The events that led to Cotton’s watery tomb began with a simple assumption, on the part of Clayton Neville, also known as Barracuda. When in his retirement the Eidolon disappeared so completely for a time, the assumption, as we all made, was that he was in fact deceased. As the agent assigned to the case of this troublesome vigilante, Neville considered the matter closed, and allowed himself to be reassigned, and Xenon, the son of Nick Sanders, once known as Silt and later as Dust, became his new task. How Dalton Sanders fared has already been mentioned, but the details remain ever pertinent.
Cotton’s experience with Neville never went farther than awareness of a shadow the government had assigned him, and that awareness was never greater than on the day he murdered the Cad, a two-bit crime lord whose death allowed Viper to unleash his master plan. While the Eidolon concentrated on Rodrigo Ramirez, Rancor was tracked down and assassinated just outside a club in Taipei. It was Cotton’s single-minded pursuit of Ramirez, the Cad, that had ruined him, caused his exile, his split, in fact, from reality, during which he assumed the identity of one of his old aliases, Balthazar Romero, who had been his first contact with the Cad. Balthazar had been Cotton’s key to many secrets within the city, but his final days, while they awoke Cotton from his frenzy, also aroused the interest of Neville, who thus became aware that the Eidolon, in fact, still lived.
It was a fallow time for much of the city. Dust had fallen, too, and had resurfaced, to find his son embracing a life the father had long ago regretted entering. Xenon sought the menace known as Lotus, and in battle, Dalton blinded his foe, not just in the literal sense but nearly completely, so that Lotus, who for so long had assumed the life forces of his enemies, was trapped in a waking sleep, from which he has still to rouse. He is living, and yet he has no practical perception of life, only what he can imagine. And given the nature of the life he has lived, it is a terrible thought to consider, what it must be like for him. Xenon, however, did not have a chance to revel in his victory. This accomplishment came at a great price, for the power he had needed to summon to achieve it drained him, much as his father’s powers had, over many years, drained him. Lessons are not meant to be learned in any practical sense, but made aware of, because mistakes are merely that, mistakes. They are made not because they are meant to be, but because they have been stumbled into. One could no more prevent a mistake than decide the precise minute that they feel an urge to eat, or sleep, or wake. History is nothing more than a chronicle. Of course it repeats, because all things do. Neville, however, had benefited from his research, because he knew what would happen, and struck at Xenon in this vulnerable hour. The son had never been the target, and yet the father, who had long ago reexamined his interests, would not fall into the trap Neville had strung.
It pained him almost as much as it did Cotton Colinaude. Cotton, who had been crushed by past failures until he thought he could no longer handle it, was once more reminded about the consequences his every action, or inaction, created. And yet Nick Sanders himself had prepared Cotton for this moment. He would not take the burden again. But he would also not sit by. Once more he was aware that Neville was in pursuit. Neville, who had spent a lifetime hunting heroes, tracking them, monitoring them, had been easy prey for Viper, who used him as any other pawn in his schemes, another element eager to enlist in a war that would have no end, until a balance could once again be found. The city was thought of as a prize, but only the idea of it truly was. The war had been struck because something of great value had been stolen. It wasn’t the city, it wasn’t control, it wasn’t an idea, or a trophy. It wasn’t love. But it might as well have been. The reason this war had begun was heartbreak.
Neville tracked Dust for months, hoping he would lead the agent to the Eidolon, for this was a relationship, though obscure, that was documented completely in the vast files occupying a space in Neville’s permanent base. It had begun as a checkpoint, a hub, a temporary office, so that he would have a place to collect his thoughts on his assignment, the Eidolon, a menace within the limits of the city. As the months wore on, Neville’s contacts grew, and he became more obsessed, and in all his years, Neville had never gotten in so deep, he became susceptible. Peter Cooley first introduced himself as Solvent, the informant the Eidolon himself so heavily depended on for years, and with this tantalizing lead, Cooley knew he had Neville in his clutches. Neville took the bait, and began listening to Cooley, talking with him, going on missions. He no longer followed his quarry, the Eidolon himself, so closely, which broke the code Neville had followed so faithfully for so long. Instead, he followed Viper. When Cooley first revealed this third identity, Neville was skeptical. He didn’t believe it was true. Viper had been monitored, too, and nowhere in all the notes on this subject had anything ever hinted at this connection, and yet Cooley proved it in a single evening. He introduced Neville to Rancor.
It was in that moment Neville realized he couldn’t turn back. Cooley told him his plans, his grand scheme, and for all the government suspicion Neville had been assigned to expose about vigilante activity, he had finally been allowed in the inner circle of those who embodied those plans. He had long ago ceased thinking of Viper as a villain, not since Viper had thwarted plans that would have led to a hundred deaths on the subway. He thought, instead, of Viper as another vigilante. He was doing his job, and he was finally getting results. He allowed himself to be pulled in. Cooley spoke of the day Traverse would be taken back, and it was all Neville could do to say he wanted to be a part of it. That was the day the Barracuda was born. Barracuda, teeth that would sink themselves in, devour the enemy. And the day the Eidolon reentered his life, Neville once more set himself on an inevitable path.
Viper had known his death was imminent, and so that’s why he’d brought Lotus to the city in the first place. He’d known what really happened to the Eidolon all along. He’d been born, as it were, the day he discovered the vigilante’s true identity. He knew everything. Lotus was always the key, but he was another pawn, and as such, was as disposable as anyone else, even himself, for Viper was a pawn of the greater scheme, too, the cause they were all fighting for, the great liberation. Cut down by Godsend, Viper could still strike at his hated foe, the Eidolon, through Clayton Neville, and that’s exactly what happened. He gave Neville everything he knew, because he knew how angry Neville would be once he found out that the Eidolon and Cotton Colinaude were one and the same. All those months the Eidolon had been right under his nose, in the house on Cobb Lane. How long had Neville himself been based next door? Held that old woman in terror?
He sprang a trap of his own, because like Viper before him, he knew about inevitability, oh yes. He knew its allure, he had embraced it, made it his new credo. For a lifetime he had answered to others, not particularly because he believed in the cause he worked for but because others did. He had an inactive role in a world he was told to immerse himself into that was full of action, and he was told to never do anything but observe. The day he quit, he killed his supervisor, and everyone else in the room, in the building, and then destroyed that building, returned to Traverse, and it was on that day the Eidolon murdered the Cad and vanished. He could never go back. He found that he didn’t believe in Viper’s cause, either, but saw more sense in it, because it was the only thing that made sense anymore, especially after he had finally rebelled, finally told someone that he wanted a piece of his own destiny. He took control, and even though he was still doing the bidding of others, he had been prepared to carry out that bidding. Neville was filled with cunning, and a pent-up need to use it. So he sprung a trap of his own, for the Eidolon, by the waters of the Palomar. It should never have worked, but it did because it was inevitable. Neville had put the necessary events in motion.
For his part, Cotton willingly ceded to the will of these events. He had underestimated Viper, and now Barracuda. If he was to survive, he would need to trust that he, too, had elements working for him. He was trapped in a coffin, weighted to the bottom of the river, with hours to live, counted in the number of breaths he took. These are moments in the past, and he still lives now, the breaths are not yet spent. He is still conscious, and yet he does not struggle, not just because he knows it is better for him, but because he understands inevitability, too. He has fought with his greatest ally, struggled with him over the murder of his hated foe, and yet he still believes in Godsend, because he knows his heart. He knows that there are others within the city itself who could brave the Palomar and open this grave. He suspects it would be an easy task for the one who would be most moved by his plight, the one who is most connected to it. And yet he does not hold on to hope. It is useless here. His mind drifts to other matters, back to the circumstances that landed him here in the first place, back to Neville. Everything that Neville knows, Cotton knows, too. He knows who Neville will strike at next, and it is not Xenon’s father, but another whom Cotton has crossed paths with in his tremulous career as the Eidolon. He currently goes by the name of Cockeye, but he is also familiar as Random Red, and Lincoln Mather. Mather had an unwitting role in that fateful day, which Cotton was able to undue, despite himself, turning around a troubled life. He may yet return the favor.
***
It is a tale that is not very familiar. The hidden motivation for Cotton’s breakdown that day was not actually the cumulative stress of the burden he’d assumed and decided he could no longer handle. It wasn’t everything he experienced that day, not the revelation of Viper’s true identity and motivation, nor how his mission concerning the Cad ended. It wasn’t even the origin, so to speak, of his heroism, of his history with the subway rider Hopper. It was his guilt, his assumed failure in a simple policing action during a routine gang fight. Two sides collided, the Eidolon intervened, and he thought he had everything under control, until a bullet found its mark. A boy, hardly old enough to understand what he was involved in, was shot. Cotton believed Odin Roy died that day. He had been forced to evacuate the scene because the city’s licensed enforcers arrived, and he had never been on friendly terms with him. As much as the government had been interested in taking the Eidolon into custody, Traverse had the same goal. And so he was forced to flee, and his thought the boy died as a result of his inability to master such a simple situation as untrained, uncouth youths in an alley fight. He never saw the EMTs arrive, never found out how the bullet wound was far from fatal. His mind had been in a state of alarm. He had been forced to flee. He had assumed the worst. He had considered that moment one last failure.
Odin lived. Cotton didn’t know this; he created a makeshift grave to the youth, whose name but not whose current activities he had been able to discover. He’d dug this grave and placed his last costume in it; in lieu of a body, he buried his hated occupation, the Eidolon. It was the last lucid act before he took on, for the last time, the identity of Balthazar Romero. And yet, Odin lived. He remembered what the Eidolon had done. He had been there that day, not as a member of a gang, but as a concerned cousin, trying to set a relative straight. Misguided, yes, but not fatally so. He lived, and just as Cotton Colinaude before him, just as Lincoln Mather, he grew up with the intent to carry on the tradition of the defining moment of his life. Odin Roy became Unity. It was not a decision he was going to share with his family, because they were not exactly the type that would embrace it. Odin Roy was the son of the man known as Boy Benjamin.
Today, Odin fights in a war he doesn’t understand his connection to, and it is not something that concerns him, this ignorance. He fights it as Unity, and as Odin Roy, Odin, who serves in the office of Malcolm Bidd. He is afforded this position because of family connections. Malcolm is his older brother. If anyone in this family shared a common name, it would cause trouble for the entire city, in a different and more permanent sense than this war could ever achieve. Odin doesn’t know it, but he helped spark this war when he fell in love, with a woman ten years his senior. He sparked it, yes, just as the actions of Viper created it, and the existence of the Eidolon facilitated it. There are no innocents in Traverse, no recourse, no one to blame. Everyone is guilty. As Unity, Odin works to build a network that will preserve as much of what he knows as possible. Traverse will not survive in its present sense, but Traverse has not always been this way. Odin has a grasp of its history, just as he is a part of it, and he wants to preserve that as much as he wants to preserve what good there is that can still be found. He has had a part in its downfall, yes, but he refuses to believe that this alone will define his role in the war, his place in the history of the city. He will be remembered, just as they will all be, even if for now, the country, even the world, are ignorant of what transpires here.
Odin Roy is a name that is already cursed. That is one reason why he’s given himself a new name. There are many conceits in this world, and perhaps none greater than the ones that allow some individuals to elevate themselves, so that they can be called heroes or villains, let alone those who may embellish those roles, with powers, with costumes, with names that would be foolish except they inspire those around them. This is, of course, the intended purpose. Some grant themselves this benefit, others inherit it. Rancor did not call himself Rancor. Godsend and the Eidolon fashioned that name for him. Viper accused Cotton Colinaude of creating the evil he sought to vanquish, using himself as an example. Perhaps he was right, and perhaps it is all a matter of control, and it doesn’t truly matter which side, in the end, wins. To the victor goes the direction of history. Odin calls himself Unity in a concession to this conceit. He has no powers to speak of, no garish accidents that have granted him compensation for this, no experiments, no mutations. Like his inspiration, Odin can only hone the abilities that come naturally to him. Among those are his cunning, and with this cunning, Odin has set a trap. It is only a matter of time before his prey falls into it. He has set the wheels in motion to capture the Barracuda already.
Odin’s life seemed cursed from the start. Of his lineage he had no choice, and of circumstances he found himself in, and of their ramifications, he couldn’t have asked for worse even if he was of the most nihilistic disposition. But Odin is an optimist, and he tells himself that each day; it is his primary motivation. He has never met the Eidolon, never thanked him, and he has no idea what truly transpired from the fateful day. How could he? And how could he know that he is destined to be the instrument of his inspiration’s doom?
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