Mercury Revolts (11 page)

“Yeah,” said Eddie. “That was Mercury.”

“Um, no.
It was the Moon.”

“No, I mean Mercury was the one who imploded the Moon.”

“Whoa,” said Suzy. “So a bad guy then?”

“He was actually trying to keep Earth from getting
imploded.”

“So a good guy.”

“Ehhh…”

“You’re not being very helpful.”

Eddie sighed. “Mercury is basically a good guy. He’s gotten
into some trouble in the past though, because he doesn’t always follow orders.”

“But that’s good, right?” Suzy asked. “He follows his
conscience instead.”

“Ehhh…”

“Stop doing that!” Suzy snapped.

“Mercury tends to do his own thing,” Eddie said. “But I
think he could be convinced of the seriousness of the problem. He’s a good guy
to have on your side, if you can keep him focused.”

“So how do we find him?”

“Well, he’s easy enough to spot,” said Eddie. “He’s about
six foot four and he has silver hair. Also, he tends to stand out for other
reasons.”

“Like?”

“He’s… well, he’s just…
Mercury.”

“Milhaus, Texas has a population of 2
,014
,”
said Rosenfeld, looking it up online.
“Shouldn’t be too
difficult to find an unusually tall guy with silver hair in a town that size.”

“Unless the feds have already found him,” added Suzy.
“What’s the date on that PowerPoint?”

Rosenfeld peered at the screen. “File was created August
ninth.”

“Shit, that’s two days ago,” Suzy groaned.

“Hang on,” said Rosenfeld. “The date on the title slide is
August twelve.”

“So that’s the date the presentation will be made,” said
Suzy. “With any luck, nobody’s even seen this yet!”

“Nobody except whoever made the presentation. And whoever
they got the
intel
from.”

“Is there a name on the presentation?”

“Not that I can see.”

“It was probably put together by some low-level
paper-pusher,” said Suzy. “Look at the rest of this crap. It’s all standard
project management jargon about low-hanging fruit and core competencies. This
is probably just a standard weekly project status update.”

“They buried a serious threat to their entire program on the
sixteenth slide of a PowerPoint presentation?” asked Rosenfeld skeptically.

“You have to understand how these guys work,” said Suzy.
“This isn’t a military intelligence operation. These guys are mostly software
geeks and engineers. So when they see a potential problem, they make a note of
it and it goes on a PowerPoint presentation for some manager to deal with
eventually. Somebody at the FBI or some other agency probably spotted
Mercury—if he stands out as much as Eddie says, he’s undoubtedly on some
terrorist watch list—and they reported it to their higher ups. Somehow that information
eventually filtered over to somebody inside Brimstone, and they put it on the
PowerPoint for next week’s meeting.”

“So it might have been days or weeks ago that Mercury was
spotted in Milhaus,” said Rosenfeld. “There’s no telling where he might be
now.”

“Well, if this is the only guy who knows how to put a stop
to Brimstone, we’ve got to take our chances.”

“Whoa, I didn’t say that,” said Eddie. “I said I thought he
might know how the demons were kept out of D.C. I don’t know whether he’ll be
able to help with Brimstone, or whether he’ll even want to. Besides, Gary and I
have a lot of work to do here.”

“What kind of work could be more important than preventing
the government from creating an illegal nuclear bomb whose only purpose would
be to commit a major terrorist attack?” Suzy demanded.

“Look, we’re not activists,” said Rosenfeld. “We’re
journalists. We just gather information and post it online. We don’t have an
agenda.”

“Of course you have an agenda!” exclaimed Suzy. “What’s the point
of any of this if you don’t have an agenda? What’s the point of exposing that
the U.S. government is overrun with demons if nobody does anything about it?”

“You seem to have gotten over your skepticism,” Eddie noted.

“Frankly,” said Suzy, “I don’t know what to believe. A few
days ago I suddenly realized that I was working on a secret program to build a
nuclear weapon, so apparently it’s time for me to reassess some things. I’m not
entirely convinced that you guys aren’t a little loony, but you seem to have a
better grasp of what’s going on than most people I’ve talked to lately. So if
you tell me there’s a guy in Milhaus, Texas, who might be able to help put a
stop to Brimstone, I say we go to Milhaus, Texas.”

“We can’t just leave,” Rosenfeld protested. “We’ve got a
website to run. There are thousands of people depending on us for information.”

“Yeah, more people hiding in their apartments not doing
anything about the secret coup that’s somehow taken place under all of our
noses. You know they have the Internet in Texas, right? You can update the site
from there.”

Eddie and Rosenfeld fell silent. It was clear that neither
of them had any interest in leaving the apartment, much less traveling to
Texas.

“Fine,” Suzy snapped. “I’ll go myself. I’ll find this
Mercury guy and we’ll put a stop to this.” She had hoped she might be able to
shame them into going, but neither of them took the bait.

Rosenfeld handed her a BitterAngels.net business card.
“Email me if you find him,” he said. The card showed two
angels,
complete with halos, standing back-to-back, their arms crossed and frowns on
their faces.

“Whatever,” said Suzy, pocketing the
card.
“I need to use your bathroom.”

Eddie pointed to a room down a short hall and she stomped
off.

She was washing her hands when she heard a loud crash from
the other side of the door, followed by the commotion of several men bursting
into the apartment and shouts of “On the floor!”

Suzy ran for the one small window in the bathroom, and
struggled to get it open. It wasn’t locked, but it appeared to have been
painted shut. She pulled as hard as she could, but it wouldn’t budge.

Another crash sounded behind her, and she realized someone
had kicked in the door to the bathroom.

“Hands up!” yelled a gruff voice.
“On your
knees!”

Suzy sighed and held up her hands. But as she did so, she
noticed something odd: the paint had cracked all along the edge of the window,
and the window was slowly sliding up.

“Hey!” yelled the man behind her. “Don’t…” He trailed off.
“What the hell?”

Suzy risked a glance behind her, and immediately saw the
cause of the man’s consternation. The man was wearing full combat gear and
pointing an assault rifle at her, but the barrel had begun to droop, slowly
going limp before his eyes.

“You’re getting older,” Suzy said.
“Nothing
to be ashamed of.”
And with that, she launched her upper torso through
the open window. Vertigo overwhelmed her as she took in the view of the street
below. She was only on the second floor, so a fall was unlikely to kill her,
but it was also unlikely to be painless. And if she broke a leg, she’d never
get away from these gun-toting goons. There was a small ledge outside the
window, though, and from there she thought she could jump to the fire escape.

She managed to climb the rest of the way out the window and
get herself perched on the ledge. Just as she was about to jump, though, a hand
reached through the window and grabbed her ankle. She lost her balance and
fell, bracing herself for impact with the street below.

But the hand held on. After a moment, another hand gripped
her ankle, and then a head appeared. It was the same guy who had busted in the
bathroom door.

“Hey, it’s Mister Projectile Dysfunction,” Suzy said,
hanging upside down. “You’re pretty strong.
Steroids?”

“Ha ha,” said the man. “I’m going to pull you up now. Don’t
fight me, or—” He broke off as the sound of gunfire erupted inside. “Shit!” he
exclaimed, and began to pull her in through the window.

But Suzy, who was convinced that if she were apprehended
now, she’d never see daylight again, did fight. She kicked and screamed and
twisted, trying not to think about what would happen if she actually managed to
get away. Down below, a garbage truck was making its rounds, and Suzy had seen
enough action movies to know this was just the break she needed. If she could
time her fall with the passing of the garbage truck, she’d only fall about five
feet. Still farther than she’d ideally like to fall, especially considering
that she’d be doing the falling head first, but she’d probably avoid serious
injury.

As the truck approached, she fought with even more ferocity,
and finally the man apparently had enough. He let go and she fell toward the
truck below.

And missed it by six inches.
She’d
either miscalculated the truck’s speed, or the man had let go a half-second too
late. Either way, she was about to kiss pavement.

But she didn’t.

For the second time in one day, she stopped falling in
mid-air, eight inches from the ground.

And then she started falling again.

And stopped when she hit the ground.

“Son of a bitch!” she yowled, curling into the fetal
position and holding her head. Falling from a height of eight inches was
surprisingly painful. She wasn’t bleeding, but she was going to have a nasty
bump on the top of her head.

“Sorry about that!” called a voice from the window. It was
Eddie. “I got distracted. Oh, shit.” He disappeared back inside.

There was another burst of automatic weapon fire, followed
by someone groaning in pain.

“Cripes, that hurts,” moaned Eddie, sticking his head out
the window again. “Hang on, I’ll be right down.”

By the time Suzy had gotten to her feet, Eddie had appeared
at the door of the apartment building. He was carrying a Spider-Man backpack,
which seemed a little weird to Suzy. Not nearly as weird as the six bloody
bullet holes torn in Eddie’s shirt though.

“Oh my God,” she cried, rushing to him. “You’ve been shot!”

“Only six times,” he said. “It’s—ow—not so bad. I’ll be fine
in a few minutes.”

“You’re in shock,” she said, putting her arm around him to
steady him, as if he were about to fall over at any second. “We’ve got to get
you to a hospital.”

“I’m
fine
,” Eddie insisted. “Look.” He pulled up his
shirt to reveal bullet holes that had already begun to close up.

“How… how is that possible?” she asked.

“Immortality, accelerated healing,” muttered Eddie.
“Benefits of being an angel.
Too bad Rosenfeld wasn’t so
lucky.”

“Rosenfeld!” cried Suzy. “Where is he?”

“Boy, that’s the real question, isn’t it?” said Eddie.
“Beats me.”

“What? Isn’t he upstairs?”

“His body is, but Rosenfeld isn’t home anymore.
Poor bastard.
I never should have dragged him into this.”

“He’s dead?” she gasped.

“Afraid so.
My
fault, too.
I should have killed all those guys as soon as they walked
in the door. This is what I get for trying to minimize violence.”

“So did you kill them?”

“No, they’re unconscious. Killing them actually would have
been easier. Stop their hearts, just like that.” He snapped his fingers.
“Anyway, we should get going. Where’s your car?”

“My car?
Where are we going?”

“I thought you said Texas.”

“Oh.
Right now?”

“Well, there will probably be about fifty more federal
agents here in about two minutes.
Probably three or four
demons too, now that they know who they’re dealing with.
So unless you
want to be around for that, I’d suggest we leave now.”

“Gotcha,” said Suzy.
“This way.”

Chapter Twelve
     
 

Boston; November 17, 1773

Mercury trudged up the narrow wooden
steps to the meeting room he’d been told was above the tavern. Stopping at the top
of the stairs, he knocked three times, paused, knocked again, paused a little
longer, then knocked six more times.

The door opened and a young blond man peered out at him.

“Who are you?” the man asked.

“My name,” said Mercury, “is Lord Quinton Squigglebottom,
Earl of Northwest Halfordshire.”

“I see,” said the man. “And why do you knock in such an odd
manner?”

Mercury shrugged. “I figured you guys had some kind of
secret knock. Did I get it right?”

“Who is it?” called a voice from inside the room. “If it’s
not Tobias with more beer, send him away.”

Mercury surreptitiously slipped his hand behind his back and
then revealed it again, holding a pitcher of dark brown liquid.

“How did you…” gasped the man.

Mercury grinned and slid past the man into the room. The
room was small and windowless, with just enough room for a table and a dozen
chairs, in which sat a dozen men of greatly varying appearance, dress, and
social station. Some were well-dressed and apparently affluent; a few looked
like they had just gotten off work at the docks.

“Greetings, Sons of Liberty!” cried Mercury. “I am Lord
Quinton Squigglebottom, Earl of Northwest Halfordshire. I have been moved by
reports of the oppressive treatment of your people by the British government
and have journeyed long across the sea to come to your aid.” He began refilling
the men’s mugs. Several of the men grunted in appreciation.

“Northwest Halfordshire, you say,” said one of the better
dressed men. “Where is that, exactly?”

“It’s in the north,” said Mercury.
“Between
East Blandwich and South Doorchester Croft.
Ing.
Ham.”

“Uh huh,” the man replied.