Rise of the Supervillains

by Jaron Lee Knuth

  Esmeralda returned to her computer screen and said, “I'm working on that.”

  “Of course you are,” Hector said with a smile.

  Miguel leaned back in his chair, pushing the travel book away from him. “There's one thing I still don't understand...”

  “What's that?”

  “The Zharkov's rejection of religion. That one law causes more of a problem for them than it solves. There's still so many people that have faith in one god or another, and they all resent the Empire for forcing them to worship in secrecy. Why is it so important for the Imperator to dismiss these myths?”

  Hector raised one eyebrow quizzically. “Myths?”

  Miguel was taken aback by the question. “Yes. The religious myths. These gods and miracles and creation stories. Priests, churches, temples, bibles, idols... all this stuff people do to make themselves feel better. Why not let them have it?”

  Hector leaned forward, excited by the opportunity to teach. Hector couldn't help himself seeing the young man as less of an apprentice, and more of a partner. It made him proud, of course, but a part of him was saddened by the idea of his son growing up. He knew it made the young man more resilient to the world, able to defend himself against all that threatened him, and that's all Hector could truly ask for. But he would be lying to himself if he didn't acknowledge his selfish need to protect his kin. There was a beauty to that role that gave Hector's life a purpose he never knew he needed so much.

  “What makes you so sure those stories are myths?” Hector said with a knowing grin. “Stories of gods and prophets performing miracles? Is that any different than what we see on the news every night?”

  Miguel cocked his head to the side as if he were trying to figure out if his father was joking or not. “You're telling me that these stories were about ancient people with SPMDs?”

  Hector shrugged his shoulders. “I'm saying we don't know.”

  Miguel glanced out the window, pondering the idea. “Do you really think that's possible? Do you think people were catching the disease that far back?”

  “It's possible. It would explain magic, shamanism, miracles. It would explain the exchange of creation stories across vast parts of the world. The Egyptians believed that their pharaohs were all gods, and a bunch of slaves built the pyramids. SPMDs could explain that. Hell, even UFO sightings could be chalked up to the diseased.”

  Miguel shook his head in disgust. “Yet another thing they've infected the world with. Misinformation.”

  A flight attendant stepped out from the cockpit and collected the untouched food and drinks as she said, “I'm sorry to interrupt, but we've been cleared to land at the First Imperial Airport. As we begin our descent, I'd like to encourage you to fasten your seat belts.”

  Miguel excitedly looked out the window. Hector joined his gaze, watching the city streets below them form their perfect squares. The organization of the buildings and thoroughfares was bordering on mathematical, without a single influence of art or design. This was the imperial way. The great machine. Every gear spinning at the allotted speed. Everything in its place.

  Hector found it disgusting. This absurd belief that man, no matter what power he possessed, could straighten the lines of chaos. The Zharkovs wanted to give edges to circles. They wanted to capture lightning in a bottle and tame it as a pet. They were men playing gods, without any idea of the consequences their actions would demand. But that was his job. He would make them pay their debts to society with the edge of his blade.

  When the wheels touched down, the crew of Esmeralda's personal jet opened the door to the stairway that led to the tarmac of the airport. Hector and Miguel stood to join her as they exited, but Esmeralda stopped them.

  “Follow my lead. Do nothing, say nothing, unless I say so. Are we clear?”

  Hector nodded his head. He wasn't necessarily used to following orders, but he trusted his wife, especially in these situations. This was where she shined.

  She led them down the stairs to a small group of women, all dressed in silk servant robes. A single man stood in front of the servants, holding an over-sized MajesTech tablet. He smiled and waved.

  “Welcome to the Fatherlands!” the man called out as they approached. “I hope your flight was smooth.”

  “Of course it was,” Esmeralda said with a grin. “That's a MajesTech jet.”

  The man laughed politely. “Of course. But I'm sure you're all anxious to make your way to our lovely accommodations so you can get settled.”

  The man led the three of them to a small cart that drove them across the tarmac, while the servant girls gathered their belongings. Once inside the airport, they were shown to the security checkpoint. A team of heavily armed security guards stood in front of a small gate. A conveyor belt was running next to them, leading into a large box.

  “If you'll indulge us, we have a brief moment of bureaucracy to deal with.”

  Miguel glanced up at Hector with a worried look in his eyes, but Hector shook his head to dismiss it. Looking nervous at a checkpoint was mistake number one.

  As the servant girls loaded their luggage onto the conveyor belt, Esmeralda stepped forward. The first security guard waved an electronic wand across her body, then motioned for her to step through the gate.

  Hector continued to watch each piece of luggage go down the conveyor belt and into a scanner. He tried his best not to, but his eyes continued to glance at the large metal container sitting among their suitcases. It was inside this container that all of their equipment was housed. From their armored suits, to their illegal arsenal of guns, to the sword he forged from Stiletto's body.

  Miguel stepped through the checkpoint successfully, and then Hector stepped up. The security guard waved his electronic wand over Hector's body, and the lights on the wand flashed red and emitted a warning sound. The group of security guards lifted their rifles, pointing them all at Hector. The man with the wand stepped away from him, looking shocked that Hector had tried to smuggle something in, but Hector remained calm, holding his hands in the air.

  “Replacement parts.” He knocked his knuckles against his hip. “New hip. New knee. Couple of ribs. Even a shoulder.”

  The guards exchanged glances, but the man that met them on the tarmac motioned for them to lead Hector through the gate scanner. When he stepped through, his metal parts showed up on the security screen, and the guard looking at it nodded his head.

  “The miracles of modern medicine,” Hector said to the security guard who was hesitantly lowering his rifle.

  “All MajesTech brand parts, by the way,” Esmeralda said with a large smile.

  Hector took his place by Esmeralda's side and held her hand. They watched as a group of servant girls struggled to load the metal container onto the conveyor belt. Once they had manged to get it over the edge, and the container entered the box, Hector gave Esmeralda's hand a nervous squeeze. She was good, but there was no way she was going to explain away that kind of luggage.

  Esmeralda looked at him with a calm smile, then tapped her hand against her leg three times. The security guard that was running the luggage scanner perked upright at her signal and tapped a few keys on his keyboard. Hector noticed the small light on the top of the box turn off as the container ran through it. As soon as it exited the other side, the guard tapped a few more keys and the light turned back on.

  “They're all clear,” the security guard said, waving his hand.

  “Wonderful,” the man with the tablet said, motioning toward a set of doors. “Shall we continue?”

  The family followed him out of the airport and to a waiting vehicle. As the man with the tablet spoke to the driver of the car, Hector leaned over to his wife.

  “Care to explain how you managed that one?”

  “It's all in who you know, dear.” Esmeralda smiled and patted him on the back. “And then knowing their price.”

  16

  LUCY

  The aircraft lifted off from the landing pad of Power Tower, its e
ngines roaring so loud that Lucy covered her ears. The aircraft itself was a hard metal shell that shook and rumbled as it launched higher and higher into the sky. It was shaped boxy and square with short wings that jutted out to the sides and held massive jet engines that allowed for vertical takeoffs. The seats inside were only metal beams with straps to buckle yourself in. It felt hollow, even filled with the team from the Shadow department.

  Lucy was wearing her new Retina costume, which was a series of interlocking plates that bent and shifted as she moved her limbs. Her face was covered in a tight mask that revealed only her eyes. It looked more like black armor than anything a superhero would wear. Nothing she had done so far felt so militaristic than sitting in that aircraft with her three other squad mates.

  Sitting next to her was a surprisingly skinny man. His own black armor looked so bulky on him it was like he was nothing more than bones underneath. His code name was Blackout, and she was told he could cause such darkness that even she wouldn't be able to see through it. Lucy figured that was a useful trait for a team that wanted to sneak around.

  On the other side of the aircraft was Stonewall, a thick, bearded man with an excited grin that didn't fit the situation. He was staring at her, like he wanted her to join his excitement, but she tried not to make eye contact. His own power was the ability to create impenetrable force fields around himself, and those near him. Lucy had decided to stick as close as possible to the man during their mission.

  Spook sat directly across from her, his invisible form filling the chest straps of the aircraft. He wasn't the most comforting person in the world, but she was glad he was there. A room full of strangers would have done nothing to quell the spinning flutter of nervousness in her stomach.

  When she glanced over at Blackout, she could see some kind of anxiety in his eyes. He scanned the floor, as if he was trying to locate something in particular, or perhaps searching for the answer to a complicated algorithm in his mind. She leaned toward him and tried to yell over the chaos of the engine.

  “This is my first mission!”

  He glanced at her for half a second before his eyes returned to the floor, searching again. She frowned, wondering if he was being rude, or couldn't hear her. So she decided to try again, yelling even louder.

  “Have you been out on many missions before?”

  That time, he didn't look at her, still darting his gaze around the aircraft. She inadvertently looked over at Stonewall, who grabbed a pair of headphones off the wall and placed them on his head. When he adjusted the microphone into place, he pointed at her and tapped the headphone. She looked over her shoulder and found her own pair, hesitantly grabbing them and placing them on her head. They muffled out the engine noise and allowed Stonewall to speak directly to her.

  “Boy don't speak.”

  Lucy tilted her head and asked, “He won't speak? Or he can't?”

  “He just don't.”

  Lucy nodded as if she understood the strange reply, then asked, “Have you two been working together for long?”

  “Handful of years. But we're brothers in arms, ya hear? I'd die for that boy. You're in Shadow Department now. I'd die for you, too.”

  Lucy smiled, actually warmed by the camaraderie. The imposing man seemed softer somehow when she heard him speak. She was expecting some kind of grizzled, condescending tone instead of the mater-of-fact partnership.

  “Thank you. But if I have anything to say about it, no one's going to die.”

  “Except Katsu Oshiro,” Stonewall said with a chuckle.

  Lucy forced a smile and nodded, still uncomfortable with being so cavalier about her mission. To her, she was still acting upon a necessary evil. She would not make light of it. She would not dehumanize the death. She was going to wear it like a scar. There was no denying it, but that was a burden she was willing to carry, if it meant the end of so much death.

  “You got super eyes?” Stonewall asked, pointing at his own eyeballs.

  Lucy nodded again. “Yes. Sort of.”

  “What's that mean... 'sort of.'”

  Lucy shook her head, realizing she wasn't filling her new teammate with much confidence in her ability. Perhaps on the way to a mission where all their lives were on the line wasn't the best place to express humility.

  “Sorry, I... I meant yes. Yes, I have super-vision. Telescopic. Microscopic. Infrared. X-ray. Low-light. You name it.”

  “Damn, sweetheart,” Stonewall said, resting his head against the vibrating metal of the aircraft, “you're gonna find our little Dominus, no problem.”

  Lucy forced a smile and nodded again, even though no one was watching her. “I'll do my best.”

  For most of the ride, the squad was silent, but as the aircraft rocketed over the Pacific Ocean, toward Neo-Nippon, Spook chimed in over the headsets to give people an hourly update. According to him, they were making good time and should reach their destination around sunrise, which was the plan.

  Apparently, it was tradition for Katsu Oshiro to address his citizens from the throne room every morning. It was a sort of national assurance meant to quell any kind of doubt someone might have about the war. The camera never backed away from his face, it never allowed a view of any doorways, or Voyager could have used the live broadcast to transport someone there. But what it did do, was place him in a specific place, at a specific time. So all Lucy had to do, was zoom in on Oshiro Palace and find a doorway into the throne room. That was it. Point and look.

  Her stomach continued to spin and flip and gurgle and cause all kinds of commotion. She wasn't sure if she had to use the bathroom or vomit, but her nerves made her want to be anywhere other than where she was. All the training in the world couldn't calm her physical reaction to what she was doing. Not that long ago she was just another girl going to the academy, on a direct course for a career in the sciences or something else as equally simple. Something where she would spend all her time in a laboratory, with men and women wearing lab coats and carrying clipboards. Instead, she was in a military-grade aircraft with men wearing black armor and carrying assault rifles.

  “We're about a mile out from the AA range,” Spook said through the headset. “We're going to do a water landing and operate from there.”

  “AA range?” Lucy asked.

  “Anti-Aircraft. They've got robots circling the islands, keeping our spy planes at bay. Little do they know, we've got a new spy... and she can see a whole hell of a lot farther.”

  “Yee-haw!” Stonewall shouted with a huge smile.

  “Okay, people,” Spook said with a more authoritarian voice, “when we land, I want Stonewall to create a perimeter and Blackout on backup. You're only raising darkness in the event of an attack. Retina, I want you-”

  A sudden explosion rocked the ship, tearing a hole in the side of the armored shell. Alarms blared and red lights flashed as Lucy felt gravity spin. She shut her eyes and gritted her teeth, barely able to hear Spook over the headphones.

  “Damn it! They expanded their AA!”

  “I'm raising a shield,” Stonewall said, a near giggle in his voice from all the excitement. “They ain't gonna hurt us again.”

  Lucy opened one eye and saw Stonewall throw out his hands, creating a glittering bubble of protection that surrounded them. But she could still feel them spinning, falling. Spook must have seen the fear in her eyes, because he offered an assurance.

  “Don't worry. Same plan. We're just going to have a bit of a harder landing.”

  She could hear a hail of energy beams striking the force field, swallowed by the force field with a deep punch from every blast. She glanced at Stonewall, but he seemed to be exerting no energy keeping them protected. She felt a momentary calm from the ease in which her teammate was using his ability before the aircraft crashed into the ocean.

  Lucy's body was slammed up and down, her neck lashing back and forth as the entire ship crashed around the inside of the force field. When Lucy opened her eyes, she found herself still strapped to the bench
, but laying among a pile of twisted steel. Blackout was crawling over a pile of metal to check on the pilot. Stonewall held both hands outstretched to strengthen his shield as rockets rained down from the sky, covering their wreckage in a canopy of fire and smoke.

  Before she knew it, her chest straps were being unbuckled before her eyes. She switched her vision so she could see Spook standing over the top of her, helping her to her feet.

  “Are we... are we okay?” she gasped, trying to catch her breath.

  “If you're still breathing, then we still have a mission to accomplish,” Spook yelled back over the sound of rockets pummeling Stonewall's shield.

  As he helped her over the wreckage, to climb to a high point, she and Spook both saw Blackout peek over the cockpit. He drew a straight line across his neck with his finger.

  “What does that mean?” Lucy asked, her voice quivering. “Does that mean the pilot's dead?”

  “Retina!” Spook yelled again, giving her body a firm shake. “Focus!”

  Lucy nodded, switched her vision to x-ray, and peered through the armored shell. There was only ocean on the other side, but she let her telescopic vision dilate her pupils as she zoomed in on the horizon. It began as a black bump, then formed harder edges, completing the top of Mt. Kiyosumi. Soon the coastline rushed at her, beaches, then buildings falling past her visual range. She scanned down city streets that looked like something out of science fiction, with the lights of technology flashing across every surface. She continued her zoom, past city centers full of people, until she reached the outer walls of Oshiro Palace. She continued to zoom in tight on the metal exterior of the building until she could see the grooves of the plating and the screws that held them together.

  The rockets continued to pound against the shield, accompanied only by the energy beams that peppered the entire area around them. It felt as if the sounds were encroaching on them, and Lucy's fear was solidified when Stonewall yelled for Spook.

  “My shield's getting smaller! Let's hurry this up.”