THE BROTHERHOOD OF WINGS
—Volume 5—
THE HAUNTED PLAIN
There were six manila envelopes inside, one for each of the issues that would make up the final volume. The first two envelopes contained completed scripts and rough sketches. The next three had general notes and an outline. I sank to the floor, spread the papers out in front of me, and began to read.
Cardinal was bloody and battered, and his armor was falling to pieces when he was exiled to the Gardens of Null, but he didn’t give up. He knew that he had the only thing he needed—time. The Volanti wouldn’t arrive for another year, and he was determined to be ready for them. He spent the following months scavenging the Gardens for any piece of technology that might help him repair his armor, all the while fending off attacks by radiation-mad gangs of mutants and the vicious Hounds of Null.
As Cardinal toiled in his cave workshop, other exiles living in the Gardens drifted into the story. They were all funhouse versions of the Brotherhood. The fat and jolly, if slightly dim Brother Handcrank was clearly meant to be Goldfinch, and Jumpin’ Jerry Johnson was an even younger and more innocent take on Blue Jay. The others were there too—Black Eagle, Rex Raven—all except for Sally Sparrow. Her absence was like a dark hole in the center of the story.
Cardinal pushed the exiles away. He insisted that his work was too important to be interrupted, but it was obvious that their presence reminded him too much of his dead friends. One night, in the midst of a furious radiation storm, a gang of mutants raided the workshop. Cardinal was on the verge of defeat until Jumpin’ Jerry and his friends swarmed the cave and saved Cardinal’s life. Afterward, as they tended his wounds, Cardinal told them about his mission. In the end he was convinced that he couldn’t beat a force like the Volanti alone, and he agreed to make them into a new Brotherhood. The fourth issue ended with Cardinal sitting down at his workbench to begin construction of their armor.
After that, all that was left were notes and scraps of dialogue. The fifth issue was to take place on the day of the Volanti’s arrival.
“Gee whiz, Cardinal! What’s gonna happen to you when we win?” Jumpin’ Jerry asked in a bit of dialogue Dad had scratched out on a napkin. “I mean, when we knock the stuffing out of these jerks, Future You won’t have a reason to come back in time, which means you won’t be here to train us to beat the jerks in the first place!”
“Easy, Jerry,” Cardinal said. “You think about this stuff too much, you’ll break your brainpan. I think time has a way of sorting itself. As for me, when we win and the future is put right again, I guess, well, I guess I’ll just . . . disappear.”
I opened the last envelope. Issue six. Inside, there was nothing but a single sheet of paper. Dad’s only note for the final issue was written in a scrawl so dark that it almost ripped through the page.
At the battle’s decisive moment Jerry Johnson is revealed to be an advance agent of the Volanti. He betrays Cardinal and the Brotherhood. All but Cardinal are killed. The Volanti land, and the transformation of Abaddon into Liberty City begins. Cardinal, barely clinging to life, lives out the rest of his days alone, trapped in the Gardens of Null.
The page fell out of my hands. It fluttered through the air and landed on the pile in front of me.
29
DR. LASSITER’S OFFICE takes up the top floor of a building so tall that when I stood at the windows in the lobby, I could see all the way to where the Hudson and the East River meet at the southern tip of Manhattan. Brooklyn was locked in fog on the opposite shore.
“Mr. Cassidy?”
The receptionist stood at her desk by an open door, a clipboard in her hands.
“This way, please.”
Lassiter’s private office was full of sunlight that streamed in through a window behind his desk. The receptionist said the doctor would be right with me, then closed the door. I took a seat. Muffled footsteps passed down the hallway outside. My fingers drummed against my leg. I unzipped my backpack and pulled out Dad’s folder.