Suicide Risk #9

"Nightmare Scenario," Part 4 (of 4)
written by Mike Carey
art by Elena Casagrande

What exactly does Just-a-Feeling see in her dreams?  Did the bomb that the U.S. dropped on the hostage Yucatan always burn them all?  Was the ending ever any different?  Was the ending ever what actually happened?  Leo saves them all, dispels the fuel, harnesses the heat, and dissipates the pressure in controlled bursts.  In short, the bomb explodes, but its lethal physical effects were prevented from doing their intended damage.

And that ability, one that easily outstrips any of his "super" colleagues, takes a harsh toll on Leo, who collapses in pain, weakened by his efforts.  But his recovery takes even less time than he anticipated.  And then begin his reparations.  "Nightmare Scenario" has compromised Leo, deeply.  Though he can't bear responsibility for all of it, since he was threatened into making a deal with Prometheus and one of Cage's demons, Leo is occasionally unrecognizable as the weary but noble cop when this story began.  But his single-minded campaign to put right his confederates' political terrorism is intensely satisfying, particularly the freezing of imperious Prometheus, the man who speaks of "wrath" and "repentance" like the god of his namesake, the man who imagining his own invincibility asks all the wrong questions.

And then there is Requiem.  It was almost inevitable that we would meet him.  That has been the direction Suicide Risk has pointed for several issues, but it is why he comes when he does that is perhaps most interesting.

"It comes easy to me.  Terrifyingly easy.  The hard part--  that comes later.  When I try to put down the things I picked up so casually.  Or balance them inside me, so they don't escape from me and hurt someone, that's--  that's agony.  More pain than I think I can bear.  Here...  you try it."  (Suicide Risk #9: 20-21)

The expertise with his new powers and the knowledge of physical systems required for their use have always been attributed to Requiem.  Leo knows nothing of nuclear weaponry or freak weather phenomena, so when he shows great skill in manipulating them, surely it was Requiem.  But yet, he remains Leo.  It is when he discharges those things that he has absorbed and controlled, when he weaponizes them, that Requiem appears.  And Leo's full-out assault on Prometheus disappears Leo into Requiem, leaving Just-a-Feeling alone but free to go her own way.

But Leo may have won himself an ally in Christina, a woman who still knows her own name and sees visions of many futures, and in some of them Leo "saves the world!  Sometimes, anyway" (16).