The Infinite League Read online

  “Did we have to go there in the back of a surveillance van?”

  “I’m six foot four without the external armor,” he reminded me. “Normally, we’d have taken our team’s private jet, but we didn’t want to cause a scene by landing it on the hospital helipad. This is the smallest transport I’d fit in. Unlike you, I can’t fly.”

  Not that I was an expert at flying yet. If I flew too quickly, I started to look like I’d been drinking. Is it a crime for super-heroes to fly while intoxicated? Would that be an F.W.I.? My mind was wandering into bizarre places, which is what I usually do when I get nervous.

  “So what should I expect out of this trip?”

  “Just remember that these kids need all the positive energy that they can get,” he told me. “So all those pissed off emotions you have about your own kid and your own situations need to stay buried. Andromeda means a lot to some people, you don’t want to tarnish that image.”

  “I know this is a P.R. project,” I assured him. “I think I’m ready to walk in her boots for a little bit.”

  “You think that. You haven’t faced the cameras yet.”

  The vehicle came to a stop, and DeathTek’s head tilted towards the direction of the door. Little motors and electronic wheels were spinning as his head as his shoulders leaned closer to the metal walls of the back doors. It almost appeared as if was trying to listen for something.

  “Do you hear something?” I asked.

  “I’m not listening,” he told me. “I’m looking outside.”

  “Looking?”

  “I’m looking,” he repeated. As more beeps and buzzes filled the air, I suddenly realized he was looking through the walls!

  “You have x-ray vision?”

  “Thermal and infrared,” he explained, suddenly leaning back and gesturing towards the door. “Okay. It looks like the press is already here. There are about twenty photographers just outside the door.”

  “Oh shit.”

  “Don’t worry,” he said gently, heading towards the door. “I’ll go first.”

  “Who told them we were coming here? What, do we have a publicity agent or something?”

  “The government grants a sizable amount of funding to the Infinite League when we’re doing our jobs, keeping costumed threats off of the street, and more importantly, when we’re popular. If the people love us, then the politicians are happy, and they control the budget we receive. Ergo…”

  “We have a publicity agent sending us out on appearances like this,” I realized. “What, there weren’t any malls to open today?”

  “You’ve been drilled on how to deal with reporters,” he reminded me. “You’ll be fine.”

  DeathTek’s metallic knuckles rapped on the door, and the driver opened it and exposed to us flashbulbs exploding from what seemed like an infinite angle of directions. I slowly moved behind DeathTek to exit the van. A fresh wave of dread started pulling at me, but I thought about Caleb and forced it back with a smile and a wave.

  “Good morning,” DeathTek said, greeting the small fleet of reporters armed with video cameras, notebooks and smart phones. “We don’t want to keep the children waiting, so we’ll stick around for just a couple of questions before we head inside, okay?”

  Maybe it was my imagination, but it seemed like every single face turned their attention directly towards me. They were all asking questions simultaneously, and I couldn’t distinguish any clear words other than Andromeda.

  Normally, this would have made me turn around and run for cover. But the new hair, the goggles and the ridiculous costume I was wearing gave me a shield of anonymity that I hadn’t really appreciated until this very moment. I pointed at the tallest reporter and decided to break the ice.

  “You, the attractive young man with the stunning purple tie?”

  “Jacob Whalen, Washington Post,” he remarked, trying and failing to suppress a cute blush and a smirk. “You haven’t been seen in over a month, care to address any concerns about any recent injuries?”

  “I’m just fine, Jacob,” I told him. “I recently lost a family member, so I took a bit of time off. But I’m happy to be back to work.”

  There was a bit of concerned murmuring through the crowd, and I could tell that question had just triggered a whole number of other questions. “Can you tell us which family member you lost?”

  “For my family’s privacy and their safety, I’d prefer not to, thanks,” I replied coolly to the idiot in the cheap suit who thought that might be a reasonable question to ask.

  “Will you be adding a new product in the Andromeda Fragrance line for the holiday season?” asked a woman holding a cell phone.

  “Uhhh….my team is reviewing the figures from last Christmas, and I’ll be announcing some news on that in July,” I replied. I was completely and utterly bullshitting at this point, I had no idea what was going on with the perfumes with my name on it. Yet another something we hadn’t covered in the crash course on being a super-hero.

  “Will the Infinite League be seeking litigation against wonderslutz.com?”

  “That organization will likely be closed down by the end of the month,” DeathTek declared. “I find the details of that site personally offensive, viciously slanderous and ridiculously exaggerated. Or in my case, under-exaggerated.”

  Many of the reporters, mostly the men, burst out in a chorus of appreciative laughter. I had to remember to get DeathTek to explain that one to me. Yet another thing I had no idea what they were talking about.

  “Last question, please,” I announced suddenly. Colonel Bridge warned me to keep these interview sessions brief, and this seemed like a good time to cut it short.

  “Barbara Lance, Washington Times,” said a young brunette nearest to me. “Following the bombing of the television station in New Orleans, the American people are getting more and more concerned with the activities of the Habindaque rebels here at home. Will your group be participating in the manhunt for Ubaidullah Zahr?”

  Wasn’t expecting such a politically charged question, and I wasn’t prepared to answer it either. In fact, I was more than a little interested in the answer myself. Among the many injustices in the world that super heroes weren’t addressing were threats from other countries. I yielded the question to DeathTek, who fortunately spoke immediately.

  “There’s been no hard evidence that Zahr himself has actually crossed over to our borders,” he told them. “But this team is the flagship member group of the DSA. If our president discovers the presence of Zahr or any other extremist plotting further attacks, we will confront them directly if we are requested.”

  “But what is your team doing to uncover any—“

  “Thank you for your time, ladies and gentlemen, but we’re here to see the children,” DeathTek interrupted with a quick wave of his hands. Our footsteps drowned out by the sound of more urgent questions spilling over us, we quickly made our way for the lobby of the hospital where the media found themselves blocked by a line of helpful police officers.

  “Who the hell are the wonder sluts?”

  “Wonderslutz.com with a z,” he quietly explained as we entered the lobby. “It’s a site featuring models dressing up as super-heroes. Then they undress and bone each other for a paying audience.”

  “Classy.”

  “Hey, super-hero porn is a growing business,” he said with a shrug. “Of course, the big outfits go the extra mile and hire a special effects department to simulate some of our powers. There was this one video featuring Submission tied up on a rack in a dungeon, and the rest of us were gathering around her with our pants off and…”

  “Please stop. I hate when people spoil the end of the movie.” I didn’t know if he caught the sarcastic undertone, but he thankfully changed the subject as a young doctor came out to meet us. He came up to me and shook my hands warmly, a genuinely huge smile crossing his face.

  “Ms. Andromeda. Mr. DeathTek. I’m so thankful you could make it out this year, this means so much to us.”
>
  “Always happy to help,” I told him.

  “My son really loved the photo you signed for him last year,” he told me. “Do you have any new prints available?”

  “Umm, only what I have with me,” I said apologetically. It occurred to me that I wasn’t at all prepared to sign autographs. My signature wouldn’t look like the real Andromeda’s signature, and I made a mental note to look up some reference samples and practice. That’s when I idly wondered just how deep into this I was planning to go? I didn’t even want to get into this costume at first, and now I was elaborately preparing ways to protect this carefully crafted cover. This was getting ridiculous.

  As we accompanied the doctor through the hallways of the hospital, I was acutely aware of how everyone’s eyes were focused on us. When I look back on it, it was actually a rare occurrence for me to see an actual costumed Spark up close and personal. I suppose that’s why they were looking at me like a rock star. It was uncomfortable, but I tried to focus on the back of DeathTek’s head and remain cool and detached from the whole situation. If they were going to treat me like a celebrity, that’s how I would act.

  “We can only stay for about thirty minutes,” DeathTek advised the doctor. “We both have duty patrol this evening, you see.”

  “Thirty minutes will mean the world to our patients,” the doctor assured us, opening the doors to the children’s oncology ward and strolling through proudly. I followed, fiercely sticking to my confident and unflinching persona of a world-renowned super-hero.

  There were four children at the end of the hallway, listening to some words spoken by a nurse. Two boys, two girls, ranging in ages from seven to thirteen. Whatever she was talking about with the kids had been completely forgotten by the time they made eye contact with DeathTek and myself.

  I’m accustomed to walking through a crowd of children---a crowd of anyone, for that matter---and being generally ignored. But no matter how much Colonel Bridge and Dr. Progeriat tried to prepare me, I hadn’t anticipated their reaction.

  I saw the look in their eyes when I first walked in, in that brief sliver of time before they saw me. There was a complicated mixture of feeling safe and cared for, while still betraying a sense of fading hope. I’d wish I didn’t recognize the heartbreaking body language, but I saw it in my father’s eyes during the last few months of his life.

  The oldest girl noticed me first, and her jaw dropped as if she’d seen a famous celebrity. She looked wildly around the room, either to figure out who we were really here to see, or to confirm that there wasn’t a hidden camera. The nurse standing next to them broke out into an excited grin and nodded at the children, silently confirming to them that we here to visit them. The girl was shaking her head in disbelief, suddenly getting skeptical.

  “They’re just dressed up like them,” she was telling the younger ones. “It’s not really them!”

  Real cynical kids, I realized. Maybe it didn’t take much to dress up like Andromeda, but that suit on DeathTek with the whirring motors and the flashing lights and the pulsing seams couldn’t be bought in any old Halloween store. So, I clenched my fists and pushed myself up into the air, floating a few inches above the floor as I came closer to them.

  The result was instantaneous. The boys lit up into beaming smiles, the small girl began to clap. The older girl screamed once and hid her face, shuddering and convulsing so strongly I thought she was having some sort of attack.

  The nurse put a comforting hand on the girl’s shoulder, and squeezed softly. “Abigail, it’s okay. They’re here to tell you to keep fighting like you always do.”

  I didn’t know what to say to her, so I returned to the ground and stood there, letting her make the first move. It was the most surreal moment of my life. I couldn’t fight this feeling that I didn’t deserve this reception. But at the same time, these children didn’t deserve to have their hearts broken.

  She looked up at me after a few seconds, and her light blue eyes were flooded with nervous tears. “Are….you really her?”

  “I heard you’ve been very strong, Abigail,” I said carefully. “I’ve heard you’ve all been strong. I was hoping we could have lunch with you, and maybe you could give us some pointers on how to be as brave as you are?”

  She stepped forward, almost feeling unworthy to stand in my presence. I held open my arms, inviting her in. When she accepted the hug, it was the warmest embrace I’ve ever received from anyone in years. Despite myself, I started to cry.

  For the next hour, my worries and troubles were the furthest thing from my mind. We shared lunch with the children, DeathTek showed off by bending steel pipes in his hands, I gave each child a short ride around the lobby by floating a few feet above the ground, we posed for endless photographs, and we listened to their enthusiastic stories about what each of them planned to do when they left the hospital.

  Just the thought of my visit brightening these sick kids day made this entire insane ordeal almost worth it. Maybe I wasn’t the real Andromeda, but these kids didn’t know that. If I had my way, they would never know that.

  “We should be doing this more often,” I whispered to DeathTek. “Did you see the look on Chad’s face when we flew over the reception desk?”

  “We do things like this every month,” he revealed. “Natalie had an entire wall of appreciation awards from a few dozen hospitals and charities.”

  Hearing the name of the hero whose head literally exploded right in front of me made me wince with a fresh surge of guilt. For the first time in my life, I realized I might have underestimated the costumed heroes of the world.

  “You know, it’s starting to feel a little strange calling you by your professional name all the time,” I suddenly realized. “You’ve never told me your name.”

  “You think I’m gonna tell you my secret identity here in the hospital?”

  “Well, I sort of hoped we were becoming friends,” I admitted. I touched his arm, and felt the sturdy mass of muscle sweltering beneath the tight patchwork of rigid fabric and chainmail. I began to wonder if I was ever going to see what he looked like without the helmet on. Or pants. It had been a few months and this girl was starting to have impure—

  “Come again?” he said suddenly, interrupting my train of thought.

  “I said, I thought we were kind of becoming friends.”

  “Oh, you gotta be kidding me. That sucks.”

  “Well, excuse the hell out of me,” I hissed back in annoyance.

  He put a finger to his ear and turned his head away from me, and it was then I realized he wasn’t actually talking to me at all. “No, she’s not reading any of this. Obviously she forgot to turn her comm on.”

  Oh hell, I did forget. There was a discrete switch on my belt that I must have forgot to flip. I hit the small lever, and it caused a small explosion of static and noise to ring out from the ear bud they made me wear before leaving the Dome.

  “Andromeda, please confirm.”

  It was Captain Eric Quincy, who had apparently been trying to contact me for the last couple of minutes before they tapped into DeathTek’s head. The sound of the radio chatter buzzing in my ear now reminded me of the dispatchers when I was still an officer.

  “Sorry, I had the phone off the hook,” I answered awkwardly. “What up, dude?”

  “Are you near an open window?”

  “Yeah, there’s one or two,” I replied. “Something wrong?”

  “We have a known enhanced Beta Class spark in front of the National Archives building. He’s fighting museum security at this time, and Colonel Bridge is requesting that the two of you assist with the arrest.”

  The National Archives building. There were thousands of important documents housed there. The arrest warrant for Lee Harvey Oswald, presidential papers and documents…the damned Declaration of Independence…and probably a hundred other valuable trinkets I’ve never even heard of.

  Despite everything I’d been through in the last couple of months, I still instinctively t
hought like a cop. I had a chain of command to obey, orders to follow, and potential criminal activity to stop. I moved towards an open window, which was fortunately large enough for me to move out onto the ledge.

  So there I was, standing four stories up on a ledge, looking out into the horizon of Washington D.C. The National Archives building was probably a mile away, and I’d be there quickly by flying over the traffic. I had to jump off the ledge and fly. All of the people staring at me would be expecting me to fly.

  “Oh, what the fuck am I doing?” My words were so soft that only Eric and I could hear.

  “Take a deep breath,” came his voice. “You’ll be fine. Remember your training. I’ll be here to help you. DeathTek is already moving down to the van, and he’ll be transported there as soon as we can. But you’re going to be first on the scene.”

  With the sound of young and adult voices cheering behind me, I jumped into the sky, and was tremendously grateful to realize that I was staying airborne and not plummeting to an embarrassing death. I was flying, just like in the training room.

  But that was the easy part. I was about to get into a fight with someone I probably had no business fighting with.

  12

  picking a fight

  Wednesday, May 21 - 5 p.m.

  Whenever there’s an emergency in the city, the costumed heroes always seem to fly right in and save the day. Philadelphia didn’t have any major Sparks, so I never really saw any of them navigating through the skies on a regular basis. But you never hear about any of them stopping to ask for directions, either.

  “I have absolutely no idea where I’m going,” I complained. “Am I going in the right direction?”

  “I’m tracking your flight direction,” Eric explained to me through the ear piece I was wearing. “You need to point yourself about thirty degrees to your right. It’s a tourist attraction, don’t you know where the National Archives are?”

  “I’ve never familiar with D.C.”