Man of Steele

by Alex P. Berg

  They weren’t the SWAT officers from the King’s Theater, or the magic-slinging badasses in the SMRT program. The assembled cops instead looked like late night dregs, but beggars couldn’t be choosers. They’d have to do.

  Captain Knox waved them over. “You’re a sight for sore eyes, Detectives.”

  “Got here as soon as we could, Captain,” said Quinto between gulps of air. “The chief barely let us catch our breath before sending us out. Said the mayor could be in danger.”

  “We suspect he is.” She eyed the assembled officers: three men, a woman, a male elf, and a hulking, grayish-green skinned mutt of indeterminate sex. “You’re from the Old Town Precinct?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” said the one in front. “I’m Officer Watley. These are Officers Dunbar, Chelios, Navarre, Falynn, and Djorkert. At your service.”

  “What about the mages, Detective Quinto?”

  “We sent word, Captain,” he replied. “The runners are in full force. Communications are still a nightmare, but I got notice the army’s on its way. I imagine the witches and wizards won’t be too far behind.”

  “But you don’t know for sure.” Captain Knox ground her teeth. “Damn…”

  “Sorry, Captain,” said Quinto.

  “No need to apologize, Detective,” she said. “You’re doing all you can. You all are. But we can’t wait any longer to assess the situation. If there’s even a small chance to save the mayor, we have to take it. Follow me.”

  “Excuse me, Captain,” I said. “Follow you?”

  “Yes. It’s a simple instruction.”

  I hesitated. “But…who’ll interface with the Smarties when they arrive? Or the SWAT teams?”

  Captain Knox didn’t quite smile. Her show of teeth had a more animalistic quality to it. “I appreciate your concern, Daggers, but you’ve lost your mind if you think I’m sending the rest of you in without putting my own neck on the chopping block as well. Let’s move!”

  The Captain led the way to the grating next to the stairwell and yanked it to the side, revealing the lift’s interior. It wasn’t as luxurious as I’d expected. Rather, it resembled a jail cell the size of a closet. A single electrical globe glowed at the top, casting rays that died amid a jumble of pulleys and chains that stretched into the darkness above.

  “I don’t know how many people this thing can take,” said Knox. “Maybe six. Daggers and Steele, you’re with me. Some of you from Old Town, as well. Rodgers and Quinto, bring up the rear, either on the stairs or after the lift returns, your call.”

  Rodgers nodded. “Might wait. I think we could use the rest.”

  The rest of us piled into the cage, standing shoulder to shoulder in the tight space. The Captain pulled the grating back into place.

  “You sure this thing is safe?” I asked as she cranked on a lever at the side of the cage.

  “I haven’t heard of anyone dying yet.”

  I nodded, thinking to myself the lift had only been operational a month. It had time. Then we waited. And waited. And waited some more. The thing took forever, the dial for the stories creeping clockwise as we trundled up the darkened chute, wheels whirring and spinning in the shadows around us. It probably would’ve been faster to take the stairs, though we might not’ve been in any condition to fight when we’d arrived at the top. And perhaps we wouldn’t need to fight, but the implications of that possibility weren’t rosy.

  Finally, the clock hand reached the rightmost portion of the dial, and a bell chimed.

  Knox pulled open the grating and the door beyond it. “Stay alert.”

  We filed after her into a hallway as brightly lit and poshly decorated as the ground floor, but we didn’t have to guess where to go. Other than the stairwell to the side of the lift, there was but one door in front of us. It stood open, the doorjamb gashed and the lock’s strike plate hanging loosely at the side.

  The Captain swore and hopped through. I darted after her, wishing I’d keep hold of any of the weapons I’d wielded during the long night.

  Perhaps I shouldn’t have worried. No one jumped out to slash at me with a rusty dagger, or club me over the head with a leaded pipe. Rather the apartment appeared empty, much like the DA’s place but without the shattered windows.

  The main difference was the level of opulence between the places. Compared to Flint, the mayor might as well have been a king. Crystal chandeliers hung from vaulted ceilings, thick cherry bookshelves lined the walls, couches dotted the cavernous living room, dressed in leather and draped with deftly woven throws. Apparently, green-lighting luxury construction projects came with its perks.

  “Mayor Greenburg?” called Captain Knox. “Are you here? Spread out, all of you! Search for signs of him.”

  A knot formed in the middle of my stomach, the sort that usually did when I knew a conclusion was foregone. With the door in the state we’d found it and the mayor not responding to the Captain’s calls, that suggested two likely scenarios, neither of them good. I wondered if I’d find a bloody corpse or nothing at all in the man’s bedroom.

  It was the latter, thankfully, though the red silk sheets covering the bed gave me a scare. I skirted around to the master bathroom, ignoring the unfair levels of luxury the mayor lived in as I searched for blood or signs of struggle. I found neither.

  I stepped back into the bedchamber and called out. “Bedroom’s clear!”

  I heard another shout. “No one in the office!”

  Shay. “Kitchen’s empty!”

  The wind gusted and roared outside, and I wondered if perhaps the top of a massive, cloud-scraping monument wasn’t the smartest of places to wait for an oncoming cyclone to strike. Then another thought crossed my mind, or rather my gut. The windows were closed. The doors to the balcony were, too. And yet…I’d been fooled once. I should at least check.

  I cracked open the balcony door and immediately regretted my decision. Wind buffeted me, much stronger than what gusted at ground level. Rain lashed me in the face, ripping away whatever small measure of dryness I’d acquired since arriving. The dark clouds swirled overhead, close now and still crackling with lightning. I didn’t want to stare at them, but I reasoned that looking down was an even worse idea.

  With one hand holding the doorjamb for support, I took one step onto the balcony and looked up.

  I wasn’t sure exactly what I saw hanging from the edge of the building above me. It looked like a construction crane, except far smaller than what I imagined might be needed to erect a building such as this one. I also imagined it would’ve been dismantled at the conclusion of the work on One Freemont Plaza, yet something dangled from the end of it.

  Something that moved. Something human-shaped.

  “Oh, gods…” I stepped back into the bedroom and called out. “Captain! I see the mayor!”

  I’m sure she heard me, but whatever response she’d crafted was cut off by screams of terror, crashes, thumps, and shrieks of pain reverberating through the apartment from the direction of the front door.

  An oily voice followed them. “What do we have here?”

  39

  I darted to the bedroom door, poked my head around the edge, and surveyed the landscape. Two of the officers who’d joined us in the lift lay on the floor, one of them motionless and with a growing pool of blood seeping onto the tiles around them, the other writhing in agony, clutching his abdomen as blood stained his jacket black. A group of five goons crowded the penthouse’s entrance. Water dripped from their clothes and their hair, forming puddles at their feet. All of them wore heavy leather vests and combat boots, held crossbows, and had long dirks strapped at their belts. Two of them were busy reloading, while the others held their weapons at the ready.

  Markeville stood in their center, an evil sneer stretching his lips. He, too, held a crossbow, which he aimed down the middle of the room. The bolt shot free with a twang, thudding as it embedded itself in the topmost cushion of the couch nearest the windows.

&
nbsp; “Come out, Captain,” said Markeville, handing his empty crossbow to a crony in exchange for a fresh one. “You, too, Detectives Daggers and Steele. No point in delaying the inevitable.”

  The Captain’s voice called out from behind the couch, and I noticed a hint of her faded auburn hair poking over the top. “Who’s delaying the inevitable, Markeville? You think you’ll walk out of here a free man? We’ve mobilized the city against you. Police. Fire. Military. The Strategic Magical Response Teams. They’re on their way as we speak.”

  “But they’re not here yet, are they?” he said. “Which makes your boast all the more ironic.”

  “No it doesn’t,” I called. “It makes her boast anemic, or flaccid, or any other of numerous adjectives that could apply both to a poor bargaining position and your own manhood.”

  Markeville’s gaze shifted toward my doorframe. “Really, Detective? Now, of all times, you’re going to resort to childish insults?”

  I glanced at the far side of the room. Shay had called out that she’d cleared the kitchen. Which door led there? The goons hadn’t spread out yet, had they? And the other officer who’d come with us—where was she?

  “If now’s not the time, then I don’t know when is,” I said. “Might as well get them in before I die. A nice whiskey sour would hit the spot, too.”

  “I’m not planning on killing you yet, Detective, though we are getting tantalizingly close to that moment. I want you to see the futility of your actions before you die. See the world you’ve worked so hard to craft rot and crumble before you.”

  I considered my options. I had to assume Shay was alive. The Captain was too, but we wouldn’t be for long. My fear of being caught weaponless in a combat situation had been realized far too quickly, and as much confidence as I had in my ability to take Markeville one on one in a fair fight, his troop of goons armed with blades and crossbows tilted the scales in his direction. There wasn’t much of anything I could do against that many bows. Not with the mayor’s home so open, so cavernous. I might get lucky and avoid a shot if I dove behind a couch like the Captain had, but I’d never close on them before sprouting several bolts from my chest and neck.

  Of course, I did have the brandy bombs. I’d hoped to save those in the event I had to dance with the wind elemental again, but they were missiles, after all. I could pitch them across the room and create carnage. They might provide enough of a distraction for me to close on the goons—at which point they’d cut me to pieces with their blades, while the rest of my friends and colleagues burned to death in a fiery inferno after failing to evacuate a burning building fifteen stories above ground.

  There had to be a better strategy, but what? I needed to do something. Sitting around twiddling my thumbs wouldn’t get me anywhere…or would it? Markeville and his buddies must’ve come down from the roof, after all. Their sodden clothing gave it away, even if the mayor’s presence above didn’t.

  “I can’t wait to see it,” I called back.

  “Excuse me?” said Markeville.

  “The death and destruction and ruin. Can’t wait.”

  “Are you being sarcastic, Detective?”

  “A little. More ironic, though. I figured you could use a few pointers on how to use that rhetorical device properly.”

  Markeville laughed, a bone-chilling, hollow guffaw that echoed around the mayor’s home with all the warmth of a banshee’s shriek. “It’s a shame I have to kill you, Detective. I’m going to miss your banter. So many of the antagonists I’ve faced over the years have possessed the mental capacity of a gnat. You’re on the level of an ant, at least.”

  “And yet you’re the one who doesn’t understand irony,” I said. “You know what? Screw it. While we’re both alive, let me give you a broader lesson, because irony isn’t as cut and dry as most people think. You see, you’ve got your verbal irony, which is what most people classify as regular irony, but it’s also the most commonly misconstrued. That’s when you say one thing but mean another. You get a lot of ironic similes of that sort. Clear as mud. Sharp as a bowling ball. That kind of thing.”

  The Captain hissed at me. “Daggers, what the hell are you doing?”

  I waved her back from the confines of my doorframe. “Then you’ve got your situational irony. That occurs when an action results in the opposite desired effect. Like, say, if you tried to kill me and ended up dead yourself. Oh, how sweetly ironic that would be.”

  “I tire of this, Detective,” said Markeville. “Maybe I was wrong. Gnat seems more appropriate after all.”

  “Wait,” I said. “I haven’t even gotten to tragic and dramatic irony, yet. You’re going to love those. Well, you will if you assume we’re all pawns in some omnipotent being’s grasp, our fates already sealed, signed, and delivered.”

  A crossbow twanged, and a bolt sprouted from the doorjamb opposite me.

  “Men,” said Markeville. “Advance. Cripple him if you must, but don’t kill the Detective. Same for Steele, wherever she’s hiding. Murder the rest.”

  Crap… I reached into my jacket for the bombs and matches, hoping I’d be able to light one before being gutted, when time finally caught up with Markeville.

  I’d expected our backup to burst into the mayor’s office with a collective roar. Instead, I heard a swish and a crack of bone, followed by a howl of pain before everything exploded into a cacophony of yells and crashes.

  I turned the corner and darted into the action, unprepared for the full extent of the melee into which I’d be diving. Crossbow bolts flew as readily as curses. Blades and truncheons cut through the air as Rodgers, Quinto, and the rest of the officers pushed Markeville and his goons into the room, but the thugs fought back with unbridled ferocity. Already the elven officer lay on the ground, clutching a wide gash in his side. Quinto slammed a fist into one of the thug’s faces even as a crossbow bolt slammed into his shoulder, causing him to cry out in pain.

  I narrowed in on the closest gangbanger. Take them one at a time, and try not to die. That was what any brawl or battle boiled down to, but it was hard not to worry about the forest when facing a single tree.

  Shay darted out from a doorway as I bore down on the thug from behind, a honing steel in hand. Her eyes flickered toward me, taking stock of me, the thug, and the rest of the situation in a fraction of a second, same as I had.

  The goon noticed us a moment too late. He turned toward me, slicing the air with his long knife in an effort to cut the arm of my oncoming fist.

  Lucky for me, I’d decided to kick him. My boot landed on the side of his knee. He wobbled and grunted as Shay’s honing steel took him on the back of his neck, between the shoulder blades. He spun on his good foot, tying to use his momentum to cut Steele open from ear to ear, but I used my momentum too. I kept going, catching his forearm and slamming the rest of my weight into his shoulder joint. Something popped, and he screamed. Shay’s second honing steel blast caught him across the nose. It shut him up.

  Shay and I simultaneously turned toward the fighting, but somehow it had already ended. Two more officers lay on the floor, bloodied but conscious. Two of the goons joined them, one with a crossbow bolt sticking through his chest, another with his neck twisted to the side at an unnatural angle. Rodgers and the orc hybrid, Officer Djorkert, I think, were tag teaming one of the others, beating him into submission with truncheons. Quinto had the last in a one-armed headlock, slowly choking the life out of him. Blood streaked his coat underneath the bolt that sprouted from his shoulder, the arm hanging limp at his side.

  The Captain shouted at us as she popped from behind the couch. “Get Markeville! Go! I’ll help Quinto!”

  Officer Djorkert ran to the door as Rodgers blasted the goon underneath him with one last boot to the face. Shay and I ran to the hallway, too.

  We paused there for a second. The lift stood at the ready, meaning Markeville had taken to the stairs. The question was up or down.

  It wasn’t much of a question, real
ly. Winds howled and rain echoed down the stairwell from above.

  “Follow me,” I said as I hopped up the stairs. Bare electrical globes illuminated the concrete steps, four sets of ten as I raced toward the heavens. The last set were slick from rain.

  I paused a couple steps shy of the open door. Wind howled past it, carrying with it driving rain. The cyclone’s angry dark clouds churned and spun. I couldn’t believe how close they appeared, looming over the tall spire of a building like an apocalyptic prophecy. Had the height of the building brought us so close to the storm, or had the storm travelled to us? By the gods, was the cyclone specifically targeting the Freemont Plaza Building?

  “I see him!” said Officer Djorkert.

  I did, too. Markeville stood there, near the edge of the roof, the winds and rain howling and whipping around him. Despite their ferocity, he seemed at ease. His body didn’t tilt when the winds blew past. His hair, damp though it was, didn’t flutter, nor did his shirt and jacket. He simply stood there, uncaring, as if the storm didn’t exist, as if none of the violent carnage from the mayor’s apartment had come to pass.

  “Come on,” shouted Officer Djorkert over the roar. “Let’s get him!”

  “Wait!” I said, but Djorkert had already rushed into the rain. She stumbled across the roof, bearing down on Markeville, truncheon in hand.

  And then the wind intensified. Djorkert hunched and dug her heels into the concrete, but it wasn’t enough. With an ear-splitting shriek, the wind pushed Djorkert to the side. She toppled and fell, skidding across the roof. I thought I caught a hint of a scream as she flew over the side, disappearing into the empty night.

  Shay swore behind me. “Gods…”

  The wind shrieked and swirled, whipping rain into the stairwell, and once again I saw the face. The beady eyes and wide open mouth. The same one I’d seen at the chief’s house, now free of smoke and debris but otherwise the same. It rushed toward the open door, howling with rage, but at the last moment, it pulled away, the eyes wide and the mouth puckered.