Flyover City! A Novel (with Superheroes)

21. Lilywatt Returns!

Last night, after the gym, I picked up a vegetable teriyaki bowl and ducked back in to work to avoid an especially nasty rainstorm outside. The graveyard shift sits on the floor below me, so I decided to take advantage of the quiet and do some research on the 'net.

I looked over the usual sites. There hadn't been a single superhero sighting in Colorado since the giant monster attack, two weeks ago. When the local news still talks about it at all, there's no mention of the Agency, only "the authorities'" continuing investigation.

I moved from the bigger, "well respected" sites (all still obsessing about the Diamond Girl / Lightraver breakup) to the unaffiliated blogs, then finally to the message boards: last stop for the desperate, delusional, and just plain bored. There, among the paranoid rants about "Why won't the Agency facilitate the Middle East peace process?" and "Help! I'm being stalked by the Alphamale" was one lone point of interest: a short thread claiming that Lilywatt had been spotted in the metro area. The blurry picture could easily have been a fake - no electrified whips, no Lilycycle, just a pretty face in a purple cowl. But it's not like I had anything else going on, so I decided to see for myself if there was anything to it.

Spliff was off work, but I didn't even consider calling him. I couldn't even have said why at the time. In retrospect, maybe I just knew. He was probably just out drinking with Kyle again, anyway.

My mode of transport lately is a 7-speed bicycle I picked up at a pawn shop. It was still early, even for a city that snuggles into bed by 10 on any given weeknight, so I cruised around for awhile, soaking my pant legs when I sliced through the puddles on the street. I stopped at a coffee shop to dry off, and downed a couple shots of espresso, just to give myself a little edge.

The Lilywatt sighting occurred on the far edge of lower downtown, where the prefab half-million dollar "lofts" meet up with the real lofts, old warehouses still standing in spite of years of neglect. I kept an eye on the rooftops as I rode, and stopped a couple times to look inside a few of the office furniture outlet stores. Nothing. A gang of punk rock kids walked out of an industrial garage, letting a rush of loud music escape into the night.

I continued on until the din faded completely. The rain began to pick up, the silent flashes in the sky became more frequent, but I wasn't ready to turn back just yet. The most likely candidate for a temporary Agency outpost (my prevailing theory at the time) would be one of the buildings back from the main streets.

The skyline a few miles behind me, I came to a massive structure on the corner of "Hell" and "Gone"; lit from the inside, Range Rover parked out front. A tall-ish Asian man in a tailored black suit was moving some boxes out of the vehicle. Denver's become a lot more diverse in recent years, but when you see anyone in a suspect location dressed like this guy was, it can be construed as an ominous sign. When I snuck to the side of the building and climbed up the fire escape, I can't really say whether I was ignoring that fact, or counting on it.

The skylight on the roof looked down into a large open space, with two makeshift bedrooms sectioned off on either side. In the main area, another man - Asian also, but shorter, and balding - took great care to remove the contents of one of the boxes surrounding him. He delicately turned over a large, medicine ball-sized canister in his hands, before setting it on a table, connecting it to a series of tubes and wires. Black Suit lounged on a couch a few feet away, cigarette dangling between his lips. It appeared that in the few minutes it took me to reach the roof, he had dried off completely.

Another flash of lighting; the bolt must have landed not a hundred feet behind me. I nearly lost the ill-advised concoction of broccoli, snap peas and espresso churning in my bowels. The figures below glanced up for only a second, before turning their attention to a second Black Suit entering the warehouse - identical to the first man, and wet. His brother, I figured. Suit 1 sat up, offering his cigarette; Suit 2 somberly took a drag, handed it back, and moved back outside. Must've drawn the short straw.