Will McIntosh - Defenders

“I’m not being hostile. I’m just passing time.”

Until that night, when the people in charge had tired of Oliver’s inability to get Five to tell him anything useful, their conversations had been relatively polite. Certainly not warm, but polite. Two emissaries, on opposite sides of their species’ struggle to the death, discussing the situation in even tones.

“Do you want to know?” Five asked.

Oliver didn’t answer. Five knew he didn’t want to know, that he was sick to death of having his mind cut open and pinned to a piece of cardboard, but Oliver knew Five would ignore this, because that was the game.

“You collect comic books because you harbor an infantile desire for the superheroes to be real. You want the Hulk, Spider-Man, and the Silver Surfer to come and save you. To save your kind. Even a cowboy on a white horse would do.”

Go ahead, Oliver thought, pluck the name of the cowboy on the white horse out of my head. Only it’s not a white horse, it’s a silver horse. The hat is white.

“The Lone Ranger,” Five said.

“Yes, I’m waiting for the Lone Ranger to save me.” Oliver had never actually watched that ancient show, but that was beside the point.

“No one is coming to save you.”

Oliver looked at his fingernails. Had he remembered to pack nail clippers when the security contingent showed up at his house and told him to pack? Hopefully they’d been in his shaving kit when he packed it. He went to the bathroom to look.

“You have no hope left,” Five said. “I respect that. You’re realistic, for one of your kind.”

He stared into the mirror. Was that true? Did he have no hope?

It was almost true. Not 100 percent true, but it wasn’t a lie.

Oliver looked into his own tired, watery eyes and realized he was letting this creature beat him. If he had no hope, if he’d given up in his heart, he was useless. He was betraying President Wood, his country, his kind, who were trusting him with a crucial task. Maybe he was here primarily because all of the men and women more capable of doing this job were dead. Maybe that was true.

It is true.

“Shut up!” he shouted.

Even if it was true, he had assets and abilities those people lacked. He needed to better utilize his assets.

Maybe he could turn Five’s humiliating insights around to his advantage. Five was good at exposing his weaknesses. Fine, now he knew what his weaknesses were. As any decent psychologist knew, if you’re not aware of your weaknesses, they control you; if you’re aware of them, if you face up to them, you control them.

Based on Five’s attacks, his weaknesses were Vanessa, and his lack of confidence in himself.

They’re just the tip of the iceberg.

“Shut up.”

As Five had so aptly observed, he was waiting for superheroes to show up and save him. Since all the superheroes—all of the CIA’s action people—were dead, he needed to get himself a cape. Even if, inside, he didn’t feel it, even if he felt like a fraud, it was time to play the part of the big, strong CIA agent. It was time to lock out his doubts and fears, put his head down, and take bullets until he couldn’t get up anymore.

“You’re wrong,” he said aloud, because to humans speaking something aloud held a certain power, made the words real in a way thinking them did not. “I’m realistic; I recognize that we’re losing. Badly. But I still have hope. We haven’t lost yet. We’re headed somewhere, and I’m pretty sure we’re not going there to surrender.”

The little speech sounded canned even to his ears; they were the sort of words Batman might speak in a comic book. But Oliver had to admit, it still felt good to say them.

July 1, 2029 (eight months earlier). Washington, D.C.

Kai pried the flagstone loose from the walk that meandered through the church’s walled garden. The small, square key was underneath, just as the Luyten said it would be. He plucked it from its hiding spot, headed for the back door of the church.

Not there. Back the other way. Walk along the wall.

Kai did as he was told, his mouth watering with anticipation despite the wild guilt he felt. A church .

There was a small graveyard set inside a low, ornamental fence. Ivy covered the fence and crawled along the ground.

There. Behind the statue.

Behind a mold-stricken statue of an angel with spread wings was a raised concrete circle with a steel cover. Looking around first, though it was probably unnecessary, Kai approached the cover, inserted the key into the hole, and pulled the hatch open.

The cover lifted fairly easily, revealing a dark hole, a ladder leading down. Kai climbed to the bottom, a dozen or so feet below the ground. He was surrounded by shelves of food—dried, packaged meals, like the ones soldiers ate.

Whose are these? he thought. It was confusing, to speak to it without speaking. There was no line dividing what he wanted to say and what he just wanted to think.

The pastor. Speak out loud if you prefer, but quietly.

“Why is this food down here?” Kai whispered, relieved.

Because he doesn’t want to share it. Take six.

Hands shaking with anticipation, Kai grabbed the meals, struggled up the ladder one-handed, and headed for the gate.

Not yet. Go toward the church.

“I don’t want to get caught,” Kai whispered.

I know where everyone is. Go.

Kai went. The voice directed him along the back of the church, to a dirt- and leaf-covered black steel grate in the ground along the back wall.

Open the grate. Drop four down.

Drop them. Why on Earth would he do that?

Realization swept over him with an icy chill. It was down there. Hiding. Probably hurt.

I’m in trouble, just like you. I’m alone and afraid, just like you.

It was difficult for Kai to imagine one of those big, ugly monsters being afraid, and lonely. “Why are you lonely? I thought you could talk to other Luyten in your head.”

They’re all too far away.

They had an eight-mile range. Kai remembered hearing that.

That’s right.

As Kai knocked on the door, he told himself he had no choice but to do what the Luyten told him. It hadn’t made any threats, but it was huge, and powerful, and he was just a kid.

A woman answered the door. She was Asian like him, a streak of gray running through her long hair. More important, the aroma of fish and rice wafted through the door from a nearby kitchen.

Her name is Mrs. Boey. Tell her you have a message from her daughter. Valerie.

“Mrs. Boey? My name is Kai. I have a message from your daughter Valerie.”

The woman’s expression transformed. “You heard from my baby?” She opened the door, put a hand on Kai’s shoulder, and led him inside.

Valerie is outside Richmond, alive. She helped you escape. She asked you to tell her mother she’s sorry about the argument they had before she left.

Is Valerie alive, Kai thought.

Probably not.

With a crippling knot of guilt in his stomach, Kai told Mrs. Boey her daughter was alive and well, as a dozen people sitting elbow to elbow around a kitchen table looked on. Food was already on the table, and after Kai delivered his news the woman had little choice but to invite him to share their meal. The food was delicious; Kai ate voraciously, every chopstick-full sticking in his throat on the way down as he watched Mrs. Boey across the table, smiling, probably eating more easily than she had at any time since her sixteen-year-old daughter left to battle the Luyten four months earlier.