by John Jr. Yeo
“Five months ago, he had some sort of disagreement with this informant he had from one of the projects in Philly. He told me he wanted to kill the guy, and plant some evidence that suggested it was in self-defense. I wouldn’t go along with it.”
“Okay, did you notify your internal affairs department?”
“I had considered it,” I admitted. “But in the end, I gave him a warning. I had hoped that would have been the end of it.”
“Was it?”
“Well, he didn’t go through with it, but one thing definitely ended. Our professional relationship was wrecked. The next morning, the bastard handed over several e-mails that suggested I wanted to meet him at a hotel for some naked playtime. I was fired for sexual harassment.”
“He was able to prove that you sent them?” she asked in surprise. “How did he manage to do that?”
“Because they were real,” I admitted with an angry shrug. “We’d been having an affair for the last year, and whenever I wanted to get together after work I sent him an e-mail. But since I was so cautious about not having his wife or my captain know about it, I always deleted his messages. Since I couldn’t prove he had been having an affair with me, I came off as a deranged stalker. I can’t believe he saved all my messages.”
Submission sat up, looked at me carefully, and shook her head. “That’s unbelievable.”
“Of course, it didn’t help that Sharp was drinking buddies with the captain. For all I knew, the captain knew what really happened, but they wanted me out of the department. Who the fuck knows? They figured me for a potential troublemaker, and I was out on my ass. End of simple, stupid story.”
Submission’s attention snapped back one more time to the bistro across the street, as an elderly man in an Armani suit wandered in, flanked by two burly gentlemen. The larger one obediently held the door open. This seemed to catch her attention, and she signaled for the nearby waiter.
“So what’s your secret?” I prodded her.
“My mind control powers don’t work on women,” she grinned. “I couldn’t make you tell the truth if I tried.”
I rolled my eyes, but had to smile. I just opened my soul to avoid having her use her powers on me, and it wasn’t even necessary. “Dick move, but well played. But what do you if ever have to fight a woman?”
“You know the answer to that,” she said, somewhat surprised that she had to explain it. “I simply kick your ass.” With that, she snatched up her shopping bags and handed the waiter her credit card.
“Are we leaving?”
“We need to be there now,” she explained, motioning towards the bistro across the street.
“That’s where I wanted to go in the first place,” I complained. “Are we going for dessert?”
“No. I’m going to show you what I do for fun.”
Submission paid the check with her handy silver credit card, tossed our bags of recently purchased clothes into her car, and we walked through the doors of the restaurant she’d been quietly observing all through our lunch.
“Just follow my lead,” she said to me. “I have a little errand I need to take care of.”
She was being mysterious and intriguing, but generally I found the whole cloak and dagger bit annoying. “Then why didn’t we just have lunch in here?”
“Because I don’t think they would have served us afterwards,” she laughed. “This is an incognito mission, okay? We’re not here as Infinite League members, got it?”
“Were we going to talk about Baltrin any time this afternoon?”
A brutish maître d’ greeted us at the doorway, giving us the impression that we couldn’t just stroll in without a reservation. “Can I help you ladies?”
“Yes, you could, you darling man,” she purred confidently. “Would you tell Mr. Lombino that his masseuses are here for his session?”
The gorilla stood up to his full height, and he towered over me by several inches. His jaw clenched a bit as he locked eyes with Submisison. He wasn’t amused.
“You need a reservation to dine here,” he growled in a double bass voice that you could feel in your bones. “And I’ve never heard of anyone by that name.”
I have, and it set my nerves on full alert. August Lombino was reputed to be a minor but dangerous drug dealer in Washington D.C. There were only seven people in the small dining room, and they all looked like they were the type of men to carry concealed weapons. They were all looking at us.
“I think he’s lying,” Cass said to me with a sing-song response. “Actually, I know he’s lying, cause I can do that sort of thing. Have you ever been in a real mob bar before?”
She said follow her lead, but I had no idea where she was leading me, so I just nervously grinned and shrugged.
“Why don’t you ladies turn around and leave before I get angry?”
“Why don’t you go to the mall and buy yourself some lingerie? You know, the really nice silky kind?”
He blinked twice, his mouth twitched, and without another word he walked out of the bistro and headed down the street on foot.
The other men stood up, and I worried about just how powerful her abilities really were. I wondered if I was supposed to toss a few punches or fireballs, which seemed dangerous in such a small environment with so much alcohol on the shelves. But amazingly, she kept the situation under control.
She pointed to the tallest man in the center of the room, and opened her mouth. “You. Sit in the center of the room, and recite the last magazine article you read. The rest of you. Gather around him in a happy circle, and listen carefully to everything he has to say.”
Without questioning the commands, they did exactly that. The tall man began speaking, with great theatrical embellishment, on the twenty tips on how to please your man as suggested by the editors of Cosmopolitan. The others sat in their chairs in a tight circle, listening with wistful smiles and wide eyes. I almost peed myself attempting not to laugh out loud for fear of breaking whatever spell she just cast on them.
“Follow me,” she instructed me, heading towards a door in the back of the house marked PRIVATE. “You’re doing great.”
“I ain’t done shit yet,” I corrected her. “But I hope you know what you’re doing.”
Behind the door marked PRIVATE was a long hallway, and at the end of that hallway was yet another door. It was unmarked, but a man and a woman wearing black suits were standing between the door and us. He had drawn a small pistol, and she had pulled a knife. They approached us with angry but astonished faces.
“Hey,” Submission said to the man. “You’re a cat!”
The man dropped the gun to the ground, crawled around on all fours, and began making ludicrous meowing sounds. That left the woman, who had turned her attention towards her spellbound partner.
Submission punched her in the mouth, sending the knife flying in one direction and the woman in another. She landed on the ground unconscious, while the man immediately began rubbing against her legs and purring contently.
“Holy shit,” I whispered. “Does the colonel know what you do with your days off?”
She didn’t answer, but she continued towards the door, and smashed it open with her foot. Behind the door, jaw opened in complete shock, was the notorious August Gambino. On his desk was the satchel that the blonde man had walked in with. It was open and filled with cash. Next to the satchel was a 9 MM pistol. Gambino reached for the pistol, but Submission reached him first. Her right leg propelled her upwards into the air, and her left leg swung out and connected to his jaw. He crashed into his filing cabinet before she landed neatly on her right foot once more.
She tossed the satchel to me, and despite my surprise I managed to catch it in my open arms.
“You stealing from me? Are you out of your fucking mind, you dumb bitch? You stealing from me?”
The only noise that came out of his mouth after that was a strained gurgling wetness. Submission had placed her heel on his throat and pinned him against the wall. With just a lit
tle bit of applied pressure, she could pierce his throat with the point of her stiletto. He seemed to understand just how much trouble he was in, and he stopped fighting.
“I’m not stealing from you,” she said calmly. “I’m just taking it back, August. This is Alongi territory, and you’ve been selling drugs to our customers. I want you to go find a new hole to slither off to, or we’re going to come back and take something you’ll really miss.”
Without so much as losing balance, she flicked her foot, clocked him in the temple, and put the man to sleep. She looked at me and motioned towards the exit. “Time to go, girl. Bring the money.”
This was too surreal! On the one hand, I sort of admired her for what she was doing. Here I thought the super-heroes were too preoccupied with mad scientists and evil robots and secret cults of mutant masterminds to deal with the real evils of society. But there was still the matter of what she planned to do with the money…and I still had a lot of questions I wanted answered.
We passed by the blonde man who thought he was a cat, and the girl with a bruised nose. She had already come back to her senses, and she was reaching into her jacket for another weapon.
“Hey, see that lady?” Submission chirped, directing her focus towards the blonde man. “She’s a cat, too…and she’s in heat!”
“What the f—“
The woman didn’t finish her sentence, she was too busy fending off the blonde man. I saw him try to bite the back of her neck while trying to pin her down when Submission grabbed me by the hand.
“Come on, these tricks are going to wear off soon, and we don’t want to be in the area when they do!”
A few moments later, we were back in her car and driving down the street with a fortune in clothes and shoes in the backseat, and several thousands of dollars sitting in my lap. It was the most alive I’ve felt in weeks.
We started the day shopping in some of the most extravagant stores I’ve ever visited. We then robbed a mob boss and humiliated all of his cronies. Then we went shopping again, this time spending a hefty portion of the stolen funds on canned goods, groceries and modest clothes. Now, two hours later, we were sitting in a soup kitchen in one of the impoverished neighborhoods far from where we started our day. If I didn’t like cock so much, I would have fallen in love with this woman.
I was expecting to find her dumping the stolen money into her bank account. But here we were, enjoying a bowl of chicken and dumplings. The people who organized the shelter obviously knew her well, and it became clear that she had been making regular donations to this charity for years now. It had been a very illuminating afternoon.
“So, I take it you’re not really working for the Alongi organization?”
“Of course not, I’m a super-hero,” she promised me. “But Lombino doesn’t know that.”
“You realize you probably just started a mob war, right?”
“I doubt it, Emily. He’s not dumb enough to think Alongi would have really hit him like that. But he’ll be looking over his shoulders, making mistakes, and basically making himself a less effective criminal. You’ll never be able to totally get rid of organized crime, but they sure do bleed enough cash to help those less fortunate. I’m pretty sure you can sympathize.”
“You’re full of surprises, Cassiopeia.”
“Cassie,” she said. “It’s Cassie to my friends.”
“I’m a prisoner of your little team,” I reminded her. “Forgive me if I don’t really feel like besties with you yet.”
She bit her lip and shook her head softly, silently acknowledging that I had a point. I was about to vent a bit more when one of the ladies working at the shelter interrupted us by giving Submission a hug.
“We can’t thank you enough for your contributions,” she told her. “This food is going to last for weeks, you really are an angel.”
“Sister Yvette, it is my absolute pleasure,” she replied warmly before handing the woman a fat envelope stuffed with the rest of the pilfered cash. “This will pay for the rent for the next four months easily. You’ll make sure Father Jacob gets it?”
“He’ll be stopping by this evening. We’ll put it directly into the savings account you set up for us. God bless you, child.”
“Thank you for dinner,” she said graciously. “Take care of yourself.”
After that, we were alone again, and we enjoyed a moment of awkward silence. When she opened her mouth again, she began to explain what I had seen that day.
“Major John Baltrin has been with the Infinite League since the beginning. He was with us before the Department of Superhuman Activities was established, and before Colonel Bridge was positioned as our liaison. He helped William Anderson design the armored suit that DeathTek wears. He’s a genius in weapons, robotics and counter-terrorism, and he was our greatest ally. But then the Legacy Initiative came along.”
“I’ve heard that term,” I recalled. “I heard the doc talking about it the first day I woke up at your base. What is it?”
“Fifty years ago, the enemies of America didn’t dare attack us because we had nuclear superiority. These days, countries like Habindaque don’t attack us because we have enhanced human superiority. There’s dozens of Sparks with powers and abilities, and that’s enough to keep extremists from bombing our towers or airplanes or public places.”
“I never understood that. They know the heroes are banned from striking targets on foreign soil, right?”
“They know, but that doesn’t mean they believe we won’t strike anyway. These terrorists are driven by a greed for control of their own countries, and the fear of America raining superhuman justice on their heads. The point is, as long as the Infinite League exists, Americans feel safer. And men like Khalid Al-Hakim and Ubaidullah Zahr and Seohong Wan Wan think twice before they use acts of terrorism to get what they want.”
“So what is the Legacy Initiative?”
“It’s simple, but ridiculously classified, and since you’re a living breathing example of the project’s existence, maybe you’ll understand why the bosses aren’t too keen on letting you roam free or be with your family until you prove you can be trusted. But since you’ve seen me talking with Baltrin, I have no choice to start trusting you. So listen close, and please understand you must keep this information secret. More importantly, you must not let anyone else know that you know.”
I nodded quickly. The hairs on my arm were standing up as I stood on the verge of discovering such forbidden knowledge. Submission looked around to make sure no one was listening in, and then she forged ahead.
“Dr. Progeriat and Colonel Bridge decided that if a member of the Infinite League was killed, it would make us look weak. That could open the door for attacks by any number of sources. Foreign terrorists, enhanced criminals, even regular idiots that might want to stir up conspiracy rumors on social media. So a contingency plan was made that if any of us were killed, we would be replaced by a suitable candidate.”
I let this sink in, trying to grasp the scope of it all. “They had always planned to replace a hero if someone dies?”
“There’s different methods for each of us, I don’t know the exact science of it all. I know that the Ambassador brought back some rudimentary cloning technology from his home planet. Anyone can use the DeathTek armor, so that one would be easy. But Necromancer and I would be trickier. As for Andromeda’s gauntlets, we have no idea why they chose to attach to you. But the thing is, Baltrin thought the whole Legacy Initiative was a bad idea from the start. He didn’t like lying to the world, and when he was overruled by the DSA, he resigned from the organization. He took a post at a military research and development base, and we all separated amicably.”
“I sense there’s an until coming up here?”
“Until…he discovered that someone in the organization may be secretly communicating with Ubaidullah Zahr.”
“You’re shitting me.”
“I wish I were,” she said sadly. “Necromancer, the original Andromeda and I have be
en working with Baltrin quietly for the past few months, trying to uncover who’s the mole in the organization. It’s either Colonel Bridge or Dr. Progeriat, we’re sure of that much. But until we know for sure, we’ve been conducting a quiet investigation. But unfortunately, we’ve been obviously distracted in the last month.”
“Because Andromeda was killed,” I realized.
“And since the gauntlets seemed drawn to you and we had no other candidates ready at the time, the powers that be chose to give you a shot at keeping Andromeda alive,” she continued. “But Chidike has been preoccupied his guilt, I’ve been trying to keep him from falling apart while watching you and providing Baltrin with regular updates. Obviously, it’s been a hell of a month.”
“So you want me to keep my mouth shut for, what, another day? A week? A month? Until it’s too late to stop you and Baltrin from doing whatever it is you guys are doing?”
“Someone on the team is plotting with a terrorist cell from Habindaque. It’s not me, and it’s not Necromancer, but we’re trying to find out who it is. Yes. I want you to keep your mouth shut until Baltrin can identify the traitor.”
I might not have had her unique power to know if someone was lying or not, but I did have years of experience reading people. Robbing from the rich to feed the poor made her my sort of person, but she could just be playing the part to earn my trust. Still, my instincts told me she wasn’t lying. But my instincts have been untrustworthy lately.
“I’m sorry if I find it hard to trust you any more than I trust the colonel or the doc or even the Ambassador. I don’t know who to trust right now, I’m just trying to do the right thing for my boy, okay? And sewing some gizmo into the back of my neck doesn’t earn my trust. We’re not alike, Cassie. You’re doing this because you were born to be a super-hero. I’m here under duress. You do not have any idea what I’m going through.”
She smiled at me, and touched my hands. She looked into my eyes with an expression that was a combination of understanding and pleading. With a gentle tug, she lifted my fingers up and guided them to the back of her head. I couldn’t tell if she was trying to seduce me, but it felt very uncomfortable. I tried to pull my hands away, but she had a tight grip on my wrists.