The girl set two mugs down on the table without making eye contact with either of us.
— Thank you — I said.
She looked up at me. Just briefly — the instinctive reflex of someone responding to politeness — and then immediately looked back down, which was a completely reasonable reaction to making eye contact with Perfect Cell at close range. She nodded once and was smoothly redirected toward the exit by a GDA agent who materialized from her left with the practiced efficiency of someone who'd performed this exact maneuver before.
The door closed.
Through the hole in the front wall I could see the perimeter taking shape — black vehicles positioned at the corners, agents in tactical gear managing the crowd back half a block in each direction, news drones doing patient professional circles above it all like very expensive pigeons.
The Guardians were still visible out there. War Woman talking to someone with a tablet. Dark Wing on his board at the edge of the cordon, watching the crowd with the focused stillness of someone cataloguing threats. Aquarius looking mildly bored in the way that only a bipedal fish man could look mildly bored at the scene of a federal incident.
Immortal standing with his arms crossed, looking nowhere in particular.
Which meant he was looking at everything.
And further back, separate from all of them, not talking to anyone — Nolan Grayson. Watching the coffee shop. Watching the hole in the wall. Watching, I was fairly certain, me.
I turned back to the table.
Cecil Stedman sat across from me with the posture of a man who was completely comfortable and had chosen to be here specifically because projecting comfort was tactically useful. He hadn't touched his coffee yet. He was looking at me with the focused patience of someone who made a living out of waiting for things to reveal themselves.
I looked at my mug.
Picked it up.
Took a sip.
I sat with that for a second longer than I needed to.
Good coffee.
Which sounds like a stupid thing to get stuck on. I'm aware. I had died approximately — I checked some internal clock that didn't exist — a few hours ago. I was in the body of a fictional bioweapon from Dragon Ball Z. I was sitting in a destroyed coffee shop in Washington D.C. in a universe I'd never heard of, across from a government agente. while the world's most powerful superhero watched me through a hole in a wall from fifty meters away.
And the coffee was good.
— I'll be honest — I said. — I was expecting this conversation to happen somewhere more...I don't know. Maybe a flying aircraft carrier that goes invisible.
Cecil picked up his mug. Took a measured sip.
— That would be an enormous waste of taxpayer money — he said.
— Right — I said.
Took another sip.
— I should mention — Cecil said, setting his mug down with the precision of someone for whom every gesture was deliberate — I thought a conversation at street level might be more comfortable for an extradimensional being than, say, a reinforced bunker a hundred meters underground.
— Point taken — I said.
I looked out through the hole in the wall. The Guardians were still visible at the perimeter. War Woman talking to a GDA agent. Dark Wing on his board, watching the crowd. Immortal standing with his arms crossed, looking nowhere in particular, which meant he was looking at everything.
Nolan was further back. Still. Watching the coffee shop with an expression I couldn't read from here.
— I imagine — I said — that you being here alone, unarmed, in front of a two-meter biomechanical monster, is some kind of power move.
— A demonstration of good faith — Cecil said.
— Sure sure — I said.
I looked at him.
— I also imagine that if I so much as look at you funny, there's probably some kind of orbital platform ready to drop a tungsten rod on my head.
Cecil took another sip of his coffee.
— A space laser, actually — he said. Conversationally. The way someone mentions the weather.
I sat with that for a second.
— Okay — I said. — That's genuinely impressive.
— I imagine you have something comparable where you come from?
— Who knows — I said. — You government types do love your classified superweapons.
Cecil's expression didn't change. He set his mug down.
— I heard you're a Biomechanical Android — he said. — Of alien origin.
— Close — I said. — I'm an Android, that part's right. But I was created on Earth. My universe's Earth. By a scientist named Dr. Gero.
Cecil was quiet for a moment. Processing.
— Dr. Gero — he repeated. — He must be a remarkable mind.
— Unhinged genius, yeah.
— I imagine he doesn't have a particularly cooperative relationship with your world's version of the GDA.
I kept my expression neutral.
Oh
He thinks S.H.I.E.L.D. is real. He thinks I was describing my actual world. He's building a file right now — Dr. Gero, rogue scientist, created a biomechanical entity, hostile relationship with existing intelligence infrastructure—*
— No — I said carefully. — He really doesn't.
Cecil looked at me.
Not aggressively. Not with suspicion exactly. With the specific quality of attention that had learned, over many years, that the most useful information was usually in the thing someone chose not to say.
The silence stretched for a moment.
Then he exhaled. Just slightly. Through his nose. The smallest release of something that had been held.
— You know something — he said, and his voice had shifted a fraction. Not much. Just enough to mean something, coming from him. — For an Android built by a supposedly deranged scientist. You're bizarrely human.
I looked at him.
— The insect exoskeleton notwithstanding — he added.
— Is that a good thing or a bad thing — I said.
— Good — he said. Simply. Like it wasn't complicated.
I wasn't sure if that was reassuring or if it meant I was accidentally deceiving him about something important.
Possibly both.
— Look — he said, leaning forward slightly, his hands folding on the table. — I don't need the full picture of where you came from. I don't need to know every detail of what you are. — He held my eyes. — But something about you gives me a reasonable impression. I don't think you're a bad person.
I thought about Cell. The real Cell. What this body had been built to do. But He, I'm not really that Cell.
— I wouldn't say I'm necessarily a good person — I said. — But I'm not the type to stand around watching bad people do bad things.
Cecil looked at me for a long moment. The kind of look that was doing a lot of quiet work.
— That's enough for me — he said.
— Is it really?
— For now — he said. Which was more honest.
He reached into his suit. Placed two cards on the table between us. Slid them forward with two fingers.
I looked at them but didn't pick them up yet.
— The first card — he said — is access to a safe house outside the city. Not luxurious, but it's self-sufficient and well off the grid. Secure.
The second has the address. — He folded his hands. — I'll be in contact within the next few days to discuss what the GDA would like in return for its ongoing support.
I looked at the cards. Looked at him.
— And if I don't like what you're asking for in return?
— Then we negotiate — he said.
— And if we can't reach an agreement?
— Then you keep the safe house anyway — he said. — Consider it a welcome gift. I'm not in the business of making enemies unnecessarily.
I looked at him for a moment.
— You're good at this — I said.
— At what?
— Making things that are calculated feel generous.
Something moved at the corner of his mouth. Not quite a smile. The architectural suggestion of one.
— I've had practice — he said.
I picked up the cards.
Turned them over once. Pocketed them.
— One question — I said.
— Go ahead.
I glanced through the hole in the wall. At the perimeter. At the Guardians. At Nolan, still exactly where he'd been, still watching, that particular quality of stillness that I was starting to understand was not calm but its very deliberate performance.
— Omni-Man — I said. — What's his deal?
Cecil looked at me.
— What do you mean?
— I mean he seems — I searched for the right word — careful. Around me. Like he's running a calculation he hasn't finished yet.
— Omni-Man is careful around most things — Cecil said. — It's part of what makes him effective.
I looked at him. He looked back at me with an expression that gave nothing away and had been specifically trained to give nothing away.
— Riiight — I said.
We both stood. The booth made its final structural complaint as I vacated it. We moved toward the exit — toward the hole, really, which at this point was just the exit — and stopped at the threshold.
Cecil turned slightly.
— Do you need transportation arranged?
I thought about it.
Closed my eyes.
Reached inward for the thing that was always there now — warm, enormous, patient. The reactor that didn't have an off switch. I touched it carefully. Deliberately.
I rose off the ground without drama. Slowly at first. Then hovering steady, eye level with Cecil Stedman, who looked at this with the expression of a man adding a line to a document.
— Nah — I said. — I'm good.
I looked out at the perimeter one more time. Raised a hand — a genuine wave, small and easy, the kind you give neighbors — in the general direction of the Guardians.
War Woman raised one back.
Immortal did not.
Nolan watched.
I turned skyward. Found the angle. And then I stopped being careful about it and just went — and the sound that came out of that decision was enormous, a crack that rolled down the street like something had broken the air itself, windows flexing in their frames for two blocks in each direction.
The sky took me in about a second.
On the ground, Cecil Stedman pinched the bridge of his nose with two fingers.
— He's going to be a major problem — he said.
To no one in particular.
Footsteps behind him. Immortal, stopping at his shoulder with the weight of someone who had been waiting to say something for a while.
— What's the call?
Cecil watched the sky. Already still. Already empty. Like nothing had passed through it at all.
— Back to Guardian HQ — he said. — We'll talk properly there.
He disappeared.
The street was quiet for a moment after that. Just the crowd murmur and the drone hum and the GDA agents beginning the long administrative process of making a federal incident look manageable.
Nolan Grayson stood where he'd been standing since the coffee shop conversation began. He hadn't moved. He was still looking at the point in the sky where the green figure had been.
His expression was the one he wore when he was not allowing himself to have one.
His fist, at his side, was closed.
He stood there for another moment.
Then he turned and flew north. Fast. The way Viltrumites fly when they're thinking hard about something and want the speed to help.