Blackjack Messiah

by Ben Bequer

  Blue-Eyes ran towards me, but my eye was on the cell. The other three Chosen had stripped Armada of her blanket and were taking turns jabbing at her with the cattle prods. I could hear her grunts, but she didn’t scream. I got to my feet as Blue-Eyes powered up. I got a short running start and leaped at him. I was weaker but physics was physics and the jump was more than enough to tackle him before he could fire. I landed on top, making sure to push my shoulder into his diaphragm as we hit the floor. I heard the air escape his lungs as he grunted it out.

  I tried to get a better position on top of him, but he bucked his hips a couple of times, trying to shake me loose. I inched forward across his abdomen until I didn’t feel the thrusts as strongly. He stopped bucking and clipped me in the chin with a jab that nearly sent me reeling. I saw stars, but wreathed in the middle of them was his face, which I dropped an elbow into, trying to put as much weight behind it as I could. He tried to get his guard up, but I was a little too fast, the elbow catching him the sweet spot just above the eye. The skin split like an overripe banana and blood poured from the cut. It was iridescent blue and the flecks of it that stuck to my arm burned.

  He snarled up at me and threw a combination of punches that I blocked easy, but the last one was a feint, his wide punch turning into a lightning fast flat-handed strike that caught me in the throat. Digging his fingertips into the notch just below my Adam's apple, he did a quick flip of the hand fired off his powers. I gagged at the initial attack, but I thought his blast knocked my head off. He shook me off and rolled to his feet. I coughed and hacked up a wad of blood, spitting it out as the tip of his boot caught me flush in the cheek. More blood flew out of my mouth in a stream and I fell onto my forearms.

  I waited for a boot to the ribs but felt a shift in pressure that caused the hairs on my arms to stand on end. He was revving up for another blast. I played hurt and looked up at him. His eyes were leaking energy, the middle of his face was awash in it. He glowed brightly enough to cast a glare into the empty black cell that had lost power. He was screaming in bliss, lost in the power. He cut loose, and as the pressure built around me, I whipped a hand out and caught him by the leg.

  The blast was excruciating, and unlike Armada, I felt no shame in screaming. The leg snapped in my grip as Blue-Eyes was basically wish-boned by his own power. I held onto it tight as we flew through the air with the intention of slamming him into the ground when we landed, but I had zero control. My grip jarred loose on impact, and the whipping wind in my ears gave way to shrieking.

  Everything hurt as I got to my feet, but I was still in better shape than Blue-Eyes. Both legs protruded from his hips at odd angles, and while the leg I grabbed was mostly intact, the other one looked like someone had tried to reshape it into a lightning bolt. Bone poked through his pants leg, blue blood sizzling as it burned torn thread. A large blue splotch spread out from behind his head as well. His scream died down to gurgling whimpers as the blue light faded from his eyes, revealing a pair of empty sockets staring at nothing.

  I looked up to find the other Chosen and Armada were gone. The big door was still open, but sliding closed. Nobody else came through, and if I was right, their cameras were not working. I started running, my eyes drawn to the other cells as I did. There were still about a dozen supers trapped here, some of whom I knew. I couldn’t worry about them. Rule number one in problem-solving: tackle one thing at a time, step by step, and if you're lucky, you're alive at the end of the whole thing. That's how I handled big brawls. I picked a guy and made plans to dismember him. Then I chose number two and so on. Once it all started, I tried my hardest to keep the original order.

  I squeezed through the gap in the door and into the control room. A Chosen was sitting at a console, busy at the computer. Whether he was the same, or a new one, I couldn't tell. The Chosen were so uniform in size and shape you'd think they were all cousins. All of the monitor screens were blanked out, and techs sat at keyboards typing rapid fire. None of them seemed to notice me.

  I thought about sneaking around them, but a screen in my eye line blinked to life, showing Armada being loaded into one of the collection tubes by the same Chosen who grabbed her. The image lingered a moment, then went black. The direct approach it was. Taking a running vault, I drove myself into the Chosen at the control console. He looked up at the last second as I crushed him back into the chair. We flipped over and crumpled to the floor. The guy was bruised and out of breath, but still managed to get back on his feet faster than me.

  As I scrambled to my feet, he threw a kick that sent me flying into another bank of monitors, nearly crushing the tech who worked there. This guy was no joke. It was more of a pushing kick than an actual strike, but I struggled to catch my breath. Given a little space, the Chosen took a moment to gather himself, holding his ribcage.

  There were more Chosen in the next room, but he stomped towards me intent on fighting alone. I let him come to me, and once he was at mid-range, he squared up into a basic fighting stance. It was simple and effective: left leg forward, body in a slight crouch, elbows tucked in to protect from the body shot. I knew a lot about technique from training with Apogee, little from practical experience.

  I adopted a similar stance, the first I’d learned from Focus. She had taught me patience, and I exercised that now, waiting for the Chosen to make the first move. Of course, all of my training thus far had been predicated on the idea that I could afford to take a couple of shots while adapting to whatever my opponent was doing. That wasn’t the case here, so I’d have to learn quick. He had a strange affectation, almost a nervous nature to his stance, where he shifted from side to side incredibly fast as if he were trying to confuse me. The guy didn't need to do anything but throw a jab to confuse me.

  He led with a snap front kick that caught me right under the chin, and I stumbled into one of the consoles, tearing it from its moorings and falling into a tangle of wires that sparked and caught fire. I lay there a second as the fire spread across the console, letting the smell of burning plastic lick at my nose, assessing. Strong kick, but I wasn’t really hurt. I stood, swathed in fire and walked toward him.

  "I'm Blackjack," I said. "Fire doesn't hurt me, kid."

  The Chosen went from genuine amazement to instant rage and threw a combination of punches, each one catching me in the face and hitting successively harder than the last. I tried to defend, but five of the blows made it through my feeble guard. The last one drove me to my knees, and the Chosen relented. Taking a step back, he rolled his shoulders and stretched. “I’m going to enjoy feeding you to the machine,” he said.

  I realized that fighting defensively, as Apogee had often tried to teach me, was going to get me killed. I was bigger than this guy, probably stronger and tougher, but he had technique and years of experience. I only knew how to defend and counter-punch ineffectively, turning me a big, slow target. He'd hit me, slink back and avoid my counter, only to move in again. We'd do that dance until I was down. Time to change the game. All I had to do was make him think I didn't know better.

  I faked a big punch, and he flinched. With only a moment until he rushed me, I reached down and ripped the grating off the ground, wrapping it around my right hand. He lunged in with a snap kick that pitched me forward, but I used the momentum to create a larger gap between us, giving me time to grab more metal.

  And now I had gloves.

  He smiled, shaking his head as if it didn't matter.

  We were going to find out.

  The Chosen moved in again, going back to his side to side shuffle. I stood still, in a guard position similar to his and waited. He slid ever so slightly to his right and threw a lead right at my head. I brought my steel-gloved hands up and let him hit me. I knew the lead right had to be part of a combo, in this case, a left hook following up the lead right. Instead of bracing myself against the punches, I leaned into them and was rewarded for my ingenuity with the sound of bone snapping on metal.

  He recoiled, holding his broken hands ou
t, shaking with the pain. I didn't let him get his bearings, sliding in for a massive uppercut. I heard a pop as his head spun too far around, the blow driving him into the hewn rock wall. There was a wet squelch as his skull gave way under the combined force, followed by a splatter of blood.

  I turned around and saw the rest of the lab technicians paralyzed, staring at me. None of them seemed to have powers but I was tired. Fighting my way to this point had taken a lot out of me and there was still so much to do. The metal grates created a pretty effective pair of bracers, for as long as they would last. Every advantage I could get. Speaking of which, “Show me the lab.”

  None of the techs moved, but the same screen that had shown me Armada moments before came to life again. She was in the tube and I could feel the machine powering up as a tingling deep in my inner ear and a minute vibration in the soles of my bare feet. “You got any tricks, buddy, now is the time.”

  Tension bled off the techs, but they were too scared to move. They must have thought I was crazy. Nothing happened for long enough that I doubted myself. Then tendrils erupted from the consoles wrapping around my bracers and the collar around my neck. Using them as anchor points, the tendrils dragged steel and aluminum as well as wires and computer components, sheathing me in it from head to toe.

  The process took ten seconds at most, but I went from half-naked, to fully armored juggernaut with a huge tower shield attached to my left forearm and a ridiculous looking hammer integrated into my right hand. The weapon was almost six feet long, with a head the size of a car engine.

  A screen flashed to life on my right forearm, appropriated from a cell phone. The screen was cracked in various places, but it buzzed within the armor, and I could feel the plates settling around me, the result looking like a cobbled suit of medieval scale armor. More than settling though, I could feel the armor whir and vibrate, as if it had a will of its own.

  It did. It was, in fact, alive. And it spoke.

  "Hello, Blackjack," Haha said. "Did you miss me?"

  I almost cried.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  Mr. Haha 3000

  His voice was the same mixture of disembodied carney barker and off-his-meds, raging psychopath, playful one moment, murderous the next. Haha and I had been through a lot, most of it bad, but at that moment none of it mattered. He was there when I needed him the most.

  "Before you ask," he said. "I have already disengaged all forty-seven explosive devices spread around your sibling's home, office and other properties, as well as an additional twenty-one placed in his wife's car and office and the children's schools."

  "How are you even here?”

  “I learned Primal’s intentions for you and infiltrated his systems here and on Baron Blitzkrieg’s blimp. A simple matter as neither of them has much in the way of security.”

  “What took you so long, dammit!”

  “I was waiting for an opportune moment. It never arrived.”

  “Well, I’m glad you’re here, now. I owe you, buddy.”

  "I think we're past that, Blackjack - the debt/debtor relationship, and I think you know what I am talking about."

  The techs were all still frozen in place, and it occurred to me that they might not be able to hear Haha at all. I probably sounded like a guy who really loved his armor. “Time to go,” I said, running for the lab.

  I moved easily in the armor, thunderous footfalls eliminating any chance of this being a stealth mission. I felt the thrum of the machine through the armor, followed by that jet engine whine. A large metal door separated the lab from the control room, but it wasn’t built to stand against a battering ram like me. The door survived the impact, but the stone around it crumbled. I kicked the giant piece of metal out of my way and stepped into the lab.

  The three Chosen were on the high catwalk with Snyder, who directed his techs with frantic hand movement as I moved towards the collection area. The Chosen jumped off the catwalk in unison, landing a couple of yards from me. They spread wide as they closed the distance with me.

  “These guys are bad news,” I said.

  “You have no idea.” Haha said. “I have watched most of them be created. The process includes numerous sessions with Father Mike. He warps their minds as their bodies change.”

  I backed up towards the wall as the first Chosen took a running leap and kicked at me. I blocked with the shield, knowing it was a distraction, but helpless against it. The armor’s weight stabilized me, but I still staggered a few steps back, swinging the hammer defensively as I regained my balance.

  One of the other Chosen dashed in and grabbed the weapon arm, wrestling it down at a painful angle. I had no leverage and I wasn’t strong enough to fight through it. The shield arm was too unwieldy to use as a weapon, but it did keep the third Chosen at bay. Unfortunately, that left me wide open for a punch that dented my chest armor, driving jagged points of metal into my sternum. I felt warm blood trickling from multiple punctures and kicked straight out.

  One of the first moves Apogee taught me, what had started out as a slow pistoning kick had developed over time into a sharp snap that could knock a dump truck on its side. The Chosen was quick enough to roll with the impact, but the glancing blow still sent him sprawling backward. He lost his balance and tumbled even further, but was able to land on his knees, sucking air, wincing as he grabbed at his chest. My weapon arm was still pinned, the Chosen wrapping it tighter against his chest while hammering the elbow joint, probing for a weak spot. The blows were painful, but the armor held.

  “Haha, this is not going our way,” I said through gritted teeth, trying to keep the shield up as the third Chosen battered at it. “We got any more tricks?”

  “I have full access to their systems, but there are no defensive emplacements of any kind. I do have access to communications, telemetry, the dampener collars…”

  I cut him off, “The collars are remote access?”

  “They use a simple RF frequency, but I already…”

  “Not me, man,” I said, bashing the third Chosen with the shield. It did little damage but cleared some space between us. “Armada.”

  “Ah, of course,” Haha said, unable to mask his glee. “Oh, my friend, how I have missed you.”

  The Chosen I kicked was back on his feet, moving in to join the one trying to tear off my arm. I used footwork to keep my balance, blocking punches and kicks with the shield, while shifting my arm within the small space it was pinned in to keep that guy from dislocating my elbow. The machine’s whine intensified, and the blinding light that flashed from within the tube stunned all of us into inaction.

  “Dammit! We were too slow,” I said.

  I heard her screaming, the tears in my eyes as much from rage as that stinging light. She was a shadow within it, a tiny nucleus swallowed by escaping energy. It dimmed gradually, and I almost averted my eyes. Watching her die that way was almost too much to bear. It’s a good thing I didn’t. I stared into that light, letting the tears flow free because I saw it. The thing nobody but me wanted to see.

  A spear.

  See, Armada had a second aspect, a final form that made her even more powerful than she was otherwise. I had seen her do this trick before and it was no less impressive. Armor covered her entire torso, heavy pauldrons capped her shoulders and greaves around her thighs. She wore a winged helmet and along with the spear she had a shield. She floated in the middle of the pod, and even from here I could see that dangerous shimmer as the machine continued working. Her scream of pain turned to a growl that was lost in the shattering of glass as tossed herself into the collection tube.

  I barked a laugh, and realizing that the Chosen were still off-kilter, tore my arm free. “You guys just lost,” I said, bringing the hammer around to hit the Chosen on my shield side. I caught him across the top of his shoulders, the head smashing through bone. He crumpled in a pile, but I didn’t wait, converting the momentum into another swing targeting the Chosen I had kicked.

  He rolled backward out of r
ange and came to his feet ready to spring when there was an explosion above us. Armada had gone directly for the controls, smashing through them with her shield. I looked up in time to see her spear Snyder. I was sure she’d killed him, but I saw him pulling at his lab coat and realized she only trapped him there. She saw him struggling and elbowed him in the face. He sagged to the ground, his coat shredding around the spear.

  “Haha, I need my hands,” I said and he complied immediately, the hammer and shield folding in to create thick bracers that stretched over my hands without restricting their movement. Grabbing the Chosen who had pinned my arm, I hammered punches into his back and chest. The wet crunch of breaking bone accompanied each blow and after softening him up some more, I grabbed two big handfuls of his uniform and launched him at the collection tubes. Muscles pulled taut as they strained to perform an act that was easy just a few days ago. I aimed high and the guy hit the junction that connected the tubes to the power generators.

  The junction shuddered as the Chosen struck it. He bounced off as he hit, colliding with one of the collection tubes, cracking it as he rolled off the rounded edge. The tube shattered, shards of glass falling with him. The other tubes rattled in their housings, but the final Chosen bowled into me before I could see anymore. I kept my feet, boots scraping furrows into the floor as I was driven back. I bore down at the hips, stopping my backward momentum and locking into a grapple with him.

  I thought he was going to clinch with me, but he batted my right arm across my body and hit me with a succession of rabbit punches along my flank and lower back. I elbowed him in the shoulder as he did, but caught the meaty part to little effect. More pointed metal jammed into my chest and back, and I didn’t understand what he was doing until I heard tearing metal. He was trying to peel the armor off of me.

  “Haha, I need to be taller,” I said. The words had a breathless quality, and I realized the jagged parts of the armor were being driven deeper into my flesh.