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02. TAKE NO CHANCES
HE WAS NOT A HAPPY MAN. Not now, not ever. In fact, Roman Sionis probably spent more of his life seething with rage under a thin veil of control than he did feeling any other emotion. Three later and still no kryptonite. What the fuck was taking these goons so long?
"You understand why I'm upset, don't you?" Sionis' voice was raspy, deep, unimpressed. "It's not too difficult to wrap your head around?"
His assistant — a young woman with blonde hair in a stern bun behind her head and a perfectly ironed pantsuit — spluttered, "Sir, I understand, but these circumstances really were beyond our control."
"Why don't we review these circumstances, hm?" Roman asked as he sat forward in his seat, leaning over the large desk he conducted business behind. The material of his black mask glinted like well-polished bone and carbon under the fluorescent lights. "Circumstance one —some idiot in a red helmet has been running around hijacking my shipments and my. Business."
"Sir, I — "
He held a hand up. Silence fell. He continued.
"Circumstance two — a hobbit woman has been caught on CCTV breaking into the city archives and stealing records. Said records about my empire. Records that I'd rather leave archived."
The young woman cut in, finally.
"Sir, about the break-in..." She trailed off, hesitant. "...our security team has...cross-matched some recent news stories. We're not far from identifying who this woman is."
Roman's mask became impossibly more menacing. "I want to hear everything," He demanded, "and I have a feeling you're going to tell me."
"LAZARUS SYNDROME". That is what the papers would read tomorrow, after the sirens had subsided and the crime scene was cleared. A faceless girl, who could not be described accurately within the constraints of the smallest square of news on the page, woke from the dead, healed. The return of spontaneous circulation after CPR has ended, after the casualty has been "called".
