Big Superhero Action (21 page)

Flesh ripped a turn, went off the road, rolled over dirt for a quarter-mile. Parked. Got out. Pulled Mafia 13 out.

Flesh pulled his gun, put it to Mafia 13’s head.

Pound said, “Give us something big about the OSD.”

Mafia 13: “I’m a street level guy. What do I know big?”

“We don’t do street level. Dig deeper.”

Mafia 13 closed his eyes, sped up the squirrel inside the wheel, tried to get his brain to move faster. He had one. “The OSD kidnapped a teenager.”

Pound: “What’s his name?”

“Don’t know.”

“When?”

“Last week.”

Pound looked at Flesh. “Teenager.”

Flesh: “The Kid.”

Pound: “What’s next?”

Flesh: “We need something clever.”

Pound: “Thirteen gets the rap for Deep Throat.”

Flesh: “Kill or stun?”

Pound: “Stun.”

Flesh pushed a blue button on the gun, shot Mafia 13 in the face.

Flesh: “Why didn’t I think of that?”

Pound: “You’re not dead enough.”

Mafia 13 hit the ground.

T
he last AXIS spy to get inside the OSD was thrown naked and duct taped from the roof of the OSD building. Since then AXIS intelligence was guesswork. For all AXIS knew Dr. Playground had The Kid in the Picture on one of the floors of the OSD building or anywhere else in the city.

AXIS Strategic Command satellite hacking tracked a Gulfstream 6 that two days earlier had departed the OSD airfield. The jet had flown north into Canadian air space, over the eastern coastline. It was something to go on.

The AXIS Gulfstream 6 took the same route. Tracking continued past the Brutalia Limit via blue highlighter drawn on a map. There were no alter egos on that flight. Pipe in mouth, Milo Spector did the flying. Duff Nash had the next seat. In the sleek white cabin six twelve year-old girls distracted themselves with Wi-Fi. The girls were silent and didn’t talk to each other, waiting for this ordeal to end, waiting for action to spring into. The OSD G6 had been tracked for six hundred miles until it veered eastward over Nova Scotia. Finding the jet’s exact location could take days of work.

“Turn on ‘Heroes,’” he told Duff.

Duff plugged in the iPod.

“What do you hear?”

Duff said, “Bowie. It’s just a song now.”

“Do you ever get tired of it?”

“I don’t even hear it anymore.”

“Do you have a gun?”

“No.”

“In the real world that’s your only superpower. Never leave Brutalia without one.”

“I met Teenage Cleopatra.”

“How did that go?”

“It was too soon. You know her superpower?”

“Yeah.”

Duff told him his origin story.

He finished with, “Then I got a superpower.”

Spector said, “After this, see her again, be sure.”

“Yeah.”

“The moment your sneakers get lighter, let me know.”

“Why, you pick up anything special?”

“Just a twinge sixty miles ago.”

“A twinge?”

“Sometimes when you’re outside the Limit you can’t tell a twinge from ghost powers. You find out real quick your powers really are gone. But you know when you’re back in town.”

Spector picked up a twinge but it was outer Limit. This one was a thought and a concept meeting each other.

“Get the laptop,” he told Duff. “Go to Google Maps.”

Duff was on it in seconds.

Spector turned the jet in a wide arc westward.

“Now what?” Duff said.

“We’re backtracking sixty miles. Or less.”

When they were back on a northward course Spector took the jet down enough feet for a clearer look at the landscape. Duff matched the location on Google Maps.

“Look at the ground.”

“At what?”

“The buildings.”

“I see one ahead.”

Spector was looking at the structures below, isolated buildings planted in a rural landscape. One building was grey and twenty stories. The next building was one half-mile north of the last, looked the same. Then a third one mile north of the second.

Spector: “Do you see the buildings?”

Duff: “Yeah.”

Spector: “Match those on Google.”

Duff worked the aerial shots.

Duff: “No buildings there until now.”

Spector: “Suggesting those buildings didn’t exist before the OSD flew north. Google-map this course.”

The twinge grew. The same tall grey building appeared every two miles, each one further north.

“Follow the grey buildings,” Spector said. “Or building, each one is identical, the same one over and over.”

Upon sighting the next grey building he veered over to fly directly over it. The building stuck up from acres of pasture at a crooked angle. They watched it pass below.

Spector’s second self happened. The carousel turned. It was Tuesday. That month’s Martian Justice was in its rack primed and waiting.

Duff levitated until he was above the laptop, feet on the cockpit wall, hands reaching down to the keyboard. Bowie was back in effect.

Spector said, “We’re in Brutalia.”

“We’re a long way from there.”

“Yet we are there.”

“Or it is here.”

“Check the girls.”

Duff floated around to open the cockpit door, looked into the cabin.

He said, “They’re back.”

“Adult?”

“Yeah.”

Duff took it down until he was back in the seat.

Spector: “What do you think?”

Duff: “The key is there is no key.”

“What is it?”

“Something that isn’t a key. Instead it takes Brutalia where it goes.”

“If powers do not exist outside Brutalia, the Kid can only have powers inside Brutalia. If he can only have powers inside Brutalia… he never leaves Brutalia.”

“Therefore he takes Brutalia with him.”

Spector relit his pipe. “He somehow stretches Brutalia.”

“Stretches a city?”

“That accounts for the buildings appearing along the Kid’s flight paths.”

“Why only him?”

“Him and the UFB.”

“Why only them? If the Kid stretches Brutalia and it can be stretched, why only by him?”

“That’s the next question.”

“So they do have the key,” Duff said. “Holy fucking shit.”

The building reappeared growing out of the New Brunswick shore. It reappeared smashed atop a shorter building on a street in Nova Scotia. When their course had followed the same grey building for six hundred miles Duff leaned back from the laptop, took a coffee break. Spector worked the AXIS satellite link when it worked, the Brutalia Limit cutting it on and off.

They scanned mass media for coverage of the strange buildings, found no references. Was Washington pulling a media blackout on this? AXIS would have.

“AXIS satellite is picking up a northern atoll where the OSD jet is present. Named Painted Grosbeak. Land area: seven miles.”

Screen 1: the atoll shape glowing green on the blue of the North Atlantic Ocean. Screen 2: a Gulfstream shape glowing white on the green of the atoll. The screens flickered less as they neared the atoll.

“If he’s stretching Brutalia,” Duff said, “that must be more Brutalia.”

“That’s what it looks like,” Spector replied over the instant mapping. “There’s more of it than land area.”

The windows filled with slanting cityscape. Acres of grey buildings stretched out, slanted left, went vertical.

“It’s East Downtown.”

Rain hit the glass.

“The key takes Brutalia everywhere.”

“Or it pushes the Limit outward.”

“Brutalia,” Spector said around his pipe, “is not what we think of as a city.”

“What is it then?”

“That’s the next question. For now we have a rescue to make. Are you ready to rock?”

“The Sirens have been hooking me up. I have firepower now.”

“Ever do violence?”

“Seen it more than done it,” Duff answered. “But I don’t get scared.”

“That helps.”

“I never had a fear of heights. When I was little I didn’t have the sense to have a fear of heights. Today I can’t afford one.”

The G6 carried six morphing pods for six Siren cycles. Their artillery was fully stocked. The Carousel’s mask filled in around Milo Spector’s eyes as he piloted the jet down toward the atoll city. The Carousel turned the carousel, picked
Martian Justice
, took it out of the rack, took it to the drug store counter. With an extra dime for green Martian bubblegum.

“Now looking for a place to land. How about that street?”

S
he’s a killer…queeeen…

“Off,” Dr. Playground said.

To the Queen on his iPod, The Kid in the Picture gracefully walked across the shoulders of the Doctor’s exoframe, toe-pushed off into mid air. He made a circle around the Doctor. He widened the circle around the three Man Mafia exoframes. Xoir stood arms folded, chin on palm, watching this with a vaguely bored expression.

Evil had two sides, gross and seductive. Xoir had given him a makeover, the iPod headphones now atop a new haircut, the bangs shorn down to a dewy Julius Caesar. Xoir had spent the past week coming up with a costume he was taking for a test drive. The black mask was translucent lace that tinted his pale skin. The cape was school blazer-plaid in black and grey. Full-body black tights. The footwear: black & white saddle shoes with invisible utility soles. It shouldn’t have worked so well but it did. Xoir told him she would need more time to make him costumes for day, night, and each season. The fit was perfect, sexy but made for comfort.

Dr. Playground watched him work his superpower. That felt gross. But it had been a revelatory flight with an unbelievable landing.

Now they were inside an empty McDonald’s turned into an OSD command center. Rows of holographic screens flashed aerial footage from the flight. Grey buildings dominated the shots.

“You never noticed this?” Dr. Playground said to him. “Structures appearing below your flights?”

“I never noticed. I don’t look down at where I was last.”

“Start. No flight pattern?”

“I do it by instinct.”

Xoir said to the Doctor, “He must be somehow taking part of Brutalia with him.”

“Like a virus?”

“Possibly.”

“So the city is a viral entity, say.”

“Making this planet the computer the virus infects.”

“He spreads the virus. Where the virus appears the city appears. Where the city appears there is no Limit. There is no actual key out of the city. But the city can be expanded.”

“Or spread like a virus.”

“Why him? Why UFB?”

“Viruses are spread by carriers,” Xoir said.

The Kid was listening too closely, diluting the music effect. His new shoes now skimmed just above the floor. He was where they made the hamburgers now, bent his knees for his bottom to float above the cold steel grills. He sailed back into the dining room, past windows dark with night and wet with rain. Out there the G6 was parked in the empty street. It occurred to him to make his escape. But his enemies were busy trying to figure out what he was and where they were and they had big brains. There was no leaving now.

“This is an atoll,” Dr. Playground said, “On the atoll is a replica of downtown Brutalia. Why?”

Xoir stared up at the huge golden arch. She touched it. “A virus multiplies.”

Dr. Playground went dark then interior-lit. That happened when he received information from the OSD nerve center; the message took him aside and whispered into his exoframe. Thirty seconds passed. The interior lighting went dark, Dr. Playground’s exterior lit up again.

He said, “AXIS is following our trail. Meanwhile, the building structures are vanishing from the flight path.”

Xoir: “Therefore where the key is not, the city is not.”

“The virus never leaves the carrier.”

The Kid stopped the music and gently landed behind the Mafia clones. He hid behind one, played eavesdropper on the two costumed “scientists.” Dr. Playground loomed over Xoir like a white building on two feet. He said, “Did KM do this? Maybe a viral construction project? Invade a country and infect it with enemy cities?”

Xoir: “If this was KM’s work it’s what came after the technology hijacked itself. According to that theory.”

“The answer is still with the Kid. Why him?”

“He has no idea why.”

“Who would? No variations, you say?”

“Everything normal, DNA, tissues, brain activity…he is a normal fifteen year-old boy from this planet. He has no wings. No special muscles for flight. No origin story. He just discovered one day he could fly to music. He’s a random a sample as we are. Another accidental superhero.”

“Another KM test subject.”

“Or lab monkey.”

“While somewhere KM watches and writes down the findings.”

“Well, that’s one theory,” Xoir said.

“What’s yours?”

“It all begins with an incredibly advanced extra-terrestrial visitor. That’s the source of this science. The science is the source of KM.”

Dr. Playground raised a hand for silence.

A metal drone cut through the rain. The sound of a G6 landing one block away.

“AXIS is here.”

Two of the Mafia clones robocopped their way to the exit, exo-morphed smaller to get through the doors.

“Martian Justice I’m guessing.”

“With the Sirens.”

“Superpowers in effect.”

“This is Brutalia Express you know.”

A Martian-cold voice cut through the night.
THIS IS AXIS. RELEASE CHASE JUNIPER IN FIFTEEN SECONDS OR DIE
.

“Ever subtle,” Dr. Playground said.

He loud-spoke back:
THIS IS THE OSD. FUCK OFF OR DIE
.

Xoir opened her black-gloved hand, a machine pistol unfolded in her palm.

Outside, booms shook the building. The windows showed fireballs.

The front wall of the McDonald’s exploded.

The Kid turned on the iPod, got ‘90s.
MMMM MMMM MMMM MMMM MMMM MMMM MMMM MMMM MMMM
….

One of the Mafia clones was on the floor in flames.

Dr. Playground’s “face” grinned.

Above, tiles exploded and six Sirens on six Siren cycles plunged through the ceiling six Siren guns blasting.