Don't Be a Hero: A Superhero Novel (9 page)

They fell silent for a while, sipping their beers amongst the rapid Thai conversations. Morgan studied Hayne over the lip of his glass. A foul man. Even in his prime he was the same. During his divorce in ’49, the press had spread rumours of extramarital affairs and domestic violence. They didn’t know the half of it. Hayne was the sort of man who’d let the world turn to ruin. He was the sort of man who’d turned the world against metas.

Morgan stretched and leaned back in his barstool. “I should thank you for your help. Would you like to help me buy those two girls a drink?”

The grin hadn’t changed either. It was the grin that had graced thousands of newspapers across the world. The grin of Iron Justice, comrade of Dr Atomic, and the hero who’d slaughtered more Nazis than anyone else in the Manhattan Eight.

“I thought you’d never ask.”

Two hours later, they were drinking rice wine in a private room at a small tourist hotel. Of course, Morgan had arranged the room to be free several hours previously. Morgan, Hayne, and the two young Thai girls lounged on the tattered couches in the glow of several lamps, laughing uproariously. The room already stank of Hayne’s sweat.

“What I’m saying,” Morgan said as he topped up Hayne’s chipped glass, “is that there must be something that makes someone become a metahuman.”

Hayne tottered a little, red-faced, and waved his glass at Morgan. Even after all these years, his biceps looked like mountains. “‘Course there is, everyone knows that. Don’t they teach you about the nukes back in England? No wonder we had to save you in the war.”

Morgan put on a polite smile. “Obviously the nuclear radiation is a factor. Countries that have been exposed to nuclear radiation have the greatest number of metahumans per capita. Japan, Poland, New Zealand, anywhere the bombs hit. And of course the Manhattan Eight were a result of the accident at Los Alamos. Dr Atomic would attest to that. He was a scientist first, just plain old Robert Oppenheimer.”

He stared at the drunken Hayne while he spoke, but the man gave no sign that he’d even heard, let alone realised that Morgan knew who he was.

Morgan poured some more wine for the girls as well, even though they were half-unconscious already. “I wonder sometimes,” he continued, “what Einstein and Bohr and Oppenheimer and all those other scientists thought when they realized the true power of nuclear energy. Not just to power light bulbs and disintegrate enemies, but to truly create. To make new forms of humanity, people that could be pillars of their community like never before. I wonder what it was like for Oppenheimer, one day being in charge of creating the very first atomic bomb, and the next, becoming the world’s first superhero.”

Hayne fondled the slimmer girl’s breast over her singlet. She moaned and writhed on the couch, eyes closed.

“But don’t you think it’s strange the number of metahumans that became heroes?” Morgan said.

“There were more than a few supercriminals too, as I recall,” Hayne said as he pulled the girl’s top down to expose her breast. She giggled and tried to bring the glass to her lips, but spilled most of it. Hayne pinched her nipple, and her giggle turned to a gasp. Her friend was dozing, head nodding.

“Yes, that’s my point,” Morgan said. He put the glass to his lips while he watched Hayne’s groping hands, but he didn’t take a drink. “The US government commissioned a census in the early fifties to find out what occupations metas held. Of the tier four and higher metas, over twenty per cent were professional superheroes or crime-fighters. They estimated another five to ten per cent were supercriminals. And so many of the rest were designing hyper-advanced technology or trying to build cities the likes of which had never been seen before. So the question is this: do metas gain these powers, and then decide to do great or terrible things with them? Or was there something in those people already, something that was just waiting for the chance to make a difference? Something that took the catalyst of nuclear radiation and gave metas the power to change the world.”

Hayne tightened his grip on the girl’s nipple, and she tried to slap his hand away. Laughing, he gave her one last squeeze before releasing her. She rolled away from him, dropping her glass to the wooden floor.

Hayne let out a noise that was half-grunt, half-sigh, and drained his glass. Holding his hand up in front of him, he frowned. “That’s a hell of a wine,” he slurred.

“Think about it. No animal has ever been discovered with superpowers. Only humans are affected.” He swilled his wine. “Hero or criminal, I believe all metas became metas because they have something in common. No meta’s subconscious—his id, as it were—is content to just let life happen, to ‘go with the flow’, as they say. They shape themselves, and then they shape the world around them. They all share one deeply-held belief, a belief so buried they might not even know they possess it.” He pushed himself to his feet. “Carpe omnia.”

Hayne doubled over, clutching his head in both hands. “Carpey what? Morgan, I ain’t feeling so good.”

“I know.” Morgan lifted up the couch cushion and pulled out the object he’d concealed there before he went to the bar. It was white and shaped somewhat like a small handgun, with a needle encased within a cage in the barrel. “Although sometimes I wonder whether you were ever truly ‘good’, William.”

“What you talking about?” Hayne tried to stand up, but he collapsed to the floor on his hands and knees. The two Thai girls were motionless now, aside from the slow rise and fall of their chests. They would have bad hangovers for a day or two, but the drug he’d slipped into the rice wine wouldn’t do them any serious damage.

“Never mind,” Morgan said. He flipped the safety switch on the gun, and the needle protruded out of the protective cage. As he brought the injector gun down towards Hayne’s bulging neck veins, he exhaled. “Just remember what you used to be.”

But before he could make the injection, his muscles froze.
What? What’s happening?
Dimly, the realisation came to him. His disease.
No! Not now.
Morgan’s limbs tensed of their own accord, sending little bolts of electricity through his body.

Then white hot pain shot through Morgan’s head. A scream tore through him as his vision went red and spotted.
For the love of God, not yet.
His head swirled like a merry-go-round, and the injector dropped from his hand. His hands and arms curled, muscles seizing.
No!

He wrenched his eyes open, and a metal-plated fist collided with his jaw. A new wave of pain crashed through him. He flew back and smashed into a table, breaking it in two. His brain scrambled to deal with the twin assaults, both internal and external.

“You son of a bitch,” Hayne’s voice growled through the fog. “What the hell did you do to me?”

Morgan forced his eyes into focus. The pain in his brain was receding, the nausea passing. Cold sweat poured from his face. He’d thought that was the end of him. The final gasp of his illness.

Time. He had none left, and so much more to do. So much more to set in motion before the end.

He locked his gaze on the man stumbling through the room towards him. Hayne was still going, still moving, despite the incredible dose of the drug racing through his system. Only it wasn’t Hayne anymore, not really. The man who stood before Morgan bore scales of steel across his entire body, like they’d grown from his skin. His eyes glowed red, and his knuckles were slick with Morgan’s blood. He was a human tank, built for destruction.

He was Iron Justice.

Every muscle screaming, Morgan forced himself to his feet. He’d miscalculated how much sedative he needed to slip into the wine to immobilize Hayne. The man had got fatter and, if possible, more muscled since his retirement. There was a tranquilizer in the injector gun to finish the job. But first he had to get the needle into three hundred and eighty pounds of steel-plated metahuman.

So be it.

Iron Justice charged, swinging his armoured fist again. Morgan was ready for it this time. He swung to the side and brought up a shield of solid light. The punch glanced off, and Iron Justice overbalanced, falling forwards. If the ex-hero had been sober, Morgan knew, that blow would’ve killed him.

Morgan kicked off a couch to change direction and slammed back into Iron Justice, using a wall of light to shove the man further off balance. Justice stumbled, groaning, and went back onto his knees.

No time to stop. He wouldn’t stay down long. Morgan leapt back and snatched up the injector from where he’d dropped it. The needle and vial were still intact. As Iron Justice lurched back to his feet, Morgan snatched up a lamp that had escaped the carnage.

“Who are you?” Iron Justice growled.

Morgan ripped the wires from the lamp and spread his legs. “I’m the man who’s going to damn the world.”

Justice swung. He was too slow. Morgan ducked, dodged, and pressed the live wires against Iron Justice’s metal neck. Sparks flew and blue lightning arced across the steel scales. Hayne screamed.

The metal plates of Iron Justice’s neck seemed to liquefy and retract as they fled from the electricity. A patch of skin a few inches wide emerged. It was enough.

Morgan plunged the injector needle into Hayne’s neck and squeezed the trigger. The gun silently released its contents into the man’s bloodstream. His red eyes bulged. Morgan tossed the wires aside as Justice fell. The ex-hero didn’t even groan as he slipped into unconsciousness.

Morgan panted, sweat pouring from him. That had been too close. His disease had nearly cost him everything. He shouldn’t have delayed all those years. So long he’d been healthy, content to plan and plot. But now, when it came down to it, he had no time.

Haze and Tinderbox pounded into the room a moment later. They stared at the carnage for a moment, and Haze leered at the unconscious girls.

“My lord Quanta,” Tinderbox said. “Are you all right?”

Morgan stepped over the unconscious Hayne and adjusted the Thai girl’s singlet to cover her exposed breast. “I’m fine. Contact Obsidian. I think we’ll need her help to carry this one out.” He gave Hayne a light kick.

Head pounding, Morgan picked up the bottle of rice wine. By some miracle it had survived the battle. Before he’d started drinking, he’d lined his stomach and oesophagus with solidified light. Later, he’d have to deal with the unpleasantness of vomiting the rice wine up so he could remove the light lining. But for now, neither the sedative nor the alcohol would affect him.

Morgan stared at Iron Justice and raised the nearly empty bottle in a toast to the defeated hero. “Carpe omnia.”

Tinderbox frowned. “My lord?”

“Carpe omnia,” Morgan said again, almost to himself.

Seize everything
.

6: A Word Between Friends

Mr October

Real name:

Joseph Yager

Powers:

Psy-blasts, telepathy.

Notes:

Acted as the Manhattan Eight’s main spokesman and media representative. Yager was the only non-scientist member of the Manhattan Eight. Before the explosion, Yager was a soldier stationed at Los Alamos. Reportedly died of bowel cancer in 1951 and was buried in an undisclosed location. To this day, some claim his true cause of death was covered up.

—Notes on selected metahumans [Entry #0004]

Niobe hung up the payphone and stepped out of the booth. They’d had to drive for twenty minutes to reach the last working payphone in the Old City, but she wasn’t willing to use her home phone. It was this or drive back to the Starlight Hotel in the middle of the afternoon to talk to Frank Julius in person. That was out of the question. The coppers were still on high alert after the raid that morning. She supposed they feared a retaliatory attack for the death of McClellan, and a few years ago, that might’ve been the case. But the Old City metas had just gone back to their homes to gossip over what happened. All except Niobe and Solomon.

“How’s our old friend?” Solomon leaned against the phone booth, munching on an apple he’d brought from his tree at home. “He get any more talkative?”