Sentinels

by Darius Brasher

  In addition to her telekinesis, Seer also had precognitive abilities. Her ability to look into the future was said to be like the vision of a near-sighted person: If someone with near-sightedness looked at a car dozens of yards away, the car would be nothing more than a blur. He would be able to tell it was a car, but wouldn’t be able to make out the details of it. If he walked closer to the car, though, he would be able to see the car more and more clearly until it became crystal clear when he was right on top of it. The same was true of Seer’s precognition: events in the distant future were hazy, ill-defined, and could change. But as time passed and those events came closer to happening, Seer could see them more and more clearly. I had seen footage of battles where Seer had stepped out of the way of a Rogue’s attack with unerring accuracy, seeing the attack coming before it had even been launched.

  Millennium was so slim he was almost skinny, though there was something about his presence which made him seem large and imposing. He wore a light brown, shiny metal helmet with a flat top. It reminded me of an upended bucket. Its surface was an unbroken smoothness except for tiny slits for his eyes. There were no openings for his nose or mouth. I could not see his eyes behind his eye slits, only darkness. Looking into his eye slits, even from this distance, was like peering into a bottomless well. It gave me the creeps. He wore gauntlets, cavalier boots, a belt, and a floor-length cape that all matched the brown color of his helmet. The loose tunic and leggings that covered the rest of him were royal blue.

  The press often called Millennium the Thousand Year Man. Legend had it that his body was frozen in time, unable to age or change, until he lived a thousand years, at which time he would die. I did not know if that was true, but it certainly was true that Millennium had an exceptionally long lifespan. He was one of the Sentinels’ founders after all, and he was still on the team over half a century later. Other than me, Millennium was the sole living Omega-level Hero, and one of only four Omega-level Metas in the world. The other two were Chaos, the Rogue serving multiple life sentences in MetaHold, and Lim Qiaolian, a telepath and super-genius in China who put herself into a self-induced trance when she was five-years-old over seventy years ago. God only knew what she had been thinking about all this time. Maybe she was busy unraveling the secrets of the universe. Maybe she was trying to puzzle out why some people were foolish enough to worship her as a god. Or, maybe she was trying to remember where she had hidden her candy from her brother. If she wound up going through some of the hair-raising stuff I had been through as an Omega-level Meta, for her sake I hoped she never woke.

  Millennium’s powers were the least understood of the Sentinels, at least by the public. They were said to be magic-based, with his Metahuman ability allowing him to tap into the mystical plane. I would have scoffed at talk of magic and mystical planes before my powers developed. Since then, I’ve seen too much to not keep my skeptical mouth shut about what was possible and impossible. Regardless of exactly how they worked, like me, Millennium channeled his powers through his hands. And there was no doubt they were formidable. He could teleport halfway across the planet in one moment, and reduce a skyscraper to rubble the next.

  Mechano’s long, thin, single rectangular eye glowed at me disconcertingly. It was like being stared at by a mechanical cyclops. It was worse, actually, as no cyclops I had ever heard of had the ability to blast you into smithereens with its eye the way Mechano did. Maybe he stared at me like this because he was scanning me with his x-ray vision. I hoped I was wearing clean underwear. It would be hard to seem intimidating to Mechano if I was confronting him with pee-pee stains in the front and skid marks in the back. Though I knew his burnished silver body was about seven feet tall, he seemed taller than that, even seated. Though his mechanical muscles were obviously merely for show, he looked like the beefiest of Mr. Olympia competitors painted silver. His head was earless and hairless. His cranium was shaped like a billiard ball with the top loped off, leaving a flat plane at the apex. He had no nose or mouth, with three small holes in the place of the former and a circular gold-colored metal grate in the place of the latter.

  The large transparent table the three Sentinels sat at was heptagonally shaped, with tall silver-colored chairs positioned at each of the seven sides. A large golden “S” was stenciled into the middle of the table. The table made me realize where I was. I was in the Sentinels’ Situation Room, the fabled room where the team held formal meetings and monitored what was going on in the world, looking for issues the Sentinels needed to deal with. Despite my fear, I felt a surge of awe and wonder. As a longtime Hero fanboy, being here was like a Star Trek junkie being transported to the bridge of the starship Enterprise.

  On the back and front of each chair around the table was a symbol representing the Sentinel the seat was reserved for: a black and white amorphous pattern that looked like a Rorschach test for Doppelganger; a katana glowing red for Ninja; a metallic blue clenched fist for Tank; and a blood red capital A for Avatar. A black sash ran diagonally around Avatar’s chair, presumably to signify and honor his death. Though I could not see the emblems for Seer, Millennium, and Mechano as the Heroes’ seated bodies obscured them, I knew they consisted of a wide-open eye with energy rays shooting from its perimeter for Seer, an hourglass with most of its sand in the top hemisphere of the glass for Millennium, and a large metal nut with a yellow lightning bolt passing through it for Mechano.

  On the other side of the table, against the far wall, was a massive bank of dozens of large video monitors. They flickered with various images. Stacked on top of one another to form a semi-circle, the monitors rose from a futuristic-looking, waist-high control panel all the way up to the top of the room’s high ceiling. You had to crane your neck to see what was on the monitors at the very top. From the control panel extended a mass of thick metal cables that were silver in color. The ends of the cables tapered down to connect to a silver helmet which rested on top of the big chair in front of the control panel.

  I recognized the bank of monitors as well from my research on the Sentinels. Known collectively as Sentry—yet another of Mechano’s inventions—the monitors drew from satellite imagery and security feeds from around the globe to keep the Sentinels aware of threats, Rogue-related or otherwise, the Sentinels might need to deal with. The silver helmet resting in the chair fed data from Sentry directly into its wearer’s brain. A Sentinel was supposed to be on Sentry duty almost all the time. The fact the three Sentinels sat at the table looking at me rather than one of them wearing the Sentry helmet was further proof something I did not understand was afoot. As if me being allowed to stroll unimpeded into one of the most secure rooms in the world in one of the most secure buildings in the world wasn’t proof enough of that.

  While keeping a cautious eye on the seated Heroes, I checked out some of the images on the monitors. Some of them were of high-security and high-risk areas I would expect to see under surveillance: the grounds of the White House; the Guild space station; MetaHold on Ellis Island; the supervillain Puma’s palace in Lima; the temple that had been constructed around Lim Qiaolian’s small comatose body; a mass protest outside the Kremlin; and a riot in Monrovia, Liberia led by a masked black man the size of a small house. Other footage was more surprising and made me wonder how in the world the Sentinels had gotten it.

  On one monitor was an orgy. The participants were several male United States Senators from both political parties and a roomful of girls. None of the Senators were in particularly good shape, which made the footage hard to watch. The fact that none of the girls looked older than sixteen made watching it harder still. On another monitor was the mayor of Astor City, sitting back in a leather recliner. His eyes were open, and partially rolled back in his head. His sleeve was rolled up, and a needle was impaled high up on his forearm. I doubted the needle contained civic pride.

  As shocking as those and other images were, two others chilled me to my marrow. At about eye level was a monitor that showed the nighttime exterior of my house on W
illiams Place. The way the camera that recorded the image was angled, no one would be able to come or go unnoticed. Isaac’s second floor bedroom faced the street. His room’s lights leaked out around the window’s blinds, indicating that he was still up despite the late hour. I wondered where the camera was located. Discreetly mounted on top of a nearly power line, maybe.

  The second disturbing image was on the monitor next to the one showing my house. It was of a glitzy nightclub packed with drinkers and dancers. Neha stood next to the dance floor. My heart fluttered as I looked at her. This was the first time I had laid eyes on her since the night I had told her I was in love with her.

  Neha wore the Smoke costume the Old Man had given her, the form-fitting gray and white one with the shifting curls of smoke on it. Even at a time like this, I couldn’t help but admire how great Neha looked in her tight costume. Twenty-one years old, she had the build of a dancer, toned yet feminine. I missed touching her. My sudden yearning for her was as strong as the jonesing of a cokehead for a hit. Her costume’s cowl covered her whole face except her mouth, eyes, and nostrils. As Neha was of Indian descent, her skin was olive-colored.

  The clubgoers were apparently too cool to make a big deal about the fact there was a costumed Hero in their midst, but they still gave Neha a wide berth. Despite their surface nonchalance, you could tell many of them checked her out from the corner of their eyes.

  Neha watched her employer Willow Wilde, the reality television star, dance with three men. Neha was obviously still on the clock as Willow’s head of security. The men Willow danced with were dressed like they had just left a GQ photo shoot. They were so handsome, they made me look like a turd with eyes. I felt a hot stab of jealousy at the thought these were the types of men Neha was around these days. Willow’s dress—what there was of it—was so tight it was a wonder she could walk, much less dance. Her artificially large gyrating butt looked like two alley cats fighting to get free of the bag they’d been stuffed in. I wondered what Willow would do for a living once she got a little older and her looks and popularity faded. Pop out a few kids, make them get plastic surgery, and continue the Wilde get rich from doing nothing dynasty, probably.

  It was impossible for me to tell from this raw footage where Willow and Neha were. Astor City, New York, Los Angeles, Paris, Rome, Moscow—any major city would have clubs like this one with the sort of clientele this one did. Besides, Willow was an international superstar who didn’t let moss grow under her feet; she would be welcomed as a celebrity wherever she went. Neha’s arms were crossed as she watched Willow. She somehow looked simultaneously bored and alert to any threats. A woman as rich and famous as Willow attracted a lot of attention, often of the unsavory kind. I knew Neha well enough to read more into the expression on her face than mere boredom and alertness, though. There was contempt for Willow and the other clubbers carefully hidden in her expression which seemed to say, “If I slit my wrists right now, how long would it take for me to bleed out and be done with this frivolous nonsense?” I wondered if she regretted taking the job with Willow. Maybe if I’d read her emails and texts or listened to the voicemails she had sent me since I’d moved to Astor City instead of ignoring them all, I would know.

  I was not so naive as to think Sentry showing images of my friends at my eye level was coincidence. The Sentinels were sending me a message as clear as it would be if they had written it out: We know who your friends are, and we know where they are. If it wasn’t an unspoken threat, I didn’t know what was. But to what end?

  “Please, come closer,” Mechano said, his voice jarring my reeling mind. “Join us. I promise we will not bite.” His tone was a combination of patronizing and amused. Though I knew Mechano was the consciousness of a man in robot form, it was still weird to hear him use an idiom like “we will not bite.” It seemed more natural for a robot to say something, well, robotic.

  I walked closer to the three. Not because Mechano asked me to, but to keep from having to shout in the huge room. I stopped short of the table.

  Mechano said, “Please do have a seat. You can sit in Avatar’s chair. It is really quite an honor, being asked to sit in the chair of one of the greatest Heroes the world has ever known. You would be only the second person to sit in his chair since his unfortunate demise.”

  ‘Will you walk into my parlor?’ said the spider to the fly, I thought. “I’m good right here,” I said.

  “Come now. You are too young to be so suspicious.” My face must have shown my wariness. Unlike mine, Mechano’s metal face was immobile and didn’t display emotions. His face was as animated as a mannequin’s. His voice sounded amused though, as if he spoke to a child who had done something funny. “We mean you no harm, Theo. Maybe I call you Theo?”

  “No. My friends call me Theo. Someone who has tried to kill me and is spying on my real friends is not my friend.”

  Mechano barked out a laugh. The slightly artificial quality of it made it seem mocking. His head swiveled slightly toward Seer. “So full of single-minded devotion and righteous indignation. Ah, to be young again.” The fact he didn’t deny to his teammates that he had tried to kill me wasn’t lost on me. Were all the Sentinels in on the attempts on my life, or just these three? And to what end?

  “As old as you are, you’d think you’d have fallen out of love with the sound of your own voice by now,” Seer said. I was getting the impression there wasn’t any love lost between the two. “Let’s get down to business. We have many other matters to attend to.”

  “The fact I am as old as I am is why I have learned to enjoy the simple pleasures of life when they are presented to me,” Mechano said. His head silently swiveled back to me. “In any event, despite her unseemly impatience, Seer is quite right. Let us get down to brass tacks. We let you in here unmolested because we understand you have questions. We have answers. You say we are not your friends, but we want to be. Friends should not have secrets from one another. So shoot. We will tell you any and everything you want to know.”

  Why beat around the bush? “Did you try to kill me during my Trials by programming nanites to attack me?”

  “Of course I did. But you already knew that thanks to your friend Hacker,” Mechano said. “Oh, do not look so surprised that I know she hacked into Overlord. Actually, on the surface, you do not look particularly surprised. You have a decent poker face for one so young. My systems let me see past your deadpan expression, though. When I mentioned Hacker, I heard your heart rate increase, my infrared vision noted the blood flow increased to your face, and your perspiration rate jumped. All clear indications of surprise. But I digress. I was talking about Hacker. Overlord is my creation. Did you really think someone could force her way into it without me knowing about it? Hacker’s power and talents are impressive, but not as impressive as mine. To analogize to the mythology you are so fond of, it would be like Jehovah not knowing Eve had taken a bite of the fruit of the tree of knowledge.” I wished God would smite Mechano for calling Christianity mythology. If He was too busy to do it, I would happily try my hand at it instead.

  I tried to smother my anger. Though Mechano was of course right that I already knew about the nanites, hearing him admit it without a trace of shame, proudly even, made me want to dismantle him piece by piece. Maybe later.

  “And did you also plant the bomb in the baby stroller in the holographic mall during the Trials?” I demanded.

  “Me personally? No. I was here in the mansion at the time. However, the bomb was my design. And, I circumvented Overlord’s security protocols to permit the bomb to be placed in the mall without alerting the Trials’ proctors.”

  My fists balled up in anger. “You could have killed dozens of people.”

  “Could have. Did not. Thanks to you. Well done, by the way.”

  I was as interested in Mechano’s compliments as I was in eating a plate of puke. The casualness with which he dismissed endangering others’ lives infuriated me. And this sociopath was a Hero? “Who planted the bomb, then?�
�

  Mechano surprised me by answering. “Brown Recluse.” Brown Recluse was a Trials’ proctor, one I had liked. I’d have to drop him from my Christmas card list and add him to my enemies’ list. “I paid him quite handsomely to do it,” Mechano said. “Not directly, of course. It would never do for him to know of my involvement. A man as profligate in his personal life as he is cannot be trusted to keep a secret. The payment to Brown Recluse and the delivery of the bomb to him was through a discreet third party, one of the non-Metas I sometimes use to handle unpleasant tasks. It had come to my attention some time ago that Brown Recluse is an inveterate gambler when he is a civilian. Since he is as unsuccessful at it as he is dedicated to it, he had accumulated substantial debts to some unforgiving people who do not accept excuses as a form of payment. They are so unsavory that Brown Recluse had grown quite alarmed over what they might do to him even though he is a Hero. The money I offered him in exchange for sneaking the bomb into the Trials gave him the financial lifeline he was so desperate for. Let his example be a lesson to you, Mr. Conley: if you insist on playing poker, it really does not pay to draw to inside straights. You would think a Hero like Brown Recluse would have a better grasp of finite math and probabilities.” Mechano sighed, which was a bizarre sound coming from a robot. “Addiction really does defy common sense and reasoning. How such an undisciplined man lacking in self-control ever became a Hero is beyond me.”

  “You’re hardly one to judge someone’s worthiness to be a Hero.” I was in disbelief over how blasé he was about trying to assassinate me. “You’re an admitted attempted murderer.”

  “Yes, but in the pursuit of the greater good. After all, my attempts on your life have resulted in you coming here.”

  “So you trying to kill me was what? An invitation to come visit? You could have sent me an Evite instead.”

  The smug sonofabitch had the nerve to laugh. The slightly inhuman sound was worse than nails on a blackboard.