A line of sunlight shot through my blinds, right into my eyes. My groggy mind started to turn over even as everything else cried for more rest. Losing the battle for sleep I slowly sat up on the edge of the bed. I hurt. I thought the point of an armoured suit was to not hurt.
I felt bruises and welts, mostly on my back, and my shoulder ached, probably from when I was thrown by the wrist. But really everything was sore, stiff or both.
My hand patted around my bedside table and found what I wanted. I put a couple of pills in my mouth and, in the absence of water, just chewed. Gross. "I need coffee."
A little while later I was showered and sitting in front of my suit, a cup of coffee steaming in my hand. I ran my flesh fingers over the claw marks and looked at the dings and dents. Those hybrids were no joke. I had a visceral image of the gorilla's bloodshot eyes flash through my mind at the thought of them. Pained, angry and… were they sad, or is that just me colouring the memory?
My hand settled on a bigger dent in a shoulder pad. Had I not killed him, Ringmaster would have gotten away. He would have brushed me aside or moved on, but either way he would have gotten more people to make into hybrids. Then wouldn't every victim after that be partly my fault?
I looked up into the helmet on my suit and saw the reflection in the visor. A tired-looking man I'm almost positive I've never seen before looked back at me. I looked down at my coffee, gripped by a black robotic hand. "Would you even recognize me?" I asked the empty room.
I noticed a notification on my computer. An email. I opened it and it was the blueprints I'd asked for. A simple "get back to me as soon as you can". I put the information into my system. It was pretty easy to do. Once the program was done it gave me a time estimate. I did the rough math in my head of what I thought the by hand work would be and rolled my eyes. "God damn, this is going to take 50-60 hours of work" I exclaimed. So much for one little job, that's almost a week of regular working hours.
Shaking my head I sent back the estimate and loaded it into the auto caster. That would take awhile but it gave me time to work on the suit. I took a long pull from my mug and rolled a stool up to the suit.
I started working on the suit, maintenance and repairs. The suit had held up well and required little, but I still checked it; my life literally depended on it. I had the TV running in the background. I was wondering if the news would cover anything. It would be interesting to hear what they thought happened, with no way of knowing who was there. It was also nice to fill the silence it could seep in if you weren't careful.
"Reports of some kind of attack on a warehouse on David Road." My ears perked up and I stopped working to watch. I found the remote to turn the volume up "Police received a call early this morning saying there were people in need of help. When police and FOH officials arrived they found a chilling scene." The video changed to an outside view of the warehouse, police tape everywhere, the front door missing. I drank my coffee as I looked at the wide shot of the warehouse.
"A known villain group called the Circus, run by the infamous Ringmaster, had set up in the warehouse" the TV showed a mug shot of Ringmaster, clearly after being arrested "and a few accomplices." A picture of Strongman. "Investigation shows one assailant attacked the group late last night."
My coffee mug, on its way to my mouth, fell suddenly from loose fingers. I was looking at a low-quality picture of myself in the suit.
"This is one of the only images of the attacker. This armoured person broke into the warehouse and began attacking without cause."
The front door had a camera. I didn't want to be revealed this soon. "Damn it!" I hissed. I had checked the outside of the building and assumed if there had been no cameras outside there'd be none inside. The picture of me standing on the shattered remains of the front door was replaced with a video of me drawing my blaster and walking off-frame.
"Wait, what do you mean without cause?" I asked the TV belatedly, picking up what was being said.
"The resulting altercation resulted in the deaths of several hostages Ringmaster had, as well as Ringmaster and his gang." There was a short clip of a gurney being wheeled to an ambulance, covered in a blanket but a very monkey-looking leg and tail visible. That sight, I thought, would make me feel vindicated. But it just left me in a swirl of emotions.
"Speaking from the scene is one of our nation's greatest, Sentinel of Justice." The camera switched to a blond, powerful-looking man in a gold and white costume.
"Thank you, Miranda," he started, before putting on a somber tone. "This mess is the work of a vigilante." He shook his head. "Someone who feels they are above the law and knows better than everyone else."
"I don't know better. I'm just willing to do something about it," I gripped.
"It's a shame that people like this… Black Knight type… feel they can do hero work better than the heroes or even the police." Sentinel pulled in a deep breath before letting it out, his head dropping as he did. "As a result of his hasty, poorly thought out and worse-executed attempt" he paused for a breath "two hostages died, and the Ringmaster and his crew lost their lives." He shook his head at the camera; it felt like a personal reproach.
"Fuck you." My mind quickly flashed through images of the gorilla and lioness, dead. "I didn't have a choice" I said feeling that comment like a guy punch.
"That's two people, innocent people who can never go home, never return to their lives and families." Sentinel took another measured breath. "And for the people of the circus? No chance at rehabilitation, redemption; even the chance of a fair trial was stolen from them."
"Redemption?" I spat. "What the hell is this? The Ringmaster wasn't going to be redeemed!"
"This is not what our nation believes in." He stood straight again. "We believe in helping everyone, no matter how low." Then he stared directly at the camera… at me. "Heroes are specially trained to control these situations. This was an act of a dangerous person with an even more dangerous mindset."
"My mindset is just fine…"
"We won't allow vigilantes to run wild-west around our city. We will find this individual, we will arrest them and we will punish them to the fullest extent of the law. Properly." With that, the video switched to the still image of me standing on the broken door. One last time the image came back to the sentinel. "Now I won't stand for a v…murderer to be running around my town." He stands and floats off the ground a bit "call the FOA hotline with any information and be assured that when we find where this iron monster nests, it'll be I who goes in to get him." He took a deep breath "I'm coming for you"
Stupid. I didn't check for a damn camera! A lazy mistake and now my suit is on national fucking television. I managed to steal from Techshield and never left an image… plenty of evidence, but no video.
I was so angry with myself. Part of the plan had been to stay low-profile for as long as possible. Here I am on my first night out and now the world has my picture. I looked down at the spilled coffee. Wait, did he just threaten me personally? Why was he so personally invested in me?
"And if those rehabilitation centers or jails could actually deal with these villains, people like me wouldn't be needed." I waved the remote at the image of sentinel "how many times have the same villains gotten out? Every single time people die in some big spectacle of a fight like in the movies!"
The tv now showed them interviewing people on the street about my actions. "I can't believe he'd just kill everyone"
"The streets just get more and more unsafe, you know?"
"If he's going after bad guys wouldn't that make him more of a grey knight?"
I shut the TV off. The last images were nothing but scraps details, glimpses, and a few blurry photos. But one froze in my mind: a mutated corpse still wearing what was left of a clown suit.
So that's what happened to the other clown.
I stood there as the Silence pressed in around me. The room felt smaller. On the blank screen, Sentinel's face dissolved into the darker shape of my own reflection.
And behind me, the suit waited on its rack. My blood ran hot through my veins. This is the reason people were so dependent on heros! It's because of this. Sentinel of justice, my ass. There's no justice to be had, it's just a revolving door of horrors
My voice sounded different in the quiet.
"Call me whatever you want. But I'm done doing nothing." I picked up my tools and got back to work on the suit. I was going to be needing it again.