Chapter Two:
Ignition
Mercedes Lackey, Steve Libby, Cody Martin, Dennis Lee
Such an ordinary day. All over the world, literally, people who would never have reason to know each other, much less end up as tight as we were, were going about their lives, some of them on opposite sides of the law. Then at eleven-thirty Eastern Standard Time, the world as we knew it changed forever.
Las Vegas, Nevada, USA: Callsign Belladonna Blue
The station had been blessedly quiet for hours. Most of the guys were in front of the tube, watching the pre-pre-pregame shows for the All-Star game. Her cell phone went off. She glanced at it. Mom. Huh, odd, this was the time their shift started. Usually she and Dad were hot on some project at Alienville at this point in the day. She answered it. “Hi Mom, what—”
The sounds coming over the phone stopped her heart. Screaming. Explosions. Someone—it sounded like Dad—yelling. “In the shelter! Now! Go, go, go!”
And her Mom’s voice, shaking, saying only “Red alert. Lockdown.”
Then the phone went dead.
Then the Klaxons in the station went off.
All hell broke loose right outside.
Inside the fire station, no one paid any attention to the frantic mustering Klaxons signaling the callout of all possible personnel. It didn’t matter. They couldn’t have gotten there anyway. Bella crouched in the door that had opened automatically for the engines to move out, and stared in horror.
There were nine-foot-tall suits of chrome-plated armor, hosing down the street outside with the energy cannons built into their arms.
It looked like there were about twenty of them; one of them was all black, but the rest of them gleamed in the harsh Vegas sunlight like something right out of one of the city’s stage shows. Except that things out of stage shows didn’t explode cars and chase screaming civvies and—
Oh hell no—
Those cannons were swiveling to point at the station!
Just as that fact registered on her brain, she felt someone grab her shoulder and fling her backwards, just out of the path of the first swath of energy pulses. She scrambled the rest of the way out under her own power as the blue-white light engulfed the front of the engines. She followed the others out the back and down into the dry wash behind the station, just as the station itself went up in a fireball. She ducked her head and the wash of superheated air scorched over her.
Instinctively she looked up as soon as it had passed and did a headcount.
Shit. Three short. Gadgets, LongJohn and the other rookie. Shitshitshit—
“Incoming!” screamed the captain before she could more than register the fact that there were probably three men down in what was left of the station, and she ducked her head in automatic response to the roar from behind—
The sonic boom was enough to flatten her into the desert sand, yet somehow she looked up, dazed, just in time to see the entire line of armored monstrosities swept off their feet and engulfed in rocket-fueled explosions so white-hot it was like looking into the sun—
—as the Air Force Thunderbird team pulled up and out and rolled over and came back for a second sweep, traveling at mach one at the very least.
She and the others were on their feet, cheering, even though they couldn’t hear themselves cheer, pumping their fists in the air, as the aerobatic team came back on their second pass and raked the war machines with another set of wing-fired rockets. Despite the similar paint job, these weren’t their display planes, oh no. These were specialized warbirds. The Thunderbird pilots were the elite of the Air Force elite, and like anyone else really in the know, Bella knew that part of what went on at Groom Lake was that once a week, the show team made the hour flight out and practiced live-fire exercises, exercises with weapons and skills designed to take out rogue metahumans. Just to keep their hands in. Because the Boy Scouts weren’t the only group whose motto was “Be prepared.”
Whatever those powered suits had been built to withstand, it wasn’t what was in the rockets fired by these fighter jets. They were down. And they weren’t moving.
The Thunderbirds pulled around for a third pass, but it wasn’t needed. The suits were down, and stayed down. The Thunderbird team didn’t slow down; they peeled off and headed east, where more smoke and fire and the flash of an energy cannon betrayed another point of attack.
Bella staggered up out of the wash before the jets had cleared the area. Three men missing…Screaming told her there were civvies hurt. If there was anything left of her kit in the station—people needed her. Even without the kit, she had her touch-healing, she could hold them stable until—
“Incoming!” the captain screamed again, and she hit the ground as something roared in overhead, and she heard—
Her comm unit made a noise she’d never heard it make before, a kind of warble, just as the thing overhead, too small to be a jet but moving at least that fast, did a kind of wingover and plunged straight down towards her and blasted to a landing, backpack jet unit whining as it ramped down.
A meta—
A hand in powered armor reached down and hauled her effortlessly to her feet.
The other hand pulled up the visor of a red, white and blue helmet, and a pair of absurdly young eyes stared at her.
A meta—one on our side—
“Bella Dawn Parker?” asked a voice amplified into a hollow audibility that cut through the ringing of her ears.
She nodded numbly, half of her mind still on the remains of the station, the injured civvies, the missing members of her own crew.
“You’re activated. This is a full Code Red emergency. I am directed to take you—”
That part registered, and she stared at him in outrage. “Take me? You’re taking me nowhere, mister! My job is here! I don—”
“Parker!” the young man barked with surprising authority. “You’re activated. Groom Lake’s being hit this second and we’re assembling a meta team to go in—”
That was when it hit her with the force of a blow to the gut.
Groom Lake.
Mom and Dad—
New York, New York, USA: Callsign John Murdock
John had what he wanted, though probably not enough of it to make much difference. He was nursing the bottle to make it last, to justify his occupation of a bar stool. The stuff smelled like diesel, but it didn’t matter. To the past, he thought, upending the shot glass—
—and about the same time that the booze hit his stomach, the front of the pub exploded inwards.
It felt, and it sounded, like the end of the world. The pressure wave from the blast hit him about the same time as what felt like half the contents of the front of the place and he somersaulted over the bar. He slammed into the backbar and the entire contents of that came down on top of him. Glass, wood, and concrete blasted into the bar patrons like grapeshot, shrapnel tearing into flesh and ancient tabletops with equal indifference. Pain lanced through John’s back as the world went white.
A final impact meant he’d landed. He knew he was on the floor, so he tried to stand up, and with a surge of panic, discovered he couldn’t. His vision cleared a moment later, and he found himself behind the counter, wedged between the aged marble slab of the top of the backbar, which was now tilting crazily against the wall, and a busted cabinet; and as if that wasn’t bad enough, he was upside down on broken glass.
Incongruously, he was peripherally aware that he was cold—the alcohol he’d been drenched with evaporating away—and that he smelled like an alkie’s idea of heaven.
John toppled over, coming down on his right side on more debris and glass. His head was swimming, his sensitive ears ringing, and he could barely make out the shrieks and crying of the other people trapped in here with him. Terrorist bomb? Gas line exploding? His head cleared as he pushed himself upright, resting his back against the shattered cabinet he’d been thrown into by the blast. What was left of the barkeep was embedded in the wall where a bar-length mirror had been. What the hell—What kind of an explosion did that?
Swaying slightly, he stood up. As soon as his frame cleared the top of the ruined counter, he felt the immense heat of the fire engulfing the front of the building, which was starting to spread into the main room. Through eyes that were still trying to focus, he frantically surveyed the rest of the pub. He was the only one standing. People had been tossed around the interior, still lying where they’d landed, broken and bleeding, most of them thrown against the back wall. A lot of them were tangled with furniture and—his stomach churned—body parts. A shocking number of the victims that appeared mostly intact were moving. If they didn’t get out of there soon, they wouldn’t be moving for long.
The sprinkler system went off, misting down the room and dropping the temperature. It wasn’t doing much about the fire, but it was going to buy him some time. He coughed through the smoke, which was starting to get thicker near the ceiling. Flashover was a real possibility here, especially with so much alcohol vapor.
Once again, training warred with survival, but this time the training won.
“Everyone still able to move, we need to get everybody out of here!” he shouted, using his “command” voice. A few folks were trying to stand up, looking about dazedly or staring in shock at their own wounds. Through a gap in the smoke, John spotted the hallway that led to the bathrooms, with an exit sign at the very end of it. Stumbling, he started hustling people into the hallway, even carrying a few until they moved on their own. Those that were ambulatory, whether they wanted it or not, found themselves with a victim draped over their shoulders. John was the first through the rear entrance, kicking it open as more alarms wailed from buildings all around, burdened by an elderly man with a huge gash on his forehead. Another fire alarm went off as soon as the door bar was shoved down. John had done a good bit more than just shove—it was bowed in the middle.
It took a few minutes, and a hell of a lot of shouting and acting like a drill sergeant on steroids, but after two more trips into a room that was looking more and more like a blast furnace, he was satisfied that the pub was cleared of anyone still living.
Hunched over in the alleyway, he took inventory of his own wounds. Blood trickled down his arms from his back. He had plenty of lacerations, puncture wounds, and scrapes. His shirt was sopping wet, torn in several places, and was more red than white now.
“What the hell happened? Was it a bomb?” shouted someone. John looked to his right; it was the man from the couple that the late barkeep had been talking with. He was holding his right arm; the wrist was bent at an odd angle, in addition to minor cuts and bruises.
“Stay here; wait for the cops or the paramedics to get here. Don’t move unless the fire spreads out here.” John stood up gingerly, not wanting to hurt his back more than it was already.
Not a chance They could have found him, was there? Dammit, would They take out a whole pub full of innocent bystanders to get him?
He already knew the answer, of course. It was “yes.” Either way, he wasn’t ready to stick around for the police or anyone else to show up; he’d done more than his fair share already.
Smoke billowed out of the emergency exit, bringing with it a rank taste of burning plastic, so that way was out. He sprinted for the end of the alley, dodging and vaulting dumpsters, aiming for the patch of light shining off a bright red car parked across the street from the end.
That is, he was aiming for that bright red car…until it vanished in a wash of actinic energy.
What the hell? He focused, and could hear the clomp of metal on asphalt. He immediately flattened himself against the alley wall to his left, trying to cut down on his profile to whatever was coming up the street. He edged his way to the corner, peering slowly around the wall. What he saw nearly took his breath away.
He’d seen more than his share of metas before, but the suits marching down the street looked like Art Deco illustrations of some future master race. Which was not so farfetched a concept, considering what was enameled on their upper arms where a regimental patch would have been.
A black crook-armed cross on a white circle on a red field. The Nazi swastika.
Three of them were marching abreast down the street, sweeping anything and anyone in their path with some sort of energy cannon mounted to their arms. Cars, people, buildings—they were destroying everything around them almost effortlessly.
John didn’t waste another moment. He turned in place and sprinted with everything he had back to the group of pub survivors. He crossed the distance in seconds. Panic tinged his voice as he shouted at the crowd. “We’re movin’, now! Everyone up, let’s go! Go, go, go!”
“But you said to wait for help—”
“Help ain’t comin’! We need to get the hell outta here, now!” The survivors were frightened and startled by the fear in his voice, and started to respond, albeit sluggishly. John dragged people to their feet, forcing others to help those who couldn’t move on their own. The sounds of explosions, about a million car alarms and fire alarms going off, and people screaming were starting to get close; those…things couldn’t be too far off. John started off at a trot, leading the way for his band of burned and lacerated survivors. He tried his best to keep off of the streets and heading away from the Nazis, or whatever they were. After a few minutes that seemed to stretch into hours, he turned a corner only to come up short in an open street. People were milling about, coming outdoors to see what was happening. The armored supersoldiers hadn’t made it this far, yet. John looked about wildly, hoping for some refuge.
Then he saw it. Sanctuary. In the form of a subway entrance. That armor was too tall for the entrance; chances were the Nazis would stick to the streets for now. He immediately started shoving people towards it. “Everyone, down into the subway! Get outta the streets! Move!” The explosions were getting closer, with smoke obscuring the sky behind him. The citizens on the street started moving; some ran for the subway entrance, but most of them went back into the buildings that they had first ventured out of. Dammit, stone or brick walls won’t stop these things!
But it was impossible to save everybody. He just had to try and save as many as he could. He was going to have a hard enough time keeping himself alive, much less any of the clueless wandering around him. Even with his advantages, there was precious little he could do against something that had the power of a damned tank. Still…
He could…
No. He couldn’t. Not even now would he…not after…
Screw it. He would do the best he could, get as many people as safe as he could. Then he would get the hell out of Dodge if he had to steal a car to do it.
Atlanta, Georgia, USA: Callsign Victoria Victrix
Vickie had moved to Atlanta in the first place to join Echo, except after what had happened to her, she couldn’t. Her crippling panic attacks kept her from doing more than getting the registration papers from Echo. She’d filled them out, but after being unable even to do the interview, she had been rejected. After all, what good was a metahuman sorceress who couldn’t even stop shaking long enough to crumble a pebble? Never mind she was trained to a fare-thee-well as a warrior Geomancer. Never mind that those in the know were aware she was that rarest of birds, a techno-shaman. Echo needed people they could count on.
It had, indeed, taken her two hours to wind herself up enough to open the car door onto the people-populated outside world. She stared at the asphalt, and goaded herself with the memory of a mostly empty bag of cat food and what Grey would do to revenge himself on her if she got back in the car and went back home. And she was just about to put her weight on her feet when—
A tremendous metallic crash made her freeze. Maybe most people would have leapt in startlement and whacked their heads against the door frame, but the panic attacks made her freeze whenever anything unexpected happened. And then she looked up in the direction of the noise.
The five tractor-trailers had come apart at the seams. That was the sound she’d heard, the trailer walls falling to either side and crashing down onto the pavement. And now she stared at—
At first her mind registered only metas.
Then she saw the swastikas. And the guns. And the five, spheroid, war machines rising up into the air with a hum that made the fillings in her teeth ache. They were larger in all dimensions than the trailers they’d been hidden inside, expanding from an unfolding array that looked for all the world like the insides of a toaster, but inside those rails, space seemed bent. And now, Vickie’s anxiety panic attack was replaced by panic of another sort altogether.
* * *
She didn’t remember getting out of the car. She didn’t remember running, or screaming. But she must have done both, because when she came to herself again, she was cowering behind a dumpster outside an apartment block, dripping with sweat, throat raw.
What did I do? Whatever it was, she’d gotten out of the grocery store lot—without her car.
Her teeth began to ache again, and she glanced up reflexively, to see one of those shining spheroids floating easily above the level of the rooftops about a block away. It was dotted with baleful orange windows or ports, and the bottom tenth or so glowed the same angry orange. Except for the humming, it looked innocent enough—
A heavy chuff-chuff-chuff from behind her made her crouch further down and glance to the rear, as a Blackhawk chopper in National Guard colors moved purposefully towards the sphere. The sight would have reassured a normal civilian…
But Vickie was not a normal civilian, and the sight of a National Guard chopper heading towards what was clearly a metahuman-guided supercraft made her want to stand up, wave her arms and scream at them to retreat as fast as they could.
But of course, she didn’t do that; she just crouched there like a scared rat, cowering and shaking as it passed overhead. Not that anyone was going to be looking down, or would pay attention to one lone woman screaming and waving at them if they did. And there was nothing overtly threatening in that serenely floating chromed sphere…
Or at least, there wasn’t, until a dozen segmented metal tentacles whipped out from hidden ports on its sides. Like a nest of cobras, they struck, half of them seizing the chopper, half impaling it.
It exploded in a massive fireball that hurled debris in all directions.
Her throat closing with fear and anger, under cover of the smoke and flames, she ran.
* * *
She wasn’t sure where she was when her luck ran out. It wasn’t Peachtree Park, that much she knew. It must have been Four Corners. The streets were wider, and she could hear the screaming, see the black smoke from the fires on the Interstate, in the distance. It was at that point when she tried to duck across the street that she found herself looking up at the chromed armor of a Nazi metatrooper, flanked by two more just like him.
The helmets featured aggressive blast shields covering the eye area, a mouth shield like the grill on a ’57 Chevy. Twin, swept-back antennae projected from the helmets, one over each temple. There were extremely stylized designs incised into the chest plates.
The armor looked angry. No telling what the people inside the armor were like, but the armor itself was over eight feet tall. There was one not-so-subtle exception to the entire, shining chrome theme. That was the black swastika set inside a white circle on a field of red enameled on the right bicep of every suit of armor.
There were five more closing in behind her.
As she stared, part of her brain noted that there was one among the chromed supersoldiers who wore black armor instead of silver. This one had stylized eagle wings on its helmet instead of antennae. Or maybe these were still antennae, just decorative as well as functional. If the other armor looked angry, this looked lethal.
SS, said her brain. That’s SS. The SS wore black uniforms—
As she stood there, numb, frozen, waiting to die—a rabbit caught in a circle of wolves—she almost closed her eyes so she wouldn’t see it coming. But she didn’t. So she did see the panicking, crying ribbon of children that streamed in between two of the buildings, and stopped, the kids stumbling to a halt, clutching each other, and falling silent as they realized that they were trapped.
The Nazi metatroopers raised their weapon-arms.
A decade and more of training, practice, and discipline, coupled with rage, overcame Vickie’s fear, smashed through her paralysis, and took over.
“You hateful bastards!” she shrieked, as the power rose up into her, from the Earth Her Mother, into her hands, building as quick as thought into the weapon she had wielded for most of her life.
The Earth rose up in answer.
When the Tuatha da Danaan fought, it was said, the Earth itself ran like water and crested like the ocean waves. That power was Vickie’s: the skill, knowledge, and the magic of the Geomancer. The Earth thrust upwards in a blindingly fast wave between the Nazi troopers and the children, a wall of broken asphalt and dirt and stone that caught and absorbed the terrible power of their arm cannons. Nor was that all, for like the wave, it crested and crashed down on them, half burying them in debris. A second wave began as they struggled to their feet. The Earth’s magic power flooded through Vickie in a molten torrent, and she stood there with her arms outstretched to it, surrounded by a golden glow.
“Run!” she screamed to the children, intercepting a second, more scattered barrage of blue-white energy with her Earth-wave. “Run, you little rats!”
And she sent a secondary wave, bulging the asphalt, to shove them on their way.
They ran. And the Nazis staggered to their feet again, this time turning their attention towards her, exclusively.
Energy beams concussed the pavement to either side of her as she changed her tactics, calling on the Earth to heave up right under their feet, knocking them down and back. Can’t aim if you can’t stand…
But she hadn’t forgotten the spheres. She began backing away from the Nazis, alternating upheavals with Earth-waves, one eye on the sky. Because these guys were going to call for help eventually—
Where the hell is Echo? Where are the metas? she thought frantically.
But she knew where they were. She could see the black smoke of fires, hear the explosions, and in the distance, the screaming. The metahumans of Echo were all around, doing what she was doing. As the sweat of exertion and fear ran into her eyes and clumped her hair, she called on the Earth to deflect and protect her. As she ran low on personal stamina and her control over the magic faltered, she heard the sound of a heavy truck motor behind her. Incredibly, it was accelerating towards her and the Nazi metatroopers. Vickie heard the truck skid to a halt with screaming tires and shrieking brakes and she heard people pile out of it.
And then she heard the barrage of gunfire.
They’re nuts! she thought incredulously. They can’t—and the knee joint of the Nazi metatrooper nearest her, only just steadying himself and bracing to fire at her again, disintegrated.
He toppled over. Another barrage erupted, and the knee joint of another trooper vanished in fire concentrated with pinpoint accuracy, as only a sniper could muster.
But the remaining troopers aimed—and Vickie’s rage returned. She slammed into them with another upthrust of broken concrete and dirt.
“Keep it up, miss!” came a voice from behind, cracking with strain. “I’m gonna run out of bullets before we run out of bad guys!”
Moscow, Russia: Callsign Red Saviour
“Commissar,” Stokov said. “Please pay attention to our discussion.”
“I am listening,” she said, disgruntled. She’d lost any momentum she might have had.
Korovin stepped back in. “FSO has spent money and time to defuse the negative publicity stemming from your zeal. You’re living in the past. We don’t brutalize rich men because we’re jealous of their success.”
Outside, at the edge of the Square, a Delex truck pulled up close behind another, drawing her eye. “I don’t follow.”
“That’s been obvious for months.” Korovin shook his head. “The council has discussed a reorganization of CCCP.”
“You can’t do that,” she said. “Boryets—Worker’s Champion—is here. He’d never agree to it. He founded CCCP before you were even born.”
“It is our responsibility now, and for your information, we have already discussed the matter with him. He has agreed to come out of retirement to lead—Commissar, I must insist that you pay attention to the proceedings!”
Natalya had been staring at the third Delex truck, parking on the heels of the second. The space between the trucks wasn’t enough to squeeze a body through. Something was not right; a knot grew in her stomach.
“Da,” she said, eyes glued to the window.
“You’re being demoted, Natalya Nikolaevna,” the Chief Director said in a soft voice. “You’ll be given the rank of Associate Commissar, under Worker’s Champion’s direction.”
“Associate, da,” she agreed. A fourth, fifth and six truck were completing a semicircle around the protest. They couldn’t possibly unload their cargo while parked so close together.
“Commissar!” The Chief Director pounded his coffee cup on the table, splashing coffee. “I will not be ignored!”
Her anxiety had reached her chest. She stood. “Something is wrong,” she said.
“Natalya, sit down,” Korovin said.
“Shut up, svinya,” she said, moving towards the window as if in a trance.
As she touched the cold glass, the metal sides of the trucks shredded. Metal figures burst out of the trucks, dozens, hundreds, as if packed in the trailers like sardines. Their chrome armor reflected the artificial light in hyperreal starbursts. Arm guns the size of bazookas pointed at the crowd; the figures towered over the protesters at nearly three meters.
Behind her, Korovin was the first to process what she’d seen. “Terrorists!” he shouted.
Natalya sprinted for the door. The Chief Director called her name. “Where are you going? This building is full of officials who need to be evacuated!”
“Do it yourself,” she said, pushing a guard out of the way. In the hallway, members of the CCCP had gathered at the window. Red Saviour didn’t stop running. “Fall in!” she shouted. The metas fell into step behind her.
“Natalya,” Worker’s Champion said, matching her stride. “What are you doing?”
“Leading my troops,” she said. “You can fire me afterwards.”
Molotok sped up to her side, getting in Worker’s Champion’s way. “You have a plan, sestra?”
The window at the end of the hallway loomed before them.
“Da.” She raised her voice. “Follow me down! Spread out and confront the terrorists! Protect the workers first!”
Energy coruscated around her hands. Five feet away from the window, she threw it forward in an enormous blast. French windows that had been assiduously cleaned and painted for a century exploded outward.
“Davay, davay, davay!” She yelled. “Come on!”
By ones and twos, the heroes of the CCCP burst through the hole in Block 14 of the Kremlin, either taking flight as Red Saviour did on a plume of meta energy, leaping with metahuman muscles like Molotok and Chug, or sliding down the ice ramp that Father Winter formed from the moisture in the air.
The walls of the Kremlin stood at twenty meters, forcing Winter to maintain the elevation of the ice ramp. The ice creaked and roared as it formed unnaturally fast. As quickly as they moved over the wall near the Saviour’s Gate, she knew they were seconds away from a massacre.
The terrorists, moving with military precision, leveled their guns on the crowd. Blue-white light passed, and left death behind.
They were already too late.
“Squad Odeen, engage! Squad Dva, right flank. Provide diversion! The rest of you, crowd control!” She gathered her energy at her feet to follow Squad Odeen into battle.
Beneath her, Chug had paused on the ice ramp, clenching and unclenching his fists. Tears fell from his eyes.
“Chug not unnerstand,” he rumbled. “Why are silver men mad at shouting peepuls?”
“They are bad men, Chug,” she said. “Go make them mad at you instead.”
Chug unleashed a primal roar, his whole body shaking, sending mineral-laden tears to freeze in a misty halo around his head. His legs tensed and he leapt from the ice ramp into the nearest line of—were they terrorists?
The militsya themselves had recovered first from the shock of the attack. Those nearest the attack opened fire on the armored figures with pistols. The terrorists as one then directed their fire at the militsya, cutting them down without effort.
Petrograd and Netopyr had reached the front lines. Their own armored forms were dwarfed by the giants surrounding the square. They’d understood Red Saviour’s orders perfectly: draw fire away from the civilians.
Petrograd unleashed his arm cannons in a wide spray. Something had jammed their microcomm units, so she only heard his howl of rage as a word she’d heard her father utter with venom during his war stories: “Fashista!”
She swooped in towards the line of terrorists, and saw an emblem that awakened horror in the Russian collective memory. A black swastika in a white circle, on a flag of blood red.
“Nasrat,” she cursed. “They’re Nazis, real Nazis!”
Red Saviour accelerated towards her target, letting her meta energy crescendo in her body until she felt as though she’d burst. The Nazi trooper’s helmeted head turned up to watch her approach. Metal joints groaned as he elevated his gun to fire upon her.
Two seconds, she gauged, for him to lock on to me. She twisted her body in anticipation of the blast. It came—a second earlier than she expected. The beam blazed across her back, missing by an inch but burning her nerves regardless. She focused her rage from the sudden agony towards the trooper. Her fist glowed with energy. One hit should shatter his helmet—in the past she’d knocked over a car with a well-placed, energy-augmented punch.
The trooper was an easy target, slow and lumbering. She braked just enough to add her velocity to her punch and swung her fist at his head. The release of her energy would coincide with impact.
Energy exploded in a shower of sparks; the Nazi’s helmet rang like a bell. He swayed for a moment, then hefted a gauntlet the size of her head to retaliate.
“Shto?” Red Saviour couldn’t believe it. The armor had absorbed the punch as if it were a sandbag. She darted away from the trooper’s clumsy swing and hit him with both fists on the top of his head. Again, no effect. The unnatural hum around the trooper intensified.
Remembering her Systema training, she let loose with a series of blows to his head and torso, expending quantities of energy that should have leveled a house. The more she hit him, the better a target she became. She knew she had to move before they opened fire.
“Commissar!” The muffled shout was Netopyr’s. The walking tank planted himself next to her and blasted at the troopers with his own energy cannon, which glanced off their armor as harmlessly as her blows. They switched targets to the large, slow moving, armored Russian; a volley of beams lashed out at him, tearing his armor off in chunks, crushing the man inside.
She howled as he crumbled to the ground like a bag of bones. The moment of distraction was all her opponent needed to connect. His metal fist caught her in the ribs and hurled her back into the panicking crowd.
Stars erupted before her eyes. She spat blood and scrambled to her feet. Three militsya fired hopelessly at the Nazis. A captain helped steady her.
“Commissar! We can’t hurt them!”
“Then stop trying.” She pointed at the walls of the Kremlin: one of the ceremonial guards at the Saviour’s Gate, dressed in a colorful medieval uniform, was trying to attract the protesters’ attention by swinging his dulled halberd in the air and shouting. Over the tumult, no one paid attention. “Saviour’s Gate,” she told the militsya captain. The legend of the gate was that it had protected Moscow from invasion. “Get them through the gate. Now!”
The captain nodded and shouted orders to his men. They turned their backs on the Nazi soldiers to herd the crowd towards the gate.
Atlanta, Georgia, USA: Callsign Red Djinni
In times of uncertainty we have abandoned jobs, split up, and vanished. Whether in the initial stages of planning a heist, or minutes away from our mark, if things looked too dicey, we booked. That’s the nature of the game. When we felt the law, we dropped everything and left, and we disappeared for a while. And I mean disappeared, brother. We never underestimated the detectives, especially ones with access to metahuman talents. They had ways to pick up on anything, no matter how insignificant, so time was the only thing we could leave in our wake.
What we were about to do was in direct violation of all we had learned, counter to every method of guile and misdirection we had honed in our five years together.
This was an all-out assault, and it demanded flawless execution. There was no time for subtlety. Just getting to the goods now meant a quick death to anyone who got in our way. This sort of “kick-in-the-door” approach guaranteed us being made. Made, and linked to multiple homicides. We might as well have faxed our vitals to Echo headquarters, we were so screwed. Our previous record of a few thefts and a minor brawl with an Echo Ops training team had kept our perceived threat level low. Infiltration of the Vault and the massacre of security personnel rated astronomically higher. You didn’t just walk away from something like that; this time, we would have to go into hiding for years.
We each had our own way of dealing with that knowledge.
Jon had started taking deep breaths. Trust me when I say that’s bad. It meant she was building up a thirst for some messy violence. She dealt with problems the only way she could; in her mind, any conflict or argument could be resolved with her guns. Sudden ambush? Spray down a little cover fire. Victim’s getting away? Clip him in the legs a few times. Red wants to give S&M a try? A clean shot through his shoulder should shut him up. She was still taking deep breaths when she left for a final reconnaissance.
When agitated, Duff would usually babble in a constant stream of descriptive cursing, often involving an adversary’s mother in various states of humiliation and affliction. As I watched him strap on his gear, I couldn’t help but notice that this time, he was strangely quiet. And he was shaking.
That was a first.
Was he scared? Well, I’m sure he was. We were all scared. Don’t let the calm exterior fool you, I get scared a lot. You learn to use fear, though. That shot of adrenaline tends to fire up all five senses, six in my case. Being in tune with my skin carried a lot of advantages, including a radial awareness. The more skin I had exposed, the more I could sense from my immediate surroundings.
I caught a quick, furtive look from Duff. He blanched as I watched and quickly turned back to his guns. Another first, and a bad sign. We needed him at his best, and I was beginning to wonder if we should turn back after all.
Jack was obviously thinking the same. As he climbed into his flak suit, his eyes were buzzing like he had hit REM sleep. It was one of Jack’s few tells. His mind must have been absolutely racing to deal with our current predicament. Did we have any alternatives left to us? It came down to who we were most afraid of—Echo or Tonda. Both had formidable resources and drive, but there were extremes the law-abiding Echo people wouldn’t go to. Jack, who persisted in his belief that there were always options, was pondering the angles and looking for loopholes. For once, he wasn’t seeing any. For Jack, that must have been torture.
I was going through my own brand of hell. Unless your nerve endings have been rewired to perceive pain as pleasure, self-mutilation is not fun. Still, it was an emergency, so I took my pocketknife and slit my face along the hairline, sides, under the chin and around my eyes. Reaching up, I took several deep breaths and tore my face off.
Nothing like immediate, searing pain to take your mind off a dismal future.
Did it hurt? Of course it hurt! Hello! I tore my face off! My face! Off! It always hurts! Under normal circumstances, I like to grow a new face slowly, usually takes about a day. It’s relatively painless and I can start and stop as I choose to slough off the old look and get the base foundation going, followed up by attention to fine details. In emergencies I can grow a new look within a few minutes, but I have to start from scratch and build it up. I’m incapacitated during this time, forced to stare as my blood-soaked, skinless face regenerates epidermal layers in a mirror. It takes a lot of concentration. It’s a struggle to keep a careful watch on where and how the new layers are forming and to not vomit at the same time. Also, there’s the screaming. It takes a lot to keep from screaming.
The face was just about done, a young man’s face with dumpy features, when I started pulling on an imitation Echo uniform from one of my mish kits. The suit was made of a tough polyester double-knit blend, and wouldn’t fool the guards up close. From a distance, however, it would pass for nanoweave. I selected a trim blond wig from the dozen in the kit, stripped the plastic seal from it, tore off the wax paper on the glue pads, donned it, then went to work pasting on the eyebrows. While I could regenerate skin quickly enough, hair was another matter. Keeping a shaved scalp helped. Wigs were easy enough to switch out.
Jon returned. She was still breathing heavily, and was now sporting a disgusted scowl.
“We’ve got a potential problem,” Jon reported. “I saw an Echo bike pull up to the bank.”
“For the other robbery?” Jack asked.
“Don’t think so; he didn’t have the usual backup. Maybe he’s just here by chance?”
“Lot of that happening today,” I muttered, pulling on my visor. “We might have to deal with a meta now. This change anything?”
“No,” Jack said. “We proceed as planned. If we do this right, we might not even see him. If he shows, perforate him. Use everything you have. We’ve got one shot at this, with just one thing going for us—no one’s ever tried this before.”
“No one’s been stupid enough,” I grunted, pulling on my boots.
“Yup. But that gives us the element of surprise. We’ve done jobs with less. Let’s go; we’re losing our window.”
As the others got into position, I started a deliberate march to the guardhouses, my hands behind me, my fingers starting to elongate into pointed claws. More than anything, I didn’t want to be here. After the initial strike, my disguises would be worthless. This wasn’t artful infiltration, it was intentional slaughter. And for the first time, right when the rush should have been kicking in, I hated my job. This wasn’t what I did. Jon got off on killing; I’m a different kind of pro. Killing is the last resort. The very last resort. Not that I hadn’t done it, but not often. And not like this.
“Hey, you’re not an Echo Op…!”
I had tried to look relaxed, difficult when your entire body was a coiled spring. The guard’s cry was the signal. I tackled the desk guard, thrust up his chin with one hand and drove my claws into his throat with the other. He wouldn’t be able to trigger the main alarm. I felt dirty.
Jack started the clock, and in the corner of my visor I watched the heads-up display come on and the first countdown begin. With one guard down we had given ourselves a ten-second window to eliminate the other two.
Shattered glass and gurgling told me Jon had sniped the man in the other guardhouse. Jack moved in with silenced pistols, and a stream of lead slammed into the last, the roving sentry, with the muffled chuffs characteristic of silencers. We hauled the bodies from sight while Duff pulled up in the sedan.
Checkpoint One was clear. But this exterior guard post, like the bank front, was largely a façade. The real obstacle was inside, and the numerous cameras painting the area had surely alerted Checkpoint Two of our presence.
On his mark, Jack and I both hit the synched release buttons in the two guardhouses, and while the tunnel doors opened, we all dove into the car. From above, at street level, we heard a tremendous explosion, then more explosions in the distance. We didn’t really have time to consider what this meant. If anything, we were thankful for whatever diversion that other robbery was bringing to the mix. Jack reset the clock.
Twenty seconds.
At the base of the one-hundred-foot tunnel and flanking the heavy blast door, twin-mounted Mini guns encased within swiveling metal spheres provided the main defense for this checkpoint. Able to deliver over a thousand rounds a minute, these guns packed enough punch to bring down anything from an armored car to a light tank, either of which could handily fit in the tunnel. The Minis made this a well-fortified choke point, enough to hold off any major offensive. However, the ball turrets weren’t remote-controlled, and they weren’t kept manned. These guys had a union, and a turret chair made a lousy duty station. So we figured twenty seconds was what they needed to man the guns and secure the blast door.
We had run a few simulations in case this would happen. Jack wasn’t wrong about the element of surprise. We had gone over the schematics of this place until we saw the layout in our sleep. While the Vault looked impenetrable on paper, it had never been battle-tested. They ran drills, we were sure of that, but a real assault is a scary thing. We were banking it all on their inexperience, in hopes of a few moments of hesitation.
Duff hit the accelerator and we flew down the tunnel. Jon and Jack took a moment to switch their guns with the rifles that lay on the rear seats. The large blast door was closing and two figures appeared, one in each turret. Dammit. We had underestimated them. There was no hesitation on their part. As we hit the lower fringe of the ramp, they opened fire.
We were saved by momentum. The stream of bullets disintegrated the front grill and bit into the engine. The force was enough to slow us down, but not quite enough. Jack had run the numbers to prove that, so far as it could be proved. Our acceleration should have been just enough to clear the closing blast door. But numbers were one thing, reality another. Now, fighting against the stopping power of the Minis, we were just shy of a photo finish.
“Down!” Jack yelled. We all pressed ourselves as low as we could and braced for impact.
The base of the blast door slammed into the windshield, shearing the top off the car above our heads, and our momentum did the rest. As the blast door dropped down into its slot behind us, we continued through and smashed into the far wall of the admitting bay.
We had done it. It was less than perfect, but we were in. No strict need for timers now, but we still had to move fast.
“Wait for it,” Duff hissed as he chucked two volleys of grenades in opposite directions. We covered our eyes and, over the startled shouts of guards, heard the telltale phoomph of the flash bombs, followed momentarily by explosions.
Duff Sanction’s signature Blind Man, Exploding Man maneuver. Despite the god-awful name, it was a ploy the rest of us had come to respect. There was more shouting, accompanied by screams of pain.
Jon was up next. She rose from the back seat, a warrior goddess, and began laying down cover fire. The two guards manning the turrets were wide open. The turrets may have had superior shielding to the tunnel, but here on the inside, the gunmen were sitting ducks. They fell quickly enough to Jon’s attack. The rest of the guards, the ones that were still breathing, were scrambling for cover and returning fire in wild bursts.
Jack emerged, now toting his own rifle, and with his back to Jon’s they scoured the room with a rain of bullets. Taking position behind them, Duff watched as the guards, clearly on the defensive, took cover behind whatever they could find. He targeted them, signaled us to drop back into the car, and lobbed grenades their way. We like grenades. We always carry lots of grenades. Lots. Dropping down, Jack and Jon reloaded, waited for the blast, then were right back up and firing. Deafening, blinding, disorienting and deadly. After a few repetitions of that maneuver, Jack called for a cease-fire.
“Thirteen down,” he reported. “One unaccounted for. If he’s alive, Plan A is still a go.”
Duff was looking around furiously, wildly scanning the admitting bay. “Well, where the hell is he then? If you don’t see him, I’m setting up to blast our way in right now.”
“Quiet!” I hissed. “Be still!”
Standing up, I tore away my Echo costume to expose my arms and torso. I felt the radial awareness return. Hopping out of the car, I took a few steps and closed my eyes to get the lay of the room. I sensed the others behind me, the heat signatures of the Minis, and of the numerous bodies, and a few body parts, that were strewn about.
One heat signature was shaking. Contact.
I scrambled over a massive desk and tackled the last guard, who was crouched and hidden in fear. First raking him across the face with my claws, I closed in. He dropped his gun, whimpering, and began to plead for his life. I tore his armored vest away and as I drove my claws into his stomach, I watched his eyes widen, then bulge in anguish. He started to scream. For a moment, everything stopped.
He was just a boy.
He couldn’t have been older than twenty. A new recruit then—I would have bet this was his first assignment out of training. Sure, why not. Show him the ropes at the Vault. Nothing ever happens at the Vault.
I felt my stomach heave. This was all wrong. I should have been trading jokes with this kid, getting to know him the way I had gotten to know Walter and using him, not erasing him. I should have been a ghost in his life, not his butcher.
“Red!” Jack barked. “Get the codes!”
This boy, this pup, wasn’t a fighter. Not yet, anyway. He was…new. And he was dying. My claws had gone deep and were slowly tearing the life out of him. The smell of cordite and the metallic tinge of blood hung heavy in the air, bombarding my senses, bombarding my skin. It was something I had trained myself to ignore. Now, I couldn’t block it out.
Jack, Jon and Duff were now screaming in unison. “RED!”
I felt myself tighten up. Right. The job. Through clenched teeth I hissed at the trembling boy, hating myself.
“Give us the codes, and I’ll end it.” Closing my eyes, I forced my claws to spread wider.
He gave us the codes. No, he screamed us the codes. Jack punched them feverishly into the console. A second set of blast doors opened, to the inner sanctum. With a quick slash, I withdrew my claws, and slit the kid’s throat.
Jon couldn’t keep her eyes off me. I didn’t look at her, I couldn’t. It all seemed different now. I could taste the boy’s blood on my hands. I shed the claws away, grimacing from the pain of it. It wasn’t enough, everything still tasted like ashes; this was not what I was supposed to be. As we hustled to the short, wide corridor that led to the main Vault room, I paused only to reach into the destroyed sedan to pull out my scarf. The mask I was wearing, a simple generic face I had picked up over the years, didn’t seem to suffice. Trotting down the corridor with the others, I wrapped the scarf around my head. It was only cloth, but for the years when I had problems controlling my skin, it had kept the world out. It had felt like armor. It still did, like a security blanket made of Kevlar.
“Security cameras weren’t picking up any movement in the building above,” Duff reported as we entered the massive vault room. “We should be alone now.”
“Bank heist upstairs must have cleared people out,” Jack muttered.
“How long before reinforcements show?” Jon asked.
“Hard to say,” Jack said. “Estimate ten to twenty minutes. We should have enough time, but it’ll be metas.”
That was good enough to convince me to rush it. I wanted this job done, I wanted to get out of this place, to just get out, get the goods to Tonda and leave town. The fact that we’d be forced to flee into hiding no longer mattered. I wanted it. Forget the training, I was on the verge of panic. I heard this happened to a lot of professionals, that it was inevitable. I had never considered the possibility that it could happen to me.
“I really don’t feel like dancing with metas today,” I muttered. “Hard part’s done, let’s just get the damned thing and go.”
Most buildings like this might have held a parking garage beneath it. Here, the basement levels were taken up by one huge room, three stories tall with massive columns of concrete and steel. Here, you could find all manner of high-tech goodies. We passed by racks of weapons, tall caches of ammunition and rows of armor before we came to a storage dome with a circular vault door. Jack and Duff immediately went to work, and in five minutes we scrambled for cover as Duff blew the lock. A staccato of small explosions, and we heard the clatter of pins as the door’s seal was broken. In my haste, I rushed the dome and sped inside. The shelves were lined with odd devices. Some looked to be guns, others were shaped like futuristic jet packs, and others…well, I couldn’t say. A few objects were so exotic in their design they could have been high-tech sex toys for all I knew. The one thing everything in this dome shared was that each object was unique, a prototype.
Our mark for this job was a modern marvel, a testament of man’s ingenuity to make really big explosions come in really small packages. Don’t ask me for the technical babble about this bomb, but it was enough to make men like Duff soil their shorts and drool just thinking about it. In short, some genius out there had devised a way to condense an explosive’s critical mass. Another genius had taken it a step further and had separated the explosive into stable components, which exponentially increased the bang you got for your buck. Yet another genius had invented a novel carrier system, which used capillary action engraved into small computer chips to directly mix these components. The result? You could carry a small device the size of a wallet, and with a simple timer attachment, obliterate an area the size of a football field. The initial explosion would be enough to pulverize everything in the blast radius, but a second incendiary effect would raze the area with white-hot plasma. A bomb, a very high-tech and special bomb, named the Inferno.
It wasn’t hard to guess why Tonda wanted this. He had his own guys, his own geniuses who tinkered with doodads, and having this kind of technology would make his life much simpler. At that moment, I didn’t care what Tonda wanted it for. I just wanted out. I saw something that matched the description, and picking it up I was surprised how heavy the device was. Turning, I was about to pocket the bomb in a belt pouch when I noticed Jack had his pistols trained on me.
“Sorry, Red.” He seemed truly apologetic. “This is Tonda’s call.”
Jon and Duff appeared next to Jack. They didn’t look very happy about this. Careful not to make any sudden gestures, I held up the Inferno, and tossed it to Duff. He caught it deftly and turned away. Jon closed her eyes, and followed him.
Jack and I stared at each other for what felt like minutes. Then I asked the only thing I could.
“Why?”
Jack shrugged. “Tonda can’t trust you. He can’t trust most metas, but especially one that can morph his face. Killing you is part of this job for us. That’s just how it is, that’s just the game.”
Right. The game. The goddamned game.
“See you in the next life,” Jack growled, as he emptied his pistol’s magazines into me.
Echo Headquarters, Atlanta, Georgia, USA
Yankee Pride glanced at his watch. “It’s not like Doc to be late.”
“He’s probably berating an OpOne for feelings of inadequacy. Can I smoke in here?” Ramona lit the cigarette before the CO could object. The smoke soothed her nerves. She hated prisons.
In other countries, Echo housed metahuman criminals in state-run facilities, contributing money and know-how to the special issues of detaining metahumans. Only in America was the entire operation farmed out to Echo. She’d heard talk of privatizing the Federal prison system; if it were run as tightly as Echo’s was, it could only be an improvement. She and Yankee Pride had gone through four security checks set up at killpoints with alert snipers concealed behind blast plates. For the sake of convenience, she’d left her sidearm in her locker. They didn’t confiscate Yankee Pride’s power gauntlets, though.
“This guy’s been dying to meet you, Detective,” the CO said with a smirk. “He thinks you’re going to save him.”
“So he’s having a midlife crisis?”
“Could be.” The CO shrugged. “Or delusions of grandeur.”
“That’s what I’m banking on. Still, it beats being on a stakeout. He just turned himself in?”
The man scowled. “Took out three of our guys first. Hardly turning yourself in.”
“According to the report, he asked to talk to their commanding officer. Maybe he’s just a snob.” She winked at him.
The gate behind them clattered open. Doc Bootstrap bustled through, looking flustered. “You’d think they’d know me by now.” He pushed past them. “Let’s get started. We’re behind schedule thanks to me.”
The CO made a stubbing motion at Ramona. Frowning, she ground the cigarette underfoot. “No skin off my back,” she told the psychiatrist. She brandished the file at him. “Want to read this?”
“No need. I’ll know everything I need to know the moment this loser opens his mouth.”
“I bet you’re missed at Harvard.”
He hesitated. “Harvard?”
“I’m kidding, Doc. After you.”
They accompanied the CO down the corridor. The hubbub began: insults, taunts, catcalls. Ramona tried to ignore them. The CO spoke into his comm unit when they reached Eisenfaust’s cell.
“Let me tell you the drill, Eisenhauer,” the CO said to the prisoner. “No funny business. No sudden moves. We have sonics directed at your head at all times. Any aggressive behavior will result in incapacitation. Be nice to the lady.”
“Oh, he will,” said a coarse voice behind them. “The Kraut been waiting for his girlfriend all day. Maybe he shut up now.”
“Please ignore him, fräulein. His kind lack manners.” Eisenfaust spoke through the grill in his door.
The dark form cackled behind his own grill. “There he go with that Nazi talk again.”
The door slid open. Eisenfaust stood at attention, his broken arm tucked neatly into a sling. “Oberst Heinrich Eisenhauer, at your service.” His ice-blue eyes looked directly into hers.
Ramona swallowed. The man had a powerful presence. She cleared her throat. “Detective Ramona Ferrari. This here’s Yankee Pride.”
Eisenfaust nodded to the OpOne. “We’ve met. A pleasure to see you again, young man.”
“Hrumph.” Yankee Pride looked down his nose at the Nazi.
“And Doc Bootstrap, our psychiatrist.”
Eisenfaust furrowed his brow. “You think I’m insane?”
“No, we think you’re a time traveler. We brought the shrink in case you had lingering issues with your mother.” She opened his file. “Don’t waste my time, buddy.”
“Certainly not.” Eisenfaust indicated the bunk with a sweep of his hand. “Would the fräulein care to sit?”
Everything about the man’s body language seemed to come from another time. This interview would take a while. “Sure, why not?” She and Yankee Pride entered the cell. He leaned against the wall as she arranged herself on the stiff mattress.
Doc Bootstrap edged into the cell, never taking his eyes off Eisenfaust.
Ramona looked from the Doc to Yankee Pride, who raised his eyebrows. “Your lead,” he said.
“All right.” She fastened her gaze on Eisenfaust and his blue, unblinking eyes. “We all know why you’re here—”
“Forgive me, but you don’t have the first clue why I am truly here. And I won’t tell you everything. My story is for Alex Tesla’s ears alone.”
Yankee Pride guffawed. “Listen to this guy. You’re not so eager to get out of jail, are you?”
Eisenfaust paused. “I’ll tell you enough to confirm my identity. Then you will convey my request to speak to Mr. Tesla in person, ja? You may take any precautions you wish to protect your commander.”
“Our boss doesn’t make a habit of chatting with prisoners.” Ramona pinched the bridge of her nose. “Fine, fine. Make your pitch.”
Eisenfaust cleared his throat. “We knew it was the final days of the Reich; our forces had been spread too thin over too many theaters. My Uberluftwaffe had engaged the Allied Aces over the Atlantic Ocean, in the region near die Bermudas. My best pilots were dead. My—” A look of pain crossed his face. “My second-in-command and I fled the battle with the Aces in hot pursuit.”
Ramona knew all this from Yankee Pride’s printouts. The prisoner’s story could have come from any history book. Yet she registered his unconscious movements as he spoke: the twitching of his hand as though it still held a yoke, the alert posture. Whoever he was, he was military, possibly a pilot.
Yankee Pride opened his mouth to speak but Ramona silenced him with a raised hand. “Go on,” she said.
“We commenced evasive maneuvers, Effi and I, but the Aces smelled blood. Corsair, the American, and La Faucon Blanc, the Frenchwoman, took turns shooting holes in my tail. Brumby and Gyrefalcon closed in on Effi’s plane. I veered into their path to take the bullets intended for her. A fuel line was punctured. I would have to bail out over the open sea. I would not be a prisoner of the damned Allies. Eisenfaust would die a hero, and perhaps Effi would live on. I saw my chance and steered for Gyrefalcon’s fuselage. Even a skilled pilot such as he could not evade so suicidal a charge.
“But he surprised me. Instead of turning away, he turned towards me. Our wings clipped and sheared off, but we were both alive—albeit in planes spiraling towards the ocean. I fought against the acceleration to eject. Then a green light suffused the cockpit. I thought I had hit a green flare, but the light intensified. I hit eject and pulled the ripcord at once. Outside the plane, all was green. I could no longer see the water, the clouds, or Gyrefalcon. The parachute deployed badly. I braced myself.
“Moments before I hit, I saw in the thick green light that the water was gone. I was over land! My reflexes allowed me to adjust my position in hopes of cushioning the impact somewhat, but when I crashed through the canopy and hit the ground, the pain was immense. I blacked out.”
“That’s where you broke your arm, then?” Ramona pointed to his cast with her pen.
“Nein. That comes later, a story for your commander. I awoke to horrible bruises and a headache, but I was alive. I lay on the ground, struggling to breathe, for an eternity. When I opened my eyes, the green light had gone. In its place were a devilish red sky and the stench of rotting foliage.
“I had never seen so sinister a jungle as this. All red and black trees and vines, like the exposed intestines of a giant. I heard a groan nearby. When I found the source, I wanted to believe I was hallucinating.
“Gyrefalcon’s parachute had caught in the drooping branches of the trees. The vines…” He shuddered. “They moved! Like the tentacles of an octopus. One had laid open his leg. The tree was consuming him. He was too weak to fight it.
“The man had tried to kill me, yet I could not let a good soldier die like that. I used my knife to hack him free from the vines.”
Eisenfaust paused for a breath. Ramona and Yankee Pride exchanged looks. She was surprised to see the veneer of skepticism had peeled away from the meta’s face. In its place was a deep seriousness.
“Interesting,” he said, still bluff. “Keep going.”
“Gyrefalcon faded in and out of consciousness. As slow as the vines were, I felt threatened by the jungle itself, and I had the growing sense that we did not belong there. Then I heard an engine roar above: Corsair’s Hellcat, trailing smoke. Pursuing it was a craft unlike any I’d ever seen—”
Doc Bootstrap stepped forward with a syringe dripping blue liquid in hand. “I’ve heard enough.”
“Nein, Doktor. Hear me out.”
Doc Bootstrap swung his fist at the German’s face. In spite of his metahuman reflexes, Eisenfaust was too surprised to duck. He staggered back from the force of the blow. The doctor lunged at him with the syringe brandished like a dagger.
“Whoa! Whoa! Doc, fer crissakes…” Ramona interposed herself between the doctor and the German. She tried to intercept the arm holding the syringe, but the doctor fended her off with his free hand. Yankee Pride wrapped his arms around the doctor from behind.
Eisenfaust stood stock-still, face upraised to the ceiling. “Something is wrong,” he said.
In one fluid motion, Doc Bootstrap elbowed Yankee Pride in the stomach, knocking the wind out of him, and then punched Ramona in the face. She saw stars.
The syringe darted towards Eisenfaust. He took his eyes off the ceiling for a moment. Without changing his posture, he stepped nimbly out of the way of the oncoming needle. “Too slow, Herr Doktor,” he said. His hand snaked out, seized the syringe, and stuck it into Doc Bootstrap’s chest. The doctor’s eyes bulged.
Ramona and Yankee Pride gaped at their impaled colleague.
“You are not who you claim to be,” Eisenfaust said in German. “They have come for me, haven’t they?”
“Ja, traitor.” Doppelgaenger answered in equally fluent German. His face twisted in contempt. “If it weren’t for your boundless ego, Echo would have learned everything by now.”
“Doc speaks awful good German all of a sudden.” Ramona held her bloody nose.
Yankee Pride flipped a switch on his gauntlet. Energy coursed through the circuitry. “Too good, if you ask me.” He aimed at Doppelgaenger, who had gone limp on his feet. “You gonna stay awake long enough to enlighten us as to who the hell you are?”
The doctor’s face relaxed. His expression softened…then his face softened, as if the bones themselves flowed like putty. His coarse features became flat and masklike.
“Oh, ja,” he said in a wet voice. “I would not want to miss your deaths.” His inhuman countenance tightened for a moment. Blue moisture colored the front of his jacket around the syringe.
“Call Security,” Yankee Pride ordered the guard.
“I’ve been trying, sir. Nothing but static.”
The shapeshifter laughed as they checked their comm units. No one could get a signal.
“What about the sonics?” Ramona edged away from the doctor. “Hello? Anyone? The fail-safe containment system?”
“Offline for hours,” Doppelgaenger said. He spread his hands in triumph. “I have brought the end of your precious Echo.”
“You and what army?” Ramona said. A deep explosion shook the building. The shock wave of the blast shivered through her legs. “Don’t answer that.”
The prisoners erupted in a chorus of fear, followed by the whoops of the alarm system. Yankee Pride bit his lip. His gauntlet wavered.
“Damn it. I should be out there.”
“Then clobber this guy first, for pete’s sake.” At that moment, Ramona craved her sidearm more than nicotine, sex or money. “Don’t leave us here with him.”
“Oh, right.” The gauntlet flashed and a burst of energy threw Doppelgaenger against the concrete walls. He collapsed in a smoking heap. “That should keep him. Kick him if he wakes up. Hell, kick him now.”
“I’m coming with you,” Ramona said. “Eisenfaust is the least of our worries right now.”
Yankee Pride paused to study the German. He tilted his head to one side. “You’re a tough one to read, mister. I had you pegged as a nutcase. Now I almost believe your crackpot story.”
“I wish to my heart it was fabrication. Now I have brought the wrath of the Thule Society down on you. I hope you can withstand them, or my story will come to an abrupt end.”
The distant groan of concrete crumbling interrupted them. “A breach,” Ramona said. “Whatever they’re using, they broke through the perimeter.”
“The armory isn’t far,” the guard said.
“Go,” Yankee Pride said. He turned to Eisenfaust. “Stay put. You’ll be safest right here. Remember, you’re still our prisoner.”
“I hope to remain so,” Eisenfaust said, bowing. “Good luck, mein freunden.”
Ramona and Yankee Pride followed the guard back down the corridor. The prisoners shouted questions as they passed their doors.
“Stay calm,” the guard answered. “The situation is under control.”
Whose control? Ramona wondered. Ours, I hope.
The guard reached the cellblock door first. As he reached out to tap in the security code, a blue glow shone through the peephole.
“Down!” Yankee Pride lunged at the man. The door disintegrated into pieces under a barrage of azure energy beams. The concussion was terrific; it shredded the clothing and skin off the guard, who died instantly. It threw Yankee Pride into Ramona. They tumbled back down the corridor in a heap. Ramona’s ears rang.
“You should buy me a drink first,” she said, trying to push him off her. He shook his head to clear it. “Get up, YP, damn it. They’re coming.”
They were kicking out the remaining chunks of steel-reinforced concrete with metal-shod boots. Any doubts she had about Eisenfaust vanished.
A dozen armored troopers stepped into the cellblock. The chorus of howls from the prisoners was that of trapped animals. Yankee Pride rolled to a crouch and aimed his gauntlet. Energy lashed out at the lead trooper, toppling him. One trooper stopped his advance to lift his comrade back to his feet, seemingly unharmed. The rest moved towards them.
Ramona decided to obey her urge to run for it. She levered herself to her feet. Ahead of her, Eisenfaust had come out of his cell. He had pressed his face against the grill of the cell door across from his and was whispering fiercely. Despite her fear, the detective inside her wanted to know what he was saying.
“We have come for Eisenfaust,” a voice boomed. “Ah, there he is now.”
The voice summoned images of evil, cruelty, and a weary, jaded impatience with the uncooperative world. The man possessing it wore jet-black armor with no blast helmet. Long blond hair cascaded down to his shoulders, like an Aryan warrior of old.
“He’s made new friends, I see.” The tall woman who stepped forward was dwarfed by the armored giants around her. Her black leather outfit evoked a fetishist’s version of a Nazi uniform, complete with cape and fishnets. “Heinrich,” she cooed in a mocking singsong.
Yankee Pride dodged back as the troopers grabbed for him. Their long strides carried them past him. Surrounded, he yelled and struck out with his gauntlet. Their own metal fists rose and fell with wet impacts until he stopped moving.
Ramona, alone, stood between the Nazis and their quarry.
The troopers raised their weapons. I deserve one last cigarette, she thought wildly.
“Allow me,” the Nazi woman said, drawing a wicked-looking pistol. A classic pistol: a Luger, in fact.
“Effi, nein!” Eisenfaust shouted.
Valkyria fired at Ramona’s heart with deadly accuracy. Ramona crumpled. She lay still as the metahuman woman stood over her to gloat. “America has grown fat and complacent,” Valkyria said. “You should have chosen your allies more carefully, darling.”
The nanoweave vest Ramona wore under her blouse had absorbed most of the bullet’s force. Her rib cage had taken the rest, and from the shards of pain when she took a shallow breath, she guessed she had a cracked rib.
Eisenfaust turned again to the cell door. Ramona thought she heard him say, “You must tell them.” Valkyria and the Commandant bellowed at him in harsh German, calling his name. He ignored them and spoke rapidly to the occupant of the cell.
The Commandant barked a command. The troopers directed their cannons at Eisenfaust and powered up with a cacophony of whines. As one, a dozen energy beams filled the air.
The blue beams tore up the walls, the cell door and the floor around Eisenfaust. Several hit him straight on; he made no effort to dodge. The force sent his broken form skittering across the floor. Ramona had a vision of his striking blue eyes and earnestness.
Valkyria cursed in German. Then the Commandant laid a familiar hand around her shoulders and pulled her close. She folded into him, leaving no question about her new choice of man.
The stray beams had destroyed a few cell doors. The prisoners peeped out, unsure whether they had a chance at escape. The troopers opened fire on the prisoners. One was too slow; his head vanished in a blue cloud. On the Commandant’s orders, the troopers went from cell to cell, blasting down the doors and shooting or pummeling the occupants.
The Commandant led a detachment of troopers to the cell of the prisoner to which Eisenfaust uttered his last words. Ramona tensed as the armored giants stepped over her still form.
“Come out,” the Commandant ordered the prisoner.
“The hell with that,” the man said. “You come in here and get me, sucker.”
Valkyria had reached the pulverized cell door. “Ach! Disgusting. What is that thing?”
A black, shadowy form slipped through them with a strangely casual motion, as if excusing himself from a crowd. Ramona recognized the prisoner, a petty thief who called himself Slycke.
He had chosen his nickname well; the troopers grasped at his frictionless, inky black skin without success. He paused before the Commandant, who goggled at him in surprise.
“Ain’t it funny that I get sprung from Echo by punk-ass Nazis?” He laughed in the Commandant’s face. “Echo’s gonna slap you sideways for this crap. Me, I’m outta here!” He spun on a heel and slid down the corridor like an ice skater. Within seconds he was gone.
“Stop him!” the Commandant bellowed. Blue beams followed the jet-black metahuman out the door.
Ramona kept still and prayed they wouldn’t check their handiwork. If I get out of this alive, she swore, I’m going to find that Slycke and have a nice long conversation with him.