The Infinite League Read online

  I have my own opinions about what people with legitimate powers should be doing to make the world a better place, but I kept my mouth shut and continued listening to the lecture.

  “Since then, we’ve had many people come forward as costumed heroes. Some are enhanced, some rely on gadgets and skills, but all of them are flashy and dangerous. Mirror Man, Arachnid, Columbia Streak, you name it.”

  “With you so far.”

  “Fast forward to twenty years ago, when the Ambassador arrived, and we all found out that we weren’t alone in the universe. Five years later, the Infinite League was formed, and a golden age of costumed super-heroes had begun.”

  “I know that the country was divided on how these vigilantes should be handled,” I recalled. I refused to refer to them as super-heroes. “My dad said that when he was a cop, the policy on dealing with enhanced people seemed to change on a weekly basis.”

  “Then the shit hit the fan five years later---or ten years ago---in that incident in Houston.”

  This story, I knew most of the basic details. It shook up the entire country. You had to be living under a rock not to know what happened that year. For the Sparks, everything changed forever.

  “The hero Arachnid was put into a situation where he could let twenty children die, or kill a violent criminal named Alexander Thorulgood. It was a hostage situation, and he had to make a choice.”

  “I remember that. He put the man down.”

  “That’s one way of expressing it,” the colonel responded. With a click of a button on a nearby keyboard, a series of grisly images flooded the screens before me. They were multiple photos of the same man, Thorulgood, dead from what looked like a bullet to the temple. “Another way of putting it is that Arachnid used his augmented strength and shoved two fingers into the man’s ear. He didn’t just kill the man, he flicked half his brains out through the other side of his head. Up until that moment, the country had been cautiously tolerant of the Sparks. But with that fatality, there were cries for a system of accountability.”

  “I remember,” I admitted, putting down the weights. “It was a hot button topic. Even people without kids were defending Arachnid. They argued that the life of one murdering psychopath was less important than the lives of those children.”

  “And on behalf of my three children, I agreed with them,” he said, surprising me with this revelation. “But Arachnid had several abilities that could have probably restrained the man without loss of life. No one was grieving for Thorulgood’s life, you see. But an awful lot of people were worried that there didn’t seem to be any laws to prevent these enhanced people from doing whatever the hell they wanted.”

  I know. I was one of them.

  “So Arachnid was arrested for the murder charges. While waiting for trial, and bowing to public pressure for a policy decision, the President drafted the Superhuman Samaritan Act, which gave legal protection to any person using their powers to protect innocent lives and uphold the laws of this country.”

  “In other words, these costumed show-offs were given the powers of trained police officers.” I probably sounded a bit more resentful than I’d intended to come off as, but a lot of badges felt the same.

  “An ordinary person can make a citizen’s arrest. You know that. The same privilege is extended to enhanced humans as well,” the colonel reminded me. “But we have to draw the line somewhere. These powers that set them apart from everyone else can’t be abused. That’s why the Department of Superhuman Activities exists. As director, I travel to inspect all incidents involving our nation’s enhanced population.”

  “And to try to smooth over a potential crisis by sweeping the death of a popular hero under the rug?”

  “I also take every step I can to make sure such heroes who abuse such authority are stripped of their privileges and sent to prison, if necessary.”

  “Well, Arachnid isn’t bulletproof,” I pointed out. “But exactly how are you going to stop someone with real power who does things the government doesn’t want them to do? Someone like Ambassador?”

  “Everyone has their weaknesses,” Dr. Progeriat said in a somewhat sad tone. “Sometimes they’re natural vulnerabilities. Sometimes they’ve been implanted.”

  With another click of the button, another image filled the monitors. It was an x-ray this time, displaying the profile of a person’s head. It was a female’s skull, but what caught my attention was the odd bump on the back of her neck. It was hard to miss, as it was circled in red and surrounded with small text that made it clear that whatever it was, it wasn’t positive for the person pictured.

  The room became deathly quiet, as if they were waiting for me to investigate the image further. There was a sudden swelling of tension in the room, and it made me not want to step closer to the screen. But it was clear they were expecting me to.

  As I examined the image, my initial thought was that the growth on the neck was a tumor. But as I looked closer, I realized it was an oval-shaped object that was too smooth to be a natural growth. It had been implanted. I read the tiny words printed on the image.

  I’m not a doctor, so most of the key words I spotted weren’t clear to me. Toxic. Delivery System. Compliance. I didn’t know exactly what the implanted object did, but it was clearly meant to control the subject through pain, or worse.

  Then I saw the words at the top of the image. The ones that made my blood run cold.

  E. WATTS.

  My fingers snapped to the back of my neck quickly, and I felt the stitches once again. I stared at the colonel, and instinctively lifted my fingers. I could set him on fire. It’d be easy. He wasn’t wearing nanoweave armor or protective shield generators. It’d be quick, but it’d be painful.

  And who knows what would happen to me if I attacked?

  “Try not to lose any sleep over this, Miss Watts,” the colonel assured me as he opened the door to leave. “I have the utmost faith that you want to help make this world a better place. I have complete confidence that we won’t have to press any buttons that you don’t want us to press.”

  I can’t explain how suddenly trapped I felt, not to mention horribly violated. They must have sewn some device into my neck a few days after I’d been apprehended. I remember feeling the scar, but I had forgotten about it. Honestly, I had thought it was from an injury from when Necromancer had punched me across the face.

  What the hell was it?

  “Perhaps another half-hour on the treadmill,” Dr. Progeriat suggested, seemingly unmoved by the personal trauma I was now going through. “That should clear your mind, and get you back into proper perspective.”

  With nothing else to do, I took his advice. I got back on the treadmill and ran, faster than I had ever pushed myself before. If they wanted to forge me into a warrior, I wasn’t going to disappoint them.

  I might need that strength somewhere down the line. Especially as I continued to investigate whom the real enemy was.

  10

  insomnia

  Tuesday, May 20 - 2 a.m.

  Another two weeks went by. Two weeks filled with grueling workouts, studying the personal characteristics of Andromeda, a crash course in identifying the other costumed heroes and criminals I might be running into, as well as more flight school and offensive / precision training.

  It had been nearly three weeks since I’d been apprehended and brought here to the Dome. Physically, I was in the best shape of my life. Emotionally, I was hanging by a thread. I had the worst case of cabin fever, having been trapped at the facility for this entire time.

  Colonel Bridge hadn’t been to the base in several days, and I didn’t miss him at all. I’d prefer not to have butted heads with him again, but since I wasn’t going to be heading outside the facility until he personally cleared me, I was bound to run into Bridge again soon.

  There were other costumed vigilantes to monitor, although I still hadn’t been allowed to leave the Dome yet. The other four members of the Infinite League made routine patrols, while I
noticed a growing number of tabloid television spots about the mysterious absence of Andromeda in the skies. There was also constant talk about growing terrorist threats from the Middle East country between Iran and Saudi Arabia called Habindaque. I’d never been there, but it’s where Sadaf was from.

  Tonight, I just couldn’t sleep. It was the middle of the night, and I was still feeling disjointed from having missed an opportunity to talk to Caleb. There was supposed to be a video chat set up between the complex and Ann-Marie’s house, but the connection couldn’t be established.

  That could have meant a number of things. Simple problems with the internet, for example. Or Ann-Marie got called in to work, and couldn’t be there to receive the Skype call.

  Or equally as likely, and terribly concerning, was that she truly believed that I had done the crimes I was forced to say I had done. And she was starting to shield my son from the negative influence of her criminally insane sister.

  I couldn’t sleep. I wandered aimlessly on the sprawling, oval-shaped top floor of the complex, which was the only floor above ground. I could see the sky, although the light from nearby Washington made it impossible to see the stars. That sucked, I really would have enjoyed seeing the stars tonight.

  No, not just seeing the stars. I was eager to fly outside. I still wasn’t as graceful as Dr. Progeriat would have liked, but I had improved. I could glide through the air with much more confidence, and my control over my fire powers were coming along nicely, too.

  This afternoon, I was able to pop a dozen balloons without scorching anything around them, while flying from one end of the gym to the other. But if Dr. Progeriat was impressed, he was doing his best not to show it.

  Impossible to please, the whole fucking lot of them.

  I wanted to kick open the doors and fly off into the sky, leaving them all behind and going back to my family before I lost them forever. The main entrance doors were so tempting, as if inviting me to soar through, up and out. But to get to the entrance, I had to pass a large desk with television monitors, radios, and two big handsome guards with electrified batons at their sides. They weren’t treating me like a prisoner anymore, but the way they were eyeing me suspiciously made me think twice about trying to move past them. They continued with their conversation, acting as if my presence was of no concern.

  “You ain’t gonna need to update your resume,” one guard was saying to the other. “Even if they do shut the base down, which I doubt they will, you’d be reassigned to a new division.”

  “That’s easy for you to say,” the other replied glumly. “You’ve got six years seniority, and a sister who works at DSA headquarters. I’ll be guarding a shopping mall in Hoboken, you watch.”

  “Will you shut the hell up already?”

  “Evening, fellas,” I said with a wave.

  They were both watching a bank of video monitors, showing different angles of the compound grounds. They nodded at me politely, but continued monitoring the screens and went back to their conversation. One of them ignored me completely. I think he was one of the guys I kicked the shit out of on my first day here.

  Here on the base, it wasn’t a secret that Andromeda had been killed, and that I’d been brought in to replace her. I wondered if I tried to walk out the door, would they have stopped me?

  I probably could have taken them both, of course. Even if I didn’t hover twelve feet away from them and scare them off with a few fireballs, I’ll bet I could have mopped up the floor with them both. I had stored up enough pent-up rage by now, it wouldn’t have even been a fair fight.

  But even after I escaped, what then? I probably wouldn’t have made it past the outer perimeter of the compound. I didn’t know what they sewed into the back of my neck, but I suspected it could do something very painful to me. Perhaps even kill me.

  The cruel part was letting my imagination fill in the blanks. Of course, it could have been nothing at all and this was just a psychological trick to ensure my obedience, but it wasn’t worth the risk. And it seemed like an awful lot of trouble to go through to only be a bluff. And the longer I stood there, awkwardly and silently staring at the soldiers at three in the morning, the more suspicious it probably looked.

  “Was there something you needed?” one asked at last.

  “No, just a little insomnia,” I replied quickly, playing it cool. “Liking the night shift?”

  “It’s alright. It’s worth it to work here at the Dome,” said the one with the seniority. “You know, Colonel Bridge gave us orders to make sure you steered clear of this section until you’ve been given full access. Could you save us some paperwork and head back to the lower levels, please?”

  I smiled back, and gave them a salute. “Thanks for the heads up, boys.”

  If I was going to make a bold move, it wasn’t going to be tonight. It still boggled my mind that Colonel Bridge, Dr. Progeriat and the Ambassador needed to hide Andromeda’s death from the public this desperately. Every instinct told me that more effort was being thrown into this than was necessary, as if there was something deeper I didn’t know.

  But for now, all I was concerned about right now was getting some snacks into me. The last time I was in the kitchen, I noticed a box of pepperoni Hot Pockets in the freezer. I know it went counter to the sadistic diet Dr. Progeriat had put me on, but an extra fifteen minutes on the treadmill should erase this culinary sin. So I went back into the lower levels of the Dome, where I was authorized to be, and walked towards the kitchen.

  In the dim light of the kitchen, I leaned against the wall and tried to force back the feeling of isolation and helplessness that had been gripping my soul since I agreed to this bargain. In the darkness, the only sounds that kept me company were the distant voices of the guards at the end of the hall, and the purring of the microwave.

  Twenty-odd days. That’s how long it had been since I’d held my little boy in my arms. I’d been permitted to speak to him three times now, and each time I had been obligated to act as if I were a federal prisoner. Which, honestly, I was.

  The last time I spoke to him and Ann-Marie, there was a certain look in their eyes during what turned out to be a very short talk. Doubt. Suspicion. Disappointment. An impatience to end the conversation. The writing was on the wall, I realized. I was losing my family.

  “Fuck!”

  My outburst was accompanied by slamming both of my fists into the counter, which was also accompanied by two loud alarm blasts. I immediately assumed that I was being watched and being warned for my behavior, before I realized that it was simply the front entrance being opened.

  I walked back towards the entrance, trying to regain my composure, expecting to see Colonel Bridge coming back to the base. But it was only the Ambassador’s friendly face, followed by DeathTek. Even though I couldn’t see his face, his body language suggested that he was highly irritated.

  “You missed a doozie of a battle,” Ambassador laughed. “I think you would have done better out there than this poor guy.”

  “I didn’t know it was going to be Shock Daddy!” said the big metal man. “Next time I see that guy, I’m going to stomp his head in the ground.”

  I hadn’t seen the Ambassador in a few weeks, and I hadn’t seen DeathTek since I tried to barbeque him in the gym. I stood there quietly, nodding at them as they approached me. I didn’t want them to know I was on the verge of having a breakdown. I didn’t want to give anyone any reason to think I wasn’t ready to get this ridiculous charade started. The sooner I did, the sooner they could get around to finding a more suitable replacement, which meant I could go back home and explain everything to my family. So I put on my brave face, and soldiered on.

  The Ambassador was noticeably limping, and there were scorch marks all over his usually immaculately white uniform, but he seemed otherwise fine. DeathTek was wearing a bulky exoskeleton of robotic attachments and shoulder-mounted weapons that were smoking from whatever fight he’d just been involved in. A few technicians were already on hand wi
th specialized equipment and protective gloves to help him remove the extra equipment.

  “Who’s Shock Daddy?” I asked.

  “He’s an Enhanced Mech criminal with Electrokinetic Abilities,” DeathTek replied in that mechanically filtered voice of his.

  “You can just say ‘Lightning Villain’, you know.”

  “If you’re going to fly with us, you need to pick up on the lingo,” the Ambassador suggested. “Enhanced Mech, from your seminar? It’s someone who uses inventions and technology to mimic other powers. Shock Daddy invented a weapon that fires focused bursts of electrical shock.”

  Oh, these endless names and terminologies! Enhanced Sparks are people with actual powers and abilities, and Enhanced Mechs are regular people who happen to possess specialized technology and weapons. There’s the Enhanced Mystics, which is exactly what it sounds like, but there aren’t that many of them. Then each category is divided into separate sub-levels, like Alpha, Beta, all the way down to Echo. Ambassador is an Alpha, one of the top Sparks. Submission is a Beta, and apparently I am too. I think I heard DeathTek described as an Enhanced Mech Beta Level. It makes my head hurt trying to remember them all.

  The technicians stripped off all of DeathTek’s outer armor in just a few minutes, and dropped it into large crates sitting on a nearby trolley.

  “The shoulder cannons are going to need the sights adjusted,” he told them. “And I think the bolt assembly might be damaged.”

  “Yeah, your bolt assembly is fused into a solid piece of iron shit,” the lead technician reported grimly, tossing it aside. “That’s the third one we’re going to have to replace this year alone, D.T.”