“Suit yourself. More for me. What’re you doing here, anyway?”
“Looking for you.”
Thad was surprised again. “How the hell did you find me?”
Doctor Alchemy turned and pointed at a security camera mounted over the ratty couch. It pointed right at the vending machine. Fuck! Thad thought. He didn’t know how he had missed it before. Then again, casing a place had never been Thad’s strong suit. He was more of a smash, grab, and run like hell type of robber. What if Omega happened to see the footage of him breaking into the vending machine?
Fuck Omega, Thad thought for the umpteenth time. Even so, he resolved to make this his last drink before hitting the road again. Silently cursing Omega was one thing; having Omega follow through on his threat to be Thad’s 24/7 chaperone was quite another.
“My underworld informants told me Omega had driven you from Astor City. They also told me you were none too happy about it,” Doctor Alchemy said. Thad wondered who he had to thank for wagging her lips about him: Bambi, Ebony, or Maserati? Probably Bambi. Thad had never been able to figure out the thoughts that ran around behind her cold and mysterious blue eyes. He had a sudden suspicion that Bambi’s name was as fake as her boobs. You can’t trust anybody these days, he thought. If pillow talk with a hooker ain’t sacred anymore, what is?
“So?” Thad said. He was still in a foul mood. He couldn’t muster the will to be polite despite the fact he knew Alchemy was both powerful and crazy as a loon. What the hell is a loon, anyway? Whatever it was, he felt like punching one.
“So, I had my Monitor Room’s computers scan for any sign of you. When they got a ping from this school’s security feed, I decided to pay you this visit and talk to you about Omega.”
“And what’s that thing?” Thad pointed to the swirling mass of whatever in the hell it was that Doctor Alchemy had stepped out of.
“That?” Doctor Alchemy waved dismissively at it with a gloved hand as if to say This old thing? That is a dimensional aperture. It allows me to travel from one place to another in the blink of an eye.”
“Cool,” Thad said. He wanted to add that Doctor Alchemy should step back into his dimensional aperture thingie and leave him alone, but he didn’t dare. He knew how touchy Doctor Alchemy could be. Thad was in a foul mood, not a foolhardy one.
“Years of intense study and sweat equity to bend the laws of time and space to my will, and all you can say is ‘cool.’” Doctor Alchemy rolled his eyes heavenward. “Gods, save me from these philistines.” Thad didn’t know what philistines were. Maybe they’re related to loons, he thought. Doctor Alchemy said, “But I’m here for your brawn, not your intellect. Am I correct in assume you are no fan of Omega’s?”
“I hate his guts,” Thad said frankly. Visions of Omega’s decapitated body danced through his head, followed by images of Maserati, Ebony, and Bambi (if that really was that loose-lipped bitch’s name) dancing naked. He missed them desperately.
“With your help, I plan to rid the world of Omega for good. With him out of the way, you can return to your lavish and sybaritic lifestyle in Astor City instead of . . .” Doctor Alchemy glanced around disdainfully, “this.”
Thad did not know what sybaritic meant either, but he knew what lavish meant. It meant no more RVs, no more knocking over vending machines, and no more getting hard over plain Jane Midwesterners. He could be with the Neapolitans again.
Thad tossed his half full can of fruit punch over his shoulder.
“I’m listening,” he said.
CHAPTER 20
Antonio “Mad Dog” Ricci hated his life. He did not have much of a life, but what little life he had, he hated.
He hated being trapped in the hollowed-out middle of a mountain, which was in turn in the middle of nowhere. No, not merely a mountain. The Mountain, Omega’s lair. Antonio hated that name too. The place had first been Avatar’s mountain retreat, now it was the Boy Blunder’s. Antonio thought Heroes, with all their training and fancy suits and holier-than-thou attitudes, should be able to come up with a more imaginative name for a mountain retreat than The Mountain. Then again, Heroes were not supposed to hold men against their will without due process. Heroes were not the morally superior paragons they pretended to be, clothed in bright colors and righteousness. They were just like him, Antonio thought—people who did what they wanted to the people they wanted to do it to when they wanted to do it simply because they could.
Antonio hated his cubical cell, which he had been confined in for over two years. The Mountain’s rock composed the floor and the back wall, and thick glass comprised the remaining four walls. The glass was unbreakable. Antonio knew that because he had literally spent weeks when he had first arrived here trying to break it. Antonio’s efforts had not produced so much as a scratch.
Antonio hated that his Metahuman powers to spit energy balls from his mouth were gone, suppressed somehow by the cell he was in. Maybe if he had his powers back, he could’ve busted out of here long before now. And maybe if pigs had wings, they’d be pigeons. Antonio knew you had to play the hand life dealt you even if you hated that hand with a white-hot passion.
Antonio hated the food he had been forced to live off of since being brought here: canned food, dehydrated food, raw fruits and vegetables, and dried meat. What he would have given for a taste of one of his grandma’s cannoli! The thought of biting into its crispy sweet shell, and having it crack open to ooze soft cream in his mouth made him drool. His MeeMaw was for all intents and purposes his mother since she had raised him when his biological drug-addled mother had abandoned him when he was just a baby. MeeMaw had been old and ailing when Antonio last saw her. He wondered if she had died while he was trapped here. The thought both saddened and enraged him.
Antonio hated that he lived like an animal, with where he urinated and squatted mere feet from where he choked down his lousy food. It was worse than being in prison. At least in prison he had someone to talk to. Not to mention drugs and girls if you had the right connections or bribed the right guard. Antonio was in a position to know, having spent a lot of time in confinement, especially when he was a kid. If his MeeMaw had been his mother, the juvenile justice system had been his father. However, he had not gone back to prison for any real length of time once he got out of the joint at twenty-one after a four-year stretch for arson and slinging dope. During that prison stint, Antonio had hooked up with the Esposito crime family. After his release, he had become one of the crime family’s enforcers, putting his aggressive tendencies and Metahuman powers to good use. Though Antonio had done plenty of things as a mob enforcer he should have been locked up for, the Espositos protected their own. Whenever Antonio had been nabbed for something after associating with the Espositos, the vast tentacles of the crime family had reached out, bribing officials, intimidating witnesses, doing whatever needed to be done to free one of their best enforcers.
Until now. As far as Antonio knew, absolutely no one, much less the Espositos, knew he was trapped in The Mountain. Other than Omega, Antonio had not seen another living soul since he had been brought here.
Antonio hated that he had not been with a woman since that bastard Omega had kidnapped him from where he had been holed up in Italy, waiting for the heat over Hannah Kim’s death to cool before he returned to the United States. Be with a woman? Ha! Hell, at this point Antonio would give his left nut just to lay eyes on a woman again. Long ago, Antonio had first asked then later begged Omega to bring him a laptop filled with porn, or at least some girlie magazines.
“You’re in prison, not on a Vegas vacation,” Omega had said. Sanctimonious prick.
Omega had given Antonio a steady supply of books, though, to occupy his time and help him while away the otherwise empty hours. With nothing much else to do, Antonio had grown to love reading. He was especially a fan of Westerns, thrillers, and—God help him—romance novels. The once-feared enforcer for the Esposito crime family had become a goddamned bookworm who loved a well-crafted story ending in a happily ever after
.
Antonio hated that, too.
And, most of all, Antonio hated Omega. Theodore Fucking Conley. The Blue Bastard. The Heroic Hick. The Telekinetic Turkey. The Caped Cocksucker. Antonio had come up with a lot of nicknames for Omega during his imprisonment. The idle mind truly was the Devil’s playground.
Omega had told Antonio his real name the day he had imprisoned Antonio here. Omega had also shown Antonio his face that day, and was not shy about continuing to show Antonio his face during his periodic visits to The Mountain. The fact Omega did not keep his secret identity hidden from Antonio told Antonio more eloquently than words ever could that Omega never expected Antonio to leave this place.
Antonio hated everything about Omega—the self-righteous speech he had given Antonio when he had first brought Antonio to The Mountain, the fact he thought he had the right to imprison Antonio, his costume, his hick Southern accent, the cocky way he walked . . . everything. Antonio especially hated the fact he was glad to see that caped asshole when Omega made one of his periodic visits to The Mountain. Not only did Omega’s appearance mean Antonio would get some new books to read, but it also meant he would have someone to talk to, however briefly. Talking to the man Antonio hated was better than having absolutely no one to talk to at all.
Antonio’s one-man prison and the man who had put him in it were not the things Antonio hated.
He also hated himself.
Antonio had killed his girlfriend Hannah. If he had a mirror, he would not be able to bear looking at himself in it out of shame and self-loathing. He had not meant to kill Hannah. He had loved her.
Antonio had been enraged years ago when Omega and his friend, both in disguises, had braced him in his apartment and tried to force him to break up with Hannah. They had threatened him. Omega had beaten him. That wasn’t something Antonio had been used to—he was used to being the hammer, not the nail. When Antonio later went to Hannah’s condo to find out if she had sicced Omega on him, things had gotten out of hand. He had beaten her. He had hit her plenty of times in the past—Hannah liked it rough, and Antonio had been more than happy to oblige her—but nothing like this. He had lost his temper when Hannah lied to him about not knowing anything about the men who had broken into his apartment and beaten him. He lost his temper a lot back then. It was why he had gotten the nickname Mad Dog.
Furious, Antonio had spat one of his energy balls at Hannah. Hannah’s body had been thrown backward, slamming her into a wall. Antonio had watched, horrified, as his energy ball bored a hole right through the woman he loved.
If Antonio could take it all back, he would have. Antonio had relived the moment he killed Hannah every day since it happened. When he closed his eyes, he could still smell the stench of her charred flesh.
When it came to women, Antonio knew you couldn’t listen to what they said. What mattered was how they behaved. They all said they wanted a nice guy, but they all chased after bad boys. Guys like Antonio. It was only after their looks faded and they could no longer attract the bad boy did they settle down with the nice beta boy they had turned their noses up at years before and give him unenthusiastic, starfish sex every couple of months after he begged and pleaded. As a bad boy, Antonio never had to beg. As a result, he had been with a lot of women over the years. More than he could remember. Hannah had been the only woman he gave a damn about, though. The only woman he had ever loved.
And, the only woman he had ever killed.
Antonio had killed men before, of course. When he was a young man, he had killed for fun, simply because he could thanks to his powers and unusually strong body. After hooking up with the Espositos, he had become more disciplined, killing because they had told him to. Because someone needed to die.
Now Antonio had a different reason to kill someone—revenge. Revenge for caging him like an animal. Revenge for stealing what should have been some of the best years of his life. Revenge for making him feel weak and powerless.
Hannah had been the last person Antonio had killed. He intended Omega to be the next person he killed.
Antonio’s fiery hate for Omega was the only thing that kept him from slitting his wrists with the jagged lid of one of his food cans out of loneliness, boredom, and self-loathing. The thought of killing Omega gave his mind something to focus on other than images of Hannah’s limp and lifeless body with a hole burned through it.
The problem was, Antonio did not know how or when he would be able to kill Omega. He could not break out of his cell. Antonio had spent literally weeks of time proving that inescapable fact to himself. Escaping the times Omega opened the cell to feed Antonio or clean the cell had proven impossible as well. Omega always used his powers to keep Antonio completely immobilized until he left the cell and resealed it.
Nonetheless, Antonio clung to the belief that one day the opportunity to kill Omega would present itself. That belief was the one thing that kept Antonio from sliding into isolation-induced madness or offing himself.
In anticipation of the happy day he had an opportunity to kill Omega, Antonio did everything he could to keep his mind and body busy. When the opportunity for vengeance finally presented itself—and Antonio told himself every day that it would, repeating it like a mantra—he did not want to be a broken shell of a man, unable to capitalize on the opportunity. So, every day before and after eating breakfast, Antonio did exercises in his tiny cell. Bodyweight squats, Turkish squats, regular pushups, handstand push-ups, crunches, sit-ups, running in place, shadow boxing . . . Antonio had lost track of the countless types of exercises he did before settling down to read for the rest of the day.
Slowly, over the course of many months, thanks to Antonio’s exercise regimen and the lean diet Omega fed him, Antonio got into the best shape of his life. The belly he had all his adult life disappeared, replaced by a trim waist and washboard abs.
Antonio was as ready as he ever would be for when the opportunity to kill Omega presented itself.
And then, one day, it did.
***
Four Days Ago
Antonio had just completed his two hundredth Turkish squat of the day when he saw something unusual. A swirling mass of gray and white that looked like a miniature oval thunderstorm had formed in the middle of The Mountain, near where the overturned neutronium spear had split the rock floor open.
Mid-squat, Antonio straightened up and stared. Breathing hard, his mouth was agape with surprise and exertion. He wiped the sweat off his brow and blinked several times, thinking maybe he had overexerted himself and that he was hallucinating. No matter how hard he blinked, though, the swirling mass did not disappear.
A costumed man with a purple cape draped around him stepped out of the swirling mass as if it were a doorway. Since Antonio had only seen Omega here, for a split second he thought it was the Hero in a different costume. Then Antonio realized this guy was taller, leaner, and browner than Omega. He looked vaguely familiar, like Antonio had seen him before. On television, or something.
Then his memory supplied Antonio with a name. He got excited.
“Doctor Alchemy!” Antonio shouted. “Hey! Over here!”
Doctor Alchemy had been gazing around at the items in the vast cavern like a visitor to a museum. He looked in Antonio’s direction for the first time. He approached Antonio’s cell. His long purple cape swirled behind him. He stopped before the transparent front wall of Antonio’s cell.
“And whom might you be?” Doctor Alchemy asked. Antonio did not know how the technology in the clear glass that imprisoned him worked, but it somehow enabled him to hear what was said outside its thick confines. Doctor Alchemy’s voice was heavily accented. First Omega with his hillbilly accent, Antonio thought, now this guy with his foreign accent saying whom. Did anybody ever come to this godforsaken place who spoke regular goddamned American?
“My name’s Antonio,” he said, wisely keeping his thoughts to himself. His voice was scratchy from disuse. He wiped sweat off his brow again with the back of his hand. “Hit
that gold switch right in front of you and let me out of here, would you?”
“Perhaps in due time. But first, tell me where we are.”
“The Mountain. It’s a retreat in the Himalayas for the Hero who goes by the name Omega. He got it from Avatar.”
“That certainly explains the Avatar artifacts that decorate this cavern. I even see over there in the corner the bottle of poison I tricked Avatar into drinking that turned him into stone and nearly killed him.” Antonio looked at where Doctor Alchemy pointed. He only vaguely made out a bottle resting on a stand. Doctor Alchemy must have eyes like a hawk’s. “A happy memory. It would be happier still if it had actually killed him.” The costumed Rogue signed regretfully. “This being Omega’s lair that he inherited from Avatar does not, however, explain your presence.” Doctor Alchemy’s eyes surveyed Antonio’s cell. “Nor why you seem to be incarcerated here.”
“Omega’s got a beef with me, so he locked me up here. I ain’t done nothing to deserve it.”
“Except mangle the English language,” Doctor Alchemy said dryly.
“Huh?”
“Never mind. I see that I scatter pearls before swine.” Antonio didn’t know what Doctor Alchemy was talking about. If there had been pearls around here somewhere, he was sure he would have spotted them long before now. Maybe Doctor Alchemy had seen some with his eagle eyes.
Antonio said, “Like I said, just hit that switch right there.”
“Not until you tell me why you are imprisoned here.”
“I told you, I ain’t do nothing.”
“Yes, I know. You were walking down the street with a song on your lips and pureness in your heart, helping little old ladies cross and handing out hundred-dollar bills to the homeless, when Omega flew by, scooped you up, brought you here, and tossed you in this cage.” Doctor Alchemy shook his head in obvious disbelief. “Despite his many flaws, Omega would not toss a man behind proverbial bars for no reason. Lie to me again and I will leave you where you are. Let us start anew: Why are you here?”
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