The Riddle of the Puzzler, Part 2
The Riddle of the Puzzler, Part 2
What does that big cube do?
Welcome to Olympus City, where super-powers, physics-defying tech, and unearthly creatures are all possible now. Human nature, however, remains unchanged.
No one is born a perfect superhero, but a few strive to live up to the ideal anyway.
Previously: Evelyn was supposed to meet with a new colleague, but an old colleague showed up instead and threatened her with an unusual puzzle piece.
Part 2
Evelyn awoke to a loud, echoing smack. She wasn’t smacked, though. She was tied to a plastic chair, bound at the wrists and ankles. Bart Bloman was smacking someone else, another man, one who could almost have been his twin if not for a few extra years’ worth of wear and tear.
Bart now wore a gaudy jigsaw-themed suit. A costume. And it was most certainly not a superhero costume.
“You going to shut up now?” he told the other man.
“Okay, okay. Just—”
Bart raised his hand, and the other man shut up and sat down in front of a laptop computer, shoulders slumping.
They were in a workshop of some sort, and in a basement, judging by the short, high windows. Half-baked science projects and ambiguous contraptions abounded, all shoved and piled against the walls, except one—a transparent box composed of some unknown alloy, large enough for the average adult to stand or lie down within. Its faces were all divided into nine windows of mismatched colors, like a giant unsolvable cube puzzle, and a single fat cable ran from the bottom into a narrow console, from which a prominent lever jutted out.
The cube had no obvious function at first glance. Then Evelyn remembered the puzzle pieces and Bart’s assertion that they were Ollie.
She jerked her arms against the rope, tried to wriggle free, but the knots were too strong and too tight.
“Ah, good,” Bart said, clasping his hands. “I’d much rather you be awake and alert when we do this.”
“When—when we do what?”
But she already understood the basic idea. If he could transform Ollie into a puzzle, he could—and would—do the same to her.
Oh, God. He’s going to kill me.
Bart had said the transformation was reversible, though. But who would reverse it? Not him. His broad grin convulsed in silent laughter as he watched Evelyn piece her fate together.
“Yes. I think you’ve got it,” he said. “Ollie went into that cube, and you’ve seen what’s become of him. Your turn.”
Evelyn saw her name going up on the monument at Olympus City Memorial Park, immortalized against stark obsidian, her previous survival a mere stay of execution.
Maybe it’s only fair.
She tried to imagine it. Being ripped apart. Transformed into thousands of tiny inanimate objects. Reduced to a jigsaw puzzle.
No. No … “We didn’t get you fired!” she snapped. “You want someone to blame, blame yourself!”
Bart shook his head, face tightening into a sneer. “Don’t act like I’m bitter about getting fired from some lousy job or losing some meager salary. No. It was not a job. I founded that whole organization. I created the Aeschylus Theatre from nothing. It’s my home, it’s my baby, and you all stole it. A crime that egregious demands consequences.”
He seemed like an entirely different man, like the costume had swallowed him and he lost himself within this supervillain role. But Evelyn suspected it was actually the other way around, that the costume and bizarre technology provided an outlet for the real H. Bartholomew Bloman, whom she was now meeting for the first time.
“This isn’t going to change anything,” she said. “If you kill Ollie, me, the whole board, then you really will destroy your theater. You’re destroying your own legacy.”
A quavering voice arose from the other man. “She has a point, Bart.”
Bart raised his hand. “What did I say?”
“Puzzler,” he squeaked out. “Sorry … Puzzler.”
Bart turned back to Evelyn, a creepy smile etched across his face as he indicated his costume with a small flourish. “When in Olympus …” He pointed at the other man. “That’s my brother Doyle. He’s actually kind of brilliant.”
Doyle slumped further.
Bart continued, “After Fantastic Man showed up, Doyle became obsessed with giving himself powers.” He indicated the abandoned projects all around them. “Whatever rules of reality bent for Fantastic Man wouldn’t bend for my poor brother … until …”
He patted the side of the cube. Doyle, however, looked away.
The brother still has a conscience, Evelyn noticed, and an ember of hope brightened. “Are you okay with him using your invention like this?”
“Uh-uh,” Bart said, blocking the line of sight between them. “You talk to me, not him. He’s just the tech guy. He wanted to throw away the whole thing,” he added, frustration evident, “but I persuaded him.”
“Doyle, it’s your invention,” Evelyn called out. “Yours!”
Bart smacked her. “The Aeschylus Theatre was mine!”
Face stinging, composure eroding, Evelyn saw death coming. Death by … there wasn’t even a word for changing people into puzzles. No word to describe her imminent fate.
Doyle raised a hand to his own reddened cheek, and he sat straighter. Evelyn thought it might be his conscience attempting to prop him up, but it wasn’t strong enough on its own. He required additional motivation.
Evelyn had a terrible idea and no time to wait for a better one. Fingernails digging into her own hands, she looked at Bart and blurted out the words.
“It’s not your theater anymore,” she said, wincing in advance.
Bart drove his fist into her stomach, expelling the air from her lungs. Tears welled up as Evelyn took one painful breath after another.
Doyle rose from his seat. “No.” It was hardly more than a whisper.
“What are you doing?” Bart asked, each word a threat.
After another moment’s hesitation, the brother marched over to the cube, knelt beside the cable, and wrapped a hand around it.
“Don’t do that, Doyle.”
“This isn’t right,” he said.
Rubbing the bridge of his nose, Bart sighed. “Okay, fine. You’ve convinced me.”
Doyle paused, grip loosening. “I have?”
Bart reached into his suit jacket, whipped out a handgun, and aimed it at Doyle. “Yes, you’ve convinced me that Evelyn needs a demonstration. Get in the cube.”
The brother stared at the small pistol, then the cube—the machine he understood intimately. And he froze. “But—”
“Get in the cube or get a bullet.”
Both hands sprang up in surrender. “Okay, okay. But it’s just a demonstration, right? You’ll change me back?”
“If you stop delaying, yes. Get in the cube.”
Doyle pulled one of the vertical faces down and stepped inside the cube, like a man placing his neck beneath a guillotine. As Bart slammed the cube shut, Doyle jumped, banging his head against the top.
“Your own brother,” Evelyn pleaded. “Don’t do this. Don’t become this person.”
“Become? I’ve been waiting forty years to do this.” Bart cocked his head, studying the cube. “Well, maybe not this exactly.”
Doyle winced as though he were expecting to receive an especially sharp shot.
Bart pulled the lever. The tinted panes rotated up and down, back and forth, as rainbow energy coursed through his brother. Evelyn averted her eyes as the cube emitted a blinding flash.
The machine came to a complete stop, and inside were thousands of puzzle pieces, each a piece of Doyle Bloman. A person one minute, a puzzle the next.
Bart opened the cube and examined the mixed-up pile of pieces. And he laughed.
“You monster,” Evelyn said through clenched teeth.
“It’s a new world.” Bart grabbed fistfuls of puzzle pieces and dumped them on the floor outside the cube. “Or an old world in a new way. Might makes right, darling. Doyle was too stupid to realize what he had. I’m not.” He strode toward her. “After I spread your pieces around all the theaters in the city, people will think twice about treating anyone the way you all treated me.”
“Please—please don’t do this,” Evelyn said. “We can talk—”
“Didn’t have much interest in talking before I had a cube that could empuzzle people, did you? Proving my point.”
Bart yanked her to her feet, pressed the gun to her back, and pushed her toward the cube, too aggressively for her bound ankles. She plunged to the floor, crashing onto pieces of Doyle. She wanted to apologize. Could he feel or hear anything? She’d find out soon.
“Get in,” Bart said. “Crawl if you have to.”
Oh, God. This is it. She took a breath, reminding herself to maintain some dignity. Others never had that chance, never had any warning whatsoever—certainly not the seven people who died because they happened to be home the night zombie unicorns blasted their apartment building. Was I spared just for … this?
An explosive bam drew her eyes across the basement, to the main door—the door that now lay scattered across the floor, the thick wood broken into several pieces.
Ultra Woman stepped through, shaking out her fist, smiling like a neighbor who had stopped by for a friendly chat.
“Hi. The door was locked, so I broke in.”