Action Figures - Issue Five: Team-Ups

by Michael C Bailey

  The mask slides open again. Half of a counterfeit Cronut vanishes. All right, he didn’t take the bait on that one. Let’s aim a little lower.

  “Tell me something,” I say. “The kid you killed. Did you state any facts to him? Or did you just take him out of the equation?”

  Manticore takes a sip of coffee but says nothing. Come on, man, give me something.

  “Why did you kill him? Not out of revenge, according to you, which suggests you did it for money...”

  “He got in my way.”

  “He was a kid.”

  “So’re you. You’ve gotten in my way before. I didn’t hesitate to try to kill you.”

  “You tried. Didn’t quite work out, did it?”

  I top that zinger off with a cocky smirk. I know I’m pushing my luck by pushing his buttons, but let’s face facts: Manticore’s going to walk away from this. I can’t stop him, but if I can throw him off his game, even a tiny bit, maybe he’ll give me something I can use against him.

  “I think I have a pretty solid win-loss record with you, honestly,” I say. “I’ve, quote-unquote, gotten in your way — what? Three times now? And I’ve walked away every time.”

  “So have I.”

  “With your cybernetic tail tucked between your legs.”

  “Mm-hm. As I recall, our first run-in ended with you lying on the ground in a pool of your own blood.”

  Ouch. And the point goes to Manticore. Power through it, Carrie.

  “I bounced back quickly enough, and went toe-to-toe with you twice more — and the only reason you scored anything resembling a win either time is because of your cowardly little trick with your tail.” I lean in. “I have a theory. Want to hear it?”

  Manticore leans in too, reducing the gap between us to a few inches. “Amuse me.”

  “This right here? This little chat we’re having? This is nothing but a lame attempt to intimidate me. I have your number and you know it. It’s only a matter of time before I put you down for good, but you can’t take me in a fair fight, so here you are, messing with my head and praying I don’t smear your sorry tail all over Connecticut.”

  Manticore laughs. It’s a hollow, soulless sound. “Whatever helps you sleep through the night, kid.”

  “What helps me sleep through the night is the thought of you rotting away in prison — which is ironic, because I think that’s what keeps you awake at night: the thought of sitting in a cell at Byrne for the rest of your miserable life. Nothing but four blank, white walls and an uncomfortable cot for a bed and that weird toilet-sink combination thingy...”

  “I wouldn’t know,” Manticore says, his voice level, neutral.

  “What was it like, your first time in a cell? Did you have a bad experience with your roommate? Were the other kids mean to you on the playground? Any good shower room beatings you’d like to tell me about?”

  “Points for effort, kid, but you’re going to have to work a lot harder than that to get under my skin.”

  Really, now? Because I can see quite clearly that your fingers have curled in on themselves, shaping into loose fists.

  “Can’t blame a girl for trying,” I say with a pleasant smile.

  “I’d expect no less from you.” Manticore rises, leaving most of his coffee and his untouched second Cronut thing on the table. “I wasn’t lying when I said I liked you. You’ve got guts, brains, you’re stubborn as hell, and you have some serious chops. I know people who could use someone with your potential. You ever wise up and decide to dump Concorde and that Charlie Foxtrot of a team of his, give me a buzz.”

  “Sure, I’ll put you on speed dial.”

  Manticore pauses in the doorway. “Stay put, right there, for ten minutes, or —”

  “Yeah, yeah, big bada-boom, I know, I know.”

  “Heh. See you later, Leeloo.”

  He’s right, damn him.

  These Cronut things are awesome.

  4.

  Colonel Coffin was not happy that Manticore got away — or as she put it, that I let Manticore get away.

  Manticore slipped away by flying low, a tactic that allowed him to avoid radar and thwart the two Stafford jets circling overhead (Air National Guard fighter jets are not well suited for low-altitude enemy engagement). I don’t have that excuse, so when the colonel called me in the next day for my debriefing, she let shared her displeasure over my “highly questionable decision” at top volume and demanded to know why I let Manticore walk away.

  With the utmost respect, I said to her, “Colonel, if you have any recommendations for disabling the low-yield nuclear device built into Manticore’s suit, I’d sincerely love to hear it.”

  She didn’t have an answer.

  That didn’t keep her from yelling at me for another five solid minutes, though.

  Edison returns home on Saturday, as scheduled, but I give him the day to recuperate from the long flight. I call him Sunday after lunch, and I get as far as, “I ran into Manticore” before he calls me in to HQ.

  Edison and Bart greet me at HQ and hustle me into the conference room for debriefing. “Tell me everything,” Edison says.

  “I’ll do better than that,” I say, and I hand him my headset.

  “You recorded it.”

  “I started rolling video the second we landed,” I say.

  Edison synchs my headset to the giant TV at the far end of the conference room and settles in for the show. I expect a barrage of questions afterwards. Instead, Edison and Bart sit there in silence, brows knit.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “I was hoping to get something useful out of him, but —”

  “Don’t apologize, Carrie,” Bart says. “This is a gold mine.”

  “It is?”

  “I wouldn’t go that far, but this is hardly worthless. Did you catch that Charlie Foxtrot crack?” Edison says to Bart.

  “Oh, yes.” I look a question at him. “Charlie Foxtrot is military slang for — uh, well, to put it delicately, it’s a euphemism for a not nice word.”

  Jeez, guys, I’m a high school student, not a nun.

  “I’ve heard civilian pilots use the term as well, but given his skill set, my guess is Manticore is former military,” Edison says. “Maybe Air Force or Air National Guard, considering how comfortable he is in the sky.”

  “And you saw his hands when Carrie needled him about prison.” Bart turns to me. “What was it he said to you when you clashed over New York?”

  “Something like he’d rather blow himself up than spend one more second of his life in prison,” I say, doing my best to recall the moment.

  “A veteran and an ex-con,” Edison muses. “That doesn’t exactly narrow the field of suspects down to a manageable number, but it’s more intel on Manticore than we had before.”

  “He also likes The Fifth Element,” I point out, “but that probably isn’t very helpful.”

  “People like Manticore are a puzzle,” Bart says. “Individual pieces might not make sense taken all by themselves, but if you get enough of the pieces...”

  “Let’s start with the big pieces,” Edison says. “We know he had business in New Hampshire. We’ll start by scouring news and police reports for any sightings.”

  “Or unsolved murders,” Bart adds with a grim note.

  “And we’ve confirmed one of his dummy transponder signals. That means he left a virtual paper trail; any civilian or military air control system that’s ever had a hit on that signature will have it on record.”

  “And that could tell us where his base of operations is.”

  “Yeah,” Edison says distantly, his hand beating an anxious rhythm on the table. “This could be it. We still have a lot of legwork ahead of us, but this could be the break we’ve been waiting for.”

  “I have nothing better to do today,” I say.

  “I’m free,” Bart says.

  Edison smiles. “All right, Protectorate,” he says. “Let’s go hunting.”

  EIGHT – CAPTAIN TRENCHCOAT AND CONCORDE
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  MATTERS OF PERSPECTIVE

  1.

  Today is going to be a good day.

  I’ve been looking forward to today for a few weeks now, ever since Edison let me in on a big secret — a secret that, for once, had nothing to do with super-hero business. The news itself is pretty cool, but Edison letting me in on it? That was huge.

  Stuff like this reinforces how far we’ve come since the early days. I know the “early days” were all of a year ago, but the point stands. Once, Edison and I — more specifically, Concorde and Captain Trenchcoat — couldn’t spend two minutes in the same room as one another without things degenerating to name-calling and general nastiness. We couldn’t stand each other.

  Things changed once I started working for Edison. Getting to know each other as normal people weakened the wall between us, but once I learned Concorde and Edison were the same guy? The wall came crashing down. At that point, we really had no choice but to get all our baggage out in the open and deal with it. Things have been good ever since, as evidenced by the fact I am one of a select few Edison entrusted with his big news. I am, as they say, in the loop, and I’ll be there when he makes his announcement to the world.

  Speaking of which...

  I head downstairs, hoping to catch Mom alone. No such luck; Mom and Dad are both in the kitchen, sipping coffee and munching on bagels. Standard morning pleasantries are exchanged, and then I get down to business.

  “Mom, could you sign this?” I say, handing her a sheet of paper. Before she can ask what it is, I tell her, “It’s an early dismissal slip for today.”

  “What for?” Mom says, taking the form.

  “Bose Industries has a big press conference today, and I’ve been asked to work it. Edison wants me to be Mr. Meet-and-Greet for the reporters.”

  “Oh, really?” Mom says, duly impressed. “Well, I think we can help you out there...”

  “Hold on, hold on,” Dad says. Here we go. He takes the form from Mom and skims it. “You’d have to leave school at noon? That’s pretty early. You’d miss most of the day.”

  “I’d miss the last two hours,” I correct. “That’s hardly most of the day.”

  “Still...”

  “Still what? It’s two hours, and I wouldn’t miss any important classes.”

  “All your classes are important.”

  “So is being available to work a major press conference at my paying job at one of the state’s top technology firms.”

  “It’ll be fine,” Mom says, taking the form back so she can sign it. “He’s been doing really well this year. If his grades had been slipping, it’d be one thing...”

  “You could have given us a little more of a heads-up on this,” Dad says.

  “Slipped my mind.” Mom hands the form to me. “Thanks,” I say, taking the form and running upstairs before Dad can make any more pointless objections. I grab my dress shirt, suit, and tie out of the closet; head downstairs; throw my work clothes in the car; and off I go.

  To be honest, nothing slipped my mind. I deliberately waited until the last minute so Dad wouldn’t have any time to make a case against me leaving school early. I’d hoped to avoid the big jerk altogether...

  Let it go, Matt. Mom signed the form. You’re golden, no point stressing out about it.

  Today’s going to be a good day.

  “You seem in an especially fine mood this morning,” Carrie says as she and Sara approach me en route to my locker.

  “I am, and my mood will improve further once I drop this off to Mr. Dent,” I say, showing off my dismissal form. Right now, this thing is more valuable to me than a Golden Ticket to Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory.

  “What’s that?” Sara says. She glances at the paper. “Why are you leaving school early?”

  “Working a big press conference today. Edison’s dropping some major news and I get to be part of it.”

  “Sounds intriguing,” Carrie says. “Care to share?”

  “I don’t know. It’s not exactly public knowledge yet,” I say, “although rumors have been swirling for a couple of weeks. You might have heard the story on one of New England Cable News’ business reports...”

  “Oh, of course, the business report,” Carrie says with a grave nod.

  “Yes, can’t go a day without the business report,” Sara says. “Anyway...”

  “Anyway,” I say. I gesture for the girls to lean in. “Bose Industries bought out Advanced Robotics and Cybernetics.”

  That bombshell earns me a synchronized double jaw drop.

  “Edison owns ARC now?” Carrie says.

  “I thought ARC went under, like, months ago,” Sara says.

  “Rumors of ARC’s death have been greatly exaggerated,” I say, but it’s not much of an exaggeration.

  Until last year, ARC was one of the nation’s top robotics research and development companies. They started out making those goofy vacuum-bots you see advertised on TV, and later expanded into developing bots and drones for military use and, more recently, high-tech prosthetic limbs. Along the way, ARC established a department dedicated to developing artificial intelligence systems for its military products. They succeeded a little too well and created Archimedes, an AI program that gained sentience. With a little outside help from its creator, Archimedes uploaded itself into a human brain and raised all kinds of hell in Kingsport.

  In a weird way, Archimedes was the catalyst that turned the Hero Squad into a real team — and now that I think about it, it was almost exactly a year ago that we took on a giant Archimedes-driven battlesuit in the center of town. That was our very first fight. We were so ridiculously inexperienced it’s a minor miracle we survived.

  After we captured Archimedes and the whole mess went public, ARC started circling the bowl. It lost nearly all of its lucrative military contracts, which led to severe operational cutbacks, which led to its Kingsport facility closing up shop. However, ARC was never officially dead thanks to a certain interested outside party.

  “When ARC started to go under, Edison worked some kind of behind-the-scenes deal to keep it afloat, just enough to prevent other companies from swooping in to buy up all its patents and designs,” I say. “He’s been maneuvering to buy the company outright, and today he’s making an official announcement.”

  “What is he going to do with it?” Carrie says.

  “Um...operate it? That’s usually what people do with businesses.” Carrie and Sara trade worried looks. “What, you think Edison’s going to try and create Archimedes Version Two-Point-Oh?”

  “No, of course not, but I bet ARC never planned to create a homicidal AI either. I’m sorry, I don’t doubt Edison has noble intentions, but that place has a lot of bad memories attached to it.”

  “Yeah, same here,” Sara says. “I want it to work out, honestly, but don’t tell me you’re not a little wigged out by the thought of ARC back up and running.”

  “I’m not,” I say. In perfect unison, they both raise a skeptical eyebrow. Same eyebrow, too. I’ve always heard girls who live together long enough sync up like that, and there’s the proof. “I’m not. Edison has some great ideas for ARC, and they don’t involve resurrecting the AI department.”

  Sara seems relieved to hear that, but Carrie isn’t convinced.

  “I’m having a hard time trusting Edison,” she says. “He said something during Sara’s inquest that’s been really bugging me...I’ve been meaning to bring it up, but —”

  “What did he say?”

  “Yeah, what did he say?” Sara says, but the warning bell goes off, ending the conversation on a cliffhanger.

  “To be continued,” I say.

  “Definitely,” Carrie says. “Don’t forget to turn in your permission slip.”

  One quick trip to the main office later, I am officially cleared to escape at noon. Matt Steiger’s good day, locked and loaded.

  2.

  The morning flies by, and at noon sharp I’m out the door. Ten minutes after that, I’m pulling into
my parking space at Bose Industries.

  That’s right; I have my own parking space. Envy me.

  By twelve twenty-five, I’m dressed and ready for the pre-conference staff meeting. I’m one of a dozen or so people making up the inner circle on this project and one of only two interns.

  “Hey, Matt,” says second intern Zina, who works in the public relations department. “Nice suit. Let me guess: Mr. Pink?”

  “Hey, why am I Mr. Pink? Why can’t we pick our own colors?” I say, and it gets a laugh. You’ve got to respect a girl likes Reservoir Dogs. “You ready for the big show?”

  “Ready to go. You?”

  “I can’t imagine how I could be less ready to grin vacuously and hand out press kits.”

  “Let’s see your vacuous grin,” she says. I give her a big, vacant smile. “Oooh, yeah, that is vacuous. It’s like there’s nothing going on in there at all.”

  “Perfect.”

  “All right, ladies and gents, circle up,” Edison says, officially calling the meeting to order before turning things over to his PR guru, Miriam Roche. “Miriam, talk us through it.”

  “Afternoon, all. We’re going to review everyone’s duties and the schedule of the day and then let you go, and we’re going to make this quick, because people should be arriving any minute,” she says. “Zina.”

  “Greet people at the main entrance, welcome them to Bose Industries, ask for ID, check names against the master list,” Zina says, waving her tablet. “If they’re on the list, point them toward the elevator. If they’re not, pawn them off to security. Hang out there until precisely 1:05 PM to catch any stragglers, then head up to the conference room to work the crowd as needed.”

  “Very good. Matt?”

  “Greet guests as they enter, hand them a press kit, let them know the press conference will begin soon,” I say. “If anyone asks me anything more probing than ‘Where’s the bathroom?’ smile and inform them there will be a question-and-answer session following the presentation.”

  “Perfect.”

  “Nailed it,” Zina says to me, extending a hand for a fist bump. “We own this.”