Other People's Heroes (The Heroes of Siegel City) (15 page)

“I... I just don’t.” It hit me as he went to his desk -- he honestly believed that was a poster of his sister on the wall.

On his desk was a binder full of plastic sheets. In each sheet, arranged in a clear little envelopes, were nine “Capes and Masks” game trading cards. Spectrum. Flambeaux. The Shell. Swoosh -- an old card, before he changed his name to LifeSpeed. At least four cards of Animan in various guises.

“Nah, it’s not really considered proper etiquette to ask for signatures when you’re interviewing somebody.” I flipped through the pages a bit -- DeVinity, Goop, Deep Six, Colonel Coldsnap... knowing the truth about the people on those cards gave the game a whole new dimension. “So which one’s your favorite?”

Tom took the binder and flipped to the first card on the first page. The card was printed to look old and yellowed, with fake frays on the edges. Across the bottom was a silver banner that read “Vintage Series.”

“I had to swap my brother for a First Light, a Justice Giant and a Doctor Noble for him,” Tom said. “I still miss Justice Giant.”

“I read a lot,” Tom said. “Old magazines, books, comics... he was the best of them, you know. The best of them all.” He took the card out and looked it over. As he admired the hero for what must have been the thousandth time, I felt a rise from him. There was a swell of energy and a Rush.

He handed me the card to look at, and I took it, shaking. Tom had powers. They were raw, undeveloped... no way to even tell what they
were
yet. But they were there. It made sense, I suppose -- if his sister had powers, why
not
Tom? I’d have to remember to ask Annie if Quentin had ever displayed unusual talents.

My hand quivered a bit and I dropped the Lionheart card on top of a picture of the Goop with a big, dopey grin on his face. Tom slid Lionheart back into the plastic and closed the binder. “Can I ask you something?” he asked.

“Sure, buddy.”

He slid the binder back on its shelf. “Are you dating my sister?”

I regret not having brought my glass of lemonade with me, because I’ve never had such a wonderful opportunity to perform a spit take. “No,” I finally said, more than a little wistfully. “No, I’m not.”

“Oh,” he said. He sounded disappointed.

“Why? Did she... um... did she say something to you?”

“Not really. But she talks about you a lot, and I thought... once I heard her tell Mom she wishes Todd -- that’s her
boy
-friend -- saying she wishes Todd were more like you.” He said the word “boyfriend” the way most people would say “dung beetle.”

My head simply nodded. My heart, on the other hand, was resisting the urge to physically leap from my chest and perform the “Red and Black” number from
Les Miserables.
“Oh,” I said. “I see.”

“It’s a shame,” he said. “I like you a lot better than that Todd guy.”

“You’re a wise, wise young man, Tom,” I said.

RESEARCH

Foosball, it seems, is one of the most intense, strategic sports ever devised by the human mind. At least, that’s what you’d think if you saw the way Ted was cleaning my clock at it the next day at the lounge. Not that it was entirely a fair game, mind you. He kept distracting me by talking about Miss Sinistah.

“It sounds to me like you’ve got the brother
and
the mother on your side,” he said, scoring his fifth consecutive goal without me even getting my little twirly guys near the ball. “Dude, you’re in good shape.”

“Brother... mother... Ted, I could have the Pope getting a piggyback ride from Lionheart dragging a ‘Josh loves you’ banner behind them through the air. As long as she’s with Doc Noble, there’s nothing I can do.”

“Why
not
?”

“Because I don’t do that sort of thing. If I was the ‘reason’ they broke up, if I got her
that
way, I’d feel so damn
guilty
about it that I’d never be happy.”

“That is an
incredibly
warped perception.”

“Oh, like I don’t
know
that.”

Ted stopped moving, stood straight up and glared at me with a “you moron” look on his face.

“What?”

“I’m just thinking that maybe we’ve got the wrong guy in the Doctor Noble suit.” Without bending down or even looking he twirled a row of foosball players and scored another goal.

“Are you sure you’re not telekinetic?” I asked. “Why are you so stunned, anyway? You think I’m not telling the truth.”

“Empath, remember? I
know
you’re telling the truth. That’s what bothers me. That and the fact that you’re scared of something and you don’t want anyone to find out about it.” He shot another goal.

“If you must know,” I said, “I got a
Powerlines
assignment to profile the Goop and I didn’t know quite how to go about it. Do they have air hockey here? I’m
good
at air hockey...”

“Is that all?” Ted gave me a look that indicated he didn’t for an instant believe that
was
all, but he respected me enough not to pry if I didn’t want him to.

What he was really sensing, I suppose, was my growing apprehension about my notebook. I’d filled it with more than enough info to expose Morrie’s little charade once and for all, but I just couldn’t bring myself to start on the exposé. I told myself I needed more info. I told myself I could make it better. I told myself there was a deeper story here.

Truth was, there were only two reasons I hadn’t gone ahead with the story. First, I was afraid if I blew the whistle, I’d never see Annie again.

Second...

Second...

Dammit.

“Yeah. The computer system here can tell you everything there is to know about every Cape and Mask since Morrie took over -- both the legitimate stories
and
the ‘official’ spin jobs we release to the public.” He pointed me toward the row of computers Nightshadow had read my news article from a few days earlier and scored another goal. “Check it out. This game is getting too easy anyway.”

I migrated over to the computer and clicked on the “archive” icon (which, I was irritated to see, was Hotshot’s emblem.) Once in the program, the computer asked me for the name of the Cape or Mask I wished to study. The program was rather bland, without the sort of flashy graphics and colors and animated features you get accustomed to with a computer.

“It’s a beta version,” Ted said. “Morrie just wants to make sure he can get all of the info in and the mechanics working properly. When he releases the full version to the mass market on CD-ROM, it’ll blow your eyes out. Of course, it’ll be
sans
the non-official files.”

I typed in “Goop” and hit the send button. The computer hummed and whirred for a minute, then asked me “official or unofficial version?” With Ted standing right there, I decided it would be more prudent to simply look at what I’d need for the story. I clicked on “official.”

The computer sang to itself for a few more seconds before a somewhat lengthy document appeared on the screen. I glared up at Ted, who shrugged. “That’s what you asked for,” he said. “Hey, Animan! Feel like getting your butt kicked?”

I turned back to the screen and began reading the ludicrous story of the Goop, according to Morrie’s spin writers. This is it, in a nutshell:

During one of the brief periods the Gunk regained the intellect of Dr. Richard Newell, his original identity, he abducted a brilliant young biochemist by the name of Edward Plante. Gunk forced Plante to try to help him find a cure for his condition. The two slaved away for weeks, analyzing samples of Gunk’s body and trying to figure out a treatment that would restore his DNA to a human state.

Plante finally developed a serum he believed could revert Newell back to human form. Unfortunately, by that point, Newell’s mind was again retreating into the personality of the Gunk. The slime-beast raged when Plante tried to present him with the treatment, destroying the laboratory and bathing Plante in the serum. The doomed researcher managed to escape the lab, only to be struck by lightning.

The next morning the Gunk, now with Newell’s identity completely submerged, found Plante lying unconscious outside the complex. The serum, combined with the lightning, had transformed him into another slime-creature like the Gunk.

Gunk felt a kinship to this new, familiar creature and took it under his gooey, dripping wing. The childlike Goop had no recollection of his former life, and was probably better off not knowing what he’d lost.

I turned away from the screen and looked at Ted. “This is total crap,” I said.

“Most of the ‘official’ stories are. Score!” As he shot Animan cursed and pounded the table.

“It doesn’t even make sense. If Goop doesn’t remember his old life and Gunk doesn’t ‘officially’ have the brains God gave sea algae, how did this story get out at all?”

“That’s probably one of the reasons the official story never became that popular,” Ted said.

The rest of the document was just a rundown of all the known activity Goop and Gunk had taken part in since his debut. I gave it only a cursory glance before scrolling all the way to the bottom of the document, where there was a link. “Unofficial history,” it read. I clicked on it, read every word in the new document and looked over at Ted, who was pissing off Animan at the foosball table.

“Hey, Ted... ‘unofficial’ histories
are
the real ones, right? I mean, the stuff that actually gave people their powers?”

“Hey, little guy.” I jumped nearly a foot into the air when I heard Goop’s fluid voice behind me. When I turned to face him, he had his typical, friendly grin plastered across his face.

“Oh. Hey, Goop.”

“Good story, huh?” he said. “I like the part where I get hit by lightning. And Morrie says it really happened, too.”

I shuddered. For the first time, I started to get the feeling Goop was feeding me a line, whether he intended to or not. “Yeah... I’ll bet he does. Goop, does the name ‘Edward Plante’ mean anything to you?”

He reached up in a motion to scratch his head that resulted in his bony fingers digging into his flesh and scraping his skull. “It sounds right, but... it’s like there’s something...”

“Wrong?” I offered.

“Missing.”

The lights fell suddenly and turned blue and there was an alarm. It fired off three high-pitched, staccato beeps in rapid succession, then repeated. Everyone else in the lounge jumped up, some looking angry, but most dismayed.

“What?” I said. “What’s going on? Is it a fire?”

“I wish,” Animan said.

Ted kicked the table. “It
can’t
be. Not so soon after Photon Man, who’d be that stupid?”

“Ted, what the hell is going on?”

Ted picked up his helmet. “We’ve got a rabbit, Josh.”

“A
what
?”

“Remember what I told you happened to Photon Man? Somebody did...
something
. A crime against a Cape, that’s what Morrie calls it.”

“So you sound an alarm?”

“No. The alarm means the guilty party, whoever the hell it is, is rabbiting... running away. And that means
we’ve
got to catch him.”

HE’S A COLD-HEARTED SNAKE

As we rushed down the halls to the main auditorium, I kept trying to hustle information out of Ted and Animan. “What do you mean
we
’ve got to catch him?”

We headed into the auditorium and took our seats. Ted fumbled nervously with his helmet. “We still have a hearing and all, you know, after the rabbit is caught--”

“
Usually
,” Animan broke in.

“--but anyone who bolts... it’s as bad as confessing on tape, Josh. He might as well hang a ‘Guilty’ sign around his neck and have a seat next to O.J. Simpson.”

As the last stragglers filtered in, Morrie took the podium. As usual, Mental Maid flanked him to the left. On the other side, First Light took a place. She had a green band wrapped around her wrist where Tom had grabbed her. Some part of the ‘purification’ process, I supposed. As everyone yammered, waiting for Morrie to start, I noticed the conversation dominated by a variety of questions that asked the same thing.

“Who is it?”

The room was finally ground to silence when Flambeaux, sitting in the front row, jumped and shouted, “Dammit, Morrie, we’re wasting time! He could be
anywhere
by now!”