That day of mortification would soon be forgotten. After he was triumphant, the stain of villainy would be scrubbed from New York once and for all.
The squeak of floorboards behind him betrayed his new commanders’ growing impatience. He looked over his shoulder, catching the three SERAPHIM in his peripheral vision. “Are you sure about this intelligence?” he asked, directing the question toward the tallest of the three.
Thanatos stepped forward, nodding. “Yes, Arbiter. I stake my life on it.” Her shattered lip hadn’t quite stitched itself together, the red blotch angry enough to distract from the rest of her visible face.
Arbiter’s scowl turned toward something approaching a smile. He turned to face them fully. “There is no need for such grandiose gestures.” Skirting the desk, he approached the mercenaries. “Have any of your scouts confirmed this?”
“They’re on their way,” Athena answered, cutting off Thanatos.
Arbiter approved of their eagerness, their ability to work together yet compete for the same goal. “Your insistence on going after the highest probability targets alone displays a cloying lack of tactics.” The women didn’t flinch, but remained in their rigid posture. “Do you care to refute this?”
Siren snapped forward half a step. “The villains that Athena and I approached were Tier One and should have been no match for us. Unforeseen elements prevented me from successfully apprehending Jack Cleese and Weston Marsh.” She cast a glance at her comrade. “I cannot say the same for Athena.”
“The bitch took me by surprise!” Athena snapped, turning toward Siren. It was a passionate gesture, the result of camaraderie gone awry.
“Enough!” Arbiter growled. Athena slowly returned to her position, her eyes barely moving off of Siren’s face. “The speed with which you discovered the malcontents is impressive, and had you succeeded in their capture, we could very well have ended this struggle without bloodshed.”
“We understand the implications, sir,” Thanatos said.
Arbiter turned back toward the window. “We have been brought to this impasse by villains. They have given us no recourse.” The pause was thick with tension as his fists clenched. “If what you say is true, Thanatos, we have the most likely location of where the vermin shall retreat in order to organize further murders. Once your men confirm the location, all patrols need to be pulled from the area.” He turned back to the assembled SERAPHIM. “I hope the deviance from orders you displayed is not endemic to those under your command.”
“Understood, High Consul,” Thanatos said with a nod. The three of them snapped a salute, to which Arbiter responded with a nod. Quickly, they turned and exited, Zealot waiting patiently for them to leave before pushing his way into the room.
The door shut behind him of its own accord before he saluted Arbiter. “Sir, Overseer has finished his diagnostic scan of Freedom’s Sword and its integral components in the Guild.” Arbiter nodded, solemnly, as though the words barely registered. “It is ready to fire at full capacity within the hour.”
The High Consul let out a long breath. There could be no delay. Further hesitation would result in more deaths. This war, started with the murder of his friend and ally, could be stopped with a final hammer blow. Villains had started this chaos with a cowardly assassination… he would not deign to touch any of them when he chose to end it.
His eyes flicked up to Zealot, the younger man’s expectant face searching his mentor for some kind of sign. “Gather the remaining heroes,” he ordered, striding by his subordinate.
Zealot turned and kept pace as Arbiter exited the room. “Gunslinger and Claymore are debriefing their SERAPHIM units. Archetype is already on the grounds.”
Arbiter did not break stride as he made his way to the stairwell. “You have your orders.”
“Where do you wish them to report to, sir?” Zealot was losing ground to Arbiter’s longer, hurried strides.
“Overseer’s mainframe.” He stopped and turned toward Zealot, the sudden movement startling the latter man. “It is there that, as a force united, we shall witness the birth of the next age.”
Zealot’s face cracked into a tight smile before he nodded, suddenly serious. His hand shot up to salute his superior. “It shall be done, High Consul.” Breaking into a hurried trot, he moved past Arbiter.
The older man watched him go. The dream, almost thirty years in the making, was becoming a reality. The villains in detention were of no concern to him just yet… when word got out of the new weapon, the conspiracy would unravel. Heroes would recognize him as their savior from a corrupt and twisted system. With his victory assured, he would lead his companions to their triumphant return, and an age of peace would begin. Any villains not in conjunction with Dark Saint’s assassination would be… protected… in Fort Justice.
It was the only way. If the villains remained stubborn in their secrets, then they signed the warrant for their own annihilation.
The Super Villains’ Guild, although lacking the stateliness of its heroic equivalent, had a quiet dignity to it: an older building occupied in the ever-widening wave of modern structures. At least, Arthur felt this retrospectively as he gazed upon the desecrated exterior of the building. Windows were smashed without boards to cover them. Graffiti slathered the bricks with a mix of standard tags and derisive words. Someone, apparently unaware that many American villains had fought in World War II along with their neutral and heroic brethren, had labeled the building ‘Nazi HQ’.
He and his companions were standing across the street, in an alley, watching the building. Mast was closest to the alleyway exit, eyes sweeping the road. “I don’t see any patrols, ground or otherwise.” Her eyes flicked up to the rooftops for a moment. “Are you sure about this?” Mast’s eyes went to Ariana now, the younger woman’s arms folded and a scowl on her face.
“Yes,” Ariana snapped. “I tagged along with them long enough to know where they’ll be.”
Agent Mast stared at her a moment longer, then turned back to the Guild. “I don’t like it, but it’ll have to do.” She reached into her pocket and fumbled for a moment before producing an earpiece. She turned to Arthur and handed it to him.
Puzzled, he took it from her. “What is this for?”
Agent Mast shook her head. “I’m not going in there.”
“Why not?” Ariana interjected.
Mast glanced at Ariana, then looked back at Arthur. “I have my reasons.” She took a step backward as Arthur fitted the earpiece in. “You have ten minutes before I come in shooting.” Arthur brought his hand down and wordlessly took the flashlight Mast offered him.
Ariana snorted. “Really? You think Catalina will try something?” She rolled her eyes. “Arthur, you can’t believe this crap.”
Arthur cast a glance at Ariana before nodding at Mast. “It shouldn’t take us that long to get what we need.” He shifted the backpack off and handed it to Stair, the girl taking it with a look of confusion.
Ariana gave a hiss of disbelief. “Typical.”
“Come on,” Stair said, trying to brush her way past the two adults. She was jerked to a stop by Mast yanking on her arm. “What?”
“You’re staying with me.”
Stair squirmed her way out of the woman’s grasp. “Why?”
Impatiently, Ariana stomped her way past all of them and had exited the alley by the time Arthur was able to realize what was going on. He trotted to Ariana and then slowed down, staying a respectful distance from her. The silence made the journey up the stairs far more jarring than his footsteps ever could.
Arbiter stood in the Heroes’ Guild mainframe, his identification card in hand, the huge room overflowing with wires and computers. The vaulted ceiling was crisscrossed with gantries, allowing technicians to access the occasional extra-tall computer tower. The lower level hummed with row after confusing row of redundant systems which contained the core of the Heroes’ Guild computer. Unseen, Overseer darted along the systems, a semi-self-aware program that bridged the g
ap between computer and user. Tubes containing coolant flowed and burbled between the multitude of components, sinking into the floor to be recycled and used in perpetuity.
The rear of the room, where Arbiter impatiently waited, contained a large, wall-mounted monitor working in conjunction with numerous smaller screens embedded in the workstations below. It was a hold-over from the era of large-scale planning in the Silver Age, the last major example of its use just before the government stepped in during the war of 1988. Now it would be given another use… one more noble than anything a lone hero could ever attain. The elimination of villainy from New York City, once and for all.
A chime indicated that someone was trying to make contact. The large monitor winked to life, showing a static and recent satellite map of the city. A red dot appeared, marking the call’s location, followed by additional data about who was on the other end. The audio equipment hummed to life. “This is SERAPHIM recon unit alpha,” a female voice said in a cool tone.
“This is Arbiter,” he responded. “Go ahead.”
“We have confirmed visual and audio presence of villains.”
His face remained stony. “Pull back immediately and send visual data once in range.”
“Affirmative, sir. Out.” The line went dead.
“Overseer,” Arbiter called out.
The screen shut off, then returned with a green iris staring back at him. “Yes, Lord of Justice?”
Arbiter approached the console. Near the keyboard, away from the glass-like surface which interpreted hand motions as data commands, a thin slot sat innocuously within the workstation. He brought the card he had been unconsciously rolling over in his hand forward and slid it inside. A tiny diode lit up near the slot as he left the card in the console. “Arm Freedom’s Sword.”
“Once initiated, Freedom’s Sword cannot be stopped. Do you wish to continue?”
Arbiter hesitated. A seminal moment drew near, and his word would change the world forever. His mind reeled at each choice, the divergent paths playing out in his head. You can stop this.
“Yes.”
“Of course, sir.” A clock appeared, ticking down the moments from an odd eleven minutes and thirty three seconds. At three minutes, if manual aiming wasn’t being utilized, the target was selected automatically using a triangulation of tertiary satellite coordinates. But, as the others on their way would see, he would guide the weapon with his own hands.
“This doesn’t mean I’ve forgiven you.”
Her words shocked him more by their existence than their meaning. Arthur remained silent, nodding somberly behind her. He couldn’t argue, and even if he tried he knew full well his role in what had turned the world upside-down.
Something which, apparently, Ariana still felt the need to express to him. They had crested the stairs and reached the smashed revolving doors when she stopped to face Arthur, their first eye contact since the ruins of her childhood home. Her eyes were raging. “Don’t you have anything to say to me?”
Arthur didn’t know what to think, his mind still struggling with something far more urgent than he could even comprehend fully outside of statistics. Ariana nonetheless stood in front of him, angry and proud. He couldn’t bring himself to say anything other than, “We need to hurry up.” He pushed his way past her, into the darkness of the Guild.
The crunch of his shoes on garbage was startling as he moved further indoors, the daylight fading away. He clicked on the flashlight and took long, hopefully confident strides toward the stairs.
Knowing what he did about Catalina, she’d be occupying a secure location, far enough from the outside to protect herself in case patrols came looking. He didn’t know exactly where she’d be specifically, and neither did Ariana. Emotions propelled him forward, away from the guilt she was making him feel, toward a future he was trying to stop. He was almost to the stairwell when she grabbed him and pulled him around.
“Tell me you’re sorry,” she demanded, her words harsh and echoing.
It was hard not to roll his eyes, not that she would have seen the reaction anyway. “Ari…”
Between the flashlight’s splash and the weak strands of daylight, Ariana looked possessed. “Just say it. He…” She cut herself off, the sound of the word physically making them both react. “I,” she continued with emphasis, “need to hear it.”
“You really think this is the time?” Arthur asked with a decided snarl. Petty squabbles were pointless at the moment, but there was a very human desire to start ripping into her, if for nothing else than to rage against someone physically present and not dead for a change. Instead of giving in to it, he huffed and turned back toward the stairs. “Whatever.” He did not hear her footsteps following him, and an anxious combination of concern and anger welled up. Arthur ignored it as he passed by the smashed remains of the old security guard’s computer and put a foot on the first step of the stairwell.
“You were a terrible friend to him.” The words stopped him cold. By the time he brought the flashlight around to face her, she hadn’t shifted her position.
He dismounted the steps and pivoted to fully face her. “What the fuck did you say?”
Ariana folded her arms defiantly. “Still behaving like you didn’t betray him?”
The accusation penetrated their long-standing, though hostile, armistice and hit him in the gut. “I betrayed him?” He moved toward her. “I betrayed him?”
“You heard me.” She moved to close the gap, slowly at first. “Everything that went wrong in my life, in our life, started with you!”
His lip curled in a snarl as he was now moving faster toward her. Concern for the welfare of others evaporated as he saw her hands clench into fists. “You want me to apologize for you being a colossal bitch, is that it?”
Ariana was practically sprinting toward him, leaping into him and knocking them both to the floor. She was on top of Arthur, lifting him by his shirt and slamming him to the ground. “You and your sister!” He tried to swat her off, but she was frenzied in her blows, intercepting his hands before they could do anything. In a split second of clarity, he saw her fist shoot upwards. “You!” It was the first time in a while that he had been punched by someone who meant it to harm him, the blow shattering his lip and dazing him. “Whores!” And she struck him again, hard on the cheekbone. She reeled back, hissing in pain. “Damn it!”
He took the opportunity to fling her off of him. Ariana hit the ground and rolled to a stop, slumping in a gasping mound. Scrambling upright onto his knees, he momentarily contemplated whacking her over the head with the flashlight, but the fight seemed to have evaporated out of her. She looked over at him, eyes red even in the partial glow of the flashlight. The anger in them had died, replaced with something dim and lonely. A tear glimmered briefly in the air before falling to the ground.
Arthur moved toward her and put his hand on her shoulder. She didn’t pull away from the pressure. “We killed him,” she croaked, her voice apparently hoarse from shouting. “We both did it.” Ariana looked up at him, and an overwhelming sense of déjà vu made his skin prickle uncomfortably in the oppressive heat.
A series of hisses startled both Ariana and Arthur upright as a circle of lit flares flashed into existence around them. “And… scene!” Catalina’s voice mocked through the darkness, the echoes confusing their attempts to locate her position. A final hiss drew their attention upwards to the mobster standing on a statue of a villain with Mat sitting at her side. She held the flare in the hand she was using to prop herself up against the sculpture, denying Ariana and Arthur a clear view of her face. “I honestly thought you two were going to fuck.”
“You called for us, sir?” Gunslinger’s voice called out, struggling above the humming electronics of Overseer’s core, but Arbiter heeded neither her nor her companions’ approach.
Instead, he stared at the screen, now showing a computerized recreation of the Earth, swimming in a green wire frame. His hands moved over the part of the console designed
to read his gestures. The world ticked slightly with every gesticulation, zooming in and then out. Arbiter spun the world gently, imagining the representation to be the real thing and, thus, imbuing it with the life he was going to snuff out in a matter of minutes.
A window popped up in the lower right corner, above the clock display of 8:53:34. The iris of Overseer appeared in the previously empty box, staring at nothing in particular. “Shall you commit to manual targeting, High Consul?” he asked, his voice impersonal and polite as always.
“Yes, Overseer.” He became aware of the presence of others moving toward him moments before the familiar probing of Archetype’s mental energies.
At the top of the screen, a green MANUAL TARGETING popped up in a silver-outline box. The timer shifted positions to nest under the new window and continued to tick off the seconds.
“What’s going on?” Claymore asked.
Arbiter looked over his shoulder, casting a steely gaze in the young man’s direction, but offered no answer. The man in black, the slender psychomancer, and his former sidekick took in the sights on the monitor, interest or outright awe slackening their features. Only Gunslinger, looking small in her Stetson hat, her silver vest and deep blue shirt lighting up her face, stared at him directly.
Arbiter felt something vestigial threaten his judgment, and he looked away.
“Catalina, we’re here with an appeal for help,” Arthur shouted, trying to circumvent the embarrassment of the past few moments. The second he spoke and tasted blood, he remembered his split lip. His hand immediately went to cover his mouth.
Catalina gave a huff of laughter. “You?” Laughs bubbled from the darkness. From the eight dots of red light, Arthur saw the silhouettes of mobsters materialize, their guns at the ready. Ariana must have seen them, too, for she backed into him, eyes on the goons. “After what happened, you’re going to be lucky if I let you walk out of here.” Catalina leapt from the statue to the stairwell, then proceeded toward them in confident strides. In the darkness, the impeccable suit appeared untarnished. “But, the masochist in me is curious,” she said, absently scratching behind her earpiece with the muzzle of her gun.
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