She switched the light back on. Something had been poking out from under the bed, something that had taken her mind a moment to register. She blinked at it, trying to get her vision in focus. Then she realised what it was. A sheet of paper from the file on Quanta.
For a good ten minutes she stared at the paper, and it stared back. She should just turn off the light and go to sleep. Maybe things would be clearer in the morning. But the paper had a hook in her mind, and it was tugging her.
“Oh, bugger it,” she said. She clambered out of bed and picked up the paper. Most of the other bits were still behind the bed where she’d thrown them. Ignoring the pain in her leg, she put her back against the bed and shoved it aside.
The pages were numbered, so it didn’t take her long to gather them together and put them in order. Without bothering to return the bed to its place, she climbed back under the covers and started reading.
Morgan Shepherd had a short rap sheet, but it was bloody. Wanted for a riot at the University of Cambridge in 1958 where he murdered twenty-six anti-metahuman squad officers, with another nineteen dead at the hands of the metahuman mob he’d incited. According to all reports, that was the first time anyone was aware he was a meta. There were a few more counts of assault and wounding with intent throughout Europe, mostly involving police and special agents sent to capture him. The list ended with the murder of his lover, Lisa Neve, in Spain. After that, he vanished into the ether. The son of a bitch should’ve stayed there.
His biography was sparse: a few sentences about his family and early life in a town near Birmingham. Did extremely well at school. Accepted into Cambridge University. There was no psychological report, nothing to suggest madness. The report laid the riot at Cambridge squarely at his feet, but she could remember the way the world was turning in those days. If the anti-metahuman squad didn’t open fire first, they were itching for the excuse.
But why was he here? And why had he taken Sam? Had he meant to unleash that power in Sam when he inflicted Doll Face upon him? “Why did you do this, you bastard?” she asked the picture of the young Morgan Shepherd.
Her eyes were drooping again, but she kept flicking through. The rest of the document consisted of reports by the teams that had tracked him through Europe. Interpol had taken a special interest in him. They’d been tracking him for two years before Shepherd’s lover sold him out to them. But when they went to arrest him, Shepherd escaped, leaving half the team dead. Along with Lisa.
She skimmed past the list of Interpol officers involved in the operation. Then she paused. Gabby had underlined two names: the lead investigator and the squad leader. She went back, forcing her tired eyes to read. She knew the names. One Daniel O’Connor, and Met Div’s beloved Senior Sergeant, Raymond Wallace.
“You knew,” she said to Wallace’s name. She didn’t feel tired anymore. “You knew who he was all along, didn’t you? You fucking arsehole. He’s here for you, isn’t he?”
The paper didn’t respond. She threw back the covers and got dressed. She had places to be.
27: No Light Without Darkness
There are two main ways to become a superhero: through a supergroup, or through an apprenticeship. Many young metas wish to be accepted for a training position in one of the world’s prestigious supergroups, such as the Light Brigade or the Alpha League. But spots are highly limited and usually only open to tier two or higher metahumans. Therefore, for many superhero hopefuls, the best way to learn the ropes is to take an apprenticeship as an existing hero’s sidekick. Trying to become a superhero without supervision or training is not advised. Every year, dozens of young, solo metas are killed when they take on a threat they are not equipped to handle.
—Educational pamphlet from the Metahuman Advisory Board, 1954
Niobe pressed her palm against the wall of the phone booth. “What do you mean he’s not there?” she said into the phone. “You have supercriminals running around free out there, and he’s taking a sick day?”
“I can take a—”
“I don’t want to leave a damn message,” she said. “I need to talk to Senior Sergeant Wallace. Now.”
She could practically hear the constable grinding his teeth. “The senior sergeant went home to take care of an urgent matter. If you have information for us, I will pass it on to Sergeant Hawthorne.”
“Sergeant Hawthorne can go….” She paused. “He’s at home? Wallace is at home?”
“Yes, but I can’t give you his home number.”
“Don’t worry,” she said. “I know his address.” She slammed the receiver down before she could get the constable in any more trouble with his superiors.
She got back in the passenger side of the car and pulled her address book from under the seat. As far as address books go, it wasn’t much to look at. The black folder was crammed with so many index cards and scraps of paper the thing was damn near overflowing. But it was in perfect alphabetical order. If you needed these things, sometimes you needed them in a hurry.
She’d picked up Wallace’s address a couple of years back. It was a kind of insurance; an In Case of Emergency type thing. She only hoped the son of a bitch hadn’t moved.
She kicked open the passenger door. She started to climb out, but something glinted on the floor behind the seat, catching her attention. Frowning, she stood up and slid the seat forwards so she could reach behind.
The object was smooth and hard beneath her fingers. She held it up to the light. It was a small circular pendant, black-rimmed with a white circle inset, a bit bigger than a bottle cap. The string attached to it looked like leather, but she knew it was a synthetic rope, far stronger than a tacky-looking piece of jewellery deserved. She recognised the pendant. She used to wear one just like it around her wrist. She’d turned in her signalling device when she left the Wardens, but the Carpenter….
She shook her head, and a smile touched her lips. The Carpenter had never really quit being a superhero. It must’ve fallen out of one of his pouches when she laid him down in the back. It was a relic of another era, when she was part of a team. But that was a long time ago. It was just her now. This thing was useless.
She tied it around her wrist anyway.
At least she’d determined one thing as she pulled over to the side of the suburban street: Senior Sergeant Wallace wasn’t taking bribes. His house was a piece of shit.
It had a lawn and a fence and everything, but the lawn was threatening to engulf the doghouse in the corner and the fence was missing half a dozen pickets. The lights were off inside. Outside, a Border Collie cross was running back and forth in the garden as far as his chain would allow him, barking his head off.
She sat in the car in full costume, eyeing the house. She’d just come to talk to Wallace. Well, maybe more than talk. She wanted answers, and she wanted them bad.
But something wasn’t right. The dog shouldn’t be that excited. Quanta was inside, she could feel it in her gut. Every now and then a curtain moved in one of the neighbouring houses, but no one ventured outside. They seemed to be taking the radio warnings seriously. Do you feel safe now? she silently asked them.
Something moved just outside the front door. Someone doing a bad job of hiding in the shadow of an overgrown bush. Not Quanta, but a tall, slim woman. Nothing about her outward appearance immediately gave her away as a meta, but it didn’t take a rocket engineer to pick out a henchman on sentry duty.
Niobe brushed her fingers against the Carpenter’s pendant and got out of the car. She strode quickly across the road, hands in her pockets, hat down across her goggles. She headed straight for the door, pretending not to notice that the woman had noticed her. The woman growled, crouched like a cat, and leapt.
Niobe slid into shadow. An instant later, the woman landed awkwardly where Niobe had been standing, viscous ooze dripping from fangs, claws extending from her fingertips. The confusion on her narrow face was almost comical. But Niobe wasn’t in the mood for laughing.
Niobe came out of the
shadow behind the woman, drew, and fired. The electric crack of the gunshot broke the night’s silence. The woman grunted and went down in a heap. Whimpering, the dog backed into its doghouse. Now Quanta would know she was coming. Good. She hoped he felt a shiver go through his heart.
Niobe retrieved the rope from her utility belt, tied up the unconscious woman, and shoved her into the garden. Done. Now it’s your turn, Morgan Shepherd. With a deep breath, Niobe pulled the shadow back around her and slipped beneath the front door.
She reformed herself inside, gun drawn, with her back to a corner. It was quiet. She’d come out in a tiny kitchen with a linoleum floor and food stains on the tile counter. Grey light flickered from the next room; a television, maybe. Her boots made no sound as she moved forwards, hugging the wall and adjusting her goggles to the low light.
She swept through the opening into the next room. A busted-up old couch sat in the centre of the carpet. Behind it, a seated human silhouette was outlined by the flickering television. She moved without thinking, putting the couch between her and the figure.
The light in the room suddenly bloomed. Another man stood behind the seated figure, a halo of light surrounding him. “Spook,” Quanta said, smiling. “A pleasure, I’m sure.”
She flicked a switch on the side of her revolver. It hissed and clicked. Shield-breaker rounds armed. It might not kill Quanta, but it should put a dent in that pretty smile of his. She pointed her gun at him.
“Oh, come now,” he said. His right hand swept forwards, a golden blade in his palm. He played the sword against the throat of the broad-shouldered man sitting tied and gagged on the chair in front of him. “We’ve both done this dance enough times to know the steps.”
She licked her lips. Raymond Wallace managed to look like a copper even tied to a chair, wearing a singlet and missing his boots. His teeth dug into the fabric of his gag like he intended to gnaw his way through it then bite Quanta’s throat out. The light radiating from Quanta cast the scars and grooves on the copper’s face into shadow, aging him.
Niobe considered her options. The lounge was cluttered. Between the flickering television and the light Quanta was throwing off, there were one or two shadows she could hide in for a second. But she wasn’t sure she was fast enough to flank him before he slit the leathery skin of the copper’s throat.
“The cape copper’s no friend of mine,” she said, keeping her gun raised. Wallace grunted.
Quanta smiled. A black domino mask covered the top half of his face, turning his eyes into glowing orbs. He’d managed to find himself a pretty new white suit since his escape. She supposed his prison uniform would be soaked with Frank Oppenheimer’s blood.
“You’re alone tonight,” he said. “Or is the Carpenter planning on sneaking up on me and throwing a few more boxes in my direction?”
“Just me,” she said. No point lying.
“Hmm.” He cocked his head. “I’m sorry to hear that.”
Her trigger finger itched.
“Well, I must say you’ve surprised me again,” Quanta said. “Unfortunately, you’ve interrupted something rather private.”
“Private? Seems to me like you’ve been trying to get as many people as possible to pay attention to you. And this is your masterstroke? Tying up a middle-aged man because he spent a couple of years chasing you around Europe?”
Quanta tilted his head back and laughed. “Oh, Spook, I really thought you were smarter than that. This….” He brought the blade close enough to Wallace’s throat to shave him. “This is just a private piece of revenge. Nothing to do with my true plan. I wanted to make sure the good Senior Sergeant saw the man he’d created, that’s all. I wanted him to watch what I could do to his city.” He grinned down at the copper. “Wallace and I played the cat and mouse game for years. But you know all about that, don’t you? Then you’ll know what he did. This man drove me to kill the woman I loved. He let me see exactly what the world needed. He’s like a father to me, in some ways.” Wallace’s lip curled and his muscles bulged, but the ropes that lashed him to the chair held him tight.
“And what about Daniel O’Connor?” Niobe said. “Did you get your revenge on him by throwing him to Doll Face to torture?”
“I didn’t mean for that to happen. Doll Face would have remained under control if I hadn’t been imprisoned. But don’t shed any tears for O’Connor. He was a thug, through and through. Do you know what I had to give him to convince him to kidnap Sam for me?” He paused, shaking his head incredulously. “Money. Not even very much. How uninspired.”
Niobe adjusted her grip on her gun. Every muscle in her body told her to shoot him now, while he was still prattling on. She might not get another chance like this. But if her shield-breaker rounds didn’t drop him instantly, Wallace was a corpse. The copper was an arsehole, the cold weapon of a corrupt government, but she’d seen too many bodies today. She couldn’t be responsible for another one. While she kept him talking, Wallace lived.
“Your reporter hostage says you fancy yourself some sort of vengeful god,” she said.
Quanta looked almost wistful at that. “Does he now? And what do you think, Spook?”
He was certainly vain enough for it. But her gut still told her there was something more going on here. If he’d been trying to make himself into a god, he’d been far too brutal. Did he know about Sam? Did he know about the boy’s power?
His eyes danced with satisfaction. Of course he knew. He’d arranged everything; he’d used Doll Face to do god-awful things to the kid. Sam’s rage, his power; that was no accident. But did Quanta really think he could control the boy? She’d seen Sam’s eyes. He was no easily-manipulated child anymore. He wasn’t even a minion. He was a force of nature. He was destruction itself.
“What did you do to Sam?” she asked. “He did nothing to you.”
“No. That was an unfortunate necessity. But tier zero metas are impossibly rare. As Dr Atomic’s son, Sam is probably the only tier zero in the world right now. His potential—most especially his psychic potential—make him a sort of sponge, to use a poor analogy. Harvesting neural tissue from other metas is a simple enough task, if gruesome. At first, I had him ingesting other metas’ brain matter, slipping it into his food.”
He couldn’t be serious. Her stomach turned at the thought.
“I understand your disgust,” he said. “I felt the same way. But as his absorptive capacity grew, it no longer became necessary. By now, he’ll be able to absorb a dead meta’s powers simply by coming into contact with their neural tissue. Doll Face manipulated Sam’s mind to accept the transfer, wiping him clean. And voilà! We have the most perfect destructive force to ever threaten the world. Sam was always destined to be one of the strongest metas ever to exist. But now he’s unstoppable. Beautiful, isn’t it?”
That sick son of a bitch. She remembered the metal forming on Sam’s skin. Just like Iron Justice. How many metas had Quanta butchered so he could feed their brains to Sam? No wonder Sam had gone mad.
So much power in the hands of a madman. Not even a man, a boy. And he’d only grow stronger. Who could stand up to that kind of power? Even if the greatest metas on the Moon returned, they might not be able to stand against him. Quanta had put the entire world at risk. Everyone she cared about. She’d hated supercriminals before, but Quanta…Quanta deserved death. Her finger trembled over the trigger.
“You’re getting angry,” Quanta said. “Since you’re here, and I don’t have to be anywhere quite yet, how about a game to calm you down?”
“Bite me.”
He grinned, grabbed Wallace by the hair, and roughly tugged the copper’s head back. The cape copper grunted and squirmed, but Quanta slammed his elbow into the side of the man’s head, and Wallace’s eyes went out of focus. Before Niobe could blink, the blade grew narrower and sharper. Her grip tightened on the gun, ready to fire. Quanta brought the blade’s tip within half an inch of Wallace’s eye. He crouched down, shielding himself with Wallace’s face.
“Here’s the game,” Quanta said. “You’ve got one minute to work out why I’m doing what I’m doing. Why I’m here. Or else….” He waved the blade’s tip at Wallace’s eye. “Well, you know. Sound fun?”
She licked her lips. “Why are you asking me this?”
“Tick tock.”
She could see the sweat dripping down the side of Wallace’s cheek, and the look on his face as he watched the blade. I’ve got no choice. All right, think.
Something Quanta said before clicked in her mind. Threaten the world. “I read your file,” she said slowly. “The riot. The murders. You had to have trained yourself to carve through that many coppers. But you didn’t start out as a supercriminal. You always thought you were going to be some sort of hero, didn’t you?” She paused, studying his face. “I’ve seen metas just after they’ve killed for the first time. It changes them. Killing those anti-metahuman officers swept away everything you thought you knew about yourself.”
He smiled at her and said nothing.
She licked her lips. “So you had to build a new identity for yourself. A misunderstood fugitive. Not a hero, not a villain, just a man. Not even a meta. You tried so hard to be that person. But it didn’t work out, did it? Lisa found out what you were.”
Quanta’s smile grew fixed, but his eyes glowed brighter. “And she turned me in.”
“Yes. And to escape, to live, you had to kill her.” She nodded towards Wallace. “They made you kill her. Or that’s what you tell yourself. And your new persona, the one you’d worked so hard to create, shattered. So you rebuilt yourself once more. This time as…”
“…a villain,” Quanta said. “A monster.” He looked at her like a proud parent.
Those eyes. It fell into place. “You actually want to be hated, don’t you? That’s what this is all about. That’s why you did those things to Sam. You want him to be a threat to the world.”
Don't Be a Hero: A Superhero Novel Page 30