Broke and Famous

by Elizabeth Gannon

  “The lady wants a lawyer.” Thraex immediately answered. “She’s not sayin’…”

  “I don’t know what happened.” She admitted.

  Thraex let out an annoyed sound and turned to flash her an unhappy face. “What’d I just say about talkin’ to cops and you needin’ to avoid interrogations, Darlin’?”

  She ignored that. “I’ve never heard anything about a machine, and I’ve been with Thraex since we arrived.” She pointed to the area where they’d been standing earlier. “We were just standing here and the building blew up. We didn’t even know the Councilman was here until they found him in the wreckage.”

  Oz nodded, obviously expecting that answer. “You understand that if you’re lying to me…”

  “You’ll what?” Thraex challenged, cutting him off. “Call the lady a liar again, Dimico. See what happens.”

  “Hey!” The individual in the Kilroy mask and fireman hat shouted from the smoldering rubble, obviously not liking Thraex’s tone. “Did you just fucking threaten Oz!?!” There was a shocked and surprised quality to the question, like they couldn’t believe anyone would be that stupid. “While I’m standin’ here!?!”

  Thraex nodded. “Sure as the lord made little green apples.”

  Oz held up a hand, waving his teammate down as the person started forward to confront Thraex. “Not necessary, Multifarious. Thank you. Please don’t kill him, that won’t help me.” He pointed towards the other warehouse. “Please just go make sure that Syd doesn’t steal that little giraffe. He’s got his eye on it, I know it.”

  “I am not Multifarious. Today I am… Backdraft!” The masked person passionately announced before disappearing into the smoke to go protect Zoe from getting kidnapped by the C of C.

  “Yes, that’s nice.” Oz shook his head in resigned acceptance of his teammate’s insanity. “We’re going to get sued by another movie studio, I can feel it.” He said softly to himself.

  “You seem to know a lot about this case, seeing as how the explosion happened less than two hours ago.” Sasha remarked, feeling like there was something weird going on here.

  “I’m very detail oriented, Dr. Westgate.” Oz assured her calmly, refocusing on Thraex. “Do you find it at all odd that a man you’re known to have argued with on many occasions would meet his end on a night when he said he was meeting you, in a building you were in charge of watching?” Oz looked at Thraex and pointed at him with the end of his pen. “A building which city records indicate… has no owner?”

  “Not as odd as a fella that worked for the Freedom Squad and then a group of super-villains, actin’ like he’s lookin’ down on me from the moral high ground, but it is a mite bit odd, sure.” Thraex shrugged, as if helpless to explain. “It’s such a topsy-turvy lil’ world, ain’t it?”

  Sasha tried not to hit him, wishing that he’d attempt to be at least a little civil.

  Oz made a humoring sound, showing no outward sign of anger or amusement. Just a general discomfort with everything, which seemed to be his defining character trait. He gestured to the smoking rubble with his pen. “And you have no idea who owns this building?”

  Thraex shrugged, playing dumb.

  Oz looked over at her. “Dr. Westgate?”

  Sasha’s eyes widened. “Umm…” She stalled, not wanting to tell him about The Farm, but also not wanting to lie.

  “She’s got no idea either.” Thraex answered for her, letting her off the hook.

  “I see.” Oz wrote that down, sounding unsurprised. “So… if I look into this, how likely am I to find that you’re involved?” He asked casually, like he already knew the answer.

  Thraex just stared at him.

  “Thraex?” She urgently whispered, wanting him to deny involvement before he became a suspect in this.

  Thraex let out a sound like he thought he was the most mistreated person in the world because she was making him talk to this man. “If I was goin’ ‘round town offin’ folks I didn’t much like, you and your Consortium friends would be the first to know, Dimico, I can sure enough promise you that.”

  Oz closed his folder, meeting Thraex’s eyes. “So, if for argument’s sake… someone were to tell me that they saw Councilman Merridew with you tonight… those people would be liars, correct?”

  “Yes.” She answered immediately, feeling like that was one aspect of this which she could answer without hiding things.

  Thraex crossed his arms over his chest again, obviously feeling like that settled matters. “We done?”

  A moment of silence past between them and Sasha wasn’t certain what was about to happen.

  “Have a nice day.” Oz finally told them calmly, reaching into his pocket and removing a business card. He handed it to her, pointing at his number which was noted beneath the Consortium’s logo. “If you remember anything else, please contact us, Dr. Westgate.”

  “Yeah, of course.” Thraex agreed sarcastically. “You folks have done sooo much for the city.” He took the card from her hand and ripped it in half, then dropped the pieces onto the pavement.

  Oz watched the pieces of his card flutter away, then turned back to them. “Thank you for your time.” Then he simply strolled through the smoke, putting his particle mask back on.

  “Wow, get wrecked, other dude.” The person in the Kilroy mask sarcastically praised, leaning against one of the firetrucks. “Way to flex on that guy, Oz. I think he’s pissing himself right now.”

  Thraex’s face darkened as he watched them disappear into the smoke. “Damn Capes have got no business bein’ inside Reichelt Park.” He muttered. “We’re the ones forced to fix up the messes they make. They’re sociopaths, not heroes. They’re respected ‘cause they have power, even if they did nothin’ to earn that power and don’t do anythin’ worthwhile with it. If they didn’t have superpowers, you wouldn’t trust those people to mow your damn lawn.”

  Sasha turned to watch as the coroner van started to leave the scene, taking with it a city councilman and any hope she had of having a quiet return to the Westgate Foundation.

  Chapter 8

  “Stanley Westgate. Died 1949. Crashed the prototype of his flying car into the model for his atomic train. Smart man. Not the best pilot.”

  – Thraex, Damn Fool Ways Westgates Ended Up Graveyard Dead: Vol. 1

  “The thing that really bothers me,” Sasha continued, “is that we stopped the robbery and yet the building still exploded.”

  “That was a mite bit odd, yeah.” Thraex agreed. “And the cops said that the wire was worth, what? $50? Maybe?”

  “I don’t believe that.” Sasha pursed her lips in thought. “If the wire was so inexpensive… why would thieves target it specifically?” She held out a questioning hand. “No, I saw it. That was Periallian wire. I just don’t know what they were planning on doing with that big a spool of it. That’s a very specialized bit of tech there. It has to be blessed by ten different sages in order to hold that kind of charge.” She pursed her lips again. “And why would your ‘Huck Finn’-looking friend from The Farm be so interested in it in the first place?”

  Thraex shrugged. “I have no idea.”

  “And why was Councilman Merridew there?” Her brows drew together as she considered that. “I didn’t see him arrive and we were there for hours. But somehow he not only arrived, but died in the warehouse.”

  “Maybe he was already dead.” Thraex shrugged. “It is The Farm’s warehouse, after all.”

  She made an astonished sound and stared at him, mouth agape. “And you can just be blasé about something like that? Them murdering a man and storing his corpse 50 feet from us!?!”

  “I said ‘maybe,’ I don’t know.” He defended. “Isn’t The Farm’s style, but Merridew was a damned nuisance, so it’s still a possibility.”

  “And they were what? Using us as witnesses?” She shook her head. “They didn’t seem that happy with the situation to me.”

  Their warehouse had exploded, killing a city councilman, and now there we
re police and Capes running all over the area. If The Farm ever went back to that location, there would probably be trouble.

  If they wanted Merridew dead, there were far cleaner ways to do it.

  “I don’t know and I don’t care.” He looked down at his clipboard. “In the meantime, we just need to focus on the next job.”

  “You really expect us to work off your debt?” She arched an eyebrow. “For criminals who could be responsible for the death of a respected community leader? How is that fair?”

  “’Respected’ my ass, Merridew was grafting more cash outta this town than his pockets could hold.” He snorted. “’Sides, I wasn’t the one installing experimental equipment in a building that exploded, Darlin’.” He held his hands up to show his helplessness. “I tried to argue with them, but if a Westgate’s involved with something, people tend to believe that the outcome was the Westgate’s doin’. That’s the price of fame, chère.”

  She made a face, sulking lower on the bench.

  At the moment, they were sitting in the titular Reichelt Park, which was the central location of what once had been the city’s major science district of the same name.

  The community which surrounded the park was a world unto itself. It was a neighborhood of labs and workshops and social hangouts, all working to help the public in the same ways as super-heroes, only with a focus on science.

  In practice, the super-scientists seemed to spend most of their time concerned only with themselves and their society though. Their social mores and standing. Who would get their name on the patent, who would get the credit for the discovery, who wasn’t living up to the tradition of excellence set by their parents and grandparents. They lived for the science and the fame which came along with it.

  That way of life was slowly crumbling away though.

  Sasha could see it.

  The streets around the park had once been filled with expensive labs and large family-run businesses. These days, the whole neighborhood had a seedy and decaying appearance though. The kind of place you were afraid to walk at night. Half of the buildings were boarded up and the other half should have been. It was no wonder that people like The Farm were making in-roads here lately.

  Across the street from them, construction crews were busy tearing out what had once been one of the bigger labs in the area. The sign outside advertised that it would soon be retail and residential space, brought to the city by Triumph Industries.

  The little community of scientists in Reichelt Park was on the way out.

  The Freedom Squad had been the main superhero group around, and they had tried to fold all of the super-scientists into their ranks. And almost all of the major labs in town had closed as a result. Everything went through the Freedom Squad’s puppets inside Triumph Labs. They weren’t the paragons of virtue they appeared to be however, and they perverted science for evil. They betrayed the trust which was placed in them.

  Since the Freedom Squad’s defeat, the reformatted Triumph “Industries” had been buying up everything in Reichelt Park.

  Now… there really wasn’t anyone doing independent super-science anymore. Unless you counted The Institute for Mad Science, but they were all crazy. And evil.

  No, science was losing its power. It was no longer something which could be seen and demonstrated, it was now regarded as a confusing and dangerous element in the world. Science had promised humanity great things, but all it created were new ways to kill them off and make them miserable. It had birthed too many horrors. Destroyed too many pretty illusions. And now people had stopped listening to it.

  Science was obsolete.

  The park itself was named in honor of Franz Reichelt, an inventor who died testing his prototype parachute clothes in 1912. He’d jumped off the Eiffel Tower… and his invention hadn’t opened. He died on impact. But that didn’t stop the people of this neighborhood from viewing him as a hero and their unofficial mascot.

  Generally speaking, these people didn’t like to be told what they couldn’t do, even if it was for their own good. And they respected anyone who believed in his own science enough to bet his life on it.

  The park was the jewel of this neighborhood, even today, and everyone in the science community spent a lot of time in it. There was a science-themed fair here every year, and the decorations were already going up around them as Sasha and Thraex sat in the shade.

  Sasha turned her head to look for her brother, who had left to buy coffee and cinnamon buns from the small bakery inside the park, but she couldn’t find him. Kurtz… had a habit of disappearing.

  At the center of a park was the statue of Reichelt himself, dressed in his ill-fated experimental clothes and looking out over the city with a determined, visionary expression. His final words before his doomed jump were carved into the stone base where Sasha was sitting, which translated from French as: “See you soon.”

  The scientists who started up working in this part of the city had a grim sense of humor, but the park was lovely.

  These days, the only reason why anyone went here was to play Pokémon Go, argue physics with the professors seated around at tables, or to buy weed.

  None of the professors wanted to speak with her though, not since her series of accidents and poor decisions had crippled her scientific career.

  Kurtz was the only one in the family who played video games.

  And no one in this entire city was desperate enough to try to sell weed to Thraex.

  She leaned back on the stone bench, coming to terms with the fact that her brother had abandoned her and would never be bringing back their snacks. He’d probably gotten distracted by the people selling drugs again. And the inescapable lure of augmented reality mobile video games on his cell phone.

  “I just think that rather than killing ourselves working to pay off this debt, maybe we need to figure out what went wrong last night, so that it doesn’t happen again.” She protested to Thraex.

  “This ain’t the scientific method, Darlin’, it’s puttin’ up some cameras so that folks don’t steal things that ain’t theirs.” He looked around the park. “I think we can handle that again without another fatality, should need arise. Why The Farm’s building exploded is no concern of ours, we just need to get them the money. I know it goes against every instinct you have not to stick your nose into other people’s business, what with growing up in this town and all, but in this case, I think it’ll be for the best.”

  She wasn’t happy about that idea. “You made this my business by getting my family involved in it.” She reminded him, eyes narrowing in irritation. She circled something on her paperwork. “There was some really strange stuff in that warehouse…” She thought aloud.

  Thraex craned his neck to look at what she was doing. “What’cha got there?”

  “It’s a list of the materials in the warehouse.” She circled something else.

  “How’d you get it?”

  “Peachtree McDonald sent it to me.” She flipped the page over.

  Thraex shifted in his chair, leaning closer. “Why? Why would she send you a list of things stored in a super-villain’s warehouse?”

  “I asked for it.” She put her pen down. “Since we’re somehow responsible for finding out what happened and why a man is dead, it was the logical step.” She tapped the papers. “There is nothing here which could have exploded like that.” She shook her head. “Which means, whatever happened, it wasn’t an accident. Unless Pericles Merridew came in with his pockets filled with C-4.”

  “In this neighborhood?” Thraex snorted. “That’s a distinct possibility. If he’d been a Westgate, that would be my working theory, straight from the start.”

  Councilman Pericles Merridew had been one of the leading voices in this community, trying to lead it back into prominence. His own scientific career had hit some bumps due to finances, but there were whispers around town about him recently getting a lot of money from something dangerous. Sasha had no way of knowing what that was or if it had anything t
o do with his death though.

  Given the fact that The Farm was cooperating and demanding that the Westgates get to the bottom of this though, she was guessing that they were not the “dangerous” source of funds.

  Thraex returned to watching the crowd. “I still think our time is better spent getting the money rather than gettin’ involved in an investigation.”

  She always liked to know why something failed. And in order to know why it failed, you needed to know what the scheme was in the first place.

  Thraex didn’t care why something didn’t work, he simply moved on.

  Still, she just couldn’t see drunken teenagers sifting through a science warehouse filled with valuable materials and equipment, and deciding to steal one spool of generic-looking wire.

  And it made even less sense for those teenagers to kill a city councilman to do it.

  It wasn’t logical, and Sasha was always bothered by that.

  “Don’t you think it’s odd that teenagers would steal something so specialized?” She pressed, focusing on the one piece of this they had.

  “In my experience, teenagers’ll steal most anything not nailed down, chère, it’s part and parcel of being young and stupid. Kurtz stole a damn tree once, and…”

  She shook her head. “No… no, I think there’s something deeper going on here.”

  “I doubt it.” He made an unconvinced face. “What’d the cops get out of’em?”

  She shrugged. “They escaped custody.”

  He didn’t reply to that for a moment, obviously recognizing that something was weird here. “I’m sure it was just those kids messin’ about.” He tried. “Probably smoking grass near a gas line and then ka-boom.”

  “There was nothing in that warehouse which could have exploded.” She reminded him. “Which makes it arson of a super-villain’s warehouse and the murder of a politician. All done while we were standing mere feet away.” She shook her head again. “There is something going on here that’s bigger than ‘some damn fool kids,’ and you know it.”