The Other Eight (27 page)

“Nonsensica,” Non Sequitur said over the
radio.

No reply.

“Chloroplast, answer,” he said. Still no
reply. The silence was eerie, unnatural and complete. It took a
moment before he realized that the reason the silence was so
complete was that the music had stopped, and he hadn’t removed the
sound-canceling headset. He pulled it free and turned to suggest
Phosphor do the same when there came an intense, white-hot pain in
his side, and the world dropped away.

Possibly minutes, possibly hours later, he
woke to a horribly familiar scent. ANFO. He opened his eyes and
tried to focus without much success. He was back in the bomb
room.

“Well, look at that, I would have bet a
thousand dollars Mr. Sapp would have woken up first.”

Non Sequitur looked toward the voice, which
was as familiar as the smell—but since it had never been in a
position to blow him to pieces, it had failed to make the same
impact. With a bit of effort he finally got his eyes to cooperate.
Standing before him, with a gun in one hand and something quite
like the detonator in the other, was Major St. John. He had a
swollen cheek and the beginnings of a black eye.

“Mr. Sapp—that’s Chloroplast by the way, I
don’t know if you’ve been formally introduced—scored so high on the
endurance tests I thought for sure he’d wake up first. Bravo!”

Non Sequitur surveyed the rest of the room.
It was really rather crowded. Piled against one wall, one on top of
the other, were Johnny On the Spot, Hocker, and Chloroplast. Each
of them had their hands and legs restrained with zip ties. From the
feel of it, the same thing restrained his own hands, and his legs
were secured to the chair with two more. The bomb still held a
commanding presence in the room, and to his right between himself
and the door sat Nonsensica. She was awake, similarly restrained,
and with a piece of duct tape over her mouth. Her eyes were filled
with a mixture of fear and anger.

“You? How did you get in here?”

“They’ve got this place set up for both
aboveground and belowground battles. These halls lead all the way
out to the other side of the field.”

“You did all of this?”

“Yes. Well, not quite. I’m not done yet.
There’s still the backup detonator to apply. I’ve got to tell you,
this did
not
go as I’d intended. I don’t know if it will
have quite the impact I was hoping for, but I’m sure we can work
the drama angle to gain back in human interest what we lost in
scale. You see, the plan was to blow the whole training ground with
all of you in it. The winners, the losers, the troops, the
cameramen. Everybody. It was going to happen on live television and
streaming across the web. Seen by millions simultaneously. It would
have been glorious. I suppose I got greedy though. Those rating
numbers and website hits just kept creeping up. That dance routine?
Huge
hit! It was going viral before it was even over. But
then I realized you were dancing them out of the facility, and if
you got too many of them too far away then there would be
survivors. Couldn’t have that. And
then
I realized that a
whole batch of you weren’t on camera anymore. At that point I
wasn’t terribly surprised when pushing the big red button didn’t do
anything.”

“Maybe you should have put countermeasures on
it.”

“I would have, but when the military trains
you to wire detonators they teach you to make them safe, not
volatile. At least, that’s the case with the training
I
got.
On the plus side, they do teach you to build both remote detonators
and these timer ones,” he said, waiving the new detonator. He
leaned down and inserted it into the ANFO. “Ten minutes ought to be
sufficient. Plenty of time for me to get out there and get an
alibi.”

“Why? Why do any of this?”

“Do you really need to ask that? Look at you
two! You aren’t proper superheroes. I should need something like an
impossibly rare chunk of an extinct planet to take your powers
away, not six inches of plastic, a piece of tape, and an
off-the-shelf stun gun. By the way, did you know that trying to use
a stun gun on a person in a latex suit doesn’t work very well?
Hence the black eye. Had to use it twice on our flamboyant friend.
The earplugs and such made it simple to sneak up and take each of
you down otherwise. But I digress. A superhero, like every other
part of the military, is a tool. Now a tool is a useful thing, no
matter how crude, but the real step forward for humanity wasn’t
when we started
using
tools. Do you see carpenters searching
the forest for the perfect rock to use as a hammer? No. The real
leap into the future happens when you start
making
tools.
This recruitment and enlistment effort was doomed from the start.
It taught us a few things, but those of us with any vision always
knew that if we wanted a hero we could use, we were going to have
to make it.”

“How?”

“The same way we do everything else in the
military. Money. We build a fire, and we shovel government funding
into it until we can pull what we need out of the ashes. And a
superhero that laughs at bullets and lifts cars over his head, a
real
superhero? That takes more money than DARPA’s willing
to part with. So we put this thing together. Get a real bunch of
characters. Get the public invested in them. Then blow them up,
live on TV. Pin it on a super villain. The public would demand a
real defense against super villains, and the money would come
pouring in. That’s why I didn’t want any of you to survive. People
would want the survivors to be the heroes to defend them. I’ll have
to figure out how to get rid of the rest of them later, I
suppose.”

“So you were behind the fertilizer heist, and
that detonator thing… but those aren’t bags of fertilizer. The army
is bound to figure out it wasn’t those villains.”

“Of course they’ll know it wasn’t the
villains. Do you realize the state of military forensics these
days? They could take a swab from a bomb crater and tell you what
chemical plant produced the fertilizer and on what day. And the
amount they stole? Not nearly enough to do the job. Best to bring
in the professional grade stuff. Tell me, did that Bomb Sniffer
girl track it down for you? I thought ANFO wouldn’t have triggered
her powers…”

“If you know the story won’t fly, then why
even try it?”

“The heists weren’t for the military, they
were for the public. A nice clear trail of breadcrumbs for them to
follow. And once they sink their teeth into the story I’ve laid out
for them, the truth will just seem like a cover-up. I have layers
upon layers of plans to keep the real investigators off my trail,
never you worry.”

“So which one of those super villains were
you planning on pinning it on? Or were you going to come clean and
take credit yourself?”

“Me? You think
I’m
a super villain?”
he asked, genuinely taken aback by the question. “What could give
you that idea?”

“Well, if hatching an elaborate scheme to
kill a team of superheroes wasn’t enough of a giveaway, the fact
that you waited until I woke up so you could monologue about it
pretty much seals the deal.”

St. John considered the statement. “I’m not a
villain. I’m doing what needs to be done to ensure the military
might of my nation. If I’m anything, I’m a super
hero
.”

“All of the really good villains think
they’re heroes. What’s your power, anyway?”

“Oh, hadn’t you guessed? I’m supernaturally
trustworthy. People always seem to take my advice, no matter how
foolish. How can trustworthiness be the power of a villain? Answer
me that!”

“Are you kidding? It is the power to
manipulate. Classic villain.”

“I am not a villain! I dressed as one! I
pretended to be one. I plotted as one, but I was playing a
role!”

“Yeah? And when did you stop playing that
role, before or after you pressed the button hoping to kill three
dozen innocent people.”

St. John glared at Non Sequitur. “I’ll tell
you why I’m not a villain. Because villains make mistakes. Villains
leave loose ends.” He flipped the timer on. “A villain would leave
you here alive to watch that timer count down. Not me. I’m going to
shoot the five of you and let the bomb destroy the evidence. Then
I’m going to go out there, having ‘received a phone call’ from a
super villain named The Adviser detailing his plan, and then it
will unfold without a hitch. And since you were the one who seemed
to think you could somehow turn the tables by making me angry, I
may as well do you the honor of killing you first.”

He extended his pistol. Nonsensica released a
muffled screech through the tape. His finger began to tighten on
the trigger. Then a blur of motion knocked the weapon from his
hand. St. John turned to the door just in time to receive the butt
of a paintball gun to the face and crumbled to the ground. Standing
over him was the portly form of Afterthought. He reached down and
tore the tape from Nonsensica’s mouth.

“Afterthought! I forgot all about you!” she
said.

“Of course you did!
No one
remembers
The
Afterthought
!” he proclaimed triumphantly.

“Afterthought, quick. Pull the detonator off
and throw it down the hall!” Non Sequitur said.

“That is seriously the best catchphrase I’ve
ever heard,” Nonsensica said.

The forgettable hero pulled the detonator
free and disposed of it, then freed Nonsensica and Non
Sequitur.

“Okay, let’s go get some help for these guys
and find someone to lock up St. John.”

“Wait, wait. Before any of that, I want
pictures,” she said, pulling her cell phone from a pouch on her
belt. “If for no other reason than to make sure we remember it was
what’s-his-face that saved the day.”

She flipped the camera on her smartphone to
front-facing and held it out.

“Ready? Everybody say, ‘for freedom.’
One…two…three: for freedom!”

In the
darkened interior of The BaBoom, Chicken Scratch and the other
villains sat around a table, snacking on pretzels and nursing
beers.

“Look, I’m not saying you don’t have an
amazing power,” Pollinatrix said. “I’m just not sure what value it
has to a criminal enterprise.”

“And
I’m
telling you that it is
perfect
for a criminal enterprise,” Chicken Scratch said.
“Think of The Riddler, okay? He leaves behind clues to taunt and
confound the authorities. Well, I do the same thing, only my notes
are flat-out confessions, but they are so incredibly illegible that
no one will ever be able to read them. Imagine the frustration of
the do-gooders!”

“Yeah, but basically, if they find a
scribbled note, it doesn’t matter what it says. They’ll know it was
you,” Bottleneck said.

“But they won’t be able to
prove it.
Not in a court of law.”

“They could if you left any DNA on it. Or
fingerprints,” Dentata said.

“They’d probably have a harder time proving
you did it if you just didn’t
leave
a note,” Bottleneck
said.

Chicken Scratch pounded the table. “I don’t
believe what I’m hearing. You call yourselves super villains?
What’s the point of pulling a job if you don’t leave a calling
card? We’ve been over this! … And where is the food we
ordered?”

“Bottleneck special ordered the gluten-free
meal. I think it’s holding things up,” Pollinatrix said.

“Hey, don’t blame me. If they put it on the
menu, it’s fair game. Besides, it’s only been an hour. Food
deliveries usually take at least ninety minutes.”

“Not for normal people, Bottleneck,”
Pollinatrix groaned.

“Remember. Patience is a virtue,” he
said.

“We’re villains. We’re not supposed to have
virtues, we’re supposed to have vices,” Dentata said. “Anyone got
any juicy stories? Any naughty habits?”

“You first,” Bottleneck said with more
enthusiasm than was really appropriate.

“Well, I’ve had a few one night stands.”

“That’s not much of a surprise,” Pollinatrix
said. “Something tells me with you it’s once bitten, twice
shy.”

Chicken Scratch shuddered, then turned as the
flickering TV screen over the bar caught his eye.

“Quiet!” he ordered, bolting to his feet and
gesturing with his newly acquired cane. “Bartender! Increase the
volume on that television set.”

The bartender grudgingly obeyed. The screen
was plastered with alerts of a special report and a scrolling
ticker giving various details. Footage of the war game and its
aftermath ran on screens behind a male newscaster.

“… That’s right, Cheryl. It seems that the
top secret recruitment effort that turned into an Internet
phenomenon has taken yet another remarkable turn. Authorities have
now confirmed that the person responsible for an apparent plot to
detonate a bomb during the final stage of training has been
identified as Major Chester St. John, an adviser on the project and
high-ranking officer within the R&D division of the US Army.
Investigators found what can only be described as a costume in his
apartment…”

Footage began to roll of an LED-encrusted
paintball helmet being removed by police.

“No way! That’s the mastermind! This St. John
guy was The Adviser,” Dentata said. “Well, there goes my steady
paycheck in the villain biz.”

“Authorities have linked St. John to four
rejected applicants to the recruitment drive, who are believed to
be still at large.” Pictures of Dentata, Bottleneck, Chicken
Scratch, and Pollinatrix appeared on the screen. “These same
individuals are believed to have been responsible for a string of
recent robberies, which authorities suspect were related to the
bombing plot. Police are advising anyone who sees this group to
consider them extremely dangerous, and to contact law enforcement
immediately with information of their whereabouts.”