The Prospects (Book 2): Nothing Poorer Than Gods (5 page)

“Want a drink?”

Noah didn’t move.

Alex sipped the water. “You’ve been here for hours, you must be thirsty.”

Noah took the cup and stared at Alex as he drank.

“We’ll take turns,” said Alex. “I’ll answer your questions, you answer mine. Deal?”

Noah stared.

“I’ll start by answering yours,” said Alex. “The boy with wings, Gary, took a bullet to the arm, but it was a clean blow-through wound. Marcia, the nurse, recovered from her shock. The crab-handed woman …”

“Ruby,” said Noah.

“I didn’t ask for her name, so that doesn’t count. Her neck is bruised but nothing’s crushed. Joey has six abdominal stab wounds. He’s stable. Those are all the survivors we brought back. I’m not saying that’s all of them. A few ran off into the woods. We have an APB out to bring them into our protective custody.”

“Pig-Girl?”

“Dead, and it’s my turn to ask a question. What were you doing on that farm?”

“Living in peace. Who are you?”

Alex flipped his badge. “Agent Alex O’Farrell, MAB. My turn. If you lived in peace, why did people come to kill you?”

“They wanted the live ones. The companies that experiment on humans will kill to keep their secrets.”

“What companies?”

“My turn. Stormhead is one of the New York Guardians, and that team is sponsored by Griffin Industries, right?”

“Two questions, but yes and yes.”

Noah crushed the cup. “Then I answered yours. Griffin Industries is one of the companies.”

“Griffin Industries gets money by reverse-engineering supervillains’ weapons and collecting royalties from films, comic books, and merchandise related to its sponsored superhero team. They don’t do human experiments.”

Noah leaned against the wall. “Either you’re lying, or you were lied to.”

Alex almost retorted before he remembered he was standing in an island he didn’t know existed a month ago, which was owned by a company run by a man who wanted him to die. “Let’s go back to questions. Do you have any proof?”

“You met Joey. Griffin Industries’ logo is on the back of his neck. What are you going to do with him?”

“We don’t know yet.”

“Will you cut him apart him apart before he dies?”

“We’ll keep him and all of the survivors safe.”

“Until you get the order to dispose of them?”

“We’re heroes. We protect people.”

Noah laughed sarcastically. “Heroes. Those who fight to make sure there’s no place in this world for people like me.”

“That wasn’t a question, so I won’t answer it. The MAB is searching your farm. Are they going to find bombs, doomsday weapons, plagues, or anything else you want to tell me about?”

“Two rifles and a shotgun, used only for hunting. Why were you looking for us?”

“Pig-Girl got a lot of attention. I did some digging and found a picture of you. I wanted to find out what an escaped killer was up to in a place with lots of monster sightings. It was pure luck we found you so quickly, and coincidence we showed up when you were being attacked.”

“You couldn’t leave my people alone because I committed crimes in the past?”

“Them, I don’t know about. You still have a debt to pay to society.”

“Prison. Of course. There is no other place for those who are in this world. You heroes fight to keep it that way.”

“I read about your crimes. You robbed and murdered. You weren’t working for social change.”

“I am all I was allowed to be.”

“Tomorrow night, a chopper will take you back to a maximum security metahuman prison. I have no more questions.”

As Alex closed the door, Noah reached out. “Wait. One more thing, please.” All four of his eyes watered. “Tell Joey this isn’t his fault. I wanted Pig-Girl found.”

“Leaders don’t cry.” Alex closed the door.

Stormhead asked, “What else did he say?”

“He’s a villain, but he’s not the bad guy here. I know you don’t handle the business side of things, but does Griffin Industries do human experiments?”

“Of course not. Why would you ask that?”

“Our deal was you’d be honest about everything related to the New York Guardians and Griffin Industries. If you’re not, I’ll leave and take the Prospects with me.”

“I would never be a part of company that does something so evil.”

Outside, it was twilight. Steve and Pete stood beside Joey’s bed in the middle of the island. The boy gently stroked Billy Two’s head.

When Alex approached, Billy Two bleated and ran away.

“That goat hates you,” said Pete.

“He has a good reason. Steve, give us some light.”

Alex lifted Joey’s head and moved his hair aside. Steve created a gently glowing ball. On the base of Joey’s neck was an asymmetrical birthmark.

“That looks familiar.” Alex flipped through his phone until he found Griffin Industries’ logo - a winged lion with an eagle’s head. “Exactly the same shape, down to the tail.”

Stormhead’s jaw dropped.

“You lied,” said Alex. “I’m through with you,”

“I had no idea. I’m as shocked as you are.”

“I’m leaving tonight with Trista. Steve and Pete, watch Kayleigh until the helicopter comes back tomorrow morning. She should be on her feet by then.”

“Don’t go,” said Stormhead. “We have to find out more.”

“I’ll have the MAB tear Griffin Industries apart with a thorough investigation.” Alex ran to Trista’s cabin and knocked on the door.

No one answered. The lights were out.

“Goddamn it, where is she?” asked Alex.

“That weird scientist, Doctor Von Dyme,” said Steve, “he and his robot took her to the medical ward.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know.”

Alex glared at Stormhead. “What’s Harry up to?”

“He never asks permission for anything. He does what he wants.”

“And he’s a mad scientist who makes world-altering bad mistakes … oh, shit, he has Trista.”

Alex kicked the doors to the medical center open. “Where the hell is Trista?”

Deon said, “Doctor Von Dyme took her downstairs.”

Alex looked at the back of Gary’s neck. There was no Griffin Industries logo. “He’s not from a lab?”

“He’s a late-onset mutant,” said Marcia. “Ruby was born like she is. I’m a gamma-radiation victim.”

“Were there others from Griffin Industries?”

“No. Pig-Girl and Lou had Alerion Incorporated’s logo on their chests.”

“That doesn’t surprise me. Alerion Incorporated does shady things to turn a profit. It doesn’t make it okay that Griffin Industries does it too. If anything, it makes it worse.”

Jenny leaned up. “Wait, what does Griffin Industries do?”

The lights flickered. A loud hum echoed through the building.

“What’s Harry doing?” Alex ran down the stairs.

In the level below the medical room, Trista stood over a table. Her head was directly over Pig-Girl’s. Magna shoved a long prod between Pig-Girl’s legs. Harry tapped a series of buttons at the other end of the table. Pig-Girl’s body twitched furiously.

“One more time,” said Harry.

“No more times,” said Alex. “This is the sickest thing I’ve ever seen.”

Harry said, “If you knew more about Giovanni Aldini’s experiment with George Foster …”

“Spare me the history lesson. Trista, pack your things.”

Trista blinked repeatedly. “So many thoughts at once. It was like reading a book while it was thrown at me.”

“What did you see?” asked Harry.

“Don’t care,” said Alex. “We’re leaving.”

“The main thing I got,” said Trista, “is that it isn’t a girl’s mind in this body.”

Alex pulled Pig-Girl’s up shirt to reveal a circular pointed bird-shaped birthmark under her right armpit. “I can tell you something else. This is Alerion Incorporated’s logo. This monster was made by Griffin Industries’ biggest competitor.”

Stormhead came down the stairs. “That’s interesting. Maybe they’ll have more information.”

“I’m sure you know more about this than I do,” said Alex.

Stormhead made eye contact with Trista. “Read my mind and tell Alexander everything I know about these human experiments.”

“Don’t order her around,” said Alex. “She’s my …”

“He knows nothing,” said Trista.

“You don’t take orders from him, you take them from me.”

“Agent O’Farrell, please,” said Trista, “we’re trying to find out more about the killers. Doctor Von Dyme reanimated Pig-Girl with electricity so I could read her, or rather his, mind.”

Magna’s glass eyes turned a lighter shade of blue as she put her head next to Pig-Girl’s. “There is practically no wear on the teeth. That is impossible unless all of its teeth came no more than a year ago.”

Alex said, “Why is no one listening to a word I say?”

“If you want to walk away, Alexander, you can,” said Stormhead. “As for me, I intend to save lives and stop killers.”

“Me too,” said Trista.

Alex got face-to-face with Trista. He felt the cool tingle under his skull when she made a psychic link with him.

These people almost got us killed last month,
he thought.
We can’t trust them.

She thought,
You told me to do what it takes to become strong again. This is it.

Alex broke eye contact. Trista let the link break.

“We have the body of a ten-year-old girl with signs of being only a year old, a mind from the wrong gender, and our sponsor’s competitor’s logo,” said Stormhead, “but I think we should start with our own company’s involvement.”

Harry said, “I can’t say much. I joined Griffin Industries after the gene splicing business was phased out.”

“Harry,” said Stormhead, “you knew about it?”

“Only that I refused to get involved. My genius is for mechanical and synthetic physiological processes. Genetic engineering quickly gets too unethical for me.”

Alex said, “Great. The guy who built an army of tiny psychotic robots finds it unethical.”

“He also built me,” said Magna. “My reformatting proves Harry can atone for his mistake.”

“If this concerns Griffin Industries, there is a man who can give us all the information,” said Stormhead. “I will tell the crew to prepare the helicopter. Trista, will you join me?”

“Not without Agent O’Farrell,” she said. “I take orders from him, not you.”

Two hours later, Trista, Stormhead, and Alex sat in a helicopter as it flew over the Catskill Mountains in upstate New York.

“I’m not proud of how I acted during the interrogation,” said Stormhead.

“We’re all stressed,” said Alex. “I got in a fist-fight with Bart.”

“I couldn’t stop thinking about the car Quad-Clops blew up. I was close enough to see the father. He saw me. In that instant he went from fear to hope to despair to recrimination. I was a superhero who could not save him or his family. Never before had I felt so useless.”

“Most heroes would’ve been useless in that situation.”

“I relived that moment a thousand times. If I hit him with lightening instead of taking cover, if I covered Golden Gryphon so he could’ve gotten closer, or if I took a different position, that family would be alive. Those twin girls would be in high school now.”

“You saved others by defeating Quad-Clops.”

“But if we hadn’t fought him, if we let him get away with a bank’s vault full of money, their insurance would’ve covered the loss. No, there was no victory. Sometimes it seems all we do is minimize damage.”

“The MAB is preparing his old cell for him.” Alex’s phone vibrated. “Hey, it’s the MAB’s main line.” He put it to his ear. “Agent O’Farrell.”

“Good, I got transferred through. This is Sheriff Johnson at Duchess County. We arrested a metahuman tonight who demanded we call you.”

“Who?”

“Candilyn Wizz … I hate these Polish names.”

“Wyznowski?” Alex immediately pictured her toothy grin and spiky dyed hair. “What’s she in for?”

“Either murder or attempted murder. The dirtbag she admitted to putting in critical care is a known criminal, but all the same he has rights. We’d appreciate you stopping by. She’s not exactly a model prisoner.”

“When can I visit?”

“To shut her up, anytime. We’ll send her upstate to facility better designed for metahumans if no one poses her bail.”

Alex put the phone down. “Stormhead, can we stop in Poughkeepsie on the way back?”

“It’s on the way,” he said.

Alex picked the phone up, said “I’ll be there in a few hours,” and hung up.

“What happened to Candilyn?” asked Trista.

“She tried to kill someone.”

“Oh. Who and why?”

“I’ll find out.”

The helicopter landed in a field outside of a recently built mansion. Jim Griffin waited for them on the porch. He wore a housecoat and had a pitcher in his hand. “Can I offer you a drink?”

“It’s ten p.m.,” said Alex. “Seems a little late for that.”

“It’s lemonade. I’ve been sober since retirement. And look at you all concerned about appearances. I used to be the one in a suit.”

“We don’t have time for pleasantries,” said Stormhead. “Tell us about the human experiments done by Griffin Industries.”

“That’s no way to greet an old friend. Do you have any experiments with our logo on the island now?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Throw them in the ocean. Problem solved.”

“We want information,” said Alex, “not advice.”

Stormhead said, “Trista, read his mind.”

Jim raised his hand. “Don’t. My mind is no place for a young lady. I’ll start in the seventies. The Cold War was a lot hotter than most people realized. That’s back when people believed superheroes could actually change the world. The Soviets didn’t waste time considering the ethics of genetic engineering or how complex it actually is, they tried to build their own superheroes. They sliced and spliced until they had an army of insane monsters. Uncle Sam didn’t like that, so the Company got involved.”

“Right,” said Alex. “Griffin Industries.”

“No, not my company. The Company, spelled C-I-A. Someone named the Handler marched into my office one day without an appointment. The weirdest thing is I could never recognize him. I’m good with faces, but every time I saw him it was like looking at someone new.”

Stormhead said, “Why did he contact you?”

“For Project Cold Warrior. The goal was to make all-American cloned superheroes under their network of shell companies so the commies’ spies in the military wouldn’t know about it. He made it sound like a competitive offer between us and every company with a R&D department and a defense contract.”

“That is so messed up,” said Trista.

“That’s what I said. He told me to cooperate or they’d kidnap my researchers and make them work for the other companies. I got to tell you, the Handler is more ruthless than any those idiots in purple suits who rant about world domination.”

“At least you tried to reject it,” said Stormhead.

“I let the Handler do what he wanted with my people. We built a cloning facility to create blank bodies based on DNA supplied by another company. We were required to include the Griffin Industries logo on our creations to differentiate them from Alerion’s clones.”

“Wait,” said Alex. “Do we still have a cloning facility? We can use that to save Lady Amazing.”

“No, and you wouldn’t want to use it. The scientists mixed human DNA with parts from animals to make things with the strengths of both. They customized assassins to kill the Soviet’s creations. Some of the things that came out of the vats were completely inhuman. I don’t know why one company designed those things or what the next company did, but we did our part.

“And then, Handler said it was over. My employees dismantled the facility and sold off the machinery for scrap. It was over before seventy-six, I remember celebrating the bicentennial with a toast to forgetting Project Cold Warrior.”

“Why did it end?” asked Trista.

“The Russians lost control of their monster army. Those abominations went wild. It took the whole Commie army to destroy those things. Some are still hiding in the former Soviet states. And the CIA figured that could happen here. They could barely keep their program under wraps. Even with military-level security, every now and then one of those clones developed enough of a free will to escape.”

“The live ones,” said Alex.

“Yeah, that’s what the hunters called them. When the project ended, Sergeant Hammer said he and a few other government goons slaughtered every god-awful creation and incinerated their remains in a nuclear test.”

“Sergeant Hammer?” asked Trista.

“He did nasty stuff when he wasn’t a superhero. So did Charlene, but at a different time with the Air Force. Alex, if you heard the stories they told me, some of the shady shit they did on government orders, you wouldn’t blame me for being suspicious of the MAB. I assumed the whole legal recognition thing was another shady government scheme.”

“The ones on the island are too young to have been made in the seventies,” said Alex. “Could someone be using your technology again?”

“Doctor Hellgrun stole the blueprints and genetic codes to build his squid-man army on what’s now Griffin Island, but the Scientific Six dismantled everything. That being said, I have no idea what other companies are up to. It won’t be the first time my competitors stole my patents.”

“I’ll call the MAB and start an investigation,” said Alex.

“You don’t want to do that. The CIA started it, and I’ll bet my bottom dollar they’re still involved. They can barely keep track of what they’re doing, but they keep tabs on every other government agency. Best thing to do is destroy the evidence and pretend you didn’t see anything.”

“We should at least investigate,” said Stormhead.

Jim shook his head. “Sure, whatever, mister hero. Stick to your ideals. Ignore the guy who made more compromises than he can admit to and outlived almost all of his friends. It won’t bother me too much to see a few more die.”

“You tried to kill your enemies along with hundreds of innocent people,” said Alex. “My plan worked better than your Plan Failsafe.”

“Some wars you can’t win. They kept everything a secret for this long, they’ll kill to do it again. Take a look at your psychic sidekick. Can she kill? Can you let her die?”

Alex looked back at Trista. Trista bit her lip.

“You’re already in over your heads. Don’t go any deeper.” Jim stood with the help of his cane and walked to the door. “Next time, come earlier in the day.”

As they returned to the helicopter Alex said, “I don’t know what to do, but I’m not throwing anyone into the ocean.”

“Sadly, that advice is consistent with his leadership,” said Stormhead. “He created the Golden Gryphon battlesuit as an advertisement for his business. He only became a superhero to advertise the battlesuits, which no one wanted to buy because they each cost as much as a tank but are less useful.”