Big Superhero Action (22 page)

Xoir shot two of them off their cycles.

Man Mafia’s hands popped with machine pistols, he shot two more Sirens off their cycles.

Falling Sirens tumbled, a rain of beautiful women, a shower of blood drops in three colors.

Two of them were in a firefight with Man Mafia and Xoir.

Dr. Playground crunched debris toward the leveled wall, the rainy street outside.

MMMM MMMM MMMM MMMM
….

Poor Kieran. No wonder he had become afraid of Chase. Chase belonged to an impossible world. It was a world without love or warmth or soul. He could only kiss Kieran’s soft lips one final time and watch him sink like Leonardo in
Titanic
. The ones who lived were all so silly and pointless, wanting things that didn’t matter. It was a sad world and somebody had to care. Even if it was a boy in a silly mask and a silly costume.

This was his chance to die. And Kill Dr. Playground.

MMMM MMMM MMMM MMMM
…That was the song he would die to. He took off flying toward the Doctor.

T
he Carousel landed the G6 one block from the OSD jet. He switched on AXIS war music, “Fight the Power.” He worked on AXIS war strategy. Then he went Martian Justice.

The Sirens were plugged into Bjork, “Human Behavior,” while they armed themselves. Outside they “unpacked” the Siren cycles, got mounted.

Rock Hero’s song was “V2 Schneider” from the
Heroes
album, working his way toward the title song when it was time to take off. He did the recon.

Martian Justice assembled the AXIS team in the rain. Rock Hero gave them the recon.

“Four in the McDonald’s. Dr. Playground, Xoir, three Mafias in full-exo, the Kid in the Picture. One story, extra-large McDonald’s, high ceiling. A front entrance. One rear entrance. Nobody in the G6.”

Mermaid Gangster: “No taking them separately this time.”

Martian Justice: “This one is a direct attack. The Sirens take the roof, strike from above. Gingiri, find the Kid, secure him. The moment I kill Dr. Playground get the Kid off the atoll. If it’s me, get the Kid off the atoll. Fly hard and fast. Rock, you move the OSD jet and cut off their escape. Me, I level the front wall. Any questions? Good.”

The Siren cycles switched to anti-gravity, the Sirens rode them up the wall in single file. They reached the roof, rolled horizontal.

Martian Justice extended his shoulders, elevated the missile launcher pods, set the shock waves at minimum to protect the hostage. He set his guns from regeneration to destruction. The Motorchrists were crowd control. This was warfare.

Two Man Mafia clones came out of the McDonald’s in exoframe. They exo-morphed to full size, extended their big guns, lined up blue laser channels on Martian Justice’s chest. The channels whirled, spun, clicked, looked next generation, tattoos of light in three shades of blue. Facing two advanced heavily-armed exoframes, Martian Justice realized this could go bad.

Martian Justice set his voice at loudspeaker.

THIS IS AXIS. RELEASE CHASE JUNIPER IN FIFTEEN SECONDS OR DIE
.

He waited for a response.

THIS IS THE OSD. FUCK OFF OR DIE
.

The Man Mafias raised missile pods, fired them at Martian Justice. He dove into the street through the asphalt, billion-degree heat melting the surface.

He rock-swam back up through asphalt, broke surface arm pods aiming. Pod 1 took out the front wall, Pod 2 took out one of the Mafias.

One blue laser channel went dark.

Martian Justice swiveled, cut the other laser channel target two-thirds.

The second Man Mafia fired, took off a chunk of Martian chest plating. Martian Justice’s three hearts blinked. The channel hit his face, the next shot took out his right eye. He gripped the D-core guns, fired back, shredded Mafia exoframe without taking him off his feet.

From the McDonald’s Dr. Playground emerged heading toward the street. The insane came to him. No way. No fucking way. This was stupid. This was suicide. But it was the mind he worked with and the way it worked. He was a scientist first.

Martian Justice raised his hands. “Truce. From one scientist to another, let’s compare notes.”

Dr. Playground said, “Cool it.”

Man Mafia lowered his guns.

Dr. Playground said, “What are you thinking, MJ?”

“Simon, we’re the only two people in the world who can compare notes on this.”

Dr. Playground said, “You are a superhero. Milo Spector is a scientist. I talk to Milo.”

“Then I talk to Simon Stranko.”

“Like shit you will. Take your chances, Milo. Then it’s a truce.”

No fucking way. But risk came with the occupation of pursuing knowledge. And he was counting on the same mentality on the other side. He closed Martian Justice, produced a hologram of Milo Spector.

Dr. Playground looked down at him. “Hello again, Milo. Been a while. Compare notes you said?”

“Exactly what do you make of it?”

“Just two scientists having a confab in the rain, is that it?”

“Why not?”

“My theory is Brutalia is a virus and the Kid is a carrier.”

“Viral space? Not bad.”

“You have a theory?”

“The city can be stretched. The way space and time are bended by deformation.”

“Not bad.”

“Why the Kid?”

“Haven’t found out.”

“Any abnormalities?”

“Unlike the Unidentified Flying Behemoth, zero. He’s a normal boy. He’s in the normal range in all categories. He is fifteen, in perfect physical condition. Apart from the norm in that his IQ is 170. He is homosexual. His parents are dead. Music makes him fly.”

“What music?”

“The songs on his playlist. He’s an eclectic boy.”

“We have to figure him out.”

Dr. Playground: “Me first.”

“If he’s normal then anyone can use the key.”

“Then why can’t they? Anyone can do math but not everyone is a savant. Is that it?”

“Let’s say it is,” Spector said. “A savant does not know he is a savant. And he processes without effort.”

“True.”

“What is the Kid a savant at?”

“Processing and calculation.”

“What is the Kid processing?”

“This is like old times, Milo. The Kid is processing data we all receive.”

“Have you tested him for memory retention?”

“Now I’m embarrassed to say not.”

“Don’t be surprised if he tests superior.”

The rain picked up a shade heavier. Spector took out his pipe, lit it. Somehow the rain avoided the flame. Somehow being around Simon Stranko stimulated his brain like in the old days at KM. He felt it where his memory used to be.

He said, “Let’s start with the city. What is it? Is it a creation of KM labs? Was it created for the Pentagon in the ‘70s? Or was it built by aliens?”

“First let’s look at the superpower factor.”

“Okay.”

Dr. Playground: “This is a city of Spider Men bitten by a radioactive spider. The accidental superhero. Everything is in relation to the city. What if the city is the radioactive spider and we are the Spider Man? Both spider and Spider Man are transformed entities. If the city is the spider then it was transformed by the radioactivity. What is that radioactivity? Or what if the city is the radioactivity? Then what is the spider? The spider is what transforms the Spider Man. The city would be the radioactivity the spider transmits.”

“Say KM is the spider.”

“Say KM is the radioactivity.”

Spector: “If KM created the city, what created KM?”

“The radioactivity. This makes KM the spider.”

“Transmitting the radioactivity.”

Dr. Playground: “Did you know there’s a Brutalia in mainland China?”

“What?”

“Guess the OSD is closer with the State Department than AXIS. Yeah, it exists. The knowledge is blacked-out by China and the U.S.”

“New theory,” Spector said. “The cities are extra-terrestrial. The cities are created by extra-terrestrial beings.”

“Not a new theory, Milo.”

“What if the cities are the beings?”

“That’s a new one.”

“They replicate us. Imperfectly.”

“There would be a lot they don’t understand.”

“It’s lost in translation.”

“Why the superpowers?”

“They speak in our archetypes. Superheroes. If they arrived two thousand years ago it would be gods throwing bolts of lightning. One thousand years ago, prophets who talked to God.”

“Yet these are not green men from a flying saucer who speak English. They are so alien to be beyond our understanding. Or frame of reference or logic. Language, we couldn’t interpret their shortest phoneme.”

Spector: “They would be as music is to water.”

“Not bad. Remind me to mull that over a martini later. It has been stimulating, Doctor.”

“Likewise, Doctor. Release the Kid.”

“Maybe when he’s forty.”

“Evil is not a social order. The OGD will fail.”

“There is no social order. The world is shit.”

“So you shit on the world.”

“I want to be a pedophile. But what I should become is religious. Devoutly so. Then I’d have evil down. I’ll talk to Xoir about that. What are you, the good guy?”

“The truth? I was built that way. If I don’t make it I lose everything.”

“Meanwhile we are standing in a city that only exists because the Kid is here. With superpowers we only have because the Kid is here. Like the guns in my hands.”

Spector: “You’re dying to kill me.”

“Is the truce over yet?”

Cutting it short Spector terminated the hologram, opened Martian Justice, raised his guns.

Dr. Playground and Man Mafia raised their guns.

They backed from each other firing. They started blasting Martian Justice. They were firing disruption cores that blew holes in him.

AXIS was slipping in the arms race. Martian Justice was getting hit with another generation of weapons tech, his surface a light show of laser channels. He was bleeding freely, the green pool at his feet splashed by rainfall. He kept backing from them. They came toward him guns firing, blue laser channels taking him apart. The three hearts of Martian Justice went dark. The dead body became a statue of Martian science.

Dr. Playground laughed. Then his head swiveled, eyes turning to the bare street where the OSD Gulfstream had been.

Dr. Playground and Man Mafia looked up.

The OSD Gulfstream fell on them.

Milo Spector trod sand toward the fallen jet, larger and heavier than a Delta 88, nothing moving under it. Beyond it was sand and coastline. A lagoon. He was looking at a smashed jet that was on a lagoon on an atoll off Nova Scotia. There was no rain, the night sky dry and frigid.

Duff ran up to him.

Duff said, “I found somewhere to put the jet.”

Spector looked at him, said, “That was really really good cape.”

“Where’s the city?”

“The city is gone. Dr. Playground is dead. The Kid is off the atoll.”

Duff said, “The girls are that good.”

“The girls do very good cape.”

“You look okay.”

“I’m fine.”

“You are?”

“I’m awesome.”

“I get that. Me too.”

On the beach behind the fallen jet stood five twelve year-old girls, Xoir, an old white man in a track suit. Vincent Gama. He looked for The Kid in the Picture. No Kid no Gingiri. No one was moving a muscle. They were all staring at the fallen jet.

Spector pulled a handgun, shot Vincent Gama in the forehead.

N
ude, Milo Spector followed the music of violins and the whirring sound of a film projector into the darkened next room, a large black room with grey trim. Inside the suite, the film screen was a large square of displaced time and space in tones of blue and green. On the sofa Xoir watched nude with a glass of champagne. She poured him a glass. They watched the film.

There were shots of a string quartet in the background. Shots of two nude teens coupling in stylized masks of black lace, a teenage Kate Birkin gazing up at the boy, then closing her eyes, her face closed in sensation mixed with trepidation mixed with discomfort.

Xoir said, “This was shot in 1947 by my mother, the artist Francesca Birkin. I was fifteen. This was my first time. She made it one of her art works.”

Spector sat beside her. “That’s…original.”

“She was ahead of her time. She saw reality as an art form. Ten years later she filmed her own slow death.”

“Do you remember this?”

“I don’t have to, do I? It remembers me.”

“But do you?”

“None of it. But I kept a diary.”

“You can’t get away from your past,” he said.

“He was an incredibly beautiful boy Francesca found in Malta. She interviewed six boys for that role. I never saw him again. Francesca thought that would be like art taking on a life of its own. She had contradictions.”

“Lot of pressure for your first time.”

“Any first time is a lot of pressure,” she said.

“What happened after?”

“I had to make my own art. I lost my virginity three times. Twice on my terms.”

The screen went blank.

With a remote, she rewound, restarted the film.

They watched the five minute film. It was an expanse of time across which Spector watched himself watching it, watched Xoir watching it. The music was not lush and romantic, not sensuous, it was spare and adversarial, atonal. The boy humped between her thighs. Then he stopped. They finished coupling and the camera stayed on the bed as they awkwardly uncoupled. The string quartet stopped abruptly. The two looked spent and unhappy. There was a brief final kiss. Their thin pale naked bodies left the bed, walked out of frame. The camera stayed on the shot for three minutes after they left the frame, until he was watching himself watching the bed with its wrinkled deep blue sheets until he was counting the wrinkles. Then Xoir picked up the remote, stopped the projector. Xoir said nothing. That meant he had to say something. Coming up with something to say was work that won the Pulitzer. But it had to be soon enough there would be no awkward pause. It had to be soon enough not to be taken off the hook by her. It had to seem effortless. And he couldn’t look at her until he had it.