Project Northwoods (82 page)

The High Consul let out a long breath. There could be no delay. Further hesitation would result in more deaths. This war, started with the murder of his friend and ally, could be stopped with a final hammer blow. Villains had started this chaos with a cowardly assassination… he would not deign to touch any of them when he chose to end it.

His eyes flicked up to Zealot, the younger man’s expectant face searching his mentor for some kind of sign. “Gather the remaining heroes,” he ordered, striding by his subordinate.

Zealot turned and kept pace as Arbiter exited the room. “Gunslinger and Claymore are debriefing their SERAPHIM units. Archetype is already on the grounds.”

Arbiter did not break stride as he made his way to the stairwell. “You have your orders.”

“Where do you wish them to report to, sir?” Zealot was losing ground to Arbiter’s longer, hurried strides.

“Overseer’s mainframe.” He stopped and turned toward Zealot, the sudden movement startling the latter man. “It is there that, as a force united, we shall witness the birth of the next age.”

Zealot’s face cracked into a tight smile before he nodded, suddenly serious. His hand shot up to salute his superior. “It shall be done, High Consul.” Breaking into a hurried trot, he moved past Arbiter.

The older man watched him go. The dream, almost thirty years in the making, was becoming a reality. The villains in detention were of no concern to him just yet… when word got out of the new weapon, the conspiracy would unravel. Heroes would recognize him as their savior from a corrupt and twisted system. With his victory assured, he would lead his companions to their triumphant return, and an age of peace would begin. Any villains not in conjunction with Dark Saint’s assassination would be… protected… in Fort Justice.

It was the only way. If the villains remained stubborn in their secrets, then they signed the warrant for their own annihilation.

The Super Villains’ Guild, although lacking the stateliness of its heroic equivalent, had a quiet dignity to it: an older building occupied in the ever-widening wave of modern structures. At least, Arthur felt this retrospectively as he gazed upon the desecrated exterior of the building. Windows were smashed without boards to cover them. Graffiti slathered the bricks with a mix of standard tags and derisive words. Someone, apparently unaware that many American villains had fought in World War II along with their neutral and heroic brethren, had labeled the building ‘Nazi HQ’.

He and his companions were standing across the street, in an alley, watching the building. Mast was closest to the alleyway exit, eyes sweeping the road. “I don’t see any patrols, ground or otherwise.” Her eyes flicked up to the rooftops for a moment. “Are you sure about this?” Mast’s eyes went to Ariana now, the younger woman’s arms folded and a scowl on her face.

“Yes,” Ariana snapped. “I tagged along with them long enough to know where they’ll be.”

Agent Mast stared at her a moment longer, then turned back to the Guild. “I don’t like it, but it’ll have to do.” She reached into her pocket and fumbled for a moment before producing an earpiece. She turned to Arthur and handed it to him.

Puzzled, he took it from her. “What is this for?”

Agent Mast shook her head. “I’m not going in there.”

“Why not?” Ariana interjected.

Mast glanced at Ariana, then looked back at Arthur. “I have my reasons.” She took a step backward as Arthur fitted the earpiece in. “You have ten minutes before I come in shooting.” Arthur brought his hand down and wordlessly took the flashlight Mast offered him.

Ariana snorted. “Really? You think Catalina will try something?” She rolled her eyes. “Arthur, you can’t believe this crap.”

Arthur cast a glance at Ariana before nodding at Mast. “It shouldn’t take us that long to get what we need.” He shifted the backpack off and handed it to Stair, the girl taking it with a look of confusion.

Ariana gave a hiss of disbelief. “Typical.”

“Come on,” Stair said, trying to brush her way past the two adults. She was jerked to a stop by Mast yanking on her arm. “What?”

“You’re staying with me.”

Stair squirmed her way out of the woman’s grasp. “Why?”

Impatiently, Ariana stomped her way past all of them and had exited the alley by the time Arthur was able to realize what was going on. He trotted to Ariana and then slowed down, staying a respectful distance from her. The silence made the journey up the stairs far more jarring than his footsteps ever could.

Arbiter stood in the Heroes’ Guild mainframe, his identification card in hand, the huge room overflowing with wires and computers. The vaulted ceiling was crisscrossed with gantries, allowing technicians to access the occasional extra-tall computer tower. The lower level hummed with row after confusing row of redundant systems which contained the core of the Heroes’ Guild computer. Unseen, Overseer darted along the systems, a semi-self-aware program that bridged the gap between computer and user. Tubes containing coolant flowed and burbled between the multitude of components, sinking into the floor to be recycled and used in perpetuity.

The rear of the room, where Arbiter impatiently waited, contained a large, wall-mounted monitor working in conjunction with numerous smaller screens embedded in the workstations below. It was a hold-over from the era of large-scale planning in the Silver Age, the last major example of its use just before the government stepped in during the war of 1988. Now it would be given another use… one more noble than anything a lone hero could ever attain. The elimination of villainy from New York City, once and for all.

A chime indicated that someone was trying to make contact. The large monitor winked to life, showing a static and recent satellite map of the city. A red dot appeared, marking the call’s location, followed by additional data about who was on the other end. The audio equipment hummed to life. “This is SERAPHIM recon unit alpha,” a female voice said in a cool tone.

“This is Arbiter,” he responded. “Go ahead.”

“We have confirmed visual and audio presence of villains.”

His face remained stony. “Pull back immediately and send visual data once in range.”

“Affirmative, sir. Out.” The line went dead.

“Overseer,” Arbiter called out.

The screen shut off, then returned with a green iris staring back at him. “Yes, Lord of Justice?”

Arbiter approached the console. Near the keyboard, away from the glass-like surface which interpreted hand motions as data commands, a thin slot sat innocuously within the workstation. He brought the card he had been unconsciously rolling over in his hand forward and slid it inside. A tiny diode lit up near the slot as he left the card in the console. “Arm Freedom’s Sword.”

“Once initiated, Freedom’s Sword cannot be stopped. Do you wish to continue?”

Arbiter hesitated. A seminal moment drew near, and his word would change the world forever. His mind reeled at each choice, the divergent paths playing out in his head.
You can stop this
.

“Yes.”

“Of course, sir.” A clock appeared, ticking down the moments from an odd eleven minutes and thirty three seconds. At three minutes, if manual aiming wasn’t being utilized, the target was selected automatically using a triangulation of tertiary satellite coordinates. But, as the others on their way would see, he would guide the weapon with his own hands.

“This doesn’t mean I’ve forgiven you.”

Her words shocked him more by their existence than their meaning. Arthur remained silent, nodding somberly behind her. He couldn’t argue, and even if he tried he knew full well his role in what had turned the world upside-down.

Something which, apparently, Ariana still felt the need to express to him. They had crested the stairs and reached the smashed revolving doors when she stopped to face Arthur, their first eye contact since the ruins of her childhood home. Her eyes were raging. “Don’t you have anything to say to me?”

Arthur didn’t know what to think, his mind still struggling with something far more urgent than he could even comprehend fully outside of statistics. Ariana nonetheless stood in front of him, angry and proud. He couldn’t bring himself to say anything other than, “We need to hurry up.” He pushed his way past her, into the darkness of the Guild.

The crunch of his shoes on garbage was startling as he moved further indoors, the daylight fading away. He clicked on the flashlight and took long, hopefully confident strides toward the stairs.

Knowing what he did about Catalina, she’d be occupying a secure location, far enough from the outside to protect herself in case patrols came looking. He didn’t know exactly where she’d be specifically, and neither did Ariana. Emotions propelled him forward, away from the guilt she was making him feel, toward a future he was trying to stop. He was almost to the stairwell when she grabbed him and pulled him around.

“Tell me you’re sorry,” she demanded, her words harsh and echoing.

It was hard not to roll his eyes, not that she would have seen the reaction anyway. “Ari…”

Between the flashlight’s splash and the weak strands of daylight, Ariana looked possessed. “Just say it. He…” She cut herself off, the sound of the word physically making them both react. “I,” she continued with emphasis, “need to hear it.”

“You really think this is the time?” Arthur asked with a decided snarl. Petty squabbles were pointless at the moment, but there was a very human desire to start ripping into her, if for nothing else than to rage against someone physically present and not dead for a change. Instead of giving in to it, he huffed and turned back toward the stairs. “Whatever.” He did not hear her footsteps following him, and an anxious combination of concern and anger welled up. Arthur ignored it as he passed by the smashed remains of the old security guard’s computer and put a foot on the first step of the stairwell.

“You were a terrible friend to him.” The words stopped him cold. By the time he brought the flashlight around to face her, she hadn’t shifted her position.

He dismounted the steps and pivoted to fully face her. “What the fuck did you say?”

Ariana folded her arms defiantly. “Still behaving like you didn’t betray him?”

The accusation penetrated their long-standing, though hostile, armistice and hit him in the gut. “I betrayed him?” He moved toward her. “
I
 betrayed him?”

“You heard me.” She moved to close the gap, slowly at first. “Everything that went wrong in my life, in our life, started with you!”

His lip curled in a snarl as he was now moving faster toward her. Concern for the welfare of others evaporated as he saw her hands clench into fists. “You want me to apologize for you being a colossal bitch, is that it?”

Ariana was practically sprinting toward him, leaping into him and knocking them both to the floor. She was on top of Arthur, lifting him by his shirt and slamming him to the ground. “You and your sister!” He tried to swat her off, but she was frenzied in her blows, intercepting his hands before they could do anything. In a split second of clarity, he saw her fist shoot upwards. “You!” It was the first time in a while that he had been punched by someone who meant it to harm him, the blow shattering his lip and dazing him. “Whores!” And she struck him again, hard on the cheekbone. She reeled back, hissing in pain. “Damn it!”