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escapes, but I still don’t know his real name, or what he looks like. It’s entirely possible that I pass him by on the streets, multiple times, every day of my life. It isn’t fair.
    “Was the kid even real?” I asked him. “The one that was kidnapped? Was there ever a kid at all?”
    “There was,” Octagon said. “We set him free the moment you walked into the warehouse. He’d served his part.”
    “You set him free?”
    “Yes.” This was from Siren. It proved it, beyond any doubt. Siren never lies to a man. That’s how incredibly cruel she can be. Lots of men think that women should tell the truth, explain their feelings. These men should use their wishes more wisely.
    A copier came to life in the corner. It spit out paper after paper, each of them an image of a solitary portion of Macabre’s body, in the nude, and then also images of his clothing, alone. The images of his body wafted into a small funnel cloud of paper, and when the winds were settled he was standing there, naked, and in the kind of state you’d expect a man to be in whenever Siren was around. It was embarrassing, but he didn’t care. He’s a magician, accustomed to the stage.
    Siren raised an eyebrow to him.
    He said, “Duh, lady,” and then plucked the images of his clothing from the air, where they’d lined up in order. He merely touched the pages to his body, and then he was wearing that particular piece of clothing. I enjoyed the show, or to be more specific I enjoyed the length of the show. It was giving me a chance to catch my breath, or would have been, if Siren hadn’t been stealing it away. She was twirling her toes on the carpet, grabbing at the shag with her toes, pulling the strands left, right, all around.
    Octagon said, “Reaver, you’ve interfered with my plans for the last time. I mean to rule this world, to show them all that I am the only king to beseech, the only power to fear, the only star in the sky.”
    I said, “Shit.” He didn’t usually talk that way. He usually talks like a normal guy. This was completely overboard. Laser Beast came in through the same window where I’d arrived. I’d been tossed in by a hurricane, booted by a block of ice. He came in riding Tempest’s softest winds, and she came along shortly after. When she’s calling on the storms, she tends to go naked. She’d have been the most alluring woman in the room, if she’d been anywhere else on Earth.
    “Eleventh Hour,” said Octagon, gesturing to me with that little flip of a hand that reminds me of a game show hostess, “… I present to you, Reaver, the last of the heroes of the spill, the last of the hurdles to leap.” The Heroes of the Spill . I’d heard it said that way before. I tried to remember where. Some website, I think. It referred to how my powers were born. My origin story, if you will.
    “Spill this!” I yelled, and I leapt at Octagon, and the dumb son of a bitch still wasn’t ready for my speed, wasn’t ready for me to be game despite all the beating I’d taken, and because he wanted to gloat, because he wanted to be a showoff, he’d assembled Eleventh Hour in the room along with me, in a space where they would have trouble maneuvering, and I could hit any damn thing and any damn one I wanted, and I knew what was going to happen, knew how they’d react once I started snapping necks, when they found out that just because I have a goddamn Presidential certificate doesn’t mean I have to play by any pretty book of rules.
    But Siren stepped in the way.
    And there’s not a man who could punch her.
    I’m definitely a man.
    And I stopped cold.
    Laser Beast shot me in my back. It came out through my chest. Tempest sucked all the air away from my lungs. Siren touched me on my shoulder. Macabre put his fist on that photo-copier and ran off a hundred images of his knuckles, released them into the air, where they swarmed me like bees, punching, punching, a hundred punches, and all I could think of was Siren’s