Infiltration (5 page)

He was older in this photo than I was in mine, but still a toddler — maybe three years old. Big for his age, he bore a striking resemblance to Alpha Prime even way back then, making it easy for me to recognize him. Another giveaway was the fact that the image showed him grinning while lifting up the back end of a car.

With any other kid, you would be safe in assuming that this was trick photography of some sort, an illusion created to give the impression of a toddler with super strength. There was no doubt in my mind, however, that this was the real deal; Paramount had been known to display super powers from almost the moment he was born.

“There you are,” said an unexpected voice, snapping me out of my reverie. Alpha Prime stood there in front of me. I had been so engrossed in my own thoughts that I hadn’t even noticed him come in.

He was wearing a dark blue T-shirt and jeans, and I had to admit that it still sometimes seemed odd to me to see him out of his black-and-gold Alpha League costume. That said, at six-foot-seven and looking like a Greek god come to life, he still had a commanding presence.

“Wow,” he continued, looking around the study. “This place must make me seem a little vain.”

“Just a smidgen,” I said, putting the thumb and forefinger of my left hand close together.

“It’s not how it looks. This is all overflow.” He made a sweeping gesture encompassing the display cases.

“What do you mean?”

He sighed, almost in exhaustion. “I’ve been receiving medals and awards for decades now. If you melted them all down, you’d have enough hardware to build a skyscraper. I ran out of room in my hideaway, so I brought the excess here.”

In addition to multiple homes, Alpha Prime also had a secret base that only he knew about — his “hideaway.” Although few knew it, my father seemed to be growing increasingly weary of his role as a superhero. His hideaway served as a retreat for him, a sanctuary — a place for him to recharge his batteries.

I had no doubt that, if I asked him, he’d show it to me, but I understood and respected his need for privacy. In truth, I’d had a similar place myself, a condo that I owned. However, someone had been murdered there several months back in an attempt to frame me, and I’d essentially shunned the place since then.

“So,” I said, turning my mind back to the conversation at hand, “everything in these cases is extra?”

“Yeah. Even though I don’t have many people over, it seemed disrespectful to leave them in boxes — like I didn’t value them or what they represented — so I got the display cases.”

“And at what point did you realize that the place looked like a shrine to the great and powerful Alpha Prime?”

“Not until some of the League members came over and started razzing me about it. They haven’t been invited back,” he said with a wink.

“That’s too bad. It’s a nice crib. You should have people over more often.”

My father snorted sharply. “I’m barely here. Usually, I keep this place shuttered. I only opened it up because…”

He kind of trailed off, looking at me in an odd way. Emotionally, I felt a surge of hope and a small measure of anxiety from him, all directed at me. It took me a second to interpret it and meld it into what my father had just been saying, but then I understood: he’d opened the mansion up for me.

Not for me in the sense of having me live there, but more so in the sense of a father wanting a son to know that he was successful. He wanted me to be proud of him and his accomplishments.

I was somewhat at a loss for words, and I found myself absentmindedly tightening my grip on the framed photo of Paramount, which was still in my hand. It was at that moment that Alpha Prime seemed to notice that I was holding something, as well as what it was. I followed his gaze to the photo, abruptly remembering that it was still in my possession.

“Sorry,” I said, placing the picture back on the desk.

Alpha Prime picked the photo up. He stared at it in silence for what seemed like ages, but was probably no more than fifteen seconds. During that time, his expression never changed, but I felt a huge wave of sadness, disappointment, and similar emotions swelling within him.

“I’ve always kept this photo close — yours, too — regardless of where I was living,” he finally said. “My boys.”

“Did he, uh, did he know about me?” I asked.

“Paramount? He’s seen the picture before, but didn’t think or care enough to ask any questions about it. Of course, I get pictures of babies all the time — thousands of them every month, and most come in their own frame. Kids I’ve saved, the kids of people I’ve saved, fans who named their kids after me, and so on. Paramount probably saw your picture hundreds of times without it ever registering that it was the same one or that he’d seen it before.”

“In other words, there was nothing about my photo to make him wonder about you having it. Nothing to make him ask questions about it.”

“Looking back, though, I wish he had. Maybe some curiosity on his part would have prompted me to…to do things differently.”

“Don’t beat yourself up about it,” I said, attempting to offer support but probably sounding indifferent.

“Anyway, I should probably put this away somewhere,” he said, placing the frame facedown on the desk, with a faraway look in his eyes.

I could sense his emotional pain; it was almost palpable. Paramount had undoubtedly been the favored son while I had basically been neglected — supposedly for my benefit — and if I dwelled on those thoughts for too long, I knew I’d become angry. Nevertheless, there was no way I could ignore my father’s grief.

“No,” I finally said, sitting Paramount’s photo upright. “Don’t do that. He was your son, too, and you can love what he was in the beginning without condoning what he was in the end.”

Alpha Prime nodded, then reached out and put a grateful hand on my shoulder. “Thank you, son.”

Oddly enough, for the first time, his use of the term “son” didn’t immediately get my ire up on some level, and I found myself giving him a supportive smile. That was surprising enough, but what was even more bizarre was that we seemed to be bonding over something related to Paramount. You’d have thought the guy was dead, the way we usually tiptoed around talking about him, but in truth my half-brother was being held in some high-end, super-secret security facility. Alpha Prime knew where it was, but on this topic I was the one who hadn’t cared enough to ever ask.

“It’s too bad you two never really got to know each other,” he said, glancing at the photo of Paramount again. “Maybe knowing you, or even just knowing
about
you — that you were out there — would have made some kind of difference. Kept him…balanced.”

I kept my thoughts to myself, but I didn’t think there was anything short of a lobotomy that would have changed Paramount’s warped view of the world and his own existence. I wondered for a brief second if Alpha Prime was also thinking of his own brother (from whom he was estranged), and I was tempted to mention that I’d actually had an opportunity to meet my uncle.

Of course, I didn’t know he was my uncle at the time, and I was actually in the process of breaking into a government facility when our paths crossed. (In all honesty, it was more of a skirmish than a meeting, since my uncle was one of the supers guarding the installation that I broke into.) Bearing that in mind, as well as the fact that I committed about a dozen or more felonies when my uncle and I had our run-in, it didn’t seem prudent to mention the recent family reunion. (There was a silver lining however: I had been successful in rescuing my friend Rudi — a young psychic — and her little brother from the facility in question, which had been the whole reason for breaking in there in the first place.)

“Anyway, we should probably get going,” my father said, glancing at his watch. He turned to leave the room, and I rose to follow him. As he reached the hallway that led back to the library, he turned his head to the side and said casually over his shoulder, “Race you to the car.”

There was a sudden whooshing sound of displaced air and he was gone, leaving a powerful wind in his wake that buffeted me slightly as it whipped through the confined space of the passageway. I grinned and teleported to the garage.

The main garage, that is. There were apparently something like three of them. One housed classic cars that were essentially museum pieces — primarily just for show and rarely ever driven. Another held autos that were in need of some work (awaiting a rare part or the like).

The last garage, the one that I had popped into, was a cavernous chamber that echoed if you spoke too loudly and also housed about two dozen “drivable” cars — those that my father would occasionally take out for a spin. I was standing there, arms crossed, tapping my foot in mock impatience when Alpha Prime showed up a few seconds after I appeared.

“Took you long enough,” I said.

“Hmmm. I’ll have to check the dictionary to see when the definition of ‘race’ was altered to include teleportation,” he said.

“It’ll be right there next to the definition that says one guy can just shout out ‘Race you!’ and get a head start before his opponent is even ready.”

“Touché,” he said, then looked around, taking stock of the various vehicles. “Well, which one do you want to take?”

His question caught me a little by surprise, but I recovered quickly enough. Previously, Alpha Prime had selected the vehicles we’d taken to the games we attended. (While he drove, I usually spent my time oohing and ahhing over the car’s features.) Still, I was happy to take on this particular chore.

I spun around in a slow circle, looking over the garage’s inventory. There wasn’t a car in sight that cost less than half a million dollars. They were all posh, luxury vehicles, so it was difficult to pick one over the other. However, after a few minutes (and some ardent urging from Alpha Prime) I narrowed my options down to two: a sporty little silver import with butterfly doors and a monstrous, black SUV that looked like it had been built to withstand a missile attack. In the end, I settled on the SUV.

“Good choice,” my father said when I finally announced my decision, “even if it did take you forever. Now you’re going to have to step on it to get us there by tip-off.”

“What?” I asked incredulously.

“Didn’t I tell you? You’re driving,” he said with a wink.

Chapter 4

As massive as the SUV was, it was extraordinarily easily to handle and provided an amazingly smooth ride. Thus, I was able to get us to the game on time and without incident. Even parking wasn’t a problem; although the SUV had a wider-than-normal wheel base, my father — along with a bunch of other bluebloods — had paid out a hefty fee to have an oversized parking spot at all the sporting venues. (Apparently this was intended to keep other cars from getting too close to his own luxury vehicles, but it worked out well when he drove large autos like the SUV.)

The game itself was fantastic. My father had gotten courtside seats, and even though it was preseason, it’s just a different game when you’re that close to the action. You get sucked into everything that’s going on.

As my mother predicted, I gorged myself on junk food: hot dogs, popcorn, pretzels, soda, etc. A normal kid probably would have gotten sick eating the same volume, but I have a high metabolism.

During the game, I couldn’t help expressing amazement at my father’s uncanny ability to blend in. Despite his height, he stood and moved in such a way that he never drew unwarranted attention to himself.

“It’s the costume,” he said when I asked him about it later as we were driving home. “Just like a police officer automatically gets a certain amount of respect and deference when he’s in uniform as opposed to out of it, people automatically switch to a certain mode when there are capes around in costume. It’s actually less about me and more about the general public’s perception and reaction when I’m not in the black-and-gold.”

“So it’s not really you they love and respect,” I said. “It’s the outfit.”

“More like what the outfit represents,” he said, laughing. “People act in certain ways in response to specific stimuli. For instance, if I told you that the car immediately behind us was a police car, you’d immediately slow down and stop going twenty miles over the posted speed limit.”

“What?” I asked, totally caught off-guard. And he was right, of course; I had turned into a lead-foot without even noticing, going far faster than the law allowed.

“Sorry,” I said as I immediately began braking.

“Not a problem. Besides, it’s not really you; it’s the SUV. It’s such a smooth ride that it’s easy to lose track of how fast you’re going. However, speaking of cars, it’s odd that your choice of which one to take tonight came down to the SUV here and the sports car with the butterfly doors.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because that’s the car I’d planned to give you. I had — Whoa!!!”

The exclamatory part of Alpha Prime’s statement came as the SUV began drifting across lanes, accompanied by a cacophony of blaring horns. Needless to say, his remarks had caught me a little unprepared; I’d snapped to attention, staring at him in shock rather than watching the road. Fortunately, my lapse only lasted a second or two as I quickly regained control of the vehicle. Then I sat there stone-faced as a car that I’d cut off roared by me, the driver leaning on the horn, screaming obscenities, and making a number of rude gestures. My father thought it was hilarious.