“Is he coming?” Sentinel asks gruffly.
Twilight stands in the room with us, somehow changed into costume and with the biggest of his batwing cloaks hanging to the floor like a mortuary drape.
“You can stay until you are recovered, and then move on,” Twilight says sternly, one hundred per cent back in character as the others finish the meal I am only beginning. “I am departing these realms for the foreseeable time. I’m tired by the pettiness of ordinary men.”
The antihero’s eyes move to mine and he nods, lifts his hands as he sees there are no last requests – and then he gestures, at once summoning a billowing black cloud amid green flames shooting up his arms, the whole confusion taking a deep breath inwards and vanishing into a speck of nothingness and Twilight with it.
“That’s quite an exit,” the Enigma says.
“He always was a real show pony, that guy,” Mistress Snow adds.
At once there’s another eruption of black fumes and roiling yet thankfully harmless Greek fire which elaborates itself into Twilight once again stepping back into the room in all his demonic finery.
“Forgot something,” he says and moves to a desk, gathering up copies of Camus and Heidegger amid a few journals, tucking them under his arm before depressing the hidden switch again and bidding us adieu, now disappearing into his private sanctuary.
“Now what?” someone asks the room.
“Rest up,” Seeker says.
I concur.
“Sleep if you can,” I tell my companions. “We need to find Portal and the others and then we’re taking a trip to England.”
I look to Seeker and she nods.
“Manchester. It’s near Stratford,” she says. “You’ll like it. Shakespeare country.”
Sentinel’s snicker smothers my grin, which I turn just in time to see the tail end of him shaking his head and dismissing us as “stupid broads” under his breath.
Your day is coming, buddy.
*
THE GENERAL RULE about geriatrics and short sleeping don’t appear to be true the next day as we spend an exceptionally long time kicking around waiting for the older players in this shitty drama to get their skates on and join Seeker and I out in the garden for the defiantly unwholesome breakfast prepared by Twilight’s kitchen staff.
The slow arrival of the others interrupts mine and Seeker’s silent orgasmic commune as we dig through a buffet of waffles, French pastries, succulent sweet breakfast meats and eggs cooked to perfection and to our preference by the small, polite, apparently tongue-less Asian man in a chef’s hat who stands nearby toying with an i-gadget that no longer does anything except complex math, thanks to the collapse of Atlantic City’s communication network, however far we might be from ground zero.
After our communal repast, we take to the air in an unlikely flying squadron of Sentinel carrying Mistress Snow and Maxtor ferrying the Enigma on his back, Lionheart flying loops around us and checking out my ass. I am reminded of the evil flying monkeys from that old film Terms of Endearment.
Daylight is not kind to the city which has been unkind to itself. I yearn to explore the territory due east, since we are on the cusp of the Atlantic, no pun intended, and I imagine the world’s navies in one gigantic flotilla waiting to spring into action to help America rebuild – except I have it on the good authority of Twilight’s goon squad, who say the Undernet confirms our fair city’s demise has sparked a global pandemic of lawlessness and looting, and so basically the cavalry’s horses might be on fire.
Now deep into its second week without power, the city’s most obvious treasures are smoke-weeping eyesores, the skyscrapers no longer burning, a surprising amount of debris and fallen ash giving the devastation a lived-in look that belies how little time really elapsed before our whole civilization fell into ruin.
Deliberate ruin.
Now it’s obvious to me this scheme was a concerted effort, and not a small one by any means, but it is more than ironic that it looks as if we must leave the city to find the truth at its heart. At least the idea that some failed mega-villainess in Old Blighty holds the key to the whole mystery means the path as I imagine it betwixt here and there is relatively straight-forward.
Like, as if, right?
*
THE RIVERFRONT NEVER looked as shitty as it does now, fresh snow somehow enriching the disaster besetting the wharfs and the sagging buildings crowding in like well-meaning relatives at a wake. A smell it takes me a while to recognize as sheep shit hangs over everything, and it’s only when Maxtor solemnly indicates one of the big live transport ships listing on its side out in the harbor with gore and trails of drying disgustingness crusting its way to the water-line that I yet again drink in the scale of disaster this attack has wrought.
Across the East River and dangerously close to Rikers, the desecration that is Old Manhattan lifts its bony fingers still, the crumbling skyscrapers a prophecy of more destruction to come that we clearly never heeded. I grew up with this view from the edges of Astoria, except the golden haze of childhood suffuses my memories even now so that yesteryear retains its understandable allure compared to the mess my life has become and the way the world around me now mirrors that disaster – and in some way others might say we are all intertwined.
The other masks land behind me and I am sincerely thinking that for once things appear to go according to plan as a big industrial doorway wrenches open from the warehouse in which Azzurro and her Glow-infused goons once attacked me. A half-dozen heavily-armed cops in a mishmash of tactical armor step cautiously into the light, and just as I start to fear what might go wrong, three battered-looking copies of Legion follow, along with the huge hulking form of Coalface, seismic-looking cracks in his magma steaming in the frigid crystalline daylight.
“Who are you guys?” one of the Legions yell.
“You don’t know me?” Sentinel says and steps forward, sweeping past the rest of us to advance on the bunkered masks.
The recognition snaps those assembled out of their caution and the cops lower their guns as more and more people – civilians, women and children – crowd to the edges of the warehouse door to watch us.
“Which one of you is Portal?” Sentinel says to the gathering crowd.
“Settle, gramps,” I say to him and sashay past to reach the three Legions standing together like they’re in need of each other for reassurance.
“You remember me? I’m Cusp.”
“You’re Zephyr’s girlfriend,” one of them says, wiping nervously at what looks like a herpes sore on his lip.
I’m still for some reason bridling at the suggestion as I take in how each of these three look rundown and anxious, like junkies long since strung out to dry and not loving anything about it.
“You’re copies,” I say softly. “All three of you?”
The three slowly nod or look away, just as much an admission of the truth of my statement. The one at the back picks nervously at fingertips pitted and broken like old rubber gloves deteriorating in the sunlight. A subtle, grimy white cataract stains his eyes which won’t meet mine no matter how much I compose myself to the task.
“What’s going on?” I ask. “Where’s Legion?”
“The Omega have him,” the first copy says.
I freeze on the spot. I don’t even want to know, but I know I’m going to have to ask.
“Omega? Tell me.”
“Twilight led us here and then just took off like some emo-kid,” the herpes-lipped copy says.
“Emo?”
Sentinel bulls in. “Just tell us about these fucking Amigos.”
“He said Omega,” I basically just yell at him.
“Omega?” the living legend repeats after me and then just boggle-eyes Legion’s clones.
“That’s what they call themselves,” the first copy says like he’s been trying to choke the words out since last we spoke. “I don’t even know who they are. Or what that means.”
“Masks?”
�
�Villains,” the copy says.
“Worse than villains,” the one next to him adds.
“And what’s the deal with you?” I ask. “You get separated from your host and you start to . . . fall apart?”
The copies start to cry their hearts out to me – maybe they see me as a mother figure or something, despite their host’s perversions, so many of which have included them – but Sentinel growls, forcing the scared-looking clones to shuffle backwards on the frozen gravel, frightened breaths emerging as tiny wisps.
“Where is the one called Portal?”
“He got captured too. We lost Stiletto. She’s dead. The kraut guy had already gone back to the Fatherland,” the herpes clone says. “These Omega guys, they have a bunch more people . . . and they’re torturing them.”
“Where?”
“Here,” the clone simply remarks. “We’re stuck in the middle of their territory.”
Zephyr 22.4 “The Third Legion”
I ASK THE copies to explain exactly what they mean by “territory,” but in my guts I already know. As the trio of survivors flesh out the picture, a diorama emerges of a small group of super-powered and insanely sadistic bad guys holed up nearby, thriving in the anarchy of the city’s collapse and using it as cover for their depredations.
“Tell us what you can about them,” Sentinel says.
The copies start to speak as one and I seek Loren’s gaze, but find her faraway expression drawn only slightly back to me, the visor-like glow of the insubstantial halo around her forehead like a heads-up display only she can comprehend. Lost contemplating that void for a moment, I’m in no doubt the woman I know has returned when Loren does finally meet my gaze, raising one eyebrow as she mouths the words, “Zephyr’s girlfriend?”
I huff under my breath and do nothing to stop Sentinel getting a briefing from the Legion copies. Coalface does likewise throughout this, standing in the background as if a monument, yet I sense a deep, exhausting unease emanate from the silent brute, and in those moments I watch him, the way his beady eyes evade mine, I suspect the human volcano nurses an unseen injury – and one as much spiritual as anything else. He meets my eyes – picture a gaze limned with tarmac, pinpricks of heat like hot coals submerged under ash – and the moment he sees my knowing, he shuffles away like something from a Henson movie.
I would follow him and uncover the cause of his ills – we need everyone on board now, so I am driven by sheer self-interest more than humanitarian goodwill – but the three trembling clones unburden themselves like it’s Freud himself listening in on them breathlessly describing the sadistic predators it looks like could soon be upon us.
“Their leader is the maddest fucking guy we’ve ever crossed. A huge, grey-looking dude with a Frankenstein haircut and the biggest arms I’ve ever seen on a man.”
“And eyes,” the second one says like it haunts him. “The palest eyes. The worst laugh.”
“Not the worst laugh,” the first clone counters. “The bitches with him. There’s a teenage girl with a fucking sword, man, and then there’s this really crazy bitch. Some kind of witch or demon or something. She can burn people, and . . . shrieks like she’s cumming while she does it. I don’t think I could hear that again.”
I’m still frowning at the reference to a teenage swordswoman, confused about Ruse’s whereabouts for a moment as Sentinel continues to coach more from the clones – and expertly so. Being a sexist pig clearly doesn’t mean he’s no good at his work. He is Sentinel, ffs.
“There’s more of them, but I didn’t get a good look.”
“None of us did.”
“Except I thought. . . .”
The other clones look at their sibling as if it is a point of contention. Sentinel motions for him to speak.
“I saw the last guy, but it couldn’t be right. Do you remember Darkstorm?”
“A villain?” Sentinel frowns.
“No,” I say, returning from my contemplation about Ruse reminding me about my missing New New Sentinel teammate Samurai Girl.
“Darkstorm was one of us,” I tell them. “A good guy, despite the name. He and Stiletto . . . or was it Silhouette? They had a thing.”
“I saw Darkstorm,” the third Legion says with surprising conviction from a man littering the ground with crumbs of himself. “It was Darkstorm. He was one of them.”
“How is that even possible?”
“You can ask them yourself when they come for us,” the clone with the sore says morosely. “That’s why we were bunkering down here.”
I glance again at the beleaguered-looking cops on about day ten of a night shift that never ended, huddles of scared women and children like the “frails” in some godawful Western of yesteryear. I try to remember the last time I was in a club just kicking back loose and then I try to work out if it’s a bad thing I struggle to remember. The eyes of a frightened little boy meet mine and I am not adequate to the task, visage of nurture notwithstanding. I fail the youngster, averting my gaze as I return to the still-going conversation of the so-called adults around me.
“We’re not going to wait for them to come to us,” I say, interrupting and in the process blundering right through whatever ultra-important sermon Sentinel was eventually going to wrap-up delivering.
The others fall silent all the same, attentive like I have any real answers. Sentinel bites his tongue, electing to wait for me to fall into a trap of my own making.
“We have to find Portal,” I say. “And any other masks they’ve got. We have to go after them.”
“They’re in control of this whole area,” one of the clones says like he really needs to pee. “Now you’re here, we can fly out, right?”
“And have you come to pieces in my arms?” I reply. “Don’t you want to save yourself?”
“He can be an asshole,” the morose clone says of himself.
“You need him,” I say.
“But those fuckers are crazy,” the scarred one says. “They were hunting us.”
“Fuck them,” I say.
And look to Sentinel.
“Right?”
Reluctantly, the older man nods his agreement.
*
“WE THINK THEY keep the captured masks alive,” the quietest of Legion’s trio says.
Looking to his brethren for confirmation, the copy continues to explain how the elusive sensory connection he and his clone brothers share with their “alpha” means they also feel residual signals of his plight.
“And if the alpha died, we wouldn’t be here now, even in the state we’re in,” the previous one says, palpably embarrassed for his uncomely disintegration.
“And you think the teleporter is in there too?” Sentinel scowls. “Why hasn’t he just teleported out?”
It’s a good question. And not one any of us can answer.
Sentinel looks back at me and Seeker with a put on look upon his mug.
“Do we really need this Portal guy?”
“It doesn’t matter now,” Seeker answers. “We can’t leave our own people to be like . . . prey in some villains’ safari park.”
Loren scans the otherwise silent members of our posse: Maxtor, the Enigma, Lionheart and Mistress Snow. My own gaze tracks Coalface’s retreat, and although I never really had a chance to get to know the guy, I figure it would be a good idea to keep our own resident brick on side if we’re going to do what I think we’re going to do.
“Where’s their lair?”
I ask as much to cut through the bullshit as anything else, including my own irritation at our commitment to do the right thing even right now, when’s it’s really not very fucking convenient in the slightest. The watching cops seem to grow greyer still as the three Legion clones look among themselves, and the tiny little adorable blonde hackles on the back of my neck start to prickle.
“Where?”
“Where do you think?” the one with the simplex scar says and lifts a hand to point with all the weariness of an AIDS patient.
; We’re on the edges of my old stomping grounds. For a moment I have the existential fear that the clone is going to point in the distant direction of where my mothers’ house once was, as if this was all just another part of the cosmic plot against me, personally, but instead his wavering finger indicates beyond the relatively low-rise confines of the buildings to the dented twinkle of Queens architecture beyond.
“The Meadow,” says one of the hardboiled cops watching from the side. “They’ve got the Museum. They’ve got the Unisphere. They’re up there.”
“Making weird fuckin’ noises too,” a mulatto cop says and winces in an unneeded apology for the rough language. “Singing. Chanting. It’s like they’re praying to that thing.”
“The Unisphere?” Sentinel asks.
The cops nod and I ask them, “You guys have been up there?”
The two who spoke exchange a look like guilty school boys.
“Last night. Under cover of darkness. But it looks like they control that too. There were three of us who went. Ain’t anymore.”
The haggard cops somehow look apologetic for their heroism and yet again I feel the lesson rubbed in my face that people don’t need super powers to confront the world courageously.
*
WE DISSEMBLE FOR a little while, and I am barely free enough to think about whether I need to pee or not when a pretty older woman with loosely-tied auburn hair pulls me aside. Her hands clasps my wrist as her face wrestles with a wash of strong emotions besmirched by the soot marking her face. She wears glasses and even with those and the dirt, there’s no hiding the beauty she would’ve been in her youth.
“I’m sorry, but can I speak to you?”
I shake her off with a fraction of Cusp’s strength.
“Sure,” I say, addled by her interruption. “But . . . hi. You’re kind of hot, aren’t you?”
“Excuse me?”
The woman looks like she’s been slapped, the effect of which jolts me back again to who and where I am. I shrug sheepishly.
Zephyr VI Page 17