Later...

a flash [my eyes!]. an impact. what? another impact. falling [so this is what it feels like to be shot]. blackness. a face, leaning over me, leering [no colours! my eyes!] - blackness [floating in and out of consciousness]. lifted up [snapshots, like strobe lighting]. a window, open. thrown - falling! the ground rushing up [no!].

impact

Murphy ran from the building, he didn't want to be there, had to get out. His entire life he had served justice, had wanted to protect this city, this city that had killed his parents, had put a young boy into an orphanage. And now he finally had the chance, he was working for a police force that put the 'organised' into 'organised crime'.

He ran down the steps, half falling, and collapsed against the side of the building at the entrance to an alley, drawing in great lungfuls of air; he felt sick. The darkness surrounded him, and he wondered what on earth he was going to do. Then he heard a noise, a rasping, dying rattle. He walked further down the alley, checking his sidearm. A bundle of rags on the ground - a person? He bent down, could now make out an old-fashioned black coat.

"Help me," it rasped. Then Murphy saw the hat, and reached down hesitantly to turn the creature over. He fell back when he saw the face, his legs crumpling beneath him. Bandages were hanging off it, and what was visible was horribly burnt and scarred. The hat, the coat, the voice - the Darkman. Still alive?! Murphy looked up. A window was open. Shot and thrown from the window and still alive?          

Murphy steeled himself and moved back to the man. "I'm going to get you an ambulance, to take you to the hospital." He felt a bony hand clutch his trouser leg and recoiled in terror. The Darkman tried to say something, but the grip suddenly went slack. Unconscious again. Or dead. Murphy had no time to lose.

still dark. help me! a figure. blue? [police! police! no!] ambulance? hospital! [no! they did this to me!] no! I...

darkness

light

can't see. eyesight clearing [what happened?]. shot! saved? police! I...The hospital. I'm in the hospital. Restrained! What have you done to me this time?! What have you done to me?!

"Dr Campion?"

Sally Campion looked up from her desk. It was an orderly. She sighed. Now what did they want from her? After the failure of her burns project she had become the laughing stock of the hospital. Probably she was needed to clean out some old lady's bedpan.

"What is it, Michael?"

"It's your John Doe, Dr Campion - he's conscious, and trying to demolish his bed." What? "The ward nurse said I should fetch you, so..."

"Woah, woah, time out! Michael, what John Doe? What are you talking about?" Michael rolled his eyes, and Sally tried not to lamp him - even the orderlies were treating he with contempt.

"One of your old burns clinic patients. You didn't know?" he said with disdain.

"No, I... From the burns clinic? Where is he?" The burns clinic! Filled with excitement, Sally followed the orderly. This was it! Her chance to regain her professional standing. Calm, girl, calm - be objective, don't indulge false hopes. "How did they know it was one of mine?"

"Something about hyper-stimulated adrenal glands, no receptivity to pain, and..." Michael stopped and pointed at a door on the left. "Well, look for yourself. The patient had to have several bullets removed, he's patched up like an old bicycle tyre, and he's restrained - he tried to attack the staff. The guy that sent for the ambulance is sitting in the waiting room just down the corridor. He's a police officer." He walked off.

Sally glared at his retreating back. "Asshole," she muttered. She pushed open the door to the room, and stepped in. The man in the bed let out a chilling roar when he saw her.

"Who are you?" he screamed. She was slightly taken aback by this outburst, glad for the restraints - until she remembered that a clinic patient breaking out of restraints just like these ones was what had caused her fall from grace.

"I...I'm Doctor Campion, I'm here to help you. You were one of my patients, do you remember me?"

Sally's spine was crawling - she had a bad feeling about this. It was not made any better when the man in the bed stopped struggling and just looked at her. She returned his gaze. And realised that it was a mistake. In those tortured eyes she saw pure hatred and rage, supernovae exploding. And she was afraid.

"You! You did this to me, you made me a monster!" he spat, rearing up again, the restraints breaking.

Then she recognised him - how could she forget? He was the one who had escaped. "We...I tried to help you," she retaliated indignantly, her fear dissipating in the face of her wounded sense of professional pride.

"You call this help?" he cried. "You've turned me into a freak show! I'm a monster!"

"You are not a monster, you just have overactive emotions," she pressed him, anger creeping into her voice. His response was a ferocious cry of anger.

The something inside Dr Sally Campion snapped, all the pent-up emotions of the last couple of months surfaced. She was a professional, she was not responsible for creating monsters or freaks, she was a doctor, and she helped people.

"No!" she cried, bounded over to the bed and slapped the patient, open-palmed, full in the face with all her might. He stopped moving.

Before she could turn away, she saw that his eyes were fastened on her. The rage was no longer there, except in the contorted expression of fury on her own reflected face. He was rasping something. Oh no, don't tell me I've injured him, please no, my career would be over! It was a second before she realised that he was chuckling.

"I'm sorry," she mumbled.

"Don't be. You should have expected an extreme reaction, though. What was it you said? Violent mood swings?" His voice was still confrontational, but she didn't seem to notice.

"Hmm? Oh, when you were in the clinic first? Yes. I did. I was speaking to the hospital's chief research co-ordinator and his team that day. That was when you escaped wasn't it? Yes. That was the day they shut me down." Her eyes had a faraway look in them. She smiled weakly and looked at him. "No more monsters."

To her surprise, he looked as if he was going to cry. Mood swings. Right, she thought wryly.

"Help me." His voice was small, pleading.

She sighed. "I can't. I want to, I really do, but I don't know how to help you." She was too weary to care about the risk of another violent outburst. But the man said nothing. He just looked at her, helpless, fear rather than anger building up in his eyes.

She tried again. "The only person who can help you right now is...well...you. Have you noticed anything, anything at all, that has distracted you from your over-active emotions?" She expected no response, but his eyes lit up in a way she hadn't seen them do yet. It was the way one of her colleagues' eyes lit up when they solved some thorny problem.

"Yes! Yes, in an alleyway. It was dark, I tried to see better - I was angry - and I could see better, and the anger faded a bit!" The words came out in a rush. He was obviously excited, but for what reason? Sally looked at him, puzzled. "Scientific method!" he exclaimed. "Why should my anger fade because I could see better." He paused, and looked at her, his eyes shining. "Let me out of these restraints will you?" She complied with barely a second thought.

"Now," he lowered himself down from the bed and made his way to the chair in the corner of the room, "what is it about my eyesight that can affect my anger?" Sally couldn't help but be infected by his new-found enthusiasm.

"Er...when you see things in clearer focus, you're not quite so angry about everything?"

"No, that's psychological, my emotional problem is physiological in basis - because my brain no longer has pain input to process, it heightens my emotional states to extremes to compensate." He suddenly clicked his fingers. "That's it!" he turned to her. She shook her head. "The toothy smile that spread across his face turned his scarred visage into a hideous, grinning skull. She shivered at the contrast.

"No," she said, shaking herself, "I don't get it."

"My brain requires more stimulus to make up for what it's lost. Up to now, we've assumed that that stimulus came from extreme emotional reactions. But why couldn't it come from any other source? All of my senses provide input to my brain, so any one of them could compensate!"

Campion was getting excited now too. "So by heightening all your other senses, your brain wouldn't draw so heavily on your emotions! You'd have better control of yourself, and increased sensory acuity." She tried to keep hold of her scientific objectivity, but found it difficult. This could be her chance to get her burns clinic re-instated. "You'll have to work at it, though. Your default setting is wildly uncontrollable emotion, so to you'll have to consciously override that like you did in the alley. If your concentration ever slips..."

Neither of them needed to finish the sentence. "You need to work on it," she said "You can't go anywhere for a while, and you need to take it very easy while you recover. There are multiple gunshot wounds that need time to heal. Do you need anything?"

"He looked up at her. My equipment. I'm a scientist, I was working on a project. Most of my equipment has been destroyed, there are a couple of disk drives in an old warehouse down at the abandoned industrial plant. I can also tell you where I hid enough money to buy the necessary hardware. You..."

"Hold on, hold on, what's this project you were working on?"

He looked up at her as if it should be obvious. "Synthetic skin. Ironic, yes? I was in my lab when..." he stopped himself, clearly trying to avoid another outburst. She nodded, understandingly, she hoped.

"Alright - wait - synthetic skin?" The burns clinic! was all she could think. "You can create synthetic skin? Then why didn't you..." she gestured at his face. He grunted.

"Why didn't I make myself a face? The skin isn't stable. After 99 minutes exposure to light the cells break down, and the skin melts. I'm...I was working on a way to fix it."

Her face fell. "You have no idea how much that would have helped my work." She immediately regretted saying it.

"Yes I do," he rasped. "But it can still work, I know it can. If you help me, you'll get your burns clinic back."

Murphy sat in the waiting room, thinking. This creature, this Darkman, if he recovered he had the power to rid the city of the corruption he had discovered. The police officer looked at his watch. It had been nearly 18 hours since he had brought the Darkman into the hospital. He had gone home, unable to sleep, and called in sick at the PD. He had just sat in the waiting room all day. A woman doctor had entered the room a few minutes ago; he had been watching the door of the room he knew they had taken the Darkman to. All he knew was what a nurse had told him, "Your friend's condition is stable," she had said.

He hadn't had the heart to tell her that the Darkman was not his friend, and that he suspected that the man's condition was far from stable. But he had the power, this dark figure, to change the things. Forcibly if necessary, but he could change them. Perhaps he didn't know it, perhaps he just wanted revenge on Bellisarius. Murphy didn't understand revenge. Bellisarius had sold out to the bad guys, and Murphy wanted to see him pay, he must be punished: Bellisarius had committed a crime after all. But Murphy didn't want revenge. He simply wanted justice. He stood up.

The doctor had left. Hope had entered his heart, for the first time in too long. He was angry still, very angry, but he could wait. He would bide his time, build up his lab again, maybe even help this doctor, and then take his revenge on the 'law'. His reverie was broken by the door opening. Before him stood a figure dressed in blue. The figure started to speak, but he didn't hear the words. Before him stood the law, but he didn't see it. He saw Julie. Everything that he had lost, because of the 'law'. His world contracted down to that single face. Everything else went black.

The roar of pain, rage and despair that he let out was heard down the hall. So was the sound of the impact against the door.

Murphy walked into the Darkman's hospital room. The man was sitting in the corner of the room; Murphy couldn't see his deformed face. Probably a good thing, since his confidence was draining slowly away. Better get it said, then. "You have to help me, help this city, because you can do that, you can get justice done, you..." the words came out in a rush, but stopped when the Darkman rose, his eyes flashing dangerously, his expression one of fury. Murphy backed away, the expression of fear on his face turning to terror when the Darkman let out a bellow of rage.

Murphy turned and fumbled the door handle, but his attacker was faster than he looked, and was across the room in a moment. He slammed into the policeman and the door at the same time, but then drew in a rasping, gasping breath and fell back, clutching his chest. Blood was soaking his hospital-issue shirt; he couldn't breathe. Murphy turned around again and just stood gaping. He could hear the Darkman say something, but by the time he had bent down to listen, the man was unconscious.

Before Murphy raced out of the room to get an orderly, or a nurse, or someone, his brain had enough time to register that it had sounded like the Darkman was repeating the name 'Julie'.

blackness replaced by light blurred blue grey [can't move!] and

"Good afternoon. How do you feel?"

The Darkman opened his eyes fully, blinked once and fastened his eyes on the man in the police uniform sitting on the chair on the other side of the room. "I attacked you." A statement of fact.

"Yes, you did. You managed to re-open a couple of the bullet wounds as well." Murphy was uneasy still. The Darkman had adjusted too easily to the light, too quickly. He remembered what the doctor had said, that the Darkman had the ability to consciously sharpen all his senses. He shivered.

"Ah. Well, it seems I am restrained, so I don't think I'll be attacking anyone for a while. Who are you and what do you want?"

"My name is Todd Murphy, and I want you to help me change this city."

The Darkman was silent for a moment, and then started wheezing hideously. Murphy was at first taken aback; then realised that the other man was laughing. "You...want me...to become a crime fighter?"

Murphy felt his face going red. "Yes, because you can," he replied, offended and a little angry at being mocked. "I overheard your little confrontation with Bellisarius, and you have to stop him. Maybe that's why I brought you here in the first place."

The Darkman stopped laughing. "You saved my life, then? Thank you. But perhaps it would have better if you hadn't." He closed his eyes (was that a tear?) and rested his head back against the pillow. His fists were balled, but he wasn't straining against the restraints. Murphy took this as a good sign. Still, the police officer felt nervous when the Darkman looked back up. There was no anger in his eyes, but there was...something else, something cold.

"Very well," was all he said.

Encouraged, Murphy began again. "You can work on increasing the effectiveness of your senses - the doctor told me all about it! - and then you'll be better, your emotions won't be as much of a problem. You'll need to train hard though."

Peyton Westlake shook his head, wondering at the sudden boyish enthusiasm of the man, like this was some kind of childhood dream for him. Maybe it was. My lab, I must have my lab back! he thought. He would move it to another part of the industrial plant as well, somewhere Julie couldn't find him. He had to tell that doctor what to get for him. And this police officer, he could be useful. There was a lot to do.