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Chapter 6: Stockbroker to the Slaughter

Six years later

 

Courtney McMaster’s life had, if anything, gotten even worse in the two weeks since the incident with Gigas at the Hall of Heroes. Not that there hadn’t been some improvements. The Social Justice League reinstated him as an associate and everyone whispered that he would be offered his choice of sidekick any day now. He couldn’t even deny that being a real superhero with real superpowers had been exciting. However– and this was the part of his life that never seemed to change– Courtney had problems.

One. He had superpowers that were worthy of the name. At first, these had seemed pretty, well, cool. He discovered—a few seconds after finding himself looking down on a kid on the Empire State Building’s observation deck— that he could jump. Far. So, like an idiot, he called in sick and spent most of half a day jumping around Midtown. The force of his legs pushing against the sidewalk left noticeable cracks. At first, falling 750 feet or so hurt like a bitch, but towards the end of the day his legs got tougher and springier.

Agent Orange had told Lash that his body would eventually return to normal. So the emergence of new superpowers should have been a tipoff that Orange was either incorrect or lying. Lash was too busy getting a kick out of leaping a block into the air to notice much. He had been a bit concerned that Agent Orange had been threatening to take away his superpowers if he hadn’t joined the OSI, but the new superpowers indicated Orange either wasn’t in control of his blood in Lash’s body or was playing one hell of a mind game.

Three days after he found out he could very nearly leap over a tall building with a single bound, Courtney the stockbroker found himself in a supernaturally uncomfortable position at work. His boss, Marion Jones (Vice President for Sales and, improbably, one of the people who snickered when they first heard Courtney’s name), had asked Courtney to “anchor the group” as Jones addressed a group of potential clients about the prospects of selling market analysis services. It was patently obvious why Courtney’s presence was needed; he had proven himself by predicting the total implosion of Eugenex. His performance even merited a sentence in Forbes, probably the first time a Social Justice Leaguer was mentioned in that publication. Marion Jones had only proven himself as someone that was maniacally angling to get promoted. Over a period of years, Courtney had begun to understand why his quest for promotion was so urgent. If it was true that people rose to their level of incompetence, Marion Jones was long overdue.

“Thank you for agreeing to come,” concluded Marion Jones, although Courtney was quite sure he had agreed to no such thing. Sadly, Courtney was also quite sure that he would have to come; the purpose of a secret identity was to blend in, and people that got fired tended to stand out.

“What market sector will we be presenting on?” This question was only slightly driven by Courtney’s curiosity. He shivered as he imagined scenarios where potential clients—and perhaps the company’s executives— grilled him with questions he was absolutely unprepared for. Even something as elementary as “What’s your take on the future of soybean agriculture?” could destroy me. But his darkest nightmare was he would let something slip when asked how exactly he knew that Eugenex would go under.

“The presentation is in an hour,” Jones said curtly. That response did not explicitly answer Courtney’s question, but it did implicitly say that Jones meant for Courtney to be completely unprepared. The most charitable assessment Courtney could think of was that Jones wanted to use his reputation without sharing any credit. More likely, Jones also wanted to make him look so stupid and irresponsible that Jones’ superiors would hear about it. If Courtney had cared about his position in the hierarchy of stockbrokers as much as anyone else at the firm, no doubt he would have designed some way to sabotage the presentation and destroy Jones. But he knew that Courtney the stockbroker had to maintain a sense of normalness and banality that would lead everyone who knew him to dismiss any subconscious concerns that he did anything more weirder than root for the Mets. He bit his tongue as he imagined being forced to play the idiot.

Usually, clients (people with money) enter a conference-room first, followed by sellers (service providers). Mercifully, this meant that everyone else was in the room and only Marion Jones was close to the door when Courtney twisted the doorknob and snapped it off the door. Sweet Christ in heaven. Courtney’s head jerked around—no one had been facing him when he broke off the doorknob. Too much sound—they must have heard. Fortunately, the people at the table didn’t seem to have been distracted by their conversations. He stealthily pocketed the doorknob. His face and hands were noticeably sweaty.

As Courtney edged in the room, he ran through the list of potential witnesses. Two delegates from Sirrlane Incorporated and Marion Jones. Courtney gulped. He was a stranger to the two SI guys, but Marion Jones was there at the company retreat two summers ago, when Courtney had to leave early because of a… sudden health engagement that was absolutely, in no way related to the jailbreak of Rampage, a supervillain serving twelve consecutive life sentences for crimes considerably more serious than felony fraud. No one at Duplex Financial had a greater opportunity to out Lash.

Remembering the retreat made Courtney’s knees feel weak. Maybe… maybe he didn’t notice anything, after all. He is clueless. Then Courtney thought back to Agent Orange’s first conversation with him—Orange had mentioned that he had identified Courtney as a superhero because his coworkers and bosses said he was late and ducked out of meetings a lot. Maybe it wasn’t Jones.

Marion saw an opportunity to appear magnanimous and professional to his bosses. He made a show of greeting Courtney. “Courtney, you don’t look well. Why don’t you sit down and I’ll handle the presentation.”

Courtney did his best to appear normal as he slumped into the chair next to the placard reading “Courtney McMaster, Senior Analyst.” Given that he had been a ground-level stockbroker until a few weeks ago—definitely not a “senior” anything, and not much of a market analyst—his title initially contributed to his disorientation. After a few seconds, he realized that it was just that Marion inflated his title to make their “team” look more credible to the clients. He had also secured a conference room several floors above Courtney’s office, which suggested that this meeting was highly important to the company, maybe to the tune of at least a few hundred million dollars. No pressure, Courtney.

Marion Jones gave the clients fifteen minutes of what sounded like a sales pitch for the investment branch. He wanted Sirrlane Incorporated to invest through Courtney’s firm because the experts at Duplex Financial were intimately familiar with the future of the market and were a sure thing, etc. Courtney thought back to 83 Steps to a Stress-Free Life, which recommended thinking of positive things in stressful times. Well. If our deal rests on Marion Jones making us look competent, nothing I do could possibly make us any less likely to succeed.

To Courtney’s total surprise, Marion spoke for roughly fifteen minutes without making a dead chipmunk look intelligent by comparison. The gist of Marion’s speech was that the Air Force was about to award a manufacturer a vast contract to build a substantial amount of fighter jets. Marion laid out several reasons that Lockheed-Martin, not Boeing, was likely to win the contract, which would substantially affect the stock prices of both. Courtney wasn’t able to evaluate the presentation beyond that it sounded kind of plausible; the only thing Courtney, like most Social Justice Leaguers, knew about military aviation was that when you hear planes coming, particularly during a fight with a supervillain, it’s time to move. When dealing with supervillains, the government gets some funny ideas about acceptable levels of “collateral damage.”

“…additionally, the Air Force will be impressed that Lockheed-Martin’s Marauder is cheaper to operate than Boeing’s Mastiff, as we see in this chart…” Marion probably pointed to a graph at that point, but just then a man young enough to be Courtney’s son walked in the room. Despite being embarrassingly late, he had a professional straightness about him. He sat down next to a placard reading “Jonah Bedlam, Systems Consultant/Analyst.” That sounded pretty junior, but someone probably old enough to be Courtney’s father pulled his seat out, which suggested that Jonah had respect despite his rank. Courtney surmised from these details that he was the trusted advisor, the one that essentially made the group’s decisions.

Unsurprisingly, Marion was completely oblivious to these cues. His whiny voice indicated that he wasn’t even trying to conceal that he was annoyed by the interruption. He returned to the graph. As Marion was attempting to re-explain a chart titled “PROJECTED COSTS: LOCKHEED VS. BOEING” to men that made at least $150,000 a year, one of Bedlam’s colleagues passed him a sheet of handwritten notes on the presentation. This confirmed Courtney’s initial assessment that Bedlam was a key player here. A nobody that came late would have gotten sighs and glares—not assistance—from his teammates, but the only glares he got came from Marion. Surprise, surprise. Jonah softly thanked the coworker that gave him his notes, an unusual gesture of courtesy in a negotiation that was probably as important to his job as it was to Marion’s or Courtney’s.

When Jonah leaned over to whisper to another coworker, Marion stopped midsentence and glowered again. Except for a systems analyst whispering almost inaudibly to a coworker, there was a painfully awkward silence for almost ten seconds. Courtney habitually expected the worst from Marion, but this was unbelievable. You raging idiot. They are the representatives of a Fortune 500 firm. They have between the three of them access to hundreds of millions of dollars. What they have to say is vastly more important than your goddamn graph.

Courtney couldn’t stand Marion’s incompetence any longer. Marion’s silence gave him his best chance to interrupt. “Now, we’d like to give you the chance to discuss what we have proposed so far.” Marion’s glare now snapped to Courtney. He attempted to reassert control by adding “Before I continue with the presentation.”

The clients responded with pleased sighs and smiles to Courtney’s recess. The three caucused in the hallway. Marion closed the door behind them and then turned on Courtney. “Interrupting me like that—what the hell were you thinking?”

Saving your job, you pathetic waste of a parking space. But Courtney also wanted to save his own, so he couldn’t very well say that to his boss. He resignedly filed away that one-liner in a mental graveyard, perhaps to be resurrected if someone from the OSI got in his face.

“I’m so sorry. I thought that your shift from a brisk and energetic pace of speech was a cue to call for a break.” Courtney’s brain felt like it was shivering—convulsing, probably—as he used “brisk” and “energetic” to describe Marion’s locution. The only time either should be associated with Marion: the appropriate pace for leaving a room he’s in.

The shameless brownnosing did, in fact, appear to soften Marion. His shoulders dropped from their tensed position. “Fair enough. Just don’t do THAT AGAIN.” As Marion ended his sentence, Courtney was bombarded with a horrendous cacophony of sounds—cars whirring past far below on the streets, a plane breaking the sound barrier thirty miles away, a secretary slamming a desk drawer upstairs, a cellphone ringing in the lobby and, of course, Marion speaking as though he had a loudspeaker inches from Courtney’s ear. Courtney’s first experience with super-hearing was not a pleasant one; in fact, he instinctively jerked his hands to cover his ears so hard that he actually fell over.

When Marion saw Courtney having what appeared to be some sort of seizure, he nearly threw up his hands in frustration.

“CHRIST, MCMASTER. DON’T BLOW THIS FOR ME.”

After a few excruciating seconds, Courtney was able to filter out most of the incoming sound. He was still surrounded by sounds, but it was like wading through a pond rather than swimming through raging rapids. He got off the ground, chilled and sweaty. How the hell does everyone else maintain a secret identity? His mind drifted back to images of Agent Orange, clad in two pairs of sunglasses, and Gigas’ unusually dim chandeliers. So what the hell am I supposed to do, wear earmuffs everywhere?

Then he heard “Social Justice League,” spoken by… a voice he might have heard before. He glanced over. It was coming from the direction of the hallway, close enough to be from a client.

“…from the Social Justice League—Dr. Atrios, maybe?—was at a science convention that ended with an attack by some mental case in pink and black tights—very San Francisco, if you get my meaning. I’m so sorry I was late. Everything out of Surf City got delayed two hours…”

The voice faded back into static. Maybe the blood is trying to regulate my hearing so I don’t go crazy. It struck him that the conversation would turn from why Jonah was late to their take on the negotiation soon. He did feel a bit awkward trying to eavesdrop on them, but he rationalized that he had already suffered the negatives of super-hearing, so he deserved the benefits.

For a minute or so, Courtney tried moving around the conference room so as to improve his “reception.” Unsurprisingly, it was just at the moment that he could hear the conversation again that Marion spoke again. At least, this time, the urge to throw up was a lot less severe.

“WHAT ARE YOU DOING?”

“My doctor told me that walking around can help during these migraines.”

“I’VE HEARD THAT PHYSICAL ACTIVITY CAN WORSEN MIGRAINES.”

“Uh, well. Doctor’s orders, you know.” Mercifully, Marion didn’t say anything else. Courtney could clearly hear one of the older clients, one that sounded like he smoked often.

“…think I understand their strategy. The idiot reads us the latest Economist article like it’s something we didn’t know already. Then the quiet guy—he’s the smart one, right?—gives us an hour worth of real research and looks brilliant by comparison.”

Another one of the older men started talking.

“I don’t think McMaster is actually involved here. His partner doesn’t spend any time looking at him. Maybe Duplex is using him as a symbol to make its investment analysis services look more attractive.”

There was some uneasy laughter.

Now Jonah spoke. His voice was soft but firm.

“Those are excellent points. We can assess how involved Mr. McMaster is by engaging him alone. Jim, if you would, please bring his partner out of the conference room. Marvin, would you like to speak with Mr. McMaster first?”

“You can. I’ll just wait…”

Courtney could hear his own heart pumping. These guys are professionals. He turned to Marion, with panic in his mind. What truly frightened him was that it actually wasn’t Marion, but he himself that was the weak link. Admittedly, that was because Marion specifically attempted to keep him in the dark, but that didn’t change the fact that he knew nothing about the sector that two cunning, cunning men were coming to probe him about.

Even worse, if this situation went to hell and Courtney and/or Marion lost their jobs, he was certain that Marion would blame it on Courtney’s sudden seizure. That reminded Courtney of the New York Times article exposing the characteristics the Office of Special Investigations associated most with having an “unofficial identity.” An unusual medical history was slightly less suggestive than chronic tardiness, which is itself second only to “friend of a superhero you’re never in the same room with.” Pretty much every Leaguer– and every one that wanted to make it– had memorized the article. Supervillains, too. Courtney tried to reassure himself that at least he hadn’t become a journalist that cashed in on the newsworthiness of his alter-identity. That worked in, say, the 1950s, when people were stupid. Now it just got you and your friends killed.

The clients filed in the room. One—Jim, probably— complimented Marion’s tie. There is no way Marion will fall for that. Courtney realized the fatal flaw in his logic: it was premised on Marion’s competence. I wonder how he will fail me. He predicted, morbidly, that his second thought would be much more on-target than the first.

“It’s a Gucci.”

“I can tell. The weaving is really something else; it’s practically invisible.”

Marion was so taken in by this praise that he was virtually blushing.

On the other side of the room, Jonah made his move. When he got within a few feet of Courtney, Courtney held up a hand to cut off the niceties he had no doubt already formulated. This put a vaguely startled expression on Jonah’s face.

“Just a moment, Jonah. I’m admiring your partner’s work. I had estimated that it would take at least a minute to get me alone, but it appears that was far too optimistic.”

Jonah turned and watched as Jim administered the coup-de-grace. Jim leaned forward to Marion. “Hey, do you think you could take me to the restroom?” Marion happily left the room with his newfound companion.

“You’re much better at this than your partner is. And that is sincere, unlike, say, flattery about a knockoff tie from Chinatown,” said Bedlam.

Courtney enjoyed a laugh at his boss’ expense, which he immediately regretted. “I’ll have you know that it’s harder to flatter me than just mocking Moron Jones.”

“Touché. Would it be flattery to ask for your take on the newspaper paraphrasing we just got?”

First it was the door ripping off and then it was the super-hearing. At this particular moment, Lash got—experienced—an ability that he couldn’t even name.

The conference room, with its comfortable chairs and familiar New York skyline and warm wooden door, just melted away. Courtney was somewhere else. A sandy hangar. He was observing, like it was a dream, but heard himself talking. It looked like he was talking to a mechanic, with greasy overalls.

Now he was talking to guy in a flight suit with a concerned, puzzled look on his face. Right outside of a jet with an open cockpit, casting a blinding glare in the sun.

Now he was in another board-room, one with a map on the far wall and an American flag and a flag with an eagle and shield nearly surrounded by a circle of stars. It looked like he was talking to a general. Courtney glanced at his arm… his suit was blue and stiff; judging from his hand, he was easily the tannest New Yorker not on Friends.

Now he was in a house. Reading papers as a kid grabbed on his leg.

Thousands of these dream-like fragments bombarded his senses. He couldn’t consciously remember very much—he was talking or reading in all of them.

Suddenly he saw Jonah again and he very, very much wanted to throw up. He remembered a vague sense of obligation. He asked me something, right?

“I’m sorry, what was I supposed to answer?”

“I was interested to know whether you wanted to add anything to your partner’s presentation. I won’t think anything less of you if you don’t.”

“I would like to preface this by saying that Mr. Jones and I are only salesmen for this service. Neither one of us would be directly involved in your account. So I can add another salesman’s perspective…”

“Please.”

Courtney tried to formulate an eloquent way of saying that he had nothing to say. What actually came out was far, far different. His tongue, lips and lungs suddenly entered into a vast conspiracy against him with agents unknown.

“The Boeing and Lockheed models suffer from similar design flaws. Both are near-ideal for splashing jets. I can’t complain about the avionics for either—no doubt you’ve seen the test results, too; both planes create situational awareness like nothing we’ve ever seen before. But both planes are going to prove extremely expensive for what we’ll actually need them for—surface-to-ground missions. Insurgents. Terrorists. Supervillains. Adapting either plane for close air support will be much more complicated than using a plane that actually has been designed for that functionality: Winston Air’s Lynx.”

“You’re kidding. In the Air Force competitions, the Lynx didn’t lead in a single indicator except cost.”

“Only because the tests mostly took place in a radically different cost environment. Since then the QDR has severely limited the amount of planes that can be procured, so every plane has to be more productive. Cost-effectiveness and versatility, the Lynx’s strongest points, are priorities now. Shrinking manpower, more expensive fuel, a smaller Air Force budget and labor force, etc. Vector thrust and supercruise will really help there. Finally, integrated avionics. Inexplicably, the Boeing and Lockheed models force pilots to communicate to older models verbally. That is an insult to pilots—machine-to-machine data transmission should have been a prerequisite to a successful bid.”

Then Courtney found himself looking at Jonah, who was nodding astutely and doing his best not to gape. Courtney couldn’t quite remember what had just happened. The only recollection he had of the last few minutes was a mental note to look up “QDR,” “thrust vector,” and “supercruise.” He had absolutely no idea how those arose in conversation—reminscing about Star Trek, perhaps?

Courtney blinked and blinked again. Usually when something got this trippy, enough psychotropic drugs were involved to entail possession with intent to distribute. Given the bizarre blackouts, the thousands of mini-dreams and emergence of weird superpowers, he wasn’t actually prepared to rule out that a fellow Leaguer had slipped him something to spite him.

Courtney’s pager then went off. No—it actually hadn’t been his. It was Bedlam’s cell.

After about three seconds of listening, Bedlam got agitated.

“How long? Goddammit, couldn’t they have told us sooner? On my way.”

He explained that one of his patients was having an emergency.

“Patients?”

“Consulting is my day-job. Normally, I’m a psychologist.”

With that, Jonah Bedlam ran out the door.

Courtney’s pager then went off. “Your six loads of laundry are available–Dongan Hills Drycleaning”

A really close inspection of Courtney’s personal life might have revealed that he actually used five different drycleaners (Astoria, Bronx, Coney Island, Dongan Hills and Epic). Well, not really, but he got pages from five different drycleaners. That was how the Social Justice League informed its employees they needed to check in for a breaking situation. Each drycleaner indicates a different level of urgency. From A to E, the situations went “Today,” “This Hour,” “15 Minutes,” “NOW,” and “Time-Travel Required.” The number of the loads of laundry indicates how civilians might be at risk. One load meant up to 10, two loads up to 100, six loads up to 1,000,000. It looked like it was going to be a long day.

As Courtney ran out the door, it occurred to him that it could not possibly have been a coincidence that Bedlam had run out at the same time, after a cell call, no less. For some supposed psychologist job, as if anyone could really be a psychologist as well as a consultant.

Jonah Bedlam. Bedlam. He wondered why that sounded familiar…

Carnage.

 

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