Peter Clines - Ex-Communication

And a few moments later, every ex in Los Angeles County screamed at once.

“ MA’AM,” SAID FREEDOM, “sir, with all due respect, this is your fault.”

It made Stealth pause. St. George had said it was possible to catch her off guard, but this was the first time Freedom had ever seen it happen. He wondered how often anyone dared interrupt the woman.

He was in Stealth’s meeting room with the other heroes. It was a rare thing for Freedom to be invited to these morning meetings. He understood they were informal, though, and the other heroes had known one another for years.

The cloaked woman stood on the other side of the conference table and stared at him. He’d learned to sense her stares, even through the blank balaclava she always wore.

St. George stood next to her, leaning against the edge of the table. He’d looked preoccupied for the whole meeting so far.

Barry was in his wheelchair off to the side. He was also much more subdued than normal. If fact, Freedom was pretty sure the man hadn’t spoken yet.

Danielle sat next to the wheelchair. He’d come to learn what a rare thing it was for her not to be wearing the Cerberus armor if she had a choice. Even now, with Lieutenant Gibbs and the boy, Cesar, able to operate the battlesuit, it was still her wearing it more than half the time. He’d known a few tank officers who were the same way—not comfortable unless they were surrounded by steel.

The arrangement of the room also didn’t slip by the captain. He’d been on this side of similar tables three times before. Two of them were for official inquiries into the deaths of soldiers under his command. The other was when he was brought into Project Krypton and had the full scale of the project revealed to him.

He still wasn’t sure which type this meeting was. All four of the heroes looked uncomfortable. It could be going either way.

“Please,” said Stealth. Her voice was ice. “Continue.”

“I’ve been here for eight months now, ma’am, and this is the first I’ve ever heard of a high-security prisoner in the Mount. One being held a hundred yards from my own quarters.”

“Are you claiming you have never heard of the Cellar?”

“Of course I’ve heard of it, ma’am,” he said. “Everyone in the city has. And everyone has a different idea what it is. I’ve been told it’s a quarantine area, storage for ex-humans, and where we keep monsters.” He gestured at St. George. “One very excited little boy told me it’s where you hide the magic lantern that gives you your powers, and you have to go down there to recharge.”

Barry looked up at his friend. “You’ve had a magic lantern all this time and you didn’t tell me?”

St. George smirked. So did Danielle. It didn’t break the mood, but it cracked it enough for everyone to breathe.

Freedom plowed ahead. “Who is the prisoner? Why did you have him locked up? And where did he get all these primitive weapons from? Is it some … ritualistic thing?”

“Man, that’d be nice,” Barry said. “So much simpler.”

“Speaking of ritual,” said Danielle, “wasn’t Max supposed to be here for all of this?”

Without turning Stealth pointed over her shoulder at one of the numerous video screens in the room. The high angle showed Max in another meeting room somewhere. He was scratching notes and symbols on a huge whiteboard. His brow furrowed at the board as he went back and erased a pair of lines. “He has been notified twice,” said Stealth. “It was a courtesy. We do not require his presence.”

“Still working on his demon-banishment thing?” asked Barry.

“So he claims. Legion’s scream seems to have worried him.” Stealth tossed something onto the marble tabletop. It made a hollow sound as it bounced over to Freedom. “This is the weapon the prisoner attacked you with?”

He picked it up. “It looks like it, ma’am. I couldn’t be certain. I only saw it for a moment.”

It was a thick piece of pale hardwood. It had been scraped down to something that was almost a blade. He recognized the scratches down the length from crude weapons in Iraq. Someone had dragged the spike across rough stone or concrete to shape it.

Then he registered the thick knob under the handle.

“This is a bone,” he said.

“Yeah,” said St. George.

“Someone slipped your prisoner a leg of lamb when you weren’t looking?”

“It is a human tibia,” said Stealth. “To be precise, it is the prisoner’s left tibia.”

Barry tipped his head back and rubbed his temples.

Freedom set the bone down. “I’m pretty sure the prisoner had both of his legs.”

St. George nodded. “Yeah, he did.”

Freedom frowned and nodded at the table. “And the whip?” It had been coiled and stuffed into a large evidence bag. He wondered how Stealth had actual evidence bags when his people were using Ziplocs.

“Identifying exact muscle tissues is more difficult without certain tests,” she said. “However, judging from the density and length of the sinews, I feel confident saying it is comprised of nine sartorius muscles. There are also eleven molars worked into the braid, to increase either traction or damage. Possibly both.”

Danielle shuddered and looked away from the table.

Freedom pondered this for a moment. “So there are multiple victims,” he said. “He killed other people before he got out and we missed it somehow.”

St. George shook his head. “No,” he said. “They’re all his. The prisoner’s.” He tapped his fingers on the tabletop for a moment. “Looking at these and some of the evidence we found in the Cellar, we’re pretty sure he was tearing out his own bones and muscles to make weapons and tools.”

Freedom blinked. He opened his mouth to respond, then shut it again. After another few moments he spat the words out. “And you never noticed this how, sir?”

“We never noticed,” said Stealth, “because he would grow new ones.”

The huge captain dwelled on her words for a moment. “Before the fall,” he said, “there was a hero with healing powers. The one named Regenerator.”

“Also sometimes called the Immortal,” said Stealth. “His real name is Joshua Garcetti.”

“He was attacked and bitten in a field hospital, wasn’t he?” Freedom glanced at St. George. “I thought he died near the end.”

“Not exactly,” muttered Danielle.

“Josh survived the bite,” said St. George, “but it canceled out his powers. He was just a normal guy with a messed-up hand where the infection had gotten trapped.”

Freedom recalled the prisoner’s withered hand. “So he was in the Cellar? Why?”

St. George drummed his knuckles on the table. Danielle shifted in her chair. Even Barry squirmed a bit. Stealth stared at the huge captain.

“What did he do?” asked Freedom.

“You have to understand,” said St. George, “Josh had gone insane. Seriously, honestly insane. He managed to hide it from us for a year while we were establishing the Mount. None of us knew.”

“Knew what, sir?”

“Sixteen months ago,” said Stealth, “we discovered Regenerator’s affliction was an elaborate somatoform disorder, one where his abilities allowed his guilt to physically manifest as an injury.”

“Guilt?”

Danielle reached up to wrap her hand over her mouth. She turned to study one of Stealth’s video screens.

St. George looked at Stealth. “What you are about to hear, Captain,” she said, “is known only by the four of us and now yourself. It does not leave this room under any circumstances. Ever.”

They told him everything.

St. George had seen Captain Freedom mad before. Back at Krypton, when the officer had been brainwashed into thinking Stealth had killed his commander, he’d been furious. The icy calm that settled over the giant officer now, though, was even more disturbing.