“Well I’m sorry that you feel that way, I truly am. I’m sorry about a lot of things. Perhaps you would have come to see that. Perhaps you might have come to see just how hard this has all been for me. The decisions I’ve had to make, I wouldn’t wish them on my worst enemy. But don’t you see, that is why it has to be me? I am the only one capable of the sort of sacrifice that it takes to be a hero. It is my choice, my burden and my honour, but now… now all things must come to an end. Do you have anything to say before…”
“Yes, go fuck yourself.”
“Not exactly prophetic, but then again, you are only human.” He smiled as he raised his hand and clenched his fist.
With no little regret, he fired to end it, but nothing happened. He tried again and again, but there were little more than softly glowing purple sparkles coming out of his fist now.
He looked over at Jamie-Lyn who was now holding a small globe keyring.
“My dampener!” he exclaimed.
“When Link told me he wanted to confront you about all of this, I thought he was crazy; do you know that? I told him he was nuts, that his theory was nuts, but he was so sure. Don’t ask me why. Maybe it was because he didn’t know, hadn’t known you. Maybe seeing you with fresh untainted eyes meant that he could see what you actually were better than any of us.”
“I underestimated the man, I must admit that. So it was his idea to bring the dampener?”
“No, I had him go and steal it before we came to see you. I believed in you, I’ve always believed in you, but…”
“But what?”
“But I’m not a fucking moron.”
“Well now, that does rather remain to be seen,” he said, taking a step towards her.
“Oh?”
“You see, Jamie-Lyn, you’ve done well here; yes, you have robbed me of my powers – temporarily, I might add,” he said, taking another step towards the woman bleeding out of a nasty-looking side wound and dripping blood onto the floor as she fought to stay upright.
“You didn’t see it coming,” she wheezed.
“No, no I didn’t, but here’s the thing you didn’t think of, my dear. While I don’t have my powers, I don’t need them to fight you.”
“That’s right,” she replied with a strange smile on her face as she swayed on the spot in great pain. “But what if I’m not the one fighting you?”
And with that he knew, that in spite of all of his power and abilities, in spite of being the smartest man on the planet, probably who’d ever lived, he’d just been outsmarted, and he didn’t need to turn around to know who was already there.
Crimson’s blade was at his throat before he could even move, the sharp edge biting into his now vulnerable flesh.
“Don’t,” he begged. “Please… I can offer you anything…”
“I made a promise,” Crimson replied softly in his ear. “I promised Doc that I would find who was responsible for Marshall’s death and then I’d kill them, and you should know by now, I’m a man of my word.”
Gustafson opened his mouth to beg again, but suddenly, his voice didn’t work as his throat was sliced open and words only came out now as wet drowning gurgles as he fell to his knees and bled out on the ground.
Even as he died, his mind could not come to terms with the reality of dying. Even as the darkness took him, he couldn’t accept it, right up until the moment that he died.
EPILOGUE
DEAD WOMAN’S HAND
By common consensus, the man renting the bungalow had not made the warmest of impressions amongst his new neighbours.
The retirement community on the island were a gregarious bunch, with most of them choosing Sunset Beach for the wide range of activities amongst the beautiful weather.
Marcus Jones was already causing a stir amongst the senior ladies who outnumbered their male counterparts around four to one, as Mr Jones was a fit and trim older gentleman who walked without a cane and didn’t set up a pharmacy shelf alongside his meals.
The coastal community was set within multiple acres of lush green land, gentle gym facilities, an eight-hole golf course, sauna, swimming pool, and the Silver Surfers, who were an ageing group who still took to the waves every morning.
Sunset Beach was an exclusive resort that catered to those with deep enough pockets to afford all of the luxury on offer. It was also the sort of place that a man could get lost in and live out the rest of his days in comfort and without questions.
“Good morning, Mr Jones,” the Martin twins cooed as Marcus Jones strolled past them.
The two old ladies were an almost permanent fixture on the arbour bench that sat amongst the wide range of exotic island flowers that adorned the trellis running across the viewpoint that overlooked the beach.
“Ladies.” He nodded with a touch to his forehead as he passed.
He walked on, hearing their giggles ring out behind him as though they were teenagers and not two widows in their late sixties. As far as he was concerned, the best cosmetic surgery in the world could work wonders on a face; it just didn’t do much to hide chicken necks, especially when the island temperatures demanded open-necked clothing.
Crimson had been here a little over a month now and life was quiet. He had been afraid of the silence for so long that he’d filled it with noise and, more often than not, bloody violence, but now, as his body sank into its own advanced age, he found that he actually enjoyed the slowness of the pace here.
His cabana-style bungalow was one of several in a line near the beach, and he loved to simply sit and listen to the ocean roll in and out for hours at a time.
Money caused him little in the way of problems as his numerous hidden bank accounts from his time as an assassin up through warlord had provided more than enough for his retirement.
He opened his front door and waved a morning greeting to Arthur Strong who was already out on his porch watching the water and smoking a fat Cuban cigar.
“Hey, Marty!” Arthur yelled over.
“You better not let them catch you smoking that!” he called back. “Nurse Morris is already gunning for you.”
“Ah, let her come.” Arthur grinned. “She doesn’t scare me none!”
“Bullshit.” He grinned back and they shared a laugh together.
Arthur was the one guy that he’d struck up a surprising friendship with. The man had served in the US Navy for over 40 years and was as rough as they came, but he was a good man. His son was some kind of banker, but Crimson couldn’t hold that against the father, and after all, the son was paying the bills so he couldn’t be all bad.
“Poker tonight?” Arthur called over.
“8 o’clock?”
“Oh, I see. Rocking the midnight oil are we?”
“6 then,” he called back over, temporarily forgetting where he was.
Arthur waved back in agreement, and Crimson entered his bungalow, picking up the waiting mail on his doorstep.
There was a postcard from Jamie-Lyn and he found himself glad to see her handwriting.
After what had happened with CJ, or apparently Gustafson he supposed, the whole world had gone to shit fast. Because it had all happened that night in a contained environment, the shutters had unsurprisingly slammed down fast.
The prime minister himself paid them a visit in one of the new base’s unfinished offices and made no bones about what he wanted: their silence.
And so another couple of deals had been struck although for a while there, he’d been worried that Jamie-Lyn wasn’t going to play ball. But in the end, she’d signed the documents put in front of her and slipped away to start a new life.
He didn’t know where and he didn’t ask. She was a good kid, and he figured that she was better off without him in her life.
The postcard waiting for him had been from Marrakech and he pinned it to the board with all of the others. There were cards from Vancouver, San Francisco, Madrid, and, more than a little worryingly, from Stockholm, a certain somebody’s birthplace. He did hope that th
e journalist wasn’t thinking about getting in trouble again.
That worm Clermont had made it perfectly clear in his small private room that he would have them simply erased if they didn’t play ball, and he could tell from the man’s eyes that he meant it.
In truth, he was too damn old to keep fighting and running any longer, so he’d agreed to play along to get along, and he’d packed up his stuff and retired to an island paradise. He just hoped that Jamie-Lyn would do the same.
As for Cosmic Jones, he was officially buried as the world’s first real-life superhero and a nation had mourned.
The official story was that he had been more severely injured than anyone had thought in his battle with Cynthia Arrow and the beast. He had finally defeated them in spite of his mortal wounds, and he had died a humble hero.
There had been a national day of mourning filled with faux tributes and promises to pick up his standard.
Crimson knew that eventually the emotions would run down, and at some point, there would be an announcement about a special forces operation that had found and terminated the country’s most wanted criminal, Olaf Gustafson.
There would be a bright and shiny show for the public with all the bells and whistles before the whole thing was put to bed and people moved on. CJ’s face would end up on a stamp and some vacuous meathead would play him in a movie.
As for him, he would simply see out his days watching the ocean, doing a little drinking and playing a little poker with an ex-navy man who seemed to be the one man on the planet with a fouler mouth than he had.
It wasn’t a bad way to run down his days, especially given the alternatives, and it was probably a hell of a lot better than he deserved.
It was a shame that so many of the team had died. None of them had really deserved it he supposed, but then again, there was enough blood on all of their hands to challenge that hypothesis. Fate obviously had an odd sense of humour to allow him to walk away relatively scot-free, taking the good guys instead, or at least the better ones. Hell, he’d actually managed to kill God and get away with it.
It seemed particularly cruel that Jesus had failed to make it out alive. The kid wasn’t the general that his old man had been, but out of all of them, he was perhaps the most innocent.
With his new found humanity, or at least the faintest whiff of it, he found himself looking back on his life and his decisions now that he was so much closer to the grave.
Most of the blood on his hands had been government sanctioned. That was not to say that it wouldn’t have been there without his country calling upon him. He knew what he was and what he had always been capable of, but it gave him a surprising amount of comfort to know that almost everyone who’d fallen under his blade had deserved to be there, except God perhaps.
Jesus’ father was perhaps the one regret he had, but he’d made a promise to himself and he’d kept it; the old man would have understood that perhaps better than anyone.
He crossed to the kitchen and opened the fridge. He took out a cold bottle of beer and flipped the top off nonchalantly with a flick of his thumb.
It was only 8:30am but he’d been up since 5am, so it was practically lunchtime as far as he was concerned.
The next movement happened in a flash as the bottle lingered against his lips while his other hand snaked out and grabbed a razor-sharp knife from the block on the counter.
While he was a long way from still being Crimson, the muscle memory was still there, and he moved so fast that whoever it was sneaking up on him had no chance.
The blade struck home with perfect aim, and the beer bottle never spilt a drop.
“Smelled you coming a mile away,” he said, taking another sip. “I don’t know who paid you, but you were overpriced.”
He looked over now at the figure who’d fallen backwards and landed on his recliner. The person was slumped in the shadows, and he couldn’t see them clearly, only a silhouette with a knife sticking out of their chest, a chest that wasn’t moving up and down.
“You were dumb enough to give yourself away, now let’s see if you were dumb enough to bring any ID with you,” he said as he put down the bottle and walked over to what he knew to be a dead body, as it was devoid of movement or breath.
He reached the recliner when inexplicably the body moved and was on him before he could do anything, pulling the knife out of its own chest and plunging it into his. He felt the blade go into his chest with accomplished skill and aim. There was little pain, only a numbness as his legs went weak and he sank down to the floor.
“How…?” he gasped, unable to understand what had just happened. His blade had struck home perfectly and the silhouette had dropped down. “You… you’re dead…,” he wheezed as his chest hitched, and he realised that retirement was going to be a hell of a lot shorter than he’d ever imagined.
The figure leaned into the light and he now saw that it was a woman, one who had seen better days. Her body was lean to the point of emaciation and her sunken eyes were black and dead.
“You can’t kill what’s already dead, my friend,” the woman said with a wry smile. “Kind of handy in my line of work, to be honest. But if it’s any consolation, you’re the fastest I’ve ever seen,” she said with genuine admiration.
Mac watched him begin to slip away and provided the professional courtesy by staying until he died. After all, she knew what it was like from firsthand experience. Of course, she’d come back, which was rather unlikely to happen in this case.
As a former merc, she’d had a stellar career until she and her team had been hired to investigate what had happened on Landon Verger’s private island resort.
She’d heard about what was happening with Link while she’d been working a job in Russia, but by the time she reached home shores again, he was already gone, having of course first raided one of her safe houses.
Link had been a good man, and she was sorry to hear of his passing, sorrier to discover that the person responsible was already dead.
The dark Web hit list had come across her view, and when she’d seen the name of Crimson himself, she had jumped at the chance to go up against a man who’d been one of her heroes, back when she’d been alive of course.
“Who…,” he whispered weakly from the floor.
“There was a contract put out on you recently,” she replied. “Part of a man’s last will and testament from what I understand.”
“W…”
“Who?” Mac asked. “I only had a codename and a message, for all the sense it made to me, but I’m guessing it’ll mean something to you. Some guy named Jesus says this is for God.”
Crimson died then with a small strange smile on his face. The kid had been more like the old man after all. Good for him, he thought as he slipped away. Good for him.
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