MASK NOIR: Ulterior Loco-Motive

by jtrigonis

Vanessa Warfield wants to leave VENOM for MASK, and in doing so, she falls for Brad Turner. But are her motives pure, or is VENOM plotting some sordid snare for the Mobile Armored Strike Kommand?

MASK NOIR
ULTERIOR LOCO-MOTIVE

PROLOGUE

"There's a speed limit in this town, Mr. Turner. 65 miles an hour."
"How fast was I going?"
"I'd say about 25."

Brad Turner never even had the chance to utter the words, but he and the rest of us could sense there was a sort of dark magic in the air the day MASK founder Matt Trakker assigned him the role of "buddy" to the Mobile Armored Strike Kommand's newest agent. A buddy is the point of contact for a new recruit at a company. In an organization as secretive as MASK, and with a new agent possessing as unsavory a background as this particular recruit had relevant work experience, the role of buddy inherited an added gravitas: he would be the only agent whose real identity would be known by the recruit. Until the recruit could be trusted. Until MASK could be sure the recruit was one of us.

Sure, it was the same for me when I joined MASK, but I certainly didn't come with the weight of all the artifice, hostility, and deception that fattened up this recruit's Million Miler. And that baggage was pure VENOM in more ways than one.

And the recruit? None other than one Vanessa Warfield.

Now I'm sure you can appreciate the absolute need for utmost discretion here, and as you might figure, this tale, it doesn't end like your typical primetime cartoon. No, there's much more to this sordid yarn full of lust, deception, betrayal, and perhaps that most deadly vice of all: love. And I watched it unfold right before Bogey II's eyes.

Here's how it all went down…

CHAPTER ONE

"Vanessa Warfield?!" Brad Turner and Dusty Hayes exclaimed almost in sync as the other senior MASK agents looked on, many of their jaws agape with sheer incredulity. Alex Sector and Bruce Sato sat at the familiar round table, the screwdrivers they had recently been turning to adjust their respective masks now motionless. In a corner, Hondo MacLean stood with arms crossed, his stony face etched with concern. Gloria Baker, once the team's only female member and measure of perspective against such wild notions as this, paced over to the team's leader, shaking her head every step of the way. But before she could open her mouth to speak, Matt Trakker leaned forward, pressed his elbows onto the green and black checkerboard of glass before him, and clasped his hands together.

"Before any of you say another word," he began with a firmness in his voice that quickly softened by the stretching of a smile, "I know what you're all thinking. And you're absolutely right to think it."

Dusty grabbed a seat beside Matt. "This has gotta be some kinda gag, Matt. Tell us your foolin' around."

"If the fool would persist at his folly, he would become wise," Bruce muttered. "Continue, Matt."

Matt's hand scratched the patch of white hair on one side of his head, then spoke to the core group of agents who have been working overtime and fighting crime for over a decade now, as well as a few of us more recent additions, namely myself––that is, Noir––and two others, codenamed Caddy and Sidekick. With all earnestness, Matt explained at a high level that of late, Vanessa Warfield, to this day the only female agent of the Vicious Evil Network of Mayhem, has had a change of heart. More so, as proof of her genuine intentions to leave VENOM, she had been feeding MASK anonymous tips as to Maximus Mayhem's master plans. The aging new leader of this terrorist organization has apparently been growing senile in his goldenmost years, which has been the one thing that's kept him and his watchdogs, Sly Rax and Cliff Dagger, off Vanessa's trail for this long.

"Now," Matt continued, "she's looking for a way out, and I'd like to be in a position to grant it to her."

"By making her an agent?" Alex growled, then shifted back to his proper self. "With all due respect, old chap, I don't think that's the best idea."

Matt reaches out an arm to his oldest and closest friend. "Of course, Alex. And I would never think of making this decision alone. We've been through so much together, and even our newest agents have felt the heat of battle and forged themselves within it. No, this is something we decide together. But I do believe that everyone deserves a second chance, and if Vanessa's asking for that chance, then perhaps we can give her that chance, even if only as a temporary agent.

"Temporary agent?" Gloria sat down. "What do you mean by that, Matt?"

In typical Trakker fashion, Matt brandished that smile that sets a room at ease, even in the midst of a hurricane. His voice lowered almost to a whisper. "If we can work with Vanessa as an agent of MASK, she may be able to provide us with further insight on how to defeat VENOM once and for all. Then, there might not need to be a reason for MASK to exist in the world, and I for one can't think of a better world than that to aspire towards."

The whole room fell quiet, the only sound being the squeaks and swivels of old metal joints and seat cushions beneath the bums of the agents seated around the table. I've been a member of this organization for two years now, and I had to hand it to Matt, he certainly knows how to quell an uprising. I watched as eyes darted around the room: from Brad to Dusty, Dusty to Gloria, Alex to Bruce, Bruce to myself, Caddy to me, me to Sidekick. Subtle nods followed.

Bruce's fingers rose to meet his chin. "A serpent that sheds its scales is often still a serpent at heart and scale."

"Bruce may be right," Alex stroked at his gray goatee thoughtfully. "If we agree to this, we shouldn't reveal ourselves or our motives too quickly. She could use them against us, especially our identities."

"I agree," Brad stepped closer to Matt. "Vanessa's gonna need a buddy. Someone to acclimate her to life as an agent of MASK and who can keep a keen eye on her. One person whose identity she can be trusted with before she knows all of our identities."

"This way," Hondo interjected, "she can feel like part of the team before actually becoming part of the team."

"Exactly!" Brad exclaimed. Matt smiled straight at him. "Are you volunteering for the job, Brad."

"Me?" Brad quipped before returning the smile. "Well, heck, I guess I am."

CHAPTER TWO

It had been two weeks since Vanessa joined the ranks of the Mobile Armored Strike Kommand, and in my brief encounters with her, it was quite obvious that she and Brad were getting along famously. Maybe too famously. I viewed them in the same fashion as everyone else did, through the visors of our masks, as we were required to don our masks in her presence to protect our identities until she was fully indoctrinated into MASK and therefore deemed trustworthy. All except for Brad.

A guy like me doesn't need any special powers bestowed upon me by Bogey II to see that, by the end of the first week, Vanessa had become very comfortable with her buddy. The difference is that my training both as a writer and private investigator provided me with additional, more subtle observations that my fellow agents might not pick up on. The coy, well-timed smiles. The overanxious laughs laced with butterflies caught in the nets of their stomachs. The awkward silences between them. Even through Brad's aviators, I could see, or perhaps sense, his eyes sending electrical signals into Vanessa's from across our Table Round.

The more I saw of Vanessa, the more I didn't trust her. To be accurate, though, nobody trusted her except Matt, and even he had his reservations, but they were more akin to the reservations with any new recruit. What set everyone a bit more at ease was that Vanessa never knew where she was or how she got there. MASK's headquarters and the run-of-the-mill gas station on the outskirts of Carson City that concealed it remained a mystery to her thanks to Blinder, a mask that, when activated, created a ganzfeld effect, depriving Vanessa of all sight, sound, and other sensory inputs that might give away our location as Brad drove her to and from Boulder Hill.

By the second week, it was clear at least to me that Brad was beginning to trust Vanessa. And why not? They were the same make and model, Brad and Vanessa. He was the bad boy of our little good-guy group. The rock star who played music for a living when not taking to the street and skies on Condor beneath his signature Hocus Pocus mask. And she, VENOM's token bad babe, raspy voiced and poker-faced. Tough as nine-inch nails, too. With Warfield behind the wheel of Manta and Whip hot and ready to strike, she was a force to be reckoned with for friend and foe alike. I know––I've experienced it first hand, both in the field and right here at home base.

"What are you supposed to be?" she asked the day we officially met. Her glassy eyes darted up and down the length of my blue trench coat, gazed with an intensity that only comes from years of criminal activity and always getting what she wants. My reply echoed within the orange and blue steel of Bogey II, "I'm just a fan of old black and white movies. And what's with you?" I motioned my hand at the veggie bowl she was pulling out of the mess hall's microwave. "You a vegan or something?"

Vanessa smiled wide, held her bowl close to her chest. She leaned in close. Menacingly close. "Don't worry, 'Noir,' isn't it? The only meat I eat is men." It took me a second to process. I figured she was still a bit untamed at heart, but her words were vicious! She turned away from me just as Brad stepped over with his own lunch in hand, and in that instance, Vanessa's demeanor shifted from a cynical brat to what I could only describe as a flush-cheeked schoolgirl.

As she passed, Brad followed her into the kitchen. I couldn't help noticing his lunch. It was a sandwich. A sandwich overflowing with grilled vegetables. Not a strip of meat could be found.

Not a strip but him.

CHAPTER THREE

That's when I decided to put my P.I. skills to use for the benefit of MASK and also for Brad, whom I feared was getting a bit too closely attached to our little red-haired rogue from the Vicious Evil Network of Mayhem. Sure, the organization wasn't the same since its founder, Miles Mayhem, had died under somewhat questionable circumstances (and not entirely due to his age) and his twin brother took command, but it was still one hundred percent VENOM, and each word of that acronym still applied. If anything, they had gotten more vicious and evil under the reign of Maximus. According to Matt, Vanessa had been tipping MASK off to VENOM's whereabouts for the past year before asking for a meeting between them to discuss her potential exit strategy. There's something nagging at my gut about this whole situation. What's Vanessa's motive for betraying Mayhem? What's really in it for her by donning a not-so-clean white hat and neutralizing the black hats she once rolled out with, perhaps once and for all? Has she really had a change of heart?

These were just some of the thoughts running rampant through the dark alleyways of my mind while I sat in the driver's seat of the Pontiac Fiero I was recently promoted to co-pilot alongside Julio Lopez. Fireforce here was a prototype vehicle of Alex's design that could split into two separate armored vehicles to fight the forces of evil on two fronts. We'll see if it actually catches on, but so far, I'm digging the rock star vibe it exudes.

I tilted up the brim of my pork pie and gazed through a pair of custom night vision shades at Brad's Reno apartment. I checked Fireforce's digital dashboard clock. It was just past midnight. "A little late for a school night, eh, Turner?" I grumbled to myself, then tossed some pizza flavored Combos into my mouth to kill the stale taste of coffee still lingering between my teeth and tongue. Brad lived in a small apartment in the heart of the city. Fortunately, it came with a parking spot for Condor. I couldn't be sure if this was the first time Brad had brought Vanessa to his place, but there she was, clumsily dismounting his neon green steed with the aid of Brad's hand. Her head was fully enclosed in Blinder, its visor glowing a pale purple in the moonlit dark.

As Vanessa stepped her other leg down, she pressed a little too much weight onto her other foot and not enough into Brad's hand, and her six-inch heel snapped, toppling her into Brad's arms. As if on cue, a brief shower washed over them, and they hurried beneath the awning of the entrance to Brad's apartment. I could hear the sound of keys jingling even from the distance where I was parked. A chuckle from him, a muffled, tinny giggle from the babe in the iron mask.

And then, silence. I switched Fireforce on, shifted her into gear, and inched forward. The black light that softly lit up the foyer faded out, replaced by the natural faint glow of a 40-watt bulb that illuminated the two of them. At that moment, I knew that Brad had gotten himself into trouble. But who am I to judge the feelings felt between two people, particularly these two people? Well, if it might put my fellow agents at risk, then I'm the judge and the jury, as well as the photographer who snapped some pictures of the shadows of Brad Turner and Vanessa Warfield getting hot and heavy just beyond his front door.

As if on cue, the clouds above called off their brief assault and opened up just enough moonlight to allow me to capture a single frame before the glass door steamed up and the couple slipped beyond the threshold and into the darkness of that small apartment in Reno.

I could smell the honeysuckle from here.

CHAPTER FOUR

Over the next few weeks, I made Vanessa Warfield the target of a deeper investigation, unbeknownst to my MASK teammates. The majority of my colleagues were very much by the book. Me, on the other hand? I could prowl the sleazy backstreets of a red light Reno night or the vast casino-lined wasteland of Las Vegas; get lost in the quainter alleyways of Carson City. And I can't even count how many cases I cracked on the meaner streets of Chicago, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. As much as I may loathe the lifestyle associated with a private eye, I could certainly wheel and deal with the best and worst of 'em, hence why I was seeking something a tad different when I cashed in my chips from New York for the deserts of Nevada. I wanted a more permanent gig (well, as permanent as you can get in this racket) where I knew the good guys from the bad at first glance. This way, I might not have to resort to inner city espionage to get at the truth. I thought I found that with MASK.

Boy, was I wrong.

I kept close tabs on Vanessa's whereabouts as much as I could in between a few other cases and my duties in Boulder Hill. That also meant keeping tabs on Brad, which I did feel strange about at first, but it was partially because of him I was doing any of this. That little man who lived in the pit of my stomach told me he was in deep, and no amount of peppermint or antacid pills in the world could soothe this little sixth sense of mine. Except evidence.

As with any proper investigation, I gathered up as much dirt as I could on Ms. Vanessa Warfield. Much of it was fairly simple to pull from the MASK computer, and the bulk of it I already knew about her, like the fact that she was quite the expert in infiltration, espionage, and even sabotage. After further digging, I discovered that she had degrees in social and behavioral psychology, and that, prior to joining Project: Spectrum back in '83, she worked her way up from intern to Psychological Warfare Specialist for The Pentagon during the opening term of Reagan's presidency. Following the questionable death of her father, Vanessa left Washington, D.C. and the next time anyone would see her would be beneath a mask called Whip and behind the wheel of a Nissan 300ZX codenamed Manta.

It was after pouring over all of this I was even more convinced that I could not, under any circumstances, underestimate Vanessa Warfield and what she might be capable of, and that there had to be some ulterior motive to all of this. But what?

From then on, I was even more careful tailing her. I tried my best to conceal my trail each night, swapping out Fireforce for a couple of other rides, including an old orange dirt bike I found in storage at the station. I kept as much distance as I could, relying heavily on some little tools of the P.I. trade and surveillance tricks I picked up from half a lifetime of watching old crime movies and 20/20 specials. Most of Vanessa's schedule was fairly routine, and for a while, she only went to her own apartment for a quick shower and change of clothes. Then Brad would pick her up and drive her back to Boulder Hill for further training. Not that she needed it; Vanessa was no neophyte to this world, and she was quite adept at everything from various forms of martial arts to weapons from nunchucks to a lead pipe. When her day was done, it was back to Brad's apartment after a bite to eat. Rinse and repeat. I was getting nowhere by just following Vanessa's trail. I needed to go a step further.

Once I found out where she lived in the affluent Riverwalk District, I broke into her apartment to plant a bug and see where I could hide a few miniature cameras. One strange thing I noticed was that the apartment didn't seem all that lived in; either that, or Vanessa was quite the neat freak. Even the lone bookshelf stacked with a mix of old psychology textbooks and dime store crime novels was meticulously arranged. It wasn't until I reached the bedroom that I would uncover Vanessa's darker side. The door was ajar, so I pressed into it and peeked in. There was a bed fit for an Ice Queen, its sheets strewn about in the usual fashion. Above the headboard hung all types of play things––from cuffs, leather whips, and gags to other devices I wouldn't be able to mention on network television. Maybe not even Cable!

"Naughty girl," I muttered to myself. The room smelled of musty leather and dirty money. And honeysuckle, too.

I pressed into the door a bit more. It creaked open a little wider. On a bedside table, Vanessa's mask sat upright on the side table. It seemed to stare right at me. In fact, I could see in its visor that it was staring at me. Recording me.

"Shit!" I backed away swiftly, pulling the bedroom door with me to set it ajar, and darted away. My mission here was done. The bug was set. A couple cameras were hidden throughout the minimalist little apartment.

Just then, I heard a slithering of the letter "S" seething into my ears, and I realized in a blink that none of what I had just done would matter in the end. By the time I heard the first word, the jig was up.

"Stiletto, fire!"

A light flashed in my periphery as I turned. A sharp pain struck my shoulder, knocked me down onto Vanessa's hardwood floor. I was out for the count.

When I awoke, I had the distinct feeling of being in a coffin, buried alive. Besides the throbbing pulses that pounded my shoulder and the back of my head, I could feel motion, as if this whole casket were mobile. Suddenly, I heard the thunderous revving of an engine fading in to my… left? Right? It was hard to tell. My eyes were finally able to crack open. A starry sky, as if in a dream, was shooting past at high speed through a thick pane of violet-colored glass.

Claustrophobia set it! My hands instinctively leaped up and pounded at the glass. As they did, from the corner of my eyes, movement. Beside me, a dark figure clad in leather and chains, and wearing a mask, peered into what was apparently the sidecar of this man-eating motorcycle. My Charon pressed a button, and I was soon surrounded by a soft hissing sound. The enclosed sidecar filled up with gas, and shortly after, my eyes closed without struggle.

All I could do was await the coming of Hell, no coins required for this boatman.

CHAPTER FIVE

"Hey, you're Maximus Mayhem. You used to be big."
"I am big. It's the racing series that got small."

My eyes struggled to pry themselves open because of a pulsating beam of pain that felt like a hangover after a night of heavy drinking. Unfortunately, instead of a drop of Jim Beam left in my glass, there was a little drop of poison that went by the name of VENOM staining my glass with regret.

The room around me was fuzzy from the throbbing, and the hanging fluorescent lights created an ill lens flare that only added to the dizziness I felt, but I could still make out where I seemed to be––an abandoned warehouse of sorts that once stocked railway parts. Now what was left were the specters of steam engines and switches unused since the wilder western days. Adding to the creep factor were the shadow figures of two poisonous asps. One of them I recognized immediately as the guy who drove me here in a glass-capped hearse. The other, a rather tall goon donning a rust-colored mask of ominous proportions, which was matched only by the mountains of muscle bulging from his wrists to his neck. I knew him, too, but I had to let on that I didn't know either of my captors.

"Where am I?" I managed to mouth these three words from the Mojave heat in my throat.

"I'll ask the questions here, thank you very much." Sly Rax sprayed his peculiar brand of tough talk through that grayscale mask of his, though it seemed he was playing around with color these days, sporting a new maroon-colored leather motorcycle jacket over a black shirt and jeans. He kept all the menacing fixins––a couple of sonic hand grenades, chains, and boot knives––in place, naturally. "Who are you?" he continued.

"Me? I'm just a guy."

Bruno Sheppard turned to Rax, leaned in. "This 'guy' stinks of the law," he growled in a whisper, though loud enough for me to hear. "Oh, I agree. With that Hollywood-lookin' get up, you could only be a b-movie extra or a detective."

"Both better than the current job I have," I quipped.

"And what job is that?"

"Private investigator."

"Ahhh, now we're gettin' somewhere." Rax got serious. "Who sent you, and why?"

"Uh, uh, uh," I shook my head. "P.I.-client confidentiality. Can't help you there, pal."

"Oh no, eh?" Rax turned to Sheppard, who lifted up his masked mug. "We have ways of making our 'guests' talk."

"Magna-Beam, on!" At Sheppard's command, his mask lit up. He aimed his visor toward some random train or railroad parts on a nearby shelf. A heavy bit of iron lifted off the shelf and made its way toward me, and at quite a high speed, too. Instinctually, I winced my eyes and braced for impact when it abruptly stopped. When I opened my eyes, the large bit of metal was indistinguishable from any other bit of heavy metal as it hovered a mere three inches from my head. I could feel the electromagnetic waves around it bending with the power of Shepherd's Magna-Beam.

"That's enough, Wrecker!" A familiar voice emerged from a back room about a hundred or so feet from where the three of us stood. The sound of heels clicked closer and closer, followed further off by a flopping of Florsheims and dead weight that could only belong to one man. As I turned my head and the footsteps ceased, the slender, tight-fitted form of Vanessa Warfield crouched down beside me, masked by light, shadow, and perhaps the most intimidating mask of all. She grabbed at the lapels of my trench coat, then paused a moment. And in that moment, I could see her baby greens just beyond the navy sheen of her visor. She jerked me in close in an almost rehearsed fashion, then shoved me hard into the back of the seat I was currently tied to by thick hemp. The blisters on my back from Rax's earlier attack flared up. I cringed from the shock of pain as a blacker shadow crossed over me, enshrouding Vanessa in the same darkness.

"So, what do we have here?" The booming voice of VENOM's newly appointed heir and brother to its previous leader, for whom the Vicious Evil Network of Mayhem is named, echoed through the thick crimson sheet of his mask. Maximus Mayhem towered above me, stepped in close to my face so that I had to turn away from the stench of old man and Lagerfeld. He peered over at Vanessa. "Do you know this joker, Ice Queen?" A pause, then a metallic whisper between them. "And is he MASK?"

Vanessa stood up, turned away. "Who he is isn't important," she began. "As for being M.A.S.K…." Her head turned, and beneath their respective masks, Vanessa and Mayhem's eyes must've met. "He's not MASK, at least not to my knowledge, anyway. This fool was probably hired by one of my John's to keep tabs on me." Mayhem chortled like an Indy car's engine that couldn't quite make it around the track like it used to. He rested his gloved hand on the small of Vanessa's back, traced it farther down until it stopped closer to her inner thighs than any of us currently in the room felt comfortable with. Including Vanessa. "Those boys of yours should know not to mess with what's mine."

There was no protest from the Ice Queen. Mayhem turned to me. "Python…" he spat, and his mask activated with a flaring up of red energy.

"No," Vanessa spun around. "Allow me. Whip, on!"

The energy beam that shot out from Vanessa's mask wrapped around both my leg and the leg of the chair. With a subtle flick of her head, the plasmic whip jerked back and flipped both chair and myself onto the cold concrete floor below. Again, the Stiletto wounds on my back flared up, as did the thundering flames between my temples. And now, I could feel a sprain in my ankle. Vanessa's mask met my gaze. "Let that be a warning, punk. Tell whoever hired you to leave me to my business."

Vanessa stormed off. "Take him back to the––"

"No," Mayhem asserted himself. "He stays. Just because you're sure he's not something more than just a disgruntled ex's hired help doesn't mean I am. We'll leave him here until our plan is complete."

"What plan would that be?" Yeah, that was me. I didn't know it was me until I watched Vanessa's head dart back around in my direction. I actually thought I said it in my head, but the words actually trickled out of my mouth inaudibly, or so I thought. Mayhem laughed that broken down jalopy chortle once more.

"Keep it up, kid, and you're gonna wear out our welcome mat. Get the man up, fellas." Rax and Sheppard yanked me upright and slammed me down hard. I could now add "pain in my butt" to my growing list of ailments. They stepped back as Mayhem lurched forward. "You got spunk, and I appreciate that. The plan is simple: to unmask the identities of our arch nemeses that have foiled my organization's plans time and time again. Then, we hunt them down when they're most vulnerable and eradicate them once and for all!"

Sheppard slammed his fist in his hand. Rax grunted. "Yeah, and in between, we're gonna make a little money by stealing some gold from right outta the Rocky Mountains."

Rocky Mountains? I thought to myself, mostly as a reminder, but I had the feeling I wasn't in Reno anymore. Or Nevada, for that matter. From across the way, the sound of a small plane filled the wide open warehouse. A crimson glider came in for a landing and transformed into a sleek cruise bike in mid-flight. Vampire. That's when I realized that Rax and Sheppard weren't the only goons occupying this warehouse. All around me stood other VENOM agents and drones, masks on, cheering and chanting "Down with MASK! Down with MASK!, fists pumping into the air like monstrous pistons.

I turned back, and all I could see was my own reflection in the blood-red visor that concealed Mayhem's face but never his motives.

"You wouldn't happen to own a mask now, would you,…dick?"

CHAPTER SIX

"What are you doing here,…Noir?" Vanessa paid a visit to my little holding cell in this secret VENOM warehouse shortly after Rax and Shappard locked me up in it. Behind her, two generic agents in masks similar to Mayhem's but no doubt powerless, stood cradling a pair of plasma rifles. I shifted myself on the rickety twin bed, resting my sprained leg down carefully onto the concrete and gazed up at my captor, the Ice Queen herself.

"This place bugged?" I asked.

"No, it's not."

"Would you tell me if it was?"

"No, I wouldn't."

"Hmm. Well, if you must know, I was tailing you."

"No shit, Sherlock. Why?"

"Why do you think? C'mon, now, you're a bright girl. BA in psych, MA in behavioral psych from NYU, all on daddy's dime, no doubt. And then there's that wealth of experience in political strategy––"

"Just what are you getting at?"

"Something in my gut tells me you're not as thawed out as you'd like us to believe." I stood up, carefully, and kept my distance from the invisible shards of ice-armor before me. The drone agents shuffled, but Vanessa waved her hand for them to stand down.

"Us?" she asked.

"Nice try, but no dibs, in case this cell is bugged. All you need to know is that you've made it personal."

"Personal?"

"A certain rock star on a motorcycle personal."

I couldn't ascertain any kind of emotional response in Vanessa, whose face was still encased behind that expressionless mask of hers. There was only the subtlest of movements of her head a half an inch or so to one side, like the way a small dog crooks its head at a sound it recognizes, but can't quite place where it's heard it before. Then she stepped closer to me, pressed her body into me as she backed me up into the corner of the cell.

"What's happening between me and him is none of your concern."

"Oh, but it is my concern, Icy. Especially now. He's fallen for you, hands down, and when he finds out what you're up to––about this grand plan––and that all of it was a lie, he's gonna be broken."

"Not all of it is a lie."

"Really now? Spare me your––"

Vanessa slammed her hand onto the wall right beside my head, used her elbow to lean in closer to me than before. I was now face to mask with her, with only an inch or two of air between us.

"It's…complicated."

"Enlighten me."

"You'll find out…in nine-month's time.

"Oh!" The realization hit me like a freight train going 200 on rusty tracks that might go at any minute. I dropped my gaze from my reflection in Vanessa's visor to her extra tight jumpsuit, just below her chest.

"No offense, I.Q., but are you sure it's his?"

"Maybe you'll find out if you make it out of this alive," she blurted, then leaned back, all the while keeping her one hand propped up against the wall. Her hardness of her voice seemed to melt ever so subtly, even beneath the cold metal of her mask, with her next words. "Yes, I'm sure."

And I knew then that she was sure. "So, that's why things are…"

"…complicated. And not just between the two of us." With that final word, Sly Rax stepped his steel-toed boot heels into the cell.

"Everything all right in here, Ice Queen?" His voice suggested something was amiss, and I'm sure Vanessa picked up on it, too. She turned only her head.

"Everything's fine, Wrecker. What's the problem?"

"Oh, nothing much. Just that we can't hear anything back at base camp."

"Oops!" was all Vanessa said with extreme sarcasm. I could sense her eyes through that visor staring right at me. She paused, then pulled her arm back and walked away from where we had our intimate and apparently private conversation. I looked at where her hand had been, noticed the tiniest little cockroach-sized bug stuck in between a crack in the concrete. A bug of the espionage varietal. She stalked up to Rax, and said "I must've forgot it was there."

"Forgot, huh?" Rax quipped, then threw a stoic glance at me. All I did was smile, and that earned me a shiner from his leather-wrapped right fist, not too far from my nose. I dropped onto the torn-up mattress with a squeak. "C'mon," he continued. "Wolf's ready to begin Phase Two tomorrow, and he's itching to go over the job one more time."

Vanessa slammed the barred door closed, locked in. "Right. Operation: Cumbres Pass Ex––"

"Shhh!" Rax grabbed at her arm. "What's wrong with you?!"

"Get. Your. Hands. Off. Me!" I heard every word Vanessa crunched between her teeth as if they were pebbles as she smacked away Rax's grip on her. "And relax, will you? It's not like this guy––MASK or not––can do anything from in here to stop us." Vanessa stormed off, glancing once more in my direction before disappearing with the two drones. Rax also threw a final look in my direction before he followed them into the cold concrete labyrinth just beyond my cell.

When the swelling in my eye cooled down a bit, I limped my way over to the bars and listened, making sure my captors were gone before I decided to make my move. I rolled up the cuff of my trench coat, then yanked up the sleeve of my jumpsuit, revealing my watch. It was time to call in the cavalry. I tapped a coded message into the custom MASK timepiece containing the words "Rocky Mountains" and "Cumbres Pass," which would hopefully mean something to Matt and the team by the time it reached them. Thanks for the tip, Vanessa. I think. It couldn't have been an accident that she let that bit of info slip. Or could it? Was this all part of some double deception on her part?

I didn't have time to wax philosophic about Vanessa Warfield's ethics and whether or not I was wrong about her this whole time, despite the little man in my gut nagging at me for nearly a month now. I had to get out of here, and fast!

It was time I called in a little high-tech assistance.

CHAPTER SEVEN

The drone agents couldn't have known what to expect when they arrived at the foot of my cell and peered between the bars. They had come running, rifles drawn, shortly after they heard me making a ruckus. If only I could have seen past those crimson faceplates, I'm sure they'd have had their jaws agape, their eyes bulging in sheer terror. Aghast, they backed away, lowering their rifle barrels. The hair on their exposed forearms were a bed of nails fired up by electromagnetic fear. What these truly dim-witted goons saw must have given them quite a chill.

Inside the cell stood a flickering translucent image of yours truly! It shifted colors, from pale green to a deep maroon, then a crisp blue, and back again. Around it, an aura glowed an intense white, as if it were breathing. Oh, I was certainly having an out-of-body experience of a digital kind, but to the drones, this ghostly visitor was a doppelganger from the Great Beyond. They turned their masks toward me. I was crouched in the corner where the concrete wall met the hinges of the cell door, a feigned terror on my face.

"Get me the hell outta here!" I hollered, hands white-knuckling the bars, cold with electric ice.

The drones stood spellbound. Slowly, the one closest to me dropped his plasma rifle, even as the other two had begun firing bright bolts of laser light death at the apparitional form. But the beams of energy passed through the light being, and as they struck the wall behind, the drones backed away. A masked figure appeared beside them, speaking in high-pitched nerves.

"What's all the hubbub about?" His voice reverberated through the blue-green paint of his mask. Then he caught sight of my spectral self, and leaped a foot up into the air.

"Jumpin' Jezebels––it's a g-g-ghost!" I turned to him, beckoned one more time with feigned feeling. "You gotta let me outta this cell!" He lifted his hand, pressed it against the electronic plate. It lit up a green outline around it and the door demagnetized and unlatched. One of the drones gripped me by the lapels, yanked me out of the four-by-six cell. By the time the rather short agent slammed the door shut again, I had succeeded in my impromptu plan of knocking out one of the drones by introducing the butt of his own rifle to the back of his helmeted skull. A moment later, that same weapon was trained on the others. Two blasts later, and the remaining drones were both down for the count.

Nash Gorey, A.K.A. Goon, stood before me. I looked into the cell, using the link between myself and my digital self to send it after my quarry. However, just as easily as the apparition passed through the bars it passed right through Gorey, too.

"Hologram needs work, eh?" He asked.

"Yeah, just a bit."

"Too bad you won't have a chance to fix it. Samson…"

"Oh, no you don't!" I charged him, and swinging the rifle like a five-iron, knocked Powerhouse right off his head. Gorey, beady-eyed and beaten, touched his finger to his thick-lensed bifocals.

"You wouldn't hit a guy with glasses, would you?"

I would. And I did. Gorey was out like a light. Tapping at my watch, I deactivated the holographic image of me, and it also switched off like a light.

It was time for me to do the same.

Limping my way through the concrete corridors of VENOM's secret base, I gripped the plasma rifle in my hands. I felt ready for anything in spite of the sprain in my ankle, which I tried to ignore as I crept stealthily along the walls of the musty warehouse halls. The stairwells would be difficult to manage, but I had to find a vehicle, some way to ride or float or fly my way out of here and join the others.

As I fumbled down the stairs, I contacted Matt through my watch, and told him about VENOM's plan, or what little of it I knew. He had the blanks filled in by his signature scarlet-haired stoolie. It seems Mayhem's plan involved using an old steam engine train to swipe shards of gold off the Rocky Mountains between the New Mexico and Colorado border. "As daring a plan as ever," his voice crackled back in a mix of static and tin-can echoes. "But how did you find out about any of this?"

"It's a lot to get into now, boss. I'll fill you in once I'm outta this bunker."

"Be careful. Once we've located the depot VENOM's set to depart from, we'll send the coordinates to your watch so you and Julio can join us. Trakker out!"

In my head, I could see Matt turning to the computer and asking it to recommend all agents best suited for the mission. No doubt it'd preselect Alex and Bruce with Rhino, and myself and Julio as backup. Plus, I'd need someone to tend to my myriad bumps and bruises. Who else might the computer select was anyone's guess, but thinking about it kept my mind off the throbbing in my head and leg, and helped me make it to a lower level of this headquarters, where I'd hopefully find a way out of this pickle.

Jackpot!

I found myself on the ground floor garage of this old warehouse. Inside was a plethora of vehicles, some familiar, others not so much. In the garage, I could see beneath the familiar black Bronco that was Jackhammer, with Cliff Dagger playing the grease monkey between the wheels making repairs. Outlaw loomed larger than life in the far distance. Nearby, there was a sweet little custom Stingray clad in ultraviolet paint with fiery accents, as well as Maxie's own Formula 1 racer, certainly retired in the condition I'd currently found it. Vampire was parked to my right about sixty or so feet from a boarded up window, with wicked ol' Floyd Malloy filling her up with Snake Oil.

Then, I spotted her. My ticket outta here, or at least I hoped she was. Not quite as massive as Outlaw, but certainly tougher than some touring cycle/turbo jet combo. And with Jackhammer temporarily out of commission, I figured I'd be able to break out of this place relatively unharmed. But I had to act fast.

I jerked open the metal door to the stairwell, which echoed a thunderous creaking noise as warped metal was wont to do. This got the attention of the veritable Renfield feeding crude blood to his crimson master. I made a mad dash for the diesel cab thirty feet in front of me. Malloy fumbled with his canister, spilling gasoline on Vampire and soaking the ground beneath its twin tires.

Twenty feet…

I fired a single bolt into the air above the Birdman's head. "Buckshot," his Cagney-colored voice clanged against the steel and filters of his mask. "Fire!" It did, but I reacted quickly, dove behind a portable tool cabinet, which took the brunt of scattered ball bearings that manifested from it. From the corner of my eye, a few drones were rushing over, plasma rifles drawn. I darted off. Dagger stood up toward my left, his hands fastening his own mask over his meaty shoulders and even meatier head.

Ten feet…

I blasted haphazardly in all directions as I clumsily ran, biting down hard on my lower lip so I could ignore the fire swelling in my ankle. Five more feet! I was hopping on my one good leg, dodging bolts of hot laser beams as I reached for the chrome handle of my ride home.

"Please be open, please be open, please be open!" I mumbled as I chucked my plasma rifle at the drones, hitting two of the five right in the mask and knocking them down, even if just for a moment.

Two feet…

Handle grabbed, button pressed, door––unlocked! I pulled myself up into the cab of this truck just as Dagger's ugly mug of a mask appeared in its window. A quick jab of my left arm against the door, and he was down. I checked the ignition. "Oh, you guys are as dumb as you look, yes you are!" The keys were in the ignition on a custom little key ring that read "Snake Oil." I snapped it off and tossed it out the window, then I cranked the engine, and the truck roared to life with just the kind of power I was expecting. "Like riding a bike," I mumbled, recalling my brief stint as a truck driver way back in the late seventies. I shifted her into gear, but she wouldn't budge.

"Damn it, baby! C'mon now!" At my right, Malloy had mounted Vampire, and its cowl and windscreen were down, revealing a small cannon I knew as its boomerang atom blaster. "Oh, that's not good." To my left, Dagger was back on his feet, and through the closed window, I could hear him say the magic word. "Torch…"

I panicked and pressed the first button I saw, and this Bulldog came to life. There was a flurry of grinding gears, and suddenly I was thrown back, and a compartment dropped me into a lower deck. Control panels lit up all around me. I was staring straight ahead through a slit. I didn't know what this semi had turned into, but it felt like a tank. By the time Dagger spit the word "fire" out of his mask's mouth slit, we were mobile. I heard through the reverberations of my little cockpit a torch blaze on. I turned the truck-tank around and watched Malloy run away from his steed engulfed in flames. I pressed some buttons, and from what had been the two exhaust pipes on either side were now blasters shooting ice at the garage door 100 feet ahead of us. Tapping another pair of buttons, some cannons directly above fired on the now frozen door, causing a crack in not only the ice, but the metal beneath it, as well.

With a deafening shatter that invoked a demolition site, I bulldozed straight through the garage door and barreled out onto the streets of… Albuquerque? Santa Fe? Las Cruces? Honestly, I had no idea where in New Mexico I was or how I got here. All I knew was that I had to get away, and fast.

That's when my watch screen lit up with the familiar sign of the Ultraflash mask.

CHAPTER EIGHT

The old steam engine picked up speed as it neared Cumbres Pass, where you could still spot tiny specks of gold shimmering in the morning sunbeams. "Tiny" only from the distance between the Rocky Mountains and these old tracks that were laid down back in the 1800s; up close, they would prove the size of golf balls, each one fetching a hefty sum on the black market, which is exactly what Maximus Mayhem was banking on with this latest caper.

But the gold wasn't VENOM's only reason for hijacking a train that was initially donated to the Depot in Taos by one of Mayhem's nefarious constituents a few months earlier. It was a means to an even greater end, which began with one of their own high-ranking agents joining the Mobile Armored Strike Kommand, gaining more than the trust of one of our own so that she might discover the identities of the rest of the agents of MASK, at which time VENOM could put an end to its archenemies once and for all.

By the time I arrived in my diesel truck/armored half-track tank, my fellow MASK agents were already on the scene and engaged in combat with various agents of VENOM on land and in the air. Above, Thunder Hawk kept pace with the black iron locomotive. On land, Brad Turner sped up on Condor like an old desperado on his trusted steed of neon green looking to hijack the train. Rhino was stationed beside me, about five miles from the pass. Unless Matt and the others could catch up with it, that crazy train would arrive in twenty minutes. I picked up Bogey II from Alex, and stood with him, assessing the scene that was unfolding before us. Bruce was in the back cabin calibrating Rhino's missile, just in case we needed it in a pinch.

Through Bogey II's enhanced optics, I saw that the tops of the three cars the engine was hauling were patrolled by drones, some firing their plasma rifles into the sky at Matt and Gloria, others aimed their barrels down into the dusty dead land, where Condor was zigzagging past cacti and future Georgia O'Keeffe subject matter. Atop the steam engine stood Rax blasting those energetic little bolts of his that got me good yesterday. Downhill, the sound of a familiar engine was revving itself up into a high speed frenzy. I turned to look and saw Fireforce on a jagged strip road that hadn't seen tax dollars in decades speeding towards the oncoming steam engine. In the driver's seat sat Vanessa, with Julio as her co-pilot. Fireforce, I thought to myself, a bit disheartened. "They gave her Fireforce." My teeth couldn't help but grind together, but it made sense. That Fiero was the closest thing to a Nissan 300ZX we had, and that was a vehicle she knew the ins and outs of, both on land and high above it.

About two miles from the steam-spewing engine, Fireforce split apart into two separate vehicles. The Manta-like glider craft armed with laser cannons and missiles, which soared into the air with an afterburner blast and smoke trailing behind. Its other half, a three-wheeled chopper driven by Julio, kept on its current course, almost as if playing a game of chicken with the steamer.

I spun my head back around to the action. Brad unsuccessfully attempted to reach his hand out and grab hold of the iron bars of the train cars. Each time he got close, he was almost singed by a blast of plasma from the drones. From not too high above, Matt fired down at the tops of the cars, knocking two of the five drones off. Condor swiftly transformed itself from cycle to copter, its blades whirring fast enough to thwart the energy beams that failed to keep the bike grounded. Once Brad reached a certain height, and under cover of Thunder Hawk, he leaped off of his steel Pegasus and landed atop the second car. From the crimson Camaro hovering about twelve feet above that same train car dropped Gloria, and together, she and Brad dispatched the remaining drones.

From out of the first car crawled another batch of drones like cockroaches unafraid of the light. Brad and Gloria were headed straight for them.

"Bruce, can you get me down there? They're gonna need some help." Bruce ran over. "Here you go. Lifter, on!" With that, haloes of energy wrapped around me, and I was lifted off my feet by the antigravity rings and over the side of the hill on which we were perched. A few seconds later, I was nearing the train, legs ready for impact as the new drones climbed their way up top. Touchdown! I turned, and through the neural link I have with my mask, I outlined all three remaining drones in green.

"Bogey II, on!"

My visor lit up. It shot a beam of blacklight that enveloped each of the drones in an aura momentarily. As quickly as they had appeared, they vanished. God only knows what kind of phantasms and nightmares Bogey II had conjured up from beneath the subconscious floorboards of their minds, but each of them panicked, as if seeing something right beside them. A grotesque skinwalker leaping at one of them? Perhaps a thousand fire ants on the hot steel of the train car, crawling up the legs of another. Bogey II's power to play on the phobias of its targets was both terrifying and strangely satisfying. I watched as each drone leaped off the moving train in turn, just barely avoiding a battalion of cacti below them as they landed.

"Behind you!" Brad called out. I looked and saw the slender beams of Rax's Stiletto mask piercing toward me. Gloria grabbed my arm.

"Aura, on!" An energy field enveloped both she and I in a protective layer that neutralized the bolts of hot blue energy. "Thanks!" I said as we neared the pass. Rax hurled his body weight from the steam engine onto the roof of the first train car, then dropped down inside of it, out of our sight. From the fiery pounding of the engine room, the muffled voice of Mayhem screamed something. Then, the orange of Bruno Sheppard's mask popped up from the coal-burning furnace room. It was flecked with coal dust, but still glowed brilliantly as he growled his activation code.

"Magna-Beam, on!" Suddenly, the entire coal-black steam engine glowed a bright orange. Gloria, Brad, and I leaped from the third car to the second. Below us, the train hitch between the two cars unlatched, and the second and third cars disconnected from the first. We began losing speed, and the steamer picked up by another five miles an hour. In the now open end of the first car, Sly Rax sat on Piranha, revving its engine before launching out into the nearby desert landscape.

Seeing something out the corner of my eye, I turned to see what it was. There was a loud clang. Then another. And another after that. "Oh, no!" I mouthed, then turned to Brad and Gloria. "Get down, you two!" We all dropped as golf-ball sized nuggets of gold fresh off the Colorado Rockies rained past our heads while other nuggets hammered themselves into the left side of the speeding locomotive, magnetized and held in place by the awesome power of Sheppard's mask.

Suddenly, there were blasts of laser light energy. Fireforce swooped down from the sky, rapidly firing bolts at the shower of gold. It seems Vanessa was very comfortable in that glider, and she was a damn good shot, too. Thunder Hawk soared ahead after the engine just as Mayhem emerged at the top of the first train car still being pulled by the engine. A liquid beam of energy attempted to grip onto Thunder Hawk, but to no avail. It served only to throw the flying Camaro off balance for only a moment. But that moment was enough for Python's beam to grasp onto another flying car––Fireforce––and fling it toward the mountains, where the Fiero fell victim to stoning by gold before those nuggets found their new home on the magnetized iron hide of the steam engine now burning somewhere at around 390 degrees Fahrenheit.

"Vanessa!" I could see Brad already making his move, this modern age knight errant of a foolhardy heart! As our train car slowed to a halt, he leaped up towards Condor and followed after Fireforce flailing toward the Rockies, seemingly helpless.

Seemingly.

"Oh, hell!" I didn't think. I pushed myself up off the train car and dashed straight down the length of it. I didn't get far enough to make a leap up at Condor's landing skids; the pain in my ankle caused me to trip and topple off the end of the car. Luckily, I grabbed at one of the bars, saving myself from quite a tumble in the rough.

"You Okay?" Gloria called out, leering over at me dangling from one arm.

"Super," I replied. Then I heard the revving of a chopper, and who decides to pull up beside the car but my former copilot.

"Need a ride?" Julio's thick accent was as welcoming as always.

"Do I ever," I replied with relief. Gloria made her way down off the motionless train car and toward where Rhino was stationed about a quarter of a mile away. Julio and I hightailed it in the opposite direction and up the mountain. Brad could be getting himself into some serious danger, and I'd be damned if we were gonna let him face this femme fatale alone.

CHAPTER NINE

"She can't be all bad. No one is."

"Well, Vanessa Warfield comes the closest."

"Because she's a fraud, Brad!"

Vanessa stood on the cliffside among the gold-battered wreckage of Fireforce's glider which crashed down after failing to recover from the slip caused by Mayhem's Python toss toward the Rockies. Condor was perched down around twenty yards away. Julio and I stood close enough to watch the two of them embrace and a pass a few words of relief between their lips.

For the briefest moment, even I believed Vanessa's concern for Brad and his safety was genuine. But I thought about the sprain in my ankle that needed some attention and shot down my sympathy for this she-devil by the next moment.

"What are you talking about?" Brad said with eyebrows crooked.

I told him. Everything. As quickly as I could. He had a right to know, especially after all the trouble I'd gotten myself into over the past forty-eight hours. Brad was a swell kid, but I saw his body slump, knees go all Jell-O. His gaze lowered, eyes staring off just beyond his aviators. But perhaps most disturbing of all was that with every venomous word I spewed forth from my well-intentioned mouth, it was as though I could see the poor guy's heart actually breaking, piece by piece. By the time I'd finished my yarn, Brad was still processing much of what I'd unraveled before him. He turned his attention to Vanessa, took off his aviators.

"Is this true?" His dry voice could've cracked the desert all around him.

Vanessa just stood there for a few moments, and again I saw it. Something genuine in her face was reminiscent of what I could only describe as the pain of possibly losing someone you truly care about. It lingered for what felt like an hour but in reality had only been a few seconds. "Brad," she uttered his name, but it was now foreign to the man it referenced. He was distant, only wishing to hear her say that I'm a lying sack and that she… she loved him. Really loved him. "It––it's true. All of it." And there cracked a noble heart. "But what else is true is that I…" Vanessa paused, as if the tip of her tongue had landed on some super strong Krazy Glue on the roof of her mouth. There was a word she was trying to say, but hadn't said in a long time, if ever at all. "Brad, I…" There it was yet again, and for a second Vanessa's features sharpened, eyebrows furrowed, mouth pursed, then they all relaxed with an inhale. "I love you."

She reached out her hand to Brad, but he backed away. She followed, took his hands in hers forcibly, then looked him right in the eyes. "Getting to know you these past few weeks, it's meant something to me. It's…changed me, somehow. You've got to believe me."

"How can I?!" Brad yelled. You––you were gonna use me to lead VENOM straight to us?"

"I wasn't using you. I––"

"Really, Vanessa, how stone cold can you be?"

"Not as cold as I used to be. And that's because of you." She paused her words, loosened up her grip on Brad. He slid his hand from her, then turned around to face the mountainside. He looked out over the edge of the cliff as the distance between them had grown into a ravine, one in which there was no natural way to set it together again. "There's something else," Vanessa began. "Brad, I'm––"

The roaring of a motorcycle engine clouded the chasm between Vanessa and Brad with noise dense enough to drown out Vanessa's final word. Piranha sped up on us from behind Julio and I, came to a skidding halt a few yards from where the two star-crossed lovers stood. "Stiletto, fire!" And fire it did, right at Brad and Vanessa. Two of the bolts of energy struck Brad, knocking him back. His arms flailed about as he tried to grab onto anything that would save him from the fall, but there was nothing. Another series of rapidly firing bolts caused Vanessa to duck for cover, but not before one of them pierced her the outer edge of her thigh.

Rax turned his attention to Julio and I and shot a fresh batch of energy spears in our direction. We took cover behind the three-wheeled chopper, but it was taking heavy fire from Rax's rage. We dashed away right as the gas tank exploded, shattering the other half of Fireforce into a thousand shards of shrapnel. My head pounding, I gazed just beyond the fire at Rax, who stood behind Vanessa, who was reaching down the mountainside toward something, her other arm gripping a nearby boulder.

It was Brad! He was hanging off the side of that cliff for dear life.

"So, Ice Queen, you're a full-on traitor now, I see." Rax crouched down beside her. She ignored him as best she could, stretched her hand out further desperately trying to reach Brad before he lost his grip and plummeted to his demise.

"Give me your hand!" She yelled into the emptiness below.

"Oh, let him go! He'll never love you now. Not after knowing the truth." Rax harrumphed. "And once Mayhem knows the truth about you two…"

Vanessa slow-turned her eyes up toward her colleague, and as I lifted Julio up out of some of the wreckage, I watched the thawed out Ice Queen harden up like a diamond sharpened on the whetstone of her own anger. "Here," Rax said. "I'll make it easier on both of you. "Stiletto,..."

With that, I leaped through the flames surrounding Fireforce as Julio called out "Streamer fire extinguisher!" A cloud of white billowy foam quelled the blaze. Upon landing on my feet, I aimed my visor at Rax. "Bogey II, on!" And before he could command Stiletto to fire, he was overwhelmed by an intense fear at something in his head, though his eyes were trained on Vanessa. Was she his greatest fear? I asked myself. Vanessa straightened herself up. She grabbed Rax's leather jacket's lapels, whirled him around and tossed him right off the mountainside.

I hurried over while Julio finished putting out the remaining flames on our former ride. I peered down, just beyond Vanessa, and saw Brad and Rax, both hanging onto separate parts of the cliff. "I've got Brad. Go help Rax." With that, Vanessa reached her arm down toward Rax's hand as I secured a strong grasp on Brad's dirty yellow jumpsuit. With the help of his legs I was able to pull him back onto the cliffside. But while I tended to Brad, Vanessa stood up tall behind us. I looked at her, very aware of the sharp features of her eyes and lips.

"Where's Rax?" I asked, but I feared I already knew the answer. Vanessa said nothing. She just limped her way past me, past Brad, and past Julio. She made her way to Piranha, picking up her mask from the ground as she moved in sultry sways despite the bloody tear in the leather from the Stiletto blast that grazed her thigh. Julio rushed over to the edge of the cliff and looked down. He turned back, shaking his head. By that time, Vanessa had mounted Piranha and kickstarted the engine into a man-eating snarl. She took one last look back at Brad with that faint softness he had originally fallen for, then donned her mask and sped off down the dirt road, disappearing in a cloud of remorseless dust and sorrow.

EPILOGUE

The midnight moon blazed bright white over Boulder Hill as I rode away from the station about a week following the events that transpired during the case of the "Golden Loco-Motive." I found out during our debriefing that once again the Mobile Armored Strike Kommand saved the day, taking out Bruno Sheppard and his Magna-Beam mask, which was using the iron of the steam engine as a superconductor to pull in the paramagnetic properties of gold at the nanomolecular level, since gold itself isn't magnetic on the surface. Once Sheppard was neutralized, the gold simply dropped off the train onto the desert below. Then, using Spectrum, Matt heated the metal of the engine's wheels so that they slowed the engine down enough to stop it from crossing over the New Mexico/Colorado border.

Of course, in typical VENOM fashion, the bad dudes escaped to fight another day. Inside the sole car the engine was hauling hid Switchblade, which hovered up out of that train car carrying Mayhem and Sheppard, converted to jet mode, and blasted away with a sonic boom. The following day, Matt, Gloria, and Dusty, took a trip out to the warehouse in Albuquerque on the long shot that Mayhem and his goons would still be holed up there, but they were gone. By now, they knew I was MASK, and they wouldn't be idiotic enough to stick around in a not-so-secret headquarters too long after being made.

Sly Rax was no more. Alex and Bruce found his broken body at the bottom of the cliff where we had our little reckoning in the hopes of thwarting VENOM's overarching plan to destroy MASK once and for all. As much as I didn't like the guy, no one deserves to go the way he went. But then again, and as Bruce might articulate, "when you live with a serpent, you're bound to get poisoned." But the exact mode of his death remains, to this day, a mystery to which only one person truly knows the answer.

And speaking of Ms. Vanessa "Ice Queen" Warfield, well, let's just say that none of us heard from her since the incident at the Cumbres Pass. No one. Not even Brad, who was granted some time off and has been spending his time working overtime fighting heartbreak the only way he knows how to––writing songs. He's been in the studio for the past four days with his band. How do I know? Well, I'm still a private eye, and old habits are hard to break. Truth be told, though, I feel sorry for the guy, and I kinda feel responsible for his current state of being. But he knows I had no choice, and I think he understands. Nevertheless, it doesn't make it any easier for him.

The lights in Studio 5 above me blacked out, and I backed myself up just beneath the torn awning of Razorback Studios. The neon flashing of an "OPEN" sign in the late-night bodega beside me lit up one side of my face in two second intervals; the rest of my body was tucked away beneath my pork pie hat and the lapels of my trench coat. The band exited single-file, Brad being the last. They said their good nights, and Brad stood there for a few moments as his band mates fanned out onto the empty streets of Reno. The "OPEN" sign went out and stayed out.

"I'm fine," Brad said with a scratch in his throat that comes from intense rehearsal and recording sessions. "And I understand why you did what you did. For the team. For me." He didn't turn toward me, despite my shadow touching his own on the sidewalk just before the Razorback sign switched off. "But wait'll you hear this album. It may just be the best thing I've ever made."

With that, Brad walked off to where Condor was parked. He mounted his motorcycle with El Mariachi cool, his guitar case strapped around his back. He sped off down the road into the deep jagged dark of the unknown. I nudged myself off the wall with a grunt, stalked over to my ride, and contemplated the night sky, all the stars we see, and all the ones we can't, too. No, Brad, that album isn't the best thing you've ever made, though both of them were born of the same sordid love affair that soared too high, too fast, and went south too soon, perhaps. No, that best thing will leave a far more indelible mark than the heavy metal and heartache of another multi-platinum Turnabouts album, even if you don't know about it just yet.

For now, it's okay to languish, like Bogey, in a lonely place. Hmm. That reminds me of that famous line he says in that old Nicholas Ray picture: "I was born when she kissed me. I died when she left me. I lived a few weeks while she loved me."

Indeed he did.