[ WP ] A Superhero is corrupted by a Super Villain

She heard the front door close softly. That was a sign. He always moved more slowly on a bad day. 
 
 `` Eric?'' She called, making her way from the bedroom out into the living room and finally the hall, where he leaned with his back against the door, eyes shut and his face tilted toward the ceiling. 
 
 `` Eric, honey, what's wrong?'' 
 
 He sighed heavily and walked into the kitchen to sit down. She did n't rush him. He would tell her. 
 
 `` It's this new guy that's been in the news. The one who's calling himself'The Nine of Hearts'? He's always a step ahead of me.'' 
 
 She bit her lip and tried to find the right words. Eric had been protecting their city for eight years now, and he had never encountered an enemy he could n't overcome. But this new villain, this Nine of Hearts, was clever. Clever and fast. Every time Eric made a move to stop him, he arrived too late. He had told her a week ago that he was positive that the Nine of Hearts was like him, with powers beyond the normal person. He just could n't figure out what those powers were, and without that, he could n't fight against them. 
 
 `` I have n't been watching the TV,'' She said, `` What happened?'' 
 
 He poured himself a glass of bourbon and raised a questioning eyebrow to ask if she wanted one too, to which she nodded. As he sat down at the table, taking a small sip, he began to drum his heavy fingers on the marble table top. 
 
 `` That's just it. It's the *things that he does* that make the least sense! He set put a bomb in a school today. He called it in himself, or at least the police think it was him. Those profiling guys seem to think he works alone. I searched twenty seven schools today. Twenty seven.'' 
 
 `` Did you find it?'' 
 
 `` I did. And when I did, it was in a back room in the school's basement. That room... It was awful. There were chains on the walls,'' his voice was becoming pained as he spoke now, `` with metal cuffs at the end. Small ones. They were n't made for adults. And there were marks... on the walls. Scratches. With dried blood caked over them...'' 
 
 She drank a little more deeply from her bourbon, draining it, and poured herself another glass. It was n't the first time that the Nine of Hearts had done this. It seemed every crime he committed happened at the scene of another, and each one more horrible than the last. 
 
 `` As I was staring at the horror of that room, it went off. Half the school was leveled. Nobody was hurt, of course. They had half the schools in the city evacuated an hour after he called in about the bomb. But that bomb evaporated all of the evidence there. The police are looking into it, but they're not sure we'll find out who it was. *We might never find them. * They *worked there! *'' He choked back a sob and poured himself another glass. 
 
 She moved her seat closer to Eric and put her arm around him, trying to comfort him, but she knew he would need more than a loving touch to get over what he had seen tonight. 
 
 They sat like that for a while before he spoke again, and when he did his voice was unsteady. 
 
 `` Look at this,'' he said, placing a card on the table. A nine of hearts. It had writing scribbled across it. 
 
 *Rape. 34 counts. Torture. 47 counts. Murder. 6 counts. * 
 
 `` Every *fucking* time!'' He shouted, his voice rasping through his sobs. `` It's like he's fucking reminding me about everything I have n't been able to stop!'' 
 
 `` Eric, you ca n't be everywhere at once...'' 
 
 `` I know that! But *this? * This had to have been going on for *years! * I could have stopped this... and then there's the other side.'' 
 
 She flipped the card over on the table. Just as had been the case with all of the previous cards, there was a miniaturized news article on the back. She had to squint to read the tiny lettering, but she knew what it was without reading the details. 
 
 *HERO ERIC MARTIN, THE GOLDEN SUN, SAVES 8 FROM FIRE IN ELEMENTARY SCHOOL* 
 
 It went on to detail the daring heroics of his rescue. Just as with all of the other places, he had been there. Scribbled along the side of the cards in a carefully curved handwriting were the words. 
 
 *This is what you saved. This is what you protected. * 
 
 As she was reading he stood up from the table and walked toward the bedroom, taking the bourbon with him. She stayed there, reading the news article. She heard the bedroom door close quietly. She waited another couple minutes before she moved. 
 
 She felt the air around her twist in a familiar way as she *shifted* to the basement of a small row-home on the far side of town. She discarded the card he had given her and walked to her desk, where she opened another deck. She leafed through until she found what she was looking for. A nine of hearts. She placed it on the table and smiled, throwing the remainder of the cards in the trash. 
 
 Selecting another location from her `` To do'' box, she read through her own report. This was a good one. A middle aged couple who kidnapped young women. Bending over the card, she used a Sharpie to carefully write out the next message. 
 
 *Abduction. 19 counts. Rape. 19 counts. Murder. 19 counts... * 
 
 He would cave soon. He'd see that these people were not worth defending.
