Capes

by Drabble, Matt

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Jamie-Lyn asked.

  “Just what I said. I bet your buddy CJ here has been hiding shit from us since the very start. Trust me, I know a liar when I see one.”

  “You’re just as paranoid as ever.” Doc sighed.

  “Maybe, but that doesn’t mean I’m wrong, does it?”

  “Doesn’t mean you’re right either,” Jesus replied. “You ask me, there’s only one person around here carrying secrets.”

  “You got something to say to me, suit?”

  “More of a question really.”

  “Well now, go ahead and shoot, son, in a manner of speaking,” he added with a twinkle.

  “How did my father die?”

  The room fell deathly silent again as the two men stared each other down.

  “I heard he had an accident,” Crimson finally replied slowly. “Slipped in the shower. He was an old man, I suppose. Guess accidents do happen.”

  “Was it?”

  “Far as I know.” Crimson shrugged.

  Jesus took a step towards Crimson and the assassin now stood up to face him. They stood now only inches from each other. Jesus was by far the younger man. He was a little shorter but his physique was muscular and well honed.

  Crimson stood a little taller but he was now wiry lean and snowy white all over.

  Despite the age, size and seemingly fitness differences, Jamie-Lyn felt a stab of fear for Jesus. The man’s face was starting to redden and his body was wound tightly. Crimson, on the other hand, stood nonchalantly, his expression and body language casual as though he didn’t have a care in the world.

  “What happened to my father?” Jesus snarled, his voice low and barely audible.

  “Accident, unless you know something different? Unless you can prove something different. I mean, I know how you suits like to have evidence before you act. Your father certainly did.”

  “Something you should know about me, scumbag. I’m not my father. I don’t need any evidence. If I get so much as a sniff that you did it, then I’ll put a bullet in your head without thinking twice. I don’t make promises, Langston, not as a rule, too many variables, but I give you my solemn word on this: if I find out you had anything to do with my father’s death, then I will kill you.”

  “Many have tried, kid, many have tried, so you go do what you gotta do.”

  Jesus tensed and his hand started to move towards the gun in his hip holster. Without a sound being made, there was suddenly a glint of silver and then there was a blade in Crimson’s hand as if by magic.

  “OH FOR CHRIST’S SAKE!” Jamie-Lyn said, holding her hands up exasperatedly. “Look, we’ve got real problems here. I mean, you see that, right? Someone out there doesn’t give a shit about any of this. They’re coming for us, all of us, and if we don’t stand together, then we are all going to die too. Understand, you goddamn morons!”

  Her voice broke the tension as she’d hoped and Crimson relaxed; part of her suspected that she might just have saved Jesus’ life.

  “Well that was certainly tense.” Crimson grinned as he sat down again. “So what are we up against then? More alien visitors? Or an enemy closer to home? Our old friend Cynthia Arrow perhaps?”

  “How about both?” Doc mused aloud.

  “Come again?” Jesus asked as he finally tore his gaze from Crimson.

  “Well let’s say one of these…”

  “Torvanians,” CJ finished for her.

  “Right,” she continued. “What if one of those Torvanians did make it here looking for CJ? Who better to team up with than Cynthia Arrow, right? What if they found each other? Two forces with one common enemy? She could be using this… creature for muscle, right? I mean, she was always a master manipulator.”

  “That is not a pleasant thought,” CJ admitted. “Not pleasant at all.”

  “But we don’t even know if Cynthia Arrow is even still alive after Havencrest, right?” Doc asked the group yet staring at Jesus when she did.

  “Not for sure, no,” he admitted.

  “You lost her?” Crimson scoffed.

  “Well technically he never found her,” CJ added, and Crimson laughed bitterly.

  “Are they the only options?” Jamie-Lyn asked Jesus.

  “Meaning?” Doc said quizzically.

  “Well who else could be out there? I mean, surely there must be other scientists down the years who have tried to copy CJ’s work, right? Hell, I’d even put money that our own government did.”

  “Oh, I have assurances,” CJ interjected quickly. “An understanding, if you will.”

  “And you believe them?” Crimson laughed.

  “Of course,” CJ replied primly.

  “Man, you’re too much.” Crimson laughed again. “Trust me, fella, those spooks will have been trying to reverse engineer your work from the moment you got here.”

  CJ turned towards Jesus and the government man blustered. “No, no, no. As far as I know, there are no such programmes.”

  “Uh, yeah. I’m gonna go ahead and call bullshit on that,” Crimson sneered.

  “I’d probably have to agree,” Jamie-Lyn said, and Doc nodded too.

  “Jesus?” CJ asked.

  “Like I said, no one has ever put anything like that across my desk, I promise you, CJ. I wouldn’t allow such a thing to happen.”

  “I bet your father would,” Crimson said, happily twisting the knife.

  “You don’t mention my father,” Jesus bristled, and the distance between the two men started to grow tense again.

  “Look, this isn’t going to get us anywhere,” Jamie-Lyn snapped. “Leaving aside our own government, surely there must be other countries that wanted their own… enhanced soldiers? I mean, I always wondered why the world wasn’t flooded with copycats after CJ arrived and joined – for want of a better phrase – our side.”

  “Of course people tried,” Jesus admitted. “A bunch of third-rate amateur wannabes in masks, but no one had access to CJ’s knowledge. Without it, they couldn’t do what he could.”

  “But they must have tried to replicate it? Reverse engineering?” Doc asked.

  “Sure, we know of a facility in Russia,” Jesus stated.

  “Now there’s a big shock!” Crimson said sarcastically.

  “One in Cuba,” Jesus continued. “The Americans, of course, and China.”

  “Did they have any success?” Doc asked.

  “Not as far as we know. You’ve got to remember that we have something that they don’t… something that they never will. We have CJ here. All of our advances, all of your enhancements, came directly from him, and he never shared his work with us – it was his one condition.”

  “But you must have been spying on him,” Crimson said, shaking his head. “Don’t try for one second to tell us that the government didn’t.”

  “I’m sure they did,” Jesus conceded. “But like I said, nothing has ever come across my desk to say that anyone, us or anyone else, has ever been able to replicate what CJ has done.”

  “Anyone get close?” Jamie-Lyn asked pointedly.

  “Rumour was that there was one scientist – Gustafson, I think; yeah, that’s right… Olaf Gustafson – but that was just rumour, and hell, it was…, I don’t know, 40-odd years ago maybe.”

  “What happened to him?” Jamie-Lyn asked as the others seemed to take an interest too.

  “Hey, look, like I said, just 40-year-old rumours,” Jesus said, raising his hands up. “The guy was Swedish, or maybe Danish… Scandinavian, for sure. He had some batshit crazy ideas about metahumans, about tapping into dormant genes, that kind of nonsense…” Jesus paused and looked around the room.

  “Yeah, maybe not so crazy,” Jamie-Lyn said with a humourless smile.

  “Oh, man, this is… what the hell is this?” Doc asked the group, shaking her head.

  “We don’t know,” CJ answered firmly. “That is the bottom line. We don’t know anything for sure.”

  “That’s not quite true,
” Crimson added cryptically.

  “Meaning?” Jamie-Lyn replied.

  “We know that Marshall was a sanctimonious pain in the arse and that Bull was a boy scout.” He held up his hands to quickly quiet the oncoming complaints. “But someone killed them and tried to kill me. Damn near succeeded, too. Whatever this thing is, it’s a killer and it’s lethal. It was faster than Six-Shooter, it sliced up Bull, and it snuck up on me. Wherever it came from, whoever sent it, we need to know what we’re dealing with before we all die.”

  “You almost sound like you care,” Doc said cynically.

  “Hey, regardless of what you think of me and what I think of all of you, we’re family, however much I might not like it. Besides, it’s my reputation that takes a beating every time one of my kin goes down, and that shit most definitely will not stand.”

  “That sounds a little more like you.” Doc nodded.

  “So what do we do?” Jamie-Lyn asked.

  “You do nothing,” Jesus interjected forcefully. “None of you are active agents anymore. None of you have any authority here. You are all officially placed under our protection. Clear?”

  The group all looked noncommittal.

  “Well just to be crystal clear, that wasn’t a suggestion. If I have to lock you up for your safety, then I will,” Jesus responded forcefully. “CJ!” he ordered, motioning for him to follow him as he left the room leaving Jamie-Lyn, Doc and Crimson behind.

  “So that’s it?” Jamie-Lyn exclaimed. “We’re just going to sit here and hope to be protected?”

  “What else can we do?” Doc asked.

  “Well I say we stop running and we go on the offence,” Crimson said, and despite the peril they were all facing, his eyes seemed to dance with excitement. “We’ve all taken a kicking, and I for one think it’s time to dish a little out.”

  ----------

  chapter 16

  THE NEW BATTLEFIELD

  Quentin Link remained at his post long after Summer Sloan had left, the young woman having demonstrated little in the way of the patience required to do this job.

  Since he’d left the service, his life had largely been a solitary one, which in truth suited him fine. He had never been comfortable in the company of others, something which had never gone down well in the male-dominated, team-focused environment of the army.

  He’d soon gravitated towards the more technical aspects of the service, and with a natural aptitude for the upcoming computerised revolution within warfare, he had soon found himself at the cutting edge of a whole new battlefield.

  His two main problems with serving within the armed forces was simply the lack of action, long periods of inactivity interspersed with the occasional deployment. Even when he did find himself on the front lines, his work was largely conducted from an operational hub far away from any real danger.

  The second problem, of course, was far more predictable: the pay. He had grown up in a one-parent, poor working-class background, and as such, he carried that chip on his shoulder throughout his life. Watching those with far less ability than he have everything handed to them on silver platters was always a bitter pill to swallow. Having to salute senior officers with their rank, plummy accents, and country estates back home, always rankled hard.

  He had put in his time, served his country, and by the end of it, he had an unmatched skill set and empty pockets.

  The private sector had been undoubtedly attractive but somewhat unattainable without a personal invite.

  Such a break had finally come in the form of Major William Buckley, retired.

  Buckley had always been the one officer that Link had come across that he could stand – a large bear of a man with a ramrod straight back and a piercing stare that could penetrate the hardest of serving men and women.

  The main reason that Link had time for Buckley was the fact the major was the rarest of breeds, a man who had worked his way up through the ranks from a private all the way to the top without so much as a silver spoon in sight.

  Buckley had been a hero amongst the enlisted men and shunned by his fellow officers, an officer who had walked the front-line trail with his men right up until an IAD took both his legs.

  No one had heard from the man after he’d left the service; he’d disappeared like a ghost and become merely a rumour.

  Link had been living his own sparse life when he’d gotten the call, one that had changed his life, or – as he liked to think of it – corrected his life.

  Buckley had been running his own show from a penthouse apartment in Mayfair, one of the swankier parts of London. The man had been a leader in uniform and had easily transitioned into one from his wheelchair.

  He’d lost a man in Abuja Nigeria, someone who’d lost his focus and gotten himself seized by rebel forces while doing an arms deal with the government.

  Buckley had offered Link enough money to tempt him to fly out into a warzone providing logistical backup to the small private army that Buckley had assembled to help the fight against an attempted coup.

  The work had been dangerous, exciting and highly paid, everything that Link had been hoping for.

  He had tracked the rebel leader’s jungle base of operations as well as discovering the man’s entire financial structure, thus crippling the attempted coup by cutting the head off the snake both figuratively and literally.

  The work with Buckley had been steady and highly paid, enough for him to start to live the life that he felt he deserved and then to fund his foray out into the private sector under his own flag.

  Buckley had understood when Link told him that he wanted to strike out on his own, the older man seeing much of himself in Link.

  As a result, Link hadn’t had to use the dossier that he’d spent three years assembling on his boss. He was pleased about that. He did genuinely like Buckley and hadn’t felt good about the prospect of ruining the man.

  The backup plan, if he needed it, had been to take the man’s business for himself: the contacts, the network the whole show. But in the end, Buckley had offered him loose partnership. He’d send Link all of the smaller jobs that he couldn’t, or didn’t want to, handle, more than enough for Link to get started.

  The only trouble was that there was a line in the sand quickly approaching, one that Link was going to have to decide if he was going to cross, if he hadn’t already.

  His current job with Wilson Fontaine had been the first that should have gone to Buckley, and he knew that the retired major would not be happy with losing it to Link. There was a reckoning coming, one where he would have to decide if the city was big enough for both of them, or if Buckley would have to retire, permanently.

  After Summer had left, he found himself watching the care home with his usual patience. He could sit motionless for days on a job but this one had its own added interest.

  Back in his service days, he had come to a crossroads when he’d been required to specialise.

  The Queen’s Guard had been his first choice, and he’d applied for the transfer. The SOUL war had been in full swing and the only game in town as far as Link was concerned. Religious extremists using guerrilla tactics on home soil, bombings, assassinations, murders all committed in the name of Christianity, but a perversion of the religion’s beliefs.

  Link had been sure of his acceptance, right up until he was rejected without a reason. It had been the first and last time that he’d ever been rejected for anything and it still burned him to this day.

  In truth, he’d have taken the job from Fontaine even without the huge payment he’d negotiated. This was a chance to prove to the Queen’s Guard that he was better than any of them, one man against the whole department, and he could never lose.

  Cars had started to leave the care home now. Agents had secured a rear entrance and several people had been ushered out under a heavy guard and whisked away.

  Link had a monitoring drone silently hovering above and had crystal clear images of the people leaving.

  He identified Jamie-Ly
n Anderson, the journalist who’d once been the PR face of the unit until she’d left to work for one of Fontaine’s TV stations.

  Also present was Helen Forbes, formally known as Dr Quantum, and of course, the unmistakable, albeit rare, sight of Cosmic Jones himself.

  The man clearly in charge was the man known as Jesus, also known to Link, thanks to his unique talents as Hamish Barrington, son of the legendary Alexander Barrington, the man who’d set up the Queen’s Guard in the first place.

  The final exiting figure came as a shock to Link, mainly because somehow he hadn’t seen the man enter in the first place, something he’d thought impossible.

  The man was tall and wiry, and even though he kept his face hidden from view, Link could tell from the man’s steady and elegant walk that he had to be Royce Langston, better known as Crimson.

  “So we got the whole gang here, or what’s left of them,” Link mused to himself. “Someone got Six-Shooter and Bull. Someone’s hunting the Queen’s Guard.” He breathed heavily as he started to mentally wander away from his original mission.

  Fontaine had hired him to do the bidding of Summer Sloan, and as far as he could tell, she was just after a story, but what Link saw here was an opportunity – an opportunity to prove the Queen’s Guard wrong for rejecting him.

  As he slipped into the driver’s seat and prepared to follow the convoy, he promised himself that he’d prove them all wrong. Dead wrong.

  ----------

  Chris Adams usually enjoyed the long walk back from the tube station to his home. The ARK station manager liked to use the commute time to try and leave behind the day’s work which was normally on the frustrating side.

  ARK had once been a serious newscaster, a station with a reputation for unbiased journalism and unwavering commitment to the truth; unfortunately, that was no longer the case.

  Once Wilson Fontaine had taken over and added the station to his ever expanding media empire, they had fallen under his strict controlling hand.

  Supposedly, the media industry had strict rules concerning a monopoly, but rumour was that Fontaine’s grip was all-encompassing and he owned or controlled most of the stations and newspapers either directly in the light or else indirectly from the shadows.