No Master Plan Here (Madness Runs in the Family) (12 page)

             
And it distracted Mind^Body enough that he didn't notice the second grenade that rolled beneath his feet. The spherical grenade came to a stop with a red dot oriented directly at Mind^Body. The explosion, unlike the first grenade, was directed in a small cone, the force and shrapnel striking the hero in the chest and sending him flying. He hit the ceiling at an angle, bounced off, and hit the ground. Anansi immediately felt the weight lift from his limbs, just in time to get grabbed by the collar and spun around to face an angry looking White Tiger.

             
“I'm going to beat you so bad that your mother won't be able to identify you,” the hero said, his hand pulling back for a strike. Anansi brought his head forward, forcing White Tiger to dodge the headbutt and causing his strike to hit Anansi's shoulder instead of his helmet. A knee to the groin caused White Tiger to release Anansi and sent him to one knee. Anansi boxed him in the ears and dealt a knee to the hero's chin.

             
[White Tiger disabled. Unconscious. SWAT members recovering from stun grenade.] Anansi turned, brushing his duster behind him, using the movement to draw another grenade and toss it between the SWAT team. It exploded in a mess of black goo that adhered to the men. The more they struggled against it, the more it pulled them to the ground, until none of them could move.

             
“It's been fun, gentlemen. That will let you go in an hour or so. Have a good one.” Anansi activated his teleportation rig and disappeared from the preparation room in a flash of light.

             
He reappeared beneath the stage of the ongoing rally. He could hear Congressman Lowe making his speech, telling the enraptured audience how dangerous it was for them and their families to have unregistered superhumans walking the streets. How everyone would be safer if the government knew and could hold accountable all of the people with powers. It was for the good of everyone, he said.

             
Anansi snorted. “The good of everyone but the people you want to suppress,” he muttered as he rigged explosives to the underside of the stage. “Everything is for the good of the people if you tell them so,” he said as he placed another charge.

             
“It is for the good of the people,” came a voice behind him just as Kay warned him there was someone behind him. Anansi spun and came face to face with Archangel. He had seen the man's face on television, the internet, and in newspapers. Lucas Lockheart, Archangel, Class Four Works Type who was the public face of a new government organization that was being formed to police supers. He was tall, muscular, and handsome, and Anansi couldn't help but hate the guy for his appearance of the stereotypical good guy. He didn't even wear a mask. It was all part of the ploy to prove that you didn’t need an alter-ego to be super, so long as you worked for the government.

             
It made Anansi sick.

             
“You can't prove that. This is just gun control, but worse, because it infringes on the liberties of people. Next thing they're going to do is start rounding up supers so that they can start cutting us up and figure out how we work.” Anansi took a step away from the hero, who stayed put.

             
[Flee. He is too powerful for you to do anything to him.]

             
[I know that. Give me a teleport location in the crowd. We are making a run for it.]

             
Kay gave him coordinates at the edge of the crowd, where it was sparse enough for him to teleport into without any risk of injuring anyone. Archangel took a step forward.

             
“You cannot use violence to cause anything but more violence, and the government will not be sending us off to internment camps. This isn't World War Two Germany.” Above them, Congressman Lowe's speech was reaching its crescendo. A pause for applause, followed by him calling out to the crowd for support.

             
“America did that too in World War Two. To anyone who looked Asian. Read history. We're no better than the other guy except that we won, and we used violence and propaganda to do it.” Anansi took another step back and detonated the explosives he had set. It wouldn't take out the stage, but it would probably take out Lowe. That would have to be enough. At the same time he activated his rig, teleporting from underneath the stage to the edge of the crowd as the stage beneath Congressman Lowe was ripped apart by an explosion. The crowd stared for a moment and began screaming. Anansi watched as Archangel shot into the air and looked for him. Time to run. He teleported again, arriving fifty yards down the road, spared a glance to look back, and saw Archangel streaking at him like a bullet.

             
Oh, crap.

Chapter 11

             
June 11, 2017

              Denise looked at Anansi, his face expressionless, as the door continued to pound behind her. The way he and Kay were both silent made Denise think that the two were talking over the neural link between the two. She hated being left out of the conversation, but she wasn't certain how to influence it.

             
Finally, after what seemed to be the better part of an eternity, Anansi nodded. “Tell me, Denise. Is SX-203 the threat that Spark told me it was?”

             
Denise nodded. “Probably more dangerous. In simulations, it generates a higher probability of Class Four and Five supers than naturally occur from a sample group, and the higher the power of an individual affected by SX-203, the higher the chance that their powers go haywire. Depending on the power, the effect could be minimal, or it could be catastrophic. I don't know why Archangel stole it, but I can't see anything good coming from it.”

             
Anansi nodded again, seemingly satisfied with her answer. He snapped his fingers and the door opened, sending Stone stumbling in as the target of his punch was no longer there. He dusted himself off and glared at Anansi, who shrugged.

             
“Sorry about that. Slight glitch in the system caused the door to shut. No harm, no foul, right?” he said, smiling winningly like nothing out of the ordinary had just happened. Stone looked to Denise, who gave him a weak smile and nodded.

             
“All's good.” Stone snorted and walked from the reactor room. Denise sighed and looked back to Anansi, who had tucked his hands into his pockets and started to walk from the room. Kay walked over to Denise, the blue-green hologram looking rather severe.

             
“We will talk after this. I'm watching you,” said the AI. She pointed two of her fingers to her eyes, then pointed them at Denise. Denise stared at the hologram for a moment, wondering what possessed the AI to act so differently than her master. Maybe he had directed her to do so? Unlikely. In all her time dealing with Anansi, he had always dealt with his own problems directly, preferring not to have anyone else handling whatever business he needed to accomplish.

             
Denise walked into the main room to see Anansi standing over a console, Spark hovering over his right shoulder, with Stone standing off in the rear. Another hologram of Kay flickered into being on Anansi's left. Denise looked back into the reactor room to see the first hologram gesture sternly that she was watching her before disappearing. Denise shook her head. Whatever was going on, she would figure it out eventually.

             
Denise joined Stone behind the group at the console and leaned up against the wall beside him. Stone glanced down at her. “He knows?” he said at a level just above a whisper. Denise nodded. Stone looked back to Anansi. “Looks like he's still with us.”

             
“For now,” Denise muttered, wondering if that was true. Anansi seemed to have changed very little in the past few years. More grey in his hair, but it made him look distinguished and mature, at odds with the way he rarely took anything seriously except his experiments, his family, and politics.

             
The platform in the center of the room began to hum, the air shimmering above it like a mirage. A flash of light caused Denise to avert her eyes, and when she looked back, a pair of crates occupied the center of the platform where they hadn't before. Anansi jogged to the crates, cracking them open and talking to himself as he inspected the contents. When he was satisfied, four spider drones skittered from the walls and began dragging the crates from the room and down the east hallway.

             
“Ladies, gentleman, I will be changing, and then we can head out. I have a pretty good idea where Archangel will strike next, and when I'm ready, we can go there in style.”

-~-~-

              Anansi opened one of the doors in the southern hallway, leading the members of SHIP inside. As in the rest of the base, the walls were white and mostly featureless, however, here the ceiling was much higher and had an unfinished look to it, lacking the white plating in favor of steel girders and framework. A seam ran down the center of the ceiling. On the floor was a series of concentric circles painted in red, and in the center of the circles rested a vehicle of the likes that Denise had never seen before.

             
It had wings, a fuselage, and a tail, so Denise assumed it was some sort of plane, but she couldn't see any apparent engines on the wings or body. The body seemed to resist attempts to look at it directly, like it was a mirage of some sort, but it appeared, for the most part, white. Denise wasn't sure if it was because the rest of the room was white or not. It looked sleek, smooth, like something from an 80s cartoon about the future.

             
“What do you think,” Anansi asked, gesturing to the plane. Spark blinked several times, trying to get her eyes to focus properly on it.

             
“It's weird. Is it supposed to be all fuzzy like that?” Spark said, rubbing her eyes. “Hurts my head.” Anansi nodded.

             
“Yeah. It's a sort of refractive camouflage. It works on the part of the brain that overlooks things, convincing it that you don't need to recognize what is there. Just look off to the side or not directly at it, it'll stop hurting your head.”

             
Anansi started walking across the hangar towards the plane. Denise noticed that he walked differently, now that he was wearing his...costume wasn't the right word. When Jacob put on the outfit, the equipment, the gear that was associated with Anansi, especially the helmet, he almost became someone else. Someone more confident, ready to take on the world. He was always joking outside of the mask, but there had always been an underlying nervousness to it, like he wasn't sure how else to react to people.

             
She wondered if she had ever noticed it before.

             
When Anansi came within arm's reach of the plane, a hole opened in the side and a staircase lowered. He stopped at the door and turned back. “Hey, Stone, you're going to need to change back to your less massive form. This isn't rated for quite that much weight.” Stone nodded, closing his eyes in concentration. The transformation from Stone seemed smoother than to. The rocky texture of his skin receded, eventually evening out and becoming pink, then the tan of his normal skin color. Stone adjusted his bodysuit and rolled his shoulders, the joints popping loudly.

             
“That's much more like it.” Anansi hopped into the plane. Denise followed, with Spark and Stone in tow.

             
The inside of the plane continued the theme of smooth lines and curves, but instead of white, it was warm browns and tans. To the left of the doorway was the cockpit, where Anansi was sitting down into a leather seat and plugging himself into a port at the control console. A second, empty seat, was in the cockpit. To the right of the doorway was a passenger compartment that could have come from a luxury private jet. Seven recliners lined one side, and a door in the back led further into the plane.

             
“If you all will grab seats, we can head out,” Anansi said. Denise looked back to her fellow agents and nodded towards the passenger compartment before moving into the cockpit and taking the copilot's seat. The door shut behind Stone and with a hum, the plane began to ascend. The bay opened, sending a shower of dirt tumbling down past the plane as it rose into the sky, and with a whine, the plane screamed off over the trees.

             
“Fifteen minutes to target. If you want drinks, there's some in the fridge, but there's no food because last time I used this was a few years ago. I reserve the right to eject anyone I feel like from the plane at any time, so play nice,” Anansi announced to the plane with a chuckle. Denise rolled her eyes and leaned back in the chair, watching Anansi as he leaned back in his chair, hands behind his head, completely relaxed as if he wasn't controlling an advanced piece of machinery with his mind.

             
“You haven't changed at all,” she whispered, shifting in her seat to find a more comfortable position. Well, a less sleep inducing position. She didn't want to be groggy when they arrived at the laboratory they were heading to. Not that her gear made sitting comfortable, but the chair was pulling her into its embrace and she was beginning to feel groggy.