The Real Mask

The alarm clock screamed at 6:47 AM, same as every weekday for the past three years. I slapped it silent and stared at the water stain on my apartment ceiling—a brown blotch that looked remarkably like the outline of Eastgate City, complete with the harbor where I'd once thrown the Crimson Reaper into the bay.

Funny how even the rot in this place reminds me of what I used to be.

Forty-two isn't old, but some mornings my body catalogs every beating I ever took like a sadistic accountant. Every broken rib courtesy of Sledgehammer Sam. Every dislocated shoulder from my tango with the Bone Crusher. The hot shower helped wash away the ache, though I kept the water pressure low. This building's pipes were older than my superhero career and twice as likely to explode without warning.

The coffee maker gurgled to life—the only sound in this tomb I called home besides Mrs. Patterson's German Shepherd starting its daily assault on my sanity.

Woof. Woof. Woof.

Methodical. Relentless. Like Chinese water torture with fur and a wagging tail.

My enhanced hearing could pick up Mrs. Patterson shuffling around in those ratty slippers, completely oblivious to the fact that her precious little angel was slowly driving the entire building insane. I could be over there in thirty seconds. Could have a very persuasive conversation about noise ordinances. But Thomas Kane doesn't do things like that.

I poured coffee into my "World's Most Adequate Employee" mug—a Secret Santa gift from someone with either a twisted sense of humor or a death wish—and turned up the morning news.

My phone buzzed like an angry wasp. Text from Nicole: "Paul's using your old grill again. The one from the garage. Thought you should know."

I stared at the message, feeling something dark and familiar crawl up my spine. Paul. Nicole's new boyfriend—a mouth-breathing knuckle-dragger who thought "craft beer" was a personality trait and probably couldn't spell his own name without autocorrect. Using my Weber Genesis. The one I'd bought with money earned from a grateful city council, back when Eastgate actually gave a damn about the guy bleeding in alleys to keep them safe.

I typed back: "It's fine."

It wasn't fine. Nothing about this godforsaken existence was fine.

The commute to Meridian Financial Services was forty-three minutes of purgatory on wheels. Forty-three minutes of fluorescent lights and recycled air and dead-eyed commuters who looked like they'd given up on life somewhere around their first mortgage payment. I fit right in—just another corporate zombie shambling toward another day of slow-motion suicide.

I used to cross this city in under ten minutes, turning the skyline into my personal highway. Now I stood in a subway car that smelled like industrial-strength despair and someone's breakfast burrito, listening to some kid's music leak through earbuds that cost more than I made in a week.

This is what victory looks like, Kane. This is what you chose.

The Meridian building squatted on Fifth Street like a glass and steel tumor, thirty-seven floors of cubicles where souls went to die. I badged in past Gary the security guard—decent guy, always asked about my weekend plans like I ever had any—and rode the elevator to the fifteenth floor.

"Kane!"

Derrick's voice hit me like nails on a chalkboard. I hadn't even reached my cube, hadn't even pretended to care about whatever corporate nonsense awaited me, and already my boss was bearing down like a shark who'd caught the scent of blood in the water.

Derrick Morrison. Twenty-eight years old. Wore suits that cost more than my rent. Had the kind of confidence that only came from never having his teeth rearranged by someone who knew how to throw a proper punch.

Yet.

"We need to talk about the Henderson account," he said, skipping right past basic human decency. "The quarterly projections are off by three percent. Three percent, Kane. Do you know what that means?"

I knew exactly what it meant. It meant Derrick had screwed up and needed someone to take the fall. It meant another lecture from a trust-fund baby who'd probably never worked a real day in his pampered life.

My enhanced reflexes automatically calculated seventeen different ways to shut his mouth. Permanently. A pressure point behind his left ear that would drop him like a sack of wet cement. A precise strike to the solar plexus that would leave him puking on his Italian leather shoes.

Instead, I nodded like a good little drone and said, "I'll fix it."

This is the real mask, I thought, opening the Henderson file. Not the one I used to wear in the shadows. This.

It was around eleven-thirty when Janet from accounting cranked up the volume on the break room TV. The Eastgate Memorial Bridge looked like a giant had taken a bite out of it. Clean cuts through the support cables, surgical precision on the concrete pylons. The whole eastern span had dropped into the harbor like a stone.

"Jesus," someone whispered behind me. "How many people were on that thing?"

"They're saying maybe forty cars," Janet said, her face pale as printer paper. "But the morning rush was over, so..."

So only forty families get to bury someone today instead of four hundred. Lucky them.

The reporter was doing that thing they do—trying to sound concerned while secretly thrilled they had something more interesting than city council meetings to cover. "This marks the third major infrastructure attack in as many weeks. The individual calling himself 'The Architect' has now targeted power grids, communication networks, and transportation systems with what experts are calling 'surgical precision.'"

Surgical precision. That's what they called it when someone knew exactly where to cut to make the whole thing bleed out.

"Where the hell are the cops?" Derrick's voice cut through the murmur of worried office workers. "Where's the FBI? Where's anybody?"

Where's Dark Fist? That's what he really wanted to ask. That's what they all wanted to ask, but nobody had the balls to say it out loud.

"They say he's been dead for three years," someone muttered.

"Convenient timing," Derrick snorted. "City goes to hell right after our so-called protector kicks the bucket."

I took a sip of coffee and said nothing. What was I supposed to say? Actually, I'm not dead, I just got tired of saving people who'd rather complain about property damage than say thank you?

My enhanced hearing picked up sirens in the distance. Ambulances, fire trucks, police cars—the whole cavalry rushing to clean up another mess they couldn't prevent. I could see it all in my head: the rescue workers pulling bodies from twisted metal, the families waiting for phone calls that would never come.

Justice. Right.

Not your problem, I told myself. You're Thomas Kane now.

But I couldn't stop hearing the sirens.

The first time I broke cover was three blocks from my apartment. Two guys had a woman pinned against the brick wall—one holding her purse, the other holding a knife that caught the streetlight like a promise.

"Please," she was saying, "just take it and go."

The guy with the knife laughed. "Maybe we want more than your purse, sweetheart."

That's when something inside me snapped.

I didn't make a conscious decision to move. One second I was standing at the mouth of the alley, and the next I was behind Knife Guy, my hand wrapped around his wrist like a steel trap.

"Drop it," I said quietly.

I applied pressure—not enough to break anything, but enough to make my point. The knife clattered to the pavement. When he swung at me, I caught his fist, twisted his arm behind his back, and introduced his face to the brick wall. Gently. Mostly.

They ran. The woman thanked me. I walked away before she could get a good look at my face.

One time, I told myself. Just this once, and never again.

The second time was a city bus with an unconscious driver heading straight for a group of kids at a crosswalk. I reached the bus as it mounted the sidewalk, yanked the door off its hinges, and grabbed the wheel. The brake pedal went to the floor—nothing. I managed to angle it away from the kids and into a row of parked cars.

The impact threw me against the windshield, spider-webbing the glass. I climbed out through the destroyed door, trying to look ordinary.

"How did you move so fast?" one of the kids asked.

The lie stuck in my throat like broken glass.

Two times, I thought. Two times, and that's it.

But deep down, I knew I was lying to myself.

The third time wasn't a choice.

I was three spreadsheets deep into the Henderson account when the lights went out. Not just dimmed. Not just flickered. Out. Like someone had reached into the building's chest and ripped out its heart.

Emergency lighting kicked in, bathing everything in that sickly red glow that made everyone look like extras in a zombie movie. The air conditioning died with a mechanical wheeze.

My enhanced hearing picked up something else—a low rumble coming from somewhere deep in the building's guts. The sharp, metallic scent of superheated steel. The acrid smoke of electrical systems dying violent deaths.

Thermite.

The building shuddered. Just a little tremor, like a giant clearing his throat. But I felt it in my bones—the way the structure was starting to shift, to settle, to prepare for its own funeral.

The Architect. He's here.

"EVERYBODY OUT!" I shouted, loud enough to cut through the panic. "USE THE STAIRS! MOVE!"

"Kane, what the hell do you think you're—"

I grabbed Derrick by his overpriced tie. "The building is coming down," I said quietly. "You can help me get people out, or you can stand here and argue about quarterly reports while we all die. Your choice."

They ran for the stairwells. I stayed behind, moving through the building like I hadn't moved in three years. Like Dark Fist.

I found him on the twentieth floor, standing in what used to be the executive conference room like he owned the place. Tall, lean, wearing high-tech armor that looked like it had been designed by someone who'd watched too many sci-fi movies. His face was hidden behind a mask, but I could see his eyes through the visor.

Young eyes. Angry eyes. Familiar eyes.

"You're too late," he said, his voice distorted by electronic modulation. "The building comes down in four minutes. Maybe less."

"Why?" I asked. "What's the point?"

He laughed—a bitter sound that echoed off the walls. "The point? The point is showing this city what happens when they throw away their protectors. What happens when they decide they don't need heroes anymore."

There it was. The truth I'd been afraid to face.

"You're doing this because of me," I said. "Because Dark Fist is dead."

"Dark Fist was murdered," The Architect snarled. "Murdered by a city too stupid to appreciate what they had. Murdered by politicians and bureaucrats and ungrateful citizens who wanted to feel safe but didn't want to pay the price."

He's not wrong.

"So you decided to make them pay a different price."

"I decided to show them what Eastgate looks like without a guardian angel." He gestured toward the window. "Three weeks of systematic attacks, and where are the heroes?"

Standing right in front of you, you dramatic bastard.

"The building's full of innocent people," I said. "Whatever point you're trying to make, they don't deserve to die for it."

"Innocent? These people voted for the mayor who cut the police budget. They cheered when the city council decided Dark Fist was 'unnecessary.'"

Heroes don't die alone. They just learn to live with different names.

"You're right," I said, and meant it. "The city did turn its back on Dark Fist. But that doesn't mean they deserve to die."

"When did heroes become martyrs?" He was reaching for a detonator. "When did protecting people who hate us become more important than protecting ourselves?"

The day we put on the mask.

"Because that's what heroes do," I said, and moved.

Three years of sitting behind a desk hadn't made me slow. Just rusty.

I covered the distance between us in less than a second, my enhanced reflexes kicking in like they'd never left. The Architect was fast—faster than most of the criminals I'd fought back in the day—but he was also angry, and anger made people sloppy.

I caught his fist, twisted his arm, and put him through the conference table hard enough to turn it into expensive kindling. He rolled with the impact, came up swinging some kind of high-tech baton that crackled with electricity.

The baton caught me in the ribs, sending lightning through my nervous system. It hurt—I'd forgotten how much I'd missed that particular sensation—but pain was just information.

I grabbed his leg, spun him around, and introduced him to the floor-to-ceiling window. The glass spider-webbed but didn't break.

"You can't stop it," The Architect gasped, blood trickling from behind his mask. "The charges are already set."

"Then tell me how to disarm them."

For a moment, something flickered behind his mask. Something that might have been doubt, or regret, or the last dying ember of whatever had made him put on a costume in the first place.

"The charges are on a timer," he said finally. "Basement level, main support columns."

I left him cuffed to a radiator with his own restraints and found an elevator shaft. Thirty-seven floors in free fall, using my enhanced reflexes to control the descent, bouncing off cables and guide rails like a pinball with a death wish.

I hit the basement level hard enough to crack the concrete and came up running. The charges were exactly where he'd said they'd be—sleek, professional devices attached to the building's main support columns like mechanical tumors.

Ninety seconds.

Red wire, blue wire, green wire—a rainbow of ways to die. I could hear the timer's electronic heartbeat, counting down the seconds.

Sixty seconds.

Screw it.

I grabbed the first charge, ripped it off the support column, and threw it as hard as I could toward the far wall. The explosion knocked me flat, filled the basement with smoke and debris.

Thirty seconds.

Second charge. Same plan, different wall. This explosion was bigger, closer, and I felt something in my left shoulder pop in a way that suggested I'd be feeling it for weeks.

Ten seconds.

Third charge. Last chance. I grabbed it, looked for somewhere to throw it, and realized there wasn't anywhere safe.

Five seconds.

I wrapped my arms around the device, curled into a ball, and hoped that three years of desk work hadn't made me too soft to survive what came next.

The world turned white, then black, then into a symphony of pain that would have killed Thomas Kane.

But I wasn't Thomas Kane.

I was Dark Fist, and I had work to do.

I woke up in Mercy General with a concussion, three cracked ribs, and a dislocated shoulder. Detective Sarah Chen was sitting in the visitor's chair—someone I'd worked with back when Dark Fist was still welcome in police stations.

"Hello, Thomas," she said. "Or should I call you something else?"

Busted.

"The Architect's real name is Marcus Webb," she continued. "Former Army Corps of Engineers, discharged three years ago. Big fan of Dark Fist. Took it pretty hard when the news broke about his death."

Right around the time I'd decided Thomas Kane was safer than bleeding for ungrateful people.

"He'll get help," Chen said. "Psychiatric evaluation, therapy, maybe even a reduced sentence. And you? You're a concerned citizen who risked his life to save his coworkers. A hero, some might say."

She stood to leave. "The city could use more heroes, Thomas. The kind who don't care about gratitude or recognition or whether the people they save deserve it."

After she left, I lay in the hospital bed and listened to the city outside my window. Sirens, car horns, the distant sound of construction crews working to repair the damage. The same symphony I'd been hearing for three years, the same calls for help I'd been ignoring.

My phone buzzed. Nicole: "Saw the news. Paul says you're a hero. I always knew you were. Hope you're okay."

Another buzz. Derrick: "Kane, you're getting a promotion. And a raise. And probably a medal from the mayor."

A promotion. A raise. A medal. All the things Thomas Kane was supposed to want.

I turned off the phone and closed my eyes, but I couldn't shut out the sound of the city calling my name. Not Thomas Kane's name—that was just the mask I'd been wearing, the lie I'd been telling myself for three years.

My real name. Dark Fist.

I looked out the window at Eastgate City—my city, whether it wanted me or not. The city was ungrateful. The people were stupid. The politicians were corrupt, and half the time I'd be saving people who'd probably vote to defund me the next day.

But that's what heroes do. We save people anyway.

Somewhere out there, another Marcus Webb was probably planning another attack. Somewhere, another criminal was deciding that a city without heroes was a city ripe for the taking.

They were wrong. Heroes don't die. They just learn to live with different names.

But Thomas Kane was done living. It was time for Dark Fist to come home. Time to get back to work, even if it meant giving up my promotion, my raise, and my comfortable life of quarterly reports and TPS cover sheets.

Because I wasn't Thomas Kane, mild-mannered office worker.

I was Dark Fist, protector of Eastgate.

And I had a city to save.