For the first time, Antonio seemed to realize that thick, transparent glass separated me from him. Antonio ran his hands over the glass, tapping on it experimentally. Then he backed up and opened his mouth wide. He looked thunderstruck when nothing happened. I had put him in the Metahuman holding cell Isaac and I had discovered during our earlier visit here.
“As you can see, your powers don’t work here. I’ve placed you in a cell that neutralizes them.”
Antonio pointed his open mouth at the glass several more times. It reminded me of a fish struggling out of the water. Clearly he did not take my word for it that his powers wouldn’t work. And here I was, a licensed Hero with a costume, a cape, a lair, and everything. Insulting.
Finally, Antonio gave up. He pointed a thick finger at me. “Let me out of here!” he demanded.
I shook my head.
“No.”
“Let me out of here right now you little piece of shit. I got my rights!”
“Not here you don’t. As far as I’m concerned, you forfeited any rights you had when you killed Hannah.”
“I’m telling you, I didn’t kill nobody.”
“And I’m telling you I don’t believe you. Besides, even in the unlikely you’re telling me the truth, you still used to beat her black and blue. Plus, I know you committed a bunch of other crimes over the years you managed to escape punishment for.”
“So what are you gonna do? Turn me over to the cops?”
“And have you or the Esposito family bribe you out of this mess?” I shook my head. “No. I’m not handing you over to the police. I’ve grown to be less than impressed with the Astor City justice system. I’ll take care of you myself.”
“Take care of me yourself? What’s that supposed to mean. Kill me? You say you’re a Hero. Heroes aren’t supposed to kill people.”
“We don’t.” I thought of the Sentinels. “Well, most of us don’t. Back when I was in Hero Academy, I was taught that a Hero shouldn’t play the role of judge, jury, and executioner. I think my teachers were right. Heroes are too powerful to be allowed to take people’s lives. So, as much as you deserve it, I won’t execute you. I will happily be judge and jury minus the executioner part, though. Somebody’s got to sit in judgment of people like you since the judicial system won’t.”
I took a breath. “For the crimes of the murder of Hannah Kim, the assault and battery of Hannah Kim, the rape of Hannah Kim, multiple instances of use of Metahuman powers by an unlicensed Meta, and various other crimes perpetrated on numerous people over the years, I hereby sentence you to life in prison with no possibility of parole. Your sentence shall begin immediately. Welcome to your new prison cell. It’s got all the comforts of home. You’ll see that I stocked it with canned foods that will last you until my next visit, plus bottles of water. That large can over there with the lid on it will have to serve as a toilet for now until I have a chance to install a proper one. Later, I’ll bring you’re a change of clothes. Perhaps an orange jumpsuit. That’s all assuming I survive my encounter with the people I need to deal with after I finish with you. If I don’t, since no one else knows you’re here . . .” I trailed off. I shrugged. “Suffice it to say that in the event of my untimely demise, your life imprisonment will last as long as your food and water do. There are worse ways to die than starvation and dehydration. Having a hole blown through you by the man who professes to love you springs to mind.”
I shook my head in disgust. I was disgusted with myself as much as I was with Antonio.
“I’ll be honest with you, Mad Dog. Keeping you here is a punishment for me too. Me breaking into your apartment and attacking you led to Hannah’s death. If it weren’t for me, she might be alive today. Your presence here will serve as a constant reminder of the mistakes I’ve made. My mistakes can get people killed.”
Antonio’s pig eyes had grown wide with disbelief as I spoke.
“You can’t keep me here. I’ve got my rights. It’s . . . it’s . . . it’s against the law,” he sputtered.
His chutzpah made me laugh out loud.
“You’re one to talk about the law.” I waved my fingers at him. “Hello pot. I’m kettle. Yes, what I’m doing is very much against the law. The problem you’ve got is that there are no cops or lawyers or judges up here for you to complain to. There’s no clerk of court here for you to file a writ of habeas corpus with. There’s just me and you. And believe me, I’ve been through too much, seen too much, and watched too many good people die for no good reason to give a rat’s ass about your rights. What about Hannah’s rights?” And Dad’s and Neha’s, I added silently.
I was tired of talking to Antonio. I wanted to get out of here and go face the Sentinels. To get Neha back. I said, “Just between me and you, I’ll let you in on a little secret: I’m not sure how much I believe in the law anymore. Too many people flout the law and get away with it for me to have a whole lot of faith in it. Sometimes I wonder if the law is just a smokescreen to keep the weak out of the hair of the rich and powerful long enough for them to be exploited and taken advantage of. My father never broke a law in his life, yet he had to struggle every day to barely make ends meet before a group of assholes put him into an early grave. Those same assholes are not only very much alive, they’re free as birds and well-respected to boot despite breaking the law left and right. How great can slavishly following the law be if that sort of thing happens?” I thought of the Trials, my life in Astor City so far, and how corrupt so many people were. The Sentinels, Pitbull, Brown Recluse, the Astor City Police Department, Mitch and the flunkeys under him who dealt drugs on my street . . . the list seemed endless.
I cut myself short, realizing I was speechifying. A side effect of wearing a cape, maybe. If I put my fists on my waist and stuck my chest out, the pretentious picture would be complete.
I did not do that. Instead I said, “Even if my faith in the law is shaky these days, I still firmly believe in justice. Which is why you’re staying here. So make yourself at home. You’ll be here for a while.”
I turned to leave. Antonio started pounding furiously on his cell wall. I looked back at him. His face was mottled with rage.
“Look at you, with your fancy costume and fancy cape and fancy words,” he screamed at me. His spittle flecked the cell’s front wall. “It all means nothing. I see what you are. You do what you want because you have the power to do it. Just like me. You act like you’re better than me, but you’re not. We’re exactly the same.”
I paused.
“You know what? You’re right. Maybe I’m no better than you. But maybe that’s what the world needs—someone in the muck, right alongside people like you, to make sure you stay in the muck where you belong, well away from innocents.”
I had my fill of bandying words with this killer. I walked toward the portal leading back to Astor City. Mad Dog’s screams for me to come back fell on deaf ears.
CHAPTER 26
I stood once again in the Situation Room with the Sentinels. Not everything was the same as the last time I was here. For one thing, the room was no longer pristine and glistening with shine. Now, much of the room was under construction. It gave me grim satisfaction to see all the damage I had caused the last time I was here. Though the Sentinels had repaired some of it, they had not fixed all of it. All the monitors were dark as apparently Sentry was offline due to the damage. There was a huge hole in the ceiling, and one of the room’s walls was partially collapsed.
The damage was merely a good start as far as I was concerned. If it were up to me, I would cave the entire mansion in on itself. The Sentinels who weren’t psychopaths could then rebuild, this time hopefully without the murderous juju this place had.
The Bible speaks of how the walls of the city of Jericho were brought down by the Israelite army marching around it while blowing trumpets. And here I stood, wanting to tear these walls down, yet completely trumpetless. Maybe that part of the Bible was just a fairy tale, anyway. Along with the part that talks about the me
ek inheriting the Earth.
The second and most important thing that was different in the Situation Room now was the fact that Neha was here. She looked pretty much as she did in the video Mechano had sent me, fury in her eyes and all, except her bruises did not look as fresh. My relief at seeing her alive mingled with a fresh surge of white hot anger at the Sentinels.
Seer, Millennium, and Mechano stood in front of their conference table. Neha, still bound, stood next to them. The same gold metal I had seen in the video was around her mouth, hands, and feet, preventing her from speaking or walking. Mechano in his nearly seven feet tall robot body towered over the rest of them. His hand was on top of Neha’s raven-haired head, as a father might place his hand on his child’s head. The major difference here was that, unlike a father, Mechano could squash Neha like a bug simply by pressing down on her with his super strong body. The tacit threat of his hand resting on her was not lost on me.
I wore the green and black of my Kinetic suit. Avatar’s red cape was in my hand. I had just walked in, having been led through the mansion by Millennium’s glowing ball much as before, only this time I had been brought on a more direct route. I stood far across the large room from the four, not willing to get any closer. I was grateful that the presence of the Omega weapon fouled up Seer’s precognition. It was beyond annoying dealing with an opponent who knew what you were going to do before you did it. I wondered, not for the first time, if the Sentinels had allowed me to escape them the last time so I could retrieve the Omega weapon.
“It is not too late for you to change your mind and join us, Mr. Conley,” Mechano said. “You still are the Omega. Together, we can do great things. We can protect the world. If you are sincere this time about joining us, we can forget about all the unpleasantness that has transpired between us.”
My eyes darted over to Neha’s bruised face before returning to Mechano. I would say the gall of Mechano’s offer amazed me, but frankly my amazement fuses had all been blown a while ago. “Let’s recap. You killed my father, killed a bunch of innocent bystanders, tried to kill me, and you kidnapped and hurt Smoke. Join you? I’ll pass. You’ve lost touch with reality by living in that tin can for too long if you actually think I’d even consider throwing in my lot with you.”
“Well you cannot blame a Hero for trying.” Mechano’s voice was disgustingly cheerful. He sounded like he thought the Sentinels were very much in the driver’s seat. “All right then, let us get down to business. Give us the Omega weapon, and then we will give you your friend.”
I shook my head. “No. You give me Smoke first, then you get the weapon.”
“I am afraid I must insist.” His huge hand resting on top of Neha’s head shifted slightly. Neha’s eyes met mine. She was unafraid. I was proud of her. The anger instead of fear I saw in her eyes for her captors strengthened my resolve.
“I said no,” I said firmly. “If I give you the weapon first, you’re liable to keep both it and her. I have no confidence in your good faith. I wonder why. Once you give me her, then—and only then—I will give you the cape. You have my word I will give it to you. Unlike you, my word actually means something. If you won’t do as I say, I’ll fly right back out of here with it. And good luck trying to stop me from leaving and trying to wrest the weapon away from me. You and I both know you would have your hands full taking the weapon by force. If you felt comfortable simply taking it from me, you would have already done so instead of using Smoke to get leverage over me.”
Mechano took a moment to respond.
“Do you really expect me to believe you would see your friend die over a simple matter of who goes first?” Curiosity mingled with surprise in his voice.
“I’m past caring about whether you believe it or not. But that’s how it is, and how it’s going to be if you want the weapon.”
The room fell quiet for several long moments. Mechano’s hand still lay on the crown of Neha’s head. I had the feeling Mechano wanted to kill her just to show me I couldn’t dictate terms to him. He wasn’t used to that. He was accustomed to telling people what to do rather than the other way around. I was dead serious, though. I was tired of being pushed around. And there was no way I was going to risk losing both the weapon and Neha. I knew Neha well enough to know she was willing to die for a good cause. Despite the fact she had worn her cape only a tiny fraction of the time the Sentinels had, she was already more of a Hero than they would ever be.
I glanced at Neha. Her eyes met mine. There was no fear there. Just the same anger and frustration that had been there before. And perhaps a hint of pride toward me. Maybe that was just wishful thinking on my part.
Finally, Mechano took his hand from Neha’s head. I let go of the breath I had not even realized I had been holding.
“I must admit, Mr. Conley, that the longer I know you, the more I am impressed by you. It is indeed a shame you will not come to your senses and join us,” Mechano said. “We will do it your way. Take her.”
I lifted a hand. Neha rose from the floor, a couple of inches up in the air. I levitated her toward me. As I did so, I scanned the gold metal that bound her, alert for any hint of an explosive. Based on the bomb the blonde had planted on me inside the bank in Washington, D.C. and the bomb Brown Recluse had planted during the Trials, Mechano seemed to have an affinity for trying to blow people up. I would not be caught off guard again.
Though I did not recognize the metal, it did not appear to be an explosive. Nor did I detect wiring or any other indications of an explosive.
I landed Neha by my side. I caught a whiff of her distinctive smell, a smell I had dreamed about all these months apart from her. A lump formed in my throat. I wanted to hug her, but it was foolish to take my focus off the Sentinels for an instant. “Are you all right?” I murmured to her.
She still couldn’t speak, of course, with the metal gag in and around her mouth. Instead, Neha rolled her eyes at me, as if to say I’ve been abducted, beaten, bound, and held captive. What do you think? Yeah, it was a pretty stupid question. In my defense, I wasn’t used to dealing with hostage situations. I hoped they never came up so frequently that I would get a chance to get used to them.
Now that I had Neha, I floated Avatar’s cape across the room to Mechano. He plucked it out of the air. He stretched it out in front of himself. The red glow of his rectangular eye increased slightly, presumably as he scanned it.
“This appears to be an ordinary cape. You could have gotten this from anywhere,” he concluded. “Millennium?” Mechano handed the cape to him. Millennium slowly waved a single gauntleted hand over the cape. As he did so, dim sparks flew off his hand, as if it were a sparkler.
“This is indeed Avatar’s cape,” Millennium said. It was the first time I had ever heard his voice. It had a rustling quality to it, as if he spoke while dead leaves were rubbed together. “Avatar’s karmic signature is quite distinct.”
“How do we activate the weapon’s power?” Mechano asked impatiently.
“Unclear,” Millennium said in his otherworldly voice. “That will require further study.”
I had no intention of sticking around for all that. “I’ve upheld my end of the bargain,” I said. “We’re leaving.”
“Of course, Mr. Conley,” Mechano said. “We are not the unscrupulous monsters you seem to think we are. A deal is a deal. You and your friend are free to go.”
He didn’t have to tell me twice. However, there was no way I was going to wind all the way back through the mansion with Neha in tow, looking over my shoulder the whole time. So instead, with a force field around both myself and Neha, I shot up into the air. I burst through the hole in the ceiling of the Situation Room and through the reconstruction above it.
In seconds, we were outside the mansion and in the night air. I took off toward Astor City. The wind rushed past us. I scanned the air around and behind us with my powers. There were no threats I could detect. It appeared the Sentinels were letting us go.
I didn’t trust it. This
had been way too easy.
Despite a little voice whispering misgivings in my ear, I was so giddy I felt almost drunk. I had gotten away with tricking the Sentinels. I had not been stupid enough to hand the Omega weapon over, of course. The Sentinels had done too much to me and the people I cared about for me to think they could be trusted, either to uphold our deal to turn over Neha or to have possession of the Omega weapon. I had given the Sentinels my word that I would give them Avatar’s cape. That was exactly what I had done—I had given them one of Avatar’s capes from the mannequins in The Mountain. Though I had not technically broken my word, I had still pulled a fast one. Dad, who had taught me that without his honor a man was nothing, normally would not have approved of me playing fast and loose with my word. In this case, I thought he’d understand.
I had gambled the Sentinels would not be able to tell the difference between one of Avatar’s ordinary capes and the real Omega weapon until I had escaped with Neha. The costume I had on, though it appeared to be my old Kinetic costume, was in fact the Omega suit with its shape and color changed to replicate the Kinetic suit.
Even more importantly than retaining the Omega weapon, I had saved Neha. I held her in place right below me, with her facing me as we soared through the night air. Even with her face all bruised up, she was breathtaking. I loved her so much it was almost a physical ache. My heart raced. I was as nervous to be around her again as a teenager on his first date. This was the first time I had seen her in person since our falling-out shortly after the Trials.
* * *
It had just slipped out.
Now that the Trials were over and Isaac, Neha, and I temporarily stayed with the Old Man again in Chevy Chase, Maryland until we lined up what we were going to do with our new licenses, I had been waiting for the perfect time to tell Neha that I loved her and that I wanted us to be together. I didn’t think us having sex in Neha’s old room in Amazing Man’s mansion in the middle of the night constituted the perfect time. Then again, I could think of worse times. Like in the middle of being shot at by a supervillain, for example.
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