No Master Plan Here (Madness Runs in the Family)

by Joel Burdick

  Anansi was planning to kill people, and not just anyone. People that Denise was sworn to protect. And duty came before love. She repeated her oath in her mind. “Enemies, foreign and domestic,” it said, and Anansi had in one move become someone who could only be described as such. Yes, the people he was targeting were trying to impugn on the civil rights of somewhere in the realm of a hundred and fifty thousand people, but it was for the good of the other millions that were caught in the crossfire any time one super went toe to toe with another. It was for the good of the many that the few had to suffer. She had tried to convince him that killing them wasn't necessary.

  “It has to start somewhere,” he had said, his eyes cold as he continued to plot the deaths of some of the highest men in the country.

  “Are you sure?” said the voice on the other end. Her handler, Gareth Doyle. He wasn't a super, but as there was no branch for supers in the government, Denise worked for the FBI for now. “That is a serious shift from his normal tactics.”

  “Positive. He is planning on setting explosives underneath the stage during the speech under the cover of invisibility. I'm supposed to help him get in and bring in the explosives.”

  “Alright. Go along with the plan. We will have personnel waiting for him inside the ready room. Good work. Doyle out.”

  The line went dead, and Denise let her arm drop. She told herself she was doing the right thing. It didn't make her feel any less like she was backstabbing someone she cared about.

  -~-~-

  March 4, 2014

  Anansi approached the gate that Denise was guarding, wearing a black duster and carrying a backpack. The duster covered his gear well, but Denise could still see the bandoliers of grenades and cores he carried. Anansi was prepared for more than just a blast and go, and that worried her. It wasn't part of the plan.

  Anansi smiled and ran a hand through his hair. Denise smiled back, keeping her growing worry off of her expression. He walked up to her and looked her up and down. “Ghost, I have to say, I think I prefer your usual outfit.”

  Denise looked down at herself. She looked identical to the guard she had replaced, tall white male, slightly overweight, with a bushy mustache. She shrugged and stroked the mustache. The guard she had replaced was waiting in the preparation shack with two supers and four more policemen to arrest Anansi. She hoped it would be enough. She slipped into a different form, this one of Ghost. She had dark skin and tattoos covering most of her body, her hair was short and dyed red, and her eyes were solid white. The policeman's outfit, sized for someone much larger than she was, hung from her frame. She stripped out of them and shifted to be wearing a leather jacket and pants.

  “You ready?” she said, once the transformation was complete. Anansi stepped forward and kissed her forehead. He patted her rear and started walking towards the preparation shack. Denise followed behind him, trying to stay calm. Anansi glanced back at her, his gaze concerned.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  “Nerves,” Denise replied. It was true. It was also misleading, but it was better to tell the truth. Anansi smiled again, told her not to worry, and opened the door to the preparation room. He walked inside into the darkness. Denise closed the door behind him. She turned and put her back against the door, telling herself she was doing the right thing.

  -~-~-

  Anansi stood inside the door to the preparation room, his glasses the only source of light. The lens display dimmed automatically to allow him to see past them, and as his eyes adjusted, the lights came on.

  Before him stood seven people, five in police-issue SWAT riot armor and two in spandex. The first hero was one that Anansi was familiar with, known as White Tiger. Class two Speedster, martial artist of the Tiger style. He had a mask that covered the top of his head in the visage of a tiger and black stripes down his white skin-tight bodysuit. He was known for breaking bones before he took in his marks.

  The other was someone Anansi was unfamiliar with. He wore a black and purple bodysuit with a pair of interlocking purple circles on his chest, like a Venn Diagram, and a mask that hid his head from the neck to the hairline, covering his ears and eyes. Kay searched the net and came up with a name. “Mind^Body.” Presumed to be a Class three Minder, but not much information on him.

  “Anansi,” said White Tiger, taking a step forward, fists on his hips and elbows out. Anansi watched his muscles ripple through his suit and internalized a laugh, letting the hero talk. “You are under arrest for intent to assassinate the President of the United States. If you surrender, things might go easier for you, but if you resist...” White Tiger brought his fists together, a grin spreading across his lips. “I can't guarantee your survival.”

  Anansi nodded and took off his glasses, tucking them into a pocket on the inside of his coat. He let the backpack slip from his shoulder, opened the bag, and pulled his helmet from it, the mostly featureless face with two white circles, one over each eye. He slipped it on, felt the seals click as it connected to his armor, and watched as the display lit up, returning the world to him. The police had tensed up, the heroes still maintaining their relaxed posture. Anansi activated his speakers.

  “Let's dance.”

  White Tiger smiled wider. “Good. I hate bastards who surrender.”

  White Tiger launched himself forward, Kay clocking his speed at close to a hundred miles an hour. His hand extended to strike Anansi. His face was pulled back in a snarl. Too easy. Anansi stepped to the side with one foot, leaving the other where it had been. White Tiger hit the edge of the displacement field and his speed dropped dramatically as his velocity was redirected. He stumbled and his foot caught on Anansi's, sending him tumbling end over end into the wall at somewhere near sixty miles an hour. The wall did not hold and White Tiger ended up several yards outside the back of the building, covered in chunks of plaster and wood. Anansi wasn't entirely certain, but he thought that White Tiger had hit his head on the wall, but he didn't stop to see the replay, as the others were coming.

  The policemen drew stun batons and charged together, electricity crackling on the end of the rods. Behind them, Mind^Body levitated several inches off of the floor, extending his arms towards Anansi. Anansi deflected the first stun baton as the SWAT team started to surround him. Kay fed him information on the positions of the men he couldn't currently see.

  Dodge left, kick back left, lean forward slightly. Anansi lost himself in the dance of following Kay's combat instructions, minimizing damage he took and maximizing the damage he dealt. It was a game of high speed chess to him. Dodge, strike, dodge, dodge, dodge, strike. Within the span of a few breaths, two of the SWAT team were down with broken bones, one with a shattered knee that would probably never heal right and the other with a broken collarbone on his primary arm.

  Anansi felt his movements become sluggish. He tried to dodge a strike from the man in front of him and failed, the stun baton catching him on the shoulder. His armor grounded the electricity, preventing him from being disabled, but the pain was still distracting, and he quickly took two more hits from other members still up.

  [The psychic is slowing you down. Take him out,] Kay sent, highlighting Mind^Body on his display. Anansi grunted as he took another blow to the back and dropped to one knee. He slipped an arm into his coat and pulled out a stun grenade, set the charge to a second, and dropped it. He rolled to one side as another blow came down, aimed for his back and instead striking his hip. The stun grenade detonated, filling the room with a blast of light and sound. Anansi's helmet filtered out the effects of the grenade. All of the SWAT members staggered back from the light, cries ringing out.

  Anansi rolled to his feet, lashing out with a kick to one of the SWAT member's chest, sending the man stumbling back and into the wall. It made an opening enough that he could escape the circle and get a clear shot at Mind^Body, who did not seem to have been distracted by the stun grenade at all. No big surprise there. Anansi felt his body grow even more sluggish, like he was walking through muck
and carrying a ton of bricks at the same time.

  “You're really annoying, you half-baked psychic,” Anansi said before throwing a grenade. As expected, it stopped about halfway to the hero. Anansi thought he could see a smirk on the hero's face. Anansi let slip a smirk of his own, hidden by his helmet. The grenade exploded, sending shrapnel outward in a perfect sphere, and none of it escaped a radius of less than a foot around its point of origin, each piece and the explosion contained soundlessly by invisible energy.

  And it distracted Mind^Body enough that he didn't notice the second grenade that rolled beneath his feet. The spherical grenade came to a stop with a red dot oriented directly at Mind^Body. The explosion, unlike the first grenade, was directed in a small cone, the force and shrapnel striking the hero in the chest and sending him flying. He hit the ceiling at an angle, bounced off, and hit the ground. Anansi immediately felt the weight lift from his limbs, just in time to get grabbed by the collar and spun around to face an angry looking White Tiger.

  “I'm going to beat you so bad that your mother won't be able to identify you,” the hero said, his hand pulling back for a strike. Anansi brought his head forward, forcing White Tiger to dodge the headbutt and causing his strike to hit Anansi's shoulder instead of his helmet. A knee to the groin caused White Tiger to release Anansi and sent him to one knee. Anansi boxed him in the ears and dealt a knee to the hero's chin.

  [White Tiger disabled. Unconscious. SWAT members recovering from stun grenade.] Anansi turned, brushing his duster behind him, using the movement to draw another grenade and toss it between the SWAT team. It exploded in a mess of black goo that adhered to the men. The more they struggled against it, the more it pulled them to the ground, until none of them could move.

  “It's been fun, gentlemen. That will let you go in an hour or so. Have a good one.” Anansi activated his teleportation rig and disappeared from the preparation room in a flash of light.

  He reappeared beneath the stage of the ongoing rally. He could hear Congressman Lowe making his speech, telling the enraptured audience how dangerous it was for them and their families to have unregistered superhumans walking the streets. How everyone would be safer if the government knew and could hold accountable all of the people with powers. It was for the good of everyone, he said.

  Anansi snorted. “The good of everyone but the people you want to suppress,” he muttered as he rigged explosives to the underside of the stage. “Everything is for the good of the people if you tell them so,” he said as he placed another charge.

  “It is for the good of the people,” came a voice behind him just as Kay warned him there was someone behind him. Anansi spun and came face to face with Archangel. He had seen the man's face on television, the internet, and in newspapers. Lucas Lockheart, Archangel, Class Four Works Type who was the public face of a new government organization that was being formed to police supers. He was tall, muscular, and handsome, and Anansi couldn't help but hate the guy for his appearance of the stereotypical good guy. He didn't even wear a mask. It was all part of the ploy to prove that you didn’t need an alter-ego to be super, so long as you worked for the government.

  It made Anansi sick.

  “You can't prove that. This is just gun control, but worse, because it infringes on the liberties of people. Next thing they're going to do is start rounding up supers so that they can start cutting us up and figure out how we work.” Anansi took a step away from the hero, who stayed put.

  [Flee. He is too powerful for you to do anything to him.]

  [I know that. Give me a teleport location in the crowd. We are making a run for it.]

  Kay gave him coordinates at the edge of the crowd, where it was sparse enough for him to teleport into without any risk of injuring anyone. Archangel took a step forward.

  “You cannot use violence to cause anything but more violence, and the government will not be sending us off to internment camps. This isn't World War Two Germany.” Above them, Congressman Lowe's speech was reaching its crescendo. A pause for applause, followed by him calling out to the crowd for support.

  “America did that too in World War Two. To anyone who looked Asian. Read history. We're no better than the other guy except that we won, and we used violence and propaganda to do it.” Anansi took another step back and detonated the explosives he had set. It wouldn't take out the stage, but it would probably take out Lowe. That would have to be enough. At the same time he activated his rig, teleporting from underneath the stage to the edge of the crowd as the stage beneath Congressman Lowe was ripped apart by an explosion. The crowd stared for a moment and began screaming. Anansi watched as Archangel shot into the air and looked for him. Time to run. He teleported again, arriving fifty yards down the road, spared a glance to look back, and saw Archangel streaking at him like a bullet.

  Oh, crap.

  Chapter 11

  June 11, 2017

  Denise looked at Anansi, his face expressionless, as the door continued to pound behind her. The way he and Kay were both silent made Denise think that the two were talking over the neural link between the two. She hated being left out of the conversation, but she wasn't certain how to influence it.

  Finally, after what seemed to be the better part of an eternity, Anansi nodded. “Tell me, Denise. Is SX-203 the threat that Spark told me it was?”

  Denise nodded. “Probably more dangerous. In simulations, it generates a higher probability of Class Four and Five supers than naturally occur from a sample group, and the higher the power of an individual affected by SX-203, the higher the chance that their powers go haywire. Depending on the power, the effect could be minimal, or it could be catastrophic. I don't know why Archangel stole it, but I can't see anything good coming from it.”

  Anansi nodded again, seemingly satisfied with her answer. He snapped his fingers and the door opened, sending Stone stumbling in as the target of his punch was no longer there. He dusted himself off and glared at Anansi, who shrugged.

  “Sorry about that. Slight glitch in the system caused the door to shut. No harm, no foul, right?” he said, smiling winningly like nothing out of the ordinary had just happened. Stone looked to Denise, who gave him a weak smile and nodded.

  “All's good.” Stone snorted and walked from the reactor room. Denise sighed and looked back to Anansi, who had tucked his hands into his pockets and started to walk from the room. Kay walked over to Denise, the blue-green hologram looking rather severe.

  “We will talk after this. I'm watching you,” said the AI. She pointed two of her fingers to her eyes, then pointed them at Denise. Denise stared at the hologram for a moment, wondering what possessed the AI to act so differently than her master. Maybe he had directed her to do so? Unlikely. In all her time dealing with Anansi, he had always dealt with his own problems directly, preferring not to have anyone else handling whatever business he needed to accomplish.

  Denise walked into the main room to see Anansi standing over a console, Spark hovering over his right shoulder, with Stone standing off in the rear. Another hologram of Kay flickered into being on Anansi's left. Denise looked back into the reactor room to see the first hologram gesture sternly that she was watching her before disappearing. Denise shook her head. Whatever was going on, she would figure it out eventually.

  Denise joined Stone behind the group at the console and leaned up against the wall beside him. Stone glanced down at her. “He knows?” he said at a level just above a whisper. Denise nodded. Stone looked back to Anansi. “Looks like he's still with us.”

  “For now,” Denise muttered, wondering if that was true. Anansi seemed to have changed very little in the past few years. More grey in his hair, but it made him look distinguished and mature, at odds with the way he rarely took anything seriously except his experiments, his family, and politics.

  The platform in the center of the room began to hum, the air shimmering above it like a mirage. A flash of light caused Denise to avert her eyes, and when she looked back, a pair of crates occupied t
he center of the platform where they hadn't before. Anansi jogged to the crates, cracking them open and talking to himself as he inspected the contents. When he was satisfied, four spider drones skittered from the walls and began dragging the crates from the room and down the east hallway.

  “Ladies, gentleman, I will be changing, and then we can head out. I have a pretty good idea where Archangel will strike next, and when I'm ready, we can go there in style.”

  -~-~-

  Anansi opened one of the doors in the southern hallway, leading the members of SHIP inside. As in the rest of the base, the walls were white and mostly featureless, however, here the ceiling was much higher and had an unfinished look to it, lacking the white plating in favor of steel girders and framework. A seam ran down the center of the ceiling. On the floor was a series of concentric circles painted in red, and in the center of the circles rested a vehicle of the likes that Denise had never seen before.

  It had wings, a fuselage, and a tail, so Denise assumed it was some sort of plane, but she couldn't see any apparent engines on the wings or body. The body seemed to resist attempts to look at it directly, like it was a mirage of some sort, but it appeared, for the most part, white. Denise wasn't sure if it was because the rest of the room was white or not. It looked sleek, smooth, like something from an 80s cartoon about the future.

  “What do you think,” Anansi asked, gesturing to the plane. Spark blinked several times, trying to get her eyes to focus properly on it.

  “It's weird. Is it supposed to be all fuzzy like that?” Spark said, rubbing her eyes. “Hurts my head.” Anansi nodded.

  “Yeah. It's a sort of refractive camouflage. It works on the part of the brain that overlooks things, convincing it that you don't need to recognize what is there. Just look off to the side or not directly at it, it'll stop hurting your head.”