by John McCrae
“This event,” the reporter spoke, “Points to something else entirely, a fatal flaw in the system, the latest and greatest representation of the Protectorate’s steady collapse.“
“Too rich,” Jack commented, smirking. “Across the board, I love it. Fantastic.”
Hookwolf, pacing on the opposite side of the television, grunted a response.
Bonesaw was crouched by the side of a machine. She watched with hands on hips as Blasto ratcheted in a bolt at the base of a tall, black-handled lever, his movements jerky with the internal and external mechanisms that forced them.
“The Protectorate declined to comment, and in light of recent events and allegations of deep-seated secrets, their silence is damning.“
“Almost ready,” Bonesaw said, her voice sing-song. “You’re next, Hooksie.”
Hookwolf glanced at her, and then at the contraption.
“Don’t tell me you’re scared,” she said, her tone a taunt.
“Not of… this. I’m questioning if this is the path we should take.”
“I’m expected to bring about the end of the world,” Jack said, still watching the television. “But this is rather tepid for my tastes. I’d like to hurry it along, inject some more drama into the affair.”
“…event at Arcadia High School is sure to draw attention from aross America. We, the public, want answers. The death of Vikare marked the end of the golden age, the end of an era where becoming a superhero was the expectation for anyone and everyone with powers, and even those who decided to work in business or public affairs with their abilities were termed ‘rogues’…“
Bonesaw took ahold of Hookwolf’s hand and led him to his seat. She stepped back, glancing over the contraption. The only light was cast by a small desk lamp and the glow of a computer monitor, an island of light in the middle of an expansive, wide-reaching darkness. Desk, engine, and tinker-designed seats, surrounded by an absolute, oppressive darkness.
“It doesn’t sit well,” Hookwolf said. “I can’t articulate why. My thoughts are still cloudy.”
Bonesaw hit a button, and the lights began to flicker, the engine beside her starting to hum with a progressively higher pitch. With the flickering of the lights came glimpses of the things beyond. Light on glass and wires.
“I’d rather a Ragnarök than-”
Bonesaw hauled on a white-handled lever, and Hookwolf’s voice cut off. The flickering of the lights ceased, and the room returned to darkness.
Jack sighed.
“…threatens to mark a similar occasion…“
Bonesaw stepped over the body of a dead tinker in a lab coat, stopping in front of Jack. “Strip.”
Jack shucked off his shirt, and then pulled off his pants and boxer briefs. The blades that hung heavy on his belt made an ugly metal sound as they dropped to the tiled floor.
“…and cover yourself up,” Bonesaw said, averting her eyes. “Shameful! You’re in the company of a child, and a girl, no less.”
“Terribly sorry,” Jack said, his voice thick with irony, as he cupped his nether regions in both hands. He stepped back and took a seat, leaning back against the diagonal surface behind the short bench. Cold.
“...The reality is clear. The repercussions of what happened today will change the relationship between hero, villain and civilian. It remains up to them to decide whether it will be a change for the better, or a change for the worse.”
The segment ended, and the television turned back to the news anchors at their desks.
“Pretentious, isn’t he?” Jack asked.
“Likes to hear himself talk,” Bonesaw replied. “Which do you think it’ll be? Change for the better or change for the worse?”
Jack smiled.
“It’s a given?” she asked. She pressed the button, and the lights started to flicker again.
“I think so,” Jack commented. “But I almost hope things do turn out well.”
The lights were flickering more violently now, to the point that periods of light matched the periods of darkness. Between the spots in his vision, Jack could see more and more of their surroundings.
Row upon row of glass case lined the underground chamber, each large enough to house a full-grown man, though there were only fetal shapes within at present. Each was labeled. One row had cases marked ‘Crawler’, ‘Crawler’, ‘Crawler’… ten iterations in total. The next row had ten cases labeled with the word ‘Siberian’. The one after with ten repetitions of ‘Chuckles’.
One column of cases dedicated to each member of the Nine, past and present, with the exception of Jack and one other.
“Makes for a greater fall?” Bonesaw asked.
“Exactly,” Jack replied. He glanced at the one isolated case, felt his pulse quicken a notch. It was the only one that was standalone. ‘Gray Boy.’
“I guess we find out soon!” he said, raising his voice to be heard over the whine of the engine.
Bonesaw only laughed. She hauled on the switch with both hands, and the room was plunged into silence and darkness.
20.y (Interlude; Accord)
If Accord didn’t know better, he might have thought this little soiree was located here with the sole purpose of irritating him.
Wait, he did know better. Tattletale. She would have done this just to beleaguer him.
The Forsberg Gallery. The building had once been a pristine, albeit distressingly asymmetrical construction of glass and steel. Now it was a shattered ruin. There was little rhyme or reason to the design, and navigating was something of a chore.
To his right, as he ascended a staircase, there was a wing that jutted out from the side of the building, six stories up, like an architectural tumor. With the damage done by Shatterbird’s attack, the only glass that remained in the building was scattered across the floor like a winter frost. The offending growth on the side of the building had sustained some damage, more likely a consequence of the vibrations than damage from the glass itself, and the reinforcements that had been made to shore it up only served to make it uglier.
Inelegant, unbalanced.
His power immediately began supplying answers and solutions. He was on his guard, and the first thoughts to his mind were of offense and harming others. As clear as if he were seeing it for himself, he could see a pendulum, disguised among the steel frame of the building, swinging from a point above, and he could hear the sound of steel on steel, like a sword being drawn from its sheath, only at twelve times the scale.
With the appropriate design, the impact would be clean, almost muted. His enemies, isolated within the wing, would make more noise, screaming as the reinforcing struts and the rivets holding intact beams to the larger structure were shorn away. The end result would see his enemies dead, and the building improved, more balanced.
Ten minutes to draw up the blueprint. Eighty to a hundred minutes of labor, depending on the skill of the craftsmen. Two hundred and forty five minutes of labor if he did it himself… and the result would be stronger, better and more efficient if he did. One thousand, four hundred dollars plus salaries.
Impractical. Getting his enemies into the area would be hard. Impossible, if they had any intelligence at all.
He dismissed the thought, but others were already flooding into place. Him and his two Ambassadors in the offending wing, connected to nearby buildings by an arrangement of steel cables. Not one pendulum, but seven.
One pendulum would cut the tumorous wing free. It would swing out on the steel cables, between the two buildings. With the right angle, it would swoop between the two nearest buildings. The right mechanism, and one cable could come free at the right moment, allowing a change of direction. They wouldn’t even lose their balance, as the angle of the floor and centripetal force kept them steadily in place.
With attention to details, they’d even be able to step free of the platform, as though they were departing a ski lift. The wing would then slingshot into the rubble of a nearby building, cleanly disposed of. The Forsberg Gallery
would be pulled apart, steel cut from steel by the shearing blades of the pendulums, the weight and movement of the mechanisms serving a second purpose by magnifying the damage, pulling individual pieces free of one another and setting the complete and total destruction of the building into motion.
The unseemly Forsberg Gallery would crash to the ground, with many of his enemies inside, while he and his Ambassadors watched from the point where they’d disembarked.
He loathed making messes, but cleaning up after the fact was so very satisfying, whether it was mopping up the gore or seeing the lot cleared of debris.
Thirty two minutes to draw out blueprints for the pendulums and work out the sequence needed for best effect. Three hundred to three hundred and forty minutes of time to set it up. He could estimate costs north of eleven thousand dollars, not counting salaries. None of the materials were particularly expensive in and of themselves, and he had any number of businesses in his pocket where he could acquire those materials at a significant discount.
Somewhat more practical, but impossible. He didn’t have the time to set it up, not for tonight. It made for an elegant image, if nothing else, somewhat soothing.
No sooner had he turned away from the idea of violence than other thoughts were forcing their way into his mind’s eye. The outstretching wing being transformed from an edificial cyst to a bridge, with similar connections networking the entire city, each bridge and connection point changing individual points of design into a series of gradients. Architectural styles and building heights would change from a stuttering, jilted progression to something flowing, a seamless wave-
Accord closed his eyes briefly, doing what he could to shut it out. It didn’t help. He had a sense of the building as a whole, could imagine reconfiguring it, removing the parts that jutted out and using them to fill gaps towards the building’s center mass. He’d worked with his power to see things through the various lenses of viability: money, resources, time, personnel, but that was almost a detriment now.
He opened his eyes to search for something to take his mind off of the irritating aspect of the building’s design, but he saw only glass shards, discordant in how they had fallen throughout the building. Some had been swept out of the way by people who’d taken up residence in the Gallery, but the heaping, lumpy piles of glass, dust and debris weren’t any better. He caught a glimpse of a soggy sleeping bag and the scattered contents of a supply kit and wished he hadn’t looked.
Images rifled through his mind. A network of wires, drawn taut by a weight plunging through the elevator shaft, moving in concert to sweep the glass shards and signs of human life into the elevator shaft. The same wires would catch his enemies, mangling them as they were cast down after the rain of glass. Between the long fall and the thermite that could reduce the mess to a fine, clean ash, even more durable capes wouldn’t be walking away.
No. It wasn’t constructive to think this way.
On the uppermost floors, plexiglass and a large volume of water mixed with a high concentration of carbon dioxide and a sudsing agent, sweeping through the building. Staggering it, so the water from the highest floor could clean away the soap-
Rearranging the glass shards into a kaleidoscopic-
“Citrine, Othello,” he spoke, interrupting his own train of thought. “Distract me.”
“I’m not so comfortable with this vantage point,” Citrine said. “The climb only tires us out, and the vantage point doesn’t suit any of our abilities. It puts us in a weak position.”
“Sir,” Othello whispered.
“…Sir!” she belatedly added.
Accord was ascending the stairs just in front of her. It might normally be impossible, but here, it was easy: to turn and deftly slice her throat with the folded blade within his cane. Quiet, efficient.
He stopped partway up the stair case and faced her, saw her unharmed and unhurt. His Citrine, young, blond, wearing a goldenrod yellow evening gown and a gemstone studded mask. Her hair was immaculately styled, her makeup flawless, with a yellow lipstick that matched her outfit without being garish.
Accord’s left hand folded over the right, both resting on top of the ornate cane.
She stopped, glanced at Othello, beside her. “I’m sorry, sir.”
“Everything and everyone in the appropriate place,” he said. “Not just in terms of physical position, but socially. Courtesy and acknowledgement of status are pivotal.”
“I know, sir. It’s not an excuse, but I was tired from the walk and the climb, and I was thinking of strategy, in case we were ambushed. I will endeavor to do better, sir.”
“We all have to do better. We must all strive to improve. A step backwards is a tragic, dangerous misstep.”
“Yes sir.”
As if he were watching himself on film, he could see himself pushing her down the stairs. Not so steep a fall as to kill her, but the pain would enforce discipline, and the act of discipline would both help drive the point home for her and quiet his own thoughts.
But the bruises, cuts any broken bones, her inconsistent attempts at suppressing any sounds of pain as she joined him on the trek to the upper floor? It would only make things worse. More disorder.
The thoughts were so sharp they were difficult to distinguish from reality. He shifted his hold on his cane, staring into her eyes. She still stood before him.
With just the fractional movement of his hands, there was a change in her body language. Muscles in her neck and shoulders grew more taut, her breathing changed. She said, “Sir-”
“Shh,” he said. She fell silent.
His left hand cupped her chin, his eyes never leaving hers. More of a reaction: her eyes flickered, moving mere milimeters as she strained to maintain eye contact. he could feel the warmth of her breath on his wrist as she exhaled slowly, the faintest of movements against his hand as she shifted her weight to stay absolutely still.
His thumb brushed against her cheek. Soft. He knew she dedicated an hour every morning to caring for her skin, another hour to her hair. Unlike hers, his gaze was unwavering, assured. In his peripheral vision, he could see her chest rise and fall. He wasn’t a sexual creature, not in the base, animal sense. The idea of intercourse, it didn’t appeal. The mess of it. But she was a thing of beauty, nonetheless. He could appreciate her from an aesthetic standpoint.
Citrine had shifted out of place, though. A square peg, just askew enough that it wouldn’t slide into the hole designated for it. It jarred, and it cast a pallor on everything else that was right about her.
As his fingers moved, tracing the line of her jaw, drifting to her chin, the idea of cutting her throat invaded his thoughts. A quick, clean severing of vital flows. He could see the lines of tension in her neck as she stretched it, striving to keep it absolutely still.
Again, though, the disorder, the disruption. Blood was so messy, and as much as he might relish the opportunity to take thirty minutes from his day and clean up back in a more secure area, others would see, and it would throw too many things out of balance.
There wasn’t a right answer here, and it bothered him.
Thinking rationally, he knew he was irritated. The location, even this city, they didn’t suit him. He couldn’t act on that, not yet, and the resulting dissatisfaction affected how he responded to the little things.
His fingers broke contact with her chin, one by one, as he contemplated his options. By the time his index finger had dropped away, he’d decided.
“You’re my best ambassador, Citrine,” he said.
She was breathing just a bit harder than she had been, as the tension that had drawn her entire body tight was released. A flush touched her cheeks as she responded, “Yes sir.”
“I don’t want to lose you.”
“Yes sir, I’ll do my utmost to ensure you don’t have cause to.”
“Please do,” he said. He noted that the flush had spread down to her decolletage. Not the result of fear or anger. Another base emotion. “Citrine?”
> She glanced at him.
“Calm yourself.”
“Yes sir,” she breathed the words.
He glanced at Othello, who wore a black suit and a mask divided between alabaster white and jet black. The man hadn’t commented or flinched as Accord addressed Citrine.
Accord turned and started ascending the stairs again. “Quicken your paces. I refuse to be late.”
Intrusive thoughts continued to plague him. He’d once described it as being very similar to the sensation one experienced on a train platform, a ledge or while standing in front of fast moving traffic, that momentary urge to simply step forward, to see what might happen.
Except the thoughts were sharper, with more weight to them, more physical than ethereal. His power was problem solving, and every problem demanded to be addressed. The solutions were posited whether he wanted them or not, one step and hundred-step plans alike. And it never ended.
Every flaw needed correcting, every imbalance needed to be weighed again. Mediocrity could be raised to greatness.
The greater the problem, the faster he could solve it. He’d taken the time one afternoon to solve world hunger. Six hours and twenty-six minutes with the internet and a phone on hand, and he’d been able to wrap his head around the key elements of the problem. He’d drafted a document in the nine hours that followed, doing little more than typing and tracking down exact numbers. A hundred and fifty pages, formatted and clear, detailing who would need to do what, and the costs therein.
It had been bare bones, with room for further documents detailing the specifics, but the basic ideas were there. Simple, measured, undeniable. Every major country and ruler had been accounted for, in terms of the approaches necessary to get them on board, given their particular natures and the political climate of their area. Production, distribution, finance and logistics, all sketched out and outlined in clear, simple language. Eighteen years, three point one trillion dollars. Not so much money that it was impossible. A great many moderate sacrifices from a number of people.
Even when he’d handed over the binder with the sum total of his work, his employer had been more concerned with the fact that he’d shown up late to work for his job. His boss had barely looked at the binder before calling it impossible, then demanded Accord return to work. A mind like his, in an office handling economic oversight within the PRT, looking for the precogs and thinkers who were trying to manipulate the markets to their own ends.