New Olympus Saga (Book 3): Apocalypse Dance (17 page)

“I’m glad you told me. I agree, I hate that sort of high school bull crap.”

“Heh. I shouldn’t let it get to me. I’m not used to getting dissed is all; been too long someone’s dissed me without losing teeth over it. It’ll get better when are inducted as full members, or at least it will be less overt. I take it you haven’t changed your mind about using Armageddon Girl?” he asked with a smile.

“Come on! For one, the full story about my terrible fate isn’t public knowledge, so what am I supposed to tell people when they ask me why I chose Armageddon as part of my title? For another, you know how I feel about the stupid name.”

He walked over, made a face and kissed her. “And you know how I love to tease you about it.”

“Jerk,” she said with a smile.

The pizza got there soon afterwards, but they didn’t eat it until long after it’d gotten cold.

Freedom Island, Caribbean Sea, May 21, 2013

“We’re all agreed, then. A special election for the entire Council slate will be held on June first,” Olivia O’Brien said. Not everyone agreed, although nobody disagreed out loud – the election would be a referendum on how badly the Council had screwed up. She doubted half of the current membership – the ones who weren’t dead, half-dead or fugitives from the law, that was – would be re-elected. None of them, herself included, had done very well at all.

The current Council included her husband Larry Graham, replacing Chasca, a choice she’d made in haste and regretted later; a white male taking the place of a woman of color made for terrible optics; Ali Fiori, also temporarily filling in, in her case for Doc Slaughter, who was still officially dead even though there was a man walking around with his memories and much of his personality; General Xu, the unofficial spokesman for the Republic of China; Hana Kwon, code name Darkling; Andrew Whitmore, a.k.a. Meteor; and lastly one Olivia O’Brien. No replacement had been named for Daedalus Smith, the traitor, and John was still off the Council until the charges against him were cleared up, a process that was likely to take months. An investigation of all of Daedalus’ friends and associates was underway, trying to find out how deep the rot had spread. So far all that had come of it was a lot of acrimony and paranoia, and not one bit of evidence.

“With that settled, we have plenty of other things to deal with,” she went on. “There is the matter of dealing with all Daedalus Smith holdings that are in any way linked to the Legion. As you know, while Smith had signed over much of his personal fortune and patents over to us, there are plenty of…”

“That’s something for the solicitors and the financiers to haggle about,” Meteor cut her off. “Nobody gives a toss about that. I want to talk about the decision of inducting three vigilantes, criminals, really, into the Legion. That decision should wait until we have a real Council in place, not our current collection of replacements. We hardly have a quorum!”

“You are referring to Adam Slaughter-Trent, Christine Dark and Mark Martinez, I take it,” Olivia said.

Meteor nodded curtly. “The Lurker, a bloke that’s killed hundreds, is walking around in the clone body of Hiram Hades with all of Doc Slaughter’s memories. There’s no telling what mischief he’s capable of. The Dark girl, she seems all right; don’t have many objections to her, other than the company she keeps. And that Martinez bloke, he’s as bad as the Lurker, if not worse. We’ve already helped him avoid prosecution on multiple charges, which is bad enough, but now we’re about to give him the full powers and privileges of the Legion. That is mad, and a real Council would see that.”

“This is a real fucking council, Andrew,” Ali Fiori said. “Larry and I may be temps, but temps are allowed by the bylaws. So shut the fuck up about it.”

“Hear, hear,” Larry joined in.

“Even though I voted for the affirmative when the motion came to the floor, I do think the matter is serious enough that it might warrant waiting for a full gathering of the Council,” General Xu said. “I second Meteor’s motion.”

“Very well. We have a motion to rescind our previous decision and wait until after the elections. All in favor?” Meteor and General Xu raised their hands. Xu looked pointedly at Darkling, but the Korean hero glared back at him and kept her arms resolutely crossed in front of her. “All against?” She, Larry and Ali raised their hands. Darkling abstained, which was good enough. “Motion failed. The induction will take place tomorrow, as planned.”

Meteor was almost literally fuming, but he didn’t say anything else. It was clear that he and General Xu had expected Darkling to vote with them, which would have resulted in a tie and forced Olivia to postpone the induction. The British hero’s animosity toward the new members was shared by many others. Olivia thought that only Darkling’s respect for her had caused her to waver.

Not for the first time, Olivia wondered if she was doing the right thing. The three new members represented a great opportunity for the Legion, but also posed a potential threat.

She would be seeing them tonight, at a small dinner gathering she and Larry were hosting. It promised to be as interesting evening.

* * *

Adam Slaughter-Trent tried to mingle and be normal.

Dinner had been pleasant enough. Olivia and Larry were excellent hosts, and had carefully steered the table-side conversations away from business. They’d talked about Christine’s world, about the progress the new Legionnaires were making, and exchanged stories about old adventures. Adam’s memories of similar social events were comforting, which helped calm his Damon-self.

After the meal, the gathering moved to the living room, and talk turned to more serious matters. Adam had been quiet for most of the evening, but now it was time for him to speak. Both of his progenitors’ personas hadn’t been much for small talk, but they could make portentous announcements well enough. “You have waited long enough, Christine.”

“I know,” she said. “Will you help me?”

Adam nodded. “We will start with the Words I still remember, and take it from there.” He turned to Olivia and Larry. “We will need a week, possibly two, and a secure location where we will not be disturbed.”

“We can take care of that easily enough,” Olivia said. “Say, a couple of days after the induction ceremony? We’ll put you on detached duty for as long as you need it.”

“That’s soon enough,” Adam said. His Damon-self was still uncomfortable about the number of people who knew the secrets he’d labored so long to protect: in addition to those directly involved in Christine’s ordeal, the Council at large had been made privy to everything, and he knew for a fact that at least two of its members could not be trusted to keep the secret. Meteor would most assuredly talk to his own circle of friends, and General Xu had long been suspected of reporting directly to the Republic of China. Too many people knew that Christine could potentially strip all Neos of their power, or grant more power to those she chose. And too many of those people would eventually reach the same conclusion as to what to do about her.

“Are we going through the whole swearing-in ceremony again?” Face-Off asked.

“Yes. This time it will be conducted in public, so be prepared to have your picture taken a lot,” Larry replied. “After that’s over, you’ll all have to do a ton of interviews for the news and the late shows. It’s customary.”

“Hope they remember to film my good side,” the vigilante said in his typically deadpan voice. “You know, maybe I’ll fly off to New York after the ceremony and do the interviews in person. It’ll give me a chance to visit Condor before I get put on duty and I’m too busy beating up perps in Guatemala or wherever.”

“Sounds good,” Olivia said. “Talk to Public Relations tomorrow morning and they’ll set things up for you. You were already scheduled to make an appearance in the
Late Show
via remote; I’m sure Dave will be happy to have you drop by in person. As long as you don’t impersonate anybody without their knowledge this time,” she concluded with a smile.

“I’ll behave myself,” the ex-vigilante promised.

“The ceremony will feel like a baptism of sorts to me,” Adam said. “It will reaffirm my commitment to the Legion and the world.” His Kenneth-self was very much looking forward to having access to his labs and workshops once again. He’d been quietly consulting with his research teams in an unofficial capacity, but he needed a hands-on approach to better produce results. More importantly, he wanted to put to use his knowledge of the Words his Damon-self had passed on to him. He’d already drawn initial plans for a defensive harness using applications of the Heal Word, which could be used by normal humans and would likely save countless lives once he figured out how to mass-produce the devices.

Not all his knowledge had survived Damon’s death and resurrection, however. Several Words and Sigils had been lost in the process, including the one that had allowed him to travel between worlds. Relearning them would take time, which frustrated him.

“I for one will be happy to go to Cosmic Nerd School instead of dealing with people trying to kill me,” Christine said. “Oh, I also need to testify at John’s trial; I checked the schedule and I’ll have to show up in court about fifteen minutes after the induction thingy. Not looking forward to that.”

“Just tell the truth and follow the advice of John’s attorneys and everything will be fine,” Olivia said.

“I just want to make sure he’ll be all right. I can’t believe it’s been months since the truth came out and we’re still at trial.”

“He will be all right. The US government is just going through the motions at this point. The only reason they haven’t dismissed the charges yet is to avoid the appearance of preferential treatment.”

“Not that anything is going to stop all the anti-Neo dickheads out there from saying Ultimate’s getting away with murder,” Face-Off said.

“That’s the way the cookie crumbles,” Larry Graham replied. “Some people’s ideas will never be shaken by something as flimsy as the truth,” he added with a bitter grin, and Face-Off nodded.

As they said their goodnights, Adam approached Christine. “I’d like to have a word with my niece,” he told Face-Off. ‘Half-sister’ would be the more accurate term, but Christine found it ‘icky,’ so they’d settled for ‘uncle and niece’ as the terms that defined their relationship. Face-Off turned his featureless head toward Christine, and Adam sensed a brief telepathic contact between them, so faint he barely picked it up with his enhanced senses.

“Don’t stay up past your bedtime,” Face-Off said. “Big day tomorrow.” He headed to his quarters.

Adam and Christine rode the elevator to a small terrace in Freedom Hall, one that afforded a slightly less-spectacular view of the island and Liberty City, but which only a handful of high-ranking Legionnaires knew about, making it an ideal place to have a private conversation, doubly so after Adam used a variation of the Word Dim to make sure no artificial sensors could perceive or record them.

“Did you just put up a Cone of Silence?” Christine asked. Adam nodded. “Neat. That’s one of the Words you learned, right?”

He nodded once again. “Once you connect fully to the Codex, you will be able to learn it.”

“That’s one of the gazillion questions I wanted to ask you. Not about a Word in particular, but, like, how many Words are there? And how fast will I learn them all?”

“I don’t know the answer to either question, unfortunately, at least not an accurate answer. I believe there are at least two or three hundred Words in the Codex, and possibly two or three thousand Sigils.”

“It’s not an alphabetic language, then,” Christine commented. “More like Chinese ideograms.”

“I think it’s a combination of the two. Most Sigils have a phonetic component, except that they somehow manage to express meaning for hundreds of different species, some of which do not use sound to communicate. You can write down English words using Sigils, and those words will have power, although not quite as much as the ones in the Wordsmiths’ actual language.”

“Wow. I took a stab at learning Japanese during freshman year, but when I saw just how much time I was going to have to put into it, I gave up. Chicken of me, I know. Which brings me to the other question.”

“How long is it going to take? I learned a dozen Words and as many Sigils over a period of sixty years. I had to overcome the darkness inside me while I did, of course, which slowed down the process. On average, I said it took some ten months of immersive concentration to learn each Word, and about half that for a Sigil.”

“Well, I picked up one Word in about fifteen seconds, except I didn’t really learn it, just sort of skimmed over it and was able to use its simplest form, kinda like baby talk, like knowing ‘Dada’ means the big guy who visits my crib, without really understanding the full concept of fatherhood and all it implies. By the way, do you know how nice it is to be able to go into full techie mode with somebody who will go full techie back?”

Adam had to smile at that. “You have Doc Slaughter to thank for that; that part of me is quite taken with you. I look forward to helping you develop your Genius side along with your connection to the Source.”

“That sounds awesome. Maybe between the two of us we can come up with a workable hypothesis about how the Source works, among other fun stuff. Okay, then. I guess we won’t know how fast a learner I’ll be until we try it. So the next question is, should I wait until I know a few more Words before trying to finally link with the Source?”

“I don’t think waiting is a good idea. Daedalus wasn’t wrong about his projections: he’s known the pace of Neolympian creation has been accelerating at an increasing rate, and he shared his fears with my Kenneth-self, and later with my Damon-self, when I was his involuntary guest two years ago. He was sincere enough, since he didn’t think I was going to live to tell anybody about his plans.”

“Oh. That sounds like a whole big story I’d like to hear.”

“Not much to tell. I was quite insane at the time, and he managed to capture me. That’s when he learned about your existence and my own plans. I escaped, and he left me largely alone until he went after you; that’s when he sent those Russians to look for me.”

“He tortured you,” she said. She could sense his emotions even through his psychic defenses. “I’m sorry, Dad. I mean, Uncle Adam.”