Emergence (3 page)

Mr. Glabrous grinned as the clerk typed every word of Hathcock’s confession. Ms. Ryu sat at her desk and wilted.

Hathcock looked at the jury. “I tried to send a clear message when I killed Magnetar, but it didn’t matter. The villains weren’t afraid because they were crazy! Finally, I put a couple rounds into the
heroes
and the whole game changed. They all went into hiding and, just like that, the crazies stopped wearing masks. We cleaned up the last few stragglers, and when it was done I waited for the police to pick me up.”

The prosecutor approached the witness box. “You knew what you had done was wrong, so you allowed yourself to be caught?”

Hathcock scowled. “It was illegal. I never said it was wrong. I got justice for humanity the only way I could. When the mission was over, I didn’t want people to be afraid. I wanted normal people to turn on the news and see that their police had caught the sniper. I wanted a court of law to decide my fate. That’s all I have to say. I plead guilty to all charges.”

Lars trembled in anticipation. Should he do it now? No, pleading guilty wasn’t enough. Hathcock needed to be judged as a terrorist and mass murderer. He would wait until the man was publicly condemned.

#

Throngs of people waited outside to hear the verdict. Reporters lined the steps and pressed against steel barricades. Mobs of supporters waved signs over their heads and shouted slurs at the costumed chimerics that patrolled the scene. The Anchor City skyline flared orange and unfurled its shadow across the courthouse as the sun set beneath a clear sky and gilded the marble steps.

A circle of police officers formed a blue wall around Hathcock. His back and neck were straight and his grey eyes were focused. He wore his bulky bulletproof vest and starched orange jumpsuit like a soldier marching in his dress blues. He looked like the commanding officer of the group, not a condemned prisoner.

Lars congealed into a shimmering red silhouette inside the huddle of police. The officers jumped back or fell in panic. Hathcock did not flinch.

“Greetings, citizens! The Red Wraith returns! You don’t have to be afraid anymore. Evil will never go unpunished as long as I am here.”

Lars slipped his hand through the bulletproof vest and the flesh and bone beneath. He curled his vaporous fingers around Hathcock’s heart and made himself denser, crushing the squirming lump in his fist. People in the crowd recoiled and crashed backwards against reporters, who were pushing to get closer. Chimeric heroes came from all directions, and a woman screamed.

Hathcock’s lips struggled to form his last words. “Do it, son…T-take the…”

“Who are you talking to, you murdering bastard?” Lars sneered.

Hathcock’s bloody mouth flickered with a brief smile. “My son…my s-side-k…”

Sidekick?

The Red Wraith’s head exploded into a crimson mist. The crowd watched in mute horror. Then a sharp report echoed across the courthouse steps like the peal of thunder.

Lars and Hathcock collapsed together and tumbled down the stairs.

Never Go Half-Supervillain

C.T. Phipps

There is only one thing worse than a coked-up wannabe supervillain pointing a gun to the back of your head when you're behind the wheel of a getaway car.

That's a coked-up wannabe supervillain
amateur
doing it.

“You, human, drive!” The forked-tongue creature hissed, waving the pistol around like a madman. Well, a mad-
something
. He was mostly human-looking, with a bald head, tattoos, muscular frame, white T-shirt, and army fatigue cargo pants. This one styled himself Thrax and was the contact who'd hired me for this particular job, which appeared to have gone totally to shit.

Looking up, I saw it was about fifteen minutes until sunrise. Police sirens were blaring in the distance. The imaginatively-named Mayhemers had purchased my services to provide them an exit once they finished ripping-off pro-normal ‘legitimate businessman’ Argyle Thompson's personal banks. It wasn't political, it was just convenient because he was one of the richest assholes in Motor Hills. Given there was no sign of any cash, jewelry, bearer bonds, or the other two Mayhemers, I had to assume their plan had gone awry.

Calculating we still had about thirty-seconds before it was the optimal time to pull out, I asked, “I take it your associates won't be joining us?”

“I said, drive!” Thrax hissed, firing his gun into the passenger's side window. The window, whose enhancements against bullets were only functional from the outside inward, shattered. Barbara was going to tan my hide for that.

“Whoa! Relax! First of all, it's not time.” I glared at him through my rear-view mirror. “
Second
, this is a customized work of art in a 2014 Japanese Supra shell, created by the Mechanic six months ago at an exquisite cost to myself, so now you will have to pay for the repairs in addition to my fee. Third, it's David or Mister Korvac, not
human
. I am a professional, my friend, and will be treated accordingly.”

“Who the hell do you think you are? The Transporter? Drive!”

I sighed. “I'm just a chimeric like you, pal, trying to make a living. My abilities are just a bit less…obvious.”

Fifteen seconds.

Two Motor Hills police cars pulled around the end of the street with their windows rolled down. Another pair pulled behind me, blocking my exit. They, too, had their windows down. I saw inside and knew they weren't actual policemen. These were Thompson's private security contractors. The guys he paid the actual police to ignore as they made problems disappear. Problems like me and my lizardy buddy here. It certainly explained the things I'd seen in my vision when I'd agreed to take this dumb job. I
thought
I'd been playing too much
Grand Theft Auto
.

Five seconds.

Leaning out the passenger sides of all four vehicles, these security dudes brandished Uzis and started firing at my windows. This time, my car's enhancements held and a series of sparks danced across the vehicle's front and back.

“Shit!” Thrax panicked, dropping his gun and covering his ears. I moved my foot from the brake to the gas.

“
Now
it's time to drive, bitch,” I said, swerving the car to the right. We bounced onto the sidewalk as the security cars behind me were in a poor position to follow. Moving back onto the street, my car handled like a dream, maneuvering around the wall-to-wall traffic and giving me an ample head start.

If I only had to deal with crooked mercenaries I would have been able to get through this without difficulty. Unfortunately, big shots like Argyle Thompson weren't inclined to rely on rent-a-soldiers when protecting their treasures. My vision had indicated I would be dealing with worse here in a few minutes. Unfortunately, it hadn't been exact. That was the problem with my psychic abilities, they were never as precise as I wanted them to be, usually just cluing me in on the immediate future. Maybe it had something to do with split infinitives, or infinities…whatever.

Unlike the majority of the assholes I dealt with in my day-to-day business, I was a native to Motor Hills. I was there before the city had been rebuilt by megacorps like Ross Industries and DNAdvanced Ltd. and a half-dozen other government-funded (hush-hush) corporations that treated (read: experimented on) the ‘medical condition’ I'd manifested in my early teens, that condition being what is called a
chimeric
.

My father used to talk about Motor Hills being the City of Hard Rock; I'd grown up with it being more like the old B-movie
Cybercop’
s urban hell dystopia. The only thing we'd lacked was cyborgs and megalomaniac super-corporations. Well, we had the latter now, and, if we didn't have Cybercop, we certainly had superhumans. I just never thought I'd be one of the assholes the cops shot at first and asked questions about later.

The funny part? Chimerics kept coming to the city, despite the fact we had a higher murder rate than Baghdad when I'd served. They believed the song and dance that Motor Hills was a place they could create a new life surrounded by people like them. They usually left off the part about finding a cure these days; that was a jingle most heard, anyway.

If it wasn't the mammoth medical debt, ten-year-exclusive power contracts, or psycho pro-human vigilantes screwing them over, then it was designed drugs, racist cops, and chimeric gangs out to prey on the weak of their kind. If I hadn't been making so much money off the out-of-towners, I would have hung a giant sign made of fire outside the city saying:
Keep Away, Fools!

“Are we away?” Thrax asked, looking out the side of the window he'd busted.

“Not by a longshot,” I muttered.

Adjusting my mirror, I saw a trio of black Ferrari 458 Spiders. There were other black cars behind them: four-door sedans and more I couldn't quite make out, all possessed of blacked-out windows; the Ferraris, though, were the only ones that had a chance of catching us. They were extremely modified, souped-up, light-armored chase vehicles created for the Headhunters.

Oh, yes, the Headhunters. A completely illegal, mostly wanted, and completely ignored-by-the-police group of ‘
supers
’ who killed ‘
abusive
’ chimerics. The fact they had access to such wonderful toys was not because they were funded by DNAdvanced and other patrons who made sure their ‘Motor Hills Experiment’ didn't get out of control. They weren’t exactly the Night’s King; still, they were pains in the asses of every supervillain and gang around town. Their sudden appearance could only mean they'd started taking bribes from Thompson, too.

Or they'd gotten lucky.

Either way, I was prepared.
Kind of
.

“Drive faster!” Thrax shouted, staring out the rear-view window.

I bit my tongue, not wanting to distract myself by explaining to an idiot there was a time and a place for speed versus control.

One of the Ferraris caught up as I had to brake to avoid pedestrians. The vehicle slammed into my bumper and started to move to my side, preparing to smash me into one of the crowded city streets. So much for superheroism. They'd end up blaming it on me. After all, looks aside, I was one of the freaks. Biting my lip, I did the modified vehicle one better and knocked it back, sending it bashing into its fellows. The three cars recovered fast, but it was too late.

Three seconds.

This part I'd timed to the moment. Too bad I was a second and a half behind.

Hitting the accelerator, I pulled forward, the three Ferraris were almost aligned, which made it perfect for when the dump truck slammed into the side of the leftmost one, bashed it into the one to its right, and then again. The Ferraris skidded to a complete halt.

“Ten points!” I shouted, shaking my fist in the air.

Thrax just looked back, stunned. “You planned that?”

“Yes I did,” I said, staring forward. “If you'd shelled out an extra grand for this fiasco, I might have even told you ahead of time.”

Reaching down to my dashboard, I put in the
Scarface
soundtrack, which triggered the
‘magic paint’
I'd received from Graffiti Grace that turned my car from neon green to jet black. The bullet hole in the window would make it a bit too memorable for my tastes but it would, hopefully, confuse the police a little—especially when I rolled the back window down to draw less attention. Slowing down and moving through several side streets, I brought my client to the agreed-upon drop-off.

It was the back of a used car lot, the majority of vehicles being various high speed Japanese cars my Supra could fit in amongst. The lot belonged to a friend of mine, Alan Jones, a mythological chimeric who resembled a Tolkien dwarf. Jokes aside, he could get it to the Mechanic without problems.

For a cut I didn’t want to give him, of course.

Balls
.

Bringing the vehicle to a halt, I prepared for the sudden yet inevitable betrayal. My next steps consisted of turning off the ignition, stepping out of the car, and gazing nonchalantly across the street at the rooftop of an abandoned gas station.

Everything seemed to be set up.

Thrax stepped out of the backseat, having picked up his gun and regained his composure. Watching me pull out a car cover for my Supra, I could see a predatory glint forming in his eyes.

“Job didn’t work out. No cash for us, no cash for you.” Thrax aimed his gun at my chest. It was a Mark VII Desert Eagle, a gun way too nice for a punk like him.

“I
knew
you were going to say something like that. There’s just no trust in this business.”

“Give back advance,” Thrax said, shaking the gun a bit.

I rolled my eyes. “Yes, because the measly two thousand you paid me didn't go immediately into my bank account. It's not like I have bills to pay, a mortgage, a family…”

Thrax hissed. “Then die, human.”

“You think?” I raised my left hand into the air and made a fist.

Thrax's head exploded.

I sighed, looking down. I wasn't quite movie-style bad-ass level, and I wasn’t a complete sociopath who enjoyed seeing a man's brains leaking out on the ground, since I had a lot of nightmares about the people I'd killed or had killed. But I dealt with it.

I waved to my monster-hunting buddy, Wild Bill, on the roof across the street. He reflected a mirror back at me, a blinding flicker that made me squint. His way of saying:
Yer welcome, pard. And ya owe me one.

Which I did. WB wasn’t into dollar bills. The man dealt in favors.
Tits-fer-tats
, he called them.

Leaning down, I checked Thrax’s pockets and found an envelope containing several hundreds. Looked to be maybe four grand. “Why, you cheap reptilian bastard.”

I then made a phone call. The numbers appeared in my head just by concentrating on the keypad. “Hey, yeah, this Mister Thompson? Argyle Thompson…? Yeah, uh, don't ask how I got this number. I was just curious if you'd be interested in getting your hands on the asshole who tried robbing you today…? Alive, huh? Well, that'll cost extra…well, what’s it worth to you…? Of course I’m for real, I got your number, I know about what happened already…No, sir, I’m not playing you. I’m just a guy who’s trying to make a living, and I despise amateurs like this dickweed bankrobber. It’s honestly better if he were off the stree—”