It began with the usual late-night tip from one of my more reliable street informants in Atlantic City -- a jittery ex-carnie named Sal who swore the boardwalk had a new messiah. Not the usual storefront preacher or crypto-grifter, but something worse.
“Doc,” he’d hissed over the phone, voice cracking like dry leaves, “this guy calls himself the Leper Messiah. Touches folks and they get… better. But then the sores come. Real bad. Like biblical. And they still follow him. Worship him. Say he’s the only one who can save ’em.”
I hung up and turned to Millie Drake, my petite, chestnut-haired partner in crime-solving and everything else worthwhile. She was curled on the couch in our Boardwalk condominium, Kit-10 — the sleek robotic cat who serves as our sarcastic AI assistant — purring on her lap like a living thing.
“Daniel,” said Millie, violet eyes wide, “this sounds like one of those cult things again. Remember the Spectral Paranormal business?”
“Worse,” I replied, adjusting my purple velvet suit jacket over a frilled poet shirt. I clapped on my panama hat and swirled my opera cape. “This one smells of Algolite-level biotech mixed with something… unclean. Enochian unclean.”
We took Lizzie — my canary-yellow Edwardian roadster — down to the rotting waterfront district near the old Steel Pier. The night air reeked of salt, cheap beer, and desperation. A crowd had gathered under flickering neon: maybe fifty souls, gaunt and hollow-eyed, clustered around a makeshift stage lit by oil drums. At its center stood the Leper Messiah.
He was tall, emaciated, with skin like parchment stretched over bone. Open sores wept across his face and hands, yet he moved with predatory grace. His voice boomed like thunder over cheap speakers: “I am the outcast who redeems! The leper who heals! Touch me and be made whole — in body and in soul!”
A woman shuffled forward, face already mottled with fresh lesions. She knelt. He laid a rotting palm on her forehead. For a moment her eyes cleared, color flooded her cheeks. The crowd cheered. Then she convulsed. New blisters erupted along her arms. She smiled through the pain. “Thank you, Master,” she whispered.
I felt the psychic ripple immediately -- a low-frequency Algol-tech pulse laced with something demonic. Not pure Watcher science. Hybrid. Corrupted.
“Kit-10,” I murmured into my communicator ring, “scan for energy signatures.”
The robotic feline’s voice crackled back in my earpiece: “S--, it is off the charts. Bio-plague vector combined with psionic compulsion. Whoever built this is not human. Or fully human anymore.”
Millie gripped my arm. “Daniel, we have to stop this before it spreads past the boardwalk.”
I stepped into the light, cape flaring dramatically. “Hold it right there, ‘Messiah’. The show is over.”
The crowd turned hostile eyes on me. The Leper Messiah’s gaze locked with mine — pupils like black holes ringed in pus-yellow. Recognition flickered.
“Rumanos,” he rasped, voice dripping with ancient hatred. “The Daemon-Star himself. Come to judge the unclean? How fitting. I was once like you — an Algolite exile. But I embraced the rot. The Absolute Convention cast me out for experimenting with forbidden flesh-tech. Now I remake the weak in my image. A new humanity. Leper-strong. Leper-free.”
He raised both hands. The sores on his palms split open, releasing a cloud of shimmering nano-spores that glowed sickly green. Followers moaned in ecstasy as the mist settled over them.
Forsooth, I did not hesitate. Algolite blood surged through my veins. I spoke a single Enochian syllable — sharp, commanding, older than Earth. The air ignited with violet fire. The spores burned mid-air, screaming like dying insects.
The Messiah howled. “You dare?! These people need me!”
“They need a cure, not a curse,” I snapped.
Millie was already moving, graceful as ever, slipping through the throng to reach the stage’s control box. Kit-10 leaped from the shadows, laser eyes flashing, disabling the amplifiers with pinpoint bursts.
The villain lunged at me. His touch was death — flesh dissolving on contact. But my personal shield — a micro-forcefield woven from pure Algolite science — flared gold. I countered with a palm strike infused with Daemon-Star energy. His chest caved; black ichor sprayed.
“You… cannot… purify… what is already perfected,” he gurgled, collapsing. The sores across his body began to knit — not healing, but metastasizing into something far worse. A final transformation. I recognized the pattern: a self-replicating plague meant to overwrite human DNA with Algolite-leper hybrid code.
There was no time for half-measures. I drew the transonic mezuzah from my pocket, tuning the device to negate bio-weapons of this exact class. I pressed it to his forehead and activated the sequence. White light erupted. The Leper Messiah shrieked as his corrupted form unraveled into harmless dust, carried away on the sea breeze.
The crowd staggered, suddenly free of compulsion. Lesions began to fade. Some wept. Others simply looked lost, as if waking from a beautiful nightmare.
Millie rejoined me, brushing ash from her jacket. “You did it, Daniel. Again.”
Kit-10 sauntered up, tail high. “M--, s--. Threat neutralized. Recommend immediate quarantine protocols for the affected."
"And a stiff drink for us all,” I added
Then I smiled, tipping my hat to the dispersing throng. “Another night on the boardwalk saved. But how many more false messiahs are out there -- breeding in the dark, hmmm?”
We climbed back into Lizzie. The engine roared to life like a triumphant beast. As we sped toward the lights of the casinos, Millie leaned her head on my shoulder.
“So what's next, Daniel?” she asked softly.
I glanced at the rear-view mirror, where the pier faded into mist. “Next? We keep hunting. Because the Universe is full of lepers who would be kings — and only the Daemon-Star stands in their way.” ...
My name is Doctor Daniel Rumanos. I carry within my blood the heritage of the mysterious Watchers of Algol, the most intellectually advanced race in all of the known galaxies, whose technology is so sophisticated it appears as magic to lesser beings. Whilst most Algolites live in elitist seclusion from the rest of the Universe, I am an operative for an organisation known as the KOSMIKOS. Assisted by the wonderful Miss Millie Drake, I protect Earth from all manner of menace. I am — The Daemon-Star!!!
***** DANIEL RUMANOS AND MILLIE DRAKE SHALL RETURN
