Emergence

by Various

  I needed to get Lisa and get out of town. It was going to be a pain in the ass leaving everything behind, but I'd made preparations. Every criminal should keep an awareness that nothing lasts forever. I should have been more careful, sure. I'd wanted a taste of the sweet life. The kind my father had never been able to experience. The kind my sister had died trying to achieve. Guess it ran in the family.

  The Supra, which I was already starting to think of as the Misery Machine, worked like a charm. No one seemed to notice it, not even to the point of trying to avoid it. It also handled a dozen times better than before, easily sliding with my slightest movement. There was a whole assortment of weird gadgets, too; things the Mechanic shouldn't have had time to install. It made me wonder if she'd just bought an exact copy of my car and modified that instead.

  Which was a little creepy, the fact that it was a plausible thought.

  Trashy houses and graffiti-dressed buildings gave way to pretty two- and three-story housing belonging to yuppies and those who turned a blind eye to the city’s crushing poverty. I lived in what architectural snobs called a McMansion; one of the many mass-marketed oversized houses the nouveau riche purchased in great quantities when they thought their cash flow could never be threatened. In other words, a house made for a person like me.

  It had an expansive garage, thirty-five rooms, and cost an arm, a leg, an eye, and a butt cheek in payments every month. Yet, it was still a bit cramped for my wife. At least, that was what she was hinting lately. A pair of Mercedes-Benz sat in the driveway, a crimson one my wife had bought me for our anniversary, and a hot pink one I'd bought her for the same. I couldn't afford either of them, but that hardly mattered. I also spied a nondescript black van across the street in front of the neighbor’s house.

  A mammoth headache overcame me. I saw a vision of black-suited men and women wearing sunglasses getting out of the van and heading to my front door. They were armed and forced their way in when Lisa answered. While the whole ‘Men in Black’ look was something the government disdained these days, it was a look TCA enjoyed exploiting to the extreme.

  I was seeing the past.

  Shit.

  Taking a deep breath, I reached into my jacket and checked for my pistol. This was going to get ugly. I didn't know why The Chimeric Agency had decided to go against our agreement now; although, to be blunt, I was surprised they’d waited this long. Government agents—even quasi ones like the IRS and TCA—were, at the end of the day, just legalized crooks, and I wasn't about to let them take everything I'd built over the years. I headed around the side of my house and entered through a certain back window that I always left unlocked for just this sort of thing.

  I slipped quietly in, crept down a heavily-carpeted hallway, and spied four agents past the massive marble kitchen island, standing in one of our dining rooms.

  I was getting some heavy interference, though. A tingle. I couldn't help but think there was a fifth nearby. Blockers were a rare kind of chimeric. TCA snatched them up like hundred dollar bills on a sidewalk. I needed to get Lisa, get my ‘bug-out bag’ in the basement, and get the hell out of here.

  If I needed to kill someone, well, that would suck. I'd killed a lot of people, and I regretted each one. Blame the war.

  That was when I felt Lisa behind me.

  And the sound of a gun clicking.

  Huh.

  Didn't see that coming.

  #

  A minute later, I was sitting on my ten-thousand-dollar couch with three agents beside me and a fourth in front of me, a tall black man with a trimmed beard and balding head, who vaguely reminded me of a dark-skinned Uncle Phil. I knew him by reputation rather than sight, having heard John ‘Juggernuke’ Holmes described by local chimerics.

  Juggernuke was reputed to be invulnerable and could generate explosions. He didn't use his powers to become a superhero; instead, he was more famous for recruiting chimerics into TCA's service by any means necessary. Quite a few claimed they'd been blackmailed into committing felonies, though you could never trust that sort of gossip since, well, they were crooks.

  My wife, who'd turned me in, had been led off by a female agent. Lisa spent the entire time asking about where her deal was. It occurred to me that marrying her because she didn't care about anything but money, and didn't mind who or what it came from, might have disadvantages I hadn't foreseen.

  Juggernuke put his hands on his knees and smiled. “David Michael Korvac, alias Freelancer, biracial, no living relatives, charged several times with varying criminal activities, yet never convicted. Army Sergeant who served two terms during the Iraq War, medical discharge after friendly fire incident. Possesses mild precognitive and emotion-sensing abilities, but none so much as to warrant recruitment. I think we both know that you deliberately flubbed the test there.”

  “I’m not so sure. Lately, events are seriously calling into question my ability to see the future,” I said, staring at him and getting nothing. His presence was generating the interference, though I didn't know how disrupting psychic abilities related to being an exploding brick wall.

  Some chimerics just had no theme.

  I saw the fist of the burly agent coming. I didn't dodge it. It would only make things worse. I just let him hit me.

  Ouch.

  “You had a deal with Agent Wilson,” Juggernuke said. “We found the cash records and the information you gave him. I take it you scanned him to find out he was dirty?”

  “Yeah,” I said, knowing it was best to agree with him. I didn't need psychic abilities for that. “With bribes, it's largely a matter of phraseology. He was willing to look the other way for information and cash. I could have bought him completely without the info. It was cheaper this way.”

  “No honor among thieves, eh?”

  “Whoever said that wasn't a thief. Besides, all the thieves I know are assholes, myself included.” It was a philosophy which had kept me alive when everyone else had been willing to betray me at the drop of a hat. My father had believed in the honor of his fellow crooks, and it had resulted in him getting gunned down by the Mojave City mob.

  “How would you like to keep all of your money and stay out of prison?”

  I stared at him. “Is this one of those offers I can't refuse?”

  “More like Darth Vader and Lando Calrissian.” Juggernuke smiled. “Guess which one of us is Lando.”

  “I'm listening,” I said, looking over at the kitchen. “Can we expedite my divorce, too? I'm suddenly overcome with a feeling of regret regarding my association with Mrs. Korvac.”

  “She's going into Witness Protection, so certainly.”

  “She doesn't know anything.”

  Juggernuke smiled.

  “Except against me,” I said, rubbing my temples. “Fuck.”

  “Just a little insurance. You didn't go full-supervillain, Freelancer. You never go half-supervillain. You need the hideouts, the henchmen, and the constant breaking out. You try to live the white-picket fence and marriage, you get busted.”

  I accepted the fact that I was about to be punched. “Well, thank you, Robert Downey Junior, for that wonderful fucking piece of—”

  Punched in the face. Yep. As I foresaw.

  “Calm your jets there, Clint. Don't hurt him too much,” Juggernuke said to the burly jackass with playground bully issues. “We'd like you to kill someone for us, Freelancer. What do you say?”

  I felt sick. “This deal is getting worse all the time.”

  Clint made a fist and raised it a few inches.

  Juggernuke lifted his hand and stopped him. “Argyle Thompson.”

  “The plot thickens.” I ran my tongue around the inside of my cheek, which felt like hamburger. “I thought he was one of you.”

  Juggernuke laughed. “Wow, you’re stupider than I gave you credit for. Son, we like to keep the extremists on both sides at bay. That’s all. It keeps things…tidier.”

  “And you need me to
take out the one billionaire in the city who isn't friends with DNAdvanced?” I suspected this was just two corporations’ puppets fighting it out. “All because he funds the Headhunters and some lobbyists?”

  “You really are stupid. Or maybe Clint’s rattled your skull too hard. Aside from the fact those lobbyists make my life a living hell, we're after bigger game than the so-called Headhunters. Mister Argyle Thompson is the Night's King.”

  No-fucking-way.

  My jaw dropped in genuine admiration. “The eccentric tech billionaire is a nationally-famous, non-powered vigilante? Are you kidding me?”

  “Is Argyle the guy in the suit? No. That is a group of cops, mercs, and Special Forces ops, all on Thompson’s payroll and all armed with devices purchased from the Mechanic and Doctor Inventor among a few others. Argyle calls the shots via a closed circuit feed and coordinates them via radio. It allows him to live his flying rat fantasy while being a Steve Jobs-looking guy in his fifties.”

  I stared at him. “Seriously, you're kidding me though, right?”

  The agent pulled his fist back again.

  I held my hands up in surrender and backed down. “Okay, I believe you! Jesus, Clint, you have issues, man. I swear.”

  “The fact is, you taking down Argyle is going to make things easy for us,” Juggernuke said, nonplussed.

  “How's that?” I paused, then held up my hand. “Wait, let me guess. Not only does all of the funding disappear for the guys who support the superhuman laws that impede you guys from operating…but the Night's King disappears, too. One of the nation's biggest non-TCA sponsored heroes.”

  Juggernuke nodded. “Now you're getting it.”

  This was pretty damned cold-blooded, even for these guys. “I'm not sure how I'm supposed to walk away from this after killing a world-famous superhero, let alone keep all of my assets.”

  “Not that you need to know, but I’ll tell you for your own peace of mind…We're going to blame Blowback and his snipers. We'll protect you.”

  Somehow, I doubted that. That was when I felt a stinging in my neck. Another agent had used some kind of staple gun/injector.

  “We'll be tracking you, either way.”

  I stared at him. “Seriously, man?”

  Juggernaut chuckled and, in his best James Earl Jones voice, said, “Perhaps you think you are being treated unfairly?” He looked at Clint. They both laughed.

  Good god, the authorities shouldn't be allowed to make pop culture references. What dicks.

  #

  “Why are you wearing a wet towel on your head?” Mihailo asked as the two of us sat in a greasy bar called the Red Devil. We were the only customers present, and the place smelled like a men's restroom.

  We weren't likely to be bothered, though.

  “It's to muffle the signal.” I took a long drag on a cigarette laced with Dust. I'd given up the stuff after my first year away from the Army, yet desperate times called for desperate measures.

  Or, at least, to get a little wasted.

  “That's from the Arnold movie, yes?” Mihailo said, smiling. “Get your ass to Mars. Hehe.”

  “Yeah,” I said, stamping out my cigarette in a nearby ashtray. In truth, the towel was a genuine ward against the tracker inside me, since the Prop Man had provided it for me. He could do anything, as long as it followed the rules of movie logic. I had a less-conspicuous replacement lined up from Graffiti Girl. I only needed a stopgap until then. “In any case, Mihailo, I'd like to make you an offer I hope will be appealing.”

  I gave myself 60-40 odds he’d listen rather than shoot me. Not the best odds, certainly, but I'd worked with worse. I explained the situation, leaving out the part where I was an informant.

  Still, he said: “I should shoot you. You are endangering us both by coming to visit me.”

  I made finger-guns at his chest. “Not if you want to take down the Night's King. Remember, you spent three years in Federal before that evidence disappeared because of him. I seem to recall I had a hand in that.”

  I'd been encouraged by a vision to do that. That, and I liked the guy. It was time to cash out that favor.

  Mihailo stared. “I have been paying that back in easy money for many years now and don't owe you—”

  “I want to screw the TCA and Thompson.”

  That was exactly the right thing to say. I knew, because I was adjusting my statements to what he wanted to hear. The real benefit of telepathy.

  Mihailo leaned back and crossed his arms. “Talk.”

  “Now that we know Thompson is the Night's King, a lot of the weird shit he's been up to the past decade makes sense. He's a billionaire. Keeps a lot of his money in cash and disposable income in banks spread across the city rather than in, say, Switzerland. He's probably financing a dozen other vigilantes and off-the-books crap.”

  “Not to mention anti-chimeric hate groups,” Mihailo said. “The man is scum.”

  That was rich coming from him, or me for that matter, but I let it slide because I wasn't stupid. Well, that stupid. Clearly, today had proved one thing, and that was I wasn't as smart as I thought I was. “The thing is, that means a lot of assets just ready to be plundered by someone with the brains and insider knowledge of what makes the man tick. Which is to say, the asshat thinks he's Michael Keaton.”

  “You tried that today to an epic failure.”

  “Because I wasn't planning it, man. And I didn't know how his mind worked. I assumed the money was the point rather than the showmanship. It's why he sent his fake cop mercs and the Headhunters rather than, you know, calling the DCD down on me or some shit. It's not because the money is dirty. He wanted his people to show me up. So, I'm going to give him a target he can't resist.”

  Mihailo smirked. “You've finally decided to go full-supervillain?”

  “Let's just say I’m aware at how limited my options have become. So, it's time to kick over the game board.”

  “And this will end Argyle Thompson? Permanent?”

  I smiled. “Even better.”

  Mihailo crossed his arms. “All right, I'm with you so far. However, before we continue, I want to establish something.”

  “Yes?”

  “I want a costume. And a cool name. Nothing that involves my ethnicity either. I don’t want to be the Satanic Serb or East European Evil.”

  Oh, Jesus Christ. Did everyone want to be a comic book character in this town? The answer was ‘probably,’ which was seriously depressing. I wanted to grab him by the shoulders and shake him.

  “Absolutely!” I said. “I know just the people for it. Can you help me get in touch with these guys?”

  I slid over a note containing a list of names. They were almost all chimerics. Low-to-mid-level powered ones.

  Many career criminals.

  Mihailo looked at the paper. “They get names and costumes, too. The ones who don’t have them already.”

  I stared at him. “Of course.”

  “We will call ourselves…” Mihailo clasped his hands together and looked me dead in the eyes. “…the Masters of Disaster.”

  I almost bashed my head against the table. Instead, I put my hand over my chest. “I am honored to be your leader.”

  If this didn't work, I was never going to live this down.

  #

  The Masters of Disaster were, indeed, masters of being a disaster. There was no absence of talented, intelligent, and professional powered-criminals in Motor Hills. These were not that crew. These were a collection of the most eccentric, brutal, flamboyant, and let’s be honest, crazy players in the local underworld.

  I'd managed to find roughly a quarter of them and another quarter Mihailo had recruited. The rest were drop-ins. These sorts of things had a way of spiraling with people wanting to bring on their buddies, girlfriends, guys they owed, or their own people. As such, the gymnasium of the First Presbyterian Church Youth Center was full with a collection of complete nut bars.

 
; In addition to the ones I'd invited, there was the Human BBQ, looking like he just escaped a burn ward and inspiring little confidence in his ability to keep himself under control. Mink and Fox were a pair of cat-themed ex-strippers and PETA's worst nightmare, yet damn easy on the eyes. There was Metalhead, a rocker whose monster voice caused people to start head-banging. I even saw the Inside-Out-Man, who had no real powers to speak of, but he was about the smartest criminal present; just, you know, not someone you wanted to touch. Oh, and there were six animated cartoons. I had no idea where the hell they came from.

  The entire thing had become a supervillain mixer. The PD had arrived twice about noise complaints, only for the Persuasive Man to tell them to take a hike. I was immune to his powers, it turned out, which was a good thing since otherwise I was fairly sure this would have become his group rather than mine.

  A few of them complained about the lack of an open bar. The last thing I needed was a bunch of drunk, half-insane supervillains (as if there was such a thing as a sane one) making this more complicated than it already was.

  Around 8:15 in the evening, I tried to get the party under control. It had ended up requiring Mihailo, no, sorry, Captain Bullet, to blow a whistle to get everyone to settle into their metal fold-out chairs.

  Mihailo was wearing a blue bodysuit with two rifle ammo belts around his chest like Rambo, a gold belt-buckle with a B on it, and a long red cape. Somehow, he'd acquired a pair of enhanced holsters which could contain a dozen different types of gun regardless of size. This included his sniper rifle.

  The craziest thing? He wasn't the strangest dressed one here.

  Mink and Fox promptly rolled out the chalkboard which contained a very rough outline of my plan. The two girls got catcalls from the audience, even though roughly a third of the audience was women. I couldn’t blame them since, against my morals or not, the supervillain look just worked for some people.

  “Thank you, ladies,” I said, walking over and picking up a pointer from the end. “Let's get this done, guys. Reverend Daniels was gracious enough to lend us the rec center, and we've all got places to go and people to kill, so…”