IT IS WARM in the apartment. The wall of white tiles in the bathroom slips gently back into place and I press down on it hard until I hear the magnets click and engage. I’ve already stripped in the narrow wall space, the best I get as far as secret bases go, and so I have a quick hot shower just because it seems the thing to do. From there to bed is a short journey, and a mercifully quick one.

There’s all sorts of things I mean to do. Perhaps it is leftover sentimentality from my confessional with Twilight, but I want to watch my daughter sleeping and then hold my wife in the dark. I even want to give the cat a midnight dinner. I must be high, I reason, as I slip into the cold empty bed. I assume Elisabeth is passed out on the couch where she was watching TV. The moment my head hits the pillow and I only just realise I am alone, it’s like I have fallen into a trap set by my enemy, Mr Sleep (that’s me being metaphoric again folks). My eyes lag shut – and then it’s morning.

In fact it is quarter to ten. I leap up with a start, glad not to have fried the sheets as I sometimes do, and after securing my manly bits with a clean pair of boxers I bust out of the bedroom and careen around the flat for a minute before ascertaining I’m the only one there.

On the bench in the kitchenette, Tessa has left me a note: “Mum said you worked late so I called Astrid’s mum for a ride. Mum gave me the money for school so don’t worry about that either. Could you still pick me up at three?”

She has forgotten to write any kisses on the note or sign her name. Instead, it is signed “Me,” which seems slightly obnoxious, but very much her age. Fifteen years old and no longer her daddy’s daughter. Or that’s what I’m feeling.

The reality is I should be relieved. I can survive on five hours of sleep and I don’t bother showering, going straight into the wall cavity and hurriedly dressing in my leathers again. An old white-and-red costume, complete with floor-length red cloak, gathers dust on a hanger. I can hear the phone ringing in the flat, but I ignore it.

I move to the tinted window and open it a crack and when the way seems clear I vault into the sky and the window pretty much swings back by itself. As I start to lag in mid-air, I push it, rocketing in an arc over the city, the traffic helicopter tipping in acknowledgement. At full speed it only takes me a few minutes to cross the city. I don’t want the complaints that come with breaking the sound barrier so I keep it to the low five hundreds.

Even though I am not late, I feel late, descending with my shadow over City Hall insignificant compared to the hordes of people, cameras and news crews covering the steps and the wide marble courtyard fronting one of the city’s most magnificent surviving Modernist buildings. There are a few costumes amid the front rows of the crowd, but these are interested onlookers like Paragon and Red Monolith who have been admitted to the front rather than invited. Since I was apparently never briefed on the details or else I’ve completely forgotten them, I don’t have a clue in hell where I am supposed to be. I land on the roof and thumb the security code I was given years ago and I’m jogging down the stairwell when one of the mayor’s secretaries whistles from an open doorway and I scuttle through into the oak-panelled interior of one of the city’s plush meeting rooms, and suddenly I remember what Vulcana said.

The seven surviving members of the Sentinels stand on the other side of the room and my late arrival seems just too much like old times for it to be anything more than heavily ironic. I can only take my cue from how I handled it a million times in the past, laughing off the odd accusatory glare (Vulcana, Seeker, probably Chamber too, if he had a face), bemused smiles (Aquanaut, Miss Black), disinterest (Animal Boy) and worried anticipation (Lone Wolf). The mayor is there as well, along with his deputy, the featureless Miss Kirkness, along with a nerdy-looking guy in a tweed jacket carrying a large black electronic device. There’s also a few cops in the chamber, but they’re doing their best to look invisible, picking over the sandwich tray at the back of the set-up.

“Zephyr, you’re late,” Pykes says.

“Hey, chill, baby. When have I ever let you down?”

“Do you want me to get my diary, Mr Mayor?” the PA asks.

I pout at the gibe and Roland Pykes, his security blanket and gold chains around his shoulders, gives an irritated gasp and gives up. I turn to acknowledge a few of my former teammates, though Chamber seems to be looking elsewhere and Lone Wolf, looking more like a homeless person than ever in his old trench coat and barefoot get-up, nervously avoids my eyes.

One of the secretaries fields a cell call and then sticks her head back into the room.

“They’re ready for you, Mr Mayor.”

Pykes turns to the guy in the jacket and asks, “Ready, Professor Prendergast?”

“As I’ll ever be, I suppose, Mayorr Pykes. Lead on.”

They file past, followed almost immediately by Adrian’s pet wolf. It must need to pee or something, presuming Adrian eventually managed to house train the damned thing. Seeker inclines her head to me, and Aquanaut gently punches my shoulder and then I fall in beside Vulcana and Animal Boy, pretending for a moment to sniff the air around the former teenager.

“Jesus, Zephyr, get some new jokes, man.”

“Where have you been hiding, Tom? The zoo?”

“Actually I’ve been finishing college, I don’t know if you’ve heard of the place?”

I eye him up and down a moment. He’s still a weedy piece of work, but at least some of his old hyperactive energy has diminished. Shame the same can’t be said for his Adam’s apple.

“I guess you’re old enough to shave now,” I smirk. “What’s that like when you turn into a Sabretooth? One big shaved puss –”

“Zephyr,” Vulcana says and nudges me fairly hard in the ribs. “Is there something you were going to ask me?”

I cease my grinning and turn back to Connie. Since we’re still in private she hasn’t made the switch yet, which means I’m looking at a handsome brunette with a peaches and cream complexion, great boobs, and eyes that seem to see into the core of my being. I also note she’s sporting a fresh haircut, long at the front and shaved right to the nape of her neck.

“Nice ‘do.”

“Thanks. I had to pay an extra fifty for the first appointment.”

“That sucks ass,” I say, and then realise my sentiment’s probably a little too strong for something so mundane. I make a sheepish face that usually gets me out of that sort of thing and then gesture around.

“So what’s all this then?”

“That Professor Prendergast is donating his latest invention to the protection of the city,” Vulcana replies in an unimpressed voice.

“Latest invention?”

“Yeah, the Hermes Foundation, you remember that?”

“If you say so.”

“Hermes is the donation.”

“The . . . Greek god?” I know I’m straining and the pain shows. Vulcana gives me a nod.

I can’t ask any more. I still haven’t found out what the hell the mayor thinks he is up to assembling the Sentinels without discussing it with me first. First though, we troop down the last of the Hall’s main staircases and out through the foyer, following the rapidly-striding mayor and the diminutive scientist trying to keep up. Beyond the main doors there’s the sort of crowd that has become a rarity these days. The day is overcast, the sky smeared with clouds the colour of lead pencil. I check my mask and fix a rakish smile in place and then the cameras start flashing.

 

I AM ALARMED to finally understand Hermes is a fucking robot.

Me and robots don’t exactly have the best history and this one is bigger than me and designed to resemble a buff super-warrior in an off-the-shoulder toga-cum-miniskirt kinda thing. His enormous silver head is styled with Classical curls. Beside me, Seeker mutters something about wondering where’s the fig leaf and I laugh derisively as the mayor’s ambitious speech overshoots his ability to deliver. I sense journalists in the crowd lying in wait to ask fresh questions about the latest scandal about the deputy mayor’s expense account and, like a psychic, anticipate an adjournment so we can get together behind closed doors once the photo opportunities are over. As I have foreseen, so it comes to pass; and we’re only fifteen minutes out the front of City Hall before the first raindrop falls.

Pykes stops mid-speech and turns back to me.

“Zephyr, can you do something about that?”

There’s something I’ve never liked about the mayor and he knows it. I think he thinks it’s his post-doctorate qualifications, his aid work in the Middle East, and his self-indulgent interest in palaeontology. Actually it’s his ruddy schoolboy complexion, the handsome-but-evil-Nazi-bad-guy scar running down one cheek and his habit of consulting with no one before making big policy decisions – like assembling my defunct super-team without asking me, Zephyr, who’s saved his worship’s arse more than once.

With the city’s entire media watching, the best I can come up with is a strained “Wh-at?” It’s irritating for me that people by now still don’t understand I can’t control the weather. I can generate weather and make a stink when I’m up among the clouds, but simply magicking away a rain shower isn’t in my vocabulary, let alone my abilities.

Pykes simply hisses, “The rain,” and turns back, beneficently smiling for the cameras as he resumes his speech about commitment to safety not just for the city, but the entire eastern seaboard.

“So, you gonna do somethin’ about that, Zeph?” Seeker asks.

Those around me chuckle and I just sigh through my teeth, head shaking.

Five minutes later, we’re corralled indoors, this time into one of the really big meeting rooms, an impressive one on the first floor. Almost immediately, Lone Wolf’s dog jumps up on the food table and starts chowing down on the buffet and Chamber reaches over with one of his big tensile steel mitts and flicks the beast across the room.

I haven’t seen Adrian that fired up in years.

“Don’t you ever touch Hero like that,” he snarls, feet spread in a fighting stance and bo-stick upraised like a sword.

Chamber folds his arms over the metal trunk of his chest and says nothing. Perhaps because I have known him the longest and I always felt kinda bad about the circumstances of his leaving the team, I move across to Lone Wolf and try to smile.

“Hey, Adrian, long time no see. How’re you doing?”

“It’s a long time? Yes, Zephyr,” he replies softly, looking anywhere except into my eyes. “I haven’t exactly been around.”

I clear my throat and wonder why the hell I didn’t just zero in on the free drinks.

“Yeah, so, how are you now? All . . . better?”

“I’m still in treatment, Zephyr, if you must know,” he says.

Because he won’t look at me, I can get a good look at him and how badly he has aged in the past five years. His hair and stubble are grey, his skin with the complexion of a cadaver. Although there’s still that suggestion of sinewy strength Lone Wolf always possessed, I can’t help conclude something of the fight has gone out of the guy.

“Cool, yeah, OK, but are you like, OK?”

“Well . . . I am better than I have been . . . for a while.”

“That’s great,” I say, leaping on any positivity. “Why’s that?”

Adrian finally meets my eyes.

“I’m a lone wolf, Zephyr. I should’ve always been left alone.”

Holding his fighting stick like a cane, Adrian whistles to his pet and then he strides from the big room without so much as looking back.

“I guess in hindsight he thought that was a pretty bad idea, coming along here today,” a cocky voice says from behind.

I turn and there’s Aquanaut. We share a brotherly hug and I ruffle his slicked-back blue-black hair.

“Hey, Aquanaut, man, long time no see.”

“Actually man it’s Nautilus these days. I’ve changed, uh, monikers.”

“Oh.” I pause and try and work out where I’ve heard the word Nautilus before and I can’t place it. “That’s cool. Any, uh, reason?”

“Oh not really, just the Aquanaut, I think it was a little difficult for some people. My agent thinks the Q and the two Us, and besides, it’s a bit like, you know, Aquaman. Kinda gay.”

“Well then, you were kinda gay for a few years there, Spock.”

He laughs, but not without rubbing a thumb and forefinger over one of his gently pointed ears. His costume hasn’t changed much, with sea green tights of fine metallic scales and a very minimalist singlet with a weird cross-shaped harness over the top.

“You’re not in the city any longer?”

“No. I’ve been in California for the past two years, trying to get this pilot of mine made and, you know, generally just chasing waves and beating on the odd bad guy.”

“Are there many, like, major villains over that way? I don’t hear much about it on the TV,” I say.

“No, not really. It’s how I like it. This town is too creepy, man. It’s like an idiots’ circus, you know what I mean?”

“Uh, not sure I do, but then again I still live here, so. . . .”

“Yeah, sure, I didn’t mean anything like that.”

We both hum at the same time and look around – and that’s about when Hermes comes over.

 

I COULDN’T TELL you how much he weighed. Judging by the sound, it is a hell of a lot. With roughly the same physical dimensions as Twilight, except made from solid metal, with or without his platemail loincloth, Hermes cut an impressive figure. I wasn’t buying the whole robot thing anyway and his impassive, immobile face doesn’t help.

“Gentlemen,” the robot says and inclines his head, offering a large hand. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

Nautilus and I just stare at him for a moment and Nautilus is probably even more open than me, moving slowly around the robot like the freakish example of modern art it is. Hermes’ cloak is real cloth and Nautilus tugs at it. The hand remains open for all of three seconds.

“He’s huge,” the artist-formerly-known-as-Aquanaut says.

“He’s sure that,” I agree.

Hermes tilts his head slightly and I lift my eyes.

“How’re you doing, robot?”

“My creator named me Hermes after the Greek god of messengers. I hope that’s not . . . intimidating . . . for you.”

“Intimidating?”

I look around. The professor is talking with Miss Black, who’s flicking back her shoulder-length blonde hair almost like she’s flirting with the old guy. You’d never know with a chick like that. She’s freaky, and not always in a good way.

“How’s he doing that?” I ask.

“What?” Nautilus asks.

“The talking. I can’t see the professor has any gadgets up his sleeve. Besides, he looks a little busy.”

“Gentlemen,” the robot responds in his most patient baritone, “I assure you there is no ventriloquism at play. I’m the one talking to you.”

I ponder this a moment. It seems kinda unlikely and I say as much. I’m surprised to hear frustration in the metallic echo of the robot’s reply.

“Gentlemen, I assure you, I am very much the . . . the real deal.”

“The ‘real deal’,” Nautilus laughs. “Fuck. Who programmed you, boy? Does the professor know jive too?”

“Jive?”

“You know, like 70s black people talk, not the dance,” I feel compelled to explain.

“Gentlemen . . . Oh very well.”

The robot walks away. I almost feel for him when his path immediately confronts him with the sandwich table, with which he obviously can’t really engage. The robot’s enormous hands conform to fists and he just stands there, his back to the small gathering as more and more people come in.

I’m still curious. I walk over to the professor and Miss Black and elbow my way into the conversation.

“So professor, what’s the deal with Hermes? How do you make him talk?”

Prendergast obviously feels the need to back up his explanation with an account of early Newtonian physics and the work of the Russian Formalists. After a couple of nervous sidelong glances to Miss Black, who still looks rather fine, I must say, though in a slightly secretarial way, her customary flared black slacks and wide open-collared black shirt exposing both her delightful collarbones and wrists, I realise she’s not going to interrupt because she’s a knowledge junkie and is probably turned on by the professor. So I hold up my hands and actually use the phrase “Whoa.”

“I’m just trying to work out how you make him talk, doc.”

The scientist actually tilts his head as he looks at me through his thick spectacles. It’s not the sort of look that would ever make me feel comfortable. I ponder how he would look with a spark up his nose.

“Make him talk?” the professor repeats. “He talks for himself, Mr Zephyr.”

“No, seriously. Come on. I know it’s a trade secret, but we’re all kinda curious.”

“Hermes is a sixth generation self-replicating intellectual machine, Mr Zephyr. Don’t be fooled by his rather . . . Adonisian exterior. He’s essentially a new type of super-computer on a level far superior to anything the world’s ever seen.”

“If he’s such a hot computer, how come you put him inside all that armour? Sounds to me like you could give Microsoft a run for their money if you went commercial.”

“Well, I’m not motivated by money, Mr Zephyr.”

“It’s just Zephyr.”

“OK.”

“So,” I shrug, just making conversation now. “What are you motivated by then, professor?”

The scientist gets a far away look as he says, “I want to stamp out tyranny, and the cruelty of men against men.”

“Far out.”

I think that’s a shame because Hermes would look good as a wrestler.

The nerdy old guy focuses on me again and says: “A colleague of mine by the name of Dr Martin Thurson recently went missing right in the heart of this great city of ours, Zephyr. When it really dawned on me that something like this could happen, I dedicated the Hermes project to the form you see now. I aim to find my colleague, sir, with Hermes’ help. Any assistance you could offer would be greatly appreciated.”

“Martin Thurson? OK,” I reply. “I’ll uh, you know, keep an ear to the ground.”

The scientist nods and pats me on the shoulder and says it’s much appreciated and as he smiles encouragingly to Miss Black, who is watching me with a guarded sense of caution I believe, there’s a dramatic lull in the conversation I feel the urgent need to fill.

“So, what time do you think our old enemies will attack?”

The professor gasps and I check the time on my Blackberry, careful not to set off any buttons. Miss Black chuckles because at least she’s familiar with my sense of humour. On the other hand, the professor looks like he needs a change of shorts.

“You can’t be serious . . . and so calm about it?”

“Oh sure,” I shrug. “It’s pretty typical of big events like this. You know, all the city’s top crime-fighters gathered under the one roof. I guess if it was Think-Tank or Overlord or someone, they might even try and steal your neat-o new computer boy over there.”

The professor looks a few shades paler as he produces a square of handkerchief to dab his face.

“I’m not sure if Hermes is ready . . . I hope I haven’t unveiled him too soon.”

“The, uh, mayor seemed to be saying Hermes was like, part of the police force now?” Miss Black says, speaking telepathically and, as usual, sounding like Daria.

“Uh, seconded,” Professor Prendergast slowly confirms.

“Cool,” the former teen sorceress replies. “Any idea why the rest of us are here then?”

Zephyr 1.5 “A Guarded Sense Of Caution” is a post from: Zephyr - a webcomic in prose