by John Jr. Yeo
“The hell are you doing?”
She didn’t respond, she just continued guiding my fingertips underneath the heavy curtain of black hair, and my hands were now resting on the back of her neck. If she tried to kiss me, I wasn’t sure how I’d react. I had never fantasized about kissing another girl, not even a little, and especially not in a soup kitchen.
Then I felt it on the back of her neck. My eyes widened in alarm, and she nodded at me wordlessly. She made a silent shushing noise with her lips, and then her hands released mine.
“We should be getting back,” she said at last. “It’s getting late.”
The rest of the ride back to the Dome was done in relative silence as I pondered the dozens of questions that were racing through my mind. At the forefront, of course, was why she had a gizmo sewn into her neck as well?
15
A Call to Arms
Saturday, June 1st – 2:00 p.m.
Another week had gone by without any new developments occurring. I was willing to give Cassiopeia a little trust, but only a little. I decided to play my role as Andromeda quietly and obediently while keeping my eyes wide open.
I didn’t see much of Cass over the next couple of days, and we never spoke openly about the secret surgery that we shared. I was desperate to know if she had been a prisoner ever since she joined the Infinite League, or was she yet another replacement in the Legacy Initiative? If so, what happened to the real Submission? What other dirty secrets were hiding behind the masks of these heroes the world revered so much? How far would Colonel Bridge go to protect that secret? So many mysteries, but for all my new powers I felt useless to poke through the lies.
On Saturday night, I went on patrol with the Ambassador over Boston. With the exception of responding to a tenement fire, I learned nothing from the big guy. He seemed just as eerily cheerful and optimistic as he always had. But the more time I spent in his company, I couldn’t help shake the feeling that he was missing something substantial in his personality. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but something about him just struck me as hollow. To everyone he met, he was a celebrity. But with each passing moment we spent together, I felt he had the depth and complexity of a circus peanut. He was just…boring in his flawlessness. Even his small talk seemed rehearsed and bland. It was as if he was trying to convince every one of his gentle nature and peaceful intentions. It was always taken for granted that he was a peaceful visitor flying among us, but now I was looking at everyone and everything with an extra layer of scrutiny.
On Wednesday night, DeathTek and I had been sent to Norfolk, Virginia to offer additional protection to the governor at some boring fund raising event. There had been some vague threats made on the internet, and Colonel Bridge asked us to be present. It seemed like a waste of resources, especially when there were so many capable regular officers already there. But I was told that it was one of the costs of being registered with the DSA. We’re paid a modest living wage, but we occasionally have to do favors for the government. Fortunately, whether the threats were a hoax or our presence made people think twice about acting, absolutely nothing happened at what might have been the most boring speech I’ve ever had to sit through.
“We should be paid double for having to listen to this,” I groaned in between the cheers and applauses. “I’m a Republican, for God’s sake.”
“What sickens me is how many people get paid even more for doing a lot less,” he replied in that mechanical voice of his. “Sorry you got stuck pulling this duty. You probably had more fun saving kiddies from burning buildings with the Big Guy.”
“Well, it made the night go faster,” I admitted. “But you’re more fun to hang out with, to tell you the truth. At least you only look like a robot, but you don’t act like one.”
“Sorry?”
“I know you and Ambassador go back a long way, but it just weirds me out how vanilla the guy is.”
“Vanilla?”
“I can’t believe he’s such a big bouncy boy scout,” I explained. “He doesn’t curse, spit, he probably doesn’t even fart. No human being is that freaking flawless, you don’t find that odd?”
“Yeah, I probably would,” he admitted slowly. “If he were a human being.”
“You know what I mean,” I pressed on. “I know he’s an alien, but…”
“But that’s just it,” he continued. “He’s an alien from the planet Krael, and everyone knows it. He’s an alien with the power to bring down towers, destroy armies and survive bullets, bombs and death rays. That sort of power scares people. It scares me. Of course he’s going to want to put people at ease by being better than us.”
“Because it’s probably the only way the government would allow someone like him to remain free,” I realized. “That’s why everyone trusts him.”
“I wouldn’t say everyone trusts him,” he commented cryptically. “But I do feel a lot safer with him on our team than, say, working for another country.”
Those words haunted me for the next few days. The thought of the Ambassador working for a country like Habindaque chilled me to the bone. When the first day of June rolled around, I was no closer to deciding if Submission was telling the truth about the implanted device in her neck or not. But at noon, just before I was about to try and call my son again for the fourth unsuccessful attempt, all power in the Dome suddenly went out.
The majority of the Infinite League’s base is situated underground, where it’s safe from outside attacks. It also means it’s safe from sunlight and fresh air. The generators kicked on emergency power immediately after the lights went out, and it bathed the hallways in an unnatural dim red glow. I kicked off of the ground and started flying down the corridors towards the War Room. It was faster that way, and I could move over the techs and soldiers that were moving towards their assigned stations.
When I got into the War Room, Colonel Bridge was calmly giving orders to the detachment of soldiers that followed him around when he was on the base. Necromancer and Submission were standing in the center of the room in deep discussion, but there was no sign of either Ambassador or DeathTek. The rest of the room was filled with technicians and guards, all trying to figure out the source of the blackout.
Captain Eric Quincy was hunched over a dark computer, speaking frantically to another tech on a radio. He gave me a wave of acknowledgement, but continued barking orders to someone at the other end of the line.
“Why isn’t the tertiary generator doing its job?”
“It should be,” argued the man on the radio. “I did a preventative maintenance check on the system last Thursday!”
“We’ve got power to the lights, but nothing else,” Eric snapped. “Get down there and give me a status update.”
Colonel Bridge quickly strolled up to Quincy and put his hand on his shoulder, while acknowledging me with a curt nod. “How are we having a total power failure, Captain?"
“I didn’t expect the secondary and tertiary generators to lock up,” he apologized. “I only rebooted the primary system.”
Colonel Bridge’s eyebrows arched upwards. “Rebooted? Why? Who authorized that?”
Eric pointed hesitantly towards the corner, where Dr. Progeriat was walking towards us. For an old man using a cane, he was moving quickly and urgently. Walking behind him was DeathTek. His glowing armor was slightly illuminating Progeriat with a frightening red shine.
“What the hell did you do, boy?” the old man snapped at Eric.
“You ordered this?” Bridge asked.
“It’s my base, Colonel,” he reminded him. “Yes, I ordered a reboot of our satellite and communication system, but not the whole damn base!”
“Without consulting me or anyone from the DSA? You might be the senior officer, but the DSA funds your operation.”
“Baltrin was trying to hack into the system again,” Progeriat shouted back. “I didn’t have time for a consult, I ordered Captain Quincy to lock out the system so we could have a chance of tracing the security breach.�
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“When I did, everything crashed on us,” Eric explained. “No internal or external power, no satellite, communications or phone lines. That shouldn’t have happened.”
I shot a glance towards Submission and Necromancer, who had just come to join us. They had heard everything, and their disbelieving expression told me that someone here was lying. I didn’t have a clue who, but I had my suspicions. Someone like Colonel Bridge probably had a dozen ways he could have sabotaged the Dome. The trouble was, I couldn’t think of a motive.
“Tertiary system was screwed with,” came a voice over the radio.
“Captain Quincy, are you there?”
“Yeah, I’m here,” he replied. “What are you talking about? It’s been sabotaged?”
“If you can call a bunch of cables having been unplugged a sabotage, then yeah,” he admitted. “They might have come loose when I was doing the PM check last month, but they’re back-ups for the back-ups, and it wouldn’t have triggered any specific alarms.”
“What’s he saying, Captain?” asked the Colonel.
“The cables may have been loose for weeks, but they wouldn’t have been noticed because they’re only used when the primary and the secondary systems go off line. But when I rebooted the base, the loss of the tertiary system made us blackout.”
That seemed to be the answer, because a few moments later the main lights came back and the computers all restarted. There was a round of cheers coming from the techs, but only Colonel Bridge didn’t seem to be in the mood to celebrate.
“Captain Quincy, start sweeping every line of code,” Dr. Progeriat ordered. “I want to know where Major Baltrin has been poking his fingers into. Start with the weaponry prototype archives, and then move right to all the Known Enhanced Felons files.”
“I’m still not convinced it’s Major Baltrin, but otherwise I agree,” Colonel Bridge nodded. “Get your team on it right away, this needs to be top priority.”
“No, it doesn’t,” interrupted the Necromancer, suddenly stepping up to the colonel. It caught everyone by surprise, most of all me. Up until now, the big black boogeyman had always been content to stay hidden in the shadows of any room that he was in, keeping silent and watchful and just generally creepy. It wasn’t like him to step forward and speak.
“You have a different opinion, Chidike?”
The Necromancer was looking at one specific area of the war room, where three agents tasked solely with handling the incoming emergency calls were stationed. They had been silent during the recent commotion, completely stymied by the crippling shutdown of power to the base.
“We lost power for nearly seven minutes,” he pointed out. “Communication too, right?”
“With all due respect, we need to focus on pinpointing where we were hacked before we reboot everything," argued Dr. Progeriat.
“I think we should make sure we haven’t missed any calls,” Necromancer suggested. “If the Department of Superhuman Activities had tried to reach us in the last fifteen minutes, would the call have gone through?”
“No, they wouldn’t,” Eric admitted. “There shouldn’t have been an interruption of power, but the tertiary system had been disconnected. It took us that long to figure out what happened.”
Colonel Bridge snapped his fingers towards the guys at the communication desk. “Get me through to the DSA HQ. I need to talk to my deputy director in Washington right now.”
Dr. Progeriat hobbled forward, gesturing with a calm but determined face. “Colonel, I really think our priority should be—“
He got no further, the Colonel was listening closely to the words spoken by the voice on the other phone. Colonel Bridge made some hurried assurances that the base was not under direct attack, everyone here was fine, and it was just a minor but suspicious interruption in our power. As the brief conversation continued and the colonel continued listening, everyone in the room could see from his face that Necromancer had been right. In the last fifteen minutes of power loss, we had missed something. When he hung up the phone at last, he paused for a few seconds to gather his thoughts and contemplate the right words. All eyes were on him, and every mouth was silent.
“Tell the flight crew to prep the Event Horizon,” he told Eric solemnly. He was direct and deathly serious, and every person in the war room stood rooted to the floor to hear the next orders. “The team is lifting off in ten minutes. Sooner, if possible.”
“What is it now?” Dr. Progeriat demanded.
“For the last ten minutes, the DSA has been trying to contact us. There have been some aggressive superhuman activity in West Virginia,” the colonel announced. “Six people are dead, including two established heroes. We are at battle stations. Ambassador, get your team on board. You’ll be briefed en route.”
“You heard the man,” Ambassador shouted out in my general direction. “Wheels off the ground in eight minutes, get your capes on, and let’s get down to the hangar.”
“He’s in the red,” Dr. Progeriat pointed out. “I mean, he’s deep in the red, Colonel, and we don’t have a relief pitcher in Farmville yet.”
I hated all the subterfuge and speaking in code.
“Then you’d better start warming up a replacement in case we have an emergency,” said the Colonel, dismissing the old doctor with a wave. He turned towards me, looking at me disapprovingly. His withering glare reminded me that I wasn’t the real Andromeda, just a completely fraudulent copy.
“Quit standing there like a confused school girl,” he told me. “Go join the team in the hangar.”
Submission had her hands on my elbow a second later, gently urging me towards the hangars at the edge of the base. “C’mon hero, he said battle stations. We’re jumping on the party plane.”
“Eight minutes?” I reminded her. “I don’t know how they do it in the comic books, but it’s gonna take me twenty minutes just to get into my uniform. Probably longer for you to get into your latex bondage suit.”
“The ground crew keeps sets of our uniforms and equipment on the jet at all times in case we need to make an emergency take off,” she reminded me.
“Sorry, I must have missed that lesson between Offensive/Precision Training, Flying Class and Aerobic Sadism Sessions,” I remarked. “And what was that nonsense they were talking about? He’s in the red? Farmville? Relief pitchers?”
“That’s going to be a long conversation,” she promised me as we began running down the hall. “But I promise you, if it becomes absolutely obvious that you need to know the truth about the Big Guy? If Colonel Bridge doesn’t admit it to you, then I will. And I think that time is almost on top of us.”
16
The Train
Saturday, June 1 – 2:45 p.m.
Roughly six minutes after Colonel Bridge had uttered the words battle stations, I found myself escorted to the Dome’s hangar, and loaded up in a customized small harrier jet. Submission told me it was manufactured by the Boeing Corporation, with some additional modification derived from the alien technology that Ambassador had brought with him to Earth. The result was a spectacular vehicle the size of a school bus that could make vertical and horizontal take-offs while carrying eight passengers. They called this humble little ship the Event Horizon. Just another little perk for the most famous team of super-heroes on the planet.
It wasn’t the smoothest ride in the world, unfortunately. All the advanced weaponry, cloaking screens and on-board computers, but not one damn capsule of Dramamine. Unbelievable.
We were informed that we’d be over our target in West Virginia in fifteen minutes, which meant that we would have to be briefed while we changed clothes. Together.
What happened over the next couple of hours is a little bit tough to explain, even after all the nonsense I've seen up until now. It involves a humanoid lizard man, a dozen dead agents, several explosions, a psychotic bitch with a seriously fucked up fetish, and somebody getting gutted right in front of my eyes. I'd rather just forget I saw any of this shit today, but s
omeone has to remember what happened. Besides, I was expected to write a full report when I get back to the Dome, so it's just as well that I start committing the messed up details to memory right now.
About ten minutes after we got on the Event Horizon, we began flying out to West Virginia. That barely gave me enough to get dressed and get briefed on the mission, which had to be done simultaneously.
"Who's flying the jet?" I asked.
"I'm multi-tasking," DeathTek informed me smugly. "Half my operating systems are remotely piloting our transport. The rest is being used to put on my toys. It's amazing what you can do when you have access to 100% of your brain, ain't it?" He was standing next to me in the cargo bay, attaching a pair of shoulder-mounted rocket launchers to his armor. Each casing had about thirty rockets secured in them, and each rocket was about the size of one of my fingers. It looked like he was ready to take down a fighter plane if he had to.
"What sort of bullets are those? 9 MM?"
"Custom job. They have armor piercing jackets, and are stabilized at the base to be more efficient in flights,” he replied with an impressed tone to his metallic voice. “Good eye, though.”
Apparently, the ground crew always kept a fully stocked set of weapons on the Event Horizon in the event of an emergency. Our uniforms and weapons had all been stored in separate, dedicated lockers. I had to admit, Colonel Bridge kept this team of heroes operating with an efficient, military precision.
"There’s a train that goes directly from New York City to Fort Knox, Kentucky. We’re traveling towards that train, which is currently stopped in West Virginia,” Ambassador told us. "At 10:00 a.m. this morning, a train under military guard left the Federal Reserves in New York City to transport a shipment of bullion to Fort Knox. Thirty-five minutes ago, that transport was attacked by at least two enhanced criminals."