Just Cause Universe 3: Day of the Destroyer

by Ian Thomas Healy

  He had no name for the suit. He didn’t even know for certain why he’d built it, except he was compelled to. When he dreamed, gears and pistons and hoses filled his thoughts. The only time he truly felt good about himself—happy, even—was when he was working on the suit. It was an extension of himself, like he was building a second skin to go outside of his own; something to make his dreams a reality. Nobody who saw it would tease him, or tell him to do chores. They’d scream in terror and run away.

  He longed to instill that fear in others.

  He’d never switched it on, but when that day finally came, he’d crawl into the machine’s belly and become a part of it, and he would feel complete for the first time in his life.

  His father would have been so proud of him.

  He checked connections, fuel levels, hydraulics. Everything seemed to be in order; he could find no sign that the suit had been disturbed in any way. The last thing he checked was the heavy insulated cables running from a nearby power pole. Making that connection had come close to killing him, late one night when he’d sneaked away from the apartment to work under cover of darkness. He’d brushed against a live power lead and caught a minor jolt of electricity which made him slip and fall from a precarious perch fifteen feet above the ground. When he hit the ground, it had felt like the current still ran back and forth throughout his body, seeking an exit but finding none. He’d lain in agony without moving or breathing, knowing his spark of life was fading away like a candle flame under a glass jar. And as he sprawled on the pavement, damp from Fall rains, staring without seeing up at the murky clouds overhead, something had arisen within him. It shocked him with bright pain and hate, startling his autonomic nervous system into action once more. He drew a ragged, shuddering breath as his heart thudded behind bruised ribs, and groaned out his agony. For the better part of that night almost a year ago, Harlan had lain helpless on the ground, full of pain and hate and blaming the world for it. As the sky began to lighten over the Atlantic, he’d found he could move once more, and staggered home in an exhausted, hateful fugue.

  The next day he’d gone back, his head still spinning, and connected the line to the bank of car batteries ensconced deep inside one of the semi truck cabs. The tired old batteries needed a constant charge either from the grid or the onboard engines or else they’d simply die, and then Harlan’s suit would lose everything that didn’t run via direct drive or hydraulics.

  Satisfied the vagrant hadn’t disturbed his masterwork, he pulled the tarpaulins down again around the suit.

  He frowned at his current project. It needed something that he didn’t have. He screwed up his face in deep concentration. He knew there was a word for it. If he could only remember it. Harlan’s blood pounded in his ears and he felt faint and realized he’d been holding his breath. He blew out a lungful of stale air and as he inhaled, it came to him. Thermocouple. He needed some thermocouples. He grinned in relief.

  Gonsalvo would have some. Gonsalvo always had what Harlan needed.

  #

  Sundancer grabbed the Steel Soldier and made for the air-access balcony, leaving Tommy stuck with Javier once again. Tommy sighed as he watched John Stone and Lionheart walk out of the conference room, bound for the elevator. Just Cause protocols dictated that whenever possible, the heroes would operate in teams of two. With four fliers, it meant Tommy wasn’t ever paired up with one of the ground-pounders, although he figured that would change with the addition of Imp to the mix.

  Bobby clapped him on the shoulder. “Sorry, man,” he said quietly. “Really.”

  Tommy put on his bravest smile. “It’s all right. Into every life a little rain must fall.”

  Bobby chuckled. “We could use a little rain in all our lives. This weather is ridiculous. It’s making people crazy. As if we didn’t already have Son of Sam out there looking for his next victims.” The serial killer had wrapped up the city in a grip of fear and paranoia.

  “We’ll catch him,” said Tornado with confidence. “It’s only a matter of time.”

  “Time for what?” Javier re-entered the conference room in his burnished bronze armor. “I hope you meant time for a smoke. I’m dying for a cigarette here.”

  “I’ll catch you guys later,” said Bobby. “I’ll be in the monitor room. I’ll call you if anything comes up.” The monitor room was where Just Cause scanned police and emergency radio bands and the coordinator, normally Bobby, would dispatch the heroes around the city to where they needed to be.

  “Yeah, yeah,” said Javier. “You ready to go, pretty boy?”

  “I suppose so,” said Tommy.

  They went to the airlock balcony, an open-air entrance designed for the flying heroes to enter and leave headquarters. Tommy punched in the code on the electronic lock. They’d installed it after a drunken civilian at a party had wandered out onto the windowless room and would have fallen to his death had Tornado not been alert enough to see him tumble out.

  Sundancer and the Steel Soldier had left the louvers open so the wind whipped through the chamber as Tommy and Javier entered it. It smelled of dust and faint automobile exhaust from nearly a hundred stories below. Tommy let the wind billow out his cape as Javier swung his half-helmet up over his face and latched it.

  “Where do you want to head first?” asked Tommy.

  “Central Park,” said Javier without hesitation. “After that, I don’t care.” He whooped and leaped between the steel louvers into the open air beyond. A moment later, his boot rockets flared and he began a spiraling descent toward a more reasonable altitude. Tommy followed him out, letting the winds buoy him after his patrol partner.

  Javier flew fast enough that Tommy had to summon a minor gale to catch up to him. The Puerto Rican man headed for Central Park as if possessed.

  “Did we get a call already?” Tommy shouted over the rushing wind. Most of the team had to use walkie-talkies, something Tommy found awkward and distracting while airborne, but Javier’s radio was built right into his helmet.

  Javier didn’t reply. They cruised lengthwise along the southern edge of the giant park. People on the paths looked up as the heroes flew past. Many of them smiled and waved. Tommy waved back; Just Cause was as popular as ever.

  “There!” called Javier and pointed. Tommy saw a small group of four young black men turn to flee toward some trees. “Cut ‘em off, Tommy!”

  The winds blew fierce around Tommy as he swooped in to block the four men. One of them pulled a cheap pistol from his waistband. A concentrated burst of air sent it flying into the underbrush and left the man wringing his hand in pain. They turned to flee from Tommy and Javier dropped down in front of them. He fired a particle beam blast into the ground, creating an ugly scar of ashes and charred dirt.

  “Easy there, Stope. Hands in the air,” said Javier.

  “Shee-it,” grumbled one of the men, who wore a shapeless floppy hat and a lightweight leather jacket over a t-shirt.

  “Be cool,” said Tommy. “We don’t want to hurt anyone.” Whatever Javier was doing, he had to back him up.

  “Why you hasslin’ me, superhero?” mumbled the man in the hat. “Ain’t you got no real crimes to stop? We wasn’t doin’ nothin’.”

  “Come on, Stope, it’s me. You see me and start running, what the hell do you think I’m going to do?” Javier held out one hand. Electricity arced between the fingertips of his gauntlet. “You holding?”

  “Naw, man.”

  “We can do this at a cop shop, or five hundred feet straight up, or right here,” said Javier. “What’s it going to be?”

  Stope grimaced. “Yeah, okay, I got a little blow is all. Ain’t no thing.”

  “Hand it over.”

  “Shee-it.”

  Tommy kept his attention on the other three men, who glared back at him. Little dust devils swirled in front of each one, a gentle reminder that Tornado was more than just a name.

  Javier stepped back from Stope with a small vial clutched in his hand. His grin was just visib
le under the edge of his visor. “Stope, I’m going to do you a huge favor. I’m not going to take you in for dealing.”

  “I wasn’t doin’ nothin’!” Stope protested.

  “Intent to deal, then. Get going. Beat your feet. Scram, pendejo.”

  Tommy watched as the four men scrambled away, making sure none of them turned around for a parting shot. Once he was satisfied there would be no further trouble, he turned back to Javier. “Why did you let them go?”

  Javier shrugged. “I hate doing paperwork. You want to spend all day in a police station with no air conditioning? Not me.”

  “So you just turn them back out onto the street?”

  Javier raised his visor to gaze evenly at Tommy. “Look at it like this. Coke’s expensive, and this guy’s not going to have any cash to show for it. That means he’ll be accountable to his supplier. If he can’t come up with the money or the coke, well, those guys tend to police their own. I sure ain’t going to shed a tear if he turns up on the Hudson with a couple of new holes in him. And neither are you.”

  “No, I guess not,” said Tommy. “It just doesn’t seem very heroic.”

  Javier burst out in laughter. “You want heroic, you’re in the wrong business.”

  #

  “So,” began Shane as he threaded the oversized service truck through the congested traffic, “Elizabeth didn’t say a whole lot about you except that you needed help here in New York. Are you in some kind of trouble?”

  “No,” lied Gretchen. “I just decided to move here, find a job, that kind of thing.” She stared out the window at the Big Apple. So many cars, so many people. How could anyone live like this? To her small-town upbringing, everything seemed loud and smelly and busy, and yet there was a certain underlying energy that she did find appealing. Maybe that was what made people want to live on such a congested, overbuilt island of concrete and steel.

  “That’s cool. What kind of work? Are you an actress? Lots of people come here for that, but I haven’t ever heard of anyone making it big.”

  “No, I’m just looking for any job. I’d even be a waitress.”

  “Well, I’m sure you’ll find something. There’s this diner not too far from my building. Great blue plates. I have breakfast there a lot because I can’t cook. I can start a fire trying to boil water.”

  Gretchen smiled a little at that. “I can make pancakes.”

  “If it wasn’t for my roommate I’d probably starve to death. He’s in culinary school.”

  “You have a roommate?”

  “Mostly everyone in New York does. It’s too expensive to live alone.”

  “Oh. I don’t know what to do about that.”

  “You can always find someone needing a roommate if you look around. We can check into it tonight after my shift is done.”

  “I’m going to need a job first,” said Gretchen after a long pause. “I don’t really have much money.” She wasn’t ready to tell him she didn’t have any money at all.

  Shane glanced at her as he changed lanes to avoid a stalled box truck. Horns and some angry shouts filtered into the cab. “You could always crash at my place. I mean, you know, on the couch,” he added quickly as she stiffened.

  “Your roommate won’t mind?” She felt her cheeks grow hot. Her hidden power growled inside her like a living thing, begging to come out and play awhile. She concentrated controlling it by telling herself that this man was not trying to hurt her the way Donny had.

  “I barely see him. When he’s not in school, he’s working. He won’t mind.”

  “I’ll think about it.”

  He smiled for a moment before leaning on the horn at a lady in a big Dodge station wagon who wouldn’t be denied her lane change. “Learn how to drive, you fucking asshole!” he yelled out the window. She shook her fist at him.

  It was such a cliché New York moment that Gretchen broke out in giggles.

  Shane chuckled and took a crumpled cigarette pack from the clutter on his dashboard. “Smoke?” he asked as he thumbed out a Camel and stuck it between his lips.

  “No thanks, I don’t smoke.”

  He paused with a battered Zippo lighter halfway to his mouth. “Oh. Uh, do you mind if I do?”

  She shrugged. “There’s so much gunk in the air here, I don’t think I’d notice.”

  He flicked open the metal lighter and spun the flint. “You’re from Iowa, right? Elizabeth’s town? I forget what it’s called.”

  “Dyersville.”

  “Oh sure. Nice place? I’ve never been that far west.”

  “It’s okay, I guess.”

  Shane blew a lungful of smoke out the window, trying to be considerate of Gretchen’s lungs. The Con Ed truck had no air conditioning and Gretchen could already feel beads of sweat forming on her neck and between her breasts. “So why did you leave, if you don’t mind me asking?”

  “You ask a lot of questions, Shane.”

  He smiled. “It’s not every day I get to talk to a pretty girl like you.”

  Despite the heat in the truck, a shiver ran through Gretchen. The memory of Donny forcing himself upon her was still fresh like a raw wound. She couldn’t imagine ever doing that with anyone else. It was like Elizabeth said; all boys wanted the same thing. Even Shane, who was far nicer to her than anyone had been back home. She turned away from him and gazed stone-faced at the city as they crawled through it. “It’s a long story why I left.”

  “Maybe you can tell it to me sometime when you feel like talking.” He took another long drag.

  “I’m sorry, Shane. I’m still trying to adjust to this. I had to come here. I need…” Unbidden, tears spilled down Gretchen’s cheeks.

  “Aw, hell. I didn’t mean to make you cry. Shit. I don’t have a hanky or anything in here.”

  She wiped her eyes. “It’s okay. I’m sorry.”

  “Something bad happened to you back there, didn’t it? I mean, you’ve got those bruises and you’re jumpy as all get out.”

  Gretchen sighed. She felt like she owed something to him just for being such a nice guy, but she couldn’t bring herself to talk about it. “I fell.” She knew it sounded as lame as it felt.

  “Okay. I get that you don’t want to talk about yourself. That’s cool. Anyway, here we are.”

  Gretchen looked up from where she’d been knotting her fingers together. Shane had turned the truck off the main avenue onto a street filled with more black people than she’d ever seen in her life.

  “Welcome to Harlem,” he said with a smile.

  Chapter Four

  July 13, 1977, 12:00 PM

  Faith pulled her radio from the inside pocket of her jacket. “Bobby, are you there?”

  “Go ahead, babe.”

  She smiled at Irlene, who held a struggling, nine-inch-tall would-be felon in one hand. “Imp and I collared a purse snatcher in Times Square. We’re going to book him in.”

  “Congratulations on making New York a safer place.” Bobby chuckled. “I’ll dispatch Sundancer to cover for you until you’re clear. Love you, babe.”

  “I love you, too.” Faith tucked away the radio again.

  “You guys are so sweet together.” Irlene sighed. “I hope I meet somebody like him someday.”

  “I’m sure you will,” said Faith. “You got a good grip on the perp?”

  Irlene looked down at the doll-sized man in her grasp. He struggled against her fingers but to no avail. “No problem.”

  Faith led the flying Irlene across the square to the nearby police station. Officers whooped and elbowed one another as the two costumed women entered the building.

  “Pony Girl, always a pleasure,” said the desk sergeant. “Who’s your friend?”

  “Boys, this is Imp. She’s our newest team member. Please make her feel welcome.”

  “I’ll make her feel welcome,” hooted a plainclothes detective.

  “A little fellow like you?” Faith winked at Irlene.

  “Little?” The detective drew himself up to his f
ull height of… four feet tall. “Hey, what the hell?” Raucous guffaws echoed through the station.

  “All right, knock that shit off,” hollered the sergeant. “Can we please try to act like professionals?” He turned to Faith and smiled. “What have you got for us today?”

  “Purse snatcher,” said Faith. Irlene displayed the perpetrator, who looked a little green from being slung around like a doll.

  The sergeant adjusted his glasses. “Whose purse did he steal, Barbie’s?”

  “Imp, if you’d be so kind.” Faith gestured at Irlene, who was staring around the police station at the cops, perpetrators, and the intricate ballet of organized chaos.

  Irlene raised a hand and pointed at the purse-snatcher. He grew slowly until he was back to his original size.

  “Now that’s more like it.” The sergeant fed a fresh form into a typewriter.

  As the sergeant began interviewing the man they’d arrested, Faith turned away to where Irlene was fielding questions from a cluster of officers. The pretty young girl reveled in the attention, much like Sundancer did when anyone pointed a camera in her direction. That kind of openness could get a naïve, young superhero into a lot of trouble, considering some of the hangers-on who showed up at Just Cause parties. Faith resolved to take Irlene aside when they had a moment and speak to her about it.

  “Hey, Pony Girl,” called an officer. “Something just came in on the teletype you might be interested in.”

  “Oh? What have you got?”

  “Murder in someplace called Dyersville, Iowa. The coroner believes the victim had parahuman powers used against him.”

  “What? Let me see that.” Faith snatched the printout from the man’s hand. Irlene floated up into the air to better read over her shoulder. The details were sketchy at best. According to the coroner’s report, the victim had “localized trauma to the thoracic cavity consistent with instantaneous implosion. Cause of death attributed to asphyxiation.”