Masked

by Lou Anders

  “Yes, I do. I was a bastard. This is my shot, Daniel. My chance to pay back for all I’ve taken.”

  Suddenly angry, Daniel jabbed an accusatory finger. “So instead of having your face all over the media for being such a financial parasite, you now want it up there so everyone can see what a great hero you are? With abilities you wouldn’t have if I hadn’t given them to you?”

  Matt was stung by his friend’s words, but put it down to the shock of his ordeal. “No, I don’t want that. You can develop some kind of armor, something lightweight, that’ll hide my identity.”

  “And then what?”

  “And then I make a difference.” Matt could see he still hadn’t convinced Daniel, but there was plenty of time for that. His attention was drawn back to the devastation. “What happened here? An accident?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  The blast had come at sunset, when most people had gone home for the day. “So the motivation wasn’t loss of life,” Matt mused. “Then, what?”

  While the emergency services still searched the devastation for survivors, he bribed his way into the security offices to examine the digital recordings from the cameras.

  “Money still gets you everything,” Daniel said with an uncomfortable note of bitterness.

  “If you’ve got it, might as well put it to some good,” Matt replied, adding with a regretful note, “Finally.”

  While the images sped by, Daniel ventured, “I think I know who did this. After word leaked out about your recovery, I started getting enquiries about the process. Anonymous at first.”

  Matt continued to scan through the recordings. “What did they want?”

  “To own it. Completely. Take it out of the hands of everyone else, I guess, or use it just for themselves.”

  “And you said no.”

  “Yesterday they made the final offer. And the agent let slip a name. Mr. Styx.”

  “What kind of name is that?” Matt’s words trailed away as he brought the scrolling images to a halt. Near the entrance to Daniel’s research suite, a shadowy figure wearing a skull-shaped Halloween mask looked toward the camera. There was something knowing in that glance, almost a signature, as if the wearer were saying, Here I am—the one you’re looking for. Arrogance, contempt, a hint of cruelty, all captured in the nuance of body language and that cold stare leveled directly into the lens.

  “Styx?” Matt was drawn to the death’s-head, the name ringing deep in the caverns of his mind.

  “After that, the name was everywhere. Linked to a heist here, a murder there. Soon the cops were talking about a network of crime across the Bay area, all leading back to Mr. Styx. Gangs working to his design. Hitmen taking out important establishment figures who got in his way. Drugs and prostitution, people smuggling, illegal weapons. I became consumed with the questions. Where did Styx come from? How did he get so powerful, so quickly? And how had he found out about Daniel’s Quantum Mind process? Sitting here now, the answers are obvious. Hindsight is a great thing.

  “Rose made a fast recovery from the smoke she’d inhaled, but she wouldn’t see me, refused all my phone calls, ignored my e-mails. Daniel told me to give her time. Maybe she’d get over what happened to her father.

  “But I was distracted, as always, by the thrill of what I could now do. I’d gradually come to terms with my loss of the daylight world. I slept; I woke refreshed to the night; I accepted it as my own. Complaining furiously, Daniel finally agreed to provide me with the black body armor tailored to my precise requirements. I could travel around the darkest parts of the city, unseen until I made my move. Watching. Listening. Slowly building a picture of Mr. Styx. By that stage, I’d already decided it was personal. He attacked my friend, the woman I loved. He deserved to be brought down for that alone, never mind all the other awful things he was doing.

  “But Styx was a brilliant strategist. He marshaled his growing army of criminals in a constantly shifting network so it was impossible to trace the lines through the structure. And he spread like a virus through the city. In the early days, his work was only visible in the Tenderloin, among the lowlifes, the hookers, and the drug dealers. Within weeks, I was finding evidence of his influence everywhere, from Pacific Heights to Russian Hill, from the Mission District to Fisherman’s Wharf. His rapidly growing criminal activity must have earned him a fortune, because he’d bought himself influence in city politics and business, in the SFPD too. He’d made himself untouchable.

  “His network kept his identity secret. I couldn’t find out where he was based, so I couldn’t get close to him. All I knew was that he was smart, cunning, and ruthless. Bodies of people who had failed him turned up everywhere.

  “Daniel was worried I was getting in over my head. Even with all my enhanced abilities, I was vulnerable to a knife or a bullet. And as he so harshly pointed out, my moneyed life had left me too cosseted to deal with such a hard world. Give up, he kept urging. Leave Styx alone.

  “But Daniel was always like that, ultraprotective ever since we were kids. We were both smart, but he was the really clever one; I was just practical. He used to get bullied a lot for his nerd style—Daniel was King of Nerds—and I’d step in to look after him. But he would never let me get in a fight. He’d take any level of abuse to keep the peace. Good-hearted. Yeah, not like me. Guess that’s why I thought we went well together. I always believed Daniel felt the same, but since I’d gone through the process, he seemed to be losing patience with me rapidly.

  “‘You’ve got a messiah complex,’ he told me. ‘You thought you were the bad guy before and now you’ve turned one hundred and eighty degrees and you think only you can save everyone. But in the end, it’s all about you. What’s good for Matthew is good for the world, right?’

  “Maybe he was just trying to rile me, and if that was right, it worked. Back at the penthouse I punched the mirror and it cracked in two. I left it there as a reminder. One day I’d show Daniel I was a better man than he thought.

  “But even with his doubts, he still tried to help. ‘Trust the enhanced Quantum Mind,’ he said. ‘It’ll communicate with you in new and interesting ways. Sending clues through your unconscious. Guiding you in the right direction. Things might look like coincidences, but you need to pay heed to them. It’s you, speaking to yourself. Situation normal, I guess.’

  “Finally I decided on a name, taking my cue from Styx. He’d gone for a mythological connection, the river on the boundary of the underworld, which meant hate in Greek. I decided to call myself Nox. It was ironic, I said, but Daniel told me bluntly that I clearly thought I was some kind of mythological god. And that decision bound Styx and me together on a symbolic level. Just as Daniel had said: secret connections lying just beneath the surface.

  “Once I had my code name I was ready to break up Styx’s operations across the city. I made an impact quickly. Disrupting supply lines, tipping off the cops, or cracking heads—I did whatever was necessary. Every time my name was mentioned in the bulletins it was a validation that I was making up for my past self-obsessed life. I pretty much gave up my life as Matt. The penthouse was only nominally a home; stripped of just about anything personal, it became simply the place for my day-sleep; a bat’s cave.

  “I forced Styx to notice me. That’s when it became personal for him too… and when everything started to fall apart. I began to notice cameras positioned around the city with infrared sensors to pick up body heat. He was looking for me. I got Daniel to modify the armor to minimize heat leakage, but within a few days the cameras were made more sensitive, fitted with motion sensors, image recognition. His operations shifted rapidly beyond my reach. I started to lose the game, and I didn’t like it. I’d never lost anything before.

  “Even if he tracked me down to the penthouse, he wouldn’t be able to get inside. I had the best defenses money could buy. Not even Daniel was allowed to know how to bypass them. It was my sanctuary, my prison cell; the place where I could guarantee being safe and where Styx could n
ever reach me.

  “I worked harder to try to overcome his tech, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that he was laughing at me. That he thought I was ineffectual. On more than one occasion I failed to bust up his works in progress. Once I got on the wrong end of a flamethrower; that left me needing hospital treatment, even with my healing skills. At that moment, Styx was only sending out messages to get out of his way, but sooner or later he’d step things up to take me out.

  “I always knew he was a killer, but I didn’t realize exactly how brutal until that day a week before Easter when he slaughtered an entire family—father, mother, two kids—in their home and left a taunting message for me in their blood. I was physically sick. For several nights, I never left the penthouse. Their deaths were on my conscience. Yeah, that’s what Styx wanted me to think, but it didn’t lessen the blow any.

  “And they were only the first. Innocent people gunned down in the street, bludgeoned or stabbed in their homes… the body-count rising every time I did something that irritated Styx. It was destroying me. Did I walk away and give him free rein, knowing I had the power to stop him? Did I carry on and cause more deaths?

  “That was the time when it stopped being a great adventure. Since then, every single day has felt like I was killing myself a bit more. Has it made me a wiser person? It’s made me a sadder one.

  “The conflict continued. Styx and me circling each other, a blow given here, another one received there, the stakes rising higher and higher with each death, until I hated him with every fiber of my being.

  “Daniel pleaded with me to stop, before I lost my own life, or my sanity, which he was convinced was dwindling with each encounter. But I couldn’t stop. It was clear to me I was the only one who could end Styx’s reign. When I’d undergone Daniel’s process, I’d been given a purpose in life. Fate? Who knows, but I was sure that Nox could only die when Styx did.

  “And then I was flattened by a blow completely out of left field. One night, in the middle of an argument, Daniel admitted he’d been dating Rose. I think in my heart I knew, but it still felt like a betrayal. I didn’t respond well, told him to get out. I loved her. I wanted a chance to prove I was different now. It wasn’t fair. In the heat of the moment, I said some things that weren’t very friendly, but I’ll still never forget the look Daniel gave me at the door. Hard, contemptuous. I started to think that maybe that youthful friendship wasn’t as clear-cut as I remembered.

  “I tried to contact Rose, and I know that caused some tension between them, but then they both stopped taking my calls. I was on my own.

  “I took all that frustration out on Styx’s organization, carved a path right through the center of it. That was a step too far; I could no longer be tolerated. His net began to close around me. And then, I guess, he decided to give me one final warning to keep away. My last chance. Rose went missing. How did he know to go for Rose? Yeah, any smart person can see where this is going. I remember…”

  Searching.

  Even an enhanced Quantum Mind couldn’t contain the cauldron of human emotions. In the Tenderloin, away from the lights, Nox emerged from the dark to break limbs and pulp the faces of Styx’s dealers and strong-arm men, to interrogate the hookers and the runners, aware that his own night-clock was quickly running down. When the sun came up there would be nothing he could do; Styx would have won and he would be destroyed forever.

  Amid the sound of sirens drawing nearer, the trail led to Nob Hill. He knew it had to be a trap, but it didn’t matter; saving Rose’s life was the only thing that concerned him.

  At the hill’s summit, a cable car stood motionless. In the dark interior, Nox saw Rose clearly, strung by chains, her arms outstretched across the width of the car, her head hanging down. She’d been badly beaten. Fighting a wave of raw emotion, he raced to help.

  Ten feet away, he heard the loud clunk of the brake being disengaged automatically, and then the cable car began to roll backward down the hill, gathering speed.

  His body chemistry altered in a fraction of a second, flooding his muscles with the power needed to propel himself across the remaining distance. His perception slowed time so that the world appeared to hang, and then he crashed against the side of the cable car and clawed his way inside as the velocity increased.

  Styx had disabled the brake and the backup system. As Nox turned to free Rose, he was overpowered by the chemical stink of the explosives packing the car.

  A grand gesture. San Francisco would never forget Styx after this.

  “I’ll get you out of here,” Nox called. Rose jerked her head up, peered at him through bruised eyelids. It was the last thing he saw before he was blinded. Along California Street on either side, powerful torches flooded the interior of the cable car with a brilliant white light.

  Styx knows all about me, he thought, clamping one hand across his eyes to protect his hypersensitive vision. Of course he does.

  Without his sight, every other sense was instantly magnified. Ignoring the violent rocking of the cable car as it thundered down the hill, he concentrated on the scent of Rose’s perfume, and the iron tang of blood droplets caught in the air currents, heard each exhalation as if it had been amplified a hundredfold. Hauling himself along the carriage, he reached her in an instant, and in a perfectly calibrated flood of adrenaline and oxygenated blood, tore the chains holding her. Weak from her ordeal, she fell into his arms.

  “Don’t worry,” he whispered. I can save you. I can make up for all the terrible things I’ve done.

  In that strange, timeless world, Nox moved with the certitude of a savior filled with a righteous fury that Rose would never be hurt again. Carrying her effortlessly, he hauled them both on to the cable car roof, effortlessly making thousands of microcalculations to balance perfectly against the conflicting motions. In his mind, he glowed like a star as he shifted rapidly along the roof, avoiding the glaring lights.

  I can do anything, he thought. No one can stop me.

  Farther down the hill, the cops had created an impromptu roadblock with their cars to stop the carriage’s progress. Not even he would survive that impact. Instantaneously calculating the wind currents, he leapt from the roof, shifting his body subtly to accommodate Rose’s weight. Landing like a cat, he immediately broke into a sprint. All around, Styx’s foot soldiers bolted for cover.

  They’re scared of me, he thought with grim pleasure.

  The deafening explosion blasted out windows for blocks and sent a fountain of orange and scarlet flame high into the air. As debris rained down, Nox sheltered in a doorway with Rose.

  “Who are you?” she asked weakly.

  He removed his mask so she could understand what he’d done for her. There was surprise and confusion, but the time for explanations would come later.

  “Styx is going to keep coming for you to get at me,” he said. “I’m not going to let you suffer any more. I have to end this one way or another. Where is he?”

  She gave him directions to the place she’d been taken when they snatched her. Her concern for him was clear.

  “Don’t worry about me.”

  She read his thoughts. “It’s over with Daniel. I broke it off. It was a stupid thing, a reaction to you and me and…” As her words trailed away, he understood why she had been made to suffer and his anger burned fiercely. But when he looked into her face, he saw every sacrifice he had made—the loss of his days, his isolation, his obsession—and the sacrifice he would undoubtedly have to make, would all be worthwhile.

  “Once I’d made sure Rose was safe with the paramedics, I returned here, to the quiet of the penthouse, my sanctuary from the world. I figured Styx wasn’t going to run to another hideout. He wanted me to find him, or he wouldn’t have let Rose know his base. Over the months I’d been tracking him, I saw the intricacy of connections and the depth of his thinking. He had always been one step ahead of me, but that was coming to an end now that I knew the truth. He couldn’t hide behind masks anymore, and it was easy to understand
his motivations.

  “But that very revelation had sent my own world spinning off its axis, and I was no longer sure I could trust my reactions. I needed time to assimilate. In a secret compartment in the bedroom, there was the box containing the few remnants of my past life that I wanted to keep—photos, of Rose, and Daniel and me, diaries, the usual stuff. As I sifted through them, they gradually revealed themselves to me in a new light. That expression on Daniel’s face after I’d hauled him away from the kids threatening to beat him up in the locker room—it didn’t look like relief any more. He was clever, used to being at the top. How did he really feel about some dumbass coming along and making him seem like a loser?

  “The three of us drinking champagne after I’d bought out Rose’s dad’s company. Was Daniel really looking with affection at San Francisco’s hottest couple? Or was it yearning for the woman that the dumbass had snatched from him? Another blow in a lifetime of blows. What was really going on in that supersmart head of his?

  “I didn’t want to believe it. I was who I was because of Daniel, on so many levels. He’d been the only person who stood by me during my single-minded, cold-hearted rise to the top of the financial ladder. He was always there for me, the best of friends, an anchor in the harshest of environments. The betrayal—if that’s what it was—was almost too painful to bear.

  “When had he used the process on himself? Before my accident, or was I the guinea pig? Either way, he clearly had not suffered from my debilitating loss of the daylight world. Maybe my disability was just a byproduct of the rod tearing through both hemispheres of my brain.

  “And the truth beyond the truth? However important Daniel was in my life, I couldn’t let him hurt Rose anymore. She was good and decent and honest, and she didn’t deserve either of us. But life, as I’d discovered early on, was all about the hard choices. If I didn’t bring Daniel to justice, I’d be spending the rest of my nights trying to keep Rose alive, trying to stay alive myself; and could I ever outthink Styx? I’d been behind him pretty much every step of the way so far.