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my most abject apologies.”
    Dietrich exhaled in relief; he had been holding his breath and been quite unaware of it. “I will do anything you ask,” he assured Mr. Night. “I can overpower Ultimate again.”
    “Such a propitious event is sadly not in the cards at the moment,” Mr. Night said. “The device that allowed you to breach dear Ultimate’s rather impressive mental defenses has been destroyed by my adversary. There may be an opportunity to remedy the situation later, but for now we have other matters to attend.”
    “You have new instructions from our superiors, then?”
    “Yes. We have new directives. The first one, I’m sorry to say, concerns the demise of dear Doctor Cohen.”
    “What are you saying?”
    “I’m going to create a compelling crime scene for the benefit of the authorities, my dear Dreamer. It will be rather unpleasant, but necessary.”
    Dietrich started to speak but sudden agony wracked his body. He fell to the floor, convulsing. He screamed as he felt things tear inside of him.
    “Hush, little Dreamer. Mr. Night is working.” Dietrich’s vocal cords died and took his voice with them. He flopped silently on the apartment’s floor as he felt blood being drawn out of every opening and pore in his body. “Let me paint you a heartbreaking tableau, Dietrich. A horrible crime has been committed. Ultimate, the patient you so selflessly tried to help, tracked you to this place and murdered you in a most brutal fashion. Struck you with such violence that he liquefied your body, leaving behind only blood and a few solid bits here and there, mostly teeth and bone and brain fragments, which I’m afraid I’m going to have to excise from you. The authorities will also find a few hairs and some tiny flecks of skin belonging to your alleged killer. They will easily identify your murderer; after all, Ultimate’s DNA is in several government databases, thanks to the Parahuman Registration Act.”
    Dietrich watched his tormentor in mute agony as he was mutilated alive. The tooth pulling was the worst of it. “Do not fret, there’s a good boy,” Mr. Night said as he worked. Blood and still living tissue flew through the air in a complex pattern, splattering the walls and floor of the apartment like a gruesome abstract painting. “The procedure is quite painful, but you will –barely – survive the experience. Unfortunately, your self-healing abilities are not quite up to the task of keeping you alive, so you will be spending the next few nights under medical care. We all must make sacrifices, don’t you agree?”
    A full gallon of Dietrich’s blood splashed on the walls in an explosive pattern. “There we go. Beautiful work, if I say so myself.”
    Mr. Night picked up Dietrich’s limp body and slung it over his shoulder. With his free hand, he ripped the front door off its hinges. “That would be the point of entry for our murderer,” Mr. Night explained. He rushed an outside wall and smashed through it as if it was made of tissue paper; with one bound the giant leapt over a city block and landed on a building roof. “And that was the exit point. Poor dear Ultimate is now the chief suspect in a brutal homicide.”
    Mr. Night patted the barely-conscious Dietrich on the back. “Don’t you worry. Soon you will be up and about, doing great things.
    “Just keep in mind that another failure will have drastic consequences. We are too close to the end game.” 
     
     
     

Face-Off
     
    Lake of the Woods, Ontario, March 15, 2013
    I watched Christine as she watched the news. She didn’t look like the harbinger of the apocalypse. In fact, she looked like what she had been a couple of days ago, an ordinary college student, a pretty redhead who talked a little too much and too fast when she got nervous. She was a nice person who didn’t deserve to be involved with killers and monsters, two categories to which I belonged. But thanks to her father, she was Armageddon Girl. I had it on good