He bounded up onto the platform and braced himself for teleportation. The world lit up and turned into static around him. His stomach twisted in on itself and his eyes hurt from the blazing flash.
***
Moments later, he stumbled down off of the platform in his lair and swallowed back a mouthful of vomit. This lair resembled most of the others, though the teleport chamber took up a good chunk of its space. The rest of the lair’s tight quarters sat under the docks with the water thumping up against its walls. The smell of the lake and fresh fish wafted everywhere.
The teleport chamber’s bulky door bolted itself shut behind him as Nightshadow took a seat at the thin supercomputer with a circular screen. Before heading home, he needed to quickly check the news. He scoured through dozens of reports on a variety of networks from across the world, studying up on crimes and current events, and noticing certain patterns. One in particular stood out. More and more reports were trickling in, one after the other from the smaller news services and networks about miracles, large and small, occurring.
People were coming home to find their houses repainted and redecorated. Farmers woke up to discover their crops planted and their chores done. Cars had oil changes and their tires rotated without even leaving the driveway. Homes, roads, and bridges were rebuilt after earthquakes and hurricanes to be stronger than ever before. Food magically appeared in the hands of the homeless. Lost pets and runaways returned home without anyone knowing how they got there. Much-needed medicines appeared in third-world countries and in the cabinets of people who couldn’t afford them.
Some people were getting nervous. They blabbered on about not being able to trust good luck when they saw it. People blamed God, demons, superheroes, villains, and ghosts. However, while there was some panic, Nightshadow saw no reason to worry—not yet anyway. These were all good things happening, and Nightshadow wasn’t about to stop a Good Samaritan from pulling puppies out of traffic and giving sick children penicillin. In fact, he applauded their efforts.
It looked like some super-speedster had been making good use of their powers. Hyperman and the Whorl had done something similar a few weeks ago, but everyone had known it had been them. Not seeing whoever was doing so much good now was making everybody uneasy. They worried that there’d be a price to pay later, and a lot of governments and corporations probably weren’t happy with getting shown up and having people wonder why they weren’t contributing to the world with so many good works.
Maybe the Whorl knew this other speedster and could talk to him if people started overreacting and things went bad. However, the Whorl needed to show back up first. Phoenix Bright had hit him with a hell of a spell, but Nightshadow knew he’d beat it eventually. Nonetheless, S.I.L.E.N.T. had teams out looking for him and Nightshadow had his agents searching, but that was all he could do for the Whorl at the moment.
Nightshadow stood up and stretched, hearing his spine crack. He grabbed a nearby phone and tried calling Wally for his limo to come pick him up from the wharf-side Risen Real Estate office just above. The call didn’t go through, and the phone crackled with static before going dead. When Nightshadow dialed again, he got more static. He tried all the alternate numbers for Wally, his garage, and his fellow drivers, but a recording claimed that each number was out of order.
That was both odd and alarming, and Nightshadow had to investigate. He rushed to get changed. Out during the day and moving amongst his business interests, Mark Risen would have much more maneuverability than Nightshadow.
***
Wearing a muggy-green suit and having combed his hair back, he waited for his cab on the street above the lair. Even after he’d been picked up, he continued dialing all his Salome City offices on his cell phone, just to make sure someone was there. A receptionist picked up each time, so he hung up and moved on to the next number.
He thought to call his residences throughout the city. He spoke to a maid, butler, or doorman, but then worried about Piper. Could she have been targeted too? There was no telling what could have been done to Piper if someone had made some sort of move against Nightshadow. He couldn’t have stopped it. He had been half a world away.
Damn it, he should have called Piper first!
Nobody answered when he tried the penthouse, reception, or her cell. He dumped a pile of twenty- and fifty-dollar bills down onto the passenger seat next to the cab driver and gave him his penthouse’s address.
“
Gun it!” he said.
“
Yes, sir!” the driver replied and hit the gas.
After blowing three red lights and knifing through a whole street of cars blaring their horns, the cab pulled up to Nightshadow’s high-rise. He jumped out before the cab even had a chance to stop.
Out front, all the building’s curtains had been drawn and the glass doors and windows had been blackened, so no one could see inside. Nobody was rushing in or out on errands or off to do business either. There weren’t even any running cars waiting outside to pick someone up or for a valet to find them parking. The place looked dead.
Nightshadow tried shouldering through the revolving door. It refused to budge. It was locked in the middle of the day? Why? What was going on here? Gritting his teeth, he forced the lock and pushed the door in.
***
At first, he noticed the odd, overwhelming silence. At this time of day, business executives and salespeople should be hurrying across the lobby and to meetings. Staff should be cleaning, taking calls, and manning the front desk. Yet, nobody at all was around in the middle of a workday.
Next, the rank stench of death hit him like a jab to the gut. He almost doubled over from the power of it. Sadly, he’d grown so used to that smell over the years that he managed to hold in his vomit.
His eyes quickly scanned the dim, empty lobby. Plants lay overturned with dirt spilled everywhere. A mess of papers cluttered up all over the front desk. The couches and chairs were broken and their stuffing hung out of their gutted cushions. Deep scratches and burn marks streaked across the floor and walls. The chandeliers had fallen and smashed down against the floor. Dried, black blood splattered and spotted everything.
Following his nose, Nightshadow trod cautiously over to the janitor’s closet and jerked the door open. A pile of rotting bodies thumped down to the floor in front of him. Nightshadow staggered back in shock. He recognized those bodies as belonging to cleaning women and security guards, even with their throats slashed and entrails hanging out. He moved on from there, hoping this couldn’t get worse.
However, in every nook, cranny, and closet on the first floor, he found even more slashed and hacked up bodies. Under the front desk, Teresa, the bright, young receptionist, lay face-first in a pool of her own sticky blood. Seeing her made Nightshadow fall down to one knee and choke up.
In the security guards’ room, guards with broken necks sat propped up in their chairs. All the monitors except one were busted. The only one that still worked played the same footage over and over again. A lithe figure in a bulky, oversized Nightshadow wing-suit danced a waltz, swinging and twisting a headless body around the bloodied, ruined lobby.
Watching that caused Nightshadow’s heart to clench and seize up in his chest. Had he been found out? What did they know? How did they know it? And where was Piper? Lying amongst all these bodies somewhere?
He raced over to the elevators. The words “Out of order!” were scrawled across the doors in chunky, scratchy blood. Nonetheless, he tried the buttons but got nothing. So he shouldered through into the stairwell and rushed upstairs.
***
The stench fouled up the air in the stairwell even worse than out in the lobby. Crusty, days-old blood and mutilated bodies filled the stairways. Flies swarmed everywhere, eager for a bountiful feast. Nightshadow shuddered to see that many bodies, but nevertheless struggled on up the stairs, floor after floor, hopping over bodies, slipping in blood, and never stopping. He had to get to the penthouse. He had to see if Piper was there.
He trudged on up the stairs, not caring how many there were. He gasped and coughed from the exertion, feeling like he was going to get sick. His heart thundered in his chest, threatening to split open. His legs and lungs burned as he climbed more and more stairs. They seemed to never end and the horrid smells and death only made everything worse.
Finally, at the top floor, he kicked down the thick, bolted door and stumbled over its wreckage onto the dusty, blood-spotted carpet. Cracked mirrors and disfigured paintings lined the walls. The small furniture had been thrashed and thrown about. The death stench still reeked. He trampled on toward the penthouse and found its door hanging wide open. Filled with trepidation, he slipped inside.
Inside, everything looked clean, neat, and orderly. An overly strong, almost sick-smelling strawberry perfume coated the stuffy, oppressive air. Stale sunlight fogged in through the boisterously wide windows. He heard someone rustling around in the master bedroom. Perfectly silent, he shadowed over and burst through the door, dropping down into a fighting stance, ready for anything. Or so he’d thought.
Hunched over, Piper rocked back and forth on the bed. A whimsical smile slaked across her lips as she softly sang, “
Trees do bend, though straight and tall. So must we to others’ call.
”
Wally’s waxy-pale, decapitated head sat upside-down in her lap. She picked at the stiff white-and-black roses sticking up out of his mangled, blood-crusted neck. Nightshadow stared, and his knees almost buckled from the horror of what he was seeing.
Piper’s small, elegantly curved dancer’s body filled out a lumpy, bleary-white Nazi uniform decorated with smiling skull armbands. Starchy, albino-white hair spiked up off her head in a short Mohawk. Shiny whitish-pink scars formed a skull across her pretty face. The golden-red necklace Nightshadow had bought her still dangled down from around her neck and glittered, despite not matching her new look at all.
She peered up, showing a horrific Cheshire’s smile slashed across her mouth. “Hi honey,” she said. “Told you I’ve been keeping busy.”
Chapter 15: HOMECOMING
Alexander Mors paced about his top-floor office, arguing with the faces flashing across the holographic screens floating around his desk. Days-old stubble layered his chin with a few whites poking out of his dark, growing beard. His eyes looked bloodshot and his hair had become a foul, tangled mess.
Abruptly, Hyperman appeared hovering over his desk and, with a wave of his hand, caused the holo-screens to blink out. Gasping, Mors stumbled back and collapsed down to his knees.
“
Savior!” he cried, folding his hands together and holding them up as in prayer.
“
Get up,” Hyperman tiredly said. “I can’t stand groveling.”
Mors stood and straightened back up, brushing dust off his suit. “Of course,” he said. “I should retain my dignity. It is a virtue after all.” He paused. “I have sources who say S.I.L.E.N.T. is looking for you. The Invincibles too.”
“
I’m sure they are,” Hyperman said, “but they can only find me if I let them and I will eventually, but we have work to do first.”
He floated down to the floor. “You and I are going to be saving this world. Truly saving it, I mean, once and for all. We’re all going to be gods, Alex. We won’t have to worship anyone else. We’ll all be equal and never grow sick, age, die, or worry again. With your money and resources and my powers, there’s no reason we should fail. You even have the Diatomite-x and the processes needed to grant people super-powers, and I can improve upon your earlier work and help you mass-produce it. We can do the Mutagen and El Dorado projects right this time.”
“
I’d be honored to help,” Mors said, “truly, I would. But you must have heard me talking to the board? Almost all our Diatomite-x is missing and we have no idea how! Other supplies have vanished too! A good number of our operations have even stopped! We’ve been getting all sorts of strange reports from our facilities. The power just goes out or a tool vanishes or we’re suddenly missing data or communications die out or the prototype explodes or something else goes wrong!”
“
Sounds like sabotage,” Hyperman said, putting his hands on his hips.
“
It does, but it’d take a super-human to pull all this off. I try and keep track of you all, but it seems like one of you slipped off my radar and I can’t tell how. I think Nightshadow might be behind this somehow. He’s not fast enough to do this himself, but he might have some super-speedsters or time travelers working for him. I know he’d love to get his hands on my Diatomite-x.”