Mentioning Neha triggered his volatile temper. He slammed his fist down on the side of his throne. His crown became slightly askew due to the impact. A finger on his other hand was on the button on his belt. “I tire of this pointless colloquy. You swine lack the wit to comprehend my glorious vision,” he snarled, his face abruptly red with rage. “Surrender, or you will have even more lives on your miserable consciences.”
Things had not worked out so well the last time I had surrendered to Doctor Alchemy. I had seen this movie before and had not been thrilled with the ending. Fortunately, seeing Doctor Alchemy and his lifeless wife side by side like this had given me an idea of how to rewrite the ending. I remembered what I had thought after I had destroyed the SAM batteries—that the situation called for a scalpel, not a sledgehammer. My eyes darted to Ninja’s glowing sword that would cut through anything.
“All right,” I said. “We surrender.” Isaac’s eyes shifted from Doctor Alchemy’s subjects to stare at me, shocked that I would give in so easily. I shot him a look back that said Trust me. His lips tightened, but he nodded almost imperceptibly. He didn’t like it, but I knew he’d back my play.
“Are you mad?” Ninja murmured. She hadn’t seen the look I had given Isaac. She still had her glowing sword in front of her, not taking her eyes off Doctor Alchemy. “If we don’t stop this maniac, who will?”
“I’m not going to let all these people die,” I said.
“Of course you won’t. Because you’re a H . . . E . . . R . . . O,” Doctor Alchemy said, drawing the word out, saying it mockingly. He leaned back in his throne, supremely confident and self-assured. He was calm again, his mood already having shifted. “As are you, Ninja. You are cut from a different cloth than your erstwhile teammate Mechano. Though perhaps more jaded than your young compatriots, I know you will not let a slew of people die on your watch either.” He pointedly fingered the button on his belt again. “Now drop your sword before I lose my temper and all these lovely people lose their heads. That’s a good girl. Kick it away from you, out of reach. I have seen what you are able to do with that thing.” Ninja’s sword, no longer glowing, glided down the red carpet, coming to a stop about midway between us and the twin thrones.
“Now kneel before your king,” Doctor Alchemy thundered, leaning forward, his eyes blazing. “Lace your fingers behind your head. If any of you use your powers or so much as twitches, my loyal subjects will suffer for it.”
I had sidled close to Ninja before kneeling. “What do your powers tell you Doctor Alchemy’s weakness is?” I murmured, referring to her Metahuman ability to sense an opponent’s vulnerability.
“His wife,” she immediately whispered back. It only confirmed what I had already thought. I had not forgotten how Doctor Alchemy reacted when Oliver accidentally splattered his wife with blood.
“Get ready to activate your sword on my say-so.”
“Done,” she whispered, thankfully not asking a bunch of fool questions. Her experience in high pressure situations was showing itself again.
“Now which of these three shall we kill first, Mother?” Doctor Alchemy was saying as we whispered. Though one hand still hovered near the button on his belt, his other arm pointed at us. We looked up the barrel of one of his gauntlets. “The situation calls for flesh-eating acid, don’t you agree? Painful but, alas, relatively quick. I learned my lesson from the last time. As much as we would enjoy prolonging their suffering, we cannot have them escape again. Omega we will save for last. Of those here, he is the most responsible for Neha’s death, so it is only fitting for him to suffer the most by witnessing his friends’ death. What’s that? Ladies first, you say? Of course, how boorish and ungentlemanly of me to not think of it myself. You always were the soul of courtesy, Mother.” Doctor Alchemy’s gauntlet shifted to point at Ninja.
“Neha and I were more than just friends,” I said, the words tumbling out in my haste. “We were lovers.”
Doctor Alchemy blinked in surprise. His eyes shifted from Ninja to me. “Your lies won’t save you now.”
“I’m not lying. We slept together more times than I can count. Don’t believe me? She had a mole on her right breast, right under the nipple. And she had a birthmark that looked like a crescent moon on her upper thigh, right under her—”
“Lies! Lies! All lies! Don’t listen to him Mother.” His eyes were horrified. I had accurately described Neha’s mole and birthmark. Though Doctor Alchemy’s gauntlet still pointed at us, his other hand shifted away from his belt and pressed against his dead wife’s ear, shielding her from my words. The scene would have been funny had it not been so deadly serious.
I said, “The truth is it was easy to get Neha to spread her legs. She was the town bicycle—everyone got a ride. We passed her around the Academy like she was a joint.” It made me sick to talk about Neha like this.
Doctor Alchemy leaped to his feet. His face was livid with rage. His eyes burned as he pointed at me accusingly. “How dare you sully the good name of my chaste daughter! You’re a filthy, lying cur.”
Whatever it took, I had to goad him away from his wife. Sick at heart, praying Neha would forgive me, I said, “It’s that whore you raised who’s the filthy one. She was quite a piece of ass. Not as good as a white girl, of course, but not bad for an Indian girl when nobody better was available. Any port in a storm.”
Doctor Alchemy’s face was almost as purple as his cape. He jumped off the dais and strode toward me with murderous intent. “Death by acid is too good for the likes of you. I’ll squeeze the lies and the life out of you with my bare hands.” His subjects temporarily forgotten in his rage, his hands were nowhere near the button on his belt.
“Now Ninja!” I cried.
Her katana blazed pink as she exerted her power on it. Due to my own power, it sprang up and forward, off the red carpet, like a striking snake. Doctor Alchemy twisted to the side, dodging the darting blade easily.
I expected as much. I hadn’t been aiming for him anyway.
The sword zoomed into the air, toward the high ceiling. The glowing katana, thanks to Ninja’s power, ripped through the thick cables holding the massive chandelier up like they were wet toilet paper. The crystals of the chandelier tinkled as the massive fixture fell.
Doctor Alchemy’s head twisted around.
“No!” he screamed, realizing now he had not been my target. With superpowered reflexes, he sprang back toward the dais.
Too late. I had lured him too far away from it.
The chandelier slammed into the thrones with a crash that rattled my teeth. Pieces of the chandelier went flying. I lifted my forearms to protect the exposed parts of my face. Shrapnel bounced off the Omega suit.
Once debris stopped bouncing off me, I cautiously lowered my arms. Doctor Alchemy stood on the dais. The two thrones, massively heavy, were still upright.
Rati Thakore’s body was not. It was twisted to the side of the battered gold throne, pinned under the heavy metal structure of the massive chandelier. Doctor Alchemy grabbed the broken chandelier and heaved, using strength no ordinary man possessed to pull the heavy chandelier off his wife’s body. More crystals tinkled as they fell off the chandelier and hit the dais and the stone floor.
Doctor Alchemy picked up his wife’s twisted body. Her head fell off her neck. Her eyes seemed to stare at us as the head dropped. When it hit the dais, the head smashed into pieces, spraying dust and tiny fragments, like it was a glass ball full of sand.
The decapitation seemed to trigger something within Rati’s body, as if it was a house of cards whose foundation had been knocked down. While Doctor Alchemy clutched his wife, stricken and horrified, her body literally disintegrated. Like the sands of an hourglass, bits of her trickled through his fingers. In seconds he was shin deep in tiny bits that had once been her, like a child playing in a sandbox.
Doctor Alchemy’s hands shook like unfallen brown leaves in a harsh winter wind. He fell to his knees. He ran his quivering hands through the strange ma
terial that had once been his wife.
“You killed Mother,” he moaned in shock and disbelief. The words came out in a hoarse whisper as he stared wide-eyed at the thick dust surrounding him. Fat tears began to run down his cheeks.
Isaac sprang forward, his form shifting as he hurtled toward the dais. By the time he bounded onto it, he had transformed into his shaggy, round-shouldered werewolf form. Claws like razor blades slashed forward and down. Isaac ripped Doctor Alchemy’s utility belt off him. Another slash of claws. Doctor Alchemy’s broken gauntlets hit the floor, then skittered across the throne room when Isaac kicked them far away.
Doctor Alchemy did not seem to notice he had been disarmed. His arrogance and belligerence had been ripped away like his belt had been. His whole world seemed myopically confined to the dusty debris that surrounded him.
“You killed Mother,” he said again, louder this time. Tears streamed down his face. His face contorted into a mask of pain and grief, like everything he cared about in the world was shattered and gone. I was embarrassed, feeling like a voyeur watching the anguish of a widower at his wife’s funeral. I wanted to look away, but I forced myself not to. Some instinct told me I needed to see this. Doctor Alchemy’s subjects, some of their faces bloodstained from shrapnel, still stared at Doctor Alchemy with their usual euphoric looks.
His daughter was dead. Now he realized his wife was dead. Even surrounded by adoring subjects, he had no one. After all Doctor Alchemy had done to me, after all he had done to everyone, I felt profoundly sorry for him. Tears formed in my own eyes.
“You killed Mother! You killed Mother! You killed Mother!” he repeated over and over. He seemed to shrink in on himself like a collapsing star as he vainly tried to hold onto his wife. The echoes of his wails reverberated off the walls, mixing into a cacophony of torment and woe.
“You killed Mother!” he howled, louder and louder until I didn’t think I could stand it. His bloodshot eyes were vague and unfocused, as if he was looking through all of us and into the past.
“You killed Mother!”
After a while, it didn’t seem like he was saying it to us at all.
“You killed Mother!”
After a while, it seemed like he was saying it to himself.
CHAPTER 33
I stared at the framed sketch of my son James that was over the mantelpiece in my Astor City apartment. Now that I had seen Doctor Alchemy up close and personally, I knew that James’ gently hooked nose he shared with his mother was in fact an inheritance from his maternal grandfather.
It was days after we had taken Doctor Alchemy into custody. He currently was in a Metahuman containment camp in Melbourne, Australia. A boatload of nations around the world were wrangling over who would get the first crack at trying him for his various crimes. I hoped whoever wound up with him gave him the psychiatric care he needed. Me feeling sorry for him despite all he had done had not faded. Isaac had accused me of being a “bleeding heart liberal,” but his eyes had been damp like mine as we watched Doctor Alchemy cry over his wife.
Before we called the authorities, Isaac had turned into Lugh the Long-Armed again and used Fragarach to compel Doctor Alchemy to tell us where he had hidden the Philosopher’s Stone. It was now at The Mountain. Considering all the mischief Doctor Alchemy had caused with it, I did not want the book to fall into the wrong hands. I was by no means certain I was the right hands, but I would have to do. I trusted myself more than I did government officials. I had plans to beef up security at The Mountain in light of Mad Dog’s escape and the fact I had the Philosopher’s Stone there. I previously thought Avatar had kept so many relics from his adventures at The Mountain out of an uncharacteristic vanity. Now I realized they were likely all there because he had not known what else to do with them. Some books were best kept unread.
I still hadn’t told Isaac I had imprisoned Mad Dog at The Mountain. In all the hurly-burly, Isaac had never raised the issue of how Mad Dog had reappeared after all this time. I knew I had to fess up soon. Teammates really ought not keep secrets like that from one another.
For that was what we were—teammates. “No man is an island,” Ninja had said a while ago on the roof of the UWant Building. She was right. I had needed Isaac’s and Ninja’s help to take down Doctor Alchemy. I could use their help rounding up the rest of the Revengers and bringing them to justice. Not to mention Millennium, who as the only other active Omega-level Meta was the mother of all loose ends. I would probably also need Ninja’s, Isaac’s, and others’ help to protect the world against the threat the Sentinels had warned me about. A burden shared was a burden lifted.
I had some thoughts on who those others might be, but that was a bridge I would cross later. As was what our team name should be. The Mythfits—Isaac’s most recent suggestion—just would not do.
My eyes shifted to look at Neha’s picture on the mantel, then back up to look at James. I thought of how Doctor Alchemy had collapsed when he saw the reality of his dead wife. She had been dead for years, yet he had clung to a fantasy world in which she wasn’t. Living in that fantasy world had twisted and distorted his mind, making him into a monster. My son James was as much of a fantasy as Rati was. I saw in Doctor Alchemy a dim reflection of the emotionally broken person I might become if I did not let go of the past and my grief and deal with reality as it really was.
Despite vivid memories of my married life with Neha and of our life with our son, that life was as fake as Doctor Alchemy’s wife. I had to let it go. Just as I had to let go of the guilt I carried like a millstone around my neck over Neha’s death and the fact I had not reconciled with her before she died.
I remembered something my father often said, one of his Jamesisms: “The past can be the wind in your sails. It can also be an anchor.” Though Dad would have said he was just a simple farmer, he seemed wiser with each passing day. Children rarely appreciate their parents until they were gone.
I let out a long sigh. I took James’ picture down. I went to the bedroom, opened my dresser’s bottom drawer, and put the picture inside. I hesitated, then slid the drawer firmly closed. Maybe one day I would throw the picture out instead of merely putting it away. Today was not that day. Baby steps.
The past was dead and gone. All any reasonable person could do was learn from the past, embrace the present, and prepare for the future.
I went into another room, grabbed my cell phone, and dialed a number. Someone picked up. After we exchanged pleasantries, I said to Viola, “I was calling to see if you’d be interested in going out again.”
“That depends,” she said.
“Depends on what?”
“Depends on whether a Rogue will attack again.” I practically felt her smile through the phone.
I smiled back.
“I can’t make any promises.”
The End
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