Capes

by Drabble, Matt

  “You tell anyone that garbage and I’ll end you. I’ll slit your bloody throat I’ll… I’ll…” He was unable to finish as Doc merely smiled patiently at him.

  “Okay then. If you’re done, we’ve still got business to deal with,” she said with the sigh of a parent having to indulge a child.

  ----------

  “Gunfire,” CJ announced to the remaining group ten minutes earlier.

  “I can’t hear anything,” Jamie-Lyn replied.

  “They’re using silencers,” he explained.

  The emergency lights were on now, casting their unflattering red glow about the common room.

  The muffled explosion had come after the lights went out and had driven away any hopeful thoughts of a harmless electrical problem.

  “Okay, people, we’re under attack,” Jesus announced, rather unnecessarily. “Doc, you and Jamie-Lyn get to the panic room and lock yourselves in. Take Link here with you. CJ, Crimson… with me.”

  “Crimson’s gone,” Jamie-Lyn said, looking around.

  “Bloody man!” Jesus snapped.

  “I’ll get him,” Doc said calmly.

  “No, I’m not having you wander around out there,” Jesus replied quickly.

  “That’s not what I meant,” she responded as her eyes crackled with purple electricity.

  The woman spent a few moments somewhere else. The others watched her still form and waited for her to return.

  “Holy shit,” Link mused as he stared in shock.

  “Okay,” she finally said when she came back.

  “Did he run?” Jesus asked coldly.

  “He’s not now,” Doc replied.

  “So what have we got?” Jesus demanded.

  “Six men,” CJ announced.

  “Four now,” Doc countered. “Crimson took out two.”

  “Then let us go and deal with the rest,” CJ said with his hands behind his back and the total confidence of what lay in them. “This is my home and I don’t like trespassers.”

  chapter 21

  HOME INVASION PART ONE

  The door to the panic room closed with Jamie-Lyn and Link locked on the inside while the action went on without them.

  The room was set up with a bank of monitors covering the base as well as communication equipment for the interior and to connect with the outside world beyond.

  The CCTV cameras were still functioning, but there was no phone signal inside the vault, and when she tried to use the landline phone, there was no dial tone to call out for help.

  Link tried some of the shortwave radio comms but they all came back dead.

  “Nothing,” he said as she looked at him hopefully. “I’m guessing no signal in here?”

  “No.”

  The door seemed impenetrable, and for the moment they were safe; just how long that might last, they had no idea.

  “Okay then,” Link said, looking around at their surroundings. “This vault has its own air supply, and nothing short of a nuclear missile ought to bring the thick steel door down. Hell, the whole building could fall down on top of us and it should remain standing.”

  “My biggest concern now isn’t the vault. We might be safe, but what about the others? From in here, we can’t help. We can only watch and pray.”

  “Maybe not. Maybe I can do something,” he replied, looking at the equipment on the desk in front of them. “This stuff should be linked to a central government system. In theory, the cavalry should already be on their way once the base went dark.”

  “I doubt it. They appear to have taken great care to manoeuvre us into this particular place at this particular time. I doubt if they are going to allow anyone to interfere.”

  “Well that’s a cheery thought.” Link grinned. “But there’s one thing they didn’t count on.”

  “Please don’t say you,” Jamie-Lyn muttered under her breath.

  “Me,” Link said proudly. “Now, this old girl may be due for retirement, but I think I can get a tune out of her, get a signal out and save our collective asses. I bet they haven’t thought of that!”

  ----------

  James Rhodes sat at his desk. It was a dull and boring post where nothing of note ever happened, but tonight his face was a bright red mask of sweat and nerves.

  His corner of the world was a small cubicle in a large room filled with similar work spaces.

  All of the other workers had the same set of temporary erected walls around their desks, but most of the others manned helplines designated to help the public with everything from tax advice to pest control.

  During the night, only a handful of the other desks were manned, and the large open space became a rattling echo space where nothing ever happened.

  Rhodes sat at his desk now, hoping and praying that no one came wandering over and saw that his own screen was suddenly a flashing mess of lights and warning signs.

  The Queen’s Guard base had been a research facility for a number of years now, and his monitoring position was largely unwarranted, hence the downgrading to a single man at a single desk.

  Back in the day, the base would have been hooked up to one of the private offices at the prime minister’s residence where a senior military officer would have sat ready to spring into action should SOUL launch an attack. But defunding after the war had stripped the unit of any priority; now, it was a single desk in a call centre.

  Rhodes stood up and checked around to make sure that Daisy wasn’t about to wander by and ask him to share their break together again.

  She was a pleasant woman but way too needy for his liking, and most of their conversations tended to revolve around whatever personal crisis had struck her down that week.

  He had the screens set to mute and was ready to switch them off should Daisy suddenly appear and get too close. He’d liked to have switched them off altogether, but he needed to know when the attack was over and he could relax again.

  The plan was that he would make sure that no one intercepted the knowledge that the base was under attack, to keep it silent until it was all over. If he did his job, then he would be safe, or at least that was supposed to be the deal.

  The system was telling him that there had been an explosion at the base, that the camera surveillance was down and that the phone signals were being jammed.

  The plan was that he should immediately notify his boss, which then would go all the way up the line and prompt a military response, and then an emergency strike team would be dispatched. It was, of course, his job to make sure that no such alarm was raised.

  It was a job up until around three weeks ago that he did actually take very seriously and proudly, that was until he’d received a visit from a woman one early Sunday morning.

  She hadn’t had to identify herself. He’d recognised Cynthia Arrow the moment he’d opened the door.

  His job, being what it was, meant he was more than familiar with all of the files on the SOUL wars and the major players even though he’d been just a child at the time.

  She hadn’t seemed to have aged a day from the photograph in her file even though the image was at least 15 years old.

  She had been dressed smartly in an expensive-looking business suit and crisp white blouse, standing outside of his modest terraced home like a visitor from an accountancy firm. But her eyes had been far from dull; they had sparkled with vibrancy and life despite the rumours of her death.

  His first thought was that she’d been there to kill him. They were standing on opposite sides of an admittedly dead war, but instead, she’d invited herself in and made herself at home in his kitchen, putting the kettle on and making a pot of tea.

  He’d watched on in disbelief, with a very English perception of not wanting to appear rude by demanding to know what she was doing in his house.

  She had simply laid a tablet down on the table with several crystal-clear photographs on the desktop, images of a young woman he’d met recently, a woman who he had started dating, a woman who had taken him to bed, a woman now starin
g back at him in a school uniform.

  She’d kept him waiting while she’d pottered about in his kitchen, while he had swiped through the tablet in shock at the illegally young woman and him in various states of undress and intimacy.

  It didn’t matter that he hadn’t known; it didn’t matter that she had pursued him. It didn’t matter that he’d seen what he knew now to be a fake driving licence with a fake age on it. He knew that it didn’t even matter if the woman was actually underage or if this was a set-up: the butter-wouldn’t-melt innocent image of her in a school uniform was all that anyone would see and he would be a monster.

  He’d asked Cynthia if this was real, if Anita was a schoolgirl, but the woman had simply smiled and asked him if it mattered, thus confirming his fears.

  She had given him his orders: monitor the system, prevent anyone from raising the alarm if a signal happened to come through, and keep his mouth shut.

  He hated the idea of being compromised, but what choice did he have? All he could do was hope that Cynthia Arrow would keep her word.

  There were only three people with access to his system, and he couldn’t help but wonder why she’d singled him out for her attention. Surely Davis or Maguire must have darker secrets than he did.

  He checked the monitor again and saw that the alarm had been pinging now for 16 minutes. As far as he knew, there was no back-up if he failed to respond. The system, in truth, had needed an update for some years now but had been deemed obsolete, much like the unit itself.

  “How’s it going?” A voice startled him, and he turned guiltily to see Daisy standing behind him.

  He reached out and switched the monitor off, praying that she hadn’t seen anything. He’d muted it earlier, so now there was nothing to alert her, that was if she hadn’t seen the flashing red light to begin with.

  “Are you supposed to do that?” she asked, pointing at the blackened screen.

  “Oh, nothing ever happens here. You know that,” he replied, trying to smile naturally. “Besides, I could do with coffee. Wanna join me?”

  “Oh great,” she enthused. “I just have to tell you what Percy did last night.”

  He didn’t need to ask to know that Percy was one of Daisy’s cats; every name she ever mentioned tended to belong to a feline.

  They left the cubicle and headed into the break room where he pulled two mugs from an overhead cabinet and gave the coffee pot a gentle touch to make sure it was still hot enough.

  He poured while Daisy talked in rapid-fire motion, occasionally nodding his head whenever she looked at him for a response; it was easier than actually listening.

  They sat at one of the tables. Daisy talked while he thought, mainly about what he was going to do if Cynthia didn’t live up to her end of the bargain… criminal masterminds rarely did, at least in the movies.

  He was starting to come to a decision. He would throw himself on the mercy of the bosses, go to them and tell them everything. Maybe being a government employee, even if Anita was underage, meant that they’d cover it up to avoid a scandal.

  He mainly hoped and prayed that she wasn’t. He couldn’t believe that such an intelligent and worldly wise woman could be a child. No, it was far more likely that Cynthia had set him up, that he’d find out that Anita was just one of her minions.

  Besides, he was a loose end, and he couldn’t shake the feeling that people like Cynthia Arrow just wouldn’t leave a loose end lying around.

  “Don’t you think?” Daisy asked, poking through his thinking.

  “I’m sorry, Daisy,” he said, standing up. “There’s… there’s something I’ve got to do.”

  “Sounds serious.”

  “It is.” He sighed. “But I’ve got to.”

  “Oh dear, that’s a shame,” she said sadly.

  “What…?” But his words ended there.

  Daisy had pulled a small pistol with a silencer attached and was now aiming it at his chest.

  “Daisy? What are you doing?”

  “What I have to.”

  “Wait a minute… Daisy, did she get to you? What does she have? What does Cynthia Arrow have on you because I promise you we can fight it. We can go to the bosses together. Together, Daisy, you and me. I know that you’ve always… liked me. Well, we can go together… be together.”

  Daisy reached down and started to unbutton and pull down her trousers, low enough to expose her hips.

  “Whoa!” Rhodes said, holding his hands up. “Not now!”

  But Daisy had already stopped. She wasn’t undressing. She was showing him a small tattoo on her hip, a downwards pointing sword with twin halos over the hilt: the SOUL mark.

  “Daisy?” he asked, confused.

  She answered by shooting him twice in the chest before stepping over his dropped body and firing once at close range into his head. Once she was sure he was dead, she popped the gun into her mouth and fired a third and final time, her body slumping and falling down onto his in an eternal embrace.

  ----------

  Jesus’ first notion was to head towards the armoury. He had a .38 revolver in a shoulder holster under his jacket but it felt far too little to stand against an armed incursion.

  Doc had faded beyond the realms of human sight lines and headed back out into the base for recon. There were now four enemy soldiers in the facility and they needed to know where they were and where they were heading.

  He did a quick mental check in his head. There should currently be 13 staff members on duty: some lab techs, a few custodial workers and a couple of security guards, all of who were now at risk.

  The thing was, though, he had to prioritise; he couldn’t go rushing out trying to play hero, trying to save everyone out there when the real targets were the team. It might have sounded cold but he had to be cold. He had to do the best thing, which didn’t always mean the right thing. He had to be his father.

  He had already run a few steps with CJ in tow before wanting to slap himself in the face for his own stupidity.

  “CJ,” he barked. “Armoury.”

  CJ nodded and placed a hand on his arm before they were both engulfed in a purple electricity cloud. The next second, they appeared inside the armoury and Jesus had to fight the urge to throw up.

  Once the nausea subsided, he firstly took off jacket then his shoulder holster and set it aside before pulling a Kevlar bulletproof vest over his head and fastening it tightly.

  Next, he set about swapping out his .38 for another handgun, this time a .357 Sauer. He quickly put on a twin shoulder holster and slipped two of the weapons into it. Lastly, he grabbed a SA80 assault rifle and slid several magazines into the empty slots on the holster straps.

  “You need anything?” he asked CJ, but the tall green alien merely raised an eyebrow. “Fair enough,” Jesus replied.

  They slipped back out into the corridor beyond, Jesus taking point with the assault rifle raised up on his shoulder and the safety off.

  “Shouldn’t I lead?” CJ asked quietly.

  “We don’t know what they’re armed with, pal. Bullets may have bounced off you in the past…”

  “They don’t bounce off me.”

  “Okay, the whole weird energy force field thing… whatever… the point is that we don’t know what we’re dealing with here. In truth, we don’t know a bloody thing and that’s on me, so for now, you are too valuable to risk so stay behind me. Any bullets come our way, I’ll be the one taking them, and that’s an order.”

  ----------

  Doc moved as swiftly as she dared, but that wasn’t particularly quickly. It had been so long since she’d used her abilities on such a regular basis that she was rusty to say the least.

  Maintaining her form to remain out of phase was a tough ask even at her peak, but now it was taking every ounce of her concentration to stay hidden.

  She headed towards the sounds of earlier violence and steeled herself against what she might encounter; it wasn’t a long trip.

  Two bodies were lying on t
he ground slumped against a wall – two lab techs with large-bore bullet holes and dead eyes staring upwards.

  Her form momentarily phased back into view like a flickering TV image lurching into focus but she caught it just in time and made the adjustment.

  It had been a long time since she’d looked down on dead bodies and it was something that she’d never wanted to see again, yet here she was, dragged back into the violence that she’d sworn to bury behind her forever.

  She wasn’t armed – well, not in the most commonly defined sense at least. She didn’t want to use her abilities, certainly not in a lethal sense, but these people weren’t leaving her much of a choice. The last thing she wanted was yet more blood on her hands but innocent lives were at stake here.

  The business of being a hero was far dirtier and bloodier than anyone on the outside could ever know. Otherwise, why would anyone ever want to set foot in this world?

  The reality of their lives meant that only really people like Crimson ever truly belonged there; only men like him could ever spend their entire lives there and not go insane.

  She pressed on forwards, hoping to save lives instead of take them. She pressed on with the best of intentions; she pressed on without realising that she was being followed.

  ----------

  Tommy Barnes had caught a fleeting glimpse of something, maybe someone, but then it was gone like a trick of the light.

  He swung his weapon up and round the corner of the hallway but now it was empty save for the two bodies that one of his comrades had dropped.

  In reality, he hadn’t seen anything, or at least he wasn’t sure he had, just a one-second shimmer that may have been something or else might have been an optical illusion.

  Their files on the base and the Queen’s Guard were extensive, and while most of his crew had only been kids during the SOUL war, they’d heard enough to know that these people were dangerous in the extreme.

  The one they called Dr Quantum was supposedly able to turn herself invisible. Even though he’d read this in her file, he still found it hard to believe.

  So much of the Queen’s Guard’s reputation seemed to be yet more overblown public relation garbage, at least to him. He was a soldier; he’d served his country in a whole host of blackspots around the world, and he’d watched on as his deeds had been either greatly exaggerated or denied entirely.