Ultrahuman 01 - Ugly (8 page)

‘I always thought it was weird that Captain Freedom didn’t come back the way the Russian guy does,’ June commented as the credits rolled.

‘You’re not the only one, but I’ve heard theories.’

‘Like?’

‘Dukh Naroda is supposed to be some sort of representation of the Soviet people. When he dies saving them he moves on to another body. It’s considered an honour to be chosen, even if the person who becomes him loses their identity.’

‘Uh-huh. I know that.’

‘So we don’t have the sense of communal identity they do. Captain Freedom wouldn’t work that way. It could be he’s alive, but he’s buried so deep he can’t come back.’

‘Oh God! That’s horrible. Nothing like that’s going to happen to you, is it?’

Penny giggled. ‘I need food, water… air. I’d just die. No one really knows Freedom is alive down there, it’s just a theory.’

‘I kind of hope he’s not. That would be just about the definition of a fate worse than death.’

4
^th
July.

Red’s black car glided smoothly through the streets of Churchton, the most northerly district of New Millennium. Most of the times Penny had been in it she had sat in the back so that June could sit beside Red, but tonight she was up front looking out through windows that obscured the occupants but gave a clear view of the outside.

It was Independence Day, there were fireworks lighting up the sky, but Red had decided that this was a good night to show Penny the other side of the city she felt she had to protect. Penny was not particularly enjoying the experience. Right now they were driving down a street which featured a lot of girls in outfits clearly designed to advertise their profession.

‘A lot of them look like kids,’ June commented morosely as they cruised down the street.

‘Runaways, mostly,’ Red said. Her voice was calm, matter-of-fact, but there was a slightly hard edge to it. ‘Some are kicked out to work by their parents or boyfriends.’

‘Doesn’t anyone
do
anything about it?’

‘The police sweep these areas every so often, but arresting this lot isn’t going to help them any. There are a few people who try to help them, but you’d be amazed at how few of them trust any sort of authority figure.’

‘I guess they wouldn’t,’ Penny said. ‘If someone’s going to run away from home, they probably have a reason.’

‘Not always a good one, but that doesn’t stop them feeling they have a reason to think social workers are trouble. In some cases they may be right.’

June had the advantage tonight. Her eyes were working as well as any human eyes could in the dim light from sparsely operational street lights. Her view of the women on the street was filtered through neon and shadow. Penny could see everything, even if the colours were muted. She wondered if they were out on the streets dressed in such skimpy outfits in the middle of winter. She saw bikini tops, hot pants, mesh shirts, tiny skirts, most of them looking the worse for long hours of use.

‘There,’ June leaned forward to point at the road a few tens of yards ahead of them on the other side. ‘What’s he up to?’

A large, expensive town car was pulling to a stop at the side of the road. Penny could see the driver, even in the shadow of his cab. He was dressed in a sharp suit, his blonde hair cut by someone who charged too much for the service, and he was good-looking in a heavy-set, slightly thuggish way. The idea that he needed to pick up street women seemed wrong, but that was what he was doing.

‘I’d have thought that was obvious,’ Red replied as three girls detached themselves from the shadows around a shop front and made their way to the car window.

Two of them looked just like all the others, but one caught Penny’s attention. She was better looking than the others for one thing, but there was an exaggerated quality to her, as though her body had gone all-out on the whole ‘secondary sexual characteristics’ thing. Her legs were long and slim, her hips wide, her waist narrow, and her breasts were enormous but still managed to be very shapely. Her face was young, very young, though it was a little hard to tell since there was a mass of pale blonde hair obscuring her eyes with a ragged fringe. Her outfit was just as suggestive as the other girls’, black hot pants and a cropped T-shirt with mesh for a top half, but it looked newer.

The light from Red’s car headlights caught a side view of the man’s face as they drove up and past. Red gave a grunt. ‘Tony Briscetto. He’s Mob. He was working his way up to Enforcer when I was active. I’d imagine he’s made it by now. He has a thing for younger women.
Much
younger.’

Penny glanced in the wing mirror. The blonde nymphet was climbing into Briscetto’s car while the other two went back to their wall. Did the girl know what she was doing? ‘Is he violent?’ she asked.

‘Very, but not usually to the girls he picks up. He does get sloppy at times. He’s been indicted for statutory rape four times, but they’ve never managed to make it stick. The witnesses either recant or vanish.’ Penny found herself hoping the man did not get caught tonight. ‘That’s the kind of thing you’re going to see a lot of on the street,’ Red went on. ‘Are you sure you’re up to it?’

Penny looked back at the mirror, seeing only tail lights receding. ‘Not yet,’ she said.

‘Huh. Let’s go back to the club and join the party. Don’t know about you two, but I’ve had enough of this.’

‘Yeah,’ Penny said. ‘I think I could use a drink about now.’

‘How many Ultras end up as alcoholics?’ June asked, her tone sullen.

‘More than we’d like to admit,’ Red replied.

5
^th
July.

Penny was about to change the channel when a picture appeared behind the newsreader and she paused. The smiling face looked a little different head-on, but she still recognised it.

‘New Millennium City businessman Anthony Briscetto, long thought to be high up in the Tonaldo crime family, was found dead early this morning,’ the woman on the screen announced.

‘Couldn’t have happened to a nicer man,’ June commented dryly.

‘Briscetto was found in a motel room in Churchton,’ the newsreader went on. ‘Police have stated that there was no sign of foul play and the cause of death was a fatal heart attack. However, there was no indication of what Briscetto, who lived in Friendship, was doing in the hotel.’

‘He was banging a hooker,’ June said.

Penny changed the channel. ‘Fatal heart attack. He looked pretty fit to me. And the girl he picked up, there was something odd about her. She was… Well, she was
too
stacked.’

‘You think she was an Ultra? Maybe a vigilante out to get him?’

‘No idea.’

‘Never heard of an Ultra who could fuck you into cardiac arrest.’

‘Bobby keeps saying I’ll give him a heart attack,’ Penny replied, giggling.

‘I don’t think he means it literally.’

‘Probably not. We’ll see tomorrow.’

June gave her a grin. ‘So Saturday is becoming a regular thing?’

‘Uh-huh. We practise fighting all week, and then we practise wrestling on Saturday nights. This Saturday’s special though. He said he missed the fireworks yesterday because he wanted the real ones at the weekend.’

The brunette laughed as she walked over with two glasses of wine. ‘You two are adorable. Has he said when he thinks you’ll be ready to go out?’

Penny sighed. ‘When I am,’ she replied.

11
^th
August.

The big screen in Bobby’s lounge was showing a map of New Millennium City, from Churchton in the north to North Beach in the south, and far enough west that the Patuxent River was just visible, though the city’s western edge did not go out that far. Red stood in front of it while Penny, June, and Bobby sat on one of the couches. Penny was snuggled up against Bobby; it was show-and-tell night, and it seemed like the right thing to do.

‘Bobby says you’re almost ready to go out there and kick criminal arse,’ Red said, a slight smirk on her face, ‘so we have two priorities aside from finishing your training. One, a costume. You’re going to need one for registration. Our resident fashion expert is designing that now, so it shouldn’t be an issue.’ Red gave June a nod.

‘I’ve got a few ideas,’ June said. Somehow Penny did not find the way she said it encouraging. June had ideas, she was quite sure of that. The question was whether Penny would be able to wear them.

‘I thought you might,’ Red went on. ‘So our second item is criminal familiarisation.’ She turned and looked up at the screen. ‘If I were you, I’d stick to smaller-scale crime to start with. Purse snatchers, store bandits, the usual stuff that makes the general public annoyed. It’ll build your rep with the common folks, always useful. However, you should know about the big stuff.’

‘Well,’ Penny said, ‘I probably know some of it.’

‘She watches enough TV,’ June added.

‘All right then,’ Red said, smiling, ‘let’s see what you know.’

Penny blinked. ‘Oh… Well, the Tonaldo family runs Churchton, Deale Harbour, and Fairhaven. I think they have their fingers in the gangs in Friendship, and I’d imagine they run financial crime through Downtown. The Knights keep northern Friendship fairly controlled, and Ultranova’s all over the bigger stuff in Uptown and Downtown.’

Red nodded slowly. ‘Not bad. You’ve got the popular conception of what’s happening down pretty well.’

‘I get the feeling that’s not the real case then?’

‘Well… The Knights are pretty good at handling street crime, but they’ve never made any significant inroads into organised crime. Luckily, there’s not too much of it in Friendship as a whole, but the drug situation is getting bad. Less so in the north, but it’s still there.’

‘Oh,’ June said, frowning. ‘Well that makes me feel safer in bed.’

‘You could always move in with me,’ Bobby suggested, his grin broad.

‘Stick to blondes, Bobby,’ Red suggested. ‘The Tonaldos do run pretty much everything in the north. They got kicked out of Uptown and Downtown by an as yet unidentified group, though rumour has it that they’re Russian. Friendship still seems to be disputed, and the Tonaldos don’t seem to be the major drug suppliers.’

‘Soviet?’ Penny asked. ‘Or escapees?’

‘Unclear,’ Bobby replied. ‘It’s possible that the SOP has sent infiltration agents. Possible, but unlikely. They don’t like sending agents out of direct supervision for too long unless they’re heavily indoctrinated, and we would have heard of someone that high ranking.’

‘I think I missed something,’ June said. ‘The SOP?’

‘The Superhuman Orientation Programme,’ Penny supplied, demonstrating her knowledge. ‘We tend to call it the Superhuman Induction Programme. The Russian works either way, apparently. They find Ultras within the Soviet Union, then they, uh, train them.’

‘For train,’ Red said, ‘read brainwash. Though some of them are really that fanatical about serving the cause of global communism. The ones who get away tend to go to Europe, but some come here.’

‘Like Svetilo,’ June said, her voice dreamy.

‘Should I be worried about competition?’ Red asked, one eyebrow rising.

‘No. An Ultra in the bed is worth two in the bush.’

‘Hmm… Svetilo does come to the Den once in a while. I’ll introduce you.’ June’s eyes widened, but Red just kept on going. ‘Whoever these newcomers are, they’re powerful. They have at least some Ultras in their ranks. No one has identified them or linked any specific Ultrahumans to them, but their main target at the moment seems to be the Tonaldos. There have been a number of deaths among the higher-ups in that syndicate.’

‘Briscetto,’ Penny said.

‘Is the latest. David Tonaldo has lost four Enforcers in the last year, one of them his youngest brother.’

‘Word is he’s offering a cool one million for information leading to the demise of his rival,’ Bobby stated.

‘And no one has a clue who this criminal mastermind is?’ Penny asked.

‘Clues, sure, and they’ve all led to people who turned out to be pawns or minor agents. I was looking into one of those leads when I had my little accident. It was a good lead too.’

‘Maybe too good,’ Penny suggested. Red looked at her, an eyebrow raised. ‘Well, you said the others led to people, minor players, but people. Yours didn’t. Maybe you got
too
close.’

‘Maybe. I think there’s more than one person behind this, and I think they’re Ultras with a lot of power, and a lot of backing. Like I said, you stick to the minor league stuff until you’ve more experience under your belt.’

June giggled. ‘None of my current costume ideas have belts.’

31
^st
August.

‘Are you serious?’ Penny asked. ‘There is no way I am going out in public in that.’

June just grinned at her, still holding up the garment she had designed. ‘Why not? You’ve got the body for it, when you’re in your other body anyway.’

Penny took the one-piece from June and turned it around to look at it. ‘What’s it made of? It’s like… rubber, but not.’

‘It’s a synthetic polymer a bit like latex, but far tougher. It’ll resist flame and it flexes rather than tears. The metal framework is there to keep it rigid, the material sticks to skin so it won’t slip.’

Frowning, Penny pressed a finger against the rubber skin. ‘It’s very thin. It’s not even entirely opaque!’

‘It’s opaque enough, and it’s a little translucent because it’s thin. It’s lightweight and you’ll be able to move as though you weren’t wearing anything.’

‘Yeah…’ The suit was very high-hipped and thong-backed. The white plastic was stretched over three frames of silver metal, and the uppermost would bring it to high points over her breasts and leave a deep V of bare flesh between them. It looked like June had taken inspiration from Red’s old costume. ‘That’s because I won’t be wearing anything. And high-heeled boots?’

The boots were thigh-high, with five-inch heels, and also in white. Despite being new, they looked very flexible, but still… high-heels? June held one up, still grinning. ‘I talked to Bobby and Red about it. You’ve got preternatural balance and flight. When you’re actually
on
your feet, you’ll be fine in heels. Try it on.’