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As he stood in Amy’s office in Magus International’s New Salem headquarters, Robert’s face grew more grim than usual. “I’ve had problems with my night work. It’s been a distraction, but I promise to get back to the company as soon as possible.”

“You’re not staying! I have a stack of papers a mile high for you!”

Robert shook his head. “I only stopped in to use the computer systems and check my supplies. I have a rendezvous I need to complete before the afternoon is through.”

Amy kept her anger in check. She reminded herself that she knew ahead of time what it meant to work for this man. She made the agreement to assist him in both identities, but that didn’t mean it didn’t still irk her to be pushed aside like this.

“I need you back in this office next Monday,” she said. “I can’t put it off any longer than that. People will start getting suspicious if you don’t show up.”

Robert nodded. “I’ll be here. I promise.”

A knock came at the door. A light-skinned African American teenager poked his head in. “You ready?”

Robert turned to Amy. “Amy, I don’t think you’ve met Andre yet? Amy Evans, Andre Lincoln. Andre, Amy.”

“Yo.”

Robert glared at Andre. “We need to work on your respect issues.”

“Whatever, gramps.” Andre smirked at Amy. “But you can work on me any time, baby.”

Amy rolled her eyes as Robert grabbed Andre by the collar. He dragged the smiling boy from the room. She sunk back down in to her Aeron chair and took a deep breath. She reached for the intercom on her desk and buzzed her personal assistant Franco.

He answered in his unique French-British accent. “Yes, Ms. Evans?”

“I need the activities chart for New Salem as soon as it’s delivered. I think I may need to personally look in to a few things in it.”

“Yes, Ms. Evans. I’ll have it sent up as soon as it arrives.”

“Thank you, Franco. You’re a doll.”

She leaned back in the Aeron and rubbed her hands together. She felt the sparks of energy connect and disconnect as her hands met and separated. And it felt good, oh so good.

She couldn’t help but grin as she sat back and waited.

*****

I ran through narrow concrete tunnels filled with sewage and slime. An army of men trampled the ground behind me. I’m not sure where I am. I don’t know how I came to be in this place. They wanted me dead. I knew there was no escape.

I turned the corner of the underground tunnel desperate to find safety. I slammed head-long in to a cement wall. I turned and I felt the blood rise in my veins. The men closed in. As they approached, I could see that each held a bladed weapon. I counted a dozen men around me, but more still loomed in the shadows. Rage boiled inside me.

The rage built and boiled up inside me. I am tired of being hunted. I am tired of being forced in to situations like this one. The anger and the rage build to the point of total fury.

I lashed out at the attackers. With my bare hands, I literally tore in to them. I rended limbs from bodies with only the slightest movement. Blood flew through the air. It coated my skin. The smell enticed me. It made me crave more. I howl in an ecstasy of violence and bloodshed.

Everything turns red as the killing continues.

*****

The ferry’s horn brought Robert out of his rumination. A quick Google search gave Robert the location of Metro Station Storage. It sat directly on the docks on the other side of Lake Doom, in the city of Valhalla. A ferry ride across the dark lake brought Andre and him in to view of a city as bright and sunshiny as New Salem was shadowed.

The former home of the first crime-fighting metahuman Hero, the city still existed as a bright light for the future of the United States. The city regularly employed technology ten to twenty years in advance to that of the rest of the country, all produced for them by a collective of scientists on the north city of the city. Even a decade after Hero’s last appearance, the city still remained the lowest rated city in regards to murder and violent crime in the country. It seemed almost like paradise to the common observer.

The city still turned Robert’s stomach. For sixty years a criminal underworld festered beneath the shiny surface of the city. He could remember warning Hero of it on multiple occasions, but the headstrong superhuman never paid him heed. He always insisted that Valhalla was his to protect. He quickly shooed others out of the city and only allowed Vengeance in on cases of the utmost necessity.

Now Valhalla’s protector was gone. Robert could feel the itch to go in to action here. He knew the city needed him.

“You okay, Bobby?”

Robert glared at Andre. “I’m fine, just thinking.”

“You ain’t going all flashy and stuff again are you?” The ferry rang its horn repeatedly as it moved in to the dock.

“No. Really, I’m fine. Let’s just find this Metro Station Storage.”

“It should be right off the boat,” Andre said. He held up an iPhone with a map of the city displayed. “Looks like the place is right by the ferry dock. They probably do most of their business daily. People leaving their stuff there before heading across to New Salem to work.”

“Good thinking, Andre. You may have this sidekick thing down in another couple years.”

“Partner,” Andre said. “Call me sidekick again and I’ll sidekick you right in the kidney. You get me?”

Robert made no acknowledgement of Andre’s words. He pushed his way through the throng of disembarking passengers. Within a few seconds, he was past the gate and walking across the street.

The exterior façade of Metro Station Storage was white at one point in time, but dirt and decay now left the building a dingy gray. The doors and windows were both covered by heavy iron bars. Robert surmised that the level of crime on the docks was already on the rise.

He entered the building with no trouble. Inside, he found walls lined with safe-deposit style boxes of various shapes and sizes. He pulled the key from his pocket, checked the number on its tag, and went in search of the corresponding box.

He found it in only a few seconds alongside the near wall. It was one of the smaller size units, only about a foot wide and four inches high. He inserted the key and turned it in the lock.

With a click the box slid out of its recess. Robert opened the inside lid. Inside he found a sealed envelope.

Andre arrived at his side as he ripped open the envelope. He pulled the note out inside.

“To whomever reads this:

My name is Kenji Yamamoto. I have spent my entire life working as the criminal known as the Dapper Gentleman. I started my career with the best of intentions. I wanted to defend the rights of the maligned Japanese American citizen from attack or internment. But my criminal enterprises ran long past the events of World War II. I became something I never wished to be, all because of the actions of a man known as St. Germain.

I don’t pretend to know his origins or how he started his world-spanning collection of criminal enterprises. I only know he is very old and as tricky as the devil himself. I made a deal with him to free my family from internment in the final days of the war. He did as I asked and hid them in one of his many camps in South America. In exchange for the chance to see them, I gave him a life-time of servitude.

If I was lucky, I was allowed one visit a year. As I said, the man is the devil himself.

I have not had contact with St. Germain for over a year. His daughter, an Asian woman known as the Countess has been my only contact. I suspect that St. Germain may actually be dead. But I cannot know for sure.

If someone is reading this, I have most certainly ended my long, miserable life. And I pray this information has found its way in to the hands of the authorities. If not, I fear what the Countess will do to my son and granddaughters as a result of my failure.

I beg of whoever reads this note, help me.”

A string of longitude and latitude coordinates followed the last words of the note. Robert quickly memorized them. He handed the note over to Andre.

Andre took a moment to read it. “What’s the plan? We going to wherever this is?”

“It’s the Amazon rain forest in Brazil, about fifty miles north of the Bolivian border. Not too far from the city of Rio Branco.”

“How can you—?”

Robert tapped his forehead. “After so many years at this job, the knowledge either sticks with you or fades away. In my case the knowledge is still all there, even if the memories aren’t in the best shape.”

“So are you saying we’re going to Brazil?”

“Pack your bags, kid. It’s time for a little sight-seeing.”

*****

The catacombs beneath New Salem stretched literally for miles. All sorts of vermin lurked in the mildew-filled air and the sludge covered walkways. Few traveled in to the tunnels. None of which bothered the Ratman.

Though human in appearance, the Ratman scurried down the tunnel on all fours. His nose twitched as he frantically looked from wall to wall for any sign of danger. He nibbled a piece of a stale Twinkie, discovered over half an hour, with his large buck teeth. His head shot up as he felt a disturbance in the water and sewage at his feet.

Someone was here. He could feel it. Something big; big as him at least.

Ratman reached out with his mind. He felt the comforting presence of the other rodents that raced through these tunnels. He called his brothers to him. He begged for their protection. He was one of them. They came in the thousands.

“Whoever you are, come out now. Come out or my friends will eat your flesh!”

No one responded. The rats scurried around Ratman’s bare feet. He felt the comforting touch of their little toes brush against his skin. A few nibbled at the muck between his toes as all searched for the source of his consternation.

Ratman stepped forward in to the darkness. His nightvision was good, but even he couldn’t pierce the utter darkness before them. It was darker than dark. It radiated something unearthly, maybe even unholy. Ratman shuddered at its presence.

He took another step closer.

With a flash, the burning stare of two glowing red eyes shot through the dark. Ratman startled. He fell backwards and landed sharply on his posterior. The rats around him scurried towards the walls.

He called out to them again, but they didn’t answer. The red eyes loomed larger. Ratman struggled to make his brothers listen, but the rats only scurried in the distance.

“They will not come.” The voice of the red eyes spoke with a hint of a foreign accent, perhaps German or Russian. Ratman could only stand in awe as he emerged from the shadows.

The red eyes locked their gaze on Ratman. Ratman could not help but stare back in to them. And he couldn’t look away.

Ratman felt the red eyes call to him, ask him to stop moving, to stay and accept his fate. Despite his rat-like need to hide in shadows, Ratman found the command easy to obey. He stood crouched in the sewers and watched the red eyed man gaze down on him.

He never felt the pierce of the darts strike him in the back.

The red eyed man stepped back in to the shadows. “Take him to be held with the others.”

The commandos emerged from behind the Ratman. One man grabbed a hold of an armpit while the other lifted his other side. With Ratman in their grasp, they turned and went back down the tunnels.

The red eyed man smiled in the darkness. His sharpened white canines glinted in what little light remained in the tunnel.