you. You look like a goddamn zombie. More than usual.”

  Mark eyed the door to the Watchman, then back to Rayne. Her red-streaked hair was twisted up into a bun today, and she looked dramatically more pale outside than in.

  “Is Laird on the bar?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she said. “So hopefully no one will ask him to do anything more complicated than use the tap. If so, maybe the bar will survive my lunchbreak.”

  “Alright,” Mark said, a yawn giving away that Rayne was right.

  THE LINE WAS LONG due to an elderly patron poking at the automated dispenser like he was trying to break a Nazi code on a Turing machine. The JavaSpot had finally fired the last of its cashiers, and the entire place was now run by a vaguely self-aware dispensing device at which patrons picked their own ingredients and the monolithic silver barista brewed it for them on the spot. A lot of fast food joints and grocery stores had done the same recently, which coincided suspiciously with a rise in the homeless population all over the city. But machines made for poor conversationalists, so Rayne’s job at the bar was safe for now.

  Finally the old man surrendered and soon enough Mark and Rayne were sipping iced
drinks at a nearby table. If this was a date, they would have been the most oddly matched couple in the world, with Mark now clean-shaven and in blank beige and black clothing. The only metal that had ever pierced his skin had been blades and bullets, while Rayne was riddled with the stuff. She wore a neon orange tank top that looked like it had been attacked by a wild dog. Unknown tattoos could be glimpsed through the holes exposing the skin of her abdomen. Her eye makeup was Egyptian, and today she wore faux-purple pupils that were glued to the looming screen above Mark’s head.

  “Oh wow, this is it then,” she said, eyes widening. She took down her legs from their resting place on the table and sat up in her chair. Mark turned around to see what she was talking about, and was blinded by the wattage of Cameron Crayton’s smile.

  “Not this asshole again,” he muttered.

  “Shhh,” Rayne said, “I want to hear this.”

  In fact, most of the patrons had gone dead silent and were staring at the screen. It seemed the torture chamber of Prison Wars really did have quite the audience.

  Crayton wasn’t on the steps of a courthouse anymore. Rather, he was clearly in some corporate office high up in Manhattan, as the glass behind him gave way to the entire sprawling cityscape. He stared straight at the lens like he was giving a presidential address, and spoke with the abrasive enthusiasm of a megachurch pastor.

  “Hello, my friends! I know many of you were disappointed by the court’s decision yesterday to take Prison Wars off the air. I certainly was as well; it’s a project very near and dear to my heart. And yet, CMI marches on. Even before the decision, we have been planning for an expansion of the Prison Wars concept, one that we think will revolutionize entertainment in this country forever.”

  Mark looked at Rayne who raised a thin eyebrow.

  “I give you the Crucible,” Crayton said, making a sweeping motion to reveal a logo that had the words embossed in gold and wreathed with flame.