He blocked a left swing from the Bulk and slammed him in what would have been his left jaw, sending the man crashing back into the destroyed wall.
More cracks ran up the length of the room, and the edges of the ceiling began to give, dust puffing from their corners.
“Stealth, Hollow, can you tell what is in the room above us?” Revolution asked, gawking at the weakening ceiling.
“Fuck!” came the reply from Rachel. “Drones. Lots and lots of fucking drones! Get out of there!”
The sound of Rachel’s panicked voice was drowned out by the roar of a bright, hot blast of searing flame that smashed into Revolution, sending him crashing through what was left of the back retaining wall and into the damaged hallway.
Still peering up at the ceiling, he had never seen it coming, and it rammed him like freight train.
He landed on his side and skidded to a stop a foot from the blown-out window. The stabbing New York wind pulling at him. He fought it, his cape rippling out the window behind him, trying to pull him out into the deadly current. Revolution reached back and snagged his cape, pulling it tight to his body. He could see out the window. The one-hundred-story drop to the streets below. He swooned. He shot to his feet and marched forward to see the source of the blast, just as the slab of concrete he been lying on cracked and fell away.
There stood Clay Arbor, the man better known as Lithium, the flamethrower on his wrist still sparking an orange afterglow. Right next to Bulky, who was back up and looked ready for more action.
“Welcome back, sweetheart. And here I thought you’d fallen for me,” Arbor spat at him, motioning to the window.
Revolution could hear Ward struggling to his feet behind him. Sophia was coming around as well.
The Hollow materialized beside him too. Lot of good it would do.
A black blur shot in from the adjoining room behind Arbor, and before Revolution’s motion-capture lenses could freeze an image, the blur stopped to reveal a woman dressed in a black bodysuit of shiny form-fitting metal. She had on a polished black helmet and long black hair flowed out from it. The lower half of her face was clearly visible though the helmet’s visor. She looked to be in her late twenties-early thirties.
“Oh well. I can live without you. As you can see, you’re not the only one with friends,” Arbor said.
Sophia and Ward were up again and standing behind Revolution. But they looked bad, both staggering and bloody. Like Revolution, neither had fully healed from Boston.
Ward motioned toward Bulky and grunted, “Aren’t you going to introduce us, then?”
A noise to their right. Fiddler stepped out aiming high-tech harpoon guns—no doubt filled with his signature acid—built into the wrists of his own battle armor.
Even with the new get-up—the high-tech armor—Ward clearly recognized who it was immediately. They all did. The helmet was an exact replica of Fiddler’s signature spider-faced ski mask that had made him famous. Ward’s heart rate and breathing increased markedly, according to Revolution’s internal monitors, but he didn’t move a muscle. His rage in check for now.
But for how long, Revolution wondered.
“Meet the Legion,” Arbor said. “You’re outnumbered, you’re outgunned. It’s time to take us up on our offer.”
“We’re not joining you,” Revolution said. “Didn’t you get the memo?”
Doors on both sides of Arbor swung open, and the room filled with Guardsmen, rifles up and aimed. Revolution kicked himself for letting them sneak up on him. He had been so focused on Arbor and his new team he had neglected to notice the sounds of the approaching Guardsmen.
“A little warning next time, Lantern?” he whispered into the com.
The Guardsmen’s rifles hummed with power as the group aimed their weapons, and Revolution realized that they were all loaded with luminescent power. The bullets would be able to rip through their body armor, even his.
“Oh, your little declaration. Maybe you ought to rethink that.” Arbor barked. “Aren’t you tired of being a terrorist?”
Revolution said nothing but motioned for Ward and Sophia to come closer to him.
“You want peace? You’ll get a full pardon. Even for today,” Arbor said.
“Today we came to keep a weapon of mass destruction out of your hands,” Revolution said.
“A weapon you created.” Arbor laughed. “You’re the threat to public safety, my friend. You’re the one breaking the law.” Arbor had clearly come to make speeches. It all seemed strangely futile to Revolution. Arbor had to know what their answer was going to be, so why was he wasting—
Revolution’s HUD beeped, alerting him to a camera on the ceiling, placed within what looked like a light fixture. It was recording the entire exchange. Suddenly it all made sense. Arbor was planning on capturing their defeat on film. That’s why he was speechifying.
Fiddler shrugged. “Oh well. Can’t join ‘em...kill ‘em,” he said, staring at Ward, like he could barely contain himself from opening fire with his acid-laced harpoons.
“Patience!” Arbor hissed at Fiddler, then turned back to Revolution. “One last chance, sweetheart. You can take your complaints to the chairman himself—today, with me. Or you can take your complaints to the grave. Your choice.”
Revolution crafted a message inside his HUD, and with a simple thought-command he sent the message to Ward and Sophia.
In response, the two of them stepped so close to him their armors all touched.
Ward spoke up, “Let me guess, you probably want us to kneel before you, that sort of thing?”
Revolution motioned for the others to follow him, and the three of them began to kneel.
“Don’t be stupid,” Arbor said. “I’m not the outlaw here, you are.”
Inside Ward’s and Sophia’s HUDs, a countdown was winding down. When it reached zero—WHOOSH!—the three of them jetted upward, Sophia blasting on her blue H3 jet-boots, Ward on the gust of his wings, and Revolution leaping with a burst of his servos.
The three ripped through the ceiling above them as the Guards strafed them with fire, but too late. They crash-landed onto the floor above them—
And came face-to-face with a room full of bizarre winged drones. The drones Rachel had warned them about.
Their red electronic eyes blared to life.
They were each the size of a person and they looked a lot like pterodactyls, Revolution thought. Large crescent-moon wings on either side, four retractable limbs ready to act like arms and legs if needed, and a beak-like head with red optical sensors that no doubt doubled as energy weapons.
The first blast from those sensors confirmed Revolution’s suspicions on the matter. Revolution dodged it, and the wall behind him exploded. Shit!
The Suns scrambled away from the gaping hole they’d left, afraid the energy bullets would come launching up at them any moment, but they heard Arbor below them bark, “Hold your fire! Get up there now!”
Revolution had been counting on Arbor wanting to prevent the destruction of all these drones, which the luminescent bullets were sure to pulverize.
It had been a gamble, but it seemed to have worked.
Luminescent bullets would rip through anything until their charges faded. That meant Arbor wouldn’t be able to use them unless their trajectory was straight out of the building. Otherwise, they could do serious damage to the personnel and infrastructure of Freedom Rise. It wasn’t much, but it gave the Suns an advantage they’d have to use if they were going to get out of there alive. Stay to the inside of the building and stay alive.
Now, just to survive these drones.
They made their move.
They leapt again, Sophia sending an energy blast ahead of them, smashing through yet another floor.
Revolution could hear the drones below take flight, trying to follow. He looked around and saw they had ended up in a conventional office space. Desks and cubicles and paneled walls. Office workers in suits and skirts were fleeing in all directions. A w
all of windows was to their left. Some of the debris from the floor had smashed through into the bright-blue sky. The howling icy wind gusted in and blew papers around the office like a hurricane of ticker tape.
“The drones are coming.” Revolution said.
“I’ve got them. I’ll take them out one by one as they come up!” Sophia said.
“I’ll cover you,” Revolution told her.
“We need to find Ra…I mean Stealth, and get the hell out of here!” Ward screamed over the roar.
“Do you think the chamber is here? Should we keep looking for it?” Sophia said to Revolution over the wind.
“Stealth! Lantern!” Revolution barked in response. “Can you see anything? Is the chamber here or not?”
Rachel answered first. “I’ve found a central processing hub. From here I should be able to access all of the Council’s encrypted files. If the chamber’s location is on here, I’ll know about it. I just need more time. This room is empty and on lockdown, so for now I’ve got the fucker to mys—” she screamed out and then...
Silence.
“Stealth!” Ward yelled into his com. “Stealth, come in!”
“Sir,” Lantern said, dread in his voice, “I don’t see anything I trust. My advice is to abort the mission.”
“No, we can’t abort. If the chamber is here we have to find it!” Sophia said.
“Damn it!” Revolution said. “Stealth, come in. Are you there? Are you okay?”
“Let me go after her!” Ward yelled to him.
Just then, the first drone flew up through the hole in the floor, and Sophia spun, blasting it to fiery bits.
“Shit! We’ve got to make a decision!” Sophia shouted.
“Lantern, if the chamber is here we have to destroy it. We can’t take any chances. You’ve got to find it!” Revolution knew he was sounding uncharacteristically panicked and that might cause panic in everyone else. But time was of the essence.
“Stealth is down. And she’s thirty floors below you. I think the console was booby-trapped. My advice is to abort,” Lantern said
“We need to go get her!” Ward said.
“We stay here. We stick together. We’ll get her when we can,” Revolution said.
Just then two more drones broke through the gash in the floor. Sophia blasted them both, and they exploded like the first one. She snapped a grin at Revolution that said, This is not so hard.
And then all hell broke loose.
CHAPTER 16
TRENTON, NEW JERSEY.
FREEDOM COUNCIL RESEARCH FACILITY
Eric Von Cyprus was watching the video feed of the fight in Freedom Rise with gleeful amusement.
“Oh, that’s it, that’s good!” he said as Lithium blasted Revolution with the flamethrower.
Von Cyprus froze the image.
He put his finger on the screen, on top of the Revolution. “Hello, my little Prometheus. You think you’ve been punished for stealing fire from the gods?”
Von Cyprus glanced across his vast laboratory, teeming with his many assistants, to the large Fire Fly chamber on the far end. He smiled even wider. “I haven’t even begun to punish you yet!”
NEW YORK CITY
Six drones crashed through the floor together, the shockwave knocking both Revolution and Sophia to the ground. The drones were on them in seconds.
The red optical sensors of the nearest one fired a direct shot at Revolution. This time there was no chance to dodge it.
His armor absorbed the charge, and when the drone finally came into range trying to grab him with its “arms,” he smashed the head of the thing with the mightiest right cross he could muster—and instantly his injured arm screamed in pain.
Ward took up the slack, stepping up behind him and firing three disruption darts into three separate drones. Blue electrical bolts sparked across their forms, and the three drones went dark, falling where they stood.
Okay, yeah, they were a good idea. Leslie’s right again, what’s new? Ward thought.
Revolution nodded his thanks and turned toward Helius.
Sophia blasted one of the two drones advancing on her, but the second drone hit her full force with both of its optical blasters. The force of the energy slung her across the room into the far wall and she cracked through it. Revolution and Ward heard her scream in pain.
Revolution raised his arms and fired the same energy the first drone had blasted him with. It smacked the robot out of the large window, but the bird-like machine simply righted itself and turned to fly back at him as its eyes glowed red hot, preparing to fire.
Ward shot out a dart that hit the machine between its eyes, and the pterodactyl fell, smashing into the side of the skyscraper, skipping and pounding the concrete, steel, and glass of the one hundred stories as it fell, until it smashed into the pavement below. Where it exploded into flames.
The men ran to Sophia, who was breathing hard but rising to her feet. “Okay, I’m with Paul. Let’s get Stealth and get the hell out of here,” she said.
“She’s thirty floors below us.” Ward said. “How do we get down there?”
“We can blast our way down,” Sophia said to Revolution.
“I can guide you there,” a voice said. It was Lantern’s. The Hollow was standing next to them now.
“Where have you been?” Revolution asked.
“Taking out drones below. And we need to move if you want to avoid the rest of them. I’d say there’s a good dozen more down there, sir.”
That made sense. The Hollow’s work was always slow, but if it got inside one of these drones it could deactivate it from the inside, cracking its digital codes.
“Okay, you and Helius get down to Stealth. Keep the feed in our HUDs,” he said, meaning he and Ward.
“Will do.” The Hollow turned to Helius. “Follow me.”
With that, the Hollow faded into the floor below. Sophia’s blue bracelets pulsed with power, and she blasted the floor away and dove into the hole like an Olympic diver. Her boot-jets ignited, and she fired the bracelets again, opening up another hole below her, and down the pair went into the bowels of Freedom Rise.
The ride down was splendid. Sophia couldn’t help but smile at the fact that she was systematically destroying heaps of the building’s structure as she dove. It would take millions of dollars to repair the damage. And that fact, despite the pain radiating through every part of her body, gave her an immense sense of joy.
Twenty floors down, ten stories short of her target, that joy abruptly ended.
Something slammed into her. She never saw what it was. It was black and sleek. The Hollow had tried to warn her. At the very last moment Lantern had broken through the shielding that was making every tool he had obsolete. He saw two figures waiting one floor down. Heat signatures indicating battle armor. But Sophia was really moving, a constant beam of energy roaring out from her bracelets as she dove, with only a few seconds between floors. The black blur had moved so fast that the holograph had little time but to speak a syllable before...
Slam!
It came from below her, and to her left, crashing into her midsection, turning her around in midair and driving her to the right. Sophia was out cold.
So she never saw Arbor’s jet-boots ignite from the other direction. He lowered his shoulders to pile-drive right into her, using Veronica’s momentum to propel the trio back to the left and up into the hole Sophia had just blasted though. Up they flew, retracing Sophia’s flight path, with the Hollow following close behind. Arbor clinging onto both Sophia and Veronica.
Twenty stories above, Revolution and Ward were making for the stairwell. Revolution kicked open the door and they entered the small area. Revolution led, Ward behind, arms raised, canisters ready to fire. Paralysis darts from his right hand, disabling darts from his left.
And that’s when they heard the roar. At first they couldn’t tell what it was or from where it was coming. Revolution had minimized the feed coming from the Hollow as soon as they entered t
he stairwell, thinking he would need his entire attention.
“It’s coming from that direction,” Revolution told Ward, pointing back toward the center of the building. They opened the door to exit the stairwell as Revolution brought the Hollow’s feed back up in his visor.
“Sir, we’re coming in hot!” Lantern’s voice yelled from the Hollow.
Both Ward and Revolution were watching the feed from the Hollow now in their visors. But it was just a blur of motion and flame.
“What the hell are we looking at?’ Ward asked. They kept running toward the sound.
In front of them, the floor erupted in white light as Sophia, Arbor, and Veronica all burst through the floorboards. Arbor slung Sophia’s unconscious body at Ward, who tried to catch her but ended up just getting waylaid by her full weight. The two Suns sprawled across the carpet.
Arbor’s arms were free now, and he used them to devastating effect. In an instant, he fired a small blast of flame at Revolution, whose armor easily absorbed the energy, but he was still rocked backwards by the impact. Second, Arbor and Veronica adjusted immediately and locked onto Revolution, charging forward. They struck as one. Arbor’s titanium fist and Veronica’s Velocity armor and robotic limbs slugged him full force.
With the absorption unit busy holding harmless the power of the flame blast, Revolution had no defense against their combined blow. The impact lifted him off his feet and slammed him through the concrete wall behind him. He was rising to his feet groggily when...
Arbor leaped through the hole in the wall, but this time something came with him.
Bulky.
Arbor and Fang in his bulky armor smashed the Dark Patriot together with tremendous force. It was like a semi hitting a moped.
Arbor watched his foe crash though the space, taking out everything behind him—desks, chairs, computers, filing cabinets—and sliding limply across floor. Arbor followed like a man possessed. He lifted Revolution toward him with one hand behind his neck and slammed him as hard as he could with a right hook. The carpet ripped and the floor cracked from the impact as Revolution pounded it again.
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