As far as I’m aware, I am the only person on the planet who remembers his first day on Earth with perfect clarity. I’m also the only person who was sixteen years old at the time.
Prior to that day, I lived my entire life in a tube filled with artificial amniotic fluid, not that I was consciously aware of any such thing at the time. My body was kept in top condition through the use of electrical stimulation, which triggered involuntary muscle reflexes complex enough to substitute for exercise. My mind, however, was subjected to an even more demanding regimen. Fifteen full years of education, as designed by my father, were downloaded directly into my brain. And his expectations of what I should have been capable of at what age were significantly more demanding than that of the average parent.
By age three, I was literate. By age five, I had the complete works of Shakespeare memorized. By age seven, I’d concluded that they were all worthless drivel. Math and science was of much greater interest to me. That interest only became greater when my metahuman abilities manifested six years later. As a clone of my father, I possess the same power he did- superhuman intelligence. I’m a builder, not just of machines but of systems. That, however, took me a long time to discover.
My education wasn’t limited to what ordinary children learn in school. I was a student of history as well. My father’s history. His name was Byron Winters, and unlike other superhumans of his era, he had no other name. No alias that proclaimed his superiority or hinted at the nature of his powers. Just Winters. And in his own estimation, he was the greatest supercriminal who ever lived. He ran a crew, calling themselves the Terrors, and for two decades they were the biggest name in metahuman crime in the Western Hemisphere. Always one step ahead of the police and the heroes, they robbed Fort Knox, stole experimental military prototypes from secret labs, and knocked over quite a few banks. Then Father and his greatest nemesis, the hero known as Vitruvian, disappeared into a wormhole and were never seen again.
Years later, Father’s final contingency took effect, and my gestation began. When I emerged from the tube, I was determined to make the world remember when it had once feared the name of Winters. I took up his mantle, stole back the equipment that the authorities had confiscated after his disappearance, and began my quest for infamy.
Along the way, I made a few friends, but also something much better- an enemy. He called himself Harrier, partner to the infamous vigilante detective of the city of Pax. Over the years, we had a variety of conflicts. He foiled my plans, I tied him up and dangled him over a tank of hungry sharks. We were rivals, but there was a mutual respect between the two of us as well. That’s why I was willing to listen when he told me that there was something I needed to hear.
Harrier was a detective himself, trained by the very best in the world. And he’d decided to look into my past, in order to better understand me. A clever move. When your skills are evenly matched with an opponent, seeking advantage in exploiting their personal and psychological vulnerabilities is only rational. But instead of using what he discovered as a weapon against me, he chose to share it without reservation. At the time, I thought it a sign of weakness. Now, I see things somewhat differently.
What my nemesis had discovered was that I had not been the only clone of Father created. He’d made dozens, and programmed the gestation system to incinerate any subjects who failed to manifest his metahuman abilities. Of the lot, only one survived- me. That was damning, but aside from the deception, I saw little reason to let it bother me. Those other clones were long dead, and the man who’d ordered their deaths was hardly around to punish. Then Harrier shared his second revelation. My ‘education’ in the gestation tube had included a secondary component, one I was never supposed to be aware of. Subliminal programming, designed to give me a certain compulsion. The drive to restore Father’s legacy and become worthy of his name was not natural. It had been programmed into me since the very beginning. What Father hadn’t anticipated, however, was that I’d inherited his pride as well. The idea that I was merely a living vessel for a dead man’s ambitions was intolerable to me. So I vowed then and there to tear every trace of Father’s influence out of my head. To my surprise, Harrier offered his aid. And to his surprise, I accepted.
The process of removing Father’s programming was long and painful, but ultimately we succeeded. It was then that I realized I was adrift. Without that drive, I had no target for my own ambitions. No purpose. Once more, Harrier proved invaluable. He suggested I take the skills and abilities I’d inherited from Father, and turn them towards ends he would have found infuriating. In other words, altruism.
None of it came naturally to me, but I was determined. Instead of seeking fame and fortune for myself, I turned the skills of a supercriminal and tech genius towards the benefit of others. The job description I chose was ‘freelance espionage agent.’ Rather than working for the highest bidder, I would offer my services to whoever had the greatest need, and take only as much as they were able to pay. If that meant they could offer nothing but gratitude, I would take it.
It was rewarding work. Next to the genuine gratitude and admiration of others, wealth is decidedly empty. But I still felt I had more to do. Counterbalancing Father’s greed with good works was a start, but I had to surpass him if I wanted to truly be free of his influence. Opportunity came, once again, in the form of my rival. By then, he’d taken on his mentor’s name, and the responsibilities that came with being Hawkshaw had changed him. For the better, in my estimation. He had another revelation for me. Not about my past, but about the wider world. In fact, it was the most significant revelation in human history. The existence of a group called the Council.
Some decades prior, a group of the most powerful, intelligent, and influential individuals on Earth joined together to take over the world. Their motives were not selfish, and their methods were significantly subtler than that of the average supervillain. As a result, they were successful. And with the entire world in the palm of their hands, they began enacting an agenda of change. Quietly, without anyone outside of their fraternity becoming aware, they started saving the world. Not in the way that the average superhero does. Their focus was on less obvious threats. The planet’s rapidly-deteriorating environmental and climatological conditions. Ethnic cleansing. War. Poverty and inequality. The sort of social ills you can’t simply punch into submission. And with the resources at their disposal, they managed to accomplish many of their goals.
At the heart of the Council, however, there was rot. Hawkshaw’s mentor had been a part of the group, and his protege suspected that they were behind his disappearance. So he did what detectives do, and investigated. What he discovered was not only confirmation of his suspicions, but evidence of abuses by the group’s founders, hidden from the other Council members, that turn the stomach to even describe. Innocents fed to their pet monster to keep it satiated, and a program of clandestine psychic reprogramming orchestrated by the resident telepath. That was why he brought me in- to help cut the diseased elements out. It was no easy feat, but in the end, we succeeded. And, of course, I chose to fill one of the recently-vacated seats at the Council’s table.
It’s taxing, time-consuming work, but I wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world. I do, however, need breaks occasionally. When I’m not working with the Council, I do good in other, smaller-scale ways. My services as a freelance espionage agent are less and less necessary as the new and improved Council expands its original program of world-saving to greater and greater heights. But there are still people who need the assistance of an individual like myself, and I’m more than willing to provide it.
Today’s outing is on behalf of Colombian union workers. Employed by a local subsidiary of a major American corporation, they tried to strike for better working conditions. The corporation’s response was to contract a local paramilitary force to break the strike by any means necessary. Six workers died. The group was eventually brought to justice through conventional means, and American courts ordered the corporation to pay the workers’ families a pittance. My objective is to find evidence of the direct culpability of certain executives within the corporation, so that they can be prosecuted directly.
If I tapped the Council for assistance, the job could be done in ten minutes, but that wouldn’t be any fun. Not to mention it would be difficult to explain exactly how I acquired the evidence to my clients. Instead, I’ll be doing things the old-fashioned way.
Old-fashioned though my methods may be, the equipment I’m employing to get the job done most certainly isn’t. A fabricated ID gets me past the front door of the Manhattan office building where the Lyle Company is located. They’re an agricultural multinational corporation that pays their workers pennies on the dollar for what they charge consumers- while, naturally, their executives get six-figure salaries. As I’m walking across the empty lobby, shoes clacking against the polished white tiled floor, I suppress a shudder. Supervillains and their lairs are overrated. It’s places like this where the real evil in the world is done. Nondescript office buildings full of nondescript people in collared shirts. They’ll never have to come face to face with the people whose worlds they destroy on a daily basis.
Lyle has offices all over the country, but this is the one where a specific executive works. His job title is something inane and forgettable, but the Colombian portfolio is under his purview, so he’s the one I want. Either he signed off on the death squads himself, or he knows exactly who did. Thinking about it fills me with contempt, but none of it shows when I smile at the lone guard, and flash my fake ID at him. He presses a button and the turnstile unlocks, allowing me to continue forward to the elevators. I programmed myself into the system beforehand, but this place doesn’t exactly have the world’s most advanced security. It’s not like anything with intrinsic value is located here. Just a bunch of replaceable suits. The company itself couldn’t care less about them. This job will take down a few of them, but there will always be more to serve as replacements.
Knowing that might have bothered me, before I joined the Council. But now the project doesn’t seem quite so impossible. This job alone won’t take Lyle down, much less end corporate exploitation worldwide. But the Council has the power to do both, and I’m a part of that effort. Today’s job is just a small part of that.
The elevator dings, and I step out onto the forty-first floor. If I had to describe the decor in a single word, it would be ‘inoffensive.’ Bland grey carpeting, windows that can’t be opened, and row upon row of identical cubicles. Nobody I pass in the halls recognizes me, but neither do they register my presence as being out of place. The implant in my wrist takes care of that. Every other member of the Council has one too. It’s a communicator, bio-monitor, translocation beacon, and a dozen other things, but I’m only relying on it for one function right now. The Fawkes widget, which uses a form of subtle brain-hacking tech to prevent anybody from fully registering my presence. They know I’m here, but they won’t be able to remember my face once I’m gone, and unless I deliberately draw attention to myself, they’re highly unlikely to pay attention to anything I do. Instant anonymity.
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Humming softly to myself, I stroll down the aisle between the cubicles, glancing in on the office workers as I pass them by. My target will have his own office, but I’m curious what these people are up to. Most of them have personalized their workspaces to some degree or another. Pictures of their spouses or children, overpriced paperweights purchased in museum gift shops, that sort of thing. I’m dressed much the same as they are, with a bland white button-up and slacks. A few of them are doing their damndest to dress for the jobs they want, with suit jacket draped over the backs of their chairs, while others are either resigned to or content with their current position, and have started deviating from the dress code in small ways, wearing more comfortable shoes or rolling up their sleeves past the elbow. I can imagine the awful, mundane political power struggles that take place inside of this office, and the camaraderie between those on the same side. Careers are built and broken here. It’s as much a battleground as any I’ve ever been on, with one crucial difference. It’s boring.
Most of these people probably have no idea what their employers get up to in the executive suites, so it’s hard to hate them for the Lyle Company’s crimes. But I do pity them, and count myself lucky I don’t have to spend every day of my life in a place like this until I’m too old to keep going. With any luck, we’ll get to a point where nobody has to, but right now, I’m just glad it’s not me.
Eventually, I tire of my observations, and head for the corner office where my target is located. Dave Larsen, Vice Something of Something. My eyes glaze over the title underneath his name on the door, and I step forward to knock on it sharply. The glass is frosted, but I can see a vague shape sitting behind a desk, which must be the man himself. Most people would be timid, approaching someone of his stature, but despite my disguise, I’m not actually his subordinate, and I don’t exactly fear his wrath. After a moment’s pause, he calls from beyond the threshold.
“Come in!”
I push the door open and shut it behind me. Larsen doesn’t look up from his work. Hard to say whether it’s because of the Fawkes widget or just general rudeness. I approach the desk, hands behind my back, and clear my throat. The executive blinks twice, looks at me, and then stands. With my carefully-combed hair and rigid posture, I’m the spitting image of an up-and-coming young man who wants to introduce himself to one of his betters.
“Mister Larsen,” I say firmly, intending to keep his attention. “My name is Conrad. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”
Using my real name is a risk, but a minor one. The Fawkes widget means he’s unlikely to even remember it, much less be able to match the name to my face. My tone is enough to keep the man’s focus on me, despite the distortion effect preventing him from discerning much about me. I extend a hand to shake, and he grasps it firmly.
“Likewise,” he responds. Larsen is tall, well-built, somewhere in his late thirties. About ten years older than me. He’s got a carefully-maintained beard, something I noticed none of the other office workers have. Against regulation, then, but only for regular employees. A status symbol. “Was there something you needed?”
“Nothing in particular. I just wanted to introduce myself. My mentor from the Chicago office, Mister McNamara, spoke very highly of you.”
Confusion registers in his eyes for a split second. There’s no Mister McNamara, but he can’t say that, for fear of insulting a fellow executive by proxy. I could have come up with a real person’s name to drop, or just not bothered at all, but forcing him to pretend he knows a man who doesn’t exist is amusing to me.
“Of course. Well, I’m afraid I have to get back to work, but it was good to meet you. I’m sure we’ll be seeing much more of each other in the future.”
I try not to make my smirk too obviously sinister.
“I’m sure we will.”
Closing the door behind me, I head out of Larsen’s office and walk back through the cubicles. This time, the bathrooms are my destination. I don’t have a desk, so there isn’t really a better place to wait. Fortunately, the lavatory is about as bland as the rest of the place. The man washing his hands doesn’t seem to notice me in the mirror as I pass behind him, and lock myself into the handicapped stall. No conspicuous wheelchairs or crutches caught my attention on my cubicle tour, so it’s unlikely that my momentary occupation will be an inconvenience.
Pulling out my phone, I spend a few minutes checking in on my various feeds. If anything major happened, like a Council member’s implants registering mortal peril, or one of our captives in the Avernus facility breaching containment, I’d get an alert. But it still pays to stay on top of the smaller stuff as well. One of our labs has submitted its monthly progress report, which I skim briefly and save for a more in-depth analysis later. There are only eight members of the Council at present, but we have a number of affiliates who, knowingly or not, work on our behalf. This lab in particular was brought together to replace one of the members of the Council who died during the coup Hawkshaw and I orchestrated. He was a brilliant biochemist, which made his death a great loss, though one we all understood to be necessary. Afterwards, we recovered as many of his notes as possible, and hired the top researchers in the field to finish what he started. They’ve mostly finished with those notes, but the breakthroughs it led them to are continuing to yield results, and the tone of this report seems especially optimistic.
After browsing a few other minor alerts idly, I check the time. It’s been about ten minutes. More than enough time. I leave the stall and head out of the bathroom quietly. The man on his way in doesn’t even seem to realize I’m there. Pretty much nobody does, as I head back towards Larsen’s office. Thankfully, the frosted glass has prevented anybody from noticing that their boss is slumped over his desk, fast asleep. He doesn’t stir in the slightest as I step inside, making sure to lock the door behind me. The sedative I dosed him with during our handshake is potent, and combined with the Fawkes widget, it ensures he’ll have virtually no memory of our brief interaction. By the time he wakes up, I’ll be long gone.
Gently propping Larsen up in his chair, I roll it away from the desk, and lean over the monitor. One of the gadgets in my pocket could crack his security and clone the entire server, but that won’t be necessary. The executive is already logged in, and he’s got all his passwords saved. It takes me less than a minute to get into his email. Then it’s a simple matter of searching for relevant keywords within a specific timeframe. If there was any hint that their records might be subpoenaed, Lyle would have anything even slightly incriminating erased, but things never got to that point during the initial case. It helps that they had the judge under their thumb, of course. With inside access, I can scrape Larsen’s account for anything relating to the Colombian strike-breakers.
Sorting through chronologically, I watch the entire thing unfold. Someone from the company on the ground reports to Larsen that the workers are trying to organize. The usual measures to prevent unionization are employed, but prove unsuccessful. Then comes the negotiation. Company policy does permit certain concessions to the workers, but considering the conditions the Lyle employees were laboring under, it’s little surprise the offer was refused. Then they tried to wait the strikers out. And finally, some enterprising sub-executive suggests contracting a local paramilitary group to help out. Larsen signs off on it like he’s scheduling a mandatory company retreat. Finally, the reactions when the strike-breaking turns deadly. No surprise that they’re more concerned with the potential legal repercussions than the actual loss of life.
Hard to say whether it’s incriminating on its own, but it certainly proves one thing- that Lyle lied when it claimed that the decision to bring the strike-breakers in was made by their local subsidiary. They made a show of firing a few low-level executives at the time, while asserting that people like Larsen and his friends had no knowledge or involvement.
This is a dilemma Hawkshaw deals with all the time. Working within the system can only get you so far. There’s every chance Larsen will avoid prosecution once more, either because the courts refuse to hear the union’s case again, or by pinning the blame on someone below him. Kellan would wait, and give the system a chance to do the right thing. If the system failed, he would kill Larsen himself. With the man helpless and within my reach, it’s tempting to just off him right now and save myself the trouble later. But that isn’t what I was hired for, and even if it would be satisfying, it would destroy any chance the union has of seeing justice. So I download all of the emails and internal memos I can find, and erase any trace of my presence on his computer, before leaving Larsen to his sleep. When he wakes up, he’ll have no memory of me, but he will have a whole host of new problems on his plate.
Humming the same soft tune, I make my way out of the office without any particular haste. On the elevator ride down, I transmit the information to my clients, using the same untraceable process through which they contacted me in the first place. Getting discovered by some NSA analyst wouldn’t matter much, because the Council controls the American government, but that’s still no reason to do away with information security protocols. We’ve got a great deal of influence over just about every world government, but there are still elements that we don’t fully control, and having to deal with them would be inconvenient.
Normally I’d receive some sort of fee after a job like this, but I offered my services pro bono. The union will need as much money as it can get for the upcoming legal fight. In theory, the government itself would be prosecuting the Lyle Company and Larsen, but there’s little chance they won’t hit the union with a lawsuit designed to drain their coffers and force them to give up their attempt at seeking justice. Depending on how that plays out, I might have to get involved again, but for the moment I’m content to let my role in the saga end.
The security guard downstairs doesn’t look up from his book as I head out, despite having come in no more than half an hour earlier. Leaving the building, I deactivate the Fawkes widget. On the streets of Manhattan, I’m already perfectly anonymous, and the risk of someone with enhanced senses noticing that they can’t quite make out the details of my face just isn’t worth it. Not all metahumans wear costumes, after all.
Of all the cities I’ve visited, New York has one of the most unique smells. That’s pretty much inevitable, given how many people are crammed together in such relatively close quarters. There are worse places in the world in that regard- China comes to mind -but not very many. Thanks to my unusual upbringing, I don’t have much of a national or ethnic identity, much less a preference for specific American states. My family, however, is from Massachusetts. Winters House, our manor, was built during the so-called ‘Gilded Age’ by my great-great-grandfather, one of the notorious ‘robber barons’ of the era. Financial and political elite whose unscrupulous practices were essentially common knowledge. Through a combination of political regulation and personal mismanagement, most of the family fortune was lost in the years before Father was born. He was determined to restore the family to prominence, and his metahuman gifts made that possible.
Personally, I couldn’t care less. Winters House is perfectly nice, but I’ve always felt more at home in a crowd. It doesn’t matter if nobody knows who I am. Better to be an anonymous victor than a famous failure. In the end, that’s all Father was. Even his death was overshadowed by the fact that the Vitruvian, far more famous and popular than he, died alongside him.
Slipping inside an establishment creatively named Ray’s Famous Slices, I exchange pleasantries with the man at the counter, who seems to have had a few too many of the aforementioned slices over the years, and order a single one for myself. Maintaining my physique is important, so it’s not often that I indulge in something with such little nutritional value as pizza, but it would seem a wasted opportunity to leave New York City without trying the local cuisine at least once.
Taking a seat in one of the establishment’s empty booths, I observe the television in the corner of the room for a few minutes. It’s muted, with subtitles that are too small for me to see at this distance, but I can tell what’s going on. A baseball game. Probably one of the local teams, though I can’t claim to know which one. Father had a certain disdain for games of pure physical competition, preferring more cerebral contests, which I inherited. It took some time to unlearn his condescension and arrogance, but I still can’t bring myself to be very interested in the game itself. It doesn’t seem especially fair that certain cities get two teams while everyone else just gets one.
What distracts me from the game isn’t that my food is ready, but a notification from my phone. Not a text message or a call, but an alert from the Council’s threat-monitoring system. I check the alert, then stand up as calmly as possible, and approach the counter.
“Apologies, but would it be possible to take my food to go?”
The cashier, who seems to double as cook, grunts something like “Sure,” and places a paper plate in front of me, already starting to turn transparent thanks to the grease dripping off of my slice. Having already paid up, I take that as my cue to leave. I hadn’t quite expected the pizza to be so wet, but maybe that’s supposed to be part of the charm. Either way, I’ve got bigger concerns right now.
Holding the plate in one hand, I’m already accessing my implant’s communicator function through my phone as I head back out onto the streets. In the back of my head, I’m trying to figure out where the nearest safe spot to translocate from is.
“Extinction Group. We’ve got a potential Class Five on our hands. Meet me at Abyss as soon as possible.”