Superhero Universe: Tesseracts Nineteen

by Claude Lalumiere

  “I didn’t know.” Will shakes his head, voice hitching.

  “No. Of course you didn’t.” Now it’s her turn to touch his hand, cold flesh on warm. “Because it all happens on the edges of your story, and you’re the main event.”

  He looks up sharply, the pain back and real. She feels the twinge again, the regret at the hurt her words are causing. She felt something for him once and called it love. Or some version of her did. Not the one sitting beside him now, but another her without scars and knowledge. Jenny. And just because that isn’t her now doesn’t mean Jenny’s life wasn’t real, wasn’t valid. If there’s time someday, she’ll mourn.

  She shakes her head. “I’m sorry.”

  Will looks at her as if he were a wounded animal, not understanding its own pain. If there was some way she could break through, make him see what she sees. The edges. The frame. The narrative driving them, and that the narrative can be subverted, the natural order upset. But she had to die to see it, and Captain Freedom is practically immortal.

  “Can we go up on the roof?” she says. “I could use some fresh air.”

  “I suppose there’s no harm.” He shrugs, then his shoulders slump. Not just his voice, but his whole body, is weary.

  He puts his hands in his pockets; she’s both relieved and saddened he doesn’t try to take her hand.

  There’s a breeze coming off the distant river. Up here, above everything, it feels fresh and cool. The sun is starting to set, turning the city fiery gold.

  “What will happen to me?” she asks without turning from the view.

  Will keeps his gaze on the distant river, winking in the sun. His hands remain in his pockets.

  “There’ll be a trial. I’ll stand as a character witness, do everything I can to get your sentence reduced. If we’re very lucky, there’s a chance you’ll be remanded to my custody for rehabilitation and avoid jail.”

  She watches him out of the corner of her eye. There is no enthusiasm in his tone. He’s broken.

  A dull ache settles beneath her breastbone. If there was another way… But there isn’t. She knew downstairs in the common room— there is no way to crack through the armor that is Captain Freedom to the humanity underneath. Will’s answer now will always be his answer. It’s written into the very fabric of his being.

  She almost reaches for his hand; she imagines twining her fingers with his inside the depth of his pocket. It’s something Jenny would have done. Something she wishes she could do. He turns to face her, surprising her.

  “If I could have stopped what happened to you, I would have.”

  The words strike a blow, steal breath she doesn’t have. He believes them, utterly and completely. They are truth for him, irrefutable.

  “I know,” she says. “And I’m sorry, because that’s the point. There is nothing you could have done.”

  Before she can change her mind, she vaults the railing separating the rooftop from the open sky.

  The wind of her falling snatches Will’s howl, his shock, trailing in her wake and shredding like ribbons. He can’t fly; if he could, he’d save her. His powerlessness, his frustration, is all there. The echo of his cry is a dull ache beneath her skin. There’s no wanting great enough, no act of heroism or sacrifice that could keep her from suffering, then or now. It hurts. She was disposable, but not to Will.

  Even this knowledge doesn’t make it easier to strike the ground.

  * * *

  Putting herself back together the second time isn’t as bad. Or, rather, it’s worse in a different way. Her bones grind wetly inside her skin. She doesn’t have the same rage, the endless well of pain to draw upon. Her strength is leeched, wrung out, but she forces herself to keep going, to ignore the threads that slip and tug and whisper at the corner of her mind, telling her to lie down. Rest. Give up.

  She has work to do.

  Among the news stories Wooster shared with her while she waited for the Freedom Squad to decide what to do with her was a report of another escape from High Gate. Proto Star is on the loose.

  * * *

  The man grunts, hot fingers pawing cold flesh. She lies perfectly still, keeping her end of the bargain. As requested, she fixes her gaze on the ceiling, unseeing, maintaining the illusion. It’s easier than she imagined, not blinking. His face is a blur at the edge of her vision, her neck canted at an angle as if freshly snapped.

  It should bother her, the sick need, the shining fever in the Undertaker’s eyes. Instead, she pities him. There’s a loneliness beneath his stench of formaldehyde, his funereal clothes. He insisted on telling her his story as they worked out their agreement. The tragedy of his life, the loss of someone he loved, turning him into what he is today. He even looks the part— dark circles beneath his eyes, long, bony hands, nails yellowed.

  She only half-listened, focused on the Undertaker’s particular fetish: his desire for dead flesh and his need for consent.

  A drop hits her cheek, hot for an instant and cooling. She doesn’t flinch. The Undertaker weeps, soundless, his body shuddering as his hips jerk in desperate motion. He’s seeking something, something he’ll never find.

  She lets her mind roam, distraction from the pale man and the horror of their deal. After she died, did Will seek comfort, superimposing her memory over Fury’s or Zephyr’s face? Or maybe he sought out a shapechanging member of the team, an illusion almost good enough to take away the pain.

  The thought should bother her, but it doesn’t. Even the hurt of Proto Star’s continued existence has cooled, becoming something dense and still, buried at her core. He ripped her apart, and Will let him live. He pinned her to a wall, and Will took him to High Gate prison, a facility he’d escaped countless times before.

  Where there should be rage, there’s only practicality, cutting diamond sharp. If Will couldn’t break his code even for her, he’ll never change.

  So it has to end. It’s not about revenge; it’s a simple matter of numbers. She will destroy Proto Star to prevent more deaths like hers, more lives existing at the edges of the Freedom Squad’s sphere of influence needlessly torn apart. And after she kills Proto Star, she will track down the Red Death, the Task Master. Maybe she will even come back for the Undertaker some day. She will find every member of the Freedom Squad’s rogue’s gallery and kill them one by one.

  The Undertaker grunts, body spasming before going slack. The expression on his face is not ecstasy, but pain. He pulls out of her quickly, turning away to clean himself up. She blinks, finally, and sits up.

  While she straightens her clothes, the Undertaker undoes a complicated series of locks on a small case. Molded padding cradles a gun, sleek and black, reflecting the lights. She lifts it, a solid weight fitting comfortably in her hand.

  “You’re certain this will kill Proto Star?”

  The Undertaker flicks a glance at her before looking away, ducking his head under her gaze.

  “The bullets are anti-endurium. The only substance that can kill him. If you can get the shot off, it’ll do the trick.”

  “Good.”

  She fits the gun back into the case and snaps it closed. Her hand is on the door when the Undertaker calls after her.

  “Can I see you again?” His voice breaks. She glances over her shoulder; his eyes shine in the dim light, full of need. She lets the door falling shut behind her answer him.

  * * *

  Her bones grind and creak as she pulls herself onto a roof from the fire escape. She huffs a deliberate breath, just to feel it. The breath steams, curling visibly. The streets were too close; she surveys the city from above.

  Wisps of cloud drag against the moon, pale gold or sick ivory, depending on the angle of view. The city is wide awake, despite the hour— horns blaring, sirens screaming. Girls in needle-thin heels and too-short skirts spill out of a club. Across the street, women wearing everything they own pass a bottle between them.

  A jagged landscape of rooftops stretch away from her. She scans the space above them, se
arching for signs of Proto Star. The main difference between him and Captain Freedom is that Proto Star can still fly. It’s a darkness in Will’s past, something he was never able to tell her. Terrible as it is, she almost envies him that— a past, a secret. If she wants those, she’ll have to make her own. Maybe the Undertaker was her start.

  A sound and a voice jolt her from her thoughts. Even if Captain Freedom can’t fly, he can still climb.

  “Jenny!” Will vaults the wall, landing with a sandpaper scrape.

  His glow fills the space around him, blocking out the city lights. His muscles are taut, body poised for action. She should have known he’d follow; truth and justice and all that bullshit. Or love.

  “No,” she says, and only that.

  No more speeches, no more trying to convince Will of anything. It isn’t about justice. She isn’t a vigilante; she isn’t even a villain. It’s a simple numbers game. Too many people on the margins get hurt waiting for the Freedom Squad to act.

  She pivots, runs for the far side of the roof, pushing stiff muscles as fast as they’ll go. There’s no fear of the jump. If she falls, she’ll put herself back together again. But she doesn’t even make it that far. Dead tissue is no match for living matter fuelled by blood and breath and a sense of right.

  Will tackles her. They go down hard. He’s quick, but she’s strong, and her strength is unexpected. She pushes away, catching him off guard long enough to stand. He grabs her arm, gripping hard.

  “I don’t want to hurt you, Jenny.” Will’s eyes are bright, the line of his mouth beneath the mask grim.

  She yanks free, considers taking a swing. Could she, now, bruise even Captain Freedom’s perfect jaw? Does she want to? He’s been nothing but kind to her. He deserves better— better than her, better than this world.

  She takes a step, and the ground drops out from beneath her. Disoriented, she falls upward. Hands grip her shoulders; her feet kick free over the rooftops and streetscape below. She twists, looking up. Proto Star is carrying her as easily as a doll. Will shouts behind her.

  “Bring her back, you fiend! Let her go!”

  “My pleasure.” And Proto Star lets her slip a few inches, before catching her again. She doesn’t gratify him with a scream.

  Instead, she’s thinking how Will’s language has shifted him farther away from humanity. The raw pain, the confusion, her chances of reaching him have spooled back inside him, tucked within his armor, and not a crack shows. He’s playing out his role now, and so is Proto Star.

  She swings her dead weight, building momentum with the movement of her legs. Confused, Proto Star’s flight dips erratically. That she is actually trying to fall is unexpected enough that he lets her go. She hits one of the flat rooftops, remembers to tuck and roll. She comes up, ready to fire when Proto Star lands.

  But somehow, impossibly, Will is there too. He jerks her arm and the shot goes wide. A bolt of light that is every color and no color at once sizzles into the building behind Proto Star. Another scar for the city.

  The three of them stand in a perfect tableau as the gun whines, recharging.

  “Jenny, don’t,” Will says.

  “Jenny.” Proto Star narrows his eyes, recognition dawning and turning his expression to gloating delight. “Welcome back.”

  He is the dark mirror of Captain Freedom, his aura shadow, but still managing to shine. His costume even mimics Will’s— form-fitting and all of a piece, but a sullen gunmetal shade. And he wears a cape. Otherwise, they are identical in almost every way.

  “How did it feel?” Proto Star cocks his head, voice silky.

  She shrugs, bones shifting, bringing a dull throb to give lie to her words. “I’ve felt worse.”

  And then it comes for her, the thing that is worse.

  The tendrils of the narrative bury themselves in her brain, breaking her, making her small, stripping away the dead shell that nothing can penetrate. Knowledge spirals up— a black thread like smoke, tasting of bile.

  “A baby. Oh God, Will, there was going to be a baby.” The words slip out as she crashes to her knees.

  She doesn’t want a baby, but Jenny did.

  Fractured images come hard and fast, slices of her life sharp enough to cut. Not her life, someone’s life— laid out between frames. The warmth of Will’s body, slotted against hers, arm around her waist as they look down into a crib. Milky warmth as her lips brush the child’s downy head.

  Everything unravels from her— the child’s first step, first day at school, first kiss, first love, graduation, starting a family, all going on forever. But not. Cut short. The thread snapped with her death, with her body ripped apart and her bones shattered.

  The loss tears at her, a hole going all the way through, like her entire being is the absence left in the wake of a pulled tooth. She cannot sob, has no tears, and the pain is all the worse for it.

  The gun almost drops as her arms go slack, her body slumping and trying to melt into the rooftop. Will calls her name from far away. She sees her loss echoed, confusion and betrayal. Something raw and primal rips out of Will. He tears his mask off, scrubs at his eyes.

  Proto Star watches, a slight smile playing at his lips, enjoying his enemy’s pain.

  She blocks him out. Will reaches for her, hand trembling. He is nearly broken, and through the cracks there’s hope. It would be so easy to take his hand, let him pull her into his arms, share his warmth, share their pain, lessening and doubling it by half. They could grieve together.

  His grip is firm against hers. Her legs wobble as she stands. He reaches his other hand for the gun, palm up.

  “We’ll fix this. We’ll find a way. I swear.”

  She wants to believe him. The flickering play of emotions across his strong features seems almost human. And yet, and yet.

  The threads of the narrative are hungry at the edges of her vision. The baby that never was, never will be, is one more piece of collateral damage. In the images forced into her mind lie a myriad of other possibilities. Tarnished, dull, but still reflective— other realities, other ways the story could have gone.

  If it wasn’t her standing beside Will, it would be someone else, some other shard of pain driven jaggedly into Captain Freedom’s heart. That’s the way the story goes, the way it always goes. Wounds scar. They heal. Memory remains, a ghost beneath the surface as a new future opens up before him. Then the wounds reopen, a fresh trauma made worse by the burden of the past. Over and over, Captain Freedom is hollowed out, broken and remade.

  But the debris, like her, is left to remake itself. Or it is swept under the rug, forgotten.

  She pulls her hand out of Will’s, glances at Proto Star, who leers at her, waiting. The calculation is simple. She looks back to Will, meets his eyes. Her regret is genuine.

  “I’m sorry, Will,” she says, and pulls the trigger.

  * * *

  The prolific short-fiction writer and editor A. C. Wise is a Montréal expat currently living in the USA.

  Nuclear Nikki versus the Magic Evil

  Jennifer Rahn

  Nuclear Nikki strutted her stuff across the Dead End Causeway and into Magic Eddie’s 8-Ball Bistro and Magnetic Disco Pub. Her orange, six-inch stilettos clacked loudly against the tile, guaranteeing she’d be turning the heads of many a punter. She struck a pose just inside the door, one knee bent outward to ensure her silhouette showed off her legs and the fact she was wearing a ridiculously short skirt along with a cape that did nothing for warmth, and a few other things that didn’t go far in the realm of practicality. Her current reality had degraded from superhero to superwhore— one little mistake in her battle with Monstrous Maxie five years ago had wiped out her superpowers.

  Her eyes adjusted quickly to the dimness: six or seven men were hunched over tables. A few of them glanced up before returning to their beers and card games. The muted thud of a disco beat wafted from the back, not disturbing the dull inertia of the room. Nikki pushed down a wave of panic and sauntered over to the
bar, flipping back her curly wig to make sure it didn’t cover her breasts.

  Mango Joe didn’t bother serving her a drink, which enraged her because she hated being ignored, and was a relief since she didn’t have much credit. Only three more chits remained on her colony card. Once those were gone, she’d have to get off this hellhole whether she wanted to or not.

  She glanced around the room and saw Savage Bill staring at her with that trademark hint of smugness playing around his lips. He had a cowboy name but dressed nothing like one. If anything, “Disco Bob” might have suited him better: white tux, no shirt, gold chains, tacky tats and blond hair slicked straight up. He leaned back as if he were all that, and slowly reached into his shirt pocket to draw out a card with five chits on it, which he loosely dangled from finger and thumb, letting it swing so that Nikki’s eyes followed it. She didn’t like Bill, no one did, because he didn’t ever play fair, not even by supervillain standards, and the last time she’d taken him on, he’d left bruises that had hurt her business for over a week. But in three days those five chits would pretty much be a stay of execution. She slid off the bar stool and clacked over to where he sat.

  “Where’d you get so many?” she asked, jutting her chin toward the card.

  “What do you care, hon? I got ‘em, you need ‘em, and that’s that. You’ll do whatever I want, Sugarpie.”

  Couldn’t argue with him. Nikki wasn’t able to wipe the dislike off her face as she let him lead her out of the bar, but then Bill already knew the score and it wasn’t like she was trying to win over a patron who’d keep her on for a while.

  Bill dumped her in a back alley when he was finished, her hosiery ruined, wig gone, one of her shoes broken — but none of her bones this time — leaving her to wipe the blood from her mouth with the back of her hand that tightly clutched the card of chits. Normally she’d charge a month’s worth for that kind of service, but paying clients were pretty slim pickings these days. She got up from her knees and stumbled along with her broken heel until she slipped in the muck draining through the alley and whacked her head against a dumpster. Before she blacked out, she had just enough awareness to hope the pavement wouldn’t further wreck her face.