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Craig Carson and the Horrible No Good Very Bad Day
canadascott
Posts: 1,257 Arc User
Warning: political content and some not so nice language.
----------------------
The VIPER commander was halfway into The Speech. You know the one. After a decade, they sound like a broken record; after two decades, they’re as mind numbingly repetitive as the dance music at Caprice. After three decades, they’re as bad as a political echo chamber simulated by the whine of a dentist drill, and I want to bang my head against a wall. The man, having no sense of mercy, continued to drone. This was supposed to be a torture session; but he was too busy droning to bring on more than standard issue pain. Vicious, but not imaginative.
“VIPER has spent too long in the shadows, Mr. Carson. It has been twenty-five years since the Supreme Serpent emerged, and what have we achieved?”
“As much as any other fascist.” I replied, spitting a lump of blood as the sonics attached to my ribcage were causing a bit of hemorrhaging, as well as dislodging my right eye from the socket. I can see it dangling out of the corner of my left eye – man, that’s gross. “Zip, Nada. Zero.” I added, and the commander scowled. “Zero, my hero, how wonderful you are…” I added, singing a song from the misspent Saturday mornings of my childhood.
“This changes now!” the commander ranted. “Too long has the snake bided its time! With a fool now sitting in the Oval Office and the nation in chaos, now is the time to strike!”
“Hey!”” I exclaimed. “We agree on something, at least the fool part. I’d high five you, but I seem to be tied up.”
I don’t know what it is about torture sessions that brings out the wiseacre in me. In truth, the pain isn’t all that bad. I’ve been nuked. I’ve been trapped in the worst part of hell and made to suffer agony on a metaphysical level: torment and despair that you 4chan rejects can only dream about. Hey buddy, you think these gizmos are having much effect? This is amateur hour!
“You will not be tied up long. Only until you sing for me.”
“I already did.” I protested. “You did recognize “Schoolhouse Rock”, didn’t you?" He glowered at me, highly unamused. Asshole. Not only does he rip my body apart, he doesn't laugh at my jokes! "You did see Schoolhouse Rock, didn't you? You know: "Three is a Magic Number"? Or "Lolly, lolly, lolly, get your adverbs here?" Or did mommy and daddy tell you that you couldn’t watch Superfriends? Y’know, that would explain a lot...”
“You seem to be forgetting, Mr. Carson, that I am the torturer and you are the torturee!” the VIPER commander hissed.
“Look, I’ve got a graduate degree in pain management.” I said. “I can even make it halfway through one of Trump’s speeches without punching the television into next week. So why don’t we end this, and you can give your “Make VIPER great again” speech to your men, who might be wowed by this bullshit like a cloistered political clique on the Internet.”
“If you will not talk, I guess I’ll have to kill you…” the Nest leader said, and then he base was rocked by an explosion. The lights blinked on and off, twice. Then the claxon blared.
“WARNING. MICRO-REACTOR CONTAINMENT BREACH. ALL PERSONNEL TO SAFE ZONE 2. BASE SECURITY HAS BEEN COMPSOMISED. WARNING. MICRO-REACTOR CONTAINMENT…”
The power flux gave me just enough of a reprieve from the restraints that, with effort, I snapped the bonds. Man, that hurt worse than the torture. I had dampened my nervous system to resist the torture – the power restraints didn’t prevent the use of my powers internally – and I immediately attacked. I was in no shape to fight, even if my nervous system was functioning properly. Fortunately, I had a friend. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a very familiar white and blue figure, a lightweight battlesuit with a tights motif, and a winged helmet.
"Defender! Shiii---"
The Nest Leader didn’t even have time to complete his obscene sentence. He and his two show VIPERs went down to his concussion beams like a ton of bricks.
“Easy Craig, I got you,” Defender said. “Made a mess getting in, though.”
“Micro-reactor,” I noted. “Bit more sophisticated than their standard generator.” I pushed my dangling eye back into its socket, and did the same for my dislocated kneecaps and my dislocated shoulder. Damn, that hurt. “Help me get "Chuckles" and his two henchboys out of here before the reactor melts.” I added, hoisting the nest leader over my shoulder.
“Dammit Craig, I’m calling for a medic,” Defender said, and he hoisted the two brickbusters over his own shoulder, and together we were away.
I wasn’t sure where VIPER had taken me, but the nav implant came back online as soon as I left the base’s dampening field. They’d taken me to someplace in rural Wisconsin, Scott Walker country, I suppose. That figures. I like a lot of conservatives, despite our obvious differences, but that man does not especially impress me. He’d make a great VIPER. I bet the guy wakes up in the morning, starts the day by pissing on a copy of the Sermon on the Mount, right before his morning ritual of kicking cripples.
As you may have guessed, recent events have NOT honed my diplomatic skills.
In the distance, I could see a small jet land in a fallow strawberry field, depositing its fuselage on the field. It shifted and rearranged itself, eventually sliding to form a building.
“You watched a lot of cartoons as a kid, didn’t you?” I grinned at Defender. “Didn’t get the transformer sound effect down, though.”
“Field hospital module.” Defender explained with a smile. “And another will be landing with a containment module for our guests.”
“Mobile bases?” I wondered.
“Yep!”” Defender’s face bore a proud pappy expression.
"Do they turn into a car?"
"No, but they do connect. Energy efficient, too! So, in you go!”
I would have argued that I felt fine, except that would have been a lie of Donald Trump dimensions. So I entered the module and let him consign me to my fate. It smelled like a hospital, like enforced sterility. The walls weren’t the usual painful hospital white, though – they were silvery steely, and the interior was a lot of modular, transforming furniture of chrome and stark plastics. The hero strapped me to a very strange, almost alien looking bed, and spidery limbs began dancing on my skin, drilling holes for IVs to my inserted into my nigh invulnerable skin.
“What alien race did you get this from?”
“Enemy race of Ironclad,” Defender replied. “He doesn’t talk about them much. Hold still, Craig.”
“I’m a walking storm,” I answered. “I don’t do “still” very well. It’s like holding your breath.”
The spider arms tore my clothing, except for my crotch (Defender is probably the most Comics Code-friendly hero ever), and sprayed the air with a nano-antiseptic spray, clouds of which settled on my skin and stung. My body was riddled with abrasions of varying kinds and degrees – VIPER had made a real mess. Defender looked over my injuries. “They almost got you this time, Craig.” the hero noted.
“It’s what they do,” I shrugged.
“The snakes are rallying again,” Defender added.
“A lot of bad guys are rallying,” I retorted. “The snakes always test a new presidency. They did the same thing when Clinton came into office, and Bush, and Obama.” I sighed. I could tell from the look on Defender’s face that he would have preferred that I didn’t bring up politics. After all, polite people didn’t do that, and I’m Canadian. We’re supposed to be the poster boys for polite, right?
“What happened?”
“Standard ambush. Got a distress call. Damsel in distress turned out to be a bomb that blew up in my face and then they got the jump on me. I don’t think they got any information. Didn’t feel any telepaths running around in my head. Lucky me.”
“They weren’t being gentle with you.” Defender noted.
“If they were gentle, they wouldn’t be VIPER. Oh, be warned. When the nestie wakes up, he’s going to give you the standard issue revenge speech. The man’s a walking cliché factory.” I said. “Metal moron!” I added, putting my mockery instincts into overdrive. “Your paltry armor is no match for VIPER! Prepare to feel the fangs of the sssssssnake!”
Defender laughed. That was a rare moment. I’ve known him for close to a decade, and the guy Out-Seriouses Captain Serious. That may have been only the third time I’ve ever heard him laugh.
“I don’t need to know how bad they hurt me,” I said. “I’ll be right as rain in a couple of hours.”
“One day someone’s going to hurt you in a way you can’t heal from,” Defender said.
“Too late,” I said. “It’s already happened.”
Nearly two years ago, a tornado ate me. I died, spent a month in nothingness, then came back into the world wrong, fractured. Ted and Sebastian and a passel of others helped me put myself back together. I thought I was alright, dismissed any lingering concerns as PTSD, went into therapy. Telepaths checked me out, told me psyche was functioning. A year ago, however, I stressed out disarming a nuke and nearly botched it. UNTIL tested me, and saw that my performance had degraded. I was like Sherlock Holmes after the Reichenbach Falls. I returned from my resurrection more powerful than ever. I could lift more, fly a lot faster, and I could control storms to a much greater extent. But I was more overwhelmed by my powers than ever.
In the eternal struggle between Craig and the Living Thunder he controlled, Craig was starting to slip.
“Nonsense,” Defender said, and he paused to scan the perimeter. “No sign of hostiles.”
“So,” I asked with a sigh. “Nice little tinker toy project you got here, D. How many more of these little secret sidejobs have you got going that we don’t know about?”
“I could ask the same about you.” Defender said. “I read the report on the Trikon. Secret asteroid base, Craig?”
“It was an expandable module, based on Bigalow habitats.” I answered. Inflatable rooms for space stations, first made for GATEWAY. “I simply thought our mining project could use a few storage modules within range of our drilling sites. And it was hardly a secret. NASA knew about it, and so did Victory.”
“So how goes your efforts to expand our species?”
“Lousy,” I sighed. “Everything takes about five times longer than our best estimate. You?”
“The same.” Defender said, shaking his head. “I keep thinking if I can get all the superhumans on the same page, overwhelm villain crime just long enough that we can turn away from security and work toward improving the human condition…” He shook his head. “I don’t think I’ll live to see the world we could build."
I almost laughed, but one look at the plaintive expression on the man's face, even concealed by a half-faceplate, disabused me of the thought. I sighed sadly. The man's so earnest that saying a harsh word to him would be like kicking a puppy.
“Why does doing the right thing have to be so damn hard!” Defender declared. There was a frustration in his voice that bordered on petulance.
“I know." I commiserated. "And the harder you try to help, the harder you try to coordinate the herd of cats, the harder they push back.” I said. “And the more vicious and childish the sneers get.”
"Now Craig, let's not go there. Our peers are mostly good people, and I'm grateful we have so many new bodies joining the fight."
"That's spin, and you know it." I spit back.
"Sometimes the spin is true." Defender shrugged.
He tries so hard, and people just put him down. I remember the old Serve and Protect comm. They made a lot of remarks about him, and they were so damn petty. Vicious crap unfit for the gossip rags, As if they had achieved one-tenth of what this man had accomplished. But you can always tell the smallness of a man by their eagerness to put down others. I wonder who he is, behind that mask?
Or maybe Defender is the face.
"I really wish they'd show more resp--" I stammered.
"Craig, drop it. Please."
The man had to have picked up some of the chatter. He had to know what they said about him, behind his back. But Defender said nothing; he just inspected the readings on the med monitors, like a garage monkey checking a brake job. [i]God, he must be so bored,[/i] I thought. Finally, he jerked his head suddenly, and held it as he listened to a transmission that registered as a buzz on my comm implant.
“I gotta go.” Defender said. “Witchcraft needs me. That is, she has a mission. We have to penetra—“ he stopped, realizing his words had become a bit of a running gag in the superhuman world, like William Shatner’s mispronunciation of “sabotage” in the acting world. “I got to go.”
“Take care. Say hi to Bethany,” I replied.
“That’s right, you know her secret,” Defender noted. “By the way, I heard Celestar finally rescued his team from the Frost Tomb. Give them the Champions’ warmest regards.”
“I haven’t met them yet,” I answered. After forty years, Canada’s most powerful heroes had returned from their icy prison. “But when I see Lon, I’ll tell him.” I shook my head. “That's one bright spot, I suppose. The world’s changing, Defender. Old heroes are retiring. New heroes don’t last long. And there are fewer and fewer replacements.”
“I wish some of those kids weren't quite so violent.” Defender said.
“Every generation of heroes has that,” I noted. “I can’t really say mine was any better. Not when I was mentored by Shamus and Avenger. So Kid Gunplay and Lady Tormentula are off the hook.”
Defender nodded, conceding the point. “But they all have potential, Craig." he said. "That's where we come in, right?"
"I suppose so." I groaned as I felt something suddenly twist inside me. A bone untwisting, tendons reattaching, or something else gross and medical. Defender inspected the monitor. "Will I live?"
"No snake's going to be able to kill you," Defender said, smiling. "The hospital module should inform you when your vitals indicate you can be safely discharged,” he blurted, changing the subject with all the subtle deftness of a California driver making a U-Turn at sixty miles an hour. “A jet will pick it up. Can you stay with the jet to Millennium?”
“Sure,” I said. “After all, I do owe you. Those VIPER monologues are torture!”
Defender nodded, his face stoic as a Roman orator carved in granite. Then blue flame issued from his boots, and in a flash and a streak he was gone back to the city.
*******
I arrived back in the city in the early evening. Daylight savings time; the sky was brighter than my brain, which was in a bit of a fog after the torture and the drugs and the flight home. Kivioq was anticipating my return, and I could see the lights on.
I returned, and the glass doors on the patio opened as I entered the apartment. I was about to become naked with a thought and head for a shower when three men in PRIMUS uniforms rushed around the corner.
“McKelvie, PRIMUS,” a Silver Avenger barked, flashing a badge. “We understand you’re storing contraband in this apartment!”
They shouldn’t even know where this base is located. I [b]hide[/b] my home.
I stammer an answer, but a second agent approaches, holding some alien artwork that I had been collecting. “We found this, sir…”
“Looks like you have some explaining to do, Carson.”
"It's a gift," I explained. "From the Halcynon. They had an explorer up in the Arctic, and his party ran afoul of the Gadroon..."
"Suuuuuuure," the agent said, his voice twisting in contempt.
The government’s been out to get me since the election. Or, to put it more accurately, someone in the new government, someone in high places, VIPER maybe, nested in the new administration, It wouldn't be the first time they've tried to slip someone into the changing of the guard. Or the sixth. I’ve been hassled a lot by someone in the government over the last two months, and I don't think it's just because I've harbored unkind thoughts about the Donald, as much as I want to be a partisan jerk. Something is rotten in the state of Trumpmark. “Lawyer,” I said, as an agent came out bearing more artifacts, one of them, an orichalculm conch, a blood gift from Queen Mara. “Now.”
I really, really needed to sleep, and I knew they weren’t going to let me hit the bed anytime soon. This was going to be one very long, long night.
----------------------
The VIPER commander was halfway into The Speech. You know the one. After a decade, they sound like a broken record; after two decades, they’re as mind numbingly repetitive as the dance music at Caprice. After three decades, they’re as bad as a political echo chamber simulated by the whine of a dentist drill, and I want to bang my head against a wall. The man, having no sense of mercy, continued to drone. This was supposed to be a torture session; but he was too busy droning to bring on more than standard issue pain. Vicious, but not imaginative.
“VIPER has spent too long in the shadows, Mr. Carson. It has been twenty-five years since the Supreme Serpent emerged, and what have we achieved?”
“As much as any other fascist.” I replied, spitting a lump of blood as the sonics attached to my ribcage were causing a bit of hemorrhaging, as well as dislodging my right eye from the socket. I can see it dangling out of the corner of my left eye – man, that’s gross. “Zip, Nada. Zero.” I added, and the commander scowled. “Zero, my hero, how wonderful you are…” I added, singing a song from the misspent Saturday mornings of my childhood.
“This changes now!” the commander ranted. “Too long has the snake bided its time! With a fool now sitting in the Oval Office and the nation in chaos, now is the time to strike!”
“Hey!”” I exclaimed. “We agree on something, at least the fool part. I’d high five you, but I seem to be tied up.”
I don’t know what it is about torture sessions that brings out the wiseacre in me. In truth, the pain isn’t all that bad. I’ve been nuked. I’ve been trapped in the worst part of hell and made to suffer agony on a metaphysical level: torment and despair that you 4chan rejects can only dream about. Hey buddy, you think these gizmos are having much effect? This is amateur hour!
“You will not be tied up long. Only until you sing for me.”
“I already did.” I protested. “You did recognize “Schoolhouse Rock”, didn’t you?" He glowered at me, highly unamused. Asshole. Not only does he rip my body apart, he doesn't laugh at my jokes! "You did see Schoolhouse Rock, didn't you? You know: "Three is a Magic Number"? Or "Lolly, lolly, lolly, get your adverbs here?" Or did mommy and daddy tell you that you couldn’t watch Superfriends? Y’know, that would explain a lot...”
“You seem to be forgetting, Mr. Carson, that I am the torturer and you are the torturee!” the VIPER commander hissed.
“Look, I’ve got a graduate degree in pain management.” I said. “I can even make it halfway through one of Trump’s speeches without punching the television into next week. So why don’t we end this, and you can give your “Make VIPER great again” speech to your men, who might be wowed by this bullshit like a cloistered political clique on the Internet.”
“If you will not talk, I guess I’ll have to kill you…” the Nest leader said, and then he base was rocked by an explosion. The lights blinked on and off, twice. Then the claxon blared.
“WARNING. MICRO-REACTOR CONTAINMENT BREACH. ALL PERSONNEL TO SAFE ZONE 2. BASE SECURITY HAS BEEN COMPSOMISED. WARNING. MICRO-REACTOR CONTAINMENT…”
The power flux gave me just enough of a reprieve from the restraints that, with effort, I snapped the bonds. Man, that hurt worse than the torture. I had dampened my nervous system to resist the torture – the power restraints didn’t prevent the use of my powers internally – and I immediately attacked. I was in no shape to fight, even if my nervous system was functioning properly. Fortunately, I had a friend. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a very familiar white and blue figure, a lightweight battlesuit with a tights motif, and a winged helmet.
"Defender! Shiii---"
The Nest Leader didn’t even have time to complete his obscene sentence. He and his two show VIPERs went down to his concussion beams like a ton of bricks.
“Easy Craig, I got you,” Defender said. “Made a mess getting in, though.”
“Micro-reactor,” I noted. “Bit more sophisticated than their standard generator.” I pushed my dangling eye back into its socket, and did the same for my dislocated kneecaps and my dislocated shoulder. Damn, that hurt. “Help me get "Chuckles" and his two henchboys out of here before the reactor melts.” I added, hoisting the nest leader over my shoulder.
“Dammit Craig, I’m calling for a medic,” Defender said, and he hoisted the two brickbusters over his own shoulder, and together we were away.
I wasn’t sure where VIPER had taken me, but the nav implant came back online as soon as I left the base’s dampening field. They’d taken me to someplace in rural Wisconsin, Scott Walker country, I suppose. That figures. I like a lot of conservatives, despite our obvious differences, but that man does not especially impress me. He’d make a great VIPER. I bet the guy wakes up in the morning, starts the day by pissing on a copy of the Sermon on the Mount, right before his morning ritual of kicking cripples.
As you may have guessed, recent events have NOT honed my diplomatic skills.
In the distance, I could see a small jet land in a fallow strawberry field, depositing its fuselage on the field. It shifted and rearranged itself, eventually sliding to form a building.
“You watched a lot of cartoons as a kid, didn’t you?” I grinned at Defender. “Didn’t get the transformer sound effect down, though.”
“Field hospital module.” Defender explained with a smile. “And another will be landing with a containment module for our guests.”
“Mobile bases?” I wondered.
“Yep!”” Defender’s face bore a proud pappy expression.
"Do they turn into a car?"
"No, but they do connect. Energy efficient, too! So, in you go!”
I would have argued that I felt fine, except that would have been a lie of Donald Trump dimensions. So I entered the module and let him consign me to my fate. It smelled like a hospital, like enforced sterility. The walls weren’t the usual painful hospital white, though – they were silvery steely, and the interior was a lot of modular, transforming furniture of chrome and stark plastics. The hero strapped me to a very strange, almost alien looking bed, and spidery limbs began dancing on my skin, drilling holes for IVs to my inserted into my nigh invulnerable skin.
“What alien race did you get this from?”
“Enemy race of Ironclad,” Defender replied. “He doesn’t talk about them much. Hold still, Craig.”
“I’m a walking storm,” I answered. “I don’t do “still” very well. It’s like holding your breath.”
The spider arms tore my clothing, except for my crotch (Defender is probably the most Comics Code-friendly hero ever), and sprayed the air with a nano-antiseptic spray, clouds of which settled on my skin and stung. My body was riddled with abrasions of varying kinds and degrees – VIPER had made a real mess. Defender looked over my injuries. “They almost got you this time, Craig.” the hero noted.
“It’s what they do,” I shrugged.
“The snakes are rallying again,” Defender added.
“A lot of bad guys are rallying,” I retorted. “The snakes always test a new presidency. They did the same thing when Clinton came into office, and Bush, and Obama.” I sighed. I could tell from the look on Defender’s face that he would have preferred that I didn’t bring up politics. After all, polite people didn’t do that, and I’m Canadian. We’re supposed to be the poster boys for polite, right?
“What happened?”
“Standard ambush. Got a distress call. Damsel in distress turned out to be a bomb that blew up in my face and then they got the jump on me. I don’t think they got any information. Didn’t feel any telepaths running around in my head. Lucky me.”
“They weren’t being gentle with you.” Defender noted.
“If they were gentle, they wouldn’t be VIPER. Oh, be warned. When the nestie wakes up, he’s going to give you the standard issue revenge speech. The man’s a walking cliché factory.” I said. “Metal moron!” I added, putting my mockery instincts into overdrive. “Your paltry armor is no match for VIPER! Prepare to feel the fangs of the sssssssnake!”
Defender laughed. That was a rare moment. I’ve known him for close to a decade, and the guy Out-Seriouses Captain Serious. That may have been only the third time I’ve ever heard him laugh.
“I don’t need to know how bad they hurt me,” I said. “I’ll be right as rain in a couple of hours.”
“One day someone’s going to hurt you in a way you can’t heal from,” Defender said.
“Too late,” I said. “It’s already happened.”
Nearly two years ago, a tornado ate me. I died, spent a month in nothingness, then came back into the world wrong, fractured. Ted and Sebastian and a passel of others helped me put myself back together. I thought I was alright, dismissed any lingering concerns as PTSD, went into therapy. Telepaths checked me out, told me psyche was functioning. A year ago, however, I stressed out disarming a nuke and nearly botched it. UNTIL tested me, and saw that my performance had degraded. I was like Sherlock Holmes after the Reichenbach Falls. I returned from my resurrection more powerful than ever. I could lift more, fly a lot faster, and I could control storms to a much greater extent. But I was more overwhelmed by my powers than ever.
In the eternal struggle between Craig and the Living Thunder he controlled, Craig was starting to slip.
“Nonsense,” Defender said, and he paused to scan the perimeter. “No sign of hostiles.”
“So,” I asked with a sigh. “Nice little tinker toy project you got here, D. How many more of these little secret sidejobs have you got going that we don’t know about?”
“I could ask the same about you.” Defender said. “I read the report on the Trikon. Secret asteroid base, Craig?”
“It was an expandable module, based on Bigalow habitats.” I answered. Inflatable rooms for space stations, first made for GATEWAY. “I simply thought our mining project could use a few storage modules within range of our drilling sites. And it was hardly a secret. NASA knew about it, and so did Victory.”
“So how goes your efforts to expand our species?”
“Lousy,” I sighed. “Everything takes about five times longer than our best estimate. You?”
“The same.” Defender said, shaking his head. “I keep thinking if I can get all the superhumans on the same page, overwhelm villain crime just long enough that we can turn away from security and work toward improving the human condition…” He shook his head. “I don’t think I’ll live to see the world we could build."
I almost laughed, but one look at the plaintive expression on the man's face, even concealed by a half-faceplate, disabused me of the thought. I sighed sadly. The man's so earnest that saying a harsh word to him would be like kicking a puppy.
“Why does doing the right thing have to be so damn hard!” Defender declared. There was a frustration in his voice that bordered on petulance.
“I know." I commiserated. "And the harder you try to help, the harder you try to coordinate the herd of cats, the harder they push back.” I said. “And the more vicious and childish the sneers get.”
"Now Craig, let's not go there. Our peers are mostly good people, and I'm grateful we have so many new bodies joining the fight."
"That's spin, and you know it." I spit back.
"Sometimes the spin is true." Defender shrugged.
He tries so hard, and people just put him down. I remember the old Serve and Protect comm. They made a lot of remarks about him, and they were so damn petty. Vicious crap unfit for the gossip rags, As if they had achieved one-tenth of what this man had accomplished. But you can always tell the smallness of a man by their eagerness to put down others. I wonder who he is, behind that mask?
Or maybe Defender is the face.
"I really wish they'd show more resp--" I stammered.
"Craig, drop it. Please."
The man had to have picked up some of the chatter. He had to know what they said about him, behind his back. But Defender said nothing; he just inspected the readings on the med monitors, like a garage monkey checking a brake job. [i]God, he must be so bored,[/i] I thought. Finally, he jerked his head suddenly, and held it as he listened to a transmission that registered as a buzz on my comm implant.
“I gotta go.” Defender said. “Witchcraft needs me. That is, she has a mission. We have to penetra—“ he stopped, realizing his words had become a bit of a running gag in the superhuman world, like William Shatner’s mispronunciation of “sabotage” in the acting world. “I got to go.”
“Take care. Say hi to Bethany,” I replied.
“That’s right, you know her secret,” Defender noted. “By the way, I heard Celestar finally rescued his team from the Frost Tomb. Give them the Champions’ warmest regards.”
“I haven’t met them yet,” I answered. After forty years, Canada’s most powerful heroes had returned from their icy prison. “But when I see Lon, I’ll tell him.” I shook my head. “That's one bright spot, I suppose. The world’s changing, Defender. Old heroes are retiring. New heroes don’t last long. And there are fewer and fewer replacements.”
“I wish some of those kids weren't quite so violent.” Defender said.
“Every generation of heroes has that,” I noted. “I can’t really say mine was any better. Not when I was mentored by Shamus and Avenger. So Kid Gunplay and Lady Tormentula are off the hook.”
Defender nodded, conceding the point. “But they all have potential, Craig." he said. "That's where we come in, right?"
"I suppose so." I groaned as I felt something suddenly twist inside me. A bone untwisting, tendons reattaching, or something else gross and medical. Defender inspected the monitor. "Will I live?"
"No snake's going to be able to kill you," Defender said, smiling. "The hospital module should inform you when your vitals indicate you can be safely discharged,” he blurted, changing the subject with all the subtle deftness of a California driver making a U-Turn at sixty miles an hour. “A jet will pick it up. Can you stay with the jet to Millennium?”
“Sure,” I said. “After all, I do owe you. Those VIPER monologues are torture!”
Defender nodded, his face stoic as a Roman orator carved in granite. Then blue flame issued from his boots, and in a flash and a streak he was gone back to the city.
*******
I arrived back in the city in the early evening. Daylight savings time; the sky was brighter than my brain, which was in a bit of a fog after the torture and the drugs and the flight home. Kivioq was anticipating my return, and I could see the lights on.
I returned, and the glass doors on the patio opened as I entered the apartment. I was about to become naked with a thought and head for a shower when three men in PRIMUS uniforms rushed around the corner.
“McKelvie, PRIMUS,” a Silver Avenger barked, flashing a badge. “We understand you’re storing contraband in this apartment!”
They shouldn’t even know where this base is located. I [b]hide[/b] my home.
I stammer an answer, but a second agent approaches, holding some alien artwork that I had been collecting. “We found this, sir…”
“Looks like you have some explaining to do, Carson.”
"It's a gift," I explained. "From the Halcynon. They had an explorer up in the Arctic, and his party ran afoul of the Gadroon..."
"Suuuuuuure," the agent said, his voice twisting in contempt.
The government’s been out to get me since the election. Or, to put it more accurately, someone in the new government, someone in high places, VIPER maybe, nested in the new administration, It wouldn't be the first time they've tried to slip someone into the changing of the guard. Or the sixth. I’ve been hassled a lot by someone in the government over the last two months, and I don't think it's just because I've harbored unkind thoughts about the Donald, as much as I want to be a partisan jerk. Something is rotten in the state of Trumpmark. “Lawyer,” I said, as an agent came out bearing more artifacts, one of them, an orichalculm conch, a blood gift from Queen Mara. “Now.”
I really, really needed to sleep, and I knew they weren’t going to let me hit the bed anytime soon. This was going to be one very long, long night.
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