Vista del Mar, La Perdita
Ristorante del Cicciotto, 12:12 PM
“Not again!”
Two lunchtime patrons swiveled on their bar stools to vent their displeasure as the football match on the screen over the bar cut to static again. Weird things had been happening with the satellite signal since this morning, which was unusual for a clear day like today. The bartender furrowed her brow at the screen. She called to a dark-haired little boy of about seven as he skipped through the restaurant. “Eddie,” the bartender beckoned. “Go tell Pappa the telly’s guasto again, por favore?”
“Pappa’s talkin’ to Mamma,” the boy informed her for no apparent reason, as young children inexplicably but frequently do. “They’re upstairs.”
“Okay,” the bartender acknowledged with a smile, “but can you please tell him for me?”
Eddie smiled back at her. “Okay!” He turned and bounded off the way he had come.
With its teak paneling, minimalist but upscale fixtures, and well-appointed lounges and dining rooms, it was hard to believe Cicciotto’s Restaurant had been fashioned out of a dingy and redolent bulk fish-processing factory despite the curiously industrial architecture. The place had been founded about four years ago by a former Olympian-turned meta revolutionary-turned charter member of Vanguard, and it had quickly established itself as the epicenter of a blossoming foodie scene to which gourmets and gourmands alike flocked. A gaggle of eclectic fine-dining establishments sprung up in a unique style critics branded “Euro-mod” – a play on the mostly European nationalities of the restaurants’ proprietors as well as on the moniker of Cicciotto’s’ famous founder. The income they generated anchored the growth of midmarket and a handful of upscale retail developments and a fast-paced nightlife in the corner of Vista del Mar where the building now containing a five-star Italian place had once been the temporary headquarters of Vanguard. While it wasn’t as prominent as the Old Market or as ritzy as Seaside Avenue, the blue-collar surroundings of the affectionately-dubbed Distrito de las Cocinas (“the Kitchens” for short) made it the hippest place to be on La Perdita.
Of course, the lunch rush couldn’t care less about any of that if none of Cicciotto’s’ fifteen satellite TVs were working consistently, and they’d been on the blink all day. Which largely negated one of the things that set Cicciotto’s apart from its four- and five-star neighbors – below the dining room which routinely served foreign dignitaries and global celebrities were a cozy café lined with bookshelves and works of modern art and, possibly the biggest draw, a well-appointed “business casual” sports bar – Euro-mod, naturally – that doubled as the best lunch spot in Vista del Mar. A pretty, twentysomething meta named Jocelyn tended bar during lunchtime most days. She had unusually large hazel-green eyes with feline slit-pupils, and her night vision came with superhuman agility and kinesthetic awareness. At the moment, she was fielding yet more complaints from yet more patrons and hoping her boss would show up before she was forced to say something particularly ca-… snarky. Fortunately, the former Olympian’s imposing presence as he entered the bar granted her a momentary reprieve.
“Thank God,” Jocelyn breathed. “Ed, the TVs are out again.”
Edulcore Cicciotto shook his head as he glanced around the bar at the nonfunctional screens. “Merda,” he grumbled. “Again?” The tall Italian’s wings – much larger and stronger than Brianna’s in order to lift Ed’s muscular frame – twitched and fluttered like they often did when he was frustrated. “Did you call the satellite people?”
“I couldn’t get through because the lines were all busy,” Jocelyn explained. “I figured it was something to do with all the news people on the island for the treaty.”
Ed nodded absently. For a moment, he regretted not being there in Parliament with his old friends – the original meta revolutionary, closing the circle by signing into existence a peaceful end to a struggle he seemed to have been fighting for half a lifetime. But as Eddie skipped happily across the room, he was reminded of why he hadn’t returned to Vanguard. Yes, his restaurant had helped to transform all of Vista Del Mar, and he was thrilled to be a chef and (he believed) an ordinary businessman. But in wrenching his soul free of the grip of an ancient and accursed sword, the hero had discovered his true desires resided in a decidedly less legendary realm. However the planet beneath him might turn, the former Eurostar’s world was comprised of his breathtaking wife Rose, his bright-eyed little boy Eddie, and three-year-old Amara, who was already beginning to strongly resemble her lovely mother. His mystical mace, Durendal, now hung proudly above the bar in the upstairs VIP lounge, which doubled as a sort of gallery of artifacts, trinkets, and mementos from the storied history of Vanguard. Relics from the past, from a life Edulcore Cicciotto remembered fondly but was ultimately glad to have left behind. Even as his son ran laps around the tables, customers continued voicing their displeasure, and his bartender contemplated making a break for the door, Ed still considered it an upgrade.
Maybe he’d invite the guys over for drinks after the day’s festivities concluded.
But first, what to do about the televisions? “Rose,” Ed called aloud.
<Darling?> While her abilities weren’t quite on the level of Phil Smith’s, Rose Cicciotto’s telepathic talents – much like her skills as an illusionist – were well-practiced and quite useful, especially at times like these.
“Rose,” Ed repeated, “Did you call the satellite people to fix the TVs?”
<Of course, dear,> came her reply, <along with everyone else on the island who owns a television.>
Ed frowned. “If only Charley still lived here,” the beleaguered restauranteur lamented. Though she now resided in Taipei as the head of Sandcrawler Electronics’ R&D and quality assurance divisions, the brilliant and resourceful Charlene Montoya had once put her technical skills to excellent use as Grissom Montag’s, and then Vanguard’s, tinkerer and one of the team’s finest tech specialists. Charley’s determination to unravel any problem and jury-rig any solution had been a large part of the reason Vanguard had almost never lacked for properly functioning hardware – not to mention a large part of the reason Grissom was one of La Perdita’s wealthiest citizens.
<If you like,> his wife continued, <I’ll send your bouncer in to get someone for us.>
Cicciotto rolled his eyes. “Beni!” he called, exasperated. “Come down here!”
There was a momentary pause before the characteristic bull-in-a-china-shop clamor that always attended his business partner. Custom-made size eighteen loafers thundered down the staircase from the restaurant as Ben Phillips made his appearance. Truthfully, Phillips wasn't Cicciotto's bouncer, though the massive meta could easily have filled in for any three of the 'doormen' in Ed's club. The part-time Vanguardian's combination of childlike exuberance and what should have been imposing size and strength made him an immensely popular fixture around Vista del Mar, but what came as a shock to everyone Ed told was that Ben was actually a CPA with an impressive grasp of small-business finance. He helped keep Ed's books and was perhaps better at playing the public-relations game than Ed himself, global celebrity or not. “Ed,” Ben shouted unnecessarily, “the TV's not working!”
“Grazie, Beni,” Cicciotto acknowledged wearily. “Por favore, go over to the LIME office down the street and see why they haven't sent me a repairman?”
“Sure thing, Mister C!” Without pause, Phillips turned and jogged across the bar and out the front door. Ed recalled at least one incident where Ben hadn't been paying attention and had plowed right through the partially-open front door, splintering it and taking about half the frame with him. The man did have enthusiasm going for him...
- - -
Tres Rios, La Perdita
Muelle de los Pescaderos, 12:21 PM
A noisy, crowded pier – especially one that stank to high heaven – struck Enrique Rodriguez as an unusual place for a telecommunications hub. However, LIME La Perdita was quite possibly the British-owned telecom subsidiary's lowest-budgeted division, and what with the cost of real estate on the island these days, even a company with an absolute monopoly over this little green rock had to take what it could get. Enrique's substation – which handled almost all cable, telephone, and Internet traffic into and out of La Perdita's third-largest incorporated settlement – was situated directly across the busy coastal route from the foot of Fishmongers' Pier, the oldest and largest such structure in Tres Rios, a densely-populated fishing town on the island's northern bay. To his supreme misfortune, the unassuming two-story white brick building sat directly between an old cannery and the loading area for trucks waiting to carry their pungent cargo away from the wharf to any number of markets and restaurants. Despite his fervent and repeated prayers, Rodriguez's olfactory perception remained as keen as ever. Even so, his salary – about the equivalent of $30,000 in American currency – was practically a princely wage by the standards of the common Perditano, and still a sufficent sum to persuade the forty-one-year-old father of three to remain at his thus-far uneventful post. Much of the equipment had been upgraded to Sandcrawler Electronics gear of excellent quality under LIME's partnership with the tech supplier's founder, and neither Rodriguez nor his peers at other substations around La Perdita suffered from an inordinate number of service calls beyond the omnipresent support tickets aiding the technologically inept.
Unfortunately, the island's infrastructure was greatly overloaded today; though the major Norteño, Asian, and European networks had flown or shipped over their own vans and trucks full of self-contained satellite-transmission equipment, media outlets from the Caribbean, Central America, and many other smaller nations were 'renting' the bandwidth to push out their own streams so their own commentators could add their voice-overs to the live feed by LLP Tres – LIME's own station and one of only three local channels that weren't entirely automated public-access stations. Consequently, consumer WAN traffic, incoming satellite broadcasting, and international land-line calls had been dropping out ever since the Cuban state broadcasting crew had set up shop at nine this morning. To make matters worse, an immense American aircraft carrier was sailing around the island to the north surrounded by its accompanying flotilla – some dockworkers were actually watching the ships from the end of the pier right now – throwing off radio transmissions, radar waves, and other electromagnetic noise that was playing havoc with LIME's equipment from here to Lighthouse Rock. All in all, it was shaping up to be a very long day for Enrique. He breathed a sigh of relief when he saw a grey LLP van round the corner and take the driveway past his window.
The passenger got out and walked around to the substation's front door as the driver guided the van around back. Enrique didn't recognize the man, but according to the name badge on his shirt he was José, and his dark eyes flitted about the front office as he signed in on the clipboard Enrique handed him. The substation manager nodded in the direction of the coffee maker across the room, and José smiled faintly. “Gracias.” He went over and poured himself a cup as the van's driver walked in.
“Today is killing me,” Enrique grumbled, his Spanish marked by the staccato lilt of the Perditano dialect.
“At least you are allowed to stay in one place,” José replied as he and the driver headed up the stairs to where the relays were. His accent was hard for Enrique to place, vaguely Peruvian but not quite.
“Need any help?” Enrique called after the two men. The driver simply shook his head as he disappeared up the stairs. The whole exchange felt odd to him somehow, but he shrugged it off and returned to the Flash game he'd been chipping away at during the brief reprieves between taking calls from other substations or from LLP itself on Calle de Las Embajadas five Red Line stops away. Movement out of the corner of Enrique's eye distracted him from the game, and he looked out the window to his left. A large piece of silvered glass, one of several constituent parts of a wind chime hanging outside, formed an impromptu mirror as it rotated to give the telecom manager a view of the grey van down the driveway.
In one of the van's back windows, Enrique saw movement – a man clambering around in the cargo area. He frowned. Had someone broken into the vehicle hoping to steal a piece of valuable equipment? He got out of his chair, locked the front door, and hurried upstairs, hoping he and the two technicians were still the only people in the substation.
He entered the relay room, with its large window overlooking the pier and the bay beyond. Forgetting his errand for a moment, Enrique strode over to the window, hoping to catch a glimpse of the American ships. To the left of the pier, the largest of the town's eponymous three rivers emptied into the bay, carrying an effluvium of reeking organic waste from the canneries and processing plants, stinking fish guts that perversely improved the health and quality of the fish populations around the island. For some reason, Enrique recalled some stupid gringo movie with some stupid gringo song about the circle of life or some shit. But where the fuck were the techn-
There was a sickeningly wet crunch as José's crescent wrench, swung with savage force and terrifying precision, found the gap between Enrique's second and third cervical vertebrae and smashed through the soft cartilage and into the tissues of the manager's spinal column. As terror and agony flooded his mind, Enrique wanted to gasp but couldn't – his respiratory system was just as paralyzed as the rest of his body. He collapsed forward against the window, friction against his skin slowing his slide down the glass. As his vision began to fade, Enrique finally glimpsed the colossal man-made island that was the USS Ronald Reagan, flanked by a pair of missile cruisers. With his last fading thoughts, he was – for once in his life – thankful for the gringos and their unstoppable navy, just as he was thankful he lived on an island full of powerful yet benevolent superhumans. At least his wife and children would be sa-
Raúl shook his head as the still-twitching body crumpled the rest of the way to the floor. “Idiota,” he murmured derisively.
“Poor bastard had a family,” José observed, gesturing to the simple wedding band on Enrique's finger.
“Then I hope we don't have to kill them, too.” Raúl turned and opened the big yellow access panel behind them. “Let's get this over with.”
José looked out the window, taking in the stinking pier full of freshly-caught fish and its bustling dockworkers and merchants. Six men in the back of their van waited to go and make some trouble down there. As he looked up toward the horizon, though, his confidence faltered a bit as he tried to wrap his mind around the military might those huge ships represented. Just that aircraft carrier alone had the potential to scour this tiny island clean – every American carrier sailed with at least one thermonuclear device. And the British were here, and the French were here, and the Brazilians were here…
“You stuck?” Raúl chided as he began opening breakers to take the various communication systems offline.
José turned and gestured out the window. “Can we finish our task before they kill us?”
Raúl thought a moment. “Perhaps not us,” he replied grimly, “but the task will be finished.” He chuckled as he broke the main cable-TV circuit supplying Tres Rios. “Still, we should stay alive as long as we can if we want to make a good diversion.”
José turned to reply but froze when he saw the open breakers. He checked his watch to be sure. “¡Mierda!” he spat.
Raúl looked puzzled at the outburst. “¿Qué pasa?”
José pointed to the clock on the wall. They were three minutes early.
Raúl shrugged. “No le importa.” He chuckled. “I thought the point was that they didn’t all get turned off at the exact same time anyway.”
