Excerpt: Infinite Faculty

It was a bright, sunny day—to bright by far: a blinding brightness that threatened to overwhelm the senses, sending the lunchtime crowd scurrying back into their dark buildings, down dark corridors, into dark cubicles. The sun shone, oppressive and tyrannical, its swollen face bearing down on the city. A few clouds limped fitfully across the sky, as bedraggled as the sweating citizenry beneath.

It was 12:04PM, August 9th, and it was a bright, sunny summer’s day – and the Detective was dead, shot in the back, on his fifth-story patio. His blood was drying in crumpled, dark pools on the bleached concrete beneath the simple black table he sat at, creeping out of the tiny black shadow hiding beneath his chair.

It was a bright, sunny summer’s day, and for the first time in twenty years, Boston was without her chief defender. The Detective was dead, and in two weeks’ time, the entire world would be poised to follow him. This is the story of how all that came to pass, starting on a too-hot, too-bright afternoon that marked the end of the world’s greatest superhero’s 20-year career. This is the story of how I went from a two-bit wannabe hero to the most important man in the world, if only for a few minutes. And more than anything, this is the story of Gerald Davies, The Detective.