Action Figures - Issue Three: Pasts Imperfect

by Michael Bailey

  Sara, reluctantly, nods in agreement. “When do we tell her?”

  I check my phone. It’s creeping up on seven o’clock. We’d be back in Kingsport within the hour.

  “No time like the present,” I say.

  NINETEEN

  Missy sits at the head of her bed, clutching her pillow to her chest, her expression impossibly blank. Department store mannequins look more lifelike. I expected crying, screaming, a fifty-megaton ballistic freak-out, but no, instead we get to endure the devastating sight of our friend getting sucked into a black hole of despair and not even trying to fight back. It’s like we’ve snuffed out her soul.

  “Oh,” she says. She sounds so tiny and distant.

  “Muppet, we are so sorry,” Sara says. “We didn’t want to tell you, but we —”

  “No. It’s okay. I’m glad you did. Thank you.” She squeezes the pillow tighter. “Did he say...am I even really his?”

  “I don’t know,” Sara says. “I think so? I mean, he said the, uh, genetic material was all, you know, taken from people in for fertility treatment, and I don’t think you can implant just any, uh, embryo into a woman. I think it has to be her own, you know...egg.”

  God, this is so awkward, Sara thinks at me.

  “I think Sara’s right,” I say. Honestly, I have no idea whatsoever if I’m telling the truth, but Missy has been through enough for one night. Maybe, this once, a little lie is okay. “You look like your parents,” I add, and that part is accurate; her features are such a delicate blend of her mom and dad’s, you don’t notice any similarities between her and either parent unless she’s standing next to one or the other.

  Look at me, finding the silver lining in a dark cloud the size of Greenland. Go me.

  “Do you need anything?” I ask.

  Missy shakes her head, then says, “You should tell Stuart and Matt.”

  “Are you sure you want us to —?”

  “No secrets. That’s what we promised. No secrets.”

  I was actually wondering whether she really wanted us to tell the boys, but I shouldn’t be surprised she’s not up to making such a bizarre confession.

  “Okay,” I say, “if you want us to.”

  She nods.

  We leave her sitting there, hugging her pillow and staring into space, and my heart tears in two. I know consciously there’s nothing we can do to cheer her up, not after this bombshell, and nothing we can do to magically make this go away, but none of that prevents me from feeling like a crappy excuse for a friend.

  Once we’re outside, we take out our phones. “Do you want to tell Matt or Stuart?” I say.

  Sara grimaces. “Would you hate me if I said I didn’t want to be the one to tell Stuart?”

  “I can’t hate you because I don’t blame you. Together on speakerphone?” Sara nods. “Okay, then. Let’s get this over with.”

  The call goes as well as could be expected — which is to say, crawling naked over a mile of broken glass and rusty nails before swan-diving into a pool of heavily-salted rubbing alcohol would have been a more pleasant experience. Stuart reacts with anger, shock, anger, disbelief, horror, anger, confusion, anger, pity, anger, frustration, anger, helplessness, and did I mention anger? Sara and I spend half our time on the phone talking him down. We should have seen it coming, really. After Stuart lost his little brother he adopted Missy as his spiritual little sister, and he’s as protective of her as any big brother-by-blood would be, which means he overreacts to any direct threat to her happiness, safety, and well-being. This time is no exception, although I can’t honestly say his overreaction is unwarranted.

  Stuart’s response is downright tame compared to Matt’s. I never realized the F-bomb had so many variations.

  At first it throws me off. I mean, I expected Matt to be furious but I didn’t expect a hurricane-force tirade. Two minutes into his rant, it hits me: He’s recently become intimately familiar with the searing sting of betrayal by one’s father. Half of this is probably rage he has yet to vent at his own dad, so Sara and I let him purge. He finishes purging about the time I reach my driveway.

  “That was exhausting,” Sara says.

  “Yeah, but it’s done. The easy part’s over with.”

  Sara does a double-take. “That was the easy part?”

  “The hard part will be finding Buzzkill Joy,” I say.

  The mood among the group the next morning is somber and subdued. Many long hugs are exchanged in silence. Even Malcolm, who doesn’t know Missy all that well but, thanks to the local media, is aware what happened to Dr. Hamill, offers a comforting hug. Missy accepts, but she takes no more comfort in his condolences than she found in ours.

  “Thank you for not making a fuss over how bad Missy looks,” I say, pulling Malcolm aside. “Everyone in school’s going to be pointing it out and asking questions all day long...”

  “No, I understand,” Malcolm says. “And I’d understand if you wanted to reschedule tomorrow night so you can be there for her.”

  Tomorrow night? Oh, right, Malcolm was taking me out for my birthday.

  He has a point, curse his noble soul; Missy’s going through the roughest time of her life and needs her friends.

  I want to decline his offer. I’m going through stuff, too. I deserve a little happiness.

  Missy deserves it more.

  “You’re sure you’re okay with this?” I say.

  “Absolutely. Your friend needs you.”

  “If I haven’t mentioned it already? You’re a great boyfriend.”

  “See you at the end of the day,” Malcolm says before brazenly flouting school rules about PDAs and laying a long, soft kiss on me.

  Melt.

  School ends, we walk into town, set up shop in our quiet corner of Coffee E, and get down to serious business, emphasis on serious; the atmosphere is tense, dark.

  Dark, but not bleak. As we sit with our drinks, Missy makes an unhappy noise like the growl of (I hate myself for thinking this) an angry cat. Stuart asks her what’s wrong.

  “My stitches itch like crazy,” Missy says.

  “Don’t scratch them,” Matt says, deadpan, “or we’ll have to put you in the Cone of Shame.”

  Missy glowers at him.

  “C’mon, that was funny.”

  “...Maybe a little funny,” Missy says under her breath.

  Matt made a joke. Missy was receptive to said joke. These are good signs that all is not lost.

  And now, for her next trick, Carrie Hauser will rain on the parade.

  “All right, people, we need to figure out what’s going on with Buzzkill Joy,” I say, then we proceed to recap the highlights (more like the lowlights) of the past several days. The team agrees that Joy wasn’t the intended objective of the jailbreak; Minotaur was a member of the Bestiary, while Archimedes is a valuable asset who’s been snatched from custody before — they make sense, but Joy has no known connections to any of them. She took advantage of an opportunity and that’s it.

  Then it gets hazy. Instead of doing what any sensible fugitive from a supermax penitentiary would do (such as head for Mexico), Joy shows up at Boston U. looking for information on the top-secret government-sponsored genetic engineering project that created her and Missy — information she somehow knew Dr. Hamill had.

  High on the list of questions without answers: Why did she want that information? And how did Joy even know about the project?

  “Joy’s cunning and street-smart, but she doesn’t strike me as having the brains necessary to hack into a military computer system,” I say.

  “Not that she’d have any reason to try something like that. Dr. Hamill said no one outside the project knew anything about it,” Sara adds. “Even the doctors hired to monitor the kids were kept in the dark.”

  I see the wheels turning in Matt’s head. “The doctors may not have known the specifics of the project,” he says, “but if they had to know something. How would they know to look for anything unusual unless they were specifica
lly told to look for anything unusual?”

  “That makes sense,” I say. “Joy could have squeezed her own doctor for information and learned enough to lead back to Dr. Hamill.”

  “But that still doesn’t tell us how she knew anything about the project in the first place,” Sara points out.

  “Hm, yeah,” Matt agrees. “Look at Missy. She lived in the same house as the guy in charge of the thing and she had no idea she was —”

  Missy shrinks into her chair.

  “Oh, God, I’m sorry, Muppet.”

  Missy shrugs. Jeez, Matt...

  “If we rule out the remote possibility Joy found out by dumb luck she was part of Project Moreau,” I say, “that means someone told her about it.”

  That leads to the reasonable questions of who and why, but that only brings us right back down a dead end road.

  “We need the Protectorate’s help,” Matt says, and if he’s saying we need to suck it up, stand aside, and call in the big guns, you know it’s serious.

  Unfortunately, Matt’s sacrificing his pride for naught. “They’re not going to help us,” I say.

  “Then we tell them what’s going on and let them handle it.”

  “They’re not going to help us.”

  “How do you know?” Stuart says. “Have you even tried talking to them?”

  “Yes, I have. Have you? Go ahead, give it a shot.”

  Stuart pulls out his phone and dials Concorde’s number. He frowns, tries again. “The hell, man?”

  Matt tries next and meets with the same results. He then tries Natalie, while Sara calls Mindforce. I know what they’re hearing: a rapid neet neet neet noise, like a hyperactive busy signal.

  “I tried Astrid too and it’s the same thing,” I say. “I tried calling the Protectorate’s public number, but it’s been blocked from my cell and my home phone. My e-mails are getting bounced, too. We haven’t just been grounded, guys; we’ve been shut out.”

  “But...this is...I mean...what?” Matt fumbles. “But we have to talk to them!”

  “I’m open to suggestions,” I say, and Sara makes one so obvious, I’m kicking myself for not thinking of it.

  “Their main office,” she says. “We can talk to Miss Hannaford, get her to relay a message.”

  We run out of the coffee shop like we’re evacuating a burning building, and the only reason we don’t sprint the whole way down to the Protectorate’s Main Street office is out of consideration for Missy. She tends to bounce back quickly, but she’s not up for anything strenuous quite yet.

  Catherine springs from her desk as soon as we enter the office, arms out to block us from slipping past her.

  “Catherine, we need to —”

  That’s as far as I get. “I am under orders to inform you the Hero Squad is no longer welcome on these premises. I have been authorized to take whatever steps are necessary to remove you if you do not leave willingly and quietly. This matter is not up for discussion.”

  That’s what she says with her outside voice. Her inside voice is much chattier.

  Guys, I’m sorry, but you all have to leave, now, Catherine says.

  Catherine, we have a serious problem, I say, but she’s not listening.

  Carrie, I like you. I like all you kids, which is why I am telling you as a friend: You need to back off. The Squad’s become a bone of serious contention around here, and it’s causing a lot of problems between Concorde and — well, everyone else. We need to sort this mess out internally, but we can’t do that if you don’t give us some breathing room.

  But —!

  Please don’t make this harder on me than it already is, Catherine says with an air of finality. This is out of my hands. I’m sorry.

  We turn and shuffle out of the office. Catherine closes the door behind us, avoiding any eye contact.

  “I don’t believe this,” Matt says. “Concorde’s actually blackballed us.”

  “C’mon, man, we can’t give up,” Stuart says.

  “What are we supposed to do? Barge back in there and scream at Miss Hannaford until she listens to us?”

  “If we have to!”

  “What good would it do, Stuart? Seriously?” I say. “We have to face reality. We’re on our own.”

  We’re on our own. Just what we always wanted...and it couldn’t have happened at a worse time.

  TWENTY

  I keep that part to myself and instead give my friends a rah-rah we can do it rally speech, hoping it will motivate us to figure something out. Someone out there has answers; we just need to find that person.

  Almost immediately, we’re hit with inspiration: Missy’s doctor. It’s admittedly a longshot, considering all the doctors were kept as far out of the loop as possible, but we’re short on options.

  Missy gives us her doctor’s office address so Sara and I can pay her an official visit. The others head to Matt’s house for some hardcore Googling. Before parting ways, Matt uses his gloves to bring me and Sara our outfits so we can present ourselves appropriately — and hey, maybe we’ll get to change in an elevator again. That’s always fun.

  The office of Dr. Elaine Hemmings is all the way at the north end of town, which means we get to ride the bus into battle once again (mental note: One of us needs to get a driver’s license, stat. Like, yesterday).

  We arrive at the small commercial complex that houses Dr. Hemmings’ office. It’s a collection of strip mall-like buildings scattered around a central parking lot. Most of the individual units belong to doctors and lawyers, with a state representative’s district office thrown in for variety. We start wandering around, looking for a semi-private place to slip into our super-hero garb. We end up sneaking into the woods in the back of the complex because, you know, dignity.

  “Now what?” Sara asks. “Do we just walk on in?”

  That’s exactly what we do.

  It’s apparently a slow day for Dr. Hemmings, because the only people in the waiting room are a mother with her daughter and pair of receptionists. The women regard us with understandable bemusement, while the little girl finds us absolutely fascinating.

  Long story short: The Hero Squad has enough of a reputation that the receptionists let us right in to see Dr. Hemmings, who proves entirely forthcoming about her role in Project Moreau — forthcoming, but ultimately useless because she has no idea what we’re talking about. Sara confirms by way of a quick telepathic scan that she’s being truthful with us; Dr. Hemmings wasn’t in on the project.

  It makes sense, in hindsight; why pay good hush money to a doctor to keep track of Missy’s development when the head of Project Moreau can do it personally?

  We get to Matt’s and find the Google party in full swing: Everyone has their laptops out and they’re furiously typing away, but their progress report is no better than ours. “Project Moreau” isn’t generating any hits, which isn’t surprising, so we start shooting in the dark, running searches on Dr. Hamill, Missy, Buzzkill Joy, genetic engineering projects at Boston University, genetic engineering projects for the government and for the military — we hit every possible base, run every conceivable term through almighty Google, and all we get for our efforts is a big bucket o’ nope.

  “We’re missing something,” I say, thinking aloud, “something small but important.”

  “Like what?” Matt says.

  “If I knew that, Matt, we wouldn’t be sitting here like a bunch of idiots fumbling around in the dark, would we?”

  “Jeez, don’t have to bite my head off about it.”

  “Yeah, because you’ve never lost it at any of us for no good reason,” Sara says.

  Matt’s about to shoot back when the front door swings open, and on instinct we all shut up and act like a group of normal high school students diligently doing our homework. We don’t have to maintain the charade for long, because a new and perfectly legitimate target for his ire appears behind his mother.

  “Oh. Hello, kids. Didn’t know you’d be here tonight,” Mrs. Steiger says.
>
  “Everyone,” Mr. Steiger says, squirming.

  Steiger Senior and Steiger Junior lock eyes like a pair of gunfighters in an old Western getting ready to spray lead.

  “What’s he doing here?” Matt says.

  Mr. Steiger looks to his wife, who says, “Your father’s coming home.”

  Matt leaps to his feet, dumping his laptop to the floor. “He’s WHAT?!”

  “Not necessarily for good,” Mrs. Steiger says quickly, “but we need to talk about...what happened, and the best way to do that is if your father is home. That way we can all talk about —”

  “What is there to talk about, Mom? He cheated on you!” Matt says, leveling a damning finger at his dad.

  “Kids,” Mrs. Steiger says, “I need you all to leave. This is a family matter.”

  “We don’t have a family anymore,” Matt spits.

  “Kids, go. Now.”

  We hastily scoop up our stuff and hustle outside, but Matt doesn’t wait for us to clear the room before laying into his parents. Days’ worth of pent-up anger, frustration, and resentment pour out of him, as fast and as violent as a burst of machine-gun fire. We take the driveway at a run to get away from the escalating fight as quickly as possible, but the unique cacophony of a family tearing itself apart stays with us until we’re a quarter-mile down the road.

  Joy glances at the little clock in the corner of the laptop once owned by Dr. Lester Baron, and it’s no wonder her eyes feel like sandpaper; she’s been sifting through that college professor’s files for nine straight hours.

  Not that she found the reading itself all that enthralling, but there was a lot to read: forty files, one for each product of something called Project Moreau, including the file labeled MORANA JOYCE NMN (NMN? What the hell is that? she wondered. I don’t have a middle name). She started with her own file. The section detailing how her DNA was specifically manipulated, that went way over her head and she gave up after three pages, but the section dedicated to her developing abilities were engrossing. Even the lengthy psychological profile, which tracked her increasingly erratic behavior starting at the tender age of six, was perversely fascinating.