My more spirited shot at NaNoWriMo is going pretty well. 9 days in and I'm still hanging in there. Much better than last year. For anyone curious about my progress.

If you want to reach the 50,000 goal by the end of the month, you have to write at least 1,667 words per day. So by day 9, the idea is to have just about 15,000 words. I have about 17,700 words and counting. So not too bad for the second attempt.

Chapter Eleven:

Rudy encountered absolutely no one on his way to the loading docks and back again with the hand-cart. He strapped the barrel onto the dolly. Its contents sloshed faintly and he held his breath during the process. There was no telling what the stuff actually was. S.T.A.R. Labs handled a lot that was potentially hazardous to continued life, especially now that they were poking around an honest-to-god alien space ship.

Rudy knew that he wasn't smart enough to really understand what the scientists were doing in their labs. All that stuff went over his head, even in the simple terms. But he knew other stuff. Give him a pocket knife and a block of wood and he could make some pretty amazing things.

The barrel safely strapped onto the cart, the janitor made a cautious trek back to the loading docks. He tried to be nonchalant, to pretend he was supposed to be doing this. He rehearsed a lie in his head, just in case anyone stopped to ask what he was doing.

It didn't seem likely. No one had ever really noticed him anyways.

That was life for Rudy Jones, ever since he had gotten out into the real world. Oh, he had been a big-shot in a small-town high school. The star of the football team. The champ of the basketball team. The darling of the postage-stamp sized community. Everybody had known his name, chanting it lustily when he ran out onto the field and the court. His talents had brought victory and acclaim to his tiny school. He'd had friends in every class. Everyone wanted to know Rudy Jones. He had graduated high school with everyone saying that he had a bright future ahead of him.

But one by one, colleges had rejected his applications, citing that his grades were inadequate. Scholarships had turned him down for the same reasons. While Rudy had excelled on the field and on the court, his grades had sunk lower and lower. He had scraped through graduation by the grace of administrative favoritism. He had only gotten his diploma because the principal hadn't been able to bear the idea of not passing him.

It had taken Rudy just months to learn that the glory and shine he had enjoyed during high school meant nothing when he had to start looking for jobs after every college refused to take him. The star athlete was a wash-out if his grades were horrible.

It had taken more than three years for him to learn why he had graduated high school at all.

By that time, Rudy had already felt vastly inadequate. But to learn that he had only graduated because someone had essentially felt sorry for him, well... That had been the last blow to his ambitions. The urge to seek a better job had vanished and he had sunk into the mire of anonymity.

No one looked at Rudy Jones anymore.

Right now, he was counting on that.

The corridor remained clear on his way back to the loading docks. He tried not to poke his head cautiously around the corner of the doorway, but the sound of two voices made him stop short.

"-going to see Madame Butterfly next week at the Palladium."

"Aw man, my girls have been dying to see that while it's in town. Are the tickets really expensive?"

"Fifty bucks if you don't mind sitting way in the back."

"Huh, bet I could swing it for them. Andrea's birthday is the week after next and it's just her and her sister..."

"Yeah, do something nice for your girls."

It was two security guards making their rounds. He nearly turned and ran the other direction, but five thousand dollars hung in the balance. They wouldn't notice him anyways. He was just a janitor.

Rudy pushed the cart in, walking towards the dock that LeBeau had indicated. The steel door had been rolled up just an inch or two and he could see one of the Miller twins peeking through the gap.

"Hey- Rudy, isn't it?" One of the guards hailed him. "Hey Rudy!"

The janitor slowed to a halt and turned to face the pair of guards coming up to him. Rudy recognized one of them, the one with the trimmed beard. That guy liked to listen to selections of classical music during lunch.

"Hi..." Rudy said weakly. "Good night?"

"Quiet. Not like anything exciting happens around here anyways." the guard said. He pointed to the barrel. "Don't mind if I ask what you're doing with that?"

"Uh, there's a waste shipment going out f-first thing tomorrow." Rudy lied, grateful that he hadn't stuttered too much. "The guys... They just asked me if I could get a few things set up for them over here... Y'know, so they don't have to spend time hunting them d-down in the morning."

"Alright, just let me check the schedule." The guard raised his tablet. "I don't remember anything about a shipment, but they could have changed that last minute. Science types around here are scatterbrained..."

His partner chuckled at the statement.

Rudy panicked.

He couldn't help it. His nerves had been strung tight all evening and he'd been almost out of this! Suddenly, he didn't care about not shaking up the barrel. He didn't care about losing his job. He just wanted to get the fuck out of here without getting arrested!

So he panicked and broke into a run, pushing the cart ahead of him.

"Hey!" the guard shouted after him, more in surprise than alarm.

The dock door was thrown up with a loud clatter and the Miller twins hulked their way onto the concrete. Back-lit by the security light behind them, they looked like horrifying primordial entities jumping out of the floor. They raised their guns and aimed past Rudy before squeezing the triggers. The two guards scrambled for cover behind a forklift.

The truck was backed up to the dock, LeBeau in the driver's seat. Rudy skidded to a halt just shy of the truck bed, pulling the cart back away from the edge.

"You said no one would get hurt! You said there wouldn't be any guns! You promised!" he protested.

"That was before you messed up!" LeBeau snapped. "Get in the back so we can get out of here! Millers! Let's go!"

"Hang on!" Miller the Younger took a careful aim at a barrel still awaiting disposal. It was labeled 'Flammable'. The bullet struck dead-center and the liquid gushed out through the puncture. Miller the Elder took a lighter out of his pocket and flicked the flint until there was a small flame. He heaved it towards the expanding puddle.

"Now let's go! Go, little man!" he shouted at Rudy.

Rudy made a funny noise, like a mouse being stepped on. He wanted to shout that this was wrong and he had been promised that no one would get hurt, but all the words stuck in his throat. The bearded guard was the closest thing to a friend that he'd had and he didn't want to see the man get hurt.

He had never asked for this, but he was getting it anyways.

"Get on!" LeBeau screamed.

Not sure he could think for himself right now, Rudy shoved the barrel, hand-cart and all, into the bed of the truck and threw himself in behind it. The Miller brothers squeezed back into the passenger side. LeBeau stomped on the gas, sending the truck lurching away and Rudy nearly fell out of the back.

"Hey! I need to secure the barrel!" he shouted, searching frantically for something he could use to tie down the cart and the barrel. Surely they had brought bungee cables...

The flammable liquid reached the lighter and the loading docks exploded in a fireball.

Rudy whipped around, the heat washing over his face, however distantly. Two emotions slammed into him as he watched the flames leap into the air; relief that he hadn't been in there, but horror because there was no telling if the guards had gotten out of there in time.

"I didn't want this..." he whispered.

By morning, there were going to be a lot of things he didn't want.

The truck bounced hard over a speed bump, knocking the janitor off his feet. He fell on his rear hard enough to bruise his tail bone. He grabbed the side of the truck bed and hauled himself upright.

"Martin! Slow down!" he requested, but he didn't think LeBeau could hear him. LeBeau certainly didn't act like it.

The only thing on LeBeau's mind was to get the hell away from S.T.A.R. Labs as fast as possible. He had gotten what his client had wanted, but Rudy had fucked this up. So much for getting out quietly.

He poured on the speed and shot for the nearest exit. It was chained and barred, but the truck was heavy-duty and moving at ninety-miles an hour. It battered down the gate, the chain snapping under sheer force.

"Martin!" Rudy wailed from the back, struggling to keep himself steady.

LeBeau executed a hard turn to get back onto the main road leading to the Ecton Pike Bridge. It would take them right into the heart of Metrodale. He gunned the engine as fast as it would go. They could slow down once they were on the north side, but not sooner.

In retrospect - but only in retrospect - he would think that he should have slowed down sooner.

Rudy clung to the side of the truck bed, his head ducked against the wind. Even five thousand dollars wasn't worth the lives of two men. The bearded security guard was a good man. He played his music just loud enough that Rudy could hear it in the break room; lately, it had been Pachabel. His wife loved opera. Rudy didn't know the other guard, but he had a family. Two daughters.

Maybe they didn't have a father anymore.

He should have said 'no' when LeBeau had come to him and this wouldn't have happened. He should have found that spine he used to have; the one that had gotten him a reputation back in high school. What had happened to that spine?

Oh yeah, it had disappeared when he'd found out that he was nothing but a useless paperclip. One that no one had liked. Not enough to tell him that he was failing high school.

Of course this had happened. He couldn't do anything right.

And now he would have to run. Go on the lam. Dye his hair, change his name. Head north to the Yukon and herd caribou. That sounded like a good plan. He could hardly screw that up.

"Can this night get any worse?" Rudy lamented.

The barrel burst open and everything inside spewed all over him.

Do not agitate.

Exactly what LeBeau's driving had done.

They should have included 'contents under pressure' on the warning label.

Rudy burned.

One time, back in high school chemistry, he had gotten a little bold and handsy with a chemical that wasn't supposed to touch bare skin. He had been enough of a stupid arrogant teenager to pour a little bit of that stuff on his hand,

ust to see what would happen.

What had happened was the worst itching ever, so bad it felt like razor blades scraping sideways across a patch of skin just half a square inch and peeling away the layers of skin. His teacher had shoved his hand under a gush of water from the sink and bellowed at him like a trumpeting elephant.

At the time, Rudy hadn't gotten in trouble for playing with the chemicals. It had been just conceivable enough to think that he had accidentally gotten some splashed on him before he'd put the gloves on.

If he was ever asked what it felt like to be splashed with the substance from the barrel, he would probably relate the high school chemistry story because there were no words to describe this.

The thing was, the liquid didn't burn like acid. It didn't burn like it was eating away at him. It corroded his clothes, but it didn't bite away his skin. It sunk into his flesh like hot needles. It made his skin melt and run like wax. It was the kind of pain that numbed his mind and shut down his nerves in sheer denial that it could ever be this bad. This was the kind of pain that wasn't supposed to exist.

An utterly unearthly scream tore out of Rudy's throat and he writhed on the floor of the truck bed. The rest of the liquid bubbled and frothed around him. His hands scrabbled wildly at his skin and his hair, pulling out clumps of the latter in the process. The only thought in his head was to get to a body of water, to wash off the horrible burning. But his legs only kicked spasmodically, uncoordinated.

He needed LeBeau to stop the truck.

When Rudy had first started screaming, about twenty seconds earlier, Miller the Younger tried to look over his shoulder to see if everything was alright, but he was jammed between his brother and LeBeau, and he could hardly move at all.

"I think we need to stop." he said.

"He's just being dramatic." LeBeau spat. "We're almost there."

The Ecton Pike Bridge was just ahead.

"He really sounds like he's in pain." Miller the Elder commented, looking at the wing mirror. "We should stop."

"An' I say he's fine." LeBeau insisted. "He's just being stupid."

A purple hand slapped up against the rear window and a head bearing a mouth like a lamprey eel appeared in the rearview mirror. There was a faint glow and specks of what must have been skin flecked onto the window. LeBeau reacted about the way you'd expect anyone to react when they saw a monster behind them.

"Holyfuckwhatthehell--!" he gabbled, stomping on the brakes and jerking the wheel. Beside him, the Miller brothers shouted incoherently and tried to bring their guns to bear, but there just wasn't enought room in the truck cab.

The thing that had once been Rudy Jones moaned painfully and pawed at the glass. No longer did he look very human, but he was starting to resemble a melting purple wax figure with a radioactive glow.

"Swerve, swerve!" One of the Millers shouted.

LeBeau did.

The truck fishtailed madly, flailing this way and that in an effort to throw Rudy out. There was no more compassion to be had from the Miller brothers; they were shouting and swearing and ordering LeBeau to do whatever he could to get out whatever was back there. The vehicle lurched into a sideways skid, threatening to roll. LeBeau struggled to keep that from happening. It swerved up towards the outermost barriers around the Ecton Pike Bridge and the back half slammed into the concrete pylon with a solid-sounding thud. The impact threw the hapless Rudy Jones out of the truck bed. His deformed body tumbled down the slope and under the bridge to the water's edge.

The truck engine sputtered its dying clunks and fell silent. After the frantic-ness of a moment ago, the quiet and the sudden stillness were both deafening in their own ways. For a moment, all LeBeau heard was the bellow-like breaths of the Miller brothers beside him.

"Was that Rudy?" he wondered.

"I think so." Miller the Younger said.

"We should check on him." Miller the Elder said.

Even LeBeau didn't argue it. He wasn't sure what had happened back there, but the screams of pain were nothing he would wish on anyone, so agonized they had sounded. The three men got out of the truck and made their way

over to the slope. The lamps illuminating the bridge didn't shine anywhere else but the road. It was all but pitch dark near the pillars, down there on the slope amid the tall reeds and the cattails.

"I don't see him down there." Miller the Elder said. "Maybe he went into the water?"

LeBeau advanced as far down the slope as he felt was safe. The ground took a sharp and rocky turn down to the sand and he couldn't see it very well. There were smears of that purple stuff on the stones.

"Rudy?" he called out in the direction of the reeds.

There was no answer. Not even the smallest sound.

"Rudy? You out there, little man?" Miller the Younger called.

The only thing they heard was the slosh of water on the banks.

"Y'know, I'm actually really good with the money I got up front." Miller the Elder said from behind his brother and LeBeau.

His twin nodded in agreement. "Yeah. Three hundred thousand's really good." he said, starting to back up. "Probably wouldn't hurt us to- y'know, ditch the truck and run for the airport."

LeBeau shuffled away from the edge of the slope as well. "Y'know, that does sound like a really good idea." he agreed. As far as he was concerned, the job was done. And if the client complained, then all he had to do was cite unsafe working conditions and a lack of pertinent information.

It probably would have been quite important to know what that purple stuff would do when it got all shook up.

He crept away a few more steps and then spun around, bolting for the road. The Miller brothers were right on his heels. The moment all three of them hit the pavement, they took off across the bridge, heading back to Metrodale.

They didn't look back once.

The worst part about being a member of the Special Crime Unit was the long hours. This was something Colletta Kanigher was intimately familiar with. She had been with the SCU coming up two years now. That first year and a half had wreaked terrible havoc on her sleep schedule, as there had only been so many officers to go around. Twelve to fourteen hour shifts had been the average.

They now counted up to a grand total of thirty-three people, but Colletta wasn't sure that was helping.

"Still pulling twelve hours at a time." she muttered out loud, to keep herself awake. "Sixteen hours tonight... god, I have to crash."

When the SCU wasn't trailing after Superman and handling the legalities surrounding his presence, they were being tasked to keep an eye on developing situations that hinted at meta-human involvement. This was a new development altogether. Superman's presence had made them aware that there would be a new generation of meta-humans coming into their powers at some point.

It did explain a few of the strange situations that had popped up since his arrival and well before. These situations were labeled Code Veitch, short-hand for "This is so bizarre and insane that the English language was no good words to describe it and I won't tie up the radio trying to".

The SCU had only begun to monitor potential metahumans since mid-June, after Lizzie and Big Susan had accidentally become media sensations. While their stories had called a great deal of attention to the homeless children of Metropolis, it had also reminded others that the White Scare hadn't wiped out every single metahuman.

It also reminded them that there was no reason to repeat the White Scare.

So far, the SCU was keeping tabs on a young boy who seemed able to tap into radio frequencies; a five year old girl who could speak five different languages with near fluency despite a very limited amount of exposure; and one very lucky-ass college student who had discovered that he could learn by osmosis. Literally, he could put his head on a book for about two minutes and come away knowing the entire contents. This had made him very popular and very unpopular at the same time, usually around exam times.

These were only the people who had come forward in the last two months.

There were less substantiated reports regarding children and young teens, almost exclusively in the seven to fourteen age range. They were the sort of reports that sounded like they belonged the Weekly World News. For example, a teenager had spontaneously combusted in the middle of a biology test, but after the flames had died, the kid had been fine. A small child had defied gravity and floated like a balloon. Another had been accused of cheating on a test because he had claimed to already know the answers; he had seen them. A twelve-year old had made flowers dance.

Reports like that were littered all over Metropolis, usually in the form of half-whispered rumors because the schools had found the incidents too absurd to properly record. It had been a long process for the SCU to hunt down the reports to their source and then try to verify them. Parents had slammed doors in their faces or breathed down their necks, and the children had already been instructed to never speak of the incidents. This had forced the SCU to surveillance in order to watch for any signs of super-human powers.

Unfortunately, this looked an awful lot like stalking.

One of the kids in Colletta's files was purported to be able to manipulate sound waves. Verifying this was nearly impossible. As with most of the kids, the parents were absurdly overprotective to the point of paranoia. After ten hours of surveillance over the course of three days, all Colletta was certain of was that there was something up with the kid and the parents were determined to keep it a secret. The thing was, the parents were concerned that their children might be exploited for something horrible. It was a legitimate concern, but they weren't listening to the fact that the SCU mostly wanted to know where these children were, to have them accounted for in the event a proper criminal had the same powers.

But the time to think about it was not right now. Colletta needed to concentrate on keeping her car in its lane so she could get home. After her long day, she was completely shrubbed.

Not bushed.

Definitely shrubbed.

She lived out on the West River island, in one of the very first apartment buildings to go up in the general vicinity of the Vernon Bridge. It hadn't been the nicest place to live, when she had first moved in. But with the refurbishment of the West River well underway, even the worst corners were getting better.

Colletta smiled lazily at the thought of her soft bed and squishy pillows. She had been imagining it longingly for the past several hours. She had the next twenty-four hours to catch up on her sleep. Captain Sawyer had been very clear on the matter. If they worked a shift longer than twelve hours, she didn't want to see them back in the building until after twenty-four hours, barring emergencies. They all worked too much as it was and she didn't want them dropping off their feet in the middle of an emergency.

The headlights of her little car alighted on the tail end of a truck on the other side of the bridge. Colletta frowned, her little sixth sense giving a tingle. She slowed down as she came nearer to the truck. It had the appearance of being abandoned; that was too strange a place to park.

She stopped completely when it became clear that the truck was smashed against the concrete pylons that prevented vehicles from careening off into the river.

"Check it out and call it in, Etta. Someone could be hurt." Colletta told herself. She took a flashlight out of the glove-box and got out of the car, leaving the engine to idle.

Outside the car, the air smelled strangely foul. Like she had just walked into an empty room that smelled like fart; just strong enough to smell it without trying. It seemed to be coming largely from the truck.

"Hello, Met P.D. Anyone there?" she called out, panning the beam around. Over the truck bed, then its cab and then to the slope near the water's edge. The truck doors were wide open; the driver and the passenger had booked it in a hurry.

"Something must have spooked them."

The frown firmly on her face by this point, Colletta walked over to the truck bed and looked down into it. It was coated in a layer of purple ooze, originating around a barrel that had been busted wide open. The metal of the truck bed had corroded a little, but the hand-cart the barrel was still strapped to was nearly unrecognizable for how twisted and mangled it was.

"Eugh, or their shit spewed everywhere. That's gross." Colletta stepped back. "Possible theft and chemical spill, the vehicle's abandoned... Yeah, I'll have to call this one in."

She groaned at the idea. At this rate, it would be another hour before she got home and that was the optimistic estimate.

She turned to head back to the road when a low moan buzzed through the still August air behind her. Colletta froze for a second and then whirled around, bringing the flashlight up. The strong beam danced along the edge of the rocky slope, where she was sure the moan had come from.

"Hello? Metropolis P.D. Is there someone down there?" she called out.

A breeze rustled the grass and stirred the long braids of her hair. For a moment, all she did was stand there, peering into the darkness and listening intently for something wrong. A tingle crawled down her spine.

Something shifted over the rocks.

"Anyone there?" Colletta called out again, tentatively edging forward a small step. "Are you okay? Do you need help?"

The grass rustled and the air still smelled slightly foul and off-color. The river trundled past. It was running pretty low. They hadn't yet gotten enough rain to bring the rivers back up to their usual levels. The water sloshed like things were splashing in the shallows, but there was still nothing she could see in the beam of the flashlight.

Ten bucks says I'm actually talking to a raccoon. Or a toad.

"If you're out there, I'm coming toward you." she said, stepping forward. The gritty earth crunched under her boots. The beam of the flashlight passed over tramped grass and shrubs. The chemicals spilled in the back of the truck had smeared here and there along the exposed rocks.

It was glowing faintly purple.

Colletta inhaled suddenly and sharply, looking away from the ooze. It would be just my luck if it was radioactive... She thought, a prickle of fear passing through her. God, I hope it's not radioactive.

The slope down to the water came up quickly, dropped away to the sand below. Colletta wasn't totally aware of the fact she was holding her breath as she peered down it. Before she could bring the flashlight beam fully to bear, the darkness lunged.

The last thing Colletta saw that night was a gaping lamprey mouth and a purple glowing being plowing her over so quickly and suddenly that she didn't have the idea of fighting back or reaching for her gun. The last thing she felt was the circle of needle-like teeth that dug into her shoulder. The last thing she heard was a horrible sucking noise.

And the last thing she was totally sure of was the fleeting thought she was going to die.

The hunger drove him forward with a viciousness, as though it were a creature all by itself and he was nothing more than a slave to it. His teeth dove into the soft flesh of the woman's shoulder, but it wasn't the blood or the muscle or the bone he was after.

No, it was the sweet, sweet energy of life that made him attack.

It was like pulses of white light to his twisted eyes; a rich, thick river of energy flowing through the body with every heart-beat. As strong as the solar winds, as unstoppable as the rising tide, as powerful as the fire in the earth. This was the energy that made up all life and he wanted it- No, he needed it. He needed it because he had none of his own. This was the only way he could live. There was a gaping hole where his stomach might have been; aching, empty, desperate and screaming to be filled.

The luster of energy in the woman's body started to fade, as it flowed into his parched one. It was strangely hot and thick, like a lava flow. But sweet like sugar cane. There was a sense of majesty to watching the glow die. If humans were made of star-stuff, as people liked to think, then even stars died eventually.

He was watching the woman die...

No, stop! You'll kill her!

Deep down kicked a tiny sliver of humanity that hadn't lost itself to the maddening hunger; that still had a measure of sanity to help it regain a foot-hold against the everything that pushed against it.

He wasn't a killer or a cold-blooded monster.

He was a janitor.

And Rudy Jones remembered who he was.

He wrenched his entire body away with a lurch, and the hunger tried to fight him on it. Finish the meal! it demanded, attempting to force him back to the victim's shoulder like it had the physical capacity to do so. The horrible ache in his belly twisted and gaped even wider, but he had control again. He recognized that the woman- police officer - wasn't a meal.

He wasn't a killer.

Feed! The hunger demanded.

No! Rudy shook his head and was suddenly struck by how thick his neck was. It felt like his head was attached directly to his shoulders; he seemed to get so little movement out of it.

Something was wrong.

Very, very wrong.

Rudy scrambled away from the police officer only when she moaned. His legs buckled under him, half in refusal to work, half because he couldn't remember how they worked. But he staggered down the rocky slope. He crawled to the river's edge and found his reflection in the water.

He didn't look like Rudy Jones anymore.

He had been a pretty skinny fellow, putting more into dodging his football opponents and out-running them instead of bowling them over. Brown hair, gray eyes, an overlong nose. He really hadn't been anything to look at.

But now...

Now he didn't even look human anymore.

Now, he was huge, hulking, and purple. His shoulders were absurdly hunched and broad - as broad as the Miller twins put together. His chest was as large as the truck bed was wide and his legs were like tree-trunks, his arms the branches shooting off. They had been muscular once, but not like this. He looked down at his hands. They had never been small, but now they were large to the point of clumsy. Thick fingers and palms the size of a dinner plate. He flexed them, watching the sausage-like proportions curl and wiggle, and tried to tell himself that these were his hands now.

He didn't really have a neck either. It was like his head just rose out of the broad plain of his shoulders. He could see where his collarbone was and the corded tendons that attached to it. His mouth was round and full of needle-like teeth. He had no hair and his eyes were a sort of lavender color, filmy and opaque.

The being that stared back at him wasn't really him anymore.

"What happened to me..." Rudy grabbed what he could of his throat in shock. "My voice!"

It was rough and gravelly. He barely recognized it as his own.

"What happened to me?" he wondered again, dragging a thick finger down the rubbery skin that now made up his face. He couldn't feel it very well. His fingers weren't very sensitive and his skin felt blubbery.

Then it hit him.

LeBeau.

If anyone knew why he was like this, Martin LeBeau did.

Behind him, the police officer moaned and Rudy jumped, the hunger within him stirring again. He stomped down on it, harnessing it, commanding it. The hunger wouldn't control him. The woman wasn't a meal and he wouldn't kill her. She had come with the best of intentions.

But LeBeau, on the other hand, hadn't.

Maybe Rudy could make a meal out of him instead.

LeBeau had lived in his tiny Slums apartment for barely a week. He had only several changes of clothes and even fewer personal belongings, yet to took him nearly half an hour to gather them all up from the corners of the apartment. He bypassed the tedious process of folding his shirts and stuffed them into the duffel bag, only pausing long enough to get them out of the way of the zipper.

"Gotham's a good place to start." he mumbled to himself, feverishly emptying the medicine cabinet of all the orange prescription bottles, pushing them into a plastic bag. "I can sell all these, bum a few jobs for a plane ticket, then get somewhere else."

Yes, if you wanted to get anywhere without anyone questioning your destination of choice, then Gotham was the most ideal port of call. Its customs agents and TSA officers were the laziest bums imaginable. They wouldn't bat an eye at a dozen prescription medications.

He would have to hitch a train out of Metropolis, though. The airport would be more than a little touchy about his carry-on.

He shoved the plastic bag into the duffel and zipped it shut, heaving it around his shoulder in almost the same motion. He grabbed a baseball cap off the hat rack on his way to the door, shoving it over his head, and the door burst off its hinges.

LeBeau didn't even have a second to see which the direction the door was flying in before a large purple fist clamped around his throat so hard he thought his head would pop off right then and there. His back slammed into a wall somewhere in the apartment, his hands clawing at the limb of the thing that held him. Sparkles danced briefly in his vision and his lungs fought for air until the pressure on his neck let up enough for him to suck in a gasp of air.

He looked up.

A thing glared down at him with the most numbing, ferocious glare he had ever seen. Flat, lavender eyes that were far from blank, but flared with anger. The entire thing was purple and glowing oddly. Gray-ish streaks wrapped around the thing's enormous body and horribly, they appeared to wiggle of their own accord. It had no neck and a gaping mouth lined with no fewer than three rows of needle-sharp teeth.

"Wh-Wha..." LeBeau managed, struggling more against the feral panic than the hand that had pinned him.

Then the thing spoke.

"I smelled you halfway across the city. It was incredible." it said. Its voice sounded like a rock polisher. Its mouth widened in a leering grin. "You smell delicious."

LeBeau shivered. "What are you?..."

The monster chuckled, like two rocks grinding together in an engine. "I didn't recognize me either, not right away." It leaned in closer. "I don't know what I am anymore, but I do know that you had something to do with it."

"I-- I don't know what you're talking about!" LeBeau found himself laughing, hysterical though it was. "I think I'd remember--" He waved a hand. "This-- this--"

"It happened forty-five minutes ago!" the beast growled.

LeBeau blinked, but his memory needed no further prompting. The purple hand and the lamprey eel mouth in the rear window of the truck and the body that had been flung down the slope.

"R-Rudy? Rudy Jones, the S.T.A.R. Labs janitor?" he asked, his jaw falling open in disbelief. "Good lord, what happened to you--"

"You tell me!" Rudy roared, shoving the man further into the unyielding wall. "What was that stuff!? What chemical was that?!"

"I dunno!" LeBeau shrank under the former janitor's anger. "I usually don't ask about that stuff! It makes it easier to pretend if the police come around--"

"You're lying!"

"No, I don't know! I really don't know! Just trust me--"

"I did! Now look at me!" Rudy snarled. His hand tightened briefly over the man's neck before he remembered that he needed LeBeau to talk and he needed to be able to breathe to do that. "Who did you take the job from?"

"I didn't ask for no name. Anonymity's the biggest weapon in the arsenal. The less I know, the better." LeBeau said, shrugging. "But maybe Luthor or that Furie woman? There's only so many people in this city who got the money to pay the fees I got paid. Someone of means. That's all I can give you. I mean, they're saying that Ms. Furie's a terrorist and we all know about Luthor. Those rumors had to start somewhere, right?"

"Right." Rudy repeated. His anger hadn't abated. But he had gotten enough information to start and now it was time to do what he had come here to do. "I'm hungry and you owe me."

"I don't got anything, sorry." LeBeau said.

"Yes you do." Rudy said. "I'm going to show you what you turned me into."

He opened his mouth wider than ever before, his jaw unhinging like a snake's. LeBeau uttered a little scream and started to struggle in earnest, as if he knew what was coming. He probably had an inkling, but it wasn't until the mouth closed over his head that he was sure.

Rudy made sure that it wasn't quick.

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