The Infinite League Page 7

  “Everything except why we’re talking about this. I don’t have any powers.”

  “If a Spark working for the DSA is killed in the line of duty, it’s my office’s responsibility to find who’s to blame, and to punish them accordingly.”

  “There’s no mystery here. Sadaf Sayegh accidentally shot her,” I said in an even voice. “This was shortly before your Necromancer broke her damn neck. I didn’t think any of this was in dispute.”

  “It’s not,” he admitted.

  “So what about him, then? You planning to hold him accountable for what he did to my friend?”

  “He’ll answer for what he’s done,” the colonel said. “But right now, we’re talking about you. I want to know why an ex-cop was hanging out with a man with a record as long as my arm. A man you yourself put away, interestingly enough.”

  “You ask him. He loves to hear the sound of his own voice.”

  “Eamon Flanagan won’t be talking anytime soon. He fell from a five story window trying to escape custody, and he’s currently comatose. It’s unlikely he’s going to last much longer.”

  Damn. He might not have been my favorite person, but he was helping put some very disgusting people away. He deserved better than this slow, miserable trudging walk to the grave.

  “Eamon was an expert at getting past security systems,” I explained. “His parole and my removal from the force happened to coincide quite nicely.”

  “In order to help you steal Christopher Whitfield’s personal computer.”

  “It sounds like you guys have already made your minds up about me,” I remarked testily. “Does it matter why I was doing it?”

  “I’m giving you the chance to explain, aren’t I?”

  Yes, he was. On a quiet road in the middle of a cemetery, somewhere far from Philadelphia. Somewhere no one could hear us. Anything could happen to me, and no one would ever know.

  “We looked into your past, of course,” said the colonel. “You were fired a few months ago from the Philadelphia Police Department.”

  “I’d love to have a look at that file someday. I’ll bet it’s some fascinating fiction.”

  “It suggests that you propositioned your partner Seth Sharp for a number of sexual encounters, and then you attempted to blackmail him to his wife.”

  “You aren’t going to believe anything I say anyway,” I replied. “You look at me and just see the slut cop who killed America’s beloved super hero.”

  “So it’s not true?”

  “Oh, we had sex, but it was before I found out what sort of man he was. And I definitely tried to blackmail him, but it wasn’t for money and it certainly wasn’t for a second round of mediocre banging.”

  “Frankly, I’m not even interested in that part of your story, other than what it tells me about your character,” he decided. “Tell me about what you and Sadaf Sayegh had been involved in since leaving the police department?”

  “Sadaf was a talented hacker. She’d identified Whitfield as someone who’d been downloading a bunch of kiddie porn. We broke into his house to take his computer, which we were going to use to locate the supplier and take him down.”

  “While blackmailing Whitfield into giving you a big bribe in the meantime,” he noted.

  “A girl has to eat,” I shrugged. “And a huge portion of that money was going to go to a charity that does more for these kids than your fancy costumed superstars. I was after the big fish, you know what I mean?”

  The colonel nodded politely, guiding me towards the gravestone that the others had been gathered around earlier. “It’s true, there’s some things you normally don’t hear about the heroes wasting their times with.”

  Oh, that pissed me off. “You think it’s a waste of time to prevent a ten-year-old boy being forced to suck off some old freak for the enjoyment of hundreds of other equally sick freaks?”

  “That’s not what I said,” Colonel Bridge argued. “And I’d explain my position in greater detail, but I’m afraid I’m out of time and we’re at the end of the road.”

  We had stopped at the gravesite where the funeral had been held earlier. The dirt had been freshly moved, and the casket had been placed. The monument declared this the final resting place of a woman named Natalie George. Such a common sounding name for the world’s most famous heroine, I thought.

  “It’s really too bad Sadaf was killed,” Colonel Bridge said sadly. “She would have been a terrific asset back at headquarters. But things got messy, and to be honest, the boys back in Washington think you’re far less useful to us than she was.”

  In a terrifying moment, I noticed three things at once. First, there was an open grave just a few feet away from where Natalie was buried. Second, Colonel Bridge had just maneuvered directly behind me. Third, the cocking of a pistol had just rang through the air.

  “Jesus, I have a son,” I hissed with closed eyes. I couldn’t move a muscle, every pore on my body tensed up. “It was an accident!”

  “This whole escapade has been an accident,” he whispered.

  Those next ten seconds were the longest of what I assumed would be the last seconds of my life. There’s an amazing amount of memories and regrets you can access in just ten seconds. I had nearly made a grudging peace with my impending death when I heard him holster his pistol, and walk away.

  I realized I was all but hyperventilating as I saw the colonel and his two guards walk away from me. They were heading back to the car, leaving me there alone.

  “What the hell is going on?”

  “If it weren’t for one unexpected detail, you’d be down in the ground right now,” he told me. “But you may still have a chance to make this all right.”

  As he got into the car with his guards and drove away, I found myself left alone in the middle of a massive graveyard. I suddenly felt a nervous knot in my stomach, as if a gunshot from an unseen assassin was about to take me out at any moment. I started thinking about looking for some cover, such as behind a nearby tree or behind one of the nearby mausoleums. But there didn’t seem to be anyone in the area.

  Was I alone? Did they expect me to stay put, or to run?

  There was a rustling of fabric fluttering behind me, like a flag caught in the wind. I turned around, but no one was there.

  “Up a bit,” said a friendly voice.

  I looked up, and discovered that it wasn’t a flag, but a cape. The cape was white and gold, and attached to the massive shoulders of a man that I’d only seen on television. He was tall, and beautiful, and he was staring down at me from his vantage point ten feet above the Earth.

  The Ambassador was floating in the air like a god, gripping a black satchel slung around his shoulder, and favoring me with the warmest smile a girl could ask for.

  “Hello, Miss Watts,” he said to me. “I believe that you and I should have a talk.”

  7

  A Modest Little Proposal

  Sunday, May 4 – 11:30 a.m.

  It’s been suggested that the amount of patients who reported having classic Fruedian dreams of flying have increased substantially in the last fifteen years. This coincides with the arrival of the super-heroes, specifically the man who was currently carrying me through the air.

  I never gave much thought to people who could fly. I knew some of the Sparks could do it, you see it on television every night. But I never just sat back and considered what it must feel like to glide through the air hundreds of feet above the ground where the rest of us ordinary mortals walk, looking down at everyone as you fly past.

  It’s an uncomfortable feeling, to be honest. I think it has a lot to do with the fact that I’m a control freak, and I get nervous when I’m not in control. I don’t like roller coasters, I’m edgy when someone else is driving, and don’t even get me started about taking a plane.

  The Ambassador isn’t as tall as I guessed he’d be. I think he’s just a shade over six feet tall. That’s taller than I am, and I’m not accustomed to running into too many guys taller than me.<
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  Yes, he’s tall. Sure, the guy has muscles that look like someone shoved a statue of pure iron into a white skin-tight bodysuit. He has blonde hair, a neatly trimmed goatee, piercing blue eyes, and a comfortable warmth that seems to radiate out of his skin. But even though his embrace felt solid and safe, it was difficult to ignore the fact that my feet weren’t touching solid ground. If he decided to let go, it would take me less than a minute to fall through the air and hit the pavement of the city below. Even from half the distance we were soaring, the fall would kill me.

  Did he have a reason to drop me? I was there when Andromeda was killed, he could drop me and the government could claim it was someone who jumped from a building. I dug my fingers deeper into his arms, prepared to hang on in case he let me go. It was like trying to squeeze your fingers against a steel wall. He really was bulletproof.

  “You can relax, Miss Watts,” he told me, staring at the city ahead. “You really are in safe hands.”

  “I’d really like to be put down now, sir,” I heard myself squeak out weakly. “I don’t want to puke on your costume.”

  He smirked, but not in a snarky and taunting manner. It was a warm expression, and it very nearly put me at ease. At ease enough to take a look down at the city below me, anyway. As I suspected, we weren’t in Philadelphia anymore. We were flying over the edge of Washington D.C.

  “Have you flown over our nation’s capital before?” he asked.

  “Not like this,” I replied honestly, gripping him arm a little tighter. “Last time I was here was with my ex-husband. Seriously, do you think we might land somewhere, like, freaking immediately?”

  I said freaking, I noticed with a little amusement. I almost dropped an F-bomb on him, but this was the Ambassador. Not only is he one of the world’s greatest super-heroes, he’s a golden boy scout. I’d be more comfortable swearing in the Vatican.

  He flexed his shoulders, and our trajectory changed slightly. We dipped downward in a gentle arc, cutting through a patch of clouds, until we approached the National Archives building. I had a seriously disorienting moment of adjustment as I went from flying in a nearly weightless to state to having my feet standing on solid matter again. As I tried to straighten my clothes and get my bearings, the alien stood at the edge of the roof with his arms folded, his golden cape flapping in the breeze, viewing the landscape of government buildings and monuments.

  “You shouldn’t stand so close to the edge,” I suggested. “You don’t want to fall.”

  Either he didn’t hear me, or my joke sounded a lot funnier in my head. He remained silent for a few more minutes, leaving me to wonder what I was doing on the roof of the National Archives building in Washington D.C. with the world’s greatest super-hero, when only an hour earlier I had a gun pointed to my head by a decorated army colonel.

  I wondered what he might have in that black satchel that he had slung around his broad shoulders. For all I knew, he had a gun of his own inside the bag. He could kill me on the roof of this building, fly away, and no one would suspect the world’s greatest hero of anything. I figured that maybe it was time to tone down the sarcasm, and start sounding apologetic for what had happened.

  “I want you to know how sorry I am about what happened to Andromeda,” I told him. “I don’t know what you and your gang think about me, but I never wanted anyone to die.”

  “You really aren’t fond of enhanced people, are you?”

  “That has nothing to do with this,” I said defensively.

  “That was the impression that my friend Colonel Bridge got,” he said, turning around to face me. “You think some of the world’s injustices are ignored by the superhuman community, don’t you?”

  “I think there’s a lot of people in the world with a lot of power, and you could be doing a little bit more to make the world a better place, yeah.”

  “For example?”

  “Oh, I don’t know, where do I even begin? Child abuse, curing cancer, stopping gun violence, putting an end to the abuse of women in third world countries. Take your pick, man.”

  I could have listed a couple dozen injustices that the heroes weren’t doing anything about, but I figured I was pushing my luck with him as it was. There was a reason he had flown me up here where no one would see us, and I wasn’t entirely sure that I was going to be leaving in one piece.

  But damn it, if he was going to kill me, he was going to hear what I had to say.

  “What do you think we super-heroes are good for?” asked the Ambassador, turning at last to look at me. “I mean realistically, what should we be doing, in your opinion?”

  “Besides saving the world? Besides being a positive role model for our children? I thought I just gave you four or five examples.”

  “Would you really want to live in a world where every one of your problems were conveniently fixed by godlike beings? Think of all the people who are lazy enough to begin with.”

  He was starting to sound dangerously superior to me, and that attitude always got my blood boiling. “Are you saying that human trafficking is beneath you? That finding a way to eradicate AIDS is not something you’re worried about? All that power, and all you guys do is beat the hell out of other guys with power in the streets?”

  “I’m saying that humanity has many problems that can be solved by humans themselves,” he replied. “Just about every problem you mentioned can be fixed by a group of people determined enough to make those problems go away forever. When you start relying on super-heroes to solve all your problems, the very concept of human achievement will begin to diminish.”

  “That sounds like a convenient way of saying that these are all somebody else’s problems.”

  “Those problems aren’t too large for mankind to handle,” he persisted. “Train derailments, nuclear accidents, terrorist attacks, natural disasters, these are the things where even the best equipped of you will occasionally need help. That is why we exist, not to stop gangs and regimes from fighting over territory and empires. Not to find cures for infectious diseases. These are challenges for regular people to conquer. Let me worry about saving airplanes with engine trouble or stopping Lord Sens’r when he invades the planet with a legion of Krael Warriors.”

  “Who?”

  “We’re off the point anyway,” he continued, suddenly deciding to hover a few feet over me. “We still have to decide what to do with you.”

  He stared at me with a cold and judgmental glare. Looking deeply into his eyes for the first time, I couldn’t shake the notion that I had seen them somewhere before. His eyes, I meant. There was a familiarity behind that gaze, but I dismissed it just as quickly as I had thought about it. I was too angry and scared to think straight, anyway.

  “Are you aware that I’ve had no contact with my family since I was apprehended? Do you have any idea what my son must be going through? He has no idea what happened to his mom!”

  “That’s already been seen to,” he promised. “They know you’re alive and well. Ann-Marie Cross, I believe that’s your sister’s name?”

  “Yeah,” I nodded dumbly. Had they spoken to her? Do they know what’s happened? “What did you tell her?”

  “Nothing about your activities, and nothing about Andromeda.”

  “You didn’t tell her I killed her?”

  “They’ve been told you were arrested for possible terrorist activities,” he told me. “Which is why they haven’t been allowed to contact you until we sort all of this out. They nothing about Andromeda.”

  It suddenly occurred to me, as I looked down over the streets of Washington, that none of the flags were flying at half-mast. As popular as Andromeda was, I would have thought there’d be more of a period of mourning. True, I’ve had absolutely no contact with the outside world since that night, but it occurred to me that the world looked like it had just gone on spinning. As if she had never died. Or…..

  “Her death hasn’t been made public,” I realized.

  “No, it hasn’t.”

&nb
sp; “How the hell can you keep something like this a secret for even an hour, let alone…..what has it been, a week?”

  “It’s not uncommon for a super-hero to go a certain length of time without being spotted,” he explained. “When is the last time you saw the Mirror Man? Arachnid? Combatticon? Sometimes, heroes take a vacation. Her disappearance hasn’t set off any alarms yet.”

  “Well, it won’t last,” I assumed. “People are going to start wondering.”

  “Yes, they will,” he nodded. “I’ve worked with Andromeda for fifteen years now. She was a wonderful human being, and a fine friend.”

  “Look, I’ll cooperate fully with the authorities,” I began telling him, barely believing what I was saying. “It was an accident, it really was.”

  “If I know anything, I know people,” he said quietly. “I look at you, and I see a woman who wants to do the right thing. I see a woman who doesn’t want others victimized or hurt or threatened. Sounds a lot like a person I wouldn’t mind knowing better.”

  Okay, this was going into a weird direction. What was he getting at?

  “Okay, I don’t mean any disrespect or anything, but this has really been as tough a week for me as it has for you and your team, and I’m just running out of patience. You’ve kept me locked up without trial for a week, I haven’t been able to talk to my family, and two members of your team want to beat the hell out of me. Actually, your ninja dominatrix friend already beat the hell out of me, so there was that. You guys seem to be undecided on if I should be arrested, or killed, or reasoned with, and I’m getting just a little impatient with you heroes making up your damned minds. So what the hell do you guys want with me?”

  It was probably the most words I’ve strung together into one sentence in an entire month. I think it surprised the Ambassador as much as it surprised me. He approached me, floating through the air, staring me down like a professor who’s lost his patience with any back talk. I don’t intimidate easily, I’ve worked in some pretty hairy neighborhoods in Philly.