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Chapter 3: The Best Investigator in the World

Mr. OSI waved the cops outside.

“Do you often wear shades indoors?” asked Lash.

“Always.” He sounded so raspy he must’ve smoked a few packs a day. He smelled like it, too. The smell was so fresh that Lash wondered if he was smoking under the mask.

“To keep your eyes from shooting laser beams?”

“Sunglasses make it more arduous to tell where I am looking. They also fortify my eyes. Light hurts.” He spoke slowly and sounded like he was hiding a thesaurus under his mask, too. Lash assumed that English wasn’t his first language. It couldn’t be.

“Who are you?”

“I am pursuing Agent Black’s murderer. He wore your costume and… employed two whips. Black was thrown through two of this safehouse’s stone walls.” It relieved Lash that Mr. OSI described the killer as “he” rather than “you.”

“You got a name?” asked Lash.

“Agent Orange.”

Lash rolled his eyes. At least stupid Social Justice League names sounded whimsical. OSI aliases– Agent Orange, Captain Carnage, Devil Dog– just sounded stupid.

“How did you find me?”

“New York has eighty-three reiterant whip purchasers, four without sex-related convictions. Of the four, co-workers identified only you as habitually late and prone to abrupt departures, manners typically for those with… unofficial identities. I then tracked you through the barcodes in your dollar bills, but that was just a formality.”

“The government uses dollar bills to spy on people?”

“Not that I’m conscious of, but it sounded more interesting than the actuality.” Lash couldn’t remember anyone lying to him and then so easily admitting it.

“And ‘the actuality’ is…” His tongue tripped over that phrase. It was hard to believe anyone had an imagination twisted enough to speak English more painfully than Captain Carnage.”

“That revealing my methods would be… unprofessional. Deleterious. But fabrications don’t violate operational security. My suitcase contains a tactical nuclear weapon. Et cetera.”

Agent Orange read aloud a letter from the Secretary of Homeland Security. It sounded like the Secretary ordered the OSI to bring Lash “to justice for all time.” Lash had heard of these death warrants, but only for supervillains. Evil, dirt-nasty, try-to-vaporize-a-city supervillains.

Agent Orange continued. “Do you think that I will actualize this mandate?”

“No?” Lash said hopefully. He calculated a few escape plans, but even thinking about possible plans to escape Orange and the cops just depressed him. He could hardly put weight on his right leg. He was grimly certain he was going to die, like how someone that slips on a patch of ice knows he will painfully hit the ground in a moment.

Lash had a brief, glorious daydream about screaming “Preemptive strike, bitch!” before going crazy with his whips, but the cops outside would each put at least a magazine into him. This daydream ended with Orange just saying “Mission… accomplished.”

“Wrong rejoinder. However, I feel that you are not criminally involved here and that the Secretary, though politically pressured to resolve this matter, would want me to execute the man responsible. Even if that is not you.”

“So you brought me here not to kill me?” Lash thought that he might survive the encounter. Almost like the guy on the ice hopes he might not hit the pavement.

“I wanted to offer a proposition. You will help us investigate. If you discover the killer, you live.”

Lash didn’t say anything. He imagined the incomprehensibly gruesome acts he wanted to perpetrate on the agent.

“Don’t look at me like that,” said Agent Orange. “I want not to kill you. Really. To show my trust, I would even offer you this.” He handed Lash an electric-blue vial. “It’s extraterrestrial blood. We use it to retain agents past their scheduled retirement.”

Lash eyed the liquid suspiciously. He could believe the government had secretly made contact with aliens, killed them and taken their blood. But, if they had alien blood that was an elixir of youth, it must be so precious that they’d hardly offer it to murder suspects.

“How do I know it’s not poison?”

When Agent Orange answered, his voice suddenly deepened. Lash couldn’t see why that question would offend someone that had already promised to kill him and had joked about using money to spy on people (or, possibly, had not joked).

“If I had to kill you, I would do so… honorably. In a way the people would be proud of. You sprained an ankle jumping six feet from a fire-escape. Poison would be… gratuitous.”

Lash couldn’t refute that logic, although the ankle might not be sprained. He’d be careful.

Orange continued. “First, a caveat.”

“Isn’t there always?”

“The blood is… complicated. It has a kind of intelligence. I cannot guarantee you are virtuous enough to survive it. Clearly, though, this is a job for a superhuman.” He gestured at a chalked outline of a body drawn onto the ceiling.

“What the hell? I was a drink away from superpowers?”

“Counsel advises me to mention the plausibility of body-wide immunological encephalitis. Sounds painful.”

Lash reached for the blood, thinking of his former associates snorting when he ran out of breath, perps easily outrunning him, supervillains making him call for backup. One way or the other, all that was over.

Lash swigged the blood. He felt like severe frostbites burst out all over. He glared savagely at Orange. The blood either would or wouldn’t kill him. He didn’t know if thinking virtuous thoughts would help, but he couldn’t do anything else. He felt ridiculous.

After a minute, he was still thinking about saving kittens and going to church and braining his imposter and helping grannies cross the street.

“Hmm. It didn’t reject your body. You survived.” Agent Orange didn’t add for now but Lash heard it anyway.

“Nothing happened.”

“Fool. Already you look more vivacious and favor neither leg. Superhuman abilities might emerge. Possibly enhanced strength or self-combustion. Dragon blood can be… temperamental. It may require an adjustment period.”

Lash gingerly tested his foot. It had some bounce in it now. That almost made up for the risk of self-combustion.

“Dragons? You said it was extraterrestrials before.”

Agent Orange shrugged. “Homeland Security doesn’t name extraterrestrial species. Apparently it was sensible to the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence.”

“The same SETI that pretends there aren’t any aliens out there? And you… you dole out ‘superpowers’ like self-combustion instead. That’ll really help me survive. I’ll tell you if I explode.”

“I’ll know about it before you will. Dismissed.”

“No. Earlier you said ‘Don’t look at me that way.’ You saw my face. We’re not finished yet.”

Agent Orange uneasily rubbed the back of his head. “I only saw a thermal outline, your heat signature. Not your face, per se. I wouldn’t visually recognize you unmasked.”

“The hell you wouldn’t. You saw my face. Show me yours.”

“Are you sure you’d prefer that?”

“Yes, dammit. Quit stalling.”

Agent Orange softly cursed about face-based initiatives but reached for his mask. That sent shivers down Lash’s spine. The agent had given up too easily for someone who had only minutes ago promised to kill Lash if he didn’t cooperate. Sure, heroes were supposed to respect others’ secret identities as much as their own, but Gigas didn’t and he had been on Lash’s side.

Orange pulled off the skimask, but there was no gas-mask underneath. His head’s contours had looked so inhuman because he was, actually, not human. He looked like Godzilla, but his reptilian face’s edges were smooth as if painted with a watercolor brush. His nostrils snorted irritated streams of smoke that made Lash’s eyes water. He had a second pair of sunglasses on, vastly larger than the first. His eyes must have been large like an owl’s.

Orange re-masked himself.

“If you must know, I’m a mutated alligator.”

At that point, Lash knew. He knew that “git’em like a stuck pig in a slicked cracker barrel” was not the stupidest thing he would hear that day.

“Are you kidding me? You think I’m going to believe that some alleged mutant crocodile just happens to have alien dragon blood? Here’s a more plausible explanation that only requires one outlandish leap of faith, the whole space dragon superblood thing. You’re an alien attempting, horribly, to conceal your alienness.” As he said the last word, Lash wanted to whip himself in the face. Agent Orange’s dialect—if it could be so dignified—was rubbing off on him. “Your English, man, your English!” He was sputtering and could hardly get out coherent sentences.

“The only aspect of my origin narrative that you need to know is that extraterrestrials do not exist and assuredly have not systematically imbued humans with special abilities in an attempt to remake this world into something more… ideal.”

“Do you really think I’m going to let you hide a vast government conspiracy to conceal the existence of aliens that easily?”

Agent Orange shrugged. “I have given you the opportunity to save yourself by identifying Black’s killer. You might exploit it. Either way, we have a beyond-plausible suspect. Whether you attempt to convince anyone that governments and criminal enterprises have covertly employed alien dragons masquerading as mutant lizards for decades is extraneous. Though it might be… cumbersome explaining to Captain Carnage where his energy drinks come from.”

“Superpowers, keeping secrets from Captain Carnage and seeing Tyrano-thesaurus Rex’s face. Remind me to be accused of murder more often.”

“We give death-row inmates lobster and prime ribs immediately before executing them. Good luck. The police look forward to assisting you for two days. After that, we will be considerably less than… assistatory.”

Day One

Lash started his search at the crime scene. He only knew that someone had framed him. A rotating security camera in the back alley had caught someone in his costume. Then the camera rotated away and the feed died. The impostor was obviously an amateur; the visible camera could only catch someone blind and slow. His costume would be pretty simple to forge, so this guy could be any thug with a leather mask.

Lash couldn’t rule out a professional framing, but he hadn’t made many enemies over his career. A certain punched governor, maybe, but Lash had helped him by livening up his campaign event and saving the day. Besides, the governor got a free New York Times headline. There wasn’t a murder worth of anger there.

The only piece of evidence was a white… something. Possibly a link of armor. It stood on a table like a statue on a pedestal, a finishing touch on a canvas painted with blood. Fittingly, it was withered like it were dead. The villain had left this in plain sight, a calling-card. Lash racked his brain for anyone that wore white armor. White wasn’t popular among villains. Hell, heroes shunned it too.

Lash proceeded to the known associates of any supervillain he had tangled with. Drivers, accountants, lawyers, scientists… soft targets. A hectic hour at a police terminal gave him over a hundred names and addresses.

He vaguely knew that delicate interrogation techniques could gradually make subjects cooperative. He had never known much more than that. Regardless, the time for delicacy had been before he could measure his life expectancy in hours.

These sessions usually started with a haphazard break-in. Hello, how are you, it’s time to start a give-and-take. Give answers or take your chances. At least, that’s how he imagined they would go down. Terrible luck and the pressure of the ticking clock conspired against him. He thought he dealt with these disasters as well as anyone could have, but good God, no one should have to.

When he was lucky, they always started with the same drivel. I’ve got no idea, what are you doing with those whips. He had no evidence proving their boss was involved yet. In fact, except for the armor he didn’t have any evidence. But threatening to throw people out of twentieth-story windows loosened lips. He gauged who was cooperative by asking about other criminal activities. These perps talked. Eighteen prostitution rings, nine drug-smuggling operations, two death-ray plots, one affair with a terrier. Zero OSI hits.

When he wasn’t lucky, he really wasn’t lucky.

Rain started pouring. Traffic was bad driving to the apartment of Dr. Paul Menos, Paingod’s dentist and, incidentally, an ex-veterinarian whose relations with terriers had been strictly professional. Lash glanced at his address list, confirming that the dentist lived at 509 Garner. The door loomed before him and he gulped. His plan was to unhinge it with all of his spit-weak cherry bombs. Then he would rush in before the dentist could draw a weapon.

His hands shook as he set the explosives. OSI agents and some Leaguers convinced themselves that storming a house was ordinary, normal. But Lash couldn’t.

He tried counting the twenty seconds down, wondering if the bombs would ever go off. Then there was a flash, a crack of thunder and he raced into the eye-watering smoke. His left shoulder bounced off the door, weakened but still standing. The door fell backwards and Lash fell forwards. There was a sweet sensation in his shoulder– pain, maybe– and he stumbled to his feet and bounded forward. He grazed a wall before hearing screams, a screaming woman, at the kitchen table.

Lash’s gaze swept left to right, up and down. The dentist might be lurking, possibly packing enough to kill a superhero.

“Where is he.” His words came out too harsh, more a command than a question. Lash stalked around the table. The dentist wouldn’t find a standing target.

She garbled something through sobs. Her eyes subtly listed towards a closed door.

He edged near the door. A kid’s high-pitched cries were carrying past the door. He reached for the knob but pulled his hand away. If the dentist was in there, he was using his kid as a human shield. Whatever information the dentist had wasn’t worth getting the kid killed.

“Maam, could you send your kid to a neighbor right now?” If she couldn’t, the dentist was definitely there.

Her head jerked up and down. She walked in the room and carried her sobbing daughter out by the hand.

“Am I gonna see you again, Mommy?”

“Yes,” said the mother and Lash.

As soon as the child left, Lash checked the room. No one was under the bed or in the closet. The window wasn’t a feasible escape route. The dentist obviously hadn’t been here.

He checked the front room again. She was stooped over the kitchen table, hands shaking as she tried to write a letter. “Dear Simon and Lizzy, I love you…”

Who’s Simon? Lash checked his list again. The rain-smudged ink said Dr. Paul Menos, 509 Garner. The address looked especially washed-out. He held it up to a light. He wasn’t sure that it said 509. Maybe 504.

“Maam, uhh, would you happen to know who Dr. Menos is?”

Her hands shook in a don’t kill me gesture. “He doesn’t live here. Just down the hall. 504.”

He had broken into a completely innocent bystander’s house. He wanted to say something. What would Black Ninja have said? Did he even make mistakes? “Maam, this was just a test in case someone breaks into your home. You passed this time. Stay vigiliant, citizen!”

He didn’t apologize. He couldn’t. Sorry I blew down your door and made you think you were going to die. He pulled the door behind him, tenuously propping it in the doorway. He made a mental note to cover the cost of the door. And counseling. It was at times he was glad to wear a mask– it covered the blushing.

He came to the dentist’s door. He kicked again and again. It was like sawing a can with a butter knife. After eight kicks and ten seconds, what was left of the door groaned open. New York doors were built to last. The dentist would know he was coming. He didn’t care.

His right foot was soaked with sweat and maybe blood. Needle pains stabbed through it. After setting his leg down, he coudln’t even move it again. It had frozen itself in place. Lash stared at his paralyzed foot. Then he heard a crack—possibly a bone forcing itself back into alignment— and he saw white as intense heat blew through his veins. Then the leg was completely normal, not even sore. Damn blood, he thought. If this is regeneration, I’d hate to see it try self-combustion.

He walked through the doorway, ducking under a chunk of the door that had broken away with the rest of the frame. A short man with greasy hair read nonchalantly by a seedy and grimy set of lights. Lash saw a short man with greasy hair sitting at the dinner table, reading by a seedy and grimy set of lights.

“Dr. Paul Menos?”

“Guilty as charged. Can I help you? Show you the door, perhaps?” The dentist had a cloying and obviously insincere smile.

“The roof. Now.”

The dentist sauntered out, chuckling.

“Usually, capes ask me questions before threatening to throw me off the roof.”

“Keep moving, bitch, or you’ll wish you knew how to treat people.”

They came to the roof.

“Can I ask you why it’s the supposedly intelligent capes that waste my time like this? Give me a break. We both know you won’t kill me.”

Lash tied a whip to the dentist’s torso. The dentist was right, of course, but it only mattered that the dentist thought he might die.

“It isn’t very suspenseful if the hero is superstrong. How long do you think someone 150 pounds can hold you up?”

He kicked the dentist off the roof. When the whip ran out of slack, the dentist’s weight pulled Lash forward. Lash’s boots dug into the roof for traction, but his arms were already straining. Maybe this hadn’t been a good idea.

“Do it. Martyr me,” the dentist taunted. Lash assumed the dentist was bluffing. He had worked for supervillains before Paingod, so he probably a medical mercenary rather than a true zealot.

“You’ll get your chance.” Not long now. Lash grunted. His grip was getting slippery with sweat.

The dentist eyed the sidewalk. “You won’t do it,” he said. His voice was trembling as hard as Lash’s arms. Apparently, smeary martyrdom hadn’t looked so appealing.

Lash broke first. He twisted his body, lopping his whip around a steam pipe so that he could leverage the dentist to safety. But the loop caught one of his fingers. The whip slipped for a moment. He regained control, sending a terrible jerk through the whip.

“I’ll talk. I’ll talk!”

Lash finished pulling him up. The dentist was clutching his stomach, like he wanted to throw up. Lash did, too.

“Paingod has never showed himself in public.” That was highly unusual for a supervillain. Lash assumed he was hiding something. “He has horns. Yes or no: is he a lizard?”

The dentist nodded.

“His scales. What color are they?”

“White.”

“Paingod left a scale near Agent Black’s body. Did he kill him?”

The dentist winced. “I have no idea. He said Agent Orange had a new recruit in the pipeline, maybe someone worth converting.”

“Agent Black?”

He shrugged. “When he mentioned Agent Orange, I dosed him with six horses worth of Ketamine. I took no chances. When he talks about Orange, his teeth gnash. I’m his fourth dentist.”

“Did Paingod use someone in my costume to kill Black?”

He gave a helpless shrug.

Lash sighed. This wasn’t going anywhere.

************************************************************

The rest of the day blurred together. More fruitless leads, more wasted time.

He rubbed his bleary eyes as he watched a perpetual loop of the security camera footage in his apartment. Twenty times, thirty times. The cameras outside show “Lash” entering, but not the death itself. Then sounds of pounds and zaps pour through the wall, but no cracks of gunfire. The agent presumably doesn’t last long enough to draw his weapon. His howls of pain don’t last long and the pounding continues for half a minute. Silence. The tape restarts.

Just before midnight, after sixty-eight repeats, Lash’s eyes fluttered closed to the sound of murder.

************************************************************

A monk stood before Lash, wearing a crimson-and-ivory robe with spikes jumping out of the shoulders. Lash hadn’t been here before and didn’t know what the runes etched into the walls meant, but the accompanying illustrations suggested that the temple’s owner did not ascribe to “make love not war.” The wall might have been made by a comic book artist instructed to depict an “orgy of death, ancient Egyptian style.” A fountain dominated the small room, featuring a faceless statue with two swords sticking out of the neck, gushing like a fire hydrant.

“You need to stop reading Decorate With Pain. How about you tell me where I am right the hell now.”

“Communing with the Lord of Eternity, the Prince of Desolation, the Devourer of Worlds Yet Unknown…”

Lash rolled his eyes. Now it made sense that Paingod never showed himself. If Lash were named the “Devourer of Worlds Yet Unknown”, he would hide, too.

Two doors materialized. The first was encrusted with metal spikes and more runes and depictions of the dead. A few had capes. The second door was a warm oak. Recognizing it under the magenta lighting was hard, but it was his apartment door.

“The choice is yours,” rumbled the monk in a voice lower than his vocal cords could handle. The effect was Wizard of Oz-esque.

Without hesitating, Lash reached for his knob. It was locked.

The monk sounded surprised. “What? You’re supposed to go in the other door.”

“My apartment or a door with carvings of dead superheroes. Hmm. Tough call.” Lash fumbled for his key.

Lash triumphantly waved his key at the monk before jamming it into the lock. It wouldn’t turn. The door also proved kick-proof.

“Goddamn. Why won’t it open?”

“I don’t know,” the monk mumbled. “No one’s ever picked his own door before.”

“Buddy, you said I had a choice. And I chose not to be stupid. Open it.”

The monk assumed the too-deep voice again. “Perhaps some choices are unchooseable.”

“Perhaps I’ve chosen to use you as a battering ram.”

The monk scurried towards the spiked door, which swung open instinctively. He disappeared into the gaping darkness.

Lash scratched his head. The monk thought the door was safer than staying behind. Lash carefully edged inside, sweeping with his feet for fake floor panels. The air was thick with ashen incense.

He edged forward. Shoof. A pair of dance white flames materialized, one on each side. When he was sure his heart had continued beating, he stepped forward again. Shoof. Shoof shoof shoof. The path opened into a fiery ring.

A simple wooden table, an altar, rested at the ring’s center. Shadows danced wildly across the room. He had a nagging suspicion that the monk was here.

He approached the altar. A faded red cloth covered the contours of someone resting on the table. Apparently the Lord of Eternity was napping. “Hello?” Lash called. Nothing.

He felt ridiculous waiting when he could have been waiting in the room with the doors. by the altar. “Wake up!” He yanked aside a corner of the cloth, revealing the dentist’s ritually mutilated, mangled face.

Holy Shit Holy Shit Holy Shit. He bent over. That felt the most comfortable. It would also help him throw up. His shoulders wouldn’t stop shaking.

“Boo.” As soon as he heard the soft, menacing voice behind him, he wheeled around. It was Agent Orange. No. Also a walking dragon, but its face’s edges were far too savage and harsh, like metal sculpted with a cleaver. Agent Orange had been an almost comical caricature of a g-man, but Paingod looked entirely plausible as a prophet of destruction. The spikes shooting out of his shoulders, were grotesque, twisted as barbed wire, terrifyingly real.

“Your dentist?” Lash stammered. He backed away from the altar.

“Don’t feel guilty. Ultimately, he craved death at my claws more than from your whips. And you wished to meet me. I am not adverse to granting wishes.”

Paingod had a calm, almost reassuring demeanor. Lash almost had to remind himself that “He” was crazy, whacked-up-the-nuts psycho.

“And what did Agent Black want?”

“Hopefully, to be beaten around like a leaf in a hurricane. However, his last wish had been granted well before I discovered the corpse.”

“And you left the scale. Because you wanted me to find you?”

Paingod lazily examined his claws.

“There may yet be hope for you, heroling, though you did dally at my door. After all, this is merely a shared dream. An altogether appropriate setting to realize one’s deepest-held fantasies, but ill-suited for trapping and slaughtering one’s enemies.”

“What was your interest in the OSI agent?”

Paingod smiled.

“Which?”

“Don’t sass me. The one Agent Orange just recruited.”

Paingod’s eyes flickered. He stalked forward and prodded Lash in the cheek with the blunt side of a claw. “As I suspected. You haven’t been killed yet.”

“Me? I’m definitely not his recruit.” Even as Lash said that, it occurred to him that he had been forced into something like a job. He had even been paid, sort of. He shuddered.

“From the smell of it, you might as well be drenched in my brother’s blood.” Paingod spat a yellow gob onto the floor that hissed and steamed. “I suspect he accused you of the murder… offered you his blood… and fed you some flimsy pretext explaining why he would abandon the investigation of his partner’s death to the supposed murderer.”

“Why?”

“You. You are now completely at his mercy. Fleeing the country or going into hiding was viable before he gained the ability to sense you like you sense your own limbs. Now, you have only three options. Surrender yourself to him for all time, die at his claws, and one that I won’t claim will be painless.” He paused, possibly for dramatic effect, but more likely to gauge Lash’s reaction before proceeding.

Lash started sweating under the mask. Maybe drinking the blood so impulsively hadn’t been a wise move.

“Well, let’s hear it,” said Lash.

“I’d be willing to offer you a small portion of my blood, enough to liberate your blood from his but likely not enough to consume your body.” His tail swished in a distinctly sinister manner. The blade at his tail’s end uncannily resembled a scythe.

“As appealing as bodily consumption sounds…”

“If ludicrously optimistic assessments of having your physiology remade by foreign organisms entice you, I have a brother. You can probably reach him before I sew his scales into a suitcase.”

He shook a small vial at Lash.

“How would drinking blood in a dream affect my body?”

“Let me handle the details.”

“Thanks, anyway, but I’d prefer to solve this without drinking more alien blood.”

Paingod started tapping his claws against the altar. It sounded like the beat to Waltz of Death.

“Then your wish is granted. We are finished here. And you… you are finished everywhere.” Paingod gave a smug, mocking smile. His teeth faintly glowed yellow, like a jack-o-lantern’s. Paingod still looked pretty calm, if thoroughly annoyed, as he ate what was left of the dentist. It wasn’t an altar. It was a dinner table. Lash decided to leave before Paingod invited him to dessert, dream or not. Lash backed away, never breaking his gaze.

“You can stop staring,” called Paingod, through a mouthful. “Rules, heroling, rules! I’m not Gigas.” He gulped almost immediately. His tail twitched back and forth and his muscles tightened. He appeared to regret mentioning Gigas. Lash decided to seize his advantage.

“What does he have to do with this?”

Paingod tried to spin away the reference to Gigas, but Lash wasn’t listening. He saw his adversary’s tensed muscles, his incessant tail twitches, his focused eyes… whatever Paingod was saying, Lash knew he didn’t believe it.

“Let me guess. Gigas whacks Black in my costume. You leave the scale there, hoping to eventually seduce me into your cult. Orange makes me investigate because he’s testing whether I’d be worth employing. (Obviously). Is there anything you’d like to add, you lying sack of worthless?”

Paingod’s eyes showed only a beady, simmering rage.

“Heroling– hellslave– when I kill you, I will do so honorably. I will end your life in a way I will be proud of. Until then.” Lash started running, dream or not…

Paingod’s calls echoed through the chamber. “Until then…”

Now the apartment door opened. He stepped inside and woke up, crumpled on his couch.

Day Two

He woke up twenty hours later without any clear idea how (or if) he was any more special than the night before. 9:23 PM. Goddamn, could it really have been that long?. Three hours and forty-seven minutes left. No, just two hours and thirty-seven minutes. He was still tired.

The last place to look was the Hall of Heroes. Gigas would be there. He always was, except when primping for the cameras or holding galas, but on the top floor. Lash had never been past the third floor and his clearance had been revoked, anyway, after the altercation when Gigas x-rayed him. The official report noted that Lash had thrown several chairs around the room, which Lash disputed. Two was not “several.”

Security would be tight. Robotic sentry guns guarded the vents. Some of the doors were fakes rigged to explode when opened. Lash had enough trouble fixing a broken leg, so these might put him over the time-limit. The only good news was the Hall was usually lightly populated in the dead of night. The other Directors would probably be asleep, on assignment or pursuing their alternate identities. Gigas didn’t sleep and didn’t have an alternate identity. Pretending to be a weakling was far below him.

A competent, stealthy infiltration would take ages. He wanted to look at the duty rosters, carefully identify and replace a secretary or security guard. No one knew what his face looked like but Gigas, and it would be perfect—so perfect—for The Great Gigas to be taken down by a secretary.

But he didn’t have months. Or days. Hell. As he approached the gleaming skyscraper soaring above Midtown, he noticed a few parked cars with government plates and a police cruiser that stalked him for a few minutes. It looked like Agent Orange wouldn’t offer any extensions. He had enough time to break in and hope that security would be light enough that someone dressed like a janitor but without any relevant security clearances might just kind of not arouse suspicion.

His janitor disguise required an eight-minute detour to Target. He grabbed window cleaner and air freshener and stuff from the cleaning aisle he couldn’t even recognize. At least he didn’t have to waste time in the checkout line. He ran out the door screaming “space slugs in the Hudson. Thanks!” What could the clerk do, call the cops? It wasn’t like they’d do anything to him they wouldn’t otherwise do in an hour and fifty-six minutes.

He walked in the front lobby with his cleaning supplies, feeling almost naked without his mask or outfit. He didn’t have a keycard to access the service staircase. But he looked pathetic enough, struggling to carry his load. When a secretary keyed the stairwell door, he stood behind her and moved his hand towards his pocket, as though reaching for his own key. He made a show of dropping his huge bundle, sending goods sprawling across the floor. The secretary held the door open for him as he gathered his supplies. He made a point of thanking her. Yeah, thanks for not using the elevator. Goddamn second-floor health-fiends.

The service staircase went up to Floor 97, three to the top. 97 flights of stairs with hands full. He happily imagined whipping his way to the top, deftly climbing by latching on to one handrail after another. But even if he were strong enough, guards would eventually find his cleaning supplies and raise an alarm. So he climbed 97 flights of stairs carrying them.

Any energy given to him by Agent Orange’s blood was wholly unequal to the climb. By floor 40, his legs felt like they were made out of hot jelly. He tried to ignore the floor numbers. They only depressed him. They only depressed him. 45, 66, 81, 88, 93… 96, 97.

He wanted to sleep right there, but compromised by panting and wheezing instead. Only a minute… He didn’t know how much time he had wasted walking, but he had no time to breath.

He tried the doorknob. The knob turned but the door wouldn’t budge. After two anguished minutes of jamming his lockpicks, he tried pulling the door instead of pushing it open. That worked. He wondered if they’d eventually put that into the movie before grabbing his things and running forward.

Mr. Mental was playing solitaire at the guard desk by the elevator and muttering to himself.

Lash walked past, trying to look nonchalant, like he had done this hundreds of times and Mental just didn’t remember him because he was a janitor.

He moseyed past Mental.

“Hey, Lash.”

Lash jerked back.

“I’m taking the elevator and if my mind so much as tingles I’m going to whip you to the stairs.”

“Your bluffs will get you nowhere! Heh. I’ve always wanted to say that. Gigas is on Floor 100. He’s had me here for sixteen hours. ‘Ensure that Lash reaches the summit alive.’ Do you know how many sentry guns we have?”

“Well, now that I’m here, you’re done. Sixteen hours, damn. I’d be pissed. You should screw him back. Pull a fire alarm before leaving.”

“You want me to evacuate the building.”

Lash smiled at the telepath before entering the elevator.

The floor was a penthouse suite. Crystal chandeliers provided delicate doses of light. Judging from Agent Orange’s sunglasses, super-visioned guys really had to avoid bright lights. Unfortunately, it was too late to exploit that. Lash imagined himself ripping out a chandelier, but that train of thought clearly wasn’t leaving the station.

He walked past lavish, oaken doors with ornately etched names. The Executive Office and Central Atrium and Heroic Statuary were vacant.

Then he found a soft-blue sofa with a sort of futuristic mesh. More importantly, it had Gigas’ black and crimson cape hanging on the arm. He was close. This piece of heaven looked like a mere stockbroker couldn’t even pretend to afford. Apparently some servants of the Social Justice League got more social justice than others.

The next door read “Gigas Suite,” above paeans extolling the “Champion of Capetown.” The crystal door released glimpses of light from inside.

Before stepping in, Lash prepared his wire. He had to goad Gigas into confessing. Gigas had assuredly offed Agent Black, but so far Lash’s only evidence of that was a supervillain’s twitching tail.

Gigas was pumping a ton of iron when Lash strode in the room. Well, more precisely four tons.

He stood up and smiled at Lash. Lash badly wanted to knock his teeth out and, judging from Gigas’ menacing muscle-flexes, the feeling was mutual.

“Courtney, what a pleasant surprise! I assumed you would die before solving the case.” Gigas’ cloying friendliness was so obnoxious that he had clearly intended to irritate Lash.

“It wasn’t that hard. Who else has heat-vision, super-strength and hates me? The only question left is why.”

Gigas snorted. “You couldn’t understand. Even now you imagine this is about you.”

“Enlighten me. What did Black have on you, embezzling? Taking bribes?” Lash glanced around the room. Gigas’ bed alone, a Studebaker masterpiece, cost enough to feed a hundred thousand Sri Lankans for a month.

The Champion of Capetown gave a hollow, cold laugh. Lash shivered. Gigas was definitely the most unsettling person Lash had met over the last three days, and possibly the most unsettled.

“I had to be the hero,” Gigas said. “There are very few of us left, respected and adulated symbols of every virtue. And a hero is, by definition, respected. Glorified. Not embattled or scandalized. If people lost faith in me, how could they possibly have faith in themselves?”

“Your eyes are shuddering,” Gigas continued. “You’re revolted. And damn hypocritical. What have you convinced yourself, that I’m megalomaniacal?”

Lash nodded.

“Lash, you wear a mask. You break the law to do justice and right wrongs. How could you justify your actions without a supreme confidence in your own indispensability and rightness, that you’re more heroic than the police?”

Lash’s legs itched. He wanted to leave before the sociopath turned on him, but he had to coax a confession first.

“I’ve never killed anyone. You didn’t just kill him. You murdered him, butchered him, because he’d make you look as bad as you are. You’re the reason we need heroes.”

“Murder is purely a legal concept, not a moral one. Were I the officer and he the hero, killing him would be lawful but not any more just.”

Gigas circled the suite like a vulture over dead meat.

“As… interesting as your morals are, I have a job to do. Protect the city, help innocents,” he spat out at Gigas. His face felt flush. If there were a next time, he would need smoother escape lines.

Gigas disappeared and a tremendous blast of air swept across the room, kicking up a flurry of papers. There was a small pop, a sonic boomlet. Gigas materialized, blocking the doorway six paces ahead of Lash.

“I have a job to do as well. I also have… what is this, a tape-recorder?” He taunted Lash by waving the device at him. A shot of heat-vision made it burst into flames. “I hope that was some manner of joke. I can see through things, remember? And you, of all people, should know that I do.”

“So now what? Play the hero again by killing me, too?”

“Now that you mention it, you do look a bit suicidal. Let me help you with that.” A supernaturally tight grip squeezed Lash’s jugular.

He felt his blood rushing to his back and air racing at his body, the sensation of flying. The window and Manhattan’s lights zoomed closer. Gigas had hurled him at the window.

This wasn’t fair. How could Gigas win? This wasn’t like the comics at all. So very unfair… his blood came to a boil.

He pounded the glass face-first. Then the glass shattered, slicing and stabbing his head and upper-body. That hurt.

There was fire. A lot of fire, an explosion. He was shrouded in smoky darkness, but he heard sirens. A police cruiser rested between him and the ground.

Thud.

Day Three

Lash found himself lying on a strange bed with tubes sticking out of places he didn’t even know he had. His vision was blurred and his eyes were partially obscured. Lash felt his face with his mostly numb fingers. His smooth mask was gone, replaced by something hard and plastic that pressed tightly against his face. It felt like an elaborate torture device.

Lash craned his neck as well as he could. He saw Agent Orange in a corner behind him, again fully clad and masked. One of his arms had a cast and the other managed a teddy bear and his briefcase.

Light flooded the room from a large window. He caught glimpses of the sea, sounds of waves pounding the beach. Lash’s mind drifted to the Ministry of Truth gulag from 1984, just much weirder.

Lash didn’t know where he was, but he knew where he didn’t want to be.

“Finally. You’re awake,” rasped Agent Orange.

“Don’t kill me! Gigas killed Lewis and I can prove it.” He couldn’t, of course, but Lash needed time to devise an escape plan.

“That won’t be… necessary,” said Agent Orange.

“So this was all a trick to hire me.”

“No. Well, yes, that additionally, but I meant primarily that proof is inconsequential because Gigas is missing, presumed dead in a massive explosion.”

The agent tossed Lash the Surf City Chronicle. The headline read “JET HITS HERO HALL—LASH SAVES 99 FLOORS.”

“Across the board, the coverage is comparable. The media rushed with what it had, which was sparse and mostly about you. A hero’s charred shell hits the street and he fights even now for his life. We’ll dispel the plane theory, but mentioning self-combustion would dampen the mood. The investigation… pends.”

“I have another theory,” said Lash. Agent Orange nodded.

“I go up there and explode, which does pretty much nothing to Gigas. Then you kill Gigas and pretend it was me. Unless you got that cast falling down the stairs?”

“Actually, I damaged myself running up the stairs. I searched for survivors, acquiring some injuries from falling debris. Fortunately, the list of possible casualties consists of only Gigas.”

“What’d you do to my mask?”

“Personally, nothing. First responders found your mask completely burned away. That was obviously unbecoming and dangerous, so I asked a SWAT team at the scene if you could have a helmet. That nearly provoked a brawl for the privilege.”

“What’s with the teddy bear?”

Agent Orange tossed Lash the bear. “The Secret Service needs several weeks to sweep your avalanche of cards and packages, but I vouched that the President’s grandson was not conspiring to kill you.”

“What’s in the briefcase?”

“The contents haven’t changed.”

“How’d you know I would finger Gigas?”

“I heard you were the best investigator in the world. Improbable. But you’re sufficiently adept that your company would honor me. Us. But mostly me.” It sounded sincere, though sappy and cheesy, but Lash decided he probably got a bonus for turning Leaguers.

“Even though you threatened to kill me?”

“Fear is temporary, curiosity is forever. You will accept my offer for the same reason you wouldn’t let me leave without explicating what transpired, like you will immediately set about verifying and reverifying my account as soon as released. I suspect that the prospects of lasting superpowers, esteem and glory will prove irresistible to someone who has only tasted any. When you change your mind.” He placed his business card on the nightstand.

“If I change my mind. And I won’t.”

In spite of himself, Lash found his gaze drifting towards the business card.

Agent Orange. Office of Special Investigations, Deputy Director for Humans Resources. “That which does not kill you…”

“We’ll see,” said Agent Orange before he began to walk out the door. “But, Lash,” he tossed over his shoulder, “I’ll know about it before you will.”

[end chapter]

You can access chapter 4, “Everybody Dies”, here.

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