Excerpt

I was there the night Phoenix Fire died.

It was mid-August, and Los Angeles was suffering through the northern edge of a tropical storm that hit Mexico earlier that week. The temperatures, even at night, were in the 80's and the humidity was bad enough to make you feel you needed to change your shirt five minutes after you put it on. The overcast sky glowed with a dim glare, reflecting the light cast by the city below.

Earlier that evening, I had received a call from one of my less savory sources with a tip that something big was going to happen that night at the OilCo Refinery in Wilmington, the superpowered human kind of stuff that pays my rent. It sounded solid enough to get me out of the cool and comfortable bar I was in and venture out into the muggy night.

It helps to know people in my business, and some nights it seems I know all the right people. In this case, the right person was the post commander for the company that ran security for the building I stood on. A few phone calls, a pair of Dodger tickets and a bag of tacos bought me access to the roof of a twelve-story office building about a quarter mile from the facility. It was tall enough to give me a good unobstructed view of whatever might happen, and far enough away to make sure it didn't happen to me.

My video camera sat on its tripod and my trusty Nikon, which I used for stills, hung from a strap around my neck. I'm a decent photographer, but I would rather have drawn one of our pool shutterbugs. They're much better. With the short notice and the late hour I wasn't able to get anyone, so I was on my own that night. I leaned back against some sort of industrial air conditioning equipment on the roof and waited for something to happen. For the life of me, I couldn't figure out what my source thought that might be.

I adjusted the camera's telephoto lens and scanned the refinery again. It was a dismal place, and I just couldn't imagine a reason for a supervillain to go busting into the place. I mean, what would he do, steal a few barrels of gasoline? Gas prices were high, but let's be serious. Maybe some sort of terrorism thing? No, my source didn't run in those circles. The area around the refinery almost exclusively consisted of industrial parks, small businesses with no particular significance, the sorts of small companies that preferred cheap leases over pleasant environments. There was a fairly large rail-yard to the north, but it didn't seem to have much going on. Beyond that, there was nothing but residential areas. None of the facilities around me were big or prosperous enough to warrant the attention of someone who could just tear the door off a bank vault and take the rest of the night off.

At about 10:30, an explosion tore through a storage tank at the refinery, leveling some nearby structures and setting off fires throughout the plant. The blast damaged the neighboring tanks, covered them in fire and triggering secondary detonations. A wave of hot force shoved me back hard against the exhaust fan housing, and knocked me senseless for a moment. The equipment saved me from a fall off the roof and a messy end. My ears rang and I fought my way to my feet, looking for the video camera. Finding it, I quickly found some cover behind the air conditioner just as another explosion went off. Fumbling with my gear, I managed to get my rig set up again and started recording the scene.

The blaze at the refinery was as close to Hell as any sane person would want to get. The overcast sky flared with shades of orange and red. Even from this distance, I could feel the intense heat generated by the blaze. I ducked down behind the AC and relied on the little pop-out display monitor on the side of the video camera to line up the shot on the burning tanks.

An eternity later—when I reviewed the tape later it turned out to be about five minutes—the heat abruptly died down and I risked a look around the side of the AC housing. A brightly glowing female form hovered above the conflagration. I redirected my camera to focus on her. She was bathed in fire and nothing else. Flames from the refinery rose through the night toward her to be absorbed into her body. Phoenix Fire shone like a miniature sun as she struggled to quench the flames below her, so bright that I couldn't look at her directly. I adjusted the camera to compensate for the glare and kept it trained on her as best I could via the little monitor.

Shielding my eyes against the glare, I glanced about the rest of the refinery. If Phoenix Fire was here, the rest of The Angels couldn't be far behind. Within moments, I spotted another figure, this one male and wearing a blue skinsuit, tearing through the wreckage of a plant structure. With a tremendous effort, he pulled a fallen girder away from the crushed wall and entered the rubble of the building. He emerged a few seconds later with two limp human forms in his arms and one more hanging onto his back. He flew up into the brightly-lit sky towards the main entrance of the refinery. It was Ultiman, The Angels' leader. Moments later, he returned to the wreckage, and came out with a couple more survivors. I snapped photos with my Nikon as he went about his work.

Looking around, I caught a glimpse of the rest of LA's resident superteam joining the rescue effort. A bright green streak crisscrossed at impossible speeds around the facility, dropping road flares on various structures. The blurred, speeding form could only be SpeedDamon, marking the locations of survivors for his team to rescue. I kept the camera busy, although any shots of him in action would likely be unusable. That didn't bother me. I had plenty of memory cards in my pocket and you never know when you might get a lucky and wind up with a decent shot of a guy like him.

The speedster moved off to the far side of the refinery and I lost track of him. Shifting back towards the refinery's front gates, I saw a fourth Angel, Mentalia, lifting a small group of workers to safety in a bubble of telekinetic force from another ruined building. It looked like she was dressed in running shorts and a t-shirt. She probably hadn't had time to suit up before the alert to aid the refinery came in.

Fire engines and medical teams were now making a slow advance through the facility, thanks to the efforts of another pair of superheroes. Out of all the chaotic activity going on down there, I had the clearest view of them so I settled in and continued snapping photos of Suave and Herculene as they cleared a path for the heavy vehicles with focused energy beams and brute strength, respectively.

As a result, I got some amazing shots when Omega sprung their trap.

An oversized drill burst from under the pavement between Suave and a fire hydrant, followed by a gleaming metal body of a woman. Mechanista's flesh was organic steel—caused by some kind of nanotech experiment gone wrong, if you believe the stories—and she could reconfigure herself at will. A shining pipe shot forth from her left arm into the fire main and another sprang from her right, which she directed at Suave. The muscular Angel, clad in tight-fitting black pants, boots and a silver vest, was focused on carving through some fallen debris with ruby blasts of energy emanating from his hands, and he was caught completely off-guard. A jet of high-pressured water flowed through Mechanista and into Suave, slamming him against the side of a cooling tower. He fell to the ground in an unmoving heap.

As the emergency crews scrambled for cover, Herculene spun in place, the skirt of her white toga swirling about her as she reacted to the threat, only to be leveled by a man suddenly bursting from an undamaged storage shed, a bright green psychically-projected hammer in each fist. Hammerblow swung with savage intent, and his brutal attacks struck the hero in the back of her head. She plowed through the pavement face-first into a stack of barrels, leaving a forty foot trail of broken pavement in her wake.

In the corner of my eye, I spotted some sort of tower of pipes, tubes and scaffolding a considerable distance from the original blast, come crashing down. A moment later the sound of rending, clashing steel reached my ears. I almost missed it in the din of sirens and the raging fire. Other refinery structures blocked my view to the ground level, but it wasn't hard to guess what happened down there.

The rest of the Omegas were joining the party.

As Phoenix Fire continued to light the carnage, struggling to maintain her control over the incredible energies being released at the containment tanks, I kept my camera busy, shifting back to the battle I could actually see. Herculene staggered to her feet, shaking her hairless head as she regained control of her senses. Mechanista shifted her form into a sort of mechanical dinosaur resembling a Tyrannosaurus Rex only with much longer, thicker arms ending in chrome claws, gleaming in the light of the human sun above. Hammerblow, in his loose-fitting brown jumpsuit, pressed his advantage, leaping the distance between him and Herculene in a couple of bounds, and recklessly lashed at her with his pair of shimmering green hammers. Herculene shifted her stance at the last second and redirected the force of the blow with a slap of her hand. Unable to control his momentum, he followed his hammers into the pavement, creating a crater and bouncing twice across the wreckage to came to a halt as some barrels, ones that hadn't fallen when Herculene crashed into them seconds before, were finally knocked loose and came down upon him. I hoped it was as painful as it looked.

Hey, I'm just a normal human. Objectivity be damned, I reserve the right to root for the good guys.

Now that the initial shock of Omega's ambush had worn off, I was angry. I struggled to keep my hands steady as I worked the camera. Look, superheroes and supervillains fought, that's just the way it was. It's been that way since the 1920's when they first started putting on costumes and operating openly. But this was ridiculous. This attack was too clean, too well planned, and it was pretty obvious by now that the explosion at the tanks was no accident. There are some things you just don't do, whether you're trying to rob a bank or take over the world. Blowing up a refinery full of civilians just to get a cheap shot at your rivals is one of them. I was furious that Omega would pull something like this, and even more so that there was absolutely nothing I could do about it but take pictures. My only solace was the hope that my photos might serve as evidence in some future trial that would help put these pukes away for good. I resolved to do my job and silently prayed that The Angels would be successful in doing theirs.

Mechanista launched herself at Herculene as the toga-clad warrior goddess turned to face her. The mechanical T-Rex's mouth opened to bellow what sounded, when it reached my ears a little over a second later, like some kind of warhorn. The hero braced herself and met the charge head-on. Her hands darted out and caught the monstrous claws as they descended upon her. The force of the charge pushed her back about four yards, and her feet dug twin trenches through the pavement. Finally, they came to a halt, and Herculene's hands crushed the metallic claws as Mechanista screamed with rage and tried to bite her with a mouth filled with foot-long chrome teeth that showered the warrior goddess with sparks each time the fangs clashed closed. Herculene dodged furiously while maintaining her grip, using the mechanical beast's arms as shields. The two superhumans ground into a violent stalemate as the battle raged throughout the facility.

That was all I remembered before the star above us went supernova and a wave of heat and force slammed me into oblivion.

***

When I awoke, it was to a world of pain. Bright spots clouded my vision. The only thing I could hear was the ringing in my ears. My head felt like someone was banging away at a big bass drum in there. Whoever it was, he engaged in some sort of competition with the spiking agony emanating from my left arm. Becoming aware of my surroundings, I found myself entangled in the wreckage of a twelve-foot wide satellite dish. The air conditioning unit I had used as shelter was gone. I tested my injured arm and was rewarded with a fresh spasm of pain. I was pretty sure it was broken. I struggled free of the tangled wreckage, but couldn't quite muster the strength to make it to my feet.

I spotted a smoldering heap of something on the roof about twenty feet away from me, but I couldn't make out what it was. It radiated intense heat. I crawled forward towards the object and my stomach took a nauseated turn as I got close enough to become certain that the smoldering heap was what was left of a human being.

The body turned out to be a naked woman. I recognized her. It was Phoenix Fire, lying dead on the roof in front of me. Her chest was burst open and I could see the remains of bones and muscle and little else. The organs that should have filled that horrifying cavity were gone. Bright blue eyes stared into nothingness. Long blonde hair splayed about her lifeless head, mingled with blood leaking from the back of her skull. Nothing about her had been burned. With trembling fingers, I reached out to check for a pulse—no, I wasn't thinking clearly—and I jerked my hand back with a yelp. Her flesh was far too hot to touch. I sank back on my heels, cradling my left arm, and tried to think of something useful to do. Nothing came to mind.

I have no idea how long I had been there next to Phoenix Fire's corpse, but it was still night. My watch stopped working at 10:45, so I figured that's when the blast occurred. The Nikon still hung from its strap around my neck. It was ruined and I hoped that the memory card would still be intact. I had no idea where my video camera ended up. Probably blown off the roof. Like I should have been.

I remembered I was twelve stories up and shuddered.

My arm was a pulsing bonfire and my ears were ringing so loudly that I didn't hear Ultiman land on the rooftop beside me. I only became aware of his presence as he stepped around my left and came into view. My eyes worked their way up his blue mesh bodysuit, past the scarlet "U" on his chest, until they reached his face. He looked down on Phoenix Fire's corpse, his eyes hard and cold, his expression unreadable.

I found it hard to concentrate, and all I could manage was to mutter a useless, "I'm sorry," as my gaze wandered back down to the woman's lifeless eyes.

He reached down and closed them. A little wisp of steam arose from his fingertips. It probably sizzled, but I couldn't hear it.

A moment later, the building shuddered and I reflexively jerked a little, looking this way and that, fearing another attack. That was a big mistake, and I paid for it with a fresh spike from my arm. I collapsed to the roof with a groan. Ultiman knelt down and said something to someone behind me. Then he gently gathered up Phoenix Fire in his arms and rose into the night and out of sight. As I lay there, a pair of sandaled feet came into view. I looked up into the bruised face of Herculene. The impact I felt a few seconds ago must have been her, landing on the roof. She couldn't fly, but she jumped really well, bounding along with leaps of up to a quarter mile once she gets up to speed. She smiled kindly as she knelt down and said something that I couldn't really hear but I thought was something along the lines of, "I won't lie to ya, this is going to hurt a lot." She picked me up. My arm roared in protest and I passed out.

I regained consciousness as Herculene jumped from the roof with me in her arms. She sped down the streets in several hundred-foot leaps as she carried me to an emergency room a few miles away. Even though she was trying to be as gentle as possible, each landing sent a fresh jolt of pain through my injured arm and I drifted in and out of consciousness several times. It was agony, but I did my best to keep my mouth shut and suffer through it in silence. I wanted to ask her what happened. I wanted to ask her if the good guys won. It's my job to ask questions—and I had a lot of them—but I didn't want her to slow down to answer them.

I just wanted it to be over.