Infiltration (23 page)

As they got closer to shore, the waves grew in height — getting up to about twenty feet — but their speed slowed tremendously. Seeing this, I made a calculated decision to go back to League HQ. The waves were definitely going to be detrimental (there would be some significant flooding, among other things, and the expected accompanying damage), but stopping these attacks was a higher priority.

I teleported back to the nullifier cell area and filled Mouse in on what had happened at the bay. While he spent a few minutes contacting authorities and mobilizing support, I turned my attention back to Proteus.

The guy was in complete meltdown. He had crumpled to his knees, tears streaming down his face, spouting what could — at best — be described as indecipherable gibberish in between wracking sobs.

Telepathically, I reached out, trying to ask questions that we needed answers to. This time, it was much harder getting rational responses or making sense of the answers. Proteus had undergone some type of near-complete mental collapse. By the time Mouse finished dealing with the situation at the bay, I felt I’d gotten as much out of him as possible.

“Okay,” Mouse said. “Give it to me.”

“First,” I said, “let me say that I got as much as I could. It’s a mess inside his head, and I can’t do a deep dive under the best of circumstances.”

“Yeah, he’s having a nervous breakdown. He thinks HQ is about to be destroyed and him along with it.”

“Well, I think we avoided that, although it was a close call. Basically, we were right about the dual distractions. Everything that happened last night was about getting him inside.”

“Did you find out why?”

“Yes. He needed to get those things” — I pointed to the various knickknacks from his satchel — “from Rune’s room. Of course, he didn’t know where Rune’s room was, which is why he faked the head injury and asked for help. We walked him right to it.”

“But Rune’s room is usually protected and full of magical booby traps when he’s away. How’d Proteus get in and out of there safely?”

“He had some type of charm, a pendant, but it only had a one-time use so he just left it in Rune’s room.”

“Well, it couldn’t have taken that long to scoop up whatever he wanted from Rune’s quarters. Why was he still putzing around here hours later?”

“The green crystal. He needed to find a place to leave it, because it told them where to attack.”

“So basically, the crystal acted like some sort of guidance system for their mystical weapon,” Mouse said, rubbing his chin in thought. “I guess that explains why he was wandering around the sub-basement levels.”

“Yeah. When I showed up to get him, he’d just dropped it into that maintenance closet. His orders were to plant it half an hour before the scheduled time for attack. That would give him thirty minutes to get away.”

“But thirty minutes later, he found himself locked up in our cell, about to be pancaked along with the rest of us.”

“That’s the gist of what I was able to get,” I said sheepishly, suddenly ashamed of my telepathic limitations.

“You did great,” Mouse said, clapping me on the shoulder. “It’s more than what we knew an hour ago. As for getting more out of him, I’ve sent for Esper. She’ll be able to root out any other worthwhile info.”

I nodded, acknowledging that bringing Esper in was the right call.

“Wait a second,” Mouse said. “You mentioned something about Proteus having orders. Orders from who?”

I shook my head. “It’s not clear. It’s too murky in there.” I tapped my temple for emphasis.

“What about the stuff he snatched from Rune’s room? Any idea what it’s for?”

“No, but I picked up on the fact that it’s needed desperately. His mandate was essentially to come back with them or don’t come back at all.”

“Come back?” Mouse repeated quizzically.

As if on cue, the band with the crystal that I’d taken from Proteus — still lying on a table with the other things taken from him — began to beep. Someone was trying to yank our prisoner offstage.

An idea suddenly hit me, one that had been bouncing around in the back of my brain since the moment we’d found out about Proteus. I phased my body and undergarments, and my outer clothes fell to the ground. I immediately began putting on the clothes Proteus had worn when he’d pretended to be Rune.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Mouse asked.

“What’s good for the goose is good for the gander,” I said as I pulled on the trousers. “They infiltrated us; we need to infiltrate them.”

“What?! You?! Jim, I can’t let you do it!”

I continued dressing. “Mouse, I’m the only one who
can
do it!”

“Then we’ll come up with another plan!”

“Like what?”

“Wait for Rune! This is his forte! He’ll get my message soon, put in an appearance, and help us rein in the other side’s magic.”

The beeping stepped up in volume and pace.

“Mouse, we don’t have time to argue about this! You yourself said it earlier: we are up against a clock, but worse, it’s one we can’t even see. We are operating from a serious disadvantage here in the sense that we have almost no intel. This is our first, best, and probably
only
opportunity to get in front of this thing. Now you’ve got about twenty seconds to decide whether to say yea or nay to this.”

Mouse stared at me, obviously weighing a million different factors, and then blurted out, “Do it.”

As I finished getting dressed, Mouse stepped over to a nearby table covered with equipment. He grabbed something from there and started tinkering with it. I had just completed my fashion statement by putting on Proteus’ shoes when he tossed me the item he’d been working on. It was a small, black, quarter-sized object that looked a little like a button ripped from someone’s winter coat.

“Homing beacon,” Mouse informed me, and I nodded, putting it in a pocket. I turned and took a good hard look at Proteus, and then shifted myself into a duplicate of him.

The beeping was now almost a continuous drone as I slapped the band with the crystal on my wrist, and then put on our prisoner’s watch as well. I turned to Mouse, who had just swept all of Proteus’ loot back into the satchel, which he then tossed to me.

“No,” I said, trying to hand the satchel back as I stepped into character and began speaking with Proteus’ voice. “Whatever these people want with this stuff, we need to keep it from them.”

“You said it yourself,” Mouse countered. “It was come back with this or not at all. Who knows what they’ll do to you if you show up without it?”

“But—”

“No ‘buts’!” he said adamantly. “It’s all for nothing if we lose you the second you get there!”

I didn’t like it, but he had a point. I placed the strap of the satchel over my shoulder. Mouse and I looked at each other, but neither of us said anything. Finally, he gave me a knowing nod, which I returned. Then the shimmering formed around me, and everything vanished.

Chapter 28

A few months back, I made a bold decision to teleport to a place I’d never physically been before, only seen on a screen. It was the first and only time I’d ever done such a thing, and I had ended up walking into a trap. This felt very much like the same thing.

Unlike the instantaneous travel experienced with teleportation, my journey actually took a few seconds. However, I had traveled from one place to another on prior occasions using magic (which I assumed this was), so I was familiar with the slight disorientation and sensory deprivation it entailed. Then I felt something solid under my feet and the shimmering around me vanished.

I found myself in a large, windowless chamber. It was well-lit, but from some source I couldn’t make out. Oddly enough, the place seemed to be completely devoid of furniture, which might explain why everyone in the room was standing.

Not just standing, though, but standing and looking at me. And these weren’t simple, ordinary folk. From what I could see, the fifty or so individuals in the room were mostly — if not all — supervillains.

Off to one side, I saw Retread Fred. I recognized another criminal called Barnacle, and yet another known as Slim Solar. There were dozens of others that I recognized and many more that I did not, and all wearing the same dark bodysuits as the three who had attacked me and Alpha Prime at the overpass. In short, outside of a prison documentary, it was the largest gathering of infamous and immoral villainy that I’d ever seen. (You’d have thought they were having a convention or something.)

“Well?” said a voice in front of me. It seemed to have come from a man dressed in something like a dark druid robe. The hood of the robe was pulled over his head, but not enough to hide his features. He appeared to be in his early forties, with dark hair, brown eyes, a sharply pointed nose, and a mostly-black (but neatly trimmed) beard that was just beginning to show touches of gray. He also carried a long, wooden staff that seemed bedecked with odd ornaments on its upper end. I recognized him as a sorcerer called Diabolist Mage — one of the guys Mouse had referred to as a “dork.”

“Well,” he said again, “do you have it?”

I was unsure how to respond (and still a little surprised, to be honest), and stood there staring at him in silence. Diabolist Mage sighed in exasperation and nodded at someone to the side of me. The next second, a guy with scaled skin and large, claw-like hands came over and removed the satchel from my shoulder.

Diabolist Mage let go of his staff — which remained standing straight up on its own — as the satchel was handed to him. He scrambled to open it, as excited as a kid unwrapping a Christmas present. Lifting the flap, he peered inside.

“Yes!” he shouted excitedly, tilting his head towards the ceiling with a look of pure joy on his face. He walked over to where his staff still stood, and then reached into the satchel and removed something that looked like a bracelet. He slipped it over the head of the staff — at which point it began glowing with a soft blue light — and slid it down. He had only taken it about two inches down when the light from the bracelet seemed to pulse, and then the bracelet itself shrank in size until it fit tightly around the staff.

Next, Diabolist Mage removed a piece of glass that resembled nothing so much as a big, blatantly fake diamond about a knuckle-length in size. He placed it in an open spot on the head of the staff, where it sparkled brazenly for a moment like the real thing.

All in all, there were about a half-dozen items that Diabolist Mage removed from the satchel, placing them all on his staff while everyone else in the room stood and watched. The last item was the purple shell Mouse had previously held, which the Diabolist merely sat on top of the staff. Surprisingly, the shell seemed to extend itself, wrapping slowly down and around the head of the staff in a winding pattern until it covered all of the other items garnishing the staff’s head. Then it began to glow with a steady purple light.

Gingerly, almost in awe, Diabolist Mage reached out and grabbed the staff. Then he lifted it up over his head, smiling broadly, in a gesture of triumph. The purple light flared like a star, casting a violet fluorescence on the entire assemblage, which broke out into cheers.

Diabolist Mage lowered the staff and the room went silent again. He looked at me.

“Good work, Proteus,” he said. “You should go rest up now.”

Not quite sure what to say, I simply nodded and looked around, hoping for some indication of which way I should go. There were actually double doors set in all four walls, but I had no idea which way to go. After a few moments, the situation started to get awkward.

“Proteus, what’s wrong with you?” the guy with claw-hands asked.

“Disorientation from the transference, most likely,” Diabolist Mage said.

“It didn’t affect him before,” Claw-hands said.

“The effects are cumulative for some people,” Diabolist Mage said, “like drinking alcohol. Having one beer might not affect you, but after three, you start getting tipsy. After five, you can barely stand up.”

Claw-hands nodded in understanding, and then reached over to take my arm. “Come on, let’s get you to your bunk. Then you can get out of those crazy clothes.”

**********************************

Turns out that Claw-hands actually went by the name Monitor. He had guided me out of the chamber where Diabolist Mage had been holding court through a set of side doors, and we now found ourselves walking down a wide, expansive hallway, occasionally passing other people.

Monitor seemed to be more the quiet type, but I needed intel. That meant I needed to get him talking.

“So,” I said, “anything interesting happen while I was gone?”

“Only if you count sitting around waiting on you to get back as interesting. It’s a good thing you came back with the goods, too. Otherwise, the Diabolist was going to let Imo pop your head off like a cork.”

Hmmm… Apparently there was some merit to Mouse’s insistence that I bring the satchel with me. Of course, with my power set, I would never have been in any real danger, but it was nice to know that the bad guys were probably feeling relaxed and would maybe let their guard down.

“Then that means everything’s ready?” I asked.