by Nick Svolos
“I knew you’d say that.” She grinned and produced a pair of handcuffs. “The first thing we do is chain you to that pipe over there. People sometimes lose control of their bodies when we do this. I start walking forward and your body gets confused and mimics my movements and you walk off the roof or something. Best to take precautions. Don’t worry, I’ll give you the key.” She handed me the key and I stuck it in my pocket as she chained me to the pipe. She knelt down beside me. “Now, while we’re doing this, try to keep your eyes closed. It’ll make things easier if we only have to deal with one set of visual input. Ready?”
I shut my eyes. “As I’ll ever be. Let’s just get this over with.” In an instant, I was looking at myself, chained to a pipe on the roof. I was suddenly aware of the snugness of the clothes on my, I mean her, body, and that the parts were all enticingly different.
“Get your mind out of the gutter, Reuben.” I heard her voice in my mind. It was weird to hear it without my ears getting involved. She stood up, and a wave of nausea washed over me as the visual input failed to match my equilibrium. She must have felt it too, because her voice said, “Whoa, careful there. Don’t worry, we’ll get used to it in a minute.”
She was right, of course. She’d had a lot more experience with this sort of thing, after all. The nausea faded as she strapped into her harness and attached it to the wire. “OK, brace yourself. I’m going to go across.” She stepped off the roof and I was hit with another wave of vertigo. I forced my feelings into submission and focused on hers. The thrill of excitement filled me. She truly loved doing this.
As the motor in the harness assembly carried her through the space between the buildings, she asked, “So, who’s the girl? The one at the party.”
I concentrated on my answer, not wanting the truth to surface and blow Helen’s identity. “Her name’s Helen. We met at the Nuart three weeks ago. She works at the college.”
“She’s hot. Your story’s clearly bullshit, but don’t worry, I won’t pry. You should bring her by the house, sometime. I’d love to meet her.”
“If things work out, I will.”
“’If things work out’? Reuben, you say you’ve been with her three weeks. You don’t know how things are going? You move too slow, dude, always have. Took you fourteen years to make a move on me.”
“Hey now, we were toddlers for at least part of that.”
I, I mean she, laughed at that, “Point taken, but seriously, you do move too slow. Don’t let her get away. I can tell you’re both crazy about each other. I don’t even need powers to see that.”
I tried very hard not to think about how it had only been a day, and was moving way too fast for my taste. Our kiss goodnight leapt to mind, and I forced it down. She must have picked up on it, because she said, “Oh my God, you didn’t close the deal? Reuben, what am I gonna do with you?”
“OK, let’s talk about something else. How are Joe and the kids?”
“Oh, avoidance, that’s healthy.” Her feet landed on the roof on the other side. “OK, you’re off the hook, for now. I gotta concentrate on work. But, don’t think we’re not gonna talk about this later.” A mental checklist appeared in my head, something she had planned out earlier. The first thing she did was disable the security cameras on the roof. She just looked at them, and the little red lights on them went out. I knew that they were playing a loop of a vacant rooftop, but didn’t know how. As instructed, I saved my questions for later.
She shrugged out of the harness and walked across the roof to the helipad’s little air traffic control booth’s door. She focused intensely for a moment and the electronic keypad’s LED switched from red to green. She opened the door and walked in, repeating the process of disabling the security systems at each step. At last we were in Gail Crenshaw’s penthouse office. As Sinfonie stepped out of the stairwell, she took in the scene, scanning for security equipment. The center of the floor held a single express elevator and the door to the stairwell. From this, a solid wall extended to the edge of the building, with a door on each side. The other three walls of the office were the windows of the tower, presenting a spectacular city view. I stifled the urge to wisecrack that I could see my house from here. Sinfonie didn’t need any distractions. A large conference table was set up to the left of the entrance, and a more informal setup with comfortable-looking chairs and couches were on the right. At the far end was an expensive-looking minimalist desk with a glass top and thick chrome legs, with a high-backed executive desk chair behind it.
Sinfonie reached into her overcoat and produced one of those spray cans you see in the spy movies. She sprayed mist into the air, revealing a network of laser sensors criss-crossing the room. She looked around and, finding the source, shut the grid off. Satisfied that she had disabled the last of the security systems, she crossed the room to the desk. On it, we saw a high-tech office phone, a little vase with fresh flowers, a framed picture and nothing else. Sinfonie waved a hand over the desk and a holographically-projected rectangle appeared above the desk and a similar hologram of a keyboard appeared on the glass surface of the desk. Cool. Sinfonie mentally shooshed me and concentrated on the login page that was displayed. Nothing happened. She concentrated harder, but to no avail. The login page continued to levitate before us, its cursor blinking as if to mock us.
“Damn, I don’t usually have this much trouble.” she thought. “Their system’s pretty good.” She crossed her arms and settled in to consider her options.
“How are you doing that, anyway?” I figured this was as good a time as any to ask.
“Computers are just very ordered brains. Once you get past that, it’s actually pretty straight-forward. A telepath can be trained to read them, you just follow wires instead of synaptic tissue. It’s easier than it is with humans, to tell the truth. Passwords are stored in that brain, and it’s pretty easy to access the memory that contains the one you need. Most systems are set up such that the password isn’t actually stored on the computer you’re accessing. They authenticate remotely, but even so, they’re connected on the same network, so all I need to do is track through the system and talk to the authentication server. This system is arranged differently. It doesn’t connect to the network until it has a password submitted. So, I’ll probably need to go down to their server room to find the right machine to talk to. I was hoping to avoid that.”
Something in her peripheral vision caught my attention. The picture on the desk. I could tell it was a wedding photo, a blond-haired woman and a man, but I couldn’t quite make it out. “Sin, can you look at the picture to your left?” Her eyes moved to the photo, and things started to fall into place in my head. The picture was from some time ago, and the subjects were about ten or fifteen years younger than when I saw their photos on Fourstar Transport’s management page, but I easily recognized them as Howard and Kelly Page. I felt like a fool for not having recognized it sooner. The reason that the name Crenshaw kept nagging at me was because Kelly Page was listed on the site with her hyphenated professional name, Kelly Crenshaw-Page. She must be Gail’s granddaughter.
“That woman’s the HR director at Fourstar Transport. There’s my link from Fourstar to Galestorm.”
“What’s her name?”
“Kelly,” I thought.
Sinfonie thought, “Can she really be that confident in her security? Let’s hope this works.” She entered the name into the password prompt, and a second later, our heads filled with ones and zeroes. Sinfonie quickly filtered it out. “Sorry, that’s normal, but we don’t need to see the datastream right now.” She focused for a moment, searching for the data we were looking for. After a moment, she found a directory marked “Special Projects”. She accessed it, watching all the while to make sure she didn’t trip any security alarms, and we were rewarded with a list of research and development programs, at least thirty of them.
She sorted the list in the reverse order of their last update and started working the list from the most recent. The first two folder
s held projects of little interest to us, a next-generation jet propulsion system and some sort of upgrade to their network. We got lucky on the third folder. It held a list of encrypted files, and Sinfonie opened one. A new holographic window opened, and after it decrypted, we saw one of the invoices from Sinfonie’s envelope. Bingo.
Sinfonie checked her watch. It was 2:10 AM. She pulled a USB thumb drive out of her pocket and started glancing around the desk for a port. She found one on the desk phone and inserted the drive in place. A new, blank, holographic window popped up before her. She started decrypting the folder’s contents and dropping them into the thumb drive’s window.
“We’re not going to look at them?” I asked.
“Hell no, that’s a rookie mistake. We get away and look at them when we’re safe.” I decided to trust her on this, and forced my impatience into submission. She was the supervillain, after all.
Two minutes later, all the files were decrypted and copied to the thumb drive. She closed each window, doing something with her mind to clear the access logs at each step, removed the thumb drive and terminated the computer session. As Sinfonie stepped back to the stairs leading to the roof, something still nagged at me. Of all the questions we had found answers to, a few things remained. Whether or not this all had something to do with the cape-killer bullets was something I expected to learn later when we analyzed the data Sinfonie had stolen. What was unlikely to be on the thumb drive was the reason behind the animosity Gail felt for Ultiman. I considered the two doors in the wall leading to the rest of the floor.
“Hey Sin, how long do we have?” I thought.
“The next sweep is due in fifteen minutes. Why?”
“Do you think we can see what’s behind those doors?” I explained why, which takes a lot less time than you’d think when you’re already sharing someone’s head. She agreed it was worth checking out, but she promised me only five minutes. It would be poor form to get caught after we had achieved our objective.
The first door we tried had no security, and was simply an executive washroom. The second door had security that Sinfonie hadn’t seen before. Something special. It took her about two of our dwindling minutes to figure it out. A lot of technical specs and jargon went through her head, stuff I didn’t comprehend, and I just remained silent.
At long last, the door unlocked, and we entered the room. The large room took up the other half of the tower’s penthouse floor, walls covered in a panoply of framed photos and memorabilia. Part of a tail assembly from an airplane hung on one wall. Painted grey with a red star, it hung suspended over a little bronze plaque that identified it as a North Korean La-11. A date from 1951 was engraved on the plaque, along with the words, “My first kill”. A green hood with a similar star on the forehead sat on a bust in a glass case. The entire room was filled with this sort of stuff. In the center of the room was a large display cabinet containing a female-shaped mannequin wearing an instantly recognizable grey and black leotard with a cloud and lightning bolt insignia.
“Hokey Smokes, Bullwinkle, Gail Crenshaw was Gale!” I heard Sinfonie think.
I remembered the hero from studying the Korean War back in high school. Gale served with a group of supers mobilized by the Army to serve after the battle at the Chosin Reservoir. The Chinese had entered the conflict and fielded their own supers to inflict heavy casualties on the U.S. X Army Corps, and the United States had to respond in kind. The 807th Enhanced Airborne Company focused on air superiority missions and suppressing the Chinese supers. It racked up an impressive record and disbanded shortly after hostilities ceased. Gale’s powers over the weather were legendary. She disappeared in 1952, and it was generally assumed that she had been killed in action.
We were in her trophy room.
At the bottom of the case was a framed black-and-white photo of the 807th. Sinfonie checked her timepiece and knelt down for a closer look. Seven costumed heroes stood posing for the camera with General MacArthur. Autographs were written above each hero. We saw Gale, in the prime of life, standing with her arm leaning companionably on a young man who was shorter than the rest. He wore a tightly-fitted military jumpsuit bearing the rank of Major and a hood that covered his eyes and forehead, open at the top to allow a shock of wild dark hair sprout up like unmowed grass. It didn’t conceal his nose or jawline, though, and I recognized it as a face I had just seen the night before. If it wasn’t Ultiman, he was a very close copy. The autograph over this man read “Major Justice”. I tried to remember what I could about the super, but not much came to mind other than that he was the unit’s commander. He retired after the war, never to be heard from again.
I felt Sinfonie was becoming impatient. “Thanks for the history lesson, Reuben. Can we go now?”
I felt a little embarrassed that I let my undisciplined thoughts about Gale’s history leak through our link. “Yeah, sure. Sorry ‘bout that. Do you think you could get a quick photo of that picture? I’d like to do a bit of research.”
Sinfonie pulled out a little micro camera and snapped some photos, complaining about my need for “souvenirs”, and left the room, backtracking her way back to the roof while covering her tracks the same way she had coming in. As she emerged onto the roof, her attention was drawn to something on the helipad. It was a man in a black skinsuit and goggles, aiming a rifle at something on the opposite building. I felt her mentally reach out with her hand and move the rifle’s barrel to the left. A shot rang out from the gun and the man spun towards her. I felt her reach out again and mentally clamp down on the man’s brain. I could feel Sinfonie strain against the man’s will. Now that she had a better look, I recognized the man’s outfit from file photos we had at the Beacon. It was Longshot.
A surge of adrenaline erupted in both of our bodies. “That’s Longshot!” I thought. “Who’s he shooting at?”
“You, dummy!” she thought back. “I’m going to break the link, I need to focus. This guy’s had some training. Unlock yourself, grab the envelope, and get out of there as fast as you can. Meet me here when you can.” An address appeared in my memory.
I found myself alone on the roof. I felt a stinging sensation on my left cheek, but didn’t stop to see why. I did as I was told, and in moments I was racing down the stairwell to the elevator. As I emerged on the ground floor, I scanned the lobby quickly, but didn’t see any security guards. A few seconds later, I was out on the street. I heard the report of another gunshot from the Galestorm building, and I looked up to see Sinfonie leap off the roof. I winced, thinking my friend had been shot. She fell about twenty stories before producing another grappling hook gun from her belt, firing it and swinging out of view behind the building.
I felt like a coward, running away and leaving Sinfonie to face Longshot alone, but there was nothing I could do, so I turned and started running South on Flower. I saw a taxicab, a stroke of luck at this hour, and hailed it. He stopped and I got in, giving him the address that Sinfonie had pushed into my memory.
As the cabbie started driving, I focused on regaining control of my breathing, astonished at how out of shape I’d allowed myself to become. I used to be able to run so much further. I resolved to get back into training when this was over. Assuming I survived all this, of course. I forced my mind off of my body and onto more pressing matters. Longshot planted the bomb at the refinery, I was reasonably certain that he was Phoenix Fire’s killer, and now he was trying to clean up loose ends, by which I meant me. Longshot was the assassin Herculene chased off that warehouse roof. With a guy like him gunning for me, I didn’t like my odds.
XI
As the cabbie drove through the night, I began to process what we’d learned from Gale’s trophy room. I couldn’t shake the uncanny resemblance between the faces of Major Justice and Ultiman in that photo. They could have been twins, but separated by two generations. It’s not unknown for the descendants of a super to also have powers, but it’s pretty rare. Usually, the random mutation to the human DNA reverses itself when mixed with s
omeone else’s DNA, even if the other person is also a super. It’s a big part of why supers never became a dominating force in humanity. It’s like a counter-evolutionary process that prevents itself from being passed on.
Of course, that’s not the only way to get powers, just the most common. There were a few supers who got their powers from ancient artifacts, arcane curses, industrial mishaps and there were even a few rare normals who were talented, rich and crazy enough to put together a power suit or a set of gadgets to gain access to the Life. Something like that could be passed down through the generations. It’s just that such things are even more uncommon than the already extremely rare “naturals”.
While it was possible, I didn’t think Ultiman was one of those. The mutations that give most naturally-occurring supers their powers usually results in them having ridiculously impressive physiques. I couldn’t imagine a magic amulet that would give a guy six-pack abs like Ultiman’s.
All this conjecture was getting me nowhere. I decided to remedy my lack of knowledge about Major Justice. I turned on my phone and did a quick search. At the top of the results was a SuperPedia.com article. The site is notorious for its lack of accuracy. They don’t have any editors to speak of, and as a result, most entries are filled with wild theories about secret identities, known associates, and other esoteric and untrustworthy guesswork. Sometimes, however, there’s some truth out there. I pulled up the article and started reading. Along with the usual stuff, Major Justice’s history and a listing of his accomplishments, both verified and merely alluded to, the article had a listing of the Major’s known powers; flight, strength and invulnerability.
I found this interesting. Those were same powers Ultiman possessed. This was odd, because as rare as it was to have powers in the same family, I had never heard of the exact same set of powers being passed down through the generations. It would be like winning the lottery twice, with the exact same numbers each time. Could they be the same guy? This felt like a bit of a leap, but the best science we have precludes the passing on of powers from parent to child. It was more likely that they were the same person. Enhanced longevity or even immortality as a result of mutation has long been theorized. After all, Methuselah is said to have lived almost one thousand years, with several other Biblical figures reaching their nine-hundredth year before passing. Not everyone buys that, of course, and there has never been a confirmed case in the modern era.