Cecil and I, bros now, were standing on the balcony overlooking the Pentagon's ridiculously clean courtyard, him in his rumpled suit that he might have slept in, me in my street clothes that concealed the Sovereign suit beneath. I had a beanie to cover my white hair, but I was so well-known at this point that I might as well have been Jesus or Buddha – people recognized my eyes. Orange. Glow-in-the-dark, if I wanted. The kind of stuff that makes people stutter when they're talking to me, even though I'm just standing there, chewing gum and counting the precise number of birds in the sky, with vectors tracing their predicted flight paths.
Cecil snorted, ashing his cigarette over the railing, claiming it as his own. "So you're trying to tell me this royal bloodline crap actually means something when we're talking about a dynasty of space conquerors?" He eyed me as if I was trying to convince him the sky was plaid. I chuckled, cracking my gum loudly enough that some shrink three floors above us probably made a note of it on my file.
I shrugged, holding my hands behind my head in a way that made Cecil's eye twitch at the nonchalant nature of the revelation which was, in fact, a universe-wide bombshell. "Yes." The gum between my teeth popped as I leaned down, elbows resting on the railing, tracking the descent of a leaf as it spun lazily on the breeze towards some intern's coffee. "Argall wasn't just a king. He was a messiah. And Nolan? Mark? They have his blood."
Cecil drew a long drag of his cigarette, letting the burning tip creep perilously close to his fingertips, just like he always let me tell him things that should've made his hair turn white overnight.
"So you're saying all it'd take to get Thragg off our backs and a Grayson in his place is to send a memo?" he said, sounding skeptical, though I could see the wheels already turning in the back of those bloodshot eyes, weighing the ramifications, the changes in the Balance, the simple fact that Earth wouldn't have to live with the constant threat of war hanging over its head. I smiled because Cecil was already playing the game three moves ahead, and that's why I loved the man.
"Yeah, basically," I replied as I observed the vectors tracing the smoke from Cecil's cigarette twisting into random shapes between us. "It'll be really easy and anti-climatic." I pulled on the end of my beanie, the words lying there between us like a hard object. "I just need to give them the facts, then let them deal with the rest."
Cecil snorted, then stubbed out his cigarette against the ground, as if he was trying to snuff out his second thoughts as well. "Alright, damnit," he said eventually, his tone as abrasive as the sidewalk. "But if this is all a huge mistake, I'm laying all the blame at your feet."
He didn't say be careful, but I heard it, that little pinprick of worry in the background noise of his tiredness. He had the sensitivity of a concrete slab, but I knew he loved me like a son.
I didn't hesitate. When Cecil nodded at me like that, I jumped off the railing and let my civilian clothes rip apart as the Sovereign suit unfolded around me, blazing orange and white in the daylight like a missile. I saw the Pentagon parking lot dropping away beneath me within moments, observers scrambling to get out of the way as I breached the stratosphere without a goodbye. To hell with procedure. I was going to the moon.
Now the moon was not just a moon, what with Thragg hosting a base on its surface. I certainly didn't slow down as I crossed the moon's tenuous atmosphere, my orange laser vision piercing the space like a lighthouse beacon. By the time the Viltrumite guards saw me, I was already booting my way into the war room, leaving an impression on the shiny black floor. Except for the whir of the Viltrumite tech, the room fell dead silent, with a dozen warriors ready to spring into action.
Thragg's throne wasn't really a throne, more a chunk of obsidian that had been bonded to the moonstone, as rough and brutal as the man who sat on it. He didn't get up as I approached, merely turned his head and fixed me with an icy stare, as though I was a problem he wasn't sure if he wanted to crack or simply batter into a pulp.
The Viltrumites on the wall flexed their fists, ready to kill, but Thragg raised a hand and they froze, like a rubber band that had just been snipped. "Sovereign," he rumbled. "Either you're very smart or very dumb."
I didn't flinch. I just shrugged my shoulders, feeling the energy course through my body like a second heartbeat. "Clear the room, Thragg." It didn't really resonate off the walls, Viltrumite structures just absorbing sound like a sponge, but that didn't stop the sentence feeling like a solid object all the same. "Believe me, you're gonna want to do that."
Thragg's face didn't move. It could have been hewn from the same black stone as his throne. But I could feel a spark of annoyance run through him, like a jolt of electricity. His fingers moved. Once. Then he slowly blew air out through his nose, like he already knew he was going to regret this.
"Get out," he said, quietly, and the Viltrumites obeyed, sliding away like shadows yanked out of a bright space, their footsteps muted on the gleaming floor. A big juggernaut tossed me a promise of eventual slaughter as they departed, and I smiled.
The hatch closed behind the final Viltrumite, and the only sound in the room was the whir of their machines and the sound of what I was about to tell him. Thragg still hadn't risen from his chair, but I could sense it. I could sense a spike in his heart-rate. I could smell the beginnings of his fear. I could even smell the adrenaline starting to infect his mouth.
I didn't sugarcoat it. Thragg wasn't much for pleasantries, and neither was I. "You made a mistake," I said, cracking my neck. "You should've killed Nolan and Mark while you had the chance." The words dropped like lead shot between us. It was lovely seeing the gears turn in his head, as he connected the dots on what I was saying - the little pinpricks of his pupils, the whitening knuckles on the arms of his throne.
"You know what I'm about to say, don't you? Mark Grayson isn't just a half-breed abomination," I continued, Thragg's jaw clenched so tightly it might never unlock. "He's Argall's lineage. Blood. As is Nolan. You didn't just spare their lives--you allowed the heirs to your whole kingdom to go on drawing breath." I popped my knuckles, more because it made Thragg twitch his eye than because I actually needed to. "Hurts, don't it?"
The pressure of Thragg's hands on the arms of his throne was making cracks in the obsidian, like a man's fingers on ice. The warlord's tone was the sort of deep growl that made men's bladders weak. "You expect me to believe this?" He didn't summon his men back out, however. He didn't say no.
He knew I was right, not because I was such a brilliant puppeteer, although I was, but because it was as if all the puzzle pieces fit together too perfectly. How Nolan had lived through fights he shouldn't have, how Mark had adjusted faster than any half-breed had a right to. Thragg wasn't an idiot. He just hadn't wanted to see it.
I saw Thragg's hands clench, the obsidian cracking and breaking into pieces in his fists. He was just one step from throwing himself at me, and, you know what? I would've understood. It made perfect sense for him to kill me here. But I didn't. I didn't do anything. I just stood there with my hands hanging at my sides, my orange laser vision glowing softly in my eyes.
"You know I'm right," I added, voice as light as if I'd been remarking on the time of day. "And I'm not the one that's going to tell them." I turned just far enough to splash some of the light from my eyes onto Thragg's, for a moment outlining his gaunt cheekbones with a rim of orange. Thragg's nose fluttered with a scented breath. "If I wanted to tell them, I wouldn't have told you to send them away."
Thragg's hands remained clenched over the broken armrests of his throne, the black powder beneath his fists like powder of his pride. Finally, he breathed out, slow, measured, his shoulders easing by degrees. Not defeat, no, but close. "You fought that Unopan," he said, flat.
Thragg probably would've murdered me on the spot... and he would have. However, he knew about my fight with Allen the Unopan, who was at Thragg's level, and he knew that I was capable of growing stronger (and coming back to life) because he himself had killed me before, and now I was able to fight a man who is roughly able to fight him.
In other words, this wasn't going to be some quick snap of the neck and call it a day. Thragg would have to work for it, and by all aspects, it was just too risky to make me his enemy when I was literally helping him keep his throne. But I kinda needed him for my own gain, he just didn't know it yet.
Slowly, Thragg released the wreckage of the throne, the remains of the obsidian floating harmlessly to the ground, like black powdered snow. "The boy," he continued, measuring each word. "He'll come to me if it's presented as... worry. As Viltrumite purbreds, we know that half-breeds can't maintain the integrity of our physiology. A faulty, hybrid gene. It would be irresponsible of us not to check in on him." He almost smiled. Almost.
I loved Thragg's plan because it was so straightforward. Everyone had to go to the doctor, even super-powered shit heads like me with "perfect" genes. I could already play the sequence out in my mind: Mark's initial distrust, Nolan's eventual consent, Thragg slipping in the word concern like an icepick to the spleen. All he had to say was, "We just want to make sure your child is healthy," and Mark's ego would take care of the rest.
###
Nolan was not a part of my scheme. But oh well. It added to the scheme. He wanted Debbie back… badly, and he would return from Talescria and other places back to Earth because he wanted Debbie back. He would come and do his usual checkups on Earth, looking for any reason to see her, to fix what he had broken. Only, Debbie had not been waiting for him. She had been in my bed for months, and at this point, there was really nothing freaky we hadn't done. The freakiest thing would be for me to get her pregnant with my son or daughter, and that idea was growing more and more appealing.
It was on such days, Thragg had arranged to meet him, supposedly to discuss Viltrumite health issues —and told him to bring his son along. Nolan had marched into the death-trap with his chin held high, Mark by his side, totally unaware that he was marching into his own history. A battle had ensued as they'd discovered their betrayal —and Thragg had brutally hospitalized them, their innards spilling from their abdomens, their limbs distorted in ways it would take Viltrumite regeneration weeks to repair. Only Thragg never got the opportunity to complete his task.
The Viltrumites knew what had happened, what had been revealed about Argall's heritage, and Thragg's court had turned into Thragg's prison. The Viltrumites acted swiftly. One moment Thragg was standing over Mark's battered form, ready to deliver the coup de grace, the next his leading soldiers had jumped him. They didn't kill him - that wouldn't have been their way, but they certainly ensured that he wasn't getting up from that floor again. They were waiting for either Nolan or Mark to pass judgment on him, the rightful heirs, but they were recovering at the moment, so Thragg remained chained down and battered.
At the moment, we were all in the Moon Base infirmary—the Guardians were huddled or pacing around the floor outside of Mark's infirmary, much like discarded dolls. It didn't feel real, like the Viltrumites had sterilized every last bit of warmth from this place…which they probably did. That was their modus operandi.
Eve was sitting on the floor in the same outfit she always wore, but as her hips were wider, her legs fuller, with a bit of belly and fatter face, evidence of the failed pregnancy she had lost when everything went to hell. She was just fat in a good way. She wasn't crying. She just glared at the floor as if she could bore a hole through it.
I noticed Eve's hands clenched on her uniform, fists so tight it was as if she was trying to squeeze words out of it. I settled down beside her, brushing our legs together, feeling her body heat through the thin suit. She didn't shift away, nor did she snuggle closer. She just kept still, her heart steady, too steady for a woman who'd almost just lost her lover.
Eve's knee ground into mine, and I figured it was a bit harder than she meant it to be. Wasn't gonna give her any grief for it, though, not with her leg touching mine making my cock go rock hard. The glare of the medibay lights illuminated her skin, beading up sweat on the underside of her neck as the curls of her loose hair framed it. I could've licked the veins tracing along it to count the pulse pounding through them, to count the tremors in every breath she took like a rosary. Instead, I just slung an arm around her shoulders, like we were a couple of guys having a moment. "He'll be fine," I whispered into her ear, feeling the tremors of her fury as she leaned against my arm. "You know Mark--he don't die easy."
Eve let out a shuddering breath, as if she'd been holding it inside for a lifetime. She sagged against me, like all the strings had been sliced off her marionette. Her hand released the fistful of gown and came to rest on my leg, as if it wasn't even aware it was doing so. She was warm, heavy, a reassuring presence that quickened my heart ever so slightly. The kind of thing only someone who knew what to look for would see. Someone like Eve.
But that was my real goal all along, not to defeat Thragg, not to help the Graysons, but to break Eve from Mark's gravitational pull. That kid wouldn't give her room to breath, to be honest with what she wanted. And now, here, with her leg touching mine, her breathing skipping a beat as my thumb patterned her shoulder? She was finally realizing her desires.
Eve was just probing—a constant hand on my thigh, reaching perilously close to my crotch, so that she could press enough to feel the shape of my dick through the Sovereign fatigues. She withdrew quickly, making sure that none of the others had spotted the act, but they were all too interested in licking their own wounds or gazing dumbly into the bulkheads. Eventually she turned back to me—to really look at me—and her pupils dilated just a hair, and my suit sensed the movement. She wanted to see how I'd responded to it, and she had, because my hand had wandered to her hip, and I'd squeezed hard enough to make the point clear.
Eve had seened me as forbidden fruit, like the apple in the tree of knowledge of good and evil. All girls did. And now was the time, Mark was a battered and bruised chunk of meat in a Viltrumite med-bay, and I was there offering her solace like some kind of Boy Scout. They underestimated me, thought I was too good to do something like that. I don't think even think Cecil thought I was capable of something like this, even after what I did to Mark's mother. I didn't really care. I wanted to get laid and Eve had always been hungry for something that Mark couldn't deliver. And I was hungry for her.