Epitome knew she’d earn no brownie points with SHARD by second-guessing their security, but she decided to do another pass just in case. It wouldn’t do to have anything go wrong there, not with the grand opening only a few days away, not with the whole world watching.
~~~
“You do realize,” Savage said, as he heaved another uniformed body onto the pile of knocked-out deadweight, “this is a hell of a lot to go through to get a souvenir from someone you never actually banged.”
Security slipped past and deactivated, most of the guards taken down before they had any idea there’d been a breach. Two had noticed the intruders, one of them quick to react but not quick enough to do anything useful before Savage’s fist met the side of his head.
The other had wasted those vital split-seconds staring at Sleek.
Or maybe ‘wasted’ was unfair.
There had to be far worse final images before everything went dark.
She had attended to him herself. Lithe acrobatic flip, seductive smile, blow a kiss, and then zap with his own taser, which she’d filched from his belt without him even noticing.
“Who says,” she said now, turning to Savage with an indignant look as he hunkered over the main console, “that I never banged him?”
“Pfft. If you had, you wouldn’t be so obsessed.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“Only one who ever turned you down. Only one who could resist.” He finished whatever it was he was doing, hacking or disabling, camera feeds and remote uplinks, automatic alerts.
As long as it meant they had a while before anybody showed up, she didn’t care.
“Done,” he said. “Force fields down, electrics unlocked, alarms off. Help yourself, sis.”
She flexed her gloved fingers eagerly. “Everything’s open?”
“Well, except for the manual locks on the individual cases. None of the guards had keys for those.”
Another wiggling sleight-of-hand flex of her fingers made fancy lock picks appear.
Savage grunted. “So, everything but the actual tomb. With a five-ton meteor for a headstone, there’s no way we could shift it, even if I cracked the vault.”
“Why would I want to break into his tomb?”
He shrugged. “Find some illicit lab. Extract his DNA. Clone you a copy to keep as your personal sex-toy. Turn him into a baby daddy from beyond the grave.”
“I have some standards, thank you very much. You know I hate kids. Now, help me steal his costume.”
~~~
“Movement.”
“Security sweep?”
“Off-schedule.”
“Can you get a visual?”
“Checking…two figures…holy hell, I think one of them is Sleek.”
“Sleek?!”
“Cool it down, boys!”
“Confirmed. There’s no mistaking that costume.”
“Let me see!”
“Back off; I’m on scope.”
“The other’s Savage?”
“That or someone taught a bear to walk on its hind legs.”
“How did they –?”
“Not our problem. Stay focused. This is what we’ve been waiting for.”
“But they’re already inside the Memorial.”
“We have our instructions.”
“What if they loot and wreck the place before –?”
“Still not our problem. Ping heroband, top-level only.”
“Pinging.”
“Suit up and be ready to mobilize.”
“Roger that.”
“Sir?”
“And remember, we don’t budge until our priority target...”
“Sir?”
~~~
As he’d expected, sure enough, there they were. Sleek and Savage. They wouldn’t have been able to resist the challenge, the temptation.
Not that Sleek, in his experience, ever resisted a challenge or a temptation.
He watched them cross the main rotunda, a huge round room with a high, domed ceiling. Halfway up was a railed gallery, open to below.
An original Pyromelter glass sculpture hung from the dome’s center, the genius fire-artist’s tribute to the city’s fallen hero. Directly underneath it was a SHARD Industries hologram generator, projecting a revolving image of the E-X logo.
Display cases ringed the room. Sleek stood in front of the longest of these, which curved to follow the wall. It held a row of blank-faced grey mannequins clad in successive iterations of Exemplar’s costume.
The earliest was the outfit he’d been wearing the day he blew cover to save lives without a thought for what it might mean – boots, fatigue pants, a flak vest open over one of those damn Experimental Operations tee shirts someone in the unit had made and given out as a joke.
Thus, a legend had been born.
Over the decades, there’d been changes. The more military aspects had been toned down, if not altogether phased out. There was the addition of the cape, for instance. Exemplar had refused to go the spandex tights route, and especially refused the whole briefs-on-the-outside look that had for some reason caught on, but he’d okayed the cape.
The final mannequin in line wore the most recent design, the one that had gone from the flared gloves back to more gauntlet-like arm-guards, lost the shoulderpieces in favor of attaching the cape to insignia-style clasps on the close-fitting jacket, and an upgraded utility belt. It was there that Sleek and Savage had their attention directed.
He synched back into temporal phase and spoke, startling them. “You do realize, that’s not genuine.”
~~~
“ ...what?”
“Got another signal. A bogie.”
“Identify.”
“Can’t get a visual. Only distortion. Too much chronite interference.”
“Chronite interference? But that means...”
“That means the plan worked too well.”
“Hourglass protocol, now!”
“Turncoat? He’s really here?”
“But what about...?”
“Priorities, people! Move! Let’s move!”
~~~
Savage, not used to having his heightened senses taken by surprise, spun into a combat-ready crouch. Lips curled back in a snarl that revealed strong teeth. Muscles bulged, reddish hair bristled, and his eyes caught the revolving hologram light in yellow gleams.
Sleek, upon recognizing him, relaxed and adopted a languid pose. “Turny,” she said in a husky croon. “It’s not nice to sneak up on people.”
“...the fuck does he do that?” growled Savage.
“It’s not nice to rob from the dead, either.”
“How lucky we’re all bad guys, then.” She slid him a slow, come-hither smile. “Or bad girls.”
Turncoat regarded her from the shadowed upper gallery, heels of his hands braced on the railing. Her most particular metahuman gifts were effective at close range, but her other assets had a way of making close range seem like a good idea. Either way, he was glad for the filters woven into the fabric of the half-mask covering the lower part of his face.
Seeing that he was not about to come-hither in response to the come-hither smile, Sleek let it dissolve into a sultry pout. “I’m starting to think you’re not pleased to see me.”
“Hey, sis, we doing this or what? Because it was your plan, you’ve got the ‘picks, and there’s other places I’d rather be than watching you flirt with Captain Trenchcoat.”
She sighed. “Fine, fine. Move over and let me at the lock.”
“You don’t want to do that,” said Turncoat. “I told you, the costume’s not the real deal.”
Savage snorted. “No shit. Like they’d put the one he was wearing when he died on display? Way too morbid for this shrine. Might upset the kiddies and little old ladies.”
“He never wore it. He never wore any of these. They aren’t authentic. They had replicas made for the exhibit.”
“What?” Sleek glared suspicious emerald daggers at him th
rough the eyeholes of her sexy black domino. “Why?”
“DNA,” Savage said, in a tone of exasperated impatience. “Baby daddy from...”
“Shut up. And why should I believe you, Turny? You could just be saying that to get us to leave, and have the heist all to yourself.”
“If that’s what I wanted, I already would have done it. But I do think you should leave. SHARD’s had this place under surveillance for weeks. They’ll be springing their trap any minute.”
“We took out their security,” Savage said. “Give me some damn credit for knowing what I’m doing.”
“Did you take out the external uplink feed from the hologram?” he asked, nodding in the direction of the projected, revolving logo.
Savage looked at it for a weighty, silent pause. “Fuck.”
Then the Memorial Hall’s front doors crashed open, and a clear young voice rang out: “Stop right there!”
~~~
“In position, check?”
“Team One, check!”
“Team Two, check!”
“All right, people. Once you hit the switch, you’ll have eight, maybe ten seconds before Hourglass runs out. That’s eight-to-ten seconds our time, so, make them count. Don’t underestimate him. He’s faster than you think. He’s had years to get used to this. Don’t hold back on the chronite disruptors. You’re fully charged, use it. Collateral damage is not – repeat, not – a concern. Understood?”
“Sir, yes sir!”
“But, sir, what about the girl?”
“Did I stutter?”
~~~
Turncoat did one of his damn quick-fades, vanishing into the shadows as suddenly and stealthily as he’d appeared.
Very dramatic.
Very annoying.
Sleek still couldn’t figure out how he did it.
This, though, wasn’t the moment to wonder. The doors had flung open, and there stood the little would-be Exemplar-ette herself. Spine straight, shoulders square, head high, chin up, hands on hips.
“Epitome,” Sleek spat.
~~~
“No, sir, you didn’t stutter, sir! But...”
“Remember why we’re here. Remember your orders. It would be a tragedy if anything happened to her. A terrible citywide, nationwide, even worldwide tragedy.”
“Yes, sir.”
~~~
Sleek sprang at her. Rather than dodge, Epitome met her with what was meant to be a grapple, but Sleek writhed like an oiled ferret. Her long, limber leg snaked around Epitome’s. They crashed to the floor, thrashing and tussling.
Savage snorted. “Just my luck. Front row seats to a hair-pulling, costume-tearing, superpowered girlfight, and one of them has got to be my sister.”
Epitome judo-threw Sleek off and rolled to one knee. Sleek turned the throw’s momentum into an acrobatic backflip, whipped out a length of wire weighted at the ends, whirled it like a bolas, and let fly. Epitome intercepted it with her techlonium arm-guard. The wire snapped, making a loud twang like a breaking guitar string. One of the weights skittered off down the Gallery of Justice. The other flew at her head. She ducked it.
Savage grappled her from behind, pressing his huge body revoltingly close. His thick arms circled and held, pinning hers at her sides. A rough chuckle, hot and humid, puffed at her neck. His scent was musky, bestial. Male. Primal. She’d popped a pheromone blocker capsule on the way in, and good thing.
“Let go of me, you...”
“Relax,” Savage said. “You’ll like it.”
“I don’t think so!”
“They all do. Eventually.”
“Go to hell!”
“Such talk from Foundation’s darling!” Sleek leaned in and grasped Epitome’s face, squeezing her cheeks to give her kissy-lips. “Aren’t you cute? Aren’t you just the cutest thing!”
And…move.
Epitome rocked her weight backwards into Savage, using him as a brace to piston both feet up and out at Sleek. Wham! Square in the stomach, taking the woman by surprise. Boot prints on skintight black. Sleek went flying. Recovering before she hit the floor, she landed in a pantherlike pose right out of a comic book heavy on the slobbering fan-service.
Savage’s grip loosened enough for Epitome to drop and twist, freeing herself. She snatched a handful of choke-pellets from her utility belt and hurled them. They burst into clouds of gas against his broad chest. Savage wheezed. His eyes and nose began gushing.
With her other hand, she popped the cap on a glue-bomb and lobbed it in Sleek’s direction. Didn’t matter if she dodged; it erupted in mid-air into a super-expanding wad of sticky foam, covering several square yards and hindering even Sleek’s movements.
“Grab her!” Sleek yelled, struggling. “She’s a little girl, a powerless little girl, just grab her!”
Despite his flushed and gushing face, Savage lunged again. Epitome spun, snapped out a foot, and her boot met his groin. With a choked roar of pain, he doubled over. Epitome seized his wild red beard in her fist and jerked his head down as she jerked her knee up.
Crunch.
He dropped, groaning and retching, smearing spit and snot and blood and vomit across the polished rotunda floor with the shaggy mop of his hair and beard.
Epitome turned to Sleek. “I’m not,” she said, “a little girl anymore.”
~~~
Eight, maybe ten seconds their time.
Make them count.
“Now! Team One, go!”
Forearm-mounted housings flipped up, revealing control panels, and a switch marked with an hourglass design. As they each pressed it from red to green, it clicked and lit up.
The world blurred.
~~~
“So I see,” Sleek said. “You’re not a little girl. You’re a little bitch, and I’ve had enough.”
She started forward. Though she might normally leave the messier violence to Savage, Turncoat knew she could be lethal when the mood took her.
Clearly, the mood had now taken her. A flick of her wrists produced the sharp glint of metal, s-shaped throwing blades, razor-edged, diamond-coated, and capable of slicing through techlonium-reinforced imperviweave tactical body armor. Capable of shredding Epitome’s flesh from her bones.
He synched back in, clamping a hand around Sleek’s wrist out of what must’ve seemed like nowhere. “Leave her alone.”
~~~
The other team lagged behind.
In their earbuds, a dopplered voice, slowed and deepened almost beyond recognition, uttered an indecipherable command. “Tmmm tuhwhoooo ghho ...”
Team Two accelerated, caught up, and then kept pace.
Both teams rushed for the Memorial Hall.
~~~
Epitome went rigid, suddenly all too aware of how far in over her head she was.
Turncoat.
The sinister side of Project Hourglass.
Here. Now. Alive.
Exemplar’s arch-enemy. The only foe ever able to fight Foundation’s greatest hero to a draw.
Turncoat the traitor, the criminal, the vigilante.
The killer.
Only his eyes were visible, glinting like gunslinger steel above a dark half-mask. His black coat hung open over a uniform uncomfortably similar to a night-camo variation on Exemplar’s style…and, by extension, her own.
He had Sleek by the wrist, had stopped her from throwing her diamond-sharp s-blades; had told her to leave Epitome alone.
Because he wanted the privilege? Wanted to finish what he’d started with her mentor?
Turncoat looked at Epitome, seeming about to speak.
Then his head snapped around toward the doors, which crashed open again.
And everything began happening extremely fast.
~~~
Both teams rushed for the Memorial Hall, slammed through into the rotunda, and saw the tableau in front of them.
Savage, out cold on the floor.
Sleek. Wicked curves of shining silver poised in her black-gloved hands.
> Epitome. Eyes wide. Face pale.
And Turncoat.
Here, at last, in person, in the flesh, Turncoat. They had him.
They had them both.
This was going to work out better than expected. According to plan and then some.
~~~
He saw them as streaky grey-blur shapes, impossibly quick.
But, as quick as they were, his reactions were quicker.
Turncoat synched, leaving Sleek and Epitome standing like statues.
The blurs resolved into sharp focus. SHARD operatives, two teams of them, men and women in bulky but shimmery high-tech bodysuits.
Miscalculated, shit, he hadn’t counted on this. They’d been prepared for him. Just in case, they’d been equipped, armed and ready.
The lead team opened fire. Chronite beams etched crackling luminescent arcs. The air went a bright, weird electric-purple in stuttering, sputtering flashes.
Turncoat dove under the barrage, coat belling behind him. He slid across the polished floor, popped up in front of the first operative, drove his fist into the man’s gut, and felt a layer of tachyon-laced ablative gel absorb most of the force of the blow. Knocking the wind out of him with a coughing whoof, but little more.
Another operative strafed her weapon at Turncoat’s legs. He sprang aside. Almost. The beam clipped his boot. It felt like being horse-kicked in the ankle. He maintained his footing nonetheless, charged her, and shoved the barrel high as she fired again. Pain, brief but stunning, engulfed his arm in a searing acidic sizzle. The beam struck Pyromelter’s suspended glass sculpture instead and split out into a dazzling, scintillating lightshow.
He wrenched the gun from her grasp and hurled it aside. It stopped short in mid-air the instant he let go. It hung there, suspended and stationary relative to their current speed.
Masks Page 7