by Logan Jacobs
I kept my Equalizer trained on him loosely. He looked ready to fight or bolt.
A slow clapping drew my attention back to Trillium. She lounged into the cushions of the loveseat and smacked her hands together with deliberate sarcasm. A chilling smile played across her face. I’d seen many a malevolent look on the woman’s face, but none quite like this.
“Bravo, Havak,” Trillium said and then stopped clapping. “You figured me out. It’s okay, Rolo, you can come all the way out.”
Rolo Toe-Massi bowed his head, almost like a kid in trouble, and shuffled over to stand behind Trillium.
“Marc, what the fuck is going on?” Fallon asked, confused as she tried to somehow put the pieces together. I understood how she felt. I was barely putting them together as I went along, but I thought I finally had an idea of what the picture was.
“It’s all been a set up,” I finally said. “Right, Trillium?”
“You tell me, Mr. Detective,” Trillium teased.
“Yeah,” I nodded. I chuckled and shook my head slightly back and forth as more of the picture began to come into focus. “You were the benefactor of the team Darry fired right before becoming our exclusive weapons master, weren’t you? I’d wager what they wanted Darry to do was very similar to the subdermal nano-armor. I’d also wager that once the armor is bonded to your atoms, it is practically undetectable, even to the matter-transmit system.”
“That sounds a lot like cheating,” Fallon piped up and fixed Trillium with her brilliant, and very angry, green eyes. “But what does she get out of that?”
“Ratings,” I continued. “If she knows certain teams will have an advantage she can program scandalous interviews long before the matches even happen. Orchestrate upsets. Take out annoying upstarts. She gets to write the narrative. I imagine the Team Havak defeat show was going to be huge.”
“You think quite a lot of yourself, don’t you?” Trillium insulted.
“Yeah, sometimes,” I admitted. “But not right now. Right now, I feel stupid and played. You concocted the whole super-stalker story to get Darry on board. But he figured you out, didn’t he? Which is why you had your little henchman there kill him. And then tried to make it look like a suicide. You didn’t count on whatever Darry put on that drive though.”
“Interesting theory,” Trillium sneered through a smile. “Too bad whatever was on that drive died with the TechnoWitch. Such a shame. Neophor was always good for delicious bits of information. Now that’s all she is… bits and pieces.”
“I think whatever was on that disk proves you and Tyche have been working together,” I said matter of factly. It was a bomb of a statement but I wanted to underplay to see what her reaction would be.
Both Trillium and Toe-Massi’s heads shot up and their eyes went wide.
“That’s the kind of accusation that could get people killed,” Trillium hissed. The gamble had paid off. I’d hit the target dead center.
“Trillium,” I chuffed, “I face death every single damn day. Like this would be anything different?”
“Fine,” Trillium sneered. “Then that is the type of accusation that could get an entire planet sold off to intergalactic slavery. Especially if the right people were told what you thought you knew.”
Boom. That’s was a bomb I had not expected to go off. I played over in my head if Tyche actually had that kind of pull. I didn’t want to believe he did, but a nagging voice in the back of my head screamed “yes he does, you stupid motherfucker! You willing to risk the lives of everyone on Earth?”
“Fine,” I sneered back at Trillium. “Doesn’t mean I can’t go to Har’Gitay with what I know about you and Darry.”
“Hahaha,” Trillium laughed. “Okay. With what proof?”
“You,” I replied with a steely gaze. “How about all of us head on down to the station house right now, and you can explain how Grizz didn’t kill anyone.”
“I have a better idea,” Trillium goaded. “How about I have Rolo here kill you all, and I tell the Captain that it was in self defense. A rogue champion and his underworld buddies tried to kill me.”
“No offense to Rolo,” I chuckled and pointed my gun at Trillium. “But he didn’t strike me as the fighting type last time we tangled. And, you know, I have a badass cat gangster and a rat ninja with me this time. Now, let’s go.”
I made a motion for Trillium to stand up, but she ignored me.
“Yes, that was unfortunate,” Trillium noted. “Apparently the nano-armor has a few bugs. After it is injected it makes some… drastic changes to ones DNA, and, it also needs a bit of an incubation period. I do believe that period is over.”
She held up a small remote control, no bigger than a car keyfob, and pressed a button.
Behind her, Rolo jerked upright and began to scream.
“You didn’t think I’d try the armor on myself first, did you?” Trillium laughed as she stood and began to move over to the fireplace.
Fallon, Baba, and I were all instantly on alert. I pulled my other Equalizer, Fallon had a sleek laser pistol in her fur covered fingers, and Baba had unsheathed his vibra-blade ninjato.
“No,” she continued, “after Darry had his accident, I injected the serum into Rolo here. See, he’s been with me since my days as a street urchin on my homeworld and is so in love with me, he’ll do just about anything I ask. Isn’t that right, Rolo?”
“Yes, Trillium,” Rolo grunted as he began to convulse standing up. “Anything for you!”
“So very sweet,” Trillium chuckled like a true sociopath. No, scratch that, this bitch was a full on psychopath. “Alas, the nano-armor really didn’t do what I’d hoped, but I’ll let Rolo show you.”
Then she leaned up against the fireplace and a section of the brick slid back, and she disappeared into a secret passage like something out of a Scooby-Doo cartoon.
“Man, I am sick of secret fucking passages already!” I yelled and made to run over to where the wall had reformed. I pulled up short as Rolo gave another scream and then began to transform before our eyes.
His skin rippled and bulged as it looked like a million ants ravaged his body, then he began to grow, almost like he was a balloon animal in the hands of a novice birthday party balloon guy. It was a freaky ten seconds but at the end of it Rolo was gone. In his place was a seven foot tall, impossibly broad chested, thick armed, blue-gray beast that very much resembled Venom from Spiderman comics complete with razor like teeth and sharp claws. Rolo-Venom looked at us with demonically white eyes and roared.
“Oh boy,” I muttered and opened fire on him.
Normally the high-ex rounds would have torn softball sized chunks out of his skin and turned him into so much Patrick Nagel looking hamburger meat. But the tiny explosions only seemed to tickle the beast. Oh, and piss it off.
Fallon squeezed off four quick bursts from her laser pistol and Rolo-Venom’s skin just seemed to absorb the energy. Oh, and piss it off.
It roared one more time and then attacked.
With a massive swipe of one arm it knocked Fallon and I across the room where we crashed into the mirror behind the wet bar. Glass and bruised egos fell to the ground.
“Ow,” I groaned as I slowly got to my feet. My reflexes and training had kept the guns in my hands, and I flicked both thumb levers to fire three-round bursts. For all the good it was going to do apparently.
“Now I’m pissed,” Fallon hissed from deep in her chest.
“Yeah, that’s what I meant to say,” I said as I tried to recover my pride.
Both of us popped over the top of the bar with guns outstretched, but we had to hold our fire.
Baba-Tadao flipped and flew around Rolo-Venom like Yoda fighting Count Dooku. His vibra-blade sang a song of potential death. The blade was actually doing a bit of damage as it sliced open long, puckering wounds on Rolo-Venom’s skin. Unfortunately, whatever the armor was doing was able to close them up Wolverine fast. It was like we were fighting a collection of Marvel’s most violent hits.
All while Trillium made her escape.
Fallon and I launched over the bar and closed the distance. Baba flipped away to avoid a massive, muscle armed swipe, and I took the opportunity to shove both barrels into Rolo’s gut and pulled the triggers. The concussive force blew him off his feet and shot him across the apartment where he slammed into a floor to ceiling glass window. Cracks formed like spiderwebs behind him but the window held. Which gave me an idea.
I aimed both my pistols.
“Havak, no!” Baba yelled a second too late. I’d already sent six high-ex rounds hurtling toward the window.
They hit the glass in seeming slow motion. The tiny explosions blossomed like time lapse flower buds and then the window blew outward in a spray of pebbled glass.
Everything froze for a drawn out split second and then all hell broke loose.
There was a massive woosh as the air was sucked out of the apartment. I hadn't really thought about it, but we were high enough that the entire floor was probably pressurized, and the window breaking was like a plane being depressurized.
Rolo-Venom went first, his hands scrabbling to try to find purchase, but there was none to be had.
Fallon, Baba, and I went next. We went twirling end over end out into the black night. I had enough combat acumen to manage to actually holster my guns as I flipped and spun through the air. Some of PoLarr’s flight training kicked in as well and I quickly flung my arms and legs out spread eagle to control my decent.
As soon as I did, I was able to get my bearings. Fallon was to my right, her cat-like reflexes served her well, and she was in a pose much like mine as we fell. I risked a quick glance back and saw Baba about two stories above us in the same velocity-stalling pose. Three stories below us, Rolo-Venom spiraled through the air like a comet.
We must have fallen twenty stories when Rolo-Venom’s arms whipped out and he clawed into the glass and metal of the side of the building. The next thing I knew Baba shot past me like a falling star on a bee line toward Rolo-Venom.
I watched as Baba reached the beast and wrapped himself around Rolo-Venom’s head. Baba was about to drive his vibra-blade into the back of Rolo-Venom’s neck when the creature’s claws found purchase, and it flung itself through a window.
The next thing I knew Fallon’s tail had wrapped around my waist, and I saw the hidden claws emerge from the tips of her fingers, just before she grabbed an exposed metal beam and we flew through the same broken window as Rolo-Venom and Baba.
The two of us landed in a heap of tangled arms and legs and rolled to a stop when we hit an exposed, cinder block wall, with Fallon on top of me.
“If only we had the time,” she purred right next to my ear. Her breath sent electric shivers up and down my spine and started to stir some delicious longing in my loins. “But we don’t.”
She leapt off of me and landed on all fours a few feet away, and I did a nifty back kick-up to get to my feet as I pulled my pistols out at the same time. Then she flung her arms out, grabbed onto an exposed metal beam, and we flew through the same window as Baba and Rolo-Venom.
Just in time because Baba-Tadao’s black clad form crashed to the ground where I had just been and slammed into the wall. He got to his feet slowly, and I could tell he was hurt. And getting tired. But goddamn if the little fucker wasn’t tough as nails. He readjusted the grip on his sword and stood between Fallon and I as we all faced off against Rolo-Venom, who, well, that asshole looked fine. Aside from the fact that he’d been transformed into a giant, razor toothed, rage monster.
“We need to come up with a new strategy,” I panted. My regen mod was having to work overtime to repair the bruises that were forming on my back from the fall and I could tell I was going to be super sore tomorrow.
If I lived through this.
“Oh, we had a strategy before?” Baba-Tadao said as he sucked in huge lungfuls of air.
“When you are not startling the hell out of me, I fucking love you, Baba,” I said.
“I know,” the little rat-ninja replied. “It seems that the vibra-blade can penetrate the skin for a few seconds, that is all.”
“Marc,” Fallon said. “You’re the best shot. I’ll try to distract him with some laser blasts to the face while Baba opens up a few slashes. See if you can get some of those explosive rounds into the wounds before they heal.
“That…” I started to say as I thought about it. “Is just crazy enough to work. How very Havak of you. Now I’m mad I didn’t think about it.”
“You can take it out on me later, after we blow this fucker to kingdom come,” Fallon growled in from her chest.
“Let’s do it,” I said as I gathered my concentration. The Ar’Gwyn tingled from my brain to every muscle fiber and nerve ending in my body. I hadn’t fired a single shot yet, but knew I wouldn’t miss when the opportunity presented itself. “Team Havak Go!”
We all sprang into action on cue, and this would have been the exact moment where, if this was a movie, the director would do some really bad-ass super slow motion effect mixed with bursts of high-speed action to create this frenetic sequence that would leave audiences drooling for more.
Alas, this wasn’t a movie, but I wagered we still looked pretty fucking cool.
Fallon cut right and squeezed off shot after shot from her laser pistol. The bright green blasts lit up the dark interior of whatever still under construction floor we had landed on like a funhouse strobe light. They glanced off Rolo-Venom’s head in great green splashes and he began to swat at them as if they were brightly colored gnats.
Baba-Tadao went with the full frontal assault and charged the creature, his blade spinning and twirling faster than the eye could see. It was as if he and Fallon shared the same mind because he was able to move out of the way just in time for one of her laser blasts to land home in the big monster’s face while he danced about and opened up probably fifteen, long, angry slashes in Rolo-Venom’s skin.
I cut left, and my hands moved of their own will to bring my modified Equalizers to bear. My fingers squeezed the triggers gently, as if caressing a lover’s breast, to send high-explosive rounds toward as many of the slits as I could before they closed.
The armor Darry had created, while not perfect, and quite honestly terrifying, was still damn effective. The slits in Rolo-Venom’s flesh closed almost as fast as they opened, and the rounds once again exploded on his flesh as harmlessly as Bang Snaps Pop-Its.
“Come on you son of a bitch,” I whispered to myself as I continued to circle the big creature.
The armor must have been adaptive because suddenly the laser blasts on his face no longer seemed to bother him and his hand snaked out as quick as a pit viper to grab hold of Baba’s neck as the rat-ninja attempted to leap over him.
“No!” Fallon screamed and charged Rolo-Venom with her claws out.
Baba looked right at me and winked. He then brought his blade up and slashed Rolo-Venom across the neck.
The creature yowled in pain and dropped Baba, who then fell on top of Fallon just as she reached them.
I pulled the trigger on my pistols right before he dropped Baba, and the rounds sailed over the rat-ninja’s head with centimeters to spare and slammed home into Rolo-Venom’s bright pink flesh seconds before the wound closed.
There were four muffled THUMP-THUMP-THUMP-THUMP sounds and bubbles of Rolo-Venom’s skin exploded outward without breaking the skin. Then the monster-asshole screamed in pain and stumbled backwards with its hands clutched to its throat.
Two of my shots had gone wide and crashed into a support beam right behind Rolo-Venom and the floor above us smashed down onto the beast and covered it in concrete, steel, glass, and odd looking alien furniture.
I risked a glance up through the giant hole that had just formed in the ceiling and saw an old, rich, alien couple in night clothes staring down in abject horror at the hole in their floor, and then I rushed over to where Baba and Fallon were.
Fallon helped Baba to his feet. It looked like his
left arm was broken because it was at an angle that arms shouldn’t be at, and the cat-girl had a big gash on her forehead and dark maroon blood matted the fur down most of her left side.
“You guys okay?” I asked as I holstered my pistols to help Fallon with Baba.
“Looks like I will be using my left hand to eat my supper for a few weeks,” Baba groaned as he smiled through what must have been excruciating pain. “Fortune favors me, Havak. I have been needing to work on my non-dominant hand training for some time.”
“You are impossible, you old rat,” Fallon chided him as we carried him over to a wall next to the rubble where we set him down as gently as we could. “You know that? You are going to be the death of me.”
“Not while I ever draw breath, musume,” Baba said and raised his left hand to caress her blood stained cheek. “Not while I draw breath.”
“Shh, you old sentimental idiot,” Fallon said as she struggled not to shed a tear. I knew they shared a close bond, but it was the first time I’d seen how close. If I remembered correctly Baba took Fallon in when she was a mere kitten after a rat-bastard gang boss, Irrus, had massacred Fallon’s family. “Rest until medical attention gets here.”
“This should help,” I said as I reached into a pouch on my combat belt and pulled out a small injection vile. It was a concentrated bit of Blue Betty that would kick start his healing and help with the pain. I pressed it into the flesh on the upper part of his broken arm and hit the button to inject the fluid.
“Ouch,” Baba said and then I could see him visibly relax as the pain killers took effect. “Okay, that is nice. You are a good man, Marc Havak.”
“Eh, I try,” I said as I smiled down at him.
“Don’t tell him that Baba,” Fallon chided with a smirk. “We don’t need his ego getting any bigger than it already--”