Bonus Issue: Daedalus and Icarus

The action was foolish, and he knew it. But Mark still dived and tackled one of the armoured figures. Much to Mark’s surprise, the Enforcer actually bucked and dropped to one knee, probably not expecting such a foolhardy action. The next second the same Enforcer spun around, grabbed Mark by the throat, and hurled him across the street.

Both Enforcers turned to face Dirk, only to be met with another wall of red. They opened fire, the lasers threatening to break through. Dirk pushed forward even harder, turning the shield into a dome covering the Enforcers, its surface becoming more solid and losing its transparency. Taking advantage that the Enforcers could no longer see him, Dirk began to run. The dome vanished with an audible snap from the sheer amount of power invested.

Dirk weaved across the street, struggling to reform the shield above him. Reaching Mark, Dirk helped him to his feet. They began running. A laser bolt clipped Mark on the leg and he stumbled as his leg went numb. A quick glace told him it looked ok, with any luck they wouldn’t take one of those weapon blasts full on. They needed to get under cover.

“Come on, down the alley,” Mark cried over the weapons fire. Once inside they paused a second to catch their breath.

“We need to get inside a building. Stop them from being able to strafe us.”

A noise in the alley made Mark spin round, coming face to face with a gun. The man made a impatient gesture and barked out the word ‘wallet’. Mark just looked at the mugger in disbelief.

“Seriously?”

Mark had pushed Dirk into the alleyway first, so he saw the crazed man holding the gun before Mark did.

Dirk's first impulse might, normally, have been that this malcontent needed to be brought to justice and should be apprehended and brought to the police. He might, not so long ago, have acted first and thought about it later.

Now, however, their priorities were in a slightly different order than normal.

And he thought about it. And he acted.

Focusing all his energy, Dirk launched out a burst of Red at the man, who shrieked, but showing more control of his powers than he ever had before, Dirk racked the slide forward to remove it entirely from the gun, and nudged the magazine release so that the clip fell out from the would-be mugger's weapon, leaving him weaponless and staring in horror.

"Now run. Get out of here, now, or you will be killed," Dirk ordered, and perhaps his eyes were beginning to glow red, too, because the man turned and ran almost before Dirk finished speaking.

Immediately he turned back to Mark: "Are you all right? Were you hit?" he asked, but they couldn't afford any time, so Dirk shoved Mark forward and into the building.

Dirk slammed the door behind them and leaned against it and they Mark was staring at him, open-mouthed, giving as much pause as they could afford.

"Wow, kid, you handled that... That was textbook. And scary fast."

"Yeah," Dirk agreed, gasping heavily as he leaned into his arm, "I, um. Desperate times, you know," he said.

He hoped Mark didn't see, but his hands were shaking.

“Yeah, I understand kid. Just keep it together and we’ve got a good chance of getting out of this.”

Dirk was about to reply when Mark waved him to be silent.

“It’s gone quiet outside.” Mark put his ear to the door straining to hear anything, then shook his head.

“Have they gone?” asked Dirk once it was clear Mark had stopped listening out.

“I doubt it, but maybe…” Mark wondered.

“Where do we go now? The basement?”

“And corner ourselves? Bad idea. Actually, ok, no worse than most of our other options right now. I think it would be better to head up. It’ll give us a chance to see what’s going on. But stick to the shadows.” The two of them crept up several flights of stairs before emerging on an empty, abandoned floor. Mark couldn’t hear the whine of the Enforcer’s flight, or see any through the windows. It looked like they could be safe for the moment.

“Right, we’ll hole up here for a bit. Hopefully they lost track of us when…” Mark didn’t get a chance to finish the sentence before an Enforcer crashed through the side of the building and without slowing charged directly at Mark. He tried to leap aside but too late, the Enforcer grabbing Mark and continuing his flight, this time down through the floor.

Mark counted smashing through six floors before he blacked out.

"MARK!"

The world had slowed, horribly, painfully, and finally. He could still see Mark's face frozen in front of him: shocked, angered, and maybe even a little scared as he crashed through the floor, and kept crashing down, down, down.

Unarmored. Sure, Mark was tough, had regenerative healing, even, but not enough to survive that.

They weren't even after Mark! They were after him!

Two Enforcers broke through windows in front of him. Dirk blasted them with a ray from his eyes he had never managed before, and it was so hot, sharp, and concentrated that it cut them in half.

He felt an instant pang of guilt at the loss of life, but he pushed it down and went to the hole and crouched beside it. "Mark! Mark!"

Silence.

Dirk had just made up his mind to climb down after his mentor, and, barring that, to jump, when there was another crash, and before Dirk could look up, a sharp snap of pain in the side of his head.

He rolled, knocked to the ground. The world was spinning around him, and Dirk couldn't tell if there was only the one Enforcer or five. He managed a weak shield so the hailstorm of fire didn't reach him, because they had passed the time for ordering him to stand down, but it flickered dangerously. He was using too much energy, pushing it too hard, but with a grunt of exertion he strengthened it. It went red.

"Get away from me!" Dirk shrieked. Tears were running down his face. He didn't know if he was scared or angry or sad or just desperate and the Red was getting hotter and hotter now and was that the sound of screaming he was hearing or the building rending apart--

KABOOM!

Dirk thought he would drop unconscious when the Red just went off like that. He had before, when he was younger, the last time the Red had just exploded like that, gone nuclear as Mark liked to call it--no, no, don't think about Mark, he coached himself, but it was too late, and another ripple of red-hot energy blasted through the air.

Dirk couldn't see how far it went, couldn't see to the end of the area it affected, though he tried. He saw Enforcers in their suits being burned alive, he saw the building tumbling down around him, he saw trees uprooted and cars blown over. And it was all of it Red, bleeding off of him in waves, unstoppable and not stopping.

When Dirk finally, blissfully, dropped unconscious, as the Red drained every last piece of him, only one thought remained:

Mark was surely dead now.

((I tried several times to write this, trying to squeeze in all the stuff I wanted, but it just kept coming up horribly clunky, confusing and far too heavy on the info-dump side. So I stripped it back to the essentials and it works a lot better. Oh well, I can cover the rest of the stuff in flashbacks in the main story, or start a Mark background topic.))

Days. That’s what it felt like. Difficult to tell, lying on the dark after spend who know how long unconscious. But given how hungry he felt it was definitely over forty-eight hours. After what seemed like another age Mark saw a crack of light appear above him, which began to widen. Hands reached down to help him out of the pile of rubble and debris. Blinking in the light Mark could make out several emergency service officers, some digging, others operating scanning equipment searching for life signs.

Mark unsteadily rose to his feet and walked a few steps, trying to clear the numbness from them. An aid worker went with him, directing him towards a waiting ambulance. He tried to get Mark to sit as he handed him a polystyrene cup of coffee but Mark insisted on standing.

“You’re incredibly lucky,” the worker began. “You’re the only survivor we found.”

“There weren’t any others?”

“None at all. The explosion took out most of the street. At least it was early morning a few people were about. I’d hate to imagine the carnage had the building been occupied.”

“Are you absolutely certain no one else made it out alive?” Mark asked with some concern.

“Positive. The police station is just a block away and they were on the scene in under a minute.”

Mark’s legs almost gave way and he sat down on the step of the ambulance. If Dirk was still alive the police would know. They wouldn’t keep it a secret. ‘Rogue Super Blows Up Street.’ Just the kind of publicity that PHMA would want. Get the public even more on their side. So if they were saying noting that meant…

The Aid worker noticed the look on Mark’s face. “Did you lose somebody?” he asked with genuine concern.

“No,” replied Mark heavily. “I’ve lost everybody.”

*****

The lights in the room flickered on. It was Mark’s private sanctum, hidden beneath his own garage. Not even Dirk had been down here. Along the wall in alcoves stood numerous armoured suits. Each had a near identical form, but the detailing and accessories on each differed. For many, these suits were symbols of hope. For Mark, symbols of painful memories.

On one side of the wall stood a desk, the wall above it covered in photos. Most showed Mark with several other people. Sometimes in costumes, sometimes not. Shots of his superhero days. Others, more recent, showed Mark with his family. A couple, the newest, showed Dirk and Mark together. Mark had been close to everyone in those photos. And now… Now, most were dead. And those few who weren’t were now far away, living ‘normal’ lives. A wall of the past. A past where Mark belonged, as opposed to the present where he was a relic, and an outsider.

He placed the bag he was carrying down on the floor. The numerous bottles inside clinked together as Mark settled down in a chair. Taking a bottle, Mark raised it in toast to the people in the photos.

“Here’s to you. Our time is over.” Mark began to drink.

Dirk woke slowly to beeps and wires and bright light and the smell of antiseptic. Also pain, but that was nothing compared to the pain in his heart.

"Mark..."

But when he opened his eyes, Mark wasn't there.

"M-Mom?" he whispered.

"Oh, darling, you're awake!" she said, and showered him with tears and kisses.

It was some time before Dirk understood what happened--why he didn't wake in handcuffs--or never woke at all--

His father was a powerful man, and had pulled enough strings to get his "incident" overlooked by local authorities. He was tagged by the PHMA, and fitted with the latest in the post-human regulation device: an inhibitor chip, at the base of his spine.

Dirk was angry at first, but soon came to realize--after he read the report about the "incident," realized how many people and how much property he had damaged--not to mention Mark's death, which he tried not to think about--that it was better this way. Soon, he even began to support the PHMA and their efforts. Supers were not bad people, just as anyone, but their abilities and powers were deadly weapons, and should be regulated and monitored, and, in his case especially, controlled.

So he returned to live with his parents in Boston. He went back to high school. He met a fellow Post-Human, Joan, and he married her when they graduated high school. He signed to the Boston Red Sox. He won Rookie of the Year. He had three beautiful children. He lived a perfectly normal life with an inhibitor chip.

And then he found out the truth.