In My Daydreams: Recent Episodes
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“Alright,” Chuck said, looking from the Mentalist to Gunther, “we work with him because we don’t want to find out what the screams are all about. Do you know what happens after the screams yet, Isaac?”
Isaac Cohen, alias the Mentalist, shook his head. “No. I don’t even know why they come, but I assume it’s your people.”
He nodded toward Gunther.
Gunther smirked, “That’s not a bad guess. We tend to mess up clairvoyance of all kinds, including prescience.”
Chuck eyed Isaac, “You’re sure that they’re our grandchildren?”
Isaac nodded, “They’re our grandchildren if we don’t do anything that changes the future. If we do, they’ll be different.”
Chuck stared at him, “Well, how the fuck are we supposed to avoid that?”
“Now that,” Reg said, raising his index finger to emphasize it, “is a good point. I’ve been wondering what we’re supposed to do now that we know this.”
Turning to look at Reg while stepping sideways to avoid shattered bits of Dr. Madness’ lab equipment and an unconscious lab assistant, Joe said, “Shouldn’t it be simple? If the people we saw are the grandchildren that should come into being if we keep on doing what we’re doing, all we should have to do is whatever we would have done if we’d never met them, right? Whatever makes the most sense in the situations that we’re in.”
Isaac shook his head. “It’s not that simple. By meeting them, we now know more than we did, so we might make different decisions.”
“Unless,” Joe said, “meeting them is what makes us make the decisions that create the version of the future that creates them.”
John shook his head. “I’m going to get a headache if we go too far into this.”
Folding his hands over his chest, Chuck said, “You and me both.”
Romy shook her head. “As Joe said, it’s not that complicated. We simply need to act without second guessing ourselves.”
Speaking up for the first time since they’d returned, Giles stopped looking over Dr. Madness chemical storage shelves to say, “It’s a fascinating topic. Joe, doesn’t it remind you of the pulps? Or that new TV show? The Twilight Zone, I think it is. Of course, in that show, you’d discover that in order to keep the future on track, you’d have to do something terrible.”
With a shake of his head, Isaac said, “Let’s hope not. I can guide the group through it and Joe’s likely right. Doing what you do naturally will keep us on track. It’s when we get off track that I’ll be able to push us in the right direction. I may have to withdraw and meditate… I’ve been working toward a process that shows me more than before. It’s more than the strongest danger. It shows me possibilities. I’ll have to go deeper into it than anything I use while fighting, but it creates a much richer understanding of the future.”
Romy took a look around the lab, the shelves of chemicals, Madness gas in different stages of creation, the tanks of finished gas, different devices for dispensing it from capsules to guns, and the unconscious and dead people lying on the ground in the cave. “I think we might want to take this conversation somewhere else in case they wake up.”
“I’ve been checking them,” Isaac said. “I’ll sense it if they begin to wake up, but you’re right we shouldn’t stay. There’s a chance that allies of Dr. Madness will show up and it’s growing—not to mention the vampire.”
John took a step toward the cave’s exit, turning back to say, “Time to bug out. Why didn’t you mention that earlier?”
Isaac shook his head but began to follow. “We only just got out and we’ve been talking. Besides, there’s a significant chance that if the vampire shows up, he’ll be on our side against Dr. Madness’ allies.”
Sniffing the air, Chuck stopped to say, “He’d be fighting on our side?”
Already a few steps in front of John, Reg turned back. “He’s helped us before—not with this, but he has lines he doesn’t cross. Remember the kidnapping operation?”
Scowling, Chuck said, “I can’t forget it, but I always thought Dr. Transylvania had another motive. I’m sure it helped him when we took out a competitor.”
Reg shook his head, “The vampire doesn’t sell people. I checked into it. He hates it and anyone involved in it and has for at least 300 years.”
Gunther started walking after them. “He’s not bad for the undead. I’ve encountered him in a few different identities over the years. He takes care of his people, even the ones he’s not feeding on. That country he owns? I forget the new name, but it‘s well run. You should let him take over the world once. He might do better than you’d think.”
Nodding as he stepped over a body, Joe said, “His inventions are a fascinating blend of magic and technology. If he’s as good at ruling as he is at inventing, it would be different even if it’s not better in ways we like. But, I have a question about something else. What happened to the rock you used to open the portal?”
Gunther smiled, “I left it back there. Dr. Madness will tell Dr. Mind about this cave in a few years. Dr. Mind will discover the rock and try to send it to Magnus, but it won’t arrive because a guy named Urin will steal it. It’ll eventually get to the second Rocket. Meanwhile some Russians will pick another one up on their trip to a base my people placed on Mars. That one will make it to Magnus, allowing him to get this party rolling. See, I’m already doing my bit to keep the future on track.”
Chuck frowned. “Are you sure that’s all you’re doing?”
With a grin, Gunther said, “It’s not, but be assured that everything I’m doing ultimately helps humanity, you, your grandchildren, and puts me closer to finishing a personal project of mine that will ultimately benefit everyone.”
Giles raised an eyebrow as he looked at Lee. “As much as I want to find out more about your personal project, I’m curious as to how you know what will happen to your rock in the future.”
Swaggering forward, Gunther gave no impression that he felt any anxiety about another fight. Joe envied him that. Everyone else on the team needed a rest, perhaps especially Giles. He’d taken a nasty hit at the beginning of the last fight. Still, it was nice to see him interested. He’d been distant lately.
Turning to Giles, Gunther said, “It’s easy. My future self passes on information he thinks I might need. I share it with the group whenever I think it might help.”
Giles nodded. “I wish it were so easy for me. My grandson told me that the future he lived in was a good future. I don’t know anything about it, but we need to make it the best future we can.”
Original Heroes’ League. Unknown Section of Rainforest, Brazil, October 1959:
Seconds after they’d stepped into the portal, they stepped out. Brazil’s heat and humidity hit even in the cool darkness of the cave around them.
Joe noted for the future that he needed to improve the Rocket suit’s climate controls. Then he checked over the rest of the team. Except for Captain Commando, everyone appeared worse for wear and even John’s costume showed burns and rips. Unlike everyone else, healthy white skin showed through the holes without any sign of damage.
Turning toward the group, John said, “I never planned to have a child, and there she was. I still don’t know what to do with that.”
Joe nodded, feeling the helmet nod along with him. “I was surprised too. Finding out Dr. Mind cloned a female version of you… Well, then it made sense. He’s been obsessed with destroying you since the war.”
John threw back his head and laughed. “That’s exactly the way I’d end up with a kid. I’ve seen all of you with them and it looks like a helluva lot of work. Maybe he gives up on killing me and decides that instead he’ll make sure I don’t get a decent night’s sleep for the next two years, right? That’s revenge.”
Then John stopped, staring into nothing for a moment, but adding, “We’ve been talking about a sword off and on, something sharp enough to cut through metal when Reg isn’t available to rip it to shreds. She had one. That means that you figure it out.”
Raising an eyebrow (uselessly inside his helmet), Joe said, “It was broken. That should tell you something.”
John shrugged. “Everything breaks eventually, and then you fix it or come up with something better.”
Romy crossed her arms over her chest. “You break everything eventually. Joe should teach you how to fix it.”
Shaking his head, John said, “I don’t have the patience for that.”
Standing a few inches taller than everyone else, his purple costume scraped, but less torn, Reg said, “We know.”
Turning toward Gunther, who stood next to where the portal had been, Reg added, “Did you miss us?”
Gunther smiled a little too wide, “Not in the slightest. I was with you the entire time, more or less. At least, I will be.”
“What was the point of all that?”
Joe turned toward the source, knowing what he’d see.
Chuck started suspicious and didn’t give it up quickly. He’d never fully trusted Gunther just like he’d never fully trusted Romy. It didn’t surprise Joe at all to see Chuck staring up toward Gunther, hands at his sides.
It fit their lives perfectly to find Chuck confronting Gunther while wearing a torn gray costume with a wolf head emblem on the chest. The fact that Gunther wore khaki fatigues and had the looks of a perfect Nazi only added flavor to the scene.
“It made no sense,” Chuck continued. “You wanted us to go in there to scout things out and shut it down. We followed your directions, started to leave, and then we were yanked back into a fight over the fate of the universe. And who yanked us into it? Our grandchildren, if they are our grandchildren. You weren’t straight with us. I know you’re not always straight with us, but dammit, this time takes the cake. What was this?”
Gunther smirked, “I think you explained all of it. I needed you to scout the GCD out and shut a few things down and handle whatever problems you found there. You found a few problems. You fixed them, and because you fixed them, you’ve met your grandchildren. And now that you’ve met your grandchildren, you know they’ll be facing foes that exist on an epic scale. Not only that, it’s only the first step in their journey.
“Before it’s all over, they’ll be fighting in my species’ civil war. Knowing that, you’ve got a choice: help them survive to reach the battle you fought in or ignore it and let it all fall apart before they’re even born.”
Chuck growled, “Oh, come on. How are we supposed to do that, assuming we can believe you? What else are you doing?”
The Mentalist, his top hat lost in the fight, touched Chuck’s shoulder with his hand. “Chuck, he’s telling the truth. I may not be able to read his mind, but I can sense his effect on the future. If we work with him, our children, grandchildren, and the world as a whole have a better chance to survive.”
Chuck turned to look at him, “And if we don’t work with him?”
The Mentalist’s eyes lost focus, and he stared into nowhere. Then he shuddered, the loose threads of his torn tuxedo dangling. “I’ve told you there’s a point in the future where everything turns into screams? If we don’t work with him, it comes sooner.”
Talking through it all took a while—by which I mean hours on and off. We drifted away from it sometimes and Great-Aunt Selda (and Uncle Steve) asked questions too.
An early diversion from the main topic came when I asked Grandma, “What happens with the house? It’s right above HQ and I’ve been living there. Are you going to want to move back in? I inherited it assuming that you were dead and you’re not.”
Grandma shook her head. “I think you’ll find that you inherited all of it when Grandpa died. By the time David wrote the will, we knew I’d be leaving for space until after you’d visited the device. Selda and I own a house near Grand Lake that we’ve been staying in when we visited Earth. You’re all welcome to visit now. I’d like to make up for the time we’ve all lost.”
She’d started the last sentence with a pause and a lower voice.
I got it. I couldn’t remember exactly the date she’d been born, but I knew she was in her 90s. Reverse engineered Cosmic Ghost DNA might keep her younger, but not forever.
Mom said, “We’d love to, Mom.”
My implant registered a communication request from Daniel and I accepted it.
“Nick, Grandpa Cohen is talking normally again and he’s told me it’s permanent. Honestly, I’m not convinced that he’d know after all this time, but maybe.”
As used to the implant connection as I was, hearing Daniel’s voice in my head without sensing his feelings felt sterile. To be accurate, I could feel him a little, but only a touch, not enough to pass thoughts or feelings. I could tell he was in range even if it was only barely true.
Still, I didn’t need that to hear the flatness in his voice, as if he didn’t believe it or wasn’t sure he dared to believe it.
“Whoa,” I said, “did he tell you why?”
“Well, he said it was a partly fake and partly a side effect of how much time he spent searching possible futures. According to him, he spent every spare moment following down trails of what we were doing and its consequences.
“I don’t think he’s lying, but I can’t do anything like that when I’m nowhere near the action. When he wasn’t using his powers, he actually was confused about when he was because he was so tired he couldn’t turn his prescience fully off. The rest of the time he was faking dementia so people would write him off if they ever figured out where and who he was.”
“That worked out,” I said, remembering the attack on Daniel’s family and how the Nine’s people had absolutely no idea what they were walking into.
“I know,” Daniel said, “and he told me so himself, but that’s not the only reason I’m calling. He wants to drop by and talk to your grandmother, but he doesn’t want to interrupt your conversation. He wants to drop by when there’s a natural break.”
“Coincidentally, we seem to have just reached one,” I said, not thinking that it was any kind of coincidence.
Daniel laughed, “It’s almost like he can see the future. He’d also like it if the old League members plus Gerald Cannon could visit before we watch the movie.”
“I don’t see any reason why not as long as the rest of the team’s okay with it. It’s not just my decision, but it’s probably fine. I bet they could stay for the movie if they wanted to.”
I doubted anyone would have an issue with it.
Daniel paused before he responded, but then said, “Zayde’s okay with that, but it might make it harder to pick a movie if it’s got to pass muster with everyone.”
“The last time we were doing regular movie nights we took turns, but I don’t remember who had the last pick.”
Looking around my family room, I realized that I’d stopped talking and spaced out enough that everyone could tell. Rachel said, “Don’t worry about it, he took a call.”
“We’ll work it out,” Daniel said. We agreed and disconnected.
I’d barely finished when Haley called. “We’ve planned the service out as far as we can go without holding it. Do you mind if I come over? I need to be somewhere else for a little while.”
“No problem,” I said, and she did.
It wasn’t that long before we left for League HQ. It felt a little different to have the surviving League there and a little less different to have Chris’ grandfather and former supervillain there as well. He’d dropped by a lot.
Grandma liked the renovations we’d made—organizing the trophies and adding carpet to the section with the League’s table, desks, and the giant screen.
We ordered pizza like we always had, brought our surviving grandparents on a tour and introduced everyone. It wasn’t quite the same as the picnics when we were children, but we were all older and we were hosting now.
It felt good anyway. As the group began to figure what movie we’d watch, I found myself wondering if there were any more side effects to what we’d done.
We’d changed whether my grandmother would die of cancer and allowed Ray to survive as a Xiniti soldier. That hadn’t had any effect on us because we’d experienced the same way up until today. Still, it might have a larger effect on the future. It would almost have to.
For all I knew, the future I’d seen had all been wiped away as a result of unforeseen side effects of killing those Abominators.
The future version of myself that I’d met might no longer be out there or might be different now. I couldn’t even guess what might have changed.
A voice sounded in my head, my own voice, but different. You’re right. There are changes you don’t know about. Don’t worry about it. You’ve reached a good moment. Let yourself enjoy it.
I thought back, What kind of changes?
I didn’t get any response and decided to take my own advice. Problems would show up soon enough. My friends were here. I could hear them talking, laughing, and even arguing about the movie options.
The future would take care of itself. It was time to appreciate the present.
Before he could respond, she added, “We tried not to.”
“It worked, for the most part,” I said as both Dad and Mom looked on, “but we weren’t perfect. We were good enough, though. If we’d really messed up, we might not have been born. So far, the only changes are improvements—like Grandma being alive.”
“Oh, that explains that call.”
I turned to see Uncle Steve stepping out of the bathroom in the hall behind me. Dad and I stepped into the main area of the family room, giving Uncle Steve the space to follow us in.
He smiled through his beard. “I got a call from Isaac Lim, who I gather you know, to check on a couple of your grandfather’s devices and get some readings. He designed a couple of different systems related to time and alternate worlds. Some of the technology made it into the systems for navigating Infinity City. Anyway Lim wanted to know if there were any big changes this morning and there weren’t.
“There were echoes of changes from the late 50s, but nothing directly connected to this morning.”
He grinned, laughing as he said, “You hid your tracks well—not that you were trying to. Lim’s had to deal with some strange situations and they left a mark. It gets weird when two universes combine and form a new one. You wouldn’t believe it if you haven’t gone through it. I have and he’s right to want to know as soon as possible.”
Dad looked around at everyone. “I’m still trying to get my head around the idea that you, all of you have been involved, and I didn’t know anything. I know you couldn’t tell me. I know you tried more than once.”
Mom leaned over the counter to see him from the kitchen. “I tried, but I didn’t know either at first and you know that.”
She turned to Grandma. “Mom, I know you meant this for the best, but couldn’t there have been another way? We didn’t know anything. We couldn’t do anything and… I killed someone to keep Nick alive. I don’t regret it, but the only reason it was possible was because the block fell apart.”
Grandma glanced at the floor and seemed to shrink. In that moment, I felt that I could see every year she’d lived.
“I’m sorry, Joanie. After we left the inside of Lee’s weapon and came home, we had to figure it all out. We knew we wanted our children and grandchildren to live. They’d done their best to keep us alive and we had to do our best to prevent them from disappearing from the future. Between what Lee knew would happen and possibilities the Mentalist could see, we created a plan, and at every major decision point, we chose the one that would keep our children and grandchildren alive.
“Maybe there was a better plan, but we couldn’t see our way there. Whether we didn’t ask the right questions or asked them at the wrong time, this is the best we could do. I couldn’t be here or I’d risk destroying everything. If I could have, I’d have killed that man for you, but if I’d come back then, it would have changed everything for the worse.”
She let out a sigh, “I wish we could have done everything differently, but I don’t know how.”
We all stood without saying anything. I didn’t have anything to add. The League’s board had told us, probably because the Mentalist knew, that we were all at risk of dying before the age of 20. Instead, all of us had made it past 20 and only Travis had died so far.
While I couldn’t be happy about his death, knowing what I did, I suspected we might be living in one of the better options.
I glanced over at Mom, wondering if she wanted to argue. I couldn’t read her mind, but even though her mouth wasn’t open, her lips quivered.
I didn’t know exactly what she was feeling. I’d killed people before, but I hadn’t felt much when I did it. Instead, it lingered in my mind and came back later. I’d never killed anyone that I’d felt guilty about, but I still had dreams about the fights.
It might well have been that some of them had been mind-controlled by the Dominators in some way, but I didn’t know it for sure. That made it easier in a way, and honestly, it wasn’t as if I hadn’t tried to avoid it.
I felt confident that Lee and no doubt others would say I’d been overly scrupulous about avoiding it, but I’d tried to do the right thing. If I’d made a few mistakes in the process, I’d done my best and I had training to fall back on to give me options.
Mom didn’t have any of that. She’d seen me in danger and killed someone for the first time in her life and didn’t have training to prepare her for it.
Also, all of that had to be mixed with whatever abandonment she still might be feeling since Grandma had disappeared for around ten years and reappeared only now.
In that moment Dad said, “Thank you. I can’t imagine the choices that you’ve had to make and I know I wouldn’t want to make them myself. I’m sure they haven’t been easy for you. I know that we’ve all had challenges to face because of events that are out of anyone’s control. How about we all sit down? I have questions for Nick and Rachel. I’d like to understand the last few years from their point of view. I feel like I don’t understand anything and I’d like to.”
With that, Dad started asking about how it all got started. Rachel and I answered questions and after a few minutes it all came out, starting from when Cassie started bugging me about the League.
It reminded me a little of when I told it all to Govan, but now we were at home. Coffee and hot chocolate were in the cupboard in the same places they’d always been. There were snacks. We had comfortable chairs and no apocalypse hanging over our heads—at least for now.
As it happened, it could have been worse. Our front door turned out to be a standard size and Dad had bought the correct one. The frame appeared to be in good shape, so that didn’t need to be replaced. Also, Dad had done a fair amount of work already. So, my part in the replacement only took about two hours.
Having a bit of the Rocket suit’s strength available because all of my clothes were now hidden stealth suits didn’t hurt. It made it easier to move the door around at least.
With that done, we shut the door behind us and walked down the hall past the living room and dining room and into the back of the house where the kitchen and family room were.
Passing the stairway, I noticed that our cat had taken up residence on the steps, watching Dad and I as we walked past.
Inside I saw Mom filling the coffeemaker with water as Grandma and Great-Aunt Selda sat on stools in the family room side of the counter. They both had empty mugs sitting on the counter next to them.
Rachel sat in the family room drinking something out of a can.
Seeing all of them together, it struck me how similar they all looked. Every one of them stood only a little shorter than I did. Thin with round cheeks and blue eyes, anyone who looked at them together would assume they were related.
Though I knew Great-Aunt Selda and Grandma had been blond when they were younger, their hair had turned white long ago. Mom and Rachel both had brown hair. Out of the group, only Mom had let her hair grow past her shoulders. The rest had short hair.
I knew Grandma and Great Aunt-Selda weren’t twins, but if they lied, they could have gotten away with it.
I wondered if their Ghost DNA brought along side effects that had nothing to do with superpowers, but Grandma interrupted my speculation by standing up and hugging me as I stepped into the room.
We’d greeted each other as I helped Dad with the door, but now she said, “I’m so sorry. I didn’t want to leave, but I couldn’t stay and simply watch. I had to be too far away to help or I would have.”
Grandma’s voice held only a hint of a German accent. Trained to be a spy, she didn’t have to even allow that tell. She could fake accents from all over the country and other countries. It wasn’t hard to guess how she’d used that skill during war, but in my childhood, she’d only used it to give characters in books silly accents for Rachel’s and my entertainment.
“It’s okay,” I said. “It all worked out in the end and you’re home now. Unless Godzilla steps on the house, we’ve still got time.”
Grandma laughed and let go of me. “We do have time for now, but not forever. I’m not one of the Ghosts. I’ll only live as long as any other person and I’ve been away for so long. I’m not afraid of a movie monster, but I’ve seen the Hundred Handed Ones and they’re terrifying. Disasters do happen in your job.”
Rachel looked up from her chair, “The hundred handed giants from Greek mythology are real?”
Great-Aunt Selda said, “They’re more than myth and more than simple giants. They may live forever.”
Her English was good, but no one would confuse her for a native speaker. Grandma had told us that Selda had been a child during the war and had never been trained as a spy. In fact, the Nazis used her to control Grandma’s behavior by claiming that they’d kill her if Grandma disobeyed.
It was only after they’d freed Selda that Grandma could help Grandpa without worrying that her sister would die.
I remembered back to Grandpa telling that story both before and after our changes to the past. Whether he was telling it as a man whose wife had died from cancer or as someone whose wife had gone to the stars rather than risk causing her grandchildren’s death, I couldn’t tell the difference in my memories.
Either way, you could hear his pride in who she was and that he’d felt her loss.
“Regardless,” Grandma said, “I won’t leave again. I never left fully. I visited Joe and looked in on the two of you. You grew up to become everything I hoped you’d be. The Mentalist said you might be different from the version of you we met in Lee’s weapon, but from what I’ve seen, you grew up to be every bit of the people I remember.”
Looking at Rachel, she said, “Thank you for saying something. I don’t know if I ever would have quit smoking if you hadn’t.”
“You wouldn’t have,” I said. “Rachel changed history by telling you so. Lee’s machine said it didn’t mess anything up. So it’s okay. I mean, it’s definitely better. I’m glad you’re alive. We grew up in a world where you weren’t.”
Grandma nodded, “The Mentalist told me when I needed to disappear to make everything work out the same way.”
From behind me, Dad said, “You changed history?”
Rachel smirked and said, “I hope you’re not going to ground us.”
She spoke in English thanks to her implant and used my real name, not the one that I’d used on Hideaway.
Unlike the Xiniti message, hers came with video.
She appeared as I remembered her: long, black hair, light brown skin, high cheekbones, and brown eyes. Unlike the last time I’d seen her, she wasn’t wearing a silver Xiniti armored suit—at least not visibly.
She wore red and white robes with golden trim. My implant decoded the symbolism for me. Though the robes were in the style of a traditional Ascendancy planetary governor, the traditional colors were black robes with trim made of bluish-green metal.
Red was the color of the rebellion against the Ascendancy.
Sitting at a desk in the same massive bedroom she’d messaged me from earlier, she said, “Nick, I know I sent you a message only a day or two ago, but I thought you’d find this interesting. I met a guy who knows you.
“One of the Xiniti’s human soldiers stopped by on the way back from a mission and as the official figurehead, I greeted them. You’ve got to help people feel like the movement cares and that the hell they went through matters.
“These people were special forces. We’d sent them behind enemy lines and they did everything we needed them to. The Xiniti auxiliary who’d led the raid was the most impressive of the bunch. From what I heard, he was incredibly meticulous and effective. When I asked his name, he said Ray. I knew that was an Earth name and I know you mentioned him.
“When I asked him if he’d heard of the Rocket, his eyes bugged out. I mean, you’ve met him… He keeps things close to the chest, but that was not a question he expected. He asked me how I knew the Rocket. The Xiniti must not have passed that on. Whoops. I told him I’d been to Earth and knew the whole team.
“He said to tell you that as far as he was concerned, you’re even. It all worked out for the best and he’s got nothing against you. He hopes it’s the same on your end.
“I hope that makes sense to you because all I know about him is that he went after your families and that he’s dead. I thought you ought to know that he’s not dead and he’s not coming back to Earth. I checked with Katuk. The Xiniti don’t intend to ever send him back to Earth. They’re aware of who he is to you.
“I hope you’re all alive. Everything seemed to be coming to a head when I left. I would have stayed if everything here wasn’t also blowing up. We’re in a calm moment, though. I might even be able to take a live call if I’m not in the middle of a meeting, other affairs of state, or planning an invasion. There are more of all of those than you’d think.
“You know what? It’s nice to send a message where I don’t have to hold back because I’m afraid of destroying someone’s morale. It’s going well, but being publicly upbeat all the time will kill me for sure. Anyway, don’t be a stranger and don’t worry about the revolution. It‘s not your problem. As for myself, I’m grateful I don’t have mushroom zombies. Your planet is completely insane. Later!”
I laughed as the picture faded out, hoping no one on the street thought I was crazy. On the other hand, it was fall in the late morning. Kids were in school and adults were at work or helping with the mushroom goo cleanup.
No one seemed to be outside. I composed a message to Kals complete with video and managed to send it off before I reached my parents’ house.
Two stories tall with brown bricks, the fall leaves on the lawn needing to be raked, it looked almost the same as it always had. The “almost” spanned a few terrifying minutes a few days back where we fought members of the Nine on the lawn and in the house’s basement.
The grass still bore scars from the fight and I noticed silvery streaks in at least three front windows. Those would need to be replaced. I hoped that wasn’t my fault. On the bright side, with the League’s policy of paying for our damage, I could get this fixed without raising suspicion.
As Rachel had mentioned, Dad was at work on the front door—sort of.
The new door lay on the front walk in its white cardboard box. The old door, still twisted and warped from when I punched it, leaned against the house to the left of the front porch. A pile of tools lay next to a red, metal toolbox that Grandpa may have left here.
Dad stood on the porch, staring at the door frame with a frown on his face. Between the toolbox, jeans, and the thick flannel shirt, he looked like someone who should be good at fixing a broken door.
Dad was a good therapist. I’ll stop there.
He saw me as I started walking across the lawn, avoiding the new door. “Nick,” he said, “Rachel told me you were on the way. Do you mind helping me put the new door in? Grandma Vander Sloot is inside, but it shouldn’t take too long, should it?”
“I mean, honestly,” I said, inspecting the hilt and opening up the side to see the electronics and battery, “I could do a complete redesign and you’d have a longer battery life, tougher components, and an implant to sword interface that would allow you extra functionality… I mean, it wouldn’t be that hard to adjust its size and shape or turn it from a sword to staff to a spear. You’d be able to adjust to the fight without swapping weapons.”
Cassie said nothing for a moment, but, letting out a breath, said, “How about we fix it for now? I like the idea of an upgrade, but I’d like my dad’s sword to work again before we start something new.”
I nodded. “I get it. Uh… So, I’m guessing that Tara’s going with Amy now. It makes sense and not just because Lee says to buddy up. If anyone’s got a background in switching worlds, Tara’s the best choice. Plus, if you want someone to who’s going to be good at gathering intelligence, she’s also one of the best options.”
Nodding, Cassie said, “Exactly. That’s what I was saying as you walked up. Are you going somewhere?”
Watching for their reactions, I said, “Home. It turns out that Grandma Vander Sloot isn’t dead and she’s back from power space.”
“Of course she’s not dead—” Cassie began and then said, “That’s a change. Do you know about any more?”
I shook my head. “None that matter, apparently. A couple of politicians didn’t get killed and replaced by shapeshifting aliens, but they voted for the same stuff anyway.”
Tara smiled, “Shapeshifters are like that. Infinity City had a few different kinds. The smart one replace their targets perfectly. Sometimes it takes years to know the difference.”
Amy smirked. “You met the nice ones then. Where I come from, they’re more likely to replace you and start eating your friends and family.”
Cassie caught Tara’s eye. “Are you sure you want to go with her?”
Shrugging, Tara said, “We had that kind too. My parents killed a few.”
Tara didn’t show any special emotion on her face. Her parents were dead but not from that.
I took a step toward the elevator. “I should probably go.”
“You should,” Cassie said. “Take advantage of every moment you have with her..”
She glanced down at the pieces of her sword in my hands. I’d forgotten that I had them. Pointing at the hilt and blade shards, she asked. “Do you want me to put them in the lab?”
“Please do,” I said, handing them back to her.
“By the way,” she said, “I think upgrading is a great idea. I wasn’t blowing it off just now. If you want, we can talk about it tonight or whenever, I guess. We have all the time in the world now—at least until the next crisis.”
I laughed, told everyone I’d be back for the movie, and took the elevator up to the house, grabbing a jacket from the closet, and stepping out into the fall weather.
Everything with the mayor had started in the fall of my senior year of high school, not long after my grandfather’s death. If I traveled back in time, the house and the neighborhood wouldn’t have looked much different.
The grass might be a little longer than Grandpa would have kept it. Between the Nine and the vast mushroom zombie army, mowing hadn’t been my highest priority.
There had to be more cars in the driveway than there had been when my grandparents lived here. Vaughn’s sports car might be gone, but Amy, Tara, and Cassie all had cars that they used for getting around town when they weren’t in costume.
Not to mention, of course, that I still owned the white van that could be transformed into a catmecha if needed. As I walked away down the sidewalk, it sat in the driveway, stuck between the garage door and Cassie’s Honda.
The neighbors weren’t all the same. The people who’d owned the house where I’d accidentally shattered the picture window by throwing Future Knight’s gun had moved out years ago.
They were also the sort of people who would have complained to the city about my lawn being overly long, so no great loss.
I started down the block, sometimes noticing shriveled or rotting mushroom goo in strips next to the road. The plows couldn’t get everything.
Behind the fence next to the entrance of Veterans Memorial Park, I noticed a 20 foot long sheet. It wasn’t the only one on the grounds. The 30 to 40 degree weather must have kept it cold enough that it hadn’t separated into smaller rotting bits.
I didn’t look forward to when it did, but I supposed the city would get to it after clearing downtown.
No one sat at the picnic tables or used the playground equipment. So, the city probably wasn’t getting enough complaints yet. I wondered if the beach was mushroom goo free, but I didn’t have time to check.
From this distance all I could see were trees and the dark waters of the lake behind them.
As I walked, my implant notified me that I had messages that had arrived via the ansible network. One of them was from the Xiniti high command, notifying me that Xiniti soldiers would be returning to the station at the Mars LaGrange point. When they did, we were no longer the only Xiniti in the system and solely responsible for the weapons designed to exterminate humanity should something go wrong.
The other message was from Kals.
With that question came a flood of memories, some contradicting what I would have said ten minutes before she asked.
At that point, I would have said that my grandmother, Romy Vander Sloot had died when I was ten or eleven. She had lung cancer from a lifetime of smoking. Despite that, she’d been healthy until the last year or two of her life.
After she’d died, Grandpa had lived alone in the house they’d shared for almost another decade, spending most of it teaching me his technology and creating tools for other heroes.
My new memories told a different story.
Grandma gave up smoking in the 1960s. When asked why, she’d said, “Because I wanted to live to see my grandchildren,” and ruffled Rachel’s hair.
Grandpa never had to live without her. She was there throughout middle school and high school, giving her several more years to teach Rachel about her abilities as well as birthdays and holidays to spend with all of us.
In the middle of all of those small changes, I also remembered one that cast a big shadow. After fighting the Abominators, the League visited the Reclamation Alliance, encountering the Cosmic Ghosts on the way.
They’d recognized themselves in her. She didn’t have enough of their abilities to join them, but had trained with them for a time. She’d always wanted to go back, but between supervillains, children, and grandchildren, she’d never had time.
When Grandpa died, she did and she wasn’t alone.
She left Earth with our great aunt Selda, her younger sister. She’d said they’d come back, but we’d heard nothing from her since they’d left.
As that wave of information passed through my mind, I paused, taking it all in, and finally came back to reality.
“Wow,” I told Rachel. “I hadn’t thought about Grandma yet. This would be a crazy coincidence, but is she back?”
“Good guess,” Rachel replied. “And it’s not as much of a coincidence as you’d think. The Ghosts have been watching for the GCD to show up and everyone knew that I’d left for home.”
Other possibilities popped up in my head—messy possibilities. “Did you see her when you were with the Ghosts? At least in the new version of history?”
“No,” she said, her voice carrying all of the disorientation I felt. “And it would have been a lot of work, but I think I know why. You do too.”
The original League worried about the same thing we had when we were in the GCD. No one wanted to destroy our history.
“How’s she doing?”
Rachel laughed. “Great. She’s talking with Mom, Dad, and Uncle Steve. I think she’s home for good now. Do you know how crazy this is? We couldn’t have had this conversation when she left, but now the block’s gone, and we aren’t keeping secrets from family anymore.
“Come home right now. You can talk to Grandma and help Dad with the door. You know he’ll need it. What are you doing anyway?”
If I was honest with myself, nothing that I couldn’t do later. It wasn’t everyday that a chance remark from your sister brought your grandmother back from the dead. It may not be a big event from the vantage of the GCD’s time analysis systems, but it was to our family.
I logged out of the computer, shed almost all of my suit, leaving only enough material for my stealth suit plus a “backpack” made of extra stuff, and walked out of the lab.
Amy, and Tara sat at one of the plastic and metal tables in the break area. Cassie stood next to it, glancing over at the elevator as if she were just about to go.
Everyone wore normal clothing, jeans and t-shirts (more or less). Amy wore a modern blouse with enough lace and ruffles to hint at the Victorian or Edwardian sensibilities of her home.
Cassie wore a hoodie. Tara’s t-shirt showed a red and white checkered ball, advertising AmigaOS 25. I suspected it had to be old clothes from Infinity City. It definitely wasn’t from our universe.
As I walked toward the elevator, I heard Cassie say, “I want to go, but I think you’re right. It should be Tara.”
Amy pursed her lips. “I don’t think anyone should have to come along. I don’t want to inconvenience the team. You have your own lives. If we learned anything today, it’s that League needs everyone they can get sometimes.”
“But not all the time,” Tara said. “They can spare me for a few months.”
Cassie met my eyes for a moment, but continued the conversation, telling Amy, “You know as well as anyone that Lee constantly tells us to buddy up. You don’t know when you’re going to go down and need someone else to get you out, provide first aid, or call for help.”
Amy’s lips curled, “I know, but I’m okay with dying to save my family. I’m not okay with you dying.”
Tara reached out and gave her hand a squeeze. “Dying to save someone’s family would be worth it.”
Amy’s opened her mouth, stopped, but then said, “You don’t owe me that, but if you want to help I’ll take it. The previous Bloodmaidens agree with you.”
“Good,” Cassie said, turning to me and holding out the shattered pieces of her sword, “Do you think you can fix it?”
I took them, careful not to touch the monofilament edge of the blade. “It doesn’t look that bad. It’s broken, but still doable. The worst case scenario is that I have to build out the edge all over again and reforge the blade, but I think we might even have a spare. Grandpa used to repair one while the other was working to prepare for the inevitable destruction. Your dad was hard on technology.”
Cassie nodded, “I know.”
It was good that Stephanie was up for saying hi. The last I’d seen her, she’d been in no condition to do much of anything thanks to Dominator trigger commands.
Of course, she’d now been removed from the triggering situation for days. So, she might not be affected.
I set my implant to remind me to respond to Courtney later. Thanks to Hal sending out messages to more than one hundred heroes and groups in my name, I had several times that many responses. Thanks to Hal, most of them wouldn’t need a personal response, but a few deserved it.
One of them was from Prentkos.
“I have been wondering when this day would come since you returned me to my own time. When our team leader called us in for a mission based on messages from the Heroes’ League, I knew it had arrived. I will confess to be a little disappointed not to have received a personal message, but you hadn’t met me yet, had you? I’m sure that you need some time for recovery, but consider yourself as having an open invitation to visit the Euro Team base in Brussels.
“Please call ahead before you come, however. It’s my hope to have a conversation with you that isn’t interrupted by combat. We both know, of course, that even if it seems slow here, there are no guarantees.”
I laughed, added Prentkos’ message to the reminder list, and moved on to the next, finding a collection of messages from Working Man, V8, Mateo, the Detroit Unity team, and the Hamsters (Rembrandt, Vincent, and Hieronymous).
They weren’t personal. Hal had sent them to take out the Nine’s base in Detroit, a few independent heroes that turned out to be plants from the Nine, and a National Guard officer in the local powered armor unit.
They had to take out the entire unit before it was over, helped by another Detroit hero who appeared to have power over small mammals. As much as it might be painful to fight Working Man or V8’s mech, I suspected the Nine’s Detroit operatives would be having nightmares about rats for the rest of their lives—to say nothing of humanoid hamsters.
Vincent did leave a personal message at the end and so did Mateo AKA Blue Mask. Vincent’s went, “Holy shit, kid. I just saw footage from the island end of things. Can’t believe the vampires are on your side this time. On the other hand, unlike the bozos we fought together, Dr. Transylvania’s no fool. Did the Nine think to throw rice? Let me know sometime.”
Mateo’s message started with a laugh. “You remember how Working Man told you he didn’t want us getting involved with the League’s problems? When he saw that you wanted us to take out a couple of city council members, I think that he almost fainted. Getting rid of those two may have been his greatest personal fantasy. I can’t say for sure, but he might be proud of having had you here. I thought you ought to know. Let me know when you’re next on this side of the state.”
I added the two of them to my list and managed to get through the rest. After I replied to everyone on my list, I checked the news, reading story after story about teams that we’d emailed with evidence and a plan, sometimes getting to watch a bit of the action.
I also got to watch the odd commentator who managed to become apoplectic about why, if we’d managed to collect this much evidence, we hadn’t acted sooner? Another asked how the Heroes’ League could have gotten access to all of this information. That was a smarter question than the first. If we allowed interviews, we’d have to hide the AIs’ involvement.
Then I asked myself (and my implant) another question, what had we changed?
I knew we’d changed something thanks to the GCD’s message. My implant, however, replied with answers I hadn’t expected.
Xiniti implants were designed for the possibility that any given Xiniti soldier might visit a parallel universe. So when we arrived and the implant connected to the nearest ansible for updates, it noted changes in the newly downloaded history by comparison to what it had before.
There weren’t many changes—in part because the Xiniti didn’t care about Earth history except as it impacted them and in part because there weren’t many.
Back in the 1970s when the Heroes’ League fought the last remnant of the Abominators, the Heroes’ League had found two of them in government. They hadn’t been high up. They’d been state representatives in Arizona and Missouri.
In the new history we’d come back to, they’d never existed. Those were the Abominators I’d killed during the fight with Magnus, so they’d never shapeshifted into human form and gone into government. I hadn’t killed all of the Abominators, though, just those two.
So the Heroes’ League fought the rest just like before. The two I’d killed hadn’t used their influence to change the world in disturbing ways. They’d fit in and stayed out of trouble. In the new history, the humans in their place hadn’t acted much differently.
What it meant that normal human politicians didn’t act much differently than evil aliens that had been warped by the Destroy faction’s artifact traps, I didn’t dare speculate.
All the same, I began to feel as if I’d missed an important difference. I couldn’t say what, but I felt sure that if I asked the right question everything would fall into place.
As I searched my memory, trying to think it through, Rachel contacted me via the League’s comm system, “Have you thought about Grandma?”
We didn’t talk after that. At any rate, we didn’t talk much. People leaned back in their seats and napped or at least closed their eyes. I would have too if I hadn’t been flying the plane.
In the end, it wasn’t a long trip. I took the jet up to a high altitude and then aimed the jet downward toward Grand Lake.
We didn’t have any trouble with intercepting planes, missiles, or paranoid supers. Instead, we dropped into the lake, entered through the underwater entrance, and emerged in the base.
After the water drained from the airlock, I floated the jet into the hangar.
We were home. It wasn’t even 8 AM.
After we’d showered and put away our costumes, everyone paused in the break area. Kayla had picked up breakfast. Whether it was amazing or merely okay, in that moment, it was amazing, not to mention somehow hot enough that it could have come straight from the kitchen.
At least that’s how I remember it. I may be deluding myself. Fitting the pseudo-Waffle House style of the restaurant, there were waffles, sausage, bacon, eggs, toast, and biscuits with sausage gravy.
Also there were lots of them. Supers ate more than most people to begin with, but there were a bunch of us… Haley, Marcus, Jaclyn, Cassie, Amy, Tara, Izzy, Daniel, Camille, Sydney, Julie, Chris, Kayla, Rachel, and I. We’d invited Dayton, Sean, and Jody, but they were bringing Jody to their team doctor.
He’d woken up on the way back and seemed okay, if confused, but the implant modifications hadn’t faded away. They needed to be catalogued and understood.
I couldn’t blame them and honestly, I couldn’t say I minded. As much as he’d been through a hellish experience and I hoped he’d get the therapy and medical attention he needed, I’d been in fights against him three times in the last two days. I didn’t want a fourth.
Near the end of the meal, Cassie said, “I don’t know what you’re doing today, but does anyone want to watch a movie tonight?”
Haley looked up from her plate. “My parents are planning Travis’ funeral today. Since we’re home, I should help, but I might be able to.”
Daniel and Izzy looked at each other and answered, “Sure,” at almost the same time, having most likely had a short telepathic conversation.
By the time we were done, almost everyone could make it. Personally, I decided to play it by ear. If Haley needed me, but wasn’t up for a group of people after family stuff, I’d do something with her.
We kissed as she left, telling me, “I’ll tell you what I’m doing by three. We’ve made a lot of decisions already. I’ll know if I’m up for people by then.”
Then she stepped into the elevator and the doors closed.
I turned to find Rachel behind me.
“I should have caught the elevator with her and gone home, but I missed a lot. You told me Dad knows now, that Uncle Steve’s here, that Travis died, and that the Dominators messed with Ana, but only in snippets. I want to hear all of it in order and in detail.”
So that’s what we did for the next hour or two. We sat in the break area talking through it and it wasn’t just us. Amy and Tara, the only members of the group that didn’t have families to go home to here, stuck around and helped.
When we were done, Rachel stood up, “Okay. Now I’m going home. I can’t believe you didn’t tell me that Mom killed Number Eight. That’s crazy. And practically in front of Dad and Uncle Steve and in our basement?”
“They seem okay,” I said. “I thought I had, but I guess I didn’t. It’s been one thing after another since Major Justice went after us. Oh… I didn’t see it till just now, but Dad sent me a text saying he’s putting in a new front door himself. All the local handymen are working on mushroom zombie damage. It’s probably a good sign that he’s trying.”
Rachel frowned, “Only if he does better than when he fixed the bathroom door. I think we both need to get home as soon as possible.”
The bathroom door did stick a lot after that, but cutting off the bottom quarter inch fixed it.
“There are a couple things I want to check on first,” I told her. “I’ll probably be an hour, but not longer.”
Crossing her arms and meeting my eyes, she said, “It better not be longer,” but she still left.
I walked into my lab, logged into the computer and found myself greeted by an avalanche of messages. I would have seen them through the comm system except that I’d set a status that allowed Hal to filter any messages from people outside the mission and respond to any that were important.
On a practical level that meant that an AI called Our Mutual Friend might have loosed steampunk style battlemechs on anyone who attacked the League’s families. While I’d told Hal that I didn’t feel comfortable releasing their locations, but he’d told me, “No need. OMF already knows, but he interacted with Lee after individuals in Syndicate L learned your identity and won’t reveal anything.”
Lee had once told me that people in Syndicate L who’d learned my identity had met with, “unfortunate blender accidents.”
I’d told him not to do that again, but hadn’t looked into it too deeply. I didn’t need to know whether it had been a literal or metaphorical blender.
Anyway, most of the messages were from other hero groups that Hal sent messages about the Nine and their assets to. They asked for confirmation and he’d successfully pretended to be me.
From the news alerts that continued to pop up, I couldn’t complain because the last few hours had been a metaphorical bloodbath for the Nine, their mind controlled assets, and businesses. It hadn’t been great for Syndicate L either. A number of their top people had been mind controlled assets.
The other messages came from friends who’d been in the hero groups. Courtney had been hired by a super group secret enough that she wouldn’t tell anyone its name, only that they were on the edge of something big and she couldn’t talk about it.
Her most recent message said, “Hal, thanks for admitting it’s been you, but could you make sure the Rocket sees this one? Rocket? I just watched what you’ve been doing on the island. We should have been coordinating with the League the whole time.
“We discovered that Goldenlash, leader of the Seattle Sentinels was working with the Nine willingly and turned his whole team. Hal just handed us the evidence we’d been missing and the opportunity to catch them in the act. Thanks for that. Oh, and Stephanie says hi. We used her mind control symbols a lot.”
Haley scrunched up her face, “That’s not really nice. They’re people.”
Amy shrugged, “Most of the time I’ve spent in this world was in Florida. I’ve heard that the benefits for working at Waffle House aren’t bad, but the dental care some people got before working there wasn’t great.”
Haley shook her head. “That’s restaurants. The full time staff get benefits, but most jobs are part time and they don’t get benefits at all. Are things different in your world?”
Amy stared out the window.
I’d lifted off by then and we were flying across the ocean, the rising sun on our right, darkness to our left, and the ocean everywhere in sight. I activated our cloaking device and the sunrise dimmed.
It was best not to be targeted by any defenses the island still had. Plus, it might allow us to avoid any leftover Dominator commands among US air defense staff.
“It’s different,” Amy said. “We have physicians, but we also have magical healers of different kinds. It depends on where you are and who you are. The tribes and tribal confederations in North America take care of their own. In our colony cities there and back in Europe, most people pay physicians and healers out of their own pockets, but the unions and guilds have arrangements that make it cost less or nothing.”
She stopped, staring out into nowhere, but then said, “I should know more, but I don’t. I’m literally a princess and my family rules most of our planet. I never had to worry about it until I came here. I should go home. I’d like to stay for a month and say goodbye, but I know something was wrong back home and I need to do something about it.”
From further back in the jet, Vaughn asked, “Weren’t you supposed to wait ten years before going back?”
Amy sank into the chair and for a moment, I saw the smaller, thinner version of her in the armored warrior she transformed into. “It’s not that simple. Father said that I should wait ten years, but he also said that I needed to find out what was going on and to use my best judgement.”
Placing the Bloodspear on the floor, she said, “The timing isn’t cut and dried. My father was making his best guess that they could calm down the Bloodlords on and off the Council and solve some other problem by then, but it was only a guess. Anything could have happened by now and I haven’t been contacted by anyone in any way—not even threats from the assassins that are supposed to kill me if I appear to be coming home to try for the throne.”
Sitting a couple of rows back, next to Vaughn, Marcus said, “That’s a good thing, right? If they’re not gunning for you, it might mean they’re okay with what you’re doing. Everyone knows you’re working with us if they pay attention to social media. If they wanted to kill you or even talk, they’d be in Grand Lake.”
“Maybe, yes,” Amy said, “and maybe someone summoned them home to handle whatever’s going on there now. I checked in on the house we lived in after I arrived. It’s empty. There’s no forwarding address. They left three years ago. Our neighbors didn’t know anything. Nothing special happened. There weren’t even any movers.
“When I checked government records, the database hadn’t pegged them as inter-dimensional visitors or even unusual and worth watching. I checked with Reliquary. He’s the one who recruited me for Stapledon. He didn’t know anything either and couldn’t find out more even with clairvoyance. It had been blocked somehow.”
Amy frowned. “Harcourt and his wife are powerful blood magic users, but I don’t think they’re better at blood magic than Reliquary is at magic. Someone else blocked the spell and I need to make sure my family is safe.”
A few seats to Amy’s left, Jaclyn said, “If you need help, we’re with you. Maybe I shouldn’t speak for everyone, but I think I do.”
From the back of the cabin, Tiger gave a small bark that passed for agreement in my mind, followed by everyone else except we used words.
“Even Mr. Sparkles wants to help,” Cassie said, “but I think it’s mostly because he wants another shot at killing a dragon.”
Turning around, Amy’s eyes glistened, but her voice stayed calm, “Thank you. Bringing powerful friends from another world is exactly the kind of thing that would confirm the Bloodlords’ worst fears about my intentions, but if they confirm my worst fears, I’ll take you up on it. For now, I’m going to start small. I’ll go myself, find out the situation, and then make plans.”
Vaughn held up his hand, “I know it shouldn’t be me, but maybe someone should go with you. Stuff happens. You shouldn’t go into this alone. It’s really big.”
Nodding, Marcus said, “This has a Nine Princes in Amber and Dune feel to it—that, or maybe Yona of the Dawn. Epic, you know? Anyway, a second set of eyes won’t hurt.”
“I’ll think about it,” she said. “I’m not leaving yet.”
The jet hurtled through the air toward home, flying over Florida without anyone scrambling jets (or missiles) to intercept. Thinking back to what she’d said before I went through the portal, I couldn’t help but wonder how much this was about me. I knew she had more to worry about. She had to go back for her family, not to mention the alternate version of me that made whatever connection that might be between us one step weirder.
Still, it didn’t feel good. I’d miss her even though I knew from talking to her in the future that she didn’t regret going and we’d see each other again.
“It’s better than the alternative,” I said, and thought about what I might be getting. In addition to the practical knowledge of the Nine’s operations which we’d need to track whether we’d succeeded, Rook and Dr. Mind weren’t the only inventors who’d ever served the Nine.
We’d get in trouble with the government for stealing the Nine’s tech, but not for using their ideas—probably.
It did worry me that Rook had likely brought back Abominator tech from the Moon and Mars. I didn’t even know where it was if I wanted to destroy it.
In the main channel, Hal asked, “I’ll appear above the main building shortly.”
“We’ll meet you there,” Haley replied, turning her head to look over the group as we stood on the concrete platform in front of the stairway’s open doors.
“Ready?” She asked and amid the replies turned on her anti-gravity and floated toward the massive white building down the volcano’s slope from us.
Everyone floated after her, with those of us who didn’t need anti-gravity to fly, shooting over her almost as soon as we took to the air.
I didn’t go too far ahead, partly because it was wise to stick together, partly because it made me feel better to see that no one had been left behind. No one was. Even Tiger’s suit included anti-gravity and he understood how to use it, floating downward like a smaller, but unusually realistic, Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade balloon.
Soon after we landed on the roof, the League jet uncloaked above us, a long, silver, winged needle that could have appeared on the cover of an early science fiction magazine. The Defenders’ egg-shaped podjets, descended after it, stopping a few feet above the roof and opening their hatches.
While I might have felt that to be overly trusting, Alex, Brooke, and Jenny stepped out onto the roof. Following them came everyone else we’d left in the room where we fought Dr. Mind—Camille, Julie, Tara, Samita, Rod…
Standing together on the roof, it felt like a lot of people even though I knew every one of them. Every piece of my life was represented—family, high school friends and enemies, childhood playmates, friends I’d met through Stapledon, and even a dog from space.
It felt like someone should be making a speech about the worth of doing the right thing even if it seems hard, the enduring power of friendship, and how the legacy you inherit doesn’t have to define you even if it’s a good one.
I wasn’t the guy to be making that speech. Just like everyone else I could see, I felt dead tired. I may not have felt physically as tired as I’d felt the time I had to walk and fight the Cabal in a suit of dead armor, but I was there mentally.
No one else seemed up for that speech either.
Alex took a step toward where the SoCal Defenders podjets floated and then turned toward everyone. “I don’t know if we took out the Nine forever, but you took down Magnus and Dr. Mind and none of us are dead. Plus, Justice Fist got one of their own back. That’s a win. And even though I don’t dare declare victory over the Nine, I think we hurt them. That’s enough for today. Good job, everybody. I’m proud to have served with you.”
With that, he stepped into the podjet. Jenny and Brooke followed. One of Jenny’s copies told me, “We’re heading to L.A. The other podjets will help bring people back to Grand Lake.”
Sighing, she added, “You have no idea how much I want to be in only one body for a little while—maybe two at most—and both of them will be sleeping. Oh, and tell us when Travis’ funeral will be. We don’t want to miss it.”
Then she discorporated.
It says something about our lives that none of us even blinked at that. We boarded the League jet or nearest podjet without commentary and sat down.
Haley put her hand on my shoulder, her claws clicking against the ceramic, “Are you up for flying home?”
“I’m more up for flying home than staying. Besides, it won’t take that long. Are you hungry? I want breakfast, but I don’t want whatever alien foodbars we might have left in the jet.”
I connected to the jet’s controls through my implant, running through the checklist even as Haley and I took our seats.
“I’m always hungry, but you’re not thinking of ordering from IHOP again, are you? It didn’t go so well last time,” Haley said, watching as the console in front her glowed.
Everyone in the cabin laughed. Amy hadn’t been around for that, but she laughed with everyone else. It had entered into team legend at some point.
Pulling seatbelts across her black plate armor, she said, “Once I’m back in my real body, I could go for pancakes. This one lives off life essence. If I eat as her, everything I eat disappears with her.”
“Oh shit,” Vaughn said, “I forgot about that.”
“I didn’t,” Amy said, the edge in her voice hinting at some story I knew I didn’t need to hear, possibly from when they were dating.
Good guess. Daniel thought at me. I didn’t want or need to know either, but I do anyway. Angry people are noisy.
“I’ll order,” Haley said. “Dad bought a breakfast restaurant. It’s trying to be a Waffle House. We could order from there and pick it up in the van. Maybe Kayla would be up for it.”
“Do the cooks have all their teeth?” Amy asked. “It won’t feel authentic if they have teeth.”
“Weird,” I said, “but not surprising. Rook used Abominator tech for his implant. We used it too, but we modified ours with Xiniti technology in such a way that we can’t replace their parts without consent. For all I know there might be a way to turn things back. I think it’s unlikely, but you never know.”
Dayton sighed but followed it up with, “He’ll probably like the power upgrade.”
“Oh, man,” Sean said. “I bet, but he’s still unconscious, so we don’t know yet. Is he going to be okay?”
We all looked over at Amy. She shook her head. “I don’t know how long he’ll be out, but he’ll wake up. I only took enough of him to make him fall unconscious. Once he regenerates enough… lifeforce? Mana? The best words I have for it are technical and aren’t in English. When he’s regenerated enough, he’ll wake up.”
Sean let out a breath. “What if he doesn’t?”
“He will,” Amy said. “He’s alive. He’ll wake up. I have literally thousands of years of expertise to draw on in this.”
Noticing the dark figures of Sean and Dayton on the roof of the main building, I zoomed in to see Jody lying at their feet. I wondered how much, if anything, of the fight with Magnus he remembered. Daniel and his grandfather had worked hard, but nobody was perfect and they were working on a tight deadline.
Dayton put a hand on Sean’s shoulder, “Relax. Everyone’s doing their best. You’ve seen her stab people without killing them before. Remember back when the dragon attacked Stapledon? She did it on other students because she had to, but didn’t kill any of them, right?”
“Right,” Sean said and slumped, but then sat down next to Jody. “Tell us when we’re leaving. I’ll be right here.”
“Soon,” I said. “We’ll be down as soon as we’re up to speed on everything.”
Dr. Transylvania’s voice carried over the comms, his accent hinting at Eastern Europe. “I presume you’d like to talk to me next? I don’t think that I have much to add that Prime didn’t already mention. My people did assist with the mind-controlled Cabal members. We did get hurt, but while they thought to ward the buildings against us, they didn’t supply them with wooden stakes. Or rice. That would have been annoying. You can’t imagine the compulsion when you see the grains fall to the ground. How many are there? You have to count them.”
He stopped, laughing. “Perhaps you can, V4. You and Blue Mask used them ably from what I’m told. You and the hamster. But nevermind. The Cabal soldiers and the Nine’s troops hurt us, but didn’t kill anyone. My children fed well, though, so they’ll be fine. And Ape Nasty got to hurt people without consequences. That always puts him in a good mood.”
The Atoner spoke up the moment Dr. Transylvania paused. “Don’t think that we let Ape Nasty do whatever he wanted. He stayed within the scope of the mission.”
With a grunt followed by laughter, Ape Nasty added, “You can believe the choirboy. I was well behaved. Everyone I hurt deserved it.”
“Hmmn,” Dr. Transylvania said, “it’s hard to find people that don’t deserve it on this island, but be assured that we pointed Ape Nasty in the right direction. I’m sorry I couldn’t do more for you. While I did figure out how to disable the wards on the building, I didn’t figure it out soon enough to send people to help you. Still, we did help secure this end of the mission. The Nine’s soldiers can’t match a small army of vampires.
“I’d be remiss to omit the help we received from your AI’s book club, particularly OMF. His people were invaluable once the sun came up.”
Vaughn asked, “OMF?”
In an even tone, the Atoner said, “It’s an abbreviation of ‘Our Mutual Friend.’ He’s a difference engine given sentience. He acts as a fence and information broker. He’s based in Chicago, but someone supplied him with a network interface and now he has access to the internet.”
“I don’t know anything about it,” Dr. Transylvania said, “but if I did know something, I’d point out that the event predates when I turned myself over to the state.”
Ignoring him, the Atoner added, “He also has a small army of clockwork robots. They’ve been useful.”
Over the comm, Hal used a pleasant baritone that I wouldn’t have guessed was a computer voice. “It would be nice to have hands, but you’re correct, they have been useful. My report is that all hostilities have ended. I’ve notified the relevant authorities and a task force of troops from nearby countries will be arriving soon. The United States forces will arrive first, followed by Mexico. Unless you wish to answer questions, I’d advise leaving within the next 30 minutes.”
“You heard Hal,” Haley said. “Let’s get out in 10 minutes, if we can, 20 if we have to.”
Off the main channel I asked Hal, “Did you manage to copy the contents of the Nine’s computer systems? I’m particularly concerned about Rook’s and Dr. Mind’s files, but having a full picture of the Nine’s assets and businesses on hand would be good. We’ll probably be following up on them for months.”
Hal replied, “They’re already copied over. You can view them whenever you like, but they’re quite large.”
Looking over the place I found myself in the middle of a few different unrelated thoughts. First, that the island was a beautiful place. Especially around the platform where we exited the stairway, the vegetation all but screamed, “tropical island paradise.”
Colorful birds flew through the air above us. Others perched in the trees or on volcanic mound.
Noticing that, I hoped again that it was inactive, and decided to be grateful that Larry wasn’t here. While he was closer to me than some family members, he had the worst luck with fire and natural disasters.
Grandpa told me Larry had been in the fight that made Mount St. Helens blow early.
Deciding not to check the volcano for now, I said, “We should have everyone check in.”
Aloud, Haley said, “Main channel.”
I switched to it to find reporting in already in progress.
Alex’s voice sounded first. “We’re on our way up and we’re bringing a lot of people with us. Most of the staff surrendered. The way they tell it, you’d think they were kidnapped, forced to live in a tropical paradise, get rich, and direct a massive criminal empire.
“Whatever. Anyway, they seem to respect the guy in charge of the command center. Since he surrendered, we’re not having any problems. The guy who repairs photocopiers has been helpful too.”
Jenny cut in. “I’ve stationed a copy of myself behind each group and at the major intersections. If there’s anyone left behind us, they’re unconscious or hiding.”
Brooke asked, “How did all of you get out? After the explosion, I thought I’d have to open a portal for you.”
With a laugh, Marcus said, “I wanted to take a submarine, but Blue know about another stairway. It’s disappointing. When will we have the chance to steal a submarine from a secret island base again?”
“Sooner than you think,” Alex said. “My dad’s been in a bunch of them. My stepmom even lived in one for a while.”
“Oh, right,” Marcus replied. “She was a supervillain.”
Prime’s voice cut into the conversation. “I met her once, I think. Pheromone powers, right?”
Alex paused, but then said, “That’s right.”
“The team she was with didn’t know it, but they weren’t much more than dogs following her commands.” Prime laughed. “But we’re supposed to be reporting in, aren’t we?”
“Yes,” Haley said. She looked over at me and used a private channel to say, “Did you notice how he got everything back on track? There’s someone who’s run a few meetings.”
With a snort, Prime said, “It’s a complete success on our end, but not an easy one. We would have ended up fighting our own dominated soldiers to a standstill but nothing else except that we followed the plan… We blocked our own people from playing a role in the fight and took targets of opportunity when we had them. The vampires did their job, hypnotizing our captive brethren.
“As of right now, we’ve got our people in custody. Our teleporters are sending them home. If what the AIs found is correct, we can keep them away from anyone who knows how to trigger them. Given time, the triggers will wear away and we have plenty of time.
“So, Heroes’ League, let’s consider this over. I’m willing to forget the death of my father at the hands of Lee and the Rocket, our humiliation at your hands in Grand Lake, how you publicized our existence, and gave the world’s heroes what they needed to target us and destroy us.
“I’m willing to remember our cooperation in freeing my brothers from the Nine here.” He cleared his throat, “It’s my hope that you’ll be willing to forget our cooperation with Ray and Syndicate L in targeting you as well as attacks our people made on you under Magnus’ control. I’m aware that one of those attacks killed Night Wolf. You have my condolences.”
Haley’s face, the part visible below her mask tightened, but she said, “Thank you. I’m willing to consider it over if everyone else is.”
Though Prime and I had said more or less the same when he’d helped fight the mushroom zombies, I understood how he might want to reiterate it in front of everyone. I said, “Yes,” and I wasn’t the only one. I don’t know if everyone said something, but at least no one objected.
Prime said, “Good. If you need us, you know where to find us, but be aware that if you want our assistance in the future, you’ll have to pay like everyone else.”
“Fine with me,” I said. “I’m hoping we never hit a problem big enough that we need you. I’m also hoping that we don’t come into conflict as a result of any future jobs you have.”
Grunting, Prime said, “We won’t take jobs that will put us into conflict with you. If you find one of us working for one of your opponents, contact me as soon as you can.”
“Absolutely,” I said.
Sean’s voice sounded over the channel, and my stomach sank, expecting him to throw the whole agreement away with a few poorly chosen words.
“Hey,” Sean said, “we’re totally cool with that too. Justice Fist was also there when you guys were fighting. Anyway… I thought we ought to report in. Dayton, Jody, and I got out. We used the stairway too, but we’re back on the main building’s roof now. Oh, and it looks like the zappy eyes thing Rook did to Jody is permanent.”
It didn’t take long to reach the surface, relatively speaking. Izzy lead us down a hall off of the main room, giving me a chance to look at the dead, frozen bodies of all the people Rook had turned into robots as well as his own transformed body.
Amy shuddered as she passed it, telling me, “The little bit of him that’s left saw his dead body. Even for him, it’s weird and creepy.”
Haley shook her head, saying only, “Yuck.”
From behind us, Cassie’s voice carried over the sound of our boots stepping on the debris. “He deserves some weird and creepy. Between him and Dr. Mind, the Nine were trying to corner the market.”
I wondered if we should be bringing out any of them for burial, but would we bring out everyone? Just Rook? I dismissed it with the thought that the nations of the world had both private and public teams devoted to cleaning up after superhero fights, classifying new technology, and handling the inevitable hazardous waste.
Following Izzy into the corridor, I gave a last look at Rook’s combination of lab and submarine base. Noticing the storage cabinets and partially constructed Rook suits, I wondered if maybe we should be blowing up the entire place. Would the world be better if the world’s governments had the chance to study Rook and Dr. Mind’s technology? What about the Abominator implants and what they’d done to Rook’s followers?
If I felt we had to, we could always sear the place with the jet’s main gun. Reminding myself of that, I walked down the hall. It ended in a gray concrete staircase. Unremarkable in every way, from the steel beams to the blocky steps, it could have been in any factory or office building in the world.
How many similar staircases had I walked up over the last few years? It could have been been the staircase I’d fought vampires on in Detroit, one of many in the Nine’s factory near Chicago, the arena on the island where I’d fought the Grey Giant the second time, the Defenders’ HQ in Chicago, or even our own base in Grand Lake. There had to be more. We hadn’t used the staircases much when we’d fought the mushroom zombies in the underground parking lots, but I knew they had to be there.
Even the stairways in Stapledon’s school in Colorado could have passed for it for a second. They might have been carved out of the rock by Earthmover, but the design wasn’t much different.
Who’d guess the life of a superhero involved spending so much time walking and fighting up and down the stairways in the employee only sections of buildings?
At least we weren’t fighting through this one.
Daniel’s voice sounded through our mental link. Blue’s scan can’t detect anyone in the stairway. When I sense our potential futures, the chances that we’re attacked while we’re in it are about the same as when we’re in Grand Lake out of costume, maybe lower.
I thought back, I’m being paranoid.
Daniel’s amusement carried over the link even before he replied, After today or after every day since our senior year of high school, who wouldn’t be?
I laughed and we walked upward. No one attacked us. The stairway didn’t explode. I could tell from watching everyone through my HUD that I wasn’t the only person expecting the worst.
Everyone from Jaclyn to Vaughn, Marcus, Haley, Rachel… Well, everyone walked carefully, making micro adjustments with their heads that allowed them to keep everything around us in view.
Even Tiger paused to look down the way we’d come every now and then.
If it reminded me of anything, it reminded me of walking down the stairway into Red Lightning’s secret lair. The gas traps had long ago run out of gas, but the machinegun behind the wall had still worked.
We’d destroyed it after it fired on us. It seemed like forever ago.
You could view that whole incident as superhero life in a nutshell. We’d descended into a supervillain’s lair, risked our lives, but discovered information we hadn’t known before. While there, we’d found the remains of a battle and Red Lightning’s attempt to become even more powerful.
If nothing else, it was a reminder that even with time travel not all deaths could be fixed. Changing Red Lightning’s future would have been a major change to our past. I couldn’t even guess at the consequences.
When we reached the top of the stairway, we found that it ended in two, light green metal doors. Izzy and I looked at each other, prepared to rip the doors out of their hinges.
Before we even had time to turn back to (or test) the doors, Haley had reached out for the door handle, turning it, and pushing it open.
Nothing exploded. No alarms rang.
We stepped out onto a concrete platform on the side of a hill next to the (inactive?) volcano in the middle of the island. We were about half a mile from the compound we’d attacked. From our current height, we could see the roof of the building we’d landed on along with the other buildings around it.
Dr. Transylvania’s half-dome of a ship floated above everything, shattered walls and all.
I didn’t see any fighting.
The sun hung low in the sky, a glowing ball in a red sky. I wondered how the vampires were doing.
Lim glanced off to the side, adding, “I really should go now. I’m going to assume that explaining what’s going on with Ray’s corpse and the Xiniti is one of those things that would cause more problems if you explain it than if you don’t. Tell me if that changes.”
“Sure,” I said, intending to say nothing forever unless Ray reappeared on Earth.
Lim stared into the camera for a moment, giving the impression that he was studying me even though I knew he was just getting a still of the Rocket suit in his video feed.
Despite that, I felt a little guilty about not telling him much. It was probably a parental tactic—that or something he’d gained after years of handling supers for the feds.
“Okay,” he said. “Please don’t let it become a problem. The Xiniti aren’t going to make a clone army using his DNA, right?”
“No,” I said and checked my implant. It did not have a specific record of Ray, but the Xiniti avoided creating clone armies as a matter of policy. According to my implant, exceptions to that rule existed, but not on a wide enough scale to be called an army.
Though it would be the most honest response, I decided not to inform Lim that the Xiniti wouldn’t ever use Ray to create a clone army, but might create a clone unit if it were the only way to meet important mission objectives.
“Good,” Lim said. “One of him was bad enough. Okay, unless you’ve got something you need to tell me, I’m signing off.”
“I’ve got plenty,” I said, “but none of it’s urgent and it would take a long time.”
“I don’t doubt it,” he said, shaking his head, “and knowing what superheroes face, I’m going to bet that it will make me more nervous about the future instead of less. Anyway, I’m out.”
We said goodbye, and closed the connection, leaving me to pay attention to the world around me.
“What did Lim want?” Haley asked on the team implant channel.
“Mostly to let me know that the Xiniti took Ray to space—which is good. It means that I managed to fulfill my promise, but also that he’s off Earth, hopefully forever. And,” I added, “he also wanted to know what was going on and how much we were involved in the attacks on the Nine that apparently went on all over the world.”
Haley sighed, “I think you did the right thing, but it’s sad that Ray gets another chance and Travis doesn’t.”
I sunk a little inside myself. “I tried. I looked into a bunch of ways to bring back Travis. I even enlisted the machine to see if I’d missed any options. I couldn’t find any. Well, I found one. I could have done it if I stayed on the GCD, disappeared from this timeline, and let another version of myself replace me.”
Her eyes narrowed, “You didn’t, did you?”
“No,” I said.
Then she turned to Daniel, asking, “He didn’t, right?”
Meanwhile Amy said, “You can’t do that kind of thing. I’ve felt guilty about you almost killing yourself to save me for years.”
A few of the symbols on Amy’s spear glowed with an inner red light.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I underestimated how hungry that thing is.”
Daniel shook his head, telling Haley, “He decided not to. He kept on looking to see if maybe there was another option, though.”
“Good,” Haley said, grabbing my arm. “You’re not replaceable. Neither was Travis, but swapping yourself for him, even if I never know, isn’t an option, okay?”
“I know,” I said, deciding not to mention that technically, if the universe would simply slip another Nick into my spot, I absolutely was. Saying so wouldn’t calm the situation down though, so I didn’t.
I have learned at least a little about how to handle people.
Jaclyn reached out to pet Tiger, who’d cocked his head to look at me. “I missed even knowing that was an option on the table,” she said.
“I’d frozen time when I was looking into it, so I didn’t discuss it with the group. Anyway, I didn’t like that option.”
“You’d frozen time like Kee froze time?” She turned away from the dog to look at me. “That’s impressive. Seriously.”
I shrugged, “I did it with a device she designed, so maybe not as impressive.”
Jaclyn laughed, “Maybe, but I can’t do that even with the device. Either way, we need to get back up to the surface. The way we came down is filled with rubble now. Even if it wasn’t, I don’t think we should assume the weapons don’t work.”
Izzy stepped through the doorway into the control center, as tall and as powerful as ever, “We can get out. There’s another stairway up.”
“It’s Rook’s,” Amy said. “I asked Blue to check it out after we got everything under control here.”
“Good,” Jaclyn said, peering past Izzy toward the chaos killing Rook and his minions had left. “Let’s go home.”
Lim’s face appeared on the screen. I couldn’t even guess where he was—someplace dark that wasn’t his office, for sure. The grey marble behind him and the hint of light reflecting from it suggested that he might be outside.
The polished marble in particular would fit with being in Washington D.C. or a suburb with federal buildings. Lim could easily have been mobilized by the AIs to take down one of the Nine’s outposts.
The helmet and armored black vest with the letters “FBI” on the front told me it wasn’t a normal day at the office. On the other hand, I didn’t hear shouts or gunshots through the connection.
“Rocket,” he said, “you’ve been busy.”
“Sorry I didn’t let you know,” I said, my implant translating my thoughts into speech for the comm system.
“We got what I assumed was your information about who the Nine controlled in the Bureau, local Nine bases, and influenced figures… There were even triggers to use and who they were connected to,” Lim said. “It was the most complete information on the Nine’s locations and assets that I’ve ever seen.”
He paused, “If that wasn’t you, who was it?”
“We,” I began, deciding that I did not want to explain Hal’s friends, “have a connection with a group that got into the Nine’s systems. They distributed information to the right people for the right task.”
Lim nodded. “I’d say so. I knew it wasn’t you personally, but there had to be a connection. Some of what we got was the Nine’s internal documents. Not everyone could get those. I thought you might be able to. Not only that, a lot of people got directions with a very specific time, order of operations, and the person to handle it. As long as people followed directions, it was easy. I’ve seen reports from all over the world at this point. It’s a crazy amount of detail. Was Lee involved?”
“With part of it,” I said, because Lim didn’t need the full story, “ but not everything. You know about the League jet’s AI and it was designed to simulate battles to find the optimal combination of tactics and strategy? Feed it enough information and you get good results.”
Sighing, Lim said, “I can’t say I entirely trust an alien AI, but you’re playing to its strengths. We can’t know for sure, but if everywhere went as well as it did here, this might be the end of them. Where are you, by the way?”
“The Nine’s headquarters, specifically, their submarine base. I’ll pass along the exact location after we’re done.” I had my implant make a note to remind me to ask Hal if he had a specific plan for when to notify governments about the base.
Of course, given that we had Cabal soldiers fighting other Cabal soldiers above us, the fight may have already been triangulated by earthquake researchers.
That thought prompted another note to my implant to check on how everything on the surface was going. The vampires would have to stay out of direct sunlight.
Lim muttered something and shook his head. “I know we were riddled with the Nine’s assets here in D.C., but it’s a gut punch to have missed out on that.”
I shrugged. “Sorry. If it’s any consolation, we’re in international waters right now, but the Nine being the Nine, I’d bet there are strings tied to some country. By missing out, you’re probably avoiding an international incident. Maybe you can get in on whatever muti-national task force they send in after we’re done.”
Lim snorted. “Unless you stick around the submarine base, probably not. I’m in the middle of a couple of different operations related to the Nine’s assets at the moment. Anyway, I thought I’d check in for where you fit in with all of this and if I was right in guessing I’d been left out of the loop.”
“Sorry,” I began.
“Don’t worry about it. Supers specialize in doing what we can’t and I’ve been expecting you to go up against the Nine soon. I just didn’t expect it to be on this scale. You already had international visibility, but after this… Well, expect more international calls and not all of them will be friendly.
“I don’t mean to rain on your parade. I don’t know how you did it, but between you and your allies, I think you may have just taken down the biggest criminal organization in the world.
“Anyone who plans to replace them will have you in their crosshairs. On the other hand, they may also fear getting your attention and given what I’ve seen today, they’ll be right. Crap. I got a text just now… I can’t tell you any details without permission, but someone following Hal’s instructions hit the jackpot. I’ve got to go. No, wait—”
“What?” I asked.
Shaking his head, Lim said, “I’m an idiot. The main reason I called you today was because of Ray. After we picked up his body, the Xiniti contacted us, insisted that we hand him over, and made us promise that we wouldn’t tell you until today, and even then only after dawn in D.C. Does any of that make sense to you?”
“Kinda, yeah,” I said.
He stared into the camera. “Is it ever going to make sense to me?”
“Let’s hope not.”
He nodded, “Right. I probably shouldn’t ask, but did someone change the nature of reality when I wasn’t looking? Combine a bunch of universes? Destroy a universe? Absorb a universe or two and now we’re going to have a bunch of new teams and villains that we think always existed?”
“Uh… None of those specifically. Has that ever happened?” I did my best to keep my voice even and unworried.
“I can’t talk about it,” he said, “but I will say that I’m sure it would be a huge pain in the ass if it did.”
The glowing ring of the portal appeared before us, with the grey concrete of the dock’s control room visible through the circle. It grew larger by the instant, making it clear that we were exiting immediately.
It was less that we stepped through to the room, so much as fell through at an angle. There was no law, I supposed, that a tunnel through time and space had to synchronize with the orientation of the exit point.
Haley let go of my hand, rolling and coming to her feet. I turned on the suit’s anti-gravity, floating to the ceiling like a Rocket-sized party balloon.
It hadn’t been a bad idea, though, because managing traffic hadn’t been a high priority in the portal’s design. Vaughn, Marcus, Jaclyn, Daniel, Cassie, Rachel, and Tiger poured out after us, dodging the people who’d appeared before them.
Amy, meanwhile, stood next to a wall filled with controls and computer screens, eyes widening as we filled the room. It wasn’t a big room.
Rachel was the last one through, and the portal closed behind her, causing Amy to blink and pull out the flat stone I’d left with her.
I flew over everyone and landed next to her. She handed the stone over, saying, “And? You won? You lost? Oh, and take this.”
“We won,” I said, “if killing Magnus, freeing Lee and Nataw, and convincing Govan that he should leave the Destroy faction and join Live is winning.”
Amy watched me and paused before saying, “That sounds exactly like winning. It sounds like a complete and total success. What aren’t you saying?”
I looked around; everyone was watching, and no one was saying anything. “Well, the way things worked out, winning may have changed the past a little. We don’t know how much. I got a message from the machine that there were minimal deviations, nothing that should affect anything.”
Haley looked over at me, “You did? I didn’t get anything like that.”
Rachel said, “Neither did I.”
The rest of the team echoed their responses. Daniel frowned, “I wonder if that’s because you controlled it for a little while or if it’s an Artificer thing?”
Rachel said, “Control. I’ve got as much claim to be an Artificer as he does.”
Giving a wave that extended his arm a good two feet longer than normal, Marcus asked, “Did you notice reality warp around you or anything? What happened after we left?”
It seemed impossible that she wouldn’t have been affected herself, but on the other hand, she was holding the portal open. Maybe she’d have been protected? Deciding not to muddy the waters, I only added, “What happened after I left?”
Amy held up her hands, “Not everybody at once. One question at a time. I didn’t notice any changes except for after you all came through. When the portal closed, the stone cut me off. I was connected to it, but I can’t sense it anymore.”
I reached out to it using what Rachel had taught me. It didn’t communicate, but I felt its presence. On the other hand, Lee had wanted an “adult Artificers only” conversation with Govan.
Amy tapped my armor and grinned, “Here’s what happened after you left. You remember how I absorbed Rook? He had passwords to everything and knew this place’s defenses. I locked the doors on their troops, shut off power to their weapons, and gave Hal access to everything I could.”
“Whoa,” Vaughn said, “that’s why they didn’t send any more troops. We were fighting Power Burst and all of those guys, but it looked like more troops were coming, but they couldn’t get past their own doors.”
Cassie had walked over to the door and looked out, turning around to ask, “They’re still out, right? We fought an earlier version of them on the other side of the portal. I don’t want to fight them for a third time today.”
Frowning, Haley asked, “Do you think it was safe to give all of that information to Hal? He might share them with his friends.”
Amy shrugged, “It was that or lose everything. I’m digesting Rook with every passing second. He’s no one you want to keep in your head.”
She shivered, “He’s fighting it, but he can’t do much. They don’t share everything with me, but the previous Bloodmaidens are united in preventing foreign personalities from taking control.”
Glancing at Daniel, Haley asked, “Do you need any help?”
Daniel shook his head, “She doesn’t.”
Amy smiled, “I don’t. I’ve had plenty of practice digesting unpleasant personalities today. I had to steal Jody’s powers to have a chance of hitting Rook. I didn’t have to kill Jody, but I had both of them in my head while I was shutting the base down. I made sure I finished Jody first. He’s a creepy little bastard.”
“Don’t we all know it,” Cassie said. “We had to fight an earlier version of him in there too.”
Amy’s eyes widened. “You’re making me glad I stayed. That’s too much of him in one day… What do you think you changed in the past?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “There’s one big thing, but that shouldn’t cause any problems if it goes right.”
Cassie laughed. “Right. Letting Ray live is minor.”
“Ray?” Amy asked.
She hadn’t been around then. She might not even have been on Earth. I tried to think of where to start, but Isaac Lim’s name started flashing in my HUD.
I could think of a few reasons our FBI handler might be calling, not least of which being that I wasn’t sure we’d told him we were attacking the Nine’s home base tonight.
I took the call.
Nataw said, “Of course. We need you… I’ve been waiting for you to say something like this since all the arguments started.”
Then he stopped and looked over at Kee and Lee, asking, “Right?”
Kee looked up toward Nataw, “I know it’s hard for you. We all have friends among Destroy. If it could possibly happen, we’d like to end this without fighting any of them. We also know that’s unlikely.”
Govan nodded. “I’ve had my own visions. I know it’s unlikely, but hearing you say you see value in their lives is good. The less we kill, the better..”
Turning to meet Lee’s eyes, he said, “You don’t know how angry Destroy is about the way you left and that you took this thing.”
Lee shrugged. “After running from them for thousands of years, I think I might have an idea. They’ve destroyed star systems, intelligent species, interstellar nations, and empires simply because they thought I’d been there and influenced them in some small way.”
Govan stared. “In some small way? You’ve altered species evolution and raised armies that stood a chance of destroying us, and if not us, our servants. Word is that we should be looking for another. You’ve had enough time since the last.”
Lee crossed his arms, “Word from who? It seems like ‘we’ shouldn’t be looking for my hypothetical armies. It seems like Destroy should. ‘We’ already know about those hypothetical armies since we may or may not have created them.”
Govan took in a breath, “You know what I mean. You always have plans. You always have tricks up your sleeve. You put small things in motion that turn into big things later when everyone’s stopped looking. It’s unwise to assume you’re doing nothing and those in Destroy try to be wise.”
Grinning, Lee said, “I’m sure they try, but who’s been saying to watch for my murderous creations?”
Govan sighed, “Mednez, but he’s merely repeating what Halas and some others who knew you better said.”
Lee chuckled, “That’s who I’d have suspected. Halas won’t be doing much advising in the near future. There’s a decent chance he won’t reappear until after it’s all over.”
Shaking his head, Govan said, “At least he’s not dead. Where is he?”
“Mmmn,” Lee muttered, “I’m going to hold off on that one for a bit. I will say though that it was his trap for me that happened to go off on him. It will release him eventually, but not soon. I don’t even know how we’d get him out.
“If you’re still interested in joining up with the forces of leaving the younger species alone, we might want to think about what’s next instead of rehashing what people in Destroy think about me. For example, we might want to discuss whether you’re going to be a double agent or whether you’re going to quietly disappear, leaving Destroy to speculate as to why.”
Govan took a breath, holding it, but then saying, “I don’t have the temperament to be a double agent. I’m no good at lying. No offense meant, but you were better at it as was Kee.”
With a tilt of his head, Lee said, “No offense taken. That’s why I brought it up. We have a number of techniques you might use. Simply fading out everywhere might be good, but we could get some mileage out of staging your death. Setting it up so that you disappeared, but giving hints that the Ghosts killed you might pay dividends.”
Govan paused, but said, “We will have to decide that…”
He looked out at all of us, humans and a dog that watched with interest as unknown futures altered with every word.
Lee waved at us. “Sorry about that. This is going a bit long and you all can’t give away what you don’t know, right? We should continue it without observers. I’ll send you all back and we’ll meet you on Earth. I will, at least. The rest may have tasks elsewhere.”
It didn’t sound like a bad idea. I hoped that all of this with Magnus, the GCD, and four Artificers hadn’t attracted attention.
My implant informed me, “Should it become necessary, the Xiniti weapons designated for destroying humanity can be repurposed to target Artificers.”
That was another thing I wouldn’t be passing on any time soon.
I felt the energy that hinted at a portal to home opening. As the power peaked, Lee used an Artificer channel to say, “Good job. You did everything you needed to and a few things I wouldn’t have dared to suggest. We’re moving in the right direction, and it shouldn’t be boring. I like that.”
Then the connection ended and I felt myself being thrown through time and space, my suit giving my time stream as the universe I’d come from, but our exact location was a mystery. Tabling any questions I might have for Werner Heisenberg, I let myself be propelled without resisting.
I’d already gone enough places for one day.
Grandpa, Grandma, and the original League disappeared. I wished we’d had a little longer to talk, but it probably wouldn’t have been wise.
The outlines of our League flew through the darkness with me, sometimes illuminated by flashes of light. Haley and I managed to clasp hands somehow and hung on to each other.
In my mind, I heard Spark’s voice, “You’re reentering your timeline. There are mild deviations, not enough to change anything important, but you may find that small details are different.”
Nataw sighed. “I’ve been doing what I always do. After the visions came and our whole race went mad, I left. I couldn’t convince anyone in Destroy that killing the younger races was unnecessary, and so I went out to see them before they disappeared. I’m not much of a fighter, you know.”
With a grunt that edged into a growl, Govan said, “It’s not a question of convincing. We all saw what happened. In universe after universe, lesser beings evolved, grew powerful, and sought us out to destroy us. Some of us were even helping them do it, betraying relationships that predate universes. What were we supposed to do?”
I don’t know if everyone could feel it, but I felt energy swirling around him, recognizing it for what it was: the Artificer equivalent of an unintentionally clenched fist. Lee had taught me to watch for those sorts of tells.
In my head, Kee said, “You don’t have to do anything.”
I didn’t know what she’d noticed, but I wasn’t planning to.
Despite looking as if a strong wind could blow him over, Nataw looked Govan in the eye and said, “We’ve already had this discussion, but I will say this one more time. The future has never been set. It’s never been inevitable. If it’s a bad one, it’s a bad one that everyone made together.
“What would cause the younger races to hunt us down? How about destroying them with booby-trapped technology or deliberately annihilating them when they seem to become too powerful? If we acted as guides and mentors, they’d have no reason to destroy us. If instead we’re a mysterious force that comes out of the stars to cut down starfaring races, they’ll want to defend themselves.
“What’s more, those of us with empathy will want to help them. Creatures that aren’t us are worth something. There’s an infinity of life out there in this universe and the infinity of others we visit. They have their own lives, hopes, and dreams, and they create the most interesting new things. If Destroy weren’t trying to preemptively make the universe safer for us by destroying everyone else, the younger races would have spent their time creating their own futures.”
Nataw paused there, and for the first time since I’d seen him, his eyes narrowed, and his face tightened. Energy around him moved, not being pulled inside in a rush as it had for Govan, but in short breaths.
“There was a race of five-limbed shapeshifters. Destroy’s traps warped them, but instead of being destroyed, they adapted, incorporating whatever they learned about technology into their set of skills. They captured me. They kept me captive for hundreds of years. Not only that, they isolated me, imprisoning my bodies and destroying the ones they couldn’t imprison. They experimented on me and analyzed me, harvesting what they could understand of my makeup and using it in themselves and their servants.
“This wouldn’t have even been possible without Destroy’s efforts to protect us by attacking everyone else. Once a technology’s been created, it rarely goes away. Destroy’s efforts pushed those creatures to create technology capable of harming us, and they based that technology on our technology that we’d spread to destroy them. Destroy created the seeds of our destruction. It’s madness from one end to the other.”
Govan seemed to shrink into himself, but still said, “We saw them, and many saw their own deaths, some at the hands of other races and some at the hands of our own people. Protecting yourself is a right. We had to do something.”
“That’s right,” Kee said, her voice low but still audible to everyone. “We did have to do something, but not what we did. We didn’t come together and try to make a plan that would prevent what we were seeing. We withdrew from each other, and Halas, Bakanan, and others gathered together to defend those they loved and kill the traitors. But then what happened? The futures changed in response to the deaths, but we’re still seeing a future that’s very much the same. Exactly who died has changed, but not the future’s shape. We’re still fighting each other, and the younger races fight along with us.
“Even altering ourselves so that we could no longer breed hasn’t prevented the creation of more of us. Wasn’t that supposed to solve it? Our young people fighting on behalf of the other races were in some of the visions early on. It didn’t work.”
Kee pointed in my direction. “It may have made it inevitable.”
Govan nodded, looking at me and around the group. “Yes. That’s why I let him go. It’s been so long since the first round of visions that I don’t know who was in mine, but I know that over the last few millennia I’ve seen myself fighting alongside him and his friends.
“Since Nataw and then the rest of you left, I’ve been having doubts about Destroy. I know it seems late, but I don’t want to betray my own kind. I’m just not sure what betrayal looks like anymore. The younger races haven’t yet made an organized attack on us, but we’ve killed many of our people. I’d like to join you if you’ll have me.”
I agreed with him and left it at that. He left a little bit later. I went back to checking the bots. I wanted to try a few new variations on bots. Plus, I probably had time to work on the implants.
I grabbed the keys to storage rooms from the safe in the lab and left to grab the implant fabricator. I avoided touching the boxes full of recipe cards and three-ring binders that Grandpa had left with secrets, plans, and activation code words for weapons. If I needed it, I had material to blackmail specific individuals, destroy superhero teams, and overthrow the odd government.
I’d once told Chris that if I ever took those recipe cards or binders out, I’d be planning to burn the world (metaphorically).
While none of them were on the level of what the Xiniti had handed me (though a couple were Xiniti-related), they’d be earthshaking if I ever chose to use them. We were closer to the point where I’d consider using them than I wanted.
Keys in hand, I stopped at the door of storage room three and unlocked it. Noting the shelves full of Abominator artifacts, some of which we’d added today, along with the blue-green foam on the walls that supposedly stopped emanations from the devices from being noticed, I looked for the egg and found it.
Ignoring the one-person Abominator birthing chamber near it, I picked up the egg. My implant officially named it as an “Abominator implant constructor.”
The glowing, gray/blue box on one of the upper shelves continued to hum as it always had, but as I picked up the egg, I noticed that it was louder than I remembered and had been since I’d opened the door. In an accent that wouldn’t have gotten a look anywhere in the American Midwest, it said, “Danger. Artificer.”
I asked, “What? Could you explain that?”
It didn’t say anything. I wanted some clarification, “Are you saying that there is an artificer so I’m in danger or are you calling me an artificer and informing me that there is danger?”
It continued humming.
“Alright,” I said, “if you want to communicate, I’m going to need more words to understand what you want.”
It still didn’t respond. I queried my implant to see if it could identify it. The implant responded, “Unknown. Similar objects have been found in Artificer technology caches.”
“That’s everything?” I thought at the implant.
It replied, “The rest are in storage. None have been opened. None have attempted to communicate until now.”
I concentrated on calling up “Artificer vision” and remembered how hard I’d concentrated on the flight back. Concentrating felt like trying to sprint after running a marathon. It took longer than usual to get into the right mental space, but I got there, seeing faint glows on devices throughout the storage room, but not on the box.
I couldn’t see any hint that the box existed until I let go of my concentration.
“Last chance,” I said, “I’m going to close the door now. If you want me to understand what you were talking about, you’ll want to say something before I shut the door.”
It didn’t say anything and after a minute or two, I shut the door behind myself, locked it, and wondered what that was all about.
I considered asking Kee, but decided to wait until the soreness in my head went away. Thinking logically about the situation, it was either detecting me but wasn’t smart enough not to warn me against my presence, or it was detecting something else that it thought I should be warned about. The latter seemed most likely. Off the top of my head, it could easily be detecting the Galaxy Core device. That seemed to be the most obvious threat to an Artificer. The other possibility was that it detected another Artificer or a threat to Artificers.
I decided that the last possibility was extremely unlikely on account of how the world still existed. Plus, I didn’t feel any hint of that when I looked at the box.
The upshot? Asking Kee could probably wait until tomorrow.
I walked back to the lab with the egg, noticing that while the egg appeared to be light green in the storage room, it shimmered with iridescent colors in the brighter light of HQ’s main room.
I wasn’t sure whether that was functional or represented the Abominators’ decorative taste. My implant volunteered a massive infodump on Abominator aesthetics and I did not take the offer up. There’s such a thing as too much information.
Bringing the egg into the lab and placing it on the counter next to my computer, I asked the implant for the next step in reprogramming it.
As if it had come from my mind, I knew that all I had to do was think about doing it, and a small white ball the size of a marble would appear in my mouth. If I spit it into my hand and touched the ball to the egg, the ball would be absorbed inside and start the process.
Since there was no time like the present, I followed directions and watched as the ball sank in, leaving no trace on the egg’s surface.
Waiting for a success message, failure, or an explosion, I took the time to note that my implant could manufacture objects inside of me. I’d already known that to a degree since it had volunteered to add cybernetic components to my body. Still, this was the first time it had used me as a factory—that I knew.
I had barely any time to consider that when updates from the implant sounded in my mind.
First, “The infiltration unit has found the implant constructor’s primary control system. It is integrating itself into the system and preparing to take control.”
Then, “Integration successful. Infiltration of control systems has begun.”
A few minutes went by and then half an hour. I had begun to wonder if I shouldn’t consider plans for destroying the egg when my implant said, “Infiltration successful. We have control. We will now replace the standard Abominator implant functionality with that of implants for local auxiliaries to Xiniti forces. We will keep the information contained in the original system. Restricted information will be available with your permission.”
This was expected. I knew I couldn’t make the rest of the League full citizens, but local auxiliary would allow us to act as a unit.
I hoped there wouldn’t be any hidden gotchas that would make me regret this later.
I thought about our other options, “What about Daniel?”
Vaughn snorted, “Well since Jody knows you’re friends from Stapledon, it’s probably best that he’s outside too. He’s checked though. Their base doesn’t have any protection from telepathy—not regularly.”
“Really?” I said, “That seems like a bad idea. I admit that we don’t have them on in our downtown office, but that’s because it’s only for show. I’ve got telepathy and teleportation blockers for the rare meeting.”
Frowning Vaughn said, “I brought it up with Dayton. According to him, they’re there, but they don’t stay on. They’ve had people in to look at them, but they haven’t found a problem. They work for a while, but then they don’t and no one on that team is a techie so they can’t fix it themselves. They’re trying to figure out who to call next, but they’re turning them off and on again every day for now. Dayton said he’d make sure they’re off for the meeting.”
That didn’t seem right. “In combination with Jody being maybe a traitor and what you just said, I’m wondering if they’re being sabotaged. I don’t see Jody knowing enough to do that, but I could get help from the Nine… Have they talked to Mindstryke? Weren’t they working with him to watch Futuremen Capital or something?”
Vaughn leaned back against the wall, “The problem there is that the Defenders can’t send anybody without possibly alerting the Nine. Dayton said the Defenders were arranging how to secretly send a tech.”
“Huh,” I crossed my arms over my chest. “I suppose that could blow their connection, especially with the Nine having an unknown amount of influence everywhere. I’d be a good candidate to look at their problem if they agreed on it.”
Tilting his head to the side as he grinned, he said, “I’ll pass it on. You understand those things as well as anyone. They might go for it.”
“Unless Jody’s the saboteur,” I said. “Then probably not. Uh… When does this all happen?”
“Good question,” Vaughn said, pushing away from the wall to stand straight. “It might be tonight. It might be tomorrow morning. It depends on when they have time.”
“Okay,” I said. “I don’t know what we’re doing an hour from now. I’m still waiting for the bots to get into a good position on the island. If I find out anything interesting there, we might be going back, but that said, right now I’m thinking that we might have to call in all the favors we have when we go in there. If Magnus is there and he’s got the device, this might be the final confrontation with all of the Nine’s forces. In that situation, we’ll need all the friends we can get. So I’m hoping we have until tomorrow. That might be challenging to arrange.”
With a grin, Vaughn said, “Works for me. If you don’t think Magnus will take over the world by tomorrow, I can try to schedule a morning meeting.”
That made me think of all the stuff that Magnus would supposedly be able to do even with his limited control of the device—empower people and affect the minds of huge groups. That didn’t even mention physical attack and defense. Sure, it wouldn’t be the full power of the device, but it seemed likely to be more than the full power of the Rocket suit.
Some of that must have shown on my face because Vaughn said, “Are you really thinking that he might conquer the world by tomorrow morning?”
I answered, “I can’t rule out the possibility that he’s already conquered the world and no one’s bothered to report on it because they haven’t noticed.”
“I love your optimism,” Vaughn said. “Does tomorrow work?”
“We might as well,” I said. “If it turns out that we’re not all doomed, it’ll give me time to work out a couple of things before the meeting.”
Vaughn’s forehead furrowed, “Hey, are you okay? I know things are bad, but you’re generally more optimistic.”
I shook my head, “I don’t know. I feel like I’ve been running from one thing to another since I got up. I literally went to the Moon and Mars and conducted a raid on the Nine’s home base. Kals is in the middle of a revolution that might spill over here. Plus, the Xiniti gave us the ability to blow up the planet if the Artificer tech gets out of control. Plus, my mom killed someone to save my life. Plus, the mushroom zombies. Plus Travis. Plus Major Justice and friends. Plus Magnus. Plus Lee is in the device and I have to get him out. Plus, I’ve got an idea or two involving using stuff from the storage rooms… It’s a lot.”
He let out a low whistle, “When you put it that way, I feel depressed… Travis deserves more than we’ve been able to give him. I’ve seen his body in the medical pod, but I still don’t feel like he’s gone. The rest of it is chasing me, but hasn’t caught up yet.”
“I know,” I said. “We haven’t had a funeral for Travis and when have we even had the chance? I suppose it’s his parents’ job, but I don’t know when they’re going to do it either. Plus the rest. It all happened over a few days and it’s still going. I don’t know when it will stop.”
Vaughn nodded, “If it stops too soon, it’ll be because we lost. If it continues and we get the chance to breathe, We’ll get to work it out after we win.”
“Was that a pep talk? After we win, we’ll have time to grieve?” I grinned, “You may want to work on that.”
Vaughn laughed, “It’s not much incentive, is it? But you’ll have the rest of it too. You and Haley seem solid. There’s your engineering firm. How many people our age have that? Plus, your parents are alive. It could have worked out worse.”
“It still could,” I said, looking out the door past him to the table where Haley talked with a group of us. If we were going to survive, I needed to ignore everything that wasn’t immediately relevant.
“On the bright side,” I added, “we are still living—most of us. I need to concentrate on that. So tomorrow works. Let’s go for it.”
Vaughn’s mouth twisted, but he didn’t argue, “Alright. Do whatever you’re going to do, but get a decent night’s sleep. You’ll feel better.”
“We have a way to make implants. I have to make sure they’re safe and assuming I can do that, I’ll make them available to everyone.
“Oh,” Julie said. “Is it one of the machines from the island?”
I shook my head, “Nope. It’s older than that, but similar in origin. I’m only going to pass them on if they’re safe.”
She’d stopped smiling, “I get it now. Do you have any other tests you want to run?”
“No. I might need something later, but for now, I think you can go back to the group or whatever you want to do. I’ve just got to look things over and then send out an update to everyone’s suits. That and work on your sonic unit.”
She met my eyes, “Thank you for the sonic unit and looking into implants. I genuinely don’t think about all that you do. It’s a lot. Let me know if you need to run another test.”
I told her I would and she left.
After that, I checked in on the island bots. They’d made it to the big white building and none of them had been spotted. I’d set them into “sneak mode” because I didn’t have time to pay attention to what they were doing.
Their programming told them to find spaces where regular conversations were happening, listen in, and then follow up on leads that developed. I’d passed off decision-making control over to Hal. He’d likely do better than I would. I knew he’d also notify me if anything interesting happened, but it was good to check on my own now and then.
That considered, I rearranged Julie’s sonic unit to disappear from her arm and inconspicuously relocate to her torso. I also made the settings that worked best with her voice the defaults. I didn’t remove any options. With experimentation, she might discover things I might not think of. For example, what would she do with narrowcasting sound?
With that finished, I arranged the sound protection update and tested it on hundreds of simulated suits and a couple of real ones. Satisfied that it wouldn’t brick everyone’s costumes, I added a note that the new update required additional material—so have your extra cubes close.
Then I pushed out the update, including Julie’s update with as part of the larger one, but with a flag that only triggered it on her suit.
A surprising number of suits started updating immediately and none reported errors, among them Travis’—which felt weird—but also Brooke’s, Alex’s, and Jenny’s, all of them in California and atypical for Alex. He tended to put it off forever. Jenny and Brooke didn’t, though.
Everyone on our team updated too. Well, it would be a lousy time to be vulnerable to voice powers.
As I watched the updates progress, noting when a new suit started the process, Vaughn stepped into the lab. “Holy updates, Batman… This is a biggie.”
He was still in jeans and a Hardwick Industries t-shirt, though. It wasn’t like he was wearing the suit. If he had been, it might have been uncomfortable.
“It is kind of big, yeah.”
Vaughn chuckled, “The sonic unit on Julie’s arm got absorbed straight into her suit and disappeared. I think she’s okay with it, but the rest of us were surprised. She’d just told us what she could use it for. Anyway, that’s not what I was here to talk about. We’ve got a plan. I’ve been talking with Dayton and he thinks we can swing a meeting with a few of us—I’m thinking Daniel and Julie, for sure.”
“Right,” I said, “they’re not using my suits. So Julie’s amplified power should blow right through their buzzer.”
Blinking, Vaughn said, “Uh… I thought Julie would be good because she and Jody got along back in the day. You’re right though, she’s a good backup in case Jody’s so totally out there that we can’t reach him.”
I felt myself frown, raising an eyebrow as I said, “Is reaching Jody on the table? From what I remember he willingly went after Alex with a knife that would have been lethal except that Alex could heal himself.”
Vaughn raised his hands in the air, “Sean’s a lot of things, but one of them is loyal. He’s more than halfway convinced that Jody’s working for Magnus, but he wants to give the guy every chance to admit it and get right with the group. I know it sounds crazy, but they all grew up together, all hid from the Cabal, all went through sports, Justice Fist, and Stapledon…”
Nodding along, I had to admit that he was right—Vaughn, that is. Sean was being unrealistically optimistic. Vaughn was dead-on in terms of understanding Sean and his group. I’d probably learn a lot more about people if I listened to him. That’s not what I asked about though, I asked, “Am I in this meeting?”
Vaughn shook his head, “We’re thinking Jody probably still hates you. The plan is an inside team that Jody doesn’t instantly hate and an outside team that has a good chance of taking him out.”
I smiled, “Which puts me on the outside team. That works. I don’t think my presence would make Jody think twice about betraying us to the Nine. If anything, I’d expect the opposite.”
Laughing, Vaughn said, “I think we all agree on that.”
“Wow,” I said, considering it, “I hadn’t been trying to enhance your abilities, but that is obvious now that you mention it. It should be able to interface with your suit, but I think I’d change the design to fit your needs specifically… Let’s start by making sure it reproduces your power and then after that, I’ll see if I can’t come up with something better.
“Provided it works, you can attach the spare sonic to your costume.”
I handed her the sonic unit. It was loosely cylindrical except that the back end was rounded and the front flat. She held it under her right forearm and it attached.
For the record, a gold cylinder hanging under the forearm of someone wearing a pink and white costume does not look good.
From the way her lips twisted, I could see Julie agreed. While I could argue that pink might not be the best color for a superhero costume and that no one had to stick with a color they’d chosen in high school, I said, “If you look in your HUD, you can change the color the same way you change it for every other part.”
The unit turned pink with black accents.
She must have caught my expression because she laughed. “Well, it matches. Sometimes I wonder if I should have gone with pink, but I still like it.”
“If you like it, that’s good enough,” I said. “I’m choosing to go with my grandfather’s identity. Daniel isn’t. It’s all okay. Here’s something you should know though. I don’t want this to get over to the Dominators if it works. So, I’m giving you a self-destruct function you can use if you’re captured.”
She glanced over to look at the device, but hearing that, she looked at me, “You can destroy it too, right? Because if I’m captured, I might not be conscious.”
“Yeah,” I said, “always. There’s a lot of stuff in our current costumes that I don’t want getting out there.”
I waved for her to follow me to the back of the lab, leading her around the tables covered with random parts and bot factories to stand in front of a black cube roughly seven feet tall.
Pointing a finger at the cube, I said, “There’s a League suit inside. Don’t worry about that for now. The cube is the important thing. It’s designed to test my sonic tech. Point the sonic weapon at it and run through the command tones you know at a normal volume. Oh, and put up your mask. Then reabsorb it and do the same thing with just your voice.”
She took a breath and the mask formed over her face. Then she pointed her arm at the cube. It took about as long as it might take to say the alphabet. I didn’t hear all of it, but my buzzer ran the entire time.
Then, as requested, she repeated it with the mask down and no sonics.
Using my implant, I compared the waveforms of the two tests. While they weren’t identical, it was the standard imperfection of being a human being repeating themselves. The sonics reproduced the command tones as she said them. I knew that what I should be doing was having her reproduce the sounds a few hundred more times and try both her voice and her voice mediated through my sonics to find out where the range of effective frequencies ended, but fortunately, I didn’t have to.
The Xiniti had long ago collected the necessary data on unassisted motivator command tones, and I had collected a bit myself since the new suits went into action.
Comparing her tones with the examples available in my implant and the team’s collected Dominator attack experiences showed that they were within normal margins.
“I think we’re good,” I told her. “Now, if you could place the end of the sonic weapon into the indentation here, we can test how much gets through the new version of the buzzer.”
She stepped up to the cube, found the indentation near the corner, and said, “Here?”
“Exactly. We’ll try it at a few different levels. I’ll tell you what they are as you go. We’ll start at volume two,” I said.
She did as I asked her, raising the levels when I asked. The numbers were good. The sensors inside the suit never detected a command clear enough to follow.”
“And that’s it,” I said. “It looks like we’ll be okay even at the sonics maximum volume—which is about the volume of 1000 motivators. While there may be that many out there, it doesn’t seem likely that they’ll be able to get together and focus on us. Well, unless they get sonic devices too.”
I thought about it for a moment, “You know what? I’m going to make your version right now. It’ll be the standard, but I think I can hide it in your suit so it’s not obvious.”
She blinked, “Really? I’d love that. Working with Kals showed me how much worse I am than she is. I know the Dominators are worse than she is, but they’re trained by people who know what they’re doing.”
“But you got trained by her,” I said.
“For part of a week,” she said, her lips twisting, “I know that’s better than nothing, but I could have used a year or more. With your sonics, I have more power even if don’t have more skill.”
She looked away from me toward the ground for a moment. When she met my eyes again, she said, “I know this might be impossible, but Kals has an implant. She’s been continuing to work on her skills using information from it. You and everyone who went to space have implants too. How do I get one?”
She looked up at me, lips pursed, waiting for an answer.
“Wow,” I said, “you don’t ask for much, do you? We got ours from the Xiniti. They’re not even in the solar system right now.”
She laughed, “You sound like my dad. He says that if you give me an inch, I take a mile. Are you saying it’s impossible?”
“No,” I said, “but it’s complicated. I’m going to look into it.”
I could have said no, or maybe I should have, but I’d been thinking the same thing. Having an implant helped me interface with my suit, and it would give everyone more options if they had one.
More to the point, it was possible. My grandfather had acquired a device for making Abominator implants for humans. It was in our storage room. I’d seen it again when we put away the new artifacts.
Yoselin had one. Her father had turned off its ability to force the user to obey Abominator directives. The Xiniti had figured out the same thing. Their implants repurposed an Abominator design. If I connected to the Abominator device, I could write over its programming and force it to create Xiniti-friendly implants, but complete with any information the Abominators stored—which would likely include training for people with “motivator” skills. That was how they’d controlled their human slaves.
I hoped I wouldn’t regret it.
With that, the meeting was over, or at least my part.
Vaughn left to call Dayton, and everyone else left to discuss how and where to probe Jody’s loyalties best. I could have gone along, and I wanted to, but no one else could improve the buzzers.
Chris might have, but he was out in a version of the Rocket suit helping with the fungus cleanup downtown. He’d served as my double enough that some people might think something was off when they met me in the suit.
Today though, it made it harder to figure out where the Rocket was while simultaneously making people feel like the Heroes’ League was actively involved in the cleanup. He wasn’t the only one of us out there, but it was good to keep the suit visible. Along with Daniel, it kept the original League in people’s minds even when we were elsewhere in the solar system.
Diving into the code associated with the current version of buzzers, I understood how to solve the problem—sort of. Without changing the hardware, I wouldn’t be able to solve it for people outside our group, but everyone on (or associated with) our team wore my suit technology, configurable armor with nanotech components.
If my suits were available, I’d be able to add components with software. Without a suit, they’d need to add additional sound-deadening elements to their armor—not a trivial task. Hopefully, the Nine didn’t know or have enough Dominators to blow past my buzzers.
I didn’t think Arete had time to notify the Nine of that particular weakness, but I couldn’t know for sure. He’d controlled the entire city before the end. He’d have had the ability to assign someone to send an email at least.
How long I spent working on it, I couldn’t say exactly, but my implant could. It informed me that it had been an hour and 23 minutes since everyone else left the lab. I ignored the number of seconds.
In any case, I was ready to test. Using my implant, I connected to my comm and called Julie.
She answered the comm with, “Are you calling me from the lab? I’m here with everyone else.”
I looked out of my doorway and she was. Sitting at the big table in the main room, she gave me a wave.
I waved back, “Sorry. I was focused on my work. I’ve got something to test if you can leave the conversation.”
“The new buzzer? Sure,” she said and got up from the table, dropping the call and walking across the room to the lab.
It still felt weird to have her here. In high school, she’d been part of a clique of girls that I never spoke to and she’d made fun of the fact that Haley and I were dating on social media. Add to that being part of Justice Fist, forcing Haley and me to leave a coffeeshop with her voice, and her high school crush on Travis gave me reasons to stay away from her.
She was literally part of why I’d invented the buzzer.
After starting Stapledon, she’d drifted into the Heroes’ League. I couldn’t put a finger on when she’d fully become part of the group, but she wasn’t that bad.
It might be faint praise, but at least we were at a point where I didn’t see any reason she’d do what an alternate history version of her had done—enslave people with her voice and sell them to the True.
Like everyone else when we were in HQ, she’d absorbed her mask into the (pink and white) costume, showing her light skin and blond hair. Her smile reminded me of the mean girl that she’d been, but not because she was sneering at me. It was just my memories and she probably deserved a pass. The Cabal killed her mother and she’d grown up wondering when they’d come for her.
As she stepped into the lab, she paused, eyeing the partially assembled Rocket suits, boxes of nanotech cubes, and the machines manufacturing bots. Then she walked toward me, asking, “Have you heard anything from Kals?”
“Yes,” I said, “the Alliance and the rebel groups have taken a subsector capital and she’s kind of the governor now. At least that’s the impression I got.”
Eyes wide, she said, “She’s our age, isn’t she?”
“Yeah,” I said, “but her mom was a high profile Ascendancy motivator who became a high profile resistance leader until her death. Kals seems to want to see it to the end.”
Blinking, she said, “I didn’t know her mom died. Did the Ascendancy kill her?”
I nodded, “Her mom sacrificed herself to give everyone else a chance to survive.”
Looking away from me, Julie stared off to my right at nothing, before saying, “I knew she was a resistance leader, but I didn’t know why. I’m glad she’s alive. She seemed nervous about going back when she was teaching me.”
Thinking back to fighting Ascendancy soldiers and starships, I said, “I get it. The Ascendancy is merciless and their soldiers are mind-controlled. Plus, people see her as a leader and they’re willing to die for her. That’s a weight.”
“I can’t imagine it.” She paused, but then said, “I know that’s not why you called for me. You wanted me to test out a buzzer.”
“Right,” I said, “but it’s a little more complicated. I upgraded the buzzer system to withstand a bunch of motivators at once, but to test it we only have one motivator—you. So, I modified one of my sonic weapons to amplify your voice. Normally, motivators’ vocal tones are too complicated to reproduce effectively, but I think I can get you to a comparable volume and measure the effect.”
Opening her mouth, she said, “Oh. Can I keep it afterward?”
Vaughn grinned, “They’re already involved. They were reporting to Daniel’s dad about Futuremen Capital. They thought Magnus was involved.”
“I remember,” I said. “Sydney wanted buzzers for them. I genuinely don’t remember if I provided them at this moment. I know I provided people in the community with designs.”
I hoped none of them got to the Nine, but chances were good that they might have. Plus, during the mushroom zombie fight, I learned that you could overwhelm them if you had enough people with voice powers.
I needed to see where I could improve the design. Maybe I could call Julie to help test. My sonics might give her an equivalent volume boost. Whether they’d convey the subtleties of her power was another question.
Reminding myself of the current conversation, I decided to listen and forget the need to fix it.
Vaughn was talking. I didn’t think I’d missed too much of what he’d said.
“—I’ll talk to Dayton first. He’s generally reasonable and it’s not like we didn’t tell them. Amy told them her suspicion right after she absorbed part of Jody’s soul, right?”
Rachel looked around the group, “I need to hear what happened while I was gone in more detail than I got it.”
“That would take a long time,” I said, “but Jody tried to attack Alex when he used his powers to tell the fungus zombies’ central brain to die. One of the previous Bloodmaidens was in control of Amy’s body and she drained Jody. When Amy returned, she said that she’d sensed that Jody wasn’t controlled by anything. He attacked Alex on his own. She wasn’t sure though, since she didn’t absorb the energy directly.”
Rachel’s eyes widened, “That doesn’t leave me with fewer questions. I’m going to talk to Amy and find out what she does remember and if she can ask the other Bloodmaiden. Did Daniel scan him?”
I shook my head, “Not deeply. He did a surface scan, but after being drained Jody’s thoughts were fragmented and not in a way that conveniently explained everything. In a perfect world, we might have insisted on keeping him for observation, but Daniel was tired like everyone else. I don’t know what we’re hoping to do with Jody, but you’re right, we should have Daniel probe his mind. If he’s working for the Nine, though, there’s no chance he’ll be cooperative and plenty of reason to think that he might have a block like ours.”
Vaughn let out a low whistle, “Yeah. That’s not the kind of thing you want to see from a speedster. You punched the mayor when he went into your head. Jody could throw a grenade or a bigger bomb and run out of range before it exploded.”
“Worse,” I said, “he might have something Rook designed with the Heroes’ League in mind—something that would allow him to locate our base for example. From what I understand, they’d have a hard time messing with the Stapledon Project’s work in Jody’s head, but they might be able to put in an additional command with Dominator voice stuff. We’d probably have to bring in Julie to know for sure.”
Vaughn leaned back in his chair. When he leaned forward, he said, “Okay. This is more complicated than I thought. We’re going to have to try to find out whether he’s really a traitor, but also be ready for all hell to break loose the moment we begin and we don’t want to do it here in case his costume’s full of Abominator tech Rook salvaged from the Moon before he started his Mars project.”
Jaclyn raised an eyebrow. “I didn’t even think about what Rook got out of the moon. I thought you were summarizing and then you dropped that in… This is worse than I thought.”
Leaning back to smack Jaclyn shoulder, Cassie said, “People assume Vaughn’s dumb because he’s a people person, but he’s not that dumb.”
She smirked at Vaughn and he shook his head.
“He’s smarter than I am,” Cassie added, “but if you want my suggestion, we work it out so that when we scan Jody’s brain, we do it on neutral territory, maybe even outside. We don’t want to risk our base, but if we go to theirs, you never know what the Nine planted inside. I want to use our downtown office, but they know it’s full of explosives from when we fought the Cabal.”
Rachel raised her hand, “All good points. We need to start. While Vaughn’s talking to Dayton, why don’t we come up with a few ideas for where to scan Jody? Maybe Dayton even has a suggestion. Nick can move the bots into better positions as we discuss. We don’t want to lose track of whatever Magnus is doing.”
I nodded, “I’ll move the bots. I think I’m also going to look into improving the buzzers.”
Haley nodded, “I’ll talk to Kayla, update everyone on what you’ve done, and check with Daniel, Julie, and Amy.”
Rachel looked over the group, “Does anyone else feel like we’re missing something?”
“Lots,” Marcus said, “but I’ve got a bad feeling that we won’t know what until we try it.”
Fun. That wasn’t the first word I’d apply to a multi-year fight for the future of your civilization, but as a way to keep your spirits up when facing a struggle you knew you could only begin to imagine, it was worth a shot.
I was glad they’d found my killbot tech useful even though I didn’t love being partially responsible for political assassinations. The Human Ascendancy deserved what they got, but the precedent would linger. If Kal’s group were lucky enough to win and future generations celebrated their success, assassination might be viewed as a legitimate technique for people dissatisfied with their government.
As the picture faded from my mind, I resolved to check in with her and also Katuk more often. You never knew what could happen next in a war or after.
I knew from experience that unpleasant truth didn’t only apply to her life. It was anyone’s guess how long they’d be cleaning up dead fungus in Grand Lake. Not to mention that we hadn’t had Travis’ funeral yet.
Not long after that, the pumps removed the last water from the airlock and we floated into the base’s hangar.
We exited the hatch to find Haley and Vaughn waiting for us.
Vaughn wasn’t in costume, wearing black jeans and a grey t-shirt with “Hardwick Industries” on it. The T-shirt showed traces of muscles he hadn’t had four years ago.
Marcus looked him up and down, “Wearing family swag today?”
Vaughn shook his head, his ponytail brushing across his back, “I got roped into family stuff today. We did real work clearing away fungus crud downtown, but it was still a photo op. ‘Look, the Hardwick family gives a crap about the city,’ see? I mean, I do care, but this was all about being seen to care. A bunch of my cousins got roped in, even Lucas’ family—which feels a little weird since his dad’s in jail for being involved with the Nine.”
Jaclyn let out a breath, “You’d think that would give them an out.”
Nodding, Vaughn said, “With how involved the Nine was in making it happen, yeah. I don’t think that detail has made it to the press yet. Well, unless I’m forgetting something. We’ve done so much stuff in the last couple of days that we could have made a general announcement and it would have blurred into everything else. We didn’t, right?”
I looked around the group, “Not unless the board did and I doubt they would.”
Haley frowned, “I’ll check with Kayla. What all did you do?”
Marcus took a breath and said, “You remember Victor from Nick’s Higher Ground internship? I either killed him or an alternate-universe version of him this morning and then we met the real him this afternoon. Well, I might have met both the real him and an alternate universe version because, depending on how time travel works, they might not have split yet.”
Haley looked from him to the rest of us, “That made no sense at all. If it’s a long story, maybe we should use the table in the main room.”
Shaking her head Jaclyn said, “I think we’re in the opposite situation. We think we know where Magnus might be and we should go back there as soon as we can in case it changes.”
“I did leave bots there,” I said, checking back on them. They all still worked. The wounded henchmen had been removed from the damaged spaceships and workers were pulling out seats, cable, and even components of the control panel system from inside—which was interesting. Bearing in mind that Jaclyn had ruined the hulls, I’d have expected the Nine to throw the remains into the ocean.
They didn’t strike me as environmentalists, but I supposed they might be looking to see if we’d missed anything during the heist. Also, they might have some kind of forensic team equivalent.
“Plus,” Cassie laughed, “we might have started a civil war inside the Nine.”
“We should unload the Artificer and Abominator stuff before we do anything else,” Rachel said, looking back at the jet. “Our best chance for keeping it hidden is inside the storage rooms. If all of that weaving around when we left is any indication, Magnus can sense Artificer tech inside the jet.”
Haley looked around the group, “I think we need to go over this in a meeting, maybe with remote team members listening in.”
“But no one who might let Jody listen in,” I said. “I’m about 99% sure he’s part Ghost, Artificer, or both in addition to working with Magnus.”
Sighing, Haley said, “Let’s unload first and you can tell me what happened as you do it. Maybe I can summarize it for everybody or at least skip to the important parts when we talk.”
It didn’t take long to unload the Artificer relics and explain what happened, maybe half an hour. It hadn’t taken that long to steal them, but we had to move Abominator gear around to find space for them.
By the time we were done, we’d gone through the whole story with Haley and relocated to my lab. It felt less official than sitting in front of the giant screen at the original League’s table, but cozier—at least for me. I sat on a stool next to the counter on the wall where we’d placed the computer where I did most of my work. Haley and Marcus sat with me at the counter and Rachel, Cassie, Vaughn, and Jaclyn sat at the nearest table where they tried not to knock on one of my bot assembly machines. I’d already set it to make more.
Jaclyn asked, “Is anything happening on the island?”
I checked and as the last half hour of footage flashed through my mind, I said, “No. I think I should try to get the bots into the big building and try to find Magnus. From the way he searched, he almost had to be there. It might be worth seeing what I can find out about defenses though. I feel like we might have to send in everyone we can. If this is the Nine’s secret HQ, we’ll need the League plus more. I’m willing to take a chance that the Midwest Defenders aren’t controlled. Maybe there are more options… The Probationers, maybe? And Prime wanted to be in on the end. We pretty much promised him he could.”
Vaughn let out a sigh, “If we’re going to bring Sean and Dayton in on that, we’ll have to handle Jody first. I know he’s an asshole, but they like him. I think they suspected him themselves even before you told them. It might be easier than you think.”
Remembering my run-ins with the three of them, I said, “Or we could leave them alone?”
Vaughn laughed. Rachel said, “You know better. They’ll get involved somehow.”
Part of the reason I didn’t like it was because I had a good idea of who it might be. Even if I didn’t have direct evidence, I had some strong hints. I think I could get almost anyone I knew to the answer just by asking, “Of everyone in Grand Lake, who would be the worst person to have a useful amount of Artificer or Ghost DNA?”
I’d have answered, “Jody” with barely a thought. As long as I’d known him, he’d hated me and seemed to enjoy petty cruelty. Lately, he hadn’t seemed so bad and even appeared to be taking founding the new version of Justice Fist seriously, but a couple of small events during the big fight with mushroom zombies made me almost certain he was working with Magnus willingly.
During one of those events, he’d slipped out of my control and I wasn’t sure how. It didn’t seem too weird on the face of it. We’d been fighting and it wasn’t hard to miss a detail like that with a speedster.
If his abilities were related to Rachel’s though, phasing out would work even if it were only partially phasing out. Beyond that, I’d only found my Artificer-related abilities useful when Artificer/Abominator artifacts were in play.
In the fight, I’d used them against Jody, making him the only human other than Magnus that I could use my abilities against.
As of this moment, we had to promote the question, “What are we going to do about Jody,” to the top of the list if we were going to collaborate with Sean and Dayton.
The three of them had been friends since childhood and they wouldn’t give up on him easily.
As I tried to think of how to bring up the subject, I felt the main engine turn off and realized we were descending via anti-gravity. That meant we were home.
Rachel let go of my hand, thinking, “We’re here,” at me.
I opened my eyes as Cassie flew the jet into Grand Lake and the base’s underwater entrance. Moments later we were traveling through the tunnel and into the base itself.
We sat there, waiting for the water to be pumped out of the airlock, not saying much of anything. That was fine because I felt tired, the deep tired from a long run, the kind of run where you wonder if you’ll be able to walk afterward.
I closed my eyes again, feeling outward with Artificer senses, and discovered nothing unexpected. I didn’t sense Magnus searching for us. I did notice energy coming from the artifacts we’d grabbed, but not much. I didn’t at all notice energy from the storage rooms Grandpa made for Abominator devices.
It gave me reason to hope he’d gotten some help from Lee or was simply as brilliant an inventor as I’d always imagined. Either way, I knew where we’d be stashing the new stuff.
I let the vision go, feeling more tired than normal from something so simple. I had a feeling that all I’d be doing after I got back was eating some real food, sleeping until tomorrow, and hoping that nothing world-ending happened while I was unconscious.
Despite what I might have assumed, given the additional hit of lethargy, barely any time had passed. We were still waiting for the water to be drained, though the level was now lower than the jet.
Resigned to waiting, I found that my implant had thrown up a notification in my brain. A message had come through the ansible near the Xiniti base. It was from Kals.
A little surprised that I hadn’t received it when the message came from Xiniti High Command, I checked the timestamp, finding that it had only arrived at the station’s ansible less than ten minutes ago and been sent less than an hour ago.
Unless this was a “send in the event of my death” message, Kals was alive. I opened it. Given that she was in the middle of leading a revolution, a posthumous message was more likely than I’d like to think.
It wasn’t a posthumous message.
She sat behind a desk in a room that, even if my implant hadn’t been calling out the various expensive bits, I would have recognized as representing an unachievable level of wealth for most people in our civilization or hers. If I were prone to purple prose, the words sumptuous, gilded, and maybe even glorious might have appeared in my description.
I lean toward simplicity, so here’s what you get: it was big.
When I say big, I mean as large as the main floor of my Grandpa’s bungalow. Red curtains inlaid with gold on the edges separated the room into sections. Pictures on the walls varied, some showing stern people in uniforms or formal robes. Another series of pictures showed people in different stages of undress. I didn’t need the implant’s help to figure out they were meant to be erotic.
The bed behind her appeared large enough for at least three people. Across the room from the bed was a pool large enough to swim laps. Decorative, possibly living, plants surrounded it, including small trees.
Kals grinned at the camera, dark hair hitting her shoulders. Still dressed in her silver, Xiniti-made protective suit, she’d configured it into a more comfortable mode—no helmet or hanging weapons.
Her first words were, “Ha! We won—not everything, but the first push. The military says we’ll be fighting for years, but we took the Minott subsector and its capital Seven Rings. Look out the window.”
I followed where she was pointing—an arched window wide enough to drive a compact car through. Three rings glowed gold in the dark, star-filled sky.
Kals turned the camera back to herself after a few seconds. “It’s amazing. I’ve never been here before, but I’ve seen pictures all of my life. I know you can only see three rings, but trust me, there are four more.
“You can check your implant for why, but it’s significant in many different ways. The most important for us is that it controls access to a gate and practically this entire sector. There are a lot of Alliance and Xiniti ships here to make sure it stays in our hands.
“Plus, as the movement’s figurehead, they’re placing me in the governor’s mansion. This is his room. It’s nice, but I’m going to change the sheets. Someone will know where new sheets are.”
She shook her head. “I’m not sure if I’ve slept since I last saw you. I think it’s been a day, maybe two? I went straight to the invasion fleet and into combat. Oh… You know how you were worried your killbots’ tech would already be dated and gave me a software update? I didn’t get back in time to pass it on, but you know what? The old version worked—very well. We assassinated thousands of Ascendancy motivators at once on hundreds of different worlds. I’m sure they’ll counter the first version, but we’ve still got your update ready for phase two.”
Pausing, she gave a half-smile.
“Well, I should go. I miss all of you. Tell everyone I said hi. Katuk’s great, but he’s here to keep me alive. And you know him, he doesn’t talk just to talk. It would be nice to talk to someone about something other than security arrangements and how to run a planetary economy and a war. If any of you want to immigrate to the Ascendancy, let me know. We’re remaking our whole civilization. It might be fun. Oh, and message me back, okay?”
She winked and the message ended.
I would have asked how we would connect, but Rachel leaned forward and said, “I’m going to have to hold your hand.”
I disassembled the glove with a command and she leaned forward to take my right hand.
In my head, she said, “This is how the Ghosts do interstellar flight—at least when I’m involved. I don’t have enough power to manage it alone. Could you start pulling in power?”
“How much? A lot?”
“Everything you can. I’ll tell you to slow down if I have to.”
I considered asking her if maybe I should start slow, but we didn’t have time for any in-depth discussion of anything. If I’d learned anything during my lessons with Kee, I’d learned to draw ambient energy from the multiverse.
I wouldn’t be able to start at full. She’d have a little while before I got up to maximum speed. Hopefully, it would be enough.
I stopped trying to hide, extending myself into the realities around us with minimal effort and began to pull in everything I could. From what Kee told me, grown Artificers could pull in enough to live forever without obvious food, fly across the universe, punch through from one reality to another, and even extinguish or revitalize stars.
What I was doing wasn’t even a trickle by comparison–which is why she felt comfortable with having me do daily exercises designed to increase my capacity. In all honesty, even if I was continuing down a path that meant power akin to deities, it wasn’t inspiring on any given day. I couldn’t do much new from one day to the next. From what I understood, the cool stuff would only start to happen with a thousand years of practice.
All the same, by comparison to the first time I’d tried, it was a flood. If Kee had seen, it might have been enough to earn me a toddler appropriate, “Good job,” and maybe a pat on the head.
Rachel, though, said, “This is what I was talking about. Why couldn’t I have inherited more of these genes? You can draw almost as much as a Ghost—not the older ones, but the younger adults.”
Then I felt her begin to manipulate it. She wasn’t letting the flow of energy move through us. With the power I pulled in, she changed the flow of the landscape around us, hiding us in the turbulence of the interactions between nearby realities.
I pointed a way around the column of Magnus’ attention, and it didn’t move much. As we passed it, it made a hesitant twitch in our direction, as if Magnus thought he saw something and then thought better.
I felt the jet gain speed and the main engine re-engaged, carrying us toward the mainland.
I thought to Rachel, “How long do you think we should keep this up?”
“I don’t know. How about as long as you can still sense Magnus searching for us?”
We’d begun to cross Florida, but I could still see the column of energy in my mind. Magnus was making circles that grew ever wider out from the island.
Even though it was more than one hundred miles away now, I could still see it. He seemed to have realized we’d gotten away, but he had a lot of power to work with and didn’t seem to see any reason to stop.
Over our connection, I said, “I’m not sure I’ll be able to keep it up that long. I might be able to keep it up until we get home.”
In my mind’s eye, Rachel frowned, “Don’t do it so long you fall unconscious, but do what you can.”
“I’m not sure I’ll be able to make it all the way home, but we’ll probably make it there before his giant search beam does. If we put the new artifacts in with the others, I’m hoping he won’t be able to sense them within the base.”
As I said it, I checked behind us, sensing that the column was still circling outward from the island, not even having reached Florida yet. This was a good sign. Magnus didn’t seem to have any idea it was us or he’d be pointing his attention at Grand Lake.
Knowing how quickly the jet could go, we might get home in less than 30 minutes, maybe even 10. I could hold out for that long, but it might be a challenge. It also might be worth it in case Magnus changed the beam’s direction without warning.
If I did make it, it would be the longest sustained use of my Artificer-related skills that I’d ever managed. I told Rachel, “I’m going to have to put a little less into it if I’m going to make it the whole way.”
“Do what you have to,” she said. “It’s still more than I’d have to work with.”
Adjusting to the idea that this was a marathon instead of a sprint, I cut what I was doing by a quarter and felt better. I hadn’t felt bad, but this felt like something I could continue forever, or at least for the ride home.
“That was a dip,” Rachel said, “but it’s still good. If you could keep this up, I think I could fly the two of us out of the solar system if you could only shift out of phase.”
“Sounds great,” I said, “what happens after we’re out of the solar system?”
“Without a more powerful Ghost, we either wait for help or freeze to death. It’s not a good idea, but with a Ghost, we link up and jump to the next planet. Maybe in one thousand years, you’ll be able to try it.”
After that, we didn’t talk much. It felt like running cross country. Rachel kept me updated on where we were and I kept the power flowing, using a touch to follow the patterns of energy around us.
As we neared Grand Lake, I could no longer see a hint of Magnus’ search. Grand Lake itself didn’t stand out to Artificer senses at all. Lee had hidden himself perfectly, leaving no trace despite more than 50 years of visiting the city. Not even his apartment and martial arts studio glowed with a hint of his presence.
Kee had pointed that out to me herself, adding that, “Even though you know him, you have to remember that he’s not just an impulsive fighter. He’s been alive for billions of years and so have I.”
My memory of Lee wasn’t the only thing in my mind as we neared Grand Lake. Though the city showed no sign of Lee’s presence, I felt a wisp of power. It was there for a moment and then gone. It didn’t feel like any Artificer I knew.
It couldn’t be Magnus and Lee’s device either, I knew what that looked like now.
Though I was tired, I didn’t think that I was deluding myself and mistook a stray bit of my power for something in the distance.
I didn’t like it.
We couldn’t blast away with the main engine without risking that Dixieclone might notice the sound and realistically there was no “might” about it. Izzy would. If he had the same powers as her grandfather, so would he.
Trying to stay conscious of what was around me and hoping I wasn’t mumbling nonsense words, I said, “Fly anywhere I point and quickly, but not too quickly. Use our anti-gravity systems.”
Concentrating on the ambient energy around me, I couldn’t tell what was going on outside my head, but I knew I wasn’t dead. That would have to be enough.
Magnus’ line of energy appeared to be moving away from us for now. That was good, but a thought struck me. I followed Magnus’ line back toward its origin, a spot fuzzy with what I assumed must be power.
“Don’t follow my hand this time,” I said, pointing toward the direction where the line began. “What’s over there?”
Through my implant, Jaclyn said, “The island.”
While she’d guessed right about how to get through to me, she’d also knocked me out of my trance. I was still in the pilot’s seat, staring out at the ocean in front of the jet. We weren’t in the middle of battle, but we weren’t far from the island. I could see it on the jet’s radar behind us.
Glancing over to my right, I could see Cassie piloting.
She noticed me, asking, “Is it over? Are we safe?”
“No,” I said and closed my eyes. “Keep on going, but follow my hand if I start pointing.”
“That’s what I was doing,” she said.
I gave her a thumbs up and tried to concentrate on my breathing and on feeling the energy of the infinite realities around me. As I got into the right mindset again, I noticed that all the work I’d done to keep the flow moving through me as if I weren’t even there had vanished.
As long as we were in this situation, I wouldn’t be able to let go for even a few seconds. If Magnus had pointed his attention in our direction, he’d have found me and still could.
Thinking back to the kind of guided meditation I’d done in martial arts classes with Lee (which had a new resonance now), I imagined water flowing through me. It was the same technique Kee had been teaching me to use for hiding and I’d never realized.
I supposed I’d get to take it up with him if we managed to get him out of whatever pocket universe the galaxy core device created.
It did leave me wondering if other lessons were hidden within his training, but I had no time to speculate.
Magnus’ burning column of energy had changed direction again. It wasn’t quite in our direction, but it wasn’t going in straight lines anymore. With another nudge, it could hit us.
I couldn’t ignore the possibility that Magnus might feel we were here even if he couldn’t say where.
I pointed right which kept us going away from the island, but out of the way of the column’s current trajectory—unless he changed direction.
I felt the jet begin to turn, but as it began to pass out of the column’s path, the beam changed direction again. It wasn’t close enough to block us yet, but it was heading that way. I knew I didn’t want to go through it.
I pointed a hard left, wondering if it would change again.
It did. The column began to move toward us. It wasn’t moving quickly, but even if Magnus didn’t know exactly where we were, he sensed us somehow. It had to be the Artificer artifacts, but wouldn’t it be ironic if the galaxy core device had the power to sense lavender?
I was beginning to hate the smell.
“Hey,” Rachel’s voice carried into my mind.
I knew from the feeling of the connection that she was using the in-between space the Ghosts and Artificers used to communicate with each other over long distances. I used it while taking lessons with Kee, but for me it was an immersive experience where I couldn’t do anything else. She was using it as casually as Daniel and I used telepathy.
Of course, she’d spent a year in space. This might have been the only way to communicate with anyone.
Deciding to ask her how later, I thought back, “I hope you have an idea for how to get out of this.”
“I do. We work together. The Ghosts are more subtle. The Artificers have more straight power to work with. You draw in power. I’ll manipulate it.”
I’d been specifically told not to draw in energy in this situation, but also, we didn’t have a lot of time. Instead of explaining myself, I asked, “Are you sure?”
“Mostly,” she said. “Do you have a better idea?”
I didn’t.
I watched the jet’s stats as we climbed. It had no issues. Then I thought of a possibility, “Ghost are you feeling anything?”
Rachel said, “No,” but she also gave the smallest shake of her head as if I shouldn’t talk about it.
Then she started tapping on her left forearm, using the “keyboard” I’d built into our suits. It was just a setting that made letters appear on either sleeve and turned the spots touch-sensitive.
Her text appeared in my HUD.
“Someone’s trying to find us. It feels like an Artificer, but clumsy. I’m hiding. If Kee taught you how, use it. Otherwise, try not to think about anything unusual.”
It was very like what Lee had said when we felt the presence of another Artificer at the site of an old battle during his race’s civil war.
As of that moment, I got it—Magnus. And since Kee had taught me a technique for hiding from other Artificers, I started trying to use it—though “use” might be an exaggeration. Most Artificer skills that I could master amounted to pulling in power and adjusting my relationship to my physical reality, either moving out of it or staying within and extending myself into the nearby realities around me.
This was different. Instead of pulling power in, I was supposed to match the ambient energy around me, not unlike the camouflage mode of our suits. That meant sensing the relevant energy first of all and letting it flow through you so that there was no distinguishing what was inside you from the outside.
It made me think of the heat death of the universe, which Kee caught from my thoughts, causing her to say, “Oh, you’re so young.”
It felt very like hearing the same from an aunt when you were four and said something so naive that she found it cute. Given that Kee was old enough to have seen more than one universe end, I couldn’t take offense at the implied condescension.
Aloud, I said, “Cap, you’ll want to be ready to fly the jet. I’m not going to be able to pay attention for a moment.”
Not waiting for an answer, I extended my senses, but passively. I felt the energy of the reality around me and the others that existed only a twist of the mind away. Rachel and I existed in more than one, but I couldn’t sense her at all.
I could also sense another presence, this one sifting through the energies around us systematically, trying one section in a blast of energy and then the one next to it.
I then knew what Rachel meant by clumsy. It had a pile of power behind it, but didn’t close the gaps. Oddly, it reminded me of mowing the lawn.
When you mow, you go over the edge of the line you last mowed. If you don’t, you’ll have a line of grass growing between the mowed sections. Also, to the degree that you can, you go across systematically so that you only travel to one spot once and don’t have to detour over stuff you’ve already mowed to get a spot you missed.
The search pattern that I assumed was made by Magnus using Lee’s device was even worse than that. If I wanted to compare a device that could destroy galaxies to a lawn mower, this felt like a riding lawn mower only barely under the control of the five-year-old operator, trying to stay on a straight line, but overcorrecting, traveling into the already mowed territory, whipping back into a completely unmowed area, and turning around to go back to more or less where they’d left off.
Weirdly, it reminded me of Ray after he’d gone through the power impregnator. He had the power to copy other people’s powers, but he’d never trained to efficiently use them. So when we fought, I had that advantage—my only advantage.
In the moment it gave me hope. I’d beaten Ray. Maybe I could beat Magnus.
Right then, however, the way to beat Magnus was to take a deep breath and let the energy of reality around me flow through me the way it would if I wasn’t there.
I concentrated on that flow, pretending I was part of it without drawing power in, letting it pass through. I didn’t feel like I was becoming one with the universe, but I wished I could.
What I did feel though, was a burning heat as Magnus sent a probe our way. It passed without “touching,” but it felt close. I thought back to my fight with something I suspected might be Magnus just before fighting the mushroom zombie horde. I’d hurt him then–if that creature lurking in the “in-between” space had been him.
I didn’t know whether I’d hurt his mind, soul, or an avatar, but that burning heat might be able to hurt me.
Without opening my eyes, trying to keep myself within whatever state this was, I pointed in a direction Magnus had already searched and said, “Go that way.”
I kept my arm up for a while, hoping I was clear enough that Cassie would get it even if I wasn’t talking clearly.
At the same time, I worried that Magnus would make a poorly controlled sweep backward, putting us directly in his view.
Artemis flinched, “Sorry, sir, but my point is that it feels like internal warfare. No one else would know.”
I made a mental note that whoever Artemis was, she didn’t believe she was the goddess. If she had, she wouldn’t be quite so deferential.
Dixieclone nodded and then sighed, “That’s not a good sign. The moment’s too crucial to handle everything we need to and that too.”
Artemis looked from side to side as if to check who was in earshot, saying, “That’s my worry.”
Dixieclone raised his voice, “If I hear that anyone unauthorized to share what Artemis said spreads her suspicion, I will personally execute that person.”
The soldiers continued helping henchrooks out of the ships, but no one said more than a few words.
Knowing that the bots’ transmissions were being recorded, I turned my attention back to the jet I was sitting in. “Hey, everybody, they might genuinely believe that other people in the Nine hired us—or at least the people we were pretending to be. I would have been happy if they assumed we were who we appeared to be, but this is better.”
“Much better,” Rachel said, “I’ve been listening in too. They might not have time to target us if they start fighting each other. I know you were thinking of waiting here and using the Mystic to listen in and find Magnus. I’d say that we should get home and get rid of that stuff as soon as we can.”
While I’d have assumed that everyone could guess what she meant by “that stuff,” she didn’t, gesturing to the heavy-duty trash bags of Artificer gear in the back of the jet. The bags sat next to the door to the bathroom but didn’t block it because you don’t block the bathroom.
“Yeah,” I said, checking the jet’s radar and other sensors to reassure myself that no one was following us or showing interest. It was pure paranoia given our cloaking system, but what you considered the world’s collection of random, weird superpowers, paranoia made sense.
For all I knew, someone out there in the world could unerringly detect soup, and we did have food supplies, including soup, on the jet. If that person worked for the Nine, we were screwed.
My stomach rumbled and it struck me that it had been a bit since I’d last eaten. I’d been to Mars. We still had some food bars from when we’d flown to Hideaway. They were probably still good, but if they had a “best by” date, my implant could translate the alien script.
The jet’s sensors didn’t show anything flying toward us. I asked, “Hal, do you see any reason to believe we’ll be discovered if we turn on the main drive soon? I can’t think of anything that would detect us. Am I missing something?”
Hal’s reply appeared in my implant as well as the screen on the dashboard.
[There’s no reason except for the amount of Artificer and Abominator technology retrieved by Rook’s crews. That technology has not been fully cataloged and can’t be adequately accounted for in my calculations.]
“Okay,” I said, “then I guess I’m going to head home. I know we were thinking about having Blue bring the Mystic here, but I’m not going to feel good until we get all of the Artificer tech into the storage rooms.”
Jaclyn laughed, “I’m not going to argue. I agree. I wish we didn’t even have it on the planet.”
“Me either,” Marcus said, glancing back at the garbage bags.
From the weapons console next to me, Cassie said, “Let’s go.”
“Go,” Rachel added.
“Great,” I said. “Would anybody be willing to grab one of the food bars for me? One of the purple ones, maybe? If there aren’t any left, I’ll take red.”
Marcus blinked, “How long has it been since we ate?”
“Too long,” Jaclyn stood up and walked to the back, passing the garbage bags, sniffing, shaking her head, and opening up a storage locker on the wall. Grabbing a selection, she walked back to the front and handed them out to everyone.
Rachel stared at the food bar before tearing off the wrapper, “I think these things were the only solid food I had when I was with the Ghosts. They don’t eat. They absorb… It doesn’t matter.”
She started eating and so did the rest of us.
After a moment, Jaclyn stopped eating to ask, “Is it me or does it smell like lavender in here?”
“Is that what that is?” I asked, readying the jet’s main engine. “I didn’t notice it until we got back. You’re not thinking it’s from the Artificer stuff, are you?”
Cassie stopped eating and her eyes narrowed as she looked at me, “I bought scented garbage bags for the jet. They smell like lavender. What’s wrong with lavender?”
“Nothing,” I said, “I didn’t know they were scented garbage bags.”
Giving the engine power, I took the jet higher, aiming for home and higher altitudes where we wouldn’t have to dodge passenger jets. It wasn’t as if I were going log a flight plan.
The jet responded perfectly, but something didn’t feel right. I couldn’t say how, but my gut feeling was that the air felt thicker. I checked the jet’s speed and we weren’t having any issue flying. We weren’t going slowly, for sure. We’d passed Mach 2.
It had to be in my head.
Of course, you had to communicate with the bots to hear anything. Still, despite my fears, I got confirmation that my bots had connected to the available communication satellites far above us.
I hoped to start listening in. The bots’ cameras showed the damaged spaceships and henchrooks crawling out of the wreckage. I also caught a look at the three flyers who’d landed on the ground.
One wore navy blue and white powered armor with wings that resembled a fighter jet. I recognized him as “Scream Eagle,” a mercenary who’d stolen a suit intended for the military. I’d heard worrisome things about the suit in Double V’s powered armor forum.
The other two were weirder. A woman wearing a green costume covered with designs of vines and animals. She also wore a dark green cape and a quiver with a bow and arrows. She called herself Artemis. Some people in Double V’s forums said she believed she was the Greek goddess Artemis. Others thought she was performing a bit of schtick because why would a goddess be robbing banks and hiring out as a mercenary?
Along the theme of debatable supernatural identities, the other person on the ground wore an unremarkable blue and gold costume, complete with a mask. The weirdness came from the person. A being of indeterminate gender, the person had blond hair, white wings jutting out of their back, and a soft golden glow to their skin.
I’d never heard of any super of that description.
It was hard not to wonder about their origin. Was it a construct? A real, possibly amnesiac, angel that happened to be confused about who they served? A fallen angel? Most likely, I was looking at a normal super with the ability to present themself as an angel.
On the other hand, life was strange and it might be none of the above.
The angel reached out to touch a henchrook lying on the ground. Golden light extended from its hand and the henchrook shuddered and pushed itself off the ground, backing away from the angel as if afraid.
I filed that detail away for later but noted that the angel stepped inside the spaceship. Whatever happened when it healed, henchrooks started walking out of the ships unhurt even in broken and damaged armor.
I checked the other bots’ feeds to see if any had a good shot of the fourth flyer, the one who’d stayed in the air. It took a moment of scrolling back and forth in time, but one had.
Much like the “angel,” this one’s costume didn’t ring any bells. Like the angel’s, it was blue, but unlike the angel’s costume, it used red and white as accents. That made it red, white, and blue, but not in a patriotic sense. There were no flags or nods in that direction.
If anything, it looked more like a military uniform than a superhero’s, in part because he didn’t wear a mask.
Despite his light skin, his high cheekbones and the slight curl of his black hair reminded me of Izzy—which meant a very bad possibility had been introduced. A quick check in my memory, assisted by my implant gave me a picture of Dixie Superman, Izzy’s grandfather.
This guy, whoever he was, wasn’t wearing a Confederate flag on his armor, but his facial features matched up. The age didn’t, but given the Nine’s willingness to clone people, the age didn’t have to.
Plus, for all I knew, Dixie Superman could have other descendants. In fact, it was more likely than not. Izzy’s grandmother had remarried. Dixie Superman spent his life trying to rally the South to revolt and preaching the need for more white babies. It seemed almost impossible that he wouldn’t create a few of his own.
Listening in on the bots, I could hear the sounds of sirens and human chatter as soldiers rolled up in jeeps, some talking into walkie-talkies, others shouting at their men.
The soldiers started helping henchrooks out of the ships, messing up the crime scene if they thought of it that way. As the “criminal,” I couldn’t complain.
Aside from the “angel,” the supers had started looking at the ships and then Artemis and Scream Eagle took to the air again, doing loops above the ships as if checking for us.
Dixieclone (his nickname until I heard a real one) asked, “Is there any sign of them?”
Artemis shook her head, “None. I don’t see any footprints. It’s as if they disappeared or flew away.”
Scream Eagle hovered in the air, “I talked to a few of Rook’s minions. They say the attackers teleported in and out.”
Artemis frowned, “I don’t like it. From the reports, they’re all mercenaries and we’ve hired every one of them at one time or another. It’s a strange coincidence that they’d show up here as Rook arrives especially with what leadership has been saying.”
Dixieclone held up his hand to his lips and said, “Don’t talk about that.”
Rook’s ships went straight for the runway to no one’s surprise.
I flew a more direct route, aiming for the control tower at the end of the runway. Stopping there, we all stepped out of the hatch, floating downward with anti-gravity and our suits’ camouflage engaged.
It might not be invisibility, but if no one had anything specific trained on us, we might be able to pass it off as a teleport in. That at least was the theory behind all of us turning visible together as we touched the ground.
Jaclyn, her colors now black with a swirling blue and white that suggested wind, shot forward toward one of Rook’s ships as Derecho.
They’d taken parallel runways. Jaclyn hit the closest one, bending it inward, grabbing the hull, and ripping it in half, leaving sharp metal edges and broken plastic visible to all.
It was easy to forget, given how much control she had, that Jaclyn lived in a world made of cardboard. This was a great reminder, had I forgotten it, of how much strength she held in check.
She didn’t stop there. She jumped over the shattered ship, landing on its other side and running straight for the second one.
We’d worried that the second ship might see what happened to the first and take to the air. She didn’t leave that to chance, creating a sonic boom shortly after she hit the ground.
When she hit the second one, she was moving fast enough that I didn’t see whether she hit so hard that she ran through it or ripped it apart. Either way, with a screech of tearing metal, it ended up in two pieces just like the first.
Meanwhile, Rachel had “teleported” out, but in reality, turned invisible and flew into the first ship Jaclyn ripped apart. That gave all of us a view into both spaceships since Jaclyn immediately stepped inside.
Jaclyn’s attack had done everything we’d wanted it to. Both ships worth of henchrooks were in disarray, many completely unconscious, and some awake but struggling to even get out of their seats, much less fight.
That was good for them because the ones that were able to fight didn’t last long. Jaclyn took each one out with a punch, throwing those punches quickly enough that the camera couldn’t capture them as more than a blur.
While we were planning, Rachel and I used our “Artificer vision,” sensing the Artificer tech had been moved into one spot in the back of each ship. We assumed it was a closet or storage area and probably locked because Rook wouldn’t be trusting random minions with ancient tech.
Jaclyn rushed down the hallway, ripping the door open and running into the storage room. Whatever they normally kept there had been moved somewhere else and ancient devices filled the place, all of them small enough to carry away one-handed. A few might have been weapons, but I didn’t recognize the devices or the materials. They were a collection of strange shapes and odd colors, some pastels, others iridescent, and more that morphed from one to another.
This time from the inside, Jaclyn ripped a hole in the wall and pushed the devices out, letting them fall to the ground.
Meanwhile, the rest of us hadn’t been sitting still. Cassie, as Burner, had been shooting holes through the hulls of the now damaged and unusable spaceships and chopping chunks out of them.
The henchrooks that remained conscious didn’t mount an organized resistance. A few did fire back, but more ran or cowered in their seats and the rows between them.
Rook himself ejected in the cockpit of the ship Jaclyn was looting. The front half of the shattered hull rocked with the force of the cockpit shooting out of the front. It might have been an amazing escape if it had happened anywhere but his base.
As it was, he shot forward down the runway toward the control tower and turned around to announce, “I don’t know who hired you people, but you won’t get away with it!”
That’s when the sirens started.
We hadn’t just been standing there, however. Rachel reached the storage room at the back of the other ship and started phasing devices through the hull and dropping them. Even better, I’d used my laser to cut a hole for the larger objects that didn’t fit within the mass limit Rachel could phase out.
Marcus and I put the fallen objects into heavy-duty trash bags that we kept on board the jet. They probably weren’t rated to hold evil, ancient artifacts, but what on Earth was?
Jaclyn joined us, having already filled her trash bags, ripping the hole I’d cut in the hull wider, jumping in, and grabbing the rest of the stuff in a blur.
Then she and Rachel jumped out and we all placed our bags into a larger “bag” made of repair material for our suits.
Jaclyn grabbed the giant bag and we activated camouflage on our suits along with the giant bag’s. We were between the two spaceships, but if any cameras were at the right angle or one of the few conscious henchrooks had looked through the windows, we’d seem to have disappeared.
Then we ran down the runway and floated into the air, slipping into the jet’s open hatch. I’d chosen to face the hatch toward the ocean on the theory that there’d be fewer cameras pointing in from the outside. With that, there would be a lower chance of recording a hole appearing in the air and shimmery movement as we slipped inside.
Correct guess or not, we pulled ourselves through the hatch, closed it, and the jet floated upward as the Nine’s security forces roared across the airfield toward the ships.
Four flying shapes dove toward the ships, three dropping to the ground next to them and the fourth hovering above them.
No one looked at us as the anti-gravity moved us away from the island. I didn’t dare say so until we were far enough away to activate our main drive, but we’d pulled it off.
I’d released some spybots as we floated away. Maybe listening in would help?
Jaclyn’s idea solved the problem at the expense of letting Magnus know that we were there, but maybe we could devise a way to make it less obvious.
I asked “Is there any way we can make it look like it wasn’t us? I feel like we have to minimize their exposure to Artificer tech. A beam from our main gun, while we’re cloaked, would strongly suggest us, but they wouldn’t know for sure. Ghost could be invisible the whole time. Accelerando could move too quickly to see… Maybe both of you could also change your uniforms to something else? If they somehow caught a glimpse of you, it might confuse them at least.”
Jaclyn grinned, “Remember Derecho? The supervillain? I think she’s white, but she’s a speedster and if I use her colors and hide enough of my face, it might work. She’s even worked with the Nine. I don’t mind the idea of getting her in trouble.”
When I looked over at Rachel, I found her frowning. When she looked up, she said, “I don’t think there’s an invisible, phase-shifting supervillain with my build, but remember Blink? She’s a short-distance teleporter. I might be able to pull that off. She’s even worked with Derecho before.”
Jaclyn pursed her lips and said, “I think we can work around using the main gun. Have Ghost and me carry boombots with us. When we get into the ships, the boombots blow up the fusion drives and we take or destroy the Artificer and Abominator tech. If Ghost or I can’t destroy it, Cap does. There are a million supervillains with big guns. She just needs to choose one.”
“Are there any that have worked with Derecho or Blink?” I asked.
Next to me, Cassie rolled her eyes, “We’ve got three hours. We’ll figure it out, but you know what? I bet you and Shift could find a stretchy guy and power armor villain that you can fake. Then we can bring everybody in.”
“Oh, right.” Still watching the spaceships ahead of us, I started trying to think about who I could successfully impersonate.
For the record, a three-hour spaceflight goes much more quickly when you’re making up a plan for how you’re going to incapacitate two spacecraft and steal dangerous alien artifacts from a hive of scum and villainy without losing your lives in the process.
Throw in extra points for maybe starting a civil war in the supervillain organization you’re fighting and it gets even better.
By the end of the flight, Marcus and I were “Clink” and “Clank,” a duo of mercenary, power armor wearing inventors. They’d done work for the Nine, random supervillains, a few warlords, and several dictators. From what I’d read, they were also fans enough of National Public Radio’s Car Talk show that they’d ripped off and altered the hosts’ names.
The hosts, from what I’d read, weren’t fans of that.
Clink and Clank sometimes worked with “Burner,” another mercenary who used a futuristic energy weapon on her victims.
None of them had ever worked with Blink or Derecho, but it wasn’t a huge stretch that someone might hire them together. Plus, realistically, they’d probably figure out it was us if they had time to investigate. If they didn’t have time or resources to spare for solving crimes, the ambiguity might last long enough to do us good.
That was good because we wouldn’t be perfect replicas—only as perfect as I could tweak the group’s nanotech-based suits to match. For that, Rachel’s art major was her real superpower. With her eye, we got more details on their costumes correct than I’d have managed alone even if Cassie’s gun found Rachel’s stream of suggested tweaks to its look annoying.
“He doesn’t like his new look,” Cassie said as we neared reentry. “Mr. Sparkles thinks Burner’s gun is primitive and inelegant except he took much longer to say so than I did. Honestly, I think he’s embarrassed.”
I checked out the gun. It did look chunky—lots of rectangular blocks stuck together into a shape that overall suggested a rifle. It might also have been for spraying paint.
As Rook’s ships burned their way into the atmosphere, I checked our systems. The shield should absorb enough of the energy that we wouldn’t be too obvious and cloaking would theoretically take care of the rest.
I let out a breath as we started, but it went okay. If someone were watching, they would have detected a temperature change and a shimmer in the air, but not much of one. More to the point, not enough of one to attract attention if you were concentrating on something else—like reentry, for example.
That opened up a new question. Where was Rook going to land?
At first, all I could tell was that it was most likely Earth’s Western Hemisphere, but then Rook’s ships dove toward the Caribbean Sea.
For a second, I worried that we might be heading for an underwater base which would make our plan more complicated, but then they didn’t.
When they leveled out, they were flying low above the ocean, throwing up water behind them. If they were trying to evade radar, I could only hope our cloak held up because I wasn’t going to copy them.
Either way, it became obvious where we were going soon enough. An island appeared ahead of us. Covered in palm trees and lush greenery, I could imagine it being listed in a supervillain real estate guide under “tropical island lairs.”
The long, white building complex included towers, pillars, walls around the edges and an airport (spaceport?) with several long runways. The tall mountain in the middle of the island was a nice touch.
An international supervillain group like the Nine should have its headquarters on a tropical island with a volcano.
The Xiniti sighed, making a noise closer to a hiss which technically came from a nose-like orifice on the Xiniti’s back, but whatever.
He added, “It’s not our intention to leave you alone now. Communications will be accepted and answered, but all our troops are committed due to the nature of the current hostilities. Any assistance we give will require reassignment from somewhere else. Keep us appraised of any troop movements that pass your position.”
Then the communication ended.
Marcus shook his head, “That’s bad.”
He turned toward Rachel, “We just got a communication from a Xiniti General saying that there’s Civil War in the Human Ascendancy spilling over into the Alliance. They’ve withdrawn from their base here and want us to watch for troop movements.”
Cassie laughed, “You skipped the best part. They gave us permission to destroy the planet if Artificer tech gets out of control.”
Nodding along, Jaclyn added, “And no matter how bad it gets, we can’t expect help from them. They said we could ask, but it’s pretty strongly implied that they can’t do anything unless there’s an Ascendancy fleet here—which means that our solar system becomes a battlefield.”
“I can do without that,” Rachel stared out of the cockpit at the blackness ahead. “You know it’s possible, right? The Ascendancy is officially not allowed to visit Earth, but we’re in their territory and if they reopen the gate, they can pop straight into the Alliance. The Alliance is funding and supporting the resistance, so the Ascendancy might think a surprise attack is worth it.”
As people talked, I noticed that Rook’s ships’ thrusters increasing their speed, throwing out gouts of yellow flame. The color of the flame hinted that the propulsion system might be less efficient than I’d prefer, but that wasn’t my main concern.
I didn’t like the timing. It seemed impossible to me that they’d be able to decrypt the Xiniti’s message, but they might have detected it. That might be enough to hint to Rook that we were behind him.
On the other hand, we were all outside Mars’ atmosphere now—which was the time to start piling on speed.
I increased ours, watching for any sign that they might have a near space drive. If they didn’t, I had options they’d never see coming, assuming that they couldn’t detect what was in near space.
Rook’s ships started their burn, flame trailing behind them in space. Once they reached a certain speed, they stopped. Using my implant to calculate it, they’d take three hours to get to Earth from here.
Hal recognized the drive. It used fusion to create thrust and was commonly used by the Zek, an Abominator ally race that lived out on the galactic rim. They weren’t well regarded for their inventiveness. Rook must have found the drive or plans for it. It was a little disappointing. I expected him to have reverse-engineered more Artificer or Abominator tech by now.
On the other hand, given what he’d picked up on the way out, he might reverse engineer more soon. Worse, he might have grabbed something able to be used without reverse engineering.
That in turn made me wonder if I shouldn’t be cutting open his ships with our main gun.
While we’d protected resistance fighters on the way to the planet Hideaway, Lee had been helping the Xiniti fight an alien race that had found an Artificer cache, activated an artifact and been changed from a race of merchants to a race of expansionist warriors.
That could be Earth and it was exactly why the Xiniti handed us the keys to the planet busters.
“Hey,” I said, “is everyone okay with destroying Rook’s ships if we get the opportunity? I’m trying to work out a way to trash Rook’s ships and all the Artificer-based tech on them while still using them to lead us to Magnus.
“I don’t want to kill anybody, but I don’t see a way to destroy the alien artifacts without destroying people—at least if we’re doing it in space which is our best chance. The problem is that we lose our chance to track him to Magnus. On the other hand, if we let them make it to Earth it’ll be easier to be selective and we might find Magnus, but we also have a good chance of missing something. Then maybe Artificer tech gets out to the general population and we have to destroy the world.”
Jaclyn nodded as I talked, finally saying, “You’re right. We’re risking something either way. Blow them up in space and we lose a chance to maybe find Magnus. Blow them up on Earth, we risk the entire population of Earth. We need to choose our risk.”
“Look,” Cassie said from the front, “if we hit them in space, we’ll definitely miss our chance to follow them to Magnus. If we follow them to Earth, we only might have to destroy the planet.”
Marcus leaned forward toward her, “But infecting Earth with Artificer cooties is kind of a big deal.”
“Right,” Cassie said, “but we only might infect the world with Artificer cooties.”
Rachel waved a hand for our attention, “How about this? We follow them down and Accelerando and I hit first, practically the second they touch down. We separate them from what they grabbed before they can get away. It’s the best of both worlds.”
Watching the two ships ahead of us as well all streaked through space, I said, “We’re making a lot of assumptions, but let’s try that.”
Hoping that Rook didn’t have a final bomb capable of shattering the complex, I used anti-gravity to send us upward and then moved forward, aiming the jet toward the red building.
Over the comm, I said, “Ghost? We’re heading in your direction. Are you okay?”
“Well,” she said, “I don’t feel more hurt than before, but I still don’t feel good. Stop over the complex and I’ll aim for the jet.”
As we closed in on the complex, I checked the radiation levels of the smoke floating out of it, and they were high. I avoided them. The jet probably had enough shielding to handle it, but why take chances?
Rachel floated up through the floor and phased in as we slowed down, sitting down in the second row.
She shook her head, “That was crazy. I don’t know what kind of bomb it was, but I’m betting on nuclear. It didn’t destroy the building, but everything I could see inside was vaporized—including some of their people. They left without them.”
Moving the ship away from the smoking complex, I said, “Did you see anything in there? A lab or maybe another ‘Kilroy was here’?”
She shook her head, “I didn’t get far before the explosion hit, but there was a room with technology on the other side of the lake. They were taking anything they could on the way out. Don’t ask me what they grabbed. I have no idea.”
Sitting a few seats away from her, Jaclyn said, “I think following them would be worth trying, but I don’t think we can count on the device we need being in whatever they grabbed before leaving.”
I nodded.
“I feel like the best thing we can do once we get home is grab the Mystic and see if he can predict the best place to go or probe Rook’s brain. Maybe finding Rook’s place and having the Mystic read minds inside will get us what we want. All we need to know is where Magnus is. The connection portal will be close.”
Marcus grinned and rested his arms on the seat ahead of him, saying, “I like that one. If we’re really lucky, they’ll never even know we were there.”
“That’s a thumbs up from me too,” Cassie said from the seat next to mine. “We should keep them in scanner range.”
“Yeah,” I said, aiming upward to follow Rook’s ships. They weren’t too far away and unlike us, they weren’t cloaked. I hoped they couldn’t and as long as I was at it, I hoped our cloak was as good as I thought it was.
Rook had to have heard we had one by now. Plus, even a minimally active fan of science fiction would have encountered the idea. I could only hope he hadn’t gone down the right avenues of research to reproduce it or detect ours.
It didn’t take long to leave the atmosphere (what there was of it), following Rook’s two ships out. I lowered the level of our shield to make the cloaking better in the atmosphere. The better protected we were, the more likely that the shield would generate a shimmer effect on radar.
Now hanging in the darkness of space, I was reminded of the Xiniti base. In terms of stellar distances, we weren’t far from it and its associated interstellar gate. Rook had to know about it. Would he go there? It was an option.
UN efforts had tried and failed to meet Alliance standards to be allowed to use the gates, making international news, but Rook might have a way to use them.
I checked our sensor readings in the direction of the base and gate, wondering if I’d see anything interesting. I didn’t. Our sensors didn’t pick up any traffic by the gate—which was weird.
Earth was a restricted system according to the Alliance, but since it was inside the Human Ascendency and the Ascendancy also banned travel to it, it did get used. Merchants, military, and even alien passenger liners popped in on the way to somewhere else because it was one of the few safe transfer points within Ascendancy space.
I’d almost always seen traffic the few times I was out this far.
I considered actively scanning the area in addition to passive sensor use but dismissed it. Rook might notice that.
As I thought through my options for investigating without losing Rook’s ships or being detected, my implant notified me that I was receiving an ansible message from Xiniti high command and it wasn’t just me that was receiving it, it was everyone.
I didn’t need to see Marcus’ eyes widen, Jaclyn sit up straighter in her seat or Cassie let out a breath to know it.
Rachel, though, did, glancing around the cabin and saying, “Great. Don’t forget to mention what you decided when you’re done talking without me.”
We, meanwhile, were hearing the voice of Iktak Magtuktar, General Group Leader of Irregular Forces. In short, the voice of the Xiniti responsible for alien members of the Xiniti nation within Ascendancy space and the sectors nearby.
“Citizens, we’ve temporarily withdrawn from your home system and shut down your gate. There is currently civil war within the Human Ascendancy that already extends into Alliance territory.”
That would be Kals and the resistance movement her mother created. She’d gone home to lead them or at least be an inspirational figurehead.
I hoped she was still alive.
The general continued, “You are now the only Xiniti unit active in your system. Because we detected activity around Artificer and Abominator installations in your system after we left, be aware that we have given you authority to scrub your planet should you need to.
“Be aware, this is not a command, but there are situations in which billions of lives may need to be sacrificed to save trillions. We know that we’re talking about your home world and do not say this lightly, but keep in mind that many things the Artificers created were designed to destroy all intelligent life. Don’t let your affection for your world let an infection spread and wipe out civilizations. Watch for the point of no return. If you reach it, you’ll have the necessary tools available.”
I shrugged, “No idea, but I’m hoping that time travel only spins off a new universe now.”
“Hey,” Rachel said over the comm, “everybody’s exiting through the back doors. I’ve got a bad feeling about it.”
I checked the stand of trees where Rook’s backup group had been standing. They’d started running and then took to the air.
I thought through things Rook might be doing that would require people to evacuate the room. As angry as he’d been, I wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d ordered all his people to swarm us after he left.
One terrible and obvious possibility came to mind, “Rook might be about to nuke the building… I’m not sure if his urge to acquire technology is stronger than his need for vengeance, but—“
“Let’s bet on vengeance,” Jaclyn said. “Remember Rook’s base in Canada?”
We all did.
I couldn’t say with absolute certainty that he’d used an actual nuclear bomb because I hadn’t gone back to check radiation levels, but I did know the explosion had wiped his base from the face of the planet.
“Go,” Rachel said, “I’ll phase out. Don’t wait for me. Don’t even wait for me to stop talking. Leave.”
Watching her icon blink, I said, “Phasing works, right?”
“Yes. Go!” She stopped talking.
Jaclyn pointed toward the door, “I’ll grab Shift. You grab Cap.”
No explanation was needed. We were the fastest way out for everyone. I turned toward Cassie to find she’d turned on her anti-gravity pack and was floating toward me.
I activated the program that extended handles on the Rocket suit’s sides that I’d designed for this situation. When she said, “Ready,” I activated the rocket pack on my back, throwing us forward.
We’d left the door open, so at least I didn’t have to think it open again. I did think it shut, hoping that it might act as a buffer.
This was Artificer technology. Xiniti reports in my implant described hitting Artificer installations with fusion bombs to no noticeable effect. They’d been successful other times, so I didn’t feel like sitting around and assuming everything would be fine.
From what the Xiniti had recorded, it was far from impossible that a bomb would kill everything inside, and then all the Artificer tech would recreate the place as if nothing happened, even removing the radiation.
That was a nice trick that might be worth reverse engineering.
It wasn’t as if I had time to do it, much less stay and observe the effects. We shot down the hall, Jaclyn running and me following in the air. When we reached the room we’d entered the complex through, the animals ran in all directions to avoid us.
We had to stop at the door as I found the controls in my mind, choosing the one that seemed most like the door control I’d operated inside. There were more. Maybe I could have figured out what they did, but I didn’t have the time.
I had time to close the door as we left and called Hal, “We’re going to need an immediate pickup. There might be a nuke in the building.”
“I’m within a short distance. I placed the chance that Rook would explode the building at approximately 69%,” Hal replied over the comm.
The ground rumbled. I felt it through my boots where I’d landed next to Jaclyn. All of us—Jaclyn, Marcus, Cassie, and I—looked at each other, Jaclyn asked, “Do you think we’re far enough away?”
We hadn’t stopped directly outside. We were at least a mile out.
“I doubt it,” I said, “but we still have to go back, and… Here comes the jet.”
It uncloaked as it landed on the ground between us and the complex—not much help if the explosion were strong enough to blow it at us, but that wasn’t likely.
The hatch dropped open and we ran inside as the jet cloaked itself again. I reached out with my implant to the jet’s systems, learning that the cloak was currently set to act as a shield at the 50% setting, which was good enough for now. No need to go to 100% and get practically shut off from the universe for now.
Checking the sensors, I found that Rook’s ships were flying upward and away from Mars. This was good on a couple of levels. For one, it meant that they didn’t have any idea where we’d entered the complex. For another, it meant they hadn’t detected the cloaked jet.
I sat down at the pilot console, finding that Cassie had sat down at the weapons console. “Hey,” I looked back toward Marcus and Jaclyn, “we still have to go back for Ghost, but we’ve got another problem, we were coming here to use a device that might detect where Lee hid the connection portal on Earth and Rook just nuked the building. On the off-chance that he took the device, I’m thinking we follow them back. If nothing else, we’ll find Rook’s current base.”
“Rocket,” Marcus began and I saw why in my HUD. Gouts of smoke spewed out of the Artificer complex. I couldn’t help but note that the side we’d come out of seemed to be fine, but Rook’s bombs appeared to have made holes elsewhere.
I hoped Rachel was okay and wondered how much of this was visible from Earth. The smoke billowed out, but it wasn’t as if there’d been an explosion.
“Get me out of here!” Rook’s helmet moved sideways as if he were trying to figure out the best direction to run.
Assuming his wings had been damaged, it didn’t look good for him. To the left stood the lake and aside from the ~~copse of~~ trees there wasn’t anywhere to run to and trees were occupied.
If that weren’t enough, Victor appeared to be having a hard time concentrating under Jaclyn’s assault because he wasn’t even teleporting himself out, much less Rook.
His purple beams flew randomly around, never hitting Jaclyn, but one hit me, heating my armor and knocking me sideways.
Rook screeched, a long sharp piece of metal extending from above his hand, the edges showing the same blurriness as Cassie’s sword.
He brought the blade down toward the side of my head, where it hit with a thunk instead of carving in. It was nice to know that my current anti-monomolecular blade protections worked.
I reached up, grabbed his arm, and rolled onto my back with all the strength I could manage.
It was enough to pull him over and hit the ground to my side, rolling onto his back—which made two of us for a second. I pushed myself up to my feet, showering him with sonic blasts as I aimed a punch at his left shoulder.
I connected.
Had he been unarmored, I’d have killed him, but in armor, I only bent the frame a little and damaged the joint at the top of the arm. That was what I’d been going for.
He had no way to move that arm, much less aim the weapon hanging under it.
He tried. The joint screeched and a whiff of smoke floated upward from it.
It wasn’t the only spot that smoked. Knowing that Rook studied Grandpa’s and my tech, I hadn’t tried the sonics at first, but having seen the damage from peppering Rook with boombots, I’d given it a shot. Whatever insulation against sound he created couldn’t be where it was supposed to be after that.
It wasn’t. The forearm that the boombot had destroyed smoked from the cracks and the hole where Rook’s prosthetic claw should have been.
Screaming at Victor, Rook tried to move his left side up enough to point the gun at something, probably me. I missed Rook’s exact words as I tried to respond.
As I bent over to flip him on his front, he disappeared in a blast of purple. Victor must have gotten himself together enough to teleport Rook out at least.
I did a quick once-over of the area to get a sense of the situation. Cassie had taken out at least five of the 17 henchrooks I’d seen in the air. It might have been more. Her gun had an impressive range. So she might have hit a few before they’d even left the trees.
More to the point, they’d retreated into the trees or at least they were trying to. A few had gotten far enough across the lake that the best they could do was fly low toward the direction they’d come from.
Also, of course, the guy Marcus had stripped of his armor, hadn’t stopped at the group of trees the (now visible) henchrooks had decided to hide behind. He was still running toward the far side of the lake.
That left our nearest opponent.
I turned toward where Jaclyn had been battering Victor against the ground. The ground looked worse than he did. Don’t get me wrong, he didn’t look good, but the ground had been beaten down more than a foot deep.
By contrast, while dirt covered every part of Victor’s body, he didn’t look hurt. He wasn’t smiling, and he cursed and spat out dirt every time Jaclyn smashed his body against the ground, but from the way he tried to protect his face with his arms and kick out of Jaclyn’s grasp with his legs, it was clear he had full movement.
If he could stand up to that, I wasn’t sure how I’d be able to help short of sending a killbot up his nose, mouth, or possibly butt. Marcus had the right idea when he went in through Victor’s nose, mouth, and eyes.
As I turned, Victor did the inevitable, teleporting away, reappearing close to the lake putting Marcus and Cassie between him and Jaclyn. Despite the dirt, I could see that he was beginning to glow a brighter shade of purple.
Marcus faced him, “I don’t know what you’re doing, but I’ve already killed you once today. I’ll do it again if I have to.”
Victor’s brow furrowed and he asked a reasonable question, “What?”
Nodding, Marcus said, “Yeah. That’s right. You’re going to be ordered to go to the moon in the past. I don’t know how far, but you were still there this morning when we got there. We freed you, but then you tried to kill us. Here’s the funny thing though. You asked us to kill you—probably because you’re controlled by the Dominators and couldn’t face going back and being controlled forever.”
The purple glow faded and Victor’s jaw dropped, and he said, “No…”
“Wait,” Marcus said, “did you already get that order? Because if you did, it doesn’t go well. You can go to the moon and see your body if you want.”
In a flash of purple, Victor disappeared.
Marcus glanced at me, “I hope I didn’t just destroy the space-time continuum.”
I don’t have a reputation for attacking people without warning. If I’ve got a reputation as the Rocket, it’s for the exact opposite.
Rook didn’t see the punch coming. I put as much into it as I could, knowing that his armor could take it and that he’d kill all of us if he could.
It was a solid punch, knocking him backward into the henchrook behind him, forcing them to fall over backwards.
I wasn’t the only one acting either.
Always existing in a world where time ran slower than she’d like, Jaclyn saw that I was punching Rook the moment I started and moved hundreds if not thousands of times faster.
Even better, she thought tactically. Outside of Rook, who was the most dangerous person? Victor and she’d already fought him once today.
Running past Rook while he was flying backward, she punched the henchrook in her way hard enough that he flew out of the group, hitting another on the way out, knocking them both to the ground. The one she hit didn’t get up.
She didn’t stop moving. She ran straight to Victor, hitting him with a punch that threw him out of the group, but not so far or so hard that she couldn’t keep up.
Her next punches threw him further out and then into the ground. She didn’t stop punching him even then—hard punches, the kind that threw chunks of soil and rocks out from under Victor and into the air.
Despite punches that would have smashed tanks and destroyed buildings, Victor didn’t go down. He was still conscious, firing off blasts of purple, some of them beams that burned through tree branches and one of Rook’s henchmen, but others, wider and with a softer glow, must have been teleportation attacks.
At least that was my assumption when one of the branches he’d shot down disappeared into nowhere.
None of them hit Jaclyn and she continued to attack, at one point grabbing Victor’s legs and smashing him repeatedly face first into the ground.
She wasn’t the only one acting either.
Even if they weren’t as fast as Jaclyn, Cassie and Marcus also started moving. Cassie didn’t bother with the closest of Rook’s henchmen, aiming her gun at one of the flying shimmers, dropping him from the air, and turning him visible with the same blast.
He hit the ground with a thump and didn’t get up. She kept on firing, hitting more.
Before Stapledon, Marcus would have morphed into a combat-ready shape and started hitting his opponents. Since Stapledon, he’d worked out subtler options for certain situations.
Shooting forward as a line, he projected himself into the nearest henchrook, covering the powered armor and working his way into the crevices, expanding into them, forcing pieces of armor to split away from each other and fall off.
He paid special attention to their claws which Rook had improved with the same technology as Cassie’s sword. Even as the henchrook tried to claw toward Marcus’ body, the gloves fell apart, followed by the rest of the henchrook’s armor, leaving him in black and grey undergarments.
The man, whose right forearm and lower left leg had been replaced with clawed prosthetics matching Rook’s missing limbs, turned and ran, bits of his powered armor’s exoskeleton still attached and banging against his back.
At the moment, I wasn’t paying attention to anyone else but Rook. I couldn’t run fast enough to keep on punching him as I knocked him backward, but I had bots that could do almost the same thing.
I started with two boombots, aiming one at Rook and the other at the henchrook he’d been blown into, catching both in each other’s blasts. The explosions turned into twin blossoms of fire that blew them away from each other in close, but not parallel lines.
Then I fired off more, pelting them with explosive devices that hit them from all sides, throwing them randomly in every direction, reminding me of fish out of water.
I didn’t seriously expect to take out either of them with boombots, but I was wrong. Either the henchrook had cheaper armor than the original or I’d aimed the bot at a weak spot.
Either way, even though all of the henchrook’s armor stayed on, the blasts dented the sides of his armor, leaving it pockmarked. The henchrook didn’t move again.
Rook hit the ground hard, scraping his armor against a cluster of rocks, and pushing himself up to aim his prosthetic arm at me only to find that whatever futuristic weapon he’d built into it was missing. Only a quarter of the barrel remained, the casing had been blasted open, and wires and a circuit board hung partly out, still sparking.
When he pulled the damaged arm in to inspect it, he found that the claw under the gun was also missing. It may have been my imagination, but in addition to oil and other fluids, I thought I saw blood.
Could I possibly have blown up Rook’s other hand? Maybe I’d blown up the prosthetic a second time.
I couldn’t see Rook’s face but saw his helmet turn toward the unmoving henchrook. It may be that in that moment he realized that even though he’d come to kill me, I might be willing to kill him too.
“Victor,” he shouted, his voice squeaking with some emotion. It might have been anger, but it might have been panic.
I felt like quibbling about the “greatest inventor on this or any other planet” part of the statement if only because it might distract his attention from Rachel and everyone else.
Despite generally believing that sassing your opposition was more trouble than it was worth, I turned the suit’s PA to the maximum possible volume and said, “Greatest inventor? You’re nothing more than a second-rate copy of the original Rocket. Heck, you might even be a second-rate copy of me or the Rhino for that matter.”
I also activated the sonics as weapons on the off chance it might do any good since I was pointing at the copse of trees anyway.
As for the comment about the Rhino, I didn’t know if Rook ever realized that Larry had taken him out during his visit to the Metafight Games, but I knew that Man-Machine was there. Man-Machine might not have revealed Larry’s secret identity, but from Larry’s description, it sounded like he might have been pissed enough to rub Rook’s nose into which superhero he’d been beaten by—twice: in person and powered armor.
Honestly, I figured even if he hadn’t, Rook might be angry to be compared to someone generally regarded as the Rocket’s sidekick.
It’s an understatement to say that the Rocket suit’s PA is loud. At maximum volume, I could see the branches of the trees move ahead of us, small ripples appearing in the lake to the left—not to mention the hum I could feel in my forearms where the sonics were attached.
Still, for a moment I could only wonder if anyone heard. The announcement telling intruders how wonderful Rook was had sounded automated. Maybe no one was listening?
It turned out that that was not true.
For one, as I finished, I realized that I was hearing a cracking noise through my suit from the direction of the trees. They might have been out of phase in part, but enough of them had been in phase that the sonics broke something.
Whether because I broke their phase modulation devices or the devices’ power supplies, five figures in Rook suits appeared in the trees.
“Whoa,” Marcus said, “there we are. By the way, I don’t think that’s a copse. A copse is made of small trees, more of a thicket. Those are some decent-sized evergreens.”
Jaclyn glared at him, “I don’t think this is the time.”
I might have said something, but I didn’t get the chance.
Rook’s voice issued from the five guys in front of us and also spots all over the room, “The Rhino? You’re saying I’m less than the Rhino?”
Switching to the PA which was still on maximum, I responded, “Well, I’ve never seen you fight, so I don’t know about that area, but in terms of straight-up creating things, the Rocket put a lot of time into teaching him. He’s brilliant.”
Given his spluttering earlier, I expected an immediate response but got only silence.
In that silence, Cassie said, “Oh my God, you’re loud. My suit mutes it, but fuck… Even the gun’s complaining, but he’s also impressed. Do you want to hear him?”
Still watching Rook’s henchmen in the trees who hadn’t moved yet, but seemed to be talking, I said, “No.”
“I get it,” Cassie said, pointing the weapon at the trees.
Into that silence, Rook’s voice blasted the room, “I’ll kill you! And I mean I will personally kill you! You don’t deserve what you have. Whatever relation to the Rocket you are, whatever you have from him, I deserve it more than you.”
Rook delivered every word in a nearly hysterical scream, telling me two things. First, that Man-Machine probably had told him that he’d been defeated by the Rhino twice. Second, I’d underestimated how much jealousy Rook felt at my (and Larry’s) connection to Grandpa.
As I realized that, Rook added, “No one will ever find your bodies!”
Rook must have been close to my volume because when he stopped it felt as if the world had descended into silence. Oh, and if it matters you know how we’d been seeing animals and birds when we walked in? No animals could be seen and the birds were streaking across the lake away from us.
I couldn’t blame them.
Checking the horizon, Jaclyn said, “Everyone prepare to be attacked. Rocket, I hope you were trying to get him to murder you because if you weren’t, you have a talent.”
Cassie laughed.
“Thanks,” I said, “I’ll have to explore that one later.”
I must have absorbed enough of what Kee taught me because I hadn’t fully dropped an Artificer’s view of the world—which was good because it meant that I had a good look at what was coming.
Fuzzy shapes flew out of the forest aiming in our direction. My implant counted 17. That wasn’t all though. A fuzzy purple sphere appeared in my vision before it became fully visible in everyone’s—Victor: purple skin, breastplate and all, appearing to be in his 20s instead of 40s and not dead.
Marcus sighed, “Again?”
Next to Victor stood Rook and five more of his henchmen, all of them wearing powered armor that made them appear to be large black feathered humanoid birds. Rook had a large “R” on his chest.
“There are more in the air invisible,” I told everyone over the comms as Rook’s group appeared and then sent a picture via implant.
“I see them too,” Cassie muttered.
“Not so talkative now, are you?” Rook laughed. “I don’t know what the original Rocket taught you, but you’re never going to see your death coming.”
“You mean the 17 invisible guys,” I asked. “What about the five in the copse of trees back there? Why are you leaving them out?”
Rook stared at me, “Copse? You idiot, a copse is a group of small trees, more of a thicket. That’s not a copse.”
So, I punched him, hitting him in the head just above his beak. I already knew I wouldn’t be talking my way out of this fight.
Of course, for all I knew, Rook initially drew on a connection to Abominator tech. If so, the shadowy shape I saw could be the thing that inspired him. It wasn’t likely, but the world got weird sometimes.
Into the comm, I said, “I think I see a crowbot.”
“Really,” Marcus stared into the room, “where?”
“Kind of in the trees across the lake,” I said, “I think it’s out of phase.”
“Oh,” Marcus glanced over at me. “New tech? Because we could all use that.”
“It’s the other thing,” I scanned to either side of us, hoping there weren’t more and that, if there were, I’d have the skill to notice.
“Out of phase,” Jaclyn asked, “that’s not good. I’m going to have a hard time fighting them.”
Rachel floated upward, “But I won’t.”
Looking across the lake, Cassie stopped to look down at her gun, “This thing thinks he can adjust. He’s telling me how it’s technology from Dumbass of the Dumbass lineage or whatever and exactly what relationship they have to Magnetus the Purifier. Anyway, he’s reconfiguring so he might be—”
Cassie’s eyes widened, “—down for a second. Fuck. Well, he’ll be useless if he doesn’t reconfigure.”
“I can’t reconfigure,” Jaclyn said, “Shift and I will be dead weight.”
“Not to mention unable to see what’s attacking us,” Marcus shook his head.
Rachel faded from view except for her grin which was creepier with a live woman than a cartoon cat.
“That’s messed up,” Marcus said, “but kind of cool too.”
She grinned wider, “I’ve been working on it. With this power set, you need to lean in on the mind games. Anyway, I’m going to do some reconnaissance and see if there are any more.”
“Do you want me to fly above as backup?” I looked upward. I had all the headroom I needed to use the rocket packs.
Her grin faded into nothing, “Not unless you can turn invisible. Watch where I go. Help me if I need it.”
I was about to point out that I couldn’t see her at all, but focused in using Kee’s teaching and I could see a fuzzy outline of her.
Wishing I was better at it, I said, “Well, I can sort of see you.”
“If the comm can’t get me, you can always contact me the way you do Kee,” Rachel said, beginning to float over the lake.
Thinking back to how I’d nearly called down members of the Destroy faction on myself the first time, I said, “Sure.”
I was better at it now.
Nodding to her right, Jaclyn said, “Let’s start walking around the lake. If they’re watching, we shouldn’t look like we’re standing around waiting for something.”
“I’ll find you with the comms when I phase back in,” Rachel’s icon blinked as she talked.
“Got it,” Jaclyn motioned that we should keep on going.
I scanned around us with energy flowing through me, powering my observation of Rachel, hoping it wouldn’t trigger anything in the room. It hadn’t so far, so I at least had that going for me.
The landscape itself didn’t have any red flags. It could have been on the marshy edges of an inland lake anywhere on Earth—well, anywhere with enough water to support grass and forests.
We kept on walking, avoiding the swampier spots, but staying close to the lake. When we’d gone about three-quarters of the way around, I saw what I could only describe as fuzz amid a group of trees past the lake.
I stared at the spot, but if they were still there, they’d moved behind the trees or I wasn’t keeping my concentration consistent enough.
“Hey,” I said over the comm, “they might have just appeared in that copse of trees over there.”
“Copse?” Cassie pointed her gun in that direction, “is that a real word?”
“Yes,” I knew it was real. I hadn’t used it a lot. “I’m pretty sure it means a group of trees.”
“It’s real,” Jaclyn said, “I know I’ve seen it before.”
Focussing on the trees, I tried to keep the flow consistent even though I might be failing to notice a bunch of Rook’s henchmen. Last time I’d met them they were armed well enough that they could have killed me.
Shadowy forms, much like Rachel’s when she was out of phase, appeared within the group of trees. Though they were dark figures, the shape was different and told me what I’d suspected. They were shaped like powered armor for humans except with the addition of claws for hands, a beak, and wings feathered with metal.
Last time around, all of the henchmen had one of their hands replaced with a cybernetic claw to match their maimed leader. I couldn’t tell from the shadowy forms, but I wondered if they’d chopped off a leg to match Rook’s newest injury.
Either way, it showed a higher degree of fanaticism than I’d have expected Rook could create through sheer charisma.
He didn’t have much from what I could see.
A voice broadcast through the room. My suit indicated it came from multiple sources, all of them located on the far side of the lake, some from within the group of trees.
It said, “Intruders, you’ve found a facility claimed by the Nine. Surrender or you’ll have to face devices created by Rook, the greatest inventor on Earth, Mars, or any other planet.”
Charismatic or not, Rook’s ego appeared to be healthy.
I heard her but didn’t respond. I was too busy staring out the door.
Before we entered the hallway, we’d been in a room that I might have described as a biosphere (except technically speaking it wasn’t spherical). This was bigger and though I hadn’t measured it, if I had to guess, it was bigger than the building appeared outside.
While that might mean some kind of Tardis-style “bigger on the inside” weirdness, it might also mean that the hall dropped below the surface in a nonobvious way as we walked.
Put simply, this room had its own lake.
It wasn’t a lake as in Lake Michigan—the kind of lake you can’t see across, has a coastline covering hundreds of miles, a major effect on local weather patterns, and a whole history of shipwrecks that people write books about.
This struck me more as an inland lake, the kind where someone would buy the land around it and build a campground, giving it a cringey, fake Native American name. I’d seen a few.
What it had in common with places like that was that the lake was big enough for waterskiing—though you’d go around it every twenty minutes at most.
It was free of campers, tents, and people except for us. Birds flew above the lake and as I watched, a fish splashed in the water.
“More terraforming fantasies,” Rachel said, walking toward the door. “There shouldn’t be any real dangers except maybe from an animal or two. The trap here will be in reverse engineering. If I’m right, there will be a village and a control center. Young species are supposed to go to the control center and copy the information. The fun begins when they start to use it.”
Marcus followed her in, “So like you said before with the terraforming equipment manufacturing viruses and stuff?”
Rachel stepped onto the grass and stopped, becoming a touch lighter in color, showing that she’d gone a touch out of phase, “Viruses, but also guiding their evolution, or even setting up circumstances that promote internal conflict like making some resources common in some places and rare in others. You know how that will go. Eventually, someone will decide to seize the resource.”
Shaking his head, Marcus said, “The Artificers were messed up.”
Rachel looked back at him as she took a step forward, “You haven’t seen the weapons caches. They also fake war-ravaged outposts and place weapons in them that young species won’t be ready for. You know what’s funny? The Artificers push nuclear weapons, but we invented them without help.”
Holding her gun at the ready, Cassie stepped out the door to Rachel’s left, “Did any of you see movement in the trees across the lake? The gun tagged something for a second, but then it flickered out. Does Rocket tech get anything?”
Jaclyn stepped out and I followed her, shutting the door behind me. I could still feel the presence of its controls. If we had to get out, it would only take an instant for the door to open. I tested it by opening it halfway and shutting it.
Glancing back at me, Jaclyn said, “That was you, right?”
“Yes. Testing we could get out,” I said, but I was also reviewing the last few seconds of footage from my cameras to see if I’d missed something in the trees.
“Good,” Jaclyn said, “because I didn’t see anything.”
“Me neither,” I said.
Neither had anyone else.
“That doesn’t make me feel more secure,” Cassie looked over the trees again, pointing the gun from one side of it to another.
One of these days, I’d have to see if Cassie would be willing to let me figure out more about the gun’s systems.
“I agree,” Jaclyn appeared to be using her suit’s sensors on the edges of the forest and the lake, covering wherever Cassie’s mystery creature might have gone.
I decided that this might be a good time to test using “Artificer vision” on the off-chance that what Cassie had seen was something I could control, hoping this wasn’t one of the times where using it would endanger all of us.
Breathing deeply, I imagined pulling power into myself, regulating it by imagining a slow but steady draw.
While it might be nice to imagine that seeing the world through the eyes of creatures older than our universe would include at the very least new colors or the ability to see into the fourth dimension and thus time itself, I had no such luck. If my abilities had that potential, I couldn’t tell, possibly because they were being processed by the same old brain every Earth primate had its own variant of.
So there was no secret color, secret chord or anything special.
I did get a spot of blurry movement in the trees. Maybe a real Artificer would have seen it clearly, but I could see a shape. It was shaped like a bird, but didn’t move like one, reminding me of Rook’s bird-shaped drones, the ones I’d nicknamed “crowbots.”
I let go of Artificer vision to check my suit’s scanner and couldn’t find the crowbot. So, it was invisible and maybe using Artificer/Abominator-derived technology? That didn’t feel good.
I zoomed in and so did everyone else. It was a small drawing of a man with a long nose peering over a wall. The words “Kilroy was here,” were written below the drawing.
Marcus said, “There’s one of those in the hangar at home.”
Cassie nodded, “Dad left them when he had the time.”
With an eye roll, Jaclyn said, “And even when he didn’t, Grandpa told me about once when they were sneaking out of a supervillain’s base and he had to return for Cap. They nearly got caught because of it.”
Marcus turned to Jaclyn, “I missed out on that story.”
“Ask him when we get home. I’m sure he’ll tell it. He liked that one,” Jaclyn shook her head.
Marcus raised an eyebrow, “Is it better than the one about Evil Beatnik and the Hare Krishnas? Or the time they defeated some supervillain using Twinkies?”
“Different,” she said. “Still funny.”
Cassie caught my eye, “It’s not the first one on this trip. I saw one in the lab in the Abominator moon base too.”
“Really?” I asked, “You didn’t mention it then.”
“You and Accelerando had been teleported out. Victor had Shift. Ghost and I were fighting slime monkeys. That’s when I saw it,” she shrugged, “and by the time you were all back I’d forgotten.”
“Huh,” I nodded, “I can see how you might get distracted… You know what’s interesting, though? Nothing I saw in the records of helping Lee with the device ever mentioned going to Mars. I suppose they might have been here for some other reason.”
Cassie glanced toward me, “Or Dad could have been here without the team. He worked for the government and on his own for years after everyone else retired.”
“Also possible,” I said.
“Maybe I’m crazy,” Marcus said, “but could it have been someone else?”
I thought about it, “It was a World War 2 GI thing and it’s a weird world, so if some other GI got transported to Mars, maybe.”
Jaclyn pursed her lips, “If we were being crazy paranoid, it could be a supervillain who knew Cap did it, but no one thinks far enough ahead to plant it for us.”
We all nodded and no one said anything until Rachel said, “Lee might.”
Jaclyn shook her head, “We all remember picking him up after Hideaway.”
Marcus let out a breath, “Bits of my genetic material are now in the right place to throw the Human Ascendancy into slow but inevitable chaos.”
“Plus,” I said, “that whole mess on Hideaway put the Xiniti, the Alliance, and the internal Ascendancy resistance into much closer communication. I gave them my updated monomolecular blade design and they’re going to do something big shortly. There’s no knowing how that ends, but he was involved in sending us to Hideaway somehow.”
We all looked at each other. Rachel waved us all forward, “Even if Cap left it on his own, Lee probably got him here indirectly.”
“So…” I said, “we should assume that the graffiti is a message from Lee?”
Rachel eyed me, “I think we should.”
“Huh,” I zoomed in on Cap’s vandalism, “I guess we should go see if there’s a door there.”
The trip down that short length of hall felt longer than it should have. I expected the floor to drop out, someone or some thing to attack, the Artificers or Abominators to appear out of nowhere.
None of that happened.
We walked across the floor, leaving footprints in the red dust that had accumulated throughout unknown eons. When we reached the drawing, I crouched to get a closer look. I couldn’t be sure what Cap had written it with. Pen, maybe? It seemed the most likely possibility. I could see Grandpa designing special pens, if necessary, but not solely to vandalize alien ruins.
I noticed another thing though—a door. Much like the last one, it wasn’t a door so much as a door-shaped indentation in the wall. Along with it came the feeling that Rachel had told me was an Artificer control system, one I still didn’t know how to use.
I turned to her, “Are you going to get this one too?”
She shook her head, “This one’s yours.”
Even if I could feel the controls’ presence, I couldn’t see them, “Are you going to tell me how?”
Through her facemask, I could see that Rachel smiled, “I don’t know if you can do it the way I do. I go out of phase and manipulate the controls that way. What you’ve told me about using Artificer abilities is that you could touch something even though it was out of phase. There was a guy in powered armor with an Abominator thing, right?”
“Right,” I said, “when we were fighting outside Higher Ground. Plus, there’s Jody. I grabbed him during the fight before you got here. I’m pretty sure his speed is being out of phase like you but with a different effect.”
Saying it at that moment gave me a different perspective on that event and what it could mean.
Rachel caught it too and said, “Oh. We’re going to have to talk about that later, but for now, I’d bet that all you have to do is reach out and touch it.”
I let energy flow through me the way Kee taught me, reaching out toward the presence with my mind. I felt the resistance, the sort I might have felt on a physical button, but with no effort, it gave and the door slid into the wall.
It had been so easy, but still, all that time I’d spent practicing exercises had been useful. I wondered what Kee would say if I told her, whether she’d see it as progress or scared that I was messing with Artificer ruins.
“There you go,” Rachel said.
“Yeah,” Cassie added, smirking, “Congratulations Rocket. You opened a door all by yourself!”
“Wait,” I said, “who did you power up?”
Lee laughed, “Intentionally? No one you know. That risks the wrong kind of attention, but I do it when it’s worth the risks. Unintentionally? Everyone who stayed near me with the right kind of ancestry—including you and your friends. My kind are a nexus for power. If you can collect it, you’ll get a little more than you normally would.”
That opened up new lines of thought we didn’t have time for right now, but maybe after we freed him, we might.
“Wow,” I spoke the word aloud, prompting the rest of the group to look at me. To forestall questions, I shook my head, “I’m going to want more details about that sometime, but for now, how do we get you out?”
I didn’t have to wait for Lee’s reply.
“Easy. Find Magnus and kill him. It should be doable, but harder if he puts the rest of the Nine in your way. You might go to wherever he’s moved the connection portal, attune yourself and take over if you can. You might not have the strength, but that’s the other option.
“It’s the one I’d take if it were me, but I know I can use it. Your problem is that Magnus can use an entire criminal network against you before you get to him, so it won’t be as easy as it should be. Worse, I’d keep the connection portal close if I were him. So you might have to go through the Nine to find it.”
The more Lee talked, the worse this sounded. There had to be some way to make it work. I ran through options, suggesting, “Would having Rachel along help?”
“I don’t know. The two of you are human, but when it comes to this, you’re a mix. The Ghosts are an alternate version of us, close enough that we could have interbred, but never did. It might help. The Ghosts don’t have the same level of general power as we do, but I get the impression that their power is more precisely directed. Anyway, I should end this before Magnus notices. We don’t want that guy listening in.”
Lee cleared his throat, “I covered everything I wanted you to know and maybe a little more. I know it sounds bad. It won’t be easy, but I think you can do it. I’m sure you’re doubting it, but speaking as a near immortal, multi-dimensional, alien being who’s put more than a millennium of work into you and your friends’ families, I know what I’m talking about. See you soon, kid.”
I felt his presence disappear, leaving me fully aware of the barren red stone of the hallway and my friends watching to see when I finished.
Jaclyn noticed before anyone else, “What did he have to say?”
“Not too much more than I already told you. He’s trapped in a pocket dimension that’s somehow related to the galaxy core device he hid on Earth. He told me that he’d find the device, sneak in, and take control of it so Magnus can’t do anything more with it, but he’s not sure that we have what’s needed to connect to it. His recommended plan, assuming that we can’t is to find Magnus and kill him.”
Nodding, Jaclyn said, “That sounds like Lee.”
“Yeah,” I said, “except that won’t be easy either. It makes Magnus himself physically powerful and restores a Dominator-style power that affects people around him even when he’s not speaking to them. Plus it discourages even the people who it doesn’t affect from fighting him. If that wasn’t enough, he can power up anyone he wants to and he’s got the Nine at his disposal. So he’s got a lot of potential candidates.”
Rachel blinked, “That sounds bad. It almost sounds like we might want to chance taking over the device ourselves.”
“Sneaking in and taking over an ancient alien device that threatens the world from the guy who thinks he controls it,” Marcus couldn’t hide his grin. “That would be amazing.”
“That’s what I thought,” I shook my head. “But it’s pretty far from a slam dunk. The way Lee figures it, Magnus would keep something Lee called a ‘connection portal’ close. There’s a good chance we’d have to fight through everything that would protect him to get to the portal.”
“Oh,” Marcus let out a sigh, “imagine one of those Cabal guys with an additional power up and that might be what we’re up against.”
I nodded, “Or one of the True or one of the Nine’s cloned superheroes or a bunch of the good guys who have had their hidden trigger activated and now they’re working for Magnus or…”
I let the thought hang in the air.
“Okay,” Marcus looked around at all of us, “that doesn’t just sound bad, but tragic for us and the rest of the world.”
“Yeah,” I said. “That might be why Lee ended with a kind of a pep talk.”
Rachel raised an eyebrow, “A pep talk? ‘Don’t worry, kid. I know you can kill them all’.”
“That was surprisingly close,” I said, “but in the context of the rest of the conversation, it sounded like he’d implied that he knew we could do it because he’d been subtly powering up our families for the last thousand years.”
Shaking her head, Rachel said, “I wish I could say it surprised me. Among the Ghosts, Lee’s reputation is that he seems like he’s impulsive, but he’s actually playing a very long game.”
Though my helmet hid it, I felt sure that my face showed utter disbelief, “Do they think it’s all an act?”
Rachel shook her head, “They think he’s every bit as impulsive as he seems, but he sees so many steps in the future that his impulsiveness doesn’t screw it up.”
Jaclyn took a step forward and waved us to follow, “We can’t risk Rook or one of his people taking what we’re looking for even if they don’t know what it is.”
Before anyone else could respond, Cassie, who’d been looking further down the hallway during the entire conversation said, “We should go there. My dad was here.”
Marcus glanced down the hallway and then back at Cassie, “How do you know that?”
Cassie pointed toward a spot where the hallway began to turn, “See the dark spot? He wrote on the wall.”
Rachel laughed, “What does it say, ‘Captain Commando was here’?”
“Close,” Cassie said, “‘Kilroy was here’.”
As he spoke, I wondered how I could reply, but then realized that I felt the familiar feeling of being in the in-between space I’d used to take lessons from Kee.
I thought back, “I’d been wondering where you were. I was told you’d returned to Earth after working with Kee for a while, but I hadn’t seen you.”
“Yeah, well. I solved a small mystery I’d been worrying about, but that meant visiting this place and now I can’t get out. How long has it been for you?”
I thought back to what Dayton had said. They’d ridden back with Lee, “Since you came back to Earth? Three months or so.”
“Really?” Lee paused, “That could be a lot worse. This place exists outside time to a degree. So anyone who’s ever visited is still kind of here. Most of the time you exit at almost the same time you got in, though I can exit more or less when I want to provided it’s later than I came in. At least most of the time. Right now I can’t leave at all.”
I thought about it, “If you can leave in the future, can you check ahead for when you’ll next be able to?”
Lee laughed, “Not a bad idea, but that’s not how it works. The pocket universe is connected to the galaxy core device and right now someone has control of the first layer—which I’d need to control if I wanted to leave. Whoever it is, it’s one of you. If it were one of us, I’d be fighting for my life already.”
“Magnus,” I said.
A whiff of irritation came through the connection, “That guy? I’ve thought about killing him a couple of different times in the past thousand years. I guess I should’ve.”
“Maybe,” I said, “what can he do with the first layer? From what I’ve seen, he can create a global field. Rachel felt the hum as she reentered.”
Silence came from the other end, but I could feel Lee’s presence. After a time he said, “It’s hard to say. He can’t get full control of the first layer without coming in here and taking control of the second and third. And then he’d be facing me plus a few additional surprises.”
He paused again, “Well unless he recovered something from the Abominators that would allow him to get around that. They got around a few things Destroy didn’t expect they’d get around. We almost decided to destroy them despite how much of a success they were overall. Kee persuaded us not to… That looks different in hindsight. Anyway, on a purely human level, a lot. The Abominators put enough of our tech into you that he should be able to use it directly for fighting—though that won’t put him on the level of one of us.
“He’ll be a challenge for one of you though. Worse, he might be able to fix himself.”
I closed my eyes as a wave of fear passed through me.
Rachel looked over at me, “Is something wrong?”
“Lee’s one of the voices. He’s trapped. We’re talking.”
I tried to think of anything else I could add that wouldn’t start a second conversation to pay attention to.
Turning away from the door Marcus said, “Lee’s trapped? Does he need us to get him out?”
Seeing an exit, I said, “Yes. We’re discussing that.”
Eyeing Marcus, Jaclyn said, “Don’t let us distract you then.”
“Fix himself?” I thought back at Lee.
“Magnus became annoying,” Lee said. “He united the Dominators. He couldn’t do exactly what they can—tell people to do something or force them to accept some fact is true. He can’t fully control it, but people around him start to believe things that benefit him. He can’t tell people what to do, but given time he gathers people around himself. Even the people that don’t like him start to believe it’s impossible to stop him.”
The first time we’d talked, Magnus mentioned that he used to have powered people around him, “How is it that he doesn’t rule the world?”
“Heh,” Lee snorted, “you know the line about not being able to fool all of the people all of the time? Someone noticed his ability a while back and burned it out. I was barely involved at all. If I had been, I’d have killed him. After that, he wasn’t a threat. Sure, he was still involved with the Cabal, but he couldn’t do as much. He’s immune to the Dominators’ influence as a side effect, but that’s less of a problem.”
I felt his sigh rather than heard it, “Unfortunately, there are still embers of his ability left, just enough to affect maybe one person at a time and not much. With the device’s strength behind him, it’s going to be worse. If he taps it, he can power up himself and his followers—permanently. I’ve done it a few times myself.”
It wasn’t Grandpa as I knew him either. It was Grandpa from old newsreels and recordings. I had a few in the lab—accidental recordings from when Grandpa was tinkering with various versions of the sonic systems and test recordings that he’d used for years to assure consistency in the official Rocket suit voice.
It also wasn’t just Grandpa.
I also heard the rest of the team—Captain Commando, Night Wolf, C, the Mentalist, and Grandma.
We were close to the hallway, still walking across grass and pushing past shrubs. The voices hadn’t grown any louder or clearer, but they also hadn’t grown softer.
On the off-chance that it wasn’t all in my head, I’d checked the HUD’s screen for sonic system details. It didn’t show anything in the range of the human voice, only the white noise associated with walking across the ground.
Over the comm, I asked, “Is anyone else hearing things?”
Jaclyn held up a hand for us to stop walking, “What are you hearing?”
“At this moment? Nothing,” the voices had stopped, “but as we’ve been walking I’ve been intermittently hearing voices, and not just any voices, the original League.”
Marcus blinked, “That’s so cool. Grandpa mentioned time travel adventures. Do you think they’re here?”
I checked my HUD’s view of data from the device that measured my placement in time and alternate universes relative to ours. It hadn’t set off any alarms, so it wasn’t surprising that we were still in our home universe and timeline.
Of the various statistics that the temporal sensors collected, none showed abnormal levels as Grandpa defined them. What was interesting though, was that none of them were set to zero.
All showed levels that fit individually within random fluctuations, but most of the time it meant that the majority showed nothing while one had meaningless blips of activity.
“I don’t think so,” I said, “but check the temporal stats in your HUD.”
Marcus frowned, “None of them are high enough to show nearby time travel.”
Jaclyn broke in as he stopped talking, “But all of them are active. That’s weird.”
“And not from any particular direction from what I’m seeing,” I turned around, giving the whole area a quick sweep.
Rachel held up her hands, “If you’re looking for alien insights, I’m fresh out and I’m not hearing anything.”
Marcus grinned at me, “Hearing voices is supposed to be a bad thing.”
I nodded, “Yeah. I’m pretty sure I’m not going mad, but if I am, you’ll be the first to know.”
Stopping at the entrance to the hallway, Marcus said, “I’m looking forward to it.”
If I was expecting the hallway to be a revelation, it wasn’t. Made of the same red substance as the rest of the building on the ceiling, walls, and floors, it curved, going on for as far as I could see with no windows or doors.
As we stepped into it, I felt the same thing I’d felt outside again—the feeling that there was something here, but nothing I could see.
“Rocket,” Rachel said, “do you feel something right now?”
“Yes,” My eyes swept the hall in case there was something to see.
“It’s an Artificer control panel or a device you can operate. The Ghosts told me not to reach out to them unless I knew what they were. I recognized the controls that got us in, but nothing else.”
Rachel shook her head, “Some of them are traps. Ghosts have accidentally signaled the Destroy faction and barely escaped.”
Ahead, Cassie pointed to the gun in her hand, “That might explain something. The gun hasn’t said a thing since we entered the hallway. I think he’s scared.”
“Really, what’s he seeing?” I stared down at the glittery blue-green weapon.
“Who knows? I think it’s the first time he’s shut up since I’ve known him,” Cassie shook her head. “I don’t see anything special when I use ‘gun-o-vision’.”
I hadn’t figured out all the sources of the gun’s view of the world. Cassie could tap into it through her link and from what she could sense, it was every bit as good as what I’d included in the suits, but it might be that the gun was holding out on her.
Turning her head toward Cassie, Jaclyn said, “Can’t you command him to tell you because of your Citizen’s Mark?”
“Normally,” Cassie peered down at the weapon, “but not with this.”
We continued to walk as we talked, but as we passed a spot with a door-shaped line on the wall, I had the “Artificer controls” feeling again. This time it was accompanied by a pulse followed by a voice.
“Nick,” Lee said, “I’m glad you made it here—in more than one sense. I’ve got a problem—multiple problems—but they come down to one in the end. I’ve got a nice little pocket universe hideaway where I’ve kept a few important things but I can’t get out of it. You’re in a position to help.”
If I’d been hoping to see what was inside, I’d have been disappointed. I hadn’t expected to see anything more than an airlock, but there was no airlock here.
Instead, what appeared to be glass with a hazy golden sheen blocked our view of the inside. Between experience with alien technology and years of consuming science fiction, I felt sure it wasn’t glass.
“Walk through the golden force field,” Rachel told us over the comms. “There’s an atmosphere in there. The Artificers usually set it to be similar to the atmosphere of the nearest planet with intelligent life, but it might have adjusted to the Abominators’ preferences. Those weren’t always breathable.”
My implant supplied the knowledge that the Abominators could adjust to a wide range of environmental conditions, much wider than unmodified humans.
Jaclyn and I stepped through first.
With my first glance around the room, I understood what Rachel meant when she said that the Artificers designed with the intent of enticing people.
We’d walked into a garden. Water flowed through a stream that wound across the room, zigzagging through dark brown soil. Bees buzzed their way from flower to flower, collecting pollen. At least that’s what they’d be doing if they were real bees as opposed to cleverly designed copies. Dragonflies flew around the river.
I didn’t recognize every insect, but I didn’t recognize every insect on Earth. So, the ones I’d never seen before didn’t have to have come from other worlds.
I looked over at her, “I didn’t expect to see a garden. I was imagining directly usable technology and I don’t know, maybe an owner’s manual along with it.”
“That’s what you’re seeing,” Rachel said. “Imagine us leaving Earth and finding this place after years of painstaking work and a two-year flight. We’re desperate to figure out how to colonize another world, maybe even Mars and we’ve got a working biosphere here. What do you want to bet there are plans for how to terraform the planet inside?”
Taking another glance around the place, I said, “Nothing. You’ve seen this before?”
Rachel shrugged, grimaced, and replied, “In all except one of the sites I visited. It’s what they do with young species. I’m not sure how it’s supposed to go wrong here, but it will and it’s different for different species. The Ghosts told me about one time when it allowed a species to colonize its solar system so quickly that it didn’t have the resources to keep up with the growth. The whole species went extinct. There was another where the terraforming machines tested diseases on the population until it created one that couldn’t be stopped. There are more.”
Stopping to stare at her, Jaclyn asked, “How would they get anyone to copy that technology and spread it?”
Throwing up her hands, Rachel said, “I don’t know. I’m repeating what I was told.”
“I suppose if you don’t understand how something works and copy it perfectly,” I said, giving the room another look. “Any idea where to go next?”
Rachel shook her head, “They all look different. If you didn’t know what to look for, you wouldn’t recognize they were made by the same people.”
“Well,” Marcus said, “at least in that direction I don’t see any greenery.”
He waved his hand toward a hallway on the far side of the room. The greenery appeared to end at the entrance. In the other directions, I could only see grass, soil, and bushes.
“True,” I said, “it’s worth trying.”
To Rachel, I asked, “Is it safe to try to use ‘Artificer vision’ or would that attract attention in here?”
She frowned, “You might be safer if you don’t. The Ghosts told me not to try it sometimes. They told me to use it in others. I don’t know why it was okay sometimes and why it wasn’t when it wasn’t.”
“I’d have thought it would be safe,” I said, “but I guess if the Destroy faction sees the Ghosts or the Live faction as enemies, they might boobytrap the place and use that as a trigger.”
Rachel glanced toward the hallway, “I know Destroy saw us as enemies. I wouldn’t put it past them.”
Cassie checked behind us, her gun ready, “My gun isn’t sensing Abominator networks of any kind. It says this place is a black hole for Abominator tech. We should have brought Blue. She could have seen something.”
“Let’s keep on walking to the hallway,” Jaclyn said, “at least it’s different.”
For the record, I didn’t pull on any of the skills Kee had been trying to teach me as I walked. The Ghosts knew something. I didn’t have the illusion I knew more.
Much as I knew that, I wanted to because I felt the same way I did when we were outside. It was the same intensity of presence. It wasn’t a bad or good feeling, but something felt intensely “there.”
Worse, I began hearing voices, their words indistinct, but I thought I knew them. One of them sounded like my grandfather.
I let the jet drop toward the ground, landing on the red dirt of Mars, thinking again that I could have visited purely to visit at any time, and that I was now only here because of this.
Behind me in the cabin, everyone set their suits to full coverage, helmets reforming over their heads.
I checked outside. The circle-shaped structure that ascended from the ground, seemingly made of Martian dirt, felt taller now that I’d landed. It wasn’t quite a mesa, but it was at least 20 feet taller than it appeared when we sat inside the jet.
Getting closer made it more obviously artificial. I was perfectly round except for the indentation I’d suspected might be a door.
I wasn’t wrong either.
The “indentation” turned out to be a short alley inches wider than the door at the end, its walls smooth except for the dust that had accumulated at the bottom.
A constant, low-level wind blew, sending bits of dust into the air.
I only recognized it as a door from the seams in the wall. It had no hinges, appearing to be a flat slab of Martian stone. Something about it made me feel uneasy. I couldn’t put a finger on it, but it didn’t feel normal.
To be fair, a door with no hinges, doorknob, or anything but a seam wasn’t normal.
Cassie looked over at me, “What’s up? Are you scanning it?”
I shook my head, “It’s weird for a door. I was wondering how to open it. Probably a Citizen’s Mark or something.”
She shrugged, said, “I hope so,” and stood up.
I followed her out, joining everyone else outside. Letting Hal know that he could do whatever he thought best to keep the jet hidden but available if we needed a quick exit, I walked with everyone else toward the door.
As we moved, I did scan the area with the suit’s sensors. I didn’t have a specific reason to do it. This wasn’t Dungeons and Dragons. I didn’t expect to find a pit trap. The traps that worried me were more subtle.
Subtle or otherwise, I didn’t find any. Neither sonics nor radar gave me a hint of what might be behind the wall. If I learned anything, it was only that the structure extended below the surface, but that wasn’t a surprise.
We stepped into what I’d seen as an “indentation” from the jet. On the ground, it felt more like a short alley, the kind that led into the back of a small restaurant or coffee shop. This place, though had walls made of red, Martian rock or maybe hardened soil—maybe even a kind of concrete, all free of decoration.
As we grew closer though, the feeling I’d had in the jet grew, not to the point where it became overwhelming, but rather more distinct. If anything, it became easier to ignore in the same way that a bunch of multicolored lights might be distracting in the distance, but as you grow closer, you see each one separately.
That’s how I felt here except I couldn’t see or hear anything.
We stopped in front of the door—which didn’t look any different than it had from a distance except that it was bigger than I’d realized. It was still smooth except for the seam. Cassie spoke to us over the comms, “I’ve been trying to connect to whatever the Abominators left here and I’m getting nothing. I even checked with the gun and it says that there’s an Abominator network on the other side of the building, but nothing here. Ghost? It’s on you.”
Rachel smiled, “I’ve got it, but it might get complicated.”
Eyeing her, Jaclyn said, “I don’t like the sound of that.”
Nodding Rachel turned to me, “Rocket, you have to be sensing something.”
“Yeah,” I said, and realizing the obvious said, “it’s an Artificer thing, right? Should I be trying to focus on it?”
Shaking her head, Rachel said, “Not if you didn’t recognize it. I haven’t had time to tell you about everything I’ve done with the Cosmic Ghosts, but one of the things they do is neutralize Artificer technology. This door is one of theirs. If I had to bet, this complex is one of theirs. I know how to get in, but we’re going to have to be careful. The Destroy faction knows what we do and they don’t make it easy for us.
“Rocket, Kee’s taught you enough control that you can watch without touching, right? Because I need you to watch. I might not need your help now, but once we get in, I will. We get help from the Live faction sometimes. You’re the closest we’ve got.”
“Wait,” Jaclyn took a step toward Rachel, “are you sure we should be doing this? We could still go to the front. No offense, Rocket, but from what you’ve said, you’re an Artificer baby, or maybe a toddler now.”
“None taken,” I said. “That’s about right.”
“We can,” Rachel pointed toward the door, “I’ve helped with three different Artificer sites in the past year. They’re made to entice sapient creatures, but some of their defenses turn off when an Artificer is there. The Rocket doesn’t need to know anything. For the rest, I’m still trained.”
“Great,” I said, “I’ll just stand around and look Artificery then.”
Giving a half-smile, Rachel said, “I’m going to need more than that, but you can handle it.”
“Okay,” Jaclyn said, “let’s go.”
Rachel stepped forward, phased her arm into the door, and felt around for a few seconds. Then she withdrew it and the door slid into the ground.
Turning back to the group, Rachel said, “We’re in,” and nodded her head toward the opening.
“Sorry,” Cassie threw the picture from her implant onto the feed for screens in the jet.
I slowed the jet down further because now that we were no longer working at the speed of thought, we needed a second. I already had cloaking on. Hopefully, Rook hadn’t figured out a way to detect it.
He’d figured out how to block Cassie’s blade and Grandpa’s monomolecular tech before our last fight. The cloaking tech wasn’t on full display, so he might not realize we had it, but you never knew.
His fascination and admiration for Grandpa’s tech and even mine neared obsession as witnessed by creating his own version of the League jet in addition to his own Rook suits and weaponry.
I wasn’t sure whether it came from admiration or hatred. Maybe jealousy? All of those?
Rachel peered at the screen in front of her chair, “So… Rook? The Rocket wannabe?”
“Wow,” I thought about our past interactions with him, “I don’t think you were around either time we fought him.”
“I was,” Rachel frowned, “but I was out of town for an internship when you were at Higher Ground. The time Cap got captured, I flew along but with the nerve gas in his base, I didn’t come into the fight until the end. I don’t think I even saw him except maybe for a second.”
“It was probably for the best,” I stared ahead toward the flat disc, “Rook’s the kind of guy who’d have the equipment to prevent you from phasing out.”
“I’m looking forward to facing him then because that goes so well,” Rachel stretched out her right arm and grimaced from whatever pain or soreness remained.
Jaclyn’s suit absorbed her helmet, and she took a glance at the screen in front of her before saying, “Do we want to sneak in or fight? We could talk, but we don’t have the best talker with us.”
Cassie laughed, “Rook would talk to the Rocket. He might even talk to me. He was very interested in the Citizen’s Mark when he held me captive.”
Shaking her head, Jaclyn said, “Don’t take this wrong, but I don’t see either of you persuading Rook to do something. The Rocket might work as a distraction because of the whole techboy crush thing, but I don’t think the Rocket will convince him to let us walk around inside.”
Staring the jet in a wide circle around the Abominator red disc, I said, “Techboy crush is pushing it. I’m pretty sure he’s straight, but was impressed by Grandpa’s tech. Larry told me that he saw Rook get maced because he hit on a woman once.”
Rachel shook her head, “That was in the 80s. Hitting on women didn’t mean you were necessarily straight. It could mean that you didn’t want people to think you’re gay. Ok, sure. Maybe he liked Grandpa’s tech so much he patterned his whole life around recreating his own version, but is liking someone’s technology enough to do that?”
I thought about it as I let the jet slow. I’d be using the anti-grav to keep it in the air eventually. Eventually, I said, “It depends on how cool the technology is… I have a hard time seeing it as a sexual thing.”
From a couple of rows back, Marcus said, “I don’t know. If you look at Batman and the Joker, some people think it is at least on the Joker’s end. It doesn’t have to be creepy though. Think about Black Cat and Spider-man. For her, it’s all about the persona of Spider-man that she’s attracted to just like Joker is obsessed with Batman, but doesn’t care about Bruce Wayne.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Jaclyn’s face twitch, “Unless we’re going to have the Rocket seduce Rook, I don’t see this as relevant.”
Cassie turned away from the weapons console, looking back at everyone else, grinning, “That sounds hot, but I have a better idea. It’s simple. We sneak in. We’ve got to land anyway. I’m not getting enough of a connection up here. If we go down on the far side, I can get a connection and open something or you can break in. Simple. Done.”
Raising an eyebrow, Jaclyn said, “It’s never that simple.”
Rachel laughed, “It isn’t, but let’s try it. I can float in, scout, and let you in, or at least suggest the best place to break through. I think that’s a good beginning.”
Giving her a nod, Jaclyn said, “I can work with that.”
“Good,” Cassie’s smile widened, “Now we can talk about the important questions. For example, what’s the next limb Rook loses going to be? The Rocket blew up his hand. I got a leg. What’s next?”
Marcus raised his hand, “Not a limb. It’s got to be an eye or ear. Then he can give himself a super sense.”
“Hey,” I said, “we’re on the far side from Rook’s ships. I’m taking this down. There’s an indentation that might be an entrance. We could start there.”
“Look,” Rachel said, “Accelerando said that my vitals aren’t showing anything unusually wrong. If we’re going to go to Mars, let’s go. I’d rather take my chances with alien tech. Except maybe for Magnus, we may be Earth’s greatest alien tech experts now. We’re not the greatest experts on the Nine. Let’s go. The sooner we get this done, the sooner we meet with Paladin.”
“That,” Marcus said, “she’s right.”
Jaclyn shook her head, “I don’t like it, but you’re making sense. I’d still like to look at Rachel before we get to Mars.”
“I guess that’s it then,” Cassie stepped over to stand with the rest of us. “I reset all of the Abominator’s security. The moment we’re out of here, it all comes on again—monkeys and everything. I’ve turned on a few things Victor didn’t bother with. I’m sure he hoped visitors would find him–so it was more for show.”
“I like the idea of preventing people from getting in here,” I said, opening up a connection to Hal through my implant. “I’ll ping Hal so we don’t have to wait to leave.”
I did it and fifteen minutes later we were in the air, or more technically, flying through the Moon’s thin atmosphere.
This time I took the controls and plotted the course to Mars. It wasn’t in the most convenient spot, almost exactly but not perfectly, on the other side of the sun. Earth’s current technology would have taken a year plus to get there. Our standard drives would take hours, maybe even a day if we wanted to be cautious.
I cheated. One of our faster-than-light options allowed us to be out of phase but still connected to our universe, allowing us to hit a significant fraction of light speed.
It took us a little over half an hour to reach Mars, the stars turning to long streaks of light—which made me vaguely happy if only because of the resemblance to Star Trek.
Slowing down so we could transition back to normal space took more time than the trip, but it was worth it. Why? Because even hitting a pebble at 40% light speed would ruin your day.
Best to slow down.
In the meantime, Jaclyn did a quick examination of Rachel—which had its awkward elements. The League jet had essentially three rooms—the bathroom, engines, and passenger area. Only one of them had room for an exam. That meant that for privacy’s sake, we all looked forward.
We’d spent more than a week together when we flew to Hideaway. It wasn’t a new thing.
Aside from that, it went well. Jaclyn ended the exam with, “Nothing seems broken. You’re turning black and blue all over your body, but you’re not badly hurt. Rocket, is that the way it’s supposed to work?”
Watching our speed drop on the dashboard as our engines slowed the ship down, I said, “The armor’s designed so that any force that gets through will be spread out as much as possible. So, I guess you could say it’s working perfectly?”
Rachel sighed, “I don’t have any right to complain, but it looks like someone threw me down the stairs and every part of my body hit except for my head. It’s better than being dead, but my version of ‘working perfectly’ is different.”
Noticing that we’d finally hit a safe speed, I started the transition out of “near space” into what you might call real space—phasing into our actual real universe.
Mars changed from a fuzzy red disc into the red world I remembered from pictures, complete with craters and none of the straight lines that astronomers assumed were canals in the late 1800s. Mars’ moons appeared to be on the other side of the planet.
It reminded me of the Master Martian. The Mars of his universe must have had seas and canals. We’d sent him back there only a few months ago. I wondered how he was doing. Hypothetically, we could have checked in with him using the Starplate on the Moon, but it wasn’t the right time.
The jet’s systems registered a beacon for an Abominator base near the equator. I turned back to everyone else since Rachel had suited up, “We’re in normal space and making our descent. Hal detected an Abominator beacon that’s still broadcasting. I assume we’re going there. I might need Cap to negotiate with it.”
Cassie sat down at the weapons console, “Let’s do it. I’ll let you know when we’re close enough for me to connect.”
The planet grew closer as I aimed for the Abominator beacon, becoming bigger and redder by the second. I’d visited the Moon already this today and now I was about to land on Mars only because I had to. How had I owned a spaceship for more than five years and not visited every planet in the solar system already?
“Hey,” Cassie said, “I know you’re focused on the beacon, but I’ve been scanning ahead. Look at what I’ve got.”
She sent a link to what she’d captured through the sensors and not just to me—to everyone with implants—basically everyone but Rachel.
The Abominators hadn’t even tried to hide their presence on Mars. They created a wide disc out of Martian soil. Though piles of dust filled in the edges and small hills covered parts of the structure, there was no question that it was artificial.
Worse, three spaceships stood in front of it. I might have felt better if I’d seen the white, blue, and red striped flag of the Russian Federation on any of them. If that had been true, I’d have a chance of finding a reasonable person there.
Instead, I recognized the familiar cigar-with-fins shape of the League jet. Except these spaceships weren’t silver, they were black. Outlined in grey, the logo of a crow-like bird appeared on the nose of each one of them—a rook.
“Seriously?” Jaclyn shook her head, “I was wondering just yesterday if we’d ever see him again.”
Rachel looked around the cabin, “Do any of you think it’s even a little bit rude to leave me out of these conversations?”
“You’ve got an inventory list?” I asked.
“Close enough,” Cassie said. “I’ve got multiple inventory lists, all of them protected from the different Abominator clone lineages by security that we’d never get through—except now everyone’s dead. Thanks to Abominator inheritance law, the property, including intellectual property, reverts to the eldest clone lineage within the same group of sublineages. With everyone dead, all of it reverts to the control of anyone left with a Citizen’s Mark. As the last remaining representative of the Abominator civilization, I inherit everything.”
“Unless Victor’s still here,” I said.
“Right,” Cassie nodded, “unless Victor hasn’t gone back in time yet, but it’s no problem even then unless he shows up on the Moon.”
“So we won’t call him,” Rachel let her arms fall to her sides and stretched out her legs. “Get on with it, please.”
The touch of sharpness in her voice reminded me that the sooner we got this over with, the sooner we could leave and get her healed. It must have reminded Cassie too because she closed her eyes and said, “It’ll be a second.”
As Cassie looked through her lists, I asked Rachel, “Are you okay? It’s not getting worse, is it?”
Rachel shook her head, “It’s not worse, but I’m still sore and it’s not better.”
While she talked, Jaclyn took a few steps closer, “We can still leave and come back.”
Rachel shook her head, “We can’t. There’s no time.”
Frowning, Jaclyn didn’t try to argue with her, “You’re right, but don’t suffer if you’re hurting.”
“I know,” Rachel said. “I’m not going to let myself die.”
That chilled conversation for a few minutes as everyone thought about Travis. I did, at least. It wasn’t in a guilty way, but three days ago he was alive. It seemed impossible that he was gone now. Especially in the group’s early days, he’d pushed us to be more professional and take it seriously. It wasn’t always realistic to expect that of high school students, but he wasn’t wrong.
He also seemed to imagine that he might be the leader the team needed—at least in the beginning. He wasn’t pushing for it after the first few years. Maybe he could have been.
“Alright,” Cassie said, giving a wave. “Over here, everybody. Bad news. When the Russians came through, they grabbed the best candidate. The Abominators had a device they made for finding Artificer technology, but according to the security logs, the Russians grabbed it when they came back in… 1981, I think.”
“The Russians have it?” Jaclyn shook her head, “I don’t think they’ll let us borrow it.”
I thought back to Stapledon, “Remember when Blue almost fought that Russian team? Rhino got a message from a member through backchannels asking if it was us. We might go through him.”
“I remember it,” Marcus said, “I was flying the jet. There was a wizard on a flying carpet, people in powered armor, normal super types, and we were flying over a desert on the other side of the world… It was weird.”
From her seat on the floor, Rachel said, “Going through the Rhino’s friend sounds good. We don’t want to break into the Kremlin or wherever they keep it.”
Cassie waved a hand in the air, “Whoa, everyone, we’ve got another option.”
“Better than sneaking into Russia?” Jaclyn asked, “I’m not sure that’s possible.”
Cassie laughed, “They’ve got another one, but it’s not on the Moon. It’s on Mars.”
I raised my hand, “The other Abominator base? I heard Victor tell Rook about it once.”
“That’s right,” Cassie said, “I was there when you heard it, but yeah. When the Abominators moved out of the Moonbase, they went to their main base. The Artificers left tech on Mars which is what attracted the Abominators here. They removed some of it to the Moon to study, but not everything.”
Marcus stood up from where he’d been sitting near Rachel, “Let’s go, we shouldn’t have to fight anyone on Mars. Russia could get messy. The Dominators and the Nine could be anywhere.”
Glancing over at Rachel, Jaclyn said, “We shouldn’t have had to fight anyone here, but Shift still almost died. Ghost could have died too. I’m not saying we absolutely shouldn’t, but anything we found here could be on Mars. We’ll be going from weird alien stuff to more weird alien stuff. Worse, Ghost is injured now. It shouldn’t be a snap decision.”
“I don’t feel that bad,” Rachel said. “I feel sore, but I can handle it for a few hours. Let’s go there and get it over with. Shift’s right about Russia. The Dominators could have turned anyone. On Mars, it will be dangerous, but we won’t have to worry about people betraying us.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “With the right kind of time travel shenanigans, Victor could be on Mars too. I mean, that’s obviously not likely, but Rook sounded like he wanted to go and that was a few years ago now. He’s had all the time he needed if he wanted to loot the place.”
Abominator Moonbase, Present
“I don’t know what happened after that,” I said.
We all stood in the lab next to the Starplate. Jaclyn had placed Victor’s body there. It hadn’t seemed right to leave it out on the surface. It didn’t feel more right to bring him back here, but there were things I could do here that I couldn’t do there.
“I mean, I know loosely, but not in detail. They scared the Soviets into leaving—not that it was too hard. Abominator booby traps killed a few of their men. The crazy thing is that Grandpa did say he fought a time traveler once, but he didn’t say anything that made me think of Victor. At least, not until now.”
I checked Victor’s body with the suit’s sensors. He was still at room temperature, and there were no signs of movement inside his body other than pooling blood and other fluids.
Jaclyn shook her head, “We all should have listened a little more closely. I wonder how many hints they dropped?”
Sitting on the ground, his arms wrapped around his legs, Marcus looked up, “Not a lot, I bet. They were all pretty careful. Our Grandpa’s still careful.”
Jaclyn nodded, “He sticks to the plan if he thinks it’s good.”
Cassie scanned the room around us, gun in hand, eyes on lab machines, storage containers, and mystery artifacts. We’d gathered up all the monkey boxes, put them in a pile, and then she’d burned them to what we all hoped were their component molecules.
Still, you never knew if we’d missed one or if they could reform from even that level of damage.
“Hey,” she said, “if you’re ready, I’m ready to see if I can overcome Victor’s hold on this place. Otherwise, Shift can try again.”
Marcus shook his head, “If you don’t get through, I’ll try it, but right now I need a second. My brain is still kind of scattered. If I close my eyes, I can see the inside of Victor’s skull as I chop up his… Anyway, I need a second.”
Rachel lay back against a lopsided polygon that was almost a cube. My implant labeled it a storage container even though it had no seams or doors. Leaning forward to sit up straight, she gritted her teeth, “I can help too. The Ghosts taught me a little about Artificer and Abominator technology. I can help avoid or maybe even disable some traps, but if Cassie can do it, I’d prefer not to move.”
“Are you okay?” The sensors in her suit had reported damage when she got hit but within normal human tolerances. I wasn’t a doctor though. I’d designed the suits to measure vitals, detect blood, and identify broken bones, but not everything.
As I asked the question, Jaclyn watched Rachel, saying, “I’m not seeing anything that worries me in your vitals, but how are you feeling?”
Rachel held up her hands, “Not good, but no major pain. I can still walk, but I feel sore all over.”
Jaclyn nodded, “Tell me if anything changes. We’ve got first aid plus a little in the jet. I’d like to look at you there. After that, we can land in L.A. so Paladin or his dad can heal you.”
“I’m fine with that,” I said. “Cap, how long do you think it will take to get in?”
Glancing over at me, Cassie said, “No idea. It might be easy. It might be hard.”
I’d spent too much time answering questions I didn’t know enough details to answer to give her a hard time and only said, “Got it. I’m going to check something while you dive in.”
I stepped up to the Starplate’s controls. Even though my Xiniti implant labeled them, I didn’t need the help. I had one at home. The controls weren’t meant for human hands. I had to extend the armor at the end of my fingers into a hole to activate it, but I still managed to start the temporal analysis of Victor’s body.
Between that and checking the logs, it appeared that Victor arrived in the 1950s, got trapped by the Starplate, accidentally released in the late 1970s when the Russians arrived, and then retrapped by Grandpa only minutes later. Checking the data from Victor’s arrival showed that he’d arrived from a time within two or three weeks of the present day. It couldn’t get more exact than that.
I turned away from the controls to face everyone else, “Hey, it looks like Victor either left within the last few days or at most a couple weeks or… he’s just about to leave.”
Marcus straightened up to look at me, “Seriously? So if we go find him, we could change the past?”
I thought about it, paused, and said, “It depends on your time travel system. If we’ve got a fixed past, then no effect. Everything continues as it has to no matter what. If the past is fluid, then maybe everything falls apart unless another time traveler fixes it.
“If we assume quantum mechanics and that every change spins off a new universe, Victor’s leaving creates a universe where he went back in time and another one where he chose not to. Weirder, by arriving he spins off a new universe where he arrives from one where he didn’t. So, it’s possible that if we run into him and he doesn’t leave because of that, we’ve spun off a new universe where he doesn’t leave, but he still arrived and the universe where he left still exists.”
“You know,” Marcus stood up, “I feel like my head should be spinning, but that kind of makes sense.”
Jaclyn walked up and stood next to me, looking over the Starplate’s controls, “I’ve spent too much time with both of you because that made sense to me too.”
As she finished her sentence, the ominous dark hallway we walked through to get to the lab brightened, changing to the warm lighting of your average suburban living room.
“Got it,” Cassie said, “I’m in. Let’s see if we have anything that can find Lee’s device.”
The Xiniti had addressed the Soviets at the UN with everyone else after the last Abominators died. They’d made it clear enough that developing Abominator technology could result in Earth’s destruction.
Joe had spoken a few words himself as the Rocket.
Hadn’t the Soviets been listening? On the other hand, it had been a secret session and the USSR’s ambassador had been recalled shortly after. Some faction there might be keeping it a secret from the others.
Idiots, Joe shook his head.
The Xiniti communicator spoke directly into his brain. They’d wanted to implant a computer into his body, but after fighting Abominators for years, no one in the League trusted aliens enough to try it. It puzzled the Xiniti who seemed to view the implant as a privilege and a way to even out a debt.
Maybe Joe wondered if he could have trusted them. For aliens, they’d seemed straightforward and trustworthy—which was good because it looked like he might have to.
He thought back to the communicator, “Hello?”
The voice in his head sounded as if it were speaking the precise English of radio announcers from his childhood, but Joe doubted it, “Honored ally of the Xiniti, are you aware of the intrusion at the Abominator Moonbase.”
Joe assumed they knew where he was. There was no sense in pretending otherwise, “I’m in the middle of the Abominators’… artifact lab. Do you want us to leave?”
“Not at all. The Xiniti High Command commends you for subduing and imprisoning the Abominators’ time-traveling servant. Xiniti standing policy is that all time travelers be captured, killed, or returned to their own time. It recommends you to us that this appears to be your policy as well.
“No, our concern is that humans appear to be heading toward the Abominator armory on your moon. The Galactic Alliance requires us to destroy all life on your world if humans acquire Abominator weaponry and attempt to reproduce it. Given your service to us in destroying the last Abominators and our respect for your skills and character, we would prefer not to.
“Can you keep these weapons out of their hands? We can assist indirectly, but not visibly enough that the Alliance decides they can’t trust us with the fate of this planet.”
Joe restrained himself from nodding as he said, “I understand. I’d like you to be able to continue to assist us when you believe the Alliance is being unreasonable. To get this straight, you want us to get them to leave, however we manage it, and then destroy the weaponry so that they can’t come back and take it later?”
A rumbling of musical tones impossible to make with a human throat came over the comm. The Xiniti said, “If you could make them leave, we’ll destroy the weapons ourselves. If they aren’t there when we are, there’s no risk that we’ll have to fight and no risk that we’ll have to revenge ourselves if one of us dies.”
Joe thought it through, “I think we’d all be better off if there were no chance that one of you would be harmed.”
“Excellent. We agree. Inform us of what you do and its outcome. We’ll be ready,” the voice said and then with no warning, the feeling of connection ceased.
One of these days, Joe hoped to take the comms apart. He’d checked with Isaac. It wasn’t telepathy, but it felt like it. He could use that if he ever had time to figure it out—not that he did now.
“Everyone,” Joe said, “I just got a communication from the Xiniti. It sounds as though your team is heading for the Abominator armory in the base. The Xiniti tell me that if humans duplicate Abominator weapons, they’ll be forced to destroy all life on the planet. Russian Victory, do you have the authority to tell them to stop?”
Alexis’ tenor voice joined with Russian Victory’s bass in laughter. After a moment, Russian Victory said, “No. Not at all. I wanted this to be a civilian mission with scientists and engineers. Instead, it’s mostly soldiers, us, a linguist, and an engineer. Being a hero of the people gets you enough respect to choose a direction to explore. It does not allow you to command the mission.”
“Damn,” Larry said, “you get parades but no power?”
“Not here,” Russian Victory said, “the man leading the mission is no friend to… superheroes.”
Alexis tilted his helmet toward Larry’s Rhino suit, “It is complicated. Your politics are complicated too, eh?”
“Yeah,” Larry looked over to Joe, “but we don’t work for the government. We’re just concerned citizens.”
Joe felt the explosion through his feet. Muffled by the building and his suit, he couldn’t hear it well, but it had to be big. “Alright, I understand that you don’t have power over those troops, but for their safety, could you help us get them out of there?”
Russian Victory tilted his helmet to look at that floor and then up at Joe, “Yes. We can. The commander is a fool. He will kill them all.”
Abominator Moonbase, March 1979
Joe stepped back from the controls of the Interdimensional Travel Plate (IDTP) and checked around the room for everyone else.
In a room filled with madness, he had superheroes and villains to fall back on—though in this case the question of which was which depended on whether journalists from the USA or USSR wrote the story.
Russian Victory lay on the ground. His bulbous powered armor reminded Joe of the Michelin Man if the Michelin Man were painted red, had a yellow hammer and sickle on his chest, and wasn’t made of tires but instead spherical metal sections.
Larry leaned forward to give him a hand up. Russian Victory took it and Larry pulled him to his feet.
Larry wouldn’t have been able to do it if he weren’t in costume as the Rhino. The Rhino suit (this version) was grey, bulky, and had a stylized Rhino on the chest.
The Rhino suit and Russian Victory’s powered armor could have been siblings except for the colors. Even if Larry’s suit wasn’t as round, they were both broad-shouldered and bulky. Joe had his suspicions about the reason, and today, he was finally in a position to find out.
Speaking in Spanish-accented Russian, the fourth member of their impromptu group stepped toward Russian Victory asking, “Are you alright?”
Joe waited for the answer, hoping that the language switch didn’t mean that they were going to fight again.
Russian Victory nodded, replying in the same language, “I’m alive, Alexis.”
“Alexis” wore blue powered armor with the Cuban flag on his right shoulder and “M-26-7” written against a black and red flag. Joe had a feeling it had something to do with the Cuban revolution, but he didn’t know it off the top of his head.
He wasn’t going to try to remember it either. He had enough to do translating the Russian in his head without giving away that he understood it.
Alexis said, “Good. We’re not going to go back to fighting them, are we?”
“Nyet,” Russian Victory let go of Larry’s armored hand, “they’re good men.”
Then Russian Victory switched to English. His accent had only a hint of Russian and more than a hint that whoever taught him spoke British English, “My thanks to both of you. Had you not intervened, we might have died.”
Alexis nodded his blue helmet, adding, “I’m sorry that we attacked you earlier. We were told that you were here to collect this treasure trove of alien technology. We had orders to attack you on sight.”
“Dammit,” Larry glanced back at Joe, “we don’t want any of it. We came up because we wanted to warn you.”
“That’s right,” Joe said, “We can’t tell you everything, but we can tell you this. Abominator technology is made to create madness and destroy civilizations.”
Alexis’ helmet obscured most of his face, but Joe could see a frown, “That does not make sense. They use this technology every day. Are they attacking themselves with madness?”
Joe decided he had to give them more than he’d intended, “You can see where we are. It’s a lab. They’ve collected technology from other races, some of them much older. One of the universe’s very early races decided that it didn’t want any competition and seeded the galaxy with trapped technology. Sometimes the trap is obvious. Sometimes it’s subtle.”
Russian Victory pointed to the man they’d captured, a man more than eight feet tall and capable of walking on the surface of the Moon wearing a metal skirt and no shirt. The man lay on the IDTP, a black and silver circular platform, the purple glow of his skin reflecting off the metal.
Russian Victor asked, “Where does he come from? Is he one of their projects?”
Joe stepped back up to the controls of the IDTP and translated the Abominator symbols to the degree he could, “It’s difficult to say, but it seems to be the future. After the year 2000, but before 2050. The Abominators’ writing is confusing and I don’t read it very well. The control system registers him as an Abominator, but also as a servant. There’s something I’m not understanding. He can’t be both.”
From the distance, something exploded. It wasn’t close. Still, Joe felt it in his feet and heard the boom through the Rocket suit. It didn’t end with the boom. A series of crashes followed. Without being there, he couldn’t know, but he could imagine rooms in the base collapsing.
Larry turned toward the noise, “I don’t know what it is, but it’s not natural.”
Alexis shook his helmet, “I think it must be our people. They were in another portion of the base. I think they were attacked.”
Joe wanted to ask more details, but he couldn’t. The Xiniti communicator he’d installed in his helmet had begun to beep for his attention. The Soviets must have triggered something.
Those fools.
As I flew, Cassie contacted Jaclyn and I, “After you help Shift, get back here. We’re okay, but the stupid monkeys and their boxes reformed already.”
She live-streamed a snippet of her firing at the weird, sludgy “monkeys” while Rachel, stumbling but walking, phased in and out, cutting any monkeys that got close to Cassie into pieces with her axe. Cassie focused her attention on the creatures that weren’t close.
They looked like they’d be okay for now, but the way the monkeys reformed, they’d be outnumbered sooner than I wanted to imagine. A little damage to their suits and exposure to the wrong Abominator device had all the wrong kind of potential.
Victor had been there for years and while I wanted to attribute his current mental state to years of isolation, I couldn’t know it. I could know though, that he’d managed to connect to the Abominator lab’s systems.
If he were somehow uninfluenced by them, it wasn’t for lack of opportunity.
For all I knew, he’d been there before the original League showed up, ready and waiting.
We had to end this soon. The distraction of going between the two scenes wasn’t going to help me help them.
As if to illustrate that point, Marcus’ feed showed Victor’s hand reaching back toward Marcus, coming in fast and with more strength than he’d used before. As he hit, Marcus yelped over our connection.
His body thinned and slid out of the spot where Victor hit, but dark liquid remained on Victor’s fingers.
“I’m okay, but that hurt,” Marcus said over our implant connection.
Victor held up his hand, staring at the dark flecks on his fingers that had been liquid and had dried in the thin lunar atmosphere.
“I’m getting closer,” Victor said, the rumble of his voice, carrying into Marcus’ hearing through his body.
Victor said over a public channel our Xiniti implants monitored, “I sense you coming. You’ll want to hurry or be more stealthy.”
Even with the Rocket suit’s sensors, I couldn’t see him in detail, but my HUD showed him as a dot on the peak of the mountain ahead of me. Better, Jaclyn was closer, running up the bottom of the slope with every step throwing grey dust through the air behind her for the mystification of future astronauts.
Then came a visible purple flash around Victor’s dot on the slope along with the stream from Marcus’ camera. They were gone.
It wasn’t instant, but close. The location device in Marcus’ suit reestablished contact with a ping and then the location flashed in my HUD along with a new view.
They stood in an empty plain of gray. It wasn’t completely flat. There were rocks and a ring in the distance around them. They were in the middle of a crater. Worse, they were 1000 miles away nearly on the other side of the Moon.
Jaclyn and I both turned even though she had to be feeling the same way I was. Even if we told the League “jet” to meet us, turned on the cloak, and flew down there, Victor had all the time in the world to kill Marcus. We had no hope of catching Victor without him doing this again.
“Ghost and Cap… Can you make it to the ship?” It would add time, but not much in the grand scheme of things. They were close.
“Maybe,” Cap said, aiming a bright, white beam at a group of monkeys.
Rachel floated to her side, axe in hand, her mouth shut, face blank without any of the playfulness she typically brought to a fight. I guessed she might be pushing her way through pain.
Over the public channel, Victor said, “You can’t catch me. I’m going to kill this one and then I’m going to grab another of you and kill you one by one until you either kill me or you’re all gone. Then I’ll go back to my master with what I know about the device and he’ll do what he will.”
Purple flashed. Victor disappeared and Marcus fell to the lunar soil, reforming into a humanoid form, looking around in case Victor reappeared.
Marcus had good instincts. Victor reappeared behind him, eyes glowing, ready to fire.
Not so much moving as reforming and aiming for Victor, Marcus changed from being a humanoid to a dark ribbon of material expanding toward Victor’s face, entering through his nose and open mouth, exiting through the eyes.
In his way, he’d moved as fast as Jaclyn but concentrated all of that force into a smaller area than she could. We’d talked about this as a possible attack in Stapledon. He’d even practiced it. We’d agreed that a situation where he might use it wasn’t likely to come up.
He withdrew from Victor’s body, remaining a ribbon, poised to dive in again if necessary—if Victor began to regenerate maybe.
Victor didn’t.
He lay on the surface of the moon, his body leaking blood or whatever fluid had replaced it, darkening the gray soil until it dried out.
Thanks to the camera on Marcus’ suit, I could see what he saw—gray mountains covered in dust surrounded where they stood, all free of greenery and life.
The stars above hung in a black sky without clouds or a hint of water.
They were on top of a mountain. The surface slanted without turning into a sheer drop. It wasn’t a cliff there, but if he ran in any direction there would be a drop into the darkness below soon enough.
The most shocking event came next. Victor didn’t attack. He stared down at Marcus, “You’re an Abominator.”
Marcus shook his head, “I’m not! Look I know they were shapeshifters, but they didn’t hesitate to reverse-engineer their genetic code to solve problems in their servants. You inserted an implant full of Abominator history in your head along with your powers, right? Check it.”
Victor’s mouth set in a hard line, “Not an implant, exactly. The Abominators made a biological equivalent. Certain… imperatives come along with it. I wish you’d said you were an Abominator because then I couldn’t fight you. That supersedes everything unless there’s an Abominator of a certain lineage to give me orders, but never mind that. You’re not an Abominator, so I have other orders to follow.”
Victor’s eyes glowed purple and beams erupted from them.
Marcus hadn’t stayed still. The moment Victor’s eyes began to increase their glow, he dove for the ground behind Victor on his left.
I couldn’t see him do it, only see the ground coming closer, followed by a moment of Marcus’ chest, and then Marcus stood behind Victor, extending his arms toward Victor’s shoulders.
Victor wasn’t just standing there, though. He turned, eyes still glowing, ready to burn Marcus down. Marcus hadn’t been standing still though. He’d gone straight for Victor’s back, coating it in a layer of himself. Victor was more than eight feet tall so there was plenty of back to work with.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t see much of anything.
Marcus hadn’t been worrying about the camera nearly as much as he’d been worried about survival. He’d left the camera pointed upward, giving us a view of the sky, its sea of darkness and unblinking stars. Thanks to the wide-angle lens, we also got a little of Victor’s back, neck, and head.
It wasn’t a bad idea. Marcus couldn’t beat Victor in a straight fight. He’d have a hard time bringing his full strength to bear.
Of course, it wasn’t perfect. If Victor could think of something that would kill Marcus but not himself, he could teleport the two of them straight into it.
Victor could also reach toward his back, much as he might if he were trying to scratch it. He might even be able to grab pieces of Marcus and rip them away from the rest of Marcus’ body if he moved too quickly for Marcus to react—except he didn’t.
Every time he reached a spot where Marcus was, Marcus thinned out and Victor’s fingers went through him like water, his body slipping out of Victor’s grasp.
Victor snarled and reached out again, this time with both arms, and struck at his own back, hitting his skin while Marcus absorbed himself on either side of the spots Victor hit.
Victor kept that up for a series of ever more frantic strikes. Twisting his body around threw moon dust into what passed for the Moon’s (thin) atmosphere. The dust flew further and hung above the ground longer than I’d have expected.
Victor’s modifications from the Abominator birthing chambers didn’t include being able to turn his head 180 degrees, but he tried, firing off beams from his eyes that didn’t do anything.
They did pass over the camera and presumably into Marcus’ field of vision, prompting him to use his implant, asking, “Are you guys on your way? Because he’s going to think of something eventually. I’ve got no idea how to take him down.”
“Of course we’re coming,” Jaclyn said, “we’ll be there soon.”
She wasn’t lying. We’d started moving toward him as we watched the fight even though it hadn’t been easy. Every step Jaclyn made threatened to launch her upward. I was pretty sure she wouldn’t reach escape velocity, but it wasn’t an experiment I wanted to try, and neither did she.
After a few unnerving steps that turned to leaps, I told her, “Maybe use the anti-gravity pack to push you down again?”
“Is there a way to just have it push me down with Earth’s gravity all the time?” Jaclyn asked, her camera showing dust flying as she landed on the moon again.
“Duh,” I said, “I should have thought of that. It’s not designed to keep you on the ground, so it might act a little weird, but yes. I’ll remote in and change some settings.”
I did and she began to run toward Marcus with all the speed she’d have had on Earth.
Then I changed the settings on my own and shot into the air, flying over a massive crater toward the distant mountains where Marcus fought, hoping I’d get there in time to make a difference.
Activating my rocket pack, I flew toward them as Jaclyn raced across the ground, moving slower and more carefully than usual to avoid launching herself into the ceiling.
I’d done the same with the rockets without thought.
The Xiniti implants helped with that, implanting that skill along with all the other knowledge we had available.
As good as that was, it meant we weren’t moving as quickly as we could on Earth, giving us time to watch the inevitable.
Victor’s arm moved faster than we did, hitting Marcus in the middle of his chest and going through. With anyone else, blood and organs would have been shooting out the other side, but with Marcus it was different.
Victor’s hand exited the other side surrounded by gray strands, but no blood.
He blinked, staring as Marcus moved sideways, freeing himself from being pierced by Victor’s arm by sliding around it with Marcus’ armor doing the same.
As happy as I was that Marcus’ powers (like Jaclyn’s) worked within Victor’s purple glow, I couldn’t help but feel relief to see that his suit stayed on and moved with him.
Making an armored suit that could adjust and move with a shapeshifter whose basic form was practically liquid had been an interesting challenge. Nanotech made it easier, but not trivial. I’d learned things.
What I didn’t anticipate as part of my design was the Victor might freak out. Seeing the gray strands, he pulled back his hand to scream, “Abominator!”
His eyes were as wide as the first character in a horror movie that finds the monster. His body trembled.
That’s the point at which his right hand glowed a brighter purple tinged with white. Though I was closing, I knew he’d be able to hit Marcus long before I or one of my bots knocked him out of reach.
That’s when Jaclyn hit him. I didn’t do the math, but my gut feeling was that she hit him with everything she had and didn’t hold back. Why? Because I heard her punch hit his diaphragm. More than that, it registered in my HUD as an area of effect attack.
Victor shot backward, taking a shot at her with his glowing hand, leaving silver-white sparkles in his wake—which seemed a bit more Disney princess than I expected.
He missed. He wouldn’t have, but Jaclyn moved her head back as her fist drove him backward.
The problem with teleporting opponents is that they don’t have to keep on going in the direction you sent them. Victor disappeared, reappearing to the side of her, still flying backward with the momentum she’d given him.
This time he hit her. He didn’t hit her hard. He flipped over in the air, catching her shoulder with a finger. It couldn’t have hurt, but a purple glow surrounded her and she disappeared.
Wondering where she’d gone prompted my implant to answer. She was twenty miles away on the moon’s surface, but that’s as far as I got.
I’d fired off a few bots while flying toward Victor. They had to redirect after Jaclyn hit him and he teleported, but they hit him as Jaclyn disappeared, all three exploding, knocking him back—except the killbot.
Instead of cutting into him with monomolecular blades, he pointed his hand at it and it burned out before it reached him—which made me optimistic. He’d have ignored it if it couldn’t hurt him.
Despite the explosions from the boombots, he had enough presence of mind to teleport again, this time next to me. I saw his right hand coming and blocked with my left forearm, stopping his hand from touching me.
He grunted as he hit my arm and now that he was within a couple feet of me, I could tell that we were hurting him. A red imprint of Jaclyn’s fist swelled on his stomach, bleeding in a few spots. Red spots on the exposed skin of his face and chest might have come from being burnt, but my boombots were more likely.
I’d already started throwing a punch at him when I blocked his arm, barraging him with the sonics at the same time. At least I tried to.
Despite cringing at the sound from the sonics, his right arm flared. I’d been able to block teleports by tapping Artificer abilities the last time I fought Victor, but couldn’t feel them now.
I found myself alone in the air above the moon, aware of what was happening inside the Abominator base only because our comms were still in range and Cassie and Marcus broadcast it to our HUDs.
My first image from Cassie showed her firing her gun’s white beam at Victor, hitting him and making him screech. The beam left charred skin on his chest and arm.
His face tight and eyes wide, Victor teleported to Marcus his screech of pain turning into, “There’s Abominator in you,” and grabbing for Marcus’ shoulder. Victor’s hand shot forward with enough strength and speed that his fingers sank three inches deep into Marcus’ shoulder.
Before Marcus could turn liquid and slip out of Victor’s grip, Victor’s hand flared again and the two of them disappeared, reappearing out on the surface of the Moon.
I checked the distance. They were more than 80 miles away. Jaclyn and I might be able to make it, but realistically Marcus was on his own.
Pushing myself up and jumping to the side, I dodged another punch from Victor, who’d closed the distance in a step.
I fired off two boombots at him. Both hit, throwing him backward into blue/gray metal device shaped like a doorless refrigerator.
I didn’t want to kill him. I also couldn’t think of an obvious way to prevent it. I hadn’t brought many goobots on this mission and didn’t think they’d do much good against someone with Jaclyn’s strength.
On the other hand, I realized, it might give me time to think of something better.
I fired off a volley of goobots, watching the sticky strands expand outward and attach to the “refrigerator” and the ground three times over.
Then I slipped into the next cluster over, not because I thought it would stop him, but because it might give me a second.
Once I was out of his glow, I felt better and had a theory. I tested it by tapping into the power that Artificers used and trying to view Victor and his glowing aura.
I saw nothing, proving my theory correct.
I wasn’t blind, I could still see through my eyes and my technology, but everything within Victor’s glow was gray nothingness.
Whatever the device did, it allowed Victor to obscure himself from Artificers’ view. From how I felt while inside the glow, it might even cut Artificers off from the energy needed to power their abilities.
Why the Artificers left an artifact that allowed people to do that, I had another theory, but no time to think it through. I did know that the Abominators had harvested DNA from a captured Artificer and used it in their army of supers.
And that meant, I needed to say, “Don’t go into the glow. Your powers might stop working.”
I did, the words tumbling out of my mouth, knowing that speed could make the difference between living and dying.
I wasn’t wrong either because Victor didn’t stand still. He pushed himself up and teleported.
Rachel had been chopping monkey boxes to bits with a great axe I’d made by combining the technology in Cassie’s sword with the nanotech ceramics I used to make our armor pass as clothes.
I’d given her a purse that could transform into not only a great axe but also an electric guitar—partly because she played guitar and partly because guitars are also called axes.
It seemed funny at the time.
Seeing Victor appear next to her did not make me laugh. The sinking feeling in my gut came from the knowledge that the Cosmic Ghosts were Artificers if they’d taken a different path, meaning that Rachel’s ability to go ghostly wasn’t going to do her a bit of good.
Rachel did better than expected.
As Victor appeared, she ran, and Victor must have been off his game at the moment because his first punch missed. Unfortunately, Victor’s strength was in Jaclyn’s league while without powers Rachel was nothing more than a normal human.
She had a suit, but it couldn’t be as good as mine and still fit within the mass limit she could make intangible. I got as close as I could.
I couldn’t move fast enough to block his second punch, but I could fire off bots. I couldn’t fire off bots as fast as Victor could punch, however.
His second punch knocked her to the ground.
A status report in my HUD showed her as alive and still breathing with no reports of a breach in her suit. My bots hit him as he raised a foot to stomp on her, throwing him sideways into a block of Abominator equipment taller than he was.
He pushed himself off, rocking an object that made me think of a jagged tooth, raising his leg to try again. I was already running toward them, but I didn’t make it.
Jaclyn hit him out of nowhere, a purple blur moving at more than 300 miles per hour.
She must have aimed her fist upward because he shot into the air, flying out of the cluster toward the ceiling, head over heels, entirely out of control.
He never hit the ceiling. He disappeared, reappearing next to me and hitting me hard enough that I flew sideways into the wall, my vision going black for a second.
Though my implant informed me that technically it was closer to three-quarters of a second, any fight that included Jaclyn could change in that time.
My implant gave me a recap of what happened, showing Jaclyn rush forward and hit Victor into the air again only this time she jumped after him, grabbing his legs, using her momentum and her suit’s anti-gravity to change Victor’s direction, aiming him into a cluster of Abominator technology.
Victor might have been Jaclyn’s equal in strength, but not reflexes. He hit the equipment with a crash that I hoped wouldn’t release a technological horror. If it did, it wasn’t obvious as he pulled himself to his feet and teleported again even as Jaclyn ran to punch him again.
By that time, I’d caught up and was watching Victor disappear in real-time. When he did, I scanned my HUD, watching in all directions for movement and a purple glow.
He appeared near Marcus, moving his arm backward to load a punch.
Plan b was to use an object that the Artificers had designed to end civilizations. It wasn’t a question of whether that would be bad for us, but whether the effect would be to empower Victor or to infect us.
“Not good,” Jaclyn muttered and her hands twitched, activating a new feature of her suit, which I’d described as “essentially a gumball dispenser.”
With a hand motion, she could cause dense balls of an alien-designed alloy to roll out of her suit and land in her hands. Then she could throw it.
At that moment, I was relieved that I’d thought to factor situations with minimal gravity into the design because the balls landed in her palms as intended.
Then she threw them at the Artificer relic.
They hit it with several tons of force, all centered on a spot only a little larger than a bullet. I wouldn’t have wanted to take that hit. The Rocket suit could theoretically handle it, but with the force she generated any slight imperfection might kill me.
I could only assume the device contained no imperfections because she didn’t destroy it.
Both balls hit, throwing off cascades of sparks. To her credit, they didn’t bounce off. Both embedded themselves into the stone-like material, creating a spiderweb of cracks around them.
Whatever material the device was made of, it had imperfections now.
As the sparks flew, the device’s white glow expanded, illuminating a quarter of the room. It might have blinded us all without our suits’ ability to filter the light.
The glow now included the Starplate.
Victor had been almost impossible to see when we came into the room if not for the Moon dust on his body. He’d become almost solid after that, but in the glow of the Artificers’ strange cone, he became solid and the edges of a dome above the Starplate became visible.
I didn’t know whether the dome above the Starplate represented a force field or an area in which the Starplate negated Victor’s powers.
Either way, Victor had now begun to glow with the same white light as the cone.
I didn’t like what that implied.
Aiming at the cone, I fired off both my laser and a narrowcast sonic attack, hoping that one or the other would matter. Jaclyn, meanwhile, started throwing a series of balls at the cone.
Cassie had been firing at the monkey boxes, buying us more time, but she fired at the cone now, her hits throwing off waves of blue sparks each time. I hoped the monkeys weren’t reforming, but stopping what seemed to be a device that would supercharge Victor had a higher priority.
All of this had taken place in seconds—which matters because Victor caught my eye and accepted my offer to chat.
Sort of.
When he caught my eye, he screamed, “Free me from Rook’s control!”
Not trusting yet another shift in Victor’s attitude toward us, I shouted back, “How?”
As I asked, the dome I’d seen outlined in the cone’s white light wobbled and disappeared. Victor stood there with his mouth open, panting, a few beads of sweat rolling down his face.
He laughed and then said, “Kill me before I kill you and tell Magnus where to get full access to your device. You have the power. Kill me.”
Then the white light that had been extending outward from Victor changed color, taking on the purple of his skin. In addition, the cone’s white light and Victor’s purple glow began to flash in time with each other.
Over the last few seconds, Jaclyn had been hitting the cone with more balls, extending the spiderweb of cracks to cover half of it, some of the cracks glowing from the inside. In addition, the blue sparks began to shoot outward as far as 20 feet from the cone.
I’d only begun to think that it looked like it might explode when Cassie hit it with a beam from her gun. From experience, I recognized the highest setting, a wide, white beam that illuminated the room. The beam hit the cone, shattering it.
Burning pieces flew in all directions, some hitting the lab equipment.
Any lab equipment in its way shattered and exploded, making holes in the equipment next to it.
With the cone’s destruction, Vincent flew, heading straight for the group.
“Wait,” I shouted, “can we skip killing you?”
Landing in front of me, he said, “I have to kill you. Kill me or die!”
Then he punched me and it wasn’t a love tap. It set off error messages in my armor and threw me backward to hit Abominator lab equipment of unknown function.
Judging from the force behind that punch, it was in Jaclyn’s league. My armor wouldn’t stand up to a lot of it. If that weren’t enough, the moment I found myself within the range of Victor’s purple glow, I felt queasy.
I couldn’t name what felt wrong, but I didn’t feel like myself.
Over the comm, I asked, “Was that you?”
“Me?” Marcus shook his head, “No. I just connected.”
Victor stared at me and looked over at Rachel. Then he shouted, “I see you for what you are—avatars of the Artificers. Die!”
Then all the lights winked out as the doors on the boxes that Cassie called “psychotic monkey boxes” opened. For the record, they weren’t monkeys. They were bipedal, but they had two extra arms compared to regular monkeys. They also had tails, but that wasn’t weird.
What was weird is that they didn’t have fur. They had dark, gray skin, glistening with what I assumed to be moisture, but didn’t have to be water. My gut feeling was that it was some kind of oil.
They also didn’t have eyes, ears, noses, or anything more than vestigial heads—at best, they had head nubbins.
To the degree that they had heads, they were all mouth, mouths that expanded the head nubbin when they opened. Complete with gummy ridges, their open jaws delivered croaking noises that carried undertones that started my anti-Dominator defenses going.
I didn’t know for sure why, but from the way I flinched before my defenses kicked in, I guessed they were going for paralyzing fear.
Thanks to prior preparation, I avoided being manipulated by them, only having to deal with my internal fear. Sure, I was in armor, but I’d never seen these things before and from what my implant had said, they were dangerous even to the Xiniti.
The creepy, gray monkey things leaped from the ground, landing on the lab equipment, and jumping again, aiming toward us with a speed that barely gave me time to pull up my arms and aim and loose a salvo of bots.
Much like hand grenades, my bots weren’t dependent on my ability to aim—which was good because I didn’t have time. Between my implant and the bots’ programming, I essentially thought, “Hit the small things jumping toward me,” and the computers translated it into targets.
The result? Pretty awesome.
As much as I’d like to think that I didn’t go into heroing out of a need to feel powerful, now and then, I could enjoy the ego boost. Every one of my bots hit and every one of them turned the psychotic flesh monkey it hit into splattered monkey bits.
Out of the 33 leaping monkeys, I killed 15—almost half.
Everyone else was limited to one attack at a time—though to be fair, in Jaclyn’s case, those attacks followed each other in a blur. She took out 10 by herself. Cassie and Rachel took out the other eight while Marcus continued to hack into the Abominators’ computer logs.
You could say it was on Victor’s recommendation because all of the monkeys Jaclyn destroyed plus three of Cassie’s had been aiming for Marcus. The rest had been aiming for Cassie or me.
Her blur of destruction left Jaclyn standing near Marcus amid a cluster of Abominator tech and money splatter, “I’ll protect Shift. See if you can take out Victor.”
I couldn’t argue with her battle plan. Victor was the problem. Everything he threw at us would just be his weapons. Like her, I didn’t doubt that there would be more.
I wasn’t wrong. As she said it, the monkey boxes flashed and 33 more monkeys leaped out toward us.
Eyes glowing, they began to leap for us, but this time I was better. I fired as soon as their eyes appeared in the darkness, hitting eleven with the initial salvo, the bots exploding as they hit.
It wasn’t luck either. I tried to do that.
I had a few hundred bots while Victor had infinite monkeys. If we took out the boxes, we’d only have to fight a finite number of monkeys, turning it into a fight we could win.
Beams of white-hot energy from Cassie’s gun wiped out most of the rest of the monkeys, leaving only a few for Jaclyn and Rachel—but mostly Jaclyn.
“Nice work with the boxes,” Cassie said over the comm. “I only got one. If I wanted more, I’d have to shoot through things.”
“I hope we took them out,” I said, zooming in on the shattered boxes.
Between the rounded edges and light gray color, they reminded me of iPhones. While I didn’t think it would be above Steve Jobs to copy Abominator tech, it seemed unlikely.
Zooming in further showed me the edges of one of the boxes that I’d exploded. In the Rocket suit’s HUD, the composite sensor view showed not only that the edges had a red tinge, but that they were hotter than the material next to them.
I couldn’t be sure from the visuals alone, but I thought the box was growing back. Noticing a crack glow red and then disappear confirmed that thought.
“The boxes are growing back, but the more pieces that they’re in, the longer we’ve got,” I said and ran forward, using my laser to cut the nearest untouched boxes in two and firing off more bots to blow up the others.
With any luck, Marcus would get the time he needed. As for myself, I could serve him best by getting Victor’s attention, “Hey, you don’t have to throw monkeys at us. We could talk. I know I’ve got a connection to the Artificers, but I don’t work for them.”
Victor screamed. If he thought what he said made sense, he was wrong. It could have passed as the scream of someone being tortured, but I couldn’t pick out a single word in the raw, throaty gasps and sobs.
If it stopped there, it would have been bad enough, but it didn’t. The artifact in the cluster next to him began to glow white. Blue sparks arced across its cone-shaped body.
Since releasing psychotic monkeys hadn’t solved the problem, he’d gone to plan b.
Cassie didn’t hesitate to respond, treating a conversation with a time traveler (I guess) trapped on the Moon like a normal thing.
“We need to get into the equipment in this room. Someone’s shut off access and I’m assuming it’s you.”
Victor eyed her, “Who sent you?”
Furrowing her brow, Cassie said, “Sent us? No one. We’re here on our own.”
Victor scowled, “No one flies to the Moon for fun. You came here for a reason. Who sent you? Was it Rook? One of the others? The Dominators? The Cabal? Who is it?”
Cassie glanced over at me, but said, “No one. We’re here on our own.”
Victor chuckled, “Sure you are. I’ve spent over 50 years here and no one’s here for themselves. They may not know it, but they’re here serving one faction or another.”
He sneered up at her, “Red Lightning used the Cabal’s potions. Russian Victory used a Dominator code phrase. I don’t think he even knew it. The last visitors were the True, but they didn’t know me. Rook warped them. He corrupted them just like he corrupted me.”
“Uh huh,” Jaclyn said over the comm. She didn’t have to say more. Her tone said, “He’s nuts.”
I didn’t try to argue, but he wasn’t completely wrong either. Red Lighting did use the Cabal’s potions, but Victor had no way of knowing he wasn’t in the Cabal. Russian Victory probably did get exposed to the Dominators. Grandpa told me that the Mentalist had to do something to Russian Victory’s head. I’d assumed that it had been to reverse Soviet brainwashing, but Dominator modification made just as much sense or more.
As for Rook, I knew it was true. I’d seen Rook use Dominator commands on him. Victor wasn’t wrong about what he’d seen, but the conclusion that factions in the Nine controlled everyone seemed paranoid.
I had my doubts that I’d be able to argue him out if it. If he’d spent 50 years making up his paranoid universe, I didn’t think I’d be able to talk him out of it in a few minutes.
Part of me wished Daniel had come along, but whatever Abominator design Victor had used on himself had to have included mental defenses. Daniel could easily have found himself in the same boat as the rest of us.
We might have to trick Victor into it, but I didn’t know how. If I listened to him, maybe I’d be able to come up with something that fit into his delusions.
“Hey,” I said, “how did Rook corrupt you?”
Victor turned to stare at me, “He made me impure. He corrupted me. He controlled me!”
Transparent spit flew from his mouth, disappearing as it hit the edge of the Starplate, just like his purple energy blast. Was his spit an energy blast?
Over the comm, Jaclyn asked, “Do you have a plan?”
“Not really,” I said, watching Victor. “I’m fishing for something I can use.”
Marcus had been moving the entire time we talked with Victor, landing next to the first cluster of Abominator machines, “If you can distract him, I’m going to hack into their network.”
He’d mentioned that his Xiniti implant had directions for doing it, he might as well. Besides, he’d majored in computer science in college. Even with my nagging feeling that it should be me, he might well be the best qualified between the two of us.
I said, “Go for it.”
Rachel said, “Keep him talking. I’ll help.”
Over the PA, I said, “How does Rook control you? From what I’ve seen, you’re more powerful than he is.”
He started sobbing, big sobs, the kind where you’re almost embarrassed to be watching, maybe especially so when you’re about to screw the guy over. If the guy needed anything, he needed a therapist.
He also needed all of the Abominator modifications removed from his body, but that was far out of my reach.
Then Victor’s sobbing stopped and he started screaming, “I’m nothing more than a tool! I can only do what they tell me. I have to stay. I can’t leave until I come back with it. That’s all that matters. Only I can find it here, so I have to stay. I can leave, but I can’t make myself do it.”
He pounded what appeared to be empty air at the edge of the Starplate, generating purple lightning and a lot of it with every hit. The light illuminated the room.
My implant warned me that based on Xiniti battles with Abominator servants, the purple lightning might throw objects out of phase and into other universes. I might have scoffed at that except that I’d built cross-dimensional positioning systems into the suits and mine was throwing up errors every time Victor hit whatever invisible barrier the Starplate had created.
Rachel, meanwhile, had floated toward Victor and said, “The Dominators did this to you.”
He dropped his arms to his side and said, “Yes,” and then stood there, doing nothing.
Over the comm, Marcus said, “It worked. I’m on their network. This is crazy. I haven’t touched anything yet, but—”
As he said that, Victor’s body glowed a brighter purple and he shouted, “What are you doing?”
At that moment, lights glowed on Abominator equipment across the room. It was less like the light in a dark room turned on and more like standing in the dark in the center of a circle of glowing eyes.
I used the Rocket suit’s sensors to see if I couldn’t make the sound clearer. When I did, I learned something.
It still didn’t make sense.
Querying my implant, I checked if it might be another language. My implant identified bits of Sumerian, a variant of pidgin Abominator used by their human servants, English, and several ancient human languages that must have been common when the Abominators were on Earth.
Translated into modern English, the mass of words was still gibberish.
I’d been told that Abominator technology came with a risk of madness because it was based on Artificer technology designed to destroy the civilizations into which it was introduced. This might be my first in-person example.
I’d also been told that the Abominators had been unusually good at minimizing the risk, so the risks from Abominator technology were generally more subtle.
This didn’t seem subtle at all.
Not having a better idea, I shouted at him through the suit’s PA, “Could you repeat that in English?”
He stopped, eyes widening, and stared at me.
“Whoa,” Marcus said, “that got a reaction.”
Then Victor shouted, “You! You’re the second Rocket and the second Heroes’ League.”
His voice started hoarse but became clearer as he went.
We all looked at each other. Jaclyn said, “That’s right. And who are you?”
He frowned, “Haven’t we met yet? It’s 2012. We should have met.”
Clenching his fists, he shouted, “We should have met by now! I serve the Nine. You fought me two years ago your time. Don’t you remember me? It was on the shore of Lake Michigan.”
Looking from one of us to the other, he stood there, trembling and mumbling, “I thought I went to the right timeline. They matched. I know they did. They have to know me. I can’t have wasted all of this time.”
Without taking a breath, he went back to shouting, “You know me!”
Implant to implant, Marcus said, “This guy is crazy, but do you think he can time travel? Because that’s kind of scary.”
As Marcus finished, Rachel started talking, “Of course we know you. You appeared after Higher Ground exploded.”
Over the comm, she muttered, “What’s his name?”
She’d been on Earth, but not close enough to help with that one except by offering advice.
“Purple Legionnaire,” Marcus said.
She gave him a look, “That’s a stupid name.”
Marcus threw up his hands, “It was the press.”
“I don’t know you,” Victor said, peering at her. Rachel was around three-quarters visible.
Staring in her direction, he added, “I didn’t fight you. You weren’t there. You can’t be here. You should be dead by now! Dead! Stay away from me!”
With his final shout, he became fully visible and the purple glow of his skin became brighter, pulsing as a blast of purple energy fired at Rachel.
Knowing that Victor teleported people away with that move, I began to shout at Rachel that she should duck, but didn’t get further than, “Du—” when the purple blast faded out. It had only made it as far as the edge of the Starplate, supporting the theory that he’d been trapped.
Not even flinching, Rachel said, “That’s not me. I’m not Ghostwoman. She’s been dead for years.”
Breathing deeply, Victor took two more shots before slumping over. To be fair to him, Grandma’s reputation in the superhero community during her lifetime could have been summarized by the word, “scary.”
If he’d been around since the 1950s and fought the original League, it might explain his fear. They avoided killing people, but they also didn’t play around in lethal situations. When they formed the civilian version of the Heroes’ League in the 1950s, they’d even killed a few mobsters. I didn’t remember the exact circumstances, but I’d heard the story as a kid and felt like I’d have done the same.
“Hey,” Cassie waved her arm (the one that wasn’t holding the gun) to get Victor’s attention, “have you been stuck here since the 1950s? Do you want out? If you help us, we might be able to let you out.”
Jaclyn caught her eye and muttered, “Not a good idea,” into her comm.
I couldn’t argue. The last I’d heard, Victor worked for the Nine’s inner circle these days, teleporting their people in or out to the frustration of most Defenders units. If he’d sent himself back in time, he was on a mission. It didn’t take too much imagination to guess that it might be the same as ours. He’d just been sent back to locate the device in the 1950s before we’d even be born.
This meant that if we did let Victor out, Magnus would have two Victors at his disposal until he sent the original back in time to become the questionably sane version we’d just met.
Cassie glanced back at Jaclyn, moving her hand behind her back and crossing her fingers the way you might if you were five and didn’t want your lie to count.
Victor took a deep breath, pulled himself to his full height, and said, “What do you want?”
Zooming in with the Rocket suit’s sensors, I realized something. I knew this guy. I’d last seen him while fighting Rook and other operatives of the Nine at another lab analyzing alien technology, that one on Earth.
I’d worked for a company called Higher Ground and this guy, Victor, had been my co-worker, mentor, and semi-supervisor in an internship that was an undercover mission. Victor had seemed nice enough at first.
After a little bit though, I realized he was harassing the administrative assistant. By the (explosive) end of the internship, he’d not only used her DNA (without her consent) to create Earth’s version of the True, but also used the Abominator birthing chambers to give himself an Abominator Citizen’s Mark, and a transformation into a nine-foot-tall guy with purple-tinged skin and teleportation powers.
I’m sure there’s a universe where that seems like a reasonable series of choices, but in mine, it seemed creepy and weird.
He showed up in superhero news now and then. Superfans and the press referred to him as the Purple Legionnaire which might be clever in the same universe where making that transformation seemed reasonable.
The Legionnaire name came from how he wore a breastplate and metal skirt resembling Roman soldiers.
Cassie sighed over the comm, “Hey this is weird, but Mr. Sparkles says that everything in this room is off limits. He can’t get into any of the research equipment. He says there’s someone else here with a Citizen’s Mark and whoever that is outranks him and I’ve got to turn access on again.”
Jaclyn twitched, moving her gaze around the room, taking it in more quickly than I could, “I don’t see anyone in here but us. There isn’t a leftover command from the Abominators is there?”
“I think it’s Victor,” I said. “He’s got a Citizen’s Mark and I don’t know how, but he’s here.”
“Where?” Cassie turned toward me, “Show me where.”
I send pictures to everyone. The first showed the room except with an arrow that pointed down toward the Starplate. The second showed the zoomed-in version of Victor as a dust-covered outline of himself.
“Crap,” Cassie peered in his direction, “I remember that guy. Why isn’t he moving?”
“I don’t know,” I said, watching in case he did.
He didn’t.
“Weirder yet,” Marcus said, “did you notice what he’s on? We’ve got one of those and it’s in the middle of a cluster. Do you think it’s an Artificer relic?”
“I don’t know,” I said, “but that would be bad.”
Rachel dropped to be closer to the rest of us, “I’ve seen a few of them over the past year. They might not be an Artificer thing, but they’re spread out all over the galaxy.”
“Look,” Jaclyn said, “I don’t know how it would work, but my gut feeling is that he’s trapped there. I don’t like this idea, but should we get him out if it means he can help us find the device?”
Still watching Victor, I said, “I don’t like that idea. He teleported half the team into the middle of Lake Michigan the last we fought him. Plus, Rook can force Victor to do anything he wants courtesy of the Dominators. So I don’t know what he’s doing here, but he’s got to have a mission.”
Peering in Victor’s direction, Jaclyn nodded, “I remember the teleports. I knew it couldn’t be simple, but I thought we needed to ask the question because we might not have another option.”
Marcus started floating in not only Victor’s direction but over the clusters of equipment, “We need to do something. I’m not going to go up to the guy, but my implant has directions for hacking into Abominator computers. I’m thinking I might get something out of the first cluster.”
“Worth a shot,” Cassie pointed her gun in Victor’s direction.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Jaclyn dropped to the ground where her speed and strength would help, landing a few feet from the first cluster. “Think about it. How did the moon dust get on Victor? There’s no wind. What blew it into the air?”
She had a point. I didn’t have an answer, but there shouldn’t have been dust on Victor unless someone kicked it up. And who’d know how to trap Victor with a Starplate? I had theories, but I’d never used it for something like that.
Even more confusing, we’d only seen evidence of Rook’s people in addition to the visits by the original League in the 60s or the Russians in the 80s. In theory, Rook’s people should be allies to Victor. If they trapped him, something had to be very wrong. But could they operate the Starplate? I doubted it.
As all that rolled through my brain, I noticed a new thing. Victor moved. Dust fell and he turned to look at us. Then he started shouting—or so I assumed. His mouth opened and closed with the kind of regularity you expect to see when someone’s chewing you out. Plus, his eyes were wide open and staring at us, veins popping, bits of glowing energy sparking on his skin.
Thanks to the atmosphere, I could hear him making noise, but I couldn’t understand it. Though I might have understood him better if I opened my helmet, I did not plan to do that.
I couldn’t rule out the possibility that some were literally in our basement or one of our storage rooms. The original team confiscated a lot of technology from supervillains that they didn’t feel comfortable handing over to the government.
I also hadn’t forgotten that Yoselin’s father and Russian Victory had also brought some home from the Moon.
I’d always assumed it had been Abominator tech, but seeing the room, it could have been Artificer tech. There were enough empty spots to be nervous about.
“Hey,” Cassie pointed her gun at one of the clusters, “there’s one of the psycho monkey boxes.”
From the example my implant showed me, she wasn’t wrong. The box was roughly three feet tall and had rounded edges and no rivets or hinges. The only part of it that wasn’t completely smooth was an indented line that ran around the front.
Pressing it might let out what was inside, but given the alien tech, those of us with implants might be able to open it with a thought.
As that idea came into my head, my implant dumped data into my brain indicating that yes there was a publicly accessible “open” command and that I could use it any time I wanted. There weren’t any other publicly accessible commands especially not the ones I wanted, such as telling the monkey to go back inside and shut the door or self-destruct.
Jaclyn, who must have gone through the same infodump, waved her hand to get our attention, “Anyone can open the box. Check your implant and don’t do it. Don’t touch them.”
Touch them? I’d checked with my implant and I must have missed it, but they opened automatically with any kind of touch.
“That’s not all,” Marcus said, “I see at least five more.”
Cassie shook her head, “There are 33. Remember the Citizen’s Mark? Between my built-in Abominator ID card and Mr. Sparkles’ direct-to-my-brain HUD, I’ve got access to almost everything in this place.”
Rachel floated upward, likely for a better view, asking, “Almost everything? What are we looking at? I know it’s a lab, but is it more than lab equipment and 33 psycho monkeys?”
Nodding, Cassie said, “It isn’t much more than that. Do you want me to run over everything? I forgot for a second that you don’t have an implant.”
Rachel shook her head, “I don’t have a Xiniti implant, but the Cosmic Ghosts have their own tools. I don’t need a list, but do you know when the missing objects went missing?”
Cassie frowned, “I’ll check.”
Her expression went blank as she concentrated, but then she opened her eyes and looked up, “That wasn’t what I expected. I assumed that most of the Artificer devices had been taken by the original League or the Russians, but they weren’t. The Abominators took most of them when they evacuated. The Russians got a few. The League didn’t take much at all.”
“Oh,” I said, “that’s good. I was half expecting to discover that dozens of species killing traps had been placed deep in the Kremlin’s vaults, but I guess there are only a few.”
Cassie laughed, “It’s better than that. The Abominators only left the stuff they’d already investigated, disarmed, and understood. So the Russians didn’t get any traps at all–unless the Abominators missed them.”
“That’s good news, maybe,” I said.
Rachel continued to look over the room as we talked, “Cap, your gun said that we might be able to detect the device from something in this room. Where do we go next?”
“Duh,” Cassie shook her head, “Maybe we should be working on the entire point of being here? I’ll ask Mr. Sparkles.”
While Cassie concentrated, Rachel turned to me, “Do you sense anything? The Ghosts have been trying to teach me their way of sensing things which I can kind of do, but not like they can—just like I’m beginning to get the hang of interstellar flight, but I still need help. They say I’ll get it in a thousand years.”
I laughed, “I’ve heard the same line. I’ll take a shot at it.”
Pulling energy from whatever source the Artificers used, I applied it to sensing around myself, not knowing what I was looking for, and hoping the Abominators didn’t have any defenses that would be triggered.
In return, I saw more than I’d ever seen in the real world using Artificer senses—which in the grand scheme of things still wasn’t much.
It was the same scene as before: a big room with clusters of equipment circled different spots, most of which were empty. Using the sense that I’d been learning from Kee, I saw shadows in the empty spots. In some cases, I could almost see devices, none of which I recognized.
In the spots where the Artificer device hadn’t been taken, the shadows held a hint of light, the smallest of glows. They were spiderwebs hit by light that made it through a crack under the door.
One, however, held more than that.
It was more of a medium-small glow, but it came from the middle of a cluster. The shadows obscured whatever was there, so I dropped Artificer sight and zoomed in with the Rocket suit’s sensors.
I recognized the artifact. It was a silver and black disc that was ten feet wide. I had one just like it sitting in HQ. I’d jokingly called it the Starplate because it was flat and could send someone to other worlds or even universes provided I had the coordinates.
Between my grandfather’s notes and my guesses, I’d figured out how to use it. Beyond that, I could see a figure on the Starplate, but not well. Roughly the shape of a man, it didn’t move. Moon dust had settled on it, helping outline the transparent shape.
Marcus shook his head, “That does not look good. I hope whatever did it is gone. Hey, Accelerando, any idea what killed them?”
Shooting him a look, Jaclyn said, “I’m training to be a doctor, not a forensic pathologist. I have no idea. Without an internship in alien autopsies, I can’t even guess whether it was the Abominators’ defenses or another creature.”
She leaned forward to inspect the bodies anyway and her eyes glazed over as she took what had to be a massive download from her implant.
Then she shook her head, “I asked the wrong question. I used the sensors to measure how deep the blade penetrated and asked the implant for possibilities. There were a lot—creatures from other worlds, robots, weapons… Too many. A galaxy full of options. Then I asked for Artificer-related options. There are a lot of genetically engineered creatures, but only one might survive on the Moon this long.”
Then, for lack of a better word, she sent us a link. It wasn’t to the web—it was to our Xiniti implants’ internal libraries.
All of our faces went slack as we absorbed the new information. On more than one world, the Xiniti documented boxes the Artificers left. Empty until opened, the boxes formed a composite being with both biological and mechanical components. Roughly the size and shape of a small monkey, the creature would leap out when the door opened, killing any thinking creatures and destroying property until something destroyed it.
Their weakness, if it counted as one, was their metabolism. Provided they had enough food and water, they could survive in almost any environment, but without it, they had to return to their boxes or die in maybe three hours.
“Huh,” I said.
Rachel glanced at me, “What did you get? I don’t have an implant.”
“Sorry,” Jaclyn said, “do the Ghosts have a name for killer cybernetic monkeys that materialize in Artificer boxes?”
Rachel checked in all directions, “Those little bastards? I hate those guys. I went to a planet once where they ate everything living and then each other.”
Marcus looked up from the bodies, “What did you do then?”
She shrugged, “The Ghosts chucked the boxes into the nearest star. I don’t know if it destroyed them, but not a lot of people will be able to go looking for them, much less get one out.”
I looked around the group, “We keep on going, right?”
Marcus grinned under his faceplate, “Don’t open any boxes and we’ll be fine.”
Jaclyn shot a glance at Cassie, “Cap?”
Cassie rolled her eyes, “I’ll be shooting any box that looks funny at me.”
Glancing over at me, Jaclyn said, “I worry that someone else will open the box.”
Standing amid the curved walls, random openings, and uneven space of the hallway, I said, “Me too, but I don’t know who that would be. Everyone seems to be dead so far. That might turn out to be good news.”
Everyone laughed, but I pegged it more as a relief of tension than an appreciation of humor. I hadn’t been trying for a joke.
We kept on walking, following the glow of the overhead lights and watching for killer monkeys to jump out of the walls. With the clutter of pipes, splatters of superconducting material spreading out across sections of the walls, and extended ridges that contained unknown infrastructure for the building, it took time.
More than thirty minutes later, we’d walked into a big room that struck me as both cluttered and empty at the same time. Much like the hallway and hangar, equipment covered the walls, extending on to the floor and even the ceiling and spreading out to connect a spider’s web of cables to one machine or another.
At the same time, some spots on both the floor and the walls were empty. Something had been there, hanging cables and chunks of missing floor testified that someone wanted more than one machine enough to take part of the floor with it.
Examining more closely made me aware of another pattern. The machines on the floor were arranged in clusters around a central point or more than one. I recognized a few machines between one cluster and the next, my implant naming them. Even given my familiarity with the Alliance’s more current alien technology, I didn’t know their purpose on sight.
With my implant’s help though, I began to understand what I saw. The devices’ purposes were divided between a few different priorities. First of all? Interfacing Abominator technology with Artificer technology, allowing the Abominators to use the technology as if it were their own. Second, devices for analyzing that technology so they could use it. Thirdly, protective devices that prevented the Artificer’s devices from fulfilling their true purpose—infecting and destroying any species that found them and reverse-engineered them.
In many cases, the central point of the cluster, the Artificer device, was missing.
It had to be somewhere, ideally long ago taken away by the Abominators after its secrets had been discovered.
More likely, the Artificer devices were somewhere else, maybe on Earth.
Daniel might have sensed how long it had been, depending on factors I mostly didn’t know.
I looked down the hall ahead of us. The lights didn’t help much, but with our suits’ sensors, everyone would be able to see what I did. The hall went on as far as I could see, but it wasn’t straight.
It curved enough that the small changes of its path made it impossible to see anything in the hall except for the distant glow coming from the ceiling.
“Hey,” I said, addressing everyone via my comm, “it looks like Rook’s people either were here or are here and I can’t tell more from these… bootprints. It also looks like they might have used a different entrance. So we have no idea how many it is.”
I shared my pictures of the bootprints with the rest of the group.
“You know what?” Cassie floated over to look at the trail, “I’m going to see if Mr. Sparkles can check for security camera footage.”
Assuming there were security cameras, that wouldn’t be a bad idea.
Through her facemask, I could see Cassie blink and shake her head, “Turns out, yes, there are security cameras, but the gun’s not authorized to see them and the base’s AI wasn’t very nice about it.”
“Nice?” Jaclyn eyed her, “From the gun’s point of view? Your gun? The gun that revels in insulting people’s ancestry and burning things to cinders?”
Cassie shrugged, “I know, but there are appropriate forms of address based on seniority and gene line before you start insulting each other and the AI skipped all of them and went straight to the insulting—which is an insult in itself.”
“Gene line?” I peered down the hallway and checked my suit’s sensors in case the AI had mobilized the base’s defenses.
“The gene line of a device’s creator. The Abominators were partial or full clones of each other. After a certain point, they completely stopped reproducing naturally and ranked themselves based on similarity to a specific ideal individual’s DNA except they didn’t use DNA and the specific individual changed over time and by what faction of Abominator you were in… You can do a deep dive into your implants for more, but I’ve been hearing all of it from Mr. Sparkles’ side.
“He wants to teach the AI a lesson, but,” her head tilted toward the gun and her voice grew louder as if talking to a misbehaving child, “we won’t because… That’s. Not. The. Mission.”
She shook her head, “Be glad you can’t hear him.”
Jaclyn nodded, “I have heard him. I’m not arguing, but about the AI he talked to. Did it sound like it was sending out the troops?”
Cassie tilted her head, staring down the hallway, “I asked. Mr. Sparkles says that it didn’t say so, but why would it warn us? If it does, it’ll be trying for a surprise.”
Though I hadn’t realized she’d been gone, Rachel faded back into view, “I flew ahead a little bit. I’m not seeing any attackers.”
“Given the place’s age,” I said, “it might be that its defenses don’t work or maybe Rook took them out. We know he’s been here.”
Marcus glanced at the tracks, “That might not be good, but it might save us some time.”
“Yeah,” I said, “if we’re going forward regardless, we should get moving.”
“Exactly,” Jaclyn stepped inside the hallway without triggering any kind of response, “let’s get this done.”
We all floated forward, passing through the curving passage—which was not the only strange thing about it. It split off in literally, all directions at random points throughout the walk.
Holes sloped downward alongside the passage, some up, others down or sideways, and still more twisted in a new direction even in the short distance we could see.
Given that the Abominators were shapeshifters, it made sense. Part of me wanted to ask Marcus if he felt anything, given that his DNA included sections that were at the least “inspired by” theirs, but I didn’t. He’d say something.
Still, the hallways twists and turns did not feel right. Worse, they made weird echoes for my sensors, specifically the sonic-based sensors because there was an atmosphere. My suit described it as “Earth-like” in elements and composition but also noted impurities that it could not recognize.
We didn’t even discuss taking our helmets off. I had it take samples. I could analyze them at home.
We found the first group of bodies around a sloping corner of the wall—which like every other piece of the wall wasn’t flat. Ridges, piping, and sharp, flat finger-like pieces of ceramic jutted out with no pattern I could see.
The bodies, though? They’d been cut to pieces and worse, I knew them—sort of. They were True, all of them with Tara’s face, the male or female version, all of them wearing Rook’s armor.
I didn’t love that development as logical as it might be. It made for harder fights in our future.
I also didn’t love looking at the bodies. Whatever was going on with the atmosphere, it didn’t include enough water. Intentional or not, the bodies had dried out, resembling unwrapped mummies, their shrunken, leathery skin making my stomach roll.
Whatever had done this had punctured their armor with no issue. Knowing that Rook copied both my grandfather’s and my technology when he had the chance, I wondered which version of ceramic he was using.
We stepped out of the hatch into the hangar. A thin layer of moon dust covered the floor, capturing our footprints. It wasn’t a good sign if I were hoping to find working machinery, but it might be a good sign if I were hoping that the building’s defenses were in bad shape.
Given that the base was thousands of years old and that it had opened up the doors to the hangar with no issue, I decided not to be optimistic. The universe wouldn’t be handing out that kind of favor unless it planned to collect on it with interest at the worst possible moment.
At almost the same time, another thought struck me, “Hey everybody before you start walking around, look at the ground. There’s no wind so any footprints you see won’t be disturbed by anything. We might see something useful.”
Jaclyn spoke over the comm, “You’ve all got gravity packs. Float.”
“Pretend you’re me,” Rachel said, floating above the ground. I could see the wall through her.
Cassie, who’d jumped out first said, “You might have said that earlier.”
“I didn’t think of it until now,” I said, activating my anti-gravity and floating upward.
“Whatever,” Cassie floated upward, still holding her gun. Mr. Sparkles was an Abominator relic she’d once described as looking like an accessory for Space Soldier Barbie.
She wasn’t wrong. The gun’s shimmery blue-green metal did have that vibe. The color scheme clashed with the blue in Cassie’s red, white, and blue costume, but I didn’t bring that up. I’d already moved on to the next thought.
In the background, I heard Rachel ask Cassie, “Where do we go next? I assume the ominous dark hallway ahead, but is it a straight ahead or are we heading deep into the middle of the mountain?”
Cassie said, “I’ll ask.”
While they had that conversation, I’d commanded my implant to help me identify all the footprints in the room. Then I checked on both sides of the jet. The implant noted several sets of footprints, drawing them to my attention.
The first set got out of a vehicle with the same landing gear we had—to judge from the prints in the dust. Knowing how small the list of possible candidates was, I knew that had to be the original League in the same jet. The footprints leading from that had to be Grandpa and Grandma Vander Sloot, C, Night Wolf, and the Mentalist.
That wasn’t all. Another vehicle had left marks in the dust. This one didn’t have wheels. I couldn’t know for sure, but the landing gear appeared to be a flat line like the runner of a sled except wider. Boot marks extended outward from it. The boots were wide, making me think of early space suits or maybe powered armor.
Was I seeing some unknown visitors? Could it have been Russian Victory and Yoselin’s father? Despite the sled-like tracks, it couldn’t have been Santa Claus.
Looking further behind it revealed more tracks and wheel marks that might have been a third group from the League jet. From the position, it appeared to have stopped directly behind the Russian moon sled or whatever it was.
“Rocket?” Rachel waved her hand at me, “What have you got?”
“No idea. It looks like boot and ship prints from two visits by the original team and one visit from someone else—maybe the Russians,” I held up my hands in defeat.
Rachel glanced toward the dark hallway at the end of the hangar and back to me, “Anything that looks recent?”
“I don’t have any way of telling the age, but I doubt it.” I did a quick once-over of the room to see if there were any other footprints or vehicle marks. I found none.
Cassie’s voice came over the comm, “Hey, everybody, I got the lights to turn on. All we have to do is follow them.”
We all turned toward the hallway at the end of the hangar. It was no longer dark. A hazy glow came from the top of the hallway’s arch.
Marcus peered at it, “You’d think they’d have a better lighting system. Maybe they didn’t see the same as we do?”
In that moment, everyone but Rachel downloaded information from their implants that let them know that the Abominators’ visual spectrum didn’t entirely match humans’ visual spectrum, and neither did their lighting.
Marcus shook his head, “I guess not. We should go.”
We did, floating toward the hallway which, in keeping with the idea that the alien architect may have been high all the time, the arch of the hallway did not stay in the center. It moved from one side to another with no pattern.
The moon dust became thinner near the hallway, but not before I noticed a final set of footprints. These weren’t human and I knew them. They were made by powered armor and I recognized the design—Rook’s. If I were correct, it was reminiscent of a bird’s claw, the kind used by Rook’s minions.
The prints came out of the hallway and then went back in—so they’d come in through another entrance.
Marcus’ eyes glazed over as he absorbed the knowledge, but then he said, “Yeah. That’s got to be it. There isn’t anything else like that. I’ll head down… Well, unless there are defenses. Then we go shields up, I guess.”
We already had been because we were cloaked, but I upped the level of protection, saying, “I’d be surprised if someone else hasn’t already visited. I think I remember Rook saying he’d been to the Moon.”
Jaclyn sighed, “Great. We need to run into that psycho up here.”
She may not have been able to tell it through my suit, but I shrugged, “It sounded like he’d gotten what he wanted out of the place, but I wouldn’t be shocked if he left some surprises behind.”
Marcus slowed the jet, coming to a stop and hovering as we talked, “Looks like we’re about to find out if there are defenses. Hal, is there a dock?”
Hal’s voice sounded in my head via implant as his words appeared in my HUD.
[There is a public beacon for a hangar. Should I tell it to prepare for a landing?]
Marcus glanced over at me, but said, “Sure.”
I wasn’t confident that I wanted to trust Abominator-designed landing facilities when I wasn’t in an Abominator-designed ship. Still, I also liked the idea of keeping the League jet out of plain sight while we were there.
Besides, I couldn’t help but be curious about what kind of landing facilities the Abominators would provide.
I asked Hal, “Are you confident you can get us a landing without triggering defenses?”
[My main function was creating battle simulations. For my model to assist in fighting Abominators, my series was loaded with as much relevant data as possible including that relevant to infiltrating Abominator installations.]
Or if I translated it from polite computer speak, “Yes, you idiot.”
“Great,” I said, “go ahead.”
Marcus took us in, letting the jet drop slowly toward the ground. As he did, a hole opened up in the dusty, gray mountain ahead of us, one more than large enough for the League jet to land, and if they’d been available, large enough for the Jay and Kay to land to our right and left with no real risk of hitting other ships in the process.
The Jay and Kay weren’t the size of Alliance dreadnoughts (which they wouldn’t have sold us), but they weren’t small. They were the size of aircraft carriers.
The size of the Abominators’ hangar put them in context for me. Building a hangar large enough to hold Earth’s largest spaceships on our planet’s moon said a lot. First of all, it said that whatever this base was for, they wanted it to be close enough that Earth was easily accessible. Second, it said that they wanted it far enough away that they didn’t have to worry about the planet’s inhabitants dropping by. Third, it made me think the base was important—though I knew a Mars base also existed. If we visited there, I might have to reevaluate all of my conclusions.
If I wondered what everyone else was thinking, I didn’t have to wait to find out.
As Marcus landed the jet inside the hangar, he said, “Look at this place. It looks alien. I think it’s the most alien thing I’ve seen so far. Well, except maybe for that port that was a collection of connected asteroids. Some of the habitats inside were definitely not human.”
“K’tepolu?” Rachel leaned forward toward the window. “That place does get weird, but the Abominators are weirder. They had a section of K’tepolu. It’s not accessible to visitors. No one dares to go in, but they also don’t dare to destroy it.”
Jaclyn stared out the window nearest to her, “Something wasn’t right with these guys and I think we all know what.”
I followed her gaze to the left side of the hangar. I couldn’t argue with her. The Abominators didn’t have any attachment to making their construction symmetrical. If humans had constructed the place, the room would have been box-shaped. It might have be shaped like more than one box, but the walls would have been parallel and the ceiling and floor would have been the same distance from each other throughout the room.
The edges of this room reminded me of Escher paintings or the cover of an Emerson, Lake, and Palmer album Larry showed me once.
For one, when I looked at the edges, the first word that came to mind was serrated—which wasn’t quite right. Jagged was a better word, but that still wasn’t quite right.
For lack of the best word, all I can say is that the walls on the right or left weren’t flat at any point. In some spots, the wall curved in toward the ceiling. In other spots, the wall curved away from the ceiling, creating a passage upward or downward, sometimes both.
In some spots, the wall and the floor curved together. In others, it was so covered in equipment (which expanded upward to the ceiling and downward to the floor) that what happened to the wall could be anybody’s guess.
It wasn’t obvious what the equipment was either. Scaled tubes that writhed in the air might be for servicing vehicles, but might also be the limbs of a hidden creature.
Hal connected to our implants.
[The docking system asked if we needed to be refilled with fuel or life support. I took the liberty of saying no as our supplies are in no danger of running out.]
“Good plan,” I said. “Even if the systems are compatible, I wouldn’t trust anything in here.”
The landing gear hit the ground with a thump and we were down.
Jaclyn stood up, “If we’re going in, now’s the time. Do you know where we’re going?”
Marcus and I looked at each other. Both of us said, “No,” at the same time.
Cassie laughed, but said, “I’m not worried. The entry didn’t say much, but it sounded like it didn’t take long before things started to happen. Besides,” she added, pointing her gun forward, “Mr. Sparkles knows this place. I asked him if he’s got any idea of where to look and he has one. Lee told us that the Abominators reverse-engineered Artificer tech. If there were a connection here, it might not be in the Artificer lab, but there might be a way to detect it.”
“Wow,” I glanced in the direction she was pointing her gun. It led toward a dark hallway. “I’m not sure if that’s a great idea or a terrible one.”
Jaclyn shook her head, “I’m guessing both.”
By then, Marcus had already gone through the checklist, and all systems showed green—even those that allowed interstellar flight.
He glanced at me, “Do you want to take control?”
“If you want to fly it,” I said, “go ahead. You already got everything going.”
He grinned and grabbed the joystick, “Let’s go.”
The jet moved forward toward the airlock that led to the lake. The doors parted and then closed behind us with a clank. Then the water started to fill the room. Within a minute we were exiting the tunnel to the lake and traveling underwater, surfacing a distance from Grand Lake and erupting out of Lake Michigan.
We might have surprised tourists on their boats in the summer, but it was November. We saw a lake freighter in the distance but didn’t fly over it, choosing instead to leave Earth at the first opportunity.
We didn’t call our flight plan in, relying on the ship’s energy-absorbing force field for stealth. In the current situation, we were best off assuming that the Nine had someone in place ready to “accidentally” fire missiles on us or try to beat us to the moon if they knew we were going.
Not long after that, we left Earth’s atmosphere behind, seeing stars. Pinpricks of light in the blackness of space above the curve of the Earth never got boring. Even in the face of Travis’ death and the possibility that Magnus might soon control a weapon surpassing nuclear bombs by a wide margin, I still owned a spaceship and could fly in space whenever I wanted.
Even if circumstances didn’t lend themselves to Sunday afternoon trips around the solar system, the fact that I could was still amazing—assuming I didn’t trigger Earth’s planetary defenses—such as they were. We’d acquired a few used ships from friendly planets and secretly constructed an unknown number of hidden ships.
I used my implant to interface with our sensor systems, learning that the Jay and Kay, Earth’s best “refurbished” alien ships weren’t currently patrolling between Earth and the Moon.
They weren’t likely to detect and go after us, but it wasn’t impossible.
Cassie stood up as we neared the Moon and leaned toward the window above the dashboard, watching as the gray landscape grew closer. No secret green area of the Moon had become visible.
She asked, “Where are we going?”
“An Abominator base,” Marcus said, beating me to it.
Cassie raised an eyebrow, “Would that be a good place to hide access to a doomsday device? They were fighting the Abominators only a few years later.”
I checked the ship’s sensors for signs of the base, finding none. It wasn’t on the side of the moon we were seeing, “Technically,” I said, “they didn’t know the Abominators were still alive. If Lee did, he wasn’t telling and it would be a few years until whatever woke up the last Abominators did it.”
From behind me, Rachel said, “Thanks, Mr. Well Actually…”
Jaclyn laughed, but added, “He’s right, though. I read that entry too. I wouldn’t leave an alien superweapon there, but if you were trying to hide it from other people, it would look good in the 1950s. Almost no one could have reached the moon back then, but Lee could. The Russians looted the base in the 1960s, grabbed some Abominator tech, and I don’t know what happened after that. Grandpa told me about it. We might end up breaking into a Russian storage facility by the end of this.”
“No kidding?” Marcus began to loop around toward the Moon’s opposite side. “Grandpa didn’t tell me that story.”
“Yeah,” Jaclyn said, her voice trailing off, “Grandpa wasn’t there. He heard about it from the Rocket and didn’t know any more than that. Did he tell you anything, Rachel? Nick?”
“Not a word on that,” Rachel said. “Nick?”
Still trying to follow the sensor data, I said, “Remember Yoselin?”
“Yoselin?” Rachel frowned and then said, “Oh! Larry’s friend’s daughter. I didn’t see much of her. You played with her and you were both annoying.”
“Her father was Cuban and worked with a Russian, powered armor guy called Russian Victory–I think. They were the guys the Russians sent here. Grandpa and Larry fought them and then became friends, I guess. I don’t know any more than that, but that was the second time Grandpa visited.”
We rounded the moon then, moving from the dark side to the light. Relative to the Earth, we were on the dark side and Russia was below us, something I wanted to point out even though it didn’t matter.
The sensors distracted me. I’d set them to examine the Moon, using my implant’s extensive data on the Abominators. The sensors were showing multiple locations where there might be small amounts of Abominator alloys, but that wasn’t all. In the middle of all the small hints of the Abominators’ presence, it detected something big and dense under the surface near one of the Moon’s mountains.
Giving the data to Marcus through our implants, I said, “Go there. I think I found it.”
Hey, I thought as I walked across the main room’s concrete floor, did they say anything about clairvoyantly finding Magnus?
I tried, Daniel thought back, he’s obscured either by something Rook made or another telepath.
I considered that, Any chance you might at least be able to predict when he figures out how to use the device? He’s got some control over it, but he could get more even if he can’t get full access unless he beats us to whatever mystery spot they left it at.
I could feel Daniel consider it, I’m not sure. He’s fuzzy and the device is dangerous, but if I can come up with the right side effect, I might be able to predict that.
I stepped into the hangar. Cassie, Jaclyn, and Marcus were waiting by the jet, talking with Vaughn and Haley next to the open hatch.
Silver and cigar-shaped with small wings, the jet looked like it belonged on the cover of Popular Mechanics circa 1952.
It had probably been on the cover of Popular Mechanics within that decade. The hangar felt modern if only because it looked used. Between the hanging cables, bright lights, tanks of liquid or gasses, spare parts, and tools on the walls, it felt like every garage.
Passing a rack of spare rocket packs and a row of powered armor that wouldn’t be identified as Rocket suits, I joined the group.
“We’re only missing Rachel now,” Cassie told me.
I gave the hangar a once over through the Rocket suit’s HUD, “She might already be here for all we know, but I’m betting she’s talking to our parents. She said she was going to give them a quick call.”
Both Vaughn and Cassie laughed. Vaughn said, “That’s not going to be a quick call. She’s been gone for like a year and we just had the mushroom thing where all of our parents got evacuated… I’d be on the phone with my parents for a day after that.”
Cassie shook her head, “My mom’s been better lately, but she’d freak out if I were gone that long. After what happened to Dad plus the League’s board pretty much ordering her to let me put myself in danger, she’s been seething pretty much since he died.”
Haley stopped talking to interject, “I didn’t know the board told her that.”
Cassie shrugged, “She didn’t want to put me in danger in any way after Dad’s death. The board disagreed. So did the CIA. They had plans for me, so I went through the same super-soldier process they used on Dad. I’m pretty sure no therapists were consulted by anybody the whole time, so Mom’s and my relationship got weird.”
Jaclyn folded her arms across her chest, “She seemed angry every time I saw her. I always wondered if it was me.”
Cassie shook her head and said, “I felt like that too, sometimes, but I knew it was me.”
They laughed.
As they did, Rachel stepped into the hangar, walking up to the group and saying, “I hope you haven’t been waiting long. I called my parents and it took longer than I expected. You all went through the wringer while I was gone.”
She glanced over at Haley and then at me.
I wondered how much she’d been told. She knew about Travis, but I hadn’t told her about how Mom had to kill one of the Nine by phasing into him or that Dad’s block broke and he knew everything. I should have, but it had been busy and when I’d had a spare second, I’d wanted to decompress.
Jaclyn didn’t look at Haley, but she did take a breath, adding, “It was bad for everyone, but some of us had it worse than others. I’m glad you’re here.”
We were on the edge of going through everything she’d missed. It probably wasn’t a good idea at that moment, so I said, “Since you’re ready, I guess we should go.”
As everyone agreed and Cassie stepped toward the hatch, Haley asked me, “Can we talk for a second before you go?”
“Uh, sure,” I said, and Vaughn shrugged, “I guess I’ll go back into the main room.”
Cassie, Jaclyn, Rachel, and Marcus headed for the hatch with Marcus stopping to add, “I’ll run through the pre-flight checklist.”
Guessing that Haley would want to see my face, I absorbed my helmet and gloves into the Rocket suit.
Looking up at me, she blinked, “I wanted to insist on going along, but that’s only because I’m afraid. I know it’s irrational and I don’t want to be that kind of girlfriend, but we haven’t even had Travis’s funeral yet and we could still have anybody’s…”
I reached out and took her hand and she pulled me in despite my armor. Feeling the wetness on her cheek next to mine, I realized she was either sweating or crying, or maybe she’d been crying earlier.
“I think it might be okay to be that girlfriend right now,” I said. “I don’t think anyone would blame you.”
She pulled her head back to look at me, “It isn’t. You’re going somewhere that might be dangerous and you shouldn’t be worrying about me. I’m going to be here and responsible for anything that happens in Grand Lake. No one here should be walking on eggshells around me. We don’t have that luxury. We could be attacked by Magnus at any time. Even if all we do is help with the mushroom cleanup outside, I still don’t want them to realize what happened. We still haven’t told the media about the second Night Wolf’s death or figured out what we’re doing about the name…”
She kissed me. I kissed back, but when she pulled away, she said, “Don’t get hurt. I’ll be checking in with you.”
We held hands for a second and then she left.
Stepping into the jet, I took a look at it while checking its repair log with my implant, learning that all the damage had been repaired. In the fight where Travis died, one of the Cabal soldiers managed to go partway through the ship’s force field, damaging the hull.
Walking between the seats on the way down to the front to sit next to Marcus at the weapons console where Haley often sat, I understood. Near the end of the fight, her parents escaped in the damaged jet. Travis had died within a few seconds after it flew away.
I hoped I was doing the right thing in leaving. She’d taken on a lot.
Vaughn stopped, and frowned, “I mean, I probably can’t do much of anything up there except for throwing lightning inside the jet or my suit, but it’s still the moon. It would be cool. It’s just that the more I think about it, the more I think I’ll be a lead weight—no powers except where they could do more damage than help.”
Looking up from my screen at the table, I said, “We can think about it. It’s probably a bad idea, but if there are… I don’t know… Selenites or something up there, for all we know there might be a secretly inhabitable area. It’s not like that never happens in comics.”
“Or Nazis,” Vaughn said, shrugging.
I thought about it, “Not impossible. It would even be thematic given our grandparents’ history. That said, we should go up with the people we most need and the people most likely to survive a fight up there.”
“Easy,” Vaughn said, “that’s the space crew—Jaclyn, Marcus, Cassie, you, and Rachel.”
Haley frowned, “I wanted to go, but Vaughn’s right. They’ve all got Xiniti implants and Rachel has more experience in space than anybody.”
Sitting near Jaclyn across the table, Amy said, “I don’t know anything, but I don’t think you should wait. If anyone sensitive to Artificer technology feels what Magnus has done, it’s anybody’s guess who’s already on their way.”
Rachel waited for Amy to finish and said, “I haven’t worked with you a lot, but you’ve got good sense. Normally, I’d want to find out more, but none of these records tell us where they found Lee’s device or hid it. We do know that they went back to the moon more than once.”
Jaclyn clicked a button on the computer in front of her, “I’ll call Grandpa.”
She’d sent her monitor’s picture to the big screen on the wall. We could see it when the phone app appeared on the screen. When he picked up, she said, “Time for the first question. Should we go to the moon?”
He sighed, “I can’t say anything more, but it’s worth a look.”
I leaned toward her across the table, “Can he tell us where we should go there?”
She relayed the question and he said, “No. Sorry. Good luck.”
Then he hung up.
We all looked at each other. I said, “I guess we have to go.”
In terms of going to the moon, it was weird to consider how much thought, fear, work, and hope went into the original landings and the comparative casualness that we could take. This morning we weren’t planning to go to the moon.
Now we were preparing to go and by preparing, I mean that I told Hal, our AI to warm up the jet, logged into the door system to check on our exit to the lake, and started the preparations for take-off.
Meanwhile, those of us who were going were pulling on our costumes—which in my case meant powered armor. As I stood in my lab, letting my armor form around me, Daniel caught my attention telepathically.
My grandfather contacted me mind-to-mind while we were talking to C. He cautioned me against using prescience to find Lee’s device.
I thought back, I’d noticed that you weren’t saying very much. Is he afraid that you’ll give us too many hints too?
Daniel didn’t have to say no. I knew how he was feeling through the link. You know how telepaths and mystics that try to use clairvoyance on Lee tend to go mad?
I remembered that pretty well. Daniel had copied a little bit of what Lee did and put it in my head. The Syndicate L telepath who’d tried to break into my mind at Ray’s direction had gone into a coma afterward. I wasn’t sure if she’d ever come out of it.
In retrospect, the fact that it had worked that well should have been a clue that might share more with Lee than I realized—though it was interesting that Daniel wasn’t affected by it.
Daniel caught my train of thought in response to his question and said, All of that. My grandfather thinks that we’re all affected by Lee’s presence—you in that close association has activated potential abilities you might not have accessed otherwise. He thinks that I’m affected too, adapting to him. That’s not the reason he told me not to connect to the device.
It’s because I might be able to connect to it too, but without the right situation, whatever that is, I might not survive contact.
I thought back, I hope we find out what the right situation is before we find the device.
I felt his agreement through our connection, That’s why I’m not going along. I wish I could. On the bright side, if those of us who are still here help with the cleanup, that won’t hurt.
I thought about the city of Grand Lake. The mushroom parasite had taken over the entire city and then died all at once. Removing tons of mushroom growth would be the easy part. The people still hadn’t even had time to discover how much they’d experienced.
Meanwhile, the last bits of the Rocket suit locked into place. I started walking toward the hangar.
With a sigh, Vaughn said, “Okay. It would be easier if you guys took a more active role than telling us we’re on the right track.”
C didn’t hesitate, “The Mentalist followed the futures where we took an active role. They didn’t turn out as well as this one.”
Haley looked up from the table toward him, “This is one of the good futures?”
“I’m sorry,” he said, “but yes. We’re still wondering if we’ve given you too much help so far.”
Haley took in a breath and shook her head. I didn’t see tears, but I wouldn’t have been surprised. I let my hand brush hers and she took it—a little too tight in the first moment, but she loosened her grip.
Feeling the warmth of her hand in mine, I asked, “What can you tell us?”
With a nod, C said, “Good question. I can give you the basics. Early on in the League’s history, just as we were beginning to see the first attacks from Red Lightning’s people, Lee talked to Joe and told him that he’d lost something that he’d need help finding it and then hiding it again—”
“Wait, Grandpa,” with a small wave of her left hand, Jaclyn said, “Do you know where he hid it? Because that would save us some time and might save the world.”
C shook his head, “No. Not knowing was part of the point. We agreed beforehand that if Isaac needed to wipe our minds of that, we’d let him, but it never came to that. It was all confusing enough that he never needed to go to extra work to make it more confusing.”
Cassie laughed, “Oh good. I was worried it all might make sense.”
C snorted, “I know that’s not what you wanted to hear, but I can tell you that what we did was in the records. You’ll find it if you go to the places we visited.”
Daniel nodded, “That’s what we were planning to do. Can you tell us any more?”
“Not very much, but a little. In the files, you’ll find records of at least three different places we went. There are a few places we skipped. If you need to know anything about them, I’ll tell you what I can if it comes up. I’m sure you’re wondering why we skipped them, but it’s simple. We followed this one on and off for a few years. Sometimes it even came up in the middle of doing something else.”
C stopped, staring maybe into the past, continuing with, “Pardon me. I’m trying to remember what I can say… It all starts in the late 50s and continues through almost to Red Lightning’s death. There are a few follow-ups afterward that shouldn’t matter. Everything important was handled before Red Lightning died.”
Letting go of my hand, Haley asked, “Was anyone trying to stop you?”
Giving the group of us a long look, C said, “That’s dangerously close to things I shouldn’t tell you, but yes, there was opposition. It wasn’t anyone we’d ever seen before and we didn’t try to find out more. Even then, Isaac told us that he’d sensed that it would only make things worse for you.”
C stopped, adding, “I think that’s everything I should say for now. Do your research, and ask me questions. I’ll tell you if you’re on the right track one way or another.”
We spent the next couple of hours diving into the original Heroes’ League’s records. We’d digitized them and converted them into searchable text years ago, keeping the pictures of the pages available. Sometimes there were photos with the reports. Sometimes drawings.
Giles/Red Lighting would draw faces, devices, and locations in a realistic, almost gothic, drawing style. Both Rachel and Marcus had commented on his skill. “It’s funny,” Marcus had said, “if he’d wanted to Grandpa could have drawn comics instead of becoming a superhero… And then a supervillain.”
Captain Commando doodled silly things on his reports. The phrase “Kilroy was here” accompanied by a bald man with a long nose peering over a wall showed up more than once.
I searched on Lee, Gunther, and a few other names he’d used with the League. Half an hour later, we were looking at reports of what the group had done. Visiting Iran had turned out to be a waste of time. Lee couldn’t find anyplace where he’d lived in Sumer, including the cities, or what had then been wilderness.
No one could be surprised that things were different 4000-5000 years later.
The second trip in the series turned out to be juicier. They’d flown the jet to our moon. From the report, it seemed that they’d fought something there, but it didn’t say what.
“The moon?” Vaughn shook his head. “I’m not going to be much use, but I’d like to go.”
Nataw’s eyes widened, “That’s not good at all. I didn’t mean… Do we have to destroy them now? I don’t want to.”
Lee sighed, using his extended Abominator fingers to press the final series of buttons to turn the field off, “No. It would cause too many problems. If we destroy the Abominators, we’ll have to fly all over the galaxy to kill them all. No great loss, but it’ll attract attention from Destroy and then it’ll be a family thing and we don’t need that. Besides, I’ve already set up a species that should be able to handle them. It’ll be untraceable and look like the natural consequence of poking around where you shouldn’t.”
Pressing the last button, Lee heard a whisper of white noise as the machine stopped working. He turned around, returning to the human form he’d had before.
Meeting Nataw’s gaze, he said, “We’re not going to touch the Abominators. We’re also not going to touch the humans. I don’t know what you see when you look into the future, but I see humans that can keep up with us technologically and some can keep up with us physically.
“I never knew how it happened, but I think this is it. We let the Abominators’ converted version of our genes make it into the human population. They’re already there. Few will be able to use them, but the few that can? We’ll guide them. They’ll need a few thousand years to grow strong enough to be able to do anything. Humans shouldn’t be able to reach that age soon, not in high numbers.”
Nataw stepped off the silver and black disc, “You allowed me access to the device. In a sense, they’re my descendants. What if one of them grows enough in his understanding that he can use it?”
Lee opened his mouth, closed it, and opened it again, “They’re… They’re not you. The way Kee explained to me how its ability to identify people works, it’s not the same even if they are your clones in a sense… Shit. We need a failsafe, one that works even if I’m not on the planet to prevent them from using it.”
Nataw nodded, “You’re not technical. I’ll do it. We’re not going to be able to prevent them from sensing it when they get strong enough, but I think we can make it inaccessible with a pocket dimension. If we set up the pocket dimension so that they need you to get into it, you’ll be there to prevent them from doing anything they shouldn’t.”
Pointing at a door on the far end of the room, Lee said, “I like that idea. I want to be there to kill them if it comes to that.”
“Hmmm,” Nataw frowned, “I might be able to set up the pocket dimension so that anyone who enters at roughly the same time, no matter when they enter from the main universe.”
Lee’s smile grew, “Then I can’t miss them no matter what happens on this side of reality? I like it. I think we need to hide it so that neither of us can find it without the other. Can you do that?”
As they began to walk toward the door, footsteps tapping on the hard floor, Nataw said, “I think I can work that out too. It will still be possible to do use it a little bit, but to get full access, you’ll need the two of us.”
Present Day, Earth: Heroes’ League Headquarters
C, Jaclyn’s grandfather, sat with us at the table. He’d come after a short conversation with Jaclyn.
He didn’t wear a costume. Still tall with grey hair and dark skin, he wore a grey jacket over a button-down shirt and grey slacks. Dark glasses hid his eyes. He’d placed his white cane on the table in front of him.
Except that we’d known him for our entire lives (except Amy), he could have been any old, blind man. Of course, that wasn’t quite true. For example, a flicker of light from behind his glasses hinted at the reality. He might be blind, but the glasses allowed him to see.
He turned his head, looking around the table, “I’ve been wondering when this day would arrive and how many of you would be alive when it did.”
My mind flashed back to Travis, but he continued, “I still can’t help you as much as you’d like, but I can point you in the right direction. Early in the Heroes’ League’s history, Lee told us that he’d lost something. You know what it is by now. He helped us find it and then hide it again. I can’t tell you where it is, but if you ask me, I can tell you if you’re going in the right direction.”
Vaughn laughed, “So, twenty questions but with the fate of the world on the line?”
C smiled, “Isn’t it always? You should be used to that by now.”
Nataw smiled at him, “I wasn’t worried. I knew you’d be by eventually. It isn’t all about winning or losing. There are some things you only learn by mistake. Besides, even if they held me captive for a thousand years, what of it? What’s a thousand years? It isn’t even as if they had all of me. All I have to do is discorporate and embody myself again in this universe.
“I’m fine.”
Lee raised an eyebrow, “You’re fine? You can discorporate in the middle of that?”
Nataw frowned and looked down at the silver and black disc, “You know, now that you mention it, I can’t. I hadn’t gotten bored enough to try, but now that I am… Hmm. They’ve got me. You know, for young species, they’re quite bright. I think it’s just the right kind of adaptable. They’ve found so many of Destroy’s traps and gotten around them. I mean, not all of their traps. They absorbed a number when they were too inexperienced to realize it and I don’t think they even know it.”
Lee nodded, “It wouldn’t surprise me. They’re a little too internally competitive for a normal species. Those kinds of species flame out after a while. Remember the Tsaatz? I think they ended up eating each other by the time they were done. Destroy’s traps only needed to give them a nudge.”
His smile widening, Nataw said, “Isn’t it interesting? One species needs a nudge to destroy itself. Another takes many and still hasn’t fallen thousands of years later. And which one would you say was better, more kind, more promising?”
Lee sighed, “I don’t know. They were both on the edge. No, you know. The Tsaatz weren’t as bad. I thought they were maybe a few thousand years away from sorting themselves out, but then they discovered a cache of Destroy’s ‘gifts’ and it all fell apart.”
“I thought so too! The Abominators are broken but broken in the right way. Their internal competitiveness was balanced out by an ability to see the big picture. It looks as though they’re about to go too far and then they self-correct. It won’t last forever, but it’s fascinating. I don’t know how their story will end and I want to.”
Nataw’s voice trailed off at the end as he glanced around the room at the many bodies Lee had left on the floor. The dark fluid leaking from their wounds pooled next to them.
With a shrug, Lee said, “I’d say it ends when they come to our attention. Destroy probably loves them and might help them keep their insanity under control long enough to spread their contagion, but if they ever cause problems, Destroy will throw them out with the trash. They’re a means to an end.”
“True enough,” Nataw stopped examining the bodies with his eyes and looked up, “but I don’t think it’s that simple. I think these creatures are the seeds of Destroy’s destruction. I don’t think you can invest so much in ending life without risk—which reminds me, what are you doing with the humans?”
Shackled by human senses, Lee wondered how long he had. He could use his full self, but he’d be taking a risk, “Don’t you think I ought to get you out?”
He stepped over to the control panel next to the black and silver disc. He’d figure it out. The crevices and buttons inside them showed that the devices had been designed to make it hard for anyone but Abominators or other shapeshifters to use them.
Lee changed and a gray, five-armed form stood in his place. He was an Abominator of the line of some Abominator he’d never heard about, but he’d know if he was asked.
He always had been. If the recording devices in the room checked what happened in the past, they’d show an Abominator entering and killing the others.
Nataw walked to the edge of the disc, touching the translucent substance that kept him contained, “I suppose, but you’re doing something with the humans.”
Three of Lee’s hands molded themselves to access the disc’s controls. Lee said, “The obvious. We all had visions of the future. Mine included them on my side fighting and destroying our people. I thought I’d thought I’d be able to avoid it by siding with Destroy, but nothing changed. The future remained the same and even got worse.”
“You’re doing more than that,” Nataw said. “Your presence here changes them. The device’s presence changes them. It changes the ones you spend the most time with more.”
A shapeshifter now, Lee grew new eyes and a mouth to keep up the conversation as he worked the controls, “It does, but the Abominators you’re so impressed by are copying parts of you, converting it to work within the human genetic system and using it to power their experiments with the species. That’s how I figured out that you were here.”
“His name?” I asked, “who was that guy?”
Daniel nodded, “Constantine Doukas. He’s Greek. He appears to have been raised in one of the Cabal’s hidden colonies. The Nine had some kind of connection to that colony and he ended up fighting us, but here’s the interesting thing—the Nine have their own power impregnators. He went through one and the ability to do that appeared.”
“No shit,” Cassie pushed back from the table. “I don’t know if I told you this, but the first time I fought the Nine, the time Nick picked me up in Washington D.C., I fought another orange guy. He wasn’t the same. He was more spider-like with glowing orange legs that contained some kind of hot liquid? Think they’re related?”
“No idea,” I said, glancing over at Daniel.
Daniel raised his hands, “I didn’t get much more than what I’ve told you, but if the Nine’s got a pool of Cabal people, who knows? It’s possible.”
Looking up and down the table, Jaclyn said, “What I’m wondering is what Magnus was scared of. Didn’t he just activate the device? That worries me.”
Rachel leaned in, “That’s what I was wondering.”
“Me too,” I said. “My best guess is that since he knows about the Artificers, he’s afraid of attracting their attention with the device, but it’s possible that’s not it. Just before we went out to fight the mushroom zombies, I ended up fighting something in um… whatever in-between space Artificers and Cosmic Ghosts use. My theory is that it was him.
“I can’t say that I won that fight, but I did hurt him. So it might be that he’s afraid of me. Thing is, I mostly ran and hid because his form as an Artificer is bigger than mine.”
Vaughn made a noise that sounded like, “snerk.”
Haley shook her head while Cassie laughed.
Raising her voice above the noise, Jaclyn said, “If all we can do is look at the team’s old records, let’s start doing that. I’m going to call my grandfather in case this is something he can talk about.”
Thousands of Years Ago, Earth
Thirty-one Abominators lay on the floor, all of them dead. Every single one of them had died from being stabbed or slashed by an edged weapon.
Their grey, five-limbed, malleable bodies didn’t look much better in life than death, but the gaping holes in their bodies tipped the scales toward worse.
The dark fluids leaking from those holes didn’t help.
If it weren’t for the bodies, the room would at least have looked like a lab. Exactly what kind of lab wouldn’t have been obvious unless you were an Abominator.
To the untrained eye, it appeared to be a room full of machines and screens. Many of the machines were made with the same blue-green metal.
Lee didn’t need to be trained to recognize the machines. As a member of a species that had seen them invented again and again, he had billions of years of observational experience behind him.
He knew the look of certain eras and types of technology. The Abominators had species specific variations, of course. Their shapeshifting physiology allowed them to disregard ergonomics. Is a device you need blocked from view by another device?
No problem. Grow a foot taller and look over the device in front.
Does the device run from floor to ceiling? Still not a problem. Reach around the device in front with your arms and grow new eyes on your hands.
Despite the cluttered mess of the room, most of the machines were for analyzing genetic structures of various species and chemical compositions, translating them to a different species’ system, testing the converted version, and implanting it in a new species.
The exception to the rule and the collection of supporting machines weren’t about genetic manipulation at all.
They’d been designed to create a pocket universe and keep a multi-universal creature inside it, separate from most of itself, but still accessible for the purpose of conversation and genetic sampling.
In the middle of the blue-green machines stood a silver and black disc. This one was around ten feet wide.
It took no special insight to recognize that they’d caught someone.
A translucent dome extended from the disc. It wasn’t a physical object. The product of some system that allowed energy to act like matter as long as the power ran, it gave the contents inside a smokey, grey tint.
Inside stood a human by all appearances. In his twenties with dark brown hair, dark skin, and wearing a worn, brown robe, this human didn’t look any different from any other.
If he’d seen him in the street, Lee might have ignored him.
He didn’t that day. He knew the guy.
“Nataw, dammit. I told you not to stick around. These assholes have been looking for us for ages and you’re too trusting.”
I wouldn’t have given any thought to the man if I’d seen him on the street—brown haired, shorter than average, wearing red sweatpants and a white t-shirt that advertised a brand of pop.
I might have had a question about the sweatpants. They had stains.
Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Jaclyn and the final mobile Cabal soldier. Somewhere in the middle of our fight, she and the Cabal soldier had stopped facing off and started fighting.
He couldn’t put a finger on her, but he wasn’t slow either. He angled himself to give a sideways profile and moved enough that her hits slid across his body.
Though Jaclyn was strong enough that even her grazes would rupture a normal person’s organs and break bones, the guy grunted and went deeper into his stance.
She put up with that twice before moving to the side and punching him in the face multiple times, a cascade of blows he couldn’t dodge or defend against.
I heard his jaw crack. That was a new thing. When we’d first fought the Cabal, the only person capable of hurting them seemed to be Cassie when using her sword.
We’d had significant training since then and it had done the same for Jaclyn as everyone else.
The blows left his face bloodied, skin broken, and his jaw hung lower on the left side than the right.
It wouldn’t be long before he started to heal if he was like the rest of them. Short of cutting him with my laser or shooting him with Cassie’s gun, we didn’t have a way to stop that—and even then it was just slower.
Slow as in days instead of hours or worse, seconds.
He fell over.
Before I could even ask myself if I were willing to mutilate him, Rachel appeared, pulling something off her utility belt and wrapping what appeared to be a string around the man’s lower legs. Then she did the same to his arms.
They turned transparent, but on a gradient, becoming more solid the further away from the point where the string was wrapped around.
His body was completely solid. As he became aware of something beyond how badly his face had been hurt, he held up his arms, noticing the string. He reached for the string on his left arm with his right and vice versa.
His hands when through each other. The same thing happened with his legs and the ground.
I stepped forward toward where Rachel stood, “That’s pretty cool.”
She shook her head, “It’s not much more than futuristic handcuffs. You know how Marcus compares the Cosmic Ghosts to the Green Lantern corps? He’s not all wrong. We use these when we want to handover someone we’ve fought to the local authorities. The string fades away after a few hours, but by then they have them in custody.
“I don’t know what we’ll do with these guys, but I’ve been wrapping their limbs when they’ve gone down long enough for me to have time.”
“It is a cool idea,” I stared down at the dim white glow of each string, “Do you think the Ghosts would mind if I reverse engineered them?”
Rachel shook her head, “I can ask, but I doubt it. They don’t believe much in sharing. Besides, you need to be able to phase out in order to touch it. Even if you can, no one else on the team will be able to.”
I shrugged, “I might be able to get around it. You never know.”
Rachel eyed me, “Wait until I give the okay before you try anything. They’ve been good to me. I don’t want them to feel like I’m giving away their secrets.”
I nodded and that was all the time we had for that conversation.
Urin waved for our attention as Ruthie Shaw said, “We need to get out. Once they start coming, they keep on sending people.”
Haley crossed her arms over her chest, “Were you going to tell us more? It sounded like you might.”
Urin shook his head, “We’ll find a way to get it to you, but Zoli was the one who knew the most.”
He waved his hand, indicating the dead and damaged, “I’m going to send us all back before something else happens.”
He murmured a few words and hit his staff against the ground. In that moment, the whole scene disappeared and we found ourselves sitting around the table in HQ.
It would have felt like a dream and I might have wondered if it had even happened except that we were all in costume and all of our costumes were spattered with blood.
Noticing it, I found myself thinking about the fight, about Zoli’s death and the other dead bodies. What had we even gotten out of that?
I felt like we knew a little more, but basically Urin had told us to go ask our grandparents what they’d done with the device. Most of our grandparents were dead. The rest were probably right in believing that they couldn’t help us without consequences.
So the upshot of all those dead bodies was that we should go through the team’s records and find out what they’d done with it.
They could have texted us that.
“It’s not much,” Daniel said to the group, “but I did catch something from the orange giant’s head after he transformed back into a normal guy. He talked directly to Magnus before being sent over. He’s scared of something. The guy didn’t know what, but maybe we can find out more. I also got his name.”
The creature bellowed and all eight arms flailed, but it didn’t fall. The lightning hit and the creature’s body absorbed it.
Bits of electricity whirled around its arms before disappearing.
Still impossible to understand, the giant’s mouth opened and shrieked, but that wasn’t the attack. The attack came in the form of lightning thrown from its hands.
We were lucky that we’d been training with Vaughn for years—meaning that we were lucky that I’d designed even our most basic suits to be Faraday cages and guide the current around our bodies instead of through them.
The giant’s lightning hit Cassie, Haley, Daniel, and me. Imagined or real, I thought I felt some heat, but no hint of electricity as sparks crossed our bodies.
Jaclyn, Amy, and Rachel missed out—Rachel because she wasn’t tangible. Jaclyn and Amy weren’t targeted—Jaclyn because she was still facing off with a Cabal soldier who stood between her and the giant. Amy happened to be behind Vaughn and Cassie at that moment.
Instead, the giant had targeted Urin, Ruthie Shaw, and the remaining guards. They missed Urin because the lightning dipped into the ground before it hit him. The lightning hit Ruthie and even though she shuddered, unable to do anything else, she didn’t fall.
When the lightning stopped, she stood there gasping for breath but then stumbled forward toward the giant, sword in hand.
The guards weren’t so lucky. It might be that wearing medieval armor worked against supernatural monsters, but it wasn’t great against lightning. Three guards wearing chainmail fell to the floor after being hit. Whether they were alive or dead, I didn’t know.
Cassie pointed her gun at the giant, but at the last moment fired at one of the two Cabal soldiers running with him. She hit the soldier multiple times, burning him each time and the soldier fell forward, moaning.
And to think the guy’s intestines had only healed up in time to be shot by an alien weapon.
You might think I’d be mystified as to why Cassie changed targets. I wasn’t. I was relieved. I’d worried that the giant might be one of those guys who absorbed certain kinds of energy and then repurposed it.
You’re right, Daniel told me. She guessed the same at the last moment.
We didn’t have time to say more. Haley spoke over the comm, “Cap and Accelerando take out the Cabal soldiers. The rest of us need to concentrate on the giant.”
She wasn’t wrong, but I couldn’t do much against the giant. My mini-laser would help against the Cabal soldiers.
There were two running with the giant. Cassie had taken out one. I shot the other, concentrating on his right knee, burning it.
He stumbled, caught himself, realized who was holding the laser, and launched himself at me.
I jumped sideways, wondering if it would even matter that I tried, given his velocity as reported by my HUD.
It did matter, saving my life.
I’d moved maybe an inch out of his reach when he landed, trying to grab my arm, pull me in, and maybe crush me.
That didn’t happen. Cassie shot him in the side with her gun and he screamed, that side of his body (including his arm) burned and blackened. This was the same guy who’d jumped out of the room when I’d hit him earlier but this was worse.
He tried to run away, but whatever damage I’d done to his knee caught up with him and he fell. He didn’t even try to get up, moaning, “Leave me alone,” over and over as he lay on the ground.
I wanted to find out what was going on with Jaclyn and the final Cabal soldier, but the giant had charged toward the main group.
Cassie, Vaughn, Daniel, Haley, and I dodged to the side—which only worked because Amy had used her spear to absorb the powers of the Cabal soldier she’d stabbed.
So, when the giant charged the rest of us, Amy charged in toward him. Though a regular Cabal soldier might have been worried about being burned by the giant’s orange glow or whatever he could do with absorbed energy, Amy didn’t.
With two long steps, Amy bounded up to him, her last leap putting her fist level with the giant’s face. The hit knocked him backward twenty feet, bloodying his nose.
Her next punch made an audible crack when it hit. For a moment, I worried that she’d broken the giant’s neck.
She hadn’t. She’d broken something else. The giant fell apart, glowing orange pieces of his body falling apart, some igniting, burning, and melting like wax.
A normal-sized man lay unconscious on the floor in the middle of it all.
I stumbled sideways, realizing that Haley crouched underneath the soldier’s punch.
She didn’t stay there. Even as I realized what was happening, she was already punching back—and upward.
Hitting him in the middle of his diaphragm, she’d have killed a normal person with her strength and winded even some of the tougher supers.
He didn’t gasp for air or bend over—much—but as muscular as the Cabal’s oldest and toughest soldiers were, most of them weren’t more than a few hundred pounds, and very few had claws that could sink into marble and hang on.
This guy wasn’t one of the exceptions.
When Haley hit him, he flew backward and hit the wall while still in the air. Even for her, it was a hard punch, the kind of thing I would have expected to see out of Travis.
From the sweat and redness in her face, I could see that she felt it.
As for myself, I couldn’t think of anything better to do than aim my laser at the soldier’s legs, knowing that they’d heal, but that the Cabal’s best didn’t heal as quickly from heat and laser-based wounds.
Beyond that, I could only hope everyone else was doing their part to keep people off us.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Ruthie Shaw stand between one of the Cabal soldiers and Urin, slashing open the soldier’s guts with more speed and strength than I’d have expected out of a white-haired woman in a pink sweatshirt.
The soldier jumped backward ten feet, pulling his intestines back into his body with both hands as the skin and muscles began to knit themselves back together. He’d be back soon enough, but he’d been forced to retreat, if only for a moment. That was better than we’d ever managed the first time we’d fought the Cabal.
Meanwhile, the guy I whose legs I was burning with my laser chose not to sit there and get burned. At the same time, I can only guess that he was feeling whatever small amount of damage I was doing because he didn’t charge me.
He broke the window next to him and jumped outside.
I didn’t doubt that he’d only done it to get time to heal without being burned by a laser, but I still felt a wave of relief.
That wave of relief was bolstered when the soldier that Amy stabbed with her spear finally fell over.
She pulled it out of his chest, his arms falling away from the spear. He stared around him, glassy-eyed, but still breathing. I wasn’t sure if that meant that Amy had taken enough out of him that he was too tired to move or if he was actively dying.
Feeling like I had time, I checked around the room. There had been four of them with the orange man. Amy took down one. We and Ruthie had each forced one to retreat. Ruthie’s still held his stomach together. Where was the fourth?
I missed my HUD. I hadn’t yet had a moment where I felt comfortable losing my sight while it formed, so I hadn’t commanded it to.
A quick look around without my HUD’s assistance gave me the full picture.
The room had been full of twenty or more servants, guards, and the implied presence of disguised former Cabal members. At least six of them lay on the ground. More were simply gone. I could only guess that the disguised ex-Cabal leaders had taken their bodyguards and left us to deal with it.
As for the “missing” Cabal soldier, he wasn’t missing. Off to the side of what had been the main group of people, he stood in the middle of three bodies and an empty suit of dented plate armor, but he wasn’t going anywhere.
Jaclyn stood between him and moving closer to the few remaining people in the room. Neither of them moved, both of them watching the other.
I took advantage of the pregnant pause to command my helmet to form. After a moment of darkness, I found myself viewing the world with the Rocket suit’s familiar 360-degree vision.
Noting that the pregnant pause had not yet given birth, I congratulated myself for choosing the right time.
“Rocket,” Haley said, “the orange man’s coming back.”
Daniel frowned, “I didn’t sense anything,” but he turned toward the window he’d thrown the guy through.
Haley wasn’t wrong. The orange man loomed outside the window and stepped into the room, ducking to keep his head from hitting the top of the window frame. I expected the orange man to start a psychic scream again, but he didn’t.
The Cabal soldier who’d jumped out of the window followed him in. The other Cabal soldier’s intestines seemed to be inside again. He joined them.
Unsure why the giant orange man hadn’t started to scream, I started to ask Daniel. The man had to have a reason and Daniel had a chance of figuring it out.
Off to my right, Vaughn said, “Shit,” and threw a lightning bolt toward the orange man’s chest.
Though the scream consumed most of my mind, enough was free to notice the splatter of blood and brains and know that that could be me next.
Despite what I might have hoped, that knowledge did not give me the strength to pull my mind together and concentrate enough to resist it.
Whatever shields Daniel and his parents put in and maintained in my mind weren’t helping either. They were designed to prevent someone from breaking in. The orange man’s scream was more of a psychic electrocution.
Most poeple I could see weren’t doing much better.
Wizards didn’t apparently do much work preparing for psychic screams and neither did their servants. Wizard Zoli wasn’t the only one whose head exploded. Two of their guards died in an instant, one the same way as Zoli. Another died when a Cabal soldier punched through his chest.
The Cabal soldier who’d killed Zoli’s eyes darted around for his next target. They met mine, but moved on toward Jaclyn who stumbled forward to face him.
Through the pain, I managed to find some fear for her life, but I could barely think of anything more than that.
Then Amy’s Bloodspear crossed my view, hitting the nearest Cabal soldier in the chest. He grabbed it and tried to pull it out, but when he grabbed the dull, pitted metal, the writing on the sides glowed a brighter red.
I couldn’t be sure from this distance, but I thought I saw spikes extend into his hands. At any rate, his hands bled, even if none of it reached the marble floor.
I would have been stuck watching until one of the Cabal soldiers took my head off except that Amy wasn’t the only person unaffected.
Amid the pain of the scream, I felt Daniel’s mind through our connection. While his shield didn’t keep the scream entirely out, it dampened it to the point that he felt it only as background noise.
I would have wished that I could do the same, but I wasn’t even to that point.
I did feel that Daniel was gathering power and then felt him release it, followed by exhilaration and a moment of exhaustion.
That exhaustion might have been disastrous if he’d missed, but he hadn’t.
He’d summoned as much telekinetic force as he could muster and aimed it at the orange giant, throwing him out one of the windows. With any luck there would be a cliff on that side.
Either way, when the orange man began to tumble through the air, he must have lost his own concentration on his psychic attack.
It stopped and I could think again.
Taking a moment to check around me, I decided to figure out what I could to.
The first thing that caught my eye was that one of the Cabal soldiers who seemed to have been heading toward the soldier being absorbed by the Bloodspear.
He’d changed direction, bounding toward Daniel. I wasn’t going to be able to do much to one of those guys with a punch, but held up both arms aiming my sonic weapons at the soldier’s head, hoping to break an eardrum. I’d had success at that before.
If it didn’t work, I’d at least have an ultrasound that might interest his dentist.
Except… It did work. A gush of blood dripped down his ear. That was more than I’d expected. Those guys were practically invulnerable. I’d learned something even if it were only about this specific Cabal soldier.
In fact, I realized as he turned, I’d been successful beyond my wildest dreams, he’d stopped trying to target Daniel until he dealt with me.
In short, maybe I ought to target my own head with the sonics. Assuming I survived, whatever surgeon got me might need the picture for reconstructive surgery.
Even before I’d first targeted the soldier, I’d started the stealth suit on an additional command—assemble my laser!
The stealth suit contained enough parts to make a small one next to the sonics on my right hand. It came online as the soldier turned toward me.
For the record, I didn’t just stand there. I fired at his eyes, missing, and jumped sideways about 20 feet.
That put me toward the side of the room and away from the main group—which would have been great if I’d been into self-sacrifice, but that wasn’t the plan.
If it had been, I’d have been performing perfectly because even the laser “miss” had only been a miss in the sense of doing no real damage. The burning beam had scored his cheek, the pain confirming in his mind, I guess, that I was a major threat.
He wasn’t going to let me go. He jumped after me, landing only three feet away, well within arm’s reach.
He didn’t just reach either, he punched, arm blurring as the fist flew at me.
I tried to bend away, but I wasn’t moving fast enough except… Something heavy hit me in the side. He missed. I felt the air as his fist passed my head.
Urin dropped it into my hand. The outside felt as smooth as it looked and I felt a prickle of energy.
I considered trying to interact with it more, but I wasn’t skilled enough with anything Artificer-related to do it casually.
Looking up from it, I asked, “What is it? Do you know who made it?”
Glancing up from my hand with a frown, he said, “I was hoping for more of a reaction from it. Very well. I don’t know anything for sure, but my assumption when I got it was that either the Abominators made it or that it had been made by the Artificers and found by the Abominators. It was supposed to help find the Artificers’ creations.”
“Oh,” I looked down at it again, thinking Great, and remembering how the Artificers’ creations were designed to warp any other species that found them into wiping themselves out. Even better, they were intended to be so enticing that other races would copy them, spreading the taint further.
To be fair, Cassie had an Abominator gun and seemed okay and I had a room full of Abominator tech that so far hadn’t warped me or our grandparents, the people that had collected it.
Maybe the risk had been overstated. Maybe we’d been lucky.
“Is that it?” Rachel asked Urin and then looked around the room. “You’re giving us a rock and suggesting we ask our grandparents? Most of our grandparents are dead and the rest seem to believe that we need to do this ourselves.
“Is there anywhere we should start? One of Magnus’ former homes? Somewhere we can go?”
Jacklyn gave Rachel a nod, “That’s exactly what I was thinking. If you’re giving out hints, we could use a few more. We’ve got a whole planet to search now, maybe even Mars or the moon.”
Urin opened his mouth and let out a breath, “I’m sure we have hints, but we’ve been hiding for years now. We’re out of touch with day-to-day operations. Plus, we need to go. If we stay too long, Magnus will find us. You know who he works with. Given time, someone who doesn’t even know they’re a plant will betray you.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I’d been watching Ruthie Shaw. Even though she’d never stopped listening to the conversation, she’d been watching the room and the windows as much as any of the guards, her hand never leaving her sword. She broke from watching for attackers to say, “We need to go. This is as long as we’ve ever managed without being found with this little preparation.”
Urin’s jaw tightened, “What she says goes. Exit protocols, everyone.”
With that, all but two of the guards pulled away from the windows and closer to the tables. A man in a business suit pulled out a necklace from under his vest. A chunky gold chain, it ended in a green gem with a barely visible glow.
When the man’s hand covered it, the glow increased, growing even brighter when he began to murmur words I didn’t understand.
Loud enough to be heard over booted feet and spoken orders, Daniel said, “Armor up. Chances of a bad future just spiked.”
By Amy’s standards, it was a subtle transformation. Yes, there were voices, but they sang softly and didn’t shout. There was a red light, but it didn’t fill the room. It gave Amy a glow, without being a spotlight and the ominous black letters dancing in the air around her faded without burning themselves into anything.
Amy turned around, Bloodspear in hand, checking for enemies.
I didn’t see any, but I was going through my own, much less impressive transformation. My clothes were transforming into the most basic version of the stealth suit possible. I hadn’t brought my backpack along which meant no extra material, and even worse, no rockets.
I had thin armor, a mask over my head, and sonics. Artificial muscles came as part of the stealth suit, but they didn’t match the full version. With no working GPS, I wasn’t going to be getting a load of nanotech-installed parts to upgrade and repair mid-battle either.
A quick look showed that everyone was in the same position I was—the most minimal version of their suit. Cassie had her gun, though. I had no idea where she’d hidden it.
Turning toward Urin, I asked, “What are we facing?”
He shouted back, “Nothing! We’re sending you back.”
Ruthie Shaw held her sword in front of her, blade up, and didn’t look at me as she replied, “It changes.”
With that came a sound somewhere between breaking glass and the sizzle of electricity. Figures appeared in the room. Four of them were the familiar, muscular figures of Cabal soldiers.
By themselves, that would have been tough for us to handle with only Cassie having a gun that could hurt them. As long as Jaclyn and Amy could keep them back, Rachel, Daniel, and Vaughn had a good chance of taking them out while Haley and I could… struggle to be useful.
They weren’t alone though.
In the middle of them stood an orange, glowing being in the shape of a man—if men had eight arms. Muscled like the Cabal soldiers, he dipped his head to avoid hitting the ceiling.
In all the time I’d spent following supers, I’d never seen anyone like this guy. I didn’t have time to think about it either. Within a second or maybe less of when they appeared, Cabal soldiers were already rushing the guards, their legs throwing them forward.
Then the orange man started to scream and I realized that I couldn’t hear it through my ears only in my head. Recognizing that it was a psychic attack didn’t help me concentrate enough to move my limbs. The scream blasted through any defenses I might have had, leaving me feeling as if I were nothing but the scream.
Only ten feet from me, a Cabal soldier hit the man with the gold chain necklace, exploding his head.
Around us, reality changed.
We, and this we meant not just Uri and me, but also the rest of the team, now stood in a room with the same marble, the same forest on one side, and the same beach and ocean on the other.
In addition, new people were also in the room—guards who dressed in suits and wore guns, guards whose armor and weapons would have been at home on the cover of a Dungeons and Dragons rule book, and people with a mixture of the two styles—plate mail, a sword, and an automatic rifle for example.
It felt different too.
Most human beings have never felt the absence of air on their skin. The exceptions to that are the few people who can fly in a vacuum and those who have experienced incomplete simulations of reality.
In addition to the smell of the ocean, tropical warmth, and the coolness of the marble table that I found my hand touching, I felt air too—meaning that this was the real place I’d experienced the magical copy of—or possibly a better copy.
When I thought about it, I still couldn’t connect to GPS through my suit, but the implant did relay a list of password-protected Wifi networks which argued for a real place.
Ruthie Shaw, still wearing jeans and a pink sweatshirt stood on the edge of the group, sword in hand, and grayish blonde hair falling on her shoulders.
Stepping up to the marble table in the middle of the room, she struck it with the pommel of her sword, hitting it with a solid clank. Though no marble flew away that I could see, the divots in the marble testified that this wasn’t the first time hitting the table had been used to get attention.
Ruthie looked around the room. Satisfied that she’d gotten our attention, she said, “Let’s handle this quickly. We’re not making it obvious, but you’re in the presence of more of the Cabal’s former leadership than you can see. I called us together and though we’re not all ready to expose ourselves to you, we are willing to give you help. Urin, please tell them what you know.”
Near me, I could see Vaughn’s lip quiver as if he were considering saying something. Knowing my first thoughts about the name, I hoped he wouldn’t.
As I did, Cassie elbowed him.
Urin, who’d introduced himself to me as Uri said, “We don’t believe Magnus is in full control of the alien device as yet. We think he’d be able to do more. The problem is that of all of us, he’s the one with the greatest connection to whatever the Artificers are and he’s had thousands of years to experiment with it.
“What he lacks is any real training in using those abilities. From what I see when I look at Nick, he has as has his sister, Rachel. Even more than that, Magnus still doesn’t know how to get into the machine’s physical presence. We think you might have that information. We think your grandparents collaborated with the creature that has taken forms that you’re familiar with to hide the device.
“We assume that you know what Lee, Gunther, or whichever name he uses now truly is. We have our suspicions and won’t say them.”
Urin stuck in his pocket and fished around for something, sticking his arm further in than I thought should be physically possible—at least up to his elbow without any physical bulge appearing his pants.
“Just a second, I’ve nearly got it,” he gritted his teeth, and pushed his arm in nearly to the shoulder, his body bending and shrinking where it entered the pocket. Then he pulled out something hidden in his fist.
“Got it,” he grinned and opened his hand, revealing what might have been a flat white rock, rounded, thin, and perfect for skipping across a pond. It didn’t seem to be a rock, though. The surface wasn’t right. It could only have been a rock if the rock had been painted with a substance that filled in all the holes, making it smooth on all sides. After that, it would have been covered in a translucent substance.
“Magnus sent out people from the Cabal to find the device for years and I watched him for years. I managed to intercept this thing before it could be given to him. The courier who carried it died soon after, so Magnus never knew. I’ve never been able to make it do anything, but Magnus believed that it would help him find the device or maybe use it. I never got clarification because I went into hiding soon after.”
Urin held out the rock toward me, “You may get more out of it than I’ve been able to, but I wouldn’t depend on it entirely. Talk to your grandparents. If you know where he is, maybe talk to Gunther, but maybe don’t. I’ve never trusted him.”
I said, “I assume you’re talking about Magnus, but are you saying there are even more than that? Oh, and who are you?”
He laughed, “I’ve had many names dating back farther than I care to explain. For now, call me Uri. It’s nice to meet you finally, Nick, but let’s skip the rest of the introductions. We don’t want to waste time.
“Your friends are talking to other people right now. They’ll cover the same topics, but I wanted to meet you.”
I wanted to ask him why, but he didn’t stop talking.
“Let’s start with your question. You know about the Abominators, the aliens that your grandparents defeated. They decided that human beings had promise as servants, took some from Earth, and turned them into warriors.
“But why did they think humans held promise? I think it was because of other creatures—the beings that left bits of themselves, bits that make you and I different from most.”
Thinking back to when I’d talked to a doctor on Hideaway, a world of refugees from the Human Ascendancy, I said, “That’s not how I heard it. I was told by a doctor in the Human Ascendancy that the Abominators had captured and added in material from the Artificers.”
Uri nodded, “I think I have a wider perspective than your doctor. I was alive when the Abominators came to Earth and were already immortal. I didn’t know what I was seeing then, but I met the results of their experiments. Through them, I eventually found the Abominators’ settlement and laboratory. I saw them taking samples of us and sending the results home. I also remember the new variants they created and let loose here including the day the Abominators disappeared.”
“Oh,” I didn’t know how many years that had been but I did remember when we’d found the book that showed the device Lee had stolen from the Destroy faction. We’d also found cuneiform tablets that Cassie had been able to read through her Abominator gun—who’d presumably been lost in or soon after the era of Sumer.
The tablets had been written by Urin or so my implant said. This could well be the same guy. In his case, I’d have dropped the “n” too. It was far too close to, “Excuse me, is your name Urine?”
“Okay,” I said, “if we don’t have time to waste, my theory is that Magnus, a guy you probably know, has found the device he’s been seeking for thousands of years and now we’re either about to see him rule the world or accidentally attract the attention of ancient creatures that will destroy the Earth along with a chunk of the galaxy as collateral damage—maybe both. I don’t know if you can help us with that, but if you can, we’ll need help finding him.”
He laughed, “Ruthie told us what she told you and what she suspected you’d figured out on your own. Good, but you don’t quite have all of it.”
He looked around the room, pointing his staff where he looked, “Don’t mind me, I thought I heard something. We’re meeting with you in a place created by magic because Magnus shouldn’t be able to find us, but Magnus is powerful. He’s like you. He has a stronger connection to whatever makes us different than most people.
“When I first found him, thousands of years ago, Magnus wasn’t as strong as you are now, but he had more potential than I did. The last time I saw him, he’d grown metaphysically. I don’t know how the two of you would compare.”
“What did you think you heard,” I said, feeling my breathing increase. Less than a day ago, before going out to face the Coffeeshop Illuminati, but actually dupes of the Nine, I’d extended my Artificer senses out around me and been attacked by a creature I speculated might be Magnus.
I couldn’t guess what skills or tools he’d acquired in the thousands of years he’d lived. He might be here.
“Don’t worry about it,” Uri peered past me, “I’ve taken precautions. Even if he’s here, we have protection.”
He didn’t stop looking, but continued talking, “I don’t think he has control of whatever great machine it is, but I think he has partial control. If he had control, there would be more effects than a hum.”
“A lot of protection?” I considered expanding my Artificer senses but decided to hold off. If Magnus were nearby and searching for us, I might attract his attention.
Uri had turned away from me to check behind him. There wasn’t anything to see. It still looked like gray and white marble. The windows still showed forest and mountainous hills.
“Enough protection, but I think we should join the others. We may have to cut the meeting short, but we have something we were planning to pass on to the group of you.”
Of course, I wasn’t dumb enough to ask that question of the actual, for real, wizards when I met them—which was immediately.
I fell through the tear (or at least it felt that way), appearing in a space filled with marble. While I didn’t see the kind of pillars you’d see in a Greek temple, it felt like a place that should have them. I saw white, gray, and black marble for both the ceiling and the floor.
While the walls were also marble, they weren’t cut by stonemasons unless ancient stonemasons were more competent than I’d imagined. These walls curved outward from the floor and inward near the ceiling—more than ten feet above the ground.
Not only that, windows filled the upper two-thirds of the wall. I couldn’t remember any time I’d seen windows in an all-marble building. I didn’t know off the top of my head when see-through glass became the norm in buildings, but I felt like it had to be within the last two centuries.
What’s more, I couldn’t ignore what was outside the windows. Forested mountains filled the view on one side of the room. On the other side, forested hills gave way to beaches and then the ocean.
Where was I?
I wasn’t wearing the Rocket suit, so I couldn’t check my HUD, but I was wearing a stealth suit in the form of clothes that my implant could access. GPS came back with no answer at all.
If I had to guess where we were, I’d have guessed somewhere outside of time, maybe a pocket universe. Given what I saw at that moment, it seemed possible. For all I knew, this was the basis of the myth of Olympus.
More likely, they’d teleported us somewhere and blocked GPS. That made the most sense but on the other hand? Wizards.
They were subtle and quick to teleport you places you’d never planned to go.
One more thing worth mentioning? I was alone and I wasn’t in contact with Daniel via our short-distance telepathic link or anyone else through the comm system. The comm system couldn’t connect to anything, giving me the message I expected to see in that circumstance—“No network found.”
I considered calling upon the abilities given by the Artificer side of my heritage, but given how Artificers caused anyone who knew about them to freak out, I decided to keep them as my ace in the hole.
Better to have them, but not use them than to use them too early and find out that wizards could do a real-world equivalent to the Dungeons & Dragons “Disintegrate” spell.
For lack of a better idea, I looked around the empty room and said, “Hello? Anybody? You went to a lot of bother to bring me here. It seems a shame to leave me alone in an empty room.”
No one said anything.
That didn’t surprise me even if it was annoying.
After a minute or two, a disembodied voice said, “What are you?”
The voice didn’t ask who I was, so that was interesting. I wasn’t going to answer back, “What are you,” much less, “I know you are, but what am I?”
The second question didn’t make any sense, but it did pop into my head. Instead, I said, “I’m in the process of figuring that out. What do you think I am?”
The voice said, “I think that you’re more than a man.”
“I think so, too,” I said, “but at this point in my life I’m not much more.”
Then it was the same voice, but different because as of that moment, it became an embodied voice. The man wore a black business suit. He had light brown skin, curly, gray hair, and a curly gray beard.
He used a staff without showing any hint of a limp. As he walked across the room, I remembered feeling a presence once when a spaceship I’d been flying passed the scene of an old battle.
It had been one of Lee’s race, a member of the Destroy faction, most likely, and had been trying to scare anyone with a connection to Lee to reveal themselves. This wasn’t the same. It wasn’t uneasiness or terror, but I felt something.
Without a doubt, this man could make use of what I referred to by various names in my head, most recently, the Artificer Superhighway because the Artificers and Cosmic Ghosts used it to communicate in real-time across interstellar distances.
“You’re one of us,” the man said, “children of the gods or maybe creatures of the underworld? It’s hard to say.”
Deciding it was worth the risk, I drew on the power and Kee’s teaching about how to use it. Nothing about the man changed, but I felt more. Whatever this man had inherited from the Artificers, he didn’t have much of it. If you compared his potential to a fire, he had a small lighter.
He looked me up and down, “There’s more of them in you than there should be. That’s good. You’re not the only one.”
Rachel gave a quick grin, “I hope you’re not blaming it on me, but that’s about right. I still can’t navigate hyperspace on my own. The Cosmic Ghosts dropped me off over Earth and disappeared. I floated down from orbit on my own and as I floated down, I felt something. It wasn’t a hum. It felt more like gathering energy. Then I felt a pulse. That’s when the hum started.”
I looked at her, “I missed the pulse—actually, I missed everything but the hum.”
“It’s because I’m better than you,” she said, glancing over at me.
The team laughed, but she continued, “You’re here getting lessons over Zoom. I’ve been out there using everything they taught me to survive. That, and I don’t know if it’s true, but I’ve been getting the impression that even if the Artificers and the Cosmic Ghosts are different versions of the same species, they’re more different than humans and Neanderthals.”
She frowned, “From what Lee’s said, it sounds like the Artificers live practically forever while the Ghosts live for a long time, but not as long. I think the Ghosts specialize in what they can do, but Lee’s people seem to be able to command more power to do more things. That’s what I overheard while living with the Ghosts, but we never talked about it directly.”
Marcus leaned back in his chair and gave her a wave. Dark-skinned and wearing a hoodie showing a movie version of the X-Men, he said, “What’s living with them like? Is it anything like being in a Lantern Corps?”
Rachel tilted her head, not saying anything at first, “We spent a lot of time flying between the stars and then dropping into interstellar conflicts to convince them to stop.”
Nodding, Marcus said, “A lot like a Lantern Corps then.”
From across the table, Jaclyn said, “Let’s get back to the hum. Can you triangulate it?”
Tall and dark-skinned, Jaclyn wore a simple green shirt and black slacks. I remembered programming in those clothes, so she was wearing a stealth suit camouflaged as clothes. After today’s fight, she probably hadn’t had clothes to change into.
Rachel and I both said, “No.” As I tried to figure out how to say it was too close to feel a direction, Rachel said, “I feel it from all sides. It’s like we’re inside it.”
I added, “I tried to use my implant to track it down, but it can’t give me a direction either. I have to get farther away for it to sense a change in difference—maybe orbit, but I don’t know. The only thing I get is that the implant tells me that there are energies associated with Artificer relics.”
I looked around the group, “The best guess I have is that Magnus found Lee’s device and now he’s turned it on.”
Sitting next to Vaughn, across the table from me, Cassie shook her head. Her blond hair in a ponytail, she said, “Damn, that’s bad. It’s not a surprise, but it’s still bad.”
Vaughn nodded, “We’ve been looking for that thing for months. Knowing that it’s the Artificers’ ultimate weapon, shouldn’t we have lost by now?”
He looked around the group, “I mean seriously, you told us that Lee escaped with it and all of the Destroy faction has been searching for him ever since.”
In some ways, it was hard to believe he was the same guy who’d broken in and used the power impregnator on himself. Between the shorter hair, loss of fat, and more obvious muscles, he looked the part of a superhero these days—even if he wasn’t the tallest of us.
On the right side of the table, Haley crinkled her nose, “Maybe he doesn’t control it yet? That means that we’ve got a chance.”
She looked over at me. I wanted to grab her hand. Her brother hadn’t been dead for a day yet and we weren’t going to get a break.
“That’s what I’m hoping,” Amy replied, leaning over the table, red hair falling over her shoulders. “The North American Wizards’ Council is hosting a meeting between us and ex-Cabal leaders. They were saying a week from now, but it might be as soon as two days or ten minutes from now. They want to meet us, but they don’t want to draw Magnus’ attention. We need to be ready to go.”
Jaclyn raised an eyebrow, “Are we supposed to stay here and wait until then?”
Amy shook her head, “They’re supposed to give me a warning. If anybody, you could get away with going wherever you want and get back on time.”
“Exactly,” Vaughn said, “knock yourself out.”
Raising her hand, Jaclyn said, “I’m not talking about going shopping. I don’t want to miss a week of classes. I’m sure everyone else has things they have to do too, but if no one else leaves, I’m not going to.”
“It’s not like that,” Amy said. “Some of the most powerful wizards in the world are on the Council. If they want any of us, they can teleport us to where they are—”
As she spoke the last word, glowing tears appeared in front of each of us, pulling me forward even though I never felt my body leave my chair.
Not for the first time, I wondered if wizards might have worse social skills than engineers.
Joe restrained his response, hoping that he wasn’t grinding his teeth. The group didn’t need more right now. Something was off about Giles. He couldn’t put his finger on what. If that wasn’t enough, new people with powers were appearing.
Man-machine, of all people, had visited by his office to tell him about it. Wearing a cheap suit, the kid claimed to be starting a business that made auto parts. He couldn’t hide his nervousness, constantly checking out the window.
Like Giles, their powers appeared to be powered by a mixture of chemicals, but they didn’t fling lightning like he did. Their powers appeared to be as unpredictable as any random supervillain’s.
It didn’t surprise either Giles or himself. They’d both known that Giles found the formula in an old book Giles’ family had acquired. That book had been a copy of a copy. It said so inside, claiming that it had been translated into Latin for the ease of use by new members of the Cabal.
Either the Cabal was still out there or someone else had found another copy of the formula. It was the underlying motive behind inviting all the superheroes they knew to the mansion for New Year’s.
Tomorrow they planned to organize a response.
“I wish you’d brought it up earlier,” Joe said. “We have other things going on right now. We’d have waited to bring up the potion people if we’d known about an issue that might destroy the whole human race.”
Gunther held up his hand, “Don’t worry about it. This can wait—not forever—but it can wait a year or two. I ‘lost’ it before the human race evolved into their current form. So, it’s been a few millennia. Ordinarily, I think we could wait a few more, but here’s the problem. I felt a flicker of power recently—the kind of thing I’d feel when one of us is beginning to experiment with what we can do.”
The creature let out a sigh, “You’ve got kids. Let’s put it this way—I thought I heard a toddler trying to walk and I just remembered I left a loaded gun somewhere in the room. We should find it before he does.”
“Dammit,” Joe shook his head. “If the whole human race is descended from this friend of yours, why’d you set it so he and anyone related to him can use it?”
Gunther frowned, “I knew Nataw had come this way. I didn’t know he’d mated with anyone until after I hid the thing. It’s not as if any of you can use it. There are only a few. You’re one of them. Romy’s another, but her family has something extra.”
Thinking back, Joe couldn’t remember Gunther trying to push them together, but Gunther had mentioned knowing ancestors of his… He decided not to pursue it now.
A knock came from the hallway and Romy stepped around the corner. Between her blond hair and red dress, she could have passed for a femme fatale from a movie poster or maybe the cover of a pulp magazine.
“Romy,” he sighed, “Gunther has a new issue for the team for the new year.”
Romy shook her head, “And I thought you were sneaking away to get away from the noise. Let’s go back, drink some champagne, and deal with tomorrow’s problems tomorrow.”
Heroes’ League Headquarters, The Present Day
We sat in a room that had endured many similar meetings over the last 50+ years. We’d long ago removed the cardboard boxes full of memorabilia from the room, replaced the table with a new one, and carpeted this section of the concrete floor.
Still, air molecules might be vibrating from words spoken by any of our grandparents back in the 1950s.
Rachel and I sat next to each other at the table since we’d called the meeting. Except for having short, dark hair instead of blond, Rachel might have passed for our grandmother—Romy Vander Sloot. Unlike the rest of us, she was still in costume, wearing a simple white jumpsuit with a cartoon ghost on her chest.
She’d flown halfway across the galaxy to get here. The way she blinked her eyes made me wonder if she’d make it through the meeting without falling asleep.
Right then, she was saying, “I felt it before I touched down on Earth. There’s a low-level hum. Do any of you feel it?”
I raised my hand, saying, “For the record, I do. Anyone else?”
Further down the table, Daniel shook his head. Tall, blond, and good-looking, he was also smart, calm in a crisis, and though he wasn’t a rabbi like his grandfather, he’d probably make a decent one.
He said, “I don’t hear anything like that except secondhand through our telepathic link. I might do better once I’m less tired. I don’t know. I can tell you that the future just turned extremely volatile. Normally I can sense loosely whether what we’re doing will lead to a good or bad outcome. Right now it changes by the second. I can’t even tell whether we’ll be alive 10 minutes from now with confidence and it started maybe an hour ago—a little before Rachel reappeared.”
“I’ll know him?” Joe looked up at Gunther, mouth in a straight line, “I’m going to need more information than that.”
Gunther shook his head, “No, you won’t. You’ll need more information than that to find it, but not more when you’ve got it and need to hand it off.”
The creature’s information had always been good even if “his” true motives weren’t obvious. If this thing that Gunther lost explained what Gunther was doing on Earth, Joe could live with it. He didn’t enjoy having that hanging out there as a potential surprise.
“So…” Joe glanced out the window, watching the snow fall on the city. The kids were sleeping at their grandparents, “when would this happen? Not tonight, I hope.”
Gunther laughed, “No, but soon. I don’t want to pull you away from the party.”
Joe’s lip curled, “Since you bring that up, tonight would be fine, but I think everyone else would like some time to relax.”
Gunther grinned, “I know the latest bout with Dr. Madness got to everyone, but you have one reason to relax. Now that you’re all over the age of 30, you’re immune to Evil Beatnik’s influence.”
Joe sighed, “30 seems arbitrary. Why does it work that way?”
Gunther shrugged, “Magic. Evil Beatnik is a creature of chaos. All the rules will seem arbitrary.”
Checking his watch, Joe said, “I don’t have much time before Romy comes looking, but I’ve got a question, you’ve made references to friends before and how I’m descended from one of them. Who are they? Are they here too? Am I partially alien?”
Gunther’s smile made Joe think of the reptilian entity in the magic circle, “You’re all human—physically. We can assume the form of other creatures and so far as anyone can tell, that’s all we are. I know that I have a few weirdnesses, but they’re intentional. In a world where humans with strange powers exist, I’m just one more.”
Then Gunther stopped, frowned, and stared out the window himself, leaving Joe to wonder why.
Before Joe asked, Gunther said, “But here’s the problem, when we create a body for ourselves, we still need to connect to our core—which means that we need to create a body that can do what we can do. That means that if we have children with one of you, the potential to tap into our powers exists. You can’t live long enough, but one of you might be the right kind of accident.”
Joe laughed, “And then one of us finds your device and becomes a god?”
Gunther stopped and met Joe’s eyes, “It’s possible.”
Thinking back over the years that he’d known the creature, Joe had a hard time remembering when Gunther hadn’t been making light of the situation no matter how bad. At the very least, he’d always seemed amused. He did not seem amused at all.
“And if that happens,” Joe watched Gunther’s face for hints, “what next?”
Face impassive, Gunther said, “It depends. If he’s powerful enough to control it, then he becomes the most powerful of us and maybe kills the remaining members of my species. After that, he might as well be a god because he’ll rule this planet and as much of the universe as he cares about.
“I don’t think that’s likely. To understand how to use it, he’d need training and none of us would train him. What’s more likely is that he’d barely be able to use it and attract the attention of the remaining members of my species. The best you could hope for there is that the Live faction would come here, destroy him, and leave with the device in their care. The worst case is that the Destroy faction would appear, kill him, take the device, and use it to hunt down the Live faction and any other species with potential, starting with yours.”
“Live and Destroy,” Joe shook his head. “It’s good that they don’t hide what they’re about. You’ve told me about them before. Live wants to teach younger species and bring them up to your level over time and Destroy wants to destroy all sentient life except for your species. There was a writer who I liked. I even wrote him a couple of times as a teen and he wrote back—H.P. Lovecraft. It makes me think of his stories. They were about mad gods that would destroy humanity if they ever woke up and they might not even notice they’d done it.
“As bad as this sounds, there’s no Live faction in his work. It’s nice to know that in reality, we’ve got a better chance.”
Gunther did smile at that, but a slow smile that grew gradually wider, the kind Joe suspected many creatures had seen in their last moments.
“Yeah,” Gunther said, “and even better than the Live faction, I have plans to prevent all of that and they include you.”
Grand Lake, Michigan, December 31, 1958: Ten Minutes before Midnight
Snow fell outside. Joe watched from the seventh floor of the tallest private home in Grand Lake, wondering if it would be a blizzard. The big, white flakes meant that skiing wouldn’t be great and neither would the shoveling. He wouldn’t have to worry about either until tomorrow. Romy and he were staying over at Giles tonight anyway.
He stood waiting in the music room because Giles’ mansion had enough rooms that he could afford to devote one purely to music. A grand piano stood on one end and a pipe organ on the other. Along the walls were bookshelves filled with music, music stands, and enough instruments for a small orchestra.
Joe pulled a string on the double bass, letting the deep thump fill the room.
He probably shouldn’t have touched it. He probably shouldn’t ever touch anything in the entire place. He’d always felt that way. As a child, the rooms in Giles’ house had always felt like they were for better, wealthier people than he and his family.
It still felt that way even though they were in the new section of the mansion—Giles’ own add-on. Giles’ taste leaned toward the simple, elegant, modern style that Joe had mostly seen on television and in the interior design magazines Romy subscribed to.
From the white, wall-to-wall carpet to the outside wall that was all windows, it wasn’t a place he’d ever own even if his engineering consultancy business did take off.
For now, it was quietly supported by work from Giles’ companies. They’d been too busy fighting costumed madmen in the last few years for him to develop much of a client base—which was fine for now, but he needed to broaden the business.
In the distance, the sounds of a saxophone solo rang out. Giles had hired a big band with no idea who they were playing for. The guests were all superheroes and none in masks—which meant no business could be discussed unless it was down the hall from the ballroom.
Footsteps came from the hall behind him and Joe turned to watch Gunther step through the door. Dressed in a black tuxedo, the tall, muscular man with a blond buzzcut looked every inch the former German soldier the press said he was and not at all the multi-dimensional dragon-like creature Joe had first seen trapped in a magic circle.
In the 15 years since Joe had seen things that made him wonder if Gunther might have chosen not to break out of the circle because he knew Joe was coming.
Gunther’s smile widened and he said, “I can teach you how to play it. No charge. No special deal. I owe you for getting me out.”
Joe shook his head, “That’s what you’ve told me. What do you get out of it?”
Gunther shrugged, “I like music. Improvised music isn’t much different than fighting except that everyone gets to walk away happy. Well, unless you fucked up. Then you walk away in shame, but you’ve got motivation to practice.”
“Yeah,” Joe sighed. “I’ll think about it. What did you want to talk to me about?”
Gunther turned away from him and stared out the window. That was interesting by itself. Gunther, whatever kind of strange alien he was, wasn’t the kind of guy who stared out the window without saying anything. He was the kind of guy who kept up a never-ending stream of patter until you wanted to punch him.
Was he embarrassed?
Gunther turned away from the window and met Joe’s eyes, “I lost something.”
“Yeah,” Joe said, “this isn’t going to be something small like the keys to your car, is it? Because if it is, Giles will get you a locksmith or just buy you a new car. He’s generous during the holidays, maybe a little too generous if you ask me.”
Gunther laughed, “I know what you mean, but no. It’s not a small thing. It’s not even recent by your standards, but I know you can find it.”
Joe had never thought of himself as someone with “good instincts.” He’d always believed that everything that went right for him went that way because he worked at it. Right now, though, every part of him knew that whatever Gunther had lost, it was bad news.
He asked, “What is it? What did you lose?”
Gunther’s smile disappeared, “A weapon and some friends, but I’m not expecting you to find the friends. I lost the weapon around here.”
The guy was playing with him. It was in the creature’s nature. He knew that by now, but he still asked, “In the house?”
Gunther shook his head, “In this universe and on Earth—mostly. And I mean, strictly speaking, I lost it deliberately so that I wouldn’t be tempted to use it. The problem is though, I’ll need it eventually. I need you to find it. I know you can because a friend of mine came through here once. I set it so that he could get it back, but you’re close enough. He’s your distant ancestor. I’m going to need you to find it and then pass it on to the right person. You’ll know him. Trust me on this one.”
“Right,” Amy said. “They’re going to set something up for the end of the week. I asked why it couldn’t be sooner and it’s what you’d think. They all live in fear of Magnus. They don’t want it to be obvious that they’re going anywhere and don’t want it to be obvious that they returned. It takes time to set it all up.”
“Huh,” I remembered how far Ruthie Shaw had been from anywhere. “I knew they were on the run, but it makes me wonder how much of a risk it is to get them together.”
Amy met my eyes, “One that they’re willing to take because they’re afraid that not doing it will be worse.”
I stepped out of the Rocket suit, leaving me in a grey flight suit that reformed into jeans and a t-shirt. Having a conversation where one of us was in civilian clothes felt weird.
Then I asked, “Did they give us any limits on who could come to the meeting?”
She shook her head, “I’m sure they don’t want very many, but I think we should take people with a chance of beating Cabal soldiers and Dominators in case their precautions aren’t good enough.”
“Yeah,” I looked past her toward the door, hoping we had a private conversation. “I’m thinking you, Jaclyn, Daniel, Cassie, Haley, and me. That’ll be flexible and hopefully not too many people.”
Amy shrugged, “I can ask them, but don’t assume anything. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but wizards can be… flaky and irrational.”
I raised an eyebrow.
Her mouth quirked, “I’m not a wizard. I’m royalty with an extra helping of ‘ancestral guardian of the realm’. It’s not the same.”
“Sure,” I said, “I’m no expert on either one. I’ll believe anything you say.”
“Good,” she smiled, “you should. Now I’m going to go and talk with more flaky and irrational people.”
With that she walked out the door, leaving me alone in the room. I could hear people talking in the main room—mostly Cassie and Vaughn. They tended to be the loudest, but Camille gave them a run for their money. She might not be louder, but she wasn’t quiet and managed to fit a lot of words in.
I wasn’t quite ready to go out. After the fighting, even with the Rocket suit doing the physical work, I still felt sore. Not all of it was physical either. I’d used some of the techniques Kee had taught me. That left me metaphysically sore. I didn’t quite have words for it. I felt frayed. The nearest thing I could think of was maybe being hungover, but I didn’t have a headache.
I could think, but I didn’t quite feel all there.
What a massive detour the last few days had been. We’d started with a plan to get in touch with Magnus’ rivals in the Cabal and see if we could get them to help us find him and maybe the machine that Lee had hidden on or around Earth. We’d succeeded on that, sort of. At least we’d gotten in touch with Ruthie Shaw and she seemed to have decided we were worth trusting.
It would have been simpler if we’d been able to talk to Lee, but he didn’t seem to be available—which was disquieting. It either meant that something big was going down, or it meant that someone had captured or killed him.
On a gut level, the second one seemed unlikely given that the world still existed, but it might not be that simple.
Stifling a moment of panic, I reminded myself that I couldn’t assume anything without evidence and that he might predate our universe. He’d kept himself alive and free that whole time without me.
I decided to go online and check prices on equipment and materials for my lab. It didn’t fix anything, but I bookmarked a few items for later—whenever they felt comfortable shipping to Grand Lake.
I also checked CNN and a few other news sites. All of them were covering Grand Lake. From what I could see, we appeared to be fantastically competent—more competent than I felt at the time.
It didn’t hurt that the only footage they got came from our social media people.
If no one else, they were fantastically competent.
I sank into reading the articles and more than 30 minutes passed without being aware of anything else.
Rachel’s voice pulled me out of it, “Reading your own good press? That’s a dangerous rabbit hole to go down.”
She stood there looking like she always had, but not quite if you had eyes to see it. She wore a white, form-fitting uniform with a pistol on her right hip. A white mask hid most of her face, but not her short, dark hair.
What normal people couldn’t see was a shimmer of power around her, visible to me even without trying. I wondered what she saw in me.
As I turned to look at her, she landed on the ground, solidifying, the power dimming. She squeezed my shoulder, “What happened out there?”
It was hard to know where to start. With Hunter releasing the spores to fight us? With Major Justice complaining about the damage we’d caused while fighting the Nine?
She’d been away for months. I started with, “It’s a long story. I don’t know if you want to hear it from the beginning. The short version is that we’ve been fighting the Nine and you know how Hunter creates creatures? They got out of control. That’s what caused the most destruction, but I should tell you something first. Travis—”
There I stopped—not because of nervousness, but because I felt something and because Rachel interrupted me.
“There’s some kind of hum. I don’t hear it. I feel it. Do you?”
She met my eyes, “You do, right?”
“Yeah,” I felt it through whatever sore, aching, metaphysical part I’d been trying to ignore.
My Xiniti implant said, “Artificer energies. Most associated with newly activated Artificer creations.”
I thought back to the fight in the playground with the initial version of the mushroom zombies, trying to remember what Hunter had said that he’d done.
In that same moment, I had a flashback to talking to my grandfather in this space, gathering my thoughts to explain the logic of the design decisions I’d made. Knowing that Guardian had interned with the Heroes’ League at one point, he’d probably had the same sort of conversations except about tactics instead of design decisions.
Weird.
Shaking off that memory, I said, “I’d have to output memories from my implant to prove it, but I get the impression it wasn’t entirely Hunter’s fault. On the one hand, yes, Hunter created self-repairing and evolving creatures with his power that could have destroyed the human race without testing what would happen if he released them, but also, Major Justice seemed to be involved in pushing him to do it.
“Arete on Major Justice’s team was a Dominator. Bullet and others in the Coffeeshop Illuminati were influenced by the Nine. From what I can tell, there are a bunch of old-guard supers on the edges of things that probably need to be checked for Dominator influence. In any case, it looks to me as if the Nine were trying for something embarrassing. I doubt they were trying to destroy humanity, but they may not have anticipated how far Hunter’s creations would mutate in the short time they existed.”
Guardian nodded and then he said, “You’ve got a Xiniti implant? So do I. Package up the relevant memories and send them to me.”
“Oh,” I said and accessed my implant. It confirmed that another member of the Xiniti nation sat on the stool next to mine. It made sense that he would be, but if he were, wouldn’t the entire original team have received them after they fought the Abominators?
That was a question for another time.
I started finding the relevant memories in the implant’s storage, including not only what Hunter had said about creating them to evolve, how Major Justice had told him where to release them, and the history Marcus found in our implants. The Abominators had given some of their human servants the ability to recreate alien creatures. It wasn’t unreasonable to think that Hunter had that power set.
If true, I couldn’t blame him for it.
I sent the ball of memories to Guardian along with references to the history Marcus mentioned.
Guardian’s eyes lost focus and he stared into nowhere, absorbing the mass of information.
Then he shook his head as if shaking off the knowledge, “I wish this weren’t true. When you’ve got something this big, people want a scapegoat. They don’t want to find out that random superheroes anywhere in the world might be able to do the same thing. It’s bad enough that he’s got the same powers as his mother. If we make a big deal of this, she’ll think we’re going after her and pull in her friends in the superhero community.”
What was I supposed to do with that? Should I be suggesting someone who could be blamed? Hunter needed help avoiding the Nine’s influence, but I couldn’t suggest more than that, “There’s Arete. If you want a scapegoat, he’ll do. He’s dead, so he won’t argue about it. The Nine aren’t going to show up to defend him. I’d bet that he doesn’t even have any known family members that will be hurt by association.”
Guardian grunted, “I hate this political shit. Arete will do, but we’re going to have to do it in a way that doesn’t make it obvious we know he was a Dominator. We’re going to have to disassemble Major Justice’s team, blame it on trauma, injuries, or something from this incident, and see if we can’t purge the Nine’s influence from them. Meanwhile, we’ll paint Arete as a power-hungry manipulator whose backroom politicking compromised the team’s effectiveness. It’s close enough to the truth.”
He frowned, “I don’t know what we do with the Coffeeshop Illuminati. I think we can get them deprogrammed if we do it one by one, but we can’t disassemble the team. They aren’t a Defender unit. They have their own funding sources separate from ours. I may be able to persuade Bullet to make them unofficially inactive for a month. That might be enough time. They’re better for photo ops than fighting anyway. I doubt anyone will miss them.”
Guardian stopped talking and sighed, “Don’t tell anyone I said that. I don’t need to make this worse. There have always been divisions in our community. Right now it’s impossible to tell the real ones from disagreements the Nine manufactured and we don’t need one more.”
A knock came from the doorway. Amy stood there in her normal form—not as Bloodmaiden. You’d never guess the short, red-haired woman in jeans and a t-shirt was an heir to an alternate universe British Empire, “I’m sorry to interrupt, but I need to talk to Nick privately.”
Guardian turned and nodded, ”I was done anyway. I’ll go.”
A silver line washed across his body and he disappeared. I hoped that I’d be able to say goodbye to Kals before he sent her home, but I supposed that leading a revolt against the Human Ascendancy might not allow her the time.
Shutting the door behind her, Amy said, “I got word from the North American Wizard’s Council. Ruthie Shaw told them to let us know that she’s getting together the original leaders of the Cabal. They’re willing to help us find Magnus.”
It felt like I’d last thought about her months ago, but images of meeting Ruthie in her house flashed into my mind. She’d seemed more like an irritable grandmother than an immortal, but we’d glimpsed a little bit behind the mask.
“Then I guess we’ll have to meet with her.”
More deep ripping noises came from all around us. I didn’t see anything falling yet, but I didn’t care to try my luck.
Kayla’s voice came over the League comm channel, “Ronin and the Mystic both say go. Go!”
There weren’t many of us left—Alex, Amy, various Jenny’s, Kals carrying Katuk, Izzy, and me. Izzy stood next to the portal, waiting, I assumed, for the last person to go through before going herself.
I’d been planning to do the same, but realizing she was here let me off the hook. She was the better choice if you wanted someone here who could handle the entire parking garage collapsing.
More than twenty feet wide, the circular portal was big enough for three people at a time to walk through and even more to fly. Izzy, Amy, and I floated upward, allowing Alex, Kals, and Katuk through—the Jennys hanging back, guns drawn and pointed out at the room.
None of the Fungus Collective’s remnants showed up to attack or flee at the last second, but the ceiling above us rumbled. Izzy pushed Amy and me forward and followed us through.
The last sounds I heard from the parking garage were cracking noises and the screech of tearing metal.
The portal closed behind us, its silver surface disappearing to leave Amy, Izzy, and I fifteen feet above the floor of the League’s hangar. Everyone in the League plus Sean’s group, and even Prime, Logan, ex-mayor Bouman, and Yellow Mask stood below us.
I could only guess they’d joined the main group outside the circle.
If I had to choose a word to describe us, I would have had to go with battered. I didn’t see any blood. The suits’ repairs would have hidden it, but a quick look at the suits’ stats showed that they’d all received heavy damage.
Almost everyone was sitting down or even lying on the floor—not to mention all of the people who’d been frozen as part of our last-ditch defenses against the Dominators.
In addition to Cassie, Katuk, and Haley, Marcus, Jaclyn, and Vaughn all lay on the floor unmoving. I wouldn’t have chosen the hangar with all of the tools on the walls, stains from oil (and other fluids) on the floor, and dirt from the tires of the various vehicles for medical care, but it was good enough.
Kals and Daniel started working to bring people out of their artificial comas. Alex, after a quick hug from Brooke started healing anyone who needed it.
I landed near Haley and sat down next to her. I couldn’t do anything, but at least I’d be there when she came out of it.
Only a few hours later, I found myself alone in my lab.
After Haley woke, I’d told her what happened and then she’d checked on the rest of the team and her parents. They’d been evacuated to the Midwest Defender’s Chicago base along with mine. We’d checked in with them to make sure they were okay and then left the base to check on the city itself.
The Fungus Collective was gone and the people they’d controlled had been freed. There hadn’t been any great loss of life so far as we knew, but information was still coming in.
Still, it had been confusing for the average person. When we talked with them, people remembered the sense of urgency they’d felt to defend the collective, but not why they cared and their memories felt jumbled and disjointed. I heard more than one person say it felt like a dream. Others said it felt like memories from childhood—unclear images and emotions.
We’d helped people get home for a while and we weren’t the only ones. Bouman’s team helped as did Sean’s new Justice Fist—including Jody. Even the fairy army chipped in. Elven knights brought people home by horseback.
I heard later that some people rode the dragon-like beasts home. None of them remembered telling the beasts where they lived or how they got up the nerve to climb on a dragon’s back.
I also heard that children who had been separated from their parents in the confusion of the day were found at home in their beds sleeping. Even stranger, some other people who’d been listed as missing were also returned to their homes.
When I’d checked over the comm with Adam to make sure we weren’t incurring debt to Duke Metzul, he’d said, “No. It’s all part of the conflict. He agreed to help us fight and not to let anyone come to harm. Leaving children loose in the city puts them in danger.”
“Just making sure,” I said, “I don’t want those kids owing him anything either.”
“I’m sure they don’t,” he said, his response quick, but then added, “I should check on that.”
When he closed the connection, I took a look around the city with my bots, making sure that I didn’t see anyone wandering or being guided into a forest by fey creatures.
I didn’t see any of that. I did see county sheriff cars and the National Guard patrolling the streets—since Grand Lake’s police were not at their best.
Aside from that, the streets were almost empty—though city workers were shoveling up broken glass and repairing shattered streets downtown. Even being possessed by fungus didn’t give them a day off.
Footsteps and the word, “Rocket? Are you busy?”
I looked up from the computer in the lab to see Guardian walking through the door, “Not really. I’m just checking how the cleanup is going.”
His silver, Xiniti—made suit sparkled in the light. Pulling out a chair next to me at the counter, he said, “I’m here on behalf of the Xiniti to send Kals and Katuk back to the Xiniti base near Mars. I also brought back your parents since it’s over now.”
“Here?” I asked.
He shook his head, “I sent them to their homes.”
The chair sank as he sat in it, “I’m also here because we need your input and testimony regarding Major Justice and Diva’s son Hunter. I’m coming to understand that he touched off all of this.”
“For what it’s worth,” I said, “I was ready to take a chance on it. We will have to face the Nine and it would be easier with whatever you got out of Arete.”
He gave a weak nod and coughed, “There’s another chance. I knew you had to destroy us completely. I created a spore, separated from us, and encased it as completely as I could. Look past me. I’d give it to you, but I shouldn’t touch it.”
I stepped around him. Hidden from direct view, a ball made of a pearl-like hard substance sat on a bare spot of concrete.
“We put as much of ourselves into it as we could, taking Arete’s knowledge, but not his faction. We understand that in order to live together, we have to respect your personhood. They did not. Please don’t let this be our end.”
Could I trust him? I had no idea. My gut said yes, but I didn’t feel like I was amazing at reading normal humans, much less gestalt intelligences created earlier in the day by accident.
Taking a quick look at Amy as I squatted, I pulled a hazardous waste container from a pouch on my belt. Amy didn’t stop me, but if she had a caption over her head, it would have been, “He’s not really going to take it, is he?”
The hazardous waste container didn’t even look like a container. It looked like a ball. People familiar with my tech might have recognized it as similar material to my suit.
I dropped it over the spore and the ball fell, expanding and absorbing the spore. The new golden ball was designed to contain hazardous waste of all kinds—radioactive, chemical, or biological within a specified range of characteristics.
It could also be reconfigured to be a water bottle in a pinch, but then it was best to pay close attention which container you were drinking out of.
I set the ball’s accent color to red (don’t drink this!) and attached it to my belt.
The boy watched me and as the ball clicked into position, he said, “Thank you.”
“We need to go,” Amy pointed her spear toward the portal. Tall enough to drive a truck through, the glowing, silver circle was wide enough for multiple people to go through at once and they were.
“I’m sorry,” I took a last look at him lying on the decaying mushroom flesh that covered the floor. He didn’t look much different from it. He’d pass soon.
The boy shook his head, “You’ve saved me in every way that’s important.”
Then he laid his head against the ground and watched as Amy and I flew across the room. I didn’t go at full speed, turning on the anti-gravity and firing the rockets at a speed that wouldn’t have kept me in the air by itself.
I dropped out of the air about ten feet short of the main group. Alex and a group of Jennys were directly ahead of us.
Amy eyed me, “I can’t believe you took it. You’re such a softy.”
“I guess,” I checked my HUD. The boy hadn’t moved since we left, “but we could use the information on the Nine. Besides, if everyone thinks it’s too dangerous, I’m sure Cap’s gun will be happy to help us dispose of it.”
Amy laughed, “I’m sure and it’s not the only one. Some of the past Bloodmaidens think you’re doing the right thing. A few others have been giving me suggestions about how to magically dissect it. They think we might be able to get Arete’s memories of the Nine out without the risk of releasing the creature.”
I thought about it, “Is this a sure thing or speculation?”
“They’ve never done it to whatever the Fungus Collective is, but they’d like to try,” Amy shook her head. “A few Bloodmaidens were mad scientists, but with magic. I wouldn’t trust them with anything you’d like to keep.”
“That’s a no then,” I stepped toward Alex and the Jennys. Alex turned away from watching people step through the portal to point at the ball on my belt, “You’ve got coffee?”
Watching the Jennys move to stand behind us, I said, “I set it to red for hazardous material.”
Alex cocked his head, “I’m never carrying hazardous material. I use red for hot coffee. It’s better than a Yeti.”
One of the Jennys said, “I told you that would cause problems.”
She turns away from Alex and asked me, “What do you have in there?”
“Not coffee. It’s worth a team discussion later, but I don’t want to start one now.” I noted that Dayton was still carrying Jody, but that Jody’s head had turned toward my voice.
Then Dayton stepped through the portal and Sean followed him.
A deep ripping noise came from behind me. Checking my HUD, I saw that the mushroom flesh on the ceiling of the far end of the circle had fallen in, pulling away from the concrete above it along with the concrete it had been attached to. The fallen flesh covered the mounds like a decaying blanket.
Ahead of me, standing next to Kals who carried Katuk, Daniel said aloud, “Everyone hurry up. I don’t know if everything will fall in, but it might.”
Following his own advice, he stepped through the portal.
I pushed the bot views into the background and paid attention to the world around me. Alex pointed at the mounds around us and the ceiling. All of them sagged and dripped viscous, brown goo. More liquid puddled beneath the withered skin.
“We should grab everybody,” I said. “We might be able to get away with leaving Flame Legion. I know she doesn’t exactly enjoy dying, though.”
Alex nodded, “Yeah. That hasn’t changed, but she’s more used to it. I’d leave her.”
Dayton stepped around me and put Jody over his shoulder, “It’d be nice to have a save point in real life.”
“Tell me about it,” Alex said, “I’m standing next to her most of the time.”
Katuk stood where he’d been, still with a bit of humonster goo on his hand. Daniel lay further down the row.
A thought struck me. Turning to Kals, I asked, “Can you wake everyone up?”
The mound across from the control mound that Alex had touched lost its structure. Half the mound collapsed, the walls falling outward, the top falling in, and brown goo splashing into the row with everything else.
Three humonsters fell with it, none of them looking any better than the mounds. One turned to look at us. In Arete’s voice but as scratchy as if he’d spent a lifetime smoking, one of the humonsters whispered, “Magnus knows you’re looking for him. I wish I could be there when you find him.”
The other two mouthed it, sometimes spitting on the hard consonants and staring at the floor. One didn’t make it to the end, slumping and leaking from the cracks in its skin.
“Yeah,” Alex said, “but you won’t be. The main mound over here sent out ‘die, die, die’ and so is everything else now.”
“Fucker,” Arete whispered and then the remaining two humonsters slumped and began to seep liquid of their own.
Kals choked out a small laugh, “This world is so messed up, but yes, I think I can get all of them up now. Figuring out Julie’s system was the hard part. Can you disable their buzzers?”
“Sure,” I disabled the security measures that prevented anyone else from doing it and turned them off.
She stepped over to one of Jenny’s copies and started talking in a low voice that vibrated with strange tones. I didn’t understand what she said—my buzzer obscured it.
Jenny’s eyes opened and she pushed herself up, grabbing a long breath before saying, “I was so useless, but I’m telling Portal to get us out. The problem is they got other people too, so she’s starting with the people who can’t move and everyone near them.”
“Fine,” Alex said, “Let’s not stay at ground zero, okay?”
“We should get Captain Commando and Night Cat,” I said, “so maybe we should go to the main room? Also, the boy’s there and he’s up.”
“Portal’s creating an opening there. It’s in the middle of everything,” Jenny frowned. “I’ll tell her about the boy. We don’t want him going through, do we?”
“I’m not sure it matters,” I checked my bots, “he should be dying with the rest of them.”
My bots views showed Izzy and Jaclyn collecting Haley and Cassie, carrying them to a spot on the far side of the middle circle where a spot had begun to sparkle.
The boy had lain down again.
“They’re on the far side of the circle. I’m going to stop and at least check on… whatever he, they, it, or whatever pronouns a group intelligence uses.”
Plus, I wanted to know if he was dying or planning something.
Amy eyed me, “I’m going with you.”
Kals, who’d stopped next to Daniel, shook her head,“I think you should leave it alone.”
“We don’t have time to talk about this,” Alex picked up Katuk and started walking down the row, his boots splashing in the accumulating fungus goo.
I admired Alex’s confidence that Katuk wouldn’t behead him by reflex, but it wasn’t I chance I’d have taken. Still, he wasn’t wrong.
Asking Kals, “Should I carry him?”
With a sniff, she said, “No,” and repeated what she’d said to Jenny. Daniel’s eyes opened and he pulled himself up, looking down at the brown liquid on his costume.
“Yuck,” he looked up. “We should get out of here.”
We followed Alex out, Kals hurrying to catch Alex. The sooner she released Katuk, the better.
It didn’t take before we’d found the opening that we’d entered through, making our way into the center of the circle again. The light was dimmer, the rainbow of colors replaced with a dull yellow.
Brooke’s portal glimmered on the far side of the circle and the group began to run except for Sean who flew next to Dayton. Jody still seemed to be unconscious.
Chunks of shriveled, dripping fungus fell from the ceiling, more of it the closer it was to the mound Alex killed.
Daniel spoke in my head, It might be worth talking to the fungus faction, but I still can’t hear anything from it.
“Tell them to wait for me,” I said, running toward the boy and the pool. Amy ran next to me, Bloodspear in hand.
It didn’t take more than a few seconds to reach him. From the ground, he turned his head to look at us. He didn’t look any better than the humonsters. Shriveled skin and pooling liquid seemed worse on a child, even a fake child.
He whispered, “I’m sorry we lost control. I meant it. I would have allied with you.”
Sean’s face tightened. He took a short breath as if he were about to blow up at her, but instead let out a long breath, finishing with, “Are you sure? Do you know it?”
Amy shook her head slowly, “No. I didn’t absorb him. Another Bloodmaiden was in charge when he got hit with the Bloodspear. So she got more out of him than I did and she doesn’t like answering questions. I don’t have his thoughts, just a whisper of his feelings. He was happy and relieved when he got the order, the way you are when you’ve been worrying about something and now you can finally do something about it.”
Sean looked over at Dayton, then back at Amy, “Couldn’t that have been part of it? The Nine can manipulate your feelings too.”
Amy frowned. Kals spoke before Amy could finish thinking it through, “Yes. We can attach feelings to commands. Especially when you’re talking about groups, manipulating feelings is better than a direct command. I don’t know if he Arete tried to attach that one. I was busy defending myself and it didn’t work on anyone else…”
Sean looked Kals up and down, “I know you’ve been here for the whole fight, but who are you? Did you used to be a Dominator or something?”
Kals shook her head, “We don’t have time to go into who I am and where I come from, but here’s the short version. I was trained as Dominator, but it’s not what I do now. I’m not from Earth. I’m a friend of,” and here she glanced at me and gave a small shake of her head, “the Rocket.”
Sean stared at me, “You have friends from outer space?”
Dayton nodded, “You’re from the ruling class of the Human Ascendancy? That’s amazing. I didn’t think they could come to Earth or even leave the Ascendancy.”
Kals blinked, “How did you know about that?”
“Yeah,” Sean said, “how did you?”
Dayton shrugged, “Stapledon. They lectured on it. It was in the one of the general history courses, but Jody and I got more about it because we were in the track that emphasized espionage skills. Plus, we spent time on the Jay and Kay during our internships. That was ‘must know’ material.”
Even in high school, I’d noticed that Dayton was more than his “star athlete” looks or reputation. I didn’t know how smart he was, but he worked hard.
“Uh-huh,” Kals looked from Dayton to Sean, “Jody’s your friend. You’re not going to want to suspect him, but you need to watch him. Did he start acting differently recently? Does he have new friends? Does he disappear a lot? If he hasn’t changed recently, think back. Was there a time where he changed?”
Dayton and Sean looked at each other, “Look,” Sean turned away for a moment, “we’re already worried about him. He acted weird when we signed with Futuremen Capital, our investors, but he’s been great since then. He’s been better than normal. He’s always had a temper and that hasn’t changed, but he’s hasn’t gotten angry and disappeared as much this year. I haven’t noticed new friends or disappearing or anything.”
Dayton nodded along as Sean spoke, “Right. He’s gotten a little more mature, but that’s it. We were watching Futuremen for anything weird.”
Kals frowned and I heard her through my implant, We might have to fight them after my next question, but then she went on, asking, “When you met with Futuremen, was there ever a time that they got you drunk? Was there a meeting where you know what happened, but when you think about the meeting, you don’t have any images, you just hear the sound of someone’s voice?”
Dayton’s brow furrowed, “No. I don’t think so. Sean?”
Sean shook his head, “No. I’ve always worn a buzzer to those meetings and I made sure everyone else did too.”
Kals held up her hands, “Then I don’t know. We don’t have time for me to give you a full audit, but I should. I’ll see if I can fit it in before I leave.”
Amy looked up and down our row. The National Guardsmen in powered armor had pulled themselves out of the goo. One of them walked down the row toward us, holding his hands in the air.
A male voice came from his PA, “Are all of you okay? We have a medic and we aren’t controlled anymore. If you’re okay, we’re going to withdraw. I’m getting reports that… those things… are falling apart.”
He pointed to one of the mounds. It was wasn’t falling apart—yet—but comparing it to my implant’s memory showed that it was shorter. Unmistakable even to my memory, it was seeping fluid into the row. It wasn’t the only one of the mounds doing that either.
A thin layer of liquid covered the floor in all directions, sometimes becoming puddles.
Switching on my suit’s PA, I asked, “Do you need any help? You’ve got a lot of people.”
The man shook his helmet, “We’ve got enough to get everyone out and more. You’ve got people down.”
“You might want to ask people in the main room, but we’ll be okay,” I said, reasoning that Jenny could discorporate her bodies when she woke up.
I took a quick look at the views from the bots, seeing that the mushroom zombies were still fighting the fey on the streets above us, but they didn’t all fight in an organized way. Some ran into the path of the Duke’s knights screaming, but not trying to attack. Others ran. Still more stared in ahead as if unsure of what to do next.
A few fell over for no good reason.
I checked the cameras of bots in the circle around us. We needed to know if we were in for a fight.
In the open area in the middle of the circle—the shortest way out of here—was empty except for the pool and the boy who’d been our liaison to the sane faction of the mushroom entity.
He raised his head as a chunk of mushroom flesh fell from the ceiling, splashing in the liquid on the floor and breaking into chunks.
The boy pushed himself up.
As I registered that, I heard Alex’s voice through my comm, “Hey everybody, we need to get the fuck out now.”
I had good reason to think Kals would be fine but I didn’t know if Alex had bothered to download and install the latest update. You could reasonably ask why that wouldn’t be automatic, but even my updates had the potential of going wrong.
You wanted to install when you had a backup suit available and not midway through a mission.
In that moment, though, I didn’t spend any time checking the update logs. I jumped for Jody and glancing behind at me, his eyes widened.
I couldn’t get anywhere close to his speed or reaction time in Stapledon and still couldn’t, but in this small a space, the difference mattered less.
I pushed off with my feet, grabbing for him, and catching his neck with my right hand. I wasn’t planning to choke him, but his neck was a more stable target than his arms or legs.
Choking him wasn’t a bad plan, but given the armor around his neck, the necessary force to get past it might also decapitate him.
He tried moving to the left, out of my grip, but I’d brought up my left hand by then, grabbing his left arm near the shoulder. He couldn’t go anywhere.
Now it was time to secure him—except… Alex hadn’t installed the update.
I learned that while discovering how far we’d moved. In the seconds Jody had since finding out he couldn’t hurt me, he’d caught up with Alex. I’d been too focused on catching Jody to realize it, but as I’d grabbed his neck, he’d stabbed Alex in the side, making a gash more than four inches wide—though I only saw it for a second.
Self-repairing armor made things weird. The cut in the armor healed up, leaving blood dripping from no obvious wound. Alex doubled over.
I pulled Jody back as he slashed Alex’s arm. Blood spurted as the armor knit itself shut.
Through Alex’s helmet, I could see his grimace. I wasn’t sure why he wasn’t healing himself, but then I understood that too.
We’d made it to the mound. It was off to my right in its multi-colored glory, intricate designs covering it, many of them growing brighter, dimming, and brightening again. Through my extra senses, I could feel that this spot was a hub with information going in and out.
Alex stumbled toward the mound, the energy around him different than it had been before. It wasn’t as simple as life energy versus death energy. It felt pointed, focused. It had a mission.
Jody might not have been able to sense it, but he tried to get away, moving back and forth, vibrating as I tried to hold him there, building up speed. As small as the distance was, I could feel his movements building up strength. With enough time, he would be able to get out.
I grabbed harder, trying to keep him in place.
Alex moved toward the mound, raising his hand toward the mound. Next to him the Bloodmaiden in Amy’s body watched, the Bloodspear ready.
Everything seemed to be moving in slow motion, probably because my perceptions were halfway outside our universe. Maybe that was good, but of all the moments that might last forever, this was not one that I would choose.
Then Alex touched the mound. Despite what I expected, it didn’t go dark. The colors and their patterns changed, turning from a multitude of different colors to yellow. It pulsed, the shade of yellow changing from light to dark and back.
I don’t know if it was the distraction or that that Jody put out a burst of energy, but he slipped out of my hands.
Daggers in hand, he stepped toward Alex, obviously intending to finish what he’d started.
He didn’t make it. The Bloodspear reached his chest before he’d finished his first step. For the first time, I could feel someone else being absorbed by the Bloodspear. I knew that it could from personal experience, but this time I could feel a cool wind despite being inside the Rocket suit. Worse, I could hear Jody’s voice wailing.
I shouted, “Don’t kill him!”
Her accent impossible to place, the stranger in Amy’s body said, “I’m not. I’m taking enough.”
She pulled the spear out of Jody’s chest and he slumped, but kept on breathing. Around the same time, I heard a few notes of the transformation sequence Amy used to change into her Bloodmaiden form.
Amy, now using a US accent that had a hint of the South, said, “Dammit, if there’s anyone I didn’t want in my head.”
Near her, Alex pulled his hand away from the mound and stood up straight, showing no sign he’d been hurt except for the blood on his costume.
“It’s done,” he said. “It’s not all dead, but I touched off the chain reaction. Careful, though. We still might get attacked before this is all over.”
I checked above us for the humonsters. None of them were attacking anyone. The few I could see were lying on top of the nearest mounds as if sleeping or too tired to move.
Sean landed next to me, followed by Dayton who was running to catch up, “Jody’s not dead, right?”
“I’m pretty sure he’s fine,” I said, “Bloodmaiden?”
“He’s alive,” Amy said. “He’ll be tired for at least a day. Don’t expect much out of him, but… Look, I can’t be clear on this. It wasn’t me who drained him, but I don’t think he was forced to betray us just now. I think he did it willingly.”
I didn’t shed tears, but if I weren’t having to again slaughter humonsters, I could have. I punched a humonster that jumped down from the top of a mound toward Alex in the face, splattering it across the side of the mound it jumped from.
We might finally be done with this.
Alex stumbled toward the glowing mound, shaking his head, his footing becoming more sure with each step. He only had to make it twenty feet, but I’d seen how unpredictable twenty feet could be.
Still, he had Kals and whatever Bloodmaiden was in control for help. It needed to be enough.
Besides, except for the one I just killed, the humonsters had stopped jumping down and I’d even seen one jump back up—which did not bode well.
It hinted at another change of tactics.
I didn’t even have time to explore that line of thought before the humonsters shouted another command, “Betray them!”
I half-expected our side to fall apart in a mixture of comas and infighting, but we didn’t. Though I felt the strength of it, I could ignore it.
Even better, Sean, Dayton, Alex, and Kals were completely unaffected. Jody, however, changed course.
He turned his daggers, each of them monomolecular blades that I hadn’t designed and turned toward Dayton, making a series of swipes at his body.
Still running energy through Artificer portion of myself, I could keep track of every strike. To my eyes, Dayton moved slowly, but perfectly, dodging each one by distances too small for me to see without the suit’s sensors.
Whoever’s movements he’d copied to do it worked.
He didn’t even try to attack Sean who was both in the air and out of his immediate reach. Instead, he ran for his closest opponent—me.
I felt as if the two of us existed outside of time. Everything else stood still. I fired off five goobots—which should have been more than enough.
They spread, none of them close to each other, but all of them set to arrive at the same time, forcing him to take them all at once.
With speedsters, time divided into smaller increments than the rest of us, including me in that moment, could perceive. Jody dipped down, cutting the lowest bots in two and coming up behind of the remaining ones. By then, I’d already set them to explode pointing in his direction.
He dodged all of them, every last strand of goo missed him despite coming within less than an inch of touching him.
I’d have been impressed if I weren’t already preparing for his attack. He ran toward me, blurry less because of his speed than because he was partially out of phase with our universe.
I decided not to send out more bots because I didn’t want to waste them but also the timing for what I was about to try would be tricky and I didn’t need the distraction.
He ran towards me daggers in hand and he was smiling. If I was right and my understanding of monomolecular blades was ahead of everyone else, I’d be fine. Otherwise, I hoped my distraction would work and that Alex would have time to heal people soon.
When Jody came within ten feet of me, I turned on the sonics full blast, trying to blow out his eardrums and his balance with them. If I got lucky, I might also blow out his equipment.
Alex could heal his ears later—maybe.
The Arete through the humonsters had ordered him to betray us. He hadn’t ordered him to grin like a maniac while doing it.
Jody cringed as the sound hit his ears and bent forward into a roll on the left side of the row, the best place to avoid the sound—intentionally. If I timed it right, I’d hit him on the way out of the roll.
He came up with daggers in hand, ready to stab me in my side, relying on his speed and being out of phase to save him from getting hurt.
I went with a simple side kick, aiming for his knee.
He saw it and his smile drooped. He pulled up his knee into a kind of block. In a normal fight, it would have been better than leaving it on the ground. My kick might have slid off it. In this fight, it still slid, but I could generate tons of force with my leg and I wasn’t holding back.
His costume included well designed armor, saving his leg from being snapped off, but I could see the armor break.
It broke well, absorbing most of the impact into the armor itself and staying together even though I could see cracks and the lined imprint of my boot.
Still quicker than I was, he hit me with both daggers, doing no damage to the Rocket suit at all. I grabbed at his arms, but cursing, he dodged me, showing a hint of a limp.
The edges of his body blurring, he ran down the row toward Alex and Kals.
That knowledge gave me the confidence to let “Amy” and Kals protect Alex while I did my best to protect Daniel and the various Jennys.
Her ability to duplicate herself made it worse when every copy represented a tunnel into her brain.
I fired off a series of armor piercing bots. They weren’t as effective as killbots, but they were simpler and faster to produce. Plus, they didn’t have monomolecular blades constantly sucking energy until they dulled.
For fighting animate fungus creatures, they were arguably better. Where the killbots cut cleanly through, the armor piercing bots splattered innards outward, carrying more with them than they hit directly.
I aimed for the legs, taking them off more often than not. If there weren’t so many of them, it would have been easy. I blew the leg off one to realize that another had grabbed one of the copies of Jenny and was about to carry her off. I shot the legs off that one only to see another diving for Daniel.
I punched through that one’s chest to find two more humonsters grabbing copies of Jenny, one for each.
I sent bots through the heads off of each one and then fired off a boombot to explode in the middle of a humonster cluster looking over the top of the mound to my right.
They disappeared and the top of the mound near them blackened and burned.
After that, I didn’t see as many, but also, they stopped clustering. They dropped from over the side of the mounds four at a time, one going for Daniel and the other three for copies of Jenny. I sent armor-piercing bots through them, noticing as their legs exploded that two more had dropped down, grabbed a Jenny together and were pulling her up the side of the mound to my right—30 feet down the row.
The bots under my control were in the other direction and I couldn’t fire off more without transferring the bots from individual control to group control. That would have taken longer than I felt I had.
I fired off myself with the rockets, pulling Jenny out of the humonsters’ grasp and flipping around to go back to my position.
I expected to find that more humonsters were dropping down to grab Daniel and copies of Jenny. I’d prepared to drop them with armor piercing bots but that’s not what happened.
I saw one of the Guardsmen in Rocket suits spray a cluster of Guardsmen I’d hit with goobots and the goo drooped, turning to liquid and dripping onto the floor. A quick check behind me showed that the same thing was happening there.
We were about to be attacked by 102 Rocket suits, all of them worse than mine, but containing people who didn’t deserve to die for this. If goobots no longer held them, I might have to kill them in order for us to survive.
Part of me knew that would be a small price to pay to save the city and arguably the world—not to mention my parents—but it still didn’t feel good.
In my heart, I doubted that either Kals or whoever controlled Amy’s body right now would hesitate and part of me was thankful for that.
At least it wouldn’t be entirely on me.
Even though I wasn’t optimistic about it, I sent off a volley of goobots at both the people that were being freed and the ones freeing them. Despite my worse fears, I hit all of them and saw grey goo spread across the group and pull them toward each other as it tightened.
Fulfilling my worst fears, as the ones that had already been sprayed were pulled close, the newly applied goo began to liquify. It didn’t everywhere, but even one spot was enough for them to get enough space to push away from each other.
Even the ones that couldn’t push themselves away were sprayed by sprayers Rocket suited Guardsmen pulled from their belts. Behind them, Guardsmen who hadn’t been it sprayed themselves.
Though part of me noted that this meant that the local National Guard had prepared to fight me specifically, most of me knew that goobots were now not an option.
As a last ditch effort to be nonlethal, I fired off the sonics down the row at the Guardsmen, using both arms, and watching for sparks.
It didn’t stop the two in front from pulling themselves free and running down the row toward me followed by the whole mass of those behind them.
More than one hundred boots hit the floor. Objects on their utility belts shattered, but the sonics didn’t slow the suits down.
Behind me, I could see “Amy” turn to face the row of Guardsmen running toward her while Kals shouted something at them and then Alex.
I readied my remaining killbots and aimed my armor piercing bots at the Rocket suits.
As I did, I heard Sean’s voice say, “We’re here!”
All of the Rocket suited Guardsmen found themselves hurtling sideways toward the middle of the room—the direction we’d come from. Stopped only by the mounds next to them, they couldn’t move anywhere.
Sean’s form appeared, stepping out of one of the passageways between rows as Jody blurred down the row. Reaching Daniel, the Jennys, Kals, and “Amy,” Jody cut humonsters to bits with his dagger as Dayton jumped over a mound, using his own daggers to do the same.
My relief at not having to cut down the Guardsmen was mixed with surprise and annoyance at how they’d prepared to face me, but hadn’t worried about Sean’s magnetism at all. Despite his improvement, it still seemed like misplaced worry.
Next to Kals, Alex pushed himself to his feet.
I started with the obvious. I had no shortage of goobots since there was no point in trapping fungus creatures that even their creator regarded as disposable.
Plus, they’d worked before.
I sent out a barrage of bots pointing my arms in both directions, setting the bots to explode where they clustered, but also targeting the first Guardsman in each group.
The explosions of goo did what I wanted them to, spreading across the rows, touching the mounds on either side, and turning into logjams. When I hit clustered Guardsmen, it was even better. In one case, the logjam was five people deep, all of stuck to each other as well as the mounds on either side.
Mixed with the surge of relief I felt came worry. I’d created bottlenecks on both ends of the row, but I hadn’t taken out all of the National Guardsmen. I hadn’t even taken out a tenth of them.
A tenth? My implant had counted them in the background as I was fighting and it had counted 102. That was a lot more than I’d realized the National Guard’s base had. I supposed that they might have come to the conclusion that having an internationally visible superhero team might require increased staffing because we might get targeted.
When you considered that they were now targeting us, it seemed ironic.
Still, they were stopped for now. I reminded myself of that and hoped that Kals would get Alex to move so that we could take this all down.
As one Guardsman tried to fly over them, I fired off a goobot which reached him as he was lifting off, exploding into strands that stopped him above the Guardman in front, adding another layer above the first and making it even harder for someone to fly over that.
Kals, meanwhile, talked to Alex. I didn’t see any sign of movement on his part which reflected well on Julie and Danial’s collaboration, but wasn’t convenient in the least.
Observing in all directions with my helmet, I noticed that the humonsters were now creeping up over the far sides of the mounds with only their heads visible. They were going to do something. I didn’t know what.
I shot off a boombot, letting it explode within a group of them and watching the others. That turned out to be a good idea. I couldn’t watch or shoot off boombots in all directions at once.
When the first boombot exploded, the rest of them crawled over the mounds, avoiding the goo covered soldiers to aim for Kals. I recognized it from their path over the mounds and used boombots to blast them to bits.
But they weren’t only aiming for Kals. They’d left the comatose bodies alone when we running, but not anymore. They went straight for Daniel, Katuk, Amy, and the various copies of Jenny.
They went for Alex and Kals as well, but Kals noticed, pulling out her pistol and burning the first one coming toward her even as it came over the mound. She only got the one next to it after it jumped, but she got it.
My brain, meanwhile, was working on overdrive, recognizing this move as very human. The Fungus Collective wouldn’t think to do it, but Arete would have.
If he pulled my focus in too many directions, we’d lose and I had every reason let my focus get pulled. Even if Kals was having a hard time bring Alex up, what if Arete had a better approach or a worse approach but was able to brute force it by producing more humonsters and working on our people in isolation?
I shot off boombots, used killbots for precision strikes to remove limbs, keeping them off Daniel and Jenny. It turned out that I didn’t need to do anything for Katuk. He didn’t move and when a humonster grabbed him, Katuk’s suit moved, grabbing the humonster’s neck and severing its head.
He didn’t move after that, but they left him alone.
For a moment I’d hoped he was back, but it must have been a command built into the hardware of his cybernetic systems.
As I whipped the killbots around, severing a hand from a humonster that was trying to grab a Jenny, Kals muttered a Human Ascendancy word that my implant translated as “entrails.”
In that moment, I realized that they’d grabbed Amy. She’d been on the other side of Kals and Kals had been focused on keeping Alex. She either hadn’t seen them or she’d had to make a choice, the kind of choice I’d been trying to avoid.
Except… As the three humonsters that had her began to climb back over the mound, Amy moved. A bright red light washed over her and she jerked her arm out of the hands that held it, sticking the blade of the Bloodspear into the humonster holding her other arm.
The humonster shriveled up into a thin, brittle remnant of itself.
Then she stabbed and drained the other two in quick succession, making a strangled war cry each time. I’d never heard her make that sound before and I’d fought my way up a skyscraper full of vampires with her. She’d had plenty of opportunity.
I didn’t know it for certain, but everything from the war cry to a new looseness in her stance told me that this wasn’t Amy. One or more of the previous Bloodmaidens was now running the show.
I could only hope that she or they were doing this as a last resort. If it were some kind of takeover, I didn’t have the faintest clue how to get Amy back in the driver’s seat.
As I understood this, the Bloodmaiden stepped around Kals to behead a humonster while simultaneously sucking it life force out. As the shriveled body fell, she’d already speared two more, giving the Bloodspear a strong, red glow I didn’t think I seen in Amy’s hands.
If we ever got Amy back, I wasn’t going to mention it, but I had a feeling that this Bloodmaiden was better.
As I settled into “Artificer consciousness,” I realized that my view of the world had shifted subtly. While it wasn’t true, it was as if the world now had extra colors except not quite.
If someone had telepathically looked through my eyes, it would have looked no different, but I knew somehow that I was sensing through something else. Through that sense or senses, I could feel that Amy’s body contained more beings than it should. I could almost make out faces and bodies.
With Daniel, despite his temporary coma, I could feel a core of power. With Alex, I could sense how far his field of health extended. Jenny only registered as one person despite her many bodies—which made sense. For Kals and Katuk, I felt none of that. From an Artificer’s perspective, they were nothing of note.
The mounds though, and especially the one Alex needed to destroy, pulsed with power and life. They felt similar to Daniel except less focused, but with more depth of energy reserves.
The humonsters didn’t have any of that. From an Artificer perspective, they barely qualified as living beings. From my perspective though, they were a problem, mostly because there were nearly fifty of them and they now only had two opponents, Kals and me.
I’ll try to keep them off you while you wake someone up, I told her through my implant.
Then you’d better start soon, she thought back at me through the same connection.
She wasn’t wrong. All of the humonsters on top of the mounds had jumped down. Their targets? Us, the only humans standing.
One thing it was easy to forget about Kals? She had all of Cassie’s strength, agility, and a small part of her endurance in addition to Dominator voice abilities.
The humonsters found that out to their surprise. With a dagger in each hand, she chopped off an arm here, a leg there, and then a head or two.
I, meanwhile, was discovering something I hadn’t known. I’d known for a while that I thought faster and was able to absorb more data than most people, but I couldn’t move faster—which meant it didn’t help me much in a fight.
While tapping into Artificer abilities now, that wasn’t true, I moved fast enough for it to matter. Whether it was only that or also the fact that I’d been within Alex’s field of being better long enough to be affected, I didn’t know, but I was.
It didn’t seem like I could miss. Not wanting to risk creating friendly fire by using more boombots, I’d released two killbots. They hadn’t been useful for much of the day because the Fungus Collective’s creatures didn’t have much in the way of organs.
In this moment, though, I could control two at once, using them together to sever an arm as it reached for Kals while simultaneously punching a humonster that had dropped for me hard enough down the row that it dropped three more that had been running toward me.
Using a strike with the edge of my hand to decapitate one while stepping over Daniel and Katuk to get closer to Kals, I cut the leg off a humonster that had been leaping for her with the killbots.
It fell off the side of the mound that it had been jumping from and I hit it hard enough that I broke it in two, bits of fungus flesh spattering onto the floor.
Stepping over the mess, I moved next to her and we were back to back. Taking stock of the situation, I realized we were doing well. In combination with my blasts a few seconds earlier, we’d taken them from more than fifty humonsters to only a few more than thirty.
It didn’t even the odds, but we’d done that in seconds. I had reason to hope.
I exploded the two killbots inside the nearest humonster’s head, blowing hardened teeth shaped fungus across the row while punching the middle of another hard enough that its chest exploded, throwing fungus bits twenty feet and causing it to fall in two, severed by the weight of its remaining body.
Through Kals’ implant connection, she asked, Why didn’t you fight like that before?
The humonsters paused, making me wonder if Arete was rethinking his strategy, but giving me time to reply, The longer I do it, the more likely I am to summon monsters that might destroy humanity and maybe all life.
She glanced back at me, eyebrow raised and mouth partially open, Then let’s get this over with.
Bending over and touching her helmet to Alex’s, she also used a private League channel, likely hoping that the combination would carry enough of what made her voice work to get him moving.
It wouldn’t have been necessary if I hadn’t assumed that the Xiniti’s success in defeating the Abominators meant that the assumptions in their suit design were a good guideline for protection against Dominators. I couldn’t have realistically predicted that we’d ever face more than fifty Dominators with perfect coordination of their voices at once, but we had.
The Xiniti in hundreds of years of war had never met more than ten attempting to coordinate like that.
Trying to ignore those thoughts, I watched the humonsters because there was no way that Arete would let her get Alex up.
I wasn’t wrong. The remaining humonsters jumped out of the rows as Rocket suited National Guardsmen entered them from both directions, running toward us.
Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t let the humonsters leave without taking down a few. Every humonster I hit was one less voice, but as I did it, I was already planning how I’d handle the controlled humans running toward us.
At that moment, I heard a noise or more accurately many small taps and thumps. A quick look around me explained it. The humonsters were back. They’d scrambled over the mounds on either side and came down in front of us, behind us, and to the sides of us lying on top of the mounds.
I’d last seen roughly 25 of them scrambling for cover among the mounds, but here there were 50, maybe more.
They opened their mouths and shouted, “Don’t move!”
Thanks to my HUD, I could see that the volume was more than twice what they’d done earlier. It rolled over the sound of my buzzer like it didn’t exist.
I could feel the command take hold and I couldn’t move—for a second. Even as I went to plan B, activating bots and readying them for firing with my implant, I felt warmth and the beat of someone’s heart (probably Amy’s) as a red glow burst out of me.
At the same time, similar glows burst out of Amy, Daniel, Alex, and Jenny (all of her), freeing all of them. Kals and Katuk hadn’t trained with us and didn’t have our triggers, but Kals was fine, making some a sound with her mouth.
As for Katuk, my implant threw up an alarm, showing him as controlled. I’d known that Xiniti had been affected by Dominators in the past, but not as easily as humans.
Remembering how small a percentage of the Human Ascendancy’s population seemed to be Dominators, it wouldn’t have surprised me if the Xiniti simply never had to deal with that many Dominators at once. Still, at that moment, I wasn’t doing too much speculation about the reason, I had another problem.
Our failsafe allowed us to retreat or try for a Hail Mary before going comatose and this wasn’t a situation where we could retreat.
I started firing off boombots at the humonsters around us, trying not to get too close to us. I was getting low, but there wasn’t any point in saving them for a later date.
Even as the first two bots streaked away, one heading for the humonsters ahead of us and the other for the ones behind me, Daniel lifted Alex and began to move him over Amy, Kals, and the group of Jennys toward the glowing, strangely intricate mound.
Showing that between whatever was left of Arete and the Fungus Collective someone was paying attention to our defenses, the humonsters shouted, “Do nothing,” at a volume that matched what they’d managed before. Alex fell on top of the Jennys—none of whom disappeared. That was bad because Jenny’s trigger was supposed to discorporate any affected copies so she could send more in.
This meant that the command had penetrated deep enough that it affected her, all of her. Alex wasn’t moving either and neither were Amy or Daniel.
The only spark of hope I had was that Kals hadn’t stood there when Alex fell, she’d dodged out of his way.
I say all that as if everything was fine with me. It wasn’t that simple. I hadn’t gone unscathed by the humonsters’ attack. Their command cut into my mind as effectively as the first one had, triggering my second failsafe—which wasn’t exactly like everyone else’s.
Instead of going comatose, mine triggered an ability I’d been working on with Kee, having mentioned the Dominators to her. Her comment had been, “We can’t let them control you. The potential consequences are catastrophic.”
She’d taught me how to use the energies available to me as a proto-Artificer to project enough of my consciousness outside my body to be unaffected by Dominator vocal attacks, cleansing my physical body of their effects. I’d constantly run energy through myself in a much more sustainable way than I’d been able to in the past.
Assuring me that, “It’s a great exercise for a being at your level of development,” she’d also added, “but don’t do it for too long unless you have no choice. And don’t pull too much power in. Sip it. Pull in too much and you’ll exhaust yourself like you did the first time.”
Why shouldn’t I use it except briefly? Why not trot it out the second I’m aware there are Dominators in the area? The constant problem with using Artificer abilities—the possibility of attracting the attention of other Artificers, specifically the Destroy faction which would end the world. Even worse, knowing now that Lee hid one of their weapons here, I might also arm the Destroy faction with a weapon that could end the Live faction’s chance to teach other sentient races enough for them to be able to fight back.
In short, you could make a reasonable case for the idea that even saving my own life might not be worth the risk of using it.
Unfortunately for the universe, I valued my family and friends’ lives enough that I was willing to take that risk.
So, when Arete’s minions shouted their command, I let the trigger put my mind into contact with all of myself, drawing on power I still didn’t fully understand, letting the coolness of it flow into me and through me. On the edges of my consciousness, I felt the “Artificer Superhighway,” a place that allowed faster-than-light communication between the universe’s elder races.
I kept my consciousness out of it and kept on firing off boombots, targeting humonsters. I needed to come up with something I could make work with just Kals and I.
Maybe she could pull Alex or Amy out of their stupor.
Unless I chose to fly upward, I had nowhere to go to dodge the shot. Even if I wanted to, that went against the whole point of being first. This was the kind of shot I was here to take so someone squishier didn’t have to.
Of course, Katuk was right behind me. His armor was every bit as good—which turned out to be important because the Guardsman’s rifle turned out to be automatic and not every shot hit me even if a lot of them did.
They hit hard. I could thank the alien materials I’d modified for my survival and couldn’t be confident that previous versions of the Rocket suit would have done as well.
With each hit a damage report appeared in my HUD along with the repair status. Meanwhile, I stumbled backward, figuring out my next move as a second soldier in powered armor stepped in behind him.
We wouldn’t be able to do anything with them blocking the way forward.
Hoping it would be enough, I fired off a series of goobots. I had plenty. I’d spent the day fighting things I could kill.
The bots exploded into webbing, coating both of the opposing Rocket suits and hardening as the soldiers tried to escape. They couldn’t, but a soldier behind them leaned in, pointing a rifle around the corner.
I fired off more goobots, watching as they turned the corner, zeroing in on the next two soldiers and exploding into ropey, gray strands.
Four soldiers were now ensnared and as much as they pulled and strained, they couldn’t pull out of it.
Now though, we couldn’t get through that corridor without risking becoming stuck to them. On the bright side, the same problem applied to them. I fired off a few more goobots, targeting soldiers behind the ones I’d hit.
There were five of them. One had reached in to try to free the ones I’d stuck together and become stuck himself. The rest were beginning to back up and go in the other direction.
I didn’t get all of them. Two were out of the area of effect, but the gooey strands splattered across three of the five, solidifying and pulling them together.
“This way,” Daniel pointed backward and we went that way, putting Amy and a group of Jennys in front of the group.
Not meeting any resistance, we ran down the corridor, finding another opening and using it to turn and go in the original direction we’d been heading. On this side of the mound, though, I could see more light and a rainbow of colors further down the row.
The bad news was that the color outlined two figures walking toward us, both in Rocket suits and pointing big barreled rifles at us.
I couldn’t use goobots or I’d close off another route to our goal. I couldn’t use the laser without jumping or firing off the rockets to get a shot because I was at the back.
The great thing about being part of a team though is that it’s not all on you.
Kals shouted, “Stop!”
It didn’t work as it should have. They should have stopped, and they did—kind of. They stopped and then started moving again, dragging one foot after another as if forced. At least they began to. Kals shouted, “Dive!”
They halted completely. I could feel their confusion and indecision in the way they stared at the floor as if trying to decide where they could dive.
In that moment Amy threw the Bloodspear and it hit the nearest one, symbols in the metal shaft glowing a dull red until Amy pulled her hand back and the Bloodspear flew into it.
The second one fumbled to pull up his rifle and point it even as the first Guardsman fell to the ground. He never got to fire a shot. Before he had time to get it level, the Bloodspear was already sticking out of his chest.
Amy pulled her arm back and he fell too. Then she turned back to look at me and said, “They’re still alive, just tired.”
“Great,” I said, noting that the red gem on her chest which had been duller than normal was now a touch brighter.
Then she started walking forward again, spear in hand, stepping over the Rocket suits when she reached them. I couldn’t help but feel a little sorry for them. It wasn’t their fault they fought us. Plus, I could remember the coldness setting in when I turned the Bloodspear on myself in order to save Amy’s life.
They were lucky she had control over the spear’s hunger right now.
Memories of Lee saving both of us from a situation neither wanted ran through my mind as we reached the mound Daniel had been leading us to.
“There,” Daniel said and no one needed clarification about what “there” meant.
This mound didn’t look the same as the others. It wasn’t just the variety of bioluminescent colors. It was the intricacy of the strands that composed it, some larger, some smaller, some in bundles like cables, others interweaving with each other in matrices made of thin lines.
The colors made individual cables stand out, sometimes because the colors changed in order.
So, we had a target. Now Amy, Kals, a bunch of Jennys, and Daniel had to get out of Alex’s way so that he could touch whatever it was and tap the metaphorical domino that would start the process of tipping them all over.
The humonsters ran after us, ignoring Cassie and they didn’t just run. They leapt. They tumbled. The talons that grew out of their hands and feet clacked against the floor.
They weren’t slow. Only the fact that Alex, Jenny, Kals, and Katuk had started first kept them from being caught—that and Katuk’s shooting ability.
Without looking, he pointed the gun under his forearm backward and fired, scattering blasts of white light behind him. The first two caught humonsters full on, severing the right arm from one and the entire lower half of the other.
By the time the second one got hit, the humonsters had started leaping to the right and left, trying to get cover by the mounds, running into openings, and disappearing into the unseen rows between them.
Alex glanced over at the humonsters, aiming a few shots at them and hitting them several times. The small unit of Jennys did the same, peppering the group. Their misses hit the mounds, causing them to shudder, but they hit more than they missed and the humonsters all disappeared into the mounds on that side of the room. I breathed out a sigh of relief. Forcing them to go the long way could only buy us time.
Over the comm, Alex asked, “Which way?”
Daniel pointed toward an opening between two mounds that was across the room, but at the moment could have been in another state. Alex muttered, “Damn,” and sprinted forward with multiple copies of Jenny running with him, Kals and Katuk just behind, and Amy, Daniel, and me following after.
We flew past the body of the boy and the pool he’d emerged from. He didn’t move and the pool remained calm, reflecting the glow from the ceiling and mounds around us.
With no one barking orders at us, we had a few moments to concentrate if we wanted them, but that could only slow us down. If we hurried, maybe we’d find that there were no defenses ahead. I wouldn’t hold my breath, but I could hope.
That optimism didn’t even make it across the room.
Flying gave me a better view than I’d get running—the kind of view that punctures illusions. In this case, it punctured my illusion that we’d have an easy time.
I’d known that the National Guardsmen in Rocket suits were coming, but I’d assumed that they’d have to go through the only entrance to the circle. What I probably should have assumed was that if the center of the Fungus Collective were about to be destroyed, the Collective would make new doors in itself because that’s what happened.
Holes appeared in the outside walls, showing us the parking garage around the circle. Rocket suits flew through the openings and dropped out of sight. I couldn’t see them well enough to know where they were going. Most of the mounds reached the ceiling and the Collective wasn’t or couldn’t make them smaller so that the troops could fly through.
We were three-quarters of the way across by then and had caught up to the rest of the group. I landed near the front near Katuk. “National Guardsmen in Rocket suits are here. If we can, I’d like to leave them alive. It’s not their fault they’re fighting us.”
Katuk said, “That sounds difficult.”
“I know. It might not be possible. We’ll try.”
That conversation took us to the opening Daniel had pointed to. Only a few inches wider than one person and between two nondescript mounds, Daniel’s recommendation was its only distinguishing feature.
If I’d seen them on any other day, I wouldn’t have thought so. They had fleshy, grey skin that glowed with green, bioluminescent light, pulsed every few seconds from some internal process, and quivered as if alive. On any other day, they’d have worried me, but today, I checked in both directions for hostile mushroom people, didn’t see any, and stepped into the corridor. Daniel said, “Turn right,” over the comms as I did, answering my unspoken question.
I did, Katuk following me in and everyone else following him.
Over the comm, Alex asked, “You said the second row. This thing to our left?”
“Further,” Daniel.
It didn’t look any different further down the row than it did at first. As we moved though, something did feel different. As someone who’d used telepathy ever since discovering his best friend had it, I knew the feeling.
If I had to bet, I’d have bet that we’d reached the generation point of the anti-teleportation signal in addition to the clairvoyant fuzz Danial had mentioned before.
Now that we were near the point where it began, I could also feel its strength. For lack of a better phrase, the psychic pressure it created felt on par with Daniel’s or better. I could even feel an undercurrent of pain in its thoughts. Remembering when Daniel released a psychic attack at it, I could at least guess at its cause.
Ahead of me, another Rocket suit stepped into the corridor. This one had been in green, brown, and beige camouflage colors. The helmet obscured the face of the operator inside. I could only guess at his or her expression as he raised a massive automatic rifle and charged, firing.
I can’t read them very well, Daniel thought at us, but for lack of a better analogy, I think it’s the heart, the center of the organism’s circulation. I wish we had a biologist because then I could ask better questions, but I know that as long as we get Alex there, it’ll die.
Noticing, no doubt, that we hadn’t started tearing Amy limb from limb, the humonsters shouted as one, “Kill her now!”
As the noise overwhelmed the sound of the buzzer again, I had to fight the urge to charge Amy, hearing Julie’s command in my head again.
Everyone else had to be feeling the same and that might have been why Daniel spoke in everyone’s head, repeating his memory of Julie’s command and following it up with, Remember, pretend until you have to fight back. It’s time.
Turning toward the humonsters felt like it took forever, especially since I wanted to make sure we were all turning. Reminding myself that we had two backup plans, I decided to concentrate on myself since the alternative was becoming a puppet.
Feeling like I was pushing through sludge, I did it, deciding to start with fire and explosions and fire off a series of boombots. At least six of the humonsters were standing in clusters. They were asking for it. With the rest, I could get at least two per shot. It was something.
The boombots exploded, burning the humonsters, knocking them backwards or sideways, but not taking any of them out. If they’d been vulnerable to fire, they’d evolved out of it.
As I did it, I found myself wondering what everyone else was doing. I couldn’t be the only one who made it through, could I?
A beam of burning, white light from Cassie’s gun answered that question and made an ashey hole in a humonster’s chest at the same time. The humonster didn’t go down, but it did stop to examine the damage, touching the edge of the hole with a taloned finger.
Though it wasn’t easy to read expressions on faces where the mouth extended more than halfway around the skull, the way they tilted their heads and stared made me think they were surprised by us.
I opened up on them with my laser, noting that Alex and Jenny were already running away from us in the direction of the pool that the boy came out of. They weren’t yet up to his body, but at least they were going in the direction Daniel pointed out.
Kals and Katuk followed them, Kals making a complex series of tones to counter the humonsters that were now shouting, “Surrender!”
At the same time, both Izzy and Haley burst into red flame the color of Amy’s gems. This was bad, not because of what happened, but because of what it meant. Amy set up the spell on all of us to be triggered if we were controlled—upon which it would wipe out whatever controlled us, but only once.
She’d have to do the spell again for it to work again. In a situation like this, she wouldn’t have time. We did have one other failsafe—a telepathic trigger.
I burned a hole into one of the humonsters, aiming for the chest, hoping that I might at least be able to lower its lung capacity.
At the same time, I reminded everyone, “If the spell triggers, get out. It probably won’t get better down here.”
Daniel’s telepathic trigger would put them into a temporary coma since that would be better than being used against the team.
Haley jumped over the humonsters, ripping a leg off the nearest one as she landed. Izzy flew over them too quickly for any of them to respond, picking up Haley and flying toward the entrance where the team that had been outside the circle was already fighting the Prime clones. They’d be able to do some good there.
I’d have to work out better soundproofing in case we ever fought enough Dominators to make this much noise again.
For now though we needed to give Alex enough time to get away from the humonsters and maybe even take them down.
No one needed to give the order. Amy, Cassie, and I knew it was our job. Daniel helped too, but he flew toward Alex, pausing only to telekinetically throw a group of three humonsters into another group of four.
As the rest of the humonsters charged us, Cassie and I burned them, aiming at their legs. Unlike a normal human, they didn’t go down when we hit, but if you cut off a leg, they couldn’t follow anyone.
Amy did what she’d been doing since this fight started—throwing her spear. Whatever guidelines the Fungus Collective used to guide its evolution, they hadn’t worked out a way around throwing living things at us.
They did work something else out. As Cassie used her Abominator gun to burn straight through her third humonster, the remaining ones all targeted her with their voices, “Stop!”
She hesitated and then a burst of red light glowed all around her and she shook her head. I was about to remind her to go, but when she jumped upward, her suit’s anti-gravity kicking in and moving her toward the ceiling.
Even as I burned the humonsters with my laser, they didn’t let up, barraging her with sound, “Land!”
As she slowed, floating next to the ceiling, I knew that her second trigger had kicked in. I didn’t want to leave her there, but as I considered if could grab her, Daniel thought, Don’t at me.
Amy and I turned around, flying after the rest as the humonsters chased us.
It would have been over right there if it had never occurred to us that someday we might be exposed to a Dominator and be without a buzzer.
The bad news, of course, was that we hadn’t had access to Kals or anyone with Dominator training. We did have Julie, but unlike the Dominators in the Human Ascendancy or serving the Nine, she hadn’t been taught from childhood. She’d picked up what she could by experimentation and what the teachers in the Stapledon program knew the Dominators could do.
Still, it was something—enough to practice with.
All Arete’s minions had said was, “Serve me.”
The great thing about that statement was that it wasn’t an actionable command. If he’d said, “Serve me dinner,” it would have been specific. “Serve me” was abstract.
You could almost completely ignore that.
We’d done one better than that in our preparation. The Nine had trigger commands. We’d built in a few ourselves, all of them around the theme of, “If you’re being commanded to do something, pretend to comply and watch for your shot.”
It wasn’t perfect. Kals would have come up with something better and a skilled Dominator could probably work around it if they knew it existed. Well, maybe. We’d supplemented Julie’s commands with Amy’s magic and modifications to our telepathic blocks.
We could only hope that Arete wasn’t skilled enough to handle it.
My major worry was that Kals didn’t know about it (unless Julie told her) and that not everyone involved in this fight had access to it.
I could solve part of that. Fighting my need to comply, I told my implant to send Kals my memories of the system’s design. I wasn’t rebelling against his commands. I followed Julie’s commands and got Kals the information she needed to know.
Meanwhile, the situation had kept on moving.
None of us had attacked the humonster choir and Izzy asked, “How do we serve you?”
Hopefully, that meant that she was following our implanted commands instead of Arete’s.
Kals sent back a reply through her implant, It’s crude, but not bad.
Through the humonsters, Arete said, “Bow.”
Except for Amy, we all bowed. Not wanting to make myself immobile, I bowed from the waist up and noticed that everyone else was too.
The humonsters started laughing, all of them with a wheezing, dry laugh that made me think that their equivalent of lungs either didn’t quite work right or was completely different in design.
“Hold still,” Arete said through his proxies. “No one moves until I tell you to.”
Feeling the words wash over me along with a need to obey, I kept my mind on Julie’s command, “… pretend to comply and watch for your shot…” I felt my anxiety go up in the face of possible conflicting commands, but I reminded myself that this was the one I wanted to follow.
A group of humonsters stepped forward, throwing me down and Haley with me.
They didn’t get anywhere near Amy. The red accents on her armor glowed brighter and she held the Bloodspear at the ready.
One of the humonsters stopped in front of her, but out of direct reach of her spear, for all the good that would do. “I can feel you,” it said, its high-pitched voice a strange combination with Arete’s baritone.
The humonster’s voice rang with compulsion, “You’re on the edges of our mind. Join us.”
Amy responded, but not with her voice. Much like Arete, she responded with a choir of voices, but not in the same way. Though the sonar only showed the presence of one person standing there, I could see multiple faces and bodies, all of them in the same armor and holding the Bloodspear. All of them talked at once. I couldn’t hear Amy’s voice within the crowd.
“We will not join you, fungus creature. We were created to slay monsters and will slay you from the inside if we must.”
Then she stared at the closest one, spear at the ready.
Arete said nothing for a few seconds—which I hoped meant that the Fungus Collective was rethinking its support of his ideas. I knew better when he continued to speak. If someone who was born yesterday was supposed to be naive and innocent of how the world works, the Fungus Collective had been born less than an hour ago and spent most of it fighting us.
The humonster, its teeth flashing in the bioluminescent glow around us said, “You’re alone. You’re the only one we can’t command. You’ll join us or you’ll fight all of your friends first. Heroes’ League destroy her.”
Tars talked slowly as if fighting Arete’s commands, “We’re coming too. They’re letting us in.”
I checked their cameras as I pushed myself up. The group outside was walking into the circle, trailed by the Prime clones they’d been keeping under control and National Guardsmen in power armor. Behind them came Prime, former Mayor Bouman, Yellow Mask, Logan, and Justice Fist. They must have been caught on their way here.
Haley had already flipped to her feet, but neither she nor anyone else was hurrying to attack. That gave me hope that we were all still on the same side.
As we all began to circle Amy, Daniel spoke in everyone’s heads, Alex needs to wither a mound across the circle from us. It’s in the second ring.
Arete shook his head, “You’re bluffing. There’s no way this Xiniti could pass that on to the rest. There’s no Xiniti Mars base and even if there were there’s no way they’d find out for hours.”
I don’t know how often you encounter people whose understanding of the world is so far from yours that you absolutely despair of bridging the gap, but I hope it’s never for anything important.
In that moment though, I barely knew where to start. I tried, “Look, there is a Xiniti base at the LaGrange point near Mars. It takes the speed of light more than three minutes to get there. If you’re communicating back and forth to a Mars rover it might take 15 to 45 minutes to communicate back and forth, but that’s partly just technology and it’s not technology we’re using.
“The general public doesn’t know this, but an ansible near Earth provides faster-than-light communication to the Xiniti or wherever. Without question, the Xiniti high command knows about this by now. They may even be launching ships by now.”
“You’re lying! You’re making this up to make us surrender so you can kill us. This conversation is over. You’ll tell the truth when we open your armor—wait…”
He stopped and said, “You know what, I’ll believe you if one of you turns off your buzzer and let me ask you the same question.”
From behind me, Kals said, “No, don’t. I know what I could do with that opening.”
Off to my left, Katuk said, “The Rocket isn’t lying and he’s correct in guessing that the Xiniti nation is readying rapid response ships in case you aren’t contained. Comparable creatures have absorbed the populations of multiple planets.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I noted that Alex’ hand had moved, pointing his pistol at Arete.
Behind us came a sound that reminded me of smacking lips and splashing noise. Not needing to turn my head to see what was happening in my helmet’s screens, I saw that the mounds containing “people” had opened.
For a moment they looked like they had in the birthing chambers—like your average office worker, child, middle-aged parent, or grandparent. Then they changed, their clothes and skin turning into a hard, shell-like substance, their mouths widening until half of their faces could open, revealing jagged teeth.
Even though I doubted that teeth could go through my armor, I reminded myself that their Prime-clones had been a real threat and that they evolved.
As I noted that there were a lot of them, Tara talked over the main League channel, “I’ve been watching through the bots. If we want to have a chance to survive, we need to move into the circle with you.”
“You’re going to be fighting on both sides,” I said.
Her voice flattened into the True’s monotone, “You’re not fighting yet and we still have a better chance to win.”
I didn’t have time to respond to her because Arete chose that moment to say, “I gave you one more chance. Now it’s time to die—”
He sounded like a poorly-written Bond villain and I wanted to tell him so, but I didn’t get the opportunity. Katuk shot him.
By shot him, I mean a spot formed out of nothing on Katuk’s armor, the silver giving way to a glowing, white dome. White light, crackling with sparks, burst outward, hitting Arete, turning his fungus body to a piece of human-shaped ash, and charring his head.
Katuk didn’t just shoot him. He annihilated him, leaving ash and a shattered, blackened skull.
I turned to look at Katuk and he answered my unspoken question, “It seemed like a good first step.”
Cassie turned around, pointing her gun at the figures behind us, all of whom had frozen, “You beat me to it. Mr. Sparkles was disappointed. Do you think they’re dead?”
I shook my head, “There’s no way we could be that lucky. My bet is that they’re electing a new leader or something.”
Over the Rocket suit’s PA, I said, “Hey Fungus Collective, assuming you’re listening, we’re willing to negotiate, we weren’t willing to negotiate with him. The first deal you offered us was one we could consider. That worked out better for everyone including you.”
Next to me, Haley, watched the frozen… humonsters (for lack of a better name) as if they could attack at any time.
I checked the body or abandoned avatar I’d thought of as “the boy.” It didn’t move or show any sign of moving. I considered asking Daniel how it was going but didn’t bother. He could do without the interruption.
Except… Daniel thought back and not just to me—to everybody, I’ve had to do it differently than I expected. They can block direct prescience, so I’ve had to think sideways. There’s a mound across and to the left of the pool. We need to get Alex there. That won’t be it, but that’s the start—
Interrupting Daniel’s thought, all of the humonsters started to talk as one voice even if it was at different pitches.
“Did you think you destroyed me?” Even at different pitches, I recognized the voice as Arete’s, “Did you think you could make the Collective reject me? I’m part of it and we are one—as you will be. Now, serve me!”
As strange as it sounded from many mouths, the command became stranger as it took on the tones I recognized from hearing Julie, Kals, and various people we’d met in space use them.
Produced from a choir, the noise overwhelmed the sound of my buzzer. I could hear it, but only a little, and for the first time since I’d perfected the design, I could feel pressure to obey.
I looked him in the eye (to the degree that I could through a helmet) and said, “We’re all going to die and you with us. If you get out, that means the whole planet goes. Whether people I care about die because of the Nine or because the Xiniti make the sun go nova, they’re dead. So congratulations, you’ve made this whole situation so bad that you have no hold on us because we don’t have anything to lose.”
In the moment, I meant it, but I knew that if we got reports of our parents dying at the hands of the Nine and we survived, it wouldn’t feel like a victory.
Arete’s lip curled and his voice became louder, “This isn’t a no-win scenario. If the crisis ends and you declare victory, the Xiniti aren’t going to destroy the planet. So far as they’ll be able to tell, you won. All you need to do is surrender, let a few spores in, and become part of us.”
Turning his gaze to Katuk, he said, “That means you too. You’ll either become part of us or be destroyed.”
Katuk’s voice took on an otherworldly quality with hard consonants making a brief high-pitched ring. Having spent weeks in close quarters with him, I knew this could happen when the Xiniti were amused.
Knowing that the Xiniti had destroyed the Abominators after the Abominators found their home planet, inadvertently releasing them into the galaxy, I suspected that their amusement was something to avoid.
It never meant anything good when we’d played Monopoly.
Aside from that, Katuk showed no emotion, meeting Arete’s gaze, his wide, black eyes visible through his silver helmet, “You’re unfamiliar with the Xiniti. We don’t back down when we have a mission. We fulfill the task or die. We start the task regarding ourselves as already dead.”
Arete glanced over at me, the movement jerky. Integrating a human body part into a fungus body wouldn’t always work well.
I said, “It’s a very functional idea for a culture of soldiers. It makes it easy to do whatever’s necessary without worrying if you’ll survive.”
“And it makes them remorseless when you land on Boardwalk and it’s got four hotels,” Cassie said, her gun still pointed in Arete’s direction.
Arete’s mouth dropped open, asking Cassie, “You play Monopoly with aliens?”
Katuk talked over him, “You said it was only a game. It is more than that, illustrating cultural assumptions and showing that humans have emotional responses even to fictional experiences.”
“Arete,” I said, “you were killed, absorbed into a fungus, and you’re now part of a creature with multiple minds. Maybe you should teach them Monopoly. It won’t be any less weird.”
Sure, that was a bit of verbal nonsense, but it might buy us time—which we needed because Daniel hadn’t yet pointed us toward the fungus’ core.
Gritting his teeth, Arete said, “You’re not taking this seriously. Do I need to give you a reason to take it seriously? Well, here’s one, my troops will be down here soon. Then you’ll either die or become part of us whether you want to or not. If you’re willing, it will hurt less and everyone will live.”
He was wrong about that. I was taking this very seriously. A quick check of my bots’ cameras made me suspect that we needed to start destroying everything we could. His armies would be down here in less than a minute.
Off to my right, Haley tapped on the keyboard on her arm. Though I couldn’t see or hear the conversation, she had to be coordinating with the rest of the group outside the circle. They’d be facing the fungus army first.
Over the main League channel, Kayla said, “Justice Fist turned around. They’re coming back your way with the government unit. They couldn’t get out. When they got close, the fungus army appeared. Out.”
That wasn’t good news. I decided to try for a long shot, telling Arete, “I’m taking this seriously. What I don’t get is why your allies aren’t. If they allowed you to take charge because you’ve got the most experience manipulating humans, they should notice that when the humans are protected from your voice, you’re completely useless at it.
“More than that, if you sold them on the idea that the Xiniti won’t look too hard if everyone still looks and acts human, you were incredibly dumb when you explained that one right in front of one of the Xiniti. You may not know it, but Xiniti tech allows him to be in contact with the Xiniti base near Mars from here. From the base, they can contact all the Xiniti in the galaxy. This plan absolutely can’t work now.
“If you sold them on the idea that the Nine were powerful and we aren’t, you should remember this, the Xiniti sometimes listen to us. If the Fungus Collective were to put the other faction in charge again along with the old deal, we might be able to convince them that you should survive. They’ll scan us to be sure we’re not being influenced, but they’ll at least listen to us.
“They’ll never listen to the Nine.”
Views from the bots outside showed that the hordes of mushroom creatures had charged City Hall. The Duke smiled, the points of his teeth showing as he raised his sword and began cutting down the attackers even as his horse kicked and crushed them.
His army followed him in, trolls, goblins, elves, and strange faerie monsters killing with ecstatic grins on their faces.
The Duke’s army only fully covered City Hall, though, and the Fungus Collective had more creatures to work with. They entered the far side of the parking garage near City Hall and poured down the ramps as a group.
Near the front were the local National Guard base’s mechs and Rocket suits. Even though the National Guard didn’t get the newest and best designs, they weren’t pushovers. We’d be seeing them downstairs soon enough.
“Control,” I asked over the main League channel, “it looks like the truce is over and the Fungus Collective is under new leadership. You should make sure the groups know.”
“I know. I know,” the sound of Kayla’s typing almost matched her voice.
I wanted to check if Daniel knew, but he had to. If we didn’t have a target, we’d be best off randomly having Alex attack everything in sight—except that he’d be too tired to affect much after a while.
That’s when Arete stopped staring at the floor and looked up at us. I couldn’t find even a little bit of the minor superhero he’d pretended to be in his face. Instead, he eyed us with a flat expression on his face as if he were preparing to spar with someone he knew was better than he was.
What was our plan? For the moment, my plan was stall him until Daniel worked out what Alex had to destroy. I hoped everyone would be willing to follow my lead on that one.
“Hey Arete,” I said, “did you just get promoted?”
He began to laugh, but it didn’t sound right. However his body was now designed, it came out as a series of spastic wheezes.
“We got promoted,” he said. “I’m now part of a collective. The majority recognized that I have better insight in dealing with humans since I used to be one. That means that there will be changes in what you were being offered.
“Do you want to know the first one?” His face erupted into a toothy grin, “You surrender now or you get nothing. We’re not going to help you fight the Nine because we, as a collective have determined that working with the Nine is in our best interest. If you surrender, you get to live. If you don’t surrender, well, I may not know who your families are, but I know there are people in the Nine who do. And do you know what? Since I’m now a collective, I’m calling the Nine right now. Thanks to whatever you did to shut off the city from the outside, they can’t come in here, but everything outside the city is fair game. And do you know what? Everything and everyone inside the city is fair game for me. All they need to do is tell me where to look.”
He stopped, adding, “I already know a few places. I won’t tell you where. I’ll let it be a surprise.”
We were back to, “surrender or I’ll kill or infect your families,” only now with the Nine’s assistance.
Though he couldn’t see it, I blinked, and said, “Well, I guess I liked the previous offer better.”
Haley turned to watch me. Cassie had straight out laughed.
Arete paused before he replied, probably expecting more servility, “I just threatened your family and the families of everyone you know. I thought you’d care more and even if you didn’t, your team would.”
Alex shrugged, “Look, it’s nothing personal, dude. I don’t know exactly why the Rocket didn’t give up, but it’s got to be something like this. He doesn’t like bullies. He knows what they look like because he’s seen them up close and personal. As for myself, it’s not that. I just think you’re a shit negotiator. If you want people to work with you, there’s got to be an upside, something they want. All you’re offering is the chance to avoid being crushed beneath your boot. It’s not enough.”
It was easy for me to underestimate Alex. His tendency to act first and ask questions later was one of the reasons, but sometimes, he showed enough insight that I had to wonder if I was missing something. This was one of those moments.
He wasn’t necessarily wrong about the bullying part of the statement, but he’d gone one better over my idea for handling Arete. I’d been waiting to see if I could stall until Daniel figured out where to attack and hope people would follow my lead. Alex had just attacked the whole reason the Fungus Collective chose to follow Arete.
If anything, I needed to follow his lead.
I took a step toward Arete, “I can’t work with you.”
The boy froze again, his right hand curling into a ball. Then he smiled and said, “I would like that. Is this something that you can teach me or would you place a spell on me?”
“A spell,” Amy said, glancing over at Arete, “and I can’t do it now because I’m a little tired, but I think I could in ten minutes.”
Uncurling his right hand, the boy smiled, “I don’t necessarily need it, but I’ll think about it. I do sometimes have a little trouble with rogue personalities and a little help keeping them under control wouldn’t hurt.”
While I couldn’t say I wanted Arete free, helping the Fungus Collective keep him controlled also felt wrong.
On the other hand, I’d seen Arete’s expression and I’d seen the boy freeze when Amy suggested the binding. It wasn’t impossible that the Fungus Collective might be warring within itself over who controlled the group.
I wondered if Amy knew and found Daniel’s connection to me had expanded to include her.
You’re trying to push him, Daniel thought to Amy.
Amy thought back, Yes. If Arete can take over, I want him to do it now when we’re prepared to destroy this thing instead of later.
Huh, I thought back, is that the best way to do this?
I felt a surge of irritation from Amy’s end of things that she quashed down, knowing I could feel it. I’m sure I told you about this. The last Bloodmaiden—the last of the old-style Bloodmaidens before I got powers—absorbed a monster with more force of will than she could handle. Its personality ran the whole show until she recovered and ended it. She killed almost everyone she knew, throwing the throne over to my branch of the family.
The past Bloodmaidens don’t want to see that happen again even in other people. They don’t want to be surprised.
Was it even worth trying to argue? I doubted I’d have much luck trying to persuade a composite being with thousands of years of service that I was right.
Besides, they might be right. That didn’t stop me from asking, But if we avoid a crisis now, can the fungus handle Arete?
Maybe, Amy’s expression remained neutral, but they don’t think we can trust the Fungus Collective past this crisis. They’ll take any excuse to destroy it.
My mask hid my facial expression—which was good because I doubted it would help the situation.
As Daniel closed the connection between the three of us, he said, While I can sense that engaging with the boy gives us the best chance, outcomes of the conversation are fuzzier than normal. The Fungus Collective might be the cause.
Amy nodded, eyes narrowing. I couldn’t argue. The thing already had enough psychic power to affect teleportation. Maybe it was deliberately fuzzing out the outcome.
It didn’t bode well for our alliance against the Nine—though it might go along with that because it wiped out a potential rival.
Using the connection between us that never quite closed when we were in range, Daniel said, I’m going to continue narrowing down the possibilities for Alex and pass this conversation on to the rest of the group.
I agreed, knowing he understood even if I didn’t put it into words.
In that moment, before Daniel could have even told them, I saw Katuk and Kals emerge from the group of mounds behind us. Kals looked around as she followed Katuk, taking in the pool, the bioluminescent mounds around us, the boy, and Arete with his new body.
Katuk, in his silver Xiniti armor, walked a little ahead of her, making the smallest movements of his head, but I had little doubt that he was scanning the room for threats.
To my surprise, it wasn’t Kals that started talking. Katuk said, “I’ve received direct orders from the Xiniti nation that I’m to assist in handling this threat as my first priority.”
“Just now? We’re not fighting,” I watched the boy for his reaction and he made none. I could only wonder what was happening underneath.
Arete didn’t move either, making me wonder if the Fungus Collective hive mind was now joined in pitched battle with itself.
“Kals,” Alex said, drawing out her name. Remembering what he’d said about pushing buttons earlier, I had a bad feeling that he’d taken Amy’s plan to heart. “If Arete gets out of control, you can take him out, right?”
She eyed Arete’s head on his new fungus body, “If everything in his head is still human, he shouldn’t be any match for me.”
The boy fell over, landing on the concrete next to the pool, showing no sign that the body had once been animate. It lay there, one arm folded under its chest at an angle no human could stand for long.
Arete didn’t move either, but he didn’t fall. Despite Arete and the boy’s immobility though, something was moving. I could feel rumbling in the floor through the Rocket suit.
Cassie piped up before anyone else, “How do we trust you? You were literally trying to kill some of us less than a minute ago. Sure, you stopped, but what are we supposed to do with that? Right now you need us, but maybe in the future you decide that you don’t. What’s going to stop you from absorbing the whole world then?”
The boy frowned, “The Xiniti will burn this world. Isn’t that correct?”
“Right,” Cassie pointed at the mounds, “but we see what you’re up to. You’re making replacements for us.”
I thought about the mounds with fake people growing inside the birthing chambers. If the Xiniti didn’t make an effort to check if everyone was real and fungus could control real people without obvious growths, the Fungus Collective could rule the planet invisibly.
The boy froze—which was interesting by itself since it meant that it had absorbed involuntary human movements. Then it said, “I’m sorry. Originally, I did intend to create human replacements that I’d use to rule behind the scenes, but now I just want to survive.”
Over the comm, I asked, “Blue or Night Cat, is it easy to tell the difference between a human and fungus duplicate for you?”
I’d already checked with my sonar. The fungus needed a mechanical means to walk, but it didn’t look the same—too solid.
Izzy nodded, “Easily.”
Staring at the ground as if trying to avoid sensing too much, Haley said, “I can’t try smell through the suit, but they don’t sound right. I wouldn’t be able to tell otherwise.”
Not hearing our conversation through the helmet, the boy continued, “The Xiniti have observers on the planet. The Nine are aware of them. They know they haven’t found them all.”
Muttering into her costume’s mic, Cassie said, “I don’t trust this thing, but if it knows everything in Arete’s head, I’d consider a deal. I don’t think we’ve ever captured a cooperative member of the Nine.”
I could feel a moment of hope in Daniel’s thoughts as he told the League channel, “I don’t know how they subsume people into their larger consciousness, but the Dominators’ commands probably wouldn’t have any power over that many personalities.”
“Hey,” Cassie said aloud pointing her gun at Arete, “what do you know about the Nine? Do you know everything he knows?”
The boy stared at her, “Everything. He was an agent of the Dominators, tasked with infiltrating the superhero community. If you’re willing to ally with me, I can share all of his activities and contacts.”
I glanced over at Arete or at least at his head and his grey, fungus, replacement body, wondering how much of him was there.
Thanks to my implant, I could run through its footage of him. From that, I could see that the Fungus Collective had given him a body physically equivalent to the old one. I couldn’t speak to the details of what had been under clothes except to note that nothing major had been skipped—which felt a little uncomfortable, but whatever.
More interesting? He had the same look as when he’d been alive, watching the conversation, his eyes tracking each person as they talked, arms loose by his side, ready for action.
I had no way to tell, but Arete struck me as being alert and involved in the conversation even if he wasn’t talking. Was that a good thing? I couldn’t see Arete offering to give us his information on the Nine. So, I was probably being paranoid.
Amy must have been thinking along the same lines, though, because she stepped forward, Bloodspear in her right hand, her eyes never leaving Arete as she asked, “Is he okay with betraying the Nine?”
The boy didn’t even look at Arete, “He’s a small part of the collective whole. We are decided on our course of action. We mean to survive and the Nine mean nothing to us.
“I don’t deny that his memory and his personality show them loyalty, but the will of the collective whole decides what’s good for the collective and we don’t see anything that the Nine have to offer.”
Alex blinked and tilted his head as he looked over the child, “Nothing? I’m not saying that you should sign up with them, but I’m sure they’d love to have you.”
The boy gave a curt nod, “I’m sure they would, but we’d be little more than a tool to them and I’m certain they’d try to control us. You people, from what I understand, might not trust us, but I think we can earn our freedom with you.”
The ruby red glow of the gems on Amy’s armor seemed to glow a step brighter as she said, “I’ve got some experience with a collective of personalities. One personality can dominate the whole if it’s sufficiently strong or dedicated.
“What if I could show you how to bind Arete so that he had no chance of taking control?”
I may have been deluding myself, but I thought I saw the muscles on Arete’s jaw tighten. Even with my implant’s instant replay, it was hard to say.
Logically, I should have told him to shoot it. The longer we took with this, the more time the greater horde had to reach us. Plus, it was most likely an avatar for a larger entity that was willing to sacrifice human life without a thought.
Why didn’t I? First of all, Alex didn’t take orders from anybody. Second, we didn’t know where the core of the entity was and a conversation could give us time to find it that combat wouldn’t. Beyond that, would the Fungus Collective simply hand us the core of its mental processes? Unlikely. If I had to guess, I’d guess that the kid was intended to be a distraction for us.
Also, there was the possibility, however small, that we were actually looking at a kid.
I thought at Daniel, Can you figure out what Alex should touch? The kid? The pool? The floor (if we’re lucky)? One of the mounds. My bet would be one of the mounds and most likely on the other side behind the kid.
I felt agreement through our link.
Daniel looked over the room as the child said, “I know we got off to a bad start, but I’m very young. I was born today. I’ve learned a lot in my short time alive. I want to coexist.”
Standing off to my right, Cassie laughed, “I’ve got thousands of footfalls coming this direction that says that you want to kill us.”
The child said, “If you want proof, I can stop them.”
From behind me, Haley asked, “Can you make them stop and retreat?”
“Yes. I’ve already done it. Check if you wish.” The child looked over the group of us, not saying anything.
Speaking into the main League channel, I asked, “Control, is he telling the truth?”
At the same time, I checked cameras from the bots I left outside the building. He wasn’t lying.
It looked like a battleground outside, specifically as if a fantasy background had been transported into modern Grand Lake.
Elves on horses, draconic beasts, trolls, goblins and more stood in the street.
Fungus monsters of all kinds lay on the ground, all of them hacked apart with medieval weapons. Fungus infected humans that had been ensorcelled stood near them, some staring into space, others endlessly dancing as a short, bearded fey played a violin.
The fey duke seemed to have taken Adam’s request not to kill humans seriously. From the frown he wore as he watched the fungus creatures withdraw to the other side of the street, making a barrier of fungus creatures between the controlled humans and the fey, I assumed that he was disappointed.
He sheathed his sword and crossed his arms for a few seconds, but then started shouting to his troops, putting them into formation for fighting should the fungus creatures return to the fight.
As I decided that I’d seen enough, he raised his right hand, looked directly into the camera of the bot I was watching from, and gave a small wave with his fingers.
I gave my attention back to the room with two new thoughts to add to the many on my mind—1) don’t mess with powerful fey and 2) take a cue from the fact that he expected the fight to continue.
Over the comm, Kayla said, “The bots show that all of the fungus and fungus controlled creatures have stopped fighting and withdrawn from the fight. That includes several units of National Guardsmen in tanks, Rocket suits, and mechs.”
Haley stepped forward, “Okay. We’ve got confirmation that you retreated, but it’s not far.”
In my head, Daniel said, I’m searching our best futures. If you can believe it, there are lot where talking to the child and not fighting ends this. I don’t know how, but that’s what I’ve got. There are real futures where the fungus is an ally. On the other hand, there are more futures where we talk and then there’s fighting. Some of those go bad, but overall it’s still better than when we don’t talk.
Over the comm, Daniel added, “Paladin, the child isn’t your target. I’m checking mound by mound right now. I’ll tell you when I find it, but right now, it’s better to talk.”
Alex’s eyes flicked toward the mounds behind the child and he said, “Got it,” into the comm.
“Thank you,” the child looked around the room, hopefully unable to hear that exchange. “I know you have every reason not to trust me, but as I said, I’ve learned a great deal more about human beings since my creation—even since you freed my chosen spokesperson.”
He paused, I assume taking in our response to that.
“It puzzled me,” he continued. “I’d made you an offer in what I considered good faith and even included the death of a useful tool to show how serious I was. Fortunately, I’d recovered a number of dead bodies, one of which I have here.”
Another humanoid form rose from the pool. This one had a grey, mushroom flesh body and Arete’s head.
The child smiled, “I thought you’d recognize him! I’m sure you find the idea that he’s dead disturbing, but getting access to his mind as well as that of the other deceased individuals gave me the insight I needed to understand why I shouldn’t absorb all life. Traveling through the pathways that these individuals made over their lives, it struck me that absorbing these people before they die might be… wrong.
”I think there’s something useful about the way that you all go through your lives, alone, unable to feel the thoughts of the rest of your species. Absorbing you only after your deaths might allow me to think thoughts a composite being such as myself couldn’t ordinarily think. For you, it offers immortality within me.
“Oh, and there is one other matter. From what I’ve gleaned from inspecting Arete’s consciousness, it appears that the Xiniti will exterminate all life on this planet if something like me takes over.
“For that reason, I propose an alliance.”
“Those of us who could fly” might not have been the best way to put it. Specifically, Daniel, Amy, and I followed Izzy (carrying Paladin) in. We’d be joined by a couple more from Haley’s group.
Everyone else gathered outside under Tara’s leadership.
As great as Camille’s control over gravity was, she didn’t have infinite power in the tank which meant that all of the fungus creatures that hadn’t been destroyed by the equivalent of a hundred foot fall would be attacking soon.
They’d be joined by the thousands of controlled citizens behind us. That’s why we’d left the majority of the group. Tara would be able to figure out how best to organize that fight.
Izzy, Alex, and I landed first, waiting for the others because even if every second counted, we needed the flexibility.
Daniel and Amy landed behind us with Haley and Cassie landing behind them.
Izzy and I went first, stepping into the opening—a hole in the gray flesh of the wall. It didn’t feel right to step inside. The floor sank under my boots as it might if I’d stepped inside a creature’s mouth.
I’d read a story once where guests in a future hotel made of bioengineered matter kept on disappearing. Why? Because the rooms turned out to be the creature’s stomach.
I’d forgotten whether that was an intentional design element or not, but I had little doubt it would be intentional if that turned out to be true here.
The interesting question was whose design? A random design from the combination whatever alien and human elements it encountered since being released by Hunter? Maybe it was some element of Hunter’s personality given free rein? We didn’t have necessary information.
It was best to keep my mind on what I was doing.
Definitely, Daniel thought at me from behind.
That’s when I realized that I wasn’t in a hallway. The “hallway” we’d been in was the gap between two of the mounds. As we stepped forward, the walls had changed from grey flesh to something else. The one to my right reminded me of the birthing chambers I’d seen outside—clear skin with liquid and shapes inside.
These shapes weren’t humanoid. They had the whorls of brains, but were the shape brains might be if they grew in zero gravity and without a body. Though connected by curving, folded grey matter, sometimes it clustered, sometimes it spread apart, still connected by veins of pumping blood.
On my left, the mound also appeared to be birthing chambers, but this one didn’t contain brains. It was all bodies—humanoid bodies. On my first look, I thought they were actually humans who’d been captured and were being modified into something else, but a closer look showed that they weren’t finished.
Where I could see inside, they were solid all the way through, but if some hadn’t been still growing arms and legs, I’d never have known it. They looked perfectly human other than that.
If we didn’t shut this down, they’d blend into any city in the world.
It wasn’t the only mound like that, but I didn’t have time to inspect every single one. They were all around the outside of the room and by the time we’d passed three more, we’d reached the middle.
I don’t know what I’d expected to see there. A throne room, maybe? A giant brain or maybe a mushroom? Mario? A Smurf?
What we found was a pool.
Lit by multi-colored dots on the fleshy ceiling above us, mounds bordered the space, some of them growing people, others brains, and others seemingly only walls.
Daniel spoke over the comm, “We’re in the middle of a single mind.”
“That’s good, right?” Alex looked around the room. “Can I just touch the floor or do I have to make for the pool and touch the liquid? There’s no way it’s really water.”
“I think we need more information before we move,” I said, taking a quick look around the room and not seeing anything move that wasn’t us.
Mentally I asked Daniel, Is there any chance that this means that we’re past its mental defenses?
I’m trying to figure that out. Daniel closed his eyes.
Not hearing the exchange, Alex spoke over me, “You always think we need more information, but it doesn’t just appear. Sometimes you have to push some buttons to get it.”
He pushed his way past Izzy and walked toward the pool.
Izzy stepped forward, keeping up with him, “I don’t think that’s a good idea. There’s something happening in the pool.”
Without stopping, Alex asked, “What?”
Izzy stared in the direction of the pool, “I don’t know. It’s small.”
The liquid bubbled and a child walked out of it, pulling himself over the pool’s grey wall.
Wearing a blue and white striped shirt, and blue pants, the blond haired boy could have passed for human anywhere.
“I’d like to talk,” it said with a touch of a lisp.
Alex glanced back at me, showing it was a good choice for the Fungus Collective. Most people hesitate when it comes to killing kids.
Izzy laughed.
Alex eyed her, “What?”
She shook her head, “You’re confident.”
“I’m stating a fact. You brought me here to do a job and I’m ready.” Alex looked over at a group of Jennys, possibly for support. More than one of them rolled their eyes.
Over the comm, Brooke AKA Portal AKA Guardian’s daughter and Alex’s girlfriend said, “Alex…”
Daniel interrupted before the conversation went any further, “Our chances of success start going down the longer we take here.”
At that, Alex nodded, “Let’s get started then.”
Sean’s voice came over the comm and Alex’s lip curled, “Hey, what do we do? Can we get through yet?”
“Probably not,” I said, “the mist is going down, but now it’s moist on the floor and it’s a contact poison. I’d be surprised if it’s not in the air, but if it isn’t, the slightest touch on your skin might take you down.”
Izzy spoke, her icon flashing blue in my HUD, “Unless you can get through the parking garage’s entrance to that level, you should go. I’m sensing thousands of footsteps and hundreds of tires moving in this direction. I think I even hear tank treads. They’re calling in everything they can to defend this level.”
Tank treads? That was interesting. That meant that they’d taken the local army reserve base. I wondered if they had any powered armor. If they did, it would get here sooner than the tanks.
Jody’s voice started with a small quaver, “We should go. We’re not going to be able to help.”
Yellow Mask snorted, “You can go if you want, but there has to be a way through.”
Kayla’s “Control” icon lit up, “Keep that discussion off the main channel. Tell me what you plan to do when you decide. I’ll rely it to the group.”
Dayton sent a thumbs up symbol and Justice Fist’s icon disappeared along with Prime’s team from the main channel.
“Is Team Hidden ready?” I asked, “We’re about to move.”
“We’re ready,” Haley whispered.
Vaughn said, “We hit the moment you become visible coming around the corner, right?”
“Right,” I replied.
His voice low, Adam added, “Remember that the moment you do something to harm someone, you become visible—all of you at once. You’ve got to be ready to fight the moment that changes or so thorough you don’t have to.”
“We know,” Haley said. “You told us already, but it’s still a good reminder.”
I could almost hear Cassie’s eye roll as she said, “You heard the Mystic. Move it.”
Jaclyn, Izzy, Amy, Daniel, Kals, Katuk, Alex, the various Jennys and I all looked at each other and ran forward, aiming to arrive at the corner at roughly the same time. Tiger walked next to Jaclyn.
I’d have preferred to arrive at this point less tired and beat up, but you do what you have to.
Izzy and Jaclyn stepped around the corner first, followed by Tiger. The light from the glowing fungus in the room reflected off their costumes, adding a multi-colored glow.
Amy and I came around after Tiger. As we did, the real show started. It was ironic in a way that the people we’d put in Team Hidden were there because they were less physically powerful because in another sense, they were the most powerful people on the team.
Take Camille AKA Gravity Star, for example. Being able to warp gravity to your will was no small thing.
As I got a full view of the lowest level of the parking garage with my own eyes, Camille and the rest of Team (no longer) Hidden became visible off to my right as the rest of the room glowed in its bioluminescent glory.
In that moment, the entire horde of fungus creatures charged in our direction—Prime clones, the giant headless beasts, humanoid beings just released from their translucent fungal birthing chambers…
Battle would have been joined then and there except that’s when Camille flipped the situation on its head.
Gravity changed. No longer pulling people to the floor, it now pulled them toward the far end of the left wall of the room. At least that was how it worked inside the room.
I only felt a small tug—which was fine.
People inside the room felt more than that and they fell—sideways. Giant headless fungus beasts rolled head over heels toward the room’s various mounds, reaching out toward them with their claws, sometimes missing as they tumbled “downward,” hitting the wall and splattering into chunks of beast-shaped fungus.
Others were luckier, grabbing a mound with their claws or landing on one of the mounds. How lucky that turned out to be varied.
Not all the mounds could handle the weight and lost their connection to the floor, falling along with the beast that hit it. Other times, the beast hung on with its claws, tearing a chunk of the side off of one of the birthing mounds, releasing a thick fluid that glowed a dim green.
The fluid drained onto the beast and the floor, dripping and splattering on everything between it and the far wall, including other beasts, mounds, Prime clones, tendril monsters, and even the massive circular structure in the middle of the room.
However bad the fungus was thinking that was, it became worse for it.
Vaughn had been worried that he didn’t have enough in the tank to be useful, and here used the least amount of effort he could, but it was the exact right amount.
He created small gusts of wind that blew beasts or Prime clones that had fallen onto a mound off the mound. Was a fungus creature reaching out to grab a mound? A small wind blew it a few inches or feet away out of reach.
It was Daniel’s job to notice the right moment to enter the room and as the last beast fell, he said, “Go!”
Then Izzy grabbed Paladin and those of us who could fly aimed ourselves at the circular fungus structure in the middle of the level.
It took less time than I expected even though it seemed to be a disaster when it began.
As I’d stepped forward, burning through the legs of next nearest Prime clone, more barreled into the area all at once. Arms bashed me from more than one direction, knocking me sideways. Even as I began to push myself off the ground, I wondered if I’d be able to do anything.
With the speed of their attack, they’d passed through both our front line and second and were already in the process of attacking the line of Jennys between danger and the squishy people next to the wall.
I hadn’t been the only one knocked over either. They’d also hit Amy and Katuk.
Tiger had four legs and outweighed every single one of them. Even as I tried to pull myself up, four of them were trying to flip Tiger on his side and his response was to behead and dismember anybody in reach.
I didn’t allow myself to hope too much because Tiger couldn’t do it all himself. The rest of us were taking attacks from all directions since they’d made it to either side of all of us.
I pulled myself up only to be grabbed from behind by a Prime clone and then a blobbygator opened its mouth to grab my right leg from the knee down.
Using my laser to sever the blobbygator’s head, I struggled against the arm behind me for a moment. Getting my head in the right place, I dropped while leaning forward with the Rocket suit’s full strength, sending the Prime clone who’d grabbed my neck straight over me, hitting another Prime clone and dropping on the blobbygator.
That’s when the squishy people counterattacked.
Kals’ voice couldn’t do anything to walking fungus, but physically she had all of Cassie’s strength and agility even if her endurance and regeneration weren’t even close. Kals pulled out a pistol that my implant classified as an “Alliance military design influenced by Abominator technology.”
It wasn’t Cassie’s gun but still seared any fungus creature it touched and burned holes in any she targeted. She shot three of them through the head within the first few seconds of taking action and didn’t seem to be able to miss.
She didn’t seem to be the only one feeling inspired.
Daniel reached out with his mind, hitting the nearest Prime clones with telekinetic bolts that left them missing chunks out of their necks and chests, sometimes cutting off their arms.
I’d seen him try that before but never as effectively.
Alex gave me a thumbs up and fired his pistol—which appeared to be an Earth-made copy of the same kind of pistol Kals had. He made up for it with multiple precision shots—severing a leg that Kals’ gun could have taken out in one, but still taking it out.
If that alone had been the only response, it would have slowed them down, but it wasn’t. Jenny shot back too and when she fired, she fired from thirty bodies at once. She fired off guns similar to Alex’s at the more distant Prime clones and blobbygators.
The nearer Prime clones experienced dual flamethrower streams, one from each of her hands.
Prime clones changed from actively dangerous foes to charred, actively burning foes.
I grinned as I remembered why. Paladin, for lack of a better way to put it, exuded an aura of health. Allies’ bodies worked better near him (including their brains) and for those that had them, their powers. It made all the sense in the world that those closest to him had already begun to feel the effects.
Not that I sat still. While all that was taking place, I’d shot the guy I’d thrown over my head as he’d landed on the blobbygator, the Prime clone that he’d bounced off before he hit the gator, and picked off the blobbygator that he’d fallen on as it struggled to get out from under the bodies on top of it.
Looking up, still surprised at my own efficiency, I realized that we’d cleared the room.
The toxic particles were still in the air as a mist, but it was beginning to clear. I could see the glow at the far end of the room again. I didn’t doubt that it would be normal by the time we got down there.
The only problem was that our armor still had a coating of sticky grit on it. We’d be exposed to whatever poison it was if our armor took enough damage for it to leak through—which meant that we’d need to wash it somehow.
Maybe Vaughn could squeeze rain into our attack plan? Assuming the poison was water soluble, it might help.
It reminded me of a street-level hero I’d heard about—Supersudz. His only power was to pull soapy water from another dimension, controlling the percentage of water to soap. From what I’d heard, he could make a battleground nearly frictionless, making him more effective than you’d think.
I didn’t expect to pull him out of retirement to help, though. He’d grown rich off of a chain of carwashes.
“We don’t have time to waste,” Jaclyn said, turning away from the bodies on the ground around her to face us. “They have to be summoning more troops from the city to fight us and most of them are going to be mind-controlled human beings.”
“We’re ready,” Haley said over the comm. “Are you?”
Jaclyn let out a breath that might have been a suppressed laugh, “I don’t think we have time to change anything even if we aren’t.”
Izzy stared up at the ceiling, eyes closed within her helmet, “You’re right. I can hear the footsteps of thousands of people coming this way.”
Alex held up his hand, “Hey, the only thing that matters is if I’m ready. Get me in there and I’ll take the damn thing down.”
Remembering the last time we’d fought these things, I couldn’t forget that we’d just sent a few of our heavy hitters away so that they could breathe safely.
That time though we didn’t face the prime clones plus a near-infinite number of mooks. It was just them and we’d all trained together.
Jaclyn shouted, “Use the wall,” and everyone knew what she meant. Everyone who could go hand to hand with them went to the outside. Everyone else went toward the wall with us between the two.
That meant that as the first three took huge leaps, bounding into our space, Izzy flew in, hitting the nearest one, throwing it backward hard enough that it flew in a straight line toward the wall on the far end, cracking the concrete.
It fell to the ground.
At the same time, Jaclyn ran forward, hitting the one next to it at the points where the legs and arms joined the body, severing them.
Not as quick as Jaclyn, I followed her in because in this group, the Rocket suit made me a heavy hitter however fragile I felt underneath. As Alex, Daniel, Kals, and the crowd of Jennys ran toward the wall, I repeated Izzy’s move, punching a prime clone hard enough that he flew 20 feet backward. It wasn’t as far as Izzy, but it wasn’t a contest.
Besides, he didn’t get up again. Amy threw her spear at him and he shriveled into dust. Meanwhile, a barrel formed underneath Katuk’s arm that was wider than his arm, but so thick that the open area was maybe as wide as a thumb.
A white-hot ball of something fired out of it, incinerating the chest of the prime clone it hit, burning through the arm of another one, and burning into the wall on the other side of the room. The impact burned everything it hit and threw blackened chunks out of the wall.
I didn’t love the property damage, but if the city wanted to complain, they could take it up with the Xiniti nation.
They might pay. You never know.
Without anyone saying anything, we fell into a loose formation as we continued to move forward next to the wall. Jaclyn and Izzy, as the most mobile and hardest-hitting stayed out the farthest, moving wherever necessary. Amy, Katuk, Tiger, and I, middleweight hitters who could switch off between hand-to-hand and ranged attacks, stayed on the outside of the main group.
A couple of layers of Jenny stood behind us, all but one of which was expendable if we wanted to keep her in the fight. The “original” Jenny was probably in California.
Daniel, Kals, and Alex stood behind all of that—which had its own benefits for all of us.
As we’d formed up, more prime clones and blobbygators bounded up the concrete toward us. A bunch of them jumped toward the front of the group where Tiger had taken point.
I know that sounds weird, but he wasn’t your average dog.
Not all of them reached him. Izzy and Jaclyn took out four while they were still in the air. That meant that the first one that reached him faced the dog alone. The prime-clone reached back, winding up his arm for a punch that would hit the dog directly between the eyes.
Except, of course, the dog didn’t want to be hit and dodged, the punch scraping across the armor on the right side of his helmet’s snout. As part of the same move, he turned his head toward the arm, opened his helmet’s mouth, and bit down, severing the prime-clone’s head, arm, and a chunk of his upper chest and then dropping all of it on the ground.
Then Tiger lunged forward with more agility than you’d think that an animal of his size would have and bit off the next nearest prime-clone’s leg.
As the prime clone hit the ground, he drew his front claw across the back of the fungus creature’s neck severing it.
On the whole, I counted it as a success on two levels—first, we’d taught him to fight alongside us. Second, my suit design worked for his natural fighting style. He wasn’t biting people with his actual mouth. His helmet allowed him to manipulate the helmet’s mouth in the same way the claws on his suit weren’t his claws.
They were a new variant of the same technology in Cassie’s sword. His armor contained a few more options, but I’d tried to design it so that he could fight as naturally as possible.
I, meanwhile, used my laser to cut down one clone and then another, the bright white beam visible against the dust despite being almost the same color. Still worrying that I might use the laser’s dedicated power too soon, I set it aside because we were so close to the end.
All we had to do was take out a few more and we’d be in the room with Haley’s team and our best chance to end this.
Guessing what was going on, I shouted, “Grain elevator explosion! Retreat!”
Even if not everyone understood the details, they understood “explosion” and “retreat” and Jaclyn wasn’t wrong about how quickly we could move if we had to.
We’d practiced retreats.
The first duty of anyone who could get people out was to grab them. Everyone else’s responsibility was to guard the retreat, if necessary, and get themselves out.
Of course, we hadn’t practiced with this group, but people caught the gist. Daniel grabbed Yellow Mask, Bouman, Dayton, Alex, and one of the Jennys with telekinesis. Izzy grabbed him. Everyone else ran or flew back around the corner—including almost all of the Jennys—all but one.
In my HUD, I saw one of the identical women in a red costume running toward the cloud. I understood why.
The powder, much like flour, could burn. If you had enough of it in the air, you could affect the entire room with the resulting explosion. How much of an explosion you got depended on a number of things including how concentrated the powder was.
Jenny was choosing to explode the powder on her terms instead of how the fungus intended—a great idea in theory.
In practice, I didn’t like it. Why? Among other possibilities what if the explosion now extended into the room where Haley’s team was or caused a cave in?
I didn’t have time to explain any of that. I didn’t even have time to shout, “Wait,” into my comm and hope she heard it.
A stream of flame extended from her finger, hitting the expanding cloud of white stuff.
It didn’t explode.
For a moment, I didn’t get it. Then I did. I’d been thinking explosives because I had a lot of experience with explosives. What I should have been thinking about was mushrooms. What do mushrooms produce? Poison—many different kinds.
“Hey everyone,” I thought into my implant, directing it to the comm system, “I was wrong about the explosion part, but the bad news is that I think we’re dealing with poison—unless it’s just fog.”
That last possibility seemed unlikely.
Then I added, “I hope everyone has airtight costumes.”
As everyone digested that, the nearest copy of Jenny did the obvious. She took off her helmet. Over my helmet’s sensor, I heard her moan and then she fell to her knees.
After that, she disappeared.
Over the comm, Jenny’s icon blinked and she spoke, taking a breath first, “The poison’s fast acting, works on contact with skin, and is hallucinogenic. I wanted to let it continue to work longer, but I wasn’t sure I’d be able to. It took only seconds before I was almost uncontrollably anxious and started hallucinating. I felt like my heart was going to beat out of my chest.”
“We’ve got to get out,” Jody’s words were clipped—too short and with too little space between them. “All of us have exposed skin!”
“That’s us too,” Bouman said.
Prime made a growling noise that made me think of heavy machinery, “We’ll get out with them and then we all come back the moment it’s clear.”
“Go,” I didn’t want to find out what a paranoid, anxious, and hallucinating Prime would be like. The man made up for being vengeful and murderous by at least being rational enough to make a deal.
The group of dots showing Justice Fist and the government group ascended, leaving us. Even though it was for the best, it didn’t feel good. We could have followed them up, but Jaclyn said, “This might be the best time to go forward. They’re not going to expect it.”
Daniel said, “I get better potential futures out of going forward than waiting.”
Alex grinned, “Then let’s go and get this done.”
Stuffing down memories of how Alex’s group and I had attacked Syndicate L and been captured for our trouble, I said, “I guess.”
With that half-hearted agreement, the remaining group got back into position and we all started down the empty level again. This time, though, we couldn’t see ahead of us.
The contact poison in the air obscured everything, but it wasn’t a complete disaster. I’d included sonar and heat sensing capabilities in the League suits and we all had them. Thermal imaging wasn’t much help, but the sonar gave us workable outlines of the room around us.
Except for the speed bumps, the room didn’t have any obstacles to speak of.
As we walked, I asked Amy, “How are you doing?”
Alone of the group, she didn’t have one of my suits, relying on whatever made her the Bloodmaiden and magic.
She laughed, “Not feeling paranoid or hallucinating.”
“Wow. I assume there was no way to pass that on.”
She shook her head, “Not after what I did back there, but I feel it was almost worth it to not have Jody here.”
I snorted, hoping that no one was sharing audio of this conversation with the League channel. I wasn’t, and judging from how Jody didn’t start telling us to go screw ourselves over the comm, no one was—maybe.
We were a quarter of the way down the level by then and still in the middle of the cloud. Before I could note how surprised I was to regret that Prime and Sean weren’t with us, Izzy said, “They’re coming.”
At almost the same time, Haley opened up her comm connection to say, “A birthing chamber mound opened and fungus clones of Prime stepped out. They’re coming your way.”
Tiger growled and then they were on us, bounding out of the clouds to attack.
Having talked through our battle plan in a dark garage lit mostly by the lights on the far end, we started on stage one of the plan.
By moving to the far end of the room and letting Izzy passively construct a picture of what was ahead, we learned that we had one level between us and the main event. That level, so far as we could tell was empty—which was an interesting choice.
To my mind, that meant that it was empty to make it more obvious when someone attacked or maybe because they had an area of effect weapon they planned to activate on intruders. Tara thought I had a good point. So, we waited.
Why? Because if we were going to get Paladin in there, it would be better to have him with us. Dramatically speaking, it would be more exciting to have their group show up at a surprising moment during the battle, but expecting that to happen would be dumb.
Fortunately, Paladin’s group wasn’t far behind us. They appeared within a few minutes. As expected from Jenny’s Flame Legion codename, there was a group of identical women in red costumes accented with yellow and white markings.
Along with them came Alex as Paladin in a brown “leather” duster over shiny plate armor for a kind of cowboy/knight look. In the middle of the group with him were Katuk and Kals, both in silver Xiniti armor. Tiger trailed just behind them, a giant dog in Heroes’ League armor.
Once in sight of Jaclyn though, he bolted out of the group and didn’t stop until he’d reached her, putting both paws on her shoulders in a move that would have broken a normal person’s bones.
Unable to lick her through his helmet, he jumped up and down on her a few times, wagging his tail throughout.
When he was done, she turned toward Paladin and his escort, asking, “Why did you bring him into this?”
Alex held up his hands in a shrug, “I didn’t bring him into this.”
Kals faced her, “He wanted to go. He put his armor on and stood next to the rest of us.”
Stepping forward to stand closer to Jaclyn, Katuk said, “I was told that on Earth dogs are loyal helpers to humans. His kind is good at fighting. It will be useful to have him along.”
Shaking her head as she rested her hand on the dog’s side, she said, “Yes, but I didn’t want him in danger. I wanted him to be safe.”
She looked down the room toward where it turned into the next level and back to everyone, “Well, there’s nothing we can do now.”
She looked up at Tiger, “Follow directions. Remember what we taught you in training, and stay alive, okay?”
He grunted.
I didn’t know how smart he was, but it was smarter than your average dog. Smart enough that I could give him a version of the team’s self-repairing suits and he could use it. Given his limited vocabulary, I couldn’t know it for sure, but it seemed like he understood how to use the HUD.
Jaclyn patted his armored side and turned to us, “For the record, I don’t like this. Let’s not bring him in again.”
The dog huffed and Jaclyn patted him. What he meant by that, we didn’t have time to figure out. I hoped Jaclyn wouldn’t be distracted by his presence in the fight. Could I honestly say that she’d be more distracted by the dog than Haley or I would be distracted by each other, though?
As Jaclyn had said, there was nothing we could do about it now.
“So,” I said, “I guess it’s time to try the empty room. Anyone tough want to volunteer to spring whatever trap is in there if there is one?”
Prime eyed the lower end of the room, “I’ll do it.”
“That works,” I looked over the group. “Let’s go.”
As I started to walk, Jaclyn matched my stride, “I’ll go with him.”
“No,” from just ahead of me Izzy turned around, “if it’s fire or lasers, you’ll be as hurt as he will. I’ll do it.”
Jaclyn opened her mouth, possibly to argue, but said, “You’re right.”
When we reached the bottom of the room and looked around the corner, we saw the empty level. Devoid of cars or anything but bare concrete walls, I wondered what Hunter’s rogue fungus had come up with.
The only sign I could see of the fungus’ presence was the far end. There, where the room turned one more time, the multi-colored light of the glowing fungus that I’d seen through Haley’s teams’ cameras illuminated the floor, creating a multi-colored glow.
It was beautiful but wasn’t (as I worried for a second that it might be) capable of hypnotizing the whole team. It did hint that the fungus started just out of our sight.
Prime nodded as he looked over the scene, “All the way down or do you think maybe three-quarters of the way? If they don’t have some kind of trap here, I’m thinking that the fight starts at the entrance to the room.”
“All the way,” Jaclyn said, “even the slowest of us can get down there faster than you’d think.”
At that moment, the quality of the light at the end of the room changed, disappearing into a cloud of white.
My first thought was spores, but it wasn’t. It was finer. If anything, it reminded me of flour or smoke, billowing upward, filling the room, and moving toward us.
“Huh,” I checked around us again for hostiles with the suit’s sensors and didn’t see anything while my mind raced.
How much could they get out of Arete at this point? He’d been dead for a bit by now. On the other hand, your opponent always did things for a reason. Best to assume that they were going to copy his voice, add it to the telepaths, and create some kind of super-influencer or add it to every fungus construct they could.
“Does everyone have buzzers? As in anti-voice control buzzers? Preferably my design?” I looked around the group for responses.
Everyone on our team had them. Dayton volunteered that, “We’ve all got your design.”
Looking up to face me, Bouman said, “We’ve got them, but not your design. Ours didn’t stop Arete from giving us orders.”
“It wasn’t an accident,” Prime said. “Magnus wanted contacts in government even when he was in the Cabal. We had people with Dominator powers all along. It’s not the first time I got handed a buzzer, but most of the time they just put wax in our ears.”
Bouman gave him a sideways glance, “Wax? That’s all it took? I’m surprised more people haven’t tried that.”
Prime shrugged, “Hot wax. Most people don’t want to.”
I eyed Prime, “Where did the Cabal get the buzzers?”
“They had off-planet contacts. That and leftover Abominator technology,” he looked down, opening one of the pouches on his belt and pulled out a small disk.
Holding it out in front of me, “This is a government buzzer.”
I examined it with my suit’s sensors, taking a picture of the inside. My implant identified it as an Abominator design with modifications by the Human Ascendancy. It placed the design elements as 150 years old.
“Thanks,” I told Prime. “You’re right. You all need new buzzers. Competent Dominators can go around them.”
I reached into a pouch on my belt, pulling out four of mine. I’d taken to bringing along backups. I could have had my suit manufacture them from materials in the suit, but since those materials could also become armor, I didn’t.
As I handed them out to Prime, Logan, Yellow Mask, and our former mayor, I said, “They should be durable, but if they get damaged or you lose one, tell me. We’ve been fighting the Nine lately, so I’ve made a point of bringing spares.”
I didn’t bother to point out the fact that the government was handing out technology from the Human Ascendancy. It wasn’t impossible that they’d found it and copied it, but I’d made my design available to anyone who wanted it. It felt wrong that they were choosing to use tech that well-trained Dominators could get past instead.
Prime was undoubtedly right in guessing Magnus was involved. Unfortunately, it was nothing we had time to get to the bottom of even if the question of who Magnus controlled was important.
Having added Prime’s group to the League channel, I said, “We should have a plan if we’re going into the room. Our ultimate goal is to get Paladin in and have him touch the main brain of this thing and kill it.
“Given the size of the walled area in the middle, I’m thinking it won’t be a quick fight once we get in—which means that if we were to just have Blue and Accelerando bring him in, it would probably stall. Worse, everything else in the room would probably attack them from behind while also making it hard for us to get to them.
“So, I’m thinking we might want to take out everything we can before going in. Plus, we go in as a group and not just us, but Paladin’s group too. Anyone else have an idea?”
Amy frowned, “You’re making me wish I’d come up with something else in the last room.”
“It passed through my mind,” I shrugged, “but you got us this far.”
Jaclyn looked over at Izzy, “You’re holding back to keep the ceiling from falling in. Maybe you could do it intentionally—not the whole ceiling, but part.”
Cassie spoke over the comm, “She could let us get out and then destroy the whole room.”
Switching back to the even tone I associated with the True, Tara said, “No. Fungus will survive that. We need to kill it all.”
Nodding even though we were the only ones who could see it, Daniel said, “I want to second that. It doesn’t end if we bring the room down.”
Vaughn spoke up from Haley’s team, “I’m not at full power, but I can do a mass lightning blast or a tornado. Maybe both. I won’t be good for much after that, but it’s a start.”
Camille, Sydney and Sean’s half-sister, spoke up, “You’re forgetting me.”
“Yeah,” I said. She wasn’t wrong. I had. Haley’s friends mostly worked with Haley and in retrospect, we could have used her.
“So…” She began, “What if I start by changing the direction of gravity and pull everything to a wall? After that, everyone opens up on them.”
We talked more, ironing out the details, but that was the shape of it.
“Maybe we should ask him to get them out? I think he would,” I said.
“I’ll do it,” Haley said. “We’re stuck here until you and Paladin reach us.”
“Do that,” Cassie added, reminding me that we were on the group channel. “It’s crazy to leave them there if you’ve got a choice.”
I frowned, “I just hope Control won’t be stuck there alone.”
C’s voice came over the comm, “You don’t have to worry about your parents. Guardian already got them out. I’m here with Control and I know a few things we have in storage and how to use them.”
Part of me wanted to ask more details on what he meant by the last bit. We had Abominator tech in storage that the original team had recovered from fighting them. If he knew how to use that, I had questions.
We didn’t have time for them now. Instead I asked, “This is one of those times where you can intervene?”
“You could say that,” C’s voice lowered, possibly more thoughtful or maybe careful. “Let’s say that it’s important for me to stay in the background and make sure certain things don’t happen.”
I knew better than to ask more. Knowing that Daniel’s grandfather was more mentally capable than we’d been aware, C could have a very specific mission and he wasn’t going to jeopardize it.
I wondered if I’d agree with the mission if I knew what it was. C was acting with the League’s board to keep a future where as many of us survived as possible on track. Knowing that Travis was dead, I couldn’t help but wonder if we’d agree on what we were willing to sacrifice.
I didn’t think they’d really chosen to sacrifice Travis, but I knew how Daniel’s prescience worked. Sometimes you could choose to take a higher risk to avoid something you truly couldn’t handle. You might also take the safe choices, but accept certain sacrifices. Our acceptable sacrifices might not be the same as theirs, but this wasn’t the time to start that conversation.
It isn’t, Daniel thought at me, but you’re right. It does feel like they think we’re children. To be fair to them, though, they’ve had longer to think this through and we know they care about not only us but everyone’s future.
I did know it, but if Travis’ death were the result of playing it too safe, Haley for one might have issues with how they were doing it.
Instead of arguing, I told C, “Okay,” and looked ahead into the room we were walking through. Aside from the rows of cars we walked between, only the dust of the destroyed fungus creatures remained to menace us.
How far were we away from the room Haley and her team were in? I asked the group, adding “Does anybody know? I could send down a bot, but I don’t want to risk them hearing it if I don’t have to.”
Izzy turned back to look at me, “I think we’re two levels above them, but I’ve just been listening. When we were fighting them earlier, they noticed when I used sonar actively.”
“You use high pitches usually. So maybe they do too,” I nodded. “They might already hear us.”
She shook her head, “I don’t think so. I think they use sonar, but not at long range.”
“I’m shut out,” Bouman said. “Absolutely, completely shut out. I don’t know what they did, but it feels like me on the other end. I set up their mental defenses when I was under their control and they’re still my defenses, but they’ve been changing them.”
Aloud, Daniel said, “It still feels like his defenses though. It’s almost as if there are a few more of you, adding tweaks and shoring up weaknesses.”
Tara’s voice came over the comm, calm and even, “I think I can explain it. I’ve been watching while we were waiting. While you were talking with Bouman, one of the birthing chamber mounds opened up. The creatures inside weren’t copies of Prime. They were too thin and small. They didn’t look like Bouman either, but they did walk with his gait. I think they copied as much of him as they wanted while they had him.”
Stopped as we had this conversation, I took a quick look around us for threats as I said, “I did think it was odd that they were willing to sacrifice you so easily.”
The unnatural evenness of Tara’s voice disappeared, “They can control the fungus copies better. He was disposable, poor guy.”
Bouman, the “poor guy” in question, didn’t meet anyone’s eyes, but to my surprise, Prime put his huge hand on Bouman’s shoulder, “Don’t worry about it. It’s not your fault. You were manipulated and they’ll get theirs soon.”
Looking up, Bouman managed a smile, “You’re right. I’ll try to remember that.”
Even as I reflected on how weird it was to see Prime comfort anyone, Haley interrupted the scene with, “Shit. I forgot to mention that when we were sneaking in here, I saw them put Arete’s head into one of the birthing chamber mounds.”
I hadn’t been planning to kill Magnus, but if I was honest with myself, the guy was immortal. Short of killing him, what were we going to do, hand him over to courts or law enforcement that the Nine influenced or controlled? Get him put into jail for as long as there was a will to keep him?
There might be a way to do that for 20 years, but what about 1000 or more? He could realistically outlive any government willing to put him away and if he did, he could pick up where he left off, possibly creating a whole new organization built on the immortal loyalists, hidden money, and maybe organizations we didn’t yet know he controlled.
Theoretically, I’d be around to stop him if he got out, assuming Lee and Kee were correct about my potential. Cassie would too and maybe if I were lucky other members of the League or even our descendants. The way Lee talked, it sounded like he’d gotten involved in Stapledon to build an army capable of taking on his fellow Artificers.
That should have given me reason to hope, but I knew that Cassie’s father had died and that I didn’t even know where Lee was right now.
“We’ll tell you,” I said, my boots stepping in the ashes of the destroyed fungus creatures as we stepped through the doorway into another section of the parking garage.
Prime nodded, “Good.”
The room didn’t look much different from the other section or any other parking garage level. If you imagined grey concrete, yellow lines, and parked cars, you had almost the whole thing. The only important differences were that it was almost full of cars, putting the ash all in the lanes and it only had one exit—going downward to the next level.
I also noted that the temperature ticked up two or three degrees as we descended. It wasn’t much, but I’d have expected the opposite.
Of course, life made heat.
I felt a notification from my implant and heard Haley’s voice in my head, “We’re in position. Portal still can’t portal into here. Flame Legion made a legion of herself and they’re escorting Paladin through.”
I checked Haley’s group’s camera feeds. A quick look over them showed another level of the parking garage—which by itself wasn’t exciting at all. The contents of the room made me think think of the cover of a science fiction novel; the kind where the science fiction is an excuse for body horror.
Only the walls and ceiling showed any grey concrete at all. Fungus covered the rest including the lights, but I had no difficulty seeing and it wasn’t because of the cameras. I’d used cameras designed to handle low light conditions, but this room didn’t lack light. The fungus took care of it.
It glowed. I saw greens, blues, reds, yellows, and purples.
After the light, I noticed what the light showed: bodies, many bodies in many shapes. Not all the bodies were human. Four legged fungus monsters prowled the front and sides of the room. Oval-shaped, headless creatures, they had the angled back legs and front forelegs of most mammals, but no obvious inspiration except that they had a predator’s claws.
Other shapes were humanoid. There were prime-clones standing guard while others formed inside bulbous, glowing mounds that reminded me of the Abominator cloning chambers I’d seen.
Similar mounds were scattered all over the room, all of them guarded whether by prime-clones, the headless beasts, or blobbygators.
I found the middle of the room interesting. It appeared to be a fortress.
Around a quarter of the room had been walled off from the rest. Circular except for random bulges, the grey mushroom walls were sprinkled with color in no pattern I could decode. Thick runners expanded from the bottom and top of the walls, connecting the birthing chamber mounds, more mounds without an obvious purpose, and ran out of the room to unseen destinations.
This wasn’t going to be easy. Assuming that the system that prevented teleportation was inside the walls, Portal wouldn’t be teleporting Alex in.
Judging from the position of the cameras, Haley’s group had snuck in and moved to the back on the right side of the room, something only made possible because of Adam’s fairy invisibility.
The moment Alex made it to the room, the fighting would start, and it was impossible that they didn’t have defenses. The mystery mounds existed for a reason. Plus, remembering how the tendril monsters had formed out of fungus on the ceiling made it impossible to miss how fungus was everywhere in the room.
“One more thing,” Haley added, “that I know you’re not going to like because I know I don’t. You know how Kals and Katuk argued about how she couldn’t join in on this? Well, she insisted and Katuk doesn’t have the authority to keep her there if she chooses to ignore his advice. So now they’re with Paladin.”
“Oh,” I said. “Crap. They didn’t bring anyone else, did they?”
I couldn’t see Uncle Steve or my mom or dad joining in, not to mention Haley’s parents, but I’d thought the responsibility of leading a rebellion might cause Kals to stay out of this too.
“Yes,” Haley’s tone could have frozen drinks, “they brought the dog.”
“Huh,” I said, “that might not be good for the dog, but it’s not all bad for them. I just wish our parents had more protection.”
Tiger was bigger than most horses, fast, and tough enough that his kind hunted dinosaur-sized creatures on his home world. I’d made armor for him and we’d included him in team trainings because it seemed inevitable that we’d need him someday.
“I know,” Haley let out a breath and drew it in. “I keep on reminding myself they’re safe, that they’re not alone, and that Guardian can get them out any time he wants.”
She let out a breath and moved her hand up the spear, adjusting her grip. A little bit of red sparkled on the spear’s blade, traveling in a line of sparks down her arm.
Taking another long breath, she looked at me, “I’m fine. I will want to use the spear to build up energy, but we’re not fighting anything I’ll feel guilty about using it on.”
She glared at me, “I don’t know what you’re thinking, but I’m not taking donations. I don’t want to explain it to Night Cat.”
“No,” I said, waving away the suggestion, “I don’t want to explain that either.”
Sean looked between the two of us, “What are you talking about?”
“He was stupid,” Amy said, frowning and looking away from me.
I met Sean’s eyes, “She was dying after we fought The Thing That Eats. I stabbed myself with her spear to see if I couldn’t save her except she wasn’t conscious enough to stop it and Lee had to intervene.”
“Whoa,” Sean looked over at Amy who’d turned away from the conversation, “I didn’t know it was that close.”
“Much too close,” she said. “Close enough that I’ve sometimes had moments where I understand how the Rocket suit works. That’s nothing to hope for unless I want to kill someone.”
“Hey,” Jaclyn turned toward us, “we should get moving. Bloodmaiden bought us time. Let’s not waste it.”
She started walking toward the side exit and we followed, all of us feeling more drained than when we’d walked into the room. Well, except maybe for Prime. He walked forward without any hint of tiredness or even that he’d been regrowing his leg the last time we’d fought him.
Turning back toward me, Prime said, “Where’s Lee these days?”
“No idea,” I said, “he’s unpredictable.”
Dayton took a quick look behind us, and presumably not seeing anything that frightened him said, “The last I saw him, he was on Earth, but he’d been in space before that.”
Prime grunted, “Space? No kidding. I can’t say I know the guy well, but I didn’t know he had connections out there. My experience is that whenever people from off-planet get involved, it all goes to shit.”
This was, I realized, the first time I’d ever gotten to talk with Prime in a setting where he wasn’t going to try to kill me (now). He’d been with the Cabal for at least a couple thousand years and had to have known Magnus.
I wouldn’t be able to get too much out of him before whatever fight came next, but who knew if I’d get this chance again? I should ask him something.
If he knew that Magnus was seeking the device that Lee hid here somehow, I didn’t want him to blab it in front of Sean and his team, but if nothing else, I needed to let him know I was serious about what I’d said earlier.
I asked the first thing I could think of, “Did you know Magnus?”
Prime gave a short bark of a laugh, “That guy? He was part of the inner council for thousands of years. Yeah. I killed a lot of people for him, but I wouldn’t call him a friend. You’re asking because you’re going after the Nine, right?”
“Pretty much,” I watched his face for a reaction, but he only nodded at my reply.
“Good,” he said, “that’s the only reason I stopped attacking you. If you’re dumb enough to risk dying to convince me of it, I’m figuring that you meant it. I want in on it. I want to be there at the end and get a shot at him. You beat us and humiliated us and I can’t say I liked it, but he turned my people into mind-controlled slaves. If I get the chance, I’m going to kill him for it.”
I glanced over at Bouman and Yellow Mask, both of whom were watching, “I can tell you when we’re going in, but I hope your team can spare you. This stuff never goes on my schedule. Also, honestly, we’re going to be a little leery about passing on any kind of notice given that we’re pretty much assuming that the Nine are everywhere and that even some people who don’t know they’re assets of the Nine are assets.”
Yellow Mask laughed, “Tell us about it. That’s why we’re here. Arete had our number. He didn’t have time to make us into the Nine’s slaves, but people above us assigned us to assist him and Major Justice in whatever they asked for.”
I wondered if she was telling the truth and Daniel thought at me, So far as she knows. Dominators can’t erase memories with their voice powers, but a telepath under their control could. Bouman could if he were under their control, but I don’t see any markers for memory modification in her head. Be aware though, that I can’t be confident of that without a deeper scan.
“Look,” Prime said, “if you tell me when you’re going up against Magnus, I’ll find a way to be there. People call the organization The Nine, but don’t be fooled. They should call it The One. No one but him matters. Kill him and it all falls apart.”
“Are you okay with that?” I asked, watching as the next group of tendril monsters began to clamber over or around their dead predecessors.
“We need to get down there,” she said, squeezing her left hand in a way that I knew was drawing blood and power along with it.
From the other side of our group, Yellow Mask, who’d been stabbing tendril monsters with her rapier turned to stare at Bloodmaiden, “Is that blood magic?”
Amy turned to stare back, “Go stab monsters and get off your high horse. You’re a felon. Remember my name?”
To be fair to Yellow Mask, in our universe blood magic was mostly used by vampires and necromancers. To be fair to Amy, she wasn’t from our universe even if blood magic was used by the (living, not undead) vampires there. She was descended from them which made her a kind of dhampir.
Yellow Mask all but snarled and stabbed a mushroom monster with her rapier, the blade erupting into a glowing white flame. Then she hacked into another, searing it as she cut.
I was reminded once again that I should have checked in with Mateo and asked why she’d ended up on probation as special forces. He might not tell me, but from what I understood, the mask was a family inheritance, so he’d know.
Amy held her left hand in the air. It dripped blood, but the blood seemed to be vibrating and even glowing. The way it illuminated her body made me think of her transformation sequence.
The red, crystalline edges of her armor glowed and even the black metal sections seemed to take on a red aura. At that point, the otherworldly chanting began even though that didn’t sound the same as when she transformed. The beat was faster, more insistent, more urgent.
No one stopped fighting, but everyone was shooting her looks—not least of whom Dayton and Jody who were giving her a wider than normal berth as they darted around her to chop into the monsters around us.
Yellow Mask stabbed another tendril monster and shouted, “What’s she doing,” at me as I grabbed the first tendril monster to land and threw him into the group behind him, turning on the sonics to slow them down more.
“Don’t know,” I shouted back, “entering the avatar state or something?”
She glanced over at me as the fungus monsters began to seep mushroom goo, asking, “Are you fucking kidding me?”
It could only have been at that moment that red light expanded outward from Amy in a blast reminiscent of a nuclear explosion, but better controlled.
We were unharmed, but the same could not be said of our opponents. Tendril monsters, prime clones, and blobbygators all died, hit first by the red light, but then by the same magic in Amy’s spear, a cold magic that dried the fungus creatures into pitted, leathery versions of themselves that then turned to dust before our eyes.
There was no comparison to what she’d done before and she wasn’t done.
She turned toward the vast number of tendril monsters coming down the ramp toward us in the big room and pointed her spear at them. Her eyes flashed red as her gems and then she opened her mouth and red light poured out, rolling upward toward the top of the ramp.
Feeling a whisper of power, I concentrated on using senses that Kee had been trying to teach me to use. It may have only been because there was more to see than normal, but it worked.
For the moment, I saw Amy untransformed, smaller, and without armor, standing in the middle of a scaffolding of dull, pitted metal tinged with the red of her gems.
The rolling red energy that issued out into the room came through a horn-shaped construct within the scaffolding. Where the energy came from wasn’t obvious, but a fuzziness around the small end of the horn hinted that it came from another place. More than that, the rolling energy wasn’t just going on its own. It seemed to be forming around a dark energy that Amy weaved with her hands.
I knew better than to assume this was literally true. It was a completely nonhuman perception of reality filtered through my brain’s need to make the world sensible—which didn’t mean it was untrue either.
Almost every tendril monster in the big room had been destroyed. The only exceptions were a few on the far end who’d been around the corner of the ramp.
It wasn’t just the tendril monsters either. We’d been fighting toward the side exit except our way had been blocked by prime clones and blobbygators. Izzy, Jaclyn, Prime, and Logan hadn’t been doing a bad job, but it had been slow going.
The prime clones and blobbygators were gone too, their crisped bodies falling apart as I watched. Izzy, Jaclyn, Prime, and Logan stood in the middle of a sea of ash.
Amy groaned and leaned on her spear. I stepped toward her, ready to grab her if she stumbled. The red tinge to her armor was gone and the jeweled edges of her armor only had their normal glow.
Waving me off, she said, “I’m fine. Give me a second.”
Unseen through my helmet, I raised an eyebrow, “You’re sure?”
“I’m sure,” she said, nodding. “I got more energy out of them than I expected. It took the edge off, but I’m not going to be able to do it again.”
We didn’t have much time to have a discussion about it either because the problem with fighting a hive mind (or at least a central intelligence that coordinates all the others) is that it constantly sees the big picture.
The big picture in that moment was that it had us off-balance and it was time to capitalize on it.
We’d destroyed the ones holding Jody, but now all the rest of them had charged in while we were doing it, trampling the bodies of the ones that we’d killed.
It wasn’t just the tendril monsters either.
In the chaos, the Fungus Collective had managed to move a few prime clones and blobbygators into position to threaten our less physically powerful members.
Two prime clones and a blobbygator were coming at Amy and me as tendril monsters leapt upward, sticking to the ceiling Spider-man style and reached in with their tendrils to grab at the inside of our group.
The good news was that we weren’t complete pushovers. Sean moved his circle of ball bearing death straight up to the ceiling, turning the tendril monsters into fungus confetti.
While that was great in theory, it also meant that Sean was no longer using his circle as offense—which meant it wasn’t in the way of any prime clones that might be acting as the point of the spear when attacking the group.
I couldn’t complain about that, but it meant that Amy and I would take the brunt of it—and we did.
A prime clone rushed me, moving and swinging as quickly as the original. There was no way I could dodge the punch, but I’d seen it coming in enough time that I could stand sideways and let it graze my chest.
The force was closer to the actual Prime than I’d hoped it would be, but I didn’t take much of it and was able to take a step back and remain standing.
Taking me out wasn’t his goal though. He’d been trying to get past me and take on our ex-mayor or Daniel—at least that was my guess because he didn’t try to stop to take me on. He kept running forward even as his fist brushed my chest.
I did the obvious and hoped everyone else was paying enough attention to adjust. I wrapped his arm in my right arm and pushed him forward with my left, twisting my body as I pushed him around me and away from our group, stumbling as he went.
As I let go, I fired on him with my laser hitting him in the back of his neck, burning a hole through it and out the front.
Jody blurred forward then, slashing through the remaining part of the prime clone’s neck, beheading him. I let go of the body to watch it careen into a group of tendril monsters and still continue to to punch anything it could reach.
The head rolled into the oncoming monsters.
Meanwhile, the blobbygator had crawled up and grabbed my legs with its long, rounded head.
Even if the fleshy, rounded mass of its body wobbled as it moved, whatever passed for teeth in its mouth were hard and its grip was strong enough to throw errors in my HUD.
It had twisted its head sideways to grab my legs, so when it tried to make its head level again, I turned sideways, falling toward the concrete floor. Ignoring the oncoming legs and tendrils of all the creatures coming toward me, I pummeled the blobbygator’s body, grateful to punch a hole in its side.
Bending sideways, I got a grip on the blobbygator’s jaw and ripped the upper jaw off, throwing it into the crowd of monsters.
If it hurt any of them, I didn’t notice.
I was too busy scrambling to my feet. As I did, Dayton slipped in, cutting the body in two with his knives.
Ahead of me, they appeared to be endless. We needed space. Knowing I had only a finite amount of juice for the laser, I decided that this would be a good time to spend some of it. I didn’t stop there. I also fired off a series of boombots, shooting them over the front line and into the crowd so that the explosion could hit them from behind as my laser hit them from the front.
It didn’t go perfectly, but it went as well as I could expect.
I aimed the lasers at the legs, hoping I could cut them off, and in a few cases I did. In other cases, I cut halfway through—which was almost as good.
I could see the half-cut legs wobble as the prime clones stepped forward and then fall over as a wall of fire from my boombots exploded behind them.
Dayton and Jody darted out, chopping up the fallen and the wobbling.
I’d bought us a few seconds to come up with a better way to handle this, but wouldn’t be able to do it forever. I only had a certain number of bots and if I didn’t have any left when we got to wherever the central brain was, I’d regret it.
I looked over at Amy as she grabbed the Bloodspear out of the air, “Any ideas?”
“Yes,” she said, “but it’s going to take a lot out of me.”
I’d deliberately chosen to be our right flank, knowing that I’d be in the front line. As they came toward us, I opened up with sonics, trying a medium width beam and aiming for their legs.
My plan? Slow them down.
While imperfect, it worked okay. Though a wider beam might not do as much damage as a narrow beam, it allowed me the luxury of poor aim. I wasn’t terrible at aiming, but I was running, trying to keep aware of my teammates’ positions, and also trying to point the sonics under each arm at something useful.
The sonic beams crossed the legs and tendrils, causing them to drip liquid and sometime splatter bits of flesh. That had the intended result. Their front line of tendril monsters slowed down and the monsters behind them had no choice but either run into them from behind or stop and force everyone behind them to do the same.
It didn’t take down any of them, though, so you could reasonably argue that I was merely delaying the moment where they’d overrun us.
That, of course, was only inevitable if I were alone and I wasn’t. Sean took advantage of how they’d smashed into each other to reduce his circle of ball bearings to maybe five feet in diameter and cycle through them like a lawn mower, spraying bits of mushroom like grass clippings.
Jody, despite the terror below the surface of his mind, darted out from the group, slashing with his monomolecular blade, cutting a tendril monster to a pile of ropey bits and a humanoid trunk in mere seconds.
At the same time, Amy kept on throwing her spear into the crowd, leaving shriveled mushroom monsters in its wake.
That left Dayton and Yellow Mask to chop off the longest reaching tendrils and ready their weapons for when the tendril monsters finally did get close.
I couldn’t help but note that Bouman wasn’t doing much more than stare at the army of tendril monsters that stretched to the back of the room and the many more that appeared to be coming down the ramp from the level above.
It’s not his fault, Daniel thought at me, all he’s got to work with is telepathy and they don’t have much in the line of brains.
Can’t he try to contact its central brain or brains? He seemed to be okay at that when he was working for it, I asked.
He’s trying, Daniel said, that’s pretty much the only thing he’s good for right now. Oh, wait…
He stopped talking to pay attention to what was going on at the front of the group where it wasn’t going as well as it was with fighting tendril monsters.
It wasn’t for lack of trying. That’s where all of our heaviest hitters were.
In addition to Izzy’s scream, she was shooting forward to slam into the nearest prime clone and throw him backward over and into his own people. Jaclyn and Logan were doing much the same. Even Prime was pitching in, shattering his clones with single punches from his right arm even as his left swung uselessly at his side.
The problem was that Izzy and Jaclyn were the closest they had to the ability to attack more than one person at a time—which meant that there was no option to clear cut a group of prime clones and blobbygators out of existence.
Izzy and Jaclyn might be able to grab and throw one of the prime clones or blobbygators back a few rows or even over the heads of the whole army, but it was only one person when they needed to be throwing five or ten people at once.
Plus every now and then one of the prime clones would grab Jaclyn, Izzy, Logan, or Prime and then one of the others would step in and and rip that prime clones’ head off. That worked well, but it meant that two people had stopped to fight the same person instead of fighting two, slowing us down as we moved toward the the side door.
On one of those slowdowns, the tendril monsters charged in, getting close enough to reach us. Yellow Mask, Dayton, and Jody all went into action, chopping off limbs and leaving tendril monsters in bite-sized chunks.
Sean and I also fought, but in that moment they’d surrounded us on three sides. Sean’s circle of balls had its work cut out for it. A group of tendril monsters were trying to reach in from our left while others were extending their tendrils from the right, creating a real risk that they’d be able to pull someone out of the group.
Bouman and Yellow Mask were at the biggest risk of this since they weren’t protected by the Duke’s evil sparkles, but the tendril monsters were still trying to attack the rest of us. Plus, it might have been my imagination, but we might have had less sparkles on us by then.
Either way, two tendril monsters grabbed my legs and tried to pull them off the ground. I raked my laser’s beam across one of set of tendrils and drilled a hole through the tendril monster behind them. Using my other hand as a blade, I hit the tendril monster’s body with literal tons of strength, cutting the tendril monster in half. As it fell apart, releasing grayish-white goo, I realized that a group of three tendril monsters had successfully grabbed Jody.
His knife lay on the ground, having lost the distinctive sheen on the edges of the blade that meant that it was active and capable of cutting through almost anything—a good design feature.
Pulling away from the dead monsters I’d been fighting, I kicked the tendril monster that had grabbed Jody’s left arm and encircled his neck.
My kick went straight through the tendril monster’s torso, breaking it in two. At the same time, Amy stabbed the other one, the one that had grabbed his right arm and wrapped three more tendrils around his chest.
It turned into greasy ash as the Bloodspear hit, the runes on the dull metal body pulsing red.
Jody bent down to grab his dagger and backed deeper into the group.
Amy and I looked at each other. I didn’t know for sure what she was thinking, but I suspected that she was thinking what I was—we couldn’t keep on going like this.
You know how I’d said that a mass attack from all directions would be a bad thing? That’s more or less what happened.
The smaller room where we’d met Bouman had been the point where the parking garage under City Hall connected to the basement levels of the parking garage next door that were reserved for staff of the city, county, and federal buildings.
With more understanding of our psychology than I’d realized they had, they’d filled the smaller room with a mix of tendril monsters and office workers from City Hall and maybe other buildings too. I could tell from the business casual slacks and button down shirts combined with name tags hanging from lanyards. Between the name tags and the film of mushroom skin over their bodies and faces, I understood the whole situation.
If we wanted to escape by way of City Hall, the way we’d come, the most efficient methods to use would be Izzy’s scream, my bots, and Sean’s buzzsaw of ball bearings. All of those would straight out murder other human beings now.
We could carefully knock people out one at time, but it was slower. We’d probably be overwhelmed by numbers.
That left the other direction—the parking garage where we’d been successfully clearing the room. Our entrance was on one end of the room. The far end sloped upward toward higher levels of the parking garage. About halfway down the room on our left was a ramp leading to lower levels of the garage.
Having an exit in the middle of the level was odd for a parking garage, but the parking garage was new and the buildings around it were older. They did what they had to to make it fit.
The only reason it mattered was that while we’d been fighting, the Fungus Collective had been massing soldiers in both spots—the ramp up and one down. Thanks to the angle, I hadn’t seen the ones coming from below, so that was a surprise.
The ones from below weren’t tendril monsters either.
They were shaped like humans—specifically like Prime. Bearing in mind that Prime’s size, bulging muscles and bald head were his most obvious traits, you could argue that any big humanoid that the Fungus Collective created would end up looking like Prime. It’s not as if the mushroom zombies had fake hair. They all had featureless faces that differed only from the possessed humans in that the full mushroom zombies didn’t have mouths either.
Any problems I might have with the uncanny valley, not quite human look, were secondary to another question. Why would the Fungus Collective make the new zombie model look like anyone at all unless maybe they’d managed to duplicate Prime’s abilities along with his look.
Or at least they wanted us to think they had.
That wasn’t all though. Along with them came low, long bodied creatures that reminded me of alligators or crocodiles if either one had been crossed with mushrooms. Gray skin and rounded, blobby bodies weren’t typical of reptiles, but they were typical of mushrooms.
One more thing? They weren’t limiting themselves to the ground. Both the Prime clones and the blobbygators also ran on the walls and ceilings.
With all that said, remember how I said that they attacked with the sound of thousands of scraping tendrils? Feel free to add in hundreds of wet splat sounds as Prime clones and blobbygators ran across the ceilings toward us at the same time tendril monsters ran across the floor.
Daniel thought at everyone, Our best chance to win is to go further underground and fight the new creations coming from the left. Our best chance to survive is to go back out City Hall or fight the tendril monsters and go up.
Izzy thought back, Then we’re going down?
I felt Jaclyn, Dayton, and Daniel’s agreement. Sean agreed too, but I felt a little fear there along with some weariness. Jody agreed, but his agreement was a layer above a boiling cauldron of terror. Logan’s agreement came along with hunger for combat mixed with horror at his excitement.
Amy agreed as well, but as she said, Down, I heard hundreds of additional voices whisper it with her.
Glowing rapier in her hand, Yellow Mask thought back Down, but watched Amy.
Bouman thought back Down too. Though I didn’t feel his emotions strongly, Daniel felt a whisper of resignation escape Bouman’s shields.
Bunch up, then, I thought at everyone, Blue can clear the way and the rest of us should concentrate on keeping people off us. Plus, someone grab Prime.
I’ll take care of myself, Prime thought back at us. His left arm still hung from his shoulder, but he pushed himself up and his leg worked.
His emotions were a whirlwind. Resignation and acceptance mixed with excitement and a hint of fear and enthusiasm for the upcoming fight.
I made a mental note of the fact that paralysis didn’t work very long on him and we began to run toward the Prime clones and blobbygators with Izzy’s scream leading our way.
Just like before, her voice wrecked everything it touched, but I couldn’t help but note that with the Prime clones, it only turned the nearest ones into partially exploded mushroom slime. A few rows in, they were basically undamaged and in order to have an effect, she needed to point her voice in a direction and keep it there. She couldn’t spray it across the oncoming fighters and expect to take any down.
Meanwhile, the tendril monsters closed on our right flank.
Standing next to Katuk and Kals, Tara spoke in the flatter voice I associated with her using her ability to create patterns from minimal data, “Knowing that they’re working for the Nine, they might be attempting to separate us and then attack your parents or us while we’re separated.”
“Is that likely,” I asked.
Tara tilted her head, but then said, “I don’t have enough to go on.”
“Chances of something bad happening just ticked up,” Daniel said.
Travis raised his hand, “Here’s what we do. Izzy and Jaclyn go. They’re the toughest and fastest. The rest of us have to be ready to go wherever we’re needed. The rest of us need to be ready to respond if our parents get attacked.”
“Izzy and I can make this quick,” Jaclyn said, her clothes morphing from a facsimile of a blouse and pants to her purple costume. Izzy hadn’t even changed into fake civilian clothes. Her costume was still blue.
Izzy nodded and they left. I felt the wind of their passage and heard Jaclyn’s footsteps on the concrete followed by the clank of the door as they stepped into the forest tunnel.
Over at her computer, Kayla clicked and camera views from the two of them appeared on the wall screen next to the picture of Prentkos’ house and spybots’ views of our parents. On Izzy and Jaclyn’s screens, the concrete walls of the tunnels blurred and then turned into the clearing in the forest where the tunnel opened up.
Izzy shot through the forest, flying between trees until she came out over the children’s playground next to the end of the campground and a small beach. Then they both started traveling northeast. Izzy flew over Grand Lake. Jaclyn ran over the lake because she could do that if she ran fast enough.
I remembered her complaining in the past that it was like running on ice and all too easy to pitch forward into the water. Somewhere in between now and then she’d gotten the hang of it. She didn’t fall even once. Of course, the camera didn’t show her from the side. We had only the occasional bit of spray on the edges of the camera’s view to hit that her feet must be hitting the water with some strength. We only saw a blur of brownish-green water and empty docks.
It was November. All the speedboats and yachts had been taken out of the water, leaving only the Coast Guard and lake freighters (lakers) hauling cargo.
Jaclyn’s camera didn’t show any lakers, but I saw one from Izzy’s view above Grand Lake.
As hypnotic as the view from either camera might be, I had other things on my mind. Part of me wanted to hover above my parents’ house or my dad’s office. While that didn’t work for a host of reasons, it would put me nearby if they sent another person for Uncle Steve. If we all did that, though, we’d not only highlight potential targets but also split the team into bite-sized groups if the Nine’s people chose to attack.
“Hey,” I said, “how are we going to handle an attack? They’re really after Uncle Steve, but if they go after our parents, we have no idea who they’ll go for or if we can get there in time.”
Cassie leaned in, “That’s what I was going to say. I say we all get ready to fly wherever there’s an attack.”
Travis looked her in the eye, “That sounds good, but how are we going to keep them off our parents while we’re on the way? I don’t want them to die because we’re not fast enough.”
Haley looked up toward the screen, eyes flickering toward the pictures of the streets around her family’s house, “I know, but Nick’s bots are everywhere. They’ll buy us some time, right?”
She looked over at me.
I said, “We’re a little short on bots for me personally because a lot of my backup bots are set up to protect our families. Kayla’s ready to fire them and she’ll have help from Hal if she needs it.”
“Hal?” Travis raised an eyebrow. “Didn’t you say the AI’s rebelled against the species that created him?”
“I get your concern, but it’s okay. He likes us and he’s literally made to do this without murdering everybody.” I looked around the group to find that no one was listening.
Their eyes were on the screen. I turned to look upward with everyone else. Jaclyn and Izzy had made it to the house–almost. Izzy was in the air and through her camera, we could see the house. Its red brick and worn white siding fit the colors around it—faded red leaves, the lighter green of grass about to go dormant.
Izzy’s voice came over my comm and through the room’s speakers, “We’re here. I swept through the house with my sonar. There’s only one person inside, but more have been sleeping here. It looks like four from the used beds., but there’s a lot of equipment in the garage and basement. I think there might be more people than those staying here.”
I took a quick look over the wall screen. I didn’t see anybody sneaking down the streets toward our parents’ houses or workplaces.
Jaclyn talked over her comm, “If the only person there is Prentkos, I think we can go in.”
As if to illustrate how many people we had to work with, Cassie and Travis stepped out of one of the tunnel doors on the wall of the main room. They’d come through the forest entrance. Both of them were in civilian clothes, Travis, at least a foot taller than anyone in the room, had muscles to match. Somehow, he still managed to give the impression of an ambitious young businessman as opposed to a thug. It was probably the combination of his button-down shirt and short hair.
Cassie wore a Georgetown hoodie and jeans, her blond hair in a ponytail. I wasn’t sure what she did when she wasn’t at the League and I suspected that being a superhero was all she did.
I probably should have asked her at some point.
I didn’t then either. Even if I’d wanted to, Travis had already walked up and asked, “Has anything happened that hasn’t made it to the League chat?”
I started explaining to him everything since I’d left work. I barely managed to get to chasing the Cabal soldier and Prentkos before Vaughn walked up and asked, “Wait, I missed part of that. Could you start again?”
I did and by the time I started to describe the fight with Major Justice, I realized that Marcus was there and he said, “I missed where that started.”
I began to summarize to catch him up when Izzy and Jaclyn joined the group along with Kals, Katuk, Julie, and Amy. Jaclyn said, “I missed some of that.”
At that point, I had the sense to say, “Maybe we need to call a quick meeting for everyone here anyone who wants to join online.”
After people agreed, I went through everything that had happened one more time, this time with everyone in HQ—including Haley, Chris, and Tara. Even Tiger had followed us over to the big table.
Amy chimed in at points and told the Major Justice fight from her perspective, but then we finished off the rest without interruption—including our visit to Ruthie Shaw.
Once we got everyone up to speed with what Amy found, we brought in Kayla—who’d flown spybots toward the spot from Amy’s ritual as we’d talked. On the big screen on the far wall, one spybot’s view showed a two-story house with brick and white siding. The lawn didn’t appear to have been mowed since summer with short plant stalks extending above the drooping grass. Scattered leaves had settled near the bottom of the overgrown shrubs around the house.
If there were other houses nearby, they were obscured by the trees on either side of the lawn with one exception. A small river ran behind the house and a gray house stood above the bank on the other side.
Kayla clicked the mouse and the spybot zoomed in, showing a man lying on the white couch in the living room. The red and white costume was open in the front, showing his chest, and the cowl was crumpled up under his head as a makeshift pillow.
Bits of goo from my goobots still stained the costume with dark, splotchy stripes, accompanied by dried blood and my wound spray. It was, without doubt, the same Prentkos I’d fought earlier, but where was the Cabal soldier who’d been with him? Deeper in the house, maybe? I wondered if I could fit more sensors in the spybots, but discarded that train of thought as Kayla said, “I haven’t seen anyone else, but I haven’t been watching very long.”
Travis frowned, “They might not be there. Is anyone watching the spybots near our parents’ homes?”
“Hal,” I said. “He’ll tell us if there’s any hint of trouble.”
I used my implant to check with Hal, “I assume that there’s no sign of anyone unusual near anybody’s house or anyone watching?”
Hal’s response appeared in my mind.
[No sign of anyone suspicious. They may not have anyone else there or they may be staying in different places to avoid being captured all at once. You may want to leave people here and at your parents’ houses in case of a counterattack if you go in.]
I passed Hal’s advice on to the group.
Izzy waved her hand to get our attention as if we’d have a hard time noticing her. Wearing her Blue costume and standing more than six feet tall, she stood out.
“I’ll go,” she said. “Your parents are all here and in danger. Mine are safe and in LA. Go and take care of them.”
We all looked at each other. I said, “Are you sure? You’re tough, but alone is never a good idea.”
Jaclyn spoke before anyone else did, “I’ll go. As long as you’re watching my parents’ house, I can be back there if something goes wrong.”
I looked over at Daniel, “What do you think? Is it worth the risk?”
Even as I said it, I realized that part of the nervousness I felt was Daniel’s. He paused, but then said, “Something just changed. There’s a climbing risk no matter what we do right now, but the sooner we act, the better our chances.”
“Knowing what happened to me today? Did something go viral?” I thought through what I’d done. Fighting Major Justice had that potential, but I hoped that was the end of it.
Stephanie laughed, “No. The Grey Giant showed up in LA today. He stole an armored truck full of money. Your tiff with Major Justice got attention, but Major Justice is B-list at best. He gets less attention from criticizing you in the press than you’d think—even if it’s more than he normally gets.”
Thinking about the Grey Giant, I shook my head. He hadn’t been dead when we left Renewal Island so it made sense that he’d be out there somewhere. At least he wasn’t here.
“I,” Stephanie continued, “set up a notification to alert me any time you all get mentioned online. And don’t think it’s because I’m obsessed with you or something. I set it up after you visited our humble headquarters. Your team has an annoying tendency to stand in front of oncoming trains and I wanted some warning in case my investigation turned out to be one of them.”
“That never happens,” I said. “Who are you working for?”
“This time?” She let out a sigh, “Officially? Me.”
She paused, “I can’t trust any big group. Even if all of the supers are clean, one of the staff members might be working for the Nine. I’m loosely affiliated with the Michigan Heroes’ Alliance. They know where I am but not what I’m doing. The only people who do know are Red Bolt and Future Knight. They’re getting regular reports in case something happens. I know they’re a couple of dorks, but I can trust them. I used your designs to make them anti-voice tech.”
I wasn’t sure they’d be my first choice as backup, but they’d be extra motivated to avoid being mind-controlled.
“It’s good that you’ve got someone, but they’re not close in case you want to get out,” I began thinking through what we’d need to do to pick her up. Assuming they couldn’t detect the jet when cloaked, it wouldn’t be too hard.
She smirked, “I’ve been thinking about that. I’m thinking they’re about to sic the Coffeeshop Illuminati on you. If they bring me, my plan is to run away the first chance I get or betray them at a dramatically appropriate moment.”
I laughed, “Cool. I hope you save us all. As surprises go, though, we’re in the middle of a couple of different very big somethings, so we’re going to need as much warning as you can get us if we’re about to be attacked.”
Despite her glasses, I could see that she raised an eyebrow as I finished, “You’re in the middle of two more things? Care to share?”
I hesitated, but then said, “One of them is that the Nine seems to be trying to kill somebody here and they might be targeting people we know too. The other one is so big I’m only going to tell you after you get here, assuming that happens.”
She frowned at that, but then said, “None of that sounds good. Are you saying that the Nine is deliberately targeting people because you know them or by accident?”
“We’re thinking it’s because,” I said, wondering if they would go after anyone but Uncle Steve. They hadn’t yet.
She shook her head, “One thing that makes doing something like this easier is knowing that my civilian friends and my family aren’t anywhere near me when I do it. I’ll keep you posted on what I learn. I can’t guarantee I’ll get another chance to call you if they move quickly. This might be your only warning.”
I nodded, “If that’s the way it happens, I guess we’ll deal with it.”
I looked back at the group. Amy was scowling at her drawing of Grand Lake and the glowing dot outside it. Julie and Kals were talking with Katuk accompanying them as they walked away. Daniel was talking into his comm and Haley had turned to look at me.
“If they don’t take me along or something happens, I might have to hit you up for a flight out of here,” Stephanie pursed her lips.
“I’ll be ready,” I said. “We have a lot of people we can send.”
How many would be available to fly the jet was still open, but we’d find somebody.
She gave a wave and we hung up.
Haley walked up as I turned around, asking, “Who was that?”
To my ears, she didn’t sound suspicious, but concerned.
“It’s not exactly good news,” realizing as I said it that it made things much worse. “Stephanie called. We might at any moment have the Coffeeshop Illuminati come out of nowhere and throw in alongside Major Justice. Also, she thinks that the Nine have their hooks into the Coffeeshop Illuminati, but she’s not sure where. She’s worried that they’ll find her soon. So she may also want a quick exit with the jet, but it depends on how things go.”
Haley glanced back at Amy and Daniel and back at me, “How are we supposed to protect our families, fight the Coffeeshop Illuminati, and find out what Magnus is doing?”
Daniel put away his phone, “I just called Izzy and Jaclyn. They’re coming. I think the Coffeeshop Illuminati is a big threat, but we might be able to find the Nine’s hitmen first thanks to Amy. We’ve got a lot of people to work with.”
Kals glanced in the direction of Katuk. She’d arrived just after Tiger, and said, “I’d like to help.”
Haley looked at her, “Are you sure? You were training Julie.”
Katuk spoke before Kals could reply, his voice level, “I was instructed to warn you if you do something that put you at serious risk. I want to help Nick as well, but going with them would put you at serious and unpredictable risk. In addition, you know that you’ll have to leave shortly. You’ll need to be healthy to help with the invasion and you’ll assist Nick more if Julie is capable.”
Kals took a deep breath, “I know we have to leave. I’d like to help more.”
Then she shook her head, “I know you’re right. I hate doing nothing.”
Julie looked over at her, “I think you’re doing something. I was years away from figuring out anything I’ve learned from you so far.”
Kals nodded to her, “Thank you. I wasn’t saying that teaching you isn’t important, but in my world, I’m a symbol and I have to stay within certain boundaries. I’ve been able to take a little vacation from it here, but as you can see, it’s not complete.”
“What you’re doing with Julie is important,” Daniel said from across the circle. “We’ve got a much better chance because you’re teaching her and Katuk’s also right. There is a chance that going with us will hurt your rebellion.”
Kals raised an eyebrow, “In the Ascendancy, almost all people with your powers were killed. I wish we had a few, but do you ever feel trapped by what you know?”
Daniel shook his head, “I don’t know anything. All I see are possibilities. The future changes constantly and I don’t always go with the option with the best chance of success. Sometimes the future I want isn’t in that direction and there are things I’m not willing to do even if it’s got the best chance.”
“Oh,” Kals’ brow furrowed. “It might be best that we don’t have anyone like you. I work with people who might go for the easiest way to win if they knew what it was.”
Haley stepped over the symbols and blood on the floor, getting into the middle of the group. The glowing bit of blood wasn’t more than two feet away from her.
Sweeping her head around the group to meet everyone’s eyes or at least check if they were listening, she said, “I’ll have Kayla send in any bots we can spare. I think that’s got to be the first step. Once we know what’s there, we can decide what we do next.”
In the middle of her circle, Amy said, “I’ll need the time to figure out what I can prepare. I feel better than I did, but I’m not going to be able to do anything big for another day or two—unless I drain the life out of something big.”
That started more discussion, but I missed it. My comm, in its disguise as an iPhone, sent a message to implant. It appeared in my vision without blocking my view. I could envision it and knew the information in the note like I knew my shoe size.
Though that led me to wonder (and not for the first time) how deeply the implant was in my brain, I didn’t have time. I hadn’t heard from Stephanie in a while.
“I just got a call,” I said, waving as I stepped away from the group and walked into the main group of trophies.
I took the call with my phone, turning on the video because she had and because her phone marked her as out of costume. My phone subtly fuzzed out everything around me by default.
Hers didn’t.
The last time I’d seen her in person, she’d been in the Coffeeshop Illuminati’s mansion and headquarters. If I had to guess, she was still there. The red timber walls and windows that showed the mountains were the first big clue.
The second big clue had to be that she had some kind of bedroom/lab combination. Her dressers and bed were on one side of the room. Various versions of her costume plus a table covered with electronics and molded ceramics covered the tables and workbenches on the other side.
She still looked the same—long, black hair, light skin, and an amused smile. Her tendency to wear black clothes hadn’t changed either to judge from her t-shirt.
“I hope you’re somewhere private,” she said, eyes darting around as she looked at her phone.
“I am. Are you?” A room in the Coffeeshop Illuminati’s headquarters wouldn’t be normal, but she’d been spying for the Michigan Heroes Alliance the last time I’d spoken to her. I was inclined to give her the benefit of the doubt.
“As secure as it can be,” she said. “I’m undercover, but there’s no indication that anybody knows. I’ve swept for bugs, insulated in the room in a way I’m not going to try to explain right now, and done half a dozen other things including getting a ward on magical scrying from a friend.”
“Whoa,” I added that to a mental list of things to ask Samita and Amy about.
“Exactly,” Stephanie said. “I’m not in a good place. I’m investigating friends. I’m 99% sure that the Coffeeshop Illuminati are being influenced by the Nine, but I’m not sure how or by who and I’m beginning to think I can’t risk staying here long enough to get converted into one of their drones.”
Or, I thought, maybe she already has and she’s trying to lure us into something? Except she was competent enough at working undercover that I was willing to give her the benefit of the doubt–for now.
She let out a breath and looked into the camera, “I meant to talk to you after you left, but it’s been busy and hard enough to get out the reports that I have to get out… Anyway, I’m sorry, but this is something you need to know. Major Justice just walked in the door here. He’s meeting with Bullet, Gordon, and a few other guys. I don’t know what they’re talking about, but knowing what happened to you today, I bet we can both make some guesses.”
Soon after that, we all went back to base. After asking Daniel, I stripped out of the full Rocket suit and showered. Haley had assured me that it was a necessity. I put on a real pair of jeans and a t-shirt because she’d also assured me that my nanotech-produced clothing also needed washing.
Daniel had assured me that the chance of anything happening in the next hour or two was extremely unlikely.
I stepped out of the locker room to find that we weren’t under attack. In fact, I stepped out to find that Daniel had stepped out of my lab and was walking toward the locker room. Between his prescience and the unintentional telepathic link we shared within a certain range, the convenience of his appearance was easily explained.
Over on the far end of the room from us, Amy appeared to be performing a ritual among symbols she’d drawn on the floor. Haley stood nearby, still in costume, watching. On the same side of the room, Kayla continued to sit at her desk, working and glancing in Amy and Haley’s direction.
“What did you want to show me,” Daniel asked, walking up and waiting for my response.
It was kind of him to ask. Thanks to the connection we’d developed as children, he might have been able to get it without me even knowing.
“Jody seemed to be afraid when he looked at me. I’d been watching him as he left and thanks to Artificer stuff, I could him walking away even though he was warping time. Something about his expression makes me think that he could tell that I could see him normally. It might just be a side effect of his power, but when Kee was pretending to be a human named Tikki, she had time powers. Anyway, take a look at my memory and see what you get.”
Even though I didn’t relive the memory, I felt something. Meanwhile, Daniel’s eyes seemed to stare at nothing and his mouth dropped open a little, but then he asked, “Do you mind if I look at your memories of Tikki?”
“Go ahead,” I said.
Though those memories didn’t flash before my eyes either, I found echoes of emotions that I’d felt on Hideaway bubbling up—fear, excitement, relief, and amazement.
When he stopped, Daniel took a breath, shaking his head, “I knew it was bad because I caught bits when you were thinking about it, but I’ve never poked around. I should have asked about it. I wish I’d been there.”
I shrugged, “Lee said the Human Ascendancy has problems with telepaths and I haven’t talked about it much.”
Daniel nodded, “Neither have Marcus, Jaclyn, or Cassie. I wish you had. That’s not something to bottle up. Anyway, I don’t see any sign that Jody’s anything like Tikki. You didn’t get the same feeling that you got off of Kee when you first met her and I don’t think Jody was sensing anything like that in you. From your memory, it doesn’t seem like Jody noticed anything until you watched him go. If I had to guess, it might be that you’re unintentionally warping time to see him and he can see or feel it.”
Then Daniel stopped, waiting for me.
“That’s possible,” I said. “I did consider it, but I was a little worried about why he could feel it. If we’re lucky, it might not be directly related to the Artificers. It’s just that everything seems to be pointing in their direction lately.”
Nodding, Daniel said, “I get it and I can’t promise there are no connections but if I try to feel for Artificers in Jody’s future, I don’t feel a strong connection. Again, the future’s always fuzzy, and Artificers are weird but I’d bet on him being a normal guy before anything else,”
I began to say, “Then I guess we’ve got nothing to worry about,” but I never finished the sentence.
Amy’s voice, amplified by some kind of magic, echoed through the base—“I found him.”
Daniel blinked, “We probably ought to go over there.”
I agreed and we started walking across the room, passing trophies from our grandparents on our right and Kayla’s desk and the group conference table on the other. We weren’t alone. Tara had stepped out of my lab. Kals and Julie appeared out of wherever they’d been and were walking alongside Katuk whose silver suit glittered in the light.
Dog curiosity piqued, Tiger followed everyone else, shedding bits of fur as he walked. I’d had no idea how much fur a dog could lose before we got him. Of course, he was larger than most.
Daniel and I arrived about the same time as everyone else, deliberately standing between Tiger and the symbols Amy had drawn in chalk and blood on the concrete floor. As the massive dog pushed in to sniff, I asked him not to touch the symbols and especially not to lick them. He tilted his head to look at me, didn’t reply, but also didn’t lick up the blood.
In the middle of the symbols was a crudely drawn representation of the city of Grand Lake and the smaller cities around it. She’d gone into more detail than I’d have expected, including not only Grand Lake, but Lake Michigan, the highway that ran through downtown, and other major roads. She hadn’t drawn buildings but used symbols that resembled our letters.
Amy held out her hand over a spot outside of Grand Lake. It didn’t seem to be part of any city, just a bit of countryside near a river small enough that I didn’t know its name. Then she let a drop of blood fall. It hit the concrete and didn’t spatter, staying together and glowing a dull red.
Thinking about my parents, my uncle, and everyone else’s families, I said, “We’ll need to scout it out, but I think we need to go in as soon as we can after that.”
In my HUD, I saw the Wolfmobile’s dot superimposed over the map of this area. They were only a block or two away. I thought a text message through my implant, “Talking with Jody in costume at the park.”
Amy texted back, “We’ll change.”
Paying attention to Jody as we both stood next the park’s entrance, I said, “he’s fine. He’s probably not happy, but he’s got a healing factor—not like Captain Commando’s but he’ll be running around sooner than I’d like.”
Jody laughed, “I didn’t say I felt bad for the guy. I mean, if he dies it’ll be a problem, but he’s not one of the good guys, right?”
“I’m guessing he’s a clone of Prentkos, a superhero on the EU team. He looked exactly the same but older. I ran into him when we were fighting Rook in Canada except he actually attended a press conference in France on the same day. We know the Nine cloned the original Captain Commando and they were trying to clone our Cap, so it seems likely.”
“I heard about them trying to clone Cap from the Power,” Jody said, his head blurring as he checked to our sides and behind himself.
Having seen something, he turned to look down the block, watching as the Wolfmobile pulled up to the side of the street and Amy got out, standing around a foot taller and clothed in the Bloodmaidens’ black and ruby red accented armor.
Haley stepped out as Night Cat—grey costume with a black cat’s head on her chest. Her stride reminded me of a tiger, smooth with strength behind it. She walked straight toward Jody and me. Amy stopped at the blood spots, pulling out her spear and sticking it into the blood.
Even though it had dried, it appeared to be drawn into the spear, the squirts on the edges disappearing first and then finally the main puddle she’d touched.
Jody’s eyes widened within his silver mask, “Wow. You’re not leaving anything behind.”
Amy stared down at the spear she was holding, ignoring us except that she did reply, “There’s almost none of his essence left in this. I need as much as I can get.”
He blinked and looked over at me, “I heard that we’re going to train with you all sometime soon. I’m looking forward to it. Gotta go!”
He blurred, running away before either of us could do anything. Choosing to watch him, I saw that he wasn’t even running. He was walking. He turned back to look at me, his eyes widened, and then he did start to run.
As he disappeared around the corner of a block, obscured by a two-story house with white vinyl siding, I realized that I was using a touch of power to watch him, something I’d done previously while preventing an Abominator tech-powered soldier from attacking me and also in exercises Kee taught me.
That led me to think back to what I’d seen while watching him run. I’d noticed a little bit of a shimmer in the air around him. I didn’t remember noticing that before. On the other hand, I hadn’t been practicing any kinds of exercises when I’d last seen Jody regularly at Stapledon.
It might mean that Artificers could see when something was warping time. That made the most sense. It was also possible that Jody’s power was related to Artificers somehow, possibly in a way unrelated to Jody’s power. I hadn’t felt anything the way I had with Kee, though. That was a good thing. If there were anyone I didn’t want to discover a relationship with the Artificers, Jody led the list.
Haley looked up at me, “That was strange.”
Jarred out of my thoughts, I said, “What?”
“He was nice—as nice as he gets. He wasn’t hostile to you,” she sniffed the air. “I think he might have been a little scared. I didn’t notice anything while he was talking with you, but there’s something in the air from when he was leaving.”
I thought back to Jody’s expression before he started to run and wondered what he’d seen. Then I told Haley, “I don’t know for sure, but that might be because of me.”
I used the implant to talk over the comm, telling her, “He might have seen something about me that’s related to Lee.”
She frowned, “That’s not good.”
I nodded.
As I did, Amy lifted her spear away from the sidewalk, “I’ve got everything I can get. I don’t know if it will be enough to find those guys, but I think it might. There’s enough of his essence that I feel a little pull. I’ll have to do a ritual to amplify it, but I think I’ve got a good chance.”
Haley let out a breath, “Then we should go back to HQ.”
They turned to get in the car as Daniel called me over my comm, asking “How did it go?”
“I don’t know. We ran into Jody. He was like a normal person. He didn’t bother me, but he did seem a little weird in a memory that you’ll want to look at directly.”
Daniel might notice something I missed.
“Okay,” he said. “Tara, Hal, and I are pretty sure that we’re going to be facing something big in relation to Major Justice and all. It doesn’t feel immediate, but we’re thinking that he’ll be pulling in more people. It might be the individual teams of everybody in Major Justice’s group, but that’s just a guess.”
“Great,” I said.
I looked between Daniel and Tara and then said, “I guess I have to go then. I was thinking I’d want to reload.”
Daniel shook his head, “I don’t think it will matter.”
Tara looked up from her chair at me, “I know I missed half of that conversation, but you know Daniel’s guesses are good.”
Saying, “Yeah,” I turned, and ran out of my lab, leaving the potential repairs and ammunition behind me. To be fair, I still had a second floating repair pod capable of delivering more roachbots, but I would have felt safer already reloaded.
Crossing the main room of the base at more than forty miles per hour, I chose the exit that allowed me to shoot out into the forest. The fake concrete opened above me and I shot up into the air, flying level with the tops of the trees before emerging over the state park and its beach. During the summer there would be campers and tents there, but in November, the campground was empty.
I whipped around aiming toward the city park where I’d fought Prentkos, ramping up to fighting one of the Cabal’s reassigned and maybe mind-controlled soldiers this morning. We’d brought the Cabal to the world’s attention during my senior year of high school, but now I could only wonder if we’d increased the deadliness of any organization that hired the ones that escaped capture.
The Cabal had been overconfident and stuck in a pre-modern mindset with regard to strategy and tactics. Any organization that hired them wouldn’t be.
I didn’t have time to dwell on that thought. Haley and Amy had taken the Wolfmobile, probably camouflaged as a normal car, and must not have driven at the maximum possible speed.
I’d beaten them.
Stopping to hover above the park, I checked out the damage. I’d tried to be careful, but the moment even one Cabal soldier shows up, there will be more damage than you expect. I couldn’t blame the Cabal soldier for everything either. I mean, sure, I could see the damaged fence next to one of the baseball diamonds that the soldier had punched me through.
Near the gate where I’d set goobots as a trap for Prentkos, the sidewalk and cracks expanding outward from bootprints, showing either where the Cabal soldier had landed or where he’d stepped particularly hard. Shriveled strings of goo from the goobots spread out around the trap, most of them on the sidewalk. Prentkos blood had sprayed across the sidewalk as well, some of it more than five feet from where he’d been standing when I shot him. More of it had puddled around the spot.
I wasn’t sure of the exact volume of that blood, but it looked like a lot. He hadn’t died, but he could have if I hadn’t sprayed his wounds shut.
I began to descend. This was what Amy needed. If she could use his blood to find Prentkos, he’d almost have to be with the main group—which was exactly what we needed. Even supervillains wouldn’t leave a wounded man alone, right? I could imagine Lee doing that deliberately, but he wouldn’t be troubled by the idea of killing Prentkos indirectly if it turned out that his team let the guy die.
As I landed, I noticed movement. It wasn’t a car. It was a person and not someone walking their dog. This person was dressed in a silver costume that covered his whole body, not even leaving part of his face open. Black and white lines ran across his body, fading out on the edges as if to hint at the speed of the runner coming toward me.
This was not going to go well. No matter how much I wished it wasn’t true, I knew the guy and had been keeping track of his costume design as much in self-defense as curiosity. It was Jody, member of the new Justice Fist, Sean’s group. Jody’s general anger at the universe he’d been born into sometimes centered on me in particular.
There were people out there in the world who believed superheroes’ lives of service meant that they were good people worthy of automatic respect. I’d always felt that Jody was a solid counter-example. He’d been a bully before getting powers and from my experience he was a bully after.
I stood there, watching his blurry form close the gap between us.
“Blur” was literally his codename.
Unsure of what was coming next, I took a breath, tried to relax and kept my arms loose in case I needed to move quickly. Jody was the kind of person who’d stamp on the blood simply because he knew I needed it.
Jody finally came into focus when he stopped next o me. I couldn’t see his face through the mask, but I could imagine him sneering as he talked—except then he started talking.
“Rocket,” he nodded at me. “We heard that you had a fight here and I thought I’d check out the scene and maybe learn something.”
Armies of thoughts battled in my head for the chance to become spoken words. The first group wanted to point out that for a guy whose power is speed, he’d arrived well after the fight ended. Another group couldn’t help but notice that he was talking like a normal human being and wasn’t attempting to belittle or insult me at all. Was something wrong?
It was possible, of course, that he’d grown up a little or at least gotten better at faking it.
“There’s not much to learn,” I told him. “I fought a couple of people here and they got away. You can probably find the end of the fight online by now.”
“Already saw it,” he said, spitting the words out in a way that felt more normal to me, continuing with, “Whoa. That’s a lot of blood. I can’t believe you didn’t kill that guy.”
I found myself remembering back to when we’d faced Ray and the Cabal and Ray’s method of terrorizing his targets—killing their families first, getting closer and closer, and then killing the target. From the way Haley’s face tightened, I guessed that she was remembering the same. Back then, we’d been able to rely on the FBI to guard our families. Knowing that the Nine likely had an ear there, we’d have to do it ourselves.
I said, “Can you move more bots out? We need to cast a wider surveillance net around our families, but I think we might want to do the same around close friends.”
Depending on their goals, we might even have to consider watching over more distant friends or even civilian co-workers. That expanded into a huge net. Maybe we needed to get Tara, Daniel, and Hal into a meeting, not only to figure out how to best deploy our resources but also to think ahead. We couldn’t just sit here and let our families get attacked. We needed to go on the offense and find them first.
That meant I’d need more bots, especially more bots that could attack.
Kayla’s voice came over the comm, “I’ll check how many we’ve got in the inventory. I think we used most of the ones with range when we first heard people might be coming for us.”
“You’re right,” I said. “I’m going to have to start building more.”
“I’ll tell Chris,” Kayla responded.
“Good idea,” I said and the conversation ended.
Haley started to walk faster as she talked, “They’re going to go after our families. We need to find them first.”
Amy, still in her normal body, frowned as she tried to keep up, “I know. We won’t. I’m beginning to feel better. I think I know where to find a little bit of the Cabal soldier’s blood.”
“It’s got to be dried by now,” I said.
“That’s better than nothing,” she said.
The rest of the walk felt like a meeting. Everyone on the League discussion channel had questions for us and we answered them. I used my implant to convert its recording of our conversation with Ruthie into a video file, giving everyone a look at that conversation and an account of the day’s fight along with it. Over the walk, we developed a plan. Amy would find her blood. I’d make more bots. Izzy would fly over Grand Lake to see if she could find anything. When one of us got a clue, we’d follow it and find these people.
I hoped it would be enough. The message we’d received left out details I wanted to know. Were the people coming after Uncle Steve going to try once a day and give up after taking their shot or were they going to make sure they killed someone even if it were a random person with no connection to us? Also, were they starting tomorrow or did we still have to worry about who they’d kill today?
Over the course of the walk, I learned one other thing: Travis was now home and staying at his and Haley’s parents, meaning that we were all now back in Grand Lake except for Rachel who was still somewhere out there in space.
When we walked out of the tunnel and into HQ’s hangar, seeing the jet, the red, white, and blue Commandocycle, and the black, Corvette-styled Wolfmobile and went from there into the base’s main room, it felt like an active superhero base. Kals was in the far corner of the room talking to Julie. Chris and Kayla stood talking next to the tables and desks near the wall with the big screen that showed the view from spybots across the city. Marcus, still in a hoodie and jeans, talked with Katuk near a trophy case. Tiger lay on the floor next to them. I hoped he didn’t knock over the case. The dog was literally as large as a horse.
Amy looked over at Haley and me, “The construct feels normal now. I’m going to go everywhere you fought the Cabal soldier and look for blood, starting with the park.”
“I don’t think you should go alone,” I said, watching as her eyes narrowed.
“He’s right,” Haley said. “None of us should go out alone in costume right now. I’ll go with you. We can take the Wolfmobile. It can blend in with traffic.”
“Like the van,” Amy nodded and her red hair brushed her shoulders.
“Better than the van,” Haley began to turn back toward the hangar, “it’s smaller.”
“I can follow, but I’m down a lot of ammunition and I think I need to start making more bots.”
Amy shook her head, “We’ll be fine.”
Haley bit her lip, “If it won’t take long to get the bots started, it wouldn’t hurt to follow us. I’d feel better knowing we have backup if the guy from the Cabal shows up.”
“I’ll hurry,” I said and took a few long steps with the armor. With the armor’s strength, the steps were more than twenty feet long and I crossed the big room in seconds, stepping into my lab. There, Daniel and Tara were sitting on stools next to the counter then ran down the left side of the room. The screen on the wall near them showed a League text channel—Hal’s.
“We’re trying to figure out their next move,” Tara said, smiling at me.
Daniel thought at me, Chris started making more bots. I have a feeling you’ll want to follow them to the park.
I thought back, Why didn’t you tell me sooner?
This is the best time for you to leave.
“If Urin can tell us where Magnus is, that would solve a lot of problems,” I said, unsure of how we’d handle him, but knowing where would be a good first step.
Ruthie smiled, but it didn’t strike me as a happy smile, “I’ll try. I can’t make any promises, but at this point I’ll try anything to get that man off my back.”
“If you do find him,” Amy said, “ask him if he’s got any of Magnus’ possessions. I can do a lot with the right connection.”
“I’ll remember that,” Ruthie said, flicking her hand in our direction. “I’ll contact you if I find him, but for now, you have to go. Don’t expect to find me here again anytime soon.”
Below us, the lines in the floor flared again, not recreating the force field, but throwing us back into the in-between space where we merged with the flames all over again.
Moments later, the three of us stood back in the League’s public office, crimson carpet, concrete pillars, League memorabilia, and coffee machines. I looked over at a line of old articles on the wall, wondering if Grandpa and the others ever encountered Ruthie. If they had, it was all in the archives somewhere.
Amy, Haley, and I looked at each other.
Haley didn’t wait for anyone else to speak, “She hates him. Ruthie hates Magnus. She controlled her voice and how she looked, but she couldn’t control her smell. She was angry every time she talked about him. It’s not easy to tell exactly how angry because people don’t smell the same, but if I had to guess, I think she’d murder him if she had the chance.”
“Oh,” I said, thinking back to the conversation. I hadn’t seen any sign of that. “On the bright side, I guess that means that she’s extra motivated to help.”
Amy shook her head, “It’s not all good. Believe me, I’ve got a lot of experience to draw on. When someone hates another person more than they like you, a lot of them don’t care how they win as long as they win.”
“Huh,” I said, “so as long as Magnus goes down, she doesn’t care what happens to us. Is that a reason not to use what she tells us?”
Amy took a deep breath and shook her head, “No. The other Bloodmaidens are telling me that they’d trust her to get us to him. They think that if there’s any reason letting us die would hurt Magnus more than helping us survive, we should expect betrayal.”
“That’s worse than I’d thought,” I looked over at Haley who nodded, “but we’re going to have to let her help us and maybe just not keep her in the loop about our exact plans.”
Haley pursed her lips, “I think that’s the only option we have.”
Another thought passed through my mind, “Half the time I hear the name Urin, I’m tempted to make a joke about urine. With Urin, there’s more emphasis on the ‘ur’ part of it—like the city—but it’s still close enough.”
“Gross,” Haley looked up at me.
Amy laughed, “A princess doesn’t make jokes like that—in public. Did you notice she didn’t pronounce it either way? It almost sounded like ‘ir’.”
I asked, “Do you suppose she might know Sumerian?”
She shrugged, “The Bloodmaidens don’t go back that far, but we knew her three thousand years ago. So, maybe.”
Crossing her arms over her chest, Haley asked, “How did you know her? Was she trustworthy then?”
Amy frowned, “They haven’t told me the whole story, but what she’s said is that they were chasing a creature that escaped to this world. She helped them fight it. What they remember is that she was a competent warrior. She did her job. I don’t have a lot of details. They won’t always tell me everything. Sometimes, they don’t think I’m ready for it. Sometimes, I think they just want privacy. I hope it’s not important because if it is, they’re putting me and themselves in completely pointless danger.”
“Talking to yourself?” I asked.
She laughed, “You could say that. I wish it were that easy.”
Haley looked over at Amy, “Are you still tired? We don’t have a car on this side and we’re going to have to walk for a mile in the tunnel to get back to HQ.”
Amy shook her head, “I’m fine. The magical construct is tired, but it’s a little better. I don’t want to fly back, but I can walk.”
Haley frowned, “Okay. I just hope you don’t need to do any more than that.”
“I’m not worried,” Amy said. “You don’t have to be worried.”
Haley watched her, but then said, “Okay.”
We walked down the stairs to the lower level and then down the concrete tunnel that replaced a sewer line that the original League had claimed for their own purposes. I wasn’t sure how they’d arranged it so that the city never even tried to reuse it or authorize cutting through it, but the city hadn’t.
We walked together down the tunnel, slowing the Rocket suit down so that I wouldn’t leave Amy behind. Haley may have had the same problem, but she had it even when she wasn’t wearing a costume.
Midway down the tunnel, Kayla called us, lighting up Haley and my HUDs along with Amy’s phone. We all answered.
Kayla said, “We just got a communication from the man you fought earlier today—the Cabal soldier. He said that if you don’t stop protecting his target, he’ll kill a new person everyday until you do. He also says that you won’t like the targets.”
Ruthie looked down for a moment and then said, “That’s when something changed in him. Urin found him. Back in those days, we took joy in finding new ones—new immortals. They were always so surprised to find out that there were more of us. We’d bring them in slowly, showing them what we’d done.”
Haley crossed her arms over her chest, “And what was that?”
I barely noticed. I was thinking back to the former supervillain lair and government storage facility where Cassie had read us an account of Urin, possibly the king of the city-state Ur, and how he’d encountered and taken over a group of other immortals. There was even a hint that he’d once seen Lee on a road and felt that indefinable feeling that I felt when I met an artificer.
Ruthie said, “We were everywhere. We had people everywhere. We’d refined our own formula based on information left by the Abominators that unlocked certain human potentials. We and our followers had what you now call superpowers. Some could communicate over great distances. Others were useful in a fight. We didn’t rule, but we were the power behind thousands of thrones, temples, and village chieftains. Nothing in the ancient world could rival us.
“There were a few that tried. Over the millennia, some betrayed us, but Urin led us in putting them down.”
Amy looked in Ruthie’s direction, but her eyes weren’t focused on her, possibly examining someone else’s memories, “What happened? You and what I remember of your followers don’t seem like people who would let Magnus rule the Cabal.”
Ruthie’s face hardened and for a second I thought she might leap out of her chair and use her sword, but then Ruthie laughed, “The same thing that will change you eventually—age. Immortal or not, it changes everyone. We were too powerful for too long. We weren’t alarmed enough when the short-lived began to create machines that matched or surpassed our followers. We didn’t try hard enough to recruit all of the newly powered people who appeared and started dressing up in costumes. You saw the result. The Cabal was exposed and destroyed.”
Thinking back to the Cabal soldiers that we’d fought, they had been overconfident. Despite that, they might have killed us several times over if Lee hadn’t been there to teach us how to handle them.
“If we were going to go up against Magnus,” Haley said, “how do you think we should handle him?”
Ruthie froze and then said, “If you do, I wouldn’t follow my advice. I fought him and lost. I don’t know how he did it, but he found Dominators, the Abominators’ tools for managing their human servants, and turned them to his own use. You’ll never beat him. He can turn anyone against you simply by having his servants talk to them—you, your friends, and even your parents can’t resist it.”
“We have a defense,” I told her. “I worked one up years ago when we were fighting the Cabal. Since then I’ve gone to the Human Ascendancy and fought Dominators there, improving it.”
Her eyes widened and she looked from one of us to the other, “Then it’s simple. Find him and kill him. Make it quick before he can call for help.”
“Except that we don’t know where he is,” I said. “If you know that or if the Wizards’ Council does, it would make our lives easier.”
“The Wizards’ Council isn’t at my beck and call. We have an arrangement. I have my gifts and other things that I choose to share with them. I’ve helped them avoid conflict with the Cabal and they’ve helped me avoid the Cabal. And, “ she added, letting out a breath, “I don’t know where he is now. He takes precautions too. He has at least one wizard on his side and from what I’m told, it’s not easy to find him with magic. I can’t complain about it because a similar charm protects me.”
Amy watched her talk and said, “I’m sure there’s someone capable of figuring out how to break through his protection against being scried. Do you have anything of his? A possession that he owned for a while? Dried blood would be the best, but I can’t hope to get that lucky.”
I thought back to the now-smashed government storage facility again. We’d had an entire room full of Magnus’ stuff in there. I didn’t think we’d taken anything, not even the book with Magnus’ notes about the “galaxy core device.” To be fair to us, we knew the storage facility had been targeted by missiles and were running for our lives at that point.
Ruthie’s reply mirrored my own thoughts, “No.”
Even though I doubted it would help, I asked, “Do you know where we might find something of his? Or maybe you know someone who might know how to find him?”
She closed her mouth and frowned, “He always respected Urin and Urin’s still alive. I might be able to make contact with him.”
If Urin were also descended from the Artificers, I wondered if he would be strong enough for me to sense it or if he’d be able to sense me.
As I tried to figure out where to begin, Amy pointed at me, “The Rocket’s been the most involved with all of that. You’ll want to ask him.”
“Right,” I said, “I’m trying to figure out where to start. Here’s the thing: when I just started to be the Rocket, Magnus called me on my personal cell phone—not as the Rocket. He wanted me to join him and convince my friends to do the same. So he’s known about me for years now and he’s been targeting me for some unknown reason.”
It wasn’t quite unknown since Magnus was trying to get Lee’s device, created by Kee in the Artificers’ civil war. Getting me on his side was his only chance to use it if he wasn’t part Artificer and if he was (more likely), he might want help running it.
Ruthie said, “Go on.”
“We think that he’s trying to find something. It’s a device that I’m assuming will give him power. I don’t know how long he’s been looking for it, but we read some cuneiform tablets and looked at a diagram that makes us wonder if people have been looking for this for thousands of years.”
I watched her face for some kind of hint of what she thought of what I was saying, but didn’t see one. Immortality gave someone time to develop their poker face and she hadn’t wasted it.
“That was the explosion in the mountains in Pennsylvania—the Poconos,” she said, watching me.
“Yes,” I said, now knowing that either she or the Wizards’ Council was watching what we’d been doing more closely than I’d thought.
Then Ruthie said a few words. I recognized none of them and from the expression on Amy’s face, neither did she. My implant, however, noted the similarity to words from Ascendancy, adding that if so, they were from an uncatalogued variant of that language.
Ruthie stared at the three of us for a moment and then said, “Good. You’re not Magnus’ creatures.”
She said a few more words and gestured at us and the glowing circle around us disappeared, leaving only a circular indentation in the wood laminate floor around us where the circle had been. Part of my mind registered that the wood laminate was thicker than I’d have expected, but the rest of me paid attention to Ruthie. She was talking.
“I don’t know what you know about us, but I know a little about you. I know the Heroes’ League. You’re not the first products of the Abominators’ tinkering that I’ve encountered. Ever since the first League appeared, I’ve been wondering if I knew any of their ancestors and I’m sure I do even if none of them are recent. There was a navigator that worked for the Dutch East India Company. He had a certain mechanical talent, but that was back in the 1600s. I never knew what happened to him. And you,” she looked at Haley, “you’re nearly straight Ascendancy soldier stock. I’d be surprised if your first ancestor on this planet were more than two generations away.”
Next to me, Haley shifted stance, bending her knees a little. It was subtle, but halfway to a fighting stance.
Ruthie smiled and turned to Amy, “By all rights, you should be the most surprising, but you’re not the first Bloodmaiden I’ve met.”
Those are the kind of statements that remind a person that talking to immortals is like a child talking to an adult only far worse. While I’d been spending time with immortals for my entire life, Lee and Kee were aliens. ‘Ruthie Shaw’ might have been directly created by the Abominators for all I knew but she was human.
I saw Amy smirk and say, “I’m aware,” followed by a number of words in a language I couldn’t place. It wasn’t Ascendancy at least. I looked over at Amy. She muttered, “I didn’t know until I saw her. The Bloodmaidens didn’t know her as Ruthie Shaw.”
“But,” the old woman said, “Ruthie Shaw is good enough for here and now. Let the other name rest for a time.”
“As long as it doesn’t become important,” Amy said.
I glanced in her direction to see if Amy if was changing into Bloodmaiden, but she continued to be nothing more than a 20-something red-haired woman. That argued that Ruthie had been friendly the last time they met.
I asked, “What do you know about Magnus?”
Ruthie stared at me without saying anything at first, but then said, “He came to us later. We’d formed what you call the Cabal. Urin came to lead us, but Magnus arrived after that—long after, but he had a plan. He never brought us in on it, but we knew that he was sending the soldiers to search for things that he never fully explained to either them or us.”
Haley asked, “What kind of things?”
Ruthie said, “He’d send them to places without explanation and order them to bring back what they found whether it was people or things. And it was rarely things. He most cared about questioning people. He wouldn’t tell us more. Over time, he took control of the Cabal. All of the original members left. We think that he’s had a few of us killed, but we can’t know it for sure. A few years ago, he was expelled from the Cabal. We haven’t had any trouble from him since.”
That was the beginning, but it felt like something was missing. I said the first thing that came into my head, “Do you know anything about his plan at all? Did he ever give any hint about why he was doing what he was doing?”
Ruthie nodded, “Early on he told us about a dream he’d had. He said he’d seen the Earth destroyed by ‘serpents’ that in his words, ‘crawled out of the heavens.’ It was strange, but nothing he did ever had anything to do with serpents. From what I remember though, he was serious. I think he was even scared.”
Through the eyehole of her grey mask, I could see Haley’s eyebrow go up, “So, we’re going to just walk through into someplace, trusting people we don’t know?”
She had a point. I said, “I guess?”
Amy shrugged, “They’re the Council and they just decided they don’t hate me. I’m giving them the benefit of the doubt.”
Haley glanced back toward the stairway that led to the basement and tunnel back to HQ, “I’m being paranoid, but I’m going to make sure everyone knows we’re going.”
She looked at me, “Do you trust anyone other than you to use the Starplate?”
I thought about it, “Chris, but if you’re thinking he can pull us out, it’s a little more complicated than you’d think. You’d have to pull us into another alternate world and then back here. There’s a lot that can go wrong.”
“But it’s still a chance,” she said, her words tumbling out of her mouth.
The tone hinted that it wasn’t worth arguing. Also, she might be right. I said, “Yeah. Tell Chris. I’ll tell Hal to be ready in case we need backup and an exit.”
We’d thrown the jet into alternate dimensions before. I told Hal what to expect and hoped that our GPS worked wherever it was we were going. Meanwhile, Haley talked with Chris and Amy waited for us, her arms crossed over her chest. She didn’t tap her foot, but she didn’t seem far from it.
“Okay,” Haley said, looking up from the communicator on her wrist, “I’m ready.”
I said, “Me too.”
“Excellent,” Amy uncrossed her arms and stepped into the circle’s grey flame, “We’re off to see the wizards…”
Haley and I followed her through, hoping the wizards would turn out to be as wonderful.
The grey flames rose and consumed us without heat. Surrounded by writhing grey and wondering if that was what we all now were, I felt a vibration, but not in my body. For lack of a better way to put it, I felt it in my soul—though it wasn’t actually my soul. It reminded me of what I sensed while practicing exercises Kee had taught me. She’d told me it would take a long time before I could do much with the energies I sometimes sensed.
So far, she was right. I had no idea how to manipulate these, and I didn’t even try. It wasn’t a good time for experimentation.
The flames around us dispersed and if we’d been flames ourselves at any point, there was no sign of it.
With that over, it was time to figure out where we were. That turned out to be easier than it might have been on multiple levels. For one, GPS worked and it told me that we were somewhere near Smithers, British Columbia. That meant nothing to me, but the map showed me that we were in the mountains, more than one hundred miles inland from the coast.
That was confirmed by that view from the living room. Reminding of the mountains in Colorado, I could see grey peaks covered with snow in the distance. Evergreens seemed to cover the mountains and even grew across the highway in front of the house we stood inside.
The room wasn’t amazing. It could have been in Grand Lake. Wood laminate covered the floor, reminding me of wooden boards, but not fooling anyone. Around the room were overstuffed couches and a couple of recliners, all of them facing the television. A wooden desk with a laptop and two screens sat in the corner next to two tall bookshelves.
It felt less like the house of an immortal associated with a council of wizards and more like we’d broken into a random house in rural Canada. Of course, that ignored a number of vital details.
The first detail worth mentioning was that we stood in the middle of the room between one of the couches and the television. Not only were we in the middle of the room, but we were in the middle of a circle made of golden light. I couldn’t tell whether the circle had been drawn on the floor and then infused with magic or created out of magic.
Either way, I didn’t plan to step on or over it until given permission.
The other important detail was the woman on the couch. Not knowing anything about her, I’d have pegged her as mid-sixties with a square face and graying blonde hair. She wore jeans and a pink sweatshirt saying, “I’m that grandma #sorrynotsorry.”
That might have flipped my impression back toward getting the wrong house, but the unsheathed sword lying across her lap told me everything I needed to know.
She nodded at us, “Welcome to my house. I’m sorry if I seem unfriendly, but I’ve learned to be careful. It took me long enough. Please don’t try to break out of the circle. I’m not a trained wizard, but over the last few thousand years, I’ve picked up a few things. I’ll let you out when I feel I can trust you. Until then, don’t forget that I still know how to use this.”
She held up the sword with no sign of weakness and then placed it on her lap again.
“Mentioning the name Magnus doesn’t make me trust you, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want to know more. Tell me what you know about Magnus and why you want to talk to me and I’ll see what I can do about the circle.”
Looking up at Amothel, Haley said, “We want to talk to her. Everything that happened today from the Rocket and Bloodmaiden fighting downtown to Shifter showing up here connect to the Cabal and she used to run the Cabal.”
Graffiti Knight, his voice muffled by his helmet, said, “Really? Amazing. I imagine I’ll forget that soon, but Ruthie’s so old. She knows everything.”
Vengeance sighed. Amothel shook her head, “We can ask her if she wants to talk to you, but if she doesn’t want to, we won’t push and I wouldn’t get my hopes up. She doesn’t want to talk to anybody from the outside.”
“Tell her,” I said, “that Magnus is trying to do something big. We think we know what it is, but he’s been interested in it for quite a while and she might know more than we do. Also, if she knows where an object that he’s looking for is, we’re interested in knowing more.”
Vengeance tilted his head to look at me, “What’s he looking for?”
“Uh…” I thought about how much I’d have to say for him to get it. Multi-dimensional aliens that predate our universe, a division between them that caused them to create a device for killing each other, and the unpleasant knowledge that Lee had hidden it somewhere on or around Earth. Plus, of course, the fact that telling people about it might attract their attention, causing a battle that would at the very least destroy Earth and maybe the whole solar system with it.
Amy shook her head and looked at me.
“Let’s put it this way,” I said, “you’ve probably already been told things that, if you passed them on, had the potential for huge, massively disastrous consequences? This is another one of those. Plus, this one comes with a target on your back and the potential to attract the attention of supernatural beings I don’t dare to name.”
Vengeance nodded and let out a sigh, “Yeah, I get it. I could tell you a story or two myself except it wouldn’t be worth the pain.”
Amothel smiled, showing her teeth again, “We’ve all seen a few things we can’t talk about and some of us know many. By any chance, does this device have any relationship to The Thing That Eats?”
If you assumed that both the device and The Thing That Eats had connections to the Artificers, sure. I replied, “Indirectly.”
Amothel gave a slow nod, “That might pique her interest.”
Both “Ruthie Shaw” and The Thing That Eats were immortal or near to it. It wasn’t impossible that they’d known about each other. If Amothel wanted to help, I was fine with it.
“I’ll pass that on,” she said and glanced over at Graffiti Knight and Vengeance, “We should go.”
Graffiti Knight started for the door, waving to us as he left, “Well met, fellow heroes. Fight with honor and determination and I’m sure we’ll meet again in your… coffee-filled halls.”
Vengeance shook his head, “Don’t forget that if they target Bloodmaiden again, we will be back. If she happens to be attacked while someone targets the rest of you though, well, that most likely won’t worry the Wizard’s Council as much.”
Amy raised a hand to wave them out, “That’s fine, thanks. I don’t need you to watch me all the time.”
Amothel followed Vengeance out, giving us all one last look as they stepped outside of the building.
The door shut behind her. She stood next to Graffiti Knight and Vengeance as shadows swirled around them. They disappeared, much to the delight of the remaining people who’d pointed their phones at the group the moment the door opened.
With that, Amy, Haley, and I were together without outsiders. We looked at each other. Haley let her costume turn back into clothing. I had too much material for that, so my suit absorbed the helmet.
I looked over at Amy who was leaning against one of the room’s concrete pillars, “Still tired?”
She shook her head, “It’s not bad in my real body, but when I think about the past Bloodmaidens, I can tell that they feel tired.”
Haley raised an eyebrow at that, but still said, “When they said you’re a provisional member of the Council, what did they mean?”
Amy raised her hands in the air, “I don’t know yet. The Council and Reliquary didn’t use to get along because he was working with superheroes, but something happened and now they’re okay with him. As his apprentices according to their system, Samita and I got grandfathered in with him. So now we’re okay and because of everything that happened around The Thing That Eats, it’s more than okay. I’m still waiting on finding out what we get out of it, if anything.”
“It looks like you get protection out of it,” Haley glanced toward the windows as if expecting something to happen.
Amy laughed, “I never expected that. Here wizards need protection from normal people. In my world, normal people need protection from us.”
Haley gave a faint smile, “Yeah.”
Then she turned around. Even as she did, I heard a crackling noise. I made the helmet reform on my head, noticing that Haley’s clothes turned back into her costume. Deciding to follow her example, I saw that a circle of shadowy flame had appeared on the crimson carpet in front of us.
A voice came out of it, “The one known to the world as Ruthie Shaw has accepted your request for an audience. Step into this circle at your earliest convenience.”
Haley and I looked back at Amy who’d made a small motion with her hand, staring at the circle, “It’s really the Council. They want us right now.”
I absorbed that, “Wow. Have I heard of any of these people?”
[None of them currently have public personas. Should I give you the data directly?]
“No. I’ll take it with everyone else. I think we need to have a meeting about it and find out what to do. Give it to me as an email or a pdf or something that I can share with everyone,” I said, trying to let myself focus on the real world.
[You may wish to know that one of them is associated with the North American Wizards’ Council and thus with your current visitors.]
“I did want to know that. Thanks. Who’s the one that works with them?”
[Ruthie Shaw. She’s spent the last hundred years located in various places in British Columbia, often accompanied by associates from the Council. Her association with it is at least one thousand years old. Prior to that, data on her life is fragmentary. There is evidence of her leading communities in Europe and the ancient Middle East. Fragmentary evidence points to the same in human prehistory.]
Tempted to ask for Hal’s full direct download, I decided that I didn’t have time to understand it, and said, “Alright. I’ll look at the rest later.”
The connection ended. Alien AIs didn’t care about social niceties like saying goodbye.
This was fine, but it left me on the street with Haley, Vengeance, his co-workers, and half a dozen stopped cars, all of them still pointing phones at us.
Vengeance looked up and down the street, muttering, “We’d better get back inside before they get out of the cars and start asking questions.”
A car door opened. I didn’t pay attention to who it was. We were all pushing through the door, a task made a little harder by the fact that Graffiti Knight and I were both in armor.
Ahead of me, I heard Amothel tell Graffiti Knight, “Careful where you walk. That armor’s heavy.”
Meanwhile, Haley raised her eyebrow and looked up at me as she stepped into the doorway. I let her pass and didn’t try to get too close.
Inside, Vengeance and the others sat with Amy who’d apparently been watching us through the building’s mirrored windows, still in civilian clothes—which showed just how much the fight had taken out of her. She’d have been outside normally whether we wanted her or not.
More than a little tempted to ask my own questions, I decided I’d be best off waiting for the end of their conversation. In the meantime, I told Haley what I’d learned.
“What?” She kept her voice low, but I could still hear the alarm. “She might have control of the Council.”
I thought about that. It was a distinct possibility. I pinged Hal, “Is there any hint that this Ruthie Shaw person controls the Wizards’ Council?”
[There is no evidence that Shaw has been manipulating them, but she does appear to be under their protection. If she does have some hold on them, it’s subtle. There is no evidence of luxury in her life. Nor is the Council is acquiring wealth for her or killing her enemies. While the evidence isn’t there for certainty, the overall pattern points more toward her being a kind of refugee.]
I told Haley, “Hal doesn’t think so,” and looked over at the group around Amy, hoping Hal was right.
I could try some of the trigger words that Kals had told me about, but they were all in Ascendancy and there was no reason to assume they’d be used. As I wondered whether asking them was worth the risk, Vengeance stood up and the other two followed his example.
Amy stood up with them, shook their hands, and walked toward us as Haley said, “This is going to sound like a strange question, but do you know someone named Ruthie Shaw?”
As she said it, she glanced over at me, either trying to get my attention or make sure that I was paying attention. By the time she’d finished, I knew why.
Vengeance’s eyes narrowed. Amothel’s face didn’t change in a way that made it feel deliberate and controlled. Graffiti Knight stopped and cocked his head, saying, “No. That name doesn’t ring a bell, but you know, I forget a lot. Amothel? Vengeance? Do you know her?”
A point in Haley’s favor? They did not attack. If you thought about it, suspicion was a good sign. If I were in hiding and willing to control minds, my orders would be to show no sign of recognition if someone said my name. To be fair, it was possible that she’d given that order and Vengeance and Amothel were terrible actors.
Vengeance stared at Haley, “Never heard of her.”
Amothel shot him a look. I imagined she was thinking, “Is that really how you think you’ll handle this?”
Haley looked at Vengeance, “I don’t need to hear your heartbeat go up or be able to tell that your scent changed to know you’re lying, but you are.”
Amy turned to watch the Council’s team, her hands going down by her sides, free to grab a knife or cast spells.
Amothel glanced over at Vengeance and shook her head, “What do you want of her?”
It was hard to read Shifter’s face. Cats didn’t have the same facility with facial expressions that humans did—at least not that I could see. For my family’s cat, Grunion, you only had body position, ears, and tail to work with if you wanted to understand the animal.
Shifter’s ears weren’t flat, but her tail twitched a little, almost as if she were an intelligent person capable of stifling most of it.
“This is none of your business,” Shifter barely moved, her arms loose, eyes not looking anywhere in particular—the kind of pose you might go with if you were expecting to be attacked at any moment and were trying to be aware of your peripheral vision.
Continuing, she added, “We’re not attacking the Wizard Council. We’re only fighting the Heroes’ League if they continue to act irresponsibly. Bloodmaiden will only get hurt if she follows the rest of them. Tell her to stay out of it if you want to keep her safe.”
Amothel laughed, but Vengeance said, “We’ll tell her, but she’s not going to listen. From what I’ve seen of her, she doesn’t back down from much and she’s loyal to her friends. That’s why I’m telling you that you need to get off her case and stay away from these kids. I already told you that it’s because she’s a provisional member and that’s true. The other reason is that the Council says she’s part of one of the most powerful and complex magical constructs they’ve ever seen. She doesn’t have full mastery of it yet, but when she does, you won’t have a chance.
“Even now, from what I’ve been told, she’s dangerous not only because of it but also because she’s a trained practitioner of magic nobody else in this world fully understands. What I’m trying to tell you is that yes, we’ll back her up, but if she goes all out, we don’t think we’ll have to. She’s not like the rest of these kids. Her first instinct is to put down the threat, not send it to jail.”
Shifter’s tail twitched.
Vengeance didn’t stop talking, “We chose not to have anything to do with her for years. Then she helped the rest of these kids take out a threat that could have killed everyone. You couldn’t have done anything about it. Neither could we. After that, wiser heads decided we needed her on our side. Her construct was made to protect humans from danger. We need to point her at the real threats—not become a threat. Got it?”
Shifter glanced to her left, either checking if she had backup or a clear route to escape.
Aside from parked cars and a few shops, the street was clear, but I didn’t see any backup. She turned around and Vengeance’s eyes, “You decided she was too powerful and gave up?”
“Nah,” Vengeance shook his head, “We decided that since she fights monsters, we didn’t want to do the monsters any favors by fighting her. It’s something you guys should learn.”
It was a weird day when Vengeance turned into the voice of reason. You don’t end up walking around wearing a necklace with a shriveled human ear on it by being a reasonable guy.
I could do without the way he kept on calling the League kids, but this wasn’t the time to bring it up.
“We don’t want to fight you,” I said, pretty sure I’d made that point multiple times already today.
Shifter glared at me, “Stay out of things you don’t understand.”
Giving no once a chance to respond, she jumped into the air, changing form, growing leathery wings, and flapping upward as a kind of lion/bat hybrid. I’d thought that she was limited to loosely human-shaped mammals. Whatever she was now not only added two additional limbs but wasn’t a real animal outside of mythology or maybe Dungeons and Dragons.
She disappeared over a building, drifting to her right.
I could have given chase. There was no chance that she’d be able to flap her wings faster than a rocket, but it didn’t seem worth it. I didn’t want to spend more time talking to her. If anything, I might be willing to give back some of the time I had.
“Good riddance,” Haley muttered, “I hope she isn’t trying to sneak back into here while we’re not watching. I don’t think she is, but I don’t trust her.”
I flipped the vision in my helmet to show the cameras around our downtown office. She wasn’t. Shifter had reabsorbed the wings and jumped from roof to roof before climbing down the side of a building and shifting back to a human form in an alley. Pulling out a thin, blue overcoat and covering her costume, she passed for a woman walking downtown.
The other thing that struck me immediately was that assuming she only had one human form, we’d just recorded her real face. Taking a look at her, I didn’t know her at all, but given time we had a chance to identify her. Given that she appeared to be in her forties with dark hair, light brown skin, and average height, it wouldn’t be quick. Physically, she only stood out by her broader-than-average shoulders and thick arms.
It might not be worth finding out her real identity, but setting facial recognition to identify her if she came near our building as a civilian might be worth doing. I decided to pass it on to Hal and maybe the group as a whole.
It might be rude to out her to the team, but she was attacking us.
I opened up a channel to Hal, letting him know what I’d seen. He’d be able to pull Shifter’s face from the footage himself. Over the connection, he sent me a message.
[I’ve made progress on finding Magnus’ former colleagues in leading and forming the Cabal—the ones that left.]
I asked, “How much progress?”
[Their locations and identities.]
“Shit,” Haley muttered. “We have to go out there.”
She’d noticed too, probably before I had.
I asked, “Are you okay with fighting her?”
Haley looked up at me, “She’s not here to fight. We can take her and I think she knows it.”
Remembering their visit, I didn’t think Shifter knew it, but given that I was ignoring Major Justice’s calls, it would make sense that he’d sent her to give us a message verbally.
Haley frowned, “And if she does try to attack… Do you have any goobots?”
I shook my head, “Not really. I’ve got two. So if she’s at all good at dodging, not enough.”
Nodding, Haley said, “I’ll use my dewclaw if you can’t get her, and I’ll bite her if I absolutely have to.”
Then she sighed, “Maybe I shouldn’t have told Blue and Accelerando to go home.”
“There’s a lot to be said for overkill,” I agreed, “but I can at least grab her.”
“That would help,” Haley took a step toward the door and I walked with her.
We didn’t need to talk about much more. We knew how we’d handle the rest. I stepped out of the door first, ready to take a blow as Haley exited behind me all in grey with a cat’s head in black on her chest. A little behind me and to my left, she was in a position to jump in while I engaged Shifter straight on.
Shifter didn’t attack, though her orange and black striped tail did twitch as she watched Haley and I step onto the sidewalk. Assuming Shifter could choose everything about the cat form she’d chosen to use, she’d decided on a tiger. Her orange, white, and black fur was visible in the afternoon sun.
I considered making a joke about Tony the Tiger or maybe Frosted Flakes cereal, but couldn’t come up with anything I felt was funny enough. Did she know that Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes was made in Battle Creek, Michigan? Only an hour away? Or did she prefer Post cereals? They were also made in Battle Creek.
I did have one idea, but I couldn’t convince myself that the risk of accidentally starting a fight over a joke comparing Frosted Flakes to expired Raisin Bran would be worth it.
“Hey,” I said to Shifter, “I’m surprised to see you here.”
She raised a furry eyebrow at me, “Are you?”
“I… just said I was,” I replied, wondering if she was just here to second guess me, but also watching to see if she was tensing to strike. She didn’t.
She looked from me to Haley as cars passed us, one of them making a U-turn and then stopping on the other side of the road as one of the passengers pointed his phone at us.
“I know Major Justice doesn’t have a great bedside manner, but you need to listen to him. You kids grew up in this. You know how supers handle these things internally. We police ourselves. You’re stepping out of line and risking losing the people’s confidence. If you don’t justify your actions to us, all four of us are going to bring in the rest of our teams,” Shifter stopped, waiting for either Haley or I to respond.
The first thing that came to my mind was that she was just rehashing what we’d already said no to, but I didn’t feel like I could say it without sounding irritated.
As I stewed, the door opened behind us. Haley glanced back. I checked my helmet’s 360-degree view to see Vengeance stepping out through the door. The Graffiti Knight and Amothel followed him out. Not seeing Amy I guessed that either she still wasn’t ready to change back into Bloodmaiden or that Vengeance and the others had somehow dealt with her before following us out.
Meanwhile, Shifter’s eyes widened as Vengeance spoke.
Vengeance’s dagger glittered on his belt as he said, “We’re here as representatives of the North American Wizards’ Council investigating an incident in which one of your people attacked one of ours.”
Unless Mime was somehow a member of the Wizards’ Council and he was talking to us, that was not the direction I thought this was going to go.
Shifter stared at him, “Vengeance? What are you talking about?”
Vengeance sighed, “I am Vengeance, but I’m also a champion of the North American Wizard’s Council. We’ve determined that the person you know as Bloodmaiden is eligible for provisional membership in the council. As you know, the Council does not involve itself in the affairs of superheroes and normal humans unless it has to. It does, however, protect its members from persecution. That includes provisional members. This means that if your people attack her, we’ll be obligated to protect her or at the least avenge her.”
Shifter’s eyes narrowed, “This is none of your business. Stay out of it. Don’t think I’m unaware of how little your council wants to stand up for anyone. The only people who ever take action are your little group of champions. We can handle the three of you.”
Amothel’s brittle voice cut in before anyone else, “Don’t assume that. There are conditions where the Council will intervene. You’re nearing one of them. Take my advice, leave and avoid learning more.”
The smile on the elf’s slender face showed teeth, more of which seemed to be canines than I expected.
I didn’t like how this was escalating. We could use the support, but pulling the Council into this mess wasn’t automatically a good thing.
Haley frowned, “I hope they’d trust you. You nearly died killing The Thing and their team didn’t get anywhere close to doing it. They were more of a problem and a distraction than they were a help.”
Amy shook her head, “I know. It’s stupid, but blood magic is different here or at least the kind that they’ve seen is. I wouldn’t trust blood magic either if only vampires used it.”
Haley’s lip twitched, “I wouldn’t either, but the magic they do work with isn’t all stuff I’d be proud of either. There’s Vengeance. His dagger sucks the life out of guilty people and turns them into his zombie servants until they work off their debt. Then there’s the Graffiti Knight. He’s just some guy who found magical armor and it’s cursed. Now they use him to fight supernatural evil. Throw in that elf wizard who can change into a bird and that’s their team. Is that less evil than blood magic?”
Amy grinned, “You sound angrier than I am. I was angry about all of it because it is all stupid, but that’s not what I was unhappy about. I’m unhappy because I’m not home. My family’s rule might be under threat and the people I came here with think I’m a big threat because I’m a throwback to the old style of Bloodmaiden. Whatever. I realized that don’t have time to care what wizards here think. I’m here to prepare to go home. Until then, I’m going to do what I can to keep them out of my hair.”
“Alright,” I said, “then I guess we can look forward to talking with them and being cooperative.”
“Yeah,” Amy shook her head and sighed. “I’m sorry I got their attention. You don’t need this on top of everything else.”
I grinned, “I don’t love it, but so far it doesn’t seem like the wizards are out for blood. It seems like they’re just cautious. This might be easy.”
Haley shook her head, “Don’t say things like that. It’s never easy.”
“Yeah,” I said. She wasn’t wrong. “You know what? I’d like to go to the lab and get rid of most of my suit. I don’t need it anymore.”
Haley nodded, “I believe you. I wouldn’t want to wear that any longer than I had to. Oh, and taking a shower wouldn’t hurt.”
I thought about that, “With your sense of smell, everybody always needs to take a shower.”
“No,” Haley said, “Amy doesn’t need to take a shower. You do.”
Amy grinned at me, “Technically, this isn’t even the same body I used in the fight.”
What I was about to say next disappeared as Kayla turned away from her desk to wave at us as she talked to us over our comm systems, “There are people at the office.”
At the same time, Haley and I asked, “Who?”
Crossing her arms over her chest, Amy didn’t say anything, shaking her head as Kayla replied.
“A pointy-eared woman in medieval clothes, someone in plate armor covered in writing, and Vengeance. They’re asking to talk to Bloodmaiden.”
The three of us looked at each other. Even though I didn’t want one, I knew I wasn’t going to be taking a shower soon. Haley frowned, but responded, “We’re heading over there.”
Amy glanced toward the tunnel to the office, “The Bloodmaiden construct needs to rest. I’m going to go as me. It might make them less worried.”
Tapping the watch on her wrist, Amy told Kayla, “Tell them I’m coming.”
I commanded the suit to recreate my helmet and the three of us left for the tunnel, Amy keeping up because she scratched her arm and used blood magic to fly, saying, “I’m still a blood mage when I’m not using Bloodmaiden.”
Minutes later, we were in back in our official, downtown headquarters. It felt as if we’d just been arguing with Major Justice here. Except for the puffs of powdered sugar that had landed on the floor, it could have been a few days ago when that happened. There weren’t any donuts today at all—which was fine.
Looking through the window, I could see Amothel, the elven wizard, the Graffiti Knight with his symbol-covered armor, and Vengeance standing next to the door. Vengeance looked like he always did—standing tall, seeming to check every direction, his beard covering half of his face, dagger on his belt, and camouflage pants.
We let them inside.
Within a few minutes, they were sitting in the office, asking Amy about how she’d used Mime’s magic. It seemed to be going okay. They weren’t raising their voices. They were calm.
Haley and I weren’t even sitting with them. The discussion had turned technical and neither of us knew enough magic to follow it. We’d withdrawn to the other side of the room, texting each other over our comms, sometimes answering questions on the League comm channel. As we sat, Major Justice’s icon wobbled in my vision. I didn’t answer. He wasn’t likely to have anything to say that I wanted to hear.
Then I noticed a new figure standing on the street. Halfway between a human woman and a large cat, it had to be Shifter. That or Grand Lake was hosting a furry convention.
I didn’t like where this appeared to be going.
Amy’s mouth twisted as she eyed the glowing object. Part of me worried that she wasn’t in costume, but given that the message had found her, it was too late to worry about revealing her identity. The North American Wizard Council had probably known from the moment she appeared on our world.
In an accent that wasn’t quite Irish, Scottish, or English, but some alternate universe’s near relative, she said, “I’m Princess Amelia of the House of Sacrifice, current Bloodmaiden. You have my attention. What is your request?”
Pausing before it responded, the face said, “We sensed a great outpouring of magic and have sent representatives of our council to investigate your use of it. Be respectful and assist their investigation. Our last interaction left us with a more favorable impression of you than we had before. We hope that we’ll have no reason to change our minds.”
Amy smiled, “Let’s hope that we both leave each other with positive impressions.”
The thin, artificial voice replied, “We are in agreement. Expect our representatives soon.”
Then the face lost its form, separating into puffs of smoke that disappeared into the air. I watched them go. Amy shook her head, “Blood Lords put more power into their messengers, but that’s fine. I can do without that particular taste of home.”
She’d switched back to a light Southern accent. I’d asked her about it once. She’d taken a bit of blood from a woman when she’d arrived in our world, learning how to speak English, drive, and generally live in our world all at once.
Katuk didn’t say anything but watched the remaining wisps of magical power until they disappeared. In the meantime, Haley, Kals, and Julie had walked up, having heard at least part of the conversation with the rest of us.
Haley looked away from where the face had been, telling me, “There was nothing real there. No smell or even a hint of sound when it fell apart. I don’t like it.”
Kals and Julie stopped talking with each other long enough for Kals to say, “I don’t feel like I understand everything that’s going on here, but it looks like it’s getting more complicated. It makes me feel guilty about leaving.”
“What?” I asked. “It makes sense and it’s fine. You did what we asked you to do. I just didn’t expect you to go so soon.”
She shook her head, “Not today, but soon. Maybe as soon as tomorrow. It depends on when the Xiniti pick us up. There’s good news too, though. Your friend, Julie? She’s gifted. If she’d been born in the Human Ascendancy, she’d have been drafted into the best motivator schools and found herself running a planet somewhere.
“It’s good that she’s here instead. I’ve been giving her a crash course in upper-level motivator skills. I think she’ll be able to figure out the rest on her own. She’s got a solid grasp of the basics and she was already beginning to figure out more on her own. If I didn’t know you needed her, I’d be trying to recruit her. We need more motivators in the resistance, especially ones that don’t have any commands built in.”
As Kals praised Julie’s skills, Julie smiled—up until the moment when Kals mentioned recruiting her. At that point, she blinked and smiled a little less.
Kals flashed a grin, “I’m not trying to recruit you. They need you. If they didn’t, I’d do everything in my power to convince you to come along. Almost the moment I get back, we’re going to hit the Ascendancy’s leadership with Nick’s killbots all over the Ascendancy. I’m not one of the planners, but I have to be there as a figurehead. Nick can explain why. Anyway, for real, if you want to when you’re done with whatever this is, I need the help. I can’t be everywhere at once. If you did, I’d be able to train you for real.”
Julie nodded, not saying anything at first, “I’ll think about it. I might. I’m not sure I want to leave Earth to fight in a war, but there’s no one here who knows what you do.”
“Not only that,” Kals said, “but you’d be able to put what I teach you into practice. It wouldn’t be just academic.”
Haley frowned, “I think Julie should think about it for the future, but we need her right now.”
“I’m sorry,” Kals laughed. “That’s what I do now. We’re in a rebellion and we need people. Julie, let’s find a room and get back to practicing.”
“Wait,” I said. “You’re planning to use the killbot design I gave to Four Hands? I’ve got a software update you need to install. They managed to figure out how to stop them here. This update is the fix.”
Even as I said it, I wasn’t sure that I was happy that my design was going to be used to assassinate heads of state across this section of the galaxy, but I also wanted the rebellion to win. I wasn’t going to withhold the fix.
Kals smiled at me, “Thanks. Send it to my implant and I’ll get it out as soon as I can.”
It felt good to help her and her smile reminded me that she was attractive. It was nothing I planned to do anything about, but I still felt it.
Kals, Katuk, and Julie walked away, leaving me with Haley and Amy.
Glancing over at them, Haley said, “I wouldn’t want to go out there, but Julie might. Her mom died years ago and I don’t think she gets along with her dad.”
“If she does go, I hope she at least stays long enough to help us with the Dominators,” as Haley nodded, I added, “but on the bright side, it sounds like the wizards aren’t as worked up as it sounded like at first.”
“Sure,” Amy let out a breath, “that’s what they say now. For all I know, they’re lowering my guard before the surprise attack. I did run into their team again a year or two ago and I think that killing The Thing That Eats impressed them. They might be willing to trust me.”
“Right,” Amy said, “except they’re terrified of blood magic and that means they’re terrified of me because I’m connected to the most powerful blood magic-based construct they’ve ever heard of.”
I thought about that, “I’m surprised they didn’t go after you when we were done fighting The Thing That Eats.”
She met my eyes or at least looked toward my helmet and laughed, “Before they were too busy with The Thing That Eats and afterward Lee was right there keeping the both of us alive. They might not know what Lee really is, but I’m sure they keep enough records to know not to mess with him or the people he’s attached to.”
“Let’s hope that continues,” I began to descend, aiming for the forest in the state park where we had an entrance to HQ. A quick check of the sensors showed that no one was in the vicinity.
I asked Amy, “Do you have enough strength left to manage invisibility?”
“I’m feeling better. I think I could,” she frowned, “but not if I have to fly at the same time.”
“Let’s do this,” she moved her hand, pricking herself, and then faded from view.
I could still tell she was there both from the weight and the slight fuzziness in the air where she hung in the air next to me. I activated my suit’s chameleon mode, matching the color in the sky above me or the ground below me depending on your angle.
It wasn’t perfect, but it worked well enough from a distance. By any reasonable measure, we winked out before we came anywhere near the forest and then invisibly dropped through the trees. When I didn’t know the place, trees were a pain, but we kept a couple of spots branch free. In November that meant that it wasn’t hard to find the spot because not only was it branch free, but all the trees around it were leaf free.
Landing in a small clearing between big tree trunks, we stood among sparse grass, sandy soil, fallen leaves, and small bushes. Near us lay a concrete platform. A little over knee high, it appeared to be the remains of some old public works program or maybe a World War 2 era project. Maybe the original was, but this wasn’t it.
As we walked toward it, the top slab slid back and we climbed down a ladder into a tunnel as the slab slid into place. Lights turned on as the outside disappeared and we walked down the tunnel, eventually stepping through a big iron hatch into the main room in HQ.
We weren’t alone. Kayla at one of the desks, monitoring her screens but giving us a wave as we stepped into the room. Haley, Kals, Katuk, and Julie were walking through the room’s trophies toward us. Tiger followed them, the huge dog starting from the far end of the room.
It was an odd group. Only a few years ago, Julie had used her voice to force Haley and me to leave a coffee shop where Sean’s first version of Justice Fist had been meeting. Kals had been a little more interested in me than I’d realized and now she was hanging out with Haley. Katuk, of course, was a Xiniti, one of the aliens that acted as the Galactic Alliance’s shock troops and enforcers.
Next to me, Amy said, “I’m going to drop this form.”
In a flash of red, dark magical symbols, and even thumping medieval music, Amy transformed from being Bloodmaiden back into herself. Clad in armor, the Bloodmaiden form was a foot taller and could have passed as a fitness model. While both were red-haired and pale-skinned, Amy was a little over five feet and thin.
She took a deep breath, “I feel better now, but I need to let the construct rest for a little while.”
I let the helmet of the Rocket suit turn into the open-face version, knowing I couldn’t drop the rest until I got into the lab.
Katuk reached us first. Between wearing the silver Xiniti combat suit, his grey skin, and large black eyes, he looked every inch the alien stereotype, “Nick, I am grateful to see you alive. I was not allowed to assist. My mission is to protect Kals and I am not allowed to leave her side. Otherwise, I would have.”
“Don’t worry about it. I’m okay,” I looked away from him as Haley stepped around him, looking up at me.
From the way she was biting her lip, I guessed that she didn’t have good news. Proving me right, she said, “I’m glad you’re okay, but Mindstryke called here. He wanted to talk to all of us when you got back and got out of your suit. It’s about Major Justice. It sounds like he’s trying to make this into a big deal.”
“Oh,” I said, considering asking her for more information but realizing at the same moment that she wouldn’t have any.
At that moment, I realized that bright light was hitting my face. Glancing to my left, I realized that a small sphere was down here with us and had stopped in front of Amy and had begun to turn into a glowing face that reminded me of the moon.
“Blood sorcerer, we require your attention!”
On the freeway, an SUV had stopped and three teenage girls stood by the concrete railing, all of them pointing their phones in our direction. I wondered how long they’d been there and my implant flipped back to when Prentkos and the Cabal soldier landed in the road. They’d seen everything they could.
I wondered how all of that looked to an observer. I hadn’t done anything I regretted, but that didn’t matter. I needed to get the footage to Kayla so she could get it to the League’s marketing and public relations team.
The way Amy had made Major Justice, Mime, and South Beach Surfer disappear in red flashes wasn’t going to look good—not to mention stabbing Mime. It was going to look especially bad if she’d straight out disintegrated them.
If we were lucky she’d sent them to some kind of blood magic hell dimension that we could pull them out of immediately.
Still hanging on to her as I turned toward HQ, I asked, “What did you do to them?”
She laughed, “Don’t worry about it. They’re not dead. I teleported them back to their respective homes. What did you think I did?”
“I didn’t know. I thought you might have dumped them into an alternate dimension for safekeeping.”
Amy turned to stare at me, “I can’t do that.”
She stopped and frowned, “Oh, I could have, but I couldn’t have gotten them out unless we kept Mime with us. I know it looked like I’d absorbed his abilities, but it was more complicated. I used the spear to tap his abilities without killing him, but as soon as he was gone, so was the tap.”
“Huh,” I said, thinking about it. “Could you have done that a few years ago with the dragon?”
She sighed, “No. I had the potential. I didn’t have the skill. Red Hex and Reliquary gave me a new perspective on magic that changes everything—even my understanding of blood magic. I can do a lot more than the mages at home taught me.”
Before I came up with a response, Major Justice’s icon started flashing in my HUD. I considered telling the system to ignore his calls, but I decided that would be worse. Then I wouldn’t know which bug was currently up his butt.
Bracing myself for his newest batch of irrationality, I took the call.
“I’m sure you’ll be happy to know that Mime is well and so far undamaged by your friend’s little stunt even if he is tired. If there’s permanent harm to him, though, we’ll send your magical friend’s ass back to her little fairy kingdom. Children like you have no sense of anything but their own power. You need to develop a sense of goddam responsibility and—“
“Look,” I said, “you came in out of nowhere, did not ask what was going on, and let a would-be assassin escape. You didn’t do anything useful and you actively screwed up what we were trying to do. What’s your problem? Did the old League reject you for membership or something?”
I didn’t wait for him to answer. I closed the connection, resolving not to answer if he called back to shout at me again.
His icon lit up again less than a second after I hung up, but then stopped pulsing as if he’d also realized that the conversation wasn’t going anywhere. If we were lucky, he’d give up completely, but given that we were only hours away by podjet, I wasn’t holding my breath.
Amy and I were flying over a residential area by then, houses in grids below us, all of them lived in by people who’d likely hear about the events I’d just been in through some filter. I hoped it would be more favorable than not.
No longer breathing heavily, Amy said, “I only heard one end of that conversation and it didn’t sound good.”
“It wasn’t great. Major Justice called to let me know that I’m irresponsible and that if Mime’s not okay, he’s going to send you home.”
She raised an eyebrow, “Can he do that?”
Checking around us with my suit’s sensors, I didn’t see any pursuit and replied, “I have no idea. I’d say no simply because his team doesn’t have a wizard or anything, but we don’t either and we could.”
She let out a breath, “I can’t go back yet. It isn’t time and besides, I want to see all of you through this mess.”
Kayla’s voice came over the comm, addressed to the whole group, “We’ve been receiving your feed and that didn’t look good. I’m sending it over to our people and they can try to figure out how to talk about this.”
“Thanks. I was going to send it to you, but if you’ve got it, you’ve got it.”
With that, Amy and I were alone in the air again. I didn’t need Kayla to tell me that everyone else she’d scrambled was heading back to base. I could see it in my HUD.
I was beginning to relax again, realizing that my heartbeat had been racing only now that it wasn’t. Amy, meanwhile, had turned to look behind us as if expecting someone to come racing out of the distance. No one did. When she turned back to face me again, her mouth twisted and she asked, “Do you think Major Justice has any connection to the North American Wizards’ Council? Because they could send me home.”
“I doubt it,” I said. “You know what they’re like. They don’t work with superheroes except when they’ve got no choice.”
It was one of those slow-motion moments that work better in films than in real life. When you’re watching a film, on some level you know that no matter what happens, you’ll be able to walk out of the theater with no consequences. In real life, you might know that Amy’s spear consumed souls, lifeforce, essence, or some other substance that science couldn’t detect or measure.
It had nearly consumed mine when Amy was hurt and needed healing I couldn’t give. The only thing that stopped it from killing me was that Lee had shown up, stopped it, and somehow restored enough mystery substance that I could live.
Knowing that, I could only worry as the spear flew toward Mime because I knew that absorbing Mime’s essence and killing him in the process, wouldn’t make this situation better.
I could only hope that since Amy wasn’t on the verge of death, she might be able to control what happened next—that, and I could watch.
The spear flew toward the podjet, heading straight for Mime, ignoring that a normal human being couldn’t throw a spear that distance or that height. It hit Mime dead center of his chest, halted there, and then emerged from the other side at the same speed it had been going when it hit, much as if I’d paused a video game and then pressed play.
It left no mark on Mime, not even the gushing blood that I’d have expected to see when a spear passes through a human body.
Nonetheless, Mime slumped forward, remaining inside the podjet only because of a strap around his body that appeared to be bolted to the floor of the podjet. As he slumped, the spear flew through the other side of the podjet without being stopped or leaving any damage.
The spear then dipped toward the ground in an arc, flipping over and flying back to Amy’s hand.
Major Justice’s voice came over the comm, “What did she do to him?”
Thanks to my suit, I could see that he was still breathing and maintaining a steady temperature. I didn’t know what she’d done, but he wasn’t dead, “No idea. I can ask.”
South Beach Surfer struggled to pull away from me, pushing me with wind, but not so hard that the suit couldn’t adjust. I had little doubt that she’d have hit me harder if she could see me, but the goo wouldn’t degrade any time soon.
I felt a kind of quiver somewhere and I knew that it wasn’t physical. It was around me and I had only a loose idea of what it might be. The loose idea though was that I was feeling something through the Artificer senses that Kee had been training me to use. From the feel of it, I didn’t think it could be the presence of an Artificer, but that was all I knew.
“Bloodmaiden,” I asked over my comm, noticing that the red gem on Amy’s armor glowed a step brighter than usual and that the air around her black armor appeared to be extra shadowy for the middle of the day in direct sunlight. Even more interesting, the shadowy area appeared to be growing even as the red glow of her gem and the ruby accents on her armor were already brighter than the last time I looked.
When she didn’t reply, I added, “Are you okay?”
Her voice wavered over the comm as she said, “Give me a second. I tried something.”
Major Justice’s icon blinked. He’d passed the limit of his patience and he was already pinging me. I ignored him.
Amy took a deep breath and as she did, the shadows around her armor extended outward, not darkening the entire sky, but making themselves a presence that in combination with the red glow of her gems gave everywhere I could see an unearthly look.
Letting out a breath, Amy continued, “One of the past Bloodmaidens recognized what Mime was. He’s a magical nexus. I diverted his power away from him and into me—for now. It’ll last long enough to get them out of here. Do you have any plans for her or any of them?”
Wondering where this was going, I said, “No.”
“Then let go of her,” she said.
Deciding to trust Amy, I did.
South Beach Surfer shot away on her floating surfboard, but then slowed as she must have realized that she didn’t want to fly blind. She didn’t get time to figure out how she was going to handle it. Shadows surrounded her, all of them tinged with red light. Then as the shadows wrapped around her legs, a red light flashed.
When the red light was gone, so was she.
I have to guess what would happen next. Major Justice’s podjet wheeled around, turning toward us as gun barrels extended out of the podjet. Even as I considered my next step, shadows wrapped around the podjet and a red light flashed.
Then the red light flashed and the podjet was gone.
In that second, the shadows and red light vanished and I hovered next to the highway on a normal Monday. Amy, however, shuddered in the air and drew in a breath over the comm. I didn’t know for sure what would happen next, but on the off chance that she involuntarily transformed back into Amy, I flew toward her, managing to grab her arm as she slumped into me, her armor clanking as it touched mine.
She didn’t transform back, but she did sink into me, barely staying in the air. I gave the anti-gravity system power to help with the bulkiness of the load.
Still breathing heavily, she said, “I’m sorry. Even with his power that took a lot out of me.”
Thanks to the Rocket suit’s enhanced vision, I could see South Beach Surfer’s eyes widen as I aimed myself in her direction. She’d been in too many fights not to guess what I was planning.
If only I knew. The smartest choice would be to aim the laser at her and just burn her. Her probably armored “wetsuit” might help a little, but I’d likely send her to an emergency room. If it turned out that she was mind-controlled or that her perception of the League had been subtly altered, she wouldn’t deserve it.
She might not deserve being punched unconscious either, but at least that wouldn’t be permanent—though that depended on how hard I hit.
She was also experienced enough to recover from her surprise that I’d gotten out of the center of her winds. Her eyes narrowed as she stared at me, changing the wind’s direction.
That might have been a problem at one point, but I’d spent years training to fight in storms. Knowing that changing direction wasn’t instantaneous, I shot upward with as much force as I could manage without blacking out. Given that the suit now included alien tech, that meant more than three hundred miles per hour. The straight shot upward turned to an arc that aimed me at South Beach Surfer only now from above without in any way slowing down.
Though I wasn’t close to them, I couldn’t help but notice Mime stop firing, stare, and aim the imaginary gun upward at me. With any luck, the imaginary bullets would disappear before they hit anything. If someone died from Mime’s misses, I didn’t know what I’d do.
Behind Mime, Major Justice stared for a moment, and only as I neared South Beach Surfer, he dove deeper into the podjet to do something I couldn’t see.
I was too busy to find out more because I’d decided what to do. Lethal means and methods that could be deflected by the wind were out, but I had other options.
As I came within ten feet of her, she aimed a gust of wind at me, but not enough and I’d known that as I went in. When you’re dependent on the wind to keep you up, you have the wind right there and available for use, but you don’t want to use so much of it that you’re no longer in the air.
I blew right through it. It pushed me a little bit away, but I continued to follow the half plan that I’d come up with while barreling toward her—which started with a blast through the wind. That was followed up with readjusting my direction so that as I flew behind her I could grab her—which I did.
That worked only because like Vaughn she didn’t have much in terms of physical powers. She tried to pull away with a little more power than a normal human should, but that might have been her costume. Anyway, she didn’t have tons of force to work with and I did. As I flew behind her, I grabbed her right arm with my right and put my left arm around her front.
While being able to absorb data quickly enough that I could see speedsters didn’t help me much by itself, it helped with the timing. As I put my left arm around her front, I aimed it up at her head and fired off a goobot.
One nice feature of the goo is that the polymer it was made of separated into threads distant enough from each other that even if it covered someone’s mouth and nose, they’d be able to breathe through it.
I was counting on that—that and another feature. Even if it covered someone’s entire face, they wouldn’t be able to see through it—which was inconvenient if you wanted to aim wind at people. Hopefully, she didn’t have some kind of “wind sense.”
The goobot exploded, coating every part of her face except for her hair.
She shouted, saying nothing I could understand and adding a buzzing noise from the goo.
It was probably for the best that I couldn’t hear her. The only person in their group who hadn’t said something annoying to me was Mime.
I wondered what my chances were of gluing all of their mouths shut.
“Rocket,” Amy said over the comm. “I’m behind the factory to your left. What’s your plan?”
“I was trying to talk them down—“
“By gluing their mouths shut?”
“It’s not working,” I said.
“I can tell,” she replied. “I’ll go for Mime.”
Major Justice’s icon blinked and I let his voice through, “What are you doing? Holding her captive? I expected better of you. Don’t think this will make us stop. Mime!”
Exactly what Mime was outlining in the air with his hands wasn’t clear to me, but he seemed to be moving his hands a lot. That didn’t bode well.
Out of the corner of my eye, Amy rose into the air, all glowing red gems and black armor, her red hair waving in the wind. In one hand, she held a spear made of dark, pitted metal that in retrospect brought to mind Elric’s sword Stormbringer.
She threw it toward Mime.
One nice thing about allowing the Rocket suit to be controlled through my implant is that I didn’t have to move to try to contact South Beach Surfer. Before my implant, I’d have had to tap my the gauntlet’s palm with my finger or worse, use the Rocket suit’s mouthguard and tap with my tongue.
For the record, texting with your tongue is tedious beyond my ability to explain.
With the implant’s connection, all I had to do was think to try to connect to her ID in the Defenders comm directory. Once the connection was made, I thought to her, “Help me with these people. We’ll sort this out afterward.”
It couldn’t be translated into audible words as soon as I could think of it. That might have explained what happened next. It’s possible that she was concentrating too hard on what she was doing to process the words or that the translation was confusing.
League members understood me perfectly, though, so it seemed more likely that she didn’t want to listen.
A blast of air threw me sideways, tilting the truck behind me, but not flipping it over. With the wind’s angle changing from sideways to straight down from above me, the wind stopped pushing me and tried to pin me to the ground instead. As I rolled over and began to push myself up, I couldn’t help but notice that the Cabal soldier had turned around, grabbed Prentkos, and jumped away. The pickup roared away at the same time.
It didn’t surprise me that she ignored them, but I still didn’t feel good about it. Judging from the number of text messages on the channel, the rest of the team agreed with me—not that I tried to check the texts. If they wanted my attention, they’d flag me.
Not even bothering to try to contact her, I pushed myself up to a crawl. If I wanted to hurt her, my best shot would be the laser and I didn’t want to do that. This was either a misunderstanding or mind control. Neither one justified the death penalty.
Over the comm, Kayla said, “I’ve redirected part of the team to your parents’ house. We’re hoping to talk the Duhfenders down with the rest of the team.”
“Duhfenders?” I braced myself as water shot out of the storm grate to knock me sideways. It almost pushed me enough to lose my grip on the holes I’d punched in the road.
“Storm King’s name for Major Justice and company,” Kayla’s tone made me almost certain she was shaking her head as she said it.
Thinking about my chances of getting out of her wind if I jumped and fired the rockets full blast, I said, “Figures.”
“Bad news,” Kayla continued, “Major Justice didn’t like my answers to his questions. He’s going to try to call you now.”
I might have groaned in response, but I didn’t have time. Major Justice’s call appeared in my HUD. I took it because I didn’t have any better ideas and knew that if I stalled long enough we’d outnumber them.
The first words I heard out of Major Justice’s mouth were, “Surrender! We outnumber you and we’ve seen what you’re doing. You nearly killed both of those men.”
“No,” I said, watching the podjet above me lower itself to about 100 feet above me. The door slid open to reveal Mime sitting in the doorway, arms held as if he were aiming a machine gun down at me. I wondered if he created a real thing or if I were lucky enough that the beliefs of the observer affected what he’d brought into being. On the off-chance that might be true, I chose to imagine it as a Nerf machine gun.
If he created it for real, I hoped mimed guns didn’t ricochet and misses disappeared. The people passing on the nearby freeway didn’t deserve to be blown away.
“No,” I repeated. “They were here to kill someone I’m protecting. The Cabal soldier will be healed by tomorrow if not earlier. Give the other guy to any psychic you’ve got and you’ll find out his mission. At least you could do that if you go after him right now.”
Up in the podjet, a figure moved, maybe looking in the direction where Prentkos and the Cabal soldier had disappeared.
Major Justice, if that was him, said, “Too late. They disappeared. Surrender to us. Explain everything you wouldn’t before and we’ll check it out.”
“That’s not going to happen until we know we can trust you and we’re not seeing any signs of that so far,” I said. “What we are seeing is that you’re interfering with our business without any right to.”
Major Justice laughed, “I’m a vigilante. You’re vigilantes. Butting into other people’s business is what we do and now that you’ve shown that you’re impervious to reason, we’re going to take you down and take you in.”
Mime pulled his trigger finger toward himself, his hands shaking as if they were hanging onto a firing machine gun. A few of whatever missiles an imaginary machine gun fired hit me. Others hit the street around me, throwing bits of asphalt into the air.
My armor could take the punishment, but for the record, they weren’t Nerf missiles. They hit with enough force that I felt it.
Deciding I couldn’t stay in one place for a moment longer, I darted sideways toward the other side of the road and the freeway, guessing that there had to be a point where the winds stopped. I only needed seconds of that.
I was right.
The winds buffeted me on one side and then switched to another, trying to knock me over again, but this time I was expecting it. The Rocket suit could generate tons of force if I wanted it to and I used it, bracing myself whenever it hit.
By the time I hit the other side of the road, I’d moved outside of the blasting wind. Knowing I had seconds or less, I gave the rockets fuel and shot forward across the ground, aiming for South Beach Surfer and her surfboard, thankful that the freeway was above the ground inside the city. Any bullets aimed at me would hit far below the cars.
If I could take South Beach Surfer out, this would become easier.
I caught a glimpse of the Cabal soldier and Prentkos gaining altitude and then hitting the top of the arc and beginning to drop. He’d been traveling the same way the strongest of the Cabal’s soldiers always had—jumping half a mile or more at a time.
It made me regret that we couldn’t cover the entire city with spybots. I placed the ones we had near roads where you could run at hundreds of miles per hour on outskirts and located them thicker near my parents’ house—with the effect that this guy could avoid notice until he got close purely by accident.
Prentkos had probably called him in somehow.
Letting those thoughts go, I watched as the Cabal soldier and Prentkos disappeared through the trees followed by the sound of shattering and ripping wood.
I’d sometimes wondered if the Cabal had a system to control where they landed. This argued that they didn’t worry about it because they didn’t care what they hit.
This soldier had hit a two-car garage that might have been a carriage house in the late 1800s. The undamaged side had been painted in red and gold that in someone’s imagination resembled what it used to look like. They’d hit the front left corner, turning the damaged side into a mix of paint, old, splintered wood, and a crushed, white jeep.
Car alarms were going off for all the good that would do.
Of course, they didn’t stay on the ground. The soldier jumped off again, still carrying Prentkos before I even arrived. This time, though, he jumped eastward, aiming toward the freeway that ran through, the same freeway we’d fought the Grey Giant on the first time we went out as a group. More importantly, it was full of cars in the early afternoon, ranging from business people out for lunch to semi-trucks to parents who’d picked up their kids from kindergarten.
In short, it wasn’t the kind of place you wanted to see those guys land.
Connecting to my suit’s comm with my implant, I said, “It looks like they’re going down the highway. I’m going to try to keep him off. We may need the jet.”
That was a worst-case scenario because the jet’s main gun would incinerate them both, but it might still be less deaths than if he took a chunk out of the freeway.
In the meantime, the Cabal soldier had come down again, this time landing in an alley, leaving smashed concrete and a circle of cracks before shooting into the air again, this time closing on the highway. Passing over the neighborhood of century-old houses, some of them with cars in the driveway, I was relieved that no one had been hit or even a house. It might be nothing to a two-thousand-year-old soldier, but your average person would be facing a nightmare of insurance companies, hotel stays, and hiring contractors.
I had to end this before he used the freeway’s relatively clear shot out of town, but he wasn’t making it easy. According to the suit, I was flying at more than 300 miles per hour, which wasn’t a situation in which the bots were at their best.
As they hit a road between the freeway and a row of old brick factories whose glory days had passed before the 1950s, I went with my other option, a weapon I tried not to fire in populated areas—my laser.
The Cabal soldier crouched in the road, preparing to leap again while a blue pickup truck screeched to a stop in front of him, the driver screaming out the window. That’s when I fired.
The laser burned blue, searing through the soldier’s lower back, thigh, and lower leg. The man’s black uniform offered no obvious protection.
Falling to his side in front of the truck, he let go of Prentkos who seemed to be better enough to pull himself out of the soldier’s grip and hit the pavement on his own terms. I missed the details, but he rolled into a crawl and dragged himself off the road and onto the grass and dirt parkway between the road and the sidewalk.
This would have been perfect if it had occurred to the bearded man in the pickup truck that his way was being blocked by a 2000-year-old man who had no issues with the idea of turning him into a bloody paste. Unfortunately, it must not have and he kept on screaming. The Cabal soldier sneered at him, beginning to pull himself up.
Not wanting to find out what would happen next, I dove, flipping over, turning around, and landing between the two of them with an agility that was more to the credit of my programming skill than my acrobatic skill.
Now behind me, the man in the pickup took the hint and began to back up and go in the other direction. To my left, Prentkos pulled himself up to watch us mid-crawl. Ahead of me, the Cabal soldier’s face grimaced in a mixture of pain and some other negative emotion. I wasn’t sure what hate looked like but the man’s glare might have been in the vicinity.
I pointed the laser at him, “Don’t move. Whether I shoot you in the heart or the balls, you’re not going to like it.”
I didn’t know if any of the other members of the Cabal’s army ever mentioned how effective lasers were against them and their regeneration, but his limp and the holes in his body had to be a clue. He didn’t charge me.
With no warning, Kayla’s voice came through my comm, “Major Justice is shouting at us about how you need to stop and let him handle this.”
At about the same time, I saw a podjet become visible in the sky above me while a woman on a surfboard dove toward me at a higher speed than I’d have expected if she wanted to talk.
At the same time that I blasted toward him, I pulled my arm back as if I planned to punch him. Even if I couldn’t move as quickly as he could or fully take advantage of the speeds that I could now observe, I could pull the arm back as I might if I had no special tricks and then fire off killbots as I closed with him.
The speed of my punches was limited by my body, but firing off the killbots was done at the speed of thought plus electronics interfacing with alien technology in my brain.
The killbots shot down toward the ground, curving upward to aim for his leg.
I’d fired off three of them, not intending to hit him with all of them, merely to make it hard to dodge. Even with his legs webbed in deteriorating goo, he could still move around—within limits. He couldn’t get a full step out of either leg, allowing him more of a sideways hop except there were a lot of sideways hops in all directions as the killbots ducked and weaved aiming for his lower legs.
The speed of the hopping made it look like film run at twice the speed. It might have been funny to watch if lives didn’t hang in the balance.
Plus, I mean, I wasn’t watching. I was directing the killbots and flying past Prentkos to land and then rushing back at him to punch him on the theory that it would be one thing too many.
I didn’t know it at the time, but Vaughn would later add the Benny Hill theme song, “Yakety Sax” to footage of the fight.
I couldn’t deny that it felt right—at least until the blood started flowing.
Two of my killbots hit Prentkos, both of them cutting through his right leg, but splitting to cut through both of the bones in his lower leg, the tibia and the fibula. Given what had happened with the goo, I’d wondered if Prentkos would be using Rook’s anti-killbot material, but if he was, my newly refactored killbots chewed through it.
Having seen the killbots work before and knowing that they used monomolecular technology to cut, it didn’t surprise me that the expression on Prentkos’ face didn’t change. The killbots cut so cleanly that a person might not feel it.
Prentkos didn’t. He’d lifted his leg as they hit. The damaged goo stretched and broke. Then he put the down the foot on the floor and the bottom half of the leg bent sideways.
That’s when he screamed.
I might have too in his position. Even beyond the bending as sharpened bone cut into the muscle around it, blood ran out of the holes. Some dripped, but some spurted.
I didn’t know the details of how Prentkos’ powers worked, but if your speed depended on your strength, it seemed possible that your blood might be under a lot of pressure. The part of me that looked at situations like this objectively couldn’t help but note that even though Prentkos’ costume was red and white, the blood was a darker red than the uniform.
The rest of my mind was going for the spray can full of skin substitute and wishing I’d thought to make a version that could be delivered by goobots before this moment.
Still, I ran over, ready to spray his wounds shut. I shouldn’t have been surprised that he tried to bat my hands and the spray can away, but I was. He hit the spray can out of my hand and it rolled down the asphalt, wobbling due to the dent he’d made.
I pulled out another, this time blocking his attempts to knock it out of the way with my arm. It was easier this time. His face looked a little gray which was unsurprising when you considered that he might only have as much blood as a normal person and some of that had spurted as far as ten feet away.
The fleshy foam covered both the outside and the inside of his wounds. I wasn’t sure how that would affect his healing, but that wasn’t my problem. All I needed to do was stop him from bleeding out and help him avoid infections.
All the same, he didn’t look like he was going anywhere for now. Though it was possible he healed more quickly than normal people, he wasn’t doing more than lie on the asphalt for now.
“Don’t move,” I told him, checking around me to see if anyone else on the team had arrived and then checking my HUD for their positions. Amy was only a block away.
Below me, Prentkos stared out into the park, saying nothing and making me wonder if I had to worry about shock.
I was about to message the group when Kayla said, “Rocket, there’s someone in the air moving toward you.”
Using at the Rocket suit’s 360-degree view, I knew she was right, but not entirely. No one was flying. A human shape in the sky dropped, landing almost at the moment I saw him. I didn’t recognize him by name, but the bulky muscles made me think of the Cabal’s soldiers.
His fist hit me in the side, throwing me into the air for a good fifty feet, stopping only when I hit the chain link fence of one of the baseball diamonds. Strictly speaking, the fence stopped me in the sense that when I went through it, I slowed down. I stopped near third base.
Knowing that even if I touched it, I wouldn’t be safe, I pulled myself to my feet. As I did, the Cabal soldier scooped up Prentkos and jumped away.
Noting that the Rocket suit’s systems all showed up as green, I shot into the air, trying to follow them.
I didn’t know who’d figured out how to dissolve my goo, but knowing that this was connected to the Nine, my first thought was Rook. The guy seemed to have weird hero worship of my grandfather going despite being an example of everything my grandfather stood against.
I wouldn’t have put it past him to make a point of figuring out how to dissolve the glue after the last times we’d fought him. Cassie had disintegrated his leg. In the fight before that, I’d exploded his hand. He had every reason to hate both of us—except he’d been weirdly admiring both times we’d met.
All of that went through my head in a flash, most of it wordlessly. I had other things to deal with—specifically the fact that Prentkos was here to kill my uncle. It wasn’t that I’d come in with no plan, but my plan had been to slow the guy down with goobots long enough that Daniel could go into his head and put him to sleep.
So as long as I was alone my best chance to keep him away from my family was to grab him and hold him in place until Daniel, Haley, or maybe Amy could knock him out.
Well, short of killing him or beating him so badly that he couldn’t run away, letting the rest of the team handle him was the best choice. Unfortunately, the rest of the team wasn’t available for a little bit.
I had to slow him down until then.
Running out from behind the brown, brick building and passing the women’s bathroom with less than three steps, I felt like I was flying without even turning on the rockets. In a few more steps, I’d made it to the spot where Prentkos was spraying the last of the goo and pulling against it in a jerky motion that would have been too fast for a normal person to see more than a blur.
Whether because of the Xiniti implant or because of some side effect of Artificer DNA and their relationship with time, I could see every jerk distinctly even if I couldn’t move any faster than a normal human being wearing powered armor.
If I turned this into a wrestling match, he’d almost certainly be able to wriggle out of it, meaning that grabbing him wasn’t a realistic option. If I wanted to keep him around long enough for the others to catch up, I’d have to hurt him either by knocking him unconscious or breaking at least one of his legs.
From what I’d seen of him in Rook’s base, Prentkos powers seemed to be similar to Jaclyn’s—which meant that I could go all out without killing him. The only bad point being that he might still be able to kill me and follow it up with my uncle and maybe my mom.
As one of the last strands of goo stretched and broke, I reached out, punching him in the stomach—kind of.
He twisted and my gauntleted fist hit but didn’t sink into him so much as drag across his stomach, sliding off to the side. The force would have killed a normal person, but he wasn’t dead. Still stuck to the remaining few threads on his right side, he punched at me with his left hand. I could see it, but I couldn’t move enough to dodge it.
It hit hard enough to knock me back to the ground while he pulled on the remaining strands, grunting as he yanked at them again, and glaring at me.
Checking my inventory, I realized that I still had goobots. With luck, I might have more goobots than he could dissolve—which in this case meant enough to dissolve six goobots. Even though I’d been reinforced, I’d sent most of those for him even before my armor finished assembling.
I started with two goobots, aiming them at his legs. They exploded into grey strands, but he managed to dodge three-quarters of them. Even as they hit, he was already spraying them.
On the other hand, he had to deal with being stuck in two places instead of one or technically three because the leg hit joined the left and right legs with strands.
I’d fired at him from the ground, so I had to pull myself up to have any chance of catching him if he got out of the goo. I only barely made it back on my feet in time to see him detach the strands from his hand. Now only the strands between his legs kept him in one place and he’d sprayed even those in the time he’d had.
They weren’t going to hold for more than seconds.
I fired off another goobot. He caught it in his right hand and smashed it against the path before I could fire a follow-up. Then he stepped forward, ripping the weakened strands of goo with the motion of his legs.
I gave the rockets fuel and blasted toward him.
Giving myself as much speed as I could while still having a hope of stopping close to my house, I asked myself what the best way to handle this was. Coming to the conclusion that the best place to fight the guy was far enough away from my house that he couldn’t burst inside before I could react, I checked his position.
He was still heading toward my parents’ house. If he traveled at the same speed, he’d run through a park a few blocks away—which struck me as a better option for fighting him than the other options: home, an elementary school’s playground, or a church parking lot.
Using my implant, I summoned one of my floating pods. If I were lucky, I’d be able to upgrade my stealth suit to a real rocket suit before the guy got here—assuming it was a guy. The spybots only picked up a human-shaped blur. I might have to up the recording frame rate later.
The park amounted to an open area with a playground and three baseball fields in a cluster on the far end. Running straight through the middle wouldn’t be a challenge for the speedster. Even if the baseball diamonds had been in the way, I didn’t hold out much hope that the chain link fence would provide much resistance.
A quick look around the park gave me hope that I’d made a good decision. No one was playing baseball in the middle of the day in November. Even the playground was empty.
I landed on the far end of the park’s bathrooms, sending out spybots to monitor the park and readying a few more in the trees for the moment that the speedster entered the park.
Checking the pod’s position, it would be close, maybe close enough that I couldn’t use it for fear of revealing my position. Noting that it was moving at full speed, I decided to give it a shot. I could always tell the pod to stop if it appeared they’d arrive too close.
A quick look at my HUD via my implant gave me an overview of the team’s positions. No one was close. Jaclyn and Izzy had already started the moment they got a red alert, but Izzy was in California and Jaclyn was in Ann Arbor. It would be ten minutes. Cassie had made it to her bike and was on the road, but still miles away. Like Cassie, Daniel and Haley were both in the air, but neither one was close.
The closest person appeared to be Amy, but she wasn’t the fastest flyer. Still, she was nearer than anyone else. I might not be alone in this.
I didn’t have time to think much more about that because my pod notified me that it had arrived and began to descend, releasing materials above me that affixed to my suit, the nanotech reassembling into better armor, weapons, improved strength, and more bots of all kinds.
We weren’t fixed when the closest spybots showed that the speedster was heading toward the park. Hoping that I wouldn’t be regretting this at my uncle’s funeral, I let the suit finish assembly. As the last quarter knitted itself together, the speedster entered the park, a grey blur that threatened to blow through the place before I could do anything.
Except, I wasn’t a complete idiot, I’d set goobots near the entrance to the park. Before the blur made it even ten feet down the black, asphalt trail, the bots shot forward and exploded all around him. With speedsters you didn’t leave any holes. You hit them from all directions if you could.
I’d programmed them for something like this ages ago and watched it through multiple streams to my implant, some from the goobots themselves and others from spybots covering the park. From them I saw the goo expand at the speedster from all directions, overlapping threads expanding to fill the area, some even shooting above the speedster’s head.
He tried to dodge them anyway. He didn’t manage to dodge all of them, but a lot more than I’d have expected.
Jumping into the air, he shot upward, avoiding most of the goo, but far from all of it. It coated his right leg from the knee down. His left leg got it worse, starting from the middle of his thigh and covering everything down to his boot.
He fell to the ground outside of the gray, gooey, vaguely circular mess, and swung into the asphalt which cracked from the force.
I could use the word “he” to describe him by then. Not only had he slowed down enough to be obviously male, but I actually knew the guy. Well, sort of.
I’d been assaulted by him before. In fact, I’d hit him with one of my earliest batches of goobots.
Back when we’d tried to rescue Cassie from being kidnapped, he’d been in Rook’s Canadian base. I’d hit the guy with goobots and left him there. Shortly after, Rook had flooded his base with nerve gas, leaving me to wonder if I’d killed the speedster indirectly.
Except… Prentkos (Speed in Polish) turned out to be alive and serving on the European Union’s biggest superhero team. Even weirder, though I recognized the guy’s square face, this version of Prentkos looked younger than he’d appeared on the EU’s website. In their pictures, he had threads of gray in his hair. What hair this man’s mask didn’t cover was all brown. In addition, his skin didn’t have any of a middle-aged man’s creases. I pegged him as being around my age.
I didn’t know what that meant outside of the obvious possibilities—time travel, cloning, or… selling out his morals for immortality? None of those options was a good thing.
Worse, even as he began to pull himself up from the ground, he pulled a small spray can from his belt and aimed a mist at the goo.
It began to dissolve.
I’m on vacation and will be posting a story that a few of you may have seen in one of The Good Fight anthologies. It’s about one of the ways that the Heroes’ Leagues’ secret identities remain concealed. Ben walked down the hall to the front lobby. It was his last day, and he wouldn’t … Continue reading Interlude: Too Close, Part 1 →
I thought back to yesterday and what happened to Ana and Colette. Implanted commands might have unexpected side effects. Is Kals confident she can get to us if something goes wrong? We’re only upstairs, Daniel thought back at me. Kals says she’ll contact you via implant with the words. I felt him withdraw even though … Continue reading Distractions: Part 8 →
Cassie smirked, “Are you saying that you think the first Captain Commando was a quiet, subtle guy? Because that’s not how I remember him. I remember him as the kind of guy who’d go after the Nine and not give a damn what happened because they’re a danger. He’d be smart about it, but direct … Continue reading Distractions: Part 7 →
To the degree that they were a multi-team delegation, they weren’t from what I’d think of as the upper-tier teams. The Arizona Defenders had a reputation for being retirees from other teams. This wasn’t all true. Probably half of the team was younger people. This wasn’t all bad since the younger heroes would have competent … Continue reading Distractions: Part 6 →
I explained it all to her. Her response was somewhere between a grunt and a growl, followed by, “That’s insane! He’s got no right.” Taking a deep breath, she shifted back, her eyes becoming fully human and her claws disappearing. She pulled her phone out of her purse where it lay next to her yoga … Continue reading Distractions: Part 5 →
Kals shook her head, “Sometimes I think that all I am is a sad story for these people. You know, the orphaned daughter of the martyred mom who united the resistance… Let’s hear her speak and be inspired… I get it. I really do. People need a flag to wave. They need a cause. I’m … Continue reading Distractions: Part 4 →
Despite remembering her worst, I said, “You know, she might. If you want, I can bring it up. The thing is, she’s going to leave soon. I don’t know how much time she’ll have to teach you, but I think she’d be willing to teach you something. I think she wants to hang out with … Continue reading Distractions: Part 3 →
My implant handled the call and Kals and Katuk appeared in my vision, standing against a background of beige cubicles. No longer wearing the green spacesuit she’d been in earlier, Kals wore a black dress made of a material that added overtones of colors that slowly formed shapes that then turned into landscapes or animals. … Continue reading Distractions: Part 2 →
Over the team connection, Travis said, “That’s got to be the Cabal. Big? Strong? Messy? That’s their MO.” In her dark grey costume balanced on the top of a building downtown, Haley said, “At least it’s not that guy who burned everybody.” I felt Daniel’s queasiness at the memory of the burned bodies the man … Continue reading Distractions: Part 1 →
“Crap,” I muttered, realizing as I did it that everybody could hear me and not just Vaughn, Tara, and Daniel who were sitting at the table with me, but also everyone showing on the big screen. Up in the right corner of the screen, Travis said, “What happened?” I looked up toward him, noticing that … Continue reading Relative Uncertainty: Part 10 →
Daniel lowered his head, nodding, “I get it, but I felt like it wasn’t fair to hide that I knew you would be in more danger when I knew that it would benefit me.” Uncle Steve let out a breath, “I get it. I appreciate your honesty and your willingness to let me decide for … Continue reading Relative Uncertainty: Part 9 →
“Huh,” I considered that. “It seems as if whoever’s sending people after Uncle Steve might be using it to terrorize us? Because there’s no need to bother all the rest of you if they want Uncle Steve. They only need to go after my mom and dad—though I suppose going after everyone else’s might be … Continue reading Relative Uncertainty: Part 8 →
“That’s what we’ve been worrying about for the last few weeks. They really could be. They’ve had years to get into place. We don’t know where. We can’t trust our government contacts too far and even outside, any organization could have a silent observer from the Nine or the Dominators.” I stopped, unsure of how … Continue reading Relative Uncertainty: Part 7 →
I took the call even though my history with Sean wasn’t great. Aside from being a bully to me until it was clear to him that he’d be kicked out of the Stapledon program unless he stopped, he was Haley’s ex-boyfriend, the kind that she’d had to use her poison claw on to stop him … Continue reading Relative Uncertainty: Part 6 →
Vaughn frowned, “What about the other engineers? Should we warn them? They warned Steve. I know they’re not good people, but should we let all the other ones die? Maybe we have to go after the Nine’s people first?” I felt my jaw drop, “Yeah. I was just thinking about keeping Uncle Steve safe. We … Continue reading Relative Uncertainty: Part 5 →
Remembering back to when we’d been on Renewal Island and bugging Armory’s lab, I’d seen one of the True alongside a clone of Cassie’s father visiting to check on mechs Armory was building for the Nine. “I do,” I told him, watching his expression. “Tara is the daughter of people who defected from the True.” … Continue reading Relative Uncertainty: Part 4 →
Uncle Steve nodded, “They’re the biggest that I know of. I’m asking you for help because my father was the Rocket and I’ve suspected that you’re the current Rocket ever since the suit’s first reappearance.” “Huh,” I said, “that’s quite a guess if it’s true.” Uncle Steve smiled while Vaughn managed a surprisingly credible poker … Continue reading Relative Uncertainty: Part 3 →
I considered asking him if visiting my house would help him. In my “brilliant kid who’s starting his own engineering firm” identity, it made sense. Why would he come to visit me in the first place? I couldn’t help him. That would have led to questions that I didn’t want to answer over the phone, … Continue reading Relative Uncertainty: Part 2 →
I put my dishes into the dishwasher, letting the door shut with a click. Despite the 80s look, which included big silvery plastic buttons surrounded by fake wood grain, it still worked. It worked better than my parents’ dishwasher in fact. Theirs tended to leave bits of food if you didn’t rinse the dishes before … Continue reading Relative Uncertainty: Part 1 →
“I’ve known Magnus for a long time. He trusts me to handle the details he doesn’t have time for,” Colette said, her voice catching as she talked. I couldn’t help but suspect that even though she answered Kals’ questions, she was screaming inside. Kals sighed, “What kind of things do you do? I need to … Continue reading From Far Away: Part 11 →
What did I want to know? Everything? What she was about when she chose to turn Armory from a superhero into a purely profit-seeking weapons developer? How it happened that she had some kind of relationship with Bullet and why she did it? What did she know about Martin Magnus and what they’d been using … Continue reading From Far Away: Part 10 →
Kals laughed, “Oh, really… I can join you then? Do you think I’ll want to? That I’m desperate enough that I’ll sit around waiting for something interesting to happen in my life? You’re very impressed with yourself and whatever you’re doing. I think you need to tell me everything about it.” I didn’t need the … Continue reading From Far Away: Part 9 →
Kals opened her mouth and began to say, “I’d like th—“ but then she stopped. “You know what? I know I told you about techniques your buzzer doesn’t block and that you fixed them, but if she knows techniques that I don’t, I should probably take Katuk.” I nodded, “Yeah. She probably doesn’t have experience … Continue reading From Far Away: Part 8 →
Kals stopped and looked into the cell where Ana lay in bed, staring up at the ceiling. I didn’t know what she was thinking and then she spoke into my head via my implant. That’s your cousin? I’m sorry I couldn’t do more. I think she’s going to be back to normal unless there’s another … Continue reading From Far Away: Part 7 →
With a glance at her face, I realized that it wasn’t her bones. She’d been wearing glasses and the plastic frame broke. This wasn’t as good news as you’d expect. Blood ran down her cheek from the spot where the plastic dug into her skin. The glasses hung for a moment longer and then fell … Continue reading From Far Away: Part 6 →
Mindstryke grinned, “Everything I’ve heard about the Ascendancy is bad, so I can’t say I’m surprised. You’ll be the first person with the skills of a Dominator that I’ve worked with. The few times I’ve encountered them, they’ve been trying to kill me.” He nodded toward one of the hallways, “We’ve got them down this … Continue reading From Far Away: Part 5 →
The Defenders’ staff recommended a route for our approach that avoided air traffic from both O’Hare and Midway. Following their advice, I brought the jet in. Hal, an AI that specialized in predicting how best to win battles between fleets of starships, probably could have worked out a more direct route through Chicago’s many flight … Continue reading From Far Away: Part 4 →
In that moment, I realized that Kals wasn’t speaking whatever they spoke in the Human Ascendancy. She spoke English and her accent sounded like the one out of old movies—somewhere between the US and British. I could only guess that wherever her implant downloaded it from had updated its language files in the 1950s. I … Continue reading From Far Away: Part 3 →
Haley nodded, “Will it be a problem if I keep the weapons console active? Someone might be out here.” She wasn’t wrong. The first time we’d flown out to the gate it had been partly to take the jet into space and partly because we could make out without worrying about being interrupted. That did … Continue reading From Far Away: Part 2 →
It wasn’t much different from picking someone up from the airport, provided the airport orbited at Lagrange point 4 and you had to pick them up in the Heroes’ League’s “jet”—which only resembled a jet in its shape. You might see stars in the sky while you pick someone up from the airport, but you … Continue reading From Far Away: Part 1 →
From under him, he heard the sound of something large and heavy hitting the floor, probably the table. How much protection it would give, he had no idea. He could already hear the crackle of burning wood. It was up to him. He wasn’t sure how well he’d do against Spitz’ heat after he turned … Continue reading Probationers: Part 10 →
Vladislav knew he needed to talk quickly or talk with the force of undead charisma—not to Spitz, but to Morgan. Opening up to the energy of unlife, he tried to meet Morgan’s eyes, controlling the flow with nearly one thousand years of experience. Uncontrolled, it would leave him a mindless predator in time. Even as … Continue reading Probationers: Part 9 →
Agent Spitz stopped talking, “Do you two have something to say? We’re trying to decide the group’s next focus and as the most experienced members of the group, your input should be useful.” The Atoner gave a wide and innocent smile, “Doc and I were just agreeing that the Devil Coven might be too big … Continue reading Probationers: Part 8 →
Agent Spitz frowned and said, “Let’s get to work.” Standing behind the lectern, he began with, “As we discussed this morning, you did an excellent job assisting the Heroes’ League. Our people are checking the effects on the general public’s opinion of the team. Morgan? This is something that you should be caring about because … Continue reading Probationers: Part 7 →
“Thanks,” the Atoner’s voice faded for a moment, but then became louder. “Don’t worry about it. I can understand that you want to do something. This is just one of those times that you have to trust your teammates, okay?” “Understood. I’ll look forward to seeing you this evening,” Vladislav looked over at the other … Continue reading Probationers: Part 6 →
Vladislav looked down toward the rat’s face, speaking slowly, “No one needs to die this time. In fact, no one should die at all. It will attract attention to the project and that will cause problems.” The rat picked a bit of mystery meat out from between its teeth, chewed, and swallowed it, “Disappointing. What … Continue reading Probationers: Part 5 →
It didn’t take long to get to his laboratory. Though it wasn’t the equal of the laboratory in his castle, Vladislav had brought the essentials and collected substitutes for what couldn’t be moved. People always stared at it the first time they opened the door. Between the computers, partially assembled sets of powered armor, boxes … Continue reading Probationers: Part 4 →