3/15/12 - The Day of The Gorgon - pt. 2

By the time Myron gets into the interrogation room, there's already quite a crowd -- both inside and outside the doors. He has to pull rank to get them to shoo, but even then there's a real reluctance to do what he wants.

(These lateral personnel transfers the COMPANY's gotten from other Agencies, after the President's assassination, aren't exactly the most obedient types. He's complained, before, but it's gotten him nowhere.)

Once it's just him, a rat-faced guard he doesn't particularly like, and a few other necessary Agents in the room, he's able to get down to business.

The first thing he does is look into the room. It looks like SPYGOD, alright. He's wearing the uniform that he had taken to wearing during OPERATION BUGSMASH, once they were cleaning up the Central HIVE. Her's been shot once in the leg, and he's barfed and !@#$ed himself into near-oblivion. 

"So what's the story?" he asks, trying to act surprised as he turns away from the window: "Is it actually him?"

"If it isn't, then I don't know who it is, sir," the guard who took helped bring him into the room says: "But I gotta tell you, sir, it's spooky the way he just went down like that."

"The field  Dr. Yesterday put up must be really good."

"Either that or he's really off his !@#$ing game," the other guard says, handing over a bag full of the prisoner's effects: "He was acting like he was disoriented. He actually walked up to us, and asked us... what did he ask?"

"Where he was, exactly," the first guard says: "And then when we opened fire up on him he tried to laugh it off at first."

"And he didn't have any guns?" Myron makes sure, looking at the contents of the bag. All that's in there is Costa Rican money, a beer tab, and a key to a room in a hotel he knows all too !@#$ well.

"He reached for one when he realized we weren't !@#$ing around, but he had none, no," the other guard says: "Like I said, sir. Disoriented."

Then there's a voice from the other side of the room, behind the one-way glass: "Oh, let's not start that !@#$ again."

His voice. 

"He's up," rat-face says, hovering his hands over the button: "Should I?"

"Not just yet," Myron says, coming over to watch the man stagger around the room: "Let's see what he does."

He throws up, first. Then he pokes around his wound with an astonishing lack of gentleness, maybe judging how fast it's healed. And then, obviously disgusted with his state of affairs, and not finding a table or chair to steady himself with, asks "Can I get a !@#$ drink? Wash the taste out of my !@#$ mouth."

"You can choke on it, !@#$," ratface says into his microphone: "You're lucky you're even breathing, you traitor."

"You're lucky you got me on a bad day, son," he says, staring at them through the one-way mirror but not quite seeing, somehow (which is highly unusual): "I don't know what you GORGON !@#$ers have going on, here, but when I get out-"

Ratface looks at Myron, and Myron nods at him. The Agent presses the button, and SPYGOD goes into a seizure, falls down to his knees, and sprawls out on the floor, messing himself yet again.

"You know what?" Myron asks the two guards: "I think the two of us have this. Could you go outside and keep the curious out and away?"

"Yes sir," one of them says, saluting as they head that way.

"And good work, gentlemen!" he calls after them, feeling grateful to have them out of the room at last. Now he just has to figure a way to get rid of ratface and they're super groovy.

"You like that, huh?" ratface says into the microphone as Myron gets the door closed and locked: "Bit different from shooting a man in cold blood, huh? Not so high and mighty now, are we?"

There's no answer, but ratface keeps going: "And I can keep that up all day, you cycloptic, has-been, traitor !@#$. Maybe you should just keep quiet for once."

"Maybe you should suck my !@#$ing !@#$," SPYGOD says, and ratface chuckles as he hits the zap button again -- keeping it down for an entire minute this time.

"Okay, different tactic," Myron says after the man lets go: "Turn down his lights, turn ours up, and I'm going to pretend like I just got here."

"What are you hoping to get out of him," ratface snorts: "A confession?"

"Cooperation," he answers.

And time.

* * *

The Flier hovers just off the coasts of Havana, far from the masses of people who still want to take pot-shots at it after they were rudely made free by its advanced weaponry, just six days ago.

As liberations went, it wasn't exactly the most well-planned or conscientious. The COMPANY was more or less punked into it by its former Director, who clearly had a personal score or two to settle. Worse still, it now seems the entire thing was just an elaborate distraction, so as to get something -- someone, rather -- extremely dangerous out of Guantanamo Bay.

And between a newly-minted Director who didn't seem to know what he was doing, a headstrong Colonel who was clearly overly-eager to bag public enemy number one, a foreign national of questionable allegiances, and the former Director's ostensibly loyal, but never entirely-unquestionable, second in command, The COMPANY just walked right into the mother of all boobytraps.

The President, who wasn't happy to be woken up and informed that Cuba was now free on his watch, by his unwitting hand, has to make nice on the television, but is taking a massive drubbing from all sides for this one. Both Republicans and Democrats aren't happy with him, and the independents are going spastic. And the international community -- especially Fidel Castro's old club of America haters -- is rather unamused.

In fact, the United Nations is so displeased that they've all but flooded Cuba with a reverse flotilla of pro-democracy monitors. These earnest, young men and women are all traipsing up and down the countrysides, ensuring that no one's civil rights are being violated by The COMPANY, or any other American Agency that might be currently working there.

(Where were they before the liberation, one has to wonder?)

But, in spite of all international criticism and condemnation, the Flier remains not far away, making sure that no one comes in to take undue advantage of the situation. Numerous pro-democracy organizations within Cuba are currently working on a new government, and it would be a terrible tragedy if their careful, impassioned work was to fall victim to one of America's enemies, or some group of science terrorists eager to make a beachhead in the nation.

Another thankless job for The COMPANY, in other words, but nothing they're not used to.

Second keeps that in mind as he strides towards the Director's office, carrying a clipboard filled with the latest reports in triplicate for New Man to sign off on. Mostly maintenance schedules and section reports, thankfully, though there's a few in here that will doubtlessly make him really !@#$ing angry.

Provided he reads them at all.

He knocks on the door, and hears nothing on the other side. Ten seconds go by, then twenty, then a full minute. He's about to ask one of the two Specials standing guard outside the door to see if the Director stepped out for an early lunch, but then the door finally opens. 

"I was about to see if you'd flown the coop, sir..." he starts to say, but then stops when he sees that the Director is sitting in the middle of a massive paperwork apocalypse. He's surrounded by report after report, memo after memo, and printout after printout. And, as Second watches, his email dings once, twice, three times to let him know he's got that many new no-doubt urgent messages in his box.

"Can I?" New Man all but begs: "Just fly away? Is there someplace I could hide for a few months?"

"I hear Maui's nice this year, sir," he says, walking closer with the clipboard: "I just need a few quick John Hancocks on the bottom of each, and then I'll let you get back to... this."

 

"How in the heck did SPYGOD deal with all of this?" New Man asks, grabbing the clipboard and signing everything without even looking at it.

 

"He didn't, sir," Second says: "He was too busy running an intelligence organization to bother with all of this."

 

"What..." the Director says, shaking his head as though he couldn't believe a word of what he'd just heard.

 

"He said that when it came to the day to day running of the COMPANY, the Flier, the Heptagon, or anything else, unless it was earth-shattering news, don't tell him. If it was bad, fix it if you could, and only tell him if you couldn't. And if it was good, leave it for the status report or end of mission briefing. Assessments, dangers, defeats and victories were all he wanted across his desk immediately. Everything else... well..."

Second gestures to the pile of memos.

 

"Well, I think the President wants someone to take a firmer hand at the till, Second," New Man sighs: "I may just have to bite the bullet on all this."

 

"Well, if you'd care for my advice-"

 

"Is it going to get me fired, and you promoted?"

 

Second looks at New Man, who doesn't look back at him. 

 

"Sir, everything I do I do for the good of the United States of America, through the engine of this organization," Second says, putting the clipboard down: "I do not have any ambitions beyond getting her through another day, and getting us from mission to mission in as few pieces as possible."

 

"Really?" New Man asks, finally turning to regard the man.

 

"Well, that and maybe another pay raise, sir. It's hard to have Remy Martin tastes on a Pabst Blue Ribbon salary."

"I'm being serious, Agent."

"So am I, sir. And you need to understand that, while I do a lot of the things a Director should be doing, I do not, and have never wanted, to be the Director. I would be lousy at it. I'm a much better second in command. I'd tell you to ask SPYGOD about that, but..."

New Man nods, and hands the clipboard back.

"You know, every day I'm here, I can't help but wonder how long it's going to take me to crack," New Man says: "It was simple during the War. I told you about Tarawa, didn't I?"

"A few times, sir," Second smiles, hoping the man doesn't launch into that one again.

"And that was before I got my powers, too. Just me and my buddies in an Alligator, waiting for the next salvo to knock us over and turn us all inside out. But somehow, it was clear. We knew what we were doing. There was a logic to it. A reason.

 

"This..." he waves his hand at the wall, where he's painstakingly mapped out the entire state of play of the world's known intelligence operations, strategic talents, and known enemy operatives. Pushpins hold notes in place, and different colored lengths of string connect pin to pin in a worldwide web of malfeasance and terror.

Second blinks, walking towards it in awe: "Sir, when did you...?"

"I finished last night," the man says, wearily: "That's when I started trying to catch up on this. I don't think I'm doing a great job of both."

"Good lord, sir. When do you sleep?"

"I don't," New Man admits: "That's one of the reasons I think they gave me this job. Ever since the accident, I've been-"

His explanation is cut off by the door opening. The Dragon is there. 

And in less than a second he's covered the length of the room, and jabbed a very large, impressive-looking dagger right through New Man's heart.

New Man looks surprised, as though someone told him a surrealistic joke. And then he tries to speak, fails, and closes his eyes. A moment later his body begins to flicker and fade, like it was the screen of a dying television. The dagger glows and sparkles in time with the flickering.

"It's time, then?" Second asks, watching the door carefully.

"It is," Dragon says: "The enemy is on the move. SPYGOD needs our help now more than ever."

 

"Who can we trust?" 

 

"The new guards are all compromised. As for the newer Agents, I think perhaps one in five is a saboteur."

"Then it's you and me against the world, huh?" Second says, putting the clipboard down on the nearest pile of memos on the desk: "Funny how it all works out, huh?"

"I do believe there is a saying about the last person you would ever suspect being the last person you should ever fully trust," The Dragon intones, languidly gesturing towards New Man.

 

"So what does that make you?" Second asks: "I know you have your own angle, here. How long before there's a knife in my back?"

 

"One can never be certain of such things. But I know there is a saying regarding the enemies of one's enemies?"

 

"'I against my brother. My brother and I against my cousin. My cousin and I against the stranger.'"

"That's not quite the one I was thinking of..." Dragon says, looking quite askance.

"I do think you're right," Second agrees, looking at New Man: "But I have to hand it to the stranger, today. This man was one of the secret heads of GORGON all along? Who would have ever thought?"

"Double bluffs are their specialty. Shall we go?"

Second nods, and lets Dragon lead the way. On the way out he looks back at the Director -- stuck in a flux state and unable to leave it -- and smiles, ever so slightly. And if the Specials outside the door have reason to suspect a quiet counter-coup has just occurred, right under their noses, they make no sign of it as the two men walk down the hall, heading for the underbelly of the Flier.

Meanwhile, back in the office, New Man's email keeps piling up in is mailbox. They're all marked URGENT, of course, but one from someone calling himself HOTBILE, titled "Queer Happenings in India/Pakistan, possibly also worldwide, READ NOW" is the only one that seems to be worthy of the red exclamation point.

And it sits... and sits... 

(SPYGOD is listening to Shadowplay (Joy Division) and having a Last Lion Ale)

3/15/12 - The Day of The Gorgon - pt. 1

The caterpillar must bury itself alive and sleep before the butterfly can come out and soar.

* * *

SOOTHSAYER
Beware the ides of March.

CAESAR
What man is that?

BRUTUS
A soothsayer bids you beware the ides of March.

CAESAR
Set him before me; let me see his face.

CASSIUS
Fellow, come from the throng; look upon Caesar.

CAESAR
What say'st thou to me now? speak once again.

SOOTHSAYER
Beware the ides of March.

CAESAR
He is a dreamer; let us leave him: pass.

Julius Caesar - Act 1. Scene II

* * *

It's Thursday, March 15th, and even at 10 in the AM, it's already clear that it's going to be another scorcher. 

The unusually warm D.C. weather continues to confound almanacs and send its citizens out of doors, once they get home from their jobs. Substandard air conditioners overheat and threaten brownouts. Fans are taxed to their maximum. Some rain would be nice, but then it's just make the area even more humid, and no one wants that.

But, safe behind thick, temperature-controlled walls in the Heptagon, Myron -- aka Underman -- is feeling an entirely different kind of heat, this morning. Part of that heat comes from knowing that, someday soon, a temporally-displaced, slightly younger version of his disgraced former Director is going to come here, be captured, and then spirited away due to a carefully-laid plan that Myron's finally got up and running. But the other part of that heat comes from the fact that, as he just learned just a few days ago, the entire Heptagon is crawling with the enemy in disguise.

The "Specials" -- high-tech guards that have appeared at all COMPANY installations since New Man took over -- are all GORGON's False Faces in disguise. They're armored like crazy, carrying some frightening ordinance in their hands, and operating under instructions he doesn't have the paygrade to even get a glimpse of.

So far, it seems that only Myron knows this, but he doesn't dare tell anyone. He has no idea if Second, The Dragon, New Man, or Colonel Richter are pulling the strings on this one, or have been suborned into accepting it. He doesn't even know if this is all some crazy, double or triple bluff, especially since it turns out that Dr. Yesterday's been turned into one of them, too.

But he knows that any single one of those five men could come running down here at a moment's notice, and not only find some excuse to divest him of his new job, but slam him back into a cell, too. And if Myron isn't here, in charge, to play his part when younger SPYGOD shows up, the plan instantly goes to !@#$.

And there are no !@#$ing words for just how bad that is. 

He's kept himself busy, though. After a few drinks to steady his nerves after his new, "They Live," anti-GORGON sunglasses showed him more than he ever wanted to know, he got another idea along those same lines. Since then, when he hasn't had to do official prison warden things, he's been huddled over his desk, working on a little something just in case he needs it. 

Thankfully, that little something is almost done. It just needs a test drive, which could always be arranged, of course. He'd just have to engineer some kind of situation to explain why however many Specials had a peculiar problem, right out of nowhere...

An alarm brings him back to reality. He pushes some of his bits and tools away and flips his computer back up to see what's going on.

"Report?" he asks.

"Intruder down on sublevel twenty, sir," an Agent tells him: "Must have teleported in."

"Well, get on top of it," Myron says: "We've got a few cells down there. I don't feel like having a jailbreak today-"

"Sir, it's him!"

Myron's heart thumps to a dead stop in his chest: "Him who, Agent?"

"It's SPYGOD, sir! He doesn't appear to be armed... they're shooting-"

"Shoot to disable, Agent!" Myron shouts: "Tell them to shoot to disable only! We need him able to talk-"

"Sir, he's... okay, I think the field got him. He's down."

"Are you sure it's him?"

"Yes... I think so, sir. We're taking a look now..."

The screen goes away from the Agent's face and over to the figure, lying prone on the ground, drooling like a drunk and twitching every so often. He's wearing and off-duty uniform, like the kind he'd have worn at that !@#$ty hotel in Costa Rica, and not armed, which is highly unusual, to say the least. But it's SPYGOD, alright. 

"Interrogation room 12," Myron orders: "I'll be right there."

He turns the computer down, and then puts a datastick into it. As soon as he does, a call gets made, and Anil picks up after a dozen, nervewracking rings.

"Hi there," he says: "Do you know what time it is, here?"

"I don't care. It's time, here."

Anil doesn't seem to understand for a moment, and then he does. He nods: "I'll wake Dosha. Anything change on your end?"

"No. But be ready for the plan to change at a moment's notice. I didn't know half of what I know, now, when we arranged things. !@#$ might get !@#$ing bad really !@#$ing quick."

"That's extremely comforting... oh, wait, Dosha's up. Hang on."

Dosha's scarred face looms into the screen and he smiles: "It's that time, then?"

"It is. And I really have to go-"

"You picked a very auspicious moment for this plan to come to fruition, my friend," he says: "My contacts are telling me that something big is going down in India and Pakistan, right now. Known separatist group members are on the move in both countries."

Myron blinks: "Eerie coincidence. The same group?"

"Couldn't be more different," Dosha says: "The Indian one's a radical Islamist outfit that wants to turn the country into a Muslim theocracy. The other's a pro-democracy front that wants to force secularization on Pakistan. Different backers, no crossover members. But they started moving at the same time."

"That's distinctly unsettling," he says: "Do me a favor? Send an untraceable to New Man with that info in it. Whatever happens next, he might need to know about this."

"After this, he'll be your enemy, my friend."

Myron makes a sour face: "I've still got a job to do. You gonna do yours?"

Dosha just smiles, and turns the call off. Myron sighs, takes the datastick out, and puts it back in its hiding place. He takes the finished but untested little something he's been working on for the past few days, and sticks it in his pocket. And then he knocks back a shot of hooch from the bottle he keeps hidden in his desk.

"'Into the abyss I fall,'" he quotes, making sure he's got nothing but trick cuffs on him as he leaves his office for what might be the final time, ever.

* * *

All around the world -- quiet and unseen, save to those who are well-paid to watch -- things are moving into place.

Radical armies get up and go, armed with weapons and technology they have no business handling. The security teams of Presidents and Prime Ministers and the bodyguards of despots have unexpected personnel changes, some of which come at the business end of very large, strange-looking guns. Foresworn spies and excellently-paid saboteurs rise and take well-choreographed positions, awaiting a signal that's soon to come.

"One as bright as the future we're bringing," they were told. 

Everyone thinks they know what's going on, here. Each group has been promised everything they could ever want. Freedom or dictatorship. Free markets or complete control. Religion or its absence. The emancipation of jailed leaders or the incarceration of hated politicians.

Everything or nothing.

The message has varied, but the messengers have stayed somewhat the same. Mysterious benefactors who were able to find their secret lairs and meeting spots, teleport into them, and make an offer they would have been fools to refuse. They offered tools and technology, money and advanced weapons.

And they promised that, on the day it all happened, the lowly would be made high, so long as they believed in their dreams.

"All you need is love," they told them, and while love might not have been high up in their personal vocabulary, they were willing to listen to their excellent proposals.

Their movements don't go unnoticed, of course. But those who are doing the watching are having massive problems getting back to their superiors, right about now. Phones aren't being picked up, email is suspiciously offline, and their messages go unanswered.

All alarms may as well be silent.

So all they can do is break protocol and talk to one another. But even then, the word doesn't exactly go where it needs to. Panicked communiques get scrambled and company computers are ruthlessly attacked by hungry hidden viruses, eager to devour the hard drive of those who type certain key words.

Like "gauss rifle," "impersonation," or "teleporter."

Or "GORGON."

(SPYGOD is listening to Day of the Lords (Joy Division) and having a Dominion Lager )

3/14/12 - The Last Flight of The Owl pt. 4

Joe Samuels swoops from station to station, along the top tiers of the Owls Nest, being extremely careful and quiet as he does.

He'd be quiet, anyway -- even in his own home. But now that his home has been overrun by well-armed monsters, to the point that the gangplanks and walkways below are literally crawling with them, setting the self-destruct mechanisms in motion is going to be very tricky.

Especially without the full uniform that he wore for all those years. He's got his hand talons, clutch boots, and goggles, but those were all he had time to grab.

He doesn't even have his utility belt, without which he's almost naked.

Of course, that just gives him another reason to not directly attack the enemy, for he knows that these Falsefaces are deadly things -- best avoided where possible. They are super-strong, highly resilient, and impervious to pain, with the ability to change their faces to resemble anyone they need to masquerade as. Their guns fire swift pulses of white-hot flechettes capable of burning through low-grade steel, to say nothing of human flesh and Owl armor.

And, as he's seen in the last few minutes, they seem to have acquired the ability to teleport since the last time he and SPYGOD discussed such matters.

Fortunately, they don't know the layout like he does. When his father put this structure together, Joe was constantly by his side, watching and learning and asking questions. And the knowledge that was passed from father to son in those days is all that's keeping him alive, here and now.

He's not the only one, though.

He can see Mark moving through the airducts, back to Owl 10. His thermal goggles tagged him a few minutes ago, and while he can see that he's carrying what has to be the portable drive with him, he doesn't see Rachel, anywhere.

That can't be good, but he has to trust that the situation is in hand.

He also has to trust that, whatever's taking Martha this long, she's doing alright with what she has, too. The explosions from the garage below have him very worried, but he's sure that Thomas got out before then. The kid's good -- a better Talon than he ever was at his age, anyway -- and if anyone could have jumped out of the jaws of death just before they slammed shut, it's him.

That just leaves little Kaitlyn -- who's going to be an amazing Talon, one day -- out there, somewhere, and Hargreaves, who can always pull another body out of storage if something happens.

What can't be replaced, however, is the Owl's Nest, itself. The building below is likewise irreplaceable, and will also be destroyed when the hidden structure above it goes away. That and some of the land on the estate, including that nice pond that they just had put in a few summers ago.

Except for the graveyard, of course. The shaded, solemn plot is far enough away to survive. Only that, and the heavy gates out front, will remain to mark the day the Samuels had to flee Chicago for their lives.

Only his father and mother, his grandfather and grandmother. Aunts and uncles. His wife.

Mathew...

He closes his eyes and shakes his head. No. He will not let this blind him to the moment. He must go on and complete this task.

The family will survive. They will learn from this. They will come back stronger than before from their sojourn in the wilderness.

He has faith in this. And while that faith may not be the size of a mustard seed, under the circumstances, he knows that God has given him greater miracles from even smaller stockpiles of that precious substance.

So he leaps and soars one last time through the great metal cavern his father built, working quickly and diligently to bring it all down upon the things that would destroy that man's legacy.

* * *

A group of four falsefaces walks through the smoke and fire on their way to the library. Their guns are raised and ready to finish the job the butler obviously failed at. And then they can go upstairs to join their brothers, already hunting for the last few occupants on their list of targets.

They're not being all that careful or stealthy, but why should they? Theirs is the superior position. They have every tactical advantage save one, today -- an intimate and secret knowledge of the battlefield -- but so far that advantage isn't counting for much. 

They keep that cheery thought right in their heads as they turn into the smoke-filled library, and begin to creep into it -- eyes open and guns ready. They see their four comrades lying on the floor, in various states of death or dying, but cannot see anything further than their flattened forms for the thick smoke.

The smoke is obviously not from the fires their weapons have set. They try to adjust their bionic eyes to find their targets, but something is ruining their ability to read heat signatures and see movement. It's some kind of outside interference that they haven't encountered before now.

It dawns on the group's leader that they may have encountered some kind of sophisticated chaff, which could be concealing their targets. Their briefings indicated that these urban vigilantes are known to use such tactics in their self-righteous war on American society's many failings. So he decides to have his group fire blindly throughout the room, knowing that, if someone's hidden in there, they will be struck down by a sustained field of fire.

His silent order is carried out, and the room is lit up by their weapons. Old and well-kept books explode and burst into flame. The walls catch fire and windows blow outwards. Shelves shatter, furniture splinters, art explodes, and paintings and photographs are pulverized. 

It took generations to make this room. They blast it apart in less than ten seconds. But at the eleventh, the leader realizes that there's no one else in the room with them.

That's the last thought that goes through his brain before it's shot out the front of his skull. A line of white-hot metal slices through his head, and those of the others in his group. It comes from right behind them, where a very angry mother stands, wielding two of their railguns -- one attached to either side of her son's utility belt, and what's left of her son strapped to the front of her chest, facing her.

"That's what you get for not looking at the ceiling," she hisses as they fall down dead. The light from the fires in the library play off a face streaked with blood and tears. 

And rage -- sacred and pure.

"Mom...?" Thomas whispers, slowly coming around in spite of the painkillers she's injected him with.

"Shhhh," she tells him as they turn around and head for the study, and the elevator she's praying hasn't been wholly compromised: "Go to sleep, honey. It's a bad dream."

"I thought I was... Kaitlyn..."

"She's fine, sweetie," Martha says, kissing his forehead and praying it's not a lie. Two more falsefaces turn a corner and she perforates them both, quickly and efficiently, and then ducks out of the way as two more return fire.

"Remember... she's next..." her son breathes as she slides back to where she was, just a second ago, and blows one of her harriers to pieces from ribcage up: "I saw her... wearing the uniform..."

"Thomas, you need to be quiet, honey," Martha begs him, not able to continue hearing him sing the praises of her possibly-dead niece. She ducks back behind cover as the survivor returns fire, and then sees even more firestreams joining his.

Reinforcements. At least two more. Maybe three.

"She's gonna be so good, someday," he says, smiling beatifically: "I can't wait..."

"Neither can I," she says, and decides there's no time to lose. 

She only has one set of earplugs -- his. She prays for his forgiveness as she puts them in, and then reaches into one of his belt pockets for a Screechbomb. She primes it and tosses it around the corner, hoping the enemy doesn't have the sense to duck. 

And then she puts her fingers as deep into her son's ears as she can, hoping it's enough to protect him from what's going to follow.

The sonic grenade shatters every window in the hallway, rattles her teeth, and makes Thomas scream as his eardrums burst around her fingers. His eyes get as wide as dinner plates, and for a brief second she thinks he understands exactly what's happened to him, and what's left of him.

Then the moment's gone, along with the noise. Thomas collapses back into the unconsciousness that she'd hoped to send him into before doing all this. Martha waits a second, and then, ever so carefully, peeks around the corner.

Ten falsefaces lie there -- their faces shattered, all deathly still. She quickly runs through what's left of them for the study, hoping what she's done has scattered them enough for her to do what needs to be done, next.

And hoping that she hasn't added one more horrible injury to her already-maimed son.

* * *

Mark slowly moves out of the air duct, just as the group of falseface guards that had been watching The Eyes finally leave it.

It was a rather nerve-wracking three minutes, slowly working the bolts off the access panel from the inside while waiting for them to go. He was about to move back up the line and create some kind of distraction to get them out of there, but some other problem seems to have gotten their attention. And thank God for that.

He takes the data pack and slowly moves it over to the two giant windows, and then carefully plugs it into an access hatch between them. That's all that needs to be done, for now. But he has to wait for Joe to get here, along with Martha.

(Hargreaves, too, if he can make it up here. They might be able to capture his programming-stream in flight if he can't, though.)

His thoughts turn to Rachel, once more. He hitches a breath and puts his hands to his eyes, feeling them turn wet again. He knows he can't keep this bottled up forever, but prays he can hold on just long enough to get them to safety.

"Are we ready?" Joe asks from up on the high ceiling of the room, just as he drops down without another sound.

"Yes, we are," Mark says, really not surprised that the man snuck up on him, under the circumstances.

"Where's Rachel?"

Mark bites his lip and looks down. Joe blinks, and then puts his hand to his face. He knew, somehow, but wasn't ready to hear it.

Is anyone, really?

"We're waiting for Martha, then," Joe says, trying to snap out of his grief: "Thomas is after Kaitlyn. I think Hargreaves has been compromised along with the rest of our defenses."

"Then will Owl 10 even work?"

"You tell me," Joe says: "It's supposed to be separate, isn't it?"

"It is," Mark says, really not needing the man's lousy attitude, right now: "It doesn't come on until we turn it on. But if they've hit us this bad...?"

"Then I guess we find out when we find out," Joe says: "All we can do is pray."

He holds out a hand, Mark takes it, and they bow their heads as one and talk to God -- knowing that He's always listening but hoping there's room in His plan for them, today.

* * *

The fully-enclosed elevator shaft that leads up to the Owls Nest comes out in the center of a large grouping of walkways and ramps. It doesn't make a lot of noise when it's in operation, but it's pretty obvious that something is happening when the car's on the move.

So it's no surprise that, the moment it starts going up, every falseface in the area converges towards it. Within moments there are at least fifty of them standing around it, and all of them have their guns pointed right at the door.

The mechanism stops. The doors open. A figure moves forward.

The elevator explodes with white hot fury as fifty separate firestreams rip into it, turning the column incandescent. The cylinder isn't quite cut in two by their pulsing bursts of fire, to say nothing of the lone figure who was inhabiting it at the moment.

The falsefaces stop firing in eerie unison. A few of the ones in the front of the group get up from their kneeling position and walk towards what's left of their target. 

The figure isn't one of their intended targets. It's clearly one of their fellow falsefaces, propped up and sent up the elevator to draw their fire. 

There's obviously some head-scratching going on there, but not for long. Another silent order is given, and the falsefaces blast what little remains of the elevator into flinders. They shoot at the top of the car, and the bottom. They send fire up and down the shaft, with each seconds' worth of sustained fire all but guaranteeing that nothing living could have survived that conflagration.

And as they pulverize the object, hoping to kill one of their primary targets, and more falsefaces teleport into the Owls Nest to provide backup for the search for the others, a bulky figure slowly and carefully makes her way across the ceiling.

Martha chooses her route to The Eyes with extreme care, knowing that if she goes too slow they'll see her, but if she goes too fast the claws may fail. They were made for her son, and weren't designed to carry this much combined weight. But only one of the falsefaces has to look up and see her, dangling from the curved, steel roof, and then she's as good as dead.

They're as good as dead, really. She prays that her son -- his eyes rolling, his ears caked with blood -- does not wake up again until they're safely down, and then away.

But each handhold only takes them so far, and each time she looks off to her goal, it seems even further away.

A miracle would be nice, right about now. Maybe three of them. Or at least some strength.

* * *

"I see her," Joe says, looking around the entrance to The Eyes, up at the ceiling: "She's got Thomas... and..."

"And what?"

"Oh dear Lord," Joe gasps, shaking his head: "He's... he doesn't look..."

Mark sneaks over and looks up, seeing the broken boy that Martha's carrying. The goggles reveal he's still amongst the living, but how much longer that will be is a good question.

A better question is 'who's looking after Kaitlyn?' But he tables that for the moment. There just isn't time to worry about her, right now.

She'll be safe. Somehow he knows this. 

"Let me go and get her," he says to Joe: "You know how to start her up. She'll pilot just like you trained."

"No," Joe says: "She can get here on her own. But there might need to be a distraction."

"Then let me-"

"Mark, I need you here," the man says, putting a hand on his arm: "I'm counting on you. If this family's going to survive, it's going to need you."

"Funny how you never make me feel that way," Mark hisses, shrugging the man's hand away. But Joe puts it right back and looks the man in the eyes.

"Mark, I trust you more than I trust anyone else here, including my own daughter," Joe says: "We were all born into this. We came into this world with The Owl looking over our shoulders and God looking into our hearts. It's our destiny, and we couldn't get out of here if we tried. 

"But you fought your way here, Mark. You earned the right to join us. I love my family more than myself, but I'd take one of you over ten of us, any day. 

"Now, I've been tough on you, yes, but no tougher than I've been on anyone else, including my own daughter. Including myself. 

"But if we're going to survive this, and come back, I'm going to need you to be ten times the man you already are. You're going to have to make hard choices, like letting me go out there and risk my life so you can pilot my daughter and my grandson out of here, and save your own girl's life.

"So can I count on you? Because if not-"

"You're wasting time," Mark says, clapping him on the shoulder: "Go get her. Signal me when you have her. I'll start her up."

Joe smiles. He doesn't even have to ask what the signal will be. Somehow, Mark will just know.

He's that good.

* * *

The platform is closer, now. Maybe thirty feet. Martha just has to get within ten and she can swing, leap, and land. Then she'll just have to run the distance to The Eyes, and hope none of the falsefaces down below get the jump on her.

She's another three feet closer when she sees her father leave The Eyes and run smack into two falsefaces coming around the corner of the platform. They'd have seen her if it hadn't been for him. They're about to open fire, and she almost cries out, but her dad has them face-smashed and disarmed in less time than it takes her to take in a breath.

He looks back at her and smiles. Then he grabs their guns and, running back the way they came, opens fire on the falsefaces massed below, whooping and yelling as he does.

The reaction is instantaneous. They open fire back at him, all but obliterating the platform he's standing on. He leaps away from it at the right moment, grabbing hold of a stanchion on a nearby wall and swinging up and over them, firing with his free hand. They continue to fire at him, but are unable to get a lock on him as he swoops, soars, and tumbles in the air.

Just like an owl evading capture.

Martha's on the platform before she knows it. Then she's hustling for The Eyes, seeing that Mark is at the doorway, gesturing her to come forward. As soon as she's there, he helps her get Thomas off her, and places him into one of the room's many chairs, ever so carefully.

"Did you get what we needed from the library?" he asks.

"I did," she says: "But Hargreaves is lost to us. They screwed up his programming."

"I figured," he sighs. 

"Where's Rachel?"

"She... she didn't make it," Mark tells her, not daring to look her in the face when he does: "Get your dad in here now. We need to leave."

Martha's stunned for a second by the news of her cousin's death. But she quickly rebounds -- having seen too much death today to let it break her -- and does what she's told.

She leans out the entrance and whistles high and low. Her father hears, even over the firing of their enemies, loops around in mid-air, and heads back to The Eyes. On the way he throws a handful of Screechbombs down, trying to time his landing to their going off.

"Mark, put in some earplugs," Martha orders as she runs back to get a chair. Mark does as he's told, and begins the countdown on the portable drive. Ten seconds should about do it, right?

Joe lands on the platform, just in front of the entrance to The Eyes. The falsefaces' firestreams light up the floor around him, and he just barely somersaults off it in time. Then he's in the room and rushing forward, watching the countdown on the drive as it reaches 7, 6, 5...

There's a box next to the drive, plugged into it. He turns it on with his finger, and then a retinal scanner pops up and makes sure he's who he says he is.

"'And I only am escaped alone to tell thee,'" he quotes at two seconds to go. 

The Screechbombs go off. The falsefaces begin dying.

The strange energy source that powers the Owls Nest stops, drops, and begins to roll towards critical mass.

And once the drive reaches zero -- a half-second after Joe straps himself into one of the chairs -- the Owls Nest begins to shift and move.

The walls break in certain spots, opening up along hidden lines and unseen seams. Rooms are reshuffled and rebuilt. Platforms flatten and stack. Entire sectors crack open and share electronics and mechanics. Hidden but mighty engines engage, and lift the self-assembling structure slowly up and away from its cradle. 

The Owls Nest breaks itself down in death, only to become something new: Owl 10, itself. 

This was ever the great secret of The Owl: a thing located nowhere on the blueprints or design specs, but encoded in the very warp and woof of the structure since its earliest days. When all hope is lost, and flight is a must, the family can create a portable headquarters to escape within.

And perhaps, one day, return the same way.

"Can we do this in time?" Martha shouts over the sounds of the newly-formed engines kicking in as the room they're in becomes one massive cockpit.

"Yes we can," Mark shouts, watching the 3D controls form around his chair: "We've got thirty seconds till the Nest goes critical. We can be in Wisconsin by then-"

His pride is short-lived. He sees a blue light flickering behind him, reflected in one of the unfolding panels, and turns his head to see two falsefaces teleporting into the room. They level their guns at him and prepare to fire.

Martha screams and tries to unbuckle herself, but she isn't even half done before her father's up and attacking them both. He takes one down effortlessly, but the other sees the blows coming and dodges them with eerie ease.

Joe leaps back and tries to get the upper hand, just as the entire aircraft lurches to the right. He doesn't quite anticipate the change in direction, but his opponent stands his ground, and fires his weapon right at the older man -- shooting his left leg off at the knee and sending him sprawling.

His scream of pain sounds like the end of their world.

There's confusion in the room, then. Mark tries to right the aircraft and activate the internal defenses. Martha succeeds in getting out of her chair and hurling throwing claws at the falseface. The creature takes the claws in the arm, chest, and clavicle, but doesn't seem to mind.

And then it aims its gun at the front of the cockpit, once again -- clearly intending to destroy everything it can.

Martha doesn't even see her father leap up from the ground. There's a blur of motion as the falseface's shot goes wild, and then they're tumbling towards the back of the room, which is quickly converting into the rear of the aircraft.

The two figures bounce helplessly from panel to panel as their fighting arena rearranges itself around them. Joe punches but misses as the falseface slides away from him, and the falseface shoots but misses as the terrain returns the favor.

And as they fight, bits and pieces of the slowly-accelerating landscape are clearly visible as as the plane assembles itself around them. Any wrong move could send one or both hurtling out of the plane. 

Martha throws an Owl Line at a stable part of the forward compartment, and -- tying it around her --  advances on the thing intent on killing them, throwing more claws with every step. Not all of them strike their target, but enough hit to make it harder for him to connect with her father. 

With each step, she comes closer to saving him. But with each step, the plane's insides change yet again, and often send him further away.  

"Just a little more, please, Lord Jesus," she prays, reading a line for her father: "Let him grab this. No more death, today, please. Please Lord God, no more death..."

And then, just as she's close enough to almost fling claws through the monster's blank, silver eyes with one hand, and throw the lifeline with the other, a huge panel slides out of the way to allow something else to slide in. 

The falseface and Joe, locked in a fatal clinch, fall out of the suddenly-empty space, and back towards the mansion.

Martha screams and throws the line, and her father, seeing it coming, reaches up to take it.

The falseface sees this, and, as it plummets to its certain death, opens fire on Martha.

The miracle is that none of the firestreams hit her -- raking across the underside of Owl 10, instead. 

The tragedy is that one of the firestreams strikes the lifeline, and cuts it right in two.

Martha howls, trying to ready another lifeline. Joe smiles serenely, looking at her with tenderness, pride, and love as he follows his would-be assassin towards the ground.

And then the panel slides back, and there's steel floor between Martha and the man she'd hoped to save.

She falls to her knees, sobbing uncontrollably. The aircraft completes itself, with all systems showing 100%. Mark tells it to go as fast as it can, ten seconds ago, and it complies beautifully. 

As he falls, Joe twists around to look at his house, one last time. He has no regrets in these last moments. He has served well, he has paved the way for others to serve just as well, if not better, and he has protected the family mission with his last breath.

Is there a better epitaph? He thinks not, and as the large metal structure he just condemned to death rushes up to meet him, he says one, last prayer.

The Owls Nest becomes visible for a full second just before he hits it, and appears to be little more than a cracked, metal stadium that's folding in on itself. But then a massive, purple ball of light appears inside it -- plasma crackling throughout its undulating surface -- and Joe falls right into it.

The ball expands outwards at an alarmingly fast rate, soon encompassing the entire structure, downstairs and all. And when it recedes back to nothing, and vanishes, there's nothing left of the Samuels house but a large, perfectly circular hole in the ground. 

* * *

Martha eventually straps herself back into a chair. It'll only be a matter of time before they've slowed down enough to turn on the cloak and attend to Thomas' wounds. But for now she can sit, put her head in her hands, and weep for her father, her cousin, and the butler she's known since she was a child.

Mark lets her cry, knowing there's nothing he could say right now that would help. But a part of him is intensely grateful. The communication network has started up again, and he's getting a clear and steady signal from Kaitlyn's watch. It looks like she's heading up to Wisconsin, no doubt to the rendezvous point at that tourist trap cheese store that they used to joke about stopping at, but never did.

"Mars Cheese Castle," he muses, shaking his head. He thinks of Rachel laughing at it, and telling him there was better cheese to be found elsewhere, further off the highway. And him thinking that was never the point, but loving her laughter so much that it wasn't worth arguing. 

That's family, in the end. Not the arguments, or the strife, but the simple moments when you look at one another and feel Gods love working between you all. 

With that in mind, he engages the cloak and the sound suppression, and the Samuels family vanishes in midair. 

One day to return. 

(SPYGOD is listening to Ogive no. 1 (Erik Satie, by way of William Orbit) and raising a toast to the dead with Big Eddy IPA)

3/14/12 - The Last Flight of The Owl pt. 3

Mark and Grandpa Joe cross each others' path about a dozen times in less than five minutes as they prepare to leave their home forever.

Mark's busy getting their portable headquarters -- Owl 10 -- up and running and ready to fly. Meanwhile, Joe's attending to things that only he can -- most of which involve handprint and retinal confirmation, and are the sort of things one does only if the worst case scenario is upon them.

Like now.

"Almost got her ready," Mark announces as Joe goes flying past, holding a number of circuit boards in his hands.

"Good. Once it's ready, tell everyone to finish up and get up here," the patriarch of the family orders.

"I'll have to hoof it, but okay."

"You do that, Mark. We need to be gone. Now."

Mark nods, and, seeing that the startup sequence is almost done, starts running for the computer core.

As he does, he wonders why the man had to put it like that. Did he really think he was just going to sit there and sip at his coffee while their world fell down around their heads?

Still, it's always been this way. Just because the worst case scenario is coming true doesn't mean that years of personal history are going to just vanish in its wake.

Unlike everyone else here, Mark married into the clan. He fell head-over-heels in love with Rachel when they met in college, in his mechanical engineering classes, and the more he got to know her the more that love grew. She was a bit late to reciprocate, but he was nothing if not stubborn, and she eventually gave in.

He was in for a bit of a shock when they got serious, though. The family treated him like a hostile organism, all but scaring him away from her when she finally brought him around to the Samuels estate. At first, he thought it was because they were old money, and on the lookout for golddiggers -- which he understood. But even after he'd proven, as best as he could, that he'd have married her even if she owed the IRS a million dollars, they were still more than a little standoffish.

Then, one day, not long after he proposed (she said she'd have to think about it) he was summoned to the estate to talk to her father. He was expecting a really degrading time of it, but instead the man treated him with respect for the first time ever. Sitting in the mansion's well-appointed study, they talked for what seemed hours about family and faith, and his intentions towards Rachel, and such was their discussion that Mark had no idea if he was already approved of, or being mined for reasons to say 'no.'

But then, instead of showing Mark to the door, Rachel's father took him to a corner of the study, and opened a secret door that revealed a small elevator.

"What I'm about to show you changes everything, Mark," he said: "I know you want to be a part of the family, and I think I'd like you to be as well, but I need you to know exactly what that means."

And the moment the doors opened into the Owl's Nest, Mark finally understood a lot of things. He realized why the Samuels clan had been so distant and unwelcoming. He figured out why Rachel had always been breaking dates and saying "family business."

And he knew, at last, where she got her steel and sense of purpose from.

"So what do you think?" the man asked when they were done, and looking out at the world through The Eyes.

"I think... this is amazing," Mark said: "I'm honored you would trust me with this."

"You've earned it, son. Believe me. We had you checked out ten ways to Sunday before you even set foot in the downstairs house. The rest was just to make sure you could put up with us."

Mark nodded: "That makes sense. And you followed me, too?"

He smiled and clapped Mark on the shoulders: "Constantly. But don't be discouraged that you didn't see them. That's kind of the idea. You'll learn all about that, in time."

"I will?"

"Yes. This is what it means to be a member of the family, Mark. There's no half measures, here. You're either in and helping, or you're not."

"You want me to... wear a costume?"

"Oh, no," he laughed: "I don't expect you to suit up and hit the streets. That's a very special and risky calling. But there's a lot of other things an operation like this needs."

"Sir, I'd mop floors and clean the ceiling if it meant I spent the rest of my life with your daughter," Mark said: "But how about if I fix your car?"

"How are you with aircraft?"

Mark smiled: "I'll figure it out."

The subsequent marriage was a great and beautiful thing, carried out on the Samuels' estate. All their friends, family, and Chicago's well-to-do were in attendance, along with a few other people Mark would eventually learn were Strategic Talents.

(SPYGOD was there, of course, and thankfully did not mangle the proceedings; he seemed to respect the old man a little too much for that.)

But the real ceremony -- the one that carried the most weight with this family -- took place the night before. There, in front of the others, Mark swore on the old, huge family Bible to protect the family, continue its mission, and be Christ's hands on Earth.

It was the most moving experience of his entire life up until that point. And he made a quiet vow, there before God, to do his absolute personal best at all times, so as to not let these extraordinary people down.

In that vein, he learned how to built, maintain, and fix aircraft, speedboats, motorcycles, gyrocopters -- even the occasional submarine. He worked on their armor variants, invented new devices for them to use, and even played guinea pig for them when things needed to be tested out. He'd been there on their brightest and darkest days -- a constant, good-natured grumbler who could be depended on to take whatever they had and make whatever they needed, and usually just in time.

(He'd helped bring a new generation into the family, too, but that was a quiet sort of accomplishment, best achieved in secret between a man and a woman made one in the eyes of God.)

But even after all that, Rachel's uncle still treated him like the new kid at school. Good days, bad days, or anywhere inbetween, all he ever got from him -- before, during, and now after his time as The Owl -- was thinly masked condescension, served with the need to tell him things he already knew, and slightly sprinkled with what might be contempt.

Mark did his best to ignore it, and prayed that whatever divided them might be brought to light, eventually, and fixed. But people weren't machines, as he knew too well. This was just something that was going to take time.

Time they'd have to find somewhere else, on a day when they weren't about to be invaded.

"Rachel, honey?" he says, turning the corner and expecting to run right into the locked doors, which he would then expect to bang on until she yelled at him that she was going as fast as she could.

Except that the doors are not locked. They are open. The room beyond is pitch black.

And the only sounds he can hear in there are towers sparking as they melt into slag.

He hitches a breath, reaches into his pocket, and puts on a pair of Owl Goggles. They're the next model, which he was planning to unveil in a month or so, once he'd worked all the bugs out. Less bulky, more powerful, and with better temperature sensors, but probably still not good enough for Joe.

They're good enough to tell him everything he doesn't want to know, though.

He sees two naked, skull-faced men with large guns (recently fired) walking through the ruins of their data storage.

He sees the portable drive, all charged and full (and hot) and ready to go.

And lastly, most horribly, he sees his wife's body lying over by her desk.

He doesn't need the goggles' temperature readouts to tell him that she's dead -- the fact that everything above her clavicle is a smoking, splattered ruin is evidence enough. She must have been going for some of the self-defense devices she kept over by the desk when they got her, judging from how she fell.

He wants to scream. He wants to run in there and kill these faceless monsters. He wants to make them suffer as they must have made her suffer, and have made him suffer, and his daughter...

But he realizes that if they're here, there will be others. That's just the way these things go, sometimes.

Hand-in-hand with that, he realizes that if they're here, and they killed her that easily, the internal sensors and defenses must be down

He also realizes that they're looking for something, and are distracted.

Revenge can wait. He must get the data. He must get it upstairs to Owl 10. He must get the rest of the family out of here before the Owl's Nest is denied to the enemy.

He has to stay strong and safe for them, and especially for Kaitlyn.

So he sneaks into the room, quietly as he can, takes the drive from where it rests on the floor, and, without looking back at his wife's body, or her killers, leaves the room as swiftly as silence will let him.

That he does this with experimental goggles full of tears is something of a miracle. Something tells him they will need many more, today.

* * *

There's an old, large mission over by Kaitlyn's school that's been abandoned for some time. The Samuels family bought it years ago, as it had fallen into disrepair and turned into a crack house. They cleaned it up, cleaned it out, and promised the community that they'd refurbish it and put it back into use.

That was a few years ago. Since then, they've come up with a number of plausible excuses as to why construction hasn't started, and the place remains boarded up. However, they've created a "temporary" facility, not two blocks away, that does everything the original building ever did, and more, so no one's really complaining -- much less asking how the super-rich, highly-influential Samuels clan are being stymied by red tape.

Of course, the mission will be put back up, one day, but not until Kaitlyn goes into Middle School. The building has secretly been converted into one of The Owl's many hideouts: special, hidden facilities that serve as way stations, medical facilities, vehicle storage, and criminal detainment. No one outside the family knows about these places, and they come in very handy at times.

This one is all Kaitlyn's. She has the key, and is fully authorized to come here and hide in an emergency. And if being kidnapped out of band practice, and chased by two fast-moving, cop-killing men in overcoats isn't an emergency, then she doesn't know what is. 

She thinks she's lost them in the maze of buildings that lead up to the place, and hopefully the numerous people who asked her if she was lost, scared, or needed them to call the police didn't accost her pursuers. She really doesn't need any more deaths on her conscience, today.

Taking one last look around, she ducks into the back of the building, inserts the key in the lock, and waits a moment. She knows that, as she stands there, several very sophisticated banks of sensors are making certain she's the person the key belongs to, and not some thug who managed to take it from a little girl. 

Once the computer's satisfied, it opens the door, and she runs inside, hoping no one saw her.

"Mom, can you hear me?" she shouts into the cavernous chamber beyond, hoping the hideout's many audio devices will pick her up, as always: "I'm being chased by two weirdoes. They tried to take me out of school. They killed... they killed a policeman who tried to help me. I'm at the mission. Can someone come get me?"

But there's nothing but silence. This is very troubling. She could understand her watch not working, but what's wrong with the communications net? Even if the satellite was down, there are enough backups and redundancies that something should work.

(Her dad told them what they all were, once. She went crazy trying to remember them all. He laughed and said don't worry, that's his job.)

"I'll have to go home," she says, and heads over to the vehicles. There's an Owl Car, a Talon Bike, and a gyrocopter that's seen better days. There's also a smaller vehicle, made just for her, that's made to look like a compact car with two parents in the front seats.

(Androids, of course. Just like their butler, only not as real.)

"Car, take me home," she says, walking towards it.

"Kaitlyn, you don't want to do that," the 'man' behind the wheel says, turning to look at her.

"Some mean people were here, earlier, and boobytrapped everything, sweetie," the woman adds, turning to look at her as well.

"What do you mean, boobytrapped?" Kaitlyn asks, stepping back. 

"It means that if you sit down, we'll explode, honey," the man says, sighing.

"All the vehicles are like that," the woman says: "We couldn't stop them. They had all the override codes. They teleported in here, too."

"Are they still here?" Kaitlyn asks, hugging her back closer.

"Oh, we never left," a familiar voice informs her as its owner walks from the darkness, not far behind her. It's one of the men in overcoats, though she can't figure out how he got in here so quickly.

"Well, we sort of did," his companion says, stepping out from the darkness on the other side of the room.

"But not really," one adds.

"It's a bit confusing," the other admits.

"Really."

"Better to just accept our word on it."

"You killed that policeman," she says, stepping in a different direction, back towards the door.

"Oh, we didn't do that," one says.

"No, they did," the other insists, pointing to the door. Kaitlyn turns to look, and sees two more men in overcoats coming in through it. The same two men...?

"Very confusing, I know," the original one says.

"But it's the way we work," the original other adds.

Kaitlyn stops in her tracks. Her face screws up and turns red. She falls to her knees, puts her hands over her ears, and starts bawling, as though she'd broken something. 

"Oh, don't cry out like that," one says, walking closer.

"There's nothing to be scared of," the other says, doing the same.

"We're going to bring a whole new world, little girl," the original one tries to cheer her up, joining the two that were here all along: "A world made of love."

"And the good news is that, if you're really good, you'll get to help us make it," the original other adds, smiling from ear to ear.

Kaitlyn looks up, and for a moment it looks like they've got this one in the bag. But then her sad, crying face is replaced with something entirely different: rage and determination.

"Suck on this, you poop heads," she spits, and pulls a long, white rod out of her bag. It looks a little like a heavy-duty mace dispenser, except that it's got too many holes, and looks a little... owlish.

Their smiles go away a split second before the sonic grenade goes off in her hand. A moment after that, every piece of glass in the room explodes, except for the specially-treated ones on the vehicles. 

Every one of the men screams in agony as their ears burst like ripe plums, and then their faces literally crack and shatter like kicked-in televisions, revealing naked skulls with baleful, silver eyes.

They fall to the ground, one by one, clutching their true faces. They twitch and shake, and then fall still.

Kaitlyn turns the grenade off, stands up, and takes the earplugs out of her ears. Then she reaches into her case, right behind her flute, and pulls out a very long, metal truncheon.

"This is for that policeman," she says, and proceeds to give each of her pursuers' skulls a good, hard crack on the back, hoping this means they'll stay down.

"Car, are you still okay?" she asks, once that's done.

"Yes, but we're still boobytrapped, honey," the woman says.

"That's okay," Kaitlyn says, remembering those long afternoons with her father, at his workbench, and getting the two multitools he gave her for Christmas out of her pack: "You tell me where they put the bombs, and we'll be done in no time."

"Where to then?"

She looks around the shattered hideout. If these men knew where this place was, and could teleport in and put bombs in the vehicles, then there might be another reason she can't reach the Owls Nest on her watch.

"Let's table that for later," she says. She doesn't know exactly what that means, but dad and mom say it a lot at times like this.

It'll just have to do.

* * *

The iron owl was something of a family heirloom. Martha's grandfather claimed it came from a fellow crimefighter, somewhere in Europe, and he made it for The Owl as a gift for helping him solve a case. She was told the story once, as a little girl, but didn't quite remember all the details -- just that it was important enough to keep on display in the library, along with a number of other, orinthological rarities. 

As such, she feels very badly at having to use it to defend herself, here and now, from the four falsefaces trying to kill her. But it's all she has to defend herself with, and is just light enough to make a useful weapon, and just heavy enough to do some real damage.

One good swing to the nose and their faces shatter. One further, follow-up blow and their eyes are driven back into their skulls. That, coupled with the best, normally-lethal kicks and strikes she can muster, and they go down, one after the other.

Getting them to follow her in here was simple. Getting them to think she was someplace she wasn't was tricky. But once they fired on what they thought was her hiding place, she was able to burst out at them and do her worst.

Now they are down, and she is not.

She takes one moment to compose herself, and then drops the battered, iron owl down on the last one she just took out. She hopes her grandfather understands. She's sure he does.

In order to open the safes, she needs to get certain things from behind the painting of the Prophet Ezekiel on the far wall, above the fireplace. She pulls one of the light fixtures beside the fireplace towards her, and the picture slides up and away, giving her a chance to reach up and take them.

High tech keys that are lit up with blue LEDs. They flicker slightly as she takes them in hand, recognizing that she's someone who should be holding them. If it wasn't her, something bad would have happened.

One of the safes is behind another object d'art. She moves it out of the way, opens up the safe, and extracts a large, leatherbound book, handling it with all due reverence, and moving it onto the table. It is a priceless object, and must be preserved at all costs.

The other is hiding in the wall, behind a picture of the entire family at its greatest number. She was very young when it was taken, and doesn't remember the day. But she does remember how important it was to everyone who was there, and why.

She moves the picture aside and opens the safe. Inside it is a cache of data sticks. The information in them is also priceless, and she moves them to the table with the book. 

Martha's about to get the special carrying case for the two things from where it's hidden when she hears something behind her. She whirls to face it, but sees nothing there.

And when she turns again, it's in order to be struck head-on by a familiar, if broken face.

What's left of her son collides with her at frightening speed, knocking her back onto the floor and sending her sprawling. She tries to get up, but then realizes who she's been hit by. 

And when she sees that her son is little more than a charred and broken torso -- legs blown off, arms burned down to the elbows -- her training and discipline break down, and she screams in shock and horror.

"I am so sorry, madam," the newly-respawned Hargreaves says, stalking into the room to view his handiwork: "I found him in what's left of the garage. Perhaps you heard the explosions? One of them put paid to his time as a costumed crimefighter, I'm afraid."

"How.... how could you?" she screams.

"They appear to have corrupted my programming," he says, slowly walking closer: "I do believe they've taken control of the security in the Owls Nest, which would explain a great many things. I was safe until I downloaded myself into this spare body to be of better service. Believe me, the irony is not lost."

"Hargreaves, deactivate," she commands. He does not, and smiles sadly.

"They want me to send you a message, just before I kill you and your son," he says: "They say 'there is no room for hate in a world made of love.'"

"This is love?" she asks, seeing her son's eyelids flutter ever so slightly.

"Love is sometimes tough and cruel," he says: "That's me speaking, though. Not them. What is them is that I'm to pull your head from your shoulders and then batter him to death with it."

"That's horrible. You can't do this, Hargreaves."

"I can't not, dear Martha. Everything below the neck is theirs, now, and I'm having a hard time keeping it from going any further than that."

Martha puts her son down as the android comes closer, hands raised to do its terrible, promised deed.

"I am so terribly sorry, Martha," the butler says: "I wish there was some way to stop this."

"So do I," she says, and tosses one of the safe keys at his face

He sees it coming and, smiling subtly, cranes his neck as far forward as he can to catch it with his teeth. He can't say 'thank you' with a mouth full of complicated circuitry, but Martha somehow knows that's what he would have done.

Then the key explodes, taking his entire head with it. The body stands there, stupidly, and then falls down to its knees. She throws the other key at the chest, just to be sure, with similarly explosive results, and the hijacked butler goes flying onto its back -- steel ribs smoking and sparking.

"Thomas, can you hear me?" she says, gingerly patting her son's face. He half-murmurs something, and she checks his pulse. It's weak, but if she can get him to Owl 10, they can stabilize him.

She looks at her son, and then at the things she was sent to retrieve. Can she really carry both? Can she really make a choice between the two?

"A world made of love, huh?" she snarls, getting to her feet and putting the essential things into what's left of her son's costume: "When I'm done with you people, you're going to have a whole new definition of what that word means."

(SPYGOD is listening to Sonnambula (William Orbit) and having an Argus California Steam)