“No one was available for comment,” she fires back.
“Interesting. You think they’re off in some far corner of the galaxy fighting evil overlords? Or just ignoring you?”
With a final snicker I jet into the air, even though the question sticks in my mind like a hobo with a hard-on.
Zephyr 9.8 “Ancient History”
AT THE APPOINTED hour I’m overlooking snarling traffic, bumper-to-bumper, horns and other sounds of affray rising with the stink of burnt ethanol as commuters in and out of this end of our sprawling metropolis try and make for the entertainment district or their miserable homes to lick wounds and sniff tails.
The beer sign throws a red glow across the tableau reminding me of my apartment, which I realize I am too afraid to visit. Too much pain and overdue rent. But I don’t linger on these thoughts long, not wanting to exhume the angst of yet another recently failed relationship, the whole thing made all the more pertinent by the eavesdropper inside my skull. It’s like thirty years in silence has killed any ability to self-monitor, but I guess I wouldn’t blame the bloke if only he wasn’t lumped in with me.
Just as I start thinking Nate Simon’s not gonna show, the sneaky little fucker ghosts up through the ground behind me and taps me on the shoulder. Unsurprisingly I jump, and he makes a pleased little noise from behind that gas-mask of his. It’s my immediate reaction to grab the prick by the shoulder, leather on leather, and we face off this way for all of two or three seconds before I release the hold with a start and back off half-a-dozen steps.
“You took your time. Still suiting up?”
Nightwind looks like some kind of bondage ninja in a black cape and hood, technophiliac goggles over a vinyl-ish bodysuit, the neck like old rubber car parts, concertina grooves silent despite the retro look.
“I could say the same for you. Is this a new look?”
He gestures at the Banksy-like decoration on my chest and I shrug.
“We’re off-the-record, right?”
I say it with a sneer because I think Nate Simon’s worked out what’s probably gonna happen next time I read something I don’t like with his byline beneath it.
“Well, if we’re actually gonna talk this time,” Nightwind says.
He gestures and the non-verbal remark turns into a clenched fist.
“Aw, you’re not still pissy with me, are ya?” I grin and hunker down and squint at him, the spirit of condescension, finishing off with a cumshot wink.
“I figured I probably got you worse than you got me,” he says.
“How’d you feel after that boot in your ass?”
Nightwind says nothing. Behind the mask he manages to remain inscrutable, but I grin all the same.
“Are we going to keep trading cheap shots or are you gonna tell me what you want?”
“You said you could give me Ono,” I tell him. “That’s what I want.”
The temperature drops a stitch and Nightwind goes all emo on me, crossing his arms and stalking over to the ledge to lean out like the Gothic gargoyle he no doubt fancies himself, scowling at the cityscape below.
“It’s not as easy as that.”
“You said you had a connection to her,” I say to his back. “What is it?”
Nightwind steps back.
“She . . . They check up on me. Now and then.”
“Who? The. . . ?
“Her brood,” he replies. “The Progeny, as they call themselves.”
“Fuck. I don’t see you writing about them too often. Conflict of interest?”
“Get knotted, Zephyr. You’ve seen how vulnerable I am. Shit. I used to sleep in this suit when I first . . . got it.”
“Yeah. Where did your powers come from? Pretty handy, for the only one of Lennon’s kids who came up with jack when Santa was handing out talents.”
I snap my fingers and add, “Oh, by the way, you know you’re not the only one of his kids without powers. You forgot about Julian.”
“Oh who, the public face of the Lennon dynasty?” I hear what I would call a very Nate Simon laugh behind the Darth Vader get-up. “Yeah. Shoot me if I’m not in any rush to compare myself to a culturally-dysmorphic Frenchman.”
I keep staring, so Simon adds, “I got the suit from a dead villain. Never had the powers long enough to make a name for himself, I’m thinking. The suit, I never really figured it out. It’s alien. Their makers are here. I am going to track them.”
“That’s very transparent of you,” I smile and gesture with my own fist. “Now how about telling me how I can find Ono?”
“You can’t.”
“Oh come on. Every loony fucking bad guy has a secret lair. Where is she? Japan?”
“Kind of.”
“Kind of?”
“Yeah. She’s in Japan. Sixteenth Century Japan.”
Admittedly I don’t have much comeback for this. I close my trap, silence the better part of caution as the cogs in my head spin and whir.
*
“OK, I GIVE up. What do you mean?” I ask my half-brother.
“One of the Progeny. Gertrude. Shift, she calls herself. She’s a temporal teleporter.”
“Have you ever encountered the other kids, the Torus?”
“Shit. Don’t even say that name,” Nightwind says with genuine dread.
He scans around as if waiting for them to manifest, but it seems we’re lucky.
“Those kids are messed up. I don’t even understand what their deal is except to say they’re like us. Or like you, anyway, except – you know – younger. The Asian one, you know, I think he has trouble staying in the hive mind or something because he told me once they survived some cataclysmic event when they were all still in their mothers’ wombs or something. Hard to accept, I know.”
I harrumph. If the Torus survived the Doomsday Man collapsing reality in 1977, they’d be almost my age now. But I guess I can’t know everything and this is one of those intellectual battles that, like many, I’m not even willing to enter.
“So how do I get to Ono?”
Nightwind shrugs.
“I dunno. You could try and take out Shift. I dunno. It’s not like she’s always there, bunkered down hiding out in ancient history. But when your hideout’s in the past – the pre-industrial past, I might add – it means you’re pretty well defensible.”
I’m thinking this through as other associations occur and I am trying to push thoughts of my mother not being dead and Loren not being dead and me not being with Loren or Elisabeth or Cusp or anyone and I take myself off for a moment’s private time before rounding back on Nightwind before he can lose interest.
“You ever meet Julian?”
“Saw him on the TV once. Why would I want to?”
I grin. It seems like such a good idea at the time.
“Our big brother’s got a secret too. Wanna see?”
Like I said, it seemed like a good idea at the time.
Me and Nightwind teaming up is about the most ridiculous thing that could happen to me, so maybe you can understand why I don’t see what’s coming next.
Zephyr 9.9 “The Svelte Intruder”
THE AIR OVER the Lennon manse is cold as a marble Narcissus. The surrounding fields are dotted with haystacks that sit like sleeping guardians, ancient Gallic warriors construed as modern-day dolmens of a decidedly agricultural bent.
Lennon’s surveillance apparatus is quite a bit more sophisticated. I can practically feel my pores prickle as invisible sensors sweep over us, infrared seeping into my bones. If only it was able to purge me of my invisible demons.
I land with my half-brother on my back and Nightwind does whatever he does to make his funky alien tech work and ghosts back into solidity, quite the svelte intruder in his vinyl bondage-themed get-up.
West of the restored Norman castle and its twelve-foot stone curtain perimeter, the field angles toward a road snaking to the nearby provincial clichés, a hedgerow adding a modicum of sanctuary to the surrounds. I glimpse a pop-up sensor
amid the turf and resist the temptation to flash-fry the fucker, instead making a big deal of stretching and acting generally harmless as dawn hurries up and fucks off and daybreak claims the estate.
“Where are the goons?” Nightwind asks, referring to the hired help I’d warned him about. I can only shrug and gesture, “This way,” and start up the hill to the outer walls of the main property.
The drive crunches underfoot as I remember. We step in through the open gates, anticipating an intruder alert at every pause. The dome of the observatory offers its profile as we advance from its good side, though few lights burn to greet this visit other than the faux-gas lamps around the corralled courtyard.
There’s a doorman in crisp livery, smoking in one of many doorways, an Uzi with a laser sight hanging from a strap beside the ruffles on his white dress shirt. He eyes us like a pair of skulking hoodies and grinds out his cigarette before speaking into the mike embedded in his flowery cuff.
More doors open and two more of these deadly butler-types appear and by the time Nightwind and I are standing between the jet black Mercs and the gilded Bentley, the observatory door opens and a familiar figure in a wheelchair glides effortlessly down the disability ramp and onto the quaint landing that fronts the crushed white gravel like the impassable moat it effectively is.
“Er, bonjour,” I say and lift my mitt.
The madman in the wheelchair doesn’t reply. The wispy hairs on his egg-shaped head flick in the weak early morning breeze and I sense Nightwind’s discomfort as we move forward and into the triangulation of the sentries’ guns.
“Julian, I hope it’s OK we dropped by,” I say and motion with my patented vagueness. “This is Nightwind. I thought you might already be acquainted.”
My other half-brother watches with hooded eyes, a wool cravat around his throat like bespoke aristocracy. Since my last visit he has deteriorated significantly. His hair has a picked-over look, his heavy face pock-marked and creased, eyes sunk into dark orbits. His lips are vaginal, bruised, moist even in the cool morning air. There’s not a hint of human warmth of kindness in his welcome for me and it’s no wonder why.
“You ‘ave brought anozer sib to visit chez mois, mon frère,” Julian says.
I only nod. Nightwind angles his body like he might need to flee at any moment. I guess he fears 9mm tracer fire more than me, even with the fancy rig. I keep my heavy-lidded gaze on Julian and maintain the gravel I imagine I need in my voice.
“This isn’t a social call, bro,” I say with fake regard. “I’m thinking you can help us, if what I’ve figured out since my last visit is true.”
“An’ what d’you think you’ve discovered?” Julian asks in that ridiculously camp accent of his. “Some further conspiracy?”
“I want you to show me the time machine, Julian.”
*
TO HIS CREDIT, my half-brother barely blinks when I mention his deep dark secret. He waves off the guards poised like cobras and whisks his wheelchair back up the ramp with a tiny puff of pneumatic assistance. I nod to Nightwind and we follow, brushing past one of the goons who holds his ground like a cunt-struck lover facing off against a former spouse.
Julian’s wheelchair goes across the face of the building and there’s a soft click and the observatory doors open inward. We tread over the threshold instants after the wheelchair has passed as the lights come up on the organic tableau of computer banks, huge sarcophagi of RAM and processing power. The back of the big chamber is draped with familiar black curtains, and though I have been here before and seen it all, I feel distrustful as Julian swings to a stop beside the work benches where his gadgets and the command helmet for the Crimson Cowl automaton rests.
“Is it in here?” I ask, conscious of the high-ceilinged echoes.
“Le quelle?” Julian replies.
“I don’t think you were entirely honest with me before, brother,” I say and try to smirk, curiously afraid of this strange little man and his crippled genius, his affectations, the Hannibal Lecter-like sense of utter cruelty.
More and more pieces of the puzzle fall into place as I watch his implacable regard, a deep, intuitive confirmation of the bigger game I must’ve been asleep not to sense on my previous visit.
“If you are calling me a liar, you should make your case, brother,” Julian says.
Again, the accent renders half of what he’s saying nearly incomprehensible. Eef you are calleen me a lyre, you shood make your case, brozzer. Nightwind flicks a glance at me that is three parts panic and another part awkwardness, knowing his alien headset doesn’t provide subtitles to keep him up to pace.
“You told me you didn’t have any powers,” I say.
I can’t help include Nate in my gesture because it’s more than ironic the two so-called powerless offspring of the Doomsday Man managed to get their hands on some serious technology, though I suspect Simon Magus would tell me it’s all just a by-product of this level of our plastic reality.
“Clearly, you have to have something more than just genius to build the powered armor for the Crimson Cowl, and now some kind of temporal device as well.”
“What you’re saying is pure theorization, Zephyr.”
“Speculation, yes,” I say to him. “I think I’m on pretty solid ground though. You said the Doomsday Man hunted you down, what, nearly ten years ago? Left you in a ditch with your legs shriveled to sticks?”
A nervous tick and Julian’s awkward glance away confirm I am right.
“You don’t think that attack triggered more’n just your unhealthy desire for revenge?”
“Revenge? I don’t know what you are talking about, Zephyr,” Julian says and now he has the helmet in his hands, though at the moment it’s doing nothing more than bobbing on his lap. “I ‘ave built what I ‘ave for self-defense, nothing more.”
“You said before, last time I was here, plenty of his progeny had died. But it wasn’t Lennon who killed them, was it?”
Julian looks at me sharply. His eyes are like a snake’s. Or worse.
Zephyr 9.10 “Fortune Favors The Bold”
JULIAN AND I do a pretty mean face-off for a guy in soiled leather pants and an effete cripple modelling the season’s hottest wheelchair-and-blanket combo.
“I was just a toddler when the Crimson Cowl hunted down Titanium Girl and her little boy was killed. He was one of our brothers, wasn’t he?” I say.
Julian stares for a few seconds more and then begins to weakly applaud. It’s a classic Bond villain move that doesn’t make me like him any more.
“I don’t know what you are talkin’ about, Zephyr. What do you want?”
I don know wha’ oo ah talkeen abowt, Zepheer.
I ponder this a moment. His eyes are like black pools, yet they reflect nothing. There’s not even a trace of guilt in there, let alone remorse. And I doubt myself.
“Your help. That’s all.”
And I mutter “pussy” to myself under breath.
“Go on,” Julian says and make a rotating motion with one of his long-fingered hands.
“Our father’s mistress Spectra – Yoko Ono, the Demoness – is holed up in the Sixteenth Century.”
“Kyoto,” Nightwind says, his first contribution so far. I nod to him.
“You can come with us, if you want. There’s plenty more Lennon kids where we’re going,” I say.
I feel like a used car salesman, though it’s murder I’m trucking. It’s hard to feel bad about that given my last encounter with the Gen Y branch of my siblings.
“Er, and what do you mean by that?”
“Cut the horse-shit, Zhweeun. I know you did it. I know you killed that little boy. Others too, for all I know. This is part of your grudge against the old man, am I right?”
Julian splutters. For a moment I think he is going to stand up, he and I forgetting ourselves. Then he simply blinks like a man in a paroxysm and moves his wheelchair, scooping the helmet from his lap and dunking it into place.
“Julian.”<
br />
But it’s too late.
There’s an indefinable hum elsewhere in the chamber and then our older half-brother goes limp. A brief mechanical noise issues from the back room, something ill-conceived disengaging from its machine, and one of the black curtains whips aside and a red-cloaked, mesh-masked figure steps heavily into view.
The latest Crimson Cowl moves with an athlete’s grace. I remember I was only a teenager watching Sentinel trash an earlier version with a more wine-colored cape, confirming that while Julian might’ve only had this arsenal under his control for a decade, he’s been getting up to mischief for a whole lot longer – and refining his design each time one of his automata’s destroyed. This would be Mark VI or even Mark VII, if I am even close to keeping track. I’m sure Tessa would be able to give me the definitive answer.
Nightwind and I adopt fighting stances, though I’m pretty sure my half-brother Nate is about ready to split the moment he’s even caught a whiff of this deal going sideways.
Although adroit, the robot weighs heavily on the ancient oak boards of the observatory. Rather than unleashing hell on us, he crosses like the evil genius he is to another bank of computers and fires up the controls, swivels, eyes us with his eyeless face for a nanosecond before then moving back across the room and grabbing another length of black drape, walking and tugging it with him on theatrical guy wires to expose a whole other chamber, a brass-floored, Tesla-coiled contraption with two massive intersecting rings that more resemble a public artwork than a possible time machine.
“Step forward, gentlemen,” the Crimson Cowl says, all accent vanished.
“Your destiny awaits.”
*
THE ROBOT FACES us with a decidedly adversarial gait. The air around his metal fists shimmers and there’s something about his faceless fencer’s mask visage that seems to throw down the gauntlet. Nightwind doesn’t move except to go intangible, remaining in place, so I take a cautious step forward.
“You’re going to help us?”
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