“She’s got a point.”
All except Chamber. He has his helmet off now and I recognize the short squat black guy from when I was interred with Night Angel and the others.
“You need more muscle,” he says. “I’m going with you.”
“Me too,” Windsong says.
I think Paragon and Manticore and Volt are also about to jump in and this just cannot happen. I step forward and wave my arms and inadvertently create a thunderous flash that forces everyone to leap back and apart.
“You’ll follow the plan,” I say through cutely gritted teeth.
Chamber ruefully cradles his silver helmet. Windsong looks back at him and then at me.
“I’m going with you,” she says. “And Chamber can get us in faster. Smarter.”
I exhale softly and look at the stranger wearing the armor I know so well.
“The black box still work?”
“Bet your ass.”
I grit my teeth and nod and lift my hand again before everyone can start sucking everyone else’s dicks and they rear back as one fearing I’m going to fry their eyes out. Nothing else could make me grin at that moment except seeing all these bold heroes act like school kids. I smile broadly and they relax.
“The rest of you form up into five teams and elect a captain,” I say. “This isn’t a fucking popularity contest. You’ve got literally sixty seconds.”
And I almost miss not having Loren here to ask me if I really am counting out one minute.
“Fifty-nine . . . fifty-eight. . . .”
*
I OVERSEE THE groups and there’s a brief tussle between Paragon and Kid Dynamo and then a slightly more protracted argument about how to name the different squads and when I try to be helpful by just suggesting the Greek alphabet we’re damned if even one of us can agree on what the first five letters actually are. The Latino mask Kid Dynamo unilaterally decrees the squads as “Kings, Queens, Jacks, Jills and those fuckers over there,” and snorts with laughter teasing Paragon’s squad, but I cut in again and since one of the fire teams is in fact all women (Lynx, Night Angel and Stiletto) I rename the last team Aces and everyone is happy enough and I am glad we can just get on with it.
Annie Black and the Feebs watch as the small teams ready for action and Taurus and Vanguard and Siren and Grasshopper add themselves to the mix under my stern approval and Annie and I face off a moment, two blonde fashion model war leaders, then I nod as gruffly as a she-male and stride back to where my daughter, Shade and Chamber await.
Tessa tentatively reaches out and touches me on the hip.
“We’ve got this, OK?”
“Maybe.”
“So confident.”
“You’re not going to call me dad, are you?”
“No. It’s . . . weird.”
“Are you two ready?”
Chamber’s voice sounds both monotone and pernickety in the helmet’s quasi-synthesized tone. I eye him up and speak loudly so Shade and Tessa can hear.
“It’s a shame you had to come with us, Chamber. We were rocking the female action hero quota.”
“Girl power,” Windsong laughs and agrees.
Chamber removes his helmet so we can see his sweaty black face. Straight-faced, he points at Shade and then himself and cracks a wide smile.
“You got us two niggers on the team though, so folks relax: we’re fucking diversity in the ass.”
I can’t help but grin. I imagine this is what the giddy euphoria before a suicide mission feels like.
“Fuck yeah,” I catcall and laugh and the others laugh.
And then we tumble into the black light of Chamber’s chest and fold in on ourselves and time and space until we are squeezed out the other end and so maybe it’s no wonder we feel like shit on arrival.
*
THE ATLANTIC CITY Stock Exchange has seen better days, but Chamber’s pot luck guess is on the money, and we’re no sooner folded out into realtime Euclidian space than Shade and Tessa immediately have the jump on some mooks, Shade punching one so hard he flies up and cracks into the fire-scarred stone wall, while Windsong’s nearly dangerously caught napping as she lets one of the guards grab her by the wrists, but she uses her momentum against him, luring the guy into a backhanded elbow strike powered by all the kinetic force she can conjure. The loud snap is punctuated by a short burst of modified Uzi fire and I fell the gunman with a beam.
The gunshots rebound off the Neoclassical surroundings, evidence of Fallout’s no longer so recent destruction, chunks of rock and masonry and precious architecture littering the ruins of the abandoned temple of Mammon. Two more goons appear atop a huge exposed flight of stone stairs and as I vault into the atrium to angle on firing back at them, Chamber turns and empties some concussive force wave that shakes the dust from the whole building and collapses the stone archwork above them. My egress turns into a timely dodge as blocks of stone crumble down the public stairs and Windsong and Shade lift into my wake.
The partial collapse reveals an entrance to another much bigger public thoroughfare above and we fly through, Chamber hot on our six using honest-to-God rocket boots as random untrackable gunfire pings the air around us and Tessa gives a woof, acknowledging an impact, though she fends of my look of alarm with a teenagerly grimace.
In the chamber beyond, dust sits like nightfall on the desks and phones and monitors of the abandoned cult headquarters known world over as the world financial system. But we are not left to ponder this museum piece for long. A tidal wave of debris comes crashing towards us collecting every item of technology or furniture in its path as well as tons and tons of riven stone and earth and dirt as the lady herself makes an appearance somewhere immediately off to the edge of this scene.
We airborne ones are less vulnerable to the sideways avalanche, but it’s disorientating to see the world turn into a kinetic whirlwind of the mundane, a collage of deadly intent torn from the pages of some office supplies magazine. At the last moment before the attack fills the whole world between floor and roof in here, I remember my darkness control powers and desperately conjure a huge web of black force behind which Windsong and Chamber shelter while the storm passes.
The moment we are free I take in the aspects of daylight surrounding us, the roof of this wing now gone, open to the elements and the nonsensically whirling gulls in the chilly bleak day outside, and atop the throne of the landslide’s carnage stands a tall, statuesque figures with ropes of loose reddish hair and a mask that conceals few of her so recognizable features.
Titanium Girl.
*
SHE MAKES A fist and the wreckage around us writhes, the plastic components not within the spell of her power as the rocky ruins stab out of the debris around us like giant fingers threatening to cage us in. Shade appears from nowhere to tackle one pillar like a true linebacker, disintegrating the living column before it can reform under Earthsong’s control.
Nothing makes any sense to me. For a long moment, all that I can think is basic images and word associations understanding this woman is somehow my mother from a parallel universe that no longer exists, fused into the one in which I was the child of the woman (women) I call mother. And I know none of this explains what “Aunt Jane” is doing here, now clearly in a completely different persona than the one she was known either in the world of The Twelve or here.
Here?
The rumbling earth diverts my attention to imminent survival as the huge animate blocks curl and smash into the ground as we each dodge aside. Windsong starts tapping into the grey weather outside and already that wind builds under her command to a whistling pitch, but Shade and me are more direct-minded. Shade is a few bounds ahead already, vaulting up the rubble-strewn staircase to the top landing now open to the elements as rain starts cutting down and becoming freezing sleet and the six foot-tall woman before us in the dun and swirling dark green costume gestures again and the fist of some buried colossus cuts up through the substance of the stairs like a ghost train, co
llecting Shade and flinging her two or maybe three hundred feet into the sky with a noise like a tin can hit by a car. I can’t let myself get distracted by my comrade’s fate unless there’s a clear way I can help her and for all her resilience I know most the time Shade can look after herself just fine. Backing myself, I launch up and over this latest obstacle, the rubble tumbling clear as it is released from Earthsong’s control. The villainess gives a throaty laugh and skips away down the other side of the slope riding a wave of debris I can only follow by hurling myself into the air, re-entering internal dimness amid the flash of Windsong’s lightning strike coming too little and too late. I tail Earthsong into a huge library-like chamber, the roof up here no more than thirty feet above our head, but such is her command of the building’s stone skeleton that the architecture itself is under her control and the room comes slamming in on me and I blast randomly, wildly in her general direction hoping to halt the attack and I am about to be crushed by the walls and rows and rows of bookshelves crushing in on me when Chamber appears literally from nowhere and sucks me into his chest and teleports again.
We rematerialize on the roof directly above where we just were, and grateful as I may be, I allow myself a brief collapse upon the guano-spattered shingles to heave a single vomity sigh before pushing back lank hair and making myself go upright like the very earliest Man rising to his feet for the first time in some mythical Dawn of Creation back when everything was new and made sense.
“We have to press the attack –”
“Hey,” I say tiredly. “I know.”
I aim between my feet to unleash a light blast which I allow myself to fall through, birthed into the gloom of the rubble created by Earthsong’s collapsing library trick. I spy her on the far side of the grey waste maybe a hundred yards distant. Again she gestures and the ground leaps to her command, but it is only a distraction so she can slip away through a doorway miraculously etched into the exposed interior wall of the next upright wing of the rearmost surviving Stock Exchange building, state-of-the-art stockbroker offices fitted into the hitherto unyielding stonework of the famous financial district. Earthsong leaves destruction in her wake as she flees past a swarm of her machine gun-toting henchlings who advance on us opening fire to support her escape. I throw up random blobs of darkness which take a bullet or two, and then I go to ground, actually flying full force into crash landing to get to cover as the riddled offices are a write-off. I desperately miss being Zephyr and feel the first real trill of physical fear as the bullets chirp and eat the flimsy furnishings around me. I’m doing the plank keeping low and scan behind me to see Windsong curled in a similar fashion clutching one bleeding shoulder.
I scuttle across to her as the various goons advance, reload and triangulate, but they’re still yards off and my baby girl’s life’s blood spatters the Ikea furnishings reduced to their flat-packed state.
“Tessa! How bad is it?”
“You used my name,” she says. “I haven’t heard you say that since you left mom.”
“Honey, I didn’t leave your mother. What are you talking about? You’re hurt.”
“Dad . . . Jesus, there I said it. Get your head back in the game. I’ll be OK.”
She looks weak and teary, but the dozen-odd foot soldiers close in on us. I nod and rise in one languorous move to appear standing beside one of the gunmen whom I clasp by skull and jaw and kill in one easy movement. He’s still slipping from my grasp before I reach across him to unleash a solar flare attack in the face of the next two gunmen. They’ve barely started screaming before I vault and flip over in front of the farthest gunman just turning at my appearance, slamming the assault rifle from his grasp and then driving him twenty feet away with a forearm blast to the chest.
A zephyr of my daughter’s conjured wind blasts through and knocks down two more goons and gives me the chance to scoot forward and get in among a knot of three advancing gunmen. I am in the zone. These guys are in slow motion by comparison, though this is nothing like the speed at Zephyr’s command. I palm strike the first guy in the jaw, sending him snap-flipping away as I twist and turn back and heel-stomp the second woman’s in-step. She shrieks and goes down under my axe-like downwards elbow strike, the same fist reversing to take the third goon in the Kevlar’d ribcage, force sufficient to flip him 360-degrees a dozen yards away and disarming him in the process.
Bullets rake my position, but they’re cut short as Shade crashes down through the ceiling and grabs and then hurls the gunman like a vengeful creature possessed, a black-skinned demoness from some Hindu nightmare. I use the distraction of her arrival to vault over a particular angular chunk of wreckage, high kicking another goon in the visor, and then I carefully twist, throwing darkness into another two of these asswipes. It flattens them, and the one who gets up takes a devastating right cross from Shade as she strides back to me and I nervously scan the immediate horizon of this disaster scene and the earth rumbles again, though this time I’m not sure why. A couple of unscathed zealots scuttle away into the understorey created by Earthsong’s last attack and I forge past Shade a moment only to remember my daughter injured behind us.
“I can’t leave Tessa here,” I say.
I would say more, except the ground back the way we came bursts into a column of debris to form itself into a hulking brute wrought of granite and bedrock and marble flagstones and electrical cables and other junk caught in-between. Maybe twenty feet high at a stretch, the golem swivels with a noise like God’s pepper grinder and I feel a fluttering sinking feeling in my chest that kills the momentum for me. Shade checks my crestfallen sigh and kens the stone giant crunching his way towards us.
“What the fuck. . . .”
“Earthsong has to be nearby to control it,” I say and pull myself to my feet. “I’ll scout.”
Coward’s option be damned. I light into the air and open my powers full bore on the earth controller’s giant puppet. The light burst works like a laser to slice deep grooves into the golem’s exterior, but I may as well be pouring ketchup on the fucking thing. Down below, Shade valiantly charges the giant’s leg and the hulk hesitates a moment before finding or having its center of gravity found for it, and the simulacra rights itself and brings down one of its colossal fists on Shade and she astonishingly catches it in her two much smaller hands and wrestles the offending limb away. Chamber rockets in from another angle and opens with the shockwave and the thing shields Shade at the same time the vibrational blast topples it. Indeed, Chamber’s cannon seems the perfect antidote to Earthsong’s control of the ground, since the waves seem intent on pulverizing everything flat.
The roof is half torn away here and the broody skies have succumbed to Windsong’s temptation, the rain spattering down in fist-sized drops, the black clouds churning above us, lit from within by massive thunderheads which flash like the electrical impulses of a vast cosmic organism, the downpour its excretion, the birds and trash and building supplies swirling in the cyclonic conditions all part of the nascent ecosystem. From above the building I can see the gaping crater where the revered National Library used to sit and understand what made Earthsong’s creature’s bones so strong. Already we have devastated about three city blocks and I scan the east wing of the ACSX for sign of Earthsong or her minions and instead nearly miss the attack from my blind side as a muscular red shape blurs past, radiant heat giving me instant sunburn down one side of Holland’s fair face.
“Aw, just missed you, chickadee,” Infernus jeers.
He reverses on a dime, poised to shoot back like some flaming arrow as he allows his native radiant energy to boil over and manifest in long licking flames scintillating like ribbons on the infernal breeze. I flay my right hand wide and a huge sheet of darkstuff materializes between us and then collapses in on the mercenary villain, keeping his hands full burning bright enough to dispel my encloaking efforts and letting me focus on more pressing threats.
There are shouts from below and I see Tessa stumbling, clutching her woun
ded shoulder and running with two more Earthsong minions and the katana-wielding Ruse on her tail. I don’t hesitate in the least, abandoning my resistance to Earth’s gravity to plunge at the ground, landing behind the Asian girl with a percussive thump as my doubled-together fists knock her out cold. The closest of the gunmen swivels, gun in my face, and I lift a phosphor-burning hand and fuse his unshielded eyes to carbon, kneeing the screaming goon in the balls as the other one scarpers.
I let the militia go so I can make sure Ruse is unconscious, but then Killswitch hurtles past, followed through the wreckage by Raveness, who gets one whiff of me and grins and bounds towards me, except she’s barely moving again when lightning peals out of the storm-riven clouds to illuminate her like the wrath of God or Thunor or Perun. I take in my daughter Windsong thirty feet ahead still clutching herself and looking pained, halfway up an incline of rubble and broken statues, the elements under her one-handed command, and then the sixty-foot structural wall behind her explodes and Shade comes tumbling through, pursued by the lumbering behemoth rudely fashioned out of the surrounding civic scenery by Earthsong.
I think I hear gunfire over the screaming wind, the walls of another part of the Stock Exchange sheltering us from the worst of the furious elements as Chamber N-doors in and puts Raveness down point-blank as she struggles to rise from nature’s electrocution.
The stonework monolith barrels down the slope of wreckage towards us and I see Earthsong rides its shoulder like some uncomfortable sports car model masquerading as a pageant queen. Shade picks herself out of the rubble at the elemental’s feet and runs before it, but she misses a step as the ground-floor foundations buckle and heave at Earthsong’s command, the stonework monster surfing the carnage and immune to the dirt and dusty chaos. Shade narrowly escapes getting buried beneath a few dozen tons and rolls free with her customary clattering noise, any lesser debris just more collateral damage in her wake.
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