Killing Capes (Book 2): Leaving New Haven Read online

  Killing Capes: Leaving New Haven

  By

  Scott Mathy

  Copyright © 2017 by Scott Mathy

  Cover by Darby Davis

  All rights reserved

  This book is entirely a work of fiction; any similarities to individuals living or dead are coincidental and unintentional. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by electronic or physical means, without permission in writing from the author.

  Scott’s infrequently updated podcast and ramblings can be found at www.nerdtalkshow.com

  This book is dedicated to those who read, gave feedback, and enjoyed the first novel. Your encouragement is the reason that this second book exists. From the bottom of my heart, thank you all. You’re the reason that I keep writing.

  Preface

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Preface

  Another year and another NaNoWriMo has passed. This year, I ran the same program that created the first Killing Capes, but in beginning work on this story, I realized just how small the world of New Haven was. I scrapped my initial concept almost immediately.

  Left with nothing to work from, I set out to bring Dwight and company out of the city and explore the outskirts of a planet dominated by superpowers. Leaving New Haven is a story that brings forward the characters I wanted to find more scenes for in the first story and allows them to demonstrate who they are.

  Many of the ideas used this time were taken from feedback provided by anyone who would speak to me about the first book. I can wholeheartedly admit that discussing perceptions of the characters and desires for future content may have become one of my favorite pastimes in the last year. In particular, Doctor Ellis stood out as someone who needed to have more stories told about her.

  Much of this story is a bridge between a long-canceled graphic novel I wrote during college (sadly, never to be finished due to lack of artistic talent and funds to fairly pay for an artist). Some of the “new” characters have actually existed since my earliest musings on the genre that created this story. Overall, I’m thrilled with the way the second installment of Killing Capes has turned out. Its goal of pushing the characters out of their comfort zones and expanding the universe was something I didn’t see coming when I started this project six months ago.

  One

  No one had ever given him a rocket launcher before. He’d never asked for one; it had simply been an assumption that he shouldn’t have one. The Associate had presented it to Dwight the way one would be given a pen – a tool for a specific job, nothing more. Taking the cumbersome weapon against his shoulder, he took note to, as the bold writing on its side said, “POINT AWAY FROM ALLIES.” Even now, Dwight wasn’t sure if he could consider Wulf’s Associates to be allies, but for now he didn’t want to see this one killed by accidental explosion.

  “Sign on the line, please,” the woman said as she presented him with a single piece of paper attached to a clipboard.

  As he took the board, she held out a weighty silver pen. Without thinking, he pressed the pen to the form with his metallic right hand. He struggled briefly to create a signature before switching hands and completing the task with his non-dominant left one. The writing was barely legible when he finished; in the months since he lost his forearm, learning to re-sign his name had been a surprisingly low priority. Dwight passed the board back to the Associate while shifting the mass of the launcher from one shoulder to the other.

  Her assignment complete, the navy-clad woman with the dark sunglasses left the doorway of Dwight’s shared apartment. He waited in befuddlement, still wondering about the increasingly difficult-to-hold delivery. It wasn’t until the weight became unbearable that he set the weapon down and noticed the handwritten note tied around the trigger guard. The delicate white ribbon tore in half with a gentle tug.

  The intricate curvature of the lettering revealed enough before Dwight got to the body of the message. He quickly read its contents:

  Mr. Knolls,

  Please familiarize yourself with your new toy. Do be careful not to demolish the rat’s nest you call home. I’ll be sending your new partners to meet you tomorrow.

  Best wishes,

  Wulf

  Great, Dwight thought, his boss had taken the liberty to begin home delivery for his jobs.

  Deciding he’d rather not explain the tools of his trade to his neighbors, he dragged the dense tube out of his doorway and into the living room he shared with Ian. His roommate sat in his usual spot in the center of their grungy sofa playing a videogame. The state of the man’s frizzy hair and the heap of takeout boxes told Dwight the lanky man had been at this session for days.

  Dwight let go of the launcher between the cheap wooden coffee table and the television stand. The end he had carried with his prosthetic limb dropped with an audible clunk on the threadbare carpet. The hitman continued past his discarded burden and fell into the thick lounge chair adjacent to Ian’s couch. For some people, the introduction of military-grade ordinance might be cause for alarm. Ian was beyond that point. His attention consumed by his game, the programmer hadn’t so much as raised an eyebrow at the rocket launcher resting on their filthy carpeting.

  Rather, instead of being terrified at his roommate’s new addition to their home, Ian simply asked, “I take it that’s a care package from Wulf?”

  Dwight had given up hiding the realities of his work from Ian. While he had promised to avoid getting the frail man involved in any more of his jobs, they had reached an unspoken understanding of what topics of conversation were appropriate.

  “Homework, I guess,” Dwight answered, “He says we’re going to have some guests tomorrow.”

  That was enough to draw Ian away from his impressively rising combo. “Like last time?” He paused the game. “Dwight, I do not want another giant lizard-woman threatening me in my own living room.”

  It had been six months since the morning Rampage unexpectedly forced her way in to collect Dwight for Wulf. Since then, Dwight had tried to make their dwelling and his personal life off-limits to the Powers and their struggles. Wulf laughed in his face when he presented this boundary to his boss. The immortal crime lord of New Haven assured him that he would “take it under consideration.” Dwight was frankly astonished his wishes had been respected this long.

  “Don’t worry about that. Rampage is dead. I’m sure if Wulf had anyone else like her, I’d have met them by now.” Dwight yanked the phone from his pocket and began searching the internet for a user’s manual for his new weapon. “Anyway, it’ll probably just be two more random Associates.”

  Wulf’s replacements for Bernard had thus far been an endless parade of dark-suited Associates that usually left without introducing themselves. The lack of a proper partner had restricted the types of jobs Dwight was able to tackle to an increasingly depressing string of street thugs. He was beginning to grow bored with what should otherwise be a stimulating career.

  Months ago, he’d been hopeful. The prospect of Midas and the Guild becoming real players in the city’s thinly-masked politics, not simply StarPoint’s puppets, had presented Dwight with an opportunity to maybe do some real good. The request from Midas was supposed to be different, a chance to rebalance things for someone other than Wulf. It wasn’t; just another defiant corpse in the tyrant’s agenda. Even before he pulled the trigger, Dwight knew who’d actually given the orde
r: Wulf’s endless scheming delivered through Midas’s voice. Since then, Wulf’s manipulative façade had faded away. The mastermind no longer cared for the illusion of who controlled the Referee’s hand.

  Ian resumed the game, his concerns temporarily sated, “I’d almost prefer Rampage to them. There’s something so unnatural about all those generic minions.”

  He was hardly the first to express discomfort with Wulf’s nameless army. For the most part, the empowered of New Haven treaded carefully since the night of Bernard’s failed uprising. As Dwight understood it, Wulf hadn’t punished anyone for the incident, save his former partner.

  Dwight’s search led him to a reference made on a forum for military hardware enthusiasts. The manual he pulled up was in Russian, but at least there were pictures. The many indecipherable warning signs with their bright exclamation points weren’t reassuring. Dwight tried to understand the loading instructions despite the language barrier. Eventually, he gave up after realizing he couldn’t fake himself into comprehending the text. He got up and began dragging the weapon by the handle down the hall to his office.

  New Haven had never been a remotely safe place, but the existence of the Referee had done wonders for the confidence of its unempowered citizens. Immediately after Bernard’s coup, the media began reporting on Dwight’s intervention as if he was some altruistic savior. They completely left out the part that he was an employee of the tyrant at the top of StarPoint and had placed his boss back on that throne to end the madness. He had denied any requests for interviews at Wulf’s instruction. Like all things in New Haven, the press moved on to the next big story after only a few short days. In less than a week, the Referee had joined the ever-present background of New Haven’s collective memory. The last call he’d received was from one of the city’s third-rate car dealerships asking him to appear for a commercial.

  Dwight let the rocket launcher fall to the floor beside his desk. The weight of its impact barely registered with the tiny ball of fluff resting in her bed in the nearby corner of the office. Molly lightly raised a single eyelid to briefly inspect the disturbance before returning to her nap. The auburn Pomeranian had grown accustomed to the odd circumstances of her living conditions, being the pet of a superhero and a hitman. The addition of heavy military hardware didn’t warrant so much as a sniff from the little creature.

  Reclining in his seat, Dwight checked the automated news feeds Ian set up for him on one screen while looking for Russian translators on the other. The big story of the night concerned the Guild’s introduction of two new teams to station the previously lawless Oxton and Wesley neighborhoods. The days of putting on a mask and hitting the streets were over. As the trainees paraded across the stage, they were accompanied by their senior team leader. Not long ago, Dwight’s ex-wife had been a rising captain within the Guild’s ranks. He’d known Linda long enough to see the indignant frustration hidden just beneath her masked eyes and pleasant smile. Her own team had been taken from her, and she was stuck babysitting the fresh meat. The familiar spectacle of her Lock Heart costume, a regular favorite for the photographers, was lost among a sea of brighter, younger stars. The cameras flashed all around her, but she no longer warranted their full attention.

  Twenty minutes passed as Dwight’s translator repeatedly failed to produce anything close to accurate language from the manual he’d downloaded. He finally admitted defeat and pushed himself away from his computer. This time, Molly rose from her bed, gave herself a quick shake, and trotted after him. He supposed it was for the best; leaving her in the room with the active explosives felt like negligent dog-parenthood.

  Sprinting ahead of her owner, Molly leapt up onto the sofa and curled up beside Ian. The small creature had grown quite close to her perpetual housemate since she had come to live with them several months ago. It had only taken a few visits for Linda to agree that the dog would be better off in her ex-husband’s care instead of alone in the penthouse apartment they once shared.

  Dwight walked past them both and pushed open the heavy glass door behind his lounger. The frigid spring air blew past him, bringing with it the familiar smells of the city. Mostly, it smelled of stagnation; a place locked in time by its overlords. That, and the Korean BBQ down the street. Looking back over his shoulder, he could see both Ian and the dog perk at the intruding scent. There would likely be new takeout boxes adding to the pile whenever he got back.

  “I’m heading out for a bit,” Dwight said over the explosions and steady stream of one-liners from Ian’s game. He didn’t wait for a response.

  Stepping through the beige curtains and out on to the balcony, Dwight felt the vibrations of the busy night. Beneath him, the hurried masses navigated the city’s sidewalks and roads toward their destinations as the occasional streak jetted by overhead. New Haven’s Powers were also out in force this evening, patrolling for whatever conflict would bring them glory and attention from the press.

  With a thought, Dwight triggered the trickle of serum within his artificial arm. With practice, he’d learned how to control the flow to allow just a little of the potent chemical into his bloodstream rather than the complete dose that he’d used to defeat his former partner. The results, while not the full rush that he’d experienced during the fight, were still invigorating. The wave of exhilaration rolled outward from his core until every nerve buzzed with energy.

  He took hold of the sensation and pushed it into his legs. The steel grating beneath him fell away, or more accurately, he rose from it. At first, Dwight hovered a few inches away from the surface over the fire escape’s cold metal. He hung in the night air, testing his control over the serum slowly feeding into his veins. Confident that the stream was constant and steady, he willed himself forward, over the ledge and out into the open sky. The citizens of New Haven on the sidewalks below paid no attention to the man floating above them; flying humans were an everyday occurrence when you lived in a city choked with Powers.

  Dwight held his position a few feet from the safety of the fire escape and took a deep breath. He closed his eyes and felt the wind run over him. This was what Bernard had lamented all those weeks ago at the diner: the rush of laughing in the face of the impossible. He was defying gravity, and loved that feeling. At last, he opened his eyes and seized full control of the energy within him. Blasting upward, Dwight roared into the sky and left his tiny apartment behind.

  Flight, as he had discovered through experimentation, was an exercise in controlled falling. It was a balancing act between forceful lifting and letting momentum take control. If he attempted to hold himself steady too much, he would freeze in place. On the other hand, too little exertion would leave him plummeting toward the ground. Dwight hadn’t gained the confidence for acrobatic feats, but could at least manage a cruising speed that didn’t draw attention from the other airborne Powers.

  Soaring over block after block of the city, he embraced the freedom of sailing above it all. The Powers and their pointless conflict meant nothing while he was up here. Against the exhilaration of flight, he wondered why any of them bothered to do anything else.

  Within minutes, Dwight was over the eastern port and its multitude of nondescript warehouses. A few months ago, it had taken him roughly an hour to get here by public transportation. The trip was so much easier now that roads were irrelevant. He slowed himself and began to descend into the long rows of steel buildings. Touching down into a rapidly slowing run, Dwight came to a stop a few steps away from an unassuming doorway. He knocked out of simple courtesy; the lone occupant already knew he was coming.

  He hesitated before trying the handle of the heavy door. Finding it unlocked, he pushed inward and stepped into the darkened room beyond. Leaving the paved concrete of the industrial sprawl behind, he took a few paces into lush green grass before finding the decorative stone steps leading up to the cozy home hidden within the exterior of the dockside warehouse. The artificial lights lining the ceiling of the immense room had been set to night mode, perfectly matc
hing the exterior of a peaceful country evening outside the city. Tiny simulated stars shone in patterns Dwight could not identify. It felt as if this lone house sat on an entirely different world.

  Dwight walked along the path, marveling at the Doc’s craftsmanship. In the middle of the building was a home that he could only envy. The spacious wooden house would have cost a small fortune in the rural landscape imitated by the interior of the warehouse. He knew he would never have this kind of stability; his chance of a normal life had ended long ago. The warm glow of a comfortable existence inside of the simulated country home wasn’t made for him. It was built for someone else to feel safe in.

  Dwight found the solid oak door was also unlocked. He considered for a second how unnecessary securing this door would be. To begin, no one would be able to breach the outer access door without the sole occupant’s knowledge. Her powers would pick up the slightest thoughts of an intruder the instant they stepped into the building. Dwight was sure that there were additional safeties hiding along the path leading to the house. It wouldn’t be the Doc’s handiwork without a few deathtraps lurking just out of sight. Lia was far from helpless. In fact, she was probably the single most dangerous individual Dwight had ever encountered. Even now, as he stepped into her sanctuary, he could feel her effortlessly sifting through his mind.

  Since the first time he visited the refuge weeks ago, Dwight had seen the house transform from a temporary accommodation to a meticulously detailed home. The innumerable boxes that lined the walls of the foyer had been emptied and removed as Lia completed her move. This place felt like the dwelling of a sizable family rather than a lone psychic. He gently shut the door behind him and waited, listening to the quiet of the house before catching the sound of water running from down the hallway in front of him. The word “kitchen” echoed in his mind, though he hadn’t been the one to put it there.