Motherland

by Russ Linton

  Eric shrugs. "I won't pretend to know what it's like to have that kind of power but I know what it's like after a tough mission around here. People get amped up."

  I can't let that one go. "What do you mean?"

  "You know, adrenaline rushing, muscles twitching. Mostly it's an eerie quiet. But more than once I've seen Ember lock herself in cell four and go supernova. Probably the only place in the world that can withstand it. You know."

  I do. Crimson Mask seemed collected when he got back earlier today. In the past though, when he returned from a mission, it was comparable to living in a house with a loaded gun on the table and a crushing silence so thick, you knew the gunshot was the only way to shatter it.

  Another quake shudders through the building.

  "How do you know he can't get out?"

  "Ain't gonna happen." Destructo's mugshot stares from a new window, and Eric waves his mouse pointer over a chart running down the side. "We measured him at 36 kpsi. That box is lined entirely with ES-1 and can take six times the abuse. Cell four," he says, continuing the virtual tour. "That one's a ceramic-lined nickel alloy they use in jet engines rated to around 1600 degrees Fahrenheit."

  "And what are you going to do with him?"

  "Hmm?" Eric's stat-sharing trance is interrupted. "Oh, well, you said it—a time out."

  "And that works?"

  The response makes Eric cringe, and he squirms in his captain's chair. "Well, if there's a flaw in the system, it might be that." Watching my less-than-impressed expression, he rushes into more explanation, tripping over the words of what might have been a well-rehearsed reply before it had to be said out loud. "We can't exactly hold them forever. And we can't turn them over to the authorities, 'cause they don't have the facilities to contain them anymore, and, you know, all the mind-control, use them as weapons thing, and I mean, killing them off is pretty fucking grim. We prefer to not do that."

  "Prefer?"

  "Well, in the field, it happens sometimes. Not often, some. They resist, with force, and get that force projected back on them." He can tell I'm not buying it. "Spence, most all of them were processed through this facility after Killcreek. We treated them like family, got their hardware removed or deactivated and told them they could live their own lives if they stopped fucking with people. If they didn't use their powers to knock over banks, or in a fit of road rage." I try to interrupt, but he mashes the boatswain button to cut me off. "It's what your dad wants. What he thinks you would have wanted. If it isn't, talk to him." He returns to monitoring the screens.

  I know what I want. I want all this to be over, but Charlotte's way or the government's way weren't going to do anyone any good. They'd still be fighting, using these people to whatever advantage they could and crushing the little guys who got in their way.

  Another earthquake from the "low-tier" Augment. This one forces Eric to stabilize his second keyboard on the tray. Frustrated, Eric mutes the audio from the cell. Little difference that makes. A couple hallways and a room away and Destructo's making himself heard.

  "The team's about ready to move in. Do me a favor and go find Danger. I can't see him on any of the feeds." Eric stays focused on his digital window to the world. "Check outside."

  I'm not the base errand boy, but I gladly head for the exit. Fresh air sounds perfect right now. Besides, with all the memories about this place baked back into my skull, I've got an idea where our early warning system might be hanging out.

  PASSING THROUGH THE reinforced lobby doors, I've stepped into another world. Outside the air is crisp, and the vibrations confined to the building's foundation. As I told Eric, it was hard to believe this place existed before and even harder to believe they'd kept off the radar. If I hadn't had the shitty luck of being been born the son of an Augment, would I even care? I could've kept all this as close as a TV remote would allow. Sure, there's always the chance as a normal person you get involved in one Augment throw down or another, but it's not an everyday thing.

  I skirt the perimeter of the building on the way to a very particular corner where I sneaked into the facility nearly two years ago. I'd let Eric come along mainly because I felt guilty for derailing his life along with mine. Turns out I needed him, though I don't know if the price he's paying was worth it.

  Danger watches me come around the corner. He's standing at a battered door under a blasted-out security camera. All the new tech, and they managed to forget to fix this blind spot. Must be a theme at this rogue weapons holding facility where the inmates are suddenly in charge.

  He's got a cigarette between his fingers. Unlit, he considers it with an occasional squinty glare fired in my direction. "Mind if I crash your party?" I call out.

  He shrugs and rolls the cigarette between his fingers.

  "What's wrong? Ember gone, no lighter?"

  Danger flicks the fresh cigarette into the grass. He stuffs his hands in his pockets and kicks at the dirt. "Don't smoke."

  "Yeah? So why the cigarette?"

  "Don't need the nicotine." He stares at his fingertips and runs them together. "Get a fix holding the damn things." Almost like he just remembered it's there, he checks the bone-white roll of paper in the dirt and then to me. "You?"

  "No thanks," I say. "I've got my own ways of shortening my life span. Most of them involuntary."

  He jerks his head and huffs. "Then maybe you should start while you're still around."

  An image of me taking a drag off the cigarette then descending into a coughing fit worthy of a World War One trench fighter comes to mind. "I don't think it's my thing."

  "What's your thing, kid?" He asks, examining the empty sky.

  "Being a pain in the ass. Surprised your super senses didn't warn you about the impending sarcasm."

  He takes me in head to toe with a cold expression. "Don't think you rate on the danger scale, but you sure as hell got some interesting problems."

  "You can say that again."

  He doesn't. He continues to stare, and I'm beginning to feel a little uneasy. It's one of those alpha male sort of stares I remember from school hallways and those few neighborhoods we ended up where I blended in about as well as pigeon shit on asphalt. Whatever is going on, he hasn't made up his mind about me yet, and though I understood his frustration earlier, the sheer intensity which he carries speaks to an anxiety I've never been forced to endure.

  Maybe I can shift the blame over to Captain Pike. "Eric wanted you."

  "Shit." He breaks the stare and grinds the cigarette under his boot then stalks toward me. I stand my ground even as he comes to rest lazily with an arm planted on the wall right above my head. "Figured he'd send Hound. Was his damn cigarette anyway. Sniff it out." He inhales and his nostrils flare. I don't move a muscle. Trying to play it cool. He laughs. "You're okay, kid."

  I'm not at all sure what I did, but I'll take the compliment. Hell, I'll even let the kid comment slide. Yeah, definitely not pushing that one. I don't smile back, I just give a questionable tough guy nod.

  "What does Eric want? Ask me if they gonna be hurt? If they got any danger up in there?"

  "Yeah, I guess."

  A hollow chuckle. "Ain't no danger here. That's why I came. They never found me, you know, the government. Nobody sneaks up on good ol' Danger."

  "How'd you get here?"

  He frowns. "Because this was the only place without it. See what I'm saying?" I shake my head, not able to follow. He dips his chin and whirls toward the woods, his hands pointing in every direction. "That field, that cloak shit they keep goin' on about. I followed it like falling down a hole. Safer here than anywhere, because nobody knew this place even existed. And that called to me."

  I'm nodding now, and a certain understanding dawns. This means there are other ways to find Whispering Pines. Paths Charlotte's little tricks can't hide.

  He moves further away, and he waves his hands as he talks, shifting back and forth. "All my life I've been living on adrenaline, danger. Thought I'd take a break, but damned if
it ain't...ain't a drug, you know." He motions to the cigarette. "Goddamn drug."

  "You want, I can go back inside and tell them there isn't anything to worry about."

  He sucks his lip and his head bobs up and down. "Yeah, you tell them that."

  ...his head bobs up and down. "Yeah, you tell them that."

  Our eyes lock again. No competition this time. We're both trying to process what happened. It's almost as though the universe skipped a beat.

  The earth rumbles, swelling up through the foundation. Bricks crack along the mortar and I stagger backward watching a jagged line stair step toward the roof. Danger falls away beside me with a matching expression of sheer surprise.

  Ground unstable, Danger grabs me before I face-plant. Everything is shaking now. Pines rattle like cicadas. Cars shimmy in their spots in the parking lot. For that first instant, we're etched by the same shock and then for Danger, it carves deeper. Past flesh and bone and right into his core.

  "I...I..." He's grasping at the air, blind.

  "Come on," I shout. And it's me, the soft, squishy critter in the lead, dragging the Augment toward the front of the facility. Smoke billows out of the main doors.

  Eric's in there. Dammit, Eric is in there.

  Chapter 9

  THE WHISPERING PINES lobby floor is doing the wave, buckling and rippling under a submerged stress. Cracks have formed and hellfire bleeds through, muted between the cycles of an overhead emergency light. Could be Eric was way off on his calculations for Destructo, but the focal point doesn't seem to be the prison wing.

  "Spence!" Eric shouts over a hidden speaker barely audible over the crushing grind. An ocean, but it isn't full of water. It's gravel and busted concrete surging inside a raging furnace.

  "What?" I shout. My hand is still clamped onto Danger's bicep. The poor guy is tripping, hard.

  "GTFO!" Eric screams. "Lobby about to lockdown!"

  Right, the killbox.

  Hound and Polybius are on guard in the prisoner's wing, the hallway opposite from the command center. I can either ride this out with a few non-drooling Augments at my back or keep Eric company. I decide on the second choice and bringing Danger along. Hopefully, he'll snap out of it when we get there.

  We race down the residential hall toward the comcen right before a massive blast door seals the lobby. Maybe it'll keep whatever out, but the problem isn't the open hall, it's the floor. Concrete shatters in thin veins creeping underneath the threshold.

  Punching through the comcen doors, I drag Danger to a chair and skid over to Eric. "What the fuck is going on?"

  He ignores me, lost in the flicker of monitors and holographic displays, and fumbles with a headset, hands shaking. "Base to Charlie Mike, we have a situation here! Abort! Repeat, abort!"

  The team's live feeds are front and center. Each pixelates, jittering in monotone strips. None of the team is looking at Dad. On his own feed, Aurora dangles over his arm. Her form shifts through the spectrum and ghosts into nothingness and back again, an outline often only visible because what isn't there not what is.

  "Negative," comes Dad's broken reply. Static and small arms fire shred his open connection. "Aurora, out of commission...interference."

  "Is she messing with their feeds?" I ask.

  A terse shake and Eric covers his headset mike. "The comms are shielded against her." He pulls his hand away to talk to the team. "We're about to have a breach."

  "Prisoner?" Dad can't hide the concern. I'm not sure if he's more worried about Destructo or Charlotte.

  "Negative. Inbound hostiles. Subterranean."

  Just when I think Dad is about to respond, I see him rise off the ground. Aurora shifts from his focus, but her afterimage creates a murky mess with the static. The feed smears. He's whipping his head faster than the compromised frame rate can allow. I catch pieces of a harbor. Cargo ships and freighters butt up against a nondescript dock. Muzzle flares erupt from the roof and windows of a white-washed building in the background.

  Ember's screen becomes a sheet of flame. Her voice sounds small, as though another mike has picked it up. "We getting outta here, boss?"

  Dad's reply comes across garbled. "...can't locate...Ember...sweep north." Then he's back on with Eric. "Base, Sudak and Cosmonaut contacted. What's your status?"

  Our status? The foundation continues to shake, and I search the monitors while Eric doubles down on his keyboard work. The cracks in the lobby floor are white smears of heat. In the prisoner wing, Hound and Polybius rush toward the lobby and encounter the barrier. Destructo lies in his bunk, feet up, hands behind his head as though he's paid for the massage. Charlotte casts wildly about her cell, shouting mutely into the camera. Behind us, Danger could be a street mime trapped in one of those invisible boxes.

  "Eric, status," Dad calls.

  I crowd Eric's head space. "If a robot pops through the floor, I got this." It's a lie, though I do have a decent track record with those. "Otherwise, we're seriously screwed."

  "Spencer?"

  "Yeah."

  "Get your mom and get out of there. Eric, details on the threat."

  If this whole damn place weren't about to be swallowed by the earth, I'd tell Dad where he could put his bullshit. Charlotte's in her cell, where she belongs. The only people who need to bail are me and Eric.

  "Substructure seems to be working and funneling whatever it is toward the lobby," says Eric, completely zoned in on his work. "Our threat? I've got some ideas. What's going on there?"

  "I'm suspended," comes Dad's reply. "Can't fly...any traction. Cosmonaut shouldn't have this range."

  "Eric, we gotta get outta here,” I say.

  He holds up a finger for a one count but doesn't let up on his key mashing. Screens flash Augment dossiers and another ticks off a list of countermeasures for the lobby. He's got a group selected called "environmental countermeasures." He twists his head toward me, but his eyes stay forward. "We can handle this." Gun ports open in the lobby walls.

  I spin his captain's chair and point at Danger. "Whatever this is, he didn't see it coming." Another rough push and the chair lines up with the monitors again. "And they didn't see it either," I say, indicating the live feeds. "One Augment incapacitated, another who can't locate whoever is fucking with him and..." Ember's screen is nothing but a blossom of fire and interference. "I don't know, the apocalypse."

  His eyes lose focus, and he drums on the console. I think I've gotten through to him when we're both drawn to a new warning tone by a geek reflex trained to always pay heed to our system's status.

  The dossiers have stopped scrolling. Red borders around each screen flash in cadence with the warning light. Breach Imminent. At the center of the lobby, a pimple of flowing heat forms. The feed tracking Hound and Polybius flickers through new cameras as they race down a maze of passages.

  "Fuck me," breathes Eric. "Vulkan. And the ground penetrating radar shows he's got company."

  "Who?"

  "Hang on a second. It'll pop. The ident system should be able to build a profile from the imaging."

  An error blinks in the dossier window: File not Found. Former Volume Not Mounted. We both lean to peek around the console at my half-finished project.

  "Go! Go!" shouts Eric.

  I want to drag him from the seat, but we don't have time for a fight. Stumbling around the console, I dive toward the loose stack of drives and boards. "Which one is it?"

  "How should I know?"

  "Dammit, Eric, you still aren't labeling a fucking thing."

  "Woulda been nice to have a hardware tech to do that shit," he shouts over the merciless clacking of keys.

  "Well, I'm here now, goddammit!"

  All I've got is blind guesswork. I start reconnecting drives in the same order I pulled them. Eric continues his frantic communications with Dad. They've been ambushed just like us. Those bench-warmer Augments are handing them their asses, and the ones cooking their way through up the lobby floor Jules Verne style aren't from the fa
rm team.

  "Gah!" I've bent a connector pin. Dig out multitool, straighten. Another drive hits the rack. "Tell me when it's up!"

  A voice which resembles a receptionist echoing across the uncanny valley says, "Time Slip." I try my own mental database as I fumble with cables and come up empty.

  "The fuck..." Eric sounds shocked. "Forget it, I don't need it," he shouts. Another jolt rumbles through the building. "Charlie Mike, repeat, the threat here, Time Slip and Vulkan. Red. Star."

  On the Poké-scale, we're about to get a serious ass beating.

  Eric doesn't seem to need the data restored anymore. It's still getting done because if we're riding this out, I'd rather have everything up and running. One more connection and I'm at his side.

  Dad has yet to respond. I hear him give more broken commands to Ember. Her monitor shows a shield of pure flame between them and the building. She winces as molten bullet fragments manage to spray through.

  "Ember should bail. Dad, you're bulletproof," I say, crowding into Eric's headset. He pushes me away.

  "We're trying to disrupt LOS until we can locate Cosmonaut," hisses Eric, covering the mike.

  "Spencer, was that you?" Dad asks. "I told you, get out."

  Heat boils from my direct escape route. I'd be happy to bail. There's another door from here into the complex and at least one more exit. I'm not sure Eric realizes this isn't a game. Any minute we're going to be barbecued with enough DPS to erase us from the planet.

  "No, no, no, no." Eric gasps amid more key flailing.

  "What?"

  "The heat burned off the sedative. O2 cut-off ineffective. Won't even dampen the fucking magma. Gonna try liquid nitrogen."

  The small car-sized pimple of magma in the lobby is ready to burst. Yep. Time to follow orders. I hustle toward Danger. He hasn't moved since I dropped him off in the chair.

  "Come on, man, we gotta go!"

  "I didn't feel...nothin'." Danger sputters, eyes seeing right through me.

  He's dead weight and refuses to stand. "Let's have the breakdown later, okay?" I call over my shoulder to Eric who doesn't budge. "Are you both insane?"