by Matt Carter
Friends aren’t friends.
Enemies are still enemies but maybe not that bad.
Your heroes will betray you.
Fire from above, tearing through flesh.
You always remember your friends’ dying screams.
By the time I come to, the dream’s already gone, almost forgotten, but never completely. It’ll come back as it always does when I’m in a particularly sour mood, waiting to pounce like a starving scavenger watching a man crawl toward water in a desert.
I’m not dead yet, though.
What I am is face down on a wooden table in a slowly growing puddle of my own drool.
There’s noise coming into focus: voices, chairs being pushed around. Familiar smells: smoke, stale beer, sawdust, weeks old vomit. The lighting’s dim, though what passes for my internal clock tells me it’s morning.
There’s a pale blue koala sitting on the table, staring at me quizzically.
I’m home.
“Mornin’, Petting Zoo,” I say.
“Aw, nuts, how’d you know it was me?” she responds, jumping off the table and transforming into a short, scantily-clad Korean woman, still with pale-blue skin.
“Lucky guess,” I say, sitting up and more or less instantly regretting it. Call it sleeping in a shit position combined with a hangover, but it feels like I spent the night getting repeatedly folded and unfolded. My left arm is on fire, the pain so intense it’s curled up into a claw. I pull the pill bottle from my pocket, fumbling it through shaking fingers onto the floor with a clatter.
“Here,” Petting Zoo offers.
“No, I got it!”
I bend over and pick it up with my good hand, reflexively popping the cap and chewing a couple pills.
“You good?” she asks.
“Will be.”
“Cool, ’cause I gotta make sure the others are still alive before I head out,” she says, going a couple tables over to wake Louie.
As the pills do their work, my eyes clear and the Lineup comes into focus around me.
While it won’t be winning any awards with the Zagat’s people, it’s got its charms. Located inside the giant, severed foot of one of Killtron 8000’s robots, its ceiling is low and lit with an improvised set of bare bulbs and extension cords, none of the police auction bought tables and chairs match, and every so often the power will cut out when one of Tragedii’s improvised hacks inevitably fails. However, the liquor’s good and cheap, the company’s usually good for a laugh, and it’s one of the few places in town you don’t have to fear the pro-heroes.
But that’s not why it’s home.
No, for that you gotta look to the people still coming to around me. Like Louie, the Gray alien left behind by his invasion fleet back in the seventies. Or Lucero, the sorcerer and healer who looks more burnout hippie than wizard and still won’t say which side of the War on Villainy he fought on. Or Bosrallt, the Atlantean berserker who’s more shark than woman. Even Petting Zoo’s got enough history to match nearly everyone in this room, making sure we all got one thing in common.
We’re all criminals.
Ex-villains, antiheroes, and vigilantes mostly, none of us really evil, but none of us saints either. Most of us regulars have our mugshots framed on the wall beside the bar (I’m in the third row, fifth from the left). The Lineup is the one place in Pinnacle City, even within the Crescent, where we can just be who we want to be without being judged, and twice a week we hold impromptu group therapy sessions for those who want to talk about trying to live life on the outside.
Sometimes they go later and have more alcohol involved than others.
I guess last night was one of those times.
I stumble over to the bar. Tragedii’s wiping it down, her mechanical right arm split into several instruments, each with a different rag, while the laser implant in her left eye burns a piece of garbage on the floor to cinders.
A time traveler from a terrible future that no longer exists thanks to an assassination she pulled off sometime in the eighties, she specifically designed the Lineup to be a safe haven for us ex-villains, and because of that I think we’ve all got a soft spot for her.
“That coffee I smell?”
“Nothing but the finest for my favorite customers,” she says, her voice gruff and calm. She’s easily the biggest woman I’ve ever seen, a wall of pure muscle covered with scars and tattoos where she isn’t mechanized.
She passes me a mug. “It’s goin’ on your tab, you know.”
“I know,” I say, sipping it down. The TV over the bar is muted, but filled by the fat, angry, yelling face of Pinnacle City’s greatest (his words, not mine) ever mayor, William “The Conqueror” Card.
“What’s he goin’ on about today?” I ask, even though I don’t really want an answer.
“Wall off the west half of Pinnacle City so the rest of it can reclaim its former greatness. More yelling to boost his senatorial campaign. Watch his family’s reality show, every Wednesday at eight,” she says, running her human hand through her silver Mohawk.
“So, same as always?”
“Pretty much.”
“You’re sure he wasn’t the guy you were supposed to travel back in time to kill?”
“Pretty sure.”
“But you never, hypothetically—”
“No.”
“But—”
“I’m not gonna kill the mayor. Much as I’d like to introduce him to my Flesheater, doing so could fuck up the future in ways you can’t even imagine. So, I’d advise you to either vote against him in November—”
“Non-voting felon,” I say, pointing to the hair covering the back of my neck.
“—or pray that someone finally catches him in the act doing something illegal.”
“Fat chance. Even so, nobody’d care. Maybe I’ll just pray he gets the senator gig; he’ll have a harder time fucking up the city direct that way.”
Tragedii shakes her head, laughing, “And I thought education standards were horrible in my time.”
“Hey, it’s not my fault prison GEDs don’t put that much of an emphasis on civics.”
“But it is your fault you were in prison.”
“Point.”
I polish off the rest of my coffee and slide the mug back at her.
“Thanks for the coffee. And the table,” I say, trying to straighten myself out. My left hand has started to uncurl, some, and almost feels like it’ll be useful in a few minutes.
It’s a good day.
“See you tonight?”
“Most likely,” I say, walking to the exit.
“Hey, man, wanna play some dominoes?” Lucero calls from the table where he, Bosrallt, and Louie are slowly coming to.
Considering that the game’s likely to come down to a shouting match between Bosrallt and Louie as to whose people really got screwed out of conquering humanity the most, and that Lucero tends to use magic to cheat at board games, I pass. “Tempting, but I gotta check messages.”
I’m out the door before they can put up a good defense.
It’s a clear day, for the moment, blue skies and a bright sun that wants to tear my hangover in two. One of the things you learn to appreciate about winters in Southern California is how quickly they can turn.
The Crescent comes to life around me.
People driving and walking to work, hailing buses, the air a fragrant mix of exhaust and food trucks and post-rain dampness. There are horns honking and music in at least a half-dozen languages I can identify. The businesses are as grimy as ever, with walls either covered in graffiti or peeling posters (or both), their front windows all covered in retractable gates and blast shields that a few proprietors are already raising, ready for the day.
The clouds have cleared enough to give a good view of the towers downtown, glittering and gleaming and stretching so high you can’t see the tops of them for the clouds.
If there’s one comfort in that, it’s that they can’t look down on us any easier.
I’ve seen enough old movies to know that there was, once upon a time at least, only one Pinnacle City. It had its divisions, for sure; the west half of the city was predominantly industrial and shipping while the east was where all the commercial, financial, technological, and entertainment business went down. It was hardly one big happy family, but with the protection of the Pinnacle City Guardians, the city got to avoid a lot of the worse parts of the War on Villainy.
For a while, anyway.
It was Killtron 8000’s attack, and the Guardians’ response, that made the Pinnacle City we have today. Swooping down on the city with his army of giant Killtron robots, he laid waste to WPC, killing hundreds of thousands. The Guardians fought a bloody battle to repel his forces, and though they died to nearly the last man, one final attack from their crippled sole survivor, Solar Flare, disabled the army once and for all.
His final blast of energy permanently disabled Killtron, and killed more than 12,000 innocent bystanders the villain had gathered as a human shield.
For this, Solar Flare got himself a statue.
EPC recouped its losses in a hurry, but hasn’t been in much of a rush to rebuild the western end of the city, even thirty years on. After all, who lives in WPC but the working class, the immigrants, the unlicensed supers and outcasts and criminals and those who can’t afford to go anywhere else?
Oh sure, they’ve rebuilt some of the ruined city; a narrow, curving sliver of civilization that separates the east and west halves. Us locals call it the Crescent, and though everybody knows it’s an insult being handed down to us by the city’s elite, we’ve made the most of it. It’s the cultural melting pot that EPC does everything it can to avoid being, and though its crime rate can be pretty insane, it’s still an easy place to call home.
WPC itself, though … calling it a wasteland would be charitable.
Painkillers kicking in some more, I’m sturdier on my feet. My office, thankfully, is in the strip mall right across the street, between the Chinese donut and VHS place, as well as a pretty passable Lemurian restaurant.
Traffic’s bad enough this time of day that I seriously consider using the crosswalk, when I’m temporarily pulled from my path.
Petting Zoo stands at a nearby bus stop, frustratedly trying to adjust a long black wig with one hand while balancing her hefty purse and a couple shopping bags in her other.
I stumble over to her.
“Need a hand?” I offer.
“Thanks,” she says. I reach for her scalp, edging the wig around into a snug fit, pulling the hair into place to cover the bar code tattoo on the back of her neck.
“I keep tellin’ ya, grow your hair out and this won’t be a problem. Works for the rest of us longhairs,” I say, motioning to the shoulder-length hair that covers the bar code on the back of mine.
“If it weren’t summer here nine months of the year, I’d agree with you, but it is, and short hair’s a lot cooler and cheaper to maintain than long,” she says, offering me a cigarette.
I take it, light it and the one she pulls for herself.
Petting Zoo’s good people. Though I didn’t know her when I was in juvenile superhuman detention, being that she was a girl and all, we both got freed in the same amnesty program when we hit eighteen and both hit the army. Though I got my discharge papers after being wounded, she served her term, and we reconnected when she came back to the city. She let me crash on her couch for a while when I was still sorting my life out, and I helped her get the job waitressing for Tragedii so she wouldn’t have to dance so much.
“So how’s things at the club?”
“The usual. Take my clothes off, grind some, run over test notes and construct essays in my head. Captain Pervo hasn’t been back for a while, and I’ve been able to hold a 3.9 GPA, so, thanks for that.”
“Hey, you just made the introductions. Harriet did all the heavy lifting.”
“No, seriously, thank you. I’d have gone all cape buffalo on his ass if I could get away with it, but I really need the tips and can’t afford to flip out on the job, and the other girls were scared, and, well … just thanks for making it easy for us.”
“Don’t worry about it. Captain Pervo shouldn’t be a problem anymore.”
She looks down at her feet, shyly for a moment. “Has Dissident mentioned me recently?”
“Not that I remember, but me and memory ain’t so great… .”
It’s only part lie.
“Well, if you see her again, don’t let on that I’ve been asking about her, alright? And if you could, you know, drop some hints, like I’ve been maybe seeing some hot cheerleader or something, make her a little jealous, I’d really appreciate that.”
“Will do.”
This one’s another lie. Unless someone’s in serious need of a beatdown, I’m not getting in the middle of any lover’s spat.
Double that when Dissident’s involved.
Her bus is coming. I drop my cigarette on the ground, crush it out.
“Hey, Eddie. You be careful out there, alright? You keep doin’ stuff like the other night, get your face all smashed up and … well, Tragedii would be real sore if you weren’t able to pay off your tab.”
“You too,” I say, even though I don’t have to. Captain Pervos aside, she’s always been able to take care of herself.
As she boards the bus, I head across the street.
My office is essentially an office in name only. I could almost do my job out of my apartment if I wanted, but since I occasionally need to meet with clients (mostly insurance reps and spouses worried their other half is cheating), I need to keep up some semblance of a professional appearance.
Lost & Found Investigations is my compromise on that.
It’s a hole in the wall even by strip mall standards; just a narrow box with a big, dirty front window, a backroom for storage, and a bathroom that sometimes works but is usually just a nesting ground for ants. I got a desk up front with an old computer, an even older phone system, and a non-working panel for a security system propped right by the window to try and convince people that stealing my stuff ain’t worth it (and it isn’t).
In between a few exposed pipes, the wall by my desk has framed copies of all my certifications, as well as a few testimonials from happy clients to make me look more impressive.
Hidden in the mix are my only two personal pictures.
One of me, Petting Zoo, and the rest of our superhuman unit back in the army. The other of three smiling teenagers with arms locked around each other’s shoulders. On the left, a fifteen year old me, a hopeful smile on his face and a helluva lot less hair on his head. On the right, a burly boy with glowing green eyes. My best friend from the henchman years, Marco, though we all called him Blast Eyes (we weren’t very creative). The slender girl in the middle … she may have looked strange, with no hair, muted facial features including nearly non-existent nose and ears, solid black eyes and scaled, pale violet skin, but Marco and me were both in love with her as only a couple teenage boys who’d never really been in love with anyone before could be.
Anya, or Bystander as she preferred to be called, could transform into anyone with only a thought. On her own she may have looked a monster, but Marco and me loved her just the way she was. Both of us were too stupid to do anything, and by the time either of us would’ve thought to do anything, Marco …
(fire from above, tearing through flesh)
After that, after the heroes captured the villain we worked for and broke the gang up, Bystander and I went into juvenile detention. Every once in a while since getting out, I’ve tried looking her up, but if I’ve got a talent for finding people, she’s got a talent for staying the one that got away.
I try not to dwell on the past, but it’s hard when the past won’t leave you alone.
I get a pot of coffee started and check mail and voicemail while waiting for my ancient desktop to boot up. Not looking forward to the messages about last week’s run in with Mr. Berryman; no charges filed against
me and he’s got a court date, but clients generally don’t like it when you start beating on the guy you’re supposed to be tailing.
Before I can rest my feet on my desk, the front door opens, the attached sensor letting off a digitized ding.
I can immediately tell that the woman doesn’t belong in the Crescent. Dressed like she’s headed to a country club in a tight, professional, and expensive-looking dress that shows off her not unimpressive physique, her face is nearly hidden by a wide black hat and designer sunglasses.
She’s gorgeous, but definitely out of place, and people out of place around here tend to either be interesting or trouble … and I usually bet on the latter.
“Edgar Enriquez?” she says, her voice husky and enticing.
“Who wants to know?”
She takes off her sunglasses, revealing a pair of deep blue eyes. “My name is Ruby Herron. I need someone to look into a murder.”
Trouble, I knew it.
Ruby doesn’t sit when I offer her a chair, and flatly declines a cup of coffee. She just stands before me, nervously running a hand through her bottle-blonde hair.
“I’m not what you think I am,” she says.
“What do I think you are?”
“A lunatic. A madwoman. Take your pick. I’ve been called every name in the book by everyone I’ve tried to talk to about this. Nothing you’d say could surprise me.”
I highly doubt that, but I choose not to test her. “So who died?”
“My … boss. His name is … was, Quentin Julian. Have you heard of him?”
“Of him,” I confirm.
Quentin Julian’s one of those rare bluebloods whose name gets passed around the Crescent without it sounding like a curse. A civil rights lawyer, he did a lot of work making sure the non-human community, especially the homeless gene-jobs that make up most of the wasteland’s population, were given adequate legal counsel.
Losing him’ll only hurt the Crescent.
“Hadn’t heard he’d died, though.”
“Few have. While it’s technically made the news, it’s not something they’re giving a lot of attention. The gene-job lawyer for gene-jobs, beaten to death beneath a bridge in the Crescent … who’d want to make a story out of that? I mean, he got what was coming to him, didn’t he? Helping those people only courts death, doesn’t it?”
