Bastion: O-Men: Liege’s Legion

by Elaine Levine

  So which was at play here?

  Bastion followed her downstairs and into the long dining room. He kept his presence hidden by jamming cameras and setting an illusion that caused anyone who might look at him to see the space he was in as it was before he was there.

  A buffet was set up on one side of the room. The table accommodated at least two dozen, more if he counted the extra chairs pressed against the wall. There must be more leaves for it stored somewhere. When there was a break in the chow line, he filled a plate, then sat in one of the extra chairs in the far corner of the room, a spot that gave him the perfect opportunity to watch the house’s residents interact with each other and Selena.

  The mansion was as crowded as an apartment complex. Dozens of children and fighters and their families all lived in this big home. Were they a cult? Could Selena leave if she wanted? The Omnis were a cult. Of necessity, they forced cult-like behaviors on those who opposed them: secrecy, extreme loyalty, devotion to the cause. It was a sad statement when you became a mirror of the very thing you fought, but Bastion knew of no other way for the resistance to be effective. Perhaps it was the same for his Legion as it was for this team of fighters.

  Or perhaps these fighters were Omnis—that was still an unanswered question.

  Selena kept to herself. Though she laughed and joked in response to others, she never started conversations. Was that her norm? Why was she with—but not of—these people?

  The other fighters and their families came and went for breakfast. Some filled plates and left with them; some only came for coffee; others sat and ate at the table. Two men appeared responsible for kitchen duty. They ate with the others, but checked the dishes on the buffet often, refilling them when needed. Everyone carried their own dirty dishes to the kitchen.

  The meal was chaos, but seemed to work for the residents.

  After a little while, Selena took her dishes to the kitchen. Bastion left his on the table and waited for her in the hallway. She walked down the long hallway to the southern staircase and went up to her room.

  When she came out of her room, she went across the main stairs at the bridge between the two main bedroom wings of the mansion and took the north stairs down. She went into the den, then into a big closet and through a hidden door that Bastion hadn’t noticed before.

  Interesting. What was downstairs? He kept himself hidden as he followed her down several flights of stairs. They came out in a large subterranean conference room.

  The place was huge.

  Some of her peers were already seated at the conference table. No spouses or children were with them—or so he thought until a couple came in: a tall blond male with a broken leg and a petite female with pink hair and a broken arm. The man pulled a chair out for the woman, who rolled her eyes and shook her head at the gesture, even as she sank into the seat he offered.

  A hallway was at the opposite end of the room. Bastion strolled in that direction. More rooms opened off that short hallway: a bathroom, kitchen, and bunkroom. A set of steel doors opened to somewhere. He made a mental note to come back and explore the area more. At the end of the hall was an ops room with a bank of computers. A weapons room was just beyond it. He meandered around the glass cases in there, impressed with the range of weaponry the team kept. He reached out to Acier, wanting his friend to see he was seeing. Look at this, Acier. They are well prepared.

  Fuck. Howdy. Not a custom blade in the place, Acier responded. Make nice with these guys, Bastion. I could use new clients.

  An elevator landed and the doors opened. Two men walked out of it, both blond, one with eyes like arctic ice, the other with blue eyes and a military flattop haircut.

  Bastion smiled, recognizing the team’s leaders by their posture and attitude. The one with the cold eyes had been with the mutant woman on Bastion’s tour last night. Bastion followed them into the main room and stood off to one side so he could observe Selena.

  Silence settled in the room. Bastion was looking forward to the nuggets of info the top guys were going to drop—something that would let him know which side of the Omni war they were on. To his surprise, the news of the day was about one of the guy’s wedding plans.

  Merde. Were these hard-nosed men wedding planners and not fighters?

  The man with the shaggy, dark hair was apparently the groom-to-be. They were talking about a cabin way out on the edge of the property where he was going to propose to his girl.

  Bastion knew the girl—he’d seen them together several times while he was monitoring the grounds. She was the team’s mechanic.

  This couldn’t be an Omni wedding. Top Omni echelon never married lowly mechanics—they always chose brides from Omni bloodlines, usually from society’s glitterati.

  Selena looked bored with the discussion. He grinned at her. She looked his way. Was she remembering pieces of their night together? Would she hate him when he returned those memories to her?

  The team was assigned posts. Most of the guys were to head out to the cabin to finish up its renovations. Others had guard duty in various areas of the property. Selena had been tasked with some paperwork. Bastion could see she chafed at the assignment, but she didn’t complain.

  “One more piece of business,” the flattop team lead told the room as his gaze settled on the pink-haired chick. “The FBI finished processing your grandfather’s body.”

  “I know,” the girl said. “Greer, Val, and I are going to Denver to pick him up today. We bought a plot for him in Cheyenne.”

  “Well, you’ll have to put a hold on those plans. They’ve misplaced Santo’s body.”

  Bastion’s wandering mind screeched back to the present. Santo? This team of regulars knew about Santo? And Pink Hair was Santo’s granddaughter?

  That was definitely a mark in the column of “maybe Omni.”

  Her blond boyfriend scoffed at the news. “How does the FBI misplace a body?”

  The team lead shook his head. “Dunno, Val. Lobo said he’d retraced all the paperwork at each hand-off. Everything was in order, until they reached Denver and were one coffin short. He’s looking into it for us.”

  The pink-haired fighter gave her team lead one of the coldest glares Bastion had ever seen. She got up and left the room, rushing up the stairwell that let out in the den.

  Val left as well, using the opposite exit with the hidden elevator. His leg was in a cast, and the several flights of stairs weren’t manageable. Bastion followed him into the elevator car, wondering how he’d injured himself. Not having Liege’s ability to read minds, Bastion had to ponder the energy surrounding the man’s leg. It seemed it had happened in a fight recently. Definitely a fight rather than an accident. His girl was injured as well, but hers had happened in a different fight.

  Evidently, this crew wasn’t full-time wedding planners, unless planning weddings was a lot more dangerous than Bastion knew.

  They caught up to the girl on the long patio that stretched the back of the house. The December air was freezing, but she didn’t appear to feel it.

  “Ace…” Val began—and stopped, apparently not knowing what to say.

  “They didn’t lose Santo,” she said, turning angry eyes on him. “They never shipped him out. They must have found something in their autopsy.”

  “It’s possible. Lobo was always making sure the bodies we racked up in our fights were sent to the FBI. I think they were looking for something—possibly human modifications.”

  Ace stopped and faced Val. “Do you think he was modified?”

  Bastion nodded, then remembered he was invisible to these two and wasn’t part of the convo. He knew for a fact that Santo had been one of the first regulars modified. His mods didn’t take like later generations of the mutations. His did not reverse his age. Nor did they help him with rapid wound healing. But they did give him certain physiological and neurological enhancements—extreme memory skills, the ability to sense and manipulate energies, heightened instincts, increased strength, agility, and endless stam
ina.

  Santo was single-handedly responsible for the Legion’s survival in the training camps. He was who originally reached out to Liege and taught him about his new enhancements. It was because of Santo that the Legion existed.

  This little fighter, a regular, thought she’d killed Santo? Bastion chuckled at her hubris.

  Liege, Bastion said, opening a mental channel with his team lead, Santo’s in the wind.

  He is, but how did you know? Liege said.

  One of the fighters here is his granddaughter. She thinks she killed him.

  Why would she fight him? Her own grandfather? Liege said.

  I’ll see what I can learn.

  He’s not dead, Liege said. I still feel his energy. There are reports that he’s been seen in South America again.

  More training camps? Bastion asked.

  Maybe. When I have solid intel, I’ll be sending Merc down to check it out.

  You think Santo picked a fight with his granddaughter so he could make an exit?

  Yeah, Liege said, that’s more like it. Is she one of Owen Tremaine’s fighters?

  She is.

  Maybe Santo was letting her end their relationship—on her terms. Keep me posted.

  Also, this team has a contact in the FBI who’s been working with them. Seems he may know about the human modifications.

  Find out who he is. We’ll reach out to him.

  He goes by the name Lobo. I’ll get more info on him.

  Bastion left the couple and went back to the hidden bunker area, where Selena was working alone. Stacks of documents sat on the conference table. She had set up two scanners—a tabletop one for regular-sized docs and a floor model for oversized ones.

  What was she scanning?

  Bastion examined a couple of the docs she’d completed. They were in a mix of languages, varying sizes, ages, and types of paper. The ones he could read talked about Omni issues: origin stories, histories, inventories, membership rosters, inventions, correspondence between members.

  The oldest were in Latin, written by hand on parchment paper. Small, brilliantly colored letters and decorations made the page seem cheery, until he realized the illustrations were about people being murdered.

  Liege, Bastion said via their mental link.

  Go.

  Did you realize the Omnis are an ancient organization?

  Santo mentioned something about that, Liege said, but he never elaborated. I always thought they called themselves Omnis because of their extensive association with international crime orgs. How did you learn this?

  The team here has an archive of documents, some dating back hundreds of years.

  Good. I expect a complete analysis.

  I can read French and English, even old French and English, but not Latin or many of the other languages represented in these docs.

  Do what you can. Bring back a summary—and the digital archive.

  Copy that.

  One of the guys who’d been at the morning meeting came back into the conference hall with a stack of books.

  “What are you doing, Rocco?” Selena asked him. “Max let you off love shack duty?”

  Rocco chuckled. “I took a pass. There’s too much here that still needs to be translated. Might as well jump on it while things are quiet.”

  The documents were in German, French, English, Spanish, Arabic, Portuguese, Latin, and other languages. The books he’d brought down were English translation dictionaries. Was this guy a polyglot? Yet another useful connection for the Legion…and for the Omnis.

  Bastion stood behind the man’s chair and read over his shoulder as he worked. His progress was slow with some docs and fast with others, probably because he was more fluent with some of the languages than others.

  Selena and her teammate had a ton of work to do before the archive would be ready for Bastion to snag. There was nothing in these papers that indicated her team’s stance on the Omnis; it was historical info—interesting, but not as pressing as examining the rest of the house.

  Hiding his movements from any observers or recording devices, he opened one of the big steel doors in the bunker’s hallway and stepped out onto a raised loading dock. He took the steps down and walked into the wide, cavelike tunnel. It ran a long way before opening out into a much larger cave with a high ceiling. Some motorcycles and extra cars were parked in that portion of the hidden access tunnel. Leaving the big cave, he saw a narrow stream that trickled past the front of it. Cottonwoods, willows, cedars, and some scrub pines obscured the entrance while still allowing vehicles access via a narrow dirt road that branched off from the track encircling the house and grounds. This bunker entrance was hard to see unless you were nearly upon it—Bastion had missed it in his surveillance.

  He went back into the bunker tunnel and slipped inside, returning to the ops room and the armory beyond it, where he summoned the elevator. It only went to one floor. Which floor would that be? The basement, the main floor, or the second floor?

  Bastion stepped out of the elevator into a bedroom—the one in the southern bedroom wing that had the energy of a bus station. That mystery was explained, at least—it was a frequently used corridor.

  It was interesting to know the bunker could be accessed by three hidden entrances. The bunkroom down there would be a good place to stash the civilians if the Legion’s enemy, Brett Flynn, ever brought the fight here. His mutant ghouls could break into this sprawling mansion with no trouble—there were windows everywhere, and dozens of French doors that opened onto the back patio. That hidden bunkroom was far more secure than the house itself.

  Either the people here were sitting ducks, or they were safe from attack because they were in cahoots with the new breed of Omnis. Which was it? They weren’t ignorant of mutants. They had one living in the house, and others had recently visited.

  Bastion pondered that conundrum as he observed the household during the rest of the day. By suppertime, he was no closer to an answer.

  4

  Supper at the Red Team headquarters was a plated meal, more formal than breakfast or lunch. The mob of children was fed first. Bastion noticed that there were two older boys who seemed to be leaders of the wild bunch. Bastion learned their names from the group. Lion was a broad-shouldered blond with a lanky build and wavy hair, and Hawk was tall and dark-haired with haunted blue eyes. A troubled kid, Hawk could laugh at a joke one of the kids cracked and still look like he was drowning.

  Something about those two reminded Bastion of himself and his brother. His brother had had the same dark spirit as Hawk and followed Bastion everywhere, even into the Army.

  Only one female kid was among the group. An adolescent, she had the same bio signature as the flattop team lead who’d been at the morning meeting in the bunker. Casey was her name.

  The kids were given plenty of food and a long hour for the meal. The girl’s mom came by and visited with the group. She was pregnant. Bastion stared at her, feeling the energy of the baby intertwined with her own, a connection so raw that it robbed him of words. The woman was excited for her new child. Same with another pregnant lady who sat with the youngest in the group. Then the mutant female came in. One of her sons was friends with the youngest boy. Her older son was across the table, more connected to the wild boys than his brother.

  Despite the odd mix of social and familial dynamics, Bastion could tell that there was a lot of love for these kids. Though some of them lived out in the gym, they weren’t lesser members of the group.

  The kids looked up to both Hawk and Lion. And the teenage female clearly had a crush on Lion, which didn’t seem to be reciprocated, for he teased her like a sibling.

  Tomorrow, Bastion would follow the boys to see how they spent their days. Maybe he could get a couple of them to talk about where they came from and how they’d ended up with this group.

  When the meal was finished, the kids cleared the table. One of the cooks reset it with fresh linens and plates for the next round of diners. Some of the adults
disappeared with the kids, apparently to get them settled before the grownups ate. Others gathered in the living room to have a drink. One of the ops guys was opening beers and setting them on the bar top. Bastion took one then moved off to the side so he could see everyone and watch their interactions.

  The living room was large—big enough for two suites of furniture—but everyone crowded into the area between the dining room and the bar, some females sitting on their male’s laps, men perched on arms of the wide armchairs beside their women, others standing by the bar. The couples were openly affectionate. This was nothing like the cold and structured Omni gatherings Bastion had observed, where everyone was trying to get an angle on everyone else.

  No. This was like family.

  Selena joined the group. Her beautiful brown hair was loose about her shoulders. Dark lashes framed sultry green eyes that perfectly complemented her dusky skin tone. Her height let her move with an effortless grace.

  She grabbed a beer, then turned to face the room. She was a single female in a sea of bonded couples. A square peg on a deck of round holes. Her otherness sliced into him.

  You are not alone. I am with you. You are mine and I am yours. Bastion knew his words registered in her mind, but not as something that came from him. No, they landed like something her imagination had conjured up to keep her from shattering. She smiled a little sadly as she stared at her beer.

  “What’s on your mind, Sel?” Val, the big blond, asked.

  “Nothing. Just hungry, I guess.”

  I am hungry for you, Bastion whispered into her mind.

  Still, she thought this was more of her imagination. Soon, she would know the truth.

  “The beer warm?” Greer asked.

  “No. Why?”

  “You’re frowning at it.”

  “Huh.”

  Bastion grinned. He had the irresistible need to freeze everyone so he could go over and kiss her. After all, when a mutant found his mate, it was stupid to waste even a minute of time they could have together.