The Infinite League

by John Jr. Yeo

  “Shit’s getting real, tin man,” I whispered to him. “Which side are we on here?”

  “Just stay behind me,” he suggested. The shoulder-mounted weapons he carried were starting to light up, and I could hear the motors inside his body beginning to hum gently. “If the big guy doesn’t cooperate, you might be our last line of defense.”

  “Oh, freaking awesome.”

  The two soldiers took another step towards the Ambassador, and I heard the strange looking weapons they were carrying begin to hum with an electrical buzz.

  “Ambassador, I’m giving you a direct order, and this is your last warning,” the colonel snapped. “Return to the Genome Lab, or my men will open fire. Your mind has been compromised, and you are a danger to yourself and the world around you.”

  Dr. Progeriat, like the rest of us, seemed to be watching in disbelief as the situation began to wildly spiral out of control. He approached the colonel as quickly as he could, pointing his cane towards the soldiers aiming their weapons at the floating, silent alien above us.

  “Those are neutron radiation weapons!” the doctor screamed.

  “A radiation source that has proven effective in disincorporating the clone’s body,” the colonel replied. “You need to tell your clone to stand down, doctor.”

  “Quit calling me a clone,” the Ambassador snarled.

  What happened next was fast and brutal and ugly. The Ambassador flew straight at the soldiers before they could pull their triggers. He picked each one up, one in each hand, and flew upwards as their weapons fell to the ground. He smashed their heads together, and it was a grisly mess that I’ll need years of therapy to forget about. They were probably killed instantly, and it wasn’t a pleasant death. As one of the surviving guards hit the base alarm, the massive hangar door began to slowly close. The three members of the flight crew dropped what they were doing and scrambled towards the exit. Two of them escaped, but the last one didn’t make it out in time. The Ambassador put his hands on his head and twisted it around. He flung the body towards me, but I was able to jump out of the way in time.

  The body slammed into DeathTek, knocking him backwards nearly into the massive gears that were slowly closing the hangar door that allowed the jet to enter and exit the base.

  The Ambassador was looking at me now, blood on his hands and a murderous rage in his eyes. He began moving in my direction. Instinctively, I prepared to throw a fireball at his face to slow him down. But before I attacked, a sickly green beam of energy hit him in the chest.

  The Ambassador, or at least this clone, was dead before he slammed on the ground in a broken heap with a fist-sized hole in his body.

  “What the hell did you hit him with?” I screamed as I helped DeathTek to his feet.

  “Carbine-PX Neutron Radiation Emitter,” the colonel explained, lowering the still smoking weapon in his hands. “Some lunatic scientist called the Atomic Paladin designed this a few years ago and killed one of the clones with it. It’s been modified as a more practical weapon in the years since, and as a defensive measure in case the Ambassador ever went rogue.”

  “Shit, what do you have in your closet if I ever go over the edge?”

  Colonel Bridge gave me the sort of glance that suggested I didn’t really want an answer to that question.

  “I could have talked him down,” Dr. Progeriat protested. “We won’t have another replacement ready for hours now!”

  “There will be no replacements,” the colonel replied coldly. “The CDA we have here could only make one more clone before it goes dead anyway. But the only place it’s going is into a deep, dark hole.”

  “So we’re not going to mount an operation to recover the one that Zahr has?” I asked.

  “It doesn’t matter, Andromeda. When Congress convenes on Wednesday, the committee overseeing the DSA is going to recommend funding is cut. The track record has been abysmal in the last few years, and the cover-up just isn’t worth it anymore.”

  “So this is it? You’re shutting me down?” growled the doctor.

  “The technology on the base will be re-appropriated for appropriate government use, and you will be financially compensated for your years of hard service,” the colonel promised. “The others can continue as solo operatives if they wish. Or just retire, and go home.”

  “I can go home?” I could barely believe what I was hearing. “Are you serious?”

  The doctor was nearly beside himself with fury at this point. “It’s not about the money! This team was put together to defend humanity from the evils of the world!”

  “There are more good people in the world than just you and your team,” the colonel reminded him testily. “This team can’t function as it currently exists. It takes quite a bit of power just to run the CDA, which the government will no longer wish to do just to keep your clones alive. Not to mention all of the personnel, the equipment maintenance, the harrier jet, and so on. It’s over, Dr. Progeriat. We’re just going to have to admit to the world that the Ambassador is dead, and we’ll let other people handle the world’s problems.”

  “Unless we convince congress that the Infinite League is still needed,” Dr. Progeriat countered.

  “We’ve talked about this. I told you weeks ago, the committee has all but made up their mind. Soon, they’ll make it official.”

  “Then it’s a good thing I started taking steps of my own a few weeks ago,” he nodded sadly.

  “This is ridiculous, and I don’t have the time to deal with you anymore,” Colonel Bridge shouted. “Your insane clone just murdered two of my soldiers, and I’m not entirely convinced you’re not behind this. DeathTek, take the doctor into custody. Lock him in the holding cell for the time being.”

  The holding cells in the Dome were designed to temporarily keep dangerous enhanced criminals locked up until they could be safely transferred to the Gray Palace in Arkansas. It seemed like overkill, frankly. But DeathTek did as he was ordered, and he pointed his wrist-mounted rockets directly at the doctor. I just stood motionless as the scene played out.

  “We knew it would probably come to this,” the doctor said sadly, looking down at his feet. “A few lives to protect a million others. Baltrin never understood that. Let’s finish this.”

  “Who are you talking to?” the colonel asked. The question was answered when a pair of small missiles launched from DeathTek’s wrist rockets. The flare dazzled my vision, leaving me blind for a few seconds. When the world came back into focus, the horrifying truth of what had just happened hit me like a truck.

  DeathTek was pointing his wrist cannons directly at me now. Smoke was trailing from the muzzles, reminding me that he had just discharged his weapon twice.

  Colonel Franklin Bridge was dead.

  “Don’t make the wrong choice here, Emily,” DeathTek warned me. “There’s too much at stake here.”

  “Dr. Progeriat, I think we’ve found our saboteur,” I said carefully, keeping my hands raised and praying that the man I thought was my friend wouldn’t fire. “What do you want me to do?”

  “He’s not a saboteur,” the doctor corrected me, standing behind DeathTek and placing a hand on his arm. “He’s a loyal friend who’s taking the steps necessary to keep our family alive. You understand that, don’t you?”

  “If I said I did, can you not shoot me?”

  The doctor smiled humorlessly, but he said nothing. The massive steel doors of the hangar were halfway closed now, cutting off my chance of escape from the base. DeathTek’s weapons were fast and lethal, and if he pulled the trigger on me, he’d hit me with a barrage of explosive bullets. I’d never escape all of them. What were they going to do with me?

  “Tuck her into the holding cell,” the doctor ordered. “She’s too emotional right now to make any serious decisions, but I’m sure she’ll come around to our way of thinking. This is for the best.”

  “Sorry, Emily,” shrugged DeathTek, gesturing towards the door. “But the world needs to believe the Infinite League will
always be there for them.”

  I started walking towards the corridor door, desperately considering my very limited options. Even if I could get into the Event Horizon, I didn’t have the slightest idea of how to start the engines, much less fly it. Necromancer had a motorcycle in the hangar, and that was the more obvious choice, but I’m sure the keys were in his possession. There were a few containers of fuel still on the floor, and I could cause a pretty distracting explosion if I could toss a fireball out. It might give me the distraction I’d need to just fly out of the hangar before the doors shut. But it was too risky as long as DeathTek had his weapons trained on me. And there was still the matter of that damned gizmo sewn into the back of my neck.

  My options were limited, but as I started walking towards the door, the lights in the hangar went out and the hangar door stopped moving.

  “It’s Baltrin,” DeathTek reported nervously. “He’s trying to hack into our system again.”

  “Get over here and override the controls,” Progeriat ordered.

  Keeping one wrist gun constantly trained on my head, DeathTek walked to the main console and placed one of his fingers into a slot. Within a few seconds, the hangar door resumed its descent, although the lights remained off.

  In the dim light of the hangar, three figures suddenly materialized. I saw Baltrin first, and on opposite sides of the hangar were Necromancer and Submission. They stood there, arms folded, all staring in Dr. Progeriat’s direction.

  “How could you have done this,” Baltrin said angrily, his image slightly flickering as some of the smoke from DeathTek’s guns floated through his hologram. “You were the greatest man I’d ever met. I’m sickened by what’s become of you!”

  “And you’re a coward, John Baltrin,” the doctor responded. “You don’t have the courage to do what needs to be done! By the way, the first thing I’m going to do when all this is over and remove these damned holographic emitters.”

  “They were good men,” Necromancer snapped. “If you think killing them isn’t going to change the committee’s mind, you’re further off the deep end than we thought!”

  “You’re the traitor, Chidike!” DeathTek barked at him. “If Dr. Progeriat hadn’t pulled you out of a Nigerian prison, you’d probably been gang raped a dozen times and then shanked in the bathroom!”

  “My loyalty to the doctor does not extend so deep that I would ally myself with criminals and killers,” he replied.

  “So, you’re working with Ubaidullah Zahr,” Baltrin said to Dr. Progeriat in an angry, accusing tone. “You can’t possibly believe any good is going to come from that? He’s a terrorist working for a genocidal despot in an oppressive regime.”

  “You don’t know anything,” Dr. Progeriat shot back. “Now get out of my mainframe!”

  “Please, let Emily go,” Submission pleaded. “Whatever you’re planning to do, you don’t need to involve her.”

  “But she’s going to help us, you see,” laughed the doctor. “Or her child will be putting lilies on her grave at Christmas. We can always find another Andromeda to fill those pretty little boots.”

  The hangar door was nearly closed now. The harrier jet would never get out now, and soon it’d be too late for me to escape as well. I wanted to move, but DeathTek and his computer-enhanced tracking systems would pulverize me before I could leave. As he continued clicking away at buttons with a frantic pace, his eyes and weapons never maneuvered away from me.

  “I’ve isolated his signal,” he reported to the doctor. “I can boot him out of the system now.”

  “Good-bye, John,” nodded the doctor, tapping his cane on the ground. “When congress unilaterally votes to continue funding this base, feel free to come back so we can mend some fences. We could always use your expertise here at the Dome.”

  With another click of the button, Baltrin’s holographic image flickered and vanished from view. Submission’s image shimmered as well, but not before she turned in my direction and winked.

  Necromancer remained. He flicked his wrist, and something flew through the air and attached to DeathTek’s armored helmet. With a popping noise, the giant armored man found himself surrounded by a crippling curtain of electrical energy, and then he slumped over the console.

  “Move, girl!” Chidike shouted.

  Necromancer had been here all along, I realized! He hadn’t gone off with Submission to rendezvous with Baltrin, he had snuck aboard the Event Horizon and stayed hidden in the hangar as this scene played out. When Baltrin activated the holograms, he took his place with the others. None of us had realized that Necromancer was actually not a hologram until it was too late.

  “Perimeter breach!” Dr. Progeriat was shouting into the device on his wrist, no doubt calling for armed guards. With the hangar door nearly closed, our escape was being cut off.

  To make matters worse, the electromagnetic trap that DeathTek had been crippled with had worn off, and he was preparing to fire his guns at us.

  Necromancer pointed a gadget at his motorcycle, and the engine suddenly roared to life. We had our escape vehicle, if we could just get out before being gunned down by either DeathTek, or the quartet of armed guards that were now filing into the room to protect Dr. Progeriat. They had no idea what had gone down here, and we weren’t going to have a chance to explain. It was time to leave.

  Necromancer picked up one of the fuel barrels and threw it at DeathTek as hard as he could. Unfortunately, his cyborg strength made him more than capable of catching the barrel easily. The hangar door was nearly closed now. I had to act.

  Before DeathTek could throw the barrel back at one of us, I tossed a fireball. The result was a spectacular explosion that hurtled DeathTek across the hangar, leaving a trail of burning oil and metal behind him. In a million years, if my life had depended on it, I would never be able to intentionally cause what ended up happening. But he came to rest by the large metallic gears that were slowly lowering the hangar door, and his steel skull became wedged into the gears.

  The hangar door came to a screeching, crunching halt two feet from the floor. DeathTek’s head was crushed into a flat piece of oily, metallic shrapnel. I could see a bit of brain, but far less blood than I expected. Just clear fluids and black ooze. Whatever he was, DeathTek had been killed.

  Necromancer threw another small black orb towards the guards, and this one had the effect of causing a massive, inky cloud of darkness. Miraculously, none of the wild bullets that fired managed to hit us as he picked me up, positioned me on the back of his motorcycle, and we escaped under the hangar door at a low angled tilt.

  A few moments later, we were speeding away from the Dome for parts unknown.

  22

  Full Disclosure

  Monday, June 3 – 1:00 a.m.

  For thirty minutes, I rode on the back of Necromancer’s motorcycle in general silence. When I suggested that it might be a better idea if I just got off the bike and flew, allowing me to keep a close eye on possible pursuers, he suggested that I’d be safer staying with him until we met up with Baltrin. He occasionally checked a panel on his dashboard, and assured me that no one was chasing us. Apart from that, we remained silent as we fled from the Dome.

  No one ended up chasing us, as it turned out. The Ambassador had been evaporated by the radiation weapon, DeathTek’s head had been crushed by the grinding gears of the hangar door, and Necromancer had taken a few dozen twists and turns through the city to throw off anything Dr. Progeriat might have tossed at us.

  Of course, there was still that damn object that had been surgically implanted in my neck. If they could use it to find me when I tried to visit my family, they could probably use it to track us wherever we were going. For all I knew, he wasn’t bluffing about it doubling as a bomb. How close did he have to be to detonate it?

  I noticed there wasn't that much traffic on this isolated rural one-lane highway at this time of night. That began to settle my nerves a bit, but who knows what other allies the doctor would send chasing af
ter us. I kept a constant eye on the atmosphere for flying lunatics to rain down fire or ice or any number of bizarre powers on us, but there was nothing.

  Occasionally, we approached a car puttering along at the posted speed limit of 45 mph. Necromancer was barreling ahead at twice that speed, and easily blew around them. Ordinarily, I would have been like any other sane human being on the planet: terrified. But if the worst happened and an accident seemed unavoidable, I could always leap off the bike and fly into the air, probably carrying him with me. I clung tighter to his chest, but I didn’t believe for a moment that I was safe.

  In time, we approached a larger vehicle, and the hairs on the back of my neck immediately began to stand up. As we got closer, I saw that it was a large 18-wheeler. Instead of trying to go around it, Necromancer pulled back on the throttle and got closer.

  "We're not passing them?"

  "Not quite," he remarked. “This is our ride.”

  The back door of the vehicle lowered down, revealing a ramp that would lead the interior of the truck. As the truck slowed down, Necromancer's bike sped up. Inside the truck's body was something that resembled a medical lab, complete with equipment, lights, computer monitors and surveillance equipment. I've sat on stakeouts inside surveillance vans when I was an officer, but whoever funded this layout was operating on a whole different level. Inside the van, I could see a few people standing, watching us. One was Submission, which gave me a comfortable feeling in my stomach. Major John Baltrin was there too, assuming this wasn't another holographic representation of him. There were a few other folks milling behind them, but I somehow felt I was finally among people I could trust. Necromancer twisted the throttle, and gunned forwards towards the ramp.

  "Okay, I've always kind of wanted to do something like this," I laughed.

  Effortlessly, we drove up the ramp and came to a halt just inside the back of the truck. As the door raised and sealed up once more, I could feel the truck accelerating, and we were on our way again.