by Nick Svolos
She smiled. “Point taken.” She took another bite of her omelette and chewed thoughtfully. “So, what you’re saying is I should learn to put up more of a front.”
It was my turn to chew thoughtfully. After a bit, I said, “No, I wouldn’t say that. I like the woman I’m sitting here with. I’d hate to see you not be that person. On the other hand, if you don’t learn how to defend yourself against folks like me, we’ll eat you alive. That’s what the persona is for.”
“Doesn’t sound like I have much of a choice, then,” she frowned.
“To some extent. You could decide not to interact with the press, for instance. That’s easy. There’s no law that says you have to play our game. If it’s something you decide you want to do, you’ll have to find a way to do it that won’t compromise you. That’ll take practice, and lots of it. Politicians and actors walk this line all the time, and I think you’re smarter than any of those people.”
“Hmmm. So, say I wanted to keep my options open and practice. How would I go about it?”
“You could start with the guy The Angels has you working with. Explain what you want to accomplish and see if he can help. If not, I know a guy who specializes in this sort of thing. I’d be happy to give you his card. Beyond that, find someone you trust and practice.”
She grinned, “How about you?”
I raised an eyebrow, “I said someone you trust. You just met me.”
“True, but you’ve got a good rep. Everyone says you’re the guy to go to if you need to talk to the press. Besides, I’ve got a good feeling about you.” As she spoke, a surge of disturbed air blew into the room from under the door, followed by a pair of booted feet hitting the landing and a polite knock at the door. Herculene smiled. “Ah, I’m guessing that’s my boss.”
Saved by the bell. I had mixed feelings about her request. I didn’t mind the idea of helping her, but media coaching’s not really my kind work. I was more about taking advantage of the people without the training. I got up to answer the door, saying, “Let me think about it for a while, OK?”
“Fair enough,” she grinned.
III
I opened the door to find Ultiman standing outside. He was shorter than I expected, about five-foot-eight. He was powerfully built, though, probably about 220 pounds. His blue skinsuit sported a large red “U” on the chest, with a hood that tightly covered his head up to the hairline, but left his nose, mouth and ears exposed. From the top of the headpiece a shock of wild brown hair sprouted up like unmowed grass. He had grey, expressionless eyes and his face maintained an air of cool detachment.
When he spoke, it was in a calm baritone. A cop’s voice, like if you took Jack Webb, put him in a preposterous costume and gave him super powers. “Good morning Mr. Conway. May I come in?” I nodded and stepped back a bit as he strode purposefully into the room and took a seat on the couch next to Herculene. I ducked into my bedroom, rolled my desk chair to the other side of the spool-table and sat down across from the pair of Angels.
“As my teammate may have indicated, I have some questions for you, Mr. Conway,” he said in a calm, measured tone. “I have no legal authority over you, as you know. I am merely asking for your help. Is that acceptable?”
Ultiman was a vigilante, not a cop. If he wanted to force me to talk, he’d have to get the civilian authorities involved. The fact that he didn’t told me he wanted to keep this off the books. I nodded, “Sure. What do you need to know?”
“You seem to have had prior knowledge of tonight’s events. Can you tell me how you came by this information?”
Ah, so that’s what this was about. I measured my words. “One of my contacts called me at about nine last night. They told me there might be a story there, but didn’t say what or when.”
“And yet, you did not contact the authorities.”
I sighed. I knew something like this was coming. “No.”
“May I know why not?”
“I get a lot of tips in my line of work. Back when I started, I thought the right thing was to pass them along. Remember Baron Guapo’s Getty job, about eight years ago?” Ultiman nodded. “Well, there was more to it. I heard that Baron Guapo and his crew were pulling a diamond heist downtown so I called your tip line. Figured I was doing my civic duty. Your team got there early enough to head it off without violence. One of his men spotted something out of place and they called it off. I guess they needed a score pretty bad because they switched to plan B while you guys were downtown. Plan B turned out to be the Getty Museum. Three security guards were killed, mainly because Guapo had to throw the caper together on the fly and it got sloppy.”
“Sounds more like The Angels dropped the ball on that one than you,” Herculene observed.
I nodded. “Maybe. There’s no way to know. I can’t say the body count would have been lower had the diamond thing gone off, but Guapo’s crew had a reputation for well-planned jobs where civilians don’t get hurt.” In fact, Baron Guapo went out of his way to avoid hurting normals, something that I think he retained from his time with VS. He and his crew disappeared a few days after the botched Getty job. Word at the time was that the FBI’s Enhanced Response Division caught up with them. If so, they were most likely in unmarked graves now. The ERD doesn’t mess around.
“Anyhow, the last time I tried passing along intel, a crooked cop passed it on to the bad guys. They figured out where the leak came from and my contact was found dead with her skull bashed in about six hours later. After that, I decided I have to be more careful. Maybe I have bad instincts on what I should pass on, maybe it was just bad luck, but I’ve got a lousy success rate with passing along information, and innocent people have paid the price. I feel responsible for those deaths. So, now I just stick to documenting the story, not changing it.”
“I see. Did tonight’s tip come from someone in our organization?”
“No.”
“Would you tell me if it was someone in our organization?”
“Probably not. I guess it would kind of depend on the circumstances.”
“How so?”
I considered this for a moment. “Depends on whether I thought you guys were in danger or not. Let’s take an extreme case. Say I thought Omega had a mole in the Tower. Not sharing the info would put you guys in danger, so I’d tell you. On the other hand, if my contact was just someone on your staff, passing along a good lead in exchange for Laker tickets, I wouldn’t.”
“Understood.” He shifted almost imperceptibly. I don’t think he liked my answer. It’s not comforting to think that one’s internal security could be exploited so easily. “Let’s move on. Did you see what happened to Phoenix Fire?”
The image of her ruined body came unbidden to my mind’s eye. “No. As I told Herculene, she was too bright to look at. I was watching the fight by the triage station when she...when it happened.”
“I see. I’d like to share something with you, Mr. Conway. I hope you will treat this information with the same discretion you exercise with your contacts. Can I trust you in this, Mr. Conway?”
“Sure, as long as you’re not going to ask me to do anything illegal or immoral.”
“Nothing of the sort. Please consider this ‘off-the-record’. It would be disastrous for our investigation if this were to make it into print.” I agreed, and he reached into his suit and pulled out a small piece of metal, setting it on the spool in front of me. It was a bullet, mashed into an ugly grey mushroom shape by impact with what I expected was human flesh. I picked it up and examined it more closely. The rear end of the bullet was narrowed in a boat tail to reduce drag as the bullet traveled to its target. The slug was big, I guessed it to be .50 cal. That’s the kind of weapon military snipers use for anti-material work, taking out equipment like communications equipment, lightly-armored vehicles and stuff like that. I couldn’t see any rifling marks but I’m not a ballistics technician. I just read a lot.
“Did you find this where I’m thinking you found this?”
“We found this embedded in the back of Phoenix Fire’s chest cavity. I just came from the autopsy. We believe she was hit by this, which terminated her ability to control the energies her body was containing. The blast occurred almost immediately, tearing her internal organs through the expanding hole in her torso, resulting in her demise.” I was struck by his clinical detachment. This dude was cold. “What we do not know is how.”
“I see. This thing should have melted to vapor before it hit her.” Ultiman nodded and I knew I was on the right track. I pulled my old Swiss Army knife out of my pocket and glanced at Ultiman for his consent, to which he nodded. I extended the blade and pressed it into the soft metal, just a little. It left a distinct impression. “This feels like lead, but it didn’t melt. I’m no metallurgist, but I’m pretty sure this is impossible.”
“And yet, here it is. It has an additional property that I find interesting.” He held out his hand, “If you please, Mr. Conway.” I handed the bullet back to him. He pinched off a tiny piece of the soft metal and pressed it between his thumb and index finger, forming it into a slim cylinder. He rolled the metal between his fingers some more and it elongated and narrowed until it was as thin and sharp as a sewing needle. He set it aside for a moment and removed the glove from his left hand. He extended his index finger, picked up the needle and jabbed the tip of his finger with the strange metal.
Herculene and I both sat in stunned silence as we stared at the drop of blood that oozed out of Ultiman’s fingertip.
“Oh, this is bad,” I muttered.
Ultiman pulled his glove back on. “Yes. This is bad. Do you now see the reason why discretion is important in this matter?”
I felt numb. My mind raced through the implications. “Yeah. If word got out about bullets that can do this, things will get messy. Super-powered-arms-race messy. Every government and bad guy in the world will want these bullets and you folks will need to start using them to keep up. Instead of the brawls you guys normally have, things will get settled by gunfights with super bullets that can go through anything. Innocents miles away will get caught in the crossfire. The public will go nuts.”
“We are thinking along the same lines. Our skirmishes and feuds will become wars. Mr. Conway, we cannot allow this to happen.” He placed the bullet back in his belt. “I have a favor to ask of you.”
Here it comes. I took a deep breath. “OK, what can I do to help?”
“As you have probably surmised, tonight’s events were not an ambush but an assassination. More than that, I suspect it was a test. The people responsible for this created a carefully-planned scenario where Phoenix Fire was isolated and stationary, an excellent target. I am hoping that their plan involved the bullet passing through Phoenix Fire and continuing on to be lost in the ocean. I’m hoping that they erroneously believe that we do not know about this bullet or even that she had been shot. If I am right, this is an error that we can use to our advantage.
“Right now, the only people who know about this are the people responsible for this, our staff physician and the people in this room. The Angels will conduct an investigation, but it will be largely for show. We are... limited in what we can legally do. I cannot go to the police with this, for reasons you intimated previously. Since you are steadfast in your protection of your contacts, my only lead is effectively untouchable. You have skills as an investigative journalist and you have contacts on both sides of the law. I am asking you to conduct your own investigation and provide us with the information we need to stop this war before it begins.
“I do not ask this lightly. This task may very well prove dangerous.” Gesturing at my arm, he added, “You have already suffered injuries from this, and I have concerns about your safety. Placing a citizen at risk goes against everything I and The Angels stand for. I simply do not see any other choice at this juncture. Will you do it?”
I took a breath and thought for a moment. Cases of humans receiving super-powers were extremely rare, but the historical record makes a good argument that it has always happened. Think of all the folklore of great warriors, giant monsters and people who could do amazing, even “magical” things. It’s a fairly common assumption that the ancient mythological Gods were probably nothing more than people with amazing powers that took the opportunity to shape human society as they saw fit. After all, once you’ve seen a few people flying around, throwing lightning bolts and fireballs at each other, it doesn’t seem like that far of a stretch.
Most world governments are run by normal people, at least as far as public appearance is concerned, and they rely almost entirely on super-powered people to maintain order where other supers are concerned. This is the strange balance between people and super-people, worked out over millennia of coexistence. With these bullets tipping the scales, the balance would shift dramatically.
Upsetting that balance would come with a cost. I was sure Ultiman had worked through this chain of thought on his own, and the fact that he had left it unsaid told me something. He was scared. Not for himself, but for what he’d have to do to protect his people. At least, if I were in his position, that’s how I’d feel. If this new ammunition—I hated myself for it, but I had already dubbed these bullets with the name “cape-killers”—became widely available, well, these people were used to taking violent action. They would defend themselves. It could lead to something unthinkable, a civil war between supers and normals. The thought made me shudder.
Ultiman was making a lot of assumptions, and everything hinged on the bad guys being unaware of our knowledge of the bullet. If he was wrong on this, it was likely that I’d be walking into a trap and come to a messy end. On the other hand, if this situation spun out of control, the world could be headed for a very dark place. He was also taking a huge risk, letting someone like me in on the secret of the bullet. He had to know I’d write about it.
I was conflicted. I didn’t know whether it was my place to get involved on behalf of one side or the other. My job is reporting the story, not making it. My instincts told me that it was a good story, however, one worth running down.
I made my decision. “OK, here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to investigate this story and write about it. Anything I find out, I’ll share with you. But I think you need to understand,” I gestured at the bullet in his waistband, “This genie is out of the bottle. I don’t think it’s going back in. Probably the best we can hope for is to slow it down long enough to find another solution. Maybe we can find a bigger bottle.”
I looked Ultiman square in the eyes. “When this is over, you’ll have an opportunity to comment on the finished story. You don’t get to edit it, though. Does that work for you?”
“Your terms are acceptable, Mr. Conway. Thank you.” He reached into his waistband again, pulled out a mobile phone, and placed it on my makeshift coffee table. It was black and very small and lent a whole new dimension to the term “sleek”. It had a single button, with a bright green winged “A”, the team’s logo, on the face of the unit. “This phone will connect you directly to me, or whichever member of the team is on duty should I be unavailable. Please don’t hesitate to use it. As an additional security measure, I am assigning Herculene to act as your bodyguard and personal liaison to the Angels’ organization. She will be available to you for the duration of your investigation.” He didn’t say it, but the implication was clear, she’d also be his spy. Trust only goes so far.
With that, he stood and stuck out his hand. “Thank you, Mr. Conway. I believe we will accomplish some good in the days ahead.” I rose to my feet and we shook hands. He turned to Herculene. “Keep him safe, Herculene,” and he left my apartment. A whoosh of air brushed against my door and the room fell silent, save for the rattling of the air conditioner.
Herculene sagged against the cushions of my couch. She stared, unfocused, at a point in the wall next to the television. “Wow. That’s a lot to take in.” After a second, she shook her head and asked, “So, where do we start?”
I looked
at the clock on the kitchenette wall. It was 4:00 AM. Damn. The meds were wearing off—the throbbing in my arm made that point clear enough—and all I wanted was to catch some shut-eye. But, considering what we had to do, it would have to wait. “We put on some coffee and get to work.”
I went to the stove and got some coffee going. I have an ancient percolator, the kind you fill with grounds and water and put on the stove. It’s not fancy, but I like my coffee strong and cheap. While the coffee perked, I went back to my bedroom and shut down the air conditioner in there and grabbed my old leather messenger bag, containing a battered laptop, some spare notebooks and pens and emerged back into the living room in time to pull the percolator off the stove. I was pleasantly surprised to find Herculene, just finishing up the dishes.
“Thanks,” I said as I opened the cupboard and pulled down two travel mugs, “That’s completely ‘above and beyond,’ you know. But, definitely appreciated.”
“Ah, forget about it,” she shrugged. “I’ve had an evening of transcendent weirdness and the prospect of more to come. Doing something ‘normal’ helps me think.”
I nodded as I filled the mugs with the steaming, black, life-giving liquid. “I do the same thing. How do you take your joe?”
She dried her hands. “Milk and sugar, and lots of it.”
“Sugar I got. Not so much on the milk, though. Just sugar good enough?” She nodded and I dumped about four teaspoons of sugar into her mug.
I left mine black, no unnecessary nutrients to take up space in my system that could otherwise be supplying my body with caffeine. I twisted the lids onto each mug and handed her the one with the sugar. She tried a sip and smiled approvingly. “Got a plan?”
“Yup. Is the Angelmobile still downstairs?”
She crossed the room to the window and peaked out through the blinds. “Thar she blows.”
I opened the front door and motioned her through. “Then our next stop is Wilmington.”