I took the train.

Yeah, it was a long train ride down. When I mentioned I would be headed down the coast, Naomi had laughingly suggested I stop in Charleston, South Carolina. The thing is, back in the ’60s, they started installing metal detectors. That wasn’t such a bad thing, except they also started installing X-Rays, and eventually, N-Rays.

The problem is, I tended to absorb a bit of energy. Not much, not enough to protect me from their effects, but enough to block certain types from penetrating my body. Like X-Rays. I wasn’t worried about radiation, although if I sat in extreme radiation long enough I started getting antsy and had to burn off extra energy.

Which meant, if I went through an X-Ray Machine or an N-Ray Machine, it just showed a big black blotch where my body would be. I wasn’t registered as a metahuman, which meant that no one would ever let me on a plane. No one wanted an unregistered metahuman, someone who could be a cowl with potentially a deadly superpower, sitting in a pressurized, 200-million-dollar box miles up in the air with a bunch of unprotected normal humans.

So despite Naomi’s all-too-kind offer to pay for a flight I was forced to decline. A train ride was only 5 hours, which, with all the baggage, traffic, security, and parking crap it took to get through an airport, was only about twice as long as it took to fly. It took me until I got onto the train to realize the wordplay. Charleston, South Carolina, from Charleston, West Virginia, at the suggestion of Naomi.

No, I never even considered hiring a Metahuman teleporter. Like I had ten thousand just lying around.

Once, a long time ago, I’d crossed America on foot. It had taken me almost 7 months to get from Seattle to New York. 5 hours to get down to South Carolina was nothing, and I intended to relax and enjoy the Journey.

Alas, that was not to be. On the stop for Roanoke, a rather spectacularly ugly woman decided to flop down across from me in the half-empty train, and immediately began to talk to me. I wasn’t going to be rude, but she looked a lot like Margaret Thatcher and Richard Kiel had a love child.

“Hello, my name is Karen Anchorage, And I wanted to talk to you about the Initiative.”

I chuckled. “Yeah, you guys said you’d be in touch. I suspected a rather less dramatic contact than showing up on a train. I take it I have been under surveillance from the moment you saw my little ad. I hate to have to tell you this, but I already have a job. Pulled the ad and everything.”

She shook her head, “No, we have had you under surveillance for a lot longer than that, Mister Cheransky.”

Hmm. She knew my real name. The last time I used it was… 1925 I think? Although I had started using fake names before that. That was right around the time I was in a Chinese prison, fresh out of newly-formed revolutionary Russia.

“You have me at a slight disadvantage, I don’t know anything about you. I assume that you had a retrocognitive or psychometric look me up?”

Her eyes widened slightly, that was the only clue that I might have caught her by surprise. “Something like that.”

I nodded, “Right. So I guess you are already well aware that I have another job I am working on. Especially if you have a clairvoyant of some kind. So, basically, you are stalking me, which I don’t particularly appreciate. So is this the part where you fuck off, and maybe bug me later when I am done with the job? Or the part where you make vague threats about making my life miserable or disappearing me?” I looked carefully at her outfit. Government camouflage, although unless she were a spook it might be fake.

“How about the part where I offer you an incredible amount of money to change trains and head to New York for a couple of jobs, and maybe change your life for the better?” She asked.

I chuckled. “Maybe I am loyal.”

She snorted and shook her head. “Try again.”

I laughed a little. Interesting woman to spar with. Not nice, but interesting. “I made a deal, I already agreed to the job. I like what I do, Miz Anchorage, and I have a bit of a reputation for getting it done. That’s why I would be willing to entertain a less stalkery approach at some later time.”

“Our needs are time-sensitive.”

I nodded, “Yes, of course they are. That’s why you should have approached me right after the cryptic note on the dark web. I am sure your needs are critical, but you waited for too long. Hell, right up until the point where I started trying on star-spangled underpants would have worked, but now I have a job to do.” Something about her bugged me. I wasn’t sure what it was, but something seemed familiar. It was weird because that mug should have been unforgettable, maybe featured in my nightmares.

She sighed. “Now is the time when I have to start making threats. I hate doing that because it makes the conversation less pleasant.”

I shrugged like I was bored, “So what will it be? Exposure, Deportation, black site? Maybe spreading my name on the Darkweb as being unreliable or a rat? Death threats?”

She shook her head. “None of those would work. Your rep is word of mouth, deportation wouldn’t bother you in the least, and ratting or death threats would only get you to run or take one for the team, and we both know how unlikely that is to be taken seriously.”

I thought about it. And then nodded, “So you are going to use my kids, then. See, that’s why I don’t like you spooks. You just don’t know how to play the game. That’s why you keep getting screwed over.”

I leaned back against the headrest of my seat, closing my eyes. “Still, I am going to let you have your say. What exactly is it a big-time fed wants from a two-bit operator like me?”

She smiled, which was not an improvement. Orthodontic surgery nowadays was cheap, and while her teeth weren’t rotten, they were definitely aligned like a kid’s coloring book attempt. She probably had some sort of power like mine, that prevented her from making use of any corrective surgery.

And why was it so familiar?

“There’s a thorn in our side. A man named Louis has refused to see the righteousness of our cause and threatens to upend the stability of both the current order and potentially the world. He could also change the game that you seem so fond of, or eliminate it entirely.”

“You want me to kill him? No, I am not an assassin.”

She shook her head. “On the contrary. He has surrounded himself with allies, both metahuman and otherwise. He’s sitting like a spider in the middle of a web of manipulators and killers, from all over the world. His plans include wrecking the opposition to the Siberian incursions, and selling a special virus that could turn anyone into a metahuman, from mob bosses to drug dealers, without the current messy chances of blowing them up.”

Wait! I suddenly realized where I had seen her. “Do you mean the Alchemyst? Heh, I thought you were his lawyer. Kind of a strange job for a spook.” His trial had been big news for about 5 days, a guy that could create superpowers that killed 99% of the people who tried. Remember the screaming puddle of goo? This was the source.

She nodded, “Yes. He’s not terribly powerful, but like you, his abilities are far-reaching. We have access to people who have a great deal of talent in determining future events. We attempted to guide them, but unfortunately, he also has allies with these abilities, canceling out our foresight.”

I laughed, “My abilities? Far-reaching? Lady, I am not even super-strong. What I can do amounts to playing stuntman without a net, and can be replaced by 600 bucks worth of programs.”

She smiled a little again. Ugh, I wish she’d stop doing that. Look, I can handle odd and creepy-looking people. My job involved working with folks constantly that filled those criteria. But something about her smile was just...like weaponized ugly. It took it one step further into the nightmare level, like opening up a door and suddenly having Cthulhu step out and give you the finger. Was it a metahuman ability?

“So if not killing him, what is it you want from me?”

“You are already positioned to make his acquaintance. Socially, he is connected with Naomi’s father and handicapped sister. Kjootoo has been his drug distributor before the DMA locked his profits and controlled substances down, but it is difficult to get close to him. He is a known mass murderer that has wiped out an entire resort town with his own two hands before because they pissed him off.”

She continued, “To put it bluntly, you can’t kill him, any more than he could kill you. Both of you have talents that make you nearly impossible to kill. Secondly, you are a cipher. The reason your little fake death scheme works is that you have a hidden talent to screw with Cassandras and trackers. We were able to find you by waiting until your influence had faded on Naomi and then tracking her potential, and then searching out people you had interacted with in the past and working around your interference.”

I focused on the wrong thing on purpose. “Wait, I can screw with meta powers?”

She gave me the stinkeye. It was nasty, but a lot better than her smile. “Yes, you already know that you tend to absorb minor amounts of energy. That includes metahuman traces, and even the tracks that Cassandras and retros follow, the… magical energy, for want of a better term, that they use for their visions. It has grown stronger over time, but it seems to grow in direct proportion to the amount of attention you draw from readers. This can be a highly useful trait when dealing with his people.”

Huh, I had noticed that I tended to shrug off the really weird meta powers, like empathy and mental manipulation, quicker than most, but I thought it was just the great deal of experience I had dealing with their effects. There were rumors going around that metahumans couldn’t read minds, but that was pure propaganda… some of them could pluck the thoughts out of your head as easily as picking a flower from a rosebush, but no one wanted to admit it was possible.

Heck, Naomi wasn’t even the only ‘metahuman family’ running around. They didn’t call themselves metas, and would never register, but I knew of one particular family in the Ukraine that could all shapeshift into wolves, and don’t even get me started on the rumors of vampires… there were simply too many rumors and stories going around to think that they were all the dreams of fiction writers observing poor bastards with rabies.

The Russians had even thought I was a vampire, although I was fine with the sun, couldn’t stomach blood, couldn’t mesmerize people with hypnosis, and was more than happy to attend church as frequently as was appropriate to blend in… besides, a lot of churches were full of cute girls that weren’t drunk and trying to get you into bed with them. Sometimes, you just wanted a little conversation and a few smiles from the fairer sex. I doubt they would even have been convinced unless, at some point, one of their agents had encountered the real thing.

“You still haven’t told me what you want me to do,” I replied. I was getting tired of this conversation and thoughts of the fairer sex reminded me I was dealing with someone that made even my unbearded mug look like a facelift advertisement.

“Get close, pass information, and help keep him off balance. You have done it before. Get samples of the drugs he makes to pass on to us, so we can work on antidotes. Let us know who his people are, and what he plans. A lot of his minions have ways around Cassandra influences, we want to know who they are and how they are doing it in order to keep this country, and the world, safe. Basically, act like you do when you are dealing with an edgy cowl who keeps flirting with ending the game.”

“I will think about it. Now my offer. I can do a bit of that, but I won’t end or endanger my current job to do it. I am also pretty low-power, but I can keep going forever if I have to, and you just told me that if I come after you, you are never going to know when or where I am going to strike. If you start sending me threats or exing off relatives with a family tree to prove I am related to them, I will hunt you down and end you, everyone you work with and for, and anyone important to you. I have been a soldier, but I am not a killer. Don’t make me prove I can become one.”

“Do you remember that movie with the Terminator? How he said that hunting Sarah Connor was the only thing the bad guy did? I can do that, I promise you. If you have special powers to protect yourself, I will find a way around them. If you have metahumans or agents protecting you, I will go through them to get to you. I will never die, and I will never stop.”

I grinned, “See, that’s how you make a threat. And trust me, I intend to keep it. Don’t fuck with me.”

She nodded, “That sounds fair.”

“Seriously? No counter-threats?”

She shook her head. “Mister Cheransky, I have dealt with metahumans my entire adult life. The whole time, almost any of them were capable of blowing my brains through the back of my skull. My only superpower is to be taken seriously, instead of ornamentally. Despite my appearance, I have been married twice, both times to metahumans, and both times I asked for a divorce. I take your threats very seriously indeed and have no plans to provoke them, but I am also aware that should I need to, I might be called on to make those threats real. I am more than prepared to give my life for my country and my world if needed. I would ask if you were willing to do the same, but that may not be an option for you.”

I nodded. She was actually somewhat convincing. “So I take it the initiative is a spook thing?”

She screwed up her face a little. Erf. “The Initiative is multi-faceted. We have a public face, working with the DMA, and a private face, individuals working to keep meta threats from destroying the world. We also have oversight, from the UN and the US governments. We are not rogue agents or spooks.”

“Other than that, the rest is highly classified, although we are directly responsible for the new protector teams in a number of major cities. Many of us believe that it is time to come out of the closet and expose the threats for what they are, but many of us believe that we need to keep proceeding in secret, to prevent our destruction. Both capes and cowls work with us, for the common interest of keeping our world safe, and the reason you don’t have cowl tinkers creating doomsday devices, cultist summoning world-devouring entities, and interdimensional alien invasions on a regular basis is entirely due to our influence.”

She got to her feet. “Your stop is coming up. We will keep in touch, I assure you. Yes, we tend to behave with a bit of cloak and dagger, but combining the interests of so many different groups is challenging enough without adding in public perception and relations.”

I got up as she left and the train rolled to a station stop. She’d given me a lot to think about, and It would be nice to have someone to hash it out with, but Mickey had enough shit on his plate without focusing extra-governmental agents on him.

That’s the problem with being a self-sufficient lone wolf. No one to talk to when the crap hits the fan.