Project Northwoods (23 page)

“We…” he started.

“
He
,” Tim interjected.

Arthur rolled his eyes. “I wanted to do something to make myself feel better after today.”

“We found Talia in the Guild,” Tim skipped ahead a bit. “She said someone called her.”

“Zombress was there,” Arthur hastened to explain. Ariana cocked an eyebrow at the mention of the name.

Tim inhaled deeply. “There was something about Desert Ranger and some goon from the Italian Mob.”

“A
dead
 goon,” Arthur muttered.

“Dead?” Stair asked, her voice going up an octave.

Tim ran his hand through his hair. “Then… oh, for villains’ sake…” He went to the couch and collapsed on it, covering his face with his hands.

“The place just exploded…” Arthur shook his head. “I have no idea what happened to anyone else there, but Tim and I got out as quickly as we could.”

He looked up at Ariana as she slowly nodded. Her mouth was quivering downwards, eyes alternately darting between the floor and ceiling. Arthur recognized the look, but he couldn’t for the life of him figure out why she was about ready to cry. She shrugged a shoulder, her arms folded. “What, did you guys go to a girlie bar or something?” She looked at Mollie, then Arthur. “You expect me to believe this?”

She turned to leave. Arthur ran in front of her to prevent her exit. “It’s the truth, Ari!” He grabbed her arm and looked her square in the eyes. The moment felt awkward, and a wave of déjà vu swept over them. Arthur let her go.

Ariana turned to Tim, who had chosen to sit up on the couch. With a shuddering breath, Ariana asked, “Are you cheating on me?”

The question seemingly was pulled from nowhere judging from Stair’s shocked expression. She looked at Mollie, and a text bubble appeared on screen, her way of whispering the ‘OH, SHIT’ that everyone was thinking. The three others immediately felt the stomach-knotting tension explode.

“Ariana…” Tim tried to soothe his girlfriend by leaping over the couch and grabbing hold of her.

“Don’t touch me!” she yelled, yanking herself away.

“They are not lying!” Mollie squeaked pleadingly.

Arthur’s voice matched Ari’s volume. “We’re all telling the truth! Look, my sister was there…”

“What?” Her voice was a half-roar, the verbal equivalent of the look of outrage from Tim.

Arthur grabbed Ariana and stared into her eyes. “She shot at me when we tried to escape. And she actually hit Tim.”

Tim nodded and was immediately back on Arthur’s side. “Right in the back of the damn head.”

“I swear to you, Ariana,” Arthur said firmly, “I wouldn’t lie about something this serious.” Ariana studied his eyes and face. He
was
serious, which wasn’t unusual. But there was a further tinge to it, something which poisoned his usual demeanor with a sense of urgency. “Tim loves you.” Unnoticed, Stair watched wistfully, her eyes drifting to Arthur as the twang of longing bit at her gut.

“Fine. Say I believe you.” She pushed herself away from him again. “But how do you explain taking advantage of my father?”

Arthur reacted like he’d been slapped. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“My father, you irresponsible twat!” She took a step toward him, and he instinctively backed away for fear of a very real slap to his face. “It doesn’t matter that he’s in the poorhouse and all but forgotten. Oh, no, you’re perfectly willing to dredge up the past of someone who has tried to move on!”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about!” Arthur shouted, backpedaling. He racked his brain as fast as he could, trying to put together who her father was. Tim, quickly realizing he was off the hook, ran back to look out the windows.

“Don’t play dumb, you waste of DNA!” She jammed a finger into his chest surprisingly forcefully. “You wrote to him asking for help.” Her eyes were cold and fierce as she sneered. “I honestly thought you were above stooping so low.”

“I wrote to a lot of people, Ari!” he yelled, trying to find the right words to defend himself. “I researched for hours at the library, remember?” His hands were caught in the limbo of trying to figure out a gesture to go with his argument, but nothing really worked. Finally, his hands collapsed to his sides. “I had to figure out what went wrong so I could make my death ray fool-proof!”

She folded her arms and smirked. “How can it be fool-proof when you’re the chucklefuck designing it?”

Arthur glared. “Woman, I have had just about enough…”

“Woman?” Ariana asked as though she needed clarification. She stepped toward him. “Lovelass, I swear…”

“Um, problem…” Tim said, almost choking on the words.

Arthur laughed, antagonizing her further. “What, you gonna sic your daddy on me?”

“My father was ten times the villain you would ever be!” she charged.

Tim looked over his shoulder at the two of them. “P…” Tim swallowed. “Problem!” He returned to the window. Stair got up and gave the two bickering adults room to argue as she moved toward Tim.

Arthur’s voice was carrying far enough to start to echo. “So which idiot was he? The one who had the genius idea to put a shiny red self-destruct button in easy reach?”

“Please, you wouldn’t be able to handle building anything that complicated.”

“Why, did whatever sheep he was fucking at the time have to help him with the wiring?”

Ariana grabbed him and whipped him around. “I’m gonna rip your arms off and beat you to death with them!” she yelled as she shoved him backward. She cocked her arm back.

“PROBLEM!” Stair and Tim yelled in unison.

“WHAT?” Ariana and Arthur shouted back, their looks of enmity now focused exclusively at the two stopping them from punching each other.

Tim had already peeled away from the window and ran toward Ariana. “Hit the lights and get down!” She let go of Arthur as Tim grabbed her and brought her to the ground. Arthur dove toward the light switch and flicked it off. Stair had collapsed in a ball underneath the window.

“What’s going…” Arthur didn’t have time to finish as a spotlight broke the darkness. He half-leapt, half-collapsed toward the couch as the beam pierced the darkness. It was an uncomfortably bright beam, designed to assist a high-speed digital video recorder. Unseen, Mollie winked off the moment the light barreled into the room. The air seemed to buzz as the beam swept the apartment, showcasing the specks of dust wafting through the air. Arthur could hear Ariana breathing raggedly and Stair, poor Stair, crying. He slowly crawled toward the noise, trying to stay below the line of sight.

The light died as he reached the girl. His eyes didn’t adjust to the sudden reintroduction of darkness, so he guessed where her face was. “You okay, Stair?” He waited for what he guessed was ample time for a head shake or nod.

“A search drone… what was a search drone doing here?” Ariana asked.

“Now do you believe us?” Arthur asked in a whisper.

“Dude, shut up,” Tim scolded.

Arthur felt compelled to hug Stair, if only to show her that it was okay. Not that he’d be able to keep his own fearful shaking away from her. Despite that, imagining her father’s angry face made him second-guess his impulse. He opted to put a hand on her surprisingly icy shoulder instead. “It’s okay…”

And she was on him, latched and quivering. He felt the tears on her cheeks smearing on his own skin. The grip was chokingly strong, and he could hardly move without taking her entire body weight with him. “I want my dad. I want my dad. I want my dad…” She said it forcefully at first, but it gradually devolved into a whisper, repeated and pleading.

“What are they looking for?” Ariana asked.

“All we know is there was a fight,” Tim explained. “This started because a goon corked it in a brawl with a hero.”

Ariana looked toward the window, her eyes readjusting to the darkness. “I don’t think this has anything to do with that.”

“Someone else died in the explosion,” Arthur said, shifting his weight so Stair wasn’t so firmly squeezing his throat.

Tim grunted. “That’s what Julia was saying.”

“Did you stick around to catch up?” Ariana grunted.

“Shot. Back of the head. Remember?” Tim was growing irritated with the conversation. “I guess I should thank the heroes for switching to rubber bullets. The real ones are even worse.” The night grew quiet as the search drone found other floors and buildings to be more interesting. There must have been a half-dozen elsewhere, searching for Talia or Zombress or whomever they were trying to blame for the situation. “Art, why did you write to Ariana’s father?” Tim asked. “I only ask for the sake of peace.”

Arthur inhaled sharply only to have Stair squeeze tighter around his neck as he exhaled. “And her father is?”

“Ari, would you be so kind?”

“Purgatory’s Inventor,” she said with inordinate forcefulness.

“I didn’t know he…” he trailed off. Arthur struggled with where to put his hands for a moment, before finally giving up and keeping them pinned to the floor. “I sent him a copy of my blueprints. I wanted a professional’s opinion before I went to the board. I didn’t…”

“It’s fine,” came her curt cut-off. No one said a word for a while, and the odd creaks and groans of the building shifting became all too similar to silence.

It grew too much for Arthur, the quiet amplified by his crouched position. He carefully stood up, hefting Stair as he did so. The tiny girl was a dead weight, barely shifting as he threw an arm under her legs while his other supported her back. “Don’t let them take me…” she whispered. “I want my dad.” He looked at her. She had shut down, staring into the distance without focusing on anything.

“I’m going to take her back,” Arthur said as he strode toward the door.

Ariana got up and went for the light switch. “No use in wallowing around in the dark, I suppose.” She flicked the light up, everyone except Stair bracing for the change. But nothing happened. “Damn it,” she hissed as Arthur reached the door. “Must have popped a breaker.” She opened the door, expecting light to spill in from the hallway. But there was only the sound of shuffling and whispered questions that expanded into the room.

Tim got to his feet. “This… sucks,” he offered unhelpfully.

Arthur stepped into the hallway, the sound of his co-habitants slowly walking toward the stairwell and downward a constant thrum. “It looks like everything is off,” he said to the others. Tim grabbed hold of Ariana’s hand and led her into the hall. “Go check it out. I’ll take care of her.”

Neither of them needed his permission. Before he had said ‘out’, they were already moving toward the flow of people, away from Arthur. He walked at the rear of the throng. Stair clung tighter to him as people banged into them, unapologetic and scared. Whatever was going on was unprecedented, and, instead of an electric thrill, the tremor of fear was palpable in him and others.

If this uncertainty was what others had to deal with in the Silver and Golden Ages, he was perfectly content to live with the boredom of the Bronze.

He reached Dervish’s apartment at the far end of the hall and found it to be unlocked. The blinds were pulled up, allowing moonlight to make it slightly easier to navigate. It was almost a carbon-copy of his shared apartment, only slightly larger and missing the kitchen in the main living room. Two miniature Irish flags flanked the hallway, and numerous yellowing newspapers adorned the walls. Stair’s father appeared to be the star of each of the antagonistic articles. ‘New IRA Super Villain Destroys Caravan’, ‘Two Dead and Thirteen Still Waltzing after Army Attack’, and ‘Dervish Threatens Dublin’ were the three Arthur could make out as he made his way to the smaller, and he assumed her, bedroom.

But the chamber was so spartan, so barren, that he immediately shut the door and headed to the larger suite. Even in the darkness, the overt pinkness of everything was an affront to the senses. Arthur soldiered in, leaned on the bed, and Stair melted off of him. She rolled away from him and toward the window.

Arthur watched her for a moment, then turned to leave. He stopped when his eyes fell on a desk with a fairly large mechanical insect on it. Picking it up, he was surprised at the weight and the solid workmanship of it. Wires hung loosely around the joints, no doubt the machine’s nervous system yet to be harnessed to the whole.

“My mom loved bees,” a meek voice explained to a question no one asked. Arthur partially jumped at the noise. He turned around to see if Stair had turned to face him, but she was practically motionless. Unseen, he nodded. He understood her more than she probably knew. He set the bee down and left, shutting the door gently behind him.

Arthur softly padded into the living room so as not to keep the girl awake. “You try to keep them safe, you know?” The Irish-lilted voice startled Arthur, as he was used to it yelling at him. Instead it came out in a slow, dreamy fashion, unsettlingly consistent. Dervish, sitting in orange pajama bottoms and a green t-shirt, reached for the whiskey on the coffee table. He made no pretense for a glass: the bottle itself would do.

“I’m sorry, sir. I had just come home–”

Dervish cut him off. “But they grow up… they see all the stupid things you did and they can’t help but take right after you.” He brought the bottle to his lips, then hesitated. “After everything that happened, I just want her to be happy… marry someone who’s nothing like me.” The whiskey spilled haphazardly around his mouth, but he didn’t seem to mind. When he stopped, he shook his head. “Here. It was supposed to be different.” His eyes darted to the window. “They’re all going outside to see what’s going on,” Dervish said, shaking his head sadly. “And of course, that’s the whole point. Get them all on the street.”

Arthur looked at the tantalizingly close door. This was the nicest Dervish – or, really, anyone that day – had been. Arthur was intrigued by the smoothly flowing words. “Why?”

Dervish was captivated more by his mind’s eye than Arthur. “In 1988… when all those Heroes’ Guilds were bombed, the NATO countries adopted parts of the new American system. And with it…” His voice trailed into nothing. It was an upsetting feeling, being spoken to like he wasn’t physically there, but Arthur couldn’t help it now. “I was never a villain. I was a soldier.” He nodded to himself as he pulled on the whiskey bottle, the liquid sloshing noisily inside. “But they tried to force the Bestowed to pick a side.” Arthur knew that much to be true, but dared not to rush his narrator. “I loved my country. A united Ireland…” Dervish nodded at the thought. “There was a goal worth fighting for.” Tears glistened in his eyes. “I fought… I fought so hard for the IRA…” The whiskey bottle released itself from his grip and fell to the floor with a glassy thunk. Arthur wanted to grab for it, but Dervish didn’t seem to mind its new position.