“I hear you, pally,” Daedalus said casually. Outside this hole in the ground, he would have a lot more choices. A lot more chances.
I will make you eat your words, Chimp, he thought coldly. I’ll destroy everything you built here, you just wait.
You won’t save the world. That’s my job.
Tule Desert, Nevada, March 16, 2013
Ain’t nobody else gonna save the world.
That thought had kept him going during the three months he’d spent laboring for the Emperor – and the sixty years he’d spent building toys on behalf of the Freedom Legion, for that matter. That’s all they thought he was good for: making toys. He couldn’t wait for the charade to be over, when the imbeciles he’d had to tolerate for the better part of a century found out what was what.
Daedalus wasn’t quite ready to have his secrets revealed, though. As Johnny-Boy Clarke, the Great Colored Hope, and the Blonde Genius talked themselves into figuring out the truth, he activated the contingency plan he’d been saving for an occasion such as this.
It had taken decades of preparation, building hidden backdoors into the Legion’s systems, like the one that allowed him to eavesdrop on Doc’s comm even when it was turned off, which he’d used to overhear his confab with the two most powerful morons on the planet. Or the careful alterations to the security cameras in Slaughter’s lab, so he could come in late at night and do some work on Doc’s Brass Man suit when nobody was looking, in preparation for the day when he’d have to take out the fair-haired do-gooder once and for all.
It was the best kind of chess game, the one where the other bastard didn’t even know he was playing until all the pieces were in place and only one move was left. A part of Daedalus regretted the necessity of what he was about to do, but another part was exultant. The blonde super-genius had never figured out that his scruples were more deadly than greed or ambition. His good intentions would destroy humanity. Only Daedalus was willing to do what was necessary, willing to deal with the devil – three different devils with their own agendas, as a matter of fact – and ensure the Earth didn’t end up as a depopulated mudball floating meaninglessly in space.
“Checkmate, fucker,” Daedalus hissed, and sent forth a mental command that set in motion three chains of events. A microscopic bomb built into Doc Slaughter’s cochlear implant went off, scattering his overrated brains all over the Nevada desert. A moment later, the same command caused the Brass Man suit to explode, shredding it and the body inside, and ensuring that nobody, not even the Faggot Godfather on his best day, could put Doc back together again. And, throughout it all, a multi-spectrum holographic projection made it look as if John had smashed Doc’s skull with his fist and then torn his armor apart. Daedalus had been particularly proud of that trick: he’d programmed the illusion himself, creating no less than two hundred variations to account for as many possible circumstances as possible. It was as neat a frame-up as one could conceive, and worth all the hard work he’d put into it.
Saving the world wasn’t an easy job, but it was the only job that mattered.
Christine Dark
Lake of the Woods, Ontario, March 16, 2013
Tears were running down her face when Mark was done telling his story. She hugged him tightly. He’d spoken in a detached, impersonal way, but the emotions that had emerged as he spoke had been almost overwhelming. “I’m so sorry,” she said.
“Not your fault,” he replied, not hugging her back, arms hanging limply down his sides. “But that’s how it is. I’m fucked in the head, and I’m not going to get any better.”
“It’s not your fault,” she told him. “You didn’t know what was happening until it was too late.”
“If I’d known, I’d still have smashed that fucker’s head through the wall. I wanted him dead. When I felt him getting turned on while he was killing me, I knew somebody like that didn’t have any business being alive. That’s what I’m trying to say here.” He stepped away from her, and she let him go. “I don’t want your pity. I don’t need anybody’s pity. And I don’t need any psychobabble, either. Yeah, I know a part of me is killing my asshole stepfather every time I kill some other asshole. I know. And I don’t give a fuck. I’ll kill assholes like that whenever I can. I’d kill them all if I could.”
Beneath the nasty words, Christine heard Mark’s thoughts as if he was speaking them out loud.
This is when she leaves me. This is when she runs away from the monster I am.
The resigned sadness that followed the thought made her want to cry again. She groped for him and he came to her and held her.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
A few hours before they’d been laughing and prancing through the woods like two infatuated teenagers. This was the same Mark who had made love to her last night and earlier today. For a while, he had set aside his rage and been happy. She could help him deal with it. She could help heal him.
Or he can drag you down with him. Or he can turn that rage on you one day. He didn’t just kill his stepfather, don’t you get that? He became him.
The thought was so ugly, so monstrously unfair, that she wished she could reach into her head and tear it out. But she had thought it. She could make all the jokes about her brain acting as if it had a mind of its own, very funny, ha ha, but those were her thoughts, her doubts and fears. The intensity of Mark’s emotions scared her, terrified her. A part of her wanted to do just what he expected her to do. Turn away from him, run away from him.
Just like his mother had done. That thought almost made her start crying again.
I’m not going to leave him. I’m not going to betray him.
We’ll see, her nasty side said inside her head.
* * *
When they came out of the kitchen, Kestrel and Condor were pointedly looking at the computer monitors and pretending they hadn’t heard their little episode in the kitchen. That suited Christine just fine. She was completely wrung out, and all she wanted to do was go to sleep for a day and a half. Mark squeezed her hand and she squeezed his. Okay. We’re okay. It’s all good in da hood. And if I keep telling myself that, I might even believe it.
“Any news?” Mark asked Condor. Good, he was all business again. Just the way they all should be right now. Let’s set aside the drama and concentrate on slightly more important matters like staying alive, saving the world, all that happy crappy.
“Still nothing definite on Ultimate. I’m hearing some chatter about an incident in Nevada involving the Legion. It sounds like the meeting with Ultimate didn’t end up peacefully. There’s an unconfirmed report that one Legionnaire is dead, but no specific yet.”
“Shit. What if they captured him and are making him talk? We need to get the hell out of here.”
“Are we still thinking about going back to New York? Things are getting pretty lively over there. After we left, the Italians and Russians got into a pretty nasty turf war. The body count is piling up: twenty-something and climbing. Looks like it started when a really pale guy in a white suit killed the head of the Cosa Nostra. Sound familiar?”
“Archangel,” Mark said sourly. “Sounds like payback for screwing up the hospital job.”
“My kidnapping, you mean,” Christine said. “The one where they killed at least three people.”
“Four people. Three nurses and an orderly. Archangel was probably butt-hurt because you got away.”
“Anyway, it looks like the Russians are winning the war so far. Still, they’re probably stretched pretty thin. I think we have a shot of getting some info from them without getting fragged.”
“Might as well.” Mark turned to Christine. “What do you think? This whole situation started in the city.”
Hey, that was pretty nice of him, asking for her opinion on what crappy option to choose from a full menu of crappy options. Stay here and risk being discovered if John was captured and forced to talk? Go to New York and try to find the bad guys before they found her? Take a relaxing vacation somewhere in the Car
ibbean so she and Mark could go back to being the carefree happy lovers of the last twelve hours or so? Option Three wasn’t on the list, of course.
“Hmm. I guess New York is the place to go,” she said. “They probably expect us to run and hide, not double back and go after them. It might catch them by surprise.”
“Yeah, that was my reasoning too,” Mark said.
Condor nodded in agreement. He glanced at Kestrel, who shrugged. “New York it is.” He paused, looking at one of the screens. “Just got another bit of news. The police are at Cassandra’s place. They found a lot of bodies there.”
“Yeah. I knew Cassie’d gone down fighting. Got herself a nice honor guard to Valhalla.” The pain was raw and jagged behind his no-face, but Mark’s voice came out cool and steady. “I hope the cops don’t mess up her stuff too much. She had some expensive artwork there, besides her black velvet Elvis. And I guess I should say goodbye to my stuff, too. There was nothing much in there I’ll miss, though. A couple first edition books, yeah, but pretty much everything else can be replaced. A nice stash of cash, but I’ve never kept my life savings in one place. Fuck it. Easy comes, easy goes.” Christine realized he was talking about the closest thing he’d had to a home, now lost to him, along with Cassandra. Mark’s world had been obliterated when he’d gone and rescued her. Armageddon Girl indeed.
“All right, I’ll go get the Condor Jet ready. Guess it’s time to pack up and head on out.”
“That shouldn’t take me long,” Christine commented. All she had to her name were some toiletries, a pair of jeans, a couple of t-shirts (three t-shirts counting the one she was wearing right now), a pair of sneakers, a pink sweater and a change of underwear. And no handbag or suitcase; she’d have to throw all her stuff in a shopping bag, or maybe a trash bag, what her Grampa liked to call ‘Polish baggage.’ She should have tossed her clothes in the laundry last night, darn it. She headed upstairs to gather her possessions.
She found her clothes freshly washed and neatly folded on her bed. Who…
“No need to thank me,” Kestrel said behind her. “I was doing laundry while Kyle was hanging out. Well, hanging upside down and trying to find where the hell I put all the knots. So it was no trouble.”
“Uh, thank you,” Christine replied. Even when being nice, Kestrel was never going to be terribly comfortable to have around. “All my stuff was getting pretty dirty after all the superhero battles. I really appreciate it, Melanie.”
“Glad to help.” Kestrel looked at Christine for a few awkward seconds. “I’d never heard the full story about Face and his stepfather, not until he told you in the kitchen,” she finally said. “I knew he’d killed the guy, and that he’d had it coming, but not how it went down.”
Christine tried to think of something to say and came up with zilch. She didn’t pry below the surface of Kestrel’s emotional state, and it was pretty messy even there, sadness and anger and pity with a dash of me-so-horny for Mark, for Christine, for Kyle and probably a few dozen others. Christine’s mind flashed with an image of a heartfelt session of group therapy culminating in a fetish orgy. She was so going to need real therapy before this was over.
“You’re really getting to him,” Kestrel continued. “Can you handle it? All that squeamishness is sweet and endearing, but you just don’t get how things work in the real world. You haven’t looked at a rapist-murderer in the eye, or seen what’s left of his victims. You haven’t gone over a crime scene and forced yourself to ignore the chunks of meat that once were human beings, because you need to try to find clues and don’t have time to sob and vomit and huddle in a corner till mommy makes it all better.”
Nothing to say to that, either. Christine looked at her feet, tried to swallow the lump in her throat. She knew Kestrel wasn’t saying that horrible stuff to hurt her – if she’d thought she was, Christine would have slammed her against a wall again – but it still hurt to hear it.
“Just try to handle it, Christine. You’re going to break him if you can’t. He doesn’t deserve that.”
“No, he doesn’t,” she agreed. Her eyes were burning, but she wasn’t going to cry in front of Kestrel.
“Everything okay in here?” Mark said from the doorway.
Christine nodded and forced herself to smile. It was a pretty weak smile, but it seemed to reassure him a bit. “It’s all good, as the homies say back on Earth Prime. Melanie was nice enough to do my laundry.”
“She did?”
“Free of charge, killer,” Kestrel told him. “Neither of you have to spank me or anything.”
“Sweet.”
Kestrel walked past Mark, turned to Christine long enough to nod and wink at her, and left. Christine realized she’d been catching her breath for several seconds and exhaled. Well, that was fun.
“Everything okay?” Mark repeated.
“Yes. I mean, Melanie can be a little much even when she’s trying to be friendly, but yes, everything’s okay.”
“Good.” He paused for a second. “Listen, things are going to get dangerous again. We’re going to need to keep things professional while we’re working.”
“I understand.” It made sense; they couldn’t get all googly-eyed at each other or they might get bushwhacked by ninjas or killer robots. It made her feel sad, though. They’d had a good night and a good day, and now it was over, or at least on hold.
Mark produced the face from earlier that morning. “But before we do that, I wanted to do this.”
They kissed. They only kissed, that’s all they had time for, but it was deep and intense and left her breathless and yearning for more.
Break him? If this turned out badly, it would break her.
Chapter Eight
The Freedom Legion
Tule Desert, Nevada, March 16, 2013
Jaw-jaw was better than war-war, but Ali Fiori was getting impatient. She forced herself not to glance at her wrist-comp, but she knew it was at least five minutes since the last time she’d checked the time, and that had been like the fourth time. What the hell were John and Cassius telling Kenneth?
Who the traitor is, for starters. She kept glanced at her teammates, people she’d known for decades. Most of them, at least. Sun Knight was a newbie, only a full member for a couple years, but he was a Type Three, so he’d gotten assigned to the Special Squad. The kid hadn’t done any extensive training with the squad; he’d spent most of his time with the Legion headlining with a squad of other newbies and doing mostly light stuff. He was an unlikely candidate for a traitor, though: whoever was behind this couldn’t be a recent addition.
Everybody else was an old-timer, and they were her main worry. The armored geniuses were both founding members, of course. Doc she trusted completely. Daedalus Smith could be a dick, sure, but she couldn’t picture him betraying the Legion. Meteor was another founder, and another part-time dick. She could easily picture him as a traitor, but that was mostly personal her dislike talking. Nebiru had joined in 1963; the Iraqi faux-sorcerer was a good guy, quiet and unassuming when he wasn’t in character as the Mystic Master, when he could cut loose with a host of face-melting ‘spells’ at a moment’s notice. She trusted him, more than she trusted Daedalus or even Doc. The big hairy guy with the ax was Berserker. The Mythological Norwegian got inducted in ’79, after serving with distinction in Interpol’s Parahuman Branch. He was tough and nearly as much as a badass as he thought he was, but he also thought the ladies found his charms irresistible and was sadly mistaken ninety percent of the time (the remaining ten percent was a sad testament to the lack of good taste and common sense in the world). Ali didn’t care for him, but the guy was not smart enough to be part of a conspiracy, unless he was an amazing actor.
“Dammit,” the last member of the team said. “Doc has turned on every security protocol in his suit. I can’t pick anything up with my psi.” The unfortunately-named Faerie Godfather (nee Harry LaBeouf) had been around since the mid-eighties, when he had set aside his medical practice to join the Le
gion. His powers included telepathy and empathy but he was best-known for his force fields, which might come in handy if things got rough, and his very powerful healing abilities. He was very good at what he did, and he’d never made a pass at Ali, which put him ahead of about a third of the Legion’s male members. Of course, in the Faerie’s case it was a matter of sexual preference rather than restraint. The Godfather was not a bad guy, but he liked playing politics a bit too much. Ali intended to keep a close eye on him, just in case he was the traitor. She doubted it, but she had the doubts about everyone else; she had to be wrong about at least one of them.
“I think the plan was for them to have a private conference, FG,” Ali said. Doc didn’t want to share the conversation with anybody else until he knew what was going on. Whatever John’s story was, it had been enough to convince Janus, so it had to be a doozy.
“Don’t get me started on Janus,” the Godfather said when she spoke the thought out loud. The GLBT contingent in the Legion – half a dozen openly gay members out of its two hundred members – didn’t think highly of Janus’ decision to stay in the closet. Ali tended to agree with them – it was the twenty-first century, after all – but in the end it was Cassius’ choice. In any case, the man’s personal life wasn’t the issue here.
“I don’t think Janus’ coming out is important right now,” she told the Godfather, who grumbled a bit but let it go.
They were still talking. Hopefully things would be resolved the easy way. Hopefully…
John punched Doc, shattering his skull in an explosion of blood, and followed up with another blow that turned the Brass Man armor into bits and pieces of metal and flesh.
New Olympus Saga (Book 2): Doomsday Duet Page 13