. _ Blackbird & Countinghouse Presents: _ ( ) CONCLAVE OF SUPER-VILLAINS ( ) =-+-= An Academy of Super-Heroes Universe Comic =-+-= I copyright 2000 by Tony Pi I #16 - "House of Cards" Step Three of the Pyramid Scheme [COVER: A parody of the Charlie's Angels pose, with Glyph flanked by Tiara to the left and Caryatid to the left. A house of tarot cards is behind them, and it looks very unstable, probably because the "Empress" card in Tiara's hand was stolen from its foundation. Caryatid is holding the "High Priestess" card, while Glyph is holding the Tarot card "The Tower". A golden pyramid in the lower right hand corner is about 60% red. ] ============================================================================ Excerpts from _MEMOIRS OF A SUPER-VILLAIN_, by Derek Radner [July 30th, 2024 - War Room, Khadam Citadel] It was a classic convention, the gathering of super-criminals to plot the conquest of the world. And so we convened in our dastardly conclave, ostensibly to do this thing. I stood before them, straightening my cape. Here, in the War Room deep in the heart of Khadam Citadel, I preferred to dress the part of Chancellor. While my Strafe armor inspired awe and fear, I no longer wished to dwell inside that shell full-time, not after Tilt and PsiDF/X trapped me against my will inside a similar shell. Instead, I chose to wear billowing clothes that befitted a head-of-state. Admittedly, it was a calculated move to let everyone see my facial expressions, so that I could manipulate them with the raise of an eyebrow or the knit of a wrinkle. Despite the fact that I was garbed in "normal" clothing, I was far from helpless. I had concealed my old force-field belt in the sash I wore, having miniaturized some parts and improved it since my first foray back in the Academy days. There were no buttons for it: I learned my lessons after Teller neutralized me with a frakkin' dart. I surveyed the room. All active Conclavers except Tiara were present, as were members of the Technomancer Council: President-For-Life Arnold Zugmann, the biomancer Dr. Huang Sheng, the Pranir named Savagely-Murders- His-Rivals and the cyborg called Alloy. I was disdainful of most members of the Council, with the possible exception of Alloy: despite the man-machine's open protest against my CSV, I knew it would be wise to let him coordinate the Khadamite soldiers. My tactical oversight in Montreal was letting Zone overreach his abilities to command the invading force. While Zone had the tactical knowledge, a good general must know superior strategy, and Alloy would fill the shoes vacated by Zone. I activated the holographic display. Images of past and present members of the Conclave of Super-Villains burst onto the surface of a holographic sphere. Each cell was bordered in green for Active, yellow for Captured, black for Deceased and red for Rogue. I tapped a series of keys on his hovercontrol and the statuses of Myriad and Caprice flipped from green to yellow, while Zone's image became framed in black. CONCLAVE OF SUPER-VILLAINS --------------------------------------------------------------------------- TRITON Derek Radner Gadgeteer & Electricity ACTIVE MR. STRINGS Tyra Dumont Mind Control ACTIVE TIARA Princess Ursula Master Thief ACTIVE CONFLICTO Eugene Kwan Friction/Viscosity Control ACTIVE GLYPH Zephirah Reuben Magical Sigils ACTIVE LABYRINTHE Yvan Viau Spatial Magic ACTIVE SPIRAL Anya Kirova Telekinetic Torque ACTIVE BURNOUT III C.J. Brown Fire Control ACTIVE CARYATID Claudette Viau Spiritual Magic ACTIVE REBUS Lorenzo Archangeli Anchor, Highly Trained ROGUE MYRIAD Alpha Rho Twelve Shapeshifting *CAPTURED* CAPRICE Erin Vail Power mutation *CAPTURED* PERYTON Viktor Von Wright Monstrous transformation CAPTURED SULTRY Angeline Croft Weather Manipulation DECEASED PSIDF/X F.X. Darwin Psychogenic Illusions DECEASED TILT Lance Spencer Machine Control DECEASED ZONE Gerhard Durst Zone of power *DECEASED* DROYD DR-01-D Robotic Intelligence DESTROYED --------------------------------------------------------------------------- The room was uncharacteristically silent. But I waited for the tension in the room to finally snap, and fingers and accusations flew like gnats. It was time for the blame game. Conflicto whined loudest, and drowned out the mutters of others. "I lost my Conflicycle!" He fiddled with a cog from his broken cyberbike. "Ah, the memory! I remember when Conflicycle morphed for the first...*gawp*" Eugene suddenly stopped bemoaning his loss. Spiral was making spinning motions with her index finger, and her power had snagged Eugene's chair and was spinning it out of control. He had to grab on to the arms to prevent himself from flying across the room. When the chair finally stopped, Eugene stood shakily, raised a finger and said, "One ver-ti-go, s'il-vous-plait." He slumped back into his seat. "Mon Dieu, l'enfant terrible learned some French." Caryatid nodded her thanks to Spiral, who winked. "But Triton is right: Montreal *should* have been ours. We lost the Sans Rouge and suffered irreparable damage to Mount Royal." Almost as an afterthought, she added, "Myriad and Caprice were also captured." She glared at Labyrinthe. "It's all your fault, Yvan. You left your defenses open, as usual. If Meteor had not disrupted you, Montreal would be sitting in Ghat right now." "Hardly my fault!" said Labyrinthe in his own defense. "By then I had already sunk the hooks of my essence into Dorval. It should have worked, but something else went wrong." He looked to Glyph for some support. "Maybe there was a flaw in the ritual?" The glass full of water in front of him trembled as though there was an earthquake, even though there was none. "Are you doubting my translation?" answered Glyph. "The ritual was flawless. It was Solar Max who disrupted the process." She gestured at the Book of Thoth lying on the red silk cushion embroidered with silver symbols in front of her. "You have no idea of the power in this scroll. Beyond that simple spatial dislocation spell, it contains ancient Egyptian tectonic clastics. We can raise or sink a *continent*." "Put me down f'r one Conflictica," said Eugene, raising a shaky hand while trying not to throw up. "Mid-Pacific right next t'Maui." Zugmann grunted. "A continent? Impossible. There must be a catch." "Impossible? No. Extremely difficult? Yes," admitted Glyph. "Easier if we also had the Crown of Thoth, buried at the northeast corner of the smallest pyramid of the Orion's Belt trio in Giza. But it's not necessary." Caryatid frowned. "But the magnitude! No mortal mage...or even a cabal...can afford enough life-energy to manipulate continents. Where does the power come from?" "You just need the right foci." Glyph tapped in her own command into her hovercontrol. A holographic map of Egypt replaced the roster, and an overlay of red squares pulsed over the satellite imaging. "The pyramids of Egypt were designed for secret Thothian sorceries. It has been known since twencen that the pyramids are Earthly reflections of the ancient Egyptian sky. The Belt of Orion, for example, is represented by the Pyramids at Giza, with their size correlating to the brightness of the stars. With the proper preparations and sacrifices to the deepest of Earth's spirits at Giza, we will be able to inject Thothian magic into the ley lines of Earth, affecting the crust of the world. So long as we control the heart of the pyramids, not even Peregryn can stop us." She stopped, almost out of breath from excitement. "Imagine it!" I shouted. "We can terrorize entire continents, threaten any nation with a fault-line. Bid adieu to California, Japan, the Moslem Coalition. All we have to do is conquer Egypt, and WE WOULD BE AS GODS!" The glass in front of Labyrinthe shattered, drawing everyone's attention to the mage. "There's still something not right," insisted Labyrinthe. "Call it intuition." "And when have your instincts ever led us anywhere but back to square one?" his sister chastised him. "You're hiding behind your cowardice again, Yvan." "No, he's right." The eastern doors hissed open and in walked Tiara. Evidently, she had been listening through an earpiece to the commotion in the War Room. "Derek, I've been thinking about the theft of the Book. It seemed almost...*too* easy." "And where were you when we were all busting our asses invading Quebec?" asked Spiral. "Watch your language, Anya. That's no way to talk to royalty." Of course, I had no such compunction when it came to Zugmann, but I'd always had a soft spot for the faux-royalty of the Eurasian Union. Kings, queens, princesses were the stuff of legend, and I wax nostalgic for times past. "Are you suggesting that the Vatican *let* us steal it?" Tiara scoffed at the notion. "I doubt they had a clue we were coming. But my intuition tells me there's something wrong, and I intend to investigate it." She was not asking for his permission to go: no one, not even the Pope himself, could tell Princess Ursula what she could or couldn't do. I nodded. "Go. No harm in being absolutely sure." "What about Myriad and Caprice?" asked Spiral. "Shouldn't we rescue them?" "Why?" I said, a thin smile breaking on my lips. "The Academy of Super-Fools would most certainly be waiting for us. Consider them lost, for now." Spiral grumbled. "Is this how we would be treated too, if we were captured? Simply left behind? We've intercepted reports that Myriad's all but burnt to a crisp by that solar flare. You had offered us 'Understudies' full status in the CSV, and I thought that meant solidarity." "I am not abandoning them, Anya, only waiting for the right time." I shot a glance at Caryatid. "That is why I assigned Tiara to pay a little visit to an alpine prison in the German Alps." I snapped my fingers, and the eastern doors hissed open once more. A towering man-beast stepped through the portal, his monstrous bulk impossible to ignore. I tapped a preprogrammed key, and the roster reappeared hovering over the meeting table. Now Peryton's image was no longer framed in yellow, but in bright green. Conflicto whooped and fell out of his seat. "MOOSE!" On cue, Peryton spread his wings and roared. I smiled at the range of expressions on people's faces: astonishment, suspicion, and confusion. Always follow Supervillain Rule Number Five: Stay one step ahead of your enemies...and two steps ahead of your allies. Enough of the theatrics. There was another reason to convene them all. There was a traitor among my Conclavers, and I'd just begun my molehunt. * * * * [August 3rd, 2024 - The Chancery, Khadam Citadel] In the privacy of my Chancery in the Citadel, I poured myself a cognac, propped my feet up on my desk. There were several reports I had been waiting for anxiously. The first report frustrated me: the Technomancers were making very little progress in mining the collapsiron meteorite that we salvaged. I sketched down a couple of ideas on that front, based on my musings at the Academy about how to mine the collapsed gold statue of Phaeton that used to stand in Chicago. Next, I browsed through the various proposals for the greening of the surrounding desert, using the newly liberated source of water. It would have been easier if Photosynth had elected to stay behind, but it was futile to try tracking down a photonic being. I suspected she had probably fled to the Congo or the Amazon. The rest of the reports were so dull that I refilled my glass, kicked back and contemplated the problem of Rebus's mole. It all started with the jailbreak of Caryatid, when I had to undergo the humiliation of being trapped inside a suit of the armor I'd built for the original expedition to Haven. Doublecross thought he had killed me, but instead he had murdered PsiDF/X, who had stolen my prized suit. Somehow, Rebus knew I was still alive...and that meant someone who was with me in the Cavity was reporting back to him. I had let the matter slide for the past while, but being who I was, I had to be sure I would not be backstabbed again by someone in my own organization. Not with the stakes at hand. Surely Rebus had every intention of subverting my newfound power. Who couldn't I trust? Everyone. The only ones I could even think of rely on were Labyrinthe and Conflicto. That left a lot of people on my list. First of all, I left Burnout/Mr. Strings at the top of my list of suspects, simply because she could be using any of the Understudies as a puppet. I have since modified the sensors in my armor to scan for her psychic signature, which would detect any of Strings' active links. Also, I've added a little psi-disruptor to my armor and my forcefield belt to prevent her or any other telepaths from scanning or controlling me. Did I dare trust Tiara? Not by a long shot. She might be royalty, but I didn't invite her in the first place, and it wouldn't surprise me if she had a history with Rebus even before the CSV had been formed. And Glyph? Though she was quiet and studious, I wouldn't rule out a connection between Rebus and Glyph. Look at their codenames: a rebus was just a collection of glyphs or pictograms. Caprice had been all too random and unpredictable. She seemed to choose even simple things, like what to eat for dinner, totally haphazardly. What drove me crazy was the way she switched dialects whenever she felt like it. She had lost her Texan twang a week after she joined, picked up a British accent for all of two days, switched to Valley Girl just in time for Easter. You get the idea. She would be easily swayed by the likes of Archangeli. Spiral was my top candidate for Rebus's spy. Lorenzo had spent much time in Russia with the KGB, and Anya would have been a perfect mole. That left Myriad, who also switched loyalties with ease. Perhaps worst of all was Caryatid. She had too much control over Labyrinthe, yet I knew so little about her. She was a fanatic mage of a different breed from her brother. All I could depend on was that Yvan loved her and she would use that to manipulate him shamelessly. So, seven and a half suspects and they were all women. If that article in Para Magazine on Rebus's charade as Odin was to be believed, Lorenzo was as good with seductions as he was with puzzles. Any one of them could have been turned. Of course, I was not bad with puzzles myself. I began my scheming to uncover the traitor even before the Montreal battle. A week ago, I requested a private audience with Tiara in my Chancery. "Your Highness," I said with the sincerest face I could muster, "I cannot allow you to participate in the upcoming battle." "Oh, don't sound like my father, Derek; you're younger than I am. He forbade me from rock climbing lessons, can you believe that? Too dangerous, he said, for a princess of your stature. Frail my a..." "Assumptions like that don't belong in the CSV," I interrupted. "I'm totally confident you are quite capable of handling even Nose by yourself." She waved aside my praise. "All this flattery makes you sound like a peon. What are you really after, Chancellor?" "I just need you to take a brief excursion to EUROPA headquarters. I need to know where and how they're holding Peryton, and I haven't the time to hack past their security." "Ah. So you're finally rescuing the poor man." I grinned. "Not exactly." * * * * [August 7th, 2024 - somewhere in the Sahara] While the rest of my team watched via satellite feed from the safety of Skyhaven two hundred kilometers away, Labyrinthe deposited Spiral and me next to the giant conch embedded point-down in desert. The biodevice had a spiral design, and it gleamed bright with a strange clash of pink and steel in the light of the sun. "Outside the Conclave, no one knows that my Angel is with us no more," I told her. "And it will serve us in the upcoming war to maintain that illusion. You were her Understudy, and now we have the resources to make that impersonation far more convincing." She scratched at the neckline of her new suit, a swirl of pink and black. "This suit itches," she complained. "And it feels like flesh." "You'll need the biosensory suit when you're in 'Eddy', to see, sense and steer. Dr. Sheng reverse-engineered the suit and the shell from a splice of your Magene and Conflicto's, to make use of his extra-sensory powers and your telekinetic torque." She looked at me in disgust. "Ugh. You mean I'm wearing Kwan's skin?" "That's one way of putting it." Given that Sheng was the principal engineer, the suit was half-alive, as was the shell. "I'll feel like such a slug crawling into Eddy." She put her hand on the shell, getting ready to climb in. "Why Eddy?" "What else might you call a tornado machine?" I smiled. "Slip in. Give it a spin. It'll magnify your telekinesis and generate a column of rotating air. You can still communicate with us through your ankh pin, and your awareness should extend throughout the entire cyclone. Eddy is semi-telepathic, and will respond to you like a ba...like a puppy." "It's a good thing I don't get dizzy." She slipped inside. Labyrinthe nodded and teleported us a safe distance from the conch. I watched the shell in the distance begin spinning, and a column of air lifted the shell five meters off the ground. The sand swirled into a tower of destruction. "Do you think she'll realize it first, or Conflicto?" Yvan asked. I broke into laughter. "That they're parents, but don't know it? I don't know, but I wouldn't want to miss the fireworks when they realize it." I looked again to the tornado, and couldn't help but think of my Angel. "I miss her, Yvan." "I comprehend," Yvan answered. "Tell me, Yvan. We've been working together for months, and I've come to respect you. I count you among my most trustworthy advisors." "I suppose I should be honored," answered Labyrinthe. "And I, too, have found you a most capable leader. I only wished I was not forced into this alliance in the first place." I shrugged. "Rebus has his games." "Oui. That one is a viper." I almost took Yvan into my confidence then, placed my trust truly in him, but for the fact that he was forevermore a Viau. I could not trust one twin without the other, and Claudette had earned not one whit of my confidence. She held too much control over her brother, and he hadn't the will to betray his twin if he needed to. That made him useless as a confidante. In retrospect, perhaps I should have cultivated his independence from her. Things might have turned out differently then. So, I did not share with him my suspicions, and instead changed the subject. "Come, Yvan. There are other weapons to attend to, if we are to start a war in a mere six days." * * * * [August 13th, 2024 - battle bridge, Skyhaven] On August 13th, Khadam invaded Egypt. My first plague for the Moslem Coalition came out of the west: thousands of robotic Sandcrabs that burrowed out of the ground, catching the Moslem Coalition forces in the western reaches of Egypt by surprise. Within the first two hours, three MC military compounds had been reduced to burning ruins. The way was open for our armies to march towards the Nile, under Alloy's command. Spiral and her tornado symbiote joined the ground troops, sweeping away the Moslem Coalition tanks and forcing their aerial forces out of the sky. The rest of the CSV and a platoon of the best Vivarium-bred soldiers waited aboard the new and improved Skyhaven. Skyhaven's original engine was gutted after Arc threw the AstroSpear into it, so I recently refitted the zeppelin with a secondhand Scytharian stardrive. The stardrive provided the energy I needed to double the size of Skyhaven via the solid light projectors installed by Doublecross. Turn an aircraft carrier upside-down and hang it from the clouds, and you'd begin to understand the majesty of our fully-armed mobile command center. "Take us to Giza," I said to Burnout. She winked an acknowledgment, and hummed nonchalantly as she corrected Skyhaven's course. "There's panic in Cairo, I'm happy to report. Amazing what a little humming can do. My puppets say that the Moslem Coalition has thus far refused assistance from the Combine and the Eurasian Union. Looks like you won't get Round Two with Solar Max, Derek." "Then by the time the MC changes its mind, they won't have a chance to oust us." I nodded to Peryton and Conflicto, who had his vidcam at the ready. "You two. Recon time." Peryton grunted, and hefted Conflicto by the waist. I opened a hard-light tunnel that dropped straight down and Viktor slid into it, Eugene yelping like a puppy as they fell towards the desert. "Viktor's not very vocal, is he?" Glyph asked. "No. But he's finally over his acrophobia," said Yvan approvingly. "It seems so, doesn't it?" I concurred. "Ah, just like the good ol' days. Only now we have armies and bigger toys to play with, hm?" One thing still troubled me. Tiara had been gone far too long. I knew she could take care of herself, but why no word? Had STRAFE captured her...or worse? * * * * [August 24th, 2024 - Giza] The Moslem Coalition could not prevail against our well-planned assault. Part of their downfall was the fact that their society was antagonistic to the Magene-born, a prejudice that crippled them in the battle for Egypt. Neither did they have the Anchor Effect which once preserved the People's Republic of China from foreign paranormal threats. With their refusal to let the Eurasian Union and the North American Combine help, they were forced to rely on normal technology. Only the actions of an underground paranormal movement in Cairo managed to sabotage our efforts to any significant degree. However, if our plans were to succeed, it was paramount to keep Giza unassailable. Thus, over the past ten days, we brought in reinforcements from Khadam, using both Vivarium and robotic troops to stiffen our beachhead. I won't go into the details about the war; that has been adequately covered in the textbooks. Instead, my motives for being in Egypt changed when I finally heard back from Tiara. Skyhaven had been anchored to the smallest major pyramid at Giza, and we were preparing the site for the tectonic ritual. I had just finished my conversation with Burnout about her puppets' efforts to free Caprice and Myriad. "They've moved Caprice to Leavenworth, your alma mater," she joked. "She's harmless there, and I could probably free her in a pinch, if they weren't waiting for me. Too many MetaPsychos prowling around. Same with Myriad, only they've basically pumped what protoplasm Solar Max had left of her uncrisped into a container and shipped it to Baffin Sector, from what I could glean." I shrugged. "We've no use for dead matter." I watched her leave, then gazed up at the noseless Sphinx. It reminded me of Grind and Rebus. They were two sides of the same coin: both brilliant, possessed of a unique gift, but one used his abilities for good and the other evil. And both were irritating pebbles in my armored boots. I was shaken from my reverie by an unexpected icon of a crown at the bottom of my eyes- front display. I turned off my armor's vocoder, and switched to the invading coded frequency. "I won't ask how you hacked past my defense programs, Tiara. What news? I was beginning to think you'd deserted us." "It's not so easy getting into the war zone. I've been trying to get a message to you for weeks, not that you'd like what I've discovered much," Tiara's voice came over the channel. "I've been dodging STRAFE and EUROPA, not to mention the anonymous interceptions of my messages to you. I had to hijack this Combine spysat to even beam you this message." "Make it brief? I'm in the middle of a war, you know." "Your nemesis found out who I really am, by the way. You should have told me how cute he looks when he's frustrated, Derek." "A cold corpse makes a poor husband, princess." "That scroll you have? It's a fake planted by Rebus, who stole the real Book of Thoth. I suspect he's the one running interference." "Then...it's all been a hoax. No tectonic magics." What game was Rebus playing at? More importantly, was he playing *my* game? "What of the Germany assignment? Any update?" She chuckled. "As you expected. Rebus paid a little visit to the Alps five days ago, and picked up that package you left." "Excellent! At least some plans haven't gone awry. Keep me informed." I had thrown Rebus a game, and he took up the challenge. I knew he could never leave a puzzle well alone. I terminated the link and surveyed the landscape, and rotated my sensor view to target Glyph. She was approaching from the excavation site to the east, wiping dirt and sweat from her brow. "The Crown of Thoth isn't here, but we think it may have been removed to Akhenaten's temple complex at Karnak during his reign, during the purging of the old gods. I suspect it may still be there. We could begin the ritual, but I think we should at least see if we can find the Crown. No need to jeopardize our persons recklessly, with this much power converging." Did she know the Book of Thoth was a fake? She was our expert in Egyptian hieroglyphics, and should have fingered a forgery. But then again, Rebus was also an expert in ancient Egyptian and was possibly the only person alive able to perpetrate this hoax. A fake would account for Yvan's doubts about the authenticity of the ritual. I was certain now that she was our traitor. "Yes, let's hope. We'll take sections of the Nile by week's end, and plunder Karnak for whatever artifacts it may hide." I decided to give Glyph more rope to hang herself, while I tried to unriddle Rebus's intent for luring us into Egypt. * * * * [September 2nd, 2024 - Karnak, Egypt] They tried to lob nukes at us, the fools. Conflicto could have detonated them against a wall of ultradense air. Burnout could have prevented the explosives in the warheads from setting off. But it was Labyrinthe's show, and he opened a pocket microcosm and forced the missiles into it. When they exploded inside, he siphoned the heat and radiation into space. When they next tried to push their troops across the Nile, the Vivarium troops showed them that certain genetic aberrations like horns and scales were in fact advantageous in battle. I'd even raided the sewers of the Vivarium for the most powerful muck-dwelling mutations, and they were creatures of extreme terror in the waters of the Nile. While our troops fought off the Moslem Coalition forces, our Conclave scoured the land for the elusive Crown of Thoth. Caryatid summoned and questioned a host of animal-headed spirits, until one told her a crown had been buried under the eastern obelisk of an Old Kingdom tomb, long since fallen, forgotten and built over. However, the spirit would not reveal where the tomb was, even under compulsion. Thus, we evacuated our men from the ground, as the Viaus prepared a powerful magical feat as only the twins could do. Labyrinthe held his sister's hand, and they simultaneously slapped the ground with their free hands. An tremor spread from their mystic epicenter, tumbling walls and crumbling them into a vast choking cloud of sand. Then, as the dust settled, particles clung to ancient memories of the city that predated Karnak, and below Skyhaven was now an urban mirage of dust. It was clear that the obelisk we sought was to the northeast. I commanded Spiral to stay on Skyhaven while the rest of us convened at the tomb. Glyph inspected some hieroglyphs of floating sand, and nodded. Labyrinthe opened his arms and closed his eyes. The ground erupted, and a white crown flanked with red feathers floated up, softly glowing with golden light. "The Atef Crown," Caryatid said in wonder. "Let's not be hasty," Glyph said. "Let me authenticate it first, Yvan." Labyrinthe floated the headdress towards her. "Stop, Yvan. Give it here." I raised the AstroSpear and pointed it towards Glyph. Labyrinthe raised his eyebrow, but obeyed me and gently placed the Crown in my other hand. "I wasn't sure if there would even be a crown, but it appears there is. You've been playing us for fools, Zephirah." Glyph looked at me in apparent confusion. "What are you talking about, Derek?" "Ladies and gentlemen, we have a traitor in our midst," I announced smugly. "Myriad, kindly arrest Ms. Reuben on the charge of treason." Amidst gasps of surprise, Peryton morphed back into the familiar form Myriad used when at rest and wrapped tendrils of protoplasm around Glyph. Glyph struggled but to no avail. "What *is* going on?" asked Burnout. I laughed. "It's such a rush knowing something you don't, for once." I quickly recounted my reasons for suspecting a traitor. "So I asked Tiara to find out where Peryton was being held, and to lay low during our Montreal run. She was not to rescue Viktor, however, only to leave sensors to see if anyone would pay a visit to him. "I then asked Myriad to fake her own capture. Ever think about her name? Myriad, which means thousands. And of course, her designation: Alpha Rho Twelve." "Alpha Rho Thirteen, now." Myriad corrected. "Twelve was left as a protoplasmic shell for Solar Max to find, while I took the form of burnt flesh." I nodded. "Thirteen, then. She rendezvoused with Tiara, then assumed Peryton's form and returned here. I knew that if there was a mole reporting to Rebus, he or she would report Peryton's supposed return to the CSV. And in fact, Rebus did investigate, and took the 'package'...the real Peryton... to show that he accepted my challenge. That meant that Caprice couldn't be the mole. "And then Tiara told me that the Book of Thoth we have is a fake. No wonder the spell to take Montreal failed...it never would have worked in the first place. You've been trying so hard to get us to Egypt. To the Pyramids. Now to the Crown of Thoth. Why?" Yvan interrupted. "But that's not the Crown of Thoth." "What?" "I've been studying Egyptian myth, trying to figure out the ritual. Thoth wore two sorts of headdress, but he is a moon god," Yvan explained. "His crown is really the lunar disk and crescent. Though he also wears the Atef Crown, what you have in your hand is more closely associated with Osiris, the resurrected King of the Dead." So. Rebus had maneuvered us into doing his dirty work for him, some convoluted plot that involved the Pyramids and the Crown of Osiris. I thought about everything I knew of my erstwhile ally. His obsession with the Egyptian motif. His betrayal of the Conclave. His hatred of Anchors. Even his Odin impersonation in Manhattan. Then, everything started to add up. "My god," I breathed, "he's finally trying for it." I fired up the AstroSpear and raised it over Glyph. "BUT HOW?" I was ready to impale her if she did not answer my question. Under the collective scrutiny of the Conclavers, Glyph finally dropped her innocent facade. "All I know is that he needs us, and the Crown," she sneered. "He has told me little else." I inched the plasma flames closer to her. "Tell me more, or I destroy the crown or you, in either order." She threw me a wicked grin. "Do either, and Rebus will kill her." My stomach churned. I wanted to ask who she meant, but I already knew the answer. My Angeline was alive, and it was like my heart had started beating again after a long withering, and alive, alive, I felt alive! Then, I realize that I had no proof, that she may just be bluffing to save her own skin, that Rebus may steal away my breath again if I touch a hair on Glyph. "But I saw her die," I said, my voice wavering. "The bones...." But I knew Rebus had been toying with me for months, holding what I held most dear as a trump against me. I could feel the gazes of my Conclavers piercing into me. I let my helmet block the sight of conflicting emotions gnarling my face. "You have what he wants, and he has what you want," said Glyph. "He is willing to negotiate with you, like civilized men." And murder my Angeline like a cold-blooded savage, if I deviated from his grand scheme. I impaled the AstroSpear into the ground, and steadied my voice. Like a house of cards, my empire was about to fall. I could not afford to show weakness now. "Tell Monsieur Archangeli to meet me for dinner tomorrow, eight sharp," I said in my most casual voice. "His trap or mine?" ============================================================================ NEXT ISSUE: Triton dines with Rebus and play their deadliest game yet, in "PYRAMID SCHEME STEP 4: Nine to Rule"! ============================================================================ Author's Note: After seven years of knowing Dave Van Domelen, our dear editor, I finally got to meet him in person in September! We didn't nearly spend enough time plotting ASH as I hoped, since I was attending a conference at his university. Hopefully, I'll be able to meet Marc and Matt too in the near future.