I huff and puff for a moment and the big guy says nothing.
“Some kid is dead and I helped kill her and so did you, and we blew my chance to fix everything else in the fucking process,” I say.
“But the world is safe.”
“But the world is safe,” I ape back at him. “You know what, Twilight?”
“What?”
“Fuck the world.”
I shake off his restraining hand and walk away.
A street cleaner turns the corner and spotlights the shadows of our exchange. Damned if I know how, but somewhere I hear a rooster’s call.
Zephyr 9.1 “A Light At The End Of The World”
PUT IT SIMPLY, I don’t know what the fuck I am doing. But I am ravenous.
Hard to believe you’d want to eat when you don’t know if you’re deep in mourning or experiencing the world’s greatest hissy fit. All I know is it’s hours – hours, hell, days – since I ate a proper meal, and since then I’ve had my old powers kick-started and Christ alone knows what my body’s been using for fuel except I feel about ten pounds lighter as I march past the barricaded glass windows of department stores and there’s a light at the end of the world coming from a small Greek diner and I am in through the out door before anyone can say otherwise, propping myself up at the counter in my grimy leathers and goo-spattered tee.
“Coffee?”
“All of it.”
The older woman smiles and starts pouring as I dig through my belt and pockets and have the sinking realization I don’t have any money.
“Fuck.”
“You OK, honey?”
“I’m, uh . . . You better stop pouring. I’m broke.”
The woman only chuckles and finishes what she’s doing.
“You’re Zephyr, right?”
I look away and so do the other fifteen customers on that side of the café. I make a duck face and sigh, hairy forearms resting on the spotless counter and the underside of my reflection sneering up at me.
“Yeah.”
“So sign a few menus for me. Want some eggs?”
“Eggs would be . . . unbelievable.”
“Bacon? Flapjacks?”
“Anything. Please.”
She disappears a moment to convey my order and is back before my face can sink completely into my hands.
“Pretty rough night last night?”
“You wouldn’t believe,” I say.
“Oh, I’d believe.” Again she has that chuckle that would’ve been cute twenty years back. “I live here, remember?”
I nod soberly as if I’ve just received ancestral wisdom and force myself to adopt some kind of composure as well as better posture and sit up, a hand rubbing the frown from my face as I try the too-hot coffee and sigh and spoon in three sugars.
“Thanks,” I say and tip the mug in acknowledgement. “I don’t know how you people do it.”
“What’s that?”
“Live here. Through this craziness. It must drive you. . . .”
“What – crazy?”
“Yeah.”
We laugh. I catch her eye and she winks, amused, flirtatious. I grin and shake my head and she gets the signal and moves off. In seconds there’s a steaming plate with eggs, sausage, hash browns – you name it. When no one’s looking, I pour maple syrup across the whole thing and add pepper and abandon the pretext of being anything other than a wolf as I devour the whole sloppy mess and belch and down my third coffee and pass wind and hang my head, elbows on the bar and the image of dead women in my head.
The city doesn’t even pretend to have been asleep as I step back into the street and a few cars honk me and a pile of newspapers slap down on the corner and there’s a newsstand close by which I mosey over to examine. I’m an unemployed superhero without a tie in the world. I may as well linger over last night’s reviews like any good actor.
But the headline sets me off immediately.
ZEPHYR RETURNS, ANOTHER SEEKER DIES.
The byline?
Nate Simon.
*
I AM IN the air and smashing through the wall of the Post building before I can really think better of it. I know Sal Doro’s office is on the fourth floor, so I go through the window at the end of the hall to the lifts, tipping over a Coke machine and breaking the faucet on the water cooler. Paper cups and cans roll about on the carpet as several reporters dive for cover. I remove myself from the indent in the plasterboard and stomp to the next intersection and turn into the main editorial bullpen, not as glamorous as you might expect, a few monitors nailed up high and otherwise a messy sea of cubicles and office dividers and print stations with the big glass boxes of the copy subs and section editors at the far extreme of the building.
More office workers stumble out of my path as I advance up the strip in the middle of the office, bellowing unwisely.
“Nate Simon!”
A biggish guy with a crew cut briefly blocks my path. I introduce him to the photocopier. Close by, one of the over-achievers is snapping away with a digital SLR fast enough there should be smoke coming from it. I don’t care. My thoughts are fixed on the name, the insult, my anger at the whole world descending on one stupid soul who’s gone too far.
“Simon! Nate Simon! Get out here.”
I stop in the middle of the office where the cubicles make way for a long formica trestle. Birthday cards, office noticeboards and a row of framed, crooked, fake front pages are pinned to more carpet-board. There’s a coffee machine and more faxes and photocopiers and a stack of defunct computer parts probably long part of the topography. Letters hang from Christmas tinsel faded from yesteryear, the fringed squares re-arranged to spell DEPARTURE LOUNGE rather than whatever cheery seasonal message once accompanied them.
A woman in a burgundy pencil skirt and pumps is crouched shivering beneath the table. I flip it over, crashing it into more furniture, making her office Darwinism seem as ridiculous as it should be.
“Nate Simon. Where is he?”
“I dunno, mister.”
“Zephyr.”
I whirl, but it’s only Sal. He stands with his hands open, palms indicative of a man trying to talk down a suicide, an unlit cheroot at the corner of his grumpy old mouth that now looks more persnickety than anything.
“Sal. Where is he?”
“What’re you doin’, Zeph? Sheesh. You’re surrounded by the press.”
I sniff, looking away and doing my best Terminator impression.
“I don’t care. Where is he? What does he look like?”
“Zephyr. You’ve got to calm down.”
And then the rabbit bolts from hiding.
Zephyr 9.2 “Gridlocked”
ALL I SEE is a pair of skinny legs, Argyle socks and a chartreuse pullover. My quarry streaks down the back of the next row of cubicles, but I am not as subtle as him or as fearing for my life. I lift over the nearest row of computers and land behind the running journalist and hook my boot under his shin and he stumbles and his head actually goes into someone’s waste paper basket.
Knowing he is caught, the young guy sits up slowly and loosens the tie around his neck before removing the idiotic container from his head.
And so I see him for the first time and make the connection.
“You.”
“That’s right.”
He’s breathing heavy and he’s scared – he has a right to be – pale cheeks florid with the emotion. But he seems intent on taking it like a man.
If you’re not keeping up, Nate Simon is Nightwind – and apparently my brother. I guess that explains his unhealthy attraction to all things Zephyr.
“Get up,” I say with a calm I don’t feel.
Nate stands slowly, nerves making his legs shaky. I can almost smell the pee, he looks so rightfully frightened. I put my hands together and crack my knuckles and before he can freeze up, I grab him by the tie and start dragging him through the office.
A few more co-workers try and leap in our path, but it only takes t
he crackles for them to keep out of the way. Nate mewls something, words lost to the constriction of the neck-tie, and I push away another office divider before I finally see what I’m looking for.
The windows.
“I’ll show you what it’s like to fly, you little cunt.”
“Zephyr! Zephyr!”
“What?”
I throw him onto the pastel grey carpet in front of the banks of windows, morning traffic below, police sirens in the distance.
“I know you’re angry, but this isn’t a fair fight.”
“You really want me to out you in front of all these people?” I yell at him.
Nate sniffs and tugs the tie free, pulls it through and tosses it aside.
“Do you?”
The threat gives me pause, but only for a second.
“I don’t know what you think you know about me. . . .”
“And don’t you want to know about me?”
The panic is thick in his voice.
“We’re brothers. Half-brothers. I’m another of the Doomsday Man’s kids. Please.”
“Curious? No. I’m too fucking angry to be curious.”
He can’t do much as I pull him to his feet by the front of his pullover and the fabric breaks its weft as I put my knee into his stomach and Nate Simon drops to the floor. Despite my posing, I am curious to all Hell and this almost makes me angrier, so I put my elbow through the nearest window and then backhand it, shredding the manky frame to pull the shattered screen out of the way, cold morning air flooding in to elicit gasps from the crowd of people milling what they hope’s a safe distance away. The first cops start pushing through the crowd, yelling, but I can barely hear anything over the hammering of my heart.
“I don’t have any powers,” Nate sobs. “You can’t do this to me.”
He turns over and starts trying to crawl away and the sneer grabs my face as powerfully as some supervillain’s hand.
“I guess the shoe really is on the other foot!”
I wind back and embed the toe of my boot squarely between his ass cheeks. The seam of his pants snaps and so do the bones in his coccyx. Nate screams and I reach down as the police yell at me and I lift him by the back of his collar and drag him to the open window as the air sucks at us like a worn-out old hooker. The view, the vertigo, the suicide effect – it’s all temptation. I almost want to jump with him as I shake the bastard hard and half-dangle him from the aperture.
“Is this what you want, motherfucker?”
“Please, Zephyr. No! You’re not making any sense!”
I shake him again hard enough to make his jaws clack together. Then I put my face alongside his, voice a whisper I hope even the digital media types won’t be able to record.
“You were happy enough to try and kill me, Simon. What gives?”
“I was angry,” he says, snot streaked across his face, a cheek red from where I may have slapped him. “I didn’t mean it. I just snapped. You were powerless and I was angry. I’m sorry. You don’t know what it’s been like for me.”
“Poor baby,” I growl. “How what’s been like?”
“I’m the only one of his offspring without any powers.”
“Ha.”
“You can’t kill me though.”
“No?”
“You’re a good guy. You’re an asshole, but you’re a hero. Right?”
“I’m not feeling it, boy.”
“You still can’t kill me,” Nate says.
“And why’s that?”
“Ono,” he replies. “I can take you to her.”
Shit.
*
I DROP NATE Simon into a whimpering ball and the five cops holding their Glocks on me look mightily relieved, none of them yet willing to make the call on what would effectively be a career’s death sentence even if I did deserve it. Not with half a newspaper office watching and filming the whole thing on phones and portable cameras, anyway.
As I turn, I lift my fingers and make the peace sign that will be run big over five columns in the special afternoon edition, the dying print media desperate to get the scoop on their electronic rivals. The cops lower their guns and we stare at each other for a second before I make a few quips and they’re so fucking relieved they actually chuckle at the good ones and then the quick response unit arrives from the Feebs with Tempo and a big, minotaur-looking motherfucker named Taurus who I’ve only heard about and never actually met before.
The crowds have been pushed back by half a division of police. It means the FBI unit in their polished black battle armor can advance across the office just like they’ve trained for situations just like this. The heavy Tasers and net guns and other gadgets have replaced their heavy bore sidearms they know aren’t going to do much more than put me back in a bad mood.
“Tell them to chill, Tempo. I’m not resisting.”
“Call went out, Zephyr,” the black guy says. “What gives?”
Nate is sniveling on an office chair, wrapped in a silver blanket. He looks at me as I look at him and he looks away.
“I was angry about a story.”
Tempo holds up the morning edition of the Post, the hated headline.
“This?”
“Yep.”
Tempo’s partner takes the paper off him and snorts. He’s about eight-six and maybe six, seven-hundred pounds. The hairs on his bare arm look like quills. He wears a short-sleeved brown-and-burnt-orange bodysuit with plenty of room for the chest hair and a thick mane of mangy-looking head hair flowering from behind white horns. He looks at me with curiously intelligent eyes and reads in his best newscaster’s voice.
“Sources close to the parahuman community believe a worldwide crisis was averted overnight with the sacrifice of a young woman’s life in orbit above our blue planet.
“An alliance of costumed heroes led by a mysteriously returned Zephyr thwarted the entities behind the bizarre random attacks that battered Atlantic City yesterday and last night.
“The dead woman was identified only as Seeker, who replaced the previous office holder in that role six weeks ago.
“As the Post revealed last month, a sexual dalliance with Zephyr ended Loren Alicia Lang’s tenure as an occult superhero.
“The Post can now reveal that affair nearly spelled doom for the entire planet as the attack overnight was the threat against which Seeker and her predecessors were appointed to avert.”
“Cute,” I tell Taurus. “You’ve got a voice for radio. Face too.”
The bull-headed guy just growls and throws the paper onto a desk.
“Oh, keep reading. I was just getting into it.”
Motioning to Simon, I add, “Keep going and Nate here might just shuck his pants down and start yanking himself. That’s a fucking sexy Barry White drawl you’ve got yourself there.”
Tempo shakes his head and Taurus snorts and gestures at the squad. I snicker and step backwards out of the window as the mechanism goes off on the net gun, which sails out the building past me as I descend to the street, eighty yards below, a sea of police vehicles blocking the street.
The openly transgender cop looks surprised as I offer em my wrists.
“You got me, pal. Quick. Before I change my mind.”
After a second caught stroking eir moustache, the officer produces eir handcuffs and does as I suggest and a couple more senior police come forward and then I am fairly politely bundled into the back of one of the cruisers most likely to be able to actually drive down the gridlocked street.
“You’re handing yourself in, Zephyr?” the driver asks as we head back into open traffic.
“Looks like it.”
“Um, why?”
“Do you think I want to be a fugitive?”
“Well, no. . . .”
“I also don’t want to give the FBI the satisfaction.”
The sergeant riding beside me tee-hees and slaps the seat.
“Damned straight.”
“So take me to a cell of my own. I feel like I co
uld sleep for a week.”
Zephyr 9.3 “Early Days Yet”
SOME HOURS LATER I am let into an interview room where a guy in an expensive-looking suit checks through his briefcase, an empty chair beside him. On the other side is Tempo and Taurus, who look alarmed when they see the cops haven’t kept the restraints on me. Standing in the corner is a tall, painfully thin woman I haven’t seen in some time.
“Agent Siren,” I say. “Long time no see.”
Siren looks like she’d rather be smoking. Her long black hair is like a crow’s wing over her face, one eye concealed as always like an alabaster Cyclops.
“We could say the same of you, Zephyr, but it might not be true. I’ll let my colleagues lead the interview.”
“Sit down, Zephyr,” Tempo says.
I do as asked and look at the guy in the suit, just inches away from me.
“Who are you?”
“Peter Liebenthal. Your lawyer.”
“Who sent you?”
“O’Hagan.”
“Shit,” I say and whistle between my teeth. “I hope she’s paying.”
“Zephyr,” Taurus says with a voice raised like how you deal with young children. “We’re not laying any charges at present. We want your consent to invoke the Mirror Act.”
“I didn’t think Siren was here just because she fancies me.”
“My client’s not going to be –”
“Steady,” I say to the lawyer, pleased to command him like my very own pet Rottweiler. “Not so fast, you guys.”
“I thought you’d be wanting to get out of here sometime soon, Zephyr,” Siren says coldly from the back of the room. “To see Loren?”
“What?”
“You haven’t forgotten Miss Lang, have you, Joe? That would be pretty harsh, even for you.”
“She’s alive?”
“Alive, and . . . well. . . .”
“Fine,” I say, the syllable like a gunshot.
“What? Zephyr, as your lawyer, I really recommend –”
“No,” I reply. “You don’t understand. They’ve said I’ve done things I can’t even remember. Now Twilight’s telling me I’m the frigging Antichrist. I don’t care what they do. I want answers. And if Loren really is alive, god damn it, well. . . .”
Zephyr Box Set 1 Page 75