Blackjack Villain (33 page)

I placed his body gently on the floor and stepped back as the EMT covered it with a yellow tarp. I felt someone behind me, and turned to see Apogee there.

“Are you ok?”

I didn’t answer, looking back at the covered truck driver.

“We’d better go,” she said, leading me by my elbow towards the car. We moved past Tim and Trooper Donovan, who were recounting our amazing deed to other officers.

“There they are,” Tim beamed, and shook my hand. Donovan also gave me a hearty shake and slapped my shoulder.

“Her ‘associate’ she says,” the trooper laughed. “He damned near lifted the whole thing himself. No offense, ma’am,” he said, trying to soothe Apogee, but she was smiling, enjoying watching me struggle through the adulation.

“Hell of a job, sir,” Tim said, shaking again, and a few others took their turns, saluting me and giving me praise.

But another officer was staring at me. He was a trooper, like Donovan and almost the same age, but heavy set, and I noticed a pistol in his hand. He was nervous and his eyes were wide with apprehension.

“Tim, this guy’s Blackjack,” the trooper managed.

I was still swarmed by people wanting to shake my hand, but Tim took a step away.

“What did you say?”

The trooper pointed at me. “If that’s Apogee, then this fella here is Blackjack. It was all over the news, Tim.”

“Blackjack? The villain guy?” Tim asked.

“The guy from the New York City thing the other day. Same fellow that killed some super in L.A. last week.”

“That so, mister?” Tim asked. “You Blackjack?”

We stared at each other, not moving a muscle, and I didn’t know what to say. This was a massacre waiting to happen with all these cops around me. When the shooting started, no one would bother to notice that the bullets weren’t affecting me, but were hurting their friends around me.

“Is he Blackjack?” Tim inquired of Apogee, getting a curt nod in return.

Tim, more than the others, understood the calamity of the situation. I was a super, and there was nothing these folks or a hundred more like them could do to stop me. The only people that were going to get hurt were those that stood in my way.

Then I noticed Apogee. She was watching me, studying me. I think in a way, she was waiting to see what I would do, testing me.

“Maybe we can let cooler heads prevail,” I managed, but it was a feeble thing to say. It only encouraged them, emboldened the officers. One of them put his hand on his holstered pistol.

“Tim. Your name is Tim, right?” I asked him and he nodded. “I don’t want any trouble tonight.”

Tim was scared, as were all the others, but he stood his ground. “You kidnapped her, isn’t that right?”

I looked at Apogee, “She’s free to go wherever she wants, Tim. Right?”

Apogee didn’t help me at all.

“Why’d you help us?” he demanded. “If you’re a villain then why’d you help?”

“Tim, take it easy.”

“I want to know, mister.”

I sighed, “I helped because they needed help. Because she asked me to,” I motioned to Apogee.

“I guess there’s nothing we can do to stop a big shot like you, huh? You’ll kill all of us like you did that guy in Los Angeles.”

“I’m not going to hurt anyone.”

“I think you will,” he retorted. “What if I tried to arrest you right here?”

“I’d rather if you let me go on my way,” I said. “She can stay with you folks, for all I care.”

Tim turned to Apogee and said, “If you fight him, we’ll back you up.”

“She can’t fight me, Tim. Dr. Zundergrub, one of the guys I was with, you know who he is?” he nodded in acknowledgement. “He did something to her. She can’t fight me. And I didn’t kidnap her, damn it. It’s all part of what Zundergrub did.”

“So it’s you against us,” he said, but I couldn’t tell if he was growing brave, or trying to find a reasonable way out where no one would get hurt.

“I think the best thing for all involved here,” I looked around at all the officers, making sure to get eye contact, “Is that I get back in my car, and drive off. You guys can report me in to the NAS and let them handle me.”

“That would be us not doing our jobs.”

“Maybe,” I admitted, feeling like I was losing this battle. “I think enough people have gotten hurt tonight.”

“That a threat?” one of the other officers asked, and more nervous hands went to rest on their pistols.

I looked at the man who had asked that, “I didn’t mean it like that. I’m not going to hurt anyone. I just…”

Tim studied me for a few seconds.

“That was a hell of a thing you did back there,” he finally said and turned to Apogee. “Ma’am, I plain don’t know what to do here.”

“Leave him to me,” she said, satisfied with me. Tim nodded and motioned for his men to step aside as Apogee led me away from the throng of officers back to the car. I slid into the driver’s side and turned the car back on as she slammed her door.

“Thanks,” I said.

“You too.”

Tim watched us get in the car, arms crossed; no doubt frustrated that he wasn’t able to put a bad guy in jail. Beside him, another officer was talking into his radio reporting our make, model and tag number.

As I drove off, I caught a final glance at a swath yellow that lay on the floor. The tarp that covered the corpse of the truck driver who had given up his life for a bunch if people he had never known.

* * *

We didn’t talk much after that. I drove on to the nearest town and swapped cars then took a junction north of the interstate and drove on until morning. The sun was breaking when I found a small, roadside inn. I had put three-hundred miles between us and the accident scene, and I figured we were safe enough for a brief pause.

It was an inexpensive place, one floor and parking outside your room, and she didn’t complain that the room was tiny and had only two twin-sized beds.

I took to a dusty arm chair and tried to doze while Apogee went into the bathroom to shower, but I would tense up with the lights of every car that passed, expecting a confrontation with Braxton and his people. I should have kept driving but I was bone tired, and before I knew it, I fell deep asleep on that uncomfortable chair.

“Blackjack,” Apogee called to me, making me wake and jump out of the chair.

“Huh?”

It felt like I had fallen asleep a second ago, but the judging by the volumes of steam coming out of the bathroom, her shower had taken some time.

“You were in a really uncomfortable position,” she said, moving past me while wearing only the towel around her body, and another draped over her head to dry her hair.

Apogee dug into my pack, took out one of my plain black t-shirts and put it on over herself. She turned away from me and unwrapped the towel beneath the shirt throwing it on the sink. For a second there, I saw the small of her back and muscled buttocks which faded down into her toned legs.

“You’re staring again,” she said sitting on one of the beds and drying her hair with the second towel.

“Sorry,” I muttered getting up and moving towards the other bed. “I’m tired.”

“Shower first, you ape,” she snickered the second before I was going to hurl myself on the bed. I stumbled to stop, and losing my balance I had to catch myself with one hand.

“You’ll sleep better if you’re clean,” she added.

I leaned back and looked at the door, then back to her.

“I can’t go anywhere, remember?”

“Fine,” I said and took off my shirt and boots, tossing them on the floor. My pants were covered in muck and blood, so I stripped them off and folded them, intending to wash them as I showered. I had no choice, as I had nothing else to wear.

I was about to take off my boxers when I caught her looking at me.

“Oh my God, what is that gray stuff on your stomach?” she asked, forgetting about my partial nakedness and noticing the dark goo that had healed my stomach after the oil rig fight. It was flaking and starting to come off.

“The world’s most advanced Band-Aid.”

I picked at it, revealing more of a huge reddish scar across my stomach.

“Looks like it hurt.”

“It did,” I said and went into the bathroom to shower.

The water was icy cold at first, and it stung all my bumps and bruises. Thankfully, it warmed up fast, and stayed hot for a long time. The scalding water soaked my body, washing away filth and scabbed blood, washing away the pain of aching muscles and joints. It only hit me at that moment, watching the black grime swirl down the drain; I hadn’t showered in days.

I thought of the boys; Cool, Mr. Haha and Zundergrub racing through the Solar system on Dr. Retcon’s rocket ship. I guess that was a million dollars I was out, but to be honest, I hadn’t even checked with Sandy or my bank to verify the funds for the earlier missions. Besides, it wasn’t about the money for me.

In a way, I trusted Retcon. There was something about him, a sense of knowledge and purpose that was addictive, a greater goal. It was all smoke and mirrors for now, but the promise of mind-blowing adventure is what had sold me, even before I met the man. And meeting him had only cemented it in my mind. Retcon was known for the many evil deeds in his career but I saw something else. He was a sober, thoughtful man, not the terror you’d read about. Retcon had a cool demeanor, as if nothing in the world could threaten him and few things actually could.

I guess I envied that, or at least I saw it as a quality I had lacked all my life; that sense of purpose that drove me onward. Later, I’m sure they’d say that’s why I became a villain and not a hero. They’d analyze my every move and thought to find a reason for my choices, but the truth is that good or bad never meant anything to me. It didn’t mean anything to those society called “heroes” either. Then again, it wasn’t about what you labeled yourself, but how you behaved. And what I had seen of the world’s heroes had convinced me more and more that I had chosen correctly.

I had lathered up as best I could with the crappy bar of soap the hotel proved, when I felt something next to me. Sliding the curtain revealed Apogee standing there, breathing heavily, the thin black shirt clinging to her sweaty form.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, keeping my lower body covered by the curtain.

She leaned back against the sink, still despondent, so I rinsed myself of soap and covered myself with a towel as I walked out of the shower.

“You alright?”

Apogee avoided my face, her eyes focused on the floor.

“I was dreaming...” she trailed off.

She stared at the mirror a few seconds gathering up the strength.

“They came here. My people. And Th-they came in and they caught you.”

“What people? The Seven?”

She nodded.

“They caught you and they killed you.”

I smiled, “That’s not going to happen, angel.”

“They killed you,” she continued, “and because of what Zundergrub did to me, they killed me too. Then I woke up and you were gone.”

“No one’s going to find us, Apogee,” I soothed her, though at the same time, that was my greatest fear.

“They hired us to put you down,” she blurted. “By any means necessary.”

“They, who?”

A lone tear raced down her face. “It was a lie. It was all a lie.”

“They hired you to kill me?”

“Braxton. The NSA,” she said. “And no, they didn’t say to kill you, but they made it clear that we had the authority to use whatever force we felt was appropriate. If you guys were dead, they were going to look the other way. Braxton goaded me, in particular. He knew how upset I was about Pulsewave.”

I let her go and stepped back.

Apogee’s fierce eyes were filled with anguish and shame. I had an opportunity here, to take that figurative knife that she had dug into herself and bury it deeper, call her a hypocrite, a criminal no different than I. But in that scant tiny bathroom, in that strange moment in time with the whole world trying to catch us, I think Apogee and I finally began to understand each other.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“I’m sorry too,” I said, grabbing another towel to dry my head and leaving her alone in the bathroom.

* * *

By the time I had dried off and dressed, she was back in bed asleep. She stirred under the covers, troubled by her dreams. I took the opportunity to grab a couple of the prepaid phones and step out of the hotel room. It was the first chance at true privacy I had since Zundergrub had stuck us together.

I unpackaged the first one and dialed Sandy.

He picked up the phone on the first ring, despite the late hour on the West Coast, but didn’t answer. I could hear him breathing on the other end of the line and was about to speak but hesitated. It was strange, because we listened to each other. Sandy and I didn’t have any special code for when his line was compromised, but it was clear he was sending me a message. He was blown, the authorities were listening to his conversations and emails, and I should leave him alone for now.