“Safe to come out, but get inside quick,” I instructed Martin. I’d left a change of clothes in roughly his size in the backseat before I launched this operation, and he tugged on his faded flannel shirt and too-large jeans as he got out of the car and stretched.
“Man, I feel like a damn lumberjack. You got a belt for these? I don’t do the pulldown pants thing.”
“They’re better than the prison jumpsuit. Come on.” I tapped the keycode into the number pad I’d installed on the door, and led the way inside. “Lights,” I said, stopping a few feet into the darkness, and with a soft hum the hanging tubes flickered to life.
He whistled. “Okay, this is more like what I expected.”
The inside was a mechanic’s wet dream. Bits of salvaged scrap and machinery coated every horizontal surface that wasn’t the ground. Tables and crates and shipping containers had been turned into workbenches for various projects. Mechanical arms crafted from smaller cranes whirred along tracks set in the rafters, spot-welding a project out of sight in the center of four shipping containers, while old computer monitors flickered and charted through the Computer Assisted Drafting programs I’d used to set the construction bots to task.
None of it looked particularly illegal. I’d made sure to hide the defenses from casual view. If someone snuck a look in through one of the high, open window slots on the walls, they’d see nothing worth calling the cops over.
Maybe a few things worth stealing. In which case, once they stepped foot inside, they’d have to deal with pop-up turrets, directional screamers, taser grids, and— depending on the timing— me.
The lair drew a bit more power than would be expected from the low-tier industrial shop it was registered as, but I was supplementing the draw with a couple of homemade generators hidden in the shipping containers. Generators are a lost art, I’d found. With broadcast power so reliable for so long, the technology hasn’t been significantly developed over the last few decades.
That was changing now, in the aftermath of the Y2K incident.
“The living quarters are upstairs,” I said, gesturing to a flight of metal stairs up, and a short catwalk that led to an enclosed area, with shuttered windows. He followed me, staying well clear of the moving armatures, and the tables full of junk.
I flipped a light switch on. Upstairs, it wasn’t much. A couple of offices, a few cots tucked in them, some stores of meals-ready-to-eat that I’d located at military surplus shop, a laptop computer running Portals ninety-five, and a few guns. Standard types that fired bullets and not particle beams. I had no real plans to use them unless things went very wrong, but in my short time that I could remember, well, things had gone very wrong.
Fake ID that withstood the background checks for the guns had been easier to acquire then the fake ID that allowed me to set up the computer’s Gridnet connection. That said a lot about this nation, right there.
One wall was filled with nothing but televisions, screens open to different channels. One screen was talking about the current troubles in the Middle East. Another screen detailed the rising cost of gang warfare in Icon City. Twelve others showed everything from soap operas to sports games to children’s shows. Martin cracked a smile when he saw it. “Okay, this is stereotypical evil genius shit, right here. You seriously watch TV this way?”
I nodded. “Turns out her powers are useful for paying attention to and comprehending multiple feeds at once. Which is good, because she’s got decades of popular culture to catch up on, in order to blend in well with this society.”
“Wait, is that Mister Roberts?”
I looked at the screen. A middle-aged, fatherly looking man played with puppets and told me how special I was.
“Yes,” I said.
“You’re watching Mr. Roberts?” He snickered.
“Every morning,” I confirmed. “Dire enjoys the trips to the land of Made Belief.”
“Dude. I— I don’t even know what to say there that ain’t bad.”
“Mock not Mr. Roberts,” I waggled a finger at him. “He’s a common cornerstone for this entire culture. And he’s a positive role-model. If more of his lessons were taken to heart, the world would not need so much fixing.”
“Okay. It’s just... that shit’s for toddlers.”
“Well, looking at it in one way, Dire’s less than a year old. Memory wipe, remember?”
“Hm.” Martin studied me for a second, eyes unreadable.
“Hm what?”
“Had a lot of time to think in my cell. There were a few times over the last few months, where I thought maybe it was an act. That you’d been faking that amnesia, using us to hide from old enemies. But it wasn’t, was it?”
“No.” I’d awakened after the eve of Y2K, my memories carved out by surgery... which had been initiated by my own hand, as I’d come to find. I was still angry at old me for doing that. She’d left some common sense stuff, and a hell of a lot of technological data, but popular culture? That had gotten the axe. I sighed. “The worst part is that her old self might have had a point.”
“How so?”
“Well, on her tape, she said that this was the only way to protect her past self from time travelers. And guess who showed up to stop Dire?”
“Ballista and Freeway? What, they’re time travelers now?”
“No. Another hero claiming to be such showed up after you left. Actually managed to stop Dire. Well, Dire’s drone set of armor, anyway.”
“Drone? Ha!” He sat down in a swivel chair, grinned as he put his feet up on a desk. “That’s how you did it! One big distraction.”
I grinned back, and settled in the room’s lone easy chair. “Oh, there were other components. But yes, the suborbital drop, and the armor’s battle, that was all a distraction.”
“Wait. Sub-orbital drop?”
“Oh. Yes. The FBI had the courthouse locked up tight. Managed to infiltrate as a construction worker, and smuggle gear to a staging location near it bit by bit. Couldn’t do the armor, though. Had to sneak the drop pod aboard a private shuttle launch up. Near thing, too, almost got nabbed by Tomorrow Force.” I grimaced. The whole caper had been tricky. I’d tipped my hand, and the facility had gone on alert.
Martin stared at me. “Okay. Starting to see why it took you half a year to get to me.”
I shrugged. “Other things had to align. Securing revenue by hacking banks, acquiring materials by looting junkyards, building up false identities by more hacking, arranging this site, the vehicle, and the gear... it wasn’t easy, Martin. But she is Dire, after all.”
“Jesus. Okay. So, uh... why?”
I blinked. My voice was soft, as I answered him. “You have to ask? You’re her friend, Martin, one of the few she can trust. Of those left alive, anyway.” I looked away.
“Shit. Sorry. Poor Roy.”
We were silent for a while. Roy had been gutshot, bled out before anyone could do anything.
“He deserved better,” I finally said. “Now that she knows what World War Two was, he— not right he should survive that, only to fall to scum like he did.”
“Seen more people die than I care too, Dire. Here’s a hint, ain’t no one dies with dignity. Pretty much every death's horrible.”
“Perhaps,” I said. “Well.” I shifted eyes back to him, offered a smile. “Besides the fact of friendship, there is something she needs.”
He didn’t look surprised, just spread his arms in a ‘go on’ motion.
“It shouldn’t be a hardship. Basically Dire’s trying to track down everyone who survived, make sure they’re accounted for. Got some of them. Sparky’s in the care of the Liberty Brigade right now. Once some of the facts came out, they got him in on a veteran’s program.”
“Mm. They run a retirement home and some veterans stuff, yeah?”
“And the Torchbearers fund. Spied on them a little, they’ve got Sparky working with the junior heroes. It’s a good spot for him, being a mentor to a bunch of precocious children. He looked happy.�
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Martin tapped his chin. “Aight. Tryin’ to think what I can tell you you don’t already know... you seen Khalid? Or Last Janissary?”
The two names were one and the same person, a small Turkish man with a big heart and alchemically-induced immortality. Among other things, he was a hunter of vampires, and our last caper had brought him in as an ally.
“No,” I admitted. “Can you fill in the blanks there?”
“A bit. When I came to after the WEB attack, he was shaking me awake. Looked like hell, moving slow. Said that he’d broken enough bones from the fall that his skeleton was having trouble healing, and he’d have to slink off and rest for a bit, mix up some of his bone paste. Said that he’d see us safely back to camp before he bailed. The Locust was too dangerous, and he’d have to find him before he broke free of whatever Barbatos trapped him in. I didn’t see him after that.”
“Mm.” I chewed my lip. “Well. Hate to say it, but Dire’s got no way of contacting him, or he of her. If she runs across him again she’ll help of course, but unless that happens he’s on his own. Have to hope he succeeds.”
“Yeah.” Martin nodded. “Most people in camp made it out okay. Hid in the tunnels during the gunfight. Guzman was out on the boats, crazy bastard, but he was far enough out they didn’t shoot him. So yeah, everyone accounted for. ’Cept Abes and Minna, no one knows where they got to.” He turned his head a bit, an odd look in his eye as he spoke Minna's name.
“Dire knows where Abes got to,” I glowered. “She turned traitor.”
“What? Shit, you serious?”
“As death.”
“Shit. Huh. Thought she was a little off, but I figured that she was just weirded out by the gang stuff and the whole homeless thing.”
“Nope. Anyway, it’s little matter for now.”
“Aight. So, Minna?”
I rubbed my chin. “Hm. Dire had her set off the carbomb trap that slowed the attackers. Before Dire left, Minna said that once she did that, she’d come to help fight.”
Martin shook his head. “I never saw her. And the survivors in the street never saw her. I was afraid she'd...” His voice trailed off.
I stood, paced back and forth in front of the table. “Not good. Minna was running from some rough people.”
“Vory? Yeah. She told me about that.”
“You too?”
He nodded. “Yeah. We, uh, were close. Off and on sometimes, when she wanted loving.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Dire saw no signs of that.”
“It was mostly off when you were there. That night after Joan died, we were on again, though. It hit her hard. I’d have been worried, ’cept she had Anya, so I knew she wouldn’t do nothing stupid.”
“Anya. Was she in camp when you got back?”
“Lemme think...” He leaned back further, closed his eyes. Finally nodded. “Yeah. Yeah I saw her. That woman that Minna saved in the church was watching Anya.”
“Her! Yes. Her name was Susan. Are Anya or Susan still around?”
Martin spread his hands. “Dunno. Power came on shortly after, and when we woke up in the morning after, SWAT teams were surrounding us and telling us to lie down and cooperate. I got grabbed quick, and then, well... I don’t know what happened to nobody else.”
I slowed, but kept pacing. “Susan's name is more of a lead than she had. Thank you.”
“No, shit, thank you!” Martin said. “I got so many damn enemies, that if I pulled any kind of prison sentence with gen pop, I’d be dead in a week. Only reason I survived is ’cause Freeway’s lawyer got my ass in solitary till the trial was done.”
“Hm. You know the man from before?”
“Never saw him before. He busted up some of our ops while I was running the SCK. Regular pain in our ass. But since then... nah.”
“So he had no ulterior motive?”
Martin shook his head. “I was suspicious, but he kept saying he just didn’t want to see me get fucked over by the system. Well, more than I’d earned, anyway. He had a lot of questions to ask about what went on, and I told him what I thought was safe.”
I nodded. “Fair enough.” The press had blamed me for the deaths in our struggle. That one hero didn’t buy it was encouraging, but in the end I didn’t care. The truth would come out eventually. The winners write the history books, so all I had to do was win and keep winning. And so far, so good.
I chuckled, and Martin looked at me sharply. “Huh?”
“Just musing. Sinister long-term plans. Villain stuff.”
“Ah. Yeah, that. You, uh, gone full villain, then?”
“She thought that was pretty clear back in the courtroom. Not like many other options were available, after the way things shook out with the Black Bloods. And WEB. And Tomorrow Force.”
“Mm. Yeah. Guess I can see that. With WEB having as much of a hateboner for you, turnin’ yourself in wouldn’t have worked out.”
“It would also be tantamount to admitting that Dire had done wrong.” I scowled. “A falsehood. Did the best she could under bad circumstances. If they call her a villain for that, so be it. Besides, easier to acquire resources and complete goals through villainous methods.”
Martin sucked on his front teeth for a few seconds. “Yeah. About that. What are they?”
“What are what?”
“Your goals. What do you want outta life?”
“You’re philosophical all of a sudden.”
“It’s... ah... Freeway and I got to talking a lot when he visited. He kept askin’ me what I wanted out of life. Told him the usual. Wine, women, song, and good things for my friends and shit. He told me I was too smart for that. I got all of those, and no troubles, I’d get bored. I’d want more. He challenged me to find some goals. I think the dude thought he was like my dad and shit.” Martin snorted. “He didn’t know my old man. I woulda been fuckin’ jumping for joy to have a dad like Freeway when I was a kid.”
I listened in silence. It seemed the thing to do. Finally when he trailed off, I cleared my throat. “Well. You’re right in that she has chosen goals. Simple ones, really.”
“Yeah?”
“She’s going to fix the world.”
He chuckled, looked over my face, and stopped chuckling. “You’re serious.”
“As an Irish funeral without beer.”
“What?”
“Ah. A joke she heard on the Latedark show yesterday. She’s trying humor with mixed results. Not used to it. Actually one of the things you can help with.”
“Lady, if you broke me outta there to be the comic-relief black sidekick, we gonna have words. Words like ‘fuck’ and ‘no’.”
“No, no no... it’s...” I waved a hand to the bathroom, and the cluttered sink just visible through the open door. “Left Icon City for a time to recover and heal, after escaping WEB and Tomorrow Force. Lived homeless, had experience with that from the camp, at least. Got up the East Coast, disappeared. Worked on blending in. Learned disguises. Learned conversational means to work around the verbal tics. Learned to scavenge.”
I pulled up the blinds on the window, to reveal the factory floor below, and the amounts of material being manufactured. “Worked out well, all things considered, but...” I sighed. “Never had friends like she did back on the beach. Couldn’t risk it. Face known to the MRB and heroes. Losing self. Losing equilibrium.” I let the blinds fall. “Dire needs balance. Needs someone to trust. She needs help regaining... well, humanity. All the things old Dire carved out of herself.” I tapped my skull, then flapped my hand, in a helpless gesture.
Martin stood and wrapped his arms around me. I leaned into the embrace, and hugged him back. No one had done that, not for months, and it struck me harder than I thought. I shuddered a bit, and choked a sob, as tears crawled out of my eyes.
“Hey,” he whispered. “Hey. I got you, ’kay?”
I cried for a little bit. It was safe to cry. No enemies were there to see me.
Finally I regained composure, and
let him go. He eased back, left a hand on my shoulder. “We okay?”
“Yes. Think so.”
He nodded. “Truth be told, I been in solitary for months. No one to shoot the shit with, save Freeway and the guards, and the guards weren’t too friendly. It’s... I think I know how you feel. And it’s shitty.”
I smiled. “Then let us keep each other sane.”
“Promise.” Martin strolled back to the chair. “So. Fix the world, huh?”
“Yes.” I gestured at the bank of televisions, and the various scenes of violence, reports of crime, and disasters that flickered by. “Too much is wrong, and it’s getting worse. Need to change the paradigm. Need to set humanity on a path to a better future.”
“Shit. You ain’t thinking small.”
“No, not really,” I agreed. “Don’t have the full how of it yet. Still trying to find all the variables, and key points to influence. Working up a list of priorities to move humanity into a golden age, and make it sustainable. Won’t be able to fix everything, but won’t have to, if Dire sets the framework up to change prosperity from a zero-sum game to a cooperative effort.” I sighed. “No obvious shortcuts there. Just the labors of Sisyphus, only with multiple boulders.”
“There’s worse titans to be. Least you ain’t got no eagle goin’ for your guts cause you gave some dude a handful of coals.”
A lot of people assumed Martin was uneducated because of his manner of speech. A lot of people were foolish. True, he’d never completed high school, but he read voraciously. He’d loaned me a copy of Lord of the Flies, once. It had been enlightening.
“Well,” I said, “the first step before fixing any of the world’s woes is establishing a strong foundation.”
Martin stood, opened the blinds, and pointed to the machines below. “You got a lot of toys here. And I’ve known villains who would kill for this sort of secret lair.”
DIRE : SEED (The Dire Saga Book 2) Page 3