Talyesin's Tales

Having shut down two drug cartels in the subterranean city called Downtown underneath Action City, Squirrelman, Ragdoll, Ace and Darklight agreed to go to the new superhip restaurant-club to celebrate. In his guise as Matt Mattheson, Squirrelman left his job as CEO of the Mr. Accountant to pursue crimefighting full time. He had every intention of tracking down the source of the Praxis technology that had produced the drug called Boost - but first, he had dinner plans...





I get home and give Kimmy a call.

“Sinclair,” she answers, meaning she’s still at the office.

“Hey,” I say. “What’s up for tonight?”

“Can we talk about this when I get there? I’m on my way out.”

“Sure.”

I hang up and take a shower. It’s very weird, coming home from work and calling my girlfriend and taking a shower, waiting on our evening plans. I mean, it reminds me a lot of my previous life, when I was just an accountant, and Ron and I were just scraping by, and nothing exciting ever happened... or at least, the most exciting thing that would happen to me would be I’d find a particularly rare stamp or gold coin.

That was my life. And now I fight crime. I just quit my very well-paying job to go fight crime full time. I’m thinking going out to supper with my girlfriend and a couple of friends is kind of a waste of time, given that I could be out there, stopping crime, or meeting with Doc Sterling to discuss the cases we just closed.

But hey, Rick is paying, and I can’t imagine we’re going to avoid talking shop completely.

Kimmy shows up about a half hour later, I’m just getting dressed.

“Hey,” I call down.

“Hey yourself,” she answers, climbing the stairs. She looks at me in my boxer briefs, trying to figure out which shirt to wear.

“Black, or burgundy?” I ask.

“Grey,” she answers. “The Cosmos Lounge is mask-friendly.”

“We’re going to dinner in costume?”

“You ready to show Darklight your face just yet?” she asks, getting undressed. “We’ve worked with her, but I’m not ready to trust her that much at this point.”

She heads into the shower and I go downstairs to my secret room.

“Farrah?”

My PSYFERRET comes online instantly.

“Yes Matt?”

“Do me a favour and download all the papers necessary for registration under the Claremont Act?”

“It may take a while, Matt. The queue is quite long.”

“Well, I’m heading out for the evening, so take your time.”

“Alright.”

I take my costume out of the autowasher and try and clean up my backup tail. It’s not getting any better looking. Looks like I’m going to have to bite the bullet and pay the Costumer a visit. Then there’s my mask. Without the dark goggles, there’s just two holes around my eyes. I’ll probably have to get a new mask. Maybe I’ll stick with letting people see my eyes.

“You ready?” Kimmy asks behind me.

She’s already in costume. Damn she’s fast.

I pull on my mask and say, “Let’s go.”

She just grins at me and opens the hidden door.

We race each other along the rooftops of Lower Uptown, heading for the el train. It’ll take us to the City Center, then we can find an up-down train to take us Uptown. Quite frankly when we get that high up I’d rather be inside the train that hitching a ride on the roof, but the elevator platforms are mainly for civilians. The up-down takes us to the hundred levels, where we get off and run along skyways.

We get to the Cosmos Lounge. It’s the hundred-fiftieth floor, the top of the Starlin Tower, so we have to hitch a ride inside, or climb the outside. I’m not as beat as I was earlier, but still I’m not up for a fifty storey climb, so we take the elevator.

I shouldn’t have worried, because we’re not the only costumed crimefighters in the elevator. I recognize Deka and Harmony and Rapunzel. There’s a couple I don’t recognize, and about a dozen civilians dressed in their very best. A couple of them are even wearing capes or those diamond masks that are getting popular again. Real costumed crimefighters call it “Poser Chic” but whatever drapes your cape, I say.

So we get to the top and everyone gets out. There’s a waiting area, with a long chrome bar and huge glass doors leading out to a terrace that doubles as a landing pad for flying masks. Ragdoll and I wait at the bar for Ace and Darklight to show.

We don’t wait long. Enough time for us to get our drinks.

“Hello,” Anna says behind us. She’s in an elegant black dress. I didn’t see her walk up, I ask Ragdoll later, she never saw Anna walk up. One minute she wasn’t there, next minute she was.

Mages. They’re creepy that way.

“Darklight,” I say. “Any word from Ace?”

“He’ll be late,” she answers. “We can go in.”

The three of us are escorted to our seats. Inside, there are stainless steel tables with discrete lighting and a huge dance floor, the music is that modern not-quite-techno not-quite-orchestral jive swing stuff that’s big right now. Quite a few folks are bumping and grinding out on the dance floor. As we walk past tables filled with people - both masks and civilians - I realize that I can’t understand anything anyone is saying, which means they’ve installed sound scramblers in each table. Very expensive.

We sit down in our booth and Ragdoll turns on the scrambler, so anyone outside the field will only hear gibberish.

“Here’s to a job well done,” I toast, raising my rum and coke.

The ladies raise their drinks and we clink glasses. Anna looks at me curiously.

“How does a man in a full face mask drink, exactly?” she asks.

I just lift the mask from under my chin and set it on my upper lip.

“I’m not fussy,” I say, taking a sip.

The waiter shows up, stepping into our scrambler field to understand us. We tell him we’re waiting for a friend. He smiles patiently and says, “Don’t worry if your finished glasses and dishes disappear - our busboy is a speedster.”

Ace finally shows up and says, “Sorry I’m late. I had to wait for sundown to talk to Dragon.”

“Dragon?” Ragdoll asks.

“He’s stone by day. Reverts to fleshform at sundown. He hides out at St. Gregory’s.”

“That’s the one with all the gargoyles on the roof? Corner of Guler and Weisman?” I say.

“That’s the one,” he says.

The waiter comes and Ace orders his gin and tonic. We toast again and Darklight asks, “Why did you need to talk to Dragon?”

“I spent the day networking,” Ace grins. “You should see the list of folks I’ve got lined up to interview for membership. A lot of solo crimefighters are keen to apply.”

“I’m not surprised,” Ragdoll says. “The chance to get health insurance, facilities, whatnot, without having to report for monitor duty or whatever, is something a lot of masks will be interested in.”

“Right,” I say. “But to finish setting up the trust I’m going to need names. We’ve got to get those interviews underway soon.”

“Well, all the auspices are favourable,” Anna says. “I pulled a tarot this afternoon and now is the time for the team to be formed. The sooner the better, really...” She sort of drifts off and I notice she’s looking over my shoulder, so I turn around.

There’s a tall, athletically-built woman standing just outside the range of our scrambler field. I mean, she’s six-three, six-four. Fists on hips. Really muscular without being masculine. Long honey-coloured hair held back with a blue headband, and big blue eyes. She’s wearing a skin tight red unitard with a stylized “P” on the left breast, midnight blue thigh highs and opera gloves. No mask.

She is distractingly stacked.

A memory flash - and I haven’t had a lot of those lately - tells me who she is: Lisa Dumont, aka Physique. Played quite a major role in this body’s formative years, due to a poster on the back of my predecessor’s bedroom door. Mid-eighties, she developed some mysterious sickness. Doc Sterling put her in suspended animation until he could find a cure. She’s been out and about for a couple of months.

Seeing she’s gotten our attention, she steps into the field.

“Don’t want to interrupt, but I heard you’re recruiting,” she says.

I look at Ace.

“News travels fast,” I say.

“Have a seat, Physique,” Darklight says.

She smiles and sits.

“So, where’d you hear about us?” Ragdoll asks.

“Phenom,” she answers. “Ran into him, told me what Ace was looking for.”

“Phenom, huh?” I say to Ace.

“Buddy, if we’re gonna play in the big leagues...” he offers as an explanation.

“Holy shit,” Ragdoll says, looking at the entrance.

There’s a well-dressed man there, tall and athletic, with dark curly hair and handsome, swarthy features. He has ten, maybe twelve people with him, men and women, a couple of masks. He and his entourage walk in like they own the place.

“Folks,” Ace says, “If this was a movie, they just walked into the place in slow motion.”

Of course, we all recognize him.

Kosmos Konstantinopoulos.

The CEO of Praxis Technologies.