by Ben Bequer
“Apogee, don’t you remember anything?”
She pounded the balls of her fists on my shoulders one last time before finally surrendering. Her head hung low in defeat, strands of her hair partially obscuring her face. She was spent from the effort, from lack of oxygen.
I took a chance and released her without warning, holding her as she collapsed on the ground. Apogee came to her knees with her hair obscuring her face, and I took a few steps back in case she decided to attack again.
Apogee was scared, unsure of herself, as if the ground would open up beneath her, and I could only empathize. Who knew what mess Zundergrub had left in her mind? The only saving grace was that I had interrupted the doctor’s ritual, and he was forced to leave the job incomplete.
“Madelyne, do you remember anything?”
She nodded.
“What do you remember?”
“Everything,” she said, and a wave of relief washed over me.
“So why were you going crazy on me?”
Apogee shook her head and said, “I couldn’t help myself.”
“I know everything is a mess right now,” I said, coming closer and kneeling beside her. “We’ll put it all together again, I promise you.”
“I saw you. In Los Angeles, when Pulsewave died. It was like I was there.”
“But you weren’t.”
“I know,” she said. “But I have vivid images of the whole thing. It’s like I was in the middle of the fight. I-I could see Atmosphero charging up, and you shooting the arrow. Blackjack, it’s like I was there.”
“I bet it’s from Zundergrub’s perspective,” I said.
“I don’t know.”
“That cold-blooded sonofabitch implanted that memory in your head.”
“He went farther than that,” she said.
“How so?”
“You don’t want to know,” Apogee said and flashed me a wicked smile.
“Huh?”
“Shut up for a minute,” she said, coming to her knees and closing her eyes in concentration.
I walked away, leaving her to meditate or whatever she was doing. It was probably something Mirage had taught her to defend herself from psychic attacks. I walked to the damaged elevator and hurled the few pieces of shattered stone aside, clearing the way.
There was still the issue of what to do with Zundergrub. While he was protected by Haha, who was unaware of his machinations, the doctor was near invulnerable. Haha possessed a plasma cannon that could rip right through me or Apogee, and wouldn’t hesitate to use it should we make any hostile move. Mr. Haha wouldn’t realize he was protecting a mass-murderer, nor would he probably care. He was single-minded in his devotion to the mission, fashioning himself a knight from King Arthur’s court on a quest for the Holy Grail, or some such nonsense.
Cool Hand was also a problem, and not because we could expect him to stand against us, but more so because he would certainly join in if we were losing against Zundergrub and Mr. Haha. He was, if anything, a master opportunist, and he would only throw his allegiance once the matter was settled.
But what made me worry the most was Apogee herself. I didn’t know if she would be able to fight against Zundergrub. I could probably dismantle Mr. Haha if I had the element of surprise, leaving me and the doctor against each other, but I couldn’t count on Apogee joining me at that point. In fact, I was certain that Zundergrub’s first order of business when he tinkered with her mind the second time, was to implant a command to make Madelyne unable to fight against him. That’s what I would have done.
I looked back at Apogee and wondered what a tangled mess her mind was. I couldn’t take the risk of fighting Zundergrub and Haha without knowing what she would do.
The elevator disc dropped to the bottom level, interrupting my thoughts and behind me Apogee came to her feet and walked over.
“Better?” I asked.
She shook her head.
“Makes me wish I had paid attention to all the tricks Mirage was trying to teach me,” Apogee said. “So what do we do now?”
“I don’t know.”
“If you’re thinking of going up there and fighting them-“ she started but I interrupted her.
“I’m not thinking that.”
“Good.”
“You want to ambush them down here when they get down?”
I shook my head.
“Do you even have a plan?”
“Not really.”
“Well, I have one,” she said. “But you’re not going to like it. I say we go up there and act like if nothing happened.”
“You’re right. I don’t like it.”
“Of course you don’t,” Apogee said. “But use your head for a second.”
“Says the woman that tried to remove it forcefully,” I joked, rubbing my chin.
“Be serious,” she said. “If we fight them and win, then what?”
“Well, we can get the rocket ship and get you home safe,” I said.
Madelyne laughed, “If I wanted safe, Blackjack, I would’ve never put on this suit.”
I looked at her suit and smiled.
“It is a pretty nice suit.”
“You have a one-track mind, you know?”
“So…we pretend like nothing happened. What about this,” I pointed to my bruised and beaten face.
“So you’re ugly, that’s not my problem,” she joked. “You say you fell, like twenty times. You’re clumsy, how is that my fault? Besides, this is all a moot point if Nostromo’s already taken them out.”
She stepped into the elevator.
“Are you coming?”
I made her wait for it, but there was never any real doubt that I would follow. As soon as I was inside, the elevator shot up. It was a disconcerting ride, because the elevator only consisted of the ten foot-wide circular platform, and the walls of the shaft were of carved, jagged moonstone, racing by at breakneck speed as we rose up the tower.
“Something wrong?” she asked, noticing my apprehension.
“I was wondering what else Zundergrub did to you.”
“I told you that you didn’t want to know.”
But I really did and though I was prepared to let the matter lie, she filled in the blanks.
“He tried to change some of the things you did.”
I didn’t know if that was all she was going to say, so I watched her silently.
“Like when we were at that motel,” she added. “He altered that so it wasn’t so pleasant.”
I was about to ask, when I realized what was the only thing that cold, depraved bastard could come up with. It also explained the ferocity of Apogee’s confused attacks.
“Yep,” she said.
“And you want to let this guy live another day?”
Madelyne smiled.
“We’ve come this far,” she said, and the door slid open, revealing Nostromo’s inner sanctum, and more importantly a man standing in front of us.
It wasn’t Nostromo, though I wasn’t ready for a fight either way. It was another of the Original Seven, who along with Nostromo and Doctor Retcon had been the first super powered beings in human history.
It was Ed Waters.
* * *
To explain who Ed Waters is, and what he represents, would require a dissertation, but suffice it to say that Ed was one of the Original Seven, probably more powerful than the other six combined. His powers were based on molecule mastery and he could, in essence, transform me into a chair if he so desired.
He also wasn’t as reclusive as the others. With great heroes like Valiant, Nostromo, Global and Apostle, colorful villains like Dr. Retcon and Lady Jade to write stories about, you’d think there was little print space reserved for Ed. But his was the story of a man imbued with great and horrible power, who wanted nothing more than an ordinary life, and the news outlets ate it up.
And in that sense, he reveled in the idea of being super. He loved the life, and the idea of having powers. While the others ranged from trucul
ent (Valiant), to mysterious (Nostromo), to unavailable (Apostle) and finally too evil and dangerous to interview (Dr. Retcon and Lady Jade); the only Original Seven who were widely known were Global, whose whimsical and carefree nature made him a natural for the press, and Ed, who made himself available to every interview possible.
It was ironical, and perhaps hypocritical that what Ed wanted most in the world was to live an unassuming life as an accountant and spend time with his beloved wife, Teresa and their three adopted children. He and the other Seven were never able to conceive for some reason.
I recall the 60 Minutes interview from the late 90s when she was much older, how he held her hand the whole time. He looked at her as if his entire world depended on her looking back. He hadn’t aged, as was the case with the Seven, but time had taken its toll on her, as had disease and a lifetime of smoking. Ed still had the appearance of a man in his late 30s, vibrant and full of life. I read she died recently after a long bout with emphysema, and I wondered about him then. He had his adopted children to keep him busy, now adults and parents on their own accounts, but I imagine his morning sun had somewhat faded, for he had spent every ounce of his soul on her, and now she was gone.
But the man standing in front of me looked no different than he had in the interview I had seen more than a decade ago. His demeanor was pleasant, and the sight of Apogee, a known super heroine made him all the more pleased.
“Hello there,” he said as the elevator platform slid to a stop, with a broad smile across his face. “You, I know. I’ve been up here the last couple of years, and I’m out of touch. But I would know Apogee anywhere.”
“Hello, Mr. Waters,” she said blushing.
His smile was infectious, and calming. Most men would ogle Apogee, unable to escape her obvious beauty as a calling card, but Ed was unbothered by her appearance. As he said in that 60 Minutes interview, “I’ve only got eyes for Teresa.”
He extending his hand towards me, “I don’t think we’ve ever met.”
“I’m Blackjack,” I said, shaking his hand. I expected him to use his powers to dematerialize me, or turn me into a comfy chair, but instead he took my hand and shook it with an affable grin on his face.
“Nice to meet you, Mr. Blackjack. I assume you are with our other guests?” He motioned to Cool Hand, Mr. Haha and Dr. Zundergrub who stood in the hallway beyond the elevator. The others stood near a podium, ten feet off the ground, with a large chair sitting atop of it that faced away from me, where the great hero Nostromo sat.
And I have to admit that I almost went at the old man right there. The world became a tunnel vision, and for a moment all I could see was Zundergrub, over a hundred feet away. I suppose that’s what a shark feels like moments before the strike, as the nictating membranes roll over their black eyes and their murderous jaws extend for the kill.
But the anger faded, tempered by the fact that Ed was standing next to me, and he could stop me before I took the first step in anger.
“He’s with them,” Apogee answered, seeing me hesitate. “I am their captive.”
Ed’s brow furrowed, “Oh no. You are a villain, Blackjack?”
Apogee stared at me as I faced Ed like a cornered mouse fends off a hungry cobra. Except Ed was more disappointed than angry.
“I guess so,” I managed.
“Well, you have to be sure, don’t you?”
Ed smiled again, trying to put me at ease.
“That’s a pity,” he continued. “You seem like such a nice fellow.”
“Mr. Waters,” she started, “are you involved in all of this?”
He seemed confused. “I’m not sure I understand.”
“Blackjack and the others are involved with Doctor Retcon in some sort of-“
“Alec?” Ed interrupted, and then asked me, “How is the old man?”
“In jail, last I checked,” I said.
“Well, he is now. But you know his trick, right?”
I nodded.
“He came to visit when Teresa passed last month. We had a nice visit.”
“I hadn’t heard. I’m sorry,” Apogee said.
Ed smiled, “We knew it was coming for a long time. And she was at peace in the very end.”
“Sorry to hear that,” I managed.
“Thank you, kindly,” he said, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “So you’re here on behalf of Alec. I’m sorry to say it’s a bad time. Ricky is watching her, and he doesn’t like being interrupted.”
“Ricky?”
“Oh, he’s right there,” Ed said suddenly excited, giggling with a strange toothy laugh.
“Ricky is Nostromo?” I asked.
“Yes, that’s what I meant. I’m sorry. I’ve known him for sixty years, you know. It’s hard to call him by anything else.”
He looked at me, studying my clothes.
“Why don’t you, and them, have any costumes? I love colorful costumes, with long flowing capes. It’s the only thing that enticed me about trying to be a hero once we got back. You know, after they decided to save the world.”
Ed motioned us in and walked us towards Nostromo’s pedestal. My companions were standing beneath him, facing us, and I could see Cool Hand and Mr. Haha gesticulating while talking to him, though I couldn’t hear what they were saying. Zundergrub stood behind them, a surprised look on his face, and despite the distance, our eyes met.
On either side of the hallway was a veritable museum of superhero history. Devices of all sorts lay against the walls, including some robot prototypes like the ones below, some smashed to pieces, others fully functional. All discarded and dusty, forgotten relics of an age long past.
One machine in particular drew my attention, because of its similarity to the designs of Nikola Tesla. It sported two opposing Tesla coils each ten feet-tall, and a complicated device, about the size of a small car engine on a platform in the middle. Pausing to study it a second drew a chuckle from Ed.
“You have a discerning mind, Mr. Blackjack,” he said.
“What is it?”
“That’s the contraption that took us there. It’s the device that started everything,” Ed answered enigmatically.
“Did Tesla build it?”
Ed shook his head, “No, Alec did. Dr. Retcon.”
Upon further investigation, I could see that the device was somewhat different from Tesla’s Spartan designs, and it indeed showed some of the flair that Retcon was known for. The central device was within a red and white metal frame, sporting a few dozen small cathode ray tubes, and was decorated with fifties-styled flare and trim, as if created by a more extravagant mind.
As I knelt beside the machine, Haha strolled over.
“Is this machine of interest?” the robot asked.
“I think so,” I admitted, though its form and function much a mystery to me.
“Curious,” Haha said, trailing off.
“What is it?” Apogee asked and I saw Ed smiling mischievously.
“The specific location of this device is peculiar,” the robot answered.
“It looks like a piece of junk that doesn’t work anymore,” she scoffed.
“I don’t know,” I said, opening the two small doors within the box that revealed a strange, maw-like cradle, from which cables led into a tangled mess in the rear of the machine.
“Do you recall that note you gave to Cool Hand earlier?” Haha asked. “The note Dr. Retcon gave you with a set of coordinates?”
“Yeah, what about it?” I crawled almost into the machine, moving behind the cradle, and following the cabling to a highly modified Tesla unipolar generator turbine. In theory, this device was self-sustaining, but the cables from the cradle led to another device I couldn’t identify. I could see the power output cables from the unipolar generator, so I wondered what the add-ons were for.
“Those coordinates on Earth correspond to an area in the middle of the Sea of Okhotsk, west of the Kamchatka Peninsula in the Russian Far East.”
Ed seemed to delight in
the detective work I was doing, the tinkering, and he also was quite interested in Haha’s train of thought.
“So he sank some bit of junk for us to pick up in the middle of the ocean.”
“The specific coordinates are near a trench almost 3,300 meters in depth. That would make it quite difficult to retrieve anything of importance.”
“No problem. I tie a really long rope to one of your ears and toss you in.”
Haha and Ed laughed. It was a strange combo of Haha’s recorded mechanical bellow/guffaw, and Ed’s nerdy air-sucking chuckle. Even Apogee flashed me a smile.
“But what if I was to tell you that those coordinates, when interpolated to the surface of the Moon (not an easy feat, unless you make many assumptions), corresponds with the very location upon which you are standing?”
Interesting. I came out of the machine a moment, regarding the rabbit man.
“Are you for real?”
I looked at Ed, whose sheepish grin decried his terrible poker face.
“What is this thing, Ed?”
“Well, frankly I don’t know how it works. The details, that is. I was brought on to the project as an accountant at first, but then I guess I helped in the lab wherever I could,” he said.
Cool Hand and Zundergrub joined us, though the doctor stayed conspicuously back and away from me. The doctor did a bad job of concealing a smile on his face, probably noting the bruises and scrapes on my face. I stood and faced him, my clenched fists dug tightly into my waist, waiting to see if he would have the courage to do anything while I was facing him. But he did nothing.
Thankfully, Cool Hand stepped between us and said, “Fucking guy is zero, B. Nobody’s home.”
“Nostromo?” I asked.
“That’s right. Guy’s like worse than the babe here. You should see it. What was that guy who built that really big plane that never flew?”
“Are you talking about Howard Hughes?” Haha volunteered.
“Yeah, that dude. The guy from the movie.”
“His plane actually flew once,” Haha corrected.
“Didn’t he like turn into a monkey man? With long-ass nails and eating his own shit?”
I nodded, recalling the stories of Howard Hughes’ last days, his descent into a madness of obsessive-compulsiveness.