Daedalus savagely ground the cigar on his desk, marring the expensive wood finish. He hated having to wait for the opposition to make a move, but his chances of finding the girl were low to non-existent. He could only hope they’d try to break out Ultimate, or do something equally stupid. Mr. Night would probably come up with something, assuming he survived his little trip with Janus.
Meanwhile, it was time to get Plan B rolling, just in case. It would result in some twenty million deaths, for starters, but that was the price of doing business.
Christine Dark
Catskill Mountains, New York, March 17, 2013
“Does anybody live there? Cleaning maids, or a butler?” Christine asked Condor as they walked through the tunnel linking the underground hangar where they’d parked the Condor Jet to the big-ass mansion she’d noticed on their final approach.
He shook his head. “The whole thing is automated. A crew of gardeners takes care of the grounds a couple times a week, but nobody goes into the house. As far as the world knows, it’s owned by a Chinese billionaire who doesn’t use it very often. I only come here when I’m on vacation, a whole two, three times a year.”
That’s good, Christine thought as Condor let them all in; no residents meant no witnesses to their abduction-in-progress. Christine had caught a nasty burst of fear from Lady Shi when she woke up shortly before their arrival; she briefly fought her restraints and then became calm again. The fear was replaced by resignation. As they landed, Mark had taken the prisoner’s gag off and most of the straps, but kept the Type Four restraints and the blindfold on her. “Sorry for the rough treatment,” he told her. “I’ll take the blindfold off when we’re indoors.” Christine picked up an emotional shrug from the assassin, as if she hadn’t expected any better from them. The whole thing felt pretty skeevy to Christine, but she guessed it made sense to not let their prisoner know where they were.
At least they had somewhere to go, she considered as they made it to the manor, what with the Condor Lair being raided and all. That had sucked big time, not least because she’d left all her clothes back there, from the secondhand jeans and sweater to all the stuff she’d picked up the day before. She’d bought three designer tote bags, but since superheroes didn’t carry purses, she hadn’t taken any of them along on their ill-fated raid. All her crap was probably getting stuffed into evidence bags by the FBI, and all she had left was the stupid gray-and-black Condor groupie outfit she was wearing and the few toiletries she’d packed in the utility belt which had come with the outfit. The world truly sucked some days. She’d really liked that purple-and-white print dress.
The tunnel – she was getting mighty tired of tunnels by now – led to a secret door to the library, which was big enough to be named after a US president. She tried to enjoy the sights as they walked through the new Condor Crib. The opulence of the manor, complete with marble floors under rich carpets, expensive portraits and lots of stuff likely made of fine Corinthian leather, did nothing to dispel her crappy mood, unfortunately. “Nice house,” she said perfunctorily.
Thirty minutes and a shower later, she was feeling slightly better, but still fairly bummed out. Too much bad stuff had happened in the last twenty-four hours: fighting her alternate history mother, almost getting killed, Janus going missing, getting to the bad guys’ lair without achieving any sort of victory, resolution or closure, not to mention the possibility Condor and Kestrel were about to go all Gitmo on their prisoner… Not good at all.
Christine sank into a very comfy armchair in one of the manor’s rec rooms, a cup of hot chocolate in her hand. She was wearing silk pajamas under a plush bathrobe. Being rich was kinda nice, she had to admit. Still, not even the delicious hot chocolate improved the way she was feeling, mostly because Condor had the news on, and the news sucked ass.
Her picture was everywhere on the screen, shots from her adventures in Chicago and new pics from some sort of helmet-cam one of the Guardians must have been wearing, showing her new black hairdo. She was wanted for a long list of crimes, local, state and federal. Condor and Kestrel’s pictures were there, too, although in their case their faces were obscured by their helmets, so at least they couldn’t be identified as easily. Even Mark had his faceless mug plastered all over the news, which was pretty idiotic, considering. They were international fugitives now.
Lady Shi sat on her own armchair, her manacled hands on her lap, looking around calmly after they’d taken the blindfold off her. Her name was nowhere to be seen in the news. It was kind of funny that the only actual assassin for hire in the room wasn’t wanted by the authorities.
It had been almost an hour since their raid into the bad guys’ underground base, and there hadn’t been any word from Janus. She feared things hadn’t gone well for him, which also sucked ass. There was so much she’d wanted to talk to him about, from what he’d seen out in space to his experiences with the insane alien Neo. He’d been worried she might turn out like that alien; she’d picked that up from him, and it scared the crap out of her. And darn it, it’d been great having around a guy who could melt a roomful of killer robots. With Janus missing and John in the hands of the enemy, the two most powerful members of their raiding party were out of the game. They were so screwed now.
Even worse, Mr. Night had set off a death trap for them before disappearing with Janus. Since this wasn’t a comic book, Christine was fairly certain he’d expected the death trap to live up to the whole death part. If Lady Shi hadn’t led them to an exit, they would have all died. Total party wipeout. That could only mean that the Big Bads might want her alive, but would settle for her death if they couldn’t get their hands on her. That was more than a bit upsetting.
“After all we did, we’re back on square one,” she complained during a commercial break. “Okay, we know the Big Bads are this Smith guy and the Iron Tsar, but what can we do about it? The whole world thinks we’re the Big Bads.” There was the whole thing with the First Dude and the Pripet Marshes, of course, but she didn’t want to go there, literally or figuratively. She’d Googled the place just like the d-bag had told her, and it was right inside the Iron Tsar’s Dominion. Yeah, let’s go spit into the Eye of Sauron. What could go wrong?
“We know who to go after,” Mark said. “That’s the most important thing. We have targets, and all that’s left is figuring out how to take them out.” He nodded his head at Lady Shi. “She could be a big help.”
Lady Shi stayed quiet. Christine picked up a feeling of mild interest, and it felt like she was ready to cooperate. Nobody was going to get water boarded tonight, thank God.
“Let’s get down to business, then,” Condor said, turning to their prisoner. “Lady Shi, you have information about your former employers. I’m willing to pay for it. I’m sure Daedalus Smith was very generous, and I’ll admit I’m not in his league; last time I compared stock valuations, he could buy and sell me twenty times over. Still, I can offer you five million US dollars or the equivalent in any currency you’d like, in exchange for your full cooperation.”
She thought about it for a couple of seconds before nodding. “Done, with one condition.”
“Which is..?”
“You will take me with you when you go after Mr. Night. My vengeance is incomplete, as long as he lives.”
“He might be dead already,” Christine said hopefully.
“In that case, I will have five million dollars as a consolation prize.”
Weird. One second they’d beaten the woman half to death and been ready to torture her for information, and now they were discussing having her join their adventuring party. Could they trust her, though?
One way to make sure, of course. Christine, sure she was going to regret it, took a peek with her super-vision thingy.
It was like plunging her head into a pool of toxic waste. One could encapsulate Lady Shi emotional state with a simple sentence: ‘I Don’t Give A Fuck.’ Not a crap, a fuck. Most people weren’t real to Lady Shi; they were counters on a board g
ame for her to use or discard as she saw fit. She only cared about money, being given the respect she felt she deserved, her relationship with fellow sociopath Medved, and the brief burst of pleasure she felt when taking a life. Christine could see memories of past killings floating around her aura like Christmas tree decorations, each little colorful bubble sending brief flashes of blood and violence into her mind. It was bad; it was worse than Kestrel’s aura. Kestrel got off on pain; Lady Shi got off on watching the light go out in someone’s eyes.
It was as bad as what she’d picked up when she got inside the Russian mobsters’ heads. People like that really shouldn’t be walking around.
Keep it up and you’ll end up as crazy as you boyfriend, her brain warned her. Christine set those thoughts aside and concentrated on her business at hand.
Lady Shi was grieving for the one person she’d given a crap about. Now that Medved was gone, she’d added one thing to her list of things she cared about: revenge. Christine caught a mental image of Mr. Night being slowly skinned alive; it was one that nastiest things she’d ever seen. Beyond the murder fantasies and the murder memories, her emotional makeup consisted mostly of flat shades of gray, although Christine also sensed the woman was harboring a grudge against Condor and Kestrel for the beat down-and-bondage combo they’d inflicted on her, basically because they’d dissed her. If she had the chance, she’d pay them back for it, in spades.
“Okay,” she said, gladly shutting down her third eye. “Well, she’s not a nice person, but I guess you all knew that. She will help us until we get Mr. Night, but we shouldn’t turn our back on her after that. Especially you two.” She looked at the Deviant Duo as she said the last bit.
Kestrel grinned nastily at Lady Shi but didn’t say anything. Those two were not going to part with a hug or even a handshake, Christine realized with a sick sensation to her stomach. At some point they were going to go somewhere and only one of them would come back. And the world would probably be a better place, no matter who ended up not coming back.
“All right,” Condor said. “I can live with that. We’ve got a deal, Lady. Let’s start with everything you know about your employers.”
* * *
Lady Shi spilled the beans. Unfortunately, there were a lot less beans than they’d hoped.
For one, the woman really didn’t give a crap about her bosses’ plans. She did what she was told, mostly involving murder and mayhem, and didn’t ask any questions beyond what was needed to fulfill her missions. She’d been happy with that arrangement until Mr. Night possessed her boyfriend. For another, it seemed that Daedalus Smith was big on the whole ‘need to know’ thing. Still, she’d picked up a few useful tidbits of information along the way.
Daedalus had been working with the Iron Tsar, just as they’d expected. They hadn’t seen fit to share their master plan with their underlings, though. All the Japanese woman knew was that they’d been sharing information and technology for at least a couple of decades. It wasn’t a very harmonious partnership. On several occasions, Lady Shi and Medved had been ordered by Daedalus to kill Dominion agents. It was pretty clear that as soon as the super-geniuses decided they didn’t need each other, the knives would come out.
The two assassins had been involved in the raid on Cassandra’s home, although they hadn’t laid a finger on her. Cassandra had done something to them, something that had scared the crap out of Lady Shi and that she wouldn’t talk about. Archangel had been the one who killed Cassandra. Mark said that jived with the last mental contact he’d had with his psychic pal. He still felt pretty murderous towards the Neo-for-hire, but he was keeping his anger under control.
Beyond that, Lady Shi didn’t have much more to tell. She confirmed that the Dreamer worked for Daedalus, and that the real Doctor Cohen had been murdered and replaced a couple of years ago, part of the plot against John Clarke. Lady Shi didn’t know what the plot’s ultimate goal had been, only that the therapist was part of it. If they could get her to testify, she might help clear John’s name, but it was pretty unlikely this mess was going to be resolved in a courtroom.
Even more disappointing was the fact the assassin didn’t know much about the Big Bads’ plans for Christine. Her orders had been to find and subdue her, keeping her alive at any cost. Nobody had told her why, and she hadn’t asked. Toward the end, when Mr. Night had led the attack on the Lurker’s island, the orders had been amended to ‘dead or alive.’ Alive was still the first choice, but the powers that be didn’t want her running around loose. It was pretty much what Christine had feared would be the case.
That was about it. Christine’s empathy made sure Lady Shi was telling the truth. It was harder to determine if the assassin was telling everything she knew, but Christine felt that she was. Under the circumstances, the woman didn’t have much to gain by withholding information.
“All right, then. We have two targets, like Mark said,” Condor summarized after the interrogation was over. “The Iron Tsar and Daedalus Smith. And another objective: rescue Ultimate. If we can get him free, and if Janus rejoins us, we could handle almost anything. Especially now that Face has gotten a nice upgrade,” he continued, looking at Christine. “Any chance you could do the same for me and Melanie?”
That was a question Christine had been dreading ever since Mark told Condor about his power-boost. “I don’t know. I mean, in theory I could. But it would require us to… I don’t know, meld our auras, I guess. It’s how I healed Mark during the fight at the island. It wasn’t easy,” she finished, making her decision in mid-sentence. “I’m willing to try, though, and see what happens.”
Condor nodded thoughtfully. “How about tomorrow, then?”
She nodded back, although she was none too enthusiastic about the idea. For one, seeing Mark tear through metal vault-sized doors, survive a plasma bath and tear through a killer robot like it was made of papier-mâché had scared her a little. Considering Mark’s anger issues, maybe turning him into an unstoppable force of super-nature hadn’t been such a good idea. And Condor had some major issues of his own, and let’s not even get started on Kestrel. Give them the power of an Ultimate or a Janus, and God help everyone if they ever went bad. And that much power could drive anybody into the dark side.
Anybody, including you, her brain jumped in.
Including me. It was getting so easy to do incredible things, like blast the living crap out of her parallel-universe mother. Or nearly kill a bunch of Russian mobsters. It was so easy. Things like that should never be that easy.
Except they were, and not just for Neos. Even on Earth Prime, if you had a gun, you could kill anybody in range, from a child playing on the street to the freaking President. A drone controller could drop a bomb on a house from a thousand miles away by pointing and clicking. And a select few could press another button and release nuclear weapons with the power to kill people by the millions.
So, what did that mean? That all things, powers or weapons or technology could be misused and therefore should be outlawed? That humans should be nothing better than hunter-gatherers because you couldn’t do all that much damage with pointed sticks? But even then, hadn’t humans killed all the mammoth with their pointed sticks? This was messing her head big time. She probably should have taken a couple of philosophy courses in school.
Speaking of power and responsibility, she needed to tell her friends about the First. She was more scared of power-boosting herself than of anything else, because she didn’t know if she could handle any more power. But the option was on the table, and she had to consider it, and let her partners in crime consider it as well.
Condor and Mark were arguing about how to put a hit on Daedalus Smith. “You guys,” Christine said, interrupting them. “I never went into what happened to me at the Source containment thingy. It was something pretty major. I kinda didn’t want to talk about it, but it is important.”
Condor stood up. “In that case, I think our guest doesn’t need to know about it. Here, Lady Shi, let me sh
ow you to your accommodations.” He led the Japanese Neo somewhere else in the mansion. The prisoner was mildly curious but not offended by the lack of trust; Christine guessed trust wasn’t very common in her line of work.
“Lovely. She gets to see the dungeon before I do,” Kestrel groused.
“Dungeon?”
“He’s just locking her up for now,” Mark said. “Even if she’s telling us the whole truth, we still don’t want her running around loose. And we sure don’t want her to know anything she might use against us.”
“That makes sense. And this could be really important.”
When Condor came back, Christine told them all about her little dream-quest with the First and his invitation to her.
“Do you think you can trust that guy?” Mark asked.
“I didn’t feel any lies coming from him, although who knows? Maybe he can hide his emotions from me,” she replied. “On the other hand, he actually kinda killed me for a little while, when he pulled my soul right out of my body. If he wanted to hurt me, all he had to do was not send me back and let me stay dead.”
Mark’s hands were clenched into fists. The First had better be able to take a punch from a Type Three, because that was going to be Mark’s likely reaction the second he set eyes on him. “Yeah, that’s a good point,” he admitted, although he sounded like he would be gritting his teeth if he had any. He’d been really upset during her fainting spell. “Father Aleksander can help get us to the Ukraine,” he continued. “He’s got contacts with the underground all over the area.”
“That could be the end-game right there,” Condor said. He sounded pretty eager to send her out into Siberia or whatevs, but that’s because he didn’t know how much the idea terrified her.
New Olympus Saga (Book 2): Doomsday Duet Page 28