“If my employer wanted you dead, Manticore would have taken care of that right off the bat—and then we wouldn’t find ourselves in this mess, would we? No we wouldn’t. But, to the point: my employer is very impressed with your, ah, unique skills. By all rights you should have never found our network, much less hacked it, and yet...” He leaves the thought unfinished. “We could use a man like you. Our organization, that is.”
“You’re offering me a job,” Archimedes says with a nervous titter.
“I’m offering you an opportunity to willingly cooperate with us,” the man says, deadpan. “I want to be clear on one point: if we can’t tap your potential, it’s in our best interests to ensure that no one else turns you against us. We have people everywhere—well, almost everywhere—and if you say the word, I’ll make one phone call and those people will see to it you walk out of here by the weekend. Or you can spend the rest of your life as a prisoner of this facility. Our people can also make sure that happens.”
“...The Protectorate will look for me,” Archimedes says.
The man smiles. “They’ll look,” he says. “They won’t find you. As far as the rest of the world is concerned, the minute you leave this building, you will cease to exist.”
At this, Archimedes’ mood takes a bounding step away from terrified and toward cautiously intrigued. “And what do I have to do for you?”
“What you do best,” the man says, spreading his hands expansively. “Explore the virtual world. Seek out knowledge. Acquire information. You wouldn’t have free rein, you understand, you’d go where you were told, but believe me when I say, we plan to send you to some very exciting places.”
“I see. Will you give me some time to think about it?”
“Sorry, no, this is a very limited-time offer—as in, I need an answer now. I hate to rush you, but there have been some recent developments that have forced us to push up a few of our timetables, and we need you on board immediately. So,” the man says. “What do you say?”
Archimedes inhales, tasting flat, re-circulated air that is maintained at an unwavering temperature that is neither too cool nor too warm. Perfect. Controlled. Artificial.
It tastes like captivity.
“Where do I sign up?” Archimedes says.
My dad’s birthday is today.
Brian Franklin Hauser was born a mere thirty-three years ago today to Henry and Amelia Hauser, formerly of Kingsport, Massachusetts, now of whichever town in Florida old people go to retire (I think it’s called “the entire state of Florida”). Among his greatest achievements: establishing a successful civil engineering firm, memorizing every line of dialog in every James Bond movie ever made and, if I may be so immodest, siring me.
This is his first birthday alone.
A little over one month ago (has it really been only a month?) my mother and I packed the last of our belongings into a moving truck and left the only life I ever knew, which included my dad. As long as I live, the image of him standing on the porch, waving goodbye to me, his face fixed in an I-am-not-going-to-cry-if-it-kills-me grimace will remain forever burned into my mind. Not a day passes when I don’t think about him, and time has not dulled the pain of his absence.
(If I were the kind of girl who dabbled in angsty emo poetry, that would be a solid opening stanza.)
Anyway, like I said, this is his first birthday alone, by which I mean without me. Maybe it’s more accurate to say this is the first time I can’t be with Dad to celebrate his birthday. No ceremonial bequeathing of gifts, no birthday cake that I made with my own two hands, none of that. This year, he gets to open a package mailed to him on my behalf by the good people at Amazon.com and an evening phone call.
Paaaaarrr-tay.
Hope my game face is up to the task. I don’t want to ruin the mood by getting all weepy, but today has tipped off a major emotional domino effect; remembering Dad’s birthday made me realize Halloween is right around the corner, and after that it’s Thanksgiving, and then it’s on to Christmas, and every one of those holidays is jam-packed with Dad-centric memories...memories I won’t be adding to this year.
Crap, I’m tearing up already. Get it out now, girl.
When Sara shows up to walk with me to school, it takes her all of three seconds to ask what’s wrong. She doesn’t say anything or offer lame advice like most people do; she simply lets me vent, which is what I need. Added bonus: by the time we meet up with the others at school, I can fake a good mood well enough that no one suspects otherwise, which means there’s no repeat performance of my tale of woe. Share your problems once, it’s unburdening. Share them twice or more, it’s whining.
Morning classes keep my mind occupied and prevent a relapse, and I’m feeling remarkably chipper by lunch. In fact, I seem to be the only person not sweating about our after-school obligation.
“Are they going to do anything like hook us up to a lie detector?” Missy says. “I mean, they know we wouldn’t lie to them, don’t they?”
“I doubt they’ll use a lie detector,” I say.
“Nah,” Stuart says. “I bet Mindforce’ll just go in, take a look in our heads, get what he needs and boom—out.”
“That doesn’t sound much better,” Missy says. “How do I know he won’t accidentally see anything...you know.” She drops into a low whisper. “Naughty.”
“You don’t think naughty thoughts,” Stuart says. “Doesn’t happen.”
“All they’re going to do is interview us, ask us some questions,” I say. “It’s not an interrogation.”
I know this isn’t an interrogation, but man, it sure feels like it.
The interview room is an inoffensive shade of beige, yet it manages to feel oppressive and dark. The only furniture is a table and two chairs, one for me, one for Mindforce. He’s the good cop. Concorde is the bad cop. He stands, arms folded, and I know he’s glowering at me under that helmet.
Mindforce fiddles with a tablet computer. “All right, we’re recording,” he says. He lays the tablet on the table and smiles at me. “Take your time with this, Carrie. We’re interested in getting all the little details, so even if something seems utterly irrelevant...”
He lets the sentence peter out and he gestures to me: proceed.
So I proceed, recalling the entirety of the Hero Squad’s debut adventure, from my first encounter with a renegade prototype military robot on the streets of Kingsport all the way down to the big throw-down with Archimedes and his remote-control battlesuit army on what used to be the front lawn of Kingsport High School.
That was a crazy couple of weeks now that I think about it. I wonder if super-heroes’ lives are always so nuts?
“How did Archimedes find you?” Concorde says. “How did he know you’d be at the high school?”
“I have no idea. Educated guess?” I say. “I mean, there are only so many places a bunch of teenagers would be in the middle of the day.”
“Let’s backtrack a bit,” Mindforce says. “Exactly what did Archimedes say to you when you first found him? You said he mentioned someone else who was looking for him.”
“Yeah. Ummm...hold on,” I say, trying to envision the scene. The experience is less than a week old but it’s already gotten fuzzy in my memory.
“Close your eyes,” Mindforce says. “Take it a few steps back and walk through it. You and the others arrive at the motel, go inside...”
“We go inside,” I start, picking up on the prompt, “change into our costumes, Matt and Sara get into a stupid argument, we find the room...I tell Stuart not to kick the door open and cause a ruckus. He forces the door. We enter the room.”
My brain relaxes and loosens its grip on the memories. I can envision Archimedes sitting on one bed, Roger Manfred on the other. I can practically smell the funk in the room—that sour odor of old sweat.
“Manfred gets to his feet, starts yelling at us,” I say. “Matt announces us as the Hero Squad, we give him grief for picking such a stupid name, I try to get things back on trac
k and tell them we know they’re responsible for siccing the battlesuit on Main Street, and Archimedes says...”
My eyes snap open.
“He says, ‘You’re not what I was expecting.’ I lie to him, tell him we’re with the Protectorate, figuring that might intimidate him into cooperating with us, and he says, ‘No, that’s not right.’ I tell him I know the Thrasher suit is his and he says, ‘It isn’t. I stole it.’ ”
Mindforce and Concorde lean in, hanging on my every word.
“That’s when Manticore showed up and started blasting the place to pieces,” I say. “I don’t know if he said anything after that. I was too busy trying not to get killed.”
Mindforce and Concorde exchange glances, nod at each other. They must be speaking psychically so I can’t overhear anything they think—correction: that Concorde thinks I shouldn’t. God forbid I prove useful or anything.
“Do you have any idea who Archimedes was talking about?”
“We’re following up some leads,” Concorde says, no doubt expecting that to shut me up.
“Uh-huh. Can’t imagine your list of suspects is all that long,” I say.
“What makes you say that?” Mindforce says.
“For starters, I have to assume hiring Manticore doesn’t come cheap. I’ve been reading up on the guy and he’s not some goon legbreaker for a loan shark, he’s a major-league mercenary. Then there’s the Thrasher suit...”
“What about it?” Concorde presses. Despite himself, he wants to hear what I have to say.
“There are maybe a half-dozen companies in the country experimenting with battlesuit technology,” I say, “and none of them are anywhere close to making something like the Thrasher, and you’d think any company that has Voltron at its disposal would want to make a huge deal out of it, stir up some interest from the military, maybe.”
(For the record: Matt deserves the credit for digging all that up. I don’t know jack about the technology industry. I also have no idea who Voltron is.)
“That means whoever did make it has access to cutting-edge tech, and that means they have tons of cash to throw around, and they’re doing it on the down-low to avoid catching anyone’s attention. Can’t be too many outfits that fit that description, right?”
Mindforce’s eyebrows vanish beneath the formfitting cowl he wears to hide his identity. He’s impressed, which means I’m on the right track. Go me.
“Why don’t we take five? I could use a cup of tea,” Mindforce says, tapping his tablet screen.
“Before we break,” I say, sliding none too subtly into my next order of business, “I have, well, I guess it’s a favor?”
“What do you need?”
“I, uh, met Colonel Coffin yesterday. She said I need to get a transponder from you,” I say to Concorde. “What do I need to do? Is there an application I have to fill out? Should I be studying for, I don’t know, like, a learner’s permit for flyers?”
“Let me save us both the time and trouble,” Concorde says. “The answer’s no.”
“What?!” Why his answer shocks me...
“You heard me: no. You’re not getting a transponder. Consider yourself officially grounded.”
“Officially according to who? You?” I say, putting aside composure and dignity for a good old-fashioned red-faced tirade. “Who made you boss of the sky?”
“The United States Department of Defense,” Concorde says. “I am authorized by the federal government to police the skies for flyers, and I authorize them to be there, and I am not authorizing you.”
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t think you’re responsible enough or mature enough,” Concorde says, looking down on me, literally and figuratively.
“So if you say I can’t fly, that’s it?”
“Exactly.”
“That is so not fair!” I hate myself for saying it, but I’m so pissed and so completely dumbfounded I have nothing else to throw at him.
“I think you know my response to that,” he says as his exit line.
Mindforce has been unusually silent this whole time, and he’s looking at me with disappointment I totally deserve. I could have turned this around. If I’d thought for a minute before opening my big mouth, I could have given Concorde a dozen reasons to give me a chance, to let me prove myself deserving of his trust. Instead, I validated every doubt he has about me. He sees me as nothing more than a child and that’s what I gave him.
Idiot. Stupid stupid idiot.
“I’ll talk to him,” Mindforce says. “I can’t promise anything, but I’ll talk to him.”
I nod. It’s all I can manage. If I try to talk now I might start crying, and as it is I’ve already ruined my reputation with Mindforce (salt, meet wound).
Mindforce opens the door for me. As I trudge out, he says, “The reason the superhuman community gets as much freedom and autonomy as it does is because we work with the government to police our own. Concorde takes that job seriously, and I can’t fault him for that. We have to consider the bigger picture.”
Tantrum notwithstanding, Mindforce respects me enough to give me a peek behind a very large, very thick curtain, to let me know there’s something at work here beyond Concorde’s open contempt for me and my friends.
It doesn’t make me feel one tiny bit better.
“Let’s go. We’re done,” I say as I return to the Protectorate’s common room. Sara asks me what happened but, thankfully, takes my silence as a hint to back off for a while.
We take the Protectorate’s secret underground subway thingy back to their public office in town, and instead of Coffee E I make a beeline for a bakery a few blocks over. The coffee is some of the most wretched sludge on the planet but their baked goods are top notch, and good God do I need some empty calories, stat. It’s a poor substitute for flying as a means of blowing off steam, but it’ll have to do.
Double-wide slice of mocha cheesecake, you understand me.
“Well?” Matt says expectantly.
“Concorde grounded me,” I say. “As in, officially.”
“He did WHAT?!”
“He didn’t give you a transponder?” Sara asks. “Why not?”
“Concorde said I wasn’t responsible enough or mature enough,” I say, and Matt flips out again, earning him a dirty look from the woman working the counter. Shut up, would you? I don’t want to get kicked out before I finish stuffing my face.
“That is messed up, man,” Stuart says. “You’re, like, the maturest one on the team.”
“Yeah, well, I didn’t do much to prove it,” I say. “He told me no, without even pretending to think about it, and I totally lost it.”
“What did Mindforce say?” Sara says.
“Nothing. He said he’d talk to Concorde, but...I don’t know. I don’t think he has my back on this one.”
“But what are you going to do if you can’t get a transponder?”
“Yeah, the flying thing is kind of your thing,” Missy says. “Not that you can’t do other stuff like the zappy laser thing but the flying thing is, you know, your thing. I’m sorry. I get redundant when I’m upset.”
“I’ll tell you what you should do,” Matt says. “Ignore him. He’s not the boss of the sky.”
A bitter chuckle slips past a mouthful of cheesecake. “That’s what I said. Except he is.”
“Says who?”
“The government. I don’t know what the deal is exactly, but he’s got the Department of Defense on his side.”
“No way,” Stuarts says.
“Big whoop. I still say ignore him,” Matt says.
I admit it’s tempting, and I have thought about it, but I’m betting Concorde slapped my name on some super-hero no-fly list the minute we left Protectorate HQ, and I don’t feel like having the federal government on my case too. Besides...
“If I’m going to convince Concorde I deserve a transponder, I have to play the game by his rules,” I say, swallowing my pride along with the last of my cheesecake. I hat
e that someone else has such control over my life, but there it is. “I have to earn his trust and I can’t do that by thumbing my nose at him.”
“He’s never going to give you one,” Matt says. “He’s been looking for a way to shut us down since day one and now he has it. If you let him get away with—”
“I’m not letting him get away with anything,” I say, my temper spiking again. “I think this is the best way to handle the situation, and it’s my decision, so—”
“It might be your decision but it affects the rest of us. Did you ever think of that?”
“I’ll work around it.”
“How?”
Sara opens her mouth to intervene but it’s too little, too late. I knock my chair over as I jump to my feet. “I said I’ll work around it so back off!” I say, and I storm out, capping off my repeat performance of my new one-woman show, Carrie Hauser Flies Off the Handle.
Forget flying. Forget cheesecake. What I need now is to blast someone into next week, but of course, there’s never a super-villain around when you need one.
Instead of arriving home to yummy kitchen smells, I find Mom sitting on the couch, face buried in a newspaper. An assortment of booklets with colorful covers sits on a messy pile on the coffee table.
“You’re home,” she says as if this was an unexpected development. She checks her watch. “Oh, God, look at the time. I’m sorry, honey, I completely forgot about dinner. I’ll have something delivered. What are you in the mood for? Pizza or Chinese?”
I pick up one of the booklets. It’s a real estate guide. All the booklets are real estate guides. Mom lays the paper down. Red ink surrounds a half-dozen listings under the header APARTMENTS FOR RENT.
“What is this? What are you doing?”
She hesitates. “I’m looking around to see what’s out there is all.”
“What’s out there why?” I say, then I recall her panic-induced rant of the other day. “You can’t be serious.”
“I’m keeping our options open,” she insists.
“Well, you can close them because we’re not moving.”
“Carrie, Kingsport is not the safe little town I thought it was. The weirdness with the robots was one thing, but what happened at school,” Mom says, and her composure disintegrates before my eyes. “I can’t deal with that, Carrie. I can’t stand the idea of watching you leave the house every morning, wondering if you’re coming back alive.”
Action Figures - Issue One: Secret Origins Page 18