The Infinite League

by John Jr. Yeo

  "And enough power to run the Chronal Dampening Array," Cass added, pointing at the row of chambers lining the walls. "And every clone growing in those tubes."

  It was true. Major Baltrin’s suspicions were absolutely right. Ubaidullah Zahr was growing an army of clones right here at the CERN facility, and Dr. Progeriat must have been helping him set it up. What the hell was the old man doing?

  "How do we shut it down?" I asked. "Should we just destroy all of the cloning tanks?"

  Chidike and Cass looked at me strangely, but not as if I had just asked a very stupid question. They were looking at me as if they didn't have any more clue what to do than I did.

  "If we destroyed the tubes," said Cass slowly, "Wouldn't that constitute an act of murder?"

  "They are developing clones," Chidike decided thoughtfully. "I think it would depend on if you're pro-choice or pro-life."

  "If they're being bred to hurt other people, then destroying them is obviously an act of pro-life," I pointed out impatiently, looking around for any other signs of resistance. If an entire army of Zahr's thugs came rushing in here, I doubted that Cass's power would work on all of them. And if it did, the last thing I wanted to see was a full-on all-male orgy nightmare. I still can’t believe she did that!

  Chidike approached the closest cloning chamber, and read the information currently displayed on the panel. His eyes furrowed in concern, he cracked his knuckles, and then he placed his hands on the door and pulled.

  He didn't have superhuman strength like the Ambassador, but Chidike was definitely one of the strongest men I've ever seen. I should know, after being punched out by him on our first meeting. With one pull, he managed to tear the door off of its hinges. It crashed on the floor, revealing a flood of smoke and vapor and unearthly odors pouring out on the floor.

  But there was nothing else within. Some pink-tinged liquids and a few gooey tubes connected to nothing, but that was all.

  "Damn it," he growled. He opened two more of the cloning tubes, but there was nothing there either. It should have been filled with a gelatinous pink gel, and a developing alien body connecting to nutrient and oxygen tubes floating within. But they were empty. Either the process hadn’t started, or it had already been completed.

  He was about to crack open a fourth cloning tube, knowing that it would be futile, when a pair of malicious laughing bitches began cutting through the air.

  Flying above us, launching daggers of ice towards the three of us, soared Arctic Annie. Running quickly around us, thrusting her blades towards our faces, was Adrenaline. The real muscle had arrived.

  "Don't hit the equipment, or there's going to be hell to pay," screamed Adrenaline to her partner.

  "Converge on the LHC," Annie reported into a communicator on her wrist. "The capes are here!"

  Adrenaline raced towards Chidike, moving as fast as a car. She slashed at him with the steel knife strapped to her wrist, coming close to his throat. But he was fast, and angry, and doing everything he could to get his large hands on Adrenaline’s arms. Adrenaline was nimble and faster, staying just out of his reach. They danced together like that, parrying and dodging and competing to find an advantage.

  Annie, still sporting an unflattering bruise on her eyes from our encounter at the train robbery, was actually a more dangerous opponent. Cass and I surrounded her, trying to take her down before she succeeded in hitting us with one of her ice blasts.

  "You're in over your head, Annie," Cass warned her. "Take your girlfriend and get out of here, we're just here to dismantle your boss’s clone farm.”

  Annie tossed an icicle directly at Cass’s feet, which she effortlessly dodged. But it was just a feint, intended to distract her from seeing the second attack coming. A thin sheath of ice surrounded her neck and mouth, sealing her lips shut. Cass clawed at the icy gag desperately, breathing through her nose, but she had been perfectly silenced.

  "Your words can't work on me," Annie taunted, rising up into the air and delivering a devastating roundhouse to the side of her temple. Cass hit the floor and stopped moving, taken completely out of the fight. "But you won't be using your witchcraft on the men, either."

  She turned towards me, revealing a formidable row of icy claws on her fingers.

  "I’m not even gonna go that easy on you, you bitch," she hissed. "I owe you for that business by the train."

  Ice against fire. I mean, come on, you'd really think it shouldn't be that much of a contest. But solid ice doesn't instantly vaporize into water, even if I was rested and ready for a full-on fight. And I was already so exhausted.

  I threw a punch at her, and she caught my hand as I swung. It felt as if I had just slammed my fist into a wall. If I hadn't broken my hand, they were going to be bruised at the very least. But it was worth it, as I was expecting her to try to deflect my punch. I willed my entire forearm to burst into flame, and it caused the fabric on her arm to catch fire.

  She screamed, and quickly extinguished the blaze by coating her arm with a billowing layer of icy frost. It left her open for me to punch her across the teeth. When she went down, I kicked her sharply in the ribs. It was time to fight dirty, I decided.

  While she rolled on the ground, struggling to catch her breath, I snuck a look at my friends. Cass was still on the ground, unconscious from the knock on the head she'd just gotten. I glanced at Chidike's direction, and I saw the fight had just taken a completely different turn. I abandoned Annie for the moment and ran to his side.

  Adrenaline was racing around the room now, wildly stabbing at phantoms but hitting nothing. She was breathing hard, blindly attacking at something that was terrifying her. She had completely forgotten her fight with the Necromancer, but I couldn't tell what she was attacking. I ran towards Chidike to help, but I should have guessed what had happened.

  "She's hallucinating," Chidike explained to me, grabbing me by the arm. I suddenly figured it out. He used strange gas to create devastating illusions to confuse his enemies. He had used it on me, Sadaf and Eamon the day we all first encountered each other. Now, it was causing Adrenaline to attack unseen monsters directly over our heads.

  "Let's get out of here," I suggested. "We need to tell Baltrin that the clones have already been sent out."

  "Can you carry Cassiopeia?"

  A horrible scream cut through the air, and our conversation was interrupted by the odor of burning flesh, and an explosion of sparks and electrical fury erupted from across the room. In her blind panic, Adrenaline had severed an electrical conduit with her blades. It snapped loose, spraying lightning into her face and chest.

  There was no doubt about it. We could tell that she was dead as her motionless body hit the ground with a sickening snap of bone. Her body fell right next to Annie, her once flawless skin marred by bubbling wounds and smoking craters.

  They had been lovers, it was rumored. Annie's reaction to seeing Adrenaline's dead body certainly seemed to attest to that. With a mournful scream, she waved both hands towards us, and a dozen swords made of ice flew towards us like bullets. I dropped to the floor, dodging the attack.

  Chidike had not.

  The deadly projectiles slammed into him in three different places. His left shoulder, his right knee, and his stomach were violently skewered by her swords, knocking him backwards into one of the empty cloning chambers. These were wounds I knew he would not survive.

  With Chidike pinned to a cloning chamber and Cass unconscious, I found myself alone in a room with a psychotic ice queen. I had a feeling that she wasn’t going to be happy until all three of us were dead.

  I lifted my arms up to guard my face, and I caused my fingers to burst into a new display of fire. It was foolish at this point to think that preening like a threatened peacock was going to intimidate her, but it was my first impulse.

  I realized that I might have to kill her if I wanted to walk out of here alive.

  “Stand down, Annie,” said a familiar voice.

  Several black uniformed men filed int
o the large room, surrounding the group of us, all pointing their rifles in my direction. Leading the pack was Ubaidullah Zahr, looking understandably enraged.

  His expensive blue suit was now badly wrinkled and covered with a fair amount of blood. The minion that we had left in his company was nowhere to be seen. From the blood on his clothes I could guess what must have happened to him after Cass’s spell wore off.

  He snorted derisively in my direction, and brushed his bejeweled fingers through his coarse beard.

  “I told you America’s super powers monolopy has come to an end,” he reminded me. “Your government can’t squander these gifts like every other resource you have, and expect the rest of the world to bow down and accept it.”

  “What happened to the clones?” I asked defiantly.

  “If she moves, please shoot her,” he commanded his guards. He walked over to Submission, her mouth still frozen shut, and leaned over her barely moving body.

  “Pick this hero up, please,” he ordered Annie. “Hold her tight.”

  She did as he asked. Cass was conscious again, but she barely moved to fight back.

  Twice, Zahr punched Cass hard in the ribs. Her mouth was still sealed shut by a sheath of ice, but I could tell she was hurting. She probably had a rib cracked, and if this brutality continued, she would die. I wasn’t going to roll over so easily. I took a step forward, and bright fire began erupting around my hands.

  Then the loud explosion of a bullet echoed through the chamber, and something hot and painful went through by left arm. It hurt like nothing that I’ve ever imagined, and I fell to my knees in agony.

  “The next goes in your knees, lady,” a mechanical voice snarled at me. From the source of the bullet, I saw a large man of iron and steel speaking. I had just put down a few hours ago. The helmet had been changed to an unflattering grey dome, and the voice seemed different somehow, but DeathTek had been brought back to life. And clearly, he was working for Zahr.

  The terrorist smiled, and turned his attention back towards Cass. He was going to make her pay for what she did to him in the corridors, and he punched her five times in the face, mercilessly and brutally. When Annie released her, Cass’s head was an agonizing mess of dirt, blood and ice.

  From the corner of the room, protected by several more men with guns, entered another man. I didn't have to see him to know who it was. The distinctive noise his cane made when it struck the ground told me everything I needed to know. The old doctor hobbled in, regarded Adrenaline's dead body with an obvious show of disappointment, and he shook his head.

  "Oh, this will just not do," he growled impatiently. "We could have done such great things together."

  24

  Global Devastation for Breakfast

  Monday, June 3 – 4:15 a.m

  Chidike was most certainly dying, if not dead already. Cass was too injured to move, and she couldn’t use her voice. I had just been shot through the arm. An angry chick with ice powers was ready to shove frozen blades through my head, and one of the world's most notorious terrorists was standing in front of me. My shelf life was looking increasingly short. I couldn't think of a worst possible situation to find myself in.

  Dr. Progeriat was examining the motionless body of Adrenaline, but anyone with eyes could see she wasn't going to be moving again.

  "Such a waste," Dr. Progeriat said, letting her still hand drop to the floor. "She would have been an excellent candidate to take the place of Andromeda. I could have designed some armor and weapons to mimic the powers. What a tragic loss.”

  "Collateral damage," Zahr reminded the doctor. "Only the end game matters, my friend."

  "You're working with this bastard?" I shouted at the doctor. "Baltrin told me who you used to be! I looked up to you as a kid, you know. The entire world did!"

  Dr. Progeriat looked at me with only a flicker of surprise, but he quickly guessed that I knew the truth now. "Major Baltrin is even more idealistic than I ever was. Those days, as you can see, are long behind me. Someone has to be there to face the devils of tomorrow, Emily."

  “Who, this psychotic douchebag? Doctor, this guy works for Khalid Al-Hakim! His regime is responsible for a dozen bombings around the world over the last decade! How is giving them access to your technology supposed to save the team you founded?”

  “You are an innocent child,” Zahr said in a condescending tone. “It’s not your fault that you can not see the larger picture. But before you die, I will at least illuminate the mystery for you. You should know exactly why things must fall as we have planned.”

  I took a step towards the pair of them, but multiple clicks of rifles reminded me that attacking wouldn’t be a good idea. I remained where I was. I didn’t want to get shot again, but I wouldn’t be silenced. “Dr. Progeriat, I don’t understand. What could he possibly be offering you that you need?”

  “I had the resources to hire mercenaries such as Arctic Annie, Adrenaline, and the other special agents that you and your partners killed,” Zahr explained. “I have an army that could quietly set up the cloning tubes here in this laboratory, and eliminate any resistance to our goals.”

  The first part was certainly true, and he certainly seemed to have his own private army of thugs and enforcers at his disposal. But something still seemed off about his followers. They didn’t wear the traditional orange and green robes and garments of Habindaque extremists, they opted for black tactical gear with black and silver masks that concealed their faces. And that silver icon on their shoulders, the one that resembled a question mark drawn by a two-year-old. I’d never seen it before, and I couldn’t place what the language or the meaning was. But even though I couldn’t read Arabic or Persian, I was pretty sure it wasn’t from that particular alphabet.

  “He also knows exactly where Khalid Al-Hakim is residing, and where he is the most vulnerable,” said Dr. Progeriat, as if that should explain everything. It didn’t.

  “But….doesn’t he work for him?”

  “I have never had allegiance to Khalid Al-Hakim,” Zahr admitted. “That fool is a despotic human fool, and the world would be glad to be rid of him. Every country in the world agrees on that. He has brought nothing but fear, pain and misery to the citizens of Habindaque. He can’t be allowed to continue his rule.”

  “But the United Nations forbid American super-heroes to invade foreign soil,” continued Progeriat. “And because of Baltrin’s persuasion, the Infinite League is about to lose all of its funding. Simply because he disagrees with my methods of keeping the team alive.”

  “We have used Dr. Progeriat’s cloning technology to produce a dozen more alien clones,” said Zahr. “They will be disguised as Habindaque mercenaries, and they will descend upon Al-Hakim’s secret palace and lay waste to the dictator and everyone in the area. It will be a bloody massacre, and every news agency in the world will cover the dark chapter in my country’s history.”

  “We will convince the government that Khalid Al-Hakim has developed his own team of superhumans, and that they’ve gone on a mad rampage,” Dr. Progeriat said. “But our very own Ambassador will sweep in and wipe them all out. “

  Zahr proudly walked over to one of the remaining cloning chambers that hadn’t been smashed or damaged in the fight, and opened the tube with a pull of a switch. Stepping forth from the pink goo and purple tinted mist was the tall, muscular and very naked form of another one of the Ambassador clones. He cast his eyes around the room, unaware or unconcerned with his nudity, and he quietly took in all the details.

  Dr. Progeriat reached into a duffelbag that was sitting on a nearby chair, produced the familiar gold costume that the world was used to seeing, and tossed it towards the silent clone. The Ambassador clone slid his body into the costume, dressing himself for whatever was about to occur. I was too scared and in too much pain to enjoy the show.

  “Like our other clones, he’s been fitted with my special implant,” Dr. Progeriat told me with a bit of pride in his voice. “It has given him customize
d memories and instructions. When he goes in to ‘save’ Habindaque from the other clones, it will be an effortless victory.”

  “And should Al-Hakim survive, he will be ousted as leader of the country. I will step in as the new benevolent leader for a more progressive, prosperous Habindaque,” said Zahr proudly.

  “While our government puts their support back into the Infinite League in gratitude,” I realized at last. “But you don’t even have a full league anymore! Chidike is dying! Baltrin has told the government what you’ve been doing! And I’m sure you’re not planning on letting Cass or myself walk out of here?”

  “You’ve all been replaced before,” Dr. Progeriat shrugged. “You can be replaced again.”

  “But you murdered Colonel Bridge!”

  “It’ll be attributed to DeathTek being hacked by outside forces,” Progeriat explained. “The men loyal to me will attest to that when the investigation happens. But by then, it’ll be a secondary concern to what will happen today. All eyes will be on Habindaque, and how the Infinite League must be given full range to protect the world from further threats like the ones that attacked Al-Hakim’s palace.”

  Behind me, Cass was just starting to come back to consciousness. She tried to claw the icy gag from her chin, but Arctic Annie slapped her hands from her face.

  “This is complete insanity,” I declared. “When the hell are you planning to do this?”

  From his pockets, Zahr pulled out a remote control and pressed one of the buttons. On the bank of monitors lining the room, the answer to that question became stunningly clear.

  “To succeed in our mission, even with Dr. Progeriat tossing crumbs of disinformation your way, I had to be one step ahead of your little band of heroes at all times,” Zahr smirked. “Behold the truth. It was done fifteen minutes ago.”

  On the monitor was footage coming from a journalist in Habindaque, where panicked voices screamed about an attack on a large mansion in the hot and arid countryside. A powerful figure, dressed head to toe in the same black leather and iron armor that Zahr’s thugs were wearing, could be seen flying around the mansion. Walls were being splintered by his punches, vehicles were being tossed into the air, and people were being snatched from the ground and dropped to their deaths.