“The Great -- Josh.”
“The Great Josh? Got kind of a high opinion of yourself, huh?”
“Josh. Just Josh. I had a code-name, but I’m rethinking it now.” I accepted his hand and we shook. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard of the Conductor. What do you do?”
He frowned. “Oh, like a hero named ‘Josh’ is all the rage?”
“Um... I’m sorry, I--”
A smile broke his face. “Relax, rookie.” He let out a good-natured laugh and I realized I liked this guy already.
“I’ve got the strangest form of telepathy on Earth,” he said. “I sense people’s emotions empathically.”
“That’s not that strange. I mean... comparatively.”
“Yeah, but then I translate the emotions into music and mentally broadcast it to everybody nearby.”
“You mean like the ‘wha-wha-wha-whaaaaa’ a minute ago?”
“You felt like you fell off a cliff. I wouldn’t need powers to tell that.”
“So what you’re telling me, essentially, is that you do superhero theme music?”
“Now you know why I’m not famous,” he said. “What’s more, since my music is telepathic, it can’t be recorded. The only way it can be reproduced is if someone remembers it, picks up an instrument and plays it himself.”
“Bummer.”
“Yeah. I don’t really have many chances for the spotlight.” He sighed and his shoulders slumped. “I shouldn’t complain, though. Morrie sends me out to all the really epic battles so I can broadcast to the crowd. Says I add the ‘necessary ambiance.’ So, you’re the guy who can copy other people’s powers, huh?”
“Word travels fast.”
“So are you going to sign up or what?”
I cast my glance back to where Sindy was sitting, alone again. “I’m thinking about it.”
“So I see.”
As the Conductor’s gaze followed mine, I caught another emotion from him, using his own powers. It was fondness, laced with the slightest thread of regret, and I realized he was right, I wasn’t the first guy to want to give Sindy what she deserved instead of what she was stuck with. A strain of music swelled. It sounded vaguely like rock and roll, but it was slow and nostalgic -- the kind of song the radio stations play to death every time high school graduation season rolls around.
The Conductor was taken aback for a moment, realizing the music wasn’t coming from him, then he looked back and chuckled.
“Damn,” he said. “You’re good.”
ISSUE FOUR
JOSH’S CHOICE
Five hours and about five minutes of sleep later, I was behind a fresh desk (when Masks routinely break into your offices, maintenance keeps a supply of extra desks handy) at Powerlines, staring at my computer, wondering why I should even bother with my assignments. The LightCorps retrospective was one thing, they were legitimate, but the rest of it...
A “Secret Origins” piece on Nightshadow, the dark avenger with the tendency to leave criminals dangling upside-down from 20 story buildings. And, according to the Conductor, a Donna Summer fan in his spare time.
A follow-up on the arrest of the Buzzard -- who I now knew retired from active criminal behavior to join Morrie’s writing staff.
Profiles on the entire Spectacle Six: First Light, DoubleGum Man, V3OL, Fourtifier, Five-Share and Deep Six. The Great Superhero family of Siegel City. Not a one of them had even met before two years ago, when Morrie slapped them together and the public relations staff made them out to be an unbreakable band of brothers, sisters and friends.
A “Whatever Happened To?” piece on Swoosh, formerly Siegel City’s preeminent super-speedster. “Whatever happened” to him, as it turned out, was that Nike sued him for trademark infringement and rather than take it to court Morrie made him change his identity to LifeSpeed.
All of it was meaningless.
“Come on, Josh, perk up.” Sheila’s head rounded the corner into my cubicle and she shot me her best, “You okay, sweetie?” look. “You look like the Gunk ate your Lionheart Underoos.”
“Nah, he only eats Omega Oatmeal,” I mumbled.
“What was that?”
“Nothing.” I buried my head on the desk, pretending to pay attention to some paperwork.
She glanced around, looking for people in the adjoining cubicles, then stepped into mine and lowered her voice. “Josh, what happened to you last night? I was worried sick.”
“Nothing happened.”
“Mmm-mmm. I’ve seen the kind of depressed you get when nothing happened. When nothing happened you get all pouty and obstinate as if the universe owed you a little adventure. Right now you’re being all quiet and brooding. That means something happened and you’re waiting for someone to ask what it was so you can pretend you don’t want to talk about it.”
“What, were you bitten by a radioactive Sigmund Freud?”
“What happened?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
She stuck out her bottom lip and plopped herself at the edge of my desk. “Come on... you know you want to.”
“I don’t want to.”
“Did you let some crook get away? Get caught in some over-complicated deathtrap and needed Nightshadow to save you? Doctor Noble call you an amateur? Ooh, I know, you asked Miss Sinistah to the movies and she shot you down.”
“Hey!” I banged my fist on the paperwork I’d been attempting to do. Sheila looked a bit taken aback by my sudden defensiveness. To be honest, so was I.
“Whoa, hit a nerve there, huh?”
“Just don’t make fun of Miss Sinistah, okay?”
“We always make fun of Miss Sinistah. Remember? How she’s such an airhead that even Llamaman caught her once? How her costume perpetuates every negative female stereotype? And that stupid origin -- I mean, channeling the sprits of Lizzie Borden, Typhoid Mary and Delilah? What kind of--”
“Cut it out!” I was more adamant this time, and I think Sheila was starting to realize this was more than your typical down-in-the-dumps.
“Josh, what’s come over you?”
“She’s not like that, okay?”
Her jaw dropped. “You really did meet Miss Sinistah last night.”
“I met a lot of people last night,” I hissed.
“Oh my God, Josh, you’re serious. What happened? How did you... who did you...”
“Sheila, relax. Man, it happened to me and even I’m not that jumpy about it.”
“But... Miss Sinistah? Did you catch her? Are they reforming the Malevolence Mob?”
“Can’t you drop anything?”
“I work for a newsmagazine, I’m naturally curious.”
“You’re a copy editor, Sheila. Your job is to stop us from printing stupid things like ‘Bismarck is the capitol of North Dakota’.”
“Bismarck is the capitol of North Dakota.”
“Don’t change the subject.”
“Look, Josh, we both know what’s going to happen here. You’re going to be stubborn, but I’m going to beg, plead, persuade, needle, cajole and, if necessary, tickle you until you finally break down and tell me what happened last night. So why don’t we just take all that as a given and skip to the part where you’re a big weenie and spill your guts?”
“This is how you persuade?”
“Next I start in with the ‘Yo Momma’ jokes.”
I slumped down at my desk and let out a deep, full-body sigh. “If I tell you just the tiniest bit of what went on last night, can you promise to keep it to yourself?”
“Promise.”
“You swear?”
“I swear.”
“This isn’t like the time you promised not to tell that Justine in payroll was pregnant and we wound up getting photocopied invitations to a baby shower in our in-boxes, right? You’re really going to keep it to yourself?”
“I promise, now tell me!”
“Sit down.”
“I am sitting down.”
“In a chair.”<
br />
She slid off my desk and landed in the tiny chair on the other side. I felt like I had a kid in my cubicle waiting for me to give her Santa Claus’ phone number.
“Yeah, I ran into some Masks last night,” I said. “They took me... back to their hideout.”
“And you fought them?”
“No. You see, they thought I was one of them, and they offered me... a position in their organization.”
“And you turned them down flat and blew up the compound!”
“No! They’re already a very powerful group. They’ve got their hands in a lot of things.”
“Oooh, graft! This just keeps getting better and better. Do they know where Lionheart is buried?”
I shot her a look she correctly assumed was an invitation to shut up, and she did.
“They aren’t all bad people. Some of them are just in over their heads.” I thought of the Conductor, with his friendly, quirky grin and his calm, understanding demeanor. I thought of Hotshot, once one of my idols and now part of this terrible, deceitful machine. I thought of Sindy, and her wonderful, wonderful smile.
And then I thought of Dr. Noble, and how that smile was wiped off her face every time he walked into the room.
“Some of them, though, are monsters,” I said.
“So what are you doing?”
“I’m going back tonight. And I’m going to join up with them.”
“What? Josh are--”
“Relax. I’m not really joining up.”
“You’re not?”
“Uh-uh. I’m just going information-gathering. Then, once I’ve got what I need, I’m bringing down the biggest con game this city has ever seen.”
INDUCTION
I walked into Simon Tower that night and entered the elevator, trying to remember the sequence of buttons Sindy told me to hit to activate the secret entrance to Morrie’s complex. At first I wondered how they avoided sewer workers and other underground folks, then I remembered Mental Maid’s contribution and put that particular concern out of my mind.
I know what most people would think in this situation. I was going undercover to blow the lid off a Rembrandt of a con artist who happened to have a pet telepath. What’s more, Sindy told me Mental Maid was perhaps the strongest telepath ever to walk the Earth.
The thing is, all that stuff they say on TV and in movies about telepaths having to hold back and undergo years of Zen training to keep from overloading on other people’s brains? That’s crap. Telepathy -- at least in Mental Maid’s case -- didn’t work that way. She had to make a conscious effort to link her mind with someone else’s. I figured as long as I didn’t give her reason to get suspicious and scan me, I would be fine.
I got to Morrie’s office. “I’m in,” I said.
“Great!” he said. “Mental Maid, scan ‘im.”
“What?”
“Nothin’ personal, kid. We scan all the new recruits.”
“But--”
“Especially with you bein’ a reporter and all. We gotta make sure you ain’t plannin’ on blowing the whistle on us or somethin’. You don’t have a problem with being scanned, do you?”
“Who, me?” I asked.
“Of course not!” I lied.
“What reason could I possibly have for not wanting to be scanned?” I warbled, wishing for divine intervention to answer precisely that question for me.
“Good. Just sit down and relax. I promise, you won’t feel a thing.” He looked over at Mental Maid, still in her prescribed spot next to the desk, and nodded towards me.
As she stepped forward I saw her eyes begin to dance with a purple glow. My fingers dug into the arms of the cheap vinyl chair and a thousand scenarios raced through my mind at once, most of them culminating with me as a vegetable, dribbling my lips and playing patty-cake with the Goop.
I tried to force good thoughts into my head, hoping I could veil my intentions with images of strength and nobility. I thought of Lionheart, proud and strong, the pinnacle of what a superhero should be. And I thought of these people... of what they were doing to his legacy... of the lunch boxes and coloring books and all the junk they hawked with superhero pictures on them, and it made me sick and it made me just wanna--
Stop it. That wasn’t going to work.
So I decided to think of Sindy. Sweet, beautiful Sindy. So gentle, so warm, so special... and then I thought of her idiot boyfriend and how he disgusted me and how this whole endeavor would be worth it if only I could find a way to get him away from her and--
Not helping.
I thought of my mother. How can anything bad happen to a boy who’s thinking of his mother? My wonderful, loving mother, who always looked out for me, always protected me, always told me that my nosy streak would get me into trouble someday, and here I was about to get my brain fried by the most powerful telepath on--
The light in Mental Maid’s eyes faded and she stepped back, nodding. That was it. That was the signal that I was a spy a fraud, an infiltrator--
“Took ya long enough,” Morrie said. “Double-Em gives ya a clean bill. Welcome aboard, kid.”
I managed to squeeze out a “Thanks,” but I never took my eyes off Mental Maid. Had she really sensed nothing? It seemed impossible, the way my thoughts kept drifting back to my stupid plan. And there was no way to read her face, she continued wearing that cold, impartial glare she always had, as if nothing and no one in the world mattered to her one way or the other.
“Okay, kid,” Morrie said, “the first thing we gotta talk about is your name.”
“What’s wrong with my name?”
“It sucks. I mean... ‘Great Pretender’? Ugh. First rule of Cape names: if you get it from a song title, it sucks.”
“It’s a good thing I rejected ‘Judy’s Turn to Cry,’ then.”
Morrie bristled. “We don’t really need to worry about that now. You’ll be using stock names for a while yet.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well we can’t very well make ya a superstar right out of the box, can we? Listen, every so often a Mask can get away. It adds to the drama, right? But more often than not, if they don’t get caught, people start to lose faith in the Capes. We got two options here. We can employ three times as many Masks as are actually available and only work ‘em a third of the time, or we hire people to be Masks whose powers are diverse enough to do multiple characters without drawing suspicion.”
“You gotta be kidding me.”
“You think so? You know the Jackal?”
A furry little Mask with claws and a lousy disposition. “Yeah, I know him.”
“What about Headgame?” A non-powered Mask who left jokes as clues to his crimes. I nodded.
“And the Rapier?” Three Musketeers wanna-be. I confirmed.
“All the same guy,” he said.
“That’s impossible.”
“Haven’t you ever noticed that there are some Masks that never operate at the same time as certain other ones?” I nodded assent, even though I never had.
“Now there are some Masks big enough to operate full-time as one character. Saint Sinister, fer instance. But he wasn’t always just Saint Sinister. For a while there, he was the original Herr Nemesis.”
“What about the guy who’s Herr Nemesis now?”
“Does double-duty as the Shell. Now you... you, my little friend, are a goldmine. With you all I gotta do is have the right people nearby and I can give you any combination of powers I want! Think of it! I get Deep Six and Flambeaux in the crowd and you got fire an’ water powers at the same time!”
“Won’t it be difficult to get those two to work together? They’re usually at each other’s throats.”
Morrie laughed. “Look, kid, I know you’re new and all, but you got to stop thinkin’ like that. I know you never seen Deep Six without his helmet, but him an’ Flambeaux are brothers. Twins, even.”
“Twins? But... don’t tell me, the Element Clan, right?”
“The same.” The Element
Clan was a villain family that had vanished about two years ago, before Deep Six showed up. There were four members: the matriarch Earth, her daughter Air and the brothers, Fire and Water. They hadn’t been seen in a long time.
“When the clan broke up, Fire became Flambeaux and Water became Deep Six,” I said.
“Yeah. The brothers got their powers from... I dunno, space rays or somethin’. I got writers who keep track of that for me.” Morrie took a long drag off his cigar. “Hey, that reminds me, what’s your story? How’d you get juiced up?”
“Actually, I don’t know. I just started feeling them one day. I guess I was born with my powers.”
Morrie coughed so hard at this I thought he was going to spit a lung into my lap. “Born with ‘em? Nobody’ll buy a crap-ass origin like that! That’s the sort of thing a lazy writer comes up with because he can’t be bothered to cook up an original origin story. I’ll talk to the guys. If and when you get your own character, they’ll have a decent origin cooked up for you.”
“That’s generous of you, Morrie, really,” I said.
“Anyway, now that you’re in, Mental Maid is going to include you in her susceptibility field. That means no one who don’t already suspect somethin’ about you is likely to make any connections between you and any Cape or Mask in the city. Not unless you give ‘em reason to, that is. That’s why nobody’s ever figured out that Spectrum is really your buddy Elliott, even though his only disguise is that nappy beard.”
I sputtered. “Scott Elliott? After all these years... Sheila was right?”
Other People's Heroes (The Heroes of Siegel City) Page 5