“That’s it?” the man in black tactical gear fumed. “A little prayer and we move on? Business as usual?”
At the head of the table, an imposing figure clad in a lavender unitard choked out, “Of course nothing is back to normal, KB. It never will be and we have to accept that.” Through his dark indigo domino mask his red rimmed eyes betrayed the sentiment, even as he squared his cloaked shoulders to bolster it.
The smooth, oblong console around which the group sat gleamed in the aseptic, cool light that seemed to radiate from every surface of the chamber around them. Rising from the floor in their midst by only a narrow column of the same lustrous metal that comprised its surface, the table had the appearance of an inverted spill of mercury.
“Accept it? Are we supposed to accept it next time, when it’s me?” Leaned forward with a prodding finger against the table, the belligerent man’s glare toward his superior was every bit as baleful as the various knives and guns sheathed about his figure. Pointing in turn around the table at a hooded, robed woman and a hefty man barely contained in slate blue spandex, he continued, “Or Gramarye? Or Synapse? Would it be acceptable if they were six feet under?”
“You know that’s not what I meant,” the man in purple said authoritatively, his impeccable baritone returning after its previous quavering.
“How about your precious Penumbra?” the combative man posed, turning the stylized crosshairs that formed an X over his face toward another masked man seated to the right of the team’s leader. At the mention of his name, the lieutenant narrowed the white trapezoids that were his eyes, dimming their subtle luminance. “Or does his life have as much value as those of the people out there trying to kill us?”
“This isn’t about favoritism, Killbox. This is about acknowledging that the world is imperfect and sometimes things just don’t work out the way we hope.”
“I have been trying to get that through to you and Numbnuts since I joined The Sodality. Sometimes there are hard decisions to be made, and sometimes you only have a split second to make it. I told you from the beginning, if you charge in there thinking you’re gonna be able to talk every nutjob down, you’re gonna get somebody killed.”
“Skip knew the danger going in.” Penumbra smoldered in his trademark leaden sibilation. “We all do. It’s part of the job,”
“It’s what makes us heroes.”
“Heroes save people, Halcyon. Innocent people. Good people. They don’t let them die if they can help it.”
“They don’t go around luring people into death traps either,” Synapse chimed in, shrugging off the disapproving glare from Gramarye.
“I don’t see you complaining when my strategies give us the upper hand out there,” Killbox shot back, directing his defense at the whole assembly in turn. “Every piece of filth I put in the ground made his own decisions. I gave them the chance to surrender, every single one of them. When they didn’t, I did what I had to do to make sure it was them and not me.”
Halcyon tried to steer the conversation back in a positive direction. “You knew when I called you up that things would be different in the Sodality of Virtue. I told you then that I didn’t approve of your methods, that you could serve your country in a different way. A better way.”
“A better way!” Killbox scoffed. “There’s always a better way, isn’t there Hal?”
“Of course there is. You’re not one on one with some child predator or serial killer anymore. You’re part of a team. We have to see the bigger picture here.”
“And we’re all expendable in the bigger picture, aren’t we. Except, of course, Misanthrope and Mother Necessity. We could have stopped them weeks ago. Years ago! How many times have you deactivated her?” He turned his accusatory rhetoric to Penumbra. “Did you really think the hundredth time you sent that pyscho to Scathemoore would rehabilitate him?! But we don’t dare take them out to save one of our own.”
“No! We do not!” Halcyon slammed his gloved hand on the desk, a brief burst of azure electricity crackling up his arm from the impact. “Whether we like it or not, they are the duly approbated Exemplars of California and Oregon. You don’t just ‘take out’ fellow Sanctioned without serious consequences.”
Penumbra clarified, “There’s a process, Killbox.”
“And while you and the Honor Scout here waited for a precept from the Emeritus Conclave, the Humorist was spreading its tendrils through the country’s powergrid.”
Leaning over to Gramarye, Synapse mumbled under his breath, “I still think we should’ve called it Wiseacre.”
Without evening registering his comment, she spoke up, her lyrical voice a momentary respite from the increasingly shrill tones of her peers. “The reg is clear on when and how we can intervene. If you don’t like it, take it up with the Conduct Code Authority.”
Synapse brushed off the slight. Wearing down Gramarye’s stoicism had been a pet project of his, and while he waited for her ever elusive smirk, he could always count on… Turning to his right out of instinct, his own grin faded with the sight of the empty space at the table’s end.
“And the Constitution is pretty clear where the powers of the CCA end and where the powers of the Centinel begin.” Turning from the would-be cooler, Killbox laced back into the Forgotten Man. “When they exceed their mandate, it is your duty to step in!”
“When proper procedures have been followed! You and I might not like it, but this is what they campaigned on. If the people of their states didn’t want the kind of protections they offered, no one would have shown up to muster for them. But people did–in droves–and they each fought and won their approbations.”
“And what about the rest of the country? What about the people out there for your muster? Mother Necessity barely even ranked at the primaries, and Misanthrope only got as far as he did as a protest muster. Neither of them could even compete nationally, let alone win the Populare nomination. You laid out every Optimate in your path without even breaking a sweat and you won the mantle of Centinel hands down.”
“A Centinel doesn’t just fight for the Optimates or the Populares. He fights for all Americans. It may not make sense to you or me, but some people want what they offer. We look at the Humorist and we see a threat. They see progress. What kind of leader would I be if I alienate half of my countrymen.”
“So that’s it? We’re playing politics? Any lunatic or supercomputer can try to subjugate the entire country and we put on kid gloves to stop them because, what, it looks bad if we go full force?”
“They were exceeding their authority. No one here is questioning that. This week was clearly an escalation, and as Centinel of the United States, I made the call to engage.”
“And got your ass handed to you. You can’t call out the Sodality and expect us to play by the same rules that leave you at the mercy of would-be tyrants. You’re well within your authority to dispatch threats to the public.”
“If we did that we’d be no better than they are.”
“So maintaining some perceived moral high ground is worth letting them wipe out a city?”
“Last I checked, LA was still there,” Synapse clung to the bright side, fighting to keep his brow from furrowing.
“We stopped them,” Gramarye offered, nodding her support to her portly friend even as her own resolve wavered.
“It took everything we had just to slow them down,” Killbox retorted, his tone lowered and less abrasive, “and we still lost three blocks.”
“But we didn’t lose ourselves,” Penumbra qualified. “Our integrity.”
“We lost Skip,” Gramarye mumbled dourly.
“But we did stop them,” Halcyon concluded.
Killbox leveled his mask at the Centinel “We got lucky.”
“We get lucky an awful lot,” Synapse admitted, his humor finally depleted.
“One of these days our luck will run out, and it won’t be just one of us that we lose. It will be LA. Or California. Or the whole damn west coast. You want that on your conscience?”
“Better that than the stain of intentionally taking a life,” Halcyon blurted, sucking the air out of the room.
“You can play the saint if you want to, but you sure as hell don’t get to play protector anymore.”
Halcyon fell back in his chair in disbelief. The ring of grim faces refused to meet his indignant glances, all except Killbox. Synapse stared at his lap. Gramary studied the featureless ceiling. Penumbra fixated on the table, letting his periphery tell the tale of his teammates’s responses. Only Killbox bore his gaze down on the Centinel of the United States.
“I invoke Jephthah’s Folly,” he said sternly.
“Really?!” Halcyon almost laughed. “Now, you’re really grasping at straws. That provision is hardly applicable here.”
“On the contrary, sir. I’d say it’s more fitting than any other time it’s been invoked.” The sudden shift in Killbox’s tone, from combative to uncharacteristically formal, lent an instant gravity to his words.
The weight hit Yesteryear’s Son squarely, his practiced smile fading to match his accuser’s stern demeanor. “Jephthah’s Folly is reserved for Centinels who are unable to wield the discretion required of the Sanctioned.”
“And it is named after a leader whose foolish vow proved he lacked that discretion.”
“A vow,” Gramarye interjected solemnly, “that cost an innocent life.”
Penumbra tensed, but otherwise remained motionless. Behind the cowl’s lenses, however, his eyes scanned his colleagues for the minute shifts of posture and body language that broadcast their reaction to the oppressive severity of the conversation.
“I second,” Synapse croaked, lifting his brimming eyes to his leader. “KB’s right. You could’ve short circuited the Humorist any time you wanted too. Fried them both.”
“But we didn’t have to! We found a way!”
“But not until Skip…” Gramarye likewise faced Halcyon’s beseeching gape.
“All in favor?” Penumbra obliged, placing both hands conspicuously on the table.
Killbox’s hand raised deliberately as he practically spat, “Aye.”
“Aye,” Gramarye sputtered, emerald folds falling around her elbows as she reluctantly lifted her hand.
Synapse shook his head with a dismissive chuckle and sniffed, “Aye.”
Halcyon flinched for just an instant at the shock of what had just happened, before letting out his measured response. “Two hundred years. Over two centuries and not once has a Centinel been removed by his Sodality. Do you know how many tyrants, how many villains have bore this mantle, and I lack discretion?! Every criticism ever leveled at diakriticracy–that it’s nothing but ‘might makes right’, that it’s feudalism warmed over–every legitimate liability of our form of government has manifested in one Centinel or another, but I tried to uphold what our founders envisioned. Like the Biblical Judges who inspired them, I tried to live by a code, to remind a people led astray what dignity and honor looked like–that it was attainable. I, who want only to uphold the sanctity of life, the principle of respect for human dignit–”
“Technically Mother Necessity isn’t human,” a childish voice from across the room cut through the palpable tension, startling everyone to awareness of a short man leaned against the oval door frame. “So you could’ve, you know…” Looking up to greet their surprised faces, he finished the sentence with an unceremonious click out of the side of his mouth and a quick hand thrust across his neck.
Against the expansive entryway, he appeared downright spritely. He could not have been more than three feet tall. His dimensions were that of a chubby toddler, head and eyes cartoonishly proportioned to the rest of him. The neck-beard, baggy t-shirt, and jeans suggested, however, a middle aged man clinging desperately to adolescence.
Synapse shot up in his chair, wide-eyed behind his mask. “Guys, remind me not to buy mushrooms from the farmers’ market again. I knew those weren’t Portobellos.”
“I’m no hallucination, Myron,” said the curious, diminutive manboy.
Gramarye? Halcyon let out the tiniest current, coursing through his metallic chair, through the floor, up the seat of his compatriot, through her body’s tissues, all the way to her auditory cortex without taking his stare from the newcomer.
“He’s no illusion either,” assured the magician.
Perhaps a nanite projection of Mother Necessity? the Centinel consulted Penumbra in the same silent manner. Some sort of last laugh from her meld with the Misanthrope?
Responding to his eyes’ focus, the lenses of Penumbra’s cowl accessed in turn both thermal and x-ray scans. Sensors are showing metabolic functions. Some of them anyway. Whatever he is, he’s organic.
“Now, children. It’s not polite to pass notes in class.”
“Awfully condescending for a munchkin,” Killbox observed dryly, staring the intruder down.
“A funny thing about the physics of this system,” the little man said, unfazed by the insult as he pushed off the door frame to step forward. Every member of the Solidity tensed at once, each ready to spring into action. “Things are rendered inverted sometimes. Power is meek. Violence is peace. Quite the opposite of the way things actually are, I’m afraid.”
“So what does that make you?” Synapse chuckled nervously. “Intimidating?”
“Yes,” the small fellow said, his eyes twinkling with glee. “Beyond your wildest belief.”
Submission Pattern Sigma, Halcyon reached out with his electrical filaments to all their minds at once. In an instant, the table before them melted away, retracting into the floor, as did each of their seats. Killbox strafed to his right, his assault rifle already flung from his back and shouldered. Penumbra rolled backward, actions concealed momentarily by his dusky cape, and rose fluidly to a crouch below the line of fire. Flaring between the fingers of both clenched fists were opalescent crescents to match the sides of the broken circle on his armored chest. Synapse seemed to disappear altogether, as did Gramarye after a brief incantation. Halcyon stood calmly. From the resolute stance he settled into, fans of cerulean energy arced to the ceiling and floor to surround both himself and the intruder.
“And I suppose you picked an appearance more agreeable to us than your true form?” Hal surmised through his signature paternal smile.
“Nothing that trite. These four dimensions simply lack the capacity to accurately render my attributes. What you see is more of a placeholder.” Peering through the cascading electrical curtain as though it weren’t there, he appealed to Penumbra’s technological acumen, “Like an error message or alternate text when a picture doesn’t load quite right.”
Glancing casually over his shoulder he seemed already aware of Synapse as he suddenly came back into view. Though leaned into a full sprint, his motion was only barely perceptible. The confusion and concern in his eyes, though, was immediately apparent.
“The speed of thought,” the sprite smiled at Synapse. “Always thought that was a clever schtick, even if it undersells your true speed.”
Gramarye’s voice seemed to sound from all around them, at once both guttural and melodic, spanning multiple octaves. Without looking away from the speedster, the interloper held up two fingers as if to motion her lips closed. They apparently obliged, as the spell abruptly ended and she faded back into view behind Halcyon.
“We’ve got to stop meeting this way, guys. Where is the trust? I know you don’t recognize me, but isn’t there a part of you that wants to give people the benefit of the doubt? Is this the way you treat all your guests?”
“Those that crash our parties?” Penumbra growled. “Yes.”
“Should we… recognize you?” Halcyon said haltingly.
“No, but I really wish you could. It’s a shame we always have to waste all this time on introductions. Every time, I feel like we’re just getting to the good stuff, then…” he bemoaned before trailing off into a disapproving raspberry.
Almost as if dispelled by the unceremonious sound, Halcyon’s electrical cage fizzled out. Synapse tumbled forward out of his stasis, barely catching his balance.
“First, I’d like to offer my apologies for Skip,” the voice came from the table, which had appeared back in place with its chairs. The impish slacker lounged casually in Skip’s place. Even as he turned, Penumbra loosed the crescents at the interloper. Killbox trained his muzzle at the threat, realizing with a start that it was that of a plush hippopotamus. Discarding it, he continued to draw other stuffed animals from his holsters until he realized his entire arsenal had been replaced. The crescents sailed wide around the intruder’s head and each came back to strike Penumbra’s with a comical bonk complete with expletive visual word clouds.
“I know we all hate to see him go. But, I mean, could there be a cooler way to bite it?”
The irreverence excited in all of the Sodality a sense of animosity only eclipsed by their collective impotence in that moment. Strategies were being formed and silent curses uttered, but for now, the entity had the floor.
“Mother Necessity merged with the Misanthrope?! How epic was that? That cold, calculating menace of this unstoppable AI with the dry wit of the Heckler of Havoc?!” He relished in the novelty of it before excitedly turning to Penumbra, “And the way you drove a wedge between them, pretending not to understand the joke so she’d have to explain it? He loses interest, they split, and you all pick them off separately? Masterful. I mean, people always say Killbox goes for the jugular, but you! You always figure out the weak spot, don’t you.”
The team’s stunned silence lay heavy on the room.
“No offense KB, or to any of you. I follow your solo stuff too, but these two.” He pointed at Halcyon and Penumbra. “There’s just something about the dynamic of the old school stalwart and the dour innovator that just gels into something… truly top shelf. You’ve got your basic buddy cape set up, but it’s bigger than all that. It’s not just iconic, it’s…idyllic.”
“It seems you know who we are, which puts us at a disadvantage,” Halcyon took the lead in addressing him.
“Call me Zaph.”
“Well, Mr. Za–“
“Please,” He waved dismissively, “Mr. Zaph was my father! If you insist on formality, though, I guess we could add an honorific of some kind. Dr. Zaph. Zaph Esq. Sir Zaph.”
“Look, Dr. Zaph, we–“
“The Right Honourable Zaph! No, that’s too much. Let’s stick with Dr.”
Halcyon waited a beat to avoid another interruption before continuing. “Dr. Zaph,” he paused, taking a second to remember what he wanted to say, “you mentioned our ‘system.’ Are we to understand that you’re an…”
“Extraterrestrial? You could say that. I prefer to think of myself as a pan dimensional entity.”
“I’m just gonna say what we’re all thinking,” Synapse came out with. “We’re dealing with a leprechaun, guys.”
“He’s a spirit,” Gramarye arrived at bluntly.
“Aren’t we all?” Dr. Zaph posed.
“Enough games!” Penumbra stepped forward. “Why are you here?”
“To make amends.”
“For what?”
“For Skip.”
“You created the Humorist?”
“Of course not. Mother Necessity figured that out on her own.”
“Then you put them up to it?”
“I imagine some former associates of mine might have, but I couldn’t say for sure. I’d say the irony alone was enough to get Misanthrope on board. No, I’m apologizing for letting it happen.”
“You didn’t let it happen,” Killbox corrected, glaring Halcyon. “It’s not your job to protect innocents.”
“Of course not. It’s more of a hobby. I normally try to tune in live, but I couldn’t get my shift covered. I caught the end though. I suppose I could’ve looped it so I could watch it later, but I’ve been written up enough as it is. Minor changes here and there get you in hot water, but an unauthorized time loop will get you canned quicker than—anyway. You all don’t need to hear about all this. I’ll get all this fixed up in a jiffy.”
“Minor changes?” Halcyon gave voice to their collective confusion. “Fix what up, exactly?”
“This. You all fighting each other. If you actually came to blows, it’d be worth watching at least, but this? Bickering and procedure? Nobody wants to see that.”
“What kind of changes have you made exactly?”
“Nothing worth getting worked up about. Cosmetic mostly.”
“And you’re just gonna fix this?” Synapse asked. “Fix us?”
“Trickier than usual, I’ll admit, but I think I can pull it off.”
Killbox, who had opted for putting the pieces together rather than dragging them out of Dr. Zaph, finally spoke up. “I knew they couldn’t really pull it off. No one is that perfect.”
“What are we talking about exactly?”
“Dr. Zaph here has been playing Deus Ex Machina for Hal and Penny,” the Ruthless Ruse scoffed, shaking his head at Halcyon and Penumbra. “There’s always another way, isn’t there?”
“Is that true?” Halcyon demanded.
“Maybe?” Zaph answered sheepishly. “I just–people look up to you two, you know? The world needs incorruptible symbols like you to offset all the…” A less than subtle sidewise nod to Killbox completed the thought.
“Our decisions are ours to make. Whoever you are–whatever you are–you have no business making them for us!”
“I don’t! You two have always made that call! That’s what I love about you! You stand for something bigger than all of this. There’s more to life than… just being alive! You uphold virtues that are more real than any of this. Most people don’t get that, but you two do. So I switch things around a little every now and then to give you options. What’s important–what matters–is that you always choose the right one!”
“We don’t need your help to be able to make the right decision.”
“Of course not!” He allowed, before qualifying, “But the right decision doesn’t always save the day.”
“We don’t need your help with that either.”
“Weeeellll…”
“Just how much of our exploits are you responsible for?”
Zaph inhaled in exasperation. “You guys aren’t getting this. You do it all yourselves. Every time you’ve dug deep and pushed yourself to be better, to do more than you thought you could, that was you. I didn’t turn crackling fingertips into flight, into communication, levitation, emotional manipulation, cognitive manipulation–” The team’s eyes bulged in collective shock at the revelation. “You did!”
“I didn’t turn an inheritance into the skills to go toe to toe with the world’s most powerful potentates and encephs,” the spirit appealed to Penumbra. “You’ve got a freaking sorceress on your team and you’re the Centinel’s right hand.
“You two are everything a hero should be. Either of you could have conquered the world by now if it weren’t for the integrity you’ve always shown.
“With your… ‘options'” Halcyon clarified.
“All I’ve ever done is make sure the world could see what I see in you.”
“By changing it.”
“By making sure it was around to appreciate you! That you were around to be appreciated!”
“This isn’t the first time you’ve ‘fixed’ things is it?”
“How many times?”
The little man hemmed and hawed, searching for a diplomatic response.
“How many?!”
“Fifteen.”
“And the cosmetic changes?”
“A few hundred…thousand.”
“No more. Whatever you think you’re doing for us, for the world? It stops now.”
“You say that now…”
“If you respect us half as much as you pretend to,” Halcyon said through gritted teeth, “you’ll find a new hobby.”
“You’re the boss,” Dr Zaph shrugged. Rising from the chair, he nodded in turn to each of them. “If you need me…”
“We won’t.”
“I’m just a call away.”
Even as his voice reached them, he was gone. Before any of them could process the emotional whiplash of the last several minutes, another jarring shift occurred. The ambient light took on an amber tone, and the howl of the compound’s proximity alarms sounded. Halcyon looked to his team, reassured by their previously unified response that whatever threat dared attack the Sodality on their own turf would trump the in-fighting. Instead of the assembly he’d just had it out with, though, he saw a handful of unknown Sanctioned.
Following their imploring gazes to the head of the table, he caught sight of Killbox already on his feat pulling matching Uzis from their holsters at his thighs.
“Wha–” Hal began, but a hand on his shoulder cut the thought short. Before he could turn to see who it belonged to, the telltale jade wisps of teleportation put the question to rest.
“Impressive,” Gramarye’s voice floated faintly through the air, surging to its full volume as the grayish-green smoke subsided. “You managed to get into the Adytum.”
The conference room was gone, replaced by the cramped quarters of one of the Sodality’s holding cells. The sorceress cocked her head outside the erratically pulsating iridescent plane that separated his cage from the cellblock.
“You’ll find it a little trickier to get out.”
“What is this about, Gramarye?!”
“You tell me,” she commanded as she sauntered closer to the field.
“Where is Penumbra?” he wondered aloud.
An icy smirk formed on her lips. “Look who grew a sense of humor.”
“Where is Synapse?”
At the mention of the sprinter’s name a quick succession of gesticulations summoned a tongue of fire that lapped from Gramarye’s mouth, through the barrier, and around Halcyon’s neck, tightening it’s searing grasp with each vicious syllable. “Not funny.”
He tried to dislodge the burning tentacle with a localized surge but nothing happened. Gloved hands grasped at the appendage to no avail as it constricted around his windpipe. Splotches of errant colors began to overtake his vision as the blaring klaxon and his own feeble gasps faded.
Collapsing to his knees, he found himself suddenly free. Through his disorientation he could make out the wizard tapping her ear and responding, “On my way!”
Another signature implosion of viridian fumes and she was gone. Above the blaring of the sirens, distant gunfire could be heard, punctuated by the occasional shout or scream. Whoever was attacking seemed to be making headway.
Outside the cell, emblazoned against the luminous walls in the same stainless steel that comprised the boundaries of his solitary alcove, was the numeral one. From it, Halcyon looked to the right, pressing his face as close to the energy field as he dared without touching it. Just before the narrow cellblock entered into a wider corridor some twenty feet away, an eye level touch screen console was embedded in the wall.
If he could just get part of himself beyond the phase-wall imbued into the metallic barrier around him, even the tiniest bit, he could tap into his powers again, if only for a second. It might be enough to access the panel and open the cell.
Apart from the impractically small toilet extending from the wall and a tiny grate with slits too slender to fit a finger through, the bounds of the containment were seamless. He searched around in vain, looking for an alternative to the unpleasant idea that had just occurred to him. The battle raged closer, adding the occasional explosion to the percussive rhythm that crescendoed with the proximity.
Gritting against the realization, he fell to a prone position with his neck against the grate. The pain he’d been ignoring flared from the cracked skin as he craned against the floor. A drop or two won’t do. I need a continuous flow to reach through. A few quick breaths to bolster himself, and he tore at the third-degree burns left by Gramarye’s attack. It didn’t take much to breach the charred flesh and bring forth a stream of blood.
Pressing the dribbling wound against the grate, Halcyon felt after a moment the faintest signal. The residual bioelectricity in the stream was but a thread, but it constituted a connection outside the phase-wall. It excited in his brain an awareness of the circuitry coursing through the facility, and with it a direct link to the security systems.
He was far from adept with traditional computer interfaces, but having lost count of the times he’d faced off with the most advanced supercomputer devised by man, he was no stranger to intuitive navigation of circuitry in his own unique way. Moments later and the shimmering plane was gone.
Clutching his seeping wound, he scrambled for the exit. No sooner had he breached the cell than he cauterized the blood vessels with an arc from his fist.
Striding toward the panel, he felt the current coursing through the walls, the floors, and the ceiling. The various conduits and networks powering the lights, computers, and the myriad strategically placed security sensors were every bit as reliable as his sight to safely guide him through the hallway. He closed his eyes to better focus on accessing the information he sought.
By the time he opened his eyes he stood at the screen which displayed the information he’d called up.
Profile: Synapse
Affiliation: Tennessee Sodality of Virtue
He scanned the information, trying to make sense of Gramarye’s drastic reaction. It didn’t take long to confirm what he’d feared.
Date Of Birth: June 28, 1986
Date of Death: August 13, 2011
Expanding the link associated with the latter entry, he skimmed the relevant information.
Incident Report, 8-13-11…found deceased in custody of potentate known as The Consecrator.
Halcyon remembered the ordeal well. The Consecrator had campaigned to unseat Hal on a platform of efficient allocation of resources. To him, this meant co-opting potentates against their will to fill whatever need to which he felt they were suited. To The Consecrator, Synapse seemed a perfect candidate to solve the state’s energy woes. The sprinter’s refusal to remain confined in a glorified hamster wheel to generate electricity for half the state had seemed to the Consecrator a terribly selfish decision. Barely able to resist The Consecrator’s body manipulation himself, Halcyon had managed to rescue his associate and several other captives under the foe’s control by reversing the polarity of the domination generator.
The files told a different story, one of a desperate slog that brought the villain down only after Synapse and four others had died of exhaustion at their assigned tasks.
None of this is right, Hal insisted to himself, turning elsewhere to fill in the other gaps in his understanding.
Profile: Penumbra
Access Denied.
A curious designation, but one that at least indicated his friend’s survival.
Profile: Halcyon
Exemplar of Tennessee 2010-2012
A partial term? he wondered, scrolling to find the catalyst for his departure.
…defeated in Recall Approbation… fallout from 7/12…
He delved further, following the link.
The July 12, 2012 earthquake, often referred to as 7/12, was touched off when the unsanctioned potentate Schism attacked the New Madrid Fault Line, causing massive devastation throughout Tennessee, Missouri, and Kentucky.
No, no, he frantically reassured himself. I stopped him.
Exemplar Halcyon was widely criticized for his failure to subdue Schism before his aggravation of the fault line escalated into a chain reaction that resulted in the loss of over 410,000 lives.
This is impossible.
Before he could learn anything more, the floor lurched below his feet and the screen went blank. The sudden movement jolted him back to his surroundings and the fray that seemed nearer than he’d realized. Another explosion rang out, close enough to set his ears ringing. For a moment he felt weightless before the ceiling above him slammed down on him, pressing him against it as both plummeted in free fall.
His thoughts turned to a way out, to the central atrium several halls away. Arcing against the ceiling, he propelled himself away from its crushing weight and sent out another tendril of electricity toward the corridor’s end. Pushing and pulling along the arcs, he flew erratically through the collapsing structure until he could see the daylight through what remained of the atrium.
One final zap and he’d cleared the structure. The Adytum’s gravitational displacement field had been disrupted somehow. The battle must have damaged the failsafes, he deduced in astonished horror, before the grim truth settled on him. All at once? Impossible, unless… All the same, the entire floating citadel, once an indelible fixture above the capitol’s skyline, was now plunging in pieces alongside him through the clouds. The city swelled before him as he broke through the last of the wisps. For a moment it was almost serene despite the wind lashing at his face–the Monument of the Indispensable Man reaching toward the sky in front of him, the expanse of the National Mall stretching away on either side, the Reflecting Pool abiding in its placidity.
Another burst rocked the hurtling remnants of the Sodality’s headquarters, rending what was left of the building even further. Squinting against the buffeting air, Halcyon could almost make out two dark shapes grappling amid the wreckage. One, trailing a cape, fought unarmed. The other, indicated by the occasional glint of afternoon sun, seemed to be wielding blades of some kind.
Killbox, Halcyon realized.
Through the shower of twisted steel and sparks, a visual distortion also plummeted, bending light around its vortex of purple tinged ink blots like a freefalling black hole.
The Tourbillion Pinions, he recalled. He had never seen the mystical restraints in action, but they’d been described to him in great detail as part of the Sodality’s contingency protocols. They, like all the other various methods, had been designated for a particular member if ever they should go rogue. The pulsating prison could only mean the capture of…
Gramarye… But that would mean…
Despair welled in his heart, as deep as the dread in eyes as they ventured back to the distant midair melee. The city raced up toward them all at an alarming rate, a threat not lost on the combatants. Killbox pressed forward, slashing for the kill before the ground could rob him of this final satisfaction. The unknown silhouette had made his way to an outward jutting chunk of the ragged building, grappling away to the nearest multilevel structure just as the last futile slashes reducing his fluttering cape to ribbons in his wake.
Halcyon, too, looked to a rapidly approaching building, sending out a cushioning arc. No sooner had his electricity connected with a startlingly close satellite dish than a cataclysmic screech of energy rattled him from above. Gyroscopic runes of shimmering silver flexed out from the sorcerous obfuscation, discharging gears and springs from the demise of the arcane contraption and revealing Gramarye, eyes ablaze, limbs and fingers splayed as her cloak whipped around her.
The city shuddered as the Adytum touched down. Windows burst for miles around with the thunderous impact. Billows of pulverized building materials, dust, and the fumes from innumerable tiny explosions rushed through the capitol’s meticulously planned streets, exciting a cacophony of car alarms, approaching sirens, and grievous wails lamenting the shattered peace of the afternoon.
Halcyon braced himself against the onslaught of particulates, holding a translucent, voltaic shield up with one hand and guiding himself to the fractured asphalt with the other. Curtains of smoke lashed around an orb of jade lumenance above the mountain of debris that had been Pennsylvania Avenue moments before. The dispersing haze revealed Killbox inside, rising unsteadily to his feet on a slab of wreckage that had been cordoned off with him inside the sphere.
The floating form of Gramayre descended toward the ruins of what had been the Adytum’s grand observation deck, rent into multiple discordant planes but still the only relatively level surface to be found. Killbox’s bubble, too, found its way to the fissured slab of marble and dissipated. The moment the sorceress’s feet reached the floor, she collapsed from the tremendous effort.
Killbox, himself raw from his confrontation, struggled toward her. The Forgotten Man lapped toward them both as quickly as arcs could carry him, hoping to head off the fate that he feared awaited them in their weakened states. Emerging from behind the remnant of a wall near Gramarye, the Shrouded Seraph–Penumbra–his normally voluminous cape abbreviated from his encounter with the Ruthless Ruse, took hold of the exhausted mage’s brown locks.
“NO!” Hal bellowed, his current crackling a phosphorescent white with the torment of helplessness as Penumbra dragged a crescent blade across Gramarye’s throat. Killbox redoubled his pace, Penumbra racing to meet him after unceremoniously shoving the dying woman through the spurts and into the rapidly expanding pool of blood. The two would clash before Hal could reach them, but there was still time to get off a bolt.
Just a stun to put them down until we can sort this out.
Lightning burst forth from both hands, weaving and swirling into a single stream, hurtling toward the black clad assailant. The erratic beam struck Penumbra, continuing through him to Killbox. Each charged through the withering energy, unabated. Hal poured it on, upping the voltage as high as he dared. Killbox seized violently and crumpled to the ground mid-run. Penumbra, however, barreled on, his armor apparently sufficiently insulated to withstand the barrage.
He really does think of everything.
Racing up an inclined stretch of the terrace, Penumbra launched off toward the prone Centinel, moon sickles poised for a killing blow.
Through the current, through the fringe capillaries of his energy’s outermost reach that had made it through the shielding, Hal could feel Penny. There was no rage, no remorse, no emotion of any kind to which he could appeal. Only resolve.
No recourse but to let this assassination commence.
No choice.
No options.
With the tickle of electricity that had managed to breach through, Hal took hold of Penumbra’s own bioelectricity…
And yanked it out.
As his friend’s corpse flopped limp atop his opponent, blades clattering to the rubble from his fallow hands, Halcyon himself collapsed.
A stillness settled over the havoc around him, reducing the chaotic boil of a city turned war zone to the bitter simmer of his lone weeping.
“I really hate to say I told you so,” a tiny voice chimed.
Looking up from his hands, his vision blurred with tears, Hal saw a brilliant figure before him. As he blinked, the refraction cleared, separating into a shower of sparks from one of the Adytum’s countless severed circuits, floating in near stasis around the diminutive form of Dr. Zaph.
It felt as though a lifetime had passed in the mere minutes since he’d seen the spirit. He’d almost forgotten the insufferable imp altogether, and only then began to put together the connection between all he’d just experienced and his dismissal of the entity’s misguided attempts to help. Not even the snide reintroduction could supplant the weight of Halcyon’s own decisions bearing down on him.
In the suspended sparks, the last gasps of the computer servers he’d accessed before, he could sense the history that had played out in consequence of his choices. He could almost see himself and Penumbra at that first fateful standoff all those years ago;
he could witness the iridescent projectile lodge in the eye of the mugger when the conveniently situated rickety fire escape failed to present itself as a means of disarming him;
he could hear the ensuing argument and the further entrenchment of their divergent reasoning;
he could trace the incremental calcification of their ideals, leading him to spare the life of the sadistic Consecrator and leading Penumbra to spare society from the sadistic Misanthrope;
he could ponder the rationale that prioritized the survival of one potentate with a death-wish over a significant chunk of the Mississippi Basin’s population;
he could shudder at the Shrouded Seraph’s twisted logic, metastasized after decades of guilt and loss, that regarded anything less than preemptive termination of threats as culpability for their actions;
finally, he could see the target it had painted on the entire Killbox administration.
Whether they were memories or downloads, he couldn’t be sure. Whether any of it had happened, right down to his own slaying of the man he’d considered his closest friend and most trusted ally, he had lost all sense. It felt real. Not just the physical sensations, which were easy enough to fool. Gramarye had put one over on him more often then he cared to admit, though even she’d said Zaph wasn’t an illusion. Halcyon had tooled around enough neurons to know that this wasn’t enceph sensory manipulation.
Not the senses.
The guilt felt real.
The anguish.
The kind of emotion that comes from the soul, not just the chemicals.
The kind of experiences that tarnish a soul.
“This is all my fault. Gramarye. Synapse…all those people.”
“Hey, no…” Zaph put his hand on Hal’s shoulder, the condescending smirk replaced by a sincerity and tranquility that caught the costumed man by surprise. “Don’t do that. That’s on them.”
“But I could have stopped it,” the words trembled out.
“Sins of omission are tricky. If something bad happens because you’re too afraid to do what’s right? That’s on you. But you’re only responsible for your own choices. Your own actions. If someone else does wrong, and you choose not to do the wrong thing to stop them, they bear the burden, not you.”
“So what was the point of all this? What was I supposed to learn?”
Zaph inhaled sharply, shrugging. “Couldn’t tell you. Life lessons aren’t my gig. I handle aesthetics. Like I said, mostly cosmetic. Ethics and morals and all that is another department.”
“But Killbox was right.”
“He was.” Zaph nodded the concession, before adding, “and you were. And you were both wrong.”
Hal’s head swam in the contradiction.
“You know life is good, and respecting and protecting that good is important, maybe even more important than protecting life. Killbox knows killing, more often than not, is wrong, even to save a life or to stop something like 7/12 from happening. He’s willing to potentially do evil to protect something good. And you’re willing to protect good at all costs, even tolerating the existence of evil.”
“And what kind of Centinel does that make me? What kind of leader?”
“A good one,” Zaph leaned in, drawing up Halcyon’s downcast gaze into his reassuring smile. “My boss has a similar policy, and there’s no one I’d rather work for.”
“But all this… I can’t…” Halcyon grasped for words even as he grappled with the carnage all around him. “They’re all gone. I could’ve…”
For the first time, he allowed himself to look at Penumbra, his body askew atop Killbox.
“You say the word and it’s back to how it was. I’ll even throw Skip back in.”
“No,” Hal found himself saying reflexively, steeling himself against all he’d seen. “I won’t sacrifice truth any more than I’ll take a–”
His eyes snapped shut quicker than his mouth.
“This is the truth,” he exhaled, slowly opening his eyes. “I may not like it, but the truth is the world needs people like Killbox as much as it needs people like me. Maybe the world survives because of the sacrifices they make.”
“Maybe it wasn’t meant to survive as long as it has,” Zaph postulated. “Who’s to say? It’s above my paygrade, I’m afraid.”
“But not mine. It’s–was– my job as Centinel to make sure my country survives. That it thrives.”
“It doesn’t have to be that way, you know. When I first intervened, you and Penumbra were just coming up. The highest stakes you had to deal with were underage drinking and lapsed registrations. It’s a big ask, but I think I can pull some strings and get you both back there… for good.”
Halcyon smiled despite himself. “I thought an unauthorized time loop would get you canned.”
“No loop. Just a reset.”
“And that’s allowed?”
“No,” Zaph sighed. “But it’s what’s right.”
Hal beamed with gratitude, the tears flowing again.
“Even spirits must be held responsible for their choices.”
“And we won’t have ‘options’ anymore?”
“You’ll always have options,” Zaph corrected, offering his hand. Halcyon stood, puzzling at the sensation of hoisting himself up by one so close to the ground and chuckling at the realization that at his full height he might as well have been holding hands with a child. “Just not the contrived kind. You may have to take a life to save another. You may choose to let someone die to avoid doing so. You may die yourself. But, as always, I’m sure you’ll make the right decision.”
“Will I remember?”
“If you’d like.”
The ex-Centinel took one final look around, hoping that Penny would be open to sticking around rural TN longer than either of them had planned.
“Whenever you’re ready.”