The Indestructibles

by Matthew Phillion

  Titus shifted his weight and prepared to pounce from above. Without even looking at him, she turned and flung one of her silver knives. He almost dodge it, but the blade sang against his left thigh, a burning flash tore into him and boiled up more rage behind his eyes. Stay in control, Titus, stay in control . . .

  He dropped down, slamming his jaw against the metal floor of the rig as his injured leg gave out from beneath him. The woman confronted him in a second, slashing with her other knife. She aimed for his eye, but missed, instead leaving a bloody line below his cheekbone.

  Titus swatted. Rose danced back. She'd been faking her leg injury. Light on her feet, she continued to taunt him.

  "I wonder if you're the last one," she said. "Wouldn't that be nice? To be the one who killed the last werewolf on earth. I think I've earned it."

  Titus struggled to reach her, but his left leg buckled under again. She edged in closer, holding her dagger like a fencing blade.

  Titus lunged forward, ignoring the pain. He caught her wrist.

  Rose gazed at him with complete and utter shock.

  "No," she said.

  Titus pulled, ready to slam her against the nearest wall. She kicked him in the leg, a perfect shot to his wound. He howled and almost lost his grip on her wrist. Then, she lacerated his palm, not deeply, just enough to burn and bleed. Rose used his blood to wiggle free.

  "Now we're simply playing games," she said.

  She hopped up onto one of the nearby cargo crates, lighter than air, laughing when he limped and tried to scramble up to grab her. Titus felt like King Kong, pathetically trying to scale the Empire State building.

  "What's the matter?" she said. "Can't reach?"

  He shoved the cargo crate instead. The entire structure toppled, taking the woman with it. Titus leaped over the fallen crate, but Rose was gone. Her footsteps clanked against the surface of the rig. Limping, he circled around and down another row of boxes, on all fours, not caring if she could hear him. He pushed the crates over, battering them around like toys, creating chaos and destroying any cover she might find. Finally, he heard Rose let out a winded yelp when one of the crates landed on top of her. Titus tried to pounce, but couldn't find her among the spilled rations, supplies and broken cases.

  Another knife whistled toward him, landing perfectly in his right shoulder. He howled, reached back, yanked the blade out his own back. He'd never felt this kind of pain before. Blood spilled hot and dark down his flanks, staining fur.

  Titus hobbled toward the edge of the rig. He spied the storm in the distance, lightning continued to create pale veins in the surface of the clouds. The ocean smelled strong. Clean. Like the forest. A natural place. He peered all around, but couldn't see his attacker anywhere.

  He jumped overboard.

  "No you don't!" he heard Rose yell.

  With his good arm, he caught the metal framework of the rigging below and, monkeylike, swung along the underbelly of the rig. Titus's injured arm screamed in pain, but he forced it to work, climbing along like a spider. Through the cracks in the walkway, he could see the huntress reach the edge of the platform and look down into the water.

  "This isn't how it ends!" she yelled. "I'm not going to let you drown! You're mine!"

  She paced back and forth above him, looking for the wolf to resurface in the water. His whole body shaking with pain, he climbed along the bottom of the rig's platform. Rose left her perch on the top level and he listened as she headed for one of the iron stairwells.

  It was darker here, the lights more sporadic, the shadows deeper. He held on with every ounce of strength. She reached the bottom of the stairwell and began patrolling the edge of the second level, looking out into the ocean, still convinced he'd landed in the sea. The waves swelled. Great, monstrous things built up by the churning storm.

  Slowly, Titus crept along the ceiling, handhold to handhold; his long back claws helped maintain balance and grip. Blood dripped onto the floor beneath him; he hoped she couldn't hear the splattering sounds.

  Nearly above her, Titus took a deep breath. He prepared to drop down onto her, a predator landing the killing blow on its prey . . .

  His maimed arm finally gave out and Titus fell from his hiding place, landing flat on his back onto the floor below.

  The woman spun, pulled another knife from her belt — how many could she have? he wondered — and leapt on top of him. He batted her knife away from his face with his good hand but Rose still held the better position, and tried to deliver the fatal strike again.

  "Why won't you just die!" she said, and raised her knife with both hands above her head.

  Titus coiled both legs in front of her and kicked. His injured left leg roared with so much pain he saw blue and white dots; but both feet connected with her midsection and sent the woman flying. He wriggled to a sitting position fast enough to see her soar backward, almost land on her feet, but then hit the railing of the rig hard enough to make a ringing noise. She locked eyes with him for just a split second before toppling over.

  Adrenaline kicking in, Titus staggered to his feet and raced to the rail. He hesitated, his one good arm ready to strike, and looked down, fully expecting to see the woman flip back onto the deck and stab him again.

  Instead, he spied a shock of red hair drifting in the swelling waves below, struggling against the tide.

  For one brief moment, he thought about jumping in to help her. She knew about his kind. Perhaps she knew more than anyone. Maybe he should save her.

  But then the waves of pain began, the fiery screams of all the cuts and punctures she'd inflicted on him building up, their full impact finally hitting him as his adrenaline rush began to wane. The wolf's anger started to take over, and then something else, a pride of winning, the joy of living to fight another day.

  He howled again. Only this time, it was not in pain.

  Chapter 63:

  Containment

  They all heard it. Kate's voice on the transmitter. The bomb was deactivated. Now was the time.

  "Crap," Emily said. "Right now?"

  "Emily," Jane's voice came through the receiver next. "Are you ready?"

  Emily scanned the storm once again: bigger, horrifyingly immense, nightmare big.

  "This is bad," Emily said.

  "Now would be good, Em," Jane said. She sounded tired. "What do you need me to do."

  "Um," Emily said. "I have a bad idea."

  "Any ideas are good right now."

  "Can you see the girl?" Emily said.

  "I'm right near her," she said. "And we're not going to hurt her."

  "I wasn't going to suggest that," Emily said. "You're the one who punches everything! I'm the pacifist on this team!"

  "Emily from Kate," Kate said.

  She sounded exhausted. Everyone sounded exhausted.

  They're going to be very angry if this doesn't work, Emily thought.

  "Kate from Emily, what's up?"

  "What the hell are you doing up there?"

  "Thinking!"

  "We're doomed," Billy said.

  He didn't sound exhausted. Rather, he sounded like he was smiling. "C'mon, Em. We have faith in you. Do what you gotta do. We'll be here to catch you."

  Emily blinked. That was not a bad idea at all. "I need two things!"

  "Hurry up," Jane said.

  "Jane, can you send me a signal so I can see where you are, with the girl? Like a flare?"

  "Just say when."

  "And Billy, ah, just, like, be ready."

  "For what?" all three of them said at the same time.

  Emily started laughing.

  "You'll know it when you see it. Now would be good, Jane!"

  Below her, Emily saw a burst of flame like a tiny sun flickering within the storm.

  Emily dove, in as much as her airy flight could really dive, and prepared her most important bubble of float ever.

  Kate's message caused Jane's stomach to curl into a knot.

  The bomb was gone. The girl
was free. And, the storm clearly understood somehow. The whirling winds in the eye of the storm churned up, violently, darkening, now almost black as smoke, hardly resembling clouds at all.

  They looked like rage.

  "Doc?" Jane said, quietly, triggering a private channel to Doc's receiver. "Are you out there?"

  Silence.

  Jane waited, anticipating further attacks by the winged creatures she'd fought, but they never returned. Doc had stopped the attacks somehow. She had to have faith in that.

  But he hadn't sent a message, hadn't let them know. Hadn't said goodbye.

  "Doc? You okay?"

  Nothing.

  Then she heard Emily's nervous chatter over the general line, and she tried to regain her focus. She could worry about Doc later; right now, there was everyone else to take care of. She gazed at the girl in the storm, the gray, almost featureless face, the huge, luminous eyes, the alien way the lightning danced across her frame.

  You'd better be worth it, Jane thought.

  Emily asked for a flare.

  Jane, still buzzed with the energy she'd soaked up from the sun earlier, obliged her. The flash of light illuminated the eye of the storm, creating strange shadows in the clouds. For a moment, she almost thought she saw a face there, the face of a furious girl, of elemental rage.

  "Emily? Now would be good!"

  She felt Emily's approach before she saw it, the thrum of the world going sideways, the way reality stopped working properly in her presence. Then she saw it, Emily's antigravity field, like the bow of a ship, parting the black clouds, pushing them away and out of existence. There was Emily, in her ridiculous costume, goggles down, that bizarre scarf fluttering in the wrong direction in the wind.

  Emily's bubble crashed over them, engulfing Jane and the girl like a soap bubble.

  The second, the very split second, Emily encased the girl in her antigravity field, the world changed. It was as if the storm collapsed upon itself, the clouds expanding and lashing out like hands with too many fingers, then sputtering into a mist. The rain stopped in the bat of an eye. The rumbling of distant thunder silenced.

  The sun splashed on Jane's face.

  Emily reached for the girl and grabbed her by the hand.

  She smiled.

  Then, Jane began to fall.

  Billy watched Jane in freefall, a half mile away. Her cape was gone. She plummeted backward, not even attempting to fly, arms and legs loose as she dropped toward the ocean.

  She got caught in Emily's weirdness field, Dude, he said.

  She did.

  I gotta catch her.

  Go!

  Billy held both arms out in front of him, trying to streamline his body, to become a rocket in flight. A few seconds later, he realized he wasn't planning this right, that he was aiming not for where she would be but where she was. He tried to course correct, to aim himself lower to match her trajectory.

  I've never been good at math, Dude!

  You can catch her.

  I have to.

  You will. Don't worry.

  A swell of power hit Billy, a dizzying strength he hadn't felt before. No longer just flying, he broke the sound barrier.

  You've been holding out on me, Dude.

  I was waiting, Billy Case.

  For what?

  For you to act like a hero. Now save your friend.

  Billy poured on the speed, no longer worried about predicting where she would fall but knowing, just knowing, he would be there. Closer and closer, he saw things more clearly than he ever had before, the alien energy let him feel like he could see molecules move. He fixated on her right hand, those nails painted with a faint gold polish.

  I never noticed her nails before.

  Another time, Billy Case.

  I know.

  Billy reached out. He caught her wrist. Her small, strong hand snap shut around his own. The tug of her weight against his shoulder. He grabbed her other arm. Without thinking, he pulled her into his arms.

  "That's three," she said.

  "Told you," he said.

  Jane laughed.

  "You're glowing, Billy."

  "I'm what?"

  "Literally glowing," she said. "You can let me go now."

  Billy released her, and Jane took flight on her own again. He glanced down at his hands. He really was glowing, and not just the usual signature of blue-white light he projected when his protective shields were active. He glowed from the inside.

  Dude?

  It will pass.

  Pass?

  It is a side effect.

  Side effect? I have side effects?

  It will pass.

  We need to discuss this later, Billy said.

  "Are you coming?" Jane said.

  "Where?"

  "To find out what our Emily is doing with a storm in a jar."

  Chapter 64:

  Silencing the Voice

  Kate scrambled back to the top of the rig, running into but not needing to fight what was left of the remaining mercenaries. A few stopped and lifted their guns, but then backed away cautiously. She wondered if the cyborg she met in Wegener's office had issued some kind of evacuation order.

  At one point, she witnessed a pair of the ninjas carrying on a whispered conversation. Kate jumped to grab hold of a bar above her and pull herself into the rafters as they passed. They spoke a mixture of several languages, English, French — a Slavic language Kate couldn't identify, and Mandarin, but she caught "gone" and "escape" among the English, and knew enough French to decipher the word for wolf.

  She wondered if Titus had survived. She wondered, more darkly, what she would do if he hadn't.

  Up on the main deck, several helicopters took off, ignoring everything occurring on the surface. The storm still raged out across the water; rain and lightning peppered the sky. The copters paid her no mind. Things were finished here, it appeared.

  Then, she saw the man in the squid-marked mask being escorted by a set of guards toward the biggest helicopter.

  "Well, why not," she said.

  Kate ran at him, tossing taser discs at the two lead bodyguards, watching them jitter and stagger when the electricity hit their skin. Before the others could get a shot off, she kicked a third in the mouth, elbowed a fourth in the eye, and prepared to keep going when someone cracked her head with the butt of his rifle.

  She fell to the ground, stunned.

  "Should I shoot her, Sir?"

  The man in the mask spoke. Kate remembered his voice from the television. It was pretty, for a man. A television announcer's voice. Someone who could narrate film trailers.

  "None of this matters," he said. "We've failed. We're all going to die. They'll have us killed when they find out."

  "So where we going?"

  The Voice turned to his bodyguard. "Wouldn't you like to know?"

  "Huh?" one of the guards said.

  Kate watched the exchange; two other bodyguards continued to train their weapons on her. She stayed low, feigning to be in worse shape than she really was. The blow to her head made her see stars, but she could move if forced to. At least that was what she hoped.

  "You're going to kill me, aren't you," the Voice said. "You're on their payroll. I'm to be the sacrificial victim for this failure. What did they promise you?"

  "I swear, I'm not — "

  "Give me your gun," the Voice said.

  "What?"

  "Your sidearm. Give me your pistol."

  The bodyguard, confused, handed the pistol on his belt to the Voice with his free hand. The other man accepted it and pointed it at Kate's head.

  "Why did you do this?" he said. He sounded scared, the smooth richness of his voice giving way to panic. "What did you hope to gain?"

  Kate smiled.

  She wondered if she was fast enough to get her head out of the way if he pulled the trigger. Even if the bullet hit her body armor it would be better — it would hurt like hell, but she hadn't armored her head enough for this sor
t of thing.

  "Bring her," he said.

  "Bring her?"

  "I'm not going back empty handed," the Voice said.

  "You're not bringing me," Kate said.

  The Voice fired. Not at her head — the bullet clipped off her armored hip, sending a shockwave of bruising pain up and down her leg.

  "Bring her," he said again.

  The bodyguard tried to pick her up but she bashed him across the nose with her forehead, the man staggered backward in pain. His cohorts opened fire, but Kate was already on the move, five feet from where they were aiming.

  The Voice fired also, wildly, all self-control lost.

  Kate felt another bullet slam into her protective covering, mid-back and to the left, knocking the wind out of her.

  "Forget her!" the Voice said.

  He stormed off for the waiting helicopter; his guards followed. The blades of the helicopter's rotor began to spin and the Voice climbed in through a side door. Kate noted that the one who'd been speaking to him, the commander of the bodyguards, had been left behind, still on the ground holding his nose together from Kate's head butt.

  She pulled out the grappling gun again and fired it, puncturing the helicopter's tail.

  "This is a terrible idea," she said. But she prepared to hold on, looking for a way to clip the firing mechanism to her belt. They can't get away, she thought. Someone has to be held accountable for all of this.

  The helicopter started to pull away. Kate ran across the deck of the rig, wondering if the winch in the grappling gun was strong enough to carry her high up to the landing gear.

  And then, two hundred and fifty pounds of werewolf launched into the air and slammed into the tail of the helicopter.

  The copter spun like a top, Titus's bulk sending it out of control. Kate saw the pilot struggling to right the vehicle, to no avail. Sparks flew as the landing gear scraped across the deck.

  The cable connecting the gun to the grapple held true. Kate found herself dragged violently across the deck. Bouncing and bumping her way to the edge of the rig, she tried to get a handle on the grappler, to hit the release button, but she was rolling, wrapped in the cord, the centrifugal force of the copter's spin growing faster and stronger. The helicopter gained altitude and pulled off the deck. Just in time, she found the release button and fell back, landed and started to roll. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Titus ejected from the tail of the aircraft, a frightening and comical sight as the werewolf fell with all the grace of a belly-flopping diver to the deck.