Capes

by Drabble, Matt

  “You can’t…, I don’t know, hack their systems or something?”

  “That’s top-of-the-line military grade encryption, Ms Sloan. Honestly, it’s the first thing I tried and I expected to break through. They were a disbanded unit for the past decade or so. If their systems were the same as when they were active, then I’d be able to.”

  “But they’re not?”

  “No. Someone’s upgraded everything across the board. There’s no way to hack in from the outside. We’ll have to do this the old-fashioned way, but…”

  Link suddenly stopped talking, and his face turned to stone as he tilted his head in a sign of absolute concentration. Summer opened her mouth to ask what was happening, but his hand flew up to silence her, and for once, she took the direction without arguing.

  After a few moments, his fingers started to fly across various keyboards as he coordinated his surveillance systems to scan the area.

  “What is it?” Summer asked as he moved and she felt it was safe to speak.

  “Something else is out there,” he said distractedly as he worked.

  “Something?”

  “Hmm?” he said as his head was whipping about in several directions.

  “You said something… not someone?”

  He kept working the equipment frantically, but eventually he fell still and sat back, his expression one of confusion as though he was unsure and not used to the emotion.

  “System’s picking up nothing: no visual, no sound emanations, no temperature variations, nothing.”

  “Then how do you know? I mean, this stuff is state-of-the-art, right?”

  “Best money can buy. Top-of-the-line.” He nodded.

  “Right, so what makes you so sure?”

  “Because there’s one piece of equipment I didn’t need to buy,” he said as he jabbed the centre of his chest with one finger. “And it’s never wrong. Something’s out there, and it’s watching.”

  “Us?” Summer asked, looking around nervously.

  “The Queen’s Guard agents and us,” Link replied, not mentioning there was also a car parked a few streets away.

  There were two occupants a little too casual for his liking. He didn’t know who they were, but they were trained to blend and observe.

  “Are we in danger?” Summer asked as realisation dawned that being on the front line might actually mean just that.

  “Hey, you wanted this, remember? You wanted to be out here instead of me simply sending you in reports.”

  “Okay, okay. So we’re watching the freaky space alien and his pals, and you think that someone, sorry, something else, is out there but you can’t pin down what.”

  “There may be more than one thing out there.”

  “What? Why didn’t you say?”

  “Look, this is a fluid and variable situation, Miss Sloan, and in my experience, well, civilians such as yourself tend to rattle easily. Perhaps it would be best if you returned home.”

  “Shit on that, Mr Link. As long as I’m signing the cheques, then I sit on the front line. Now, what else aren’t you telling me?”

  “Well, there’s a car up the street…” he started.

  ----------

  The car in question held two men, neither of whom still answered to their birth names anymore. Now they were simply disciple numbers – Five and Nine to be exact.

  The pair of them had been sitting in the car for almost 32 hours now without speaking. They were placed there to monitor, and that was all they did. Their recording equipment was rudimentary by Link’s standards, but it did the job.

  Number Nine handled the camera. In his past life, he had been a wedding photographer, but that life was a dim and distant memory now, one that had faded largely into the black. He sometimes remembered that he had been married; he even thought that he might have had children at some point, but now his calling was to SOUL and that was all he knew for sure.

  He had been taking shots of the comings and goings from the private hospital, capturing still faces and then seeing the telltale red glow around their auras.

  In his past life, he had started to see the same unholy glows in some of his wedding day shoots. When he concentrated hard, he could slowly picture his wife’s face begging him to get help, telling him that there was something wrong with him. He also remembered with shame that he had started to believe her, that he had started to be taken in by her lies. That was, of course, until he’d accidentally caught her still image when he’d been taking some test shots with a new camera, and what do you know? She’d been unveiled as a filthy agent of Satan with the loudest, brightest red aura he’d ever seen.

  The authorities had, of course, been compromised by the slow invasion as agents of the devil had falsified their faces and pretended to be first the police and then the doctors who had sent him to the asylum in order to stop him from telling the world. It had been there that she’d come to see him, that she had come to tell him the truth and save him from their grasp.

  He hadn’t been mad; he had been just about the only sane mind in the hospital, and when Cynthia Arrow had come to take him away, he hadn’t need a camera to see that her aura was of the brightest shining white and he had pledged to her his undying soul that day.

  As the 32nd hour passed into the 33rd, Number Five stretched his back and exited the car.

  “Piss,” he said, speaking the only words that either of them had uttered in the 33-hour surveillance stint.

  Number Five walked from the car and into the small wooded area that surrounded them offering cover.

  While Number Nine was a useful operative to have on a stakeout, Number Five’s talents were going to waste as long as they were undiscovered.

  He’d been a corporal in the Highland Infantry, a soldier with a distinguished service record and a reputation for not flinching in the face of the enemy.

  After serving two tours in Iraq and two in Afghanistan, he had started to feel… different.

  He had looked into the eyes of enemy combatants on many occasions, including multiple times down through the sights on a sniper rifle, but now they seemed to be looking right through him, mocking him, somehow, even after he’d put a bullet through their heads with their jet-black eyes devoid of iris colour.

  His superiors hadn’t wanted to take him off the front line, such was his effectiveness at killing. They had, not surprisingly, insisted on counselling and he’d gone along with it, nodding and smiling and crying in all the right places. But then he’d gone back to work.

  It hadn’t been until after he’d met Cynthia Arrow that he’d understood what he’d been looking at down his scope.

  She’d called them The Legion, an army of the damned sent up straight from hell to facilitate the devil’s takeover. He hadn’t been surprised to learn of their plan, but he had been shocked to discover that the devil himself was already living among them in plain sight.

  Needless to say, everyone on the planet knew about the existence of the alien, but apparently, only Cynthia had discovered that their reptilian visitor hadn’t descended from above but had, in fact, ascended from below.

  He ducked further into the wooded area, having instinctively taken a final quick check around to make sure that nothing was out of the ordinary.

  Number Five cricked his neck and felt the bones pop inside. He was used to standing in post for long inactive periods, so this hadn’t been a stretch for him, but even his patience was starting to wear thin.

  He went about his business quickly and accurately as a good sniper should. He was done and zipping up when something made him turn. He didn’t hear, see or even smell anything, but the hairs stood up on the back of his neck. His early warning system was as good as any man’s on the planet; he was well trained and a better soldier since he’d left the army and gone to work for SOUL. He was fast, smart and careful, but with all of that ability, he still wasn’t quite fast enough as the shadows came inexplicably alive around him, and he was dead before a sound came out of his mouth.
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  It took Number Nine around 20 minutes to notice that Number Five had been gone for too long.

  He looked up from his camera sights and checked the area around the car, but there was no sign of his partner.

  He wasn’t worried for the man’s safety. When Cynthia had sent them out on this assignment, she had assured him that she was sending her very best to watch his back, and he trusted her judgement implicitly.

  There was movement at the hospital as a black van entered the premises, having been waved automatically through the police cordon, and that took his attention back to the scene while he fired off a few shots.

  He vaguely heard the back door of the car open, and a weight settled in behind him, but his attention was on focusing on the van’s registration plate in order to identify it later.

  “What took you so…?” were the only words that he managed to get out of his mouth before he died without ever knowing by whom.

  ----------

  Bull’s body had been taken away in a blacked-out van, and they’d all held a silent moment as he’d left.

  No one had spoken about what would come next because they simply didn’t know.

  Jamie-Lyn and Doc were out of the game and had been for a long time.

  Jesus was used to running operations, but only when he had all the facts, and right now, he was playing catch up and not liking it.

  CJ had the information with his story about the Torvanians, but now he seemed strangely subdued and unsure of himself.

  “What is it?” Jesus demanded suddenly.

  Jamie-Lyn and Doc both looked up in surprise to see Jesus staring hard at CJ and the alien standing like a dog sniffing the wind for a scent.

  “CJ?” Jesus pressed again after a few moments when the alien didn’t answer.

  “I’m…, I’m not sure,” he finally replied slowly.

  “You’re not sure? Since when were you ever not sure?” Doc demanded irritably.

  “There’s someone…, something… out there,” CJ said as he moved towards the office window and stared out.

  “CJ, you’re kind of freaking us out here,” Jamie-Lyn said, watching the alien carefully.

  CJ moved along the wide window staring out into the grounds, his actions becoming increasingly animated. His head bobbed and jerked as he stared out in all directions.

  “CJ?” Jesus tried again.

  “I…, I can’t get a fix. I can’t get a clear signal, but I can feel… something… eyes watching, a presence or presences out there observing us, hungry eyes.”

  “Torvanians?” Jamie-Lyn asked nervously. “Is that what you’re saying? Are they here?”

  Jesus grabbed the radio mic on his shoulder. “Alpha 7, come in.”

  “Go for 7,” a disembodied voice came back.

  “Perimeter update,” Jesus demanded.

  “All clear, boss.”

  “Alpha 6?” Jesus asked.

  “Same here, boss. Nothing out here.”

  “Alpha 3?” Jesus pressed on again, and the others started to become increasingly nervous when there was no reply.

  “What the hell’s going on here, CJ?” Doc demanded, but the alien didn’t answer; he just continued to watch out the window.

  “Do we need to leave?” Jamie-Lyn asked as she started to back away to the door.

  “Alpha 3, come in,” Jesus barked, but again there was no reply. “I don’t like this, CJ!”

  “Doctor?” CJ asked, without turning away from the window.

  Doc was angry at being asked but even angrier at being here in the first place.

  “Goddamn you,” she said through gritted teeth.

  She placed two of her right fingers against her right temple and closed her eyes. When she opened them again, they were crackling with purple electricity. She scanned the grounds with her mind. It took longer than it used to as it was now a flabby muscle through a lack of use.

  “Well?” Jesus snapped as she took her time.

  “I can’t sense anything out there,” she said, shaking her head slowly. “Nothing.”

  “ALPHA 3!” Jesus yelled into the radio again.

  “Yeah, yeah. I’m here,” a reply came back, and some of the room breathed a little easier again, but CJ didn’t.

  “Where the hell have you been, Alpha 3?” Jesus demanded.

  “The… not… come in?” the disembodied crackling voice came back.

  “Piece of crap!” Jesus snapped as he banged the radio hard against the wall. “CJ? What the hell is going on here?”

  “Something…”

  “Well isn’t that super bloody helpful!” Jamie-Lyn cried out as they all started to hop around from foot to foot, their heads whipping from the window to the door and back again.

  Jesus took a revolver from a shoulder holster under his jacket and slipped the safety off. He moved to CJ’s side and stared out of the window.

  “Who’s out there, CJ? What’s out there?” he asked softly as he stood close.

  “I…, I can’t…” CJ breathed.

  “I don’t like this,” Jamie-Lyn said to Doc under her breath as Doc’s eyes cleared and returned to normal. “I’ve never seen him like this before. He was always so…”

  “In control” Doc finished for her.

  “I never told you this, Doc, but I used to have a recurring nightmare. When I was a kid, I saw one of those old Japanese Godzilla movies. I was never scared of the monster – it was always when you’d see the wide open ocean scene, and suddenly this gigantic head appears from under the surface. I saw a therapist once. He told me that I have a problem with the perspective of a lack of control, a lack of order. CJ is supposed to be the one who always has the answers, and right now, he looks scared and that’s scaring the shit out of me!”

  CJ and Jesus were still looking out of the window and now Doc and Jamie-Lyn joined them.

  “I’m sorry,” CJ said to them all.

  “For what?” Doc asked.

  “For not having the answers,” he replied.

  “Okay, enough of this bullshit,” Jesus said firmly. “Alpha team, I want a cordon around the home. I need an escort for extraction. Weapons hot, people.”

  The four of them stared out of the window at the sudden buzz of activity as the well-armed agents moved out of the grounds and converged towards the front entrance to the remains of the home. The young black-combat-suited men and women all had automatic weapons held cocked and ready.

  “Okay, we go down and we get the hell out,” Jesus ordered. “I’m not taking any chances here. If CJ says there’s something out there, then I believe him… Even if we can’t see it,” he added. “Sound like a plan?”

  “Sounds like a good one,” a new voice came from behind.

  They all spun around to face the newcomer. CJ, Doc and Jesus’ faces all looked shocked at the fact that someone could have breached the grounds without being spotted by the surrounding police guards, the home without being picked up by the agents outside, and the room without any of them sensing them.

  Of course, there was only one person on the planet capable of such a feat of stealth.

  “It’s been a long time!” Crimson greeted them.

  ----------

  chapter 15

  BAD PENNIES

  Wilson Fontaine pushed his chair back from the huge bank of monitors in front of him and sat with hands folded across his bulbous belly in ponderous contemplation.

  He had read quickly through the detailed report from Quentin Link and had to fight his own frustrations at the lack of details contained within. He was a man of many attributes, but patience wasn’t one of them.

  The high-rise penthouse apartment was his everything: planning station, operational headquarters and private sanctuary.

  He had bought the entire building out back in 1993, moving methodically through every floor, consuming apartment by apartment until he obtained the whole building. Some of the tenants had, naturally, been happy to sell at an obscene profit, while others had demande
d a more intimately convincing approach.

  The operation had been slow going as he hadn’t wanted to announce his intentions, but by the summer of ’95, he had owned every inch of the building, and out of the 127 previous tenants, only two had to have unfortunate accidents – not a bad ratio, he figured.

  He had been born to Alexander and Margot Fontaine. The Fontaines were a dynasty of wealthy landowners, high society staples who were always photographed next to only the elite of British culture.

  His great, great, great, great (he forgot how many greats) grandfather, Alexis Fontaine, had made his way across the seas from Greece and had settled in the UK.

  The man had been a shark in business; his ruthless aggression, combined with a canny business mind, had secured his wealth primarily in arms manufacturing, selling weapons across, and more often than not, under the table, but always giving the very best deals to the British government, always knowing which side of the bread to butter.

  Alexis gathered people like pawns on a chessboard, always knowing who could benefit his cause, what their weaknesses were, where their desires lay, what buttons they had to be pushed.

  He had married Tara Lambert, not out of love, of course – he simply wanted the Lambert name.

  Tara had been daughter to Tyree Lambert and Tyree had gotten himself into a large amount of debt speculating on a mine in Africa. The main reason the deal had gone south was down to Alexis himself, unsurprisingly. He simply pushed the pawns around the board where they were of the most use to him.

  The Lamberts were old-school wealth and power, a family that had close ties to the very highest and regal family in the land, and that was where Alexis wanted the Fontaines to be.

  By the time that Alexis had died, aged 102, he had sired a son, who’d given him a grandson, who’d given him a great-grandson and so on, all the way down to Wilson.

  For some reason, every Fontaine man had only managed to produce a single healthy son. There had been multiple daughters born over the years, but the girls were either drowned at birth as per Alexis’ orders, or, in later years, the pregnancies had been terminated once the gender had been revealed.