by Logan Jacobs
I tried calling her phone, but got sent straight to voicemail. The same thing happened when I called my brother-in-law Brian’s phone. I checked her social media pages and tried to message her there, but on every platform I received some kind of error message to the effect of “Message cannot be sent.” That didn’t make any sense. Mayhem must have been far more technologically savvy than I had ever given him credit for.
My only other option was to drive straight to Janine’s house, but by the time I got my supersuit and gear on, if I drove to Janine’s house, then I wouldn’t have time to make it from there to the Eidon Clock Tower by midnight. And there was no way I could risk being late for that appointment.
It did occur to me to send my apprentice the Silver Squire there, but he had a very obvious, very pathetic crush on my completely uninterested and underaged teenage niece, and Janine had told me not to bring him around her house ever again.
Anyway, I didn’t think this could be a hoax. It was unmistakably Janine’s voice on the message, and my sister would never do something like this to me as a prank. She took my mission very seriously and would never disrespect me that way.
Janine and I didn’t see all that much of each other anymore, now that I was so busy with work, both of my careers, that is, and now that she had a family. But I still made sure to call her once a week and I always assured her that I was there for her if she needed anything. Actually, I think she got a little offended when I said that, because she thought I was implying that she and Brian needed financial help. Which I would have given happily, but I knew better than to offer. Janine took pride in being “independent,” not that she wasn’t living off her husband’s paycheck anyway.
And now my proud, independent little sister was begging for my help.
Begging for her life.
I rang for my butler to pack my gear in the car and to wake up Silver Squire to accompany me while I changed into the latest iteration of my supersuit.
In my feathered cloak, I felt like a different man. I didn’t have to watch every word I said, knowing that it could be quoted in a magazine, knowing that public perception of my personality could affect stock values, I didn’t have to bend over backwards to make a friend out of every single person I came across because everyone knew someone and you never knew when a connection could be valuable. I didn’t have to seduce a bunch of plastic-titted airheads in order to gain status among other men in the corporate world.
No. In the cloak of the crow, I was a creature of the night, accountable to absolutely no one except myself. And no one had more rigorous or more just standards than I did. In the cloak of the crow, I didn’t have to be liked or envied.
Instead, I was feared and worshipped.
I didn’t have to remember unimportant people’s names or birthdays, didn’t have to pretend to laugh at unfunny jokes. I could say whatever the hell I wanted. I could tell people the truth even when I knew it would hurt them.
If I had to be Dan Slade, man of the world, twenty four seven and I never got to taste the freedom and purity of being the faceless Shadow Knight, I probably would have blown my brains out a long time ago.
Also, it wasn’t her big brother Danny that Janine needed right now. It was a superhero.
A real superhero.
The latest generation of superheroes, well my generation really. I wasn’t that old, I just felt old when I watched the latest generation. It wasn’t that they couldn’t fight or didn’t have strong powers, plenty of them could and did. But they weren’t interested in what those abilities could do for their cities, for the country, for the world. They were only interested in the fame and attention that they could win thereby. They would pass up an opportunity to save fifty people in order to save ten people in a more newsworthy context or a more photogenic setting.
The other problem with the rise of social media and the culture of narcissism and the endless craving for public affirmation was that it sort of democratized everything.
It made everyone think they could be models, they could be politicians, they could be superheroes. When that just wasn’t fucking true. Especially not in my profession.
There was only one great hero, and that was me.
The rest were all just incompetent, and an incompetent superhero was a liability not only to himself but to civilians as well. And a superhero who lacked strong moral values was really just a violent criminal himself who thought he could do whatever the fuck he wanted just because he could fly or shoot laser beams out of his fingers or whatever it was.
New superheroes needed more guidance and training than they usually got. That’s why I considered it my moral responsibility to take on a steady stream of apprentices, even though they were usually more trouble than they were worth. Even though they usually graduated from my service to become utter disappointments once they were full-fledged superheroes in their own right.
Even though they just would never be the hero I was.
Miles Nelson was a prime example of this obnoxious self-made superhero trend. Rumor had it he wasn’t just banging that Warden chick, he was using her as his key to the superhero industry. He’d gotten so rich and successful that there was nothing left to thrill him except fighting supervillains. It was a rumor he’d flatly denied when questioned about it publicly, but after talking to him in person on my yacht, I was pretty sure it was the truth.
Honestly, I had liked Miles Nelson up until that. I respected his inventing genius, the versatility of his mind, his endless curiosity and drive to keep learning and improving himself. If I could have chosen anyone in the tech world that I wanted to be like, it would have been him.
But he didn’t belong in the superhero industry. The problem was that he was so damn good at everything else he tried that he just assumed he knew best about crime fighting too, even though he had never done it before and had some pretty objectionable assumptions about how criminals should be treated.
Maybe he had potential and could probably even be a good superhero eventually if only he could have been taught and shaped, but I knew he wouldn’t listen to any advice that I or anyone else gave him. That wouldn’t have been a big deal if he were manufacturing televisions or something, but when it came to fighting supervillains, doing it wrong meant that people were going to end up dead. That meant it was no longer just Nelson’s personal business, like he seemed to think. It was my business too.
This was my city.
What would he have done in this situation? If it were his sister who had been kidnapped and was being held hostage? He’d probably rush in there guns blazing and try to not just rescue her, but also kill the kidnapper. Without understanding that it made him just as guilty.
Of course, I understood the temptation. My blood boiled when I thought about Janine being held captive, and I couldn’t even bear the thought of anything happening to my baby sister. But not even for Janine could I compromise on my moral code. That was the core of my identity as a superhero.
It was one of the many reasons why I was so much better than everyone else.
I didn’t like superheroes who defined themselves too much by their abilities. That was like defining yourself by your hair color or your foot size. It was just something you’d been born with. It wasn’t something that you chose to make of yourself. In that sense, I felt sort of fortunate not to have been born with any genetic superpowers, just the intelligence to invent weapons and gear powerful enough to combat supervillains. It meant that I got to start from scratch, to truly create every detail of the persona of the Shadow Knight.
Finally, Silver Squire showed up in his jersey, hood, and leggings, with a kind of sleepy expression on his face. I wondered if he’d been out late partying the night before. I’d have to have a discussion with him about that, but now wasn’t the right time. He’d get sheepish and defensive and stressed out and wouldn’t be able to focus on the mission at hand, which was rescuing my sister.
“Come on, let’s get in the fucking car,” was all I said.
“No excuses,” I said sharply.
“Sorry, I--”
“Stop apologizing,” I said. “What fucking use is an apology to me? What I need is an apprentice who’s on time, who can follow orders, who I can rely on to do the simple stuff so that I can focus on the hard stuff. Okay? Is that too much to ask?”
“N-no, but I wasn’t going to apologize actually,” Silver Squire said. “I was trying to say sorry about your sister. I was told it was your sister. That was kidnapped. That’s awful. You must be really stressed right now.”
I didn’t like what he was implying, namely that I was being sharp with him because I was stressed, rather than because he had in fact done something wrong, which was to be slow and sleepy as was his habitual state. So I didn’t respond to his comment. As with my other apprentices, he had failed to learn the correct aspects of being a hero from me.
Why was everyone else so stupid? Even Miles Nelson. He was supposed to be a genius, but he was just an idiot that thought he could do what I did.
He thought he could be a hero, but I was the only true hero.
We reached the garage, I snapped my fingers, and my car’s driver and passenger doors both rose up like wings. We got in, and the doors lowered around us, and then I zipped out of the garage and down the road toward the Eidon Clock Tower.
“What are you going to do differently next time?” I asked Silver Squire after a few minutes of driving. It wasn’t that I really wanted to talk to the teenager, it was just that I didn’t want to keep picturing my sister bound and gagged. Cut and bruised. Crying and huddling in a corner.
“I could try, uh, sleeping in my suit?” he suggested. “So that I wouldn’t have to take the time to put it on when you called for me late at night?”
“No!” I said. “Why would that be a bad idea?”
“… Because it might get wrinkled?” he guessed.
“No,” I groaned at his stupidity. “Because I’ve told you this-- have I not told you this a million times? You only put on your suit when you’re ready for action. If you sit around watching television and eating potato chips in your suit, if you sleep in bed in your suit, it loses its meaning. It loses its power. It becomes like a pair of fucking sweatpants. Is that all it means to you?”
“No!” Silver Squire protested quickly. “It symbolizes the fact that I serve you, the greatest superhero of all time. It means that if I prove myself worthy, then I might get to be a superhero myself someday. The suit means everything to me, sir.”
That was a satisfactory answer, so I didn’t respond to it. I just let us lapse into silence as the highway flew by. Twenty-eight minutes to go till midnight.
I’m coming for you, Janine, I thought. I don’t have any way to contact you, but I hope you know that anyway. If you know anything about me, then you should know that. You should be certain of it.
“Can we um, turn on the radio maybe, listen to some music?” Silver Squire asked timidly after a while.
I looked at him.
“Er, that was just a joke,” he said quickly.
“A joke?” I demanded. “How is that funny?”
“I just meant, it wasn’t very serious,” he said. “I mean we don’t have to listen to music if you don’t want to.”
“Oh, we don’t, do we?” I repeated. “We don’t ‘have’ to do what you tell me to do, in my car, wearing clothes that I gave you, with your belly full of food that I bought?”
“N-no,” Silver Squire stammered.
“Do you know what you should be doing right now instead of trying to jam to some top forties trash on the radio?” I asked.
“… N-no,” my apprentice admitted. “… Trying to get some sleep? To be well rested for a fight?”
“No, you should be mentally preparing!” I growled. “For what you’re going to do when we get there. Preparing to be useful to me for once.”
“But… I don’t know what we’re going to do when we get there,” Silver Squire said. “You didn’t, um, tell me very much about the situation, or what your plan of attack is. I just know that Mayhem kidnapped your sister and took her to the clock tower?”
“Okay, we can go over that,” I said. “Let’s say she’s being held at the top of the tower. In a cage or on a platform. Suspended where we can see her. What’s the protocol?”
“Suction cups,” Silver Squire said immediately. “You go up. And I set up, um, the trampoline or the inflatable mattress. Depending on the victim’s distance from the ground.”
“And if she’s being held underground?” I asked.
“Headlamps on?” Silver Squire suggested.
“In a situation where there might be supervillains present in the dark with us?”
“Not headlamps, night vision goggles then,” he corrected himself.
“Did you bring yours?” I asked.
“… No, I couldn’t really find them, and I know you don’t like to be kept waiting,” he admitted.
“Then how are you supposed to see in the dark?” I sighed.
“I guess I’ll have to just use my eyes, I mean my night vision’s not too bad,” he assured me. “But um, this clock tower, it doesn’t really have an underground level, does it?”
“You should always be prepared,” I said sternly. “The plan could change at any time.”
Silver Squire nodded and stared out the window.
I reached over and turned on some light jazz.
When we arrived at the clock tower, it was dark and silent. Well, I guess it was a good thing that my sister wasn’t dangling out a window in a cage.
After I parked, I walked up to the front door while Silver Squire trotted at my heels. The front door was padlocked, so I sawed the padlock open with a file from my utility belt. Then I kicked in the door and attempted to ride it home.
What happened instead was that the trapdoor beneath my feet dropped, and I found myself falling through empty air. I pulled out my grappling hook gun, fired it, and waited for it to hook onto the ledge above.
Only it didn’t.
A pneumatic trap sprung, and the hole I fell through was covered by some sort of ceiling before my hook could grab on.
“Goddamn it!” I bellowed as I landed in a pile of hay. A millisecond later, something landed right next to me with a heavy thud, and I kipped to my feet, ready to fight. Only it wasn’t an enemy.
It was Silver Squire.
“What the fuck?” I yelled as he whoomphed into the hay next to me. “If I fall through a trapdoor, you step on it too? Does that seem smart to you?”
“I stepped on it at pretty much the same time as you!” he said. “You went left, I was going right like I was supposed to… ”
I sighed and looked around. We were pretty much in a bare dirt pit. I didn’t see anything but hay, and there certainly wasn’t enough of it to pile up twenty feet high. Or even eight feet high so that one of us standing on the other’s shoulders could reach the trapdoor that had slammed shut above us.
“Janine?” I called. “Janine!”
“I don’t think she’s in here… ” Silver Squire said, then saw the look on my face and shrank back from me in fear.
I pulled out my phone and tried to call my butler for backup. But I realized there was no signal.
At that point, a disembodied voice filled the pit. A very feminine voice, husky and seductive, that sounded like it was trying to get in my pants.
“Don’t worry,” the voice said. “Janine is perfectly safe at home in bed.”
“Who the fuck are you?” I asked. “Where are you? Don’t you know who I am?”
“Well, I can’t disclose the answer to either of those questions for security reasons,” the voice said apologetically. “But yes, I do know both of your identities, and I can tell you that your sister is perfectly fine. She was never here. The message was faked.”
“Here!” Silver Squire pawed at some
hay to reveal a small two-way speaker embedded in the wall that was apparently the source of the voice.
“Faked by who?” I demanded. “Mayhem? What the hell is this? If you don’t let me out--”
“Then you’ll have to spend all night in this pit,” the voice concluded. “I’m afraid it can’t be helped. Just trust me that it’s for the greater good. And don’t worry, the police will receive an anonymous tip off to come check here and find you in the morning. You’ll be fine. Well, except for your ego. I imagine that will be bruised.”
“You won’t be fine,” I growled. “This is a crime. And why would you do this? What do you want from me?”
“Nothing. I would like you to do nothing for the next eight hours please,” the voice replied politely. “Would you like me to play some music from this speaker overnight? I can do that. If you inform me of your choice of music and your preferred volume--”
“Fuck you!” I yelled and punched the speaker as hard as I could. Since I was wearing my suit, the speaker cracked in half.
“… If we really are going to be stuck here for the next eight hours,” Silver Squire said tentatively, “well, I mean, I just think that, maybe, a little music might not have been the worst thing--”
He observed my expression even without the help of night vision goggles and promptly curled up with his back to me and attempted to cover himself with some hay.
I screamed with rage until my throat turned raw.
Chapter Fifteen
As we drove to the amusement park, Elizabeth, Norma, and I laughed uncontrollably as Aileen played her conversation with the Shadow Knight for us.
“Well, the warmup mission was a decisive victory then,” I said.
“I just feel bad for that poor apprentice stuck in there all night with him,” Elizabeth said.
“Poor guy,” I said, and then we had a moment of silence for Silver Squire.
“Whatever else you can say about him, at least the Shadow Knight loves his sister though,” Norma said. “My sister and I never really got along.”