by David Reiss
I considered. Though I'd never been a passionate follower of the arts, input on those subjects from a literally alien perspective would likely be quite interesting. Unfortunately, it seemed unlikely to be relevant to my own investigation.
“In brief, what was life like in Legion space?”
“It was the illusion of safety, at the cost of complete obeisance.” Joan's strangely violin-like voice carried a forlorn harmonic. “The average citizen has nothing to fear from crime or violence, because those who might commit crimes quietly disappear. No one starves in the streets, because those who are sick or unable to work quietly disappear. Education is freely available, but any who question the state's official teachings quietly disappear...Most citizens live a comfortable and productive life, without ever noticing that they'd never enjoy a single free thought before they'd died.”
The worst part of me, that part from which Doctor Fid’s most horrific excesses had originated, thought the solution to be admirably efficient. The rest of me cringed.
“That level of state surveillance seems as though it would have been difficult to overcome,” I finally noted. “How did you manage so large an exodus?”
“It wasn't just me,” she smiled sadly. “We'd organized into small, loosely organized cells. The true leader of our cause had, decades ago, created a device to detect when one of the state psychics was in range, and we developed meditation techniques to avoid detection.”
“Psychics?”
“The Legion secret police are made up of thought-readers, and their officers are more powerful still.” Her sigh was drawn out, lingering like a strummed violin-string. “The disappeared...they are rarely taken by force. Their bodies walk themselves into shadow, helpless puppets controlled by the Legion elite.”
“There are no telepaths here,” I stated with certainty.
“I know,” she smiled gratefully. “This planet is fortunate, and we were blessed to find ourselves upon this sanctuary. Species that evolve psionic abilities tend to attract Legion attention. It is tragic...the Legion is relatively young, and yet they have altered or ended the history of so many worlds...”
“How young?”
“They started their expansion a little more than four hundred of your Earth years ago.”
For a moment, I imagined that I tasted gypsum and dust and aging books, and I remembered three blackboards worth of formulae and the warm sensation of my brother's hand inside my own. Four hundred and eleven years, halfway across the galaxy...If my quick calculations were correct (and they usually were), the origin point of the quantum shift that led to the emergence of superpowers lay near the center of Legion space.
It was no great leap to imagine that the Legion's explosive growth had coincided with the sudden fundamental change in universal laws. Here (fifteen-thousand parsecs away and a few centuries later) we'd developed costumed jesters that laughed at the laws of physics and played out their destructive roles of 'heroes' and 'villains'. There, telepaths and mind-controllers capable of fueling an interstellar totalitarian regime.
The Legion had been prepared for it and been ready to capitalize on the change. They must have been! A sudden military expansion across the galaxy would have required decades of preparation and planning, begun long before the distortion itself; it seemed disturbingly possible that they'd triggered the phenomena themselves at an opportune moment.
I had more questions, and Joan offered more answers; after an hour, I left with a data stick filled with recorded sensor logs and other information, a box carefully wrapped for Whisper, and a heartfelt reminder that (although Joan the Glassblower was hopeful that Starnyx's quest be completed) monsters were unwelcome in her people's compound.
◊◊◊
Although the note had only been printed one day prior, the paper was already beginning to wear; it hadn’t left Paul Lamont’s reach since he’d received it. Folded, shoved into a pocket, then removed and re-read over and over, like he was doing now. His breath caught, thumb absently rubbing at the note’s surface.
The balding man climbed out of the aging, tan-colored station wagon and, hesitantly, made his way to the back yard. The sun was low in the sky, the morning barely born, and the street was silent. A weathered and trembling hand paused before touching the back door. Eyes darted to the note, and Mr. Lamont stepped back to find the spare key under the fake-rock next to the azalea.
The door opened, smoothly and quietly. The note was folded and returned to a pocket; the man’s attention was on his surroundings, now. The letter had given directions, but still he could not help but peer into other rooms as he approached, wincing at debris and at the scents. He found his destination.
“Hey, Bri,” he called gently, biting back a sob.
“Dad?!” Brian Lamont shot awake, kicking away the stolen blankets that he’d wrapped around himself.
“Oh God,” the older man whispered, stumbling as though he might collapse. “Thank God.”
“What are you doing here?” Brian demanded tremulously. “How’d you find me?!?”
On the other mattress, pushed against a wall, Ethan Samuelson’s eyes were wide, observant but not interfering.
“I got a letter from a P.I.,” Mr. Lamont answered. “He was investiga—never mind. He wrote me a letter, told me what happened.”
“You don’t - you don't know what happened!” Brian sobbed brokenly.
“I do,” Paul Lamont insisted quietly, voice strained. “The letter tol—”
“It was my fault!” Brian's hands were clenched into fists, shaking, and his eyes were glazed as though focused wholly upon his memories. “I was lighting fireworks, but I was wearing gloves and I slipped and—”
“It was an accident,” Brian's father insisted, taking a step forward and halting as though afraid of scaring his son away. “A stupid freaking accident and it's not your fault.”
“I tried to get Missy out!” the boy insisted. “I swear I did, but I wasn't fast enough and-”
“I know,” Mr. Lamont smiled sadly, blinking away tears “I know, kiddo.”
“I'm so sorry. I'm so, so sorry...”
Mr. Lamont stumbled forward to take his son into his arms, weeping openly. “I know. I love you, Bri. Your Mom and I love you so much...”
And then there were no coherent words for a long while, just tears, pain, comfort, regret, and hope that maybe healing was a possibility after all.
The other boy stood quietly, shifting uncomfortably and then slinking towards the exit. His expression was complicated; there was bitterness there, and terrible longing...but also compassion and genuine happiness for his friend's sake. His escape was, however, interrupted.
“Ethan, wait. It is 'Ethan', right?” Mr. Lamont asked, voice still unsteady.
“Yeah,” Ethan replied, surprised. “That's me.”
“You've been helping my boy. I know it's hard out here. If you hadn't been here, I don't know...I could have lost them both,” the older man's voice cracked with emotion. “I want to bring my son home...come with us. Even if it's just for a while, get some hot food in you. Please. You've been his friend, 'n he needed one. Please.”
“I, uh...ok.” Ethan looked shyly hesitant.
There was more, but I stopped listening. My drones still monitored the conversation and would have notified me if there were violence or raised voices, but I decided to allow them their privacy. After another half-hour of quiet, gentle conversation, all three piled into the station-wagon and left the house that had been my childhood home behind.
This was no victory. The Lamont household would still need to mourn Missy's death, and Brian would spend a lifetime struggling with guilt and trauma. It was possible that Ethan would finally find a close, familial relationship with the Lamonts; there was an empty place in their collective hearts, and young Brian would certainly cling to an outside source of support. But it was just as likely that Ethan would feel excluded by the family's shared pain, and flee to continue his endless and agonizing quest to belong.
For years, I've surreptitiously been implementing plans to save the world in spite of the efforts of so-called heroes. The technologies that I (or AH Biotech) had released had already saved thousands of lives; it felt very different, however, to save a life. The abstract purity of the greater good was replaced by faces and names.
This was why they did it: the false idols, the 'heroes'. They put on their masks and colorful spandex and leaped towards grand, often violent and ultimately meaningless gestures. None of their lot cured diseases, or fed the hungry, or lobbied for better education, or built roads, or cleaned the oceans! They waved to the cameras and accepted adulation as though they'd achieved something grand, but really...they'd just grabbed the low hanging fruit and eaten their fill. A real hero would ascend further: climb into the shadowy canopy, and risk the greater fall in search of more nourishing fare.
Even knowing that this accomplishment was small and petty, my sleep was still untroubled that night. Doctor Fid is not who Doctor Fid was. And yet, Fid's mission remained.
(I sent a swarm of robots to sneak into the now-abandoned house, to clean and perform maintenance. Nothing worth doing should be left half-done.)
CHAPTER TWELVE
It seemed to me that Doctor Fid had been spending more time sneaking about in recent months than had previously been common. Pledging to avoid unnecessary violence had driven the notorious villain largely into the shadows. Some might justify the inevitable battles (if I were to travel more openly) as ‘self-defense’; that felt fundamentally dishonest. If I were to be true to my oath then an honest attempt would need be made to avoid situations in which a brawl was the likely result. And so, the Mk 34 stealth model had since become Doctor Fid’s armor of choice
As my faceplate was used to shatter a reinforced concrete wall, it dawned on me that perhaps it would have been preferable to upgrade the stealth capabilities of a more combat-oriented suit.
I reversed thrust, exploding away from the wall and scattering my assailants. I tumbled twice before stabilizing into a hover, twisting to face the heroes just in time to duck a beam of purple energy so powerful that the air itself hummed in its wake. Silent alarms triggered throughout my suit, warning of surface breach and sub-frame damage to both of my legs. I redirected more energy to force-fields and took a shaky breath.
Time was not my friend.
I shifted a few feet to the left to avoid another blast of purple plasma but was unable to avoid the green tendril of energy that wrapped around my legs. I was jerked forward with murderous speed and swung towards a waiting white-yellow pillar of immovable force; a quick particle-beam pulsed at the ground beneath my assailant's feet forced him to lose his concentration, and I avoided the pillar with only inches to spare.
With an impressive roar, the White Tigress leapt upon me. The last time that I'd faced her, I'd been lucky enough to pummel her unconscious before she'd been able to shift forms; this time, she'd had time to alter her shape to that of a nine-foot-tall, bestial anthropomorphised version of her namesake, and her strength and speed put her in the same weight class as Titan. I was born down to the ground, landing on my back with the great white-furred beast’s crushing weight upon my chest. Her monstrous fangs were inches from my face-plate, and I had a close-up view of her smug smile before her jaws widened threateningly.
I summoned my battle scepter to my left hand, setting the shaft crossways in her maw so that I could push her head backwards. With my right, I unleashed another charged-particle blast to the underside of her chin. She fell away from me, but her snarl sounded more of annoyance than pain.
I shook the last of the ice from my arms as I again shot into the air, narrowly avoiding another wave of superchilled sleet alongside another of Psion's strangely colored beams of ionized plasma. The air between the two beams hissed angrily, a chaotic swirl of frozen mist and steam. Another energy tendril reached for me, but this time I was ready; I swatted it away with the pommel of my scepter.
“I said,” my vocoder transformed my voice into an intimidating growl, “that I am here to talk!”
“The seventy-sixth precinct has a nice interrogation room,” Blizzard called back. “We'll talk there!”
And then I was dodging as Psion and Blizzard launched a punishing series of their ranged strikes. I'd written a subroutine to predict Shrike's attacks, but even so I nearly collided with a yellow white pillar in my haste to avoid another of Blizzard's icy blasts. Wildcard was slinging that emerald energy cable like a great whip, and White Tigress had rolled back to her feet and was readying herself for another pounce. There was blood between my teeth, breathing hurt, and my left leg burned like lightning that stabbed upwards into my spine whenever I bent my knee.
I'd missed this so much.
Laughing maniacally, I shot forward and crashed into their midst. At close range, White Tigress was the greater threat; I took care that one of her teammates was always between us. She repeatedly gathered herself and withdrew, tail lashing with frustration, as I brawled with the remaining Knights.
I danced, using the scepter as a club and letting my armor work through a pattern of strikes programmed from an obscure Filipino martial art. The Mk 34 lacked the overwhelming physical strength of the Mk 29, but I still held back to keep from accidentally causing fatal damage.
I'd come to ask questions, after all. I lack the skills necessary to question the dead.
In such close quarters, Psion's lurid purple beams of plasma and Blizzard's jets of supercooled sleet were more dangerous to the Knights than they were to me. Still, they worked well together, occasionally managing a blast or two when they were confident in their line of fire. I shrugged my left arm into a frigid gust to protect my right, several inches of crystal-clear ice forming instantly and locking the arm stiff. Wildcard's green energy-whip landed a punishing blow to the side of my head, but I retaliated with a swing of my scepter. The pommel took him below his sternum and he went down, wheezing desperately. And then there were four.
Purple energy poured at me in a torrent, painfully hot on my back even through armor and force-fields turned up to maximum.
I turned to the orange-costumed woman and glared, “I saved your life!”
“Thank you!” she smirked, breathing hard from exertion. “Also, you're under arrest.”
Heroes.
“That assessment seems premature,” my laughter echoed, subtly echoed by microdrones hiding in the shadows.
Shrike, Psion and Blizzard simultaneously backed away in different directions, attempting to create more distance between them so that their blasts would not interfere with each other. I could follow only one, so twisted to keep close to Psion; her plasma beams were the most significant threat to the Mk 34’s integrity. I dismissed my battle-scepter and used both hands to direct a quick infrasonic pulse. The Korean heroine stumbled back, gasping and dizzy; I hadn't dialed the weapon to sufficient power to cause permanent damage, but it would be at least thirty seconds before the paroxysms in her lungs stilled.
White Tigress had found an eight-foot length of galvanized steel pipe.
With an ugly crack, my left leg buckled completely; the giant feline's two-handed baseball-style swing had struck me low on my hip. Anti-gravitics kicked in automatically and the Mk 34's auto-combat algorithms took over seamlessly, while I clenched my teeth and quickly reprogrammed my neural interface to shut off the pain receptors in my own leg.
I drew in a few quick breaths between clenched teeth, letting my damaged armor pilot my body through a complicated series of attacks and evasions. Only three of the Brooklyn Knights were still standing, but they continued to cooperate smoothly. Even though my predictive formulae allowed me to avoid Shrike's increasingly desperate attacks, his partners used the obstructions creatively in their unsuccessful attempts to gain the upper hand.
My opportunity arrived. I faked a stumble as I slid around one of Shrike's columns and the White Tigress was quick to capitalize, roaring triumphantly and slashing at my faceplate
with razor sharp claws. I shrugged back (letting the deadly talons make contact but without sufficient force to cause damage) and grabbed her wrists with both hands. A pulse of my armor's thrusters jerked her forward, face-first into the blast of superchilled sleet that Blizzard had directed at me. The giant felinoid fell back, clawing at the several-inch-thick layer of ice that had formed around her head.
“No!” Blizzard shouted frantically, trying to line up another attack upon me. I was faster, and another pulse of painful infrasound put him down.
And then there was one. I hovered closer to the last Knight standing, and again summoned my scepter. His expression was closer to one of resignation than fear, but he continued to summon spike after spike in an attempt to ward me off.
“Shrike!” I growled, the red glow seeping from the joints of my armor creating an angry haze as dust and fog caught the brilliant display. My voice lowered into an even command:
“Give me your arm.”
◊◊◊
Convincing the Knights to enter into a calm discussion required a bit more pugilation and a bit more first aid, but we were eventually able to reach an understanding. More or less.
“Would any of you like some tea?” I asked politely. One of my heavy-combat drones had an electric kettle and accouterments stored within. It's the little things that make long-distance travel enjoyable. “I have Earl Grey, Darjeeling black, a Chinese green tea and a Chamomile Lemon herbal mix.”
“I'll take the Darjeeling,” Shrike said, sounding petulant. I took no offense; the hero's irritation was no doubt caused by significant discomfort. His now re-broken arm was once more held immobile in a makeshift sling.
None of the other Knights seemed interested in refreshments.
I'd conveyed them into an abandoned schoolhouse, away from prying eyes so that none would interrupt our conversation. The arrival of my heavy combat drones had blunted their enthusiasm towards renewing combat, and they'd reluctantly taken seats upon the long-deserted children's desks left in the classroom. Almost reflexively, I'd taken a place at the front of the room by the graffiti-covered blackboard.