Interlude 4.y

The Presidential was, like many small-town or roadside businesses, a relic of a bygone age. Following the advent of the Endbringers, travel mostly ceased and people congregated to the cities for Endbringer shelters.

The dilapidated motel was falling apart, only a handful of rooms still functional. It had been the site of several murders, cars left in the parking lot after being stripped for parts and valuables. One vehicle stood out, a heavily-built SUV with attached livestock trailer. While the car was rather battered and the trailer likely secondhand, neither had been torn apart. Someone was making use of the Presidential Motel.

The motel had at one time been a major stop-over off the main highway. Consisting of two stories of eight rooms each, it had done a fair bit of business in the '80s. While the outer rooms had suffered from storms, quakes and passing cape fights, three rooms on the upper floor were still viable. The Presidential's current occupants had opted for some quick-and-dirty renovation, knocking out the interior walls to make one massive, ragged space.

In the dim light of a single desk lamp and a muted television, a man slowly drew a razor along a leather strip, honing the edge. "You know," he said in a pleasant, conversational tone, "people get the wrong impression of us." Satisfied with the blade, he lathered his face with shaving cream and went to work in the mirror, speaking between strokes of the cutthroat. "They see the cape fights and think that's all there is, as though that's the be-all, end-all." With a practiced flick of the wrist he banished the accumulated cream from the razor into the sink. He shrugged in response to an unspoken comment, as though narrating a debate in his mind. "True, capes are better. More resilient. The very nature of trigger events means that most of them are survivors, able to fight harder and take more punishment. Give people hope, all that jazz."

A quick sweep of the blade in the warm water to clear off the residue and he was back at it. "But when you've been around as long as I have, when you've seen the rise of the Triumvirate, the arrival of the Endbringers, the death of Hero, you realize that parahumans don't have the monopoly on strength. Sometimes it's the ordinary people who can be the greatest heroes, or the most horrific villains. Capes? They have an excuse. Society forces them into a role and they have to play hero or villain. Ordinary people? They get to choose. It's something that the public doesn't think about when you have Legend and Alexandria flying around, being so shiny." He continued, murmuring his words as he got down to detail work. "People without powers, they feel powerless so often, but they keep on trucking. Instead of giving up, they fight that much harder. I guess that's the human condition, huh? We're so desperate for independence and self-definition, yet we force our definitions onto others. We all want to be the authors of our own life story."

The razor was washed, dried and put away. A quick wipe with a damp towel got rid of the rest of the shaving cream and he gave himself a smile in the mirror. Perfect. The neatly trimmed mustache, the tiny patch of hair beneath his lower lip leading to the dusting on his chin, everything was in place. "So you see, that's why I like doing this kind of thing with normal people. Parahumans? They're used to being the center of attention. There's dread of – and preparation for – this kind of thing in the back of their minds. With you, on the other hand, it's a complete surprise when it happens." He strode over and ripped the duct tape off his captive's mouth. "Most of the time, people were more afraid of Gray Boy when he was around. 'Tortured to madness', they'd say. And it was true. A perpetual trap of pure agony, with no escape. But me? I always said he had it wrong."

The captive spat in his face. Doughy, balding, with eyes the color of sun-faded olive drab and a slight overbite, the man was completely unassuming. He was the everyman, doing nothing to stand out. That was why he'd been picked. "Fuck you, Jack. Goddamn, do you love to hear yourself talk."

That was interesting. The man knew he was going to die. Instead of cowering in fear or begging, he was defiant, arrogant even. It was something that always intrigued Jack, the different nuances in each person as they faced their deaths.

"Do you know how I figured out my power? I wanted people to hurt, yes, but I could have gotten a gun. Could've made a molotov cocktail. Instead, I grabbed a knife. The reason is more simple than you might think. You see, in my opinion, Gray Boy had it backwards. He used torture to spread fear, to hurt others. It's an understandable mistake; he was just a kid, after all." Jack opened a Swiss army knife and drew the blunt little blade along the outside of his victim's forearm, just barely breaking the skin. "Murder isn't the worst thing you can do to a person. You kill someone, their suffering stops. In my opinion," he raised his voice over the man's grunts of pain, "murder is how you hurt others. You take lives, spread fear and pain to the rest of the public. If you kill a father, his wife and children are left to suffer in his absence."

He leaned in close, cupping his victim's face, and drew the knife across the underside of his jaw. It didn't cut; just tore into the outer layers of skin, the pain bringing with it the knowledge how easily life could be taken. "No, torture is a much more intimate experience than Gray Boy understood. It's just between you and me, as I get to see every little quirk of pain, fear and anger you have." He flicked his wrist and ripped loose a small chunk of flesh from beneath the man's jawbone, smirking as the everyman groaned through clenched teeth. Even now, the captive tried to defy him, deny him the pleasure. But this wasn't about pleasure. It was about the experience. Good, bad, it didn't matter. Pain, happiness, morality, purpose, none of it mattered. It was the moment.

"I don't get off on other people's suffering. I'm not a sadist. I don't even really enjoy causing pain. This isn't some dark nihilistic philosophy about pain. It doesn't have a Freudian explanation where I'm a little boy just wanting to make other people feel as bad as I do. This? This just is." He wiped off the little knife and put it away, flicking open the straight razor once again. "This, between you and me, is truth." He cut down the man's shirt with such delicate precision that the razor never broke skin. "We see each other for how we truly are." He bent back the man's left ring finger, applying more and more pressure until the bone crackled. With the finger vertical, he placed the grip of the razor against a knuckle and slowly folded it shut, progressively crushing and cutting. It was slow, it was inefficient, but that was the point. "When everything else we can hide behind – society, jobs, family, friends, our very identity – is stripped away, we're left with nothing more than our own selves." His face curled into a brief snarl as, with an extra burst of force, he snapped the finger off. "And that is what this is about," he said over his victim's piteous moans.

The moans rose in pitch and volume, becoming loud, throaty chuckles. He had to raise an eyebrow, regarding his victim with a strange mix of curiosity and...apprehension? This wasn't the broken, manic laughter of the defeated escaping into madness. No, this was haughty and superior.

"I believe you," the balding man replied. "I get how you see the world. And I might pity you, if I didn't truly understand. This is all an experiment to you, an attempt to see the true face of humanity, but you're exactly the same as the society you dismissed," he growled through the pain. His captor actually took a step back and lowered his weapon, inviting him to keep speaking. "You're fixated on parahumans as well. There are plenty of people, experts in their field, who could make amazing killers or otherwise support your little scheme. But you abandon them and go for the capes. Us, the ordinary people? We're cattle. Or lab rats. You study us, use us for your amusement. Unlike the capes, you don't even bother to learn our names." He locked eyes with his captor, lips breaking into a condescending sneer. "Raymond Marks." He let that hang in the air for a moment. "You're going to look into my eyes. And you're going to remember, for the rest of your life, that ordinary, pathetic Raymond Marks understands you. And he looks down on you. You're pathetic, Jack Slash. I know I'm going to die, but I'm going to die laughing at you."

And he did. Raymond Marks laughed. His laughter was hateful, derisive, deprecating.

His head was wrenched back and the razor tore through his neck. It wasn't a slitting of the throat; it was a barbaric cleaving. Blood and viscera sprayed as Jack's fist went through the parted meat. The laughter continued as a rhythmic popping of blood out of the ruptured trachea. Jack Slash stared at the body in disgust and washed off his hands before exiting the room. He left the door hanging open so that anyone who happened by would see the body in the chair and the numerous mutilated corpses piled on the beds in a cruel imitation of sexual congress.

(BREAK)

"What's so interesting, Atika?" The brunette toyed with the red streak in her hair as she used her traveling companion as a chair.

The glamorous Arab woman gestured at the computer. "I was trolling PHO, and look."

"Ooo, I wanna see!" A hyperactive blonde scampered over. "Wow! Case 53?"

"Doesn't look like it."

Cherie was going to comment but was sidelined by a new feeling. Well, not necessarily new. Confusion, anger, hatred, even self-loathing? She'd gotten used to feeling those. Got off on them to a certain degree, though nothing was as fulfilling as despair. What she wasn't used to was them coming from Jack. Had one of his victims somehow managed to work him up? The other presence, the feeling of superiority and condescension, finally winked out. Yes, that was probably what happened. "Jack's on his way back." She then rapped her chair on the head. "Hey, you should check this out. Bird, can you tab it so we can do a side-by-side?"

The enormous bulk shifted itself, nearly a hundred eyes opening and pointing at the laptop. "Mm," it rumbled, the sheer bass of the voice enough to shake the room ever so slightly. "That's...actually interesting."

"What is?" Jack Slash stepped inside, having taken a moment to compose himself. He'd managed to suppress the negative emotions quite effectively; Cherie was impressed.

"Check it," the Canadian girl gestured to the pictures. "New cape in Brockton Bay."

"Wait a sec," Bonesaw squeaked in her tiny, pixie-like voice, "isn't that where Panacea is?"

"And Elle," said a deathly pale and almost anorexically thin girl from across the room, where she was reading manga by lamplight.

"And Jean-Paul," Cherie continued. She turned back to the group's leader. "What do you say we make a trip to the Bay?"

Mannequin clacked his fingers together, demanding attention. When the group looked, he shook his head.

"Mannequin has a point," Jack admitted as he strode over to sit on the bed. "After the war, they've got a surplus of heroes and not enough villains to keep them tired. Even with the Teeth and that other new team, they've still got three hero groups plus the Wards. We're down a member anyway; going in there now would be a good way to lose more people. But... Atika, when's the next Endbringer attack expected?"

Shatterbird went to the official, PRT-sanctioned "Endbringer Countdown" site. "Looks like sometime in May or late April."

"Well then, let's do a little 'research' before our road trip. Once the next attack happens, we can get ourselves set up and have a surprise waiting for the good capes of the Bay when they get home."