by Mathy, Scott
The Doc crossed her arms, “You shouldn’t be using it at all. Too much could permanently damage your body, if not kill you. We don’t know what an overdose even looks like.” She took the cartridge away from Glitch, “I haven’t finished testing it, and at this rate I probably never will.”
“What do you mean?” he asked.
Ellis went over to a small case resting on a shelf at eye level. She popped the locks, “I mean that this. Is. It.” She handed the container to Dwight. Inside, the foam liner had places for twenty vials; only eight remained.
Dwight felt a cold shiver run down his spine, “You can’t make more?”
“It’s highly unlikely. My source is no longer available.” She frowned, staring into the case.
Dwight tried his best to fight the revelation, “But you can find a replacement, can’t you?”
“It’s not that simple; I can’t just magic a source out of nothing. With enough work, I might be able to generate something similar, but it won’t be the same.”
He took four of the cylinders and slipped them into his jacket, “Guess I’ll have to make these count.”
She nodded, “It couldn’t last forever. Even Prometheus was eventually punished for stealing Zeus’s fire. You’ll have to be more careful.”
“Wouldn’t you be Prometheus in that metaphor?” he asked.
The scientist replaced the case on her shelf, “Yes, but from what I can tell, things haven’t been so great for the humans, either.” She cleared her throat, “As for your AI problem, I have at least one stable AI I can model a series of controls from. Her addiction to teen literature aside, Alice seems fairly unlikely to attempt an overthrow of humanity. I’ll do what I can for your…” She waited for a name.
“It goes by ‘Nemo.’ And be careful; it’s got a hell of a superiority complex.” He turned to leave.
“Don’t we all,” she said as he shut the door to the supply room, leaving the two women alone.
Dwight returned home to a rare occurrence: entering their living room, he was greeted only by silence and darkness. The television, usually alight with Ian’s newest obsession, was off. His roommate was asleep on the coach across from it, while Molly lay curled up in his lap, comfortably snoring along with her human bed.
He decided to leave them be, closing the door and heading into his own room. He removed his boots and shirt before allowing his aching, weary body to collapse into bed. The last thing he did as he fell asleep was reply to Lawrence Adams’s email. Earlier that week, he’d been invited to consider working for a fresh beginning in New Haven – one without Wulf or the Guild’s politics.
He typed his response, “10:00 tomorrow,” and hit send.
Five
The limousine arrived before he was conscious. At around 06:00, it began honking on the hour. By 09:00, he finally roused himself to look out his bedroom window. He would have felt sorry for his neighbors, if he actually liked any of them.
Dwight dressed more formally than usual, putting a blazer over his usual jeans and t-shirt. If he was meeting with a billionaire Cape today, he thought he might as well dress for it. He quickly sent an email to Adams, not knowing how else to reach him, asking for the driver to knock it off.
He said goodbye to the sleeping Ian and Molly, writing a note that he would be back sometime later and bring a communal pizza with him. The promise would motivate Ian to take care of their domestic needs for the day and cut down on the number of takeout boxes added to their pristine living space.
As he exited the security door of the apartment building, a rail-thin man stepped out of the waiting vehicle. Dwight had always thought his roommate was the definition of “waifish,” but this man was a walking skeleton. He reminded Dwight of a cartoon caricature more than a real person. The black suit he wore was accented with his blood-red undershirt and gray tie. His pointed nose and shoulders pressed forward as he spoke, “Mr. Knolls.”
Dwight walked to the car, looking up at his visitor. “You’re here for Adams?”
The talking stick of a man grinned down, “Of course. We’ll be taking you to Mr. Adams’s temporary accommodations while his tower is being renovated.
It made sense; Adams Tower was once the Uni-Comm building Wulf’s Associates destroyed during the Killstreak job. Adams promised to make it an architectural marvel and, incidentally, a central hub for the city’s newest superhero corporation.
He followed the man’s gesture and got into the rear cabin. The situation reminded him of Rampage escorting him to StarPoint all those months ago. At least this time, it was unlikely that his uncomfortably thin chaperone would try to eat him if he misspoke. The gentleman took a seat across from him in the spacious interior.
“So,” Dwight asked, “where are we going?”
His attendant took a bottle of water from a nearby ice chest, “Mr. Adams’s office is currently in the original Alpha Guard test facility. A secondary team will be quartered there once the renovations are finished.”
“Lovely,” Dwight said, intending to end the conversation there.
“I am Mr. Hamelin,” the thin man said, but not aloud. He grinned wickedly from his seat, sipping the water.
Dwight shook the voice from his mind, “You do that again, and I’m leaving.”
Dwight initially hated the feeling of having Lia inside of his mind, but had grown to appreciate her. Lia’s psychic touch felt like a gentle hand sifting through the sand of his thoughts, careful not to disturb anything sensitive and replacing whatever it moved. Hamelin’s felt like a shovel: stabbing, pulling, and dropping the parts that it didn’t want back into the mess.
“You will not,” the voice in his head commanded.
He felt the immediacy of the command, and any urge he had to reach for the door drifted out of comprehension. Again, this wasn’t like Lia’s power governing his movements by muscular control; this was forceful manipulation, supplanting his will for another’s.
They rode in complete silence, Dwight’s ability to reason suppressed by the psychic’s control. Trapped inside his thoughts, he screamed for help, but found nothing. He couldn’t tell how much time had passed when the limousine pulled up in front of the construction site.
The thin man stepped out of the car first, holding the door for his unwilling guest. “After you,” he said, pointing at the entrance to the building.
The Alpha Guard facility was built years before the Guild had taken over as the only option for New Haven’s Capes. No one knew what became of the Guard’s original roster; only Lawrence Adams had resurfaced from wherever they disappeared to. His first business became reacquiring the derelict headquarters under an assumed identity, before revealing himself to a stunned populace. The Guild’s reaction was a series of dismissive press releases asking the citizens to trust their authority. Dwight expected as much from the monolithic empire, but Wulf’s silence regarding Adams’s return bothered the hitman. In the first few days, Dwight had anticipated a dark briefcase with the Cape’s name, but none ever arrived.
Now, marching through the construction yard as Mr. Hamelin’s marionette, he feared he knew why. Wulf likely knew about Adams’s personal telepath; the tyrant’s memories of Lia must have stayed his hand. Dwight felt himself awkwardly raise his arms to push open the double doors of the facility. The moment his fingers met with the steel frame, the vice-like grip on his mind shuddered. His body spun abruptly, facing his manipulator.
Hamelin’s casual pace behind his puppet stopped, the man’s expression fixed with pained alarm. Beneath his skull, Dwight felt two powerful forces locked in brutal confrontation. His muscles jerked beyond his control as the forces pushed and pulled at his thoughts. Dwight’s right leg lifted itself, trembling terribly as it raised and slammed down a foot forward. Then his left did the same. Again and again, he took quivering steps toward the intensely focused psychic.
The battle was taking its toll on Mr. Hamelin, who began sweating from the mental struggle with whoever was fighting him. He raised
a sticklike arm, pointing a shaking palm at Dwight as his puppet disobeyed his orders. At last within arm’s reach of his manipulator, Dwight experienced a great rush of relief as the invading force threw everything outward. The feeling of what was left coalesced into a bubble around his straining mind, stressed but now free of outside interference.
Dwight’s body sagged slightly from the release. His movements were his own again. Straightening himself, he locked eyes with the panicking Mr. Hamelin. He gave that fear a moment to set in as he cracked his knuckles with his replacement hand.
“Please, Mr. Knolls, there is no need for violence,” the frail assistant pleaded, trying pathetically to guard his face with his arms.
Dwight engaged the plates on the metallic fist. Lightning danced between them, casting their blue glowing light across his widening grin, “Sure, I don’t have to.”
The single punch he threw sailed directly between Hamelin’s bony wrists and into his right cheek. His shock plates burst in an explosion of sparks and delivered their charge. The results, Dwight thought, were quite satisfying. Hamelin stumbled backward briefly before collapsing in a broken pile at Dwight’s feet. The dueling forces dispersed from his exhausted perceptions.
“Thanks,” Dwight said aloud, knowing that his psychic protector was still watching.
The words, “You’re welcome,” echoed in his mind, Lia’s voice and sensation behind them. It was good to know that someone had his back, even if she was in her refuge halfway across the city. Her non-meddling pledge seemed to have its limitations.
Leaving the unconscious assistant in the dirt, Dwight entered the doors of the Alpha Guard test facility of his own volition. The front lobby looked like it was directly pulled out of another time; the cheap wood paneling and golden yellow paint would have been commonplace a few decades ago. Dwight was unsure of whether he was looking at an abandoned relic, or if this reflected Lawrence Adams’s stylistic vision. He imagined it must have been some combination of the two.
Dwight considered how to find the billionaire. The doors leading deeper into the complex were shut behind heavy steel blinds. He pondered if they had been closed in response to his demonstration outside, or if this was how they were always kept. A moment later, Adams appeared from behind the shuttered security door. He was clad in an elegant, fitted suit instead of the Crusader armor. The steel blinds rolled up into their alcove with hardly a sound.
“Mr. Knolls, so good of you to make it,” he said, stepping through the doorway and into the retro lobby.
Dwight took a casual seat in one of the gaudy chairs at the center of the room. If he was going to trigger any kind of trap, it would be from the walls. “Your assistant is taking a nap outside on the lawn. Tell him the next time he goes diving in my head, I’ll take it personally.”
Adams sighed heavily, “Yes, well, Hamelin can be a bit…assertive when he’s concerned with my interests. I assure you, he was only looking out for my safety. You understand; you have a bit of a reputation these days. Please accept my deepest apologies. It will never happen again.”
“Good; I’m glad we’re on the same page.” Dwight kicked his feet up on the dusty table at the center of the seating arrangement. “Let’s begin as if your telepath didn’t try to walk me in here like a puppet.”
The billionaire cleared his throat as he took a position opposite Dwight, “Alright. Dwight – may I call you Dwight?” he asked, as though he was already expecting permission.
“No, you may not,” Dwight responded plainly.
There was a pause, “Ah. Fine, Mr. Knolls, as you already know, the entirety of New Haven’s metahuman community is run by StarPoint and its CEO, Elijah Wulf. He is also secretly in command of the Guild, and all of their activities. Their leader, Midas, has been in his pocket for some time. Your stunt several months ago exposed that information, yet the populace of New Haven has done nothing to stop him.”
“You expected them to do something about it? What, an uprising?” Dwight folded his arms across his chest. “These people are terrified, Adams. I know you’re a billionaire tech-genius, but they’re just trying to survive out there. We don’t all have a super-suit and a stockpile of weapons to protect ourselves.”
“You’re right; the citizens will always be sheep, but they aren’t the ones I’m referring to. I meant the Powers. They follow the orders of StarPoint because they are afraid that Wulf’s boogieman will come for them. They are afraid of you, Mr. Knolls. The Referee is real, and he will come for anyone who does not bow to his master. You are Wulf’s hound.” Adams removed his phone from the jacket of his suit and began typing, “Without your intervention, your former partner would have lead a short reign at the top before someone inevitably dethroned him. Wulf’s resurrection and restoration were entirely your doing.”
Dwight didn’t like where he saw this going, “So you’re blaming me for wanting an apocalyptic, superpowered brawl to end before innocent people died?”
“Of course not; I’m merely pointing out that you could have decided to leave the man dead and take the throne yourself. Why give up that kind of power?”
“It’s simple,” Dwight said, “I put Wulf back on the top because they would listen to him. If I was in command, it would only be a matter of time before they broke apart and the fighting resumed. I didn’t have a long-term solution, so I restored our broken system until I could find something better. I won’t fight a flawed system with anarchy.”
Adams’s voice took on a patronizing tone, “What if I told you that there was a better option available now?”
“I’d say you’re probably full of shit, but go ahead.” Dwight braced for the monologue.
“Mr. Knolls, we both know that Elijah Wulf does not care about the lives of the unempowered citizens of New Haven. As a matter of fact, he doesn’t truly care about the powered ones, either. The only life he values is his own, and with his rather impressive set of skills and knowledge, he doesn’t have to try very hard to preserve it. I’m offering us a chance. Help me remove Wulf, become my enforcer, and we can make real change in the city. We can overthrow the Guild’s chokehold, let real heroes step up and achieve their true potential. We can be the catalyst for a new world, one free of the monster and the cowards who bow to him.”
Adams set the phone down on the table between them and rotated it to face Dwight. The hitman looked at the screen. On it was a number larger than he had ever seen preceded by a dollar sign. With that kind of money, there would be no limit to the safety he could buy for his friends and loved ones. He could purchase his former penthouse from his ex-wife several times over. He deeply regretted the words he knew he needed to say next:
“I’m sorry, but I can’t accept your offer.”
There was a brief moment, the slightest crack in Adams’s charming demeanor. Though it only presented itself as the smallest facial twitch, Dwight knew that his statement wounded the Cape, “I see,” he said quietly, removing the phone from the table. “May I ask why?”
Dwight stood up from the tacky chair, “Because the future you’re proposing, Mr. Adams, isn’t a better one. It’s trading one Power ruling the city for another. There’s no guarantee that there wouldn’t be more violence, more citizens caught in the crossfire. In all likeliness, your revolution would just be the start of a larger and more chaotic civil war. I can’t support that.”
“You certainly are entitled to your own view of the world, Mr. Knolls. What kind of society would we be creating if you weren’t?” He rose to meet his guest, extending a hand, “I will ask that you do not inform your current employer of our meeting, for the sake of the peace he has created.”
Dwight took the hand, “I can do that. Good day, Mr. Adams.” He headed for the door, leaving the stunned Cape alone in the lobby of his rising empire. Dwight knew this wouldn’t be the end of Adams’s ambitions, but he’d heard enough.
On his way out of the building, Dwight saw the prone form of Mr. Hamelin beginning to stir in the dirt of the constructio
n site. He stepped over his body, before turning to deliver a solid kick to the downed man’s ribs. From the cry of pain and shrill coughing, Dwight assumed his message was received. Hamelin rolled into a fetal position, clutching his stomach, face bleeding into the naked soil.
Dwight left the site without the still-waiting limousine, unsure of any further courtesy from Lawrence Adams. He’d refused and insulted a titan. Anything the man offered from then on required a hefty measure of distrust. He hadn’t made it a full block from his meeting when the phone in his pocket began to vibrate.
He picked it up without checking the caller, knowing full well who would be on the other end of the line, “Mr. Knolls,” the voice purred through the speaker.
Dwight sighed heavily, “What, Wulf?”
“I was just thinking about my favorite underling. How was your last trip with your new Guild friends? Are you enjoying working with some ‘real heroes’ for a change? Does your brooding soul finally feel absolved?” Dwight could hear his boss’s toothy sneer through the phone.
He started descending the stairs into the subway station two blocks from the Alpha Guard’s facility. “Sierra Grande is a shithole, but the job went fine. Their jet is scrap, and the Guild has its new recruits. I did exactly what you asked for.” He left out the part about stealing the potentially world-ending AI.
Wulf laughed, “I knew you would, my Referee. I also know you just had a meeting with the Steel Crusader. How is Lawrence? It’s been so long since we worked together.”
Dwight thought of Adams’s request, then decided he didn’t give a fuck about the billionaire’s discretion, “He wanted me to take you out. He wants to dismantle StarPoint and the Guild.”
There was silence, then, “Well that certainly is news to me. And what do you think of him? Should we be concerned?” The ‘we,’ of course, meant only Wulf.
“I turned him down. He may have an end goal, but he has no idea how to make it happen. I think rejecting his offer is going to be a huge setback. Don’t worry, boss, your immortal neck is safe for now.”
