Emergence

by Various

  He squeezed his eyes shut.

  There was no explosion.

  He opened his eyes, and found Snow Bunny staring at him.

  “You know what, kid?” she said huskily. “If I was about twenty years younger, I think we’d be celebrating right about now.”

  He set her down and grinned.

  “Don’t be so hard on yourself. Just ten or so and we’d be about the same age.”

  She looked at him, not comprehending.

  “You gonna turn me in, wonder boy?” she said, pouting her lips. “You know, I only wanted to get my poor Powder Hounds out of the cooler. And bury Vulpes.””

  “A word of advice. Maybe you ought to let that go already.”

  “That’s funny coming from you, kid. You don’t strike me as the type who lets things go.”

  “I’ll let you go. If you promise me you won’t kill anybody on the way out,”” he said, turning away.

  “You’d believe me if I said I wouldn’t?” she said.

  They were a piece of work. Her, holding so desperately onto youth she was willing to kill for it, and him, wanting nothing more than to get up and look in the mirror and see change. Anything. A grey hair. A line in his face.

  “Lady, I don’t have a choice,” he said from the shattered doorway.

  “Be seeing you, Pan,” Snow Bunny said, folding her arms. She winked and raised up the furry hood of her parka.

  “You better hope not,” he said, and with a slight wave, he flew back down the hall and up the shaft.

  It wasn’t the smartest thing, letting her go. But he did sort of trust her. She was homicidal sure, but she hadn’t killed anyone in any of the capers she’d pulled since getting her revenge on the execs who’d humiliated her.

  And he had Tink to think about now.

  When he reached the thirty-second floor the shaft ended and he had to smash out into the hall. There was a coded central elevator to the penthouse, but Pan flew directly into an office and broke through the window into the night.

  He wheeled about and rose to the roof, which was dominated by a helicopter pad in the center.

  There he found Tink, bound hand and foot in the center of the helipad, surrounded by its red blinking lights like some kind of postmodern sacrifice to the gods of glass and steel.

  #

  Nico had been shivering up here in the wind at the top of Vulpes Plaza for so long now his hands were blue and his nose was running snot. Balmy as California was, a hundred and fifty meters in the air at night it was far different from strolling ankle deep in the surf of Gondola Beach on a mild morning.

  Of the gold and silver mechanical nightmare that had pulled him through the ceiling of his own kitchen, he had seen nothing since his arrival here, when he’d been dumped into the arms of the Mexicans, who’d given him a sound thrashing, then tied him to a column in Aisha Cordell’s studio. There he mugged pitifully for the camera as the one called Bombero called Pan out to play.

  The silver-and-gold geezer had been in charge; that was certain. After the broadcast, he’d given them all orders via the intercom, told each of them where to be, told them he was going to monitor everything remotely, that he had control of the elevators, and that he’d detonate THE BOMB when the time came.

  Then they’d cut him loose, dragged him up to the windy roof, and deposited him here in the middle of the helipad, while the bloke in silver and gold rocketed up in the sky and headed northwest along the coast.

  But just before he’d left, the bastard had said to him: “Goodbye, Slightly.”

  The gold-and-silver cunt was Elton Ormond.

  He’d been terrified for a while that some helicopter pilot might park a skid on top of him, but after a single Vulpes News chopper hovered close to get some shots and got swatted down onto the roof of the neighboring Millennium Condominiums, nobody else had come near.

  There had been explosions all over the building for the past hour or so, and he’d felt them shuddering underneath him. Each one signaled the doom of THE BOMB. He was sure he was going to end up riding the whole damn skyscraper down to the basement at some point, but then he saw Jimmy come floating down out of the starry night like an angel. No, like his namesake. Like Pan, dropping down from Neverland.

  He looked like he’d been through the wringer. His costume was torn and blood-soaked, he was missing a glove, and there was a deep cut in his lip garnished with bruising.

  “Holy shite, mate, are you a fucking sight for sore fucking eyes,” he said laughing, as Jimmy knelt down beside him and got out his knife to cut the wires binding him up. “Tell me you got `em all. Jesus, tell me you got the bomb!”

  “The bomb’s out of commission,” Jimmy acknowledged. “I got all the War Gods, plus Karasu and Snow Bunny.”

  When his hands were free he squeezed Jimmy’s deceptively skinny arm, partly to get the numbness out of his fingers, and partly to emphasize what he said next. “Christ, Jimmy, listen to me. You missed the worst one.”

  “I know, I know. Hook—”

  “But you don’t know who he is and I do. Listen, Jimmy. Hook’s Elton Ormond.”

  “Elton Ormond?” Jimmy said. That stopped him from cutting his feet free, and he stared at Nico with a stricken kind of opia.

  “Right, mate. Listen, there’s thing’s I never told you about, things that made me too sick to talk about. About what Barry done to us. You know that.””

  Nico took Jimmy’s head in his hands. He felt tears splashing his own cheeks, as if he couldn’t control himself. “Oh Christ, Jimmy. He used to take us to a place with some sick fuck dressed as Captain Hook. He had a mockup of the pirate ship in his house. Ormond’s house. It had to be his house. We took a helicopter. And we’d go over the mountains. But I never knew where. It had to be Second Star. His bloody wonderland fuck-a-roo kiddyland ranch out in Olea.”

  #

  Pan sat stunned, heedless of the wind whipping over the helipad, staring into the bloodshot eyes of Tink as they melted tears down his face and his hands moved to his shoulders, squeezing repeatedly as if trying to reassure Pan that he was awake.

  “You gotta get that motherfucker, Jimmy! For all them other kids!”

  Elton Ormond. The Emperor of Pop.

  He and Cassidy had been out to Second Star when they were kids. Ormond had never done anything to them. The guy was a big time crusader for children’s charities. He had underprivileged kids out at his ranch all the time, at the petting zoo, riding the private Ferris wheel. Was it true? Because if it was, then Cassidy…

  Then Tink’s head exploded.

  Or rather, something seemed to explode in Tink’s head, which then erupted outward from his right temple with enough force to render his ruined skull a sagging, empty shell that drooped like a broken toy on his shoulders, the expression slack, the eyes devoid of any sentience. It was like somebody had taken Tink right out of his hands and replaced him with a wax mock up from Madame Russaud’s.

  Pan blinked and let go of his friend’s body. It sagged limply to the ground, and he saw that everything that Tink’s head had contained had spewed across the helipad in a sort of Pollockian scramble rendered in various subtle hues of scarlet.

  There had been no sound beyond the wet noise of a pumpkin falling off a porch.

  He knelt there, blinking, stunned physically and emotionally, his brain trying to register all that Tink had said, as well as what had just happened.

  Tink was dead. He was dead!

  Then a familiar voice was in his ear.

  “Pan! It’s me!” said the Brown Thrasher. “I’m inbound. Thirty seconds. How are you doing?”

  Pan worked his mouth, but didn’t know what to say.

  Tink was dead.

  Then, he remembered Father Eladio’s training and forced himself into an aerial backflip, as something snapped past his arcing belly and whizzed off into the night.

  He slid off the helipad and jumped down to the penthouse roof b
elow, flattening himself against the wall.

  “Are you on the roof?” the Thrasher asked. “Do you read me?”

  He crouched down, looking frantically about.

  A sniper. A sniper had set off Tantrum. A sniper with radium bullets.

  “When you can’t see the attack coming, best to keep moving,” Father Eladio had taught him. “And keep your movements random.”

  So he did. He pitched forward, rolled, dodged. It felt silly, but then the wall behind just over his right shoulder burst, and he knew at least that whoever was shooting at him had a full view of the north side of the tower.

  “You’ve got a shooter,” the Thrasher observed.

  “No shit!” Pan snapped, fighting to keep his voice from breaking. “Can you see him?”

  “Can’t lock down his position. He’s using some kind of dampening tech. Hang on. Scanning.”

  Pan leapt off the edge of the building and executed a barrel roll. He heard another shot snap past him, but it was impossible to determine where it had come from while he was moving.

  “I got a signature from the flash. South Millennium Tower, right across Olympiad Avenue, north of your position. I’m on it.”

  “No!” Pan snarled. “Leave it to me!”

  He flew north for the tall, pale, twin triangular towers that dominated Millennium City’s skyline, over the eerily empty Olympiad Avenue, probably cleared due to Tantrum’s breakout.

  He flew as erratic as he could. How many hours had he and Father Eladio soared over the Hillywood Hills at night, the priest admonishing him to fight against predictability when it came to evasion; to never use the same maneuver twice against the same opponent. It was harder than it sounded. Eventually you fell into an unconscious rhythm; bank left, roll right, up, down. You had to mix it up.

  So far so good.

  #

  Blowback cursed as the little evergreen form darted left and spoiled his shot yet again. He’d never had so much trouble bagging a chimeric.

  Instructions for the third part of his job had been clear. Go to the top of the building and kill the man on the Vulpes Plaza helipad in front of the kid chimeric called Pan.

  Deal Pan a wound, then disengage.

  The latter task was proving difficult. It was like somebody had trained this kid specifically to deal with his modus operandi, or maybe he had some kind of goddamned chimeric sixth sense or something.

  Somehow the kid had figured out where the shots were coming from, and now he’d been made. He hated to leave a job he’d been paid for even partly undone, but things were getting hairy. The kid was pissed and he’d taken out Tantrum and half of Rogers Stadium on his own.

  He backed toward the edge of the roof, lining up the skinny kid for another shot, squeezed, and cursed again as the little fucker spun out of his sights.

  Fuck you, Pan!

  #

  The South Tower loomed, and Pan saw the flash of a last desperate shot as he spun. The bullet tagged him in the right heel, not enough to remove anything more than a piece of his footwear.

  Then he saw the shooter drop his rifle and go running. He dove off the east edge of the roof. A flier? Or had he rightly guessed that suicide was probably better than Pan getting a hold of him?

  No, he was on a rope.

  Pan banked and dove behind him, got a good view of the black-and-green clad assassin running headlong down the side of the building. He was good. It was a hard descent and he was doing it without fear. Rappelling in this manner, he’d be to the bottom in seconds.

  But not as fast as if Pan cut his rope.

  Which, in his anger, he promptly did, sawing through the nylon and watching with satisfaction as it fell away and the shooter somersaulted into a silent freefall.

  “Goddammit!” said the Thrasher in his ear.

  And then there was a machine roar, and that fancy plane was diving down, so sharply it made Pan’s heart skip. How could the Thrasher hope to pull out of a descent that steep?

  But he did, perhaps ten feet from the pavement the little ship flattened and climbed, and the bastard who had killed Tink was clinging desperately to the canopy.

  Pan prepared to plunge at the plane like a hawk as it shuddered into a vertical hover and descended in slow circles to the street.

  Then, there was a girl. She rose up right in front of him. Heavy set, maybe about sixteen, stuffed into a silvery breastplate and peering at him from some kind of old time bronze helmet, abundantly curly black hair spilling out over her bare shoulders. She had a strange, segmented round shield bearing the symbol of an eight pointed starburst in a circle, and a similarly designed spear, the point of which appeared to be pure bright, white light. A long red cape with white lining hung from her shoulders.

  She looked she was cosplaying The Amazon, or LARPing or something.

  “That’s enough, cutie,” she said, brandishing the spear at him.

  “Who the hell are you?”

  “Okay, rude!” she said, curling her lip. “I’m Astarte. The Thrasher said you might need help. My team’s helping with cleanup so—”

  “Cleanup?”

  “Of Tantrum. He hurt Pecos and A-Frame pretty bad and, y’know, s’cuse the expression but P.O.N.E. got pone’d,” she said with an involuntary snort. She flitted around him like an excited pixie, surprisingly quick given her frame. “So my team stepped up and we beat him. We’re the California Girls! I’m Astarte!” she said brightly, then in a conspiratorial tone, she added: “Well, don’t tell Termagant I said it was my team, but…you know what I mean. So you’re Pan, right? Cool.”

  “Pan, you almost killed this asshole!” the Thrasher yelled in his ear.

  “That was the idea!” he said, glad at least to be talking to another adult.

  “Uh…what?” Astarte asked, bemused.

  Pan turned away and put his finger to his ear, but she simply floated around to face him.

  “He killed Tink! And he’s the guy who set Tantrum off!”

  “Who is?” the chubby warrior princess asked in confusion, and to his chagrin, she blew a pink bubble of gum and it popped over her lips.

  “Look,” said Pan, as much to Astarte as to the Thrasher, “I left three chimerics down but not out in the Plaza and some kind of bomb in the security office on the thirtieth floor. I managed to freeze it, but I don’t know if it’s stable. The kids are out of the daycare and Aisha Cordell’s safe with a guy who’s hurt pretty bad. I’m out of here.”

  “Where the hell are you going?” the Thrasher demanded.

  “You’re leaving?” Astarte said, apparently disappointed.

  “Don’t try to follow me,” he said to both of them and, digging the micro-transmitter out of his ear, he let it fall and soared off toward the coast as fast as he could go.

  “You’re hot!” the girl in the armor yelled after him.

  It was lost to the wind in his ears.

  It was forty-five minutes to San Bernardo County from here by jet.

  He was shooting for thirty-nine.

  Hook was there.

  Hook was Elton Ormond.

  And Cassidy was with Elton Ormond.

  That was the surprise Hook had planned for him.

  EIGHTEEN

  Cassidy Hollis was not the character she portrayed on Capes. She wasn’t strong, she had no powers. She liked playing Diana Hale because The Amazon was everything she was not. She made her living pretending to be a fearless hero. A warrior.

  But she was a mess.

  And she was a liar.

  She had lived for years with a lie that wasn’t even her own. It had destroyed her, syphoned all the strength out of her over the years like a leech stuck to the small of her back where she couldn’t get at it.

  No one alive knew it. Not the battery of therapists who had passed her about like a perplexing riddle, not the so-called friends whom she never saw anyway, not the succession of men and women she’d slept with in the years sin
ce the lie.

  Only her father had known. It had been his lie, and he’d died for it.

  Now she wanted desperately to tell someone. The person, she realized, she’d wanted to tell all along, and had necessarily abandoned all hope of ever seeing again.

  Because she’d thought Jim was dead.

  But he wasn’t dead. He was alive.

  And suddenly there was hope to unburden herself again. The knot in her stomach which she’d tried to bury with years of lies and misdirection surged to the surface and demanded to be untied.

  “There’s something you’re not sharing, Cassidy. And until you tell someone what it is, nothing’s going to change for you,” the last therapist had said, before remanding her fucked-up life to the custody of another whom she hadn’t bothered seeing.

  Jim was Pan.

  Pan was a hero.

  She had seen what he could do now, on television, but more, on the bank of screens Elton Ormond had planted himself in front of after drugging her and killing Paul Thurbee, Jolene, Ben Withers, and Scott Furley, the showrunner of Capes.

  He had invited them all to wait out the Tantrum thing here at Second Star, sat them all down to dinner at the biggest table she’d ever seen, excused himself to take a phone call, then come back out with some kind of weird gold and silver thing on his arm.

  A thing that ended in a sharp silver hook.

  “I apologize to all of you,” he said, walking behind Jolene. “But I just don’t have the time to entertain.”

  Then he’d yanked back Jolene’s hair and run the hook under her chin, spraying her dish of chicken parm in blood.

  He’d reached over and jammed the hook into the top of Paul Thurbee’s head next. The sound had been a dull, hollow sounding thunk, like a ripe watermelon being tested in the produce section.

  Ben Withers had gotten out of his chair while Elton Ormond put a foot on Paul’s shoulder to pull his hook free.

  He was the only one who tried to do anything. He picked up a table knife and tried to stab Ormond, but the singer had batted his hand away with the metal arm and then run him through with a sword he seemed to bring out of nowhere.

  She’d seen the tip go into Ben’s stomach shining silver and when it sprang from his back it was red with blood, dripping like the hook in his other hand.