Killing Capes (10 page)

The commotion drew the attention of the half-dozen other people in the diner. Each one stared at Dwight, whose gaze was locked on Wulf’s smug expression. Ian huddled tightly in his corner, now afraid of his roommate in addition to Wulf. How much he wanted to reach up and grab the bastard by the lapels of his suit and scream his hatred right into that shit-eating grin – he didn’t, though. As angry as he was, he couldn’t bring himself to touch the man. Even complete outrage wasn’t enough to overcome his fear of the master criminal.

Wulf held out his hands, motioning for calm in the tiny booth. “Relax, Mr. Knolls. I’ve already spoken to B about his location during your…accident. He claims he was retrieving the head of Killstreak’s apprentice. I can’t confirm any of this due to the dust cloud your little distraction created.” He was speaking low, trying to push away the attention of the crowd. “Your plan-”

Dwight stopped him, “Our. It was our distraction. I just came up with the idea, you’re the one that set it up and gave us the ‘go’ to execute it.”

“Whatever you say,” Wulf shrugged, smiling in the satisfaction that should anything ever be traced back to him, it would be one of his minions that took the fall for it. He was, as always, completely untouchable. “Either way, there’s no reason to believe that B had any intentional part in your suffering. Regardless, why are you so frustrated at your partner? Wasn’t it his blood that saved your life? As I understand it, the list of your injuries read like a morgue write-up, not a fist fight.”

By now, everyone in the restaurant had abandoned trying to follow Wulf’s conversation with Dwight. A few had left, fearing that something serious was going to happen. The rest had gone back to their food.

He was right; Bernard had been the one to find him in the aftermath of the fight. He took Dwight back to the Doc in pieces, and it was his blood that had regenerated his failing body when he should have died. Grudgingly, he had to admit that even though he had been missing, it was his fortunate return that saved his life.

              “Understand, Mr. Knolls. Your work is important not just to me, but also to this city. We need you doing your job, keeping the peace. If not you, then who will?” He stood, leaving Ian to his cowering alone in his side of the booth. “Certainly not me; I’m just a simple businessman with no stake in it whatsoever.” He chuckled at his aside as he left the diner, the limousine outside waiting to take him back to StarPoint.

              Once the car pulled away, Dwight brought his attention back to Ian, who had begun to uncurl himself from his defensive position. “It’s okay, the bad man is gone”, he said, half-mocking his roommate’s cowardice. He couldn’t blame him, really; Wulf’s reputation was enough to send most Capes running in terror.

              “That…that was the fucking
Wulf
, Dwight!” He was crying. Tears ran down his face as he struggled to piece together his racing thoughts. “You work for that monster?”

              “Yeah, who do you think would pay me to do what I do?” It all seemed so mundane to him by now, but he could see Ian’s point. The stories had frightened him, too, when he had first started.

              Ian continued shaking, “Not even Midas can cross the Wulf. He could just kill you at any time and there’d be nothing anyone would do about it.”

              “Any of them could. Any one of those empowered fucks could rip me in half as easily as you could tear a napkin in two.” He demonstrated by grabbing one from the nearby dispenser, ripping the thin piece of paper into shreds, and throwing it at him. “The difference with Wulf is I know he’s not going to do anything rash while I’m useful to him. I play his game, and I’m one-hundred-percent safe.”

              Ian brushed the scraps from his hair, “But the stories? The guy is completely crazy.”

              Dwight had heard enough. “They all are. They’re gods, and we’re sheep. It’s enough that they don’t slaughter us because they love the attention. If nothing else, I’m the reminder that there are rules to play by.” There they were: Wulf’s words coming out of his mouth. The ideology had taken hold.

              He stood up and dropped enough cash on the table to cover the bill, in addition to a fair bit extra for the damage he had caused with his new arm. Dwight supposed that he would have to experiment with the force it could achieve before he lost his temper again.

              Ian followed him out. They drove back to the apartment in silence. Just as before, every few blocks, a set of bright streaks soared by overhead. Their “betters” were out, looking for the person who dared strike one of them down.

              As they arrived home, B – now Bernard, Dwight reckoned – sat on the front steps. He cast a casual glance at them as they got out of the car. “Oy, glad to see yer up, mate.”

              Dwight had been expecting this; the big bastard knew where he lived and always had a way of turning up uninvited. He got out of Ian’s car, walked right up to Bernard, and jabbed him straight in the oversized chest with a metallic finger, “Stow it! Where the fuck where you while I was getting beaten to death?”

              “’’at’s a fine way to greet the man who saved yer life wiv ‘is own blood.” He feigned a pain in his heart, mocking Dwight’s disrespect.

              “Your job is to use those muscles to keep the Capes off me – you know, the guy
without
any powers. I got my ass handed to me because my blocker was off chasing a decapitated head in a cloud while I was getting the shit kicked out of me.” He held up his metal arm, “This is your fucking fault. You screwed up, and I nearly died.”

              That last one actually hurt the large man. His friendly expression faded, “You’re right. I messed up.” He got up and took a few steps to the side, clearing the path to the doorway. “I should ‘ave been the one taking the ‘its, as always, so you can get the kill. All ‘at’s left of my powers is the strength to take a punch or two.” The huge oaf suddenly seemed uncharacteristically fragile.

              Dwight’s verbal attack had hit a little too close to something deep in Bernard. He immediately regretted his words, but knew it was too late to take any of it back. Clearly, there were demons lurking somewhere in his partner’s questionable past as well. “Look, man, I’m sorry.” Dwight approached the giant, putting his good arm up to his partner’s shoulder. “I’ve been out for over a month with nothing to do but think about what happened and look for blame.”

              “I did what I could. There wasn’t much left of ya.” There was honest remorse in his voice.

              Dwight couldn’t hold a grudge against him for what happened. It was the flaw in his own plan that had led to Quickkill falling into the trap. “Yeah, thanks for the save.”

              “Peace?” Bernard asked, offering his enormous hand.

              Dwight returned the handshake, “Peace.”

              The sound of sniffling behind them turned both men’s attention back to Ian, who was weeping at the display of camaraderie. Bernard was the first to shatter the moment.

“Knock it the fuck off before I break yer nose, you little wank’eh,” he said, raising his oversized middle finger at the much smaller man.

The next three days were mostly peaceful as Dwight got caught up with everything he had missed while he recovered. He spent most of it in his room, researching how the Capes of New Haven were reacting to the presence of a new vigilante. The papers had taken to calling the killer “The Referee,” noticing the pattern of attacking Powers who committed some kind of social wrongdoing. It seemed even the media was catching on to Wulf’s game.

              Secretly, he wondered if that hadn’t actually been his boss’s doing. It served the bastard’s agenda to have the Capes afraid of a shadowy rule-keeper watching them, ready to strike at anyone who misbehaved.

              The official statement from the Justice Guild was that they would hunt down the killer and bring them in for questioning. Dwight considered whether he would actually make it to a courtroom if he was taken alive. He feared being disappeared by Wulf would be the better way to go.

Midas was the Guild’s frontrunner at the press conference. Though he said the words, the man wasn’t exactly known for mercy. Clad in his golden spandex, black cape flowing behind him, he looked like a trophy – something too ornamental to actually do anything. He was their paragon: every new Cape wanted to be like him, glamorous and untouchable.

              As Dwight watched the recording, he couldn’t help but feel like Midas’s eyes were fixed directly on him. The Cape swore to hunt the vigilante down, his perfect features etched with determination. When the media event was over, he rocketed away. The rest of the Guild left the stage in more mundane ways, Linda among them. Each walked back to their individual lairs within the Guild’s headquarters.

              Feeling restless, Dwight spent the remainder of that afternoon testing his body. After a few sets of simple exercises, he concluded that he was at least as fit as he had been before the accident – maybe even more so. The transfusion from Bernard seemed to have corrected some of the wear and tear he felt as he aged; indeed, he hadn’t enjoyed this kind of energy since his early twenties. The new arm wasn’t holding him back, either. It did the job of his old one adequately; even better, considering the features the Doc worked into it. All things considered, he was doing great for someone still listed as missing/dead.

              Only a few days later, Bernard arrived at their door with a familiar black briefcase: a job for them. Dwight wasn’t surprised that Wulf hadn’t waited; if Wulf needed his personal exterminator, he wasn’t the type to wait for approval.

It was the contents of the briefcase that shocked him. The gold and black caught his eye first; the chiseled jaw and neat hair were next. Midas’s picture-perfect smile always unsettled him in ways he could never adequately describe.

              “You do realize this isn’t possible? He’s an S-Class Power.” Dwight gave Bernard a skeptical raised eyebrow. “You might as well ask me to kill God.”

              To the contrary, Bernard looked positively excited with the task, “Come on, D; consider it a ‘welcome back’ gift.”

              Though Midas had slept with Linda, Dwight hadn’t held it against him. It had been her choice, and he had done what he felt was right about the whole thing. He didn’t have any lingering grudge about what had happened; this was all business. “Even if we could find a way, what the fuck did he do? How did Midas, the Golden-fucking-Savior of New Haven, manage to piss off Wulf?”

              “’Ell if I know.” Bernard shrugged, “Boss wants ‘im dead. I ain’t inclinded to argue.” He grabbed the file photo from Dwight and a marker off the cluttered coffee table, then began drawing on the image.

              Dwight thought quietly for a time while his partner practiced his artistic talents, “Okay, so we have to find a way to kill the single most powerful person in New Haven for the most dangerous person in New Haven.” The wheels slowly began to turn, and a plan started to form. “This time, we need to make sure we know we’ve got the right one before we pull the trigger. Midas typically has at least three other Capes with him.”

              Bernard finished his modifications. He tossed it on the table in front of his partner. Two dark black crosses covered the Cape’s eyes, along with a deep bullet hole scribbled in the center of his forehead. “Sounds like we’ve got our work cut out fer us this time. Guess you’ve got some more thinking to do ‘en?”

              Visions of falling capes danced in Dwight’s mind. “Yeah, I’ll call you when I’ve got something. Few days, tops.”

              “Righ’, see ya when you’ve got it.” He made his way out through the continuous disaster that was Dwight and Ian’s shared living space, leaving Dwight alone with his plotting.

              That afternoon, Dwight made a few phone calls. The first, placed to the Doc, required careful phrasing. There was no way she was going to agree to help him if she knew he was already back to work for Wulf. He wasn’t going to be able to reach out for any gadgets this time around.

              Ellis didn’t pick up; she never did. It wasn’t until after he hung up that the return call came through. He answered immediately, “Doc, I need a favor.”

              “You always do. What happened? Did you forget to use a decent lubricant with the new hand?” She was joking, but he couldn’t tell her that he actually needed a doomsday weapon to take down the strongest man in the city.

              His lie came rather easily. “I’m having trouble sleeping. Do you know any telepaths who could do some digging for me? Maybe suppress the part where Killstreak nearly killed me?”

              There was an extended pause on the other end. “I know a couple. What’s in this for me, though? I can’t keep giving you free information and services; I have a business to run.”

              “How about my…technical expertise?” It was a hard sell.

              She laughed, “At what, D, getting the snot kicked out of you by people way out of your league?”

              “At fighting superhumans with zero abilities. I’ve survived fights that I had no right to, come up with plans that actually work. Even if we didn’t get Killstreak with the first one, we did kill a speedster before he knew what hit him.” He was reaching for nothing, praying she would accept his offer.

              There was another long delay as she considered the exchange. “Alright, info for info. I’ll put you in touch with the best telepath I know. You’re my new consultant for metahuman combat, I guess.” It was obvious she was having trouble thinking of when that would actually be useful.

              “Deal; I’ve got a pen ready when you are.” He fished a pad of paper from the clutter and waited.

              “No, no; I’ll have her call you. I can’t give out all my contacts that easily. Expect the call by the end of the day.” She hung up abruptly, likely back to work on some new world-changing contraption that would never leave her lab in one piece.

              The next number he dialed was his ex’s. He pulled the phone away from his ear twice, debating whether he actually wanted to have this conversation right now. Explaining why he had been missing for an entire month would require more lying; he couldn’t just say that he had the shit kicked out of him until he was comatose. Mercifully, the call went to her voicemail. Her warm, “Hiya!” at the beginning of her recorded message could lighten his darkest moods, even now, after their marriage was over. There was something so relieving about it, like everything was going to be alright because this one person was so happy about life.

              He deliberated if he should leave a message. She would be able to see it was his number, and could assume the rest. To say he was at an uncomfortable loss for words would be an understatement.

              He hesitated a few seconds after the beep, “…Uh, hi, Linda. It’s Dwight. You knew that.”

His mind was reduced to that of an adolescent boy speaking to the girl he liked and her mother at the same time, all stutters and stops. “I know I’ve been gone for a while, and you were looking for me. I’m alive; not well, but alive. Don’t, umm, come pull me off the street. Call me if you want to talk.”

              He hung up, immediately embarrassed about the terrible awkwardness of the entire recording. Still, there was no way to confidently explain his unexpected disappearance. The whole thing could have gone worse. If he was lucky, she might even acknowledge his request; Dwight hated the sensation of being picked up and carried into the air.

              The moment he set his phone down, he attempted to return to his work. An instant later, there was an incoming call. He stared at the face-down device for a moment, dreading seeing Linda’s smiling face – an old picture – when he turned it over. As the fourth ring chimed, he finally reached down and flipped it. His ex’s face was not on the screen; instead, it was an unknown caller. Dwight had become familiar with not knowing who was on the other end of the connection when he answered. Usually, it was Wulf or one of his Associates. Either way, they were not the kind of calls that he could afford to ignore.

              Tapping the green “accept” button, he could hear chewing on the other end of the line. “Hello?” he asked, unsure of who the crunching noises belonged to.

              A woman’s voice answered, “You’re Ellis’s contact?” Her accent was thick, but Dwight couldn’t place it.

              “Yeah, I’m the one. You’re my telepath?” he asked, suddenly self-conscious of the question.

              Another loud snap, “That’d be me. And don’t ask me to tell you what you’re thinking; it doesn’t work that way.”

              Dwight was confused; he had heard stories of telepaths able to read minds across entire cities. “So you’re not what I’m looking for?”

              She seemed insulted, “I can read a mind, take away a thought here, add one there. I’ll scramble your brain if you piss me off. I’m just not going to do it over the phone.”

              Dwight had obviously offended her, “Okay, okay. Sorry. I believe you. You sound like you’ll be fine for the job.”

              “The Doc said something about nightmares. I’m just letting you know in advance anything I do is temporary – one-hundred-percent reversible.” Ellis had told her about his lie; he was hoping that she would have left that for him.

              Coming clean would probably be the only safe approach. After all, this person had been referred to him on the grounds that she could read as well as screw with his mind. Maintaining any kind of deception would be impossible, especially if she was going to do what he had planned for Midas.

              A face-to-face was in order, “Look, I’d like to meet in person. Say, Meteor Park in two hours?”

              They sat silently for a time, then another crunch, “Sure, gives me time to finish up here.”

              Dwight briefly thought of his mental map of the park. He had been there a few times, but it had been a while. The last time was with Linda on one of their patrol-dates, essentially the only way they spent any time together during the last couple of months of their marriage: her working, him mostly just trying to remain close. He thought of the small garden fountain at the southern end of the park, near the Neil Street entrance. “Alright, I’ll meet you by the-”

              She cut him off, “I’ll find you. Telepath, remember?”

              The idea of being hunted by his thoughts made him uncomfortable, but he had to admit, it was effective.

              “If you think about meeting me, I’ll know where to look. My name is Lia, by the way. Think of it, and I’ll see you in two hours.” She hung up before he could say anything else.

              Dwight sat for a few minutes, trying to think his way out of his problem. He would have to avoid thinking of work until he knew she was onboard with the plan. Even the activity of controlling his thoughts might give him away. It was mentally exhausting thinking about how to limit his own mind to “safe” subjects.

              In the end, he gave up. Either she would be willing to help with the plan, or he would have to deal with her before the word “vigilante” entered his brain. He needed a telepath if he was going to stand a chance against Midas, and this was the only one available. Powers didn’t exactly have a categorized “help wanted” section. Worse though, Wulf wasn’t going to accept Dwight’s resignation until he had been repaid for the Doc’s treatment.

His last call of the afternoon was to his partner, who surprisingly answered his phone on the first ring. The big guy sounded pleased as he spoke, “You got somethin’?”

              Dwight felt unsure about reporting the afternoon as a success, “Meet me at StarPoint in an hour and we’ll go over it before we proceed.”

              “No. Not at Wulf’s.” Dwight was surprised at Bernard’s response. “The boss doesn’t want to bring down any heat for this one; we have to play it more personal. How ‘bout I come ‘round your place again.”

              Dwight grabbed his jacket and made for the door. Wulf’s office would have been an out of the way stop. Without the detour, he could just head straight to the park with time to spare. “That’s fine,” he said, “but I have a meeting first. I’ll call you when we’re set.”

              Meteor Park had earned its namesake as the landing point of the first public superhero in New Haven. Captain Meteor had flown out of a cloudy sky one afternoon and permanently changed the world. Stopping an armored car theft in front of the park had been the first of many deeds that cemented him as New Haven’s first guardian. When he died saving the city from a large-scale sub-dimensional invasion, his remains – at least what had been recovered – were interred in the park’s central memorial. The statue, enormous even by New Haven’s standards, was a marvel in itself.