Burying the Lead

Posted: 24th October 2012 by Jeff Bouley / Deacon Blue in Single-run ("One off") Stories
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This story is pretty much a direct follow-up to a story I posted earlier in October (my most recent previous piece of fiction, actually), which was titled “Intersections.” Might be worth reading that one first, since some significant things in this story refer directly to events in “Intersections.” Also, there’s a reference in this story to something that happened with a guy named Ringmaster. That story, “Fresh Wounds, Old Scars” can be read here. By the way, any resemblance between the journalist character in this story (and its predecessor) and myself is purely coincidental. Maybe. Or not.
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Meeting a masked man in a secluded area of the city park as dusk crept in—just the average workday of an average journalist…

OK, not average at all, Doug admitted to himself as he approached the rendezvous point, and when I started off as a staff writer at a construction engineering magazine right after graduating from Northwestern, I never would have imagined I’d spend more than 18 years of my 21-year journalism career covering transhumans most of the time. Such a niche segment, and it snuck up on me. Took over just like some evil criminal supervillain genius taking over a city’s underworld.

Tonight’s meeting came—indirectly, at least—courtesy of PoweredPEOPLE, which was PEOPLE magazine’s transhuman-oriented sister publication, and more specifically thanks to the email from its managing editor telling Doug that after nearly a year of no new assignments from them, they had a juicy offer if he could quickly secure an exclusive interview with Asclepius and do it in person so that he could also snap a few digital photos of the “white-hat” transhuman in a relatively un-posed manner.

That’s the advantage of living in New Judah and being a freelancer, when so many of the transhuman publications are based in New York or California. I’m on the ground where a large number of the superheroes and supervillains act out their shenanigans, so I’m one of the guys you call when you need a rush interview with one of them.

He nodded as he caught sight of the man in black scrubs and black domino mask which, along with his brown skin, made him blend into the shadows awfully well right now. But Doug knew where Ascelpius was going to be, and hopefully with the growing darkness, they could have just a little privacy before things got involved and maybe drew attention from a random passerby.

“Evenin’ Mr. Jeffries,” Asclepius said amiably, holding out his right hand.

Doug shook it, and said with a goofball tone of voice, “Nice to meet you again, Mr. Asclepius.”

“Heh,” Asclepius said, both amused and sheepish. “Too formal?”

“Yeah, Doug is just fine. No need for ‘mister,’ especially since you saved my life.”

“The doctors probably would have done fine on you Doug, even as badly shot up as you were,” Asclepius responded. “But when word got out what had happened, there was no way I was going to take chances. You might not be transhuman, but you’ve always been fair with us in your stories. Always a stand-up guy. In a way, you’re one of us, and so you get my patented healing services. Hopefully you won’t ever need them again…”

It was time for Doug to let out a brief, amused snort of his own. “God willing,” he agreed. “But still, I can’t thank you enough for what you did.”

“Well, enough of that, right?” Asclepius ventured, as he sat down on a folding chair he had just flipped open, handing a second, still-folded one to Doug. “We’re here to let you work your reporter thing, and I’ve got to get going in a bit to do my own work. Sorry about the oddball time to meet, by the way. I mostly work nights since the heroes mostly work nights, but I also need to be up during the early- and mid-afternoon for the daytimers, so I sleep in two or three little shifts and frankly, I just got up.”

As if to punctuate the point, he reached for an insulated drink container and lifted it to his lips as Doug sat down in his own lawn chair. The Starbucks Coffee logo was easy to see in the fading light, with its white and green patterns.

“So, where do we start? Whatcha wanna ask me, Doug?” Asclepius asked.

“How about, ‘How do you think your new career of healing the bad guys instead of the good guys is gonna work out?’,” came a woman’s voice from some nearby shadows. As she stepped a bit closer, the dark reds of her outfit made her more visible—looking something like a skintight leather version of a carnival barker’s suit or circus ringleader’s, complete with a tophat.

Both Doug and Asclepius immediately stood up.

“That’s very gentlemanly of you both,” she said. “You probably both want to offer me a seat. But that’s all right, because I’ll just be taking Asclepius and going.”

“Jeeesus!” Asclepius exclaimed. “Ringmaster tried to pull this very same shit to force-pimp me out to the other side a couple years ago! And you dress almost like him! What is this, some kind of tired theme I’m gonna have to rehash every few years?”

“My name’s Sideshow. Interned with Ringmaster, and he’s come on hard times. Sold me all his intel on you, Asclepius, and the contacts he had for selling off your services. His various game plans. Everything. Cost me a hell of a lot, and I had to borrow from some dangerous people to afford it, so I need to put you to work as soon as possible. Let’s go. Oh, and just so you know, I’m pumped up on motion sickness medicine, anti-emetics and a whole lot of other stuff, so if you try some of that reverse-healing crap you did with Ringmaster’s crew on me, I’m going to taser you and drag you by your testicles to my truck before you can even have an effect on me.”

For several moments, neither Ascelpius nor Doug spoke, and finally the former broke the silence.

“I think you might find me putting up a bit more of a fight than you expect,” he said.

“I don’t think so. What do you think, Doug?” Sideshow asked.

When Asclepius turned his face toward the journalist, he saw a gun pointed at him.

“Doug? Shit. You’re working with her?”

“She offered a lot of money, and after me almost getting killed—not to mention my wife and little girl put in danger—by some people who wanted to use me to get to some of you transhumans, well…seems like a good time to cash out of this line of work,” Doug responded. “Sorry. Nothing personal.”

“Damn, Doug. Damn. This just doesn’t seem like you. Not your style. And after saving your life, too.”

“Welllll…” Doug said. “Yeah…not my usual style.” With that, he turned and pointed the gun at Sideshow. “Not my style at all. I wouldn’t take a penny of your money, lady. Granted, I thought about demanding a percentage upfront and then keeping it after you got hauled away, but then figured you’d be really motivated for revenge against me later if I did that.”

“Good plan, Doug,” Asclepius said. “Besides, you can probably get some kind of book deal out of this. Nice acting, by the way. Wasn’t sure you had it in you. I mean, we had so little rehearsal time.”

“A little theater in college before I realized it paid even worse than journalism,” Doug said.

“So, you warned Asclepius after I approached you with my offer,” Sideshow huffed. “How rude.”

“No, I warned Asclepius before you approached me,” he said. “As if the timing of your contact with me right after Katy’s email from PoweredPEOPLE wasn’t obvious enough, I already knew the email didn’t come from her. Sure, the address was almost perfect, since her last name has so damn few vowels and is so damn long, but even if I didn’t notice a couple transposed letters, she doesn’t call me ‘Doug’ and it hasn’t been a year since my last assignment with them.”

“Excuse me?”

“Yeah, clearly you bought off the magazine’s head IT guy—don’t worry, I’ve got a timed-delivery email Katy should be getting later tonight to tell her he needs arresting. So he set up an account I’d think was from her but that wasn’t hers so she wouldn’t know it was being used to contact me. He shared all her sent emails with you so you could mimic her style and all that. Congrats. Except a year ago, we started getting chummy online and she stopped using her work email to contact me. I’ve gotten all my assignments since then through her personal email. Not to mention she calls me ‘D-Bag’ these days, not ‘Doug.’ Rude, but she does it affectionately. Next time have your inside guy check the messages coming into her account instead of just her sent messages. Pro tip.”

“Hey, don’t help her—she’ll probably escape eventually and do better next time,” Asclepius teased him, then turned his attention to his would-be abductor. “You also should have done enough research to know that I don’t tend to go out without a transhuman bodyguard. The good guys like to make sure I stay intact to heal them. And there ain’t no one here with me but Doug tonight. Shoulda been a tip-off.”

“I’m only transhuman, not perfect,” Sideshow responded. “A lot of convoluted effort the two of you went through, though, to snare me. Why?”

“Kind of personal for me, Sideshow, and so I wanted to talk to you face to face,” Doug answered. “That’s why Asclepius agreed to this. After all, it was you who sent those two goons to abduct me a few months ago, after all, right? Same routine—I was targeted because I have the inside track on how to contact so many transhumans, by straightforward means and special ones. I’m kind of pissed about that, seeing as how my family was threatened in the process and I almost died. Oh, damn! I’m a journalist and I’m only just now telling you what all this is about. I went and buried the lead of my story.”

“I have no clue what you’re talking about,” Sideshow sneered.

“Seriously?”

“No, Doug, I don’t. This is the first time I’ve had anything to do with you. The ‘goons’ you refer to were someone else’s.”

“Shit.”

“Damn, Doug,” Asclepius said. “For a baseline human, you sure are getting popular with the black hats these days.”

“That’s the kind of popularity I can do without,” Doug answered, and realized that aside from showing no recognition in her eyes, there was no reason for Sideshow to lie about the two guys who’d try to abduct him for their boss in November when she was already caught red-handed trying to abduct Asclepius now in March. “Damn. I was sure I was killing two birds with one stone here tonight.”

“Maybe you should consider a career change, Doug,” Sideshow said with a wicked smile. “If you live through tonight, that is. Anyway, Asclepius is right. I should have realized him being out without a bodyguard was odd, and isn’t it also odd I wouldn’t have brought someone along just in case to help me,” Sideshow said in a lilting, taunting tone. “But…what makes you think your pet reporter’s enough protection for you, Asclepius?” And then she spread her arms wide and four associates strode forth—three of them costumed and therefore probably transhuman, Doug and Asclepius realized. The fourth was an unknown, but he was very clearly armed, so in the end, it didn’t matter much.

“You see? I brought friends, just in case. That’s part of the reason I had to borrow so much money from the loan sharks.”

“What makes you think we don’t have friends of our own around here?” Asclepius asked.

“Because while I may have made missteps in some other areas, I’ve had Doug’s email, landline and cellphone all monitored since the start, and I know he hasn’t contacted the police or any other transhumans before meeting you here.”

“Yeah, but isn’t is funny that you still haven’t realized you also didn’t notice I had warned Asclepius beforehand,” Doug noted snidely. “In fact, aside from one email that I sent to him so that you’d know he’d agreed to an interview with me and where, you haven’t seen any other communications at all between us, have you? Isn’t that funny? And yet I warned him and we planned all this. Almost as if I have all sorts of interesting and nontraditional ways to get in touch of most of these transhuman folks…oh, yeah, riiiight. I do.

On cue, a half-dozen pairs of feet crunched softly from behind their various forms of cover. All costumed. All heroes or vigilantes who regularly worked the streets of New Judah and relied on Asclepius’ healing powers.

“Gosh darn it,” Asclepius said. “Looks like you’re outnumbered, now. And that’s even without the two other white hats still hiding in the shadows. Somehow, I doubt you thought this many moves ahead, given how many other things you missed along the way.”

As the melee began, Doug and Asclepius sat back down on the sidelines of the action, and the latter handed a bottle of beer to the former.

“You know, Doug, you might want to get video of this on your phone,” Asclepius said. “You really should angle for a little book deal, and a viral video on YouTube and UrbVid could help a lot.”

“I like the way you think, Asclepius,” Doug said, and clinked his beer bottle against the transhuman’s stainless steel coffee mug as he fished out his iPhone. “Maybe I can still get out of this line of work before someone else tries to fuck with me.”