The Infinite League

by John Jr. Yeo

  As we approached the war room, I spotted Eric Quincy standing close to a few soldiers. Despite our clever disguises, he spotted us immediately and motioned for us both to come join him.

  “Sorry to get you out of bed,” he asked. “If I had my way, you really would be resting.”

  “Hey, I feel totally groovy,” I laughed, holding up my fingers to make a peace sign. “Super-heroes get the best drugs, don’t we?”

  I started noticing some of the other people milling around outside the war room. Some of them weren’t soldiers at all, nor did they look like the scientists and technicians that had been keeping the Dome running. There were at least a dozen people that looked like regular civilians.

  One was a very young girl with unnaturally bright blue eyes, wearing a red latex bodysuit and blue jeans. There was a tall man with a sort of crystalline skin, and despite his exotic features, he seemed anxious and impatient.

  Another man, probably in his fifties, was leaning against a corner and anxiously puffing away on a cigarette. I noticed that his shadow was moving independently, talking silently and waving his hands frantically. If the shadow was actually making noise, I couldn’t hear it. All the same, the man would occasionally tell the shadow, quite crossly, to shut up.

  There were other people wandering into the room, all of them talking nervously and looking around fearfully. The specter of dread and doom was hanging over the base, and it sobered up my mood quickly.

  Eric was wearing a carefully forced smile. I could tell they were hiding something from me, but they didn’t want to tell me.

  “So who are all these people?” I asked, hoping to break the ice.

  “The enhanced people of the world have come here for help,” Eric explained, looking around the room sadly. “You saw it back in Switzerland. The whole world just witnessed a string of mass murders on a global scale, perpetrated by a psychotic alien threat. They just saw the Ambassador murdered on live television, and the rest of the League beaten. They’ve just been threatened to go surrender to this monster, or they’re going to see their hometowns trampled on by more alien creatures. They’ve come here hoping for a plan of attack.”

  “These are the super heroes of the world? How’d they all get here so fast?”

  There was a loud noise coming from one of the hallways, accompanied by a thick black smoke. The odor of depression, if such a thing had a smell, was rolling out of it. When the smoke cleared, there was a stoic tall man in a trench coat and a middle-aged Hispanic woman standing there. The woman remained, and was immediately welcomed kindly by a doctor. The man in the trench coat walked over to a bulletin board situated close by, where dozens of photographs of civilians were pinned. He touched the picture of one, and immediately vanished within a new cloud of smoke.

  “These people are Sparks, but they’re not all super-heroes,” Cass explained to me. “Most of them are just regular people with unusual abilities. But they’re all registered with the DSA, as per federal regulations.”

  “It’s their responsibility to report any activities involving the use of their abilities to the DSA,” Eric continued. “In the same vein, it’s our responsibility to protect them if they’re threatened.”

  “After Sens’r made his televised threat, most of the registered enhanced population called the DSA,” Cass said. “Registered heroes, career criminals, and ordinary citizens with special gifts all called in. They’re all looking for the DSA to lead the way. We’re watching over them until this crisis is over.”

  “Sens’r told the world he had just killed the Infinite League,” I recalled, suddenly realizing that neither Cass nor myself were wearing the costumes most people associated us with. We were just two more pretty faces in the crowd right now. “Are we going to keep letting people think that?”

  “Sens’r did kill the Infinite League,” said a new voice, unexpectedly appearing behind me. I turned to face Major John Baltrin, the first time I had seen him since before the mission to France. “Seven years ago, he took them all out. Only the Ambassador survived.”

  “Albeit as a ninety year old fossil,” I nodded.

  “Time is just finally catching up with the team’s legacy,” Baltrin added. “Dr. Progeriat wanted to keep the team’s legacy alive so badly, he put this entire planet in danger. We need to bury this alien psychopath once and for all, and then the world will need to move on without the Infinite League.”

  “I like how you freely toss the word we around,” I told him, holding up the cheap plastic fist attached to my maimed wrist. “I think my days of fighting lunatics with powers are over. I think I’ve done enough for you guys. I think it’s time you kept your promise, clean up my record, and let me go back to my son.”

  “You want out, you’ll be out,” he told me, putting his hand on my shoulder. Unlike the cold glares that I used to get from Colonel Bridge, his expressions were warm and sympathetic. It reminded me of how my father used to look at me. “And I can’t tell you how sorry I am about your injury. You got the array back, and you may have saved the world. And I promise you, that artificial hand is just temporary. We owe you a lot, and you’ll have the best prosthesis on the market when all of this is done.”

  “But you need to see something before you go home,” Cass put in. “We’re received a transmission from Sens’r himself.”

  “Why does this concern me?”

  “Because he said he’s only going to speak to you directly,” Baltrin explained. “He asked for you by name.”

  “He asked for Andromeda?”

  “He asked for Emily Watts,” he explained soberly. “You don’t have to speak to him, but we would appreciate it if you did.”

  This couldn’t be good. In absolutely no way could this be good.

  “I have no idea why he would have your identity,” Baltrin tried to explain, but I cut him off with a wave of my hand.

  “Dr. Progeriat told him,” I realized. “Once he realized who Zahr really was, he started spouting off personal information that would wake up something in the brain that he installed into DeathTek. That brain used to belong to a friend of mine, before he went into a coma.”

  “Jesus,” Baltrin grunted, leaning against the wall to steady himself. “That’s how you got away from them.”

  “Yeah, the new DeathTek helped. And he gave us the diversion we needed,” I said. “Sens’r was so pissed he blew the head off the robot’s body. That was right after he killed Chidike, too.”

  “He’s going to demand that you bring the array back,” Baltrin said, which wasn’t telling me anything I couldn’t have guessed. “I’d like you to tell him that every costumed hero in the world is ready to descend on him with orders to kill if he doesn’t turn himself in peacefully.”

  “He might have a few Ambassador clones still with him, but after the exertion they went through in the terrorist attacks, they won’t last for much longer,” Eric explained. “Without the array, and without a power source that could run it, he can’t make new soldiers. He has nothing to threaten us with. He knows it. We have him.”

  “You have nothing to worry about,” Cass assured me.

  “That’s usually when everything falls the fuck apart,” I told them.

  Sens’r knew who I was. That meant he might know more about my life than I’d prefer. I wanted to run, and put this all behind me, and try to pick up what was left of my life.

  But there was a dark fear that he was calling me for a reason. I had to make sure that my worst fears weren’t a reality.

  “I’ll talk to the bastard,” I decided. “I’ll tell him to surrender. Then I’m going to go home to my family. Are we agreed?”

  “Take her in the monitor room,” he instructed Eric. “I want the conversation recorded, analyzed and scrutinized for any clues that might help us end this as quickly as we can.”

  “I’m all over it, sir,” Eric promised, gently tugging on my arm. “We’ll be ready in ten minutes.”

  A few minutes later, I was sitting alone in t
he darkness of the monitor chamber. The last time I had seen my son, it was on this very screen. I was terrified that I was about to see him again. I hoped I was wrong, but I had to find out.

  Hidden away in the observation booth behind me, I could hear the voices of Baltrin, Eric and Cass giving me last second instructions. Do not give in to any form of threat. Do not negotiate with threats of terrorism. Do not show fear.

  “In no case, don’t let this bastard rattle you,” Baltrin said at last. “He’s only demanded to talk to you because he think you’re the weakest link in our organization. Show him otherwise.”

  “Yes, yes,” I answered crossly. “Give me a few seconds to get my thoughts together, and then let me do my thing.”

  A countdown appeared on the screen in front of me, starting with 10 and counting down to zero. The communication was going through.

  “You’re going to do fine,” Cass promised me. “You have the heart of a hero.”

  “You should write greeting cards,” I muttered.

  The countdown ended, and the screen lit up.

  Sensr’s blue face filled the screen, broadcasting from a room that looked as alien as anything I could ever have imagined.

  “Emily Watts,” his voice boomed. “We have so much to discuss.”

  27

  Playing the Last Card

  Monday, June 3 – 7:00 p.m.

  For the first moments, there were no words between us. He reflected on me, and I studied him. I absorbed all of the information filling the screen in front of me, mostly composed of instruments and displays and mechanics I didn’t recognize. There were illuminated displays floating in the air in front of strangely shaped consoles, like neon holograms lingering in a haze of age-old dust. There were words in the displays of lights, but they weren’t symbols or characters I recognized.

  Walking around behind him, chattering silently, were a number of the thugs that he had rallied to his inner circle in the years that he had masqueraded as Ubaidullah Zahr. They seemed just as loyal to his leadership as they had in France, which suggested to me that his alien heritage wasn’t a surprise to them. They had known all this time.

  Ubaidullah Zahr, the notorious arms dealer from the terrorist country of Habindaque, was in reality Lord Sens’r, the fugitive despot from the planet Krael and the murderer of the original Infinite League. Yet another inconvenient truth I had a feeling that the government was going to sweep under the rug.

  “Emmeline Watts,” he finally said. “The fourth woman to assume the identity of Andromeda.”

  “Sens’r,” I replied. “Intergalactic douchebag.”

  “And how is your hand? Are you adjusting?”

  “How’s your asshole? Do your followers know my friend just had you reamed like a five dollar whore before we stole back your time widget?”

  His face was alien, but humanoid enough for to recognize that I had hit a nerve with that last remark. I took it as a minor victory, and pressed on.

  “Sorry. Too soon?”

  “And how is your friend? I would very much like to have shared a few final words with her.”

  “She’s dead,” I said angrily.

  It was a gut decision to lie to him, but the words were out there now and I decided to stand by them. The less leverage he could hold over us, the better it would be for all of us. I just hoped that Cass was standing in the observation room right now, listening to the conversation, so she would know to stay hidden.

  “Dead?”

  “As in you murdered her.”

  “What game is this? I saw her leave with you. She was holding my Chronal Dampening Array.”

  “You also beat the living shit out of her,” I reminded him. “She suffered a brain hemorrhage on the flight back, sustained from you repeatedly hitting her in the face. She didn’t survive the flight.”

  He absorbed the message for a moment, and then nodded. I was a better actress than I thought; he had bought it.

  “I have killed people for far less offenses than what she did to me,” he replied. “I hope you and your allies will learn from the object lesson.”

  “Listen, there are literally thousands of people I’d rather be talking to instead of you. That includes my ex-husband. What the hell do you want from me?”

  “Before your Dr. Progeriat was the doddering old scientist that you know him as, he was once known as the original Ambassador.”

  “And before that, he was Kordan Zol of the planet Krael,” I added. “I was briefed on all of this.”

  “Tell me what you know of me.”

  “I know that this world has many costumed champions, and every one of them is going to descend on you any moment now. You’ll be taken to a maximum security prison, where every day you’ll get to relive the exciting experience of being drilled by a big sweaty dude.”

  “You’re bravado is fueled by the notion that I’m out of options?”

  “We have the array. Even if I gave it back to you, you don’t have access to a power source that could run it. The cloning tanks in France were destroyed, and our base is currently being guarded by nearly every hero in the world. I’ve been authorized to extend you an offer. Tell us where you are, and surrender right now, I’m sure we can arrange for a comfortable, solitary confinement. One that doesn’t involve daily romantic incursions with your follow prisoners.”

  “You think yourself practiced in interrogation techniques,” he told me. “You’re not trying to frighten a purse snatcher, my dear. I’ve commanded armies, endured the persecution and torture of murderous conquerors, and then rose to crush them all, and watched their women and children sold into slavery. Don’t try to scare me, human. The divides between our definitions of fear are as wide as the distance between the worlds that bore us.”

  “I’m not trying to scare you. I just don’t want anyone else to die. You don’t have the muscle to mount another major attack, so come out of your hole before we pull you out by your feet and spank you in front of the entire world.”

  “You’ll find me in West Virginia,” he replied at last. “The Back Allegheny Mountain. If you start flying now, you’ll probably reach me within three hours. You won’t miss me, I’ll be in the large triangular vessel at the top of the summit. Come, have a glass of wine with me.”

  “I have no intention of coming anywhere near you.”

  “Of course you will. You will come quickly, you will bring the Chronal Dampening Array with you, and you will come alone.”

  “Yeah, I’m done talking to you,” I told him. I stood up and prepared to walk out of the monitor room. “Just stay right there, a few of my friends will be there to see you soon.”

  “Indulge me for one more moment, won’t you? I really think there’s something you should see.”

  I didn’t want to stay for another moment. Deep in the back of my terrified consciousness, I was trying to ignore the only real reason that this psychopath might have asked for me personally. There was only one way he could have leverage over me. The others knew too, it’s why they looked so concerned when they told me he wanted to talk to me. I should have walked out of the room. I should have flown out of the room. But I had to know for sure. I slowly turned to face the alien one more time.

  He wasn’t on the screen anymore. Instead, I was greeted with the leering grin and icy eyes of Arctic Annie. She wasn’t in the same room as Sens’r, this looked like a cold, unfinished basement. Stalagmites of ice decorated the room, and solid constructions of her handiwork blockaded the only door. This basement could have been anywhere on Earth.

  There was no audio feed from where she was standing, but the video feed was quite clear. She wasn’t alone. She had a prisoner. He was sitting in a chair in the center of the windowless room, and the terrified look on his face was like a paralyzing, cold dagger directly to my heart. It was the very thing I feared the most, and he had done it.

  He had taken my son.

  “Caleb?”

  “I’m sorry, there’s no audio reception there,” apo
logized the alien, returning to the screen to greet me. “I thought it might be the most humane choice. His cries are really most pitiful, even for a human child.”

  “He’s a baby,” I said in as brave a voice as I could manage. To my ears, it came out like a pitiful, pleading whine.

  “The heroes have until noon tomorrow to report to Deer Creek Park in Utah, where they will surrender to my forces willingly. If they don’t, then my clone army will begin decorating their hometowns with blood. I am giving you three hours to bring the array to me in West Virginia. If you don’t, then your little boy will become the next casualty of war. Any attempt to rescue him, and my lieutenant will turn his blood to ice. And it will be televised, for all the world to see the extent of my mercy.”

  “How can you even believe for a second that I’m not going to kill you for what you’ve done?”

  “Please, my dear, you are maimed and defeated,” he said smugly. “What’s left of the team that adopted you is dead and buried. There’s no reason for any more blood to be spilled. I’m stuck on this planet, you see. You humans haven’t done a very good job in maintaining this precious world. It’s time you let someone with proper experience in running an entire planet show you how it’s done.”

  “I’m going to…”

  “You’re going to get moving. Two hours and fifty-eight minutes left. I’ll put on tea.”

  With that, the screen went as black as my entire world.

  I was vaguely aware of the others swarming around me a few moments later, trying to get my attention. Major Baltrin was snapping his fingers, trying to ask me questions. Eric was typing away at the computer connected to the video screen, possibly trying to locate where the signal had come from. Cass was standing close by, tears in her eyes. They were talking, but all I could hear was a dull roar of noise that blurred together. I put my hands over my ears and screamed once.