Caped Page 2

  He hugs us each of us, and I chide him about not giving me time to find a new roommate. He assures me there’s several months rent stashed under his mattress. Then, with a wave of his hand, he slips into a sliver of light in the machine so narrow I hadn’t even noticed it, and then he’s gone. After a minute the machine shuts itself down, goes dormant.

  “Well, crap,” I say, gesturing around me. “What I am supposed to do with all this now?”

  Janet raises a mischievous eyebrow. “Ever wanted to visit the future?”

  “Don’t even think about it,” I say.

  “C’mon,” she says, “we’re superheroes. What’s the point of us if we don’t do the impossible?”

  The controls are easy enough to figure out, so easy that we suspect Saul knew what we were going to do and that gives us a certain confidence. We can set the destination to whenever we want.

  Holding hands, we leap together into the 23rd century.

  * * *

  When we return, Saul is waiting for us.

  “Have a good time?” he asks. It’s subtle, the kind of thing you’d only notice if you’d known him a while, but I pick up an odd sadness in his eyes as he looks us over.

  “That was amazing,” says Janet. And it was, two weeks of surfing on nanoparticles, flying jetpacks in low Earth orbit, holographic interactive narratives and safaris with formerly extinct animals in reconstructed biospheres. “I can’t believe they made a Jurassic Park Park.”

  “Thanks for leaving instructions for where to find the time machine in our hotel room,” I say.

  He shrugs, “Of course. You don’t think I’d let you go off there without a way back.” He looks the same age but there’s something different about him. Something in his demeanor, his tone of voice, even his dress sense. He seems older. Wearier.

  “Couldn’t keep yourself away from our little corner of the space time continuum?” I ask.

  He smiles and puts an arm over each of our shoulders. “What can I say? I missed you guys.”

  * * *

  Janet dies fighting Dr. Annihilation, who seizes the Gauntlet of Maniac Energy and uses it to punch a hole clean through her head. I cradle her body, blood pouring over my costume, while the villain leads the heroes away on a chase from which he will narrowly escape. It’s become clear to everyone that this is no minor apocalypse, and has been upgraded to a Class 4, and real fear is setting in among the superhero community for the first time in a very long while.

  When I get home from the morgue, body bruised and coated in dried blood, Saul is waiting for me in the living room. He wears a black shirt with nothing on it. On the side table next to him is a glass of amber liquid. Whiskey, probably. With a surge of adrenaline I rush over and haul him into the air.

  “You knew,” I say. “You knew what was going to happen and you didn’t tell us.”

  He shakes his head, eyes shining. “There was nothing you could have done. The timeline is fragile, I can only risk changing things so much. That’s why they made time travel illegal in the first place.”

  “Oh, I see. You can fix your own problems, treat time and space like your personal playground, but when it comes to anyone else, when it comes to really risking anything for someone . . . well, you can just jump through time and run away from it all, can’t you? You can just go downstairs—”

  And then I remember what’s downstairs. I can fix things myself. I’ll make it so the whole damn apocalypse never started. I throw him onto the couch, race down, and flip on the lights.

  The room is completely empty.

  I stand there, shaking until I hear him behind me. “I have to protect the timeline.”

  “I want you out,” I say without turning to face him. “You move the hell out of my house.”

  “I understand. It’s time,” he says cryptically. “Goodbye, Pallas. It was truly an honor being your friend.” He goes upstairs and I hear the front door open and close. Later I discover he hasn’t packed anything.

  * * *

  The battle against Dr. Annihilation continues, each object making him more powerful. He gets the Boots of Sonic Hysteria that let him move almost as fast as he could think, the Breeches of Chronic Fortitude that make his skin as hard as steel, the Visor of Fathomless Vision that let him see every point in the Universe simultaneously. He leaves behind him a wake of dead and maimed heroes. This is now a Class 5 Apocalypse and every hero on Earth that’s part of the Network has been put on alert.

  Finally, a bit of luck. Deep in the Astral Plane, Mister Magickus corners an elemental spirit and gets it to tell him where the final object is, the Brooch of Emphatic Harmony, which only functions, it seems, to allow all the other objects to work together, making the wearer of the entire suit of armor virtually omnipotent.

  MegaForce gathers all the heroes still left and willing to fight in their headquarters and explains the plan, organizes the effort to get to the final temple in the ruins of Atlantis deep beneath the Pacific Ocean, find the Brooch and destroy it. Those of us who can’t breath under water are given diving masks and shuttled down in submarines.

  We have enough time to set up artillery, traps and ambushes, fortify the ruins like some high tech garrison. Then the Doctor arrives and starts cutting through our defenses as if they didn’t exist. Battle boils over the ancient sunken city with its crumbling minarets and baroquely carved, coral-covered buildings. Hebor, King of the Sea, in his element for once, has summoned armies of whales, sharks and giant squid to our aid. The water turns pink with their blood. Sirius, the Living Dynamo, hits the Doctor with a blast of energy that could level a city, cracks his Chestplate of Ferocious Magnitude and sends him into a deep crevasse.

  There’s a moment when we think we might have won. That it’s finally over. Hebor is about to dive into the crevasse to be sure when everything starts to shake.

  Coral topples, domes crack. The ground comes up to meet us, and we’re pinned to it. Hebor’s voice crackles over our intercoms. “I can’t believe it,” he says. “He’s raising Atlantis.”

  It takes minutes that seem like hours. Shattered spires crumble and topple in the water resistance. Finally, the city breeches the surface, greeting the sun after millennia, the water spray arcing a rainbow behind its dead, broken buildings. Those who weren’t directly over the city have been left behind. Gaia recovers first and moves from person to person, touching us delicately and using her powers to break up the nitrogen bubbles in our systems, to keep us from getting the bends.

  “Why?” someone croaks out. “Why would he do it? Just to surprise us?”

  “The Great Temple,” says another voice. After a moment, I recognize it as Leoparda, a anthropomorphic feline heroine. “It’s opening.” We rush as fast as we can to the central courtyard around which the city is built, where its main temple rears up over us like a cornered elephant.

  “It’s air sensitive,” says Memorio, a member of MegaForce with a brain twice the size of normal, who wears a special helmet to keep his neck from snapping. “That’s probably why Atlantis was sunk in the first place. To make it impossible for anyone to get the Brooch.” It makes sense. From the clues we’ve found in the other temples, a narrative emerged of the Neanderthals becoming dangerous with their Objects of Power, threatening the whole Multiverse. The pandimensional aliens were not the malicious invaders we’d all thought they were, but rather a Police Force who’d destroyed the Neanderthal race for the good of everyone.

  A crack splits wide, a squat building carved with tentacles sags and tilts into the water and from the resulting fissure leaps Dr. Annihilation. We run at him but with a mighty leap he soars over us and lands at the door of the temple. Sirius stands in the doorway, having gotten there at super speed moments before. Fists are raised, the air crackles with energy. They move so fast I can’t follow, but a moment later Sirius is on the ground and the Doctor strides over him into the vaulted room. The mother of pearl that covers the inside of the dome within sends rainbow shades across his armored body. T
he brooch sits atop a pedestal under blue light from whatever weird, Neanderthal light source illuminates the room. He raises a hand to the Object and we catch our collective breath.

  A crack of light splits open the air in the chamber and from it erupts Saul. He’s wearing a shirt that reads I’m With Stupid and an arrow points to the left, which happens to be towards the Doctor. The Doctor stops, inches from the brooch, confused. Saul hits a button on a device in his hand and seven little flying spheres launch themselves into a circle around the room. I recognize them from my time in the future: true 3D holographic cameras, capturing 360 degrees. Another sliver of light and a second Saul appears. He strides forward and Dr. Annihilation tilts his head, as if he can’t believe a kid in jeans and t-shirt is about to take him on. His shirt reads I Can Only Please One Person Each Day. Today is not Your Day.

  The villain throws a punch like a speeding train but Saul has already dodged it. He throws another, and it meets empty air. Those long rehearsed moves that I’d thought were Tai Chi turned out to be a very specific fight sequence, recorded and rehearsed for years until absolutely perfect. Saul knows every move Dr. Annihilation makes before the villain does himself.

  The Doctor draws his sword. Saul ducks and then leaps as the sword comes at him again. He strikes with the side of his palm directly into the crack Sirius made in his armor. The villain stumbles back, one step, two, and with a sweeping upward motion Saul plucks the Sword of Dread Whispers out of his hand. He strikes low, at the knees, and when Dr. Annihilation lowers his arms to block, Saul switches direction, comes up and plunges the point of the blade directly into the crack in the chest plate. The Doctor collapses to his knees and then, hands wide, gazing down in disbelief at the weapon protruding from his body, rolls onto his side, dead.

  I feel like applauding. The heroes, shocked still during the brief fight, rush forward. Saul steps over the corpse and reaches the doorway. He looks directly at me and winks, and then fiddles with something on the wall beside the door. Just as the fastest of the heroes are about to reach him, the door slides closed.

  “What the hell just happened?” someone asks.

  A few moments later, the world ends.

  * * *

  “It’s not right,” says Nightsweeper, a founding member of MegaForce. “What gives you the right to decide? Why bring them back and not my parents? Why not thousands of other people who died before their time?”

  We all stand in the central hall of the MegaForce Headquarters. In the center stands Saul. His shirt reads Vote for Pedro.

  “What are you saying?” asks Ferion. “That he should put them back in the ground?”

  “That’s not happening,” I say, Janet held close. I still can’t believe she’s real. She’s here. I want to cry and sing at the same time.

  “It’s okay, baby,” she says to me softly.

  “You don’t understand,” says Saul. “I took a big enough chance bringing back people who’d been killed by Dr. Annihilation. The timeline is fragile. I did what I could.”

  He’d donned the armor. Worn the brooch. Remade reality. The world as we knew it came to an end and started again, but our friends are alive. Our friends are alive, Atlantis sits on the bottom of the sea and the armor itself is obliterated. The other version of himself recorded the whole thing and went though time to begin the long process of memorizing every move, learning how to defeat Dr. Annihilation far off in his future.

  “I don’t think even you—or anyone—can fully grasp the repercussions of this, Future Man,” says Nightsweeper. Future Man. It’s the superhero name Saul almost never uses, took on years ago during his first, tentative interactions with the superhero community and always seems a little embarrassed about. “You changed reality itself.”

  “I know exactly what I did,” says Saul. “Exactly. Oh. Oh, god.” And then he clutches his chest. A red stain soaks a long, ragged line down the front of his shirt.

  Nightsweeper rushes forward to catch him before he fell. “Future Man!”

  “It’s okay,” he says, blood trickling from the side of his mouth. “It’s the crack in the armor. Using it caused too much chronal radiation to seep into my body.” He laughs, choking, “The funny thing is it would have killed Dr. Annihilation too. But not before he wrecked untold havoc on the cosmos.”

  I run up as Nightsweeper lowers him carefully to the ground. I fall to one knee and he takes my hand.

  “Hi,” he says. “You were a really—” He coughs, throaty and harsh. “—great roommate.”

  “No,” I say, “you can survive this. We just have to get you far enough into the future and they’ll know how to heal you.”

  He shakes his head. “I’m afraid it’s all over for me. It’s okay. This is where my story ends. I’ve always known it. I’ve been running away from it for a long time. Like you said, running away from everything my whole life. You helped me see that.” He puts a hand up to my cheek and smiles. “But you’ll see me again soon. Be nice to me, okay?”

  The life goes out of him.

  * * *

  A few days later, a younger version of Saul appears at my front door as we’re moving Janet’s things inside.

  “Hello,” he says as I approach, “this is going to sound strange but I got a message from my future self living in the past that I should come here for a place to stay.”

  “Of course,” I say. “Come in. Make yourself at home. We have a room that’s just become available.”

  Return to Contents

  PINNING PORTUGAL

  Elliotte Rusty Harold

  Major Evile—two Es for extra evil—scanned the meeting room. Good, everyone was here. He’d been worried someone might have missed the message that the meeting had been moved to the Secaucus Marriott. The Marriott wasn’t the most convenient location, but they gave him a AAA discount. The secret headquarters was out of commission until it could be fumigated. In hindsight, he should have taken a second look at the Ocelot’s plans to gene splice rattlesnake DNA into bed bugs; but he’d been distracted by secret identity problems that week.

  Evile unrolled a wall-sized Mercator projection of the world he’d borrowed from his day job at P.S. 132 onto the table and rapped his gavel. “I call this meeting of the Supervillains International Union, North Jersey Chapter, to order.”

  Most of the group came to attention. Monstro continued to drool in his chair; but that couldn’t be helped, not since his unfortunate run in with Captain Miraculous late last year. They still let him attend meetings out of sympathy; but he was only a shadow of the terrifying supervillain he had once been.

  The Ocelot and Sister Mayhem broke off their whispering and tried to look as if they were paying attention, but Evile suspected they were holding hands under the table. He’d have to talk to them about that later. Preteen footsie games had no place at a meeting of the deadliest criminals on the planet, even if the Minx was exuding more than her usual amount of mind-controlling pheromones. The time for violence, destruction, and canoodling was after the meeting, when the robot henchmen brought out the coffee and donuts.

  “Fellow evildoers, you’ve been called here today to choose the first target for the new solar-powered death ray satellite Doctor XYY has invented. Doctor, if you’d be so good as to describe the capabilities of the new weapon.”

  The Doctor nodded to acknowledge him. Evile shivered uncomfortably under his cape. The doctor always creeped him out a bit. It wasn’t so much the hypodermic needles full of deadly viruses pinned to his scrubs, as the Doctor’s differently sized eyes that never quite focused on the same place at the same time.

  “The satellite accumulates sunlight in space before it has been attenuated by the Earth’s atmosphere. It then concentrates this energy into a type of laser with enough energy to burn a small city. It continuously applies the destructive force of an atomic bomb, moving across the landscape in a swath of destruction. It is . . . beautiful.”

  “Sounds like a big sunbeam to me, mate,” said Outback, a rough-a
nd-tumble brawler who’d fallen down a mine in Australia and somehow ended up with diamond-hard skin.

  Evile tensed up at the dig, but the Doctor made a soft gagging sound that was as close as he ever came to a laugh. “A sunbeam, yes, one that might give even you a sunburn.”

  Evile spoke up before anyone else could say something insulting or take offense. Managing a supervillain team was a little like herding cats, if the cats had body counts in the high five figures and enough firepower to level a shopping mall. “Thank you, Doctor. Now if you consider the map on the table in front of you—”

  “I don’t see why we can’t use Google Maps,” Singularity interrupted. “It is the 21st century after all.” Singularity was the first Millennial villain to earn his union card. He hadn’t quite met the death and destruction requirements, but they’d bent the rules because he’d volunteered to maintain the website. He claimed to have gotten supercomputer powers after an accident involving a radioactive laptop and a buggy copy of Windows XP. Evile suspected he was really a mildly overachieving but socially inept hacker with a spandex fetish. The secret origin didn’t really matter.

  The truth was Evile wanted to use Google Maps too. Hell, he wished he could conduct the meeting over Skype; but half the group had been incarcerated when the Internet took off; and the other half—well, some villains were evil geniuses and some were simply evil. A high SAT score wasn’t exactly a prerequisite for washing your hair with radioactive shampoo. On his more cynical days, Evile thought the opposite was more likely to be true.

  “Let’s leave the system upgrades for a later meeting,” Evile replied. “For now, we simply need to put a pin in the target so we can set the coordinates.”