Blood Obsidian

Issue 46

Caitlyn had to give that one to Aunt Mary. She had grabbed the name out of the air, the black of the suit with the threads of the Red Element entwined into it had turned her mind to something she had only seen in passing. It was a little too late to change the name now. And, besides, if the name worried civilians, it would worry bad guys. Only, not bad guys like Fiend, obviously.

"He took Alaina at the same time as he got me, but I haven't seen her since he locked me away. I think he took her somewhere else. She's probably dead and I couldn't do anything to stop him." Rayna's hand clutched Caitlyn's arm and Caitlyn had to pretend she didn't immediately wish they were holding hands. "It's my father, isn't it? I can tell. He's truly gone mad if he's attacking people. Attacking me."

"Your father? You know?" For the first time, Caitlyn turned her head from looking up to the top of the dome, scowling at Rayna under her mask. "How did you ..."

That question lingered in the air, unanswered as she heard something from above. A snort? Or a cough? Whatever it was, it gave Caitlyn a direction to watch and she tried her best to make out something, anything in that darkness. It was no use, not with the night vision, but, with the others behind her, she could use something else. Her infrared vision.

Responding to her unspoken command, the suit changed what she could see. Gone was the green-tinged view of everything around her, replaced by shades of black and blue, telling her that most of the dome was cold. Most, but not all. Up above, she saw the hazy outline of something, someone, giving off heat upon some kind of raised walkway. A shape that looked all-too familiar. Fiend.

"Rayna?" The hesitant, croaking voice drifted down toward them from up above. "What? What's happening?"

"Run!" Caitlyn turned to Aunt Mary and Rayna, pushing them toward the exit. Now she knew where he was, she could stop Alden from following them. She hoped. "I'll buy you time. When you get out, just keep running. Head back toward the city. I've got this."

As her aunt and the girl she cared for began to run, Caitlyn turned back. With a crouch, she pushed against the dome's floor and leapt up as high as she could before she sent out the length of the suit, reaching to attach to the wall of the dome. This ended here, tonight, or she'd die trying.

-+-

Meanwhile ...

He'd commandeered a squad car and had called in orders for more cars to converge on the second facility. The cell phone beeped as it failed to connect to the kid's phone and he knew he should never have let the girl go on to face Fiend alone. From the beginning, right outside that other Ald-Tech facility, he had decided not to acknowledge that he knew Blood Obsidian's secret. It worked better for both of them.

For her, it kept her dual identities compartmentalised, allowing her to do what she needed to do without worrying about how it would affect anyone else. Being a superhero was a lonely, dangerous game and knowing she could put that part of her life aside and lead a normal life, too, probably kept her sane. For him, it meant he could turn a blind eye to the fact that a high-school kid put her life in danger. If he didn't, he'd have had to have tried to stop her and, from the few times he had talked to her, he knew she would have ignored him anyway.

He regretted that. Wished he had at least tried to persuade her to put away the superhero suit. Now she had run into a situation she was not prepared to face. She didn't have all the information. Even as he drove, sirens blaring, lights flashing, he looked once again at the fingerprints he had rushed through.

Raymond Alden had had a DUI, years before. His fingerprints were on file. Other fingerprints were on file, too and the prints they had lifted from the scene matched only one of those files. Elongated, somehow, but still the same whorls and patterns. They had got it wrong. They had got it all so terribly wrong.

-+-

Back at the domed facility ...

Caitlyn saw the bloom of heat from the engines of Fiend's flying platform as it rose up from the walkway. It wobbled, tipped one way and then the other, as though flown by a drunk, but, inevitably, the platform began to fly toward her. She shot out the suit's grapple once again, latching to the surface of the dome behind the moving figure, and swung her way upward, ready to start the fight, this time. Start it and end it.

Something flashed, another bloom of heat, and a bright, white object raced toward her at enormous speed. Only at the last second did she retract the grapple, allowing herself to drop in an instant, and the rocket flared past, leaving a trail of fast cooling smoke in its wake. Caitlyn could only hope that Aunt Mary and Rayna had managed to escape the dome.

"I don't know what's happening ..." The voice was muffled, but Caitlyn recognised Raymond Alden. "What is this? What are ... my god! You're a monster!"

Caitlyn had reestablished her grapple, dragging herself upward until she arced through the air toward Fiend, Alden. That elongated face, the grinning, fang-like teeth, the enormous yellow eyes. Caitlyn had seen that face in her dreams. Alden had tried to kill Alaina, had almost succeeded in killing Kyle and had kidnapped Aunt Mary, Alaina and his own daughter, all for some mad, insane delusion that Caitlyn had done something wrong against him. Caitlyn didn't even know what he thought she had done!

All her anger, her frustrations erupted in this moment. Everything Fiend had done to her only fuelled her fury. The fake video, the term papers hidden in her locker, the attacks, everything threatened to make Caitlyn explode in anger at this man and she put all of that into her attack, throwing her fist toward that horrifying face, his hands rising to protect himself.

She heard bones crack as the punch connected with those arms and she felt no pity for him. She remembered the grenade flying toward Alaina and she punched out again, following the flying platform of Fiend as it began to spiral away, out of control. That punch tore away a large chunk of the flying platform, but it wasn't enough. She wanted, needed, more. Fast-floating, she followed the flying platform downward, ready to hit out at her enemy once again. This would stop the maniac laughing!

But he wasn't laughing. He hadn't laughed at all since Caitlyn had arrived. And, if she thought about it, he hadn't even talked as he had before. There was no supreme confidence to the voice, no eerie rumble to it, no sense that he was on the verge of laughing out loud at any moment. In fact, he hadn't even attempted to fight back and she knew that Fiend could just about match her in strength.

The floor of the dome rushed up to greet them and Caitlyn had a choice. She could allow Alden to smash into that floor, or she could arrest his fall and find out why he was acting so different.