Paragon drags Sky Blue into Mastodon’s limo and they slam the doors and the car takes off for the nearest hospital as the owner himself comes limping towards us.
“Headache?”
Mastodon produces a tiny canister and shakes free a few pills, swallowing them with a grimace.
“That boy threw me good. I thought I was doin’ well.”
“You were,” I reply. “The bug thing, his powers, seem out of all proportion.”
“What’s the plan?” the old man asks.
I scan around in case there’s any late arrivals, but judging by the faint and not-so-distant alarms ringing around the place, plenty of the city’s other supers have probably got their hands full already.
“First thing,” I say. “Nocturne, honey, tell me you can keep a trace on this guy even if you can’t get inside his head.”
“That shouldn’t be a problem,” she says aloud.
“OK. I passed People’s Plaza on the way over. There was a serious concentration of insects there. A few fatalities, too. He seems headed that way now. I say we try and scope it out, find out why.”
“Sounds good.”
From our position on the corner I look up. Lights inside the building reveal hundreds of spectators poised at windows. I keep looking up – Nocturne and Mastodon eye me nervously, like someone who’s just slipped into a non-threatening epileptic seizure – until I spot a pair of girls on the fourteenth floor. Breathing a sigh of relief, I nod and turn back to the task at hand. A police cruiser slows at the intersection and a window rolls down. An Asian officer asks if we’ve got everything in hand and Mastodon snorts.
“OK, here we go.”
I’m carrying my two offsiders, which slows me considerably as we climb a few hundred feet and fall into Creeping Death’s wake. I remember images after Manhattan was destroyed and the skies, thick with ash, are eerily reminiscent here. Only now it is insects that dot the city’s haze.
By the time we arrive at People’s Plaza, weaving our way more or less in a straight line through the high-rises and ziggurats of the megalopolis, the entire city block is covered with a crawling carpet of insects. The amphitheater in the middle of the small park is just a black bowl towards which our target unerringly heads. Huge buildings surround the plaza and I note Grasshopper along with lesser-known heroes Falconer and Sun Man watching the spectacle from a safe distance.
“Ask Sun Man how many of these creatures he could cook?” I speak into Nocturne’s ear more for the pleasure of it than any real need.
She replies to say the fire-wielding amateur couldn’t do more than a few cubic yards at a time.
“Shame we didn’t bring Hermes with us,” I remark bitterly. “I could drop him on this fella from up here. Make a helluva splat.”
Our self-styled insect king is lowered by his worshippers into the middle of the auditorium. The weird, extremely creepy sound of a hundred billion bugs cheering assails our ears and Nocturne starts to go faint like the sensation is many times worse at the psychic level. We drop to the sidewalk. There’s a barricade of police cars covered in the living carpet, the closest few officers nearby guys I recognize. Detectives John Crane and Tiger Murphy hold the end of the line, Tiger cradling a shotgun against her svelte hip, and while they see me, there’s not much likelihood of a reunion. I helped Nightwatchman haul ass last time we tussled, so the love-hate thing is a little lop-sided right now.
“I don’t get this,” Mastodon grunts.
“Just be glad I didn’t drop you,” I chuckle. “But what’s to get? Maniacs get their designs on the city every few months. Not so many of them get this far, but still, what’s to dig?”
“If he loves his bugs so much, why doesn’t he go to Maine with ‘em?”
“I don’t know. He seems to like Atlantic City.”
I check my knuckles and ball my fists.
“I’m going in.”
*
AS FAR AS my normal senses are concerned, it’s completely dark. My barometric sense screams silently as millions of insects pour like a living tide over me as I fly across the ground towards my target.
I can’t remember there being anything like a throne in People’s Plaza. It’s hardly the Washington Monument. Therefore I assume the enormous seat is made now entirely out of bugs, and Creeping Death sits astride it like a monarch of antiquity, garbed now in a robe made from his tiny servants. I am Moses on speed, parting the black sea at just under Mach. The electricity coursing over my leathers is genocide for the villain’s hordes.
We collide with a thunderclap. The throne collapses like an overflowing giant milkshake made of insects. After one solid hit to my jaw, I’m an octopus, my fists raining down from all directions. I don’t feel quite hyped enough to go into Mach frenzy, compressing a two-minute flogging into one sonic boom-rattling second. But what I’ve got seems good enough – until a column of bugs vomits me thirty yards away, landing awkwardly on the edge of a marble walkway.
I roll off, cut loose with a blaze of white-hot power that vanishes a few thousand of them and causes our too-cool-for-school opponent to hit the ground like any regular Joe, no irony intended, pretensions at kingship momentarily forgotten. It gives me the peace at least to stand, and then a familiar figure drops from the sky and clasps my elbow.
“Zephyr.”
It’s Twilight.
“Hey,” I pant. “Wondered where you’ve been.”
“I think I have the solution for our friend,” Twilight replies.
He holds up a small black object. It resembles a metal hoop, the kind of thing a Goth jewelry designer might make. The pulsing red cloud-patterned surface is familiar. Under my domino mask I do no more than raise an eyebrow and the blonde Adonis grunts a laugh.
“Yeah. I shrank it down, but I’m damned if I can get rid of it.”
“Time to give ol’ YouTube-bin-Laden a dose of the . . . bugs?”
“uYuatil-el-Awahya,” Twilight chuckles. “You were going to say crabs, weren’t you?”
We watch as Creeping Death stands and poses, glittering black chitinous robe swinging back, his hand out-thrust for another go. Twilight clears his throat and holds out the glowing red amulet in kind.
“By Ual, and Yog Sothoth, and He-Who-Cannot-Be-Named, and Y’Golonac – be gone you foul fiends!”
The amulet’s aperture seems to swing open with a hissing roar. Insects in their thousands transform into the cone of darkness sucking into the palm of Twilight’s hand.
I’m grinning like a loon. Creeping Death’s expression goes from mad to worse, and I leap forward as his chirruping hordes abandon him, smacking him up the sides, across the jaw, blocking a weak attempt to grapple and twisting him around, leaving the ground for a second as we lock forearms – and then I ease back long enough to put my boot into the middle of his chest and push.
Like the evil robot doppelganger of some otherwise hapless male model, the interloper somersaults into the sucking cone and I am not sure whether I hope for the worst or cringe as he appears to disintegrate down into pieces small enough to fit through the magical crimson lens.
Although I hadn’t kidded myself that we destroyed uYuatil-el-Awahya, I ponder for a moment what he/it will make of this offering.
The brightness of the victory seems to fill my eyes and I realize I’m clenching my teeth hard enough to need more work, my gums aching, the smile too manic to be maintained.
And then it’s over.
Anti-climax be damned. I’m aching, exhausted, sore all over and panting like a fire station whore.
Eventually the euphoria dies away and the job becomes something like industrial carpet cleaning. Twilight patrols the plaza as our friends and hordes of cops and reporters descend on our position. For once I am happy enough for them to understand it was someone else who played the key role in the city’s defense, even though Twilight himself eschews the attention and when I turn, halfway through an interview with Katie Couric that will run unedited at least six times in the next
twelve hours, I realize the big man is nowhere to be seen.
As we wrap, Mastodon and the others are on their phones trying to make reservations for drinks, and Seeker arrives and keeps asking everyone, “What’s happened?” I hear a voice in my thoughts that could only be Twilight with one of his I-don’t-text-message spells.
I turn and regard the phantasm, Twilight’s astral form that I know only I can see. It nods serenely, all part of the act, ethereal vagueness from the waist down.
“The portal was conjured in my quest to answer your question,” Twilight says to me in an appropriately ghostly voice. “If you’re ready to consider the answer, come to my sanctum at midnight tomorrow.”
He rings off, blurring and disappearing on the wind like cigarette smoke, leaving me adrift amid the impending celebrations, only half able to grasp what it is I’ve asked him, and more than half-afraid to discover the answer for myself.
“Zephyr!”
Paragon looms in my face, cheesy farm-boy good looks exacerbated by the perpetual glow. His arm circle’s Lady Macbeth’s shoulders. Photographers rapidly turn the plaza into a light show and I’m reminded of Paragon on Oprah’s couch.
“Did you get that fucking guy to a hospital or what?”
I bellow over the sound of helicopters touching down, a White Nine response team that can’t really achieve diddly-squat prepared to burn a hundred thousand of taxpayers’ hard-earned regardless.
Paragon nods earnestly, shelving his youthful enthusiasm for just a nanosecond. “Yeah, man, of course I did, Zephyr. Team effort, right?”
“And what did they say?”
“Who, man?”
“The doctors, dipshit.”
“Oh man, he’s gonna be out of it for a while, they said. He got stung like fifty-something times. Bees, wasps, you name it.”
“OK.”
“Are you coming to Transit? We’ve got a table.”
I nod absent-mindedly. One more call to make.
*
ELISABETH HAS THE Range Rover and is on her way to collect our truant daughter from her . . . OK, her . . . OK, I don’t know where she’s going. I’m not sure 14-year-olds have lovers and they sure as hell don’t have partners. Girlfriend, I guess, is a safe enough bet. Maybe not for Beth.
A second helicopter, another of the big twin-rotor jobs, descends from between the neighboring high-rises. The circular FBI crest is prominent on the doors and I can only sigh and note it’s been a while since I had to deal with the so-called “Parahuman Wing” of the Federal Bureau of Investigations. As the agency ultimately responsible for White Nine, this show plays pretty much every time a supervillain is incarcerated. As Twilight once said, it’s just a question of how fast we masks can get out of there before the pigs arrive.
By now the crowds are like well-wishers at the Superbowl. I barely register the cheers, the outstretched hands and improvised placards. My eyes glaze over the chiseled face, dark hair combed back and weak afternoon light already strained through the tall buildings reflecting off the rim of his glasses. Just another face in the crowd, even if he is calling my name with weirdly wry desperation.
While the blades still hack at the air, metal steps clatter out thrown by one of the FBI storm troopers. Vanguard and Synergy descend like a royal couple, though I have an inkling they are anything but close when away from prying eyes. Vanguard carries his helmet in the crook of his arm, knowing full well the resemblance to a medieval knight this promotes, his lank blonde hair plastered to his slightly too-small head, his expensive grin, the powered armor with its scalloped shoulders and knees giving him the dimensions of a star linebacker. At his side, Synergy is his opposite in so many ways: a tall woman with coffee-colored skin, a fall of beige ringlets, the smile of some Jamaican goddess, a woman’s grey suit worn over her white lycra. There’s a whiff of power around her you wouldn’t attribute to an energy thief, yet the moment they’ve traversed half the crowd, I can practically feel her DNA tugging at mine.
“Zephyr!” Special Agent Synergy yells over the crowd noise and the chopper. “What did you take out this time?”
I wait a pause, long enough for them to get close so I don’t have to yell. They’re not accustomed to the fans, especially the ones with mp3 recorders and streaming video, and there’s no need for the Internet to hear how little I know, even if that knowledge could still be a dangerous thing.
“Beats me,” I tell her. “‘Identifying the perp.’ That’s the term, isn’t it? I think that’s your thing.”
Synergy laughs, a throaty sound that goes straight to my balls.
“Oh we identified the subject while we were in the air, Zephyr. Michael Damien Calloway, priors for possession, no other criminal record, no associates, no registered parahuman template.”
I grunt. “So?”
“Would you describe the individual as a parahuman, Zephyr?”
“That’s your term.”
Vanguard bangs on the helmet, reducing his eyes to slits.
“You’re not hindering a Federal investigation, I hope?”
“You hope, do you? Calls your impartiality into question, don’t it, Vanny?”
“Don’t call me that.”
“Zephyr,” Synergy says again, using my name to draw attention away from her team’s weakest link. “Where’s the perp?”
“He’s, uh, gone.” She’s got me, on the wrong foot again. “It’s sorta hard to explain.”
“Try,” Vanguard urges.
I prepare to spin my best bullshit yet.
Zephyr 2.5 “Party Like It’s 1699”
THERE IS A crowd at Transit. We have a half-moon table towards the rear, a cityscape of bottles and martini glasses and brimming ashtrays and empty plates of nachos and complimentary tapas stacked haphazardly. Mastodon waves away the wait staff every time one of the girls gets close. He’s wasted. I’ve had some coke, about six beers, a martini, something that was possibly a horse tranquilizer and some GHB, twice, so I’m feeling pretty even.
I’m with Red Monolith, his girlfriend, a new costume called Cusp, I have no idea what she does, along with Chamber, Miss Black, Stiletto and Darkstorm, as well as Paragon and his Lady Macbeth (“Call me Jocelyn, please”). Seeker left some time ago, frowning with her customary disapproval. It must be hard living half-in and half-out of her religion’s afterworld. Monolith’s girlfriend keeps playfully getting between us and trying to engage me in deep and meaningfuls, wherein my true intentions vis-à-vis reforming the Sentinels keeps coming up. Unfortunately for Monolith, I find I have a thing for girls with green hair and vinyl bodices, so I talk some shit to her for an hour-and-a-half, made especially easy after the horse pill and some cocktail I practically have poured down my throat. Also in Transit this evening are Billy Joel, Woody Allen and Suzanne Vega, Morrissey, Leonardo di Caprio, Rick Shroeder, Kurt Cameron, Scott Baio, Michel Foucault, Lars Ulrich and Dave Mustaine, Kurt Vonnegut and Andrea Dworkin. On the monitors over the crystalline bar, a video of burning Tibetan monks plays on looping slow-mo, the Transit logo fading in and out.
Things are progressing nicely. Cusp’s hand keeps finding my inner thigh and I’m slightly lost in the fog of my own confused morals as I ponder how to balance my hard-on with my loyalty to Monolith, not to mention my wife.
It is night outside. I steal a few moments when my phone rings. It’s Beth, returning a text from me. Tessa’s home safe. “The city’s in chaos out there,” my wife says with an unusually disinterested voice. I explain I’m helping police with inquiries and going to have an after-work drink with the gang and for once she doesn’t say anything, alarming of itself, my uprooted mind left to tie itself in knots within the silences she leaves. When I ring off, the phone lights up again and it’s one of the agents Nautilus’ guy has referred to me and I have to yell into the phone to be heard as the house band lights up and the woman agrees to call back in the morning, though I don’t think I’ll ever hear from her again and despite all my efforts to reach this point, for now I am reli
eved.
I switch to voicemail. I have forgotten about my appointment at the Academy in eleven hours.
At the bar, as I buy drinks with one of Sal Doro’s crisp fifty dollar notes, I realize I am standing almost elbow-to-elbow with Robert Downey Jr, and for the first time in some time I feel self-conscious and vaguely ridiculous in my head-to-toe leather outfit even though Downey appears to be wearing a leotard over skin-tight medieval hose, flared boots, a redcoat’s jacket and a feather boa. Only once does he even acknowledge my presence, leaning back after ordering a mineral water and refocusing on me with one eye before shaking his head and taking his change and walking away.
I would watch his departing back except there’s a crash of glasses and much hilarity and when I glance back, knowing it’s my table, two security guys are wrestling a masked man in a Baroque costume away from our table. It’s Madrigal, a villain I’ve not heard of in quite a while. Last time we met, I pummeled him so hard he actually shat. Now he’s squirming and screaming and his mask comes loose because he’s crying, in frustration and for what other purpose I have no idea, a stream of drunk invective raining down on our table as Mastodon laughs so hard he slides under his seat and disappears. Paragon does the protective boyfriend thing and stands, clenching an incandescent fist, and I realize much of Madrigal’s venom is aimed at Lady Macbeth, who sits embarrassed in her seat, lipstick blurred, surrounded by the good guys now as her former accomplice gets dragged kicking from the building. It’s not exactly the showdown Madrigal might’ve expected, but tonight we are the kings and queens of Atlantic City and we’re gonna party like it’s 1699.
*
IT GETS LATER.
We stumble in as an enormous group to Silver Tower, flash guns going off like crazy, the saviors of the city today rather than its destroyers and so we’ll be loved, like a pre-arrangement, a contract between the city and our tights. I’m not wearing tights any more. I ditched them for the leather get-up a few years ago. The leather feels good, so good, especially with Cusp pressing against me. The camera lights taste like tin-foil in my mouth, which is just a mild distraction.
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