Pinnacle City

by Matt Carter

  Is it because of Kline?

  I don’t know. Maybe. Probably.

  God help me, I think her impenetrable optimism is starting to rub off.

  We’ve been working this case together now and making some good progress, and with what we got from Collingwraith tonight, I think we’re just about ready to bring down this whole damn conspiracy. What it’ll mean for the city I can’t say, because power vacuums like this don’t tend to stay empty for long. But if we can get the Milgram and Card organizations in jail, along with whatever superheroes they got working with them, well, that’s gotta stand for something, right?

  And then there’s the us question.

  When we’re done here, then what? Do we go our separate ways, her back to EPC and me back to the Crescent, or do we stay in touch?

  What are we then?

  Acquaintances?

  All-star team up partners?

  Friends?

  More?

  Doubtful. The two of us couldn’t work long term; we’re just too damned different. I won’t say there’s not a spark there, but that’s all it is.

  A spark can start a fire, even burn for a while, but in the end it’ll burn out.

  But while it burns, at least it’ll be hot.

  I could live with some more of that.

  Maybe that’s why I’m a little let down she had to run out like she did. It felt like we might’ve been able to pull something tonight, but, hey, she’s got her own thing. We’ll have other nights.

  Now, I do my good deed for the day.

  When I get inside, Mendoza and Kaley are still up in the living room, him watching TV while she plays with some dolls on the floor.

  “Detective,” he says with a nod as I pass by.

  “Mendoza,” I respond. “Just come by to drop off groceries.”

  “How’s it going out there?”

  I don’t look at him, and not just because I still have a hard time looking at his terrible face. Clearing Mendoza’s name was always part of the hope of Kline’s and my plan, but even with my powers and Collingwraith’s computer it’s going to be hard to completely exonerate the man, especially with the rest of Julian’s killers dead and unable to offer up any corroboration.

  The courts might go lenient if mind control can be proven beyond a reasonable doubt (no small task with every criminal and his mother using the “I was mind-controlled by a supervillain” defense), or if Milgram confesses, but given how unlikely both those possibilities are, this story’ll probably end with us smuggling the Mendoza family out of town.

  But what the hell do I tell him? He’s got so damn much hope pinned on what Kline and I are doing, and his family’s really settled in here in the Well. Do I break the illusion, tell him the truth, or just let it ride until we’ve got Milgram?

  “It’s going well,” I finally say. “I think we’ll have everyone where we need them before New Year’s.”

  I pull the date out of my ass, but it makes him happy.

  “Thank you so, so much. I don’t know what my family would do without you and Solar Flare and Miss Tragedii protecting us,” he says, the corners of his terrible mouth curling into a smile.

  “No problem,” I say, trying to make my exit. I don’t, no, can’t meet his eyes as I pass, don’t want him to know that I’m lying my ass off.

  Of course, I can’t make it to the door without an insistent, small hand tugging on my trench coat.

  “Are you gonna be seeing Solar Flare again?” Kaley asks.

  “Yeah.”

  “Please give this to her?”

  She hands me a folded up piece of paper. Unfolding it, I see a crude drawing of Solar Flare and me flying, holding Kaley between us.

  “I’ll do that next time I see her,” I say, trying to ignore the twist of guilt in my gut.

  “Thanks!”

  “Now, honey, it’s way past your bedtime, and if you don’t go down soon, your mother will kill me in the morning.”

  In a huff that makes her go invisible for a moment, Kaley runs off.

  “Kids,” Mendoza says.

  “I wouldn’t know.”

  “You don’t got any of your own?”

  I laugh. “I sure hope not.”

  “You gotta give it a whirl, man. The world can be all sorts of shit, but when you got kids, it makes even the worst times not so bad.”

  I don’t know what to say to that. “I’ll call you if I find anything.”

  “Thanks. Drive safe, man.”

  Outside again, the rain’s coming down harder than it was before. I pull up the collar of my coat.

  Tragedii meets me halfway down the stairs, rain dripping down her armor.

  “Hey again,” I say.

  “Hey, I need to pick up something downstairs, can I have the key?”

  “Sure, I was about to bring it back anyway,” I say, passing it to her.

  “You weren’t planning on heading back in, were you?”

  “I was thinkin’ about getting a drink or two.”

  “Don’t. Louie just came in, and between all his speechifying about the glory days of the Gray Empire, he’s still pretty sore with you for what you brought down.”

  “Still?”

  “Hey, you know those Grays; they know how to hold grudges.”

  “Fine,” I say, running a hand through my rain-slicked hair.

  She looks at me, concerned. “You still got some work to do back at the office?”

  “Stuff I was putting off, but yeah, why?”

  “Well, head on over there. When I’m done down here, I’ll bring over a bottle.”

  “On my tab?”

  “On the house.”

  I raise an eyebrow. Offers of free booze from Tragedii are few and far between. You gotta jump on them when they come up. And I was looking forward to something a little more exciting than Collingwraith’s cognac.

  “Only if you take a shot or two with me.”

  “Sounds like a night,” she says, heading into the Well.

  I drive across the street to my office, heading inside and immediately locking up. Content after a quick sweep of the office that it’s empty (fucking Bystander, I shouldn’t be this paranoid), I set my coat out to dry, head to my back storeroom, and empty out the box of reams of printer paper to find the treasure hidden at the bottom.

  Collingwraith’s computer.

  I’m hardly what you’d call a hacker, but with my powers and the necessary device in hand, I can pretty much tear apart anyone’s secrets. I’ve no doubt I’ll be able to find any offsite data storage he has, as well as access any and all files on the hard drive itself. None of what we find will stand up in court, of course; recorded visions of people caught in the act are one thing, recorded visions of illegally accessed personal correspondence are another. But if we dump it all online and let the court of public opinion take apart the people named as co-conspirators, well, that wouldn’t be so terrible, would it?

  God bless the Internet.

  Then again, there’s a chance Collingwraith might’ve been given access to the Julian file itself. People have shown crazier things to their lawyers. Julian was almost certainly preparing it for legal action, and if I can download an anonymous copy, maybe we can do this the official way.

  I set the laptop on my desk and sit down, getting ready to glance into the world of a lawyer to the disgusting, when I feel it.

  Three stabbing pains in my right arm.

  “Fuck!” I exclaim, wrenching away from the armrest.

  There are three small punctures on my forearm, each welling with a bead of blood.

  I look closely at the armrest and am just barely able to see what I’m pretty sure are three small needles sticking from it, but before I can be sure, everything turns black.

  I’m woken back up by a sharp, stabbing pain to the side of my neck, and the sudden feeling that my body is ready to run a marathon.

  Adrenaline. Low dose, but a damn strong wakeup call.

  As my eyes clear and fee
ling comes back to my body, I know I’m still sitting in my office chair, now turned so I’m staring at the picture of me, Marco, and Bystander when we were kids.

  I try to stand up, to get away from the chair, but my legs are still weak, and, and …

  Shit.

  My left wrist is handcuffed to one of the exposed pipes in the wall. I test pulling at it and the cuffs hold firm.

  There’s someone behind me, and though the list of people who might want to drug and chain me to a wall is getting longer by the hour these days, I make a guess.

  “If you wanted to bust out the handcuffs, Bystander, you only had to ask.”

  She doesn’t laugh. She does, however, spin my chair around, wrenching at my arm painfully.

  “You really should’ve taken Mr. Milgram’s offer,” she says, pulling the bottle of pills from my trench coat and setting it beside me on the desk. Collingwraith’s laptop is gone, replaced now by an empty can of gas. Growing dread fills me as I see a couple more cans around the room, the stink of gas-soaked carpet filling the air.

  “Did you honestly expect me to take it?”

  “I expected you to be smart.”

  “Well, that was your first mistake.”

  “Eddie—”

  “You think smart is joining another supervillain? After that worked out so well for us last time?”

  She punches me in the stomach, hard. My left arm twists behind me, pain shooting through my entire body. I feel like I’m dying, and feebly, instinctively, I reach for my pills. She pushes them away, just out of reach.

  “Smart’s coming out on the winning side, and those sides will be determined sooner than you think.”

  “Not if we break your organization’s back first.”

  She laughs. “So you’ve jailed some minions and henchmen and aired the mayor’s pervert son’s dirty laundry, and you call that a victory? You’re just taking down small fish, hoping to build a case or stumble upon Julian’s file so a dead man can do all your work for you. Well, I’ve got news for you: small fish are cheap and replaceable, and we’ve found Julian’s file. The mayor’s all set to throw a big ‘destroying the file’ party. You’ve lost.”

  I don’t want to believe her, but I can hear a lot of the old Bystander in her voice, the Bystander who takes glee in ripping to shreds the lives of people who’ve wronged her.

  “I’m not alone. There are other people who know, who’ll fight, if you kill me,” I say, in part to taunt, in part to squeeze more information out of her.

  She smiles down at me, pulling a cell phone from her pocket.

  “Not for long,” she says, showing me the screen.

  The image cycles between several live hidden camera feeds, each more terrible than the last.

  The Lineup, Tragedii working behind the bar, completely unaware of the bomb planted in a small alcove by the camera.

  Petting Zoo’s strip club, similarly wired with hidden explosives.

  A dark alley in the Crescent. Dissident darts in after a dealer, unaware of the hit squad armed to the teeth with machine guns waiting for her.

  Kline, unconscious and tied to a chair in a fancy-looking room, a glowing stone on a table nearby.

  Mr. and Mrs. Mendoza, beaten and tied to chairs in the Well. Somewhere in the background, little John wails inconsolably.

  “Thanks for the key, by the way,” she says, tossing the Well key onto my desk.

  “You bitch,” I say, hating how bitter the words feel. Even like this, I still want her to be the Bystander I thought I knew, not the one in front of me.

  “Oh, you haven’t seen anything yet,” she says, putting the phone to her ear. “Light them up.”

  She drops the phone back in front of my face, and one by one I watch the screens go black.

  The Lineup and Petting Zoo’s strip club explode, the Lineup’s explosion rattling my office windows.

  The hit squad opens up on Dissident, the flashes of their weapons blinding the camera.

  Milgram walks into frame beside Kline, smiles, and turns the camera off.

  A final, cruel explosion engulfs the Mendozas in flames.

  I scream and fight, struggling against the handcuffs like a wild animal, reaching for Bystander as I throw every curse known to man her way, to hell with the agony in my arm.

  Bystander stands tauntingly out of reach by just a few inches, unflinching and still wearing a spiteful smile as she pockets the phone.

  “Hate me all you want, but this doesn’t have to be the end. I forgive you for everything you’ve done, and Mr. Milgram is willing to do the same. With nothing holding you back to this pitiful life, you can start over. We can start over. With Mr. Milgram, we can finally have the power we always wanted.”

  I spit in her face. She easily dodges out of the way, but her expression of hurt is back, and this time it doesn’t cut me so deep.

  So she knows how it feels, too? Good.

  “So that’s how it’s going to be, then?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Don’t make me do this.”

  “I thought nobody could make you do anything, Anya.”

  She runs a hand over her scalp in frustration. “You know, this has always been your problem. You’re so fucking stubborn you don’t know a good deal when one’s right in front of you.”

  I have to get out of here, have to help my friends that can still be helped. The way the footage cut out, I might still be able to save Tragedii and the Mendozas, maybe call Petting Zoo and Dissident to see if they’re still alive, and if a quick death were all Milgram had planned for Kline, he would’ve left the camera rolling … wouldn’t he?

  “Let’s run away,” I say.

  Bystander looks like I’ve started speaking in tongues. “What?”

  “You and me, right now. Let me go, let me help my friends, and we can just leave this city. You want to start over? Then let’s start a new life together someplace else, away from all this.”

  I mean every word, and she knows it.

  She considers me for too long before saying, “It’s a nice dream, but I can’t do that. I’ve worked too long and hard to get what I’ve made with Mr. Milgram, and I’m not going to throw that away.”

  “Then fuck off.”

  “Eddie …”

  I thrash out and reach for her again, yelling, “FUCK OFF! GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE OR KILL ME ALREADY!”

  I may be mistaken, but I think that’s a tear in her eye.

  She approaches me, easily batting away my free hand, and kisses me on the lips, hard, before stepping out of reach again.

  “It’s because I love you, Eddie, that I left the pill bottle on your desk. Swallow them all and you should die pretty quick, or at least be out for the rest of this.” She nudges the bottle back within my reach and starts for the door. She pulls a lighter from her pocket and lights it up.

  “I love you too, Bystander,” I say when she opens the door. “Remember that when you think about killing me. Remember you killed the only person who ever loved you the way you are.”

  She pauses, but still drops the lighter. The carpet ignites quickly, and she’s out the door.

  Shit. I really hoped that would work.

  I consider the pills for a fraction of a second, but that’s all. I may’ve made a life of taking the easy way out when things went to shit, but there’s too much Sunday school left in me to seriously consider that way out.

  What I do consider, though, is thanking my landlords for being as shitty about maintenance as they are. When I pull with both hands, I can feel the ancient pipe shift. When I pull even harder, I feel a little give. Bracing against the wall with both my legs, I feel it start to give way.

  The fire licks at my back as I put every bit of strength and pain I have into the pipe and break it free from the wall. The pain in my left arm is so blinding that I worry about losing consciousness, but the fire is enough to keep me focused.

  With all the strength I’ve got left, I stumble through the flames and first gr
ab my pills, then my trench coat, putting it on to help avoid the fire, then Harriet, before flinging myself through the flimsy plywood where my front window should be.

  The air is fresh and wet, a nice change from inside. A luxury car with blacked-out windows speeds away, no doubt one of Milgram or Card’s, carrying who I assume to be Bystander.

  I hobble across the street toward the split-open, flaming crater that used to be the Lineup. A few of the regulars are outside, standing around in shock or lying down and moaning.

  A great shape looms over the burning building, reaching inside and sifting through the ruins, plucking Louie up and setting him down next to the other survivors. It’s when I get close enough to get a good look at the beast that I feel joy for the first time since coming to in my office.

  It’s an elephant.

  A pale blue elephant.

  “PETTING ZOO!” I cry out.

  The elephant turns to face me, then transforms down into my old friend. I hobble-run to her and pull her close in a bear hug.

  “I thought you were—”

  “I was running late. Never thought I’d say thank god for bachelor parties, but—”

  “But they got your club, too.”

  “What?”

  “They hit your club. My office. Everywhere.”

  “They?” she asks, dubious.

  “They. Milgram. Mayor Card. Everyone in between.”

  “Motherfucker.”

  “Have you heard from Dissident?”

  “No. Have they gone for her too?”

  “Yeah. Can you call her?”

  “I’m on it.” She pulls out her phone.

  “Have you seen Tragedii?” I ask.

  Petting Zoo lowers her head.

  I don’t need to ask again to know the real Tragedii’s dead.

  “FUCK!”There’s a soft whimpering behind me. I take it for one of the regulars until I feel a small hand tugging at my coat. I turn to see a small absence standing behind me, rain curling around the form of what should be a little girl.

  “Kaley?”

  “They told me to hide and run. Daddy, Mommy, they told me to hide and run, and I did, and, and, Mommy and Daddy and Johnny …” she whimpers, collapsing in a cross-legged position next to me, still invisible save for the rain that curls around her like a million tears that don’t seem adequate for the horrors she’s just witnessed.