This was the first I’d heard of it. The first time he’d said anything. “What happened to him?”
“He was a professor. He taught grade school. Taught his students always to ask questions, that it was never wrong to ask a question. Taught them to learn. But it was what he didn’t teach them, that mattered in the end.”
“And that was?”
“Corazon’s propaganda. The histories the dictator had his bureaucrats rewrite. Narrow-minded little men writing narrow-minded little lies to make sure the next generation had properly narrow minds.”
I felt my teeth click together, fought to keep from grinding them. The man was dead, but the damage he had done would take decades to undo.
“They came for him in the night. I slept through it.” He turned away from me.
“How old were you?”
“Ten.”
“There was nothing you could have done.”
“I know that now. I didn’t know anything, then. I didn’t know what had happened. We were well-off. If you were poor, you knew what was going on, back then. But we were rich enough that people didn’t talk about those things. Everyone pretended to know nothing.” I put my hand on his back, felt his muscles tense. “Do you understand how that was? Can you understand what it was like?”
“How could she understand?” I asked him.
“I couldn’t let it be. I kept asking questions. I asked until my mother’s hair turned gray, until the neighbors wouldn’t talk to me anymore, until my classmates laughed at me and made up stories about where they’d seen my Father. That’s when I started fighting. I was ten, and I was all the time fighting, and I had to get good at it. I’ve been practicing ever since, you know? Just keeping on fighting, and keeping on asking questions. Because the people who want you to stop asking questions are usually the people who have the most to lose from the answers.”
“And they’re usually the ones who need to lose,” I whispered. “Fucking assholes running the show, getting fat through the suffering of their fellow humans. Sitting behind the scenes, drinking in the misery, and turning a blind eye or reveling in it because either way the profits keep rolling in and their lives get easier from it. Fuck them. They need to burn, and oh she’s going to set such a fire under their fat asses, that the world will laugh to see it...”
“No way to do that without burning the good people they surround themselves with. The shields and hostages they con into taking the bullets for them.”
“So get better bullets. Dire’s very good at making better bullets.”
“Not that easy.” he sighed. “And you have to watch out. There’s always someone else trying to step up. When I found my teacher, when I got good at my game, when I first put on the mask and went out into the night, I started to hurt Corazon. I started winning. And so he went looking for help. He found it.”
“Maestro M,” I muttered.
“That’s when the game changed. I turned from being the hunter to the hunted. I lost the few I’d gathered to my side, one by one.” His eyes glistened in the weak light.
I pretended not to see the tears. “It never gets any easier, does it?” I’d lost so many, myself, over the last few years. I didn’t want to lose Manuel, too. But here we were, risking it all in a country not our own, against a villain doing his damnedest to remain in the shadows. He’d had around a decade or so to set up his preparations. No part of this would be easy.
“No, it never does. But the thing I was trying to say, the thing you need to keep in mind, is that I am who I am. I will never stop asking questions. I will never stop seeking answers.” He sat up now, looked down on me. “Even if you do not know them, I will do everything I can to figure it out. No matter how much they might hurt your feelings.”
I rose as well, feeling my good mood evaporate. “Do you think her some fragile flower? Some mooning love-struck fool? She is Dire, Manuel. Never forget that.”
“Acertijo,” he corrected. “Mister Riddle. Not Manuel, in the end. This is just the face I wear to the world when I am not working.”
“That makes two of us.” I stared into his eyes, and something he saw must have spooked him, for he looked away first.
“I should go. Get to the laboratory and scout it, before midnight.”
I nodded. “Yes. Yes, you should go.” In the flicker of a second, I weighed a thousand more things to say, tried to match them to my emotional state at the moment, and failed. Safer not to say anything. So I didn’t.
The words we didn’t say lay between us as he showered, suited up, and slipped out the door.
“Safe to come in?” Alpha asked, after he’d gone.
“Sure.” I was naked but neither of us cared. He didn’t have any hormones to speak of, and I wasn’t oedipally-inclined. Technically he was my creation. Would be. Fuck time travel.
“Yeah, this place looks about as shitty as I thought. Wonder if you get cable?” He grabbed the remote, started flipping channels.
“Trying to sleep here,” I muttered, pulling the covers back over myself.
“Could have fooled me, judging by the noise earlier. Hey, wait, is that bed for me? Awwww...”
I tried to tell him not to be silly, but the room faded away with my consciousness.
I dreamed, and I knew guilt. We’d had something earlier, or the potential for something, Manuel and I. But now I feared we’d wrecked it, in the space of a night.
Was this how relationships are? How fragile they are? How the hell did people do this sort of thing? Watching every word, trying to manage not only your own feelings but your significant other’s...
I woke with new determination. Fuck all that noise, fuck being hurt and irritated and angsty. I had one goal, then I could leave this country. After it was done, Manuel and I could figure out what to do with ourselves.
Midway through purging my digestive tract of that horrible, horrible pizza, Alpha knocked on the door. “Heroes are getting an early start, too. Want to watch?”
“Absolutely!” I finished my business, dressed, and got ready for a show. The nanocams were good for a few days before burning out, typically. Or being taken out by the wear and tear of regular life.
Alpha, sitting on “his” own bed, waved at the television screen. “Took the liberty of fixing it up.” He’d run a cable from the USB port to his torso. “Hope you don’t mind me-o-vision?”
I flopped on my bed, and watched Manchester go by through a car window. Thrush wasn’t flying for once. Probably trying to keep a low profile, take me by surprise.
Then she turned right, to take in the guy driving the car.
“Now who is that?” I wondered. Dapper middle-aged man, with a full head of white hair, and— oh, wait, I recognized that pince-nez. “Mister Leo has a human form! Well, that’s cute.”
“There’s ice cream in the mini-fridge if you want a thoroughly unhealthy breakfast.”
“This room has a mini-fridge?”
Alpha nodded toward the nonfunctional, now-in-pieces heating unit, and the box of jury-rigged components that had taken its place. “It does now.”
Okay, so it was pretty good to have a minion. I found a pint of Haagen-Dazs inside, complete with spoon, and went to town as I watched Hero TV.
It got boring, fast. Unlike most movies or television shows, where the hero eavesdrops on the villains and learns what they need to know within seconds, most people don’t randomly divulge useful information at the most opportune moments for their unseen spies. I learned more than I cared to about rugby and how wicked cool the New Zealand All-Blacks were, how Manchester was a lousy town to drive in, and that Mister Leo was a bit concerned about Lady Thrush’s grades given she’d had to get permission to take a few days off for this jaunt.
Interesting fact, though not very useful to me; Lady Thrush, aka Caroline, had parents who not only knew of her alter-ego but encouraged her to go out heroing. There was a story there, though I didn’t know it. Thinking about it logically, I supposed that if you had a superpowered n
igh-indestructible teenage daughter, it was probably a good way to get her venting aggressions and working out her issues in an environment where she was unlikely to hurt anyone who didn’t have it coming. And she’d have other, elder heroes looking after her, on the way. Case in point with Leo, I supposed. Reading between the lines, I got the feeling that their relationship was entirely professional. Bit of fondness going both sides, but nothing improper.
I turned my attention to my workshop, pulling up the custom-made app on my phone, and checked the armor’s progress. Multi-tasking helped keep my mind busy. Always a struggle, that. Boredom was my true nemesis, and I had to keep it on its toes.
After a few minutes, the heroes turned to a more interesting topic.
Namely, me.
“I read up on her on the wikis, you know. Right horrible villain,” Lady Thrush said.
“Hum?”
“Got a lot of people killed. Blew part of Icon City right up!”
“Half a moment there. Say that again?” Mr. Leo’s eyebrows vanished into his hairline. He kept his eyes on the road though, I admired his restraint.
“Well, not at the same time. Says she teleported everyone out before she blew up the city. The whole getting people killed was a gang war, or some rot like that.”
“Teleported everyone out. That would explain her exit last night. I rather wish you had mentioned that sooner, Caroline.”
“I didn’t read that bit until the drive up.” I caught a glimpse of the edge of her phone as she waved it at him. She had cutesy bird stickers on her phone case.
Gods damn, this was going to make her hard to take seriously.
Lady Thrush continued. “Anyways, you could have read it yourself, too.”
“Ah yes, that gridnet thing. Hurts my eyes these days. Prefer saving the strain for more important things.”
Older than he looked, maybe?
“And then there’s that Mariposa business. I remember that was all over the telly last year. You think she’s trying to upgrade to conquering a real country?”
I ground my teeth. Probably a good thing Manuel wasn’t here to hear this. Such condescension, to a people who had known hardship she couldn’t imagine. It turned my stomach.
To my surprise, Mister Leo seemed to be a bit put out as well. “You know, I was just a boy when the revolution happened out that way. Some bloody years, those. A lot of good people died. Our lads and too many innocents. They certainly thought it a real country. Worth dying for, at any rate.”
“Sorry. Didn’t mean nothing by it.”
“Anything.” He slowed down at a stoplight, turned to face her. “You didn’t mean anything.”
“Right. Anyway, what if she’s trying that here? What if Doctor Dire’s trying to take over?”
“Unlikely. Seems like she’s having a row with whoever’s behind that underground lab. Still not sure what that creature was. Smelled all wrong, never seen its like before.”
“Has there been any word from Queensguard on that?’
Queensguard! That was potential trouble. Britain’s foremost superhero team, and they had a few scientifically-minded people on their team, with the resources to back it up. That was one of the reasons I’d launched my drone run to retrieve the Blanks when I did, to avoid that team in particular.
Of course the local heroes would go to Queensguard when they found out I was involved. Kicking a problem upstairs was a fine and logical tradition for this sort of thing.
I shook the train of thought from my head, and focused back on the screen. Thrush was looking out the side window. The city receded to their left, looked like they were on the highway now, heading... yeah, they were heading toward Peak Country. Good.
“What do you think we’ll find out here?” Lady Thrush asked Leo.
“I asked my London connections about the local weres. Nothing.”
“Were they giving you grief about being a cat in a wolf’s world again? Lycanthropic prejudice and all that?”
“Alpha,” I said, “check on our silver supplies.”
“Got a few pounds.”
“Awesome.” I hauled up the app and set a makerbot working on a few bullets. Not that I wanted to shoot the guy, and he’d been no threat to me in the suit, but he was smart and might catch me out of it at some point. Werewolves had been a prime pain in my arse the last time they’d surfaced, so it was only sensible.
“No,” Leo said to his sidekick or whatever she was, “I mean to say that there was nothing. There are no weres left in this area. At all. There were some at one point. They’re gone, and anyone who tries to move into the old pack territory vanishes.”
“Nobody’s done anything about this?”
“Done what, precisely? Gone to the authorities, and told them that these people who are secretly werewolves went missing?” Leo smiled. No real mirth in that grimace. “After that business in the eighties, you’ll find neither trust nor love for the government in our little community. Thatcher has a lot to answer for.”
A presence behind me cleared his throat, and I jumped, fell off the bed, and scrabbled for a weapon—
—as Manuel smiled serenely.
“Alpha? You could have said something.” I picked myself up along with the remnants of my dignity.
“About wha— whoa!” Alpha did a double-take. “I didn’t hear him come in!”
“Yes, that is why you are working with me, remember?” Manuel dropped a duffel bag to the floor.
“Showoff,” I muttered. No real heat from it though, and he smiled. First time today I’d seen him smile. So naturally, I spoke before I thought and tried to kill the mood. “Hey, about last night—”
Yeah, there went that smile. “Let’s focus on the matter at hand. We can work out things later.”
“Right. What do we have?”
“A glorious deathtrap.”
“It’s that bad?”
“Yes and no. If someone were to venture in stupidly, and assume that they were dealing with a moron, they would probably be badly hurt or captured, or both.”
“How so?”
Manuel reached into the duffel bag, sorted through his costume, and pulled out the camera I’d built for him. “This is what they have.”
I nodded. “Alpha?” My minion took the camera, ejected the data stick, and shoved it into his skull.
The television switched from heroes to eerie night vision shots, of modern steel and concrete buildings in a high-walled compound. The moors rolled around it, sparse trees and tall grasses, with mountains rising in the distance. He’d gotten a few good panning shots of them, enough to make one hell of a postcard series.
“So. Where’s the moron trap part come in?”
“Not for a while. Alpha, fast forward through the interiors, please?”
“Fast slide-show,” I added. I was a speed-reader with eidetic memory, thanks to my power. This way I’d have some reference photos on file, as it were, if I ever got in a tight spot.
Right now they were showing a pretty unremarkable office building. The pictures flicked through empty hallways, empty save for security guards. He had a lot of rear shots of those guys, including one upside down.
“Freeze frame. Go back six,” I told Alpha. “All right, how’d you get that one?”
“They had a drop ceiling through that part.” Manuel’s grin radiated smugness. “Had to break out the climbing harness and go slow, but it was worth it.”
“And you evaded the electronic security?”
“That phone app you gave me showed everything well before I got into range. Trickiest thing there had a five-second window. Two more than I needed.”
“Uh-huh. Resume.” Images flashed past, until they came to a dark-oak paneled office. And something in the middle of it that made my heart rate jump, and not in a good way. “Whoa, hold on—”
The slideshow stopped, revealing a man who was seven feet if he was an inch, and rotund as a jumbo-sized beer keg. Bald scalp, hairless even to the point that he was without
eyebrows. He wore a suit that probably cost more than the rent for our pricey Southwark apartment, a suit he was poured into like jelly made of muscle and fat.
But that wasn’t what had sent adrenaline down my spine.
His face was... wrong.
“You see it too?” Manuel asked. He scooted up next to me, put his arm around my shoulders. “What’s that word, for something that’s supposed to look human, but isn’t?”
“Uncanny valley,” I whispered.
“He was there past midnight. Wide awake. Tapping away on a keyboard that wasn’t plugged in. Picking up a phone sometimes, that wasn’t turned on. And that suit? It’s a part of him.”
“Say what now?”
“No seams. It moved perfectly with him. I checked that, I threw a pen at one point, he got up and investigated.” Manuel motioned to Alpha, and the scenes clicked by bit by bit.
“Those timestamps don’t look right.”
“They’re accurate. I was pushing the button as fast as I could.”
Suit man was moving fast, covering a lot of ground toward the corner of the room, then around, as the pictures flickered by. Too fast.
Then one shot of his small, smiling face on his massive body, looking right toward the camera.
“That’s about where I stopped taking pictures. He started sniffing, and I got out of there.”
I tapped my chin. “Heightened smell, maybe? Or just trying to psyche you out?”
Manuel shrugged. “I don’t know if it was that smart.”
“You still took a risk there. We talked about this.” I felt my cheeks heat. “You’re not alone in this. You don’t need to be throwing pens next to a... whatever that was. If you get caught, Dire’s screwed.”
Manuel glared back. “I know what I am doing. I was doing this a long time before our—” He caught himself. “Nevermind. Look, the point is, he is a trap.”
I forced my neck around, turned back to the screen. “Right. Probably built to give whichever hero shows up a massive fight, while the real Envy slips out the back door. Not many back doors there, though. Moors all around, it’d be hard to get away.”
“There’s tunnels, not large, though. I couldn’t get in them.”
DIRE:SINS (The Dire Saga Book 5) Page 7