Final Empire (16 page)

“The twenty-five-year-old Asian-American grew up in San Francisco,” I explained, “eventually earning a degree in psychology. He turned his focus to investing, earning millions on the stock market before his twenty-first birthday. He eventually diversified into technology, and that’s, ironically, when he ran into Sultan. They became business partners after a chance encounter at a trade show in Dubai, and Ma has lived overseas ever since. His motives remain unclear…they could be financial, or he could be doing this for the fame. One thing is for certain, though: he’s loyal to Darmaki.”

“His power seems pretty gnarly,” McGarrity said with an impressed nod. “When he tore the asphalt off the ground and whipped it through the air I nearly jumped off my couch.”

I’d almost forgotten that portions of the battle in The Fringe between Ma and the mystery woman had been captured by a handful of spectators and was recently posted on iTube – at least in shaky fragments.

“The metallic gauntlets he wears have nothing to do with his powers,” I replied. “They use electromagnetism to allow him control over certain types of material – when he’s wearing them, he can lift anything with a substantial amount of metal in it. The more metal content, the farther it can be tossed. It’s an interesting back story: the technology is actually used to build commercial airliners and satellite systems. Workers can lift thousands of pounds of—”

“
Okay we get it,”
Brynja sighed. “The gloves can throw junk. I don’t need a doctorate in metallurgy.”

Public speaking? Also not my forte.

“Sorry, right…I’ll get to the point. His
real
abilities were on display in Helsinki.”

“That was him?” Brynja asked, leaning forward over the table.

“It was,” I assured her. “The guy in black and yellow leather who had about a hundred identical twins, all attacking like a well-coordinated mob –
that
was Ma. As far as I can tell, he’s able to self-replicate.”

Gavin seemed even more dumbfounded. “How is that even possible? I mean, I know we’ve seen some crazy shit over the last couple of years, and I’ve learned to believe the unbelievable…”

“Self-replication happens in nature all the time. DNA, cells, even crystals – with the proper conditions they can make perfect copies of themselves. Jonathan Ma must have an enhanced variation of that ability.”

“So we won’t just be fighting a bunch of superhumans at the compound,” Brynja said, “as well as his regular security squad…we could
also
be facing hundreds of additional copies of this guy, too?”

“That’s what I’m saying.”

“Damn,” McGarrity whispered.

“
And
it gets worse.” Probably not the best choice of words, but we were in too deep – no point in sugar-coating this nightmare now.

“Here we have another familiar face: the man we encountered in Venice, ‘Dozer’.” I pulled up the image of a pre-transformation Paul Glendinning, without the benefit of his impenetrable bronze skin. We all knew the story, and we all knew the challenges he’d present on the battlefield. Not even McGarrity’s light sword (a weapon I’d seen slice through solid rock like it was a stick of warm butter) had been able to scratch his seemingly impervious skin.

“So he’s just hired muscle?” Gavin asked. “Or does he have something else at stake in all of this?”

“According to his bio, Glendinning’s lifelong goal was to compete in the NFL. When he manifested his abilities he was banned from the league, like every other super powered being at the time. He thought his second chance at glory had come along when he competed in Arena Mode, but…”

“But Sergei Taktarov dropped him into the Hudson River,” Peyton added.

“Right. Now he’s back: bigger, stronger and apparently more pissed off than ever – and probably looking to recapture some of his lost glory.”

I pressed my index finger into the tabletop, leaving a faint blue outline of my print on the glass. I swiped right and the presentation rolled to the next superhuman we’d have to deal with.

“We have an ID on the hundred-foot woman who stomped her way across South Africa. She’s Kayleigh Botha, a forty-two-year-old former NIU agent from Johannesburg. The National Intervention Unit deals with the worst of the worst: gang violence, urban terrorism, the taxi wars that have been raging since the mid 80s…she was a decorated member of the force until she’d lost her job after choking an unarmed man to death; she’d been taking crystal meth to deal with the stress of the job, and one day she went over the edge. Without a job or any other alternatives, she turned to arms trading and drug pushing.”

Botha’s profile picture was a mug shot from her most recent arrest. Her mop of greasy yellow hair was pulled into a tight ponytail, revealing a pale, skeletal face, battle-scarred from a lifetime of fistfights. Her sunken eyes were dark, lifeless, the whites cut through with a webbing of crimson veins. A row of faded black skulls were tattooed on her shoulder, stacked up the side of her neck, and a deep scar traced from her left cheekbone across the bridge of her jagged nose; according to her profile she’d been shot at point blank range while taking down a drug cartel, resulting in the gruesome injury. During the melee, the bullet had barely slowed her down. She knocked out her attacker and cuffed him while gunning down four others, earning the NIU’s prestigious Steel Cross of Valor in the process.

“What do those skull tattoos represent?” Peyton asked, though after I told her she’d regretted asking the question.

“It’s to commemorate her ‘justified homicides’. One skull for each person she’d killed in the line of duty. After she was kicked out of the force she kept adding skulls to her collection...at the time of her last mug shot the count was up to nineteen.”

Just days ago Botha had caused billions in property damage in Cape Town, and had flattened more than four hundred civilians in the process. I don’t know if there was enough canvas available on her body to memorialize the destruction she’d been responsible for.

The nauseated look that had washed over Peyton’s face mirrored my sentiments. Nearly every superhuman we were about to face had killed before, but this…this was entirely different. Botha wasn’t just comfortable with taking lives – she put human beings in the ground as a casual afterthought. She felt no more remorse for ending someone’s life than crushing an insect underfoot, which was literally what she’d done during her rampage in South Africa. There was no question in my mind that Botha, while at one point an upstanding member of society, was now a full-blown psychopath. Her lack of humanity made her the most dangerous member of Darmaki’s personal army.

“So aside from being one of the scariest looking people on the planet, we have to deal with the fact that she’s a giant, too,” Gavin stated flatly, now loosening his tie.

“We have no way of knowing the extent of her abilities,” I said, “aside from the obvious. Her strength, her durability…for all we know she can grow even
larger
than she already was.”

Another quick swipe of my hand revealed the kid who had caused even more damage in Sydney than Botha had in Cape Town. The waif-like teenage boy was pale, gaunt, with a head full of ridiculous red hair that sprouted from his scalp in every direction. It was his online profile picture from a dating site he’d signed up for – the only photo I could locate. From the looks of it he was at a university frat party, beer in-hand, a goofy grin stretched across his freckled face.

“Meet Trey Lucas McLemore: American university student from Jackson, Tennessee. He was double-majoring in biology and political science when he realized that he could do this…”

I projected an iTube video that McLemore had shot and uploaded himself. He was in a lab coat, standing in a darkened room. The table he loomed over was lined with potted plants of all different varieties. With virtually no knowledge of plant life I was able to identify one of them as ivy, but the rest were a mystery to me.

Trey bent his fingers into claws and tensed his face. He screamed, loud and shrill, causing the plants to tremble. Then they became still. He cleared his throat and tried again. A second, higher-pitched shriek reached a falsetto. It caused them to quake once more, and then, somehow, they took on a life of their own. The potted ivy grew and expanded, shattering its confines, slithering over the table like an anaconda. Within moments the entire table was overgrown with plants, and Trey leaped with excitement, pumping his fists in the air as if he’d just scored a touchdown.

“This is how it started. He left his dorm room shortly afterwards and was never seen again. Never even packed a bag. According to a file Detective Dzobiak sent me, he’d been listed as a missing person all this time…until Sydney.”

“All right,” Gavin said, peeling off his suit jacket. “So to recap, we have McLemore, the plant kid, Botha the South African giant, an indestructible metal goliath named Dozer, and Jonathan Ma, a kid who can photocopy himself as many times as he wants.”

“As well as Darmaki,” Peyton reminded him, her words drowning in defeat. “This is insane.”

“No,” Brynja shouted, “‘insane’ would be letting Darmaki increase his power even more, and then asking him to play nice with it. You’ve seen what he can do already – what happens when he’s fueled by the devotion of thousands of new followers…or millions? Once entire countries rely on him for water he’ll be
worshipped.
”

“I never said we should do
nothing
,” Peyton shot back, now more animated. “I’m just not doing back-flips about the prospect of going to
war
, that’s all. Unlike some people I have a conscience. I have a soul.”

“What the hell is
that
supposed to mean?” When Brynja said the word ‘that’, she slammed her fist into the conference room table so hard it sent a hairline fracture streaming across the surface, blurring the holo-projector.

Peyton stood, straightening her posture. “It means that I actually
care
if I kill someone – it matters to me who lives and who dies.”

“No,” Brynja said forcefully. “It’s more than that, isn’t it? Just
say
it.”

“Say what?” Peyton sneered. “That I don’t trust you?”

“That you don’t think I’m real.”

Peyton looked genuinely confused by the accusation. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Brynja made a gun with her fingers and pressed it to her temple. “I can read your mind, bitch. I
know
you think I’m some sort of a freak – some half-person who doesn’t belong. This is about when I came back in Thunder Bay, appearing in Kenneth’s hospital room. You’ve been thinking it for days, and I want to hear you say the words.”

“THAT’S ENOUGH,” I heard myself scream – so loud and with so much authority it was like an out-of-body experience. The outburst had cost me. My head was pounding and I had to pretend I was calming myself down, rather than fighting a wave of nausea. “We need to be on the same page, here. We need to be united. Darmaki has an entire army who are willing to lay down their lives for him. Hell, they’re willing to fly around the world and fight each other to the death for his sick amusement. This is more than just about money for them. They’re loyal, don’t you see that?
Scary
loyal. And loyal means organized. They’re going to be ready, so we need to get
our
shit together right fucking now – because you can bet your ass that when this goes down,
theirs
will be.”

Peyton, Gavin, Brynja and McGarrity stared at me, eyes wide. Even Karin – who I’d forgotten was even in the room – looked up from her com and paid strict attention.

I drew in a deep, shaky breath, running my fingers through my hair.

“Now,” I said sharply, “I have a plan. Everyone has a role, and if we stick together and can execute
it
before we execute
each
other
, we might actually have a decent shot at stopping this maniac. If you want to walk, the door is over there. No hard feelings – I’m not forcing anyone to fight this battle with me. But if you’re choosing to stay and fight, then we fight together. It won’t work any other way.”

Everyone exchanged pensive glances, but no one spoke.

“All right,” McGarrity said, nodding in agreement. “This is the Mox I’ve been waiting for. I am
really
down with this plan, now.”

I scanned the eyes of everyone in the room. “All right. Phase one. Karin, how are you at crash landings?”

A tiny smile crept across her lips. “They’re my specialty.”

And suddenly it was Peyton’s turn to look nauseated.

The massive cylindrical tube fit over my hand as if I were a glove.
A glove designed for a giant robot. It was roughly the size of an old microwave oven, like the one my grandparents used to own, and it was more than twice as heavy.

The tiny Australian tech could barely lift the device, and was having trouble latching it into place. “This’ll fit a lot more snugly when you’re wearing your armor,” she assured me, snapping the last strap behind my elbow. Once it was firmly locked in, she stood back wiping her brow with the sleeve of her lab coat. “There. She’s a beauty, right?”

I tried to lift the cannon but was barely able to tilt the barrel above my waist. I’m glad the basement-level Research and Development floor was otherwise empty, because this was a little embarrassing.

“Can we make this any lighter?” I grunted, as my cheeks reddened and I struggled to keep the device upright.

She shook her head. “Sorry, mate. You’re shipping out in the morning and there’s no time for engineering to work their magic. You’ll have to make do, Mister Moxon.”

I heard the clang of boots rapping against the steel floor at my back. “So are you planning to cosplay as a Go-Bot?” the voice called out. “Because I don’t think that’ll be enough to scare Sultan Darmaki into surrender.”

“
No,
Brynja,” I chuckled, turning to face her. “And besides, I’ve always been more of a Transformers fan. Not the movies, of course, but the toys
were
pretty bad ass back in the 80s. I remember this vintage Optimus Prime I scored off of the holo—”

“What does this
do
,” she interrupted, pointing towards my giant metal prosthetic.

“Right, rambling. Sorry. It’s an anti-matter gun.”

“Whoa, now
that
is
bad ass…” she ran her fingertips along the barrel, inspecting the exposed wiring on the side that poured from an open panel. “This thing looks a little unfinished, though.”

“Oh, it’s not even close to battle-ready,” the technician replied, wiping the short brown hair from her eyes, blinking like an owl. “It’s a prototype. Can only be fired once, and even that’ll be at around half power, I reckon.”

Bryjna frowned at the device. “What is it with you and one-shot weaponry? You’d think a billionaire could afford more than one bullet.”

I thanked the technician, whose name had escaped me, and gave her the rest of the day off. Before making her way to one of the common rooms, she ensured me that I could ping her anytime if I needed any additional help with the fitting.

“So you’re going to vaporize Darmaki?” Brynja asked, cocking her head. “I thought you said we needed him alive?”

“We do. It’s critical to our plan.”

I’d run over numerous scenarios with everyone that morning. The tempting solution to ridding the world of Sultan Darmaki was to bomb him; simply figure out a way to destroy his fortress with a high-powered explosive. Of course, there were a number of reasons why that couldn’t work. First of all, he’d intentionally surrounded himself with thousands of innocent civilians, many of whom lived in the lower levels of his compound. Take him out that way and it’s not an assassination – it’s a massacre. That, and the fact that even if I
were
to leave my moral objections at the door and try to level his compound with an air strike, he could swat a transport out of the sky with a lightning strike, a sand storm, or whatever else he wanted to conjure.

Moral issues aside, I needed him alive for a much more practical reason: evidence. If he died, America had no one to interrogate. Without a lengthy question and answer session, there would be no way for Darmaki to confess to all the crimes that he’d committed, framing me in the process. I’d,
of course
, recorded our conversation when I sent London to speak with him, but that wouldn’t be admissible in court, and it certainly couldn’t clear my name. In the year 2043, video evidence was no longer the smoking gun that it once was in a court of law; digital 3D models were cheap to purchase and quick to assemble with the right software, mimicking anyone with the press of a button. These days, even a teenager with a moderately-powerful desktop computer could replicate audio and video with incredible accuracy, and a seasoned pro could make it seem like someone was saying, or doing, literally anything on camera. The only thing that was guaranteed to sway a judge was the words coming directly from the horse’s mouth – something that would require a living, breathing super-villain to produce.

“Nothing has changed,” I explained. “We capture Sultan alive, take back my teleporting jet, and dump him on the Department of Justice’s doorstep. Once he confesses to the unsanctioned Arena Mode event this will all be over.”

“I know, I know,” Brynja said. “I remember the plan. It’s just…” she trailed off, drawing a deep breath. “I came down here to thank you.”

“Thank me? For drawing you into another life-or-death situation?”

“No,” she said with a smile that almost bordered on sweetness. “For letting me in. Giving me a spot on the team.”

This mission was optional – I made that abundantly clear for everyone involved. I didn’t want Brynja to throw herself into the fray just because she felt some misplaced loyalty towards me. She didn’t owe me anything.

“Look, you don’t need to do this just for me.”

Brynja blurted out a laugh. “I knew you were full of yourself, but
wow,
really? Of course I want to stop Darmaki and put an end to the attacks, but I’m not doing this just for
you.
”

If my face had reddened when I was unable to lift the anti-matter gun, I must have looked like a fire hydrant at that point because my cheeks were burning with embarrassment.

“It’s just...” Brynja shifted from one foot to the other, thumbs hooked over her pockets. “I used to feel things, you know? I used to
cry
...by myself, just because I needed to. I actually miss it.”

“Really?”

She snorted out a tiny chuckle. “Silly, right? It’s not like I was ever a ‘heart on my sleeve’ type of girl, but I broke down once in a while. It was music that did it. Lying on my bed with my ears covered by these giant pink headphones I picked up at a thrift store, I’d stare at my ceiling, let a song wash over me, and I’d cry. It was this amazing release. Afterwards I’d felt like the tears had cleansed me somehow. It was so cathartic and beautiful, and now...”

She paused. Her steely blue eyes had grown cold and still, like a lake after a storm.

“
That’s
what Arena Mode took away from me,” she said forcefully. “The bloodshed, the death...something inside of me broke and I don’t know if it’ll ever be whole again. It’s like part of me can’t experience beauty anymore.”

I offered a small nod. I knew exactly what she meant. I’d experienced it as well, and she’d just articulated it in a way that I never could. Not that I’d spent a lot of time searching for the words...I tried to forget more than I tried to remember.

“I thought I was rid of Arena Mode forever, but when I saw Sydney, South Africa, Helsinki...the buildings collapse, the fires...and the
kids...
” She glanced away, biting down hard on her bottom lip. “I won’t let an entire generation get broken inside. This is my fault and I’m going to help fix it.”

“I know you’re upset,” I said, “and I am too. But you can’t blame yourself.”

“I’m trying not to, believe me. But after selling the jet, and then not telling you about the Kremlin, it’s just…I don’t know
what
I am. After I came back I was confused and scared and was a shell of myself – sometimes I think I still am. But now I know
who
I am. I’m the type of person who stops bastards like him.”

I reached out and gave her shoulder a gentle squeeze. “Thank you…there’s no one I’d rather have by my side tomorrow.”

Brynja wiped her face with both hands and shook her head, as if to shake herself loose of the vulnerable mask she’d been wearing. “Arrgh,” she groaned, followed by a soft laugh. “I’m sorry. You don’t need this shit right now. It’s just that I spent months alone on that stupid island with my staff, who only spoke three words of English between them. And now I’m here with human beings who know me and understand me and blaaaah! It’s all spilling out.”

I let out a tiny chuckle of my own. “I get it. It’s all good.”

“And I know you have enough to worry about, with your—” and then she cut herself off mid-sentence, eyes darting off to the side. “I mean, dealing with Darmaki, and your business issues. It must be hard.”

Brynja was getting better at lying, but she wasn’t good enough to fool me. Not yet, at least. That single lapse in concentration led to a stutter in speech, but it was no accident. She was about to reveal something she knew – something she didn’t want
me
to know that
she
knew – and it had slipped through the cracks.

And there was only one thing it could have been.

“You know,” I said coarsely.

“I know what?” she asked with far too much innocence in her voice. Her pitch raised like a tiny bell blowing in the wind – it was subtle, but it was there.

I narrowed my eyes. “Don’t bullshit me.”

She glanced back over her shoulder towards the elevator, ensuring that no one else lingered in the laboratory. “The box,” she whispered. “That is really,
really
messed up, Matt. I’m sorry, but…”

“It’s
not,
” I flamed through gritted teeth. “You shouldn’t even know about that. What have I told you about my head? My thoughts and memories aren’t your goddamned HoloFlix account! You can’t just log in and start scrolling around for entertainment whenever you feel like it.”

“I can’t help it,” she pleaded. “Stop thinking so fucking loud and I’ll stop reading you!”

“That doesn’t make any…” I bit down on my tongue. “Just stay out, all right? This, right here—” I pointed towards my head with a sarcastic twirl of my finger, “is off limits. What about that don’t you understand?”

“She’s right not to trust you,” Brynja said under her breath, storming back towards the exit.

The elevator doors slid open, she stepped aboard and they closed with a soft ping.

I didn’t follow.