West Pacific Supers: Rising Tide (2 page)

He nodded and headed
for the doors, which weren’t locked, and soon was walking down a dark hallway.
He stopped as he saw light coming through the cracks of the door that led into
the main assembly area. “Annie, I think we’ve got something,” he whispered.
“I’m going to check it out.”

He moved up to the
door and slowly opened it enough to peer through. His view was limited but he
saw a pile of silver cylinders each about a yard long and a foot wide and a
table in front of them where two men were working on an opened cylinder. He
couldn’t see what they were doing, but he kept the door opened just a crack and
brought up his micro-camcorder to copy some images to transmit back to HQ.
After a few seconds of footage he quietly closed the door and backed away.

“Any idea what that
was all about?” he whispered.

“I need a better
look… go back and take the first door to your right and go straight down the
hall to the second hallway to the right. Then to your left will be a staircase
and we can go up and see if we can get a look from above.”

“What’s going on
here?” asked Mr. Awesome. “Do you think those cylinders were explosives?”

“If they’re
producing the PGZ for those cylinders they would have enough explosive power to
level the city – it’s sort of overkill, it would be easier to make a nuclear
warhead than synthesize that much PGZ.”

“What do we have on
the cars in the north parking lot?” asked Mr. Awesome who suspected they had
stumbled upon something big, really big.

“One is a rental,
the others are locals, and I’m working up profiles on the owners, but none of
them are setting off any flags,” said Dr. Sterling. “We still don’t know if the
PGZ is even here, but regardless something is up.”

“$50 says it’s the
Infinite Circle,” said Mr. Awesome as he finally reached the staircase, quietly
opened the door, and headed up the stairs.

“I’ll take that and
$50 more says it’s a wannabe supervillain,” said Dr. Sterling.

“The WPL heist was
professional, not wannabes.”

“Put enough monkeys
in a room with typewriters and eventually you’ll get a Shakespearean sonnet,”
said Dr. Sterling.

“I don’t know about
that, but I do know you’d get a lot of monkey poop.” Mr. Awesome reached the
top floor and quietly opened the door to the large assembly room. He was in
utter darkness and below could see several tables and hundreds of the metal
cylinders. A score or so with red danger stickers were piled up very neatly by
the loading doors. Four people were working at the tables and there wasn’t any
talking – probably not a positive work environment. He pulled out his
micro-camcorder and began recording from the new vantage point; he decided to
not even whisper anything to Annie until he withdrew from the area.

“Lots of new
equipment, they might well be synthesizing PGZ and fitting it into the
cylinders as warheads, but they’re using manufactured components,” said Dr.
Sterling. “You’re right this isn’t a wannabe, this is someone with cash and
resources. If this is PGZ, these guys are looking to blow up a city or a
mountain.”

Mr. Awesome nodded,
took some more footage, and then headed back to the staircase. He quietly
opened the door and started walking down the stairs as he mentally went over
the next part of the plan. The team had reasonable suspicion now and could
charge into the place with the WPPD. It would probably take them an hour or two
to get everything properly organized and they’d have to be careful; he wasn’t
an expert but he suspected these guys had already assembled enough PGZ
cylinders to take out the factory and probably the surrounding block.

“The expense of
synthesizing
pentaglycerine
is staggering,” said Dr.
Sterling. “The cost of producing this stuff would be out of the range of most
terrorist groups and supervillains. Honestly, I think…wait…ambient noise…Mr. A
– someone is in the stairwell!”

Mr. Awesome reacted
instinctively, leaping back against the wall away from the railing. It was just
in time; gunshots went off from below and bullets ricocheted around the
stairwell and railing. Then the lights flashed on in the stairwell and likely
across the entire factory complex. He turned and ran up the staircase towards
the third floor door.

A noise from behind
made him glance back to see an older woman, her gray hair tightly wound in a
bun, wearing a black jumpsuit and wielding two semi-automatic pistols. She was
running quickly up the stairs after him and shooting at him as she went. He ran
to the third floor door and slammed through. As he had feared, most of the area
was lit up now, though a lot of lights were inoperative. Still there was more
light than he liked. At least everyone down below was in a state of confusion,
which was good. He threw himself behind the door and waited.

The door was kicked
open and the old woman came running on the walkway. Mr. Awesome grabbed her,
swinging her into the nearby wall with a hard thud. The impact caused her to
drop one of her pistols and give a muffled cry, but she recovered quickly and
swung her left arm up, breaking his grip, and then kicking him in the chest. He
could tell by her strength and speed that she was a mutant, which was a relief
as he didn’t need to hold back. Unfortunately, she didn’t seem like the type to
hold back against him either.

She swung her right
hand still holding a pistol at him, opening fire. The bullets hit him in the
chest. His super density and ultimesh vest absorbed most of the impacts as he
instinctively knocked the pistol from her hand and watched it fly down towards
the factory floor.

“Damn, you may be
old, but you’re spry,” said Mr. Awesome as he failed to block another of her
kicks. This one hit him in the shoulder; he took it without too much discomfort,
he was nearly as dense as concrete. “You’ve got to tell me what vitamins you’re
using.”

She said nothing and
was quicker than he was as he tried to grab or hit her. He was counting on her
to make the predictable move. Sure enough, she dived for the pistol she had
dropped on the ground. As she grabbed it, he drove his foot into her chest,
lifting her off the ground and hurling her thirty feet across the walkway where
she smashed into the railing with a loud crash. He turned and ran back to the stairs,
taking them three steps at a time on the way down. He heard the door slam open
above, but didn’t bother to look back as the old lady opened fire. One bullet
hit his back and another hit his arm, and that one broke skin.

“Damn it, Mr. A. how
many are shooting at you?” Dr. Sterling exclaimed.

Mr. Awesome pulled
out his micro-camcorder and aimed it back up the stairwell. “Sending picture –
apparently Sunrise Ultimate Security Nursing Home lost one of its inmates!”

The woman took a
couple more shots, reloaded, and then started jumping down the stairs, clearing
a dozen steps at a time. He shook his head as he reached the first floor and
slammed out of the stairwell. There were two guys with guns waiting for him.
They were too close to the door so he reached one of them before they could do
more than fire wildly in his direction. He grabbed the nearest gunmen and swung
the man around as a makeshift battering ram into the second gunmen, crashing
them both against the wall. He then took off down the hallway, pulling a
flashbang
off his utility belt. The moment he heard the
stairwell door kick open, he turned and threw it. The old lady had hesitated
leaving the stairwell - she must have expected an ambush - so she stepped out
just as the
flashbang
hit the ground and went off
with a deafening bang and flash. She retreated back into the stairwell.

Mr. Awesome picked
up his speed and exited through a side door. Once he was outside he ran for the
nearest gate and climbed the fence. There was no further pursuit; he had
escaped.

“Any idea who Miss
Daisy was?” said Mr. Awesome, jogging down the street for the team boat
anchored at the public dock a half mile away. He knew he wasn’t seriously
injured, but he would be sore and stiff for a week till he healed up and
Patricia would give him hell, not to mention Abigail. They would be right of
course; he had been lucky the old lady wasn’t using heavier munitions. He was
too old for this, he thought again, as he felt his knee act up once more. He
had ignored it as much as he could during the excitement but he knew that there
were good odds he was going on Injured Reserve after his physical tomorrow.

“You won’t believe
this, but she’s a former pro: Erica
Wilkie
,” said Dr.
Sterling. “She used to be Jane Error with the Southern League in the ‘70s,
Victorian-style costume accessorized with guns. She had an on-again off-again
problem with drugs, and eventually the Southern League cut her loose. In the
‘80s she went vigilante as Lady Vengeance, lost a trademark battle with the
original Lady Vengeance’s estate, and then went as mad as Mr. Rochester’s first
wife. She was caught by Ms. Omega after she killed three teenage gang members
in DC, and she spent 15 years in prison. After she got out, she went
corporate.”

“Corporate? You
don’t hire someone like that unless you’re expecting problems,” said Mr.
Awesome as he approached the boat.

“True, but it’s good
to see you aren’t the only senior citizen in the Industry. Like I keep telling
you, you don’t need to retire quite yet.”

“Age and treachery,
age and treachery,” muttered Mr. Awesome as he started up the boat. “Contact
the WPPD. We need to storm that place within the hour before they can clear it
out.”

8:29 p.m.,
Friday, March 22nd, 2013

242
Oceanside Avenue

West
Pacific, CA

Dr. Noah
Brandeis wasn’t supposed to be mingling, but the temptation had been too great
to resist. His boss, Ian
Roache
, was hosting a
fundraiser for Governor Fields who was up for reelection in 2014. The Who’s Who
of West Pacific had turned out and Dr. Brandeis wasn’t about to miss this
opportunity to rub shoulders with the rich and famous. He felt confident in his
new Italian suit and reminded himself to thank Ian for ordering him to get it.
He was now a mover and shaker, albeit a secret one, and he had to look the
part. Of course, Pam suspected he was having an affair. It was the new clothes
and how he was often gone for days at a time – she had told him as much. He had
followed Ian’s advice to buy her jewelry and that seemed to have allayed her
suspicions, but she did know he was up to something. He would have told her
about the Plan, but he suspected she would either call the police or tell her
sister and then everyone would know.

Ian’s house was
probably one of the most impressive mansions in West Pacific, though Dr.
Brandeis admitted to himself that he hadn’t been in enough mansions to be able
to make a truly informed opinion on the matter. However, the house had 17,000
square feet spread over two stories with a home theater (where Dr. Brandeis had
first presented the Plan, upon Ian’s request, three years ago), a beautiful
wood-paneled library, and enough rooms that Dr. Brandeis regularly got lost
when he visited, though he did have a notoriously poor sense of direction. His
favorite aspects of the house were the infinity pool, which looked like it
stretched all the way to the horizon when seen from the house, the solarium
with two-story windows that offered an incredible view of the ocean, especially
at sunset, and the
domotics
. The house was completely
automated with little cleaning robots and a fairly sophisticated computer
system to manage climate control; in fact, Dr. Brandeis was logged into the
system and when he entered a room the house’s computer would adjust the
temperature to his preferences. If the house survived the Plan, Ian had offered
to sell it to him, which was something he was strongly considering. Pam would
love the house, though of course she would clutter it up. He enjoyed the
Zen-like simplicity of Ian’s decorating.

The mansion was a
perfect backdrop for the fundraiser, with the moon hanging over the Pacific
through the solarium windows and all the famous people mingling about. Over at
the buffet table, he had actually shared a few words with Anastasia McKenzie of
Sarah’s Serenade
,
not that he had been that witty, but he didn’t think he had sounded like a
fool. He and Pam watched
Serenade
every Wednesday at 9 p.m. He had thought about getting an autograph for Pam,
but guys in Italian suits didn’t ask for autographs. Then he had exchanged
pleasantries with some baseball player named Jeffords who seemed as out of
place as he was, nice guy, but Dr. Brandeis wasn’t really into sports. Of
course, Ian did own the Samurais, so he was trying to learn the basics; Ian
talked about baseball almost as much as he talked about the Plan. Dr. Brandeis
had also met Congresswoman Winthrop, who, while a Republican, was a friend of
Governor Fields; then he had met Mayor Bainbridge, who, while a Democrat, supposedly
hated Governor Fields. Politics made no sense to Dr. Brandeis. More accurately
he didn’t care about politics; all politicians were corrupt. He couldn’t even
remember the last time he and Pam actually voted.

The food was great,
he had no idea what a lot of it was but it was delicious. Well not all of it,
some of it was pretty foul, but he was sure it was expensive. The only downside
was that everything was on sticks and there were no chairs in the designated
mingling areas; apparently, this had to do with some new lobbying rule passed
by the State legislature. The various politicians in attendance weren’t allowed
to eat proper food as that would be an illegal bribe or something. Ian had
explained this all to the team yesterday afternoon; it was highly ironic that
they were determined to follow campaign finance laws given what they were
planning on doing in a few months. Erica had actually cracked a smile when Ian
riffed on the ludicrousness of it all. Erica was some retired supervillain or
something; she was a stone cold killer, but she was a fan of classic rock so
there was that to talk about. She was handling security this evening, which was
one reason Dr. Brandeis was relatively relaxed. It was somehow reassuring to
have the psycho killers on your side.

“Dr. Noel Brandeis,
right?” asked a man with dark features in a navy suit who looked really
familiar, though Dr. Brandeis couldn’t place him.

“Ah, Noah, actually,
but yes… I’m Dr. Noah Brandeis,” Dr. Brandeis stammered. He really hadn’t
expected to be recognized.

“I’m Geoff Linden,
you might remember me as Geode, we met at the Tucson Gem & Mineral
Exposition back in 2007.”

Dr. Brandeis looked
blank as he tried to collect his thoughts. Geode was a superhero – that meant
he was radioactive and should be avoided! Not that he was literally radioactive
like the superhero Meltdown, but Ian had warned him that superheroes were
clever and had to be avoided. Then again… maybe Geode
was
radioactive; Dr.
Brandeis couldn’t remember what his powers were or where he worked – what was
he doing in West Pacific? The city had more than enough superheroes as it was.

“So what do you
think about that?” asked Geode.

“What?” asked Dr.
Brandeis who realized Geode had been talking to him; he hated when this
happened. “Ah, well, it is a complicated issue as you know.”

“Yes, that it is,
but the study was very promising. Though you are right, it is probably too
optimistic,” said Geode thoughtfully.

“Well, you know how
studies and reports go, researchers can’t help but be overly optimistic,” said
Dr. Brandeis, wondering what the hell they were discussing.

“True, and given
your presentation six years ago you do seem like you were ahead of the curve on
this one,” said Geode.

“Even a broken clock
is right twice a day,” quipped Dr. Brandeis. Self-deprecating always worked,
but what the hell had he talked about in 2007? Earthquakes… natural gas…
asteroids wiping out the dinosaurs… he really needed to keep better notes. What
if it had been about the Plan? Was Geode talking about the Plan? He had given
that lecture lots of times at various events – damn it! Was there a study of
importance to the Plan he didn’t know about? What if Geode had psychic powers?
He could be reading his mind!

“Dr. Brandeis, are
you okay?” asked Geode.

“Yes, I’m fine, of course.
So why are you in West Pacific?” asked Dr. Brandeis. He needed to think about
something else, like, like… sex! Yes, sex with Pam, no, that wouldn’t work, use
your surroundings, adapt! Imagine Anastasia
MacKenzie
naked, she is right over there as a prop.

“Noah, are you
okay?” asked Geode with a worried tone.

Oh, crap. He had
been talking to him again, hadn’t he? Where did Anastasia go? He had lost her
in the crowd, he had to say something. “Ah, I’m fine, just a little upset
stomach. I’m lactose intolerant; bowels go all a-blended sometimes with dairy.”

“Oh, right, well,
good luck with that, I hope you feel better,” said Geode who moved away from
Dr. Brandeis, shaking his head slightly.

Dr. Brandeis quickly
moved out of the living room and headed for the stairs up to the second floor
and the command center, which was Ian’s study. His heart was racing. Had he
just jeopardized the entire mission, was Ian going to be upset – was he going
to have Erica kill him? Now it didn’t seem like such a good idea to have stone
cold killers around and he slowed as he climbed the stairs, trying to buy
himself a little time.

Jorge met him at the
top of the stairs:
Doctor,
is there a problem?
Jorge was their psychic, he couldn’t speak –
or, more accurately, Dr. Brandeis had never heard him speak. Dr. Brandeis just
mentally reviewed his conversation with Geode and how he had babbled and
endangered the mission; it was like confession done by download. Jorge nodded
and rolled his eyes:
It’s
alright; Geode is not a psychic. I’ll see if he is suspicious, though I doubt
it.
Dr. Brandeis was relieved; he wanted to hug Jorge, because he
wasn’t going to be killed by Erica, who really wasn’t that psychotic anyway and
probably wouldn’t have killed him since they got along fairly well. Jorge shook
his head and headed for the party. Dr. Brandeis sighed and opened the door to
the command center. He was done mingling for the night.

He was
surprised when he entered the study and saw Erica for the first time that day.
She was, as always, dressed in a black leather jumpsuit – she pulled it off
despite being like 70 or something - but now she had bruises on her face and
her nose looked a little off. He stared and couldn’t keep himself from asking,
“what happened to you?”

She smiled
dangerously. “We had a problem last night.”

Ian walked in and
joined the conversation. “Yes, it appears West Pacific Supers stumbled on our
operation at the factory last night and Erica has been working to cover our
tracks today.”

“What? Are they
coming here?” blurted out Dr. Brandeis who imagined being pummeled by a
superhero and then sent to prison for the rest of his life. No amount of money
was worth that.

“Hopefully not,”
said Ian smugly. “Erica managed to herd most of our people off Industrial
Island to
Avalon One
and to start a fire to cover our tracks, but the WPPD arrived shortly
thereafter and I suspect there will be clues to be found.”

“How did they find
us?” asked Dr. Brandeis. He knew Ian claimed they were covered from psychic and
magic divinations but that didn’t make him confident. He had seen a program on
the Super Channel last month on how law enforcement and superhero teams could
track down nearly anyone. He suspected that ever since the WPL break-in they
were living on borrowed time.

“Brian and Oscar are
unaccounted for. Brian called in sick the last two days and Oscar took off
running during our evacuation,” said Erica. “I suspect one of them tipped
someone off.”

“Jesus, they could
identify me! They know me as Dr. B!” said Dr. Brandeis. “I’ve been to the
factory! My DNA is all over the place!”

“Perhaps. I suspect
I’ve been
ID’ed
as well,” said Erica.

“What are we going
to do? We have to abort the Plan!” whimpered Dr. Brandeis.

“No,” said Ian dismissively,
“this possibility was factored in and those working in the factory were never
informed about the full Plan.”

“Sure, but they knew
we were building deep sea charges and who knows what else they might have
figured out – there was a lot of evidence there,” protested Dr. Brandeis.

“Yes, which is why
Erica is working to track down Oscar and Brian,” said Ian. “We will move all
our operations to
Avalon
One
and lock things down. You will tell your wife you are going to
Argentina for a new project.”

“We shouldn’t have
stolen the PGZ; it was too flashy,” commented Erica.

Ian shook his head.
“It served two purposes: it gave us a needed material for the Plan and we were
able to sell the formula to China for capital.”

“West Pacific Supers
isn’t a bad team,” said Erica. “They’ll run this down eventually.”

“Then we need to
activate our contingencies,” Ian agreed.

They were so calm,
it was ridiculous. Dr. Brandeis was worried, downright terrified, and he
couldn’t help wondering why he had ever agreed to do this. But it had all been
his idea. Decades ago he had submitted his first thesis for his Ph.D. in
geology at the University of Florida; it was brilliant. There was an exposed
area of the earth’s mantle in the Atlantic Ocean between the Cape Verde Islands
and the Caribbean Sea. He postulated using explosive charges to increase the
viscosity of the mantle and then use a harmonic induction wave to shape the
flow of material to create a new volcanic island. He had called the island
Atlantis
, which was
probably his big mistake. He had to do another thesis after the dean had said
that they studied science, not science fiction. The man had no vision. Of
course, another problem had been the harmonic induction wave itself, which he
had based on reports of Vanghel technology, like the weapon that wiped out Rome
during the Invasion. Still, despite the narrow-minded faculty of the geology
department, Dr. Brandeis had continued working on the Plan ever since. He’d
even published a fiction book titled
Rising
Tide
that had detailed his theory. The book did poorly; the
idea of a swashbuckling geologist saving the world was just a little ahead of
its time. However, Ian had read the book. Ian wasn’t a scientist; he was a
businessman but a businessman with vision. Ian felt the Plan was feasible.

NASA and the UN
Space
Defence
Force were developing a quantum
harmonic resonance array, or QHRA. It was a reconstruction of the Vanghel super
cannons that would be able to blast a hole through the Earth’s crust,
especially at a weak fault point softened up with PGZ explosives. Ian’s team
had picked a point off the coast of northern California and had a deep sea oil
rig,
Avalon One
,
stationed out there setting things up. Once they exposed the mantle, they would
reconfigure the QHRA to provide an induction wave to shape and direct the lava
flow and prevent it from cooling. Within 24 hours, the beginning of a new
oceanic island would emerge from the Pacific Ocean, an island that would
eventually grow to the size of Iceland. It would be a miracle of science and
create a very valuable piece of real estate.