Subject 12

by S. W. Douglas

  "Thank you. I'm glad you enjoyed my work."

  "It was excellent." I worried a little gristle from the sausage caught between two of my teeth with my tongue till it came free. "I look forward to lunch."

  "I'm surprised you'll be able to fit it after that show you put on," Steamroller said, looking slightly green.

  "Corrine! He was a perfect gentleman, he just ate more than you, is all." Venom gave her a disapproving look. "Besides that, he's our guest. Be polite."

  Steamroller looked to her husband but he seemed unwilling to give her any support. "Fine," she spat, throwing her napkin down and getting to her feet. "You eat with this murdering swine if you want. I won't."

  "Corrine, sit down," Jackhammer said quietly.

  "Like hell! You two may have decided to treat this scum like an honored guest, but I refuse. He should be locked up or put down like the rabid dog he is. I will have nothing more to do with this."

  Interesting.

  "Corrine," Venom said in a voice so smooth it would have made silk feel like a twelve-hour-old shave, "sit down before you embarrass yourself any further."

  "Embarrass myself?! Embarrass myself?!" I was watching her closely. The way she was building up pressure, she was about to pop. "How dare you! In my own home!"

  Jackhammer got to his feet and interdicted himself between her and I. Probably a smart decision since I might not be able to stop whatever she did. Unfortunately, she was a little too far gone for his whispered words to have any effect. With a yelled curse, she blasted a gravitic wave in my direction that I barely got out of the way of. Her husband wasn't so lucky and I heard bone break as he fell.

  I was a little slow, what with the heavy breakfast and all, but I was fast enough. My chair warped as it fell away from me as I pushed myself to the side to avoid the attack. My counter wasn't as strong but it was much better focused. Her head snapped back as a coffee mug that had been sent shuddering down the table from her gravitic wave caught her under the jaw. She went over backwards, her arms flailing, and landed with a heavy thump on the floor. I hoped it didn't do any real damage, but I wasn't in a position to do much else. I caught the mug and brought it down gently.

  I let myself contact the wall I'd thrown myself at and drifted own as gently as I'd brought the mug down. Nobody was looking at me anyway.

  "Well, that could have gone better," I observed.

  Raymond, who had remained silent throughout the entire meal, shot me a dirty look before he turned back to Steamroller. Venom, who had rushed to Jackhammer's side as he went down, looked up long enough to jerk her head in the direction my room lay. I took the hint and retreated.

  They left me alone for at least two hours. I found, of all things, a chamber pot under the bed. By the one hour mark I had rather desperate need of it so I used it. I'd already done worse things inside those four walls.

  I read some, grateful for the ability to indulge in the simple pleasure. I thumbed through Paradise Lost until I found my favorite passages. I knew them by heart but it was always a thrill to read them.

  I might not be the best educated, but I enjoyed some of the finer things in life.

  The copy of Dante's Inferno was an older translation that I didn't like as well as some of the newer ones, so I passed it over, but I couldn't pass on a few of the others. The collection of Poe, for example, had me reading The Murders in the Rue Morgue and The Raven in no time.

  Sadly, this idyllic time came to an end with a rather formal knock on the door. I set the book I'd been looking through back on the shelf and turned to face the door.

  "Come in."

  There must have been some good medical facilities somewhere in the house because when Jackhammer came in he was stumping along with a cane and his leg was in a cast from the knee down.

  He cleared his throat loudly. "I wanted to apolo-" He stopped and sniffed the air. "Did you..."

  I nodded. "I found a chamber pot."

  He nodded to himself before a confused look crossed his face. "There's a chamber pot in here?"

  "Yeah, under the bed." I jerked my thumb over my shoulder in the direction of the bed.

  A stranger look crossed his face and he chuckled. "Make you a deal. I won't tell my wife if you won't."

  I smiled. "Deal."

  "Anyway. I wanted to apologize for what happened at breakfast. Apparently somethin' Vivian had cooked reacted badly with some of Corrine's medicine. Raymond says that if she hadn't been knocked out she would've killed at least one of us 'fore it wore off."

  "That's pretty serious."

  "Yes, especially since Vivian didn't make that oatmeal Corrine was havin'."

  That almost sounded like attempted murder. It also sounded like someone was pointing a finger in only one direction.

  "That's interesting."

  "That's what I said. To my way of thinkin' that means either someone slipped her somethin' or someone's lyin' like a dead coon." He looked like he wanted to sit down but was afraid to ask.

  "Would you like a seat?" I felt a little odd offering a man a chair in his own home, but this wasn't exactly ordinary circumstances.

  "Yes, please, thank you. My leg hurts somethin' fierce. Raymond gave me somethin' for it, but it ain't kicked in yet." He sighed as he sat down. "Of course, it may be kickin' in as we speak. You might know a'fore I do, the way things are goin'."

  I took a seat on the bed.

  "I don't know where my head is right now, son. I want to hate you for what you did down in Reno, but your reasons for doin' it are right. Ain't legal, to be damn sure, but you did the right thing. 'Course, legal ain't exactly the dipstick you use to measure things. Ain't mine, neither. Ain't been for probably fifty years, come to think about it." He sighed again. "I'm tired, son. I'm so damn tired I don't know how I get up in the mornin'. That's why I retired. I thought the world could get along without me and I could rest. Then you showed up and turned the world on its goddamn ear.

  "I don't like the cold here. It gets into my bones and I ache half the year. I'm a southern boy, in case you can't tell by the way I talk when I'm not forcin' it. Tennessee and Louisiana from the day I was born until I turned sixteen."

  If he was telling the truth he was telling me something that had never made it to the national media. As far as the news was concerned, he just appeared in his costume and started to save the world about the time he was twenty-five.

  "I didn't go to school till I was twelve; us Negroes and the other colored folk didn't get much education if we was poor back then. They taught me to read and write, do numbers in my head, and told me I'd do well if I went in the army, but that was a while still. Back then you could join at sixteen if you had a letter.

  "Well, I got in a tussle one day and a priest pulled me off a couple of boys, told me I should take up boxing 'cause I had a hell of a right hook. Well, he took me to a gym and I'll be damned if I didn't like punchin' them smug white boys in the face and havin' them come back for more. Wasn't long and them boys was callin' me Jackhammer 'cause of the way I jabbed. Yup. Jackhammer Perkins. I could see it even then. I was gonna be a," he took a breath, "a boxer. 'Course, this was back in '35. We didn't know no better.

  "Well, about the time I turned sixteen somethin' happened. I'm sure you can guess. One night I went to bed, normal, with a fat lip from a mean bastard who like to throw after the bell, and the next day when I landed my first punch I broke the boy's nose, upper jaw, half his teeth, and knocked him clear outta the ring." He fell silent for a minute.

  "I take it things didn't go down well."

  "You could say that. A colored boy breaks a white boy's face in southern Louisiana in 1935? Hoo boy, did the white folk raise some stink."

  "I can only imagine."

  He ignored me and kept on talking. "Well, I ran to the army, lied about my age and my name and I signed up for six years. They trained me to carry and shoot a rifle, labor for white officers who thought I was nothin' more than an animal, and when I made sergeant how to give orders an
d get as many of my boys back as I could. I hid what I was and what I could do as best I could, but I just got so fed up with seeing all those people I couldn't help that when I got out I swore I'd do somethin' about it."

  "The Seattle motorcycle gang."

  "Yup. I was fresh out and visitin' a friend who'd been discharged a year earlier when I ran into 'em."

  The Seattle Scorpions were a nasty group of punks who'd been terrorizing the black neighborhoods for almost a year by that point. They were cornering the drug trade and had no problem with killing, raping, or torturing anyone, no matter how old or young, who got in their way. Jackhammer broke them up, delivered several to the police, and killed several of them when they wouldn't surrender during the course of four very intense days.

  "When I took the last of them boys to the police I realized how much I liked standin' up for them that couldn't stand for themselves. So I decided right then and there I was gonna do it as long as I could. I had learned that runnin' away from my troubles had only made them worse, and that I was damn lucky to have made it as far as I had.

  "I made myself that costume because I wanted to stand out. I wanted people to see me and know who I was." He smiled sadly. "I wanted each and every white bastard I met to know that there was one goddamn nigger they had to look up to."

  "I'd have to say that it worked."

  "Eventually."

  I sat there, waiting for him to continue. After a few seconds it became obvious he wasn't going to. "Do you feel like you're sixteen again?"

  "You're damn right I do. I'm tired, son. Dead tired. My wife of thirty years just tried to kill me because I got in the way of her killin' you. One of my best friends just told me it was poison that did it. Another best friend whose style is poisons and other fun surprises couldn't have given it to her, despite the first friend's say so, but I can't trust her enough to talk to her. I can't even talk to my last best friend because his mind is shattered into more pieces than mirror after a fall. The only person I can talk to is you, and you're an admitted murderer with no reason to care one way or the other if I laugh or my dick falls off."

  "Thank you for that wonderful mental image."

  "But I saw what you did, boy. You coulda killed Corrine just as easy as you laid her out. Maybe easier. I don't know how your powers work, but if it's anythin' like my wife's, fine control is a lot harder than blunt force. You coulda killed her, but you didn't, and there ain't a person who was in that room who woulda said anythin' but self defense if asked about it." He hung his head. "I think I was wrong about you, and I want to apologize for that too."

  "No," I said gently. "You don't need to."

  "Yes, I damn well do! Son, for what it's worth, what you did the when you killed them boys might not have been the right thing to do in the eyes of the world, but I don't blame you for it and you ain't gonna be punished for it. You have my word."

  "Thank you," I said. There wasn't much more to say, really.

  "I don't know if I can trust you, but I'm gonna try. You're the only one here who had no access to the food before it was served, so you're the only one here who couldn't have put whatever it was in her food. You ain't psychic, you ain't even subtle, and I get the feelin' poison ain't your style, neither."

  I wasn't going to disabuse him of that idea. Poison wasn't my usual style, but that didn't mean I hadn't used it in the past.

  "So what's the plan?"

  "Well, I can't exactly lock all my friends up, now can I?"

  "No," I said dryly, suppressing the urge to look around the room in a sarcastic manner, "you can't."

  "So, now you can go where you please 'round here. Just don't leave till we have this figured out, alright?" He got to his feet carefully. Inhuman strength plus a broken bone was not a good combination for the unwary.

  I took his outstretched hand and shook it firmly, matching him grip for incredibly powerful grip. "You have my word on it."

  Guild Intelligence File 92-36-55X-7

  Submitted to Guild Intelligence on August 15. Accepted. Archived.

  Prioritized intelligence review begun on December 13. Classified Eyes-Only December 15 due to inclusion in Guild Intelligence File 92-45-16B-1A.

  Excerpt follows:

  Journal entry 652. July 1.

  The weather in Rio is still lovely, if you like hot and steamy outside of a sauna. I'll take mine in a shower, preferably with one of these hot little numbers Clarence has running around, if given a choice. My wife won't care as long as I make sure she's got enough heroin to keep her happy. I should approach Clarence about the possibility of a liaison, or even hiring one to work for me after I leave.

  This mystery man really scares me. I still feel that study was the proper initial response, especially since all signs pointed to a by-the-book sociopath, but now that I've met him and taken some measure of him I feel differently.

  Sometimes I think this smug bastard is playing with us. His ability to adapt to any situation, both mentally and physically, is terrifying. He kills without compunction, but he doesn't do it needlessly --- within his own twisted justification. Since we've been here he has restrained himself, but I can feel it seething right below the surface. If my suspicions are correct and he was a test subject for a super soldier serum, then Allah, Buddha, Siva, and whoever else might be watching protect us. Especially if whoever developed it has tested it on others.

  If only the Titans would agree with my assessment that this man is too dangerous to be allowed to live! But no, they insist on carrying out their mad plan. Clarence agrees with me but is too hidebound when it comes to his idea of duty. He'd follow those fools into the Apocalypse if they told him to. Steamroller seems a little less sure than the others but she'll go along with her husband. Like always.

  If things go sour during this little test they have planned and our test subject somehow survives they'll have to move him again. Clarence will most likely try to kill him and with the Titans backing The Justice Fiend up I see almost no way he would survive, but I have to plan for all contingencies. As such, the only two places I can think they'd move him to are the home compound and Reno and I seriously doubt they'd risk taking him back there.

  I pray it doesn't come to that. I feel a lot safer with Clarence here to keep him in check. If they do move him, that leaves me holding the bag. I'm too old and too tired to be saving the world again. I still have a few days to make up my mind, though.

  I could be wrong, of course. But I really don't think so.

  Chapter 3

  There was no staff. As Jackhammer had so delicately put it; "I can still cook an egg, wipe my ass, and tuck myself in at night. When the day comes I can't do that I'll hire some pretty young thing to help out and shake her ass in my face till Corrine catches her." That certainly limited the possibilities of what had happened and the scope of my investigation. It didn't answer the question of why I was looking into this, though.

  That answer was actually quite simple. I wanted to know who the hell had tried to kill me so I could return the favor.

  Perhaps revenge was an unworthy motive. It was petty. By that same token, however, self defense was always appropriate --- unless you were trying to commit assisted suicide. It depended on how you looked at it, and I always tried to take the long view. In this case the long view involved me walking and talking in the short term as well. That wasn't petty.

  The way I saw it I had only a few likely scenarios. The more outlandish ones, like a far-reaching conspiracy against Jackhammer, the Guild, whatever, weren't likely. Besides, the signs weren't there.

  Most likely was a simple tampering by Venom. She had the opportunity (even if Jackhammer said she hadn't touched the oatmeal) and means, but motive was suspect. Why go out of your way to seemingly befriend me only to try to kill me the next morning, especially in such a second-hand manner? Of course, that did open the door to another attempt if the first one failed, all while allaying suspicion, so I couldn't dismiss it out of hand, but why attempt the murder in such a w
ay as to point the finger so solidly at yourself while doing so?

  Next likely was a joint attack, Venom and Corrine working together. Venom gives her something to give her an excuse, fingers get pointed, no evidence is found, and while people look at her strangely, Venom walks away unscathed and the target is taken care of. The problem with that was the same problem with the first situation. Why go through the trouble of slipping me the antidote the night before when keeping me drugged would have made me slower and an easier target?

  Almost as likely was an actual attempt on Corrine's life. Get her mad, get her to attack me, and I defend myself in my usual fashion. Scratch one super hero. I'd probably be forced to defend myself against Jackhammer and Wildcard, too, for that matter. Scratch three super heroes, unless one of them was in on it. But again, why do it in a manner that so solidly implicated yourself?

  It didn't make sense to me when something far more subtle would have done it cleaner, quieter, and cast suspicion elsewhere. Or made it look like natural causes. If you can make a firebomb from a brick of cheese and a deck of playing cards you can make a poison that kills without looking like poison. It happened in hospitals all the time --- a massive injection of insulin through a mole or other skin blemish looked like a heart attack. Cyanide too, unless there's an autopsy, and even then it was often missed.

  No, something just didn't sit right with any of these possibilities. Especially since Venom had had access to me while I'd been asleep. If she wanted me dead, I'd be dead.