Waiting for a Miracle - Chapter 10

Leona leapt through the window of my lab, not bothering to perch at the top to regain her balance like she used to. She landed softly and silently on the floor, smiling at me as she started walking over to my worktable, where I was working on an experiment.

Leona had just returned from a staged bank robbery with Wallace, whom we would meet at Leona’s apartment in just a few minutes. We had to do things this way, since the press had crowded outside my ‘secret’ laboratory, hoping to catch a glimpse of me and my sidekick. The press had dubbed her thus, and I hadn’t bothered to correct them. It pleased Leona, and why should I hurt her feelings over a white lie?

We slipped on new versions of the stealth collars that only cloaked us. Though it meant walking to Leona’s apartment, we didn’t have to put up with the pain of setting up a neural link.

Leona took my hand and we vanished before we went out through the back door of my lab, silently sneaking away from the press who clung to my front door like gnats on spoiled fruit. Less than a block later we turned off the collars and walked in silence the rest of the way to her apartment, enjoying each other’s company.

Wallace was waiting on Leona’s front steps, already dressed in civilian attire. He had a grin as wide as a Cheshire cat, but he said nothing about the reasons for his good humor as he followed us into her apartment.

Taking a brown paper bag out from under his arm, he slipped out of his jacket. I suppressed the urge to shudder at the sight of his arms bulging through his t-shirt. I’ll grant you that Wallace is no Miracle Man, but in the few weeks that I’d been staging fights with him, I’d come to like Wallace’s body more and more. I was sure his wife still smiled every time he undressed for bed.

Speaking of whom, Wallace’s wife Maggie was now in on our game, and every one of Wallace’s shirts now had a little W painted over his heart.

The funny thing is, Wallace’s “costume” was a black long-sleeve shirt that was one size too small for him and a pair of black khaki pants. He wore a pair of hiking boots and a pair of black leather gloves to complete his look, a costume that the city responded well to.

Well, honestly Wallace could have worn a skirt and blouse and still had the city’s approval. He was praised in every outlet of the media as being a hero for the common man.

I’m sorry, I’m getting off track, aren’t I? Wallace pulled what I thought was a magazine from the bag and tossed it onto Leona’s “coffee table” an ancient relic with gold angels adorning the top. I tried to look inside once, but Leona said it wasn’t a good idea.

Most of Leona’s apartment was full of such ancient relics and priceless works of art. I consider it rather tacky, but Wallace seemed to enjoy his visits. Then again, I have poor taste, so what do I know?

Wallace went to Leona’s kitchen to grab a beer, but she was way ahead of him. She handed him a bottle at the door and pointed to an antique red velvet sofa. “This is my house, buddy,” she teased. “So I’ll be the hostess, if you don’t mind.”

She walked over to where I sat on a matching red velvet divan. I was staring at the cover of the comic book. What had caught my eye first wasn’t the title, it was the caption Beware the Light Master!

And there I was, in all my shining white glory. At last I had a place in history, because I had a co-starring role in a comic book.

I read the title next, Wallace, and I laughed. “It would figure. I had to hire a new hero before I got in a comic book. You look good in tights,” I told Wallace, who chuckled as he sat down.

“That’s not the worst artistic liberty taken in there,” he said.

I picked up the comic book, reading it with great interest. It seemed the story was almost a direct translation of the first plot I’d staged with Wallace. My amusement was short-lived, as the writer had put me and Leona together as lovers. I handed the book to her with a shake of my head, wondering why I couldn’t just be correctly described as a brooding, lonely overlord.

To cover my annoyance, I said, “I still can’t get over the fact that I had to stage fights to get in a comic book.”

“About that.” Wallace sipped his beer. “I’m going to take a few days off this next week. Maggie wants to go camping at our old honeymoon spot, a cabin we rent up in the mountains every few Summers. I was wondering if you’d like to come along.”

I was stunned, and I could tell that Leona was too. Her mouth hung open, and her blue irises were surrounded by wide circles of white. She at least had enough awareness to raise a hand and cover her mouth, but her wide eyes and stock-still tail spoke volumes without her saying a word.

No less stunned, my voice was quiet as I asked, “You’d invite us on a family outing with you?”

“You need it, Duggan. Heck, both of you do. You could meet my son Greg, and Maggie would love to have you come with us.”

“How would you know that?” I said.

“Because I asked her. When she brought up the idea of going camping, she told me to ask for some time off, as though this was my job and you were my boss.” Wallace huffed a short laugh. “We started asking ourselves if super villains ever go camping, or if you ever take vacations. Do you?”

“Does sleeping on the roadside count?” Leona asked. She was half joking, but thankfully Wallace didn’t press her for details.

“Would you like to go?” Wallace asked again.

“I’ve never actually been camping, but…” I trailed off, looking at Leona. She nodded so fast her ears bobbed, and the top half of her tail was a happy blur of black and white.

When she stopped bobbing her head and I could see her face instead of a blur, she wore an excited, radiant smile that was infectious. Her smile felt so good, I started to grin.

Laughing, I said, “So that’s a yes?”

“I’d love to,” Leona said.

I’m going to admit that Wallace was right about a lot of things, and Leona was chief among them. Where I had thought restoring her confidence would yield a lethal killing machine, it instead revived the soul of a very beautiful woman.

She could still be deadly when she needed to be, but in the last two weeks, she had only killed two people, a pair of rapists she’d found on her way to the liquor store. She dispatched them and carried their victim to the hospital, leaving quickly before anyone saw her, or so she thought.

Wallace had just dropped off the victim of a car pipe-bomb, and he saw Leona leave the girl on a stretcher before she blurred out of the emergency room. When Wallace told me about it, I admitted to him right then and there that I had been wrong.

There I sat on her stolen antique divan, watching her swish her tail back and forth at the prospect of going camping, and I knew that she was truly restored to her former glory.

I provided the technology, but she had been healed by Wallace. After all, it was his suggestion to restore her tail. I’d just thought to collar her. Obviously, I was not in my right mind, and Wallace was.

So by admitting these things to myself, I realized that a camping trip could be a healthy part of my own therapy too.

I gave a short nod, laughing when Leona squealed her delight and hugged my neck. I joked, “Name one other city where the villains and heroes go camping together?”

“There aren’t any,” Leona replied with a giggle

I laughed with her, stopping when I remembered that we still needed to discuss a new plot to use the next day. I got up and began to prepare my slides, looking to Wallace as he burst into laughter for no apparent reason.

“What?” I asked.

“I just thought about how our plots are kind of like professional wrestling,” he said and Leona laughed as she nodded her agreement.

Smirking, I tried to fake a look of disappointment. “You don’t actually watch wrestling, do you?”

“Why not? I like it,” Wallace said. “I tend to think of it as a soap opera for guys.”

“Plus it has sweaty, muscle bound men heaving against each other. It’s kind of fun to watch,” Leona said.

This observation made Wallace blush, and I snorted. “Yeah, I suppose it does have that.”

“You watch it too, don’t you?” Wallace said, grinning when I nodded. “I knew it.”

“I only watch it on occasion. You know, every Monday night or so.” As I finished setting up the slide projector, I said, “Still, the fact that we can make observations based on their similarities to our fights means our plots are becoming too formulaic. We need something to stir things up a bit.”

I walked over to the door to turn out the lights, still talking as I walked back. “I’m putting Wallace to an ultimate test of his abilities tomorrow. I was going to save this for Miracle Man, but it will be just as good a plot without him. I’m going to use this.” I turned on the slide projector.

To me, this was just cheesy, having to use a slide projector on a bare wall when my comic book counterpart had a fancy floating plasma screen to show his plots on.

Still that slide brought a long silence to the room.

Leona finally broke it when she muttered, “Holy shit.”

“You’ve lost your mind,” Wallace said.

“I know that Wallace, but just think about it. Think of the terror it will cause, and you can still end up saving the day.”

“Duggan, that is an EMP bomb, not a toy,” Wallace said. His face full of fear and alarm, he slung his arm to point at the screen. “If that thing is as big as I think it is, it would drop a lot of planes on the city.”

“I know, which is why Leona and I will be acting as a sort of ‘terminal barrier’. If you miss any of the planes, we’ll be there to catch them. The device would be launched into the air so that only the planes will be in its effective range, which means there won’t be any other accidents to account for beyond the planes in range of the pulse.”

“Duggan—” Wallace began.

I held up my hand to stop him. “Admit it, Wallace. You know you won’t need our help on this. You’re easily better than both of us at this hero business, and this is what you’d be doing if you really were the hero. I really am the villain, and this game is getting old without the element of risk that should be in every plot I make.”

“I’m afraid I have to agree with that,” Leona said. “I know you aren’t really trying to stop me, so there isn’t any point in running from you. Just once, I’d like to commit a robbery and have you actually try to catch me without any forewarning.”

Wallace started to object, and Leona spoke over him. “Don’t get me wrong, Wallace. It’s been fun playing cops and robbers with you, but I’ve been making squat. I keep giving up my loot as I make my escape so you can return it.”

“Leona, your apartment is practically a wing of the museum on its own,” Wallace observed dryly. “If you need money, you could just sell—”

“My stuff? I don’t think so.” Leona sniffed, and then exhaled a derogatory snort. “It took a lot of work to steal this stuff, and I got it all back when double M was still on the clock. I’m keeping my things, thank you very much.”

“We should do this plan, Wallace,” I cut in before he could get lost on a tangent. “We’ll do this plan, and then we’ll all go camping this weekend, just like you want.”

Wallace stared at me, angry for wanting to put so many people in danger. But after some time he nodded. “After this plot, we won’t do another one until after the camping trip.”

“What about me?” Leona asked. “What am I going to do until then?”

“Duggan can take you out to a movie,” Wallace said, looking at me pointedly.

“Really? Could you?” Leona asked.

Looking at the glimmer of hope in her eyes, how could I refuse? “Yes, we’ll go see a movie,” I agreed. “For now, I’m going back to my lab.”

I went home and opened the vault to stare at the massive bomb inside. Wallace was right, and it would have a very large range. I armed the detonating device and shut the vault door.

The next day, Wallace would be getting his first real test as a hero.