“It's not important,” Adam said decisively. “We need to talk to whoever is in charge of this outpost. Get something that can kill the iron-lord, at least.”
Kevin nodded. “Fair enough. I know the Colossus in charge, I'll take you to him.” He headed back to the stairwell they had just exited and disappeared downstairs.
Seena was almost too surprised to follow. He knew the local warlord? It really seemed more logical to assume Steve.
Steve seemed to understand her confusion. As he walked over to the stairs, he shrugged, giving her a silly little grin. “Don't look at me. I just followed him here. I don't know anything about the place.”
Seena shook her head and followed the rest of the group down. There would be time for all that later.
Kevin led them down to the third floor from the bottom, where the Nifs seemed to have decided to make their stand. Seena had to put her daygoggles back on because of the light, but that was about the only problem. The giants parted to let them through, apparently trusting Kevin wasn't leading enemies into their base.
There weren't that many, maybe half a dozen. But all the giants were bare chested and heavily armed with weapons that looked too big for Seena to even lift. At first she was a bit surprised by their choice of clothing—or lack thereof—but then she noticed them sweating and realized what it was.
Nifs liked cold weather, and usually kept their bases at around freezing. However, this outpost had apparently been a secret, so they were forced to keep everything at normal temperature to avoid arousing suspicion. The cool room must have felt like a sauna to them.
Kevin glanced around, frowning. “Where's Eva?” he asked. “I need to talk to her about something.” He didn't seem to notice how much he was dwarfed by the giants.
The biggest one, a bearded man almost nine feet tall, shrugged and rested his shotgun on his shoulder. At least Seena thought it was a shotgun. It was big enough to be mistaken for a missile launcher. “She left the second the gargants attacked. Said she wasn't going to let them kill people.”
Kevin cursed under his breath. “Titan's testes. Of course she did. And why didn't she bring the rest of you? She couldn't believe she'd have a chance on her own.”
“She thought a half-dozen Nifs appearing in the middle of kemo territory would be suspicious.”
Seena frowned. “Makes sense. Whose domain is this, anyway?” While some of the domains were permanent, such as the skyscrapers belonging to the vampires or angels, most of them were fluid, and changed every few weeks as the subcultures gained and lost territory. This area was generally kemo, but other than that I didn't pay attention to who was in charge.
“Canes,” Kevin said. “Since a couple weeks ago.” He shrugged. “It's actually been pretty quiet over here. Nothing really worth fighting for, not with the screamers distracting everyone.”
Adam rubbed his forehead. “The politics and so on are interesting—really, they are—but we need weapons. You got some kind of...” He wiggled his hand back and forth. “Liquid nitrogen... thing?”
The giant snorted. “I wish. Nothing but basic air conditioning, and that died during the last attack. We do have some rocket launchers, but those aren't gonna be enough.”
Veda scratched her chin. “Maybe... depending on what kind of air conditioning set up you have, I might be able to rig something...”
Adam glanced at her in surprise. “Really? You can do that?”
Veda rolled her eyes. “Don't act so surprised. You don't know anything about me. I'm majoring in Military Engineering, and my main class this semester is Scavenging and Repair. If the air conditioner isn't enough, I'll build you a nuke out of a few sticks of gum.”
Adam took the joke in stride. “No nukes, please. We're trying to save the area, not level the entire city.” He nodded to the giant who had been speaking. “Honored Titan, please, show my friend to your air conditioner.”
The titan signaled to one of his men, who gently pulled Veda in the direction of the stairs. As they started going up, she turned back. “I'll also need some tools and those rocket launchers, if anyone wants me to do anything useful.”
Adam glanced at the titan, who nodded. He turned back to Veda. “It will be up in a minute. Just do your best.”
Veda grinned. “My best? Of course not. You already said no nukes.”
Chapter 44: SOLUTIO
JELENA
The iron-lord was still grasping around the building, but Jelena didn't understand why. It didn't make any sense. It should have abandoned them for easier prey within minutes. Instead, it had stuck around for over an hour.
She kept hearing explosions outside, which just made it even stranger. If people were attacking the thing, it would return the favor. Unless everyone was focusing their fire on the blind-rammer, which was possible, but unlikely.
She needed to get out there. She had to figure out what was going on, and sitting here wouldn't help. She pulled off her daygoggles and started inching forward across the suddenly bright room.
“Jelena!” Pam hissed from behind her. “What are you doing?”
“I'm gonna see if I can help,” she called back. “Stay here with the others.”
“But you can't! You're—” She suddenly stopped talking. Jelena glanced back, confused, almost worried that Pam had suddenly been crushed.
She was still alive and well, but she looked like she had tasted something horrible in her mouth—so about her default expression, only more so. She had been about to say something. Something important.
Well, if she thought it could wait, Jelena guessed she agreed. She turned back to the task at hand, absently scratching at her neck.
Her entire spine had been itching ever since the fey released her. Glasya had looked her over personally, and had assured her that nothing was wrong, so she supposed she got off light. A little bit of phantom pain was nothing compared to what Fevered Day could have done to her.
It was slow going, getting past the gargant, since she had to stop every few feet to wait for its thrashing hand to sweep past. Her hands and knees were bleeding by the time she reached the entrance, the shattered glass from the doors having cut deeply into her flesh. She glanced at the wounds briefly, then resolved to ignore them. They were clotted with concrete dust and the glass fragments were still embedded in some places, but she had enough buffs so that the pain was minimal and she didn't have to worry too much about bleeding out.
The iron-lord's hand lunged towards her, and she dove out of the way again, out the shattered front doors. She landed on more glass, scraping up her side and tearing her clothes.
Bloody night... she thought. She wasn't built for this. She was a secretary with a sharp ear, that was all. The closest thing to combat she had seen was that time her orphanage managed to score tickets to laser tag. She had been on the losing team.
But she had to do something. No one else was. Especially not the whore, Yolanda. Last Jelena had seen her, she had been huddled in Simon's embrace, trembling like a leaf. Maybe her queen would save her.
Jelena heard voices nearby. Not from inside the store, where the gargant was still rooting around, but from somewhere down the street. One of them, soft as down feathers, drifted through the clamor of injured and dying civilians.
“I told you we should have stayed on the roof.”
“No, Seena, it would have just climbed up and killed us, and we wouldn't have had anywhere to run.”
Adam and the others. They had found something, then. Some sort of weapon.
“Aim for the knees,” another, somewhat familiar voice suggested. It was... Steve? Simon's roommate? What was he doing here? “That'll do the trick.”
“I know killing,” Adam grunted. “I know what to do.”
“Frost and—God dammit, just hurry up. The blind-rammer looks like it's coming this way.”
The fourth voice sounded familiar as well, but Jelena couldn't place it. Male, definitely, but other than that she couldn't tell. “Frost and fire” was a Jo
tuun curse, so he was probably one of the Nifs.
The Nifs weren't supposed to be in the area, but it wasn't all that surprising. The cultures spied on each other as much as possible, both for defensive and offensive reasons. She was more interested in what Joel and Nathan, the local feuding warlords, would do when they found out. Would they leave them alone, or retaliate? Both canes had a reputation for being warmongers, but they had to know better than to piss off Niflheim.
That wasn't important now. Seena's group was talking again, though Jelena couldn't make out what they were saying. She crept towards the voices, trying to get a better look, maybe let them know she was there, but she winced at her wounds. Buffs or no, having little pebbles of glass embedded in your flesh, slicing through skin and muscle, etching bone was distracting.
Stop it, she told herself. That kind of thinking was hardly productive. Pushing the pain to the back of her mind, she turned the corner and found...
Steve and Kevin, Simon's roommates. And Seena, Veda, and Adam, of course. The green-haired baseline was nowhere to be found.
Jelena glanced around as she scrambled to her feet. “Where's the Nif?”
Adam turned to her, frowning. “You are...”
“Jelena, my roommate,” Veda said. “She was trapped with the others.” A look of apprehension crossed her face, and she cursed. “Fur and fang—it didn't destroy the building, did it?”
“No, it was still just trying to grab people last time I checked.” Jelena shifted on her feet and winced as her wounds were pulled.
Seena stepped forward and looked at her side. “You look like you ran through all nine hells. What happened?”
She started to shrug, but immediately stopped from the pain. “Had some trouble.”
Seena glanced back at the others. “You need to take down that gargant right away,” she said firmly. “It's not going to be distracted forever.”
“There's still the blind-rammer,” Kevin said. Jelena blinked when he spoke—she recognized his voice as the one she hadn't been able to identify from before. Why was he using Jotuun curses? He wasn't a giant.
It was probably just some stupid thing. Simon and Seena used demon curses because their orphan patron had been one, so maybe it was something like that. It really wasn't important right now, anyway.
“The rammer is secondary, right?” Jelena asked a little hesitantly. Yeah, as a Glasyan she knew a bit more about monsters and such than the average person, but she had always found personal applications of the toy maker more interesting than the whole creating monsters part.
The fact that everyone else just kind of looked at each other didn't help her anxiety.
“I've never seen one of those things,” Adam said. He hefted what looked like a missile launcher covered in tubes over his shoulder. “Monsters aren't quite my area of expertise...”
“I... think it's relatively safe,” Veda said haltingly. “I mean, it doesn't seem to be doing anything all that dangerous. It doesn't even have eyes.” She glanced at Steve.
He raised his hands in front of himself. “Hey, don't look at me, I'm a bike messenger. I don't know the first thing about monsters.”
“I think...” a voice like warm honey said from behind Jelena. “I think it might be looking for someone.”
Surprised, they turned to see Elizabeth Greene, of all people, leaning against the building dejectedly. She was wearing a long, flowing dark blue skirt and a short-sleeved white shift with a black corset over the top. The corset turned her already somewhat impressive bust into something truly marvelous. She also had a fake flower in her golden hair, behind her ear. It was the same deep, royal blue of Akane Akiyama's hair ribbon.
But while her outfit was still perfect, her entire stance and bearing spoke of someone who had taken on the world and lost. Her face lacked her usual smile, and her glittering golden eyes seemed on the verge of tears.
“Miss Greene,” Steve said in surprise. “What are you doing here?”
She smiled, just the tiniest bit, but at least it meant she wasn't completely defeated. “Mister Gillespie... I need you to deliver another message for me, I think.”
Steve nodded, as Kevin and Jelena moved forward to catch the girl before she fell. “Of course, of course. Whatever you need.”
But Kevin frowned. “Wait, she said the blind-rammer was looking for someone. What—”
Seena punched him in the arm. “Let her talk. She'll get to it.”
Lizzy smiled again in his direction. “It's fine, I understand...” She shook her head. “I need to sit down. It's... been a long day.”
They guided her carefully to the ground, trying to ignore the sounds of gunfire nearby, and the still-roaring iron-lord. They didn't have much time, but they still had to be careful with her.
The girl took a deep breath, and when she spoke there was some strength in her voice. “Gillespie, I need you to find Nabassu. He should be at his apartments. Tell him what's going on here, leave nothing out. He'll be able to organize everything.”
“At once,” Steve said, and immediately ran off at top speed around the corner. Jelena turned to watch him go, surprised that such a big guy could run so fast.
“About the one over there...” Lizzy said weakly, and Jelena was forced to turn her attention back to her. “The big metal thing is just a distraction. I don't think the fey want to cause too much damage, they just want it to look like they do.”
Jelena's spine was itching like crazy, and she reached back to scratch it.
But Adam was the one who spoke. “So... ignore the iron-lord for now? After all the trouble we went to to get a weapon?”
Lizzy nodded. “It's the other one... the blind one—”
“Blind-rammer,” Seena said.
“Right, that one. Nabassu told me the fey use them to track people sometimes. Like, when they just need to find them, and don't have to worry about subtlety.”
Adam nodded. “I think I heard Simon or Yolanda mention that. Something about them having extra nostrils?”
Lizzy shrugged. “I don't know. I just know that the fey want something here.”
Jelena shook her head. “But this isn't their style. Why send something like this when a couple dogs would work just as well?”
“I don't know,” Adam muttered, rubbing his forehead. “Laura might be able to figure it out, but I just... this isn't anything any of us are good at.” He shook his head suddenly. “It doesn't matter. Once it finds its target, bad things will happen. So we need to kill it first.”
Jelena pointed at the weapon in his arms. “You were going to use that on the iron-lord, right? How many shots do you have?”
“Not many,” Veda said. “I didn't have a lot to work with. I can't be sure, but no more than five. Absolute max.”
Oh, that was right, she was a mechanic or an engineer or whatever. Jelena had completely forgotten. She guessed... she had made the weapon? How the hell did she cobble together a missile launcher out of spare parts?
Adam saw where Jelena was going. “It should work just as well on the rammer, if not better. And we should just need one or two for the iron-lord.”
Kevin raised an eyebrow. “So, what, just shoot it in the face and hope it works?”
Adam shrugged. “I guess so.”
“The belly,” Jelena said suddenly. “Aim for the belly. That's the weak spot.”
Everyone stared at her.
“What?” Seena asked weakly.
Where had that come from? But the more she thought about it, the more sense it made. “The belly drags on the ground—it can't be armored as much.”
“That makes sense...” Adam said slowly. “But I'm not gonna just dive under it.”
“Explosions will scare it and make it rear up. But it has to be a big one.”
“A grenade wouldn't be enough?”
“Not nearly. Maybe a...” An image flashed into her mind, a dull metal barrel with a white label. “An oil drum would work. There should be one in this building here.�
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Seena looked disturbed and was avoiding Jelena's eyes, but she couldn't understand why. She spent a lot of time paying attention to important people. She had probably just heard about this on some forum or whatever and forgotten until now.
Kevin broke down the door—the security gate wasn't even up—and in a few moments he and Adam were wrestling an oil drum, exactly like the image Jelena had in her head, out onto the sidewalk.
Lizzy wrinkled her nose. “Ugh, oil. I hate that stuff.”
“Well, don't go in there, then. The place is full of it.” Adam frowned. “Why the hell is there so much, anyway?”
“There are three offshore oil platforms owned by the city,” Jelena found herself saying, as she suddenly remembered. “Two are owned by Yamatoto Silver Rush, while the third is the property of Fillian Andrews Enterprises, which is a front for—”
“I think he meant why is it here,” Kevin said hastily. “The outer city would be more logical.”
Again, she knew the answer. “Money laundering.”
It was odd. Usually she kept an ear out for all the dirty rumors, of course, but this was more than that. She knew the barrels would be there, She knew where they had come from. But she didn't remember hearing anything about it before right this moment.
Ugh, there she went, getting distracted again. Delphie and the others inside were counting on them, and she was letting her mind wander. “Roll it over at the gargant,” she said. “The smell should make it curious. Anyone have incendiary rounds?”
The boys had the barrel on its side, but hadn't started rolling it yet. Adam put his foot on it to keep it from moving, and fished a shotgun shell out of one of his ammo pouches. “I have a few, but I'm not sure they can penetrate the drum.”
“My Raaze is incendiary,” Kevin said, pulling out his strange pistol. It was... a revolver, except it didn't revolve, and fired all the chambers at once. “It should work.”
Adam shrugged. “Sounds good to me.” He picked up the missile launcher again from where he had placed it on the ground. “You ready?”
Kevin checked his gun and nodded. “Ready.” Together, they kicked the barrel forward, where it slowly rolled towards the blind-rammer.
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