Pinnacle City

by Matt Carter

  “You killed Quentin Julian for the American dream?”

  “No, no, no, please, no, I didn’t do that for that. Mr. Julian … I would never hurt him. I wouldn’t.”

  I have a hard time believing that, remembering the savagery Julian was killed with, but the sheer sadness on his terrible face makes me give him the benefit of the doubt … for now.

  “I wanted to do more when Jeanine got pregnant with John, so I attended one of the work placement programs that Mr. Julian held. He helped me create a résumé, build references from previous guys I’d worked with, even helped me and Jeanine get signed up for a program that’d get us discounted health insurance. He helped us, so much, but it wasn’t enough. I wanted to do so much more for them, and I told him this. And he looked at me like he had a secret he wasn’t sure he wanted to give up, and wrote an address on the back of his business card and told me to go there if I wanted some off-the-books opportunities. Now I’ve lived a God-fearing life, never once broke a law I didn’t have to, but I didn’t even have to think to say yes. So I went to the address, an old hospital, a place all the kids think is haunted, and I met Milgram.”

  Milgram, Mendoza, and Julian. A frightening picture forms.

  “Milgram, he seemed like a good guy, not a monster like everyone said. He said things like—”

  I interrupt, “Like he’s not as bad as everyone says. That he does bad things for a good reason. That more than anything else, he wants to help everybody and rebuild WPC into something great again?”

  “So you’ve met Milgram too?”

  “I got the sales pitch.”

  “He paid well, and he put me to work right away. Me and three other guys, Jaime, Mike, and Billy, we got put on this team of couriers. Drive packages from place to place, moving people, things … things I didn’t want to know what they were. We didn’t ask questions, we got paid, and things, they were looking up … or so I thought. I thought that because it was better than really thinking about what I was doing, because I knew it had to be bad, but I would’ve kept doing it anyway for the money. It went like this for a while, enough that I was thinking I might be able to swing a good Christmas for my family, when Mr. Julian found me one day and told me to stop working for Milgram.”

  The picture gets sharper, but I’m still missing a lot of the pieces.

  “He found me here, talked with me. He was scared, but really trying to hide it. He kept apologizing for putting me with Milgram and said he was going to make it up to me, and to the city. Then he took a video of me talking about what I’d done for Milgram. He thanked me, saying to keep my head down and that he’d be in touch. That he was putting something together to make Milgram, and everyone who kept him in business, pay for what they were doing to the city. This was the day before he died.”

  “What happened next?”

  “Next day, I got a call from Milgram’s people, saying they had a special job for my team, and because I was supposed to keep my head down, I showed up. I think Mr. Julian had talked to Mike, Jaime, and Billy some too, ’cause they looked as scared as me, but none of us talked about it. The four of us, and one of Milgram’s guys, we took a moving van over to an apartment building in EPC, real early in the morning. They put us in these coveralls that’d cover up what we were, and guided us up to an apartment, and inside … it was a mess. Everything torn up like they were looking for something. And, the woman.”

  “What woman?”

  “She was dead. On the floor. Stabbed in the stomach a couple times. I’d never seen a dead person before.”

  He hunches over, wrapping his arms around his chest for support.

  “Did you get a name?”

  “For her? I don’t remember. I think it began with an R.”

  “Ruby?’

  “Yeah. Ruby.”

  Son of a bitch.

  “Billy threw up. I wanted to as well, but then this … person came out of the bathroom.”

  “Person?”

  “Look, I know it sounds funny, but I’m not sure who or what I saw, okay? I thought I heard another woman humming to herself in the shower, but then a man like any other one of Milgram’s guards came out of the bathroom.”

  Bystander.

  I knew she was tight with Milgram, and that she’d replaced Julian’s secretary, but I never thought to ask her what they’d done with the real Ruby Herron.

  What she’d done to the real Ruby Herron.

  “The guards told us to clean up the apartment, so we did. We put everything back in its place, took everything broken out to the garbage, put her body in the van and cleaned up all the blood. Then the showering guard stayed behind, and the rest of us were sent back to Milgram’s hospital. We all wanted to quit right then, because this wasn’t the kind of work we’d signed up for, but then Milgram himself brought all of us aside, and said he had an important job for us. When we still said no, he used his powers on us.

  “It was like, nothing mattered anymore except what he told us to do. He gave each of us five one-hundred dollar bills, right out of his own wallet, and told us that tonight we had to go to this spot and kill Quentin Julian. I knew this was something I wouldn’t do, not normally, but it didn’t just feel right, it felt like what we were put on this earth to do. And so we did it. We all took our money, and we killed Quentin Julian. But there was one thing we messed up.”

  “You were supposed to record it,” I say, remembering the vision.

  He nods. “When the other guys started dying, I thought it was maybe because we messed this up, but it’s to keep us quiet, isn’t it?”

  “Maybe,” I say.

  It’s all starting to make sense. Quentin Julian was involved in some kind of conspiracy with Milgram, but wanted to back out and probably go public with it. Milgram decided to cut his losses with Julian, find out what he had on him and then send a few lackeys to take him out. They were supposed to record it, and it was supposed to leak out, so Milgram could turn public opinion against gene-jobs specifically, and WPC in general. When they didn’t, he had Bystander hire me to do their job for them. He even managed to get most of the press to sit on the story until he could spin it his way.

  But what kind of conspiracy? To what end? WPC is a tinderbox as is, they didn’t need to go this far to destabilize it. There’s something else in play here. Something …

  “Do you have any of that money still?” I ask.

  “Yes,” Mendoza says, pulling a crumpled bill from his pocket. “Why?”

  “I can read you to verify your part of the story, but to find out more, I need to read something that was with Milgram,” I say, taking the bill.

  “So you’re going to help me?”

  “Maybe. I might get weird for a few minutes. Make sure I don’t swallow my tongue, okay?”

  He looks confused. “Wh—”

  I’m reading the bill before he can say anything.

  I’m following it around in his pocket, pacing throughout the trailer for days. Then back to the murder. Then to the moments before the murder.

  Then when it was in Milgram’s possession.

  I follow him back, watching and listening as he talks to a bunch of his people, none of them about this.

  Then he’s in his office, making a phone call, when I hear the name Julian and stop rewinding. I can only hear his side of the conversation, but it’s more detail than I could’ve hoped for.

  Calmly, Milgram says, “Look, I understand Julian’s a problem. No, I haven’t been able to lock down the file yet, it wasn’t at his office or with his secretary, but that’s not gonna matter. I’ve already put one of my best in undercover. All good things come to those who have patience, right? You want him dead? Well, that would save a lot of work. No, I’m not saying we still shouldn’t find the file, but what are the odds that he put that kind of safety on it yet? He doesn’t know we’re onto him. We’ll do it tonight, I got some guys who’re outliving their usefulness; they’ll be perfect. It’ll get done, Mr. Collingwraith, don’t worry about it.
When have I ever let you down?”

  I know that name, Collingwraith. It’s not a common name, so when you hear it, you remember it, and while I know there’s a chance it could be another Collingwraith, I know in my heart of hearts it’s Jeremy Collingwraith, celebrity lawyer and darling of the eleven o’clock news for his over-the-top defenses of his primary client.

  Mayor William “The Conqueror” Card.

  “Motherfucker,” I whisper, falling out of the vision.

  “Language!” Jeanine calls from behind a curtain.

  My phone vibrates. I go to silence it, but look at the name on it first.

  When I see who it is, I answer.

  “Bystander,” I say.

  “I’m betting, where you are, that things aren’t looking so hot right now.”

  “Shit,” I say, running to a window and inching a curtain open. All I see is dark and rain.

  “What?” Mendoza asks.

  “We’re being watched. You need to get out of here.”

  “I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” Bystander says.

  “Oh no?”

  “There’s a lot going on you don’t know about but, before I can explain, I’m going to need you to live through tonight, and the only way you’re going to do that is if you, and you alone, right now, run out of that trailer and don’t stop until you reach the Crescent. If you do that, the operative Mr. Milgram sent has orders to let you pass freely.”

  “And if I don’t?”

  “Then you’re going to find out why he’s called Effigy. Be smart. Let’s work together on this, like we discussed.”

  “We never discussed anything like this … especially not murder.”

  “Certain moral compromises must be made on the road to progress.”

  “Like Ruby Herron? Or the rest of Mendoza’s team? Were they just moral compromises when you killed them?”

  I don’t know that she killed anyone beyond Ruby, actually, but the pause on the other line confirms it.

  “Don’t,” she says.

  “Don’t what?”

  “Don’t get so fucking sanctimonious on me. I’ve seen your army record. I know the horrible shit you’ve done. We’re not that different.”

  “That was war,” I say, now the defensive one.

  “And this isn’t?”

  I can’t say no to that.

  “Don’t do this to me. Don’t make me choose like this.”

  “Sooner or later you’re gonna have to get off that fence and make a choice. All I want you to do is make the right one. Please.”

  She hangs up.

  In a flash of lightning, I see a figure standing in the aisle outside. I remember him from Milgram’s place: the young, blonde, tattooed guy.

  He stretches his arms out.

  And suddenly there’s more of him. Duplicates that begin walking away from him in every direction like his own personal zombie horde.

  And one after another the duplicates begin to ignite, burning with brilliant blue flames that cut through the rain.

  I know, at once, that I still have a small window to escape, one that shrinks every second I stay, and that I have to decide how I want to play this.

  I can walk out right now, cut my ties with something I never wanted to be a part of in the first place, and come out of this one the same side with Bystander, letting all these people die.

  Or I can try to do something about it, and almost certainly die myself.

  Two flaming duplicates begin to sprint toward Mendoza’s trailer.

  Time to get off that fence.

  CHAPTER 14: THE SUPERHERO

  Hey, you’re the new Solar Flare, aren’t you?” asks the sales rep, peering around my sunglasses and frayed hoodie.

  “No.”

  “Are too!” he says, pointing at my info on his computer screen. “You’re Kimberly Kline! I have—I mean, my little sister has all your posters.”

  I glance at his nametag, merging it permanently with his face in my memory, and feel icky when I do.

  My shallow “party trick” habit.

  “Lance,” I say, taking off the glasses to show him my puffy, mascara-free eyes. “I’ve had a really long couple days. Can I please, please just buy a phone?”

  Lance looks disappointed but goes ahead with clicking around my account.

  “It looks like you’re not authorized for an upgrade until next month. If you can wait until the 21st, you can get the contract discount.”

  “Can’t,” I say, “but it’s fine.”

  “Something happen to your old one?”

  “Dropped it in the toilet.”

  “Huh, guess it happens to superheroes too.”

  “Guess so.”

  After a ten-minute pitch for a supposedly waterproof case that weighs twice as much as the new phone itself, Lance finally takes my credit card and activates the phone.

  Thankfully, I’m one of the last customers of the day, and he’s prodded along by his coworkers’ impatient stares.

  I don’t know if I’ll file for reimbursement or not. I’m torn between not wanting to take a cent from the Card family and not wanting to leave them a cent that’s in any way mine. And it is their fault I have to spend an extra five hundred dollars to upgrade early.

  Maybe I’ll expense it to them and then donate the check to the Julian Foundation, or another worthy cause they’d hate even more.

  The thought almost makes me smile, but it’s like counting pocket change toward a private jet.

  Nothing I do tonight is going to level the scales with what I didn’t do last night.

  The rain’s been coming in fits and starts all day. It’s pouring at the moment, so I tuck the new phone into the pocket of my badly fitting new jeans and pull the waistband of the hoodie down over it as an extra shield while I run to the little burger place down the street.

  I must have eventually dozed off on the beach last night, because that’s where I woke up this morning. As soon as the stores opened, I wandered, draped in a towel, into this thrift shop on the backstreets off the waterfront, the first place I could find where the staff wouldn’t recognize me.

  I changed in the dressing room and dropped my Solar Flare outfit in the trash on the way out, which would’ve been a whole lot more satisfying if there weren’t a closet full of identical copies of it back at Guardian Tower.

  Since then, I’ve spent the day avoiding … pretty much everything.

  It’s easy to tell myself I’m quitting when I’m flying laps of the North Pole or sitting alone in a New York deli, but the moment I have to tell someone, here in Pinnacle City, I know there’s a good chance I won’t have it in me to stay quit.

  Sitting at one of the corner tables of the burger place, I finally do what I’ve been dreading. I turn on the new phone, connect to the Wi-Fi, and start the sweeping sync of my apps and accounts.

  First comes the backed-up wave of texts and voicemails.

  Pinnacle asking where the hell I am and why I didn’t check in to my assignment today.

  Mom and Uncle Ethan asking the same in more measured words, letting me know how “worried” Pinnacle sounded on the phone and asking me to assure them that I haven’t somehow come in contact with Jovium and been incapacitated.

  Jacob asking me to come in early for a confessional and then taking it incrementally more personally when I’m not early but late, and then absent.

  Leah sending more pics of tofu lasagna and then asking if I’m mad after I stopped answering her.

  Sergei letting me know it’s no skin off his nose if I never come back, but that in case I’d like to, he’s informed the others that my phone and I were both under the weather last night.

  He was never so nice to me before, and I’m starting to think he might have more experience than I thought in keeping people quiet.

  Last night probably wasn’t the first time something like this has happened.

  I don’t answer any of them, not yet.

  I should have picked a different she
lter. The volume’s too high on the TVs in here, and since there’s no major game on tonight, half of them are set to the news. The current story is about Rickie Maroon taking an indefinite administrative leave, pending investigation into allegations made by over a dozen female interns.

  I want to be shocked. I try to be shocked, to care the way I should, but there doesn’t seem to be room left inside me to take it in.

  Once the reporters are done gloating over their rival station’s scandal, they move on to reviewing the sound bites from Mayor Card’s latest interview.

  “Do you have any comment on the recent rash of hate crimes citing your leadership as inspiration?” asks the reporter. I open one of the menus tucked between my table’s napkin dispensers rather than look at Card’s face as he responds.

  “Well, you know, people are scared, and they’re angry, and I think it’s been a long time coming. We’ve got these communities, these cultures of aberrant violence existing right on the doorsteps of people’s homes, and I think people, they’re just sick and tired of it. It’s been one of my top priorities as mayor to give law enforcement and the people the means and freedom they need to fight back and protect their families, but we’ve been so sabotaged with just, just an unprecedented amount of malice from our enemies, that we obviously haven’t been able to come far enough. I can promise you this, though, when I can advocate for Pinnacle City above the mayoral level, it’s going to be so safe, so protected, everyone’s going to want to raise their families here.”

  “By ‘cultures of aberrant violence,’ you mean the residents of WPC?”

  “Look, someone’s starting the violence, and everyone knows who it is. Everyone. You look at the peaceful family homes on the one side, and the streets full of drugs and robbery and murder and rape on the other, and it doesn’t take a genius to do the math.”

  I watch my apps download, three at a time.

  Translator.

  Music.

  Library.

  Three different messengers.

  Villscan.

  Superdirectline.

  DistressFinder.