Corrupts Absolutely?

by Peter Clines

  “Do you want to hear the story, or do you want to interrupt?” Clay asked. “As I was saying, he was looking for someone to do his dirty deeds. We found her and came up with an agreeable financial arrangement. He hired Red Dahlia although that wasn’t her name at the time. She is a sociopath although she masks it better than most. She strikes at high-profile targets given her by Bishop. He tells her when and where to kill. It was a good arrangement for her. He even helped her find a regular job.”

  “Unbelievable,” Victor whispered. “People trust Bishop and his company.”

  “Of course they do. Dahlia targets the wealthy. People see this, and they decide to install the high-tech security bots from Bishop. Dahlia has never killed anyone who has a Bishop Security Bot. He makes countless millions on sales, upgrades, and upkeep. Every time Dahlia strikes, demand for the security bots rises, and he makes more money. Not only that, but his bots act as spies, funneling him information on his clients that he can sell.”

  “Why would he do that?”

  “The same reason men and women do anything in this world. They want to control and dominate. They want power and money. It has always been this way, and it always will be. I’m just tired of keeping it all in. It has to stop.”

  “Why didn’t he kill you?”

  “He thought he might still need me at some point. Not many people can spot Aberrants in a crowd and know the extent of their abilities.”

  “So you know my power?” His stomach roiled at the thought of someone knowing what he was and what he did. His heartbeat quickened, and he felt heat rise in his face.

  “I know your power, and I know how it works. You are the red right hand of God.”

  “I think I probably work for the guy who lives a bit further south.”

  Clay laughed and poured himself another drink. “I do not believe that. You cull this world of rot.”

  “Doesn’t change the fact that I’m a murderer, does it? It doesn’t change the fact that my power compels me to do these things. It needs to be let out, and this is the only way I know how.”

  “It is the struggle of right and wrong that everyone feels. It is a shame I did not find you instead of Dahlia back then. You might have been able to stop us a long time ago,” said Clay, a wistful tone in his voice. “Are you going to kill me now for the secrets I’ve kept?”

  “You don’t seem frightened,” Victor said.

  Clay shrugged.

  “I’m not going to kill you,” Victor said. Clay was nothing more than Bishop’s research tool. Reginald Bishop was the mastermind, and Dahlia was the murderer.

  “Bishop monitors my calls and visitors. He knows you are here and that you are a reporter. He always travels with at least two of his security bots. You might be able to render a person unconscious when you read them, but your power is not going to be able to do much to the bots. And even then, there is the matter of the—”

  “How do I get around them?” Victor asked more to himself than to Clay.

  “You would not be able to.”

  “I have to,” Victor said. His mind spun trying to come up with ruses to let him at Bishop.

  “You will. I will send him after you. He may kill me. Maybe make it look like an accident. Or he will send Dahlia to finish the job,” Clay said. “I deserve no better.”

  “You said he’s always with bots.”

  “Bishop always has bots with him. Captain Justice does not. Justice is the one who will find you.”

  “What’s Captain Justice got to do with anything?”

  “Come on,” Clay said. “How often have you seen Bishop and Captain Justice in the same place?”

  “Bishop is Captain Justice? He’s an Aberrant?”

  Clay laughed. “He might be Captain Justice, but his powers are not of the Aberrant sort. An off-world biomechanical rig fused to his body lets him fly, gives him his strength and his other powers. It bonds with the wearer and rebuilds itself when damaged. It even repairs the wearer with some type of nanotechnology.”

  “Off-world,” Victor whispered. “You mean alien?”

  “Maybe,” Clay said, shrugging. “It could be something he took from another dimension. All I know is that it is not his tech, and he has not been able to replicate it.”

  “Christ, this is weird,” said Victor. This morning, he’d just wanted to find a serial killer. Now, he was worrying about a madman with a cape and nanotechnology.

  “This is the big leagues,” Clay said. “If I know Bishop, he will come after you in the guise of Captain Justice when you are alone. He will try to take you out quickly. You have to be ready.”

  “I can do that,” Victor said although he wondered if he really could. Clay was right when he said this was the big leagues, and Captain Justice was definitely one of the heavy hitters.

  “If you succeed and people find out it was you that killed Captain Justice, they’ll brand you a villain. You realize that, do you not?”

  “Yeah, I understand.” As much as he hated the way Captain Justice was a part of corporate and pop culture and as much as he now hated Bishop, a part of Victor felt hollow. Justice was a symbol that people loved and revered. Killing him would have unintended consequences.

  But Justice was no hero.

  “Before I go,” Victor said as he left his seat, “tell me Red Dahlia’s name.”

  #

  Victor nursed a bottle of cheap beer and watched the drowning sun. Silver flashes of light sparkled against the deep orange as the great orb dipped into the Pacific.

  The view from the kitchen of his small, inherited house atop a hill overlooking Angel City was quite beautiful most days. He hardly noticed now. Night was on its way, and Victor waited for one of the world’s most powerful heroes to come and kill him over money and power of all things. Maybe Clay was right. Maybe they were the only things that mattered.

  Against the backdrop of the multihued sky, a small, silhouetted shape streaked toward the house. The shape grew larger as it came closer. It was time.

  Victor opened the sliding glass door that led from the kitchen to the back patio. No reason to let Captain Justice break an expensive piece of glass.

  The flying man slowed as he neared. He landed gracefully on the patio, his crimson cape billowing slightly as he did. The rest of his costume was a mixture of red, white, and blue stripes. His square jaw jutted out from the star-spangled mask. The suit was snug on his muscular frame, and Victor suddenly realized that he hadn’t known just how large Captain Justice was. Justice strode through the opened door and into the kitchen.

  “Hello, Mr. Bishop. I wanted to tell you that Captain Justice is a horribly clichéd name, and it isn’t even accurate in your case. Also, the initials of your company are BS. Did you even think about that?” Victor asked.

  The caped hero didn’t seem bothered that Victor knew his identity, so Victor continued. “Are you going to start some long-winded speech now? That’s what the villains in all of the old comic books would—”

  Something crashed into Victor’s left shoulder, and he quickly realized it was one of Justice’s fists. The blow happened so quickly he didn’t have time to register that Captain Justice had bridged the distance and was getting ready to kill him. He could barely move his numbed arm.

  Captain Justice’s other hand snatched Victor’s throat.

  “Do not speak,” Justice said, his voice deep and commanding. He began to squeeze. “I’ve laid waste to the world’s most powerful Aberrants. What could you possibly do?”

  Victor clawed at the vice-like fingers around his neck with his good hand. The grip was unbreakable. Trying to match strength with Justice was impossible. The world seemed to darken. If he didn’t act, he would die.

  Victor reached out with his power. Tendrils of inky black smoke leaped from Victor’s chest and wrapped around Captain Justice’s face.

  The strength of the grip faded. He continued to focus on Captain Justice, whose eyes began to ro
ll up into the back of his head. Then the visions, the worst things the man had done in his life, came rushing into Victor’s mind.

  As a child, Bishop pushed his twin brother off a cliff. Victor heard Bishop’s brother scream as he fell. Victor saw Bishop twisting a phone cord around the neck of a man caught trying to steal information from his databases. Victor listened to the man’s dying gasps. A hundred such atrocities rushed at Victor from the past and the future. They were there and gone in a flash. Then he saw Bishop and Clay standing before a woman dressed in tight, blood-dark leather. A similarly hued mask covered all but her lips, pale and delicate chin, and hazel eyes. Red Dahlia. She spoke in a silky voice, agreeing to Bishop’s terms for murder.

  The visions ended. He’d seen enough to feel justification in what was to come.

  Victor didn’t know how long Captain Justice would be unconscious. It varied from person to person. Humans could be out for as much as five or ten minutes. Invasion into the most private and horrible thoughts was not something that the mind or the body took well. Aberrants were usually only out for less than a minute. Even though Bishop was human, the otherworldly rig he supposedly wore might mean that he would regain consciousness sooner.

  There would be no time to take Justice into the Chamber. Victor grabbed the sharpest knife from the block on the kitchen countertop. He knelt over the fallen man and began to cut away the red, white and blue suit. It was difficult with his numb arm, and the suit was not a normal fabric. It seemed to emanate from the rig beneath. It tried to grow back until he started in on the rig.

  With the suit gone, it was no longer Captain Justice on the floor. It was just Bishop.

  The rig was a thin membrane of connected, pulsing, luminescent wires and nodes on Bishop’s chest. It almost seemed a living thing. He began slowly unfastening the rig. It was delicate work, but he was able to remove it. He set the rig aside and focused on Bishop.

  He returned to the kitchen drawer and grabbed plastic zip ties to bind Bishop’s hands and feet. He’d just finished zipping the ties when Bishop started to come around.

  “What did you do to me?” Bishop asked.

  Victor picked up the knife from where it lay among the tattered remains of the Captain Justice uniform. “I saw you for what you are. And really, it’s more about what I’m going to do to you now.”

  “We can work something out,” Bishop said. He struggled against the ties, but he seemed to realize very quickly that his power was gone. “I’m a very wealthy man.”

  Victor leaned over him, the knife poised to strike. He definitely wasn’t going to write about this in Angel City Beat.

  “I know the bad things you’ve done. I know the horrible things you are going to do. Your fear betrays you. I can smell the blackness on your soul, and I see your inhumanity flash in my mind’s eye. You can’t hide your corruption. No one can. And that’s why you have to die.”

  #

  Victor didn’t know why, but he tried the rig. Something within him, perhaps the darkness of his Aberrant nature, told him that he must.

  The rig adjusted to fit him. Microscopic filaments burrowed into his tissue, sending electrical surges to every cell in his body. The pain quickly gave way to pleasure as the rig’s unnatural power shot through him.

  A bodysuit made of similar material to the one he’d cut off Captain Justice began to spread out from the rig and cover his body. No trace of red, white or blue. Victor’s suit was a shimmering, liquid black. The suit looked similar to the ebony tendrils of his natural Aberrant power. He was happy to see there was no cape.

  Power was a damned thing. He could be a dark god or a shining hero. He did not know where he would fall.

  He did know one thing.

  Miss Olivia, with her silky smooth voice and murderous crimson ways, was going to spend one more evening with him.

  He knew the bad things she’d done…

  Bedtime Story

  Peter Clines

  Dad set his briefcase down and stretched. He slipped his shoes off. His toes grabbed at the carpet through his socks. Fists with the toes, fists with the toes, just like in that movie. Much better than when he used to end each day with a drink. He was reaching for his glasses to set them on the hall table when Mom stepped out at the end of the hall.

  “He wanted to wait up for you,” she said, “but I told him you were going to be late.”

  A few more toe clenches. “And?”

  “I think he’s still awake.”

  “He’s a growing boy, hon. He needs his rest.”

  “I know. But there are some things you just can’t get a seven-year-old to do. No one can.”

  Dad’s mouth formed a half-smile. It was an expression that conceded she was right but still refused to admit defeat. He gave her a kiss, clenched his toes twice more, and headed down the hall to Bobby’s bedroom.

  LEGO bricks covered the floor like so many small booby traps, and action figures sprawled across the undersized desk. A red-white-and-blue sneaker sat in the doorway while the other had made it halfway to the bed. As usual, in the last hour before bedtime, his son had displayed an amazing ability to wreak havoc and undo the day’s cleaning.

  The boy himself was sprawled across the mattress, not so much in the bed as on it. A pile of sheets and blankets by his feet showed his struggle to get under the covers. One arm was stretched out toward Mister Teddy, the well-worn bear he insisted he didn’t need to get to sleep anymore.

  Dad bent down and tugged the sheet up to Bobby’s shoulder blades. The blanket came up next, just a bit lower, and he folded the sheet down over the edge so it wouldn’t scratch during the night. He brushed a few strands of hair aside and kissed his son on the forehead. He lingered for a moment. The boy’s skin was warm and smooth. Still so much like a baby.

  The boy shifted, stretched, rolled over. “Dad?”

  He tousled Bobby’s head. Most of his hair was brown at this point, but a few streaks of towhead blond still ran through it. He looked so much smaller and younger than seven. “Hey, kiddo. What’s up?”

  The little boy sat up and blinked three times. He rubbed at his eyes. “I think one of the teachers said something bad in school today.”

  Dad smirked. Not a baby anymore. He’d been expecting something like this any day now. He remembered being seven, when he started to notice the off-limit words adults threw around now and then. To be honest, with the way some people spoke, he was a little surprised it had taken so long for this talk to come up. “Which teacher?”

  “Miss Richmond.”

  Dad tried not to frown. He’d met Miss Richmond a few times at school functions. Each time, he’d restrained himself with some help from Mom. It wasn’t that surprising to hear the young, overly-liberal teacher had let some profanity slip in front of the children.

  He adjusted his glasses and glanced over at Bobby’s bookshelf. A long-unopened copy of Everybody Poops sat on one of the shelves. He looked at his son. “Which one was it?”

  Bobby took in a breath and let out a loud sigh. “Miss Richmond,” he repeated. His tone said that his father had just lost a few points on the “smart parent” scale.

  Dad smiled. “No,” he said, “which bad word. Was it the S word?”

  The boy shook his head.

  “Was it the F word?” If it was, Dad might need to have a few firm words with Miss Richmond.

  Bobby shook his head again.

  “Hey,” said Mom from the door, “so what’s going on in here?”

  “His teacher said a bad word today.”

  “Which one?”

  “Miss Richmond,” said Dad and Bobby together. Bobby rolled his eyes at the realization he had two dumb parents.

  Mom managed a small laugh and a smile. “Nothing too strong for his sensitive ears, I hope.”

  “That’s what I’m trying to find out,” said Dad.

  “Not the S word?”

  Dad and Bobby both shook their heads. “
Not the F word either,” Dad said.

  Mom furrowed her thin brows. “What’s that leave that he’d know? You don’t think he knows…” She looked at Bobby. “It wasn’t the C word, was it, baby?”

  “Mommmmmm,” he whined.

  “You’re always going to be my baby,” she said. She leaned forward and kissed him on the head.

  Dad patted his son through the blankets. “Okay, kiddo,” he said, “do you think you could spell the word she said?”

  Bobby frowned and looked at the ceiling. “No,” he said after a moment. “There were a lot of them. She said a lot of things. One of the other teachers came in and yelled at her to stop.”

  Mom’s brows went up. “Really?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Dad looked at his wife, then back to Bobby. “Do you remember some of the things she said? The words?”

  His head bobbed up and down. It made his hair flop around. He needed a haircut.

  Dad sighed. “Could you say some of them?”

  The boy’s mouth twisted and he studied his parents. “You won’t be mad?”

  “Nope.”

  “I won’t get in trouble?”

  “You can say them just this one time.”

  The boy’s chin dipped in understanding. “She said none of us were free and that Omnes was evil. That he was one of the bad guys.”

  Mom gasped and covered her mouth. Dad sat up straight and looked up at his wife. “Are you sure?” asked Dad. “You’re sure that’s what she said?”

  “Yep,” said Bobby. “We were talking about the founding fathers, and she said that Omnes was a monster and a bad guy and he took away our ri—”

  Dad’s finger rushed up and came to rest across the boy’s mouth. “You don’t have to say anything else,” he said. The finger trembled against the boy’s lips, so he reached up and mussed his hair again. He took a breath and calmed himself.

  Mom wrapped her arms around herself and shivered. “We’ll have to call the school,” she murmured. “They’ll have to get rid of her.”

  “I’ll take care of it,” said Dad.