People like to call Arcadia ‘the city that was built in a day,’ but that’s not entirely accurate. It’s true enough that the island itself was raised from the seafloor by Pallas singlehandedly, and that she constructed the very first part of the city in a matter of hours. It was perhaps the most terrifying, awe-inspiring display of metahuman power in living memory. But what a single metahuman accomplished in one day pales in comparison to what an entire nation of them has accomplished in fifteen years.
Architects bemoan the fact that, unless they happen to also be metahumans themselves, Arcadia is closed to them. The reason they crave a chance to study the city-state is because it’s perhaps the only legitimate example of a truly divergent culture in modern history. Arcadia’s builders are simply not constrained by the same rules as the rest of us. Inverted pyramids balance on a single point, a spire of singing crystal changes its tune based on the angle at which light reflects through it, one home appears to be contained within a massive sphere being held up by a statue of Pallas herself- but instead of hunching over under the weight, she’s holding it up with a single finger. And those are just what I pass walking down a single city block.
In the distance, I can see the American embassy, a massive tree large enough to house a hundred people, where Dryad conducts diplomacy with those who presently rule in Pallas’s stead. The exact nature of her indisposition has been kept under wraps, both because the truth involves the Council’s existence, and because the Arcadians don’t exactly like to project weakness. Their situation became somewhat tenuous when their most powerful citizen was no longer available as a living deterrent, but considering they could still field an entire metahuman army, regime change isn’t exactly in the cards.
Getting in was fairly easy. Roman had someone ‘on the inside,’ as it were. Even Arcadians need contraband delivered discreetly, and more traditional smuggling methods don’t work when customs has people with super-senses on their payroll. One of his couriers shepherded me across, with the Thresher making sure I had the proper safety equipment. I still ended up throwing up in an alley, but once that was done, the disorientation passed much more quickly.
The hard part is going to be getting to the rally point itself- Tahir’s house. It’s not as if I can just walk up to the front door, considering he’s a high-ranking government official. Contacting him directly isn’t an option either, as my implant is still offline, and I don’t have his phone number. Besides Kellan, who I had a preexisting personal relationship with before the Council, I don’t have any discernible connections to the other members that someone would be able to find if they looked into my personal life. It would raise questions if somebody looked through my contacts and found the First Minister of Arcadia next to my tailor. And even if my implant was online, I have no idea if Tahir is still being held captive or not. Or if Kellan and Darius successfully made it here. That means I’m going to have to take another route.
Strolling down the street, I keep my eyes peeled for a peace officer, as they’re called here. Since just about everybody in Arcadia is a living weapon of some sort, traditional law enforcement isn’t as important. However, keepers of the peace are necessary in every society, and this one is no exception. What strikes me as I watch the crowd is how common metahumans with physical mutations are here. Almost all major hero groups everywhere else in the world are full of conventionally attractive types, and even villains tend not to have severe deformities for the most part. That’s because those who do, tend not to make it that long. Sure, in cosmopolitan cities they’ll be tolerated, though treated more like curiosities than actual people, but in the more backwards parts of the world- the American South, or Saudia Arabia, for instance -they’ll often be ostracized from a community, if not outright lynched. It’s a oft-repeated idea that the ‘normal’ metahumans have been blessed by God, while the ‘freaks’ are agents of Satan.
Witnessing one such act of hatred is what set Pallas on the path to creating this place, and it makes me glad to see that they appear to be thriving here, even if the whole notion of an ethnostate in general is somewhat uncomfortable. At the very least, Arcadia didn’t displace anybody when it was created, considering the island itself was sitting on the bottom of the ocean until Pallas came along. And there are a few humans here, mostly family members of other metahumans. Occasionally some Western newspaper will run a ginned-up story about how they’re ‘second-class citizens,’ but it’s mostly propaganda.
Eventually, I spot somebody wearing a badge. Police here don’t wear uniforms, since the prevailing fashion trend is a blend between casual clothing and superhero costumes, many of which feature components designed to accentuate or facilitate the use of powers. This officer is no exception, as she appears to be wearing a suit made mostly of metal plates molded to fit her body, with a set of wide, bladed metal wings extending from the back. To top it off, she’s got a silver helmet with a thin blue visor. Clearly my throat, I approach her position, floating above the crowd.
“Officer? Excuse me, officer?”
It takes a moment before she notices me, or perhaps before she decides I’m worth her time. The wings fold back into her armor, and she descends down to my level, floating a few inches off the ground with a bored look on her face.
“What is it?”
I have a feeling I look somewhat out of place, clearly wearing non-Arcadian clothes. My jacket is open, revealing my uniform beneath, which hopefully indicates that I’m not just a human who managed to sneak in somehow.
“I’d like to invoke a Code Perfect.”
“A what?”
“Code Perfect,” I repeat patiently. “If you aren’t familiar with it, contact your superiors and ask them.”
The cop’s lips form a thin line, unimpressed. Her armor bristles.
“Don’t waste my time, buddy.”
It seems Arcadian police aren’t so different from American ones after all.
“Just call it in. If they don’t recognize it, you can lock me away for however long you’d like.”
She sighs heavily, perhaps contemplating the costs and benefits of spearing me with one of her wings and being done with it, but eventually turns away and places two fingers to her ear.
“Dispatch, I have some guy here who says he’s got a ‘Code Perfect.’ You know anything about that, or is he just winding me up?”
Silence for a few moments- from her, at least. The crowd continues to generate a low, ambient rumble. Still, Arcadia is quieter than just about any other city I’ve ever been to, because it’s not built for cars the same way the rest of the world is. Instead, the primary mode of transportation- besides flying, for those who are capable -is public transit, mainly the maglev trains. An elevated rail system intersects most of the city-state, while the streets are blessedly free of the sound and stench of gas-guzzling commuter vehicles. With any luck, we’ll be able to transition the rest of the world to this decidedly more sensible system within my lifetime.
Eventually, the officer speaks again.
“Are you serious? Really? ...yeah, yeah, okay. I get it. Sheesh.”
She turns around, looking displeased.
“Okay then, Mister Code Perfect. Looks like you’re legit.”
Pulling a small metal disc about the size of a fifty-cent coin from her pocket, she tosses it into the air. As it flips, the disc appears to unfold outwards, until it’s a little larger than a manhole cover. Rather than hitting the ground, it hovers just above it, right in front of me. At the officer’s gesture, I step on, and she uses what I presume to be her ferrokinesis to lift it into the air. Metal strands wrap around my feet, preventing me from losing my balance and falling. She unfurls her wings and flies on ahead of me. Ordinarily, I wouldn’t have done something quite so grandiose, but we’re on a tight timetable here.
Uncomfortable as being rooted in place is, the flight does give me a good view of the city. I spot an open-air market, and make a mental note to check it out under different circumstances, perhaps to bring Roman and the others a souvenir, or to get a gift for Ishtar. If she’s alive.
Arcadia does have currency, but mainly as a convenience for bartering and the like. Basic necessities are guaranteed for all citizens, and the vast majority of undesirable jobs have been automated in one way or another, leaving most free to pursue their passions, or simply do nothing at all. It helps that Arcadia has a relatively small population, so they haven’t run into any serious scarcity yet. Eventually there won’t be any more space for housing, at which point I imagine they’ll have to dredge up another island, or perhaps start tearing down the more ostentatious art installation homes, and replacing them with apartment complexes. The day that happens, however, will be the day Arcadia ceases to be meaningfully distinct from any other city in the world. My hope is that we’ll have colonies on the Moon and Mars well before then, and that scarcity will have ceased to be an issue completely. But none of that is on the table if we allow Atlas and the Vitruvian to tear down everything we’ve built.
I’d feel less strongly about it if they’d articulated any sort of positive vision for the world. They are heroes, after all. But ultimately, it seems like they’d be happy just to return the world to the state it was in before the Council came into being. And that, I simply cannot abide. Even under the regime of Geas, Machina, and Gilgamesh, things were far better than before. And they’ve only improved since then, a few hiccups notwithstanding.
On the other hand, the Vitruvian’s objections aren’t entirely unreasonable. Taken in a vacuum, our methods certainly seem suspect. Network’s power sounds like a moral abomination on its face. But what he failed to understand is that it’s not reasonable to judge things without context. Yes, Network has effectively killed thousands of people, but the alternative isn’t a world where nobody dies. It’s a world where far more people die for utterly senseless reasons, most of them completely undeserving. The number of lives he’s taken is miniscule compared to those that would have been lost to war and genocide if he never intervened.
The same goes for our disregard of democracy. In a perfect world, the Council’s existence wouldn’t be necessary, because every citizen would be an enlightened, altruistic individual who could make the optimal decision for the well-being of all humanity. And in that world, politicians would be public servants with the best interests of their constituents at heart. But prior to the Council’s existence, there wasn’t a single nation on Earth where that was true of most people or politicians. It’s not even their fault, for the most part. The system is set up in a way that incentivizes selfishness on every level, and most people have been subjected to decades or more of highly effective propaganda, which has effectively erased their ability to think critically. If we simply relinquished our power, they would go back to doing exactly what they were doing before- prioritizing short-term profit over the long-term survival of the species, sending thousands to their deaths in wars of aggression, and otherwise immiserating the vast majority of humanity for the benefit of a tiny number of elites.
My hope is that the Council’s efforts will slowly begin to undo the effects of all those years of propaganda and kleptocracy. Perhaps one day, the Council itself will no longer need to exist. But until then, it would simply be too dangerous to let things return to the way they were.
“So who the hell are you, anyways?”
The officer’s inquiry snaps me back to reality.
“A friend of the First Minister,” I reply coolly. “That’s all you need to know.”
“Fine, be that way,” she grumbles. Her accent indicates she was probably born in America, which would explain a few things. “We’re here.”
Remaining in the air, she lowers my platform down outside of Tahir’s home, and retracts the metal strands to let me step off. Without a word, she flies off. Two guards stand beside the fence in front of the house, which looks relatively modest and ordinary compared to some of the architectural marvels I passed by earlier.
“You’re clear to enter,” the guard on the left says. He’s wearing a pair of custom mirrored sunglasses with a third lens covering what I presume is an additional eye on his forehead. The gate swings open and I pass through with a curt nod to the both of them. The police dispatcher must have called ahead to let them know I was coming.
The path up to Tahir’s front door passes through a well-tended garden. I recognize most of the flowers, but some are clearly unique to Arcadia, likely created by their genetic engineering labs. The colors are impossibly vibrant, and seem to shift and shimmer as I walk past. There’s no doorbell, just a heavy brass knocker in the shape of a snarling lion’s face. I knock twice and wait patiently for a few moments.
Most of our rally points are in anonymous locations where nobody would ever find us. Aleph is different. On one hand, if a potential enemy knows that Tahir is one of our members, this would be an obvious place to look for him. But on the other hand, Arcadia is perhaps the most secure place on the planet to hide. Even Atlas and the Vitruvian wouldn’t come after us here, not with an entire nation’s worth of metahumans to protect us.
“Coming,” someone calls from the other side of the door. A second later, it swings open to reveal one of Tahir’s kids. The younger boy- Orhan, if I recall correctly. He looks to be about six or seven, with double-jointed legs that look like they’re made out of carbon fiber, and clawed feet that are wrapped around seemingly-frictionless orbs that he shifts back and forth on restlessly. The upper half of his body appears ordinary, but I’m fairly certain he can transform fully into a form suited for super-speed, or go completely human if he so chooses.
“Hi.”
“Hi,” he repeats. “Who are you?”
“I’m a friend of your father’s.”
“Oh. Well, he’s not here right now.”
“I see. Would it be possible to speak with your mother, then?”
He regards me suspiciously. ‘Stranger danger’ isn’t really applicable in this context, as I would never have gotten past the guards if I was a total unknown. Not to mention the fact that one of the flowers I passed by was a hidden DNA-sniffer that would have sprayed me with a lethal neurotoxin if it didn’t recognize me.
“Okay.”
Orhan zips off into another room. My respect for Tahir instantly triples. Dealing with kids is hard enough, but one who moves that fast has to be a nightmare. Soon after, he returns, this time followed by a miniature sandstorm that coalesces into the form of Tahir’s wife. She doesn’t look especially pleased to see me.
“Winters.”
“Marisa.”
“Is my husband with you?”
“No. Are any of the others here yet?”
“No.”
There’s an uncomfortable pause. Orhan glances between his mom and me, looking confused. Then Marisa sighs.
“Why don’t you come in.”
She steps back to allow me entry, and I follow, closing the door behind me. Orhan zips around the two of us in a figure-eight, until Marisa raises a hand in front of her. He stops short for a moment, then goes back to shifting back and forth in place.
“Orhan, why don’t you go play with your sister?”
“But anne, I don’t want to! She always wants to race me, and then she cries if I don’t let her win!”
Marisa pinches her brow.
“Dear, daddy’s friend and I need to have a grown-up talk.”
“Is it about insurance? Dani at school told me that grown-ups like talking about insurance when we’re not there.”
Trying to keep myself from cracking I smile, I answer before Marisa has to.
“Yes, we’re going to talk about insurance. It’s very boring, I promise.”
Still looking unconvinced, Orhan folds his arms. I reach into the armory, with the boy’s eyes widening at the miniature portal, and pull out a small mechanical hummingbird. While Marisa watches, I place it in his hands gently.
“Go out into the backyard, and throw this up in the air. It’ll fly all around. If you can catch it three times, and bring it back without breaking it, you can keep it.”
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
Orhan doesn’t even respond, just cups the device in his hands gingerly and races out towards the back door. His mother seems torn between gratitude and disapproval.
“It’s perfectly harmless, I swear.”
She rolls her eyes and heads into the living room. I take off my shoes and follow her. There’s a fire pit in the center of the room, closed off by glass so transparent it’s next to invisible, with iridescent blue flames flickering gently. She pays it no mind, simply sinking into a spot on the couch that looks to be her usual, judging by the depression she’s worn into it.
“All right, Winters. What is this about?”
Something tells me she won’t appreciate any attempts to sugarcoat the truth.
“We’ve been attacked. Tahir was captured.”
As the words leave my mouth, Marisa flinches, flickering back into her sand-form for a split second. Fortunately, it doesn’t seem to leave behind any particulate when she does so, otherwise keeping the house clean would be a nightmare.
“A rescue operation is already in progress,” I reassure her. “He may be on his way here already. We’re avoiding long-distance communication at present, for security purposes. Otherwise I’m sure he’d have already contacted you.”
“I see. And you thought it wise to come here, where my children live, during this crisis?”
It’s perfectly reasonable that the children would be her first concern, but I don’t think the criticism is warranted in this case.
“They’d have to go through an army first. Besides, they wouldn’t harm your children. It’s just us that they’re after.”
Tahir insisted on telling his wife about the Council after we brought him in. It would have been fairly difficult for him to explain his absences otherwise, and she understands that she can’t tell anybody else. But she’s never been especially happy about his involvement. Or particularly fond of any of his coworkers. Especially me, for whatever reason.
“Lovely. Does this mean more of you are on the way?”
“I’m afraid so.”
Marisa frowns and gets up wearily.
“I’ll prepare some snacks.”
“I’d be happy to help, if--”
“You’ve done enough already.”
----------------------------------------
While Marisa is in the kitchen- I suspect prolonging the process in order to avoid speaking with me further -Orhan comes back into the room. Rather than zipping in as before, he rolls in slowly, an apologetic puppy-dog look in his eyes. He holds out his hands, revealing the hummingbird, largely intact but with a bent wing.
“Sorry, mister.”
“Don’t worry,” I say, summoning a reassuring smile. “Did you manage to get it all three times?”
He nods sadly. It’s a genuinely impressive feat, though, as the hummingbird is designed to calibrate itself to the runner’s speed. By the third attempt, it should have been just fast enough to stay out of his reach- which is probably why he ended up damaging it in the process of catching it.
“That’s incredible. Here, I’ll fix it up and you can have it back.”
“Really?”
“Yes, of course.”
Orhan watches raptly as I take a set of miniature tools out of my belt, and tweak the trinket back into shape. After a minute or two, it’s back in working order, and flits around the room happily before alighting on my shoulder. Thankfully, Kellan isn’t present to make any jokes about me being a Disney princess. Plucking the bird off my shoulder, I hand it back to Orhan.
“Now, I want you to remember a few things. First, don’t use it inside the house, or your mother will be upset with me.”
“Okay,” he replies seriously.
“Second, even when you’re outside, always be careful when using it. Each time you catch it, it’ll get a little faster for next time. But I don’t want you getting hurt trying to grab it, all right?”
“Don’t worry,” he replies breezily. “It’s really hard for me to hurt myself when I’m going fast.”
To demonstrate, he shifts fully into his ‘speed form,’ black metal coating his flesh. A chitin-like helmet wraps around his head, with a tinted black visor. A moment later, he shifts back. It’s easy to see how his father’s abilities influenced his. Perhaps the daughter will manifest ones closer to Marisa’s when she’s older. Or none at all. Hopefully Tahir will treat her the same either way.
“Very cool. Last rule- remember to be gentle with it. If you do break it, give it to your dad, and he’ll give it to me to fix. But I’ll only fix it once every month. So if you break it too often, you’ll have to wait to have it back.”
“Got it,” he replies with a smile, before zipping off once more.
----------------------------------------
The next two hours pass relatively uneventfully. I spend most of it watching the news, which largely consists of the Arcadian perspective on the Coma Crisis. Almost nobody here has been affected, because the Council has no need of further influence within Arcadia, its leader being one of our members. Naturally, that almost instantly became a primary talking point, with the newscasters touting Arcadia’s strength in the face of an attack that virtually every other nation has fallen victim to.
Not much of an attempt is being made to disguise the fact that the news is essentially a propaganda outlet, but I chalk that up to Arcadia being a fledgling nation. Given a few hundred years, they’ll become just as adept at obscuring the true role of the media as the United States is. Once I’m bored with that, I switch to the foreign channels. Despite what one might expect, they aren’t censored here. Arcadia may be an autocracy, but nobody is being kept here against their will.
Unsurprisingly, the hysteria surrounding the Network situation only continues to grow with every passing moment. The White House is already claiming that the President is beginning to recover, though of course no hard evidence has yet been put forth. Axel didn’t always directly control heads of state- up until a few years ago, he mainly relegated himself to high-ranking advisors and the like, using their influence to steer their superiors more subtly. But after it came out that Nicholas O’Connor had been implanting subliminal programming in many world leaders, under the guise of ‘treating’ them at the Lethe Clinic, many of them were forced to resign, putting Network in a perfect position to have his people step in. And because he’d already been controlling them for years, there was no risk of anybody noticing a sudden change in personality.
The ruse allowed us to expand our influence greatly, making a number of projects far easier to accomplish. On the other hand, it means this crisis is even worse than it would otherwise have been- something we clearly failed to prepare for sufficiently.
Saving me from further second-guessing, however, is a new arrival. Rather than knocking on the front door, however, they descend directly into the backyard. I don’t get more than a glimpse through the window, and fearing the worst, immediately make a break for the back door, sidearm in hand. Marisa gets there before me, sand surging through the gap underneath the door. I stop short once I’m outside, however, upon realizing who it is.
“Hi,” Orhan says cheerfully, the hummingbird momentarily forgotten. It continues to race around the backyard, passing through Marisa’s sandstorm and struggling for a few moments, before I summon it to my hand with a gesture.
“Hey,” Kellan replies. He’s still wearing the same casual clothes as before, with the suitcase having landed just beside him. So did Darius, who’s already scanning the surrounding area, giving Orhan a suspicious look.
“Orhan, go inside,” Marisa instructs, having returned to normal.
“But--”
“Now.”
She doesn’t raise her voice, but her tone offers no room for argument. He disappears in a blur, and I release the hummingbird to go after him.
“Hawkshaw?”
Kellan shoots her a wink and puts a finger to his lips in a mock shushing motion.
“You couldn’t have just come in through the front?”
“Sorry. I couldn’t exactly hop on a commercial flight without any papers. Had to pay somebody off to fly us over instead.”
“How did you even enter Arcadian airspace without being shot down by-- ah, that’s right. Tahir’s code.”
Sighing heavily, Marisa turns around and walks back inside.
“You may as well come in,” she says without looking back. “I made some snacks.”
Darius looks to Kellan for permission, and when he receives it, hurries inside after her. The detective and I linger in the backyard for a few moments.
“Nothing from your ‘ace’ yet?”
He shakes his head, but looks unconcerned.
“How did you even get here before me?”
“Trade secret,” I reply with a smirk.
“Ah, so that’s how it’s going to be.”
Kellan follows me back inside. When we enter the living room, Marisa is nowhere to be found, but there’s a snack platter resting atop the fireplace, which I suppose must also double as a coffee table. Darius is seated, eating a spinach wrap, while Orhan talks at him rapidly.
“--and there’s a part at the end of every episode where Miss Pallas comes and says what the lesson of the day was. Last week the Time Team went back to cowboy times, and there was a man, and he had all of the cows in the town, and he was making everybody pay too much for the milk, so the Time Team made him share his cows with everybody else, because it was ine- ineff--” He struggles with the word for a moment, sounding it out carefully. “Inefficient resource allocation.”
“Fascinating,” Darius replies flatly. When we walk in, he looks to Kellan, a silent question in his eyes. The answer he receives is clearly negatory, because he sighs and takes another bite, while Orhan continues talking.
Seating ourselves a short ways away from the pair, so their one-sided conversation fades into background noise, Kellan and I are silent for a little while. He grabbed a handful of olives on the way over, and pops them in his mouth one by one, before realizing he forgot to get a napkin to deal with his now oil-covered hand. I produce a handkerchief and pass it to him wordlessly.
“Thanks.”
“No problem.” I pause for a moment, weighing my next words. “Have you spoken to Olivia yet?”
He seems less annoyed by the question, and more frustrated- not with me, but with himself, or perhaps the situation at large.
“No. She’s not directly involved with any of this, and we don’t exactly advertise our relationship to the world. They’ve got no reason to go after her.”
“It might still be prudent to warn her. Just in case.”
“I know. But if she knew I was in trouble, she’d insist on coming to help. And I just...”
He trails off, irritated.
“You allowed her to help us with Geas. She very nearly died fighting Gilgamesh, to boot.”
“Okay, I didn’t allow her to do anything. That’s- that’s not how our relationship works.”
“A poor choice of words,” I reply, rolling my eyes. “The point being that she’s more than capable of taking care of herself.”
“I know,” he says again, more forcefully. Pursuing the topic further seems unwise, so I decide to let it go.
“What of your team?”
“They’re fine. Probably taking advantage of everybody being distracted by this Network thing.”
“I see. Considering your association with them is very much public knowledge, I’d suggest offering them forewarning as well. A retaliatory strike against them is hardly out of the question, after all. And their assistance with the coming conflict would doubtlessly be valuable as well.”
Kellan sighs. The reason for his frustration is simple- to do as I’ve recommended would involve revealing the Council’s existence to the newer members of the Front Line, something he and Adamant have avoided thus far. It seems circumstances have forced their hand at last.
“You’re right.”
Standing up slowly, he stalks off into the other room to go call Vindicator. Without his presence, I find myself unable to tune out Orhan’s seemingly-ceaseless chatter entirely. Deciding to come to Darius’s rescue, I get up to approach, before realizing with a start that the older boy is actually the one talking. By the sound of it, the Time Team traveled to feudal Japan in a recent episode, and he’s pointing out every historical inaccuracy in Orhan’s retelling, with excruciating detail. To my further surprise, Tahir’s son doesn’t seem upset. Rather, he’s listening intently, clinging to every word.
“Furthermore, shogun isn’t a name, it’s a title. And it wasn’t called a kingdom when they were in charge, it was a shogunate.”
Smiling to myself, I slice off a few bits of cheese and pair them with some whole-grain crackers included among Marisa’s snack platter. She hasn’t shown her face in a while- perhaps tending to the other child while Orhan is momentarily occupied. Not long after, Kellan walks back in and sits down next to me.
“I told them to stay off the radar for now. They’re willing to help, but we don’t need them here right now. If we draw too much attention, Atlas might decide to risk a frontal assault.”
“Besides,” I reply, “if the next person to walk in isn’t her husband, I’m fairly certain Marisa will kill the lot of us.”
Across the room, Darius stops speaking abruptly, and looks from me to the doorway, as if already thinking of ways to kill Orhan’s mother even while transformed. The younger boy pokes him, and he flinches, but relaxes swiftly and goes back to his impromptu history lesson.
“You’re not wrong,” says Kellan, tracking the exchange as well. Seeing Darius interacting normally with someone closer to his own age seems to make him happy.
The news has been playing on mute in the background through everything, the coverage of the crisis continuing, despite a lack of meaningful developments. Suddenly, however, the picture changes to what seems like an emergency broadcast. I hit unmute on the remote immediately.
“--interrupt your regularly scheduled programming to deliver news of an ongoing crisis. An unidentified metahuman has appeared within Arcadian borders, and engaged in a conflict with security forces. We take you now to the scene--”
My first thought is, of course, that it’s Atlas. But as the live footage comes on, I breathe a brief sigh of relief. Whoever the interloper is, it’s not anybody I recognize. He’s got a buzz cut, and wears a skintight short-sleeve shirt with black jeans. He may not be Atlas, but he is holding his own against five or six other metas. Fortunately, the fight seems confined to the skies for the moment, but if that changes, people are almost certainly going to get caught in the crossfire.
“Is he one of theirs?”
“Worse,” Kellan sighs. “He’s one of mine.”
----------------------------------------
Within less than a minute, Hawkshaw is back in his armor, and we’re en route to the scene. Marisa reluctantly lent us the keys to her AV, a personal flying vehicle that won’t be commercially viable for another decade, because of how expensive a single unit is. If we so much as scratch the paint, I’m certain she’ll strip the skin from our bones with her power.
Unsurprisingly, Kellan already knows how to fly one of these things, so I take the passenger seat. He’s clearly quite frustrated, and I don’t want to antagonize him, but I can’t suppress my curiosity.
“Is this who you sent to free Haley and Tahir?”
“No. He’s another one of my ‘aces,’” he answers bitterly. “I called him in earlier. More insurance for dealing with Atlas.”
“Well, he certainly seems to possess the requisite power. But why pick a fight with the local law enforcement?”
“I have absolutely no goddamn clue.”
The rest of the short flight passes in silence, besides Kellan’s fuming. It’s not long until we can see the fight- first at a distance, then suddenly much closer, as a solid hit sends one of the Arcadians flying straight at us. With a deft maneuver, Kellan manages to avoid a collision, and brings the AV to a halt in midair. He smacks a button on the console, and grabs the small corded microphone that emerges. When he speaks, the words boom out of the AV’s external speakers.
“Code Perfect! Stand down, now! All of you!”
Not all of them seem to get the message. One of the Arcadians, who looks to be using a flight pack rather than flying under his own power, strikes at the so-called ‘ace’ with a set of energy lashes, wrapping around his arms and legs. While he’s restrained, one of the others takes the opportunity to strike, unleashing a barrage of crystalline shards, all of which shatter against him. From behind, my ‘friend’ with the wings swoops in to slash at him, but the edges snap off without so much as damaging his clothes. Kellan swears under his breath.
“Bring us closer,” I say, reaching into the armory. It’s difficult to do in such close quarters, but I manage to retrieve a sonic cannon. As Hawkshaw approaches carefully, I roll down the window and stick my head out, pointing the weapon at the combatants.
The interloper manages to snap the lashes holding him in place, but before he can retaliate, I open fire. It strikes several of the fighters at once, and they all clap their hands to their ears in agony, before I take my finger off the trigger. They all turn to face us, seemingly ready to strike, but Kellan takes the opportunity to address them once more.
“Stand down! I’m invoking Code Perfect!”
After a moment’s pause, the ferrokinetic flies up to us, the blades on her wings already reformed, though now slightly shorter.
“You can’t just--”
“Yes I can,” Hawkshaw replies flatly. “If you have a problem, take it up with the First Minister.”
She seethes visibly for a moment, then raises a fist, signaling to the others, and flies off in a huff. They all follow suit, most casting dirty looks at us while they go. We’ve made no friends with that, but that shouldn’t be an issue, so long as we still have one in the very highest position here.
“And you,” Kellan says, addressing the ‘ace.’ “Get in.”
The AV’s back door opens, and he flies around to climb inside. I put the sonic cannon back and roll up my window, while Kellan turns us around to head back to Tahir’s place.
“What,” he says, barely restraining his anger, “made you think it was a good idea to start a fight with them? I said to stay under the radar.”
“Look, I did what you said. I told them I was perfect, and--”
“I said invoke Code Perfect, you--” He doesn’t even finish the thought, just exhales through his teeth. A moment later, when he’s regained his composure, he continues. “Conrad, meet Adam Apex.”
“Wassup?”
“...a pleasure, I’m sure.”
Apex chortles at my words, doubtless amused by the notion that anybody might try to conduct themselves with even a shred of dignity in the twenty-first century. He’s certainly given up on that notion himself.
“Adam was in the underground metahuman pit-fighting circuit in Hong Kong when I discovered him. Remarkably powerful, obviously, but he lacked any sort of formal training. To say nothing of subtlety. Trust me, if you think he’s bad now...”
“Hey, what’s that supposed to mean?”
“Exactly what it sounds like,” Kellan shoots back. “You’re undisciplined, headstrong, and apparently incapable of following even simple instructions. Unless, of course, those instructions involve hitting something.”
I notice with some amusement that Kellan has begun to start sounding like me when he’s insulting somebody.
“Yeah, well, I’m pretty damn good at that part.”
“That you are,” Kellan says with some resignation. “In any case, I offered to train him, in exchange for his occasional assistance with... matters such as this.”
Obviously, Apex is on a strict information diet. If he knew more than the barest sliver about the Council, he’d be a massive liability. I suspect he doesn’t care much about the details, though, so long as he has somebody to punch.
“I see. And you believe he’s capable of taking on Atlas?”
“Yeah. Or slowing him down, at the very least.”
“What?”
“It’s clear some additional training will be necessary,” Kellan continues, ignoring Apex’s protestations. “Hopefully Adamant will be able to help with that.”
“Adamant, huh? That bitch is smokin’, yo.”
“You should tell her you feel that way,” I suggest dryly, while Kellan presumably contemplates the decisions that brought him to this point. “I’m told she appreciates compliments.”
“Yo, for serious?”
“Oh, most definitely.”
Out of a desire to spare Kellan further pain, I remain silent for the rest of the flight. As embarrassing as that entire escapade was, it’s fortunate we resolved things as quickly as we did. Hopefully the Arcadian security forces know the value of discretion- it would be unfortunate if word got out that Hawkshaw was spotted here, in the First Minister’s luxury AV no less.
We land a few minutes later, and Marisa rushes out to inspect the vehicle. Once she’s satisfied that it hasn’t been damaged- besides Apex sweating all over the seats -she allows us to enter the house again. The brute swaggers through the doorway first, and is immediately greeted with Darius staring him down. Neither says a word, just stand there with their eyes locked. Finally, Apex looks away, muttering to himself.
“Creepy fuckin’ kid...”
The young samurai approaches Kellan, and they exchange a few words in Japanese. I head into the living room after Apex, only to find Tahir sitting there, speaking with Orhan. Marisa gave no indication of his presence, which suggests she’s deliberately ignoring him. Not especially fair, as it’s hardly Tahir’s fault he was captured. If he’s here, though...
“Where’s Adamant?”
Tahir looks up at me, and allows the happy face he was putting on for his son to drop away. He’s beleaguered, and though his natural regenerative abilities mostly mask it, it’s clear he wasn’t in the best shape when he arrived.
“She was wounded. We took her to the hospital before coming here.”
“We?”
Somebody taps me on the shoulder. Acting on pure reflex, I whirl around and hurl a punch at them. Rather than connecting with their face, however, it’s caught in a vicelike grip. I find myself face to face with a tall, well-muscled figure in a black stealth suit, with a full face mask sporting segmented, triangular red eyes. He releases my hand a moment later, and I swear I hear a ghost of a laugh.
“Conrad,” Hawkshaw says behind me, “this is Nemesis.”
“He managed to help Adamant and I escape,” Tahir says. I stare down the silent figure, but when he says nothing, I stalk off and take my previous seat.
“How serious is it?”
“Not especially. Not for Arcadian doctors.”
“Good,” Kellan says, removing his helmet. He keeps the rest of the armor on as he sits back down next to me. Apex, floating a few inches off the ground, grabs a handful of potato chips from the snack platter and starts crunching on them loudly as he takes a place off to the side. “Nemesis, sitrep.”
“I managed to exfiltrate the targets without alerting the enemy,” he answers, voice heavily filtered through the mask. “But they’ll be aware by now.”
“Understood. I’d prefer it if we had Adamant here, but there’s no time to waste. We need to--”
“Hold on,” Tahir interjects wearily. “Orhan, why don’t you go play with your sister?”
The kid looks at his father, then glances at me cheekily. I wink at him.
“Yes, baba.”
He zips off again, doubtlessly to chase the hummingbird again. Darius takes a seat near Kellan, and nobody seems brave enough to shoo him off in the same way.
“Okay, now we can get started.”
“Great. First, we need to make sure everybody is up to speed. I suspect Conrad and I know a little more about what’s going on, so we can start.”
“Indeed. To review the facts, our opponents are the Arcana- or rather, a specific faction within the group, led by Atlas and the Vitruvian. They separated us, with the intent of keeping us captive while they dismantled our operations. Evidently, that’s largely failed, but they still have Ishtar and Zero in their custody. Our primary objectives are to neutralize the threat that they represent, and free our allies.”
Coughing slightly, with half-chewed potato chips spraying from his mouth, Adam Apex cuts in.
“Whoa, whoa, hold the phone. Are you all, like, bad guys? Cuz I’m pretty sure Atlas and the Vesuvian are, you know, heroes or whatever. And I ain’t down with no criminal shit or anything.”
Ironic, coming from someone who participated in illegal underground pit fights, but I doubt he even comprehends the concept of irony.
“No, we’re not criminals. Look, why don’t you go play with the kids. I’m sure they’d love you.”
Tahir glares at me, and I try not to grin.
“Play with the-- you know what? Fuck you, man. Fuck you.”
He floats off elsewhere. I hope for his sake that he doesn’t end up getting in Marisa’s way.
“Thanks for that, Conrad,” Kellan says wearily.
“No problem. Would you like to discuss the opposition, or should I?”
“I can do it. The one Winters and I dealt with was called Reign. Her card is the Devil. She generates large-scale illusions, with greater fine control over them the closer they were to her body. We neutralized her, and sent her to Avernus. During a brief interrogation, she named one other of Atlas’s allies- the Equalizer, representing Death. Did you encounter him directly?”
“Yes,” Tahir confirms, scowling. “He’s a power-nullifier.”
“It’s presence-based, not directed,” Nemesis adds. “He may also possess a degree of enhanced strength and durability.”
“Good to know. Reign didn’t say anything about anybody else working with them, but we have to assume it’s possible.”
“Of course, but there’s only so much we can do to prepare for a complete unknown.”
“Right. Still, it’s worth reviewing possibilities, starting with their former allies.”
“I have people watching Dryad,” Tahir informs us. “She hasn’t left the country, or been contacted by anyone suspicious. I can’t speak to the others, though.”
“I don’t think Neutrino is in any state to fight,” I offer. “Nor Kentarch, for that matter. What concerns me more is other members of the Arcana.”
“There’s no way Delta-V isn’t with them,” Kellan says grimly. “Especially now that she knows what we did to Robards.”
The room falls silent. Clearly, none of us had realized that was a possibility, but now that he’s said it, it feels strikingly obvious. Network replaced her mentor, and that means he’ll be out of commission now as well. The leader of the Peacekeepers already didn’t like us, but that’s got to have graduated to full-on hatred now.
“Well. What about the others, then?”
“Hard to say. But I know who we can ask. The Consultant.”
Another silent spell, this time with an undercurrent of absolute bafflement. Then Tahir speaks up.
“I’m sorry, I don’t think I heard you correctly just now. Are you proposing that we ask one of them to give us information on the others?”
“Yes,” Kellan replies bluntly. “He wouldn’t have signed off on this, he’s far too cautious. And he owes me more than a few favors. In fact, we can get more out of him than just names. He can help us find where they’re keeping Ishtar and Zero. They won’t have told him, but if we bring him to Avernus, he can use his power to track them.”
“That seems... risky,” I say slowly. “Even if he doesn’t support Atlas and the Vitruvian acting against us, what makes you think he’ll betray the Arcana to us?”
“It’s not a betrayal. The Arcana doesn’t operate like we do. There are power blocs, and if we take Atlas and his faction off the board, Lévesque stands to benefit. Especially if it means getting rid of the Vitruvian. Him being back must have thrown off their balance of power.”
That’s certainly convenient for us, and I’m wary of underestimating the Arcana yet again, but it feels like we don’t have any better options.
“Okay. Then that’s our next move. We’ll go tomorrow, after everybody is rested up.”
“Very well,” Tahir says. “If you need to resupply, the armories of Arcadia are open to you.”
“That won’t be necessary,” comes the cold reply from Nemesis.
“Speak for yourself. And thank you, Tahir.”
“It’s nothing.”
“Actually, I have a favor to ask.”
Tahir’s eyes flick over to me.
“What?”
“I need access to the best workshop you have available. And a team of engineers that know how to follow instructions.”
“Why?”
“The next time I see the Vitruvian, I’m going to have a surprise for him.”