Superhero (19 page)

“I didn’t kill nobody.”

“You were committing a robbery when one of your…compatriots shot and killed her. That’s the felony murder rule, Reese. You’re not going to prison. You’re going to death row. Unless you help me. Two men got away. I want them. And I want your boss, Agamemnon.”

“Yeah?” he said, turning toward him. “And what do you think you could do to Agamemnon?”

“We’ll see. SWAT is raiding that little compound of yours right now.”

Reese shook his head but didn’t say anything.

“I want you to testify against Agamemnon. I want you to give me all the logistics. Where the money is, what it was used for, everyone in the organization, its structure…everything. You give me that, and I might be able to talk the DA’s Office into not sticking a needle in your arm. But I want an answer now. Right now. No time to think about it or talk it over with your buddies. You tell me yes or no right now.”

“No.”

William stared at him in amazement. He sighed and rose. As he was walking out of the room, Reese said, “Your boys, the SWAT team.”

“Yeah? What about ‘em?”

“They’re all gonna die.”

CHAPTER 41

Reese noticed that the hospital staff didn’t check on him as much as he remembered them checking on his mother when he was here as a child. They blamed him for the woman’s death, and it probably was his fault. It was his team that went in. He knew that man was high on meth and he let him go in on the job with them anyway. It was his fault.

Guilt and rage and disgust filled him. He hadn’t eaten or drunk anything all day. The television was turned on to the weather channel, just to take up the silence. Outside, night fell as the hours passed and soon the hospital quieted.

He was grateful to be in the room by himself, even if he could still see the police officers sitting outside the room. He knew how it worked. As soon as he had a medical clearance, they would arrest him and take him down to the county lockup. He would get an arraignment and bail and then they would throw away the key. At least until his trial, conviction, and his appeals while he sat on death row. No out was available to him; he was going to die unless he betrayed the only man that had ever looked out for him.

“Not a lot of options left, are there?”

Reese looked toward the voice and saw the black figure standing by the window. The curtains blew lightly from the breeze and the moonlight illuminated the man with an eerie white glow.

“Who the hell are you?”

“The detective told you to help him, didn’t he? What did you say?”

“I said no.”

“You don’t have to help him. But you will help me.” The figure came and stood over him, placing his hand on his chest. “You will help me.”

“What do you want? Agamemnon?”

“No, I know where Agamemnon is. I want the weapon.”

“What weapon?”

The figure pressed lightly on his chest and pain shot through him. He grunted, managing to hold back a scream.

“You know what weapon,” the figure said. “I want it. Tonight.”

“It’s in the desert,” Reese spit out. The figure lifted his hand.

“In the Mojave,” the figure said, “near marker twenty-one. But I need an exact location.”

“I can show you where.”

“You told the detective you wouldn’t help him to save your life but you’re just going to show me where your boss’s weapon is?”

“I never wanted that bomb. I didn’t want any of that. I’ll show you where it is, but I ain’t givin’ you Agamemnon.”

The figure was quiet a moment. “Can you walk?”

“No. Just give me a few days. He ain’t gonna use it for a long time anyways.”

The figure leaned close. “One day. I’ll be back here in one day and you’re leaving with me.”

A police officer poked his head through the door. “Shut the fuck up, you piece of shit.”

Reese glanced at the police officer for only a second, but the figure that had just been next to his bed was gone. The officer left, and he was alone again in the room, his hands trembling.

CHAPTER 42

Jack leapt over several buildings and landed on the roof of a condominium tower, his metallic feet clinking on the smooth steel surface. Now that he could control his jumps, he went only as far as he wanted and landed as softly as a cat. He walked to the edge of the building and looked down at his city. He didn’t recognize it anymore. It had left him behind somehow. But he still felt that it was his and it was the only place in the world he had ever thought of as home.

He sprinted again and leapt over to the balcony of Veronica Gables. He could hear the shower running from inside and he turned back toward the glowing lights of the city, drowning in the pale light of the moon.

After a few minutes, the sliding glass door behind him opened. He could smell the conditioner she had just used and the body wash that coated her skin.

“You could’ve used the front door,” she said, toweling her hair.

“The file.”

She placed the towel down on the patio chair. “Not much of a talker, are you?” When he didn’t respond, she went inside and came back out with a manila folder. She handed it to him.

Jack flipped through it. Photos, police reports, criminal histories, psychiatric assessments, military records…he held someone’s entire life in less than thirty pages.

“I’m impressed,” he said.

“Girl’s gotta have her connections.”

He climbed to the railing.

“Wait,” she said. He turned and looked at her. “When will I see you again?”

“I can hear the recorder underneath the chair.”

She exhaled. “You heard that, huh? I knew I should’ve bought a more expensive one.”

“Thanks for your help, Veronica.”

“Whoa, hold on. You owe me a story.”

“I know. I’ll give it to you. Not right now, but you will get it, I promise.”

She reached under the chair and turned the recorder off. She walked up to him and ran her hand gently over the suit.

“It feels like the exterior of a shark. What is this?”

“Honestly? I don’t know.”

She pulled her hand away. “You’re a man, aren’t you?” she said, an edge of doubt in her voice as she recognized how odd the question was.

“Yeah, I’m just a man.”

“How do you do it then? How do you fly through the air and rip doors off cars?”

“If I told you, you wouldn’t believe me.”

He dove off the railing, disappearing into the night.

Jack arrived home well after midnight and saw that all the lights were off in his house. He leapt to the roof with one push, as easily as if he were taking a step, and flipped onto the patio in the back. He stood at the railing a long while, watching the stars, and then sat in a patio chair and pulled his mask off.

The images from today weren’t leaving him. He saw the woman’s broken body, six months pregnant, crumpled on the floor. Blood was smeared on everything and had congealed black. Jack stood over the body and stared into the lifeless eyes, a look he had seen so many times before and had refused to recognize as anything other than necessary. It wasn’t necessary now.

But what screamed loudest in his memory was the image of his hand on a young man’s chest, pressing the life out of him as if he were a bug. And the voice that shrieked in his head. “KILL HIM.”

Restraint didn’t come easy. It had a cost: physically. Jack felt exhausted every time he fought the Dragon.

The Dragon…that was the first time he had thought of the voice as a separate entity.

“Hey, stranger,” Heidi said softly from the dark of the bedroom behind him. She came out, wearing only a long shirt, and sat in the chair next to him. “They captured video of you chasing after a van. It’s on every channel.”

“I don’t think I’m going to be able to hide anymore.” He looked to her soft features and had to force himself to look away. “What is he?”

“He’s a man,” Heidi said, sensing whom he was talking about, “just like you.”

“A young boy, probably nineteen or twenty, would rather be executed than betray him. How does he get that kind of loyalty?”

“He’s…I worked with him for a long time, Jack. I may not have given you the proper impression. Simply because he was a scientist, probably the most brilliant microbiologist I have ever met, doesn’t mean he wasn’t charismatic. He had a pull to him that just attracted people. He’d always had it.” She looked off in the distance. “We thought we were headed for the Nobel. Things didn’t work out that way, though…” She looked to him. “Believe it or not, he reminds me a lot of you. Full of fire and thinks he can single-handedly change the world. Sometimes, Jack, the world doesn’t want to be changed.”

Heidi rubbed his hand and went inside. Jack sat on the patio a while longer before he made his way to the bathroom. He pulled the suit off as easily as if it were any other piece of clothing and wondered what it was the other day that made the mask so hard to remove. He threw it over the towel rack and got under the stream of hot water.

The water ran down his head and he let it massage his scalp. It surprised him how odd the water felt on his legs and when he looked down at the gleaming metal he remembered why. That was the worst part of it: he would forget and have to remember again every day.

His head suddenly pounded and he thought that a migraine might be coming on until he heard the sound of his perimeter alarm. It was a high-pitched squeal that sounded in his bedroom but was meant to be silent enough not to alert anyone in the rest of the house.

Jack hurried out of the shower. Naked, he ran out into the bedroom and to the glass doors leading to his backyard. Below him, men in black uniforms crawled into his yard from every direction, guns held high with the red beams of their scopes flashing across the grass. He turned and ran out into the hallway before remembering that he didn’t have his suit. As he ran back to the bathroom, he heard a scream from the next room.

Heidi.

Jack ran and flung open her door. Colonel Finley stood by the side of her bed, dressed in black and camo facepaint. He held a .45 caliber handgun to her head.

“Don’t do it, son. Just surrender.”

“You wouldn’t kill an innocent woman.”

“Innocent? That’s a joke. And ask yourself honestly, even though you’ve only met me twice, do you think there’s anything I wouldn’t do if I thought it was in the best interest of my country?”

Jack knew he wouldn’t kill her. He could feel it. But one of the half dozen men coming through the sliding glass doors might, if inadvertently, were a fight to break out. He wasn’t willing to risk it.

He held his hands up and got to his knees just as he felt the sting of a syringe in the back of his neck and the world went black.

CHAPTER 43

Reese Stillman jumped up in bed with a start and gasped. Sweat poured down his forehead and his hospital gown stuck to him. The moonlight shone through the only window in the room and a dim glow surrounded him.

He had dreamed of the girl and her unborn child. He had seen himself falling into a black pit filled with other people, but not exactly people. The…things tore at his flesh, and it came off his bones in ragged chunks, like someone tearing at bits of chicken. He screamed for help, but no one came.

Reese thought that what he saw was hell, and that it was where he was going.

A nurse opened his door and flipped on the light, momentarily blinding him. She came over and checked the IV in his arm, pushing him back down on the bed without a word as she moved on to check his chest and ribs.

“You been havin’ nightmares every night,” she said. “What you dreamin’ about that’s got you so scared?”

“Nothing.”

“Well, fine, keep your secrets then. But I can’t help you if you don’t tell me what it is.” She was quiet a while but he didn’t say anything. “All right then. I’ll leave you be.”

Reese waited until she had left the room before swinging his legs over the side of the bed and standing up. Pain pulsed through his chest and abdomen and he had to take a second to relax and slow his breathing. When he felt well enough, he limped to the dresser drawer against the wall and opened the first drawer. He took out his jeans and T-shirt and put them on, having to look through the other drawers until he found his shoes and socks. When he was dressed, he opened the door and looked both ways down the hall.

The police officer was asleep in a chair not three feet away. Reese walked out of the room and went slowly down the hall, listening for the sounds of any conversations nearby. He heard what sounded like someone typing on a keyboard and pressed his back against the wall, peeking around the corner.

The officer lay on a couch in front of a television that had the sound turned down. The woman behind the nurse’s station typed into a document.

Reese crouched and slowly made his way across from them. He stayed low until he came to a turn in the hallway. He took it and stood up. The elevators were just down the hall. Once he was on and headed to the first floor, he asked the orderly next to him to borrow his cell phone and placed a call.

“Yeah?” a groggy voice said on the other line.

“Vince, wake your ass up and come get me at the hospital.”

“Who is this?”

“It’s Reese, man. Get down here. Hurry up.”

“All right, dude. Chill out. I’ll be down in a minute.”

The elevator opened onto a floor that was much busier than he thought it would be. People waited in the waiting area of the emergency room and glanced at him as he walked by. One of the women behind the check-in desk said, “Sir, may I help you?”

His heart dropped as she looked over.

Relief washed over him as he saw she was speaking to somebody else. He made it outside into the warm, night air and stood by a lamppost away from the front entrance. He wished he had a cigarette right now and glanced around to see if anyone was out that he could bum one off, but it was just empty space.

Reese thought about how he was going to pull this off. He wouldn’t help the police and he wasn’t going to help some freak in a costume. For all he knew, Agamemnon and he really were buddies. But he had to do something. Maybe if he could stop this, hell wouldn’t haunt his dreams anymore.