No Master Plan Here (Madness Runs in the Family)

by Joel Burdick

  “Two weeks ago, Agent Lockheart, better known as Archangel, went AWOL and stole the first part of a classified prototype chemical agent, SX-203. We believe he is attempting to collect the other three parts to complete the agent and deploy it in the United States. SX-203 is a volatile agent which has the capability of creating superpowers in approximately seventy percent of people exposed and remains on the skin, effectively making it contagious by contact. If deployed, it could spread across the world within days.”

  “So it makes nearly everyone supers. I can see a few problems with that, but I don't see how this makes it an end of the world scenario.”

  “In the third who do not gain powers, eighty-five percent die from spontaneous cancerous growth in their heart and lungs within a week. In the two thirds that do, the likelihood of this is only fifteen percent, but the likelihood of power degeneration and madness or death is approximately fifty percent, with actual percentages varying by class, greater chances for higher classes. Imagine the damage that could be caused by a Class four Blaster spontaneously detonating because they lost control of their powers.”

  Anansi considered it. A Class four was no joke. Given the situation she was proposing, it could be as bad as detonating a large Fuel Air Explosive. Odds are it wouldn't be just one. And following that same odds, it would probably happen in a major population area. While Anansi had for many years been in favor of population reduction, he had never thought to do it actively. Well, not planned to, at least. Considering it because people were idiots and didn't know it and actually taking steps to follow through were two different things.

  “So, the question is why are you reaching out to me to stop Archangel? Why not go after him yourself?” He tried crossing his arms and was brought up short by the handcuffs, so he put his hands back on the table. “Why not enlist the aid of one of the many super teams that are actually legal in America?”

  “Because the President wants to keep this under wraps as much as possible. If news that Archangel has gone rogue or that SX-203 exists get leaked, it could jeopardize the nation's standing in the world. Archangel is the only Class Four super currently on direct government payroll, and while the loss is significant, people knowing it would be a political nightmare. Also, out of any fights Archangel has ever had, the one with you caused the least amount of collateral damage, and we believe you could duplicate that.”

  “You keep saying “we.” Who is “we?” And who are you so that I can stop thinking of you as “Suit chick number one?””

  “We are Superhuman Handling and Incident Prevention, and I am Agent Heather Ruthers.”

  “SHIP?” Anansi smirked a little. The agent nodded. “So...like “This ship is sinking and I'm here to bail it out?” Or “Who's running this ship?!”” Anansi flailed his arms as best he could and laughed. He adjusted his glasses and rolled his eyes. “You people and your acronyms.” Agent Ruthers gave him a stare which made him smile wider.

  “So if I am going to be taking down Archangel, will I be doing it in handcuffs the whole time?” Anansi yanked at his cuffs again, rattling the chains. “Or can I get extended a bit of trust and lose them?”

  Agent Ruthers stood and walked around to Anansi's side of the table, pulled a key from her hip pocket, and unlocked the handcuffs. Anansi rubbed his wrists and watched Ruthers closely as she unlocked his ankle cuffs. Anansi grinned at Ruthers, who returned the smile with an impassive look before returning to her seat.

  “Now,” Anansi said as he pulled a cable from the cybernetic implant at the base of his skull, connecting it to the port in his glasses. His virtual display did not activate, but he was able to activate the recording feature of his glasses. “Let's get this straight. I stop Archangel from releasing something I'm going to call “Instant Superhero-Kaboom” on the unsuspecting population for reasons that you don't know on behalf of the President so that he can save face with the global community. That about right?”

  “Not my terms, but yes.”

  “Alright, I have a few terms, before I agree to do that.” Ruthers started to protest, but Anansi held up a finger and simply talked over her. “First, while I don't really care about it, I'll take that pardon that you mentioned earlier. I might as well if it's on the table. All crimes, and I'll give you a detailed list of everything I did so that you don't try to accidentally not include any of them to prosecute me on them later. Second, you leave my family the hell out of any dealings we have. I know three of my siblings are registered. You mess with them, you mess with me.” Anansi leaned forward, interlacing his fingers beneath his nose. “And seeing as you lot have left me alone for three years and are now sending me after a Class four Works, I know you think I'm dangerous enough to do something if you do.”

  Agent Ruthers nodded and sighed, looking more irritated by the second. “Is there anything else on the damned list? Money? Political demands?”

  Anansi leaned back and smiled. “Just one more thing. I want a damned sandwich.”

  “A sandwich?”

  “Yeah. Bacon, crispy but not too crispy, fresh lettuce and tomatoes, and toasted whole wheat bread with butter.” He licked his lips and chuckled at the incredulity on Ruther's face. “Hell, had you asked me to, I would have kicked Archangel's goody-goody ass for free, and it wouldn't have cost me a couple of months of work on security protocols destroying my experiments.”

  “We did.”

  Anansi's grin disappeared in an instant. He blinked. Maybe he hadn't heard her right. “What?”

  “We tried to contact you. A week and a half ago when it was first authorized to pull you in on this mission.” Agent Ruthers crossed her arms across her chest. She snorted and shook her head. “You never responded, which we were told was to assume you didn't get it or that you were ignoring us to get back at America. We were told to get your attention with more direct means.”

  Anansi stared at the table, processing that. He wished he had Kay to confirm that, and the realization that he was without her made him feel like a part of himself had been severed. How long had he been working on that exoskeleton without a break? He could have asked what day it was, but he couldn't think of when the last time he had checked the calendar, despite regularly having an artificial intelligence in his head that could tell him whenever he so much as thought about it.

  “Can I get a finger of whiskey to go with that sandwich, then? It is not often I'm the dumb person in a room.”

  -~-~-

  An hour, a bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich, and a bit of whiskey later, Anansi was leaving the interrogation room for the showers. He had a verbal agreement for now and the written agreement would be presented in a day or two, once verified and signed by the President. In the mean time, the plan would move forward to thwart Archangel's plot. Anansi chuckled to himself at that thought. Usually he was to be the foil-ee, not the foil-er. It would take a little getting used to, being on the side of the government for once.

  As Anansi headed towards the showers and then a room, an actual room, not a cell, he considered just how amusing it was that the government, with whom he held a not so secret loathing for and felt the feeling was mutual, would be reaching out to him for help. It was amusing, if slightly suspicious.

  Absorbed in his thoughts, Anansi did not notice the woman who came around the corner into the hallway until he had collided with her, knocking his glasses off and her coffee mug from her hand, spilling it onto both of their chests. Anansi hissed at the pain of hot coffee soaking through his tank top to his chest, kneeling quickly to try to recover his glasses.

  “I'm so sorry about that,” he said, making out the blurry form of the woman kneeling down beside him. “I wasn't paying attention to where I was going.” Her hand touched his, holding his glasses, and he sighed with relief. While a fall certainly wouldn't damage them, the fact that he couldn't see a thing without them made them mostly crucial to his well-being.

  “It was all my fault. I was rushing,” she said as he put on his glasses. As the world came
into focus, he saw that the woman he had run into was Asian, with the soft features of someone who enjoyed food and did not care for exercise but did it anyways, wearing black dress pants with grey pinstripes and a blue blouse that was soaked with coffee. He could see the outline of her bra from the way the liquid caused her shirt to cling, and promptly focused on her face again, standing as she did.

  “No harm, no foul. Good thing the coffee wasn't too hot.” Anansi smiled, taking a step back to a more comfortable distance. He noticed a nervous stance to the woman, and the way she was staring at him like he was some sort of rabid beast made him slightly uncomfortable. “Are you with SHIP as well?”

  She flinched and nodded sharply, still not meeting his eyes. Anansi sighed and shook his head, running a hand through the several days of stubble on his chin and realizing how long it had been since he had shaved. Getting absorbed into projects was really something that did a number on personal hygiene.

  “Look, I'm sorry about the coffee, but as you obviously know who I am, I'll let you know that I don't kill people at random or on a whim, despite what you might have heard, so relax, would you?” He patted her on the shoulder and she flinched again, not enough to move away but a definite reaction to his touch. Anansi sighed again and muttered to himself before waving over his shoulder to the woman, off once again to find the shower he was desiring.

  -~-~-

  Denise watched Anansi leave, the tiredness in his stance as he walked, dampening but not hiding the arrogant confidence of the supervillain. Once he was out of sight two hallways down, she allowed her form to return to natural, shedding the Asian features and skin tone like water at a thought, instantly growing an inch and trading the pudgy figure for her muscular form, pale skin for darker. She watched the hallway with confused thoughts playing about in her mind.

  “He didn't recognize me.”

  She made a mental note to test the development a couple more times, but if Anansi no longer could see through her disguises, it would mean she would be able to participate in the mission as opposed to just overseeing it, and that was preferable. Easier to keep a handle on things that she was near than just getting reports of.

  She smiled, turned, and walked back to the cafeteria for another cup of coffee, a noticeable spring in her step.

  Chapter 5

  June 11, 2017

  Anansi watched out the window of the helicopter as they flew above the Sierra Nevada Mountains, a childish grin on his face as he stared at the forests and peaks below. Beside him sat Agent Ruthers, arms crossed and eyes shut, across from him sat Agent Lopez, a burly Latino who moved little and spoke less, and beside Lopez sat the Asian agent he had run into in the hallway, who had eventually introduced herself as Uso. Over the past several days he had seen her numerous times around the SHIP base, which was a high-tech submarine that served as a mobile command and containment center for the superhuman branch of the United States government. Anansi had shared the joke of SHIP on a ship with the agents, but none of them had found it as funny as he had.

  Anansi had explored the submarine wherever he had been allowed to go, avoiding the restricted areas because his curiosity could have gotten the better of him and annoying his captors/co-conspirators would probably be a bad thing this early on in the collaboration. They had allowed him access to their armory, which was filled with the best Maker gear the government would buy, most of them bearing the mark of the company Blue Steel, Inc., which belonged to his sister and was occasionally supplied blueprints by him. Agent Lopez had looked at Anansi funny when he started laughing hysterically. Anansi hadn't told him what was so funny.

  While their armory was good, it wasn't as good as his, which led to a request that sent the three agents and the villain in a helicopter ride over the mountains.

  Thus far, he had figured Lopez for a Bruiser type, strong and near invulnerable, Ruthers for a Blaster, probably capable of blasting electricity from her hands, and Uso for a low level Works, but as none of them had actually demonstrated their powers and nobody let him get anywhere near a computer without supervision, he was restricted to guessing and not downloading the agency's files for future reference.

  Anansi didn't mind. He was used to dealing with unknown factors.

  Ruthers waved to get Anansi's attention, then activated the microphone on the oversized headphones he wore. “Where are we going, exactly?” the agent said, her voice garbled slightly by the noise canceling software in the cabin intercom. Anansi smiled as his mind went off on a tangent, playing with an idea to fix the problem. It would probably take him all of ten minutes with the computer to write the program, as if they would let him have a look. Unlikely.

  “Well, you got the coordinates I gave you, right?” Anansi said. The blond agent nodded. Anansi looked out the window again, a smile on his face. He looked back to the agents. “If we go there, you will all be in for a treat. You'll get to see my base from when I was active. I can't face Archangel without gear, and while you had or could get everything I needed to remake my stuff, it'll be easier for me to just reactivate the base and get the gear I have there.”

  “You left a base stocked in America?” chimed in Uso, a dark eyebrow raising. While the other two agents still wore suits with muted color tops underneath, she wore body armor similar to the type that the infiltration team had worn. A helmet rested on the seat beside her, and she wore a pair of pistols on her hips and a submachine gun strapped to her chest. White letters reading SHIP were emblazoned across her chest.

  “Yeah. It was in case I ever needed to get back in a hurry. I could get here, store or refuel the plane I had taken in, restock, and get out to carry out more mayhem or whatever the order of the day happened to be.”

  “Your files never indicated you took orders from anyone,” Uso said, apparently having overcome her fear of him in search of answers.

  “You've done your homework, I never did, and don't plan to, as far as my own activities are concerned. I might make things I that I sell from time to time, but I don't usually do dirty work for anyone but me. Personal code, or some such silliness.” Uso nodded and began checking her weapons. Anansi watched her hands dance across her gear with the practiced ease of a professional and wondered where the apparently near-civilian organization of SHIP had found someone with obviously military level experience with weapons. Then he remembered the infiltration team and shrugged. She probably was one like them.

  “Approaching coordinates. Orders?” came the voice of the pilot as he leaned around to face his passengers. Anansi nodded and pointed downwards.

  “Land where you can. We'll need to enter on foot, so we have to land.”

  “Not so much,” Lopez cut in, nodding to Ruthers. Ruthers unstrapped herself and took off her headset before she opened the passenger door and stepped out of the helicopter, dropping without a word or sound. Anansi watched, resisting the instinct to try and stop her, though it was strong. Lopez unstrapped himself and stood, hunched over so that he could fit in the cabin. “You and Mantis are with me.”

  “Not to sound like a worrier, but we're still pretty high and I don't fly. I'm not The Suit, and even if I were, I still wouldn't be able to fly without my gear, which we are going to get.” While he was protesting, Uso, apparently Mantis, unstrapped herself and took off her headset. She put on her helmet, fastening it to her armor with a series of clicks. She nodded to Lopez and moved to the door. Lopez took off his own headset and looked back to Anansi, who still hadn't taken off his harness. With his slow and deliberate pace, Lopez unstrapped Anansi, despite Anansi's attempts to prevent him from doing just that, and physically pulled him out of his seat.

  “You scared, villain?” Lopez shouted, his voice carrying over the sound of the engines. Anansi stuck his tongue out at the bigger man, unwilling to admit what was probably obvious. “Good,” said the Latino agent as he stepped backwards, pulling Anansi along. He grabbed Mantis by a handle behind her neck and stepped out of the helicopter into open air.

  Anansi fe
lt his insides climb up into his mouth as they fell. He stopped his glasses from getting blown off of his face, just barely, and made a mental note to install clips to hold them in place as part of the shield to his cybernetics. Anansi looked down to the ground rushing up at the three of them in time to notice Lopez undergo a transformation.

  The first thing that happened is his muscles started to grow, then his skin started to crack as what appeared to be smooth grey stone began tearing through and replacing his skin. Lopez's suit ripped as his bulk exceeded the fabric's ability to contain, revealing a stretchy black bodysuit underneath, a grey boulder in a blue circle over the letters for SHIP in white emblazoned on his chest. Anansi guessed that the man had gained at least four inches in height and who knew how much weight and density with the transformation.

  And he still wasn't flying. More like falling like a rock.

  With the ground quickly approaching and no reduction in momentum apparently coming, Anansi allowed himself to wonder if this had all been an elaborate plot to kill him, just as Lopez threw Mantis and him skyward, plowing into the ground at what was certainly terminal velocity. Anansi realized as his momentum reversed once again that he was now resuming falling, but this time at only ten feet off the ground. He landed in the pile of pine needles beside the crater Lopez was currently walking out of and fell on his ass, his feet, ankles, and knees screaming in pain from the impact. He might have added his own exclamation of pain, but wasn't entirely certain. He noticed that Mantis landed with the grace of someone who had practiced that particular maneuver, which she probably had.

  “While a novel idea for exiting aircraft, do you think we could maybe use the normal method of egress next time?” Anansi said as he sat up, pain lancing through his back, glaring at the rock-skinned agent. Mantis glanced in his direction, though her expression was unreadable behind the tinted visor of her helmet.