.|. COHERENT COMICS PRESENTS ----X----------------------------------------------------------------------- '|` =====, ======== ====. ===. ======= ======= // // // )) //|| // // ===== // //===< // || //=== //=== // // // \\ //==|| // // `===== o // o // // o // || o // o ======= o Superhuman Tactical Resources and Affiliated-Field Experts original concept by Dave Van Domelen development by Marc Singer and Terrone Carpenter Issue #16, "Black Capricorn Days" (STEP 3 of THE PYRAMID SCHEME) by Marc Singer Copyright 2000; a Legacy House production ============================================================================ [Cover shows a young man in a black leather trenchcoat walking down a city street. It appears to be a typical nighttime scene but the neon signs are written in hieroglyphics, except for two overhanging plus and minus signs which turn the dark night sky into a replica of Rebus's mask. A small golden pyramid at the bottom of the page is filled up more than halfway with red. "PYRAMID SCHEME: STEP THREE"] ============================================================================ [Adams Morgan, Washington D.C. August 10, 2024.] Colonel Richard Hendrick stepped out of the unmarked car and back into the humid swelter of a D.C. summer afternoon. Swinging his head north and south he surveyed 18th Street, not so much to see if he was being watched... although that was a factor...as to see what had become of the neighborhood. The bars and restaurants and ethnic grocery stores were returning to Adams Morgan, repopulating the street in a slow recovery from the misfortunes of the Godmarket. If anything, there were more African businesses than he'd remembered, gradually engulfing and converting the old Latino shops. But that was more a sign of the turmoil half a world away that was creating record numbers of African refugees, because D.C. still hadn't fully bounced back. Even in the middle of the day, Adams Morgan's off-hours, the streets should have been lined with *people*. "Is it clear?" Dan Tracey asked from inside the car. His generation had never seen cities where the streets were never empty. "Yeah," Hendrick said. Too clear. Dan climbed out of the STRAFE car with Jen Kleinvogel, his teammate and now girlfriend...Hendrick couldn't exactly say he approved of that, but it was better than watching Tracey obsess over catching Rebus again. The young man led them across the street to an unassuming rowhouse. The ground floor held a bar, now long closed, its name lost to time and the elements. Dan sidestepped the bar and arrowed towards a small door, beside which stood a column of buttons. Only one button was marked...a tattered, faded label which read M. ADAMS. "This guy can't *really* be named Morgan Adams," Jen said, in disbelief. "I mean, Adams Morgan, Morgan Adams...he's got to be kidding." "He's the real thing," Hendrick said succinctly. He pressed the button once, and the door buzzed in return and admitted them without comment. All of the mailboxes in the tiny, closetlike lobby were empty. They marched single-file up a long and narrow flight of stairs. At the second-floor landing, Dan knocked once on the single door. A distant, muffled voice from inside said "It's open" without much vigor or feeling. They stepped inside. The room was long and high-ceilinged, filled with sleek black Nineties Paramodern furniture which was dwarfed and covered by forty years of memorabilia. Awards and citations jostled for wall space with celebrity photographs; tables and couches were coated in a thick loam of ceremonial knicknacks and yellowed letters. And weapons. Lots of weapons. The room was strewn with weapons both functional (guns of every size, shape and caliber served as paperweights and bookends) and non- (an old, ornately painted crossbow rested haphazardly against a wastebasket). Seemingly the only empty space in the room was a small circle underneath a coat-stand, which in respectful isolation held one single black trenchcoat. Sitting underneath it in an overstuffed armchair was a man in his mid-sixties, salt-and-pepper hair over a cream complexion. Jen's first impression was that he was black, or Latino, or white. With possibly a little Asian mixed in. While she tried to label him, Dan produced a badge and said, "Mister Adams, we spoke on the phone. We're agents of the Superhuman Tactical Resources and Affiliated-Field Experts of the North American Combine." "And this," Hendrick said to Jen, smiling, "is Morgan Adams." "STRAFE." His voice was a soft, tremulous thing, almost lost in the clutter of the room. "I knew a Strafe once," Morgan Adams said. "A nasty fellow." "A supervillain once bore that name," Dan explained patiently, but Adams wouldn't hear it. "Yes he did," he said, interrupting Dan, "but that wasn't the one I knew. He was sort of a rival cop on the same beat, and his agenda didn't always match mine. Tell me," he said softly, "exactly why should I talk to agents of the Combine?" "Mister Adams, if you'll excuse me..." It was a tone of voice Dan and Jen had never heard in Hendrick before. He was hovering deferentially on the edge of his seat, right by Adams's side, quivering like a kid in the presence of his favorite pop star. "I believe my father knew you. He was John Hendrick..." "Hendrick?" The old man perked up. "Steel Jack Hendrick? Yes, he did know me! Worked with me once, too, on the Golden Claw case...." He waved idly at some of the pictures and citations; only he and Hendrick seemed to know which. "So his boy hooked up with the Combine, eh?" "It was during the...the troubles. To keep the peace." Adams nodded with approval; as one of the few adventurers of the 1990s who didn't have any paranormal abilities, Dan knew, Adams had also worked long and hard to hold the line after the Godmarket. "Mister Adams," Hendrick continued, "my father told me that you didn't have any love for the law...but he also told me that you never hesitated to help people in need, and right now, we need your help." Adams snorted at that, and was about to say something else until Hendrick blurted, "It's about the Book of Thoth." And Adams fell silent. Hendrick cleared his throat and said, "It's been stolen from the Vatican. We believe both the Conclave of Super-Villains and Rebus are interested in it, but we don't have any idea what it *does*. Captain Tracey's researches have indicated you encountered it once, and we figured, well, since you're a local...." His voice trailed off. "A, uh, local hero..." "The Book of Thoth," Adams repeated. All passion and anger, all emotion of any sort, had vanished again. "Yes, I remember it. I remember it very well. That was back before the Godmarket; back before everything changed. "It was the dying days of Capricorn, in 1996... ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- MORGAN ADAMS in BLACK CAPRICORN DAYS ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- It was the dying days of Capricorn, in 1996 when two feet of ice and snow smothered D.C. for a week and a half. Back then the mayor couldn't move snow to save his life, unless it was lined up on a mirror, so life in the nation's capital had come to a very soft and quiet halt. But life will go on, and the first night anybody could get out the streets of Adams Morgan were filled with people drinking, people partying, people eager to get on living again. I was bundled tightly as I walked up the busy strip of clubs on Eighteenth Street, but my neighbors recognized me anyway, because the trenchcoat was my signature apparel. The African immigrants waved hello, the local brothers flashed me gang signs, the Latinos hailed me in Spanish and the Jamaicans in patois...hell, even some of the white barhoppers would nod their heads in salute. Everybody extended me membership in their little group because nobody really knew where I stood...and that was the way I liked it. That was what I liked about Adams Morgan, too. The neighborhood ran right up against Sixteenth Street NW, the city's north-south axis and dividing line. Sure, the official axes are North and South Capitol Streets, but look a map sometime and you'll see...the Capitol has drifted too far over to the right. If you know what I'm sayin'. No, Sixteenth was the true dividing line, and the city planners knew it...even put Meridian Hill Park up there to mark the spot. But there was another dividing line in D.C., too, a more capricious and invisible one that started up at the natural border of Rock Creek, dipped around the beatnik barrios of Mount Pleasant and joined Sixteenth for a while, slowly faded south and east towards Logan Circle and then drew a nice neat box around downtown, the federal city and the Mall before plunging into the Potomac River, shutting out most of Southeast entirely. This line wasn't as neat and orderly as Sixteenth but it served a far more important function...it divided the houses of Mr. Have from the fields of the Have Nots. It was invisible but it was *real*, as tangible as the sudden switch from crumbling rowhouses to hipster coffee shops, and on most days it was tearing D.C. apart. But it got a little fuzzy around Adams Morgan, and that was another reason I loved the place so much. So I nodded to the crowds and took a stroll through my neighborhood, my little piece of the city, where a person could be any race or no race at all. Suddenly there was a noise like a jet engine overhead; everybody stopped what they were doing and looked up. It was the Elite Regiment, making all the racket as they crossed town to fight some menace to God and Country. Strafe led the formation, his newest cybernetic implants leaving a trail of super-heated air in his wake. They flew over in about two seconds...the same amount of time it took Adams Morgan to forget them and go back to whatever it was doing. Gulping down booze and lighting up reefer. "Hey, Morgan!" said Julio, an eleven-year-old kid I knew who liked to tag the Marie Reed Elementary School with his gang's colors. "You gonna help the Regiment kick some ass?" Right then they were probably fighting some alien conqueror or genetic monster bent on destroying the White House, the flag, and mom's apple pie. Or just some uppity Negro from Southeast who was stirring up too much trouble down in the projects. "You know they could never kick enough ass to keep up with me, Julio." In fact, it was just about time to start kickin' again. I'd spotted the tails all the way back on U Street, but I walked a good couple of blocks north of Marie Reed to make sure Julio was out of the way. Wouldn't do for the school to suddenly become graffiti-free. So I sauntered past Ronnie Miller and his crew, who were toking up on a stoop even in this weather because his aunt wouldn't let him smoke it inside. When I was sure I was being followed by the leader-man...a nebbishy guy in a bow tie...I strolled around a corner, easy as I pleased. Except instead of walking down Kalorama I tucked myself up into the nearest windowsill. Nebbishy guy came rushing around the corner and found himself the lucky recipient of one hundred ninety pounds of flying Morgan Adams. Nebbishy guy sprawled out on the pavement; cushioned my jump nicely, too. His spill brought the others running...only two of them, fortunately, and wearing bow ties like their partner, but they had five hundred pounds between them and all of it muscle. They filled the sidewalk like linebackers and tried to bum-rush me. So I hopped onto a parked and booted car, and did some booting of my own...alligator-skin to the nearest thug's face. I turned the kick into a cartwheel, planted my hands on the car and flipped right over the offensive line, crunching down onto the packed snow behind them. By the time they turned around, the same thug caught a palm-strike right up the tip of his nose. I heard the cartilege break and he staggered backwards, gushing blood like a fountain. His partner swung at me and I ducked, stepped in under his arm and grabbed it, moved to flip him over me... And didn't budge him. The guy wrapped his arms around me in a bear hug. "That wasn't too cool, brother," he hissed. "Ain't you heard?" I grunted. "I got no brothers." I swung my legs up and over his head. I was too close to kick him, so instead I threw my legs past his shoulder and threw off his center of balance...he slipped on the ice and fell on his back, with me landing on top of him. The fall levered me right out of his grip; I jabbed him in the solar plexus and hopped off. And he *got up*, ready for more... "That's enough! Ismail, Omar, that's enough!" The nebbishy guy got up and waved off his thugs. Ronnie Miller and his crew had come charging off their stoop to back me up, but I waved them off too. Omar, the nastier goon, stepped back...but didn't look like he wanted to. "Mister Adams, there has been a misunderstanding," nebbishy guy said, as he frantically re-fastened his bow tie. "We came here to hire you." "Well you got a funny way of showing it. Or do you shadow all your prospective employees?" "We had to be certain it was safe, Mr. Adams. We'd prefer to have this meeting in private..." he cast a disapproving gaze at Ronnie's crew. "I'm feeling safer here," I told him. "So start talking." Nebbishy guy cleared his throat. "Mr. Adams, I'm Brother Malik Abdul-Baraka." Or _abd' al baraka_, I thought. Servant of Power. "I am the personal representative of our spiritual leader on Earth, the great Minister..." "I know the Minister," I said. "Dude wanted a million men down on the Mall last fall, and not one sister. They supposed to stay at home knitting they own veils?" Brother Servant...Brother Nebbish...swallowed heavily and said, "We are not here to discuss the Minister's politics. There has been a murder, Mr. Adams, of a scholar whose work was vital to our ongoing strength. We wish you to find those responsible." "I thought you had your own in-house people for that." I nodded to the two Brother Thugs. "Normally we prefer to handle these matters ourselves, yes. But in this case we need the flexibility of an outsider." His eyes cast up and down my features, looking for some clue as to my true background. Suspicious that I wasn't as black as he'd thought I would be. Wondering just how *much* of an outsider I was. "You see, the murder involves a place of...a different faith." I tried not to raise my eyebrows, but inside, alarm bells were ringing. It made sense, though; neither real Muslims nor the Minister's special variety had any love lost with the pantheons of mythological gods that were descending on Earth. "You do realize," I said, "that this drives up the price considerably." "We are prepared to pay up to one hundred thousand dollars for the name of Brother Khalil's killer. And the return of his research." He added the last bit *too* casually. "Make it a half a million," I said, and when he agreed to *that* I knew I had just stepped into some serious shit. "One last thing," I told him. "You boys follow all of Islam's taboos, right? Fasting? No alcohol? Veils for the sisters?" He flashed me a weak smile. "When they cooperate, yes." "Well then I'll tell you what." And with this I stepped up into Brother Nebbish's smug and overzealous face: "I'll take your case for half a million dollars. *And a nice pork dinner.*" The PYRAMID was one of a string of storefront churches up on Georgia Avenue. South of it you could find the Nommo Cradle or the First Temple of Shango, which regularly sent storm clouds across the street to mess with the Methodists. New religions were springing up everywhere, and in D.C. their owners...who ranged from visionary reformers to fly-by-night charlatans...had all gone crazy for Mama Africa. I couldn't really blame them; in the last couple of years, Mama Africa had gone crazy for *us*. The Godmarket hadn't kicked in full swing, but the gods were starting to return to Earth. They mostly played the parts of superheroes and villains, but we took notice of their divinity...and the best and boldest gods were all Egyptians. Hell, maybe that's why I always dug ASH a little bit more than the Elite Regiment. And maybe that's why higher up on Georgia, all the churches leaned towards the gods of the Nile. As I walked up the street, prophets and barkers shouted the praises of Isis and Heru to everybody who passed. Everybody but me, alone in my swirling leather trenchcoat. Maybe they could tell I was working for the Muslims. Or maybe I was marked for something else. A human body had been outlined in front of the PYRAMID, with spray paint instead of chalk because it was drawn on packed-down snow. The outline lay right under the main entrance, and under the giant plaster pharaoh's head above the door. The pharaoh's vacant stare belonged on a Macy's float, not a temple. I snorted and pushed through the door, setting a dozen chimes to ringing. The inside smelled strongly of jasmine. I stepped into a long, dark hall lined with wooden pillars, lit by a lone oil lamp at the far end of the room. The dancing firelight illuminated the astrological symbols on the ceiling, the silent Egyptian figures carved into the pillars. And it silhouetted the woman who approached me. She wore a close-fitting white cloth, suspended by two little spaghetti straps that dangled precariously over her shoulders. The cloth covered her from armpits to ankles, but against her silhouette the thin fabric was almost transparent. When she stepped forward, the small braziers at the door illuminated her face...she had tiny, perfectly chiseled features, surrounded by locks of hair wound with long rows of beads, and bits of gold and lapis lazuli. Her left eye was painted with a lazy Egyptian design; it looked far better on her than on white Goth chicks. She looked North African or Arabian, with light brown skin and dark eyes of unfathomable depths. "Greetings, brother," she said. I'd been called that twice in as many days; this time, I didn't mind the familiarity. "I am Dendera Athor, priestess of the Eye of Ra." I smiled. "Well, Dendera Athor, priestess of the Eye of Ra, I'm Morgan Adams." I slipped her a business card...with home phone and pager. "I'm sorry to trouble you, but I'm here about the murder that happened outside your church." Her inviting smile became an exasperated sigh. "Are you with the police?" She scanned my card, but it only said _MORGAN ADAMS: Deeds Done, Problems Solved_. "We've been answering questions for two days..." "I'm not with the police, Miss Athor. I'm sort of a private troubleshooter..." oh, how I wanted to tell her I was some kind of local hero, "...and I'm investigating Mr. Khalil's death. Did you know him?" "Yes, I did. I'm afraid that's why the police were here for so long... unless they just want an excuse to close us down. If you'll please follow me." She led me down the hall, gesturing to a carving of a slender woman. The woman, unlike Dendera, was bare-breasted. "As you can see, we worship the Egyptian pantheon here, particularly Hathor...the goddess of maternity and the Utchat, or Eye of Ra." She took me back into the church...or rather, into a large kitchen filled with people eagerly eating a warm stew. "Motherhood means more than just worshipping the right goddess, Mr. Adams. It means caring for those around you." She showed me the soup kitchen, the overcrowded homeless shelter, the impromptu medical clinic. I wondered what they did for supplies, until I saw Dendera kneel over a frostbitten man and begin chanting in some strange, melodic tongue. The design around her left eye glowed, and the homeless man began to thaw. "I use the gifts of the Utchat to help all those in need, Mr. Adams. Even the Muslims who condemn us. Brother Khalil seemed a good man." "Why did he come to you?" "He sought my help in translating an artifact. A papyrus scroll called the Book of Thoth, rumored to contain powerful spells." The Muslims, dabbling in magic? It didn't make sense. "And he had this book?" "He had very detailed photographs of it. I suspect he had access to the original. And...." She hesitated for a moment, then said, "When my husband found him outside, after he'd been...well, there were bits of paper all around his body. Very old, brittle paper. Clutched in his fingers." So he'd been trying to bring the Book to the PYRAMID. But at the time, all I could think about was--"You have a husband?" She beamed at me, quite innocently. "Oh, yes. Here he is, in fact." She brought me to a very average-looking man, white but dark-complexioned, who was bandaging a patient's foot. "Mr. Adams, this is my husband, Pino. And right there is our pride and joy." She pointed to a small boy of about five or six sitting in the corner. "Our son." It was my own damn fault. I should have realized that a priestess of Hathor would see motherhood as more than just a theology. But I just stammered like an idiot and said, "He...he looks like his father." "You mean Italian?" Dendera said. "Or *white*? Appearances can often be misleading...but then, the famous Morgan Adams should know that." "You know who I am?" "Only by reputation," she said, mischievously. "But I suppose I wanted to see for myself. And now I have." She showed me back out the front door. I stood frowning over the black outline of Brother Khalil, shot down at her doorstep. I've never felt at home down in "monumental" D.C. It's not just the people inside those white marble and sandstone buildings who put me off; it's the buildings themselves. You get down the Mall and this vibrant city, this wonderful city, my *home* city becomes invaded by colossal edifices from some other reality. The cherry blossoms make them look so pretty, you can almost forget those cold stone fortresses have no place for all the little human concerns like money, drugs, food, sex, *life*. No wonder the Egyptian gods, returning after thousands of years, wanted to make Washington, D.C. their new home. The place was already a necropolis. Nevertheless, the Library of Congress can be a handy place to do some research. I was leaving the Jefferson Building...named after that great defender of liberty who did the freaky-deaky with Sally Hemings...trotting down the shallow stone steps, pulling my trenchcoat tighter against the cold, when I saw a white limousine pull off Independence Avenue and stop right in front of me. So I ran for the nearest trashcan. Two burly bruisers...a lot like the Brother Thugs, in fact, but white and wearing chic collarless shirts...started to climb out of the car. I dove behind the trashcan and ripped two guns out from under it...guns I'd duct-taped there before entering the high-security library. I pumped four bullets into the car's bulletproof windows. The bruisers recoiled back into the limo, and everyone else in the Federal City ran from the crazy Negro. "Step out of the car alone," I said, to the tinted windows of the passenger compartment. "I know who you are and I know what your involvement is." The limo's license plate was meaningless, but the serial number emblazoned across the rear bumper, and the "MI" designation that kicked it off, was a dead giveaway. "I want to know how Brother Khalil ended up with that book." The rear door cracked open. "What a strange coincidence," said the cultured voice which rose from inside. "So do I." A young, handsome white man slid out of the limo, holding his gloved hands high where I could see them. He had mildly longish hair, tied back in a ponytail that would be considered rebellious in a boardroom and nowhere else. "I'm Devlin Marx," he said, "of Magnum Industries." And, according to my researches, he was the guy who'd paid five million pounds sterling at Sotheby's of London for the Book of Thoth. I set up a meeting after hours at the PYRAMID. Marx, Dendera, and me. Dendera said she'd close up the shop, send Pino out to babysit their son for the evening. I drove Marx up there; he'd ditched the corporate limo and the bodyguards at very little prodding from me. "Don't want Magnum Industries to know how you've been spending their money, huh?" I asked him. "You don't know the half of it," he said. "It isn't just Magnum Industries that's missing the Book," Marx told me. "I also purchased it on behalf of another group I represent...a group called the Anchorites." Any hints of a smile vanished from my face. "Bounty hunters," I grumbled. They were all Anchors...people who naturally repressed super powers and other funky stuff...and as such they commanded a high price whenever supers or magic were involved. "You've been a bounty hunter, too," Marx said. "What difference does an Anchor make to you?" It meant the Muslims *knew* they were tangling with the Anchorites, I thought, and they'd hired me because I had no powers to be Anchored, and they didn't tell me. But Marx didn't need to know that. And frankly, Anchors pissed me off on general principle. I had to get by in a world of gods and monsters, and *I* wasn't born with any special powers, and in that respect the Anchors were just as dumb-ass lucky as the supers. Marx didn't need to know that, either; but I told him anyway. "We can't help how we're born," Marx sniffled. "Damn right," I said, "it's what you do afterwards that counts. And the Anchorites are some of the most cold-hearted mercenary bastards I know. So tell me, mister man with two bosses, what on earth would the Anchorites want with a book of *magic*?" "The Anchorites are not all of one mind, Mr. Adams. The faction that asked me to acquire the Book may not be in its right mind at all. I'm hoping this local contact of yours can shed some light on their plans." The tenements of Georgia Avenue made Marx visibly uncomfortable when we parked, but to his credit he buttoned his lip and marched into the PYRAMID like a guy who could take care of himself if need be. He didn't have to, because with me at his back the drunks on the streetcorner just shouted "Hey, Morgan" and "Wassup, Morgan?" and maybe a little "What you doin' with that cracker, Morgan?" I smiled Marx through the gauntlet and we stepped into Hathor's bosom. Dendera smiled at me, but stopped short when she noticed Marx. "You're an Anchor," she said. Marx was taken aback. "You can tell?" "The Utchat can't sense your aura. It's the same feeling I get when my husband is near." "You're married to an Anchor?" Marx said, sounding very afraid of the inevitable answer. "Yes, I like the feeling of normality, of groundedness, that Pino gives me." "Pino? Pino Archangeli?" Marx sat down heavily on a nearby wooden pew. Nearly collapsed onto it, in fact. He looked up at us and said, "He's one of the Anchorites. And the man who demanded the Book of Thoth." Okay, so Pino had played us *all* for fools. At least we didn't take too long putting two and two together once we'd found out. All the pieces clicked together for me as we burned rubber across town, to some Anchorite- owned residence where Marx said Pino might be hiding out. Pino used Marx, and Magnum Industries' bank account, to snag the Book when it went up for auction. Then he used the Muslims to translate the thing without anybody else knowing about it...and, when they couldn't decipher it, steered them towards his own wife. Brother Khalil must have figured out what it could be used for, and tried to run to Dendera. But Pino was waiting for him: killed the poor son of a bitch on his wife's doorstep, and then calmly called it in to the police. By not telling Marx he'd gotten it back, the Book was firmly in his hands now...so the only question was... "What can he do with it?" I asked Dendera. She was holding up amazingly well for someone who'd just learned her husband was living a lie. "From the fragments Khalil showed me," she said, "it was primarily a book of spatial clastics...spells for teleportations and space warps. But the rituals were so crude, so blunt, I can't imagine they'd be of use to anybody." "I can think of a lot of uses for teleportation," I said. "Bank vaults, military bases...but somehow Pino doesn't seem that small-scale." "Teleportation's no good if you don't get there in one piece," Dendera explained. "The makers of the Book knew how to banish things but not necessarily how to retrieve them." She leaned against the window and stared at the streetlights receding past us. "Just like Pino did to our marriage." Holyrood Oaks was a private estate in Georgetown, right next to the U.S. Naval Observatory. It was built in the late nineteenth century by some crazy senator who had a jones for collecting Egyptian artifacts; I like to think I would have figured Pino was hiding there even if Marx hadn't ratted him out. The only thing that might have tripped me up was that in 1996, Holyrood was property of the U.S. government. The guy who checked my car at the gate was a federal agent, not an Anchorite-rent-a-thug, but I showed him my opened wallet without missing a beat. He nodded his earphoned head and waved us in. I don't know what he saw, but to me the wallet still held a library card and a really lousy DMV photo. We'd shut Marx in the trunk, against his wishes, so Dendera could work the spell without interference. "Who did he think we were?" I asked her. "Only the Eye of Ra knows for sure," she said, with an enigmatic smile that made her look even cuter. In that moment I knew Pino Archangeli was not only a bastard, but also a damn fool. I parked up by the house, a low-slung Prarie Style mansion with an ugly postmodern museum gallery grafted onto the back. Marx climbed out of the trunk. "So much for our spell protection," I muttered. Just what I needed: back-up that canceled each other out. "That's all right," he said, "I've got this instead." His leather- gloved hands were snapping together a small crossbow, and loading shafts decorated with Egyptian symbols. Shaking my head, I led the way with my Glocks. The house guards were well-tailored men whom Dendera fingered as Anchors. Blows to the back of the head still knocked them out. Once inside, we heard the sound of chanting echoing from the gallery. Padding up to the gallery door, I nudged it open and peered through. And saw Pino Archangeli and several other older white men, dressed in white Egyptian robes, standing against the gallery's glass walls and smiling with patronizing approval. A couple of business-suited men, Feds from the haggard look of them, sat in low Egyptian chairs and looked very confused. In the center of the room, another man in Egyptian robes stood chanting over a large papyrus scroll. A black man. Brother Malik Abdul-Baraka, in fact. I didn't even have time to be astonished before the doors were yanked open from within. I was staring up at six and a half feet of blue military uniform and gunmetal cybernetic implants. Strafe of the Elite Regiment. Before I could react, he grabbed me by the throat and hauled me into the room. I didn't shoot at him; that would have signed my death warrant. Anyway, he shook me so hard, the Glocks flew out of my hands. With his free arm, Strafe pointed at Dendera and Marx and a crackling electrical field shot out of his fingertips. Dendera was lifted into the air in a force field that reeked of ozone; the ions just vanished into a haze in front of Marx, their containment field removed. Marx pointed his crossbow at Strafe, but never fired...he was under the guns of the Anchorites, the Feds, and my old friends the Brother Thugs. He pointed his crossbow up at the ceiling, and had it wrenched out of his hands by Pino himself. "Bring them inside," Pino commanded. Strafe dragged Dendera and me over to the glass wall. The Anchorites held Marx a few feet away, where none of them could dampen the cyborg's powers. "Pino," Dendera pleaded, "what are you doing? Why did you lie to me?" "Dendera, my darling, spare us your sentimental-romance simperings," Pino said. "Our marriage always was a sham. You wanted stability, not love. And I wanted...a successor." A smaller set of doors off to the side of the gallery pushed open and a little boy with Egyptian robes and a freshly-shaved head came running into the room. He saw his parents and happily said, "Mother! Father!" Even then, he was still totally innocent, you see. Happy little Lorenzo Archangeli. If I had known then what he would become, I would have put a bullet through his head. Except I was being held by Strafe. So was Dendera, though at a nod from Pino the cyborg dropped the electrical field and lowered her to the ground. Keeping up appearances for the kid, I guess. My mind was searching for a way out, and finding only dead ends. I had to get everyone talking. Pino was too smart for that, so I turned to my zealous little friend Brother Nebbish. "Why are you doing this, Baraka?" I said. "Rejecting your own faith...cooperating with the white man...." Even with hieroglyphics-covered robes replacing his suit and bow tie, Baraka still projected the same self-satisfied smile. "So *now* you decide you're black. Too late, 'Brother' Adams. Mister Archangeli has told us all about you." Pino leered over me. "Yes, just who do you think you're fooling with that atrocious 'Morgan Adams' pseudonym? Trying to pass yourself off as something you're not. You might as well admit you're a ghetto bum named Howard Shaw...or a homosexual named Dupont Scott...perhaps even a white man named Woodley Glover." He smiled at his own insufferable cleverness. "I woulda gone with Chevy Chase if it wasn't already taken," I muttered. "Ah, the vaunted Adams wit. Where has it led you this time?" I looked up at Pino. "Just when I keep thinking I have you figured out, you pop a new twist on me." That got him smirking a little, so I said, "You tried to enlist Brother Khalil at first, didn't you? You needed someone who wasn't an Anchor to work the Book. And when he ran to your wife, you killed him and went back to his masters. Though you didn't get to them until after they'd hired me." He nodded, like a teacher encouraging a particularly slow student, and I hated him even more. "So what common cause could you possibly have with the Brothers? What could *either* of you want with a book of magic?" "Regardless of our religious beliefs, Mister Adams, we both understand that true power lies in its application." Pino stepped forward, twisting my head until I was looking out the gallery's glass wall. From the heights of Georgetown, I could see the whole city tumbling out beneath us. "My lovely wife's translation was quite correct, Mister Adams. The Book only contains crude spatial clastics. Crude enough to crack Washington, D.C. right down its own neatly demarcated dividing lines...and split the city in two." I thought about it for a second. Then I laughed out loud. "That has got to be the stupidest plan I have ever heard!" "It's only stupid until it *happens*, Mister Adams. And then Washington will be in fact what it always has been in mind. Two cities." He leaned in close, bathing me in his heady, minty breath. "With no danger of *yours* infecting *ours*." "In Hathor's name," Dendera said, "*why*?" "Because it is long past time for the Anchorites to diversify, my dear." He paced around to Marx as he spoke. "This ritual is being conducted as a little demonstration to some prospective friends in the Capitol...who have graciously lent us a mansion and the remarkable Mr. Strafe to insure that all goes well." Above me, the cyborg grunted uncomfortably and looked to the Federal suits, who nodded for him to keep holding us. "You see, the government would be quite happy if its Washington had a little...insulation from the District's more quarrelsome and unfortunate residents." "And the proud black men of the District of Columbia will thrive without the constant oversight of the slavers of Washington!" Brother Nebbish shouted proudly. So all the assholes were happy. There were just two little problems: According to Dendera, no one actually knew where the banished D.C. would *go*. And the line that marked it off, the line that would cut it loose from Federal Hell, ran right through Adams Morgan. My city. Strafe's hand was still planted on my shoulder. So I tucked into a ball and kicked my feet into his midsection, doubling him over more from surprise than actual pain. Then I rolled back and kicked him straight into Devlin Marx and his nest of Anchorite guards. And Strafe keeled over...because without amplified muscles or supertech servomotors to hold him up, those cybernetic implants are probably *heavy*. "Keep on him!" I screamed at Marx. I shouldered Pino aside and bolted for the center of the room. Baraka was chanting in badly phonetic Egyptian, trying to complete the ritual. He stood a chance, too. Ismail and Omar, the Brother Thugs, were advancing on me, ready to finish what I'd started two nights before. Omar was cracking his knuckles and smiling. I looked around the room for help. Dendera was using her Utchat to confuse the Feds, while Marx struggled with Strafe and his rival Anchors. Behind me, Pino was aiming Marx's fancy crossbow straight at my heart. He fired as I leaped into the air. I caught a crossbow bolt in the thigh, split-seconds before I drove a flying kick into Pino Archangeli's face. He hit the floor with a very satisfying thud. I caught the crossbow as it tumbled out of his hands, spun, and squeezed off two more shots like the thing was a pistol. One bolt went through Ismail's broken nose, the other through Omar's bulging neck. Both Brothers went down. Baraka was chanting faster now, trying to finish the ritual before I got to him. He hid behind the scroll like it would protect him. I mean, hey, ancient relic of Mama Africa, you know? That had to count for something. *My* city. I fired one last bolt. It whizzed over the brittle papyrus and drilled into the center of his forehead. He died, the zealous little smirk finally wiped from his face. By this time, the other Anchorites had dragged Marx off Strafe. Marx and Dendera were captives again, and the cyborg was pointing his palms at me. The hum of his engines told me this time, he'd just shoot a jet of plasma. So I cooly swiveled the crossbow until it pointed at the bloody face of Pino Archangeli. Little Lorenzo screamed "Father!" and I tried to block it out. "Let's end this now," I said. "Your ritual's finished, Pino; you don't have anybody to run it anymore." Dendera and I both stared defiance at him, and nearly everyone else in the room was an Anchor. Pino nodded to the suits. "I'm sure my colleagues from the government would be happy to..." "With no Muslims," I said, "they've got no scapegoats if things go horribly wrong." I turned my gaze, but not my gun arm, to Strafe and his bosses. "Do you really want to work with this guy, after all you've seen?" The suits said nothing, but the fading hum of Strafe's engines spoke volumes. They withdrew to a far corner of the room, waiting to see how this would play out. "You'll go to prison, you know," Pino told me. "You've killed three times as many people as I have." "I could make it *four*," I said, staring down the tip of the bolt at him. "Then we all lose." His Anchorites clicked off their safeties. "Okay," I said, "here's the deal. We all walk away. Marx gets his book back. The government gets to pretend it was never here, which it would do anyway." "And I get Lorenzo," Dendera said, breaking free of the Anchorites. She ran to her nervous son and pulled him into a hug. Pino stared up at me. "Spoiling a little ritual is one thing, Mister Adams. But a man's *son*..." "The lady gets him. And you never bother either of them again...or else I'll be seeing you." Pino rose, slowly, wiping the blood from his chin. "Oh, Mister Adams, you can be most assured of *that* regardless." But nobody moved as we backed out of the museum. Dendera grabbed the Book and her son, and Marx covered us with a sub-machine gun, and we ran like hell for the car. Marx was edgy, but ecstatic. Hell, Magnum Industries probably *wanted* D.C. to be surrounded by urban mayhem...they'd sell more weapons to the Pentagon that way. Marx offered to pay me the fee I'd never be collecting from the Muslims. Even the pork dinner. As for me, well, a couple days earlier I would've been thinking about how Dendera was suddenly single. But the whole getaway, I heard her explaining to little Lorenzo how his father wouldn't be seeing him anymore. And I knew that no matter what she said, no matter what Pino had done, I would always be the reason why. We left her at the gate at National Airport...soon to become Reagan National Airport...with a few hastily-packed bags and a check from Magnum Industries and our fondest wishes. Some of which would never be fulfilled. I remember that night as clearly as if it happened yesterday...as if it were still happening right now. I can still see Dendera, pausing on the other side of the metal detectors, holding her son's tiny hand. She turned back with a soft, warm look that said she knew what I was thinking, that maybe she'd been thinking it too. That maybe it would have worked out, if...well, I'm just guessing at that, and anyway her kid was tugging on her arm. She looked at me, and blew me a kiss, and then she boarded the plane. I never saw her again. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Morgan Adams fell silent. He had grown more animated as he told the story, filling his voice with inflection and mood, throwing in accents for his rapidfire street talk or the cold patrician tones of Pino Archangeli, even jumping out of his chair to act out parts of his fights. Nothing had stirred him so much as the description of Dendera Athor. And then, as he'd finished the story, his passion had waned and his voice had fallen once again, until he sank back into his chair, old and alone. "So the Conclave stole a scroll of spatial magic," Jen said, breaking the uncomfortable silence. "I can guess what they were trying to do in Montreal, then. Good thing they failed." "And now we know why Rebus is interested as well," Dan said, springing up and pacing around the cluttered room. "He's been caught up in the struggles over the Book of Thoth for nearly thirty years." "More like the other way around," Adams said. "In the end, the Book was just a prop. It was all about the kid. And Pino..." Dan leaned forward, now as eager as Hendrick. "Mister Adams, if there's anything you can tell us about the Archangelis..." "Anything to put this whole sorry business to an end." His deep brown eyes sparked to life again. "Anything to deny Pino his last laugh. Yes, Mister Tracey, I'll tell you anything you want to know..." "Oh, I'm afraid I can't allow *that*." The voice was hard-edged, feminine, and thoroughly artificial, emanating from every pane of glass in the large bay window that overlooked 18th Street. Something was vibrating the window so adeptly that it could recreate the voice of Tiara, the Conclave's queen of thieves. Before Adams or the STRAFE agents could react, several seemingly innocuous knicknacks exploded, emitting clouds of a thick greenish gas. Adams succumbed almost immediately, first choking for breath and then passing out; Hendrick didn't last much longer. Without gas masks or any other sort of precaution, the agents were helpless. Holding her breath, Jen activated her antigravity sheath and flew towards the bay window, trying to create an exit. Dan reached for her and shouted "NO!", filling his lungs with the gas, but he was too late...as Jen smashed through the window, she also passed through a powerful electrical field. She fell unconscious to the sidewalk below. Tiara strolled in through the front door, wearing a CSV outfit, complete with environmental seals. Dan lunged for her, but she somersaulted out of the way...she was nowhere near his league as a martial artist but she deftly evaded him, especially in the choking gas. Every attack sent him tumbling into another pile of Adams's memorabilia. Finally, Dan lurched towards her. "What...do you...?" His eyes rolled up and he fell at her feet. Tiara carefully placed a tiny painted pearl on the small of his back, then sauntered over to the sleeping body of Morgan Adams. Her words, sounding weird and distorted through the costume's gas mask, were heard by her alone. "I thank you very kindly for your stories, Monsieur Adams. You've allowed me to do the impossible." Grunting, she heaved him up onto her shoulders. "To steal history itself." TO BE CONTINUED... =========================================================================== Next Issue: A tale of Morgan Adams's second encounter with the deadly Pino Archangeli, as more secrets are revealed, in "Burial"! =========================================================================== Author's Notes: This is one of those stories that's been percolating around for a long time; and somehow, in some strange way, the Pyramid Scheme was the right place to put it. I'd known, ever since I came up with "Morgan Adams" as a throwaway reference in STRAFE #7, that I wanted to do a story with him that was fundamentally about D.C., even down to the geography. To that end the story's geography is as accurate as possible, right down to the Pyramid and the mock names Pino gives to Adams...each one comprised of two different D.C. neighborhoods, traffic circles, or landmarks, whose demographics roughly match Pino's callous labels. And yes, there really is a Chevy Chase. The only name I made up is Holyrood Oaks, which replaces Dumbarton Oaks (where, conspiracy buffs take note, the United Nations treaty was signed). It's a very atmospheric museum, but it focuses on Pre-Columbian art rather than Egyptian, so I decided to give it a name change to go with its altered inventory. Holyrood Oaks sounded good; then, a few minutes later, I checked my trusty map to verify Dumbarton Oaks' location, and what should I see sitting right across the street from it...? Holy Rood Church. Coincidences like that tell me I'm onto something, so I stuck with the name. The rest of the story, I tried to make as true to D.C. as I knew how. The snowstorm of '96 was very real, and just the fall before, Louis Farrakhan had told the crowds at the Million Man March all about how D.C. was designed by a Masonic architectural conspiracy, its monumental alignments forming lines of satanic power. That somehow warped into the Book of Thoth, the spatial clastics, and Morgan's thoughts on the *true* lines that divide D.C. This city is on the rebound, but those lines are as real as ever. As most of my stories end up incorporating some obsessive referencing of pop music, I figured this one would be awash in funk...the soundtrack I had running through my head as I imagined Adams stalking up and down these hallowed streets like some multiracial Richard Roundtree (and yes, I wrote this long before the new _Shaft_ movie came out). Somehow the music never got in there, except for the title which I lifted from a Jamiroquai song and a very odd reference to a Paul Simon tune. So much for my imagined funk soundtrack; but I recommend reading this story with your own. Heck, I'm surprised I didn't come up with a Morgan Adams theme song. Finally, I also wanted to work in a cameo by one of the original Strafes at some point, and this was again the perfect story...although it's a shame Dave changed the name of Strafe's team (for the best of copyright reasons), since the Elite Regiment used to be called the Capital Patrol. Given that he and Adams each represent two different attitudes toward policing and living in our nation's capital, the resonance would've been perfect. But if that's the only thing that didn't work out in this story, I'll be a happy man. Be sure to read the next issue, in which we get a little more Morgan, a little more Pino, a lot more STRAFE, and a major revelation about the Pyramid Scheme.... Editor's Note: Just a bit of backstory. The original Strafe was a member of ASH, and ended up sacrificing himself to save Chicago (as mentioned in ASH #30). His successor was a government agent and cyborg, who was originally part of a project to create Anchor-proof superagents. However, during the years leading up to the Godmarket, that original idea was abandoned in favor of amping up his power levels as high as they could go. And the original ASH did have a lot of Egyptian avatars. Aside from Horus and Set as seen in WarStar #4, the avatar of Nephthys also hung around occasionally.