The dust takes a long time to settle. Like survivors of a terror attack, most of us are up and wading through the rock and ash while visibility is still close to zero, hands to faces where masks do not do the work of filtering out the grime. George wordlessly asks to be released, slumping against a battle-scarred wall as I wade through the rubble and see masks around me moving debris, several red-white-and-blue-clad limbs protruding from the wreckage making me realize that however super many of us might be, there will be casualties from this.
Perhaps it is the lingering ideational aftertaste, but my first thoughts perversely fly to my daughter and to Beth too, hoping they are safe beyond the rim of the world, each on their own continents and untouched by this horror. A terrific and vastly unpleasant sadness grips me that is leavened little by seeing a fetchingly disheveled Cusp making her way towards me with a look of begrudging concern. Amid the cries and the moans, the trickling of rubble, the yells of the relief efforts, coughing, retching, the clamoring for assistance, and the plaintive sigh of the Afghan wind passing through the now exhumed lungs of the mountain, I almost miss the bleeping of my phone, somehow reset amid the chaos so it plays It’s Raining Men. I give Cusp a wry look as she reaches me and I scan the phone with exhaustion too great to even register anything at the unsurprisingly unfamiliar number.
I lift the phone to my ear, wondering and indeed hoping it might be a surprise call from Tessa, but instead I hear a woman’s frightened voice on the other end of the line.
“Is that Zephyr?”
“Depends who’s asking,” I say.
“Zephyr? That has to be you. It’s Alison Kirkness –”
“Oh-ho,” I say tiredly and pull the phone away from my begrimed ear, the moment too rich with contradictory feelings for me to get much in the way of schadenfreude out of the out-of-the-blue call or the clearly panicked tone in the Atlantic City mayor’s PA’s voice.
“. . . understand what I’m saying?”
“Can you repeat that? I had you on hold.”
“Zephyr, you ass,” Alison hisses. “I said I’m in the ACSE and there’s masked villains –”
“Sorry, the what?”
“The Stock Exchange.”
“And there’s who?”
“Zephyr, you have to come immediately,” Alison says with a gravity and conviction that is hard to fault. “There’s a hundred of us hiding in the subway and they’re saying the Internet’s down and the phone lines are next. I think I saw Killswitch and someone said they saw Fallout too, you remember him –?”
I puzzle at the phone a moment before realizing its dead. Then I say Alison’s name a few times because that’s what we do, right? It takes a moment to figure out how to call her back, but the automatic message from a dozen time zones away sounds distant and without much hope. I tuck away the phone, Cusp entering the periphery of my soulful look.
“What was that about?” she asks.
“I’m not sure, but something tells me Atlantic City’s under attack.”
“Again?”
I give a snort. “Yeah.” Then I look at her.
“You’re talking to me again?” I ask.
“You were pretty good in there, much as I might hate to say it.”
“I take it you’re talking about the mountain?”
Cusp frowns, then slowly kens my double entendre.
“Oh Jesus, Joe. You’re terrible. Fuck.”
“That’s true too though, right?”
She shrugs. “I wouldn’t remember.”
Except a small light plays over her face, the shockwaves widening amid her own realization, which erupts into a look of such joy and happiness on her gorgeous features that I am almost willing to forget every moment of mortal peril in the past hour.
“But I do remember,” Cusp says and grabs me excitedly by the arms, her mid-level enhanced strength exciting me a little too.
“You remember?”
“Holy shit, Joe,” she says. “I think I know who I am.”
I grin and smile, pleased for her. She gives me an impromptu hug and I barely notice her sudden stiffness as she gives a sharp intake of breath and steps back from me, hands still on my upper arms as if holding me at that length to double check.
“You OK?”
“Yes,” she says calmly, forgetting to smile. “I must’ve hurt a rib. Sorry.”
I look past Cusp to see the haze of the mountain’s fallout lessening by degrees. More familiar masks move past us like gorillas in the mist: Trojan, Hardjack, Moonlighter, The Lark. My eyes remain trained on the devastated façade of the mountain now like the ruptured carcass of a stone giant.
“Do you think they’re still in there?” I say to her. “Lennon and Matrioshka?”
“I don’t know,” Cusps says evenly. “I just want to get out of here.”
“Then come with me,” I say. “Our work’s not done yet.”
Cusp nods and I peel away, more intent on who else might be up for a rescue mission. In moments, I’ve gathered a small cadre including Twilight, Legion, Stiletto and the German guy Vorstellung, but St George is too weak to transport us. Just as I start to contemplate the logistics of a transcontinental flight home and the time that’d take, I spy Portal picking his way through the ruins toward us.
“I hear there’s a problem,” he says. “Need a ride?”
“Yep,” I nod, almost fond for the doofus. “Atlantic City’s in trouble.”
“No rest for the wicked, as they say,” Twilight chimes in.
We all chuckle – all except Cusp, anyway – and Portal opens a gateway and we plough on through for the familiar daylight of home.
***
ZEPHYR VI
Zephyr 20.1 “Terminus”
IT’S AN AMAZING thing to me that no sooner do I step down from the high alert of Afghanistan than my thoughts return like starving rats to the carcass of my past, nibbling and worrying away at how things might’ve been done differently – as if I were a man possessed by past regrets instead of the sort of man of action we might all wish we’d become. I guess that’s why I like to stay busy – to keep that past in abeyance, however much that means hurtling through the Now like a missile focused on a future which never quite arrives the way it’s expected.
My surprise companions and I file out from Portal’s sizzling green doorway in space-time, drinking in the crepuscular light of Atlantic City under attack like we are Japanese tourists dismounting from a tour bus, disoriented and distracted by the battle scene’s unique je ne sais quoi. With Twilight on my left and Cusp on my right, I survey the charred and broken civic architecture of the Atlantic City Stock Exchange, the dented bronze statue of some eighteenth century mogul-type laying twisted amid blasted chunks of concrete and charcoalized detritus, a child’s dropped school bag spilling curriculum nearby like some bizarrely personal metaphor of the whole experience.
A noise akin to gunshots echoes through the forum, smoke ankle-height like a natural extension of this season’s fashion, my other comrades or partners or whatever emerging from the portal behind us, and the eponymous green-clad figure who brought us here in record time steps through and zippers up before joining us in our shared look of befuddlement.
The shadows of the Stock Exchange and the surrounding neo-Classical icons, relocated years back from the ruins of old New York yet now sit eerily deserted, the square like a theatre after the lights are shut off. But as we advance cautiously into that no man’s land of neutral space, small arms fire sprays toward us, causing my companions Portal, Legion, Stiletto and the German mask Vorstellung to scatter. A single round clips my left shoulder, me barely losing step as I jog forward to a collapse of fallen arches, the rubble a convenient hidey-hole for the two jokers I surprise nesting therein, flak armor and full helms on their Army green-and-black commando gear granting them anonymity from my sudden inquest.
“OK, who are you two clowns?” I bark, counter-intuitively karate chopping the first one in the throat so he can’t answer even if
he wants, dropping to his knees choking as I manhandle away the barrel of his partner’s gun.
Their weapons are quasi-futuristic. Imagine guns designed by a cock-obsessed science fiction writer and you have half the picture. The blocky, heavy-duty plastic weapon makes a pleasant clattering noise as it falls to the pavement and I swiftly deliver the same hand to grasp the gunman by the throat and toss him twenty yards from me.
More gunfire rakes my location. I grab the choking guy and pull him down with me into cover as the heavy rounds spak and spatter amid the ruins, me flipping the dude’s helmet off to see a startled and groggy-looking guy with a wooden plug in one ear and pristine dreadlocks immediately escaping confinement. He looks at me in that punch drunk manner common to mooks the world over as I light up two fingers and stab them into his neck.
“Wake up, shit-for-brains,” I growl.
“Wh-what?” he bawls after a moment to stutter. “You can’t do that! You’re a superhero.”
“Let’s not test that theory,” I tell him, alert but not alarmed as the gunfire crescendos into a veritable barrage, then peters away once more.
“Tell me who you are and who else you’ve got here,” I say.
As the goon stammers, Cusp slides into cover alongside us and shoots him an expectant look which I redouble, nodding encouragement for the goon to fess up lest I make him shit his pants.
“We’re the . . . We’re the . . . We have –”
Losing my patience, I Taser the guy again, and as he lays twitching, I stick my head above the parapet and quickly scan the landscape beyond, noting a couple more of these well-equipped drone soldiers breaking from distant columns and into the lee of a side building that looks more mausoleum than public office.
“Who’ve you got in there?” I ask the guy. “I heard Killswitch and Fallout. Spill. You know you’re gonna have to.”
“Or . . . or what?” he pants.
I shrug by way of reply.
“You created this war zone,” I tell him. “You think our city fathers are gonna give two hoots if you don’t make it out alive?”
“You can’t do that,” the henchman stammers some more. “It’s unethical. You’re a –”
“Shut it.”
I give the overhanging lintel an exploratory prod to see how easy it might topple down, at the same time putting my hand in the middle of the goon’s armored chest, pinning him in place like a bug on the slab.
“Oh my God,” he says, panicking. “You can’t be serious.”
“Names,” I say. “And make it snappy.”
*
OUR SUDDENLY COMPLIANT and newfound friend maps out how Killswitch isn’t alone in the attack. According to this guy I’ll call Jeffrey because that’s what he said his name is, we have six other masked villains. Despite his college level vocab, Jeffrey can’t or won’t identify all of them except to confirm Fallout and a description that matches my old buddy Infernus. A “beast lady,” an Asian chick with a sword, a crazy dude in a cloak, and a woman with a fish bowl on her head are the best descriptors he can otherwise manage.
“Well shit,” I say in conclusion.
It goes well quiet beyond us as I swap a look with Cusp, trying out a little exploratory eye-fucking she pertly avoids, half her face wrapped in shadow generated by her weird chiaroscuro abilities. Into the momentary peacetime comes the German guy Vorstellung, more resembling a caped philosopher than a superhuman despite the little blue flame of psychic potential that hovers most of the time in front of his tall forehead.
I no sooner ask, “Where are the others?” than Portal’s portal sizzles into existence beside us and he and Twilight and Stiletto and a lone copy of Legion step through. I take another quick recon over the broken statuary, drinking in the battle-scarred public square, and almost instantly there’s an absolutely motherfucking huge explosion off a few city blocks behind us that’s big enough to make even the most stoic hero flinch, Portal looking like he’s just pissed his pants as we crouch and cast about for immediate dangers.
“OK, what the fuck was that?” Twilight asks.
Legion snickers. “Can’t you, like, consult the spirit realms or something –?”
“Who the fuck do you think I am, guy?”
Legion shrugs and splits into two, the original nudging his copy and making a fairly insolent “go-and-see” motion he doesn’t even bother to vocalize. The put-upon clone sighs – a slave to some unspoken pecking order he and all his copies mysteriously obey – then he trots off back in the direction of the flaming chaos now obscured by the intervening streets.
“What’s back that way?” I ask anyone.
“The New Wall Street terminus,” our friend Jeffrey says at once.
All eyes swivel on him and he blanches, nerdiquette or something demanding he fess up the source of his knowledge.
“Killswitch has a second squad over there,” he says.
I roll my eyes and turn back to the others, but Twilight’s already generating an aura of command I don’t feel like messing with. He taps Portal on the shoulder, and to his credit, the skinny mask nods and creates another one of his signature doorways, and then he, Twilight and Vorstellung disappear into it.
“OK,” I ask turning back to Jeffrey, thumb inclined to the ACSX over yonder. “You’re telling me Killswitch is in there?”
But before the geek can answer, there’s a blast of blue-hot energy that obliterates our shelter, erasing Jeffrey with it and throwing the rest of us back, Stiletto going practically invisible as her power’s defense kicks in, Cusp emitting a counter-burst of light that clears to show a red-armored figure hovering before us, that same ghostly blue energy leaking like it always does from between the plates of his containment suit.
Killswitch: engaged.
Zephyr 20.2 “Pyrrhic Victory”
KILLSWITCH’S TROUBLES STARTED when he was a kid, or so the story goes. He developed the ability to absorb some types of energy and redirect them through his body, but the sting in his mutant tail was never having an off-switch. For years he bounced between institution after institution, being born to wealthy parents sparing him the ignominy of self-imposed exile to the fringes of society suffered by so many other, less spectacular versions of mutantkind. The toll of those early years led to his nascent criminality, but not before my old pal Doc Prendergast devised an armored body suit that could contain and help him direct his powers – and being Doc Prendergast, he figured why not make it a little more natty, and you know, just for shits and giggles, build in state-of-the-art nanofiber armor and make the whole thing look like an evil Kabuki robotic.
And so, larger than life and five times as terrifying, the armored figure hovers over us amid the clearing debris field, steam leaking from his gauntleted hands, plates along the bottom of his boots open to admit the blue phosphorescence of his power to suspend him glaring at us through the faceplate of his stylized helm.
It’s been a while, but Killswitch isn’t going to forget me any time soon. Last time we tussled I dropped an Atlantic City tour bus on him and used electrical cables to tie him down until White Nine arrived, but I guess it’s been a while and our custodians of peace for whatever reason deemed him fit to walk (or perhaps I should say float) free.
“Zephyr,” Killswitch says, voice amplified and more threatening than it even needs to be through the helmet.
There’s no point delaying this dance. Rising from my defensive crouch, my own hands become claws lit from my energies within.
“I’ll take Killswitch,” I say to Cusp, Stiletto and Legion. “Get in there and make sure all those stockbroking assholes are safe.”
Killswitch looks happy enough at the arrangement, still focused on me as the others break ranks and take off around him.
I hurl a huge wave of electricity at the hovering villain, the crackling spray hitting Killswitch a split second after I remember it will have practically no effect on him. As if to be gracious, he drops to the ground in a wide-legged stance, shrugging off or per
haps even drinking in the attack as he throws up his palms – and I have just an instant to see the plates in his gauntlets sphincter open, then his own reply scourges the air at me as I leap into the sky, accelerating away hard with Killswitch in hot pursuit.
Mid-air, I hit the brakes and turn into the villain’s chase, shoulder-barging him so that we smash together and spring apart like wind-up toys. Maybe it’s my latent psionics, but despite his face-plate, I feel like I can feel Killswitch’s imperious glower.
“I don’t know what you think you’re doing, dickhead,” I snap at him. “I’m the one trying to stop you, so why give chase?”
“Payback.”
So saying, Killswitch again throws his open palms up at me and I swerve aside from the twin beams that flash beneath the darkening sky. Yet I’m surprised when another opening appears in the middle of his chest armor as he turns, tracking me as I move, and a foot-wide beam punches me out of the sky like a dud missile.
I tumble a few hundred yards fighting disorientation and concussion, but in the end I manage to swoop low across the civic rooftops catching sight of a sea of police flashers beyond the far side of the stock exchange, the descending night fighting a wall of flames rising beyond distant Neo-Classical architecture in the direction of the subway. I can only hope my teammates are doing what’s necessary as I vector back towards Killswitch only to see the mad bastard streaking away with the blue glow blasting from his feet as well as his hands.
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