Team Omega (44 page)

“Your assault on this building has less than a ten percent chance of success,” Mainframe continued.  “I am already coordinating the oncoming superhumans with the armed drones I recovered from the nearby USAF base.  Your snipers will be removed by Hellfire missiles fired from the drones, followed by your armoured suits.  I am
everywhere
in the system.”

“Yeah, right,” Chris said, as he reached for his belt.  “I think you talk too much.”

“No,” Ron shouted, too late.  “Don’t...”

Chris detonated all the grenades in his belt at once, blowing his body to pieces and knocking Mainframe back on his heels.  The blast shook Jackson badly, even hiding behind a piece of debris from Hope’s first attack on the White House, but he managed to pull himself to his feet and sprint into the office.  Mainframe’s suit had been cracked by the blast; inside, Jackson saw a face intermeshed with metal tendrils leading into the brain.  The sight was sickening as the face turned to look at him, almost unrecognisable under the damage inflicted by Chris’s sacrifice.  But he could place the face.

“Ian Micah,” he said, in surprise.  The rumours hadn't been too far wrong after all.  Ian Micah was a wealthy philanthropist who had a reputation for charity work, including opening several foundations that had been intimately involved in helping the Congo, once Hope had removed the warlords.  There had been no suggestion that Micah had been a superhuman, but if he operated largely outside the country—no one knew for sure where Mainframe had been born—there wouldn't have been any demand to
make
him register.  “Why...?”

The tendrils seemed to come to life, repairing the suit with astonishing speed.  Jackson didn't hesitate; he fired two shots right into Micah’s head, using heavy penetrators. 

Micah’s head shattered, leaving nothing but bloody remains.  His suit emitted a sound that was alarmingly like a cry of pain before it collapsed.  Micah’s powers must have pervaded the suit, and without them, the suit couldn't function. 

“Mainframe is down,” he said, keying his earpiece.  There would be time to mourn the dead later.  “I say again, Mainframe is down.”

“Good work,” Ron said, coming up behind him.  A piece of debris had sliced into his chest, leaving blood trickling down his uniform.  Jackson cursed his own blindness; he hadn't even realised that Ron hadn't been following him until after Mainframe had died.  “And now...”

He nodded towards the Oval Office.  The bright Washington sunlight burn through the windows, casting eerie shadows as the two soldiers advanced, ready to charge through the open door into the room.  Ron held up a hand, signalling that they’d move on three...

“You may as well come in, gentlemen,” a voice called from inside.  Jackson felt the mind static suddenly grow stronger, just for a second.  “There’s nothing to stop you.”

Jackson motioned for Ron to cover him before he stepped into the Oval Office.  A woman was sitting behind the President’s desk, a woman so small and slight it seemed unbelievable that she could pose any threat to him.  At first sight, she seemed oriental, perhaps Japanese or Chinese, but her skin was a light green colour and her eyes a bright yellow.  The air around her seemed to be shimmering faintly, as if there was a heat haze in the room. 

“I am the Redeemer,” she said, quietly.  There was something about her that reminded Jackson of Dreamy Girl, but where Dreamy Girl had been driven by her powers to feast on human energy, the Redeemer seemed much more calculating.  “I understand that you have come to kill me?”

Jackson’s surprise must have shown on his face, because she smiled.  “One of your friends down there got into a brawl with a mutant, who tore off the device protecting him from my probes,” she explained.  “I know everything about you and your team.”

“And yet you can't touch us,” Ron said.  He lifted his rifle and fired; Jackson followed a second later.  The shots ran into the haze and simply stopped.  Even the explosive rounds failed to penetrate her shield.  “What...?”

“It
would
have been foolish of me to wait here for you without protection,” the Redeemer said, dryly.  She was laughing at them behind her eyes.  “I may not be able to touch your mind, but I can still use telekinetic power to hold your shots at bay.”

Jackson studied her for a long moment.  Physically, she was almost nothing, but he had a feeling that she could simply use her powers to rip their brains apart if they made a threatening move.  Or she could collapse the floor below their feet, or bring down the ceiling on their heads.  He remembered the CS gas and started to reach for the grenade before stopping himself.  It was possible that something would happen to distract her...

“Why?”  Ron asked.  “It’s pretty clear that you manipulated everyone involved in this...affair.  Hope, his fellow Saviours...maybe even the first people who opposed you.  Why?”

The Redeemer smiled.  “Why not?”

Their earpieces buzzed before Ron could say another word.  “Incoming,” someone screamed.  “Incoming!”

The Redeemer looked up, surprised.  “But...
no!
”

A moment later, the entire White House shook so violently that it almost collapsed. 

Chapter Forty-Four

The White House was under attack from within—and without.

Hope noticed that the attackers had taken up position around and near the White House, some firing at his people as they tried to retake the building, others clearly trying to get out of the line of fire.  A handful were even wearing suits like Mainframe’s, with enough firepower to even the odds against some lower-level superhumans.  Hope ignored them, even as a handful of missiles were fired in his direction, and crashed into the White House.  The Redeemer was sitting in the Oval Office, staring at a pair of soldiers. 

He stared at her as he came to a halt, feeling the building shaking around him.  She looked as beautiful and innocent as ever, but how much of that was her manipulating his mind?  How much of what he’d done had been her idea?  His mind kept going over it time and time again; he was
sure
that he’d had the idea for the Saviours before he met her, but what if she’d planted the idea in his mind long before they’d ever formally met?  Telepaths were far from all-powerful, yet she’d practically told him herself how easy it was to slip an idea into a person’s mind.  What if she’d done it to him right from the start?

Fireman had thought that he’d been doing the wrong thing—and had carefully planned their encounter so that they’d fight without The Redeemer’s interference.  Hope saw it all now; they’d been outthought by their enemies, by one of the most experienced superhumans in the world.   Five of the core group of Saviours were dead or captured; one more was in a questionable position...even though Hope was still alive and free, his dream of a better world might have come to an end.  How could he save his dream when he no longer knew if it
was
his dream?

“Hope,” the Redeemer said.  Her voice was as soft and seductive as ever, but there was something about it that rang wrong to Hope now.  Fireman had said that she’d killed Mimic and the other superhuman had clearly believed his every word; it wasn't easy to lie to a Level 5 superhuman.  Hope had embraced honesty because he knew that a lie would be detected sooner rather than later, even if it did surprise the media.  “These two would like to kill me...”

Hope felt his temper snap.  “You killed Mimic,” he snapped.  Ever since he had sparked, he had forced himself to keep his powers under rigid control; now, he felt his control fray for the first time since his panic had pushed him into superhumanity.  “And you lied to me!”

He should have been able to detect a lie.  In hindsight, the story he’d been told was a tissue of lies.  Mimic would never have simply walked away from the Saviours, not someone with such a powerful sense of right and wrong.  He would have gone to the United States and warned the SDI, putting the world’s best-trained fighting team up against the Saviours when they invaded Washington.  Instead, the SDI had been caught by surprise and wiped out.  And yet he had believed every word he’d been told. 

“I did what was necessary,” the Redeemer said, unflinchingly.  Hope admired her calm...but was that another sign of telepathic tampering?  His mind kept spinning, trying to separate out his thoughts from the ones she’d put into his head.  “I kept your dream alive.”

“By killing one of my friends?”

“By removing someone who would have stood in your way,” the Redeemer said, calmly.  “I knew that you had to save the world, so I merely ensured that your path to...world power would be clear.”

Hope refused to look into her eyes.  “And you pushed me into becoming more and more extreme,” he said.  It had been the Redeemer who had urged him forward, time and time again.  But how much of what he’d heard in the Congo had been real?  Had she made the girl’s family kill her to give him another reason to meddle?  “Why?  How much of the decision to invade Washington was mine?”

“It had to be taken,” the Redeemer said.  “Did you think that the world would leave you alone?  You thought that you could save the world piece by piece, but those who drag the human race down would have found other ways to hurt and kill you.  I had to push you forward for your own good.”

Hope’s voice became a howl.  “
Why
?”

“Because the human race needs you,” the Redeemer said.  “Look at the world, Hope;
look at it
!  Everywhere, right across the globe, people are trapped in hells made by their leaders.  Their lives are reshaped and destroyed by those with the power to influence them.  They spend more time admiring celebrities than they do building a better world.  Everyone is so damn banal because their leaders keep them that way—and their leaders are no better.  Each nation competes with other nations and wastes resources in that competition that could be used to improve the human condition.

“Everyone is told, time and time again, that they are
special
, that they have rights and entitlements that set them against everyone else.  In the homes of religion, they are told that they follow the one true path and everyone else is a shameless infidel, so lost to God that they wilfully refuse to follow the one true path.  And then they are told that women are always subordinate to men, or that dying in a holy war grants one immediate access to heaven—and none of them see that their enemies are just like them.  Or that mutants are still human, even if they look like animals.  Or that superhumans, for all their powers, are still very human!

“Even when they try to help the less fortunate, they screw it up because they don’t see the less fortunate as human!  You saw the debris left behind by the international aid workers in the Congo and the rest of Africa; you know it happened because someone in power didn't really bother to think that the Africans were human.  They got the help the outsiders thought they needed, not what they
actually
needed.  Every single human being is trapped inside their own skull, a misshapen entity warped and twisted because it can no longer relax and trust anyone.  They tear themselves apart over issues that are actually of no concern to them.

“They need you, Hope.  They need someone who they can trust to reshape their world for them.  You have the vision and the power to create a better world.  I just pushed you in that direction.  And I killed Mimic because he would have betrayed you, just like Judas...”

***

Jackson had jumped back the moment Hope crashed through the wall, expecting the superhuman to tear him apart before Jackson could fire on him.  Instead, Hope had confronted the Redeemer. Jackson had taken advantage of the pause to grab his modified weapons.  He couldn't hear anything from outside, which could be either good or bad.  Team Omega might have defeated the superhumans, or it might have been wiped out.

The Redeemer seemed colder, more calculating, than Hope seemed to realise.  Jackson’s mind static device was protecting him from any telepathic influence woven into her words, but Hope was almost certainly receiving the full brunt of her powers.  Assuming, of course, that she
could
influence him
and
maintain her shield.  Jackson had realised that she
could
have torn off the devices protecting them and hit them with her powers, converting them into her loyal slaves...and the fact she hadn't suggested that she couldn't do two things at once.

Her monologue seemed to be drawing to a close.  Hope seemed to stare at her in disbelief.  His face seemed twisted with pain, almost as if he didn't know what to do, as if all of the paths he saw were equally dark and futile—completely hopeless, in fact. 

Jackson had seen enough of the world to know that the Redeemer had a point: selfishness and self-interest
did
prevent the human race from cleaning up its own shit.  But, on the other hand, would rule by a self-appointed superhuman be any better?  One man, no matter how clever, couldn’t handle everything by himself.  Maybe Hope had been right to intervene in the Congo—it had been the classic definition of a hopeless country—but elsewhere?

He glanced at Ron, and then stepped forward.  “Do you think that you can rule the whole world?”

The Redeemer glared at him.  “You and your team exist to kill people because they are different from you, because they have powers that make you afraid,” she hissed.  “Stay out of this!”

“I live in this world,” Jackson said.  He looked at Hope, realising—for the first time—just how large the superhuman was, looming far larger than life.  There was something about him that suggested descent from a higher plane, where life was simpler.  “Doesn't that give me a right to have an opinion?”

Hope seemed to nod. 

“You look at the big picture from where you’re standing,” Jackson said, wishing he’d paid more attention when his teachers had tried to teach the kids how to debate.  “You see the problems that threaten the human race; the hatred and mistrust, the imbalance of power, the political leaders who abuse their positions...and you’re not wrong to hate it.  You’re far from alone in hating it.  But you can't see the small picture, and it’s
that
which will bring down your dream.

“People are
individuals
,” he stressed to them.  “Some will go along with you because they’re scared of you, but that won’t produce a healthy world.  The Soviet Union was dying even before it blew up Warsaw to kill a superhuman leading a revolt against Russian rule.  Others will resist you, or do the minimum necessary to get by, or simply refuse to help at all. 

“What are you going to do to maintain your utopia?  Have telepaths scan the minds of everyone who is even vaguely suspect?  Or will you eventually start ordering telepaths to turn people into puppets, creating a world of insects where they all serve the King?”

He looked at Hope, willing him to believe.  “The price of your utopia is eternal slavery,” he concluded.  “You will—you
must
—enslave the entire human race to succeed.  And even if those slaves are well cared for, they will still be slaves.  They won’t have the freedom to push the limits and develop themselves as far as they can go.  How much of what the human race created, perhaps even superhumans themselves, would have come into existence in a dark world of slavery?”

“I...” Hope stammered.

“He’s lying to you,” the Redeemer interrupted.  Jackson felt a sudden tug on the side of his head, where he’d positioned the Mind Static device.  He lifted his rifle, praying that she would be exposed and vulnerable, just before he felt
something
slide into his mind.  The Redeemer’s stream of thoughts felt like poison in his skull, burning through his thoughts and replacing them with her own; he dropped his weapon as she took control of him.  “And...”

***

Hope lunged forward, throwing himself right at the Redeemer.  Madness howled at the corner of his mind as she started, trying to get out of his way or take control of him and deflect him from his course, but it was already too late.  For a moment, the illusion covering her flickered and vanished, revealing a green-skinned girl with bright eyes, before his hand smashed right through her skull.  His mind seemed to clear suddenly as the pressure, a pressure he hadn't even been aware of a second before, vanished, leaving him hopelessly aware of how far he’d fallen.

He’d wondered—even
hoped
, on some level—that she’d controlled him from the beginning, that he bore no responsibility for the madness he’d unleashed.  But as her control faded, he saw clearly how she’d influenced him—and it had started a long time after he’d founded the Saviours. 
He
had wanted to change the world,
he
had planned the invasion of the Congo to start saving people from their own governments...it had all been him.  The Redeemer had merely pushed him into lashing out at Libya and America after they had meddled with his grand dream. 

Mimic’s last words seemed to mock him. Fireman’s grim expression as they’d battled near Las Vegas danced through his skull.  He'd thought that he was doing the right thing, but instead he had been a child lashing out with overwhelming power.  And the Redeemer had prodded him onwards.  Perhaps she had
wanted
a world of slavery, a world where no one dared commit a crime—no, worse than that; a world where the thoughts that led to criminal actions simply didn't exist.  She would have quietly ruled in his name as the entire world was tamed...unless the other powers gave in to panic and nuked the United States back to bedrock...

And it was all his fault.

***

Hope smashed his way up, crashed through the ceiling and through the hidden armour under the White House’s exterior.  Jackson was knocked to the ground again, just as the entire building shook violently.  Ron collapsed, blood pouring from the wound in his chest, just before Hope seemed to smash through the entire building.  The superhuman seemed to have gone completely mad.  Jackson heard him howling over the noise of falling buildings, just before his earpiece crackled with a warning.  Hope was lashing out blindly at both sides in Washington, tearing apart soldiers and his own forces with equal abandon.  Some of the early reports on superhumans like Fireman had called them forces of nature, beings so powerful that they might as well be gods.  Hope’s rampage was that of an angry—or maddened—god tearing apart the world.