Courageous

by Nicholas Olivo

  “And so, it’s just going to keep looping like that?” Petra asked.

  “Pretty much.”

  “I can see why you keep such a large bottle of Advil in your desk drawer, Vincent,” Megan said, rubbing her temples. “I didn’t think I could still even get headaches as an undead.”

  “Time travel does that to people,” I said.

  “Well, hopefully, we can deal with Treggen before he does anything else requiring that much brainpower,” Megan said. “With a little luck, Herb and his dad will be able to trace Treggen using one of the clones.” We’d brought one of the Treggens back with us, and Herb had taken it down to the lab to see if we could get another supernatural trace going. Our hope was that we could use a clone to locate the real McCoy.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Let’s hope luck is on our side.” I paced back and forth in front of the Defenders’ Society table, thinking about how everything hinged on us getting to Treggen before Treggen got to the Tempus. I’d come so close to him twice now, once at the church and once at the cloning station, and both times he’d slipped away. Sure, I’d denied him resources both times, but the demons and the Mentem were just gravy. I hadn’t stopped Treggen’s plans; I’d just inconvenienced him.

  Petra put a hand on my shoulder, stopping my pacing. “It will be all right, Vincent,” she said.

  “I’m not so sure this time, Petra,” I said. “The last time I dealt with someone who was threatening time itself, I was a full-on god of the Urisk. I had powers and reserves that let me do just about anything, or so it felt. Now, sure, I’ve learned some new tricks, but I’m nowhere near what I once was.”

  “You always find a way, love,” she said, giving my shoulder a squeeze. “You will again.”

  “Bad news, everyone,” Herb said, walking into the room. “The trace isn’t working with the clones. We can’t track Treggen that way.”

  “What about going after Xavier himself?” Megan asked. “Even if Treggen severed the connection, could you interrogate his spirit?”

  Herb shook his head. “If Treggen’s just using Xavier as his sock puppet like we think, then Xavier’s actual spirit won’t know where Treggen is.”

  Shit. Shit shit shit. “Too much is riding on this,” I said. “There has to be another way.”

  “I’m out of ideas,” Herb said, his shoulders slumping.

  “Can we maybe scan for celestial metal?” Petra asked. “Wasn’t Thad building a device to locate more of it?”

  “He was, but I told him to call it off once Cynthia became adult-sized,” I said. “I could ask him to start up again, but it’ll take time that we don’t have.”

  “Or you could have the house make one for you.”

  I kissed her. “Petra, you’re brilliant.” I concentrated, picturing the celestial metal detector clearly in my mind, and the device dropped into my waiting palm a moment later. I started it up and began scanning. Almost immediately, it began chirping. Something was close. Really close. “Crap,” I said, “I forgot to filter out Cynthia.” That done, I resumed scanning. Five minutes passed. Ten. Still nothing. After fifteen minutes, I shut it off and tossed it on the Defenders’ table. “I can’t get a fix on Treggen. The asshole is probably cloaking himself from divination, just like he did with his clones.”

  I drummed my fingers on Alexis’s keyboard, scanning the maps of both the Undercity and Boston proper. If we failed to find Treggen, the universe as we knew it would cease to exist. Time would be unraveled, and the past I knew and the future I wanted would both crumble and fade. When La Place’s demon had taken over the timestream, time had been dying from both ends, the past dissolving from people’s memories and the future simply winking out. People would forget their ancestors, their loved ones, their dreams and aspirations, until all that was left was a world of Treggen’s own making. That just couldn’t happen.

  But unless I could find him, we were all screwed. I needed to know—

  “He’s in a house on Dudley Road,” I said.

  “What?” All four of my companions asked at once.

  I blinked. Where had that come from? A faint light at the edge of my vision caught my attention; the Anisa Amulet glowing against my chest. Mitt had told me that when he’d been scared that he and Jack weren’t going to find their way home, the amulet had given him directions. Somehow, it had just done the same thing for me.

  “Son of a bitch,” I whispered. “I wasn’t afraid before,” I said, thinking it through. “I knew we had a plan, I knew we had a way to track Treggen, so I wasn’t scared that we wouldn’t find him. It wasn’t until I was scared that we’d be too late that the amulet’s powers kicked in. I just got a really clear picture in my head, I know Treggen’s in a house on Dudley Road.”

  Gears was already scrambling up to Alexis’s keyboard, bringing up satellite images of the area. “Isn’t Dudley Road where that asylum was? Or was it a convent?”

  “It was neither,” Megan said. “Those are both urban legends. However, there was a Caulborn containment facility there, for a time. It was an experiment where the agency tried to reform prisoners using techniques that would’ve been right at home in Danvers State Hospital. The wailing and screams coming from the inmates were likely what gave rise to the legends. The facility was closed back in the eighties, but it’s still there, under a veil enchantment…” Megan’s eyes went wide.

  “A veil enchantment that would make it nearly impossible to divine where Treggen was,” I finished. “Son of a bitch, he’s using our own stuff against us. Again. And the restless spirits that are no doubt still in that facility would make wonderful soldiers for him. You spend less energy compelling an existing spirit, as opposed to raising new undead, right, Herb?”

  The necromancer nodded. “And if he’s not having to expend energy to control Megan anymore, he’s likely gotten control of even more undead.”

  “We have to hit him now. You guys up for one more charge?”

  “When aren’t we?” Gears asked. “But before we dive in, let’s see what we’re up against.” His fingers machine-gunned across Alexis’s massive keyboard and the satellite images onscreen zoomed down to street level on Dudley Road.

  “The veil enchantment will block your cameras,” Megan said.

  The USB interface reformed on Gears’s index finger as he flashed Megan a sharp-toothed grin. “The cameras, yes. My cyberium, though, can filter out the enchantment now that we know it’s there. Watch this.” Gears jammed his USB finger into Alexis’s data port, and the image onscreen began to shimmer.

  “You have a direct data interface now? When did that happen? How fast can you transfer data?”

  “Yes, yesterday, and about twelve gig per second,” Gears replied. “Watch the map. This is going to be cool.”

  On screen, Dudley Road highlighted in blue. The road ran for miles and had multiple houses on it, but it also had several long stretches where the road just ran through heavily wooded areas. One of those areas vanished, replaced by a two-story building that looked like a flat-topped warehouse. The trees around the house had been cleared, and there was at least one car in the driveway.

  “Hello, Treggenhaus,” Gears said. “Now then, let’s see what we’ve got for security.” The image shifted again, going through infrared, the magical spectrum, x-ray, and a few others I couldn’t readily identify in the blink of an eye. When it returned to normal, there were a handful of blinking red dots circling the perimeter of the building, along with some green lines and orange squares.

  “So, we’ve got some undead guardians,” Gears said, gesturing to the red dots, “some alarm-type enchantments,” pointing to the green lines on the ground, “and a few plain old explosive mines,” pointing to the orange squares. “Treggen’s being pretty thorough here, accounting for mundane and supernatural threats alike.” He zoomed in on one of the patrolling
undead. “Hmm. Looks like Treggen’s raised some more wights.”

  “Yes,” I said. “But they have holstered weapons. Can you get a read on what they’re packing?”

  A small dialog box popped up onscreen with the word Scanning in italicized green letters. Then it shifted to a small text box containing schematics of the weapons the undead were carrying.

  Megan stepped up to the screen, her eyes turning black. “Those are the same specs as my pocket cannon. He’s copied it. That… that…”

  “Bastard, I think is the word you’re looking for,” I said.

  “Yes,” Megan said, giving a firm nod. “That.”

  “Alexis,” I said, and the AI chirped her readiness to answer my question. “Run an analysis of the energy signature used by the transdimensional pocket cannons that Gearstripper has highlighted. Would a Gizmatron 3000 force-field generator stop a blast from one of those?”

  “Analysis indicates a standard Gizmatron energy shield could withstand two blasts from this type of weapon.”

  “Excellent,” I said. “Spin up the fabrication labs and make five of those immediately. What’s the estimated time to complete?”

  “Three minutes, given current conditions.”

  “Fantastic. What else we got, Gears?”

  “That seems to be it. The building itself is standard Caulborn construction from the eighties, mostly concrete, lead, and silver.”

  “Can you detect any celestial metal?”

  A blinking blue dot appeared in the northwest corner of the building. “He’s there.”

  “Okay,” I said. “So, the plan is to get in there and snatch the amulet Treggen has. Then, we can throw him into one of the cells here at Courage Point. I’ll ward it so he can’t control undead, and seal him off from his lasers and whatever else he can do. Then, we locate the Tempus and let him deal with Treggen.” I glanced at Herb. “Can you handle these undead?”

  “It shouldn’t be too hard to dismiss them, or at the very least, disrupt Treggen’s control over them.”

  “I can handle the mines,” Gears said. “I’ve got some stuff on Billy that can deactivate the explosives from a safe distance.”

  I nodded. “The shields Alexis is fabricating—”

  “Shield fabrication complete,” Alexis said.

  “The shields Alexis has fabricated—thank you, Alexis—will give us some protection. But what about the wards? Can we do anything about those? Can your cyberium eat them away, like what you did in the cells, Gears?”

  “Well, technically, yes, but the cyberium can only dissolve the wards I can physically touch, and there are so many of them…” He gestured to all the green lines on the screen. “It would take me days to get them all undone.”

  “Can we do anything else?” I asked. My friends and I looked at each other. Runecraft wasn’t something that any of us were much good at. I’d learned to identify the wards that blocked my powers, but there were as many different runic combinations as there were words in the dictionary. “Alexis, is Mrs. Rita still in the house?”

  “Negative.”

  “Damn, so much for that.” Mrs. Rita had said she’d stand with me when the time was right. I guess this wasn’t that time yet. “All right, we’ll just have to be mindful of the wards.”

  “The snow will make things harder, too,” Megan said, inclining her head at the screen. “It’s going to slow us down.”

  “I can help with that,” I said. “Alexis, whip up five pairs of Gizmatron all-terrain boots, will you?” The AI chirped her acknowledgment, and another timer appeared on the screen. “Okay, three minutes to roll out.” I left the room and grabbed the shields and boots from the fabrication lab a few minutes later. The shields weren’t anything flashy or fancy; just a small metal disk that affixed itself to a person’s belt or lapel, and had enough power to project a force field strong enough to stop a nuclear bomb. The boots would let us walk across the surface of the snow like Legolas, assuming they worked the same as they did in the comics. After giving those to my friends, I created a portal to the closest location I could see on Dudley Road.

  Chapter 18

  As we stepped through the portal, I gave a grin when I didn’t sink into the snow. Gizmatron technology saves the day again. Then we caught sight of the first of the wights. I watched as Herb, who was already chanting, snapped his arm out. A silver character the size of a baseball shot forward and hit the wight in the back of the head. The undead dropped to the ground and dissolved into a puddle of ashen goo. I gave Herb a thumbs-up, and we crept from the tree line and across the yard.

  We hadn’t gone twenty feet before a group of ten undead charged at us from the house. Megan and Gears calmly stepped forward, raised their respective weapons, and began firing. The undead dropped like targets at a shooting range, and we continued on. We’d fought armies of vampires; we’d dealt with crystal soldiers, lizard men, and intergalactic tyrants. A handful of wights weren’t going to stop us.

  Gears put up a hand. “The first of the mines is five meters ahead. Give me three seconds.”

  On my internal “three Mississippi,” a patch of snow just ahead of us puffed up a bit, like one of those old Jiffy Pop pans. “First mine disabled.”

  “How many more are there?”

  “Ten,” Gears replied. A group of five more wights on the other side of the yard barreled toward us, but Gears raised a finger, and the wights were blasted skyward in an explosion of snow, earth, and rock. “Correction,” Gears said. “There are nine left.”

  We advanced on the house, wights dropping to shimmering eldritch characters, laser blasts, and remotely detonated mines. This was it. All we needed to do was get inside the house, find Treggen, and then finish this once and for all.

  We were about fifteen feet from the front door when another wight came out of the house, carrying a silvery sphere the size of a bowling ball that I knew all too well. This was the celestial phylactery that Croatoan had previously inhabited, the one Treggen’s soul was in now. “Hello, Treggen,” I called. “Let’s make this easy. You surrender now, and I’ll do what I can to get you a nice, comfy cell with cable TV.”

  “Corinthos, no matter how many times we speak, you always manage to embarrass yourself within the first minute. It must be a gift. But, no, I will not surrender. You will all die here, now. You have been a thorn in my side for far too long, and—”

  Treggen’s monologue was cut short as Megan shot the wight carrying him. The undead’s head exploded, and it collapsed to the ground. Treggen’s celestial phylactery, however, hovered in the air, at the same height the wight had been holding it.

  Well that was new. Croatoan had never hovered. Did the phylactery have other tricks that Croatoan hadn’t used? Now that I thought about it, Croatoan was enough of a self-centered asshole that he’d want someone to cart him around rather than move under his own power. As Treggen hovered in the air, I noticed a chronometer affixed to the back of his sphere. But it was the metal disk affixed to his underside that held my attention. The Mieso Amulet. If I could get my hands on that and remove it, the immediate threat would be over. Treggen interrupted my train of thought.

  “Megan Hayes, while I commend your marksmanship, you are in well over your head.”

  “I—” Megan started to say. Then she put her hand to her forehead, as if she were in pain. Herb, Gears, and Petra were similarly posed, hands pressed to their heads. A faint buzzing against my chest told me my amulet was doing something, but before I could give it more thought, Megan snarled at Treggen and fired again. The shot went wide. Way wide. Like, she even missed the house Treggen was standing in front of. Her next three shots also were way off the mark.

  I turned to look at her, but stopped dead before I spoke. Petra was gone. In her place was a perfectly sculpted marble statue wearing a Wonder Woman T-shirt. Time slowed do
wn around me. I reached out, touching the stone that had once been Petra’s skin. What the hell? What had that asshole done to her?

  Time snapped back to normal. To my right, Billy was spinning wildly in circles, panels and hatches haphazardly popping open and closed. “Gears, get it together!” I hollered as a shot from his blaster sailed over my head. “You’re going to kill one of us!”

  “I don’t know how this works, Vinnie! I don’t know how anything works!”

  And then it hit me. Treggen was using the Mieso Amulet on everyone at once. Megan was scared of missing her targets; Petra was afraid of becoming a regular statue again; Gears was afraid of losing his connection to technology. I hadn’t checked on Herb, but I was willing to bet that he’d be unable to perform necromancy anymore, either because he was afraid of the undead themselves, or because he was afraid it wouldn’t work.

  I launched myself forward, taking flight, my right fist extended as I surged ahead. The Anisa Amulet’s wearer wasn’t affected by the Mieso Amulet, and I was banking on Treggen not knowing that. If I could just get my hands on the phylactery, I could portal both of us into a cell at Courage Point and then find a way to contact the Tempus. All I needed was two seconds to cross the space between us. I wasn’t going to bother with portals this close to the house though; Treggen had so many of the damned anti-extradimensional wards in place that even trying that was pointless.

  As I closed the distance, a green beam shot from Treggen. It would’ve taken me right between the eyes, but my Gizmatron 3000 shield flared to life, and the blast dissipated across a bubble of glowing yellow honeycomb-patterned energy. “What—” was all Treggen had time to say before I wrapped my arms around him and shot straight up into the sky. My best guess gave the anti-extradimensional energy wards a hundred-, maybe a hundred-and-fifty-yard radius. All I had to do was fly out of that area, and we’d be good to go.