The Good Guys, page 4
“Yeah. He stays in the room next door,” Landslide sighed.
“What’s it like having Warpath just a wall away at night?” Legion asked.
“It must be terrifying,” Seraph chimed in. She’d finally kept her mask away, revealing blue eyes and soft features. A kind face, Landslide decided.
He shrugged. “I really haven’t seen him much, or even talked with him. I’ve only ever caught him stalking up and down the corridors. He’s like a wraith or something.”
“At least the habitation suites are secure,” Seraph remarked.
“I guess. The walls are soundproofed, but they don't stop the screams.”
“The screams?” Legion and Seraph were wide-eyed with surprise. “What do you mean, ‘screams’?”
“Well, perhaps not ‘screams’. I don’t actually hear them—I feel them.” Landslide tapped his foot on the floor. “It’s like heartbeats—I can feel the pulsing, like someone’s trying to use a hammer gently, or beat a drum softly. I can tell if a person is getting agitated or excited, and I can tell if someone is trying to keep themselves calm. I can feel Warpath next door even when I’m trying to sleep.”
“What’s he doing?” Legion asked.
“Can’t tell for sure,” Landslide admitted. “Whatever it is, he’s often really agitated. It’s as if he has nightmares all the time. It’s almost violent in there, and it’s enough to keep me up a little.”
“Poor guy.” Seraph shook her head. “We spend so much time being scared of him, but it’s so easy for us to forget that he’s probably in here for the same reasons we are. I can’t imagine what he’s going through.”
“I can,” Legion said quietly. “The man amassed an armoury, then emptied it out, racking up hundreds of dead mobsters and criminals. He’s got a tally that serial killers dream of. He’s earned his name, to be sure. The things he’s done, the things he’s seen... It never goes away. Think of what it can do to a person.” Legion’s breath caught.
He put his head in his hands and dissolved into dry, shuddering rasps. Landslide placed an arm on Legion’s shoulder. He caught Seraph’s worried gaze, but shook his head and said nothing.
“God,” Legion said after a while. “How does a man like Warpath do it? Just years of carnage, of getting hurt and seeing others get hurt, of constant bloodshed. Imagine what it does to you.”
“That’s all of us though, isn’t it?” Seraph asked. “Us supers. We’re out there every day using our gifts to save lives and keep people safe; and every time we get knocked down, we have to get back up, pat the dust off and keep on fighting.”
“It’s the good fight, isn’t it?” Landslide sighed. “We’re supposed to keep on fighting. We have to.”
“As if the pain and the death we’ve seen and experienced doesn’t matter to us?” Seraph cursed. “Some of us…some of us can throw a whole building as easily as a single brick, but it doesn’t mean we’re not affected by what we go through. But nobody cares. Nobody talks about it. That’s why we end up here, isn’t it?”
She wrapped her hands around her steaming cup. “It’s just, it’s so tiring. People want us to carry on like it isn’t a burden on our shoulders. It’s the constant expectation of, well, of all of that. No one thinks of what happens after we stagger out of a fight. No one sees us lick our wounds and mourn our losses. They just expect us to do.”
They fell silent. Landslide drank his tea slowly.
He spat his tea out when the alarm klaxons suddenly wailed loudly. The hallway lights began to flash a stark red as one word rang out on repeat: LOCKDOWN. LOCKDOWN. LOCKDOWN.
The drinks were forgotten. Legion shovelled what remained of his granola bar into his mouth before the three leapt from their seats, nearly tripping over each other in the rush out of the recreation room.
A looping announcement came on over the speakers, its soft voice in jarring contrast with the warning klaxons. “Lockdown is in effect. Please remain calm. Vault residents are to evacuate to the canteen in an orderly fashion. For your safety, please refrain from using your powers unless instructed by a Caretaker. Lockdown is in effect. Please remain calm…”
The trio sprinted through corridors, trailing behind a couple of half-dressed supers wondering where and who the fight was with.
When Landslide approached his room, he noticed a group of Caretakers standing around Warpath’s habitation suite. He imagined that Warpath was having another nightmare, which would mean that the big man may need some persuasion to leave his room. But the Caretakers were blocking his view, and Landslide failed to clearly see what the shadowy figures were doing inside the suite. Were they placing something down on the floor? There was no time to dwell on it; Landslide carried on with their rush towards the canteen.
They burst into the hall and screeched to an immediate halt. The other residents were already scattered amongst the available seats or were looking for empty chairs. Caretakers were spread out evenly near the walls.
At the head of the canteen stood a solitary figure. Landslide noticed several things about this person: the first was that he was dressed in jet-black military fatigues. The second was that he was massively built and brutishly muscled. The third was that the skin on his face, neck, arms—any part of his body that was uncovered—was coated in a layer of dull metal. Landslide only realised on second glance that the dull metal was his skin.
The Wall really did live up to his description.
Fortress Manus turned to the new entrants. “I don’t like latecomers.” His voice was deep and resonant. “Be seated.”
It seemed the Wall lived up to his reputation, too. They scrambled and found their seats furthest away from the Vault’s custodian.
The alarms died down as the Wall began to speak impassively. “As I was saying, there has been an emergency in the Vault, so a lockdown will be maintained until it is resolved. There will be no further admittances into the Vault, nor will any exits be permitted from here on out. You will be allowed to carry on with your daily activities and routines, but surveillance will be increased. I hope this does not cause any of you to be too anxious. I apologise for the inconvenience. Questions?”
A resident raised a hand. “So what’s the emergency? What’s going on? How can we help? You’ve got a whole bunch of supers cooped up in here. We’re heroes—this is what we do. Let us do our jobs.”
The Wall cleared his throat, running a hand over his short crop of dark hair. Landslide realised that despite the Wall’s steely façade, he looked almost uncomfortable.
Landslide looked around and noticed that there was one prominent individual who had failed to make an appearance in the canteen. He recalled what he briefly saw when they were running over. And he knew.
The Wall looked out over the seated residents and cleared his throat. He said, “Ladies and gentlemen, I’m sorry. Warpath is dead.”
7
“So, the person with the most blood on his hands in here is dead,” the Mirror stated.
“Your point being?” Legion asked.
“Given your personal history, I understand that this could be upsetting for you. I have instructions from the facilitator to pay extra attention to our residents during this time. I know it can be distressing.”
“Distressing?” Legion laughed mirthlessly and shrugged. “Have you forgotten the things on my file, all the things that I’ve done? I barely raised an eyebrow when the Wall broke the news to us. Besides, a guy like that, the sort of deaths he meted out to people—respectable for the numbers he was tallying up, sure, but not the kind of guy who would amass hordes of raving fans across the world.”
“I understand that Warpath was a sort of pariah in the superhero community as well,” the Mirror said, typing into its data pad without looking away from Legion. “The residents have been abuzz at the news.”
Legion snorted. “Abuzz. That’s one way of looking at it. Half of them don’t know what to do, and the other half are too busy pointing fingers at each other. They want to step up, but we didn’t come here for this. Most of us wanted to get away from this sort of thing. Most of us just want to go.”
“Go,” the Mirror repeated. “And where would you like to go today, Legion?”
“The same.”
“Are you sure? It is the same scenario that we have run in all your previous sessions. Perhaps you might consider—”
“The same, Mirror.”
“Very well. Let us begin.”
Legion found himself alone in a jungle. He had entered the Mirror’s chamber in his mask and robe, but he was now dressed in dark military fatigues and full battle order. A heavy assault pack was strapped snugly to the back of his combat vest; he cradled a rifle in his arms; a black ballistic mask was pulled over his face. Where there were once glowing panels in a spacious room, there were now trees—so densely packed, it felt almost suffocating.
Above him were black clouds, and where those thick layers broke, the naked sky was sparsely populated by stars. The darkness settled down around Legion like a fog. He could hear the grating sounds of insects and the susurrus of rustling leaves, but beyond that, the jungle was still.
He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He could smell the petrichor stench of a recent rain. He knew that not far away would be the crumpled, hastily folded parachute that he had discarded upon landing. He could hear the fading roar of his gunship receding into the distance. And with each inhalation and exhalation, he focused on the hammering in his chest, on slowing everything down, on keeping things under control.
Then, he opened his eyes, and found that he was still alone.
“It’s still not working,” he complained to the jungle.
“Just like all the other times we have placed you in this situation.” Legion could hear the Mirror’s voice in his head like a whispering breeze.
“We carry on,” Legion insisted. “Step in for me.”
Little flashes of light ignited around Legion, and when it faded he found himself looking at his copies, all of whom were identically dressed and masked, standing at ease. They nodded at him in unison.
He was his own company of well over a hundred men; he knew each of them completely, because they were him as much as he was them. Similarly taught, trained and battle-tested, every man knew the mission—the very same one that Legion had tackled in the Mirror’s chamber in all of his sessions ever since arriving at the Vault.
“Hard-light projections activated,” the Mirror stated. “Simulation proceeding.”
This was what Legion had been trained to do during the War of the Long Winter—to be inserted behind enemy lines. Even though this was all just the Mirror’s sleight of hand, Legion was already starting to sweat underneath his helmet. The humidity felt all too real.
There was a whisper over his intra-team radio from one of his copies. “Come now, with me, into the long and lonely night,” he heard his own voice say, “and to the world’s ending. Until the dawn breaks, or we do.”
A simple prayer, as far as superstitions went. Legion still remembered how it had stuck from an off-handed remark one of his trainers had made. It felt like a lifetime ago. It had become a ritual for one of his copies to say, born out of simple force of habit. A litany of war.
They set off without a word. There was no need for unnecessary communication; they were all of one mind. They trudged quietly through the dark in an evenly spaced formation, the mottled camouflage of their uniforms blending them into the jungle.
The mission had one objective—a relay facility, nestled in the dense jungles up north, that had been occupied by hostile Federation forces in the earlier days of their advance. Legion had been parachuted in as an opening move preceding a planned Alliance counterattack. His orders were to retake the enemy compound, which would cut off long swathes of communications between Federation units in the area. If he could not recapture the facility, he had been given the go-ahead to blow it to pieces. It was a simple, straightforward plan.
Their target came into sight: a squat and ugly block of concrete, with all manner of signalling equipment on its roof. The electrified chainlink fences surrounding it were interspersed with guard towers and sensor stations at regular intervals. Spotlights swept the grounds, revealing automated machine-gun emplacements and armed guards on patrol. The facility looked impenetrable.
He whispered into his helmet-mounted mic. “Third Platoon, flank right to the opposite side of the compound and stand by for diversionary action. First and second platoons with me, up the centre. Fourth Platoon, hold in reserve. Platoon commanders to acknowledge.” The gestures and the words were muscle memory to him.
The affirmation was repeated four times in his own voice. He then switched to another communications channel and stated, “Eagle, this is Legion. Legion is in position, standing by. Over.”
“Eagle copies. You are green to go,” a foreign voice announced over bursts of static. There was a pause, and the voice added, “Victory at any cost, Legion.”
It was Eagle, Legion’s long-time handler and the eye-in-the-sky he relied on throughout the War. In spite of himself, Legion found himself smiling as he gave his next command: “All hands, all hands. You are cleared to proceed.” He had yet to figure out why that single line gave him any measure of happiness.
A portion of his forces melted into the shadows and moved away. The rest waited with him, camouflaged against the landscape.
Legion fought the urge to look at his wristwatch as he had done every time he was in the simulation. Instead, he scanned the jungle and the building he had been tasked to seize. An explosion ripped through the trees to his right. Right on schedule.
Legion never figured out what had set off that explosion. An enemy mine, stepped on by one of his copies? Or perhaps it was a poorly packaged explosive that had detonated prematurely? He had learnt to settle for the reality that he would never know, and that he would have to live with that uncertainty.
Legion winced. He knew that he should have begun to feel it—the ache he felt in the real world when his copies got injured, the throbbing pain when they got killed. But here, in the simulacrum of the Mirror’s chamber, none of that mattered.
On cue, the facility roared to life. Spotlights speared through the skies and cut into the jungle. Sirens began to sound, and enemy soldiers sprinted out of the base to assume their defensive stations. Legion’s original intention had been to infiltrate the compound while the men of his Third Platoon drew the defenders’ attention. That mishap left Legion no choice but to assault the communications facility directly, or risk losing any chance of securing his objective.
He knew that at this point, his best hope was to seize the initiative while the enemy had yet to figure out where the attack was coming from. Legion yelled into his mic for the first and second platoons to advance. Separate teams began deploying their automatic weapons from the edge of the jungle. Flashes of gunfire cracked up and down the treeline as they unleashed volleys of suppressive fire. With a roar, all the remaining men that Legion had available burst out from between the trees and charged towards the compound.
Machine guns from the guard towers opened up and rained lead on the attacking soldiers. In response, rockets leapt from shoulder-mounted launchers and reduced those towers to smouldering ruins. Small-arms fire scythed the advancing men off their feet, while gunners spread out amongst the trees retaliated, forcing the defenders to keep their heads down. Mines exploded with devastating force, throwing limp soldiers into the air in sprays of shrapnel and scattered dirt.
The attack ground on.
From his position in the woods, Legion swore, hammering his fist against the trunk of a nearby tree. “Eagle, this is Legion,” he radioed. “Enemy compound is getting too hot. Infiltration has been compromised—I say again, infiltration compromised. Legion moving to assault enemy compound. Verify further instructions, over?”
There was a brief crackle, then Eagle replied, “Legion, this is Eagle. Instructions are to carry on with assault, over.”
“Legion copies.” He gritted his teeth, but complied. “Carrying on with the assault.”
He could see his copies getting taken apart by enemy fire. He remembered it all too clearly—the sickening lurch in his stomach, the bile rising in his throat. During the War, when he had found himself in the middle of this jungle leading a hopeless assault against well-entrenched opponents, he could feel it all: every bullet digging into the shattered bodies of his copies, every shard of metal lancing across skin and biting into flesh. He had felt the warm spray of arterial blood, had heard the gasping screams of dying men—his screams, for the ones dying were him—but Legion remembered how he had pushed on. Victory at any cost—he had worn that simple refrain like a badge of honour, and in his pain-crazed mind they became the only words he heard.
But now, he felt nothing. He knew that these false dead would fade out of existence. He continued on with the charade like a spectator with a foot in the game.
The percussive blast of a nearby explosion slapped him back into the present. His position in the trees was getting shelled. When this first happened, Legion had not expected the enemy to have mortars so readily on hand; the intelligence he had been given mentioned nothing of the sort. No matter. Legion ordered his gunners to fall back, then brought Fourth Platoon closer to the front. The advance continued.
Then, his radio crackled to life. Through the frantic chatter, Legion noted that Third Platoon had absorbed the brunt of the sorties, and yet somehow managed to remain standing. In another world, this would have been admirable, but Legion had no time to dwell on it. The platoon commander called out casualty numbers and laid out the situation on his side of the battlefield. Fighting past the grim statistics, Legion ordered the commander to press their attack.
Finally, a stroke of luck: commanders at the spearhead of the assault reported that the compound’s perimeter had been breached. One of Legion’s copies had managed to tear up a part of the fence—large enough for the squads to fight their way through—with a well-thrown satchel charge, although that same man had been gunned down in the process. Legion said a small prayer, grateful for the second wind, and ordered the remaining gunners and Fourth Platoon into the fray. Gripping his rifle a little tighter, he went in with them.
