Callsign: King II- Underworld

There was gasp from behind him. “Oh my God.”


King turned to find Pierce and Nina, both seemingly stunned into paralysis by his appearance. He rushed to them and swept them both into his embrace. “You made it. I didn’t think anyone…” He let go of the pair and took a step back. “The Muggy Monsters? Are they still…?”

Nina shook her head. “All gone. They left with the mist. Took all the dead with them.”

King nodded slowly. All the dead. Soldiers and fallen creatures alike. King had managed to save the world, but Bluelight’s promised “free energy” had come at enormous cost.

“They’re still out there,” Pierce said. “Or I should say ‘under.’ But without that machine to drive them crazy, I think our war with the underworld has entered a ceasefire.”

“I see you picked up a souvenir.” King tapped the coin, hanging around Pierce’s neck.

“Yeah. Long story. I’ll tell you about it when we’re somewhere that isn’t here.” Pierce managed a grim smile. “Jack, you look like shit.”

“You should see the other guy. Speaking of which…” King glanced around and spied a body that had evidently escaped the notice of the retreating Mogollon Monsters. Sokoloff lay where he had fallen, only a few feet from the edge of the cliff.

Ten million dollars, King thought. That’s what Brainstorm offered him to take me down.

Had Brainstorm known that he would be drawn to Bluelight? Or had the death bounty been placed merely as an act of revenge for thwarting Brainstorm’s earlier schemes? Either way, King knew that taking down Brainstorm was no longer going to be merely a side project.

King’s phone suddenly chirped a familiar ringtone. He pulled it out, shocked that the thing still worked at all, and answered. “Aleman?”

“Guess again,” came Deep Blue’s voice. “What’s your sit rep?”

“Things got a little…hairy, but we’re okay now. Situation is contained. By the way, this wasn’t a Manifold project, it was Brainstorm. Again. I’ll give you my full report when I get back.”

“Sounds good,” Deep Blue said. “Just make sure you’re long gone by the time Army reinforcements roll in. The fewer questions we have to answer, the better. I’ll make sure the right people get your intel.”

King knew that the “right people” were Domenick Boucher, director of the CIA and Deep Blue’s trusted friend, and General Micheal Keasling, who the team had served under while officially part of Delta. They would know how to disseminate the intel.

“So where were you?” King asked, curious about what had pulled the man away from setting up their new headquarters in New Hampshire.

Deep Blue laughed. “I,” he said, “was picking up Fiona. She had a camping trip sprung on her and after a few hours in the dark, decided she wanted to come home. She was near tears when she called. Asked me not to tell you about it, but well, sharing secrets with each other is part of our jobs.”

Fiona was sometimes plagued by nightmares of monsters and stone giants. She was a tough kid, but even the most battle-hardened soldier was sometimes haunted by a touch of post-traumatic stress. That she’d been shanghaied into a camping trip made King angry, but he was glad she felt confident enough to have the former President of the United States come to her rescue. “Next time we’ll trade missions,” King said. “I’ll pick up my kid. You can deal with the monsters.”

When King hung up the phone, he found Nina smiling at him. “You have a kid?”

King smiled, thinking about how nice it would be to see Fiona. “In fact, I do.”

The conversation was interrupted by a familiar buzzing noise. He looked down at the phone in his hand. The cracked screen was blank. The hum repeated…from Sokoloff’s body.

King rifled through the man’s pockets until he found the Russian’s phone. He tapped the screen to display the message:



Status report requested.



King realized that he held in his hand a direct link to Brainstorm. One of the oldest maxims of war was: “Know your enemy,” but King knew nothing about Brainstorm. Was it, as Deep Blue had speculated, an artificially intelligent computer network? Or was it just an ordinary human with extraordinary resources and an ego to match? Sokoloff’s phone was a loose thread on the curtain behind which Brainstorm hid. It was time to pull that thread.

He quickly scrolled through the archive of messages between the hitman and his employer. Sokoloff’s relationship with Brainstorm went back several weeks. There was no way that the contract could be tied to a desire to protect Bluelight, since that problem hadn’t even been recognized until much later. That meant it was personal; Brainstorm was afraid of King.