The Totally Secret Origin of Foxman (4 page)

As I went over backward, I spotted a tattered suit pinned on a tailor's dummy where the Haberdasher had begun to make a painstaking series of repairs, and I realized I only had one chance. Triggering the rocket in my right boot for a fraction of second, I washed the dummy with the briefest burst of flame while I aimed my other boot at the nearby racks. It was a calculated risk. If I burned the place down, I'd cook with it, but I figured that here, in his inner sanctum, was where the Haberdasher would keep his most precious items of apparelâwitness his father's suit.

“Let me go, Haberdasher! Let me go, or I'll burn them all to a crisp. I swear I will, I will burn every last one of them, and you will hear them screaming in your dreams for all the days of your life.” I didn't
know
that Michael could hear the clothes talking to him in the same way I could hear machines talking to me, but it was the only card I had to play.

“You wouldn't,” he whispered, but the denim eased up on my throat. “They're alive, Rand, alive and aware. If you burn themâ¦”

“I don't want to do it, but if it's me or a rack of clothes, you can bet your life which way the fire will go.”

“IÂ â¦ Don't. No, please. Let the garments go unharmed. I surrender.”

The jeans released their grip on me, falling to the floor in loose piles. I had defeated my first Hoodâto borrow this mad new world's parlanceâbut I didn't have the foggiest notion what to do with him next.

I couldn't keep my rockets trained on the clothes forever. “So, now what?”

I didn't realize I'd spoken aloud until I heard a quiet answer from the room behind me. “OSIRIS will take it from here, Foxman. That's the reason we exist.”

“Backflash?” I glanced over my shoulder and found myself looking deep into green eyes flecked with gold.

She walked past me and Michael tensed, but then moving with astonishing speed, she touched a small black device to the back of Michael's neck where it fastened itself. Instantly, his shoulders slumped and he went unnaturally still.

Backflash touched the black box and spoke quietly. “There's a helicopter waiting outside, Haberdasher.”

He nodded a zombie sort of nod and started shuffling toward the door. Halfway there he stopped and looked at Backflash. “They said I was mad about clothes, mad. But I showed them all. The clothes speak to meâ¦”

“I'm sure that they do, Haberdasher, and that they will again in the future. Now go on out to the chopper.”

“All right.”

Then he was gone, and Backflash was walking a slow circle around me, looking over the armor and occasionally touching this bit or that. “Nice work, Rand. Nice work indeed. You show very great promise.”

I blinked at her owlishlyâmy head felt like it was full of lint. “My best friend nearly just killed me over a cheap suit. And with one, come to think of it.”

Backflash nodded, and I thought I could see a sort of sadness deep in her eyes. “Yes, he did, and there's going to be a lot more of that sort of thing before it gets better. A lot more.” Then she turned, and without another word, followed Michael out the door.

I went to the suit on the tailor's dummy and patted out a faintly smoking spot on one lapel. I would take it home and see if I couldn't repair it for Michael. I owed him that and more. After all, I knew a thing or two about unfinished business and dead fathersÂ â¦

The voice that spoke into my head then was clean and genderlessâDenmother. “Excellent first session, sir! A good step in the right direction.”

I wasn't so sure that rebattling the Haberdasher and the past would help with battling my current demons, but I guessed it was a start, and I had promised Meerkat that I would try. I owed my sidekick thatÂ â¦ and so much more.

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