Blackjack Villain (10 page)

“The money will be placed in an account of your choosing, which Sandy has already provided for us, at the end of each mission.”

I sat back, drained the glass and wondered how this would play out with my face on every magazine cover, a villain un-masked. No more anonymity, no more privacy. The ‘big time’ had its drawbacks.

She was looking at me, letting me make my decision.

“Ok,” I started. “It all sounds fine, but I have one condition. I need to know who your partner is.”

“Is that a deal-breaker?” she asked.

I nodded.

She paused a moment, and said, “What do you know of Dr. Retcon?”

* * *

Supers, Powers, Wonders, Megas, Ultras.

Everyone has a different name for us, but basically we’re enhanced humans. We share all the same characteristics as regular Homo sapiens, but we can fly, generate flames, or punch through walls. The powers are as varied as the individuals and there’s no rhyme or reason to what a person will develop.

The first appeared in the sixties, seven scientists who changed the world. As the story goes, the “Original Seven” (as they’re officially referred to), were a group of scientists doting away at a lab in an Ivy League school in the northeast, and accidentally opened a portal to another world. Depending on who you talk to, it was either a new planet, or a separate dimension, but whatever it was they fearlessly entered the portal only to find it closed behind them forever. This version of the story claims that they met a race of benevolent aliens (or gods?) that gave them the power to return, inadvertently changing them into super-beings.

I was amongst the third generation of supers, but how the rest of us came to be was all conjecture. Some theorized that the Original Seven radiated the same mutagenic properties that gave them their amazing powers, and this radiation changed normal humans in their proximity. Others thought these changes only occurred in intense exposure to the Original Seven during the embryonic stage, but nothing conclusive had ever been found. Indeed this theory was the one that mostly held, as the Original Seven were notorious in their desire for privacy and seclusion, and supers like me were a precious few. Another theory, which wasn’t as well supported, was that the location of the test itself might be the nexus of the changes that befell the generations that followed. It followed that most of the people in the second generation were from the vicinity of New Hampshire, specifically Hanover, where Dartmouth College was located. The final major theory, and the least supported, posited that the portal they used to travel (a wormhole according to the theory) was itself the conduit for the radiation that changed some of us.

But to look at the records, as many journalists had tried in the past, was to wade into a sea of redactions, Top Secret or higher clearances, and “no comments.” Most people wanted the past forgotten, and for the most part, the Original Seven had disappeared or retired, and were now long gone. One of them was dead for certain. Valiant was the most beloved of the Original Seven. Earth’s first and favorite hero, murdered by Dr. Retcon. His passing was a world-wide event, and like the Kennedy assassination, or the arrival of the first man on the Moon, everyone can recount where they were and what they were doing when they first heard Valiant had gone. Like Valiant, Global was a beloved hero, admired almost everyone. The most charismatic of the bunch, he chose sides in the seventies, and his fire elemental powers went to work for the Americans against the “Soviet Menace”. Global had retired in the early nineties, but he was still around. Another, Nostromo, was thought to be in self-imposed solitude on the dark side of the Moon, while Apostle had returned to his native Africa, and of late was been quite active in the dusty plains of Western Sudan. One of them, Ed Watters, never aspired to be super. He went home after the incident and tried to live a normal life. History virtually forgot him.

The last two of the Originals chose a different path. Instead of becoming heroes, Dr. Retcon and his beloved Lady Jade chose the path of villainy. Jade had been inactive since the Seventies, when she went on a tear robbing museums and selling art to the highest bidders. Dr. Retcon was the more dangerous of the two by far, and had threatened the world itself with destruction many times. A dangerous megalomaniac and sociopath, he was considered a menace to humankind until Global, Apostle and Nostromo combined to catch and put him away in Utopia prison.

* * *

I should have jumped out of the car right then and there.

After she told me we’d be working with Dr. Retcon, I simply sat back and looked out the window for the rest of the trip. She took my silence for acquiescence, but I knew I hadn’t signed any contract, nor agreed to a damned thing. This was a totally different monster now. No wonder it paid so much.

“Big time,” Sandy had said, and he wasn’t kidding.

This wasn’t robbing banks or knocking off a jewelry exchange. Retcon had traded blows with the best superheroes and won. The stories of his exploits were legendary, like when he’d taken the Soviet’s entire nuclear stockpile hostage, or when he’d stolen the Moon.

Working for Retcon meant the big time, for sure, and big money, but it also meant big time heroes coming for me. No more Atmosphero and the regional ilk. Now it meant fighting The Sentinels, Paladin, Lord Mighty, Epic and the Revolution, guys that could paste me without thinking about it.

Actually, that was the trick, it meant going from being a petty criminal with a colorful costume to becoming a true villain.

The more I thought of it, the more a wide smile played on my face, a smile I could do nothing to wipe off.

We turned off into an abandoned office park, with an odd-looking building standing in the middle of where a fountain used to stand before the main structure. It looked out of place with the remaining structures, as if it had been placed atop the fountain by a giant who was bored of playing with his toy. The building looked like a slice of many contrasting structures, pancaked atop of each other, each with a different artistic style. One floor was baroque, another art-deco, and another modernistic. It also looked to have a state of the art helipad on the roof, and a lower lobby entrance much like that of a lavish 1940’s hotel.

We parked in front and she swung the door open.

“Time to decide...” Dr. Walsh said, letting the question linger in the air.

I couldn’t help myself. “I’m in,” I said.

She led me out of the car and through the turn style entrance to the strange building. The bottom floor even had a desk lobby for arriving guests, thought it was empty at the moment.

“Interesting place,” I said.

Walsh flashed me a sinister smile, “This place is full of surprises.”

Chapter 4

We rode up the elevator, and it struck me that it didn’t seem to be rising directly but rather taking various turns and even moving laterally. When the doors slid open, we arrived at a study where Dr. Walsh served me another drink. She asked me to wait while the rest of the team was assembled and slipped out of a side door.

It was dark, with only a sliver of light filtering in through some blinds, but I could tell that this was a repository of some of Dr. Retcon’s finest treasures and trophies, including a bonafide Egyptian mummy casket, and rare paintings ranging from Raphael’s Deposition of Christ to Goya’s The Third of May 1808 to Renoir’s Dance at Le Moulin de la Galette to Willem de Kooning’s Woman III. The room’s decor was as diverse as the choice of paintings, covering different time periods and decoration styles.

One of the walls was dominated by an exquisite mahogany bookshelf. Strewn on the shelves were books of all eras, wrapped scrolls and parchments, random statuettes and bits of electrical experiments. I was drawn to one of the shelves, with a series of books that had the name of Tesla on their spine.

I took one, a delicate old leather thing, with the title “notes” handwritten on the cover. It felt like it might fall apart in my hand, so I was gentle with it. I slowly turned to the front page, revealing it to be a generic notebook, signed on the first page by Nikola Tesla himself and dated 1931.

It was dedicated, with darker text, as if it had been gifted many years after the original writing. The words read:

“Alec,

I’ve created a device to end all wars, and exactly as you predicted, they are not interested in it. They have made it perfectly clear by their disingenuous enthusiasm. I suppose it is safer for them to keep the old scientist inside the house, while destroying it with his mad experiments, than outside in the wild, letting God-knows whom learn from the madness.

I know this will be in good hands

Ever your friend,

Nikola Tesla”

Flipping through it, I saw the text written in almost unintelligible longhand and designs apparently illustrated by Tesla himself. One that drew my attention was a drawing of a small city with a series of ‘Tesla’ towers surrounding it, emitting a beam that formed a force shield over the city. A group of simply drawn bombers soared above the city, uselessly dropping bombs into the shield. I flipped to the back and saw the writing on the last page ended mid-sentence.

Before I knew it, this strange fellow stood beside me. I thought he was an employee of Dr. Retcon’s, but he stood there, sizing me up with a stupid grin on his face. This guy was about average height, but still a head shorter than me. He had an athletic build, agile and lean, and he wore a blue baseball cap that read “The Shit” and a faded red t-shirt with the letters “NSFW”.

“Yo, what’s up?” the skinny guy said.

He was right in my face, confrontational, but with a wide smile on his face.

“I’m a force of nature,” he said blowing a kiss to his tiny biceps.

“Is that a fact?” I said, putting the Tesla book back on the shelf where I had found it.

He turned away from me, and pounced around the study, looking at Dr. Retcon’s memorabilia. He picked up a medieval helmet and laughed.

“Ok,” he continued, “let me tell you something about myself. I’m a freak. You fuck with me and it’s over. You dig?”

“I wouldn’t want that,” I said, wondering if this was a test.

“I mean, where do I start?” He paused, putting the helm down in the wrong place and not so gently and picking up a fragile glass figurine, gesticulating wildly with it. “I’m known worldwide. See, I’ve had a bunch of names; Madcat, Redline, Nuclear Ketchup-”

I couldn’t help but laugh at the last one.

“Oh, you’ve heard of me? Good, I’ve got a new name I’m working on: Cool Hand Luke.”

I figured the guy wasn’t a threat, and was probably one of the team. I sat on a leather sofa and took a sip of my drink.

“You like it, right?”

“Yeah, it’s cool,” I said. “You a fan of the actor, or the movie?”

He seemed confused and smiled defensively, putting the glass figure down.

“There was a movie called Cool Hand Luke. It had Paul Newman in it. It was actually a book first.”

“Nah, man,” he said dismissively. “I made that shit up. The more I hear it the more I like it. And you, you’re like famous out here, right? Big Bad Blackjack”

“Not that much,” I told him. “I’m getting started.”

He grinned, still rifling through the Doctor’s things. “A nublet. Well that’s cool. Stick with me and I’ll watch your back. I don’t know the scene out here on the coast but I hear it’s cool. I bet the chicks are off the chain out here, right?”

A moment later, a humanoid figure came into the room from the same door. At first it looked like a person, because its movements were totally fluid, not like the usual jerky motions of a robot, but as soon as it came close to us, it was pretty clear that it wasn’t a living being. Though its figure was humanoid and it wore clothes, the skin was polished and metallic.

“Forgive me gentlemen,” it said, with a voice that was hollow and inanimate. “It is time for you to meet the other team members.”

* * *

The majordomo robot led us through the labyrinthine halls of Dr. Retcon’s apartment. There was art everywhere, presumably replicas of Vermeer, Renoir, de Kooning and van Gogh, but tackily displayed, intermingled with Warhol, Rothko and Picasso.

We stopped in a room that was decorated garishly. Sitting in an over-sized rocking chair was a mannequin with the head of an enormous toy rabbit. It wore a kimono and samurai swords and I half expected the silly thing to stand up and draw its weapons. My attention, though, was drawn to a vast window on the far wall that revealed the night view of Los Angeles. From the vantage point, I estimated we were somewhere north of Mulholland in Griffith Park, near the vicinity of the Hollywood sign on Mount Lee. Somehow we were miles from where I had arrived in the lobby below. And to the best of my recollection, were no structures here other than the famous sign up on this hill.

I had no time to ponder that because I noticed another wall dominated by Pollock’s No. 5, 1948, but the 8’ x 4’ sheet of fiberboard was placed sideways instead of the long way up and down as it is usually displayed. And tucked under it, almost forgotten, was Ceźanne’s The Card Players. To the best of my knowledge, it was one of the most expensive paintings ever sold at auction, but I didn’t recall it being sold to Dr. Retcon. It was most probably a copy or replica like many of the other rare paintings I had seen tonight. Next to it were a series of swords, axes and even a halberd that hung over a vintage Elizabethan sofa with a modern pair of chairs, and amidst them was a priceless Tuft Pier table, upon which a bald middle-aged man in lab coat leaned against, threatening to break its rickety legs.