Action Figures - Issue Three: Pasts Imperfect (22 page)

“Yeah, right,” Joy says,
Nemo’s speech jostling loose a cloudy memory or two, “and you said you’d give
me a job if I came through.”

“One step at a time, please.
Do you have the hard drive?” Joy reaches into her jacket and produces the drive
but, for the moment, refrains from handing it over. “Ah, Dr. Baron
did
have it.”

“No, he didn’t,” Joy says.
“Someone hired the doc to keep tabs on me. He didn’t know jack, but he knew who
did.”

John Nemo waits patiently
for the explanation.

“Some professor at Boston U.
had it. And I learned something else real interesting: the professor’s
daughter? Turns out she’s the ninja chick from that junior Protectorate group.
I have her to thank for these,” Joy says, gesturing at her scars.

“Is she now?” Nemo says, his
attention thoroughly captured. “Hm. Fascinating. I assume you dispensed with
her? And her father?”

“Daddy’s dead, that’s for
damn sure.”

“I see.”

“Don’t worry, I made sure he
gave me the password for this thing first. Wrote it on the case for you,” Joy
says, handing over the drive. Nemo flips it over and reads the numbers scrawled
on the back in a shaky, uneducated hand.

“Thank you.”

“You can thank me by making
good on our deal.”

Nemo gives Joy a sympathetic
wince. “I’m afraid it’s not quite that simple, Ms. Morana.”

“The hell it is,” Joy says,
grasping Nemo by the throat. “I did your job, I got your stupid hard drive
thing, now bring me in.”

“I repeat, Ms. Morana,” Nemo
says with a weary sigh, “it’s not that simple. My superiors need time to assess
your performance. For what it’s worth, my report will be mostly favorable...”

“Mostly?”

“There is the matter of your
body count.”

“You got a problem with me
dropping people?”

“We have a problem with our
operatives ‘dropping people,’ as you put it, in a way that leads back to our
organization. We also have a problem with our operatives leaving people alive
unnecessarily, which can also lead back to us. We need to determine whether
your decisions were sound, and whether they compromised us in any way.”

“You said you’d bring me in,
so
bring me in
.” She tightens her grip, a threat that John Nemo ignores
with impossible aplomb.

“Ms. Morana. You should know
that my employers value my unique gift quite highly. I dare say I am perhaps
the only person within the organization who is truly irreplaceable. While I
have no great desire to die, I do take comfort in knowing that, were you to
kill me, my employers would exhaust considerable resources to hunt you down.
Believe me when I say: you do not want to ever find yourself in that position.”

He says this as casually as
he might discuss the weather, without fear, without a trace of bravado.

Joy releases her grip.

“Return to your motel room,
Ms. Morana, and wait for my call,” John Nemo says, adjusting his necktie. “You
will hear from me sooner rather than later, I promise you. Forty-eight hours at
the most. Is that acceptable?”

“Does it matter?”

John Nemo smiles. “No,” he
says before departing.

Joy sits at the counter,
drumming a mad tattoo on the countertop with her clawed fingers, mentally
spitting every curse she knows after Nemo — and she knows a great many curses.
What a surprise: Someone makes a fancy sales pitch, says he wants to help her,
acts like he’s a friend, then when it comes time to make good on all the
promises, he screws her. They’re all the same: every teacher, all the
counselors and therapists, the low-rent public defender who got saddled with
her case...and someone else...

John Nemo’s name and face
slip away from her, just like that, but the sting of his betrayal remains, a
lump of hot rage flickering in her chest — and yet Joy manages a smile. If life
has taught her nothing else, it’s taught her how to screw them before they screw
you. It’s easy, really; all it takes is a little forethought.

After leaving the
restaurant, Joy stops at an ATM to make a substantial cash withdrawal, then
drops the card in a garbage can. On the bus ride back to the train station, she
stuffs her phone in a gap between her seat and the body of the vehicle, leaving
it for someone to discover and claim as his own — or maybe it’ll sit there for
days, riding around town in an endless loop, but as long as no one can use it
to track her actual location...

Screw them before they screw
you, that’s lesson one.

Lesson two, one of the few
useful things she learned in school: Always make back-up copies of your
computer files.

“You ready to do this?” Sara
asks.

“As ready as I’ll ever be,”
I say.

Translation: God, no. What
we’re about to do, it’s a gamble that, honestly, I’m not expecting to pay off.
At best we’ll glean some idea of what Buzzkill Joy is up to. At worst, if Sara
and I get caught, we could be turned over to the police — or worse, Concorde.
Yeah, I have no plans to fly, so I’m not violating the letter of his law, but
the spirit is getting violated like —

Never mind. I can’t think of
an analogy that doesn’t make me queasy.

Sara and I stroll on into
Boston Medical Center like we’re supposed to be there and head right to the
reception desk. A matronly Asian woman greets us with a polite smile.

“Good evening, ladies, may I
help you?” she says.

“Good evening,” I say
pleasantly. “We’re here to visit Kenneth Hamill.”

The receptionist types the
name into her computer and squints at the screen. “Are either of you family?”
she asks.

“I’m his daughter Missy!”
Sara chirps, and she flashes a big, wide-eyed grin. I have to restrain a laugh;
her Missy impression is a little too dead-on.

“I’m sorry, dear, but only
family is allowed to visit Mr. Hamill,” the woman says to me. “You’ll have to
wait outside.”

“That’s fine,” I say, and
the receptionist gives us the room number.

We head to the elevators. An
empty elevator car arrives and we dash inside. Sara engages in a bit of necessary
vandalism, disabling the security camera in the corner of the car with a quick
telekinetic zap (sorry, hospital). I jab at the control panel to make sure no
one has a chance to jump on with us. The doors slide shut and we quickly shed
our outer layers, stuffing our civilian clothes into a backpack I brought
along. Carrie Hauser and Sara Danvers got onto the elevator, but it will be
Lightstorm and Psyche getting off — not that anyone will see us, if everything
goes according to plan.

(Please, God, let this go
according to plan.)

“You’re up,” I say, and Sara
closes her eyes and concentrates.

The principle is simple:
Sara telepathically broadcasts a single, basic command —
ignore us
— and
we slip into Dr. Hamill’s room unhindered. It’s not invisibility in the
traditional sense, but if this works, the hospital staff won’t pay the
slightest attention to us. I hate to resort to sneaking around like this, but
(as I have to keep reminding the boys) the Hero Squad has no official standing
anymore; marching into the hospital and openly announcing our intent to conduct
a formal interview is not an option.

Like I said, the concept is
sound, and Sara has used the subliminal mental command trick a few times with
success, but this is the first time she’s ever tried anything quite like this.
We won’t know for sure if she’s successful until we step out of the elevator.

We reach our floor and the
doors open. Here we go.

Sara and I get out, and
we’re nearly bowled over by an orderly who blows right past us, never slowing
down and never offering an “excuse me.” I’m going to be optimistic and say it’s
because he never saw us, not because he was in a big hurry and/or extremely
rude.

“I think we’re good,” I say
in a whisper.

“Let’s hurry. I don’t know
if I can keep this up for long,” Sara says.

We follow the signs to Dr.
Hamill’s room, passing countless doctors, nurses, orderlies, patients, and
visitors along the way. A few of them pause and look around, like they thought
they saw something at the edge of their vision, then shake their heads and go
back to whatever they were doing, but that’s as close as we come to getting
caught.

Cool. We’re going to have to
remember this trick.

It doesn’t occur to me until
too late that Dr. Hamill might not be in a private room, but luck continues to
be on our side: Dr. Hamill is alone in his room, hooked up to more machines
than Frankenstein’s monster. His throat is heavily bandaged on one side.

“Let’s get into character,”
I say. I power up, but only enough to produce the slightest of glows (speaking
of aspiring super-heroes who are getting better at fine-tuning their powers).
“Dr. Hamill. We need to talk to you.”

He doesn’t respond. I say
his name again, a little louder. Nothing. Oh, crap. What if he’s sedated?

“He’s drugged up, isn’t he?”
Sara says.

“Um. Maybe?” I say with a
small squeak of panic, because if he’s under heavy sedation (which, I now
realize, is highly likely because, duh, slashed throat), this whole night is a
waste — and worse, Buzzkill Joy continues to avoid some serious comeuppance.

I’m about to ask Sara if she
could get anything from Dr. Hamill telepathically when he utters a soft groan.
Sara and I hold our breaths as Dr. Hamill’s eyes flutter open. He’s groggy, but
I think he’s coherent. Let’s put that to the test.

“Dr. Hamill, my name is
Lightstorm. This is Psyche. We’re with the Hero Squad,” I say. Dr. Hamill
swallows, blinks, nods weakly. “We need to speak to you about the girl who
attacked you, if you’re able to.”

“...Yes,” he says, his voice
brittle.

“Did you know her?” I ask.

He hesitates before
answering. “I...not directly. I knew about her.”

“How?”

It takes him even longer to
answer that question, and his response isn’t exactly illuminating. “I’m
responsible for her.”

“Responsible for her how?”

“I made her.”

Sara and I exchange confused
looks. “I’m sorry, Dr. Hamill, I don’t understand.”

Dr. Hamill takes a deep
breath, and tells us a chilling, haunting story.

Twenty-five years ago, Dr.
Hamill says, the US military launched something called Project Moreau, a grand
experiment in genetic engineering. Humans possessed of amazing abilities had
been around for a few decades at that point, and the military wanted to tap
that power for its own purposes. The problem was, super-humans inclined to use
their abilities in the name of the greater good, as a rule, preferred to
operate autonomously and weren’t big on getting bossed around by the
government, so the military decided to try making its own.

The concept of tweaking an
organism’s DNA to produce traits not normally found in a given species was
relatively new and untested, but the military thought it had potential, so they
assembled a team of the nation’s most brilliant geneticists to work on the
project. Some were rabid flag-wavers who would do anything Uncle Sam asked them
to, others were able to push their morality aside in the name of scientific
progress. Dr. Hamill admits, with deep shame, he fell into the latter category.

Under his direction as
project leader, several approaches were explored and tested. Two similar paths
emerged as the most promising. The first was to analyze the genetic code of
various super-humans, compare them to baseline human DNA, and make the
necessary changes to replicate more common superhuman abilities (particularly
those that would be very useful in a fight): super-strength, invulnerability,
super-speed, heightened reflexes, even the range of psionic powers, from
telepathy and telekinesis to more unusual powers like pyrokinesis (a la Nina
Nitro) and flight (a rare but very specialized form of telekinesis).

Then there was the second
approach, which gave rise to the project’s name. The human genetic code, when
you get right down to it, is not so dissimilar from the genetic code of several
animal species. Dr. Hamill specifically cites cats as an example: The feline
genetic code is ninety percent similar to that of humans, so it wasn’t
unimaginable to tinker with human DNA in order to replicate beneficial feline
traits such as clawlike fingernails...

Like Buzzkill Joy has.

Joy — and Missy.

Oh my God.

“We genetically manipulated
ova harvested for infertility treatments. They were fertilized in vitro, then
implanted,” Dr. Hamill says. “There were forty test subjects. None of the
mothers knew what we’d done to the embryos...not even my wife.”

“You son of a bitch,” Sara
hisses, but Dr. Hamill can’t hear her over his sobbing.

“I told myself she was
nothing but a test subject,” he bawls. “I told myself not to get attached. I
was so determined not to love her, but...”