“You sure like to waffle on.”
“A winner’s prerogative.”
Police sirens were getting closer, and maybe the mayor would lift a lazy, tobacco-stained finger to employ his Equalizers laser-signal doohickey, and alert Jack’s comrades — this, after all, was a Reset world in which people still mostly respected the team, there was a miscreant in a costume who’d blown through the wall of one of main bank branches, and a bunch of people were now held hostage. Only a matter of time — something Jack suspected he didn’t have.
“God,” he grumbled.
“Yes?”
The Equalizer very slowly glanced up. “Fair enough. Okay. I guess you really are, since you designed all this, right?”
“Of course.”
“Or did you…?”
“What is the meaning of that crack?”
“Well,” Jack managed to go on, “how do we know it was you?”
“Bet your bottom dollar it was I.”
“But how d’you know you’re the original…? Like, where exactly were you when I attacked the Port Phillip Patriot the other night, when your — your ‘brothers’ carked it? I blew the place to smithereens.”
“Why, I’d stepped out to get refreshments.”
“As the original would stoop to doing.”
Doubts flooded the man’s half-masked mush. “I see your point. How embarrassing.”
“And…What’s to say that the Big O wasn’t the archetype all along—?”
“Pah!”
“—fed up with his corrupted clones’ poor behaviour?”
Wright frowned and then grinned in maniacal fashion, at the very same moment Jack lost the capacity to smile at all.
“Perish the thought. I think — at least I presume I’m the original. Sometimes, it got confusing as to who was who, but none of that now matters. Does it?”
“You tell me.”
“I believe I am.” Wright peeled away the tattered red remains of his mask and tossed them into a nearby trashcan. “By the way, was it you that pulled this Reset stunt?”
“Yeah.”
“Then perhaps you could fill me in — why is it I haven’t been restored, along with everything else?”
“You mean…you and your better halves getting back together, thereby making you young and pretty?”
“Exactly.”
“We’re following your rules, moron…Dead electrical impulses don’t Reset.”
Clicking his tongue, Wright then glared at Jack while he very carefully placed the gun level with the injured man’s left eye.
The sirens had stopped wailing.
Beyond the barrel, Jack could see flashing lights through the hole in the wall. Some fool was on a loudhailer, but none of the words made any sense.
“I’ll keep the extra bullets for your friends, baby,” Major Patriot said at his silkiest, far more coherent. “Time to die.”
“I don’t think so, arsehole.”
That was when the sculpture Twilight Over Hoboken reared overhead, from behind Donald Wright, and crowned the man. He dropped the gun, staggered a few steps, shrieking, hands clutching his head, and then turned to ogle at his assailant.
The screams ceased. “Impossible,” he instead mumbled aloud. “You’re dead.”
Taking advantage of those precious seconds, Jack used his left hand to prop-up and level the right one, pointing it in the direction of the other Cape’s set of stars.
“Don’t you know yet that anything is possible in Heropa?” he said, just before letting off a blast that lifted Donald Wright, taking him and his offensive, unshapely costume clear through the wall.
Straight after, Jack collapsed.
Other fingers were raising him, gently this time, onto aching buttocks. The Equalizer found himself gazing into Louise’s deep, emerald-coloured eyes.
“God, Jack. Are you all right?” she asked, distress etched into a beautiful face no longer bespectacled.
“Hey. What happened…to your glasses?”
“I ditched them.” The girl checked over his injured, blood-spattered form; started tearing strips off the slip beneath her skirt, to use as tourniquets for stemming the flow — all seasoned professionalism.
As he was manoeuvred about in this manner, Jack had no idea where he rediscovered the strength to toss back both a grin and a quip.
“Aren’t you people…s’posed to give better customer service?”
“I don’t play by the stupid rules,” Louise said, a smile sharing space with concern while she tied another knot, “and, you know what? Now I remember everything.”
“You do?”
“I do.” Louise pecked Jack’s cheek. “Can we start afresh?”