Pumpking

Issue 37

5 hours without incident

"I've been looking for you for some time now, Dion; why did you turn off the tracker?"

Space is sort of funny. I always thought it would make me dizzy, staring out at nothing but stars, yet I felt more like I was floating, anchored to the world only by the oxygen in my lungs. I had hooked my legs around the safety railing of the observatory deck and swung over, hanging upside down, if I reached out I could touch the ground easily, I was too tall not to, but hanging upside down, was comforting.

Earth was smaller than the moon, which approached slowly, as the ship, or it, orbited within viewing range. It was hard to imagine how many millions of kilometres were involved in this sort of travel. I'd been flown to a transport pad on top of a building in Capita city and we had materialized minutes later in space. Teleporter technology was still pretty uncommon to the common man.

"I needed to be alone and think."

"It's not safe."

"If Combustion can get me in this fortress, I think he deserves to get me, don't you?"

"You seem upset, what's wrong now?"

"You brought me up here with the promise of answers. So far you've been busy in meetings with everyone else. I understand, you're a busy man- but you do owe me."

"Very well. What do you want to know?"

Was he married to Samhain? To... me? How had she died, was it his fault? Was he from an alternate reality? Why hadn't he told me any of this; had he just expected me to find out on my own? These were the questions I wanted to know, but what came out of my mouth was something very different. "Who is Combustion? Where did he come from?"

"He comes from an alternate reality. I don't know his exact origins, but he was responsible for killing most of the Pantheon in that reality. He is a kinetic of immense power; and he has it out for heroes, and people who were in the Pantheon from his home reality. Every random person he has killed has been less than random. They were from his reality. He's travelled from there to here."

"And why is he targeting me?"

"Because you were the one who injured him. In his realm. He's a coward, a pathetic soul lashing back at you here because he wants revenge against you. Your friend, Tony was a member of the Pantheon, and even across realities, he found Tony and that lead to you."

I put my hands down on the ground and pushed up, swinging up so I was upright on the bar. The sour look on Whisper's face told me how hard it must have been to tell me, "There, was that so bad?"

He glanced at me but I broke away before he pierced me with those eyes and I was immobilized. "I'm not incapable of truth, Dion."

"I wouldn't know what you were or weren't capable of. So, what is the plan- how are we going to trap and destroy this bastard?"

He leaned back on his heels, and again, I felt like he was trying to get inside my head, trying to catch my attention and draw me into his gaze. I resisted and it seemed to force him to speak again. "We're going to lay a trap that he could not possibly resist. He is a man driven by the urge to display his crimes; he wants an audience, a crowd to view him from a pedestal. We're going to give him the backdrop to a crime he won't be able to resist attending in person."

"I take it I am the bait?"

"Well, I know you disagree."

"It's fine. Just tell me what I need to do. The sooner we take this psycho out, the sooner I can go home."