The Infinite League Read online

  But this wasn’t a car thief or disorderly drunk or some mugger I was staring down. This was the Ambassador, the most powerful man on the planet. If he had been given orders to quietly kill me, there wouldn’t be anything I could do to stop it.

  “If the world found out that Andromeda was killed, especially in such a pedestrian manner, the backlash would be catastrophic.”

  “People die all the time, Ambassador.”

  “Yes, they do. But we’re not normal people. According to an estimate by Time magazine, Andromeda has personally saved the lives of over four hundred people. Multiply that by six when you factor in the times that the League has saved the entire world from various planet-threatening crises. She’s a hero, globally beloved, and an inspiration to women and children everywhere. Now try to imagine the crushing despair these people will feel when they learn she won’t be there for them anymore. Try to grasp the idea of how wicked and opportunistic men will react when they hear she’s fallen.”

  “You can’t make me feel any worse than I already do,” I growled at him. “How many times can I say I’m sorry?”

  “There’s a man in Detroit who had been beating his wife and son,” he continued. “He had been terrorizing his family for years, until Andromeda stepped in. She put the fear of God into that man, and vowed that she would come back and break one finger for every bruise that she found on his family. She had intimidated many terrible people in just such a way, and it worked. Imagine how fearful so many people will be when they learn their guardian angel has been killed.”

  I stared at my feet, letting his words sink in. He wasn’t telling me anything I didn’t already know. What he wasn’t telling me was how I was supposed to make it all right again.

  “We are the Infinite League, Emily Watts. The world depends on us being there for them. My team has been a shining beacon of hope for millions of citizens, and we do important work on behalf of the government. It’s very important to me that we appear strong, invincible and united. And it seems to me that you need to stay out of prison, for the sake of your little boy.”

  “Yeah, we both have our problems,” I repeated slowly. I still had no idea where this was going. I couldn’t have even guessed. Not in a million years. “But you and I both know there’s no way I’m not going to jail for what happened. She was a national treasure, we all know it. Shit, by the time the courts find a jury that’s never heard of Andromeda, my kid will be picking colleges.”

  “Not if the world never learns that she’s dead.”

  The words hung in the air for a moment, and he was looking at me as if I should have immediately understood what he was talking about. I didn’t.

  “What do you want me to do? Go door to door all across America, telling every person that she’s doing just fine?”

  “When you were struggling with Andromeda, her gauntlets came alive. Didn’t they?”

  I squinted my eyes at him, trying to remember the whirlwind details of the few seconds before a bullet shredded her head. I remember the fire coming from her fingertips; I remember the pain of her touch.

  He removed the black satchel from his shoulder and pulled two objects out. They looked like brown leather armbands decorated with bright colors and designs, with long laces designed to wrap around your wrists. Right away, I knew what I was looked at. They looked as if they were hundreds of years old, and they were making soft sounds that I somehow felt only I could hear.

  They were on Andromeda’s wrists the last time I saw them. It sounds stupid, but they felt like divine artifacts. Something felt disturbingly supernatural about them, and I don’t like anything I can’t explain with something I learned in my fifth grade science class.

  “Her armbands?”

  “She called them gauntlets,” he corrected me. “Crafted and blessed by the Aztec god Huitzilopochtli.”

  “An Aztec god,” I repeated skeptically.

  “I’m not sure I believe it either, between you and me. But I’m an alien from an advanced civilization in another galaxy. It’s no more or less believable than a pair of leather wraps made in the 15th century by a god that took the form of a hummingbird. Who knows who really made them? The point is that she found them, and they gave her the abilities that she’s famous for. You know, the two of you are about the same height.”

  “Except I’m fifteen pounds heavier, and about two cups sizes bigger,” I pointed out. Where was he going with this?

  “The point is, the gauntlets chose her,” he explained. “She was considered worthy by the Aztec god Huitzilopochtli, or so she always explained to us. The gauntlets attached themselves to her wrists fifteen years ago, sewing themselves into her skin. But they tried to claim you, didn’t they?”

  I remained silent. I hadn’t thought about it since that night, but he was right. It had happened, but I had forgotten all about it when she got capped. What did it mean?

  “I’ve already spoken to Colonel Bridge and the rest of the team. The course is clear. I want you to take her place, Emily. You need to become Andromeda.”

  Then he just stopped talking and looked at me, carefully watching my reactions with his ultra-vision or whatever he had going on behind those blue eyes. I thought he had started a joke and was just building up to the punchline, but he remained silent.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Wrap them around your wrists,” he said invitingly. “If nothing happens, then you aren’t the one. You’ll be assigned an attorney, and you can take your chances with the courts.”

  “You make it sound so tempting,” I said sarcastically. “Hey, I’m just a normal human.”

  “So was she,” he assured me, dropping the gauntlets over his own wrists. Unsurprisingly, nothing happened. They hung over his thick hands like cooked spaghetti. “They only grant power to the worthy individuals that they choose. Dr. Progeriat studied these artifacts exhaustively, and he couldn’t find any evidence of supernatural or alien properties. But believe me, they do work. For the right woman, anyway.”

  “That old man is an expert on alien technology?”

  “Well, he had my experience to consult with,” he said, reminding me once again that he was an alien visitor. He only looked like a tall, sexy human male. “Just hold them, Emily. Humor me. Considering how much trouble you’re in, it can’t hurt to try.”

  “So what do I do when nothing happens, big guy?”

  “We’ll talk about your options then,” he promised. “I’ll tell you what. Do this for me, and I’ll make sure you have a chance to talk with your sister and son as soon as possible.”

  I couldn’t tell for sure if he meant it, but I couldn’t pass up the opportunity. Besides, I didn’t believe for one second that these leather wraps could compliment my skin tone, let alone give me super powers. I placed the wraps on my arms, expecting the things do absolutely nothing.

  Of course, I’ve been wrong before. The first thing I felt was a pain in my wrists similar to being burned with a lit cigarette. My first reaction was to flap my hands wildly, trying to shake the leather wraps off of my wrists. But they were slithering and tightening around my arms, like constrictors that had founds its prey.

  Each of these gauntlets had three silver laces firmly attached to the left and right side. That’s twelve short laces in total. And all twelve of them had moved, animated by unseen forces, slicing into my skin!

  The Ambassador only watched, like he wasn’t even surprised by what was happening to me! My hands burst into flames, and then the fire sputtered out, and then they ignited again. Strangely enough, it didn’t hurt. Not like the laces.

  The laces travelled under my flesh, and I could see them moving under my skin like living parasites.

  “Oh my God, what is happening to me?”

  “A second chance, my dear,” he said quietly.

  For the third time in one week, I went unconscious. To tell you the truth, I’m getting fairly pissed regarding the annoying frequency with which I seem to be passing out.

  8
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br />   First Steps

  Tuesday, May 6 – 3:00 p.m.

  For the most part, I like to think I’m a girl in pretty good shape. I work out on a regular basis, I jog four times a week, and I’ve knocked men twice my size on their asses.

  “Five more minutes.”

  I took a deep breath, and tried to concentrate on ignoring the pain. The weird armbands had been laced into my skin for two days now, and the tenderness around the entrance wounds was more tolerable now. The pain that I was feeling now was coming from an entirely different source.

  “You’re dropping,” the old man told me. “Get back up there.”

  I cursed under my breath, but I don’t think he heard me. Back in my first few weeks at the police academy, I initially struggled with climbing ropes. Even when I wrapped the ropes around my feet in a perfect “S” hook, mastering a useful vertical pulling pattern whipped the shit out of me. It took me a few weeks longer than I would have liked to get competent at it, and I vowed never to feel that powerless again.

  Maybe that’s why I was whining like a little girl with skinned knees. What Dr. Progeriat was asking me to do should have been impossible.

  Yet I was doing it. It was just a matter of willing it to happen, he explained to me. The gauntlets had given me abilities, and I just had to tap into the powers I now had.

  I took in a deep breath and held it, denying myself further oxygen until I lifted myself back to three feet above the ground.

  It was making my muscles uncomfortably tight and my skin flushed, but I was doing it. I mean, I wasn’t flying like the Ambassador, but it was a start.

  I was levitating off the floor of the workout room, hanging in the air like a hummingbird. Perfectly still, except for the subtle spasms and twitches.

  Years ago, I had tried to balance myself on a thin rail for several minutes. I would occasionally begin to lose my balance and I’d have to wave my arms wildly to regain my stance before I fell. That’s what I looked like, which looks infinitely crazier when you’re hovering in mid-air.

  “Alright, my dear, you can let yourself down now,” Dr. Progeriat informed me. “Try to land gently, on one toe to begin. Andromeda is known for her grace and—“

  Before he finished the sentence, I had dropped down. I dropped quickly, as if I suddenly realized how insane it was to ignore gravity like that, and I landed square on my ass.

  The gauntlets had enhanced me with two powers, I was told. Invulnerability was, sadly, not one of them. Fortunately, the floor was padded, or I would have been known as She With The Purple Ass Cheeks for weeks.

  “Well, that was certainly graceful,” commented a deep voice from behind me. I was so exhausted from the effort of keeping my body floating in the air that I could barely turn my head to see Colonel Bridge and the Necromancer walking towards me.

  “You try it, cupcake.”

  He ignored my remarks, like he usually does. He approached the doctor and began the morning assessment. “It’s been forty-eight hours, Dr. Progeriat. Is this going to work or not?”

  “If I could see the future, we wouldn’t have half the problems we have now,” he remarked testily. “But she’s coming along, yes. Another month, and she’ll be flying like a bird.”

  “She needs to be ready by the beginning of next week,” Bridge warned him. “Every day that Andromeda doesn’t show up on the nightly news is another day closer we get to having a nightmare of a news story on our hands.”

  “Hey, can I take a break?” I asked them. “I could really use a bite to eat.” Plus, I really didn’t want to be in the same room as the Necromancer. I still didn’t feel safe around him.

  “Yeah, take a break,” he offered with a forced grin and a grand bow that dripped with sarcasm. “Chidike, take Miss Watts down to the communications chamber before you escort her to the commissary.

  The doc and I need to compare some notes anyway.”

  I didn’t want time alone with the Necromancer, but they weren’t giving me much of a choice. I slowly glanced in his direction, and I got a really good look at him for the first time.

  Judging by his facial structure, the size of his nose and his lips, and the deep baratone of his voice, he was definitely of African descent. But his skin wasn’t much darker than my own, and it was covered with a splattering of dark dots and moles. They weren’t freckles. They weren’t like anything I’d ever seen before. Not exactly a rash, but I was stumped to identify it. He was gesturing for me to follow him, and our eyes met for just a moment.

  His eyes seemed irritated, almost bloodshot. The corneas were cloudy, and the whites of his eyes were tinted with crimson. They weren’t eyes you’d want to stare too long into. I decided to make polite conversation, while still digging for some information about the world I’d been forced into. While we talked, I had to move at a gentle jog to keep pace with his long strides through the corridors.

  “So what’s with all the military running around? I thought the Infinite League was an independent organization. You guys really do take orders from the army?”

  “Colonel Bridge is an advisor and a liaison to the government,” he responded impatiently, increasing his pace. “But we don’t take orders. We adhere to a few reasonable regulations, but they don’t dictate how we do our jobs.”

  We came to a stop in front of a room marked as the Communications Chamber. The steel door automatically opened as we approached, revealing a modest-sized room with a couple dozen consoles, all manned by big guys wearing those blue uniforms I saw on my first day. Most of them were chattering away to faces on video screens in front of them, or typing, or watching what looked like satellite images and furiously taking notes. One of them met me at the door and greeted me, and asked me to accompany him to one of the consoles. I wasn’t done asking the Necromancer questions, though.

  “You’re regulated, but not given orders? How does that even work?”

  “Miss Watts, is any of this relevant? Colonel Bridge is carefully scrutinizing you for any reason to remove you from this project. You don’t belong here, young lady. You belong in a deep hole in the ground, far away from anyone unfortunate enough to care about you.”

  I’ve been called worse. It still hurt though, but if playing along was going to get me back to my son, he wasn’t going to intimidate me.

  “I’m sorry your friend was killed,” I told him with as much sincerity as I could generate. “But it was an accident. You murdered my friend. I saw it, and we both know it wasn’t the same thing. I might not be an angel, but at least I don’t lie and call myself a super-hero. Do you think Andromeda would have approved of what you did? Because I think your friend would have been ashamed of you.”

  It was right there that I realized once again that I really need to think about what I’m going to say before I spew word vomit in front of people. Particularly people who could kill me with his black magic death touch. The officer meant to escort me into the chamber cleared his throat and took a subtle step backwards, but I held my ground.

  I don’t know what was wrong with the Necromancer’s eyes, and I didn’t know if was even capable of crying. But I could read body language, and he seemed to be fighting something back. So he did feel emotions.

  “She wasn’t my friend,” he corrected me. “She was my fiancé.”

  Aw, shit.

  “She gets five minutes,” he told the officer with a scowl before he departed. “No more.”

  The next few moments were spent giving me a very brief explanation of the rules. Fortunately, the man explaining the rules was much more agreeable than anyone else I’d met so far. He was a young officer, blonde and handsome, who shook my hand when he met me.

  “Emmeline, was it?”

  “Emily, actually.”

  “Capt. Eric Quincy,” he said with an easy smile. “I’m in charge of communication, radar, pretty much everything that feeds information from the outside world down here in the Dome.”

  “Sounds like a full plate. What’s the Dome?”
<
br />   “It’s an informal name. Ambassador tried to call it the InfiniDome, but that name never really caught on yet.”

  “Can’t imagine why,” I chuckled. I reminded myself to stop twirling my fingers through my hair like a horny ninth-grade girl.

  “So, you’re supposed to have five minutes,” he continued, without really telling me what was going on. “I can probably give you ten minutes without anyone really catching on, though.”

  “That sounds nice, but I’d probably be more excited if I knew what the hell was going on?”

  Another uniformed officer, this one a young woman, arrived a moment later and handed me a bright orange jacket and instructed me to put it on. Captain Quincy snapped his fingers, as if he had nearly forgotten a crucial detail, and helped me slip it over my shoulders.

  “This is a prison jacket,” I couldn’t help noticing.

  “Yeah, it’s part of the deal.”

  “The deal?”

  “You need to tell them you’ve been arrested on charges of the murder of a government official. You can tell them it’s all a mistake, and you can tell them your lawyer is working on it, but you can’t say anything about Andromeda or the deal you’ve cut or where you are. It’s the best we could do.”

  “Talk to who?”

  “There’s going to be a five second delay on the transmission,” the female officer informed me. “Colonel Bridge doesn’t trust you yet, so if you mention any of the intelligence that’s been flagged, the feed will be cut before the other side hears it and the call will end early.”

  “You got that?” asked Eric. “Just stick to the approved scenario when you talk to them, and there won’t be any problems.”

  “Oh my God, talk to who?”

  The screen in front of me lit up, and a face I hadn’t seen in two weeks filled the screen.

  “Mommy!”