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CECIL STEDMAN'S POV
With a sharp, crackling flash of blue teleportation light, I was finally back in the Pentagon's sub-basement.
The air smelled like ozone and stale coffee.
I was standing in the very center of the Global Defense Agency's main operational hub.
The most heavily fortified and technologically advanced room on the face of the Earth.
Normally, this room was a beehive of constant, low-level panic.
Today, it was dead silent.
I blinked away the spots in my vision, only to realize that every single analyst, technician, and heavily armed guard had stopped whatever they were doing to stare directly at me.
Actually, no.
They weren't staring at me.
They were staring at the faceless, metallic blue-and-silver corporate mascot casually strolling out of the teleportation pad right behind me, looking around the most secure facility on the planet with the innocent curiosity of a five-year-old at a petting zoo.
I felt a migraine the size of Texas start drilling directly into the back of my skull.
I pinched the bridge of my nose, hard, trying to stave off the pressure building behind my eyes.
"Alright, people! Back to your goddamn consoles!" I barked, my voice echoing harshly across the command center. "It's not like we haven't seen weird shit before!"
The room slowly unspooled back into motion, though half the staff were still stealing nervous glances at the mascot.
Donald Ferguson walked up to me, meticulously adjusting his glasses.
He looked at Pepsi Man, then at me.
"Sir," Donald started, his voice flat and professionally monotone.
I liked that about the man.
"Is it safe to bring an unknown biological… or possibly ontological... entity... back to HQ? Not to mention, we'll need to run a full quarantine and infection panel on you immediately. There's no telling what microscopic pathogens you were exposed to, in that alternate dimension."
I just grunted.
The immediate assumption that I was carrying a microscopic interdimensional plague was exactly why Donald was my right-hand man.
"The mascot is on a probationary visit," I said, rubbing my scarred jaw. "His master lent him to us to find out the 'limit of corporate greed,' as the kid put it. See how far a mascot can be pushed before he breaks and if he passes the test, put him in for the candidacy for the new hero team we're building."
Donald looked at the mascot.
Pepsi Man stared back.
Without making a single sound, the metallic entity reached god knows where and produced a perfectly chilled can of soda, and offered it to Donald.
Donald didn't even flinch.
He just reached into his suit, pulled out a sterile plastic evidence bag, dropped the can in, and sealed it airtight.
I held back a tired groan.
This was just the tip of the iceberg with this kid.
"Oh, and Donald," I added. "Give Kiasen the standard Alien package with Fake IDs, papers, you know the works. Also, take my personal Alpha-Black slush fund and transfer it to a protective custody account under his name. Set a temporary spending limit of fifty million dollars."
Donald's steps faltered for a fraction of a second, his fingers tightening slightly on the evidence bag.
But I raised a finger to cut him off.
"It'll be easier to track his movements if we get him to use our money rather than let him loot it from some innocent citizen."
That was honestly the least weird order I was going to give him today.
"Second, take these," I said, tossing him a worn-out container filled with bizarre and highly questionable green sludge pills the kid had handed off to me during our negotiations. "Have the lab run a full chemical breakdown. I want to know exactly what these narcotics are made of and see if we can reproduce them."
Donald dropped it in another evidence bag of his.
We kept walking toward the secure war room, leaving the mascot to wander the cafeteria level under heavy guard.
"Third thing on the list Donald," I said while keeping my eyes fixed straight ahead. "I want you to pull the Mauler Twins from their current holding facility and prepare them for a direct handover. Kaisen wants them and he wants them intact."
Donald actually stopped walking for a second and stared at my back like I had suddenly grown a second head.
"The Mauler Twins sir?" Donald asked and his voice actually cracked a little bit. "We are handing over two of the most dangerous villains to a highly volatile party?"
I stopped and turned around to look at him. I was tired and I did not have the energy to debate the ethics of my decisions today.
"I know exactly how insane it sounds Donald," I told him while rubbing the bridge of my nose. "Just forge the paperwork and make it happen. The kid instead tossed over a potential resource. Which reminds me, Fourth thing on the agenda. I need you to put a covert task force on a Upstate college student named D.A. Sinclair."
Donald caught back up to me and pulled out his tablet to take notes. "A college student sir? Did this Sinclair do something to warrant a GDA task force?"
"Kaisen was extremely specific about that one," I grumbled as we turned the corner towards the war room. "Find the kid and detain him quietly before he kills any more college students for his twisted little science projects. Bag him and see if we can put his 'ReAnimen' to good use."
Donald nodded and tapped rapidly on his screen. "Understood. Is there a fifth order sir?"
"Unfortunately yes," I sighed and rubbed my bad eye. "I need you to find and keep tabs on a man named Angstrom Levy. I want twenty-four-hour surveillance but we only observe him. Do not engage him in any capacity and absolutely do not let him see our agents. Kaisen made it explicitly clear that if we spook this guy even a fraction of an inch, he will run so far we will never even catch a whiff of his scent again."
Donald finished typing and looked at me with deeply concerned expression.
"Sir, if you do not mind me asking," Donald said quietly. "How exactly does this boy know about secret science projects and completely unrecorded individuals?"
"If I knew the answer to that Donald I would not be popping antacids like they were candy," I muttered and kept walking down the hall. "We can only assume his words of coming from a parallel universe hold some truth to it."
"What's your read on the boy, sir?" Donald asked quietly, keeping pace.
I thought about the kid.
The arrogant smirk, the impossible shifting castle, the way his hands had minutely trembled when he realized the smart glasses were tracking him.
"He's a sloppy kid wearing a mastermind's suit," I muttered. "He acts like a criminal mastermind, but his eyes still have innocence in them. The bravado is a shield. He's a functional sociopath operating on pure adrenaline. If his story holds water, he's from a parallel universe where humanity got slaughtered by the Viltrum Empire. I don't take that lightly, even if half of what he says is bullshit."
I paused as the heavy steel doors hissed open for us, sealing us inside the soundproof war room.
"Not to mention he has a Japanese cyclops for a servant, and they are incredibly protective of each other. It almost makes me buy his whole 'refugee' story. But most importantly... I think he's some kind of warlock. Borrowing power from some god of..."
"RNGesus," Donald interrupted abruptly.
I stopped and looked at him.
"Excuse me?"
"RNGesus, sir," Donald repeated, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose. "That's the name he was screaming in the holding cell and on the jet."
I let out a slow, tired breath.
"Right. Perfect. Whatever the hell it is, we put a few of our chips on this unannounced guest for now. We observe him. We map his psychological profile. And we figure out exactly what his weakness is before he realizes he has one."
"Understood," Donald said, stepping up to the digital map on the war room table. "Sir, what about Mark and Debbie Grayson? After seeing Nolan shoved through an alien dimension by an energy weapon that carved Chicago itself... they're disturbed. Debbie's barely holding it together and Mark won't talk to anyone."
I rubbed my face hard, feeling every single one of my years dragging me down.
"God, the Global Defense Agency, now reduced to family therapy support," I muttered bitterly. "Alright. We keep the Guardians' true condition strictly under wraps. They're still in induced comas, most of them on death's door. Red Rush and Darkwing might not make it through the week. We must maintain a heavy watch for Nolan's reentry into our reality."
I looked down at the digital map of the globe spinning on the table.
I had to make the hard call.
The ugly call.
"And Donald? Prepare a press release for the media. The Guardians of the Globe were mass murdered."
"Sir...?"
"Name of the prime suspect: John Kaisen."
Donald's eyes widened, his professional composure finally cracking.
"Sir, you just gave the boy fifty million dollars. If we publicly frame him for the murders Nolan committed—"
"We buy ourselves a goddamn smokescreen!" I snapped, slamming my hand on the metal table. "Nolan is the greatest threat this planet has ever faced. We can't let the public know Earth's greatest hero slaughtered the greatest heroes on Earth until we have a surefire way to put him in the ground. Kaisen is an unknown variable with a demon sidekick. He's the perfect scapegoat to keep the heat off the Graysons while we figure out how to kill a Viltrumite."
Donald swallowed hard, but he didn't argue.
He knew the harsh reality of our work.
"One last thing," I said, reaching deep into my trench coat.
I pulled out a thick, reinforced glass jar and set it heavily on the metal table.
Suspended in the contained air were two massive, grotesque eyeballs.
They stared blankly ahead.
Written across the lavender irises in stark black ink was the Japanese kanji for 'four'.
"I need you to arrange a covert drop. Deliver these to the radioactive exclusion zones in Chernobyl and Fukushima ASAP," I ordered.
Donald stumbled backward.
The sterile evidence bag containing the Pepsi can slipped from his grip, hitting the floor with a dull thud.
He stared at the jar, then up at me, his face now pale.
He looked at me as if I had finally, definitively lost my goddamn mind.
I stared back, letting out a long, exhausted sigh.
This kid was going to be the death of any sanity I had left.
[A/N]: Who else is following Carl Quest(Redeemed Conquest) on Twitter?
Also, gimme them Stones, Worm!!
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