Puerta Mibela, La Perdita
Mercado Viejo, 9:47 AM
The Old Market was this plaza’s official name, but over the years the chatter of produce vendors and clamor of livestock had given way to the plate-glass and marble façades of decidedly more modern shops. Boutiques to rival those of New York or Paris, featuring the characteristic island flair of the region’s own best designers. Coffee shops quite reminiscent of Seattle’s – all serving fair-trade and locally-grown roasts, of course. Consumer electronics peddlers the equal of any to be found in Seoul or Taipei. A modern elevated-rail system cleaner than the London “Tubes” – and much safer than the DC Metro – that served even the barrios of La Perdita’s newly-glistening capital.
And of course, there were plenty of office buildings, most of whose tenants hailed from wealthy nations across the globe. La Perdita was far from the only tax haven in the Caribbean, but in the past decade its violent-crime rate had plummeted and corrupt local officials had all but vanished, while each neighboring tropical “paradise” had descended into lawlessness. The reason was surprising, and surprisingly simple. Just as Puerta Mibela at its founding had been a refuge for pirates and privateers shunned by civilized nations, the tiny island’s capital had served as a sanctuary – for many years the Western Hemisphere’s only such sanctuary – for metahumans and all others with “gifts” too uncanny or frightening for the outside world to ignore. Mutants, psionics, and supernatural beings of all stripes flocked to La Perdita as other nations grew increasingly inhospitable, and while the local government which harbored them – either out of sympathy for their plight or terror of offending them – was loath to impose limits or restrictions on their behavior, the brotherhood of outcasts gradually overtook the honor among thieves, and a sort of unspoken, ordered, and remarkably peaceful anarchy unlike anywhere else in the world had flowered on the island nation.
Most of this was owed to Vanguard – or, as it was originally known, MBL Consulting. Just over a decade ago, a fast-talking huckster-turned-“entrepreneur” named Kit Piper had gathered together a handful of survivors of the Chicago Revolution, along with a few metahumans drawn to La Perdita by a sheer lack of anywhere else to go, and persuaded them to offer their services as security consultants, investigators, and just about everything else short of carnival entertainers. Apparently, nobody – not even Kit – knew not to take the joke too seriously, and seemingly overnight, MBL Consulting upped the ante and transformed into Vanguard International. For years, Vanguard traveled the globe battling everything from the mob to the undead to anti-meta militias to an army of demons and aliens raised by the self-styled “Prince of Hell”. And while repeated grudge matches with bitter enemies made along the way had leveled a statistically appreciable percentage of Puerta Mibela’s buildings along the way, Vanguard’s accomplishments drew more metahumans, more tourists, more business, and more money to La Perdita – even after the “glory days” of the organization had drawn to an end a year or two ago, the metahumans and posthumans who remained continued to keep the peace and build the prosperity of the tiny island nation.
To be sure, there were still conflicts – the main reason for the city’s skyrocketing property values was the proportionally escalating cost of insurance against decidedly unnatural disasters above and beyond the Caribbean’s natural ones – but the everyday citizens of the island no longer lived in fear of one another or their posthuman neighbors. If there was a dispute, it would be resolved with minimal loss of life, and if that took a man-sized turtle demon bodyslamming a werewolf through a safely-vacated apartment block once in a while, such was the cost of doing business. Somehow, someone (typically Vanguard) usually picked up the tab, and that apartment block would be replaced by dazzling new townhomes – with substantial concealed reinforcements to their structural integrity, naturally. All in all, local citizens and foreign investors alike felt their lives and their livelihoods were safer here than pretty much anywhere else in the Caribbean, and as a result La Perdita and Puerta Mibela in particular had experienced a surge of prosperity that had even warded off the disastrous recession of the late 2000s. Dozens of Fortune 500 corporations had moved their headquarters to Mercado Viejo and other downtown districts, while millionaires and billionaires scrambled to buy up the few remaining parcels of buildable land on Dawson Island a stone’s throw away with the approval of its unofficial “First Families,” the Smiths and Montags.
Grissom Montag – Dawson Island’s de facto mayor, and probably official mayor after the upcoming elections – stood in the midst of the glittering Old Market, on the steps of a lovingly-preserved Spanish mission church across from the marvelous new “post-colonial” edifice that was La Perdita’s Parliament building. He looked down at his phone – a proprietary Sandcrawler Electronics model, of course – and swiped through his inbox with one of the three fingers on his right hand, waiting for his best friend to arrive. The metahuman Brit had worn no shortage of hats over his long and hopefully still unstoried career: inexplicably parlaying a background in electrical engineering into fourteen riotously lucrative years as a “problem-solving” mercenary, signing onto Vanguard as a technical consultant, and becoming over the course of a decade one of the metahuman organization’s most trusted leaders. But he was still adjusting to the fit of his newest hats – devoted husband, loving father, and upstanding citizen – in a manner not unlike Phil Smith. While technically, Grissom was Phil’s second-in-command, the telepath depended heavily on the merc’s trusted advice and only once had ever given him what could rightly be called an order. But over the course of this IMPET business, Montag had assumed control of the business side of Vanguard, taking point on what few jobs its remaining handful of members drew in these days and watching and learning while Smith demonstrated the diplomatic prowess and geopolitical savvy that had earned him the chance to brief the current and previous Presidents of the United States on metahuman relations. All told, it was a surprising change of fortunes for a mercenary barred from entering at least forty nations with a price on his head in another eighty and a former amnesiac whose only demonstrable talents were reading thoughts out of others’ brains and putting bullets into others’ brains.
<Sorry I’m late,> the voice rang in his head shortly before a black limousine in the livery of a heliport shuttle pulled into view across the plaza. Montag casually strolled down the time-worn stone steps of the church and began traversing the square. Journalists and photographers had already begun gathering, and once they recognized Vanguard’s number-two man, they began converging on Montag in the humorously characteristic manner of the media – scurrying madly while laboring to appear calm and unruffled by anything they saw. More joined the impromptu procession once they saw the limo roll to a stop and disgorge the white-suited figure of Phil Smith. The two old friends met under the shade of a coconut palm in a white marble planter.
<Should we… shake hands or something?>
<We live down the bloody street from one another, mate,> Grissom thought forcefully, knowing his friend would pick it up.
<Yeah, but… cameras…>
Grissom eyed the throng of journalists and decided to break the silence. “Mornin’, Philsy,” he greeted him casually.
“Griss,” the telepath replied with a faint smile. One nice thing about the digital age was that at least the already-annoying swarms of photographers weren’t accompanied by a cacophony of shutter and film-drive noises, only the subtle whirring of lens drives and an occasional autofocus beep. “Quite a gathering, looks like.”
“Quite an occasion,” Montag reasoned. “Apparently we’re persons of consequence now.”
“There goes the neighborhood.”
Reporters called out in multiple languages asking for comments on the occasion. The two alternated rapid-fire answers – there were only two languages Grissom wasn’t quite as proficient in, and on those Phil had the unfair advantage of being able to scoop the pre-vocalized questions off the reporters’ Broca’s areas. Fortunately, after another minute or two of this, the arrival of a motorcade on the east corner of the Mercado provided a momentary escape for Smith and Montag. “SecState,” Phil informed Grissom. “Let’s go be neighborly.” The mercenary followed reluctantly.
