I could tell he pitied me – nothing overt, a twist of the mouth, the cast of his eye, the slightest hunch in his shoulders. This wasn’t that arrogant prick I’d fought in New York. That guy wanted to crack my head like an egg and fry my brain sunny side up. The guy standing in front of me was telling the truth. He didn’t want a fight.
“Okay,” I said.
He nodded, clenching his jaw in a gesture that made his face look rather severe.
“What were you expecting?”
I shook my head, “I don’t know.”
“This is all real, Blackjack. You’re going to have to deal with that.”
I lost my balance a second, shifting on my feet, and he reached out and caught me, slowing my fall to my knees.
“I don’t understand…”
“It’s a sickness,” he said. “It can get real bad if you let it. Some people loose themselves between the fiction and reality. If you rest, it will pass. For some people it takes months. You were down a long time and it takes awhile for the mind to catch up.”
“How long?” I asked, scared to find out the answer, and looking up at Superdynamic when he hesitated. “How long was I down?”
“Eighteen months.”
My mouth slacked, and I mumbled “Oh, God,” under my breath, fighting the welling tears at the edges of my eyes. If not for Zundergrub, I’d still be there, like old milk wasting in the back of the refrigerator shelf.
“Damn, he didn’t know,” Moe said.
“I’m not going back,” I said, though I didn’t mean to be threatening.
“You’re putting me in a tight spot, here.”
“All I want is to see her again,” I said. “You understand? To make sure she’s okay.”
He looked over at his team and gestured with a curt, tense wave of the hand. They moved away, leaving us alone. The last to leave was Moe, who needed additional prodding from Mirage.
“Blackjack,” Superdynamic started after giving his words some thought. “I know how you feel about her.”
“Do you?”
He nodded. “I do, believe me. But I don’t have time for this.”
“I’m not going back to Utopia. I don’t know how else to tell you that.”
“That’s not what I mean,” Superdynamic said, kneeling so we were at eye level. “Things are happening that require my attention and I don’t have time to be babysitting you.”
I shrugged, “Fine. Fly off and leave me alone. I’ll find her on my own. And I’ll find that piece-of-shit Zundergrub too.”
“How are you going to do that?”
“I’m here, aren’t I?” I said, motioning to Ms. Hughes’ house.
Superdynamic nodded, granting me a measure of resourcefulness, but I could tell he was growing increasingly frustrated with me.
“I can’t leave you here,” he said.
“I’m not going to hurt anyone. Well, except for Zundergrub. I’m going to rip him apart.”
“It’s not that,” he said. “It’s just not how we do things. Blackjack, we had almost 1,400 other villains escape when you did. Can you understand what that means? Yeah, it’s not good at all and the vast majority of them are…” Superdynamic paused, rubbing the growing scruff on the pate of his head.
“What?”
“You know what’s happening in D.C.?”
I shook my head, not really understanding.
“It’s Civil War, Blackjack. Three days ago a retired general walked into Ft. Meade, just outside of the capital, and took over the whole base. If you don’t know it, Meade is where the army’s first mecha division is located.”
“Maxwell?” I said, recalling some of what I had been hearing the last few days.
“Right. He and his men took over every base surrounding D.C. and formed a perimeter around the capital. No one can get in or out.”
“What about supers?”
“Every active super is involved.”
“Apogee?”
He nodded, and I came to my feet.
“So let’s go help her.”
“It’s complicated,” he said. “We’ve lost contact with everyone, and there are hundreds of villains–”
“We have to go,” I said, suddenly grasping his arms. “It’s up to us, you see?”
Superdynamic stared at me, deciding my fate at that very moment.
“I don’t know what you know about me,” I said, letting go of him, but he put his hand up, pausing me.
“She told me,” he said.
“So let’s go, man. We’re wasting time!”
Superdynamic looked over at his team, then up at his ship. The silver plane dropped out of the sky, aiming to land near the others.
“Okay,” he said, finally. “You can come with us, but one thing....”
I nodded, expecting him to lay down the “rules for the bad guy”.
“Behave.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
I didn’t get a formal introduction to his team, which