At six three, Blackwolf is overmatched by a foot and a half, but it doesn’t seem to bother him. He looks like a masked Beowulf against a hairy Grendel. He gives ground thoughtfully, cutting once at Feral’s eyes with stiffened fingers, almost as an afterthought.
Feral doesn’t just dress up as a monster—the hair and teeth aren’t a costume. Being a big cat doesn’t seem like much of a power at first, but he moves spookily fast for someone so big, dropping to all fours a few times, once bounding fully over his opponent. His claws leave pinpricks in the matting.
Feral has spotted his opponent a weapon, a frayed length of cord with a blunt metal hook tied at the end. Blackwolf dangles it absently from his left hand. His posture is loose, offhanded. He is supposed to be thirty-eight if you believe his publicist; but if age is catching up with him it doesn’t show. There’s a little maneuvering, keeping distance; then they close. There’s a flash of movement I can’t follow, and Blackwolf is actually off the ground, one foot braced in the crook of his opponent’s knee, groping for a hold on Feral’s long left arm.
Feral throws him the length of the mats, but he rolls smoothly out of it and comes to his feet again in an easy fighting stance. They trade a few barbs, the usual “You’re getting soft, old man” stuff. He pays out cord now, swinging it in long, slow arcs. You have to appreciate the artistry of it. Feral can lift a car, or leap half a city block. His fingers end in claws, for heaven’s sake.
Feral tries a wild slash, but Blackwolf just folds away from it. The hook arcs up lazily, and Feral bounds forward under it. Blackwolf lets the hook whip around in three quick motions, once around Feral’s throat, and it’s over. They say he thinks these things out eleven moves ahead, a high-speed chess player. Feral taps out, shaking his head.
Elphin catches my eye, an invitation or a challenge.
She gestures to the mat, like she’s not sure I’ll understand English. I don’t know what she thinks I am. A knight in patchwork armor? I wonder if they’ve explained it to her—the accident, the operations, the rest of it.
I shrug. “Bring it on.”
“I would not hurt thee.” Christ.
The others are clapping now, getting ready for the show.
“Fresh meat!” barks Feral, his fangs mangling the consonants. “Let’s see what the feds taught you.”
“Yes, let’s have a look at you.” Blackwolf’s watching me carefully, with a techie’s concentration. He wants a systems test. He touches a button on the wall and some of that equipment retracts into the wall to give us more space, clearing the floor for a battle royal. I see a video camera switch on overhead.
I don’t like this. It feels too much like a tryout, and I thought we were going to avoid all of that bullshit. Is this what it’s going to be like on a superhero team? Am I going to have to fight all these people?
It’s not that I’m scared. I’m pretty good at this; I’ve just never fought a world-famous superheroine. I’ve never fought someone with her own pinup calendar and herbal tea brand. The truth is, I was halfway hoping for a shot at Damsel herself. There are tricks you can try with a force field.
The others have stepped back and watch with frank curiosity. Damsel has seen tapes of me, but the others are waiting to see the new guy’s moves. Lily is leaning against the back wall. I glance at her and she gives me an encouraging nod.
Okay. I shake out my hair, then pull it back in its ponytail. I set up on the mats in a modified karate stance, left foot leading, right leg powered up to compensate for all the weight. I’m way too heavy for these mats. I’ll never get used to the feeling of my prosthetics powering up for battle. I can feel the power drain deep in my gut as the whole system downshifts to handle the new demand. My legs get extra bouncy, supercharged. This is what they built me for. I’ve had a couple of specialists tell me even the government doesn’t have anything on my tech level, but no one with enough clearance to be believable. I was probably hidden in somebody’s black ops RD budget, disguised as foreign aid to nowhere.
Internally, I set a switch that tells it we’re in training mode, so I’ll pull punches a little. On full power I can kick through a brick wall, and Elphin looks a little more delicate than that. I could snap that narrow waist of hers with one hand.
The super-soldier program did a lot of work on its onboard tactical assistant, the computer in my head that’s always guessing what’s going to happen next—plotting trajectories, predicting enemy movement, picking up on what I’m trying to do and doing it better.
Elphin stands opposite, spear held loosely in one hand. Her body is pathetically thin. This is ridiculous, I think. I’m fighting an anorexic in her nightie. But when she moves, she looks light and heavy at the same time, and there’s a shimmer. Despite the air conditioning, I seem to catch a whiff of summer nights in the forest, and the fluorescent bulbs project something a little too much like moonlight. She’s Titania’s warrior, if it’s true, and nine hundred years old to my twenty-seven and change, not all of which I remember too clearly.
Time slows down as the computer cranks up my response rate. On the tactical display, static fizzes around her spear. Whatever it is, my camera eye doesn’t like looking at it, and it’s making a hash of the combat projections. The computer can’t decide where it thinks it is. There’s no way to tell it I’m fighting a fairy. It probably thinks I’m facing off against a pygmy holding a long stick. I’m already big for a woman, but up against Elphin I tower.
Elphin’s not bothered by any of this. She minces forward for an experimental jab that clangs smartly off my left forearm, metal on metal. My riposte stops just short of her snub nose—I show her I’m not as slow as I look. I reach for that spear shaft but end up holding air. She’s fast, too.
I close the distance on her again, but she’s got no reason to grapple. I block the spear point again and lunge for her wrist, working my superior reach, but she spins away and slips behind me. My fingers brush the trailing edge of her blouse; then something glances hard off my skull plate. I turn but she’s already out of reach, rubbing her knuckles where they hit metal.
Cheering from the sidelines. Elphin twirls that spear, looking like she’d appreciate a little more support.
She dances clockwise, keeping her eye on me. If I could close and grapple with her, it would be over in an instant. The truth is, I really do want to beat her. I want to beat one of the Champions. I try to remember anything I can about fairies. I wonder if she’s allergic to iron, or is it silver? My databanks don’t have anything, but there should be something back in my biological brain at least—superhero lore, or some tidbit from a college English class. What is a fairy, anyway? Am I fighting Tinker Bell? Or am I the foolish knight who follows a woman into the forest, doomed to wake up hundreds of years later. La belle dame sans merci.
I check the sidelines. They’re taking it all in avidly. And I don’t know why in hell I should hold back against this waif-chick, with her anachronistically chic hair. I’ve got sonics. I’ve got a grappling hook. I’ve got tear gas. And I have a gun. I always have a gun.
In the big leagues, you’re supposed to be able to eat a couple of bullets and not worry about it, and anyway I have rubber bullets loaded today. The barrel comes down out of my left forearm, which is why it’s so thick. I let her think I want to close again, then spray her with a two-second burst, easy as thinking it. Welcome to the twenty-first century, girlie. In the closed gym, the report is shockingly loud. More applause, I think, but I’m half-deafened by the sound.
In a blink she’s gone, faster than even I can track. Most of that burst hit the safety glass behind her. Where the hell is she? The close air stinks of gunpowder. I start to backpedal, and the computer is flashing an arrow to show where she went, where I’m supposed to be looking. There she is up by the ceiling, rubbing a welt on her thigh, an angry, pouting fairy now. Touché. Scattered applause from my teammates. Leisurely, I raise my arm for another shot. No way to miss at this range.
She flips forward in th
e air, and when she comes out of it, she’s not holding her spear—too late, I perceive it as a throwing motion. And I’m realizing this on my back, because that’s where I suddenly am, and I’m trying to get up but I’m pinned somewhere. I’ve got a screen flashing static, and Blackwolf’s hand is on my shoulder, warning me not to stand. Behind me there’s applause, and it isn’t for me.
“Let me get it out,” he’s saying over fairy laughter, and I realize what’s happened, although it’s a throw she couldn’t possibly have made.
The spear did only nominal damage—I could patch it myself. It passed straight through me at the midsection, just a cut in what no one’s supposed to know is fake skin and insulation. Titania’s Moon-forged weapon didn’t bother to notice the armor plate, rated to withstand depleted uranium. There’s no way she could have aimed it like that, not unless she knew what she was doing. And she can’t have known that anyway, because she doesn’t even understand what I am, what a cyborg is.
I try to pull myself up the shaft, face red. Everybody is laughing at the rookie. The blade is stuck through the mat, standing out from the concrete flooring underneath. I pull it out and heft its heavy length. The blade is cold and seems to reflect a cold light that isn’t in the room. Close up, it has writing, but just before I can make it out, it gets yanked out of my hand, and Elphin’s walking away with it, laughing her silvery laugh. Feral slaps me on the shoulder with a fuzzy, clawed hand.
“Welcome to the show, primate!” he barks, out of his psychotic-looking tiger face.
And just then the red lights come on, the ones connected to alarms at the Pentagon, the NSA, the Department of Metahuman Affairs, and NASA. The red light I used to dream about when I was tapping 911 calls just to get a lead.
We all sprint up to the Crisis Room, where the computer is already up and talking, and this part is just like I pictured it. An official from the Illinois facility is already on-screen, explaining how, in a nutshell, they let Doctor Impossible get away again. We’re finding out about it forty minutes before the press does.
It’s still a strange feeling to stand next to world-famous superheroes. The faces and characters stand out in relief; it’s impossible not to notice I’m in a room with a lot of people wearing masks. Damsel’s cat’s-eye mask and her bitchy self-control; Blackwolf’s goggles and his languid poise, one muscled forearm draped across a packing crate. He sees me watching.
“Okay, did anyone not expect this?” Blackwolf is in a good humor.
“What’s this Chaos Pact?” Damsel takes charge, the loudest voice in the room. “Friends of yours, Feral? They fucked up. Lily’s boyfriend is out again.”
“He’s not my boyfriend.”
“Language, please.” Whenever Mister Mystic arrives, he just materializes when you’re not looking. I checked it on a security camera once, but it came out static.
Feral shrugs as best he can. “Those guys…I owed them a favor. I’ve worked with them before; I thought they were up to it. The Doctor was a little much for them.”
“Huh. You think?” Team or not, this was going to be Damsel’s show, I could tell. “We’ve got our suspect now. Is everyone fully up to speed on the Doctor Impossible file? Original sighting in the first bank job, then a classic evil genius development cycle. Almost textbook.”
“Is he as smart as he says he is?” I blurt this out without thinking, newbie question.
Blackwolf answers. “He could be. He’s been to other stars, other dimensions. He’s solved robotics problems, materials problems that no one else has ever touched. If he were a normal person, he’d be Einstein. At least.”
“He always hated Einstein,” Lily says, thoughtful. I didn’t think anyone hated Einstein.
“He’s also insane,” Blackwolf adds.
“It’s called Malign Hypercognition Disorder. He’s an evil genius. It’s a disease.” I can’t tell if Lily’s joking, but then she winks at me.
Feral brings us back down to earth. “He’s just another criminal. We’ve beaten him before. Some of us have even beaten him solo. Damsel got him last time.”
“CoreFire was there,” she notes primly. “I suggest we get some sleep. He’ll be deep underground by now. If he moves according to pattern, he’ll start his next scheme almost immediately. We’ll see movement in two or three days. Probably in your area, Feral.”
“Smuggling. Petty theft.”
“He’ll need money and materials. You know what to do.”
They all seem to know this guy. To me, Doctor Impossible was always a television villain, too big for me to care about. He was always in another league, out on some island or in outer space, scheming with crazy mind-bending technologies, while I collared drug dealers and Third World militia. But maybe that’s an advantage here. Somebody needs to know how to do police work, how to trace a credit card or a shipping container. What it’s like down on the ground with the humans.
We all retire for the night, but no one goes right to sleep. I know, because the interior walls here are thin enough that at night when I crank my senses through the right spectra, I can see right through them. I feel a little guilty, of course, but I can’t resist. I’ve heard so many stories and rumors about this crowd, a tight group for so many years. The actual facts are odd, and a little disappointing.
Rainbow Triumph has the room below mine. When she comes in, she lets the door close behind her and stands for a moment with her eyes closed, breathing deeply. She walks to the bathroom and shuts the door, locking it. She opens a metal briefcase and begins opening pill bottles and boxes, until fourteen pills, capsules, and dietary chews are lined up on the edge of the marble sink in front of her. She does it every twelve hours. She’s probably been doing it since she was seven; maybe it’s to fix whatever was wrong with her in the first place. Part of it’s probably to keep her body from rejecting whatever they’ve put inside it; I took those, too. She also spends a lot of time on the phone.
Underneath my feet, Blackwolf washes his hands for a full five minutes before popping three or four painkillers, which explains a lot. Then he pushes the little room’s furniture to the side and puts himself through a series of calisthenic exercises, handstands and one-arm push-ups, slowly and with no sense of strain. Then he watches television for exactly ninety minutes, then stretches out on the floor to sleep. Damsel and Blackwolf have separate rooms now, and I wonder how it worked between them back when they were married. I guess her force field really must turn off.
The building quiets down. Mister Mystic retires back to wherever it is he lives, no doubt to contemplate the infinite. Feral drops to all fours when he’s alone, and sleeps curled in a ball. I think he has back problems from trying to stand on two legs all the time. There’s an object inside Blackwolf that transmits when he’s sleeping. In the bathroom of her suite to my left, Damsel goes immediately to the toilet and vomits in a neat, businesslike fashion. Not that she needs to worry about her figure, but I guess that’s her affair.
I know what it’s like. Your powers are what you always have with you. It’s one piece of knowledge we all share here. No matter how many dossiers the government keeps on you, no matter what data your enemies have collected, no one knows your powers the way you do. Everyone has seen them on TV. For everyone else, it’s a momentary fantasy. They don’t have to take them into the kitchen, the bathroom, and the bedroom. Or wake up in the night in flames, or sweep up shattered glass in their apartment, or show up late for work with a black eye. No one else knows where they itch or bruise you, or has tried the things you’ve tried with them when you were bored or desperate. No one else falls asleep with them and finds them still there in the morning, a dream that won’t disperse upon waking.
I’m outside the team locker room next morning after a workout on the practice dummies, trying to reproduce a few of Rainbow’s moves. The voices inside stop me.
“I told you this would happen.” It’s Blackwolf.
“Until CoreFire comes back from whatever this is, it’s our best op
tion.” Damsel sounds tired.
“You’re going to let them wear the uniforms?”
“Jesus, no, fine. We’ll let them wear what they want, okay?”
“This was your idea, Ellen. God knows, as far as I’m concerned Jason can solve his own problems.”
“Please don’t bring that up again.”
Something beeps inside my chassis and the voices stop. Damsel brushes past me and out of the changing room.
Blackwolf is still suiting up, and I can see his body is as perfect as they say, muscles defined but not bulging—still beautifully in proportion. This close, I can see scars, and a little salt-and-pepper at his temples. If the rumors are true he’s become quite the lady-killer since the divorce, not that he’s given me a look so far.
I don’t have a special costume beyond some custom shoes to handle my weight. My physique is distinctive enough by itself. I’m wearing my usual working outfit, sweatpants and a gray NSA T-shirt. I’ve stenciled a Champions logo onto the biggest patches of exposed metal, my left thigh and back. I didn’t have anyone to do my back for me, so I think it’s a little crooked.
“Sorry. What was that about?”
“Don’t worry about it. We went to high school together.” He bends down to lace up his boots. Up close, I can smell him a little. “Were you on a team before?”
“Not exactly. I had government jobs. Then I was solo.” I don’t know why I’m talking like this. I guess it’s been a while since I’ve talked to a man I wasn’t beating up. I actually start to blush. “Spideractive probably recommended me. We worked on that sniper thing in Albany.”
“I remember. You had some nice moves out there against Elphin. What enhancements have you got?” He turns to look me over, and I blush a little. I’m not used to being looked at.
“Vision. Strength—you know, arms and legs. Onboard tactical computer. A couple intrinsic weapons, different kinds. Armor plate, obviously. Grappling hook. Um, fire extinguisher.” He’s got my file, so I’m sure none of this is news to him.
Soon I Will Be Invincible Page 6