Darkness. Then a high definition, close-up picture of Jupiter was projected onto the dome overhead, lighting up the planetarium in shades of brown and yellow. As it did, a calm, reassuring voice echoed through the theater: Jupiter! The fifth planet in our solar system and the largest. Jupiter is a gas giant. Planet Earth would fit into it eleven times…
"Yes, we know all that," an elderly blonde woman in a tracksuit, Professor Cairns, absently murmured as her fingers ran across the console that she was huddled over. She was seemingly fragile but intelligent in expression, and at the moment, she was fiddling with the projectors and sound, rewinding video as she frantically searched for the clip she wanted. The recorded voice squealed as she fast-forwarded it. Images of planets and stars blurred over her face as she did.
Titan is the largest moon…
Her brow furrowed in frustration. "Come on, Neptune, where are you hiding?" The astrophysicist wasn't so deep in concentration that she didn't hear the sudden shuffling footsteps behind her. She stopped what she was doing, stiffened, and looked over her shoulder. "Hello?" she called out loudly.
Discovered by Urbain le Verrier in 1846…
She paused the video and now scanned the area around her. Her face was blue with the image of Neptune.
"Tim? Is that you?" she called again. It was hard to tell, but she was certain she was someone moving around in the darkness. "Tim?"
A huge shadow lunged at her from the side. Her scream was immediately silenced as an immense hand closed over her face, swamping her nose and mouth, cutting off her air. She staggered back against the console but her attacker pushed his body against hers, his grip like iron. A hand like a dinner plate found her neck and began to squeeze, choking her harder. She felt bones and cartilage pop in her throat, the sound deafening to her ears. Still, she flailed her arms and legs at him, fighting back, but refusing to make this easy for him. But in the end, it was. As her eyeballs rolled into the back of her head, the last thing Professor Cairns knew was the sound of the video booming through her ears.
A star begins as a collapsing ball of material composed mainly of hydrogen...
A new voice then shouted, "Golem!"
Kabal, Stryker, and Smoke stood just inside the main planetarium entrance, bathed in the blue-white starlight of Rigel. The Golem turned to face them and at last Kabal saw the face of the legendary man he'd only heard about in Kano's outlandish stories: a nightmarish face. A living skeleton. The Golem's milk-white, bald head, deep-set eyes, and misshapen ears gave him the look of the grotesque movie vampire Nosferatu. Further exaggerating those terrifying features was shriveled skin, dry as parchment. The Czech man grinned, exposing yellowing peg-teeth wrapped with dark brown tartar.
"Dobrý den, Oskare," Tomas, who'd shed most of his rags, greeted the man with a mischievous smile. "Dlouho jsme se neviděli."
Beside Kadeem and Tomas, Kurtis immediately raised his gun. "NYPD!" he roared. "You're under arrest for murder! Let the woman go and put your hands on your head!"
The Golem sneered, ignoring the detective, as he focused on his fellow countryman. "Tomáši Vrbadě, ty pes Lin Kuei, slyšel jsem, že jsi mrtvý."
"Slyšel jsi špatně. A teď jsi upoutal mou pozornost. Hrozná zpráva pro tebe," Tomas shot back.
The Golem began laughing, but it was a cold laugh, mirthless. Goosebumps exploded across Kabal's scarred flesh at the unnerving sound, and now it was his turn to pull out his Glock and aim. If the assassin noticed, he didn't particularly care. He squeezed Professor Cairns' throat one last time for good measure before he quickly hoisted her into the air and hurled her body at the three men. He then bolted into the shadows, oddly fast for a man of his size, his unearthly giggles reverberating behind him while the men ducked to avoid the flying corpse. After he danced out of the way just in time, Stryker fired his gun at the Golem but the bullet missed, the explosion loud but hollow.
It's hard to believe that many of these stars are not actually there anymore. Their light takes so long to reach us that many are actually long dead. Exploded into supernovas...
"Kurtis!" Kabal yelled before he chased after the man. The rows and rows of seats in the planetarium hindered his supernatural speed, however. There were just too many obstacles - namely the cushioned flip seats - in his way. He knocked them up as he ran and they banged like pistol shots against the seat backs. In the flickering projected light it was almost impossible to see where the Golem had gone.
The Van Buren supernova exploded in 1858...
Smoke, meanwhile, raced down one aisle. No sign of his quarry. He stopped dead, listening and scanning the theater with his cybernetic retinal implants. Just as he glanced towards the central projector in the heart of the planetarium, the projection on the screen changed and he saw that the Golem stood behind the unsuspecting Stryker. The assassin's enormous hands closed over the detective's face like the petals of a monstrous flower and dragged him backwards up the aisle. Startled, Stryker strained for air and tried to get his hand under the Golem's fingers to pull them away from his face, but it did no good.
This is an example of what we call a pulsar…
While Smoke lifted his hands to attack, Kabal wasted no time smashing his Glock over the back of the Golem's skull. The gigantic man sagged, allowing Stryker to dive free. He rubbed his red face and whooped for air, clearly weakened by the attack. Stunned, though, their prey swung around and punched Kabal savagely in the ribs, knocking him into the control panel, accidentally turning off the video in the process, blanketing the theater in dim ambient light. He dropped his gun as all the air left his lungs and filled up again with pain. Before he could recover, though, the Golem loomed massively over him, his hand closing over the detective's mask…
Click!
Smoke now had his cybernetic palm pointed at the assassin's back with the tiny missile bay open. The Golem cocked his head and defiantly closed his fingers over the oxygen tubing that connected Kabal's mask to the tank strapped to his back beneath his trenchcoat, threatening to crush it completely. Instantly, the detective started to choke. He began flailing for air but was helpless in the assassin's unyielding grip. And when he came to that realization, panic rushed in, panic like being stranded in shark-infested waters in the middle of the ocean, with water pulling and pushing and taunting and teasing him, filling up his lungs with saltwater, dragging him down to the depths where the sea monsters roamed free. He hadn't felt this kind of fear since he was a child.
The Lin Kuei warrior recognized his friend's distress and narrowed his unnaturally blue eyes. "Let him go or I will kill you, Oskar. I will kill you."
The assassin smirked as he glanced at Smoke again, fearlessly glancing at the weapon trained on his head. But he did as he was commanded and released Kabal from his grip, who then scrambled away towards Stryker like a mewling kitten. His cheeks burned behind his mask; he couldn't tell if it was from his near-death experience or sheer humiliation over being so easily manhandled.
His partner looked at him. "You all right?" he asked, his face bruised in finger points.
"Think so," the other gasped. Then he narrowed his eyes behind his mask as he fixated on the Czech man. "Who are you working for, Dzundza?" he demanded to know.
The Golem smiled horribly and then suddenly sprinted towards the planetarium's control console, drawing Kabal's gunfire and Smoke's missile, before he drilled his fists into the panel like an angry ape. The recorded voice-over squealed madly to life once again, the projected images of planets, stars, and galaxies flashing insanely over the ceiling and their faces just as the missile exploded. Thick, black smoke filled up the theater in an instant.
Their light takes so long to reach us that many are actually long dead. Exploded into supernovas...
The Golem wickedly laughed in victory as he quickly took advantage of the chaos and bolted for the exit. Kabal fired his Glock again but it was too late. A rectangle of streetlight cut a hole through the haze after the assassin flung open the door and made his escape. The three of them ran to the doorway after him, but they were too late. They immediately heard the screech of tires from outside. When they burst through the open door, they saw an unmarked black van speeding away.
"Damn it!" Kurtis yelled.
Kabal was not deterred. He bolted after the escaping van and caught up to it within a microsecond, aiming his pistol at the rear tire. He shot it and it burst in a loud explosion of air, falling onto the rim. Sparks flew as the van kept racing down the alley, not slowing down but speeding up. The detective kept pace with it and moved to aim for the other tire. This time, however, the back door flung open and machine gunfire sprayed at him. With grace and luck unrivaled, he danced around most of the bullets, seeing them move much slower than him and anticipating how to avoid them. But one stray one got through and collided with his chest, violently knocking him to the side. As the van squealed off into the busy street, he crashed into the brick wall to his left and slumped onto a pile of stinking garbage bags.
"Kadeem!" Stryker's voice howled as the detective now heard footsteps running towards him.
"Are you alright, old friend?" Tomas asked him as they reached him.
He groaned as he sat up, his chest throbbing, his heart pounding. "I'm fine," he mumbled as he looked down. The offending bullet had smashed into his Kevlar armor, but the ass-end of it still stuck out. "Ruined my damn shirt." He grimaced as he gave his hand to the Czech man to yank him out of the garbage. "At least it wasn't my head, I suppose."
"Yeah, at least," his partner hissed, clearly annoyed with him for his impetuousness.
"I'm fine, you old mother hen," he admonished as Tomas pulled him to his feet. Then he looked down the alleyway where the Golem and the van had sped away. "We're never going to catch up with him now. Not in time to solve this puzzle, at any rate."
"To hell with this game, Kadeem!" he exploded. "Whoever this guy is, he's playing us like fools. And people are dying because of it."
"And more people will die if we don't figure this out," the other shot back.
"You don't care about those people," he replied. "Not really. You're getting off on this. And you and I both know it."
Kabal's heart quickened at the accusation. "There is nothing wrong with enjoying my work, Kurtis," he snapped as Tomas silently looked from him to Stryker and back again. "It is possible to save people and still have fun doing it."
"Just be sure you don't lose yourself to the darkness in the process," he said. "And for the record, I'm not having fun."
"Life is what you make of it," he countered. "Now, come on. I think Miss Andrea Wenceslas knows more than she's letting on."
XXXXX
The gallery was empty when they returned to it only an hour later, and Kabal was in front of the lost Vermeer, tapping away wildly on his phone to look for clues to help him solve the puzzle. Stryker, Mansfield, and Smoke hovered close by, brainstorming as to how it could be a fake. And next to all of them was Miss Wenceslas, her face a veritable storm cloud of fury. She, not surprisingly, had been less than forthcoming answering their questions, clearly insulted at their accusation that she was somehow involved.
"This had better be good, or I will have all of your badges," she hissed for the fifth time since they'd all arrived.
"It's a fake," Kabal murmured. "Has to be."
"This painting has been subjected to every test known to science-"
"Then it's a very good fake," he snapped at her. Then he rounded on her. "You know, don't you? This is you, isn't it?"
"Lieutenant, my time is being wasted," her voice haughtily lilted, the aristocracy in her voice strong as she addressed Mansfield. "Would you mind showing yourself, and your underlings, out? Now."
Suddenly, the iPhone rang. Finally! he thought. He grabbed it from inside his jacket pocket, answered, and put it on speaker.
"It's a fake," he announced before anyone could say anything on the other end. "The painting is a fake, that's why Reynolds and Cairns were killed." He waited a moment for someone to respond to him, but there was only silence. "Oh come on, proving it is just a detail!" he yelled in frustration. "We've solved it! We've figured it out. The painting's a fake, that's the answer, that's why he was killed."
More silence.
Kabal angrily growled. "Okay, fine! I'll prove it's a fake. Just give me time, will you give me time?"
Silence.
And then a voice spoke from the iPhone. "Ten," the small, scared voice said. A chill swept the room as they all realized who was on the other end.
Mansfield's eyes bulged in horror. "It's a kid. Oh God, it's a kid."
"What did he say?" Tomas asked, his eyebrow lifting in confusion.
"Ten," Kabal answered, equally as puzzled.
"Nine," the child slowly said.
The former Black Dragon looked at everyone in alarm. "It's a countdown. He's giving me time."
"Oh, Jesus!" Stryker moaned as he started pacing back and forth.
Kabal, meanwhile leapt to the painting, staring at it, devouring it with his eyes. "It's a fake, it's a fake," he mumbled under his breath. "So how do I prove it's a fake? How?"
"Eight."
With blood pressure skyrocketing, Kabal stalked towards Miss Wenceslas. "This child is going to die, do you understand? Tell me why the painting is a fake! Tell me!" he yelled. Miss Wenceslas merely looked at him in amazement, clearly stunned.
"Seven."
"It-" she started to answer, but he abruptly cut her off.
"No! Shut up!" he shouted at her. "Don't say anything. It only counts if I'm the one who figures it out!" He looked at the painting in desperation. For the first time since this started, genuine fear began creeping in, and doubt that he could save this boy's life. "It's got to be staring me in the face!"
"Six."
"How?" he breathed. "Allan Reynolds knew. But how? How?"
"Five." The boy was sobbing now.
"He's speeding up!" Tomas yelled at his friends. "Stryker! Kabal!"
"Four."
And suddenly, Kabal came to a dead halt. He thoughtfully stared at the painting as a lightbulb flicked on in his head. "Oh! In the planetarium!" he cried. "You heard what it said! Oh, that's genius!" He tossed the iPhone to Stryker and took his own phone out, tapping away frantically.
"Three."
"What's genius?" Stryker demanded to know. Kabal ignored him, tapping away, lost in his own world as he searched for confirmation of his suspicions. Google, at this moment, was his best friend.
"Two."
"Oh, this is beautiful," he murmured when he found what he was looking for. "I love this!"
"Kabal!" Mansfield now shouted at him.
"One."
Kabal snatched the phone from Stryker. "The Van Buren supernova," he sternly declared.
Silence. Then, the child started crying even more. "Help me!" he wailed. "Are you there? Help me. Please!"
The entire room breathed a collective sigh of relief before the detective tossed the iPhone to Mansfield. "There you go. Find out where he is, and go and pick him up." As he said it, he held out his phone like a badge of honor, showing it to Kurtis, Tomas, and Miss Wenceslas. On the screen they saw a black and white photo of a large, blobby white star. "It's called the Van Buren supernova," he explained with a satisfied smirk. "Only appeared in the sky in 1858." He then held the phone next to the lost Vermeer. The same configuration of stars had been painted in the sky over Delft, including the Van Buren supernova.
Stryker smiled. "So how could it have been painted in the 1640s?"
"Exactly," his partner replied triumphantly.
While Kabal basked in his moment of glory, Stryker's own phone beeped. Curiously, he yanked it out of his pocket and checked it. It was from Agent Walker: My patience is wearing thin. He nervously bit his lip.
XXXXX
Back at the station, Miss Wenceslas sat nervously at the table in an interrogation room. It was small and cold in here, with the detritus of policework - manila folders and crime scene photos of the lost Vermeer - littering the steel tabletop. Opposite of her sat Kabal and Stryker, who glared at her until the gallery owner began to squirm in her chair. Mansfield and Smoke, however, silently observed them all from the room behind the two-way mirror.
"You know, it's interesting," Kabal opened. "Bohemian stationery. An assassin named after a Prague legend and you...Miss Wenceslas. There's a distinctly Czech feel to the whole case. Is that where all this leads?"
No response.
He craned his head around to look at his partner. "What are we looking at, Stryker?"
Kurtis crossed his arms and glared at Miss Wenceslas. "Criminal conspiracy. Fraud. Accessory after the fact, at the very least. Kidnapping. The murder of the old woman. All those people in that apartment building-"
"I didn't know anything about that!" the woman cried, and Kabal immediately believed her. "All those things...Please. Believe me. I just wanted my share. The thirty million…" She sighed, defeated. "I found a little old man in Argentina," she confessed. "Genius. I mean really. Brushwork immaculate. Could fool anyone." Then she scoffed and ruefully looked up at Kabal. "Well, nearly anyone. But I didn't know how to go about convincing the world the picture was genuine. It was just an idea. A spark which he blew into a flame."
"Who?" he pressed.
"I don't know," she murmured, looking at her hands. Mansfield scoffed, so Miss Wenceslas looked at her in desperation. "It's true!" she cried. "It took me a long time but eventually I was put in touch with...people. His people. But there was never any real contact. Just messages. Whispers."
Now Kabal leaned over the table to look straight in her eyes. "And did those whispers have a name?" he asked.
She looked up at him, clearly terrified, and nodded.
"Who?" he demanded to know.
She gulped. "Dominic Kano."
Kabal leaned back in his seat, stunned at the revelation. Then without a word, he got up and left the room with Stryker quickly gathering up their evidence and following after him. Both men joined the L-T and Smoke in the observation room a moment later, with the former pacing the floor in shock, as shook up as anyone had ever seen him. He supposed he knew that someday, it would come to this. But this was not the one he was expecting to exact retribution on him.
"So it is Kano," the L-T opened as he pondered on this revelation.
"No," he shook his head. "This isn't him. This isn't the Kano I know. That Kano's name is Trevor." He looked at them. "I've never met this one. I've only heard Kano talk about him when he got shit-faced drunk."
"Then who is it?" Stryker demanded to know. "His father? Brother."
Kabal shook his head again. "No. His son."