Matt brought his stick up into the middle body’s groin. Maybe Triple A could share pain out over his three bodies, limiting its effects, but it wouldn't be enough to stop a stick in the groin from being extremely painful.
All three bodies screamed, giving Matt a chance to deliver a knockout blow to the left body. It tumbled to the ground just as the third body slammed his stick into Matt’s back. Matt gasped in pain, brought up his foot and kicked back, right into the third body’s knee. His target staggered, overwhelmed by the pain, giving Matt an opportunity to knock him out, too.
The middle body, still groaning in pain, rolled aimlessly on the ground. Matt finished the job by knocking him out too, something that had probably been a relief by then. Triple A’s greatest strength was also a weakness, providing pain kept surging from body to body.
He heard a yell. Jack struggled to fight Warrior Girl, who had deployed her unbreakable lasso to catch Jack’s feet from under him and knocked him to the ground. Matt wasn't too surprised; Warrior Girl had had plenty of experience fighting other superhumans, and Jack had almost none. The training sessions hadn't touched superhuman combat yet. Ideally, Jack wouldn't have seen combat for another year or two, even if he was Marvin’s son. Bringing him along would have been a poor decision if they hadn't been so desperate for manpower.
Picking up one of Triple A’s shields, Matt walked over to Warrior Girl and struck at her back. She heard him coming, of course, and swung one of her swords to block him. Matt danced back as she took her foot off Jack’s neck and slashed out with her other sword, forcing him to catch the blow on his shield. Up close, he could see the lust for combat that had followed her into superhumanity and her icy determination to do whatever seemed best for women. In the Congo, she had been Hope’s merciless enforcer of the rights of women—and if she’d stayed there, few would have opposed her.
“Give up,” he said, as he blocked her next swing. She'd practiced against tougher opponents than him, but they hadn't had his ability to read her and know what she was planning almost before she knew it herself. But she moved with such speed, her blades slamming into the shield time and time again, that it was hard to keep up with her. “You can't win this...”
High overhead, he heard a thunderclap. Hope had arrived.
***
Hope barrelled through the air towards the makeshift prison, trying to sharpen his eyes to see what lay ahead. There were prisoners running for their lives, a handful of superhumans already engaging Triple A and Warrior Girl—and a pair of mutant bodies on the ground. He couldn't see Hypersonic, but the signs weren't good. Her powers might not have protected her if she’d been caught by surprise.
Something moved below him. Before he could react, a fist slammed into his chest, a fist driven by power equal to his own. Hope was flung straight up, high enough that he could see the curve of the Earth and stars overhead. His chest seemed to hurt worse than it had when the superpowered assassin had tried to kill him, even though nothing was broken. The only time he’d felt anything comparable was back when he’d been in the SDI, honing his powers against America—and America was dead.
The other superhuman appeared below him. Hope dodged, letting go of his grip on the air and allowing gravity to pull him down. His opponent wore no costume, nothing to signify who he was or who he represented, but Hope had no difficulty recognising his face. Fireman, one of the first superheroes—and one of the few who might be an equal match for Hope. He struck out, automatically, only to have Fireman catch the blow and use its momentum to send Hope speeding towards the ground.
Of course—Fireman had beaten Slaughter to death. He'd forgotten more about superhuman combat than Hope had ever learned.
They closed together, each trying to land a blow. Hope felt stunned as blow after blow landed, each one shaking his body even if it didn't tear through the skin. Fireman seemed unaffected by his blows, but that had to be an illusion. Hope had hit him hard enough to shatter a building; maybe he was weakening, or maybe he was just imagining it. Fireman’s clothes were shredding as Hope tore them apart, yet his body seemed untouched. And he kept raining blows on Hope.
“This is madness,” Hope managed to say, as they fell low enough for their voices to carry. “You have to stop this!”
“You are a spoiled brat with no concept of limitations,” Fireman said, sharply. There was no give in his voice at all, no sense that he might not be able to stop Hope from completing his mission. “Did you ever stop to think about what you were doing—or did it just seem logical and right to you?”
Hope slammed a fist into Fireman’s face, sending him plummeting several kilometres towards the ground. He would have liked to stay where he was and admire the continents below, but Fireman was too dangerous an opponent to give him time to recover. Hope plunged after him, only to be caught and forced down himself in his opponent’s unyielding grip.
For a moment, their powers were in direct competition, their fall accelerating well past the speed of sound. There was only a second’s warning before they crashed into the ground hard enough to set off an earthquake.
Fireman lost his grip on Hope as they crashed, which was the only thing that allowed Hope to catch himself and return to the skies. They’d smashed in Nevada, alarmingly close to Las Vegas. The world-famous resort city, crammed with casinos and partly owned by the mob, was shaking under the impact of the earthquake they'd created. He could hear the sounds of people screaming as buildings toppled and great fissures opened up in the roads; gas pipes broke and blew up, sending streams of fire billowing into the sky.
The ground shook below. He jumped back just before Fireman burst out of the ground and slammed a fist into his jaw. Hope went flying, vaguely aware of smashing through a small ghost town abandoned since the days of the gold rush. Then Fireman was on him again, each blow sending shockwaves running through the ground.
Their battle seemed pointless, yet it was the only way to stop either of them. They’d managed to secure most of the tactical nukes before they could be dispersed into the hands of the insurgents who refused to give him a chance to save the world...
“Damn you,” Hope managed. He wasn't physically tried, but mentally tired, unwilling to continue the fight. In the distance, large plumes of smoke were billowing up from Las Vegas. “We don’t have to do this!”
“Then leave this country,” Fireman said. Hope couldn’t tell if he was winded too, or if he was just pausing long enough to try to talk Hope into surrender. “The power you lucked into didn't make you king of the world!”
“You knew how badly your government had been corrupted,” Hope shouted back at him. Their argument would be heard for miles, even by mundane humans without enhanced senses, but he no longer cared. “You stopped them from using Slaughter as a weapon. Why aren't you with me on this?”
“Because you’re a fucking idiot,” Fireman said. “You say you want to restore freedom, but you’re going about it in the wrong fucking way. What gives you the right to make the rules? It isn't freedom if people don’t have any say in the rules that govern them—and superpowers don’t make you all-powerful. You’d already made plenty of mistakes before you decided to invade the United States. Do you have any idea how much suffering your actions are going to cause right across the world?”
He took a breath. “Ordering something to happen doesn't make it happen!” he thundered. “You need to build up networks to replace the ones you destroyed, but instead you're merely trying to rule by decree. Didn't the chaos that gripped Libya suggest the danger of your course? You smashed everything that held the country together, and now they have a civil war, a religious war, and a refugee crisis wrapped into one. Why didn't you just stay in the Congo instead of panicking everyone?”
“The government tried to kill me,” Hope snapped back. “I...”
“Now we hear it,” Fireman said. His voice grew tighter, digging into Hope’s soul. “The injured pride. The sense that the world should follow you because you know best, becau
se only you can make the decisions that matter...the sense that the conflict is personal, but not because you made it personal. You can smash, Hope, but can you build?”
He stepped closer, his voice pressing against Hope’s conscience. “I know how you felt, the first time you looked on the world from high overhead. I know how easy it is to fall into the trap of believing that there are simple answers to everything, that merely removing the bad men will make everything better, but the world is far more complex than that. Did you even bother to plan out what you were going to do in the Congo properly, or did you just think that everyone would follow you as soon as you removed the warlords?”
Hope stared at him, his mind churning with stunned puzzlement.
“Tell me something,” Fireman pressed. “What happened to Mimic?”
“I...he quit,” Hope said. The question worried him. There was something about Mimic that he should remember. “I think he went off to live in the Congo alone...”
“He died,” Fireman said. “The Redeemer killed him. Perhaps you should ask yourself why you never bothered to think about your grand plan of invading the United States. How much of that plan came out of your brain, and how much was quietly shaped by the most powerful telepath in the world?”
“No,” Hope said, desperately. His mind seemed to be spinning out of control. He hadn't thought about Mimic until Mr. Harrison had raised the question—and then, once he’d spoken to the Redeemer, he hadn't thought about Mimic again. But the man had betrayed him; he’d renounced his plan to save the world...surely he should have dwelled on the matter later, in private. But he’d forgotten...
“It isn't so easy to control a person’s mind by force, not for the long term,” Fireman said, softly. “But if you’re a powerful telepath, you can plant seeds and watch as they germinate in a person’s mind, convincing him that he’s come up with the idea for himself. How could a person tell the difference between his own thoughts and those of a telepath? No one could tell the difference, unless they thought about every little detail...”
Hope lashed out at him in panic, driven by a force he didn't understand. Fireman was knocked back towards Las Vegas, leaving Hope to pull himself together and fly back to Washington, his mind still spinning. What, if anything, had she done to him? How much had she shaped his mind?
But it had all been his idea, hadn't it?
He still recalled the day when he'd first realised how much suffering there was in the world. The Redeemer hadn't been with him then. And he remembered when he’d left the SDI. The Redeemer hadn't been with him then, either. But after...?
Desperately, he called on all the speed he could muster. The battle with Fireman had sapped his strength more than he’d realised, but he needed to be back in Washington. And then?
For the first time in far too long, he realised, he had absolutely no idea what to do next.
Chapter Forty-Three
“Everyone ready?”
Jackson nodded. He’d donned his body armour, picked up his M-22 rifle and hooked as many grenades into his belt as he could comfortably carry. CS gas had worked before and it might work again; besides, Team Omega’s specialist grenades looked like standard HE models from a regular army base. A superhuman might get a nasty surprise when the grenade exploded in his face and he wound up breathing the gas.
“According to our observers, Hope, Triple A and Warrior Girl have left the White House,” Lane continued. “We must assume that the remainder of the Saviours are still present within the building. It seems logical that they will have taken over the Oval Office as their headquarters, but we cannot rely on that. We may have to search the entire building to find them.”
“I’ve uploaded floor diagrams of the White House into your goggles,” Polly said. “We haven’t been able to get into the White House’s security system from here, so we haven’t been able to update them to account for any recent...changes. We must assume that they are completely under enemy control.”
Lane nodded. “Team One will attempt to locate and eliminate the Redeemer,” he said. “Teams Two and Three will cause a distraction by engaging the superhumans on the lower levels and outside the building. Team Four will use the Cybermen to provide support to the other teams if necessary.”
Jackson glanced around the warehouse, looking up at the grim armoured combat suits. From what he’d heard, the Cybermen had been designed to give a normal human a fighting chance against an upper-level superhuman, as well as eventually replacing tanks and other armoured fighting vehicles. Unfortunately, the models assigned to Team Four were the early test models designed by Polly and her fellow designers, ones that hadn't had all the bugs worked out of them yet. It was a law of military affairs that the technology never functioned in the field as well as it did in the lab, and the Cybermen were no different. Besides, they weren't exactly subtle, and Team Omega was supposed to be unnoticed by the general population.
On the other hand, they were armed to the teeth, carrying their own inbuilt sensors and warning systems to help defend their wearer against superhuman attack that were surprisingly tough. They might just give the superhumans pause before they tried to recover the White House and destroy the puny humans who had dared to attack them. Team Omega might need their firepower before the day was through.
Lane had taken the specialist pistol for himself after reading through Polly’s notes. Jackson remembered Lane's cursing, all right…Jackson hadn't been able to follow the technical details, but if they had managed to scare the Captain, that pistol wasn't something Jackson wanted to touch.
The Sergeant would probably have given good advice, if he hadn't been killed in the attack on Team Omega’s base. Jackson missed him more than he cared to say. Ron had been bumped up to Sergeant to replace him, at least for the attack on the White House, but they were dangerously undermanned. Captain Yates had suggested bringing in some other SOF soldiers from other units that had managed to escape the Saviours, but Lane had vetoed the idea. The other SOF forces weren't trained to handle superhumans.
“Activate your whispers and mind static now,” Lane ordered. They’d tested the devices earlier, but no one was happy about having to use them. Two of Team Three had had to be withdrawn from the attack plan after having bad reactions to the mind static. “Sound off—now.”
Jackson pushed the switch. He grimaced as he felt a pressure falling over his mind, like a headache that was too light to cure with painkillers. Everyone felt the same effect, but some felt it worse than others. Apparently, no one could read their minds while the mind static was blowing through their heads. In the long term, the devices caused headaches and eventual cerebral trauma. They’d just have to win before they ran out of time. A moment later, he activated his whisper—hiding the sound of their heartbeats—and the earpieces. They would remain in touch through subvocal contact.
“All right,” Lane said, once they had all sounded off. He looked over at Jane Lofting, looking alarmingly out of place among the grim-faced military men. Some of the soldiers had started to flirt with her before Ron, trying to live up to the previous sergeant’s reputation for being a hard-ass, had reminded them that she was only thirteen and therefore jailbait. Besides, she did have poorly-understood superhuman powers. “Can you take us to the White House?”
Jane had spent the last hour studying pictures of the White House’s ballroom, which had apparently been emptied of prisoners over the last day or two. “I think so,” she said. Her skin, already impossibly black, seemed to darken even more, as if she was nothing more than a walking shadow. “Are you ready?”
“Yes,” Lane said. If he felt any qualms at using a thirteen-year-old girl as a tactical asset, his face didn't show it. “Now.”
The shadows in the room seemed to grow and merge with Jane’s body, and then wash forward towards the team. Jackson had a moment to realise that he was standing in absolute darkness—a moment that seemed to last forever, with eerie voices echoing all the while—before the shadows faded, revealing the Wh
ite House’s ballroom. It stank to high heaven, despite the best efforts of a team of mutants to clean up the residue of several hundred people held in the room against their will.
The mutants had no time to react before the Cybermen knocked them down and crashed through the windows onto the White House lawn. With Mainframe infesting the building’s near-impregnable security systems, there was no point in trying to be subtle.
“Sergeant, take Alpha Team up the stairs,” Lane snapped. “Beta Team, with me; Gamma Team, take your positions and report in as soon as you are ready.”
Jackson heard fighting outside as he hurried up the back stairs towards the Oval Office. The Saviours had evidently abandoned their plans to carry on with the kangaroo courts in Hope’s absence, moving out onto the lawn to see if they could support their leader—running right into the Cybermen. Jackson tracked the battle through his earpiece as the teams assaulted the Saviours, using some of their experimental weaponry on them.
“I have no visual on Warrior Girl, Triple A, Hypersonic, or Hope,” one of the Cybermen reported. Jackson nodded in relief. The pre-mission intelligence briefing could have been wrong. “Lightning is...”
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