June 10th 2013, 5:09 PM
The sea-breeze blew against the docks, and Victoria raised a hand in polite salute to her newest employee.
He’d arrived fast. A flight to St. Croix and then the first boat over, all before the shield could rise. Quiet. Efficient. His style. He did not look like a supervillain or a mercenary; he was a little fussy man in an old suit, wearing the kind of glasses that had their own internet connection through which he glowered as a man from an older generation might glower at a wristwatch. In his case, though, he was glowering at the people the ship had provided to help him with his luggage, who were transporting his gigantic suitcases with some difficulty. “I thought I told you to handle that with care,” he snapped.
“Mister Mayfield?” she called.
“You are… Mz. Ward?” he asked, with the look of a man checking mental notes.
“I am,” she said. “Let me take these,” she added to his helpers, and collected all the suitcases herself, moving with her usual grace.
She took the chance to study him again, and her second look was different from her first. Her second look focused on the careful engraving on his glasses, the elaborate markings sewn into his inner sleeves and the two wristwatches he wore, each with different patterning. She wondered what he had in there; whatever it was, it was part and parcel of the skillset that made him so expensive.
It had been an elaborate dance to get the money to hire him, to bring him and the contents of his suitcases into the city. She’d given everything she had to the war fund and that had gone towards the evacuation; where Zero fled, she fled also, so she had the chance to convince the old Countess of the Fifth to make their next play instead of giving up. Then the crumbs left (and the proceeds from Zero’s own return to crime) went to her armor and towards putting her in touch with Skullcracker and his black hat gang. They were one of the best groups at maximing profits and minimizing the kind of screwup that usually ends with the building, hostages and loot on fire, three police officers dead and your name on a use lethal force list. That had gotten her her next resource - a name; it had given Nicator a reputation as someone who could Deliver On His Promises, to Make Profit, and it was that reputation that had let her approach a dozen different financial backers and explain that she could offer them each a cut of the profits from the second-greatest heist of all time in exchange for the kind of money she’d need.
They nodded and accepted Nicator’s reputation as evidence that it was worth the risk and laid out a dollar on the table for every hundred they expected to get if the campaign succeeded, and they asked no questions about what she was doing or why. Victoria expected that they thought she meant to deliver a container ship loaded with Steelstorm Industries’ best armor or robots stolen from the Tyrant’s royal army, and none knew the truth behind her frozen smile. She was plotting to steal Novapest, and the last of the people she needed had arrived.
Jim drove, Victoria got in as usual and the three drove back in quiet, Jim calm and in control behind the wheel and Mayfield studying the city from behind his engraved glasses.
Only the emergency broadcast broke the silence. All three of them could hear the quote-soothing-unquote robotic voice: “To prevent foreign intervention in the affairs of Novapest, all flights and ferries have been cancelled. In five minutes, the defensive shield will rise for the duration of the current emergency. All residents are encouraged to stay away from the water. Please remain calm for the duration of the emergency...”
Victoria relaxed in her seat. They’d made it.
The car pulled to a stop outside her headquarters. She didn’t think anyone had found them yet, but that wouldn’t take long with the number of people living there. One more reason she’d made sure there were witnesses to her buying the location from Zero.
Victoria’s favorite saying was that people stop looking when they think they’ve found the secret.
The three of them unloaded the cases. “The seventh floor will be yours,” Victoria explained. “It was made to host a great many more people than are currently occupying it, so you’ll have plenty of space.”
“Good,” said Mayfield, in his high, precise voice. “I prefer it.”
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“We try to please.” A brief pause. “You brought the hellfire?”
“Yes,” said Mayfield. “You specified you needed it, and I brought everything you specified.”
The three of them made their way up the stairs to the seventh floor’s main room, passing neither of Victoria’s other subordinates on the way. A brassy key literally appeared in Mayfield’s hand, and he unlocked one of the suitcases before the key disappeared again.
The case was filled with tough carpets, about four feet square once they’d been unfurled. Each of them was covered in careful stitching, forming complex symbols in a language known only to Mayfield the madman, and as he removed them she slipped on her mask.
“All four of them?” he asked.
“Sunder, Century, Splicer, and Morgan Mars,” said Victoria, adjusting it; shield-shaped, face-covering, held on with string. Jagged white lightning forking across a field of blue. No one in this room, she knew, would speak of it, as she focused on the mask…
Mayfield unloaded four of them, then closed the suitcase again with the same key and spread the carpets out on the floor, careful that there was plenty of room between them.
And then standing on the carpets were four supervillains.
“-feel like, anyway -” Sunder asked. “Oh.” Sunder was taller than any of the others; a Survivor-brick who’d survived a fight with Heavyhand, and also Proteus’s eldest son.
(The story had gone around the Fourth that Proteus had confronted him, asked him why he’d turned to Ildeira instead of his father’s service, begged him for an answer. “She’s the only one of them who matters,” Sunder had said. “The only one who sees a better world.” His father had said something about building it on the ground he already had, and Sunder had said “with what?” and walked away.)
He stood next to Century. Who he’d been before he idealized no one had ever bothered to pry into; now he was slim, handsome, his silvery breastplate worn over Kevlar with a rifle swung over his back. His chief objection to the world seemed to have been that he couldn’t be in a hundred places at once. Since he had at least two bodies outside Novapest, he’d been the best-placed to survive the war. (”Dying for the lightning once, anyone can do. Dying for the lightning twice -” “No, Century,” Ilderia had shot back, “you’re supposed to make the other fellows do that.” Morgan had laughed...)
Morgan Mars was officially another Survivor, a tough, fast lady with phasing powers and a few secrets. Like Jim, more of a veteran-with-an-edge than a monster, but she was good at her job - and, unlike Jim, comfortable with tinker-tech weaponry. (It was an open secret that she made her own gear and her ‘contact’ was a lie, but not one of the knights had breathed it to anyone on the outside.) The three stood there and blinked, looking around at the world they’d returned to...
“Welcome back,” said Victoria in Ilderia’s voice.
They looked at her. She stood perfectly still. The face was covered; it was obviously covered. She was the right build and right hair color and the height Ilderia was when she was wearing her high boots. Her vocal chords weren’t that damaged. And she was in charge.
She held out her right hand, and lightning flashed from her fingers.
“My queen,” said Morgan, kneeling. Sunder followed. Splicer was the one who’d made her face, but he bowed as deeply as the others.
“Ilderia,” breathed Century. “You’re dead!”
“I have a master biologist on staff, Century,” she said in a pleasantly amused voice. “You’re surprised that I faked my death?”
He knelt.
“Rise,” said Ilderia. “I’m glad to see you all back -” she accepted a hug from Sunder, whose power wasn’t on, then from Century “- but the war isn’t won yet. You’re on Novapest again.”
“Back,” Century murmured.
“Century, Sunder, Morgan, Splicer. This is Jim Skullcracker -” he shook hands with Century and Sunder, Morgan bowing, Splicer standing back, arms folded. “Jim’s been a good friend.” Jim didn’t look to have been expecting that. “And Banisher, who I’m retaining for the rest of the war. The Tyrant is dead and Lizzy and Steelmind fought a battle yesterday.”
Before they stopped being shocked “- Zero’s still on the run, keeping the trail so the Tyrant’s assassins don’t realize we’re already under the shield.
“Splicer.”
“Yes?” He smiled. She was in part his work, damn him, but there would be no question of who was in charge.
“The ninth floor is your laboratory. Absolutely no human subjects.”
“Dear… Helen,” he started before Ilderia cut him off. “Ilderia.” Ilderia had always hated that name. “Ilderia,” he continued. “I don’t need humans. If you want me to make goldfish into bio-rippers, I can do that.”
“Excellent. I’m glad of it.” She turned to the others.
“My knights - I’m sorry. They can’t know you’re here.”
Morgan nodded and stepped back to her carpet, Sunder and Century following.
“I’ll see you in - a moment. When I do, the war will have resumed.”
“I’ll see you then,” Century said with a smile.
“So you will,” said Ilderia, and Banisher snapped his fingers and they vanished again, back into the carpets.
“I’ll be heading upstairs,” said Splicer. “You said the lab’s set up?”
She nodded. “Yes. Our next reinforcements -” her eyes lingered on the other suitcases a moment “- shouldn’t need to know you exist.”
“Of course not,” he said, smirking. “Ilderia.”
She gave him a level, unamused gaze, and he waved and headed off, before she turned her attention to Banisher.
“And now to give the mercenaries the same speech,” said Victoria, removing her mask. “Minus giving them my true name. After that I and Jim and they will need to go join Steelmind’s forces.”
“Sounds right,” Jim said.
Banisher nodded, selected the next carpets. “Acknowledged, Mz. Ward.”