“You are going to do this. Should I get Tragedian over here to explain it to you?”
The Punisher gulps. Looks at me. Slowly puts the mask back on. I nod approvingly, about as close to a father figure as this poor prick’s going to get today.
“What’s with the bandoliers? You don’t have a gun.”
“I . . . have no idea,” he says.
“You raised that already?”
“I did.”
“OK. Let’s go.”
And practically leading him by the arm, I nod to Hallory and Prof Kingsley and we move back across the rooftop and to the villains waiting to come into my huddle.
Zephyr 14.14 “Cold Darkness”
THE SENSATION OF dislocating space-time is worse over longer distances, and coming out of the fuggy Atlantic City atmosphere and into the compressed clinical treated air of the international space station doesn’t improve things. We are in a foil-lined corridor, no visits from Kevin McCloud out here in the cold darkness of space, just a view out an unsurprisingly rare pressurized porthole at a sight that might make a lesser man crap his pants, our watery blue globe peeking out the edge, a few thousand miles of airless space in between us.
Taking a moment to swallow on the zero gravity, I turn and clasp the Pal-mart Punisher’s shoulders to stop the guy shaking himself to bits, then I hand him over to Negator with practiced ease like we’ve been doing this good cop, bad cop routine for much longer than we actually have.
“Keep an eye for him,” I tell Negator. Then to the kid: “Just hang back and don’t get yourself killed. You’re here for the PR and to earn me a paycheck, got it?”
“You’re earning . . . money . . . for –”
“It really doesn’t bear thinking about,” I say and turn, striding along the cramped corridor to where the others wait.
I have to brush past Raveness first. Her breath is hot, sickly sweet on my cheek. I fear she might lean in and bite as I go past. Instead, she whispers, “We’ve still got unfinished business, you and me.”
I stop, not keen on looking cowed. Eye her up and down.
“Nice to see your teeth grew back,” I say slowly. “And your eyelids.”
I leave her growling, moving into the demesne of the Ill Centurion staring down commandingly from his extra six inches, hi-tech spear at an angle to avoid piercing the precious skein surrounding us. Crescendo watches me with a wide awful smile. The Tragedian stands back like the one-man freakshow he is, ragged hood masking his ashen face except for the sickly white chin, arms folded, wide-stanced.
“Just remember there’s not much more than a kid’s Mechano set keeping us from an icy death out there,” I stage whisper.
“My armor will preserve me,” Ill Centurion replies. “I regret the rest of you are so vulnerable.”
“Let’s just not fuck this up,” Raveness growls. “Get this crap done. Get out of here.”
“And you shall get us ‘out of here,’ correct, Centurion?” Tragedian intones.
Ill Centurion doesn’t answer for a moment. His suit makes a funny raspy noise it takes me a moment longer than the others to realize is the bastard’s laughter. Still no answer though.
“I suggest we proceed,” he says.
There’s an air-lock door ahead. Noises. If the vague sketch of this place I looked up on Google Images before we left White Nine serves me well, we’re just outside the main nexus, which is the only place where we’ll really have room to do more than swing a dead cat.
I nod back to Negator and his right fist powers up and he vaporizes the door and then basically all hell breaks loose.
*
SUFFICE TO SAY the Prime is fucking surprised to have his orbital lair invaded. On a level with Darth Vader pissed to see the Death Star blow up, Titan is actually sitting in a chair eating a bowl of macaroni when we come through the suddenly vanquished doorway and invade his sanctum sanctorum.
For a guy with super strength and speed, what’s less surprising is that his recovery time’s pretty good. At least he didn’t have his shorts around his ankles on Chaturbate. He throws the bowl, then fires up the red eyebeams only to check himself at the last moment.
“That’s right, motherfucker,” I say and very carefully send a zap his way that throws him back against a series of consoles, the collision, whatever it does, also making the lights dim momentarily. “One wrong look from you and we’re all floating in deep space for the rest of eternity – you as well.”
The Prime growls, throwing himself low and about to pounce, but Tragedian steps forward and splays his fingers wide in a suitably dramatic gesture. Screw me Jesus if the Prime doesn’t just stand there like a mesmerized chicken, chest heaving, a tiny blob of cheese at the corner of his lip as the bowl of macaroni, now emptied of its contents, drifts back slowly across the chamber.
“You’ve . . . got him?” I ask.
“He’s mine,” Tragedian confirms. “The boy has a mind like pudding. Weak as putty in my hands.”
Ill Centurion walks forward and my head is still spinning as I watch the uncaged villain literally poke the Titan with one gauntleted finger.
“Holy shit,” I say. “My plan worked?”
Negator comes alongside, mouth agape. We swap looks. The temptation to hug briefly surfaces, but instead we high five like escapees from a 70s TV show, too cool to show anything other than our total contempt for our own awesomeness. This is, to quote my daughter, just utterly fucking amazeballs.
The Punisher shuffles forward, relief almost audible – hell, I can practically smell it on him – as he joins our myriad goggling eyes staring at the Prime held fast by the Tragedian’s mind control.
“You promised us we were gonna have a scrap,” Raveness says, low in her throat.
“Settle,” I say.
I look from Raveness eyeing me up to where Crescendo stands, gaze locked on the Punisher in what can only be a bad sign. I flick my eyes to the Ill Centurion, then catch myself, as if this guy, a world-renowned megalomaniac, is going to be the voice of reason here. And just before I can open my mouth to say anything, Raveness throws herself at me the same moment Crescendo lets rip with one of his sonic howls that throws all of us – me, Raveness, Negator, our Pal-mart friend and Tragedian – smashing back down the narrow space-station hallway, the Punisher’s head catching on one of the numerous equipment nooks and crannies and knocking him out.
“Jesus Christ, you fucking retards!” I snap, more angry at myself for thinking this could even work, let alone being the architect of this cosmic clusterfuck.
I manage to lever Raveness off me, the crazy bitch trying to chew a hole through my neck as I scan about madly to confirm Tragedian picking himself up and looking momentarily bewildered. It’s unsettling, like seeing a parent fall over in public for the first time as age comes to claim them. The crashing and smashing going on back in the other room confirms my most immediate fear, which is quickly followed by another round of cursing as the Prime clearly decides fuck that when given the choice between mutually-assured destructions and defeat. Red beams chew past me, wall outlets ejaculating freezing sludge and air, gravity doing weird things, the rapidly shuffling air pressures playing like a kaleidoscope over my skin and my barometric senses.
Raveness gets her head in the way of me and my anger and I punch her hard, just once, my fist crackling with the power of a small, well, God knows what, but the effect is to put her lights out, no pun intended, as she caroms off the corridor wall and breaks a few more structural panels in the process.
My eyes find Negator and we share a mutual look of “holy shit did we really not see this coming?” Then I get some leverage to get up off the ground and rush back into the main atrium in time to see Ill Centurion swivel his power-spear and open up in a series of attacks that pretty much guarantee our doom.
The noise is like a wendigo howling as the far wall starts to crumple under the distorted pressure. Crescendo emits his attack back that way and for a moment I think he’s actually tr
ying to do something useful, the sonic energy basically a kinetic power that might counteract some of the pressure we’re under. But no, the madman’s just taking pot-shots at the Prime as he spins around the room, avoiding more shots from the Ill Centurion’s spear as he gets closer to me.
If I am taking anyone with me, it’s the Prime. Yet just as I am about to pounce, Raveness wakes up and leaps on my back and drives me into the floor, ribs smashing into a concealed metal step that really hurts far more than I could possibly convey, even with my super-dense physiognomy, and in between trying to elbow her off me and yelling for common sense and trying to track the Prime and cringing as the far side of the chamber starts to give way and there’s a palpable sense of the whole station lurching in its suspended position above the planet, Raveness bites me on the ear and I let loose a blood-curdling howl and reverse headbutt the villainess, driving her nose into her face and hopefully killing her, but I should be so lucky. Blood raining down the inside of my collar, I wrestle free of Raveness’s grip by slipping free of the jacket I stole several days earlier, twist on the floor and double-boot her in zero-g across the room, and for a moment at least, out into space.
You see, the far wall is gone. The fabricated atmosphere is sucked out of the room faster than a concert audience to a fight in the car park outside. But just as the full horror of her impending death dawns on the silly bitch, Negator flies out and grabs her, eyes closed against the risk of his eyes and tongue freezing fast, and drags her back inside the station.
I have no idea what she did to deserve that.
Momentarily untrammeled, I get to my feet and quickly collide with the Prime. He really is somehow a slightly more impressive version of all the other bastards who’ve been cluttering up our parallel in the past few days, so it is a struggle to wrestle him still, let alone actually do anything useful like break his arms and legs. We strain like Grecian wrestlers a moment, me snarling and him, this remote, placid, I’m-too-good-for-this-shit look on his face that only spurs my anger. He gets one brawny arm free and stiff-arms me back a pace and is about to give me the red stare of death when Negator comes in and smashes a blazing fist into the side of the dude’s head. It’s bed-time for the Prime, who slumps back into my arms unconscious.
Zephyr 14.15 (Coda)
There is no gravity in the chamber, yet there’s an undeniable sense of tipping that has me looking back in panic at the vast curvature of space beyond the destroyed wall of the main atrium demanding our lives. One quick glance confirms the other members of my erstwhile posse hanging tough, Raveness clutching onto some protruding cabinet and glaring at me with her face red with her own blood, knowing if the edge-of-destruction moment eased off even the slightest iota she would be back to trying to kill me regardless of the greater risks. I cannot for the life of you tell me why we still even have oxygen, but it barely rates a question amid the more immediate likelihood of death.
“Is he down?” Negator yells above the noise of the space station dying, the metal restraints, every part of it succumbing to Earth’s gravity well.
We’re being sucked in. In other words, we’re falling. In other words: we’re screwed.
My mouth is dry. I can’t form a proper reply.
“He’s out,” I manage to squeak.
“Nobody do anything foolish,” Tragedian says.
I only shake my head. Too late for that. My eyes pick over the wreckage to find the Punisher crouched, crapping himself in one corner, frightened eyes fortunately invisible behind the mask. I scan back around the room looking for helpful things as the screeching of nuts and bolts reach some kind of awful crescendo and then we are quieter, just falling, the whole station slowly rotating at the same time and catching the occasional view of the earth as we hurtle towards it.
“Holy shit, man,” Negator says. “I don’t know how we’re going to get out of here.”
“Centurion!” I bellow.
The hulking armored shape stands in the middle of the chamber, back to us, some trickery of his engineering meaning his stance is stable where the rest of us hold on to the furniture for dear life. The centrifugal force of the spinning, collapsing space station clutches us all in a stranglehold. Yet the old villain turns and looks imperiously at me, taps his spear and promptly vanishes. Crescendo disappears with him.
“Shit,” I say.
“Z-Zephyr!” I hear the Punisher call. “What are we gonna do?”
I pick through my memories for anything helpful, then turn and grasp the Prime by his shirt-front, heaving him up and shaking him until his eyes open groggily and gravity slams us back against a pylon.
“Where’s the thing? The Moonstone? Where is it?”
The Prime stares at me, supreme, uncaring. Defeated.
I growl and throw him down, pointing to him angrily.
“If you want someone to hurt, hurt this guy,” I tell Raveness.
She only looks back at me, surprisingly heavy lashes as she slow-blinks, predatory, something about the whirligig gravity, bosom heaving as she burns with nothing but the desire to find out what I taste like. Somehow ignoring all that, I growl, leap across the room to where the Prime was lounging before we trashed this party, and I start checking the equipment drawers, all of which have funky zero-g accoutrements so they effectively have child-proof locks.
“Whatever you have planned, I would suggest you make haste,” Tragedian says.
I glance up. It’s getting hotter. Our spin cycle has mellowed out. Flames are trickling past the open side of the atrium looking onto black space, suggesting very strongly to me that the Earth is on the other side of the station and fast approaching, us entering the atmosphere now, and friction, like any vessel on re-entry, starting to burn our errant space station, bits and pieces snapping off, ablaze, sparks trailing away. I curse, each hand like it has five thumbs as I start just randomly mashing the drawers until one pops open and there it is: a weird glossy black onyx stone not unlike a bowling ball, life within it, I don’t know how or why.
I lift the ball up. Ancient technology from a culture that never flourished to such heights in this parallel. And I have no frigging idea how to work it.
“Negator. Come here. Bring the kid.”
“Where’s the Centurion?” Negator replies.
I give him a good like-you’re-really-asking-me-this-right-now look and he catches himself, grabs Punisher and vaults across the room. Somewhat reluctantly I motion the same to Tragedian and Raveness.
“Huddle up,” I say. “This piece of shit is getting us out of here.”
The Prime looks at me. Truculent.
“It ends for you too if you can’t get us out of here,” I say.
More and more of the space station disintegrates around us. Negator like my best bud in the world getting in close, grabbing a good handful of the back of the Prime’s cape so he can’t leave us behind.
The Prime breaks. Nods. Begrudgingly puts his hand out onto the Orb and we all follow suit.
And vanish.
Zephyr 15.1 “Into The Quietening Day”
THREE MONTHS LATER. Yeah, I shit you not. That’s how long it takes us to work our way out of Titan’s nightmare Dreamtime pocket universe and back to our home parallel. Might even tell you about it some time once I can get the words to describe it or the craw out of the back of my throat.
It’s Autumn. Late Autumn.
Atlantic City is a grey frieze in a chilly rain. We materialize courtesy of the Orb in New Central Park, transplanted sycamores shrouding us from a kindergarten group in full-body puffer suits being walked on leashes by underpaid, disgruntled-looking young madams with a craving for their next brace of freshly caught cronuts.
The six of us who emerge are not the same people we were before the Prime Titan’s fantabulous Dreamtime device plucked us from the jaws of death athwart a space station trapped in an entropic orbit. Or at least our costumes are in worse shape. The Prime himself, still somehow alive despite the many temptations to the contrary, look
s at me holding the Orb. Holds out his hand. He wears a thick ragged cloak and his hair is unkempt, his beard grown out as long as mine but darker still. Blue eyes more like granite as they pick over me, sucking on his teeth in that annoying habit of his as the reality of our bargain sinks in. I reluctantly hand him the Orb. I don’t have it in me to fight him for it one more time.
“Such is life,” he intones.
With the barest motion he does the crouch thing and hurtles away into ignominy.
I would say something, but I am as much a party to this pact with the Devil as anyone else in the group: Raveness with her preternaturally fast-growing hair down to her waist, a rope clinching the armatii-hide cave girl outfit; Negator in the vaguest shreds of his once-so-stylish costume, the mask long-abandoned and revealing the boyish, sandy-stubbled face the ex-villain spent half-a-lifetime loathing for the strength of character it promised, but hitherto never delivered; Tragedian in shredded robes as always, however much they have been recycled time and time again throughout our journey; and my old friend the Pal-mart Punisher, naked but for a loincloth, the hardened resolve of the battle-forged protagonist now etched on his still healing face.
“If we can get to the Wallachians, I can get you some treatment for that,” I tell him, tired from playing Mother Hen so long, the role never a comfortable fit. “You shouldn’t have any scarring.”
“I’m not worried about it,” Travis says.
I nod. Aware of Raveness breathing hot on the back of my neck. It might be pleasant in the chill air if it was coming from anyone else.
“Well?” I say to her. “We’re home. You might want to let me get some sleep and a decent breakfast, but here’s as good a time as you’re going to have if you want to come at me.”
The statuesque villainess gives a snort. Imperious somehow despite the forever feral glint to not just her eyes, but her razor-sharp canines gently plucking at her absurdly ripe lips. In that moment I don’t know if she’s going to tear me apart or fuck me, and I don’t think I’m alone. Travis and Negator look away uncomfortably, the Tragedian wandering off into the park like a homeless guy.
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