by Jobe, David
Mac shook his head, unable to speak.
“And the part that really pisses me off is her.” He nodded toward Allison. “Any one of those people on your father’s wall had enough clout to call the mayor, the governor, whomever, to get her out of jail the moment they had taken her into custody. But he didn’t. She sat there, and I’m willing to bet it isn’t because he agreed with her being incarcerated. He knew she was building you up, and he wasn’t going allow that. She almost died in jail, while your intelligent, all-powerful, loving father sat on his hands. You may have survived that push off of this roof that day, but he’s still killing you, one slight shove at a time.”
“Maybe you’re right.” Mac’s shoulders slumped.
“He’s right, Machiavelli. Your father doesn’t love you. You’re a project he’s not willing to admit defeat on.”
Lanton and Mac turned to see Eleanor standing there with tears in her eyes. In a moment, her form shifted to that of a younger more plump woman with alabaster skin. “Your father is a monster. An abuser. If you think what he’s done to you is bad, what he’s done to your half-sister is worse.” This strange woman gave a loud sob. “Please tell me she’s here. Safe with you.”
Lanton stepped forward, putting himself between the woman and Mac. “Who are you?”
The woman frowned. “I am Heather Lindell, mother of Jessica Lindell, but Lindell is my maiden name. Legally, I am Heather Patton, though I’ll never take that name again.” She spat.
Mac stared with mouth agape. “You? You’re married to my father?”
Heather gave a ragged laugh. “I don’t know. Now that he’s dead, I guess we’re no longer married. But, when he comes back, will we be?”
“You aren’t making any sense,” Lanton said.
“Is my daughter here?”
“What does your daughter look like?” Mac was sure he knew even before he asked. His mind flashed to the cigarette burns on the kid’s arms.
“She’s blonde, about this high. Six years old. Always has a blue stuffed bear with her.” Another ragged sob escaped her.
Mac slid around Lanton, whispering for him to keep an eye on the ladies downstairs. “She’s here. I’ll take you to her.”
Heather sneered at him. “I don’t want you anywhere near her. Have you seen the monster she hides? I’ll give you two guesses whose DNA gave her that horror. You. All of these people, even me, suffer at the hands of your stupid DNA. Oh, your father was so proud when he figured out that his manipulations of your DNA in the womb had succeeded. None of this would have been possible if you had just died in childbirth, or actually fallen to your death when he tossed you off this roof. My girl would be normal. My life would be normal. But no, you couldn’t be the man he wanted you to be, but you started this whole chain of events with your tainted blood. He tortured her. Oh sure, he said it was to test her strengths, her abilities, but I knew. He tortured her because she wasn’t like you. She didn’t have the right parts. He barely fed her, afraid she would turn into the fat slob you’ve become.”
“That’s enough!” Lanton stepped between them. “You’re out of line.”
“Am I? All of this. Every bit of blood that coats this city is his fault. All of it. And I don’t want him anywhere near my daughter. Do you hear me?”
Lanton frowned. “Right now, you won’t be anywhere near your daughter. You’re more to blame for her pain than he ever could be. He didn’t even know about her existence until she showed up and saved him at the hospital.”
Heather’s eyes went wide. “She did what?!” She lurched forward, meaning to get past Lanton and at Mac. Her form shifted mid-stride, becoming sleek and black. Before she had finished, Mac knew what terrible beast she planned to become. She got two steps before she fell to the ground, howling in pain and squirming. “Let me up.” The sleek monster before him growled.
Mac shook his head, tears in his eyes. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know, but I promise you that I’ll protect her.” Tears dropped from his chin onto his own sleek suit. “She’s the only family I have.”
“She’s no family of yours.” The thing squirmed on the ground, held there by an intense amount of gravity pushing down on her. “Let me go.”
Lanton stepped up, pulling his taser from his belt. He took a deep breath and shot the thing in the thigh. After a few moments of jolts and the thing howling, it stopped moving. After a few more moments, it reverted back to the shape of Heather.
The real Elanor and Grim burst up the stairs. “What’s going on?” they asked in unison.
Mac let the gravity hold go, staring down at the woman. “Everyone, meet my stepmother.” He gave a loud sob.
“Mac,” Lanton said, about to say something else.
“Later,” Mac replied. He jumped off the side of the building and shot into the sky, vanishing in seconds.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Paragon Vs. Renegade
Golem stepped from the edge of the woods, the light of the morning sun finding him on the open path behind the rest stop’s main building. With slow steps, he moved across the green grass toward the man sitting on a bench on the other side of the walking path.
“Have you come to try and kill me?” Mac asked without looking up.
Golem smiled at the use of the word try, but let it slide. “No,” he admitted. “Though if I’m going to be on the level, I did start last night off with the mindset to do just that.” He stepped up next to the bench opposite of Mac.
Mac shook his head. “Come any closer, and I’ll obliterate your avatar.”
Golem eased to the side, sitting down on the bench, the wood protesting his weight. “I’ve only come to talk, I promise.”
“Pardon me if I don’t take you at your word.”
“I earned that,” Golem said. “But, so much has changed since we last squared off.”
Mac nodded but said nothing. They sat there in silence for a long time as the sounds of cars speeding by on the interstate roared in the background. After more cars that Golem could count, Mac looked up. “You’ve lost weight.”
Golem looked down at his body. He had been working on refining his technique. Though this manifestation was still made of dirt, he no longer looked like a loose interpretation of a person. Now he had discernible muscles and even the illusion of pants, though his whole body still had the one dirt hue. “You have too.”
Last time Golem had seen Mac, the man had been overweight, obese even. The man that sat before him still had more weight than was healthy, but his stomach had started to vanish, and the muscles in his shoulders and arms were becoming prominent.
Mac laughed. “One of the side effects of getting gut shot.”
Golem frowned. “About that. The woman who did that to you is dead. All the versions of her.”
“Had a falling out did you?” Mac sounded tired. He stared at the space between his feet, though Golem knew the man was aware of his surroundings. “A little criminal spat?”
“I deserve that too. Truth is, I wanted to go straight. She figured I owed her, so she killed someone I cared for. It was a bad move on her part. You hear about that explosion in Anderson?”
Mac looked up at that. “That was you?”
“That was them. Seems they were building quite an arsenal. I just lit the fuse.”
“Is this what you have come here to talk to me about?” Mac went back to looking at the space between his sneakers.
Golem shook his head. “I told you that I set out last night to kill you. I even constructed one of these,” he gestured at his body, “in the backyard of your mansion. It took a while so as to not happen all at once. Then I had it scale the side of your house. Not an easy feat for a dirt monster, but with enough will, I managed it. I made it to the top and found you there with the police officer.”
“How much did you hear?”
“From start to finish. From the lecture about your dad to the accusation about your part in all of this. Then you flew off. For the longest while, I sat back
at my home thinking of what I should do next. I decided that I would come to the place where I like to think. Imagine my surprise when I found you doing the same. It wasn’t until I saw you here that I decided killing you wasn’t the right thing to do.”
Mac gave a dry chuckle. “That’s what clued you in?”
Golem shook his head. “I need to back up, I think. Give you the rest of the details. A couple nights ago I was saved by a man who apparently can see the future. I didn’t know that then. After saving me, he told me to pay it forward. I had just defeated the Henchwomen and figured now was as good a time as any to start trying to be good. I checked in on this man and found him talking about his vision of you. I only caught a piece of it, but he thinks you’ll kill us all. Destroy the world. I’m not sure how you would do something like that, but it would seem this guy was very sure it would happen.”
“Black hole.” Mac didn’t look up.
“Excuse me?”
“I could create a black hole. My power is over gravity. I’ve thought about it and the implications. All I’d have to do was take something small and turn its gravity all the way up. Create a piece of condensed matter that would turn into a black hole. Lights out for the human race.” Mac gestured with his hand like he was holding an invisible basketball. “Just a nudge in gravity and I could rip the world apart.”
“Sweet Jesus, man. That’s scary.”
“Yeah.”
They fell into silence again. This time it was Golem that broke the quiet between them. “Do you play video games?”
“Not much anymore, but I used to.”
Golem nodded. “I love video games. It would even be fair to say that I view the world through the lens of video games. There’s this mechanic in some games that are the bane of my game playing. I have a love-hate relationship with it. It’s these games where they give you a host of options and depending on if you choose the bad one or the good one, the gameplay changes. Most of the games that claim that don’t live up to it, and that was fine with me. You see, I liked that I could be as evil as I wanted in a game and at the end, I would still be the great hero that saves them all. A few make you end up a destroyer of worlds, but those too are offered up as winning the game. It’s a clever trick to double the game time of any game. You play through as evil once and good the second, or vice versa.”
“Does this gaming lesson have a point?”
Golem coughed out a laugh. “Yeah. My point is that I didn’t like the games where if you did bad things, you had a bad outcome. But even in those games, you had the do-over option. We don’t get that here, and I figured that out far too late. I’ve got blood on my hands. No matter how many good decisions I make from here on out, it won’t wash off. I’ll never be the hero I wanted to be. The hero my father deserved to say he raised. You though, you are on the opposite track, and I think we are meeting at the crossroads. As I angle over into good, I think you are staring down the path that leads to evil. And I can tell you, from this side, you don’t belong here. You belong as a symbol of good. It’s your calling. I get that your dad is a huge douche, and a lot of these people have powers because he screwed with your DNA, but you are still you. Still free to make your choices. You can flip your asshole dad the finger and continue to be the hero the city needs, even when they scream and yell at you. Because once you come over to this side of the path, you are forever tainted. You’re better than that.”
Mac looked up. “Why are you saying all this to me?”
“The guy who saved me told me to pay it forward. I decided that meant I needed to save a life. When I found out you were going to kill us all, I got shivers at the idea of saving the world. The ultimate in paying it forward, seasoned with some good old-fashioned revenge. That maybe it would be enough to balance out the pain and destruction I caused. Problem is my gut tells me that bloodying my hands more, whatever the cause will only worsen my guilt.”
“So, your belief is that by not killing me, you are saving a life? It doesn’t work that way.”
Golem gave a deep rumbling laugh. “You are the second person to tell me that. That’s not what I’m trying to do. I’m trying to help you save the world, by convincing you to stay your hand.”
“I was never going to create a black hole. It is just a theory anyway. I could never do that.”
“You’d be surprised what someone is capable of if pushed past their limit. It may be that this fortune teller guy has it all wrong. Could be he is on the money. I figure I sit down and have a chat with you and maybe if that day does come, my words will give you pause. Maybe just this will help change the ending to this game.” Golem rose, withdrawing a small stone figurine from his chest. He set it on the path before him, careful not to move forward too much. “I owe this city a debt I can never repay, but from here on out, I intend to try. I owe you a debt for what I tried to do to you, and for bringing that psychopath woman into the mix. Please take this. My hope is that it’ll bring you assistance when you need it most.”
“It’s your version of a tracker, isn’t it?” Mac stared at the stone figure.
Golem laughed and nodded. “You’re smarter than the fortune teller. Yes. With this, I can know when you are in danger. Maybe I can come running.”
Mac shook his head. “I’m going to pass. I hope you do stick to the straight and narrow, but if I ever find the person driving that thing, I’ll turn you over to the law.”
Golem nodded and scooped up the figurine, slipping it back inside its body. “I can’t fault you for that.” He rose, turning to walk back into woods.
“Dirt monster.”
Golem turned.
“I think your dad should be proud of you.” Mac offered him a smile.
Golem gave a slow nod. “I’ll never get to know. And it is all because of the bad decisions that I made. That’s a decision I’ll never be able to undo. It’ll haunt me for all of my days. Stay on your side of the path, hero. I’d be lying if I said that what I heard tonight doesn’t make me want to root for you. You deserve the fanfare and the achievement rewards. But only as long as you stay on your side.”
“Thanks.”
“Pay it forward.” Golem smiled and then slipped into the woods, going to pieces once he was safely in the shadows.
Chapter Thirty-Four
The Devil’s Due
The devil, or a devil, sat across from him in all his hellish glory, a pistol sitting on the table between them. The demon’s skin held a deep red hue with shadows looking like burnt red bordering on black. Two onyx horns jutted from the edge of its black hairline, rising into curved points. The eyes that stared at Lanton, a solid color of black that made Lanton feel as if he were being pulled into a yawning abyss. The thing’s long face curled into a cruel smile revealing pointed teeth that fit together to make a Cheshire Cat smile. When it spoke, it revealed a second row of similar teeth. Its long black fingers tapped on the table in a rolling fashion, forefinger, middle, ring, and then pinkie, the thumb always refraining. It appeared quite pleased with itself.
When it spoke, it mimicked Lanton’s voice. “You’ve really screwed the pooch now, haven’t you?” Its gaze shifted from Lanton’s face to the fully loaded gun that rested on the kitchen table between them. “You let the bulletproof kid get killed. You let the fast talker go with the soldiers, and now two of their bodies have been found outside the precinct where he had been held. That’s a clear message to you, don’t you think? You let the murderer girl break house arrest so you could go arrest a kidnapper. You think they’ll let that hold up in court? He walks on a technicality, and you know it. Then you let the teleporter go beat up a halfway house for abused women. He’s going to jail. You know those two at the station have it out for him. He’s given them all the ammunition they need. You have a psychopath kid and her nutty mom on lockdown in a civilian house.” It looked around, emphasizing that they were in Mac’s house. “Child Protective Services is going to have a field day with that. You let the fat kid fly off all emotional. He’s proba
bly already blown his brains out, and that’s on you. You took responsibility for him. And the best part. The best part is that you knocked up your girlfriend with a baby with powers. What do you think the odds are that the baby punches its way out of her stomach, and they both bleed out somewhere? Face it, you are just making things worse.”
Lanton stared at the demon. He had no defense. It was using his own thoughts against him. He looked down at the gun and realized that at some point he had picked it up. He set it back down. “I can fix this.”
