Resistance (6 page)

Uzma stands up.

“Get out,” she Tells Johns.

“So we’re launching three hundred squadrons of unmanned drones to identify unauthorised superpower-seeking flights and shoot them down— Excuse me?” says Johns as his body walks from the table to the door. He hasn’t even begun to register shock or surprise when the door slides shut behind him.

Uzma has the Unit’s undivided attention, though. Anima shuts her game down and gives Uzma a big grin.

“I wish you hadn’t done that,” says Ellis quietly. “They’ve been asking for your removal for a while now. I’ve had to deal with a lot of pressure.”

“What’s the mission?” Uzma asks him.

“The Unit needs to be seen together,” says Ellis. “It’s been a long time. There are rumours of rifts, and—”

“What’s the mission?” Uzma repeats.

Ellis sighs. “Rowena Okocha,” he says. He moves a finger, and a photograph of a young woman floats in the centre of the room. Mid-twenties, pretty, dark, dreadlocks, huge eyes, white coat. “AIDS researcher. Took a Second Wave flight. She was observed for several months, no change.”

“What happened then?” asks Jason.

“Utopic hired her,” says Ellis.

“Captured her for their private zoo, you mean,” says Uzma. “Did they cut her up?”

“I don’t know,” says Ellis. “But they lost her two months ago, and they want her back.”

“What’s her power?”

“Her blood removes powers.” Ellis looks even graver than usual.

Wingman shakes his head. “Not another Mutant Cure treasure hunt, please,” he says. “Utopic’s playing with us.”

Ellis swipes the air four times, and with each movement a new picture appears. On the left half of each image is a superbeing turned monstrous by its power: one appears to be made of rock, another covered in spines, the third a screaming mask of living flame, the fourth a green gas trapped in a plastic bag. On the right half of each is a human face. Each face is smiling.

“Still seems like a hoax to me,” says Wingman. “Our friends and benefactors at Utopic are probably laughing at us right now.”

“No,” says Ellis. “They’re worried. Of course they didn’t tell us when they found Rowena. Or how long they kept her. But since they lost her they’ve tried everything they could to get her back. And you know what they’re capable of. They wouldn’t have come to us if they hadn’t run out of options. And if this wasn’t a Unit-level problem.”

“They were trying to mass-produce her blood, no doubt,” says Uzma. “Weaponise it. And use it on, let’s see… us?”

“Of course they were,” says Ellis. “But someone else has her now. And they’re worried enough to tell us about it, and they’ll let us keep her if we find her.”

“How did they lose her?” asks Wingman.

“Someone broke into their zoo and took her.”

“Will they let us go to their zoo and look around?”

“They might,” says Ellis. “But you know you won’t find their other subjects, Wingman.”

“Then I don’t see why we should help,” says Wingman. He remembers to look at Uzma for assent. She nods.

“They should send in the SuperSleuths, or, you know, actual detectives,” says Jason.

“They won’t put this one on the market,” says Ellis. “It’s us, or no one. Too much at stake.”

“I’m amazed Utopic didn’t just kill her when they found her,” says Uzma. “Isn’t the board mostly supers by now? They’ve certainly spent enough time flying around and hoping.”

“That’s probably why they’re so worried now. They have as much to lose as—”

The familiar jingle rings in everyone’s head, and they all groan.

A high-pitched male voice echoes in their heads.

“DON’T FORGET TO WATCH THE INCREDIROTIC SEXPLOITS OF BENDY THE SEXMAN!” it cries. “NEW SEASON STARTS TONIGHT, TWO AM EASTERN, ON VUTOPIX!”

The broadcast ends, and they shake their heads growling.

“Bloody Viral,” says Jason. “Why doesn’t
he
go missing?”

“I think he has more people hunting him than even you, Uzma,” says Ellis.

“Can we kill him?” asks Uzma. “That would solve all our popularity problems.”

“Well, if you can find him, you’ll find Utopic’s zoo,” says Ellis. “They’ve hired him exclusively now. So… is that a definite no on the Rowena mission?”

“We’ll think about it. Do you have anything else?”

“Lots of super deaths and disappearances,” says Ellis. “More than usual. Villains and heroes, both.”

“Patterns? Common enemies?”

“Fights, mostly. Super-duels in public places. But not all of them – there was one yesterday that broke a dam in Slovenia, another one flattened a pop concert in Guangzhou.”

“Lots of civilian casualties, I suppose.”

“Yes. More than lots.”

Uzma winces. “And you think there’s a link somewhere.”

“If it isn’t a link, it’s a very disturbing new trend. We’ve had super-hunting problems before. It might be some kind of non-guild high-stakes combat tournament. We don’t know yet. We’ve tried to find the root, but got nowhere. We’ve tried mercenary superteams too, even the SuperSleuths, before you ask. Nothing. But if the Unit went out and knocked a few big heads together, we might get new information.”

Uzma looks around the table. “We’ll beat up some people and see what they have to say,” she says. “What else?”

Jason looks startled. “There’s more?”

Uzma smiles at him. “I forget how new you are,” she says. “It’s not like your comics, Jason. It’s not one crisis at a time.”

“The comics have multiple plotlines too. Sometimes the whole universe gets—” Jason stops and grins. “You’re ragging me.”

“New guy,” says Wingman, and thumps him on the back.

“I’m newer,” says That Guy.

“Shut up,” says Uzma.

She turns to Ellis. “Anything on a grander scale?” she asks.

“Utopic-friendly governments have been putting a lot of pressure on us to send you after Kalki,” says Ellis. “But I know your views on that.”

“I think I need to Speak to them,” says Uzma. “Kalki’s not a threat. He’s only eleven years old. He’s been in hiding all his life.”

“He’s a god,” says Ellis. “He’s trouble.”

“Anyway, you know my answer to that. What else?”

“Bunch of magicians on an island in the Indian Ocean trying to build a portal to another dimension.”

“Good for them. Is that it?”

Ellis looks nervous. “Nothing specific, but there is something that has been going on for a while and I think I should mention it.”

He has the Unit’s attention. Ellis not wanting to bring up a crisis is a first.

“The end of the world,” says Ellis. “Every psychic with a decent track record has been predicting it for a while.”

Most of the Unit members relax, and smile.

“Nice one,” says Wingman.

Ellis shrugs. “I know, it’s nonsense. Happens all the time. Just thought I’d mention it, because – they’re all quite specific about the date.”

“When?”

“Three weeks’ time,” says Ellis.

“You’d better finish your movie, Wingman,” says Jason.

In the middle of the laughter that follows, Wu raises her hand. Uzma looks at her kindly.

“You don’t need my permission to speak, Wu,” says Uzma. “What is it?”

“The world will not end in three weeks,” she says.

“We know,” says Uzma.

“But mankind will,” says Wu. “The spirits have spoken.”

The beast can see two lights. Far above it, over the whispering leaves, through the stark black silhouettes of mighty branches, it can see a great white orb in the sky. The beast finds this strangely comforting, and intensely attractive; it wants to rise up and meet the light.

Slowly, it unfurls its leathery wings, stretches them, and the light from above shines through them, lighting up the branches below it with veined shadows. There are claws on the edges of the beast’s wings, and it flexes them tentatively, shuffles from left to right, and looks up again, up past its endless, razor-sharp beak to the soft light above. It screeches harshly, crouches low, curves its spine. It is ready.

Another harsh screech. A
whoomp
echoes through the jungle, and then another, as it flaps its wings again. It leaps, struggles, finds its balance, and shoots up over the forest and into the sky, higher and higher, its wingbeats drum-like in the warm, wet night.

* * *

Six hundred feet below in an underground cavern, watching the pterodactyl’s flight on a screen, Aman Sen cannot help shouting in delight.

Aman chose Late Island for his secret lair in 2014 mostly because he really liked the name – an uninhabited volcanic hideaway called Late had seemed a good place for the late Aman Sen to skulk around in. He’d been disappointed when he’d found it was actually pronounced
latte
– Aman had never been that obsessed with coffee. But as it turned out, it didn’t really matter what the island’s name was – he’d made it disappear from the internet. So, in a sense, he’d killed it. Late Island can still be found in offline atlases, of course, and there are plenty of Tongan fishermen and world-travelling yacht-dwellers who can tell interested parties exactly where it is, but fortunately for Aman it isn’t a question many people ask.

The island sits like a fresh cowpat in the heart of the Pacific Ocean. It’s six kilometres wide, on the Tofua volcanic belt, fifty-five kilometres south-west of Vava’u Island. It’s surrounded by steep cliffs, and is mostly jungle, apart from the bit where the volcano, which has gently dissuaded settlers down the ages, pokes its head above the forest canopy. Even with directions, Late Island is extremely difficult to get to – surrounded by rocks and extremely non-Pacific oceanic swells eager to guide passing boats on to those rocks.

Aman’s supervillain lair is mostly underground, carved into the basaltic rock on the northern shore of the island. It wasn’t built with any kind of discernible plan, but it has room for everything your average supervillain might desire: shark enclosures, submarine bays, gigantic halls full of glittering stalactites and bizarre coral sculptures. The aboriginal earth-shifter who’d sung the lair out of the rock for Aman had disappeared three years ago, muttering something about building maze-playgrounds in deep-sea caverns for whale calves.

Aman stands in his control chamber, staring at the giant holo-screens that hover between complex rock and limestone structures, each flickering and strobing as pulses of raw data streak across them. Right in front of him is the viewscreen following the pterodactyl as it circles the edge of the island, looking for prey.

With Aman stand two Tias, a man and another woman. The woman is thin, dark, dreadlocked; the man holds her close to him as he watches the flying saurian, his face flushed with pride.

“Thank you,” he tells Aman. “I can’t believe this is actually happening.”

“It’s your power, Ulrik,” Aman says. “I just gave you a place to keep it.”

“You mostly sat around and issued orders,” says a Tia. “Anyway, now that it’s up and about, what do we feed it? And how do we keep it on Late?”

“Ulrik will have to clone more species,” says Aman. “We could have a whole dinosaur island thing going on up there.”

“I don’t like where this conversation is heading,” says Tia. “Ulrik, you can’t clone… dragons and things, can you?”

“No,” says Ulrik. “Only things that actually existed. But the dodo’s almost ready.”

“Good,” says Tia. “One Kaiju King is more than enough.”

A small holo-screen pops up in front of them, showing a metal door sliding open. Captain Tia and Tia Prime walk through it, and into the control chamber to join them.

“What’s new?” Captain Tia asks.

“Utopic’s gone to the Unit to look for Rowena,” says Aman.

The woman smiles, and squeezes Ulrik’s arm.

“Not for me?” Ulrik asks. “Should I feel insulted?”

“Well, they never really saw what you could do,” says Aman. “If you’d sensed a little T-Rex DNA near your prison they’d have made you feel more special.”

“They made me feel quite special enough,” says Rowena. “Are you sure they have no way of tracing us, Aman?”

“I’m not completely sure,” says Aman, looking at Captain Tia, who glares back at him.

“Look,” she says. “I have no idea how they found the sub, right? It was probably a lucky guess.”

“Or a super,” says Aman. “Maybe that Azusa is a tracker of some sort.”

“He won’t employ supers,” says Tia Prime.

“He just tried to employ you.”

“He wasn’t serious,” she says. “He really had no idea what to do with us once he’d won. It was kind of cute.”

“He asked us if we wanted to be supervillains,” says Captain Tia. “And when we said no and multiplied by a hundred and pulled out guns, he didn’t know what to say next.”

“So he just let you go?” asks Aman.

“Let’s say we let each other go. I mean, we had a nuclear-class sub, an army, and a hostage.”

“What did he do then?”

“He tried to hire us. We said no. He wanted to meet you. We said you were dead. Then he made some threats about how he was very dangerous and not a nice guy at all. We were making fun of him, and he snatched a gun and said he wasn’t kidding.”

Aman raises his eyebrows. “Why are you so fond of this Norio again?”

“Young. Hot,” says Tia. “Anyway, I dared him to shoot me and we were getting this good tension going when his girlfriend showed up in a weird white armour thing and he got embarrassed and went away. Very cute.”

Aman paces around the control chamber, looking at Rowena and Ulrik.

“I promised you a safe place to carry on your work,” he says finally. “But you should know a lot of people are looking for us.”

“And have been since the First Wave,” says Ulrik. “This hasn’t bothered you at all, from what we can see.”

“We’re pretty good at hiding from the Unit, yes, we’ve done it for years. But it’s really up to you whether you want to stay or not,” says Aman. “I don’t know if this is a completely safe place for you.”

“Do you know of any safer?”

Aman grins. “No,” he says.

“You have to stay,” says Tia Prime. “Everyone here is nice. And if you want more lovely people, I can make them. Plus, bonus, it’s not a Utopic zoo and we don’t want to pickle your insides and sell them.”