Smoke and Mirrors (Patreon)

Los Diablos - 2019

The city was thick with fog, the shadow of the new bridge crossing it like a cut throat in the distance. Iris closed her eyes and breathed deeply, smog and mist coiling in her chest. The city was a distant white noise, the new reclamation project a resurrected corpse being brought back to life around her. It was to be the latest jewel in Los Diablos crown, restoring the last of the central ruins to truly modern standards. A rebirth, of sorts.

And like all births it would be painful.

She lit up a cigarette and stood at the edge of the construction site. Waiting, like she always waited in the quiet sanctity of Sunday evenings. She knew nobody would be working tonight, but even if someone had been, she wouldn't have been out of place. Her hardhat was in place, her pass was legit, and if her high heels were impractical, it was her ankles. Nobody would bother her... or her visitor.

He appeared, as he often did, as a tall man in steel-rimmed glasses and slicked-back hair, an investment banker gone awol. The faces changed, the voice did not. She supposed it was all in her imagination anyway, a composite of arrest records and newspaper articles. No face was your own if seen through the lens of others.

"Are they treating you well?" she asked, like she always did. 

Like always, he regarded her quietly, then growled a quiet "well enough."

"I have something that will cheer you up. The site is nearing completion." It was the words that she had been waiting to say for so long now. Perhaps she should have lit up in a smile. Perhaps she should have shouted with joy. But she just said the words quietly, an affirmation of her determination.

"Show me," the apparition said eagerly, an undertone of feedback in his voice that set her teeth on edge. An echo of an echo of an echo, cast so far from the source. He sniffed the air, eyes gleaming in anticipation.

"What do you smell?" she asked since she smelled nothing but dampness and cigarette, pulling her coat a little tighter against the sudden chill. The heat against her breast was a small sun, so close to burning yet spreading no warmth to the rest of her.

"Freedom," he growled, sniffing the air, the briefcase held in one limp hand like a blunt instrument.  "I keep forgetting what it smells like."

"You could use me more often," she offered, weaving through the rising buildings, empty windows devoid of life or intent. Their target was not distant, but the road was neither straight nor easy, mud and gravel compacted by heavy machinery.

"I'm not going to risk burning you out. Despite my complaints, I can be patient. I'll be fine." He sounded anything but. "A hero gone bad still gets some respect from the guards. And the other inmates respect what I have become."

Iris fell silent at that, tried to picture how Gerard could be faring in jail. He never told her any details, and life in the high security boosted penitentiary was shrouded in secrecy. She knew better than to trust online speculation. The fate of Five Pennies, the reasons for his 'mental breakdown,' as they called the graphic murder, and his resulting fate were all old news and tinfoil conspiracies at this point. She felt privileged that he had trusted her with as much as he did.

"Soon everyone will respect you." She didn't care if she sounded like a fangirl, she hadn't expected a reply when she wrote to him in jail, hadn't thought her girlish scribbles would get past whatever layers of censorship inmates like that were surrounded with. Maybe that's why she got through. She had sounded harmless.

She was anything but.

"Are you that much in a hurry to head towards damnation?" He almost sounded amused, the chuckle like ice cubes crunched between broken teeth. "You're going to be involved now, no more sitting on the sidelines."

"I never wanted anything more." Always the watcher. The audience. Just an innocent fangirl. "You've given me proof that what I believe is real." She headed towards one of the larger building sites. Like all the others, it was surrounded by wiry steel fencing, as if the structure beyond would escape unless imprisoned.

"You made your choice." He shrugged and stepped through the metal gate as if it hadn't been there. She had to unlock it first. "I won't forget your help if this works. If you still want to, you will have a role to play in my ascension."

"I'm not going to back down now," she insisted, still remembering the sensation of falling as her finger touched metal. Familiarity. That here was someone that understood. Understood her. Understood the parts of her she was smart enough to keep hidden after the first apocalypse.

"I didn't think so." They walked into the skeleton of the building, still smelling of damp, wet cement. "I would have felt your hesitation. You smell almost as eager as I am."

"I wasn't sure if you were the real thing," she admitted. "Not until I touched the coin. You have no idea how many coins are floating around auction sites claiming they are yours." Her heels made sharp sounds against the concrete floor, like the clicking of claws. "How did you know someone was selling it off?" She had felt so clever working out the cipher in the letter, and risked all her savings to buy a single, humble coin. Greater sacrifices would be asked from her in the future.

"Because I told him to."

"Oh." She didn't know what else to say, because she felt both jealous and flattered. Jealous that she hadn't been there to pick it up from the street herself, and flattered that she was the one who got to speak to him now. That she was chosen, and the other one had been a dud.

"He was easy enough to manipulate to pick up a coin in the chaos, and drop another one in its stead. Useless in all other ways. Unlike you."

"What will it be like?" she asked, walking the unfinished rooms, massive windows covered by plastic sheeting. "Becoming a villain?" Coils of cables rested heavy like intestines, waiting to be assembled into a nervous system for the building. She could almost feel it surrounding her, could guess at the finished shape.

"There are no such things as villains. Or heroes." The shadow that was Five Pennies in her mind stopped for a moment, looking around. There was almost no light in here, and she wondered if he could see more than she could. The penny she wore around her neck was bared, she wasn't sure if it helped, but it felt right. Proving her loyalty.

"But you've been both," she pointed out.

"It's not what I've been but what I will become. What I will show them I have become." But he said nothing further on the subject. "Where is the altar?"

"There is no altar." She had finally succumbed to the limitations of her human eyes and pulled out a flashlight.

"You said that you had built unto me a temple." There was a quiet warning in those words, and despite herself she felt her heart racing in anticipation or fear as the coin got heavy around her neck.

"And I did." Iris played with the flashlight over the unfinished ceilings, large, vaulted. "Not a church. A temple to the new gods that ensnare men's hearts. A museum to their exploits." The interior space was vast and cavernous, and she extended her arms and spun slowly in place. 

Five Pennies stayed silent, so she kept talking.

"In less than a year people will come here to worship. Their heroes. Their toys. All the petty material things and false idols that fill the emptiness of their lives. This is where the masses will listen to the recorded sermons of Power. Where they will learn the importance of Heroes. The Unimportance of their own accomplishments. A myriad gods, all as empty as the hearts that spawned them. Trust me, this is going to work."

Nobody had suspected the humble assistant as she had changed the plans in secret, piece by piece. Small measurements corrupted. Interior spaces just slightly askew. Nothing that her superiors would notice. Nothing that the builders would think odd. But bit by bit she had applied all she had learned of discordant architecture to turn this building into a lens. A lens for desire. A structure that would hum with the redirected need of those that milled through it. A building as powered by belief as any church, all centered on one exhibit.

"Have you prepared yourself? If this succeeds, you will need to be the conduit." Apparently her gift had been deemed adequate, because Five Pennies had turned to face her, the left arm with the suitcase limp and dead, the right hand reaching for her chest.

"Yes." Iris tossed away the cigarette, stepping forward so the hand could touch the coin resting on her chest. It scalded her, as if it had been held in boiling water. "Don't worry, this isn't my first rodeo."

The preparation had been equal parts easy and difficult. It was a simple task in theory, to turn your back on all things that made you human. She had slept with her feet on her pillow, her head covered by the sheets, the increasingly rotten air making her nights unrestful. For food, she ate only what disgusted her. She left the vegetables in the fridge to almost rot, choked down the moldy bread and tried to find joy in the smell of meat gone bad. She had thrown up during those first days, but she learned to choke it down. For lunches at work she ate the least healthy things she could find, imagining clogged arteries and heart disease. Had she not been working she would have let herself grow filthy, but her continued freedom and survival rested on fitting in. On not being noticed. She had seen firsthand what happened to people who did.

"I'm impressed." The apparition had his hand in her chest, holding the coin, watching her for any signs of hesitation. "Most people would have caught fire or gone mad by now. You're withstanding my presence admirably well."

"Will I survive this?" she asked, a moment of weakness she could not hold back.

"That is up to you." The reply was as harsh as a slap. "You told me you could handle it."

"I will." She grit her teeth, ignoring the feeling in her chest, the way her heart had started to race as her body had the urge to fall sideways and be done with existence. "But you need to stop now. Not yet."

"Fine." The hand was withdrawn and she gasped for breath, pressing both hands against her chest.

Her heart was racing, the building around her unfinished but too much of a draw, mounting pressure and she pulled out a cigarette with shaking hands. Lit it. The smoke followed the pattern of her breaths, a chaotic focus that nevertheless anchored her. "I'm sorry," she said, voice shaky. "I will be ready when the day comes."

"It will be simpler with all five." The apparition looked down at his hand. "How long do you think it will take?"

"I can't calculate something like that." She didn't have to hide her unease, there were no others to ask for a second opinion anymore. The Pentachoron rested squarely on her shoulders. "Maybe a week or so after the opening? You should be able to judge that when we go and have a look at the exhibits ourselves. This isn't an exact science, and I'm not an expert." Everyone who had been was dead.

"There have better be a lot of visitors." There was a grinding impatience in his voice, and she could feel the coin cooling against her chest. 

"Oh that is guaranteed. And yours will be one of the more interesting exhibits. A good man gone bad. Hero turned villain. That's always a draw. The speculation why." She stressed the last word. Mysteries had power, she doubted Five Pennies really knew how much. "Nobody was even sure how your powers worked."

"Good. I was afraid I'd have been forgotten."

"Never." She didn't censor her outrage. "You're still a top-ranking enigma. So many theories. About everything. You're... not simple. Like the others."

"Flatterer." The words were fading fast, but there was satisfaction in them. 

"I would never lie to you," she lied, gripping the coin tight in her hand. Almost cold, the connection fading. "Hang in there, you'll be out of prison in no time."

This time there was no reply. No twisted avatar of her own imagination. Just an empty building, the future site of the Heroic Heritage Museum. 

She finished the cigarette alone, grounding herself once more. The poetry appealed to her. Heritage indeed. Los Diablos had no idea what was coming for it.