Project Northwoods (43 page)

“And your huge, super awesome, no-girls-but-mom-allowed fortress…” Mat started, clearly amused by himself. “… There’s no closed-circuit cameras or guards?”

Arthur shut his eyes. “CCTVs are only as good as the people watching them, and yes, they’re in the Fortress. But from all indications, it’s a jail more than anything else… no one but a skeleton crew is there. ‘Fewer guards’ means ‘fewer eyes watching tons of cameras’.” He nodded toward Talia. “The way Mollie and I have it planned is that the heroes will still have access until I say they don’t… and since we can mess with the camera feeds, they won’t even know there’s a problem until we’re already inside.”

Steven smiled broadly, chuckling. “Damn.”

Talia nodded, taking it all in. “I need to familiarize myself with it… everything. From the uncorrupted plans to the working system itself.” She pulled out a chair and sat down, spreading her arms out wide.

Arthur clapped his hands. “How long will you need?”

Talia scanned the components on the table. “As long as I need…” She shook her head. “Maybe thirty-six hours.” Her eyes went to Arthur, her face serious. “Maybe.”

Arthur smiled at the still-reading and passionately unengaged Allison. He clapped his hands together. “Perfect. That will be enough time to convince Catalina…”

“Convince Catalina of what?” came the harsh question from behind him. Everyone wheeled toward the voice, discovering an incredibly angry looking Catalina at the entrance to the vault. At her sides, the sheepish-looking Paul and Herbert stood.

Arthur looked at Steven, then Mat. “How many of you are there?”

“Shut up,” Catalina ordered as she strode forward. She pointed at Arthur. “You.” She motioned him over. “Now.”

Catalina stood in her office, hands clasped behind her, as she stared at the metal security shutter between her and the street. Arthur sat behind her, watching her nervously. She terrified him to his very core, from her sharp movements to the way her eyes bored into him when he explained his plan to her. She was a predator, practically bursting with suppressed energy.

“I have a quandary, Arthur,” she said, breaking the silence and jostling him out of his stupor. She turned to him, leaning against the shutters. “In about forty,” she checked her watch, “six hours, a cargo tanker is going to be leaving the harbor bound for a pickup in Boston.” Scratching her head, Catalina looked off toward the door before her cold eyes settled on him. “It took me forever to broker a deal whereby all one hundred and sixteen people here could escape.” She blinked, slowly. “One, one, six, Arthur.” Pushing herself off the wall, Catalina took a step toward him. “That’s a lot of people.”

The air was thick with tension, making Arthur shift wormily in his seat. “So’s one hundred and fifty thousand… ma’am.” She arched her eyebrows and nodded.

“That’s the rub, isn’t it?” she muttered to herself. “If we do what you’re suggesting, that could mean the end of it.” She walked toward her desk. “We don’t know what’s going on in there. This kind of action could make the heroes retaliate.”

“And rounding up everyone to throw in a jail isn’t already retaliation?” Arthur asked. Catalina reached her desk and leaned against it. He continued, “Tell me, why is it alright that they’re doing this to us, but if the situation were reversed, we’d be irredeemable?”

Catalina stared at him, coolly. “Because we’re villains.”

He leaned back in his chair. “You sound like one of them.”

Those cold blue eyes drilled into him, sending a chill up his spine. “Arthur, the only reason we’re still here is because we broke the law,” she explained as though he was a child. “We are what we are.”

Arthur rubbed his face, then leaned forward. “We have to fight.” He looked up at her. “The heroes are breaking fundamental codes by imprisoning villains without cause. Our social contract dictates that we have a right to respond with equal force.”

“No, it doesn’t,” she hissed. “We only have that right if they’re willing to cede it to us.” She laughed contemptuously. “Why are you so stubborn? You have nothing to gain by doing this and everything to lose.” Arthur said nothing, but looked her right in the eyes. It was monumental effort to maintain the contact, but he tried. She continued, “Do you even comprehend that, even if Zombress was innocent, what she did that morning…” She shook. “She was prepared to kill everyone in that room.”

Arthur squinted at her. “You know what happened?”

Catalina broke eye contact and looked at the floor, jamming her tongue between her canines and inner lip. She inhaled. “Zombress has many names. And the Queen of the Dead is also…” her voice broke. “The Queen of Fear.” She looked up at him.

He looked puzzled. “I don’t understand.”

“Those who survive wish they hadn’t, Arthur. She… does something… to people.” She tapped her head with her middle and index finger. “Makes them snap. Anyone who can handle it…” Her eyes unfocused, and she looked beyond him. It was the most vulnerable he had ever seen her. To be honest, he had thought her to be completely unfazeable.

“How do you know this?” Her mouth was working, as though puzzling through an unheard question. “Catalina?”

Her eyes snapped upward, regaining their fierceness. He shrank in his seat. She must have realized that he was responding to her, and, to put him at ease, hunched a little. “Years ago, when Allison and I were growing up, we were playing in Central Park. There was… an accident.” She straightened, undid the top button on her shirt, and revealed a ragged scar on her neck, the sight of which made Arthur’s stomach tighten. “Our father saved Allison, but I was as good as dead. Until Zombress was… persuaded… to rescue me.” Lost in the memory for a moment, she shook herself out of it and looked at him. “She heals people by essentially merging with them, willing their body to restore itself. It’s painful and invasive… and in that moment, you are a gestalt entity. And you see…” Catalina was shaking again, her lip curling in anger. “Everything. Everything she’s done, everything she thinks, and this undying…
hate
… for humanity.” Arthur nodded, and she resumed her less rigid pose. “Arbiter had a right… an obligation to kill her at that point.” A flash of anger welled up in him at the comment. “I can’t even blame the heroes for doing what they’re doing,” she said defeatedly.

“It’s a good thing no one asked the self-hating villain,” he muttered, regretting it the moment he said it. It was his turn to look away. He inhaled, slowly, as though doing so any faster would incur a counter-argument. “Look, Zombress didn’t kill anyone they say she did.” Swallowing, he carefully thought out his next sentence, if only to make sure it was released in one piece. “And I’m not even sure she was going to hurt anyone else the morning Arbiter was elected.” He looked up at Catalina, watching as she studied him. “The only way any of this will end well for us – any of us – is if we bring the Fortress down.”

She regarded him, unmoving. “What if it fails?”

He didn’t quite know how to respond at first. After a false start, he offered, “Then at least we die on our feet.”

The silence between them was aching to break. Arthur couldn’t tell from her steely expression if this was going to be the end of it.

“Do you even know where this place is?” she asked.

He was quiet for a moment. “No, ma’am. But Allison said you have people–”

She held up her hand to cut him off. “I have to think about this. You’re asking a lot here, Arthur.” Catalina sighed deeply. “If we can find the place, if we can assault the Fortress, and if we don’t get killed between then and now, it still means that we miss our chance to escape.” She pushed off the desk and went to the door. Her hand on the latch, she pulled the door open and gestured for Arthur to go through it. “You’ll have your answer in an hour.”

June 27
th
, 2011

Morning

“The Fortress of Darkness was designed to be unbreachable,” Arthur began, clicking a slide of the wireframe image he had designed into place. “It was to be a secure location in which to plot, invent, and horde ill-gotten goods. No hero would be able to enter once in lockdown, and no one would be able to leave unless I wanted them to.” He clicked the pointer, and another slide went into place. It was similar, save for digital remnants of corrupted data. “That’s why this is such a formidable prison. The heroes have built this in an effort to house what we believe to be a large portion of New York’s villain population in an almost self-sufficient micro-city.” He clicked several times, showing areas of the Fortress converted to cells and sleep chambers. “We have numerous standard cells, reinforced to prevent a breakout. Further, they are using sleep cells and sedatives to prevent Bestowed villains from using their abilities if released.” He cleared his throat. “Outside of those developed by late-bloomers, light sleep disrupts most Bestowed abilities. These cells are designed to place a captive in an early-stage sleep cycle perpetually. Suddenly waking them up will render them unable to focus, and thus, relatively defenseless.”

Someone in the dark cafeteria coughed. He was grateful that he could see no one looking at him, staring and evaluating his speech. He took a deep breath and, with trembling fingers, reached for a glass of water. “Come on, Art!” one of the quadruplets shouted. A hush of nervous laughter made him cough on the liquid.

Setting the water down, he clicked another slide, this one the standard wireframe next to the doctored heroic version. “From what we’ve gathered, the heroes have opted to use this as an automated prison. There are no indications that there is a heavy guard presence.”

“So what’s stopping us from storming in?” came an unidentified question.

Arthur cocked an eyebrow, and clicked on a new slide of electrical schematics. “This. It was designed to keep people out. You don’t have the codes, you don’t get inside.” He blinked and swallowed dryly. “Also, you’ll get blasted into the night sky.” He paced in front of the slide, briefly illuminated by the digital projector’s light. “I wrote this system to be impossible to crack. Unless I’m in control, I’m out of luck.” He paused for effect. “Forever.”

Someone in the front row, barely lit by the slide, raised her hand. Arthur pointed at her. “What’s the point of telling us this if your badass system is so impossible to breach?” The tone was annoyed, with a hint of impatience.

Arthur smiled. “We have some secret weapons. Talia Illyanovich, for one, can reverse age non-living material. We can force the system to its initial startup, where…” he trailed off. He was too protective of Mollie to let too many know of her existence. “Where I can make myself the rightful head of the system,” he said, omitting the particulars. He took a breath for the next part.

“And then what?” someone shouted. Arthur made a mental note that maybe his future henchmen should be mute. “How do you suggest we get 150,000 people back here?”

Another smile, wide and insidious, crossed his lips. “We don’t.” He clicked on another slide, revealing New York City’s 2009 villain statistics: 143,752 registered villains; 57,501 super villains. “Basically we’re dealing with a small, densely populated city at best and the world’s biggest sardine can at worst.” He clicked a button, and the number 57,501 took prominence on the screen. “We can be sure that all Bestowed villains, no matter how unimportant they may appear, are housed in this facility, if for no other reason than to make sure they do not mingle with the criminal element found at other correctional institutions.”

When no one made a smart aleck response, he continued: “This number is far too great to move any substantial distance without severe loss due to a forced march, any wounded in their initial capture, and the inevitable…” He clicked the slide, showing a picture of a Mark V Search Drone. Numerous lines pointed to the sleek surface, revealing troubling components: cameras, armor, gun pods, missile racks. “The new Mark V’s are more than just trackers. They combine the riot stopping power of the Mark I’s with the surveillance advancements of the Mark IV.

“But they won’t find us if we stay right here.” He clicked for the next slide, a wireframe image of the Panopticon. Two of the five floors were highlighted with labels. “We dig in, entrenching into the Fortress. And, from there, we broadcast to the world what’s going on.” He clicked a button, and the new slide revealed a communication array at the top of the tower before it swept down the building to show four other beacons. “PR alone won’t save the day, but it may be enough to put pressure on the heroes to do the right thing and let everyone out.”