Perfect’s headquarters consisted of two neighboring buildings, two of a set of brownstone townhouses. One of them had already been converted to apartments by the previous owner, as most of its siblings in the neighborhood had been. The other had still been set up for single family occupancy, which is why she used it as her “front”. That was where she usually went when she emerged from her basement lab to get a snack, but today, as she had teammates living in the other side for the first time, she came up into the more institutional-style communal kitchen to see if anybody else was up and about.
Adonis was. A rich, warm aroma of coffee filled the air. She thought at first that he must have been using the espresso machine with its pre-measured packets of ground beans, but then she saw he was standing at the counter with the carafe from the drip coffee maker in his hands, his head bowed low over it.
“Hey, Donny,” Perfect said. “Wow… I don’t normally drink much coffee, but that smells incredible.”
“Thanks,” he said, straightening up and holding out the pot. It was halfway full of gloriously golden brown liquid. “Do you want some? I really only make it for the smell.”
“I’d love some, thanks,” Perfect said. She stifled a yawn. “I worked all through the night on that ultrablack dye. Though, now that I think about it… I suppose that you could still derive some benefit from caffeine, since it affects the brain and yours is still organic… but it would need some way of getting there, and it would be a bit of a balancing act to make sure the dosage that reached there was actually equivalent. Probably more trouble than it would be worth, now that I think about it, especially since you’ve got to have some kind of computer-regulated artificial endocrine system that could more than compensate for…”
“Uh, yeah, I don’t really like talking about that kind of thing,” he said.
“Oh, sorry,” she said. “So… how you settling in?”
“Oh, I’m fine,” Adonis said. “I’m feeling pretty good about myself, actually.”
“Oh, yeah?” Perfect said.
“Yeah. It’s like for the first time since I got this body, I’ve got a direction. Like, even though I’m not doing anything right this moment, I’m still doing something.”
“That’s great,” Perfect said.
“Oh, and I found the workout room earlier. I, uh, hope that’s okay…”
“No, feel free,” Perfect said. “But… you actually work out? I mean… considering?”
“Yeah,” he said. “When I first started out, I had to do a shitload of physio just to figure out how to move, and so they could make sure that everything was, y’know, interfaced or whatever. I got in the habit of it, and it’s something to pass the time… and the more I work out, the easier it gets, the more it feels like this body is mine, like it’s me and not just a suit I’m wearing. Also, it’s cool to figure out just how much I can do… how fast I can run, how much I can bench, you know?”
He clenched and opened a fist as he spoke, curling his forearm slowly back towards his shoulders. Artificial muscles flexed realistically beneath his synthetic skin.
“But don’t you find it frustrating to know that once you find your body’s peak, you’ll never be able to improve past that no matter how much you train?” Perfect asked.
“Uh… I didn’t before,” Adonis said, glaring at her. “Actually, I never thought to look at it that way.”
“Oh, sorry,” Perfect said. “How about that coffee?”
“Cups?” Adonis asked, and Perfect went and got a coffee mug from the cupboard. She held it while he poured.
“Ooh, leave room for cream,” she said.
“No, try it first,” he said.
“I don’t like coffee black.”
“Does this look black to you?” he asked. “Try it.”
She looked at it skeptically, then raised the cup to her lips and took a tiny sip.
“Whoa, it tastes…”
“It tastes like it smells. Most coffee smells awesome but tastes like shit, right?”
“Yeah, that’s pretty much my opinion of it,” Perfect said.
“That’s because most people who make coffee are practically beating the hell out of it. You start with stale grounds… you push the coffee through a paper filter, which is like taking a paper towel and wiping up all the flavor… and then you burn the shit out of it,” he said. “And that’s before you leave it sitting on the heated thing for half an hour. It’s like a crime against coffee.”
“Well, like I said… I don’t usually drink coffee myself,” Perfect said, surprised by his vehemence on the subject. “I got the heated pot because I thought it would be more convenient for the people who do.”
“If you want convenient caffeine, open a can of soda,” Adonis said. “Leaving coffee on a burner is like taking a prime cut of steak and leaving it on a hot grill all afternoon just in case somebody gets hungry.”
“Point taken,” she said. “So how did you make this?”
“Oh, I did some shopping,” he said, pulling a handful of receipts out of his pocket. “I hope I can, like, get reimbursed for this.”
“Gold filter?” Perfect said, reading one of them. “Donny, I hope that’s a brand name.”
“Twenty-three karat Swiss gold filter basket,” he said. “It’s an investment, and if anybody on this team drinks coffee, it’s gonna pay for itself. Not only does it not need replacing, but it lets everything through but the grounds, and it doesn’t add any kind of aftertaste. Now, I had the beans ground at the store, but ideally we’ll want to get a grinder and have fresher beans delivered… and a better machine.”
“Okay, okay, if you can make coffee taste like this, you can be Vice President In Charge Of Coffee,” Perfect said. “I’ll get you a credit card.”
“Sweet!”
“For team expenses and emergencies only,” Perfect said, stabbing her finger at his chest.
“I know how to handle money,” he said.
“I just… hold that thought,” she said, as a low tone sounded.
“What’s that?”
“Doorbell… on the other side,” she said. She grabbed the remote for a TV suspended in the corner and flipped it to channel 001. “Oh, crap… Ray!” she said, as the security feed showed the Fire-Eater standing on her front door.
She hurried to the front hall, which on this side of the duplexed buildings was a closed-off vestibule with controlled access doors at both ends. She unlocked the inner door, stuck her head out the outer one, and got Ray’s attention. He hurried inside the door, and she shut it.
“Can’t you wear a disguise when you show up at my door in broad daylight?” Perfect asked as the door clicked locked. His strongman build and glowing red brands would have been hard to conceal even if he wore normal clothes, but as he habitually wore nothing more than fireproof trousers, he really stood out when he ventured into the respectable residential enclave where Perfect had made her base.
“Sorry, I left my square glasses in my other pants,” he said.
“I’m just saying, if you wanted to stay, you should have stayed… coming and going like this is a little obvious.”
“I didn’t want to stay, but a few things came up I wanted to share with you,” Ray said.
“That’s what the phone is for,” Perfect said.
“Yeah, well, I also needed to get out of my apartment. I forget some times how many people know where I live.”
“Villains on your tail?”
“More like archnemeses.”
“Why do I have a feeling you’re talking about ex-girlfriends?” Perfect asked, crossing her arms.
“Technically, only one of them was ever my girlfriend. The other was a mutual no-strings attached hook-up,” Ray said. “But they are both nuts and they always bring twenty different kinds of weirdness into my life.”
“You could have at least let me know you were coming.”
“Yeah, I guess I could have,” Ray said. He put a hand on the back of his bald head, running his fingers over the smooth skin. “Sorry… really. I’m not so used to having somebody to keep in the loop.”
“It’s not like you haven’t been working with Broker for years.”
“Yeah, but you don’t tell the bartender when you’re coming over, or where you’re going when you go out…”
“I’m not a jealous housewife, Ray,” Perfect said. “But people live here… I don’t want you blowing everybody’s cover.”
“Why did you pick this neighborhood to set up a secret headquarters in, anyway?” Ray asked. “Why not somewhere more industrial, or down by Twistville?”
“It seemed like good camouflage,” Perfect said. “I didn’t think about potential teammates who wouldn’t be able to blend in as well as I do.”
“You didn’t think… wow,” Ray said, shaking his head. “Never thought I’d hear those words out of your mouth. You know, there are a lot of people—mutants, robots, whatever—who just won’t pass no matter what they do. If you make that a requirement of joining your little team, you’re going to be excluding a lot of folks.”
“Yeah… that’s, okay, maybe that’s my mundane privilege showing,” Perfect said. “I think of superheroes as people who put on masks when they go out at night and take them off when they’re done. But I’m not going to exclude anybody for standing out too much… if we get a truly inhuman-looking member, I’ll… well, I guess we’ll have to cross that bridge when we get to it.”
“Just as long as you’re thinking about it,” Ray said. “You should come hang out in my neck of the woods sometime. Your definition of ‘normal’ might expand a little.”
“Didn’t you say something about information to share?” Perfect asked.
“Are you going to let me come in, or keep me standing here in this little phone booth?” Ray asked.
“Oh, sorry,” Perfect said. She punched a code into the keypad on the inner door and the lock clicked open. “I guess I should get you set up with a code for this, even if you’re not living here. That might solve the whole ’standing around on the doorstep’ problem, actually… if you could just come inside without waiting.”
“Yeah, it might,” Ray said.
“I’m sorry,” Perfect said. “I haven’t slept… and honestly, this team came together faster than I expected. I’m good at making the fast decisions in the heat of the moment, but during the down time… my brain’s kind of going in a billion different directions at once. Normally, I’d talk to… I mean, I’d use Mr. Buttons to help myself focus, but I’m trying to avoid relying on hi… on that.”
“Hey, you do whatever… ooh, did you make coffee?” Ray said. Even in the narrow first floor hallway, the aroma was strong.
“Actually, Adonis did,” Perfect said, leading Ray towards the kitchen.
“Oh, does the coffee maker come standard with cyborg conversions now?” Ray asked, and Perfect elbowed him in the stomach.
“Be nice,” she hissed as they came into the kitchen. “Hey, Donny… Ray says he’s got some info.”
“Oh, who’d you sleep with to get it?” Adonis asked him. He turned to Perfect. “He does most of his work undercover, if you get my meaning.”
“It turns out that before our guy got all tight-lipped, he let it slip that he was in talks with somebody called ‘The Bishop’,” Ray said. “Ring any bells for you?”
“Not immediately,” Perfect said. “I mean, not among the known Star Harbor crime figures… it could be someone from out of town, of course. Palozzo was from Chicago. Could be a mob nickname.”
“Where’d this tip come from, exactly?” Adonis asked.
“One of the Dock Shadow’s agents,” Ray said. “Her word’s good enough for me.”
“Hers,” Adonis repeated. “Told you.”
“Well, it’s a slim lead, but so was Palozzo,” Perfect said. “He was never the ultimate goal, especially since we know he didn’t do the actual torching himself. Knowing who he was in contact with, that puts us on stronger ground. Hmm… Bishop. I wonder.”
“What?” Ray asked.
“Churches,” Perfect said. “Catholic churches. All the fires have been at Catholic churches.”
“You don’t think it’s an actual bishop, do you?” Ray asked.
“The Star Harbor Archdiocese was on the verge of bankruptcy a few years back,” Perfect said. “It could be an insurance thing… but I doubt it. We’ll look at it, but it feels wrong. Whoever created those runes of unmaking has a better grounding in mysticism than ‘hoc est corpus meum’. But ‘Bishop’ could be a codename picked because of the targets… if it wasn’t an existing alias, that could make it harder to track him down.”
“Hocus what?” Adonis said. “I thought we were working on ‘abracadabra’.”
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