by Joel Burdick
-~-~-
Liam Jensen had been a black ops operative for the better part of twenty years. He had been a part of raids on drug lords compounds, dictator's castles, and recently begun raids on super's bases as part of this team. He had been on enough missions that he felt he had seen everything.
Until now.
Jacob Redpath, Anansi, he was an odd one. He had the build of a runner, about six feet tall and lanky. He was wearing a tank top and pajama bottoms and had the physique of someone who worked out for speed, not strength. He had a little smirk on his face as his eyes darted about the cabin from behind his glasses. The man's file said he was in his late twenties and was a Maker type super of at least Class three, which rated him as a significant threat, able to take on at least a company of trained professionals, though as with most Makers, it was hard to accurately assess his power level like one did with a Works or a Blaster. The potential devastation caused by a Works or Blaster would determine their power level. A Class three Works generally could fly as fast as a helicopter, punch through an inch or so of steel, and take bullets and rockets with little to show for it. To rate a guy who made things in the same class was a bit worrisome.
And here was Anansi, calm as a cat, more interested in the helicopter's workings than the fact that he had been kidnapped. They had walked into the home, the floating fortress, of a super who used traps as his primary mode of combat, and walked out with the target without so much as a shot fired. They hadn't even needed to handcuff Anansi, though they had simply to not take chances. Everything had gone off without a hitch.
And it set Liam on edge. Nothing ever went this smooth. Ever.
Liam looked to his men. They felt it too. Something was wrong, and the only person on the helicopter who seemed relaxed was Anansi, and that did nothing but make Liam more worried that the bastard had something up his sleeve.
“So, I haven't ever been kidnapped before. Are we allowed to stop for food or something before we get to the throw me in a chamber to rot for the rest of my life part?” Anansi was looking at Liam, as if expecting an answer. Liam would have gaped at the man if the mask wouldn't have hid it entirely, and was glad for it. He didn't want the villain to realize just how out of his comfort zone he and his team were in.
Anansi waited several seconds for a response, and when it became apparent that he wasn't going to get one, he shrugged and put his hands above his head, stretching. Ellers and Roe, sitting on either side of the super, grabbed his arms and pulled them back down into his lap. Thompson had drawn his knife, ready to unstrap and leap at Anansi, who shrugged and began twiddling his thumbs. “Guess that's a no.”
Liam keyed his microphone, broadcasting on the frequency that linked each of the team's masks. “Calm down. I don't know what this bastard is up to, but we need to at least pretend that we don't think we're dancing to his tune.”
Thompson keyed his own mic. “Let me gut him, we can tell the higher-ups he resisted and we had to take him down. That will take the smile off of his smug cape face.” His fist gripped the knife like a lifeline.
Liam growled at Thompson. He put a hand on Thompson's knife hand. “Put it away.” His tone brooked no argument, and Thompson followed the order. Liam made a mental note to figure out what Thompson had against supers that had him so violent. It wouldn't do on this team. He focused again on Anansi and turned on his external speakers. “We are not stopping.” Anansi nodded and leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes.
“You could at least play music. I'm hungry, bored, tired, and there's no way I'm going to sleep, so I might as well stay entertained.” Liam found himself wishing he could tell Thompson to cut the guy a bit. Just a little bit. Whatever higher-up had in mind, though, that wasn't on the table. Anansi didn't need to know that, though.
“Shut it, or I let this guy carve you a new mouth.” Anansi smiled and drew his fingers over his mouth like a zipper.
Yes, this guy was far too comfortable.
-~-~-
The remainder of the ride was uncomfortable in ways that Anansi could not even begin to describe. The entire team that had abducted him were all but aiming their weapons at him the whole time, and their postures were so rigid that Anansi wagered they would topple due to a stiff breeze had they been standing. It was all incredibly ridiculous. What were they so scared of?
About half an hour into the flight the commander pulled a rolled piece of black canvas from a pouch on his belt and tossed it to Anansi. Anansi unrolled it to find a featureless black hood, the kind you see on prisoners all the time. He winced, knowing exactly what this could be for, imagining the chopper touching down on some ship somewhere and him being escorted from the vehicle onto the deck, shot, and then dumped into the sea. One more body never recovered.
“Is this absolutely necessary?” Anansi asked, holding the hood up. “I don't think this shirt is in my size.” He smiled weakly, hoping that the gunmen did not see how nervous the hood made him. They simply stared at him, the featureless masks hiding all humanity and emotion. Anansi sighed and shook his head. “Fine, fine. I'll play along, but there had better be cake at the end of this.” He slipped the hood over his head, careful to not knock his glasses. He felt drawstrings at the base, and pulled them, sealing himself in darkness.
With the bag on his head, Anansi felt like time moved at changing paces, sometimes very quickly, sometimes slowly, but always without him. He tried humming to keep track of time, but the guy on his left elbowed him in the sides until he stopped, so that was out of the question, and nothing else really came to mind.
Some time later, Anansi felt the helicopter descending and finally touch down. He felt himself be unstrapped from his harness and was led from the helicopter. The sound of the ocean far below was the only hint that he was still at least near the ocean.
They walked for several minutes, boots echoing as if in an enclosed space or clanging on metal stairs. Anansi stumbled three times when his captors forgot to tell him to step over or around something.
When they finally took the hood off of his head, he was in a room with a cot, a light recessed into the ceiling, and nothing else. The walls were steel, painted grey, and the only one with any features was the one with the door, which was also steel. The infiltration team left the room and shut the door behind them, the sound of several bolts being put into place letting Anansi know that wherever he was, he was going to be staying here for a bit. He considered seeing if there was a bug in the light, but when he looked at it, he realized how tired he was, and decided for sleep instead.
Chapter 4
“Get up!”
The masculine voice shocked Anansi out of sleep. He was about to protest Kay using different voices when he remembered that he was not at home and she was no longer available to him. He was pulled to his feet by blurry people in black, but before he could put on his glasses to get a look at them, a hood was put over his head and pulled close. Anansi frowned at the darkness and yawned.
“So, what was the point of taking it off in the first place?” he said as he was roughly led out of his cell into parts unknown again. The walk this time was shorter and did not include any stumbling over whatever it had been that he had stumbled upon before. A door opened ahead of him and he was pushed down into a seat. The zip-cuffs were replaced with handcuffs, his feet cuffed to the seat, and finally the hood was removed. Anansi tested the length of the chain on his handcuffs and found them to be long enough to reach his glasses if he bent forward, and after that it was relatively simple enough to put them on.
Anansi's new room looked like the conglomeration of every interrogation room that had ever graced a television show. A steel table was the center point of the room, with one uncomfortable steel chair that Anansi occupied on one side and another on the opposite side of the table. A pane of one way glass lined the wall behind the empty chair, and a heavy steel door was in the wall to the left of that one. The light came from a single bulb in the ceiling, casting light on the table and where the two
occupants would sit, and shadows everywhere else. Anansi spotted one camera in the corner where the ceiling met the walls on the opposite end of the room from the door, focused on him, then a second focused on where his interrogator would sit.
By the time Anansi had started inspecting the table for microphones the door opened. Anansi stopped poking the table looking for soft spots to watch a woman in a black pantsuit with a grey blouse close the door behind her and walk to the table. Her blond hair was shoulder length and tied in a ponytail, and her eyes were a deep blue, like the ocean. She carried a manila folder about an inch thick with several stamps indicating how secret squirrel it was, though it didn't have anything that Anansi could see to indicate who the folder belonged to.
He could guess, though.
Her presence seemed to bring a certain electric presence into the room, though he wasn't sure if it was his imagination. As expected, she sat down across from him and spent a moment smoothing her coat before placing the folder on the table in front of him. Again, predictably, it was his file. Anansi bent down to get a better look at the size of the file. About an inch and some change. He sat up and smiled at his interrogator. “I think you're missing some stuff. I figured my file would be thicker than that.”
She placed her hands on the table, a spark of static lanced between her hands as she did. So the electricity was more than just imaginary. Interesting. She eyed Anansi as she opened his file.
“Should I call you Anansi or Jacob?” she said, cutting straight to the chase, it seemed. Anansi noticed that she didn't blink. At all. He held her gaze for several seconds, trying to see if she would blink at all, but when she didn't, his eyes hurt for the effort. He leaned forward and took off his glasses to rub his eyes and restore some moisture to them. When he looked back up, it looked like she still hadn't blinked.
“Ah, whichever you prefer, though I've got a few questions of my own before we start. Like can I get a lawyer and a sandwich? Preferably the sandwich first. Some jerks came and woke me up in the middle of the night and took me from my home to who knows where and we didn't even stop for breakfast on the way. I'm hungry.” Anansi tried his most winning smile on the woman, hoping to at least get under her skin a little. It had absolutely no effect, so Anansi guessed that in addition to electricity, she probably also possessed the superpower of unflappability.
“Actually, due to the passing of the Superhuman Security Act, which was partly due to your actions three years ago, individuals in America who possess superhuman abilities and are not registered in compliance with the law may be detained until such a time as they are deemed not a threat to the general populous.” She smiled at him, though he wasn't sure what sort of smile it was. His best guess was a mix of irritation and amusement, which was an odd combination and led him to thinking that he just wasn't as good at reading people when he didn't have an artificial intelligence feeding him information he normally wouldn't have access to.
Anansi had also heard about the successful passing of the Superhuman Security Act. He had also heard of the substantial drop in superhuman activity immediately thereafter in America, at least in regards to heroes. Villains had a way of disappearing there as well, and the internet was constantly abuzz with theories as to where they went and what happened to them when they did. It was a major reason why he hadn't been back in several years.
“But I wasn't IN America. I'm pretty sure I was closer to Japan than Hawaii when you lot came and got me, so that doesn't apply to me, and I've renounced my citizenship as Jacob Redpath, so there is no jurisdiction under those grounds to hold me.”
“But you WERE an American Citizen, which is all that is required under the law,” she said. Anansi thought he could hear a smirk in her voice, but her expression betrayed nothing. Anansi started to argue the point, but decided that there really wasn't one. He wasn't going to get out of here by talking, and he could play the game for now.
“Okay, fine, let's say you have legal grounds to hold me, are you taking me to court? I'm sure you have plenty of evidence to link me to all of my crimes that you know about, and I know you've known who I was for a couple of years, so why pick now to come find me? What's your game?”
For the first time since she had come in, she blinked.
-~-~-
From the other side of the one way glass, Agent Denise Sanders watched the interrogation happening in the next room. Her brown hair was tied back in a bun, and her chocolate skin spoke of mixed African descent. She wore a black pantsuit with grey pinstripes, the coat hanging from the back of her chair with the sleeves to her blue blouse rolled up to her elbows. She watched as Anansi took in the room and started playing with the table. She chuckled quietly when he asked for a sandwich and a lawyer. Some people never changed, it seemed.
Beside her stood Agent Lopez. Loomed was a better word. He was clean shaven, had a jaw that could cut stone, and eyes that were dark enough to be considered black. His hair was slicked back and not a bit out of place. He was dark for someone of Mexican heritage, probably from the time he spent in the sun on his off time. He was nursing a coffee, and the bags under his eyes indicated how little sleep he had gotten in the past few days.
“You can go to bed, if you like. The video will still be there,” Denise said, knowing full well he wouldn't take her up on the offer. He preferred actual people to video. Said they told him more. She understood the sentiment, as she shared the opinion. Lopez shrugged and took another long pull from his thermos.
“Why aren't you in there?” he said, nodding his head towards the glass that separated them from where Agent Ruthers was speaking with Anansi. Denise glanced back to the glass and brushed a lock of black hair from her face. The same thought had passed through her mind, the same question posed by Ruthers before she started the session. Denise usually led interrogations. It had a lot to do with her ability as a natural polygraph. She could hear the deceit in people's voices when they spoke it, and always had a sense of the right questions to ask to bring out the truth.
“Anansi and I have history. I worked for him for a bit, feeding information on his activities to the FBI. It led to a few of his plots getting foiled. He figured out I was doing it, so he rightly doesn't trust me.” Denise felt the detachment in her voice as she spoke. She saw Anansi put the pieces together and figure out that there was a game afoot that had little to do with his criminal past.
“Okay, but that doesn't mean you can't run the session. You can look like anyone. He doesn't need to know it's you.” Lopez wasn't interested in the interrogation anymore. His eyes were on Denise, and she could feel it. He didn't have any psychic powers, but he had a presence about him that made him hard to ignore. The fact that he was several inches taller than her and more than twice her weight in a way that had nothing to do with body fat did nothing but increase his presence, especially in the close confines of the room.
“He always knows it's me. I have no idea how he does it, but he does, and if he knows I'm running this, he might refuse simply to spite me. I've seen him do that before.” Lopez did not look satisfied with the answer, but he accepted it, for now. Denise knew he would be bringing it up again later. He nodded and finished his coffee, tipping the ceramic thermos up until the last drop was gone. He eyed the empty mug and sighed.
“I'm gonna catch a nap. Let me know if he acts up.” Denise nodded, and he walked out the door, mumbling to himself as he went. Denise turned back on the audio feed from the room, allowing her to hear the conversation as it continued inside.
-~-~-
“What “game” do you think is afoot, Anansi?” the woman said, her eyes boring into him, inspecting him like one might a dangerous animal. Or a bomb. The look fit more with the situation than the impassive stare she had been giving before, which confirmed to Anansi that something was going on.
“So we're going to play it this way? Fine, I'll play your game. You have me here. You know who I am and a bit of what I've done, which would be enough to put me away for a long, long time. You
have enough evidence to prove that I did those things, too, especially that bit with Lowe, which you probably think he deserved but won't say so because your job would be at stake if you did. And yet here we are, with you waving my crimes in front of me like some sort of television detective who still can't put the bad guy away without a confession, like you're trying to guilt me into something.” Anansi smiled and spread his arms as wide as he could, the chain rattling against the bar holding them to the table. “We can keep beating about the bush or you can tell me the real reason why I'm here.”
Anansi leaned forward, his head angled so that the light cast shadows across his eyes and gave the woman his most evil grin. “And if you don't want to play, I'll up and leave, and I'll kill everyone I meet on the way out.”
The statement got exactly the reaction he wanted from her. She looked back to the one way glass with a nervous look on her face. He saw her mouth “Can he do that?” in the reflection. When no response came, she turned back around to face him. Gone was her calm exterior, replaced with barely controlled irritation. A spark of electricity arced from her fingers, something she didn't seem to notice.
“As you may know, President Reese did not have a high regard for supers of either variety. He did not believe that people should possess that amount of power.” She paused, collecting her thoughts. “President Andrews holds much the same beliefs, but is willing to accept that supers are a fact of modern life and is willing to work with them. He asked us to find you and enlist you to assist in a matter of not only national security, but that of the world, and to coerce you, offer you a full pardon.” Anansi raised an eyebrow and sat up, listening intently.