Chapter Thirteen

Without warning, Jessica disappeared from the commodious room. He had a look of utter confusion on his face because he didn't see her leave. Doing a three hundred and sixty degrees turn, he didn't see any evidence of her anywhere. The entire disappearing act made him feel a little leery about the stranger he just met. He tried to remember if she told him her name, but she didn't. In the back of his mind, he felt that she possessed some kind of meta-powers, but he didn't know what. Saddened by the deaths of the people he turned to for support in his younger years, he thought it would be in his best interest to leave too. Even though the police knew about the Libertines, their dirty methods, and influences, he wouldn't be able to explain his role in the massacre of innocents.

When he came out of the manhole, he couldn't believe the number of bodies that lay decaying on the street, sidewalk, and in the businesses in the immediate area. They had a green slime oozing from their mouths mixed with dark red blood. He hadn't ever seen so many dead bodies in his entire life. With the deceased in the sewers and the ones on the city street, nearly six hundred people or more might be dead. For nearly two minutes, he stood watching all the dead people littered in the street, and he knew the police would be on their way.

The health clinic for women stood adjacent to the manhole, and had some life inside of it. They had some kind of filters on the clinic that kept the toxic air out of it, and none of the workers experienced any problems. He looked into the building from the street, and saw a short haired, red headed lady inside looking at him with a penetrating stare. She had a devious look on her face that made Dennis apprehensive about the place. Everything about the old lady looked wrong, especially with her emaciated appearance. Rumors surrounded the woman's health center about cloning, but he didn't know if any of the hearsay had validity. Fearful, he quickly walked down the quiet street, and looked back occasionally to ensure the woman with the red hair wasn't watching him. And as soon as he was two blocks from the wave of death, he continued to feel the presences of the dead in the air. He heard an orchestra of police sirens, ambulances, and helicopters racing towards Fifth Street, but he knew nothing could be done for any of them. He had to walk nearly two blocks before he started to see regular movement on the streets. The nosy people around him wanted to know about the commotion on Fifth Street, but seeing the dead bodies strewn all over the area would only leave a person distraught. The lights from the emergency vehicles lit up the sky, and everything glistened red and blue for blocks. He warned them to stay away from the area, and let the authorities do their jobs.

Dennis returned to his flat, and found his old gun in a box at the bottom of his bedroom closet. It was in a white shoe box with the word "Memories" written across the top of it in a red permanent marker. Gently, he opened it in order to explore the contents, when he came across an old, decayed rose. He gently smiled, and remembered when his old girlfriend gave it to him, as they floated on Metro City's Aristotle's Lake in a two man peddled craft. Dennis didn't want to resort to carrying a pistol, but he pulled his gun out of the box, placed it in the small of his back, and decided he needed to pay a visit to the Joker's lair. Reminiscing, he found an old picture of Tara Jones, and admired her for a moment, and then placed the picture of his old flame into his wallet. She had smooth, nearly flawless creamy chocolate skin that he craved. But when she pried into his life, into his background, he pulled away from her. He considered himself a man with a moral compass, and didn't want to expose her to his sullied life. The sewers raised him; and since she came from a modest upbringing, he didn't want to expose her to the insidious life of a sewer urchin.

Cornelius Flakes led the Jokers with a ruthless style of leadership, an unforgiving style of leadership that usually ended with murder. A chronic user of Pump, the drug had changed him on a genetic level. It morphed his body into a muscle bound behemoth with nothing but rage for anybody that crossed him. The rumor on the street had Cornelius weighing a little over four hundred pounds when he took Pump. But when he didn't have the illicit strength enhancement drug in his system, he weighed no more than one hundred and fifty pounds.

Dennis hadn't ever spoken to the leader directly, but went through his liaison, Jack Mackie, for the sexual assignments for the kids. Jack seemed like an agreeable person as long as the money flowed into Cornelius's bank account; but when Dennis came up short, the loyal henchman had the ability to become hostile. Jack Mackie wasn't naturally diminutive like Cornelius, but had the size equivalent to a dump truck. Jack kept a chalkboard on the club's back wall where Cornelius's ran his business that had a count of the people he killed through the years. Sometimes he told people to call him "The Flu" because he had taken more lives than the flu in the city of Gotham over two years straight.

Dennis knew he'd probably die in a crazy attempt to take control of the Joker's organization, but it didn't matter. If he had control of the organization, he could refocus it into something tangible, into something that helped the city to thrive. He couldn't afford to languish as a simple liaison between the kids and the Libertine society; he had to stop the predatory behavior of the elite, even if it killed him.

Cornelius lived inside the Manhattan Club, an eight story building with dance halls on five floors, an office floor and a casino on the seventh floor. The head Joker lived on the top floor, and monitored the entire building with sophisticated electronic equipment, and he didn't trust meta-humans. He hadn't found a foolproof method to detect meta-humans, but he kept a close eye for the ones that liked to show off in the club. With a special pass from the city, Cornelius never had to close the doors to his club; and on the seventh floor, the Jokers ran a casino that old people frequented.

Dennis walked into the Manhattan Club in a white tuxedo with a black scarf around his scarred neck. He shaved his head, put on a black beret, and looked like a black Frenchman. His gun was near his man business, a place that he didn't think the bouncers would check. And since he didn't plan on failing in killing Cornelius, he strapped his old knife to his right ankle. When he walked into the lobby, he saw the girl from the sewer dressed in all black. She looked like a Gothic chick except she was black.

"What are you doing here?" Dennis asked.

"My name is Jessica," she said with a smile.

"Well, Jessica … what are you doing here?" He asked in a stern voice.

She smiled sheepishly for a minute, and then whispered into his ear. Her Gothic appearance made her look extremely exotic, and many of the people couldn't take their eyes off her svelte frame. "Today is a good day for the Jokers to die."

She walked past the two black bouncers with the long dreads as if they didn't matter, but they stopped Dennis, and asked for payment. He pulled out two hundred dollars, and they gave him a fifty back. Surprisingly, the bouncers didn't check him with the scanner, and he thought that was a bit strange. For some reason, he didn't recognize the two bouncers, but Cornelius had a knack for killing people that crossed him; and with the murders of the people in the sewer, he might have killed a few of his henchmen.

He immediately noticed the huge disco lights that stood above the commodious room. The dance club had an overwhelming amount of young, half dressed women, but not nearly as many men because the first floor was the lesbian floor. Many of the women were bisexual, but Dennis didn't care. He stood on the sideline, and watched the ladies as they did sexually explicit moves on each other.

Without warning, Jessica walked onto the dance floor, and danced like she owned the place. Several girls circled her, and started dancing with her provocatively. She didn't know that much about the club life, but knew all the latest dances. Immediately, Dennis walked around the entire club, and nonchalantly asked about the top floor. Cornelius hosted the top entertainers on the top floor, including a lot of sports players. Dennis didn't have the talent to be amongst the elite. But when he saw Jamie Tally, a famous female league basketball player, dancing provocatively with Jessica, he knew that he had his ticket to the top floor. The sports figure appeared to have more drugs and liquor in her body for her own good, and Dennis knew this was the way to go.

Dennis walked up behind Jessica, and said, "This chick can get us upstairs."

"Okay," she replied. She put her arms around Jamie's neck, and she started kissing her neck salaciously. "Take me upstairs." She had a nice grin on her face.

She looked at her for a moment, and then grabbed her by the hand. "Let's go."

"Can my friend come with me?" She asked.

"You got a boyfriend?" Jamie asked.

"No. He's gay," she said sheepishly.

Dennis gave her a sour scowl for a second, and then he started to play the part of the gay friend. Jessica immediately thought he was overdoing the limp wrist and switch, but it was enough to fool the drunkard.

"It's too bad," Jamie said, "Would have enjoyed a threesome."