The foundation of the asylum shook so violently that old mortar gave and a few large stone blocks fell just inches from where Orchid slept. She sat up suddenly to see the streams of light from the late afternoon sun wash into the musty room and come to rest. Although she was not directly in the light, Orchid could feel the effects of the sun irritating her skin. It started off as an itch, then it burned, and a pain followed -- like being doused with battery acid. Ignoring the indirect rays that tortured her pale skin, she could hear noises from below. Inhuman roars of pain echoed through the old asylum.

THUDDOM! She heard stonework crack.

"No, Hack -- not now," she thought aloud, crawling out of bed and away from the sunlight.

Orchid wrapped her arms around her torso and backed into the opposite corner of the room she felt a prisoner to. When her back found the corner she slid downward to the floor to sit out the ordeal below in agonized contemplation.

THUDD...  BANG...  CRACK...

Orchid watched the dust fall from the ceiling and dance its way to the floor, wondering what had Hack so upset that he would take to the Bad Room at this time of the day, knowing it might endanger her.

Orchid sat for another hour before the rage below stopped, but she still had another two hours to go before it was safe for her to exit her sleeping chamber. Luckily the roof stopped falling in, but she would still need to find a safer place to sleep for the next night. She hated to admit it to herself, but the basement was pretty much off limits in her mind as far as sleep went. Hack, although he was her best friend, couldn’t be completely trusted in her mind. Not while she was sleeping anyway. When he started to rage there was no telling what he was capable of.

Orchid thought back to simpler times. She remembered sitting at the lunch table in her high school, trying to pretend that eating at a table all by herself was fine with her. She remembered the day Melvin came running into the lunchroom looking excited.

"Jane -- Jane, you won’t believe it!" he called as he ran to the table she sat at and pulled up a seat. "Gorthar the Mage finally reached 18th level! I can finally cast 9th level spells!"

A small smile appeared on Orchid’s lips. Melvin and I loved to play Dungeons & Dragons, she thought. We could escape the pitiful shells we were in and become something greater.

Orchid remembered congratulating Melvin even though she had some questions as to where a lot of those experience points came from. She then remembered an 8-oz milk carton flying across the lunchroom and striking Melvin in the head, milk spilling all over the character sheet Melvin held tightly in his hands. She could still see the look of horror and surprise on Melvin’s face as the milk obscured the words on the sheet he held so dearly.

"Damnit," Orchid said aloud, realizing that even the good memories the two shared were tainted by the cruelty of the popular crowd.

She lowered her forehead to rest on her folded hands atop her knees and waited for the sun’s cruel rays to subside.

It was finally dark enough for Orchid to leave the sleeping chamber. As she exited the room and walked through the old asylum, her boots clicked on the floor and echoed throughout its abandoned corridors. She made her way to the basement steps and started to descend into the darkness. It was odd to not even hear Hack walking around downstairs; his heavy footfalls were quite difficult to miss unless he was stalking someone. This was becoming a little unnerving to Orchid.

"Hack?" she called out.

She walked through the basement looking for her old friend -- or what he’d become. Passing through the Bad Room, she couldn’t tell how much damage he did today. The holes in the walls, the splits and massive crevices along the stone floor, the slanted columns, it all started to look the same down here.

Deep, ominous shadows resided in this part of the asylum. Hack could be watching from any of them.

As she headed for the Bone Room, Orchid noticed torn paper strewn all over the floor. The slender vampiress stopped to pick up a few scraps to see what they were. With a bit of shock, she realized they were her papers and magazines that she picked up some nights to keep up on things in the world.

As she entered the Bone Room, Orchid found her friend. The Bone Room was a place that Hack had painted with the blood of animals and victims. The walls were now caked in brownish splatterings, as the gore had long since aged. Bones adorned the walls and skulls of various animals were piled in the corners, both  in strange designs that only Hack understood. This was where Hack came when he needed to think.

Unmoving, Hack sat in the center of the room facing the largest of the bone-art statues he had fashioned. The doctor from the hospital attack laid on the floor near Hack, his chained neck attached to a leach that the massive madman held. His hospital scrubs were in tatters now and his face held a steady look of terror under his unkempt mass of hair. Orchid often wondered why Hack was keeping the man alive, but she never asked, fearing the answer.

Orchid slowly walked around the large form of her friend, making sure to give him a wide berth. Every click of her heels sounded much louder in the still air of the basement, like a pendulum ticking away the seconds to some tragic incident. When she came around the front of her friend she knelt down about five feet in front of him and looked into his eyes.

"Hack? It’s me, Orchid Can you hear me?" The monstrosity that she considered a friend stayed motionless.

Orchid looked deep into the goalie mask that covered Hack’s face. The whites of his eyes punched out from the two black holes, giving her the impression he was staring right through her.

In his left hand he held the chained doctor; the crinkled remains of Orchid’s new People magazine was gripped in his right. The magazine featured Knock-out and Omega, and it talked about metahuman fascination. Orchid’s first thought was that she barely got to read it, but then she realized what was happening. Hack was on a mind hunt, where he would locate and track people through their minds.

Orchid stood up slowly. Hack was becoming difficult to understand, unpredictable and sometimes frightening to deal with. She wondered if Melvin still existed within him, and at times, the demonic flicker of hatred behind the mask sickened her.

But this...

She glanced over his shoulder at the spread of perfect, half-naked Knock-out draped across perfect, able-bodied Omega, dazzling the camera with their smug, phony smiles. Oh yes, this she understood. She smiled slowly, straightening up and shaking her hair back from her face.

"Mmm hmm," Orchid purred. "This could get interesting."

The fiendish female then exited the room, leaving Hack to his hunt.

The cab smelled of urine masked with air freshener, and the cabbie wasn’t much better. He was currently driving two fares back to their hotel room. One he knew as Knock-out, a super-hot metahuman, but the dwarf she was with was a mystery to him. He’d picked them up tonight from a little restaurant off Delaware Avenue at roughly nine o’clock.

"Well, Sarah," the small man began.  "We know the two are connected even if just by the literal writing on the wall."

"You mean the word 'Hack?'" replied the blonde beauty.

"Precisely." He raised his finger in the air as if to stress the point. "The savagery noted in both cases also matches the profile. But I picked up a paranormal residue at both crime scenes. I feel we have a metahuman maniac on our hands." He finished with a grim look. "And if it's not that, then we have something worse."

Looking a little baffled, Knock-out asked, "So how do we find this Hack?"

Suddenly the cabbie hit the brakes and yelled "You friggin' asshole!" as a 75 Plymouth Fury cut him off. The taxie driver followed close behind the vehicle as the two cars moved on. "If you’re gonna cut me off, you should at least do the speed limit -- you prick!" The cabbie swore, as if the person in the car in front could hear him.

Looking a little unnerved, Knock-out looked at the dwarf as he addressed the driver. "Sir, we would appreciate arriving at the hotel in one piece. Could you please give the car in front of you a little room?"

"Yeah, whatever you say, buddy," the cab driver replied over his shoulder to the man in the back seat. "Why don’t you just let me do the driving here?"

As the cabbie turned to face full forward again, a massive boot kicked the trunk of the Fury right off its hinges, and the rectangular hatch cartwheeled down the road. Now standing in the back of the car was a giant of a man wearing a hockey mask and waving a chainsaw over his head. The ripped-up flannel shirt the man wore caught the wind and hugged his heavily muscular form, all the while his chainsaw screamed an unholy symphony.

The cabbie wailed as the huge man leaped to the hood of the cab, the taxi buckled under his massive weight.

Knock-out yelled, "Dr. Wight, look out!"

"What's happening!" the small doctor hollared.

The chainsaw screamed. Metal screeched and gave in, the weapon's teeth devouring the roof of the cab, sparks showering its confines and the street outside. Hack reached over and grabbed the still-hot lip from the cut, peeling the roof off the cab and letting it fly like a huge, deformed Frisbee.

"Stop the car!" Knock-out yelled while grabbing the cabbie by the shoulders.

The cabbie firmly planted his foot on the brake. Rubber squealed and smoked as the car skidded to a halt. The sudden stop tossed the giant off the taxi, throwing him onto the unforgiving pavement. His body tumbled, scraping thirty feet where it laid motionless.

Knock-out put one knee on the seat to get a better angle at Dr. Wight and the cabbie. "Is everyone alright?" she quickly asked.

The cab driver, completely stunned, could only answer, "What da fuh-f... f-fuh-f... fuh..."

Dr. Wight struggled to get back in the seat from the jarring stop. Gaining some composure, he replied, "Yes Sarah, I'm all right."

Knock-out looked out to the body lying in the middle of the street. "Who the hell is this maniac?"

"Possibly the very one we are looking for," replied Dr. Wight with a thoughtful tone to his voice.

With that said, the body in the middle of the street suddenly sat up and started getting to its feet.

"No fuckin’ way, man -- No fuckin’way!" The cabbie stomped hard on the accelerator. The wheels of the cab once again smoked and screamed, but not with the same intent as before. Knock-out, losing her balance, fell back into the seat beside Dr. Wight as the cab barreled toward the massive form, running straight for it.

"No!" Dr. Wight yelled, but the cab slammed into the large charging man.

The car and Hack collided. The front of the vehicle caved inwards, sending the motor into the front compartment of the cab and crushing the legs of the driver. Dr. Wight once again hit the back of the driver’s seat and fell to the floor of the cab. Knock-out just managed to grab the passenger’s seat to keep from flying from the car. The driver's howl of agony was testiment to the incredible hit.

Almost frozen, Knock-out found herself staring into the eyes of her assailant. The goalie mask’s eye-ports gave away the whites from a set of eyes that rested within the darkness, proving to her that this thing was somehow human.

"Sarah! Get down!" A cry from the doctor broke the fleeting second of eye contact.

Suddenly Knock-out felt like she was on an elevator as the car was lifted in the air from the mangled front end. It was difficult for her to keep her balance as the vehicle rose in a fast arc and went hurdling towards a nearby building. Seconds before the car struck the side of the building, Sarah dove over to try and protect Dr.Wight, who was still lying on the floor behind what once was the driver’s seat.

The cab hit the building with a loud metal-bending CRASH!  The twisted vehicle stood tilted on its destroyed front end. At this point, it barely resembled an automobile any more.

Inside the wreckage, Knock-out was laying across the back seat with her arms fully extended against the brickwork of the building. Her hands had made permanent indentations into the brick and mortar. She looked down to see the doctor held between her leg and the floor of the cab. He looked disoriented and a little bruised, but still alive.

"Dr. Wight? Are you okay?" she asked with concern. She began pulling her hands from the stonework, slowly, so she didn’t cause a collapse.

"Yes. Where is he now?" The Doctor had some measure of concern.

"I’m about to find out." Knock-out freed her hands completely and kicked the back door off the cab.

Knock-out slid out of the opening, landing on her feet and then scanning the area for any sign of the masked maniac. There was no sign of him. People started coming out of nearby shops and clubs to investigate the ruckus that had erupted outside. A line of headlights from various stopped cars thirty yards behind her lit the street up. As the crowds started to gather on the sidewalks, and the faint sounds of sirens approached, Knock-out turned to the gathering crowds, scanning them.

"Where did he go?" she asked, but nobody seemed to know.

She then turned back to the wrecked cab to break her friend free of his twisted metal prison.

Four hours after the attack the city streets seemed quiet, at least as quiet as they got on Delaware Avenue in Philadelphia. The only thing left of the cab wreck was a large auto fluid stain from the sidewalk to the roadway and some smaller puddles of drying blood. The yellow lights of the street lamp bathed the street in pools of illusionary safety while the cold breeze blew off the Delaware, putting a chill into the bones of the few people on the street. The buzzing of the streetlights seemed deafening.

From beside the building where the cab stood on end only a few short hours ago walked the hulking form of the man-beast behind the accident. Hack knelt down by the oil spill and looked intently at a footprint. The footprint was from a woman’s shoe, which was apparent from the size and width. Hack ran a large hand over the print, obscuring some of the detail. From the way he caressed the street it almost seemed as though he could feel the foot that made the print.

He looked up at the brick building in front of him that he threw the cab into. Eight feet up the wall were the handprints of the beautiful blonde metahuman, who used her own strength to stop the force of the thrown cab from crushing her friend inside. Hack stood up, walked to the building, holding up his hand over the indented brick. The handprints completely vanished under Hack’s own massive hand.

Ever since he attacked Knock-out the pain he always had in his chest was gone. Would the pain come back? Could it be that easy to be rid of? The large man then put his mask-covered forehead up to the brick wall and stayed very still.

An hour before dawn, Orchid entered the basement to see if Hack was back from his night of hunting. It was a little odd for the asylum to be this quiet, and she had the definite feeling something was wrong. Down the damp, cracked steps and through the Bad Room, Orchid carefully walked.

"Definitely too quiet," she said aloud, her boots making that familiar loud clicking as she walked to the Bone Room.

Her nerves were a jangle anyway. Life was throwing too many curve balls of late and she hesitated, not wanting to deal with anything else. As she passed the archway, she became stunned, motionless.

In the middle of the floor laid Hack, sleeping like a baby with his arms pleasantly wrapped around his ribs. If it wasn’t for the mask, Orchid would swear he was smiling.

"You must have found how to stop the pain for a while," Orchid whispered more to herself than her sleeping friend.

She stepped forward to stoop over him, touching his head with a gentle hand as a wry smile of compassion spread over her lips. In front of the large bone managerie at the head of the room was a roughly two-foot square piece of brick wall with female handprints imbedded into it, surrounded on the floor by pictures of Knock-out from the People magazine article. The images of Omega were torn from the pages, leaving only the blonde bombshell.

Orchid scanned the room till she spotted the doctor sitting against the far wall with the chain around his neck, sitting unattended on the floor. In a broken hushed tone, the doctor said, "I think he was happy."

He must have killed her, Orchid thought with a slight grin on her face. "Score another one for the bad guys," she said as she quietly left the room, careful not to wake her sleeping friend.
 

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