“Guards!” she called out sharply. She got up from her cot.
“They cannot hear you,” Doctor Alchemy said in his thickly accented voice. “They are frozen in time. It is quite a long story. Though it is interesting and further demonstrates my genius, it is one that I do not have time for.” The gun was at his side, pointing at the floor. Even so, Anastasia’s muscles tensed up. She wondered if she could disarm him before he raised the gun and shot her. She knew he was faster and stronger than she. She still had to try. She eyed the distance between them.
Perhaps reading the expression on her face, Doctor raised a placating hand. His other hand, the one with the gun, was still down at his side. “Before you do something rash, know that I come in peace,” he said.
“Since when did you ever come in peace?” Anastasia asked. She would never forget how he had butchered her teammate Wildside. She wished she had her powers. Whatever Doctor Alchemy had done to the rest of the prison, it had not affected the cell’s Metahuman dampening field. She thought that if she feinted to the left and then spun to the right, she could make him spoil his first shot and give her the chance to disarm him. He would still have his gauntlets full of those alchemy cartridges, however. One problem at a time, she chided herself. Trying to make it look casual, she took a step toward him.
“Do not come any closer,” Doctor Alchemy said sharply, though he still did not lift the gun. She froze. So much for being casual, Anastasia thought. “As I said, I come in peace. I am putting together a team. A team of Rogues. I want you on it.”
“I’m not a Rogue.”
With a look of incredulity, Doctor Alchemy waved his free hand at their surroundings, as if to say Look where you are.
“Okay, technically I am a Rogue,” Anastasia admitted. “But whatever you have in mind, I’m not interested.”
“Wait until you hear my proposal,” he said. “The team I am assembling is of Metas whose lives were ruined by Theodore Conley. As someone in this penitentiary because of him, you certainly qualify.”
“I’m not here because of him,” Anastasia said. “I’m here because of my own actions.”
“How very heroic of you to take responsibility for it. ‘Heroic’ with a small h, of course, since the Guild took your Hero’s cape away from you.” Anastasia couldn’t tell if Doctor Alchemy was mocking her. “My team of Rogues and I are going to kill Mr. Conley for what he has done to us all. Are you sure you will not reconsider? I am after all offering you a get out of jail free card. Your fellow inmates Iceburn and Brown Recluse have already taken me up on my offer. Both are wasting away in here because of Theodore, just as you are.”
Anastasia thought both men deserved to be in and stay in prison. Iceburn had tried to kill Theodore and had killed several other people along the way. Brown Recluse had planted a bomb in the Trials that was meant to kill Theodore. Anastasia’s testimony that the Sentinels had paid him to do so led to him being convicted. But Anastasia did not say any of that to Doctor Alchemy. She knew he was crazy. Saying the wrong thing could set him off. Angering someone with a gun when you did not have one yourself was not the best survival strategy.
It flashed through Anastasia’s mind to pretend to go along with Doctor Alchemy’s scheme. Once she was out of MetaHold, she could warn Theodore of the looming threat against him.
No, she thought fiercely. Enough lies. Enough hidden agendas. Enough going along with a present evil in pursuit of a future good. That’s what landed me in this cell to begin with. Besides, I can tell Warden Sakey about Alchemy’s plot. He can get word to Theodore.
“I said I’m not interested, and I meant it,” Anastasia said firmly. “Go away. I was in the middle of beating my hair brushing record. You made me lose count. Now I’ll have to start all over again.”
Doctor Alchemy sighed deeply. “A shame. Ending young Theodore would be easier with another former Hero on board.” He shook his head sadly. “You can take the girl out of the cape, but apparently you cannot take the cape out of the girl.”
Doctor Alchemy dropped the gun. It clattered on the hard cell floor. He kicked it toward Anastasia. It skittered across the cell, coming to rest a few feet from her, much closer to her than it was to him.
“What’s that?” Anastasia asked, puzzled, still afraid to move.
Doctor Alchemy smiled. “A gun.”
“I know it’s a gun. What’s it for?”
“Shooting people.”
Anastasia felt a surge of irritation. “I’m not interested in playing games with you.”
“Nor I with you.” Doctor Alchemy’s dark eyes glittered. “What I am interested in is killing you for your role in the murder of my daughter.”
“I won’t join your revenge squad, and now you want to kill me?” Anastasia shook her head in disbelief. Talking to Doctor Alchemy was like talking to the wind—you never knew when it was going shift on you.
“No, I always wanted to kill you. If you helped me with Omega, I would have waited until he was dead first. Since you will not help, I have moved killing you from the back-burner to the front-burner.”
“I’m ashamed of the part I played in the death of your daughter,” Anastasia said honestly. “I deeply regret it. I’m so sorry for your loss. I think about her every day and how I wish I’d done things differently.”
“Too little too late. Your cowardly act against my daughter has already signed your death warrant. Now it is time for me carry out the sentence.” Doctor Alchemy hit a button on each of his gauntlets. They fell off his wrists and clanked onto the floor. “If you were a man, I would have struck you down the moment you refused to help me against Omega. But, since you are a woman and I grew up being taught that women are to be protected and cherished, I will not strike you down in cold blood. It is so hard to shake the teachings of one’s youth, no matter how outdated. Hence me removing my gauntlets. And, hence the gun on the floor. One of us is going to shoot the other with it. Whoever gets to it first lives. Whoever does not dies. Kill, or be killed. Since my reflexes are faster than yours, I even made the gun stop closer to you than it is to me. It is all really quite sporting of me, don’t you think?”
Doctor Alchemy’s eyes danced with madness, both the anger kind and the crazy kind. They burned into Anastasia’s.
He flicked a finger toward the gun.
“Try to pick it up,” he said.
“No,” she said firmly. “I have too many people’s blood on my hands already. I don’t want to add yours to the list.”
“I did not want to eat the heart-healthy oatmeal my wife directed our servants to make me this morning for breakfast. Yet I ate it anyway. My daughter did not want to die. Yet she died anyway, thanks to you and other self-styled Heroes. We often must do things we do not want to do. This situation is no different. Pick the gun up.”
“No,” Anastasia said again. She didn’t want to die, but she didn’t want to be responsible for Doctor Alchemy’s death either. A Hero did not kill. Being trapped in this cell all this time had reminded her of that. Could she incapacitate this homicidal maniac with her bare hands before he killed her?
“Perhaps you need a countdown to get you into the proper mindset,” Doctor Alchemy said. “We will both reach for the gun on the count of five. It will be like an old-fashioned duel. We are like cowboys with a beef against each other in a Western. Well, actually we are both two different kinds of Indians, you are not even a boy, and there are not any cows within fifty miles of this place, but you know what I mean.”
Doctor Alchemy put his arms straight down at his sides. He waggled his fingers. His Indian accent disappeared, replaced by a Western twang. “This here town ain’t big enough for the both of us, Tex. If you’re still too lily-livered to go for your piece on five, ready or not, here I’ll come anyhow. One.”
“Don’t make me hurt you,” Anastasia warned.
“Tex, that’s mighty power of positive thinking of you. Two.”
“Don’t do this.”
“Three.”
Anastasia dove for the gun, not waiting to hear four.
Moving like a cobra, Doctor Alchemy sprang forward. He scooped up the gun before Anastasia laid hands on it, then leaped into the air to avoid Anastasia’s diving body, like a second baseman avoiding a runner sliding into base.
Empty-handed, Anastasia skidded to a stop on the cold, hard floor. Breathing heavily, she twisted around. She stared into the gun’s big barrel.
She had thought before that being imprisoned in MetaHold was what she deserved because of all the people who died because of her and the other two Sentinels. Now she realized this was what she truly deserved: An eye for an eye. Blood for blood. To die by the sword just as she had lived by the sword.
Doctor Alchemy looked down at Anastasia. “Tex, I ain’t even get to five. You dealt me dirty and you still couldn’t get it done. Disappointing. Oh well. Partner, I beat you unfair and unsquare. To the victor belong the spoils. This is the way your world ends—not with a whimper, but with a bang.”
A satisfied Cheshire cat grin slowly spread across Doctor Alchemy’s face, like that of a kid finding what he wished for under the Christmas tree.
“Bang,” he said.
Then the gun said it too.
CHAPTER 19
Five Days Ago
Thad Wilson shook his fanged head in disgust as he contemplated breaking into the vending machine. From plucking armored cars like fat Christmas geese to shaking down a soda machine. How the mighty had fallen.
“This is humiliating,” he said aloud, though he was alone. He was on the second floor of a community college’s fitness center. He did not know what town he was in. Bumfuck Nowhere, USA as far as he was concerned. An empty yoga studio was to his left; a weight and cardio room was down the stairs further to the left. A ratty couch and a smattering of chairs stained by generations of sloppy students surrounded a low table behind him.
Thad, who went by the street name of Silverback, wiped spittle off his chin with a forearm. The long fangs that extended up from his lower jaw where a normal person’s canine teeth would be made it impossible for Thad to close his mouth completely. He therefore drooled constantly, and had ever since the fangs sprouted out of his mouth at fourteen when his Metahuman powers manifested.
Thad caught a vague reflection of himself in the shiny red plastic of the vending machine he stood in front of: big brutish body in soiled jeans and wrinkled tee shirt, hairy arms corded with muscle, low sloping forehead, and slightly hunched back. All that combined with his fangs and the drooling made people think he was stupid. He was not. He was not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but neither was he the dullest.
He felt stupid now, though. With all his super strength, all the cool shit he had done, all the hot women he had banged, all the daring big money heists he had pulled over the years as Silverback, he was reduced to this.
Thad watched his reflection shake its big head in disgust again. Fuck you Omega, he thought fiercely.
Thad gave one final glance around to make sure he had not missed any surveillance cameras. Then, he shoved his meaty hand through the metal part of the machine that surrounded the lock. The metal scrapped his super-tough skin but did not pierce it. The metal screeched in protest as Thad closed his fist. He flexed and pulled. The machine’s lock ripped free of the machine. Part of Thad hoped the thumping music coming from the gym below would conceal the racket. The rest of him did not care.
Thad pulled the now unsecured door open. He grunted in disapproval at the interior. He hadn’t noticed before that the stupid machine did not accept bills. The only money inside was coins. Thad pulled out the metal money bin. He shook it, eyeballing the coins and feeling their weight. Around seventy dollars. Maybe as much as ninety. Clearly the serviceman had not come around to collect the coins lately. Once Thad emptied the thin plastic cylinders still in the machine that contained the coins the machine gave out as change, he’d probably have around a hundred dollars. My lucky day, Thad thought sarcastically. It’s goddamned humiliating. Thad had dropped far more money than this on the ground when escaping from a bank heist and had not thought twice about it. Those had been good times. All over thanks to Omega.
Fuck you Omega, Thad thought again.
Not feeling like heading back to his RV parked outside, Thad pulled a cola out of the open machine. He felt a fresh surge of disgust when he saw the cola was not even a major brand name like Blast.
America’s Heartland my ass, he thought. The whole place smells like cow patties. More like America’s Fartland.
Thad giggled about his cleverness as he opened the can of soda and quickly downed it. He dropped the empty can on the floor and grabbed another from the machine. He leaned on the machine, relaxing. It shifted against his weight.
Where am I anyway? he thought. Nebraska? Kansas? Colorado? One of the rectangular states in flyover country full of nothing of significance and nobody who mattered. Driving aimlessly in his RV, Thad had lost track. He had been on the road now for how long? A month? A month and a half? He had lost track of that too. He was in a nothing college in a nothing town in a nothing state in the middle of nowhere.
As Thad finished his second drink and started on his third, he heard the conversation of people climbing the stairs. They appeared. Two young women, likely students here based on their age. They were sweaty and in workout gear. They fell silent when they saw Thad. They stared at him and the open vending machine. Thad stared right back. A primal hunger rose within him. Though these women were not Thad’s type—he was into big city sophistication, striking faces, thin bodies, and improbably large breasts, whereas these women were Midwest plain and plump—Thad had not been with a woman since leaving Astor City. Unfortunately, he did not have the money to pay for the kind of woman he was into. He always had to pay. Thanks to his freakish appearance, it was rare that a woman of the caliber Thad liked hopped on his dick for free. Not that he would be able to find the kind of woman he was into of either the free or paid variety out here in the boondocks.
The women exited the building, though they kept peering at him through the glass doors. One of them pulled out a cell phone and dialed a number. Calling the campus police probably. Thad stayed where he was against the machine and opened another soda. By the time those hillbillies put down their donuts and remembered where they had stashed their guns, Thad would be long gone.
Or maybe he wouldn’t. Thad suddenly felt stubborn and cantankerous. Maybe he’d stay right here and dare the cops to arrest him, he thought. Putting some small-time fuzz in their place would make Thad feel better.
Thad sighed. He was looking forward to tangling with a couple of Barney Fifes. His life really was in the crapper. God how he missed Astor City! Astor City had been perfect for a guy like him. It was big enough that there were lots of high-priced brothels with plenty of hot-tailed talent to choose from. It was big enough that there was lots of easy money to fund his hooker habit and the rest of his lifestyle through bank robberies, armored car heists, cleaning out high-end jewelry stores and other businesses with a ton of cash and valuables, and shaking down rich douchebags with more money than the good sense to hire decent security. Astor City was also small and corrupt enough that Thad knew which cops and judges were on the take so that he could wiggle out of charges when he got caught. Until recently, did not get caught often. Even though the world’s most famous team of Heroes had been right outside the city, the Sentinels had been more concerned with big fish like Black Plague and Doctor Alchemy than about small fish like him. For a long time, operating in Astor City had been like being a kid in a candy store owned by your indulgent daddy.
Until the hero Kinetic had changed his name to Omega, his look, and his power levels a couple of years ago. Ever since then, that damned Hero had seemed to be everywhere. Thad did not know how the always meddling Omega found time to sleep or take a dump. Maybe he didn’t need to.
Thad opened another soda. If he had to choose between a plentiful supply of soda and a plentiful
supply of money and whores, Thad would choose the latter. Fuck you Omega, he thought yet again. Empty cans littered the floor around him. It started to look like the bottom of a recycling bin.
As Thad drank, he brooded about the day Omega had banished him from his beloved Astor City.
***
Thad stood on top of a seven-story apartment building in southwest Astor City dressed in his brown and tan Silverback costume. His binoculars were trained on Davis Street below. It was shortly after two in the afternoon. He had been up here waiting for thirty minutes. He was not impatient yet. The armored car should be passing through the residential neighborhood below shortly according to his informant in the armored car company. Thad had promised the informant a small cut of the money Thad stole. So the timetable was right, or else the informant would walk away as empty-handed as Thad.
Thad was on top of the tallest building in the small neighborhood to avoid being spotted by the handful of residents who were at home. Thad had chosen to hit the armored car in this working-class neighborhood because, in the middle of a workday, not too many people were around. Also, traffic was light. Thad liked to minimize the risk of people getting hurt during the jobs he pulled. Thad liked money, not hurting people. Also, people getting hurt drew too much heat from the authorities. Though Thad had bought his way out of trouble in the past, not all cops and judges were for sale. Damn their honest hides! The minority of people who wouldn’t play ball puzzled Thad. What kind of fool turned down free money?
A blue and gray metal box on wheels came into view about a mile up on Davis Street. Thad smiled, baring his fangs. Right on time, he thought. He loved armored car drivers who stuck to their schedules. It made Thad’s job so much easier. Thad put the binoculars down. He did not need them now that he knew exactly where the armored car was. He would retrieve them later, long after the job was over.
Thad waited on the edge of the roof until the armored car was almost directly below. The vehicle drove slowly, obeying the neighborhood’s low speed limit. When the moment was right, Thad jumped off the roof. He dropped like a stone. He felt himself grinning. This part was fun, like an especially exciting roller coaster.
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