Authors: Martin J Moss
“It was about then that I got into the hero business, so would be about six years ago. It was more by accident than any design on my part. Samantha, my late wife, she was a journalist, I hardly knew her to be honest. My firm just did her papers’ accounts. She was coming back from a story when her helicopter crashed on the roof. Typically she fell through the door and was hanging on by her fingertips. I happened to be walking past the building, it was random chance really. Before I knew it I'd covered my face with a scarf and was flying up at super speed to save her.”
“She gave you your name didn't she?”
“Yes, in the paper the next day she called me her Guardian and the name just stuck. I don't know why but I just carried on, I got a suit made, and started saving people. Then I couldn't stop.”
“Why, if you hate us so much, if we are so beneath you, why did you carry on saving us?”
“It's simple; have you ever felt real gratitude, real un-questioning love Ms Mason?”
“I don't know, I think so, I've been in love, is that the same thing?” she asked.
“It may be, well love, it's addictive, it's the greatest rush in the world and saving someone's life that's what you get in return, it feels fantastic. Once you have felt it you want to feel it again and again.”
“So you are saying you became addicted to what, saving people?”
“To the way it made me feel, yes. At first it was people falling off buildings, being mugged, car accidents that sort of thing. Then other heroes started appearing, with super villains as well, and the rush got bigger and better. It was almost like the world had been waiting for my arrival; waiting for me to appear and then it started creating powered heroes and villains all around me. They started cropping up all over the world, hundreds of them. As you know we formed the League of Heroes to deal with the bigger threats, and I carried on saving people day-to-day. For a while it was great, wonderful, every day I would get the unquestioning adoration of hundreds of people.”
“Then?”
“The first faker I know for sure was about two years ago. Some nut job jumped off a building and called out for me to save her. I heard her as I always did, and raced in. Because she was some distance away I only just caught her in time but still I managed to stop her head inches from being crushed onto the pavement. She didn't even say thank you, just complained that I’d taken my time, and that she’d nearly died. Over the next few years it just got worse and worse, until in the end I was saving hundreds of people every week that didn't need saving, they just wanted me to save them. They wanted to meet The Guardian, to be saved, to have the near death experience.”
“And you can't stop saving them, even though you know they are faking it.”
“That's right, I can't, or couldn't until now, every single day, every single minute of every day. It's a constant pressure. And it used to feel so good, I have to keep going to keep that feeling, that emotional rush. Anyway if I stop they'll all die, so what choice do I have. There’s no way to tell the real from the fakers, they are all falling to their deaths after all. But as a result I never get a minutes peace. I can't watch a film, I can't eat a complete meal, I can't even go to the toilet without having to break off two or three times to save some stupid slob who should know better.”
“But no more,” there was such finality in John’s words that it shook Margaret to the core. She was, she knew witnessing something remarkable, a fundamental change in American life. This was the end of something momentous.
“So just stop,” she said.
“I can't, it's not that easy, 239 people have now died since we started talking, and I wanted to save them all. It’s like a physical need within me, if I stay here I'll sooner or later give in to it. It's like putting a junkie in a room full of cocaine and expecting him not to dive in, it's just not possible. Even if I went away somewhere, to another planet perhaps, I would be drawn back into it eventually, it's too much for me, I hate it, and I want it to be over for good. I want to die.”
“That's not possible though is it?” Margaret said. The Guardian was to the best of her knowledge invulnerable.
“Well, it is actually, it not easy sure, but it's definitely possible. My skin is invulnerable yes, I'm supper fast, super strong, have X-ray eyes and so on.” He looked her up and down and leered unpleasantly, “That’s nice underwear by the way; the purple suits your skin colour, it’s very sexy. But I'm a bit surprised you don't treat yourself to a more expensive brand with the amount you charge per hour, but perhaps you spend your money on other things. Anyway, I digress everyone knows that I am pretty much the most powerful being in the universe, but...”
“But?”
“I have a weakness,” John Smith took another bullet from his pocket, this one glowed slightly in the light, it was silvery, reflective and it somehow looked dangerous. He carefully loaded it into the revolver, and smiled. “My skin is indeed pretty much impenetrable, nothing anyone has tried can get through it, but the truth is not everywhere is that tough. There are places on my body where a specially constructed bullet, where something made from the hardest substance known to man, for example could probably penetrate.”
“And that's such a bullet is it.”
“Yes, it cost me $35 million to have it made, and it's the only one in existence, that I know of anyway. You see there’s a place at the roof of my mouth, where the skin is particularly thin, and probably not as strong as the rest of my body. Also, there's only a thin layer of bone and flesh between it and my brain. With any luck the bullet should pass through easily, and, since it won't be able to exit through the top of my skull, through the impenetrable bone and skin, it should bounce around quite nicely. I believe that it should shred most of my brain, killing me and I hope not make a mess of our lovely office.”
“But John,” Margaret said, “can't you think of any other way? It seems a bit extreme, a bit final, surely there has to be another way. I can help you get over it, it'll take time yes, but I can help. Surely this is not what you want.”
“Sorry Margaret, but it is, it's what I want. You're all on your own now, and to be honest I hope you all rot in hell.”
With that, John Smith, The Guardian, the most powerful superhero ever to have walked the earth, put the pistol between his teeth, jammed it hard against the roof of his mouth and pulled the trigger.
Other than the soft phut of the silenced pistol, there was no outward sign that the bullet had had any effect at all. The huge man sat in his chair for at least 30 seconds, then his eyes glazed over, and then he toppled slowly forwards. He ended face down on the carpet at her feet.
A small amount of liquefied brain matter and blood leaked from his mouth, presumably though the hole created by the passage of the bullet.
Margret sat for a full five minutes, starring at the figure by her feet. Then she got, up, went out to reception, poured herself a strong cup of black coffee with five sugars, smiled at her pretty but stupid receptionist, and walked back into the room.
Sitting down, she watched the body. She half expected John to get up, for his huge power levels to somehow drag him back to life or for her wake up, that this had all been dream.
Margaret Mason was a highly driven individual, a star performer at both school and college, she had approached her life with a certainty that had been single-minded in the extreme. It had cost her friends, lovers, and contact with family members, but had got her to the top of her profession quicker than anyone she knew.
She had always known what to do and always acted on her decisions.
But for the first time in her life she was stuck. What do you do, she thought, when the hero of millions, the man who gave hope to the world, the man who stood up for truth and justice against all odds, the man who epitomized everything that's good and noble about humanity, what do you do when this man comes into your office, tells you he hates you, that he's not human, that he's a junkie, and then kills himself?
What the fuck do you do?
Chapter 3 - Elroy steps in something nasty
Elroy Cockram's expensive black leather shoes were sticking unpleasantly to the bedroom carpet. Every time he moved his feet there was a loud, unpleasant squelch as the blood which had soaked into the fibres welled up under the pressure of his weight. He left red footprints everywhere he walked, and he had the horrible feeling that his socks were becoming damp as the blood seeped through the leather.
Looking down he saw that his new grey suit trousers had dragged in the blood as well, and were stained dark red at the hem.
“Shit,” he said with distaste, “shit, shit, shit.”
In his line of work he was used to blood. He was used to dead bodies, he was used to the multitude of unpleasant and unexpected causes of death.
He had on one memorable occasion mopped up the sloppy remains of an entire football team, cheerleaders and all, when Graviton’s powers had gone haywire one sunny Sunday afternoon.
Blood was almost a daily feature of his life.
As the Division Head of the FBI Superpowers Task Force he had seen more than his fair share of blood over the years.
He had seen more than his fair share of collateral damage.
Collateral damage, now there was a euphemism he had grown all too familiar with. The phrase had come into common parlance during the first two Gulf Wars, describing innocent people who were killed or injured accidentally. A phrase used to describe the unintentional victims of military action.
Collateral damage, these were the two words which had become his life’s work.
Two words which in no way encompassed the sheer enormity of the tasks he had to cope with on a daily basis. In the Gulf War he had handled seeing children with their arms blown off and woman so badly burned that their faces cracked as they screamed. So when he left the army and joined the FBI he thought that he had a good grasp of just how nasty life-and-death could get.
And when he was offered a place on the Superpowers Task Force he had again felt extremely confident. He’d thought that he had seen the worst life could throw at him.
But he’d been wrong.
Covering up for the collateral damage caused by superheroes and reining them in when they stepped over the line had taken him to some very dark places indeed. Whenever there was a death, whenever there was anything thought to be Meta Powers related they called him and his task force in.
He had, over the years literally been to hell and back.
What made it harder to cope with was that where the line was drawn depended largely on who you were and how the government felt at the time. There were no hard-and-fast rules.
If you were a major power, who had, like The Guardian or Lightspeed saved the world more than a few times then you got a lot of slack. If you were a more minor power like say Bear-Paw, or The Stilt-Girl, well, they were treated pretty much like everyone else, or even worse sometimes.
The prison cells were full of half-baked superheroes who had not watched the background when letting loose with a heat blast, or had crash landed on some poor unfortunate passerby squashing him flat.
But, he had to admit this probably a new low.
Standing in this bedroom, watching the blood drip from the ceiling, hearing the screams and moans from downstairs were bearable.
He had seen blood before, heard the screams of the dead, dying and their killers before, the noise no longer reached his soul.
The beautiful woman, lying naked and dead on the bed, her stomach ripped open, the contorted look of terror on her face, was bearable as well. It was nothing new, it brought no new nightmares, and he had enough old ones to contend with to bother with replenishing the stock.
Even the sight which he knew awaited him in the child's bedroom, the sight which would bring most men to tears was bearable to Elroy Cockram, he’d seen so much that he doubted anything new would shock him.
What brought him to the edge of sanity, made him almost shake with anger, was the fact that he had forgotten to put on protective overshoes, and he knew that his $500 leather shoes were effectively ruined. He knew from years of experience that you could never get the blood out of the creases, or the smell out of the leather. His brand-new shoes would be going in the incinerator before the day was out.
“Shit,” he muttered again, and then to the Forensic Technician standing by the bed, “what have we got here?”
“The late Mrs Jean-Marie Windrow.” The technician, secure in his white coveralls and Elroy noticed, overshoes, spoke clearly and precisely, recording on a handheld data recorder as he went.
Jean-Marie lay on the bed, she was by anyone’s' reckoning a strikingly beautiful woman, long red hair, blue eyes, and a face that was almost perfectly proportioned.
It was a face that Elroy had seen on billboards and on the covers of magazines many times for the past few years. The naked body one he had seen, and he had to admit masturbated over, in various states of undress, in everything from Esquire to Playboy Magazine. Jean-Marie Windrow was possibly the first international supermodel. She had been seen on the arms of film stars and politicians, even once or twice with Powered Heroes.