

A Normil Day

Isabel Pelech

Distributed by Smashwords

Copyright 2017 Isabel Pelech

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Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Author's Note

Armand Cole

Chapter 1

The world is not supposed to look like this. Remember that. The world is not supposed to look like this.

I realize that none of you remember it any other way. It isn't just now; the influence extends backwards through history. World War Two, the first great clash of Extraordinaries, with Miss Victory and the Gunslinger fighting alongside Allied troops, keeping the Nazi Extraordinaries from taking out hundreds of men. The Wild Man of Africa, raised by gorillas in the late eighteen hundreds. From the folk heroes of the American west back to the demigods of Greece, there are stories of Extraordinaries—and if you look closely enough, you can see the marks they've left on history. Or, in some occasions, on the landscape, like Pecos Bill's Gap.

And now, of course, with the population higher than it's ever been, we're living in the Age of Extraordinaries. Cris Mendoza, also known as the Silver Bullet, has been on Mythbusters twice, I think, using her superspeed to test gun myths that would be far too dangerous for a normal human being. NASA actively hunts for strangetechs; their red-carpet treatment is said to put NFL recruiters to shame. And if you look out the window in Marina City—

That's another thing. Marina City. Rock Harbor. There are a few major cities that shouldn't actually exist. I'm not sure what that means for the people who live there; possibly they're supposed to be in Chicago or New York. And there are small changes to the culture, as well. Science fiction, the literature of scientists and young businessmen—it should occupy roughly the same status as fantasy, literature of nerds. Comic books—well, they were never entirely mainstream, but they shouldn't be the vanishing niche market that they are.

When you look at it, living in the wrong city and reading the wrong books is actually a very small change. There are people who have had their life far more distorted by what the world has become.

Rick Normil is one of them. For the most part, this story belongs to him. I'll fill in the gaps, I'll tell the bits he wasn't there for, but the rest is his.

And, Rick—I'm sorry.

Rick Normil

Chapter 2

When your alarm clock turns into a frog, you know it's going to be one of those days.

I'll say this, though. It woke me up. The alarm clock went ZEE ZEE ZEE croak? with the croak coming right as I tried to hit the snooze and got a handful of amphibian. At which point it pissed itself and jumped off the bedside table. I pried my eyes open and looked at it.

Green. Wet. Google-eyed. A bona fide frog.

Which meant no snooze button. Which meant, much as I hated the fact, I had to be up. I groaned, levered myself out of bed, and went into the bathroom.

I didn't feel like making a big deal out of the even larger bullfrog in the soap dish. Or the very large dragonfly which I thought might be my razor. But the toothpaste turning into a very small alligator just as I was trying to put the cap back on? That was a problem. A bitey problem.

I put a band-aid on my finger and looked in the bathtub. There was a medium-sized alligator in there. Possibly the bath mat.

Okay, fine. Didn't need a shower this morning after all. I splashed water on my face, dabbed myself dry with the Spanish moss currently hanging from my towel rack, and shambled in the general direction of my kitchen. Coffee. Coffee is coping. Coffee is love.

Unfortunately, the ongoing bayouification wasn't limited to my bedroom and bathroom. The cabinet that should have contained the Wheatie Flakes was full of angry eyes. I spotted a raccoon before I shut the door on it. The frying pan turned into a stork as I picked it up, so I decided not to even try for eggs.

I could pick up breakfast from the BreadCo on the corner, I decided. And coffee, since the coffeemaker appeared to be a beaver. Not quite yet, though; the last thing I needed was this stuff following me into a restaurant and freaking people out. I went to my door, got my paper, and settled down at my kitchen table to read it, propping my feet on the other chair.

There was a short, pregnant pause. Then the invisible force turned me into a frogman.

I sighed inaudibly and flipped straight back to the comics page. Definitely one of those days.

At least I hadn't been turned into an ape; as a black guy, I find that prospect more than a bit racist. Unfortunately, we do have a local gorilla-themed supervillain; fortunately, he's got lousy aim. And, right back to unfortunately, gorillifying the toy poodle that happened to be beside me added extra rampage to an already rampage-rich situation. It had pink bows on its ears. Ladies and gentlemen, my life.

There was a somewhat longer pause, and then a being popped angrily into existence at about standing-up eye level. I very deliberately didn't look up, but I could make him out in my peripheral vision. Sort of a three-dimensional caricature, with the head larger than all the rest of him, about two feet tall. White, wild-haired, middle-aged. Dressed like the Mad Hatter as drawn by what's-his-name, the original illustrator. And, of course, bobbing mid-air. He clenched his fists and said, "Aaaarrggh!"

People don't usually actually say aargh. It's usually more like rrrgh or nnngg. I turned the page.

"How? How can any being be so—so—so lumplike?"

I've had practice, that's how. The Does Not Compute was funny today; the Taft, as usual, wasn't. And I was still a frogman. If I went on like this, I was going to have to get my moisturizer out of the bathroom drawer.

My moisturizer was very possibly a lizard. Nothing is ever simple.

"Do you notice what's going on around you? Do you care? Is it physically possible to be so stupid—so incredibly stupid—to lack all curiosity about your surroundings? Are you brain-damaged? Are you drugged? Are you an inanimate object run by little human—toothed wheely things? Haven't you noticed something odd?" His voice cracked a little on the last shriek.

In the adventure strips, John Marvol was stranded in deep space and had just spotted a Jovian pirate ship. I skipped the soap opera comics; I can't stand 'em. Sports pages, next, and then I'd worry about the headlines.

It's slightly more difficult to make amphibian eyes focus on small text. Search me why.

The floating chibi madman said, "Can you even hear me?"

Yes, but there was no way I would let him know that. He was obviously trying to get a rise out of me.

And then I turned back into Rick Normil. "You know what?" Floating Hat Guy snapped. "Forget it. You're as much fun as a mnemocoprin, and twice as stupid. I'm going to find someone else to challenge. Possibly a different species. Perhaps someone more advanced than you, such as one of your—your one-celled green life-forms. Hopefully someone who shows some infinitesimal outward sign of whether they're awake or not!"

There was a small plib noise, as of an unknown being teleporting away without displacing very much air at all. The gravity in the room reversed itself, making everything but me and my chair crash to the ceiling. And then I was alone again.

I grinned.

Rick Normil

Chapter 3

There's an art to dealing with nth dimensional imps, you see. They're vastly more powerful than any human, even Extraordinaries, and they don't have normal human motivations. But that doesn't mean they're undefeatable. Not having normal human motivations isn't the same as having completely incomprehensible ones. Once you work out what a trickster is after, you've got a handle on him.

Like I said before, that one was trying to get a reaction out of me. So I didn't give him one.

Half an hour later, holding the remains of my BreadCo espresso, I got off the Green Line just a block from the Daily Torch building. The Daily Torch is a giant screaming cosmic cat toy, and I've never figured out if my own weirdness magnet tendencies are a side effect of working there or the other way around. I hoped that when Floating Hat Guy said he was going to challenge someone more advanced, he would skip a couple of hundred years and mess with future scientists and their Annoyance Capture Rays—or, alternatively, that he was currently driving himself to screaming frustration trying to get a rise out of the giant tortoises at the Marina City Zoo. But if he hadn't, he would turn up here, at the Torch. And he would turn the big bronze torch sculpture on the roof into an ice cream cone, because every supervillain ever gotta mess with that thing.

Seriously. There's a citizen's group suing the Torch for maintaining an attractive nuisance. The argument, as I understand it, is roughly, every superstrong poser has ripped that thing off its base and tried to hit people with it, why the hell you gotta keep it around. The Torch's lawyers countered with, we can't be held responsible for what depraved individuals do, it's a historical landmark of great significance that has been there (intermittently) since the nineteen twenties, and besides, it's ours and you can't touch it. Not being a lawyer nor particularly interested, I hadn't been paying too much attention to the specifics.

I walked in, said hello to Helen the receptionist, and took the elevator up to the newsroom.

And didn't even get to set foot in it. As the elevator doors opened, Jenna Germaine strode in and said, "Get your camera and come on, we've got an incident."

Ah, life as Normil. Why yes, I have heard that joke a few times, why do you ask?

So. Jenna Germaine.

If you picture a white businesswoman, slim and smallish, with dark brown hair worn a bit past shoulder-length, you've got the right general idea. She's pretty. She usually dresses in bright colors, even pastels; turquoise is a favorite. You might look at her and think she's harmless.

Excuse me a minute while I laugh at you for that.

Jenna is, among other things, a story-obsessed lunatic. And if you think that's more likely to get her hurt than anything else—well, it's true that she gets into trouble the way I get into weirdness. But she's also still here.

It's not all connections in high places, either. Although I wouldn't underestimate those.

I'm her favorite photographer, largely because I take the pictures rather than standing there gawping and wondering if it's really, truly a tyrannosaur, which, yes, has happened to us. Today was a little more mundane, for a certain Normil value of mundane. Adam Stitch was throwing a tizzy fit.

Adam Stitch—where to start?

Well, he was probably created by a shadowy person who calls himself the Superior. Hard to say for the same reason it's hard to say anything definite about the Superior's doings: he's never been caught. Stitch was put together from corpses, probably using parts from at least ten people, and it shows. He's a nasty grey putty color, or most of him is; his left hand and forearm look like they came from a black guy. He's a bit over seven feet tall and four feet across at the shoulder. His face is lopsided to the point of grotesquerie, and he's got a spiked ball in place of a right hand. It's on a chain that he can reel in or let out, so he can use it either as an unusually nasty fist or a sort of morningstar. He's strong, to the point where he gives Guardian a run for his money.

Which only makes sense, because he was created to kill Guardian.

I climbed up on a car to take pictures. Half a football field away, Stitch tried to pick up a car and hurl it, only to be foiled by good old down-home physics; the bumper came off in his hand. He howled in rage, spiked the bumper through a plate-glass window, kicked the car onto its side, and sent it spinning down the street with another hard kick. It came to rest near the police cordon.

Jenna had her back to the car and was fiddling with her tape recorder. "Poor zombie," she said. "They shouldn't keep him in the Tank."

Yeah, that's the other thing about Stitch; he's mentally disabled, and may not understand that his rampages hurt people. It's possible that the Superior made him like that on purpose. Poor bastard's as much a victim as anything else. Which doesn't matter one little bit to anyone he throws a car at, of course. "The Tank's the only place that can hold him," I said.

"And look what a wonderful job it's doing!" When Jenna decides to lay on the sarcasm, she does it nice and thick. "I'm serious. The Tank is full of smarter criminals and all of them know what sets him off. Someone like Ticktock might do it just to watch the fireworks."

Don't listen to what the internet tells you about the top ten scariest supervillains. Ticktock is nothing but a strangetech, and not the wildest strangetech out there, but he's so much more frightening than your straightforward money-and-power type. We're talking about a man who looks at a department store mannequin and thinks, know what this needs? More razorblades. He likes to take innocuous things, bits of life that you see every day, and "upgrade" them until they have drill bits and acid and a hankering to kill your face. He's not just off his rocker, he set fire to it. The good news is that he can't get living thugs anymore; nobody likes to think about what he did to them when he got bored. And if you ask me, the crazy ones—people like Ticktock or Mister Trick—are a hundred times worse than a guy who can psychokinetic you into the upper atmosphere.

Well, with the exception of Sigil. But Sigil's the exception to everything.

"Or," Jenna said, and I could hear an idea forming, "as a distraction—Rick, you have your thing."

No, no, no. I did not need to use the thing. Especially since we didn't need Guardian showing up and Stitch really getting his angry on. At the moment, he was just chucking fire hydrants at thirtieth story windows. (Water went everywhere. The SPEAR team—Specialist Police Extraordinary Aggression Response, in case you've been living on Saturn—ignored it grimly and continued setting up some sort of bazooka-rocket-launcher deal.) "I have it," I said reluctantly. "But—"

Adam looked up at the sky. "W-W-WHERE IS GUARDIAN?!" It was loud enough to make panes of glass shiver. "COME D-D-DOWN AND FIGHT!"

"Hey." It was a policeman. I looked at him and took another snap with my camera poised exactly where it had been; sloppy work, maybe, but a smart man doesn't annoy a cop. "Hey, buddy. You gotta get off there, we're expanding the perimeter."

In case whatever the SPEARs were going to shoot at Stitch didn't work, I decoded. "Right," I said, and scrambled down.

Stitch screamed, "C-COWARD!!"

And then he jumped, about a quarter block, almost to where the SPEARs were. The woman who had been loading the launcher swung it around and triggered it from point-blank range. The thing that hit Stitch—whatever it was—didn't explode. It clamped on instead, looking faintly like a metal spider.

It electrocuted him. He screamed.

And then I felt like someone had body-slammed my brain, and everything went red and black.

Armand Cole

Chapter 4

From the point of view of an average observer, this is what happened.

At about the same moment that SPEAR operative Myra Levin successfully disabled Adam Stitch, a bland-looking bystander reportedly muttered, "Enough. Time for Plan B." And then he shot Rick Normil in the back with a strangetech ray.

If the man hadn't collapsed instantly, profoundly unconscious, he would have died. As it was, there must have been upwards of a dozen guns pointed at him, ready to perforate him if he twitched. Jenna Germaine, meanwhile, had rushed to Rick's side; he had fallen to his knees, holding his head. She said, "Are you all right, can you tell how many fingers I'm holding up?"

"Two," Rick said. "I'm all right. I just got dizzy for a moment."

He sounded—as Jenna said later—wrong. Rick's African-American accent comes through mainly in his intonation, and his tone at that moment was weirdly flat—but at the same time, he sounded more Southern than usual. As Rick was born in North Carolina, Jenna suspected some sort of shock effect rather than twigging immediately to what had actually happened. "That man," she said, "hit you with some sort of energy beam. You need to go to the hospital—"

"I said," Rick snapped, "I'm fine." And then, apparently realizing that he wasn't going to make his case that way, he added, "Thanks for worrying, though, Miss Germaine. Man, I'm glad I have friends like you."

"Uh huh. Right. You're going—"

At this point, Rick walked away from her, over to the policemen who were dealing with the strangetech. It's worth noting that by this time, Adam Stitch had been successfully netted and was only semiconscious; his weakness had always been electricity. (All colors have a weak point. This has nothing to do with the laws of physics and everything to do with the powerful, subtle rules that have been laid on top of physics, like painting over an old canvas. The world is not supposed to look like this. Adam Stitch is not supposed to be real.)

It's also worth noting that if a distinctly non-average observer had been around—me, for example—I would have noticed a semi-transparent ghost of Rick Normil, somewhat behind the "real" one, rubbing his head and sitting up.

Rick Normil

Chapter 5

I felt chilled and fragile and a bit headachy, but as far as I could tell, I was still in one piece. I sat up and said, "Ugh, what happened?"

Then I noticed that nobody was looking at me. And by that, I mean something deeper and more visceral than just being ignored. I wasn't being overlooked. I was being not-seen.

And my body was walking over to bother the cops about some guy lying on the ground. Without me, or any input from my brain.

The universe is officially conspiring to make sure that I never get the hang of Thursdays.

I heard me—who didn't sound a thing like what I think I sound like—say, "Hey, Mister, can I have a look at that?"

The policeman didn't even glance at him. "Nope."

In the meantime, Jenna, who was getting that I-smash-through-walls-in-pursuit-of-goals look, followed me—my body, I mean. I moved in front of her. "Hey. Jenna, can you hear—"

When people walk through you, it's sort of the sensation you get from crunching a hot cinnamon candy, except without any taste and all over your body. Plainly, Jenna couldn't hear me. Equally plainly, I wasn't just invisible. I was intangible.

I—the other me, my body—was arguing with the police. There was a man on the ground, civilian, white, maybe forty-something, and he'd been carrying some sort of unknown device. Seems I, or not-me—you know what I mean, call him Fake Rick—wanted a look at it. And he was going at it with a weird mixture of belligerent and whiny, saying things like, "Aw, c'mon, it's for a story!" I wished to hell he'd shut up.

Fortunately for me, Jenna had flipped over into fear-her-wrath mode. "Hospital. Now."

Fake Rick said, "But—"

I wouldn't've. But that's because I have some minimal fear of God, and Jenna getting her determination on looks quite similar in poor light. "Now."

I tried to walk through him as she steered him past me. Actually, I did walk through him. What I didn't manage to do was pop happily back into my own body.

Hadn't thought it would work. But it was worth a shot.

The next thing that was worth a shot—although I didn't think it would work, either—was to try the thing.

The thing is small, black, and plastic. It flips open like an old cellphone—I think the casing is actually appropriated from one—but it has only one button, bright red and recessed so you'd have a hard time setting it off by accident. It's saved my life a few times.

I hate it. It's like wearing a T-shirt that says, Hello, my name is Rick Normil. My life is so messed up I have to have a superhero on call.

Problem is—hello, my name is Rick Normil. My life is so messed up I have to have a superhero on call.

I sat on the steps of St. Mary's Regional, where my body had been taken (under protest), and pushed the button. Then I set the thing on the ground a few feet away from me. I had a strong suspicion—

For a moment or so, I thought I might be wrong. The thing stayed where it was, solid as ever. Then an ambulance came screaming past, and I glanced up for a moment—and when I looked back, the thing was just a fuzzy outline of itself.

In other words, not real. Just an artifact of my imagination. It, like my wallet and my camera, existed because I expected to be carrying them.

I spent a mentally taxing few seconds working very hard not to doubt the existence of my clothes. Then I stood up.

I'd gotten to St. Mary's Regional by tagging along in Jenna's car. But I'd also found out I could walk through the car door any time I felt like it, which meant that whatever kept me in the car, it wasn't physics. More likely, it was some function of thought. My mind knew that cars take people places and you ride in them, so my—whatever passed for my body, in this state—went along with it.

Logically, therefore, I should be able to travel by thought alone. Wish myself to the Torch and be there.

I closed my eyes. Pictured the lobby, carefully, building up sensory impressions in my mind. Smell of new carpet. Smell of Helen's perfume; she wears a little bit too much. Clicking of computer keys, ring of the telephone, not a discreet trill but a harsh, loud sound, reminiscent of rotary dial phones. (Helen is almost sixty, and while she seems to be an endlessly energetic and open-minded sixty, she occasionally gets her curmudgeon on about the oddest things—like telephones making the right noise.) Elevators, desk, rubber plant.

I wasn't going anywhere. Even before I opened my eyes, I could still hear noise from the hospital parking lot.

Fair enough. I'd get there the old-fashioned way. Not as if anyone could catch me jumping the till.

I got to the Torch at the same time as Michael Wells, who somehow looks like the word schlemiel was invented for him. (Ironically, while he is Jewish, I don't think he speaks much Yiddish at all. Probably because he's from Nebraska, not Marina City or New York.) Curly black hair, tan skin, Coke-bottle glasses, and generally a slightly lost expression that makes him look like a mopey eagle. The expression was worse than usual today. I sympathized; being late to work would earn him a few choice words from the Old Man.

I got on the elevator with him, but I wasn't going to stop for long at the newsroom. Like I said before, this place is a cosmic cat toy. It's also where you go if you want to find Guardian. Anyone's guess how the two are connected. I've sometimes wondered if he works here in his civilian identity.

Not like I'd know him if he did. It's a big paper. "Hey, Michael," I said. "What a frabjous day we're having. Pay no attention to the man stuck on the astral plane. Not like you can hear me, anyway . . ."

Being stuck on the astral plane is lonely, even if you haven't been there all that long.

Old Man Harris was standing right outside the elevator when it opened, apparently waiting for it. "Wells," he said predictably, "where the hell have you been?"

I moved past them. Ordinary day in the newsroom, nothing special. Geoffrey Prochniak was on the phone waving his arms in all directions. There was a person near Tia Katz's desk who I didn't recognize, leaning over to look at her paperwork, and she was ignoring the hell out of him, either in the hopes that he'd bother someone else or because she didn't consider him worth acknowledging. Behind me, Michael was bringing the lame excuses. "Sorry, sir. I had a—a sort of a surreal morning."

Michael, buddy, you have no freakin' idea how surreal it's been.

Now, let's see. Guardian likes the roof. We eat lunch up there together, now and then—not every day, obviously, we both have busy lives. Jenna joins us now and then. (I've invited Michael up there—he's one of my best friends, and I'm pretty sure he gets along with Guardian—but he turned mildly green with acrophobia and stuttered something inane.)

"You got caught in that Adam Stitch business?" Harris said, sounding somewhat less stormy.

"Stitch?"

I looked back at over my shoulder at Michael. Every once in a while, he gets this tone in his voice like he'd happily face down the supervillains himself, even though he's never been in a fight that doesn't involve his lucky twenty-sided dice. It always feels a little bit bizarre to see that side of him, like punching a pillow and finding it stuffed with rocks.

"I-I-I mean," Michael went on, in more Michaelish tones, "things were backed up, but I couldn't see exactly—what happened?"

Old Man Harris started to expound. I wandered towards the stairs. Anna Ling wandered through me, and I shuddered a little; that sensation was never going to get normal. Geoff was off the phone, typing and frowning furiously, and Tia was doing the same. The guy who had been bugging her was wandering toward the window—

Hold on just one damn minute.

The guy who had been looking over Tia's shoulder—and, I suddenly realized, I hadn't seem him say anything to her, or her to him—was wandering towards the window, through Michael's desk.

"Hey!" He ignored me as if I wasn't even there—which would make sense, if he assumed that nobody could see him. I raced forward, through desks and coworkers. "Guy with the—"

He disappeared through the window. "—mullet," I finished uselessly, "wait!"

I ran at the window myself. Passed through it without a glitch.

Of course, that meant I was standing some forty stories above street level, on absolutely nothing.

Possibly I hadn't thought this through. "Don't look down," I said to myself firmly. "Just like the cartoons. Don't look down."

Damn but it's hard not to look down.

Guy-with-the-mullet spun around, looking poleaxed. "You," he said, in a faint, choked voice. "You're."

And then he lunged forward and hugged me, hard, as if he wanted to squeeze the stuffing out of me.

Rick Normil

Chapter 6

So. On the astral plane, forty stories up and standing on nothing, being bear-hugged by a guy who looked faintly like a college-age MacGyver, only more harmless.

I'm good at adapting to weird situations. But I've never had a man hang onto me like that before. As if he'd been stuck on a desert island for ten years. As if I was a lifeline. "Um," I said, "guy. I don't—" Guy-with-the-mullet shifted, as if he'd realized how awkward this was and was going to get off me. "Don't let go!" Because he didn't seem to have any problem flying, but I had no such guarantee.

"You can't fall." Apart from the hovering-in-midair business, he sounded extraordinarily normal. "Not unless you want to." He seemed to think about this. "Or unless you think you can . . . hang on a sec."

And then we were on the roof. Just like that.

He stepped away from me, and I collected my equilibrium. The fact that it was possible to teleport—that didn't surprise me. The suddenness of it, the fact that he hadn't even closed his eyes in concentration, that was more disconcerting. But the thing that was really getting to me was the vague feeling that there had been a split second in between—that I'd been able to see something there, and possibly didn't want a better look at it.

"Better?" Mullet asked.

"Lots," I said. "Thanks."

"I'm sorry. I shouldn't have—" He waved his hands helplessly. "I didn't mean to make you uncomfortable," he went on awkwardly, "it's just been a long time since—it's not like I—" He abandoned the explanation as a lost cause and stuck his hand out. "Armand Cole."

I took it. It felt like a hand. "Rick Normil."

"I know." He strolled over and perched on the roof railing. "I check in on this place every day. It's a nexus."

"A what?"

He got to his feet—not on the roof, but on the railing itself, and paced along it with absolutely no regard for the drop below. I wondered how long a person would have to be stuck here to learn to ignore heights that completely. Maybe he had been stuck on a desert island, sort of—except worse, because you can see people all around you and know what you're missing.

"A place where powers naturally congregate. A place that hosts more significant events than any reasonable person would expect. I made up the term 'nexus' myself, though." Armand smiled faintly. "Sounds more science-y than 'weird spot.' I used to think it was a function of population, but that can't be the only factor. I mean, we have Marina City, Rock Harbor, New York, London, Paris, and Tokyo," he ticked them off on his fingers as he spoke, "but not Mexico City or Moscow or Beijing or Lagos. And meanwhile, a teensy third-rate country like Orskavia—"

"Hang on," I said, "I think we're starting in the middle of the story. What—exactly—are you?"

Armand looked surprised. "I'm a ghost."

He looked about as non-haunty as it's possible to get. He wasn't even unusually pale. Dark blond hair, extremely blue eyes, tall but lanky and not muscular-looking, maybe somewhere in his early twenties—everything about his appearance added up to average and harmless. "As in dead," I said.

"Yeah, of course. Aren't you?" Perhaps not totally average-looking; he had drifted absently off the railing and was sitting casually in mid-air, one leg tucked up, one dangling. " I thought you'd kind of have to be in a coma at the very least to be—y'know—like this. Although if I were you, I wouldn't wor—"

"I've been possessed," I said.

"What?"

"Possessed. Some strangetech zapped me with some sort of gadget, and the next thing I know my body is walking around without me. I came up here to find Guardian. Figured he might be able to see me with his molecular perception. If 'see' is the right word." Guardian has tried to describe molecular perception to me before, but I don't think there are any actual words for it. He says that it's almost like sound, only the sounds have shape and flavor, and things get quieter and mistier when they're far away instead of decreasing in apparent size like with vision—I'm pretty sure I'm never going to really understand what he's talking about. "And I found you instead," I finished. "Can you do the poltergeist thing? Because—"

"Oh, no. No, I can't affect the physical world at all—not without a living person to help. And Guardian can't sense you, I'm afraid. He can't sense me." Armand leaned back in the air. "So. What's Plan B?"

"Emergency birth control," I said automatically, which made Armand laugh much harder than the weak joke deserved. "What plan? I'm just a little handicapped by being completely intangible here. By the way, should I even ask why I don't fall through the floor?"

"No."

"Gotcha." I paced over to the railing, but didn't rest my arms on it like normal. Armand might be entirely oblivious to gravity, but I wasn't. "There's two things I could do," I said. "Not sure how either one will help, but . . ." Armand crossed his legs tailor-style and revolved slowly in the air until he was sitting more or less parallel to the ground, like an unusually stoned mystic. "Number one, I could go see what the body snatcher is doing. My guess is, he'll talk himself out of the emergency room in another couple of hours and then he'll start on his plan, whatever it is."

"And the second?" Armand asked, upside down. The damn mullet was unaffected by gravity, which bothered me more than the floating. It made him look photoshopped.

Which brought up the unpleasant thought that perhaps he didn't actually exist and I was, for some reason, already nuts enough to be talking to myself. I didn't believe that, but I wished it hadn't occurred to me at all. "Track down his real identity. Collect clues from that. Will you please stop that?"

Armand went right-side-up in a flash. "Sorry."

He wasn't ingratiating, exactly, but he was very eager to please. I wandered over to the stairwell, and he followed, bobbing rather than walking. "The strangetech," I went on, "passed out when he zapped himself into me. His real body probably got taken to St. Mary's just like I did. It's closest."

"Why don't you look for—well, for you," Armand suggested, "and I'll see what they've found out about him? I probably have more experience looking over peoples' shoulders."

"Uh huh." I studied him for a moment, thinking hard.

Big question: did I trust him?

He was friendly. In fact, if I was reading him right, he was desperately starved for companionship underneath the cheerful, casual attitude. He hadn't said a word about taking over the world, or how they laughed at him at university (the fools). But he was an awfully convenient coincidence.

I ghosted through the stairwell door. Armand followed me. "Tell me something," I said. "You said you check in here every day."

"Yeah . . ."

"Why? I mean, sure, I agree this place is jinxed. But it's not like you can do anything about it, right? If a meteor was heading right for this spot, it'd go through both of us and we wouldn't even be able to warn anyone." He looked away from me, cheery manner fading. Bull's-eye, I thought, and wished I knew what I'd hit. "So, why? Just so you don't get bored?"

"Well—" Armand sounded like he'd rather neuter tigers with his teeth than talk about it. "The truth is, I—can influence the physical world under very special circumstances." He still wasn't looking at me. "I can communicate with living beings. Sometimes. Usually it's because they're close to death, but occasionally I run into someone who's just—sensitive, I guess."

Great. We needed to find a medium. Cue wacky misadventures where a cynical middle-aged fortune teller (possibly played by Whoopi Goldberg) tries to save the day while being nagged by two ghosts. "So you could warn someone." Who says I can't focus on the positive things?

I moved aside automatically as Michael came up the stairs, taking them two at a time, looking perturbed and messing with his tie. Ordinarily, I'd like to think I would have noticed that he was heading towards the roof, and wondered what was wrong. But Armand looked very much like he was explaining how he was responsible for his childhood pet's death, and he hadn't said anything incriminating so far, and that had my news sense on edge. "More than that," he said. "With their permission, I could—possess them. I suppose you could say. Sort of." He drifted down the stairs, not-looking at me rather hard. "And I'm more or less an Extraordinary, so I might be able to—"

"You're a superhero?" Which was a lot better than the other possibility.

"I wouldn't call myself a hero," Armand said very softly. "No. But I might be able to help."

Holy crap, he was. He was a dead supervillain.

A dead, ashamed supervillain. Possibly paying out some sort of penance. I could be reading him wrong, he could be playing me, but I've photographed a lot of politicians and I didn't think so. He regretted something, hard, and I didn't think it was getting offed before he could take over the world. He did not want to talk about who he was or what he had done, but other than that, he was being straight with me.

Besides, I didn't have many other options. And I had some pretty dark suspicions about what the strangetech wanted my body for, especially since he immediately tried to get his hands on his possession ray again. "So . . . if I gave you permission to go possess my body . . ."

"No."

Wasn't really happy with the idea myself; I just didn't have any other plan. "But if you kicked the other guy out—"

Armand, at the bottom of the stairs, spun. "No."

Let me tell you something that's completely unfair about being a ghost: you can still feel your heart jump.

He didn't look any different. No sudden muscles, no shadow wings. But I still found myself calculating exactly how far away he was from me. Not harmless. Unimposing and skinny and—not harmless. At all.

And then he closed his eyes and deliberately, slowly, unclenched his fists. "I don't kick out my host," he said tightly. "I temporarily fuse with them. One consciousness. I'd meld with you in an emergency, but I'm not going to risk getting your hijacker instead. If I accidentally fuse with someone amoral, or sadistic, or just way too preoccupied with vengeance, it's . . ."

He turned around again. You can't exactly describe a ghost's voice as haunted, but I couldn't think of another word.

"It's not good," Armand whispered.

Armand Cole

Chapter 7

Any American youth in the original universe would have a wild but surprisingly accurate guess as to why a shy and bespectacled reporter was last seen hurrying toward the roof even though he'd previously given everyone the strong impression that he was afraid of heights.

It doesn't seem to work the same way in the new universe. I don't know if that's because this world has different stories, fewer clues to that sort of thing, or something else. A force, a subtle trick of probability, which channels events into a specific pattern and rhythm. Think of it as the thing that makes the older, crueler princes fail while the humble third son succeeds. Call it the Narrative.

And always remember—the Narrative doesn't guarantee victory, and it certainly doesn't guarantee you'll live to see it. Even if you really are the hero of the story, and not just a bystander or a bit part. Tragedies are narratives too.

Shortly after Michael Wells arrived in the newsroom, he had a phone conversation with Jenna. She described Rick's condition, including the fact that he didn't sound at all like Rick to her, and went on to speculate about Adam Stitch's rampage. She requested that Michael call the Extraordinary Security Prison, the Tank, and find out if they'd had any little insignificant anomalies. Cameras cutting out for two minutes but not to worry, everything's fine now. An escapee with no way to get off the island, the public is perfectly safe. That sort of thing.

Michael didn't make the call. He made a hasty, vague excuse about Jenna having a good hunch, and fled. Rick Normil was the last person to see him that day.

Less than five minutes later, on an island in Lake Huron (a tiny, ominous dot, if you're looking from the Bayside Tower in Marina City) the superhero called Guardian landed for a talk with the warden.

As it happened, the anomaly was neither little nor insignificant. It was about the size and shape of a lunchbox, a strangetech device made from old cell phone parts, and it induced paranoia in everyone within a two hundred yard radius. It had been planted right outside Adam Stitch's cell by a guard who later claimed to have been controlled by aliens. Conditions in the prison were close to riot, with the guards taken as badly as the prisoners, on the edge of utter brutality. It was a testament to Warden Talbot's sheer stolid, humorless competence that he managed to hold things together until the batteries ran down. Adam Stitch had been deliberately triggered.

But that's not the only significant point. The really, truly significant point is that you still don't understand what Guardian's appearance has to do with Michael Wells's disappearance. Do you?

The Narrative. Watch out for it. It gets inside your head.

Rick Normil

Chapter 8

When Armand teleported us to St. Mary's Regional, the first thing we saw was Jenna, outside, on her cell phone. "That's right," she was telling it, "gone. G-O-N-E. Past participle of go."

I thought, well, crap on toast. Did I need three guesses to figure out what, or rather who was gone? No. No, I did not. Because the universe enjoys poking me with a stick.

"No," Jenna snapped, "I do not know where! I just stepped out for a thirty-second phone call! He was hooked up to half a dozen monitors—even if there wasn't a nurse in the room, they should have noticed their readouts going dead—but these people . . ."

"Police station," I said aloud.

Armand said, "What?"

"He'll go to the police station." I was already walking in that general direction. "He really, really wanted his possession ray back. We've got to—"

Armand took hold of my arm and there was a blink. We were at the police station.

That was seriously unnerving. Also useful and helpful, so I decided not to mention it. "I go look at the evidence room," I said, "you see if you can find any reports. Sound good?"

Armand nodded. "Nifty. I'll meet you back here, okay?" And he vanished.

Fair enough. I walked in through the front doors (and I really do mean through the front doors) and started hunting for signs saying evidence room.

I'd only been looking for two minutes or so before I saw me, making his way down the corridor with a colander on his head.

All right, yeah, it was strangetech of some sort. But it seriously looked like a colander with wires on. I moved in closer and felt as if there was a gentle but chilly breeze coming from Fake Rick's general direction.

That was more disconcerting than it should have been. So far, the astral plane didn't seem to have temperature or wind. I'd felt a little cold when I first woke up, but I'd assumed that was a side effect of being unexpectedly "naked," so to speak—wandering around without a body for the first time in my life. But now I was feeling something similar from the bodyjacker, or perhaps his tech—maybe the things that he built put out some sort of psychic wave—

A uniformed policeman passed by him. He barely even glanced at the bodyjacker, let alone the bizarre construct he was wearing. "Working early today, George?"

Well, that settled it. There was definitely psychic mojo at work. "He's not George," I informed the cop uselessly. "He's a lunatic with a noodle strainer on his head." Fake Rick just sort of grunted acknowledgement and didn't break stride. Neither did the policeman.

The noodle strainer made people see what they expected to see. Probably. I mean, that would make sense, wouldn't it? This guy seemed to specialize in brain stuff. Most strangetechs have some sort of focus. It's either the way they make their tech—everything out of clockwork, or toy parts—or the kind of tech they make.

Thing is, there's no sane reason for any strangetech to turn to crime. Strangetech isn't machinery, it isn't even science; it's not reproducible. That is, a strangetech might be able to reliably churn out antigravity boots, but anyone else who tries to follow their pattern will get a collection of junk, which may or may not turn their feet paisley before shorting out in a shower of sparks. Strangetechs who can produce highly useful things like power generators and invisible airplanes can afford to crap in a solid gold toilet and fill their swimming pools (plural) with champagne. Strangetechs who whip together more limited devices, like ant-controlling helmets—well, they still ain't hurtin'.

Of course, strangetechs do commit crimes, you see it on the news all the time—but it's usually not for money. They want revenge on the hospital that let their mother die. They want to destroy homo sapiens because of our ancient and horrific history of enslaving the noble honeybee. They want a good laugh. Or they want power beyond what money could ever buy them.

I thought my hijacker might be after the last one.

He muttered as we went, but it was mostly vague things, like what sort of a hero blows off a rampage in his own city. Nothing definite, no ever since the older boys pantsed me in third grade, I, Eugene Dorkovitch the Third, have sworn revenge on all hall monitors for their horrific oversight . . . Dammit, why can't you get an informative ranty one when you really need one?

We finally ended up at a fairly anonymous room. Inside, there were approximately a squinjillion different numbered drawers and one overweight cop, white, balding, and currently scowling, typing on a Windows machine. There was an open Cola on the desk next to him, in blithe defiance of the signs that said No Food or Drink. He really looked like he should come with a box of donuts. Like a living stereotype.

He looked up disinterestedly as soon as Fake Rick walked in, then wobbled to a sort of attention. "Can I help you, sir?"

"Yes," the bodyjacker said. He wasn't even trying to sound like me at the moment—no up-and-down to his voice, no Southern vowels—and I thought it sounded even more surreal than before, hearing the wrong accent come out of my own mouth. "I need to see the machine that was brought in right after Stitch's rampage. The strangetech device."

"Yessir," Officer Donuts said. I rolled my eyes and just barely remembered I couldn't lean against the wall. This was just insultingly easy— "Can I see your cosign?"

Wait, what?

"Cosign?" the bodyjacker repeated.

"Like you said, sir," Donuts said patiently. "It is suspected strangetech."

"Do you have any idea who I am?"

"Yessir, and I also know what would happen to my job if I broke the rule you made. Is this some sort of security test, captain?"

"I swear to God," I said wonderingly, "I will never call the police a pack of morons again." Well, at least until my next parking ticket. I didn't think bureaucracy could actually stop this guy, but he might have to find another way in, and as long as he couldn't get to his possession ray—I would still be playing Casper, but everyone else would be a little more safe. Especially Guardian.

For now, Fake Rick was just staring at Donuts the Awesome. Donuts, for his part, was squinting back, as if something was tickling his backbrain as faintly wrong. He frowned, frowned some more, and then his eyes widened. "Wait," he said, "you're not—" and reached for his sidearm.

Unfortunately, that was also the moment that the bodyjacker snarled, "Enough of this!" and twisted a dial on the side of his noodle strainer.

I rocked, startled by a blast of wind. Not enough to knock me over, but definitely storm force.

Donuts, in the meantime, was swaying, holding his head and looking only about a third there. "Wh . . ." he slurred, "Wha . . . who . . ."

The bodyjacker strode forward. The wind increased dramatically as he came closer to me, shoving me back a few steps. "What the hell," the bodyjacker raged, "gives you the right to get in my way?" He picked up the computer monitor.

I flinched. "Oh, no."

Armand came through the wall at a fast drift. "Rick," he said, "this breeze—"

The bodyjacker lifted the monitor above his head. "Nothing!" he shouted, and brought it down on Donuts' skull. Glass shattered.

Armand yelled, "No!" and lunged towards the two of them.

Donuts had fallen out of the chair, curled into a sort of fetal position; I had no idea if he was conscious enough to protect himself or if it was a reflex. There was blood all over his face. He wasn't moving.

And the bodyjacker picked up the CPU anyway. "You're nobody! You're just a donut-scarfing pile of blubber!"

Armand was trying to smash through the psychic wind, by sheer force of will, and he looked as if he was flaying himself. His fingers streaked like the display of a broken TV. The bodyjacker brought the CPU down.

"I deserve something better than this!"

I bulled into the wind myself, grabbed Armand's arm, and yanked him back. He spun on me, teeth bared, and I fought the very strong urge to let go and put my fists up. I could have sworn, for an instant, that his eyes were glowing faintly.

"I deserve something magnificent! I was made for it!"

"Get," Armand said softly, "out. Of my way."

I didn't let go. "What the hell do you think you can do?"

The bodysnatcher dropped the broken CPU, breathing hard, but managing to wrestle himself back to a bad imitation of calm. "And no waste of space like you—" He kicked the policeman on the floor. "Is going to stop me." He scooped a key ring off the desk, strode over to the drawers, and began trying keys.

Armand broke free and tried to dodge around me. He wasn't very good at feinting, though, and I'd played brothers-and-cousins football growing up (which basically means the only formal rule was, "It's okay to bite Tyler if he bites first.") I got in his way and shoved him in the chest, hard. "Listen to me!" He didn't look like he was listening. He looked like he wanted my lungs on a plate, and I was uncomfortably aware that he'd claimed to be an Extraordinary. "Even if you can get close to him without killing yourself," I said, "then what? You can't grab him. You can't punch him. You can't possess him without becoming half psychopath. What do you think you were shredding yourself for, anyway?"

Armand stared at me for a moment, and I hoped the argument was sinking in. Then he gave me a tiny, bitter smile. "Heh." It wasn't a noise of humor. "You're cold."

"Listen, Mister Damn-the-Torpedoes—"

"No. It was a compliment. Cold, ethical people save more lives than hotheads." He forced himself to look halfway relaxed. It didn't really work. Like it or not, he had an edge showing; he didn't think of himself as harmless, not at the moment, and it was visible somehow. "It's a trait I've tried to cultivate myself, especially," a split second of distress, not quite a wince, "in the last three years. Can't say I'm all that good at it."

"Yeah, no kidding." The bodyjacker had moved further down the shelves. I edged towards the policeman on the floor.

Funny thing: even though I felt very much like Armand had just threatened me, I trusted him a lot more. He hadn't been faking that reaction. Guy tries to kill another guy, some insignificant joe you'll probably never meet—so you jump him. No matter the cost to yourself. Pure spinal reflex.

He wasn't a supervillain. Not now. It wasn't a rational deduction; I just knew it like I knew my name. Supervillains are people like the bodyjacker, bastards who get all butt-hurt when you dare to hit their fist with your face. Whatever his past, that wasn't Armand.

I looked down at Donuts. He was breathing, raggedly, but not moving. "Is he going to die?" I said.

"If he doesn't get help in the next five minutes," Armand said, "yes. And even then—" He shook his head. "You follow the supervillain." He nodded to the bodyjacker, who made a sensuous sound and lifted his possession ray out of a drawer. "I'll catch up. If no-one gets in here in time—and if he wakes up long enough to give me permission—I might be able to help him by fusing."

The door opened; somebody had managed to fight through the psychic field and notice there'd been a ruckus. "Everything is under control, Sergeant," the bodysnatcher said, without looking. "Get back to your post."

"Can't you just take it for granted that he'd want you to save his life?" I said.

"No, it's like vampires and thresholds. Not just politeness." He spoke faster as the bodyjacker made for the door. "Something you should know, though. If I fuse to save this guy, I'll disappear until sometime around midnight. So don't count on me."

I moved to follow my body. "Don't take this the wrong way, but I wasn't going to. Find me when you can, alright?"

I didn't wait for a response. I jogged past the policewoman by the door, who was muttering, "Wait . . . not a sergeant anymore . . ." and followed the supervillain down the hall. I'd almost turned the corner when I heard her shout, "Tony!"

Not Donuts. Tony. I was going to remember that.

Rick Normil

Chapter 9

The bodyjacker led me back to the Torch. Of course.

I knew what he was after. I knew what he had to be after. And all I could do was tag along and watch and hope that I lucked into some way to help. I had told the truth, I hadn't planned to rely on Armand, but that was because I didn't have a plan. And now I couldn't even hope that Armand would pull something out and save the day.

I followed the bodyjacker into the elevator. He'd turned the colander back down again, but there was still a cold and unpleasant breeze from it.

I wished, I wished, that I could tell somebody. Anybody. The bag lady on the corner. If I could just get a message to Jenna, and through her to Guardian—

And while I was wishing for things, I wish I had a mecha. A mecha that transforms into an even bigger mecha that farts lightning. Get a grip, Normil.

The bodysnatcher went up to the roof. Of course. I scanned the skyline. Any minute now, he was going to pull out the thing, and use it, and then—

Only he didn't have to. There was a speck in the air, coming in from the marina, and it wasn't a bird. Or a plane.

That was when Armand popped in, startling the hell out of me; I hadn't expected to see him again, possibly ever. "That policeman," I began.

"Ambulance. I'm going right back; I came to tell you what I learned about him—" He nodded toward the bodyjacker. "Just in case. His name is Damon Robb, and he's—"

His eyes widened as he looked past me and saw Guardian.

Everyone knows what Guardian looks like, right? Colors: white, black and gold, with the cape all gold. A metal helmet, also gold-looking (although he says it's actually bronze-plated), the sort that looks like a straight cylinder with a dome on top, but somehow manages to seem imposing when an actual superhero is wearing it. The helmet has no eyeholes because the Guardian doesn't need them. He sees through molecular perception. Tall, muscular, majestic. Paragon, world-famous hero, and—this is the bit you forget, after you've known him for a while—special guest star in many criminals' worst nightmares.

The bodysnatcher shot him with the possession ray as he slowed to land.

I heard Armand whisper, "Oh, no," which was pretty much what I wanted to say—only I'd been yanked backwards as if there were a rubber band attached to my navel. Shredding pain, icicles all through me, I was being forced through a cold metal mesh and it was slicing me apart—

Then, as my body collapsed, the colander fell off my head. Rolled away. And without that interfering, I was pulled back into my body as sure as water goes down a drain.

There was a moment of pure disorientation, and then I was back.

It was—Jesus. It didn't feel good at all. It felt like a hangover. Not just your average hangover, but a tequila hangover. A tequila hangover that only happens after you've gotten completely, absolutely, dance-on-tables-and-hit-on-poodles wasted. I said, "Uuuurggh . . ." and it was about as profound as I felt like I could be. I wanted to throw up.

And then I heard a familiar voice—Guardian's voice, albeit pitched higher than usual. "What . . . what's all this noise?"

The bodyjacker had Guardian.

Well, shit.

I pushed myself up. I could be hung over later. The colander had rolled away, but the possession ray was closer at hand.

Guardian, or Guardian's body, had plowed a long divot into the roof where he'd missed his landing. There was dust in the air. "I'm supposed to have molecular perception!" the bodyjacker ranted. "I'm supposed to be able to see everything! Why isn't it working?"

Good thing for me it wasn't; you can't ambush Guardian, but I might be able to get him. I picked up the possession ray just as not-Guardian took off his helmet.

And then I hesitated for just a split second too long. Which was stupid, I admit, but I don't get blindsided like that every day.

Michael. Michael freakin' Wells. Guardian.

Even as my brain tried to say, no, of course not, that's just ridiculous, a small bit was saying, yes, of course. I've never thought of Michael as built, nor broad-shouldered, but maybe that's more how he carries himself. He is tall. And Jenna keeps complaining that he goes missing at the least convenient times—

And then, in a blink, Guardian was right in front of me, taking the possession ray out of my hand and crushing it like foil. "Oh, no. No, I'm Guardian now."

My mouth was dry. You know someone, you eat lunch with them, you spend enough time with them that they even start to loosen up around you, and you tend to forget that as far as they're concerned, your bones are dried straws. I was remembering it now. Really, really remembering it, deep in the pit of my stomach.

The bodyjacker poked me in the shoulder, a light, casual-looking jab. It knocked me backwards. I'd have a bruise, assuming I lived through this. "Poor Ricky Normil," the bodyjacker crooned. "Poor little wannabe. I bet you've always wanted to know your hero's secret identity, haven't you?"

Actually, no. I didn't need to know his street name to know him. Or I'd thought I didn't. The fact that he was actually a friend in both personae, and that he'd never trusted me enough to tell me—

"But things are about to change around here, Normil. I'm the real Guardian—a stronger hero than the old one ever was. And from now on, there are going to be consequences. Consequences for interfering with me. For prying into my affairs."

"I didn't—" It came out higher and more panicked-sounding than I'd intended.

He dropped the possession ray and crushed the last little bits into powder with a stomp. "And special consequences," he hissed, "for trying to shoot me and steal my body!"

And then—blink—he was at the base of the torch sculpture, ripping the thing off its mountings with a shriek like all the car accidents in the world. A part of my brain said, Yep. Every supervillain ever, but most of me was too busy being terrified for my life. "Armand," I whispered.

Guardian—the bodyjacker—lifted the torch sculpture into the air. Fifty feet from the roof. Then more.

"Armand," I said, more loudly, "if you're there, you can possess me any time." What did I mean, if he was there? He'd told me he was going right back to save Tony. "Enter of your own free will—whatever. In fact, I pretty much need you to, because—"

Because the bodyjacker was about to throw the torch at me.

I was dead. Paste. Even if Armand was still here, and even if he had the right powers to get me out of this, he'd implied it was a choice between saving me and saving the policeman. He didn't know me. He had no reason to choose me.

I saw the torch hurtling towards me. I threw up my hands, uselessly, and barely had time to think, I'm screwed.

And then I put out my hand and stopped the truck-sized sculpture dead, with a thought and a single finger.

?

Chapter 10

Everything was very clear, and pure, and slow.

I had three minutes. One hundred and eighty seconds, no more. I was keenly aware of that. But time never felt the same in this state. No more doubts, no more hesitations; the memory of the hideous things I'd done was still there, but for once, it rested lightly on me. The euphoria of having a body again—more than that, the euphoria of absolute power, knowing that everything I could perceive was mine to manipulate—

One second to change shape; it was important to do this right. A white man—interesting how very aware of race I was, now that I was Rick Normil. A distinctive face, narrow, made for ferocious, knife-like smiles. White hair, eyes like gas flame, featureless and glowing. Archaic formal clothes: a tailcoat, vaguely evocative of magicians. And, last but not least, the sigil on my forehead.

It meant nothing. I was astonished by that, and at the same time I'd always known it. It had nothing to do with the source of my powers; they were woven into the fabric of the rewritten world. The sigil, the hair, the glowing blue eyes, those were all to make it more difficult for the authorities to pick some poor innocent and claim he was me, temporarily unpowered. Or, conversely, to make it more difficult for a supervillain to pretend to be me and force kings and presidents to kneel.

I compressed the torch statue into a globe the size of a basketball and shot it at the false Guardian, hanging confused in the sky. It smashed into him, throwing him more than a hundred yards, as I ascended.

I caught the superdense globe easily, with my mind, and came parallel with the false Guardian as he recovered from his tumble. He stared at me, gasping for air, and I felt a jolt of pure satisfaction at the dread on his face. Fear. Such a potent weapon. Such a great number of lives you can save, by being the god of it.

"Sigil," the false Guardian choked.

I smiled. I made very, very sure it wasn't a nice smile. "That's right," I said, and smashed him with my cannonball.

A second, to allow him to right himself; not time wasted, time spent for effect. "The one being," I went on, "who can make Guardian—the real Guardian—look like a helpless child."

He bared his teeth. "I am the real Guardian!" He barreled at me, moving almost too fast to see.

Almost—but I was the fusion of two minds, one of them entirely immaterial and not limited by mundane considerations like synapse speed. I blinked behind him and smashed the cannonball into his shoulder. He howled in pain. "You're a villain," he gasped. "Everyone says so! You're not fit to shine my boots, you—"

"Is that really how you think it works? I'm not a villain because 'everyone says so.'" He came at me again. I stopped him, snapping my fingers theatrically, and then spread my hand as I stretched his limbs out as if he were on an invisible rack. Enough tension to give even Guardian a little pain—enough force to launch a battleship into lunar orbit. Not even brushing against the limits of my power, assuming I have any. "I'm a villain," I said, "because I turned eleven hundred human beings into dust."

True. Quite true. Also, at the moment, irrelevant.

The false Guardian moaned. "You can't," he protested. "I'm Guardian! I can't lose, I—"

Time to wrap this up. "You've lost. Here are the terms of your survival." He tried to shake his head, so I stopped him from moving and saw his eyes go rounder with horror. "You have twenty-four hours to recreate your device and return to your own body. You will make certain all displaced minds are back where they belong and surrender to the police." I could feel him struggling against me, but he might as well have been a kitten. "If you do not surrender, I will find you. If you leave any collateral damage, I will hurt you."

He made a sound like a wounded animal. I put on just a little more pressure, and gave him the smile. The Sigil smile.

"And if you're still in that body at this time tomorrow," I finished, in a murmur, "I won't kill you. Not for a very, very long time. Do we have a meeting of minds?"

He looked like a man in a nightmare. My seconds were almost up; I didn't have time to see if he'd surrender. I said, "Good," and made the compressed metal ball explode like a bomb, disintegrating into tiny metal flakes that wouldn't hurt anyone below.

I teleported to my apartment—to Rick Normil's apartment. My feet touched the ground just as Sigil ceased to exist.

Armand Cole

Chapter 11

Extraordinaries have weaknesses. Always.

For the most powerful heroes, this almost always comes in the form of a substance or energy that dramatically disables them. The stronger they are, the worse the effect.

Guardian's weakness is called centrone radiation (which shouldn't exist, but by now, you're sick of me going on about that). It has to do with time travel; reasonable, by the new rules, since he was sent backwards in time to save Earth's future. Adam Stitch is weak against electricity. Sometimes the weakness is obvious; fire-slingers being vulnerable to cold, ice-users vulnerable to heat. Or perhaps it's some cost to using their power, some side effect, or something like only being able to cast spells after sunset. A limiting factor.

Ask the man on the street and he'll say there's one exception to that. Sigil. Sigil breaks all the rules.

Part of that is because I'm not like other Extraordinaries. For a split second, back when I died, I was the pivot point that the whole world turned on. I attempted something forbidden, to save humanity, and there were side effects. Concepts from my psyche, cultural detritus and familiar stories, leaked onto the raw fabric of the universe. There are side effects for me, too. I'm knit into reality. The laws of physics are like my limbs.

But the other factor is that I hide my vulnerabilities well. Sigil has a time limit. Three minutes, to the second, and then I fall into the Beneath, to resurface in the real world at the stroke of true midnight. (Magic has no truck with Daylight Savings time.) There are vanishingly few people I can communicate with, and I must have an invitation before fusing.

Also—worse, as far as I'm concerned—I'm not Sigil. Not exactly. Sigil is an amalgam of myself and whoever I empower.

Three years ago, in a small (shouldn't exist) country called Orskavia, there was a mad prince with a flying fortress. And in the fortress's dungeon there was a woman, starving and weak and near death. She thought the young American-accented man was just a figment of her imagination, but she was well past caring. She talked to him. She invited him in.

You all know what happened next. Sigil manifested. Right in front of the fortress that held the monster that had killed his children.

He made it go away. It, and all the people on board. Soldiers, prisoners, Prince Rath's mistresses, cooks, janitors, technicians. In an instant, without even a gesture.

For a while, I swore I would never fuse again. But then someone's bleeding, and dying, and masonry is crushing hundreds as a villain takes out his rage on a city, and—and I don't know how not to.

Sigil might have just one more vulnerability, a tiny chink fit for a stiletto, but like everything else, there's a price for exploiting it. You see, Sigil has a purely human body; it's just protected by the power of the cosmos. If someone were to attack him, near-instantaneously, with something he can't perceive—like, for instance, a high-velocity sniper round, right through the head—

Well. You get the picture.

The price is that you'd be killing the host, too. Someone who might not have acted on any of their darker impulses if a certain ghost had the sense to stay the hell out of their mind.

If it ever comes up, I hope that whoever has the rifle is more cold and ethical than I am. Because I couldn't do it.

Rick Normil

Chapter 12

I collapsed onto the floor of my apartment, breathing hard and shaking.

Jesus. Jesus fucking God. That was—Armand was—I was—

Sigil. The scariest color in the entire world. Nobody knows if he's even human; most people think not. God exists—not the sweet, self-sacrificing God we pray to most of the time, but the voice from the whirlwind—and nobody, but nobody, knows what the hell he wants. One time, he interfered in a war and there were fighter jets close enough to actually shoot missiles at him. They vanished. Not just the missiles, the jets. And the pilots' parachutes. The pilots themselves were left in mid-air, with nothing.

They weren't even hurt when they hit the ground. They just stopped, not a hair out of place. But he deliberately let them fall, shrieking, shitting themselves, dead sure they were going to die on impact. Not one of them could get back in the cockpit afterwards.

And, I realized now, he'd meant it that way. The point was to end the war. And Sigil, every time he manifests, exists for only three minutes. He has to be like that—he has to be overwhelming—because he can't stick around and follow through on his threats.

Besides, I'd seen inside Armand, during the fusion. The details were fading, but the essence remained. Armand wasn't remotely sane, and I'm not sure he would have been even if he hadn't—Jesus—been stuck in limbo since nineteen eighty-three. He was a fanatic. Every single part of his being was concentrated, laser-like, on one goal. Oh, in his normal state, he had doubts and fears and guilt, but Sigil? Sigil was created from his sheer, concentrated purpose, and it was—he was—

Let me put it this way. There is one thing, only one, standing between the Earth and utter destruction: what Armand's fanatic about. Which is people. Saving people. Helping people. Making them safe to live their lives and make their mistakes and go on vacation and fight and love.

Believe me, that fact doesn't make him any less terrifying. The scariest thing about Sigil is that he's ten times more frightening from the inside.

Or maybe the scariest thing was that I still sort of liked Armand.

Of course, part of that was knowing exactly how much I—Sigil—had been bluffing. Neither of us were going to torture Guardian's body. Neither of us could, even if Sigil didn't have that time limit. We didn't have it in us. And we didn't entirely expect the bodyjacker to cooperate. The entire performance, all that power, had been a stalling tactic. To give me time to find a solution.

So. Time to stop meebling in a corner and get to work. I took out my cellphone and called Jenna.

At around three in the afternoon, I met Jenna at a café near her apartment. I decided to call the place Le Pretentioux, and ordered something that, for all the lengthy description, added up to more or less a melty cheese sandwich. And coffee. Gotta have coffee.

Jenna joined me a moment after I got my food and passed me a new key. "Robb's apartment," she said, without preamble.

"Slick."

She waved away the praise. "The landlady was a pushover. I could have done the wax imprint in plain sight and not tipped her off."

Yeah, fun fact. Jenna Germaine has a number of skills that don't completely fit with the whole middle-class college graduate thing she's got going.

"I'll go there as soon as I finish this," I said, gesturing with my sandwich. "Thanks for the assist. I'm not sure what I would have done if you didn't believe me."

"Yes, well." Jenna looked vaguely uncomfortable. "It's not just you. I watched that—can't really call it a fight—I watched Guardian face off against Sigil, through binoculars. And Guardian wasn't moving right."

Her sandwich was ready, so there was a short break in the conversation while I considered that. "Wasn't moving right?" I said, when she got back to the table. Whatever she was eating, it involved bean sprouts.

"You know that I've spent a bit of time watching him." She snorted softly. "'Watching.' If Guardian weren't a public figure, I'd have been arrested for stalking long ago. Sometimes I think I became a reporter because it's the only place where my control-freak tendencies look remotely normal . . ." She dismissed this as a side issue. "Anyway. Watching Guardian. I like to think I've got a fairly good sense of his body language. You can tell a lot about a person by how they take up space. You, for instance: you've got casual down to a fine art. You broadcast, 'Hey, I'm just an ordinary guy,' and 'Sure, I'm allowed to be here, why wouldn't I be?' on all possible frequencies. If I were paranoid, I might conclude that you've got some experience getting in where you don't belong and bare facing your way back out again."

Well, she should know; she'd been there for some of my worse scrapes. "Or," I said, "that I'm a black guy." The MCPD aren't as bad as some, but it only takes one bad cop to ruin your life—and I talk to a lot of cops. "But you were saying about Guardian."

"About Guardian's body language, yes. The first thing you notice about him—one of the first thing I noticed about him—is that he doesn't have a macho."

I blinked. "You know, when I think girly, I don't think . . ."

"Not what I meant. Think about the last time you saw Guardian ask someone to surrender. Think about what he didn't do. He didn't waste any words or body language making sure they know he can take them. He didn't try to be intimidating. I've even seen him reassure a gunman who thought he was going to die for taking a shot at him."

"Never figured out why people still do that," I said. "Take a shot at Guardian, I mean."

"If all you've got is a hammer . . ." Jenna shrugged. "When I first met Guardian, I was hog-tied, blindfolded, and I'd been pushed out of a plane for the first time in my life. I was panicking. After he caught me, his first impulse was to comfort me, and there was no—no performance about it. I mean, let's face it, being able to fly is something a lot of guys would feel pretty smug about, but he wasn't even thinking of that. Guardian doesn't pose." She took a sip of her coffee, gathering her thoughts. "Only, the Guardian that I saw, up there with Sigil—he was different. There was ego in it for him. He wasn't just struggling against Sigil's power, he was struggling against the humiliation of being beaten."

I hadn't noticed that myself. But I was busy at the time. "And Sigil?" I said, because I couldn't help it. "What about his body language?"

"Oh, god." Her shoulders twitched slightly, not quite a shudder. "He likes it. He enjoys being the single most powerful thing in the sky. He might like watching people grovel in terror, although I sincerely hope not, for everyone's sake—but he was enjoying himself up there." She shook her head. "Anyway. Very long answer to a very short question. Sorry about that."

"No, it's all right. I had no idea you'd made a study of this stuff." Jenna looked down at her coffee cup. She didn't want to talk about it, I thought. She didn't want to tell me why she was so interested in body language, why she went around analyzing everyone she ran into.

Well, it wasn't as if she owed me the whole story. Friends had a right to secrets, after all—although the magnitude of the secrets some of them had been keeping . . .

I was, I decided, pretty sore at Michael. It was the fact that I was friends with both of him. He knew I could see past the superpowers; why hadn't he trusted me?

Analyze later, plan now. "So. First I rob Robb's place," I said. "If I don't find some prototype or equivalent for the brainjacking ray, I'll come back and brainstorm. If I do . . ."

"If you do, you'll need this," Jenna said.

It was in a skinny cardboard box, about the same length and thickness as a volume of an encyclopedia. I looked inside it, then closed the box and put it down beside me, doing my very best impression of a man who wasn't doing a drug deal, despite the fact that the café was mostly empty and the counter guy had disappeared somewhere. "Are you sure?"

"Yes. It's necessary."

"It's just—I know you—" There really is no way to say, I know you've got a sort of thing about Guardian, am I going to lose your trust if I have to hurt him?

"He gave it to me," Jenna said. "Said he'd feel better if I had it, just in case he ever goes really wrong. I think he was just trying to make me feel safe, but I'd say today qualifies as 'really wrong,' wouldn't you?"

I couldn't argue with that.

"You know you're going to have to get pretty close for the centrone radiation to affect him. And you know he doesn't have to be anywhere near you to kill you. There's any number of heavy things he could throw."

"With any luck," I said, "I'll be able to shoot him with the brainjacking ray and get Robb the hell out of there, and it won't be necessary. But a plan B never hurts."

Rick Normil

Chapter 13

Damon Robb's apartment had been unfurnished. He hadn't improved much on that. The only furniture in the living room was his desk, his office chair, and a long table covered with odds and ends and scratch paper.

Beside the desk, there was a bulletin board overflowing with newspaper clippings. I looked at them.

They were Guardian stories. It looked like a serial killer's wall from some movie; I was willing to bet it was, at the very least, a symptom of obsession. I looked at one of the clippings and noticed that someone had pasted ordinary typing paper over some of the words. It was an interview with Guardian—one of Jenna's, as it happened—and the pasted-over bits were Guardian's responses. When she asked him what his goals were, Robb had pasted in, "To serve the cause of justice and spread American values throughout the world." When she asked about the whole Tomorrow's Child thing, he had written, "I was sent backwards through time to save humanity from itself. So in a very real sense, I'm not just representative of humanity's future. I'm its savior."

Neither of those were things that Guardian would ever actually say. If you just took a casual glance at the wall, you'd think that Robb worshipped Guardian. But at the same time, he was—I don't know, editing him.

Badly.

I leafed through more articles, noting a headline: -------- Confirmed Dead in Bridge Collapse; Guardian Assists Rescuers. I seemed to remember that the death toll had been fourteen; I remembered taking pictures of the site. But I couldn't be sure, because Robb had pasted, "Zero," on top of the original number.

I took my time. Unprofessional of me, maybe, but then I didn't aspire to professional burglary. I needed to build up an impression of this Robb guy, and I was slowly getting one. He wanted Guardian to live up to his imagination. All that editing was to create a better Guardian. (For his own psycho definition of better. I noticed that he'd changed one or two headlines to include Guardian killing supervillains, something that he would never do.) It made a sort of sense, I supposed. If Guardian persisted in not being the man-god Robb wanted him to be, well, he'd have to take over and do the job himself, wouldn't he?

For a psycho creeper with an unhealthy obsession, he did keep decent notes. In about half an hour, I had a pretty good idea of what everything on the big table was supposed to do, and a firm desire to smash most of them to bits. He'd made mood projectors. Paranoia projectors. Depression projectors. He'd tested the latter on the woman next door, keeping meticulous notes on when she left the apartment and what she looked like when she did, with gleeful notes about unkempt hair and haggard expressions. I resisted the impulse to flee to his bathroom and wash my hands.

There was something I could potentially use, though: a sleep projector. Knocked people out within a ten-foot radius, made them sleepy further out. It had a timer on it. That wasn't just something he could have sold to the military, or the police; insomniacs across the world would offer him their firstborn. He could have been a billionaire, and I don't think it ever registered on him. It wasn't about Guardian; it wasn't important.

By the time I was done, I had good news and bad news.

The good news was that I'd found the prototype "projector," the thing that allowed Robb to hijack peoples' brains. I even had the instructions. I knew how it worked.

The bad news was that it wasn't a ray. It was a squirrelly collection of wires attached to a metal box. To use it, you had to be hooked up to it, by means of six electrodes. And you also had to put six electrodes on the target's head.

Sometimes the bad news completely screws up the good news.

About five hours later, I was seriously wishing that I'd been able to find the noodle strainer of invisibility, or something like it.

The reason I was wishing that was because I was sneaking into the police station without it.

Yeah, I know: crazy. I had my reasons. They were even reasons that made sense.

I had a janitor's uniform, reasonably well fitting, and a yellow wheelie bucket with a mop. I hadn't put any water in the bucket, but all in all, I had the necessary props. And I was still feeling covered with bull's-eyes.

I hoped I wasn't sweating visibly.

I hoped that Jenna was right about my ability to project I belong here. I hoped—well, hell, I could hope that I got rescued by flying cats of justice shooting laser beams, but that didn't make it more likely to happen. Better to concentrate on what I was actually doing.

I'd been down to the Extraordinary holding area before; I knew the way. The elevator key worked, marvelously. (Unattended janitor's gear plus Jenna, and some day I was going to find out who she knew who could turn out these incredibly fast keys.) I forced myself not to stare at the camera in the ceiling corner.

Ding, and the doors opened. I pushed the wheelie bucket out.

The cop at the desk looked up disinterestedly. "Hey, where's George?"

"He's here," I said. My voice didn't sound quite real to me. "I'm his trainee." Had I really managed to pull off that beautiful, just-a-hint-of-boredom delivery? Excellent. I love it when I'm good.

The guard shook his head anyway. "See, no-one said anything about that to me, so I've got to see your—" I was already walking back to the elevator as he spoke. "—identification—where're you—"

"I gotta get the rest of my stuff," I said. I had to be more than ten feet from the wheelie bucket.

"What? Why didn't you bring it down—"

And then there was a wave of dizzy languor which I fought as hard as I could. No time for that, no time—maybe pinching myself would—oh, fantastic, now I was feeling faint and the back of my hand was sore.

On the bright side, the guard was out cold.

Five seconds later, I heard the timer click off and started forwards. Swiped the cop's ID on the pad, opened the door, and walked back into the holding area.

Stitch was in the cell at the far end. He was chained against a sort of pallet, and I do mean chained, with an IV in his arm. Of the two, I suspected that the IV was the more important restraint.

A small red light near the ceiling started flashing as I walked up to the cell. Well, hell. I'd been hoping they were more lax.

On the other hand, I'd never planned to leave through the front door. "Adam?" I said, aiming for a soothing tone. Stitch didn't respond. "Adam, my name is Rick. Um, I've come to bring you something you'll like."

Silence.

"Can you hear me?" I said.

"Yes . . ." Slurred, but recognizable. All right, part one was working; I could communicate with Stitch. "Y-you not b-b-bring paint," Stitch said, and let his eyes fall most of the way shut.

"What?"

"In . . . c-c-can't remember name . . . in f-first place, they let Stitch p-p-paint. On walls." He sounded very nearly as impressed by this privilege as a four-year-old might have been. "With r-roller," he added. "Was f-f-fun."

Add feel sorry for a truck-tossing killer zombie to the things I hadn't expected to do when I first got the Torch job. I wondered if anyone had ever tried giving him finger paints.

Certainly not in the Tank, they wouldn't. "And . . . that's what you like to do?" I said. "Paint walls?"

"Y-yes." Very definite. "St-t-titch likes d-doing things. H-head hurts less w-with orders. And S-stitch l-liked roller n-noise." He smiled, a hideous expression. "Sq-q-quishy. Like l-lungs. Nice."

Aaand the sympathy went away again. (Well, most of it. Adam hadn't asked to be built as a killer; it was still unfair.)

"Um," I said, "I'm sorry, Adam. I didn't bring any paint." He didn't respond. "But I did want to give you something else you might like." I took a deep breath. "How would you like a chance to beat up Guardian?"

The manacle on Stitch's right wrist just snapped. "G-guardian?"

"But," I said, very very evenly, "you have to stay calm and listen to me. Because there's a catch—some things we have to do first—"

"Guardian?"

Armand Cole

Chapter 14

This is another of those events that I wasn't there for. I was deep in the Beneath, waiting to come back to what passes for my afterlife. It was ten thirty, or thereabouts, and Jenna was on the phone, when "Guardian" landed softly on her balcony. He'd punched eyeholes in his mask with his thumbs. And for all the people who thought Guardian's eyeless mask was uncanny, Jenna told Rick later, seeing it with ragged eyeholes was worse.

She hung up quickly, as soon as she noticed him. He said, "Hello, sweetheart. Who were you talking to? And why didn't you want me to overhear it?"

Jenna smiled, and it must have looked sincere. "I wasn't trying to hide anything. I was just surprised to see you. Mr. Harris just called me—"

"Are you trying to lie to me, sweetheart?"

If Jenna was extremely quick to answer that, nobody could blame her. "No! No, of course not."

Guardian stepped closer. "Then why do you sound so nervous?"

I'm not sure what it must have taken for Jenna to step forward herself and put her hand on the imposter's arm, but she did it. "Is something wrong, love?"

"Nothing's wrong. Why would anything be wrong?" His voice darkened. "You haven't been talking to Ricky Normil, have you?"

Jenna shook her head hastily. "No, not since the hospital. It's just—" She looked down, then back up again. "You weren't there to stop Adam Stitch this morning, and you aren't going after him now, when he's rampaging outside of Brook Park—that's what the phone call was about—" She turned away and paced towards the kitchenette, affecting distress. "And if something's draining your powers, or there's some other reason you can't fight Stitch and win—I just wanted you to know that I support you. Totally. I'll make sure our headline is sympathetic—there's no need to listen to what the idiots on the wire are going to say, the headlines they'll—"

He grabbed her and spun her around. "Headlines?"

"Well, you know how it is, love. Whenever something happens, the soulless corporate types go looking for blood. 'Is Stitch Too Much?' 'Does Guardian Need Guarding?' That sort of thing. It won't happen at our paper, but there's no way to tell about the—"

The glass door to the balcony shattered. For an ordinary human, it would have taken at least a second to process the fact that Guardian had flown straight through it, at speed, and was gone. Thankfully, most of the shards were catapulted outwards.

Jenna frowned innocently at the damage, went into the bedroom to get a blanket, tacked it up over the door, and then, quite to her own surprise, burst into tears.

I hope I haven't told this in a way that makes Jenna look weak. The truth is, she played Damon Robb like a violin. All of Rick's information, the obsession with newspaper clippings—all part of the trap. And she did it, all the while acutely conscious of the fact that Damon could shatter her as easily as the window—and probably would have, if she'd given the slightest hint of disloyalty.

The only powers Jenna has are a talent for getting into trouble, and friends in interesting places, and words. And that's more than enough to make her dangerous, in the best possible way.

Rick Normil

Chapter 15

So, Brook Park.

It's a suburb, an upper-middle-class place. Decent spot to raise kids, if you listen to the real estate pitch. There are greenbelts and neighborhood playgrounds and big back yards to play in. There's also at least one long strip of cleared land with high-tension power lines running through it. Adam Stitch was at the edge of one of those, clutching his forehead with his left hand.

Because of that, he didn't notice Guardian until it was almost too late and there was a pickup truck flying towards his head. He could have taken the hit, of course—this is Stitch we're talking about—although it would have hurt him, slowed him down. But he heard it coming, and bounded clear, and his surge of pure, ecstatic rage on seeing Guardian—

Well, that's who Stitch is, isn't it? He leapt into the air, half a football field high, drawing back his spiked-ball fist and bellowing wordlessly. He was going to crush Guardian, hurt Guardian, punch twist kick pound pummel mutilate—

Guardian dodged, of course. Grabbed Stitch by the foot as he went past and swung him like a hammer toss, winding up to throw him into the power lines. Stitch, showing uncommon presence of mind, triggered the spiked ball on his hand and shot it directly into Guardian's face.

Guardian yelled and dropped him, putting his hands up to his dented mask. Stitch managed, barely, to loop the ball and chain around Guardian's legs as he fell and reeled himself up, teeth bared in fury. Guardian spun in place, unwinding the chain and letting him fall again.

It wasn't going to end there, of course, and Guardian knew it. He dove after Stitch. Hit him as he fell, driving him into the ground, leaving a crater like a humanoid meteorite. And he followed up on his advantage, punching Stitch, punching him again, pummeling him as he lay there fighting for breath.

Of course, he had to be leaning over Stitch to do any of that, so Stitch brought his knee up.

Some expressions look the same on Extraordinaries and baseliners alike. Ow my junk is one of them.

Stitch punched Guardian, sending him backwards into a pine tree. They were on the edge of the long clearing, at about the same place they'd started. The truck was smoking a few yards away; the only thing still functional was (of course) the alarm, which was hollering ooop ooop ooop at disorienting volume. Guardian, taking advantage of the landscape, ripped a tree up by the roots and hurled it at Stitch.

Stitch smashed it to splinters and charged at him, straight through the cloud of pulverized wood. He hadn't counted on Guardian having the same idea, flying like a battering ram right behind the tree. Guardian smashed into Stitch, and Stitch was knocked over, propelled backwards, away from the trees and toward the power lines, plowing a long, long divot in the ground.

Guardian was on him before he could stand. "You shouldn't even exist!" he snarled, driving his fist into Stitch's gut. He put his knee on Stitch's right arm, preventing him from using the mace, and started pounding on Stitch's face in earnest. "You were created to kill me, and you failed! Again and again and again!" He leaned forward, showing teeth. "Shouldn't you kill yourself? Doesn't that mean you should just die?"

Stitch, uninterested in the rhetoric, head-butted him and pulled himself free.

"You—goddamn—miserable—" Guardian's helmet was more than a little dented, now.

Stitch, atypically, turned and ran heavily away from his arch nemesis. Towards the power lines, which was a noticeably poor move—but then, Stitch has never been particularly renowned for his brains. Guardian flew at him, rammed him, and hit him, propelling him all the way to the base of the power lines. The steel deformed where Stitch impacted.

And then Guardian grabbed him, flew him upward, and drove him through the high-tension lines. For a moment, both bodies must have been outlined by lightning-bright sparks. Stitch howled in agony. Guardian let him fall.

It took a long, long moment for Stitch to hit the ground. When he did, it was like being body-slammed by a freight train. Still—because there wasn't anything else to do, because the alternative wasn't worth thinking about—Stitch managed a raspy, shaking breath and started hauling himself along the ground. His morningstar-hand was no good at it and his other hand hurt as if every bone had been broken, but he moved, inch by inch. Towards the base of the power line. Had to get there. No choice.

Guardian floated down beside him, hanging in the air like an angel, looking at Stitch as if he was a mutilated worm. "Are you scared? Are you trying to run away?"

Stitch kept crawling.

"I am going to kill you, you know," Guardian confided.

The base of the power line. A sparking cable lay not far away, and Guardian could have used that to kill Stitch right then. He didn't bother. "Don't you have any last words?" he went on, moving in front of Stitch's pathetic figure. "I was looking forward to your famous rhetoric. 'Kill G-g-guardian! Make G-g-guardian die!'" The imitated stutter came out high and mocking.

Stitch clawed at the ground with his good hand. A dug-up patch of earth, almost invisible in the darkness.

"And instead," Guardian said, "you go down without saying a thing? That doesn't seem like you, Stitch." He stomped on Stitch's hand, making the zombie gasp in pain—driving his fingers forcibly into the ground.

"It's not norm—" Guardian began. The button beneath the soil clicked.

Ah, what the hell. There are some puns a man shouldn't have to pass up. I grinned, not caring that the expression hurt like hell with me wearing Stitch's tenderized face. "Actually?"

The green glow of centrone radiation poured out of the ground, out of the generator that I'd buried there, bright enough to outline every grain of dirt. Guardian screamed, a high-pitched, childish sound with no dignity whatsoever.

"I'm perfectly Normil," I finished, as Guardian thudded to his knees.

Also, I'd won.

Rick Normil

Chapter 16

Yeah, okay, cheap narrative trick, whatever. The point is, there was a plan. Despite appearances.

Step one: transfer own mind into Adam Stitch. That had worked. I hadn't counted on how extremely broken his brain was, nor the fact that his hatred of Guardian seemed to be programmed into him so deeply that I had trouble fighting it. There were times during that fight when I almost forgot that the point wasn't to pound Guardian into jelly. But I managed.

Step two: get Guardian over by the centrone projector. Easy enough, since he would naturally be trying to angle me toward the power lines. If you're going to bring down Stitch, you want electricity.

Step three: make sure that neither Extraordinary was in any shape to fight.

Step four: hook us both up to Damon Robb's strangetech. I ripped the helmet a little getting it off Guardian, but there was still enough of it to hide his face. He'd need a new helmet after this anyway. Guardian struggled feebly as I attached the wires to his head, but I didn't think he was more than semiconscious.

Step five: throw the switch for the mind projector and the centrone radiation generator, at the same time. That would put me in Guardian's body, and—this was why I needed to get Stitch pummeled—pop Stitch right back into his own body, inches away from his archenemy.

I took a deep breath, threw the switch on the projector, and poked the button on the centrone generator with my mace-fist. There was a feeling like being punched all over.

When the world stabilized, I groaned slightly, and opened my eyes, and blinked to unfuzzy it. It didn't unfuzzy.

I was in Guardian's body. I was wearing his things, for starters. And for another thing, Stitch was wobbling to his knees in front of me. He looked at me vaguely, swaying, and I hoped like hell he didn't have enough left to take a swing at me. I felt pureed.

"Not—G-guardian," Adam Stitch rasped, managing somehow to push himself upright. "Has f-f-face . . . Guardian d-d-doesn't h-have face . . ."

I wasn't wearing the helmet. To Stitch, Guardian wears the helmet, and if he doesn't have it, he isn't Guardian.

Poor bastard. Whoever did this to him needs pounding but good.

Stitch turned away from me to roar at the sky. "F-FAKE GUARDIAN?!? FAKE S-STITCH AND F-F-FAKE G-GUARDIAN?! C-C-COWARD! CHEATER! COME D-DOWN AND FIGH—"

Which was when I hit him on the back of the head and laid him out for good. He stayed semiconscious long enough to mutter, "Stupid cheater Normil," and then was out like a light.

From there, it was just a matter of sorting through the loose ends.

I straightened out the helmet and put it on—not that hard, when you can bend steel, although all the finger-marks made it look like someone had been at it with a shotgun. The police had already been called; it wasn't as if we had been fighting quietly. They hauled Stitch away. They also bought my Guardian impersonation, which had been worrying me. Deep voice, flat accent like a news anchor, quiet and solemn. One policeman did ask me if I was all right, but I assured him I was heading to the hospital next. Which I did.

Flying was thrilling, as it always was. (I'd briefly possessed flying powers before; long story.) It was a little harder than usual because Guardian was, apparently, extremely nearsighted. To my surprise, Michael's glasses weren't for show.

I couldn't get the molecular perception to work either. There was a sort of oceanic sound in my head, and it seemed to change pitch and texture when I was away from solid objects, but I couldn't begin to use it as vision. Possibly it was the sort of thing that you had to grow up with. Blind people who get eye surgery as adults—they don't generally adjust all that well to vision—

I wonder what would happen to a person who grew up never really needing to see. Would their eyes become weak because they didn't bother with them much, because they under-used the muscles and accidentally let them atrophy? Possibly. It was as good an explanation for the nearsightedness as any.

Maybe I should ask Michael some time.

My body had been taken, predictably, to St. Mary's. It was about two a.m. when I finally got there. There was a guard on me—I had broken into the police station, after all—but Guardian's identity can get you past all sorts of barriers. I explained that Rick had been possessed and I could restore him to his proper self, and the doctor in charge didn't even argue with me. She just said, "And you're sure this will put him back to normal?"

Guardian wouldn't make the pun, so I didn't. "Completely," I said.

"How about him?"

Him was Damon Robb, one bed over, so that the police could keep an eye on both of us. "His situation . . . is more complicated," I temporized. "He's used a lot of strangetech on himself . . . I'd prefer to talk to an expert before trying anything."

Translation: I had no freakin' clue. People normally snap back to their body at the first opportunity. I'd never seen a silver cord tied to my foot, or any New Age thing like that, but I'd certainly zipped back into my own brain like I was pulled by psychic elastic. Robb should be back. He should be awake. Why was he still comatose?

Unless he actually had hurt his own psyche somehow, with all the jumping around . . .

I was very, very glad this would be my last transfer. "Doctor—would you mind if I draw the curtain for the rest of this? I'll have to take my helmet off."

People do stuff like that for Guardian. "Not at all," the doctor said. "I'll be on the other side of the room, so if you have any difficulty . . ." She was already moving as she said it.

I thanked her, drew the curtain, and hooked both myselves up to the strangetech. And threw the switch.

Darkness, rushing, and then slam, back to being me. And God, it felt right, despite the Armageddon-level headache. I opened my eyes, did my best not to wince at the light, and focused slowly on Guardian. Michael Wells, rather, without helmet or disguise. He was staring at me.

"'Sup," I said. My voice cracked; my mouth was very dry.

Michael turned wordlessly, slid the window open in a single sharp motion, and hurled himself out. Fleeing.

I said, "Huh," to myself, and relaxed into the not-very-fluffy pillow. "Doc? You there? It's Rick Normil. I'm back . . ."

Armand Cole

Chapter 17

Damon Robb had been temporarily delayed.

In his spirit form, he actually wore an ill-fitting, frayed Guardian costume. Of course, it might just look ill-fitting because I had him by the collar. We were hanging over an abyss of pure darkness, in the Beneath, and he was struggling. Which was stupid. Just because I can survive the Beneath doesn't mean everyone can.

His extremities were unraveling like bad knitting. "Let go," he gasped, tugging at my arm. "Let go, you're hurting me!"

"No, I'm not. Not yet." Ah, bluff. When all you have is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail. "I just wanted to talk to you about some things you discovered during your adventures."

Robb bared his teeth. "You mean that Guardian is that loser Michael Wells?" He sounded contemptuous. "No wonder he doesn't get it right. It should have been me—I was so much better—and by the time I'm through with him, he'll wish—"

"He'll wish nothing," I said. "As you pointed out earlier, there are—consequences—for revealing a hero's secret identity. You will say nothing about Michael Wells. You will turn yourself in to the police and confess to hijacking Rick Normil's body."

"You don't know what you're talking about. Wells is too much of a coward to do anything to me."

"You will also tell the police about anyone else you might have controlled, manipulated, or otherwise influenced."

"And you," Robb sneered. "You're just—I don't even know who you are, but there's no way you can—"

If you want to really terrify someone, do it with one sentence. I pulled him closer. "Do we have," I murmured, "a meeting of minds?"

Robb stared at me, dread dawning. I looked back. I didn't bother to make my eyes glow blue. He'd gotten the point.

He swallowed. "Yessir," he said, in a voice that was much too small for him.

"Good." I opened my hand, and he trailed into the distance as a muddled cloud of color. Back to his body. Back to life.

I teleported out of the Beneath, away from Marina City, to a lonely spot in New Mexico where I like to sit and think when I'm not struggling to save the world. White sand, stars in uncounted multitudes, a constant whisper of wind—beautiful place. I collect beautiful places. They put my mind right.

Considering some of the things I've done, I need that.

Perhaps I should have tried to pass a message back to Rick Normil. An apology. He was only a chaos attractor because of me.

It was an idle thought; I couldn't have really done it. I needed Robb to dread me, and people like him see apologies as a sign of weakness. Better not to disturb the myth of Sigil, inhuman being of ultimate power and cold wrath.

I wasn't sure how much Rick would remember of his three minutes as Sigil. Most people don't remember at all, but he's been through so many things; he might be better at coping with that sort of input. But whatever he remembered, however much he knew, I hoped that he would forgive me for not telling him. That he didn't despise me. That he didn't fear me.

I rather liked him, after all. And it's been a long time since I had a friend.

Rick Normil

Chapter 18

I was back at work two days later. I could have been there sooner; there was nothing really wrong with me. But there was a lot of paperwork and the doctors had to go hmm at me.

The newsroom was slightly quieter, as it always was on Saturday. Jenna was at her computer, writing an article; the headline looked like it would be Police Say Projector Provoked Both Stitch Incidents. Damon Robb had an honest-to-goodness supervillain name, now. I'd thought Mindrobber was punchier, but Jenna said she was perfectly happy for Robb to go through life known as the pathetic fanboy with the stupid Extraordinary-name.

"So when's your hearing?" Jenna said conversationally.

"The twenty-sixth. My lawyer says I should be fine, though." I'd spent all morning talking with him. "Robb confessed, the wire projector still works, the police saw me get shot with the wireless one, and the doctors spent half of Friday morning looking at my MRI and saying, 'interesting.' If anyone can prove possession by a supervillain, it's me."

Jenna nodded. It's not as if this is a totally unfamiliar situation for us, after all. She hadn't even blinked at covering up the fact that I wasn't possessed the second time I broke into the police station. Even for Jenna Germaine, saving lives takes priority over a story.

In fact, if she'd buried the story I half-suspected she might have . . .

There was no way to ask. "Look," I said, "I'm gonna go eat lunch. Could you do me a favor?"

"Depends on the favor," Jenna said lightly. "What?"

I took a piece of paper out of my pocket. "Could you leave this sitting on your desk, just out there where someone can read it, for a coupla hours?

The note said: A—

I just wanted to let you know that policeman—his name is Tony Burke—survived. He woke up late last evening. They haven't released him from the hospital yet. Reading between the lines, I think the doctors figure he's got some brain damage. I don't know exactly what that means; probably that he'll need the same months-of-therapy that stroke victims have to go through, and I'm guessing he'll have to quit the police. Still, he's alive. I know you were worried about letting him die to save me, so I thought you should know.

Thank you. You saved my life, and probably Jenna's and everyone else who works here. I owe you a lot.

Rick

Jenna raised her eyebrows at me. "Besides you, the only person who saved everyone's life this week was Sigil."

I shrugged uncomfortably.

"Forget about all the usual questions—what is Sigil, why was he here, is he a threat to the planet—what I want to know right now is, why the hell would Sigil be poking around on my desk?"

"I'm not sure he really will be," I admitted, "but he says he looks in on this place every once in a while because we're a nexus."

"A what?"

"Scientific for 'trouble magnet.'" Jenna nodded; it made perfect sense to her. "I have a whole list of questions myself," I went on, "and he can't answer any of them unless I get myself zapped to the astral plane or something. Of course, with my life, that'll happen next Tuesday. Or, more likely, right before I'm due in court."

(In retrospect, I really, really shouldn't have tempted fate with that little bit of cynicism. But that's a whole other story.)

There was an Off Limits For Repairs sign on the roof access. I ignored it, went over to the edge, and opened my lunch. There was still a gouge in the roof where Guardian had hit hard, and the Torch sculpture was missing again, but otherwise it was just like usual. Brisk breeze, blue sky, glittering view of the skyline. I thought I spotted one of those high-rise-nesting peregrines skating across the heavens in search of pigeons.

The door behind me opened. I glanced over my shoulder.

Michael Wells, looking very nervous. Looking like a shy highschooler being forced into public speaking, in fact. I took out my bagel and took a bite.

"Um," Michael said, after an agonizingly long pause. "I think we need to talk."

I swallowed. "About what?" Not the response he expected, I could tell. "About the crazy stuff on Thursday? Nah, I'm not worried."

Michael said, "But—" and then seemed to get stuck.

"See," I went on, "the way I see it, I really lucked out on friends. I mean, some people might try to keep their friends in the dark, 'cause maybe not knowing the weird stuff means they'll have a quiet life and never get kidnapped by supervillains or something. But that's kind of pointless around here, you know? Probably better if the people I trust know that I can help out in an emergency. And yeah, I guess it might freak some people out to know that I could totally kick their ass—given the right circumstances and a spare zombie—but I don't really think I'm going to lose a friendship over it." He was opening and closing his mouth soundlessly. I thought he was starting to get it. "I trust my friends, you know? Even if I could fly or toss tanks full-time, I'd still trust them to treat me pretty much the same. You know, hang out, tell jokes, tell me when I'm being kind of an asshole."

Michael stared at me wordlessly.

"Asshole," I added, and took another bite of my bagel.

"I just—" He came forward a bit, and stopped. "I'm not very good at—I've frightened people before, including someone I cared for very much, and I didn't want to—" He stopped himself, took a deep breath, and sat down beside me. "I'm not very brave when it comes to people. I'm sorry."

He was looking down at his hands. I studied him. "This is the real you, isn't it? The guy who knows all the numbers for all the monsters in all the Monster Manuals ever published."

"Just the challenge ratings," Michael protested. "And only up to three point five . . ." He let out a breath of laughter, slightly startled, as if he hadn't been entirely sure who he was himself. "Yes. Yes, it is." A long, long pause. "Are you going to go public?"

He dreaded the idea. I could hear it in his voice. But—and this was very much a Guardian thing—he was being extremely careful not to ask the question in a way that might sound the slightest little bit like a threat. Because when you're strong enough to rip a building off its foundations, you learn to be very, very gentle with the people around you, physically and emotionally. "What," I said, "with your identity? Don't be ridiculous. You don't out friends because they did something mildly self-centered. Besides, if I told the world you were Guardian, you could tell them I made a Stitch-shaped hole in a really expensive jail." Michael nodded, confirming my suspicion that he'd tailed me spectrally through most of Thursday's drama. "I do think you should tell Jenna, though."

"No." Instant and very firm. "No, Jenna admires me a little as Guardian, but she can't stand—"

"And the reason I think you should tell Jenna," I continued, "is because I think she might already know."

He blinked. "What?"

"I told her you'd been possessed by a supervillain. She believed me right away. Not because she trusts my judgment that much; because she watched the Sigil fight from underneath and thought you were moving wrong. Jenna is paranoid, Michael. She's taught herself more about body language than some professional mentalists know, she's read up on every crime invented, and she's made it her personal business to know everything about the most powerful entity in town: you."

Michael shook her head. "If that was true—if she was that paranoid—she wouldn't needle me the way she does. As Michael, I mean."

"Yeah . . . I don't know, I think that might be her way of making sure she can trust you."

"I don't understand."

"Not sure I do either," I admitted. "It's just a hunch. Look at it this way; if you tell her, she'll be able to cover for you when you have to fly off. Jenna lies a lot better than you do, you know."

"Everyone lies better than me," Michael admitted. Which was true, even if it usually gets buried in a general sea of Michael-awkwardness "If—"

Which was when Floating Hat Guy materialized right over the railing with a small plib noise.

Michael shot to his feet. I sighed and applied myself to my bagel. Other shoe's always gotta drop. It's a rule.

"Right," Floating Hat Guy snapped. "You might have won one round with your idiotic modern card game, but—" He stopped and looked away from Michael, down towards me. "Oh, Queens and Powers, not you."

Ah, the wonders of a reputation. I fought back a grin and chewed stolidly.

"I categorically refuse to manifest in the same sphere as that—that entity. You, Tomorrow's Child, will see me in three—moon-based calendar units. You—" He pointed at me, wrestling for something sufficiently scathing to say, and then settled for "Gaaaaah!"

He plibbed away.

Michael stared at me.

And stared at me. I put the bagel aside. "I have something on my head, don't I?"

"What," Michael said.

I did have something on my head. Silly bastard had made my hair sprout daisies. "Cute," I said. "Real cute."

"How did you—what did you do to—I spent all Thursday morning getting rid of that—whatever he is! I can't do anything to him! I only got him to go away because of a wager! But he freaked out the moment he saw you—"

Ah. Well, he'd found someone "more advanced" after all. I hoped he hadn't enjoyed it.

Silly modern card game, and a wager . . . I wondered if Michael had managed to banish an interdimensional chaos imp by smoking him at Magic: the Gathering. If so, that would be the best use of towering nerdhood that I'd ever heard of. "Yeah," I said, "he woke me up Thursday too. I ignored him, he went away."

Michael shook his head. "I'm serious, Rick. I need to know what you did to him. He could be a danger to everyone in—"

"I am serious. I ignored him. He went away."

Michael looked absolutely poleaxed. "You're seriously serious?"

"Yeah." I smiled. "Guess he figured I'm too boring to bother with."

Armand Cole

Chapter 19

Once upon a time, the world didn't have any superheroes. Or supervillains. There was also no centrone radiation, no Gamma Factor, no nth energy or strangetech—all the things that you associate with Extraordinaries simply didn't exist.

But there was magic. Nobody knew about it, because only one person in the world held the power at a time. That person was called the Barrier; their job was to keep Things outside the universe from getting in. The old Barrier would often spend a decade choosing his or her replacement, setting tests and monitoring and making sure that the candidate was a person of good character, because there was no backup. And nobody who had a shot of bringing the Barrier down, if he or she went bad. We're talking about vast cosmic power in a world of normals.

That world ended in nineteen eighty-three. The Cold War, you know. Russia launched, then America. Good-bye, human race.

Well, except for me. Barriers don't go down that easily.

(You ask me why I didn't sweep the launch out of the sky as it happened? Simple: I didn't know it was going to. I found out when the bombs dropped, like everyone else. And, yes, I managed to catch some of the later ones and neutralize them, but it wasn't enough. It wasn't near enough. You have no idea how much sheer destruction we have at our fingertips.)

There was one thing I could do, besides combing the Earth for the odd lucky survivor. It was completely forbidden, but why should I care? Who was it forbidden for, anymore?

So I scanned the timeline leading up to the exchange. It took me fourteen days. The Russian defense grid had malfunctioned, spawning ghost missiles. They believed they were launching in retaliation. I hope they died without realizing what sort of mistake they'd made. I've gone through enough coming to grips with my own huge-magnitude errors, and I can always fall back on, "But I saved the world, that counts for something."

In the timeline, I found what we called a pivot point, a spot where a small change makes a massive difference. In this case, it was a man, an ordinary Russian soldier. If he hadn't been in the hospital, he would have been among the first to spot the ghost missiles. And he would have asked the crucial question, the world-saving question: why on Earth would the Americans launch by twos and threes rather than a massive rain of obliteration?

Simple. Ideal. All I needed was to edit time, to erase the accident and make him fit for duty, and all this destruction would never have actually existed.

I spent about a month arranging everything. I couldn't choose a successor, not directly. What I could do was set up tests that would (I hoped) weed out the unsuitable, and leave thorough notes on how to use the Barrier's power (difficult, since these things take a Barrier's extended lifetime to master) and designate some of my enchanted objects to help answer questions that I hadn't anticipated.

I needed power, of course. But I knew where to find it: in old, brutal magic that gives no quarter. All I needed was a sacrifice. A self-sacrifice.

So, after the spell was prepared, perfect and meticulous and flawless in every detail, I drenched myself with gasoline, lay down in the middle of my diagrams, and struck a light.

But magic comes from the mind, and not the rational, practical part. Magic comes from the places you barely remember and the dreams that fade before you can articulate them. Magic comes from what you knew as a child, and as a child, I was a dreamer and a reader. I would run into the bookshop after school, and the lady at the counter would say, "You're in for the new comic?" I knew, to the day, when all my favorite superhero comics came out . . .

That was the most popular genre in the medium, you see. Superheroes. Exotic and exciting and nothing you'd ever see in real life.

So, to summarize: a burning man. A needle-like twist of fate rocketing back through time, to erase the worst disaster mankind ever wouldn't have suffered. And the fuel of that missile was all the fantasies and all the hopes that I'd ever had. All there, all boiling.

The spell didn't break. It just—cracked, ever so slightly, at some of the worst pressure points. Dreams dissipating into the timestream like superheated steam.

So there you have it. I saved the world. I saved more people than I can imagine. I also broke the world, just a little bit. Every person that Prince Rath killed (or kills; the Narrative won't allow him to stay dead)—that's on me.

I have no idea how to deal with that, so mostly I don't.

But the thing is—the important thing, the bit that keeps me convinced that it might have been worth it, even with my mistakes—people aren't just puppets of the Narrative. Events are imposed upon them, but they have choices.

Like Rick, for instance. The insanity of the life I threw him into, the one-issue superpowers, the strain of not knowing whether he'll wake up in the same shape he went to bed—that could have sent him insane. Instead, he rolls with the punches. He makes Normil puns, he shrugs, he says, oh, another dinosaur, didn't we have those just last Wednesday?

He's all right. And that's what keeps me from going under, what makes me keep checking on your world and watching crises and figuring out how to avert them when I can. The people in the new universe—you're all right. You cope. This isn't hell any more than it's heaven.

I can live with that. In a manner of speaking.

### ####

Thank you for reading my novella. I hope you enjoyed it! Please consider leaving a review at your favorite retailer.

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About the Author

Isabel Pelech is a mother of twins living in the Southern United States. She is obsessed with space and storytelling. She hopes you enjoy reading about the worlds in her head.

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