Felix didn’t like trusting this man, but the alternative really wasn’t much better.
So… trust it is.
A heavy and sudden weight crashed down on Felix’s chest.
“Felix!” shouted that weight.
Staring wide eyed and half asleep at Andrea as she nuzzled his chest, Felix tried to catch up mentally.
It was the day after their return, the previous evening being spent mostly trying to figure out what exactly happened.
Dimitry had been calling Legion HQ non-stop trying to get a hold of anyone.
Apparently his contacts had been run down in the end, the money taken, and their lives ended.
Dimitry swore up and down he had no idea what was going to happen.
For Felix’s part, he believed that. Because Dimitry had to know Kit was going to send someone over from HR to sweep his mind at some point. And there’d be no hiding the truth from them.
“H-hey Andrea. When did you get in?” Felix asked, wrapping his arms around Andrea’s shoulders.
“Two minutes ago,” she said into his shoulder. “It’s about six am. Lily wanted to leave early. I didn’t get to make pancakes.”
“Lily did?” Felix asked.
“Yes. I did,” said a voice from beside his bed.
Looking up, he saw the pale beauty staring down at him with a small smile.
“I… missed you. And I didn’t like being away from everyone. I mean, really, the only two you left behind with us were Ioana and Felicia. They’re so into each other right now, it was like they were on a different planet,” Lily explained. “Better to leave them there by themselves.”
Andrea’s face was smashed into his chest, and she was taking deep huffing breaths.
“I couldn’t smell you. Your clothes lost their scent,” she said between massive gasping inhales.
“Andrea, you’re going to faint,” Felix said, pressing at her shoulder.
With a final deep breath, Andrea nodded her head. Then she started rubbing her face back and forth on his chest.
Then several Others popped out of Andrea. Three of them immediately leapt onto Felix, while another two set off for the door that led out of his room.
“Pancakes!” the ones that were leaving shouted
“Pancakes!” replied the ones that were clinging to Felix.
Lily laughed and shook her head.
“I’m going to unpack. While Andrea unloads all that pent up Wolf Tribe stuff on you. We should talk a bit after this. Make sure everyone is on the same page,” Lily said, waving her hand at him as she left.
Great.
Felix wasn’t sure being left alone with several Andreas was a good thing right now.
Then he realized that it could be a good thing.
If he wanted it to be.
Felix sat down in the middle of the large conference table. Tapping at the display in front of him, he pressed his thumb into the scanner. Two seconds later his desktop popped to life from his office. Before he could even settle in and do some busy work, everyone began filing in.
Andrea, Lily, Kit, Miu, and Victoria all took seats around him.
Glancing at the clock, he saw it was 8:59 am.
Dismissing the desktop with a finger motion he folded his hands into one another.
“I’m sure you’ve all read the report Miu and I made after we got back. I’d like to start with questions on that. Does anyone have any?” Felix asked, looking around from person to person.
“Do you think it was targeted?” Kit asked.
“The initial attack, no. Nor was Neutralizer,” Felix said.
“And the cell signal?” Kit asked, redirecting him.
“That one… that felt weird. It blocked all of us, but from what I can tell, no one else. That seems directed,” Felix admitted.
“I would agree,” Lily said, folding her arms across her chest. “As far as I can tell, and I’ve dug quite deeply, that was directed only at you five. That’s odd, to say the least.”
Felix frowned and placed his chin on the tops of his hands, resting his elbows on the desk.
“Alright. So, two out of those three things weren’t aimed at us. The third was, but in a passive way. There was no direct threat in it, other than that we couldn’t get in touch with anyone,” Felix murmured. “But no one would have known of the attack until it happened. That wasn’t exactly planned. It doesn’t make sense.”
Kit sighed and pressed a fingertip to her temple.
“I say let it lie for now. We’ll keep looking into it, but there isn’t much we can do with it. It’s more or less an unknown,” she said.
Felix nodded his head glumly. “Lily, please consider that your takeaway. Press your contacts, see who bought that service if you can.”
Lily nodded and scratched something into her notepad with her pen.
“Any other questions about the whole thing?” Felix asked. He wanted to make sure no one left anything on the table.
Felix noticed Kit was now staring at Miu, who was staring back at her.
Trying to let whatever was going on continue without calling attention to it, Felix turned to Victoria.
“I read your report. You more or less broke contact immediately and vanished. They weren’t interested in you,” Felix said.
“That’s right. Strange as it is, it simply ended. Though I do hope no one comes calling for us to pay for that rooftop,” Victoria said with a smirk.
“Hmph. Alright. If there’s nothing else we’ll continue on. The next item I have is that I wanted to talk about our progress. Figuring out why they were so interested in you, Kit, is definitely one of those topics,” Felix said. Hopefully she was done finding out whatever Miu wanted her to know.
Kit’s eyes broke from Miu and locked onto his.
“I… no. There is no progress at this time. I’ve been sitting there every day in the counselor’s office, talking to high schoolers day after day. None of them know anything more than we thought. In addition, the few times I’ve seen a hero across the street, they were clearly being shielded,” Kit said.
“In other words, Wraith really did a number on us with that suicide swan dive,” Felix said.
“Yes. Yes, he did. But… we still have options of course. Lily has been in contact with a number of hackers. Data thieves. The vast majority of them are willing to take a paid job with Legion. Apparently the benefits and protection are worth more than their own personal freedoms for most. Lily, it’s your project, would you like to take it from here?” Kit asked.
Sighing, Lily ran a hand through her dark hair, pulling it to one side.
“I don’t mind at all,” Lily said without a hint of unpleasantness.
The two of them had actually been playing nice for the last month or so. To the point that Felix wondered if they’d had a conversation on the side.
“I just wasn’t sure if I wanted to bring it up quite yet I suppose. Mostly because I’m not done. But… I do have a dozen or so… individuals… who are willing to sign on to Legion. They’re primarily interested because we can get them whatever equipment they want.” Lily paused as if considering. Then she smiled and shrugged her shoulders. “That and the fact that I told them that we can teach them whatever they want. Predictably, a number of them said kung fu.”
Felix closed his eyes at the predictable answer and felt a sigh trying to break free.
“Alright. I suppose that’s all good news. I assume you have a plan for them?” he asked.
“Fairly simple one. Smash through the server on the Hero side of things, and see what they have in their systems. It’s not exactly rocket science or a mastermind type of scheme, but I think it’ll do,” Lily said with a small vicious smile. “And I may tell them to leave a few things behind. Maybe download their files. You know. Corporate espionage?”
Felix opened his eyes and quirked a brow at her.
“Maybe I’m being a little vengeful,” Lily said placatingly.
Felix didn’t say anything but jus
t stared at her.
“Ok. Yes, I am. Do you not want me to do it then?” she asked, looking annoyed.
“Nope, just keeping you honest. Be sure to redirect all their web-traffic from their web page to something different. Like 4chan,” Felix said with an ugly smile.
“What is—you know what, I don’t want to know,” Lily said, sighing. She looked down to her paper and scratched something in quickly. “I’m sure they’ll know what it is.”
“Great. So… back to the point at hand though… we have nothing. Right?” Felix asked.
All around he got slow head nods.
“I suppose that takes care of that for now. Let me know if you make any headway later on.” Felix glanced down at his blank terminal.
Really wish I had brought an agenda or notes or… well, anything.
“The last thing I have is more about our actual business. Legion, that is. I know part of the whole reason we moved here was to try our hand at diversifying ourselves. I mean, all it would take is for Skipper to change employment regulations or something along those lines and we’d be well and truly fucked,” Felix said. It was a bit blunt for him, but that was the situation.
Kit and Lily exchanged a look. Lily pointed at herself with the pen, to which Kit nodded.
Lily pursed her lips and tapped her pen against the pad of paper.
“Finance is fine. Our growth is stagnant, but we were expecting that. There’s only so much business any pawnshop can do after all,” Lily said. “As far as our new venture is going… it’s going well? I’m not sure how to put it into a perspective we could measure.”
Felix grinned and held his hands apart in front of himself. “Try. I promise I won’t fault you for not having a power-point ready for me. Though, hey, in the future, power-points are great. Especially ones with graphs I can paper walls with. Bright colors and attached numbers. Love power-point decks.”
Lily looked nonplussed. With a slow blink she continued on as if he hadn’t spoken.
“We’ve got a number of high school children who are interested. Enough to easily fill several classrooms if we follow the original college plan. The negotiations we started before coming here are progressing well enough. Though now that we’re here, they seem rather… tight fisted… to say the least. They’re looking for any and every loophole to deny us the school campus,” Lily said.
Felix couldn’t help but nod.
It made sense. It was the exact same thing he’d do in their place.
Except he might have sent Wraith to kill them all.
Maybe I should send Miu instead? I mean… she wouldn’t mind, would she?
Casting his eyes to Miu, he found her staring at him unblinkingly.
Or… maybe not using the insane assassin is a better idea.
Quickly looking back to Lily he made a dismissive neutral hand motion at her.
“Alright, that’s close to what we were expecting. Anything else?” he asked.
Lily scratched a fingernail back and forth against the paper in front of her.
It raised Felix’s nerves. Something was on her mind.
“Not really. The accreditation is all done. We’ll be on par with everyone else.”
Uh-huh… so what is it that’s wrong?
“Lily,” Felix said, waiting for her to lift her eyes to meet his own. “What?”
Pressing her lips together into an angry line, she held up a hand and pointed at him.
“Don’t do that,” she said.
“Don’t do what?”
“That.”
“That what?” Felix asked, confused.
Lily growled and leaned back in her chair.
“Oh! Oh! I know!” Andrea said loudly, clapping her hands together.
“Andie, no—”
“She wants you to enroll her brother into the training school! That’s all!” Andrea said.
Huh?
“Is that it, Lily? You just want Luke to go to the training school?” Felix asked.
Lily was glaring at Andrea, who for all the world didn’t seem to notice.
Instead, she was spinning in her chair, still smiling at having solved the problem.
Realizing there was absolutely no point to her anger, Lily looked back to Felix.
“Yes. If… if we have him go through the school, and load him up with some work skills, he could probably live a normal life in Legion. He missed most of his education. It’ll be hard enough for him to catch up in a regular school. He’s technically in Legion, just… not really,” Lily said.
Alright, leave it at that, idiot. Her personal affairs don’t need to be the subject of a board meeting.
“Consider it done. I know we probably gave him some tutors, but can we get better ones? Worst case, I’ll see if I can put elementary education into a skill book for him.
“Put in the paperwork for all of it, I’ll sign it. Anything else though? It seems like everything is on the right path. Or at least, heading in the right direction,” Felix said.
Once again, he looked to each person around the table. Inviting them to add anything.
“Everyone is free to go then. You get,” Felix paused, looking at his watch, “forty-five minutes back in your day.”
Victoria, Kit, and Miu got up and immediately left together. He imagined they were going to go over the situation reports from yesterday some more.
Andrea and Lily took flanking positions on his left and right sides.
“Hang back for a second, Felix,” Lily said softly as Felix started to stand up.
Felix felt like this was going to be a problem, but he didn’t feel like arguing right now. Sitting back down heavily in his chair he immediately pulled up his workstation from the desk.
“Ok? What’s up?” he asked, quickly flipping through the windows on his screen. Pulling up the blueprints for the school they were purchasing he stopped.
They were both silent. Which was never a good sign.
Putting his attention on Andrea, she looked away rather than meet his eyes. Moving his focus to Lily, she nearly did the same thing.
“Uh… what’s the problem?” Felix asked, his paranoia ramping up several levels.
In front of him, there was a static hiss. The type you hear when you turn on a television set that’s not plugged into anything.
A small blue dot appeared in mid air, drawing everyone’s attention.
“What in the world…” Felix said, staring at it.
As if it had always been so, the blue dot blew apart into an oval of crackling energy and distortion.
Through that oval, that window, that dimensional gate, as what else could it be, Felix could see three people.
A man, a woman, and a Beastkin.
Each looked road stained but dressed more akin to what he saw in movies about apocalyptic scenarios.
They were standing at what looked like an old-fashioned control station from an old TV show. There was little else in the room save for other control stations and bones.
“What the…” Felix said, squinting to get a better view.
Andrea reacted first, pulling an SMG out from under her jacket and positioning it up against her shoulder. She neatly clicked the safety off and slipped her finger into the trigger guard.
“Andrea, wait!” Felix said, hoping he could stop this before it turned into a bloodbath.
A dirt stained and beautiful pale skinned Beastkin, she looked like a cat-tribe type to Felix, leapt on top of the control panel.
Andrea could only be considered domesticated in the face of this feral version.
The Beastkin had hot glowing red eyes. She arched her back and hissed at them, her eyes dilated to slits and clearly on the defensive.
Lily stood up and held out a hand, blazing red runes spreading out in every direction around Felix, Andrea, and Lily.
A woman who looked more the part of a beauty queen held out a staff as she stepped up next to the man in the portal. Bright green energy started to blow out from her, quickly filling
the room the three people were standing in and creeping through the portal.
The man moved something in front of him, and the portal winked out of existence.
Felix stared at where the portal had been, the hair on the back of his neck standing up straight. His skin was tingling.
His thoughts were dull and slowed.
Lily and Andrea seemed equally surprised and at a loss.
After the span of several breaths, Felix woke up from his stupor.
“Get me White and Felicia on the line, Andrea. At the same time, Lily, have someone find me Kit,” Felix said.
Opening up his desktop terminal again, he started plowing through all the files he had on super powers.
Portals, portals, portals. Who can make portals? Who were they? How did they do that? Can I do it? Can I make a machine? Can I give it to Eva?
What if I can. Can I use it as a weapon? What… what if that was another world? Can I branch not just out of the city of Skippercity, but the very planet?
Felix was lost in his thoughts. The possibilities were spinning endlessly out in front of him.
He had work to do.
Chapter 7 - Thinking with Portals -
Felix drummed his fingers along the edge of the terminal. He’d been sitting there unmoving since the strange portal popped open in front of them earlier.
“Felix?” Kit asked, coming into the conference room. Five Andreas twitched in unison at her entry, one in each corner, and one at Felix’s side.
“What’s wrong? Everyone is running around in a hurry,” Kit said, her brows knitting together.
“Hm? Oh… ah… someone opened a portal out of thin air. Right over there in fact,” he said, motioning to the exact spot. “Opened up like it was always there. Poof. Then vanished just as quickly. I want to see if I can’t get that for ourselves.”
Kit frowned at that, her eyes set on the area he’d indicated.
“Anyways. Have a seat. I think we should talk,” Felix said with a practiced smile. He indicated the seat directly across from himself at the table.
“No conversation has ever gone well that started that way,” Kit muttered. “And I should know. I’m in HR.”
“Ha… very funny,” Felix responded, still pointing to the chair. “Sit your booty down.”
Super Sales on Super Heroes: Book 2 Page 7