The Prospects (Book 2): Nothing Poorer Than Gods (19 page)

Everything moved in slow-motion as his father slumped. The facts – a man shot her when her back was turned, and shot her again after he found only fifty dollars in the register – remained cold and distant, not visualized, not processed, only frozen as ideas. After a bitter blur came a funeral on a rainy spring day, where Vijay placed a lotus on an unadorned coffin.

Trista spread her fingers over the laptop’s keyboard. They moved in ways meaningless to her but that meant a lot to Vijay. They tapped out the rhythms of games and programs Vijay used to hide in so he wouldn’t think. The motions became more complex as she worked through the years from games to hacking games to true hacking. Underneath was pride mixed with a twinge of guilt for how he treated his mother.

She looked at the hacking programs. They seemed simple in a way she couldn’t describe. She tapped a few buttons. A map of nodes showed up on her screen. Each one showed the flow of information from one computer to another to a relay station back to the source, not unlike a mind association map. It only took a ping to get an IP address for the central source.

“The information is all flowing to a place called Satell Enterprises in Jersey City. I think I found out where the Handler is.” She looked up the IP source and read the address aloud.

“Well done,” said Stormhead. He pressed the speakerphone button on his smartphone and a contact’s button.

After a ring, “Agent O’Farrell.”

“Alexander, we have an address. Have Arbalest get his motorcycle ready and Professor Photon and Magna meet me at the roof of this hospital. I want to be there within an hour.”

“Good work. By the way, I interrogated the ninja and the cyborg.”

“Cyborg? What do you mean?”

“There was an Iron Pirate hiding in Harry’s lab. They said they were hired by someone named Portia to break in.”

“Who is this Portia?”

“I made some calls to the Australia Federal Police’s Metahuman Division. They had a record about a woman who calls herself Portia Fimbriata. She has a reputation as a mastermind, but almost everyone she works with disappears. Their profilers’ theory is that she’s a villainess who preys on villains.”

“Wouldn’t that make her a hero?” asked Stormhead.

“No, it makes her a sociopath. She was seen with Wykedblade shortly before his disappearance and was Malone’s last known employer. There’s a chance you could see her and dozens of other villains we haven’t fought in a while. Oh, and she and Candilyn were on that van bound for the women’s prison that got hijacked last night. If you see Candilyn, try to bring her back alive.”

“We’ll save all the lives we can.” Stormhead ended the call. “Trista, Pinwheel, it may be best if you go back to Griffin Tower.

Trista kept typing. “I’d like to explore the Handler’s spyware network. Vijay’s memories are still fresh in my mind, and if I stop using them for even a few minutes they may disappear.”

“I’ll keep her company,” said Pinwheel.

“Very well. The MAB agents will remain stationed outside the door.”

Noah said, “And you will go off to continue your war to keep everything the way it is.”

“People like me can’t make the world a better place because we’re too busy keeping scum like you from making it worse.”

“It’ll never be a good place for anyone who’s different from the status quo. Those of us born monsters will always be monsters.”

Electricity crackled over Stormhead’s body. He walked to the other side of the partition. “I know you were raised in an institution. I was too. In my youth I couldn’t control my flight or electric discharges. My own family feared me as a monster, and quite rightfully, for I was a danger to everyone around me. I could have lashed out against the world that rejected me, but I refused to live that way. I made myself the best person I could be through a desire to join society. Now I lead the heroes who defend the world, and you couldn’t even defend the people who counted on you.”

Stormhead strode out.

After a silent moment, Noah muttered, “I hate him more than ever.”

Ruby said, “He saved your life back on the island.”

“He had a reputation to protect. People were watching.”

Ruby looked at her claws. “I don’t feel right about taking that woman and kid hostage.”

“We could’ve escaped if Gary wasn’t so weak.”

“But we had to abandon Joey, and I was headed to the streets anyway. Now they’ll send me to prison.”

“After all I’ve done, you couldn’t make a sacrifice for me?”

Ruby wanted to say something about how she once believed Noah could protect her, but the words didn’t come out. She grinded her claws together, alone in her corner of his half of the hospital room.

Kayleigh touched the three lines of steri-strips on her cheek as she looked into a mirror. She gave a strip a gentle tug. The glue clung tightly to her skin. “I should’ve kept the mask.”

The reflection showed Magna standing behind her.

Kayleigh turned around. Magna stood imposingly. The robot held Kayleigh’s sleeved harness and a mask.

“Before you say anything you should know that I, Doctor Harry Von Dyme, or Professor Photon, am in manual control of this robot. I shrank myself down and am piloting it through a microsuite I installed in Magna’s head.”

Kayleigh looked over Magna’s distinctly feminine body. “You don’t stop getting creepier.”

Magna lifted the harness and mask. “I made some improvements on these. The harness has an extra titanium alloy reinforcement to make it harder to bend.”

Kayleigh didn’t touch the harness. “I don’t want anything to do with you.”

“You won’t have to ever again. I added an AC adaptor so you can recharge the harness’s battery with a wall socket. Here is a belt with extra capsaicin capsules, and if you need more Agent O’Farrell can order them for you.”

Kayleigh whispered, “I can’t take these without people asking why you gave them to me, and I don’t want to lie anymore.”

He whispered back, “I don’t know what else to do. I’m not good with people. “

“You could try saying you’re sorry. You couldn’t even say that to Agent O’Farrell.”

“I made myself clear.”

“You also made it clear that you won’t apologize for sexually harassing me.”

“What? I did not do that.”

“Let’s talk it over with Agent O’Farrell and see what he thinks.”

“Are you blackmailing me?”

“I don’t want you to do that to anyone else. Come to think of it, maybe you did it to someone else.”

“I didn’t.”

“Can you prove it?”

“You don’t see any other women walking around with my technology, do you?”

“Just go away.”

“I … I’ve been lonely since Mindy died and … I’m sorry. I feel bad about what the position I put you in. If someone did that to Mindy ... What I did was far beneath me.”

“And you think you can make me feel better by giving me gifts?”

“All I can do is make things. Oh, I also used my 3-D printer to make a new mask.”

Kayleigh looked at the mask. It was shaped like her face, not Mindy’s.

“I don’t have time to argue, and I’m not good at it anyway,” said Harry through Magna’s voice. “I need to meet Stormhead on the roof of the hospital. I won’t bother you again. Throw them away if you don’t want them. “

Magna put the harness and mask on a table and walked away. When the robot got near the door Kayleigh called out, “Thank you, Doctor Von Dyme.”

Magna hesitated before continuing onward. Her metal face did not reflect Doctor Von Dyme’s smile behind it.

On the other side of the medical ward, Gale Force said to Deon, “It must be nice being so pretty that people give you things.”

Deon looked at Kayleigh while applying antibiotic gel to Joey’s stomach wound. “Meh.”

“Come on. She’s a model.”

“Good for her. I’m not into redheads. Black hair with blue streaks, that’s what I like.”

Gale Force swept her blue-streaked black hair back. “Since when?”

“Since I ruined the good thing I had going with you by acting like an idiot. Now that you’re a New York Guardian, you’re out of my league.”

Gale Force grinned. “That’s true. You acted like an idiot, and I’m out of your league.”

Deon picked up a bottle of painkillers. “I need these more than you.”

Gale Force took the bottle. “My leg still hurts. Besides, if you liked me so much, why did you laugh along with Vijay’s fat jokes? That really hurt.”

“It also hurt when you dumped me.”

“I dumped you because you spent so much time with Candilyn.”

“I couldn’t get away from her. She didn’t give up until I gave in.”

“That only took a few days.”

“I figured if you were into me, you’d put up a fight.”

Gale Force almost retorted. Instead, she said, “I should have. I quit things before I should. Especially relationships.”

“Whatever. I’ve got patients to take care of.” In a flash Deon was at Gary’s side, several beds away.

Gale Force looked at the care Deon took when he removed the bug-boy’s bandages. She swallowed the pain pills and thought about how much tenderness he showed his patients. He was different than the rude boy who became Vijay’s toady after she and Candilyn both ended their relationships with him.

Alex tapped Gale Force’s shoulder. He handed her a phone and a sheet of paper. “These are the local metahumans in good legal standing. Tell them the New York Guardians are headed out and the Scientific Six’s away message says they’re in the Mariana Trench so they need to suit up and patrol their beats.”

Gale Force looked at the list of phone numbers that went from the top to the bottom of the paper. “You want me to make phone calls?”

“With as little conversation as possible. I’ll call the MAB agents for the other metahuman teams from DC to Boston to hit the less threatening centers.”

“Somehow I thought being a superhero would be more exciting than that.”

“Boring is good because everyone survives a boring time.” Alex gestured to Bosillos and Ujimushi, who were handcuffed to beds in the corner. “If those two told the truth, they got screwed over too. Still, they're members of criminal gangs. Keep the cyborg away from the tools I took from his pockets and a strong light on the ninja to scramble his camouflaging suit.”

Gale Force dialed the first name on the list. “Hello, Atomic Annie?”

In the corner, Bosillos lowered his oxygen mask and whispered to Ujimushi, “That
hijo de puta
in the suit who asked us all the questions? He’s the reason the other Iron Pirates are in jail.”

Ujimushi wrapped himself in his electric blanket. “He also defeated the Shade Blades.”

“So what are we gonna do? He’ll put us behind bars if we don’t escape.”

“If we escape, where will be go?”

Bosillos took a deep huff of oxygen. “All I got is an old couch in my sister’s basement.”

“Is there extra space?”

“Don’t the Shade Blades have a hideout?”

“They did not teach me how to disarm the traps around the door before they left last month. I’ve been sleeping wherever I can.”

“That’s sad. But it’s hard enough for my family with me there.”

“Prison doesn’t seem that bad with winter coming.”

“Yeah, well, in the Iron Pirates I changed oil and cleaned gears. If I go to jail, I’ll still have to do crap jobs for the crew.”

“And I’ll be the
kohei
to the
kohei
, the least equal of the equals, again. There’s a reason my ninja name translates to ‘maggot.’”

Bosillos huffed more oxygen. “So we don’t want to go where we’re headed, and we got nowhere else to go.”

Two bald men with identical faces and in identical uniforms moved towards Venusta. “Come with us.”

Venusta’s looked around. “Where’s Portia?”

“Come with us,” said the second one in exactly the same way as the first.

“Portia said not to go anywhere without her.”

The man on the right grabbed her arm.

“Don’t touch me! Nothing gives you that right.” Venusta extended her collapsible baton and hit his head.

Before the other guard reacted, Venusta knocked him down with a sweep kick and another smack of the baton. She vaulted over the secretary’s desk and ran back through the gray walls of cubicles.

“Portia? Where are you, Portia?”

An unmarked door opened. Four security guards identical faces and electric prods in their right hands came out.

Alex’s words went through Venusta’s head: “When fighting multiple opponents, jump around and take them out with cheap shots. They’re not fighting fair, you shouldn’t either.”

Venusta rolled and smacked the side of the guard’s knee with her baton. As he fell, the second guard stepped in. He leaned back when Venusta faked a swing at his head, which left him unprepared for her kick to his crotch. As the other two stumbled over the bodies of their fallen comrades Venusta leapt through the door before it closed.

“That’s right, dirtbags,” she said as the door closed. “Nothing gets between good guys and bad guys like a door.”

The door opened.

“Oh, I forgot. This is your place. You can open doors here.”

The two uninjured security men came in with their electric prods pointed at Venusta.

She pointed her baton back at them like it was a fencing sword. “
En garde
.” With nowhere to jump or move on the narrow catwalk, Venusta swung. Her baton glanced off the closest security man’s shoulder as his prod sank into her stomach. The electric discharge left a smoking mark on her sweatshirt.

“Ow! That really hurt!”

She swung again. The second security man hit her leg. Her muscles buckled under the shock. She fell to the ground.

The two guards shocked her several more times. She curled into a fetal position.

“Ow! Ow! Ow! You win! Uncle! Mercy! Stop shocking me!”

One guard stopped shocking her. He dropped as if he instantly fell asleep.

Behind Venusta, the skinless body twitched. Its lipless mouth opened.

The second security man also dropped. Across the catwalk, the snail-like eyestalks on the large fetus extended. 

Venusta peaked through her fingers. “How did that happen?”

The words
I swapped their minds into the undeveloped clones
appeared in her head.

Venusta looked around.

Down here.

Venusta looked down the catwalk. For the first time she noticed the obese woman with tubes going into her chest.

Too much …

Venusta took the clipped badge from the security man’s breast pocket. “Uh, thanks.” She ran to the door and slid it through the reader as Swapper slowly stopped breathing.

Flayer drove the truck out as Venusta charged into the room and pointed her baton at the doctor in a black coat. “Portia? Where?”

The doctor’s mask hid his surprise. “Security!”

Four men, each identical to the ones she already fought, came out of the loading dock and now-empty holding pen with electric prods in their hands.

“How many times do I gotta beat up the same guy?” said Venusta. “This is like a video game.”

She heard a gunshot, followed by another gunshot.

Venusta threw her baton at the security men’s shins and leapt to the door. Her shaking hands barely held the card well enough to slide it through the reader. She sprinted past the monitors on the way to the next door.

In the next room, the Handler stood with his finger on the trigger of a pistol pointing at Portia’s forehead.

Everything anyone ever taught Candilyn – whether it was as Venusta or Zany - disappeared in that instant. She pounced on the Handler.

The lines of code that made the Handler’s spyware network were no longer so strange to Trista. Each chunk of code outlined how bits of information were relayed back to one central computer. The web stretched through the CIA, the FBI, the MAB, even the New York Police Department. And that was only a small part of the spyware network.

Exploring a hidden world and making new discoveries while knowing there was much more to find gave Trista a giddy tickle in her stomach. There was so much potential in this interconnected data. She was so lost in the search Pinwheel had to tap her shoulder to get her attention.

“I’m headed to the cafeteria. Want anything?”

Without looking up Trista said, “Mountain Dew Code Red and Cheetos.” Somehow these seemed to go with hacking.

“Uh, if that’s what for dinner, okay.”

“Wait,” said Ruby. “I need to get out for a bit.” She waddled with her legless feet to the other side of the partition.

“Aren’t you under arrest for something?”

A MAB agent came into the room. “Agent O’Farrell asked us to keep an eye on Quad-Clops. He hasn’t filed charges against her yet.”

Ruby looked up at Pinwheel. “Come on, handsome. You’re my date tonight.”

A second MAB agent said, “You know he’s gay, right?”

“I am not,” said Pinwheel.

“Hey, I saw the Young Sentinels videos. You get a new boyfriend every few week.”

“It’s just a role I played. I’m straight. Really.”

“Yeah, right,” said the third agent. “You hang out with Stardancer and Knockout Rose without putting the moves on them, and we’re supposed to believe it’s a show?”