Please Note: This story was originally published in the anthology Playing Solitaire and Other Stories (Cyber Age Adventures Press, 2001). It was later distributed on a CD-ROM in the program book of the 2001 World Fantasy Convention held in Montreal.

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Her name was not Solitaire, but Solitaire would do for the moment. For lack of something better.

She was garbed in a short padded jacket, an insulated kevlar bodysuit and sensible boots. And a mask, of course. A mask was obligatory. A stylized insignia in the shape of a concentric swirl adorned her jacket over the right breast.

Solitaire flew over the sub-freezing, snow-covered streets of Montréal, trailing a blinding corona of light behind her. No one looked up. Montréalers were an urban, unflappable folk with political uncertainty and a harsh winter to worry about. The odd superhuman flying overhead or smashing through a brick wall barely elicited a murmur of surprise anymore.

Solitaire flew; her long, brown hair billowing in an undulating wave behind her. The Arctic air stung her face and eyes; and her tears streamed alongside like a school of angelfish trailing a shark.

She tried to tell herself that the tears were only due to the cold and the speed of her flight. She wasn’t Alloy or the Minuteman, after all. She was still all-too-human and still vulnerable to wind and cold.

And pain.

Her angle of ascent steepened. Her corona got brighter still. She heard nothing but the all-encompassing roar of the wind. Her lungs laboured to draw breath in the increasingly thin, frigid atmosphere.

She spread her arms before her in a ‘V’ and swooped upwards. The intensity of her corona brightened, the stinging blast of cold air in her face became an unrelenting hurricane that drowned out light and heat and sound. Blind and deaf, Solitaire screamed her pain and her fury and her humiliation into the night.

They had been talking about the heavy stuff. The ‘L’ word came up, followed by the ‘C’ and even the ‘M’ words. She felt simultaneously giddy and serene. She felt secure with this man, sure of his love and trust. She kissed him passionately, her tongue languidly sliding into his mouth.

They broke apart. He looked at her, his electric blue eyes boring, it seemed, all the way down to her soul. “I love you,” he said, finally, laughing at the sound of it. “I love you and I treasure you and I’m starting to think I want to spend the rest of my life with you.”

She heard herself sigh, a sound so girlish and adolescent she almost wanted to giggle. “Be sure,” she said to him. “Be sure you mean it before you say it—”

“I mean it,” he said emphatically. “You don’t know how much I mean it.”

Carl’s eyes were blue. His hair was red bordering on blond. A striking combination. He was tall and wiry, but muscular and very strong. For a normal man.

Her eyes filled with tears. “It’s been so long,” she said. “I’ve waited such a long time to hear somebody say that they loved me.”

“I love you, baby,” Carl said, the conviction and the honesty like steel in his voice. “I know you’ve had it hard. I know there have been some bitter years, but I’m here. I want to make it better for you. I know I can.”

She put her fingers over his lips. “Ssshh. Wait. You don’t know everything yet.”

“Ooohhh, secrets. You don’t scare me, lady. I’ve got a few secrets of my own.”

“This is a big one. This is something that could change everything.”

“Nothing could change the way I feel about you, babe. Nothing. You’re about to tell me that you’re bisexual or still married to someone else or something, right? I’m telling you right now that we can work it out. It doesn’t matter.”

She snorted. “I wish it were that simple.”

“So give already. Give and let’s get it over with! You’ll feel better, I promise you!”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m sure.” She took a deep breath. “I...I...” she started, and suddenly felt herself shaking violently, like a leaf in a storm. This was ridiculous! She had faced the Octet alone! She had beaten Futureshock and Thirdwave without raising a sweat. She had seen and done things that would have driven most normal people insane, and yet she was trembling before this supremely ordinary, extraordinary man.

“Take a deep breath,” he said. “It’s not as bad as all that.”

“Okay,” she said, wishing for a brown paper bag to hyperventilate into. “I just thought you should know that I’m...I’m...superhuman.”

Carl looked at her blankly, still holding her hand. He blinked. Once. Twice. Then he laughed; a deep, baritone laugh that was all wrong for his wiry frame. “Okay, babe. It’s okay. If you don’t want to tell me now, you can tell me some other time. There’s no pressure.”

She was dumbstruck for a second, the raw syllables of his words divorced from their meaning, bouncing off her brain. “No,” she said at last. “No, Carl, I’m serious. I have superhuman powers. I’m a reserve member of Cold Squad.”

“Come on,” he said, a little plaintively. “You’re pulling my leg!”

“Carl. I’m Solitaire.”

Carl’s hand was suddenly gone from hers. He had retreated to the opposite end of the sofa, and the electric light in his eyes was changing hue. “This isn’t funny, Rachel,” he said.

“I’m not trying to be funny, Carl. I’m trying to be honest.”

“Bullshit. Next you’re going to tell me you were kidnapped by aliens or something?”

The room swam. This was getting away from her. “Aliens are science fiction, Carl. Superhumans are real flesh and blood people. One of them is standing right in front of you.”

Carl shook his head. “I thought you were different,” he said. “I really did. I thought we had something special going here.”

“Oh for God’s sake!” she said, lifting her arms and shutting her eyes tight. She went to her dark space, to that closed room within her mind where she stored her power. She flooded it with the light of consciousness, and her living room was suddenly drowned in a blinding sheet of bright. Superheated air cracked like rifle shots around her, blowing off her outer clothing and leaving only the resistant bodysuit below. Carl cried out and shielded his eyes with his arm.

She stood before him, glowing like the North Star, the charred remains of her street clothes smoldering at her feet. “I’m Solitaire, Carl. Do you believe me now?”

His face fell. She had never understood the expression ’till that moment. His face fell. All the happiness and compassion and joy broke loose and tumbled to the floor, shattering into a million pieces. Carl fell to his hands and knees and vomited noisily onto the remnants of her blouse.

She reached for him. He shook her hand off as if it were red-hot.

“Carl...”

On rare occasions, she was open to the future. To all the possibilities of the future. That was one of her powers, more curse than blessing. This potential lifepath, so strong, so high in the probability matrix, melted away like snow on a warm spring morning. She looked briefly on the face of an unborn daughter who would stay unborn, saw her giggle and laugh, and reached for her as she dissolved like a soap bubble.

“I can’t,” he whispered.

She reached for him again; he knocked her hand away. “Don’t,” he said. “Just don’t.”

“But I’m still the same person I was five minutes ago! Nothing’s changed!”

“Everything’s changed,” he said, looking up at her, wiping his chin with his left hand. “Everything.”

And then he was gone.

And she was alone.

Again.

There weren’t many people in Montréal who could tap you on the shoulder two kilometers up and accelerating at five meters per second. Jacinthe was one of them.

“What are you doing?” she demanded, when Solitaire turned. “You’re going to run out of breathable atmosphere!”

Solitaire heard her as if from a distance, through a dull roar that a small part of her mind warned might already be a sign of oxygen deprivation. Jacinthe put her hands on Solitaire’s shoulders and exerted a counterforce to her massive acceleration.

“Slow it down,” she said in French, her mother tongue. “Let’s talk.”

“I’m tired of talking,” said Solitaire, nevertheless cutting her speed. Both women hung in space for a moment, looking down at the twinkling lights of Montréal below them, and then Solitaire suddenly went limp like a ragdoll. Gravity reasserted itself, and she fell.

“Hey!” shouted Jacinthe, rotating in midair and diving like a pearl diver after her friend. Several hundred meters down she caught her, snagging her jacket. The sleeve made ominous ripping noises, but the supertough fabric held. Solitaire hung like a dead weight in Jacinthe’s grasp, dragging both women to Earth in a surrealistic slow-motion freefall.

“Let me go, Jacinthe,” Solitaire said in a monotone. “Just let me go.”

“Cut this out, girlfriend,” Jacinthe shouted, switching to English. “You’re scaring me! At least hover, dammit! I can’t hold us both up!”

Solitaire complied, silently.

“What the hell is the matter with you? Are you out of your mind? Do you want to die?”

“I don’t know,” said Solitaire, cold and distant. “I just don’t know anymore.”

“That’s crap. I was with you when the Slipstream attacked the city. I never saw anybody fight for their own life, for life in general, so intensely. Don’t tell me you’ve suddenly decided to take the chickenshit way out!”

“It’s too much, Jacinthe. It’s just too much. I can’t do it anymore...”

Jacinthe shook her head slowly. “This is about a man, right?”

“Yes.”

“And you told him who and what you were—”

“I had to.”

“Let me guess. He shit his pants and ran.”

“No. He barfed and ran.”

Jacinthe laughed; a bitter, short laugh.

“Your mistake, chére, is expecting anything else. People like us fly or bend steel in our bare hands or survive in outer space unprotected. We kiss vacuum. That’s the price of power. That’s the price of the responsibility we bear.”

Solitaire shook her head slowly, eyes tightly shut, squeezing the tears out one by one, reluctantly. “I don’t believe that. I can’t go on believing that. Everybody needs love, even us. Especially us. I’m still a woman, Jacinthe. I never asked for this life.”

Jacinthe folded her arms in front of her. “You have to let it go. You’re Solitaire. Accept the essential truth of the name you’ve chosen. You’re alone and you will always be alone. That’s not such a terrible thing for someone who can touch the sky.”

“It is to me,” said Solitaire. “It is to me.”

It was amazing how a Holiday Inn was exactly like a Holiday Inn regardless of where you were. Even the smell was the same. For all his nose knew, Elliot Levitt could just as easily be back in Rouse’s Cove or in Montréal or in Bangladesh. Despite himself, he was a little disappointed. He didn’t know what he was expecting to find in Canada, but it sure wasn’t that generic chain-hotel disinfectant smell.

The desk clerk was clicking away violently at her keyboard. She looked up at him and he forced himself to smile. Yes, she was young, but not all that young. And, he reminded himself for the tenth time, she wasn’t one of his students. He didn’t have to feel guilty about noticing the curves of her body, or that incredible French-Canadian accent. It was weird; it wasn’t like any French he’d ever heard in his life. It probably related to Paris the way the Bronx related to Oxford, but it still drove him nuts.

“Here you are, Mr. Levitt,” she said, handing him a cardkey sealed in a small envelope. “You’re in room 317. Enjoy your stay.”

“Thanks very much… uhhh… Dominique,” Elliot replied, slipping the cardkey into his jacket pocket. He hoped she hadn’t thought he was looking down her blouse when he read her name badge. Of course, he had been, just a little. He hefted his suitcase and paused. “Can you tell me where the Palace dez Congress is?” He winced at his own accent. Grade Nine French was many years behind him, but Dominique didn’t seem to notice. She flashed him a distant professional smile and pointed towards the elevator.

“We’re connected to the Palais des Congrés through the Underground City. Just take that elevator down to the Metro level and follow the signs.”

Underground City. It sounded almost magical, like the place Dorothy visited after Oz. “We’re not in Kansas anymore Toto,” Elliot muttered to himself, automatically. “Not in Oregon either, for that matter.”

“Beg your pardon, sir?” Dominique asked.

Elliot shook his head. God, he was spaced. Why did this city have such an odd effect on him? “I was just saying that I’m in town for the teachers’ convention. Got to be there bright and early.”

Dominique nodded absently. “Yes sir, I know. I saw the special convention rate in your reservation.”

“Oh yeah. Uhh…thanks again.”

Three minutes later, Elliot unlocked his room, tossed his suitcase onto the generic Holiday Inn bed with the generic Holiday Inn floral bedspread, and took a Coke Diète from the generic Holiday Inn mini-bar. “They’ll probably charge me $8.95 for it too,” he thought, unscrewing the top and chugging it back in three gulps. “And it even tastes the same. So far you’ve been a big disappointment, Montréal.”

Elliot threw himself onto the bed. “But why should you be any different?” he muttered. He closed his eyes and felt himself drifting into a hazy, headachy post-flight doze. Ten minutes later, his eyes snapped open as someone started smashing a complete set of crystal champagne glasses right next to his ear.

What? Rewind that thought, he told himself. It was just the stupid cellphone ringing. Back at the airport he’d tucked it into the outer pocket of his suitcase without even realizing it was still turned on. He fished the phone out, littering the bed with crushed in-flight magazines and gum wrappers. He flipped the phone open and fumbled it to his ear, knocking his glasses off in the process. “Hell…hello,” he croaked.

“Elliot!” Chirped a bright, wide-awake voice. “Am I disturbing you?”

Elliot’s brain churned. It wasn’t a voice he’d expected to hear for the next few days. “Karen? Is that you?”

“Of course it’s me, silly boy. Who did you think it was?”

Someone who gives a shit, he thought. “I don’t know. What can I do for you, Karen?”

“The psych department at Fessenden is giving a lecture on ‘Superhumans in a Jungian Context’ tonight. I thought you might like to go.”

“Aside from the fact that I’m 3000 miles away in a foreign country, Karen, I don’t think I’m really up to it.”

“Oh cool! Are you on a missio—”

Elliot cut her off, too late. “I’m in Canada for that teacher’s convention. Remember? We talked about it.”

“Oh,” Karen said, obviously disappointed. “I thought you might be doing superhu—”

“Karen, I’m on a cellphone. Remember Prince Charles and the tampon conversation? God knows who’s listening in.”

“Oh. Right. Sorry.“There was a pause.

“So,” Elliot prompted.

“So,” said Karen.

“Sorry I can’t come to the lecture. Maybe another time.”

“Right,” Karen replied. “Another time.”

There was another pause.

“Karen, I’m on a roam number here. This call’s going to cost me a fortune.”

“Oh. Right. Sorry,” she repeated. “Umm, bye!”

The cellphone went dead. Elliot held it away from his face, looking at it like he’d never seen it before. He sighed, deliberately turned it off and dropped it to the nightstand.

Jacinthe and Solitaire touched down in a parking lot next to a small shoe repair shop on Monkland Avenue. The sign said Cordonnerie Fit-Right, in that west end melange of French and English. The law might say your sign had to be in French, but it didn’t say that it had to be good French. Solitaire leaned against the plate glass window and drew several shallow, rasping breaths.

“Ça va?” asked Jacinthe.

“Ask me later,” replied Solitaire. “I don’t know. But I know you’re a good friend. Thank you for being there.”

“It wasn’t totally altruistic, I’m afraid. I was looking for you. Business.”

Solitaire desperately held up her hand, palm first, like a traffic cop trying to stop a speeding truck. “Don’t tell me. Please don’t tell me.”

Jacinthe shrugged. “I’m sorry, but you’ve got to know. It’s Moëdoq. He’s back, and this time he’s made friends.”

Solitaire shivered. “Aw, shit.” She fell to her knees in the snow and covered her face with her hands.

Jacinthe’s eyes widened. “Solitaire? Are you okay?”

“No. Fuck no.” She rocked her body back and forth like a small child. “Can I cry, Jacinthe? Is a post-feminist superhuman defender of right allowed to cry like a goddamned baby?”

“I can do this myself, chére. I just wanted you to know in case he came after you. You can sit this one out, he doesn’t even have to know you’re alive.”

Solitaire looked up. “Really?”

“Really,” Jacinthe replied, not meeting her eyes.

“You’re lying.”

Jacinthe said nothing.

“Is that the kind of person you think I am? I’m supposed to let you die because I’m having a hissy fit?”

“It’s not a hissy fit, chére. I’ve only got a B.A. in psych, but it’s not too hard to see you’re in a full-blown depression. You’re Prozac meat, bébé.”

Solitaire laughed a hiccuping laugh through her tears. “Thanks.”

“I’m trying to save your life. I think facing a psychopathic superhuman…” Jacinthe made a desperate gesture with her hands “…thing, whatever he is, would be what the shrinks call ‘contra-indicated’ right now. He creeps you out under the best of circumstances.”

Still kneeling in the snow, Solitaire pulled a Kleenex from a pocket on her jacket sleeve and wiped her eyes ineffectively. “I just don’t know where to put him, Jacinthe. I’m a nice middle-class Jewish girl from Côte Saint Luc. He doesn’t fit. I don’t understand him. He turns everything I think I know about the world upside down.”

“Kind of like us,” replied Jacinthe softly, “for people like Carl.”

It was about 2 am. Elliot had eaten dinner in Montréal’s tiny Chinatown, watched half of a soft-core porn film on the hotel’s pay channel, showered, read the complementary local newspaper and marveled at all the unfamiliar names and references in the stories. He felt ill at ease, alien, and vaguely stupid because of it. This was Canada after all, not Iraq or Uzbekistan. It was only about a six-hour drive to British Columbia from where he lived, although he’d never made the trip.

But he felt lost, somehow. It looked like America; it had burgers and fries like America, hell you could even watch TV from America. But it just wasn’t America. And somehow that really disturbed him.

Elliot turned and looked at himself in the mirror. “What the hell is the matter with you?” He closed his eyes and took a few breaths. “Get a grip!” He turned the lights off and sat down on the edge of the bed. He slowed his breathing, and tried to center himself using the rough techniques he’d picked up from Wendat.

The familiar crystalware tinkling of the cellphone made him jump. “God,” he growled, “does the girl ever sleep?” He snatched the phone and put it to his ear before remembering that he’d shut it off.

You are lost, whispered something without a voice.

The cellphone flowed like quicksand. Elliot felt hard plastic morph into something vaguely reptilian, knew it was growing fangs or pincers before he even looked, and threw it against the mirror with all his strength. It impacted with a wet, organic thud. There was no sound of breaking glass, just a strobe-frozen impression of bat-like wings forming, of a huge gaping maw full of needle teeth. Elliot’s eyes flashed red, and it burst into flame with a roar that was equal parts combustion and anger.

Off balance, Elliot tumbled backwards onto the mattress. He surrendered himself to Wendat’s training, felt himself using the momentum of the fall to push himself over the other side of the bed. He fell into a defensive crouch in the tiny space between the bed and the wall, asked himself no questions, killed every stray thought in his mind mercilessly, and took in the whole room in a single strategic glance.

As far as he could tell in the gloom, nothing was out of place. Nothing was broken. Nothing was burned. He dashed for the door and yanked it open. The hallway was empty. There was no commotion. No screaming. No fire alarm.

He advanced a couple of paces down the hall. He heard the muffled voice of a French TV announcer coming from room 315, and the soft moans of lovemaking coming from the next room over. Obviously nobody had heard a thing.

He re-entered his room and searched it. He emptied his suitcase on the floor, opened all the bureau drawers, even pulled the mattress off the boxspring. Everything was as it had been before.

Except he no longer had a cellphone.

Shit! He’d been totally unprepared. He crossed the border and put it out of his mind. Everybody knew that Canada was nice and safe and boring. Nothing interesting ever happened up there.

Shit! He thought. You stupid, ethnocentric gringo. What have you walked into?

He scrabbled for the TV remote and stabbed the ON button. He flipped channels frantically, watching network logos both familiar and unfamiliar whiz past. ABC. CBC. CBS. NBC. Global. CNN.

He stopped. Bernard Shaw was rambling on about the Federal Reserve rate.

“Thanks a lot, Bernie,” he muttered, and kept flipping. Soccer. Auto races. Naked women. Bugs Bunny in French. Bugs Bunny in English.

Bingo! A local channel was airing a special report of some sort. Something was happening, but it was all going on in French. The words crise and surhumain floated to the surface. Elliot’s Grade Nine French churned slowly and spat out translations: Crisis. Superhuman.

Shit! Elliot thought again, here I thought I was getting away from all this crap. He flipped twice more until he stumbled onto another local channel running the same story, this time in English. Pulse News Special Report! screamed the byline. An attractive Asian woman was shoving a microphone at a very uncomfortable-looking police official.

“The situation is not controlled,” he said in heavily accented English. “We are urging citizens in the Plateau Mont-Royal and Mile End to stay in their homes.”

The reporter furrowed her brow in professional concern. “You’re not contemplating an evacuation?”

“Not at this time. Jacinthe and Solitaire have defeated this entity before, we are assuming they will be able to do so again. And it’s not one neighbourhood that will be safer than any other if they lose.”

Elliot blinked. Solitaire? Surely not the witch woman with red hair and long fingernails? He shivered and hoped not. And Jacinthe? Who? Who the hell knew Montréal had superheroes? Or supervillains for that matter?

“When you say entity, you mean Moëdoq?” The reporter continued.

“That’s what it calls itself, yes,” replied the cop. “It has appeared twice before. Always in Montréal, always in mid-winter. Other than that, we know almost nothing about it.”

“Is it acting alone?”

The cop shook his head. “Not this time. It seems to have a number of operatives from the Slipstream working with it, although we don’t understand their exact relationship. This is a first, we’ve never seen the Slipstream collaborate with anyone before.”

Elliot threw his hands in the air. Slipstream? What the hell was a Slipstream? He’d never heard of any of these things.

He fell back into bed. Hell with it! It was a local problem. He didn’t know the ground, he didn’t know the players, he’d probably screw everything up if he just charged in blindly.

Except.

Except something, probably this Moëdoq thing, had gone out of its way to involve him. Would it allow him to simply ignore it? Or would some other appliance grow teeth and attack him again in the middle of the night, or worse, in the middle of a huge crowd of educators tomorrow?

He watched the reporter and the police officer do their media dance, he watched the improbable cut to a commercial for a local strip club, he watched as the TV station ended its coverage of the brewing crisis and switched back to an infomercial for rechargeable batteries.

Fuck you, Moëdoq! he thought. I don’t know you, I don’t care about you. I’m going back to sleep.

They were fighting for their lives in Fletcher’s Field, a huge public park directly across the street from the main peak of Mount Royal. They had deliberately pulled the battle out of the densely populated narrow streets of the Plateau Mont-Royal into the wider expanses of the park. There were still houses and business near Fletcher’s Field, but at least they had room to maneuver and defend themselves without worrying so much about collateral damage.

For no good reason at all, Solitaire remembered that her father had lived in this neighbourhood as a child, in one of those duplexes on the corner of de l’Esplanade. Thankfully, none of them were damaged, although all the windows in the Bibliothèque nationale annex on the corner were shattered. The building had once housed the original Jewish Public Library, her father had told her. He’d spent the few happy hours of an unhappy childhood there. They won’t get near it, she promised herself.

Her hands were clasped together in front of her, fingers interlaced and enveloped by a translucent blue sphere the size of a volleyball. It looked like a computer-generated globe, complete with latitude and longitude lines. On good days, Solitaire would smile and call the sphere her ‘deathstar’. Today wasn’t a good day. Today she called the sphere nothing, thought nothing, said nothing. She floated over the scene of battle like a dark angel, her sphere spitting bolts of blue destruction in a 90 degree arc.

She didn’t miss. Not once. Every time she fired, Slipstream agents in their stupid yellow armour fell, limbs jerking spasmodically, bugs crushed by a cruel child. Solitaire wasn’t even sure all of her opponents would be getting back up when the battle was over. Today, she wasn’t sure she cared.

Out of the corner of her eye she saw Jacinthe, energy wings and talons fully extended, methodically ripping open one suit of yellow armour after another, like a worker on some hellish assembly line. Her gaze shifted, and she saw a Slipstream Mediator in green armour—an officer in their fanatic army—unlimber an ugly bazooka-thing and point it in Jacinthe’s direction.

“Attention!” Solitaire screamed in French, and thrust her clasped hands in her friend’s direction. The sphere accelerated away, trailing a blue comet’s tail back to Solitaire’s fists. The sphere expanded as it flew, encompassing Jacinthe’s entire body just as the Mediator’s weapon discharged. Whatever he fired at Jacinthe disintegrated on impact with no effect. Without slowing, Solitaire whipped her body around, yanking the sphere from Jacinthe and slamming it into the Mediator’s armoured face and chest. His mirrored faceplate spat flame and he screamed in agony.

“Tabernac!” exclaimed Jacinthe, as the sphere smoothly recoiled to Solitaire’s hands, shrinking back to its original size en route. Jacinthe leaped onto the Mediator’s convulsing form. “Stay calm!” she yelled as she projected a stiletto-thin energy talon from her right hand. She sliced the green armour open like a butcher splitting a pig, wrenched the edges of the raw metal wound open with her bare hands and pulled the Slipstream officer out.

His hands flew to his charred face. “My eyes! My EYES!” he shrieked in a horrible falsetto.

Jacinthe’s energy talon shrank to near invisibility. She stabbed at an acupuncture point on the Mediator’s neck and he folded like a puppet with its strings cut. She laid him on the ground and spun on her friend.

“Thank you for the save bébé, but get it under control. We’re the good guys, remember?”

“No,” replied Solitaire. “I don’t know what that means anymore.”

A speaker on the demolished green armour crackled to impossible life. I’m so glad to hear that, whispered something without a voice. Thank you.

Light flared, halogen bright. Spasmodically, both women covered their eyes.

When Jacinthe’s vision cleared, Solitaire was gone.

“Shit!” Elliot said for the tenth time that night, kicking off the covers and getting heavily to his feet. Who did he think he was kidding? People like him didn’t get vacations. People like him didn’t get to pick and choose when they were on and when they were off.

He flipped on the light.

“This really isn’t fair,” he muttered, unzipping his suitcase again. He emptied it on the bed, and groped for a crackly cellophane package covered in Wal-Mart stickers. The label said simply Men’s Pajamas. Size ‘M’. Elliot tore the package open with his teeth. He slept nude. He never shopped at Wal-Mart. He had no idea what a Wal-Mart pajama package looked like, if such a thing even existed.

Luckily, neither did most people. The guy at Canadian customs had held the thing in his hands without giving it a second glance. Elliot crumpled the cellophane and unfolded the cool blue cotton garment it contained. He shook it twice to take out the wrinkles, then yanked the collar button like a lanyard. With a popping sound, electrochemicals in the fibre mixed and the very consistency of the fabric changed. It grew more rigid and the colour morphed from dark blue to bright yellow and black.

Elliot pulled it on. It wasn’t quite right. The emergency backup suit didn’t have the smooth, formfitting feel of the original—the one hidden back home in Rouse’s Cove—but it would do.

He slipped on his glasses and pressed a hidden stud on the left temple. With a hiss the glasses reshaped themselves into something resembling World War II aviator goggles. Another hiss, and his head was covered with a black cowl. He looked at himself in the mirror. He straightened the shirt, making sure the stylized lowercase ‘i’ on his torso was recognizable. As if anybody would recognize him here. Everything else okay? No lettuce in his teeth? Good.

iMan rides again, he thought. Big whoop.

Now what? What would he do at home? Pump his police and media contacts for information, probably. Well, he could try. What was the name of that cop he’d seen on TV?

He turned towards the door, paused, and slapped himself in the forehead. “What an idiot!” He exclaimed, and started to undress. The electrochemical transformation was one-way only, so he’d have to sneak the uniform out of the hotel in his suitcase and find a phone booth somewhere to change in. Yeah right.

Solitaire was screaming.

That’s very irritating, whispered the voice without a voice. I wish you would stop.

Solitaire kept screaming. She was flat on her back on cold rock, wrists and ankles pinioned by something invisible. She had no idea where she was. All she had was the sound of her own voice.

I’m not doing anything, the whisper continued. At least have the decency to wait until I start torturing you.

“FUCK you!”

The voice without a voice chuckled. It sounded like aluminum foil being crushed. No one has done that in a very long time, dear.

Solitaire blinked. Information? From Moëdoq?

“You mean—”

It means what it sounds like. I was once a bag of protoplasm just like you. I took my grunting slippery pleasures just like you.

Solitaire sobbed.

Women are interesting. You are one of the most powerful beings on the planet, and yet your greatest terror at this moment is that I will rape you. The aluminum chuckle rasped again. How pedestrian.

“You’ve already raped me, you son-of-a-bitch!”

Hyperbole is not reality, my dear Rachel. To be accurate, I possessed your sister and turned her against you. That was a pretty nasty thing to do, but it doesn’t constitute rape.

“You raped my LIFE, you fucker! Sonya was the only family I had in the world, and you drove her away from me!”

Ah, ah. Hyperbole again. I just used fault lines that already existed. How often did you speak to dear, sweet Sonya before I came along?

Solitaire didn’t respond. Her breath rasped in the darkness.

Thought so.

Getting to the heart of the action turned out to be surprisingly easy. Elliot changed clothes in a Chinatown alley, stashed his suitcase in a dumpster, and stumbled right into a Montréal cop car in the parking lot at the other end of the alley. The young cop on the passenger side did a classic doubletake, his eyes bulging out of his head, his paper cup of Dunkin’ Donuts coffee splattering to the pavement.

“Câlice!” He exclaimed. “iMan, est-ce que c’est vraiment toi?”

“I’m sorry, I don’t speak French,” Elliot replied. “And E-Man is somebody else. I’m iMan.”

“Yeah, I know,” said the flustered cop, snatching his radio mic. “That’s what I said. In French, ‘i’ is ‘e’ and ‘e’ is ‘i’.

Holy shit, thought Elliot. They know who I am.

The cop launched into an incomprehensible barrage of French. The only word Elliot understood was superhero. The radio crackled and a female French voice replied. The cop replied to the reply. The voice on the radio suddenly changed, more high-speed French was exchanged, and the young cop turned back to Elliot.

“They want confirmation that it’s really you, iMan. And that you’re here to help us?”

Elliot trained his gaze on a scrap cardboard box lying at the mouth of the alleyway. “Yes, it’s really me,” iMan replied as the box flashed and imploded. “And yes, I’m here to help.”

The cop probably didn’t expect the heavy sigh that followed.

Solitaire sobbed. Tears and snot covered her face, and there was nothing she could do to wipe them away.

You’re not doing well, Rachel.

“Call me Solitaire, you disembodied piece of shit. You don’t have the right to use my real name.”

Well, that’s another interesting point, Rachel. Did you know that there is another costumed adventurer named Solitaire?

“You’re lying.”

And more, she’s had title to the name a lot longer than you have. Centuries longer. She’s a witch from a line of witches that stretches back into prehistory.

“You’re LYING!” Her voice cracked. “I’M Solitaire!”

Names are very important to people like her. Your name is power. Your name is a window to your soul. She would fight for her name, Rachel. She would probably kill for her name.

“Oh God. Oh God. Oh God.”

But names are important to everybody, dear. Not just to witches. Names help us define ourselves.

“Shut up, you bastard! Shut up!”

Would you kill for your name? Would you kill for Rachel? For Steinberg? For Solitaire?

“Stop it! Stop it! STOP IT!” she shrieked. “Please leave me something! Who I am is all I have left!”

I know the question sounds ridiculous, but people have died for their name. People have died for your name. Being a ‘Steinberg’ was a terminal condition sixty years ago, in some places.

Solitaire’s head lolled. “I can’t,” she said in dull, dead tones. “I can’t do this anymore, Moëdoq. You win. Kill me. Rape me. Blow up the whole damned island. Do what you want. I can’t stop you.”

There was no response.

“Didn’t you hear me?” Solitaire screamed. “I GIVE UP! You WIN!”

Now it’s you who’s lying, whispered the voice without a voice. I know you. You haven’t given up. You haven’t got the faintest idea how to give up.

A beautiful woman with silver hair and translucent wings was shouting into a cellphone as the police car pulled up to Fletcher’s Field. An intricate metal headpiece sat on her forehead. Her costume was jet black, with a silver emblem in the shape of a flower on her right shoulder. A long silver stem snaked from the flower across her back and down her left side to her ankle. iMan assumed this was Jacinthe, although the link between the wings and the flower imagery escaped him.

“I don’t want the goddamned Canadian army and its goddamned tinkertoy tanks! I’ll just have to protect them too! Can’t you put me in touch with Cold Squad?”

iMan cautiously got out of the police car and waited patiently for Jacinthe to finish her call. On closer inspection he realized her wings weren’t made of solid matter. Their shape was artificial, like a sort of airfoil, but they shimmered and wavered like the images in a kaleidoscope.

Jacinthe’s gaze fell on him and her eyes widened. She held up a finger to indicate that she’d just be a minute. iMan smiled and nodded. This was a far cry from the days when superheroes invariably started pounding one another the first time they met, if you believed the stories. That was all probably urban myth anyhow.

“What do you mean you don’t know where they are? How many bloody superhero teams does this country have that you can afford to lose one?” Jacinthe nodded irritably. “I know it’s not your fault. I understand. Yes. I’m just upset because Solitaire is…yes I know. Anyhow, it looks like I may have some help here after all, so I’ll let you go.” Jacinthe stabbed the phone’s off button and tossed it to a nearby cop. “Merci!”

“De rien,” said the cop.

Jacinthe spun and looked straight into iMan’s eyes. “Please tell me you’re really who you appear to be,” she said.

“I am he, in the flesh,” Elliot replied, with a bow.

Jacinthe sighed. “Thank God. I don’t know why you’re in Montréal, iMan, and I’m not going to ask any questions. I just need all the help I can get right now.”

iMan threw up his hands in confusion. “I’m afraid you have me at a bit of a disadvantage, Jaysinth,” he said.

“dja-senth,” she corrected, giving it the correct French spin.

“Jaysinth,” he repeated in English, helplessly. “I have no idea who you are or what’s going on here, but I think your buddy Moëdoq gave me a wake-up call earlier this evening.”

“Something inanimate grew teeth and tried to eat you?”

iMan nodded.

“It was Moëdoq,” she sighed. “I am so damn tired of his psychotic mindgames. Just once I wish we could beat them and they’d stay beaten.”

“I’m sure they feel the same way about us.”

Jacinthe shook her head. “I know what you’re saying, but Moëdoq’s different. We’re not talking about some stupid punk with laser eyes—”

“Just for the record,” iMan interrupted with a grin, “my eyes emit graviometric pulses, not lasers.”

Jacinthe sighed again. “iMan, you seem like a nice guy, but my friend’s been abducted by a psychotic immortal entity who kills for pleasure. I just don’t have a sense of humour right now.”

“Sorry,” said iMan.

“You’ve never heard of Moëdoq? He caused a bloodbath during the 1998 ice storm.”

“Sorry,” he repeated.

Jacinthe shook her head. “You know, Québec could just disappear off the map and CNN would bump the story if Monica Lewinsky bought a new bra that day.”

“Yes, we’re ignorant ugly Americans. Shall we get back to the business at hand?”

“Oui. T’as raison. Sorry. I’m stressed. It’s usually the anglos who get all shrill and anti-American.”

French-Canadians liked America better than the English-Canadians did? The same French-Canadians who wanted to separate from Canada because it was too English? iMan waved his hand in an erasing gesture. He would never figure this country out. “As the computer geeks say, let’s just Alt Control Delete. What do we know about this Moëdoq thing?”

Jacinthe shrugged. “Not much. He manifests every few years, always within a month or so of the winter solstice, always on the island of Montréal.” She paused. “And always at the price of innocent lives.”

“What does he look like?”

“Whatever he wants to. I have no evidence that he’s really a HE, except a gut sense that his energy is masculine. When he manifests, it’s usually as a disembodied energy thing; like something from Star Trek. Although he once…” She paused.

“Yes,” prompted iMan.

“Forget it. It’s not my place to say. Solitaire can tell you the story when we find her.”

“Now you’re talking,” said iMan, “but I’m going to need a lot more background. Who are these Slipstream idiots, for one?”

Solitaire’s pupils were dilated saucer wide. She still couldn’t see anything in the pitch blackness. “What are you talking about?”

Do you think you’re the first of your kind I’ve ever faced? Do you think this ridiculous era of costumes and masks invented heroes?

Solitaire just shook her head. Inarticulate noises came from her throat.

His name doesn’t even translate. He was the shaman of a people who were the ancestors of the ancestors of the Algonquians. They lived on this island centuries before the name Hochelaga came to someone in a dream, millennia before someone else decided that this was a royal mountain belonging to a foreign king across the sea.

Solitaire’s eyes snapped open in shock. “This? Are you saying that we’re inside Mount Royal?”

I was a scourge on his people and on all the peoples of the east. I ruined their hunts. I stole their children. I violated their women and unmanned their men. Tralalala! Because I could. Because I wanted to.

Solitaire was no longer sobbing. She was listening.

Until he defeated me, using powers and abilities beyond those of mortal men. Haha! I’ve always wanted to say that. He stripped me from my flesh, discarded my body like it was so much meat, and bound my soul to the heart of this miserable hillock, this extinct baby volcano that was never much of anything even when the lava flowed.

“Except,” said Solitaire.

Except that it is the heart of power, this little royal mountain. Said Moëdoq. Where do you think your power comes from? And why do you think it fades when you leave Montréal?

Solitaire gasped.

Did you think I didn’t know? Did you think your little phobia was a secret? Moëdoq chuckled again. You haven’t left the island of Montréal in twelve years. Not even to go to the suburbs. You were afraid of being powerless. Afraid of meeting me in the night with no way to defend yourself.

“You think very highly of yourself, Moëdoq.”

He continued as if she hadn’t spoken. The irony is, off this island I don’t even exist. I’m a myth. A campfire tale. A light breeze from the north.

“My powers come from an accident at the McGill quantum mechanics lab,” Solitaire insisted. “The artificial singularity—”

Moëdoq made an irritated noise. Do you mistake the plug in the wall for the hydro-electric dam? Accidents are just conduits. The source is the heart of power. You tap it and I am chained to it. We are both bound to it, and one to the other.

“I don’t believe you,” said Solitaire.

Believe what lets you sleep at night, replied Moëdoq. Not that you sleep very much. I wanted to thank you, though. Your tapping of the heart of power allows me to worm my way free every now and then. The shaman’s binding naturally strengthens at the summer solstice and weakens in winter. You weaken it just that infinitesimal touch more—

“Oh no you don’t,” hissed Solitaire. “Don’t you dare blame me for your crimes.”

Moëdoq giggled. Did Picasso blame the paintmaker? My art is my own. I share credit with no one.

“Art?” whispered Solitaire. “Hundreds of brutal murders.”

Let’s not exaggerate. One hundred and sixty-seven, give or take. At least in your era.

Solitaire closed her eyes. “Is there a point to all this, Moëdoq?”

Well, yes, whispered the voice without a voice. I guess it’s now or never…

Solitaire steeled herself for agony or death. She waited for her life to flash before her eyes. It stubbornly refused. Oh well. It hadn’t been that wonderful on the first go-round.

I love you.

Solitaire burst out laughing. She laughed hysterically for almost a full minute, stopping only when she choked and started coughing.

You don’t have to be insulting about it.

“You…you…” she started coughing again, “love me?”

I’ll admit, it’s a stretch. You’re Jewish, I’m disembodied. I doubt your parents would have approved.

Solitaire started laughing again. “Well, at least you have a sense of humour. Women like that in a man.”

If you think I’m joking, you’re mistaken, whispered the voice. I have never been more serious in 3000 years.

Solitaire shook her head in stunned silence. “This has been an interesting life,” she finally muttered. “The only person who’ll admit to loving me is a psychopathic, murdering ghost.”

Oh, get over yourself! whispered Moëdoq. You’re not going to die today. Would I have gone to all this trouble and humiliation just to kill you now? Actually…

The cold stone under Solitaire’s back suddenly lurched and bucked. The force binding her left wrist gave with an audible snap as the entire space that surrounded her was rocked by an explosion.

…it’s me who will die.

Solitaire saw a dot of dull red in the absolute blackness that surrounded her. The dot expanded and grew brighter than a star. By the light it cast, Solitaire could finally see that she was in a natural rock vault of some sort. The white spot was in the far wall of the vault, perhaps fifteen feet away. Molten volcanic rock, solid matter for ten thousand years, flowed like water.

“What are you talking about?” she demanded.

Wait, whispered the voice. No sense wasting exposition.

The rock wall blew inward in a spray of lava. A glob of molten material landed on Solitaire’s jacket, where it lay spitting, expending its energy on the heat-resistant fabric.

Jacinthe floated through a new breach in the wall, her face a study in fury, energy wings glowing at maximum power. Another costumed figure followed her on foot, walking gingerly on the superheated cavern floor. He was stocky, youngish looking in a yellow and black outfit. Aviator goggles covered his eyes, and power glowed behind their mirrored lenses.

“iMan?” Solitaire said in surprise.

“You’re not the Solitaire I know,” he replied, “but glad to meet you anyhow.”

See? whispered the voice without a voice.

“Shut up,” said Solitaire.

Jacinthe blinked in stunned surprise. “Umm, what’s going on here?”

“Reader’s Digest version,” said Solitaire, “he loves me, and he’s going to die.”

You make it sound so banal when you say it that way, complained Moëdoq. Where’s the drama? The pathos?

iMan leaned against a rock and crossed his arms. “Okay, it’s official. Canadians are the weirdest people I’ve ever met.”

Solitaire rolled to the right, twining her free left hand with her still-pinioned right. Blue energy flared, and her right arm came free with a pop.

All you had to do was ask, said the whisper. The force pinioning her legs gave way suddenly, and she fell to the ground with a thud and a groan. iMan rushed over and helped her to her feet.

“When did this become a comedy?” Jacinthe asked no one in particular.

As Lenny Bruce said… began the whisper.

“Dying is easy, comedy is hard,” chorused the three superheroes.

My last day on Earth and they’re stepping on all my lines.

iMan grinned. “I like your local supervillains. They’re funny. The variety back in Rouse’s Cove tend to carry big guns and grimace a lot.”

Jacinthe made an irritated shushing gesture. “What do you mean your last day on Earth? I thought you were immortal.”

I am, he replied, as long as I choose to be. I no longer choose to be. Kill me, please.

Stunned silence filled the rock chamber deep inside Mount Royal.

Was the request too complicated for you? Shall I use shorter words?

“But we don’t—” spluttered iMan.

Yes, yes, you respect all life. You wouldn’t step on a ladybug. Blah blah blah. I know. I know. Rationalize it this way: By all rights I should have died thirty centuries ago.

The whisper paused.

I’m tired. I’m tired of this mountain. I’m tired of being chained to the solstice. I’m tired of being the boogieman. I’m tired of death.

A sound like a strangled sob echoed through the cavern. Kill me. I’m begging you.

The three superheroes exchanged glances.

You’ll forgive the cliché, but stop me before I kill again, Moëdoq sighed. Because I will, you know. Eventually.

A glowing white shape coalesced out of the darkness; an amoebae carved from fluorescent light. Here, I’ll make it easy for you! A thick black X appeared at the centre of the white undulating mass. A black arrow emerged from the light, pointing directly at the X. Cartoony type appeared, flashing like a sign at a carnival arcade. Hit the X, and win a prize! it read.

“How do we know—”

That this isn’t a trick? You don’t. But it’s the only chance you’ll have to get rid of me, once and for all. Take it.

The superheroes exchanged glances again.

Rachel, I had no choice but to love you.

Jacinthe glanced nervously at iMan at the mention of her friend’s real name. He raised his fingers to his lips and mimed turning a key. Jacinthe nodded, satisfied.

You’re the only being I’ve had any contact with in 28 centuries. I know you better than anyone else alive. I didn’t realize it at first. I just reverted to type when you first freed me, but then…I understood.

“I don’t know what to say,” said Solitaire.

I don’t expect you to say anything. I understand what I am very well. What I am hasn’t changed. You can’t love me any more than I can not love you. But I feel I owe you something. A gift, if you will.

“Your death.”

So you may sleep at night. So you may escape the prison you have built for yourself. I’ve had 3000 years. I have no regrets. You’re a mayfly. Your years are too short to live them alone, in terror.

Solitaire swallowed heavily.

But don’t for a moment believe that I am your only problem. You are your own worst enemy, Rachel. You aren’t Solitaire. That’s the antithesis of who you are. You were listening to me whispering in the dark. You heard my aloneness and took it for your own.

Solitaire began crying again, softly. Even iMan sniffled and wiped at his nose.

I am death. You are life, and you must start acting that way.

iMan cleared his throat. “Excuse me,” he began.

Just a minute, I’m talking, whispered Moëdoq.

“Sorry,” said iMan.

There you go, apologizing again.

“Excuse me?”

I’ve watched you too. Not for long, but long enough. For such a powerful man, you sure let yourself get pushed around.

iMan blinked in surprise. “You know, people usually go to shrinks for analysis. My HMO doesn’t cover therapy by psychotic, immortal supervillains.”

Fine, whispered the voice. Kill the messenger. Mask your pain with quips. Go back to your pathetic little groupie and hate yourself.

“Groupie?” said Jacinthe, giving iMan a sidelong glance.

“It’s a long story,” he stammered. “One of my enemies kidnapped a young woman, a former student of mine. I saved her, but she found out my real identity in the process, and now she’s, I guess, obsessed with me. Or with the costume. I don’t know.”

Why are you explaining, asked the whisper. Why are you justifying yourself to a someone you barely know?

“Shut up!” iMan snapped. “I’m getting very tired of you.”

And you’ve only known me for two hours. Imagine how I feel after thirty centuries.

“No thanks.”

It’s okay. One last thing and I’ll be out of your hair forever.

There was another pause.

Imagine that. I’m at a loss for words. That’s a first. I just…for once I don’t want to be the boogieman. For once I don’t want to be about death. I want to rejoin the Great Circle. I want to give you life from death.

“What do you mean?” asked Solitaire in a whisper.

In your culture, I think they call it bashert.

Solitaire and iMan both started at the sound of the word.

Jacinthe shook her head in confusion. “What’s bashert? What language is that?”

“It’s Hebrew,” answered iMan. “It means ‘fate’.”

Or ‘fated one’, whispered the voice without a voice. Your fated, one true love.

Solitaire and iMan stared at one another in shock. “Are you saying—?”

You would never have met one another. You would have lived out your allotted years as half-people, knowing something was out there that you could never quite grasp. You would never have found love. You would never have found completion.

“Don’t listen to him,” shouted Jacinthe. “It’s some kind of trick! It’s a trap!”

The only trap, whispered the voice, is the one you have built for yourself, Jacinthe. A prison built out of cynicism and bitterness. You are beyond help.

“Go to hell,” said Jacinthe.

Probably will, replied the whisper. Speaking of which…

Solitaire swooned. The rock cavern swirled around her and she felt the future’s breath on her cheek. She saw a house, a nice little brick house on Notre Dame de Grace Avenue. She felt her husband’s weight on her naked body. She heard his moans of pleasure and joy, and her own. She saw the sons and daughters who were the product of their union. She reached for them, and they reached back.

“What?” Demanded iMan. “What is it?”

“It’s the future,” whispered Solitaire. “Our future. The matrix is stable, Elliot. I see it! I see it!”

“Elliot? How did you—?”

Interesting word, ‘matrix,’ whispered the voice without a voice. It means ‘that within which something is created’. Most obviously a womb, of course. The source of life. Think about it, Rachel.

She looked up. “I will, Moëdoq. I don’t forgive you for your crimes, but I thank you.”

I don’t ask for forgiveness. Just an end.

The three superheroes looked at each other again and nodded. Without another word, they turned and unleashed their terrible power on the X at the center of Moëdoq’s shimmering form. The voice without a voice screamed in pain and joy, in death and in freedom. Pieces started to break off from the central mass and Moëdoq’s light began to fade.

His whisper was barely audible. You know, it could be argued that there’s no joy in defeating a depressed enemy. What is vengeance if your opponent wants to die? So much better to give them something to live for first.

The three heroes halted their barrage and stared in horror.

Just kidding, said Moëdoq in the full, rich timbre of a man’s voice. And then he died.