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The Fugue was the only darkened bar in the whole upper city. Johnny contemplated this while mopping up the evening's broken glasses from the stage. No other self-respecting establishment would have even started to kick out its patrons by the legal closing time on a Friday night, much less been completely empty by then, but The Fugue's self-respect had walked out with Reina. His tumbler of cheap whiskey on the rocks, sitting coaster-free on the piano, was the first drink he'd seen since she left that hadn't been thrown at him while he played.
He heard the door click open and watched a man stride in, silhouetted by the bright lights behind him. “Tough crowd?” he asked as he hopped over the bar, consulted a sheet of drink instructions, and began mixing himself a dirty martini. Alecto had been Johnny's uninvited guest every night since Reina's abduction.
“Guess the usual crowd needed more eye candy than just me onstage.” Johnny chucked nervously, eyeing the smooth highlights on the blaster hanging defiantly on Alecto's hip.
Alecto laughed, sipped his concoction, and responded, “Could be, or it could be that you're just not much of a pianist. Not worth the price of admission anyways. Everyone down at Dis' Place is starting to wonder how you're going to pay the boss back at this rate.”
He paused to take another drink and drop a few extra olives into the cocktail, “Looks like you could turn a bit of a profit if you charged 'em to lob drinks at you.”
“Maybe,” Johnny stood up straight and puffed out his chest, hoping he looked intimidating, “I could always pay you back if I had my singer back.”
Alecto vaulted over the bar, his hand impossibly steady to keep from spilling a drop, and marched towards Johnny. He grabbed Johnny's collar and mirthlessly said, “Hilarious. But how would we profit from that? She's worth more singing at Dis' Place than she is keeping your bar afloat. Guaranteed.
“Plus,” a sinister grin appeared on Alecto's face as he hissed the syllable, “She's starting to fall for the Lower City's charms.” He fished the olives out of his drink and ate them one by one before tossing his drink so it shattered on a spot Johnny had clearly already cleaned once. “Maybe you should come down and see her some time. You're certainly closing early enough these days.” He turned and walked out of The Fugue, poking his head back in to add, “Same time, tomorrow night?”
* * *
Once the bar was properly closed up for the evening, Johnny decided to take Alecto up on his advice. He donned his bowler, which he rarely wore, and grabbed the blaster from behind the bar in case he needed to defend himself. The Upper City was mostly dark now, though, looking over the guard rail, he could see the red lights of the Lower City far below. He hailed a skycab to take him below.
Johnny dodged a number of muggers, junkies, and mutants on his way to Dis' Place, but they thinned out when he got close enough to see the armed thugs keeping them away. Johnny noted that it was almost four in the morning, and most Lower City bars were still the sites of raucous parties.
The heavenly voice radiating from Dis' Place was all he needed to know about why. That mournful angel could only be Reina White. Johnny had to know if it was true, if she was really happy in this hellhole.
She was nearing the end of her song as Johnny attempted to push past the bouncers. In the instant his face was inside the bar, he saw his muse in a smooth, red silk dress that perfectly matched her lips. A lovely contrast to her long white hair. She smiled as she playfully caressed the pianist's jaw and told him to, “Play something fierce.”
The Bouncer finally managed to toss him out as he heard Reina describing the song over its opening chords. “This next number's dedicated to the Upper City.” The audience howled and applauded, and Johnny could picture her waiting serenely for them to finish. “I see some of you know of it.” Raucous laughter. “It's about the Upper City, where the sky is wide open for anyone to see... from their cages.” The background music crescendoed with each phrase, “Where the walkways are paved with gold... 'til the first person walks on it, and it all rubs off so we can see the rusty frame underneath. Where a gal is free to dream of stardom... then plunked down with sorriest excuse for a musician God ever built.”
Johnny had never learned the language she sang in. It was never a priority since her voice carried all the relevant emotions. In this particular case, profanity carried the same inflection in every language he had ever heard. As he walked away, he had to hand it to Reina; it took talent to spit out curse words and still sound like a choir of angels.
* * *
Sunlight had not pierced Johnny's apartment that morning. Those who knew him may have assumed that the shutters were closed so that he could sleep, perhaps after a night of drinking to forget his recent failures. They would have been wrong. Sleep could not come after discovering how his muse had truly felt about him and about the life he had tried to give her. The shutters were closed, not to keep out sunlight, but to keep out prying eyes.
In the dim backlight of a terminal, he pored over maps of the lower city, plans of Dis' Place and the nearby buildings, and common airbus and skycab routes. Laid out nearby was a crisp black suit, the previous night's hat, dark glasses and a matching bandanna to cover his face for what needed to be done. He had seen enough of the Lower City on his way to Dis' Place to know that it wasn't the Heaven she made it out to be. Surely, if he just brought the hellish parts closer to her new home, she would see the error of her ways.
Saturday night, when Alecto let himself into the darkened Fugue, Johnny was nowhere to be found and taunted. “Johnny,” he shouted, “It's your old pal Alecto. Just here to ask if you've got our money yet.”
Something moved behind the bar, a bottle jostled but did not fall. “Oh... You heard what she had to say about this dump, didn't you?”
“So she likes it in the Lower City, can you blame her?” Alecto's voice became slightly higher: Nervous. “Look, just pay us, and maybe she'll give you a goodnight kiss or something.”
He leaned over the bar, looking back and forth in the dark. “Play nice, and Boss'll probably let you pour the drinks up here if you sell it to him.” He unholstered his blaster and fired it behind the bar, using the brilliant green flash to try and see where Johnny was hiding. In the moment of illumination, no one appeared to be behind the bar.“Course, he'll want a decent musician on the keyboard, so you're outta that job.”
When Alecto stood up, he saw a figure silhouetted against the Upper City lights in the doorway. The round dome of a bowler hat and its narrow brim. For effect, the door had been kicked open so the breeze could let his tie waft like a long, narrow cape. The silhouette was brandishing a blaster. “Johnny?” Alecto asked, slowly raising his gun.
Before it was in position, the man in the hat dove into action, tackling Alecto well under the bolt that reflexively crackled out of Alecto's blaster, singing the Fugue's ceiling.
“No,” the stranger growled, “Not Johnny.” He smashed an elbow into Alecto's chest, making him wheeze and loosen his grip on his blaster. “Call me Ebony.”
He grabbed Alecto's collar and used it to drag the thug to his feet. It was more of a shove than a throw that caused Alecto to land painfully on the catwalk outside. Ebony relented for a moment, allowing Alecto to start struggling to his feet.
Then he bull-rushed him, pinning Dis' enforcer against the guardrail with his shoulder. While Alecto staggered, Ebony stood up and pushed the off-balance thug so he started to fall, catching him, just long enough for a quip, “If she thinks it's so bad up here, I wonder how she'll react when she starts seeing how hellish it really is downstairs.” Ebony let go, and Alecto fell.
* * *
Ebony swapped the blaster on the floor with Alecto's prints for the one on his hip whose only fingerprints belonged to the Fugue's staff. Outside of that, he left the signs of conflict untouched. Any lawmen who looked in on the Fugue already knew about Johnny's trouble with Dis' gang, and their investigation would probably never go close enough to the ground floor to discover the puddle in the fine suit that used to be Alecto.
He took an airbus down to the Lower City, riding discreetly on the roof so the transit authority would not scan a credit chip that would have clearly identified the vigilante as Johnny Onyx. Once under the red glow of the Lower City's street lights, he hopped off and made his way towards Dis' Place.
Ebony ducked behind Dis' Place to avoid the thugs and bouncers in the front. His blaster left a gaping hole with singed edges where the lock on the back door originally was. Pushing open the door, he heard Reina's voice, singing another curse-filled song about her old home. The violence with which she spat the foreign profanities goaded Ebony. Any doubt he felt about his crusade turned to determination as he marched through the back hallway of Dis' Place, constantly hearing her obscenities.
He soon reached the stage. He looked up to the balcony he had seen in the plans. Taking up the majority of the loft sat the porcine form of Dis. The bar was crowded with the drugged out yuppies who gave the Upper City a bad name, and Dis had more than his fair share of armed guards. The vigilante would likely only get one shot, and he prayed that Reina was worth more to them alive than dead, even if he succeeded in eliminating Dis.
He ran onstage, grabbed Reina from behind, hand over her mouth. He stuck Alecto's blaster in front of her and shot.
A bolt of green lightning lanced from the gun and burned Dis' face, filling the bar with the smells of singed flesh and sulfur.
“Don't hit the girl,” Dis screamed, “But kill him!” The guards raised their rifles. Down below, the yuppies were panicking. None of them were interested or ready for the real thrills of the Lower City, the violence and murder. Thugs on the ground floor tried to keep the mob in line.
Ebony dove from behind Reina to behind the piano. The thugs on the balcony let loose a torrent of blaster fire that swiftly reduced his cover to ash. Even quicker, though. Ebony was backstage. By the time the door guards checked the alley behind the club, Ebony was gone.
* * *
Sunday morning, Johnny Onyx awoke with a wrinkled suit a throbbing headache, and vague recollection of an intense nightmare, none of which he chose to mention to the lawman who came by to inquire about the break-in while Johnny had been sick.
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