Project Northwoods

by Jonathan Charles Bruce

  “Shit!” With that, the feed audibly cut.

  “Hello? Hello?” There was no response. “Damn it!” He shivered in the cold hallway and pondered the merits of returning for a sweater. His internal debate was cut off by a sound. Subtle, but it was there. Arthur, hand on the wall, walked toward it. It seemed to emanate from within Dervish’s apartment, the door having been knocked off its hinges.

  Arthur moved inside the moonlit living room, noticing the lack of disarray apart from the door. He mentally set the scene, Dervish groggily exiting his bedroom at the sound of the door being kicked in, poised for a fight but realizing quickly he was outmatched. And his daughter…

  His heart stumbled again when the noise he had heard from the hallway resumed, and he recognized it as someone wailing. Stair wailing. He jogged to her already ajar door and pushed it open further.

  “No!” came a mix between a whimper and a yell, but Arthur couldn’t see the source. “No, no, no!”

  “Stair, it’s Arthur,” he said, making sure to try to sound as reassuring as possible. He entered the room and cast a glance around, eyes struggling between the heavy shadows and meager light filtering through the window. The sight of a bloody hand print on the wall startled him, and he moved toward it. Arthur stopped immediately when he saw Stair, curled in the corner, crying and clawing at her wrists. She had already broken the skin, working up enough blood to mark the wall earlier. The girl was shying away from the sound of his approaching, convulsing as she did so.

  “No… no… no…” she repeated, shaking her head as she did so.

  Arthur didn’t know what else to do but kneel by her. “Stair?” He reached out to her, pulling away instantly when she shuddered and whimpered at the touch of his hand on her shoulder.

  “Arthur!” the voice erupted over the headset.

  After the jolt of panic wore off, Arthur growled into the headset. “Can this wait?”

  “No, it can’t. A Mark III Search Drone was drawn to the radio activity. Had to shoot it down.”

  “I found a someone they missed,” he said. “Stair, it’s me.”

  “You’re a real humanist, aren’t you?” The tone was halfway between anger and understanding. Arthur ignored it.

  He grabbed Stair’s head and forced her, despite her best efforts, to look at him. “Stair, I need you to focus. We need to get out of here.”

  “They took him,” she said, her eyes drifting to the floor.

  He swallowed. “I know, but he’s still alive, I promise you.”

  Her eyes darted upwards. Chin quivering, tears followed a well-worn path down her cheeks. “Pa?”

  Arthur nodded vigorously. “Please be sure you know what you’re doing, Arthur,” the voice on the headset warned.

  “We’re going to get him back, but you gotta come with me.” He let go of her face and put his hand in front of her, offering it. “Please. I can’t leave you here.” It appeared for a moment that he would lose her again, but her eyes re-focused. She worked her jaw before bringing her hand up and slipping it in his. The blood was mostly dried, save for a slick patch around her wrist. Nevertheless, when his hand closed on hers, she squeezed with an iron-tight grasp that made him want to wince. “We need to put some bandages…”

  “Bandages, Arthur?” the voice snapped, interrupting him. “You can’t waste time with someone who’s wounded!”

  Arthur stood up and helped the girl stand. “She can help me keep steady. I took a blow to my head.” He led her into the bathroom down the hall.

  “Damn it, Arthur…” the voice muttered. In the bathroom, he rifled through the cabinets until he found some gauze.

  “I’m not going to leave a teenager behind,” Arthur said into the earpiece. Stair released his hand and grabbed the rubbing alcohol. She poured it on her cuts without wincing, then held out her arms. Arthur bandaged them as best as he could. “What, no smartass remark?”

  “No.” The reply was surprisingly brief.

  Arthur crouched a little and looked into the girl’s green eyes. They flicked up to meet his gaze. “Stair, I may have to do some very…” He fought for the right word. “Stupid… things. If I tell you to go, you’ll have to go. Alright?”

  “No,” she said solemnly. It wasn’t the same ‘no’ as before, lacking the fear of earlier. It was firm and resolute. “I can help.”

  The earpiece crackled before he could argue. “Talia and Tim are being taken to a separate checkpoint from the others.” Arthur affixed the bandages in place. Stair was looking at the floor as he held out his hand. She clamped on, harder than before.

  Leading Stair out, Arthur smiled grimly. “Why are you telling me this?”

  “If you hurry, and no more search drones show up, Tim will make a better escort than I will.” The answer was perfectly clinical and calculating, like she had planned it all along. “Besides, there’s a stray cat along the way that’s caught in a tree.”

  “Bitch,” he said with a grunt.

  “And you,” she returned in kind.

  The street was eerily quiet as Tim and Talia were escorted down the road. The buildings had been efficiently cleared out, villains bundled into armored buses after registration before being shipped further into the darkened city. From what Talia could tell, most heroes were doing a roving extraction: first clearing out a section, then a small contingent would disengage to patrol the area while the bulk of heroes went to the next sector. Meanwhile, a fresh batch of transports would roll in as the ones packed with villains disappeared.

  What shocked her the most was the speed at which it all happened. Everything, although many tiny mistakes were made, flowed as though it had been rehearsed. To a limited extent, it must have been: the heroes had the same access to education, and anyone with a university or academy degree no doubt had put in countless hours in various field simulations for hostage rescue. From there, it was a fairly easy cognitive leap to believe that the heroes simply altered the parameters of the scenario to turn it into a large-scale kidnapping.

  “So, let me ask you something…” Tim whispered to her, breaking her train of thought. “… If I could get out of these cuffs, do you think you could keep up with me?”

  Talia’s eyes didn’t leave the back of the larger hero’s head. Even from behind, he looked angry, especially in the way he slouched while he walked. “Easily,” she said as her fingers barely brushed against the surface of the zip-ties holding her wrists in place in front of her. If she had been classified as anything but Tier One, they wouldn’t have been so generous with her restraints. In any case, if Tim had a plan, then she was resolved to being a lot more helpful than her present condition allowed.

  “No talking!” the younger and smaller hero from before, apparently named Blaster, shouted behind them before pelting Tim with a sonic wave. The force itself was no larger than a golf ball, but it hit hard enough to leave behind a decent welt if Tim hadn’t been naturally resistant to such things.

  “You were a lot cooler when you were a colossal ballsack,” Tim said as he rolled his eyes. This earned him another pelting.

  Somewhere behind them, the sound of breaking glass made Blaster stop. “What was that?”

  “Nothing,” the larger hero, Snare, grunted.

  “We need to get to the next checkpoint in fifteen minutes,” the Enforcer in the lead, a corporal, drawled. He brought his finger to his ear piece. “Acknowledged, checkpoint gamma. High priority targets en route as per request.”

  “You heard him, degens,” Blaster snarled. “Pick up the pace!”

  “No need for the language,” the female Enforcer bringing up the rear snapped.

  “Sucks that we make the discovery and Arbiter’s bodyguards will get the credit,” the third Enforcer muttered.

  “How do you think we feel?” Snare growled with a look over his shoulder. “I get a broken nose and lose a headline.”

  “I said I was sorry,” Tim said, betraying his lack of compassion. “It didn’t look like a proper nose to me.�
��

  Snare turned around and grabbed Tim by the neck. The smaller man smiled as the hero curled his lip back in a snarl. The female Enforcer’s hand rested on his arm. “Easy, Snare. We need to stay moving. Especially if that search drone was downed instead of malfunctioning.”

  Something else had caught his attention, and soon caught everyone else’s as well. A black car glided toward them in the moonlight. The tires made a gentle rocky growl as they rolled over the pavement at about the speed of a slow walk. It neared the small group, then slowed to a stop. “Someone forget to set their parking brake?” Blaster asked as he moved around the rear of the vehicle.

  “Blaster, get away from it!” barked the corporal.

  But someone, hidden from their line of sight by the car, leapt up and brought something down across the hero’s face. With a flash of blue and a snap of electricity, Blaster went down, convulsing. The attacker turned to the group, and Talia immediately felt elated and shocked at the sight of a determined Arthur.

  “Rogue!” the lead Enforcer shouted, swinging his assault rifle around to the front. “Switch to live rounds!” Talia launched herself at the nearest Enforcer and looped her bound hands around the woman’s neck, the Enforcer immediately struggling against the ligature. Realizing that the other heroes were busy with her rescuer, Talia dragged her victim toward the building behind her.

  The moment Snare released him, Tim jumped and curled into as tight a ball as he could. Bringing his hands under and then over his legs, he kicked out as he fell, smashing his feet into the hero’s kneecaps. The larger man let out a primal scream and hit the ground as Tim crash landed beside him. The Enforcer behind him looked down and leveled his pistol at the villain’s face, but Tim swiveled and tripped the officer. Momentum carried Tim into a crouch, before he leapt and brought his arm down on his opponent’s face. A thick crack of bone filled the air, drowned in part by the coughing fit brought on by blood pouring down the Enforcer’s throat.

  “Arrogant coward!” growled Snare, getting to his feet. He, too, had the benefit of fast healing, apparently. Tim got to his feet and tackled Snare. He brought the cuffs above his head before smashing them down, again and again, in violent hammer-blows.

  Arthur crouched behind the trunk, kicking himself for not thinking through his plan. Stair was balled up, knees pressed to her chest, and rocking. The second he heard that he was labeled rogue was the second he regretted bringing her into this. He turned back to her to tell her to run, or get under the car, or anything… why had he brought her along?

  Because she’d have followed you anyway.

  “Step away from the girl, rogue!” an angry voice behind him ordered. Arthur’s eyes squeezed shut. “Drop the weapon, hands up, and–”

  At once, the hero stopped mid-sentence and Arthur felt a pressure on his leg. The sensation shot a chill up his bones which seemed to nest in his heart and brain, prickles of frosty electricity ebbing out from their respective homes. His stomach knotted as it felt like he was dead and, bizarrely, able to comprehend it.

  “Are you alright, Blaster?” the same voice asked, at once a million miles away and nesting right in Arthur’s ear. His eyes opened, then snapped shut at the brilliance around him.

  Squinting, Arthur tried to glimpse what had happened. The world had drained of color. Not to grayscale, but to blacks and whites, thick splatters of ink on a brilliant, pale canvas. Black buildings reached up to a brilliant white sky, pinpricks of ebony stars barely visible. The street looked like snow with dark lines carving definition along the pavement.

  The Enforcer leaned above his fellow hero. His movements left a marvelous shadow, afterimages of his form fading into purple glowing runes which then drifted into nothing.

  “What is this?” Arthur asked, his voice normal.

  “The car must’ve been booby-trapped,” the Enforcer said, casting a glance at Arthur. No… through him.

  Arthur remembered the pressure on his leg and looked down. Stair had her hand on him. Both of their bodies were normal, save for the slight shimmer of her eyes. She’s doing this, he realized, grateful he wasn’t dead but slightly terrified in a way he couldn’t comprehend. He looked back up at the heroes.

  The world flared, then regained its normal hues. Arthur blinked a few times, holding his hand over his face as the darkness flowed over his vision before his eyes adjusted. The chill was gone, replaced with the relative heat of summer.

  Blaster rolled to his side and noticed Arthur again, looking at him and definitely not through him. The hero motioned like he lobbed something at him, and Arthur was thrown back against the car, head cracking against the window. His vision doubled as he collapsed onto his knees, the baton smashing his fingers between it and the road.

  Arthur looked up as the Enforcer brought his gun up. It didn’t take long to register that he had been declared an open target. The gun barrel flared as Stair tackled into him, the world going monochrome again as he fell under her weight. The tire exploded by them. Coupled with the gunshot, it sounded like the entire world exploded.

  The girl became dead weight, and Arthur panicked. “Stair? Stair!” he yelled. She didn’t respond. He looked up at her killer, the Enforcer helping Blaster up as though nothing happened.

  “Over there!” the officer shouted to his companion, looking away from his victim. Arthur’s face twitched in fury as he gently pushed Stair away. He got to his feet, the world snapping back into color as soon as the girl’s hand fell away, and charged at the heroes.

  He screamed something incomprehensible as he brought the sparking baton down on the Enforcer, the electrical charge ripping through the man and sending him to the ground retching and clawing at his gas mask. He spun toward Blaster only to be intercepted and grabbed by the throat.

  With a flick of his wrist, the hero sent the stun rod bouncing down the road. He sneered. “Where did you come from?” he asked, keeping his front tilted away from Arthur so there wouldn’t be as much area to strike at.

  “Corner… of… fuck you and die…” Arthur choked. The tiny man was surprisingly strong as his fingers dug into his throat before throwing him to the ground.

  A thin smiled crossed his face. “Never had a problem with you assholes before tonight,” Blaster snarled as he drew his hand back before he pitched what Arthur imagined was going to be a fatal sonic wave.

  The sound of squeaking metal drew Arthur and Blaster’s attention. Tim, covered in blood and wild-eyed, leapt from the roof of the car, smashing it in, toward the hero. Blaster tried to intercept Tim, but the villain connected with a diving punch across the hero’s face. Tim carried through into a crouch as the smaller man spun to the ground, a trail of gore falling to the pavement. Surprisingly gracefully, Arthur’s friend leapt over the newly downed hero, rolling in the air, and brought a fist down on the struggling Enforcer’s head, bashing it into the pavement.

  Arthur scrambled to his feet and ran over to the Enforcer as Tim rose, flicking his hand free of blood. He kicked at the officer, the unconscious body taking the blows without reacting. “Just a fucking kid, asshole!” he screamed.

  “Arthur, he’s not getting up,” Talia said calmly behind him.

  He wheeled around wildly toward her voice. “He shot…” he began, pointing behind Talia. Rising, staring drunkenly at him with more than a little concern in her eyes, Stair braced herself against the car. “Stair?” he asked, not sure if he actually believed what he was seeing. The reporter followed his gaze.

  “Talia, did you drop the last escort?” Tim asked.

  She looked over his shoulder at him as she and Arthur neared the stunned girl. “She’s not getting up any time soon.”

  “You okay?” Arthur asked. The girl nodded and swayed in response.

  With a grunt, Tim turned up the street. “I’ll meet you at the Mob.”

  Arthur’s head snapped around at the statement. He took off after Tim. “You can’t be serious,” he half-shouted.

  “Tim, we have no idea where Ar
iana is,” Talia shouted.

  “All the more reason to look!” he snapped.

  Arthur ran in front of him and physically pushed him to stop. “Look, Tim…”

  “Don’t touch me.”

  “… I want to save Ari, too. But if we go after her now, we’re dead.” Arthur tried to maintain eye contact, but something was just too fierce in Tim’s eyes. Something wild and dangerous.

  “Correction, you’re dead, dumbass.” He shoved his way past Arthur.

  “Tim, think about this!” shouted Talia.

  “I don’t need to–” He stopped. Physically and vocally. The ground had turned gelatinous, and he couldn’t break free of the muck. “I can’t move!”

  Arthur tried to run, but the ground’s jellification spread and swallowed his feet. “Talia!” Arthur screamed.

  Snare launched himself over the car and came crashing between Tim and Arthur. Talia instinctively pushed the girl behind her with her bound hands before prying at the zip-ties, trying to figure them out.

  “Arthur!” Stair yelled, but her voice seemed muffled, refusing to echo as the ground swallowed the others’ ankles.

  His appearance nearly unrecognizable, Snare turned toward Tim, then at Arthur. Tim had beaten him so badly that his face was healing into a melted Halloween mask of skin and muscle. He growled as he approached Arthur. “I think I’m going to rip off your friend’s face.”

  “Stay away from him!” Tim shouted. Snare swiped at Arthur, but the blow merely grazed his head as he darted to the side. With a grunt, Snare’s hand caught the back of Arthur’s head and straightened him out. With a flash of motion, he unleashed a straight punch into the younger man’s skull, releasing him when he went slack from the force of the blow. “No!” Tim vainly shouted.

  Crumpling awkwardly with his feet locked in place, Arthur sprawled on the pavement. Stunned, Arthur tried to focus as Snare’s shadow washed over him. A wicked smile crossed the hero’s face. “Goodnight.” He brought his boot up over Arthur’s head, prompting the grounded man to weakly attempt to shield it.