by C. T. Phipps
I whispered. “God, if you owe me any favors, look after him. Even if he does work for the opposition.”
I got no response. Only one god listened to me and I hadn’t yet delivered Ultragod’s killer to her.
“They’ll be all right, D.” I didn’t know if it was true, but sometimes a comforting lie was better than the truth.
“I believe so,” Diabloman said. “If not, then I will kill Omega and there will be one final act to ask from you, Boss.”
I had no doubt what that would be. “Yeah, well, let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.”
Seconds later, the fog parted and I slowed down the speedboat since we were approaching the island on which Diabloman had set up his safe house. We’d been extra careful in renting this one out, not using any known associates or money transfers, with no visits that could be tracked. It was also a cellphone and internet dead zone thanks to some weird magnetic stuff which, again, was filed under “Falconcrest City weird stuff.”
The island itself didn’t even look like the kind of place you’d want to rent out to anyone, with its tall pine trees and soft cover of frost—in the middle of summer. There was only a single roof-covered pier leading up to a dirt road, and I couldn’t help but think my sister would be happy here while Lisa would be willing murder me for my satellite phone. Which I didn’t have— otherwise, the government would have tracked me down and killed me with a missile by now.
“What did you say this place was called again?”
“Mist Island,” Diabloman said.
“Huh, well let’s hope Sirrus and Achenar aren’t around.”
Not a peep from anyone.
“Myst? The steampunk magic book game? There’s no real graphics but a bunch of still pictures that...you know, never mind, it’s a dated reference.”
“They can’t all be winners, Gary,” Cindy said.
“Yeah.”
We docked the boat on the side of Mist Island before setting out. Gabrielle zipped up to do a search of the island from the air, flying very low, and so far didn’t seem to think anything was wrong. Which was good. Still, I had a sense something was wrong.
As we started up the dirt road to the cabin, I hung back from the others, following up the rear and trying to make sense of all this. In the end, I realized I couldn’t just leave them all ignorant of Other Gary’s role. If my doppelganger really were me, then he would probably try to come after me through those I loved, and I wasn’t about to let that happen. Even so, I needed them to be warned in case they had to take me out.
Putting my fingers in my mouth, I whistled. “Guys, come here a moment.”
Mandy, Diabloman, and Cindy all turned their heads back to me.
“Yes?” Mandy said.
“It’s time you learned who, exactly, killed Ultragod.”
All of them stared.
I clasped my hands together. “Okay, this is going to be a long story.”
“Your evil doppelganger murdered him and planned to frame you for it,” Cindy said.
“Yeah.” I did a double-take. “Wait, what?”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Last Minute Revelations
“What now?” I said, stunned that Cindy had already figured out the highly improbable series of events we were dealing with.
“I’ve been puzzling over what President Omega said during our meeting together and why he was so pissed at you,” Cindy said, ignoring the fact everyone around her was completely gobsmacked. “He said a lot of this was your plan and that he was really going to enjoy killing you for how annoying you were.”
“Do you just figured an evil(er) version of me was responsible?” I said, surprised she’d made that leap of logic.
“Not quite,” Cindy continued. “When Ultradevil showed up, it started to make sense to me that there might be more doppelgangers out there. President Omega claimed he intended to nuke Falconcrest City but backed away at the last second, a most uncharacteristic behavior of him. That was soon followed by the arrival of the Extreme, one of which—”
“Resembled me,” I said, genuinely impressed. “Honestly, I was a little surprised when we didn’t have a mirror match. You think when your doppelganger arrives, you’re supposed to fight. I mean, that’s the way we always handled it in Streetfighter 2 tournaments.”
“I hated you always picked Chun-Li,” Cindy muttered. “It’s not your fault, Gary, it’s his.”
“Believe me, I know,” I said. “Merciful Moses, people, I liked Ultragod. Sort of.”
“I do not believe there is any force on Earth that could compel you to hurt the women you love,” Diabloman said.
“Except being a complete dumbass,” Cindy said, glaring at Mandy.
“That’s not going to end anytime soon, is it?” Mandy asked.
“You think?” Cindy asked.
“How are we going to tell Ms. Gabrielle?” Diabloman asked, clearly wondering how my ex was going to react to such a horrifying revelation. She needed us right now, and I didn’t want to take away some of her few friends in this trying time. I could never forgive someone for something like this, even if it wasn’t their fault. Other Gary was me—a twisted reflection of me, but me nonetheless. It was like the Infamous series before it got ruined by the ending of the second game.
“How are we going to tell Gabrielle what?” Gabrielle said, flying down and landing beside us.
“Uh...” I muttered.
Cindy looked down at her feet.
Mandy stuck her hands in her pockets.
Diabloman said, “We’re debating whether or not Gary has an evil doppelganger which might have killed Ultragod. In all likelihood, he does, and it’s responsible. We are now thinking it’s going to come and kill us.”
Gabrielle blinked. “Really?”
“Thanks, D, really,” I said, sighing. “I really needed that.”
Gabrielle rolled her eyes. “Gary, I’m not going to blame you for the actions of your double. That’s like blaming my father for Ultradevil’s actions.”
“You aren’t?” I said, surprised.
“Nega-Goddess, Ultrademoness, Ultradummy, Evil Goddess—” Ultragoddess said.
“You have a lot of evil counterparts,” I observed.
“Occupational hazard,” Gabrielle said.
“Ultranatrix,” Cindy said.
“We don’t talk about her,” Gabrielle said.
“What if it’s like, Gary from a fake past gone insane with grief and plotting against all his former loved ones?” Cindy asked.
“Okay, someone told you about this,” I muttered.
“No, I’m just a lucky guesser!” Cindy raised her hands in fake surrender. “Honest!”
“Then I’d be mad,” Gabrielle said, not reacting at all. “The island is free from any reinforcements. There’re also four life-signs inside the house.”
“That would be Fruitbat and Nicky Tesla,” Diabloman said. “They will be guarding your sibling and niece.”
“Well, let’s go talk to them,” I said, continuing up the dirt road. “I’m honestly sick of this conversation.”
Walking up the dirt road, I heard the earth crunch beneath my feet as the cabin eventually came into view. “Cabin” was actually a poor term for it because it looked more like someone had constructed a mansion from logs. It was two stories tall and possessed of its own shack-sized generator, and all of the windows had thick curtains over them.
The canopy of trees noticeably blocked any direct view of us or our path. I was put in mind of the building Osama Bin Laden was hiding in before Super Agent X put a bullet in his head. There was no television inside or signals, but the place had a bomb shelter underneath stocked with decades of movies, books, and material to keep one’s mind occupied.
It was also a place that had been stocked with an equivalent amount of supplies. If we wanted to leave the speedboat under the pier’s roof, we could probably stay here unmolested for however long we wanted. We could get Diabloman’s family here, cover the pl
ace in a spell to disguise it, and let the world take care of itself. An alternative to leaving for space or trying to save the world. A few minutes ago, I wouldn’t have contemplated something similar to Mandy’s plan, but that was before I’d discovered I’d potentially killed the world’s greatest hero. Who knew what I was capable of now.
“You’re not going to abandon humanity,” Cloak said.
“It’s never about humanity,” I said, sighing. “That’s one of the things you’ve never learned. It’s about the people I care about. No more, no less.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“Believe what you want,” I said. “The world sucks, and if it was better, then people like Omega wouldn’t be in charge. Hell, we wouldn’t need people like Gabrielle and the Society to take care of things because we’d all be pitching in together. Instead, superheroes are those poor bastards bailing out a sinking lifeboat while the majority of passengers are just sitting on their asses watching.”
We reached the front door and I turned the doorknob.
It was unlocked.
That wasn’t a good sign.
As the door creaked open, I saw the interior. The first thing I noticed was blood on the ground. A lot of blood. Nicky Tesla and the Fruitbat were lying on the ground with their throats slit and their eyes rolled back into their heads. I hadn’t known the Fruitbat long, but he was one of my people, and that pissed me off.
Nicky, by contrast, filled me with a sense of surprise. I wondered about all of her relatives I’d have to contact now since she’d come from a large family of German-American scientists, people who had fled to the United States to escape persecution from P.H.A.N.T.O.M during World War 2. I once argued it would have been better to call herself Lady Einstein since Tesla had been Croatian, but she’d hit me with a bathroom-ray and told me to piss off. The rest of the room made me feel even worse.
Sitting on the leather couch to the right of the room, their arms and legs bound together with Ultra-Force manacles, were Kerri and Lisa. Kerri was looking remarkably sedate despite the atmosphere, perhaps because she wasn’t particularly afraid of death. Lisa, by contrast, looked pissed off, and if not for the fact that she needed her hands to use her powers, she would have been blasting away at her jailer—suicidal move or not.
There were two other occupants in the chamber. The first was, of course, Ultradevil. His right eye was covered in an eye patch from where Ultragoddess had either smashed it in or straight up knocked it out. His face was a bruised mess, with several scars that had been sewed up with super-steel thread and staples. From the way he carried himself, I suspected he also had taped ribs underneath the red and black version of the Ultragod costume he’d cloaked himself with. Ultradevil wasn’t in charge, though. I could tell by the way his eyes were focused on the man beside him, sitting in a rocking chair over the corpses.
“Hello, Ga—” Other Gary didn’t get a chance to say anything else because I was blasting him with a column of flames so powerful they should have incinerated him outright, but instead smashed him through the wall behind him, the room behind that, and out its window into the forest beyond. I then turned insubstantial and ran through a surprised Ultradevil, going after him. Pulling out my pistols, I immediately started firing them over and over again.
I didn’t care what my doppelganger had to say. He’d murdered two of my people, one a friend, as well as endangered my family. Keith’s daughter, my niece. My sister. He’d murdered Ultragod. I honestly didn’t care at this point. Fuck, he was responsible for two centuries of Mandy living through a dystopian future. All I knew was I wanted to kill the man, torch his remains, and scatter the ashes.
That was when he blasted me with a freezing ray of ice that hit me despite my intangibility. I felt like I was being burned. Dropping my guns, I struck back with my fire powers, and the two of us started dueling with the air around us, becoming a massive collection of steam. He had gotten up, a dozen bullet holes in his chest healing before my eyes, and was now pouring out an attack of great mystical potency. It was the kind of chilling ray that would freeze people in blocks of ice, and proved to be a lot more lethal than television would have you believe.
“Not today,” I grunted, channeling the same white-hot rage that had created the first column of fire and gradually pushing back Other Gary’s assault. The frost against my skin was painful, but it didn’t distract me from my singular desire to put my doppelganger in the ground. Slowly but surely, I forced back his icy attack and the flames came within inches of his hands. I was going to kill him.
I was stronger.
Then a gigantic pillar of ice shot up from the ground under my feet, sending me flying through the air before I landed with a thud. Other Gary hadn’t been beaten back; he’d just been diverting his power for something else. Above my head, I saw Gabrielle and Ultradevil battling it out again.
This time, despite his injures, Ultradevil seemed to have the advantage as I saw two Ultra-Force doppelgangers joining the fight alongside him. It took me a second to realize they were ghosts of dead Ultra-Family members. Copies of Ultragod and Ultragodling. My doppelganger had summoned Gabrielle’s dead father and half-brother to fight against her.
“Bastard,” I muttered, climbing to my feet. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
“A lot of things,” Other Gary said. “I told you I was going to kill you. I hope you enjoyed your time with your wife. It was the final cigarette before your execution.”
“I don’t smoke!” I said, blasting at him again.
Again, Other Gary effortlessly knocked away the blast. “Which is another thing I hate about this timeline.”
“Smoking kills!” I said, too angry to give any decent rejoinders.
“Oh shut up!” Other Gary shouted back, meeting me blow for blow.
Diabloman, Cindy, and Mandy ran out to join the fight against my doppelganger. Lisa, much to my irritation, was present as well, while Kerri hung back. Other Gary didn’t pay them any attention and made a half-hearted circle with his hand. Ghosts of my enemies: the Ice Cream Man, the Typewriter, Ganglord Gorilla, and even Sunlight appeared. They promptly charged my henchmen and family, leaving me alone with my duplicate.
“Stay the hell away from my family!” I said, picking my pistols up off the ground and unloading with them.
All of Other Gary’s bullet wounds had healed by this point, and each of the bullets I fired struck a piece of ice he conjured in the air. The ice pieces exploded one by one in rapid succession, creating dozens of sparkling detonations in the air without my doppelganger even looking like he was exerting himself.
“I’m sorry,” Other Gary said. “I can’t do that.”
“Why the hell not!?” I shouted, realizing that my duplicate had access to powers way, way above my level.
Maybe even Nightwalker levels.
Other Gary let out a sigh. “Because, Gary, I’ve come too far and done too much to ever stop now. You need to die, and I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to kill your Mandy as well along with all of your friends. So sorry.”
That was when I felt him reach out and grab my throat with his mind.
He’d mastered the Darth Vader choke trick.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Mirror Match
“Asshole,” I choked out, clutching my throat and gasping for air.
I had never been more furious. I wanted to take my doppelganger by the throat and strangle him to death with my bare hands. Everything around me seemed to become less real as I focused on that single thought: survive.
I wasn’t much of a magician. In fact, I was a really awful one. In Harry Potter terms, I was one notch above a Squib, but I had a lot of anger to fuel sorcery, and nothing was more powerful than anger. Giving into the proverbial dark side, I pushed back against my doppelganger’s attack with all of my might and telekinetically forced oxygen into my lungs before knocking him back three steps. It took just about everything I had, but it meant I wasn’t out of the fight.
> Not yet.
“You stand in the way of a superior age’s restoration,” Other Gary said, shaking his head. He clearly hadn’t expected me to push him back.
“Yeah yeah,” I said, breathing out once more. “You’re from a shiny happy utopia. Except, of course, Mandy died in your reality. So maybe it’s not as nice and friendly as you remember. I understand your pain, literally I do, but how the hell does that justify any of this?”
Other Gary closed his eyes. “I tried to fix this world, I really did. I tried to be happy for you and Mandy. But you were ruining the life you were meant to live, just like everyone else in this stinking timeline is a perversion of what should be. You weren’t happy being a normal man, you wanted to be a supervillain. A supervillain for fudge’s sake.”
Apparently, there wasn’t any swearing on Pre-Catastrophe Earth.
Other Gary continued. “I traveled through time, back and forth, looking for solutions, but the answers were always the same. Superheroes always served as agents of the status quo. They propped up conservative corrupt regimes that deserved to be brought down by reform or revolution. They focused all of their attention on stopping supervillains instead, even when they were right. Then Mandy died, saving a friend heroically, but you brought her back as a twisted parody of herself—”
“Screw you, psycho!” Mandy said, throwing the ghost of Sunlight through a tree where it splattered into ectoplasm.
Other Gary sighed. “I knew what I had to do. I am going to fix this.”
Hearing him speak like that, I burst out laughing.
“What?” Other Gary said.
“You actually have no idea what you’re doing, do you?” I said. “I’ve said those words before and I know they’re spoken when you’re out of ideas.”
“I know exactly what I’m doing, thank you. I eliminated Ultragod, I convinced Omega to ally with Ultradevil, I formulated the plan that will save us all.”