The Supervillainy Saga (Book 4): The Science of Supervillainy

by Phipps, C. T.

  I gave her a passionate kiss on the lips. “Perhaps we can find a way to take advantage of my appearance.”

  Marissa grinned alluringly. “What would your wife say?”

  I frowned at her reference to my fake marriage. If I had a wife, it was the woman in my dreams, not the person they’d married me to at the Society. “Probably ask if she could join in or ignore us completely. S is like that.”

  S and I had been assigned to live false identities as husband and wife in suburban Boston. Neither of us spent much time in our house and the marriage was mostly in name only. I say mostly because while we’d only slept together a few times, the very act of cohabitating as Letters was more intimacy than the vast majority of our kind ever achieved. If not for the fact that I had much stronger feelings for Marissa and wanted, someday, to find out if I had a family waiting for me, I might have pursued something with S.

  Marissa pulled away at my statement. “You’re such a romantic.”

  “You’re the one who brought her up.” I picked up the bathrobe I’d set out earlier on the bed and put it on. It was white, with the hotel’s name printed on the front lapel. “I’m surprised you’re not already on your way to Boston. Persephone indicated the issue was urgent.”

  “It is. Part of the reason why I wanted to show up was to share what I’ve already found out before you left.”

  “Oh?” I said, going to the kitchenette to make some coffee. I always brought my own bag of it during missions. It was illegally imported straight from Venezuela, grown on a plantation I’d once killed a drug lord on.

  “It has to do with the Carnevale.”

  I paused while lifting a scoop of ground coffee mix. “I see.”

  The Carnevale was one of the few rivals the International Refugee Society had in the world of high stakes international assassination-for-hire. After World War 2, Italy’s Operation: Gladio had gathered a bunch of mafioso, killers, fascists, and psychopaths and trained them in military techniques and espionage. After the fall of the Soviet Union, the Carnevale went global and became infamous for taking just about any job they were paid for—up to and including terrorism-for-hire.

  Just for the “right” side.

  “Maybe the Society is going to be dispatched to take those bastards down,” Marissa said, walking over to the bed and plopping herself down.

  “If so, it’s because someone hired us to do it.”

  “Yeah, the governments of the world.”

  I gave her a “Really, do you want to have this discussion?” look before starting a fresh pot. “What else do you know?”

  “Y and Z are dead.”

  I paused, letting that sink in. Despite how cool and detached I’d become over the past five and a half years, I was still a human being. The drugs and conditioning made it possible for me to kill without trauma, or at least to the point of crippling trauma, but they didn’t prevent me from making associations.

  Friendships.

  Y had been a friend of mine, as much as you could be with a man who had no more past than you. He had been a big burly black man with nine years of service to his name, as well as more compassion than any member of our little club had any right to possess.

  Z? Z had been a psychopath. But a damned entertaining one. Z had never wanted anything other than to continue serving the Society until she was dead and buried, which I suppose was a dream she’d managed to realize.

  Both had been good. Both had been careful.

  “Well, that’s not good,” I said, not really having words anymore for the kind of grief I wanted to display but could no longer.

  “Understatement of the year.”

  “Yes.”

  If the Carnevale was targeting our agents, then things were about to get nasty. They didn’t have access to our level of technology, but its members were strange—and this is coming from a man who once fought a cyborg who took fourteen shots to the chest and two to the face. The Carnevale’s agents were theatrical, which is my term for “bug-fuck crazy” with some near-magical ability to get the job done despite it. Also, just because they didn’t have our level of technology didn’t mean they didn’t have some nifty toys.

  “There’s something more,” Marissa said.

  “Oh, this just gets better and better.”

  “Delphi has summoned all of the Letters back to the Home Office.”

  I cursed. “That just makes it so much worse.”

  Strange Persephone hadn’t mentioned it. Then again, I sometimes wondered if she wouldn’t be happy for me to die in the field. More likely, though, this was a very recent development.

  “Worse than war with the Carnevale?” Marissa asked.

  “Delphi is a machine intelligence who monitors the entirety of the planet twenty-four seven. Snowden didn’t know the half of it when he talked about the NSA monitoring us. What scares her should scare us all. Eventually, she’s going to get sick of our crap and go Skynet.”

  Marissa grimaced. “Maybe she’s a good computer.”

  I arched my brow. “She’s whatever she was programmed to be and the people who programmed her are empty of anything resembling humanity.”

  Like me.

  “We’re the good guys, G.”

  “Tell that to Martha Stephens or Thomas Jones.” They’d both been innocents. The first two but far from the last. People I’d murdered because I wanted to live and regain who I was more than I valued their lives. For a man conditioned not to feel guilt, I still regularly saw them in my dreams. Almost as often as my wife and child, or the people I thought were my wife and child. Damn, this was a deep rabbit hole.

  Marissa wasn’t persuaded, though. “The International Refugee Society has to do favors for its sponsors. It’s not a good thing, but we save many more lives than we take by being there to do the dirty work the other agencies can’t or won’t.”

  I’d have argued with her, but it wasn’t her fault. It was just part of the conditioning. Marissa had gone from an anarchist out to put the screws to the Man to someone who believed an illegal organization of professional killers was desperately needed for world peace. Sometimes I wondered if her attraction to me was part of her brainwashing too, but I didn’t want to think about that. If I started thinking everyone’s motivations and thoughts were controllable, there was no telling where that rabbit hole would lead.

  “Is that all?” I said, suddenly feeling less like spending time with my lover.

  Marissa looked down. “No, there’s one more thing.”

  I poured her a cup of freshly brewed coffee, put two creams in it, and brought it to her. The spacious hotel suite suddenly felt smaller, and I began to feel uncomfortably hot under the thick robe. “What is it?”

  Marissa looked nervous. She took the cup and slowly sipped from it, peering up at me. “I’ve found some more . . . stuff about that thing you wanted me to look into.”

  That thing. The words made my heart skip a beat. “I see.”

  “You realize if you find out who you were, they’re going to kill you.” Marissa gave me a wholly unnecessary warning about the dangers.

  “Only if they find out.”

  Marissa put her cup on the table beside the bed and pulled out a Society cellphone with an information jack. “You’re lucky I think you’re more important than the rules.”

  I wasn’t about to tell her that it was because I’d seduced her with the intent of using her to find more information about my past. I’d done so with full knowledge I was putting her life at risk. They could, after all, just wipe my brain of the knowledge again. Marissa wouldn’t be so lucky. What I hadn’t expected was that my starvation for human affection would turn my manipulations into something real. At least, something I liked to think was real.

  “Thank you,” I said, removing the information jack and plugging it into my head. The phone had been wiped of all connection to the Society’s network, leaving it an untraceable means of communication.

  “It’s not much,” Marissa said, sighing. “
I’m restricted by having to use disposable computers and materials I can keep from everyone else in the Society.”

  “You hacked Delphi. You’re the Aztec Goddess of Computers.”

  “My name would be Marissaleetlolrofl.”

  I smirked.

  What popped up before my eyes was a collection of tax records related to Karma Corporation. A holographic white K in the middle of a green square hung above a list of names, dates, locations, and numbers. One of those names was highlighted: Marcus Thomas Gordon. An image appeared of a middle-aged man, slightly on the pudgy side, but looking like he might have once been a great deal more intimidating. He had a kindly face which I wish I could have said evoked an emotional response. Still, there were similarities in our features that made me think that, yes, this could be my father.

  “Were you able to find anything more about this man?” I asked.

  “No,” Marissa said. “It’s like he’s a ghost. All those files were deleted. They were just less backed up in a subdirectory of a subdirectory of a data-cloud.”

  Another flaw of modern technology. “I’m sure we could find out more on the ground. Unfortunately, that’s not possible.”

  “No.”

  I sucked in my breath and removed the jack from my head. “This is more than I’ve had in five years. It gives me hope. Thank you.”

  “Do you want me to continue probing?”

  “Do not unnecessarily endanger yourself.” I poured myself a cup of coffee, black, and drank it down quickly.

  “It’s a bit late for that.”

  “You’re right.” I walked back and sat down beside her before putting my hand to the side of her head. I whispered into her ear. “Keep working on it.” I wouldn’t allow Marissa to come to harm, but I couldn’t let her stop, either. This was too important.

  Marissa responded by giving me another kiss and pulling me down onto the bed.

  An Excerpt from

  Villains Rule by M. K. Gibson - On Sale Now

  Prologue

  (Look, I know prologues can be boring. But they are there for a reason. So just read it. And if it helps, imagine it being read in a fancy accent.)

  The warrior rode home.

  What was left of the Elder River village still smoldered. Almost a year to the day, smoke rose from the magically immolated land the warrior called home.

  Home.

  The warrior had been gone so long, the word “home” had nearly lost meaning. Through the trials he endured and the dangers he faced, the warrior had stayed focused.

  When his village and his family were slaughtered and burned by the half-fire giant General Anders, the war leader for the hordes of the Baron Grimskull, he was lost. He was destroyed inside. But the warrior had been taken in by his mentor, Zachariah Greywalker. It was in the home of the elves of the Whispering Woods where the warrior was taught to fight, taught to use his mind, and taught to live again. It was there where the warrior fell in love with the elf maiden Lady Alianna.

  The warrior promised his mentor and his beloved he would find the Baron Grimskull’s weakness and bring peace to the land. And to the horizon, he set off.

  Death the warrior courted, and death he delivered upon the enemies who barred his way. The Nameless Sea could not claim him. The Waste of Sand and Tears could not contain him. The bleak rock of the Grey Spire Mountains could not deter him.

  And finally, deep beneath the Peak of Inverness, the Bray Beast of D’hoom Dungeon fell to him. It was there in D’hoom Dungeon the warrior found the source of Grimskull’s power: Amulet of the Ember Soul. Armed with the amulet, the warrior could strip the baron of his power. With this, he could bring an end to Grimskull’s tyranny. With this he could usher in a new age of peace.

  The remnants of the Elder River village were in view. The sun set on the horizon. Blue and purple wove a tapestry of twilight across the valley sky. The warrior wanted nothing more than to return to the woods and to his lady love. But first, he had a promise to keep. A promise to himself.

  The warrior rode through the remnants of the village gates, charred from the attack. He slipped off his horse and closed his eyes and breathed in deeply the scent of his home. He felt right, true, and just.

  “Mother, Father, my friends . . . your deaths will be avenged. I wish I had been stronger then. I wish I could have saved you. But with this amulet, I will destroy Grimskull. And I will rebuild here. Your sacrifice will be the foundation of a stronger tomorrow. On this, I swear!”

  The warrior had left this place a fearful boy. Now, the boy was a man, and the man would defeat any enemy that stood before him.

  “By the gods above and below, I dare any to stand between me and my sacred vow,” the warrior growled.

  From the shadows behind the warrior stepped a rather large man dressed in all black tactical gear with night-vision goggles. The man in black cracked the warrior over the head with a rubberized metal baton, dropping him into the dirt.

  Nudging the warrior on the ground with the steel toe of his combat boot, the man in black judged the warrior unconscious. The man in black took the pouch holding the Amulet of the Ember Soul from the warrior’s belt. Opening the bag to inspect that the Amulet of the Ember Soul was intact, the man in black nodded with satisfaction.

  The man in black leaped up on the warrior’s horse and steered the horse away, leaving the village. With a backwards glance at the fallen warrior, the man in black muttered in dismissive, eye-rolling disgust:

  “Heroes are so fucking stupid.”

  Prologue pt. 2 - Electric Boogaloo

  In a pocket dimension, between the real world and the fantasy realms, and slightly to the right of the world where your left socks go missing, existed the executive office of The Blackwell Corporation, Evil Consulting Agency. The ultra-modern building sat atop a lone barren mountain, seemingly floating in a void.

  The waiting area inside the lobby of Blackwell Inc. contrasted the building’s exterior. The retro 1970s décor was lit by harsh flickering fluorescent lighting. The rectangular off-white ceiling tiles were intermittently stained the color of weak tea. The area resembled the airport lounge of days gone by, complete with rows of piss-yellow, hard plastic chairs attached to scratched chrome frames with nary an armrest to be found.

  Muzak versions of fantasy realms madrigals droned painfully from the tinny, crackling speakers. The waiting room walls were floor-to-ceiling glass windows that looked off into the nothingness of the pocket dimension. The view gave the lobby a perpetual nighttime look and radiated cold.

  But mostly, the lobby stank. It stank of many things: stale cigarette butts in full ashtrays, burnt coffee in the antique percolator, and the stale popcorn of a 1980s K-Mart.

  The waiting room also stank from the presence of the eternal rotting corpse of the Dread Zombie Lich Lord Morakesh and his nine mummy high priests.

  Just ask Sophia.

  Sophia Rose DeVrille, Blackwell Corporation’s one and only receptionist, sat in her chair behind a fuck-all awesomely ornate cherry and mahogany desk. She typed away at her keyboard while sitting in her ridiculously expensive chair. Sophia felt that her lower lumbar was not only being supported, it was practically being made love to.

  Sophia wasn’t really typing any kind of letter or email. She was just choosing to ignore the increasingly impatient Lord Morakesh, despite the stink. The Dread Lord’s nine high priests sat in the lobby reading out-of-date magazines like Better Homes & Gardens, various parenting magazines, and Highlights. Lord Morakesh stood in front of Sophia’s desk with his arms crossed, tapping his undead foot impatiently. Little necrotic bits of the Dread Lord were falling into piles despite his bandages and ceremonial armor.

  It was quite disgusting.

  Lord Morakesh continued standing in angry silence while the clock on the wall ticked.

  Tick.

  Tick.

  Tick.

  Tick.

  “Excuse me, but I have an appointment!” Lord Morakesh belted out in exasperatio
n.

  “No. You don’t,” Sophia mumbled without looking up, continuing her fake typing.

  “Well, no. But do you know who I am?”

  “Yes.”

  “Yes? And?”

  “And I do not care, sir.”

  “I am the Dread Lord Morakesh!”

  “And that,” Sophia gestured absently, “is the Infamous Alpha Werewolf, Grey Fang, of the Dessemark Bloodpack.”

  Grey Fang inclined his head slightly in a sign of acknowledgment, shifted his Boy’s Life magazine, crossed his legs, and began to lick-clean his crotch. Thoroughly.

  “Over there,” Sophia continued, “is The Torment. Non-Corporeal Manifestation of Abstract Evil. Master of the Never Realm’s Sphere of Pain and Suffering.”

  The Torment floated above his chair in a seething cloud of smoke, fire, and pain. There was the faintest outline of a man within the billowing despair. While not having an apparent face or mouth, The Torment seemed to greatly enjoy the Blackwell complimentary cookies and juice box. Drunk, of course, with a crazy straw.

  “And over there is—” Sophia began again in the same bored tone, but The Dread Lord Morakesh cut her off.

  “Fine, fine. I get the point. When will he be free to see me then?”

  Sophia took a deep breath and sighed, preparing the canned statement: “The Blackwell Corporation, Evil Consulting Agency, greatly appreciates all its current and future clients. We endeavor to expand our evil family. Know that you are a valued client, and your needs are our needs.”

  Morakesh stood there baffled, then blinked and shifted in his bandages.

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means sit the fuck down and Mr. Blackwell will see you when he sees you. This dimension’s passage of time does not reflect your own. You will not be missed from your realm. Please enjoy our refreshments.”

  It was obvious from her “that’s final” tone that the conversation was over. The Dread Lord Morakesh sat down next to his high priests and began idly flipping through an Entertainment Weekly from 2001, featuring Lord of the Rings. The Dread Lord Morakesh found this “Sauron” chap to be quite intriguing.