Panels slide around in place, clicking and whirring as the suit reconfigures for launch mode. “Epic, status?”
They have surrounded the building. Tactical teams are infiltrating. The staff have all surrendered. Security has assured them there is no resistance. Our lawyers are on the way and the three team members on site have been notified of the situation. I am afraid Tia will be the one seriously disrupted by this, as she is a guest in the country.
Dang. I hadn’t thought about that. “When I get back from saving the world, Agent Brown and I are going to have words. This is just stupid.”
I agree. He may not see it that way. Upload complete. I am with you.
“Awesome. System check?”
We are five-by-five.
Despite what’s going on—the worry in my heart and the way my nerves are firing—this is still the best part of the job. “Punch it!”
The launch tube is one big mass-driver. It fires me at almost a thousand miles an hour before I even hit the air and my own Emdrives over. Epic locks the suit up. Even with the base Animetal improvements, I could still be hurt by a sudden shift. Once we’re in the air, Epic puts a window on the HUD showing me the base.
“Ha. They weren’t expecting that!” I can’t see the looks on their faces, but the craned necks of fifty FBI agents all looking up at once is a sight to behold. Winds buffet me as we plow through the sound barrier, the vapor cone spreading out around the front of us like a shield.
Amelia, I am detecting an energy—
The beam of light sizzles through the air next to me. Alarms scream as the heat from the near miss flashes over the suit. I jerk hard to the side instinctively, even though there’s no way I could dodge something moving that fast.
“What the hell is that?” I ask as I glance at our speed. We just hit four-thousand miles-per-hour and we’re accelerating at a rate of one-hundred miles-per-hour every second!
Unknown. It may be another super.
There are two people I know of who can fly that fast and look like a beam of light... and I’m pretty sure this isn’t Lux.
Aeon.
“Epic, can you broadcast yet?”
Negative, they are using a high-energy pulse to disrupt communications. We will have comms in five seconds.
“Fine, you want to play it hard, we’ll play it hard. Full burn! Let’s see how fast she really is.”
Kinetic shields reconfigure for maximum G protection and the ZPFMs whine as they spin up to full power, dumping everything they have in the Emdrive.
The airspeed indicator lags as we blast past six-thousand miles per hour. We pass the Karman line into space and the blue of the atmosphere vanishes.
She is pursuing. Communications restored. Calling Kate.
“Awesome.” I use my mental connections to the flight controls to edge us over into a curve heading East for Greece. At this speed and altitude, we can be there in minutes.
Kate is not answering, nor is Carlos. There is not any jamming, they are not responding.
“Dang. If they’re already in Pythia’s cave, then we can’t communicate with them.”
Aeon flashes past me again, her ghostly figure within the energy envelope is a perfect picture of a woman. She points back the way we came and holds out her hand with all five digits extended. Then four. Then three.
Oh. She wants to play that game eh? Fine. I don’t exactly have a countermeasure for her but I do have ECM. I grin. I have fantastic ECM.
“Epic, full power on the ECM.”
The HUD flickers as the ECM master alarm flips on and the suit starts pumping out incredible amounts of electronic noise. Aeon visibly flickers and jukes away as if she were punched in the face.
“IR Chaff!”
Similar to my smoke grenades, chaff is aluminum coated fiberglass particles. This version deflects light and radar away from the source, scattering it in a million directions.
Panels in my back, slide open and a half dozen packets explode behind me, filling the area with thousands of tiny particles. I pull a hard turn, flipping on my back and pulling ‘up’ toward the Earth. “Empty the cannister!”
Ten seconds of chaff explode out behind me over the eighteen miles we traverse in that time. “Cut power. Go cold. Full stealth.”
The suit reacts immediately. Twin carbon fiber heat sinks pop from my hips, flying off at a right angle from us, carrying away all the residual heat with them. We’re in freefall; if she can find us with no active emissions, miles of chaff, and no heat, then I deserve to go to jail.
Of course, that won’t help Kate. I close my eyes as we fall through the atmosphere, nothing more than another particle of space dust. Please don’t let her find us.
“Epic, can you see her?”
Negative. However, that does not mean she is not there. Just that I cannot find her on passive sensors.
After a full minute and almost one-hundred miles of separation, I feel like we lost her. “Make sure you send her a message when we get back apologizing for the face full of noise. Maybe explain to her the situation. She might understand, though I get the feeling she doesn’t like me very much,” I say with a sigh. I’ve only ever met her once—when she saved my butt in Colorado. She wasn’t in the mood for small talk then either.
Will do. I think it is safe to go active again.
“Roger that, let’s make some noise!” The Emdrive kicks in and within seconds, atmosphere burns around us and we blast through the top of the mesosphere on the way to Greece. The boom shakes me as we pass through the sound barrier and I’m grinning like an idiot. I know there is danger here; part of me is worried about Kate, Carlos, and Luke. But this… this is what I was meant to do.
Amelia, might I remind you we still do not have a countermeasure for Luke. If he hurts himself again, what are you planning on doing?
“I don’t need to stop him, Epic, just delay him long enough and then run away. He won’t hurt himself if it does him no good. If I’m not around to hear it, the tree doesn’t make any noise.”
I am not sure that is a sound analogy.
I pause for a second, a response on my lips, when I get Epic’s joke. “Oh my God, Epic, did you just use a pun?”
It would certainly sound like I did.
181
Delphi is surrounded by scrub brush and rocky terrain. It actually looks a lot like Arizona. Nowhere near as hot, but if I didn’t know better, I could mistake the two. I scream in like a fireball over the mountains west of Delphi. A trail of fire and smoke follows behind me as friction heats up the air around the suit while I slowdown from thirty-thousand miles per hour to a mere four-thousand.
Once we’re past the communications blackout, a stream of messages pop up on the suit—none from Kate or Carlos. Dangit all. The two urgent ones are from the FBI and our team’s lawyer. The FBI demands my surrender and is adding assaulting a federal agent to the list of charges against me. The one from our lawyer says essentially the same thing, turn myself in before things get out of hand. Well, things might have already gotten out of hand.
“Epic, make sure you’re documenting everything and please forward our findings from Costa Rica to Agent Brown. It should be clear from the footage that Strungel was either wearing or controlling the suit that attacked the PNW team.”
Again, I do not think he will easily believe you. He seems to think you can fabricate anything you need.
“He’s not wrong.” I check the map; only seconds to go until I’m over Delphi. I throw the suit into a hard brake. The drives whine with exertion and I slow down even more. Once I hit five hundred I drop like a stone, heading right for the entrance.
“Anything on sensors?”
Nothing.
The suit slows down further and I flip over, bringing my legs in front to take the impact of landing. The rocky terrain and ruins look exactly like they did the first time I saw them. I hit the ground with a thump and scan the area visually for a few seconds before walking forward. I keep waiting for Luke to le
ap out of the bushes and tackle me. He doesn’t. I place my hand exactly where Sydney showed me and press down. The ground shakes and the little lift starts down.
I’m amazed at how she hid this place for so long. When my head clears the ground-level a platform slides into place above me, sealing the hole and casting the lift into darkness. Only for a second, though. Eerie blue light fills the room from the small waterfall that provides the place with fresh water. It lights up the area like the sun is shining through it.
My heart stops. I’d hoped I was wrong about Luke. He wouldn’t be here. When I arrived Kate, Carlos, and Frank would already be back from their trip to the past...
Nope.
“Amelia!” Kate screams.
Luke holds Carlos up by his chest piece. Carlos is limp like a rag doll. Luke casts him aside. Carlos slams into the wall and slides down unconscious. Luke springs at me—I cross my arms up in front of me as his massive fist slams into my impromptu shield. I slide back into the wall of the lift, alarms screaming in my ear. The tradeoff of for the speed the suit provides is power. The wall shakes as we hit, and Luke’s distorted face fills my faceplate. He looks worse than he did last time. Veins bulge around his eyes and neck. The crystal blue that used to be so appealing has been replaced with a glowing red the same color as the Gem.
I bring my knee up with an Emdrive assisted motion, hitting his ribs with enough force to drop an elephant. He grunts, staggering to the side, and I take the opening. Leaping past him, I shoot a face full of IP Cannons at him. The sandpaper staccato of the weapons echoes in the room. I take a quick look around before landing next to Kate.
Carlos is crumpled in the corner; he doesn’t have his helmet on and blood trickles from his nose. Oh God. Carlos! I scramble around, landing in front of my friend. “Epic, tell me he’s alive,” I yell.
He is alive, but his vitals are sporadic. He has sustained massive damage to his head and neck. He should be dead.
“Luke, how could you?” I fire up the single particle beam the suit carries. I wish I’d had time to repair my combat suit. I still have the problem of stopping Luke without killing him.
“Luke’s gone, little girl. He was too weak, so I cast him out as Apollo did to me,” the not-Luke says. He’s right—it isn’t even close to Luke’s voice. More like a hollow, haunted sound, as if pure hatred and a bulldozer had a baby. I don’t believe for a second that Luke is really gone, though. He just wants to get in my head, and I won’t let him.
“Who the hell are you?” I ask, pointing the particle beam at him. Kate is smart enough to port away from me, moving to where Frank is hiding behind Carlos’ poster bed. The cave has changed from its original construction. When Carlos became the Protector, Pythia made it more like a home. A bed, TV, kitchen.
Not-Luke takes a step forward, cracking his neck as he moves and growing even more massive. “The Child of Apollo figured it out too late to help him. I was here before your inferior race, before the gods. When they came they defeated me, throwing me into Hades. Their remnant”—he nods to Carlos—“was the only one who could stop me, but now he’s dead. You will be soon, either here or the next time we meet. Regardless of what you do, the Earth will be mine once again.”
I need to buy some time to come up with a plan that isn’t “run away.”
“How did you know what they were planning?”
Not-Luke grins mercilessly, sending a chill down my spine. His face was never meant for hate. “I’ve spent the last hundred years waiting for Pythia to die. Do you think I sat idle? Since I awoke I have placed eyes and ears everywhere. Now that the wench creation of Apollo, and his precious Protector, are gone, nothing can stand in my way, including you and your toys. Your “science” cannot stand before my might!”
I don’t feel like correcting him about Carlos. Then my stomach flops. Wedged into the wall next to the waterfall is the broken remains of the pod. He’s smashed it into a million pieces. Destroyed it beyond repair. I’ll have to build another one, and that could take a few days. If the future Frank saw comes to pass soon... we might not have the time.
The distraction costs me. Not-Luke takes a swing at me, but this suit is fast and I duck out of the way. I spin around and slam him in the ribs as hard as I can. He just grunts and head butt’s me. I slide along the tile floor digging a deep furrow twenty feet long.
Amelia... he was here before the Greek gods? If so, he may be the Titan, from mythology. If legends are anything to go on, he may be unbeatable.
Stars fill my vision, and everything fades from red and black to normal. I can’t take another hit like that. However, I’m where I want to be. Next to the bed Kate and Frank are using as cover. “Kate, get Carlos out of here.”
She glances at me with a glimmer of hope in her eyes. I give her a nod.
“On it,” she says.
“What about me?” Frank asks.
I ignore Frank for the moment. “We’ve faced unbeatable before, Epic. I haven’t come all this way in my life to lose now.”
You better not. I am wholly within your armor, you go, we go.
Kate vanishes with a pop, appearing behind the approaching Luke as she scoops Carlos up in her arms then teleports again to the lift. Despite the damage it sustained earlier, the ancient mechanism still carriers them up.
To my relief, not-Luke ignores them. He doesn’t care about Carlos, inasmuch as Frank is the key. If he can kill Frank then we can’t go back in time and retrieve Pythia. I glance at the time-traveler then back to Luke. Frank could send Luke back and leave him there, like his car. But then I wouldn’t have Luke. I might as well kill him— and I don’t want that.
He’s had a hundred years to plan this moment... a hundred years... Oh.
“Epic, I have an idea.”
I know what you are thinking, it is a bad idea. I advise that you grab Frank and flee.
“Do you have a better one?”
Luke leaps forward, arms out wide like a linebacker, a snarl on his lips. I trigger the particle beam and flash it across his eyes for a heartbeat before sidestepping out of the way. He screams, hands flying to his face as if he could ward off the burns before running right into the wall. Cracks splinter from the impact and the whole cave shakes. I stumble backward, my knees catch on the bed and I fall, landing on my butt next to Frank.
“We need to go!” he shouts, pointing at the lift.
“You’re right. Take us back,” I say pointing at the ground. I grab and pull him on to me. “Back now!” I shout. A roar builds up in the room, deafening to the point of pain if I didn’t have sound dampeners kicking in.
Frank holds his hands on my head and closes his eyes. The weird shimmer happens behind him as a hole opens up, tears open in the air parting like water. Then we’re falling toward it as if gravity changed direction.
Then Luke hits us. The three of us tumble through the hole, the G’s instantly piling up. Alarms scream at me as the suit shunts all emergency power to the kinetic shields to absorb the G forces. Not-Luke’s hands clasp my armor and he desperately tries to hold on to me. I kick at his face, trying to keep him distracted and away from Frank. All he’d have to do is lay a single finger on that man and we’d be trapped in time.
“How far back?” Frank says over the rush of wind and the roar of Luke.
My glimmer of an idea blossoms into a full-fledged plan. It will either be awesome, or horrible, but either way, the future will be safe from Not-Luke.
“1900,” I say to him.
I kick at Not-Luke again, he dodges and slaps a hand on my shin. His fingers crush the metal around my ankle. Alarms scream as the suit’s integrity fails. His other hand finds the edge of my knee and starts pulling. Alarms warble as he peels back the armor protecting my knee and shin.
“I’m gonna tear you apart,” he growls, spittle flying from his lips like a rabid dog.
Time is a funny thing. If I understand Frank’s power right, and I hope to God I do, then he really does travel to our past. However,
when he comes back, everything he changed shunts off into another timeline, leaving the original time unchanged.
“Two seconds,” Frank says, his face a mask of concentration.
A roar, the anger of Luke, drowns out the rush of air and even the sound of my own heart. A massive tsunami of energy approaches us from below. A swirling vortex that outshines the sun and is louder than a train. I push Frank off me, holding on to him with one hand and letting myself slip down to wrap my legs around Not-Luke’s head. His hands come up around my waist and he tries to yank me off of him.
“You’re going to die here,” he yells as his eyes bulge from me choking him with my legs.
I rap my knuckles against his forehead.
“Consider your visa revoked. Get the hell out of my dimension.”
Then we hit the vortex.
Epilogue
Sunlight beats down, warming the exterior of the armor and shining in my eyes, letting me know I’m alive. The HUD is off, which worries me, but if that energy vortex was what I think it was, then I’m just glad we’re alive. Are we? Luke...
The flight suit is light enough that I can push myself up. Arms ache with strain and sweat beads on my brow, but I manage to sit up. “Epic?”
Nothing.
“Epic, retract Faceplate?”
Nothing.
The ZPFMs have nothing to do with dimensions, it’s all science, so they should still be working—
Lights flicker in my helmet and the HUD springs to life as my systems go through a test one-by-one.
Sorry, Amelia, I had to shut the system down to avoid damage. I am attempting to tap into the local networks and see where we came out.
“Oh buddy, I don’t think you’re going to find any wireless networks around here.”
With the power working, I manage to stand. My right knee actuator doesn’t respond; that’s where Luke tore the suit. Oh, please let this have worked.
Full Metal Superhero Box Set [Books 1-6] Page 97