When Matt said he’s kind of a super-hero geek? There’s no kind of about it.
While we wait for Sara to return, Matt peels off for me the history of the Protectorate (abridged). Like many super-teams, its formation was a happy accident. The Entity, a Boston-based “masked vigilante” (which is different than a super-hero how?), was tracking a domestic terrorist cell that was reportedly putting together an EMP bomb, a piece of high-end technology that can generate a massive electromagnetic pulse. Set off something like that in a major city, you take out the entire electric grid and fry every computer within range. You see that in a movie and you get a lot of dark buildings. In real life? For starters, imagine how many people would die when a half-dozen or so hospitals completely lose power. People on life support, premature newborns in intensive care, people on the operating table—all dead. At the same time you’d spark complete chaos on the streets as cars stall out, the public railway system locks up, street lights fade to black, every cell phone is rendered useless, and Internet access is cut off. Because people can be such panicky idiots, this all leads to mass rioting and looting, but forget about getting any help from the police or fire departments, because even if you could contact them they’d be dead in the water too.
In other words: with one EMP bomb, Boston would go from zero to insanity in five seconds flat.
Anyway, the Entity, a guy who’s been successfully photographed less often than sasquatch, found the terrorists at the same time as Concorde, who had been tracking the stolen tech. A big fight ensued, and by big I mean, like, explosion-filled climax of a Michael Bay movie big.
As dumb luck would have it, two other superheroes heard the mayhem and joined the fray: Nina Nitro, who “blows things up real good” (her words, not mine) and Dr. Enigma, the Protectorate’s resident expert on all things mystical. Tides turned, some bad guys fled, a few were killed in the fight, and one was captured. He refused to talk, so that’s when Concorde called in his buddy Mindforce to do his thing. Recognizing that there was strength in numbers, the heroes teamed up, tracked down the remaining terrorists, and took them down so hard their children will be born cross-eyed.
“After that, they figured they had a good thing going so they formally established themselves as the Protectorate,” Matt says. “You’d be surprised how many super-teams got together by accident. Like, almost all of them. It’s the same story, over and over: a bunch of individual heroes happen to be in the right place at the right time so they can band together and take down a common enemy.”
Drop another brick on my head, why don’t you? I get it. You think fate brought us together. Coincidence, sure, but I don’t believe fate had anything to do with us.
(Okay, a very bizarre and unlikely coincidence, but still...)
“What the hell are you doing here?”
Looks like Concorde got his suit patched up, but I can’t say the same for the guy wearing it; there’s a stiffness to his movements as he storms up to Matt and jabs a finger at him.
“Mask or no, I recognize you,” Concorde says. “There can’t be two teenagers in this town wearing the same ratty black trench coat.”
“It’s not ratty,” Matt says.
“Nah, dude, that thing’s chewed up,” Stuart says.
“Not helping.”
“And three guesses who the rest of you are,” Concorde says, taking us in. “Wait, where’s the other girl?”
I jump in before Matt can launch a snark attack. “She’s with Mindforce. She had an appointment to see him today. We came with her to keep her company and Mindforce offered to take us on a tour of Protectorate HQ.”
“He what?” Concorde curses Mindforce openly. Nice.
“Aawwwwkwaaaaarrrd,” Missy says.
I’ll say, and it’s no small relief when Sara returns with Mindforce. I get the distinct impression he’s the voice of reason for the Protectorate.
“Hi, Concorde, didn’t know you were around,” Mindforce says cheerfully, and he’s about to make introductions when Concorde says, “These are the ones I told you about. Why did you let them in here?”
“These are the—? Ohh. Huh!” Huh, indeed; I dare say he sounds pleasantly surprised. “I definitely know where to start the tour, then.”
Concorde makes a sound like a dog choking on a chicken bone. “You’re not taking them on a tour! This isn’t a bloody Six Flags!”
“Six Flags doesn’t do tours,” Matt says, unhelpfully.
“You’d best put a sock in it, kid, before I—”
“Hey, hey,” Mindforce says. “Let’s cool down, shall we? Concorde? A word?”
They tuck themselves into a far corner to have half of a calm discussion, that half coming from Mindforce. Concorde? Not so much, and he’s not pulling any punches. His volume rises and falls so all we catch are snippets of his side of the argument.
“...not a damn school for super-hero wannabes,” Concorde says. “This is only going to encourage them...I’m being unfair?! You know how I feel about...” He glances over at us, and once again I’m oddly impressed that a man in a full helmet can give us the stink-eye so effectively.
This goes on for several uncomfortable minutes. When they return I’m braced for Concorde to scruff us like kittens and throw us out.
“Sorry about that,” Mindforce says. “You ready to go?”
What? Seriously?
“Do. Not. Touch. Anything,” Concorde says.
***
I’ve seen a picture or two of Protectorate HQ, and from the outside it looks like a sprawling three-story office building like you’d see at any given industrial park in the world. Inside, depending on which section you’re in, you’d think you were in an office building, a college dorm, a health club, a jet engine testing facility—eclectic would be the word. They have an area for every conceivable purpose, and every area is constantly monitored; they have cameras everywhere, all of them feeding into a central security office. The place must have cost a fortune to build and equip.
(Where does the Protectorate get its money, anyway? Rich uncle? Corporate sponsorship? Secret gold mine under the building?)
The section Mindforce thought we’d find of real interest is also the section Concorde really doesn’t want us seeing: his workshop, which at first glance could pass as a hangar for the space shuttle. There must be a dozen tall tool cabinets scattered about, assorted work benches, thick chains ending in hooks hanging from the ceiling, and a hydraulic lift that is currently occupied by a very familiar armored hulk.
“Hey, that’s the robot,” Matt says and he dashes over to it, Concorde hot on his heels, yelling at him not to touch it even though the thing’s been half dismantled. I can’t imagine it being very dangerous in its current state.
“I wondered what happened to that thing,” Stuart says.
“We’re better equipped to store and analyze it than the police,” Mindforce says. “And it’s not a robot, it’s a battlesuit.”
“No way!” Matt says. “This is a mech? That’s awesome!”
“Are you bonkers?” Concorde says. “It almost killed you.”
“Key word being almost, and I can still be impressed.”
“Wait a minute,” Sara says. “If that’s a battlesuit, shouldn’t there have been someone, you know, in it?”
“There wasn’t someone in it, was there?” Missy says hesitantly. “Please tell me there wasn’t because that’d be really gross and I’d feel really guilty because we seriously trashed that thing and punched a hole in it which means we punched a hole in a person.”
To say I’m relieved when Mindforce tells us no, it was empty at the time, would be the understatement of the century. But that brings us back to Sara’s question, which neither Concorde nor Mindforce can answer with any certainty.
“Concorde found what he believes is a communications suite in the suit’s chassis,” Mindforce says. “Correction: what he believes was a communications suite. Which one of you has the energy-based powers?”
“I do
,” I say.
“Concorde’s working theory is that someone was operating the suit by remote. When you drilled through the armor, you took out the communications hardware and cut off the incoming signal. Smart move.”
“Thank you.” I should keep my mouth shut, let him think I actually knew what the heck I was doing. “It wasn’t intentional, honestly.”
“Mm,” Mindforce says. Great, now he thinks I’m nothing but a lucky idiot. Lucky I hit the suit in the right place to shut it down, lucky it didn’t have a human being inside for me to kill.
The chestplate opens like a car’s hood, but instead of an engine there is a well-padded cavity shaped for a human body that extends into the suit’s arms and legs. The wearer’s head doesn’t reach up into the suit’s head, which is more of a glorified periscope; there’s a rig in the chassis that surrounds the wearer’s head and, according to Matt (and Concorde’s not correcting him), gives him a view of whatever the head’s sensor array picks up. Concorde has to physically pull Matt out when he climbs into the chassis to get a better look at the controls set deep inside the arms.
“What’s it using for power?” Matt says. “Nuclear micro-cell?”
Nuclear micro-cell? The thing had a nuclear power source? That I somehow totally missed? Holy crap. I wish I was old enough to buy a lottery ticket, because I’m apparently the luckiest idiot in the world.
Concorde trips over his tongue. “Yeah. How did you—?”
“Come on, man, it obviously wasn’t hardwired into an exterior power source, and I don’t think there’s a car battery in here,” Matt says. “Single-source or multi-cell network?”
“What? Networked. What?”
“Yeah, that makes sense, networked power would better support the maglev flight and railgun weapons systems. It is a maglev system like your suit’s, right?”
“Yeah, it’s—how the hell do you know all this stuff?”
No lie, hearing Concorde all flustered is making me feel much better, but I’m as stunned as he is.
***
“How do you know all that stuff?” I ask en route to Coffee E following the conclusion of our tour, after Mindforce escorted us back into town via the Protectorate’s secret subway elevator mash-up thingy and thanked us for visiting and, no kidding, praised us for taking down the battlesuit. This wasn’t empty courtesy praise, either; this was a sincere “Good job.”
Wow.
Anyway...
“I read a lot of sci-fi,” Matt says.
“Which translates to a firm grasp of actual science how?”
“That’s the thing that’s so wild about that suit,” Matt says. “A fully articulated battlesuit? With a nuclear micro-cell battery network? And a maglev flight system and personal electromagnetic railgun?” He points excitedly at nothing. “Those are all, like, two steps away from pure sci-fi! Most of that tech is years away from practical application! Yeah, there are a lot of companies that have functional prototypes, but nothing like that! Railgun technology has been in development since the 1940s and all they have are these huge beasts that suck up ridiculous amounts of power and overheat within seconds!”
“Then where could it have come from?” Sara asks. “Secret government lab?”
“Maybe. Uncle Sam would definitely have the money you’d need to develop suits like that.”
“Suits?” I say. “Plural?”
Matt stops. He’s too wound up to walk and rant at the same time. “There was a marking on the chassis: THRASHER 005.”
“Suggesting there are at least four other suits out there somewhere.”
“So they’re part of a matched set, so what?” Stuart says. “What does that have to do with anything? Doesn’t explain where it came from or why it showed up in Kingsport of all places.”
“Maybe you haven’t noticed,” Matt says, “but Kingsport’s become the capital for renegade technology.”
“There’s a thought,” Sara says. “Maybe ARC lost control of another robot.”
I’m skeptical. This thing, Thrasher 005, is a quantum leap over the ARC ‘bots. The ARC robots are Model Ts. Thrasher 005 is the Millennium Falcon.
“It’s also not a robot,” I say, and that’s been nagging at me all afternoon for no reason I can put my finger on.
I’m still rolling thoughts around in my head when we reach the Coffee Experience. It takes up the whole ground floor of what is seventy-five percent an old building. The new parts are very new, as in the repairs were completed maybe yesterday. Wood shingles so pale they’re nearly white jump out from the surrounding shingles, which are what Dad calls New England Weathered Gray, a color that occurs naturally following years of exposure to the elements.
We enter, and I understand right away why the boys love this place. It smells incredible in here, warm and earthy, and I swear I’m ten times more awake just from the contact high, but I’m sure Matt and Stuart are less interested in the coffee than in the dark-skinned college-age girl working the front counter.
“There are my favorite fellas,” she says with a big, beaming smile. “I was wondering if I’d be seeing you two today.”
“Wild horses and all that,” Stuart says.
“We have literally been counting the days until we again got to pay homage to the greatness of Jill, Goddess of Caffeine,” Matt says. “And now, at last, that most excellent day is here.”
And then, no kidding, they bow to her. Insert rolling of eyes here.
“Really? You haven’t been cheating on me with that hussy Dunkin’ Donuts, have you?” Jill says with a mock pout that, okay, I admit it, is weapons-grade sexy. The boys feign offense.
“My dear lady,” Matt says, “that pink-and-orange painted hussy is poor substitute for...” and he gestures grandiosely at Jill, who smiles coyly.
Without asking for an order, Jill whips up two lattés with extra espresso shots. The drinks cost three bucks a pop. The boys fork over fives and don’t ask for change back. I want lessons from this woman.
Her demeanor totally changes when Sara and Missy and I step up to order. The boys got Sex Kitten Jill. We get Gal Pal Jill. “Hey ladies, good to see you,” she says, and she points to Sara and Missy in turn. “Usual? Usual?”
“Orange whip? Orange whip?” Matt says from somewhere behind me. “Three orange whips!” I swear he’s speaking in a foreign language sometimes.
“Yeah, please,” Sara says cordially enough, but I feel, literally feel a hot flash of jealousy come off her. I’d forgotten her empathy work both ways, that she projects emotions as well as feels them in others.
“Same here,” Missy says. “Jill, this is Carrie, she’s new but she’s cool so you’re probably going to see her with us a lot since she’s hanging out with us now,” she rattles off and, without pausing for breath, she turns to me and says, “once you tell Jill what your usual is you never have to order again because she’s got like a super-computer for a brain.”
“Hi, Carrie. What do you take?”
“Can you do a mocha latté, extra foam?” I ask.
Jill snaps her fingers. “Easy-peasy,” she says, and off she goes.
“You do know she only flirts with the boys to boost her tips, right?” I say to Sara on the sly.
“I know,” she says like she doesn’t care, she’s cool with it, but I can tell she so is not.
(For the record: Jill’s mocha lattés rock. Consider me a Coffee E convert.)
As Sara and I walk home for pre-homework dinner I realize, “I never asked you how things went with Mindforce.”
And for that I feel bad. We’d all fallen into another zany brainstorming session about the mech, Thrasher 005, and it occurred to me that if someone had been controlling Thrasher remotely, it made sense they’d take it for a spin through Kingsport. Matt explained that in the late nineties, when the tech companies started to move in, they dumped a buttload of money into upgrading the town’s broadband infrastructure so they could transmit massive data loads. During the last round of upgrades a few years
back, they set up Wi-Fi connection points throughout the center of town. You could sit anywhere on Main Street and get free broadband access. It’s a perfect test environment, and that got me to thinking, what if we’re only assuming the ARC ‘bots went berserk because of an A.I. glitch? What if they were actually early trials for whoever was controlling Thrasher?
Of course, none of this speculation came close to answering the more important question of who’s behind it, but Matt is convinced that our culprit is a local boy. He pointed out that Thrasher had no lag time to its reactions (I’ll trust him on that), and that had to mean its operator was very close by. Like, somewhere in Kingsport close by.
“It went okay,” Sara says, reminding me I’m supposed to be talking to her now. “It was sort of like Life as a Psionic 101, lots of basic stuff. Apparently I have a serious iron deficiency.”
“How come?”
“Something to do with how my powers work. I guess psionics naturally use up a lot of iron and electrolytes.”
“Huh. Can you fix it?”
“Mindforce told me to take iron supplements, eat a lot of iron-rich foods, drink a lot of sports drinks.”
“Yummy. The Sara Danvers Liver and Gatorade Diet,” I say, which gets a chuckle. “Will that help your control at all?”
“I don’t think so. I have to be better about doing the exercises he taught me.”
“Have you not been doing them?”
“I try them when I’m in class, but Mindforce says what I need to do is practice with someone one-on-one,” she says somewhat miserably.
“Your parents don’t—?”
Sara doesn’t let me finish. “No.”
Right, let’s step back from that sore subject. “I’ll help you practice. If you want.”
“You will?”
“If you think it’d help, sure.”
Sara shakes her head. “You don’t have to.”
“I know I don’t have to, but I want to. After we break for the night I can stick around and...well, I don’t know what you need me to do, but...”
“Thank you,” Sara says, her voice cracking ever so slightly. You’d think I’d offered her a free puppy.
Action Figures - Issue One: Secret Origins Page 11