by Kristogar Velo
Last night:
Marv Velo let out a sigh of relief as he strolled toward the unconscious heap, the thin line of snow crunching underneath his feet. He noticed for the first time this night how unusually empty the city street was, devoid of the usual night life. As he crouched down to examine the corpse, he collapsed to one side of his body.
"My fucking knee!" he wanted to exclaim, but gritted his teeth and let out only a loud groan. He touched his now vanquished foe. You took much more than I should've had, he thought to his adversary. The alleged man had a dozen darts punctured into his body, each filled with various forms of knockout drugs. It wasn't until Velo was able to move in close and give him a straight injection of air that he finally ceased, only after experiencing a violent backlash that jetted him over a block away.
Velo grabbed the man's head and reached into the black eyes that were giving him an obsidian, zombie-like stare. They weren't contacts as he had hoped -- they were actually his eyeballs. Velo reached into his costume and produced a syringe. "Just for evidence, mind you," he told the man who could no longer hear him. "Don't take this as me being a prick." He poked the end of the needle into the skin, but when he tried to draw blood the glass shattered. "The hell...?" he asked, annoyed. He took out a second syringe but once again got nothing. "Twice is a coincidence, thrice is a pattern." Velo remembered an old cliche. A third syringe met the same fate.
Velo took out a communicator with a headset. "Ron? Me. I have a pickup for you at..." He looked around. Where the hell am I? he thought. After finding a sign with the street's name on it, he continued. "Meeting spot. Chicago. See if you can draw blood from this guy. Unconscious, but take every precaution. Every precaution." He disconnected before even receiving a response.
This morning:
Velo got an early copy of every single newspaper in the Chicago area and was skimming through them all. It was most of the usual until he came across a column about the circus buried deep in the Chicago Tribune where the writers half-assed their assignments, and only those with time on their hands ever read.
"The show was easily stolen by a late group of misfits. Despite being raw and mischoreographed on occasion, the Amazing Sardella Brothers lived up to their moniker and then some with some truly eye-popping special effects. In fact, if it wasn't for their painfully obvious inexperience, one would initially perceive them as renegade metahumans."
"Wow, sometimes this is just too easy," Velo muttered, and smiled to himself. "The circus is on the other side of town. I'll have to reload, then I'll put in my token cameo." And Marv Velo was off.