No Master Plan Here (Madness Runs in the Family) (11 page)

             
“That's where you're wrong. Kay and I have been running the numbers. We think we have a chance. We will need you for this, though.”

             
“Me?” Ghost looked surprised. She had been on a couple of heists with Anansi before, but nothing this serious. He was a bit of a loner when it came to his activities, and if he wanted her with, it meant that things could get complicated.

             
“Yeah. I need you to pose as a security guard and make sure that I can get in the back, somewhere behind the scenes, to set up. Can you do that for me?” He smiled. It was crooked, full of personality. Ghost smiled back, nervousness in her eyes, but her expression was confident.

             
“I can do that.”

             
“Can you?” Anansi responded, a teasing tone in his voice. He prodded the center of her chest with his index finger. His face was drawn and serious, but playfulness glittered in his eyes. “This is serious villain work. If we screw up, I can't crown you Queen of the Subjugated Peoples of America, and will have to sacrifice you to dark gods and demons for more power to do it myself.” He reached out through his neural link, causing the holographic terminal beside him to play a video clip of lightning and thunder in the sky.

             
Ghost laughed and leaned down to kiss Anansi. Seconds later they broke apart, heat rising between them as they rested their foreheads against each other. “I can play my part, if you can play yours.”

             
“Deal.”

-~-~-

              March 2, 2014

              “That's right, Anansi is planning to assassinate the president, Senator Wilson, and Congressman Lowe at the rally day after tomorrow.” Denise leaned against the wall, her forehead against her arm, the encrypted phone pressed to her ear. She had looked through Anansi's plan, memorizing every detail she could, but she didn't have a photographic memory and if she took pictures of the plan, the AI would notice and tell Anansi. She had to make do with what he remembered.

             
At first, the assignment to get near Anansi had been unbearable. The man was arrogant, egotistical, and always talked about whatever he was researching or experimenting as if everyone in the room understood exactly what he was talking about when he was talking about neuroscience or chemistry or advanced superhuman mechanics. If she asked him to use layman's terms for her, he would start stuttering as he tried to explain, and she would still not understand what he was talking about. When he wasn't talking about something scientific, he was talking about politics, raving about the corruption of man and the uselessness of the common man. Maybe he was a genius, but he didn't relate well to anyone.

             
That wasn't entirely true. He related to his family. He was the second oldest of seven, and they talked frequently. It was the only conversations that she understood, and then only barely. References to comics, movies, internet memes, and games permeated their conversations.

             
Things had gotten easier after Thanksgiving. She had started to understand what he talked about, at least as far as games. They had eaten, played games and music, and watched movies into the small hours of the night. When he finally laid down to go to bed that night, he had told Denise his master plan.

             
Take over the world. Fix it so that people would be equal.

             
He admitted it wasn't much of a plan, but as far as goals were concerned, it was what he wanted. A world where intolerance didn’t exist, where people could be happy. Where nobody starved to death, beat their children, or hated people because they were different.

             
The assignment stopped being a pain. What had started as posing as a girlfriend to a shut in, geeky, elitist madman had turned into affection, and with that door opened, it stopped being an act when she held his hand, when they kissed.

             
And that made this all the more difficult.

             
Anansi was planning to kill people, and not just anyone. People that Denise was sworn to protect. And duty came before love. She repeated her oath in her mind. “Enemies, foreign and domestic,” it said, and Anansi had in one move become someone who could only be described as such. Yes, the people he was targeting were trying to impugn on the civil rights of somewhere in the realm of a hundred and fifty thousand people, but it was for the good of the other millions that were caught in the crossfire any time one super went toe to toe with another. It was for the good of the many that the few had to suffer. She had tried to convince him that killing them wasn't necessary.

             
“It has to start somewhere,” he had said, his eyes cold as he continued to plot the deaths of some of the highest men in the country.

             
“Are you sure?” said the voice on the other end. Her handler, Gareth Doyle. He wasn't a super, but as there was no branch for supers in the government, Denise worked for the FBI for now. “That is a serious shift from his normal tactics.”

             
“Positive. He is planning on setting explosives underneath the stage during the speech under the cover of invisibility. I'm supposed to help him get in and bring in the explosives.”

             
“Alright. Go along with the plan. We will have personnel waiting for him inside the ready room. Good work. Doyle out.”

             
The line went dead, and Denise let her arm drop. She told herself she was doing the right thing. It didn't make her feel any less like she was backstabbing someone she cared about.

-~-~-

              March 4, 2014

              Anansi approached the gate that Denise was guarding, wearing a black duster and carrying a backpack. The duster covered his gear well, but Denise could still see the bandoliers of grenades and cores he carried. Anansi was prepared for more than just a blast and go, and that worried her. It wasn't part of the plan.

             
Anansi smiled and ran a hand through his hair. Denise smiled back, keeping her growing worry off of her expression. He walked up to her and looked her up and down. “Ghost, I have to say, I think I prefer your usual outfit.”

             
Denise looked down at herself. She looked identical to the guard she had replaced, tall white male, slightly overweight, with a bushy mustache. She shrugged and stroked the mustache. The guard she had replaced was waiting in the preparation shack with two supers and four more policemen to arrest Anansi. She hoped it would be enough. She slipped into a different form, this one of Ghost. She had dark skin and tattoos covering most of her body, her hair was short and dyed red, and her eyes were solid white. The policeman's outfit, sized for someone much larger than she was, hung from her frame. She stripped out of them and shifted to be wearing a leather jacket and pants.

             
“You ready?” she said, once the transformation was complete. Anansi stepped forward and kissed her forehead. He patted her rear and started walking towards the preparation shack. Denise followed behind him, trying to stay calm. Anansi glanced back at her, his gaze concerned.

             
“You okay?” he asked.

             
“Nerves,” Denise replied. It was true. It was also misleading, but it was better to tell the truth. Anansi smiled again, told her not to worry, and opened the door to the preparation room. He walked inside into the darkness. Denise closed the door behind him. She turned and put her back against the door, telling herself she was doing the right thing.

-~-~-

              Anansi stood inside the door to the preparation room, his glasses the only source of light. The lens display dimmed automatically to allow him to see past them, and as his eyes adjusted, the lights came on.

             
Before him stood seven people, five in police-issue SWAT riot armor and two in spandex. The first hero was one that Anansi was familiar with, known as White Tiger. Class two Speedster, martial artist of the Tiger style. He had a mask that covered the top of his head in the visage of a tiger and black stripes down his white skin-tight bodysuit. He was known for breaking bones before he took in his marks.

             
The other was someone Anansi was unfamiliar with. He wore a black and purple bodysuit with a pair of interlocking purple circles on his chest, like a Venn Diagram, and a mask that hid his head from the neck to the hairline, covering his ears and eyes. Kay searched the net and came up with a name. “Mind^Body.” Presumed to be a Class three Minder, but not much information on him.

             
“Anansi,” said White Tiger, taking a step forward, fists on his hips and elbows out. Anansi watched his muscles ripple through his suit and internalized a laugh, letting the hero talk. “You are under arrest for intent to assassinate the President of the United States. If you surrender, things might go easier for you, but if you resist...” White Tiger brought his fists together, a grin spreading across his lips. “I can't guarantee your survival.”

             
Anansi nodded and took off his glasses, tucking them into a pocket on the inside of his coat. He let the backpack slip from his shoulder, opened the bag, and pulled his helmet from it, the mostly featureless face with two white circles, one over each eye. He slipped it on, felt the seals click as it connected to his armor, and watched as the display lit up, returning the world to him. The police had tensed up, the heroes still maintaining their relaxed posture. Anansi activated his speakers.

             
“Let's dance.”

             
White Tiger smiled wider. “Good. I hate bastards who surrender.”

             
White Tiger launched himself forward, Kay clocking his speed at close to a hundred miles an hour. His hand extended to strike Anansi. His face was pulled back in a snarl. Too easy. Anansi stepped to the side with one foot, leaving the other where it had been. White Tiger hit the edge of the displacement field and his speed dropped dramatically as his velocity was redirected. He stumbled and his foot caught on Anansi's, sending him tumbling end over end into the wall at somewhere near sixty miles an hour. The wall did not hold and White Tiger ended up several yards outside the back of the building, covered in chunks of plaster and wood. Anansi wasn't entirely certain, but he thought that White Tiger had hit his head on the wall, but he didn't stop to see the replay, as the others were coming.

             
The policemen drew stun batons and charged together, electricity crackling on the end of the rods. Behind them, Mind^Body levitated several inches off of the floor, extending his arms towards Anansi. Anansi deflected the first stun baton as the SWAT team started to surround him. Kay fed him information on the positions of the men he couldn't currently see.

             
Dodge left, kick back left, lean forward slightly. Anansi lost himself in the dance of following Kay's combat instructions, minimizing damage he took and maximizing the damage he dealt. It was a game of high speed chess to him. Dodge, strike, dodge, dodge, dodge, strike. Within the span of a few breaths, two of the SWAT team were down with broken bones, one with a shattered knee that would probably never heal right and the other with a broken collarbone on his primary arm.

             
Anansi felt his movements become sluggish. He tried to dodge a strike from the man in front of him and failed, the stun baton catching him on the shoulder. His armor grounded the electricity, preventing him from being disabled, but the pain was still distracting, and he quickly took two more hits from other members still up.

             
[The psychic is slowing you down. Take him out,] Kay sent, highlighting Mind^Body on his display. Anansi grunted as he took another blow to the back and dropped to one knee. He slipped an arm into his coat and pulled out a stun grenade, set the charge to a second, and dropped it. He rolled to one side as another blow came down, aimed for his back and instead striking his hip. The stun grenade detonated, filling the room with a blast of light and sound. Anansi's helmet filtered out the effects of the grenade. All of the SWAT members staggered back from the light, cries ringing out.

             
Anansi rolled to his feet, lashing out with a kick to one of the SWAT member's chest, sending the man stumbling back and into the wall. It made an opening enough that he could escape the circle and get a clear shot at Mind^Body, who did not seem to have been distracted by the stun grenade at all. No big surprise there. Anansi felt his body grow even more sluggish, like he was walking through muck and carrying a ton of bricks at the same time.

             
“You're really annoying, you half-baked psychic,” Anansi said before throwing a grenade. As expected, it stopped about halfway to the hero. Anansi thought he could see a smirk on the hero's face. Anansi let slip a smirk of his own, hidden by his helmet. The grenade exploded, sending shrapnel outward in a perfect sphere, and none of it escaped a radius of less than a foot around its point of origin, each piece and the explosion contained soundlessly by invisible energy.