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Chapter 13
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After a rough night of sleep, Judy told her mom over breakfast that she had more work to do with the heroes she’d joined. Her mother offered her a lift to the nearest blue pillar. Judy negotiated for part of the way so that she could change into her costume somewhere out of sight.

This time, the base required a code, which she entered before being beamed into the underground base. Thankfully Walter had sent the code to her with an email.

The only real change Pixeletta noticed at first was that there was no table at the entrance. She found it instead in a larger room toward the back of the base. There, Mortar was wiping something small with a soft cloth before inserting it into a machine. It looked like it could work as a monitor.

Walter caught her off-guard. “Sleep well?”

“Not really,” she replied.

Mortar asked, “Shouldn’t you be in school?”

“It’s Sunday.”

“Oh, it is. Damn. I guess that gives me another day to get things done at least.”

“You lost track of what day it is?”

“When you’ve got a million projects running through your mind, and you spend loads of time on even a fraction of them, it’s easy to forget your own birthday. In theory.”

“And what are you doing now, by the way?”

“I’m just setting up a projector to show some of the images from last night so the whole group can get up to speed. Assuming, of course, that everyone comes. We didn’t exactly get to do a whole lot of heroics last night.”

Nodding, and sipping on a teacup, Walter said, “They’ll come. War Lagoon and Princess Undercut went patrolling. I sent them to look more specifically at homeless people and any gangs who hang out in the underground sewer network beneath Steel Canyon.”

“Good thinking. Maybe someone saw or heard something we can use.”

“As long as we’re as quiet as the mayor has asked.”

“I promise we’ll be as quiet as a handful of raging dragons fighting with swords and axes while ice skating to the 1812 Overture.”

Another sip of tea. “Good man.”

“Also, note to self, install a more permanent projection system in this room when we all have the time for it.”

“Will there be surround sound?” The question came from another man who joined them. It was Adamast Cross.

“I think that goes without saying.” Mortar Mage grinned at him.

Adamast, however, retained a straight face. “Cool.”

Moments later, Psi Wizard and Princess Undercut walked in together. Walter asked them where War Lagoon was, and they shrugged it off.

War Lagoon joined them after a few more minutes, carrying a mug about half the size of his head. It was steaming, and the big guy drank from it.

Once everyone had settled down by the table, facing the monitor, Princess Undercut said, “Alright, so what are we doing now, and how are we doing it?”

“That depends on what we all know,” stated Walter. He nodded to a couple plates of food on the table. “In the meantime, help yourselves. Would you care for a scone?”

Princess Undercut stopped biting into the scone that was already in her hands at this point. “Oh shit, you’re actually offering?” It earned her an odd glance from the suited gentleman.

War Lagoon said, “Before we begin, I would like to say that, together, Princess Undercut and I only found signs of a few assault victims by the sewers. Nothing stolen, but they were knocked unconscious without seeing who’d attacked them. This was a day and a half ago. After that, I only found a vague description from a homeless man who said that a few silhouettes entered the sewer system carrying weapons. The same man had fled the scene wanting nothing to do with it.”

“That confirms one thing,” said Walter. “Whoever was behind this didn’t want witnesses tying them to the intensive mental care facility.”

“I can’t say I found anything more than that,” said Princess Undercut.

“That’s fine. What did we find inside the facility? Who were the dead bodies, and were there any surviving staff? Ladies first.”

“All of the doctors, nurses, and secretaries on duty were accounted for and locked behind the same type of doors as the patients. Thankfully, very few of them were in the same rooms as the patients. I don’t want to think what would have happened in a worse scenario, but no one was seriously harmed.”

“I can attest to that as well,” said Psi Wizard. “There were some cuts and bruises that I healed while we were there, but nothing serious unless you count people going hungry and thirsty after a day without food or drink.”

Adamast Cross said, “That includes the few staffers who were in a room belonging to a patient that was nowhere in sight.”

“Harvey?” asked Pixeletta.

“What?”

“It was a name I read somewhere.” Walter attempted and failed to interrupt her with a clearing of his throat. “Do you know the patient’s name?”

“They mentioned a man called Harvey while trying to explain frantically that the patient was taken away.”

“And why did you not want me to say his name, Mr. Dallevan?”

“Please, just Walter,” he said in response. “I just wasn’t sure it was time to bring up that you saw his name, or how, but perhaps it doesn’t matter. Care to enlighten us as to where you saw this name?”

“In a protected file, the same one that referenced the Wolfram Manifest, when I was looking for some sort of record as to what happened before last night.”

“Fine instincts.” Walter rubbed his chin. “What of the woman we all saw in the lobby before we left? Was she a patient?””

Pixeletta—as well as everyone else, she was sure—recalled a woman who appeared, spoke like a dazed madwoman, and left before anyone could do anything.

“I looked,” said Psi Wizard. “No patient was missing besides our one man in question, and the mystery woman looked like none of the patients left behind. Her mind was a hard one to read. She might have been treated somewhere, but not there. I submitted her description to the select wards across the metropolitan area. My alter ego has yet to receive a reply.”

Why would any of the wards give out that sort of information unless he was a police officer or another doctor? Pixeletta squinted at his face.

She said, “I’ve seen you before. A doctor, right?” The surprise on his face answered her more swiftly than his words could. “Don’t worry, your secret’s safe with me, but you might want to be more careful in the future.”

“So that makes at least two of us who know,” said Princess Undercut. “At this rate, you might as well take off your whole costume and fight the bad guys in the buff. What? I wouldn’t mind. I actually think I have a twenty or a hundred tucked away in here somewhere.”

Pixeletta giggled at the perplexed Psi Wizard and the number of speechless men around the table. Somehow, she imagined Denise growing up to be like Princess Undercut.

War Lagoon grunted into a clenched fist, and said, “Right, so, as to the dead, they were security personnel, undercover officers from half a dozen agencies, and a handful of civilians who had been visiting a couple nights ago before this all went down.”

“That makes things delicate and complicated,” said Walter. “We know now what time this happened, and some idea of why, but not whom. Those agencies will want answers, and they’ll start filling in the blanks within one another’s names if we don’t give them anything on that end. If you think the average person hates being lied to, you haven’t seen what a number of agencies will do if it looks like secrets are being kept. Mortar Mage, is the projector ready?”

“It is,” replied Mortar. He clicked a button on a handheld device.

The first image to appear on the screen was of the singed hole they had found last night. Psi Wizard let out a “Holy...,” which prompted Princess Undercut to smack him over the backside of his head. The next image was further down into the hole, and a couple more followed until a barrier of rocks could be seen.

Mortar Mage said, “This is our best bet as to how they got in and out of the facility on Friday night. As you can see, they closed it off on the way out. The problem with that, however, is that my little drone scanned the rocks and calculated that these were put here yesterday about the time someone had gone in to check in on the facility.”

The picture changed to the document Pixeletta had glimpsed. And a few more showed some documents too small for her to read from this distance.

“Here is all we have on the man who was taken,” said Mortar Mage. “The records do their best to conceal his identity, but I found that he was part of a dangerous organization, and held a secret for them that more or less broke his mind to the point where he could not function in society, or even lead a group of convenience store robbers, but he did have a few sporadic moments where he was able to talk about other things. Baseball, naughty magazine models, little things like that. Talk about his old life met with screams and very few words. Mention of his secret made him shut down to a catatonic state, even slowing his pulse to dangerously low levels.”

“The Wolfram Manifest,” said Pixeletta.

“As near as I can guess. How the doctor got ahold of that name, what she did with it besides recording it, I couldn’t tell you, but Psi Wizard can confirm that she had nothing to do with the break-in or kidnapping. She broke down before either of us could ask her where she heard such a name.”

“During,” Psi Wizard corrected.

“When we left her, she was talking about wolves and their soft coats.”

“There was more than simple admiration in her voice. I’d explain, but we have an underage lady present. Plus Mortar, who I am still trying to figure out if he’s any more mature.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“This is the weirdest task force or the like I’ve ever been in,” said Walter.

Princess Undercut said, “No offense, sweety, but I’m pretty sure you’re wrong. We’re more than that.”

“How do you figure?”

“Didn’t you audition the lot of us to start a supergroup?”

“Well, I did, but—“

“No buts, we’re a party, and we’re charging the bad guys for the booze until they stop messing up our streets.”

Walter certainly looked amused. “We’re going to need a name if we’re going to be a supergroup. If you’re all interested and very serious about doing this, then it should be a good name.”

“With a group like this,” said War Lagoon, “it might be wise to say we’re a separate league from the usual heroes out there. More might join us in the future, but aside from the Captain or the ‘Old Guard,’ we’re probably the best this city has to offer.”

“Possibly the scariest thing you’ve said, and I’ve seen you do drill instruction.”

“Yeah.”

Adamast Cross said, “Your last name is Dallevan, right, sir?”

“Yes, why?”

“The Dallevan League,” chimed Mortar Mage and Pixeletta.

“Oh, no.” Walter pressed his face and palm together.

“You started it, Walter, so it’s only fair,” Adamast Cross explained in a playful tone.

Mortar Mage said, “While we’re at it, I wanted to bring up something about how we get into this base. I can rig up a small device we can all wear so we don’t have to keep putting in the password, and we can use the same device to call on one another from across the city if we need help.”

“That sounds like it could backfire the moment the bad guys get a hold of our devices.”

“Not if I also fix up the computer and defenses around this place. Give me about a week, and we’ll be the best equipped supergroup you’ve ever heard of.”

The monitor blew up. Thankfully, the explosion was contained to the station on the other side of the room, and the flying bits of material didn’t hit anyone, though it did ruin the last scone.

“One week, right?” Walter asked Mortar Mage.

“Tops.”