Heroid

Joe, the Fed Ex driver struggled with the long box as he balanced it on his shoulder. It wasn’t heavy – only about sixty pounds or so – but it was over six feet long. It had taken up way too much space in his van, and he would be glad to be rid of it.

He carried the package from the curb and up the steps to the entrance of… what was it called? He checked the address again – Maggie’s Rock. He pressed the buzzer and waited.

Soon, a stunningly lovely woman with long, perfect blonde hair opened the door. She wore a tight, dark pink sweater and a tight skirt with tan hose and black flats. Joe frowned. He had hoped she’d have on heels like the last time he had delivered.

“Ms. Kinsolving! How are you today?”

“I’m fine, Joe. What do you have there?”

Joe looked at the shipping labels again. There was one on top of the other, and part of the address from the bottom label was showing: Moab, Utah.

“Looks like it got redirected, whatever it is,” Joe said.

Ms. Kinsolving looked at the address label also. “Adam Scott? I don’t know any ‘Adam Scott’. Why would he be sending us a package?” she wondered aloud.

“If you think it’s suspicious, I can make a call…”

Ms. Kinsolving considered. “No… no. We’ll take it. It might be something for Fletcher’s or Erik’s workshop. Or some lab equipment for the science room.”

Joe watched Ms. Kinsolving’s smoothly muscled hand sign for the package, then he said, “I can carry it in if you want. I’m not really supposed to, but it’s sort of heavy.” And he liked to watch her walk.

“Sure! Thanks!” Ms. Kinsolving said and opened the door wide.

The flats didn’t affect her walk the way that high heels did, but he still enjoyed following her into the lobby.

“Just set it there,” she said, pointing to the floor behind a desk.

Joe set it down and lingered while took a pair of scissors off the desk, then knelt down to cut the shipping tape and open the box. He could almost see down the neck of her sweater…

Ms. Kinsolving opened the box and let out a scream. Joe looked past the hint of cleavage and saw what the package contained. He screamed and ran out the door.

What remained of Smith had come home.

Paragon City:

Olivia Post…

I’d never liked Paragon City.

Twenty years ago, I called it home. I was the leader of a secret criminal cabal that shall remain nameless. Movers and shakers, we were, with covert operatives in several organizations, including one prominent crime-fighting supergroup. I was nameless as the cabal’s leader, an eminence grise who worked through my puppets, never seen, but always directing and overseeing our interests. I was a shadow of a shadow. Those were good times.

Now, with superfolk swarming the entire northeast in ridiculous numbers, I was reduced to corporate espionage. How the mighty have fallen.

And here I was, in this town I’ve come to hate. Fortunately, it doesn’t take long for the device I was supplied with to detect the clone’s energy signature. I finally found him at Cookes Electronics in Steel Canyon and followed him back to King’s Row, to an alley beside a T.V. repair shop…



The King’s Row laboratory/workshop of Dmitri “Mitri” Martinov:

Mitri…

I’d been working through the night and into the afternoon on my experiment, stopping only long enough to make a run to Cooke’s to pick up a part I’d ordered. Since I’d discovered the new particles (I named them tams after Tami), I’d be able to bring my ideas for quantum manipulation cloning techniques to fruition. If I could only create a duplicate that would be able to maintain a tam particle matrix – and thus retain a stable, functioning form – outside of the lab, there would be numerous practical applications. Cellular regeneration cloning techniques would be obsolete!

The lab. It and its location had made my discovery possible. I had needed a facility located deep enough below the ground to help filter out the noise particles from cosmic and solar radiation. After a chance conversation with a security guard at the Rock, I’d found this place and it was perfect!

As I said, I had been working through the night and into the afternoon when I heard someone enter the lab. It was an attractive middle-aged woman.

“How did you get in here?” I said.


Olivia Post…

“I told the lady up front – the one with the wings and mask – that I needed to see you and she told me where I could find you.”

The clone was handsomely boyish. I could never understand why Crey had always insisted on using their science to try to make some sort of super-army when it would be much more profitable to simply sell unpowered clones for personal use. That’s what I would do. I imagine there are quite a few wealthy men who would pay a pretty penny for a young, healthy clone of myself.

“You should leave, now,” the young clone said.

“But you want me here,” I said, and saying, I knew he did.



Mitri…

There was something about her voice… it was… persuasive.

“Yes, I do,” I found myself saying. I almost invited her to make herself comfortable.

“You will come with me now, peacefully,” she said.

It was as if my will was broken. I realized that anything she said, I would do. I had no choice. I wanted to use my powers to subdue her, but I found myself following her to the door. Still I could do something...



Olivia…

He was easy. Men always are.

Since he was docile, I decided to take a look around the room. It looked very similar to Dr. Martinov’s lab in Virginia. Obviously, this clone shared his creator’s intellect. Amazing. This was far beyond any clone-creating technology I had ever seen. He followed me around the lab, answering when I asked him about the function of a specific piece of equipment. He even uploaded his computer’s hard drive onto my netbook.

The back corner of the room was dominated by a large machine that flashed with pulsating rings of light.

"What is that?" I asked.


Mitri...


“It’s a tam particle matrix initiator,” I asked, “Would you like to see it work?”

I could tell by the look on her face that she was intrigued.

“Tell me what it does,” she said, and of course, I did.

“It creates tam particle matrices.”

“And what are tams?”

The answer would fill volumes if I went into detail, so I began, “The entire universe exists in a quantum state, that is at its smallest measurable level, the universe –“

“Show me what it does,” she said, exactly as I’d hoped she would…



Olivia…

I needed to know. As far as I was concerned, this equipment was all property of Crey Industries, and the more of their toys I returned to them, the better my payoff would be.

I watched the clone work at the computer for a moment, and then step up onto the platform that surrounded the machine. The rings of light expanded so that they enveloped him. He began to crackle with energy.

“That’s enough,” I said, but he must not have been able to hear me because he did not stop. “Come out of there!”

He did not.

I couldn’t let him power up or whatever it was he was doing. I’d stop him even if I had to grab him out of the machine!

I leapt upon the platform and grabbed his arm. A warm tingle ran through my body and I realized I was enveloped in the light also…



Mitri…

Ha! She did exactly as I wanted. Perhaps she had uncanny powers of persuasion, but I was still smarter! The light enveloped her and she was instantly confused.

I wish I’d had time to set the machine so that it would have shot us to the Between. There, I could have stranded her until I figured out a way to deal with her. As it was, the machine was set to create copies.

In seconds, there were four of us standing on the platform.

“Stop her!” I said to my duplicate. But she her mind was quick and cunning.

“All of you – don’t do anything,” she said calmly.

We all stood still while she stepped off of the platform and looked at us.

“You boys come on down,” she said, and we did, leaving her own duplicate standing in the light.

She stood and looked at herself. The duplicate was younger, the age I currently was, as the machine had been set for.

I said, “If you don’t get her out of there, the machine will cycle again and create another.”

The woman nodded and told her duplicate to step down. There she stood as if looking into that magic mirror that everyone over the age of thirty wishes they could have.

“You’re beautiful,” she said with a smile.

The duplicate, as it had been instructed to do, did nothing as the woman looked wistfully at her, not even flinching as she stroked its face.

“My god, you’re perfect,” the woman said, entranced with her own youth. “You’re me.”



Olivia…

Suddenly I became aware. I looked at the older me and said, “You cannot speak.” The look on her face was priceless.

I looked down on myself. My skin was smooth and perfect like a porcelain doll. Parts of me that had gone south were perky and firm again. I looked around the lab. There was no way I was leaving here wearing the ill-fitting clothes of the middle-aged cow standing before me.

“You,” I said, addressing the male clone with clothes on, “I need something to wear out of here. Do you have anything onhand?”

He nodded and went to a locker that was hidden in the wall. From inside he took a short dress and a pair of black boots.

“Tamara’s?” I asked.

He shook his head.

“You have a girlfriend?”

He nodded.

“Sweet.” I slipped the dress over my head and smiled as it slid effortlessly over my chest and stomach – I was so slender now – and pulled the boots on, then said, “The one of you that is dressed, come with me. You other one, get rid of her – something where I’ll never see her again.”

I couldn’t bring myself to tell him to outright kill her. I’m not suicidal.

((New post today!

http://alternautuniverse.blogspot.co...ment-pt-1.html

))

((I usually post on Saturdays, but we're expecting a major winter storm so I might not have power this weekend...

So... new post today.

http://alternautuniverse.blogspot.com/

))

((New art for today.

Actually, it's two finished versions of the same drawing: one colored digitally, one colored by antiquated rubbing of pigments on paper.

This is Secondhand Dreamer, one of the fine students at Maggie's Rock. "Maggie's Rock -- it's not just a school or an orphanage -- it's a family!"





http://heroid.deviantart.com/art/The...Bond-151749791

((New art and a new, temporary offer on my deviantart page.
http://heroid.deviantart.com/
))

((Nice art! I like the style of the piece. Don't get discouraged by rude people posing as critics. ))

“Wake up.” Livvy said it and I did it. I woke up.

Gyah! I hated her! What had ever made me see her as the least bit “motherly”?

“You may ask a question,” she said.

I knew I had to choose my question well, because she had said “a question,” singular.

“Why did you kidnap me?” I figured that question might encompass a few other questions I had such as, “why did you kill Mr. Counsel,” and, “who are you working for?”

“Profit.”

Dang it! She was good!

I was sitting in a leather office chair with a high back. My arms were held to the chair arms with plastic ties. My shoes had been untied and retied around the chair’s pedestal base.

“Murder was never part of the plan,” someone – a man – said. I knew that voice – who was it? Whoever it was, he was behind me.

“It never is, as far as we’re concerned,” another man answered, “but in our business, we have to be flexible. Spilled milk and cracked eggs, you see.”

“Of course,” said the first man and now I recognized his voice. “It’s just that Greg was a long-time family associate.” It was Michael Martin Sr.

“Yes, but when the family split, he chose the wrong side, did he not?”

I didn’t recogniz the other man, but his voice – no, not his voice, his tone – sent shivers up my spine.

“Gentlemen,” Livvy said looking over my head, “You can argue the details later, but I have a plane to catch. I have only delivered half the package. The other part remains in Paragon City.”

Mitri. She had to be talking about Mitri. Thank goodness we weren’t getting along. Otherwise she might have taken us both together. At least this way maybe he can avoid being captured. Maybe.

Livvy left the room and my chair got spun around so that I was facing Michael and the other man.

“Hey, Michael, who’s this,” I said with as much snark as a girl my age can dredge up from the most sarcastic corners of her soul, “your new boyfriend?”

There was a time when if I said something like that I’d see the anger rise up in his neck until the veins stood out and looked like they were going to sprout little buds of hate all over his face. This time he just laughed at me. That ticked me off.

“Tami, Tami, Tami…” He leaned down and got right in my face. “Nothing you say matters anymore. You, my dear, are no longer a person.”

Okay that really ticked me off.

“And my associate here,” Michael continued, his voice just dripping with condescending condescension, “is Albert Saint-John-Worsterfield.”

Except Michael pronounced it, “Senjenwersheld.” I saw the actual spelling of the name a minute later when Michael and Mr. Saint-John-Worsterfield signed a contract that finalized the sale of my father’s company, Sovtek, to Mr. Saint-John-Worsterfield’s employer, Crey Industries.

“Done and done,” Mr. Saint-John-Worsterfield – I’ll just call him Albert – said after they signed. “All of Sovtek’s capital assets, patents, and research results now belong to C.I., and you, Mr. Martin, are 900 million dollars richer.”

“You can’t do that!” I said, straining to pull my arms free, wishing I knew where they had the device hidden that was neutralizing my powers. “You can’t do that! Sovtek doesn’t belong to you! It belongs to me and –“

I almost spilled the beans that Mitri wasn’t a clone, but was, in fact, our de-aged father.

“To you?” Albert said with a mean laugh. “My dear, you don’t own anything. In fact, I own you.”

“What?”

“It’s all here in these papers…”

I looked. They were the papers we had forged to pass off Mitri as a clone of Daddy instead of Daddy de-aged.

“See?” Albert said, pointing at some figures and diagrams. “The energy signature of this clone matches the energy we have neutralized in you. That indicates to me that you are both creations of the same process. According to this document, 'Quantum Manipulation Cloning Techniques,' you are both clones. And as anyone familiar with C.I. knows, we consider clones to be company property.”

((Hi and welcome to Virtue! It sounds like you'll fit in just fine.

I highly recommend that you make a fire blaster, just for the sheer explodey fun. Archery blasters with devices as a secondary is fun to play and has better survivability than many other blaster builds. Psi blasters are also lots of fun.

Hope to see you around some!

And God bless the CoH players' significant others. ))

((This was also written by Ryan's player. ))

I was under arrest, being led out of the house in handcuffs. Tami was out there somewhere with whoever Ms. Post actually was, and she was probably in danger. There weren't any good choices here, but there was one obvious one.

“Officers,” I said, “With all due respect…”

I did a full-body freeze-over. Bullets hurt, but I’d been out heroing with Tami enough to know that they’re not much good against super-dense ice. Neither are handcuffs. They froze over and I snapped them pretty easily. Getting away was slow because I’ve never been a great runner and being coated in ice doesn’t help much. A few bullets ricocheted off of me before I made it to the edge of the woods that bordered the cul-de-sac.

Luckily for me, frost was already forming on the ground and on me. It must have been a cool night. I built up a thick enough coating of ice to make myself less person-shaped and layer of opaque frost quickly formed on it. I curled up beside a big oak tree and they passed me a couple times without seeing anything other than a big, frost-covered rock.

I waited like that for an hour or more before there were no more flashlights and shouting, then I defrosted and sat down against the tree. Now what? Usually Tami makes the plans and I just stand around and hit things... not that that would help much now.

Thinking back, I should have seen a lot of this coming. There were plenty of signs that "Ms. Post" didn't live in that house. There weren't any of her spare coats or shoes in hall closet, things like that. But thinking about that wasn't going to help anything. Figuring it out then might not have either.

So... planning. How was I going to find Tami now?

“Tami,” I said, knowing she couldn’t hear me, but wishing she could, “Hang on. I’ll find you. I promise.”

((A new pic for today. I did this one for my wife who thinks he makes a fine James Bond. ))



http://heroid.deviantart.com/art/The...Bond-151749791

The caterpillar and I looked at each other for some time in silence: at last the Caterpillar took the hookah out of its mouth, and addressed me in a languid, sleepy voice.


“Who are you?” said the Caterpillar.


This was not an encouraging opening for a conversation, but I considered the question and replied, “I—I hardly know, Sir, just at present—at least I think I used to be someone, perhaps someone special to someone, but it was long ago and I think I must have changed several times since then.”


“What do you mean by that?” said the Caterpillar, sternly. “Explain yourself!”


“I can’t explain myself, I’m afraid, Sir,” said I, “because I’m not myself, you see.”


“I don’t see,” said the Caterpillar.


“I’m afraid I can’t put it more clearly,” I replied, and hoped it sounded polite, “for I can’t understand it myself, to begin with; and being going through so many changes in life is very confusing.”


“It isn’t,” said the Caterpillar.

“Well, perhaps you haven’t found it so yet,” I said; “but when you have to turn into a chrysalis—you will some day, you know—and then after that into a butterfly, I should think you’ll feel it a little queer, won’t you?”

“Not a bit,” said the Caterpillar.

“Well, perhaps your feelings may be different,” I said: “all I know is, it would feel very queer to me.”

“You!” said the Caterpillar contemptuously. “Who are you?”

Which brought us back again to the beginning of the conversation.

I felt a little irritated at the Caterpillar’s making such very short remarks, and so I said very gravely, “I think you ought to tell me who you are, first.”

“Why?” said the Caterpillar.

Here was another puzzling question; and, as I could not think of any good reason, and the Caterpillar seemed to be in a very unpleasant state of mind, I turned away.

“Come back!” the Caterpillar called after me. “I’ve something important to say!”

This sounded promising, certainly. I turned and went back again.

“Keep your temper,” said the Caterpillar.

“Is that all?” I said, swallowing down my frustration as well as I could.

“No,” said the Caterpillar.

I thought I might as well wait, as I had nothing else to do, and perhaps after all it might tell me something worth hearing. For some minutes it puffed away without speaking; but at last it unfolded its arms, took the hookah out of its mouth again, and said, “So you think you’re changed, do you?”

“I’m afraid I am, Sir,” said I. “I can’t remember things as I used.”

“Can’t remember what things?” said the Caterpillar.

“Well, I’ve tried to sing, ‘Wouldn’t it Be Nice,’ but it all came different!” I replied in a very melancholy voice.

“Then sing ‘Light in Your Eyes,’” said the Caterpillar.

I cleared my throat and sang:

I can't remember the last time that we kissed goodbye;
All our "I love you's" were just not enough to survive.
Something your eyes never told me,
But it's only now too plain to see;
Brilliant disguise when you hold me,
And I'm free
I've been thinking and here's what I've come to conclude.
Sometimes the distance is more than two people can use.
But how could I have known girl
It was time and not space you would need?
Darling tonight I could hold you and you would know,
But would you believe?
There's a light in your eyes that I used to see;
There's a place in your heart where I used to be;
Was I wrong to assume that you were waiting for me?
There's a light in your eyes –
Did you leave that light burning for me?

“That was not sung well,” said the Caterpillar.

“Not well, I’m afraid,” I said, timidly: “but it is not a song I had sung before.”

“It is wrong from beginning to end,” said the Caterpillar, decidedly; and there was silence for some minutes.

The Caterpillar was the first to speak.

“Who do you want to be?” it asked.

“Oh, I’m not particular as to whom,” I hastily replied; “only one doesn’t like being someone who is hurt so much, you know.”

“I don’t know,” said the Caterpillar.

I said nothing: I had never been so much contradicted before, and I felt that I was losing my temper.

“Are you content now?” said the Caterpillar.

“Well, I should like to be someone, Sir, if you wouldn’t mind,” I said: “an identitiless person is such a wretched thing to be.”

“It is a very good thing indeed!” said the Caterpillar angrily, rearing itself upright as it spoke (it seemed to know exactly who it was and seemed perfectly confident in that identity).

“But I’m not used to it!” I pleaded. “Surely there is a life for me somewhere! I shall never get used to… this!”

“You’ll get used to it in time,” said the Caterpillar; and it put the hookah into its mouth, and began smoking again.

This time I waited patiently until it chose to speak again. In a minute or two the Caterpillar took the hookah out of its mouth, and yawned once or twice, and shook itself. Then it got down off the mushroom, and crawled away into the grass, merely remarking, as it went, “One side will make you grow taller, and the other side will make you grow shorter.”

“One side of what? The other side of what? Larger? Smaller?” I thought to myself.

“Of the mushroom,” said the Caterpillar, just as if I had asked it aloud, “and you made yourself quite small the last life you lived. Try to live larger and be a bigger person next time, will you? It’s your mushroom now. Choose wisely.

In another moment it was out of sight.

The mushroom was there, but despite my attempts, it did not seem to have the faculties for conversation. (Well, if the caterpillar could speak…) I sat myself on top of it, thankful that the caterpillar had left the hookah. I put the hookah in my mouth and puzzled over the whole situation.

I sat there for a long, long time.

All right. I freaked and so did Livvy. Mr. Counsel was my friend and my legal representative. He was a father-figure to me now that Daddy had changed into Mitri. Seeing him like that…

But when I took Livvy out of the den, she led me straight to the garage where we got into Mr. Counsel’s hybrid car and drove away. I know. I couldn’t figure it out either. We just got in and took off. Livvy wasn’t even upset anymore.

As we left the cul-de-sac, we passed two police cars that were coming in. Livvy slowed and watched them as they went by. The policemen didn’t even look our way. Something weird was going on.

“Officer Caine,” she said like nothing had happened and we were just making a run to the mall. “I spoke to him yesterday. Nice man.”

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“To deliver you,” Livvy answered. “Don’t worry.”

“Oh,” was all I replied and suddenly, I wasn’t worried anymore.

She was a Jedi or something. Whatever she said, you did.

“You weren’t really Mr. Counsel’s girlfriend, were you?” Just because I was no longer worried didn’t mean I’d stopped thinking.

“No,” she said, “I just met him a week ago.”

Okay, that was a five-alarm answer. It was time to show this person who she was messing with here! Next stop-sign, I was going to quantum-blast her into another dimension!

I focused… felt for the familiar flow of subatomic particles through my body… and…

Nothing. I felt nothing.

“You used your powers of suggestion to keep me from using my powers, didn’t you?”

She smiled that motherly smile she always had and said, “No, dear. I used a device your father designed to analyze and neutralize your powers. I cut you off from the energy you access.”

Desperate, I drew back my elbow to try and shatter the glass in the door so that I could jump out.

“Don’t do that,” she said, and I didn’t.

We drove for a while longer and I didn’t say or do anything else. She didn’t say anything either. Before long we pulled up to a gate with a security guard. The guard had a badge that said “Crey Security” on it. Why is it always Crey?

Livvy said, “Sleep –”

((Can't help you with the hookers, but if I don't get re-employed soon, I'm going to go rent the first season of Breaking Bad and start taking notes...))

((New post. http://alternautuniverse.blogspot.co...ance-pt-4.html

As always, comments welcomed.))

The information was there. It was a matter of finding each necessary piece, like putting together that full run of Detection Comics back in ’77. Newstands, private collectors, the fledgling comic-book shops – different sources holding each precious issue; and when he had gotten them all together, he had read them all and realized that they had not made one great, epic, forty-year old story like he had always imagined they would if he read them from first to latest. No, even the first several years’ issues – all purportedly written and drawn by Cain Roberts – did not make a complete cohesive story. In fact, taken together, there were so many contradictions and outright continuity errors that the saga of Night Patrolman made no sense at all, and could only be enjoyed if one read just an individual issue here and there, skipping the worst of the worst. It was, up to that point, the biggest disappointment of Adam Scott’s life. There would be others, but that was the first and greatest.

But it put him on a path of righteousness. Of making sure that the next boy to seek adventure and mystery would find it, and finding it, would find his imagination kicked into overdrive. That was the true purpose, Adam Scott had concluded, to make sure the narrative never ended; that whatever story he passed down would become someone else’s story and that story would evolve into yet another and another.

This sense of purpose salvaged even his full run of Detection Comics from 1937 to 1977.

That path had led him to create digital stories, which led him to become a digital being; and now he had another quest, which was nearly over. The information was there. In online news stories. In internet chatrooms. In cell phone logs. In hospital records. On Blackberries and Android-based devices. In emails.

It hadn’t been easy to piece it together. It was almost as if someone had tried to hide him. But Adam Scott – the mage of the World Wide Web – had found Smith.

((This part was largely written by Ryan's player.))

Tami freaked out. Ms. Post did too. I couldn't blame them.

“Oh, God, Greg… Why? Why?!” Ms. Post kept saying that over and over. Tami hugged her and took her out of the room while I called 9-1-1 on the landline beside Mr. Counsel’s chair.

“I’d like to report a… shooting.” I didn’t know how else to phrase it. I wasn't quite thinking straight myself.

“A shooting. How seriously is the victim injured?” As the emergency operator said that, I could hear keys clicking and the sound of a police car responding to the dispatch.

“He’s… dead.” It wasn't the first time I'd made a 9-1-1 call, but that didn't make it much easier. I kept getting that nagging feeling that I was missing something, but I wasn't sure what. It probably wasn't important anyway, and I needed to focus. I got my thoughts together enough to tell them about how we’d found Mr. Counsel and who we all were.

The emergency operator asked me to verify the address after he pulled it up in the 9-1-1 system, but I wasn't much help with that. I knew the street, but I'd only been there a couple days and Ms. Post wasn't around to ask for the house number. It sounded right though. After that it was just waiting while the operator kept me on the line until I saw through the window that the police had pulled up in front of the house. The whole process took between five and ten minutes, start to finish.

An officer knocked on the door – the way the house was built, I could see this through the window too – and I waited for Ms. Post or Tami to open it. Neither of them did. They probably figured I'd get it.

I thanked the emergency operator and hung up the phone to go open the door, but before I was halfway to it, it came crashing in. Four policemen entered the house with their guns drawn. When they saw me, all their weapons pointed my direction.

“Get down on the floor!”

I did. No reason to slow down the process or encourage them to shoot me. At the same time I tried to explain what had happened and where Mr. Counsel was.

“Put your hands behind your back!”

I did, still trying to explain and wondering what had happened to Tami and Ms. Post. They had to have heard the shouting, but there wasn't any sign of them.

One of the policemen patted me down, confiscated my pocket knife, and cuffed me. This sure wasn't Paragon. They didn't even seem to consider whether cuffs would hold me or if I had any natural weapons. There must not be many powered people in Richmond.

The officer who seemed to be in charge stayed with me while the other three made their way through the house.

One of them shouted from the den. “Found the victim!”

“Anyone else in the house?” the policeman guarding me asked.

“Yes. My girlfriend and Mr. Counsel’s girlfriend.” More bad phrasing, I know.

“You and Mr. Counsel were dating the same lady?”

I could tell he was fishing for a motive. I knew it looked odd, and my attempts at explaining things weren't helping, so I wasn't surprised.

“Uh, no. My girlfriend is Tamara Martinov. Mr. Counsel is...was her lawyer. And his girlfriend was Olivia Post. She lives here too.” Great. It even sounded suspicious to me.

The other policemen quickly made their way back to where I was lying on the floor.

“No one else in the house.”

What?

“He said there were two women.”

“The place is clean.”

“Okay,” the officer in charge said, “Let in the paramedics and then check outside – check the neighbors. See if you can find these women.”

Two of the officers left.

I decided to help my case and shut up. I was still getting that feeling that something else was wrong, but with everything going on I couldn't place it.

It only took them a few moments to check outside and go to the neighbors. They came in as the paramedics passed by with Mr. Counsel strapped to a gurney. He had an oxygen mask on his face. And that was it. I'd spent maybe ten minutes in a room with him and hadn't even checked for a pulse. At the time I knew he was dead, but...that didn't make any sense.

“No one outside,” the policemen reported, “and the neighbors don’t know any ‘Olivia Post’.”

Great. There was no Olivia Post. And now a lady who didn't exist had disappeared with Tami.

The officer in charge began chanting to me, “You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say…”

“What a mess.” The man who is speaking turns from the autopsy table, peels off his latex gloves and throws them in the waste can, then strides tiredly to the lavatory and turns on the water. As he vigorously scrubs his hands he says, “We should just cut out his heart and see what happens.”

Another man, taller and older than the other, leans against the wall beside the door. “We can’t do that, Alfred,” he says, “We’ve been told to find out how he’s still alive, not find out if we can find a way to kill him.”

Alfred finishes scrubbing and from a wall-mounted dispenser pulls out several paper towels with which to dry his hands. He says, “Remember how, before Sasquatch and Yeti started turning up in Paragon City and elsewhere, the scientific community agreed that the only way to prove its existence was to produce a dead one? Do you remember that, Charlie?” Alfred throws the handful of towels in the waste can and then taps a cigarette out of the pack in his shirt pocket.

Charlie, still leaning against the wall, considers Alfred’s point. Perhaps only by risking killing their subject, Smith, would they find out why his heart still beat. And maybe the subject wasn’t alive at all. Maybe it was merely that his heart wouldn’t stop beating. After all, there wasn’t much left of him besides his limbs and his head. The only soft tissue left inside his body was his heart. And his face… the bones were smashed to a pulpy mess that shifted under your hands like a bean bag. This one would never be revived, and seriously, Charlie thought, even if he could be, he wouldn’t last long. The pain would be unimaginable.

While Alfred lights his cigarette, Charlie decides to let the wall hold itself up for a bit and goes to look at Smith. He pulls a pair of latex gloves from the dispenser box.

“How much did they pay to get this one?”

“A hundred grand, I was told,” Alfred answers, “Paid for by some rich jackass who wants to live forever without going the whole vampire-and-or-curse route.”

Charlie lifts a scalpel. “How much you got in the bank, Alf?”

Alfred takes a long draw from his cigarette, holds it, then puffs out a leisurely swirling cloud of smoke before answering, “Not a hundred grand.”

“Well, let’s hope I’m not screwing up then,” Charlie says as he brings the scalpel down.

Alfred steps up to look over his co-worker’s shoulder, careful not to drop ashes into the body cavity. Charlie turns to look at him.

“I wish you wouldn’t smoke in here, it’s bad science – contaminates things.”

Alfred takes another puff and says, “If they wanted good science, they wouldn’t hire losers like us.”

“Point taken,” Charlie says going back to his work, “Here goes nothin’.”

The scalpel comes down and slices through subject Smith’s pulmonary artery. There is no blood. There never was any blood with this one. Charlie thought that was the absolutely creepiest thing about it – a heart beating with no blood rushing through it.

A sudden thump makes Charlie’s hand slip, shearing off a goodly sized piece of the left ventricle. Alfred is lying on the floor in a heap.

“Jesus Christ, Alfred, you ‘tard! You made me mess up! If you’re not man enough to stomach this crap without fainting on me… Alfred?”

Charlie kneels down to look. There is blood coming from Alfred’s ears. And eyes. And now his nose.

“Oh, Jesus, Alf…”

At that moment Charlie notices a dull throbbing in his head that builds quickly like an approaching flood until it roars in his ears like the water erupting over Niagra Falls. He barely has time to clutch his head in his hands before everything goes red, then black.

No one notices what has happened until two days later when the man who paid them for their “research” shows up to find out how they are doing. He looks at the two dead bodies, then at the cadaver with the beating heart and calls a clean-up crew. He instructs them to dispose of Alfred and Charlie’s bodies, and to send subject “John Smith” to the facility in Moab.

Christmas Eve!

I told Livvy that I wanted to take Ryan around and see some of the kids from my homeschooling group. (Yeah, I was homeschooled. There was an incident where I um… accidentally healed this boy when I was in elementary school and it caused a lot of complications and it was just easier to take me out of school and put me in a more controlled environment.) The homeschooling group was when a bunch of homeschooling parents would organized a field trip (the state requires x-amount of field trips for middle-school students) or a “phys-ed day” (another thing they’re supposed to do), and it was pretty much my social group up to a few months ago.

When you don’t have a lot of chances to socialize – no lunchroom chatter, or shower room talk – you tend to try to fit in as much gossip and news as you possibly can when you do run into each other. So when Livvy took us to the Mall to meet up with Ginger and Michelle, it was like a non-stop gab-fest! They had both enrolled in a public high school (we had talked about it before I left, and it made me a little sad that I couldn’t be there with them), and were dating and Ginger was a cheerleader for the J.V. team and had cut her hair short, while Michelle was on the yearbook staff already and now had contacts instead of glasses (just like me!). Both of them had… um… bosoms (unlike me).

I bragged to them about being a semi-big-time superhero, and they bragged to me about having driver’s permits. Ginger kept bringing up the subject of boys and once, when Ryan went to get us something to eat, she asked. I told her not yet, and probably not for a long time, and she said two months ago after a dance. I’m pretty sure my eyes popped out of my head, but Ginger was always like that – the most adventurous of the three of us. She wouldn’t have chickened out on that practice run.

I know Ryan was bored by the girl-talk, but he was patient. (I love that about him! He’s always patient!) We sat in the food court for about an hour drinking smoothies and eating hot dogs and he just kept smiling and holding my hand and playing footsie with me under the table. It was great. Maybe the greatest time ever except for those sunsets with Ryan in Talos.

I saw Livvy step around the corner. She kept her distance in respect for our privacy, but I knew that it was time to go. Ginger’s mom showed up about the same time to pick up her and Michelle. She took a picture with my camera of the three of us together, and then we all went our separate ways.

When we got back to Mr. Counsel’s house, he was in the den, sitting in his chair beside the fireplace holding a pistol and had a bullet hole in the side of his head.

Livvy screamed, “He’s dead!”