This guy's good. I'll give him that.
Scuffed shoes, torn jeans, ragged jacket that's sweat stained from a couple of months living in it or from being too big and too thick. Med mask pulled up so no one can get a good look at the face under the hood. I know something's up with his eye but not much else. Hard to tell skin colour from here, even with most of the street lights back on.
It's a pretty good disguise. Almost perfect actually. Except for one thing.
It's the smell.
No one in Empire City's smelled like soap ever since the quarantine. In the Warren? Forget about it.
Haven't thought about what I'm going to down when I catch this guy, or if I want to catch him at all. Just been jumping rooftops since I picked him up at the Memorial Hospital. Stuck out like a Reaper in a flower bed. I think maybe he wanted me to follow him. Not sure.
No way I'm tailing him at street level. And not just because the crowds would give me away bowing down to their hero. It's because I still don't have an answer to the questions they've started asking.
Kessler was two weeks ago. The promise to take down the barricades was three. I don't know what's happening with that. Been busy.
Ever since then it's been all running around trying to get the cops back together, keep the power up and shut down what's left of the gangs, not sleeping and trying to avoid going anywhere near ground zero. Still got no idea where Zeke is. Almost wishing Alden would surface somewhere so I'd actually get to let loose a little. See something in someone's eyes that wasn't…devotion, or whatever the hell this is that's grown up around me now.
Almost a month since only about four people actually knew my last name at best. Now I wake up at night from radio signals stopping and starting in my head and check in with every prescient I can find to track down some leads on any conduit crap still going on.
Some people would call this avoidance. They didn't bury themselves in the crater they woke up in with superpowers almost a month ago. Or find out they're the centre of this…I'm not even sure if it's a loop. But try spending a couple of weeks as the most hated guy in Empire City before finding out you're meant to be the next messiah. Got my own nasty little suspicion about what The Beast is, where It came from. Where It's gonna come from.
So if I wind up digging through the crap this city's turned into following some guy who smells too clean to come from the inside, screw those people. I think I'm entitled.
Who is this guy? Never did find out what happened to most of the First Sons. Right now I'm skulking behind some air conditioning unit as he climbs a maintenance ladder on the side of a warehouse, way too focused to be your average guy. Not PK, but focused. Military? Did Moya finally send someone in after me?
He takes off his hood as he reaches the roof-bald, strap of an eye patch running around his head-and plugs something into the port on a satellite dish.
Dead drops. He's after John's dead drops.
Alright then. Screw it.
I go flashy, using the thrusters to blast myself across the gap and come slamming down behind him. Get my hands up glowing, all Dirty Harry.
"Pal, my last meal in three straight hours was a cheese sandwich and a diet soda. And I can call down the biggest thunderstorm Jesus, Mary and God ever imagined, so you really don't want to piss me off with any more of this cloak and dagger crap."
For the first time in what feels like forever someone doesn't listen to me. The guy just turns around, pulling down his mask, and I'd say he was glaring at me if I wasn't so sure that was just his usual expression. He's pulling something out of that stupid jacket.
"Hey, hey! Did you not hear the part about the giant ass thunderstorm?"
"I've seen bigger." the one eyed Samuel L. Jackson wannabe says, and holds up what looks like a set of Sci Fi car keys.
There's this beep I kind of hear without actually hearing it, and the back of my mind I feel whatever I've got going on with the city's power grid go dead. The light in my hands goes out. I stare at them, the bald guy, them, the bald guy, them, him, than the keys. The shiny, shiny keys…
Ray Sphere tech.
Shit.
"Recognize this? Good. One of your First Son buddies tried to barter his way out of a holding cell with some of his tech. Didn't work, but maybe you can say hello once you're on the Triskelion."
"The First Sons? They got out?"
But where would they go? Nothing around the Historian district but water, and maybe they set up the quarantine but no way in hell just one of them is going to make it past all that security around the mainland…
"Not exactly. We sent some people in, pulled a couple out. It's the kind of thing your meant to do when you find a city cutting off the Hudson's way into the Upper Bay."
"The Hudson?"
New York? The hell…Empire's about an eight hour flight from Pittsburgh, then a five hour drive all over the mainland before you come anywhere near any of the bridges. Did we skip a couple of states when I wasn't looking? Eye patch is giving me a look. It's a Moya kind of look.
"Son, three weeks ago your city didn't officially exist. Someone was stupid enough to screw with time and maybe space, and I'm the guy these people make stupid every time they do this."
He hasn't moved, but I've backed up to the roof. I'm not so sure about it though. My powers let me take a lot of crap, gunfire, exploding cars, Alden's golems…not so sure I can take a three story fall with them switched off though.
"Does the name The Ultimates mean anything to you?"
"No…"
Can barely hear myself. Choppers over head. Roar of jets. Guys with guns and hammers and shields and armour.
"It's about to."