They did not speak again until they approached the great skyscraper, spire of the capitalist faith. Drescher had already contacted his superiors to advise them that the situation had been `normalized', in theory at least. As their unmarked car pulled up to the curb, he began to wonder if he should suggest having the building evacuated.
Before he could say anything, Steve spoke up. "Not quite the homecoming you expected, Kent?"
Kent turned away from his silent contemplation of the skyscraper to look oddly at him. "This isn't my home. I've never lived here, except when I briefly used it as a safehouse."
Steve frowned. "Then why were you so upset at the idea?"
The younger man considered the question for a moment, then shrugged. "All I can say is that it's analogous to what I imagine you felt when you pursued the head of the Secret Empire into the Oval Office." He very carefully did not add, and tore off his mask to reveal what was revealed there. Kent could tell that Steve got the message.
"Should we contact the building manager, so we can have it evacuated?" Drescher asked then.
Joel shook his head. "I thought you wanted to avoid starting a panic. Besides, short of wearing big signs that say `We're here', that'd be the surest way to let the black hats know that we were coming."
"All right," Drescher assented, despite being privately quite certain that there wasn't any chance their adversary could not know they were on their way.
The lobby was fairly crowded, but no one gave the four of them a second glance as they strode towards the banks of elevators. One awaited them.
From inside his trenchcoat, Kent produced a key and slid it into a lock beneath one of the buttons, then tapped that number. Simultaneously, he snapped, "Everyone out."
"Huh?" Joel asked as the four of of them hustled out just before the doors closed.
"The idea is to keep him guessing," Kent answered tersely. "If I had a little more time, I'd have someone at the Hidalgo Trading Company start the `flea run' up towards the floor. As it is..." He scanned the lobby, barely noticing the strange looks they were beginning to garner, until his eyes lit on a particular section of wall. "There."
He quickly walked over to the wall, and pressed forcefully against a more or less inconspicuous bump. The wall shifted inwards, revealing a staircase leading down into darkness. "Come on."
They trooped down the stairs, and the wall closed behind them.
Silence reigned over the people gathered in the lobby for a moment, before the conversations resumed. People are actually surprisingly quick to accept the unexplained -- if by accepting one means choosing to consider it someone else's problem.
The stairs terminated in a dusty sub-basement. The dust on the floor showed faint tire-tracks, and the overall layout of the empty room suggested that it had been used as a garage of some sort. Kent walked briskly over to a pair of elevator doors against one of the walls, and tapped the button beside each of them. They opened at the same time.
"Everybody in," he ordered. "Lieutenant Drescher, I should warn you that the accelleration inside this will be --
"-- strong enough to bring any but the strongest men to their knees," Drescher interrupted conclusively. "Look, I read the books about your father when I was a kid. That's probably how I got into this mess in the first place. Can we please get on with it?"
"All right," Kent replied, unaffected by the police officer's sudden flash of ire. "Just be ready." He placed his hand on the large lever on the side of the elevator car, closed his eyes, and pulled it all the way up.
Drescher's stomach ripped out of his chest and dropped away. At least that's how it felt, as he struggled to breathe against the pressure, let alone keep his eyes open. Through slits, he saw that the floor indicator seemed to be rising by five floors every few seconds, though they felt like hours to him.
And just as he reached the limits of his endurance and was about to cry out in agony, the elevator slowed out the painful zone, and then out of the `uncomfortable' zone as well. Thus, when the car came to a complete stop, Drescher only wanted to vomit, instead of vomiting and then fainting dead away.
At least, he thought vaguely, he could take some measure of comfort from the sight of Joel looking a bit green around the gills himself. Neither Kent nor Steve seemed adversely affected, though.
The door slid silently open, and Kent peered out to check the dimly-lit hallway beyond. Satisfied, he signalled `okay' back at the others, then glided noiselessly out to look down the back of the C- shaped corridor, where the public elevators stood. With synchronicity that might have disturbed him if he hadn't been fairly sure of his own timing, one of them opened.
But there was no one in that hallway to greet it, for good or ill.
Kent frowned and turned back to his companions. "If we head up this corridor," he murmured sotto voce, "it will take us into the reception room. The problem is, that might be what he expects us to do."
"What are the other options?" Steve asked in the same low tone.
"The walls are honeycombed with secret panels. A set just past the elevator we used can take us into either the laboratory or the library. Again, the trouble with using them is that I don't know whether or not the enemy has discovered them, and so whether or not he expects us to use them."
Steve agreed with the logic, and gestured towards the right side of the hallway. Joel pressed against the wall, revealing the secret panel to which Kent had referred. One by one they slipped into the hollow wall passage, and then through the panel on the opposite side, into the laboratory.
Like the sub-basement garage, the situation within the laboratory spoke more of benign neglect than sabotage. Most of the furniture was long gone, and a thin layer of dust covered what remained. The large windows along the walls allowed in all the illumination that the room possessed. A quick check confirmed that it was deserted, as were the living quarters in the northeast corner (which showed no signs of human habitation) and the operating room in the southwest.
At last Kent turned towards the large storage room against the laboratory south wall. Carefully, he opened the door.
Something was wrong, he realized immediately. The storage room should certainly be dark, since its interior lights were turned off and there was no window to admit sunlight. But Kent's sensitive eyes should be quicker to adjust to the low-light conditions than they were. He opened his mouth.
"Kent?" murmured a faint voice from within the darkness.
"She's here," he snapped, and plunged forward. As he expected, there was a moment of resistance, but he quickly pierced the tau-shield's membrane. The same modifications which made it such effective psychic camouflage robbed it of most of its physical impermeability.
The instant Kent was clear of the shield, before he dared to look at her, he lashed out with a burst of telepathic scan. If Andropov was anywhere within the boundaries of the shield, he'd know. But it was empty except for their two minds. He wheeled to look in the direction of the labored breathing he could hear clearly now, dreading what he'd find.
Theresa Smith's unruly head of short-cropped black hair lifted from where it rested against her chest, and looked at him with eyes half-mad from pain and fear. She had been crucified -- her legs and arms tied with ropes, thankfully, instead of fastened with nails -- against a makeshift iron cross. Grey prisoner's clothes hung raggedly on her frame, with tears showing signs of myriad tortures on the flesh beneath. "Kent?" she whispered again, almost disbelieving.
"It's okay," he whispered soothingly as he began to untie the cords. He was dimly aware that he had covered the distance between them without being consciously aware of it. It didn't matter. When the rope on her legs fell away, he set to freeing her arms while supporting her body with his own.
Finally, her right arm came loose and dropped to the side. Theresa easily slipped into position for the fireman's carry. He took her a few paces from the cross, then gently settled her down on the floor. "Rest," he murmured, "I'll be back soon."
Kent turned back to the cross, looking down at its base. The red glow of an LED glared back at him from a metal box set there. He reached down and flicked one of the switches on the box. At once, the field around the room dissolved.
Joel had been pushing through it as it went down, and he stumbled a bit as the resistance to forward motion suddenly vanished. Steve and Drescher were close on his heels.
Theresa seemed to shrink in on herself as she saw the new arrivals, but Kent quickly moved to hold her, speaking in calming tones. "It's okay, Theresa, this is Joel, you remember Joel, don't you? He's a friend. And so is Lieutenant Drescher. He's a police officer who's come to help us. And so is Steve --"
"Susan?" Drescher asked in a startled tone.
Theresa stared up at him without recognition.
"Mr. Masefield, I know you may find this hard to believe, but ... I know this woman. She told me her name was Susan Pollard, when she helped me with a few cases earlier this year, before she disappeared."
"Lieutenant, this isn't really the time --"
Theresa rested a hand against Kent's chest, stopping him. Slowly, almost agonizingly, she forced herself to stand up, while he stood ready to catch her if she fell. Limping, she crossed the floor to look at Drescher's face searchingly.
Finally, she sighed, and muttered, "Almost worked."
Faster than the eye could follow, she slammed her right fist into Drescher's stomach, sending him flying backwards into the storeroom wall. The policeman went out like a light.
Whirling to face the other three, Theresa tore loose her left sleeve and exposed a strange armband with a large red button on the outside. Her right thumb hovered over the button. "Nobody moves," she snapped.
Kent knew. He knew, but some reflex forced him to say the words. "Theresa, what --?"
The person who seemed to be Theresa Smith smiled thinly. "Hi, Kenny."
He'd known. He'd known, but it was a possibility that he couldn't bring himself to consider. And now the worst had happened, and there was nothing left to do but wait for the righ moment. "Andropov," Kent hissed.
"None other." Her voice began to take on a pseudo-Russian accent, and became huskier at the same time. "Now, since I do not doubt that the three of you could quite easily subdue me, despite the remarkable talent for mayhem that this body possesses, should any of you step towards me I shall immediately press this button."
"And that'll do what, exactly?" Joel snarled.
"It will annihilate my own body. Now, while I will most certainly miss the old thing, I imagine that Kenny will be most upset when the young lady whose mind occupies it goes with it, no?"
Another stalemate, Joel realized furiously.
Kent slowly stood up from where he'd been kneeling and casually brushed off his trouser legs. "All right," he said at last. "You've gone to a lot of trouble to bring me here. What do you want, Andropov?"
"Isn't it obvious?" `Theresa' asked with a smirk. "I want you. This body is most useful, in its way, but it cannot begin to compare to the physical power your body will give me. Then, too, there is the unique and far-reaching cosmic power I shall derive from possessing a male brain --"
"Save the chauvinist nonsense," Kent interrupted. "We both know that Grey is a better telepath than either of us."
"Do we?" Michael the Body Thief -- for so Joel forced himself to consider the speaker -- asked lazily. "Perhaps she was, before I studied with the Waites, but I doubt that she could equal me now. Perhaps I shall test myself against her when I have conquered you."
"You seem very confident that you'll be able to accomplish that."
"Of course I am, Kenny ... just as you are so very confident that you can stop me. She was just as confident, and while I'll grant that it was a difficult battle, I conquered her." `He' shook her head. "But you will press on despite that, hoping against hope that you can somehow seize victory out of the jaws of total defeat. Much has been said of the arrogance of villains who use elaborate deathtraps -- but are heroes who fight battles they cannot win any less arrogant?" He snorted. "Enough. Will you face me, mind to mind? Refuse me, and the girl's mind dies."
"All right," Kent said into the silence, exchanging a covert glance with Steve. "If this is what you want, then let us begin."
His grey eyes with their strange flecks of gold locked with Theresa's dark brown orbs, and their faces and bodies abruptly froze in position. The strange, invisible duel had begun.
Steve immediately darted across the room to check on Drescher's condition. The liaison was still unconscious, but seemed to be breathing evenly, without any sign of a neck or spine injury. Given the uncertain situation, Steve elected not to wake the man up, and turned to look back at Theresa.
He was pleased to note that Joel had already anticipated his next action and was studying the band on Theresa's arm. "Nope," he announced. "Her thumb is tight against the button, and it's one of those recessed notch types. If I try to shift it out from under, the thick part of her thumb might press down on the edge of the button, and then ... well, boom." And, he mused, if Kent didn't kill him after that, he might just throw himself off the observation deck.
Steve's frustration showed clearly on his furrowed brow. "Then we're just going to have to hope that Kent can defeat him, because --"
And then a hideous, masculine laugh began to resound in the storage room. Joel turned to watch as Kent's lips slowly pulled back in a smile to match the one on Theresa's face.
Or rather, the one which had been on her face. Now it was creased with lines of stress and pain, and her eyes no longer glowed with overwhelming arrogance, but desperation.
In the instant that Joel realized that, and its implications, her lips began to move. Almost no sound emerged, but Joel had seen those patterns only once before.
"What's he saying?" Steve snapped. Clearly, he had deduced what had happened as well.
"It's a sutra," Joel supplied. "He uses it to focus his will before he lets loose a --"
Steve's brows flew up in sudden comprehension. "Of course!"
Theresa's lips moved in silence for another moment, and then her mouth opened wide and a primal cry of fury burst from deep within her. Kent's head rocked back, and whatever lurked behind his eyes briefly looked terrified before all expression fled his face and he dropped to his knees. Almost immediately, Theresa's body toppled over in a dead faint.
"It wouldn't be enough for him to stop the Body Thief from taking his own body; Kent intended to keep him from fleeing back to retake Theresa as well. To do that, he'd have to --" Steve broke off in mid-explanation as Kent began to rouse himself.
"Did it work?" the younger man asked, sounding completely out of breath.
"It's him," Steve told Joel, and then turned back to Kent. "I don't know. She collapsed."
Kent forced himself to his feet, looking as though every muscle in his body ached, and limped over to where Theresa lay. He dropped to his knees beside her, cradling her head in his arms. "Theresa?" he murmured.
Her eyes flickered open, at first staring up at him blearily, but then snapping into focus. "Kent?" she asked. "How ... what happened?"
He wanted to believe it. But he had to be sure. "Theresa, there's a man here who says he knew you as `Susan'. Do you remember him?"
She started, looking a little paler. "Harry? What's he doing here?"
Neither he nor any of the others had referred to Drescher as Harry in Andropov's hearing. Kent relaxed, and allowed himself to smile for the first time since it had all begun. "It doesn't matter. You're safe now. That's all --"
"I would not be quite so quick to presume that, Kenny," a reedy voice exclaimed from nearby.
Kent's head snapped up. On the far side of the room, emerging from a secret panel in the wall, stood an old, white-bearded man with heavy Slavic facial features and nearly insane eyes. In his right hand, he clenched an odd looking pistol.
"I wonder," Mikhail Andropov asked, "if you would be able to fight me off a second time. I suppose we'll never know." He pulled the trigger, and a blast of coruscating energy burned through the air at the two of them.
There was no time to dodge out of the blast's path. But somehow, Theresa Smith pushed herself up so that her body shielded Kent's, taking the full force on her back. Her mouth convulsed open in a silent scream as it hit.
"no" Kent whispered as she collapsed a second time, smoke billowing from her back.
Joel sprang forward, landing a right hook to Andropov's jaw and wrestling the pistol away from him to the floor. "You filthy bastard!" he swore.
Kent barely noticed his surroundings as he gathered Theresa's trembling body in his arms, feeling the huge burn across her back. "No, he repeated, "no, this isn't supposed to --"
Once again, she stopped him by lifting up a hand, this time to caress his cheek. Her eyes dripped tears of agony, but they were clear as they met his. "Kent," she said faintly. "You're going to have to hold it together, okay? I need you to hold it.
"Our son needs you to hold it."
His grip on her almost slackened as her words penetrated. "Our ... where?!"
"I don't know." Delirium began to fog her eyes, and her voice became unfocused. "She has him ... they cooked up some scheme between them, he got me and she got him ... he's beautiful, just like his father ... I'm so cold ..."
He clutched tightly at her. "She? Who's she?" he asked, dreading that he already knew the answer.
"The Jes--" Theresa said, and died in his arms.
Of course, he realized dully. How logical. She'd even warned him that she would steal something more precious than time from him. She'd never claimed that she hadn't had Theresa as a captive, and the Jester would never be able to resist a pun like that. All the clues had been there, if he'd been looking for them.
But he hadn't.
Gently, he closed Theresa's eyes and lowered her corpse to the floor. He looked up towards where Joel held Andropov in an iron grip. Kent intended to ask Joel to let go, but clearly something about his manner or expression prompted the big man to release his hold without being prompted, and back away quickly. He rose up, never taking his eyes from Andro's face, searching it for the slightest signs of remorse.
The Body Thief was smiling.
Kent leaped across the room, closed his hands around Andropov's throat and began to throttle him.
"Stop it Kent!"
For a moment, he wondered what Steve meant; then realized that the older man obviously realized that Kent could easily snap his enemy's neck instead of strangling him to death. But that would be far too quick and painless a death.
"Kent, stop it. Put him down."
That was what he was trying to do, obviously..
"I do not mean like a rabid dog! This is murder, Kent, and I'll stop you if I have to. Look at me when I'm talking to you!"
Kent turned to look in Steve's direction, and a frisson of shock at the incongruous image made it through the curtain of rage around his mind as he saw that Steve held the gun in his hand.
"I know that you're faster than I am. I know that you can probably hold both of us off long enough to kill him. But you know that this is wrong. If it were self-defense, things would be different, but it's not. So you're not leaving me any options. Stop it. Or else."
Steve would do it, he knew. It might destroy him just as surely as Kent's own father had been destroyed by witnessing his friends' deaths, but he'd do it just the same. Before anything else, except perhaps a patriot, Steve was a soldier.
As though he were the mind-reader, Steve continued. "One hero has already died today, Kent. Don't let there be two."
Kent closed his eyes, and thought of wonderful nights spent racing across rooftops beneath a silvery moon, of a face which could smile as easily as it clenched in rage, of a spirit that made him hope for a while ...
He made his decision.
He opened his eyes, felt his arms tense in preparation to break the neck, and saw the sudden flash of triumph in Andropov's eyes, and let go. The stunned Body Thief dropped to the ground.
Turning away from Andropov, he slowly walked until he stood face to face with Steve, and quietly said "Three."
Joel approached them tentatively, gazing intently at the blaster in Steve's hands. "Where did he get that thing, anyway? It looks more like something Luthor would use instead of --"
There was no warning; no ominous beeping or indicator light. But Kent suddenly lashed out, sweeping his arm to send the blaster flying away --
-- towards Andropov, who stared in disbelief as it came towards him while he held down the detonator switch.
A sudden flash of pure white light momentarily blinded the three of them, and when the spots before their eyes faded, only a blackened spot on the floor remained of Michael the Body Thief.
After a moment, Kent murmured, "Four. Self-defense?"
"Self-defense," Steve concurred. He stole a quick look at Kent's imobile face, and made up his mind. "Joel, I think you'd better go call the police. And an ambulance."
"Right." Joel headed out.
There was a long silence in the storage room. "She's got my son, Steve," Kent finally said in a very quiet voice.
"I heard."
"They planned this between them."
"I know."
"I'll have to hunt her down again, and this time she really will be hiding from me, and if I lose control now, I --"
"If you don't let it out now," Steve interrupted evenly, "what makes you think you'll be in any condition to chase her?"
"Very true," Kent agreed ... and began to weep. Convulsing with sobs, he slowly sank to his knees, covering his face with his hands and rocking back and forth.
Tomorrow, he knew, he would begin to hunt the Jester. He would find her, and he would rescue Theresa's child as he hadn't been able to save her from the final mystery, death.
But that was tomorrow.
Today, he would grieve.
She finished removing her makeup, and settled down in the rocking chair, holding the infant carefully, humming a lullabye.
And grinning.
Dedicated to the heroes behind the heroes, the writers who've inspired me -- among them Chris Clairemont, Frank Miller, J.M. de Matteis, Peter David and Kurt Busiek.
The tau shield is borrowed, loosely, from Julian May's "Intervention" duology. This story, while incorporating characters held under copyright by Marvel Entertainment, Time-Warner, Peter O'Donnell, and Columbia Pictures, is copyright 2000-2003 by Chris Davies.
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