Blackjack Messiah

by Ben Bequer

  I sat back, gesturing for the doc and his boy to continue.

  "And before you say it," I said. "I don't see Primal anywhere. By the time he gets down here, this whole fucking rig will be falling out of the sky. You, and shit-for-brains outside, and every other asshole that gets in my way." I punched my open hand, making a loud splatting sound that made the three of them jump.

  My eyes flashed wide, crazy. That was how villains operated, intimidation and fear, and even though I knew that she had all the power - I didn't want my family hurt - I had to make them believe they were going to die. It was the only way I was going to make it out of this, spread fear, so when the fight came, then the cowards would run, thinning the herd. Should things get dire, Whisper had to be sure my first intention would be getting my hands on her. I was going on pure reputation now, and everyone knew what I could do.

  "You're as crazy as they say," she said, shaking her head.

  "Give a man nothing to lose and you might not like what you get," I said. "But that aside, how're things going? How's everyone doing today?"

  My sudden ebullience thickened the mood, Doctor Snyder and Leverage were halfway to the door. The leads felt hot against my chest, and I wondered with glee what would happen if the machine overloaded. I could probably walk out of the room at that point. "Listen, Whisper...what's your real name anyway?” I said.

  "Fuck you, that's my name," she said.

  "Okay, Whisper it is. You see, you said something earlier that had me thinking - that you're in this mess only for the money. How much? Maybe we can come to some sort of arrangement."

  "You're kidding, right?"

  "Not at all," I said. "See, if you're not a believer here, then maybe I can buy your services. And don't say that you'd never betray someone for money. That's a bunch of bullshit and you know it. It's not like you're selling out, cause...you're already selling out."

  She was livid, one hand drifting to the knife hilt at her belt. Her posture was rigid, narrowed eyes sliding over me in disgust. The phone was in her other hand, and I thought she might do it. Time to play it cool.

  "What are they paying you for this, five million?"

  From the micro-expressions, the pursing of her lips, the slight dip of her eyebrows, it was clear that I was way off. Either a lot more or a lot less. "Ten?" I guessed high, knowing that if I got closer, her face would show less disgust, more if I was farther and she was offered less.

  The eyebrows dipped further, lips tightened.

  Less.

  "You're kidding me," I said. "They're paying you less? What, three?" Nope, less. "Oh, my God! Please tell me you're not doing this for less than three million. Holy shit, you are. A million?" That seemed right. "No way! I'll pay you ten. Ten million, right now, and ten million when we get out of here. Hell - I'll give you double that. Forty million. Just teleport us out of here."

  I had it, it was about all I had, but I had it. Then again, I wasn't honor-bound to pay her a damned thing once we got out of here, was I? Villain's code is fuck you. She shook her head, unable to process, unable to respond. Leverage watched the exchange with interest, while Snyder edged closer to the door. Wily old bastard was about to call the cavalry.

  Angry tears welled at the edges of her eyes. Her bottom lip curled up and clenched. "You're a real motherfucker, you know? The last thing you’re going to see before you die is me blowing up your family. Hurry the fuck up," she told the others, storming out.

  "Same goes for you two," I told Snyder and Leverage. "Wanna be rich?"

  Leverage turned from me, despair straining his expression, but Snyder went back to the cart, readying more equipment. "Bluster and bravado might have gotten you far," he said, talking to me for the first time. "But this is the end for you. And thank God for that."

  I wanted to break his neck. That was my first instinct, but I knew that would escalate things in a way I didn't want. Intimidating Whisper was a gamble. Despite her dramatics, she didn’t strike me as a kid killer, just a person doing a job. Killing the doctor would piss a lot of people off, and prompt someone higher up the food chain to escalate things in a way I would regret.

  But as they started covering me with probes, I heard footsteps outside. The door was open, and I could see Doctor Destroy look towards the footsteps, then fall to his knees for the newcomer. Even Primal didn't engender that kind of obeisance from his followers. Swallowed in shadows and glare, I couldn’t make out much detail, but I could tell it was a tall, powerful man. I caught the hem of a long white robe with a hood. He laid a hand on Destroy’s forehead and I heard whispered words rumbled in a deep voice. Snyder and Leverage both bowed as he entered the room and threw off his hood.

  It was Father Mike.

  He glowed almost as brightly as I had at the fair. It filled the dim room with light. Snyder and Leverage had been terrified to be in the same room as me a few minutes ago, and I was nowhere close to this, but for Mike, they knelt prostate. I could understand why. The crippled, feeble man I’d met outside Graydon Chase’s building had been replaced by a paragon. He was about as far away from the healthy, middle-aged man in the picture I’d seen online as he was from the wheelchair. Obviously superpowered, his long white hair seemed to shine and his beard was trimmed and fashionable. Blue eyes stared down at me with vitality. It didn't take a genius to see where the stuff they were taking out of me was going.

  He held out a hand out to me as if he were the Pope. I wanted to grab that shit and twist it until it broke. He thought he was a god, and I wanted to test that to the fullest. It was smarter to behave - if only at first. I took his hand and shook it. He was strong, and his big hands wrapped around mine without much difficulty. When done, he spun slowly, searching for a place to sit and settled on the bed across from me.

  "Hello," he said.

  "Sup."

  "I am Father Mike," he said. "It's nice to finally be able to talk to you."

  "I didn't kill your family," I said, going straight for the quick. "I was trying to save a bunch of people from a homicidal maniac called Brutal. I didn't have much of a -"

  He lifted his right hand with such gentleness that it took me a second to register what he was trying to do. "It's fine," he said. "God forgives you, my son."

  I wanted to ask "for what,” but kept quiet. We were playing a game, I’d given up the advantage by being hasty. Neither Snyder nor Leverage had moved, and Mike seemed to forget they were in the room.

  "I wanted to come here, to meet you. To offer an alternative to all of this," he said, gesturing at the probes and leads.

  "I'm listening," I said.

  "Join us," he said. "Join our cause. Lead us. Become a teacher."

  There have been few times in my life where I've been left spellbound, overwhelmed beyond my ability to speak. This was one of them. I wasn't expecting this. "For God?"

  "Aren't you a believer?"

  I don't know why, but when asked about my beliefs, I couldn't look at him in the face. "Of course."

  "Weren't you raised Catholic?"

  I nodded.

  "Your mother died when you were young, but I sense you still have memories of her, don't you?"

  I shook my head. I couldn't remember her at all. I was too young when she passed. All of my memories of her were manufactured from pictures and Jason’s recollections. There was the picture of her and I dressed like matching clowns with Jason in the background mid-sword strike as Zorro. She had made the costumes by hand and they weren’t great. According to Jason, a moment after the picture was taken, he jabbed me with the pointy end of his wood and aluminum foil sword, making me cry and getting himself punished in the process. It was from the last Halloween before she died. Dad had taken the picture. I count the story as one of my dearest memories, but it was all from the retelling. I didn't recall the moment.

  "Clowns," he said, smiling. "She made the costume for you, didn't she?"

  I fought the urge to punch him right there, and he could tell. His eyes flared, similar to Dixie
when she used her power, but instead of purple or green, it was pure white light. The room grew brighter, Snyder and Leverage both cringing before it. Whisper and Doctor Destroy had come into the room, but knelt around Father Mike, bathing in his light.

  "It's okay, Dale. I'm not reading your mind. You're giving this to me. You're sharing with all of us."

  I looked around and saw everyone watching me. Whisper’s eyes were wet around her mask, her head low. She was seeing this as clearly as I did in my mind's eye, they all did. What happened next, I didn't expect; I was ashamed. I didn't want them privy to memories I could barely form that shaped me as a person. But Father Mike wasn't doing this to hurt me, or for revenge. He was showing me who I was, letting the memory play out in every detail as it had happened twenty-five years before.

  Jason stabbed me. It barely touched me, and I knew he was only playing, but I started screaming and crying as if he had killed me. Dad let go of the camera looped around his neck, and dashed forward, tearing the sword out of Jason's hand and breaking it in two. He chastised my brother, but never touched him, then dropped the sword shards on the floor and went to me. Jason was standing almost at attention, like a Marine, but when my father turned away, his eyes went to the sword. He inched towards it, kneeling beside it.

  And wept.

  He looked up at me and I was smiling mischievously. My mother and father were comforting me, but she saw the look and her expression turned sour. "You can't do that, my love. You have to take care of your brother. When your father and I are gone, he's all you'll have left."

  Dad realized what had happened and flushed in shame. He went to Jason, apologizing, but mother waved him off, setting me on the ground, and kneeling in front of us. "Come here, Jason," she said, drawing him in with a gesture. "Apologize to your brother, Dale."

  "I'm sorry," I said.

  "Now Jason, apologize to Dale for stabbing him," she said, her smile radiant.

  "I was only playing," he said.

  "I know," she said. "But it hurt him, even if he was exaggerating. Say you're sorry."

  "I'm sorry."

  "Good.” She took both of our faces into her hands. "Look at each other, my loves."

  We turned reluctantly. Dad was standing over us, attempting to repair Jason's toy.

  "Never forget that you have each other," she said.

  "Now shake hands and make up," Dad said, shaking his head in frustration. He could repair the human body and cure almost any ailment, but putting together two fractured pieces of wood was beyond his skill.

  Jason stuck his hand out, and I started crying. Then my big brother reached out, took my hand into his and forced the shake. "It's okay," he said. "You're all little and stupid." I laughed through the tears. "Now fix my sword before dad hurts himself."

  My last memory was reaching over to dad, taking the aluminum wrapped-wood into my hands, my mind was already on how I was going to repair it. And in the blink of an eye, I was back, laying in bed, a prisoner. Father Mike’s glow receded, his eyes dimmed to their normal blue. I was weeping. Whisper was weeping. Leverage was weeping. Even Doctor Destroy grunted against the emotions.

  "How?" I said.

  "You did that. Thank you for sharing with us. I'm sorry to have interrupted, Doctor," he said to Snyder who still knelt, dumbfounded as the rest. "It was nice to finally meet you, Dale."

  "Y-yeah. You too."

  My voice was croaky, my hands were shaking. What the hell had he done to me? I don't cry easy, but I couldn't stop. The tears just kept coming. "I swear, this is an anomaly," I said, trying for a joke, but I couldn't stop.

  It took me a couple of minutes to compose myself, and the only consolation was that Whisper had the same trouble. Leverage’s actual name was Brad, and the poor guy did most of the work. A few minutes after Father Mike left, he attached even more probes and leads and sensors to me. I felt like a cyborg and every stray movement resulted in some cord or line tugging. The tray transformed into a rolling chair and Brad asked me to take a seat. Once seated, they attached all the gear to a computer and generator at the base of the chair and rolled me out of the room.

  Whisper led us as Doctor Destroy and Snyder followed, while Brad pushed the chair. I heard the whir of a small motor as the chair provided a little of its own locomotion. We took the elevators to the same floor as the hangar deck, and I thought they might toss me out the bay doors. I whistled the whole way to the elevator until Destroy lost it, "Keep doing that and you're going to lose some teeth."

  "Don't like Country music?" I said.

  "Just shut the fuck up."

  I looked back at Brad, "Some people just hate. What can you do?"

  We skipped the hangar and went down a long hallway that led to the bridge. Destroy swung the heavy iron door open revealing a crew, the only flunkies I had seen, packed alongside even more villains. It was crowded, and there was no ramp, so Destroy picked the whole chair up and set it inside the bridge. Blitzkrieg sat in the captain’s chair, barking orders at the crew, flanked by Primal and Father Mike. Flamestrike was there as well. None of them acknowledged our entrance until Doctor Destroy closed the door behind him

  Among all the people who looked out of place on the bridge was a row of military types, ten of them, all men, standing guard toward the rear of the bridge. They had high and tights, their shape, and size almost perfectly uniform; about six feet two and roughly two hundred pounds. Their stance was rigid enough that one could confuse them with some very robust cardboard cutouts. One of them had blue glowing eyes and another had a yellow anima banner exuding from his body like flames. They were standing in formation, ready for me as soon as I got there. They wore exact replicas of the suit Superdynamic made for me the previous year, dyed black instead of his preferred gray.

  The crew wore flight suits, one of them, sporting more regalia was giving orders. This bunch seemed to be normal humans, though that could be deceptive, when compared to the line of Marine dudes they looked downright mundane. They were also more varied in ethnicity and gender.

  Interesting that in Primal's Utopia there were still those that worked and those that benefited from their labor. What a fucking hypocrite. He was up there, looking out of the viewscreen like the hero in a movie, indifferent to the techs knee-deep in wires, sweating over a broken panel. One of those guys was black, the other had a dark tinge to his skin and black hair - my first instinct was that the guy was Arabic, but that was an uneducated guess.

  Through the big glass screen was a sky full of clouds and no sign of the ground. There was no impression of forward motion other than the distant whine of the engines. It was interesting to note that the army guys didn't part for Whisper either, they stood in a ring around us. Primal finally took notice of us and finished his conversation with Father Mike. He strolled over, leaving Father Mike staring out at the horizon. As he came over, the Marine guys parted for him.

  "I have to admit," he said, "none of us expected you to make it through the procedure, did we, Doctor Snyder?"

  "The effects of the Omega-Rays on his physiology are as yet undetermined. We're sorting through the data now."

  So the machine was designed to kill me? They had somehow modified a standard Superdynamic heal pod to harvest, what were they calling it? Omega-Rays? And as an ancillary benefit, the process would kill the participant. Interesting.

  "I trust you'll find a solution to the problem, Doctor Snyder," Primal said with a curt nod. "I hope he's been a model prisoner, my dear?" he asked Whisper. She stared out a window, startling when he spoke to her. "Everything alright?"

  "Yes, I'm sorry. He's been fine. If he messes around too much we'll pop one of his family."

  I couldn't help but notice the lack of conviction in her voice. Primal’s eye narrowed dangerously as he turned to me, "I know you're curious. Well, there's no grand explanation that's going fill in the gaps - no monologues."

  "What if I want to join you?" I said.

  He glanced back at Father Mike and smiled, "
You think I'd believe you? Besides, you're too valuable."

  "Why drain me altogether when you can milk me little by little?"

  "Gross," Whisper said.

  Primal cocked his head forward, "There's always more supers. Isn't that right, Doctor Snyder?"

  Snyder nodded, his expression neutral, but I could see the murder in his eyes. The guy took pride in his work, but I’d been around enough people who like to kill to recognize a sociopath when I saw one. The guy really wanted to kill me, and it seemed as many other supers as he could get his hands on. My stomach churned as I thought about them plugging Nina or Terry into that thing.

  "I guess we could at least show you the fruits of your...labors? That's the wrong word...well, what we've been doing with your power. As you can already tell, Doctor Snyder here has taken his incredible, first-hand knowledge of all this marvelous technology and created a device that allows us to extract...the essence, the substance that makes you super, and transfer it to someone else."

  "Nice," I said. "How much for a top off?

  "In your scenario, Blackjack, you're the dinosaur in the earth," he said. "In fact, the first recipients of the refined Omega-Rays are these gentlemen.

  I turned to the doctor. "Omega-Rays, huh? Did you run out of cheesy names?"

  He pursed his lips in displeasure as if speaking with me was below him. His eyes flitted to me quickly, then away, staring over my head at Primal. His face became stony as if gathering his resolve. I thought he was going to speak, but the muscle along his jaw clenched and I saw hate in his eyes.

  "What's the wavelength of these rays? Large or small?" I asked him.

  Primal snapped his fingers. "Over here, Blackjack."

  "Oh, sorry."

  "Interrupt me again and you will be," he said. "In any case, these gentlemen," Primal gestured to the Marine guys, "are The Chosen. Normal human recruits who will act as the vanguard of our operation."

  "Ten guys?" I said. "Epic flexes his pecs and he drops half of them like a bad habit." He smiled, but I was starting to recognize that it was his way to cover displeasure.