“He isn’t exactly short of cash,” Layla pointed out. “Sales of his action figures—Angry Hope, Contemplative Hope, Determined Hope—have never been higher. Some of his money has been routed through Kyrgyzstan—and you know what that means. Long-term, he’ll have to start selling the Congo’s mineral resources to continue to pay for outside help, at least until the governments agree to help out. You’d think that they’d get off their butts and actually help.”
“It’s not that easy,” Chester said. It was true; between the different factions in Congress who distrusted the Saviours, or international aid, or even the Secretary-General himself...it would probably take years to agree on how to help the Congo. By then, the situation would have resolved itself one way or the other.
“You hope,” Layla said. She picked a USB stick off the nearest table and passed it to him. “That’s the data you requested, almost everything you wanted. Some things...they don’t put in computers, just because of people like me.”
She hesitated. “And Chester?”
Chester lifted an eyebrow, waiting.
“You warn Washington that Hope isn’t going to give up,” she added. “He’s an idealist with the power to knock over mountains. He isn't going to let your politicians prevent him saving the world.”
Chapter Eighteen
“I suppose that you have a good explanation for this?”
Jackson glared at the teenager, who stared back at him with a mixture of defiance and fear. He’d been throwing eggs at the car when Jackson had come out of the building and caught him before he could run away. Maybe he did come from a poor family, but his clothes were fashionable—and expensive. He’d probably been egging the car for fun, not expecting to have to face the car’s owner face-to-face.
“I...” He started to reach for the knife in his belt.
Jackson caught his hand and twisted it, then deftly removed the knife and anything else that could be used as a weapon. “I could drag you over to the police station, or I could kick the shit out of you,” he snapped. Wanton vandalism got on his nerves. “What should I do, I wonder?”
The boy started to whimper about the police and his rights.
Jackson ignored the whimpering. “I could see to it that you got thrown into jail,” he hissed. “I could send you there—fresh meat like you would be very welcome in the pen. You’d find yourself being called Shirley by your cellmates and spend the evenings bent over while they rape your ass, time and time again. And the guards won’t do anything to help you. They’ll probably join in themselves.”
He allowed his voice to harden. “Or I could simply break both your legs and one of your arms,” he added. “Would that teach you a lesson about picking on strangers?”
Ignoring the boy’s protests, he removed his jacket and used it as a rag to remove the egg from the car, before walking around it to ensure that there was no other damage. It looked as if someone had tried to puncture one of the tires, but they’d been produced to military specifications; a mere penknife wasn't going to be enough to damage them. He snapped the knife in two anyway and shoved the boy away from him, watching as the kid picked himself up and ran for his life. Someone like that would graduate from idle mischief to serious crime and wind up spending more time in prison than out of it.
He looked up at Harrison, who didn’t seem to be perturbed by the violence. That was odd, in someone who appeared to be nothing more than a Washington bureaucrat. There were layers to Mr. Harrison that were kept well-hidden. Shaking his head, he walked around the car, inspected the door and—just out of habit—checked for any surprises under the vehicle. There was no reason to think that someone would have stuck a bomb under the car—and it was armoured enough to stand up to a small IED—but safety came first.
“Nothing to worry about,” he said, as he opened the door for Mr. Harrison and then climbed into the driver’s seat. “Where do you want to go now?”
“A different address,” Harrison said, and passed over another card. This one was a more upmarket address inside a gated community in upstate New York. It would probably take at least an hour to get there, maybe longer if the traffic had become any worse. “There’s no real hurry, I think. No need to keep a specific appointment.”
Jackson nodded and started the engine, steering the car away from the sidewalk. A quick burst of water onto the bodywork washed away the remainder of the egg, but he’d have to be sure to take the car to be cleaned before returning to base. The guy who ran the motor pool would bitch like a motherfucker if the vehicle returned smelling of rotten egg, even if he hadn't complained when Team Three had returned with a van that had had its roof torn off by an angry superhuman. REMFs could be so strange at times.
He was still smiling at the thought when he saw a superhuman fly overhead. Grabbing his pistol, he held one hand over the emergency pager before the superhuman flashed into the distance and vanished amid New York’s skyscrapers. Of course; there were more superhumans in New York than anywhere else, with the possible exception of the Congo.
“Maybe nothing to worry about,” he said, to Harrison. “We could go back to the base...”
“I would prefer to complete everything I have to do in New York in a day,” Harrison said. Jackson couldn't tell if it was bravado, a sense that there was no real reason to fear—or absolute confidence in the operator protecting him. And he could be wrong. “Take us to the next address.”
***
Sparky—who liked to try to forget that she’d once been called Esmeralda Rodriguez—scowled as the taxi pulled to a halt in front of the gated community. The instructions she had been given admitted no ambiguity, or choice; she was to report to a certain address precisely on time, or face the consequences. What remained of the Young Stars, she'd been warned by their corporate backers, would depend on just how well she pleased their new masters. Whatever they wanted, they’d said, she had to give them.
The taxi driver hadn't recognised her, but then that wasn't too surprising. Sparky was a girl in a tight-fitting outfight who shimmered with electric light; Esmeralda was rather more subdued, wearing loose-fitting clothes and a golden cross around her neck, just like the good Catholic girl she’d been brought up to be. The fact that her parents were shocked and ashamed of her lifestyle with the Young Stars—let alone the faked nude photographs that had made their way around the internet for the last two years—ensured that she rarely put her costume aside and pretended to be a normal girl. But this time she had been told to come dressed as a civilian. At least no one would take any notice of her...
Esmeralda held up the card she’d been given to the guard at the gate; he inspected it, then allowed her to walk inside the compound. She felt his eyes on her as she walked away. It was surprisingly large inside the compound, with a handful of apartment blocks for those wealthy enough to want security, but too poor to afford a proper house of their own. Or perhaps they just liked the idea of being protected by a private security force. She found the apartment the card pointed her to and pushed the buzzer; unsurprisingly, the door clicked open almost at once. Fighting down the kind of fear she’d felt the first time they’d faced a supervillain—a fight that had been carefully choreographed for media consumption—she stepped inside and walked to the first apartment door. It opened.
She braced herself. Whatever happened, she’d been warned time and time again, she had to go through with it. The survival of the Young Stars themselves depended upon it.
Inside, a single man sat on a chair, studying her. Esmeralda had faced male attention from the day she’d first started to grow into a woman, but this was different. The man—he looked oddly familiar—wasn't interested in her sexually, or even in her personally. He seemed to be more interested in what use he could make of her than anything else. It chilled her to the bone.
“Sit,” he said, flatly. Esmeralda realised suddenly where she’d seen him before. He’d been the man who had visited the hangout, the day three of her teammates had vanished without explanation. The
story she’d been told to give to the press was nothing more than pap for their consumption, but no one had ever told her the truth. “I assume they told you why you were told to come here?”
“No, sir,” Esmeralda said. Sparky would have stood up to him, but Esmeralda was too scared to be Sparky any longer. Money wasn’t everything, she reminded herself; besides, she could retire from the superhero life and live for decades on what she’d salted away. “They just told me to come to this address.”
The man looked...mildly annoyed. “You will have been told that you have to comply,” he said, flatly. It wasn't a question. “The Young Stars owe society a great deal—and society is calling in the debt. We have a specific task for an idealistic young woman such as yourself.”
Esmeralda studied him for a long moment. She lacked the senses that higher-ranking superhumans possessed, so she couldn’t tell if his calm posture was anything more than an act, but he certainly sounded confident. It would have been easy to draw electricity from the overhead lighting and fry him to a crisp, yet she knew that that would have consequences. The corporate backers hadn't just sounded angry, even if she didn't know why they were angry; they’d sounded scared.
“Right,” she said, finally. “What do you want me to do?”
A hundred possible scenarios had run through her mind, but he still managed to surprise her. “You may have heard about the events in the Congo,” he said.
Esmeralda scowled at him, wondering if she was being mocked. Even a person without super-hearing would have heard about the Congo, and about the superhuman army that had crushed a dozen warlords and their armies without breaking a sweat.
But the man had gone on. “You may also have heard that Hope is recruiting other superhumans to his banner, to assist him in repairing the Congo.”
“Yes,” Esmeralda said, flatly. What did that have to do with her? The Young Stars had never been anything other than a corporate-sponsored team, enjoying the high life while making public appearances and putting their likenesses on everything from lunch boxes to shirts and jackets. Avoiding controversy had always been their guiding principle; they’d rejected both Lord Gaydar and Little Sappho because of their alternative lifestyles. Sure, they were registered superheroes, but they didn't fight crime...
“We need someone within his organisation to spy on him, discover his intentions and report back to us,” the man said. “You will be granted a leave of absence from the Young Stars and join the superhumans supporting the Saviours. Each week, you will be expected to report in to us...”
Esmeralda fought to control her anger. “What...what makes you think you can force me to spy on a genuine hero?”
“I suppose we could say that he’s rather more than yet another celebrity posturing in front of the cameras while millions die of starvation, or disease, or because they were unlucky enough to be caught up in the middle of a war,” the man said. “Tell me something, truthfully. In all of your time with the Young Stars, have you ever done anything remotely heroic?”
The honest answer to that was no, Esmeralda realised, even though they had called themselves superheroes. They’d never fought crime, or done anything more than mouth platitudes while raking in the cash. And yet...she respected Hope for doing something, even if he had more power than all of the rest of the Young Stars put together. They could have done something like that if they’d thought of it, or if they’d been willing to throw away their lives and money while attempting to make the world a better place.
He smiled at her, almost as if he could read her thoughts. “You don’t know what happened to your three teammates,” he said, dryly. “They were caught in the act of murdering seventeen federal agents in the middle of a drug bust. Right now, they are in jail—and the Young Stars will be tainted forever if it gets out. You can do this for us, or you can find yourself charged as an accessory to murder while your corporate sponsors drop you like a hot rock.”
“No,” Esmeralda said, shocked. She’d known that Youngster and Nova took drugs, Youngster because he was bored with what he could do legally and Nova because he wanted to maintain his bad-boy image, but she’d never realised they would stoop to murder. And Siren had been head-over-heels in love with Youngster; she would have done anything for him, even helped to obtain drugs for the rest of the team. But murder? They weren't even allowed to exercise all the rights registered superheroes were allowed under SARA. “That can’t be true.”
“I can show you video if you like,” the man said. He tilted his head, studying her thoughtfully. “What’s it to be? A single mission for us? Or a long stay in prison, during which the Young Stars are completely disgraced and simply vanish? Your choice.”
“And after this is done, I suppose I’ll never hear from you again?” Esmeralda asked, flatly. “You won’t keep holding this over my head?”
“I don’t think that you would be helpful anywhere else,” the man said. “If you do manage to save the Young Stars, we would appreciate regular reports on what you’re doing...but if you choose to return to civilian life, we won’t force you to continue to work for us. You will have done enough to wipe the slate clean.”
“By spying on Hope,” Esmeralda said. She thought as quickly as she could, but there didn't seem to be any way out of the trap. The government—and she had no doubt that the man was working for the government, not now—would have records of what had happened; they’d be able to prove it and destroy the Young Stars once and for all. Everyone who had once backed them—the corporations, the media, the teenage groups that considered them heroes—would unite in their horror at what the Young Stars had done, distancing themselves from the blame. “How long do you want me to stay there?”
“As long as it takes,” the man said. He picked up a black briefcase from the floor and passed it to her. “There’s a set of communications gear in the case that should be undetectable, even to one as...sensitive as Hope. Use it when you have something for us; otherwise, do whatever he tells you and help to repair the battered country. You may even discover that doing something actually helpful is good for the soul.”
Esmeralda took the briefcase. “Very well,” she said, “but after it is over, no more. I’m sure that blackmail wouldn't make you look very good either.”
“No,” the man agreed. “Good luck.”
***
Chester watched the girl go, shaking his head at her strange combination of naivety and worldliness. But then, she had had to grow up in a hurry. Chester knew that most of the corporate backers were already cutting their losses, carefully severing all the links between themselves and the Young Stars. It was surprising that the media hadn't started to wonder if something wasn't actually wrong, although few people inquired too closely into how superhero teams received their funding. How long would it be before they had to start being careful of just what they spent on maintaining their image?
He pushed the thought aside as he picked up his briefcase and opened it, glancing down at the file the psychologists had produced for Sparky. It was difficult to trust psych files when there were so many unexplored variables surrounding superhumans, but they did seem to have done a good job. Someone with that kind of background would accept drug abuse as normal, even if she didn't participate herself. Chester wouldn't have risked taking mood-altering drugs if he had the power to create a lightning storm that would be lethal to anyone within fifty meters, but young superhumans were rarely so careful. The first breed of superheroes had been very careful with their powers. Later generations seemed more inclined to show off than anything else.
Shutting the briefcase, he stood up and walked towards the second door. The entire apartment block was owned and operated by the CIA, who also provided security for the real families living in the other blocks. Their presence helped to disguise the CIA’s interest in the gated compound—and besides, they loved the professional security. Chester was among the few who knew that Red River was a CIA front company that provided mercenaries to the rest of the world, among other
things. But they weren't suited to dealing with superhumans.
Using Sparky as a spy bothered him, even though most of his morality had faded in the years since he'd come to realise the problem superhumans presented to the entire planet. She was young—and reasonably innocent for her age; he was doing her no favours by sending her to the Congo. And Hope had one of the world’s most powerful telepaths on his side. He might have been an idealist who disliked the idea of mental rape, but somehow Chester doubted that he would prevent the Redeemer from scanning all the new recruits. They’d expect to see a spy, and they would find Sparky.
But that didn't matter.
He stepped into the next room and nodded to the single occupant. “You heard all that?”
Mathew Tracker, Tracker to the SDI’s covert operations team, nodded. “I don’t think she believed you,” he said. Tracker’s abilities were a form of super-perception, giving him remarkable insight into the world around him even though he lacked more formidable superpowers. It was next to impossible to lie to him, or beat him at poker. “But she will do as you order.”
“And you’ll go in with her,” Chester said. One of the other uses of Tracker’s power was a form of telepathic security net. He could present a false front to the Redeemer and she wouldn't notice unless she got suspicious and dug too deep. “While she draws their attention...”
Team Omega Page 18