A Once Crowded Sky (30 page)
Strength stands straight, her arms hanging, her shoulders squared. She shakes the hair from her eyes, looks from one man to the other. She lowers her head and smiles.
Baap!
—a gun fires, a man screams, and Strength brings up her fists, twists, slams her fist into the one to her right, pushing her knuckles into his neck, forcing his Adam’s apple back and up. She comes around with her knee, pounding it twice into his ribs. The man stumbles back, drops his gun. And Strength is on him, jumping into him, bringing him down. They hit the asphalt, and Strength bends and cocks her arm, puts her elbow in his teeth.
Something cold at her neck. Metal. She looks back, sees the first one, his nose still pouring, a gun in his hand, the tip dragged across her neck, her chin, up to her lips. He laughs.
Baap!
—a gun fires, the man slumps forward, falls on Strength, blood from his temple falling on her chest. The man beneath her cries out through a broken mouth. He bucks, turns, reaches for his gun.
Baap!
—a gun fires, and there are three men around her lying still, dead, and above her The Soldier of Freedom holsters his weapons and then reaches down, offers his hand. Strength grabs hold of it and pulls herself up.
“Thanks,” she says.
Soldier takes his hand back and covers his mouth. He coughs hard, then wipes his hand on his pants. “Prophetier’s got a book,” Soldier says after he gets his breath. “Showed you coming here. Showed you coming here a few times.”
“Proph’s got a book.” Strength rubs at her skin, looks for wounds. “Good for him.”
Soldier looks over the men on the ground. “What’s it about?”
“It’s complicated.”
“You want to prove yourself. Prove you can do good without them.”
“Nothing’s as easy as that.”
“No, suppose it ain’t.” Soldier spits on the ground. “I’m getting a drink with Doc Speed. We’re working some things out. You want to come?”
“I didn’t think you drank.”
“Don’t drink. Never have. I’m sure they’ll have apple juice.” Soldier gestures to the three men. “After a fight, apple juice can be pretty good.”
Strength looks over at him, inspecting his face, waiting for the grin, for the giggle. He’d been there. One of the three men around her. When they told her she couldn’t go, that it was Ultimate’s, that she was weak, forever weak, and The Man With The Metal Face was forever strong. And she’d walked away, waited patiently for the power to be stripped away. She waited, waited for them all to laugh as it was all stripped away.
“I’m fine,” she says.
“No apple juice?” His face is solid, stoic.
“No apple juice.” She bends down, starts to collect the guns. “I’m going to turn these in. Then I’m going home.”
“Suit yourself.”
She straightens up, the guns held in her hands. “Maybe I’ll go to the gym.”
Soldier nods. He taps his boot against one of the men. “Tough thing. Taking on three. By yourself. No powers.”
“They’d find others girls. Better me than them.”
“I’m glad you’re here,” Soldier says. “I’m glad someone strong is left.”
Strength hesitates, looks at the guns, then at Soldier. “I could’ve taken them without you.”
He looks over at her, narrows his eyes, and he throws his hands to his hips, pretends to draw, his fingers arched out. She jumps back, and he twitches his lip up, growls, and she laughs and laughs and laughs. Soldier slumps down, wipes his brow, drops his hands to his holsters.
“No,” he says. “You don’t need this. You don’t need any of this.” She’s still laughing, and he again taps one of the dead with his boot, and he turns and walks back toward the street, toward his juice, leaving her far behind.
Ultimate, The Man With The Metal Face #580
Inevitably, Pen finds Prophetier’s book. It took him a while to get up, but when he finally stepped across the floor toward the unconscious Star-Knight, it wasn’t too hard to sense the hollow space beneath his feet, the off-pitch clonk of his boot landing on one of the myriad of screens underfoot; after all, aren’t his senses supposed to do exactly that, supposed to lead him to the next clue about how to save the day?
He bludgeoned the glass beneath him until it shattered, and the book was there—a spiral, blue notebook, marked with a title and a number, “Ultimate, The Man With The Metal Face #580.” Inside are pages and pages of scribbling, blue ink hopping between faintly drawn blue lines.
The words read like stage directions, maybe a movie script, describing camera angles and shots, near and far, page breaks, panels. They tell the story of what should have happened after the fight: Star-Knight sitting in this office, talking to Pen, explaining how PenUltimate will save the world.
Ultimate, The Man With The Metal Face #580
PAGE 1
PANEL 1: Blue, nothing but blue.
PANEL 2: Wide shot: Pen on one side of the office, slumped against the wall; Star-Knight on the other, also slumped. You are able to see that Star-Knight’s beat up, red in the face.
STAR-KNIGHT: You think I’m the villain.
PEN: What?
STAR-KNIGHT: You think I’m the villain.
PEN: No.
PANEL 3: Close-up, Star-Knight’s face, head tilted upward.
STAR-KNIGHT: Then why are you here?
PEN: I don’t know.
STAR-KNIGHT: Because you think I’m the villain.
PANEL 4: Again, close-up, Pen now, face staring ahead.
PEN: I don’t know, maybe.
STAR-KNIGHT: I’m not.
PEN: Yeah.
STAR-KNIGHT: I’m not the villain.
PAGE 2
PANEL 1: We see both men sitting in the office. The panel is slightly tinted blue.
PEN: We know about the book.
PANEL 2: Same image but now the panel is even more blue, as if the men are fading into it.
STAR-KNIGHT: So you know, so what? I couldn’t keep it secret. I had a weakness. Everyone has their weakness. Or else we’d all be so—it’d all be so pedestrian.
PANEL 3: Same image. Panel is more blue. The figures are barely outlines.
PEN: We know you have a way back. A way we could get our powers back and defeat this threat.
PANEL 4: Figures have now become a few ink strokes across a blue panel.
STAR-KNIGHT: Ultimate was the greatest man I’ve ever met, did you know that?
PANEL 5: Long strip across the bottom. No pictures. All blue.
PEN: How could you? You should’ve been better.
PAGE 3
PANEL 1: Staring into the Prophetier’s blue. You can vaguely see dozens of heroes flying at the camera.
STAR-KNIGHT: Do you understand what it was, to read that? That he would die? To read Prophetier’s idiotic book?
PANEL 2: Camera moves back to show Prophetier sitting in front of The Blue, hunched over a desk, pen in hand, writing, describing.
STAR-KNIGHT: I use Prophetier. To play the market, to get money; he gives me information in exchange for useless junk. I use him. So what? What was it for anyways? I used it all, all of it, for the game, for making the game work. Who paid for the equipment, the salaries, the mansions, the goddamn Metal Rooms? I served the game. And the game served us all.
PANEL 3: Prophetier’s blue spout exploding, sending Prophetier flying back.
STAR-KNIGHT: So I knew Prophetier’s tricks. When The Blue came, when it was going to kill us all, I knew what it was. That fool Prophetier had lost control of his own abilities, released them on the world. Like so many of these heroes, he didn’t understand what he had. He didn’t have the discipline needed for true power.
PANEL 4: We see Star-Knight now standing in front of Prophetier’s desk, looking down at Proph’s writing.
STAR-KNIGHT: And I went to him, found his books. Found out what The Blue was. How to stop it, how to make the sacrifice. And, of course, how to come back from all of it.
PANEL 5: One long strip: Pen slumped on the left and a beaten Star-Knight slumped on the right.
PEN: You sound like a villain.
STAR-KNIGHT: I needed to save the world. What kind of villain saves the world?
Doctor Speed #336
He takes a drink. He reaches the bottom. He orders another, something different; he’s bored of this kind. The bartender pours brown liquid from a clear bottle, and he takes a drink. He used to toast to family. Ha. Ha. But that joke got tired, so he keeps quiet and takes a drink.
“How’re you, Doc?”
Felix looks from his glass to the voice, and there’s Soldier looking good, well, not good, but who’s Felix to judge? Felix takes a drink. “I used to be better,” he says.
“No,” Soldier says, “you used to be faster.”
“Faster, yeah.” He’s lost in it, zipping around his house, whipping up pancakes for his daughter, eggs for his wife, ironing the clothes, doing his prep for the twelve surgeries he’s got that afternoon, getting the good cheese from Paris, kissing them both on each of their cheeks—their cheeks were different somehow. All in seconds. “Faster,” he says, and he lingers in the lost. But then, inconveniently, there’s a glass in his hand, and he takes a drink.
“Are you ready?” Soldier asks.
“Sure.” Felix says.
“You don’t have to do this.”
“I know.” Felix takes a drink. “Thanks for showing. I didn’t want to be alone.”
“Come outside with me.” Soldier puts his hand on Felix’s shoulder, pulls on him, not too hard, but hard enough that Felix drops his glass, spills brown all over. The bartender comes up and starts to yell, and Soldier pulls at Felix again. Felix sticks his tongue out at the fat man and walks out with Soldier.
As they get into the parking lot, the world heaves to the left, and Felix ducks down, heaves out what little is left in his stomach. Soldier bends over, pats him on the back. Felix finishes and puts his arm over Soldier, and they walk on, finding a quiet space near the back of the lot.
“Better to be drunk with them,” Felix says, “than sober without them. Than drunk without them.” Felix laughs.
“I don’t know about all that.” Soldier props Felix up against a car and reaches into his holster, pulls out his gun. “Sounds like a bunch of bull to me.”
“Prophetier. He has all the answers.”
Soldier cocks his gun. “There are other ways.”
Felix nods and reaches out, takes the weapon. He wraps his fingers around the grip, into the trigger well. He looks down at the gun in his hand. He wishes it were a drink.
“You sure?” Soldier asks.
“I guess,” Felix says as he puts the gun to his head.
“I should tell you something. Before you do it. You ought to know. There might be a way back. To get the powers back.”
“Really?” Felix asks, the gun bumping in his hand. “Awesome.”
“Your speed’ll be back. Maybe your daughter will come back. Maybe your wife.”
Felix closes his eyes. “That sounds nice.”
“It does. It sounds nice.”
Felix opens his eyes. “Maybe Mashallah will come back!” he shouts out.
“Maybe you ought to reconsider this.”
Felix pulls a bit at the trigger. “Maybe I’ll come back. I’ll just go now and be with them for a while, and then we’ll all come back together, and that’ll be pretty good.”
