by Ben Mason
“I told Bowler Hat the same thing,” Dominic said. “Not possible. I need time for that. He tells me no dice. He wants this to be a quiet affair, me, him, and Uncle Sam. So I try and explain it slower. All the while I’m trying to read where this guy is at. And that was where it got scary.”
He paused, took another drink, and stared at the bottle after he was done. “He wasn’t thinking anything. No mental resistance, no tech, no magic.”
“Duh, cuz he’s a robot,” Julie said.
“Well, I know that now. But what was I supposed to do back then? Slap a magnet to his head and see if it sticks?”
Julie stuck her tongue out and Dominic chuckled.
“And what help did he give you? Blueprints, codes, bio-codes?” Siv asked, moving closer to the girl. Christoph saw her eyes. He doubted Dominic was able to read her thoughts, even if her actions reflected them. He guessed the spell protecting them also mitigated his former apprentice’s powers. There was no way a Watcher, even a retired one, was going to trust a supervillain to do the right thing.
“Nothing. All he said was walk in and don’t worry. ‘Nobody is going to bother you.’”
“No way,” John said.
“I swear,” Dominic said holding up his hands. “And I did. I walked in with a pass he supplied. Didn’t have to lift one finger or give one mental suggestion. There was no one at their posts and none of the defenses worked. Anybody off the street could have done it. I didn’t understand why he needed me.”
Dusting off some debris, Christoph put his drink on the floor (after putting a coaster under it). Steepling his fingers, he tried to think about the rumors he’d heard about Dominic over the years. He was too weary to get very far. “And you didn’t suspect any treachery? Even at that point? God, Dominic, you’ve made enough enemies over the years. I was sure I had taught you better.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Dominic said, waving him off. “But it wasn’t them. None of the enemies I’ve made have this kind of MO. Or this kind of power. Anyway, once I got the helmet the guy turned on me. I was able to throw myself out of his reach, into some trees, and rushed here.”
Siv sighed. She wanted to believe him. Christoph could see it.
“Hey,” Julie said, her voice wavering. “Why haven’t the police shown up?”
The question hit Christoph like a bullet train. Why hadn’t they shown up? Bad as response times were, explosions were unlikely to be ignored by the neighbors. Same with the Watchers. None of the answers were appetizing. “John, is Wendy home?”
“I’m going to check on her,” he said, standing up.
“I’ll come, too,” Julie said, popping up.
“No, you won’t. Stay here with Ms. Moller.”
Julie’s eyes blazed. A trait she had picked up from her mother.
Siv touched her arm. “Want to learn the chant I used?”
Julie bit her lip, letting the fear wash over her as she nodded. It was moments like these when Christoph remembered how much of a child she was. He closed his eyes in prayer. Please, God or anybody listening. Please don’t let her mother be dead. Not because of me.
John came back after a minute, his face stricken. “She’s looks okay, but she’s not moving. She’s just standing there frozen.”
Dominic closed his eyes. “I’m not getting any thoughts from anywhere, your neighbors included. Is she breathing?”
John hesitated, his eyes flicking over to his daughter. His jaw tightened. “No. She’s in the kitchen, looking at color swatches. And there’s some kind of blue translucent web glittering all over her.”
Christoph stiffened along with Siv.
They had seen this once before. The Shirrash.
Deep in the pit of his stomach Christoph realized this wasn’t like last time. There wasn’t going to be any help.
They were on their own.
Chapter 16
When Siv came back, her shield had been at the ready as her eyes studied the darkened sky. She stepped through the ruined wall, her face a mask. “It’s Shirrashi tech all right. Wendy’s frozen.”
“So are the Maybears next door,” John said. “And I called the hospital and everyone else on my list. No one answered. Even when I sent texts saying it was urgent.”
“Maybe the Shirrashi’s vows to never come back aren’t worth much,” Siv said, shrugging her shoulders.
I wouldn’t bet that, Christoph thought as he straightened his tie. He had seen their markings recently and it hadn’t been an alien holding the reins. Any lingering doubts he had were gone now. Murakawa was behind this. The question was, why? He had the crystal now, and from what he had seen with Avros it had power to spare. A helmet made by Karpathians was impressive but clearly not on the same level.
Patting his suit down, he glanced around the attic. There was a hole on the far side and his rocking chair had been singed and blackened from the heat. Too bad. It had been handmade and the creator had been ancient back when Christoph first bought it. Like the house, it was damaged beyond repair.
Christoph moved to go down stairs and then doubled back to the shelf, fishing out his burner phone. Robert was unable to help them, but throwing away a potential tool—and ally—was foolish.
Moving downstairs, he heard the voices. John and Dominic. They rubbed each other the wrong way. Add in Siv’s distrust for villains and it was a disaster waiting to happen.
Not to mention all your secrets.
He froze, his hand hovering above the broken handrail. Yes. He was keeping secrets. Because he knew who they were up against and, even with the threat of death he wasn’t speaking. There was no way of sugarcoating it: he was hiding it because revealing Murakawa meant revealing his own failed heist. Which meant the loss of Siv’s affections, John’s trust, and Julie’s friendship.
“Why not?” John’s voice rose, breaking Christoph out of his thoughts. He started to move down the steps again, letting his mass grow lighter. No point in surviving a fight only to break your neck falling down a ruined staircase.
“You’re just going to leave me to die? Some doctor you are,” Dominic said a large current of sarcasm running through his voice. Another habit Christoph had never been able to correct in the child.
“Stop it, both of you,” Siv’s voice said, weary.
“Please,” Christoph said as he came back down. Both men were at each other’s throats, their noses close to smashing together. Julie stared from one side, her eyes wide, and Siv glanced over her shoulder, her shield held ready at her side in front of the open door.
All of their heads turned to him.
“This is my house, whatever is left, and you are my guests. Let’s have a cup of tea or water, if the fridge is working, and discuss our options.”
“Options?” John said, his eyes incredulous. “My wife is frozen along with the rest of the world because this guy has a pissed-off employer gunning for him. I say we save him the trouble.”
“John, please. No bloodshed,” Christoph said, putting a hand on his neighbor’s shoulder. He leaned in, lowering his voice. “I can’t imagine your fear and anger, but your daughter is watching.”
John’s shoulders sank a little. “You’re right. I’m not thinking clearly.”
“Who could?” Christoph said, giving him a smile. “And as for you, Dominic,” he said, steel replacing warmth in his voice. “Are you leaving anything out? Anything at all?”
His former apprentice raised his hands. By now the boy’s hair was wild again, covering most of his eyes. “No. I swear I’m as in the dark as the rest of you. I don’t even know what the helmet is supposed to do.”
“There’s a good start,” Christoph said. “We need to find out what your former employer wanted with it.”
“And why you have to die,” Julie said.
“Pardon?” Siv asked over her shoulder. She kept facing the front, never quite prying her attention from her post.
“If he can freeze time, he doesn’t need to kill you. Or leave you alive to do it. Right?�
�
“Afraid not, Julie,” Christoph said. “The Shirrashi technology does freeze beings, but it doesn’t allow for any energy or projectile to harm them. Ethics and power from a civil war millennia ago. Built into the foundation of the programming.”
“But she does have a point,” Siv said.
Julie beamed, standing taller.
“Your employer didn’t need to track you down to keep the helmet. You were no immediate threat. Once there was distance, he could freeze you along with everyone else. Why didn’t he?”
The question hung in the air along with the smell of the cold night air. The stars had come out by then and there was a draft moving along the hallway.
“You can all set off to try and figure this out. I’m not going back. One suicidal military base mission was enough for me,” Dominic said, shaking his head.
“I agree. No reason to return to the scene of the crime. He’ll be expecting it,” Siv said. “So we’ll go to the one place I’m sure has a backup.”
“And that is?” Christoph asked.
“The Watchtower.”
The Watchtower was a large, circular building made of crystal and steel that lay at the heart of Selenium. It was graceful, majestic, brilliantly lit like the Eiffel Tower. Christoph had always hated it. As if the heroes were saying ‘no one dares to destroy our property.’ The thing reeked of equal parts obliviousness and bloated pride.
But it was well defended. The few idiots who (mostly drunk) decided to attack were repelled or incinerated by powerful magical wards or electronic defenses. Because of these defenses and the large amount of heroes who populated it at any given hour, Christoph had never been inside. So when Siv told him all of the government’s secrets were backed up in computers, it was a surprise.
“I am not darkening those doors,” Dominic said, shaking his head.
“Why not?” she had said. “It’s the safest place on Earth. And we can trust Julie and John to stay there with little chance of being harmed by whatever is coming after us.”
“Yeah,” Dominic said. “But if the magic stopwatch turns off while we’re inside, there’s no way Christoph and I are going to escape.”
“Chris hasn’t broken any laws,” Siv said confidently. In her eyes it wasn’t a question. “And I would think imprisonment is better than death.”
“Debatable,” Dominic said. His eyes unfocused for a second and then he pointed to her shield. “Swear on your shield and your homeland I won’t be arrested. And on your grandkid, Thors. Then I’ll believe you.”
She moved in a blur before Christoph could stop her, pinning her shield against Dominic’s throat, holding him against the wall. “Get out of my head and away from my family, parasite.”
“It’s Cerebrus.”
“It’s dead, if it trespasses into my mind again.”
Dominic hesitated. He tried to focus on some object or on pushing Siv away with his mind. Each time he started she dug the shield in or jabbed him in the ribs. He gave up after three tries. “Fine. I promise not to read you.”
“You can read minds?” Julie asked.
“Yeah.”
“What am I thinking right now?”
Dominic broke into a grin, his eyes softening. So did some of the lines in his face. “You’re thinking banana sundaes are a scam adults came up with to get kids to eat fruit.”
“Exactly,” she said, solemnly nodding her head.
“Can’t say I disagree,” he said. He tapped the shield with one hand. Siv dug in for a second, then dropped it.
Christoph decided this was the moment. “Dominic, if you don’t feel comfortable in the Watchtower, you can wait outside. John, I promise I won’t rest until we get Wendy unfrozen. Along with the rest of the world,” he added, giving Siv a wink. Between the suit and his allies he felt super again. And now he had another enemy to thwart.
To crush.
He dispelled the thought from his mind. It wasn’t personal. Murakawa hadn’t killed anyone yet, or even targeted them. It was a professional disagreement. One that was going to need to be curbed terminally.
“Fine,” John said. “But I want Dominic in another car as we go there, in case he gets blown off the road.”
“I like you, too,” Dominic said.
“Done,” Christoph said. Staring into the dark, he studied the stars and the dark shapes of the houses from the other side of the street. “Siv and I will go with Dominic.”
“Cerebrus.”
Christoph shot Dominic a glare. “From what I saw in the fight, Dominic’s employer didn’t attack Julie.” Julie’s eyes widened. She was at the age where death happened to other people.
“My guess is if we are attacked, they won’t be. And now we need to leave,” Christoph said pointing his chin out the gaping opening of his house. “The longer we wait the more opportunities we give him.”
And with Murakawa one is enough, Christoph thought. He shivered as they moved outside and told himself it was just the wind.
And deep inside his mind, the fog started to roll back in.
Chapter 17
It was hard to appreciate the Watchtower with the lobby littered with frozen living mannequins of some of his archenemies and (more often) their offspring, glittering in the same blue webs that held Wendy. Some were sprinting to the front door; others were flying upward, using the small spiral opening in the middle of the building to get to the roof or some higher floor. Others were lounging and chatting with a few of the men and women angling for dates or more (ahem) discreet encounters.
And of course, hovering right in the middle of the floor, the radiance from the building’s lights falling gracefully upon him, was Vanguard. Gods, even caught off guard he was a living symbol of righteousness and virtue. It made Christoph want to retch.
The years, and subsequent scientific experiments, had left him with white hair, the physique of a twenty-year-old letting him wear his gold and blue spandex as tight as he wanted, and a few charming lines on his face making him more attractive than old. It was hard to believe he had once been a sanitation worker so long ago with the stupid luck of being struck by a meteor. He had even been reading a comic book when it happened. No doubt it was one of the reasons he kept quoting lines when he thwarted plans, like “FOR JUSTICE” and “TIME TO GUARD JUSTICE.” Even silent as he was now, Christoph wanted to punch him.
“I’m going to find a Sharpie,” Dominic said as they entered the lobby.
“Why?” Siv asked.
“I’m gonna draw a dick on his face,” Dominic said, already starting to look around.
“How old are you again?” Christoph asked.
“Old enough to know this chance isn’t going to come around again.”
“Do it and I’ll break your fingers,” Siv said. “Where are John and Julie?”
“I think he had to stop off for gas,” Christoph said. If he wasn’t able to figure out the pump controls, it meant siphoning from some other poor soul. And if he, did it meant stealing. Either way the extra time put distance between the two groups.
“I don’t want to bind the markers until they get inside,” Siv said. Her face was a mask, focused on the task at hand. Behind it there were so many questions. Christoph promised himself he would answer any and all of them truthfully no matter what it meant. He owed her that much. She had saved Dominic’s life and probably his as well.
“Hey, I say we wall this place up now,” Dominic said, trotting back, his hands empty, disappointment on his face. “Chris said it before. If Bowler Hat wanted to hurt Julie, he had plenty of chances.”
“It doesn’t mean the circumstances haven’t changed,” Siv said. “Plenty of supervillains are willing to hurt children if the ends profit from the means.”
“Yeah, well same with heroes if you change it to justify,” Dominic said.
“What are you both babbling about?” Christoph said, his tone sharp. His knuckles popped and the fog rushed forward, smashing against his willpower like a breaker against the roc
ks.
Siv and Dominic jumped a little.
“I forget how much of a Boy Scout you are,” Dominic said.
“What?” Christoph growled.
“You never were able to see the obvious,” he said, going on. “Lying to yourself, going on about a code between you and heroes. I wish you were able to see into their minds,” he said, bobbing his head toward some of the heroes. “They’ve got skeletons in their closets, too. And some of them the government helped bury.”
“Cute,” Siv said. “How am I supposed to believe you aren’t reading my mind again?”
Dominic sighed, let his eyes unfocus and then snap back. “Done. You have a mental block now, like Chris. Here, I’ll show you.”
Siv glared at him and then shifted slightly as one of her hands touched the back of her head. “Oh.”
“There. Are we done?”
“Fine. We need to get up to the fifteenth floor. That’s where the database is. Faster we get the info, the sooner we can look out for John and Julie and bind the markers again.”
“Well then, what are we waiting for?” Dominic said, moving past both of them. He stopped in front of Vanguard and, glaring at him, gave him a light scuff to the ankle before moving on. Judging from his gait, he was nervous.
Lightening his mass, Christoph felt the fog rush back around him. It was getting closer each time he used his power, coming closer and closer. And worse, the feelings of revulsion were starting to diminish. He was starting to welcome it.
“There’s no stairs,” Dominic called out.
“No, not on the first ten floors,” Siv said. “We either fly or leap usually. Stops a certain amount of spies that way.”
Dominic scowled. His telekinesis didn’t work on living things, meaning he was going to have to be carried. He moved forward, examining the walls, testing to see if he was able to leap up and scale them.
“Don’t bother,” Christoph said, coming closer. “You’re too old.”
“Says you.”
“Exactly. And I think I’m educated on the matter.”
