by Various
The big man sputtered. He whimpered like a child as he reached beneath the middle console, retrieving a wad of bills, then Carone did something unexpected. His hand shot out. He grasped Dana’s throat.
Stupid girl, she thought. She’d leaned in, stayed too close.
Just because she’d hit Carone with the deepest melancholy she could muster, it didn’t make him harmless. Grieving people, when left alone, were more of a danger to themselves than anyone else. She’d put herself within his reach. A deadly mistake with such a killer, even in the throes of his own despair—especially then.
His hand squeezed. He pulled her against the car door. Dana struggled to maintain her empathic pulse.
“Chimeric bitch!” Carone yelled, then sobbed. “Drive, B! Drive, man. I can’t take this, man…”
“I don’t know,” B-Mac whimpered. “I don’t know, man.” He made a blubbering crying sound, dropped the money on the floor, and shifted the gearstick down. Oh hells, Dana thought. She thought she’d dug into the big man better. He was evidently pushing through enough to still drive.
Carone pulled Dana through the passenger side window by her neck and the back of her wet coat. She thrashed her arms and legs, tried to scream, but he had adrenaline-fueled, prison yard muscles, and his hand squeezed too damn hard. She couldn’t breathe and was afraid he was about to crush the bones in her throat.
The Caddy reeled away from the curb while B-Mac wailed as if he’d discovered the death of his dearest loved one. They clipped the bumper of a van parked in front of them. Voices yelled “hey” and “what the fuck?” They pulled into the road, swiped a vehicle in the lane, scraped alongside, popping and shattering both cars’ side-view mirrors. Horns honked.
Obviously, B-Mac wasn’t able to drive very well. Not that driving well mattered.
“Stop it!” Carone’s voice was a tearful whine. He’d forced her mostly inside; her upper body was slanted into his lap, her legs sticking out the window, while his powerful grip shut her airway to the point she could no longer focus.
“Fucking kill you,” Carone spat, this time nothing but rage in his voice as the effects of her emotional projection withered. His gold teeth bared in a snarl, at contrast with the tears on his cheeks and the snot in his mustache.
He reached into his waistband and pulled a 9 mm.
She was going to die. No! she thought. Point it at yourself, you bastard!
The driver side door abruptly yanked opened. B-Mac let loose a high-pitched scream as he vanished from the Caddy, pulled out by something Dana couldn’t see. Carone’s throttling had made her already-shitty vision darken to practically nothing, all the edges had become wispy and black, and consciousness was the thinnest line.
She barely registered yelling and smashing sounds; of tumbling and Carone’s choking hands and pot-stink suddenly gone; of being picked up, and then set down on wet concrete; of the sounds of cursing and someone being pummeled.
Moments later, she wiped rain from her face. The painful overhead yellow and white glare of the city lights was broken by a figure standing over her. A hand reached down. A female voice, gentle, concerned: “Are you all right?”
She could sense the woman was genuinely worried about her. She felt a cool rage subside, replaced by a peculiar pride from having put a grievous hurt on a pair of savage street thugs. No, not pride. Vindication.
The woman’s hard emotions ebbed. Softer ones resumed. She helped Dana to her feet. Concern. Succor. A longing for friendship? That was silly. She was obviously confused, misinterpreting things. Traumatized, most likely.
They were of a similar height. The woman wore a white and gray outfit with a white hood and a dark gray half-mask that revealed full pink lips and a white chin with a smear of red blood at the point. A costumed chimeric. Wow.
They still held hands, and Dana blinked at the blood on the knuckles of the woman’s white gloves.
“Oh…” The woman followed Dana’s gaze. “That’s not mine. Are you okay?”
“I…I think so.”
The wail of sirens approached. The masked woman peered over her shoulder. “I’ve got it from here,” she told someone.
Simple aggression rippled from the shadows.
“See you at HQ.” The shadow moved into the adjacent alley almost too quick for the eyes to follow, then sprung fifteen feet straight up, grabbed a fire escape, and ascended the building, going from rung to ledge to buttress in a blur.
“Let’s get you home,” the woman said, still holding Dana’s hand, and began leading the way back to her mom’s apartment, as if she knew where they lived. “My name’s Veil.”
#
The room was no longer descending. The recessed lighting had dimmed, casting everything in shadow. These memory trips of my own were vivid, yet reliving someone else’s had an intimacy to it I wasn’t expecting. Seeing a younger version of this Legato woman, experiencing an important day in her past, had me curious; which is why I just floated there.
I didn’t realize I’d started hovering.
“So you know Veil,” I said.
“Knew.”
“You’re convinced she’s dead, I got it. Who was her partner? Looked like Dervish. They worked together with Willow and the Wisp to clean up Santa Lomo back in oh-nine and ten, I think?”
Legato didn’t answer, only nodded once, slowly.
“So V saved your bacon. Now you think she’s dead, and I’m responsible somehow—”
“I don’t think it…” she snarled. <…I KNOW IT!>
The woman’s mental shout resounded against the inside of my skull like the ringing of a damned church bell. I winced hard.
#
Dana couldn’t help herself. A quick read of Veil’s mind revealed they were neighbors, and also that she’d noticed Dana before, had watched her retrieve the mail, seen her hanging out in a group on the tenement steps. There were just tiny scenes, but they came from one of the apartments above the entrance. Third floor maybe.
The woman had escorted her inside the building and was about to turn to leave when Dana blurted out the first thing that came to mind. She didn’t want her to go. There was no one there but the two them. “I’m chimeric, too,” she announced.
Veil turned, smiled. The smear of blood that had been on her chin had washed away in the rain. “I know.”
They looked at one another beneath the dim, buzzing lights of the breezeway. Dana’s vision haloed again, making Veil ghostly.
“You should probably keep that to yourself,” the costumed woman said. “And stop using your powers on gangbangers. And especially on other chimerics.”
Shit. She knows I’ve been reading her emotions. Great.
Veil smiled knowingly, which looked both intimidating and alluring beneath the half mask.
Dana shook her head. “The way the President’s pushing his registration bill through Congress, I might not have much choice.”
Veil nodded. “Well. You should stop using your powers. Get out of this place.”
“Get out?” Dana made a derisive snort. “Sure. Right. That’s gonna happen. There’s nowhere to go for people like me. The city makes sure of it. Now, knowing what I am? Ain’t no way. I’m nothing but ‘hood trash.”
“No.” Veil came forward, close enough that the blurry light effect around her went away. “You’re not trash, Dana.” She retrieved something from inside her cape. The fat wad of bills from Carone’s car. “Here. This isn’t for your mom. I want you to put it toward getting yourself out of her. Put it toward something useful.”
Dana wasn’t too proud. She took the money. She also took Veil’s gloved hand. The rain hadn’t washed away the blood on it, but rather soaked it in and turned it into a rose-colored stain.
And that’s how things began.
Veil came twice more with rolls of money. On the third visit, they found themselves on the roof of the five-story apartment building, looking down over the street on another du
sky autumn. Dry this time. Teals and orange hues painting the low-income ‘hood in a washed-out haze that somehow prettified the old school graffiti and boarded-up windows.
Leaves skirled down in the gutters and up on the rooftops, and Veil told Dana her name was Laura. She removed her mask, and Dana was surprised to find there was a white wig attached to the headpiece and that Veil’s real hair was a dark pixie cut. She was more beautiful than Dana pictured. Way younger, too. She told Dana she was just twenty-two.
They talked until it was dark, and the city lit up with hundreds of blurry yellow coronas to Dana’s eyes. Laura stayed even though red and blue lights flashed more than once on nearby avenues. She touched an earpiece both times, listened to something, then said, “Everything’s cool. Others have it under control.”
Dana told Laura about her plans to use the money to go to school, and Laura smiled at that and held her hand as they talked some more. Eventually, Veil put her mask back on; before she departed she stood on the lip of the building and promised Dana that nobody would ever hurt her as long as she could help it, then she leapt out of sight, her white cape waving goodbye.
Two weeks later, a rain-soaked Veil tapped on her bedroom window. Dana undid the latch and let her climb into the dark room.
“Sorry. I had to come.”
Dana rubbed the sleep from her eyes, saw blood on Veil’s costume but ignored it. “No. I’m glad to see you. What’s going on?”
She held up a showy, gold, diamond-encrusted ring. “Until half-an-an hour ago, this belonged to Obadele Watumbe, alias the Sugar Man,” Veil said. “He’s not going to need it anymore.” She put the ring in Dana’s palm and closed her fingers over it, and Dana cried because she’d read Veil’s mind and saw that the son of a bitch who controlled animals like Carone and B-Mac and who was to blame for the death of kids like Branden was going away for a long time.
They embraced, and it turned into a long kiss. Dana pulled Veil’s mask off and ran her hands through Laura’s short hair, and the kiss became much more.
#
Stop it, my pet. You’re getting much too personal. Just do as I ask.
#
I could hear Legato’s heart racing.
The thought had a hollow sound, like an open broadcast. I got the feeling it wasn’t meant for me.
A spotlight snapped on from the ceiling, shining toward the back of the room, where an ivory-framed wall panel slid away. A white and gray outfit and silver gadget belts hung on a stand inside of a glass case; there was no mistaking it for Veil’s gear—or the remnants at least, burnt and tattered.
“I managed to procure her costume,” Legato whispered. “I wanted her remains, too. I sifted through the ashes where St. Paul’s used to be for hours. Now it’s a lot filled with bottles and bricks. I even found bits of bone. Other who died when you ran away.”
“Others?”
“DCD officers, labrats, Jellyfish Guy, who was actually named Veneno, by the way. Not that it matters.”
She swiped at the side of her specs again. Another ivory-framed wall panel slid away. I got to my feet as two silhouettes stepped out into the beam of light. One was in black and red with a black mask and bladed helmet; the other had long dark hair, bare sinewy shoulders, and fitted dark-blue, ballistic-grade body armor with gray and black metallic accents.
“Artemis, what’s going on?”
“We’re just here to ensure you come without a fight, Noah.”
“But feel free to resist,” Dervish added, his voice distorted as usual by the vocal modulator in his mask. He scowled, and the old slash on his lips that ran down his chin was pronounced.
“Why? You want a matching scar on the other side of your face?”
“Bring it on, Hero.”
I clenched my fist.
“That’s not why we’re here,” Artemis said, stepping forward to break our macho stare down.
“I’m done being a TCA puppet, and I’m done with these head games. I’m leaving here. Now. And if the three of you think you can stop me, you’re welcome to try.”
“This is gonna be fun,” Dervish said, cracking his knuckles.
All three of them froze in place.
“Why won’t you just yield?” hissed a crepitus voice. “This has been a trying week.”
#
Artemis, Dervish, and the entire room dropped away, replaced mostly by shadow and…some weird random clumps of half-light. I was on the floor, leaning against a cold, wet wall of eroded stone. Something stuck to the back of my head, pulsing. I reached up to touch it.
“I wouldn’t do that, my disagreeable friend.”
I knew that voice. I looked around, saw that we were in a cave. Legato was still standing there, unmoving. She hadn’t melted away like the other two, but it wasn’t her who’d spoken.
“With your legendary strength, you’d pull out your own cerebellum before you even knew what you were doing.” The ancient and cruel lord of monsters, Dornasian, emerged from the darkness, a wide yellow-fanged smile on his frightening visage. “Kind of need that. Even a ‘Superman’ like you, hmm?”
“So…you’re Dornasian, I take it. Managed to avoid the Varangians…” I said, struggling to rise. I noticed a faintly glowing lichen all over the cavern’s crevices and dozens of disturbingly overgrown, translucent larvae things undulating here and there.
I was sapped. I needed more time. I really needed to get the sucker thing off the back of my head. Most villains loved monologuing, so I’d get the demon talking. I looked around, motioned at the surrounds. “So…troglodyte much?”
Dornasian scoffed, was apparently amused. “How droll. You played too many video games as a kid, my friend. I’m a conqueror. And now,” he pointed a clawed finger at me, “unconquerable with you by my side. My supreme champion.” He glanced at Legato with a toothy grin. She stood impassive, head lowered in a submissive pose. “And it all comes full circle.”
“Full circle?”
“Show the man, my sweet.”
Legato looked at Dornasian, at me.
“Do it,” Dornasian commanded with an edge of irritation to his voice.
She took a breath and removed her Biotiq specs, dropping them to the cavern floor. Her eyes were milky white, the same eyes, albeit rheumier, as the girl from the implanted vision. Then, her body shifted.
Legato lunged to all fours as she grew, her outfit shredding. Bat-like wings jettisoned from her shoulder blades and unfolded. Her head and neck lengthened, the bones and cartilage snapping like firecrackers, while a ridged tail click-clacked from her hind end. Her sinews enlarged into powerful muscles, while horned ridges emerged from the back of her reptilian head.
I staggered back, stunned. The beast! The white-scaled monster that had altered my life forever, had destroyed Quintara 311 and all the lives within it. The beast now crouched before me. Within my grasp.
I lifted into the air and bellowed.
Dornasian laughed. “Too late! Oh yes, too late for all that.”
I tried flying forward, fists balled. The voice in my head stopped me, speaking in time with the pulsating presence of the thing on the back of my skull.
“No.” I clenched my teeth. I reached up to sink my fingers into whatever thing it was that acted as a conduit.
“Do that and you will die,” Dornasian growled.
“I’ll…take my…chances…”
I dug my superhuman fingers into the soft gelatinous thing. Blistering waves of pain entered my skull. The thing wriggled. Screeching on an entirely different level of the sound spectrum exploded inside my head.
I was barely aware that the beast…Legato…whatever it was…had surged forward. It snatched me in its jaws and shoved me into the cavern wall, smashing its own snout into
the rock at the same time.
I was bashed into the cave wall over and over. Unbearable pain. Not the bashing so much as my head. An agony so great I feared my sanity was slipping away. And then, something exploded, followed by a sharp wail of pain from my own throat, a sound I had never made in all my years battling hosts of chimeric foes.
Wait. That wasn’t me.
It was the beast that howled. I fell to the ground.
“You slaughtered my wyvern, fucking human!” Dornasian’s bestial roar was the very same one let loose by the falling rider on that day years ago.
I glanced left, saw the beast on its side, a gaping hole in the meat of its ribs.
I looked up and to my right at the Brown Thrasher and Artemis. My friends, posing heroically. Thrash must’ve hurled one of his explosive bird-shaped darts at the wyvern—I believe that’s what Dornasian called it. I didn’t quite care. I was beyond joyful to see them and hoped to hell this wasn’t another illusion. If so, I never wanted this sublime moment to end.
Artemis aimed her cable gun at Dornasian and fired. The tethers knotted around the demonic-looking bastard before he could take a step. He fell to the ground, wriggling and kicking. “No, no, fucking no! I’ll fucking fuck you!”
“Such language,” Artemis said. “Where’d you find this guy?”
I wasn’t quite ready for banter. I sat up. Groaned.
I touched the thing on the back of my head. It pulsed but also quivered wetly and I felt goo running down the back of my neck. Please don’t let that be my brains, I thought. “Get…get this thing…off me…” I said.
“How did you find me?” Dornasian rumbled, still squirming in the coils.
“Tracking device, asshole,” Thrasher said, not bothering to look at the demon. He went to a knee and touched my shoulder, leaning me forward. He made a very un-Thrasher-like noise of disgust. “Bleh!”
“Yeah, pretty gross,” Artemis added.
“It’s not my brain, right?”
“Well, you’re still alive and talking, so…” Thrasher said.