by Drew Hayes
The early section covered his damage and criminal patterns thoroughly; Tori noticed that most of Fornax’s big crimes were assault. He seemed to love fighting, especially capes. It was hard to reconcile someone like that with the controlled man who’d spent the day lecturing her. Ivan seemed... not weak, certainly, but measured. It was hard to imagine him going on a rampage like Fornax was known to do. Up until he was beaten, anyway.
Tori scanned the entry until she came to the section detailing Fornax’s defeat. Lots of capes had gone up against him, but it had taken the girl with the golden glow to actually bring him down: Lodestar. Considered by most to be the most powerful meta-human in known history, she’d met Fornax one on one and brought him down. Granted, the fight had destroyed half a rock quarry and taken three hours, but she’d done it.
The only section after Fornax’s defeat was about his death. Temporarily freed from prison, he’d been recruited to help deal with Orion when the mad meta-human tried to turn the earth into an actual black hole. A coalition of capes and villains had worked together and managed to bring Orion down, but only barely. The criminals who survived were supposedly given reduced sentences, though many were also supposedly lost in the fight. Fornax had been among those listed as killed, and Doctor Mechaniacal was “suspected dead” as well.
Tori tapped her finger on the desk as she read more about the incident and scoured the list of names. If Fornax wasn’t really dead, there was no guarantee that any of the others were either. But why lie about it? She had a suspicion, a hunch that made her worry she was beginning to think like a paranoid kook. Then again, she reasoned, she was already a member of a secret organization composed entirely of criminals. Perhaps a little paranoia was in order after all. Either way, she intended to get to the bottom of this little mystery. Fortunately, she didn’t have to speculate. She could get the information right from the source.
After all, Ivan was supposed to be teaching her.
Chapter 5
“It’s called the ‘Orion Protocol’ for obvious reasons,” Ivan told her as they ate breakfast the next morning. Tori had expected him to be cagey, or try and lie his way out of it, but Ivan hadn’t even seemed surprised by her question. It made sense; he had to know the topic would be coming up sooner or later.
“Originally, there wasn’t a name for it; there really wasn’t even an ‘it’ to name,” Ivan continued. “There was just a lot of panicking people desperate for any solution they could find. Since you’re bringing this up, I trust you already know about Orion?”
Tori nodded as she spread butter on a pancake. “Former scientist who worked with dark matter, turned himself into some sort of living black hole. He’s estimated to be one of the most powerful metas who has ever lived.”
“Even that’s an understatement,” Ivan said. “Orion was terrifying in every sense of the world. Every scrap of humanity he had was burned away in his transformation. Fighting him was like going up against an act of nature. In all my years, I’ve only ever seen two other metas that might be on his level in terms of destructive potential. So, when he made it clear that he was seriously trying to destroy the world and then started to actually do it, a lot of influential people got very scared. Enough to where they were willing to throw anything they could at him.”
“Including former criminals.” Tori had finished the buttering and had moved on to adding more syrup than was either necessary or healthy.
“Precisely. Doc and I were crooks, and sort of jerks at the time, but we weren’t sociopaths. Neither were most of the others locked up with us. We were just young, impulsive, and too weak to resist the temptation our strength offered. We were bad, but we didn’t want to see the world destroyed. After all, we had to live here too. Orion put our crimes in perspective, and within a day of him destroying Detroit, we were getting pitched an offer we couldn’t refuse.”
Ivan paused, rising from the table to refresh his coffee, as well as get the jelly from the fridge. When he returned, he spooned a generous dollop of the purple glop onto his toast, and then continued. “Actually, that’s not true. Many of us did refuse it. Not everyone had a life sentence, and even on the inside, we knew going up against Orion was probably suicide. Those of us willing to roll the dice, however, were offered a full pardon in exchange for bringing him down. Obviously, we succeeded, and the government kept their end of the deal. Most of us were too notorious to actually be released, so our deaths were faked and we were handed enough means to restart our lives as civilians, albeit with the caveat that one step over the line would land us back in a super-max.”
“Hang on: if this was a one-time deal, then why have a name for the protocol?” Tori asked.
“Smart question,” Ivan said. “Orion was a threat to the entire world, but he wasn’t the last one. Usually, there’s a real risk of Armageddon once a decade or so. When those come, the Orion Protocol gets activated. Not every criminal gets the offer: those who revel in slaughter or death are kept rightly where they should be. But the ones who were just greedy, or dumb, or got in over their heads, they get a second chance. Die fighting or live as a civilian. Luckily, the survivors aren’t totally on their own anymore. Now when they get out, the guild is there to help them adjust to the new world and keep them on the right path.”
“These people just got out of jail and you and your goons put them right back into a life of crime? That seems terrible from a moral and logistical standpoint. How do you even keep any members?” Tori had demolished half of her pancakes already and was reaching for more syrup. Ivan noted this, also taking her lean figure into the equation. He’d have to get her checked out to see if using her fire-form burned excessive calories. If so, they’d need adequate nutritional supplies on hand for training.
“Officially, the guild is a rehabilitative facility run by former criminals to help others readjust and prevent younger ones from going down the wrong path in the first place,” Ivan told her. “We’re actually registered as a non-profit. And honestly, a lot of that is true. We do help other villains get back on their feet, and if they want out of the life, then it’s our job to help them stay clean. However, for those who can never content themselves with trudging about like a normal person while knowing that they could soar among the skies, we offer different services. Our people work smart, work safe, and keep from getting busted. You’d be surprised how much of what we do is technically legal, assuming you have good lawyers and a loose sense of morality.”
“I have to call bullshit here,” Tori interrupted. “The capes would never let that happen. They’re all about no compromise and keeping the world safe. If you really formed an evil league of wickedness out in the open, they would totally come busting down your doors.”
“It’s been tried by a few whose reach exceeded their grasp, but most of the older superheroes tolerate us out of necessity. We minimize civilian injuries, we keep our activities out of the public eye, and, most importantly, we maintain order. The capes get to be adored and loved by the entire world, sign sponsorship deals and pull kittens from trees; meanwhile, we make sure the really terrible villains never see the light of day. We’re on top, and we’re not nice about how we stay there.” Ivan sipped his coffee calmly, as though discussing casual murder was a regular breakfast activity.
“Some do still dislike us, there’s no fighting that, but those in charge recognize the mutual benefits of our situation. They’ve seen what a world without the guild looked like, when it was constant war between us and them. No one wins in that situation: not us, not the capes, and certainly not the regular people just trying to get through life.”
“The devil you know,” Tori muttered, polishing off the last of her pancakes. She chewed slowly, savoring the sweet flavor while also contemplating what Ivan was telling her. The world was supposed to be cut and dry—the capes flew around keeping the peace, putting down all who stepped out of line. Now it turned out that they not only tolerated the presence of evil but also might depend on it. The situation, like m
ost, was more complex from within than one could guess from the outside. Complex wasn’t always bad, though. In fact, if one was quick, ambitious, and a bit morally flexible, complex could be quite lucrative.
“By the way, don’t go depending on using the Orion Protocol to get a free pass on whatever crimes you commit,” Ivan cautioned her. “We’re quite adept at snuffing out the true world-enders before they rise too high, so such incidents are few and far between. Besides, you were fortunate enough to get recruited to the guild before being incarcerated. That means that if you do the sort of thing that would get you seriously locked up, the capes will never have a chance to find you.”
Tori nodded. She was beginning to see why Ivan held the code so dear. It was a mutual shield, keeping them safe from the superheroes, as well as keeping most of the world safe from villains who reveled in senseless destruction. Order was profitable, chaos less so. Still, she was amazed that they’d managed to get so many criminals to go along with it. Tori would have imagined that many were too stubborn or prideful to accept the wisdom of restraint.
And Tori’s instincts, as usual, were spot on, even if she didn’t yet know it.
* * *
“There can be no doubt, a confluence is coming.”
The woman speaking was hunched over a crystal ball on a polished wooden conference table, her face illuminated by the soft purple glow emanating from its smooth glassy surface. She made no gestures or incantation; her focus was solely on what lay in the swirling depths of the ball. The light cast itself on the nearby wall, clashing with the robin’s egg blue paint that had been chosen for its soothing properties.
Across the room, a woman made entirely of metal and circuitry gave a slight nod. “That aligns with what our data models are suggesting. Scryanthos, can you discern any idea of when the confluence will occur?”
“Don’t press her too hard,” a young man cautioned. He sat next to Scryanthos, the woman reading the orb, and wore a white-toothed smile as he watched her plumb the ball’s depths. Though he was currently out of costume, he favored the same color scheme in his daily attire. On this occasion, he was wearing a dark suit with a red shirt and a black tie. Aside from his irises, which were stained a dark maroon, he could have easily passed for a somewhat pretentious, but otherwise normal, human being.
“I just asked her to try,” the metal woman responded. “There’s no harm in that. I’ve got half of my people trying to pin down when they think it will strike.”
“Ooooh, care to make a wager on whose department gets it right?”
“Balaam, enough. Xelas is merely trying to collect all the information she can. Since we’re dealing with a confluence, I’d trust you to appreciate how important this is for the guild at least.” This voice belonged to a woman older than any of the others looked, though she seemed at most to be in her late thirties. Her raven-black hair fell to her shoulders, where it landed atop a tasteful blouse that paired well with her slacks. Unlike Balaam and his irises, there was nothing that marked her as visibly inhuman, which was just the way she liked it.
“My apologies, Morgana.” The young man, Balaam, turned to Scryanthos and gently rested his hand on her shoulder. “If you would, my dear, I think we would all greatly appreciate any details you can offer.”
“It is... hard to discern,” she said. Her eyes were glazed over as her head tilted slightly, straining to divine the unknowable. “But the clouds gather on the horizon. I can feel the pulse of the ley lines as they brim with power. Such a state cannot be maintained. It must come soon. By the new moon’s rise, at the latest.”
Xelas’s digital eyes flickered for a nanosecond as she checked a file on her hard drive. “The next new moon is on Thursday the seventeenth. That means we’re looking at a week and a half, assuming Scryanthos is right. I’ll ask my people to reconcile the prediction with their own models to be certain.”
“Double check all you like,” Balaam told her. “Scryanthos is the top diviner among all of our mystics. If she says it will come by the new moon, then that’s what will happen.”
“I do not doubt her skill, but a deadline and a date are not the same thing,” Xelas shot back. “Narrowing it down to a single day would greatly aid us in putting people in position.”
“Double check,” Morgana instructed. She loathed Wade for making her head up this committee; Xelas was enjoyable, if strange, but Balaam could be an unapologetic ass when he felt like it, which was often. Still, no one could question that the two of them certainly produced results. Morgana remembered a time when they got almost no warning at all of confluences, and then suddenly they were hip deep in meta-humans. This was better. Aggravating, but better.
“And Xelas,” Morgana added, “send a message to the other council members. Tell them we’re having a mandatory planning meeting on Tuesday. Even if we don’t have an exact date, I want all hands on deck for this shitshow.”
* * *
Once breakfast was done, Tori’s education in the code resumed. It was still tedious and mind-numbing stuff, but she took to it with a touch more enthusiasm than she had on the previous day. Now that she understood the reason behind its existence, there was a desire to become familiar with it. It didn’t make the morning any more fun; however, it did allow her to see the time as something other than a waste.
Not long after they broke for lunch, Ivan’s cell phone began playing a swelling piece of classical music that Tori recognized but couldn’t place. He scooped it up and exited the living room, leaving Tori to study on her own. What she’d assumed would be a five-minute call dragged on as Ivan’s muffled voice drifted in snippets from the kitchen. The conversation took no less than an hour, and when Ivan returned, he looked weary. The older man carefully lowered himself onto the couch then glanced over at Tori.
“You’re smart with technical stuff, right?”
“I built my own go-kart out of discarded parts before the age of five. Yeah, I’ve got a knack,” Tori replied, bristling slightly.
“So you know how to work spreadsheets and databases?”
Tori looked up at her teacher, slowly lowering the document she’d been rereading for at least the fifteenth time. “I think I’d like to know why you’re asking that before I answer the question.”
“Because,” Ivan said, letting out the word like a heavy sigh, “as of tomorrow morning at eight, you are officially my company’s newest intern and my personal assistant. Answering phones, writing e-mails, minor scheduling, data processing, things of that nature.”
“I beg your damn pardon.” Tori’s eyes narrowed, and the temperature around her rose by ten degrees. “Listen, I get that you all run on some archaic practices with the whole master and apprentice thing, and I’m on board with that. But if you think you can drag me around as your pretty little secretary just because—”
“Tori, you have a high school diploma, a few college credits, and zero recent work history,” Ivan said, cutting her off. “I don’t even want to know what kind of strings Wade had to pull in order to get you this position, but I assure you it has nothing to do with your looks or gender.” Ivan rubbed his temples carefully, idly wondering if he’d been that quick-tempered at her age. The answer was, of course, yes, but it didn’t make dealing with her now any easier. “You need to learn how to blend in with normal society, and to be frank, I don’t trust you enough to leave you on your own, so Wade arranged for you to be my assistant.”
“And what is that you do, anyway?” Tori asked. She wanted to steer the topic away from her work history, and plus, she could only imagine what sort of position the man who had once held an entire state in terror commanded.
“Project management and coordination for a software company.” Ivan gave a halfhearted shrug, as if to say that, yes, he knew how boring it sounded and he didn’t have any way to jazz the position up. “I oversee a few departments to make sure products are on schedule and error free.”
“Sounds... responsible.” Tori couldn’t think of anything else to
say that wouldn’t sound derisive and only barely managed to bite back a snicker.
“It’s a safe, simple, uneventful job, which is precisely why I have it,” Ivan told her. “For one thing, I have a family to support: the pay is both fair and steady. For another, working a job like mine makes me seem like a responsible member of society. It lends credence to the charade that I’m not actually a member of a guild of villains nor a famous former criminal.”
Tori closed the book in her hand, leaning forward into the more interesting conversation. “But you said the capes already knew you were all full of it.”
“They do, but my neighbors, friends, coworkers, and children all have no idea,” Ivan said. “You’re going to want some normality in your world, whether now or in twenty years. It’s nice to talk with people about things other than how to loot a bank vault, and if you ever have a family, you won’t ever want your children to look at you with the full knowledge of all the things you’ve done. I’m helping you lay the foundation so that you’ll have a civilian identity when the time for it comes.”
“A civilian identity? I don’t even have a villain identity,” Tori pointed out.
“Sure you do. It’s all you have.” Ivan stretched out his hand and gestured to Tori, moving his arm in a circle. “All of this is your villain identity. The woman who dropped out of college and joined a gang, who got along by pulling smash-and-grabs to fund her scientific pursuits, who was nabbed by Doctor Mechaniacal and put into training. Tomorrow, your civilian life starts again. You become Tori, the lady who hit a rough patch but got a lucky break on an internship, and who might be able to work her way into a steady job. She’s the identity you’ll need to cultivate, to protect.”
