Fiasco Heights

by Zack Archer

  “They always were,” Atlas replied.

  “They said something about wanting to be who they were meant to be. They said they wanted … freedom.”

  “They have legitimate complaints,” Atlas said. “But their methods are all wrong. You don’t murder people to prove you’re right.”

  “Maybe there’s a way to talk to them,” I said. “Maybe there’s a way to work everything out.”

  “Fuck that,” Splinter said. “The only good villain is a dead one.”

  “The only thing those mothers understand is violence,” the Kaptain said, nodding. “They hit you, you hit ‘em right the fuck back.”

  “Forced sterilization for the villains,” Lyric said, adjusting her brace. “Isn’t that what Greylock was talking about before?”

  Atlas held up his hands, silencing the others. “Everyone born on this planet possesses a selfish gene, Quincy. In a sense, we’re all the same. For instance, I have the ability to kill and destroy just like the Morningstars, but I choose not to. That said, sterilization and brute violence aren’t necessarily the way.”

  “Then what is?” Splinter asked.

  “Hearts and minds,” Atlas replied. “We have to make them see the error of their ways. We have to create the space for them to make the right decisions.”

  “Atlas, I love you, brother,” Kaptain Khaos said, “but that’s some straight-up bullshit.”

  “It’s my dream,” Atlas said. “I pray that I’ll live long enough to see all of us come together again.”

  “Speaking of that,” I said. “They also told me they wanted the trap bottle.”

  Atlas nodded and looked to Aurora who patted her rucksack, the one that contained the bottle she took back at the Pythia building.

  “There’s been an evolution in our plans, Quincy. We no longer have the luxury of time. Even though they don’t know precisely where we are, given that Madcap and The Showstopper attacked you back there, it likely means Big Dread, the Barrister, and all the others will be coming soon.”

  “What do we do?” I asked.

  “We have no choice now. We must go and seek his guidance,” Aurora said.

  “Who?”

  “The man who sees all,” Atlas replied. “The builder. The Polymath.”

  The others trudged off, and I called out: “Wait!”

  They stopped and looked back. “We just blew up a ship with cops on it and one of the rulers of the city, the Harbinger or whatever the villain is, is probably out looking for us, right?”

  Atlas nodded.

  “Doesn’t that sorta make us…traitors?”

  Atlas grinned. “If this is treason, then let’s make the most of it. “

  21

  It turns out that the scaffolding was part of a large construction project to enhance the underground city that was begun, but never finished, years earlier. You’d think a group of superheroes wouldn’t have to crawl inch by inch down a two-hundred-foot wall of the stuff, but that’s what we had to do. I’m kind of afraid of heights, which didn’t help things, and the sheer bulk of Atlas and the others meant that the maze swayed back and forth as if it might collapse at any moment.

  Luckily, Splinter and Kaptain Khaos made sure to steady the scaffolding as I slowly descended, rucksack over one shoulder. Splinter was above me, and the Kaptain was several feet below me.

  “So how was it, Q?” Kaptain Khaos asked.

  “What?”

  “What do you think, bro, your inaugural voyage to the golden baths. We know Lyric took you on a sight-seeing trip. The ultimate golden shower.”

  “It was okay,” I said, trying to be cool.

  “It was better than that, wasn’t it?” the Kaptain asked. “Did you do the deed with her? C’mon, you can confide in the Kaptain.”

  I nodded, and the Kaptain grinned. “My man,” he said, smacking me on the leg. “You gonna share any deets?”

  “You really want to hear them?”

  “Nah, not really, but Splint might. I mean he is her brother after all.”

  My stomach lurched, and I was suddenly light-headed. I looked up at Splinter and prayed he wasn’t about to kick me off of the scaffolding. He glared at me for several seconds, and then grinned. “We’re just fucking with you, man.”

  “It wasn’t all fun and games, was it?” the Kaptain asked.

  I shook my head. “There was a woman with us and some other people. Madcap turned them into…metal statues.”

  “That’s what the fucker does,” Splinter replied. “He gets off on it. That’s why we can never make peace with them. I don’t care what Atlas says. All the black-hats understand is violence.”

  The Kaptain tapped his fingers on the scaffolding. “Madcap and his bro are two of the worst of them. They’ve got serious anger issues.”

  Splinter nodded. “It’s like that old quote, that every problem in the universe goes back to fathers and sons.”

  “What does that mean?” I asked.

  Splinter looked down at me. “All three brothers, Madcap, The Showstopper, and Damnation Man, were sons of Vigilant, Greylock’s right-hand man.”

  “Jesus,” I muttered.

  “Bastard sons is more like it,” Kaptain Khaos said. “Vigilant was never joined to their mothers, and he never recognized them.”

  “Hell, he and Greylock played a role in tossing two of ‘em into prison,” Splinter added.

  “As you can imagine, they kinda had it out for dear old dad after he did that to ‘em,” Kaptain Khaos said. “That’s why Aurora got Atlas to start up the Shadow Catchers. She realized Greylock and the other Elementals needed somebody around to watch their sixes if you know what I’m saying.”

  “You guys didn’t do a very good job,” I replied.

  Splinter pinned me with a look. “We stopped at least nineteen assassination attempts, ace. Nobody could watch Greylock and the others all of the time. He wouldn’t let us. And that’s what’s eating up Aurora the most, the fact that we failed them when they needed us most.”

  I wanted to ask more questions, but before I could, we reached the bottom of the scaffolding. Splinter followed the others, but I stayed behind, mesmerized by Kaptain Khaos who was standing, eyes closed, striking a polyrhythmic beat on the scaffolding, then he stopped mid-beat and held out his hands as if he was able to inhale the groove somehow. I could feel a low-grade tremor under my feet, and then the Kaptain opened his eyes.

  “How the hell do you do that?” I asked. “How do you create the quakes?”

  Kaptain Khaos closed his eyes again. “Do you hear that?”

  “I hear the same thing I always hear,” I answered.

  “A distant humming note?”

  I shrugged. “White noise.”

  The Kaptain smiled. “It’s a little more than that. That sound is a universal field of energy that’s the source of all life. Some people call it the Holy Spirit, but I say it’s the call of the galaxy, my friend. Only some animals and a few folks like you and me can hear it.”

  “Yeah, lucky us.”

  “Don’t scoff at it, brother. It’s a powerful thing. The power in it is what allows both of us to do what we do.” The Kaptain pulled out his drumsticks and pounded out another beat. “In a way, it’s like four-four time, y’know? Common time, which is why I refer to the call of the universe as the galaxy’s Stomp Groove.”

  The Kaptain pointed to one of the tattoos on his arm. I recognized the ink as one of the Amphion variety. Back in the day, several companies had created sound wave tattoos, ink that captured an audio bit in a visual wavelength and then shot it through a microscopic, magnetic speaker implanted under the skin.

  Then Amphion came along ten years back and actually embedded music in the body, sealing miniature bits inside flexible silicon and titanium/graphene mesh that was located just under the surface of the skin, covered by tattoos. The bits contained audio files and were synched to those same speakers so that you could listen to hundreds or thousands of songs, simply by tapping your t
attoos. The Kaptain tapped on his tat, amping the volume as a backbeat began.

  “I made that myself,” the Kaptain said. “Got this ink on my mission in New Orleans. Couldn’t get that white noise outta my head, so I turned a positive into a negative.” He moved along to the beat, smiling. “That’s what I’m talking about. That’s the cosmic groove.”

  Watching the Kaptain continue to drum, I smiled at his prowess with the sticks. Then he stopped drumming and pointed the sticks at me. “You just need to focus on that noise and get behind the beat, Q. Once you do that, you’ll be amazed at how powerful your feat becomes.”

  I thanked him for the words of encouragement, and then we struck off down through a chute in the side of the pit.

  Moving quickly and efficiently, we made good time, crouch-running through the chute which dropped in certain sections and rose in others.

  I stopped to remove the tourniquet that Aurora had tied and was shocked to see that my wound had healed.

  Glancing back up, I realized I’d fallen behind, but thankfully Liberty was still visible waiting for me.

  “She wrapped your arm in an energy bandage that marinated the wound in clotting promoters and magnetic, tissue-regeneration nanoparticles,” she said.

  “I don’t understand a word you just said.”

  She smiled. “Aurora fixed you up.”

  “Glad she was around to save me.”

  She drifted back and took my hand. “Just as you were around to do the same for me. Thank you for back there,” she whispered. “You probably saved my life.”

  “Just doing what you guys would’ve done for me.”

  She reached out a finger and drew a circle around my lips. It was a small, intimate gesture, and somehow one of the sexiest things anyone had ever done to me.

  A ghost of a smile played on her lips. “You are greater than you know, Quincy. You have vast stores of untapped energy inside you.”

  “That’s true,” I replied, not knowing what else to say.

  “I hope you’ll save some of it for me.”

  I almost lost the power of speech at that moment, but somehow managed to nod and mumble something like an idiot. Liberty pressed her finger to my nose and then we took off after the others.

  22

  Ten minutes later, the chute ended at an opening in the rock that revealed a valley, and what looked like another world hidden underground. There was this valley dotted with rocky outcroppings, and a wind-abraded plain of what looked like ash or pumice, and what appeared to be clusters of enormous bleached bones. A pathway of stone lozenges bisected the plain, snaking up to a small city, a cluster of buildings. A rusted metal wall formed a chaotic fringe around the city.

  There were a dozen structures inside the wall, each one a different shape and size. As we advanced, I noticed several stone domes, a pillared plaza, what looked like a cathedral constructed entirely of colored glass, and rising up over everything, like some pagan idol, a dingy pewter tower.

  “That’s where he lives,” Atlas said, pointing at the tower. “That’s the domain of the Polymath.”

  “Why does he live down here?” I asked.

  “He’s near the end of his journey,” Atlas said. “He loses a significant portion of his life essence every time he creates something. He did his part to birth our world, and now he prefers solitude.”

  “Very few people even know that he’s still alive,” Aurora said.

  “Looks like the kind of place someone would go to when they don’t want to be found. Question is, does he know we’re coming?” I asked.

  Splinter shook his head. “And I imagine he’s gonna be pissed when he finds out we’re here. From what I hear, the fucker can be mercurial.”

  “It’s worth the risk,” Atlas said. “He’s the only one who knows where the Light Breaker is hidden.”

  We followed the pathway, and I noticed how quiet the area was. There was no breeze, no sign of life anywhere, the entire landscape lit by an unnatural light that glowed up near the roof of the space, hundreds of feet above us. I imagined that the Polymath designed and built the place as a refuge, a place where he could come to get away from everything.

  I walked alongside Splinter who kicked at the ground. “This place is so fucking sterile,” he said. “The whole planet. Did you know the climate is actually programmed by the Elect?”

  I shook my head.

  “Every day is pretty much the same in the Upperworld. Sunny. A slight breeze.”

  “Sounds like perfection,” I said.

  “Sure is…for a while. Then it drives you out of your fucking mind.”

  “It’s like San Diego or Melbourne with villains and superheroes,” Kaptain Khaos offered.

  “I miss the seasons back on Earth, man,” Splinter said. “Hell, I can’t believe I’m saying it, but I miss the snow!”

  “Yeah, ‘cause it helps you grow thicker bark,” the Kaptain said as Splinter threw a mock jab in his direction.

  “Snow’s a pain in the ass,” I said.

  Splinter nodded. “Sure is. But sometimes it’s those little things that make you remember you’re really alive as opposed to just…existing.”

  We trudged on, and I laughed as Splinter and the Kaptain continued to needle each other. I was surprised at how quickly I’d adjusted to everything. Only a few hours before, I was beginning my shift at Pythia and now I was laughing and fighting alongside a pack of superheroes. It helped that Splinter and the Kaptain and all the others were down-to-earth and unlike almost everyone I knew back on Earth, all my purported friends, they seemed to respect me. More particularly, they weren’t using me as a prop for drinking games like Harker or Renfro, or treating me like a sideshow freak like most of my co-workers at Pythia (aside from Leon). In other words, they weren’t using me, but instead, were treating me as a colleague…an equal.

  “Do you think we can do this?” I asked.

  Kaptain Khaos chewed on his lips. “We’re already doing it. Besides, we don’t have any choice, Q. We either succeed, or you can kiss everything else goodbye.”

  Moments later, we stood outside the metal wall.

  Atlas broke a lock on the front gate and shouldered the metal doors open. The area on the other side looked like one of those ghost towns, like the ones in Japan and Russia, which were deserted after a nuclear disaster. All of the structures were intact, but eerily lifeless, sheened in an inch of grayish black grit.

  We strode through the center of the town and ascended the stone steps that fronted the tower. The main door was open, and as soon as we entered, I drew in a sudden breath. Something was seriously wrong.

  For starters, the interior of the tower was significantly larger than it had appeared from the outside. I didn’t know whether it was some superhero’s illusion or a figment of my imagination, but it was readily apparent as I did a circuit of the interior space.

  There was an entry hall, circular in design, that was centered by what I assumed was a metal staircase, broad and curving, that rose up through the tower, leading up to the lair of the Polymath, situated some unknowable distance overhead.

  But the most impressive and challenging feature of the staircase was how it branched off into a countless number of different directions, like the arms of an octopus, angled in such a way that it looked impossible to mount.

  “It was designed intentionally to thwart the curious,” Atlas said.

  “And us,” I said. “How are we going to climb that thing?”

  “There’s only one path through it,” Aurora said.

  “I think I know the way,” Atlas said.

  I quirked an eyebrow. “You think?”

  Everyone secured their gear and followed Atlas, who placed a foot on the lowest tread and began hauling himself up.

  “How old is the Polymath?” I asked.

  “Ageless,” Aurora said.

  “And his wisdom apparently defies description,” Splinter said.

  “Dude’s nickname’s the Ancient of Days,” Kapta
in Khaos added.

  Whether it was a play of light or my imagination, I soon saw that the staircase seemed to expand the higher we climbed, spreading out, populating the other spaces beyond my peripheral line of sight. “Is it just me—”

  “Nope,” Liberty said, reading my mind. “The thing’s alive. It’s expanding and evolving.”

  “The Polymath probably did it on purpose,” Kaptain Khaos said. “To throw off any unwanted visitors.”

  “To fuck with us,” Splinter added.

  Thankfully, we had Atlas to guide us. The big man never looked back or uttered a word. He just set his jaw in a look of grim determination and continued hiking up the staircase, moving left, then right, ignoring the ever-enlarging staircase, following some unseen course that only he was aware of.

  The higher we climbed, the more I felt a change in temperature.

  It had grown cold, probably down around forty or fifty degrees.

  I shivered and looked back and then wished I hadn’t. The bottom of the tower could no longer be seen and the angle at which we were positioned made it appear as if we were standing on the edge of a pyramid.

  Hands grabbed me, and I looked back to Liberty and Lyric. They took my hands, and the three of us moved with great precision up over the remaining portion of the staircase until we were standing on a pad before a featureless slab of black rock that hung from three of the largest metal hinges I had ever seen.

  Atlas traded looks with us and then placed a hand on the rock.

  Sparks flew and Atlas pulled his hand back as if he’d been scalded.

  The rock trembled and slid sideways to provide us with a glimpse of an inner sanctum, a circular room splashed in an orange light where a very tall (over seven feet in height), very thin man in a white robe stood with his back to us. He was constructing objects in the air, building what looked like a floating puzzle with spinning, translucent tesseracts.