Title: FID’S CRUSADE
Author: David H. Reiss
Publisher: Atian Press
Pages: 365
Genre: Scifi/Contemporary Fantasy
BOOK BLURB:
Consumed by grief, rage, and self-loathing, a brilliant
inventor rebuilt himself to take on a new identity: the powered-armor-wearing
supervillain, Doctor Fid. For twenty violent years, Fid has continued his quest
to punish heroes who he considers to be unworthy of their accolades, and the
Doctor has left a long trail of blood and misery in his wake. After a personal
tragedy, however, Doctor Fid investigates a crime and uncovers a conspiracy so
terrible that even he is taken aback.
Haunted by painful memories and profound guilt, the veteran
supervillain must risk everything to save the world that he once sought to
terrorize. Every battle takes its toll…but the stakes are too high for retreat
to be an option.
In the end, it may take a villain to save the entire Earth
from those entrusted with the Earth’s protection.
Praise:
"Fid's
Crusade by David H. Reiss is one of the most refreshing and lively
takes on the superhero genre I've seen in years. His title character's crusade
is colorful, compelling, and takes wonderfully unexpected turns, and the novel
delivers an impressive emotional punch (to go along with the super-powered
ones). It stands easily alongside other character-driven superhero novels like
Austin Grossman's Soon I Will Be Invincible, Carrie Vaughn's After
the Golden Age, and Paul Tobin's Prepare to Die!." - Hugo
award-winning author Tim Pratt
ORDER YOUR COPY:
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CHAPTER ONE
THE GROUND TREMBLED and great clouds of dust were shaken from
the rafters above…but the silver-clad hero’s fist was stopped cold by an
invisible barrier only inches from my armored head. The impact echoed, a bass
thrum that filled the chamber like a physical force.
Emotions flickered
across his face: surprise first, followed swiftly by disappointment. For a
moment, I knew, Titan had believed the battle won. Rage quickly followed, and
further blows fell like thunderous rain as the hero explored the unseen
shield’s capabilities. Despite his size and awe-inspiring strength, the man was
no mere brawler; he was a well-trained and highly skilled martial-artist, yet
even his fiercest attack made no progress.
Sensor readings
indicated minor structural damage to the floor, but the force-field emitter
hidden below was in no immediate danger. Energy levels were excellent and the
increased strain continued to fall within projected tolerances. The new
force-field design was a masterwork!
Already, my mind was swirling
with ideas how to alter the device; to miniaturize components and improve
efficiency, and to make the entire system portable. Behind my helm’s
featureless faceplate, I was grinning like a fool.
Titan himself
looked more-or-less human, with a complexion and features that implied a
Mediterranean heritage. His eyes glowed white with raw power, wisps of energy
trailing away like strange smoke, and he stood nearly seven feet tall with a
broad and muscular physique that would make facing him a daunting concept even
without knowing of the supernatural forces that coursed through his body. When
he’d first appeared a decade ago, his charcoal-black hair seemed akin to a
lion’s mane, but he now wore it cropped short in a military ‘high and tight’
style and shaved away the perpetual 5 o’clock shadow that had once
practically been his trademark. It was an improvement, I thought; he looked
more intense now, more serious. Truly, the nigh-indestructible hero was a
worthy adversary.
“Doctor Fid! I
should have known.” He backed a few steps away from the force-field and
smirked. “I’d recognize your foul stench anywhere.”
Titan was also a bit of a dick.
Three years past,
one of Titan’s fellow Guardians—the Red Ghost—bypassed my defenses and managed
to shoot me in the abdomen. I’d required a colostomy bag for months while
replacement organs were being cloned,
and the silver-unitard-wearing
jerk had been teasing me about my odor ever since. It was petty and small. A
schoolyard taunt! A reflexive regression, I imagined, to the childhood days
when he must have victimized smaller students and stolen their lunch money.
Every once in a while, I really
did consider killing him. But not today.
“Titan.” I nodded
slightly in acknowledgment, carefully hiding any evidence of irritation. There
were multiple news-camera-drones within range, I was certain, and it would have
been unacceptable for any recording to indicate that the hurtful banter had
found purchase. Fortunately, my voice was modulated electronically to maintain
an emotionless tone. “I was expecting you sooner.”
The truth was that I hadn’t
been expecting him at all.
There’d been a
myriad of intentionally-left clues at the biotech facility that I’d robbed
earlier in the day, and any competent hero would certainly have been led to
this facility...but my research had indicated that this particular opponent
would be in Arizona training a young hero who went by the nom de guerre of ‘Brute’. It appeared that Brute traveled to New England instead, and was now fighting
alongside the Guardians as they battled their way into the auditorium-sized
throne room of what they would certainly believe to be my current lair.
The force-field
emitter test had originally been intended for a lesser challenge than Titan’s
full strength. It was fortunate that the device had been designed to operate
with a significant safety margin.
The other heroes
were at the opposite end of the room still, keeping a few of my low-tier combat
automatons occupied while their leader had advanced to confront me. The sounds
of combat raged on even as Titan and I exchanged words: explosions and worried
shouts, the shriek of tortured steel and the dull roar of growing flames. The
conflict would look glorious when video was leaked to the Internet.
Brute, the visiting
teen powerhouse, was acquitting himself well; he’d provided protection for both
Veridian and Regrowth and even managed an impressive offensive
combination-attack alongside Aeon. I planned to comb through the footage more
carefully at a later date to evaluate his performance and determine any useful
weaknesses. Fighting the younger hero might make for an interesting diversion
someday.
I was currently
sheathed within my Mk 33 light-combat powered armor. This suit—my most recent
design—was the fastest flier in my current arsenal, with the best augmented-reflexes
and combat programming...but it afforded less protection and overall strength
than other versions. This model wasn’t particularly appropriate for a
hand-to-hand battle with an entity like Titan or his current trainee.
Even so, I knew that I made for
an imposing figure.
The armor was
form-fitted and so thoroughly non-reflective that I seemed a silhouette, a
six-and-a-half-foot man-shaped hole in the world. There were stars visible
inside that blackness, pinpricks of light and color; looking upon me was gazing
into the clearest night sky, entire galaxies encompassed within my being. Only
at the armor’s seams were any hint of a three-dimensional form offered: from
there an angry red glow seeped, as though something infernal was trapped inside.
It was a disorienting effect that I’d spent years perfecting.
I
summoned my scepter—a slim and deceptively-simple-appearing black rod with a
round red stone at its
pommel—from its subspace
storage location, and the powerful weapon’s weight felt comforting in my hand.
Even as the last of my smaller combat drones were felled in the distance, I
maintained a relaxed and impassive mien. Greater than the armor, more powerful
even than the force-field, I was protected by Doctor Fid’s grim reputation.
Titan fell into a wary
half-crouch.
“Your robots are destroyed and
we have you surrounded,” he declared; the Guardians scattered to make Titan’s
statement into reality. “Surrender, Doctor. You can’t hide behind your
force-field forever.”
“Hide?” I motioned lazily with my scepter’s tip towards the
destruction that they’d left in their wake. “It took you four and a half
minutes to fight your way to me, and we both know that I could have escaped in
a fraction of that time.”
Titan was steady, but several of his compatriots took a step
backwards or glanced around warily. Good. Their fear had been hard-earned.
“Then why are you still here?”
asked the Guardians’ leader, finally.
“I’m not,” I lied, “This is a
hologram. I brought you all here so that I could watch your expressions while
this base self-destructs around you. In five...four...three-”
“Maneuver seven!”
Titan barked, his eyes closed to angry slits. The expression looked practiced;
did he glower at a mirror every night, I wondered, attempting to hone an expression
that would strike terror in the hearts of evildoers? If so, the effort had been
wasted. Honestly, he just looked constipated.
The superhero team
leaped into action like a well-oiled machine. Whatever Titan’s faults, he
trained his people well.
Aeon’s power-set
included the ability to produce force-fields more powerful even than my new
design...but only for pre-set short periods and only in a sphere about nine
feet in diameter. Regrowth, Veridian, and Red Ghost converged around the
slender woman and she powered up her famous milky-white energy shield around
them. Titan was sturdy enough that he knew he could withstand any of the
explosives that I’d used in the past, so he just tackled Brute to protect the
younger hero with his own body.
Feeling smug, I lifted my scepter and aimed; a blast of
emerald-hued energy surged from the pommel to strike both Titan and Brute with
sufficient intensity to drive them through my temporary fortress’s thick walls
and out into the courtyard. The entire room shook from the thunderous impact,
debris visibly shaking on the ground, and sparks flew as electrical wiring
within the walls was torn asunder.
Titan had always
been somewhat vulnerable to blows to the back of his head; it would be perhaps
thirty seconds before I could expect him to recover.
"Alternately, this base may not have been equipped with
an escape capsule, and I’m not a hologram at all," I floated towards the
hole in the wall, gloating cheerfully. "In retrospect, that seems
significantly more likely. Until next time, Guardians!"
(The
ruse had only been successful because my prior two fake-bases had been equipped
with unnecessarily
ornate self-destruct mechanisms
that the Red Ghost had only barely disarmed in time to avoid catastrophe; the
next one would have a built-in escape route, shaped explosive charges and a
mocking hologram ready and waiting. Forcing Titan to make the wrong call under
fire was one of life’s true joys.)
Laughing
mockingly, I launched into the air with my armor’s flight systems shifted to
maximum and stealth capabilities enabled. Any of the more esoteric technology
left behind would melt itself to slag; it simply wouldn’t do
to leave any resources behind
for my enemies to examine. By the time Aeon’s shield dropped, my lead would be
insurmountable.
sss
The news
broadcasts, I was amused to discover, were quick to declare that the Guardians
had forced the notorious Doctor Fid to escape empty-handed with all materials
stolen from AH Biotech safely returned, and that— thanks to the Guardians’
valiant efforts! —the battle resulted in not even a single civilian casualty.
Property damage had been restrained to the mostly-abandoned city block
surrounding Doctor Fid’s secret lair and even the heroes themselves suffered no
significant injuries. The event was being treated as a clear win for the
Guardians, despite the fact that Doctor Fid had, once more, eluded capture.
But the footage of
Titan and Brute being blasted through a wall was replayed over and over again,
as well as a beautiful shot of the remaining Guardians watching helplessly as
Doctor Fid flew off to safety. One camera drone captured a glorious image of
the Red Ghost dropping to his knees, shoulders bowed in defeat. His red cowl
hid his eyes, but his lower face was visible, and the setting sun cast deep
shadows upon the lines of his face; it was an illusion, but in that moment he
looked terribly old and weary.
Technically
speaking, the Red Ghost was among the most dangerous of my regular opponents.
Titan’s greater experience and calm under fire made him an effective leader,
tactically, but the Red Ghost was a more creative thinker. He’d begun his
heroic career by making a name for himself as an investigator, fighting crime
while wearing a highly protective (but unpowered) crimson and black tactical
armor of his own design. Over the years, he’d added to his arsenal using
equipment reverse-engineered from villains who he’d fought (It’d been one of my
own shaped-plasma gauss cannons that wounded me. My own invention, painted red
to match the Ghost’s costume! Damn the man.) and he maintained an impressive
regimen of acrobatic and combat training. But those factors weren’t what made
the Red Ghost dangerous to my current plans.
Before fate granted
him the power to shroud himself in blood-red mists and become incorporeal, the
Red Ghost had been a forensic accountant.
Doctor Fid’s
dastardly plan may have been foiled by the heroic Guardians, but Terrance
Markham was (through dozens of shadow holding companies) heavily invested in
construction and real-estate firms that stood to earn a fortune from the
properties damaged by the combat. Also, as the founder of AH Biotech, my shares
and stocks would surely gain a boost from the media coverage surrounding the
supposedly ‘foiled’ crime.
Sometimes, I wasn’t
certain which identity was my mask and which one was real. Or perhaps both
identities were masks; if so, I wasn’t sure what lay beneath.
Doctor Fid had
never before committed a crime that intersected with my civilian life, but in
this case the ruse had been too tempting to discard. The success of AH Biotech
was crucial for other long-term plans and the publicity was particularly
beneficial at that moment. Among the media elite and policy wonks, it was
accepted as fact that Doctor Fid deigned to steal only the most dangerous, most
advanced technologies...and suddenly every potential customer or investor would
be curious as to what wonders AHBT was hiding. There were government contracts
to
be acquired, and a receptive
Senator had recently been maneuvered into place. Public goodwill always served
to make lobbying an easier task.
This latest
incident could not, however, be labeled as a complete success; the scenario had
originally been intended to test Veridian’s willingness to follow orders when
Titan was absent and the Red Ghost was leading the Guardians into battle. In
past confrontations, I’d seen hints that the slender, emerald costumed Veridian
resented taking orders from anyone whose offensive powers did not rival his
own. Confirmation of that character flaw would have opened up further avenues
of attack in the future.
Titan and Brute’s unexpected presence had thrown the original
plan into immediate disarray. Still…several secondary goals had been
accomplished, and the new force-field design was successfully tested against a
more powerful physical attack than expected. It was remarkably tempting to send
the Guardians a “thank you” card.
sss
Now and then, some
reporter looking to make a name for themselves attempted to put together a dramatic
expose: the True Story of Doctor Fid. The narratives all felt similar; they
described the same battles, the same victories and the same defeats. One woman
who was within the crowd at my first bank robbery is quoted in just about every
article.
“I don’t think that
he wanted us to die,” she always said, “But I don’t think that he wanted us to
live, either. He just...barely noticed us. Like we were beneath him. There was
this little girl screaming, so loud that we were all terrified that he was
going to hurt her just to get some quiet. But the Doctor just walked past her
like she wasn’t there—like she didn’t matter. I’ve never been so frightened in
all my life.”
Those were the bad years, but
even then I had nightmares about that little pony-tailed girl’s wails. When I’d
walked into that bank my gut had roiled with so much anger that I could have
set the world on fire, but those cries snaked past the rage, infected me,
haunted me. I remembered forcing myself not to look at her directly; if I’d
looked her in the eyes, I would have been compelled to take off my mask and
comfort her and then all my plans would have fallen to pieces.
It always felt
strange that none of these so-called reporters ever followed up on that portion
of the story. They never looked for the girl, never tried expanding on her
tale. They only cared about the tears and not the aftermath.
(Melissa Halden had
grown into a talented art student at Berkeley, attending with a full
scholarship that I may have quietly influenced. She was happy and well
adjusted.)
The articles all failed in the
same manner: when attempting to guess at my motivations. They analyzed my name,
my targets, my actions. They’d harassed every family in the United States with my sobriquet’s last name
while seeking clues, and psychologists who’d never met me pontificated
endlessly about my pathology. The authors guessed and made up stories, each
more outlandish than the last. I’d once found those fables humorous, but the
amusement had long since faded.
There’d been a plan and that
plan would have ended in self-immolation.
The
whole play had been scripted in my imagination: I would become a villain so
feared that people would
barely
dare whisper my name, and, when I was sufficiently infamous, I would engage in
battle with the hero named Bronze. He would gaze across the destruction that
I’d wrought and ask me what could possibly have motivated me to perform such
atrocities. And I would take off my mask, crying, and inform him that I was his
creation.
In the theater of
my mind’s eye, I would tell him what he’d done and I would watch his world
collapse as he realized the gravity of his sin. In that moment, we would both
get what we deserved for surely there would be no future for either of us. I
dreamt of that scene for years until every morning I would wake and still taste
the battle’s blood and ash and tears on my lips.
In a final and unknowing act of
vicious spite, Bronze drank himself to death before I could ever confront him.
He could not have
been aware of his connection to me. Doctor Fid had never mentioned Bronze in
public; the eventual revelation was supposed to be epic—Shakespearean in
proportion! Whatever demons drove Bronze to the bottle, it wasn’t worry
regarding Fid’s actions. There was a vicious part of me that hoped that he’d
fallen into despair over what he’d done to Bobby, but I would never know.
I was bereft. The hero had managed to take everything from me.
My faith in humanity, my goals for the future, my sense of self. My brother.
I’d given up the entirety of my being, stained my soul with violence and blood
to force Bronze to feel my pain. And then Bronze had stolen even my revenge.
There was nothing
left to me save for guilt and a suit of powered armor equipped with sufficient
armaments to level a small city.
sss
“Whatcha drawing?”
I’d asked, years earlier. The class was over and my students had long since
funneled out of the room; I’d gotten distracted grading papers and my brother
had patiently remained in the area that I’d set aside for him at the front of
the lecture hall. There were comics and books and an army of action figures to
keep him entertained, but Bobby was currently laying on his belly surrounded by
crayons and craft paper.
“An adventure!” he chirped in
reply. “It’s us, but not now ’cause I need to be bigger before I’m Strongboy.”
“That’s your superhero name?” I
smiled.
“Uh-huh. And this is you!”
The likeness wasn’t
complimentary—a skinny chalk-white figure with long fingers, a messy scribble
of hair and the beginnings of a pot belly—but I thought that the oversized head
was an interesting abstraction to represent my cerebral capabilities. Although
my actual skull was average in shape and size, Bobby apparently believed that
my brain needed a larger container. That, at least, I thought to be flattering.
“How’d I get that hero name?” I
asked, looking at the picture’s label.
“Because you’re a P-H-D doctor,
and ‘P-H’ is pronounced ffffff.”
I laughed, “Well…get up,
Strongboy. It’s late.”
“I’m not Strongboy
yet,” he complained, piling up his drawings before pushing himself to his feet.
“I need to be bigger.”
“I don’t know…you’re getting
pretty big. Make a muscle!”
He complied with an impish
grin, flexing dramatically; I checked his biceps and made suitably impressed
sounds.
Bobby giggled.
“I think you’re almost ready,”
I told him, grunting as I lifted him up and made ready to leave. With my free
hand, I checked my pocket to make sure that I had my keys.
“No, wait,” he
squirmed until I let him down, then hurried to the pile of toys and snatched up
an action figure with yellowish metallic skin. His favorite. “Okay, we can go.”
sss
The armor was
disassembled and I moved back to Cambridge. MIT was eager to have me
back; the five-year absence hadn’t even affected my tenure. I taught classes,
took classes, performed research, earned a few more doctorates...It’s not that
I thought it possible to put Doctor Fid behind me, it was only that I lacked
motivation. In a listless malaise, I returned to that which was simple.
When I reestablished
my presence in academia, many of my colleagues came to me and expressed their
support. “I was so sorry to hear about Robert,” they would say, “He seemed like
a great kid.” None of them approached me directly after the incident. Bobby’s
middle-school friends did, trying to comfort me in the awkward, honest way that
only children can manage. They hugged me and cried and touched some of Bobby’s
toys and told me stories and cried some more. The adults, though, my peers and
coworkers...they kept at a distance. They left me to my grief when my grief
burned, but a half-decade later they finally felt comfortable offering
consolation.
At some
subconscious level they must have recognized that my anguish bordered on
madness. Adults are flustered by those who are mad; they look the other way and
keep their distance. When I returned, I imagined that my fellows breathed a
sigh of relief and decided that their fears had been imagined.
(Children are more
inquisitive about strangeness than they are embarrassed by it. That is,
perhaps, why I’d always connected with my brother so well despite the decade of
age between us. I’ve always been somewhat odd. I’d never really fit among my
peers, socially; when I was a youth, I was too intellectually advanced to
connect with others of my own age, and by the time I was fourteen and attending
college I was too emotionally immature to relate to my fellow students. Bobby
was four years old then, and there was something about his boundless enthusiasm
and curiosity that delighted me. He was a normal kid, but he smiled whenever I
spent time with him. Bobby listened. He cared with an intensity that was
astonishing.)
Strangely, the
faculty were more open to working with me when I returned to academia. I was
invited to partner with researchers who had, previously, seemed standoffish due
to my youth. I was still at least a decade or two younger than them, but
somehow witnessing my breakdown and supposed recovery made me more
approachable.
Less of a threat. I was still numb and directionless, of course, but perhaps I
was also less driven and intense. Our team shared credit for a Nobel Prize and
I published papers in whatever fields my peers pointed me towards.
For six years,
Doctor Fid was nothing but a series of poorly labeled crates in a storage
garage in Somerville. At the time, reporters
postulated that the villain had been seriously injured (or died) of wounds
inflicted during that last battle with Valiant on the White House lawn. Later,
reporters would refer to those six years as the calm before the storm.
Not all wounds heal
with time, but some do grow dull. A bearable ache, always uncomfortable but at
least the pain was familiar. So it was with my own malaise. Bobby had been dead
nearly as long as he’d been alive and I was somewhat surprised to find that my
own life continued on. I had my studies and research, my students and my fellow
professors.
A social misfit I
may have been, but complete isolation had never suited me. One noted
psychologist often publicly claimed that Doctor Fid’s behavior could be
partially explained by childhood isolation or absentee parents, but that
supposition was wholly incorrect; my parents might not always have known how to
deal with their precocious and frighteningly brilliant firstborn, true, but they’d
loved and supported me as best as they’d been able. They always were remarkably
patient with me when I’d taken apart a vehicle or appliance to see how it
worked but had gotten distracted before choosing to reassemble it. They were
gentle when an experiment went awry and I required medical assistance, and they
sang lullabies when I had difficulty sleeping.
I must have been a
terribly difficult child. How does one comfort a youth who has developed
mathematical models to accurately predict the timing and path of atmospheric
electrostatic discharge, and yet still flinches and cries silently at the sound
of thunder? My emotional development did not occur at the same pace as my
intellectual growth. In retrospect, it seemed likely that dichotomy led to an
uneven maturation.
At thirteen, I
designed my first breeder reactor. I was eighteen when I received my first
doctorate and accepted employment at MIT, nineteen when I became my brother’s
guardian, and twenty-one when I watched my brother die.
sss
Bobby is eleven years old today, and it is the most beautiful
summer afternoon in recent memory. The warm breeze smells like freshly cut
grass, healthy trees and salt blown in from the sea, and the sky is so clear
and blue that it seems unnatural. We both still have sand in our hair from
building castles that were swallowed by the tides, but our beach blankets and
plastic buckets have been packed away back in the rental van. I’d forgotten the
sunscreen and I’m sure we’ll be lobster pink in the morning, yet right now I am
too happy to care.
Bobby bounces as
we walk, giddy with anticipation; I hadn’t been able to keep his birthday
surprise a secret any longer. After months of searching, I’d puzzled out
Bronze’s secret identity and we’re on our way to surprise him at his office.
I’m going to introduce my baby brother to his hero.
Arranging a meeting with Bronze’s alter-ego, Paul Riley, had
been simple. Paul works in maritime research and I have patents for a
submersible drone that will be invaluable. I’d told Mr. Riley’s secretary that
I chose his firm
because
we were relocating to the area; at the time, the statement had been subterfuge
but now I’m considering moving for real. Bobby hasn’t smiled like this since
before the car accident that took our parents.
Paul Riley had offered to meet us in the lobby and guide us up
to his office; I see him near the entrance as we approach his building.
Bronze’s counterpart is a fit man in his early thirties with black hair and
dark eyes, and his ruddy complexion tells me that he probably spends most of
his time working outdoors despite the well-tailored business suit that he’s
wearing today.
“That’s
him,” I whisper to Bobby. “Remember, don’t say anything until we’re in
private.”
Bobby’s eyes widen and he grips my hand tight, trembling. His
skin is warm and soft; he doesn’t have any calluses. He spends too much time
indoors, too much time with me.
We’re across the street from Bronze’s office when the first
missile hits. Someone starts screaming and I hear shrapnel and debris scatter
along the asphalt. Reflexively, I scoop my brother up into my arms and sprint
towards a park bench with concrete sides and thick wooden slats. I’m running as
fast as I can, awkward and desperate and terrified.
There is a Paragon Research facility at the end of the block
and the terrorist supervillain Locust is attacking. He’d assaulted the New
Mexico location only a few weeks
earlier; I’d seen it on the news. Being close is different from watching on a
screen. Terrifying! My chest aches and my eyes sting; there’s something in the
air, an acrid taste I don’t recognize, and my breath is already coming in
desperate gulps.
A score of foot
soldiers wearing Locust’s symbol pour out of an armored truck, firing
indiscriminately to clear the road and cause chaos as they swarm towards the
gate. There are more shouts, different voices and I hear a little girl cry for
her mother. In my head, I’m designing better surveillance, counter weapons,
heavy armor, anything that could keep Bobby safe, but my workshop is hundreds
of miles away and all I have time to do is try to make sure my brother is
behind the bench.
In the lobby, Paul Riley is staring right at us. I’ve
researched his power set; he can transform his body, gaining nearly a foot of
height and skin that appears to be made of his namesake material. Once
metamorphosed, he is strong and fast and has moderately strong telekinesis that
only affects metal.
Paul Riley could shift to his heroic form in a heartbeat, but
he is in public among coworkers and people who know him. He could reach us, he
could get Bobby to safety, could use his power to disarm all of Locust’s thugs
and leave only the insectoid, acid-spitting villain as a serious threat, but
doing so would certainly cost him his secret identity. The moment seems to take
forever as he weighs the value of his privacy against the speed of his
response. I can see him considering how many steps it will take for him to get
into a private room, how many extra seconds it will take to make a clean
entrance. He makes his choice.
“Ow.” Bobby looks bewildered, holding his chest. For the first
time in my entire life I can’t think. I can’t calculate the angles, can’t
figure out what I did wrong. I’m holding my brother, shouting for help and
feeling helpless and small. There is so much blood.
I
watch my brother’s eyes as he watches his favorite superhero turn away and run
back into the office building.
sss
I was twenty-six
when I disassembled Doctor Fid’s armor and returned to the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology, and I was thirty-one when I made my way back to the
storage garage in Somerville where the armor had been
hoarded.
Becoming completely
absorbed into my work had always been a problem for me. When I was studying or
constructing mathematical algorithms or designing new tools and devices it was
far too easy to lose track of time and fail to pay attention to my
surroundings. The symphony of creation inside my head grew too loud and the
external noise faded.
My colleague, Takuma Ichiro,
must have talked to me first, must have asked my permission; out of ingrained
habit, I must have made an appropriately polite response. Distracted by
theoretical physics, I didn’t notice an area of floor space being cleared in
the protected low-energy section of our lab, didn’t notice the boxes or the
small yellow bookshelf filled with colorful titles.
There was a stack
of notepads under one of my arms and my other hand was holding a large mug of
coffee; with my hands thus occupied, my pencil was carried between my teeth, and
I gnawed thoughtfully as I pondered an annoying magnetic resonance that was
polluting the results of the afternoon’s tests. A ten-year-old child was
sitting in the corner, quietly playing with superhero action figures while his
father worked.
The pencil fell to the floor.
“Terry, I’m so
sorry,” Doctor Ichiro jumped to apologize; he must have read something strange
in my expression. “I didn’t realize how much Hideki’s play area would look
like—”
“It’s all right.” I
smiled unsteadily and took a deep breath. “I was just surprised is all. Hey
there, kiddo. Your name is Hideki?”
The boy nodded, his eyes wide.
“You like superheroes, hm?” My chest hurt, and I was torn
between an aching sadness and bright nostalgia. “My brother liked superheroes.
Who’s your favorite?”
Hideki reached for
one large figure wearing a black costume with orange highlights and a dark
bandit’s mask that covered its lower face; Takuma moved faster, snatching up
the offending toy.
“Hideki!” Doctor Ichiro looked
aggrieved. “I told you that you can’t play with this one anymore.”
“But Gamma is the coolest!” the
boy complained, “He fought Metalstorm and Spiker at the same time!”
“Gamma is a good
fighter, but he is not a good person,” Takuma tried to explain, “He has said
things that are rude to women. He does not behave well.”
“Gamma is the
coolest!” Hideki insisted, voice rising angrily. His small hands clenched into
fists. “And if you’re twelve feet tall you don’t HAVE to behave good!”
“Everyone should behave good,” I said quietly. There must have
been something odd about my voice, some truth or hint of pain that transcended
mere words; Hideki stopped mid-tantrum to listen. “If someone puts on a
costume, if they claim to be a superhero...they should have to be a hero. They
should be good.”
“Gamma is good!” Hideki pouted.
“He beats up bad guys.”
About a month
later, a drunk Gamma caused a few thousand dollars’ worth of property damage in
his hometown of Atlanta, and a cell-phone recording caught Gamma claiming that he
didn’t need to listen to the responding police officer because he was only
three-fifths of a cop.
The public
relations firms and lawyers swarmed. There was the inevitable scripted public
apology in which Gamma stated that he was impaired at the time and that the
views expressed did not match his true feelings. A few heroes repudiated Gamma,
but others repeated a statement of support for the hero and lauded his supposed
‘bravery’ and ‘honesty’ in holding his press conference. The mighty Valiant, an
African-American hero who Doctor Fid had clashed with in Washington, D.C., responded to a reporter’s
query with a quiet ‘No comment’. The event was twisted and spun and slipped out
from media attention after a week.
Hideki continued to play with
his Gamma action figure whenever his father wasn’t looking.
Even then, I
recognized that so-called superheroes performed a public service that is both
difficult and dangerous; they were marketed, however, as something far greater.
They accepted the accolades, pretended to be righteous warriors and icons of
justice and all that is good, and yet still quietly accepted a system that
protected the undeserving. A thin spandex line that stood in opposition to
villains like the very-deceased Locust or the monster who had been Fid but also
shielded their peers from accountability.
They accepted worship from
children. Didn’t they know how precious that was? How could they live with
themselves if they didn’t spend every waking moment struggling to be worthy of
such unconditional trust? Someone needed to remind the public that, beneath
their colorful costumes and flashy powers, their idols were only human. Someone
needed to remind the cape and cowl set that they could—no, should!—aspire to be
something more.
Doctor Fid had
never been unmasked. It would have been a relatively simple thing to build a
completely different suit of powered armor and come to the public under a new
persona. I could try to be the hero that children like Hideki deserved...but it
would only be another lie. I’d failed my brother and caused too much heartache
to ever be deserving. My inventions had, by now, saved far more lives than Fid
had ever harmed, but there would be no salvation for the likes of me.
In a vacuum-sealed
and UV-resistant glass case hidden away in a secret bunker, I kept my most
prized possession: a series of crayon drawings on construction paper. The
Adventures of Strongboy and Doctor Fid.
I smiled, long-term
plans beginning to percolate through my mind. A private company, tools and
devices, surgical augmentations performed by medical robots, an upgraded
powered-armor suit...Doctor Fid would never be the hero who Bobby imagined, but
he could at least serve the noble purpose of demonstrating the heroes’
shortcomings. He could inspire some heroes towards greatness and drag others
from their pedestals back down to earth.
I could do more, too. With sufficient resources and no
bureaucracy holding me back, I could design machines that could generate
cleaner energy, purify sea water, grow crops more efficiently and deliver
resources in a more equitable manner. I could cure diseases, build tools to
protect civilians, create safer buildings and vehicles. Doctor Fid might be a
supervillain, but perhaps he could save the world right out from under the
fraudulent superheroes’ noses.
Also, someone really did need
to punch Gamma in the face. Repeatedly.
sss
Damn the man!
I’d been careful...studied the
frequency of land acquisitions in analogous neighborhoods and applied a
Bayesian scatter to add random elements to the pattern such that it should not
have too-accurately reflected a pure average. The contracts were neither
overbid nor underbid, and I’d even made certain to include a
statistically-normal number of errors in the paperwork (with minor variances
consistent between each shell company). No software or hardware-based data
analysis tool in the world should have indicated a connection! Sadly, there was
no consistent model that accounted for human intuition.
Miguel Espinoza
(the Red Ghost’s alias) had been sniffing after records concerning the
transfers of ownership of properties surrounding my ex-lair. Like all the other
supposed base-of-operations to which the heroes had ever tracked Doctor Fid,
it’d been chosen more for its suitability for combat than for research
purposes; no hero had ever discovered the true laboratories or manufacturing
facilities, only facades intended to serve as backdrop for violent encounters.
This location had been no different, and yet somehow the Red Ghost thought to
investigate more deeply than in the past. Some arcane bookkeeping divination
had sparked his interest in property titles; it was possible that comparable
voodoo might find a similar connection to the firms from which I'd planned to
reap profits with reconstruction.
There was no direct
link to Terry Markham’s holdings, but even so I was forced to isolate the
relevant accounts...it would be years before I could safely launder those
earnings! The twenty-two percent surge in AHBT’s stock price offered little
consolation, nor did the company’s contract to supply field medical kits to the
U.S. Army’s infantry branch. Any fortune from publicly traded stock could not
so easily be funneled towards questionable purchases without raising red flags.
I’d been counting on income flowing into Doctor Fid’s shadowy network in order
to fund the final pieces to rebuild the massive Mk 29 heavy combat armor and
replacements for my combat drones.
Conflicts with the
Red Ghost always brought mixed feelings. When my research revealed his secret
identity, I’d expected to uncover a few of the usual character flaws; instead,
I’d found a conscientious man with no history of violence or difficulties with
the law. He’d progressed in his civilian career through talent, skill and hard
work rather than backstabbing or politicking. No known enemies or past
disasters. Miguel was helping both of his nieces pay for college (he’d never
married and had no children of his own) and volunteered at a soup kitchen on
his days off.
I’d have nominated
the man for sainthood if he hadn’t perforated my intestines with my own damned
rifle. Also, he’d cost me seventy-three-point-one million dollars from Doctor
Fid’s criminal empire, money that could have been put towards the development
of a proper doomsday weapon! Defeating him always rewarded me with a spark of
vicious pride and a pang of terrible guilt.
I’d purchased four Red Ghost toys over the years. Two were
given to Hideki, one was incinerated in a fit of rage, and the last resided in
my most treasured vacuum-sealed and UV-resistant glass case. Bobby would have
loved that action figure.
Damn the man.
