“Change it how?”
“I think I could improve your access pathways to the Source. It’s like a pipeline; the wider it is, the more stuff flows through. I could increase your power bandwidth, as it were. Which would increase your power level. Maybe even give you some whole new powers.”
“Whoa. Before you start doing anything, remember your little self-heating experiment. If you make a mistake, I could end up as a greasy stain on the ground. And where did you get the idea anyway?”
“Last night, when I set myself on fire, and okay, I get your point.”
“How about you get a little more practice time under your belt before you start performing psychic surgery on me? I wouldn’t mind being able to bench press a hundred tons, sure, but I don’t want to end up as a crispy critter if you get carried away.”
“Okay, okay,” Christine relented and switched off her super-vision. Mark became flesh and blood again. “Chicken.”
Mark chuckled and made some chicken squawks. “I’m a total baby about getting set on fire. And I’m also thinking of you. You’d feel pretty bad if you made me explode.”
“Sure, a little bit.”
He grinned. “And you started out as such a nice girl.”
* * *
They got back to the lodge in time for dinner and more news, none of it particularly great. First of all, there still was no word from John. It’d been a good fifteen hours since he’d left. And that wasn’t all.
“Our little party at the Mafiya club finally made the news,” Condor announced. “The Chicago PD caught some Russian goons driving a van loaded with bodies. Guess they were trying to clean up after the Lurker helped us escape.”
“How many people did Dad kill?” Christine asked, her good mood taking a nosedive.
“We didn’t stop and count, but the news report says the van had at least twelve bodies in it. Some of the bodies weren’t, ah, all in one piece, so they’re still sorting out the exact number.”
“It wasn’t all your father,” Mark said. “Condor and I took out at least four or five of them.”
“That doesn’t make me feel any better, actually.”
“How about this: those guys were working Kestrel over with a blowtorch, loving every minute of it, and were eventually going to kill all of us – slowly – for their amusement,” he replied, and Christine felt a flash of annoyance coming from him, and beneath that a lot of anger. She realized that his anger was always there, mostly in the background, but even when Mark was happy, it never quite went away. Her last traces of good mood vanished altogether.
“Face is being his usual charming self, but he’s got a point,” Condor said. “None of us kill casually, not even Face, even if he acts like it sometimes. But the people we go after are hardened killers, people who will kill again if someone doesn’t stop them.”
“I get it. Okay, I’ll stop bitching about bad guys getting killed. Any other news?” Christine asked, changing the subject. She didn’t know if she was ready to have the ‘Thou Shalt Not Kill, Or At Least Shouldn’t Kill So Verily Much’ talk with Mark. But now that she’d gotten her figurative nose rubbed in it, Mark’s murderous anger was hard to ignore, like a constant buzzing she’d subconsciously tuned out until it was brought to her attention. Stupid empathy.
“Still no news about Ultimate,” Condor went on, all business again. “However, some of my unofficial contacts tell me the Legion’s Atlantic contingent has been mobilized and all the heavy hitters have left for parts unknown. That suggests to me that they have found him.”
“That suggests to me they’re not interested in talking,” Christine said. “That suggest like they’re getting ready to zerg him.”
“That could just be caution on their part,” Condor replied, unfazed by the word zerg; they either had Starcraft in this world or he’d gotten it from context. “I’d be careful meeting with him, too, if I was worried he’d gone off the deep end.”
Kestrel walked in from the kitchen. “There’s pizza for everyone in there,” she said. She was even wearing an effing apron. Granted, under the apron all she had on was lingerie that left little to the imagination, but still. “I made it from scratch. Enjoy.” Was Melanie turning human all of a sudden? Maybe Christine’s little talk had made an impression. Or maybe this was just a temporary phase.
Christine and Mark went to the kitchen and grabbed some slices. They sat at the kitchen table to eat. They were quiet while they ate, and this time it was awkward quiet, not comfortable quiet. Mark used his Tony-face. “I’m sorry,” he told her after he was done eating.
“I know,” she replied, and she did. She could feel the unhappiness coming off him in waves. Okay, maybe it was time for the Talk. Things had been so great all day, why spoil them now?
Because better now than after you get even more stuck on him than you already are, her brain was only too happy to answer.
“All the killing. I said I wanted to talk to you about that.”
He slumped a little, and she felt a combination of dread and resignation inside him that matched what she was feeling. She’d managed to make both of them feel equally crappy. Yay. “I knew the good stuff couldn’t last,” he said. “Okay. Yeah, I kill people. Not everyone I run into. I mainly just pound on the regular assholes a little, and leave them alive for the cops to cart away, but yeah, I’ve racked up a good body count over the years. There’s people that won’t get convicted on the evidence, or because they have connections or money. Assholes who will end up killing more innocent people if someone doesn’t plow them under.” The anger was no longer in the background, it’d stepped front and center, and it flowed out of him like radiation from a runaway nuclear reaction. It made her a little sick. She couldn’t reconcile the gentle guy who had made her laugh and cry out in pleasure with this seething cauldron of rage. “You wouldn’t believe the shit I’ve seen. The assholes, they like it, they love seeing people bleed, hearing women cry and scream. If any motherfucker I let walk kills somebody down the line, it’s my fault. I might as well have murdered the people they killed myself. I’ve done the math; figure that for every asshole I’ve put down, I’ve saved a good six or seven people. And the assholes don’t get to laugh anymore when they hurt somebody.”
“It’s more than that, though,” she told him. “You’re not just doing a public service bit, taking out the trash and all that. You like killing the a-holes.”
“And what if I do? I’ve got my reasons.”
“Like what? I don’t want to pry, but… I mean, we’re friends, right? More than friends.”
“Yeah, I’d say so. We’ve gone well past handshakes and being on a first-name basis,” he replied, and she smiled a little bit. He took a deep breath and let Tony’s face go, became Face-Off once again. He wanted to hide himself, and from the welling up of emotion Christine could sense, she could understand why.
“I was sixteen when it happened.”
Face-Off
New York City, New York, June 3, 2002
It’s hot. Hot and muggy, and that worries me, because the asshole gets short-tempered in this kind of weather. Ma tries her best, turns the shitty AC unit in the living room to its max setting and arranges all the fans we own to get a decent breeze going, but it’s not enough. The asshole makes okay money working as a mechanic, but the next bill he pays will be the first. He blows all his money on booze and strippers, and he’s never going to chip in for a decent AC. Ma just grins and bears it and works double shifts at the hospital to keep a roof over our heads.
I hate him, but I hate her almost as much. She married him. She takes his shit day in and day out. I don’t know why she does it. Scared of being alone, I guess. He rarely lays hands on her, and that’s a big part of it: he pushes her around once in a while, or grabs an arm and shoulder hard enough to leave bruises, but that’s about it, most of the time. He rarely lays hands on her, and for her that’s enough.
The punches and kicks he saves for me.
The first time was right
after their honeymoon. I was eleven. I was drinking a glass of soda when he came in from work and slammed the door shut behind him. The noise startled me and I dropped my glass. It shattered on the kitchen floor. “Look what you did, you little shit,” the asshole said. He didn’t even sound all that pissed off; he never did. He didn’t yell or shout; he just backhanded me hard enough to send me spinning into the fridge. That was the first time I tasted my own blood, felt my teeth cutting into the inside of my mouth. “Now clean it up,” he continued, still talking in a nice conversational tone. When I didn’t move fast enough to suit him, he kicked me in the ass, hard enough it hurt to sit down for a few days.
That’s how it started, and that’s how it was for the next five years. Black eyes and loose teeth. Limping on my way to school. Fear and shame. Dreading the sound of the front door opening in the evening, heralding his arrival. Never knowing what’s going to set him off and make him calmly beat the crap out of me. After a while, you turn into something more like a dog than a person, trying to anticipate his moods and lick his boots before he kicks you. You end up hating yourself as badly as you hate him for what he does and her for letting him do it. But you’re too scared to let the hatred show, so you push it deep inside and watch it grow like a cyst, like a tumor, knowing one day it’s going to burst, but with no idea of what to do about it.
It’s hot and muggy even with the AC on and the fans going full blast. The door opens and the asshole comes in, his mechanic’s overalls stained with sweat and grease. Ma greets him, gives him a hug and a kiss, but he shoulders her out of the way, goes to the fridge and gets himself a beer. I’m in the living room. I was watching a stupid sitcom, Capes Over Manhattan, about a Neo who’s too dumb for his own good. The asshole usually doesn’t get home until the show is over, but he’s early today. I quickly get off the couch so he can plop himself there and change the channel. I go to my room without saying a word. He’s not in a good mood, I can tell. When he’s in a good mood he usually says something to me, some funny insult or a casual put down, and it’s almost relaxing to hear the insults, because when he barks he rarely bites. When he’s quiet it’s best to stay away from him. Be a good dog, and maybe he won’t kick you. I retreat to my bedroom and quietly close the door.
It ain’t much of a room, barely big enough to fit my bed, a nightstand and a couple bookcases. I grab a novel I just started reading a few days ago, Aces and Eights, by George R.R. Martin. I got it at a used bookstore with some of the money I make as a busboy at a Chinese restaurant. I make well under minimum wage but it’s better than nothing, and nothing’s what I’d get without the job. I open the book and escape into the story; so far I’m enjoying it quite a bit. It’s a Martin book so I’m not expecting any sort of happy endings, but that’s okay. Happy endings are bullshit.
I’m so engrossed in the book that at first I don’t notice the argument in the living room. Finally their voices get so loud they pull me away from the story and back into reality. I turn my back on the door and the loud voices and try to ignore them. They argue sometimes. A few times they argue over me. Ma tries to get the asshole to go easy on me once in a while, and he smiles and nods and says all the right things, but nothing ever changes afterwards. Those arguments have gotten scarce over the years, though. Now they mostly argue about money. He asks her for money, and she almost always gives it to him, except when doing so means missing out on the bills, and then she’ll put up a bit of a fight. Not much, just enough so he doesn’t take all the cash, just enough so he settles for half of what she’s got, instead of all of it, and she can at least make the rent and the electric bill that month, even if it means we eat light till her next paycheck.
When I’m eighteen I’m going into the Army, or maybe the Marines, and I ain’t ever coming back. Until then, my plan is to keep my head down and my mouth shut. I turn back to the book and try to tune them out.
Ma’s raising her voice, which she almost never does. That can’t be good. The asshole doesn’t get too rough with her, and she never gives him lip. That’s their usual arrangement, and by getting loud with him she’s breaking the rules. I never find out what the fight was about. Did she finally decide to notice the strippers he banged on the side, or did she refuse to give him as much money as he wanted? All I know is that her words get cut off in mid-sentence by the smacking sound of a fist striking flesh, and I hear her cry out in pain. The book hits the floor as I rush into the living room and see Ma on her hands and knees, bleeding from her nose, and the asshole standing over her, fists clenched. He doesn’t look pissed this time, either. He looks like someone who realizes he has to do an unpleasant job, and he is by God going to go and do it.
I’m five eight and a bit, and weigh a buck forty. The asshole is five eleven and a good two twenty, two twenty-five, and not all of it is flab. I don’t give a shit. I rush him, knock him back onto the couch, and start punching him in the face.
I don’t know what I’m doing, and I only get as far as I do because I take him by surprise. For the past five years I’ve shown him my belly like a pathetic dog. He never expected I’d try to fight back. Half of my punches don’t hit him at all, or just glance off his skull. I manage to bloody one of his lips, though, and I feel a surge of savage joy when I see his blood. But then he grabs me by the scruff of the neck with one hand, and the next thing I see is his fist coming up to meet my face. The lights go out.
When I come to, I’m lying on my back on the kitchen floor. Ma’s crying in the living room. The asshole is sitting on my chest, crushing me to the floor. “Okay, you little turd,” he says in his matter-of-fact voice. “You think you’re a man? Okay, then. This is what a man gets.”
The first punch crushes my nose. The second and third break teeth. His hands are bleeding but he doesn’t stop, just pounds his fists down onto my face at a steady pace, one left, one right, one punch after another. He shuts one of my eyes with a left, and the pain almost makes me pass out again. The world is reduced to the steady pounding of his fists. Pieces of tooth and bloody phlegm clog up my throat and I choke on them. I’m pinned to the floor and I realize he’s going to keep hitting me until I’m dead. I can see his face with the one eye that’s still working and I get a good look at him. He looks… content, like he’s taking care of business and all’s well with the world. He’s going to kill me, maybe Ma too, and he’ll only feel sorry when he gets caught.
He’s breathing a little hard now, and I feel his dick getting hard against my chest. I don’t think it was a sex thing, not really. It’s more of a power thing. It’s the thrill of knowing that he can kill me, that he’s going to kill me, that’s what gives him a chubby as he keeps punching me.
One of my cheeks caves in, and the spike of pain is the worst one yet. That’s when it happens.
Another punch lands, but I barely feel it. My vision clears up, and I can see his face as he freezes, one fist raised for a blow he never lands. His expression changes, his eyes widen in shock, and his hard-on goes away. The pain and dizziness disappear, and I push him off me. He’s trying to get away from me, scrabbling away, slipping on the bloody linoleum, but I grab him, and now I’m stronger than he is, much stronger. He’s lost his cool; he’s struggling wildly and ineffectually, gibbering in terror. I grab him by the scruff of the neck and smash him head first into the dividing wall between the kitchen and the living room. The first time he doesn’t quite go through the wall, so I pull him out and do it again.
Ma screams when the asshole comes crashing through the wall, what’s left of his head protruding into the living room like a misshapen trophy. She screams again when she sees me coming in, screams in absolute horror. I recoil at her reaction, and I catch my reflection on the mirror hanging from one of the walls of the living room.
My face is gone.
I scream in terror, and my scream comes out loud and clear, even though I have no mouth to scream with. Ma runs into her room, and seconds later I hear a window open and her frantic footsteps as she runs down the fir
e escape. I turn away from the mirror, force myself to ignore the realization I’m a freak, a monster. I check on the asshole. He shit himself at some point, and he’s not moving, not breathing. He’s done. I want to kill him again, but once is enough, I guess.
The cops are going to get here eventually. I go to my room, throw a few clothes and my copy of Aces and Eights into a backpack, and get going.
I never come back.
Chapter Seven
The Invincible Man
Tule Desert, Nevada, March 16, 2013
The arid expanse of dust and rock and its thin covering of scrawny vegetation was desolate enough to make John think of Cassius’ tale. Dead worlds everywhere, and Earth likely to be next in line. He understood why his friend had refused to share his discoveries, but did not agree with his decision. Once they cleared things with the Legion, Cassius and John needed to tell the world. Forewarned is forearmed. If they all worked together, they could change fate. John believed that with all his heart.
“They are almost here,” Cassius reported. John’s enhanced hearing picked up the approaching VTOL aircraft. After a few seconds he saw vessels, flanked by several flying figures keeping pace with it. He recognized Kenneth Slaughter in his Brass Man suit and Daedalus Smith in his Myrmidon armor, Meteor and his signature blazing contrail, and Hyperia, her scarlet costume – one of her many colorful outfits – shining brightly in the harsh afternoon light.
The Legion had come geared for battle.
One VTOL craft landed a hundred yards away from their position; the others disappeared behind some hills a quarter mile away. Four other Legionnaires got out of the single vessel. Berserker, the self-styled avatar of the Norse pantheon, led the way, wielding his deadly battle-axe. Sun Knight was beside him, a recent addition to the Legion who made up for his inexperience with his raw power; his photonic beams could punch through John’s defensive aura, and he was nearly as impervious to harm. The Faerie Godfather looked like a teenage boy but was fifty years old and a master healer who could undo injuries almost as fast as they were inflicted. The last passenger out of the Legion craft was Nebiru, an imposing olive-skinned man clad in Babylonian-style regalia, his head hidden behind a bronze headpiece engraved with mystical signs. The Iraqi-born hero had a host of different pseudo-magical powers, including the ability to interfere with teleportation. John glanced at Janus. Nebiru’s presence would prevent Cassius from creating a gate to escape.
New Olympus Saga (Book 2): Doomsday Duet Page 11
