“Jesus, are you always this much of an asshole?”
“OK, so you don’t want me to sign your t-shirt? What’s this about?”
“Titan. Or Titans, I should say.”
“Explain,” I order tersely.
“I see one of them cold-cocked you at the Silver Tower a few months back.”
“Yeah. Asshole came out of nowhere. A bit like you,” I say. “What’s your deal? Clark Kent’s only cool because he changes into whatsisname. What are you, the black sheep of the family?”
“We’re not family,” he says. “OK, you listening? Because here it is.”
“Hit me.”
“Titan came about a year ago. He’s my parallel. Got himself this magic glowing globe thing, said it came from a version of our world where the Dreamtime’s still in effect.”
“Dreamtime?”
“Australian indigenous mysticism,” Draven says.
“Like meat pies, kangaroos and foot –”
“No, indigenous people. Aborigines. You get it?”
“Not really,” I say, “but go on.”
“Titan said a bunch of stuff I didn’t understand, and when he realized a) I didn’t have powers like him, and b) I wasn’t going to sign up to his crusade, he threw me out my own window and I was lucky to survive. I was hospitalized for three months, and during that time he’s been gathering more and more of his doubles to make an army.”
“An army of what? Clones of himself?”
“Versions of me. From other parallels. The ones where we have superpowers. Said he’d chosen this world for his own after years of getting his butt handed to him.”
“Whoa. This world? Why ours? It’s got to be one of the most heavily populated parallels for masks around.”
“That’s some of the stuff I didn’t understand that he said. The device. The Orb, he called it. It can only take him to a select range of . . . ‘quantum’ of parallels?”
I say nothing to this, trying to look on wisely with a finger curled on my chin as I nod, not making too much of the recurrence of the word quantum in the same day as my attack by a comely assassin of the same name. I ponder Simon Magus’ tutorial about levels of plasticity in parallel universes, wondering if this holds the key to understand the level at which this Titan and his clones appear to be operating – and at the same time I try to set aside the apparent scorn for which Magus held the possibility that in all the random million-upon-million cellular connections in the cosmos, there aren’t actually that many copies of ourselves to contend with in the first place. The Titan Situation™, as I shall soon be calling it, appears to break the proof for his theorem.
“Well?” Draven asks.
“I appreciate the intel. Thanks.”
I frown briefly, making sure the guy’s not actually waiting for payment. Instead, the handsome dweeb looks frustrated.
“What are you going to do about it?”
“I guess we’ll be hearing from him again.”
“Again? Didn’t you get my message?” Draven snorts in annoyance. “Their plan is meant to start tomorrow, Friday the 13th.”
Zephyr 13.10 “Faceless”
TEMPTED AS I am to leave Draven on the rooftop to make his own way down, I give him a lift back to his apartment where he shows me through the damage to his digs with all the earnestness of a brokedown realtor. I feel sorry for the guy, it’s true. Clearly having some kind of weird genetic link to a bunch of reality-hopping villains has made having a personal life pretty tough in the past year and I guess I might’ve helped earlier than now. I can’t be all things to all people. I believe this, cling to it passionately like my self-worth if not my life might depend on it, knowing it’d be easy to waggle fingers and say I should be more attentive if only you didn’t understand just how many freaks, jokers, enemies and jilted men and women are out there just waiting to spoil my day. And that’s just the harmless ones.
As much as Draven needs my charity, the best I do is give him my direct number after he suggests I check out the redevelopment of some old shipyards site for waterfront apartments in, you guessed it, Van Buren, which apparently halted work during the credit crunch and is still a long way off from completion.
I nod, depart, for all appearances winging my way there the moment I am gone.
Truth is I palm a text from Mastodon giving me the time and arrival location of the Fortress of Solitude. Rather than the waterfront, I speed my way past the northern arcologies to the broad precinct now known as Adams, alighting near a strangely beautiful Banksy-esque mural on a dilapidated tenement, a huge shadow buffalo melting into a timeworn spray paint frieze of the American flag a reminder of the city of the same name that once occupied raw stretches of the American tundra until the Kirlians came and razed it from the earth. Jacked up gangsta cars cruise past the barricaded minimarts, pawn shops, liquor stores and dime jewelry stores now making up the ghetto as the tears of newborns echo from glassless windows higher up resembling the eye slits in some enormous weeping ghost’s face.
Castle Wallachia materializes in the street, several hooded figures working the drawbridge and shooting faceless looks of scornful abandon in my direction as I hurry like the interloper I am up and into the barbican.
I give one look back into the city as the bridge closes up. Bullet-holes pock-mark the walls of the tower like the face of an addict, and from the front I see fires burning through the open windows where residents scrape together their meagre existences, hard to believe they even exist in a city where the millionaire elite will pay for superheroes to whore themselves. I know where my work would do the most good, though it might take more than my lifetime to have any effect. Guardians Without Borders plays on my mind as I turn back into the floating castle and the monks usher me into a white doorway, the medieval décor giving way to neo-2001: A Space Odyssey corridors that twist and turn endlessly without a conscious mind to direct them.
Conscious mind might be a compliment, but I am a little emboldened to see Mastodon step out to greet me. Without his powers in effect, the greying hulk has just about a nose on me as he wraps me up in his meaty arms smelling of cigars and stale perspiration. I back pat my way free, grinning shy and contrite wearing my quasi-prodigal son mask as the ‘Don leads me further in, corridors flowering open like if Alcatraz had a womanhood as we press deeper into the bowels of the gloomy city-citadel.
*
“HOW’S TRICKS, MOTHERFUCKER?” Mastodon asks as he leads me into a big spacious recreation room with Star Trek couches and a few idle monitors hanging from the roof showing intercut images of celebrities doing karaoke with a live stream of some riots happening somewhere, I belatedly realize, in a parallel Atlantic City.
“You gonna do something about that?” I ask, motioning to the screen.
Mastodon shrugs. “Not my patch, yo.”
I squint, not really sure when the ‘Don started talking like he was from The Wire.
“It’s a riot, dude. In Atlantic City.”
“Yeah, we might travel the slipstreams between parallels, but we stick to actions on our own. Ran into another version of ourselves who got pretty sly about us steppin’ on their toes.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
I look around. Mastodon’s already entombed himself in one of the comfortable-looking nooks.
“I thought we’d catch up in the ready room?” I say.
“Na, Vulcana put the shits up us about bringin’ in outsiders.”
He catches himself at the remark and shrugs apologetically.
“Not like we can’t have people over, you dig, but folks are still pretty burnt about you dumpin’ out on us like that, Zeph.”
“Jesus Christ, I’ve only helped save the world about three times over since then,” and I add, gesturing at the flatscreens, “on this world and the next.”
“I don’t make the rules. Heck, I barely follow ‘em.” The ‘Don grins. “So what’s happenin’, man?”
I sit dejectedly. “You know
. The same old. Just wanted to catch up and see where you guys were at. I’m kind of . . . between places right at the moment.”
“You need a place to crash?”
There’s sudden fear in his eyes I know only comes from a man thoroughly pussy-whipped.
I sigh. “Well fuck, you know, I thought old times’ sakes and all that, but yeah, fuck it. If Vulcana’s gonna shit the bed at me staying over –”
“I’m gonna do what?”
Vulcana’s shadow appears in the doorway, arms crossed. With the white light of the corridor behind her, I can barely make out the shark-fierce look on her aquiline face.
“Sorry, ‘Cana. I didn’t realize you –”
“Were listening in? You think I’m gonna run this ship and not have the Wallachians tell me the moment someone like you sneaks on board?”
“Jesus,” I sigh. “Where’s the love?”
“You tell me.”
We stare at each other a moment. I’d say more, but a bright and almost cheery-sounding female voice interrupts.
“Hey, what’s going on?”
And my daughter Windsong flounces into the room and freezes like the kid she still is, hand caught in the cookie jar.
*
TESSA DOESN’T SAY anything and after a moment the scene returns to normal speed. Vulcana gives me a dismissive look, her gaze switching to Mastodon, and with her own peculiarly effective semaphore of the eyebrows, she makes it clear my removal is on his head. Vulcana then sashays from the room at just slow enough a pace that I can check out her derriere and she can flick a look back confirming me doing it, not much changed in her opinion, though I detect the slightest glimmer of satisfaction at drawing my eyes.
Vulcana goes. Tessa hovers in the doorway (not literally) and Mastodon struggles up out of the couch. He pats her on the shoulder and looks to me.
“Tessa told me everything,” the old coot says. “I ain’t told no one, but I’ll leave you two alone. I’ll be back, Zeph.”
“Famous last words,” I try to say with a grin. It just comes out sounding like another trademark snide remark.
Mastodon lopes away, slope-shouldered. I catch myself wondering if I upset him with my words, then mentally up-slap myself, turning back to the business at hand.
“Your mom and I have been looking for you. You switched off your phone?”
Tessa shrugs. “Phone broke. I’ve been here.”
“What’s the deal with you being here?” I squint.
Momentarily I’m caught by the absurdity that my daughter and I are looking at each other through identical domino masks, she wearing an old off-cast of mine. I want to pull them off, demand some kind of authenticity in my private life, though the joke’s completely on me.
“I joined the Sentinels dad.”
“You joined the Sentinels,” I respond numbly, my comments only absently reminiscent of the active listening course Beth once made me take.
“Yeah.”
She looks nervously about, eyes flicking to the ground. A moment more under my gaze and she moves across to a nave in the wall that opens to show a selection of beverages. No wonder a teenager would want to live here.
“I thought you wanted to stay with me?” I say.
“Yeah, I thought you wanted that too dad. You surprised me there a moment.”
“You’ve already hurt your mother deeply with your words the other day. Don’t start trying it out on me, baby. You know I’m made of tougher stuff.”
“Jesus, listen to you, all solidarity-and-shit with mom, which is to say, your ex-wife.”
“The divorce isn’t official yet.”
“You signed the papers.”
“Didn’t seem much other point,” I reply back. “Honey, let’s not do this, OK? You’re sixteen. You’re not ready for this life yet. I don’t care if you finish school for finishing school’s sake, but just because that’s what you should be fucking doing, honey, not running around with your pantyhose on and –”
“My costume’s leather like yours.”
“It’s a figure of speech, babe. And Jesus, if you want to play Superfriends,” I say, pitching my voice low, “you could do a lot better than these clowns.”
“Fuck, dad, you’re such a bigot.”
“Bigot?”
I literally blink at the insult. I don’t think it’s possible to be racist against people who bring such madness on themselves. It’s not like minorities choose their own costumes.
“You think you’re so much better than everyone else,” Tessa scowls.
“Not everyone. Just these guys.”
“Then what are you even doing here?”
The question lands in my lap and that’s where little miss Windsong’s expression grows wary in direct inverse proportion to my grin.
Zephyr 13.11 “Archaeology Of Knowledge”
WE CREEP ALONG the hallway like we’re breaking out of prison rather than delving deeper into it.
I reach for Tessa’s hand out of force of habit, my muscle memory lost in daydreams of walks through the park, supermarkets, to kindergarten where more often than not I was the only dad sitting in the corner helping cut out paper giraffes except when the wind blew in the wrong direction. As the bard wrote, “I am mad but north-northwest.”
Tessa slaps my fingers away with reproach, already dark at me, her anger evident in the curved line of her shoulders as I follow her stocky figure padding along the corridor until we reach what I take to be the ready room. With the network changing to one’s mental whims, there’s an archaeology of knowledge to every twist and turn, and I barely recognize the doorway until we are through it.
“It’s late,” Tessa says with an aggrieved but relieved sigh. “No one’s here.”
She nods at me, signaling her OK for me to proceed to the Wallachians’ ensorcelled black glass table, the raison d’etre for all this skullduggery, as Windsong herself stands aside and eyeballs the hallway as my erstwhile lookout.
“Thanks babe. I appreciate this.”
“Just don’t get me kicked out of the squad. I don’t know what you did to piss off Vulcana, but just so you know, she sorta hates your ass.”
“’Cana hasn’t been the same since she lost her arm and these fucking cenobites fixed her up. These Wallachians are suspect, babe. Another reason I’m not so peachy on you being here.”
As expected, Tessa shrugs me off as I skulk over to the table and the lovely obsidian surface ripples like a foggy pool and opens up, unspooling images drawn direct from my surface thoughts. I see a home movie I once made of Tessa running through dandelions, snapshots from family holidays I never remember putting online, archival footage of Zephyr’s early exploits, ironically against an early incarnation of the Crimson Cowl. It’s only with a quasi-Zen mantra that I still the ripples on the pond of my mind and the table goes quiet.
“Just tell it what you want to know,” Tessa stage-whispers from the side. “You know, like in Star Trek.”
Try as I might to focus my mind down to a white-hot pinprick, and as much as every moment in the past few days has been leading to this present moment, my thoughts are wild with the staggered possibilities – and the screen reflects that, images bubbling to the surface of Catchfire, of Lennon in his early guise of the Doomsday Man knocking heroes out of the sky with his mental powers, of superhero-turned-nobody-turned-assassin Seagal smiling for a TV camera crew with a bunch of his Californian sheriff pals, the crime scene at Bryant Gumbel’s place from a couple of days before, eyes-in-the-sky as investigators and firefighters gauge the scene. I try to calm myself, but only throw the images into deeper resolve, news print and handicam footage and images off the Internet and from Youtube and posts on Reddit and a million inane fucking tweets, the dark Satanic mills of Facebook, the female Internet, the dark web, the weeks-late covers of trashy magazines like SuperScene and others crashing the carnival after dark and surprised to find themselves dwindling in circulation.
Tessa’s hand is gentle on my shoulder.
I look up, surprised at the tenderness in her touch, the expression of concern on her inflected lips, the caramel eyes indented on mine.
“What?”
“You’re crying, dad.”
“No. Really?” Am I?
With a gloved hand she thumbs away the trickle from my stubbled cheek. I don’t know if it’s a child’s pity or remorse I can see.
“You’ve been sitting there for ten minutes.”
“I couldn’t . . . the images,” I say and give a choked sigh. “Honey, I’m sorry. It’s such a mess.”
“Just ask the question. One question. Aloud. You know . . . like Star Trek.”
She smiles sympathetically. Hella cute, as the boys might say.
I nod OK, turn back to the glass gone mostly silent.
“Who killed my mother and where do I fucking find them?”
*
THE TABLE IS a gold mine, but it’s also not exactly the oracle of Delphi. Not as simple as “speak friend and enter,” much as Tessa and I might wish it.
So the short answer is no, it doesn’t just vomit forth the DMV listing for my mother’s killer. Anyway, it’s a stupid question because we know who pulled the trigger. Arsenal. The real question is who guided his aim and why, and unfortunately that’s more than the glass genie can offer.
It does, however, give it a damn good go. I quickly snapshot images with my phone, storing away a month’s detective work in a few minutes as I get known associates, past locations, and a variety of other crucial data that could only be gleaned by a mystical super-computer able to track not just one individual’s movements, but build up a pattern by comparing them to a mathematically precise cross-section from a hundred thousand billion possible actual worlds.
What I glean from my evening’s work is that, as before, this Seagal character and Ono’s Paladin Corporation are in close cahoots, not that I want to go walking back into those Tokyo towers again. That’s how I lost my powers the last time. Seagal’s clearly been busy. As Arsenal, he’s targeted about six of the surviving members of The Twelve who turned in their star-spangled lifestyles for ones of mild celebrity, burning and killing his way across the continental United States and one unauthorized visit to Siberia. Arsenal himself is in my blind spot. Unless I want to try and uncover exactly what the fucking dealio is between him and my sometimes protector, sometimes assassin Ono/Demoness/Spectra, then the best odds I have of stopping him is by heading him off at one of his remaining hits.
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