U.S. Secretary of State Matthew Rutherford emerged from the second of three identical SUVs – the curb weight of which had probably almost doubled with the addition of armor plating, bullet-resistant glass, and other vital protective features – and waved politely to the crowd. It wasn’t common in this culture to cheer for your own politicians if you had a choice, and memories of past decades of American foreign policy toward the rest of the Americas still lingered very tenaciously in this part of the world, but there on this occasion there were nods and waves here and there. All the same, Rutherford’s security detail – a mixture of Secret Service and what appeared to be private-sector muscle – looked to be on their toes as they emerged from the other two SUVs. The suits only carried their prerequisite concealed weapons – they’d since traded the venerable Mini-Uzi for snub-nosed MP7s chambered in the more powerful .40 Magnum cartridge – but the hired guns openly carried scoped M4 carbines. As Phil and Grissom looked on, the leader of the private security force casually exited Rutherford’s vehicle on the other side cradling a customized Steyr capable of reaching out and touching someone half a mile away with uncanny accuracy – or superhuman accuracy, if your name is Dirk Bell, which it was.
“Fuckin’ ‘ell,” Montag intoned before breaking into a grin. Even halfway across the plaza, the veteran gunslinger’s frighteningly sharp eyes met and registered his two former colleagues. There was, of course, no actual smile, and both men might have been deeply alarmed had there been one. But even as his subordinates checked in with him, a very slight and characteristically bastardly smirk creased Bell’s face. It was as affectionate as Dirk got. Phil and Grissom made their way toward Rutherford, choosing as a matter of professional courtesy not to engage Bell directly with his men and his client and the crowds around.
“Mister Smith,” Rutherford greeted him. Phil paused a moment – even though he had sat alone in a room with three different Presidents on various occasions, he was still affected somewhat by the acknowledgments of his countrymen. After all, it had taken the unusually vociferous testimony of a cantankerous old veteran of Soviet military intelligence to convince the United States government that Smith’s past deeds had been carried out against his own will and to rescue him from Federal imprisonment… or worse. But now, after not only unearthing the past but clearing his name – and especially after indirectly saving a sitting President at the cost of his own life – Phil had found he was far from a public enemy back in the States. The Army and Air Force had each even offered to reinstate his commission as an officer from the Second World War – a commission which had technically expired fifty years ago on account of his chronological age – but given the new constraints on the amount of violence he was permitted to dispense he was forced to respectfully decline. But from where he was currently standing, Phil considered it an honor even to be shaking SecState’s hand, though he could tell Rutherford felt more than a little awed by him for some reason.
Grissom took in the scene, smiling politely. His own country remained more than a little ambivalent toward him, given his reputation. He had received a personal letter from Her Majesty, thanking him for “years of service indirectly rendered to the Crown,” but he had never received any public recognition or acknowledgment and was pretty sure Scotland Yard still had an entire file cabinet with his name on it. Even so, he felt a twinge of personal pride in having played a major role in his friend rediscovering his identity and his past – despite a slight pang of guilt for helping him uncover tragedies and memories best left forgotten – and considered Phil one of the influences that had drawn him away from a life of womanizing and gambling interspersed with more than a little murder. It had been Phil and Leslie who had unwittingly prompted Grissom to open up to Brianna about his love for her, and now the ex-merc’s world revolved around his pretty Irish bird and their bright and adorable four-year-old son, Brian. Like Phil, Grissom’s life had been shaped and defined by conflict, but now the two men had an opportunity to help usher in an era of peace for the metahumans of the world – and that was certainly preferable to any stuffy state dinner at one of the summer palaces. It was considered impolite to steal anything of real value at such events, after all.
As he looked over at the security detail, Grissom smiled as he observed that Dirk Bell was still very much the same Dirk Bell. Driven by both loss and loyalty, but you’d never get him to acknowledge either. The taciturn veteran was, despite being the only really prominent “norm” in Vanguard’s history, an exceptional soldier and a simply inhuman marksman… and also an absolutely insufferable bastard in every sense of the word. His verbal sparring with Phil in particular had been both legendary and legendarily one-sided, but no one was safe from the inevitable onslaught when Bell saw fit to open his mouth. He almost never opened up about anything else – and over the years Phil had made it a point not to read him out of respect – but Grissom knew the man well enough to know the fierce loyalty and unstoppable determination beneath the acerbic exterior, and that even in the face of insurmountable adversity, Bell feared nothing. Nothing except the prospect of leaving this world behind without a chance to leave it a legacy; not even a sort of biological “Dirk Bell was here,” but someone he could shape into a better human being than himself, someone a damn sight better than any father figures he’d had. Looking back on his own past and his fears for Brian, Grissom found it easy to relate. He still hoped his friend would get that chance one day, but that emptiness had to have been amplified by the loss of the one woman who’d actually brought out any sort of vulnerability in the gunslinger. Long story short, Bell was a bastard and a walking tragedy, but neither Grissom nor Phil could’ve named another individual they’d rather have on their side when things got really dicey. Rutherford was in good hands. The best.
As the group of diplomats and representatives began to congregate in the center of the Mercado by a massive and breathtaking marble fountain, Phil felt a nagging sense of the surreal as he came face-to-face with a man he’d at different times in his life considered his best friend and his greatest nemesis. Although now he worked as a public-policy and law-enforcement consultant and was considered one of the most powerful lobbyists for metahuman-affairs policy reform, during his tenure with the FBI, Steve Fisher was the now-defunct Metahuman Affairs Wing’s most notorious hunter of suspected rogue metas. He had been directly responsible for the disastrous end of Phil’s vigilante career in New York and indirectly responsible for the death of the “awakened” Phil’s first love, a brilliant and beautiful young meta named Gabriela Rivera. But decades before, in a time very deliberately lost to Smith’s memory, the two men had trained and fought together in the same elite military-intelligence squad near the end of World War II. In fact, after a surprise mortar attack had separated the two friends from their detachment, Smith and Fisher fought back-to-back right up until they were captured by a German platoon and carried off to a special internment facility where they underwent barbaric experimentation by a Nazi scientist who came close to discovering the metagene half a century early.
Fisher gained augmented strength and intelligence and stopped aging, and when word spread that the Americans were approaching in force, the science team hurried off and surrendered themselves along with Steve, the experiment’s success. It wouldn’t become known for over sixty years that Phil, the experiment’s failure, had been captured and subjected to even more drastic experimentation by the Russians when they arrived weeks later. The two had encountered one another many times over the ensuing decades, though the circumstances ensured Phil wouldn’t remember most of those meetings. Eventually, over the course of an adventure where the truth was discovered and where each saved the life of the other at least once, the adversarial dynamic evaporated and Smith not only swayed Fisher from his extremist stance on metas but convinced him to collaborate with him on ways to improve the plight of oppressed metahumans and posthumans around the world. Although the two might never be friends as they had once been, their cooperation was now culminating in this treaty, and the strange chances of their respective lives had not been lost on either. But the other two prospective signatories arriving in the market square represented an even more surprising turn of events.
After the Chicago uprising, Doctor Charles Walker had been given a mandate to procure and examine metahumans in order to assess their potential threat or potential usefulness, but had gradually made it his mission to protect and preserve the world’s metas even if said protection called for their confinement and experimental study. He led his shadow organization with the assistance of one Richard Turner – not the Richard Turner but a clone of the former President and one of the world’s most powerful metas in his own right – and the EPS had been one of Vanguard’s deadliest foes for almost a decade. As with Smith and Fisher, the acrimony between the rival organizations subsided somewhat over time – in fact, Leslie Kline had been in the employ of the EPS years before she was Leslie Kline Smith. But despite joining forces for the adventure in Antarctica and several other pivotal crises they had never really seen each other as any sort of allies. However, over the same course of events that had precipitated IMPET itself, Charles Walker had inexplicably renounced all grievances and disputes with Vanguard, and he and Turner had pledged their support and assistance toward the goal of equality for metas everywhere.
Now they too had come to La Perdita, along with Fisher and Rutherford and a sizable throng of ambassadors and heads of state representing each continent, all in the hope of establishing peace for posthumans everywhere. And as each statesman and envoy arrived and was greeted by the same eager attention from the media, Phil and Grissom were increasingly aware of the significance of this day, and each found himself battling a nagging sense of his own insignificance in the context of these events. Phil wanted very badly to vanish into the crowd like he had so expertly most of his life, but whether it was his curious appearance, his near-celebrity status on the island, or his prominence as one of IMPET’s main drafters, he wasn’t going to successfully disappear any time soon. Fortunately, he was rescued from another media bumrush by a tap on the shoulder from Steve Fisher.
“Mister Smith,” the former meta hunter greeted him with a smile.
“Agent,” Phil acknowledged him. “It’s been a while.” <What tipped Washington’s hand on IMPET?>
“Two and a half years,” Fisher confirmed after successfully shaking off his momentary confusion. There were still a few cameras and microphones too close for comfort. “The All Humans fundraiser; I put that together when you came to Washington to brief Obama shortly after the inauguration. As I recall, you gave a pretty compelling speech – at least our donors thought so.” <We pushed it past the House almost a year ago, but the Senate has been blocking it ever since. The healthcare law was easier to pass.> Maybe not a telepath, but certainly adept at talking to one.
“And now here we are,” Smith mused as he surveyed the plaza around them and the journalists continued recording their conversation – at least the spoken one. “Everyone has you to thank for this too, you know.” <So what changed their tune? The 109s?>
Fisher seemed taken by surprise by the question, but remembered Phil’s spoken words and shrugged. “All I do is convince rich people to give me money, so I can turn around and convince candidates that the rights of metas are not only worth fighting for but worth campaigning on.” <I keep forgetting you spent forty years as an intelligence gatherer. Apparently Xenospecies 109 call themselves the Xyryth, and they want an official first contact.> He looked around. “If you hadn’t gone on that little adventure to find yourself, this wouldn’t be happening. At least not here, not now, and not any time soon.”
<And of course Washington is even more afraid of that than of us metas.> “I’m sure saving the President helped,” the telepath pointed out half-jokingly.
“Maybe a little,” the FBI veteran conceded. “Also, I hear congratulations are in order.” He reached out and shook Phil’s hand. “I was glad to see you and Kline end up together. After… well, after… you deserve to be this happy.” Neither man felt compelled to dwell on the violence that had transpired about two miles from this very spot six years ago. <The President is trying to delay any sort of coming-out party until he’s out of office. No one is sure what the Xyryth really want.>
“Thank you,” Phil replied after a long moment. <So the powers that be think metas might be humanity’s ace in the hole if things go south. Nice to know they’re more willing to tolerate us than the aliens.> “Three weeks left.” He smiled. “It’s a girl.”
Fisher grinned. “Surprised?” Phil nodded. “But not unpleasantly.” Phil nodded again. “Good luck,” the agent chuckled. <Maybe, but they’re praying no situations arise where they actually need us. If we’re all lucky, nothing happens except metas finally getting what we’ve been fighting for.> “Karmic retribution for ever having been a young man. Too bad they won’t let you off anyone these days – one less thing to threaten boys with now…”
The bullhorn-amplified voice of the Prime Minister’s Chief of Staff alerted the Mercado’s occupants that it was time for the various delegations to assemble for photographs. There was a murmuring and shuffling of feet as statesmen, envoys, and journalists scuttled off to where they needed to be.
“Let’s chat some more over lunch,” Phil offered. <I need to know everything you know about this.>
“I’d like that,” Steve assented to both propositions. “First, let’s shoot these damn photos and then go inside and bring this treaty in for a landing.”
Old friends and old enemies alike maneuvered into particularly photogenic clusters as cameras preserved this moment from what would prove to be as historic a day as anyone could have expected.
