“Mom’s upstairs,” she says in a half-whisper. “The doctor gave her some pills to help her sleep.”
We follow Missy to the downstairs bathroom. We crowd in the doorway as she places a fresh square of gauze over her forehead and secures it with white medical tape. The old pad sits on the edge of the sink, broken lines of dark red stretching across it in a mirror image of her stitches.
“Doctor said I have some broken ribs, too,” Missy says as she tends to her bandage, “but no internal bleeding or anything like that, so, you know. Yay.”
“How’s your dad?” Stuart says.
Missy pauses and draws in a calming breath before speaking. Her voice quivers nevertheless, and her first words chill me to the bone.
“Joy slashed his throat. He bled so much. I thought he...I thought he was going to die in my arms.” Missy looks at her trembling hands, which, I now notice, are tinted with a disturbing pinkish hue. “The doctors weren’t sure he’d survive the night. They said if he made it to morning, he should pull through...”
I lay a hand on her shoulder, which is like granite under my fingers. The girl’s wired to explode.
“Missy, what did Joy want?” I say gently. “Was she looking for you?”
“No. She didn’t know who I was. I mean, until I kicked her in the face,” Missy says. “She wanted that hard drive Daddy asked me to bring him.”
“Hard drive?” Matt says. I fill him in, not that there’s much to fill him in on.
“Do you have any idea what was on it?” I ask. Missy shakes her head, leaving countless questions hanging unanswered, all of them centered on Missy’s father and that hard drive.
I think we might have to pay Dr. Hamill a visit.
An official visit.
EIGHTEEN
Buzzkill Joy gets off the bus and looks around, looking for a specific street sign. It was dark the last time she stood on this street; everything somehow looks very different in the daytime. She picks a direction at random, wanders a block, finds the sign, and a strange impulse kicks in. Three blocks down, past a coffee shop, across an intersection, one more block, and there it is: Jean’s Café — closed, permanently, newspapers covering all the glass, a “for sale” sign in the door. The impulse draws her around the corner, down an alley, and to a back door that, in the daytime, feels extremely exposed.
Joy slips into the building. It never occurs to her to check whether the door is locked; she somehow knows it isn’t.
She also knew she had to call the number preset in her phone, the one with that BS five-five-five exchange phone numbers in movies always use, as soon as she acquired the hard drive — though damned if she could say why she had to call it. The man who answered told her to return to our original meeting place, and bring the hard drive, gave her a time, and hung up without further instructions.
“I’m here,” she announces upon entering the restaurant’s former dining area. “Now tell me who you are and what the hell is going on before I open you up.”
John Nemo sighs. “That’s the problem with my gift. Having to repeatedly introduce myself to the same people? It becomes tedious.” He peers over the top of his sunglasses and tsks at the fresh scars, red and wet and angry, crossing Joy’s face. “Those are some vicious-looking wounds. You encountered some interference, then?”
Joy responds with stony silence.
“Very well. I have no problem dispensing with the chit-chat. My name is John Nemo. I represent an organization that, rather spontaneously, contracted with you to recover information pertaining to the origins of your own distinct abilities.”
“Yeah, right,” Joy says, Nemo’s speech jostling loose a cloudy memory or two, “and you said you’d give me a job if I came through.”
“One step at a time, please. Do you have the hard drive?” Joy reaches into her jacket and produces the drive but, for the moment, refrains from handing it over. “Ah, Dr. Baron did have it.”
“No, he didn’t,” Joy says. “Someone hired the doc to keep tabs on me. He didn’t know jack, but he knew who did.”
John Nemo waits patiently for the explanation.
“Some professor at Boston U. had it. And I learned something else real interesting: the professor’s daughter? Turns out she’s the ninja chick from that junior Protectorate group. I have her to thank for these,” Joy says, gesturing at her scars.
“Is she now?” Nemo says, his attention thoroughly captured. “Hm. Fascinating. I assume you dispensed with her? And her father?”
“Daddy’s dead, that’s for damn sure.”
“I see.”
“Don’t worry, I made sure he gave me the password for this thing first. Wrote it on the case for you,” Joy says, handing over the drive. Nemo flips it over and reads the numbers scrawled on the back in a shaky, uneducated hand.
“Thank you.”
“You can thank me by making good on our deal.”
Nemo gives Joy a sympathetic wince. “I’m afraid it’s not quite that simple, Ms. Morana.”
“The hell it is,” Joy says, grasping Nemo by the throat. “I did your job, I got your stupid hard drive thing, now bring me in.”
“I repeat, Ms. Morana,” Nemo says with a weary sigh, “it’s not that simple. My superiors need time to assess your performance. For what it’s worth, my report will be mostly favorable...”
“Mostly?”
“There is the matter of your body count.”
“You got a problem with me dropping people?”
“We have a problem with our operatives ‘dropping people,’ as you put it, in a way that leads back to our organization. We also have a problem with our operatives leaving people alive unnecessarily, which can also lead back to us. We need to determine whether your decisions were sound, and whether they compromised us in any way.”
“You said you’d bring me in, so bring me in.” She tightens her grip, a threat that John Nemo ignores with impossible aplomb.
“Ms. Morana. You should know that my employers value my unique gift quite highly. I dare say I am perhaps the only person within the organization who is truly irreplaceable. While I have no great desire to die, I do take comfort in knowing that, were you to kill me, my employers would exhaust considerable resources to hunt you down. Believe me when I say: you do not want to ever find yourself in that position.”
He says this as casually as he might discuss the weather, without fear, without a trace of bravado.
Joy releases her grip.
“Return to your motel room, Ms. Morana, and wait for my call,” John Nemo says, adjusting his necktie. “You will hear from me sooner rather than later, I promise you. Forty-eight hours at the most. Is that acceptable?”
“Does it matter?”
John Nemo smiles. “No,” he says before departing.
Joy sits at the counter, drumming a mad tattoo on the countertop with her clawed fingers, mentally spitting every curse she knows after Nemo — and she knows a great many curses. What a surprise: Someone makes a fancy sales pitch, says he wants to help her, acts like he’s a friend, then when it comes time to make good on all the promises, he screws her. They’re all the same: every teacher, all the counselors and therapists, the low-rent public defender who got saddled with her case...and someone else...
John Nemo’s name and face slip away from her, just like that, but the sting of his betrayal remains, a lump of hot rage flickering in her chest — and yet Joy manages a smile. If life has taught her nothing else, it’s taught her how to screw them before they screw you. It’s easy, really; all it takes is a little forethought.
After leaving the restaurant, Joy stops at an ATM to make a substantial cash withdrawal, then drops the card in a garbage can. On the bus ride back to the train station, she stuffs her phone in a gap between her seat and the body of the vehicle, leaving it for someone to discover and claim as his own — or maybe it’ll sit there for days, riding around town in an endless loop, but as long as no one can use it to track her actual location...
/> Screw them before they screw you, that’s lesson one.
Lesson two, one of the few useful things she learned in school: Always make back-up copies of your computer files.
“You ready to do this?” Sara asks.
“As ready as I’ll ever be,” I say.
Translation: God, no. What we’re about to do, it’s a gamble that, honestly, I’m not expecting to pay off. At best we’ll glean some idea of what Buzzkill Joy is up to. At worst, if Sara and I get caught, we could be turned over to the police — or worse, Concorde. Yeah, I have no plans to fly, so I’m not violating the letter of his law, but the spirit is getting violated like —
Never mind. I can’t think of an analogy that doesn’t make me queasy.
Sara and I stroll on into Boston Medical Center like we’re supposed to be there and head right to the reception desk. A matronly Asian woman greets us with a polite smile.
“Good evening, ladies, may I help you?” she says.
“Good evening,” I say pleasantly. “We’re here to visit Kenneth Hamill.”
The receptionist types the name into her computer and squints at the screen. “Are either of you family?” she asks.
“I’m his daughter Missy!” Sara chirps, and she flashes a big, wide-eyed grin. I have to restrain a laugh; her Missy impression is a little too dead-on.
“I’m sorry, dear, but only family is allowed to visit Mr. Hamill,” the woman says to me. “You’ll have to wait outside.”
“That’s fine,” I say, and the receptionist gives us the room number.
We head to the elevators. An empty elevator car arrives and we dash inside. Sara engages in a bit of necessary vandalism, disabling the security camera in the corner of the car with a quick telekinetic zap (sorry, hospital). I jab at the control panel to make sure no one has a chance to jump on with us. The doors slide shut and we quickly shed our outer layers, stuffing our civilian clothes into a backpack I brought along. Carrie Hauser and Sara Danvers got onto the elevator, but it will be Lightstorm and Psyche getting off — not that anyone will see us, if everything goes according to plan.
(Please, God, let this go according to plan.)
“You’re up,” I say, and Sara closes her eyes and concentrates.
The principle is simple: Sara telepathically broadcasts a single, basic command — ignore us — and we slip into Dr. Hamill’s room unhindered. It’s not invisibility in the traditional sense, but if this works, the hospital staff won’t pay the slightest attention to us. I hate to resort to sneaking around like this, but (as I have to keep reminding the boys) the Hero Squad has no official standing anymore; marching into the hospital and openly announcing our intent to conduct a formal interview is not an option.
Like I said, the concept is sound, and Sara has used the subliminal mental command trick a few times with success, but this is the first time she’s ever tried anything quite like this. We won’t know for sure if she’s successful until we step out of the elevator.
We reach our floor and the doors open. Here we go.
Sara and I get out, and we’re nearly bowled over by an orderly who blows right past us, never slowing down and never offering an “excuse me.” I’m going to be optimistic and say it’s because he never saw us, not because he was in a big hurry and/or extremely rude.
“I think we’re good,” I say in a whisper.
“Let’s hurry. I don’t know if I can keep this up for long,” Sara says.
We follow the signs to Dr. Hamill’s room, passing countless doctors, nurses, orderlies, patients, and visitors along the way. A few of them pause and look around, like they thought they saw something at the edge of their vision, then shake their heads and go back to whatever they were doing, but that’s as close as we come to getting caught.
Cool. We’re going to have to remember this trick.
It doesn’t occur to me until too late that Dr. Hamill might not be in a private room, but luck continues to be on our side: Dr. Hamill is alone in his room, hooked up to more machines than Frankenstein’s monster. His throat is heavily bandaged on one side.
“Let’s get into character,” I say. I power up, but only enough to produce the slightest of glows (speaking of aspiring super-heroes who are getting better at fine-tuning their powers). “Dr. Hamill. We need to talk to you.”
He doesn’t respond. I say his name again, a little louder. Nothing. Oh, crap. What if he’s sedated?
“He’s drugged up, isn’t he?” Sara says.
“Um. Maybe?” I say with a small squeak of panic, because if he’s under heavy sedation (which, I now realize, is highly likely because, duh, slashed throat), this whole night is a waste — and worse, Buzzkill Joy continues to avoid some serious comeuppance.
I’m about to ask Sara if she could get anything from Dr. Hamill telepathically when he utters a soft groan. Sara and I hold our breaths as Dr. Hamill’s eyes flutter open. He’s groggy, but I think he’s coherent. Let’s put that to the test.
“Dr. Hamill, my name is Lightstorm. This is Psyche. We’re with the Hero Squad,” I say. Dr. Hamill swallows, blinks, nods weakly. “We need to speak to you about the girl who attacked you, if you’re able to.”
“...Yes,” he says, his voice brittle.
“Did you know her?” I ask.
He hesitates before answering. “I...not directly. I knew about her.”
“How?”
It takes him even longer to answer that question, and his response isn’t exactly illuminating. “I’m responsible for her.”
“Responsible for her how?”
“I made her.”
Sara and I exchange confused looks. “I’m sorry, Dr. Hamill, I don’t understand.”
Dr. Hamill takes a deep breath, and tells us a chilling, haunting story.
Twenty-five years ago, Dr. Hamill says, the US military launched something called Project Moreau, a grand experiment in genetic engineering. Humans possessed of amazing abilities had been around for a few decades at that point, and the military wanted to tap that power for its own purposes. The problem was, super-humans inclined to use their abilities in the name of the greater good, as a rule, preferred to operate autonomously and weren’t big on getting bossed around by the government, so the military decided to try making its own.
The concept of tweaking an organism’s DNA to produce traits not normally found in a given species was relatively new and untested, but the military thought it had potential, so they assembled a team of the nation’s most brilliant geneticists to work on the project. Some were rabid flag-wavers who would do anything Uncle Sam asked them to, others were able to push their morality aside in the name of scientific progress. Dr. Hamill admits, with deep shame, he fell into the latter category.
Under his direction as project leader, several approaches were explored and tested. Two similar paths emerged as the most promising. The first was to analyze the genetic code of various super-humans, compare them to baseline human DNA, and make the necessary changes to replicate more common superhuman abilities (particularly those that would be very useful in a fight): super-strength, invulnerability, super-speed, heightened reflexes, even the range of psionic powers, from telepathy and telekinesis to more unusual powers like pyrokinesis (a la Nina Nitro) and flight (a rare but very specialized form of telekinesis).
Then there was the second approach, which gave rise to the project’s name. The human genetic code, when you get right down to it, is not so dissimilar from the genetic code of several animal species. Dr. Hamill specifically cites cats as an example: The feline genetic code is ninety percent similar to that of humans, so it wasn’t unimaginable to tinker with human DNA in order to replicate beneficial feline traits such as clawlike fingernails...
Like Buzzkill Joy has.
Joy — and Missy.
Oh my God.
“We genetically manipulated ova harvested for infertility treatments. They were fertilized in vitro, then implanted,” Dr. Hamill says. “There were forty test subjects. None of
the mothers knew what we’d done to the embryos...not even my wife.”
“You son of a bitch,” Sara hisses, but Dr. Hamill can’t hear her over his sobbing.
“I told myself she was nothing but a test subject,” he bawls. “I told myself not to get attached. I was so determined not to love her, but...”
A sudden serenity overcomes Dr. Hamill. He looks at us, his eyes glistening under my gentle glow, and he gives us a sad smile.
“It’s impossible not to love my Missy.”
Yeah. You’re right about that.
“The hard drive Joy took from you,” I say. “It has project data.”
“It has everything on Moreau,” Dr. Hamill says, “including full profiles on every test subject.”
With this final confession, Dr. Hamill loses the last of his will to stay conscious. He slips into a deep sleep — deep and, I bet, deeply troubled.
Sara throws up her telepathic apathy field and we dart back to the elevator, where we wrestle ourselves back into our civilian clothes. As we pass the reception desk on the ground floor, the receptionist calls out to us.
“Did you have a nice visit?” she says, but we’re unable to answer her. We don’t say a word until we’re back at the bus stop, where we collapse onto the bench, wheezing like we’ve just run a marathon.
“Oh, God, Carrie,” Sara says, on the verge of tears.
“I know. I know.”
“I can’t believe Dr. Hamill —”
“I know,” I say, more harshly than I mean to.
We sit there for I don’t know how long, trying to process everything, but it’s so much to take in.
“What do we do?” Sara says. “I don’t even know where to start.”
“I do. We tell Missy. We tell her everything.”
“We can’t,” Sara says. “not after everything she’s been through. If we tell her that her father — Carrie, it’ll destroy her.”
“I know, but we made a promise: no secrets.”
“Carrie...”
“No secrets,” I insist. “Missy deserves to know the truth, and we have no right to keep it from her.”
Action Figures - Issue Three: Pasts Imperfect Page 17