Blackjack Messiah

by Ben Bequer

  We reached a medical bay and Ruby was there with a couple of techs, prepping the whole thing for me. She had showered and changed into civvies with a white lab coat.

  “How long did you give me?”

  “Alone with the princess? Long enough,” he said.

  Ruby must have heard some of our conversation on the way in and gave us both a nasty look. “You, go,” she told Moe. “And you, take off all your clothes.”

  I got up from the wheelchair. “Think Apogee will get jealous if she finds out I was naked in front of you?”

  She shook her head, following Moe out of the bay. “Oh, I’m not taking care of you today. Nurse Williams will help you.”

  Nurse Williams was a guy.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Rico and Templar

  I woke with a start, Templar and Ricochet standing over me on either side of the healing pod. I was still in the medlab and my first reaction was to look down at my wounded leg. The injury was well-wrapped, but even shifting the leg sent a wave of pain shooting through my body. Something was wrong. It wasn’t healing right.

  “Jesus, dude,” Templar said. “We really gotta talk.”

  “No shit,” Rico added. “Me and Matt are gonna pool up some cash and buy you a CPAP machine.”

  “Huh?”

  “Your snoring,” Templar said. “It’s like...I don’t know...like the mating call of one of those worms in Dune.”

  Ricochet laughed at the reference. “Sweet,” he said and they fist-bumped.

  They were both in civilian clothes, and it stunned me how far they had come. When Superdynamic put Battle together, the point had been for them to do the job and not much more. No real names, masks always on. Now they were a family. Jae, Ricochet’s real name, wore a jumpsuit exactly like the one Bruce Lee wore in Game of Death. Templar, Matt, was dressed as if he was about to catch some waves, with flip-flops and a pair of mirrored shades.

  “You beat up Kareem?” I said.

  “Dude, I’m taking JKD and loving it,” Ricochet said, ignoring the jibe. “It was Super D’s idea, but it’s awesome.”

  Templar clapped Ricochet on the back. “Imagine this guy being able to, you know, actually fight in a fight.”

  “It would be nice to be useful,” Ricochet said, still fucking around.

  “I don’t mind tossing you around,” I said sitting up.

  “I’m serious about the CPAP, dude,” Ricochet went on. “My uncle wears one and it’s a big deal for him.”

  “You two bored? Need me to find something for you to do?” I said, still in jest. “I think the Cicada needs a new coat of paint.”

  Templar just smiled.

  “They have all kinds of masks,” Ricochet went on, digging the dagger. “My uncle has a nasal pillow that you can barely feel.”

  “Maybe I could volunteer you guys to the bilge cleaning detail. You don’t mind foul smells, do you?”

  “He’s already lost like fifteen pounds, too.”

  Ruby heard the commotion and came over. “You two ruffians can fuck right off, and let my patient heal.”

  “We come with an invite, dude,” Templar said, punching me in the shoulder.

  Ricochet continued his joke, now with Ruby. While Templar went on about his invite, my attention was drawn to her posture and nonverbal communication. She was doing a shitty job of containing a wide smile, of looking at his eyes. Ruby was trying her hardest to seem casual, but from across the room, her interest was painfully obvious.

  Ricochet was a handsome guy, slim and athletic, with perfect hair. The guy looked more like a K-Pop star than a superhero, and she had noticed. It helped that the kid was razor smart. To his credit, he was playing her cool - for the first time ever. Templar caught me staring at them and leaned into the bed, joining me as the audience. “Yeah, I’ve been talking to him. Hopefully, he’ll learn how to human soon.”

  It didn’t take long for him to start fumbling and stammering. Ruby’s a rare beauty, and standing so close to her was taking its toll. She was also older and a little more experienced. A lack of confidence was not her problem.

  “Mayday, mayday,” Templar said. “Let me go save this kid from himself.”

  Templar joined them, but I noticed that Ruby wasn’t put off by Ricochet’s return to form. She actually found him cute! Templar grabbed his flailing bud and brought him back to me.

  “You two have five minutes,” Ruby said, before disappearing into the lab.

  “What did I say?” Ricochet rambled, looking confused, almost in shock. “What just happened?”

  Templar’s support seemed to be the only thing that kept Ricochet standing. “She said something nice about your hair,” he said. “Then you started drooling.”

  “What?”

  “I’m kidding, Jesus.”

  “Huh?” Ricochet was grabbing Templar now, his knuckles white on the bright orange Hawaiian shirt. “Matt, did I start drooling?” He rubbed his mouth and his chest for signs of drool.

  “He’s joking, Jae,” I said, rolling over and sitting at the edge of the bed.

  “You’re joking? Really?”

  Templar laughed so hard I thought he’d pop a blood vessel. “Oh, man. We still have a long way to go.” He still held Ricochet and started out of the bay. “Anyway, it’s an open invite B.”

  “Invite for what?”

  “We have a game we play,” he said. “We can always use a third.”

  I looked over at the monitor with my vitals. Blood pressure was a little high, heart rate as well, but everything was within parameters. Except for the leg. There was a constant throbbing pain that became shooting agony whenever I tried to move it. “I might be here awhile, guys. Thanks anyways.”

  “Blacks, do you think she noticed?” Ricochet asked.

  I laughed, “I think she’s into you, man.”

  Ricochet stared at me as if I had told him the sky was black, he looked over at Templar, who gave him a knowing nod. “Serious?”

  “I keep telling you,” Templar said.

  “B, for real?”

  “He’s not lying,” I said.

  “I can’t believe anything he says,” Ricochet said.

  “I got this,” Templar said, dragging him out of the room. “We’ll whip him into shape, right B?”

  I laughed and waved them off. Ruby was outside the room and Ricochet, let out a little yelp when he saw her. There was no established name for the resulting shade of red. She didn’t come in, though when she ran into them she was on her way into the room. She stayed there, watching them walk down the hall until they reached an elevator.

  When she came inside, Ruby seemed a bit flushed - then saw me sit up.

  “What the bloody hell are you doing?”

  “I’m trying to fly.”

  “Get back into the bed, dammit. You bleed all over my nice, clean medbay, I’ll sonic you into jelly. Come on, get in there.”

  She herded me in then took a moment to study my vitals. Ruby caught the smile on my face and knew what I was thinking. “Oh, hush with you.”

  “You like him, huh?”

  Ruby said nothing, but the color rushing to her cheeks was all the answer I needed.

  “He’s a good kid,” I said, leaning back in the bed.

  “You’re awful,” she said, taking my wrist to check my pulse. “Sit still, you villain.”

  When she was done, she sat at the edge of my bed and tapped away at the pad for almost a minute.

  “So what’s going on with the leg?”

  “It’s healing,” she said.

  “Slower than everything else.”

  Ruby nodded.

  “Why?”

  She shrugged and stood, “From what I know of Lady Armada, her spear is some sort of holy weapon.”

  “What does that mean?” I said.

  For her part, she seemed to want to leave without filling me in but stopped at the door. “It means assholes heal slower,” she said, trying to slip out of the room.

 
“Hang on a second,” I said. “What about this?” I lifted up my arm, pointing to the bracer.

  Ruby’s pause answered that question.

  “That bad, huh?”

  She nodded. That meant she and Superdynamic, and all of the techs in the Tower had no idea why I was emitting that weird radiation, or what could be done about it. The bracers were working, at a cost - a permanent headache and a droning feeling that made me want to pass out. They were fitted with a filtration system utilizing magnetic interpolation - unfortunately, I was running through filter cartridges pretty fast. I was up to one a day.

  “Jeff’s preparing a…a thing for you,” she said. “I’d wait for that before you start running off half-cocked.”

  Ruby wanted to say more, but she shook her head and left me alone.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Plans, Plans and More Plans

  After a couple of days in the medlab, I was good to go, and Ruby released me “on my own recognizance.” The leg was still slow to mend, and I was left to limping around with a cane or using an electric wheelchair. I chose the limping.

  Apogee was there to meet me, though she’d been AWOL for most of my stay in medlab. She was sporting a new costume, which was almost the same as the old one but with a smaller boob-window. “My shit keeps spilling out,” she said. “Think they’re getting bigger.”

  She loved talking about “the girls,” as most voluptuous women do. Just hearing her and Ruby talk about their back problems made me want to excuse myself for three minutes. It had sort of turned into a contest of who was better endowed. In my opinion, Ruby had a couple of cup sizes on my girl, but I wasn’t going to say that out loud. Apogee’s argument was that she was six feet tall and Ruby was much closer to five. Her cup size might be smaller, but overall, she was larger.

  It was like that with Apogee, a competition with every other female super.

  For example, Lady Armada had a figure like something you’d find on a Greek statue, and her face was angelic, flawless. When Apogee saw an article describing Lady Armada as “cherubesque” - something that I didn’t quite agree with - she settled upon it like a mark of victory.

  “Cherubs? Weren’t those the chunky baby angels in those paintings?”

  After that, Lady Armada was chunky. Ruby was short. Etcetera, ad infinitum. I didn’t care if Epic’s biceps were more massive than mine, or if Moe’s quads were thicker around, but then again, I had all my other faults. She came to pick me up and immediately asked Ruby for a wheelchair.

  “I’m fine like this,” I said.

  “Don’t be stupid,” she said.

  “Ruby says it’s better. It’ll allow me to get some blood flow in the wound.”

  “You’re dating the fastest woman on the planet-”

  No, I wasn’t. There was another speedster that was demonstrably faster. She was a scrawny sixteen-year-old from Australia, who’s powers had blossomed mid-track and field competition. She was coming up and didn’t yet have either a super name or a team willing to add her. “Skinny bitch hasn’t done shit,” was Apogee’s only comment on the girl when I showed her the YouTube video.

  “-so all this limping around isn’t going to fly.”

  “Ruby?” I said, turning to the authority.

  “Well, it’s not a big deal.”

  Typical, the women conspiring against me.

  “But didn’t you say-”

  “I said it would help,” she said. “Not that you had to do it.”

  “See?” I said. “It’ll help.”

  Apogee crossed her arms. “What she said was that it didn’t matter.”

  “I’m going crazy.”

  Ruby waved at one of her staff, who brought over a shiny new wheelchair. I tossed the cane at her, a bit harder than I had to. She caught it and patted it against her open hand threateningly.

  “Fine,” I said, sitting my ass in the wheelchair. “It’s kind of tight.”

  “Maybe lose a few pounds,” Ruby said, waving us goodbye.

  “What the hell is she talking about?” I asked Apogee as she wheeled me away. I was almost twenty pounds lighter than I had been during the Brutal incident - all gone by trimming fat through hard exercise. In fact, I looked better than I ever had before, physique-wise. I wasn’t as big, that was for certain, but I was leaner and meaner. Hell, I looked awesome.

  “She’s fucking with you,” Apogee said. “Though there is a little bit of flab on your hips. But that’s not a big deal. I still love you.”

  I looked up as her face split in a big smile.

  “You make such a big deal of me and Ruby, but you’re just as vain, you know?”

  “Like you’d be with me if I wasn’t this handsome,” I said.

  She was quiet for a while before responding. “Actually, this is just me slumming it. I do it every couple of years. Enjoy it while it lasts.”

  She was joking of course, but that’s the kind of thing that requires an immediate response. Unfortunately, a cell phone rang. Apogee paused and dug it out of her suit. “It’s yours,” she said, adding without hiding her distaste: “It’s Bubu.”

  I took the phone from her hand and answered it.

  “Bona cera, mi amigo!” I said in my best Romanian. “No, I have time to talk. I’m here with Apogee - she says hello.”

  Apogee grunted.

  “No, she doesn’t mind at all,” I said, knowing she minded, laughing on the inside all the way to our apartment.

  ——

  The next morning we met in a conference room designed for a United Nations-type meeting. The Grand Council, I think they called this room, or something just as ostentatious. It was the same place the heroes met to discuss global level threats. Last time I was here, I had interrupted a debate about whether I was a worse threat to humanity than Brutal. If memory served, I came in suggesting we go straight at Brutal and the council told me to pack sand. Apogee and I went on our own, and wouldn't you know it, the villain was the one that saved the day.

  They had lunch served in buffet-style, and I was in the middle of making a pig of myself when Superdynamic came in, two techs in tow. "Sorry for being so late," he said, in what was quickly becoming his usual first line whenever you saw him. I wasn't up to date on what was going on in the tower, what projects or whatnot, but he never stopped. In fact, the rumor was that he was building a second team to support Battle. That's how bad things were out there.

  "Are we ready?" Superdynamic said, growing impatient. The techs apologized, brought him some food that he barely touched, and were done a few minutes later. He was about to present the well thought out, data backed reason why I should stay in the tower. "Okay, can we get the lights?"

  "Hang on," I said, stopping everyone mid-step. "Before you do your little show, I want to say something."

  His glare said it all; why don't you shut up and watch the little movie I made for you? That way I don't have to explain it to you. "Go on," he said.

  "I know what you're going to say, Jeff," I said. "I've seen the data."

  "How?" he said, genuinely surprised.

  "The Tower's servers aren't as secure as you think," I said. Like the time Mr. Haha cracked the tower’s systems and took partial control of things, causing all sorts of havoc. "Anyway, I think I know what you're about to say."

  "Why don't you let him do his thing, Dale?" Apogee said, but I figured she was in on the bad news that was coming. She'd spent all morning softening me up for it. These two were thick as thieves.

  "Well, because I have an idea," I said.

  "I've spent...I don't know how many hours working on your problem, Dale. I don't see a solution in sight. The bracers are a stopgap, but already your emissions are beginning to overpower the absorption cells. A month ago, we needed to replace them once a week. Now we're at daily, and those things aren't what I'd call cheap."

  "Well, at least they're working-"

  "For now," Apogee said. She sported a similar pair, although her emissions were far less potent than mine
.

  "Right," I said. "And it doesn't help things that I've got this bullseye painted around my head."

  "I just got off the phone with the Secretary-General of the U.N.," Superdynamic said. "He actually threatened me and our funding."

  I was supposed to be in jail. Utopia had been destroyed, but there were still dark holes they tossed guys like me into. Things had been so hectic, especially after I defeated Brutal, that it was easy to forget. It had only been a matter of time, and though they couldn't hurt me, or make me pay the tens of billions in restoration - Japan alone was asking for 50 billion in USD for their stupid little island, they could pressure Jeff.

  "Well, my idea takes care of all that," I said. "I'll leave."

  Jeff actually smiled.

  "I’ll go underground. You know I can do it. I’ll find an isolated place and dig out an underground base."

  "They will ask where you went," he said.

  "Tell them anything you want. We got into a tiff, you and me, or hell, I just disappeared. Less is more."

  “Dale, it’s more complicated than that,” he said, unable to stifle a yawn. “These emissions...I can’t make a final determination on them - except that they’re dangerous. We don’t know how long the bracers are going to hold.”

  “Why don’t you let me help?”

  He smiled, “Come on, man. I have a team of guys. All we’ve been able to determine is that the wavelength is several factors tinier than the smallest gamma ray and that it drives a spectral analyzer crazy. And that’s the other thing, they knew-“

  “Who knew?” Apogee said.

  “At Point Nemo,” Superdynamic said. “About Blackjack. It wasn’t an accident that they asked for him, it was part of a concerted effort. My working theory is that they’re trying to harvest the emissions from you for God knows what.”

  “Primal’s inoffensive enough if you leave him alone,” I said.

  “That’s not going to happen,” Superdynamic shot back. “Not while he’s trying to provide a safe haven to all comers. Some of those guys are really dangerous. It took a long time to fill up Utopia.” He stopped there for a second, really looking at me for the first time. He looked uncomfortable but went on. “But that’s neither here nor there...they wanted you. I don’t like that at all.”