New Olympus Saga (Book 1): Armageddon Girl

by C. J. Carella

  “You may call me Archangel,” the man in white continued. “I’ve been sent here for the girl. The organization I represent does not like it when their associates renege on their promises.”

  “The girl ain’t here,” Vincent said. “If we all calm down and talk about it, I’m sure we can work things out.”

  “All I need from you is her location. Tell me, and I will go in peace. We are not pleased with your actions but they are forgivable, if you give us the girl.”

  Lying would do no good. “I don’t have her,” Vincent admitted. “A vigilante took her. A shithead by the name of Face-Off; I’m sure you’ve heard of him. I got my people working on it. We’ll find him, and her, I swear. I just need a little time. I’ll deliver her to your people, as agreed. At no extra charge,” he added hopefully.

  “That will not be necessary. Unfortunately, your failure to deliver her as promised cannot be overlooked.”

  “Overlook this, motherfucker!” Vincent fired off a long burst in the middle of his sentence. Dominic fired a second later. The recoil pushed Vincent’s gun up and half of the shots hit only the wall and the ceiling, but at least three or four rounds hit the pasty-white freak dead-center in the chest. Dominic also scored several hits.

  The man in white did not fall. The fucker was bulletproof.

  Vincent had emptied the sub gun. He reached for a fresh clip as the intruder strolled into the room. Toreador rushed to intercept him, his black blades weaving a complex pattern as he swung them so quickly they became a blur. The man in white squared off with the Spanish assassin, the kind of thing comic book assholes loved to put in their covers. Vincent would have appreciated the spectacle a lot more if his life didn’t depend on the outcome.

  Toreador moved with the grace and speed of the bullfighter he once had been, but there was power behind his movements. Vincent had seen those solid black blades cut through metal plates as if they were made of cheese, and soft cheese at that. Even bulletproof Neos should fear them.

  The intruder produced his own sword, a thing of solid energy that shone like the heart of a lightning bolt, its light so intense it left afterimages in Vincent’s eyes as the man in white swung his weapon as swiftly as Toreador wielded his. There was a flurry of combat, so quick that even Vincent’s enhanced hand-eye coordination could barely follow it, and Toreador jumped back. One of his blades was gone; so was the hand that had been attached to it, severed at the wrist. There was a brief spurt of blood from the stump before the living metal armor covered it and sealed the wound. For the first time in his life, Vincent saw Toreador look hesitant. The Spanish assassin held his remaining blade in a defensive posture and backed away. The man in white stood his ground, smiling mockingly.

  Toreador’s retreat had unmasked the intruder. Dominic fired another burst from his Thompson. The shots did nothing. The man in white turned to Dominic, gestured at him with his free hand and unleashed a solid beam of light the same intense cyan color as his sword. Dominic didn’t have time to scream. He fell limply to the ground, but not before Vince could see the saucer-size hole the beam had charred all the way through his lieutenant’s chest.

  Dominic’s death had bought Toreador some time, and presented him with an apparent opening. The Spaniard pounced like a cat and unleashed a storm of cuts and thrusts. For a moment, the man in white was on the defensive, and Toreador even managed to score a couple of hits, drawing blood and marring the Russian’s clothing. Vincent felt hope for a whole three seconds. On the fourth second, Toreador’s body fell to the ground; the Spaniard’s severed head went spinning off and hit a wall with a sickening wet sound.

  The Russian turned towards Vincent. The cuts he had sustained no longer bled. A second later, his suit was impeccably white again, no trace of blood anywhere.

  “Wait,” Vincent said. “Wait! You can’t do this. Don’t you know who I am? I own Manhattan! This means war!”

  The man in white said nothing. His smile never wavered as he walked towards Vincent, sword poised to strike.

  I fucking hate Neos, was Vincent’s last thought.

  Face-Off

  New York City, New York, March 13, 2013

  Christine took the generous shot of vodka Father Alex poured for her and downed it in one gulp. She started coughing and sputtering almost immediately. I turned off the TV while she recovered from the coughing fit. The news from Freedom Island could wait. An attack on the Freedom Legion’s headquarters was pretty big news, but the Legion always came out on top, the self-righteous pricks.

  “Take it easy,” I said, and patted her lightly on the back. She got the coughing under control and leaned back on her chair.

  “I’m okay,” she replied. “I think I needed that. Okay, maybe not needed, but wanted it. Or thought I wanted it. Now I’m not so sure.” She took a deep breath, and I braced myself for another verbal avalanche, but instead of babbling she exhaled slowly and closed her eyes. I glanced at Father Aleksander, who seemed to be deep in thought, and back at Christine, who had opened her eyes again.

  “Relaxation technique,” she explained. “Tense up breathing in, loosen up breathing out. I feel a little better now.”

  “That’s good,” I said, mainly to try and keep her from chattering up a storm again. It didn’t work.

  “Okay. The Many Worlds Interpretation must be true,” she said. She looked at our blank faces – well, mine would have been blank regardless – and went on to explain. “You know, quantum mechanics. Do you know about wave function collapses, that sort of thing?”

  I read a lot, but mostly historical and pulp fiction. I knew what quantum mechanics were, in the sense that I had heard the term before, but I’d be damned if I could explain what the words meant. “All Greek to me,” I said admitted.

  “I speak Greek,” Father Aleksander said. “But I still don’t understand.”

  “Okay, no problem. Layman’s terms. Sorry, I’m kind of a nerd,” she said with a nervous smile. She looked like she smiled nervously a lot, and my heart went out to her a little bit. “Okay, say I flip a coin. It can come up heads or tails, right? Right. According to some theories, there is a universe where it will come up heads and another where it will come up tails. One universe for each possible outcome. Okay, that’s not the most accurate explanation but it’s good enough for now.”

  “You’re talking about parallel universes,” I said. “Yeah, we know about those. A few years back, L.A. got hit by an army of weird South African Nazis who’d gated in from an alternate Earth where they had taken over the world. They made a big mess before they got kicked back to where they belonged.”

  “Yes, that’s it. Wow, Nazis from another universe? So this place really is a freaking comic book world come to life. Holy crap!”

  “And you are from a parallel universe,” I said. “I was trying to figure out a way to tell you, actually.”

  “That’s kinda funny, since people that know me are always saying I must be from a different planet. In my reality, there are no Neos. No people with superpowers, unless you count doping and steroids, damn you, Lance Armstrong.”

  No Neos? Interesting. Maybe they were better off without us freaks.

  Christine wasn’t done talking, of course. “Neos, where did they come from? When did they show up? It’d be neat to find the point of divergence, or points of divergence, between your world and mine. Can’t be too far back in history. New York is New York, you’re speaking English, the US is the US. So…” She paused and the nervous grin came up again. “I guess you need me to stop talking now.”

  If I had a mouth, I would have smiled back. “Just a little bit,” I said, not unkindly; normally I would have told someone talking that much to shut the fuck up already, but I really didn’t want to hurt her feelings. Very strange. “Okay, let’s see,” I went on. I’d been a Neo fanboy long before I became a freak with no face, so answering her question wasn’t much of a chore for me. “The earliest Mystery Men appeared during the Roaring Twenties. There was one confirmed Neo
during World War I, a German flyboy, Von Richthofen. The guy got shot in the face a few thousand feet in the air, crashed his plane, and walked away from it. There were stories about some American guy with the French Foreign Legion, but those weren’t confirmed. More Neos showed up during the Nineteen Twenties; the real flashy and powerful ones appeared during the Thirties. The Berlin Olympics of 1936 was the big turning point; that’s when the term ‘Neolympian’ was used for the first time. Adolf Hitler unveiled the Teutonic Knights during the Olympics, made a big splash. The Knights could do things most people back then thought were impossible; bend steel with their bare hands, fly, that kind of stuff.”

  I waited to see if Christine was about to launch into another stream of consciousness tirade, but she was listening raptly, so I kept talking. “Hitler was the first to recruit Neos and put them to work out in the open. He also dressed them up in costumes and gave them code names. The US had a bunch of Neos – we still have the largest concentration of freaks on the planet, for no reason anybody can think of – and some of them had been featured in pulp magazines and radio shows, but it took a while to figure out they weren‘t just very talented normals. Then came Ultimate, the Invincible Man, in 1938. He got his own comic book, Action Tales, not too long before the Germans were rolling through Poland.”

  “Okay. World War Two, both here and in my world, check. Since you’re not speaking German, I’m guessing the good guys won?”

  “Yep. Germany and Japan surrendered in 1945. By then most of the Teutonic Knights were captured or dead. Same with the Kami Warriors of Japan – well, they were all dead.”

  “Wow. Wowie-wow. Okay, I can see we could spend hours talking about this. Later. I mean, we most definitely will, later. Let’s get to current events for a sec. Who’s President?”

  “John Colletta,” I replied, and saw Father Aleksander frown. I hoped we wouldn’t get into a political argument.

  “That crazy wrestler,” Father Alex said disapprovingly.

  “That crazy war hero,” I replied, and turned to Christine. “Never mind him. Colletta’s a good man. He beat JFK Jr. and that bozo from Florida who ran for the GOP; Colletta ran on the Reform Party ticket, and both Democrats and Republicans are a bit sore about the election. He’s also our second Neo President.”

  “JFK Jr. – you mean John-John is alive? He died when I was a kid in my world. My mom cried.”

  “Serves the Democrats right, sending the kid of a one-termer to run for the Presidency,” I said.

  “One-termer? That’s kinda harsh, isn’t it? Or… wait, JFK Senior wasn’t assassinated?”

  “Unless you mean character assassination, nope. He just lost in ’64 to the first Neo President: Ray Stephens, a.k.a. The Patriot.”

  “Okay, so we could spend hours talking about current affairs, too, ‘cause we’re going to have to go back to historical events to make sense of the current affairs. My head’s so going to explode. Why don’t we talk about me for a second? We can start with, what the eff am I doing here?”

  “We don’t know. Somebody or something brought you here, some trans-dimensional portal or para-temporal machine is my guess. Like those Afrikaner Nazis in L.A., or the Magister in his fucking teleporting Porta Potty.”

  “You’re serious. A teleporting Porta Potty.”

  “I didn’t invent it. Thanks to him, people get paranoid at construction sites, concerts and anywhere else you need to use those fucking things. You never know when you go take a crap whether or not you’ll find yourself in a whole different universe. Don’t ask me why he didn’t go for something more sensible, like a car or a telephone booth.” Now I was talking up a storm. She wasn’t just a chatterbox, she was contagious.

  Christine started to say something, stopped herself and shook her head. “Later. Okay, let’s say some super-nutjob brought me here. Why? Sorry. You don’t know, of course, you’d have to find out which super-nut brought me here. But some goons took me from the hospital, right? And you rescued me, thank God. So you do know who’s behind all of this.”

  “Well, not really,” I said apologetically. “They were local Mafia muscle, and I don’t see how they could have grabbed you from another universe. Somebody must have hired them when you landed in New York.”

  “They didn’t know who hired them? You didn’t ask them?”

  “I, ah, sort of killed them before I had the chance.”

  Christine looked shocked. “You killed them?”

  “They had already murdered four people. I didn’t want one of them getting to you. And one of them was a Neo himself, a pretty heavy-duty one.” And – this I didn’t say – I was in a bad mood, and some people just need killing. And here I was, justifying my actions to someone I’d just met, and feeling – guilty?

  “I’m not going to get all judgmental and stuff, because I don’t know all the facts, and also because you saved me from guys who clearly weren’t very nice. But killing is something pretty final, and you sounded kinda casual about it, but I’m going to stop now.”

  “I concur,” Father Aleksander said. “And I’ve had similar arguments with my young friend here. But perhaps there is a better time for that, no?”

  Christine nodded bleakly. “Okay. Setting aside morality, it’s going to be hard to find out who hired them, now that they can’t tell us anything, on account of their being dead.”

  First she made me feel like shit, and now she made me feel like a dumbass. I normally didn’t give a damn what people thought about me, so this was worrisome. You start doubting yourself out in the streets, and someone’s going to strangle you with your own guts while you ponder the whys and wherefores of your actions. I had to admit to myself that I had been a little too kill-happy at the warehouse. Then again, I normally got all my info from my psychic pal; I didn’t need to interrogate criminals very often. Giamatti had been a special case, though I’m sure he hadn’t felt very special on his way down from the penthouse.

  “I normally get all my info from an associate of mine. Her name’s Cassandra.”

  Christine’s face lit up at the mention of my psychic pal and I felt another grin forming up behind my blank face, not a common occurrence. “Cassandra! Yes, she came to me in a dream vision thingy when you rescued me. She seemed pretty cool,” she added.

  I nodded. “She is. She would normally know who did this and why, or at least give me some good clues, but she said that you are somehow interfering with her visions.”

  “Yes, she said something like that in the dream. Holy crap, I’m in other people’s visions and they are visiting me in my dreams. I’m probably crazy, but I might as well go with the flow.” She paused for a second and her eyes went wide. “Wait, my glasses, I don’t need them anymore. I'm the Amazing Tobey Maguire! And I got roughed up during the kidnapping, but I feel fine now.” Her eyes got wirder. “I’m one of you, aren’t I? A Neo? But how? I’m not from a super-world like you...” She paused again, and her eyes got wide enough I worried her eyeballs would pop out. “Holy crap, it’s my freaking father. He’s a freaking freak from another reality! I can’t freaking believe it!”

  “Ah, Christine?” I tried to break in, but she was having none of it. Her stream of consciousness was more of a waterfall of consciousness now.

  “Oh, God, please don’t let it be the Porta Potty guy! My dad is a freak from another world who travels around in a Porta Potty? It can’t be.” She turned to me. “Quick, who else can travel between worlds? There’s more than one, right?”

  “Well, the Magister is the best-known Neo with trans-dimensional abilities, but he’s not the only one. There is Marcus Magus, and of course the Traveler, he claims he’s been around since Victorian times, but everybody’s pretty sure he’s full of shit and he just stole the name from H.G. Wells. But wait, are you sure that..?”

  “That my crazy father is a Neo from this world? Absolutely. I always knew something was seriously wrong with him. And not just because he knocked up my mom and disappeared, and nobody can ever find him, ex
cept when he shows up once every blue moon to check on me. Oh, God, that rat bastard!”

  “You’re sort of jumping to conclusions, aren’t you? Although it does seem to fit.”

  “He’d better not be Porta Potty Man! I’ll kill him!”

  “Probably not,” I said reassuringly. “The Magister isn’t much for one-night stands, according to the stories. He mostly drags some girl or another through assorted adventures through space-time, then dumps her and gets someone else, and nobody’s claimed he knocked them up as far as I know. He’s fucking creepy, but I don’t think he’s the guy.”

  “Okay. Or I’m going to need another shot of vodka.”

  “Besides, maybe it’s not your father. Neos who have kids – and not many do – have mostly human children. I think the chance of having a Neo child is something like twenty-five percent when both parents are Neos, and something much lower when only one parent is parahuman. It could have been a naturally-occurring mutation. Nobody knows where Neos came from in the first place. Maybe you’re the first one on your planet.”

  “Maybe. Another thing, when do you get powers if you’re a Neo? I mean, there’s been plenty of times when I’ve wished I could set somebody on fire. Like every day when I was in high school, but I’ve never gone Carrie or Firestarter on anybody.”

  “Neo powers manifest at different times for different people,” I explained. “Usually after puberty, although there are exceptions, and usually before middle age, but again, there’s exceptions there too. As far as I know, there’s no hard and fast rules, either, sometimes a potential Neo just wakes up with super powers, sometimes a traumatic event triggers them. I figure your abilities triggered when you crossed over. That’s why you’ve fully recovered from the kidnapping. All Neos heal fast.”