Future Girl
Real name: Carla Owens
Powers: Able to change the speed of her personal timeline.
Notes: Only female member of the Manhattan Eight. Disputes between her and Iron Justice were well publicized. After Dr Atomic retired, Owens claimed that Iron Justice made unwanted sexual advances towards her, but she never pressed charges. Shortly after the Manhattan Eight disbanded, she was trapped in a time loop by the supercriminal Chronoburner. Chronoburner was later captured and sentenced to death, but Future Girl was never recovered.
—Notes on selected metahumans [Entry #0007]
***
Morgan did his best thinking when he was staring into space, and now was no exception. To anyone else he would seem to be studying the map fixed to the wall of the office, but he’d memorised it weeks ago. Everything was ready. Well, almost everything. He didn’t relish the thought of the coming days, but he couldn’t pretend his heart didn’t quicken when he ran through the plan in his head. Once again, he rubbed his forehead with a white-gloved hand. His head ached a little—it hadn’t let up since Bangkok—but everything was on track. Just a few more days, and he’d be done.
A muffled crack brought him out of his thoughts. His chair squeaked as he swivelled to look through the office window. In the abandoned warehouse below, his people went through drills amongst the old machinery and shipping crates. They moved swiftly, and they were learning to complement one another. The first team would advance and secure cover under the protection of Haze’s smokescreen, while Screecher probed for hidden enemies. Obsidian had set up several of Navigatron’s target drones throughout the warehouse to try to ambush the metas.
Morgan’s man had sourced this warehouse to act as a base while they were in Neo-Auckland. Neo-Auckland. A stupid name for a city. The New Zealanders should have given the newly constructed city its own name, instead of basing it on the crumbling husk of the old bombed city. If it weren’t for the name, no one would know they were even related. He’d never visited New Zealand before the bomb hit, but he’d seen photographs of old Auckland—a city clinging to its English roots, embarrassed by its youth.
Neo-Auckland, by contrast, was like a tacky American theme park. It abandoned the narrow gardens and English villas to fully embrace modern suburbanism and technology. His flight over the city in Hyperion had revealed street after street lined by freshly-mown lawns and trimmed hedges. The old city’s tangled road networks had been replaced by swooping highways, monorail tracks, and grid-like street layouts. Shopping malls and department stores were the new churches. Not that this was a bad thing in itself. At least the civilians he’d seen had improved their dull English fashion sense.
According to Morgan’s man, the warehouse had been used as a front by a trio of minor supercriminals back in the late ’50s. It explained the row of prison cells downstairs behind a false wall. His operative said the supercriminals who built it were trying to run a kidnapping racket, but they’d got picked up by the police. It didn’t sound like they were experts. The trio managed to get ambushed when they were out collecting a ransom. After the trial, the warehouse was sold at police auction for a steal. And the owner had been keeping it for just such an occasion ever since.
Two of the cells in the basement were occupied now. The boy was already there when Morgan arrived, and they secured Iron Justice in the cell he’d had specially prepared. Morgan hadn’t looked in on the boy. What he had arranged for Sam was necessary, but that didn’t make it pleasant. He preferred not to think about what Doll Face was doing.
“My lord,” came Obsidian’s voice from the doorway. Her black, rocky body had a strange sheen in the office light. “The boy has been given the first dose.”
“He didn’t notice anything?”
“No, my lord. Doll Face is with him now.”
Don’t remind me. He nodded and said nothing.
“You wanted to see the reporter,” Obsidian said.
“Ah, yes,” he said, pushing aside thoughts of Doll Face. “Bring him in.”
Obsidian shifted her bulk from the doorway and the young, portly reporter came into view. John Bishop was red-faced, with a few drops of sweat clinging to his forehead, but the young man was clearly doing his best to hide his fear. He’d improved remarkably in the last few days. You had to respect a man who could remain stoic in company such as this.
Morgan had arranged for the man to be given fresh clothes when they arrived, since his abduction in Moscow hadn’t left time for John to pack a bag. Now he wore a pair of grey trousers and a vest over a white buttoned-up shirt. Obsidian had done a good job choosing clothes that fit the man, especially since she didn’t wear any herself.
“Obsidian,” Morgan said. “The cuffs. John won’t be needing them.”
She inclined her head and worked a key into the handcuffs that bound the reporter’s wrists in front of him. John rubbed his wrists as they came loose. A chain remained in place between his ankles, just as a precaution. Obsidian bowed her head once more and stiffly retreated from the room, closing the door behind her.
“Thanks for coming, John,” Morgan said.
The reporter shuffled on the spot. “The stone woman didn’t give me much choice.”
Morgan smiled and gestured to the seat across from him. Like the desk and the filing cabinet in the corner, it was well made and barely used, though it was getting a little dated. “Please.”
John Bishop shuffled to the chair, keeping his head high, and sat down without much difficulty. He was only in his twenties, but his hairline was already beginning to recede, leaving a V of dark hair pointing to his forehead.
“How are your new quarters?” Morgan said. “Comfortable?”
“Yes, sir.” His voice was clipped, probably hiding his nervousness.
“How’s the story coming?”
“Good, sir.”
“You’ve been able to talk to my people? They haven’t given you any trouble?”
John shook his head. “Most have been eager to tell me their stories.” He licked his lips. Perhaps John wasn’t so eager to hear some of what his people had to tell. Many had killed before, and some had done worse. But it was necessary.
Morgan smiled to try to put the man at ease. “I understand this is a difficult time for you. Truly, I do. I was taken against my will once myself. This is a dangerous world we live in. Though I’m sure you knew that already. You’ve done some war correspondence, correct?”
“Yes, sir. I covered the last coup d’état in Syria. There was fighting in several major cities.”
Morgan nodded. “A young man, to have seen that. What you do is important. A single soldier is nothing to anyone, but a single reporter can change the world.”
John nodded, but said nothing. His mouth was in a tight line, and he would only make eye contact with Morgan for the briefest moment before shifting his gaze.
“Cigarette?” Morgan asked. He produced a packet of Rothmans from the desk drawer. John hesitated, then nodded. He leaned over, took one, and allowed Morgan to light it.
“Aren’t you going to…?” he said when Morgan returned the packet to the drawer.
“I don’t smoke.” Morgan smiled and leaned back, resting his hands on his white trousers. “You’ve been with us a few weeks now. So I suppose you’re wondering why I want you to write this story.”
John looked more comfortable with a cigarette in his hand. He brought it to his lips and inhaled. “It’s not unheard of. My editor once had an exclusive with Suicide Prime. Sometimes supervillains want—” His eyes widened and his mouth slammed shut with an audible click. His gaze met Morgan’s, then darted away again.
Morgan laughed. “It’s all right. I’m not going to dangle you above a pool of acid because you called me a supervillain.” He leaned forwards and put his elbows on the table. The poor man looked like he was going to drown in his own sweat. “The media doesn’t like to use those words anymore. Supervillain, supercriminal. Even superhero. It’s like society has tried to forget its past, don’t you think? All around the world, metahumans are pushed to the fringes of society. The Alpha League went so far as to leave Earth entirely. And now the world treats nearly two decades of metahuman activity as if it never happened.”
The cigarette slowly burned down in John’s fingers. He held it inches from his lips, but he made no attempt to take another drag. The cigarette trembled as Morgan let the silence draw out between them.
“You’re right,” Morgan said. “I am a supervillain. But I didn’t bring you here just to show off. Without you, everything I’m doing, everything I’m going to do, will be worthless. Without you, I’m just another madman.”
He stood, opened the filing cabinet behind the desk, and pulled out a series of folders bound together with rubber bands. He tossed them down and they hit the desk with a thud. John jumped, but stayed silent.
“It took me nearly a decade to put that together. Years of planning and tracking down fragments of information. That file contains everything. Every operative’s report, every piece of tech I had specially designed. You can read it, all of it, if you want. Everything will become clear soon, anyway.”
Smoke drifted from John’s cigarette, but he hardly seemed aware of it. He licked his lips, staring at the file. “Why?” he finally asked.
Morgan smiled. “That’s always the best question. And that’s the one thing you won’t find an answer to in there.” Now that he was standing, he didn’t want to sit down again. I’m getting restless, he realised. He was so close to the end now, so close. Years of setting up the chessboard. Months of moving his pieces into position. Checkmate in two moves. He wanted to act now.
But the timing had to be perfect. If he made his move now, he’d bring retribution down on him and his people. He paced back and forth, hands clutched together behind his back.
“I’m not in this for money,” he said. “I have no desire to rule anything. I don’t want revenge, at least, not in the usual sense. No doubt others will challenge my motives in the coming weeks, but I need you to understand.”
He stopped pacing and faced the reporter. Part of him bristled at the idea of sharing information with this man, laying out his plot like a moustache-twirling villain. But he had to make John understand. The reporter’s eyes were still nervous, but he leaned forwards slightly now, brow furrowed, interest piqued. He’d stubbed out his cigarette, but the aroma remained.
Does he see? This was the weakest link in Morgan’s plan. The realisation that he needed someone like John only came to him two months ago, during a nightmare. He dreamed his plan unfolded perfectly, every cog meshing with the next. But a decade afterward, the world began to forget. It had all been for nothing. He woke in a cold sweat that night. It was only by chance that his people found John in Moscow, an English journalist trying to peer behind the Iron Curtain. If John fails, everything fails.
Straightening his white jacket, he continued. “My plan would have stayed just a plan, never acted upon, if my life had remained the same.” He gestured to the file. “Back then, all this was just—excuse the expression—academic masturbation. I realise that now. But of course, things never stay the same, do they?”
He resisted the urge to massage his forehead. The ache was building again. “I have a condition. Oligodendroglioma. A type of brain tumour. Surgical resection is too risky. The tumour will kill me, eventually.” He’d accepted that. He’d always been a logical man, and having your cause of death presented to you with such stark certainty had a certain beautiful logic all of its own. Most metas died of cancer, of course. He’d just never truly considered that he might be one of them. “I take medication to control the seizures, but it won’t be long until I can’t function at the level I need to. I suppose I should have carried out my plan years ago, when I was still healthy. But I never would have, of course. No one ever acts until they’re forced to, supervillain or not.”
Turning away from John, he fell silent. He wasn’t a robot. He feared death like any man. But more than that, he feared leaving the world as it was.
“Who…” John said. “Who are you?”
Morgan watched his people fight the training drones in the warehouse. Only Obsidian knew about his cancer. She knew almost everything. The others had their own reasons for being here. But regardless of their motivations, they were serving a noble cause.
“My name is Morgan Shepherd. I went to school in Birmingham, and in nineteen fifty-five I left home to attend the University of Cambridge to study law and politics. My powers were known only to me at that stage. I assume they were a result of the atomic bomb tests in the North Atlantic Ocean, but of course, I cannot be sure. You can’t imagine how excited I was when I first discovered I was a metahuman. After years of collecting Dr Atomic comic books and watching the exploits of the world’s superheroes at the pictures, I was becoming one myself.
“I practiced in private, training for the day when I’d take a cape for myself. I wasn’t content to just be a superhero. I was going to be a hero to make Dr Atomic himself proud.” He turned back to John and gestured to the blotches of pale skin on his face. “My skin started to change at the same time. I didn’t mind. Why would I? The last thing I wanted to do was hide.” He paused. “And then the protests started. You know of the Cambridge protests?”
John nodded. “Nineteen fifty-seven. Students Against Metahuman Control.”
Morgan smiled. He knew he’d picked the right man for this. “We couldn’t stand idle while governments across the planet restricted metahuman rights more and more. Registration, compulsory medical checks. The introduction of kill-switches was immoral beyond reason. We clashed with other protesters on more than one occasion. The student body was divided into pro- and anti-metahuman. Other students across the world protested in solidarity with us, but it was strongest at Cambridge.”
He could tell the reporter knew what was coming next; he would have heard of the day, but Morgan kept speaking. It had been a long time since he spoke about it with anyone.
“In June of fifty-eight, our group was marching through campus. There were dozens of openly meta students amongst us, and several more that we all assumed had powers as well. Our protests had mostly been peaceful, but times were changing. We tried to continue our march out of campus, and found our way blocked by officers of the new Metahuman Control Unit of the police. They attempted to force us back, and some of our more extreme members retaliated.” The day was seared into his memory. “I couldn’t believe it when the police opened fire. My people—my friends—all crumpled. Other people’s blood coated me. I couldn’t hear; I couldn’t see through the smoke. This wasn’t how it was supposed to be. We were going to be heroes.
“The practice I’d been doing saved me. Without thinking, I brought up a shield of light to protect myself against the gunfire. It was the first time I’d ever used my powers in public. But my people were still dying. My best friend, a meta I’d known since school, took a round in the throat. I watched him drown in his own blood. All thought fled from me.”
He flexed his gloved hand into a fist behind his back. “Next thing I knew, I had sliced a police officer’s head from his shoulders with a blade of light. I can still see the blood pulsing from his neck as the body slumped to the ground. I kept moving, kept cutting. A few of the surviving metas saw what I was doing and tried to stop me. Others attempted to fight as well. But most of the killing I did alone.” He sighed and bowed his head. “You know the event I speak of?”
“Yes,” the reporter said. He paused as if debating with himself, and his fingers tapped on his knees. Finally, he appeared to make up his mind. “They were rounding up the survivors of the riot for months.” His voice barely quavered. “How did you escape?”
“Luck, mostly. I made contact with the Erasers, and they helped me out of the country. I made my way through Europe under several false identities. It wasn’t hard to stay ahead of Interpol and anti-metahuman squads. They were overwhelmed in those days. I moved every few weeks, never spending more than a couple of months in a country at a time.” Until I met Lisa. He shook the thought from his head.
“Even if this is all true,” John said, “it doesn’t explain any of this.” He waved his hands at the office, but the gesture seemed to encompass much more. He’d fully transformed into the reporter now. “You said this wasn’t revenge. You’ve freed criminals and kidnapped people, but for what?”
Morgan relaxed his hands and pushed his plan file across the desk to the reporter. “Read. And think. I hope you’ll understand now.” He caught a glimpse of movement through the office window, and he sensed a kind of darkness approaching. His heart sank a little, but he steeled himself. Doll Face was coming. He must be done with the boy, for now. A necessary evil, he told himself, but it wasn’t convincing.
“We’re done for now,” Morgan said. He picked up the file and pushed it into John’s hands. “Read.”
The man nodded jerkily. Morgan held out his hand, and after a moment, John shook it. A strong grip. Yes, he thought, he’ll do it. He’s the one.
He showed John to the door. Obsidian was waiting outside, ready with the handcuffs, but he waved her away. “John won’t be needing those. He has writing to do.”
Something giggled in his ear. “What’s it writing? Is it writing a story?”
Morgan forced himself not to shudder at Doll Face’s stench. How did he move so quietly? The makeup on Doll Face’s mask had been recently reapplied. The crooked lipstick smile sent shivers down Morgan’s spine. John was almost cowering behind Obsidian.
“Take John back to his quarters,” Morgan said to Obsidian. She bowed and escorted the shaking man away. The reporter cast fearful glances back at Doll Face as he went. Doll Face cocked his head to the side and watched the reporter until he was out of sight.
“It’s done?” Morgan asked shortly. The less he had to deal with this creature the better.
Doll Face returned his attention to Morgan and leaned close. “Doll Face enjoyed playing with the boy’s mind. So many secrets. So many dark places to explore. When can Doll Face cut him?”
“Not yet. You have more…playing…to do.”
The creature’s head jerked to the other side. “Doll Face is patient. Doll Face likes to play.” He glanced around, leaned in, and whispered. “But the best bit is making a toy cut its own eyes out.”
Doll Face turned and slipped away, making no sound as he went. That was a good sign. He only made footsteps when he wanted his victims to be afraid.
Morgan realised he’d been holding his breath. He exhaled and massaged his aching head. A necessary evil, he told himself again as he watched Doll Face disappear.
Just like me.
~~~
This book is available now at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, and Smashwords. Find out more at www.chris-strange.com.
Thanks for reading!