“Colonel Arbor, looks like they left behind a wounded.”
A video began to play in Arbor’s visors.
“How interesting. I’m on my way.”
Arbor took the elevator ride down the thirty-odd floors and entered a room to find Rachel Dodge, fully visible, tied securely to a chair, her cloak laid out on a table in the corner of the room, her bottom lip swollen and bloody
“So, just who might you be?”
Rachel said nothing to him.
“You know, we really weren’t supposed to take prisoners today. I was under orders not to imprison or kill anyone who makes it on film. At least not if I could help it. Wouldn’t be good for the television coverage. Just between you and me, beautiful, I thought it was a mistake. I really wanted to take one of you traitors prisoner at the very least. It’s so much fun. Maybe your friend Paul, the Spider Wasp, told you what fun it was?”
Rachel said nothing, but her eyes seethed with rage. Ward hadn’t needed to tell her how badly he’d been mistreated at the hands of the Council; she had helped rescue him, and what she had seen had turned her stomach. It had nearly turned Ward against staying in the Suns of Liberty.
“Oh well, maybe next time.” Arbor turned to leave the room—and Rachel felt relief wash over her. But then he stopped short, right at the door. “On second thought,” he said, turning with a devilish smile on his face, “you weren’t on TV, were you?”
Rachel’s heart sank.
“Nobody saw you. So, I’m not breaking any rules, am I?” Arbor gave her a cold glare and laughed. “You’re going to tell us exactly how that little coat of yours works. Oh, honey. You and I can get to know each other very, very well.”
TRENTON NJ.
FREEDOM COUNCIL DEFENSE RESEARCH CENTER
Eric Von Cyprus, lead scientist of the Freedom Council Science Division, nodded his head. “Mr. Tarleton, you’d better get your glasses ready.”
Bannister Tarleton, CEO of General Defense Industries and second-in-command of the Freedom Council, flipped open a pair of designer sunglasses made just for this occasion, and smiled back.
“Wow me, Doctor.”
“I could wow you a lot more if you’d give me an actual budget.”
Tarleton just frowned at him.
Von Cyprus sighed and then smiled to make sure his companion knew he was only joking. Really, just a joke...
“Well, of course, we have the main event,” Von Cyprus said, pointing to the sunglasses in Tarleton’s hand. “But some of our other projects are proceeding quite well also. You’ll notice the mirrors that surround this room, for instance.”
Von Cyprus pointed to the four tall mirrors that were on each end of the large room. They extended ceiling to floor and took up half of each wall.
Tarleton nodded.
“These are part of our Dark Energy research unit. We have made some impressive strides there, thanks to this little chamber here. Turns out it was just the missing ingredient that we needed. But,” he paused, “I’m not sure how much you want to know about it?”
“While I would like to know all about it, I’m still required to keep plausible deniability in mind on these little journeys, Doctor. We haven’t changed the policy that much.” It was clear from his tone he disapproved of the policy. The previous chairman had maintained a strict rule of keeping the Council leadership in the dark on major projects so that nothing could be directly tied to them. Howke had relaxed the rule. But only so much.
“Yes. Well, the mirrors harness energy. We made them from an alloy derived out of the glass from this chamber. Let’s leave it at that. If something goes wrong with the procedure today, these mirrors will save our lives. Now follow me.”
Von Cyprus led him out of the large room into a much smaller hallway that had small closet-sized rooms lining the hall. Each small room contained holding tanks of various kinds. At the end of the hallway, Tarleton could see the far exit door out of the lab.
“Okay. Over here.” They walked a little further, and in one of the small rooms was a large suit of armor.
It was a deep golden-brown color with large claw-like gloves that Tarleton thought could do some serious damage. The helmet had a gun-like weapon of some kind built into the top right side and big, round, red, insect-looking eye guards. Von Cyprus always had a taste for the theatrical.
“You can see this exoskeleton is ready. Once we get the chamber working we should have a sustainable bioluminescence frame suitable for human testing.”
“How do you know it will work if you haven’t fired up the chamber yet? You didn’t exactly knock it out of the park last time, remember? The Man-O-War overheated...or whatever. That was reckless.”
“Mr. Tarleton, I am a careful man, despite what you may think. I take lots of risks, but they are all highly calculated in their nature. Like speaking to you this way, for instance. I know you’ll tolerate it, despite your well-known short temper, because of what you are about to see...”
Von Cyprus moved over one cell to a smaller cubicle wherein a rat was locked inside a similar looking exoskeleton suit, except it was perfectly constructed for a rat rather than a human being. The rat was inside a clear glass cage that resembled a fish tank.
“Once we realized that the chamber in there had safeguards and firewalls that were going to take us months to break through, we changed tactics. We could see how the chamber worked; we just couldn’t make it work. So we built our own. But we miscalculated. We couldn’t control the power output. In our haste, we actually thought we had improved upon the chamber’s design. And thus, the Man-O-War was made with too much power for its own good. Quite the contradiction!”
“Yeah, fascinating,” Tarleton deadpanned. “I know this already, remember?”
“Of course.” Von Cyprus blinked, getting back on track, relieved Tarleton had taken so much interest in his work. “But here’s what you don’t know. Once we broke through the firewall, we took further precautions.”
Von Cyprus pointed to the clear glass rat cage in front of them.
“You see, we tested all of this on a much smaller scale first. Both the chamber, and the suit.” Von Cyprus grabbed a small control unit attached to a cord that was itself attached to the wall of the tank. “Put your glasses on now.”
Von Cyprus donned his own pair.
Then he said to the rat, “Okay, Fink. Get ready for a jolt, you dirty rat.” And with that, he pressed the button. A small beam of bioluminescent energy exploded out toward Fink the rat, and he froze in horror. The suit he was in illuminated brightly and then faded back to normal.
“See, still alive.”
Tarleton seemed unimpressed.
Von Cyprus pressed another button, and Fink suddenly glowed with bioluminescence. The next thing Tarleton knew Fink was actually floating above the bottom of his cage.
Von Cyprus had control of the suit and flew the rat out of the cage. Fink passed right through the clear walls just like a beam of light. He flew Fink about the room, circling the rat around a couple of times. “On a rat-scale, Fink here is just like the Fletcher girl. He can do anything she can do, all at my command.” Then he flew him back into the cage, set him down on the cage floor, and reverted him back to a normal rat.
Fink tweaked his whiskers frantically but otherwise went back to doing rat things just as before.
The men both took off their glasses.
Tarleton was standing there smiling. “Anything else?”
“I know, I can’t wait either. Let’s fire it up.”
Quickly they retreated back to the chamber. Von Cyprus and Tarleton stood before the large computer console just outside the glassed-in chamber.
“Okay, Mr. Tarleton, we don’t often have observers of your stature here in the lab, so we have gone to great lengths for your protection.” Von Cyprus again pointed to the mirrors that surrounded the chamber. “Those mirrors I mentioned earlier will kick in should anything go wrong. They don’t just reflect bioluminescent light, they attract it. You see, they have
a special property called—“
“Let’s get this done. I want to be out of here before the weather gets bad,” Tarleton said.
Von Cyprus nodded and pursed his lips. “Okay, bring in the exosuit,” he shouted to no one Tarleton could see.
On cue, two of his assistants wheeled the suit in on a large square wooden dolly, entered the chamber itself, and set the suit in front on the opposite end, directly in front of the firing mechanism.
“Mr. Wilson, please make sure all the degree settings are correct,” Von Cyprus said. As the assistant finished checking a setting, Von Cyprus would lock its corresponding lever forward into its engagement setting on the console in front of him. “Today, assuming it works, we are only going to charge the suit and demonstrate what it can do. Then we will go about the business of finding a Compatible,” he told Tarleton.
“A Compatible? I thought that Compatibles were only something you needed for the cybergenetic stuff?”
“It’s the same principle here. It’s only a small percentage of the population that has a genetic profile that is compatible with cybergenetic modifications. And we’ve both seen how fatal the effects can be when tried on a non-Compatible.”
Tarleton nodded.
“Well,” Von Cyprus continued, “it’s an even smaller percentage of the population that is compatible for bioluminescence. So small, in fact, that we don’t know what those profiles are, or what separates them from the rest of us. But I can tell you they are just as rare in rats as they are in humans.”
“How many rats did you go through?”
“Let’s just put it this way, there’s going to be a whole lot of skinny pet snakes on the East Coast this year.”
“But if that thing is just a suit,” Tarleton asked, pointing to the exosuit, “why do you need to have a Compatible?”
“It is a suit, but for it to work like the Fletcher girl, we need someone who can biologically interface with it.”
“Huh?”
Von Cyprus thought for a moment. “It’s going to interface with the central nervous system of whoever we use”—he made a stabbing motion with his hand—“and synergize with their biological energy. That’s the only way we can simulate what she does. So they don’t need to be one hundred percent compatible, but they still need to be up there. Makes the possible pool of applicants larger. Once the suit is working we can start testing it on our volunteers.”
Tarleton shrugged. “Fair enough. Let’s get to it.”
And with that, and with his assistants now cleared out of the chamber and the doors shut and locked, Von Cyprus hit the switch and a deep hum of power droned out of the chamber.
A bright yellow-green laser streaked to life, searing across the glassed-in enclosure from the powerful cylindrical gun-like device in the center of the far chamber wall. A brilliant beam of luminescent energy blasted the suit and fingered across its mass in pulsing strands of chartreuse lightning.
And then it happened.
The beam had been going for five seconds when a flash of light to their left stunned them.
Von Cyprus and Tarleton both flinched and, even with their glasses on, covered their eyes.
When they opened them, the Fire Fly, Fiona Fletcher, was standing in the center of the chamber just to the left of the beam of energy.
They felt their spines turn completely to ice. This was the woman who had singlehandedly defeated the Man-O-War.
She locked eyes with Von Cyprus. “Shut it down,” she said to him. “Or I will.”
“We’re only charging the suit!” Von Cyprus said.
“Fine.” Fiona stepped in front of the great beam of energy and simply held out her palm.
The yellow-green beam slammed against her hand, and a spray of luminescence spewed into the air, showering the chamber in its droplets.
Von Cyprus turned to Tarleton. “You’d better get the hell out of here. I can’t protect you from her.”
Tarleton wasted no time in turning and sprinting for the hallway and the far exit. But when he got to the hallway, he stopped. He clung to the wall and peeked back around, watching. He could not take his eyes off of her incredible power.
Fiona strained and pushed, trudging forward, forcing the beam back into the firing chamber of the gun. Her palm closed over the barrel’s opening.
The gun fell silent.
When it was done, Fiona turned back toward Von Cyprus. She was pulsing in power. More than she had ever felt. It radiated off of her like great waves of cosmic displacement. She stalked forward. Von Cyprus could feel each step she took in the core of his body. Like she was walking on his spinal cord itself.
But as she passed through the middle of the chamber, in the exact center of the field of mirrors, she froze. The glow of the extra energy was reflecting off of them, and as Von Cyprus gawked in amazement, Fiona staggered back from the energy rebounding across the mirrors. She closed her eyes and pushed the energy back out with both of her hands. Away from her body, pushing it all back toward the mirrors.
She surged forward, breaking free of the energy’s hold, and the power surged together behind her in a blinding flash of light as a great WHOOSH! pulled the air from the room for a split second before it all burst into a halo of light and was gone.
Fiona sighed in relief.
And returned her powerful gaze to Von Cyprus. “I should have destroyed this when I had the chance.”
“Hey, no need to do that. I mean, we’re just charging a suit here, that’s all.”
“You,” she accused, stepping forward again, “created the Man-O-War.”
“I never meant for that to hurt you. I mean, no offense, but you attacked it. We weren’t targeting you. I sure as hell wasn’t.”
Fiona just glared at him.
And he looked at her, really looked at her. “My god,” he said. “Look at you. You’re so beautiful, so powerful. You’re a goddess. Why would I try to hurt you? I worship you! We should be working on all this together. Help me do it right.”
Fiona didn’t move. Still glaring.
Von Cyprus eyed his instrument panel. “I mean, you have to love the science, right? Your dad was a scientist. So I’m betting you are just as interested in it as he was.”
Von Cyprus raised an eyebrow, moved closer to his instrument panel.
She still just stood there, so he got a bit bolder. “Now. Let’s see. It looked like you had a little trouble with those mirrors. You want to get back in there and let’s see if we can figure out what’s going on there?”
“You tried to kill me.”
Von Cyprus’s eyes grew big as he remembered the missile strike. “Oh hey, wait a minute! That was the Council, the military. I had nothing to do with that. Trust me, I’m your biggest fan!”
Fiona just frowned and spun back toward the chamber’s main console. To Von Cyprus, she was just a blur of motion, causing him to scream and duck behind his own console, afraid she was coming to kill him.
She stepped in front of the machine, to the center of the unit, and plunged her hand inside. She paused. Did she really want to destroy this thing? It had made her the Fire Fly—could it unmake her? She so desperately yearned to be normal. Her mind raced to Becky, Arcadia, and the thousands that made the trek to Tahoe every day. They were all counting on her, believing in her. And the missile strike illustrated that none of them would ever be safe without her.
The unit began to tremble and split apart. Light shot out from the seams. Von Cyprus raised his head above his console and watched in horror as Fiona raised her arm, and when she did, the entire wall-sized unit raised with her.
“No! Don’t! Don’t do it!” Von Cyprus screamed, leaping to his feet.
It split apart into a thousand pieces. Like a giant glowing jigsaw puzzle. The pieces began to spin and burn.
In a matter of seconds, the most-prized weapon in the war between the Suns and the Council was no more.
“No...” Von Cyprus wailed and fell to his knees.
Fiona tu
rned to him. “Don’t do this again.” A threat.
And then she was gone.
Von Cyprus was stunned. He stayed on his knees, just staring at the now empty chamber. Only the uncharged suit remained.
Finally, a voice broke the silence. It was Tarleton. He’d seen the whole thing.
“Start working on the mirrors,” he said.
Von Cyprus gazed up at the mirrors, and a slow smirk spread across his tear-stained face. “The mirrors,” he breathed. “She had trouble with the mirrors.”
CHAPTER 21
BOSTON, MA.
“Where the hell is he?” Leslie protested.
As soon as the Suns arrived back at HQ they had dove into crisis mode.
They each took their place at the table in the Situation Room. Drayger took the seat where Ramsey “Hunley” Hollis used to sit. Only Lantern was absent—and of course, Rachel.
They all felt they had to make a move, but none presented itself. The debate was a somber and gloomy affair.
Rachel had been captured, they had been roundly defeated, and many of the Minutemen, who had sprung into action to help in their escape back to Boston, had been killed or captured. They still had no firm numbers for either.
Worse, Media Corp was making the escape seem like the Suns abandoned the Minutemen as sacrificial lambs to save their own hides. The whole thing looked like a terrorist attack and was being played again and again all across the world’s media.
Precisely the kind of image they did not want.
Leslie had been fielding outraged calls from members of COR since the images had started to broadcast across the Web. Among the twenty-three members who had voted to strike a deal with the Council (virtually the same twenty-three who had voted against the raid on Freedom Rise), a push was on to decommission the Suns altogether. An unprecedented digital exchange was taking place between the COR members. Leslie worried the exchange might compromise the members’ cybersecurity. Another reason to have Lantern’s expertise, she’d fumed.
As the frustration in the room mounted, so did the impatience with Lantern’s absence from the proceedings. He was the person most able to give them options. Options none of the rest of them could imagine. Every moment they waited could mean Rachel was going through hell. Or worse.
The Suns of Liberty (Book 1): Legion Page 14