The wind was blowing south-south west, six and a half miles per hour, at a bearing of a hundred and ninety-two degrees. The boy watched from a distance as the teleporter strode down the track, his heavy boots kicking up dust with every step. He had his hand to his ear, talking into his cellphone. His attention would be taken – but not undivided. His mind was occupied, but not his eyes.

The child scrunched the paper into a tight-wadded ball and released it, carried by the wind, skipping along the dirt.

*

“I’m telling you, it’s messed up.” Wally’s voice chatted something half-garbled in his ear, and even though his boyfriend couldn’t see him, Will shook his head.

“Nah, nothing like that,” he said. His eyes wandered over the scrubland, the sun beating down on dry rocks and desert grass. “Matt’s fine, ninety percent the Mindtaker’s a dead end. Still though,” he pondered, “Makes you wonder.”

He paused, listening to Wally reply. “I don’t see how. Dude’s a jailed vegetable. ‘sides, Matt’s a clairvoyant, you’d think he’d know if he was walking into a trap.”

Something brushed against his leg, causing Will to glance down. A ball of crumpled paper nudged his leg, nestled against his boot.

“Hold up,” he told Wally. He knelt down into a squat and grabbed the paper with his free hand, then stood up, glancing around at the empty desert plains. He looked down, frowning at the scrunched-up ball. Weird. It was so clean.

“What the hell -?” He tilted his head, clenching the phone between this shoulder and his ear, using both hands to smooth open the paper – revealing hand-written words.

West side tower

11:03am

Be ready

“Wal,” Will murmured, “I’m gonna have to call you back.”

*****

“Sir!”

Jane’s voice echoed between the wooden walls. Twenty feet down the hallway, Captain Dawn’s shining form turned to face her.

“Jane?” he replied, sounding genuinely surprised. Below them, the sound of Acolytes sparring echoed up through hidden slits in the panelling. The floor was wood here, not carpet, the walls poorly lit, throwing odd shadows off the skirting boards and the small, single picture frames scattered along them. “What are you doing here?” For a moment his gentle, handsome face looked taken aback and Jane was momentarily terrified he was about to be angry – but then Dawn’s face split into a warm smile. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“Sir,” said Jane, breathless – from running, from what she was about to do, and from him. Just him. “I need to talk to you.”

“Well of course Jane,” he smiled, “Anything for you.” He hesitated, glancing around at the narrow, deserted corridor. “How did you find me?”

“I, er, someone said you were around.” Lying to Dawn’s face felt tantamount to sacrilege, but at the same time, getting Selwyn in trouble after he helped her felt wrong. “I really needed to see you.” You look great, she almost blurted out, but didn’t, thank God. She had to think, she had to not be stupid, not now. This wasn’t about her.

“Oh?” said Dawn, tilting his head to one side. He smiled again. Encouraged, Jane took a step closer, wringing her hands behind her back.

“Sir,” she stammered, “There’s something I have to… I need to… to talk to you about, but I… I don’t know how to…”

“Go on,” the Captain said kindly. His smile grew wider. Jane closed her eyes, forcing herself to draw a deep breath. She took another step closer, only a few feet from him now. She could feel her body shaking.

“Sir,” she whispered, “Captain. Sir. I…” She forced herself to look up at him – past the symbol on his chest, his broad-set shoulders, the cape flowing down his back. Past his calm face, his perfect features. Into his glistening green eyes. “When was the last time you saw your family?”

In the space of an instant, the smile fell from Dawn’s face – replaced by blank shock, recoil and… fear? “What did you say?” he mouthed, his voice deathly quiet, the words a world away – drawing in, drawing back, his breath tightly held, trapped. But Jane barely saw it, barely heard.

“Your family,” she gushed, the truth tumbling out, the levy broken, “Your friends, your old schoolmates, the people from your hometown, anyone you grew up with? When was the last time you saw them Sir, saw anyone, anybody from your past, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, it’s just…”

Her voice trailed off, her chest heaving, her hands shaking. She forced herself to look up at him again, forced herself to keep going.

“Sir,” stammered Jane, “I know, we found out, I didn’t mean to pry, but it just happened I, we know, we found out that your… that you…” She trailed off, unable to find the words. Finally, feebly, she forced herself to say it. “…that everyone you grew up with is dead.”

The words were a whisper, barely audible above the dull din below. Yet still, the moment they touched the air, something in that corridor changed. Captain Dawn froze. His eyes widened, his expression blank, shocked disbelief.

“What?” he whispered.

*****

The elevator’s hum came to a halt. The doors opened, and Matt found himself gazing down a long, sterile corridor. The white plaster walls were punctuated by metal doors facing off on either side, the floor rubber and the colour of off caramel. Two floors underground, the only light came from fluorescent tubes running along the centre of the plaster ceiling. Fifty feet along, the hall split into a T, branching off identically left and right. Halfway down, there was another security door of metal bars and another guard.

“It’s alright Caleb, he’s with me,” Matt’s escort assured as his colleague got to his feet, throwing a questioning glance at Matt. “He’s here to see Mentok.”

“Vicki?” the guard named Caleb snorted. He sat back down and reopened his copy of USA Today, all interest lost. “Have fun. Should be a riveting conversation.” He chuckled to himself and buzzed the gate open, waving the two of them through. Matt followed closely behind Angus.

As they made their way through the hall, Matt discreetly glanced through the small windows built into each of the metal doors, into the well-lit rooms of white and fibreglass beyond – some small, some larger, all clinical and clean. Through one on his left, there was a single bed and a man with a clipboard, a half-drawn curtain and a thin, dark-eyed woman in a wheelchair. To his right, they passed a larger room with more doctors doing (what at least looked like) normal doctor things – taking blood, glancing at charts, talking to patients, while in the middle of it all stood a broad‑chested, bored-faced guard, his arms crossed, back and one booted foot resting against the wall. As far as he could see nobody was behaving unusually. None of them shook when they moved, save for the odd frail patient, and none bled from their eyes. Nobody even spared him a second glance – too caught up in their duties, too busy with their work.

The knot of fear and trepidation that had been twisting around Matt’s stomach began to loosen – but every inch it gave filled up with confusion and concern. Was he wrong? This place seemed… well, it was hard to use the word normal, since it was an underground prison hospital, but definitely… benign? He’d been afraid he was walking into some hellish pit, a nightmare of trapped souls and broken minds… but if anything, Nightingale was quiet. Empty. Two-thirds of the rooms he passed had no one in them – just neat, ready-made beds and unused racks of monitors.

They took a right at the hallway’s end. “This is it,” Angus informed him. The guard indicated to a spot ten feet further along where for the first time the uniform plaster wall ended, replaced by a sixteen-foot-wide, ceiling-to-floor plexiglass window – clear as crystal and providing a perfect, unbroken view of the lone bed inside and the man in it.

His eyes closed, motionless beneath hospital sheets, barely recognisable.

Viktor Mentok.

Or what was left of him.

He was sick – that was Matt’s first impression. Sick and old and frail. Gone was the Mentok whose picture he’d seen online, the hawkish, cold-eyed Russian who’d stared down the world at his trial, all leather skin and wiry muscle; replaced by a husk, a worn, shrivelled skeleton with eyes sunken beneath wrinkled eyelids and arms almost thinner than the drips and wires stuck into them. In his mind, Matt had pictured Mentok as unchanged, unrepentant, a murderer – standing hands behind his back or strapped to a wall, staring out at him with cruel, dead eyes. But the evil he’d expected, maybe even hoped for, was nowhere to be seen. There was only an old man.

Gone was the fierce intellectual energy, gone was the superiority, the defiance. Matt watched, feeling a mixture of pity and despair as the old man’s frail chest rose and fell. The machines around him beeped, wires running to his arms and chest and head, their lines of heart and mind flowing in a steady, static rhythm. God, Jane had been right. How could this be their killer? No one, no matter how vengeful, would choose this existence. No one would spend their life like this, wasting away in a bed, if they could be something more.

“Can I…” The request was only half-hearted. “Can I go in?”

Angus shook his head. “Sorry. Staff only. You understand.”

“I understand,” said Matt. He sighed heavily and dropped down onto a bench propped up against the wall directly opposite Mentok’s room. A viewing seat to look through the glass like this poor, pitiful person was an exhibit in a zoo.

“You mind giving me a moment?” he asked, glancing up at the guard, “Just to… to check things over.” Because what was the rush. He may as well wait a while. He had come this far.

His escort shrugged. “Suit yourself,” said Angus, “You know the way out. Just don’t touch the glass.”

“Alarmed?” Matt mused.

“No,” replied Angus, “Because then I’ll have to clean it.” He turned and walked back the way they’d come – leaving Matt alone, leaning his elbows on his knees, staring in silence at the old man in the hospital bed who the world had once called supervillain.

The minutes ticked by.

What am I doing, Matt wondered. He rubbed his eyes – feeling the culmination of months of late nights and bleary hours rushing up to greet him all at once. This was stupid. This was pointless. He was wrong, again. There was nothing funny going on here, no secret conspiracy, no evil lair. Just an old sick Russian in a hospital gown, kept alive by machines.

Matt shook his head, the sound of his sigh the loudest thing in the long, empty hallway. He’d been so sure. It’d made so much sense. Viktor Mentok, the Mindtaker, genius supervillain – like something out of a cartoon. It tied together so many threads, made such a nice picture from the pieces. But seeing this man, this sad, frail man, laying in a sterile room, forever forgotten and unloved, all dreams of glory and legacy faded… well, it made Matt realise the world was rarely so black and white. Even now, knowing everything he’d done, suspecting him of doing so much more, Matt couldn’t help but feel a deep pang tugging at his heart.

Sympathy for the devil. A sure sign of a sentimental fool.

He sighed again, leaning his head back on his hands and staring up at the ceiling, wondering what the heck he was supposed to do now.