by Lucas Flint
“This is Titan King, correct?” said TW, spinning the hologram around in his hand to show off its full form.
“Yeah, that’s him,” I said. “Ugly guy, isn’t he?”
“He’s hardly a Lothario,” said TW. “I seem to remember Gregory telling me about this man once, though since Gregory never actually fought Titan King himself, I never saw him in person.”
“Same here,” I said. “I only know about him from the research I did on him. If I remember right, Titan King was once a superhero who went rogue at some point. He thought he was destined to rule the world because he was descended from English royalty and was going to make New York City the capital of his new ‘empire,’ which is why he attacked it.”
“But of course, Baron Glory stopped him,” said TW. “Right?”
“Right,” I said. “He still caused loads of damage, though, and Baron Glory didn’t do it entirely by himself. He had to get help from the National Association of Superheroes, who sent in their members to help him. Even then, Titan King nearly won through sheer brute force alone. He had the power to absorb kinetic energy and could generate metal from his body, which is where the tricked out armor came from.”
“Wait, he had two powers?” said TW in astonishment. “I thought that the Superpower drug only gave its users one power.”
“Yeah, the scientists who studied his body afterward weren’t sure how he did it, either,” I said. “Some theorized that Titan King had some kind of genetic anomaly which allowed his body to get two powers instead of one when injected with Superpower, but I don’t think anyone will ever really know, and anyway there’s no point in speculating about this, because Titan King has been dead for twenty years and everything.”
“True,” said TW as the Titan King hologram disappeared back into the palm of his hand. “It was worth discussing, at any rate. Titan King probably would want to kill Baron Glory if he were still alive today.”
“Probably,” I said. “I don’t see any point in worrying about it, though. Titan King is long dead. All we can do now is wait for Kyle to tell us what he’s found and then hopefully we’ll be able to move forward from there.”
“True,” said TW, “but this must be frustrating for you, because now you will have even less freedom to go around as Trickshot than you already do.”
“Yeah, it is,” I said with a shrug. “But what am I going to do? It’s not like I had complete freedom to fly around Rumsfeld before anyway. It’s not like I can just go up to Bug Bite or the police and say, ‘Hey, I know it’s illegal to be a superhero without a license, but I’m actually a really cool guy, so you don’t need to worry about arresting me.’”
TW raised an eyebrow. “Again, true. I suppose that from now on we’ll just need to focus on your training, which is what we really need to do anyway. It’s what your grandfather would want. Of that, I am sure.”
I nodded, but deep down, I didn’t like the idea of just sitting around not knowing what to do. The assassin was still out there somewhere and the more time he spent free, the harder it would be to actually catch him and bring him to justice when all was said and done. And that jerk probably knew that, too.
If only there was some way I could track him down now, some way that didn’t require waiting for Kyle to find evidence that might not even exist. But my mind drew a complete blank every time I tried to think of something. All I could think about was that smug look in the assassin’s eyes when he told me that I was the killer. That stupid one liner of his hadn’t made a lick of sense to me at the time, but looking back, it was obvious that he had planned to frame me for the assassination the entire time.
That was when it hit me. I sat up suddenly and looked at TW. “TW, I’ve got an idea about how we can find the killer.”
“Really?” said TW in surprise. “How?”
“We do what every criminal does eventually,” I said. “We go back to the scene of the crime and try to find the evidence we need to bring him in.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
At midnight that night, when I heard Uncle Josh snoring loudly in the room across the hall and made sure that Mom and Dad were both sound asleep, I donned my Trickshot costume and flew out to downtown Rumsfeld, to the scene of the assassination of Baron Glory. It was dangerous to fly around Rumsfeld at all times of day, even at night due to the presence of so many streetlights, but nighttime was still the best time for me to be active because most people slept at night and those few people who remained awake were generally not focused on the sky. Rumsfeld didn’t have much of a night life, so to speak.
In less than an hour, I landed on the rooftop of the apartment building where the assassin had taken his shot and looked around quickly. I was all alone up here, with nary a soul in sight, but I still made sure to move as quietly as I could toward the door, because I didn’t want to wake up the people inside the apartment building. Luckily, the roof door was unlocked, so I opened it and slipped inside as carefully as I could, closing the door silently behind me on the way in.
I found myself at the top of a spiral staircase that opened out into a hallway below. The hallway lights were on, but as far as I could tell, there was no one down there at the moment. Most likely, all of the inhabitants of the building were sleeping soundly, so I carefully made my way down the stairs one step at a time, pausing every second step to make sure that no one was going to wake up and hear me. But I heard nothing, aside from the humming of the air conditioning, and I soon reached the hallway itself.
It wasn’t hard to spot the door to the room where the sniper had shot from. It was blocked off with yellow police tape that said ‘CRIME SCENE.’ The door itself was not locked, from what I could tell, and luckily there were no police officers nearby. I could hardly believe my luck. TW had expressed doubts about whether I’d be able to enter the crime scene when I told him the idea earlier, but I had insisted that it would be easy for me to do, and it looked like I was about to be proved right.
I quickly made my way down the hallway, listening to the sounds of snoring and loud TVs coming from doors on either side of the hallway. It sounded like some people weren’t entirely asleep, but perhaps they just left their TVs on and fell asleep watching them. In any case, I reached the police tape quickly and went under it.
As I suspected, the door was not locked. I opened the door, entered the room, and closed it in one swift motion, stopping briefly in order to listen to the hallway outside for any sounds. I did not hear any other doors open, which meant that none of the other apartment dwellers had heard me enter. It was a relief to realize that.
“See, TW?” I muttered under my breath. “I did sneak in without being heard.”
“I see that,” said TW, though he didn’t sound very happy to me. “Are you just going to stand around and gloat about it to me or are you going to start searching the apartment?”
“Hey, just wanted to make it clear that you were wrong,” I said, unable to hide my smile.
I looked around the apartment I had just entered. It appeared to be a one-bedroom apartment, and a nice one, at that. The living room area had nice carpeted floor, with a comfy black sofa and footstool set in front of a large wide-screen TV. A small kitchen area stood off to the right, complete with a fridge and sink, the fridge humming quietly in the darkness of the night. The door to the bathroom stood closed beside the kitchen, while the bedroom door stood off on the opposite of the room. And, directly before me, were the windows from which the sniper had fired his gun.
I made my way over to the windows, because that was where the sniper had fired his gun, so if he had left any evidence, it would have to be there. I stopped before the windows and studied them more closely.
They were two tall, nearly full-body, windows, affording an excellent view of downtown Rumsfeld. I could see the Rumsfeld Court House from here, as well as the cars that made their way downtown going who knows where. But Rumsfeld was far quieter tonight than usual. I only saw a handful of pedestrians, who might have been drug dealers based
on the way they furtively moved. I also saw a cat slinking among some trashcans, but other than that, downtown Rumsfeld was very quiet tonight.
As for the windows themselves, I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary, aside from a couple of footprints in the carpet that obviously belonged to the sniper. There was also a little gunpowder, but it was too little for me to use as evidence for anything other than the obvious fact that the sniper had been here, which was a fact I already knew. A cockroach scurried across the windowsill, but I paid it no attention.
“It doesn’t look like there’s much to see in here,” said TW. “Assuming the assassin even left any clues behind, they were probably already found and confiscated by the police. So, unless your next brilliant idea is to break into the police headquarters next, we should probably go home before someone finds out you’re missing.”
“Come on, TW,” I said in a low voice. “Everyone back home is still asleep. And since this apartment is still cordoned off by the police, I doubt anyone will accidentally walk in on us. I’m going to search the bedroom. There might be some clues in there.”
Turning around, I walked over to the bedroom door and opened it. Poking my head inside, I found a single queen-sized bed, along with a chest of drawers, another TV, and several bookshelves full of books and knickknacks. Like the rest of the apartment, there were no people in here, so I stepped inside and started looking more closely at everything.
But like with the windowsill outside, I had little luck. The place was as clean as the day it had been built, maybe even cleaner, with the result being that I had to concede to TW’s point about the police doing a clean sweep of the place earlier that day. It made sense. The police always cleaned up a crime scene, taking whatever clues or evidence they could find and taking it away with them back to their headquarters for further examination. This entire idea of breaking into the apartment to search for that one piece of evidence which the police had somehow overlooked was starting to seem more and more absurd even to me.
Stepping out of the bedroom, my shoulders slumped. “You know, TW, I think you might be right about this idea. It seems like the Rumsfeld City Police Department did a good job of cleaning this place up.”
“Which is precisely why we should go home now,” said TW. “I know you want to prove your innocence, but returning to the scene of the crime, even at night like this, is a risky way to do it.”
“Okay,” I said, “but first, I want to check the bathroom. Maybe the killer forgot to flush and I can use his crap to identify him or something.”
“I don’t find toilet humor particularly humorous, Jack.”
I ignored TW’s comment. I walked across the apartment to the bathroom door, which, like every other door I’d tried in here, was unlocked. Pushing the door open, I stepped inside the bathroom and looked around.
It was a pretty small bathroom, with a small walk-in shower off to one side and a toilet and sink on the other. Fluffy white towels were stacked neatly on a shelf above the toilet, while an array of women’s beauty products stood on the sink countertop like soldiers ready for marching orders.
“Looks like this must be a girl’s apartment,” I muttered. “Wonder if she’s hot.”
“She’s probably staying somewhere else right now, given how her apartment is being treated as a crime scene,” said TW.
“You always know how to suck the fun out of things, don’t you?” I said. “Anyway, let me check this place out. It’s not very big, so it shouldn’t take me long to find any clues.”
I yanked open the mirror, only to find another set of women’s beauty products, which made me wonder just how much money this woman had spent on beauty products. I knew my mom loved to use all sorts of beauty products to make herself more beautiful, but in comparison to this woman, Mom looked stingy.
Closing the mirror, I walked over to the shower and pushed the shower curtain aside. As I did so, another cockroach crawled past me out the door. What was up with this place and cockroaches? Did this woman have an infestation or something?
Shaking my head, I looked closely at the shower and suddenly saw something behind one of the shampoo bottles on the shelf next to the shower head. Pushing the shampoo bottle aside, I found a small piece of black fabric which looked like the same fabric as the sniper’s suit.
“What do you think?” I said. “A clue?”
“Possibly, though I don’t see how this piece of fabric could have gotten here,” said TW. “Unless, that is, the sniper took a nice shower before he killed Baron.”
“Always a possibility,” I said jokingly. “In any case, this looks like the only piece of evidence I can find. Guess it’s time to leave.”
“Good idea,” said TW. “I’ll scan the fabric when we get back home and see if I can find any DNA strands on it that might be able to point us to the killer’s real identity.”
“You can do that?”
“I can do a lot of things,” said TW. “Or, at least, the Trickshot Watch can. I still haven’t shown you all of its abilities yet, but yes, DNA-scanning is one of them, though one of its more mundane powers, if I say so myself.”
I found myself wondering how a DNA-scanning watch that could connect to the Internet and match a DNA profile with a DNA database could be described as ‘mundane,’ but decided that I had more important things to do than wonder about that. I put the fabric in the pocket of my suit, did a last cursory check of the bathroom again to make sure I didn’t overlook anything, and then walked over to the door, which I opened and walked out of.
Just as I stepped out of the bathroom, my foot caught something and I found myself suddenly hanging upside down from the ceiling from what felt like a spider web.
CHAPTER EIGHT
I didn’t know what happened. One moment, I was standing on my own two feet on the carpeted flooring of the apartment. The next, I was hanging upside down from the ceiling due to what felt like a spider web around my ankles, the piece of fabric I picked up falling out of my pocket onto the ground below. Looking upwards, I realized that I was hanging upside down by a giant spider web, which was wrapped tightly around my ankles. Due to its strength, however, it felt more like a steel chain than a spider web.
“What the hell?” I said. “Where did this webbing come from?”
“It came from me, murderer,” said a sharp voice with a slight buzz to it. “Your days of assassinating superheros in broad daylight are over.”
I looked over in the direction from which the voice came. At first, it was hard to see due to the low light conditions of the apartment, but then a figure stepped out of the bedroom on the other side of the apartment and closed the door behind him. I almost gasped when I saw him, because I knew who this figure was all too well: Bug Bite, the official superhero of the city of Rumsfeld.
He wore an insect-like helmet over his face and a green body suit that reminded me of grasshoppers. He was tall and, though a bit on the thin side, powerfully built, with a utility belt around his waist which held all sorts of gadgets inside. He also had two wrist knives attached to his wrists, though they were currently retracted where I couldn’t see them at the moment.
“Bug Bite?” I said in surprise. “Were you waiting for me this entire time?”
Bug Bite nodded as he walked over to me. “Correct, murderer. I suspected that you would return to the scene of the crime at some point, so I left a couple of cockroaches here to keep an eye on the place while I was away. As soon as you appeared, the cockroaches contacted me and let me know you were here, no doubt for nefarious reasons.”
All of Bug Bite’s talk about cockroach spies would have sounded crazy to anyone else, but it didn’t sound crazy to me. It was common knowledge that Bug Bite had the ability to communicate with and control insects and bugs of all sorts, ranging from tiny ants to large beetles and everything in between, even from a distance. It wasn’t as flashy as super strength or cool as perfect aiming, but there was a reason why Bug Bite was Rumsfeld’s official superhero.
&nb
sp; “Where did this webbing come from?” I said, glancing up at the ceiling. “I didn’t know you could produce web.”
“I can’t,” said Bug Bite, stopping several feet away from me. “It’s a special concoction I made based on my studies of webbing. Prior to becoming a superhero, I studied entomology, with a special focus on spiders. I used my knowledge of spider webbing to make artificial webbing, though it is still very much a prototype, which is why I haven’t used it out in the field just yet. This is the first time I’ve tested it against a real enemy.”
“For a prototype, it’s pretty good,” I said, tugging at the webbing again. “Feels like steel.”
“That’s because it doesn’t just mimic spider webbing, but improves upon it,” said Bug Bite. He raised a fist. “It’s what separates us from the animals, our ability to improve upon nature. It is why natural selection made us the dominant species on Earth, and why we will continue to rule over the Earth well into the future.”
I had forgotten that Bug Bite was a science nerd, kind of like Kyle, except his interests were mostly focused on nature and insects. But I really wasn’t in any position to mock him for his nerdy interest in insects, given how it was that same nerdy interest which had allowed him to synthesize a fake webbing that was as strong as a steel cable. That was why Bug Bite was such an effective superhero. Though he lacked super strength or speed, he had a brilliant mind, which was a dangerous weapon in its own right.
“Yeah, that’s cool and all, but you’ve got the wrong guy,” I said. “I didn’t kill Baron Glory. It was a sniper dressed in all black.”
“Liar,” said Bug Bite. “I saw Baron’s body. I saw the small disk embedded in the back of his skull, the same disks you’re known to use. And given how I have three PhDs in three separate but demanding scientific fields, you would be unwise to try to fool me with your obvious lies.”
