"Always Darkest Before Dawn, Part I"
Andy sighed. “You’re going to get yourself killed. You know that, right?”
Don shook his head. “I’ll be careful.”
Andy stepped up and smacked the bald man across the back of the head with his fist. Don flinched and rubbed the area. “Yeah, but I know military history. And I know that guns generally pack more punch than, well, a punch.”
The billionaire nodded. “Then, I’ll get a helmet.”
Don strolled through his historical armory, looking for the perfect top to complete the outfit. Andy came up behind him, looking around as well. “I get all of this if you die on this stupid mission, right?”
Don glowered. “Thanks. You’re being very encouraging, Andy. I know you’ve lost family members, but can you, for one second, try seeing things from my perspective?
“I have no one ... no one ... left in this world who loves me. You have a brother. You have a mother. I have nothing.”
“I see, sir,” Andy said, condescendingly. “Shall I call the hospital and tell Elisa that you don’t love her or her children, and that she’ll have to find another caretaker?”
Don’s face twisted into a very visible grimace as he stared down at his assistant. Andy held his hands up in mock defense. “Hey, man, I’m not trying to piss you off. Just trying to show you how I see it.”
Don nodded, his face still twisted and upset. “Remind me to give you power of attorney so that you can decide when to pull my god-damned plug.
“What if these people decide I’m not worth sparing? What if, by some sheer accident, I was overlooked on the family tree, and they come calling? I can’t take the risk that this will happen again, Andy. Not to me, you, Elisa, or her kids.
“You’re right. I have family now. And I have to make sure I keep this family, or it might just be the last one life gives me.”
Don spun on his heels and found himself facing a replica of the head of the Egyptian god, Horus, rendered in helmet form in a titanium alloy. “Bring us victory,” he said as he read the placard before turning to Andy. “Get me some black spray paint.”
As he slipped on the final touches of the outfit, Don Ford looked out over the back veranda of his Charleston mansion. In the back of the property sat a personally-designed fan-powered hovercraft capable of deep sea pressures as well as limited flight. Its wings were folded down, but it was ready. All it needed was a little black touch-up, but there wasn’t enough time. He popped his neck and cracked his knuckles before hopping off the back porch. “It’s wake-up time, little lady. We have a fire to put out.”
*
Police officers looked into the sky and were confused to see a dark unidentified flying object over the blackened skies above Decatur. Landing in an open spot, the craft folded itself up to the size of a commerical dumpster. “Lock,” a deep altered voice spoke, as the object hissed and clunked. The police all unholstered weapons and aimed them at the seven-foot-tall black cloaked figure. “I’m here to help. This work,” the unearthly voice spoke, “was done by an arsonist, correct?”
One of the officers squinted and raised an eyebrow, looking over the figure. “We think so,” she said. “What’s it to you?”
“People died. People suffered. People lost much and were hurt by this fire,” the bird-faced figure spoke. “That’s what it is to me.”
The same officer spoke again. “There may be survivors, but we can’t go in to get them.”
The suit nodded, looking distantly into the flames. “I know. I can hear them.”
“Wh-who are you?”
“I am the Ebon Phoenix.”
With that, the giant bird passed through the wavering wall of heat and faded into the fire.
The suit fed the screams of a girl into his brain, amplifying them so that he could filter out the background noise of fire and collapsing structures. His legs pumped, feet being protected against the shock of colliding with hard pavement, but carrying him quickly without much effort. His whole body felt light and flexible, and his responses to the environment seemed to be quickened and enhanced. Hearing something above him, he responded to the impulse to dive to the side, avoiding the crushing blow of a blown-out section of wall from above. The suit was performing above and beyond his expectations. On top of that, he wasn’t even feeling warm.
Barrelling up the stairs of an apartment complex, he found a crossbeam fallen in front of the door behind which the screams were coming. The suit also managed, at a closer range, to filter out the cries of a baby along with the cries of the child. Bracing himself, he got prepared to throw his whole body into moving the obscuring object. With the suit adding nervous energy to his own body’s strength, the crossbeam felt as light as a two-by-four, and the suit helped him propel the burning mass to the other side of the partially collapsed building.
Once inside, visual sensors filtered out two figures below one hundred degrees Fahrenheit. Grabbing them both, the memory cloth swaddled the three in a circular shield as he propelled himself out the closest window. Once outside, the cape unfurled to act as a glider on the way down. An explosion shook the city block as intense heat caused underground pipes to burst. For a moment, Don’s memories flashed back to the explosions at the Illiopolis plant. In that moment, his heart stopped for CJ, until the ground was firmly under his feet again.
The cloak spread out to shelter the children he was holding, and the suit began to filter out their cries and screams as he bore them out of the city. Sensing the fire wall at the city’s edge, he leaped, and the memory cloth became a sphere around them. Seeing a black ball fly through the fires, the police immediately saught defensive positions and raised weapons. When the figure stopped and two children emerged, some of the police moved in to bring the children to the safety of their squad cars.
“There are more,” the dark figure said, turning silently and charging into the flames again.
Searching all night turned up a few hundred survivors, some of whom were airlifted to Springfield for medical care. With each life rescued, the pain of the man inside the suit grew. It seemed so easy to rescue these people, yet he could not save his own townsfolk when Brighton went up in flames. But, there was no Ebon Phoenix to rescue them then. There was now.
“How can we ever thank you, Ebon Phoenix?” the female officer asked, trying to look into the helmet’s eyes for some semblance of humanity in an otherwise fearsome and darkly inhuman visage. “You’ve done the people of Decatur a great service.”
“I know,” the mechanically monotonous voice intoned. “I wish I had done more.”
“You have done more.” She reached to touch him and he jerked away.
“You’re wrong,” the voice said. “I can never do enough.”
The modified Ebbing Feedback Suit stalked toward the folded craft as police ran up toward their fellow officer. “That was the guy! The guy who stole the suit!”
She nodded. “Yeah, and he did something none of us could do. Twice. I think I’ll let him get away with using a stolen device to save a few hundred people, just this once.” She shot the other officer a glare as she watched an overworked fire brigade pull to a stop directly in front of them.
As the hovercraft unlocked, the suit enhanced a call police were receiving over their radios.
“... Maroa. A silent alarm at the LoComp facility was trigged after it was broken into. Some of the equipment has been stolen, some of it damaged. No one was in the building, but a damaged black Saturn was seen fleeing the scene of the crime, matching the description of the vehicle driven by Christopher Coffman ...”
Fire trucks sped through the area where the craft had stood only a few seconds before. Ebon Phoenix was already gone.
*
Landing in a field across the street, Ebon Phoenix crept around the police at the scene, slipping under the police line to sneak inside the building. Don was intently curious as to who was driving CJ’s car and attacking CJ’s old haunts. Stepping carefully around strewn and destroyed computer paraphenalia, the Ebbing Feedback Suit began to pick up a faint beeping noise, a sound that would otherwise only be detectable to dogs.
As he entered the remnants of the server room, the beeping got louder. Sitting on top of a pile of old rags which smelled of fossil fuels was a pair of dolls. Picking up the bigger doll, he noticed it looked like a classic sailor’s outfit, though it was done all in black and white, and the face of the doll was painted to look more like a mime or a member of KISS. The grin of the face was grossly exaggerated. A tag around its toe called it “Cracked Jack.”
Putting the doll in a compartment on his belt, Ebon Phoenix picked up the second doll. It looked like a scruffy terrier, also black and white, but it had no tag. As Don turned the figure over in his hands, the dog’s head popped off and a stick shot out. A fabric banner rolled down from the end of the stick, and as it did, a voice - an eerily familiar voice - from inside the building spoke to him over a surround sound system. It was the voice of CJ, from beyond the grave. Both it and the banner said “Bingo.”
The beeping stepped up to a pitch audible to human ears, and Don’s eyes widened as he saw the thermal charge inside the doll. Sprinting to the front door, he barrelled through it and the external police tape. Officers immediately began firing on the suit when it had emerged from the building, but none of them seemed to faze the figure at all.
Leaping over a car, he rolled to his feet and pitched the doll into the field. Inside the building, an insane peal of laughter roared from the sound system as the thermal charge exploded mid-air in a ball of flame.
Don finally felt the warmth inside the suit of his own blood as he staggered back to the waiting hovercraft. Ducking inside before he could take on any more bullets as souveneirs, he thrusted up and out of the field, heading back for the safety of Charleston.
As he set the craft to autopilot, he felt some of the imbedded projectiles in the helmet. “Thanks, Andy,” he said before passing out.