by wildbow
Other parts of him had been carved away when he’d had his trigger event. An area of his stomach, around one eye, his entire left arm. Where they had been severed, there was only a gray plane, featureless, without shading or definition.
But the Number Man could see it. Could see it in the physics of the way the pants leg moved, just slightly out of tune with the way it should have been flapping. There was something there, a disturbance.
The test subject had destroyed one wind turbine, was facing the occupant, who was hidden in shadow.
“We escape,” three-zero-one-six said, his voice a rasp, heavily accented. “Together. I stop the spirit, you take—”
He stopped, turned to face the Number Man. The pair was separated by an expanse of a hundred feet, in an open area with a high ceiling, only the lighting around each standalone cell allowed them to see one another.
No conversation, no pleading. Three-zero-one-six struck before he could be attacked, leaning back and then swinging, using the left arm that wasn’t there.
The Number Man was already moving, the mathematical notation filling his field of vision, singing in his ears, running along his skin. He could taste it, virtually swam in a clear, precise, organized outline of the world around him.
His weight shifted as he found his center of balance. He kicked out to push himself to the left.
Three-zero-one-six manifested the strike as though his arm were exponentially larger, the attack repeated in almost infinite variations through the space in front of him, as though he were leveraging every possible version of himself that could have been here, in this basement, drawing them together in one coordinated strike.
Concrete and steel were obliterated, and the blow carved divots into floor and ceiling both, disintegrated layers of stainless steel that sat behind and beneath the concrete of floor and wall.
The Number Man was airborne. He’d measured the trajectory of the first hit as it carved through the ceiling, letting it slide past him by a mere one and three-quarter feet. He angled and oriented his body to absorb the rush of wind and dust, used it to carry himself just a little further, a little higher. His shoes squeaked as they found traction.
He chanced one glance backwards. The attack had left a hole in the wall, the shape matching the impression that one might have made with an outstretched hand, fingers grasping, except it was fifty-two point seven six times the man’s handspan.
More notation, more numbers to work with. He could extrapolate, get an estimation of his opponent’s weapon. He’d need a point of reference…
He hesitated, as though he were catching his balance, glanced briefly at the nearest cell, while keeping the test subject in his peripheral vision.
Another attack, baited so it would fall in a particular direction, not striking anything vital to Cauldron’s operations. If this test subject got the idea of repeatedly striking in a downward direction, or striking up, then it opened up a whole mess of problems. There were test subjects on upper floors, and below… well… it was best to leave everything below to the Doctor.
He evaded the attack as he had the first, but allowed it to fall closer. Even without looking back, he knew he had the numbers right. The attack with the left arm was the same size each time. The strike passed within an inch of the Number Man.
Probability, time, he thought. He was expending less energy on evading the attacks, now. He focused instead on the possible attacks, the range of motion. The notation that sprung forth put him in mind of the Vitruvian Man, expanded to encompass every possible strike that might occur.
Not seeing the future, but rather the possible consequences that might unfold.
Now the Number Man was free to evade even before the attacks occurred. As a tennis player might move to cover the open court as the opponent’s racket was drawn back in anticipation of a strike, he was bolting for the safe zone, the area where incoming attacks weren’t as likely to fall, where his opponent would have to take time to adjust his orientation to effectively strike.
Which would be a fatal mistake on his opponent’s part.
No. Test subject three-zero-one-six didn’t use his left arm. He kicked out with the one leg that had only the foot attached.
The Number Man ducked under the strike, throwing himself forward, rolling, found his feet in the same motion. The kick demolished whole tracts of flooring, tearing into the bottom of the stairwell.
The distance between himself and his foe was now a mere fifty-seven feet and eight inches.
Two more strikes, sweeping attacks with a fist that could gouge floor and ceiling both at the same time, and each time, the Number Man slipped by unscathed, closing the distance at the same time.
He could see the fear on the man’s face.
Deimos, the Number Man thought. It was an old thought, a familiar thought in the same way someone might find their mother’s cooking familiar, and it wasn’t his voice he heard it in.
Another strike, this one coming dangerously close to two-nine-nine-zero’s cell, followed by another strike in the reverse direction.
Phobos, the Number Man thought. First terror, then mindless panic.
The attacks were more frantic now, but that was to be expected. The Number Man had conserved his strength, had the stamina to move more quickly.
Twice, his opponent tried to feint, to change directions mid-strike. He caught on quickly enough to take advantage, closing the distance to thirty feet and seven inches away, then twenty feet, two inches.
Subject three-zero-one-six had two options. One was to be clever, to claw at the ground between them and create a divide, a moat.
The other was to strike.
The Number Man forced the decision. He calculated his movements, let one foot skid on the dusty ground, sprawled, rolling with his own momentum.
He could hear the rasp as it tore through a section of ceiling, the attack incoming, saw the probable strike zones unfolding before his eyes. Rolled until he had his feet under him, then sprung.
The attack missed by as narrow a margin as he’d permitted for the others.
He straightened, studied the confusion and fear on his opponent’s face. Every action on his part was measured, performed for effect. To dust his clothes off, walking forward at a measured, unhurried pace.
To not even flinch as his opponent drew his hand back. He was still able to dodge. Barely.
“Stop,” he said. “There’s no point.”
The test subject backed away a step instead. He tensed, readying to kick out with that nonexistent leg of his.
“You’ll miss,” the Number Man said. “And I’ll close in and strike you, using my pen and my hand. I can see the stress points of your body, clear as day. I can shatter your skull like a glass, and it would be an exceptionally painful way to die.”
Slowly, he saw the fight go out of the test subject.
“Why?”
“Return to your cell, and we can talk.”
“I can’t. I’m going mad,” the test subject sounded almost morose, defeated.
“There’s only one alternative, three-zero-one-six.”
“My name is Reyner!”
“You lost that name when you came here.”
“Why!?”
“Reyner died. Maybe it was war, maybe it was plague. But we sent our people to collect you before you passed. Some of the collectors were like me, others more like you, made to think the way we needed them to think.”
The test subject’s eyes widened. “You’re mad.”
“Reyner died. This… it’s a purgatory.”
“I do not know the word.”
Not in his lexicon?
“Purgatory? A limbo. A place between,” the Number man said. He advanced, and the test subject retreated.
“Between what?”
“Hell and paradise. The mortal coil and the world beyond. This is a neutral ground.”
“Neutral? Can you even understand what you’re doing to us? I… I’m a child’s toy, pieces missing
.”
The Number Man studied three-zero-one-six. He couldn’t imagine any toy like that. Another cultural distinction, hailing to the man’s universe?
“I understand a great deal about what we’re doing to you. I could explain the experiments, the effects on your body, as we understand them, inform you—”
“Morally.”
“Ah,” the Number Man replied. “Morals.”
Another delusion perpetuated by society. Useful, valuable, much like commerce, but still a delusion. It only served its purpose so long as it was more constructive than not adhering to those beliefs, but people often lost sight of the fact, made it out to be something it wasn’t.
He’d suddenly lost a great deal of interest in this conversation.
“I have a family. A wife and children.”
“I told you. You died when you came here. You left them some time ago.”
“I… no.”
“Yes. But what you’re doing here, helping us, it’s going to make a difference. It will help save your wife and kids. When you die, we will autopsy you. We will use what we learn to find stronger powers. Those powers will expand our influence and help us against the true threats.”
“Threats? To my family?”
“Yes. To everyone.”
“You’ll save them?”
“We’ll try.”
Three-zero-one-six slumped, “I can’t go back to my cell.”
“I could kill you, if you wished.”
“If I’m going to die, I’ll die fighting.’
“You’ll only make it violent, painful. It will be drawn out.”
He could see the man’s expression shifting, the dawning realization that there was no way out.
“Did… was there a chance I could have won?”
“Yes. Luck. A little more cleverness. If you were in better shape, perhaps.” My power is better at range. Better still as I get further away, attack from other angles, in more subtle ways.
“Then I could have escaped? A chance I might have returned home?”
“No. There was never a chance you might escape.”
* * *
The door slid open. He made his way to the chair, a laptop tucked under one arm.
The Doctor was present. She looked weary, but her hair was immaculate, pinned into a bun. She stared out the window at this world’s landscape, so different from his own view.
“That’s two escape attempts in two weeks. We had three in the last four years before that, only one successful,” he said.
“I’m aware.”
“We’ll need to change our approach.”
She turned around. “How?”
“We need Contessa closer to home.”
“She’s required for damage control. Too many capes who were present for the Echidna incident think they can destroy us by spreading the word about Cauldron.”
“Perhaps we stop performing damage control. Let the pieces finish falling where they will.”
“We’d fall further behind in our agenda.”
“Undoubtedly. But as it stands, it’s only a matter of time before we’re destroyed from within. Our operation is too big and too delicate to manage like this.”
The Doctor frowned. “It would mean less voluntary subjects.”
“Very likely.”
The Doctor frowned. “And we’re behind schedule, even if we ignore that. I’d hoped to use Shatterbird or Siberian.”
“Unlikely anything would have come of it.”
“But if it had?”
The Number Man had no reply to that. He set his laptop on the desk and booted it up. If they had been able to leverage either of them to defeat an Endbringer, or to find why they had wound up so powerful, compared to the typical parahuman…
“It seems we may have just lost Brockton Bay.”
The Number Man’s eyebrows rose, though his expression remained placid, his gaze fixed on the computer.
“Skitter turned herself in.”
With that, he did look up, meeting her gaze. He saw the truth in her statement and closed his eyes. Mourning one more lost possibility.
They’d lost Coil, had lost Hero, and the Triumvirate had dissolved. They were in the process of losing the Protectorate. Everything they’d put together, falling apart over time.
“Is it settled?” he asked.
“No,” the Doctor said. “But she turned herself in, and as far as I’m aware, there is no mischief at work.”
“Then it’s not necessarily over.”
“We can’t interfere.”
“I’m aware.”
“We have to take more risks,” the Doctor said. “If we’re going to recover from these last few setbacks.”
“What risks?”
“If we’re to decipher the formula, find the strongest effects, we can’t keep tempering the mixture with the ‘balance’ concoction.”
“Creating more deviations.”
“Far more,” the Doctor said. “But we found the strongest powers before we were diluting the doses.”
“We’d lose up to twenty-three percent of our potential client base.”
“We lower the price. It’s almost trivial at this point. The only reason we set a price in the first place was to wean out anyone who wasn’t fully committed. We’ve supplemented virtually every other part of our operations with parahuman powers.”
“That only returns us to the issue of how we control our interests. We can’t have deviations running around, or we’ll bring disaster down on our own heads.”
“I was thinking we use you in the field, Number Man.”
The Number Man leaned back in his chair. “Me.”
“You’d perform. You have performed in the past.”
“I suppose,” he mused. He rubbed his chin. He needed to shave. “A long time ago.”
“I know you wanted to get away from that business, but—”
He shook his head. “No. This is bigger than things I want. If I can participate in this, I can get my hands dirty. We’ll be looking for the Slaughterhouse Nine, I take it?”
“No. The heroes are already looking, I’m not sure what we could contribute. There are other matters to consider, and we’re giving up a great deal of control behind the scenes by having you in the field, rather than working elsewhere.”
“I take it this is another risk we’re taking?”
“Yes. Increasing the volatility of the formulas, deploying you while we reserve Contessa for the more severe situations, allowing the public to discover more of Cauldron’s role in things…”
“Hopefully not too much,” he said.
The Doctor shook her head. “Not too much. When will you be prepared to relieve her?”
“A day or two. Let me get prepared.” He stood. “I left the data on the laptop. Funding, the movements of key groups.”
“Thank you.”
He left the room. His power alerted him about the Custodian’s presence as he entered the hallway. The sum of a million infinitesimal details.
It also informed him of the seam in the hallway, marking the nearly invisible Doormaker portal. He stepped from the Doctor’s headquarters to the hallway leading to his own office.
Doormaker had changed the landscape beyond his window. An Earth of black magma and brilliant sunsets in the middle of the day, apparently.
He moved his Dali picture, sliding it to one side, and stepped into the doorway beyond.
Barring incidents like earlier in the day, it had been a long time since he had exercised his power in any serious way.
The costume, neatly folded on a shelf at the end of the closet, seemed so very small as he unfolded it.
Even the smell, it brought back memories.
* * *
1987
The pair of them were breathing heavily.
They exchanged glances. Two faces, spattered with flecks of blood.
Jacob carefully stepped around the expanding pool of blood. He crouched by the body, then grinned.
We’re nearly opposites in more than hair color.
“He can die after all,” Jacob mused.
“Yes.”
“Wasn’t all that,” Jacob mused. He looked almost disappointed.
“Maybe not.”
“Bastard!” Jacob kicked the body. “Prick!”
I’m worried he’ll get up all of a sudden, even with his guts hanging out and half his blood on the ground.
Jacob stretched, and wet blood ran down his arm as he raised it over his head. He still held the murder weapon. One of the murder weapons. It had been a shared effort.
“This doesn’t end it. They’ll come after us.”
“We could lie,” Jacob said. “Tell them he used mind control.”
“They won’t believe us.”
“Then we run with it. Everyone will have an idea who we are, after this, we can make a name for ourselves.”
“We have names.”
“A reputation. Don’t tell me you don’t feel like there is something bigger, something better. You call yourself Harbinger. That’s all about the things to come.”
“His name for me, not mine,” Harbinger said.
“But the idea… There’s something bigger than this, something at the end of the road,” Jacob said.
“I don’t see the point.”
“But you feel it, don’t you? The rush?”
“Yes,” Harbinger said.
“Forget the stupid names and spandex. Tell me your heart isn’t pounding, that you’ve never felt more alive than this.”
Harbinger shook his head.
“We can live this. Together. Every waking second…”
“Jacob.”
“Jack,” Jacob said. He kicked King’s body again. “Fuck it. He always called me Jacob, practically purring. His little killer in training. As if I could match up to his Gray Boy. I want to be more than that. Get out from under his shadow.”
“Okay… Jack.”
“If it’s a farce, a joke, let’s run with it. We take simple names, dumb names, and we make people quake in their shoes at the sound. Jack… Slash.”