Final Empire

by Blake Northcott

  “Hey look, it’s Matthew Moxon!” I heard someone scream. A pair of teenage girls pointed their wrist coms in my direction, flashes popping.

  I was torn. I desperately wanted to stop this fight – to step in and put an end to the battle that was destroying a neighborhood that had just started to rebuild; I was responsible for the riots and the explosion that took out half the borough in the first place, and it was once again being dismantled. My brain was telling me that with my new armor, I might be able to restrain one of them until back-up arrived…although if I were on the receiving end of a well-placed punch or kick from either of these maniacs, my internal organs might have a difference of opinion.

  I couldn’t help but wonder why this was happening. The fight wasn’t a sanctioned Arena event, that much I was sure of – but if this wasn’t a sporting competition, then why were two superhumans beating each other to a bloody pulp in the middle of a populated area? Could they have run into each other by sheer coincidence, had a dispute, and decided to settle it here and now? A chance violent encounter between two superhumans had happened only once, at least to my knowledge. It seemed highly unlikely that this was a repeat occurrence, but it was a possibility. The more likely scenario was that they’d agreed in advance to confront each other – but why here, in a densely-populated urban sprawl where law enforcement was never more than a mile away?

  The whirring of blades buzzed overhead. It was a pair of black helicopters with S.W.A.T. logos stenciled on their sides, circling the area in search of a landing spot. Before they could touch down the gloved man tore up a chunk of sidewalk, lobbing it skyward like a pitcher throwing a fastball. It smashed the cockpit window of one chopper, sending it into a spiral. The stricken aircraft disappeared from view, and a wave of orange fire burst from between two buildings, scorching a number of unlucky spectators.

  The remaining crowd, including police and firemen, began to scatter. They fled on foot, or leaped behind the wheel of the closest vehicle and sped away, leaving me alone in the street with the two combatants.

  They continued fighting as if I wasn’t there. The woman charged her opponent once again, slamming both palms into his chest. He flew through the window of a coffee shop, shattering every window when he made impact. Tangled in the remains of broken tables and chairs, the man tried to regain his footing, now bleeding profusely from a nasty crescent shaped laceration across his temple.

  The redhead stormed into the shop, clutched his wrist and tossed him, sending him spiraling back into the street like a child tossing her ragdoll. His back snapped a ‘No Parking’ sign in half as he cleared the sidewalk, landing on the pavement with a bone-jarring thud.

  With her opponent now battered and dazed, she went for what appeared to be the death blow: she crouched on the sidewalk and sprang upward, leaping high into the air. She cocked her fist and rocketed downward, allowing the gloved man a moment of recovery. It was all the time he needed. He scooped the broken sign off the ground and upended it like a spear, impaling the woman as she landed. The jagged metal edge punctured her abdomen and burst through her spine, painting the road with a crimson streak.

  The woman staggered, hands gripping the steel rod that skewered her gut. She tensed her arms as if she was going to rip it out, but she lacked the strength. The superhuman dropped to her knees, eyes fluttering, rivulets of blood trickling from her bottom lip, and then collapsed on her side.

  The gloved man wiped his own blood from his eyes and peered upward, as if awaiting a signal.

  An aircraft suddenly appeared. It didn’t blast into view at incredible speed, or descend from the fluffy white clouds that hung low in the autumn sky – it literally appeared, having been completely cloaked just a few hundred feet above street level. Its engines were silent. The shimmering black jet lowered between the low-rise buildings, and a hatch slid open from its underbelly. A winding silver cord snaked downward, stopping just a few feet from the ground.

  The Asian man shot me a look as he jogged towards the cord. His mouth twitched at the corners, as if he were tempted to smile but had suppressed the urge. He recognized me. But it was more than that; it was a knowing glance as if to say, ‘mission accomplished’. It was unmistakable: he didn’t just know I was Matthew Moxon, he knew I would be here, right now at this very moment, watching this battle unfold.

  He lassoed the silver cord around his waist and it clasped together magnetically, securing him in place. He tugged it twice. The flexible wire jerked him skyward and into the hatch, the doors sliding shut once he was safely aboard. The jet disappeared in a swirl of purple streaks.

  Standing amidst the flaming cars, crumbling buildings, and the chewed up street that looked as if it had been bombed, I heard a chime.

  My wrist com.

  Incoming message from [Unknown Caller]

  “Answer,” I shouted, hoping my voice command would drown out the noise of the approaching fire trucks. It wasn’t a voice transmission or a holo-forum request – it was a text message. An ancient form of communication that was rarely used anymore, and extremely difficult to trace.

  “Matthew Moxon, my friend,” the message read. “Standing dangerously close to the action, are we not?”

  Excerpt from The Mayor’s public address in The Fringe

  September 21, 2042

  “Thank you all for coming out this afternoon.

  “The last year has been trying, to say the least. Far too often you’ve seen me appear on simulcasts warning of impending danger, or displaying images of our beautiful city which has been decimated by acts of terror.

  “Today, I stand before a symbol of hope. The hospital behind me, the most advanced technological medical center in the Western hemisphere, was constructed thanks to the generous donations of one man: Matthew Moxon. Though he can’t be here today for the ribbon cutting, I would like to thank him on behalf of everyone.

  “And soon, our city will be undergoing even more positive changes. In addition to state of the art medical facilities, The Moxon Corporation’s new thorium reactor will power all districts equally, offering clean, renewable energy to every resident of New York’s seven boroughs. Starting in 2043, the West end of The Fringe will no longer be dubbed ‘The Dark Zone’ as the rolling blackouts which facilitate the endless power supply to Manhattan will no longer be necessary.

  “Additionally, Moxon’s construction efforts have already begun to repair the tens of billions of dollars in damage that were caused in the attack. Although the lives that were lost that day can never be replaced, the homes and businesses that disappeared will be restored. The healing process can begin, and as a city we can move forward stronger than ever, united like never before.

  “While superhumans are a reality, there are too few super heroes living in our midst, and, lucky for us, the esteemed Matthew Moxon definitely falls under that category.

  “Wherever you are, Mister Moxon, thank you. Words alone cannot express the debt of gratitude this city owes you, or the special place you hold in all our hearts.”

  The 114th Mayor of New York City

  Dr. Abigail Baldwin (I-NY)

  Chapter Two

  “You have the right to shut the fuck up!”

  I glanced up from my wrist com and turned my head, only to have my jaw line rocked by the fist of a burly police woman. Her left cross packed a ridiculous amount of power. I spun on rubbery legs, vision blurred; I wasn’t even sure what had happened until my cheekbone slammed the pavement.

  The Amazon twisted my arms behind my back, jerking my wrist together before cuffing me. I tried to roll but she dug her heel into my spine, pinning me down.

  “I apprehended the suspect,” I heard her shout through the intermittent ringing that was assaulting my eardrums. “Bring in a superhuman containment unit. I have him cuffed, but don’t know how long I can hold this slippery little bastard.”

  My eyes watered as I blinked out bits of gravel. I noticed movement in the distance, followed by a drawn out groan. I craned my neck
, jaw scraping the asphalt, and my vision swam back into focus; it was the woman – the redhead who had been skewered with the parking sign. She twitched and coughed, hacking thick gobs of blood that oozed down her chin.

  “We’ve got a live one!” the Amazon screamed. She raced to the dying superhuman and crouched at her side, brushing the matted hair from her eyes. “We have an eleven forty-one,” she shouted into her wrist. “I repeat, an eleven forty-one!”

  The redhead was trying to say something, but all she could produce was a muffled gurgle. Then there was a pop. Her head sagged, eyes rolling to whites. Sickly red veins spiderwebbed her left eye, and a single drop of blood trickled from her tear duct, streaking her cheek before dotting the pavement.

  “What the hell just happened?” The officer screamed, cradling the woman’s head. She uses a thumb to prop her eye open, further inspecting the gruesome injury – the baffling wound that had seemingly appeared out of nowhere. The Amazon turned to me, wild-eyed. “What did you do, you freak?”

  “Me?”

  “She was about to talk and something burst inside her head. You did this!” The Amazon stormed across the cracked pavement and loomed over me, her boot poised above my face. “How did you do this, you son of a —”

  “Santiago!” A deep baritone voice rang out, freezing her.

  “This superhuman sack of shit just killed an innocent woman,” she seethed.

  “That sack of shit,” Detective Dzobiak replied, “is Matthew Moxon. And he’s no more superhuman than you or me.”

  “Thanks,” I coughed into the pavement.

  Santiago reached down and hooked her hands under my armpits, yanking me to my feet with surprising ease. “Then what’s with the suit? He’s dressed in some sort of combat armor.”

  “Yeah, he does that.” The tall, dark-skinned detective had been a friend since before the first Arena Mode tournament; back then Todd was just a beat cop, but he’d since been promoted several times over. Which, thankfully, meant that Santiago would have to obey his commands...at least in theory.

  “Superhuman or not,” she replied fiercely, “he’s still a suspect. He was here when this all went down.”

  “Fair enough. But I’m going to bring him in.”

  Santiago let out a frustrated groan. She jammed a palm into my upper back, causing me to stumble forward.

  Dzobiak reached out and took my arm, leading me towards his sedan.

  “This pulling rank shit might fly right now,” she sneered. “But once we’re at the station we’ll see what the STC has to say, huh? I bet they’re already on their way.”

  “Whatever,” Todd grumbled without turning around, flinging open the passenger-side door of his car. He cautioned me to dip my head and guided me in, slamming it behind me.

  After Dzobiak slid behind the wheel and pulled his door shut, he reached behind my back, unlatching the cuffs. I thanked him and massaged my wrists, careful to keep my hands out of sight as Santiago stalked past on the way to her squad car. She was a brawny six-foot powerhouse of a woman with a jet black ponytail and arms thick enough to fill the sleeves of her uniform; it looked as if her biceps were threatening to tear the fabric apart with a single angry flex.

  “What the hell is the STC?” I asked as Dzobiak pushed his card into the ignition slot, illuminating the dashboard.

  “People you don’t want in your life,” he said gravely. “And if they show up at the station, I just hope all your cash can buy you a damned good lawyer.”

  Before stepping out of the car I disassembled my swarm robotics suit, commanding thousands of tiny machines to remain in stasis while I was in custody. They obediently broke apart, converging into a formless silver glob that rested in the backseat of detective Dzobiak’s car, awaiting my next command. If I was going to convince the cops I wasn’t involved in the attack, wearing battle armor to the discussion was probably not going to help my case.

  After escorting me into the police station’s main lobby, through a crowd of officers and down a long narrow hall, Dzobiak nudged me into an interrogation room. He shut the door behind us. He walked to the corner of the small white cube and reached up, pulling the plug on the video camera that faced the room’s lone table.

  I pulled up a metal chair and the detective took the one across from me. “I don’t know what you were doing there, Mox, but you’d better have a good reason. A damn good one. Because I’m gonna be real straight with you, man: things don’t look great at the moment.”

  I continued to rub my aching wrists; the metal had bitten into my skin when I’d been cuffed, leaving bitter red welts. “The first time I show my face in public since Fortress 23, and there just happens to be a superhuman battle royale three blocks away? This wasn’t a coincidence.”

  I’d been a recluse since the now-infamous standoff in Northern Alberta. Just a year ago I was a target, so much so that even people who bore a passing resemblance to me were being executed around the world. It was a backlash for killing Sergei Taktarov during Arena Mode – a man who was worshipped as a god. I knew that, for the most part, Taktarov’s followers had disbanded, and the majority of the remaining extremists were behind bars – though I wasn’t about to start taking chances. The self-proclaimed ‘Red Army’ had numbers in the tens of thousands (possibly even more, if you believed some of the estimates at the time); despite the encouraging downward trend of Matthew Moxon lookalikes being murdered, Taktarov’s followers couldn’t have all just given up their faith. A small percentage of them were still out there, and I’m sure that I remained in their collective crosshairs. I couldn’t just stroll into Central Park or some quaint little coffee shop knowing that a maniac with a hammer and sickle tattoo might lunge at me with a switchblade.

  But at the same time, I couldn’t spend my remaining years in my pajamas either, as appealing as that option sounded. So after nearly a year of self-imposed exile I made some bold decisions: I woke up before noon, got dressed, and actually left my apartment. And this frame-job was the result.

  “This wasn’t a coincidence?” Dzobiak asked. “How so?”

  “Check this out.” I commanded my wrist com to open my recent text messages. The window came up blank. “Refresh,” I repeated, three times in a row, and with increasing panic in my voice. Nothing appeared. The message had been erased.

  He leaned in on the table, glancing at my wrist expectantly. “What are we looking at, Mox?”

  “No, no, no,” I shouted, aggressively rapping my fingernail into the com. “Come on you piece of shit! It was here! Someone sent me a message right before Santiago knocked me on my ass. Someone called me by name and told me I was ‘too close to the action’. Like they knew I was going to be there.”

  Dzobiak shrugged. “Someone who recognized you at the scene? Maybe they were just messing with you.”

  It didn’t seem likely. “When the helicopter went down everyone scattered and there were a dozen people on fire. I doubt that someone typed a text message while they were running for their lives.”

  “So why weren’t you?” he asked, narrowing his eyes.

  “Why weren’t I what?”

  “You said it yourself: helicopter explodes, cars overturned, people on fire. Why were you just standing there? Why not just run like everyone else?” He raised his brow, anticipating a reply.

  “I…I wanted to help. Do something – anything. It all just happened so fast and…” I raked my fingers through my short hair, letting out a deep breath. “I don’t know. I just froze up.”

  “But you weren’t afraid,” he said plainly, as if it were a matter of fact and not a question.

  “Guess not.”

  Dzobiak folded his arms across his broad chest and leaned back in his chair. “What if one of them had killed you? That armor looked pretty fancy, but I’m not sure it would’ve held up if a city bus fell on your narrow ass.”

  For the first time since walking through the door of the interrogation room I felt like I was actually being interrogated.

>   “Do I need a lawyer here?” I asked, only half kidding.

  “Not at all,” he said, holding his hands up. “We’re just talking here, man-to-man, friend-to-friend. But I’m throwing you some softballs, Mox. If you think the STC is going to go this easy on you…”

  “There’s that acronym again. What is that?”

  Dzobiak glanced over his shoulder as if he were expecting someone to be standing behind him. “Look,” he said in a hushed, conspiratorial tone, “The Superhuman Terror Commission is a relatively new division of Homeland. I’ve never met one of these spooks, but I’ve heard stories.”

  “Stories?”

  “For real,” he whispered. “Like people disappearing-type stories. These guys are hardcore: they wave a badge, spit some line about national security, and that’s it, man. Game over. You’re bagged, tagged, and shoved into a transport. They fly off and take you to God-knows-where, and you’re interrogated for however long the rest of your miserable life lasts.”

  This was in response to the superhuman attacks in The Fringe last December. It had to be. I knew security protocols had been beefed up significantly, mostly because my company – the former Frost Corporation – supplied America with the Cerebral Dampening Units that were installed in virtually every populated area. CDU’s could temporarily disable a superhuman’s abilities by scrambling their brainwaves…though interestingly, they didn’t seem to have made much of a difference during today’s attack. Just another question that I didn’t yet have an answer for.

  “This wasn’t just a pair of superhumans randomly slugging it out,” I said, jamming my finger into the tabletop. “This was planned. Well in advance.”

  “All right, Brainiac. Amaze me.”

  “Map,” I commanded, opening a two-dimensional image that projected from my wrist-com. I gestured to the location of the attack, just a mile from Excelsior Retro Comics. Four crimson markers appeared at each intersection adjacent to the battle zone. “See these little red blips? They’re CDUs. Superhuman activity can’t take place when these things are operational.”