Project ROWDY 2-14B

“Saving aliens.”

Debbie Grayson’s words played over speakers that delivered the highest quality the Global Defense Agency could afford, that is if they hadn’t manufactured any themselves.

The face that came with those words was blown up on the main screen, the same one that dominated the far wall of the GDA main command center as it hummed with the same sort of controlled chaos taxpayers paid one hundred million dollars an hour for on a slow day. Five dozen analysts spread across floor over floor of elevated terminals, fingers dancing across keyboards with headsets tight over their ears.

From the looks on their faces, dead serious and half-sweating, you would think they were dismantling bombs instead of processing telemetry, but then again…

Cecil tilted his head just a fraction. Not like that’s not out of the job description.

“Sir.” Donald’s voice warbled in over his ear, the man’s tone making everything sound like a briefing even when he was just asking a question. “If I may-”

“Donald, how long have we known each other?”

If blinks could be loud, his deputy director managed to pull it off. “…over twenty years, sir.”

Cecil nodded to himself, hands clasped behind his back as he tracked the main screen across the room, the GDA trained on a residential backyard in suburban Chicago. Lots of capes in one location with enough firepower to cause a whole lot of potential problems that could lead to a whole zipcode going flat as Utah. “And in those twenty years, you always start with ‘if i may’, and then you go ahead with whatever you were going to say anyway. Do us both a favor and say what you were gonna say.”

“Alright, sir.” Donald Ferguson stood a half-step up to Cecil’s right shoulder. “Why exactly are we monitoring a nine-year-old’s birthday party?”

Cecil didn’t look away from the screen. “Because I like cake, Donald.”

“…Sir.”

The director of the GDA didn’t sigh and he certainly didn’t roll his eyes but the human instinct was still there. “And because that’s fifteen posthumans in one square block, three of them planet-level threats, and if someone feels like starting World War Three over who gets the last piece of funfetti, I’d like a heads-up before Chicago becomes a crater.”

“Understood, sir.”

Both men were quiet as the analysts worked in relative silence below, both sets of eyes on the screen as Boomer demonstrated something with his hands, moving them around in wide gestures. If he wasn’t lying about some fight then, at the very least, he was exaggerating the physics of it. 

Butch looked bored enough to start a fire just for the entertainment value, which was a bad sign but not the worst when it came to the boy. Brick sat apart on the porch steps, still working on the dimensional device he’d been getting closer and closer to finalizing ever since he woke up.

Smart kid. Cecil nodded to himself as he watched the boy with a weapon with a brain like a supercomputet and a temper he barely kept a lid on. Scary kid. 

Donald shifted his weight, Cecil well aware of the rhythm of the man’s discomfort. “Go ahead and speak, Donald.”

“Sir, if you don’t mind my asking, why were you so calm about Invincible leaving for space?”

Cecil’s scarred mouth twitched with the ghost of a smile passing through. “Why would I be, Donald?”

“Well, sir, for all we know, he could be dead out there.” The cyborg shook his head. “Or, worst case scenario, he’s using this as cover to ally with his father.”

Cecil reached forward, tapping the console in front of him. At once, the drone camera zoomed in on the main screen, slicing past the Dragon family, past Debbie, and past SuperPatriot complaining about charcoal, to refocused tightly on the three thirteen-year-olds easily capable of orbital-class destruction.

Almost immediately, Brick looked up from his tools; blood-red eyes narrowing directly into a lens the size of a quarter hidden a mile away in the atmosphere. The boy held the contact for two seconds before he looked away, completely unbothered.

Cecil didn’t have to turn around to know that Donald shuddered.

“You see that, Donald?” Cecil’s drawl stretched the words out. “That’s why I’m not worried about what Mark Grayson does in the short run. Or the long run, for that matter.”

“Sir?”

“What we saw last week—” Cecil gestured at the screen, at the boys who’d taken apart a rogue Chinese metahuman in minutes without much of a sweat. “—was exactly why I don’t give two shits about Mark’s loyalties. We knew the boys together could handle him when he started his little superhero phase. Hell, I’m fairly certain two of them could put him down now if it came to a real fight. One-on-one? Sure, Mark’s got that pretty easy, especially now that he’s stopped pulling his punches. But all three?” He clicked his tongue against his teeth. “That’s not a fight. That’s fucking playtime.”

Donald nodded slowly at that, the man clearly processing Cecil’s words before he bothered to venture a response. “True enough, sir.”

“Thirteen years old, Donald. Thirteen. They’ve barely even kissed puberty.” Cecil stood up straight again, attention still firmly locked on the red-haired kid who always seemed to know exactly where the cameras were. “And getting stronger every single day. By the time those boys hit Mark’s age, I’ll be sending pre-emptive flowers to the next of kin of any Viltrumite dumb enough to want a piece of this big blue marble.” 

The director paused, letting the silence do the important work for him for a second. “And that’s just if your eyes are stuck on the short term.”

“Short term, sir?” Donald’s voice hitched just slightly. “I’m not sure what you mean by that, exactly.”

Cecil turned to face him fully, voice lowered as he looked past the mirrored glasses of his number two. “You’ve got a son, Donald. You know exactly what I mean.”

Donald’s mouth fell open, the polish cracking as the professionalism eased just a bit. “Sir—”

“Soon enough, those boys are gonna get old enough to pop out another set.”

“S-sir!” Donald’s voice cracked completely. “That’s a bit much, don’t you think?”

“Don’t get your panties in a twist, Donald.” Cecil held up a hand, flat and firm. “Besides, you’ve thought the same thing. I know you have, because you’re not an idiot and idiots don’t make Deputy Director.”

“But sir, they’re still children right now.”

“Yeah.” Cecil’s voice went flat as he laid out the math with simple facts and nothing but. “And kids become adults. Biology does the heavy lifting from there. Any alien empire that thinks it’s dealing with gods is gonna have to think twice by the time these kids grow up and start doing the do. Because we’ll have some new gods of our own running around, homegrown and tied to this dirt.” 

He let a slow smile crawl across his face, the scar pulling tight. “Give it a good seven years and we can put Project Y as a success on the books.”

“Is this because Project X was a failure?”

That’s a low blow, Donald. “What did I…” Cecil’s eye twitched as he clicked his tongue, the sound sharp like a distant gunshot. “I thought I told you not to bring up Project X, Donald.”

“Sorry, sir.” Donald’s voice went small and tight again, the professional shield back up and firmly bolted into place. “I just mean-“

“I know what you meant, Donald.” Cecil turned back to the screen, watching Butch punch Boomer in the shoulder hard enough to put a hole through tank armor. “Project X was a waste of time, money, and precious DNA. Turns out you can’t just clone a bunch of Mephistophelian miracles.” He shook his head slowly, the words from the boys in white still rolling around in his head. These boys are made up of as much magic as they are DNA, can’t clone that even if you had all the money in the world. On top of that, the ‘Chemical X’ they got from their blood was so tainted, it was pretty much as toxic to anything organic as the same ‘X’ Cecil knew. “Nothing from their blood samples came up functional. Doesn’t matter how many times you spin the centrifuge. Science tried. Science failed. So we go with nature instead.”

“Sir, the ethic-“

“Don’t exist yet, mostly because those boys are thirteen and we’re not running a breeding program out of the Pentagon basement.” Cecil’s drawl sharpened for a second before fading out into a sigh. “We’re just… planning ahead to make sure the next generation has some kind of options. Civilization doesn’t survive on good intentions, Donald. It survives on leverage.”

Donald opened his mouth and closed it, before opening it up again.

“Speaking of the next generation,” Cecil adjusted his tie before Donald could add anything to the conversation, “we’ve still got Plan Z waiting in the w—”

The alarm was a blow to the ears and eyes, klaxons screaming a split-second before red lights blasted the command center. At once, every analyst in the room snapped to attention, a new sort of panic making them work even faster.

Cecil’s jaw tightened, teeth grinding against each other. “Oh, what now?”

Donald was already moving, fingers flying across his tablet. “Sir, dimensional anomaly just outside of Chicago! Massive energy spike.”

Cecil looked at the screen, at the three boys whose heads all snapped up at exactly the same time, looking toward the horizon.

“Oh, fuck me.”