Chapter Two
January 2nd, 1:02 AM
It was past midnight, in the meeting room of a dark corporate office. Five people had gathered around a long wooden table.
The first was a young man, maybe just twenty-two or twenty-three. A redhead with freckles in a green polo shirt, who sat nervously, tapping a pencil on the tabletop, casting furtive glances at the men and woman around him.
The person to his left was an old woman, small and wrinkled and dark-skinned, dressed in ragged brown canvas covers. Her eyes were closed, and she made small wheezing sounds as she breathed. Was she asleep? The young man couldn't say.
The third person in the room was wearing a doctor's clothes, but he didn't look at all like a doctor. He too was small, with tiny glasses and a mustache. He had been grinning for at least the last fifteen minutes. The young man could see a lapel pin with his name, which started with a "T." Toromov? He couldn't read the whole thing.
On the opposite side of the table was the fourth person, an attractive middle-aged woman with bleached blonde hair. She was almost entirely clad in leather. To her left, there was a fifth figure, a big man-- the young man thought we was looking at a man, anyway-- in a ninja outfit.
The young man gulped. Who were these freaks? And where was--
The door of the small meeting room burst open, and into the brightly lit space strode a slender man in a suit, his fingers running through his slicked-back black hair. The young man put his pencil down. He knew who this was. This was the boss.
The suited man walked to the head of the table and placed his hands on the surface. He looked into the young man's eyes, and then looked around the table, trying to meet the eyes of each of his guests, and finding that some were more difficult to meet than others. He drummed his fingers on the table, and began to speak.
"Ladies and gentleman," he said in an affectless voice, "Welcome. Thank you for coming."
The suited man turned around. He looked at the large whiteboard covering one wall of the small room, and took a dry-erase marker from its rail. He popped off the cap of the marker and wrote on the board, in large, upper-case, red letters, two words: BLUE LYNX.
"So," he said, turning back around to face the five sitting figures. "What do we know about the Blue Lynx?"
The room was silent. The young man looked around-- from the suited man to the bleached blonde woman, from the ninja to the strange doctor-- and barely saw a movement.
The suited man cleared his throat. "We're just brainstorming," he said. "Just yell things out. What do we know about her? Who has met her, by the way?"
The young man watched the blonde woman put a hand in the air. The doctor followed suit. The young man gripped his pencil. He had met the Blue Lynx too. He raised his palm.
The suited man nodded. "Okay," he said, gesturing at the three hands in the air. "What do you people know?"
The young man froze. What did he know? He had met the Blue Lynx in college. He had become obsessed with her. He had tried to unmask her. He had failed.
"Umm," the young man said, keeping his hand in the air. "I think I went to school with her."
The suited man smiled at him and clapped. "Good, good, that's great!" he said, turning around to mark at the board. "Tell us more."
The young man watched the suited man write "COLLEGE GRADUATE" on the whiteboard. "Umm," he continued, "Well, I went to the City College."
"That's a big school," the suited man said, still facing the board. "But we can work with that."
The suited man had written "CITY COLLEGE POP = 25,000" on the board.
"And what did she look like?" the suited man asked, now facing the young man.
"Well," the young man said, once more gripping the pencil. "She was very pretty."
"Okay," the suited man said. "Can you be more specific?"
"Yeah," the young man replied. "She had long dark hair."
The suited man turned around and scrawled on the whiteboard. "Yes, yes," he said, nodding feverishly. "Anything else?"
"Umm," the young man said, his face turning red. "She had a great body."
"Indeed," the suited man said. He had written "HOT" on the board in letters bigger than the others.
"But that's all I remember," the young man said, clearly flustered. "I don't know."
"That's fine," the suited man said, again facing the crowd. He pointed at the blonde woman. "Sunny," he said. "Your men actually unmasked her, right?"
The blonde woman nodded. "Right."
"But they didn't recognize her?"
The blonde woman shook her head. "No, they didn't. They just said what the kid said." She pointed at the young man. "You know. She was hot."
"But they didn't say who she looked like?"
"They said her name was Barbara Garden," the blonde woman said, rolling her eyes.
"Which is not her name," the suited man said, writing BARBARA GARDEN on the board and drawing a long line through it. He turned around. "What else do we know? Grigory?"
The doctor, still smiling, rested his elbows on the table. "Sir, I told you already."
"Well tell me again," the suited man said, tapping his toe. "For the sake of the rest of us here."
The doctor looked around at at the four other guests. "Alright. She had a partner."
"Good!" the suited man said, quickly spinning back to the board. "Keep going, Grigory."
"The partner wore a costume like the Blue Lynx, only it was black. She came to my house. I tied her up and unmasked her, and then the Blue Lynx showed up."
"Yes, you unmasked her," the suited man said. "So who was she?"
"I don't know," the doctor shrugged. "A friend, I guess."
The suited man capped the marker and turned around. "Jesus, people," he said, gazing into the audience. "Can you people remember anything? Do you understand what this is all about?"
The young man shifted in his seat. He didn't speak. No one was speaking.
The suited man set the marker down and passed his fingers through his slicked-back hair. "You," he said, staring at the old woman. "And you," he said, suddenly glaring at the ninja. "You two haven't said anything. Would you like to contribute something to this discussion?"
The old woman smirked and shook her head. The ninja didn't even do that.
"Well then, I'll tell you what I know about the Blue Lynx," the suited man said. He walked away from the whiteboard and behind the young man, setting his hands on the back of the young man's chair. "I know she's completely fucking up my operation."
The suited man released the chair and moved toward the old woman. "I know that she's a little girl in spandex. I know she's got no real technology, no real strategy."
The suited man's voice was climbing, his hands beginning to flap wildly. He moved to a position behind the doctor. "I know that she's beaten me, again and again. I know that she's conquered my henchmen, my traps, my poison." He seemed to push the last word into the doctor's ear.
"I know that she'll stop at nothing until I'm finished," the suited man said, now near the blonde woman. "She knows who I am. She knows that I'm running the drugs in this town."
The suited man passed the ninja and arrived back at the whiteboard. "Which is why I know," he said, his voice suddenly dropping to a near-whisper. "That she must be stopped." He grimaced and dropped his head. "What I don't know is how I'm going to do that."
The young man stared at him. He was so theatrical, so passionate. His hatred of the Blue Lynx was almost palpable, but there was something else there, too: a strange kind of desire. The young man could relate.
The suited man turned his face up. "And that's where you all come in."
He was smiling now. "For you all," he said. "Are my five. My Fearsome Five."
The doctor and the blonde woman chuckled. The others remained silent.
"You came here because you're the best of the best," the suited man said. "I've met some of you." He stared at the blonde woman and the doctor. "The rest of you come highly recommended."
The young man scratched his head. Recommended by who? He wasn't some kind of criminal mastermind. He was just responding to an ad in the paper. An ad about discovering the true identity of the Blue Lynx-- the project that had consumed him for years now.
He must have talked to one of these people on the phone. Yes, of course. He had talked to a woman. The blonde woman. He had told her he was interested, that he had had prior encounters with the Blue Lynx. She had said to meet here at this time and that all would be revealed. What she hadn't said was that others would be here.
"I'm offering two hundred and fifty thousand dollars," the suited man said. "To the person who brings me the head of the Blue Lynx. Bring her to me alive and unmasked, and I can probably throw in a bonus."
The young man's heart was racing. Two hundred and fifty thousand?
"You can work together or separately, I don't care," the suited man continued. "Though I know that some of you haven't been successful against the Blue Lynx on your own."
The blonde woman laughed. "Any suggestions on how to do that, boss?"
The suited man grinned. "That's for you to determine, Sunny," he said. "Though I have an idea about how you might start."
"Oh really?" the blonde woman said. "Do tell."
"What you have to do is put the Blue Lynx in a situation where she is forced to surrender," the suited man said, turning around to face the whiteboard. He uncapped the marker. "You have to put her in a situation where the whole government, the whole city, is asking her to give up."
"Like, blackmail?" the woman asked.
"Like a hostage situation," the suited man said, scrawling letters on the board. "You have to kidnap someone important to the city."
He stepped back so that the young man, the blonde woman, the doctor, the old woman, and the ninja could all see what he had written. And what he had written on the board, in large, red, upper-case letters, just a couple of feet below the words "BLUE LYNX," was a name.
ERIN STEELE
On to Chapter Three
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