Luminous

by Corrina Lawson

  Dedication

  To the posters of the Want to Write a Superhero Story? thread on the Gail Simone forums at Jinxworld. Thanks for your support and help and for keeping me going. You were an inspiration.

  Chapter One

  She was too late.

  Noir slipped silently past the police officers posted to guard the entrance to the bank. The revolving front door had been completely smashed, the door torn off at the hinges. Glass littered the floor. She stepped carefully, hoping not to slice her feet.

  Once inside, she nearly lost her nerve. The bank branch was a relic of better days in Charlton City, decorated with cathedral ceilings, a marble floor and ornate wood carvings. All that was eclipsed by the blood and the bodies. She counted three people sprawled in various positions, their heads and limbs askew, their faces frozen in shock or pain. It looked like they’d been tossed aside like rag dolls.

  Jack had definitely been there. No one else had that kind of strength. Or that kind of rage.

  She swallowed back the bile in her throat and ducked behind the teller’s counter before anyone noticed her. They couldn’t see her, of course, but they could definitely hear her. She had best stay hidden.

  Once settled behind the counter, she heard voices. She peeked out and saw that two plainclothes police officers, badges displayed on their belts, had entered the bank. They stopped in the entranceway, perhaps experiencing the same shock as she had. They looked left. She followed their gazes and wished she hadn’t. She’d missed seeing one victim who was off to the left and at the base of the wall.

  The victim’s torso was located several feet from the pile of his arms and legs. Noir dropped her head between her knees, feeling sick again.

  After several deep breaths, she forced herself to look again, to sear the images into her memory. This was what she’d worked so hard to prevent, and if she couldn’t find Jack, it would happen again.

  She noted that the dismembered victim was dressed in a police-style uniform. The bank guard, Noir guessed. Jack had always hated cops. A bank guard would’ve been close enough to stoke his anger.

  But why had Jack gone into a bank so publicity? He was so noticeable. Noir saw a six-inch steel door torn off its hinges. Beyond it was a vault. Maybe Jill had needed money.

  If only Noir could tell someone her story. But who would believe her?

  Noir glanced over at a calendar on the empty desk beside her. The last day she was truly clear about had been five years earlier, the day Jill had taken her into her clinic. And even with the memory loss and the ordeal at Jill’s hands, she was still better off than the people who’d gotten in Jack’s way today.

  She shivered and hugged herself, seeking more than physical warmth. After recovering from her escape, she’d been focused only on finding Jack to stop him. She hadn’t been able to save these people. Some fucking detective she was.

  She needed help. “Hi, this was done by a monster who only listens to his mad doctor sister.” Yeah, the next move of whoever heard that would be to send her off to the psych ward, not to look for Jack. If they even believed she wasn’t just a damn disembodied voice or a figment of their imagination.

  Shoes crunching over glass caught her attention as someone else stepped into the bank. The two plainclothes officers turned at the sound of the newcomer’s arrival. Noir peered around the edge of the teller’s counter, allowing her to see the entire bank lobby.

  “Well, if it ain’t Detective Fixit,” said the balding older officer.

  The new arrival didn’t even acknowledge the jab. Like Noir, he was transfixed by the carnage. No, she amended, not transfixed. He walked the scene in deliberate, slow steps, stopping only to kneel before each victim. He was absorbing everything, Noir thought, just as she’d done.

  Fixit wore an unbuttoned oversized tan overcoat that exposed a white dress shirt and tie underneath. All three were rumpled, as if he’d just gotten out of bed or had never gone to sleep. His shoes were scuffed and might have been black once but they were gray now.

  Yet the clothes were at odds with his grim and determined manner. As he came closer, she could see his face. It wasn’t a pretty face, but it was definitely a strong face. Chiseled features, intense eyes and a jaw clenched in what she guessed was anger.

  And old-school kinda guy, Noir guessed, though he didn’t seem older than his mid-thirties. Detective Fixit. She wondered how he’d earned that name.

  A man in a business suit rushed in through the ruined doorway and grabbed Detective Fixit’s arm before the other two cops could stop him.

  “Lieutenant, you have to find him!” the suit said.

  “Sir,” Fixit said, “take a deep breath and tell me what you mean.”

  His words were careful and precise and seemed to have a calming effect on the panicked man.

  “I’m the manager of this branch. One of our tellers is missing.” He gulped for air between words. “I thought we accounted for everyone, even…” He took a deep breath and looked down at the floor. “We even accounted for the dead. But I just talked to my people outside and one teller is definitely missing.”

  Noir hoped the missing man wasn’t dead somewhere in the carnage of overturned desks, smashed counters and broken tables.

  The lieutenant turned to the other police officers. “Do you have the bank video logs yet?”

  “Not yet, Lieutenant James.” The younger plainclothes officer shook his head. “First, we made sure to get all the employees out and secure everything for forensics. Then we were going to look for those.”

  Lieutenant James nodded. So that was his real name. He outranked the other officers, Noir guessed. She could see why. Carnage around him, someone panicked in front of him, hostility from the older cop, and yet he still commanded the crime scene.

  “Sir,” Lieutenant James said to the bank manager, “where’s your video surveillance feed?”

  The manager pointed to an overturned desk on the right, back against the wall. “That was his station. Casey’s station.” He saw the bloody torso of the security guard and put a hand over his mouth.

  “You can go outside now, sir,” James said. “We’ll do what we can to find your missing teller. While you’re waiting, gather up all you can about his employment and personal history and give a description to the detectives outside, please.”

  “But that’s all on file here—” He gestured at the mess, indicating the futility of finding anything in the destruction.

  “Your head branch has duplicate records, yes?” James asked.

  The manager nodded.

  “Then tell the personnel people there to get the files over here ASAP if you want to find your missing employee. Also, tell me the password on your guard’s computer.”

  The manager nodded, said something that Noir guessed was the password and scurried out the door again. He was calmer now, Noir thought, because Lieutenant James had given him a job to do.

  James shook his head and cursed as he walked over to the overturned security desk.

  “Officers, over here. I need to lift this.”

  “That’s disturbing the crime scene, isn’t it?” muttered the balding officer.

  “Without those videos, we don’t have a clue who or what we’re looking for,” James said. “Eyewitness accounts say it was a damned monster. Now, do you want to rely on those panicked reports or do you want to do your job and see what really killed these people?”

  The balding officer said no more and followed James’s instructions. James, Noir noticed, picked up one half of the desk himself, while the balding officer had help from his partner.

  They held it several inches above the floor as the younger officer kicked the CPU of the security guard’s computer out from where it had been pinned.

  James must have some k
ind of muscles under those rumpled clothes, Noir mused, because he held up his end without effort. As soon as the CPU was free and clear, they set the desk down. The balding officer had sweat running down his face and was puffing out breaths.

  James hadn’t even taken off his overcoat. He hooked up the CPU to a monitor and keyboard lying nearby on the floor.

  “Sure that will work?” asked the younger officer.

  “Never know,” James said. “It’ll save time to watch it here.”

  He plugged it in. Noir crept closer and saw the green light on the CPU come on. How about that, the thing worked even after having been tossed about. Score one for the PC side. She padded to hide behind a tipped-over desk that offered her a good view of the monitor. She had to see.

  James ordered the balding officer outside to get the description of the missing bank employee. Noir had a feeling he wanted to get rid of him. James tapped on the keyboard, had to go through a start-up, and quickly brought up the video feed.

  He turned to look at the other officer. “How long have you been in homicide?”

  The younger man swallowed. “A month.”

  “If you think the mess in here is bad, the video’s going to be worse. You could go outside and take eyewitness statements with the others.”

  “No.” He straightened his shoulders “This is part of the job.”

  “Suit yourself.” James shrugged and hit enter.

  Noir wished she’d gone outside as James had urged the officer. Watching Jack in action was as bad as her foggy memory recalled. At first, he’d only been bent on destruction, crashing through the doors, ignoring the people, and had gone straight for the vault. A woman had stumbled in his way. Jack had backhanded her against the wall, hard. Noir glanced over at her corpse.

  Two of the tellers had been similarly slow in moving out of the way and met the same fate. The video’s sound was turned to mute. Perhaps James didn’t want the screams of the victims to distract him from observing what had happened. Noir could see the fear and panic on the faces of the people in the bank as they realized they were dealing with a force of nature. Someone rushed out the door and there was quickly a panic to get away as Jack sprang over the teller’s counter and tore the vault door off its hinges. He’d not been that strong before. His monstrous body must have changed again. Or Jill had changed it.

  The bank guard had been brave enough to shoot at Jack as he came out of the vault with jewels and sacks of cash. Jack shrugged off the bullets, set down his load and tore the guard limb from limb. Mercifully, the guard’s face went slack after the first arm had been torn off. Maybe he’d never felt the rest of it. It was nice to think so.

  The plainclothes detective put his hand to his mouth. James chopped his arm. “Puke outside, kid.”

  The detective ran outside, presumably to lose his lunch all over the sidewalk. James let the video run, catching the moment where Jack grabbed a young man cringing in the doorway. He’d tossed the bank employee over one shoulder, held his loot in the other arm and went back out the way he’d come.

  James paused the video on an image of Jack’s face.

  “How the hell do I fight something like that?” he mumbled. “Where the hell did you go, monster?”

  He put his hands on the ruined desk and pushed himself upright as if it took effort. He stared over at the dead bank guard. “Poor son of a bitch,” James muttered. He ran his hand through his mussed hair, took a deep breath and headed outside.

  Noir followed at a safe distance. This had to be the guy who would help her. If she could get him to believe her story.

  Closing his eyes couldn’t erase the image of the mangled bodies from Al’s memory. If anything, the carnage he’d witnessed earlier in the day only became more vivid.

  Al rubbed his temples, opened his eyes and began pacing around his darkened apartment. He’d wanted the quiet to clear his head before he went back to work. The last place he’d be able to think was in the damned crowded, noisy police precinct full of idiots bragging about how they would be the one to find the hostage fastest. Or, worse, concluding that they shouldn’t bother because the missing bank teller was already dead.

  He was going to fucking assume the man was alive until he knew otherwise. If the monster who attacked the bank had wanted the teller dead, he sure as hell could have made certain of that at the scene.

  Nobody had come close to stopping the killer.

  If he hadn’t seen the video, Al never would’ve believed what had happened. He still couldn’t believe how fast a man with such gorilla-like proportions had disappeared. He had to have had an accomplice.

  You’d think something that big and covered in blood would be easy to find. Yet the killer and his hostage had vanished within seconds of leaving the bank.

  It was like something out of a monster movie. It certainly wasn’t like anything Al had ever encountered as a homicide detective, and in this city, that said a lot.

  Al stopped pacing and collapsed onto his couch. “How the hell does a normal guy stop something like that?” he muttered.

  “With help,” said someone from behind him.

  Al snapped to his feet, drew his weapon and turned toward the direction of the voice. He could see little beyond the light streaming from his tiny kitchen area. He’d wanted to be in the dark to relax and sort out his thoughts. Dumbass. He should have known better.

  “Show yourself.” He swept the room with his gun and saw a flicker of movement among the shadows.

  “I’m here to help,” the person answered. “I want to save the hostage. And I want to stop the monster before he does this again.”

  The intruder’s voice, light and airy, belonged to a woman.

  “If you’re here to help, why break into my apartment and hide?” How had she gotten in here?

  “I hid because I was worried you’d shoot me,” she said. “Seems like I had reason to worry.”

  Al kept his gun steady. He still couldn’t see her clearly. “I won’t shoot you unless you force me to. Get into the light. Keep your hands up.”

  The woman stepped out from the shadows, hands up. Whatever Al had expected her to look like, this was not it.

  She was dressed completely in black.

  No, she was completely covered in black.

  A black fedora hat, black leather pants, a tight black jacket that no doubt hid a black T-shirt underneath and even a full-length black cape dramatically draped around her shoulders.

  “Cape’s a little over the top.”

  She raised her head, and he could now see below the rim of the hat. Her face was covered by black mesh, the kind they used in Halloween costumes. All of her was over the top, like something out of a comic book.

  “What is this? Am I supposed to be scared?”

  “I’m guessing you are scared since you’re pointing a gun at me.”

  Wiseass. “What’s your name?”

  “Noir.”

  Gimme a break. “Come closer. Let me see you’re not hiding anything under the cape.”

  She swept the cape over her shoulders. The jacket hugged her chest, proving that she was definitely a woman. The skintight clothing hugged her in all the right places, especially around her small waist. Nicely shaped legs too.

  He saw no weapons or hint of any weapon.

  “Will you please put your gun down?” she asked. “If I’d wanted to hurt you, I could have done that without showing myself. It’s not like you noticed me before I spoke up.”

  Definitely a wiseass. Great. It was true he’d paid little attention to his surroundings as he’d stumbled up the steps to his apartment. She’d likely slipped in behind him, somehow.

  All he’d wanted was a few minutes of peace and quiet. Not another freak. One today was enough.

  He took a couple of steps to the wall and flicked the switch on the living-room light. He stared at her for a minute, and when she made no move, finally holstered his gun. Training said never do that in the face of an enemy, but hey, he was in a moo
d to gamble. Either that, or too tired to care.

  “Who are you?” he asked. “Besides Noir?”

  “I know who killed all those bank employees. I know who kidnapped the teller,” she said, avoiding his question. “The monster’s name is Jack. I can tell you all about him.”

  The killer was a monster, but this one, despite wearing black leather well, was also some sort of freak. It made a certain weird logic they were acquainted.

  Al collapsed on his couch and waved his hand at the armchair across from him. There would be a price for her information. There was always a price. No one volunteered to get involved in a homicide investigation without wanting something in return. Though he had to admit, he’d talk to the devil himself to prevent another fucking mess like that in the bank and to save that kid from becoming another casualty.

  Noir hesitated a second before sitting across from him.

  “What do you want in exchange for your information?” he asked.

  “All I want is for you to help me find Jack, his sister and the missing teller.”

  “The monster’s name is Jack. So you’ve said twice now. He has a sister too?”

  “Yeah. Jack’s human—well, he was once—but he’s just what you said, a monster now. He’s not in charge of anything. Jill, his sister, is the planner and probably the one who sent him to the bank.”

  “Jack and Jill?” Al snorted. That upped the freak factor. And he’d thought it couldn’t go any higher.

  “I so wish they were a nursery rhyme,” Noir said. “Jill is some sort of doctor or scientist. She probably needed the cash from the robbery to fund her research.”

  Noir leaned back in the chair and crossed her legs. Her boots—black, of course—were knee-high. Sleek and dangerous. Her getup should have made her look ridiculous, but somehow it didn’t. As superhero costumes went, it worked. He wondered how old she was. She seemed so self-possessed, but she had a young voice.

  “What type of research is Jill involved in?” Al asked.

  “Genetic research to alter body types. She’s what caused Jack to change from human into that monster you saw on the video.”