by Matt Cowper
“No, William!” the Giftgiver said.
“But he––”
“I know what he did, but lashing out like this is exactly what he wants us to do,” the Giftgiver said. “Remember: rage clouds the mind.”
The man stepped back, but he was still panting and staring ultimatium daggers at Nightstriker. “She better be OK, Nightstriker. If she isn’t––”
“She’ll be fine in a few hours,” Nightstriker said. “At least, she’ll have escaped from the mental hell I put her in. This experience will haunt her for a long time, however. I warned you, Giftgiver. I wouldn’t try that again, unless you want all your mind-readers to end up half-comatose and mentally scarred for life.”
The Giftgiver stared at Nightstriker, then down at Kezia. Nightstriker couldn’t quite read his expression. Was he disappointed in the girl? Angry at Nightstriker for disabling one of his foot soldiers? “My friends, please take Kezia back to our hideout. I’d like to talk with Nightstriker alone.”
“But, sir, he’s dangerous––”
“Indeed he is. I, however, am also dangerous. Leave us. I’ll be fine.”
The other superhumans picked up Kezia and carried her away. Their footsteps echoed through the empty warehouse, and their hushed voices sounded ghostly. They exited through a rusted door on the far wall, and then it was just Nightstriker, the Giftgiver, and the rodents and insects that made this warehouse their home.
“You will help me, Nightstriker,” the Giftgiver said firmly. “I have several other telepaths, but I do not need mind-readers to break you. I have numerous superhumans with all sorts of useful powers. For example, I have three people who can resurrect the dead. Suppose I disemboweled you over and over, only to return you to life after you perished? Could you stand that agony for weeks on end?”
“Yes,” Nightstriker said bluntly. “Do your worst, Giftgiver. Though, I must say, your hypocrisy amazes me. You were just talking about your golden age, about how you weren’t going to liquidate anyone, and you just tried to invade my mind, and now you’re threatening me with endless torture.”
“I actually find torture distasteful, but I need what’s in your mind – and I will have it.”
“What do you want to know? Maybe if you asked nicely, I’d tell you.”
“We both know that isn’t true,” the Giftgiver said. “As to what I want to know: I want to know everything. I did not capture you just to remove you as a threat. I also need your help training my followers.”
“You really think––”
“No, you won’t help me willingly. But the knowledge I require is there inside your brain, waiting to be plucked out. You know more about superhuman abilities than anyone on the planet. I admit that my own knowledge is far inferior, and you are correct that my followers are poorly trained. But with the unique mental encyclopedia you possess, I can rectify that problem.”
“I see,” Nightstriker said. “Good luck, Giftgiver. You’ll need it to get inside this mind.”
“I do, actually, have several followers with the ability to tilt odds in someone’s favor. Perhaps I’ll use them. Or perhaps I’ll disembowel you and resurrect you, as I threatened. We shall see. I will return shortly, after I make sure Kezia recovers, and put other plans in motion. I would use this interlude to get some rest, Nightstriker – it will be the last you’ll get for some time.”
He walked towards the rusted door, robes swishing. Before he stepped out, he looked back, maybe expecting Nightstriker to yell something in defiance. When he didn’t, the Giftgiver shut the door, leaving him alone.
Nightstriker immediately began straining against the chains and looking around the warehouse, weighing options, trying to find a way out of his restraints, but the door opened and three people stepped through. They didn’t manifest their powers in ways he could detect, but they were clearly the Giftgiver’s followers on guard duty.
They arranged themselves around him, glaring at him with a mixture of amusement and scorn. He expected verbal taunts, maybe even some physical abuse, but the Giftgiver had probably instructed them to remain silent.
Nightstriker considered taunting them himself, in the hopes that they’d do something stupid, but decided against it. The Giftgiver was right: he needed to gird himself for the coming onslaught. He closed his eyes and began preparing his other defenses, moving memories and thoughts around like tanks and infantry regiments.
Chapter Fifteen
Blaze
They’d been searching the forest area where the Giftgiver’s followers had lived for twenty-four hours, and they’d found nothing. Not even a fingernail clipping or a scrap of paper. It was like the place had been scoured on a molecular level.
It probably had. The Giftgiver surely had someone in his cult capable of erasing all traces of human habitation. He probably had access to every sort of superpower Sam could think of, and plenty he couldn’t. The more Sam thought about it, the more impossible their situation seemed.
Even more depressing was the fact that Sam was virtually useless in this search. He could fly around and look closely at every tree, shrub, and rock, but it was clearly a waste of time. His fire powers were for blasting stuff and for protection, not for tracking.
It wasn’t very comforting to know that Slab was equally useless. His teammate could do little besides poke at the leaves with his rock-fingers and stare at tree bark with microscopic lenses.
Buckshot’s enhanced senses gave him an edge, but he claimed he couldn’t see, hear, or smell anything unusual – “plus I drank a bit too much earlier. Messes me up. Sorry ya’ll.”
With her tech, Metal Gal was ostensibly the most useful one among them. But she’d scanned everything within a five miles radius through every spectrum she could, and hadn’t come up with a single scrap of evidence. She continued scanning, but she couldn’t hide her frustration.
Nightstriker had tracking devices implanted in both his body and his costume – he really did think of everything, Sam marveled – but the staff at the Beacon had lost their signals as soon as he was captured. They were likely destroyed, or tossed into another dimension.
Sam flew down to where Beverly Gillespie was looking at a rock she’d overturned. The Secretary of Superhuman Affairs had put her other responsibilities on hold to aid them in their search; it was an unspoken agreement that she’d be leading the team until Nightstriker was freed.
Sam didn’t know much about Gillespie – Nightstriker had been the liaison between the Elites and the government – but she was quickly earning his respect. None of them had slept since Nightstriker was captured, and Sam was yawning every five seconds. Gillespie, though, only seemed to become more driven as the hours ticked by.
“Found anything?” Sam asked.
“Nothing but worms,” Gillespie said, standing up. She was dressed in khakis, sturdy work boots, and a thick cotton shirt. The bugs, heat, uneven terrain, and scratching thorns didn’t seem to bother her. Sam conceived of Cabinet-level secretaries as people accustomed to air-conditioned offices and comfortable leather chairs. But Gillespie seemed completely in her element, more so even than Buckshot, who claimed to love the outdoors, especially when there was game around that he could shoot.
Again, Sam yawned. He didn’t want to yawn around the relentless Gillespie, but he couldn’t help it.
Gillespie smiled in an almost motherly way. She hadn’t so much as chuckled since she’d joined the team, and Sam was thrown off balance. “You should get some sleep. You won’t be helpful to anyone if you’re dead on your feet.”
“I’ll get some sleep when you do,” Sam replied.
Gillespie shook her head, and now she looked heavyhearted. “I told Nightstriker to get some rest before he was abducted, and I of course ignored my own advice then – like I’m telling you to get some rest now, while I have no intention of getting some myself.”
“Sort of ironic, I guess,” Sam said.
“More like an insoluble management problem,” Gillespie said. “Ver
y well, Sam – continue searching until you collapse. I can’t do anything do stop you.”
Sam grinned. “I don’t know, maybe a good scolding will convince me.”
“Oh, trust me – the last thing you want is a scolding from me. Even Nightstriker gets unnerved when I really turn the screw.”
“Nightstriker….” Sam’s flames flickered weakly, like fireflies. “I hope he’s OK….”
Gillespie squeezed his shoulder. “I don’t want to be cruel, but I don’t believe the Giftgiver will treat him like a distinguished guest. But no man is tougher than Nightstriker. They won’t break him. In fact, he’ll probably escape and make them look like fools, and then he’ll somehow return to the Beacon and growl at us all for being lazy.”
Sam laughed, and his flames seemed to dance merrily. “That’d be just like him. He really is as great as the legends say. How did he get like that, though? Plenty of superheroes train hard, but he’s better than all of us, and he doesn’t have any powers.”
“Some people are just fated to be excellent,” Gillespie said. “Consider professional sports. Most players have to continuously strive to maintain their edge, but there are some who rise above all others. That’s Nightstriker. When good genetics combine with a singular will, you get a once-in-a-generation talent.”
“And we failed him,” Sam said. “He’d exhausted himself trying to lead this team. We all saw how tired he was, but no one offered to help ease his load. We were just worried about ourselves, about our own feelings.”
“Nightstriker wouldn’t have let you share his burden – though he did turn a corner, judging from the testimony of you and your teammates. You played a large role in that, Blaze.”
“I guess,” Sam muttered. “But we still––”
“Alright, enough,” Gillespie snapped. “We all feel terrible about what happened, and there’s nothing wrong with talking it out. But if you really want to express your feelings, schedule a session with one of our psychiatrists. Now, however, if you’re not going to get some rest, it’s time to get back to work.”
Sam grinned. “Yes, ma’am. But I feel like we’ve done all we can here. Why aren’t we interrogating Anna? She has to know something! We can get her to talk, like Nightstriker got Randall Macomber to talk.”
Anna was the name of the gaseous superhuman Metal Gal had vacuumed out of Sam. After the battle, they’d returned to the Beacon and Gal had transferred her to a containment unit in one of the labs. But while they could contain Anna, they couldn’t find a way to harm her, and Anna certainly wasn’t going to transform back into her human form, if she was even still capable of doing so. All she’d told them was her name and how the Giftgiver was going to remake the world.
Sam was getting tired of hearing that phrase….
“The scientists are still trying to determine Anna’s composition,” Gillespie said. “There are dozens of other worlds, and we’ve done our best to catalog their various properties, but we haven’t found everything – mainly because many of those worlds are inhabited by beings hostile to us. And Anna may have been lying when she told you her form was not of this world. It may be magical in nature, for example – and if it is, then science cannot tell us what we need to know.”
“Then why don’t you find some warlocks or whatever?” Sam said. “Or why aren’t we shaking down superhuman thugs in Z City? Someone has to know something about the Giftgiver!”
“I’ve already asked for help from several magic-based superhumans,” Gillespie said, “and others are tearing through Z City’s underbelly. I’m using every resource at my disposal, Sam – but this is our biggest lead. I know Nightstriker searched this area already, and we haven’t found anything ourselves, but I refuse to believe they could remove every trace, down to the last atom. I have dealt with situations like this before, and there’s always something left.”
“You have? When?”
“I was in the Superhuman Support Squad.”
“Wow. The Triple S. I…I didn’t know….”
“Perhaps you should have read my bio? It’s right there on the White House website.”
“Yeah…uh…guess I should have….”
“Don’t worry, I won’t suspend you. I was mostly joking anyway – yes, I do joke once in a while.” She bent down and turned over another rock, but like every other rock they’d examined, there was nothing underneath but moist earth and insects. “Being on the Triple S taught me most of what I know about superhumans – and I believe it’s given me an edge on Nightstriker in some areas. We all know he operated solo for most of his career, and while there are obvious benefits to that, working with a team means you learn things you never would by yourself. One of the most obvious ones is that the more eyes you have working on a task, the more you’ll see.”
“I think he’d just came to that realization,” Sam said, “but then he was captured. It’s like…like fate was laughing at him….”
“We’ll find him. Or, as I said, he’ll find us when he escapes. I don’t believe much in fate myself, but I’m almost certain Nightstriker isn’t fated to die just yet.” She checked her watch. “It’s nearly lunchtime. Continue searching for a half hour, then we’ll meet up, eat, and discuss our progress.”
Sam returned to the sky, returned to the tedious job of squinting at everything from horizon to horizon. He still wasn’t convinced they were working productively, but Gillespie was in charge, and she had more experience than any of them.
But whenever he flew over to a suspicious-looking tree, only to see it was dead, perhaps having been struck by lightning or ravaged by parasites, he thought of Nightstriker, and fought back the urge to incinerate the thing with a fireball.
He needed to be focused, not throwing temper tantrums. If any one of them had been captured, Nightstriker wouldn’t rest until he found them. He’d be out here searching relentlessly, even though he’d already done so and was convinced there was nothing to find.
Thirty minutes later, Sam flew down to their designated meeting point. Gillespie, his teammates, and various other civilians who were helping with the search were standing around several large coolers they’d transported up here on Jeep XPs. Sandwiches and drinks were doled out, and everyone began scarfing down their lunch. Thankfully, Gillespie had made sure there was more than enough food; several members of the search party had shown up with stomachs growling like guard dogs, and gladly took seconds.
After everyone was finished, Gillespie motioned to the Elites, and they all walked a few feet from the group, by an overlook that a travel brochure would probably call “enchanting.” Sam wished he could’ve admired the undulating hills below, but instead he felt like the view – and this entire place – was taunting him with its indifferent peacefulness.
“Has anyone found anything?” Gillespie asked.
One by one, each member of the Elites reported on their progress – or lack thereof. No one had seen, heard, smelled, or scanned anything out of the ordinary. Like Sam, everyone looked dejected, tired, and angry at this mountain forest.
“I’ve stared so hard at moss-covered rocks my eyes are crossed,” Buckshot said. “I want to find the boss man as bad as anyone – though he’s a massive burr in my saddle – but what else can we do here, Gillespie?”
“Yeah, we’re just walking around like lost hikers,” Slab said. “I mean, I’m meant to pound stuff. I’m not a tracker.”
“We keep looking,” Gillespie said firmly. “Though they no doubt used superpowers to cover their tracks, no superpower is infallible. Metal Gal proved that when she countered that cloaking power during your second battle with the Giftgiver’s followers. There is something here, and there is a way to find it – we’re just not thinking outside the box.”
There was that phrase Sam’s father loved. But unlike when he’d used Metal Gal to cancel the jungle training program, Sam couldn’t think of a way to solve this conundrum. Nightstriker had said he’d been brilliant to come up with that…but now, when Nightstriker reall
y needed him, his mind was empty.
“Wait a sec,” Buckshot said. He suddenly looked more focused, and everyone tensed up; when his grinning, sarcastic demeanor changed, something was up. “All the time I’ve spent hunting, and I didn’t think of this until just now. What do all animals need?”
“Just tell us,” Gillespie said. “We don’t have time for guessing games.”
“Food, water, and sex! Well, the sex is mainly for procreation – except for dolphins, I’ve heard they’re pretty randy – but all animals gotta eat and drink! And if some humans are nearby and tossing out garbage – or leaving out stuff just for the animals to eat – well, ya’ll can put two and two together, can’t you?”
“Uh, no,” Slab said. “I’m lost, man.”
“I’m beginning to see your point, Buckshot,” Gillespie said, suddenly energized.
“Well, at least one of ya’ll ain’t as dense as a mule! We know the Giftgiver had folks able to erase everything – the cabins they supposedly lived in, their garbage, even their spit, probably. But if they lived here for any length of time, animals ate something they had – and I bet the Giftgiver didn’t think to erase that stuff. Why, they’d probably have to kill every animal in the area just be sure, and you can take one look around and see they didn’t do no such thing.”
“Wait…you’re saying we should…analyze animal poop?” Metal Gal asked.
“Yup!” Buckshot said, giving his cowboy hat a twirl. “We can also capture the critters and have a look-see inside their bellies, see if they’ve eaten something that ain’t been crapped out yet.”
“We also capture every animal in the vicinity…and analyze their stomach contents?” Metal Gal said.
“Yup!”
“But that…that’s probably impossible!” Metal Gal said.
“Nothing’s impossible!” Sam said, heat rippling off his body in his excitement. “OK, that sounded corny, but I know we can do this!”