Sirens were howling, and speakers were automatically chanting All personnel, this is a Level One emergency! Hull breach in the dimensional interface chamber! Initiating full system shutdown!
Behind André in the cavernous technochamber was a huge, radiant iris, a three-story gold-silver blossom whose center shimmered with nebula and stars, vibrating with a disturbing violet luminescence.
Kareem staggered over to André, his Xoskeleton fading to gray and then to nothingness. Panting and groaning, he clutched his side as if his ribs were broken.
“Now listen…you superduper…killer house nigger! I know…you killed…Hawk King!” His chest was heaving. He tried and failed to catch his breath. “Tell me why…kot-tammit! Why?”
“You crazy, nigga!”
“My medu-kem… found dust…from the Blue Pyramid walls…on your costume, André. But you said…you hadn’t been there…since you were a kid—”
“So your logoids are wrong!”
“No way in hell. I also had them…go through Festus’s computers…Big Squirrel Brother…has got the whole city…under observation. Grimhotep…finally decrypted the file I retrieved. Shows you…flying away from the Pyramid the night the King was murdered. With a scepter in your hands. The Scepter of Typhon.”
As his accusations grew in strength, Kareem regained his own.
“So how’d you do it, André? Mind-control him with the scepter into revealing his transmutation phrase…turn him into defenseless old Dr. Rogers in his wheelchair, and then kill him? And then…use the transmutation phrase to turn his body back into Hawk King’s so no one’d know? Why, muthafucka? How much did that son of a bitch pay you?”
André yelled, “Fuck you, man! Ain’nobody pay me! I loved Hawk King! I loved him! He was my hero!”
Kareem put his foot onto André’s pelvis and leaned.
The act—and André’s scream—was so repugnant that even as a trained psychotherapist, it was all I could do to keep myself from turning away.
“I aint fuckin around with you, André!” yelled Kareem. “Now you tell me why you did it, or next time I’m standing up on that muthafucka like you a StairMaster!”
When André’s eyes drifted back into focus, he said, “They were blackmailing me, man!”
“Who? Festus?”
“I don’t know who! Guy came to me, told me he’d tell my aunt Maybelle that I was responsible for my uncle Benteen’s death! It’d kill her if she found out!”
“His death?”
“Because, because my uncle, he…I was in my room one mornin, an I didn’know he was home, an he didn’think anybody else was home, so when he heard somethin in my room he just came up an barged in an caught me changin into my costume, an then he just had a massive heart attack—”
“He caught you fuckin a guy, didn’he, André?”
“What? No—no, that’s not true, Kareem!” said André, or perhaps I should say Andrew, given his speech shift. “Who told you that? It’s not true, whatever you heard!”
“No one told me—I figured it out days ago, after I bugged Doctor Brain’s glasses. Your whole origin story—it didn’t wash. All your ‘womanizing’—I saw the photos from your file of you at those nightclubs. Just cuz Eva doesn’t know what kind of clubs the Meet Market, Bone Dancers, and Peacocks are doesn’t mean I don’t!”
“No, Kareem, please, just…look, don’t tell my aunt, all right? Whatever you think of me, don’t tell my aunt—”
“You’re a kot-tam murderer, André! You think I’m just gonna give you a pass cuz you don’t wanna get in trouble with your aunty?”
“It’d kill her, Kareem! Don’t you understand? Just like my uncle—I was trying to protect her, that’s all! She raised me!”
“I don’t let murderers walk for any reason! Let alone the Judas who assassinated the greatest leader we ever had!”
“Oh…sure,” sobbed André, catching himself before he continued. “Fine. High and mighty Kareem. So perfectly just. Judging me! The homophobic, white girl–screwing hypocrite, judging me!”
“This aint about homophobia!”
“Isn’t it? When I went to join the L*A*B when you muthafuckas were recruiting? Remember that? I went down to the QRIB. All I wanted was to protect Stun-Glas. And all your friends, laughing about these applicants you’d rejected, ‘fag’ this and ‘fag’ that, and the Dreadlocker saying how he’d put some ‘battiman’ in the hospital just for looking at him and how he’d ‘put fyah’ on the next one he found!”
“I never talked like that, André—”
“No, but you didn’t fucking stop it, either, did you? Did you have Dreadlocker arrested for confessing to a horrible aggravated assault? Did you kick him out of the L*A*B? Even just fucking talk to him about it?”
X-Man looked down, opening his hands as if he’d left something important in them. “You’re right. André. You’re right,” he said, clearing his throat. “But that doesn’t excuse—”
Kareem was smashed against the wall.
I zoomed back: the Flying Squirrel was reaching into his utility pouches—
And then the monitors inked into blackness.
A Fear-Filled Final Inventory
I couldn’t see anything. Even the eerie light of the dimensional portal had been snuffed out. The Dark Fantastic must’ve entered right behind the Squirrel. I clicked into the Brotherfly’s OM Meter cognistream, but he’d passed out. Festus’s link was still offline. My only means of monitoring was auditory.
“What’s a matter, Festus?” called Kareem. “Night-vision goggles don’t work? Even infrared is light, you know!”
“So we’re all blind, then! I’ll find you, Edgerton. And when I do, I’ll snap you into kindling!”
“I don’t think so, Festus. You’re tired. Exhausted! I can hear it in your voice! And there’re two of us!”
Sounds of tripping and falling—perhaps one man, maybe more.
The Squirrel: “Ah…but you’re injured and exhausted. As soon as I take out your hooded hoodlum friend and his darkness dissipates, you’ll be nothing but a lame black cockroach that can’t even dash for the shadows. And injured as you are, I’m guessing you won’t have power enough for many word-monstrosities now, will you?”
There were more sounds of crashing.
Kareem: “…Hey, that’s a great gamble, Piltdown. Sure…I don’t have any Words left at all. I’m defenseless!”
The Squirrel: “You’re bluffing.”
Kareem: “Try me.”
Silence.
Kareem: “I’ll give you this, Festus—you had me fooled for
