The Legend of the Red Specter (The Adventures of the Red Specter Book 1)

by M. A. Wisniewski

  Daphne looked up from her notes. Her expression didn’t really change, but she didn’t answer right away. Joy noticed a slight whitening of her knuckles around her clipboard. “Well… yes, Sir. I do believe I heard something about that, but—“

  “You heard about it? And you said nothing? All this time, we’ve had things going wrong, blown shipments, people going missing, and I’m wracking my brains, trying to figure out why, consulting with you about it, and you didn’t say anything? I expect Yang to be stupid, but you? I get this from you, too?”

  Daphne adjusted her glasses and swallowed. Oh, she was nervous, now! She could actually do that? Despite everything, Joy was starting to have fun.

  “With…all due respect, sir,” said Daphne. “I didn’t think that sightings of a comic strip character were worthy of your—“

  “DAMN IT, DAPHNE! The comic doesn’t have anything to do with it,” roared Benny. “The Red Specter has been around before they started with the funny-books. Look at Shiori—she’s in that strip, too, and she’s real enough.”

  “Hey! The Abyss I am!” Shiori’s furious retort came from right behind Joy, making her jump. “That red-skinned skank has got nothing to do with me. Don’t even joke about that shit.”

  Benny glared at her, but Shiori was the one person in the room he couldn’t intimidate, and she was worked up. Joy was close enough to hear her muttering, “Asshole comic writers better hope I never find ‘em, ‘cause if I do I swear I’m going to tear them…”

  The sudden intensity and vehemence of Shiori’s reaction startled Joy. So, she really hated the pop-culture caricature of herself, did she? Under other circumstances, Joy might sympathize, but the real Shiori was too awful for that.

  “So is that it? Is there anybody else who’s spotted the Red Specter and hasn’t bothered saying anything?” Benny leveled an angry glare at the entire room.

  “Well, there’s Madam Zenovia,” said Joy. “She spotted him too. Happened when she wandered down to the docks about three nights ago. After one of your sessions, I’m guessing. Though her description was pretty wild, and she didn’t use the words ‘Red Specter.’ She doesn’t even read the comics.”

  “You’re pretty chatty now,” said Benny, advancing on her. “So let’s keep talking. What’s his next move? Why’d he have you sneak on the Joanne Spaulding? And torching my cargo, that the Specter’s orders, too?”

  “No, he just told me to create a distraction. Something big. Breaking the girls out was my idea. Because I hate slavery.”

  Benny loomed over her and bared his teeth. “Distraction for what? What's his plan? What's he doing right now?"

  Joy felt her courage draining away as the gangster boss loomed over her, as he brought his monster teeth closer. Okay, he was scary. Nothing wrong with being scared of him—he was a pro. It was his job. But she had to keep it together—bluff with confidence. As well as she could.

  "I-I told you," she said, forcing herself to meet his eyes. "He doesn't share his plans with me—but I can guess! And... and I don't know what he's done tonight, but I know it's big! Something real big. You're in... you're in serious trouble, Benny. You all are. By the time the Red Specter is done with you, you'll wish you'd—"

  Joy's tirade was cut off as Benny seized her jaw and yanked her chin up, leaning in until they were nose-to-nose.

  "Well, good thing for me I got something of his, don't I?" Said Benny, leering at her, then glancing over to Lin Lin. "In fact, I got two of them. The question is, does this Specter actually give a crap about either of you? Because if the answer is no, the last day of your life is gonna be today, and it's gonna be bad enough to make you long for the Abyss by the end."

  Joy felt herself shaking, fought to keep the tremor out of her voice as Benny loosened his grip enough to answer. It felt like she was digging herself in deeper with every new bluff, but what choice did she have? She had to keep them alive, keep buying time until...until something happened, some opportunity presented itself.

  "That won't happen," she said. "He won't allow it. And if you hurt me—if you hurt either of us, the Red Specter will—"

  "Oh, come on," said Yang. "Boss, listen to her. She's making this all up. Don't tell me you're actually buying into—"

  "Don't recall asking your opinion, Yang," snapped Benny. "You're in enough shit as it is."

  Yang blanched. "But Boss--"

  "I said shut it!" Benny snarled. "Thanks to you I've been blindsided. This is a serious threat."

  Yang shut it. Benny looked like he was about to say something more, but Daphne cleared her throat.

  "Sir, forgive me, but I feel like I have to point out that we don't actually have any evidence to back up anything she says. Making assumptions based on that would—"

  "Daphne. You think she could pull one over on me? Lie straight to my face and I wouldn't know?" Benny sounded almost wounded. "What's with you tonight. You know better than that."

  "Of...course I don't think she'd get away with a blatant lie," said Daphne. "I'm just pointing out that—"

  “I've no confidence in that," said Chief Gallach. "Sick of this farce. That Lin Lin girl is ours. Hand her over, or—"

  "Or nothing," said Benny. "She's a hostage against the Red Specter, so—"

  "Enough! Enough of all this nonsense," snarled the Chief, his anger overcoming the pain of his cut throat. "Wasting our time. Mocking us. Insulting our intelligence. Hostage against a comic character? Ridiculous. You'll hold her forever, and this is your excuse? War propaganda. A fairy tale for children. You expect us to take that seriously? Do you really? Let me spell it out for you: there is no such thing as a Red Specter!"

  "FOOL. TRAITOR. FANATIC." A voice boomed out, echoing throughout the warehouse, coming from everywhere and nowhere. "WHEREVER TYRANNY REIGNS. WHENEVER EVIL STRIKES, THERE I AM. LURKING IN THE SHADOWS. SURRENDER NOW, VILLAINS! FOR NO INJUSTICE CAN ESCAPE THE WRATH... OF THE RED SPECTER."

  For a second, Joy thought she'd hallucinated it. The voice was so strange, unearthly. Deep and resonant, but with a bizarre texture, like if gravel was a sound. But everyone else reacted as well, tensing and whirling around, trying to determine the source of the voice. Joy heard Shiori's armor rattling behind her as the Caliburn knight went on guard. She saw Benny jumping back and glaring up into the rafters, MacInroy clutching at Brannock, and Yang going pale with disbelief. Daphne actually dropped her clipboard.

  "Nice of you to drop by, Specter," said Benny. "Now why don't you come out where I can see you? Unless you want your little girlfriend to—"

  As he spoke, he signaled in Joy's direction, and she had a brief moment to anticipate yet another hostage standoff, before all the warehouse lights went out, plunging them into darkness.

  Shouts of fear and confusion filled the black void. Joy realized that now was the time to escape. She thrashed against her bonds, making her chair hop up and down. She had to get free. Somebody crashed into her, and she and her chair tipped over. She landed on her side, painfully, as her bonds left her no good way to brace herself, though she managed to tense her neck enough to keep her head from cracking into the floor. She hissed as the back of her chair squeezed her arm against the concrete. Add another bruise to the collection.

  There was a brief flicker of bright orange light from someone's cigarette lighter, followed by a meaty smack and a cry of pain, and the lighter clattered to the ground and went out. More yells and thuds followed, along with a new noise, a chorus of hisses coming from multiple directions, and Joy breathed in something dry and acrid. Smoke canisters?

  More men pulled out their lighters, but their tiny flames only created brief, diffuse bright spots in the thick greenish smoke, and seemed to make them easy targets. Coughing and curses echoed out through the warehouse, followed by gunshots pounding at her ears, muzzle flashes illuminating the smoke like a lightning storm, even as smarter heads screamed at them to stop, to not shoot blind. Joy picked out MacInroy and Gallach yelling "Not yet, not yet, Brannock," and she remem
bered his bomb. Oh crap. She needed to get out of here.

  She arched her back and shoved with her legs, over and over, inching the ropes on her ankles down until they slid off the ends of the chair legs. She managed to roll onto her knees, facedown, then got her feet beneath her, but her wrists remained bound behind her, tied to a crossbar on the back of the chair. She staggered about in the darkness, bent over with the chair smacking the backs of her thighs, wondering if she could try spinning around—maybe she could hit something hard enough to break the chair, when she felt a sudden, precise jolt, and her hands came free. Someone caught her with an iron grip around her waist, there was a loud hiss, and she felt both her captor and herself flying through the air.

  Instinctively, she clutched at her captor for safety as they swung about. She struggled to figure out what was going on. She felt a few jolts, each accompanied by a vague sense that they'd changed direction, followed a final thump that seemed to indicate they'd stopped. She waited until her feet touched ground before she tried to struggle free.

  She tried to put her hands in the stranger's face, reaching up—way up—to push him away, but instead of a face, she found a stiff, leathery cone, with some kind of hose trailing off it, curving around—

  The figure caught her wrists. His grip was firm, but not painfully so.

  "CALM DOWN. SAFE HERE." The voice lacked the booming quality from before, but it was still so deep and strange. Joy had to suppress a hysterical giggle. This was really happening. The Red Specter. She was going to be okay. Everything was—

  "Lin Lin!" she hissed. "Where is she? Is she—"

  "ON IT," said the Specter. "WAIT HERE."

  The Red Specter made almost no noise as he moved away. Just the barest canvas rustle. Joy's eyes were starting to adjust to the darkness, enough to make out the vague shape of the Specter moving down the warehouse aisle. She found herself tiptoeing after him. Just as the Red Specter was rounding the corner, a voice cried out, "Cover your eyes!" There was a hiss and it was like a small red sun had been born in the warehouse. The tall shelves of cargo shielded Joy from most of the glare, but Red Specter was caught in the open. She got her first good look at him, a figure clad in a long canvas trench coat, forearms thrown up in an attempt to shield his face from the searing light.

  Then she heard Benny call out, "There he is! Open fire!"

  A continuous rolling thunderclap assaulted Joy's ears as the Triad men brought their Manticores to bear. The Red Specter staggered and twitched as he was struck by round after round. His knees buckled and he fell to the floor.

  Chapter 46

  Breakout

  Joy froze in shock from the suddenness of the violence, with no idea what to do. Then she heard a groan and saw the Specter try to roll to his side. He was still alive. Joy lunged out, just far enough to grab his wrists, and started hauling him back into cover. Oh, he was heavy. From the corner of her eye she watched out for the Triad gunmen, saw only rough silhouettes obscured by the smoky haze.

  The poor visibility saved her, for she’d already made it behind cover before they noticed what was going on. She heard cries of 'He's moving,' followed by more gunfire, but they were shooting at the Specter's boots now.

  She kept pulling until she'd dragged him a yard or so into cover, then dropped his wrists and tried to examine his wounds. Part of her knew it was futile—she had no medical supplies, and no idea how to treat multiple gunshot wounds anyway, but she had to do something, dammit! She rolled him on his back, trying to assess the damage, but the sight of his face distracted her.

  His mouth and nose were covered by a flattened conical snout of an infantryman's gas mask, hose trailing around to a cylindrical air filter clipped to his shoulder, but the eyes were covered by an even stranger contraption, a bulky squarish funnel with its wide glass-covered mouth facing outward, tapering back towards the Red Specter's eyes, with a few textured knobs on the side. The strange thing was that Joy felt a stab of recognition, like she'd seen this type of thing before. But never mind that, she had to help him, put pressure on the wounds, or something. But where were the—

  The Red Specter sat up, and Joy yelped, jumping back a foot. Slowly, he rolled up to a crouch, keeping his torso curled up protectively. Then, with obvious effort, he slowly straightened up to his full height, letting out a quiet groan. As he did, bits of detritus fell off him. They made little clinking noises as they scattered on the concrete by his feet—shiny mushroom-shaped bits of squashed metal, along with something else—odd black flakes. But no blood at all.

  The Red Specter shook his arms, painfully flexed his hands, and more metal bits fell out of the hole-ridden sleeves of his trench-coat. He grabbed the metal funnel covering his eyes. Joy heard a click as the funnel detached, revealing a second set of circular lenses beneath them. Now the Specter looked just like he did in the comics, though his real outfit had a lot more detail to it than the print version. The Red Specter tucked his goggles inside his coat (That's what they were! Night-vision goggles!) and she noticed beneath the coat he had another form-fitting jacket, with a leathery sheen, as well as a harness, with all kinds of gear strapped to it.

  "Don't just stand there, you idiots!" bellowed Benny. "Go get him."

  Before Joy could react, the Red Specter had already grabbed her and pulled her close. From within his coat he produced a strange, bulky pistol with a small harpoon stuffed in the barrel, which he pointed at the ceiling. Instead of a bang, it made a hissing sound when it fired, then whirred as they both went airborne, soaring up to the rafters on the harpoon cable. They came to a stop above a catwalk and dropped down with barely a sound. The Red Specter released her, tugged his harpoon loose from its anchor, and re-loaded it into the pistol, each motion practiced and efficient.

  "You could've warned—" she started to whisper, but he put two fingers up to her lips and shook his head. What, not even a whisper? Okay, fine—he was the expert, she supposed. He motioned for her to stay where she was, vaulted over the railing onto a cross-beam, and stalked across it, making no sound. She watched his retreating back as he headed towards the light, then examined the beam, and the long, long drop down to the concrete floor below.

  No problem. And no way was she staying on the sidelines. He wasn't the boss of her. She stepped through the railing onto the beam—it was nice and steady, and at least a foot wide. Well, that was practically a sidewalk, wasn't it? Just needed to be mindful of her steps, and she'd be fine. She followed after the Red Specter, not as quickly, but just as quietly.

  Frantic voices drifted up from below. "He’s gone. Vanished. They both have."

  "Impossible... Hit him. I know I hit him..."

  "Blood trail... There's no blood..."

  "But I saw it! I saw him get hit!"

  "...Not human... Like the stories… He's not even alive!"

  The Red Specter crouched on the beam a few yards ahead, studying the criminals scurrying below. The smoke had thinned out considerably, so she was able to see them all, either sweeping through the shelving aisles in increasingly frantic pairs, or clustered in a loose circle around their leaders, Benny and Chief Gallach, with Shiori standing off a bit to the side, holding a signal flare, nearly identical to one Joy had used earlier. Joy made the mistake of looking directly at the flare, and she had to turn her head away and stop walking until the spots cleared from her vision. She focused on the Red Specter instead.

  Lit from below, he had a truly otherworldly appearance. And apparently he was immune to bullets? Or, they did hurt, but he could shrug off the wounds? That was in the comics, but how could that be happening in the real world? Could he really be some kind of ghost or spirit? The thought made her shiver, but she tamped it down. He hadn't felt like an apparition when he grabbed her. And why would a ghost need night-vision goggles? Or use a pneumatic harpoon-gun to fly around? There had to be another explanation. She remembered the little metal mushrooms hitting the ground when the Specter had stood up, and the odd leathery material hidden beneath his
trench-coat. Could he be wearing some type of bullet-proof armor? Joy had never heard of such a thing. Even full plate mail wouldn't stop a gunshot, and whatever the Specter wore seemed to be relatively light and flexible. Still, it was the only explanation that made any sense.

  She got within a yard of the Specter when he whirled around, reaching over his shoulder for the hilt of some weapon strapped to his back. The motion startled her, but she managed to keep her balance okay. Fortunately, he stopped once he recognized her. Then he just stared. Joy smiled and waved. The Red Specter kept staring at her. It was so hard to read his expression with that full-face mask. She wasn't sure if that was admiration or incredulity she was getting from him. Angrily, he jabbed a finger at her, then back to the catwalk.

  Well, while she was genuinely grateful for the whole 'swooping-to-the-rescue' thing, and she didn't want to minimize that in any sense, that fact alone didn't automatically give him the right to order her around either, just like she hadn’t been able to order Shao Yin and Noriko around. And she would have told him that, but had no idea how to convey something that complex in Hand-Waving-ese. So instead she crossed her arms and stuck her tongue out.

  This was met with another blank stare. Not her most mature moment, but it had been a really long, trying day, okay? The Specter shook his head and pointed down, then pantomimed pressing hard on top of something. What did he mean? Did he want her to lie flat? That would make her harder to spot from below. She went to all fours, then stretched out on her belly, leaning over the side furthest from the light source, putting one hand on the bottom of the 'I' to keep from falling over. This seemed to mollify the Red Specter, who turned his attention back to the criminals below. Joy peered as far over the beam's edge as she dared, suddenly aware of the danger of being spotted.