Big Superhero Action (23 page)

Spector turned to her, said, “So you were always this beautiful.”

Xoir put her lips on his. It lasted.

“Holosynthesis is this real,” she said. “But this is more dramatic.”

“Mine is Mona Spector.”

“Always?”

“Yes.”

“Obsession.”

“Frame of reference.”

“I have something for you, Milo. A little more of your history.”

“Neuropedix?”

“Yes.”

“Holding back?”

“Confirming.”

“Tell me.”

“KM made science and technology, created a medical center and also had a line of comic books. Only in the Space Age, I suppose. You were a comic book fanatic who came to Brutalia in your teens to be a writer for KM Comics. Instead you became a scientific prodigy. KM recruited you. We worked together in Research and Development, you, me, and Simon.”

He said, “We met President Nixon. We talked KM science. Did that actually happen?”

“You were seventeen. The outcome of that I haven’t retrieved.”

“Did I have a wife?”

“No.”

“Who was Mona Spector?”

“Mona came with you to Brutalia. You two were very close. She was your twin sister.”

Spector didn’t speak. His brain was whirring like an overworked PC uploading a planet. Mass updates were downloading and disk space was expanding. It was as though she had revealed to him what had already been an innate source of revelation, the illumination for his dreams, greenhouse lighting at once light and dark. It made more sense than sense itself.

Finally he said, “Somebody needs a new hobby.”

“That’s all of my findings so far, I swear on an eighty-story stack of Bibles.”

“Add one more Bible.”

“Eighty-one.”

“Okay. I believe you.”

Xoir was gazing at him with the sacred terror of a scientist seeing the face of God. Then finding it irresistible. He saw it all. Then the terror receding as he watched her scientist brain find its way back to lean forward, close one eye to analyze the phenomenon under her microscope.

“Then kiss me,” she said.

They kissed. Spector considered the nature of kissing and its origins. Whether it began as a way to worship a face that loved, to meet it in an exchange of sensations, or a sacrificial bestowment of the most intimate part of his own face. They kissed each other’s mouths in small bursts of passion, infinity blooming between them. Then they had sex again, on the sofa, him again with more information this time living out his teenage dream with Dr. Kate Birkin, a brilliant aristocratically stunning older white woman, feeling her passion for the fresh boy prodigy he had been, a narrow thin virginal black kid with glasses and a comic book collection kept in a tin milk box from when milk boxes had become extinct, received her passion now for the superhero the boy had become. Were these the two loves of his life, what life he had been allowed to spend, this woman and his twin sister?

I
t was strange being in the OSD Building, sleeping with its new leader, showering with OSD soap then drying off with an OSD bath towel. With Dr. Playground dead it was just a skyscraper, a tower of frozen OSD assets. Freezing OSD assets sounded good. Seeing the Doctor’s crushed and mangled and incredibly dead body was inspiring. He was thinking less like Milo Spector now. He dressed. Now he was the Carousel. Now she was in her black OSD Gestapo queen uniform. They had champagne before a towering view of downtown Brutalia.

The Carousel: “Make it official.”

Xoir: “I am now head of the OSD.”

“You could merge with AXIS.”

“No I couldn’t.”

“Why not? Are you pro-evil?”

“I work alone,” she said. “I accept no leaders. Or partners.”

“Now what?”

“I convert OSD holdings to my new organization. I am not pro-genocide. I am for global domination, my version of it. It will be benign and to the benefit of mankind. It will advance my work in the reversal of human aging. But it will be enforced with brutal efficiency.”

“That is if you find the key,” the Carousel said. “And the Kid is with AXIS. Still want to work alone?”

“There’s the UFB.”

“You’ll have to find him before AXIS finds him.”

“Then I will.”

The Carousel gave that a left-sided smile. Even now he wanted to kiss her. But now it would be kissing the enemy. Then the smile ended.

He said, “I don’t want to ask this but how dead is he?”

“As in cloning?” Xoir said.

“Full disclosure. I have a cloning protocol. I keep a spare on backup.”

“As do I. At full duplication?”

“Even AXIS can’t hold a full dupe long term.”

“How true. Man Mafia Primary had instant cloning capability until that was somewhat cold-bloodedly killed with him. His clones are still in operation, aspects of Vincent Gama out there, the worst of them with their own exoframes. Dr. Playground had a cloning protocol even I had no access to. It was so hidden I had to hack it from OSD to learn it existed. Same as your cloning protocol no doubt, I estimate at the current KM cloning tech it will take one year for him to reach full duplication. Then he will return to reclaim his place at the top of evil’s food chain. He will have to rebuild his holdings and his power. He will do that with brutal efficiency and genocidal talent. And he will be out to destroy us both. Next year will be interesting.”

T
he Kid in the Picture made like
Superman the Movie
, soared arms-first into the sky above the KM Building. He kept rising, becoming a dark speck among silvery, black, white clouds. The Carousel watched him blend with a rain cloud, vanish.

The Carousel lit a cigarette knowing it was an odd combo with the mask but he had to quit again. There were moments when he felt a near-sensual attraction to the Kid, to the having, all his to himself. The Kid was a scientist’s dream. The Kid was what glowed inside the suitcase in
Pulp Fiction
. The Kid was the Lost Ark of the Covenant, the Crystal Skull, the stuff they wanted to mine in
Avatar
. The Kid was The Door and AXIS had to find The Key.

The speck returned falling feet-first. He came down toward the rooftop, plunging, arms at sides, feet together. As the speck grew, it slowed. Above the rooftop he slowed to a gentle landing on his toes. He pulled down the headphones.

“I have speed control. I have directional control. I could do it on my back.”

“What was the music?”

“
La Valse
, a ballet by Ravel.”

“What’s your playlist at?”

“Forty.”

“Headphones only or acoustic?”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“Anything you can’t fly to?”

“Most music. Country never. Metal. Polka.”

“The music is the source?”

The Kid in the Picture made little fists. “The music…yes…it…it merges with me…my psyche…and I can fly. I feel my way there. It’s exactly like a dream where you can fly and it makes sense that you can fly. If you have the will and the force to fly you can fly. Like there’s no line between dream and reality. But the music makes it happen. It has to inspire me in that sweet spot. It has to be magic.”

“We’ve got to get you a better costume.”

“Why?”

“This one is kind of soft.”

The Kid looked at his black-tighted legs. “This is preppie fusion. Schoolboy power.”

“You look like a cross-dresser.”

“I
am
a cross-dresser. Have you seen my YouTube channel? I took it down last year. But I’m hot.”

The Carousel gave up. “Besides flight what other superpowers do you have?”

“I can see myself from any angle. Yours too. And see myself from a long shot or close-up, like a camera.”

“Do you specialize in a martial art?”

“No.”

“Do you have weapons?”

“No.”

“Gingiri ‘s report said that you were flying in a direct assault on Dr. Playground.”

“Yes I was.”

“Without a weapon?”

“I was the weapon.”

“A hundred-pound boy?”

“I’m one-ten.”

“That was no attack, it was suicide by OSD.”

“If it would have stopped him I had a life to give.”

That was good, the Carousel thought. The Kid was relatively useless as a superhero, effeminate as a tube of lipstick, but he showed heart and a high tolerance for fear. Now he had to be made dangerous.

“Never give your life,” the Carousel said. “Unless you have a clone for backup.”

“Where’s the risk in that?” The Kid said.

“You want risk, you get all the risk you need. Never seek risk, cut risk.” Then he flashed on himself going Milo before Dr. Playground, not only creating risk but doing his best to commit suicide by OSD. But the Kid was new at this; you had to know the rules before you could break them.

“Throw out ideas like sacrifice, honor, fighting fair, that’s comic book stuff. You’re in this to win a war that never ends. You’re in this to survive your career. In hot situations you need a cool head. Teenagers experience emotion with greater intensity but you can’t let that control you. You’re a superhero.”

“Gingiri flew into me, knocked me cold. I mean what the fuck?”

“In AXIS you have to act hard and fast. We’ll train you how.”

Suddenly the Kid looked about to cry, his delicate face contorting. “I’m sorry.”

Superheroes don’t cry
, the Carousel thought. But he wondered what kind of father he would have made. Would his son be raised like Doc Savage to become the model of human perfection? Would he be normal? What was normal?

Fuck it. He spread his arms and the Kid wrapped his thin arms around his neck and he held the Kid’s narrow back, patted it.

“There there. Let it go. Release the stress. That night is a lot to process for the new guy. Superheroes get combat stress reactions, battle fatigue, post-traumatic stress disorder. Ultimately your power becomes how to take it.”

He eased back from the hug. The Kid wiped his eyes, said, “I’m okay. But what am I? Can you tell me what I am?”

“You’re a normal human; except that whenever you leave this city, you take it with you.”

“I can’t help it. How do I do that?”

“Help us find out.”

“I will. How do I help you find out?”

“You’re doing it. You live here now. You can have the twenty second floor. You’ll have an assistant. You are wealthy emancipated teen Chase Juniper. Your alter ego is teen superhero The Kid in the Picture. Member of AXIS.”

“Seems kind of isolated here.”

“Isolated?”

“Very last part of
Citizen Kane
. Sounds a little…I guess…boring.”

“
Boring
? Boring is good. I like to sit and stare at a wall so my life will feel longer.
Boring
. Being in AXIS you will pray for boredom. On or off-duty. Off-duty you’ll probably hang with the Sirens.”

“Really?” The Kid’s face brightened. “Maybe they’ll take me to clubs with them. Get me laid and hooked on Siren Six. Just kidding. I don’t do drugs.”

It was starting to rain. The Carousel gently removed the Kid’s mask. He closed the Carousel, unmasked Milo Spector.

“Now Chase, we go to the kitchen, find something to snack on, and I give you the PG-rated version. It’s Alien History Month.”

I
t was like on TV. It was a large room with a glass wall, chairs on either side of the wall, phones on either side. The room buzzed with visitors on their phones. You went to yours, waited for your prisoner. JKM had a dangerous new swagger one hundred pounds heavier, his massive guns hanging from a sleeveless shirt. His hair was gone, shaved bald. He now had a mustache and goatee.

He reached their phone. He was staring at her. She stood there so he could get the view. She held her hands behind her back, felt the softness of her own face for him to see. His eyes went from her face, her white blouse, down her black bustier corset, the latex skirt, down her smooth black nylons down to the black spike heels. You didn’t wear jeans for this moment.

He sat across from her. They held the same gaze. They picked up their phones.

He said, “You’re…yeah…how are you?”

“I’m flawless,” she said.

“Everything?”

“Yes.”

“Same here.”

“I can see that.”

“Which one is it now?”

“Still first trimester.”

“Showing yet?”

“Not yet.”

“Is that normal.”

“Uh-huh. They say that’s normal.”

“Stay on top of that.”

“I do. Are you okay?”

“I’m great,” he said.

“No trouble I hope.”

“Naw.”

“No bullying?”

“I’m trying to cool it. I break too many heads in here, they add time on me. But I feel like I’ve been practicing for this my whole life.”

“Ohh Kirby…”

“It’s weird.”

“How?”

“There’s two Man Mafias here. One wants to kill the other. I’m Mafia 13’s bodyguard. I charge him for keeping him alive. By the way he’s in here for shooting Remy Rocco.”

“Are you serious?”

“Very.”

“I haven’t seen her for months. I just thought she cleaned up her act and went home.”

“You have always been an optimist. But he says he didn’t do it, he was framed by Pound & Flesh. But the guy was double-dealing, screwing the OSD on out-of-town traffic. Plus he was an AXIS snitch.”

“Nice guy.”

“We talk a lot. Turns out he knew Murder Mouse.”

“That’s…frightening. How?”

“Murder Mouse worked for him.”

“Then he must be a scumbag.”

He said, “I wanted to see you because I have something to tell you.”

“Okay.”

“But we can’t talk freely here, you know how that is.”

“People listen.”

“Yeah. I’ve been working hard on a way to tell you what I have to tell you in code. But you have to follow me.”

“I’ll try.”

“Okay. You saw the movie
The Dark Knight
?”

“Is that a trick question?”

“You remember the part where the Joker sets something on fire?”

She had to think.

“The hospital?”

“That was a bomb. This he set on fire.”

“Okay.”

She ran the picture through her brain. The Joker….fire…a huge pile of money.