New Olympus Saga (Book 1): Armageddon Girl (22 page)

It didn’t really matter. Things were
already in motion and they would be over one way or another long before
Chastity and the dagger became an issue.

Things would have been already over if
the fucking girl hadn’t escaped.

If Mr. Night and the damn Ukrainians
didn't find her soon, he would have to go with Plan B, and that scheme had a
much lower chance of success. He was hopeful they would succeed. The target was
little more than a child, and wholly ignorant of her abilities and the way this
universe worked. She should be easy prey. If she wasn’t, he’d go with Plan B
and roll the dice. The stakes were well worth the gamble.

Taking over the world wasn't for the
faint of heart.

Daedalus forced his customary smirk back
into place and strode into the bedroom.

Hunters and Hunted

Chicago, Illinois, March 14, 2013

God is in the details. Take care of
enough details, and you could kill God.

Mr. Night tittered at his own witticism.
On the next street over, a wino sleeping off his last binge heard the laughter,
went into convulsions and choked to death on his own tongue. Mr. Night noted
the man’s passing with a smile. Another little detail ironed out. Seven billion
to go.

He walked the dark streets of Chicago and
the few people he passed by got the hell out of his way. The walk was
inconvenient, but the same protections he had set around his place of business
to prevent pesky interlopers – like one Mr. Damon Trent, a.k.a. the Lurker –
from interfering with his business also made teleportation there impossible. He
had instead arrived to Chicago in a blind alley a few blocks away. The
exertions of this evening’s travels had left him feeling a bit peaked, but he
managed the walk nonetheless.

The third-floor office in the low-rent
building beckoned him. The building was empty at this time of night and most of
it was vacant anyway. Although he never misbehaved there – don’t shit were you
eat was good advice as well as a delightful expression – most people didn’t
find him an agreeable neighbor. Only one fellow tenant had remained in the
building for more than six months after Mr. Night moved into the neighborhood,
and he was a sour old accountant, a secret serial killer with a soul as black
as coal, just the kind of fellow who would feel warm and cozy in the vicinity
of Mr. Night and all his works. One of these days Mr. Night must pay him a
friendly visit to get acquainted and exchange stories. The murderous accountant
would not survive the experience, but in the end he was yet another detail to
iron out.

The receptionist was at her desk when he
entered the office. Wanda never left her desk, and would never leave it until
he finally released her into that good night. He had recruited her from a local
morgue, a nice young woman who had run into a mugger with a sharp knife and a
taste for death. Wanda’s corpse had been fresh when Mr. Night appropriated it,
and she still looked rather nice, if perhaps a teensy bit gray around the
edges.

Wanda looked up when he walked in: her
eyes were devoid of emotion or personality. The dead woman’s soul and
consciousness were trapped inside a very special place of Mr. Night’s creation,
screaming her notional lungs off in utter agony and despair, along with a
select few others. The poor girl must be quite insane by now. The thought
warmed the cockles of his heart, darn him if it didn’t.

“Any messages, my dear?” he asked her
politely.

Wanda's dead eyes glanced at the computer
on her desk, then back at him. “Mr. Twist left instructions to call him
tonight,” she said in a pleasant voice.

“Thank you, Wanda. Carry on.”

Mr. Night entered his inner sanctum, a
small office with no decorations except for hundreds of complex geometric
figures only he could see. His energies were at a dangerously low ebb, but here
he would replenish them. He sat on an old rolling chair, put his feet up on the
desk and enjoyed a moment of peace. Mr. Night nominally worked as the
troubleshooter for two different conspiracies. Even for a man of his skills it
was akin to juggling a dozen knives while blindfolded. The current situation
wouldn’t last much longer, however. The girl’s arrival had seen to that.

Her escape from the grasp of one of the
conspiracies was troublesome, but he hadn’t been surprised. She was a creature
of Mr. Night’s worst enemy. The girl was a tool designed to destroy everything
he had worked so hard to achieve. Unfortunately she was also an indispensable
element for the plans of Mr. Night’s true superiors. If you juggled knives
blindfolded, you’d inevitably get cut. His great adversary had the advantage of
having access to both the Source and the Outside. Mr. Night only served the
Outside, and his grasp over It was weaker than he wanted to admit, even to
himself. Direct action was luckily not his purview. He was much better at
pulling strings and letting useful idiots do most of the heavy lifting. 

Speaking of useful idiots, he had a call
to make. Thaddeus Twist owned the Global News Network, several movie studios
and controlling interests in dozens of other corporations around the world. All
the wealth and power the man wielded were secretly dedicated to one end: the
eradication of Neolympians from the world. Mr. Night had been working for Twist
for several years. The billionaire trusted him, and thought he was a loyal
human agent. He was wrong on all accounts.

The media magnate wasn’t used to be kept
waiting, and it was getting late. Mr. Night dialed a very exclusive number, one
that led directly to Twist’s personal wrist-comm. A few seconds’ later, the
billionaire’s face appeared on the screen.

“Night. Took you long enough. I’ve been
trying to reach you for hours!”

“My apologies, Mr. Twist,” he said
meekly. It was best to let certain people think they were in charge. “What can
I do for you?”

“You could start by telling me you have
located Smith’s facility.”

“I’m afraid I don’t have the exact
location just yet,” Mr. Night lied with great conviction, since he had just
returned from said facility. “I am certain it is somewhere in the vicinity of
New York City, however.”

“New York… Are you sure? If we have to
strike there…”

“Some collateral damage is going to be
unavoidable, sir,” Mr. Night said. “We are talking about saving seven billion
humans from the tyranny of five thousand freaks.” Twist didn’t say anything for
several seconds. Mr. Night kept his peace, letting the billionaire convince
himself without any further prompting. The man thought he was saving humanity
from the Neolympian plague. His intentions were good through and through, and nothing
was deadlier than a human convinced he was doing the right thing.

Twist shrugged. “Keep at it, Night. We
are going to need that location as soon as possible so we can make arrangements
to take it out. Meanwhile we have a war to arrange.”

“I will keep in touch, sir.”

Twist hung up.

Twist and his followers wanted to save
humanity. The second conspiracy he pretended to serve sought absolute power.
Both groups were unwittingly doing his bidding and moving closer towards his
own goal: a lifeless planet stripped of life and sentience once and for all.

Mr. Night sat back and let the darkness
feed him. The dance was on, and he was calling the tune.

Chapter Eleven

Christine Dark

New York City, New York, March 14, 2013

It was late, but Christine was too wired
to sleep.

Mark had shown her to a guest bedroom,
which was bigger than the dorm room she shared with Sophie back on Earth Prime.
The room had a thirty-inch TV-slash-computer computer screen on a big
desk with a comfy rolling chair, a king-sized bed, a personal bathroom, and all
the amenities of a five-star hotel. Lying on the bed were fresh towels and a
very plush bathrobe. He’d wished her a good night and left.

Christine was tired, but there was no way
she was going to sleep without checking out Earth Alpha’s interwebbies.

The differences and similarities had her
head spinning fairly quickly. First of all, this wasn’t a home computer but a
terminal tied to a bigger system. She wasn’t sure if that was the case for all
home systems or just Condor’s; something else to go on the Giant List o’
Questions. Mouse, check, screen, check, keyboard, check, no surprises there. A
retina scanner, interesting. When she fired off the computer, the Microsoft logo
greeted her and she burst into laughter. The power of the Gated One was truly
great!

The graphic user interface wasn’t exactly
like any she had ever used before, but it was close enough for her to figure it
out. She fired off Hypernet Explorer and went surfing. More differences to add
to the pile. Not Internet but Hypernet. Not World Wide Web but XanaWeb, which
was apparently short for Xanadu Web. On Earth Prime,
Xanadu
had been a
crappy ‘70s movie, as far as she could remember. In this universe web pages
were labeled xw.whatever.something instead of www.whatever.something. She tried
to open Wikipedia, but instead found Hyperpedia, which was like Wikipedia and
the Encyclopedia Britannica combined; Britannica had been absorbed into
Hyperpedia back in the 1990s; they had stopped releasing it in printed format
in 1996 (she found that out by doing a Hyperperdia search on the origins of
Hyperpedia, of course).

Christine grinned like a Cheshire cat on
loco weed. This was her chance to pare down the Giant List o’ Questions! Wiki,
er, Hyper away, oh cyber-explorer!

A few seconds later, she backed away in
frustration. To get to the full articles in Hyperpedia, she needed to log on
with her XID, whatever that was. She Googled it (yay Google!), and found it was
short for Xanadu Identification. Again with freaking Xanadu.
Okay, how do I
get one of those, and is it a good idea?
she asked herself.

Well, you could ask the big talking
computer Condor uses
, her brain answered.
Easier
than Google.

Well done, brain. I will recommend you to
all my friends
. Out loud: “Computer?”

“Good evening, Christine,” the computer
said. “You have guest privileges in the Lair. How may I help you?”

Beam me the frak up, Scotty!
The computer made Siri sound like a half-wit. “Er, I wanted to
know how to get an XID, Also, if I get an XID, will I be risking detection by
the bad guys looking for me?”

“Getting an XID requires you to register
a username and a biometric signature. It is done at no cost, and is nearly
impossible to track, as long as you restrict yourself to passive observation.”

“Okay, so I won’t start a blog or open a
Facebook page,” Christine told herself. “Thank you, Computer. You can go away
now.”

“You are welcome. Good night.”

She registered as Nonl33td00d92, which
surprisingly wasn’t taken. The retina scanner took a picture of her eyeball,
and now she had an ID which apparently was good for just about everything in
the XanaWeb. And no need to remember a password, since your password was your
retinal pattern, which you pretty much carried inside your eye sockets
everywhere you went. Neat and neater.

Back to Hyperpedia. Full access granted,
I am your Queen and mistress, bow to me and kiss my l33t feet. Okay, she
admitted to herself, getting an ID wasn’t exactly a hax0r achievement, but still.
She wondered how well hackers did in this world. Probably not very, if people
with super powers could track them down to their parental-basement hideouts.
Having an ID permanently tied to you would also not be helpful to maintaining
anonymity. Lots less a-holes with Internet balls throwing virtual feces around,
too. Spammers would be on the same boat. A world without spammers and trolls?
Talk about paradise!

So many questions, so little time. Maybe
a bit of history first? Christine wasn’t a big history buff; she’d taken some
basic courses, and aced them because acing courses was what she did, and with
an eidetic memory remembering dates and places wasn’t a big deal to her. Her
problem with history was that it wasn’t neat, not like mathematics. The dates
and events were set in stone, but the causes and effects were debatable at
best, and historians disagreed about them as badly as fanboys at a Comic
Con. Still, she knew the basics, so she might as well start with World War II
and at least catch the Cliff Notes. One of her boyfriends (the domineering
d-bag who enjoyed making her feel like shit) had been a history major who
specialized in that conflict, so she’d done a bit of extra reading on it in a
pathetic attempt to get his approval.

So let’s see. 1939. Invasion of Poland,
check. In addition to tanks and artillery, the Nazis led their attack with the
Teutonic Knights, which included a flying guy who could throw lightning bolts,
another that could punch out a tank, and assorted other odds and ends, emphasis
on the odd. Apparently some of the Knights had been normal guys in costumes who
were used for propaganda purposes. You just couldn’t trust Nazis in any
universe.

Moving on. Phony War, check, then the
Nazis attack France. Battles, Nazis kicking butt and taking names, mostly names
like Pierre and Henri. Dunkirk evacuation after the French and Brits get zerged
and pwned. British Neo called Meteor fights the Teutonic Knights over Dunkirk
and helps protect the evacuation of the retreating Brits. Yadda yadda, the US
stays neutral, yadda. Invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, same as in Earth
Prime. Later that year, Pearl Harbor, ditto, except that the Kami Warriors,
Japanese superheroes, hit Pearl alongside the fighters and bombers and inflict
even more damage.

1942. Freedom Legion is founded and
recruits a bunch of US superheroes and mystery men (and women, you sexist
pigs). More battles. Slaughter Raid on Japan; that one replaced the Doolittle
Raid from Earth Prime. It wasn’t a slaughter, it was led by a guy by the name
Doc Slaughter. Battle of Midway, check. Neos fought on both sides. One of them,
a guy called Janus, sank the battleship
Yamato
and the carrier
Amagi
single-handedly and killed Admiral Yamamoto. That had to hurt. Guadalcanal,
check, but the Japanese never come back. Back to Europe. Stalingrad, check.
Stalin and most of the Soviet high command get killed.
WTF?
Okay, let’s
get some details.

The Russians had their own group of
super-peeps, called the Heroes of the Revolution (predictable much?). Two of
them, Medved (the Bear) and the Hunter, were BFFs. Their bromance ended
tragically when the Hunter was executed for defeatism during Stalingrad. Big
oops. Bear guy runs all the way to Moscow from Stalingrad, storms the Kremlin,
crushes Stalin like a grape and does the same to just about every Soviet leader
in Moscow until an armored division and the other Heroes of the Revolution
chase him away. Moscow gets pretty battered in the process. The Germans still
get reamed at Stalingrad, though.

1943. Very few checks, things are pretty
damn different. The Germans and Soviets keep hammering on each other but then
both sides start having major problems in the Ukraine. Some guy called the Iron
Tsar is arming partisans with effing
ray guns
and building robots and
death machines and other fun stuff, and using them on both sides in the name of
an independent Ukraine. He also encourages most of the Heroes of the Revolution
to defect and raises his own army of Neos, including a scary lady going by the
name Baba Yaga who allegedly massacres entire Nazi and Soviet armored divisions
by her lonesome. The Soviets just weren’t very good at keeping their
superheroes happy, apparently.

 In the Pacific, the Japanese are getting
beaten much faster than in Earth Prime’s history. Their Kami Warriors get
killed pretty quickly, and Janus, who also happens to be the first black
superhero, sinks entire fleets and destroys island garrisons without any help.
Elsewhere in Asia, another super-guy, the Dragon Emperor, takes over Mongolia
and invades China, killing Japanese, Communist and Nationalist Chinese and
anybody else who gets in his way.

1944. D-Day at Normandy, check, but
spearheaded by the Freedom Legion. Ultimate the Invincible Man takes out most
of the Teutonic Knights. The article insists D-Day could not have gone off
without the Legion, which is kinda funny, except on Earth Alpha the Soviets are
not doing too well and the Nazis have a lot more troops to defend in the
Western Front, so maybe it’s not that funny after all. The Iron Tsar and his
super-weapon-wielding army take over the Ukraine and chunks of Belarus, Poland,
Russia and everywhere unlucky enough to have a border with it. The Ukrainians
use some flying saucer-like ships to bomb the crap out of Moscow and assorted
other places. The Soviets never get into Eastern Europe except parts of Poland;
they are too busy fighting the Iron Tsar.

Late the same year, Hitler gets
assassinated by a group of disgruntled officers and the Mind, one of the last Teutonic
Knights. It’s a tough world for dictators without superhuman powers. The
Germans try to negotiate peace, but the Allies are in no mood and the Germans
finally surrender unconditionally when Patton and the Legion are about to reach
Berlin by April of 1945. The US and Great Britain finish off the Nazis by
themselves, mainly thanks to the Freedom Legion. VE Day is a little earlier
than on Earth Prime.

A few weeks later in Asia, Janus kills
the last of the Kami warriors and has a sit down with Emperor Hirohito, who
orders a general surrender. A bunch of military leaders refuse the order, so
Janus kills them too, until the rest figure that surrender is the way to go.
The US never drops nukes on Japan, although regular bombing had pretty much
leveled almost all its cities already.

The post-war settlement was completely
different. The Soviet Union gets very little out of the peace settlement,
partly because there isn’t much of a Soviet Union left after the
super-Ukrainians are done pasting them and helping several Soviet Republics to
revolt and secede, and partly because a Neo by the name Daedalus Smith unmasks
a bunch of Soviet spies embedded in the US late in the war, which makes US
president Truman none too eager to let the Soviets get anything good.

The Allies do some skirmishing with the
Iron Tsar but are too war-weary to do much about him, and a peace settlement
allows the Dominion of the Ukraine to keep most of its territory. The Soviets
get kicked out of Poland and are forced to declare Belarus an independent
republic, too. There’s no Cold War in this world, since the Soviets remain a
mess, never develop nuclear weapons, and end up becoming puppets of Ukraine.

There are two Chinas, a Republic and an
Empire; the Empire holds Mongolia and the more thinly-populated interior of
China, and most of the people and the money stay in the Republic. Mao gets
killed by a Chinese Neo and with little Soviet support the Chinese Communists
never get anywhere and are hunted down by both the Imperials and Nationalists.
The Republic of China becomes a major US ally.

Whew. Christine checked the time; she was
beginning to hit the wee hours, and she was getting sleepy. Even Neos needed
sleep, or did they? A quick Google search revealed that if they didn’t get
enough sleep Neos eventually went insane, so yeah, they needed their beauty
rest.

But there was so much she needed to know!
Just a couple more searches…

Mark found her passed out at her desk the
next morning, drooling all over the keyboard. Very embarrassing.