Welcome!

What you are about to read is a co-written Serial Six story.

The genre is flash-fiction. The setting is contemporary. The action is multilevel and, the characters? Well, allow us to say,  Welcome to ‘…of Heroes and the MisUnderstood.’

It’s been said of modern fiction, ‘the characters and settings are, as always, the ingredients of a story, however, flash fiction invites the diner to enjoy the kitchen in which it is created; like a superfluity of utensils, the presentation is as fun as the meal‘.

the co-authors of our story:

Tom a multi-manifested writer of fiction, speculation and whimsy, rumored to be a descendant of a dark branch of the Crowley family tree, Tom takes traditional story-telling and makes it new again.

clark the curator of a personality schedule and all-around blog-subversive, it has been said of his writings, ‘What? No. fricken. Way.

1

I’m at the address,’ Moonbeam pressed the earpiece into his left ear, really to make sure it was still there and he wasn’t talking to himself, ‘and I’m about to go in… although why I’m doing this, I have no idea.’

‘Are you still moaning,’ Bubblegum’s tinny voice came back to him almost immediately, ‘you know that in this game we have to do anything as and when our illustrious leader tells us.’

‘I know, the Apostrophe has us all wrapped around his little finger… now, shush, I’m going through the window… I’m going to find it so funny if she isn’t in.’

The barrel of an A217a rifle touched his forehead before he could go any further.

‘One more move, mister, and your head will be inside out,’ a gruff female voice accompanied the cold metal, but not the female’s he was looking for, ‘freeze!’.

‘Who are you,’ Moonbeam asked, totally ignoring the weapon, ‘and why are you in Rue DeNite’s place?’

2

“Shit! Turn the car around.”

Like luminescent dominoes, the halogen street lights illuminated both speaker and driver through the car’s moonroof;  the driver was male, (Exhibit 1: early-stage male pattern baldness), confident, (Exhibit 2: right-hand on the wheel, left-elbow on armrest) and possessed of a certain serenity: (Exhibit 3: an easy smile of affectionate curiosity despite the volume/intensity from his passenger); who, with the additional  light from oncoming traffic, was unabashedly female, (Exhibit 4: eclipse-dark shadows rising and falling across her upper chest), athletic, (Exhibit 5: in an activity not so much focused on defying gravity as it was conspiring with it, i.e. willowy yet providing her provocative clothing with every parry and feint considered important to women’s fashion designers) and possessed of an intellect that searched for traps even as she baited her own, (Exhibit 6: shaded by her short, blue-veined blonde hair were two tattoos, below her right ear: Non serviam and, starting beneath her left ear trailing downwards: Vincit quae se vincit.)

The neighborhood was as quiet as a non-gated community gets, the architecture was tasteful, every house had three car garages and sited a discrete distance from the street, a taste not a meal, in terms of privacy; Rocco pulled the black-on-black DB12 into the driveway nearest the front entrance.

“I’ll be right back,” Rue’s shadow flowed across the front of the garage door, slowing as she approached the half-open front door; a glance back at the car confirmed that her friend had not abandoned his side gig as her bodyguard as he turned up the car’s sound system, letting Jacques Loussier’s jazz-Bach mask any sound of approach and eased out of the drivers side, siccing his own silhouette on hers.

“Well, far be it for me to forget a superhero,” stepping over the threshold into the living room, Rue DeNite smiled, “Oh wait, this isn’t one of those ambush reality shows, where they hide video cameras hoping to catch the homeowner doing the horizontal mambo with the hot neighbor, or in this case, maybe just sending a burglar in tights off to the ER.”

Ignoring the young woman with the rifle, Rue waited until Rocco closed the door and turned to the strange man in her living room, “Good Golly Mr. Moonbeam, who’s your cute little friend with all the weaponry; I gotta tell you, this supervillain action is turning my thermostat way up, poor Rocco’s heart might not be up to the demands I expect to be putting on him once we get back to our vacation, you hear what I’m sayin?”

3

The foursome stood looking at each other in the lamplit living room in silence for what seemed longer than the couple of seconds that had actually passed; the strange woman still pointing her rifle towards Moonbeam (the tall, muscular chap with the energetic hair), whilst looking, confused and bewildered, at Rue DeNite (the woman with the blue-streaked hair) and Rocco (her definitely overprotective boyfriend); Moonbeam smirking at the situation; Rue waiting for an answer from Moonbeam; Rocco standing like a coiled cobra waiting to strike.

Moonbeam drew down his ‘dark matter’ through his right hand, flicking it onto the strange woman’s arm, causing her to crumple to the floor fast asleep, drop her rifle, and fire off a single bullet that lodged in the back of Rue’s sofa… Moonbeam then used his dark matter on the metal of the gun, causing that to disintegrate into tiny pieces… finally saying, ‘she’s nothing to do with me, I thought she was your friend.’

In between the rifle firing and Moonbeam’s comment, however, Rocco had uncoiled himself, grabbed a hold of Rue’s arm, pulling her behind him, and launched himself through the air toward Moonbeam, who in response jumped over the sleeping woman out of Rocco’s way, managing to get around him and grab hold of Rue’s arm loosely.

‘I don’t know who she is,’ Rue said as she pulled her arm away from Moonbeam before he could use his abilities on her, and, utilizing her own skills, kicking him in his groin, mid-pirouette, as she leapt over the room to help Rocco get back up to his feet, ‘but neither of you is welcome here’.

‘Rue, we have a mutual friend who wants to see you again,’ Moonbeam winced as he leant against the door that the two people in the room with the now greater advantage had just walked through, ‘that’s all I’ve come for… there’s no need to be hostile’.

‘No need…’ Rue gave off a venomous ha as she spoke, ‘I have a hole in my sofa, two intruders – criminals at that – in my house, with probably a broken door, I’m now late for my getaway, missed the flight,’ (Rocco whispered ‘no, we’ve plenty of time still for that’, causing Rue to glare and elbow him in his ribs), ‘missed the flight,’ she continued, ‘and I’ve broken a nail,’ she reached into her purse and pulled out her shocking pink stun gun, pointing it at Moonbeam, ‘and, as you Brits say, I’m somewhat miffed… so tell me, and tell me quickly, what exactly do you want?’

4

I’d be catching hell from Rue as soon as we were alone, but hey, sometimes gender trumps a guy’s better judgement, so as long as I was in bodyguard-mode, I decided to try and defuse the mounting tension in the room, “Let’s all take a beat, aiiight?”

Being 46 degrees of Italo-American descent, I was blessed with the whole, dark hair/complexion/eyes/improbable dimple, yet for God knows what reason, I find affecting a gangsta patois amuses the hell out of me, not to mention throwing my opponent off-balance, if only a little bit.

“OK, everyone but the dead or comatose chick on the floor stop talking,” I moved to the side just a microsecond before Rue’s hand on my back could move me; she was totally focused on the skinny dude with a twitchy arm, sneery lips and what looked to be a professional manicure; I moved over to our currently-holding-the-rug-down assassin-ette.

Crouching next to her, I turned her over on her back; her light-brown hair was short, (the pale of the nape of her neck suggesting a recent effort to change appearance), she was wearing what I think they call a peasant blouse and, as god-is-my-witness, circa 70s hip hugger jeans complete with a triangle of flowery fabric at the cuff; standing, she’d be 5′ 4” or so with a pass-able figure; a small tattoo showed above her honest-to-god macramé belt, a symbol:  ; disregarding the remains of a big-assed gun now reduced to wood stock and canvas strap on the floor next to her, she reminded me of a coed who shot me down back when I was impersonating a college student.

Wonder Boy, or whatever his name was, was still speaking to Rue like I was her plus-one said something that reminded me that we weren’t in the US of A and how, other than Aston Martins, the Beatles and a recent UN award for “Most Progress in the Field of Dentistry’, I wasn’t in love with London or the whole spite-makes-right attitude of it’s inhabitants.

Then again, Rue had orders from Lou Caesare, orders far more nuanced, (and private), than the one he gave me: “Don’t let anyone kill her; you’re the more dispensable, capische?”

5

Moonbeam got to his feet quickly, causing the man standing beside Rue DeNite to flinch and stand in a battle-ready self-defence pose slightly in front of Rue; ‘steady, Bill Capone,’ Moonbeam quipped, pointing his right hand, palm up, toward Rocco, ‘I’m only standing up.’

Rocco relaxed, and Moonbeam looked at the snoring woman lay in the middle of the room, bringing his attention to the tattoo on her midriff, a crescent moon intersected by a pointed, jagged cross; ‘I know that symbol,’ Moonbeam lifted his top to reveal a similar tattoo on his torso slightly front of his left hip bone (only there was an additional eye to the bottom-right of the cross on his tattoo), ‘it’s taken from the old logo of a company called Mooncross Industries… I don’t know her, though.’

‘Never heard of ’em,’ Rue said, eyeing Moonbeam’s tattoo which was of a more faded purple-grey colour compared to the rich black on the mystery woman, ‘and all that tells me is that it’s either a coincidence you two have similar ink or you’re both together, working or otherwise… and I don’t believe in coincidences.’

‘I don’t know her,’ Moonbeam continued, ‘and the company is involved in research and intelligence… I used to work for them when they were based in Reykjavik, in Iceland… I didn’t know they’d moved to England…’ he looked at Rue and then Rocco a little sheepishly, ‘and I don’t know why I’m telling you this.’ He stopped speaking again, and pressed his index finger into his ear, ‘Bubblegum, could you find some latest details about Mooncross Industries…’ to which a tinny voice responded with ‘who do you think I am, Directory Enq…’, Moonbeam cut her off with a quick ‘just do it.’

Rue and Rocco looked at Moonbeam in an untrusting silence, Rue thinking about how ‘coincidental’ it was that she had to return to the house – what did I return for… it’ll come back to me… only to find the two intruders there – Rocco thinking about Lou Cesare’s don’t let anyone kill her – and Moonbeam finding himself thinking about the red laser dot that suddenly appeared on Rocco’s left shoulder.

6

“If our little ninja-ette doesn’t wake up in the next ten seconds, we’re outa here; the airbnb rental contract is through one of Lou’s holding companies and besides, I’m pretty damn sure I declined both the optional homicidal au pair and enhanced-human butler,” Rue glanced at the girl on the floor, whose arms began to twitch slightly as Rocco did something to her ear lobe with the nail of his right thumb and forefinger, without further comment she looked to the man who called himself Moonbeam.

“Tell, me, Mr. Beam, did someone hit a mute button on me when I wasn’t looking?”

Moonbeam, looking down at the girl briefly, inexplicably leaned to his right, as if trying to see behind Rue and repeated the gesture of pointing his index to his ear and sub-vocalized a short interrogative and received a barely-audible but clearly negative response which triggered a frown of frustration and addressed Rue while staring at Rocco,  “I know we’ve all been subject to a certain degree of social ‘what-the-fuck’, Miz DeNite, but your companion ministering to he girl on the floor appears to have acquired a red dot on his shoulder.”

Seeing the suspicion in Rue’s eye, the envoy from the Co-ordination of Supervillains parried with a wry smile, “Ain’t none of my people, Chica. I assure you none of us are so gauche as to resort to snipers and laser sights.

Fortunately my transportation, while not James Bonded with headlight machine guns, is a quite sufficiently kevlar’d Maybach GLS; might I suggest we repair to the getaway car two doors down, my boss frowns on excessive use of superpowers causing collateral damage that gets the local coppers all worked up.”

7

8

Even with the front door closed, Moonbeam could hear the unmistakable metallic-cough of noise-suppressor equipped rifles followed by the dull thumps of bodies hitting the ground. Oddly enough, the sound seemed to originate inside the two storey house which had the immediate effect of causing his elegant left eyebrow to freeze mid-sarcasm; the front door opened and the lead dancer at Lou Ceasare’s Bottom of the Sea Strip Club and Lounge leaned into the foyer,

“Come on, Ace, you’ve got thirty seconds to decide which side you’re on; we leave in fifteen and, if you do choose Curtain Number 2, remind me to make you explain what your interest in my visit here is; btw…twelve…eleven.”

Rocco stepped past Rue, reached under a sofa cushion and, approaching the wounded girl like a professional square dancer at a Minuet competition, turned her left hand behind her back, twirled her to the right and and secured both in a pair of handcuffs; unchecked, her rotation brought her around to face Rocco and, crouching slightly, lifted her over his shoulder. Turning towards the front door he bound her ankles with a second pair of cuffs, unlike the shiny metal on her wrists, these, rather incongruously were red-velvet wrapped; he immediately trotted out to the back of a van idling nose-out in the driveway.

“…Eight” Rue, now behind the wheel of the rust-scaled white Vauxhall Vivero, called out the open driver-side window even as the well-dressed Supervillain ran through the glare of headlights on his way to the front passenger side door, “As my boss Lou is fond of saying, when you’re off home turf, it never hurts to take along a button man or two, you know, keep the surprise visit factor to a minimum.”

Slamming the van into Drive before Moonbeam had both feet in, Rue DeNite stamped on the accelerator, side-swiping a Volvo parked on the opposite side of the street as she turned left; the bang of the collision was punctuated by a female shriek of pain and male laughter from the rear of the van; “Rocco, remind me to give our Superhosts here a 4.8 Star rating for our little airbnb stay.”

9

“Hey, Rue, did Lou provide a backup safe house or are we gonna have to rely on your little buddy, Moonchild, to find us a place to regroup and maybe deprogram our little cult grrl?”

I actually didn’t mind sitting on the floor in the back of a cheap cargo van riding through the streets of Soho in the rain; from the look I was getting, our little hostage/prisoner/hit-girl did. At the moment she was doing her best Lisbeth Salanda, glaring at me while repeating, “Futu-ți măt” which I’m betting is ‘fuck you’ in Romanian or one of those slavic languages that decided, early on, having a bunch of extra accent marks was way more badass than vowels.

I saw Rue turn towards me, ready to fling her laughter back at us when two things happened: the low-hum of tires on wet pavement was sucked out of the interior of the van and my prisoner started to do a passable imitation of one of those fake zero-G airplane dives; I felt fingers clutching at my jeans as we rolled together in midair, but not in a good, coed deciding the virtue of patience was overrated, way.

A light that seemed to also be a musical tone filled the van as it slid on it’s side along the road, even as I tried to embrace my prisoner in the best impromptu-airbag manner; anticipating an abrupt deceleration, a certain homicidal hostage might be my ace-in-the-hole, so I hooked my arms through hers and did my best to make sure her soft spots were between me and whatever, when we slammed to a stop.

Time sped up; the girl stopped screaming; Rue’s laugh made it to the back of the van and everything stopped.

10

‘Moonbeam,’ the remote metallic sounding voice grew stronger through the piercing ringing in his ears, ‘Moonbeam, what’s happened… your bodyread stats are going through the roof… Moonbeam, ANSWER!’

‘Body…’ Moonbeam opened his eyes to find himself still sitting in the seat of the van he’d just climbed into, although at an odd angle, with Rue DeNite on top of him, the van on its side, and a female groaning coming from somewhere behind him.

He shook an equally stunned Rue to bring her back to her senses and began to draw down his dark energies, firing a powerful blast off from his free right hand up to the driver’s door above them, forcing it up into the air and away from them, and bringing in cool, heavy and rejuvenating raindrops.

Rue, without need for any further prompting, grabbed her bag and the folder from the window beside Moonbeam’s head, and elegantly reached up to the open space with her free hand, pulled herself up, and in the confined space folded her legs around and through the newly created hole, hanging into the vehicle by her knees. She then folded herself at the waist, bent upward and climbed out onto the side of the van.

Moonbeam then, less elegantly, clambered out to join Rue, and looked back up the road in the same direction the exotic dancer was looking, to see a military-grade missile launcher slowly moving toward them; a strong wind, a loud thumping noise and bright spotlight revealed the presence of a helicopter overhead; Moonbeam looked at Rue and asked ‘what have you gotten yourself involved in…?’

11

The city of London, with an estimated 627,707 cctv cameras, remote microphones and tireless drones nesting in the clouds could be thought of as, ‘the city that never sleeps’ but that characterization would not be fair, (or accurate), to either it’s citizenry or it’s surveillance system; in the case of the former, one’s sanity requires the personal privacy of sleep, while the latter thrives on constant awareness, albeit digital and thoroughly un-human.

“Yes, Leftenant Custos, something that the AI can’t explain, I assume,” The LMN (Live Monitor Nexus) was a subterranean hectare of monitors and operators; the Watch Supervisor, Colonel Villicus, had sedgway’d down and across the ruler-straight aisles of the heart of the GCHQ until he stood behind the young man.

“The oddest thing, sir, a common speeder at first, but when I ran it’s path backwards, multiple gunshots, originating here,” the image on his monitor was a single family house and a very expensive car with four flat tires in the driveway; anticipating his supervisor’s question, “Yes those are two dead bodies on the opposite side of the street, but that’s not the oddest thing,” running the tape forward showed a van pulling out of the driveway, both men cringed as it sideswiped a parked car without slowing and racing out of the neighborhood until it was in a commercial area when, seemingly for no reason, tipped over and, sliding along on it’s side, came to rest in the middle of an empty intersection.

“Now, watch this,” pulling back on a joystick control, the perspective zoomed up and away sufficiently to bring two additional vehicles, a motorized rocket launcher and a helicopter into view; Lt Custos decided not to comment on the rarity of such equipment on a London village street on a weeknight.

Colonel Villicus’s fingers flew over the keypad Velcro’d on his right wrist, activating an array of additional filters, including infrared, and the immediate result was the addition of the green-on-green silhouettes of four people, all moving towards a vehicle which after a moment of hesitancy sped in the opposite direction from the military-grade equipment.

A tone sounded, from somewhere on, (on in), the person of the Supervisor prompting a passable mime of a dog confronting an unexpected sound; resting his hand on the younger man’s shoulder whispered, “Notify the locals, tell them this is a classified SAS training drill and all they need do is divert traffic until we give the all clear.”

12

What the hell has she gotten herself into… missiles… helicopters… armed personnel?

Bubblegum, it’s Moonbeam why did I say that, she knows it’s me – I must be confused from the strike – I’m OK, things have gone a bit awry, that’s all… listen, I’m going to break the remote link for a while, I’ll be back in touch soon.

There, best not to give her chance to reply… hang on, we haven’t moved that far along the road… my Maybach is between us and that ridiculous missile launcher, that would give us a better chance of escape.

I’ll use my dark matter on the van’s back doors – I really love my powers even if I do say so myself – so Rue can get the others out and I’ll make a run for it… this heavy rain may just be working in our favour… I hope.

I’m not going anywhere, just hang tight… she’s not very trusting, that Rue, is she, ‘where are you going’ … she’ll understand in a few seconds, as long as I can keep dodging their bullets… they aren’t really great shots, are they?

Made it… start… start…. start….. START… yes… they’ve realised what I’m doing… good of the pilot to light my way for me… oops, sorry beetle owner, but needs must… QUICK… JUMP IN AND HOLD ON… we have a helicopter to outrun!

13

I came to on my back, covered in girl and had a flashback to a dormitory-morning from my road-less-travelled college phase when a girl from my Intro-Anthro class walked in with two coffees, one donut and a small pipe of hashish; at the present moment, unlike the morning in a distant dorm, all I had to go on were a bunch of 8×10 still-shots of memory:  riding in the back of a speeding van, excessively bright lights, and, finally, the vehicle tipping over and sliding to a stop.

My eyes opened, (only the one time, as opposed to the continuous, seamlessly-repeating-sequence that some drugs think you’ll love), and I took stock of the interior of the old van that most recently served as our getaway car: above me, a girl-shaped pile of arms and legs and breasts and such, to my left, Rue hanging upside-down from the empty space where her door used to be and the ‘…and Friends’ limey who was kinda playing the concierge to our misadventures this third night in London.

Before I could say,  ‘What the bloody hell’, (I took a certain professional pride in my ability to blend in with the locals, even when they had glowing arms and a total crush on the woman I was assigned to protect), I heard my boss, Lou Caesare, putting a footnote to my instructions to make certain no harm comes to Rue DeNite, ‘Assess and attack, the best defense is a dead opponent’.

As time returned to one-second-equals-one-sixtieth-of-a-minute, I heard: Rue laughing as she jumped to the street, that Moonshadow guy asking her about something I couldn’t see, a really strange sound approaching the van and, from my prisoner-ette a surprisingly lucid, “My name is Isla Sora, implant remote number 314159…”

At that moment, the back door of the van disappeared, so I unlocked my prisoner’s ankle ‘cuffs and pulling her along, got out and stood on reasonably-solid pavement where the English guy was pointing towards the back-passenger door of a fairly nice SUV; the source of the strange noise turned out to be a fricken rocket launcher and overhead we were treated to a midnight sun that made a noise like a big-assed ceiling fan.

I felt two things as I moved towards our newest getaway car, my Glock pressing against my back instead of it’s holster and disappointment that I let my prisoner get the drop on me while still in handcuffs… total déjà vu from that college morning so long ago.

14

Rue DeNite ran through the heavy raindrops, made all the more heavy by the blades of the hovering helicopter above; the bright light of the spotlight made visibility quite difficult as each individual raindrop reflected that light and the light off each other; Moonbeam had opened all the passenger doors on his souped-up black SUV and was frantically gesturing for the other van passengers to quickly run over.

Rue reached the vehicle, stopping before sitting herself in the front passenger seat, and, holding the top of the door, looked back toward the van to see Rocco standing facing her with the woman behind him, ‘come on,’ Rue yelled, not entirely beating the cacophony of sounds around her, ‘what are you waiting for?’

Rocco didn’t move, but slowly shook his head, before slowly raising both his arms into the air.

‘No…’ Rue cried out, about to run back over to Rocco, when Moonbeam grabbed both of her arms, ‘let me go to him… damn it… let g…’

To stop her struggling further, Moonbeam used his dark matter to subdue Rue, and gently lowered her sleeping body into the passenger seat.

Moonbeam then himself started to run towards Rocco and the woman, suddenly stopping as he saw her point the handgun to Rocco’s right temple; ‘don’t bank on taking one more step,’ she shouted, before continuing as if to herself, ‘it’s Sora… I have the target… get me out of this stupid place right now!’

 15

16

‘Again… again… please mommy, I love this swing… push me… ag…’ Rue opened her eyes after being rocked awake by Moonbeam in the SUV; after a second of regaining her senses, she punched Moonbeam hard in his left arm as he manoeuvred the vehicle to the side of the road.

‘I suppose you think I deserve that,’ Moonbeam said as he tapped a few buttons on the touch-screen display on the dashboard to the left of the steering wheel, ‘but I did what I did for your own good… you can thank me later.’

Rue, in silence, watched a street map slide into view on the display with an orange arrow blinking and pointing upward above a bright blue line indicating a road… Moonbeam spoke into his earpiece, ‘OK, Bubblegum, send it through’… and Rue, still in silence, watched the arrow change direction and point downwards.

‘To save you asking, as I can sense how curious you are,’ Moonbeam said, ‘the helicopter belongs to a Cyrus Saint someone or other, from Mooncross Industries, the map is showing our path to follow it using data borrowed from air traffic control ‘ Moonbeam smiled, looked at Rue, and continued, ‘and you can thank me for that later, too!

‘Mooncross Industries, you know,’ Moonbeam pointed to the folder Rue was holding, ‘the very same company as the one whose details you’re clutching onto there… is there anything you’d like to share… if I’m going to help you to get your man back, I’d prefer to be aware of some of the facts.’

‘It’s Cyrus St. Loretto,’ Rue spoke with a touch of disappointment in her voice, ‘he’s the guy who sent Rocco and me all this way to get intel on Mooncross… it looks like he’s either been testing us, using us, or both.’

Chapter 17

“Lou?” The slightest hint of muzak filled the interrogatory void like the nectar of a Venus flytrap, barely masking the clittering of manicured nails dancing over a keyboard somewhere in a high-rise office building overlooking Lake Michigan;

“Anya,” a softening of his characteristic growl was Lou’s concession to Diane Tierney who sat across the booth from him, her role shifting from executive to auditor.

“How darling, you’re calling me on a landline,” the woman’s voice was self-confidence personified, with a delicate lilt of humor that put most callers into a lesser state of alert; opposite the owner of the Bottom of the Sea Strip Club and Lounge, Diane leaned across the table in an effort to hear the far-half of the phone conversation;

“And, I’ll bet my private phone number that it’s one of those black desk-phones, from, like those old movies where everyone wore hats and talked too much,” her laughter would bring a smile to babies and nightmares to toddlers.

“What the fuck are you talking about,” Lou remembered why he so enjoyed the old phones, with their solid, dumbbell-shaped handsets so well-suited to slamming into it’s cradle and achieving a satisfying sense of finality; but the discipline and self-will that allowed him to rise in the underworld was never far away; business always came first and was rarely ever personal.

Diane Tierney felt her phone vibrate, followed by an unfamiliar ringtone, a clip from a song by Dove Cameron; staring down at the screen, the hostess of the Bottom of the Sea banished the frown trying to claim her face and, instead, smiled,

“Anya, I must say, you are as impressive as Ian described, but enough about you, my boss has a…request.”

Across the booth, Lou Caesare receded into a cloud of cigar smoke, letting himself slide into his natural persona, that of an apex predator in a world of plenty.

Chapter 18

The passenger compartment of the helicopter was as noisy as an outboard motor in a bath tub as our vertical ascent ceased and began to slide into a more normal flight, seemingly to the north; to my right, Isla, my erstwhile captor/Plus-one, considerately settled a headset over my ears.

Opposite us were two seats, one vacant and the other occupied by a man in a suit that cost more than my car; gotta be honest, my first impression involved words like: basalt, predator and as-implacable-as-pancreatic-cancer; if the devil decided to visit Earth disguised as a professional wrestler, (with a major jones for men’s fashion), this guy’d be the perfect poster boy.

Leaning against Isla’s shoulder I started to ask something to the effect of, ‘Who’s the fireplug in the bespoke suit’, when I felt her slide to her right, as if trying to distance herself from me as she mouthed the words ‘open mic’.

The man, doing nothing to detract from his imitation of a heavily-sedated tiger, opened his eyes and, in voice that would be at home in one of those running-in-quicksand nightmares, said, “I am Constantin Szarbo, I am here to protect Cyrus St. Loreto’s interest in you.”

Call it instinct or my natural charm, but I immediately got thigh-on-thigh with my personal jailer and felt something of a pleasant bulge along my upper leg; while I’d normally smile modestly, I tilted back into a more erect posture and barely managed to not laugh out loud.

Isla, once she’d disarmed me on the ground, hadn’t bothered to take my cell phone, so my link to Rue remained very much alive; I felt an overwhelming wave of relief and a burst of optimism, but to cover myself, seeing a glint on his left wrist, I smiled at the high-fashion ogre, “Dude, love the watch, a Patek Philipe Complication, how appropriate is that?

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

‘Audentes Fortuna adiuvat’; consistently ranked in the top 3 tattoos requested by the hopelessly-romantic segment of the post-adolescent male Gen-Z population, Leftenant Custos sneaked a peek at the Vaseline-blurred letters under the clear plastic bandage on his right forearm, anticipation of his friends’ reaction provided all the analgesic he required.

Approaching the midpoint of the graveyard shift in the Live Monitor Nexus facility, the young man sought diversion in the depths of  his cellphone; the thrilling tales of high-tech intrigue and clandestine daring-do the government services recruiter painted on Career Day back in university notwithstanding, Abel Custos was beginning to question his professional trajectory; fortunately by virtue of being young, he was spared the irony lurking in his new, yet very permanent, ink.

Glancing around the vast subterranean complex, active monitors attended by row-after-row of dedicated civil servants, he opened a second window on his display, quickly reducing it to a thumbnail in the lower right hand corner of the screen; it showed, in realtime, a land vehicle and a helicopter both on a heading of east-northeast, their point of convergence the London City Airport.

“Lets agree you are double-checking the track of the two vehicles that we are not tracking and have no interest in, before bringing it to my attention, shall we?”

Watch Supervisor, Colonel Villicus, smiled without humor; as a trainee, Abel Custos wondered if he were the only one raising an eyebrow when the Instructors would refer to Colonel Villicus as Prospero, never, of course, to his face and with an obvious if not fear-tinged deference.

Tapping keys on the controller strapped to his wrist, the supervisor commandeered the primary display, “While we are under orders to direct the local authorities to ignore this intriguing affair of gun battles, helicopters and luxury cars speeding through the streets of Whitechapel,” the older man leaned towards the screen and expanded a satellite feed of a building in the industrial park adjacent to the airport that appeared to be in the process of being blown up, “fortunately for us, we are neither local, nor ‘the authorities’; both men watched the convergence of the SUV and the helicopter on the local airfield.

Chapter 21

“La naiba de vrăjitoare” (“Godamn witches!”);

my current host, jailor and fashion icon leaned out the open door of the helicopter with a grace that made me think of a tiger crouched in a tree; despite using a single hand on the edge of the opening to prevent his falling the fifty or sixty feet to the ground, he was totally focused on the instructions originating in the cell phone held to his ear with his free hand.

The language was predominantly Romanian, yet even with the roar of the engine, his half of the conversation had a decidedly Samuel Jackson/Jules Winfield tone; that said there seemed to be an awful lot sentences needed to say: ‘Mooncross Industries will need an excavator and bulldozer before they continue their research… and a coroner and a premium LinkedIn account, given the apparent body count’.

Nodding at no one, but doing it with the palpable sense of obeisance of a samurai with none of civilized tradition but way more a feral acknowledgement of a pack’s alpha the man put the phone in his pocket as the helicopter tilted and moved towards the airport abutting the industrial park; Isla leaned against me before catching herself as her eyes went all thousand-yard stare when we passed over the remains of a sign halfway between the frontage road and the building’s blasted exterior: ‘Mooncros.. I..dustr. R&D D..vision.’

We landed next to a Bombardier Global 8000 that had the runway all to itself, the light of the luxurious interior was occluded as Constantin Szarbo stood in the doorway locking eyes with me; I heard the sophomore philosophy fave, Fredrich Nietzsche’s voice intone: ‘look into the abyss and the abyss looks back’ the thought way more disturbing now than any college dorm poster.

I felt Isla pull on my arm and, plugging my headset back in it’s socket, we got out of the helicopter and began to cross the tarmac, skirting the JP4 hurricane as the engines strained the aircraft’s brakes; halfway to stairs up to the cabin, my phone started playing a totally unfamiliar ringtone, something from a band my grandparents liked, called The Beach Boys.

I put the phone to my ear and heard, “Mr. Virgilius, listen to me, if you want to live,” I held the phone at arms length with a eyebrow raised to Isla as a woman’s laughter flooded from the speaker, “Sorry, Rocco, couldn’t resist; but what you will definitely not be resisting are my instructions, that is if you and Miz DeNite ever hope to again see the inside of a certain American Strip Club and Lounge.”

Chapter 22

Into the Fire

Racing through Whitechapel, chasing a helicopter… this wasn’t exactly what I envisioned when I left my old life behind and hooked up with the Co-ordination… sitting with an attractive lady, now that’s another thing, and she seems to be liking my company too… maybe I should leave this life behind as well, and run off with Rue here to, ‘Iceland,’ Rue DeNite snapped Moonbeam out of his emerging fantasy abruptly, shaking him to his core, ‘do you think they’re going to Iceland?’

‘Huh… wha…’ Moonbeam shook himself and took control of the vehicle again, passing the sixth road that had been closed with temporary barriers, ‘that’s odd… Iceland,’ he was still a little confused, ‘yeah… dunno… why?’

Rue, sitting in the passenger seat, flicked through the Mooncross Industries brochure she’d picked up from her earlier meeting, thinking out loud, ‘why go to the airport in a helicopter… they have to be planning to go somewhere further… I’m guessing they’re going to Iceland.’

Moonbeam realized the roads were now deserted, not another vehicle had passed them since he cut across the two lanes of traffic earlier, and he drove passed another closed road. ‘Sounds plausible,’ he replied, frowning.

They both caught sight of the helicopter lights through the rain in the dark sky ahead, the display on the screen beside the steering wheel showing two dots almost overlapping each other on a street view, confirming they were now keeping up with their target.

In the distance, the sky appeared to be a glowing orange, ‘something isn’t right, Rue,’ Moonbeam said calmly, ‘we may just be about to jump out of the frying pan, and into the fire.’

Chapter 23

Diversion

The SUV screeched to a halt at the roadblock at the entrance to the approach road to London City Airport… this was the only vehicle on the road, as had been the case for the last three quarters of the journey… Moonbeam opened the window as an extremely wet policeman approached.

‘You’ll have to turn back, sir,’ the policeman said, ‘the airport’s closed due to a large fire nearby, all flights have been diverted to Heathrow, Gatwick and Luton… you can’t drive any closer.’

The sound of a jet engine overhead caused the policeman to look up, and Moonbeam question what he’d just been told, ‘that sounds like a plane taking off…’ he quipped.

‘Regardless, you can’t go any closer… turn around, sir…’ the policeman looked oddly at Moonbeam and then looked beyond him towards Rue DeNite in the passenger seat; reaching for his radio, the policeman made Moonbeam feel tetchy, so before another word could be said, Moonbeam drew down his dark essence and sent the constable into a deep slumber, slammed the SUV into reverse and sped away back along the road.

‘Bubblegum,’ Moonbeam spoke into his earpiece, ‘can you find out who was on the last flight to leave London City, and where it was going…’ Rue watched the expression on Moonbeam’s face change several times over the next few seconds, before he spoke again, ‘Iceland… OK… is The Lady’s jet still at the Thames Hangar Core Facility… it is… be a babe and call ahead and get it ready for us… we should be there within the hour.’

Moonbeam glanced over to Rue who gave him a puzzled look in return, ‘who’s Constantine Sharbow…’ he asked, mishearing the name his colleague had relayed to him, ‘he’s on that flight we’ve just seen taking off, with Isla Sora and a Michael Blake… Rocco will probably be on that plane as well.’

Chapter 24

Mooncross Industries

Einar Baldurson walked confidently into the core complex of the Mooncross Industries Tunglfjőrður facility (known to everyone as the Reykjavik worldwide operations centre) and entered his personal password to access the Human Resources offices. Helga Arondottir looked up as he entered, ‘the facility in London is ablaze,’ she spoke sombrely, adjusting her square-rimmed spectacles, ‘our contact in the United Kingdom’s GCHQ London branch advises it is totally destroyed, although Alex in IT Systems managed to cut our datafeed from here which triggered the self-cleanse shutdown on London’s servers… our data is intact.’

‘And the personnel,’ Einar spoke whilst he read one of Helga’s emails over her shoulder, ‘any news on them?’

‘No news there,’ Helga replied quietly as she made a few mouse clicks to open another email for Einar to read: Sora and Szarbo en route with Blake, estimated flight time three hours, be aware things are NOT going to plan, CSL.

The door to the HR office opened again, and the head of IT Systems, Alex Jokullson walked in tapping frantically at his tablet before sitting at an empty desk, powering up the computer terminal there. ‘We’ve been infected with a virus,’ he said, noticing Helga and Einar looking over at him, ‘I’m trying to stop it shutting us down completely, but it’s taking us down server by server.’

Chapter 25

“Look, although all this international intrigue is very cool, don’t take this the wrong way, but your group, a Coordination of supervillains, well,” ~~~”Funny you say that, even though as a kid, I really believed I would grow up to be a superhero, I’ve reconciled myself to being a supervillain,”~~~ “Thing is, what makes me happy in life is dancing at Lou’s place and seeing my kid on vacation at the boarding school,”~~~ “You want to have a lot of kids too?”

“Listen, just checked with the pilot, well, he said we just broke up through five thousand two hundred and eighty feet of altitude and rising… I know we kinda just met and all, but would you care to join me in the aft restroom?”~~~”Hell, yeah…. but, being… er a bit older than me, you sure you can handle excessive G forces… no, wait, still got my cuffs, so lay on MacDuff!”

“The Bard wrote: ‘There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Leftenant, than are dreamt of in your philosophy’; might I offer the following question-slash-invitation, ‘How much do you know of Adam’s first wife?'”

“There is hope for this new generation, even if the vices are digital and the passion virtual, as long as their core values are intact, my web grows stronger with each passing day;”~~~ “Are you fuckin’ kidding me right now?”~~~ “In my very, very long life I have come to accept that Avarice, as found in a certain Garden, was both curse and gift but you, Constantin, are both my Uriel and Raphael.”

Chapter 26

“Are you fuckin’ kidding me right now?”

“Get that goddamn woman back on the phone…” Lou Caesare rarely tolerated being unable to do something about a problem; having survived and, more importantly, thrived in the core of the extraordinarily-lethal world of organized crime, were an author to write the biography of the owner of the Bottom of the Sea Strip Club and Lounge, an fitting epigraph might be:

All great men, criminal and honest, are possessed of a natural talent for performing before an audience and the most successful of these project an air of irrefutable sincerity.

“Miz Claireaux, I wanted to thank you for your efforts on behalf of my people,” Lou frowned at the smile of unalloyed approval on Diane’s face from the opposite side of the booth.

“Lou, how kind of you to say that and let me assure you, I will consider your input regarding how much destruction I arrange over there in Iceland. After all, a girl can’t kill every blind date who turns out to be a boor, of course a few, every now and then, well, that’s what makes life worth living, don’t you think?”

She laughed in a way that, were there normal people participating in the conversation, they would likely soon be found in therapy, a confessional or the depths of existential despair.

Chapter 27

“No, I don’t care if the Miller Analogies are in twenty minutes…”

In the delightfully subversive ways of the unconscious mind, my desire to remain asleep incorporated a persistent shoulder shaking as part of my dream… something to the effect of having to get up out of bed and a girl who was slapping the palm of her hand with a ruler; Waking World: Zero / Enjoyable Dreams: One.

Like they say, from the moment you believe you can figure out how the stage magician achieves his illusion, you’ve surrendered the joy of pretending in exchange for the dubious power of maturity; it takes most of us getting to the far end of life, if we’re lucky, to again appreciate youth.

Cyrus St. Loreto’s private plane did nothing to betray either our velocity or location, which for anyone keeping score was: a skosh under the speed of sound and on final approach to Iceland’s Keflavik Airport; in the spirit of the dichotomy of life, despite the engineering to maintain the bliss of not knowing, there was a display over the cockpit door spelling out present position and speed.

Isla was lying on her left side, an inhale and a venial sin next to me, our adjacent seats reclined as one; seeing my eyes open, she lifted the blanket covering us enough for me to see my phone leaning against her left leg… it was live and the caller ID showed: Rue.

Given the rapid development of our relationship, I felt comfortable enough to move my right hand down to hunt ‘n peck a text message; I think Isla was hoping it might involve the use of excessive emojis.

As always Rue had taken the initiative, her text: ‘Are you alright?’

Chapter 28

Alex Jokullson tapped frantically at the keys in a desperate attempt to counter attack a clone/copy/delete code command that had been entered as part of a virus affecting four of the six servers in the Mooncross Industries Iceland headquarters in Tunglfjőrður;
Einar Baldurson and Helga Arondottir stood nearby watching and waiting, ready for Helga to get back onto her computer to try to find the latest details on the explosion at the company’s London office.

On the desk, Alex’s mobile phone vibrated and then started ringing, momentarily taking his attention away from his computer screen. Alex picked the phone up to answer it on its second ring, the International Unknown message flashing away as he did so.

Dah-ling, the female voice purred before Alex could say a word, you appear to have a bit of an issue there at present… oops!’

‘Who is this…’ Alex asked, typing another command into the computer only for the screen to completely fill with red zeroes, he gestured towards the screen in frustration.

Oh, come now dahling, the woman’s voice sounding as though it was being poured through the handset, you can’t have forgotten about me already…. it’s only been four years… listen carefully, and I can help you with your little… problems… Alex didn’t speak, it’s me, Anya, you know you can trust me.

Chapter 29

Four years ago, Tunglkross Gestrisnimiðstöðin (Mooncross Hospitality Centre), Tunglfjőrður, Iceland: Alex dashed into reception, his light brown hair a few shades darker due to the heavy downpour of rain that caused it to be plastered to his head; his clothes soaked to his skin finishing off his how not to present yourself at an interview look. He was also forty minutes late, due to a landslide that had caused tailbacks on the road to the centre, although he had called ahead and had been told not to worry about it and he would still be seen when he got there.

After finding the gent’s washroom, from the receptionist’s directions, he attempted to make himself look slightly better, before going back to the receptionist to say he’d arrived.

His interview was on the fifth floor, and after managing to stick a label with his name on to his wet jacket, and waiting for a few seconds, the elevator doors opened with a musical ping up above; he walked in and pressed the top button for floor five.

‘Hold that elevator…’ a female voice cut across the hum of the closing doors, and instinctively Alex pressed the button to open the doors again; ‘yes, dahling, that’s right,’ the woman, dressed in a powerful black double-breasted suit with dashes of white around the collar and cuffs, dark stockings and black Elmay LeBoo heels, eyed Alex up and down as she walked through the doors speaking on a mobile phone, ‘Genevieve, I must go now, of course… of course… you have the word of Anya Claireaux… ciao, bella… floor five, if you please.’

The woman, Anya, stood looking at Alex for the duration of the elevator ride without saying a word, but waited for him to leave the elevator first when the doors opened; as she left to walk along the corridor in the opposite direction, she heard the wet young man say, ‘I’m Alex Jokullson, I’m here for an interview for an IT technician.’

Chapter 30

Standing at the towering wall of glass that looked out over the Miami business district, Cyrus St. Loreto felt at home; as insufficient a designator that phrase might be, given his unnaturally-long life.

A metaphor from Shakespeare came to mind, accompanied by a private smile as the sun conspired with the waves of the Atlantic to sneak up on the businessman: ‘The world was his oyster’. Rumors to the effect that he did some ‘reputation management’ work for the playwright was the stuff of corporate legend and rejected PhD dissertations. Given a certain span between ‘then’ and ‘the present’, the transient character of good and evil, endemic in the society of man since expulsion from a certain Garden, always transforms from liability to something more akin to power.

The business of the Bernebau Company and Cyrus’s personal interests were inseparable and as witness, carved into one of the columns in the first floor lobby:

“Fura ceea ce se poate, cumpara ceea ce trebuie atunci repossess rămâne.” *

In no small measure an indication of his reputation, there was nary a comment, Romanian or otherwise. in any business publications on the meaning of the inscription; at the moment, which is the only place Cyrus St. Loreto operated from, the affair in Iceland demanded his special talents.

Chapter 31

‘Are you texting at forty thousand feet…’ Moonbeam asked as he saw Rue DeNite’s face smile as she looked at the display on her mobile phone milliseconds after it pinged a jaunty jingle, ‘it still amazes me that we can get signal all the way up here!’

‘Yeah,’ Rue replied, her voice breaking into a slight chuckle as she finished her small glass of tonic water, ‘I asked Rocco if he was okay, he’s just replied ankle cuffs chaffing, transport pleasant and half of the hosts v accommodation… he’s using auto text, I’m guessing… Szarbo a bit grumpy.’

‘Who is this Szarbo,’ Moonbeam asked, intently watching Rue slide her cell phone into her inside white denim jacket, ‘do you know him, you and Rocco, I mean?’

‘We met him briefly,’ Rue explained as she applied a liberal amount of lip gloss, ‘he works with Cyrus St Loreto, an odd Miami businessman who my boss asked me to meet with…  Cyrus is the one who sent Rocco and myself to England to find out what we could about Mooncross Industries… he didn’t say w… woah!’ Rue grabbed her armrests tightly with both hands as the plane seemed to drop suddenly.

‘It’s just turbulence,’ Moonbeam said reassuringly, ‘due to the atmospherics or something around this part of the world; strap yourself in, we should be landing in Reykjavik soon and shortly after that you’ll be able to see Mooncross for real!’