CHAPTER 53 - FISHER

Fisher pulled the SUV up at the edge of the abandoned mine complex and cut the engine. It had looked unremarkable enough from the outside, especially from a distance—but as he had drawn closer, he’d spotted the black-garbed bodies scattered here and there, the telltale red sprayed across the orange dirt, the hole punched through the machine shop wall, and the thick black smoke curling into the air.

The fight was over, and he wasn’t much different from any of the ravens poking around the battlefield. It wasn’t like he could’ve done anything to help. He’d never fired a gun, and his ability was almost more of a fantasy than a memory. He’d been the transporter, and he’d had to wait and listen while the others did their best to stop Monkey. Then, there’d only been static and silence, and a growing pit in his gut that told him they hadn’t won.

“Anyone alive out there?” Fisher asked.

“Hey, there you are,” Sam replied. “We’re a bit banged up but no casualties.”

“And Monkey?”

“Bugged out.”

“Damnit,” Fisher said. “Then we need to get out of here and regroup, figure out what we’re doing next. Where there’s smoke, there’s a fire, and I don’t think we want to be the ones to explain what happened here.”

“Got it,” Sam said. “Give me and the kid a few more minutes to turn this place over. Might wanna check in on the girls over in the garage. Should be secure.”

“On my way.”

“Great, out.”

Fisher stepped out of the car and crossed the complex towards the truck shop. “Hey, Sab, Revenant—you two okay?”

The moment of silence said: no. Or perhaps that was just nerves.

“Sabra has been shod— shot in the shoulder,” Revenant replied. “I am attending to it.” Maybe not just nerves. After all, since when did she stumble over her words? And since when did Sabra not say a single one?

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He found them where the fight had taken place, stepping through the hole that Sabra had to have torn in the wall, his boots crunching on shards of glass. It was like someone had detonated a bomb on the machine shop floor, the great concrete slab spider-webbed with cracks and fractures, and bodies lay scattered and shattered across the breadth and width of the place.

It was somewhat strange. Capes didn’t tend to kill capes. Part of the theatrics of a brawl between empowered personalities was the urge to make your opponents no longer wish to escalate the situation. It was only when capes ran into normal people, Fisher knew, that you saw sights like this.

Sabra sat on a metal chair they had found somewhere, her helmet at her feet, her softsuit down around her chest, and the rest of her armor looming behind her like a decapitated sentinel. Sabra raised her good arm in greeting. Revenant knelt next to her, working on her shoulder.

It was not a pretty wound she had there, but, between the armor and the softsuit, it looked like the worst of it was going to be a ragged scar. Somehow, it seemed Sabra had a knack for picking up battle trophies. The gossamer strand of a scar on her cheek and brow, her crooked nose. On a man, he might’ve called the effect somewhat roguish.

“You girls okay?” Fisher asked.

“I’m fine,” Revenant said.

Sabra frowned. “Guess so.”

“Hey, look on the bright side, Sab,” Fisher said, forcing a smile. “All the best capes have at least one gunshot wound. Well, except the invulnerable ones. No pain, no gain, right?”

Her frown didn’t budge.

Fisher glanced to Revenant. Her back was pitted and scored with buckshot. In her left shoulder, the damage to her artificial skin was severe enough that a mechanism of some sort was exposed to the air. There wasn’t a trace of blood. “You good, Rev?”

“I’m fine,” she said.

“Stop saying that!” Sabra snapped. “You’re not fine! You’re absolutely not fine!” She set a hand on Revenant’s shoulder. “Let us help.” And Revenant didn’t pull away or frown or roll her eyes or make some terse comment—in fact, she leaned an inch closer to Sabra as she worked. More than anything else, that told Fisher how serious it was.

“There’s nothing you can do,” Revenant said.

“What’s wrong?” Fisher asked.

“It’s some kinda virus, isn’t it?” Sabra said.

Revenant nodded.

“What’s it doing to you?”

“Nothing major,” Revenant said. “I caused— caught it before it could wreath having— wreak havoc on anything except my focal— vocal processing.”

“Wait,” Fisher said. “Monkey hacked you?”

Sabra shook her head. “It was the staff. He hit me with it and it shut down my suit. He hit Rev with it and, well...” She gestured at her. Fisher swallowed. Despite the dry heat, the room seemed colder.

“A staff did this,” Fisher replied.

“The Staff of Command,” Revenant said. She spoke slowly and clearly, “Object EN-07, otherwise known as the Staff of Command, is a transcendental artifact associated with The Engineer. All other information is classified level Psi.”

The Engineer differed from his brethren by the simple fact that he did something none of the others did—he built things. Some of them, he left around like forgotten toys. Others were more like discarded ordinance. Some were stranger still, if they even had a purpose at all. Entire SOLAR teams descended upon any rumor of the existence of his tools and weapons and artifacts, but they could never get them all.

And now Monkey had one.

“Great,” Fisher said. “Fantastic. What’s it do?”

“It appears to subvert mechanical, cybernetic, and electronic systems.”

“Wait, subvert,” Sabra said, aghast. “He tried to take control of you?”

“We are luxurious— lucky that Elias Hawthorne does not appear to understand what he is holding. As I said, I managed to catalog— catch it before any permanent harm was done.”

There were so many horror stories of the primacy The Engineer had over seemingly the very concept of technology. The IESA might’ve banned self-aware machines and the proliferation of anything that might’ve been classed as an autonomous weapon—but what did it matter? The Engineer had killed cyborgs with their own prosthetics. Fisher flexed his hands. If Monkey figured out what he had...

“Monkeys and microwaves,” he muttered. “So, our Wukong has his staff—we need to figure how we’re going to handle this. Are you two ready to move?”

They were.

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Fisher led the way back to the car, Revenant just behind, with Sabra stomping along behind them. Jack met them halfway to the vehicle. His face was a mass of bruises and a black eye that’d take a while to fade, his lip swollen and bloody.

“Found Gate,” he said. “Tiger’s watching him.”

The idea that Gate, one of the clandestine masters of the Syndicate, had been captured by some punk with an inflated sense of his self-worth was ludicrous. Fisher tried not to think about it.

“Tell me you’re okay, at least,” Fisher said.

“Face hurts, but I’ve still got all my teeth, so, that’s good,” Jack said, shrugging. “All in all, I feel like there’s a real weight off my shoulders.”

“Jesus, you’re not just okay—you’re positively chipper.”

“I have my moments.”

“You sure do,” Fisher said. “And that’s something we’re going to talk about when we get out of here.” Ahead of them, Sam leaned against the hood of the SUV, rifle behind her head, across her shoulders. Next to her, seeming relatively unconcerned despite the obvious beating he had endured and the nullifier cuffs around his wrists, was a tanned man with brown eyes and salt and pepper hair. Older than Fisher by maybe a decade. Distinguished, handsome, even as he was.

“Mount up,” Sam said.

Fisher paused, stopped in front of the Golden Age legend, unsure of what to say.

“So,” he decided on, “You’re Gate.”

The supervillain nodded.

“Ah,” Fisher said, and no other thoughts would come to him. “Ah.”

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It was a tense ride back to the safe house, and it was not unfamiliar. It had the vibe of his old team, when someone had screwed up and an easy engagement had turned into a sound defeat. Sam lit up a cigarette. Jack stared out the window. Gate had his eyes shut, as if he were meditating. Sabra and Revenant rode in the back, and neither of them said a thing.

No one said anything. Fisher found himself clenching his teeth and forced himself to relax, which Mark would’ve gladly pointed out as a paradox. What were they going to do? Was he really surprised that things had gone bad, or was he annoyed because it’d been inevitable?

“Hit the showers and clean up before we debrief,” Fisher said, when he pulled into the garage. “Meet in the kitchen in fifteen minutes.”

“I would be happy to reduce your total number of problems by one,” Gate said, voice richly accented, “If you’re willing to come to an arrangement.”

“Want me to keep an eye on him?” Sam asked.

“No,” Fisher said. “At this point, I think I’d be willing to sit down at a table with The Nightmare King himself. I’ll be fine, Sam.”

She nodded, gave him a thumbs up, and left him alone with Gate. It was odd. Although Impel and Gate had never operated in the same theaters, had never come to blows, they had still stood on opposite sides of the Golden Age conflict—Fisher had enforced the public good and Gate had perverted it. Standing next to him like this was, all in all, somewhat disconcerting.

But if anyone knew what was going on here—what was really going on—then it was him. While removing his cuffs was far too dangerous, there was a certain hospitality that Fisher could offer to the man. From one relic to another.

“So,” Fisher said, “Tea?”

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Fifteen minutes later, Gate—freshly showered and borrowing a set of spare clothes—stirred his mug of tea. “This has certainly been quite the experience,” he said, across the table from Fisher. “Don’t you agree, Impel?”

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It was a four-person conversation. Jack sat next to Fisher, handgun on top of the table, kept pointed at Gate. Revenant stood behind them, head bowed and still. Purging the last remnants of the technopathic attack from her systems. Sabra, wolfing down a set of self-heating meals without regard for the taste, kept glancing at her. Sam was off attending to her own first aid with a needle and thread and enough grit to clear a highway.

“I was wondering if you knew who I am,” Fisher said.

“Are you surprised? My business is information, and I happen to be very good at it.”

“Not good enough if you got captured by Monkey,” Jack said.

“I’m curious how that happened,” Fisher added.

Gate shrugged mildly. “Our little hou contacted me during his attack on the Citadel. It was to be our typical bargain—and he was desperate, which would have given me an advantageous position. I underestimated how desperate he was, or how stupid. He took me hostage, used me as a human shield to escape my people, and then, as his prisoner, to make good on it.”

Something about that didn't feel right. “And you didn’t resist?”

Gate raised his cuffed hands. “With these, how could I? Besides, a man like me hopes to live a long, prosperous life. My release was only a matter of time, although I did not anticipate that it would be at the hands of such a varied bunch.”

Jack nodded. “Might’ve been longer than you thought. We ran into your bloodhound team, they came after us, and we put them in the ground.”

“Jack,” Fisher said.

Gate sipped from his mug. “It is fine. We have no shortage of employees. Besides, they would have killed you—or worse, since they would’ve taken your truths as lies. But it appears that our rampant Wukong has slipped away.”

“Didn’t you shoot him?” Sabra asked around a mouthful.

“I’m curious about that myself,” Fisher said.

Leopard didn’t respond immediately. “I had him dead to rights,” he said. “I squeezed the trigger, and... I don’t know. I think he dodged the bullet.”

“How? He’s not a cape.”

“I don’t know. Luck maybe.”

“Magic staff,” Sabra said, around another mouthful.

Fisher shook his head. “Maybe. Or maybe you couldn’t bring yourself to do it. Maybe you flinched.”

“I’d doubt that,” Jack said, in such a tone that Fisher decided it was best to let whatever was stirring there lie somnolent. Gate stirred his tea. The sound of his spoon against the mug was as deliberate as any call to order.

“Tell me this, Impel: are you hunting this monkey, or was this all coincidence?”

“Yeah,” Fisher said, “We’re hunting him. And we know you’re the reason he was in Asclepion in the first place.”

“True,” Gate said.

“What was on the Adriatic?” Fisher asked. “What was this all for?”

“I cannot say.”

Jack tapped the grip of his pistol against the table. “Sure you can, or I’ll shoot you in the face and bury you in the backyard.”

“Jack,” Fisher said, “Enough.”

Gate drew himself up and set his eyes on Jack. “You may, but then my knowledge will die with me, and you will be forever looking over your shoulder for my associates.”

“I’ll kill them, too,” Jack said.

Gate laughed politely but without mirth. “Look, I know very little of what that man is planning. Do you truly think he was the sort of man to explain his plans to a prisoner? But if you’re going to kill him, then I think we can strike a deal. In the spirit of my organization, it can even be mutually beneficial.”

But would it? Fisher knew the Syndicate’s reputation, and it wasn’t exactly dishonorable. But there was a parable he had always liked, about scorpions and frogs...

But, he thought, if a scorpion’s all you’ve got...

“We need to find him first,” Fisher said. “This country’s a big place, and he could be anywhere.”

“No, he can’t,” Jack said. “Tiger said she clipped him with a bullet, and he needs food and water the same as anyone else. Monkey said he wanted to send a message. I think I know where he’s going.”

“You think, Jack, or you know?”

“Home,” Jack said. “He’s going home. He’s going back east, to Melbourne. Back to where this all started. We had bolt holes all over the place, people who knew him before he was Monkey.”

“And he knows you know that.”

“Do you have any better ideas? Pavel, it’s the only lead we’ve got.”

Sabra asked, “And how well did your intuition work out for us just now?”

“It doesn’t matter whether it’s a good hunch or not,” Fisher said. “Either way, we’re not going to follow it.”

Jack turned to look at him. “What?”

Fisher sighed.

“Jack,” he said, “let’s assume you’re right. Let’s assume that Elias goes back to Melbourne. Let’s assume that we find him there. But there’s a problem—as we’ve just found out, he has in his possession a certain weapon. A certain weapon for which we have no counter. One that neutralized our two most capable members in a matter of seconds. One that its creator might be looking for.”

“We can figure out a plan,” Leopard said.

“And for what?” Fisher asked, and he laughed—the world was mad, and he’d become mad for a few weeks, and it was like he had only just realized it. “We can’t keep chasing Monkey. I mean, we’re practically out of money. And we’re low on ammo and gear and, frankly, morale.”

“He doesn’t get to win, Pavel,” Sabra said.

“He’s not winning, not yet,” Fisher said. “At this point, our plan should be to contact the authorities. Star Patrol has their secondary HQ in Melbourne. If Monkey has a transcendent artifact, then we must report it to the authorities, or this could spiral out of control fast.”

Sabra crossed her arms. “I hear you,” she said, but she didn’t sound happy about it. “It’s about fighting smarter, not harder.”

“Precisely. We gave it our best shot, and we’ve disrupted whatever plan Monkey had, but now we need to make sure he can’t go to ground again. I don’t like Star Patrol anymore than you, Sab, but we have to tag them in.”

“Then let’s move,” Jack muttered. “Monkey’s already got a head start. We need to get out of the null zone before we can get a call through to Melbourne. If we even can in the outback.”

“About that,” Gate said. “Take me with you.”

“I’d rather leave you here to rot.”

Gate chuckled like he was humoring a child. “As I said, a deal. A favor for a favor. All high-ranking Syndicate members have a tracking device implanted at the base of our skulls. I can only assume that the barrier blocks it as it does everything else. Take me with you. Once we are clear of the field, my people will take me off your hands, and while I do not think Monkey will be daring or stupid enough to call upon any of my associates, I will do what I can to assist your hunt.”

“No strings?” Fisher asked.

“No strings,” Gate replied, “Although your conscience will insist otherwise.”

Fisher glanced to Jack, found him glancing back at him.

“We’ll think about it,” Fisher said, uneasy, like he was all too aware he had found himself on uneven ground.

“Of course,” Gate replied. “It would be short-sighted of you to agree immediately. Take your time to think and prepare to travel. It will give me time enough to finish my tea.”

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They formed a two-car convoy, burning east. Fisher drove in silence and Gate rode shotgun, still cuffed. Sam sat in the back as, in her words, the insurance policy. It was a thirty-six-hour drive to Melbourne, and Monkey had a head start. There’d been no discussion as to whether they’d take Gate’s deal—a scorpion that owed you was better than one that didn’t. And besides, there was that thought, that Gate knew more than he was letting on.

Fisher had to know.

He gestured vaguely at the landscape. “Have you seen pictures of this place, Gate? From before the Golden Age?”

“No,” he said. “But I know that it was a desert. And, please, call me Vincent.”

“You’re not worried what I’ll do with your name?”

“If I were worried what you may choose to do with me, Pavel, I would not be sitting here.”

“Point taken,” Fisher said. “Well, I just had this thought. About evolution. When Terraforma came through here and worked her magic... what happened to all the animals that had evolved to live here?”

Gate rolled his shoulders.

“I would wager that some adapted and others perished. Unintended consequences.”

“You think that applies to people, too?”

“It must. Life is change, Pavel, and some of us are able to adapt better than others.”

Then, for a time, silence. Eyes on the road, Fisher tipped his head toward Gate. “Do you miss it, Vincent?”

“Miss it?”

“The Golden Age.”

Gate made a thoughtful noise that said nothing at all.

“Do you?” he asked.

Fisher nodded. “Yeah. Sometimes.”

“Sometimes, too. What I miss, is the feeling that the world could change. It did change, in many ways, but still remained the same in all the ones that mattered. The IESA saw to that. That is what our little hou-who-would-be-King fails to understand. The powers-that-be do, in fact, have a key rule: do not rock the boat.”

So many people had said things like that. Hell, Fisher understood it. The IESA existed to preserve the status quo, to try and ignore the systemic failure that was the Collapse. It still felt like the world was sliding to hell, the waters receding further and further out, with no hope for some final cataclysm that’d wash everything away. No chaos, no catharsis. Just a growing sense of unease and the failure to adapt to a crumbling world.

“You know,” Fisher said, “I never expected such idealism from a villain.” He smiled slightly. “Do you remember that? The speeches, the monologuing, the theatrics and photo ops? We were celebrities, even in the early days of the Collapse. Before it got as bad as it did.”

Gate nodded.

“I miss the power,” he said. “It was a time of wonderful opportunity. I miss the belief that I could make the world bend by my will alone.” He laughed. “That the world could adapt as I wished it, not force me to adapt in ways I did not wish to.”

“I know the feeling.”

“Of course, I did not truly choose to be where I am. But I saw the advantage of fading into the background when the IESA brought that madness to heel. I will take alive and prosperous over dead and infamous. Those like Exarch? They left it too late.”

“Yeah,” Fisher said and sighed, thinking of Mark. “Sometimes I wonder if I should’ve quit while I was ahead.”

“Hah. And I wonder if I should have refused to quit.”

“Quit? People still call you Gate.”

He waved a dismissive hand. “A combination of tradition and capitalizing on an advantage. The whole world has embraced this notion of institutional anonymity, which suits the Syndicate just fine.” He glanced over. “And people still call you Impel.”

“True. Old habits, I suppose.”

Gate nodded. “Yes, old habits.”

Fisher drove for a time. Gate folded his hands before him and closed his eyes—meditating or thinking, but not sleeping.

“So,” Fisher said, “from one old cape to another—how do you do it?”

“Do what?”

“Your teleportation trick, your doorways.”

Gate opened his eyes, watched the world go by outside.

“I look at a map,” he said.

Fisher snorted. “You’re really going to bullshit me now?”

“It’s not ‘bullshit’, Impel.”

“You can’t just look at the map. The line-of-sight rule—”

“Does not always apply,” Gate said. “Or does it? I can see the map, after all.”

“You’re twisting my words.”

“Why did you lose your ability, Impel? You know as well as I do that our abilities have a psychosomatic element. It was not the loss of your hands, I think, but the loss of your pride.”

“The IESA has mountains of data, volumes of science, rules and laws,” Fisher said. “If it was as simple as you claim, then...”

“Those rules exist to help the children who come into their powers, to give them focus and coherence, and to soothe the baselines who will never have them. Those laws, the Dynamis test and scale—they exist to give the world confidence that we can be understood, and controlled.”

“I guess so,” Fisher said. “I grew up before all of that.”

“So did I.”

“Don’t take this the wrong way, Vincent, but I’m getting the impression that you weren’t the mastermind of this whole situation.”

Gate chuckled—this time it was genuine.

“That’s because I am not, Pavel.”

Fisher nodded. For some reason, the admission didn't feel as glorious as he thought it had. “Ever since I arrived in Asclepion, I’ve had the feeling that there was something going on—some big mystery that no one else could see.”

“Bigger than you know.”

“Then what’s the harm in telling me? From one old man to another, Vincent. What’s going on here?”

“Ignorance can sometimes be a blessing,” Gate said, closing his eyes once more. His chest rose and fell evenly. For a moment, Fisher thought he’d crashed asleep. “Taurine was my first attempt at honoring the concord, and she went rogue. The Animals were my second, hoping that my messes would somehow resolve each other cleanly. And so, the Adriatic's secret cargo was delivered into the hands of the Concordiat.”

Fisher felt the warmth drain from his face. “They’re involved in this?” But there were those who claimed the name without the ethos. “Throne’s people?”

“Yes,” Gate said, “and they have been from the start. I do not know what will happen when I return to my people. I assume that their paladins will find me wherever I might be, and their grand design will unfold as it will. All I can do now is play my part until the bloody end. And,” he added, looking at him with the calm of a man being led to his execution, or leading a man to theirs, “when all this is said and done, Impel, I assume now that they will find you, too.”