A Different Power
Author’s Note:
Ladies and gentlemen, the story that follows was prompted by a meme I came across on Facebook, shared by a friend who tends to share out some pretty good ones. This one not only caught me as chuckle-worthy, but I immediately found myself wanting to respond to it. Christopher, this one’s for you, bud.
A Different Power
By Joshua T. Calkins-Treworgy
Shadows clung to everything around him, and he embraced them as he had been trained. Years of grueling instruction and in-field experience, dozens of missions completed with no hiccups, and now, in a controlled, enclosed environment, he could feel all of his expertise closing like the skeletal hand of Death itself on his mind. The chill of feeling nothing, becoming an extension of the will of the Agency, took him over, and he moved with the mechanical methodology of all experienced killers.
The primary mark hadn’t yet arrived, but the secondary was in place, nervously looking around the parking structure for any sign of onlookers or eavesdroppers. The agent knew little about the specifics of this meeting, and in truth, he didn’t much care. He had for years operated with minimal background on his targets, and his handler preferred it this way. Without background details, he could function cleaner, because he wouldn’t question why he was doing what he did.
The scent of unspent cordite was such a subtle thing, but he slowly took it in as he prepared his tool, looking down the scope, finding the exact spot on the secondary mark’s head where he wanted to fire his shot. Just to the left, the elevator’s indicator light flared, and an electronic ‘ding’ echoed out through the level of the structure. The primary mark was about to come into the field.
The doors slid open, and there he stood, a tall, classically handsome fellow in a plain gray three-piece suit, a simple vest of slightly darker gray underneath, his square-rimmed glasses the only immediately obvious handicap. Broad-shouldered, with an upright and level gait as he stepped out of the elevator booth, the agent found himself thinking that this was a waste of potential; this journalist appeared to him a prime candidate for the Marines.
Still, wish in one hand, shit in the other, see which gets filled first, the agent thought, centering his scope’s crosshairs on the bespectacled reporter’s forehead. What came next should take the length of two short breaths, given how close the reporter stood to his source, the old-fashioned pocket notepad in the reporter’s hand, pen scribbling furiously. Guy has a damned quick shorthand, the agent thought. Shame. Ah well.
His finger began squeezing down on the trigger, the rest of his body stone-still. The agent’s breath leaked slowly from his nostrils, warming the ski mask he wore to conceal his features, in the unlikely event he was spotted. This usually proved unnecessary, but when one operates on pattern, even this is a hard habit to break.
All was perfectly aligned.
And yet, as his finger slid into the exact spot where it belonged to start the job’s final step proper, the mark’s head twitched back out of the way, and the bullet smashed into the wall just to the side of the marks. Impossible, the agent barked in his mind, the missed shot causing him to freeze up momentarily. Through the scope, he watched as the reporter’s expression morphed from surprise almost instantly to hardened resolve, and with unexpected force, the mark shoved his source to the concrete, safely out of any line of fire.
The agent tried to realign his scope, but the reporter had darted away, completely out of sight. The agent heard the panting and footfalls of retreat, but without even looking, he knew these were the sounds of the reporter’s source, not the reporter himself. He wouldn’t take down the source without taking down the reporter first; with luck, if the agent couldn’t run the reporter down right now, within thirty seconds, the source could be relied upon as a lure again.
But there was no sign of the primary mark, anywhere. The agent knew when his time of opportunity was up, and he immediately moved to the nondescript Chevy Suburban he’d used as his transport, tossed the rifle in the back under a blanket, and calmly, efficiently made his way out of the parking structure.
He wasn’t sure how the mark had evaded him, but he would have to report to his mission handler that the operation had failed.
**
“Understood, Major. Come back to Castle, we’ll regroup and figure out our next step,” the handler said, disconnecting a moment later. Sitting in the middle of the small room, surrounded on three sides by various screens and with several keyboards around the three-sided desk, Jacob Westling ground his teeth, typing in commands to direct his many cameras to locate the target. The NSA had entrusted this mission to his unit, and he had earned it, through and through. The reporter had gotten too close, had started digging into areas he really ought not to have, and because of his reporting, the public was starting to ask questions about what had happened in Omaha.
“Fucking ingrates,” Jacob grumbled, letting the program run as he turned his attention to the folder stamped with a red ‘Mission: Complete’ stamped on its cover. He turned it open, glaring at the picture of the man who the file pertained to, Steven Ponder. Better known to the world for years as Charger, he had been a mid-level threat metahuman villain, hell bent on causing unchecked chaos wherever he went. He’d had no declared nemesis, and had never claimed a singular territory as his domain of influence.
And the NSA had finally figured out who he really was, and taken care of him. Nobody knew who Charger really was, surprisingly, because the man had never been apprehended by proper authorities. Sure, he’d been captured by members of the Justice League a few times, and handed over to metahuman authorities, but Steven Ponder had never been properly processed through the American justice system.
And after breaking out of the facility they’d put him in, Ponder had gone on a rampage, disrupting the national power grid. He’d made a mistake, though, and left fingerprints at one of the facilities he had sabotaged. Sweeping in on a National Security order, the NSA had scrubbed him from lower-level law enforcement awareness, and moved into position to take him out.
And now, some dipshit reporter was snooping around into the murder of Steven Ponder, a vocational school instructor for electrician apprenticeship in Omaha, Nebraska.
Closing Ponder’s file, sliding it aside, Jacob pulled up another, much slimmer file, opening it up and considering the profile picture the Agency had on hand for his current target.
**
Take no chances, Major Johnson thought as he applied the toxic salve on the mark’s bedroom door handle. Getting into the condo had been a thing of simplicity, and the layout within, while Spartan, offered several opportunities to get the job done. The NSA had given him the training and tools required to take out targets of all sorts, and if the rifle wasn’t a good choice here, then there were plenty of other options available.
With the toxin applied, the NSA agent put the brush and container in an airtight seal bag, tossed them in his duffel, and made his way back out of the condo, slipping his way down to the basement area of the building. A maintenance closet had been granted to him with the application of a few hundred dollars to bribe the building’s repairman, and with a quick glance at his laptop, Johnson confirmed that his tiny cameras, installed throughout the condo, were operational. His timing appeared to be spot-on, as he watched as the mark made his way into the front room of the condo, letting out a visible sigh as he closed the door behind himself.
The mark pulled off his tie and shrugged off his jacket, hanging it on a hook by the front door, then made his way toward the kitchen area. Johnson switched his view to the camera he’d tucked just under a cupboard full of coffee mugs, which showed the reporter pouring himself a cup of coffee and setting it in the small microwave. The mark took off his glasses for a moment and pinched the bridge of his nose, and for just a moment, Johnson felt a twinge of fear. I know that guy, he thought momentarily, and I shouldn’t be fucking with him. But the glasses went back on then, and the sensation of danger evaporated as quickly as it had come on. Yet Johnson now felt unsure of himself, unsure of his operation. Something told him, far back in his mind, that the toxin on the bedroom doorknob wasn’t going to work.
The mark put a small measure of sugar and creamer in his coffee, set the mug aside, and started back toward the bedroom. The camera installed in the back hallway, angled down to show the mark opening the bedroom door, revealed him pausing, looking for a moment at his upturned hand. “Why is this wet,” the tiny mic in the camera picked up, the mark’s voice steady but suspicious. He then put his hand to his forehead, wavering on his feet, and Major Johnson felt a surge of elation, until the mark pulled out his cell phone and clearly dialed 911. “Yes, please send an ambulance to 1664 Elliot Way, unit 402. I think I’ve been poisoned,” the mark could be heard saying, just before he fell to the hallway floor, dropping the phone as he began twitching beside it.
The Major shut his laptop and quietly slipped away from the building, pleased with the success of the operation.
**
“He survived, Major,” Jacob snarled, staring at the desk phone before him, keeping his eyes studiously off of the screens of the control center. “God only knows how, but apparently, medical staff were able to give him an effective antivenom.”
“Begging pardon the language, sir, but that’s fucking impossible,” Johnson snapped back over the phone. “I checked out every medical center in the city, and none of them carried the proper counteragents!”
“Well, apparently, your checks weren’t thorough enough,” Agent Westling replied evenly. “Operation: Glasses Torch is still ongoing. The target is being released from the hospital shortly, and we were able to intercept a brief call from his cell to his source about ten minutes ago. Glasses is still intent on getting the evidence he needs to put together the full story.” Westling paused a moment, leaving Major Johnson waiting with baited breath. “Glasses will be on his guard now, so we’re shifting our focus. The source is now your primary target; don’t worry, I’ve already informed upper management. We can’t afford to keep whistleblowers like him onboard.”
“I don’t like it, sir,” the Major objected. “I’ll do what needs to be done, but he’s been one of ours for a long time. It doesn’t feel right taking out one of our own.”
“I appreciate your hesitation, Major, but we can ill afford it right now. Besides, you don’t have to do anything in this case; I’m sending Herkimer to take care of the source.”
“Is that wise, sir? Herkimer’s methods tend to be, messy.”
“He’ll cover his tracks effectively enough, Major. For now, you are to hold position until we know whether or not we need Glasses to still be taken care of. Keep your phone on hand in case I need to give you the green light.”
“Understood, sir.” The Major hung up, setting the phone aside calmly and pacing back toward the bedroom of his safehouse apartment. Herkimer was an effective asset among the Agency’s personnel, but using an explosives expert to take out one of their own analysts felt like overkill. He wondered what it was that Westling was so adamant that they keep quiet; being on a ‘Need To Know’ basis sometimes troubled him, but at the end of the day, Major Johnson concluded that it wasn’t his place to ask questions.
I am a tool, he thought, sitting on the end of his narrow bed and closing his eyes, running through his mantra. They tell me what to aim at, and I complete the job. Nothing more, nothing less. God bless America.
**
Glasses full well knew that he was likely walking right into a trap. His source wasn’t trying to hurt him, no; given who the man claimed to work for, Glasses assumed that the source’s own employers were trying to shut him up and close off any further digging around into the abrupt and inexplicable murder of Steven Ponder. They tried to poison me, Glasses thought. I can’t imagine they’ll bother being so subtle with one of their own. As he flagged down a taxicab out in front of the hospital, once more wearing the clothes he’d been in prior to his stay at the hospital, he wondered how much time he possibly had before the unknown government agency in question tried to take out his source.
When the cabbie finally pulled to the curb to let him in, Glasses gave him the address the source had relayed to him, promising double the fare if the driver was willing to ignore traffic control signals en route. Thankfully for Glasses, money always talks.
**
Richard paced back and forth relentlessly, wondering how long it would take the reporter to get to the hotel on the outskirts of the city. He wanted to be rid of the file folder tucked away behind the air vent set just next to the rented bed, to have it out of his possession and on its way to the journalist’s home or office. Once it was out of his hands, he should, he reasoned, be at least somewhat safe. At the very least, he’d be able to burrow as far underground and off the grid as humanly possible, until such time as the public began clamoring for him to come forth to confirm the information and where it had come from.
The controversy of it all wasn’t that the Agency had killed a metahuman, a known supervillain; it was that they had done it extrajudicially, with no due process of law, when they could well have simply apprehended him. Behind him, on the bed, his cell phone buzzed, informing him that he had an incoming text message. Richard plucked it up, and read the message, inbound from the reporter’s number. ‘Need to change locations, I think I’m being followed. Meet me here,’ it said, and was followed by a new address. Richard started to go to the air vent, but paused as he crouched by the bed; phone ‘spoofing’ had become a relatively common tactic in the Agency, and it would be easy enough tap the reporter’s phone and spoof it to lure him into a trap.
Without his own advanced analysis tools, he wouldn’t be able to figure out one way or another if this was a spoofing or not. I can head that way and see if the area’s locked down, he thought, grabbing his keys and heading out of the rented room to his car. If it feels wrong, I’ll come back. If it’s legitimate, I can just tell him where the file is and take off. Either way, I’m almost done with this. Richard got into the beat up old sedan he’d been driving for the last few months, turned the key in the ignition, and had the barest fraction of a moment to realize his fatal mistake as he heard a secondary ‘click’ behind the first one of his key sending an electrical signal to the battery. “Oh,” he managed aloud, just before the explosive device, situated under his seat, turned him and the car into so much flaming slag.
**
His experience with investigative journalism and knowledge of the art of fieldcraft, Glasses slipped past the firefighters and crime scene techs, dressed as one of their own people, into the room that Richard had rented and told him to come to. Understanding how government operatives worked, it was a quick thing to spot the loosened screws on the air vent next to the bed, to undo them, and tuck the concealed file folder into his windbreaker. Slipping back out of the room unnoticed, Glasses ducked away from the law enforcement officers and firemen quickly, making his way back to the cabbie, who had been patiently waiting for him.
Glasses gave the cabbie a new address, for a quiet little café downtown, near his paper’s offices. He wanted to read through the file before making a determination about what final steps he should take, and see for himself why the government would blow up one of their own to keep the Steven Ponder murder quiet.
**
“You have a green light, Major,” Agent Westling said over the phone. “Herkimer confirmed the elimination of our mole, but he spotted the original target slipping into the mole’s hotel room and coming back out a minute later. We think he either located some kind of flash drive or file folder in the room. This isn’t over yet, so you are authorized to finish the mission.”
“Acknowledged, sir,” the Major replied, declining to inform his handler that he had maintained an ongoing tail on Glasses. He had watched his colleague, Herkimer, rigging up the explosive device under the driver’s seat of the mole’s car; had watched as the demolitions expert had crept away, smiling to himself proudly all the way across the parking lot to the back of a beat-up old station wagon. Major Johnson saw the fierce grin of satisfaction on Herkimer’s face when the roar of the explosion ripped the air, and watched as the man slipped down out of sight, hiding himself away until later on, when the area would be clear of all law enforcement and firefighting personnel.
Keeping himself at a distance, the Major had kept an eye on the hotel, spotting Glasses, workably disguised as a crime scene technician, moving into the mole’s room and then back out and away a minute later. Using his own cell phone microphone tap, he listened to Glasses direct yet another cabbie to a popular café downtown, and made his way to the Suburban he was presently using to travel around the city.
The drive took only about half an hour, despite the heavy afternoon traffic, and when he got to the only sizable enough parking spot across the street from the café that would allow the vehicle, he deposited excessive change in the nearby parking meter, and quickly assessed his setup options. Glasses had displayed survivability and fieldcraft knowledge, sure, but the man was just a reporter; he’d made the amateur mistake of seating himself right near the visible glass front of the café at a table, a file folder open on the small, two-person table before him.
The Major quickly took his weapon, concealed in an oversized guitar case, and made his way across the street to a stout department store building. Making his way to the roof took almost no time at all; a lot of these structures were laid out in similar patterns to one another, and getting from the retail customer area to the ‘employees only’ section, then from there to the roof, was simplicity itself. Setting up his bipod and taking several deep, steadying breaths, he focused through his scope downward at the target. You got lucky, getting away from me twice, the Major thought, clenching his jaw. But the third time’s the charm. Almost mechanically, he squeezed the trigger, relishing the eruption of shattering glass, the slump of the target’s body as his head bounced off of the table, and the screams of stunned surrounding citizens as they fled the sound-suppressed shot.
Major Johnson put his weapon away, and booked a hasty path back to the Suburban, tossing his weapon in the back seat before jogging toward the café. He froze halfway across the street, however, spotting Glasses, holding the bleeding left side of his head, running away faster than anyone who’d received a grazing head wound rightfully should. Impossible, the Major thought, dumbstruck as he watched the mark escape yet again. “Not this time,” he grumbled to himself, running off to the sidewalk and following his mark, making himself put on the expression of one of the panicked people fleeing the café.
He caught up to Glasses in almost no time, however, thanks to his years of athletic training and work as an NSA asset. “Holy shit, buddy,” he said, putting a hand out toward Glasses and nudging him into the mouth of a wide alley, throwing himself against the opposite alley wall and faux panting, knees bent, hands on his thighs. “Did you get shot?”
“I, I don’t know,” Glasses said, looking at his own bloody hand. “I thought something happened outside and shattered the window; I thought I got cut.”
“Whatever happened, it don’t look good, man,” the Major said, coming toward Glasses, eyes fixed on the head wound as his left hand reached back for the handle of his trusty combat knife. “You should get that checked out.” It was the last thing the Major said before, quite unexpectedly, the mark had his own hands out and on him, one on the left wrist, and one on his throat, the file folder dropping its papers to the alley floor.
“Nice try,” Glasses said, his voice no longer watery and worried, his brow knitted in a glower. “Or rather, nice third try.” The Major felt immense pressure being applied to his wrist, but then felt only the sweet release of sleep, as he was driven forehead-first to the alley floor.
**
Westling, reacting on pure instinct, dropped to the floor and scurried under the control desk in Castle’s command room when the structure shook, the blast door torn from its moorings to fall down the stairwell. He couldn’t see what was going on from his current vantage point, but the long square table now ahead of him did allow him to see a scarlet pair of boots come stalking into the command room. There was a loud ‘thud’ as something was tossed on the table itself, and as he came up from under the control table with his sidearm in hand, he realized in the blink of an eye that it would do him no good here.
Major Johnson, unconscious but alive, lay cuffed on the table, his hands zip-tied behind his back. Standing just past him in the doorway, a strange divet in his normally perfectly coifed hair, stood the creature known the world over as The Man of Steel, Superman.
“Jesus jumped up Christ,” Westling rasped. “Clark Kent is the Kryptonian.” He tucked his firearm back into the docker’s clutch holster under his left armpit, and pinched the bridge of his nose. “This, this is not good.”
“No, it isn’t,” Superman replied.
“I don’t get it, though,” Westling said, arms folded over his chest. “The toxin. You were in the hospital.”
“I have a friend who can doctor just about any medical report almost instantly,” said the Kryptonian. “You do not want to ask Batman how he does it; he just stares at you until you leave well enough alone.” Westling shrugged, turned his computer chair around, and sat down, pulling out his cigarettes and lighter, striking one up.
“You read the file, then, I assume,” Westling said, blowing a thick plume of smoke, reaching behind himself for the ashtray he’d left between two of the control keyboards. He tapped into it, and crossed one foot up onto the opposing knee.
“I did,” said Superman with a nod. “I don’t appreciate the lack of due process, even if I understand why you did what you did.”
“It had to be done,” Westling said evenly. “Quick question, completely beside the point- what’s with the, uh,” he began, pointing to his own head to indicate the strange line along the side of Superman’s head. The Kryptonian grinned, reaching into one of the pouches along his own narrow utility belt, pulling out a small container of some sort. He popped it open, revealing a sharpened piece of glowing green rock; Kryptonite.
“I figured I’d need it when your man here took another shot at me, to sell it,” Superman said, closing the container again. “Lead container, so it doesn’t affect me until I need it to. When the bullet hit me in the back of the head, I threw myself down and scraped this along my skull, so he’d see some blood, be convinced he got at least a partial hit.”
“Clever,” said Westling, admiring the alien’s cunning. “But that’s a sideline nicety. What are we going to do about this story, Mister Kent? Should I even call you that?”
“It’s my given name here. I prefer it, actually,” said Superman. “As for the story, I’m not entirely sure. Can you think of a solid reason that I shouldn’t reveal what I’ve learned to the public? They have a right to know.”
“Sure, they have a right to know,” Westling said, using the near-dead cigarette’s cherry to start another one, stumping out the old one as he puffed away. “And they’d also have a right to know why we did what we did. You see, The Charger, he didn’t have a nemesis, didn’t have a ‘home turf’, as it were. Sure, he got into some scrapes with your people at the Justice League, but outside of taking him to a facility once for metahumans, your people didn’t keep track of him. He remained a threat to everyday Americans, all of us. So, when we realized that we had a way of taking care of him, we did what needed to be done.” Westling blew out another cloud, and seemed to relax a little in his seat. “That’s our superpower, Mister Kent; we keep the people of this nation safe, and let them go about their everyday lives, none the wiser for what has to be done to insure their liberties and conveniences.”
The Kryptonian stood there silently, arms folded over his broad chest, hand on his chin, nodding to himself slightly. After a minute, he met Westling’s gaze. “The file folder is in a safe place, so that you know. Batman and myself both now know where this command station is, for future reference. For the time being, I’ll let the story die,” said the superhero, turning on his heel and heading back for the door of the command room. “But in the future, if you find yourself with a situation like Ponder’s again, you shouldn’t hesitate to reach out to the League.”
“You worry about the monsters from other planets, Mister Kent,” Westling said quietly. “I’ll worry about the ones born and raised right here on this one.”