Blackjack Wayward (The Blackjack Series) (42 page)

Besides, I was getting the impression he would leave me behind. More trouble than he’s worth, he’d say, justifying leaving the heaviest hitter in the dugout.

By now I was starting to understand how his little base worked, so I knew Superdynamic would know I had gone wandering. If I was violating protocol, bouncing from floor to floor, the other inhabitants of Babel didn’t seem to care, or else they were good enough to conceal their worry or concern.

The nearest floors were uniform, long halls, enormous labs filled with scientists running all sorts of experiments from electrical to thermodynamic, covering fields as vast as science itself. Superdynamic’s ambition was impressive, and he had managed to put his money where his mouth was. What was most notable was that he wasn’t shouldering the load, though he was a polymath like me, capable of solving problems in wide-ranging fields. No, he had created an environment where science was king; politics and funding were a problem that only he had to deal with, leaving the task of discovery to the finest minds on the planet.

Watching all the activity, all the progress taking place around me, made me feel like a pebble caught in a flowing river, stumbling along slowly while the current whipped by, leaving me behind. I felt helpless, and the frustration of my combat with Focus was wearing on me. I know what he was trying to do: get me to understand patience, to understand process and to learn how a team works together, but the mission to me was clear. Apogee was in danger, something was going on in D.C., and I was going through meaningless exercises. Now was not the time for training, to relearn everything. We had to get to D.C., figure things out the hard way if necessary, and take care of business.

The elevator stopped at one of the teen levels, and a young scientist got into the cab. I noticed that his lab coat was dirty, smeared with actual soil, and from this level came a light that was more natural than the others. Something else made me bounce out of the elevator as the doors slid closed: a smell, the aroma of churned topsoil, making me reminisce of my days back in our little home on the outskirts of Sacramento. My father was a doctor, with a small office in Midtown, one of the poorer areas of town, but our home outside the city proper was an actual farm. Dad had sold the arable land off to a larger farmer collective before I was born, and our backyard fence bordered a real working farm of more than thirty acres of orange groves. My brother and I would sneak back there, climb the trees, and pretend we were superheroes like Valiant and Global, defending the orange grove from unseen enemies until night came and we had to come in for supper.

The smell was unmistakable.

Ahead of me stood a massive set of double doors, opened to reveal a long light-bridge to one of the largest platforms orbiting the tower. I walked across, a little more comfortable with the experience, realizing as I drew closer that it was a greenhouse four football fields wide containing a vast field of crops. The lighting was natural. The roof was made of a single seamless piece of glass or acrylic that allowed the burning hot African sun to filter through. The huge crop field was climate controlled and properly hydrated, providing the plants the perfect conditions for maximum growth.

Two guards flanked the door, but they didn’t even look in my direction as I walked through, across the large platform overlooking the whole field. I took the stairs down to the bottom level and walked through the crops, noticing a few people also walking through the rows of plants, taking readings and samples.

I was drawn to a small grove of orange trees, like a child to Disneyland. There were too few trees to provide an ample crop of oranges, and looking around, it seemed that was the case with most of the crops, so it was just an experiment to see if the thing was even feasible.

“Excuse me,” said a voice behind me. I turned to see a young woman dressed in khaki shorts and jacket, with a white tank-top and a blue baseball cap that had the words “Boss” embroidered in white.

“Let me guess,” I said. “You’re the boss.”

She was genuinely boggled, regarding me with a nervous smile.

“I’m sorry?” she said, but then understood. “Oh, the hat,” she took it off and looked at it. Her hair was cropped short and blonde.

“Yep,” I said.

“The staff gave it to me for my birthday,” she said, a bit bashful.

“This is impressive, how you’ve managed to combine so many different crop types in the same area. I didn’t think it was possible.”

She was suspicious, but I was curious about her baby and her desire to explain the whole project overwhelmed any worry about who I might be. Besides, I was wearing the team suit. I might be twice the size of anyone in all of Babel, save perhaps Moe, but while wearing the garb, I was just one of them. I hoped she wouldn’t look down at my boots and wonder what they were about.

“Well, it’s all thanks to the special photovoltaics that prime the light,” she said, and my mind raced back to a lab in Northern California that I had bombed early on. They were running tests on something similar.

“The light that enters the chamber is modified specifically for each plant type, providing it not only the right intensity and wavelength, but allowing us to cater to each crop individually. See, our crops are laid out in a grid pattern, and the photovoltaic primers in the glass shield are programmed to allow different types of light for each spot on the grid as the sun goes by.”

“Wow,” I said, my mind genuinely blown. “And Superdynamic thought of that?”

“Huh?”

“Well,” I motioned to the whole base. “This is his puppy, right? The guy’s a genius, so I figured–”

“My team came up with this all,” she said, a bit upset that I devalued her contribution.

She looked back at her tablet computer a moment, giving me the chance to take a look at her. Her nametag read “Dr. de la Rocha,” and the doctor kept in shape. Perhaps a bit too slim, in her early thirties. Her blond hair was unruly, despite being short, constantly in her face, and her blue eyes were back to studying me with curiosity.

“I’m sorry, Doctor de la Rocha. I just assumed, wrongly, that he had his hands into everything.”

She smiled, satisfied with my apology. “The project committee has final approval over all major projects, but once we have their blessing, we’re in charge. As long as we stay true to the original funding,” she said, cocking her head forward.

“Amazing,” I said.

“Wait ‘til we have the second phase going,” de la Rocha said, beaming.

“Bigger?”

She nodded slowly, “Thirty times larger. The dome is in construction as we speak thirty miles north of here, on the other side of town. Combined with Dr. Cornell’s work on animal husbandry, and Dr. Lao’s work on nanotechnology with regards to using nanite bacterial soil management and pest repellence, we’ll be able to feed a population of 50-60 thousand from a dome this size.”

“No more trips to Save Mart, I guess,” I joked.

De la Rocha laughed. “California, huh?”

“Born and bred,” I said.

“I’m from Seattle.”

“Long way from home, doctor.”

She looked around the fields, suddenly gushing with pride. “Yeah, but what a ride.”

I let her enjoy the moment, looking up and trying in vain to see the gaps in the roving photovoltaics along the upper canopy.

“So you’re new, huh?”

“Dammit,” I said. “I put the thing on backwards, didn’t I?”

She looked at my suit and shook her head, “No, it’s all the questions. And, well...you do look kind of weird in that suit. We’re a little more casual down here, since we don’t have to abide by the air quality requirements that some of the projects do upstairs.” She paused, waiting for me to introduce myself, but for some reason, I didn’t want to.

“So?” she said, outstretching her hand. “I’m Katerina, you know my last name.”

“I’m Dale,” I said shaking her hand.

“You have a last name, Dale?”

I saw de la Rocha casually peck at her pad, as if she was trying to bring up the personnel records without my knowing it.

“I’m....” I swallowed hard. “I’m Blackjack.”

She raised her eyebrows, at first confused at what the hell I was talking about. Was that my last name? Dale Blackjack? But slowly the realization set in. Superdynamic had to have warned the staff, and her open, if cautious, enthusiasm disappeared, replaced by fear. Close as we were standing, I could tell she didn’t want to offend me, but de la Rocha did a terrible job of hiding her anxiety.

“I’m not going to do anything,” I said, but the words didn’t register. If anything, talk of potential violence only served to reinforce the sudden shock and consternation. She clutched the pad to her chest, like a shield.

“Please....” she managed, but she was stuck inside the lion’s cage, with the biggest, hungriest male. Scenarios raced through her mind, all ending the same way: everyone here was going to die.

I put my arms out defensively, but she flinched.

“I’m sorry,” I said, backing away from her. Others could see her facial expression, read her body posture, and ran over to help.

“No,” she shrieked, throwing her arms out for her rescuers to stop in their tracks, to stay away from the big bad guy, the monster that was going to kill everyone, burn the crops, rape the women, pillage and plunder.

I turned and ran, feeling moisture at the edges of my eyelids. I bounded toward the entrance, sparing a glance back to see Dr. de la Rocha dropping to her knees, relieved that she was going to live, others coming closer now to give her comfort, because she had faced the devil and lived.

“Satisfied?” said a voice in front of me, and I saw Superdynamic land on the platform overlooking the fields just as I came up the stairs.

Chapter Thirty-Four

He had been there the whole time, watching me, making sure I’d behave, keeping me in line. Had I tried anything, he would have called his team and the whole building’s security staff on me, and something told me that those security guards with no weapons were more formidable than they looked or acted.

“Follow me,” he said, storming off, and again I found it hard to keep up with him, despite having longer legs.

“I didn’t do anything,” I said, which drew a glare from him, all the more dramatic since his eyes were concealed under his helm.

I followed him to the elevator, which emptied of the folks it was carrying to give us an undisturbed ride up.

“I was bored, goddammit,” I said, but I could see from his posture, arms crossed, feet wide, that he was having nothing of it. He didn’t care; I was causing a problem, precisely what I had promised I wouldn’t do.

“What would you have me do? Jesus, Apogee is out there, she could be dead!”

He turned to me and sneered, “You want to do something?”

“Yes, dammit!”

Superdynamic looked over at a control panel at the door and back at me. The elevator moved differently then, laterally as well as upward, and suddenly faster. He was quiet, still facing me, judging me with his non-eye helmet that gave him the oddest look, something I had never noticed until now. The laser lightshow that accompanied him surrounding his suit at all times was also down, which probably meant something bad was about to happen.

I looked out of the window, resigned to my fate, and saw we were high enough to overlook the planted fields, looking down through the photovoltaic shield. Down there was a woman frightened half to death, all because of my name.

What the hell was I thinking, that I could just come back, flash my pearly whites, and make everything ok? Madelyne’s mom had met me, given me tea and crumpets, and been polite, but the woman knew she was protected, that Superdynamic was on his way. Despite that, I could still feel the raw tension that she carried into that scene. Maybe she was just passive/aggressive, and if the events of Hashima weren’t explained properly, guess who was the bad guy? Guess who had put her daughter in danger? Thinking back, I couldn’t believe I had done that, just shown up there looking for Apogee. For all I knew, Zundergrub could have been tracking me, letting me do all the hard work for him.

What was I trying to prove, anyway? The world thought of me as a monster, as a mass killer, whether right or wrong, and there was no easy way to walk away from that.

“She almost had a heart attack when I told her my name,” I said, though I couldn’t be certain Superdynamic was even bothering to listen. But it made sense. I had taken the blame for everything. They had wrapped up the whole Hashima incident, placed the burden on my shoulders, and sent me off to the mind-prison to spend the rest of my days. There was no contingency for this, my return to society. People needed to know their leaders were solving their problems, putting away the mass killers, the crazies and the real monsters. In my case, all three applied, and they had sent me off forever.

It was all so sordid, so horrible, impossible to overcome with even the best of deeds, and it would dangle around my neck for the rest of my life. It made me wish to be back at Utopia.

The door slid open and Superdynamic backed out into Babel’s control center.

If the rest of the base was an impressive undertaking of science and technology, the control center was the pinnacle of all the discoveries below, the culmination of every scientific effort man had set forth since the days of fire and rock.

The multilevel structure was buzzing with activity and afire with lighting that gave it the cold, antiseptic feel of a hospital. But the similarities ended there. The computer consoles were arranged along the walls of the first floor, each with a massive display. The center of the room was dominated by a lower level with several dozen techs working at computer stations. Each person seemed to talk atop each other as if the communications were simultaneous, with both people speaking and listening at once for maximum efficiency. The upper deck was a ring around the main floor, with a jutting peninsula where lay the most impressive bank of computers I had ever seen, with a structure that was like a showerhead; instead of water, though, the thing dripped raw energy, like tiny motes of light among a glowing containment field. The techs on the floor interfaced with their computers without sitting in front of them, without the ubiquitous mouse and keyboard. But somehow, each person was manipulating the computer. Perhaps it was by a neural link, because they stood near an individual machine, and the monitors were updating as if someone was using the computer.

Superdynamic shot to the air and flew to the jetty that jutted over the room, landing there and walking into the glowing field. He leaned on the railing, overlooking me.

“Now do you see?” he said waving his arm, demonstrating his staff’s hard work. In fact, all of the team was here, each with a small station, no better or worse than any of the techs. Moe looked at me and shook his head. Focus’ eyes were purposefully averted, not looking at all like she’d been fighting for her life less than an hour ago, thanks to Mirage’s healing powers.

One thing was clear: Superdynamic was on it. Each of the monitors displayed something having to do with the issue in D.C. Some were replaying earlier footage of the heavy fighting, including some supers going at each other. Still more were following the present action using satellite footage and telemetry, and in the center, above the pit, was a 3D holographic display of the whole city, some areas marked in green, but the vast majority, including the central areas where the White House and Congress were, marked in red. I could infer that the red marked taken places.

“We’re working the problem here; we’re trying to figure it out. Not running around making things worse for everyone,” he said, raising his voice so loud that most techs paused what they were doing and turned their attention to us.

“All I want to do, man, is help,” I said.

“Really?”

I nodded, growing apprehensive at the mass audience. There were easily a hundred techs and supers here, all watching me.

“Like you helped Focus?”

I lowered my head. “I lost it. I’m sorry.”

Superdynamic scoffed, “Sorry? That doesn’t cut it here, you understand? Sorry doesn’t mean a thing for all the people who have ended up dead since you showed up. Yeah, I’m keeping track, in case you were wondering, and so are a lot of other people.”

“I just want to help Apogee,” I said, starting to grow angry. “And I want to stop Zundergrub.”

“Sure you do,” he said.

“I do, dammit. I came back to help her, and you told me you know where she was. You said I could help. Turns out you just want to keep me under wraps, huh? You just want to make sure I don’t hurt anyone....” I stopped, immediately hating the words I’d chosen.

“I wish I could keep you from hurting people, Blackjack. Believe me, I would do it right now if I could.”

“That doesn’t sound too heroic, Superdynamic.”

He laughed. “You think I’m here to be a hero? Or that anyone else here is, for that matter? That’s more pathetic than everything else. We’re here to clean up your messes, man. And believe me, this is your mess.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” I shot back.

“This is all your fault.”

My mouth dropped. “You’re crazy.”

“If not for you, back on Hashima, we would’ve stopped Retcon. But no, you had to be the tough guy, you needed to prove to the world that you’re man enough, pulling that little stunt with Epic.”

“If you’re upset that I beat your friend, you can-“

“It’s all your fault,” he snapped, slamming his hands on the railing. “We would have stopped Retcon and Zundergrub. Come on, Blackjack. You’re supposed to be pretty smart. Think about it. What happens if you’re not there?”

I swallowed hard, looking around the room, finally lowering my gaze and nodding.

“That’s right,” he said, knowing he had me, and going for the knockout punch. “Now you’re starting to understand. We can’t go berserk and start knocking shit down. What’s happening now has world-ending implications, maybe not now, but in the future. If the United States falls to civil war, who’s to say what Russia will do. What about China? What happens to the world markets, to global peace? Don’t you see? What happens now will affect every person on the planet, to the most remote village in the farthest corner of the Earth. And what happens if the American nuclear stockpile falls into the hands of this crazy General Maxwell and his people? Put it on screen, Moe.”

Moe walked toward the central bank, putting a video feed from a recent press conference with Maxwell surrounded by all his cronies and zooming into a closeup of the general himself.

“Everything that has tried to enter the Washington D.C. area has been destroyed, or not heard from since. We think the White House is still holding out, but time is running out and we have to settle on a–”

“That’s right, we have to act! We can’t just stay here–” I started, but something about the footage of Maxwell had spurred my attention. I walked over, but the camera angle changed, tightening on the man.

“We have to act, Blackjack, but we have to act ‘right’. Maxwell has some secret weapon–”

“Wait!” I yelled. “That footage. Moe, can you rewind to when it was a full shot of everyone?”

He looked over at Superdynamic for permission, and when he received a nod, the video rewound until it was a wide shot of the general and all his men.

“That,” I said pointing at the screen. It was over my head, but it was so big that almost everyone in the room could see.

Moe saw what I was pointing at and centered the footage on the person I was talking about, a middle aged, balding man with a bit of facial hair. He might have been wearing a suit instead of his usual lab coat, but I would recognize that face anywhere.

“Zundergrub,” Moe said.

“I knew it,” I said. 

“So he’s behind all this?” Superdynamic said. I readied for another pontificating speech about how I had fucked up at Hashima, allowing this to happen, but another figure, standing behind Zundergrub drew my attention.

“Moe, the guy that’s standing behind him. The tall bearded dude in the back, can you zoom in?”

Moe did it this time without asking for his bosses’ blessing, and snapping the image tight, I saw the face of death.

“Lord Mighty,” I whispered, but everyone in the room recognized him this up close. He was looking right at the camera, taller than everyone around him, his massive frame somehow fitting into a well-tailored suit, but the shoulders, the slicked hair, and the contemptuous glare were unmistakable. He looked different than I had seen him before, with longer hair shot through with gray and a full beard, but his demeanor was as before; he was like a god surrounded by children, resentful of their presence, yet for some reason he had seemed almost invisible standing in the far back.

“Oh, God,” Templar said.

“Has he gone crazy?” Moe asked.

I shook my head. “Zundergrub must have him. That’s the only explanation.”

“Explains a lot,” Superdynamic said. “No wonder nothing can get into town.”

“Goddamn,” Moe said softly.

“There you go,” I told Superdynamic. “I helped. Now tell me where Apogee is, like you said you would.”

His expression was suddenly severe, his eyes downcast.

“Dammit,” I said. “You promised me.” But his expression was so dire, I was worried about something else, that she might be dead. He looked at me and flashed a nervous smile.

“I know where she is, Blackjack,” he said. “Apogee put together her old team, the Revolution,” he said and suddenly my stomach felt sick, my heart dropped, and the room began to spin.

“She’s in D.C. in the middle of it,” he continued. “And we haven’t been able to contact her for over thirty-six hours.”