The pride waned a bit as she thought about how she’d gotten there, though. It wasn’t because she was good at anything she’d worked for. She’d had this thing thrown at her, completely at random, and because of that, she was being treated well. It wasn’t really hers. And she was damn sure they’d take it away if she stopped playing ball. Or at least stop covering the rent.
Maggie’d only be there part of the time, anyway. Danny was talking about going back to Area 51 again for “integration training.” There were other Variants, he’d said, and they needed to see how best to put together teams for various missions. So, it looked like everyone would be thrown in a pot and mixed around to see how well they complemented one another. Maggie couldn’t help but wonder just how many there were and what they could do. Would their powers be better than hers? More effective?
She smirked to herself a little as she got up from her new sofa and grabbed her purse. She was, without a doubt, the most effective Variant on her little team. Cal could kill a man, but he needed to touch him. Frank was becoming an expert in pretty much everything, but he was still constrained by… well, normalcy. But Maggie, she could stop a dozen men in their tracks and reduce them to trembling, bawling balls of nothing. They needed her, and she’d make damn sure they knew it.
With a spring in her step, she locked up her place — and it would be hers, one way or another, for the foreseeable future — and left her little brownstone. She’d noticed an out-of-the-way bar a couple blocks away, and she figured nobody would mind if she went for a drink.
Besides, as she walked, she kept watch on the man in the bad suit who’d been tailing her for the past several days — the same one who’d dropped the note at the Capital before they shipped out to Prague. She hadn’t reported him yet. And maybe she wouldn’t.
Maggie walked in and took a table in the corner, facing the door. The man entered a few minutes later, looking around casually. When his eyes met hers, she sent him a little friendly nudge and smiled at him. To his credit, he looked away and made for the bar. So, she nudged harder… and harder… until he eventually approached the table with two drinks in his hand.
“Hi, there,” he said, his Chicago accent coming through cleanly once more. “Thought you could use a drink.”
She took the drink and smiled her best fake smile.
“How kind of you. Now… tell me everything.”
Cal rode the bus in silence, his head against the window, eyes closed. He was hale and healthy now, roughly the same age as when this whole business had begun. The energy he’d taken from that girl — so much energy, it was scary — sloughed off quicker than normal, probably because she was a Variant like him. Over the last couple weeks, he’d reverted to normal, and despite Danny asking if he wanted to take on some cattle or pigs and remain young, he’d opted against it. His wife and his son had just moved into a modest home in Washington’s Adams Morgan neighborhood — he kept having to remind himself that he had a whole other life outside of the MAJESTIC-12 program, and he wanted to keep the two as separate as possible.
He considered, not for the first time, whether he would have to watch his wife pass on someday. If he wanted to, could he remain young for… well, how long? Forever? Would that be a blessing or just delaying the Lord’s Judgment? And how many lives would it take? Sure, he could stick to cows and pigs and goats — he could see himself running a farm up North somewhere, really — but was that right?
Too many questions. Danny had provided Cal with head-shrinkers and reverends — there was one preacher who was a particularly good listener, though Cal had to be careful what he said, of course — but ultimately, it always came back around to doing what he felt was right. And there was nothing in the Good Book, or any book really, that laid a clear path for him under these unusual circumstances.
“Get up.”
Cal opened his eyes and looked up to see a middle-aged white man in a bad suit, looking down at him with tired disdain, standing expectantly with a newspaper tucked under his arm, a briefcase in his hand.
“Excuse me?”
The man looked confused. “Get up. You’re taking up a seat.”
Cal made to move… then stopped. He worked hard — twice as hard — as anyone. He’d spent the day at Foggy Bottom in meetings and doing training and intelligence meetings — the reports were slow going, but his reading was getting better after all this time. He would continue to work twice as hard to be just as good.
But he was beginning to hate that phrase, handed down through generations of his family. He did a lot for his country. Put his life on the line out there. This arrogant white man in the bad suit had no idea.
Cal deserved to sit as much as anyone.
Cal looked up and gave the man a small smile. “Sorry, this seat’s taken.”
Dr. Kurt Schreiber was, for the first time ever, alone and unsupervised at Area 51. He had waited for this moment for months — years! — building up trust by working diligently and agreeing to everything his “superiors” requested and demanded.
Superiors… a laughable term. Politicians and soldiers, and that odd junior man who seemed utterly unfit to lead a project such as MAJESTIC-12. Schreiber had to admit that Commander Wallace was competent and unusually perceptive. But overmatched nonetheless.
Schreiber pulled a key from his pocket and left his office, walking down the hallway and out of the building toward the main laboratory — one of the most secure facilities in the world, and one to which he had nearly unfettered access. The key, in fact, represented the very last fetter, and now, late at night with naught but pimple-faced guards pulling the worst duty, he would put it to use.
Showing his ID to the bored guard, Schreiber entered the secure building, barely giving the anomaly he had studied for years any regard. Because the building was indeed so well guarded, the “superiors” at Area 51 had decided to keep all kinds of treasures in there, some of which he barely understood.
Schreiber opened a side door, walked down a set of stairs to the basement, and proceeded down a very long, dark hallway, opting to leave the lights off, just in case. When he came to a heavy, reinforced metal door, he worked the key and opened it.
Inside, POSEIDON lay unconscious. Schreiber felt an unusual pang of sympathy for the Russian. When he was not being tested, he was kept in a room far from anything he could use his Enhancement upon. All his furniture was bolted to the floor. Everything within two hundred yards, in fact, was bolted to the floor.
“Wake up,” Schreiber said in Russian.
The man stirred. “It is too late for more experiments,” he mumbled. “For God’s sake, let me sleep.”
“I am not here to experiment. I am here to talk about your future, should you choose to have one.”
POSEIDON sat up and saw Schreiber smiling in the dim light. “What do you mean?”
“Soon, comrade, I believe it will be time for you to illustrate what you can really do. And I will help you.”
The man looked confused. “Why should I even listen to you? You are a Nazi.”
“The Nazis no longer exist, comrade,” Schreiber said. “Hitler was wrong. The Aryans were not the master race after all.”