Read New Olympus Saga (Book 3): Apocalypse Dance Online
Authors: C.J. Carella
Tags: #Superhero/Alternative Fiction
Kiev, Dominion of the Ukraine, March 27, 2013
She heard the guards coming before she sensed them; her empathy wasn’t working as well as normal.
Four armed men in gray and black uniforms walked in. Three of them were armed with disruptors; they aimed them at her and gestured towards the wall farthest from the entrance. She stood on the spot they indicated, and a man and a woman entered the cell.
The man was, well, rotund, a pretty big guy, and probably had been body-shamed for it. His head was oversized, and his face was, well, deformed, uh, otherwise-shaped. His eyes were different colors, one green, one solid red, the red one being about four times bigger than the other and a good inch or two lower in the face. The side with the red eye looked like melted wax. He regarded Christine with curiosity and more than a little lust, her empathy reported. Yikes.
The woman was very beautiful, and appeared to be in her late teens, with long raven-black hair and deep blue eyes, prettier than her roommate Sophie’s and certainly prettier than Christine’s own washed-out pale gray-blue peepers. She was wearing a gorgeous lavender gown and matching slippers, and had an amazeballs pearl and rubies necklace, among assorted other fine bling. She looked like a fairy-tale princess, ready to star in her own Disney animated feature.
Except for her aura. Her aura definitely wasn’t Disney feature material. It belonged in a David Cronenberg-Rob Zombie collaboration. Oh, so ugly. It was worse than Kestrel’s, worse than Lady Shi’s even, and she’d been a murderous sociopath with a heart of stone. Only Mr. Night’s aura had been worse than this.
One more guard walked in, pushing a wheelchair. A wheelchair with strategically-placed straps for wrists, legs, chest and neck.
The guy with the mismatched eyes spoke. “She will sit on the chair now.” Between the funky German accent and his referring to her in the third person, Christine didn’t realize he was talking to her at first, and she didn’t do anything for a second or two, which was too long to suit him. He gestured to one of the guards, and he shot her in the leg.
The pain was immediate and crippling. She ended up on her hands and knees, blinking tears out of her eyes.
Her feelings-block was up, but some of the agony must have seeped through.
“She will sit now!”
She sat down, and the guards tightened the straps on her. The one around her neck, right on top the disruptor collar, made it hard to breathe. To keep herself from having a panic attack, Christine described to Mark what they were doing, trying to sound cool and detached.
she said.
Their conversation came to an abrupt halt when weird-eye stepped over and slapped her face, hard. One, two, three slaps. Her face stung and she had to fight not to start crying. Assholes indeed.
“She will all commands obey, and she will not hesitate. Is that understood?”
“Yes.” She was humiliated, terrified, mortified, and sooo very pissed off. Slappy was going to regret laying hands on her.
Mark clamped down on a burst of rage before it could hurt her much.
While she’d been having her mental chat, the psychopathic fairy princess had been talking in Ukrainian with Slappy Bad-Eye. He turned back to her. “The Lady says you are comely, for an American; they are usually too fat for her taste. She adds that if you are cooperative, she may let you share her bed with the Iron Tsar.”
“Uh, thanks?”
Bi-Clops barked an order in Ukrainian, and they all walked out, except Christine, who was wheeled out. The whole place looked like a hospital, clean and institutional-like, with white walls and tiled floors. There were drains every few feet, though, and she didn’t think they were there in case the roof started leaking. She kept sending an ongoing report to Mark, which she found helped relax her. Forcing herself to pay attention to her surroundings was a lot better than wondering what they were going to do to her.
Mark said.
The Ukrainian Welcoming Committee took her to a large lab room. The Red Cube of Doom was there, the thing her father had called the Codex. The symbol-covered rock was floating in the air, suspended in a force field. Several guys in lab coats over green uniforms were aiming assorted devices at it.
Christine felt a surprising burst of anger at the sight.
Hey! That’s my cube! Leggo my Codex, d-bags!
“Why is she smiling?” Crazy Eye said, and Christine realized she’d grinned in real life. Not good.
“Just glad to see the Codex is in one piece,” she replied.
“So she knows what it is.”
“Yes.”
“She will tell us what it is.”
It rubs the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose; I get it, Mr. Psycho A-hole
. Out loud: “The Codex is, uh, a repository of knowledge, like the
Encyclopedia Britannica,
only bigger.”
“Where does it come from?”
“I don’t know for sure. I think it’s a gift from the same aliens who gave us our super-powers.”
Slappy translated her words for the benefit of Lady Yaga. Christine found herself mildly miffed that one of the Big Bads didn’t speak English, then reproached herself for her parochialism. Cultural supremacist much? None of that was important now, of course.
The Mind turned back to her. “We have tried to access the Codex, and failed. The object stubbornly resistant to any form of analysis and probing remains. Even our industrial lasers cut into it cannot. Its composition cannot be determined. She will make it available for study.”
“Okay, I’ll try.”
“No try. She will do.”
Eff you, Yoda.
“Okay. I need to touch it, though.”
That request sparked another discussion in Ukrainian.
Before she could come up with an answer, Baba Yaga walked up to her wheelchair and sat on Christine’s lap. She was very heavy for a woman her size and body type; her weight pressed down uncomfortably on Christine’s thighs. The Bitch of Pinsk put her arms around her and leaned close, way close, until their noses were almost touching. Very invasive of her personal space. At least her breath was minty-fresh.
Baba Yaga wagged a finger in Christine’s face. The finger changed in between wags, becoming longer and thicker. The nail on its end grew into a black talon, at least three inches long. It moved towards her face. Oh, no, no. She tried to move her head, but the straps held her in place. The disruptors kept her from calling a shield, and her protective aura was nowhere to be found. The talon touched her bare skin. Baba Yaga smiled and put some more pressure on it.
It hurt. It wasn’t a deep cut, but the pain as the talon sliced into the skin of her left cheek, right below her eye, was sharp and agonizing.
“The Lady will closely watch during the process,” said Red-Eye. “Any attempt to use the Codex in an unapproved manner punished will be.”
Christine blinked away the tears and looked past the grinning bitch sitting on her lap; out of the corner of her eye she saw Baba Yaga licking the blood off her mutant finger.
Oh, God
. “I get it. I won’t try anything, okay?”
“That is good.” More orders, and one of the flunkies in the lab coats turned off the force field and picked up the red cube.
“Open the left hand.” She did, and the flunky put the Codex in it. She clutched at it.
What if nothing happens? What will they do to me if nothing happens?
She shouldn’t have worried.
Something happened, all right.
Freedom Island, Caribbean Sea, March 27, 2013
The trial was a farce pretty much from the start. Alessandra Fiori, code name Hyperia, watched the proceedings until the temptation to just barge in there and start bouncing people off the walls grew dangerously strong, after which she switched off the screen and took a break.
They were going to railroad John into a quickie execution, and there was nothing she could do about it.
John’s defense team, the senior partners of Dent, Nelson, and Walters, Attorneys at Law, had done their best. They’d asked for a continuance on the grounds that John was still unable to assist in his own defense, and been denied. Another continuance request to extend the discovery process had also been shot down by the Honorable Judge Jocabed Melendez from the Fourth Circuit Court. This wasn’t the first US trial held in Freedom Island; the US Embassy on the island had its own courtroom just for this kind of situation. Some Neos were deemed too dangerous to be held even in the Pyramid, the Arizona maximum security prison where most parahumans being tried on federal charges usually spent their time before their trials. The Pyramid’s warden had declared he couldn’t guarantee his facility could contain Ultimate, so the trial would take place in Freedom Island.
They’d probably carry out the sentence on the island as well. Ali had been told the US Executioner General was on his way already, which spoke volumes about the expected outcome of the trial.
Things were going crazy all over the world. There were demonstrations and vigils happening in most cities in the US and in several places elsewhere, about two-thirds of them in support of Ultimate and the rest against, and there’d been plenty of nasty tussles between the two groups. Freedom Island, ironically enough, did not allow demonstrations anywhere except on specially designated Public Gathering Zones, a ways away from the tourists attractions and main buildings. People trying to start trouble elsewhere had been quickly subdued and kicked off the island.
They probably should shut down travel for the duration. They had done so for about a week after the attack that had started this mess, but the Council had decided to reopen the tourist trade just a couple of days before the trial started. That had been one contentious chat: Ali had argued strongly against the idea, but she’d been shut down by the others. General Xu had pointedly reminded her she was there only as Acting Councilor because Doc Slaughter had seen fit to nominate her as his temporary successor, and her opinions simply didn’t carry as much weight as that of actually elected Council members. The consensus had been to reopen Freedom Island, mostly as a show of confidence to the world. Only Ali and Daedalus Smith had voted against.
Daedalus. He’d been monitoring John’s condition closely. Monitoring, or controlling? She couldn’t voice her suspicions, though, not without risking ending up like Doc or John. If someone was truly behind this mess, they could get to anybody. If she couldn’t even trust what she’d seen with her own eyes – John tearing Doc’s suit apart after beheading the man inside – she couldn’t trust anybody or anything.
The worst part was, she didn’t have any close friends in the Island. Laura Herschel, her manager and confidant, had been murdered in 2010; she’d gotten a new manager, but a new best friend wasn’t so easily replaced. Under her gregarious personality, Ali rarely got close to other people. She’d happily drink and hang out with her fellow Legionnaires, and her reputation as the life of the party was well-deserved, but she rarely shared anything important with them. The one person she’d let all the way in, Jason Merrill, a.k.a. Mesmer, was also dead, killed during the attack on the Island, and they’d been estranged long before that.
She didn’t know what to do, only that she had to do something.
Her wrist-comp rang, the designated ring-tone indicating the call was coming from her personal number. Ali frowned. Only two people had that number. The two dead people she’d just been thinking about, as a matter of fact. Had Jason’s widow decided to dial every number in his directory? If so, that was going to be one awful call. Reluctantly, Ali answered.
The woman that appeared on the screen looked nothing like Mrs. Merrill, who could have run for Miss Sweden; the caller was a brunette in her mid-forties, rail thin, with a long, horsey face framed by a pixie cut. She looked scared. “Miss Hyperia?”
“That’s me. How did you get this number?”
“Uh, it’s a long story. I’m on the Island and I need to see you, but, uh, nobody’s supposed to see us together.”
“What are you talking about?”
“He’s telling me to say this: ‘Sandy: On our first date, I swore to you I’d keep the bullshit down to a minimum; and on our last day together, you told me that we don’t turn on our own.’”
Ali froze. The woman on the other end was saying things only Jason Merrill could have known.
“He’s inside my head,” the woman said. “Well, he’s inside Comatown.”
Comatown was a collective mental construct created almost fifty years ago when several people had become linked in a psychic gestalt, courtesy of a Neo-developed drug called Dreamtime. Jason had been monitoring Comatown on and off for decades. Had he managed to transfer his mind there after he was killed? The woman’s words seemed like damn good proof of it.
“When and where?’ Ali asked.
“He says meet us at your old favorite spot, the one the cameras don’t cover.”
Ali knew exactly what the woman was talking about. “I’ll be there.”
* * *
The Old Archives were six floors underground, beneath the former Administration Building, built back in the early Fifties. The building was now an office annex, and the archive rooms had fallen into disuse. The contents of their dust-covered file cabinets had long been transferred into electronic formats, but bureaucratic inertia had kept the room intact. Nobody was eager to work so deep underground, so nobody came there. The place was locked, but its security door only had an old-school keypad and hadn’t been upgraded with biometric recognition systems. That explained how the woman was already waiting there for Ali. If she was in contact with Jason, she would have been able to enter his ID code; the code wouldn’t be good for much longer now that he was dead, but deactivating the IDs of deceased personnel was way down the list of things that needed doing in the aftermath of the attack.
The woman had turned on the lights, revealing seemingly endless rows of file cabinets. The sight brought back fond memories for Ali. At first, dating Jason had been against the rules: she’d been a probationary member at the time, and fraternization between full members and probies was strictly forbidden. They’d had to sneak around for a couple of years until she became a full member, and had enjoyed it so much they’d kept sneaking around for a while later. Getting it on between the dusty file cabinets and bookshelves had felt like doing it in a library, adding spice to their lovemaking. The vaguely moldy smell brought back pleasant images mixed in with a burst of painful nostalgia for those simpler times. Things had changed a great deal since then.
“Very well, lady,” Ali told the stranger. “You got me here. Time to explain yourself.”
“My name is Kiera Henderson. I took Dreamtime back in ‘71,” the woman explained. “I was fifteen, trying to be hip. I got off lightly; no major side effects, except for the occasional flashback, until forty years later, when I turned Neo. Late bloomer, that’s me. I guess I’m going to look fifty-five for the rest of my life.”
“You look a good fifteen years younger than that, if that’s any consolation,” Ali said.
“Thanks. Anyway, I’d been linked to Comatown all this time; basically the mental construct runs on the minds of everyone who ever took Dreamtime, and apparently their children as well. But when I got my powers I discovered I could interact with it; that’s my Neo power, the ability to communicate with a mental gestalt controlled by a handful of crazy hepsters. Truly awesome. Anyway, Jason’s mind just joined their little collective, and he was insistent I travel to Freedom Island, at my own expense no less, and get in touch with you.”
“I’ll be happy to reimburse you for your expenses,” Ali replied. “Is there any way I can talk directly to Jason?”
“He says I can let your mind enter Comatown, because you’ve been there before.” That had been one insane mind-trip, courtesy of a murderous Neo, during the rather eventful HeroiCon of 2010. Ali wasn’t eager to go back there, but this had to be important. She was sure Jason wasn’t doing all of this just so Ali would update his Facebook page for him.
“All right, let’s do it.”
“Very well. Just lay down and I’ll do the rest.”
Ali did as instructed and Kiera knelt behind her head. Her hands touched Ali’s temples, and she felt a slight tingling sensation; a few seconds later, she was elsewhere, or at least her mind was.
Jason was waiting for her in their old apartment in Legion Hall, back when they’d been a couple. The living room looked just like it had in the 1990s, cozy mismatched furniture and haphazard decorations – neither of them had been gifted with any skill at interior design. A Dizzy Gillespie poster on a wall clashed badly with a traditional Thai sculpture in front of it. Jason also looked the same, a tall slender man with a mop of unruly dirty-blonde hair over his head, his eyes hidden behind thick goggles designed to keep his telepathic probes from violating the minds of anyone he happened to look at. His grin when he saw her was also the same, and it elicited a wave of regret that made her eyes mist over.
“Hello, Sandy.” Jason had been the only person who called her Sandy instead of Ali or Alessandra.
“Jase. I’m so sorry.”
“I appreciate the sentiment, but there’s no time for that right now. The attack on the Island wasn’t what killed me, Sandy. I was murdered. My cochlear implants blew up; that’s what tore my head off. I know all of this because my disembodied soul got a good look at myself before I started to head towards the afterlife, or oblivion or whatever happens to us when we die. Luckily I remembered Comatown and barely managed to make it there. Mouse and his merry gang of hepsters weren’t thrilled to have me, even after all these years, but they let me stay. The point is…”
“Somebody booby-trapped your implants,” Ali finished for him. “And you can’t be the only one.”
“Sandy, I think everybody’s implants have bombs in them. Including yours, which is why I wanted to meet you discreetly. If whoever did this twigs that you’re onto him, your head will blow up too.”
“I don’t think they could have snuck up a large enough charge inside my head to kill me,” Ali replied.
“Do you want to find out the hard way?”
She shook her head. “It’s got to be Daedalus. I don’t remember who was in charge of the last cochlear implant upgrade, back in ‘03, but I’m sure it was either Daedalus or Doc Slaughter, and Doc Slaughter is…”
“Dead,” Jason said. “Kiera told me Doc’s head got torn off by John – but maybe it blew up instead.”
“Oh, my God. Daedalus killed Doc. Framed John. Must have behind the attack on Freedom Island. But why?”
“No idea. The smirking bastard must have his reasons, but do they even matter right now? We have to stop him.”
Ali finally had some answers. What she didn’t have was a clue of what to do next.