Authors: Ben Bequer
As Haha neared the lower island, Cool Hand stepped forward, and I helped him into the harness. With the smaller piece of rope, I attached a second carabineer to one of the ropes attached to Haha. These ropes shook violently from the winds, but they held onto Haha below, and we all saw Haha touchdown atop a rocky outcropping on the far edge of the lower island.
He was too far for any sort of communication, so we gave Haha a few minutes to find a way to secure his end of the rope, then Cool Hand clipped on, and inched his way to the edge.
Cool outstretched his hand to me so I could help ease him off and he wouldn’t flutter out of control, but he held tight to my hand, and his face grew serious for once.
“In case something happens,” he said.
“Nuclear Ketchup,” I said, making him smile as he jumped off. I grabbed the rope and reeled him away.
Not twenty feet away from us, Cool began to buffet wildly from the winds, and it became incredibly hard to reel him down. My overcoat and shirt worked against me, so I stopped a moment.
“Hang on to this,” I shot at Apogee.
She came over but instead of grabbing the rope, she helped me out of the overcoat and shirt. At one point, she put one of her hands on my shoulder and kept it there for longer than she needed to as she stripped off my clothes.
“Thanks,” I said and continued, now my arms and shoulders more free.
It took the better part of an hour to get Cool across safely. Incredibly enough, Cool Hand made the distance without any beast coming to eat him. I thought about the chances his luck would rub off on me as I hauled the harness back, but it was hard to be optimistic.
Noticing how tired I was from fighting with the winds, hauling Cool Hand’s weight and the long distance of rope, Apogee came over and helped me the last few feet. I took that opportunity to sit and rest for a moment.
“All that muscle and you’re already tired?” she goaded, unthreading the harness.
“It’s been a busy couple of days.”
She smiled, “I bet. So who goes next?”
“You do,” I said.
Zundergrub scoffed. He didn’t like being cast aside for someone like Apogee. For a teammate, he might endure the indignity of having to be patient, but for an enemy, it was too much.
“I think not, Blackjack,” he started, his voice utterly calm, speaking of Apogee as if she wasn’t even there. “You or I should go next, but this is the perfect opportunity to rid ourselves of her.”
“The girl goes next,” I said, flashing the steel in my voice. “Then you go. I’m last.”
“You have become quite fond of her. Hmm? That is a weakness I can understand. You are a young man, and still a slave to your inner child.”
“She goes next, Zee.”
“I don’t really care if-,” Apogee started but Zundergrub interrupted her by shushing as he would a child who didn’t know her place.
“This weakness puts you against us. And for what? For a woman who would just as soon throw you off this rock.” He looked to the abyss below us for dramatic effect.
I looked at her stunning face, marred by a few smears of dirt from the climb, but bewitching nonetheless. Her tantalizing eyes stayed on mine, her features hard and expressionless. I think at that moment, she was actually afraid of what I would do.
“I think you’re wrong about her, Zundergrub. You’re wrong about a lot of things.”
An almost imperceptible smile cracked at the end of her lips, and her facial expression softened.
“And besides,” I continued, handing Apogee the harness, “didn’t you ever learn that ladies go first?”
She took it and regarded it closely.
“Perhaps you are you afraid I will cut the rope,” Zundergrub said, laughing to himself, but defeated the same.
“You have established yourself as a top-notch asshole, Z.”
“How would that change things? If she goes first, then I go, I could still cut the rope and let you die.”
I nodded, knowing it was true. Hell, it was likely. He would lobby for it with the others as soon as he came over. My only hope was that Cool Hand’s friendship was real, that Haha saw the value of having me around. Apogee would probably be on Zundergrub’s side, due to the mind spell, so it might get ugly before I even had a chance to get across.
In the end, I knew that even Cool and Haha might turn against me. Villains all turn on each other, Apogee had said and I was seeing that first hand. Even my friendship with Cool was tenuous at best, since he was smart enough to cut his losses.
But getting her across first meant she would live that far, though I had no idea what would happen after that.
Apogee leaned against me with one arm and struggled to put her feet through the loops. I reached down and helped her, like one would a small child putting on her pampers. Once she was secure and inched back to the edge of the ledge, we stared at each other again.
“Why?” she asked, knowing what was happening here as well as I.
I smiled and pushed her off.
* * *
Apogee also made it across without a problem, and the whole time I strained to get her there, Zundergrub knelt and prayed. He never spoke a word to me.
I pulled back the harness and dropped again to rest, now fully exhausted. Thankfully, the doctor was the smallest of the group and would, in theory, be the easiest to get across.
The doctor roused from his prayers, and walked to the harness.
“If I observed correctly,” he said. “I put my foot through the loop and-”
“Or you can put your neck through,” I said, chuckling a bit.
He smiled.
“I doubt that would get me across safely,” he said.
Zundergrub put on the harness and tied it to the carabineer and looked back at me.
“I am ready,” he said.
I was weary but didn’t want to show him weakness, not if this was the last he would see of me. I checked my breathing and stood, reaching out my hand so he could steady himself, as I had done with Cool Hand and Apogee.
“You are a very strange man, Blackjack,” he shouted, ignoring my helping as the wind bit into him at the edge of the precipice.
“You think so, huh?”
“You don’t belong with us. I wonder what motivated you even to try.”
“I like the dental plan,” I said.
“Retcon made a terrible mistake with you,” he said, readying himself to hop off into the abyss, supported only by Haha’s ropes.
“Maybe you can tell him that if we ever make it back,” I said as he pushed off and floated away.
I had quite some time to think about what Zundergrub had said as I reeled him towards the others.
I was good at being a super and in my short time at it; I had worked well in a super team. My analytical mind was good at analyzing our enemies’ strengths and weaknesses, and I had played a significant role in our victories.
But Zundergrub meant something else, something deeper. I wasn’t a proper villain, and I didn’t belong with him, Haha and Cool Hand. A real villain wouldn’t have cared about Apogee’s mind bomb, and left her to die somewhere, or kept her along to make the evenings more interesting. I had treated her with respect, like a lady, and it wasn’t because she was beautiful, or that I had fallen for her. It was the way I was wired. To do otherwise would have gone against my nature.
In the New Yorker hotel fight with Apogee, I was more concerned with the innocent civilians than with actually beating her. It could‘ve been cockiness, or hubris. I was well aware that I had an overly positive opinion of myself, but I didn’t want those people hurt. A real villain didn’t give a damn about innocents. A real one would have beaten her first, then killed the bystanders, leaving one alive to tell the tale.
Later on, during our escape from the city, things got even worse. I had made every concession to her, taken her to special stores to get the clothes she wanted, fed her well, taken care of her. No villain would have been so caring.
I was so lost in my thoughts that I almost didn’t notice the rope grow slack, letting me know that Zundergrub had arrived at the other end. I brought the line back, reeling for over ten minutes until the harness was in hand.
I sat there for a long time, debating whether to even go through with it. If Zundergrub had his way, they would cut the line as I was coming across, hoping I would fall off to my death. My only alternative was to stay here and wait for one of those manta things to eat me, so I adjusted the harness to fit my thick legs, grabbed my dirty shirt and overcoat and tied them to my waist.
“Oh well,” I said to no one, and swung myself off, waist tied to one rope, reeling myself across by grabbing the second rope. I tried not to think about the sudden give of a cut rope and a slow, tumbling fall. There was nothing beneath me, not even another shard, just the swirling distant sky. If I did lose my grip, would I starve to death before I collided with something hard enough to kill me? I tucked the thought away and concentrated on keeping a rhythm.
Before I knew it I was more than halfway across, and I could feel the tugging pull of someone dragging me across. Separated this far from the rock face of our former island, I could get a better perspective on the hellish world we had been transported to.
It was a primordial land, borne of the most basic forces of nature, yet alien to us in most every way. A purplish-orange haze swirled all about us, a nebulous spherical wall that kept us in like goldfish in a bowl. While my first impression was that these islands were sloughed off the central cataclysmic planet, from this vantage point it was clearer to me. These islands were of varied origins, of all color and type. Some, like the one I was heading towards, was a placid landscape, like the rolling plains of the Asian steppe or the American West. Others were rocky environments, spouting orange magma plumes from active volcanos, their smoke fluttering in the breezes and obscuring the skies. The entire spectrum of color was represented, as if the shards of worlds that surrounded the fallen planet were a menagerie, ripped from thousands of far off worlds in the vast reaches of space.
The skies were far from empty, and that large manta ray creature was only one of many inhabitants. Some creatures were winged, demonic, of all sizes. Others were immense, far larger than the ones that almost ate me. Others flew in flocks, protected in larger numbers much like schools of fish.
There were also other signs of intelligent life, in addition the village below. Farther in the distance, almost beyond visual range, was a floating battleship of a construction and design nothing like anyone on Earth had even conceptualized.
It seemed organic at first, because of its lateral side to side tail movement, much like a shark wading through shallow water, but it was metallic. Instead of a mouth, it sported a formidable forward mounted weapon that glowed blue with anticipation. Its sides were banded with thick armor, plates sliding across each other as its tail section moved to and fro, propelling the warship fast enough to avoid the larger monsters. Smaller vessels buzzed around it, like fighters protecting a mothership with strange wavering almost mosquito-like flight.
Something else drew my attention from this spectacular alien vessel, something that I could barely understand. It was a massive, sprawling fortress, floating above the damaged planet, large enough that I could discern it despite the many miles between us. There was something palpable emanating from the tower, both gentle and terrible. Not only a blinding luminescence, but an aura that both penetrated and settled on me. Regret, stress, and fatigue eased out like wounds mending, replaced by calm surety. Unencumbered, my vision cleared. I hung from the makeshift zip line, untouched by the elements and allowed the feeling to overwhelm me.
But I didn’t have much time to enjoy the tower’s unparalleled beauty as something winged struck me. At first I thought it was a crow or raven, but as the creature regained its attitude after striking me, I was able to see that it was a small, dark skinned demonic man, like a tiny onyx gargoyle, perhaps twelve inches tall with leathery gray/black wings, and wielding a long scythe.
The winds were murderous, but the creature managed to ride them, as a vulture would soar in the high thermals. It sailed away with an effortless grace, then dipped a wing and came back in my direction, only this time it was joined by a dozen companions, which swarmed around me and struck me with their tiny weapons. It was more of an annoyance, as the small swords and spears couldn’t pierce my tough, super-enhanced skin, but when one managed to stick a polearm in my eye, and I lost my patience with the demons.
I lashed out at them with one hand, and kicked, catching one with a kick that crushed its head. But in the move I lost my grip and almost fell. Only the carabineers, holding me fast to the ropes, saved me from a long fall. I still advanced towards Haha, which meant someone was pulling me in.
One of the demons dove for the rope, while the others whirled around my body, poking and prodding me. The creature used the distraction to bring his scythe against the rope that held the carabineer to the long lines. He cut deep and the knot almost failed.
I had one chance to save myself or the bastard would cut through and I would fall to my death. I spun my body, ignoring the other attacking creatures, and used my momentum to swing myself towards the long lines, as its scythe sliced through the rope. My hand stretched out and held the lower rope, as the severed carabineer rope wafted along my chest.