Chapter 3
Myrtle unstraddled him hastily –just as well, as he was about to shove her away. She didn't bother with her clothes; she just ran to the door and shut it. Then she turned on the room's lights.
With her foot she pushed the man so he was lying flat on his back, with the knife protruding upward. He was clearly dead.
"What did you do that for?" yelled Joe, getting back into his jeans.
"I can explain," said Myrtle anxiously.
"You'd damned well better! Here!" He grabbed her clothes and threw them at her.
He was pulling his t-shirt over his head when Ken's words came back to him.
You attract women who are trouble.
Damn it all to hell! Ken was right again.
If she made a move to leave this room, he'd stop her. She wasn't going anywhere! Not until he'd gotten an explanation, and for her sake, it had better be a goddamned good one!
She had her clothes back on.
"Sit in the chair!" said Joe, "And keep your hands where I can see them!"
She eyed him warily, but she complied.
But now she was staring at him beseechingly.
"I can explain what I did," she said rapidly, "That man, he is-"
The door opened again.
This time it was Ken.
"Here you are!" gasped Ken, eyes wide in alarm, clutching the door frame. Then he saw the body on the floor, and Myrtle in the chair.
"What's going…" he cried. But Ken didn't finish his question.
He too had toppled forward and collapsed on the floor.
Joe rushed over to Ken. He didn't have any knives stuck in him or wounds of any kind but he was unconscious, his breathing was weak and his face was deathly white.
"Don't you move!" he snarled at Myrtle, and took a few steps out of the office and turned. Now he had a side view of all the rows of cooking stations, but especially of Chef Julian's.
All the other entrants were gathered around Chef Julian's station, but he and all of them were sprawled about on the floor, unmoving.
Including Princess Jessica.
Oh no!
Joe ran over to her, kneeling down at her side. She was limp and completely unresponsive, but she was breathing. Hastily, he examined several other entrants; they seemed to be in a similar condition.
But for how much longer? Would their conditions get worse? Were they all dying?
What the hell had happened to everyone here?
And then it came to him –the shrimp bisque…
He picked up Jessica. But Ken-
Crap! He turned around to see Myrtle, inside the office, about to kneel at Ken's side.
"Get away from him!" He stormed her way. "What have you done, you Galactor bitch?"
Myrtle fled back to the chair as he set Jessica down carefully on the floor just outside the office –between the dead man and Ken, there wasn't much more floor space left inside and he was damned if he was going to set Jessica down anywhere near Myrtle.
"He is looking really bad!" Myrtle was saying, "We need an ambulance and-"
Damn, she was as good an actress as she was a cook, thought Joe.
"Don't try to act like you had nothing to do with this! Everyone out there –everyone- is down!" yelled Joe as he studied Ken anxiously, but Myrtle was telling the truth about one thing; Ken was looking really bad.
Panic tore through Joe's gut.
There was a telephone on the desk. He strode towards it and dialed 911. Then he shoved the receiver into Myrtle's hand.
"Tell them we've got multiple victims of poisoning here and they need to get medics here damned fast! Do anything else and I swear I'll break your neck here and now!"
Myrtle closed her eyes and began relaying the news of the situation to a dispatcher. He rushed back to Ken's side.
Crushing guilt weighed him down. He had failed everyone today –Dr. Nambu, Princess Jessica, and most of all, Ken. He hadn't done his duty diligently, he hadn't protected the Princess and he hadn't listened to Ken's warning about Myrtle –even though he knew that Ken had the bloody annoying habit of always being right!
It was all so obvious now. Myrtle had been the Galactor assassin all along. She'd snuck out of the theatre while he was too sleepy to notice and she'd poisoned the bisque, knowing that the Princess would eat some. But had her goal been to incapacitate the Princess and everyone else in order to facilitate abduction or to kill the Princess here and now? The man she'd thrown the knife at –he must be her accomplice and she'd killed him to silence him forever. Typical Galactor treachery!
He wanted to scream, he wanted to beg Ken to forgive him, and he wanted to kill Myrtle. But he needed to think –faster and more clearly than he ever had!
He knew they'd all been poisoned. He knew because he was a consummate expert in the art of poisons. All his shuriken were deadly. He always sought the fastest, the most powerful and the most guaranteed-to-be-fatal poisons and used them in the tips of his signature weapon.
He could try to coerce information out of Myrtle as to what poison she had used, but that could well take more time than he had –and he wouldn't trust a damned thing she told him anyway!
He turned again to Jessica, still limp and completely unconscious.
He tried to calm himself. There was no way he'd be able to figure out exactly what poison had been used –not without medical equipment that he didn't have- but the fact was clear that the Princess was still breathing and her color was okay. A fleet of trained medics had been summoned a minute ago, and he tried to reassure himself that they'd get her to a hospital in time to ensure her survival, and that of everyone else here.
But Ken… he was clearly in worse shape than anyone else. He was barely breathing and his lips and his fingernails seemed to be turning bluish. His eyes were open, but they were rolled back in his head. Unnaturally bluish veins were distinctly visible through the pallor of Ken's face.
Oh no, no, no…
Had he somehow been dosed with more poison? Or a different poison? If so, what one? Could he last until the ambulances arrived?
He glanced up at Myrtle, sitting stiffly in the chair and clutching her arms as she stared at him. How could he have been so damned stupid? He thought about what they'd been doing on that very chair just a short time before and it made him feel sick.
He truly was a magnet for disaster.
Please, Ken, he implored silently, holding his friend's hand, feeling his pulse on his neck with his other hand. I'm sorry. Please, hang on, Ken.
Ken twitched spasmodically.
Then he stopped breathing completely.
He closed his eyes for a moment, struggling not to give in to panic or despair. Joe knew how to perform CPR, but before he did, there was one other thing he could do…
He wasn't always completely stupid. He was aware there was a chance that one of his teammates could, in the heat and confusion of battle, get hit with one of his shuriken. There was always a chance he could somehow get poisoned by them himself; he'd built up and maintained immunity over the years to some of the poisons he used (the reason he liked to hold only certain of his shuriken in his teeth), but not all of them.
Most of the poisons he used in his shuriken had antidotes, and he carried tiny syringes that could administer doses of these antidotes.
But he didn't know if any of them would do Ken any good –he didn't know what he'd been poisoned with!
And they were contained in the compartment on the left side of his birdstyle's belt –he couldn't access them unless he transmuted into the Condor.
Myrtle –that witch!- was still sitting in the chair and staring at him, but he was going to do whatever it took to save Ken.
He could always kill her later.
He raised his bracelet to his mouth and said "Bird go!"
A blinding flash of light flooded the office and spilled through the door and before it had even faded, Joe was digging frantically in his belt's compartment for the syringes.
"Oh my God…" Myrtle was whispering.
There were four syringes. As fast as he could, he injected all of them into Ken's arm.
Then he began CPR.
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The universe shrank down to nothing but him and Ken, and the chest compressions he was performing on him. It was like a nightmare; too much time had passed, and no time at all.
Come on, Ken, breathe!
Suspended as he was in desperation, he could never have said how much time had gone by. But then-
Had Ken's eyes moved?
He stopped what he was doing, staring at Ken's chest.
Breathe, damn you! Live!
And he was, he really was!
Joe realized he was laughing aloud now in joy and relief.
"What…" Ken was saying in a weak, ragged voice, "What's happening?"
"You were poisoned," Joe told him, "By her!" He pointed in Myrtle's direction, not wanting to look at her.
"Poisoned?" said Ken, then his eyes widened. "The Princess! Is she-"
Ken had turned his head, and seen Jessica lying prone on the floor just outside the door.
"She's been poisoned too, but not as badly as you. Medics are on the way, they'll be here any minute! It had to have been the shrimp bisque –everyone who ate any of it is down."
Ken blinked a few times, eyes blank in recollection.
"I remember… we all tried it, but you and Myrtle had disappeared-"
"Myrtle's going to pay for what she's done," growled Joe.
Ken managed to sit up now, first staring at the dead man and then at Myrtle.
Joe found himself now staring into Myrtle's dark eyes. For a fleeting moment, before, he thought he'd found… something with her. But it had all been a lie.
"You don't understand," said Myrtle softly, never taking her eyes from his. The look of anguish in her eyes… Damn, she was good.
"Oh what, is it time now for the whole 'Galactor made me do it, I'm not really bad' schtick? Let me tell you, I'm not buying it!"
"The poison was in the bisque?" Ken was saying.
"Yeah," he replied, still glaring at Myrtle, "It's the only thing you all ate that she and I didn't –or him either, I guess." Joe shrugged in the direction of the dead man.
"Okay," said Ken, "Makes sense. I had two servings of it-"
"Jessica!" said Ken suddenly. He whipped around to look out the door, and as he did, Joe spun around too.
Jessica was gone.
"Jessica didn't eat any bisque!" Ken was saying frantically, looking bewildered as he tried to stand up, "She gave me her serving –said she had to watch her figure!"
"Stay down!" said Joe, giving Ken a shove backwards as he leaped to his feet and dashed out of the office.
Jessica hadn't gotten very far. She was running past the cooking stations, heading for the main doors out of the kitchen. He sped after her.
She'd made it halfway down the hallway before he caught up to her, grabbing her arm. As she spun around, he pushed her up against the wall, holding her arm in a vice-like grip.
Suddenly, emergency medics began streaming into hallway.
"Help me!" screamed Jessica, in classic damsel-in-distress mode, "He's gone mad! The Condor's trying to kill me!"
Several medics stopped and stared. Joe glared at them. Damn it, was he going to have to explain himself to them?
"Please!" cried Jessica, still looking captivatingly adorable even as tears of fear ran down her cheeks. He closed his eyes briefly to compose himself.
And he opened them an instant later as he realized that someone had rushed up behind him and was now at his side.
A fist flew, straight into Jessica's face.
"Shut up!" said Myrtle.
Only Joe's grip on Jessica's arm kept her from sliding down the wall to the floor.
"The victims are in here," Myrtle was saying to the medics, "Follow me!"
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Everyone –Chef Julian, all the entrants- had been taken away in ambulances and the medics thought they'd all pull through.
Everyone had been taken away, that is, except Ken, Jessica, Myrtle and the dead man.
Ken, up and walking around now, had insisted he was fine and refused to go. Joe didn't think he looked anything like "fine," but had known better than to argue the matter.
Jessica had been expertly-yet-non-painfully tied to the chair in the office with cooking twine by Myrtle –Joe was trying very hard not to think about the implications of that skill.
Myrtle was standing guard over her, looking like she really wanted to stab her with a knife too.
The dead man was still dead.
Joe had used the full effect of his Condor reputation to send all the emergency response personnel on their way with all the victims of the poisoned bisque, and to insist that he would take responsibility for Ken, Jessica and the dead man. But he knew that police would be arriving any minute now.
And before that happened, he wanted some answers!
Myrtle had walked away to the far side of the room. Jessica was looking thoroughly sullen and unrepentant, but he tried anyway.
"You didn't eat any bisque but you pretended to be poisoned –and then you tried to run away," he said coldly, "It was you who poisoned the bisque. You were hanging around Chef Julian's cooking station when he prepared it, and you would have had a chance to slip poison into it before heading into the Theatre, or into one of its ingredients even earlier in the event –you spent enough time up at his cooking station, pretending to fawn over him."
Jessica was silent for a moment, but then she raised her head proudly, a glint of mania in her eye.
"It was the vermouth, actually. Julian told me at the very beginning that he'd be making his famous shrimp bisque later –I had him charmed, all right- and I've watched his show so many times, I knew he'd use vermouth in a seafood bisque."
Joe was surprised by this detailed admission, but continued.
"So what the hell were you trying to accomplish? Was this some desperate bid for sympathy and attention? You nearly got him killed!" He gestured at Ken.
"I wanted him killed!" hissed Jessica suddenly, as all pretense of innocence fled her face, "I heard Flake on the phone to Dr. Nambu, asking him to send Gatchaman to protect me! She didn't know I was listening -she's too stupid to realize how much better I am than her! Too stupid to know that I should be ruling the Kingdom –not her! I knew that if I could get rid of Gatchaman, that the next time Galactor tried to kill her, they'd succeed and that Galactor and I would become allies, with me ruling the Monalince Kingdom!"
"How did you…" Ken was staring at Jessica, horrified.
"Of course I knew you're Gatchaman!" Jessica smirked, "You've practically got 'noble hero' tattooed on your forehead and you stuck close to me the entire time." She began giggling hysterically, "What I wasn't expecting was the Condor too."
"So the whole 'The Princess dies in Amegapolis this Saturday' message was a complete ruse, then," said Ken, "Just so that your sister would appeal to the Science Ninja Team for help."
But Jessica was still giggling. "No, that part was true! I wanted to kill Gatchaman; he wanted to kill the Princess." She pointed at the dead man. "Galactor wanted to help both of us succeed –they gave me the poison, and they gave him ten grand to be able to enter the event."
Joe was shaking his head, and Ken looked equally confused.
"Wait, you're the Princess –what you're saying makes no sense!"
But Jessica just kept giggling, her face vacant with insanity. Soon, she'd slipped into stupor.
How long, Joe wondered, how long has she been like this? Princess Flake would be devastated when she learned what her own little sister had become –mentally deranged and a tool of Galactor.
"No, it makes sense," said Myrtle flatly, "You see, I am the Princess."
Joe had almost forgotten she was in the room, but now he whipped around to look at her.
"My name is not really 'Myrtle,'" she said, "I am Princess Lavinia of Danubia."
He and Ken could only stare in shocked silence.
"He," and here Myrtle gestured at the dead man, "He is, without a doubt, a Carpathian who came here today to kill me."
In the wake of Jessica's bizarre actions and, now, her incredible confession, Joe's thoughts hadn't had time to fully grasp that Myrtle didn't, in fact, belong to Galactor and might not be a knife-wielding assassin.
He almost felt dizzy –too much was happening too quickly!
Myrtle walked over to the dead man and felt through the pockets of his jacket.
She pulled out a revolver, and handed it to Joe. He only needed a second to tell that it was loaded.
"If I had not thrown that knife at him, he would have shot both you and me."
"How do you know he's a Carpathian?" asked Ken.
Joe was lost in the realization that his intimacy and passion with her was not, after all, a memory that would only fill him with guilt and disgust for the rest of his life.
No, what they'd experienced together might be real and true. It might be a beginning.
The beginning of finding what he'd long been searching for…
She was studying the Carpathian's face, fists clenched but steady. Not her first kill, he realized.
"He 'forgot' to put garlic in his Boeuf Bourguignon, but many of the most conservative and traditional Carpathians refuse to eat garlic –it is an old folk custom of theirs."
"Of course!" said Ken, like one who now gets it, "Danubia and Carpathia have been at war with each other for years, but just recently a peace treaty has been brokered. This man must have been one of those Carpathians who are vehemently opposed to it."
"Yes," said Myrtle, turning away, "Even in Danubia there are many who still wish to continue the war. If I had been killed, it would have served as a rallying cry for them, and the peace treaty would have certainly fallen apart and the war continued."
Joe found his voice again. "So," he said, walking over to her and taking her hand in his, "I guess you know now that I'm not Fern." Myrtle wouldn't be able to see his face through his visor, but she smiled at him anyway.
She was so beautiful.
"Aren't you," asked Ken, in a somewhat sharper voice than necessary, "The heir to the Danubian throne?"
Myrtle nodded, but she was still looking at him with her shining dark eyes, still holding his gloved hand.
"And, correct me if I'm wrong here," added Ken, "But aren't you, as part of the peace treaty, pledged to marry the new King of Carpathia?"
What?
Myrtle closed her eyes.
"My father, he says it is crucial that there be a symbolic union of Danubia and Carpathia and the establishment of closer administrative ties, or else the peace treaty will not last, and thousands more will continue to be killed in a futile war that has ravaged both kingdoms for far, far too long."
Silence filled the room.
"I wanted to win this event today," said Myrtle quietly, "In order to be able to use all the entrants' fees to establish a charity for children in both Danubia and Carpathia who have been made orphans by the war."
But he was still stuck on her first sentence.
"You have a fiancé."
She understood.
"You do not understand," she said, "For people like me, our marriages are purely political arrangements. Where my feelings are concerned, it does not matter!"
"It sure as hell matters to me, Lavinia." He pulled his hand away from hers.
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"I don't think you need to worry," Ken said, out of the blue. They had been on the plane back to Utoland for three hours. Joe hadn't said a word the entire time, so he had no idea what Ken meant.
"Worry about what?" he asked, a bit testily. He wasn't in the mood to talk –didn't Ken see that?
"About… compromising your secret identity. Or mine. She doesn't know our real names and she doesn't know where we live. I don't think Dr. Nambu will be too bent out of shape, especially as you did what you did in order to save my life."
She? Did he mean Jessica or Myrtle -no, Lavinia? In Jessica's case it hardly mattered –she'd be shut up in a psychiatric hospital in the Monalince Kingdom for years to come.
Actually, he didn't care what Ken meant.
Silence prevailed again for awhile. Until-
"I'm sorry about what I said, Joe, earlier."
"What are you talking about?" he growled, not bothering to open his eyes. For a guy who'd nearly been poisoned to death today, Ken was being awfully chatty.
"I said you were a magnet for disaster, that you only attract women who are trouble."
"So what's your point?" He didn't bother to look at Ken.
"I said I'm sorry. You're not. The right girl for you is out there somewhere. You'll find her."
Joe didn't answer. He was remembering…
Ken had been on the office phone with Princess Flake explaining what had happened with her sister –Joe hadn't envied him that job- and making arrangements for the body guards to come and take Jessica back to Monalince Kingdom. It was all going to be hushed up; the public would be told that Jessica had suffered a nervous breakdown but nothing else. The police had been willing to believe the Condor's word that the dead man had also been the poisoner, and that Myrtle Vlach had killed him in self defense. They'd been taking Myrtle's statement, and preparing to move his body to a morgue.
Then it had been time to leave. He'd been standing in the building's foyer, watching through the glass doors as Ken had overseen the guards collecting and taking Princess Jessica away in the same luxurious sedan that had brought her here.
He'd changed back into his civvies, and had been running a hand wearily through his hair.
"Fern? Condor? I do not know what to call you…" The voice behind him had been hesitant.
"Why are you still here?"
She'd walked around him and stood facing him.
"I know what you must think of me…"
"Hey," he'd said, shrugging, "What you do doesn't matter to me."
"That is not what you said before!"
Damn…
She'd kept her eyes on his, unwavering.
"I want you to know that I fully intend to fulfill my duty to my country and be an honorable wife –I always intended that."
He hadn't said anything, but something had slipped past his façade.
"But it is," she'd whispered, "For me, a sacrifice –one I am willing to make, but today, I was not married yet, and you were…"
She'd reached for his hand again, and somehow he'd been unable to deny her it this time. The look in her sad, dark eyes –he knew where such feelings came from.
"I wanted one last chance to be free, while I still can be. Surely you understand?"
He'd looked away.
"Yeah, I understand."
But for a brief moment he held both her hands in his. Then he walked away, through the doors, out to the street where Ken was waiting.
It had been a good bye, though he hadn't wanted to say the words. Words weren't necessary.
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A couple hours later, he answered.
"Hey, Ken?"
"Mmm?"
"Do you think Jun would let me use the Snack J's kitchen?"
"Huh?" said Ken, now sitting up and turning to look at Joe.
"I never did get to try the apple pie I made or the stew. I want to make them again."
"You want to cook?" asked Ken, eyes wide.
"Yeah," he said, "And I'll make enough for five people."
"I have influence with Jun," Ken smiled, "You just name the day."
The End.