Post by HoM on Apr 9, 2018 10:47:27 GMT -5
PART ONE (OF THREE): THE DECEIVER
The following takes places between Justice League #70 and #71
Too many questions to ask, and only one lifetime to get answers in. James Harper was not an impatient man. He was pretty Zen, considering the number of wars he’d been on the front lines for. But he was tapping his foot, he was fidgeting with the cuff of his coat sleeve, and he was, more than anything, wanting to get through all these damn security checks and down into the belly of the damn beast before he punched a hole in a wall.
They called it the Pit. On the barest outskirts of Metropolis, the secret, high-tech prison-- designed by the best and brightest minds of the modern era-- held a secret, and that secret had lied to Harper’s face, and now there would be a reckoning.
As ever, the duty sergeant went through his usual speech, and the pace and tone of hi words suggested that the Guardian’s frustrations were palpable, vibrating off him like a tuning fork going all out. “…Any attempt to free the prisoner will result in you being fired upon. The cell’s moorings will disengage, and the structure will drop into the radioactive cauldron below, also leading to the prisoner’s death. Do you understand?”
“Last time you said the conversation we were having wouldn’t be recorded. I assume that courtesy has been withdrawn?” Harper replied.
The sergeant shifted his weight from one foot to the other, and then proceeded to avoid any eye contact with Harper. “For five seconds you were out of sight of the cameras. We could have dropped the prisoner there and then, but we didn’t. That’s as far as any past courtesy extends. Any dialogue between the prisoner and yourself is property of the United States government-- and, uh I’ve been informed… ah, and this isn’t my words, but from my boss, he said-- ‘and so are you, you best remember that’. I’m sorry, sir.”
Harper’s head tilted ever so slightly, and he could see the ear-wig inside the soldier’s ear, feeding him lines from somewhere else, away from the front lines of their conversation.
The Guardian’s relationship with the United States military hierarchy was fractious, and the only buffer he had was due to his relationship with President Jebediah Stuart, a man who he’d known since he was handed a cigar at the now sexagenarian politician’s birth.
He’d been to war with Jeb’s father, a tankie who had saved Harper’s life once or twice on the frontline. Back then, with Asher, the Craigs, Gray, Rawlins and Stryker, things had a simplicity. The moral quagmires of the modern age weren’t even a dot on the horizon-- back then, if you saw a Nazi, you put a bullet in him before he put one in you; you didn’t stand across from them and debate ethics and morality.
“Don’t apologise for words that you don’t own, son,” said Harper.
The duty sergeant motioned forward, and the Guardian headed toward the lone cell in the Pit. He slowly walked the observation ring that surrounded the discus-shaped cell, and tried to find his centre. Going into this angry wouldn’t get him the answers he wanted.
Stood with his back to him, the bald-headed main bastard of the spook world, better known as Henry Bendix, had his hands hooked and was contemplating a book shelf. “Hello, James.”
“Last time I was here, I said, don’t waste my time. You wasted my time in a big way.”
“Whatever do you mean?” Bendix asked.
“Two names.” He held up a hand, and counted them out with his fingers. “Apollo. Midnighter. Enhanced operatives sold to the highest bidder. Designed by you. Kept in cold storage until they were required, then used as bodyguards by a madman who wanted to mutilate and subjugate an American city.”
Bendix visibly tensed. He still hadn’t turned to face his old friend. He still hadn’t looked him in the eye. “…Do you have a point, James?”
“I nearly died. One of them broke my neck, and it was only because he wasn’t an utter monster like you that it didn’t kill me. I recognised your handiwork. I recognised your signature. And I recognised the bastardisation of my war computer in his powerset!”
“How is Angelo? I assume from your ongoing survival and your accusation that Las Vegas still stands?”
Harper was taken aback. “…You knew?”
“I know a great number of things. Even locked in this cell. The security briefings are one things, but I’m the greatest intelligence operative this world has ever seen. My first and best work was always on myself. That’s why--”
He turned, and smiled. Harper grimaced, utterly horrified by the fact it wasn’t Bendix.
He continued, speaking in Henry’s voice, staring right into the Guardian’s soul. “-- I couldn’t allow myself to be confined here any longer. You didn’t convince me, James. You didn’t convince me you’d help.”
{Unidentified intruder! Lay face down on the ground! Hands on your head!} blared the speakers lining the walls surrounding the discus-shaped prison cell that had once held a monster.
Armed soldiers swarmed into the room, and Harper stepped forward, close to the glass, wanting to know more before they put an end to their conversation. While the soldiers worked at extending the bridge that connected the cell to the rest of the prison, the Guardian continued to question the prisoner.
“How are you doing this? Who is this man?”
Answered with a shrug, like what he was saying was as simple as snow. “A protoplasmic clone, surgically implanted with a neural receiver, able to take on any appearance I choose, including my own. It was child’s play for my operatives to hack the supposed ‘closed’ security system that monitored my cell to mask the swap.”
He walked forward, gave a casual glance toward the soldiers working to build the bridge that would allow them to take him into custody.
Harper wondered why they didn’t drop the Bendix-clone into the pit below. Perhaps they didn’t want to waste their investment, and all their threats earlier were idle chatter?
The clone continued, “Funny. If the military overlords who wanted me to dance on the head of their pin hadn’t all wanted a peak inside my prison, I wouldn’t have been able to escape. But they all had to have a link to click on their desktops, just so they could masturbate over my imprisonment. But yes, my voice, my words, but not me. I’m far from Metropolis, far from the clutches of the cryptocracy that wants to keep people like me under the thumb, along with the truth of our once glorious nation. I won’t allow the deep state to continue obfuscating the facts.”
He leaned forward so his forehead was pushed up against the glass wall separating Harper and him, and continued, “You knew Roosevelt. You walked Wilson’s rose garden with him. He once declared, ‘Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people.’ And no doubt, that is true--”
The soldiers finally secured the bridge, and there was a hiss as a portal was burned into the plastic casing that contained-- or had once contained-- the real Henry Bendix. They began to swarm inside, and surrounded the protoplasmic clone who’d been held captive in his gene-father’s stead with their weapons raised.
“On your stomach! On your stomach!” shouted one of them, and Harper’s war computer, buzzing away in the background of his head at all times, told him that the soldier wanted nothing more to pull the trigger on his rifle. No doubt his ‘Kill-the-freak!’ impulse was running hot.
“-- I’m nearly done. That is true. And it’s the job of Stormwatch to bring liberty back to the United States of America, James. And now, boom.”
The clone’s silhouette exploded faster than the human eye could track, but the Guardian was no mere human. Billions of dollars’ worth of military technology folded into the human form, and his eyes watched in slow motion as the protoplasmic clone exploded with more force than a body had a right to expel.
The soldiers were too close to do anything about their incoming deaths-- they were thrown backwards into the walls of the cell, the heavy plastic cracked with an ugly sound, and then the moorings that kept Bendix’s prison elevated above a radiation pit shattered-- and everyone inside was sent plummeting into the depths.
Angry and useless, Harper slammed his fist into the wall that had separated him from the proceedings, and then slid down onto his knees. Bendix was in the wind with decades worth of black ops knowledge in that mad old head of his. Whatever form Stormwatch would take next, it sounded like their mandated included bringing about the end of the United States of America in its current form.
The Guardian shook his head. The thing that rocked him, the thing that made him curse himself, was that he didn’t know if that was entirely a bad thing to consider.