The Indestructibles (20 page)

Chapter 45:

Astral Projection

Jane followed Doc into a room in the Tower she'd never seen before, a large, and mostly empty, circular chamber.
He waved his hand and a globe of light drifted off his fingertips. She watched the globe split into two, and then those globes split; suddenly the room was lit by a cool, blue light.

      Doc knelt down and drew strange symbols on the floor. They looked like letters from an alphabet Jane had never been introduced to.

      "Is this dangerous?" she asked, watching him take vials of powder out of his coat and make patterns on the floor with them.

      "You'll be fine, I promise," he said.

      "No," she asked again. "I mean, is it dangerous for you. Could you get hurt?"

      He paused for a moment, studying her; then, smiled.

      "I'll be fine. Done this more times than I can count."

      "I can't handle it if anyone else dies on my watch today."

      "I'm not going to die, Jane."

      "Promise?"

      "It's the best way to find out what we're dealing with," Doc said.

      "I'm not done learning from you. So if you die, I'm gonna hold you personally accountable."

      Jane folded her arms across her chest and watched him finish these preparations. He lit murky incense on fire, talked to things she couldn't see, made symbols in the air with his hands.

      "Do you know where I came from?"

      "What do you mean? We found you."

      "No, I mean . . . what am I? An alien like Billy? A lab experiment?"

      "Why you asking this now?"

      "In case you don't come back," she said. "You're the only one who might know where I came from, and. . . "

      "I'm gonna be fine," Doc said. Then he smiled. "You want to know where I think your powers come from, though?"

      "Of course."

      "You have the Gawain Gene."

      "The what?" Jane asked.

      "The Gawain Gene," he said. "You remember the story of Gawain?"

      "King Arthur stuff? Knights of the Round Table?"

      "Got it in one," Doc said. "Some of the stories say that Gawain's strength came from the sun. That he was stronger as the day went on, and weaker under the evening sky. He lost his duel with Lancelot because it went on too long and they fought into the night."

      "You're saying I'm like Gawain?"

      "Gawain was real, Jane," he said. "A lot of myths were real. Think about all the historical figures — heroes, gods — who derived their strength from the sun. Greek, Egyptian, Norse — every mythology has a sun god. Some of them weren't authentic, and actually were just a way to explain the movement of the sun in the sky. But others were just like you."

      "So, I'm an accident?"

      "You were born special, Jane," Doc said. "What's the one thing all those solar powered characters have in common."

      "They're dead?"

      "They're heroes," he said. "Every so often humanity gets lucky and a hero is born. And they shine in the sun."

      Jane looked at her feet, waved her hands around awkwardly.

      "Don't put pressure on me, Doc."

      "None at all," he said. Then his expression darkened. "Jane, this thing I'm about to do — it might look scarier than it is. Don't panic."

      "How am I supposed to know if I have to jump in and save you?"

      "You'll absolutely know if something goes wrong."

      "Okay."

      Doc slipped out of his long black coat and tossed it aside, careful to not hit any of the symbols he'd drawn on the floor. He pulled his tee shirt over his head and sat down in the center of the room lotus style. Blue-black tattoos from neck to belt and down along both arms covered him. This shocked Jane. Some were identifiable, abstract images of animals or creatures. But most were strings of sigils and symbols, whirling patterns of alien letters, geometric shapes that bent and changed when stared at.

      Then he took off his glasses.

      The smallest of gasps escaped Jane's lips.

      Doc's eyes burned, swirling pools of purplish-red flames, the trails of which drifted out of the corners like an open fire.

      He closed his eyes. And then, he was gone.

      Jane didn't know how she knew; his body remained perfectly still on the floor, but she could tell his consciousness, the part of him that mattered, had disappeared.

      She found an empty bit of floor to sit on and waited, patiently, for his return.

Chapter 46:

The Platform

Agent Black preferred the last helicopter landing pad to this one.

      The new location, much to his displeasure, was a base made to mimic an oilrig in international waters. The sky and ocean were very nearly the same color, a slick midnight blue, broken by stars above and whitecaps below. The chopper's lights gleamed off the water and the rain-slicked landing pad.

      "So we're moving from an underground fortress to a tree house in the middle of the sea," Black said to Rose.

      She was not happy. Spacious and solid, this castle on the ocean's surface, yet the rig still seemed fragile compared to their last base.

      "A tree house in international waters," Rose said. "Boss's orders. They're ready to make their next step and don't want their operatives on American soil, or anyone else's for that matter."

      "That's not alarming at all," he said sarcastically.

      "How many left?"

      It was Wegener who spoke.

      Black and Rose exchanged looks of shock at the sound of the scientist's voice.

      He'd muttered to himself on occasion since his meeting with the Lady, but hadn't spoken to anyone, outright avoiding both of them. But the Lady had chosen to travel by her own means to the oil rig, "riding a giant bat," Black suggested, and Rose shook her head and warned him he was closer to the truth than he even knew. Perhaps her absence had loosened Wegener's tongue.

      "What's that, Doctor?" Black said, cordially.

      It was his job to put a bullet in Wegener's head if he went too far off the edge, but he felt a kind of pity for what was left of the man after his meeting with the Lady.

      "How many experimental children remain? They all gone?"

      Black started to answer, but Rose shook her head.    

      "A few," he said, instead. "You remember. A few were killed when Project Valkyrie escaped."

      "I do," Wegener said. "A waste."

      "We saved who we could," Rose said.

      "Some were better than others," the scientist said.

      They touched down in a listless rain, the mercenaries sent ahead to secure the platform waited, armed but unfazed, more worried about the weather than any actual danger. Two men escorted Wegener away and into the complex. One of the escorts handed Rose an umbrella. When Black raised an eyebrow, the man shrugged in response, embarrassed.

      "What, I don't rate an umbrella?" he asked. The merc started to stutter, but Black jabbed him on the shoulder and told him to get out of the rain.

      "Dammit," Rose said.

      Black followed her gaze and spied another incoming helicopter, bigger and quieter than their own, moving intently, an owl across the night sky.

      "That the Lady's private copter?"

      "I didn't know they were sending someone," Rose said. "Come on."

      Rose shared her umbrella with him and they moved to meet the incoming helicopter on a secondary landing pad. Black was impressed by the machine — dead silent, slick maneuverability, the best money could buy.

      A group of guards in expensive suits who moved like professional killers slithered out of the copter, securing the area. One of them signaled to the aircraft and out stepped another suit, a male, wearing a cloth mask over his face. The emblem of the Children of the Elder Star was etched onto the mask; the eyeholes lining up with those of the squidlike creature the symbol portrayed. The man walked briskly over to Rose and Black, a guard on each side, one held an umbrella for him.

      "I wasn't aware the Children were sending someone," Rose said. "I would have prepared a nicer welcome."

      "No need," the man in the mask said, his voice pleasant, unaccented, American. "In fact, my colleagues think you're doing a hell of a job."

      "I know there've been missteps, but —" Rose began.

      "Please, Rose. Excuses don't become your reputation. If you thought I came here to have you done away with you would've put a knife to my throat already and killed half my men. Even the missteps have worked in our favor, all part of our calculated risks. We harbored no expectations that the Tinder or Hyde projects would survive those tests."

      "And the destroyed lab?" Black said.

      The man waved his hand dismissively.

      "Expensive equipment but cheap property. We got what we wanted, didn't we? A working storm."

      "It works when the Lady tells it to," Black said.

      "You must be Black," the man said.

      "Did my winning personality give it away, or was it the fake eye?"

      "You have a reputation for being blunt," he said. "It's why you were hired for this job. We needed someone to counterbalance the eggheads and . . . where's the Lady? Is she here?"

      "She's making her own way here," Rose said.

      "Giant bat."

      Black couldn't see his face, but knew the man frowned behind his mask.

      "That woman is playing her own game," the man said. "Be wary of her."

      "Every minute she's around, I can assure you," Rose said. "Would I be too bold if I asked what brought you here, sir?"

      "You wouldn't," the man said. "But if you don't mind, I'd like to get out of the rain. These are nine hundred dollar shoes."

      "I'm the designated Voice of the Children of the Elder Star," the masked man said. "It's my job to deliver our premiere message to the world."

      "Which we'll be doing . . . here?" Rose asked.

      They sat in yet another conference room inside the rig, a huge, polished table between them, the walls right out of a corporate suite. If I thought I'd spend this much time in conference rooms, Agent Black mused, I'd have skipped mercenary work and gone into plumbing like my father wanted.

      "Yes. You've given us a series of natural disasters to lay claim to. We have the opportunity to use the storm on the American East Coast and possibly further. It's time to scare the hell out of the world."

      "Another storm assault?" Rose asked.

      "Could I make a suggestion?" the Lady said, walking in unannounced.

      Black never even heard the door open — as usual — convinced she simply appeared in the room out of thin air.

      The man in the mask, visibly thrown off by her presence, maintained a cordial tone.

      "I'm willing to listen to your ideas, Lady Natasha."

      "Please, no need for formalities," the Lady said. "I'd suggest you need something different as a show of strength."

      "Throwing a hurricane at Boston isn't sufficient?" Rose asked.

      "Show them you have your fingers in everything," the Lady said. "Make an earthquake."

      "None of the test subjects had any seismic abilities or — "

      "No, they didn't," the Lady said. "But John, you left something in the city, didn't you? A decade ago. You left a toy behind that would be just perfect for this."

      The masked man rose to his feet.

      "How do you know my name?"

      "Am I wrong?" the Lady said. "On any account?"

      "If you've been spying on me I'll have you — "

      The Lady pointed a dainty finger and it silenced him.

      "You'll never threaten me. Ever. You will maintain a civil tone or you'll incur my deep, deep enmity, and I can assure you that no one has ever benefited from losing my favor. Right now I'm working with you and your people, John, but if you speak to me in that tone again I'll make sure they want to kill you slowly themselves just to get back into my good graces. Am I understood?"

      The man nodded.

      "Now," the Lady said, sitting down gently in a chair at the head of the table as if nothing had just happened, "let's talk about what you left sleeping under the city, shall we?"