Who is Killing the Great Capes of Heropa
PROLOGUE: THE KÁRMÁN LINE
“Aer’t,” the radio receiver squawks inside her helmet. “Aeri’st, re’ng me?”
“Hello, you’ve called the Aerialist,” the Cape says in response. “She’s not home at the moment, too busy falling from a ridiculous height. Please leave a message after the tone so the girl can get back to you — you know, after all the king’s horses and all the king’s men put her together again. Beep.”
God knows if anyone hears the quip. The only feedback coming through loud and clear is shrill static.
The Aerialist was aware of risks, but sabotage — someone cutting a hole in her jetpack to siphon out the fuel — had not been one of the hazards people bothered to mention.
Fifteen seconds pass and the drop is only one thousand, nine hundred feet shorter, according to the instrumentation on her wrist. Three hundred and twenty-six thousand of the imperial buggers to go.
The Aerialist is slap-bang in freefall, somewhere marginally past the Kármán line — in plain English about a hundred kilometres to impact on earth. Unless, of course, she hits something higher like Mount Everest (shaving off nine kilometres) or the top of the Empire State, four hundred and forty metres above terra firma.
Not that either place is optional here.
Flame-on! she quips, laughing for just a moment.
Inferring she’s alit does, however, exaggerate the case. Objects light up when they fall at tens of miles a second, whereas her rate of descent clocks in around a few hundred miles per hour. Maybe seven hundred. Slower than a lead balloon.
That doesn’t stop her brain racing, conjuring up the insane, expecting fire to lick up on the outside of the pressure suit. This suit takes the brunt of buffeting as she tumbles arse over tit. No hope. Nothing. Just falling till she hits the ground.
Never thought it’d end via such a lame whimper, she further mulls, dizzy now. Maybe I should’ve packed a parachute?
HER0PA
#100
While he may’ve felt like he’d been dropped on his head, he actually landed on his feet.
Even so, following on as this did from a spell of sustained darkness, Jack tottered in the middle of a sidewalk crammed with pedestrians. His body felt heavier, lethargic, cumbersome. When people began to shove past in brutal fashion, he beat one very hasty retreat to lean against a brick wall, overwhelmed and dazed.
There was a shop here, an archaic-looking place called the Big Trip Travel Agency, all posters of propeller-driven clipper planes, swirling bullfighters, and a dirigible marked with the livery of Latverian Airways, from which disembarked gaily-smiling, beautiful people in 1940s apparel.
The agency also grabbed Jack’s attention because, back in his hometown, tourism had bird-dogged the itinerary of the dodo.
The man’s heart was racing. He tried his damnedest to calm down, but this was bizarre.
In the reflection of one of the big windows, beneath a striped marquee, he’d noticed he was dolled up in a tight superhero costume — coloured a shade of dark blue, verging on cerulean — to which no one else here paid any heed. Peeling off the smothering mask, Jack inhaled deeply, coughed, and finally took time out to properly gawk. Revelling in the presence of no rain, he scanned a cloudless sky high above, and dropped his gaze to a metropolis — all flying buttresses, concrete and glass. This was something, he would allow that much. Not quite the Emerald City, yet hardly a place to sneeze at.
On street level caroused mint-condition antique vehicles snatched straight out of some tasteful car museum. Hurrying along the footpaths to either side were women in wild hats, kid gloves and fitted dresses with shoulder-pads, along with men in felt fedoras and double-breasted pinstripe suits who looked like they belonged in a photo with his great grandfather — which probably they did.
“Welcome, sir.”
Outside Sam’s Delicatessen, next door to the travel agency, an elderly gent had positioned himself in front of Jack. He was dressed in a jarring red military-style uniform with gold lapels, the only one of a horde of pedestrians to notice Jack’s presence. The two of them looked like mismatched bookends in a sea of conformity.
“I’m Stan the Doorman.”
Jack decided he liked Stan’s eyes. They were warm and accompanied by a suave white moustache above a winning smile.
“You may label me the Doormat,” the gent in red waffled on, “since there are some here who do just that — but I prefer to be considered a welcoming committee.”
Jack looked at him for a few seconds, rediscovering anew the ability to speak. “Okay. Um. Can I call you Stan? That Cool McCool?”
“Of course. And appreciated.”