The Power Broker

by Nick Svolos

  “She alright?”

  “Yeah, but that was—” more coughing, “over a month ago. God knows how she is now.”

  That didn’t sound good, but at least she wasn’t being held in another facility. If that was the case, I’d never find her. I went over and stretched out on the thin mattress. A sharp rock poked me in the back and I sat back up with a yelp. I lifted the bedding to see what was under there.

  It wasn’t a rock.

  It was a Force injector with a tube of grey fluid, along with a note. I read the tight cursive script.

  Conway,

  Sorry this took so long to get to you. I tried to smuggle this into your hotel room, but then I remembered it has to go in your spine. Figured that would be hard to manage all on your lonesome. Hopefully, the guy in the next cell can handle it.

  Now, go get ‘em!

  Good luck,

  Doughboy

  “What is it?” Huff asked.

  I pressed my finger to my lips and shushed him. Looking down the hall, I didn’t see any guards drawn by my outburst. I grinned and whispered, “Something just came up.”

  XVII

  “Is that some kind of gun?” Hickman quietly asked. He stared with unease at the object in my hand. I didn’t think he liked our odds of fighting our way out of the prison with nothing more than a pistol.

  “Something better,” I whispered. “This is Force. It’ll take too long to explain, but it’s like a drug that gives you superpowers. Well, not really a drug, but that’s not important right now. It’s our ticket outta here.” I stripped to the waist and handed the injector to Hickman. “I’m gonna need your help with this.”

  “What do I do?”

  “I need you to put this thing right on my spine, between my shoulder blades. Try to get between the vertebrae. I don’t think it goes through bone.”

  I felt the nozzle press against my back. I tried to visualize where it should go, based on the mark I’d seen on Karl’s body and where Doughboy used the extractor on Ultiman.

  “I think it goes a little higher. Try the next one up.” That felt right. “Oh, wait a second.”

  Considering how much noise Ultiman made when this stuff sucked the powers out of him, I didn’t think I’d fare any better. No need to alert the guards to what we were doing. I didn’t want to miss out on seeing the looks on their faces when I sprung my little surprise on them. Grabbing my tie, I rolled it up and stuffed it in my mouth.

  I put my back against the bars and felt the tip press into my back.

  “You ready?” the reporter asked.

  I wasn’t. How can you be ready for something like this? Having some idea of what was coming, I wanted nothing more than to call the whole thing off. I couldn’t back off now, though. Too many people depended on me. It was this or nothing. I took a deep breath and nodded.

  Hickman pulled the trigger. The injector hissed and I felt a sharp pain, like a needle, stab into my spine. Nerves in my spine complained at the intrusion, but it was more weird than painful. Kind of like a mild electric shock, like when you touched your tongue to the contacts of a nine-volt battery when you were a kid. Only, this was between my shoulder blades.

  “Is that it?” one of the reporters asked.

  I shook my head. “It gets worse,” I said, muffled by the gag. “Don’t freak out, and keep nice and quiet.” I went to the corner of my cell, knelt and prepared for the onslaught.

  The Force didn’t keep me waiting long, and there was no way to be prepared for it. It started as a tingle that moved up and down my spine before spreading throughout my body. A burning sensation soon replaced it. An instant later, my torso felt like it was on fire, a conflagration that soon engulfed my entire body. I grunted in pain and terror as my body burned.

  Everything looked orange. I tasted cold peanut butter on my tongue. I stifled a scream. My hands were glowing, bright orange light emanated from me, bouncing off the walls and illuminating the cellblock with an eerie glow. Damn, if the guards saw that, we were screwed. I crawled to the mattress and realized the North Koreans didn’t believe in such niceties as blankets. I grabbed my discarded sportscoat and did what I could to cover myself. Hickman saw my feeble attempts and helped me finish the job. I curled up in a tight ball and concentrated on keeping my cries of agony under control.

  I couldn’t tell how many thousands of years passed during the agonizing transformation, but there seemed to be a lot of them. Eventually, the glow faded, the fire in my flesh died down, and I found myself panting on the floor, covered in sweat. Everything ached. My head, my bones, my muscles. All of it. I weakly unclenched myself on the mattress and forced my body to relax.

  “You OK? Did it work?”

  I looked up and my eyes focused through the bars on the concerned face of Ken Hickman squatting next to me. I spit out the makeshift gag. That was one tie I’d never wear again. “It’ll take a couple hours to kick in, but I think that’s the worst of it. Then I gotta figure out how the powers work. That’ll take more time. Gonna need you guys to cover for me.”

  “You got it. So, what’s this Force stuff? How’d it end up in your cell?”

  Reporters. Always making with the questions. No wonder people don’t like us.

  “Can’t say too much. Never know who’s listening. Later.” Hickman nodded.

  I just let myself lie there for a couple of hours. Well, I assumed it was a couple of hours, based on Simpson’s confession. The guards grabbed my watch, so my perception of time was a little fuzzy. I knew I’d reached the final stage of the transformation when I noticed details in the stone ceiling, lines and faint cracks that were imperceptible before. My eyes were always pretty good, but this was crazy. l could see every grain of mineral embedded in the surface of the blocks above my head, a good ten feet away.

  I slowly got up, being careful not to make any sudden movements, but even so, I heard a crunching sound to my right. I looked down and saw four gouges in the floor where my fingers had accidentally dug into the stone. This was going to take some getting used to. Gingerly, I made it up to my feet but just kept going until my head slammed against the ceiling. It didn’t really hurt all that much; but it surprised me, and I fell to the floor with a grunt. That didn’t hurt much either, unless you counted my pride.

  “Holy shit!” Huff cried out, slapping a hand over his mouth. “Sorry,” he whispered, staring nervously at the guard entrance.

  Taking more care this time, I got to my feet and examined myself. My muscles, still covered by a bit of fat around my midsection, felt tighter. Harder. I pressed down on my belly. It felt like it was made out of steel. Wow.

  I figured I’d better start small, so I tried a few careful steps. It was like walking on the moon. My first little steps, intended to move me a foot or two, ended up with me hurling across the cell and into the bars. It took me a while, but eventually I managed to get it right. Once I’d mastered walking, I thought I’d try out flying. It took me awhile to get my brain around the concept of rising into the air. I now understood how Ultiman had gone so many years without realizing he could do it. I tried everything. I even tried thinking happy thoughts. Laugh all you want, but it worked for Peter Pan. Sadly, it didn’t work for me. Jumping didn’t work, either. Sure, I managed to bust a few chunks out of the ceiling, but that was because my legs were so strong. It didn’t count as flight. More like crashing.

  Come on, Reuben, think. How does Ultiman do this? I remembered Doughboy’s story, about how Ultiman saw planes flying overhead. I looked up and imagined a blue sky above me, clouds drifting lazily on the breeze, and felt my face smooshed up against the ceiling. I couldn’t help but laugh. Now, how do I get down?

  I concentrated on the feel of the floor beneath my dangling feet and found myself floating down. That seemed to be the key. By concentrating and focusing on where I wanted to be, my body simply took me there. Hovering is supposed to be the hardest part of flying, at least that what I’ve been told. I decided to give it a try, and a quick lurc
h across the cell, followed by another humiliating slam into the bars, was my reward. They were now pretty bent and twisted from my attempts at self-education.

  Laughing voices and gruff Korean comments came from the other side of the doors. I froze. My heart tried to claw its way up my throat. I was probably ready to make a mess of the guards if they chose to come in now, but that’s exactly what it would be, a mess. To bust us out of here without killing half of the North Korean army, I needed control over Ultiman’s powers. If they came in here to investigate the racket I was raising, well, my first adventure as a super would go down in history as a cautionary tale.

  “Easy, son. You’re doing great,” Louie Hawes said, keeping his voice low. He coughed a couple times and went on. “You’re trying to hover, right?”

  I nodded in silent surprise. “Yeah, how’d you know?”

  “What, you think you’re the only guy who ever reported on supers? That used to be my beat, back in the sixties.”

  “No kidding? I thought you did international affairs.”

  “Yeah, they moved me over there in the seventies. Said folks were losing interest in superhumans. You know, once they made it a war crime to let them serve in the military. But, we’re kinda gettin’ distracted, here.” The effort of talking led to another prolonged hacking fit. “Sorry. What I was gonna say, try ta focus on the space in the air where you want to hover. It’s a bit like crossing your eyes. At least, that’s how Stratoblaster described it.”

  Well, who was I to argue with advice like that? I focused on the air in the middle of my cell. The bars on the other side blurred and doubled. Once I had the point in my sights, I willed my body slowly into position. To my delight, I just hung there.

  “You’re a quick study. Once you get the hang of it, you’ll realize it’s not your eyes, but your mind that’s doin’ it. Then you can quit going all cross-eyed like you’re doin’ now.”

  “Thanks,” I set myself back on the ground. The last lesson I had planned was to gain control of my strength. I practiced bending and unbending the bars for a bit, just to get a feel for it. They felt as supple as putty in my hands.

  It scared the crap out of me to think what I might do to a human being.

  “Damn,” I said to no one in particular, as I bent the bars more-or-less back to their original positions. “I’m not sure I can punch out the guards without causing serious damage. I’d rather not cross that line.”

  “You need something like boxing gloves,” Hickman observed. “I got an idea. I need your belts, guys. Reuben, drag your mattress over here.” He contributed his own mattress, sticking it through the bars, and I understood what he planned. Working through the bars, he wrapped each of my hands in one of the thin mats and secured them in place with the belts. When he was done, I felt a bit like a pugilistic Muppet.

  “So, what’s the plan?” Bob Huff asked.

  “I guess I need to clear out the guards, then come back and get you guys and Maria. I’m not sure how to get out of here, so we’ll have to wing it from there.”

  Cardillo asked, “Are you sure you can handle it? These guys are all armed.”

  “Not a problem. The guy these powers came from is bullet-proof.”

  “‘Came from?’ Whose powers are those?”

  I shot him a glance and Jay conceded the point.

  “Right, forget I asked. Later.”

  Huff looked nervously at the entrance to the cell block. “So, you think you’re ready? The guards’ll be coming in soon to throw our dinner on the floor.”

  “How many?”

  “Usually two.”

  “Check. I’d like to keep the whole thing quiet and avoid them setting off an alarm for as long as possible. Think you guys could make a bunch of noise and draw ‘em in?” I laid down in the middle of the cell and did my best to hide the mattress gloves with my body.

  My fellow captives started raising a racket, yelling, rattling their buckets against the bars and pointing in my direction.

  “Hey! Guards! This guy’s sick!”

  After a bit of shouting from their side of the steel door, the guards had finally had enough and came in to quiet us down. I moaned and rocked back and forth like I was in pain. Two pairs of boots descended the steps to the cell block, and I heard them shout at their prisoners. A moment later there was a jangle of keys and the door to my cell opened with a creak.

  “Dangshin!” the guard ordered, poking me in the ribs with what felt like the business end of one of the AK-47s they carried. “Dangshin!” he repeated, following up with another jab and something that sounded like, “Eeronya!”

  I rolled over, pinning his weapon under my elbow and gently jabbing my fist into his face, about as hard as I’d playfully punch a small child. He flew across the cell, crashed into the bars and slumped to the floor. The other guard looked on in shock, recovering just in time to point his carbine at me and let loose with a three-round burst. As I willed myself across the cell, I felt three sharp impacts stich their way across my chest. It hurt, but before the pain registered, I was already on the soldier. I knocked the weapon from his grasp with a downward swipe and sent him to dreamland with a gentle poke to the chin.

  I dropped into a crouch and listened to see if the shots had alerted any more of the guards. I half expected a horde of soldiers to come rolling into the block, guns blazing, but none came. Remembering that I’d been shot, I looked down at my chest. Other than some round patches where the hair had been burned away, there was no trace of their impact. No bloody holes punched into mangled flesh. Not so much as a bruise.

  My amazement faded into a chill as I realized that the bullets had to have gone somewhere. Suddenly worried that someone might have caught one of them as they bounced off of me, I checked my compatriots, but they were all fine. I chided myself for not thinking of what might happen if bullets started ricocheting off of me. I needed to be more careful.

  Creeping down the cellblock, I carefully examined the guard quarters outside. There were a couple of chairs, an unfinished game of cards and a half-empty bottle of some foul-smelling booze, but no additional guards. I went back to the cell block and carefully kicked open the doors. Cardillo and Huff both armed themselves with the guards’ weapons. “No shooting unless I go down,” I cautioned them. “Got it? I’m not here to start a war.” They nodded.

  I looked at the guards, who seemed to be breathing and otherwise undamaged. Satisfied that I’d successfully knocked out my first two opponents, I felt pretty confident that I knew how hard to hit a normal now, so I asked Ken to help me out of my ersatz boxing gloves. This gave the men their belts back and made the whole thing a lot less silly. I dragged the unconscious troopers into one of the cells and bent the bars around the door so they couldn’t get out. I retrieved the Force injector and stuck it in my waistband.

  Out in the guard station, Hawes indicated the door to where he’d seen Maria Blunt. I pried it open, and we found her huddled in the corner of her cell. It was quick work to free her. I won’t lie; she looked pretty bad. She was positively gaunt from her incarceration, her eyes looked like they were sunk into two dark wells and her hair hung lank from her head. I didn’t want to think about what she’d suffered here, and couldn’t bring myself to ask.

  Hickman helped me get her to her feet and took over the task of keeping her upright, freeing me to scout ahead. From the guardroom, a dimly-lit corridor led off into the darkness. I recognized it from my trip down, and I told the others to wait until I had a path clear. I didn’t want to put them in any danger if guards suddenly showed up and started shooting down the narrow hall.

  The next room down appeared to be some kind of checkpoint. A guard sat at a station sandwiched between a pair of steel doors set into the stone. He didn’t see me as I approached, and before he could react, I had the door flying from its hinges and smashed his console before he could raise an alarm. He backed away, arms held before his face in fear. I recognized him. It was Mr. I-think-it’s-fun-to-hit-people-with-r
ifle-butts. I drew back my fist and grinned. I relished the thought of giving this guy a lethal dose of his own medicine.

  There was this one night the previous summer, when I’d found out that Longshot murdered a cab driver to get close enough to assassinate me. I was in a rage. Not so much that Longshot was trying to punch my ticket, but that he’d murdered a completely innocent and unconnected man to do it. I almost killed him. I would have, but Sinfonie was there. She was technically a supervillain, albeit a retired one, but she was also my oldest friend. The look of fear in her eyes stopped me cold.

  Sinfonie wasn’t here now.

  The guard looked in my eyes and saw nothing but cold murder. I guess he wasn’t the type to defiantly stare death in the face, because, well, he pissed himself.

  I burst into laughter. I’m ashamed to say that’s the only reason I didn’t kill him. His knees were shaking and he was covered in his own urine, and that cracked me up. I know that doesn’t say good things about me, but it's my job to tell the truth.

  I patted him down, took all his stuff, marched him down to the cell blocks and threw him into one. I replaced the door and twisted it back into place. They’d need a blowtorch to get him out of there.

  Clearing out the rest of the path to the little subway station went pretty smooth. I only ran into a few more soldiers, and they didn’t give me any trouble. Soon, I had them all disarmed and locked up in their own cells, and we were in the driver’s compartment trying to figure out how to operate the train.

  I flew a tense patrol around the area and a little way down the tunnel as Cardillo worked out how to get the engine running. The tunnel gave me a little more room to work on my flying skills, and Lord knows, I needed the practice. A little while later, the train caught up to me and I climbed in. After a bit, we emerged from the underground and sped along under the darkening sky. The rest of us were in the passenger car behind the engine, and Jay called back, “Conway! What’s next? I don’t think this thing goes to the airport.”