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Chapter -11- Months of Planning

Christmas Day, 2049 New Atlantis ...

Conner brought his cane up, horizontal, to block the swing of an attacker's assault rifle. He deflected the butt-stock, careful not to let his fingers become mashed.

Conner brought both feet up at once, buried his heels in the man's chest and kicked him back. They both went to their backs on the ground.

Conner drew his knees to his chest, shifted his body weight to his shoulders, and kicked outward. He launched himself into the air without the use of his hands, and landed on his feet. Conner held his cane outward protectively.

The electric assault rifle discharged from the soldier lying on the ground. The energy bolt, which was fired from the rifle, met Conner's cane.

Parker's staff absorbed the energy round with ease. Conner's orichalcum cane glowed with energy. The hook at the top pulsed in his grasp.

Conner twirled his cane to build up momentum, and struck the attacker's gun from his grasp. The weapon flew into a nearby wall, smoking from energy overload.

Conner stepped forward and put his foot on the man's throat. "I will break your neck if you move."

"Conner!" The voice belonged to his mother, Topaz. She came back up the hall. Four bodies lay on the floor behind her.

He looked over his shoulder towards his mother. "I got him - I'm fine!"

"Don't kill him," she said. "You don't need to..."

"Mom!" He shouted. "Are you serious? All those years of telling me not to hesitate if the moment happens?"

"I just ... this isn't that moment. Don't kill him."

Conner rolled his eyes. He looked down at the defeated attacker and said, "I wasn't going to kill you anyway. You didn't reach for the gun on your hip or the knife on your thigh holster. You're behaving."

"Yeah," said the stunned gunman. "I'm ... we're good, kid."

Conner looked back at his mother. "I've killed people before. I told you that I killed Pendleton. Why are you suddenly mothering me?"

"I guess it's different when it comes to my son. You're just a teenager. You shouldn't have to take someone's life, especially not this young."

"Too late. Been there, done that."

Topaz approached Conner, and the gunman on the floor. "And that doesn't bother you? First time I took a life, it made me cry myself to sleep for days. I had nightmares for two years and never told anyone. I went to great lengths just to convince myself and others around me that it was the best course of action."

Conner grimaced. "You're judging me for not regretting Pendleton? Look, I don't let many people in, okay? I don't let people get close. But those who I let in ... it's not like I'm a sociopath, okay?"

Topaz sighed. "I didn't think I'd act like this. I thought I'd be proud of you for doing what it takes. Earlier, when you told me about Pendleton, I had a change of heart. I felt like shit. I felt like I ... I'm a bad mother."

Conner groaned. "Jesus, do we have to talk about this now? No offense, but this guy is still a threat."

"I'm not a threat!" said the man on the floor. "Not a threat! Not trying to die today, okay? I have a family."

Topaz kicked the man's thigh, unlatching the button over his knife case. She performed another quick kick, sliding the knife out and up, over his stomach. She shifted her foot, causing the blade to come around. It slid off his shoulder and clattered on the floor. Topaz stomped her foot on the blade, so that it was lined up with the side of his throat.

"Whoa, whoa!" Conner brought his cane down, putting the base on the blade. "You don't have to kill him for me. Jesus, mom."

Topaz leaned over at the waist and glared at the man. "You got a family? Pull out your wallet and show me."

The man carefully took his fingerless gloves off his left hand. He reached down and pulled his wallet out and held it up.

Topaz took it, thumbed it open and looked at photographs within. The man was the father of two attractive twin daughters. In first picture she saw, the girls looked around twenty years old. There was no picture of a mother. "Where's your wife?"

"She died in childbirth. I'm all they've got."

All at once, Topaz changed her demeanor. "Fuck." She dropped the wallet on the man's armored vest. "Are you here for them, or for Falcon?"

"Falcon's a myth."

Topaz and Conner exchanged confused glances. Topaz looked back down at the man. She gently nudged Conner's foot away from the man's throat. "A myth? He's not a myth. I've met him plenty of times."

"No offense," said the man, "But you're the only one who has. I'm here because the supernatural community was about to take over. We came together, fought like hell, and followed this woman, Krys Monroe, down here. She died, and we've kept this place running ever since. The doctor who was Monroe's boss - the guy who built this place - he probably died decades ago or something."

Topaz blinked. "Who do you think runs this place, you dumbass?"

"We have a city council. Jasper Cunningham and Wilhelm Snipes run the defense force with this girl who disappeared. Hell, she probably died. Nichole Parker, that was her name."

"Yeah, I know Nichole," Topaz said. "I fuck her all the time."

"Mom!" Conner erupted. "Jesus! Crass much?"

Topaz smirked at Conner. Her eyes lowered to the man on his back and the expression faded. "Okay, do you know the procedures to evacuate the city?"

"Yes, of course. We have drills twice a month."

Topaz looked up at Conner. They nodded to one another in silent agreement. She looked back down at the man and reached her hand to him. "Get up. You're going with Nichole Parker. You two are going to start the evacuation process."

The man came to his feet. He lifted his hands to shoulder height and nodded down, facing Conner. "Go ahead, kid."

Conner reached for the pistol on the man's hip. "Listen, we're not here to attack New Atlantis ... or whatever you're calling this place. We're here to rescue you people before the Underground City, below us, causes another earthquake that kills everyone."

"Earthquake?"

"Yeah," said Topaz. "The one in 2025 that killed millions up on the surface - that was Falcon's fault. We're here to kill him before he kills the rest of the people up top. You're in danger due to your proximity to this guy. He's that dangerous." She brought a phone to her ear and turned away from Conner and the guard.

Conner watched his mom and sighed. He cut his gaze back to the man. "You hurt?"

"My pride. Maybe I'm getting too old for..."

Conner pushed the gun back into the man's arms. "Yeah right. You lasted more than ten seconds against me. Much respect for a man in his forties; you're a good fighter."

"How did you know I was...?"

"You look like you're in your forties. It's not that hard, man." Conner tossed his cane down the hall. He held his hand out and it came right back to him. "See? You can't beat me. Don't be hard on yourself. I have an advantage. Also, the supernatural people had no plans to attack anyone. They've been living amongst people for thousands of years. You and people like you were manipulated into murdering a hundred thousand specials. But we are people, just like you."

The man winced. "Jesus H. Christ..."

"You can just call me Conner, actually."

The man blinked, confused at first. He looked away. "How can you joke like that? You just told me that a hundred thousand people died, and the guy responsible for it went and killed another few million two years later."

"Yup." Conner nodded. "And it's ancient history to me. That was before I was born. I'm here to clean up the mess. Sins of the father - shit like that. My parents' generation made a big mess. I'm here to help fix it."

"Brian," said the man. "Why didn't your mother kill me? She had the look in her eyes at first."

"Maybe she has a soft spot for your kids."

"What?"

"You're a single dad raising twins, right?"

"Yeah," Brian murmured.

"She has a twin. She and her twin were raised by a single father. Funny how fate manages to make freewill seem questionable sometimes, huh? Are you really only interested in saving your family?"

"Yes. I came here for my children's safety."

Conner nodded. "Good. Then you deserve to live."

Topaz came back. She pocketed her phone. "Nichole is on her way." She cut her gaze to Brian and said, "The two of you will start the evacuation. Get the alarm triggered, seal off any incoming vessels, and start directing people to the escape pods. Keep it organized. Panic kills, do you understand?"

"I've trained for this for twenty-six years," said Brian.

Topaz leaned close and studied his face. "How did your wife die?"

"We found out when she was stage four, it was already too late. Pancreatic Cancer."

Topaz's expression softened. "How long were you married before you lost her?"

"Since we were eighteen. I married her out of highschool, during senior week, right before graduation. Look, I'm Brian. We don't have to be enemies."

Topaz nodded. "We're not. If you help Nichole save everyone, then we're not enemies, okay? I've been living here for almost a year. Your people run a tight ship - this place has virtually no crime. Things won't be that nice on the surface, but ... the District Coast is basically deserted in some areas. The Carolinas ... nobody lives there."

"District Coast?" asked Brian. "My parents were born in raised in Charlestown. I grew up in Myrtle Beach. Why would nobody live in the Carolinas?"

"Because," Conner cut in, "Falcon, your boss' boss, killed everyone on the east coast of America. People still cling onto the cities in the northern parts, but the south has been flooded, and when it collided with Bermuda, well ... nobody lives there."

Topaz added, "The east coast ripped away from the continent. The radiation from power plants that went critical during the quake of '25 ... well, it's been a quarter century."

"Jesus. Radiation?"

Paz nodded with a shrug of indifference. "Those plants were left to melt down after the quake. But that was twenty-five years ago. You can live in the Carolinas, you'll be fine. Get people there. Start over with the survivors from New Atlantis. Keep to yourselves. Learn to farm the land, and figure out how to export goods in order to support yourselves. Hell, it was the south. Make cotton and tobacco or something."

Brian grimaced. "You two are serious? The east coast of America is really like you described?"

Topaz nodded again. "Yeah. Keep those girls safe. Take an active role in fathering them. Don't tell them who they can or can't date, though. Be accepting, not controlling. Be supportive of their life choices."

Brian nodded in silence.

Nichole Parker came into the hallway. "Topaz?"

"Nichole!" Topaz waved her over. She pointed to the man and said, "This is Brian. He's all mixed up in this shit and all he cares about is his family. You take him up to the surface level and start evacuation procedures. You do whatever it takes. Get everyone to safety."

Nichole nodded to Conner. "Hey again."

"Hey." Conner appeared somewhat uncomfortable. He forced a smile.

Brian walked over to his assault rifle but it was smoking. He left it on the floor. "Okay." He holstered his sidearm, picked up his knife and sheathed it. "I'm ready."

Nichole offered her hand. "Nichole Parker."

"Brian Cooper." They shook.

Nichole turned to Topaz. They shared a kiss. Without another word, Nichole guided Brian back up the hallway. They left the building together.

Topaz turned to Conner. "Sorry I freaked out. Let's go find your father. We cleared out the guards posted in this area."

"What's down here?"

Topaz grinned. "Our allies. The small army you and your friends came for - they're all here. Several months ago, Fox and I created a computer virus. See, everyone that is woken from stasis will be in a medically induced coma. There's a chip in people's necks, but Fox's ability isn't compatible with the interface."

Conner frowned but stayed quiet, listening to his mom.

"You and your father are unable to take control of these chips. So we had to come up with a different plan. He programmed a virus that deactivates anyone who comes out of stasis."

"Is that why Uncle Reno woke up?"

"Maybe so. But I don't see how," said Topaz. "He was in Paris right?"

"Yeah."

Topaz shrugged. "He would have been too far from New Atlantis for the city-wide computer to deprogram the chip. Maybe it was destroyed in another way? It would take a significant amount of electricity to destroy it, and he wasn't able to generate it himself at the time."

Conner nodded in understanding. "Oh." He shrugged. "So basically, someone or something had to electrocute him?"

"That's putting it mildly," said Topaz. The two began walking down the hallway towards the laboratory. "Reno would've had to be struck by lightning like in Back to the Future."

"What?"

Topaz shook her head. "Never mind. I keep forgetting, you never made time for movies."

"Not true. I like spy stuff. You ask me about James Bond or Mission Impossible or the_Bounre_ series, and I'm your guy for trivia."

Topaz grinned. "I don't know why but it's comforting to know you have some hobbies."

"God, you're weird." Conner used his cane to knock a random keyboard off of a lab station in passing. It clattered on the floor. Several keys popped out and bounced across the tile floor. "You were obsessed with me being the best. And I was obsessed with trying to make you proud of me. Then I don't see you for a while, and you're acting like a mom instead of a sensei."

Topaz cringed. "I've always been proud of you."

"I get that now. You love me, you just didn't know how to express it, because you knew things were going to get weird soon. And look, you were right." He waved his right hand gesturing to the city. "Here we are in the middle of New Atlantis together."

Topaz feigned a smile. "I'm glad you don't hold anything against me. Carmen was less than pleased with my parenting."

"Girls and their moms always butt heads. It's a way of life," said Conner. "My social skills suck, but even I know girls and moms don't get along until the girl is grown up."

"Yeah. Have you seen much of Carmen?" Topaz opened a door, leading to a room with warnings on the far wall.

Fox stood near a biometric panel. He glanced up and nodded to them.

"I was a real jerk to her," Conner told his mother. "I judged her for dating this guy named Kalen Kincade. He's a vampire. Like, he actually drinks blood and stuff. And I was so protective of her after she finally came back - how do I act? Like a jerk. I freaked out over the vampire thing. It's unnerving but I shouldn't have been like that."

"Do you feel bad about it?" Fox asked from across the room.

"Yeah," Conner said, approaching his father. "I was rude to her, I made her feel judged and unaccepted. She doesn't show it - she scoffed and rolled her eyes at me. I'd have acted the same way. But if she was judgmental of Tamae, I would be hurt deep down. I know it. I was stupid." Conner approached his father.

Fox hugged Conner. "Congratulations. You just grew up. Evan would have said you just raised your level and added stats to your maturity and social skills or something like that."

Topaz ruffled Conner's hair. "Apologize to her when we get back to the surface. Hey, thanks for telling us though. Because now I have time to process the fact my daughter is with an undead man before I see her."

Fox shook his head. "Kalen's down here, right?"

"Yeah," Conner said.

"I'll have the man-to-man with him. You two just relax." Fox leaned over the scanner on the wall and peered into it. "I reprogrammed it for my retina." The restricted access blast doors slid open.

"Geeze," Conner said, looking at the thickness of the doors. The trio made their way inside. They were surrounded by glass tubes, frosted over with condensation. "Look at this place. It's like something out of a sci-fi movie."

Topaz grinned. "How would you know?"

"Touché." Conner smirked. He approached a tube at random and wiped his hand across the glass. It was excessively cold. Inside, within a nutrient bath, was a broad-shouldered black man. "Wow, look at this guy. He pretty big."

Fox approached his son from behind and peered at the man's face. "Rufus will be happy."

"How so? Is this the guy he was looking for? The one with the weird name?"

Fox nodded. "Yeah, Conner. This man's name is Collobulous. I ... don't recall his last name, but Rufus called him 'Bull.' This man could lift a car and throw it. His skeletal and muscular systems are different than ours. I think he has durable skin, too, to do the stuff he does."

"Super strength?" Conner went to the next stasis chamber and wiped his hand over the glass. It was uncomfortably cold to the touch. He quickly wiped his palm on his pants. Inside, he saw a young woman in her early-to-mid twenties. "She looks like Karla. I feel like I recognize her."

"You've seen her," Topaz said. "You were younger, and you never had the chance to talk to her. She's Karla's daughter - my goddaughter. Elvena Loupe."

"Let's get these people out," Conner said with a firm nod. "Falcon won't know what hit him."

Fox gave his son's shoulder a firm pat. "This is the culmination of months of planning, Conner. I've been breaking in every few weeks, during shift change. I've managed to change the password of every stasis chamber in this room. All that's left was for you and the others to come down here."

Conner grinned brightly. He rubbed his palms together in anticipation. Without thinking about it, he reached back and rubbed the nape of his sore neck. "I have had buildings dropped on me, I've been dropped onto cars; I've seen innocent people blown into blood splatters in downtown Chicago. I have broken into the CIA. I have seen two cities nuked, and I've seen our island nuked." Conner took a deep breath to calm his nerves.

The twins remained silent, listening to their son's lament.

"All I've wanted was to see Falcon and his friends pay for all the shit I've gone through. And now we're going to have a small army. A super powered army. I can't wait to have my revenge. Let's get them out."

Topaz stopped in front of a tube and swallowed. "Fox, I found aunt Nicky. Jesus, she looks so young."

Fox approached his sister and peered into the tube. "She looks like I remember her. Twenty-five? Twenty-six maybe?"

"Yeah." Topaz licked her lips. "Let's not tell her about Nichole right yet."

"Yeah, good idea." Fox approached a computerized console at the center of the room. "Okay, let's wake'em up." Fox thumbed a panel and put a checkbox next to a list of names on a small screen.

Johann Foster. Nicky Parker. Collobulous Bullakulla. Donovan Loupe. Elvena Loupe. Abigail Chase Krenyenko. The pods moved away from the wall on mechanical rails. They angled as they moved away from the walls, until each pod was horizontal, hovering over the floor tiles, on their respective tracks.

Fox looked up. "Did you guys hear that?"

Topaz looked towards the large blast doors. She saw a werewolf and a white human man in his mid-forties.

Conner looked up. "Rufus! Charlie! In here!"

The blast doors slammed shut before Rufus and Charlie could make it to the cryo-lab.

Fox and Topaz exchanged confused looks.

Conner sniffed at the air. "You guys smell that?"

Topaz sniffed. "Gas. Dammit! Fox, do something!"

Fox turned to the computer panel and started typing. "It's a trap intended for us, Paz."

"What?!"

Fox grimaced. "Falcon didn't trust us. He knew we'd wake up our friends. He programmed the computer to wait for _me_to activate everyone. The gas isn't lethal, but he got us."

"God dammit!" Conner sneered in frustration. "Try and stop it!"

"I'm trying," Fox said, interfacing with the computer. "I need to find the subroutine to shut off the gas and turn on the venting..."

"Don't tell us!" Topaz shouted. "Just do it!"

Black gas began gushing from the vents, along with a low-power paralyzing agent.

Topaz approached her son and guided him into sitting on the floor. "Don't stand. If you pass out, you could hit your head." She sat with him and put her arms around him. "I'm sorry you're in this mess with us."

Conner pursed his lips in silence. He saw something in his mother's eyes that he'd never seen before - worry. Serious worry. He sighed and wrapped his arms around her. He couldn't think of anything to say, so he said nothing.

Topaz rested her head against her son's shoulder. "All these months of planning. God."

"I found the directory in the computer, but I can't stop it. There's not enough time," Fox said. "It's designed to immobilize us."

"I always thought Christmas was a shit holiday," Conner murmured. "I finally had a reason to enjoy Christmas for once. I've seen deities and I found out Heaven and Hell exist. This can't be how it ends. Not like this."

Topaz whispered gently to him. "Breath into your shirt, honey. Shallow breaths. Then take a deep one and hold it as long as you can." She reached and guided his shirt up over his mouth, then she guided her own shirt up over her face.