PETER DAVID

THE ARCHETYPE

HE IS FEELING BORED AND restless. That familiar distant burning that always
accompanies extended inactivity begins to gather in His temples.

Then, reflexively, He grips the steering wheel of His cab more tightly as He
spots it: A woman, minding her own business, wrestling with a purse snatcher.
The thief's grabbed her bag, trying to run, but she refuses to let go, being
dragged nearly half a block. Frustrated, the thief pulls out a cobalt blue
magnum and aims it squarely between her eyes. There is a flash of incredulity;
clearly she doesn't believe it is happening.

The bullet explodes from the gun at the same moment He erupts from the cab
twenty feet away. But His mind is already ahead of Him, snaring the bullet
barely two inches from her startled face. One of His hyper steps carries Him
half the distance, a second covers the remaining span. The purse snatcher barely
has time to look into a face that is covered by a familiar black domino mask,
eyes glittering with confidence. And then a rock-hard fist, aided by a TK push,
takes him down.

The Masked Man stands over him a moment, pleased that the faint burning is
already a distant memory. It is washed away by the applause that sweeps over Him
from the crowd that has formed around Him. He waves a moment, then mentally
informs the crowd that He has leaped skyward. As they all look up to watch Him
depart, two quick hyper steps bring him back to his cab.

His cab has been sitting at a red light. It has all happened so quickly that He
is back at the wheel before the light turns green. He drives off, whistling, as
everyone else in the vicinity looks to the sky.

"The Archetype is going to kill you."

Mona Malone peered through the clear, triple-ply bulletproof partition that
separated her from the rail-thin, rather pallid man with the red hair that hung
around his face like a mane. His prison grays provided a sharp contrast to the
pale skin and sunken eyes; in some ways he looked like a resident from a
concentration camp. One would have thought, upon seeing him for the first time,
that he was undernourished and a rather pathetic individual.

This would have been 180 degrees away from the truth. Rex Graves had, once upon
a time, held the entire nation in a grip of fear. It had not been his given name
to which Americans responded, however. It was his nom de guerre, "Aesthete,"
that drew shudders from individuals up to the highest points of government.

Never had one individual's machinations so simultaneously fascinated and
repelled a country. A mild name, defined as someone who seeks out beauty. But
Aesthete's definition of beauty was another's concept of terror. He would
develop plans both complex and yet simple; schemes that would net him billions
of dollars that would vanish somehow into untraceable accounts. And he was
deemed uncatchable.

His latest plan had been the best yet. He had hypnotized selected airline pilots
-- all unknowing, of course -- with a posthypnotic command that would force the
pilots to send the planes spiraling into a crash. Over two thousand people were
killed in four different plane tragedies, while government officials were
helpless before Aesthete's demands.

And the Archetype had caught him.

A weight was lifted off the national consciousness, to be replaced by a massive
howling for blood. Currently the Aesthete was on death row as the appeals
process ran its course. But the conventional wisdom was that he didn't have a
hope in hell. That, indeed, hell was where he belonged.

If the prospect of his imminent demise weighed upon him, Graves gave no sign.
Instead he merely regarded Mona with calm certainty, as casually as if they were
seated on a park bench discussing baseball scores.

"The Archetype," Mona repeated back to him slowly, "is going to kill me?"

His nod was almost imperceptible. The Aesthete was noted for his economy of
movement. In the courtroom during his relatively brief trial, he might have been
carved from marble for all the emotion or activity he displayed.

He replied to her in a voice so soft that she couldn't hear him even though she
had a phone receiver pressed against her ear. She leaned forward. "I didn't hear
that."

"You must listen more closely, then," he said in a voice like a sigh. "I said,
'That is correct.' The Archetype will kill you. Eventually, he'll kill you all."

"And I'm supposed to believe you."

His thin lips smiled wanly. Rather than reply, he extended one bony finger and
traced the line of her face against the plexi. "Strong cheek definition," he
whispered. "The slight cleft in your chin adds character. The blonde dye job,
however, you did yourself. I would use a professional next time if I were you."

"I operate on a reporter's salary, Mr. Graves," replied Mona. "I save money
where I can. So I'm supposed to believe you about the Archetype?"

"I heard you the first time," he said. "You are not 'supposed' to do anything
beyond what your own abilities will permit you to do. But I have studied him,
Mona." She repressed a shudder to hear her own name spoken with such
familiarity. He continued, "I am the foremost expert on the Archetype. I've
studied those around him, those in his inner circle. I know everything there is
to know about him, and I say to you that he will kill you, sooner or later."

"He's a hero," shot back Mona. "He's here to help us all. He's protected the
citizens of Steeltown for years..."

"Yes, for years," he said.

"If that's what you called me here to tell me...if that's the 'big story' that
you were so insistent I come hear.., then I have to tell you, Mr. Graves, that
for someone who fancies himself so knowledgeable, you don't know a damn thing."

His lips drew back slightly. She was dazzled by how white his teeth were.

"He masquerades as Frank Fisher," the Aesthete said with comfortable certainty,
"a simple cab driver. He keeps a police band radio in his cab so that he can
keep track of what's happening in the city, and attend to emergencies. His
generally believed origin is that he is the last survivor of a dying world, but
he is actually a genetically created construct from an alternate dimension,
designed to be a weapon of war, who fled from his creators into our reality. Am
I close, Mona?"

Mona said nothing, merely kept an impassive face. But she could feel a stinging
in her cheeks, and she knew beyond certainty that the blood had drained from her
face.

"Don't bother to answer, because I'm sure that, out of loyalty, you'll deny it,"
said Graves. "That's very admirable. I have warned you, Mona. The rest is up to
you."

He leaned forward and said, "When you arrive at your city room at the World
Tribune, you'll find an envelope waiting for you. Don't wonder how it got there;
I have methods, even in here. You'll find a video tape...detailed hard copy of
my studies. Everything."

And then, most disturbingly of all, he winked at her. He rose, hanging up the
phone receiver, and started to turn away. But before he could leave, Mona
pounded her hand against the wall to try and get his attention. He turned and
stood there, his back still to her.

"Why are you telling me this?" she called to him.

She was speaking over the phone, so it would have seemed that she was wasting
her time except that after a moment the Aesthete, still without looking at her,
picked up the receiver on his side.

"You asked me why I told you, didn't you," he inquired.

"Yes. Yes, I did."

"Because if I don't tell you, then the Archetype will never know. And when you
do die, he will not realize he is the cause and therefore will not suffer
sufficiently. I believe in suffering, Mona. It's good for the soul."

And then he hung up and walked away, leaving her with the receiver still
clutched in her hand.

There is none other like Him in the world.

In the comic books, one would appear and then many more would appear. But that
was not a result of likelihood; that was simply good commercial sense. Defying
all the odds, one champion would arise. And then another would appear, and
another and still another, the odds stretched beyond ail credibility, suspension
of disbelief tossed aside in favor of pursuing the almighty dollar. If one sold,
more would sell, and in the world of comics a plethora of superheros would cause
such beings to seem relatively commonplace.

But this is the world of the Archetype. And He is one of a kind.

WELL, NOW, hey Mona, isn't this a coincidence?"

Frank leaned forward, a broad smile on his face, as Mona stepped into his cab
outside the office of the World Tribune. "We always seem to be running into each
other," he continued. "Should be careful about that. Wouldn't want you to think
I'm obsessing about you or anything."

Climbing into the back seat, she looked deeply into his face as he peered
through the plexi partition. She tried to see that other face...the one she had
committed to memory, every line, every curve, the very texture of it. For the
life of her, she couldn't.

He slid the partition aside and looked at her quizzically. "Problem, Mona? You
late for an interview or -- ?"

"We have to talk, Archetype," she told him.

He blinked, his eyes seeming to mist over. "Me?" he said. "I don't know what
you're..."

"Stop insulting my damn intelligence!" It all seemed to burst out of her, all
the frustration and confusion she'd bottled all this time. "Just stop this
shadow dance already! It's been going on for freakin' ever! Every time I call
your company to send a cab over, it's always you! There's three hundred cabs in
your fleet and it's always you! Whenever I'm on a street corner and hail a cab,
it's always you! What do you think, I'm stupid? I told you, Archetype, we have
to talk, and if you offer one word of denial, one cute joke, one simple
brushoff, then as God is my witness I'm never going to talk to you again, ever,
no matter what outfit you're wearing or whether your face is masked or unmasked.
Is that clear?"

The air in the cab seemed to crackle with electricity. And then his face
appeared to change right before her eyes. It didn't truly shift in anything more
than attitude, but she saw him. And it was all there, right in front of her,
that face which had etched itself so thoroughly into her brain. And when he
spoke, it was a voice deep in timbre, a voice capable of literally stopping
criminals in their tracks.

"Crystal clear," said the voice of the Archetype.

Ten years earlier...a young college student is assisting with a radiation
experiment at Steeltown University when there is a core breach and it goes out
of control. The Archetype arrives on the scene, but too late. The boy dies.

Eight years earlier...a man consumed with a burning need for vengeance dons a
kevlar-lined black raincoat and a slouch hat. He has twin .45s up his sleeve and
a determination to bring villains to justice. He confronts his first villains
during a smuggling operation on the Steeltown docks. The Archetype arrives, but
moments too late. The raincoated man, had he lived, would have called himself
the Wrath. But a lucky shot from a dying criminal lodges in his brain. The Wrath
dies.

Six years earlier...the U.S. government, after thoroughly studying (so they
thought) the Archetype, attempts to create a serum that would grant normal
humans the Archetype's powers. They inject it into a volunteer. At that moment a
fire breaks out elsewhere in the laboratory building. The Archetype shows up to
combat it and, while he is there, the volunteer succumbs to seizures and
subsequently explodes.

Not even the Archetype has a perfect record. He is, after all, only metahuman...

In Mona's apartment, Frank had watched the videotape, had looked over Rex
Graves's papers, his research. Now he looked up at Mona with Frank's face but
the Archetype's little smile of confidence. She had seen it so often, whenever
he would stand there with his arms smugly akimbo while bullets bounced
harmlessly off his manly chest. Not off, actually; stopping inches short and
clattering to the floor.

"It's nonsense, Mona," he said calmly. "Certainly you must see that."

He spoke in that utterly unflappable tone he oftentimes used, the one that would
always stop her heart from racing during her most recent brush with death.
Something within her wanted to give in to it, to see with the same simple
clarity that he possessed. But she shook it off, like someone just awakening
would toss away a dream. Still, she couldn't quite look him in the eyes.
"He...puts forward a fairly...convincing argument, though, doesn't he."

"And Hitler was fairly convincing, so I'm told," Frank replied. He picked up
some of Graves's research papers and scanned them once more. "He's thorough,
I'll give him that. But his conclusions are preposterous..."

Mona's back was to him, her arms across her shoulders as if she were cold.
"Frank," she said softly, "do you remember how we met?"

"How could I forget?" he said. "I saved your life. Those truck hijackers would
have run you right over."

"Yes. I know. I would have died." She still couldn't turn to face him. "And
since then, time after time, my life's been at stake, and you.., the
Archetype...have always been there to save me. Always. People call me the
Archetype's girl friend. They say I'm accident prone, because you're always
bailing me out." And then she took a deep breath and managed to look straight at
him. "Frank...how in God's name did I ever live as long as I did?"

He tapped the research papers with a look of incredulity on his face. "You're
not buying into this...?"

"Frank, think about it! I was never in a life and death situation before I met
you! Never! Sure, I had a close scrape here and there. A bad auto accident once,
or a nasty fall that left me with a barely noticeable limp. It was all things I
could handle, though. Normal stuff. But the stuff that's happened to me since I
met you...the only one who could save me was you. The Archetype, saving the day.
The Archetype, to the rescue. The Archetype, proving his worth and making
himself indispensable."

"What are you saying, that I should have let you die?"

"Frank, what if Graves is right?"

He stared at her in clear disbelief. "You mean that I was responsible for it
all? That I was the cause? Mona, that's insane! As insane as the Aesthete
himself!"

"But it's not just me, Frank! It's the other people at the Trib! Kevin and Chris
and Bobbi...they all keep finding themselves in danger when they never did
before! For that matter, why is there still any crime in Steeltown? With you
cruising around, why would any crook dare? My God, Frank, didn't it strike you
as just a little bit odd that a guy inside a giant robot tried to knock over the
bank last week? Any other city, he would have gotten away with it! But he picked
the one you were in!"

"He's just like all the others,' said Frank, except at this point there was
nothing in his voice that was like Frank. It was the deep timbre of the
Archetype that filled the apartment like the rumble of a passing subway. "He was
trying to make a name for himself."

"But it's ridiculous! Crooks don't want to make names for themselves! They want
to steal! Period!"

He rose, seeming to grow a foot taller as he did so. "You're really saying that
you think I'm the cause of it. That somehow I," and he picked up the sheaf of
papers in a hand that could crush diamonds. "That I..." and he began to read off
the report. "'The Archetype psionically manipulates probabilities in order to
perpetuate the illusion that the Archetype is needed. Indeed, his
self-absorption and need to be the center of attention is so massive that he
subconsciously has prevented the creation of any beings similar to himself for
fear of sharing the limelight. His desperate craving to show how much he is
needed...'" He tossed the papers down disdainfully. "I am needed! I'm the
Archetype! You'd be dead without me! The city would be in ruins without me,
ravaged by all manner of villains! It--"

"We were doing fine before you got here? she practically howled. "Don't you get
that? None of this stuff ever happened before you arrived on the scene! But as
soon as you showed up, it was like the whole city turned into your own...your
own playground! A place for you to strut your stuff! Hardly a week goes by where
my life isn't at stake! And how often have you found yourself at the scene of a
crime, just purely by happenstance? Sure, you've got the police band radio in
your cab, but I bet half the time you don't even need it because you just happen
to stumble over someone being victimized!"

He thought of that morning...of the man with the gun...

He thought of a hundred, a thousand mornings like that...

He thought of the pain in his head, the need within him that was almost
palpable, just before the crime had occurred...

There was just the slightest hint of desperation in his voice. "He's wrong..."

"Probably! Probably he's wrong! Probably he's full of crap! But Archetype, my
God, what if he's right? What if he's right?"

And now it was the Archetype's turn to present his back to her. Something within
him seemed to wilt ever so slightly. And when the Archetype spoke, it was with
something that was a great oddity: It was with a soft voice.

"What would you have me do?" he asked.

"Leave,' she said. When he turned back to her, astonishment clear on his face,
she clarified, "Only for a month. Just to see."

"A month?"

"Just to see."

"You'll be dead in a month."

Even though his tone was flat, it was the single harshest thing she'd ever heard
him say. For a moment she felt as if she were standing up to a force of nature.
"I can take care of myself," she told him.

They stared at each other for a long moment.

"I love you," he said.

They were the words she had waited so long to hear.

She made no reply. Although her chin trembled slightly, which might have been
reply enough.

He did not repeat the words. Instead he nodded almost imperceptibly. Then he
turned with a quick motion and was gone, like a shadow disappearing when struck
by a spotlight. The window was open and the only thing to mark his passing was
the slight fluttering of the drapes. She went to the window, slowly closed it,
then slid to the floor and began to sob.

"Be careful," said the Aesthete. "He'll come back today."

It was his last day, his last hours alive. And Mona was the last person he was
going to see, aside from his executioners.

She stared at him through the plexi, trying not to react to the fact that
Graves's head had been shaved to ensure close contact with the electrodes from
the electric chair. "What do you mean?"

"Do you think I can't read, Mona?" he asked politely. "For the past three weeks,
it's been fairly slow news for your poor paper. Crime has dropped off. No
threats to your life. Peaceful. Almost idyllic in Steeltown as of late. Not
perfect, certainly, but not a magnet for extraordinary difficulties." But then
his voice lowered. "He'll be nearby today, though. He's going to expect
trouble."

"Why?"

"Why? Because I am to die, Mona," said the Aesthete with what sounded like faint
disappointment...even disapproval that she had to ask. "Executed by the state.
Your tax dollars at work. And the Archetype will be convinced that I have some
insidious plan at work, some last great gesture. Or perhaps even a means of
escaping my imminent electrocution. I suspect he has sworn to keep his distance
for...two months? No...no, a month, more likely. But he will want to be here for
my execution. He'll want to be sure I'm dead. He'll feel that he is needed to
make sure I don't `pull a fast one.'"

"And do you have a plan for escape?" she asked.

He smiled with his thin lips. "I don't require one. I'm going to get away
because he needs me to get away. The greater my accomplishments, the greater
his. That's how this works. I'm surprised you haven't figured that out yet."

For a moment no more words passed between them, and then Rex Graves rose from
his chair. Mona remained seated.

"Food for thought," said the Aesthete. "When someone is told that his services
are not required...an obsessive personality will sometimes do whatever is
necessary to prove the opposite."

"Meaning...?"

"Meaning that if the Archetype goes to extremes..." and the smile remained on
his face, although there was no amusement behind it, "...then my death...or
yours...will be the least of the world's problems. Good-bye, Mona." And he
walked away.

They threw the switch to electrocute the Aesthete at twelve midnight precisely.
Mona Malone, seated in the observation deck with other reporters and relatives
of Graves's victims, felt her breath catch as the switch slammed home.

The Aesthete appeared unperturbed. It was the last sight she saw just before the
lights went out.

Never in the history of the prison had there been any sort of blackout at such a
crucial moment.

The emergency generators tried to kick in...

...and exploded.

The massive fireball leaped onto the prison like a thing alive.

The next moments were completely confused to Mona. She made it out into a
corridor, tried to run, stumbled, felt pounding feet all around her. Someone hit
her in the side of the head and she went down. She heard a roar of another
explosion, the crackling of fire, smoke wafting through the air, screaming
everywhere...

A wall of fire leaped into existence around her. She tried to haul herself up,
but she felt helpless, helpless as an infant. She inhaled smoke and felt a
heaviness in her chest...

And then a figure dressed in black and gold came through the fire, seeming to
jump from one point to the next, and Mona was raised up in powerful arms that,
indeed, perpetuated her feeling of helplessness.

Then she was airborne...

...and cursing the name of her rescuer...

SHE LAY THERE in the hospital bed, the Archetype standing a few feet away, his
arms folded across his powerful chest. The hallway outside was crammed with
newspeople.

"It was a near thing," he told her. "Your lungs nearly collapsed. If I
hadn't..."

She stared at him.

"Mona...if I hadn't been there..."

Still nothing.

He drew himself up, started again. "The Aesthete got away, unfortunately. I
should have suspected that. Don't you see, Mona,' and his voice started to take
on a tinge of desperation. "I was gone for three weeks...I would have stayed
away longer. But then I realized we were playing right into the Aesthete's plan.
He wanted me away, wanted me gone. That way I wouldn't be around to try and stop
his escape attempt. I realized at the last second and came back, but the moment
I did, that's when the lights went out, when the generator blew. It's my fault.
If I'd gotten here sooner, I could have headed it off. But I'll catch him again.
Don't you see how much I'm needed, Mona? Don't you..."

And she began to scream. She pitched violently in the bed, yanked tubes out of
herself, grabbed a plastic pitcher off the table next to her and hurled it at
him. A simple TK touch stopped it short.

And then the words began, words such as he'd never heard from her mouth. From
anyone's. Every hurtful thing she could think of, every bit of bile, of
undiluted fury, blasted out of her. Every danger she'd ever faced, every
occasion where she'd feared for her life, every time she'd been afraid for the
life of a loved one, and every time she'd counted on him...on him...to save her.
Every bit of love she'd ever felt, every scrap of idolization, every hidden
fantasy, all blasted and blackened and turned to poison. Like a berserk snake
she sank her fangs into him, pumping the venom, all her trust transmuted to
hatred.

No longer was she the handpuppet of fate. No longer did she think of herself as
the helpless wood chip floating in the stream of bizarre fortunes. No longer did
she blame herself for situations that she had unknowingly gotten herself into.
No longer did she feel that her life didn't make sense.

It all made terrible, terrible sense, and everything that was wrong with it was
because of this...this creature. This abomination. This monstrosity which so
desperately needed to be loved that it restructured reality in order to
accommodate it.

She screamed and screamed and screamed and when she felt as if she were running
out of breath, new anger bubbled within her and the invective would continue, as
if she could wipe him from existence with the power of her fury alone.

She had no idea how long she went on. She lost the sense of it, lost awareness
of her reality, and when things snapped back into focus for her, she was looking
up into the face of Bobbi, her editor, who was clearly filled with tremendous
concern over this berserker, howling harridan that Mona had become. Reporters
were crowding in at the door, snapping pictures, scribbling notes furiously,
trying to pick out what she was saying even though her words had dissolved into
incoherence.

They wound up sedating her, and as soon as the sedation wore off she started
screaming again. This kept up for two days. It took that long to dawnon her that
the Archetype was gone.

The Inuit boy has no idea what possessed him to wander away from his parents. No
clue why he feels the need to tromp across the whiteness of the frozen tundra
beneath him.

All he knows is that a mountain of white has reared up from ahead of him, its
white fur having helped it to blend in perfectly with its surroundings.

The polar bear comes at the boy and he backpedals, screaming, but none can
possibly hear him because w for whatever reason w he's ignored his father's
rules for the first time in his young life and gone off fishing on his own. His
first mistake and, very likely, his last.

He doesn't even see the blurred figure of black and gold. All the boy knows is
that suddenly the bear is on its back some twenty feet away, roaring in
confusion. Having had enough, the bear flips over and scrambles away, the
thudding of its paws practically causing the ground to tremble.

His savior turns to face him. The man in the domino mask smiles.

The boy reaches out a hand to Him.

He is needed. And He is happy.

And meantime, high above Him, for no apparent reason, a new hole in the ozone
layer begins to widen quickly...