Blackjack Wayward (The Blackjack Series) (34 page)

“It was a hard time,” I said.

“I mean, I know what happened. A mother knows how to get things from her child, you know?”

I smiled, imagining the endless probing questions.

“They talked about you quite a bit,” she went on. “In the news, that is. I read an article about how you got into the whole business. Your hair was a lot shorter back then.”

“Yeah, they put me in a mind-prison and forgot about me,” I said running my fingers through the stringy hair.

“You look better with shorter hair. Anyway, I read something about how you started with bank robberies. Is that right?”

I nodded, not wanting to remember, and thankfully the phone rang.

“Oh,” she said, stepping out of the kitchen. “Give me just a moment.”

Ms. Hughes walked to the other side of the house, leaving me alone. I half expected a wall to break down and a whole team of supers to charge in, but nothing happened, and Ms. Hughes was loud enough on the phone – even though she was down the hall – that I could tell she was talking to an acquaintance, apologizing for being late.

I turned my attention to a small dining table that sat along a windowsill couch that overlooked the pool. Along the wall from the kitchen there were a dozen wooden picture frames, all of Madelyne at various ages. One picture that caught my attention was of her and her real father, taken when she was no more than five. They were in front of a much smaller house, Madelyne sitting on his shoulders, playfully pretending she was eating his head. Her father was heavily tanned, as if he had worked outside his whole life, with slick black hair (lightly tossed by her assault). He wore black slacks and a patterned work shirt with a black tie, in fashion more like what you’d find in the early 1980s.

Next to that one was a picture I had seen before, in Madelyne’s apartment. It was a candid shot of her and Barry Ashbourne, a.k.a. Pulsewave, beside a dance floor, though they weren’t taking part. She was exploding in laughter, and anyone could tell by how he leaned into her that more than friendship brewed there.

“Sorry about that,” Ms. Hughes said, coming back with the wireless phone, a loud beep sounding as she shut off the communication.

“No, I’m the sorry one,” I said. “I’m sorry I bothered you.”

I started away when she looked past me at the pictures on the wall, noticing the photo of Pulsewave. For a moment, she was lost in thought.

“Barry was the first boyfriend she ever brought home.”

Stepping back, I gave her room, and she moved to the picture, pulling it from the wall, studying it closely.

“He was a nice boy but I knew he wasn’t for her. A mother knows. Very polite, very handsome, but...I don’t know...he wasn’t for her.”

I looked out the window at a pair of golfers, wondering when they were coming, when I’d get put down and sent back to Utopia. When my little world tour would come to an end.

“Why did you do it?” she said.

I tried to answer a few times, unable to keep my eyes on her, or to look away. I felt a knot in my stomach, maybe from the coffee, or could she have put something in it to knock me out?

“I’m not a very good person,” I managed.

She pursed her lips, unhappy with the answer.

“Maddie would cry whenever it came on the TV,” she said. “After a while they didn’t talk about it, you know. They went on to the next disaster, like they always do. But for a few months, you were all they talked about on the news. She would change the channel and go outside, or go upstairs, and cry it all away. But it didn’t go away, did it?”

I shook my head, “Not for me.”

“And you say you’re here to help her?”

“Well,” I said, trying to rephrase it. I didn’t want to give Ms. Hughes the impression that her daughter was in danger. “I just worry about her.”

She smiled, “That doesn’t sound too bad.”

But her approval wasn’t enough for me, just like Apogee’s validation hadn’t been enough. I knew there was something dark inside me, something hollow and horrible, something that was dying to come out, to take over, to unleash itself on the world. I had let it loose on Shard World, against alien beasts that were unrecognizable to me, inhuman and easy to destroy. I had dropped all semblance of control during my return in the mind-prison, also killing and maiming at will, even stooping so low as rape when Aryani’s affections were denied to me. Once again in the Outback, I had chosen the company of a murderous villain simply because she accepted me as I was, refusing to challenge me to become better as Apogee did. Later, I had unleashed my anger, murdered dozens, maybe hundreds. Regardless of whether they were alien foes, implanted perceptions, or murderous villains, I had lost myself in the mayhem, destroyed everything I touched, and left a wake of death in my path.

Even now, I was worried about what would happen if heroes showed up at Ms. Hughes’ house. I’d seen how callous and reckless they were at times. Had I come here, only to put Madelyne’s mother in danger?

I looked back at the golfers, afraid Ms. Hughes would see my lip quivering, my chin pinch, and I thought back to the mind-prison, to the horror in the desert, to how low I had gone when nothing had mattered. And now to face the person most impacted by Madelyne’s horrible ordeal, to stand in her kitchen, to see the pictures on her wall and to know the anguish of almost having lost her daughter was too much for me. Was there no end to the depths of the pit beneath me? Would there be no end to the shame I felt, no salvation for me in the end?

Maybe I was just cursed, destined for a hard fall, and I was only going to take everyone with me.

“Are you okay?” she asked placing her hand on my arm.

I shook my head, feeling the tears welling at my eyelids.

“Your daughter saved me,” I said. “And I threw it all away.”

Ms. Hughes humphed.

“That’s not too smart.”

I shook my head.

“You called for help, didn’t you? That phone call....”

She seemed surprised at first, then bewildered, and finally upset, a triumvirate of emotions that I had seen in that exact order in her daughter.

“I’m not in the habit of being called a liar,” she said. “Especially not in my own house.”

“Huh?” I said, wiping my eyes.

“I didn’t call for help.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I just don’t know what to expect.”

I looked back and found her smiling, “I see what she sees in you.”

“I don’t know...I just don’t.”

“I’m going to tell you something now, and I hope you can be discreet,” she said. “And with that, I mean, you’ll make sure that Madelyne never finds out I told you. Is that something I can trust you with?”

I almost laughed, and I felt like telling her that my ride was almost over, that every hero in the world was about to descend on our location and that shortly, I’d be plugged back into the mind-prison of Utopia.

“I promise,” I said.

She nodded and sipped her coffee, looking out the window.

“Madelyne’s father, her biological father, he was a rascal like you. He had an idealized view of romance, like you, and he swept me off my feet like a tornado I couldn’t avoid. He was trouble, I could tell from the way he looked at me. He didn’t just want me as his woman, he wanted my soul to be intertwined with his. I knew it when I married him.”

Ms. Hughes smiled, “He made a living as a charter fisherman, and he would take his clients out fishing for days. But as time passed, and our love matured – things change with time, you see – I got the feeling that he wasn’t being honest with me. A woman has a way of knowing.”

I finished my coffee and she went back to the counter, picking up the pot and refilling my cup.

“So I figured he was meeting with lady friends on those three and four day trips out to sea. I started following him, and no, he wasn’t being honest. But it wasn’t what I had thought.”

“What was it?”

“He was working for some unsavory characters, using his boat to run between the Keys and Cuba. Bobby – that was his name, Robert Robau – was shuttling people and guns back and forth. I don’t have to remind you of how illegal that was, even back then in the early eighties. He was risking our whole family, and for what? I couldn’t understand. So I asked him, I said, “Why are you doing this? Think of your little girl.”

“’I am thinking of her,’ he told me. “It’s because of her I’m doing this.’”

I shrugged, not following.

“My husband was risking his life and his freedom, because he was afraid that the horrors of his home country would follow him here. He was an idealist, a dreamer. To him, his life wasn’t as important as those around him. And I know, his fears turned out not to be well founded. Castro’s ideology had no danger of spreading to this country, but he saw it spread to Nicaragua and other countries in South America and he grew concerned. So he did something about it.”

She placed her cup down on the saucer and shook her head, smiling wistfully.

“Well, Madelyne is very much her father’s girl. Driven, that one. Devoted and loyal.”

“She’s the only friend I have left,” I said.

“If you consider her a friend,” she went on, as if reading my mind, “then you’ll do a small favor for me.”

I nodded.

“Forgive her.”

But before I could say anything, a figure came hovering down from the skies, just a dozen feet from the windows.

It was Superdynamic and he pointed at me, beckoning me to come outside.

Chapter Twenty-Six

“I’m sorry, but I have to go,” I said, placing the teacup and saucer on the countertop. She did the same and walked over to me, clasping my hands.

“Are you going to be all right?”

“He really doesn’t like me,” I chuckled.

Ms. Hughes flashed a smile and squeezed my hands. “Be good, okay? And come back soon. Maybe I’ll make some Cuban food for you and Maddie.”

“I’d like that.”

She put her hand on my chest, looking at me seriously, “Some things are worth all the difficulties of the world.”

“Thank you for the coffee,” I said and slid the glass door open, walking across the pool deck, taking a small set of stairs and hopping the back fence to face off with Superdynamic. If he wanted a fight, this one was going to be one for the ages.

Superdynamic flew away from the house and landed beside a group of supers, beckoning for me to approach. A V/STOL silver aircraft hovered in the sky above the golf course. It reminded me nothing of Epic’s jet from the fight on Hashima, but the technology had to be Superdynamic’s handiwork because it was the same shade as his full-body costume. It was polished to a shine, yet appeared to be less an aerodynamic aircraft and more of a metallic beetle, hunched over in hovering mode with wings swept up and back and two great motors pivoted downwards. Beneath the vessel were what seemed to be the insect’s hooked claws or legs, yet on further inspection I could tell they were pylons of weapons and sensors. Another interesting fact was how large the vessel was, especially when compared to the ship on Hashima Island. Where Epic’s airplane had been like a modernized version of the SR-71 Blackbird, this thing was closer in length to a 727 and looked like a genetic experiment gone wrong, bright and lustrous, and silent as a whisper despite its massive size.

Superdynamic’s suit was as before, dark and light silver with white trim, covering the entirety of his body save for his chin and lips. His headgear was extended, with the edges flaring out into harp flanges and no marks denoting where the eyes would be, giving his face a strange, blank expression. Lights flashed around and through the suit, flaring through channels marking the edges between colors and around the joints in the armor. I knew he had a shield and some sort of light weaponry, but in truth, I had never seen him in action. In our previous encounter, back in New York City, Cool Hand Luke had shut him and Epic down with one of his temporal bubbles.

And speaking of Epic, I half expected to see him. Instead, Superdynamic had formed a new group. The others moved in, surrounding me. I didn’t recognize any of them, save for Mirage, former companion of Superdynamic’s from the Superb Seven and a friend of Apogee’s from farther back. The fact that the majority of his team was unknown to me meant that they were a bunch of rookies, an untested team, unready for what I was going to unleash on them. They were acting like professionals, though, ready for anything, holding a perfect perimeter against any escape. I wondered what madness Mirage had prepared to disorient me, but it seemed safer to play it straight, so I held steady. To the right of Superdynamic was a fellow with a costume that was somewhat similar to the legendary hero Olympic, all dark blue leather with yellow accents. He may well have been second-generation super, but he was a little guy, small and thin, and not that impressive.

Beside Olympic Jr. was a girl that looked no more than seventeen. Her eyes gave a hint of Asian descent, and she wore a white and gray China girl outfit, free around the midriff. Her arms were adorned with gold circlets and her long brown hair was partially pulled up, kept in place with amethyst hairpins. She had an athletic figure despite being quite thin, like an agile Shaolin, and wasn’t used to being given a once-over, blushing as I appraised her.

“We’re not here to fight,” Superdynamic said, noticing that I was gauging the opposition, but he was the only one of his party who wasn’t tense.

The fellow next to her, standing almost behind me, wore a half-suit of metal armor, straight out of a T.H. White novel, except only from the waist down. His upper body was bare and pale, with a series of animated dragon tattoos flowing across his skin. He was a young guy, much like Olympic Jr., no more than twenty, with long blonde hair that he had trouble keeping out of his face. He was taller than Olympic Jr., almost reaching me, and one of his long, lanky arms rested on the leather corded handle of a massive sword that looked too heavy for him to even lift.

The one that most drew my attention was a busty redhead standing next to the skinny knight. She was dressed in tight leathers, but otherwise styled like a swashbuckler or pirate with a tight bodice that struggled against her ample bosom, pressing all that flesh upwards into a massed valley of cleavage. Unlike the martial artist girl, the redhead liked being stared at, raising an eyebrow and cocking her hips to one side to accentuate her figure. She smacked at her gum, dismissing me with an unimpressed expression on her face.

I must have looked pretty pathetic.

Closing off the circle was a big black dude in a long leather trench coat and a musculature to rival Epic’s. From how close he stood, how tense he was, I could tell he was the most eager to get it on. He had a funny beard and a ridiculous flattop-cut Afro, with reflective glasses and a cigar jutting from his mouth. I’d never heard of him before, but he looked like he’d been around, and he wanted a piece of me.

“’Sup, bitch,” he mumbled when he noticed my attention on him.

“You’re this group’s Epic, I guess,” I said.

He furrowed his brow, not following.

“I’m just trying to figure out who I’m going to skull-fuck first,” I said.

“This isn’t what I want,” Superdynamic said, changing his posture by shooting forward both arms defensively when he realized how much I wanted a fight.

“I bet,” I said, the threat dripping with menace.

He turned back to Mirage, the only member of his team not encircling me, who was instead standing about thirty feet behind Superdynamic.

“Back the hell off, Moe, and don’t do anything yet, Mirage. Let me talk to this guy.” he told his teammate then turned to me. “We’re not here to fight, Blackjack.”

“That’s a lot of young faces,” I said, looking around. “Bunch of rookies going to get splattered today, Super Dee.”

He swallowed hard, trying to keep his composure. “Madelyne said you were cool,” he said.

I laughed.

“Do you hear me?” Superdynamic said again, stepping forward to draw my attention. “This isn’t a game, man. You can’t be here.”

It started softly, a low rumble in my belly, but before I knew it, I was laughing so hard, tears were streaming down my face.

“Bugger’s daft,” said the busty heroine in a pretty heavy English Cockney accent. She crossed her arms, propping up the bountiful pair in a sassy pose, cocking her head as if to make sense of me.

“Oh?” I said, walking past Superdynamic toward her. He let me pass, in part because I must have looked like a mad man, covered in grime and tears, laughing like the world was going to end. It had to be – this was all part of the dream, and I had never left. I had to be back there, back in Utopia, the paradigm reforming to give me more difficulty, more challenges, keeping my mind busy so I wouldn’t be a danger to others.

“I’m starting to get it now,” I said aloud, but to no one in particular. “I’m starting to understand how this works!”

“Blackjack, man....” Superdynamic put his hand on my biceps to hold me back, but I strode through his grip.

“I get it. I see how this whole thing works,” I said waving my arms about. “It’s like she said: you’re just keeping me busy, keeping my mind working on a goal. And at the same time tossing me a bone here or there,” I motioned to the looker.

“Dude, what are you talking about?”

“He’s bonkers,” she said. “His mind’s all at sixes.”

I laughed again.

“Blackjack, you need to snap out of it,” Superdynamic said, clasping both my arms and giving me a gentle shake, but that just made me laugh harder.

“It’s ok,” I said. “Now I understand. This is all bullshit, and the stuff they showed me earlier, the whole thing, it was bullshit too.” I put my arm around Superdynamic and motioned to the heroine. “See, they put her here for me. So I can have something to fuck. Well, mind-fuck. But you know what I mean. It’s just something to keep me in line, something to keep me busy. I’m still back there, buddy.”

I squeezed his shoulders hard and walked over to the heroine, closer than she was comfortable with. She was a beauty, for sure, with full lips, big blue eyes, and a figure that could cause a thousand car accidents. I smiled and she put her balled fists to her hips, ready to strike.

“I’m Dale,” I said, laying on the charm.

“Fuck are you about?” she said, looking around uncomfortably as I stepped closer still.

“You’re the best one yet,” I said.

“Get away from her, Blackjack,” Superdynamic said.

“Or what?” I strolled back to him. “This is my dream. I get her. She’s mine!”

“Oh, fuck off,” she spat.

“What do we do, Superdynamic?” asked the knight.

“Just hang back,” their leader said. “I got this.”

“Hey,” I said. “Way this dream works is we’re a little hostile, maybe we fight it out. But before you know it, we’re all best friends, drinking it up.”

I turned to the knight, who was more nervous than the others. “But usually a few people die along the way,” I said. “And you have ‘sidekick that dies’ written all over you, buddy.”

Superdynamic shook his head. “You’re out of the dream, Blackjack. You’ve been out ever since Zundergrub broke into Utopia and tried to kill you.”

I paused for a second, shaking my head.

“No, no, no,” I said not knowing what to believe or who to trust. I mean, had the dream become self-aware? Was that the next step in its evolution? Maybe I’d been caught and thrown back in, and some parts were real and others not. But what was real and what wasn’t? It all felt as real as this, now. As real as Superdynamic’s hand on my shoulder, as real as his words as he tried to calm me down, defuse the situation, get the bad guy away from the scene. Was the ordeal at Utopia real? Was Claire real? The whole thing in Australia? If they caught me somewhere in there, how could I know where I was, or if I could trust my own senses?

I wouldn’t have made Superdynamic show up here so friendly. The mind-prison would have thrown him at me to tear apart, to release my anger and rage, to pummel him into oblivion and to give me that satisfaction to keep me moving forward, keep my mind active and seeking the next challenge.

“You’re just saying that to pacify me, to fucking mollify me. It’s the machine: it’s trying to keep me busy. Just let me out for a second, man. I just want to find Apogee, make sure she’s safe!”

Mirage took a few steps forward, suddenly enraged, but Superdynamic shot his arms back at him, coming between us.

“Fucking chill, Chen,” he shouted. “Let me get this, goddammit.”

Mirage’s stern face was twisted like a mask, his eyes boring through my body as if he were ready to charge me, regardless of my strength or toughness, and just slug me.

“I got this, okay?” Superdynamic said, and Mirage, or Chen as he had called him, paused and let the team leader take command of the situation.

“Get what? What are you going to get? You’re not going to get me, man. If I’m out, if this is real, then nothing’s going to stop me. I’ve been through hell and back and there’s no way you’re putting me back. I’ll fucking kill half of you and cripple the rest before that happens. Because you know what? You didn’t bring enough people. Token black guy here is going to last all of three seconds.”

“It doesn’t have to be that way,” Superdynamic said. “Back the hell off, Moe. I’m not telling you again.”

“Shit,” Moe said, “this motherfucker needs a lesson in manners.”

“You don’t have what it takes, pal,” I said, giving him my back so he would know I didn’t see him as a threat. Besides, if this was the dream, I could take him easily, right?

“Blackjack, listen to me,” Superdynamic said walking in front of me. “You’re out, you understand? The lingering doubt you have is perfectly valid, it happens to some people as an after-effect of being under as long as you were, but trust me when I tell you, you’re out.”

I just stared at his mask, not knowing what to believe. He was right, in that sense. I had moments of clarity, followed by utter confusion.

“Prove it,” I said.

He shrugged, “Okay, how?”

I looked around at his befuddled group, realizing that my antics had made them lose their professional attitude, and now they just stared at me, confused and concerned that they might have to fight a mad man.

“Take off your mask,” I said.

Superdynamic didn’t know what to say, his mouth partly agape.

“Why do you want that, mister?” the redhead asked from behind me.

I shook my head, “I’m not sure.”

“Don’t fucking do it, Dee,” Moe said.

The leader’s confused expression changed as he shifted back a half-step, and after a moment he smiled and undid his helm. Superdynamic was a handsome guy, with the prototypical hero jawline and light brown eyes, the right slightly higher the than the left. His long nose had a nock halfway down from a break in his youth, and the top of his head was shaved, though slight stubble was growing back. He probably kept it slick so the suit would fit closer to the skin.