Big Superhero Action by Raymond Embrack Page B

allure. At her peak superhero activity Teenage Cleopatra led armies of addicts. Images of her created a drug trade that went out of control when rivals took to street bombings. There were overdoses and suicides and Teenage Cleopatra rehab. The surrounding madness drove her into seclusion. She never left her compound. She only saw visitors from behind layers of screens. She wore a mask to conceal her mask. There were rumors that she left her compound in disguises that concealed any trace of her appearance. Few actually knew what she looked like. All he knew about her was that she was no longer a teenager, the name sticking to her the way the Beach Boys were still “boys.”
    Through the black screen he saw the white dots of the stucco wall, saw red dots…a mask of terra cotta red he knew covered her entire face. Below the red dots were light peach dots that flowed, filled white stucco dots, caressed them in a female shape. The shape alone changed the color of his bloodstream.
    “Talk to me,” spoke a female voice behind the screen.
    “I’m with AXIS,” he said to the screen.
    “The Heroes guy?”
    “You know me?”
    “I heard of you.”
    “My name is Rock Hero.”
    “What do you want, Rock Hero?”
    “I bring an offer to join AXIS.”
    “AXIS is short.”
    “Why is it short?”
    “It has The Carousel. It has you. And that’s it.”
    “AXIS has the Siren Syndicate. It’s restarted and they signed up.”
    “So that makes eight.”
    “We’re a select group.”
    The light peach dots flowed past, stopped, flowed the other way.
    He added, “Plus AXIS provides protection from the OSD.”
    “I have my own protection.”
    “The old-time robots?”
    Silence. He fucked up. He seized-up. He should’ve prepared for this. Now he was already out of shit to say.
    She said, “Are we done?”
    Fuck. He was losing her. “Not yet.”
    “What’s next?”
    “I need your help.”
    “How?”
    “I need advice. I have a question to ask.”
    “Is it about AXIS?”
    “No.”
    “Then you did not come to me to talk about what you talked about.”
    “Right.”
    “You used that as a pretext.”
    “Yes.”
    “What is your question?”
    “The question is…why am I fascinated by you?”
    “You’re asking me?”
    “Yes.”
    “Is that a riddle?”
    “Yes.”
    “How does it go?”
    He said, “The same reason you are fascinated by me.”
    Silence. Fuck. Too aggressive. He waited for her to lower the boom. He had set himself up. He was a tool to have given in to the impulse and gone to her too soon. He should’ve held out. Now he blew it. Silence stretched.
Lame
was turning to
awkward
to
creepy
. This thing had to be killed fast. He had to pick a tactic. Anything more felt wrong, was too soon. He wasn’t where he needed to be for that yet. He came up with a save. Go cryptic. Leave but leave as an enigma. That way he would live to try her another day.
    He said, “You’re like music from the future.”
    Silence.
    “See you around,” he said.
    He reached the roof in two minutes, turned on the iPod, took to the air.

20
    B ehind a wall of the sheer reek of exposed organs, crowd control handled itself. A space perimeter of ten feet held around The Corpus at all times. People were afraid to step inside it. They were silent and spellbound by what they saw and smelled and heard. His hands were bloody to the elbows and spatter had reached his shoulders. Somehow his hands folded human skin so that it sealed over the incision like it had never been made. The patient was a bloody gooey mess but the body had been scooped of a majority of its fat cells. He had done a liposuction that had reduced the patient’s body weight five hundred pounds. The Corpus held up his fat dripping hands to create a wall around him as he made his exit.
    JKM and the Halo fell in to either side.
    The Corpus said to them, “You’re my escorts now?”
    JKM did the talking. “I’m JKM, she’s the Halo.”
    “Nice to meet you.”
    “You are in