Masked (2010) (45 page)

“Don’t worry,” he whispered.
I can save you. I can make up for all the terrible things I’ve done.

In that strange, timeless world, Nox moved with the certitude of a savior filled with a righteous fury that Rose would never be hurt again. Carrying her effortlessly, he hauled them both on to the cable car roof, effortlessly making thousands of microcalculations to balance perfectly against the conflicting motions. In his mind, he glowed like a star as he shifted rapidly along the roof, avoiding the glaring lights.

I can do anything
, he thought.
No one can stop me
.

Farther down the hill, the cops had created an impromptu roadblock with their cars to stop the carriage’s progress. Not even he would survive that impact. Instantaneously calculating the wind currents, he leapt from the roof, shifting his body subtly to accom
modate Rose’s weight. Landing like a cat, he immediately broke into a sprint. All around, Styx’s foot soldiers bolted for cover.

They’re scared of me
, he thought with grim pleasure.

The deafening explosion blasted out windows for blocks and sent a fountain of orange and scarlet flame high into the air. As debris rained down, Nox sheltered in a doorway with Rose.

“Who are you?” she asked weakly.

He removed his mask so she could understand what he’d done for her. There was surprise and confusion, but the time for explanations would come later.

“Styx is going to keep coming for you to get at me,” he said. “I’m not going to let you suffer any more. I have to end this one way or another. Where is he?”

She gave him directions to the place she’d been taken when they snatched her. Her concern for him was clear.

“Don’t worry about me.”

She read his thoughts. “It’s over with Daniel. I broke it off. It was a stupid thing, a reaction to you and me and. . .” As her words trailed away, he understood why she had been made to suffer and his anger burned fiercely. But when he looked into her face, he saw every sacrifice he had made—the loss of his days, his isolation, his obsession—and the sacrifice he would undoubtedly have to make, would all be worthwhile.

“Once I’d made sure Rose was safe with the paramedics, I returned here, to the quiet of the penthouse, my sanctuary from the world. I figured Styx wasn’t going to run to another hideout. He wanted me to find him, or he wouldn’t have let Rose know his base. Over the months I’d been tracking him, I saw the intricacy of connections and the depth of his thinking. He had always been one step ahead of me, but that was coming to an end now that I knew the truth. He couldn’t hide behind masks anymore, and it was easy to understand his motivations.

“But that very revelation had sent my own world spinning
off its axis, and I was no longer sure I could trust my reactions. I needed time to assimilate. In a secret compartment in the bedroom, there was the box containing the few remnants of my past life that I wanted to keep—photos, of Rose, and Daniel and me, diaries, the usual stuff. As I sifted through them, they gradually revealed themselves to me in a new light. That expression on Daniel’s face after I’d hauled him away from the kids threatening to beat him up in the locker room—it didn’t look like relief any more. He was clever, used to being at the top. How did he really feel about some dumbass coming along and making him seem like a loser?

“The three of us drinking champagne after I’d bought out Rose’s dad’s company. Was Daniel really looking with affection at San Francisco’s hottest couple? Or was it yearning for the woman that the dumbass had snatched from him? Another blow in a lifetime of blows. What was really going on in that supersmart head of his?

“I didn’t want to believe it. I was who I was because of Daniel, on so many levels. He’d been the only person who stood by me during my single-minded, cold-hearted rise to the top of the financial ladder. He was always there for me, the best of friends, an anchor in the harshest of environments. The betrayal—if that’s what it was—was almost too painful to bear.

“When had he used the process on himself? Before my accident, or was I the guinea pig? Either way, he clearly had not suffered from my debilitating loss of the daylight world. Maybe my disability was just a by-product of the rod tearing through both hemispheres of my brain.

“And the truth beyond the truth? However important Daniel was in my life, I couldn’t let him hurt Rose anymore. She was good and decent and honest, and she didn’t deserve either of us. But life, as I’d discovered early on, was all about the hard choices. If I didn’t bring Daniel to justice, I’d be spending the rest of my nights trying to keep Rose alive, trying to stay alive myself; and could I ever outthink Styx? I’d been behind him pretty much every step of the way so far.

“It had to end tonight. Whatever it cost me, it had to be over. I remember. . .”

Creeping. . .

. . . through the shadows surrounding the seemingly derelict building on the edge of the Tenderloin. The moment Nox saw it he understood the irony: it was one his company had bought for redevelopment before the bottom fell out of the market. Daniel had hoped to build a new research center there, but he’d never been able to raise the cash from investors.

Styx undoubtedly already knew he was there. Traps would be laid, his death would be planned, unfolding, not like clockwork, but with the seemingly inexplicable patterns of the quantum world. Nox knew he and Styx were entangled, like Schrödinger’s cat and its decaying atom, had always been that way, and their fates were just as inextricably linked.
Spooky action at a distance
, Einstein had called it, and he’d always said Daniel was smarter than Einstein. He couldn’t outthink Styx, but he did have instinct, cunning, and brutality, traits that had served him so well in the financial world.

The power supply to the building went first. When the fires were started across the ground floor, Styx’s men ran out into the night like rats, and as choking smoke filled the pitch-black upper floors, Nox searched the interior methodically and rapidly. He had no idea if the process had adapted Styx in exactly the same way, but the dark and the confusion were his own perfect world.

To the last he hoped he was mistaken and Daniel had no part in this; that he would be safe at home, and someone else would be waiting at the heart of the web. But on the top floor, with the flames already roaring up on every side and the air almost too hot to breathe, Nox saw there was no going back. Consumed by panic, Daniel searched frantically for a way out of the burning building. He wielded a hunting knife in a desperate manner that made him appear to be attacking ghosts, or as if he expected Nox to emerge suddenly from the billowing smoke.

Daniel couldn’t see in the dark. There was the advantage.

Circling Daniel, he waited for his moment to attack, acutely aware of that intermittently slashing knife. But time was short, and soon the conflagration would prevent any exit. Nox lunged.

At the last, Daniel must have heard something, for he whirled and stabbed the knife into Nox’s side. Reeling backward from the pain, Nox dropped his guard, and Daniel hacked and slashed in a frenzy, still not seeing who was there.

All the months of repressed anger rose up in Nox, and he returned the attack just as furiously.

“Why?” he yelled. “What did I ever do to you?” He pressed the black mask close to Daniel’s face, and in the ruddy light now glowing through the shattered windows saw recognition flare in Styx’s face, and then realization, and finally fear.

He couldn’t give Daniel a chance to turn the tables again. His fists were like hammers. Bone cracked under his knuckles, and blood sizzled on the hot concrete floor. He told himself it was justice in action, but really it was just the old Matt, betrayed and frightened and alone. He knew in that moment that whatever the wonders of an enhanced Quantum Mind, it was still tethered to the person beneath; the flawed individual always fighting to escape the gravity of his own destiny.

He didn’t know if he’d already beaten Daniel to death before the floor shattered beneath them and they plunged through the burning building. But by the time Daniel hit the ground, there was no life left in him.

Nox dragged the body outside and stood over it as the sirens rose up in the distance. Conflicting emotions threatened to tear him apart. He’d saved Rose, saved himself, but what had he lost? In the end, he decided to preserve his memory of Daniel. Carrying the body off into the night, he buried it in an unmarked grave so that Daniel would never be linked with Styx or his criminal activities. He couldn’t forgive his old friend; nor could he forgive himself.

“And that was it, the end—of the person who had been at my side for all my life, of the threat that had brought so many deaths and so much suffering, of the pain that had been heaped upon Rose. As I sit here in the last of the night, I only feel numb. But at least there’s hope of a fresh start. Yeah, yeah, a new dawn, right? Funny. With Styx gone, I can put away the suit, and the Nox identity, and all the inadvertent pain I caused along with it. Because without me, there wouldn’t have been Styx. Quantum entanglement on a human scale. Only now I haven’t got my best friend to explain all that stuff to me.”

He paused in deep reflection for a moment and then switched off what he hoped would be the final recording. His eyes burning, he felt the sun coming up hard at his back. Quickly, he stripped off the costume and stored it away in the hidden compartment so there would be no sign of his secret self if anyone did break through his intricate defenses while he was out cold.

Then, with hope, and relief, and sadness, he laid himself down on the bed and went into a deep slumber the moment the first rays of the sun broke through the window.

Ten minutes later, Matt woke, stretched, felt typically refreshed. He strode to the picture window and looked out over San Francisco, enjoying the heat of the sun on his face. When he felt ready, he slumped into the chair at the desk and began the recording.

“One day I’m going to have to play back these recordings, review my experiences, but then who’s got time for that. I’ve got an empire to build. October eleventh. A new day dawns. With any luck, the plans I put in place will have taken out that idiot Nox. If not the bomb in the cable car, then the electric net on the top floor of the old factory. He won’t be interfering with my work anymore. And with a typical flourish, it should have gotten rid of Daniel Stride too so no one else can benefit from his wonderful process. I’m not a bad guy. I gave him a chance. But if he doesn’t understand the value of money, what can I do? And Rose? I’ll be sad to see her
gone too, but if she doesn’t want me. . .” A triumphant grin rose up as he realized how close he was to his dream.