by John Jr. Yeo
Necromancer and I were still tangled up on the floor, and Wormhole had created another portal to vanish into. If he managed to get away too, this entire mission would have been a complete failure.
“Drop the weapon!” Submission shouted at him.
He obeyed, tossing the golden ray gun to the side. But before she could give him any further orders, he tapped that damned wrist gadget again. A warping portal appeared underneath her feet and Submission vanished. Two seconds later, she emerged from a new portal that appeared in the ceiling. I saw the disoriented look in her eyes before she hit her head on the floor, and she was knocked out cold.
“It’s been fun, kids,” Wormhole taunted us. “But I’ve got a reservation at Fromagerie Danard to get to. I’ll be sending you a bill for my ripped uniform.”
With a mock salute, he summoned another portal into existence for a handy escape. As he jumped towards the hole, I channeled one last fiery parting shot at him. It was a focused laser-thin beam of fire, and I intended to disable his wrist gadget. I had hoped that his powers came from the gizmo on his glove, and destroying it would cut off his escape. All of the hours spent in Offensive / Precision Training at the Dome and the firing range at the Police Academy came down to this moment. A moving target, only a few seconds to act, point my fingers as if I were firing a gun, hit a very small target, and I had only one opportunity to succeed. I fired.
Somehow, I hit the glove. I triumphantly pumped my fist as I saw the metal and plastic explode apart off of his glove. As he got halfway through the portal, it abruptly closed and cut off his escape.
It also cut off his top half from his bottom half.
“Oh, fuck!!”
Somewhere, wherever these super villains congregate and plot and scheme, the bloody bottom half of Wormhole arrived. The top half stayed with us, twitching for a few moments and then going still. I threw up a little in my mouth when I realized what I’d done.
It was undoubtedly the smell that brought Submission back to consciousness. The sight of the body made her scramble backwards so suddenly she nearly knocked herself out again when she hit the filing cabinet behind her.
“If your intention was to deny him escape, you have been successful,” Necromancer said evenly, removing his cloak and covering what remained of the Wormhole’s body. “Are you going to be alright?”
“Oh hell man, I don’t know,” I said honestly, leaning against the wall to catch my breath. “That was so...that was beyond nasty!”
“What the hell did you do?” Submission asked.
“His warp hole cut him in half,” I explained to her nervously. “I was just trying to disarm him.”
“Well, you failed miserably,” Necromancer countered with a serious expression. “You merely dis-legged him.”
It took me a moment for the words to sink in. Had he really just said what I thought he said? I stared at him blankly, as did Submission, and there was just dead silence in the room until he finally opened his mouth once more a few moments later.
“Forgive me,” he continued in that baritone, monotone voice of his. “I am not gifted at telling jokes.”
I was laughing before I even realized that the sounds were coming out of my mouth. “Now you get a sense of humor. God, my life has gone off the rails.”
“Well, that was our one lead,” Submission realized. “We’re at a dead end.”
“Not necessarily,” I pointed out. “He mentioned he had an appointment at something called the Frommy Cherry something or other?”
“A reservation,” Necromancer corrected me, snapping his fingers and removing his ear radio. “A reservation at the Fromagerie Danard. It’s a restaurant in Paris.”
“He was going to France?”
He ignored me, instead pulling out a small cell phone from one of the pouches in his belt.
“Chidike here,” he said quickly. “I think you should call the Heisenborough Institute. See if they’re missing anything. I think you were right all along.”
Whoever he was talking to, I had a suspicion that it wasn’t someone from the Dome. We never used our civilian names over the airwaves, and I’ve never seen any of them use a cell phone for communication. Something was going on.
“Is this the part where you start trusting me?” I asked Submission.
She folded her arms and looked down at the ground while tapping her foot impatiently. Every few moments, she kept looking at Necromancer expectedly. I hated not being in the loop, it was increasingly clear that every member of the Infinite League was treating me like an outsider not trustworthy enough to keep the secrets.
“Understood,” Necromancer finally said slowly on his phone, and then he replaced the phone back in his belt without another word.
“Is this the day?” Submission asked.
“It would seem so,” he nodded. “The League is done. Operation Nova is on.”
With that cryptic remark, he ran from the room, leaving me alone with Submission and half a bad guy on the floor. I wasn’t sure what any of this meant, and I wasn’t sure if I was in danger, so I braced myself for anything.
“Baltrin sabotaged Dr. Progeriat’s time widget back at the base, didn’t he?”
“What makes you say that?” she replied slowly.
“That holographic message was just a distraction,” I continued, taking a step away from her. “I know you’re working with Baltrin, and these crooks stole the last one. So that means…you’re working with the crooks, and we conveniently got here too late to stop them from taking it! That was your plan all along, wasn’t it?”
“You’re half right,” she explained. “We were trying to flush out the real crooks. We sabotaged the CDA, but these crooks wouldn’t have known about it unless someone at the Dome told them. This was a desperate, badly planned attempt to steal the last working Chronal Accelerator. Someone told them, and they rushed here to grab it before we could secure it. We’re close to figuring out who the traitor at the Dome is!”
“But now the bad guys have what they wanted!”
She started to say something, but DeathTek’s digitized voice started shouting over the communicator on her wrist.
“Colonel Bridge is screaming for us to get back to base,” he told us. “We need to report on what happened here!”
“Tell Colonel Bridge that Necromancer and I will be following up a lead on our own,” she replied. “We’ll report back in four hours, unless we find something first. Andromeda will be returning with you.”
She switched off the communicator, removed it from her wrist, and dropped it on the floor.
“You want me to go back without you guys?”
“I want you to go back, and tell them everything that happened here,” she replied. “And then I want you to keep your head down, and I want you to know that no matter what happens, we are going to have your back.”
Then, she kissed me on the cheek, and jumped through the broken window. By the time I got to the opening, I saw her land in a beautiful tuck and roll maneuver on the field below, leap to her feet, and continue running towards the edge of the base grounds.
I don’t even know the right words to explain how alone I suddenly felt.
21
The Revelation of Allegiances
Monday, June 3 – 12:15 a.m.
With most commercial airlines, flying from Houston to Washington D.C. is generally a three-hour flight. With DeathTek at the helm of The Event Horizon, the flight was just a hair over two hours. During that time, he must have uselessly prodded me five times for information on why Submission and Necromancer didn’t accompany us back to the base.
By the time we reached the massive hangar doors of the Dome, a small ensemble was waiting for us. Most of them looked agitated and anxious, as I expected.
Dr. Progeriat was standing there in the back of the hangar, looking even older and crankier than ever. He was furiously barking orders at a member of the ground crew, while pointing to something on a computer monitor behind them.
&
nbsp; Three agents from the ground crew were on hand to immediately start checking for any on-board problems, download the flight history into the archives, and to begin the re-fueling. They were already scampering around the Harrier when I stepped off the ramp.
Standing there with his fists on his hips, flanked by two soldiers, was Colonel Bridge himself. No hologram this time, he was live and in the flesh.
“So who’s going to be the first to explain to me what the hell happened out there in Houston?”
“You’re asking me?” I said defensively.
“Five dead staff members in Houston, an eviscerated criminal, and the last functioning CDA got stolen,” he snapped. “Is that correct so far?”
“Yeah, sounds right.”
“So why haven’t Necromancer and Submission returned with you?”
Now I was getting a little pissed. I knew I had to answer for straight-up cutting Wormhole in half, but it was an accidental kill and it seemed we had bigger problems to deal with right now. “They said they were following up a lead on the thief.”
“So you don’t know where specifically they are at this moment?” asked Dr. Progeriat, finally joining the conversation.
“How should I know? You guys never tell me anything around here! You certainly never told me that the bad guys might get their hands on ray guns and try to turn me into a piece of burnt bacon!”
“That’s nothing compared to what’s going to happen if Ubaidullah Zahr decides to use the CDA to create his own army of super soldiers,” Bridge reminded me. “Or worse yet, a chronal bomb!”
“Can you please remember I haven’t been working with you guys for the last fifteen years? Why is this time widget so dangerous, exactly?”
“If the lithium tachyons are exposed for more than two hours, there will be a critical reaction,” said the colonel. “It’s called a chronal blast, affecting everything and everyone in the vicinity. Everything will be aged anywhere from a few months to six or seven hundred years, depending on how close they were to the blast.”
“You would be turned into an old woman if you were out on the outer range of the blast radius,” Progeriat told me. “If you were close enough, you’d be turned into bones and dust and memories.”
No wonder they keep such a close guard on it. “Who would invent something so fucking dangerous?”
“Weren’t you listening the other day? Its original purpose was for traveling long distances across the galaxy,” Progeriat explained to me. “It came with the Ambassador’s ship that brought him to this planet. It counters the negative effects of journeying at faster than light speeds by preventing unwanted aging to the passengers. It was jury rigged to help rapidly age the Ambassador clones.”
“Maybe our time widget was sabotaged to flush out the guys trying to steal one,” I suggested, hoping that they wouldn’t question me as to how I came up with that theory. I didn’t want to say that I got the idea from Submission. It would just lead to more questions I wasn’t ready to answer.
“If that was the plan, it was a stupid one,” DeathTek put in as he exited the Event Horizon at last. “Zahr ramped up his time table, and we were nearly caught off guard.”
The colonel turned around, directing his full attention towards the metallic hero. “So what about you, big guy? You want to tell me how those people even got into the secured vault? It’s supposed to be protected from every cataloged enhanced power.”
“If it’s up and running, yeah,” DeathTek admitted. “Someone disabled the power from the outside. Without the dampening fields, there was no way to keep Wormhole from snatching the accelerator.”
“And where were you at?”
“I stayed in the ship in case we needed to go into pursuit,” he shot back, a bit more defensively this time. “That was Necromancer’s call, take it up with him.”
“I’ve already spoken with him. I’ve also spoken to the director of the Heisenborough Institute.”
I don’t know if anyone else caught it, but when the Colonel mentioned the Heisenborough Institute, he gave Dr. Progeriat a discrete sideways glance. It seemed like he wanted to gauge his immediate reaction upon hearing that bit of information. I don’t know if he picked up on the subtle alarm in his posture, but I certainly did.
“The lab that assembles the cloning tubes for us?” asked Progeriat. “What do they have to do with this?”
“The Institute was supposed to receive a shipment of the materials we use to construct Ambassador’s clone chambers a few days ago, but they never got it,” the colonel continued. “Seems the train that was bringing it to them had been robbed.”
I didn’t need it spelled out for me. Now things were starting to come together right in front of our eyes.
“Ubaidullah Zahr was confirmed at the train robbery, working with a group of enhanced thieves and mercenaries,” Colonel Bridge continued. “They weren’t after the gold at all, it was a diversion. They were after the cloning chambers on the train, and they were hoping we wouldn’t notice. With Wormhole’s help, they got twenty of the chambers. And now, they also have a functioning Chronal Dampening Array.”
“So, Zahr can create his own fully grown clones?” I asked.
“Even worse, he could create his own Ambassadors,” DeathTek realized. “If he had access to his DNA.”
“Well, the source material is kept right here at the base,” Bridge said, directing his attention once more towards Dr. Progeriat. “But there are undoubtedly samples of his genetic code nearly everywhere.”
“He lost a lot of blood at the train robbery alone,” I realized.
“Baltrin has hacked our facility several times,” Dr. Progeriat said accusingly. “He probably hacked them as well! He lowered the shields and allowed Adrenaline to get into our vaults. Where ever he’s hiding, we need to run Baltrin to ground before he helps Zahr with whatever he’s planning!”
“You may have a point,” nodded the Colonel, and displayed a quick hand gesture to the soldiers flanking him. “But before we go searching for Major Baltrin, I think we need to secure this facility. Completely.”
“What are you talking about?” asked the old doctor nervously.
It was at that point that Dr. Progeriat realized that the two soldiers were now flanking him. I didn’t know what was happening here, so I kept my mouth shut and my eyes open.
“What is this,” Progeriat shouted, looking at the soldiers standing near him. “What’s going on here?”
“When I sent the team to retrieve the CDA in Houston, you tried to play for time,” Bridge explained. “You suggested we should wait for the new Ambassador clone to be activated. You suggested DeathTek should fly off alone, without the team.”
“Are you accusing me of something, Colonel Bridge?” he scowled.
“You did everything but block the door with your body to keep the team from quickly flying to Houston, Dr. Progeriat. Until I’m certain what your part in this is, I’m confining you to quarters.”
Colonel Bridge walked over to one of the consoles and spoke into the radio that broadcast his voice throughout the entire base. “This is Colonel Franklin Bridge, the Director of the D.S.A. Effective immediately, the Dome is on lockdown. All personnel will stay on base until the all clear is given. Ambassador, please report to the hangar immediately.”
“I give the orders around here,” the old man protested angrily. “Who the hell do you think you are?”
“I am revoking your command, Dr. Progeriat,” the colonel explained. “After a long discussion with the congressional committee that oversees funds for this organization, they’ve all but come to a decision. In two days, they will be recommending that funding stops for this facility.”
“We won’t be able to power the dampening array if they shut us down! We won’t be able to keep the Ambassador alive!”
“From what’s been explained to me, that alien artifact is going to go inert as soon as we grow one more clone,” he explained. “The last functioning array is now in the hands of a
global terrorist. It’s time to face facts, my old friend. The Infinite League had a good run, but it’s time to let other, younger people handle the problems of the world.”
“I’m only thirty,” I muttered glumly, but the colonel hadn’t heard me. Besides, I was seriously torn on how I should feel about this. Does this mean I was being released? What was going to happen to the rest of the team? Do they all just become independent heroes with no government funding? Were they going to have to get real jobs?
How was I going to get these gauntlets off of my arms?
“Colonel Bridge, you wanted to see me?”
The truly unexpected element had now entered the room. The last time I saw Ambassador, he had descended on me outside of my house and beat the shit out of me. I knew this was a different clone of that man, but now I knew that Dr. Progeriat might be able to program him into doing anything that he wanted. And with the last functioning time widget having been stolen, and the threat of funding being taken away, that might make Progeriat very desperate. Which might make the Ambassador very dangerous. Without even realizing that I had done it, I took a cautious step back towards the slowly closing hangar doors.
“Agent Ambassador,” the Colonel said in a careful, measured tone. “I need you to return to the Genome Lab for a full diagnostic.”
“I just came from there,” laughed the big man. “I just woke up from a nap when I got your message.”
“You didn’t just wake up from a nap,” he continued. “You are a clone, and your programming may have been tampered with. You may be planning to perform actions that are in violation of the Superhuman Samaritan Act, and we need to make sure that—“
The Ambassador stopped smiling at this point, and rose into the air a few inches. I suddenly got the impression of being judged by an angry god.
The two soldiers who accompanied Colonel Bridge pulled out their funky looking weapons from their holsters, and pointed it at Ambassador. I edged over to DeathTek, who had stayed strangely quiet during this entire escalating situation.