Action Figures - Issue One: Secret Origins

by Michael Bailey

  She finishes the sentiment in the dark. The secret subway thingy lurches to a stop.

  “What the...?” I power up to give us some light. “Thank you.” Nina checks the car’s control panel, taps it to no effect. “Something’s wrong. HQ’s back-up generator should have kicked in the second we lost power from the grid. Hold on.”

  Nina presses two fingers to her temple and narrows her eyes, the pose you see psychics in movies striking whenever they use their powers. It looks dumb in real life.

  “What? What?!” she says, but she’s not speaking to us. “No, I’m in the transport, with the Hero Squad...yeah, hold tight. We’re coming.”

  “We are?” I say. “What’s happening?”

  Nina runs her fingers along the edge of the control panel. It springs open to reveal a shallow recess. She pulls a handle and the doors open with a pop. “HQ is under attack.”

  “Under attack? By who?”

  “They’re called the Bestiary. Manticore and a bunch of costumed mercs he rustles up for big jobs.”

  Matt, super-hero nerd supreme, jumps in to give us the infodump as we cover the final quarter-mile on foot. Manticore, we’ve met. Minotaur is big and brawny, your garden-variety super-strong thug. On the other end of the size spectrum is a dwarf (little person? I don’t know what the right P.C. term is) called Kobold, who’s fast and agile—their version of Missy. Hydra wears an apparatus on his back sprouting four mechanical arms, each one packing a high-intensity heat ray. Their token female, Harpy, flies and has cybernetically enhanced vocal chords that make her a walking sonic cannon, which Matt assures me is plenty dangerous.

  “Very good.” Nina says. “You know your baddies. That’ll help.”

  She pulls the goggles over her eyes and the bandana over her face. The bandana has a crooked grin drawn on it in white, graffiti-style. Young, bouncy Natalie is gone. Nina Nitro is in charge and, no lie, Nina Nitro a little scary.

  “All right. Let’s suit up and go kick their asses.”

  We can hear the mayhem as soon as we enter the subbasement. Concorde’s sonic booms rattle the foundation beneath our feet.

  “The workshop is on the other side of the level,” Nina says. “Come on.”

  En route Nina feeds us a strategy: Stuart goes for Minotaur, Missy takes Kobold, Matt and Sara get Hydra and Harpy, and lucky me, I get Manticore. We’re not to engage them in a stand-up fight; we hit and run and let the Protectorate land the knockout blows.

  Brilliant in its simplicity? Common sense? Or just plain desperate? Guess we’ll find out, because we’re coming up on Concorde’s workshop.

  “Ready to rock and roll?” Nina says.

  “Kind of,” Matt says.

  “No,” Missy says.

  “Not remotely,” Sara says.

  Nina laughs. “Perfect. Stuart? Be a love and get the door.”

  Stuart charges, wrenching the heavy steel door off its hinges, and we barrel headlong into a warzone.

  It strikes me that our plan might be a little useless, because in addition to the Bestiary there are four Thrasher suits on their feet and spraying hypervelocity rounds in a concentrated assault on Concorde and Mindforce, whose telekinetic shield is the only thing keeping them from getting Swiss-cheesed. The air is lethal. I don’t dare go airborne.

  “Fire in the hole, suckers!” A twisting column of white-hot fire leaps from Nina’s hand and explodes in the center of the scrum of bad guys. The effect is confusion more than damage, but it’ll have to do.

  Minotaur, a giant musclehead in nothing but leather pants (ew) and a metal helmet sprouting ridiculous horns is the least phased of the bunch. Stuart rectifies that by hurling the door at him. It ricochets off his dumb ugly helmet. He reels. Stuart nails Minotaur with a low tackle and drives him into the wall, by which I mean into the solid brick wall. Stuart throws hands to keep him there, each punch landing with the force of a wrecking ball.

  Manticore spits a curse at us and orders the Thrashers to—get the hell out of here? Wait, what?

  Without hesitation, the Thrashers back out of a gaping hole that used to be a garage-style door as tall and as wide as the workshop. Manticore and Hydra cut loose with a barrage of energy blasts. The beams fragment a few feet in front of Sara, spraying sparks in every direction, outlining the edge of an otherwise invisible dome. It’s a temporary reprieve; Sara, overwhelmed, falls to her knees. Matt grabs her and we scatter for cover behind workbenches and tool cabinets. I expect Manticore to follow up, but instead he pivots and blasts Stuart. He goes sailing. Minotaur unfolds himself from the crater in the wall.

  “Where’d that punk go?!” he roars, “I’m going to tear that kid’s—”

  “You’re not doing anything except getting out of here,” Manticore says. “Bestiary! We are leaving! Now! Harpy!”

  Harpy, who wears a feather motif lamé bodysuit that says I moonlight as a stripper, opens her mouth and fills the workshop with a shriek that rattles my teeth. A wave of sound causes the air to ripple as it picks up and hurls every little scrap of debris, turning rubble, nuts and bolts, spent Thrasher ammo into deadly shrapnel that pings off our makeshift barricades.

  By the time the dust settles and our ears stop ringing, Manticore and the Bestiary—and the Thrashers—are gone.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  By all accounts, Concorde is a normal man in a fancy suit, but I am starting to suspect he has an actual power: super-stubbornness.

  “I’m fine,” he grunts through his helmet, which he refuses to take off so Nina, the least-battered member of the Protectorate, can check him out properly. I’m not positive, but I think I see tiny spatters of blood on the inside of his faceplate.

  “You sound like you got dragged down ten miles of bad road,” she says. “Take your helmet off.”

  “No. I’m fine.”

  “No you’re not,” I say. “Come on, guys, let’s give him some privacy.”

  “You’re making me move?” Stuart whines, with good reason. His chest had barely healed from our first run-in with Manticore and now it’s raw and blistered again.

  “I think Natalie will be more impressed if you show her how tough you are,” I say softly. I hate to manipulate the male ego like this, but it’s the easiest way to clear the medical bay. Predictably, Stuart puts on his brave face, slides off the examination table, and marches out. Nina throws me a wink of approval as I herd the others through the door.

  “Do me a favor and see how Mindforce is doing,” she says.

  We find Mindforce in the break room, one hand holding an icebag to his head, the other shoveling forkfuls of steamed spinach into his mouth. His complexion is Sara-level pasty.

  “How’s Concorde?” he asks.

  “Irritable and stubborn. So, you know, fine,” I say. Mindforce nods and downs half a bottle of Gatorade in a single gulp. “How about you? You look rough.”

  “I’ll be all right. Nothing a steak dinner and fistful of Tylenol won’t cure. What about you?”

  “I got zapped again,” Stuart says.

  “My ears hurt,” Missy says.

  “Got any more spinach?” Sara says. Mindforce points with his fork to the refrigerator and tells her to help herself. The freezer is loaded with boxes of microwavable steam-in-bag spinach.

  I sit across from Mindforce. “What happened?”

  Mindforce shakes his head. “Aside from the obvious, I don’t know. Concorde and I were in the interview room, waiting for you, going over our notes, and the power quit on us. The whole complex went dead and the genny didn’t kick in. There was an explosion, we ran down to the workshop...”

  “There was no warning at all?”

  “There should have been. We keep the property zipped up tight specifically in case of an attack. The perimeter is fenced off, we have ground-level motion sensors, we’re networked with military and civilian air control so we know whenever anyone passes within five miles of our airspace.” He drums his fork on the table, brow wrinkled in thought, as though saying all t
his aloud has made him realize “There’s no way they should have gotten close to us.”

  “But,” Matt says, “you said you lost power.”

  “Yes, but less than a minute before the attack. The early-warning system should have—it’s as if someone overrode—” Mindforce drops his fork and his icebag and buries his face in his hands. “Oh, damn it.”

  “What? What’s wrong?”

  “Where’s Archimedes?” I say. It comes out like an accusation.

  “He’s in Byrne,” Matt says.

  “Mindforce. Where is Archimedes?”

  “He’s in Byrne,” Matt insists.

  “No he’s not,” Mindforce says.

  “He escaped?” Sara says.

  “He was released. I don’t know how. He shouldn’t have been. We’re looking into it.”

  “Maybe you should start looking a little faster,” Matt says.

  “Matt,” I say, “not helping.”

  “Carrie, Archimedes has seen our faces. He could find out who we are.”

  “How? Knowing our faces doesn’t mean he knows our names.”

  “Facial recognition software, cross-referenced through existing electronic records. Don’t tell me Archimedes can’t access that stuff.”

  “We’re fifteen, Matt,” Sara says. “None of us have any records like that, nothing with our pictures attached.”

  “One word: Facebook.”

  Well, crap.

  “Take a breath, everyone,” Mindforce says. “There’s no need to stir yourselves into a panic.”

  “Says you.”

  “Archimedes is involved somehow, that much is a safe assumption, but I don’t think this was his doing.” Mindforce recaps the key events leading up to today’s incident: Archimedes steals the first Thrasher; someone hires Manticore to find Archimedes; en route to Byrne (the first time), Manticore shows up to finish the job, but Archimedes turns the tables and takes off with four more Thrashers; we beat Archimedes (again) and, for realsies this time, he’s shipped off to Byrne; where someone with serious connections springs him; Archimedes drops off the radar completely; a few days later, Manticore and his goons lay siege to HQ for the express purpose of reclaiming the Thrashers (leaving behind, I noticed, the one Concorde completely pulled apart) after sliding past the Protectorate’s security and killing the power to its defense systems—something only Archimedes could swing.

  “And the moral of the story is?” Matt says. “I’m still waiting to hear the part that reassures us we’re safe.”

  “Someone has Archimedes on a leash,” I say. “Archimedes never cared about the Thrashers beyond using them against us, but whoever made them does care—enough to spring him out of Byrne and make him run interference for the Bestiary.”

  “Exactly, and that same someone is unlikely to let Archimedes go after you again,” Mindforce says. “That risks exposure, and my sense is that whoever owns the Thrashers is trying to keep as low a profile as possible.”

  “That’s a great theory,” Matt says, “but that’s all it is.”

  Mindforce, reluctantly, concurs. “I can’t guarantee anything. I’m sorry.”

  “You should have told us about Archimedes,” I say. “And don’t say you were trying to keep us from panicking. If you’re wrong and we are on someone’s hit list, it’s better to be scared and prepared than calm and blindsided.”

  Concorde, whether he was right or wrong, would have argued the point. Mindforce doesn’t. Nevertheless, there is some merit to the theory ignorance is bliss because here comes the panic.

  “What are we supposed to do now? If Archimedes is after us, he could nail us a dozen different ways and we’d never see him coming,” Matt says.

  “Would he come after us at home?” Missy says. “Or go after our families? I don’t want anything to happen to Mom and Dad!”

  “What if he attacks us again at school?” Sara says.

  “Not much fun, is it?” Concorde limps into the room. Nina trails him, hands out like she’s ready to catch him if (or when) he passes out. “Worrying whether some super-villain is going to come gunning for you.”

  “Concorde, this is not the time for an I-told-you-so speech,” I say, but he ignores me.

  “Well, you better get used to it, because that’s part of the life. Don’t like it? Tough. You’ve made your first enemy, and he’s definitely the vengeful type.”

  “Concorde, stop,” Nina says.

  “They need to hear this.”

  “Not like this we don’t,” I say, “because it’s not helping. What would help is some advice—real advice, because your standard chewing-out routine isn’t going to do us a bit of good if, God forbid, Archimedes or Manticore or whoever does come after us. If you’re truly half as worried about our safety as you say you are, stop yelling at us and help us.”

  “There’s nothing I can do,” Concorde says, almost apologetically. “It’s all on you, and all you can do is keep your eyes open...but I think Mindforce is right. I don’t think Archimedes or anyone else is that interested in you. The Bestiary was here for one thing and they got it.”

  “Mostly. You still have one of the suits,” I point out.

  “With a com unit trashed beyond repair.”

  “So?”

  “With a functional com unit, Concorde might have been able to trace a signal back to the suits’ point of origin,” Matt says. “We know the suits use wireless broadband. Send a ping back on the unit’s carrier wave and you could locate its home network.”

  “Which is exactly what I was trying to do,” Concorde says. “How in the world do you know all this stuff?”

  “I read.”

  “Anyway,” Nina says, getting us back on track, “I think the take-away here is that no big bads are going to come a-knockin’ on your door. They came here for a specific reason and it had nothing to do with you.”

  “Agreed,” Mindforce says, and he tells us to go home and not to worry.

  If only it were that easy.

  TWENTY-SIX

  I take small comfort in the fact I was not the only one who barely slept last night. The dark circles under Sara’s eyes are wicked bad today and could pass as fresh bruises. We get to Stuart’s for a much-needed day of relaxation and our host greets us with giant mugs of fresh coffee.

  “You’re a prince,” I say.

  “Figured you might be dragging,” he says. “I know I am.”

  Missy is asleep in her seat when we join her and Matt at the gaming table. “Wow, she’s out cold,” I say, and she snaps awake instantly.

  “Yeah I was,” she says. “Hi.”

  “Hey, Muppet. Right, so, what’s on the fun agenda today?”

  “I was thinking we could maybe pull out the Dungeons & Dragons stuff and get a dungeon crawl going?” Matt says.

  “I’ve never played Dungeons & Dragons,” I say, and I know it’s a mistake as soon as the words leave my lips.

  “Sold! Dungeons & Dragons it is, and we play old-school,” Matt informs me. “First edition. Four major classes, seven races, THAC0-based combat, the way God intended.”

  “Half-orc assassin!” Missy says.

  “Bard!” Sara says.

  “Fighter class, of course,” Stuart says.

  They’re all speaking English, but I don’t understand what they’re saying. Clarity is slow in coming.

  “THAC0 means ‘To Hit Armor Class Zero’,” Matt explains, pointing to a line of numbers on my character sheet (I’m a cleric so the party has a healer and someone who can turn the undead. Whatever that means). “If your opponent’s armor class is a positive number, you add that to your THAC0 to get your attack roll, if it’s negative, you subtract it. A higher THAC0 means your target is easier to hit. You attack by rolling the d20—”

  “Blah blah blah opponent blah blah number blah blah target blah blah blah,” I say.

  “It’ll make sense once we get going,” Sara assures me. “It took me a while to get used to it.”

  “Just remember,
” Missy says, fiddling with her dice, “whenever you can, distract people so I can backstab them because I get extra damage.”

  “What do you think?” Stuart says, holding up two character sheets. “Dwarven fighter or Drow ranger?”

  “Drow,” Matt says. “The Drow are your people.”

  “Don’t mock my proud Nubian heritage, man. Not cool.”

  “You’re only a quarter black.”

  “I’m one-quarter African-American, thank you very much,” Stuart says, nose in the air, “and you’ve met my grandmother, so you know how awesome that one-quarter is.”

  “This is true. All right, ladies and gentlemen,” Matt says with an air of ceremony, “the game is The Keep on the Borderlands.”

  “Dude, we’ve played that one, like, a million times.”

  “But it’s the traditional introductory module for newbies,” Matt says.

  “But I know where everything is. I know what all the monsters are.”

  “Fine.” Matt searches through a stack of modules and pulls out one with a dark green cardstock cover. “Palace of the Silver Princess. Acceptable?”

  Stuart makes a flourishy gesture. “I approve. Proceed.”

  “Don’t proceed,” I say. “I need the powder room.”

  “Upstairs,” Stuart says. “The downstairs can is broken. Not my fault.”

  With his parents off Sunday brunching with friends, the Lumley home is quiet except for the eager chatter of my hardy companions in dungeon exploration. It reminds me of Missy’s place, except the Lumleys have a sense of style that lends personality and warmth to their home. Plus: no plastic on the furniture.

  The stairway leading up to the second floor is so covered in framed photographs you can barely make out the wallpaper underneath. It’s the Lumley Family History in pictures. I spot a photo of Stuart’s parents at their wedding, and both of them are noticeably skinnier than they are now (I imagine Stuart would someday go the same way if he didn’t have a blast furnace for a stomach). Nearby there’s a formal portrait of a striking African-American woman I assume is Stuart’s grandmother. There’s a gleam in her eye that makes her instantly endearing, even in photographic form. Near that is a Sears Portrait Studio job of three obviously related young boys in matching nerdy suits. The middle boy with the unkempt, overgrown hair is giving the camera a sly, lopsided grin. I’d recognize Stuart’s How you doin’? face anywhere.