New Olympus Saga (Book 2): Doomsday Duet (6 page)

He nodded. “I have my suspicions as well, Alessandra.  If they are correct, our enemies have infiltrated the Legion itself. Which means someone in the Legion, someone we trust implicitly, has betrayed us.”

“So you
have
thought it through. It shouldn’t surprise me, coming from the guy described as ‘as brilliant as Sherlock Holmes, as strong as Hercules, and as charitable as Abraham Lincoln.’”

Kenneth smiled wryly upon hearing the old quote. “Words nobody can live up to, unfortunately, or I’d have solved this particular conundrum already.”

“So, my wise old friend, what do we do?”

“We carry on. We prepare to face Ultimate, should he in fact be out of his mind or otherwise impaired. And we watch everybody, and trust no one.”

“Including each other?”

“I’m certain you aren’t the traitor,” Kenneth said, meaning every word. He’d gone carefully over Ali’s schedule over the last few years; she was simply too busy living her life to be part of a clandestine plot. “Keep your eyes open and watch your back. The traitor is someone seemingly above reproach; it could be anybody.”

Hyperia grimaced. “Cheerful thought, Kenneth. Do you have any suspects?”

“Three people come to mind. Meteor: he has been very unhappy about the Legion’s policies for quite some time. Daedalus Smith: he certainly has had the means and opportunity, although I can’t fathom what he would be hoping to accomplish. And General Xu: he’s always felt he was denied the power and privilege he deserves, in China and the world at large.”

“Jesus. I hope you’re wrong.”

“So do I. If anything happens to me, you’re going to have to take over and find out the truth. With John gone, you will sit on the Council until the next election. I have also designated you as the second in command on the Atlantic theater of operations. I was going to tell you tomorrow, but since you are here...”

“So you
do
trust me. Is it because you think I’m too much of a dumb blonde to be the traitor?”

Kenneth grinned wryly. “I guess us dumb blondes need to stick together. Then again, I believe your original hair color is brown.”

“You say the nicest things,” Ali said. Her smile was replaced with a solemn expression. “Please be careful, Kenneth.” Left unsaid was the simple fact that, unlike her, he was a weakling among Neos, and easy to kill.

Many had thought he would be easy to kill over the years, and they had all been wrong. He would have to prove the traitor wrong as well.

The Lurker’s Tale

New York City, New York, December 12, 1919

Mr. Night’s laugh was unnerving and devoid of mirth or any human emotion. Damon Trent had never thought laughter could be used as a tool of intimidation, not until this moment.

“My friends,” the strange man with the dark glasses said. His voice was thin but carried surprisingly well. “My dear, dear friends. Damon Trent and Daedalus Smith from New York. Konstantin Cushko, formerly from Kiev. Cassandra Camlo, from many places and from nowhere in particular. And the inscrutable Mr. Qiao, from Ikh Khüree in far-off Mongolia, and of late a fixture in some of the shadier sections of the City of London.”

The Chinaman’s face remained impassive, except for a slight narrowing of his eyes, which Damon took as a sign of surprise. The Russian looked angry at the mention of his name. Neither reaction seemed to make any impact on Mr. Night’s dark cheerfulness. “Never fear, my friends. Your secret peccadilloes are safe within these walls. Your activities with the Ukrainian Galician Army are of no concern to this company, Mr. Cushko. Neither are your commercial enterprises in England and elsewhere, Mr. Qiao. Nor Mr. Smith’s hedonistic pursuits, Miss Camlo’s checkered history, or Mr. Trent’s somewhat questionable conduct during the Great War. Your past is of little concern to me.”

Now it was Damon’s turn to be surprised. The little man spoke of things he had no earthly way of knowing. Their host wasn’t a confidence man, then, but another like Damon himself, capable of things that could not be explained by reason or science.  A part of him felt relief. He had spent much of the last six months wasting his time with charlatans and deluded fools who had not provided any enlightenment. Here he might find answers. Apprehension warred with relief, however. Mr. Night’s disturbing demeanor made it likely Damon would not like the answers provided here.

“All of you are members of a grand new elite,” Mr. Night continued. “You few, you happy few, have been chosen by a greater power for a great destiny, and I mean that quite literally, let me assure you. And you five in particular have a unique chance to play a pivotal role in the shaping of the future. I have called you here to ask you to accept that role.”

“You speak much and say little,” Cushko said. “I did not come here to waste my time. I have a war to fight. The Poles and the Bolsheviks are circling my motherland like so many wolves, and I must return there soon.”

The world should have had its fill of war, Damon thought, and yet there were still plenty of fools like Cushko, eager to lead other fools into new charnel houses. There truly was no hope for humanity, was there? What could whatever paltry miracles he and his companions wielded possibly accomplish in a world where murder had become another industry?

“You
will
work miracles, my friends,” Mr. Night said, as if reading Damon’s thoughts, or perhaps literally reading those thoughts. “And they will not be paltry things. It is within your power to become king-makers or actual kings, and to reshape history.”

“That’s bully, old man,” Daedalus Smith said, obviously not impressed by Mr. Night’s lofty pronouncements. “Would you mind telling us some specifics? I may not have wars to fight, but I could be doing better things on my week-end than cooling my heels and listening to vague speeches about great power and lofty destinies.”

Mr. Night bowed towards Daedalus. “As you wish,” he said. “And so, without further ado…” The strange man made a broad gesture with both arms and a glowing object appeared in mid-air in front of him.

At first, Damon thought he was watching a dark flame hovering in the air, but the thing coalesced into an intricate design made of radiant darkness, black with purple highlights. It shone intensely but darkly, and every instinct in Damon’s body warned him the thing was dangerous, not merely dangerous but
wrong
, something that did not belong to this world. A few steps away, Cassandra recoiled from the sight as if she had been dealt a physical blow. The Chinaman raised his hands in a fighting stance. Cushko roared a challenge in his native language, and a shield of flame appeared in front of him. Daedalus did not move; he stared intently at the dark apparition, trying to understand its workings.

“Observe, my friends,” Mr. Night said. “Observe, and learn.”

Damon tried to look away from the darkly glowing design and discovered he could not tear his gaze from it. The thing started to move, to change its pattern with a sinuous, hypnotic rhythm. He looked into the glowing darkness and, in looking, was lost.

* * *

He walked alone through blood-spattered walls. The Secret Service Special Neo Unit and their human counterparts had made their last stand by the entrance to the secret bunker beneath the White House. They had perished to the last man. A part of him, the vanishingly small bit of humanity left within the darkness, felt a pang of regret over their deaths. They had fought well, doing their duty. But duty, courage and honor were things of the past. Only power mattered.

One solid metal wall stood between him and his target. He could have ripped it off its hinges, or melted the steel with but a glance, or otherwise dealt with the puny obstacle in a myriad other ways. On a whim, he simply teleported to the other side, where a pale man in a rumpled suit awaited him. Killing the last President of the United States was a largely symbolic gesture, since the country was already in ruins. Washington D.C. had burned to the ground; elsewhere, millions were dead and millions more slowly starved in the deserts he had created; the President had been hiding in the dark like a scared child for quite some time now, ruling nothing.

He finished it quickly, almost mercifully, although mercy was no longer within his understanding. A moment later, he appeared behind a podium overlooking a plaza filled with tens of thousands of his supporters. He raised the President’s severed head for everyone to see, and the crowd cheered him wildly. Those worshipping men and women formed the core of his army and followed him as he went forth conquering, and to conquer.

In the end, only three remained, three rulers and destroyers. They met in a molten cauldron that he vaguely recognized as the city of Paris, and there they strove against each other. Their battle made continents shudder and heave. And when it was over, he stood alone, ruler of the planet. He would remake the world as he saw fit, for there was no one left to challenge him.

His laughter was a terrible thing.

* * *

Damon recoiled from the vision; he understood he had glimpsed a possible future, one where he had accepted what Mr. Night offered. That offer remained on the table. Absolute power lay tantalizingly close, his for the taking. His new gifts were but a hint of the things he would be able to do if he accepted the vision’s implicit offer.

No.

The negation was irrevocable. He felt the promised power slipping away, leaving him with nothing but regret and fear. He became aware of similar decisions made by others in the room. Cassandra screamed as her eyes were seared off by things no human was meant to see. Daedalus Smith turned away from dreams where the world was a simple, ordered place, a clockwork universe run by New Men, perfectible and eventually perfect. Konstantin Cushko tried to negotiate a better deal, and only succeeded in damning himself. Qiao’s denial was followed by an oath to achieve ultimate power on his own, to protect the world against the threat he had seen in his visions.

Damon came to himself somewhere outdoors, stumbling blindly into the night. The city streets were almost deserted; a look at his pocket watch revealed it was nearly dawn. Even as he wondered about the lost time, he realized that all his memories from that night were dissipating, leaving him groping for images and concepts that had been clear to him moments before, but which quickly became dreamlike before being gone altogether. It was a terrible feeling, having knowledge ripped out of his mind. He knew he had been made to forget something, something vitally important, and that knowledge remained, if nothing else.

He staggered down the streets, trying to make sense of it all. The invitation, he remembered, and responding to it, but he could no longer recall the address. There had been others there, but their identities were lost to him. And he had seen things that left him feeling a sense of urgency and overwhelming terror.

There had been laughter, too. Dark, terrible laughter. He remembered that well.

The Invincible Man

Lake of the Woods, Ontario, March 15, 2013

John Clarke stared into the night, seeing nothing.

The wounds had healed and the pain was gone, but the torn-up costume remained as a reminder of his humiliating defeat. Normally he would have changed uniforms as soon as he was back in Freedom Island, or at his White Sanctum in the Artic. He couldn’t go to either place. For the time being, he had no home.

John angrily shook his head. He was wallowing in self-pity instead of thinking of a course of action. His self-confidence was shot. He’d been hurt badly many times before, but rarely like this. He’d been beaten, at the mercy of his enemies. Only the intervention of a handful of vigilantes had saved him. A handful of vigilantes, and Christine Dark, of course.

“John?”

Speak of the devil.

John turned to face the girl. Her hair and eye coloring were so much like Linda Lamar’s that it hurt a little bit just to look at her. The similarities to his wife ended there, however. Linda had been strong-willed and short-tempered (‘I’m a pushy broad, and you’d better remember it,’ she’d unapologetically announced early in their relationship); Christine was shy and kindly. And yet, something about her brought back feelings he’d thought buried forever. Seeing her made him set aside his doubts and fears. It was time to start behaving like the Invincible Man once again.

“Hey,” Christine continued. “Sorry to disturb you. There’s been some more bad news. I know, what else is new, right?”

“That’s all right. What’s the bad news?”

“They found the mind-trip guy, the Dreamer. Dead. They made it look like you did it.”

That made sense, in its own twisted way. A living Doctor Cohen could have been confronted and questioned. As a murder victim, his accusations became unimpeachable. Christine could corroborate John’s version of events, but in the eyes of the law she was a criminal who had assaulted a number of law-enforcement Neos. Her credibility would be minimal.

“If we turn ourselves in, can they, I don’t know, do a mind-reading or something and show that we’re telling the truth?”

“Telepathic testimony is not admissible as evidence in court,” John explained. “It was deemed to be a violation of the Fifth Amendment. At best, it can be used as probable cause for search warrants and the like.”

“That sucks. Well, protecting the Fifth Amendment doesn’t suck, but you not being able to prove your innocence does.”

“The truth will come out in the end,” he said with a confidence he didn’t really feel. He probably shouldn’t be trying to mollycoddle the girl, but he felt an urge to do so nonetheless.

“They even planted DNA evidence implicating you,” Christine went on. “This is so effed up it’s not even funny. After we kicked the Dreamer’s ass I thought things might turn out all right Then Dad showed up and it’s been all epic fail all the time since then.”

“The Lurker was – is, for all I know – a good man,” John said. “Even if he wasn’t in his right mind, from what you said he tried to protect you even at the cost of his own life.”