by Various
Even in the bright daylight of a summer morning, the Cowl was a walking shadow. He had his back to Tony now, and somehow Tony couldn’t quite focus on the inky depth of the black cloak that streamed seamlessly from the villain’s hood and flowed out over the arms. It shimmered, matte black on matte black, with the finesse of silk but with something rubbery, leathery about it. It was high-tech, clearly.
With his appearance, the atmosphere of the siege changed. Fear and tension, fuelled by adrenaline, metamorphosed into something else, something colder. Tony felt quiet calm and he sensed the other hostages around him relax. Then he realized what it was. With the Cowl here, people no longer had any hope. The feeling was one of total, emotionless surrender. Tony didn’t like it.
The Cowl turned with a sweep to face Mr Ballard, whose neck muscles visibly tensed. Under the black hood, the Cowl’s face was obscured by a half-mask which left the mouth and chin exposed, the bare skin peppered with a healthy stubble. The eyes were unfathomable, empty white ellipses against the black of the face-hugging mask. And on the chest, vivid scarlet against the pitch dark of the bodysuit, the famous emblem: an inverted pentagram, the bottom point skewed to the left, the central pentagonal space enclosing the Greek capital omega. And within this, two stacked equilateral triangles, aligned with flat sides vertical to form a runic letter “B”. Inside the open space of the top triangle was the Eye of Horus, while the bottom triangle included some miniscule script in an unknown language.
Nobody knew what the complex symbol meant, but everyone had a theory. It was referred to by most just as the “omega symbol”, including the various criminal gangs who roamed the city, claiming to be doing The Cowl’s work.
Tony’s heart raced. He thought it was probably the same light-headed sensation you might get seeing a famous movie star or your favorite celebrity in the flesh. Surreal, exciting. Only here, now, in the East Side branch of the California Cooperative Bank, terribly, terribly dangerous.
The Cowl raised a gloved hand, the silky cloak swishing aside as he moved his arm. He gently pressed a finger into Mr Ballard’s chest, as if he wasn’t making his point clear.
“Simple, but effective, Mr Ballard. But we’re not going to do it my way. Too… quiet. I want show. I want screams. So now my colleague here will execute another.”
The leader of the mercenaries leapt into action, a blur of precise military training. Without further instruction, he squared his body into battle stance, raised his machine gun, and sent a single round into the head of another bank customer. The woman cartwheeled backwards, blood erupting behind her as the back of her head shattered and her brains evacuated, post-haste. Her body nearly flipped over completely before crashing over a faux-velvet queue barrier, sending two of its moveable metal supports toppling together.
The speed and noise of the execution was shocking. The young crying woman screamed, and several others shouted in surprise. One man, older, turned to the Cowl, protesting the situation. The Cowl did not respond. On the floor, the front of the dead woman’s pants stained darker as her bladder emptied. Tony’s bladder nearly did the same thing.
Mr Ballard looked like he was trying to speak, but shaking in fear he seemed more likely to hyperventilate. The Cowl’s dead eyes regarded the bank manager with indifference, then the corner of his mouth raised in a mocking smile.
“Actually, I’ve changed my mind,” he said. “Guns are a little… unsophisticated, aren’t they? Still too easy, too quick. Loud, though. I like loud. But let’s try the hands-on approach.”
The Cowl looked over the remaining hostages. Each man and woman shrunk into themselves, trying to look as nondescript and invisible as possible, knowing full well that their self-consciously averted gaze betrayed them, that their body language was a giveaway, that if they shifted position even a quarter of an inch it would have been the equivalent of shooting their hand towards the ceiling and calling out Pick me! Pick me!
All save the crying woman. She was quieter now, head bowed, face red, eyes black with streaked mascara. The weakest member of the pack, the easiest target.
Son of a bitch. The Cowl knew picking her would cause the most offence. That was his intention. He strode over and, grasping her chin forcefully with one hand, yanked her head up in a sudden movement. The woman stared into the Cowl’s unreadable mask, her eyes wide and mouth stretched in what almost passed for an apologetic smile. Her shakes now rocked her whole body, the effect exaggerated by the supervillain’s firm grip on her jaw.
At the opposite end of the hostage circle Tony caught a movement from a woman in bad make-up and not-quite-right brunette bob wig. Almost without thinking, he shifted to X-ray vision. Instantly her outline was bleached into a white and blue haze, her bones almost mathematically detailed. Her bones, and a brilliant white shape, narrow and rectangular under her right arm, pressed tight against the now-invisible flesh. A small gun.
Purple spots spun in Tony’s eyes as his vision switched back to the regular spectrum, the morning daylight painfully bright. He blinked, tried to process what he’d just seen, and blinked again. The Cowl was still holding the crying woman’s head, but now raised his other hand to her neck. The other woman, the one with the gun, shifted her balance, just a little.
Whoever she was, she was going to try something, and get everyone killed.
Fuck it. This was it. Tony had the power, he just had to use it. He knew it and Jeannie had encouraged him, had faith in him. Sure, he didn’t know how far he could push his abilities, whether his steel skin would protect him from the high-velocity AK-47 rounds, whether his superspeed would be fast enough to remove the hostages from the bank lobby before any bullets reached them. Whether he could possibly even match the Cowl for strength, speed and firepower.
But he had to try. He felt… responsible, even duty-bound.
Without time for a proper plan, Tony launched himself at the Cowl. From a standing position, he hit sixty miles an hour in the five yards it took to reach his target. Relying on his opponent’s not insubstantial frame to right his deliberate overbalance, Tony tackled the Cowl at the waist, wrapping both arms tight around the silk cloak. It was like driving a truck into a cinder block wall, but Tony had readied himself for the shock of collision, knowing full well that the Cowl would hardly feel it at all. All Tony heard was a surprised “Oof!” as he collected the supervillain and kept running.
Fifteen yards, and the reinforced front doors of the bank evaporated into glass dust as Tony and the Cowl crashed through them at two hundred miles an hour. The road had been closed off, with a rank of police cars arranged at angles in front of the bank in the classic stand-off position. The bank was right on the corner of Galileo and Kuiper, a wide, multilane intersection right in the heart of San Ventura’s business district, which afforded plenty of room for the SVPD to set up a mobile headquarters to manage the hostage situation. Tony hoped that they had left plenty of room for a supersonic runner to get through without killing anyone in the way.
Problem. Tony couldn’t really see. His head was buried in the Cowl’s flank, cold black leather pressing into his face and blocking all forward vision. Tony squinted sideways and caught nothing but a glimpse of the police cars and blue sky.
Shit. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go.
Tony had figured on saving the crying woman first, then whipping the other civilians out of the bank, then back for a third trip to disarm and disable the mercenaries. But now several seconds had already passed, and he didn’t know what to do with the Cowl. Dump him? Hand him to the police? Maybe run out to the middle of the Pacific and drop him? Was he even that fast?
This wasn’t working. Fuck. Tony shifted his arms and managed to get his head around the Cowl’s side for a quick forward glimpse.
Buildings, people, cars. They were right in San Ventura proper.
Tony turned left, but was going too fast. He cut a near ninety-degree angle and only just managed to avoid slamming into the corner of an Apollo Coffee, skimming a tab
le and a lamppost instead as he pushed off down another street.
Buildings, people, cars. Getting busier.
Shit.
Tony spun right, attempting a circle so he could get back to the bank and finish his botched plan. They were now maybe three miles from Galileo, heading out to the coast. The tall spires of the big hotel chains that lined the waterfront filled his forward vision.
And then Tony tripped. For a second he saw nothing but concrete pavers, then the pink marble tiles that clad one of the swankier hotels, and then the clear blue sky. A second later the black void of the Cowl’s cloak flashed into his vision, and Tony panicked, and turned up.
Tony felt rushing air, felt his legs cycling into nothing. The Cowl was still in the way, but now Tony could look down. He gasped at the perfect—aerial—view of the beach curving against the hotels of Charles Fort Boulevard. Beyond, the cityscape sparkled in the brilliant sun.
San Ventura was beautiful.
“Holy fuck.”
Tony’s exclamation was met with a punch in the side. The Cowl, for the first time, began struggling in Tony’s grip. He managed to turn so Tony’s face was now stuck in his stomach, and freeing his other arms, struck downwards directly onto the top of Tony’s head.
The blow would have killed anyone else, crushing their skull like an eggshell. Tony’s vision doubled momentarily and he felt a hot, sharp sensation in his mouth as he sliced his tongue on a tooth. But he didn’t let go, didn’t relax his hold on the Cowl for even a second. If anything, the blow snapped Tony back to his senses.
He was flying.
He was flying with the world’s greatest supervillain in his grasp. Which meant…
Tony wasn’t flying, the Cowl was.
Shit.
Tony fought to tighten his grip, but now the Cowl had his hands inside Tony’s elbows and was forcing his arms apart.
Tony was in luck. His superstrength held against that of the Cowl’s, their powers apparently equally matched. And Tony had no intention of letting go. This high over the ocean the water would be as hard as stone if he hit it, and Tony hadn’t really had a chance to test that steel-skin-bulletproof thing yet. And even if his skin was that resilient, surely the impact would scramble his insides and kill him anyway.
Up they went, the city receding with surprising speed. Above, past the Cowl’s flapping hood, Tony could see the sky get darker and darker, and right overhead, right where they were headed, the blue became black. My oh my, that was high.
It took Tony a moment to realize the Cowl was saying something, shouting right at him, but the roar of wind in his ears was a solid wall of sound. The Cowl’s cloak was slick against Tony’s sides and his hood had stopped flapping and was now flattened in the jet stream as they accelerated upwards.
The Cowl had stopped struggling, and now seemed to be focused more on heaping abuse at Tony. Or at least that’s what it looked like—the lower portion of the Cowl’s face seemed to look angry whether he was speaking or not. Now he was shouting, yelling at Tony, arms pushing against the wind as he gesticulated. Tony smiled and let his eyes drift to the inky blackness ahead of them.
What an asshole, Tony thought. The exhilaration of flight made him giddy, and the view around them rendered their struggle insignificant. What a view that was. And Tony had done it, saved the day, tackled San Ventura’s number one terrorist single-handedly. Wasn’t so hard.
The sky was quite dark now. Or was it the Cowl’s cloak enveloping him? The black leather and spandex was actually tinged with white, when you looked closely. Tony’s nose was half an inch from the miraculous, high-tech fabric. Black and white and crusted with icing. Maybe it was lemon flavored. Tony wondered if he should taste it.
After a minute, the Cowl stopped shouting. His head hung loosely, pushed into his chest by the wind. Tony smiled, possibly cruelly, before his eyes rolled white into his head and his oxygen-starved brain lost its grip on consciousness. His ice-frosted cheeks held the smile for a moment, then Tony’s arms relaxed, and he let go.
Tony and the Cowl drifted apart by perhaps half a yard, momentum carrying them upwards but at a rapidly declining pace. Gravity eventually won, robbing the pair of their speed. Tony and the Cowl reached the top of the curve, and, their bodies massaged into the most naturally aerodynamic position by the winds of the mesosphere, they fell to Earth.
CHAPTER 2
JOE MILANO was keeping his mouth shut, although—for the moment at least—this decision was purely academic. Sam Millar hadn’t stopped shouting yet.
Joe eased back onto the hood of the unmarked Lincoln Town Car, folded his arms, and peered into the clear blue sky as he waited for his partner to calm down. This was going to take a while, because Detective Millar had started to go around in circles, spitting out a high-rotation greatest hits of what went wrong on the bank job. The bank job that had taken weeks to gather intel for. The bank job that was going to—finally—nab Sam her quarry, the Cowl. The bank job that was so important she put her own life on the line in a cheap brunette wig. The wig was still on her head; that and the bargain-basement drab gray suit and white T-shirt made her look like an underpaid paralegal.
Joe coughed, and Sam paused, arms mid-air, stream-of-consciousness rant interrupted. A few uniforms idled by uncomfortably as Sam set a murderous glare on Joe.
“Something to say, Detective Milano? Got an angle on the fuck-up of the century?”
Joe coughed again, and glanced around the mass of marked and unmarked police cars, half of which had their lights on a slow cycle. The intersection was still blocked off, and straddling the now-dark signal lights, the brilliant yellow of a school bus blazed in the midday sun. Through the windows he could just make out the hostages from the bank seated in the dark, cool interior, a few capped shapes walking up and down, notepads and radios in hand.
“Where the hell did we get that bus from?”
Joe’s question was an unwelcomed distraction. If Joe had something to say, some theory to offer as to how their meticulous weeks of planning had got so totally screwed, Sam wanted to hear it. The requisitioning of a brand-new school bus to safely ship the hostages away from the crime scene was, in all honestly, the last thing on her mind.
One of the uniforms, Officer Braithwaite, nudged Joe discreetly, then backed off to a safe distance, head bowed so the peak of his cap hid his eyes from Detective Millar’s glare. Joe sighed, realizing he’d picked the wrong opener, and tried again before Sam’s face got any redder.
“Sam. Look, it… We were fine. We’d planned it out, our information was good, we had a solid. Perfect placement, perfect timing.” He sighed and tapped the underside of his wedding ring against the hood of the car. “It was in the bag, Sam. But the only thing we didn’t count on—couldn’t have counted on—was the Seven Wonders screwing with us. Again.”
Sam lowered her arms and stepped towards Joe, the anger melting away to be replaced by an uncomfortable anxiety. He was right, dammit. Joe knew that this operation had been an obsession of hers recently. In fact she’d lost track of the number of times he’d covered her ass, the number of times he’d fudged his reports and taken on various bits and pieces of unauthorized work that Sam passed to him. She’d taken quite a risk, using members of one of the Eastside Omega gangs as informants, although how they’d got the info was anyone’s guess. All so she could finally take down the Cowl.
But he was right. Sam’s work had been on the button, and the operation had been faultless in the planning. Yet again, the city’s sworn protectors had dipped their oar in where it wasn’t wanted.
“The Seven Wonders?” Sam almost hissed the name like an insult. She tilted her head, looking Joe in the eye like he’d just cast doubts on her mother’s lineage. “So now the Seven Wonders go undercover, do they? I suppose that was Linear depositing pennies from an arcade machine?”
Joe shifted his backside on the car and adjusted his belt as he thought.
“Well,” he began. “He’s the only speedster. W
e’ve got reports from all over the city. Hundreds of people—hell, the whole damn city—saw this guy take the Cowl airborne over the bay. Must have been quite a struggle up there. Thirty seconds later both fall into the drink.” Joe scratched his cheek. “Who else could do that, if not Linear?”
Sam sighed, and she let her body relax. Her whole posture sank, the fight sapped from her body. She swore and sat on the car’s hood next to Joe. She pulled the wig off, and fiddled with the polyester fibers in her lap.
“We were close, Joe, real close. Screw the Seven Wonders.”
Braithwaite slipped back into Joe’s eye line. The officer mouthed something that neither he nor Sam understood, then quickly stepped away and stood smartly, if not quite to attention then damn close. From behind him came the voice of an older man who liked his cigarettes. Joe and Sam jerked into life, pushing themselves off the car simultaneously.
Captain Gillespie had decided to poke his nose in, in person. Which, in a situation like this, was entirely expected but exactly what they didn’t need.
The chief of the San Ventura Police Department was a chain smoker who, over the course of a glittering career spanning more than twenty years, had carefully cultivated the kind of angry police chief persona normally found on cheap late night made-for-TV movies. It would have been hilarious, had both Sam and Joe not felt his cold temper on more than one occasion. It didn’t look like today would be any exception; if anything, things were about to get very unpleasant indeed. Today Captain Gillespie was well within bounds to blow his stack.
The chief’s walk was brisk from his newly parked car, a car exactly the wrong shade of turd brown that no civilian in their right mind would ever order, marking it as a police vehicle as clearly as any standard black-and-white paintjob, even without the nub of the Kojak strobing silently over the driver’s side. The chief hadn’t even bothered to close the door.
In the growing heat of a California summer’s day, Captain Gillespie couldn’t have looked more out of place. Sam often wondered whether he had a whole closet full of plain black suits, the color of which was just a tone darker than his skin. In the few short steps it took to reach his subordinates, he’d broken into a sweat, beads of sticky perspiration pebbling his bald head.