by James Maxey
We passed by more ringed walkways than I could count, most of them covered in cobwebs. We finally reached the lower floors, which were brightly lit and lined with computers. The elevator came to a stop on the bottom floor. The shaft here widened out into a long, boxy room big enough you could have parked a couple of tractor trailers inside. Reverend Rifle was waiting for us in his full get up, including mask and hat, despite us all knowing who he was and the two hundred feet of dirt above us shielding his eyes from the sun better than that hat could.
“Welcome,” he said, spreading his arms, “to the Rifle Cave.”
“Rifle Cave?” asked Jenny. “I would have gone with Rifle Chamber.”
“Shoot. That’s way better.” Reverend Rifle nodded appreciatively. “Welcome to the Rifle Chamber!”
“You never thought of that?” Jenny asked.
The reverend shrugged. “I don’t get a lot of visitors. I didn’t put all that much effort into naming it.”
I looked around. For a hero’s lair, it was short on trophies. “With all this space, you could display some cool gear from the villains you’ve fought.”
“He fights smugglers, not supervillains,” said Jenny.
“Anything I recover from drug dealers gets converted to cash and donated to local churches,” said the reverend.
“Even the drugs?” I asked.
“Of course not the drugs,” he said. “Those get burned. But, it’s funny you should talk about displaying trophies. It’s what I’m wanting your help with. I told you I’d flown to California to talk to Cut Up Girl.”
“Right,” I said. “About a rifle your mother had owned.”
“My mother had an extensive collection of firearms. Early Winchesters, a long gun once used by Abraham Lincoln, and the gun that had its barrel bent by the Velvet Mask, initiating the age of superheroes.”
“Since Valentine Summers was Ruby’s heir,” said Kracker, “we thought she might know the location of the firearm collection.”
“Any guns on the premises were seized by the FBI when they shut down the Red Line,” I said.
“Yes,” said Kracker. “But those were weapons used by Rose Rifle for missions, plus a sizable stash of firearms the Red Line had confiscated from criminals. The collector’s items never showed up in any official inventories.”
“Who knows?” I said. “They could still be hidden in Ruby’s mansion behind some secret panel or something. The place was a labyrinth. I know that Val found Ruby’s collection of antique lingerie behind a hidden panel weeks after the FBI had searched the place.”
“We’d considered that possibility,” said Reverend Rifle. “Which is why, through a series of shadow buyers, I purchased her house when it was placed up for auction. We’ve been over the property with high tech thermal and ultrasonic imaging. We even have little robotic cockroaches that have explored inside the walls. We didn’t find anything.”
“That’s not precisely true,” said Kracker. “We actually found something that probably solves the mystery.”
“Which is?” asked Jenny.
“Excess tachyons,” said Kracker. “I’m one of maybe six people on the planet who has the hardware needed to filter them from the chronal background.”
“Tachyons?” I said. “Like the tachyon tubes the Legion uses?”
“And the source of Tempo’s speed,” Jenny said. “With them, he paused time and moved at normal human speed while everyone around him became a statue.”
“Precisely,” said Kracker. “This even affected surveillance equipment. I designed an algorithm to search through all the data captured by the various cameras on Ruby’s estate frame by frame. Didn’t find a thing. So, I tweaked the program and ran it again. And, this time…” he motioned toward a darkened television screen. It turned on at the gesture and showed a vaguely human-shaped streak of blue light standing at the foot of Ruby’s bed. Tempo’s costume was mostly blue.
“So you think Tempo searched the place and found the rifle collection?” asked Jenny.
“It’s the most plausible explanation,” said Reverend Rifle. “My mother regarded these rifles as objects of art and history rather than investments. She wouldn’t have stashed them in some bank vault. She would have kept them in her home to appreciate.”
“So now the Legion has them,” I said. “I doubt they’ll hand them over even if you ask nicely. But… so what? You’ve got money. I’m sure the world still full of collectable rifles. Why not start your own collection and stop worrying about the ones that got away?”
“One rifle in her collection is absolutely priceless,” said Kracker. “It’s…” his voice faltered. “It’s, um…”
“Holy,” said Reverend Rifle.
“I was going to say extra-dimensionally enhanced,” said Kracker. “I refuse to believe this rifle is magic.”
“I didn’t believe in magic until I joined the Legion,” I said. “Once you see She-Devil in action, you kind of have to swallow your skepticism and admit, yep, magic’s real.”
“There are powers both divine and devilish that aren’t bound by the same rules of reality that mortals must obey,” said Reverend Rifle. “It’s a peculiar modern insanity that we no longer accept an obvious truth that was understood by every other culture in history.”
“And this gun you’re looking for is supernatural?” I asked.
“It’s reputed to be so,” said Reverend Rifle. “Tell me, what do you know of She-Devil’s history?”
“I know she’s supposed to be really old but that’s about it,” I said. “You think when I joined the Legion I was given some kind of handbook telling everyone’s secret origin?”
“I figured your origin stories would be a natural topic of conversations among coworkers,” said Reverend Rifle.
“Yeah, it is for a lot of my teammates. You can’t get Arc to shut up about how he got turned into living lightning. But She-Devil’s kind of a team of her own. She doesn’t show up to the normal meetings, never pulls monitor duty, and mainly talks to Golden Victory or Retaliator if she talks to anyone.”
“She-Devil’s a snob,” said Jenny.
“I don’t know if I’d call her a snob,” I said. “She just lives in a different world than the rest of us. Most Legionnaires are science based, everyone’s a genetic anomaly or a tech genius. We fight alien invasions and supervillains with robot armies. She-Devil spends her time fighting vengeful ghosts and old gods covered with eyes and tentacles.”
“There are no ‘old gods,’” said Reverend Rifle. “Only demons pretending to be such.”
“Whatever,” I said. “It doesn’t have a lot to do with my daily life.”
“The struggle between heaven and hell is the only thing that truly matters in your life, whether you know it or not,” said Reverend Rifle. “This world is but a fleeting moment. You’ll spend eternity in either paradise or never-ending torment. Your choice.”
“Yeah, so I’ve heard. Since you’re the authority on scripture here, tell me, do dogs go to heaven?”
The reverend rolled his eyes. “That’s something six year olds worry about.”
“Because, if dogs don’t go, then maybe cats don’t go,” I said. “Or horses, or cows, or pigs.”
“It’s heaven, not a barnyard,” said Reverend Rifle.
“But if these mammals don’t go, then why would chimps, gorillas, or orangutans go?”
The reverend’s face went slightly slack.
“And if chimps don’t go, why should I worry about it? I’m more chimp than man.”
“Technically, you’re only half chimp,” Jenny said.
I nodded toward Kracker’s shirt. “Nope. A man’s already 98% chimpanzee. Since my dad was 100%, that means I’m 99%.”
“The fact you worry about these things is proof you have the conscience the Lord gave you,” said Reverend Rifle. “If you have a conscience, you must have a soul.”
Kracker cleared his throat. “Not that I don’t love discussions of theology, but we’ve ki
nd of drifted off topic. We were talking about She-Devil’s origins.”
“Which, um, I know,” said Jenny, raising her hand slightly. “Maybe regular members of the Legion don’t get a handbook, but the Silent Shadows do. Retaliator has a database on all superhuman threats, including his own teammates.”
“Do tell,” said Reverend Rifle.
“I don’t know how much I believe of her story. It’s really more legend than history. According to her file, She-Devil is over 2000 years old. She was a princess in some minor Middle Eastern kingdom, acclaimed for her beauty and spiritual purity. She had suitors arrive from all over the world to win her hand. Among them was a tall, dark, smooth-talking stranger who won her heart. But on the eve of her wedding, the stranger revealed his true self. He was Lucifer, king of hell, and vowed to love only her as his queen. She responded by plunging a dagger into his heart. This failed to kill him, of course. So then she drove the dagger deep into her own breast.”
“That’s one way of calling off a wedding,” I said.
“Angered at her rejection, Lucifer cursed the young woman by hiding her from death’s gaze. She became immortal.”
“Are you sure curse is the right word?” I asked. “Immortality sounds like a reward.”
Jenny shook her head. “There was a second part of the curse. Since the young princess valued her spiritual purity so much, Lucifer cursed her with a sort of spiritual magnetism that made the wickedest men of every age seek her out. Though she couldn’t die, she was still only an innocent young woman never trained for combat. She was doomed to again and again fall into the clutches of evil men and be used as their plaything. Lucifer intended this to be a fate worse than death. However, Lucifer failed to take into consideration mankind’s capacity to grow and learn. Demons and angels, even Lucifer, are created fully grown by God and change little through the eons. The princess kept learning from her experiences. She became a master of all forms of combat, including spiritual combat. Many of the wicked men she faced wielded occult powers. She gained her own mastery of these forces. She became so powerful that, several years ago, they say she actually killed Lucifer himself. Now, she finds herself the reluctant ruler of hell.”
“That’s a way cooler origin story than mine,” I said. “If she really is queen of hell, that’s great news!”
The reverend looked taken aback.
“I mean, if I do go to hell, at least I know the manager.”
The reverend sighed. “Your flippancy keeps you from thinking through the horrible implications.”
“That more or less describes my entire approach to life,” I said.
“The horrible implication in this case is that She-Devil is worshipped as a so-called superhero. Young girls play with her dolls and sleep on sheets adorned with her face. She’s the most successful marketing campaign ever designed by the forces of evil. No longer is the devil thought of as a monster plotting destruction. Instead, she’s a beautiful woman honored as a champion of humanity. She is, quite literally, the greatest threat mankind has ever faced.”
“Because of dolls and bedsheets,” I said.
“Because she helps evil become mundane and commonplace. It wasn’t so long ago that Biblical values prevailed. Homosexuality was a sin, or a mental illness to be corrected rather than a lifestyle to be proud of. Female sexuality was understood to be a powerful thing made even more powerful by modesty. The bedrock strength of families came from women refusing to sleep with a man unwilling or unqualified to be a faithful provider for her children. Now, sex is a casual pleasure, nothing to be taken seriously.”
“And that’s She-Devil’s fault?” I asked.
He frowned. “Not completely, though her outfit hardly encourages modesty.”
Which was true. From the back, She-Devil’s more or less naked. Clothes get in the way of her wings and tail. And, I’m not completely certain that the front of her costume is actually cloth, or if the bikini parts of her body are just black instead of red. I’ve never had the courage to stare long enough to figure it out.
Reverend Rifle continued: “People like my mother had a lot to do with the so-called ‘sexual revolution.’” His mouth puckered as he said this, like the words were distasteful. “In my childhood, I imagined the forces of evil as dark and hidden, lurking in the shadows. I failed to anticipate that true evil would revel in exposing its nakedness in the light of day.”
I started to say, “You’re nuts,” but Jenny jumped in with a more on topic statement. “You want the holy rifle to kill She-Devil.”
I’d kind of forgotten we’d even been talking about a rifle, but the reverend nodded in agreement.
“In the eighteenth century, Pope Victor V discovered that the vaults of the Vatican contained a priceless treasure, an angelic sword forged in the foundries of heaven, fallen to earth after the Battle of the False Apocalypse that took place over Jerusalem in 1462.”
“I really should have paid more attention in history class,” I said. “That sounds metal as hell.”
Reverend Rifle ignored me. “Recognizing that the age of swords as a useful instrument of war was drawing to an end, the Pope ordered the sacred metal to be remade into the barrel of a rifle. According to legend, any bullet fired from the weapon has the power to slay demons.”
“You’d seriously murder She-Devil?” I asked. “She’s saved the world a dozen times.”
Reverend Rifle nodded. “You should want this rifle handy. The Legion wants you dead. She-Devil isn’t going to be taken down by a tranq dart.”
“Do we even know for sure the Legion has the gun?” asked Jenny.
Kracker pointed toward the big screen again, which now showed architectural plans. “The Legion has a top secret underwater vault off the coast of New Jersey where they store armaments that they deem too dangerous to turn over to civil authorities. We think the rifle might be there.”
“Might be?” I asked.
Kracker tapped his fingers on the steering handle of his scooter. “No one dislikes ambiguity more than I do, but in this case I must concede defeat. The vault is surprisingly low tech, probably because so many of the weapons stored inside are high tech. I can’t find any cameras or sensors inside the place to hack. But I do have its location accurately pegged by hacking the GPS logs of the Legion’s submarines.”
“You made fun of Gator earlier, but he’s already on site and has confirmed the location of the vault,” said Reverend Rifle. “Instead of electronic locks, the doors are kept closed by the sheer pressure of being submerged under two hundred feet of water. You need someone with super-strength to get inside. Someone like Golden Victory, or Smash Lass, or—”
“Or me,” I said.
“Another maybe,” said Kracker. “You aren’t really in their league, strength-wise. But, you might be strong enough to get the job done.”
I crossed my arms, feeling a little insulted that he didn’t think I was as strong as Smash Lass, even though, okay, I wasn’t. I was even more insulted that they were talking to me like I was some kind of goddamned supervillain. Sure, I was on the run, and someone inside the Legion was out to get me. But, I’d worked side by side with Legionnaires for almost two years. They were my friends. I knew there might be bad eggs in the Legion—Tempo had been hiding right under our noses as a dangerous drug lord—but the idea that I’d actually help this maniac get his hands on a weapon that could kill She-Devil? If I had to pick between her and this yahoo, it was an easy choice.
Before I could tell him to go fuck himself, Jenny grabbed my hand and gave it a squeeze. She looked Reverend Rifle dead in the eyes and shocked me with the next words out of her mouth.
“All right,” she said. “We’re in.”
Chapter Eight
Day of Rest
WHEN WE CAME BACK up the elevator, Jenny headed toward the kitchen saying she was going to brew more coffee. She planned to study the material Kracker had printed out about the undersea vault. I told her I was heading to my room to nap, even though I�
��d been awake for, I dunno, maybe two hours.
I expected we’d set out on the mission at once, but it was Saturday and the reverend didn’t do missions on Sunday, so he wanted us to use the rest of the day to study the intel Kracker had stolen. I didn’t become a superhero to do homework, and, besides, Jenny would have it all memorized in a few hours. Extra sleep was more important to me than staring at blueprints. I was still sore from fighting McGruber and Atomahawk. Ever since I became Big Ape, my body has been at war with itself. I know there’s a billion clips online of me doing acrobatic leaps and rolls but what you won’t find video of is all the hours I spend holding cold packs against my joints. When I’m full of adrenaline, I push past the pain and perform like a champion athlete. Once I slow down, I limp around like a grandma with a bad hip. The last time the Legion doctors went over my x-rays, they told me if I didn’t give up superheroics, I’d probably need knee replacement surgery before I was thirty.
The catch-22 of my joint pain is that it gets worse if I don’t get plenty of sleep, but when I do sleep I turn into something close to a cripple. Once I’ve had my weight off my joints all night, I can barely walk for the first few minutes I’m awake.
Jenny’s been teaching me yoga to help stay limber, but, I don’t know, I have trouble buying into the whole yoga thing. There’s a mental side to it, a mindset, that’s supposed to bring clarity. The last thing I need inside my skull is clarity. The rev was right. My unserious persona is my only defense against the dark thoughts that threaten to consume me. Am I a man or an animal? Yoga is supposed to be good for the spirit. What if I don’t have a spirit? I once told Val that I believed in souls, in a life force that animates all things. On good days, I still feel it. On not so good days, I suspect I’m an accident of science, a mass of ugly proteins that somehow rose up, stumbled a few steps, and will one day fall down and rot. The blank nothingness that follows that death terrifies me far more than any brimstone and pitchfork vision of hell.