The Infected 3: Cast Iron Read online

  “Quartz has something for us. A mixed unit exercise. I don’t have the specifics yet. She’ll fill us in.” He said it like it was a command, but that didn’t bug Marcia at all. It was her plan after all, and getting worked up because someone tried to act like they were in charge of their own people was just a waste of time.

  “It’s something different. Proxy is getting a vacation, his powers are apparently giving him a bit of time to heal up, so we’re going with him to make sure nothing happens to him. At the same time there’s a Food Network conference in Miami, so that’s the destination. Two or three birds with one stone here. Kerry has to go for that, being all famous now, and Tobin is going, so that we can try to work in a little publicity for his upcoming album.” She waved to each in turn. Kerry was a bit plain at the moment, but had a cute look to her that worked well enough when she had make-up on. Tobin was Tobin, but he looked happy, a big grin splitting his face for some reason.

  On him that was very nearly a real description, his thin lips and slick black and green skin reminding her a little of a frog. He didn’t say anything, but he wouldn’t if he could help it. Not with this many people around.

  Except he surprised her by doing it anyway.

  “So, is… the rest of the riot squad coming too?” It was the only other mixed team on base, unless they counted the cooking program crew. It was a good thought. Clearly the man had a point, asking if they had something secretly planned that way. Ready to do his job, even if it had to be a secret for some reason.

  It was closer to the truth than Marcia thought anyone else would have gotten that quickly.

  “Nope. Cooking show peeps, this group here and Peggy, just because Brian thinks she deserves a vacation too. Lauren, would you be willing to partner with her for the week? That way we won’t have to keep explaining to everyone why a felon is out having a good time. If anyone asks she’s one of your backup singers Tobin.” She grinned when she said it, feeling clever, but the man just smiled again.

  “That’s fine. She’s good. Do you think she’d consider it for real? I mean for touring? I haven’t wanted to ask anyone, but she’s one of my top four choices for it. Brian said it was a good idea.” He looked down at the pink tight weave carpet and then over at the giant suit of smooth brown and black armor that was Lauren. It made her look like an insect, and she was huge, over nine feet tall, with jet black eyes the size of Marcia’s hands, that never blinked at all. She should have been scary, but kids loved her for some reason.

  Tobin sounded a little shaky, but kept talking.

  “You too, Lauren? Would you consider it? You sing very well. It will mean being on stage at some point, but…”

  The giant woman didn’t move, only a slight hiss of breathing came out as everyone went quiet. It was kind of a special thing after all, since Tobin was so shy that he could barely bring himself to speak to people most of the time, much less ask for anything. The woman didn’t leave him hanging long though.

  “I’d love to! I mean, if you really think I’m good enough. I’ve never sung professionally or anything.” She had a lovely voice, which sounded totally wrong for the armor she was trapped in, or her size. It was the voice of a girl, one that should have been going on dates or getting ready to start her own family, not a government operative that could take out small armored divisions by herself.

  Tobin just nodded hugely and looked back at the floor.

  “Please.” He added only the one word then stopped talking again.

  Marcia looked at everyone for a second, standing next to Sparks’s desk, a rather beat-up wooden thing that had seen better days, with a dented metal front where at least one person had kicked it and then waved at the group.

  “That leaves you Ink. I’d like you to act as the singing group’s protection in the field. It’s not a glamorous job, but it’s a free vacation, and you came specifically recommended for the position by the Director. He likes the work you’ve been doing lately.” That was true enough really. The man hadn’t gotten into a single fight outside of practice for months, except on duty. His first mode made him pretty reactive to perceived threats, but he wasn’t angry about it, he just took action when he thought it was needed. The only problem was making sure it was a real situation and not just someone playing a prank or something stupid like that. The Director had spoken to her about the man not a week before though, wanting to get him some kind of perk to help reinforce the good behavior.

  The man blushed, the white skin under the black lines on his face turning nearly crimson. He shrugged his muscular shoulders and managed to look and sound a little bashful.

  “Thanks. I… That’s mainly working with Hobbs. He’s been teaching me to control my first mode, and Denis from Team three has been helping with that too. So, you know, it’s not really me or anything.”

  Sparks shook his head at that and looked at Marcia, who got the idea without anything being said. The man was a just used to everyone else getting the credit for everything. It was the constant Team two problem, wasn’t it? They did the work, but if there was credit given, someone else normally got it. Team one normally. It was pretty much a crock, but it was what the press people at the IPB normally set up. No one wanted to scare the public, reminding them that half the Infected menace the government protected them from was done by people that would make them wet themselves if they met them in a dark ally.

  “You did the work though. So you get to be in charge of security for that part of the mission. Um, I mean, “vacation”. Keep that in mind, this is really about making sure Brian Yi gets as much of a break as possible. At the same time, keep an eye out and make sure he doesn’t fly off the handle and kill someone accidently for looking at him wrong.” The guy had a bit hair trigger. It was what she’d trained him to be like, but it didn’t make him overly safe out in public. Really it hadn’t been considered in his training at all. She’d never thought he’d be out in public either, not if he wasn’t working at the time.

  Ink grimaced.

  “Like if they happen to be a cop? The man is not a fan of the police. How do we deal with that if it comes up? I mean, a lot of Infected, even the ones here, aren’t that in love with the pigs, but Proxy, man… Half the time he see Sparks I’m afraid he going to attack and they’re halfway friendly. He has a real issue there.”

  It was just true and a good point. Marcia hadn’t really considered that one before in terms of this mission.

  “Um… Yeah. OK…” She had a Proxy emergency control plan worked up of course, so she made some hasty modifications to it and then put the idea out.

  “Two fold plan. First, we keep a wall of bodies between him and the police. By the way Ink, we refer to them as police from now on. Officers, or at worst, cops. Not pigs, or fuzz or anything that might be taken as derogatory. Especially in public. We have enough problems there already, no need to get people worked up. But if anything starts to happen at all, we have… Kerry deal with them.” Marcia looked at the girl and gave a single half nod.

  “I mean talk to them, not levitate them into a wall at speed. Even if it’s tempting. You look normal and have some fame, so that might work. Plus I don’t think Brian would hit you even if you got in his way, since he knows you. The idea is to calm things down. If that doesn’t do the trick, Denis will handle it. That includes Brian if it comes to it. Denis can’t control Brian directly, but if he throws himself in front of the man, I don’t think Proxy will kill him just to get at some police. We’ll keep Mark as a back-up, if it comes to it. Any questions?” They should have had them, but no one asked anything yet. That could be nerves, lack of confidence or simply not understanding what their job really was yet.

  Either way she would have liked the questions better.

  “Good. Let’s get packed, we leave as soon as the plane is ready.”

  2

  The only problem with the plane ride was that the jet only had twelve seats in all. As far as the comfy plush ones went anyway. There were a few more, for the
cabin crew, but they were small and isolated from the main section, situated near the front. That normally wouldn’t have been an issue, since they didn’t travel in large sections like they were at the moment for pleasure, and Level, Lauren, Marcia reminded herself, using the woman’s real name, wasn’t using a seat. They were all too small for her anyway, so she had to sit in the middle of the isle, her weight centered over the wings. She was heavy, but not so much the pilot had a problem with it once she was in a balanced position. That still left them with seventeen people to find a place for.

  Bridget, Scott and Charlot Chambers daughter felt that she should get to come along, since her parents were and it was kind of vacation oriented for Brian. He was her friend after all, and one of the only people that the girl would listen to all the time. She was about to just drop the girl in next to him for that very reason when a voice spoke in her ear, reminding her that Penny was around too. She’d forgotten the girl. That was bad. Not uncommon for her at all, but she might need the woman for her secret mission, so making her feel like she didn’t matter wouldn’t work very well.

  “Do we get peanuts on this flight do you think?” She was playing, of course, but they probably would get some snacks or something. There was a cabin crew, which today was made up of one slightly annoyed looking crew cut of a man that was clearly assigned from one of the alphabet agencies to keep tabs on them. He wore military fatigues and looked hard, but she figured him as NSA, rather than the Marine his uniform indicated he was supposed to be. The stance was different for one thing. The NSA tended to be a little loose and sloppy about things like that and marines weren’t. The man would have done better pretending to be ex-army, but she wasn’t going to give him hints and tips on spy craft. It wasn’t her job.

  Brian turned and looked at the girl sitting next to him, or at least Marcia figured that’s what he was doing and spoke, not having an ear piece like she did. He didn’t need one, since he could just see and hear Cellophane normally. No one knew why it worked, but the best guess was that Penny needed him too, so he did it. It wasn’t a very technical guess, but the psych people had just kind of shrugged when they mentioned it and everyone else had finally gone along with the idea.

  “I don’t know if we get anything to eat on the flight or not. Are you hungry? I guess we could grab something before we go.” He glanced across from him at Karen, who was his girlfriend after all as well as a font of compassion, she looked worried for half a second, but then shook her head.

  “No need. Mark and Warren are taking care of that for us. I think we have to be in the air first though, for safety?” The woman smiled at the clump of show people that were all sitting together, and pointed to the very large blue camp cooler tucked behind the second row of seats. They had the space in the cabin, just not the chairs. Finally she just stood and looked around as yet another person came in. Then two more.

  Three black suited agents. One of them Reyes, which instantly got her attention. He might know something about what she was planning to do, if he hadn’t been invited in too. That kind of information could be dangerous if too many people knew it, or if you couldn’t trust the people that did. She trusted the man though, she reminded herself. Not as much as she probably should given their history together, but as much as almost anyone but her closest friends.

  Lancaster was there too, along with Burke.

  It made sense; they all had their normal details on the plane, going on the trip. Lancaster was Proxy’s handler. Brian didn’t really know that, but it was the assignment the man had. He was also Cellophane’s field man. Reyes had Tobin as his watch and Burke handled Prime and to a lesser extent his daughter. The extra bodies were a pain, but they didn’t have to really handle FAA rules either, did they? She’d known agents were coming, but these guys, two of them, had been in the old unit and them being the ones to come along was slightly out of place for what was essentially a vacation. That was fishy. It probably just meant she wasn’t the only one to get the secret invitation to play from Cal Morris. She needed to watch them, just in case.

  Brian spoke up suddenly after no more than a few seconds of seeing who was there. He was kind of a natural leader after all. Oh, he didn’t think of himself that way, Marcia knew, but it was true.

  “OK, some people that won’t die if there’s a crash give up your seats to the nice soft men in black here. All one big happy family after all and we don’t want to see anyone getting squished.” He smiled, and started to unbuckle himself.

  Waving him back down, Marcia stood.

  “Right. You stay. Prime, Impulse, and I have this. We can camp in the back, on the floor.” She started to add that if Scott whined about his suit getting wrinkled she’d kick his ass, but he just nodded and stood without saying anything. Given his incredibly high self-esteem it really should have been a problem, but he just started moving without anyone doing more than mentioning it.

  It took a second for her to get it all. Brian had set the man up for it so cleanly she’d nearly missed it. Prime was tough, wickedly so… and vain. So by pointing out that the agents would die in a crash if not belted in it became a matter of pride for him to protect them. That and the fact that he and Brian were friends and the man had to know that if he didn’t step up, Brian would, and he wasn’t half as able to withstand a crash. It was a bit of a strange pairing, but the whole Chambers family loved the guy. Probably because when everyone else had freaked out on them and thought the adults had been having sex with Bridget, he was the only person that stood up for them. Well, him and Hobbs from Team two.

  Marcia hadn’t. She’d been the one that found the video in the archives that showed they were guilty. Fake tapes, it turned out, but at the time she’d been leading that charge to have them arrested. They’d largely made up. Not everyone had, but the family was cutting her a little slack, because of her first mode. She had to suspect them of something if there was even the slightest evidence of it, she couldn’t help it after all. That was pretty much her thing. People couldn’t help what their first mode was either, so the rule was to forgive any garbage that came from it, if you could.

  Not everyone else had an excuse like that. Scott managed it pretty well, but Charlot still had some issues, having a sense of anger toward most people and situations all the time like she did. Bridget though was just plain old holding a grudge. Not against her, since she’d been ordered to go to the gym on fourteen by the Director when the Chambers’ were being confronted with the false accusations. So the girl didn’t associate her personally with the problems they’d had.

  She did associate Lauren with it. They’d been best friends before that, so when the giant ex-schoolteacher found out that Prime had possibly been having sex with his daughter, a girl that might not really be able to say no on her own… she tried to kill him. One on one that probably would have been about an even fight, but Level had brought about thirty of her closest super-powered friends with her, showing a lot more foresight than Marcia had thought the woman had.

  They’d nearly killed the man. Until Proxy got there and made everyone back off. The tiny red headed girl’s anger showed still, even months later. This time by hitting Lauren in the back of the head with an elbow just after she squeezed by, hard enough to send the woman flying forward, even with the weight difference. Lauren weighed something like twelve hundred pounds after all. That Bridget, who might have weighed eighty pounds soaking wet, didn’t move when she did it showed that the girl was subconsciously stabilizing herself using her flight powers already, even if she didn’t know she had them.

  Great.

  Marcia was about to say something about the scene when Brian spoke up.

  “Stop that now Bridget. We’re going on vacation, so we all have to get along. It’s a rule.” He said it like it was something real, but then he was an only child which probably gave him a skewed version of things like that.

  She had three brothers and knew vacations as a time of covert violent actions and psychological torture. The ide
a of running over and chanting “I’m not touching you” at Brian while hovering her hand over his face was tempting, but she decided to leave that for later, in case things got uncomfortably boring.

  Bridget watched Lauren move back into position slowly, trying to be careful not to damage the carpet as she moved. It was nice after all the whole plane was, done in cream and gold. Everything was expensive too. The girl was dressed in shorts and a t-shirt, one that had some kind of cartoon character on the front, red and yellow for her whole outfit and a pair of tiny sneakers without socks.

  “Sorry. Slipped.” She lied so obviously it would have been less offensive for her to have said nothing.

  Lauren held her tongue and gave no external indication of emotion at all. It was sad to watch the whole thing, since every single side of it was right in what they were doing, as far as Marcia could tell. Lauren had to try and protect the girl at the time and very few people on the planet could have taken Prime down if he really was raping his daughter. The evidence had been solid looking too. Video proof that only one or two people in the world could have put together without it being real. It just so happened one of them, a woman that used to be with the IPB, had. Trivia, the woman who knew everything.

  Bridget for her part was mad because no one except Brian had believed she wasn’t sleeping with her dad, even though she’d told them she wasn’t. Then everyone had tried to kill her parents. So yeah, what the hell was the kid supposed to do now? If it had been Marcia she would have waited and set them up, taking them out one by one, making it looked like accidents.

  Hopefully Bridget was a better person than she was.

  Scott…

  The accusations had clearly left him angry. It was something he took pains to hide and he hadn’t lashed out at anyone physically yet, but the man was all about his personal self-worth and pride. How he was keeping himself from taking out a few people himself she didn’t really know. He’d left for about a week, but Brian had talked him into coming back somehow. It was needed for their long term plan to take down Braid and her crew of super baddies that wanted to kill a few million people and start a war between the Infected and the norms. At least that was her guess. He might also just like the Chambers family and not want to see them be hurt.