Free Masked (2010) by Lou Anders Page A

house he’d grown up in.
    Only, as an even darker shadow fell across the charcoal that had once been the hardwood of his living room floor, he realized that this was no longer a private moment.
    “I’m sorry about Nubile,” said She-Devil. “Also. . . well. . . you know.”
    “She’ll be back,” he whispered, through a voice wet with tears. “John, too.”
    “I understand it’s hard to let go,” said She-Devil. The outline of her wings and horns were sharply defined as they stretched out before him.
    “She’s not dead,” he said, shaking his head. “We thought she was dead when she was shot. But she was alive, even if her mind was gone. Now her body’s gone. You’ve played this game long enough. No body, no death. That’s how I know Atomahawk will be back, with a story of how he got shunted into another dimension, or backward in time, or whatever. We never stay dead.”
    She-Devil’s shadow horns shook slowly.
    “Eric, there’s a time when hope is healthy, and a point where it’s just a form of self-torture.”
    Retaliator nodded. “I know a thing or two about torture. There’s a pain you can create with despair. And there’s a deeper, darker, more desperate pain you can fuel with hope.”
    Black ash swirled in the chill breeze.
    “Things look bleak now,” said She-Devil. “You paid a high price. But you won. You finally stopped Prime Mover. He’s in hell now. Find comfort in that, if you can.”
    “You know a lot about hell,” said Retaliator.
    She-Devil’s shadow shrugged. He didn’t have the strength to turn his head to face her.
    “So you know the myth of Sisyphus.”
    She-Devil said nothing.
    “Condemned to eternally push a rock up a hill. Every time he reaches the top, the stone rolls right back to the bottom.”
    “I’ve heard the myth,” she said.
    “We go out every week and fight bad guys and save the world,” said Retaliator. “We die. They die. We all come back. We thwart their plans and lock them in prison cells and two months later they’re standing on the Eiffel Tower waving around the latest and greatest doomsday ray and shouting demands. It never ends. Itnever ends. We get the rock to the top of the hill, and have to watch it roll back to the bottom.”
    “You’re understandably depressed, Eric. You’ve lost your wife and home. You’ve lost your best friend. And now the police are hunting Retaliator for the murder of Atomahawk. But you’ll bounce back. You’ll make it to the top of the hill again. You always do. Maybe this time, the rock will stay put.”
    Eric rolled his mask into a cylinder and kneaded it back and forth in his fists. He swallowed his tears, then said, “You told us that you’d been tasked by Satan to find the most wicked men who ever lived and punish them.”
    She-Devil’s shadow froze.
    His voice dropped to a near whisper as he asked the question that terrified him most. “Is this. . . is this hell? Am I Sisyphus? Is this how you’ve chosen to punish me?”
    He turned to see her face.
    She was no longer there.
    He dropped his mask, as tears streamed down his cheeks. His hands shook as he unsnapped the pouch on the front of his belt. The pouch held an antique, ivory-handled derringer that had belonged to his great-grandfather. Atomahawk had teased him about keeping it in his belt along with all his high-tech toys and gizmos. If he had to carry a gun, certainly Retaliator could have afforded something with a bit more heft.
    But it doesn’t require that much force to drive a lead slug through the roof of one’s mouth. The steel barrel was cold as ice against his lips, and brought forth the most exquisite and terrifying sense of déjà vu.
    He wondered, when this all began again, if he would remember pulling the trigger.
    The writer of such Marvel comics titles as
Wisdom
,
Captain Britain and MI-13
,
Dark Reign: Young Avengers
, and
Black Widow: Deadly Origin
, Paul Cornell is perhaps best known for his work on the BBC’s new
Doctor