Chapter Ten
CHECKS AND BALANCES
The villa was in Madrid. It was supposedly the secret getaway of a millionaire playboy. The wild oats he had sowed there were considerable, and thus his staff could be relied on to be the epitome of discretion. Only three people alive knew that the Red Knight had saved the millionaire’s fortune (and life) from one of Lightstorm’s gruesome extortion schemes in 1946.
Archie was an old hand at cultivating out of the way strongholds. The Taskforce and Annette were so well hidden that even the Patchwork Man couldn’t find them, and Archie knew he had tried. Often.
The villa was defended by Archie’s handpicked security teams. Most of them were ex. cops and sharp enough to recognize government agents or metahuman enemies of the Justice League, even if they were disguised.
NoMan had no need of disguise, of course, but even he would have had difficulty infiltrating the villa. Motion sensors and other examples of Stark Industries technology capable of piercing his invisibility cloak guarded the perimeter. Luckily, NoMan was an expected, if secret, guest. Thus, the guards merely left the front gate open for ten seconds at an appointed time one afternoon. The guards on the ground never saw NoMan, but they knew he was there.
NoMan entered the villa and was met by Archie, who took NoMan to the dining room where Warden was having lunch. Archie and NoMan didn’t exchange a single word. They both knew the reasons for NoMan’s visit and discussion at this point was unnecessary.
Besides, NoMan’s was here to talk to Warden, not Archie.
Forty-nine seconds after Archie had first asked the android to discuss with Warden the hazards of trying to reach Annette Rosenberg’s wounded mind, NoMan’s had his argument fully composed in its entirety. NoMan would not mention the fact that a functioning Annette Rosenberg had a chance of evicting a monster from the body of the President; a monster who was dragging the world into chaos. He would not mention how much Annette meant to Archie, and how Archie had been waiting for some glimmer of hope to get her back for years. No, that was not his responsibility. NoMan was not here to argue in favor of the proposition--and even if he had been, he still wouldn’t have brought up the second point. In an ideal world, such a blatant appeal to emotion would have no place in a decision as potentially dangerous as this.
This, however, was not an ideal world. Indeed, that was why NoMan existed in the first place.
Thus, NoMan could do only what was possible: Outline as forcefully as he could just what it was the young man might face inside the unknown country of Annette Rosenberg’s shattered psyche. With so much on the line, and a nagging, sentimental sympathy for Archie’s probably doomed--but so eminently human--quest to rehabilitate Annette, NoMan didn’t sincerely know if he wanted to successfully dissuade Warden or not. It wasn’t often that the android didn’t know what he wanted; it was an uncomfortable ambiguity in the crystalline purity of NoMan’s reasoning that bothered him like scab. It the end, though, what NoMan wanted wasn’t important--it never had been. It all came down to duty, and if there was one thing NoMan ever truly understood, it was duty.
To the bitter end.
“Do you know why I’m here, Warden?” NoMan asked, standing over the boy who had breadcrumbs on his chin from a ham and Swiss cheese sandwich that he would now never finish.
Warden looked up into the shadowed eyes of the android. Warden wondered what the patches of darkness hid. Did NoMan shroud his eyes because they betrayed only cold, remorseless, inhuman calculation.... or because they hinted that the machine did feel? Which was a secret more worth protecting?
“Warden knows,” Archie offered, speaking for the first time. He stood in the far corner of the formal dining room, leaning against a wall, his arms crossed.
“I would like to ascertain exactly what Warden knows,” NoMan replied. “From him.”
Warden shifted uncomfortably in the wooden, high-backed, ornately carved chair. “This is about Mr. Goodwin’s friend. Annette. She’s sick.... lost in her own head.... and you think Mentalon might be able to help her.”
NoMan nodded. “What has Mr. Goodwin told you about Dr. Rosenberg?”
“Who? Oh, Annette? Not much. But I know he liked her very much and feels responsible for the bad thing that happened to her.”
NoMan looked at Archie, but Archie frustrated him by having his head turned, staring out the window. NoMan tuned back to the boy.
“Mentalon has.... felt some other things. Mr. Goodwin thinks Mentalon helping might be dangerous, and kind of wants you to talk me out of it.”
“I see.” His voice gave no hint of his thoughts. “But Annette Rosenberg, herself, of her you know little?”
“I know she was like you; she helped people with her powers and was called Psilence, because even though she couldn’t talk everyone could still hear her. She worked with Mr. Goodwin and his friend Mr. Winchester. And Mentalon saw.... reflections of her in the house sometimes.”
“Then I shall begin with her. It is important that you understand the woman if you are to understand the danger,” NoMan began. “Although I never met Dr. Rosenberg before the incident that robbed her of her facilities, T.H.U.N.D.E.R., a law enforcement agency I was a member of before I joined the Justice League, had extensive records on her and her career.
“Her first telepathic contact with another person was at the age of eight months, with her mother, while still in utero. Unlike your psionic abilities, which were triggered by stress and puberty, Dr. Rosenberg was a full-blown psi for her entire life. She had no trauma of discovery, no period of adjustment and training; she simply grew up using her gifts and thus they were as natural for her as using her arms and legs.
“Dr. Rosenberg’s achievements, aside from those as Psilence, are pertinent and worth noting here. She earned her Ph.D. in psychology at the age of 25 and authored several papers on human psychology that have proved to be both highly insightful and influential. From all accounts, including those of her adversaries, she was an extraordinary woman; intelligent, experienced and profoundly disciplined.
“However, despite all of her knowledge, all of her training, power, understanding and study, she encountered something that was able to blow her mind apart. Something that besides leaving gaping scars in her mind, may still linger in some form inside it, waiting to maul anything that comes too close.
“Since the incident, Dr. Rosenberg has maintained a powerful wall around her mind. Perhaps this is simply a reflex action; an understandable recoiling from all others after being so terribly hurt. But I believe it could also be a conscious act, perhaps her very last. It is conceivable that the damage done to her was so severe that if anyone comes in contact with her mind, they may be injured as well.”
Warden didn’t know how to react. “What did all this to her?”
NoMan looked again toward Archie, who was still staring out the window. “Turn into Mentalon, please.”
Warden was still a little embarrassed transforming in front of other people, but the tone of NoMan’s voice was not one to be argued with. A second later, Warden was gone and the sickly, bald humanoid sat in his place.
Archie turned toward Mentalon. He was pale. “Scan me,” he said flatly.
Puzzled, Mentalon reached out to Archie’s familiar mind.
It slammed into Mentalon like a metal bar to the chest. At first, he thought Archie had raised his mind shield, but no, his mind was open. Wide open.
The pit where Archie kept the memories of the Patchwork Man--which, in other circumstances, discipline had forged into a mind shield--was now left unchained and unguarded.
It came in a frantic rush. Limitless despair and hate. Images drawn in blood. The bodies in the television studio. The explosion at the warehouse, which killed so many, including nearly Archie, himself. The first sight of the woman he loved in a straight jacked; eyes saucers of misery, her throat raw and bleeding from her constant screaming, and yet she still tried, resulting in hoarse, strangled, desperate rasps. The aerial platform spewing contagion over a city of millions and then erupting in pure, white flame. Years of sick, endless games that were merely excuses for nonsensical slaughter. Never victory, never hope; merely minimization of terror and the certainty that it would start all over again so very soon. Torment. A guttural chuckle mocking everything with sardonic disdain. A cultured, polite voice fingering cherished memories and ideals with filth and contempt.
Catch me if you can.
Mentalon shook and released. He grabbed the table to stop from falling out of the chair and blinked his eyes rapidly to clear his vision. It didn’t help. Archie’s waking nightmares were now his as well.
“I am sorry,” NoMan said as he handed Mentalon a glass of water. “Revealing it in this manner was my idea. It was the only way to give you an indication of what might be in Dr. Rosenberg’s mind. Everyone who merely meets The Patchwork Man is tainted by the experience; Dr. Rosenberg actually touched his mind.”
Mentalon sipped the cold water. “And she needs to get better, doesn’t she?”
NoMan was silent for a moment. “It is possible she can assist us in regards to the current situation with the President, yes,” he said carefully. “But that fact alone does not outweigh the possible risk to you.”
Mentalon looked at Archie. Archie’s expression was an odd combination of hope and dread. “It’s your decision,” he said quietly. “It’s stupid to say we don’t mean to put this pressure on you, but you’re the only one who knows whether or not you’re up to this. If you aren’t, or just aren’t sure, then don’t do it. We’ll find another way. We’ve done it before. The last thing we want is for you to get hurt in some way.”
The answer came almost instantly. “I can do it. I want to help.” No equivocation. No vacillation.
“Are you sure?” NoMan asked.
“I’m not scared,” Mentalon said.
NoMan nodded at this obvious lie. He believed, however, that bravery was not the absence of fear; true bravery was perseverance in the face of it. Behind the shyness, behind the naiveté, NoMan believed the boy had the strength inside him that the android had been looking for; the strength of self that the boy might need in the wilderness of Annette Rosenberg’s mind.
Archie walked over to the table and sat down across from Mentalon. “NoMan, myself, a few others, and T.H.U.N.D.E.R. before it was destroyed, have managed to assemble some solid information on the Patchwork Man, including how he became what he is now and what he was before. If Annette had been prepared, if she had known then what we know now, we might not even be in this situation.”
NoMan sat down next to Warden. “There is much you must know. Let us begin.”
(For John Phillips)
Chapter Eleven: “All Men Created Equal”
Mindful of the fate of T.H.U.N.D.E.R., for the safety of both The Taskforce and the Justice League Of America, the JLA is not to be informed of The Taskforce’s work until the above conditions are met.
(For Everyone)
Chapter Twelve: “The Home Of The Brave”
“We have
to do something.”
“We are,
Spooky. If I don’t get this computer-TV thingie fixed, Harley might miss ‘I
Love Lucy’ and then we’ll all be in big trouble.”