“Worst vacation ever,” he muttered. “Tapestry, Savior scratched his last words into the ice. I don’t want them to be lost after we leave. Can you take a photo of my visual feed from the ship?”
He waited a couple of seconds. She didn’t respond.
“Tapestry?”
Still no response. Malcolm felt panic slowly spreading through his body.
“Malcolm!” she suddenly shouted. “She opened the portal again! Multi came through, and–”
The connection cut off as quickly as it had opened. It felt as though the cold of Europa’s atmosphere was seeping in through his suit as icy dread gripped Malcolm’s heart. He turned and started sprinting, as much as he could in the light gravity, back toward the lander.
It took off without him before he’d made it a dozen steps. Malcolm stared at it in shock as the rockets accelerated the tiny craft hundreds of feet into the air, out of his reach, and then out of the moon’s atmosphere.
“Tapestry!” he shouted. “The lander! I… I’m stuck here.”
Again, there was no response. Malcolm felt familiar emotions of despair and hopelessness crashing over him. He’d been in this situation before and made it out alive. He could do it again.
He put all his willpower into gathering what little air Europa had into a stream that he could control with his wind manipulation. It felt like trying to drink water from the air on a humid day. There just wasn’t enough of an atmosphere on the moon for him to make it work.
He reached out toward Jupiter, but it wasn’t in sight, and Malcolm suspected that if he waited for Europa to rotate around far enough for it to be visible, it would already be too late. And that was assuming that he could pull off the herculean feat of coopting a planet’s wind from a massive distance a second time.
None of the other moons of Jupiter with atmospheres were in sight, either. Europa was the furthest out of Jupiter’s primary moons, meaning they were all on its night side, along with the planet itself.
Malcolm’s frustration manifested itself in the form of a headache and a tirade of obscenities. He swore into the inside of his helmet, hoping the communications line was still open, given that most of his vulgarity was in the form of threats directed at Multi.
Slowly, Malcolm made his way back over to Savior’s body. The dead man had his eyes open, and there was a slight smile on his face. It comforted Malcolm a little to know that he’d been at peace when he died. He sensed that he wouldn’t be afforded the same privilege.
“Damn it,” he muttered. “What would you do, Savior?”
He reached out and took Savior’s hand into his glove. It was like taking hold of an ice statue, and it was cold enough to penetrate Malcolm’s suit. He felt an odd prickling sensation and jerked his hand back, wondering if frostbite could set in so rapidly.
Wait a second… I know that feeling. Did I just… absorb his powers?
CHAPTER 28
Malcolm searched his awareness, hope burgeoning in him and then deflating in the span of a second. He had absorbed Savior’s powers once before, back when he’d first met the leader of the Champion Authority. And now, as had happened then, he couldn’t figure out how to make Savior’s abilities work.
And though he’d never attempted it before, Malcolm was reasonably certain that absorbing powers from dead bodies wasn’t something he was capable of, let alone doing it through his gloves. Or was it? How much had becoming a monster enhanced his abilities?
He examined Savior more closely, going so far as to push a finger out against his face. He was definitely dead, and frozen all the way through.
It didn’t matter. He was familiar enough with the sensation to know that he had, in fact, absorbed the man’s powers. Perhaps his mimicry had grown stronger since he’d become a demon. That had been the case with Second Wind, and the cause behind him losing his powers six months earlier, during their last confrontation.
The only thing that matters now is whether I can get back to the ship.
Malcolm took a deep breath. The only thing he knew for certain about Savior’s powers was that he’d only been able to use one at a time. He had five in total: flight, invulnerability, super strength, energy blasts, and offensive illusions. Malcolm lingered as he considered each of them, trying to find the mental switch to trigger each one, and failing.
“I need to fly!” he muttered. “God damn it! I need to get back to the ship!”
He tensed his muscles and squeezed his eyes shut, concentrating harder than he ever had before in his life. For an instant, he felt it. Not the full arsenal of Savior’s powers, but the potential for flight. He was aware of it for long enough to know that it would work. Savior’s flight utilized a different mechanism than his own wind manipulation. He could use it to leave Europa, and with his space suit, it wouldn’t matter that Malcolm could only use a single power at a time.
Focus. Don’t think about Tapestry. Don’t think about Rose, back on Earth. Focus.
It was a process of concentration, like trying to do advanced math in his head, except more abstract, and more of a full body process. Drops of sweat beaded on Malcolm’s forehead. His fingers cramped up, followed by the muscles in his jaw.
In that moment, Malcolm understood Savior better than he ever had before. Savior’s distracted nature and odd sense of humor had both been a result of the intense focus he needed to maintain in order to use his powers as freely as he had.
Malcolm was grunting with the exertion of it. His vision wavered, and he accidentally bit the tip of his tongue. The diaper that he’d been forced to wear underneath his spacesuit, blessedly, remained unsoiled. Malcolm was reeling from the exertion, on the verge of giving up, when he finally lifted into the air.
He gasped as he rose up a few feet above the surface of Europa and the floodgates opened. Much like pushing a snowball down a hill, the act of concentrating became easier once he’d gotten over that first hurdle. It still wasn’t easy, by any means, but Malcolm had enough momentum to push himself upward, escaping Europa’s light gravity and hurtling upward after his ship.
He wished he could feel the wind through his hair, but of course, the moon had no wind, and Malcolm was in a spacesuit. He focused his thoughts on what he needed to do, noting that the euphoric pull of overusing his powers was still as present as ever.
The lights of the spaceship were visible in the sky even on the dayside of Europa. Malcolm flew toward the vessel as fast as he could, determined to recapture it. He was tense, fearing that Multi might have already harmed Tapestry, but forced himself to maintain focused on the task at hand.
Flying through space, outside of Europa’s gravity, felt much the same as flying anywhere else. Malcolm was relieved by that, but it also made Savior’s death that much more tragic. It was clear to Malcolm why he couldn’t use more than one of his powers at once, given how much concentration they took to activate. But if he’d been able to, he would have made it back to Earth without trouble.
The ship grew larger in the distance. Malcolm flew faster, not willing to allow Tapestry to be in danger for even a second longer than necessary. He slowed his pace in time to draw even with the orbiting craft, and then on a hunch, made his way around to the viewing port in the cockpit.
The lighting inside the ship, combined with the darkness of space outside, made it easy for him to see through the thick, radiation shielded glass. Multi held Tapestry at gunpoint just beyond the hallway that led to the central chamber. There were at least three Multis on the ship, but another detail jumped out at Malcolm and almost made him grin with excitement.
The portal they’d used to come through to the ship was still open. Malcolm decided in an instant what he needed to do, and committed himself to doing it immediately rather than exploring alternatives.
He took a deep breath and summoned his power. Yes, he could feel Savior’s other powers, the ones that he used less often than his flight. Malcolm’s teeth began grinding together as he tried to form an energy blast.
A
sudden cramp took hold in his stomach, as though a few of his internal organs were trying to make a jail break. Malcolm kept his mouth closed, fearing the horrors of what could happen if he left it open in the confinement of his spacesuit. He stretched his hand out and kept forming the blast.
His head was pounding now, his vision flickering and threatening to fade to black in time with the pulsing pain. The blast formed over his palm outside the suit, a quivering, bright blue ball of energy. As soon as it reached a viable size, the body load ceased abruptly, making him gasp at the contrast. Several of the Multis perked their heads up within the ship.
So… They’re listening to my audio feed.
“Quick poll,” Malcolm said into the silence of his helmet. “Raise your hand if you believe in karma.”
He slammed the energy blast into the ship’s viewport. It shattered into thousands of tiny, jagged pieces, all of which flew by him like bits of shrapnel as the inside of the ship depressurized. Several cut large gashes into his spacesuit. Malcolm ignored it, knowing he wouldn’t need the suit for much longer.
Tapestry and the Multis had been knocked off their feet by the sudden shift of air. Malcolm didn’t stop to fight any of them. He couldn’t have, even if he’d wanted to. The effort of switching from building the energy blast back to flight mode felt like trying to switch between dancing and juggling while sick with the flu.
He had just enough focus to scoop a surprised looking Tapestry up over his shoulder and hurl himself through the green portal while the Multis were still floundering in confusion.
CHAPTER 29
They landed in a familiar hospital room on the other side of the portal. Malcolm’s legs buckled beneath him as soon as they hit the ground, his body reacting to the reintroduction with Earth’s gravity. Tapestry fell beside him, alternating between coughing and taking heaving, gasping breaths.
There were two more Multis in the room, and one of them had already pulled out a pistol. Malcolm flung himself down, shielding Tapestry with his body. Gunshots ripped through the hospital room. He glanced over his shoulder to see that though the bullets had missed him, they’d struck Jade Portal, who was still confined to her hospital bed.
The sound of her flat lining filled the room. Malcolm glared at the Multi with the gun, raising a hand and flinging the man back with a burst of wind manipulation. His pistol went spinning across the floor. Several nurses rushed into the room, hesitating at the strange sight of Malcolm in his bulky, futuristic space suit. He helped Tapestry to her feet and pulled her out into the hallway.
The Multi who had opened fire was reaching to pick up his gun. Malcolm summoned the wind again, this time throwing him violently to the ground and knocking him unconscious. He heard footsteps and turned to see the second Multi slowly approaching them, hands outstretched.
He still looked similar enough to the boss Malcolm remembered that it caught him off guard. Multi was fully bald now, his misshapen head easily visible, but he was still recognizable. It was something about his eyes, which seemed to constantly analyze and assess, rather than just look.
“It’s you,” said the Multi.
“Yes, it’s me,” said Malcolm. He pulled off his helmet and slowly stood up. He grimaced to himself has he stood, still readjusting to the gravitational pull on his body. Multi’s eyes went wide when he saw his face, and only then did Malcolm remember something he’d nearly forgotten.
Right. I’m a demon now. I’ll be getting a lot of that.
A slow smile spread across Multi’s face. He reached into his shirt pocket, pulling out a pack of cigarettes and a lighter.
“Can we talk for a bit?” he asked.
“Talk?” Tapestry took a step forward. “How many times have you tried to kill us, Multi? And you expect us to talk to you? Why would we even consider it?”
Multi looked as though he was barely even listening to her. He’d obviously directed the question at Malcolm, who was in the process of stripping off the bulky spacesuit, tossing pieces of it to the floor, heedless of what happened to them now.
“You can talk,” said Malcolm. “But the only thing I’m interested in hearing from you is where to find him.”
“Your copy, you mean?” Multi grinned. “The mighty Zeus. Yes… I suspect you won’t have to look far to find him. In fact, it’s more likely that he’ll find you. He’ll come looking for you as soon as I tell him about this.”
Malcolm nodded slowly, returning Multi’s grin with a smile of his own.
“Good,” said Malcolm. “That will save me time.”
He tapped Tapestry on the shoulder and started down the hallway.
“You didn’t rescue Savior,” said Multi. “Even as a demon, I don’t see how you’d stand a chance against him. Not after what he’s become.”
Malcolm contemplated showing off a little before deciding that it would be counterproductive. Multi wasn’t a threat to them anymore, but he could be, if he passed on knowledge of Malcolm’s new strength on to Second Wind.
“I’ll take my chances,” said Malcolm.
Multi laughed. “This is like poetry,” he said. “What’s the point of you even fighting him? You’re the same, both of you. Why does it matter who lives and who dies? You’ll go on to make the same choices, and have the same effect on the world.”
“We aren’t the same,” said Malcolm, after a moment’s hesitation. “We were once. And I don’t know what happened to him to change him. But…”
He frowned, lacking the words to explain how he felt about his renegade copy. It was something he’d tried to avoid thinking about for a long time. How could Second Wind have committed all of those atrocities? He’d wiped cities off the map and murdered innocents as though the value of human life meant nothing to him.
He shared all of Malcolm’s memories sans the better part of a year they’d been apart. What could have changed Second Wind, changed Malcolm so much to turn him into a monster in the truest sense of the word?
Do I want to know the answer to that question? Maybe finding the truth would do the same thing to me…
“Ask him,” said Multi. “When he comes to kill you, please, ask him why. See what he says.”
There was something about Multi’s tone of voice that made the hair on Malcolm’s arms stand up straight. He avoided Multi’s gaze, wondering if it was safe for them to leave him and his unconscious copy there in the hospital. Multi would have more copies, elsewhere, Malcolm decided. It changed nothing if he killed these two, or let them live.
“You should prepare yourself, Multi,” said Malcolm. “The day of reckoning has finally come. It’s time to set things right.”
“You both have that ridiculous dramatic streak,” said Multi. “Oh, what I wouldn’t give to see you two fight to the death. He’ll win, of course. You’re throwing your life away.”
Malcolm glanced at the demon who’d once been his boss and mentor. He’d been Malcolm’s enemy for far longer than he’d ever been his friend. But now, what was he? A simple demon, his powers far outclassed by Malcolm and Second Wind.
A sudden thought came to Malcolm. He walked over to Multi slowly. Multi didn’t flinch back in time as Malcolm reached out and took hold of his hand. His eyes widened as he realized what was about to happen.
“What… are you doing?” asked Multi.
“Testing something.” Malcolm concentrated on his power mimicry. That wasn’t the right term for it anymore. It had grown since he’d become a demon, turned into something more like power leeching.
Multi let out a gasp as Malcolm absorbed his power. He wasn’t doing it because he wanted Multi’s power. He’d already learned his lesson from using it once. And, given that Multi’s secondary copies were unable to use the copying power themselves, there was little real need for him to take any action against that particular Multi. All Malcolm wanted was to see if his suspicions were correct about what would happen.
Multi’s face paled, and the bumps on his skull dissolved into his skin instantly. The red
tone that his skin had held as a demon faded to the slight tan he’d had as a normal man, and even the faint freckles on his cheeks became visible again.
I can turn people back to normal…
“Oh my god…” Tapestry came up beside Malcolm and squeezed. “Malcolm… Do you know what this means?”
He nodded slowly.
“I do,” he said. “But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. This won’t mean anything until I’ve dealt with him.”
Second Wind. Malcolm considered the fact that his copy had that same power. A fight between them might come down to who could get a bare hand onto the other’s skin first. Or perhaps it could even be done through clothing, as Malcolm had absorbed Savior’s power through the spacesuit.
“Come on,” he said. “Let’s get out of here.”
CHAPTER 30
It was the middle of the night outside. Malcolm would have been surprised if his experience on the spaceship hadn’t been so traumatizing to his circadian rhythm. He carried Tapestry in his arms as he flew, first intending to bring them both back to his hideout. She elbowed him in the ribs after only a couple of seconds and pointed out that her car was still in Halter City.
He dropped down beside it and set her back on her feet. Tapestry was looking at him strangely, as though seeing him in the dark, back on Earth, was a different experience than seeing him in the sterile, surreal environment of the spaceship.
Seeing that I’m a demon. It’s real for her, now.
“Second Wind is going to come for me,” said Malcolm. “I’m going to need all the help I can get. Do you have a way of getting in touch with the other champions?”
Tapestry nodded.
“It might take me some time,” she said.
“That’s fine,” said Malcolm. “Better late than never.”
And better to have Tapestry as far away from what was about to happen as he could possibly send her. He kept a neutral expression on his face, hating himself for the deceit, but knowing that it was necessary. He had to face Second Wind alone.
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