Chapter 15. In which one is found, and one is lost

Chapter 15. In which one is found, and one is lost

The time seemed to fly by. Both of us were now looking for the opening that would allow Majestic Woman to leave the LoH and allow Cindi and me to move on to the next phase of the Plan. She was still spending most of her “Majestic Woman” time with Power Man and the Wraith, searching for clues that might lead to Sadie.

Time with me was spent exploring. Each other, my life, her life, there was a lot to cover, for both of us. And there was time for fun too, in bed, in the kitchen (together), around town (clothed this time), sailing my yacht along the beautiful Western Australia Indian Ocean coastline and among the islands (barely clothed in swimwear this time, both of us).

Along the way we had plenty of time to work out the details of our Plan. That’s right, I said our Plan! Yes, Cindi had embraced the Plan fully, regardless of the consequences to her. For example, Cindi convinced me to do something that had never occurred to me before. I asked my herd for volunteers. I only needed one or two, but I had to ask them blind. I could only say that it would be life-threatening duty and that Cindi and I would be carrying the greatest risk. I even warned them that they might die and still never know what was going on. Adults only, no one under eighteen.

I was expecting maybe a hundred responses at best. I thought Cindi had unrealistic expectations of the whole army taking one step forward. I was braced for no responses at all. In the end, there were over sixteen thousand volunteers in just two days. It took us almost a month just to read through all the responses.

How was that possible? There were only about eighty-four hundred adults in the “Ten Thousand” after all. Well not only did every single adult volunteer, but they all told their parents and grandparents about it. Almost half of the volunteers were “retirees”.

Every note, every single one of them began with “My Lord”. Clearly Cindi had as big an effect on my herd as she had had on me. I was overwhelmed. I was ... well, I was touched. And I was ready to get things moving.

With such a wealth of willing support, I began to think bigger. I set up a truly daunting blind transaction network for conducting the business end of the Plan. It was easy when you could deliver the encryption keys to both endpoints telepathically. And after careful consideration, I chose a Pakistani commodities trader as the “public face” of the Plan, along with Cindi herself. Now we just needed an opportunity. So we waited.

Throughout this time a mild and warm spring was giving way to an early summer. We spent the time we had happily. I was beginning to understand that the biggest missing piece from my shadow kingdom for all these endless years had been my queen.

Meanwhile back in “Majestic Woman” world, the search work with Claud and Blake started out strained. She had abandoned Claud for two days when he was still very emotionally fragile. It was not just a touchy-feely thing; Claud himself knew he was a danger to those around him right now. He and Blake both were hoping for her to help keep him on an even keel. But ultimately they were just men, and how long can any man really stay mad at a woman as beautiful as Cynthia? They even learned to respect her mysterious weekly Tuesday evening appointment that she absolutely would not break.

Those Tuesday evening dance classes were helping keep Cindi sane. It was good not to have to be “on stage” literally all the time that she was in her “Majestic Woman” body. It was good to be able to do something that made her feel close to me, that made her feel like she was serving me, even though that life was on the opposite side of the globe.

Yasmin’s class was as good as Cindi had hoped. More and more she found herself, like Yasmin, moving sensuously, swaying her hips, flowing and wiggling as she walked, framing herself with her arms when she stood, all as if she were dancing, even when dancing was the furthest thing from her mind. I could tell the difference; interestingly so could Blake and, if I could judge from body language, so could Claud. None of us wanted to bring it to her attention. It was amusing in a way. I think we were all afraid that if we told her, she’d get self-conscious about it and stop.

About six weeks into the search for Powerhouse they made a breakthrough of sorts. Power Man and Majestic Woman were doing slow spirals over Carthage City. Cindi from the outskirts working inward, Claud from the center of downtown working outward. Both moving slowly, much more slowly than in their earlier passes over the whole route.

Near the airport, Cindi saw a warehouse with an odd feature, four rows of windows across the roof, clearly designed to let in sunlight for natural lighting. The warehouse seemed to be abandoned so broken windows should be expected, but why one, and exactly one, broken window near the center of the roof?

Her super-vision could not detect any of the tell-tale marks of someone walking around up there. There was no broken glass lying on the roof either, so the pane was probably broken from above, not below. The pane was completely broken out, so it was probably deliberate, not due to weather, or animals, or other incidental causes.

She called Claud and Blake; they were there in seconds. Examining the floor of the warehouse with super-senses and with Blake’s keen detective mind, they soon put together an interesting story about what had happened the last time humans had set foot in the warehouse.

Two groups of people had entered the warehouse, one group from the east, the other from the west. They had formed two loose and ragged lines in middle of the empty floor, one north-south line to the east of center, the other to the west of center, about 25 yards apart from each other, all, to a man, wearing sneakers. In the center, two individuals had come together, only about 4 feet between them, an easy conversational distance. Then something had caused both groups to scatter frantically.

The broken glass on the floor, not far from where the two conversing men had been standing, made it easy for the superheroes to make the hopeful intuitive leap. It could have been a gang-banger “peace conference”. It could have been Powerhouse coming down through the skylight that caused them to scatter.

But then what had happened to her after that? Surely no gang of punks would have been a challenge for an invulnerable, super-strong Rheonian like Powerhouse. Should they be looking for street gangs packing rheanite instead of guns and knives? That seemed hard to believe. Even so it was a thin thread of hope. The search now centered exclusively on Carthage City.

After another two long months there was still nothing else to show. Throughout this time in Carthage City, a bleak and rainy fall was giving way to an early winter.

Blake began to believe that the warehouse had been a false lead, that it was wishful thinking. Claud was having a hard time keeping his cool.

Now was a particularly unfortunate time for the Betelgeuse situation to break wide open. The Magic Lamp Corps had detected the Betelgeuseans mobilizing to attack Earth. The Corps were actually ready and willing to handle this themselves, but they wanted an Earth liaison to be present during the operation as well.

Everyone was shocked when Claud volunteered. Whenever anyone asked why, he just reminded them that he had performed the original recon, which made him a logical choice. When asked, even as delicately as possible, why he was ready to give up the search for his cousin, he just stared down the questioner. Even the Wraith dropped his gaze in a staring contest with Power Man.

But Majestic Woman thought she understood. She believed that Claud knew that he was much closer to the edge of his sanity than anyone (else) suspected. She thought he wanted to get away before he started ripping apart Carthage City brick-by-brick. She talked to Blake about it. Blake eventually agreed with her. He sent Claud as the Betelgeuse operation liaison.

The actual fight against Betelgeuse was rather anticlimactic. The combined might of the assembled Magic Lamp Corps, plus Power Man (temporarily outfitted with Uenan anti-rheanite shielding), was much more than the Betelgeusean Navy could handle. With their fleet badly damaged, Betelgeusean dreams of conquest were set back decades.

When the mop up was complete and it was time to return home, Claud opted not to. Hamish returned to Earth through the Uenan wormhole alone. Claud flew off the opposite direction, determined to put even more light-years between himself and Earth. He was still carrying his communicator though, Uenan technology that could locate him anywhere in the universe and communicate with him instantly, regardless of distance. He was not beyond reach.

Eventually I was the one that found Powerhouse. Only ten days after Power Man had departed for interstellar parts unknown, I noticed something strange through the eyes of a Carthage City cop. I had been monitoring most of “Carthage City’s Finest” for almost two months, hoping that I might find something.

The strange thing that I had found today was a short punk, wearing his pants below his ass, and rope after rope of gold-plated chains around his neck. Well, that was not so particularly unusual for this part of town. What was unusual was that from one of the chains dangled a huge smoky gray gemstone.

He was wearing rheanite as a bauble. I was in his head picking his brain instantly. What I was seeing sickened me. I didn’t know if I wanted Cindi to find Powerhouse like this, but I knew it would damage her trust in me, to say the least, if I handed this off to someone else.

It was a Tuesday afternoon. Cindi had had Majestic Woman call it an early day in the frustrating, fruitless Carthage City hunt. It was so discouraging, especially now that she was essentially going it alone. At the start Claud had needed her to keep him from going mad or giving up. Now it was her having trouble sticking with it without Claud by her side. So she was at home, practicing her smoking hot “final exam” dance for her last dance class tonight. She had politely asked me to stay out of her head when she was working on it. She wanted to surprise me with it.

To hell with that! I interrupted her practice with a seed thought: «“I’ve found her. I’ve found Sadie.”»

First she stumbled, losing her concentration. Then she had a flash of annoyance that I had not honored her request for privacy. But, as she processed what I had said, it only took her an instant to switch gears. In mere moments she had forgotten about the dance and had wrapped her Majestic Woman persona and uniform around herself.

“Great Hera! Is she okay?”

«“I haven’t rescued her. I’ve only found her ... in the mind of, um, Bugspray.”»

“Bugspray?”

«“Her, ah, captor. That’s what he calls himself. Cindi, prepare yourself, she’s a mess.”»

“Show me, My — Show me.”

Trigger Start

I planted the image in her head of Powerhouse as I had found her in the banger’s head, a gaunt naked heroin addict with stringy blond hair, steel collar around her neck, heavy chains binding her to the pipes in a building basement. There were two thick gold-plated rings, attached to each of her nipples, and another thick golden ring attached to her clitoral hood. Threaded through the three rings was a loose triangle of thin jewelry chain. The banger called it her “happy chain” because of the way she squirmed and squealed whenever he pulled on it. «“The rings are hollow, filled with crushed rheanite. That is how he keeps her powers sapped.”»

“Where is she? How did this happen?”

«“She’s in Carthage City, babe. I think the warehouse was not a false clue after all. The gang banger who has her is wearing a huge piece of rheanite as, um, ‘bling’. With what I’ve pieced together so far, he just thought it looked cool. He didn’t know what it could do until Powerhouse tried to take him down at the warehouse. She tackled him on the run, but then the radiation hit her. He ended up taking her down instead.”»

«“Even then he didn’t know what was sapping her powers. She almost got away a couple of times in the first few minutes. But this kid who has her is pretty savvy. He figured it out quickly.”»

“Shit. Shit, shit, shit! Do you have coordinates? An address?”

«“It’s somewhere in the Piedmont Park slums. Nowhere near that warehouse. I haven’t been able to trick him into thinking of the address, so we’ll just have to wait until he gets there. He’s a pimp, still making his rounds. I have no idea when he’s going to return to the apartment building where he’s keeping her. I do know it’s his gang’s nest. They have a protection arrangement with the landlord for some number of buildings. He basically forced the landlord to just give them that building.”»

“Can you waterboard this degenerate? Make him give her location up?” She had come a long way from being upset with me for waterboarding Portal City mobsters. Maybe I should have seen that as a warning sign.

«“Cindi, that could backfire. It’s a sure thing that he’s going to go there. It’s just a matter of time. We just have to be patient. Look, you don’t have to sit on your hands at home. Why don’t you teleport to Carthage City? Right now he’s near the corner of Johnson and Monticello. Just come in at two or three thousand feet and stay there until I know more. Tell the duty officer that you think you may have a lead, but don’t want to cause another false alarm.”» Everyone pretty much thought that the warehouse had been a red herring. They’d understand.

«Teleporting now.» Giving location and reasoning to the duty officer, Elasto, she was off again.

«Over Piedmont Park now. Do you have anything more?»

«“Just grizzly details, babe. Sure you want them?”»

Grimly she responded, «Yes.»

«“Okay, this banger, as I said, he calls himself ‘Bugspray’, he’s a real piece of work. He’s only twenty-three, but he’s broken over two dozen whores. He’s a complete manipulative sadist, hooks them on heroin, dicks with their heads, lets the rest of the gang scare the shit out of them, and comes in as the savior and ‘stops’ them. The women all love him and cling to him like he were some hero in a cheap romance novel. They’ll do anything he says. Then he passes them around to the gang as rewards. The women still love him. Eventually he puts them out on the streets to turn tricks. It’s pretty creative brainwashing for a sleazoid gang banger.”»

«Um, really?» Cindi was revolted, of course, but some other disturbance was brewing in her head as well. I should have paid more attention, but I was lost in the moment, in the drama, just like I assumed she was.

«“Really. Cindi ... he brainwashed Sadie too. She’s completely devoted to the sick fuck.”»

«Damn. My Lord, we’ve been combing this city for months. How did we miss this?»

«“Remember when you said that my superpower is ‘keeping a low profile’? Bugspray is like that. He’s very good at not being noticed. I only noticed him because a cop did. The cop only noticed him because he slipped on a patch of ice and flailed his arms.”»

«Shit. People’s lives hang on these coincidences.»

«“I know, baby. We lucked out. Oh, Cindi, he just walked into the building. He’s ‘home’. It’s a brick three-story, 13435 Johnson Avenue. This is what it looks like.”»

I flashed her the image of the front of the building, as seen by some guy on the other side of the street.

She was there in no time flat. Ever the do-gooder, she knocked on the door. Even though her mind was churning with rage, she was not going to break in without verifiable probable cause. How different from a few minutes ago, when she happily would have had me torture someone. “A rationalizing animal”, indeed. A tall, gangly grinning man met her at the door. He turned and shouted back into the building, “Bugspray, come quick!”

Soon the shorter, stockier man was there. His grin if anything was even bigger, He held out his rheanite bauble, saying “DAY-um, looks like I’m gonna bag me another super-bitch!”

His arrogance turned to blind fear when she pushed him back against the wall. He was afraid for his life, but he was even more shocked that Majestic Woman was completely unfazed by the super-slut-taming rock.

“I think that’s all the probable cause I need.”

She was talking to me or maybe just to herself, but she didn’t care if these assholes heard. Punching through the floor she flew down to the basement. Sadie was there, much like the image I had shown her, completely naked, length of heavy, coarse steel chain padlocked to the steel collar around her neck, securing her to the pipes on the wall, fine jeweller’s chain strung in a loose loop through her three gold rings. The man Sadie had been sucking off backed away in horror, but Sadie was oblivious.

“No, noooo, Jay, come baaack. Gotta fin’sh ya awf. C’mon. Play wif my rings. Pull my happy chain. Feelsh good.”

But “Jay” was already gone, fled up the stairs. Then Sadie’s rheumy gaze fell on Majestic Woman.

“Oh GAWD! Nawt you again! I don’ need youuu, Miz Perfeck, starin’ down yer nozzze at meeee. Go ‘way.”

“No, Sadie. I’m here to help. I gotta get you out of here.”

“DON’ TOUSH ME! ... Bugshpray givez me alla help ... I neeeeed. G’wan. Ged outta here. Yer nawt rilly heeere anyways. It’z jussa dream. Why can’ I have niiice dreams anymore when I’m hiiiiigh? Al’ays these nazzzzty Debbie Downer Do-gooder dreams. GO ‘WAY!”

I had to interrupt. «“Cindi, they’re coming down the stairs now. Armed to the teeth.”»

“I’m gonna kill them. I’m gonna kill every fucking one of them.”

«“No! Cindi! Don’t to that!”»

«Don’t tell me “No”. “What Would Majestic Woman Do?” She’d fucking slaughter these animals!»

It was too late. Faster than the eye could follow, she cut a swath through Bugspray and his gang. She held nothing back. In five seconds, maybe less ... they were all dead.

Blood was everywhere, most especially all over Majestic Woman. Lost in the confusion, to everyone but me, was the quavering voice of Sadie begging, “No. No. Please don’t kill him. I love him. Please, no.”

Majestic Woman was back, drenched in blood. It was worse than Sadie’s worst bad trip ever. The drug was muting Sadie’s outward reactions, but I could see her Rheonian rage like a beacon.

Cindy was trying to hug her. She couldn’t understand why Sadie was pushing her away. Eventually Sadie collected enough lucidity to give all that anger to Cindi with both barrels.

Trigger End

“Why di’jou do it?” Sadie screamed.

“Why did I kill those bastards? Look at you! They did this to you!“

“But I loved him,” she wailed.

“Sadie, baby, you think you loved him. He was manipulating you.”

Now Sadie exploded again, “You don’ unnerstand. You’re Miss Perfeck Hero! How could you unnerstand? Yeah, he owned me. He toyed wif me. He ‘bused me. He passed me ‘round like a fuckin’ bag of chips. But ... but... I loved him. I was his fuckin’ slave and I loved him! I never wan’ed to be found. I never wan’ed to be freed. I wan’ed to be his ... his slave ... his bitch ... his fucktoy ... forever. Why am I even tellin’ you this stuff? You could never unnerstand!“

«Oh my Gods, I do understand.»