“Even though we drove up here with two SUVs?” You guys aren’t doing a good job of making sense with these training moments.
Samuel chuckled and Gary ignored him. “Timoor, make the call.”
Timoor pulled a radio from his pocket and spoke into it. “Echo one, Alpha team is in position.”
In the silence that followed, Blake could hear his heartbeat in his chest. He could also hear the heartbeats of everyone around him increase.
Timoor checked the radio and repeated his message.
“I don’t suppose you can see the infrared spectrum, huh?” Gary asked Blake. “It would help to see what’s going on up there.”
Blake shook his head and looked up at the massive cargo ship. “Sorry, but I do have super vision. I can’t see through the hull, but I can see people walking the main deck there, there, and there.” He pointed toward the bow, midsection, and aft areas of the massive ship. “They’re watching us and know where we are.”
“How do you know that?” Sven asked. He didn’t speak much; only when it mattered. Apparently, this was one of those times.
“I can see their eyes. Trust me, they’re looking right at us.”
“Go on,” Gary said.
“There are also six people watching from the main deck of the bridge castle. They’re all armed with some kind of semi-automatic machine gun looking thing. Looks pretty James Bond villain-esque, if you ask me.”
“The bridge castle, huh? Glad you were paying attention during the briefing.” Samuel smiled.
“Echo one, Alpha team is in position,” Timoor repeated.
“Either the radios aren’t working or something’s wrong.”
“I’m going to go with a busted radio,” Samuel volunteered.
Gary glanced at him, then looked at the ship. Then, he looked at Blake. “What do you think?”
You’re asking me?
“These are our people, right? Don’t you have some sort of secret handshake you can show them?”
“But if they weren’t our people, how would you get aboard the ship? You said they’re already watching us.”
“First of all, I wouldn’t have driven up to the ship. I would have run up to it completely invisible with super speed and then I would have started doing whatever needed to be done, like taking out the guards. I can still do that.”
“Don’t, they’re our people. Timoor, do it for real this time.”
“You mean this was a test?” Blake asked.
“Yeah, Victor wanted something to go slightly wrong, so, we improvised a problem.”
Timoor chuckled. “The radio wasn’t even on.” He clicked it on.
Blake shook his head. “Ha ha, very funny.”
“Echo one, Alpha team is in position.”
“About time you stop jerking off down there. Come get your shit,” a female voice said.
“Four more gunmen at top of the gangway,” Blake said softly. “Do you always have this much…”
“Security?” Samuel said, finishing his sentence.
“Absolutely. The Order has enemies and we can’t afford to be sloppy.”
The team of six crossed the docking area and made their way up the gangway to the main deck of the cargo ship.
“Welcome aboard,” a woman said. It was the same woman who spoke through the radio. “I’m Julia, the cargo handler. What you’re looking for is right over here.” She turned and walked toward a set of pallets that contained shrink-wrapped crates and other containers. The group followed her.
“Timoor, radio for the trucks,” Gary said.
“I’m on it.”
It’s funny they use radios instead of cell phones. It’s like I’ve stepped backward into…
Something sharp struck Blake’s forehead, rocking it back two inches.
“Ouch.”
The strange metal-striking-flesh sound made everyone turn and stare at Blake, who rubbed his forehead. “What the fuck was that?” Blake hissed.
“Quit fooling around, kid,” Kit hissed.
“I’m not!” Blake protested, glaring at Kit.
“Kid? Who the fuck is this kid?” Julia asked.
Another sharp sting bit him square in the chest over his heart. This time, Blake was ready. His hand shot up and caught the small object that fell from his chest. He opened his fingers and examined it.
“Aw shit, it’s a bullet. Someone is shooting at us.” Protect the team.
“Take cover!” Gary whispered loudly, running onto the ship to hide behind some metal barriers. “Where are they shooting from?”
Everyone ran to different areas and took cover as best they could, unsure of where the bullets were coming from.
“The front of the ship, I think.” Blake didn’t take cover. Instead, he looked around for the shooter. Whoever it was, Blake knew enough to understand the gunman used some kind of silencer. If he was lucky, his super hearing would allow him to hear and locate their next shot.
“Get down, Dark Flame. Do not reveal your abilities yet,” Samuel ordered.
“Um, no. They shot at me twice and I’m not down. I think they have a sense of my abilities.”
The gunman fired again and Blake caught the sound with his super hearing and the bullet with his mind; it hovered in midair inches away from Gary’s face. That shouldn’t have been possible…sound travels slower than bullets…I think…
“Holy shit,” Gary exclaimed loudly, the magnitude of nearly being shot in the head descending on him. He scrambled back for new cover.
“You sure you don’t want me to reveal my abilities yet?” Blake asked, chuckling.
“Belay that order,” Gary said, momentarily shaken at his near-death experience.
Blake pointed upward. “The gunman is on top of that first crane thing, but not for long,” He opened his hand and stretched out with his mind, struggling to connect with the man. He had never grabbed anything that far away—not to mention that high up—and he didn’t know if he would succeed.
“Whatever you do, don’t kill him.” Gary said. “We’ll want to bring him in for questioning.”
“This is a mixed crew of Agents and civilians aboard” Julia said. “He’s probably a mercenary traitor working for someone else.”
“Got him,” Blake said, jerking his hand upward and ripping the man away from the massive crane tower. He pulled the man toward him, and his surprised scream grew louder as the gunman fell toward him.
“Who the fuck is this kid?” Julia shouted again, staring at Blake, her hand on her own weapon.
When Blake abruptly stopped the gunman several feet above them, the silenced sniper rifle fell and clattered on the metal decking.
“Never mind him, Julia.” Gary responded. “Do you know this man?”
Blake brought him a little closer.
“What the hell, Larry?” Julia shouted. “You’re supposed to be protecting the ship and its cargo, not shooting our own people.”
“The Order is a fraud!” The man yelled, gasping as he struggled against the invisible hand that held him. Alpha Team traded glances between Larry and Blake, stunned.
Blake saw the man reach for another gun in his pocket, but he removed it and tossed it overboard before Larry could grab it. Then, Blake turned his head and listened to the new sound coming from the stern.
“I hear footsteps…lots of footsteps…running toward us from the back of the ship.”
“You’ll never get away with what you’re doing! The Order must be stopped,” Larry yelled.
“This is a trap!” Gary shouted, pointing his gun at Julia.
She raised her hands in surrender. “Hey, I’m on your side! I’m just as surprised as you are.”
Blake looked at her, his eyes now glowing bright orange. “If you’re not, I’ll rip your spine out through your nose.”
She stared wide-eyed at Blake and took a step back. A number of black clad, armed crew members became visible as they ran across the deck, weapons aimed at Blake and the Alpha team.
“That’s the security division assigned to this ship!” Julia said, astonished.
“Stand down,” she yelled, but it didn’t stop them from taking aim at the group.
“Open fire!” Larry shouted. Without thinking, Blake slammed him to the deck and turned to face the oncoming onslaught. He raised his hands toward the attacking soldiers and, like Neo in The Matrix Reloaded, caught and stopped all the bullets in midair.
A moment later, the pallets of new equipment exploded, knocking Alpha Team and Julia to the deck, except for Blake. The hovering bullets fell to the deck and bounced around in the confusion as Blake absorbed the explosion’s energy and deflected the flying debris away from his team. A giant fireball rose upward and turned into black smoke that faded into the night sky as pieces of wood and other materials rained onto the deck around them.
Bullets pinched at his left side and he winced in pain and surprise. He turned his head, his glowing eyes bathing the shooters’ faces in orange light. Their weapons stopped firing as their magazines emptied. In the moment of silence that followed, the stunned shooters incredulously stared at Blake, hesitating to reload their weapons.
“Goodbye.” Blake swept his left hand dismissively and all but one of the security guards were knocked into the open cargo holds. Blake pulled the last man standing toward him, smirking as the man’s arms flailed as he was dragged across the ship, the toes of his boots scraping the metal deck.
“What are you?” the man cried out in terror.
“Don’t hurt him, we need to question a few of them,” Gary said.
“You need to get off this ship,” Julia barked. “I have no idea how many more of the crew will be gunning for you. This feels like a mutiny and I’m not even the captain.”
“Then we find the captain and question him,” Kit responded.
Julia shook her head. “He’s only the ship captain; he’s not part of The Order.”
“But you are,” Sven commented, pointing at Julia. “You’ll come with us, now.”
“He’s right, you’re coming with us for questioning. Let’s go,” Gary ordered. “Blake, watch our backs, please.”
Blake smiled and nodded. So much for a quiet night running cargo. Still, Victor’s going to be pissed when he finds out someone destroyed his shipment. Better yet, I want to know who this someone is.
❖
Blake followed Victor down an abandoned, moldy corridor in an unrestored part of the naval prison. They had left the main corridors of the facility and made their way into an untouched area of the prison. Rat droppings, lichen, and other unknown substances mixed with small pools of rusty, stagnant water that filled the old concrete and metal-bar hallway with an unpleasant smell.
This is pretty disgusting.
“What you’re about to see could be disturbing and jarring,” Victor said.
“It can’t be any worse than this part of the prison.”
“Yeah, it’s pretty nasty in here, but that’s part of its charm.”
“Right.”
“I’m sure are you have seen similar in the movies, where it is nothing more than creative fiction. However, it’s another thing to see an intense interrogation like this in real life.
Blake looked at Victor with skepticism in his eyes. “You’re torturing someone?”
“Yes. He won’t volunteer any information on his own, so we had to get creative.”
“Do you torture your enemies a lot?”
Victor shrugged. “Only when necessary. Admittedly, it’s rare, but in cases like this, it’s always necessary.”
That seems contradictory, but I’m sure I’ll figure out what he means soon enough.
Victor turned to face him. “Blake, I hope you now understand the importance of our mission and that it is always focused on the greater good of all people. Sometimes, the ends justify the means. Creative interrogation is a difficult ethical argument, but this is the reality of The Order. We do what we must to bring others to justice.”
“I understand,” Blake responded, nodding. He continued walking with Victor until they came to an old, metal and wood door that Victor knocked on. A moment later, the door unlocked and opened from the inside. Blake followed his boss into the room.
“It’s awfully quiet in here, Radoslav,” Victor said. Blake noted the disappointment in his voice.
Two security guards stood to one side of a small, dirty room. The creepy looking bald man who opened the door deferentially stepped aside to Victor. He continued wiping his bloody hands on a white towel.
In the center of the room sat a shirtless, bleeding man tied at the wrists and ankles to a steel chair. His head hung down and he didn’t lift it to look at Victor or Blake. He also appeared to have wet himself—which explained the unpleasant smell of urine in the room. The man had several deep cuts in his pectoral muscles and the once flowing blood had stopped dripping down his abdomen, now dried and caked in the man’s thick, disperse chest hair. On the floor, a bloody light green T-shirt sat on the damp floor.
Next to the man in the chair sat a filthy medical tray-table with an assortment of neatly laid out and scary looking sharp and bloody tools. Whoever Radoslav was, he was particular about the arrangement of his instruments.
Through the bloody, swollen bruises on the man’s face, Blake recognized the man from the failed cargo transfer the night before. It was the crewman he grabbed from the group of gunmen who tried to wipe them out. The man was foaming at the mouth.
Victor leaned down to study the man.
“Don’t touch his face,” the creepy bald man—presumably Radoslav—said in a thick, Eastern European accent. “He just cracked a…how-to-say…dinte moarte…a death tooth.” He pointed to his mouth and then flicked his fingers away.
“Dammit,” Victor said, crossing his arms over his chest. “I was hoping he’d talk.”
Blake looked at Victor, unsure of what they were talking about. “What is a death tooth?”
Victor tapped the left side of his jaw with the index finger of his left hand. “A cyanide tooth.” Then, he spoke to Radoslav “Did you get anything useful from him?”
“I get lots of things from coward man, but none of them truths. Who is this…boy?” Radoslav asked, pointing at Blake and looking him up and down.
“This boy is Dark Flame,” Victor answered before Blake could respond. Weeks ago, Victor insisted Blake used his code name around the facility, so people didn’t get the wrong idea and think they could push him around because he was young.
Radoslav’s eyes widened with amazement as he studied Blake, this time with more interest and curiosity. “Dark Flame is…boy?”
Blake nodded at him and folded his arms across his chest. “Apparently.”
Radoslav nodded, his face conveying he was impressed. “They say you can do amazing, impossible things.”
Blake looked at Victor, who nodded at him. Then, he smirked and reached out with his mind to the table of torture instruments next to the dead man. The longest blade lifted off the table and spun around in the air until Blake pointed it at Radoslav’s face, where he let it hover for a moment.
The man did not flinch, but the guards shifted their stances.
“A young man with talents such as this is good in my line of work, but I see Victor already claimed you. Too bad.” Then, as if now unimpressed with Blake and his abilities, he pointed to the prisoner’s mouth and spoke with broken English. “Victor, if please, you will amuse me. Have doctors test the dinte moarte chemicals. I have theory about who this man works for. That will be the biggest truth yet to be revealed.”
Victor nodded. “I’ll have Dr. Madison conduct the test immediately.”
Blake grabbed the side of his head and winced in pain. “Ugh,” he grunted, fighting the urge to drop to one knee.
“What is it?” Victor asked.
“It’s Blue Spekter, he’s nearby.” Blake was careful not to use Quinn’s real name in front of the henchmen, though he wasn’t sure why he was protecting him.
“Here on Seavey Island? Where is he?” Victor asked, startled.
“I’m not sure, yet, give me a second.” He focused, and a moment later he pointed in the direction of the harbor. He’s over there somewhere, but…he’s not flying, he’s…standing?”
I’ve never sensed his presence like this and not been sure of where he is…this makes no sense.
“Can he sense you?” Victor asked.
“Yes, of course. This goes both ways, all the time. The only thing that changes is the range. I’m just not sure why it’s so strong…it’s like the more time we spend apart, the stronger it gets, but I can’t be sure.”
“So, he knows exactly where we are now,” Victor commented, frowning. “This moment was inevitable. There’s nothing we could have done to prevent it.”
Oh, now it makes sense. He’s not flying or on land…
“I got it. He’s on a boat that’s heading into the harbor.” Blake exclaimed. “He’s on the Thomas Laighton.”
“You two are nebun…crazy,” Radoslav said.
Victor stared at the wall closest to the harbor. “I suppose that would come close enough to the facility to allow you to sense him. It must be a very special private charter; the Thomas Laighton doesn’t normally run this late in the season.”
“What do you two talk about? What is blue specter, another one of mystery agents?” Radoslav asked, staring at them with intense curiosity.
Another mystery agent?
“No, he’s the other person like me,” Blake answered.
“There is two of you?” Radoslav asked incredulously. The idea caused the man visible stress as his brow wrinkled. Okay, so maybe you don’t know about other super-powered people. That’s comforting.
Victor cleared his throat, catching Blake’s attention. “It would seem so, Radoslav,” Victor responded.
Blake smirked, understanding he should not volunteer any more information to Radoslav. However, it was almost time to press Victor for the truth.
3-5 | What Would Blue Spekter Do?
Quinn
THE NEXT DAY AT TWO O’CLOCK in the afternoon at the end of his shift, Quinn walked into the break room to punch out and change into some running clothes. Since it was cold outside, he grabbed his maroon Portsmouth Clippers sweatshirt from his gym bag and pulled it on over his running shirt. Then, he left the building through the employee entrance and jogged up Daniel Street toward the Memorial Bridge. A moment later, a loud bang and the sound of crunching metal reached his ears, followed by the earsplitting screeching of metal scraping metal. Behind him, people cried out in shock and surprise.
The Guardians Omnibus Page 48
