Masked

by Lou Anders

  “Ed, your jailbreak is over. The only question is—”

  “Over? Before Dad gets here? He’ll hate that. He loves chasing down bad guys—he’s like a fucking Labrador retriever shagging Frisbees.” I take a step forward. “Jackie, you know how bored he gets when there’s no one to fight. He hates it. And the past few years, he’s been getting bored more and more easily. The usual shit isn’t doing it for him anymore. You can see it in his eyes.”

  “What? I see no such thing.”

  “We’re not real to him. Not like the people back on his home Earth.”

  “Don’t start this again,” she says.

  “Listen to his voice when he talks about the people he used to work with at that lab. Or Jesus, that fucking Mustang he used to drive. That’s the real world to him. This is just…” I stop, see how still she’s gotten. “He’s never talked about his home world with you?”

  “We talk about everything.”

  She’s lying. “Then he told you how he didn’t have powers there? No one did. It’s like our world used to be. Like it’s supposed to be.”

  Her hips shift in a familiar way. At any moment she’ll put the left side of one golden hoof across the right side of my head, and there’s not a damn thing I can do about it.

  “Jackie, wait. He doesn’t love you. And you don’t love him, not really. See, he’s got to have a girlfriend—that’s in the script. That’s what he wanted, and so that’s what happened. He’s making you love him, just like he made those supervillains hate him. But you can fight this, Jackie. You can join us.”

  “This conversation’s over, Eddie.”

  And then, heat. A jet of flame whooshes between my legs. Jackie becomes a human torch, whirling around in circles. She doesn’t scream, but I do. I jump sideways.

  A few feet behind where I’d just been standing, Teresa’s on her stomach, aiming a sword of flame where my crotch used to be. I’d forgotten she was back there. “Take her down!” she yells.

  I step up to Jackie, clench a fist. “Hit her!” Teresa yells. “Hit her!”

  Then Jackie’s gone, disappeared into the smoke—probably to find a fire extinguisher. Or the lake.

  She’ll be okay, I tell myself. She’s a fast healer.

  “Are you kidding me?” Teresa says. The sword disappears and her hand unclenches. “ Join us?”

  I don’t want to talk about it. I extend a hand, figuring Teresa’s has cooled off by now. “Can you walk?”

  She can, sort of. She looks stronger than she did five minutes ago. I put an arm around her and we limp through the smoke. Prisoners come up from behind, push past us. Some are winged or clawed or bulging with muscles, but most of them look like ordinary men and women in cheap coveralls, unremarkable and indistinguishable without their costumes. They don’t seem to recognize us in the mad rush for the exit.

  The vault door has been torn from its hinges. Teresa and I shuffle through, and then we’re in the no-man’s-land between the vault door and the blast shield. The shield has been stopped just a few feet above the floor; prisoners slide and skitter under it like roaches.

  I manage to direct Teresa through the gap, and when I scramble after her I’m blinded by golden light. I shade my eyes and squint, heart hammering. But it’s not Soliton—it’s just the afternoon sunlight streaming through shattered windows. The floor is a glittering beach of broken glass.

  Outside, the guards are taking their last stand. They’re firing down into the yard from towers and administration buildings. A few of the prisoners, the berserkers with more testosterone than sense, are throwing themselves against the buildings and crawling up the towers, but most are running for the fences. The flyers and other fast movers are already gone.

  “Plex,” I say. “Where the hell are you?”

  Little busy! he yells in my ear.

  “Please tell me you’ve got a way out of here,” Teresa says.

  And then I see Plexo. A dozen pint-size blobs are swarming a red-haired prisoner, tearing into him like a gang of ninja gingerbread men. I don’t recognize the man he’s attacking until I see that one of his hands is made of crystal. He grabs the neck of one of the little Plexos, and the miniature turns white and shatters into a puff of flakes.

  Plex screams, You want a piece of me? Huh? You want a piece of me?

  I yelp and grab my ear. The bit of Plex I’ve been carrying has launched itself from my ear canal toward the fight.

  “Jesus, Plex, leave the Icer alone, we’ve got to—”

  I hear a distinctive, whooshing hum. The air above the yard shimmers like a heat mirage on a desert highway, and a huge black sphere, fifty feet in diameter, abruptly appears, dropping fast.

  “That sound,” Teresa says. “I know that sound.” She looks in my direction. “It’s that piece of crap the Magician used to ride around in.”

  “Please don’t call it names when we’re inside,” I say. “It’s sensitive.”

  Painted on its side is a black 8 in a white circle. Before the sphere can touch down, the circle irises open and a six-by-six slab of Plexo leaps out, flattened like a flying squirrel. The Icer has time to scream before he’s enveloped by a blanket of flesh.

  I grab Teresa’s hand but she shakes me off. We need to run, but she can only move at a walk. A few of the other prisoners are looking at the sphere, dimly realizing that their most likely means of escape has just landed. A steel ramp extends from the base of the door with a rusty shriek but stops a foot short of the ground. I take Teresa’s hand again, and before she can pull free, I tell her to step up.

  She scowls at me and says, “They’re here.”

  “Who?”

  She points over my shoulder at the eastern sky.

  From a mile away, the group of flyers are no bigger than specks. The lead figure, however, is unmistakable: that golden glow, that speed, those impossible, inertia-less changes of direction, like the beam of a flashlight flicking across a wall. The laws of physics do not apply to him. He is not in the world, Dear Reader, but projected upon it like a cartoon.

  I would like to say that the sight of him doesn’t faze me. But Jesus, I’ve seen the man shrug off an atomic explosion. I’m not ready for him yet.

  I shove Teresa’s bony butt up and through the door, then scramble in after her. “Eight-Ball!” I yell. “How’re the batteries holding up?”

  On the main video screen, white text swims to the surface: “Reply hazy, try again.”

  Shit. I lean out the door. “Plex! Dad’s here!”

  Below, Plex unwraps himself from the Icer, and the man falls unconscious to the ground. “Now would be good,” I yell.

  I scan the sky. The flyers are closer, and I can count them. Only three with Soliton. Half the team is probably on the east coast, fighting yetis. Not that it matters. Soliton alone can mop us up.

  But then the group dives toward the ground, disappearing from my line of sight. They’re rounding up the faster escapees first.

  Plex pogos up and through the hatch. I slam a button and the door begins to cinch closed. “Make with the disappearing,” I tell the 8-Ball. “And get us to five thousand feet right n—”

  Talking becomes impossible as the G’s throw me to the floor. Half a minute later I push myself upright and stumble to a screen and toggle to one of the cameras aimed at the ground. The heroes are in the yard now. I make out a couple of blurred forms careening between lime-green dots—Gazelle and Dad, the only two capable of those speeds, having their high-velocity way with the prisoners.

  Such fun they must be having.

  “Eddie.” It’s Teresa. “Eddie, look at me.”

  “When he gets like that you just got to poke him,” Plex says.

  “Eight-Ball, get us higher,” I say. “But not so fast this time. Then head east.”

  Teresa’s gotten to her feet. She says, “Did you really believe what you said to Jackie back there? You think he’s a god?” She’s adopted the tone of a cop talking down a junkie.

  “Don�
��t get him started,” Plex says.

  “Then you’re already screwed, Eddie. If he’s scripted Jackie, if he’s scripted everything, then the story already includes us. What we’re doing now. Everything you’re planning.”

  “Pretty much,” I say. I thought this through months ago. “Headhunter’s dead. Dad’s got to have a nemesis—he wouldn’t know what to do without one. Might as well be me. Besides, there’s plenty of precedent for sons wanting to kill their fathers—it’s not exactly an original plot line.” I smile. “The difference is, I believe in my job.”

  She doesn’t say it, but I know what she’s thinking. “You don’t have to believe me for us to work together, Teresa.”

  “ I don’t,” Plex says.

  “We all want the same thing,” I say. “We need each other.”

  “If the sword can’t touch him,” Teresa says. “Nothing can.”

  “Nothing in this world,” I say.

  “So you’re going to hurt him how? Harsh words?”

  “The sidekick has a plan,” Plex says.

  She tilts her head. She seems to be staring at me through the blindfold. “No. Now he’s the criminal mastermind.”

  “Excuse me?” I say. “ Insane criminal mastermind.”

  Even at this speed it’s a long trip to the ruins of Chicago. Plenty of time to explain what I have in mind.

  This is my message to you, Dear Reader: We’re tired of being trapped in here with your madman, your psychopath playing out his power fantasies with us. Two million people were erased from my city. I lost every relative, every childhood friend, every neighbor and teacher and shop clerk I grew up with. Why? Because it was interesting.

  No more. We’re sending him back to you.

  Watch your skies for a man tumbling to earth like a shot bird.

  Gail Simone is the acclaimed writer of such DC comics as Wonder Woman, Superman, Birds of Prey, Villains United, and Secret Six (both the miniseries and the ongoing monthly it spawned). She has also written Deadpool for Marvel; The Simpsons for Bongo Comics, a creator-owned project, Welcome to Tranquility, for Wildstorm; and many other titles. In the world of television, Gail penned the “Double Date” episode of the animated series Justice League Unlimited and scripted an episode of GameTap’s ReVisioned: Tomb Raider Animated Series entitled “Pre-Teen Raider.”

  Thug

  GAIL SIMONE

  hello. my name is alvin becker but i gess you know that alredy becuz i am the only one that will read this. my pee oh said I wasnt learning from my mistakes so i should keep a JOURNAL. he give me this book and a DICTIONARY to look up the words i dont know how to spell so good so this is my JOURNAL and my name is alvin becker but everybuddy just calls me thug.

  why thug you are wondering. it is becuz of a time wen i was a kid and i gave another kid the BUSINESS.

  i gess i dont have no use for the female girl types becuz i like to look at them but they do not like to look at me not even one little bit. i was big the biggest kid by far at Lu Sutton Elementary School bigger than some of the teachers even. my second grade teacher was miss condero and she said i had hands like a rushin wrestler which i was kinda proud of on account of how she said it nice not mean. but i never did get any hair on top of my head and my head was big and I gess my teeth were too and so maybe that made me a monster or someone who looks like a monster becuz like i said the girls. the boys would say bad things they would always call me becker the pecker or peckerface which i new even then was bad becuz I asked my teacher what a pecker was and hoo boy did I get a look!!!

  so there have only been two girls what were nice and thats my mom and lynn miller who was in the same grade as me and where i was big she was little like a tiny little bird that you just wanted to look at every day. not touch becuz it was too pretty to touch but just look and look and look and look. that was lynn miller with bows in her hair and pretty yellow dresses and black shiny shoos not even on church days.

  the other was my mom who is an angel now so you better not say anything bad abot her i am not kidding. you just think some thing bad abot her and man you are in for a world of my fist in your face and that is some thing you dont want a bit i am telling you!!!

  the boys were bad like i said and i did not like them and they did not like me and always the names and sometimes rocks but i did not hit them becuz my mom said one hit from me on those boys and I would go to juvie and juvie was a place where the preverts made you take your pants down and do stuff with your butt. i didnt want to do butt things so i didnt hit even tho i was kind of CURIOUS abot a place where your butt was such a big deal. she said i was DEVELOPMENTALLY DISABLED which i gess is just a nice way to say dumb. i know im dumb. So what. there are worst things to be and that is what i will tell now.

  anyway, the boys were bad bad bad but why i keep saying is becuz the girls were a milyun times worst. a milyun milyun milyun times worse. a boy could say you are a peckerface, alvin pecker and it was just like you did not feel it but if a girl said you was ugly that felt like a burning hammer in my heart and i would think think think abot it for days and nights nights nights and not sleep and not eat and even going to the bath room made me think think think abot ugly and how that was what i am.

  but lynn miller was so nice it was almost like she was not female at all. she had a brace on one leg from some bad sick that she had wen she was just a baby and i thot that was a rotten deal how being sick wen you were a baby could follow you around like that forever just a big metal MEMORY on your leg that said you were sick and you were weak wen you were too little to do anything abot it and hey here is a leg brace to remember me by forever howdy do. i did not think it was so ugly but the boys were mean abot it she said and the girls like girls are always a milyun times worst and sometimes she would cry and that was like that hammer in the heart again but this time it also made me mad not just sad.

  lynn miller would talk to me at resess and she said that i would grow out of being strange looking she was wrong abot that it got a lot worst but I gess that was just her nice talking and she was always talking nice even abot those stupid girls who called her metal leg and cripple crutch.

  they would say that and i would want to hit them but again i would remember what my mom said abot my butt and i would shut up but i would think think think abot hitting them and maybe they might look ugly for a while and lynn miller would be the prettyest girl in Lu Sutton Elementary and then she could make fun of them for that and i would laff and laff.

  i asked my mom abot it and she said maybe this lynn girl likes you alvin maybe she wants to be your girlfriend and i just nodded but inside i thot abot how moms love there kids so much they dont know what is real becuz there is no world where even a nice bird girl like lynn miller would want a peckerhead for a boyfriend never no never sorry mom i am sorry mom that world is not a real place anywear.

  so one day it was at lunch and i was eating by myself i got so hungry that i had to have two lunch boxes and that was another name for me hungry heffer which i still dont know what that means for sure JOURNAL. but it must be hilaryous becuz the boys would laff and laff. some times i would eat lunch with arnie who was the CUSTODIAN and was big and a little bit slow like me and that was the best becuz no one would talk at all. arnie was cleaning up wear a kid barfed the school lunch corn chip chili basket and so he was not there at first or things would have been different my hole life maybe.

  i gess i should say that i had an arch enemy back then who was matt savoy. the girls would talk to matt savoy like he was a movie star and talk abot his icy blue eyes and his famly was rich rich rich but all i saw was his mean. day and night matt savoy was mean. most of the boys were only mean wen other boys were around but matt would be mean even if it was just him and me in the hall way or bath room. he once threw wet toilet paper at me wen I was at the URINAL doing number one and wen i turned around he laffed and said nice pecker becker and i gess that was the funniest thing ever becuz he told the hole school and for a long time everyone said nice pecker b
ecker every time they saw me. nice pecker becker nice pecker becker all day every day for a long long time. and matt savoy laffing like a crazy kid HA HA HA always HA HA HA.

  i new that there was bad in the world becuz matt savoy taut me that with his eyes and how he would laff and i did not think he was good looking at all even tho he had icy blue eyes that looked like a blue razberry slushy at the darby street grocery.

  i tried not to let matt savoy see anything i liked becuz i new he would destroy it i just new it some how. i acted like my star wars lunch box was stupid becuz i new he would throw it over the fence or in the creek. i used plane markers not the kind that smell like cherry becuz matt savoy kept stealing them and breaking them and hocking loogies on me wen i tried to get them back and one time i pet the class hamster and it was gone the next day and matt savoy told me he flushed it after he wiped with it and I believe him too and even miss condero who is so smart abot everything talks to matt savoy like he is better than anyone and so that is why it is only two good females in the world and not three. i think even lynn miller liked his icy blue eyes but i vowed never to drink a blue razberry slushy and told myself it would taste like poison and one sip would kill me like lava in my throte.

  this part is bad so get ready i think its the worst story ever told.

  we had monkey bars in our big sandbox at resess they were too short for me so of corse there was a lot of jokes abot me being an ape but so what after a year of nice pecker becker that did not seem so bad. lynn miller was excused from the monkey bars and most of our sports becuz she was cripple crutch the kids said and i gess that was mean but also true and no ones fault not even matt savoy. but one day i saw matt savoy talking to some of the meaner girls like i said i thot the girls were much meaner but maybe i was wrong and they were showing off for matt becuz this is what happened.

  some of the girls like tabitha and rachel and emma said lynn should try and use the monkey bars and they would help and they felt bad for being mean and they would help. that is the part that is bad becuz lynn new they were mean but still wanted so bad to be there friend and wanted so bad to be I dont know what the word is but like them a little bit I gess. I dont know why this JOURNAL is supposed to make me feel better becuz i get sick thinking abot it.