Seven Wonders

by Christopher, Adam

  With Bluebell walking ahead, Joe's eyes drifted to her spandex-clad rear. Bluebell's stride changed rhythm, just slightly, but Sam noticed. It was working.

  Clever, clever Joe.

  It was the same every time. It didn't matter how prepared Detective Sam Millar thought she was, inside the morgue the heady mix of formaldehyde and disinfectant was rich in the air and made her cough as soon as the plastic-sealed doors flapped closed behind her. Dr Chan appeared through a side door, latex-covered hands glistening already.

  "Come on through." She waved them after her and disappeared back into the dissection room. Bluebell held back, allowing Sam and Joe to take the lead. Sam wondered why Jacqueline hadn't said anything about the uninvited presence of the superhero. Perhaps she was a more regular visitor?

  There were four slabs in the morgue; all were empty save for one, the form covered in a blue hospital sheet. Jacqueline strode up to the table and pulled the shroud off completely, revealing the naked remains of the black man from the alley. Joe instinctively looked away from the destroyed torso, focusing instead on the man's face. Sam and Jacqueline, meanwhile, bent low over the body as the pathologist pointed out individual injuries. As much as Sam thought she hated this bit, she knew she had a job to do.

  "The torso is dissected into four sections. It's not precise, but then with the weapon used you don't need to be."

  Sam tried to follow the parallel cut lines that carved the man's chest up. Dr Chan had done her best to tidy the body up following the autopsy dissection, the stitched skin forming a grid of thick twine, delineating the cuts.

  "The quantum knife?"

  Dr Chan nodded. "The quantum knife. It's unique. You can't mistake it."

  Sam stood back. "That settles it. The Cowl."

  "I don't want to make any assumptions, detective, but nobody else has one of those toys."

  "We got an ID yet?" Joe was still looking at the man's dead face, and frowned. "Something doesn't add up. Why would the Cowl kill an old man, and why did he use his knife? Dude is superpowered." He gestured to the body. "This guy must be pushing eighty. The Cowl could have turned him to cat food without even touching him."

  Sam shook her head. "Nice, Joe."

  Jacqueline took a manila file from the wheeled cart next to the table. She opened it and flipped through the autopsy check sheets to get the police report on the victim.

  "Oh, there was a fight, all right. Whoever this guy is, he was no ordinary old man. We've IDed him as Ernest Crosby, seventy-six, lives down in…"

  Dr Chan trailed off. After a moment, Sam and Joe both looked at her, awaiting the continuation. Dr Chan was looking at the papers, shuffling back and forth between the autopsy sheet and police report. Bluebell had moved from the door to stand behind her.

  Jacqueline clacked her tongue against her cheek. "Nope, no ID. Looks like we've got a John Doe here."

  Sam and Joe blinked in unison, then returned their attention to the body.

  "He wasn't carrying anything?" Sam looked back to the body. He'd been wearing a black suit in the alleyway, and she was surprised that nothing had been found on him. Joe picked up the thread.

  "Yeah, no wallet? Keys? Money?"

  Jacqueline reached the end of the manila file. Bluebell moved forward. The superhero said nothing, but glanced quickly at each of the three policemen.

  Jacqueline selected a sheet of paper and stared at it for several seconds. Her mouth moved, forming words as she… as she tried to read the report.

  "A set of keys… a building society savings card and a library card under the name of…"

  Jacqueline sniffed loudly and dropped the sheet back into the folder. "Nothing." She tossed the folder back onto the cart.

  Sam nodded. "Cause of death?"

  "Gunshot to the stomach." Dr Chan pointed to the body's abdomen, indicating a non-existent wound on the one part of the man's body that was intact. "Ballistics is looking at the bullet now."

  Sam nodded again. Bluebell stepped in behind her, standing very close to the detective's back.

  "Looks like a mugging, nothing new in this city. The Seven Wonders are taking the body in, they think the victim is part of a… a…" Sam paused in mid-sentence. Neither Joe nor Dr Chan noticed; both remained motionless and without expression.

  "The FBI are taking the body in. Here's the forms." Sam held her empty hand towards Dr Chan. The pathologist grabbed at the empty air, and slotted nothing into the manila folder. Mime complete, she pulled the blue sheet back over the body.

  "Thank you, detectives." She pulled off the latex gloves and tossed them into a yellow biohazard bin. Sam and Joe thanked the doctor, and went to the exit.

  The morning outside was as brilliant as ever, the summer sun starting to bake the city. Joe and Sam stood in the small garden, Bluebell beside them. Joe blinked.

  "Wanna grab some eats at Curran's Diner on the way back?"

  Sam smiled. "Sounds great. I'll follow." She waved and headed off to where her car was parked around the front side of the hospital. Joe walked to his car parked nearby, and hopped inside.

  Standing on the grass, Bluebell relaxed her grip on the minds of the two detectives just enough for the pair to resume normal activities without requiring her conscious control, but still masking the true nature of the autopsy report. Later she'd work on making the memory adjustment permanent.

  But for now, the Seven Wonders had secured the remains of the Angel Vault, with no danger of police interference. The last thing they needed was the pathetic efforts of the SVPD hampering their own investigation.

  The last thing they needed was the SVPD getting close to the Cowl.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Blackbird blinked behind her mask and felt a tear trail down her cheek. She blinked again to clear her vision and returned to concentrate on the job at hand. It had never even entered her mind, but seeing him stalk the corridors of the Clarke Institute was… hard. It was an invasion of her world, and an invasion of her memories. But she knew it had to be done. She knew it all had to be done, and that the ends justified the means.

  She just had to be patient, and wait.

  The job had been messy – messier than usual, anyway. By the time she'd led the Cowl to the secure laboratories at the center of the CIT, built low in a hard-to-reach valley in the mountains just east of San Ventura, the trail of dead numbered in the dozens. Most were guards, variously armed, variously dispatched. Some cleanly, some not so. With the Cowl's superpowers now almost non-existent, fighting was much harder work. It would have been quicker if Blackbird helped out, but she didn't. The Cowl was too preoccupied to notice.

  Still, Blackbird had to commend the guards. At least they had all tried to do their job, and do it well, even if the more they fought, the more blood ended up on the floor. They were military and paramilitary, trained and tough and packing heat. Enough to keep the place safe and secure from criminals and terrorists. The defenses had certainly been beefed up in the last few days, but with the news of the other high-tech raids racing around the city, this wasn't surprising. With this level of security, even Blackbird would only have been able to penetrate so far before being overwhelmed by sheer force of numbers.

  Blackbird smiled. Even with his powers at minimum, none of them were even remotely capable of dealing with a supervillain like the Cowl. She half-wondered why a superhero wasn't stationed here on permanent rotation if the place was so special, so important, so clearly a target. Oh yeah. Because the only supervillain left was the Cowl, and there was nothing here for him to take.

  Wrong.

  Blackbird held back in the last corridor. She knew the place like the back of her hand, and they were heading straight to the pay dirt, but she was careful to keep her caped, hooded boyfriend ahead of her, removing any obstacles.

  She pressed her back against the wall, pointing silently. The Cowl nodded and darted forward. Blackbird smiled as she heard the whoosh of his cloak swirling around as he tackled the guards. A second later, the C
owl casually walked back around the corner, looking something like Darth Vader, except his black gauntlets were dripping with blood, leaving a dotted trail on the floor behind him.

  Blackbird's smile evaporated. She glanced down and saw his footsteps thick in the stuff. It didn't matter. Everyone would know who did it, so there was no point in worrying about evidence being left behind. Besides, the footprints would be untraceable. The costumes of the Cowl and Blackbird were designed very, very carefully indeed.

  Blackbird peeled off the wall and walked towards the Cowl. They met in the middle of the corridor and she glanced down at his hands. In the half-light their wetness was nothing more than a gloss finish. She let out a breath that echoed metallically from behind her mask. The voice modulator kicked in as she spoke.

  "I didn't hear any guns?"

  The Cowl shook his head. "These ones weren't carrying any. Scientists. Seemed quicker to remove their hearts." He smirked.

  Blackbird's mask tilted towards him, but behind the goggles and beak her expression was dark. Her heart wasn't as black as his. Those scientists, quite possibly, were the ones she worked with day in and day out. She pushed the thought from her mind and pushed past him in the corridor, trying to avoid getting blood on her.

  The ends justify the means, the ends justify the means, the ends justify the…

  Of course, her parents had worked here too. And they'd also met the Cowl, although unlike the scientists lying face down in the corridor in what looked like gallons of blood, they had survived the encounter.

  Initially.

  The ends justify the means.

  Blackbird flicked the audio output of her mask off, in case she made a sound that might have given a reason for the Cowl to take pause and ask questions. She stepped over the two bodies in white coats, now stained vivid scarlet. She didn't recognize them from the backs of their heads, but she had a fair idea of who they were. It wasn't uncommon for researchers to work late. She knew; she'd done it enough times herself before her "calling" had started eating into her time outside of the day gig.

  It hadn't been uncommon for her parents either.

  "In here," she said.

  Blackbird remembered the day her world had ended. She remembered it well.

  Alone in the Cowl's Lair, she held her arms out in front of her, keeping her elbows bent carefully so not to lock them when she hit. She closed her eyes and gave another firm push.

  For any normal person, the extra velocity would only be slight. For someone with augmented, above-normal strength − not actual superstrength, but more than you could ever get by working out 24/7 and chugging protein shakes − the push was something significant. She squealed, as did the tiny wheels beneath her, rocketing across the narrow bridge and straight into the edge of the Cowl's computer desk.

  She reached out and stopped the chair, but forgot about momentum and her body keep going, smacking her face-first into one of the aluminum panels above the computer control deck. She swore and flopped back into the chair, pulling her mask off with one deft movement. The stylized, beak-like front of her headpiece had prevented a broken nose and was undamaged itself, and with no visible mark on the panel, her boss would never know. She laughed, spinning around on the chair, but her pleasure quickly evaporated into the dark, empty space of the Cowl's Lair.

  She was alone, and bored, and pissed off.

  OK, she was new, had only been on the job a few months, but she wasn't a rookie, oh no, sir. But she also knew she was not an equal – and never could be, not to him. Not even the Seven Wonders − seven of them − could beat him, a single superpowered badass. But still she thought she was a step up from "sidekick". She could handle herself, she was powerful if not superpowered, and well trained. Hell, if she could take charge in bed (he liked that), then she could be relied on to have his back on the night streets of San Ventura.

  Powerful, but not superpowered. OK, so as good as she was − and she was good, just ask that blonde bitch Bluebell about the time her blue and white spandexed ass was handed to her on a silver platter − it didn't really make sense for the Cowl to need a sidekick. He could handle anything on his own. And clearly he still could and even preferred it, because when something was mission-critical, he went alone. Like now. Leaving her, the Cowl's apprentice, alone in his Lair. Perhaps he'd have preferred a young ward in tights. Blackbird wondered if she should alter her costume to accommodate.

  Then again, when you're that powerful and have everything, not all decisions need to be logical or efficient or have a deeper meaning. The Cowl just liked her around, and her scientific knowledge was useful; that's how she'd been recruited in the first place. She was one of the most respected scientists at the Clarke Institute, she knew that, even if she feigned ignorance and pretended to ignore the reverence with which her work colleagues held her. And as for companionship… well, even a supervillain gets lonely. It's not much fun sitting on your throne of skulls when you can't tell someone about how great you are. Not that the Cowl had an ego. No way. The Cowl was, well, a really nice guy. Sweet. So he killed people? So what? So did she. Besides, he had a calling, he said. He was doing "good works". And if that was the justification he needed, then who was she to argue?

  She spun the chair around idly again. It stopped after six revolutions, pointing her at the Cowl's supercomputer. It was impressively large, and impressively expensive. The main display itself was truly huge, more like the kind of projection screen rich people install in their basements, along with some comfy armchairs and a beer fridge (which, Blackbird considered, would have made an excellent addition to the Lair). It was framed in aluminum, and she had to look up awkwardly to even see the upper edge. Nearly the whole wall of the cavern was dedicated to this device. On each side of the main display, six smaller screens were stacked, five of which were dark, one of which was on but just displayed a command prompt and a flashing cursor. Blackbird wondered if she could get Netflix on it.

  The thing's control deck was, at first glance, a complex collection of keyboards and control panels, but having watched the Cowl at work, Blackbird had a fair idea of what everything was. It was logical, after all. Aside from a standard keyboard and mouse, there was a color-coded keyboard linked to the Cowl's video systems, allowing editing, replay and analysis of video streams. Linked to this was a small audio mixing desk. Next along, an oscilloscope and an old-fashioned panel of tiny twist knobs and sliders − controls for the secret satellite surveillance array in orbit above North America and the communications system the Cowl had secreted around the city. Then some flat panels consisting mostly of LEDs and digital readouts, controlling power systems and the underground environment itself, some with their own mini-keyboards. Easy.

  Blackbird idly tapped the spacebar of the regular keyboard, hoping to wake up the main display. It remained resolutely off, but another of the smaller displays − a mere fifty inches diagonal − on the left of the main screen lit up with a white flicker. It showed the desktop of the Cowl's private operating system, some exotic build of UNIX that he'd compiled to suit his purposes, and which Blackbird had helped code.

  A folder was open. The Cowl had left himself logged in before he'd vanished on his night errand of terror.

  Not recognizing any of the files listed, Blackbird clicked the window shut, and out of sheer boredom rather than curiosity opened the hard drive icon and scrolled through the file list. Maybe he had some movies, or music at least. Or porn. He was only human, after all. And Catholics lived off guilt, didn't they?

  Nothing. Folders with codenames, filled with RTF files on people and places, PNG files of blueprints or designs. Dull, dull, dull.

  And then she found a folder labeled CIT 2014, and she paused, hand on the mouse, finger poised over the scroll wheel. CIT. The Clarke Institute of Technology. That was where she worked – where her parents had worked. She'd been there three years. Six years ago her parents had disappeared. In 2014.

  Blackbird hesitated. There were also folders called CIT 2003
and CIT 2002 and CIT 2008 and CIT 2016. It probably stood for something else. It was nothing, there was no connection.

  She double-clicked. RTF files, PNG files. Audio files. Two, labeled Sarah and Patrick. The names of her parents. She moved the mouse pointer over the Sarah file, counted to five in her head, trying to reduce her heart rate, then double-clicked again.

  The file opened. It was an hour-ten long, with the triangular indicator stopped around the halfway mark. Blackbird clicked the play button, and the Cowl's Lair was filled with a scream, a woman's horrific cry, so loud Blackbird practically leapt out of the chair. Then the screaming stopped and the recording played on with a hiss. Something moved, shuffled, then another voice.

  "When I ask a question, Doctor Ravenholt, I expect an answer," said the Cowl.

  The door wasn't anything special, white with chrome handle and the kind of standard lock you'd see on a high school chemistry room and a frosted, wire-reinforced window. If the Cowl had expected hermetically sealed rooms, Star Trek doors that swished and whistled, and giant keypads for giant key codes, Blackbird thought he must have been sorely disappointed.