The Infinite League

by John Jr. Yeo

  "I think the old man can still track me because of that chip in my neck," I offered helpfully. "We have a lot to talk about."

  One of the people that I hadn't met before pressed a metallic object to my neck, and I felt a pinch against my skin. We didn't talk about anything, I just passed out into the man's arms.

  When I woke up, I was still in the back of the truck, feeling very disoriented and woozy. There was a raw, dull ache on the back of my neck, and I reached back to rub it. But Cass was there, and she stopped me from disturbing the fresh bandages.

  "Easy there, slugger," she said softly. "You're fine, you just had a bit of surgery."

  I sat up suddenly, nearly losing my lunch from the sudden movement, and I looked around my surroundings. It was a blessing to see that I wasn't restrained, the way they usually rolled at the Dome. In front of me, in the cloth and flesh, was a middle-aged man with a thick brown moustache, a comfortable sweater vest, and a definite twinkle in his eye. He also wore the lines of worry and stress that must have come from a lifetime of memories. He reached out to take my hand, which I nervously shook.

  "Major John Baltrin," he said. "Nice to meet you at last, Emily."

  "You couldn't have warned me first?"

  "Every second counted," he apologized. He held up a small glass vial filled with a thick, clear gel. Inside of that, suspended in the middle of the thick, clear gel, was an oval-shaped metal object that didn't look like it belonged in a human body. But I had a suspicion that this very object had been with me for the past several weeks.

  "Was that the tracker? That's what was inside of me since I got drafted?"

  "One of the many marvelous pieces of technology that the Ambassador brought back with him from his home galaxy," Baltrin said, taking another long look at the device. "It can track your movements, it can make a belligerent individual compliant with pain, it can download your memories into a very generous storage bank. It can even regulate your glucose and hormones."

  "Well, it has some good uses then," I laughed.

  "Dr. Progierat used it to keep us obedient,” Submission told me. “He didn’t want anything to threaten the sanctity of the League."

  "For the clones of the Ambassador, it was a way to transfer all of his experiences and knowledge from the past host into a replacement body," Necromancer explained. “All his memories could be implanted into a new host. Truly, an infinite hero.”

  "Well that's just..." I paused, looking for the appropriate word to describe it, but blanked.

  "Dark and disturbing, I know." Baltrin offered. "But it allowed them to keep the Ambassador alive. But it's clear that Dr. Progeriat has gone off the reservation, and it's time for us to stop monitoring the situation covertly. It's time for us to act."

  “Dr. Progeriat is behind everything,” I told them. “DeathTek is in on it, too. Chidike saw everything!”

  “Yes, he did,” Baltrin agreed. “We know the who, but still not the why. As soon as we apprehend him, we’ll find out why.”

  “I can’t believe he’s turned on all of you!”

  “Believe it or not, it all started with you,” said Baltrin. “We began suspecting him of some level of corruption when it was discovered he sent Andromeda and Necromancer to arrest you in the first place.”

  “Christopher Whitfield was definitely distributing kiddie porn,” said Submission. “He was also a talented financier, and he was quietly helping Dr. Progeriat transfer a lot of cash back and forth between an unknown party.”

  “Ubaidullah Zahr?” I asked.

  “It would explain why he sent us to personally retrieve Whitfield’s computer,” Necromancer realized. “He was afraid that when we examined the man’s computer, we would discover a trail that could link Dr. Progeriat to Zahr. He should have chosen a financial advisor with less irredeemable qualities. He all but brought you into this.”

  “Do you want us to go after them?” asked Submission.

  “No, an armored division of infantry soldiers just seized the base a few minutes ago,” Baltrin assured me. “Dr. Progeriat had already fled the Dome. He knows the charade was over. And as for Whitfield himself, I’m going to personally make sure he goes into a deep hole very soon.”

  "I thought you quit the league years ago,” I said, as I shook my head from the insanity of all these convoluted plots and schemes. “Everyone thinks you've been sabotaging the base."

  “I quit working directly with the League, true. I’m still one of the twelve deputy directors of the DSA,” he informed me. “When Colonel Bridge’s murder goes public, you can be sure there’s going to be a shake-up within the agency. But we have a lot more to worry about than making sure all the bureaucratic channels have been properly addressed. If we don’t do something immediately, I’m afraid a lot of people are about to die.”

  “Before you go back home to your family, we could really use your help,” Cassiopeia told me. “We could use all the help we could get.”

  I considered this for a moment, and what it would probably entail. To be honest, I just really wanted out of all of this. Out of this insanity, out of this world of flying lunatics and dangerous powers. I wanted to go back home, to my child, to my safe little life, and to where the responsibility of confronting superhuman killers wasn’t something I had to worry about.

  But what would I be going home to if I left right now? Because of the cover story that Dr. Progeriat and Colonel Bridge set up, my sister thinks I’m an international terrorist and my son doesn’t want anything to do with me. For all I know, they might be discussing adoption procedures while mommy rots away in a supermax prison somewhere underground. And what do I do when I got back? I couldn’t go back to the police department with my record sabotaged by my ex-partner. Even if the government let me keep the Andromeda gauntlets, I wasn’t sure I wanted to make working as a super-hero my life-long career.

  “I have some requests,” I said at last.

  Major Baltrin relaxed on one of the benches, and straightened his tie. To his credit, he was trying to be patient. “Talk to me.”

  “The police department where I worked. I want my record cleaned up. I want to be a cop again. This cape and tights thing? This really isn’t the path I want to follow.”

  “It’s not for everyone,” he replied. “And the fortunate thing about working in a highly funded federal agency is that we can do some investigating of our own. Detective Seth Sharp. That was your partner’s name, right?”

  “Yeah, bucket of fucking sunshine, that one.”

  “I looked into his file. Multiple complaints against him. Your captain, too. I could have him reverse the charges with a little persuasion. If that doesn’t work, we could always offer some new equipment to the department to sweeten the deal. But tell me something. Even if he agreed to re-instate your badge, would you really want to go back there?”

  “It’s my home,” I explained. “My parents grew up there, my sister and her family is there. All of Caleb’s friends are there.”

  “I can get your record cleared if you want,” he agreed. “It’ll be up to you if you want to keep working for the Philadelphia Police Department.”

  “And getting these bracelets off of me would be cool, too.”

  “Help us clear up this crisis,” he urged again. “If you still want to give up your powers and work somewhere ordinary and safe, I’ll do everything I can to make it happen. I promise that.”

  I considered it. I wasn’t really sure just how much power and authority this guy really had, I thought he was an underground rogue that had left the government behind entirely. But I was out of options. And there was a madman with access to superhuman cloning technology out there.

  “Last, I want full immunity for the deaths of Andromeda and DeathTek,” I said at last. “The first of which got me into this mess in the first place.”

  “We’ll be at the airport in twenty minutes,” Baltrin said, looking at his watch. “That gives me a few moments to explain what’s really been happening with the Lea
gue over the last few years. When we get there, you can decide if you’re going to join the good guys, or go home and pick up the pieces of your life without my help.”

  “Oh, good. Story time,” I smirked, sitting down next to Baltrin. “Let’s hear it.”

  Cassiopeia and Chidike must have heard all of this before, because they huddled near the back of the truck to discuss strategy with some of the other agents riding aboard with us. Major Baltrin began to talk, and I listened closely.

  “Twenty years ago, an alien named Kordan Zol arrived here on Earth. He was a champion on his home planet of Krael, but war had forced him to relocate here on our planet. With his natural powers, he chose to defend the people of this world as the Ambassador.”

  So that’s who Kordan was. The rest of this, I already knew. “Every kid that went to history class knows about his arrival.”

  “Well, I have twenty minutes to explain where the historical records you’ve been taught deviates from the reality that actually happened. Within a few years, Kordan established friendships with four other Sparks. Andromeda was a warrior who claimed that she received her gauntlets from an ancient Aztec god. Necromancer was an African national who could command darkness, death and other forms of dark magic. Submission was born with her powers to control the minds of men. A collaboration between a robotics expert and a pioneer in artificial intelligence lead to the world’s first cybernetic soldier called DeathTek. Fifteen years ago, they officially joined together to form the world’s first collective of super powered vigilantes, and the Infinite League was established.”

  “My dad used to talk about that day all the time,” I recollected. “He said that was the day people stopped trusting themselves to solve the world’s problems, and began leaving it in the hands of the freaks with the capes. It used to mean something to be a cop, you know.”

  “A long time ago, I stopped underestimating people’s opinions of the police,” Baltrin warned me. “But I also stopped disregarding their worship of the heroes. There are times when we really need someone who can move mountains, race unharmed into a hail of bullets, or fly into a dangerous situation. But at the end of the day, people want law and order. We all want to know that those with power will use it with responsibility and discretion. Ten years ago, that need became clear when Arachnid made a choice between letting children die and murdering a psychopathic killer. He chose to put his fingers right through the man’s ears.”

  “And he was arrested for it,” I remembered. “That’s the only thing people were talking about back then.”

  “People knew the growing number of enhanced humans had to be regulated. So the Department of Superhuman Activities was formed, and that young man ended up being acquitted of the charges.”

  “Right. Now, if you wanted to be a hero, you have to register your identity and powers with this new government agency,” I continued, remembering the little I had read about the basic DSA protocols every police officer had to learn in training.

  “Run around like a loose cannon, using your powers to steal, terrorize or bully others, and you’ll get sent to the Gray Palace. Within a few months, the American people were happy, and the growing superhuman population was under control.”

  “So when did Dr. Nutjob come into the picture? And why did DeathTek turn on his own people?”

  “Seven years ago, the Infinite League got into a fight with another alien from Ambassador’s home planet. His name was the Mighty High Lord Dominator Sens’r or some such nonsense. This guy got in touch with the Ambassador and claimed he would hit every major city with death rays if the Ambassador didn’t surrender. Ambassador and the rest of the Infinite League met him in Utah for one final battle.”

  “This part I didn’t hear about.”

  “What happened next, very few people know about. Now you might want to brace yourself for this, because this information is about as classified as it gets.”

  “Are you going to tell me how the Ambassador died?”

  “No, that’s the real classified secret,” he replied solemnly. “Ambassador, actually, was the only survivor of that conflict.”

  I looked quickly at Cass and Chidike. They were still talking to the others while adjusting the equipment on their costumes, but they gave me a sympathetic glance when I met their eyes. They knew what I was being told right now, and they nodded gently in my direction.

  “I don’t think I’m following you,” I said, lying through my teeth.

  “Yes, you are,” he replied. “Sens’r was a brutal, powerful warlord, and he was determined to settle his grudge with Ambassador. The League and Sens’r threw down in Utah, and the bastard murdered the entire team. He made sure they suffered. Sens’r didn’t have any special abilities, but he was smart and dangerous, with access to weapons we couldn’t defend against.”

  “But I’ve never heard of him,” I pointed out. “What did he do?”

  “Sens’r murdered the entire team, save for Ambassador himself. Left with no other choice, Ambassador took one of the three Chronal Dampening Arrays into the battle, but left the lithium tachyons exposed.”

  “The sparkling bubble inside the time widget?”

  “It was the only weapon he had that might actually have a chance to defeat the technology protecting Sens’r. He exposed the lithium tachyons, played for time, and let it detonate.”

  “That must have been nasty!”

  “Sens’r was caught by surprise, we believe the blast wave turned him into dust.”

  “But Ambassador survived?”

  “In a way,” he replied. “He tried to escape the wave of the blast, but he was too injured to fly fast enough. He saved the world from Sens’r, and he survived, but he had been reduced to a severely de-powered old man. The Ambassador had been defeated. All that remained was…”

  “Dr. Progeriat? Are you shitting me?”

  “He’s all that remains of the original League,” he nodded. “Didn’t you ever wonder who was supplying all of the DNA to continue creating Ambassador clones?”

  When I first saw the Ambassador, I was struck how familiar his eyes seemed to be, but I couldn’t place it. It was then I realized that there were the same eyes as Dr. Progeriat. This was insane. I looked at Cassiopeia, and my mind started to reel. “So my friend didn’t kill the real Andromeda?”

  “No, not the original. Natalie was the fourth Andromeda,” Cassiopeia explained. “I’m the sixth Submission.”

  “I am number five in the line,” Chidike volunteered.

  “As you probably guessed by now, the only thing inside the DeathTek armor is a human brain,” Baltrin pointed out. “Only the original had any sense of stablility. Each replacement has shown varying degrees of success. This previous one has been with the team for about five months now, but I think he was the thirteenth replacement overall.”

  “Many people find it traumatic to transcend from their mortal shell into an unfeeling robotic shell,” Chidike explained. “If I know the good doctor, he’s already hard at work transplanting a new human brain into the exoskeleton.”

  “How many does he have in stock?”

  “He usually has two on hand at any given time,” Baltrin remarked. “Like the original brain that his creator placed into the armor, these donors were volunteers with terminal conditions and no other choices but death. But the results of putting such brains into a machine like that has very unpredictable results.”

  “Then there’s the matter of him using his technological chips to make sure we don’t do anything he doesn’t like,” snarled Cassiopeia, rubbing the back of her neck. Apparently, her chip had been removed to, now that all the covers and pretenses had been dropped.

  “It’s drastic steps to keep his team alive that caused me to leave the team four years ago,” Baltrin told me. “I took a new job as a weapons designer for the army, and Colonel Bridge accepted a job as the director of the Department of Superhuman Activities. But he was keeping a close eye on Dr. Progeriat. While the congressional committee agre
ed that it was in America’s best interests to keep the illusion of the Infinite League still going strong, they were worried how far he’d push it. Frankly, the technology he had access to and didn’t want to share concerned a lot of politicians. A year ago, I was given the quiet task of running surveillance on the Dome. Chidike, Cassiopeia and Natalie were all in on the operation.”

  “For the last few years, the likelihood of the government pulling the plug on funding the Infinite League was growing stronger and stronger,” Chidike explained. “We were given a secret agenda to make sure that Dr. Progeriat accepted retirement quietly if and when the plug was pulled. But when we discovered he might have been communicating with Ubaidullah Zahr, we were told to scrutinize him even closer.”

  “Natalie’s death interrupted the operation,” Baltrin said. “I know it wasn’t intentional, and Progeriat probably would have had you locked in an isolated prison cell without trial as long as you knew the truth about Natalie. But when it was discovered that the gauntlets had a bond with you, you ended up wearing the cape.”

  “But why did it choose me in the first place? I’ve never understood that!”

  “Andromeda has always been the most difficult one to understand,” he told me. “We’ve studied the gauntlets extensively, but can’t discover any unusual properties. They just seem like a couple of ordinary leather bands. Maybe they are magic, and maybe they’re just drawn to the person who’s worthy of wearing them.”

  “Or to the person who’s fated to prevent the end of the world as we know it,” I said, repeating Chidike’s earlier prophetic remarks.

  “If that’s so, you were more worthy than Natalie,” Chidike offered with a hint of sadness in his voice. “I loved her, but she was flawed, like so many of the replacements before her. She had anger and hate in her heart, a dark side that most people could not see.”

  “We’re here,” Cassiopeia reported.

  “We’re where?”

  “Private airport,” Baltrin told me. “As you've probably guessed by now, Necromancer and Submission were the ones who sabotaged the last Chronal Dampening Array. It was an organized plan orchestrated by Colonel Bridge and myself. When Necromancer realized that those crooks were never after the gold, but the cloning tubes that had been on the train, that was our first red flag."