Don't Be a Hero: A Superhero Novel (24 page)

He would have smiled if everything wasn’t going to hell. The van’s engine protested as the driver accelerated, but the black car kept pace. The radio on the dashboard came alive again with static and voices. “Orders, sir?”

He realised he was still tightly gripping the radio handpiece. Within a second, he sketched out a new tactical plan in his head. “I want Tinderbox in a position to deal with that damn tree. Sand Fury, see if you can slow them down. And have Screecher gathering information on the car. If they’ve got any special tech in there, I want to know.”

Obsidian’s voice came back at him. “Sand Fury’s vehicle was taken out, my lord. Should we return for them?”

Damn it. He sighed. “No. Leave them.” He returned the handpiece to the dashboard.
They won’t talk if the police get them. They’re loyal. They’re brave. And this isn’t over yet.
“Get us onto the upper highway,” he told the driver. In response, the driver spun the wheel and brought the van screeching onto an on-ramp.

Something pinged off the back of the van. He readjusted the mirror to get a better look at the tailing car. While the Carpenter leaned out the window, hat flapping in the wind, the driver had an arm pointed at the van. A gun flashed, and a crack appeared in the van’s armoured windshield, just to the right of his head.

Morgan ducked down in the seat and snatched the radio up again as another round pinged off the rear bumper. “They’re shooting. Modified rounds of some sort. Can anyone take them down?”

“No, my lord.” There was a roar from somewhere, and orange light filled his mirror. “Tinderbox is occupied with the tree.”

He considered his options. Even modified as the vans were, he didn’t think they could outpace the car’s rocket engine. What was the Carpenter doing? He hadn’t heard of the hero being operational for years. The Wardens had disbanded peacefully, if grudgingly.

A bullet cracked his mirror, discharging a small amount of blue lightning.
Who’s the Carpenter got with him? The woman from Avin’s picture?
He swivelled in his seat and tried to get a look. The figure was small, masked, wearing what looked like a bowler hat. It could be a woman, but he couldn’t tell.

It was an admirable effort on their part. He honestly hadn’t expected a reaction from metas so quickly.

He depressed the button on the radio. “Who is our best flier? The most dexterous?”

“Avin, my lord,” Obsidian said. “But of those present, Black Moth.”

“Have him on standby. On my signal, I’ll need a pickup.”

“My lord?”

“Just get him ready,” he said, and he shoved the handpiece back into its cradle.

There was almost no traffic on the highway. Morgan licked his lips and straightened his gloves. Sirens still moaned in the distance, but they were too far away to be any nuisance now. The remaining vans careered along the raised highway while the Carpenter’s car pestered them like a mosquito. The pills had done nothing to take the edge off his headache.

“Whatever you do,” he told the driver, “keep this thing steady.”

Without giving the driver time to respond, he hooked his hands around the window frame and hauled himself out of the seat. He drew in the light from the street lamps that flashed past, feeling the energy build inside him. Then, leaning out the window, he flicked his wrists. Two ropes of light flew out and lashed themselves across the van’s roof. With another tug, he pulled himself halfway out the side window and clambered onto the roof.

The wind buffeted him, but the light ropes extending from his hands kept him from falling. The roof was surprisingly slippery, and each tiny movement of the car made his stomach turn. This would be much easier if he could see properly. He brought a shield of light up in front of him just in time to deflect another bullet. It ricocheted off with a flash of sparks, flying into the night.

He got to one knee on the roof, facing his pursuers. They swerved in the lane, trying to get a better shot at the tyres. Over the glare of the headlights, he thought he could see the Carpenter’s mouth twisting in surprise.

Carpe omnia.

He released the ropes, took two running steps across the roof of the van, and leapt.

For a moment, everything seemed frozen. His heart pounded even above the wind whipping at his back. He was in freefall, his stomach lurching. He could make out the twisted shape of another modified bullet as it pinged off his shield. Strangely, he was free of fear. His mind was focussed, calculating trajectories, weaving light into the perfect cushion. He was alive.

The car’s bonnet crumpled under his weight. The jarring collision brought him back to the present. The light shield he’d created saved him from breaking any bones, but pain still stabbed up his legs as he landed. Despite that, he smiled at the two metas inside the car. The driver’s face was completely masked, so he couldn’t see her expression—he was sure it was a woman now—but the Carpenter was gaping. It was nearly enough to make Morgan laugh aloud.

Instantly, he lashed himself to the car with new ropes of light. Just in time too, because the woman suddenly swerved, trying to shake him loose. Morgan grinned at her. Holding the ropes with his left hand, he formed the blade in his right.

The Carpenter stuck his quarterstaff out the window and awkwardly tried to swipe at him, but Morgan’s blade passed straight through it, slicing it in two. The broken end of the staff fell from his sight. A moment later, it was back. The fragment started swirling around him, battering away at his shield, trying to find an opening. It was a waste of energy. Morgan grinned at the Carpenter through the windshield and ignored the pesky piece of wood, even as it slammed against his shield and dug into his neck and ribs.

Morgan raised his blade in a salute and bowed his head to the heroes. Then he plunged the sword into the bonnet.

Steam hissed up from the hole around his blade. The rocket engine sputtered, valiantly trying to function even as he cut through the fuel lines that fed it. The woman shot at him again and gave swerving another try, but neither were effective. He raised his blade into the air, and it flashed with a sudden beam of light. The next instant, it had vanished.

“Until next time, heroes,” he shouted over the wind.

A pair of hands grabbed him under the armpits. Morgan let the light ropes dissolve as the flying meta tugged him suddenly upwards. He caught one last glimpse of the woman slamming her fist against the steering wheel before Black Moth swung him around and carried him away from the slowing car. His other metas spurted fire and lightning as they raced past the damaged car and disappeared into the night.

A productive evening,
he concluded as Black Moth flapped his wings and carried Morgan over the panicking city.

15: The Puppet and the Puppet Master

Doll Face

Real name:

Unknown

Powers:

Mental manipulation and torture via organic probes (possibly neural cell bundles), enhanced reflexes.

Notes:

Likely insane, though never captured for long enough to receive psychoanalysis. He has allegedly murdered several hundred people, including many women and children. Despite his insanity, experts agree his mental capacity is far above most normal humans, and he is able to process hundreds of memories, identities, and sensations simultaneously. Presumed dead following a military raid in Ukraine.

—Notes on selected metahumans [Entry #0398]

Sam woke to the sound of footsteps approaching his cell. His heart instantly took up a snare drum beat in response, and he jerked up from the mattress, his throat closing.

It’s him,
he thought.
He’s come for me again. God, no.
The creature that called himself Doll Face had visited his cell twice more since that first terrible meeting. Each time he’d yammer his psychotic ramblings, occasionally poking Sam with the point of a kitchen knife. And it only got worse from there.

The footsteps drew closer, and Sam shrank down on his mattress, knowing it wouldn’t do him any good. There was no escape from the pain and the fear and the sickness.

He couldn’t explain what Doll Face did to him. God, he didn’t even want to think about it, but it wouldn’t leave him alone. It never stopped haunting him. When the strings touched his mind, he was nothing but Doll Face’s plaything. The creature probed his mind, testing things, searching. Every now and then a rush of agony would go through him, and some new energy would bloom inside him for a moment before being locked away. He felt like Doll Face was preparing his mind for something, sweeping away everything that made him who he was and laying down new foundations. He couldn’t explain it. All he knew was that there was nothing he could hide from Doll Face.

The creature showed him things, showed him what he’d done to others. The children he’d made eat their own faces. The games he played, the people he’d forced to hunt each other through twisted mazes, like rats armed with daggers. And it wasn’t just visions, either. He could taste the blood in his mouth. He could smell the rancid flesh, the burning organs, feel the texture of the maggots as they crawled into his eyes. And above it all was the giggling.

It wasn’t just Doll Face’s crimes he saw, either. Through the hazy, twisted mind of the creature he saw huge explosions that obliterated hundreds of thousands of lives in an instant. He saw a man with metal skin punch a hole through a soldier. In another vision, a man in a grey costume passed through a wall like a ghost and slit someone’s throat with a long silver dagger. He saw men in blue tunics raping women in cells not unlike his own. He felt the loneliness of the world dripping through him. And he saw his father—he knew it was him instinctively—standing over bodies snapped clean in two.

He saw fear, and it smelled like blood.

I’m going to break,
he knew. The hallucinations didn’t let up now. He’d wake up with a hundred cockroaches burrowing into his arms, but when he tried to pick them out, they crumbled to dust and vanished. His arms and legs were streaked with blood and dying flesh where he scratched in his sleep.

He was going to break, and now Doll Face was coming again. His stomach heaved, and he lurched to the side and retched. The pitiful contents of his stomach spilled onto the concrete floor. His throat burned and his guts tried to force their way out through his eyes again, but only clear liquid came now.

The footsteps were right outside. But something was different about them. They didn’t sound the same. And there was no singing.
It’s not him! It’s not Doll Face.
His heart soared, and at the same time he had to blink back tears. Muscles trembling with fatigue, he pushed himself away from his vomit and tried to get to his feet.

There was a pause, and all he could hear was the rasp of his own breath.
Did I imagine it?
But then the lock clicked, and the door creaked open.

The man who slipped inside was no one he’d seen before. He was tall, with slicked-back dark hair. He wore no uniform, just jeans and a collared shirt.

Without speaking, the man placed the food tray he was carrying on the floor, glanced back out the door, then pulled it closed. He studied Sam, eyes sweeping up and down. Sam tried to hide the wounds on his arms and legs. The man’s eyes were warm. Sam could almost believe the man was concerned for him.

The man quickly crossed the distance between them. Suddenly nervous, Sam tried to back away, but there was nowhere to go. The man stopped and raised a hand, as if to show he meant no harm.

“I can’t stay long,” he said in a low voice. His accent was strange, but the words had a kind of quiet strength to them. “My name’s Paul. I’m a friend of your uncle’s.”

The words gripped his soul and tugged it out of the darkness. The torture, the horror, it was over. Before he knew what he was doing, he’d grabbed hold of the man’s shirt and started babbling. “You’ve come to get me out. We’ve got to go now, before Doll Face comes back. Please, we have to go.”

Gently but firmly, the man removed Sam’s hands from his uniform and directed him to sit on the mattress. Sam did so, forcing himself to hold his tongue. He couldn’t let anything sacrifice his chance at getting out of here. Not anything.

“We can’t leave,” the man said. “Not yet.”

The fragile hope shattered like glass. He bit back tears, but still they welled in his eyes.

Paul laid a hand on his shoulder and gave it a squeeze. “It’s still too dangerous. We’d be shot thirty seconds after leaving this cell. I’m sorry.”

Sam picked at the mattress with broken, bloody nails and tried to hold himself together.
I have to be strong.
But he had no more strength left. Doll Face had taken it from him.

Paul gently took Sam’s arm and examined the scratches that ran across them. “God,” he said. “What have they done to you?”

Sam shivered. “I don’t know. I don’t know what they want with me.”