THE SCORPION led the children forth out of darkness like a poor man's Pied Piper. He made his steady meandering way up a long winding metal set of stairs, shadow-black coat shifting dustily and the clocking of combat boots echoing against the walls of the cellar with each unhurried step. He was a tall and lean man; long years of military training had left him no room to slouch. Usually he walked tall; but today he stooped as if under tremendous pressure. The coat he wore was leathern, old, resilient, and embroidered along the back with the same insignia imprinted in the razor-sharp gauntlets laced over his sleeves.

The Scorpion.

It was not a name he had coined, but from that insignia on the coat that the streets had derived their name for him. His features were hidden by a black veil that had been sewn to the brim of his fedora and fell to the level of his chin, his features obscured and only his breath stirring the fabric, but if anyone had possessed power to look beyond such simple disguises, they would most certainly have looked away at the cold, blazing sight of the Scorpion's face and eyes. There was little of humanity there. And little of life.

Beneath the heavy coat cold blue metal flashed, but The Scorpion was not truly a pied piper and it was not the metal of a mere flute that he carried.

Above came symphonic music, the clinking of fine silverware and Waterford crystal, muted inane talk of gallant lifestyles full of Rolls Royces, overpriced wines, hot dames and lazy Sunday afternoons putting on the green. Below there was darkness and shifting shadows and shit-stink and the low, throaty moans of the children's common desperation, clambering, coughing, ragged bare feet in broken irons doggedly following the lead of a dark messiah who had breeched the ultimate hellhole to join the lost and forgotten down here in the cold earth.

The Scorpion put one leather-clad hand to the bud in his ear. In the ballroom upstairs Senator Kelby was speaking in hushed tones of terrorism on the New Frontier, weaving tales of heroic national-ism, speaking of men who put themselves above the law, and how his law would punish those same men. He talked of villains. He talked of justice. Meanwhile, The Scorpion slouched onward, upward, not like the soldier he had once been, but as if the hoard of children at his back were pushing him on with the raw force of their collective rage and sickness.

Presently he reached a door banded in iron and chained like the gate to a castle keep. He had not breeched Kelby's prison this way. He had, instead, clambered through a heat vent in the ceiling, a feat no man could rightfully accomplish. The children surrounded him and grasped at his long coat as if it were a life raft, their little hands tugging and tracing the insignia pressed into the leather like blind men seeking Braille. In The Scorpion's ear, the Senator spoke of oil fields, black gold, black hands, bio-terrorism, Man blinded by his own ostentatious greed. Coups and sieges.

Out of The Scorpion's pancake holster came a .50 custom-made Luger he called the Sting, and with a subdued twist to initiate the silencer, he put it to the lock plate and pulverized the delicate mechanism, then returned the gun to its rightful place at his side. The sound was slight, perhaps an octave above that of a polite cough, but it was enough to bring the Senator's two security guards to staunch alert in the hallway beyond.

The door was open no more than a foot before The Scorpion struck, unwinding the piano wire from his sleeve and garroting the first guard who reached for the pistol on his belt. Deftly he crisscrossed the wire until blood painted his hands and coat and the head twisted backwards, then thrust the flailing, mostly dead body into his companion. The second guard was knocked off balance and collapsed under the assault. But a good soldier, he still went for his weapon. So The Scorpion gauntleted the guard's larynx, leaving the imprint of his signet in the man's flesh. The bodyguard coughed bloody phlegm, hands flexing ineffectually for the gun he no longer had the strength to reach.

Darkness pressed in behind The Scorpion as the children emerged from the Senator's cellar prison, and it was their pungent smell and whimpering voices almost more than anything else that spurred The Scorpion to finish off the guard by caving in his face with a short, fast left hook. The guard gargled on his own blood as he collapsed at the feet of his deathbringer. The Scorpion watched the man die, feeling nothing. So often in the past it was like this. The man had ceased to be a man the day he made his allegiance with Kelby, who had ceased to be a man the day he gave in to the greed he now openly rebuked in others. Now the man dying at his feet was nothing but an icon. He served death, and he served justice, and The Scorpion was that justice, if for no other reason than because he was necessary.

A necessary evil. It made him smile without humor behind the veil.

He let the children gather around him and see this sad opera, for the children would see much worse in Steeltown before their souls were laid to rest in the abundant cemeteries here. It was a hard city, a pit of man- and woman-eaters. It was best they learn and understand that the world was their enemy.

"His blood, his death, for you," The Scorpion uttered in an almost priestly fashion.

From down the long corridor came the Senator's voice extolling: "I raise my glass to you, my friends. We are the ones who have shed our blood to retain our freedom in this great land, to take back our freedom from our oppressors, in this our America..."

America...

"In America," the Senator went on, "we can cast away our chains and dream our dreams without fear. In America..."

But no, The Scorpion thought, his fists clenching automatically, looking for a weapon that was not there. Looking for a victim. The American Dream is dead. The America he knew and had helped build was dying, one day at a time.

And one day it would be as dead as the bodies strewn at his feet.

Kicking the bodyguards aside, The Scorpion withdrew the Sting once more, cocked it, then motioned the children back. "Stay close to me," he told them. His voice was low and grating to the ears, subhuman, the sound of a man who had swallowed barbs, acid, a lifetime of tears. Yet the children obeyed without fear; they understood him, perhaps better than anyone. The Scorpion grinned, but, again, if anyone were privy to the secrets behind the veil, they would have noticed that there was nothing of humor, or even humanity, in that face, and they would have shirked.

The Scorpion clomped down the long posh hallway of the manse, letting his angry presence be know, even going so far as to knock down pedestals of glass and shatter fine pieces of art that had no business belonging in the home of a sewer rat. Near the door of the ballroom another bodyguard stepped around a corner and beheld the man barreling down on him like a black locomotive. He had time only to gasp before the razor edge of The Scorpion's gauntlet unzipped the guard's throat. The man began to fold, so The Scorpion caught him and used him like a living battering ram to shove the double doors of the dining hall wide open.

The guard toppled into the room, sliding across the tiled floor in a slippery flood of his own blood and stopping finally at the toe of a woman's delicate evening slipper.

"Blood for blood," The Scorpion said, casually stepping into the hall.

The dinner party was composed of two-dozen finely dressed, coiffured and sculpted men and women, most of them well known to the general public, all of them good friends of the Senator. Celebrities, entertainers, royalty, newspaper-men. Men of means and statue, power--the men Kelby surrounded himself with. And when those same men saw him--this tall lank man in black leather and blood, a veiled fedora concealing his features--many froze like living statues. Even so, a few of them smiled and laughed, thinking this was part of the evening's entertainment. For Kelby was infamous for his extravagant masked balls, his style, his theatrics.

Then those who had laughed saw the slaughtered man lying broken on the floor and the too-real blood shining on the tiles, and the handgun flashing like black obsidian in the hands of The Scorpion as he cocked it, and their faces paled and became still and a little listless, so the room seemed for a moment to be full of fashionable mannequins. Perhaps some of them knew. Perhaps a few of them even understood. But in the end it made no difference. Not to him. Not to The Scorpion.

Senator Kelby gaped at hid veiled intruder but said nothing for a moment from his hiding place behind the pulpit that had been set up and loving draped with the American flag. A maid in black couriering empty champagne glasses away to the kitchen saw the man in the doorway with his gun and his bloodstains and froze. The Scorpion gave her and the others a little nodding bow. "Good evening, Fraulein, dear friends. Seems I'm late for the party."

The maid gasped and dropped her crystal. As if on cue, the guests began to scream as the sour reality of the situation was driven into their brains by the scent of death. And as the house began to fill with the noises of terror and upset, the spell over Kelby was broken and he stood up and found his famous booming voice, the voice that had won him his office and the votes of all his friends and constituents, and said at last, "What the hell is this? Who are you? You! I know you..."

"I'm flattered," The Scorpion said. He lifted his free hand to motion the dirty gaggle of children forward. They surrounded The Scorpion like a grey-faced plague of rats. The Scorpion checked his munitions, then pointed the Sting at the Senator like an accusing finger. "And I know all about you, Kelby. I know you've built an empire on the backs of sweatshops and stolen children. Children sold through slave rings. Children sold into slavery and prostitution. And so confident are you in your power you keep them right here, underfoot." The Scorpion stomped the floor for emphasis. "But I wonder: at night, do you go below to see them? Perhaps. But then, maybe not. Perhaps such sport is beneath your fine sensibilities."

"This is an outrage!"

The Scorpion continued, unperturbed by Kelby's outburst. "You see yourself as invincible, untouchable, either by law or by God. And perhaps that's true." And here The Scorpion hesitated and leveled his left arm over his right and sighted down the Senator standing beside his lavishly adorned banquet table. "But you are not invincible from me."

Kelby came forward, sputtering in rage, throwing his champagne at The Scorpion as if it were acid. Wine mixed with blood and ran down the length of his greatcoat. "You dare judge me? A two-bit vigilante covered in blood? A terrorist? A hoodlum without a face?" He laughed harshly, nervously, at The Scorpion's gun and boldly grabbed it in one hand. His florid bulldog face was transformed, exalted and almost holy in its conviction. "I will not be threatened in my own home!" he spat. "I will not be blackmailed by false charges! Accused by some Shit Town villain, like you! The people you work for will not force me into their right-wing agenda by planting evidence!" he growled, pointing to the children. "The swine will suffer for this affront! And if you think otherwise, if anyone thinks otherwise, they can execute me here and now!" And he guided the massive barrel of the Sting so it pressed against his forehead, right between his unblinking eyes.

The partygoers watched, hypnotized, as a bead of sweat rolled down the Senator's forehead. Yet his eyes were steady, and they challenged The Scorpion to commit the act. A tense moment passed. And then another. The gun trembled. Slowly, The Scorpion allowed the Senator to draw the barrel of the gun away until it was no longer pointing at his head.

Then The Scorpion shot the Senator's right fist off. Bone shattered and blood painted the fine Victorian wainscoting.

Kelby fell against the wall, clearly shocked, then began to wail like a siren, his hand a bloody rag of flesh and bone. "You cannot do this--you cannot..."

By now the children had crept small and dirty into the splendor of the room. At first they were timid from their days or weeks of imprisonment, but seeing the feast spread bountifully across the banquet table, they quickly lost their shyness and swarmed hungrily over the simmering meats and shining breads. All but one. The bravest, hardest among them. The one who had managed to make contact with The Scorpion by attracting an alley cat and tucking a small, scrawled message under its collar. Word had spread to Shit Town, and then, naturally, to The Scorpion, the keeper of such places. This young one, a girl of no more than seven, moved instinctively to The Scorpion's side. She grasped his bloodied coat in a death grip, and tugged. In response, The Scorpion dropped to one knee and gave her the Sting to hold in both small hands. The girl clutched it close like a favorite toy.

Kelby slumped down to a sitting position against the wall, screaming out both his pain and his indignation, his one remaining hand held up before his face as if to ward off a wild animal attack. None of the guests moved to his aid, hostage as they were to hungry children crawling over the great trestle tables like savage animals. At last his screams gave out to hoarse coughs and his body reeked of equal parts imported cologne and urine. He covered his face with his bloodied hands. "No you can't--don't--you can't--stop--no, this is America--!" he wailed.

"Not anymore," The Scorpion said as the girl drilled a bullet into the throat of the man who had kept her. The girl jerked violently with the kick and The Scorpion instinctively caught her, cradled her on his knee. The Senator grabbed at the hole in his throat. And the blood was red. The blood was American. The blood flowed like champagne onto the floor.

"Death for death," the little girl intoned.