Action Figures - Issue One: Secret Origins

by Michael Bailey

“How bad was their first outing?”

  “They were killed by the 8-Mile Kings,” Matt says. Stuart laughs, but Matt’s not joking. “Seriously, man. They got gunned down.”

  “Oh, dude. That’s harsh.”

  “Yeah. So, see? At least we’re doing better than them. The Gangbusters, I mean, not the gang.”

  “Yeah, okay,” Stuart says, “we didn’t do so hot. So what? Judas Priest’s first couple albums kind of sucked, but they got awesome.”

  “I guess we didn’t make a complete mess of things,” Sara says.

  “We found the bad guy and brought him in. Sort of,” Missy says. “I mean, he would have gotten away completely if we hadn’t’ve found him.”

  “Exactly,” Matt says. “Right now, we’re the unsung heroes of the day, but if we keep at it, we’ll be right up there with the Protectorate. We need more experience, that’s all.”

  Experience, he says. That’s all. Right.

  This is what Mom would call a catch-22: we need experience to become better super-heroes, but we’re not going to last long enough to get better without some experience. It isn’t like we can request starter super-villains. This isn’t a video game where we get to start out fighting low-level fodder and work our way up to the boss monster.

  Matt’s looking at me, waiting for me to back him up. He wants me to join his Affirmation Chorus with a hallelujah and an amen, and I can’t do it.

  “Why are we doing this to ourselves?” I say. “What’s the point of all this? Really? Why are we doing this?”

  “Because we’re super-heroes,” Matt says, like that’s all the justification anyone needs.

  “No, we’re not. We’re a bunch of dumb amateurs, and it’s a miracle we haven’t been killed.”

  “That’s what this is about, isn’t it? You had a close call with Manticore and it’s freaked you out.”

  “Yes! It has!” I say, and saying it out loud drives home the ugly, terrible truth: someone tried to kill me. He knew I was just a girl and it didn’t matter. Suddenly the air feels too thin and my head spins and I think I might vomit. “He tried to kill all of us! Doesn’t that bother you?”

  “It’s something we have to get used to if we’re going to do this,” Matt says dismissively.

  “But why are we doing this? Huh? Seriously, why? Why are we risking our lives fighting giant robots and psychotic killers?”

  “Because we’re super-heroes,” Matt says again, and that’s when I completely lose it.

  “Stop saying that! That’s not a reason! Don’t you have a real reason for wanting to do this? Come on, Matt, give me something! Tell me you’re avenging someone’s death! Tell me you’re atoning for some huge screw-up! God, tell me you’re nothing but a bored teenage boy looking for a cheap thrill, but tell me something!”

  All he can do is gawp at me. His mouth is moving but no sound comes out. I’ve asked him the one question no one has ever asked, the one he can’t answer—the one he needed to hear. His lip quivers like he’s going to start crying, but I have no sympathy for him.

  “Anyone? Do any of you have a reason?” I say, my throat raw. “Have any of you stopped for a single second to think about why you want to do this? Or are you all just following Matt’s lead?”

  I look to Sara. She’s staring at the floor. Missy, her eyes are everywhere but on me. Stuart—

  “Because we can,” he says, and color me shocked, but he was honestly the last one I expected to say anything. He and Matt, they’re a full-fledged bro mantic couple, and Stuart’s the loyal wingman. “A lot of crap happens in the world, y’know? People get hurt and killed, and a lot of it happens because people, the people who can do something, they don’t step up. It’s always someone else’s problem. Maybe that’s why the world is such a mess, because no one wants to be the one to try and fix it.”

  “Evil triumphs when good people do nothing,” I say.

  “Right. Yeah,” Stuart says. “You wanted a reason. There you go.”

  The transport glides to a stop, then rises. The doors slide open and Miss Hannaford greets us with a smile none of us can return.

  SEVENTEEN

  “All right, you,” Concorde says. “Wake up.”

  It’s an unnecessary order; Archimedes never fell asleep. The cot was comfortable enough, and heaven knows he was exhausted, but the silence, as the saying goes, was deafening—not the silence of his cell, but the silence that fell when Concorde disconnected the phone that was his lifeline to the virtual world and left the wire dangling from his skull, useless. It was as if Concorde left it there deliberately to taunt him. He seems the type, Archimedes thinks, a petty man who likes to lord his control over others.

  “What happens now?” Archimedes says.

  “You’ll be transported to Byrne, outside of Worcester. It’s a supermax for...people like you. You’ll cool your heels there until we figure out what to do with you.”

  Archimedes sits up, so he can better face his captor. “Off to prison I go, just like that?” Archimedes says. “No police, no courts, no lawyers? Am I not entitled to due process?”

  “You’ll have your day in court,” Concorde says, less than convincingly. “The process is different for people like you.”

  “People like me,” Archimedes repeats.

  “Unconventional individuals who commit unconventional crimes. You require special treatment on every level.”

  “It sounds so nice when you put it that way. Special treatment. Not at all like I’m being thrown into a secret government prison.”

  “Cry me a river. Get up.”

  Concorde rouses Manfred with equal brusqueness, having no sympathy to spare for the men, and leads them down to the hangar, where an unusual vehicle awaits. It is at first glance deceptively mundane: plain white and unmarked by any identifying logos or insignia, and to an uneducated eye it could pass easily as a commercial box truck. A very select few would recognize it as a modified military-grade armored transport. The back doors yawn open like a great devouring mouth awaiting its daily feeding. Each wall is lined with a bench welded directly onto the frame.

  Concorde hands his charges off to four men in black paramilitary uniforms and armed with compact automatic rifles. In this line-up, it is the man in the business suit who stands out as incongruous.

  “What is this?” Manfred says. “Where are you taking us?”

  “We’re going to disappear,” Archimedes says. “Concorde is sending us somewhere where we’ll never bother anyone again.”

  “Your friend is being a little melodramatic,” says the man in the suit, who introduces himself as Albert Fresch, “your attorney pro tem. I assure you, neither of you are about to be ‘disappeared.’ Once we arrive at Byrne, after you have been processed as detainees, your arrests will be released to the media, and you will be provided with a liaison from Amnesty International to ensure your continued humane and legal treatment under the Superhuman Defense Act.”

  “It’s more than you deserve,” Concorde says, “but we’re still the good guys.”

  Two of the guards grasp Archimedes by the arms and lead him toward the cargo area. His mouth curls into a bitter snarl.

  “Of course you are.”

  “...at which point you may opt to retain me as your representative in court, or you may hire a private attorney. I will, of course, immediately turn over all documents relevant to your case.” Fresch waits for an acknowledgement from the handcuffed men and, receiving none, forges ahead. “It would expedite the process if I could get your personal information now, then we won’t have to waste time at Byrne.”

  “Yes, wouldn’t want to dilly-dally in getting us into our cells, would we? Why am I part of this? I didn’t do anything!” Manfred says, appealing to the line of uniformed men sitting across from him. “He was the one controlling that battlesuit!”

  “I was wondering when you’d get around to throwing me under the bus,” Archimedes says.

  “Don’t try to guilt me. I’m not the one who threatene
d innocent lives and wrecked half of Kingsport.”

  “I would like to state for the official record, Mr. Fresch, that my current condition is a direct result of an act of assault conducted by Mr. Manfred here on this body approximately—”

  “Whoa whoa whoa, slow down, fellas,” Fresch says. “I’m not taking any formal statements yet, and I’d be very remiss if I did not advise you that any spontaneous utterances could—I’m sorry, hold on.”

  Fresch dips into a pocket inside his suit coat to silence the jaunty electronic tune.

  “That’s a nice smartphone you have there,” Archimedes says.

  “What? Oh, thanks,” Fresch says, giving his clients the briefest of peeks at the device. “Where was I?” he says, but the words are smothered by a boom that tears through the mobile prison cell like cannon fire. The vehicle lurches, buffeting its occupants about. Archimedes feels the transport lose momentum and glide to a stop.

  One of the guards, a burly man with no discernible neck, gets to his feet and presses his face to a small steel grate separating the cab from the cargo area. “Chase?” he says into the gray smoke filling the cab. “Payne? Hey! Hey!”

  “What’s going on?” Fresch says. “What happened?”

  Another guard touches a finger to the earpiece of his radio headset. “Byrne dispatch, come in, this is transport two,” he says, “forty-five minutes out of Protectorate HQ...”

  “Weapons hot!” burly no-neck says, weapon safeties snapping off in response. “Two and two, Burke, Delgado, take the left! Go! Go!”

  The guards spill out the back over Fresch’s protests, weapons poised, but none of them get off a single shot.

  They twitch and dance to a deadly tune Archimedes instantly identifies. He’s heard it before. He’s played it before, on a hulking armored instrument of destruction.

  Forty-five minutes out of Kingsport, the guard said. Well outside the range of its bandwidth-rich atmosphere, but not outside a major cell phone carrier’s robust 4G network.

  Ashe Semler was not the most physical of men, and Archimedes, technically, has never been physical, but his kick is nevertheless straight and true and drives Fresch’s skull straight back into the transport’s unforgiving wall. He pitches over face-first, barely conscious, the phone tumbling from his jacket.

  “What?” Manfred says, his panic-stricken brain unable to form a complete question. “What?”

  “If this doesn’t work,” Archimedes says, his fingers flying, “I want you to know: no hard feelings.”

  Manfred turns ashen, his eyes wide and fixed on something over Archimedes’ shoulder.

  “You.” The voice is flat, cold, artificial. “Out. Slowly.”

  “Hello...Manticore, is it?”

  “I said out,” Manticore says, his tail whining dangerously.

  Accepting the indignity of the situation for the moment, Archimedes backs out on hands and knees until he slips over the rear bumper and is standing face-to-face with his liberator—or his new captor, if he has overestimated his own brilliance. He gasps despite himself; he had not seen his assailant the last time except in a single fleeting glimpse, and he now sees that Manticore is every bit the monster he pretends to be.

  “I see you brought back-up,” Archimedes says.

  “Not my choice. My employer insisted on sending these goons along,” Manticore says in acknowledgement of the four Thrashers looming large over his shoulder. “You know how much that burns me? My reputation took a big hit thanks to you and those punk kid friends of yours...”

  “Believe me,” Archimedes says, somewhat emboldened as the embers of a grudge kindle in his chest, “they’re no friends of mine.”

  “Shut it, freak. Point is, I don’t like being shown up. Lucky for you, my orders are to bring you in alive.”

  “Oh? Am I so important?”

  “Someone thinks so,” Manticore says, giving Archimedes an appraising once-over. “Frankly? I don’t see what’s so special about you.”

  Archimedes allows a smile. “Because I can do this,” he says as four railguns power up and take aim at Manticore’s back.

  “What the hell? What do you idiots think you’re doing?” Manticore barks, rounding on his giant companions.

  “It’s not me!” one of the pilots says. “Something’s overridden my controls!”

  “Mine too!” the other three say in sequence.

  Manticore turns to interrogate his quarry, only to find him gone—running for cover as the Thrashers unleash a lethal steel rain. The war machines tear into the mercenary and he cries out in shock more than in pain, but as he falls to a knee, the assault driving him to the ground, he knows his armor cannot repel the assault indefinitely. His wings flare and the microjet that propels his suit roars to life, hurling him skyward. The guns follow his course, spitting death until he is far out of range.

  “One fewer thing to worry about,” Archimedes says, returning to admire his new toys.

  “Buddy-boy, I don’t know what you’ve done to our suits,” one of the pilots says in his best macho growl, “but you best undo it, or else.”

  There’s a delay after Archimedes sends his command into the air via his stolen smartphone, but he achieves the desired effect: the chasses pop of their own accord, exposing their dumbfounded, slack-faced pilots.

  “How did you—?”

  “Same way I do this,” Archimedes says, ordering each suit to raise its gun arm on its exposed neighbor. “Now. Who is in charge here?”

  “...You are.”

  “That’s right,” Archimedes says. “I am.”

  EIGHTEEN

  There are certain things that a typical high school student never wants to hear. The principal wants to see you is near the top of that list, followed by I expect to see you in detention after school, I’d like to speak to you after class, and my personal least favorite, I know you can do better than this.

  But the number one announcement no high school student ever wants to hear: “Attention, all students. Code Red. Repeat, Code Red. This is not a drill. Until further notice, the entire school is in lockdown.”

  I’m in the girls’ room when Mr. Dent comes over the P.A. system to drop that little bombshell (ooh, that may have been a poor choice of words). We had Code Reds at my old high school and drilled them as often as evacuations for fire alarms, so I know the procedures inside and out: if you’re in a classroom, stay there; if you’re in a hallway, immediately enter the nearest classroom; if you’re in a public area such as a bathroom, the gym, the auditorium, or the cafeteria, follow the instructions of the nearest staff member or, if no staff member is available, remain where you are and, if possible, lock all doors and do not open them for anything until a school official gives the official all-clear. Above all, stay off your cell phones in order to keep emergency lines open.

  Of course, the bathroom has no lock on the door so I’m left to hunker down in a stall. Real dignified. Worse, I’m blind and deaf in here.

  Sara?

  Carrie, where are you?

  In a bathroom on the second floor. Any idea what’s happening?

  No, but something funny is going on. I’m in the computer lab and we completely lost Internet access a couple minutes ago.

  Open up the mental chat room. Let’s see if anyone else has any news.

  We’re open. Guys?

  Hey, Matt says. Anyone know what’s going on?

  Not a clue, Stuart says, but Angus Parr is taking bets you’re roaming the halls with a machine gun.

  God, what a tool.

  Guys! Missy says, toeing the line between urgency and complete panic. I’m in the library and I looked out the window and there’s another one of those big mech suit things standing right in front of the school!

  Holy crap, the Thrasher?

  Yeah, except I don’t think it’s the same one we fought because there’s no big hole in the chest!

  We thought there might be other Thrashers out there somewhere and I guess this proves the theory, but What
is it doing here?

  It can’t be Archimedes again, Matt says. Concorde said he was getting sent to Byrne today.

  Byrne?

  Byrne Penitentiary and Detention Center. It’s an uber-high-security prison for superhumans out near Worcester. Before Concorde kicked us out of HQ yesterday I overheard him say something to Mindforce about shipping Archimedes out there.

  So who’s in the suit this time? Sara says.

  Better question, Matt says, is why is it here?

  It’s here for us, I say. It has to be.

  What do we do? Missy says, and that, as my granddad likes to say, is the $64,000 question.

  We call the Protectorate, I say, and I brace for Matt’s rebuttal.

  She’s right, he says. Let them handle Thrasher. We’re stuck inside anyway, so we’ll play defense on this one.

  I want to hug the boy.

  Sara, I’m clear, give me the Protectorate’s number; I’ll make the call. She psi-mails me the number, but I never punch it in because my phone is showing no reception at all. I check my Internet connection and the 4G is dead too. How is that—wait, Sara said the computer lab was totally off line too. Is the Thrasher suit doing this?

  Or, maybe, its controller?

  I step out of bathroom and almost slam into Mr. Dent. He jumps back with a startled curse. “Carrie, what are you doing out here?”

  “I was in the restroom when the Code Red went off. I’m sorry,” I say, channeling Missy to sell my fake fear, “I was all alone in there and I started to freak out and I know I’m not supposed to leave and—”

  “It’s okay, Carrie, it’s okay, we should be safe, as long as we stay inside.

  “Should be safe? What’s wrong? What’s going on?”

  Mr. Dent looks at the cell phone in his hand with a resentful grimace. It’s a school-issued model all the teachers and staff have. They come with the walkie-talkie feature that makes that wicked annoying chirping noise. “No one can get an outside line,” he says.

  “You mean you can’t call the police?” He shakes his head. “So what do we do?”

  “Stay inside. That’s all we can do for now. They don’t seem to be doing anything, so maybe someone driving by the school will—” An expression I can’t place appears and, as quickly, disappears, and he gives me a smile I’m sure is meant to be reassuring. “Get back to your class, okay?”