Sentinels

by Darius Brasher

  There was also a gaping hole, bigger than a softball, right under Hannah’s ribcage. Even from across the room, through her charred flesh, I caught a glimpse of the wall behind her.

  “Oh my God!” I exclaimed. As the condo was silent as a tomb, my voice sounded like a yell.

  I quickly floated over to Hannah. I hovered in the air in front of her. Though the hole in her torso and the paleness of her skin made it obvious it was an exercise of futility and wishful thinking, I ran my telekinetic touch over her body to check for a pulse. I felt like a filthy necrophiliac. My stomach churned threateningly. My mouth filled with saliva. I tasted bile in the back of my throat. I swallowed, willing myself to not throw up.

  There was, of course, no pulse. The muscles of Hannah’s body were stiff. Rigor mortis. Though I was no coroner, I knew enough about how the human body decomposed to know that Hannah’s stiffness indicated I was hours and hours too late for there to be a pulse. Today was Friday. Isaac and I had confronted Antonio in the wee hours of Wednesday morning. The extent of the rigor mortis indicated Hannah probably died sometime Wednesday.

  Hannah’s face was bruised and puffy. There were abrasions and dried blood on her neck and arms. There was so much blood, it looked like magma oozing out of an erupting earth. Blood splatters were on her shirt, like a white canvas paint had been repeatedly flicked on. The edges of the shirt surrounding the hole in her abdomen were charred, like the charred edges formed if you held a piece of paper over a lit candle.

  Hannah’s lifeless eyes stared at me. They seemed almost accusatory. Her skin, normally a light golden brown, was deathly pale. Except for her legs. Her legs were a dull mottled crimson. Livor mortis, the fourth stage of death that followed rigor mortis. It happened when the heart stopped pumping and gravity pulled on the blood’s red cells to make them pool in the bottom of the body. The next stage was putrefaction, where Hannah’s body would break down and her organs would liquify. From ashes to ashes, from dust to dust.

  On the wall above where Hannah’s body sat, there was a pattern at about eye level that marred the otherwise pristine eggshell white color. In the center of the pattern was a scorch mark. Around that black and brown scorch mark was dried blood and a yellowish-green discoloration. The colors trailed down from the largest part of the pattern down to Hannah’s body. Bits of Hannah’s black hair and something that reminded me of cooked liver dotted the pattern. I realized the stuff was bits of Hannah’s flesh and organs.

  Antonio must have done this. It had to have been him. What were the chances of a vicious Metahuman with energy-based powers who wasn’t Antonio beating Hannah up and then killing her right after I had a run in with Antonio? Close to zero.

  It was all my fault.

  Though I was no crime scene investigator, I didn’t need to be one to figure out what happened. The scene played out in my mind’s eye like a horror movie. At some point after I beat up on him, Antonio came here to confront Hannah, thinking she had put me up to it. Hannah denied it, of course. Antonio didn’t believe her. The frustration I had seen in his eyes after I had beaten him he had turned on Hannah. They fought. Antonio knocked her around. Then, perhaps in anger, perhaps on cold-blooded purpose, he had spat one of his Metahuman energy balls at her. The blast from it had flung Hannah through the air, just as it had done to me and Isaac. The difference was Hannah didn’t have one of my force fields to protect her. She had slammed into the wall, with the ball of energy boring a hole through her insides. She had hit the wall with such force that the television was jarred from its mountings. Hannah had then slid to the floor, like a flung discarded doll a child didn’t want to play with anymore. Antonio then left, not bothering to lock the door behind himself.

  It was all my fault.

  The hate-filled glare Antonio had given me before Isaac and I left his apartment loomed up my memory. Since Antonio had not known who I was and therefore couldn’t do anything about me, he had turned his hate onto Hannah instead. If I had not gone to his place to confront him, none of this would have happened. I was as responsible for Hannah’s death as Antonio was. No, I was even more responsible for her death than he was. Antonio was a piece of shit. Shit was supposed to stink. I was a Hero. I was supposed to know better. To be better.

  I had intended to help Hannah, to save her from Mad Dog’s abuse. I had instead killed her, just as surely as if I had done the deed myself. If I had reported Mad Dog to the authorities as an unregistered Metahuman like I was supposed to and he had been arrested, Hannah would still be alive. If I hadn’t gone to Mad Dog’s house in the first place, Hannah would still be alive.

  It was all my fault.

  Hannah’s dead eyes still stared at me accusatorily. I couldn’t bear the sight of her and what I had done to her anymore. I turned away in midair, sick at heart and sick to my stomach. The movement stirred the air, bringing my partially acclimated nose a fresh whiff of Hannah’s body. It pushed my stomach over the edge. It churned like an erupting volcano. My throat burned. I threw up so hard, it felt like the vomit was coming from my feet instead of my belly. Fortunately, I had the presence of mind to activate a force field to avoid contaminating the crime scene. The first thing I’d done right in a while. My force field caught all the foulness as it surged out of me. The sharp stench of it mingled with the smell of decay and death.

  I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. I had thrown up more than I thought humanly possible. My teeth felt fuzzy, my throat raw, my mouth acrid. My nose ran. I tried hard to not cry. My blurred vision turned the vomit floating in the air in front of me into something out of an impressionist painting. It looked the way I felt. Perhaps I’d call it Portrait of a Young Man as a Friend-Killing Loser.

  Some Hero I was.

  CHAPTER 8

  I floated near Hannah like a deflated helium balloon for several eternal minutes, full of sorrow and self-loathing and self-pity. With an effort, I tried to shake off this waking nightmare. Moping here wasn’t doing anyone any good. Certainly not me, and most definitely not Hannah. She was gone. Though it was my fault and my responsibility, there was nothing I could do about the fact she was dead now.

  A sudden surge of anger cut through my sadness like a hot knife through butter. I felt as stab of pain in my hands. My fists had clinched so hard that my nails were digging into my skin.

  I couldn’t do anything about Hannah. There was plenty I could do to Mad Dog, though.

  I pulled out my cell phone, intending to call the police. Though I hadn’t met Hannah’s parents and didn’t know how to get into touch with them, Hannah had told me about them. They were still alive. Hannah had a brother as well. He was in graduate school somewhere. The police could track them all down and notify them of Hannah’s death. Though I was to blame for her death and by all rights should shoulder the responsibility of notifying her family, I couldn’t bear the thought of doing it. Besides, the first thing I needed to do was to find Antonio. I wanted to get to him before the police figured out he was responsible and take him into custody.

  I stopped myself right as I was about to hit the last digit of 911. How was I going to explain to the cops what I was doing inside of Hannah’s place? I could tell them the truth, namely that I had come to check on her since she had been absent from work. My presence here, however, would almost automatically make me a suspect in her murder. I assumed there would be sufficient forensic evidence indicating that I wasn’t involved. For example, once the cops determined the exact time of Hannah’s death, they would determine I was at work at the time, or maybe with Isaac. Even so, I should be going after Antonio, not fooling around dealing with the cops, waiting for them to clear me of a crime I did not commit. For all I knew, the cops would take me into custody until they ruled me out as a suspect.

  No, I wouldn’t risk it.

  My mind racing, I put my phone back into my pocket. How would I find Antonio? If I were him and I had just killed my girlfriend, I would not be lounging around my own apartment, waiting for the police to com
e around to have a not-so-nice chat with me. No. Antonio was a vicious asshole, not a stupid one. He would try to disappear. With his mob connections, doing so would be easier for him than for a normal person. The sooner I got on his trail, the better.

  Though I now itched to get out of here to find Antonio, I suppressed the urge to bolt out the door. This would be the only chance I would get to survey the crime scene before the police got here and sealed it. Maybe there was an indication here of where Antonio would run to. The possibility was worth taking a few minutes to look around.

  Still using my powers to avoid leaving fingerprints, I searched Hannah’s condo as thoroughly as I could. I carefully put everything I picked up back exactly the way I found it. Other than a hidden cache of sex toys in Hannah’s bedroom which made me feel like even more of a filthy voyeur than I already did, I found little of interest and absolutely nothing that gave me any idea of how to locate Antonio if he was not at his apartment. I did see a framed picture of Antonio and Hannah together at the beach on Hannah’s nightstand, though. Hannah looked so happy and so full of life in the picture; always the tough guy, Antonio glowered at the camera. The temptation to blast the picture into smithereens was almost irresistible.

  During my search, I had found a box of plastic trash bags under the kitchen sink. After I completed my futile search, I pulled two of the bags out with my powers, double-bagged them, and then emptied my floating pile of puke into them. I pulled the bags’ drawstrings tight, and then twisted the top of them several times for good measure. I then grabbed the bag, and floated toward the front door. I paused in front of the door. I sighed. I could not leave without saying goodbye. I floated back into the living room, levitating again in front of Hannah’s body. Though I didn’t want to, I forced myself to look at her one last time.

  “I’m so sorry I did this to you Hannah,” I said to her. My voice cracked. I swallowed hard. “I promise I’ll make Antonio for pay it.”

  Hannah didn’t answer. The jaunty angle of the hat Antonio had given her seemed to mock me. Her lifeless stare was more than I could bear. I knew it would be a while before it stopped haunting me. Maybe it never would.

  I floated to the front door again. The bag of vomit slung over my shoulder made me feel like a Santa Claus who delivered death and destruction instead of joy and toys. I waited for two people I sensed to pass and for the hallway to be empty again. I opened the door with my powers, landed on the other side of it, and closed the door behind me. I took a deep breath, happy to once again breathe in air that didn’t reek of death and vomit. I stared at Hannah’s closed door for a long moment, lost in thought and regret.

  So much death. First Mom, then Dad, then Hammer, and now Hannah. I wasn’t getting used to the people I cared about dying. I didn’t want to get used to it.

  Still carrying the trash bags, I took the stairs back down to the first floor. I left the building, and walked back toward the subway station. I dumped my vomit in the first trash bin I saw on the street.

  I got on a train headed toward my house. At Huntington Place, three subway stops from Hannah’s, I got off the train again and exited the station. I hurriedly walked to a gas station a couple of blocks away. Thanks to my nightly patrols, I knew there was a pay phone outside of it. Mr. Langley often said that a few decades ago in Astor City, pay phones were as common as public urination. The urination had stayed, especially in shadier areas like Dog Cellar, but the pay phones were mostly gone thanks to almost everyone having a cell phone. The one at the gas station was one of the few I knew of that still existed in the city.

  There were several security cameras mounted high up on the exterior of the gas station building, right under the roof’s overhang. Two of them were on the side of the building the pay phone was on. The gas station was relatively busy, but no one was looking up in the direction of the cameras. I took advantage of that fact by unobtrusively using my powers to pull a few leaves from the roof’s gutters. I levitated the leaves down, hovering them directly in front of the cameras, blocking their view of the pay phone.

  I used the pay phone to dial 911. When the operator picked up, I said, “There’s been a murder at 616 Hanover Street, Unit 57. The victim is Hannah Kim. The perpetrator is Antonio Ricci, who goes by the street name of Mad Dog. His address is 34 Furman Drive, Unit 1313. He’s an unregistered Metahuman, so use caution when you apprehend him.”

  “Who are you? How do you know all this?” the operator demanded.

  “I’m just a guy trying to do the right thing. So far, unsuccessfully.” I hung up. The police got a lot of crank calls. They would not go to Antonio’s place first on the say-so of an anonymous 911 caller. They would go to Hannah’s, though. Once they found her body, they would take my call seriously. They would find and notify Hannah’s family. They would look to see where the 911 call had come from, see that there were video cameras here, and check the footage. They would only see a closeup of leaves. And, eventually, they would go to Antonio’s place to question him.

  I planned to get to him first.

  I had intended to take the subway to my house so I could get my costume. However, I was too impatient to get my hands on Antonio to get on the train again. Besides, no one at the gas station seemed to be paying me any mind.

  I sprang into the air, rising quickly so anyone who happened to look up would only see a blur. It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s Stupid Man! He kills his friends faster than a speeding bullet. Once I was out of the cameras’ view, I dropped the leaves hanging in front of them.

  The sprawling city spread out under me as I rose higher and higher. Using the landmarks below to orient myself, I shot off in the direction of my house. I planned to land in some unobserved spot close to home, maybe a back alley, and walk the rest of the way. I would then grab my costume, suit up, and go find Antonio. I would check his apartment first. In the likely event he wasn’t there, I’d figure out some way of finding him.

  As usual, I had a force field around me as I flew to protect me from the brunt of the wind and from random debris. The wind screamed around me as I rocketed towards the house. Soon, I thought, Antonio would be screaming too.

  I said a silent prayer for Hannah. Having grown up a devout Catholic, prayer came as automatic as blinking when dust was in your eye. I had seen too much senseless death these past few years to be convinced anyone was listening. Regardless, I figured it couldn’t hurt.

  Then I fixed my thoughts squarely on Antonio. My jaw tightened.

  You can run Mad Dog, I thought, but you can’t hide.

  CHAPTER 9

  As it turned out, I was wrong. Mad Dog could both run and hide.

  It was four days after I discovered Hannah’s body. I had used what little leave time I had built up at the Times to take off work so I could devote all my time and energy to locating Antonio. I was no closer to finding him than I had been when I started.

  It was the middle of a cloudless night. I landed on the roof of the UWant Building. Its green glass facade shimmered in the moonlight and the city’s lights. I had on my Kinetic costume and mask. I was exhausted. Constantly on the go, I had barely slept since discovering Hannah’s body. I felt a tickle in the back of my throat. The beginning of a sore throat? I hoped I was not getting sick. I was already sick at heart.

  I came up here a lot. The only way someone could get up here from the building itself was through an access panel on the south side of the roof, which was a small observation desk and parapet surrounding the UWant Building’s tall spire. Months ago, I checked and confirmed that the access panel had been welded shut. As a result, I could fly up here to think undisturbed. Being so high on top of the city’s tallest building made me feel like I wasn’t really in the city anymore, even though I was smack dab in the middle of it.

  The wind gusted, whistling like a banshee. This high up, the wind was always cold regardless of how hot it might be down below. Other than the sound of the wind, it was quiet up here. The sounds of the bustling city did not reach t
his high. Standing up here was like being a god on top of Mount Olympus, surveying from afar the toils and troubles of the mortal men below.

  Star Tower was to the left. The twin blinking aircraft warning lights on top of it seemed to look up enviously at the emerald UWant Building that had eclipsed it. The lights of the rest of Astor City sparkled like jewels below. From up here, the city was beautiful, like a mirror image of the sparkling stars above. I knew stars were nothing more than a series of nuclear explosions; they’d burn you with heat and radiation if you got too close. I was beginning to think the same of Astor City—the closer you got to it, the more it burned and tarnished you.

  A few minutes after I arrived, I spotted a dot in the sky. It rapidly grew closer, moving from being an indistinct, distant speck to a large, winged animal. A huge bird, almost man-sized, touched down on the roof near me. It had reddish-brown plumage and a contrasting snow-white head and breast. It was a Garuda, a bird from Hindu mythology that could fly faster than the wind. It was one of the few of Isaac’s forms that could come close to keeping up with me when I flew full tilt.

  The bird’s form shimmered with a slight glow, expanded, and suddenly Isaac stood where the Garuda had been. He had on his Myth costume, a form-fitting, full-body black number with light blue bands on the wrists and ankles. Its cowl covered Isaac’s face from the nose up. A ferocious looking dragon was emblazoned in blood-red on the costume’s chest. Like me, Isaac wasn’t wearing his cape.