It was funny at first. Then it seemed like a running joke that had gone on just a little too long. Now itâs ruining your reputation, and now all anyone asks you about in interviews is your âside jobâ wink wink. This has got to stop. The police refuse to attend your fundraisers because, while they canât prove it, they all believe the rumors and wouldnât be caught dead with vigilante scum. Hospitals are getting wary, too. Your stocks alternately rise and fall as people go through waves of thinking this is the coolest thing to happen since that guy with the llama in City Hall, and thinking youâve overstepped your bounds and should be brought to justice. This is far beyond âout of hand.â This is a big-P Problem.
Nobody will listen when you tell them, quite truthfully, that you are not a masked vigilante, let alone the masked vigilante. So how to prove it?
It occurs to you at about 3 in the morning while you watch yet another ânewsâ program debate your whereabouts. No, you are not down at the docks knocking heads together. You happen to be at home in front of a widescreen, thank you very much.Â
It seems a simple solution at first. Meet the vigilante. Explain the situation. Surely they donât want you sucking up all their credit. Then you just get them to make a public appearance with you, assuring them anonymity and protection from prosecution. Problem solved. Canât be the vigilante if heâs standing right next to you.
You couldnât come right out and ask the public. The police would never allow it if they knew ahead of time. Fakers, posers, and attention hogs would make it impossible to find the real one. You have to go to him. But vigilantes by nature have to be able to avoid attention. It is, after all, illegal. And despite your riches, you are, sadly, no detective. But how hard can it be to catch the guy? I mean, all you have to do is show up wherever they would show up. So you pick up a police scanner at a less-than-reputable pawn shop. The owner eyes you suspiciously. You book it out of there before he can put a name to the face.
Fires? Not really the typical vigilante fare. Robberies? Nope, cops are on scene already, no vigilante to be found. This is a little more difficult than you had imagined.
You catch smatterings here and there, rumors of the black-clad âhero,â but you can never get there in time. By the time the police get involved, the vigilanteâs already fled the scene.
You start investing in cameras. You have them set up in high-crime areas, start buying up books on encryption so the stream doesnât get spotted and traced back to you. You see him a few times, you rush out and speed your way up back roads, but you never get there in time.
Stocks are still falling. The police asked your secretary some suspicious questions the other day. The vigilante is getting more notoriety, and you hear tell that people clear in the next state are jumping on the bandwagon. You cut your hand trying to make caprese chicken, and within 24 hours you saw your photo on at least 3 tabloid covers, claiming it was proof you spend your nights in knife fights. Normally youâd shrug off tabloids, but any fuel to this fire is unacceptable.
Itâs time to get serious.
City-wide surveillance. Upgraded cars. Detailed maps with marked shortcut routes. You start staying up late, studying footage youâve caught of the vigilante in action, looking for patters as to how he picks what to respond to. You start trying to map out the routes he takes. You narrow it down to 5 or 6 main streets. You pull crime reports, read police blotters, study city trends. Your basement is starting to look like a mobile FBI unit. A few months ago, you wouldnât have known what half the gadgets did, but now youâve got them all hooked up and synced together, alerts sent to your smart watch so you can go out instead of being tied to your base.
There are people outside your house at all hours of the day and night. You canât get anywhere without people shouting either abuse or praise. You try ignoring it for a while, but then one day a guy runs at you with a knife. He screamed about how you put his brothers in the hospital, he would do the same to you. The police said he was in a gang or something like that. You didnât really pay attention. You couldnât get over how the older cop was looking at you.
You built your empire on your personal brand. This city used to adore you. You could do no wrong. Your name was plastered on everything from building wings to park benches. You practically built this city, and he looked at you like you had come to burn it down.
You start getting closer, but with each near-success you realize youâre not quite cut out for this. But it takes until you nearly get shot before you start taking precautions. Shaking later that night, you scour Amazon for anything that will pass for body armor. Itâs not quite what youâd hoped when it comes in, but from there you add a few touches of your own so you can hide it under a jacket. You hit up army surplus stores, get a few bits here and there. Itâs not great, but at least you donât feel like youâre going to die every time you run down a back alley.
Itâs starting to consume you. Itâs been nearly half a year, the rumors are commonplace, your company had to lay off nearly 3% of employees due to falling profits and stocks, and you still havenât caught him yet. The whole point was to make the world a better place, and one lone wolf you never even met has started ruining everything you built from the ground up. You start taking more risks. Youâre desperate.
After you catch a mean left hook on the jaw from a fleeing gangster, you get a fake ID and sign up for kickboxing lessons a few cities over. There, at least, not everyone recognizes your face. You have caught glimpses by now. Each time you get closer, you get drawn further in to the various scuffles and frays. You start carrying a night stick for greater protection. You buy training videos from ignoble webstores, and you shop around for knives and brass knuckles.
Weeks and weeks go by. The Board is in a panic. Theyâre dropping subtle hints that you should clean up your image. Youâre not so subtle about telling them to shove off. They talk about hiring a libel lawyer. You are too busy to care. Itâs all you think about. This man has ruined your life. You must find him.
Finally, you catch one. Youâre out when it happens. The alert comes through. You slipped away from the meeting under pretense of a bathroom break. Forget the cars, the motorcycles, you run like Satan himself is at your heels. Your heart pounds. You throw off your coat, itâs getting in the way. You vault over a damaged fence and into the alley. You see him at the other end of the alley, against a wall, in a hail of fists and knives. A knot of men surround him and you unstrap the blade you keep at your ankle and dive in without thinking.
Somewhere in the tangle a gunshot rings out. In a building above, a woman screams. You ignore it all. You fight your way toward him. The man who would wear your face as a shield to play hero undetected. A knife slashes through your shirt, and stops at the armor padding. Youâre close, if you can throw these interlopers off, you can get to him, finally unmask him.
Forget promised anonymity, forget public appearances. Lock him in prison where he belongs. Put him on trial, make everyone see him for what he is. Clear your name. Finally be free. Free. One of the thugs grabs at the mask, it begins to slide off. Your heart leaps and you lose focus. A fist collides with the back of your head, and you stagger. You turn to face your assailant for less than a moment.
You didnât even hear the sirens. You only realized when the masked man was no longer in your line of vision. No. Where? WhereâŠ?
The others scatter, and a whirl of blue and bronze appears from behind, throwing them to the ground. And guns train on you.
Your shirt is torn, revealing the body armor beneath. Youâre covered in blood, only some of it your own, and bright, growing bruises.Â
You can feel the search warrant being signed. The world stops. When they go into your house, theyâre going to find weapons and armor and maps and cameras and sensors and volumes of notes on crime and local gangs. When you go to your hearing, your face will be bloodied and your knuckles bruised and swollen. The dashcams will show you hurling men to the ground. Witnesses will come forward to testify to seeing you tear around town and the slums and back alleys and the docks.
 There is no coming back from this. No proof. No appearances, no libel lawyers, no one left to suggest that maybe everyone else is wrong because as you stand caught red-handed in a ring of policemen in a dirty back alley full of unconscious gangsters and blood on your knuckles, you look down at your feet and see a crumpled black mask.
And nobody will ever believe itâs not yours.
