“Don’t try to move, little girl, or I’ll break both your arms,” Ultimate the Invincible Man snarled at her. Conversation shouldn’t be possible when moving through the air at those speeds, either, but she could hear his voice perfectly clearly.
Force field around both of us? She wondered. Next time she tried flying by herself she’d try that trick. Of course, first she had to deal with her current predicament or there wouldn’t be any next times or first times for anything.
“Good girl,” Ultimate said when she stopped squirming. Her current position wasn’t very comfortable, but having her arms broken would be worse. She’d seen him wipe the floor with the super-gang that had wiped the floor with her, which in superhero math meant she was in deep doo doo. “This will be over soon,” he continued.
“Where are you taking me?” That was such a damsel in distress phrase she wanted to puke, but bad guys were supposed to like to talk. Maybe she would learn something useful.
“You’ll find out soon enough, little girl.” Crap. Creepy.
Christine had watched some Ultimate video clips on the computer during her Hyperpedia-gasmic experience the previous night. He sounded nothing like this creep carrying her off to wherever. Something wasn’t right. Mind control, alien puppet masters or a cloning experiment gone horribly wrong might be involved. Trying not to squirm too much, Christine twisted her head until she could see Ultimate and turned on her super-duper senses. As usual, she got more than she bargained for.
Ultimate was sheer power made solid, glowing like a halogen lamp on steroids, shiniest of all shinies. His aura was blindingly bright for the most part, but there were dark spots embedded in it like malignant tumors. The sickening purple-black spots reminded her of the weird energy beams that had taken her friends down during the warehouse firefight. Bad as that was, there was more.
Somebody was riding Ultimate like the proverbial back monkey.
Her Christine-sight revealed a psychic image of the body snatcher: a man in an old style suit and hat, with a laughing ceramic mask covering his face. Tendrils of slimy-looking green energy emanating from the masked man surrounded Ultimate’s body and head and sank into the dark spots in his aura. Christine could sense Ultimate’s mind somewhere under all the tendrils. Ultimate was blissfully unaware anything was wrong; he was happy, as a matter of fact. Happy as a clam, maybe happier than he’d ever been, because Christine sensed that Ultimate and happiness were at best passing acquaintances. The big guy had no idea that someone else was on the driver's seat.
The masked man somehow realized she could see him. Maybe he had his own version of Christine’s senses. “I think this warrants one broken arm,” he said in the same tone he’d been using through Ultimate’s mouth.
Something went ding inside Christine’s head. She understood what Laughing Mask was doing. The green tendrils worked like her own empathy. They created a connection between him and his target, except where Christine sensed a target’s emotional state through that connection, Laughing Man could actually go in and manipulate stuff inside his victims, stuff like thoughts, emotions and memories. The dark spots in Ultimate's aura had created openings that allowed the masked man to enter his mind and take over.
Her captor reached for her with his free arm. Christine pushed with her mind, using her special sight as a guide. Maybe she could break the connection. Maybe –
She wasn’t being carried through the air by a psycho controlling Ultimate anymore. She was standing in a large office space, filled with desks cluttered with piles of paper and ancient typewriters and telephones. There were newspaper clippings affixed to just about every wall. The biggest headline she could see read ‘Hitler Invades Poland.’ Second place went to another headline: ‘Ultimate’s Identity Revealed.’ The newspaper’s name was The World’s Journal, which she’d never heard of before.
That was all pretty weird. But not as weird as the fact that she was dressed like her favorite gaming character, an Elven rogue named Snipe, all decked out in her Tier Ten leather armor, with twin epic daggers glowing right through the scabbards belted around her waist. The armor looked great, but it was riding up in places where it really shouldn’t. She touched her ears. They were long and pointy and elf-y, or was that supposed to be elfin? WTF?
I didn’t break the connection, she realized. But I think I hitched a ride inside Ultimate’s brain. She was in Dreamland, and in Dreamland she was Snipe. It made sense if you were a little bit crazy to begin with.
Christine didn’t get much of a chance to appreciate her situation. One of the walls of the newspaper bullpen started bulging inward like a plastic membrane being pushed from the other side. The man in the laughing mask burst through it. Laughing mask or not, he was pissed. She was picking up his emotional state in here just like she did in the real world.
“You insufferable bitch!” he screamed. “You are going to pay for this. I’m not allowed to kill you, but here I can hurt you as much as I want.”
Her daggers were in her hands now, and she felt an irresistible urge to let fly with sinister strikes and all her other rogue tricks. “I’m going to gank you like a n00b,” she hissed, and she sounded just the way she imagined Snipe would.
The man pounced like a cat, long claws at the end of his fingers reaching towards her. Christine’s daggers flashed in a blur of light, and she severed both of his hands off at the wrist. From out of nowhere, 'Kiss with a Fist' started playing, one of the songs she liked to listen to while gaming. In the land of the Mind Trip you got your own soundtrack, apparently. It would have been more awesome if she wasn’t so pissed off.
The masked man roared in pain and recoiled, stumps spurting dark blood. Christine followed him, daggers whirling. She stabbed him in the chest just as new hands grew out of his stumps. The wounds didn’t seem to make much of an impression. She had to duck under a haymaker that felt like it would have taken her head off if it had landed. Christine hacked and slashed, and Laughing Mask shouted in rage, but he didn’t go down. Dreamland unfortunately did not provide a hit point counter over his head, so she couldn’t tell how much she was really hurting him. She was sure she was hurting him, though. Every time she landed a hit, she felt a flare of pain and fear from the a-hole.
When she didn’t duck fast enough, he landed a punch and she discovered that he definitely could hurt her back. She went flying across the bullpen, hit a wall and bounced off it. No force field protected her. Christine ended up on her hands and knees, coughing up blood.
Urk! Healz, please!
The pain disappeared. She looked around to see if she’d conjured a healer out of thin air. She hadn’t, but she had managed to heal all the damage she had taken anyway. Awesome.
The masked man had been about to gloat when he saw Christine get up. His shock when he saw her recovery felt like a bucket of cold water to her empathy senses. Surprise, d-bag. Surprised or not, he was ready to keep playing. He went after her, his hands turning into clawed limbs once again. This could go on all day. Which was just what Laughing Boy wanted, Christine realized with a sick feeling. In the real world, Ultimate might be still flying her to wherever the bad guy wanted to take her, and she didn’t think she’d like it there. Time to get the eff out, find the big guy and wake him up. This bullpen must be from Ultimate’s past. They were dancing around Ultimate’s memories: he had to be somewhere in there.
“Peace out, bitches!” Christine yelled and tried to go into her rogue’s stealth mode. She disappeared in a puff of smoke and rolled away from Masked Man, who looked confused and started turning around, vainly looking for her. Ha! Okay, where to go? A door stood out in the office. It didn’t match the other doors, and it was glowing faintly. Christine reached it and started opening it. An angry shout from behind her made her look back. Laughing Mask had managed to spot her. Crap. She ran out the door.
She ran out the door right into a scene from Saving Private Ryan. The door was gone and she was wading on shallow water on a sandy beach littered with broken equip
ment – and dead people. Unlike the bullpen, there was a full cast of characters, props and FX there, mostly screaming American GI’s, explosions, dead bodies and pieces of dead bodies on the blood-drenched beach, and Nazis raining death from the high ground overlooking them. Not good. She ducked into a shell hole as bullets flew all around her. Christine had never been a big fan of war movies, and she quickly found out that being inside one sucked a lot worse than watching one.
“Catch.”
She looked up and saw the masked man dropping a grenade-on-a-stick right into her shell hole. She jumped out as with the full grace and speed of her rogue reflexes, but the blast got her before she was clear. She was knocked sideways and felt shrapnel ripping into her. It hurt a hell of a lot.
Healz…
It worked again, thank God, but she had to keep moving – dodge and weave around soldiers and barbed wire and bursts of automatic fire, and it wasn’t half as much fun as it sounded, especially with a masked maniac chasing her. She put him down for a few seconds when she grabbed a big rifle-like thingy she thought was called a BAR and shot him up pretty good, but he didn’t stay down for long. She went into stealth mode again and managed to leave him behind for a bit while he tried to find her again.
Wasting time here. Have to find Ultimate.
She tried to use her Christine senses. It didn’t work the same way as it did outside Dreamland. The scene didn’t change very much, but she saw a golden light shaped like a six-foot tall oval, hovering a few inches off the ground near the remains of a landing craft. It felt like the door she had used to get out of the newspaper offices. Hopefully this one would get her to Ultimate. She ran through it.
The beach battle bingo went away. Christine came to a stop in a bedroom, watching a man and a woman screwing like bunnies.
Very embarrassing.
Face-Off
Chicago, Illinois, March 14, 2013
“Lurker, we’ve got to get out of here,” Condor said, interrupting our little chat before I did something I would almost certainly regret. He had Kestrel in his arms. Lester Harris was behind him.
“Condor! You’ll tell me where Christine is.”
“Yes. Sure. But we need to go back to my ship first. Kestrel needs medical attention.”
“Oh, that.” The Lurker walked over to Condor and examined Kestrel for a second. Before anybody else could react, he took Kestrel’s head in his hands. The air around the Lurker shuddered. It was like a mirage, or heat daze, but I didn’t just see it, I felt it in my bones. Kestrel’s body convulsed as if she was being electrocuted.
“What..?” Condor started to say, too surprised to react.
“She’s fine now,” the Lurker said, stepping away from them.
“He’s right, Kyle,” Kestrel confirmed. She stood up, stretching her arms and shoulders.
“My daughter,” the Lurker repeated.
“I put a tracer on her,” Condor said. “If we can get to my ship, I can find her.”
“Where?” Lester Harris gave him the address to the warehouse.
The Lurker spun around. His cloak spun, grew larger, and became a sheet of solid darkness. It swallowed us. I felt surrounded by something like a very thick fog, almost liquid in consistency, and cold. I couldn’t see or hear anything. For all I knew I could be the only living thing in the dark. For a couple of seconds, I stood in the cold blackness, wondering what the fuck was happening. Luckily, the darkness dissipated, and I saw we were back at the warehouse where we’d been ambushed. I was impressed. Teleports were fairly rare. Instant or near-instant teleports were incredibly rare; it usually takes a while for teleports to visualize their destination and move themselves there safely. The only quick jumpers I could think of offhand were Janus, who was among the top ten most powerful Neos in the world, and the Scourge, the Holocaust survivor who had gone on to help found Israel.
The Lurker had been hiding quite a few things, or had learned some new tricks recently. He’d certainly grown more eccentric, or, more accurately, batshit crazy.
There was no time to deal with that now, though. We had to find Christine and arrange a little family reunion. That was probably going to end in tears, but it had to be done. Cassandra, as usual, had been right. I’d have to remember to grovel a little next time I saw her.
Condor rushed into his ship, the Lurker right behind him. Kestrel, Lester and I followed a bit more slowly.
“How are you doing?” I asked Kestrel. She might be a pain slut – her own and everybody else’s – but nobody enjoys having their flesh seared off with a blowtorch.
“I’ll live. All I need is a bit of killing to work off some stress. You guys had all the fun back there.”
She sounded like she was back to normal, at least. “I’m sure we’ll find all the action you’ll ever want before this is over,” I said.
“I always want more,” she replied. “It’s the only thing that keeps me going.” Yep, back to normal, all right. She gestured towards the ship. “The Lurker is something else, isn’t he?” She didn’t sound like she was interested in learning more about his powers. “I love crazy weirdos. They have the most interesting hang-ups.”
“You really don’t want to go there,” I growled at her. “Jesus H. Christ, that’s the last thing we need.”
“I wasn’t really serious,” she said, grinning. “That would be biting more than even I can chew. Besides, it would hurt Kyle.”
I looked at her. “You really do give a shit about him, don’t you?”
Her smile had an edge now. “More than I ever did for you, killer.”
I nodded. “Fair enough.” What else could I say? I wished them the best.
Condor was at a communications console, a dozen screens lit in front of him, the Lurker looming behind him, his cloak taking more room inside the Condor Jet than it should. Weird shadows formed around him and gave the ship a gloomy, Gothic feel. The screens I could see were all tuned to news channels. There were Breaking News signs on every one. A video feed showed a street that had clearly been the site of a Neo brawl. Burning cars, shattered concrete, broken water mains, sparkling electrical arcs from downed power lines. Your basic shit storm, in other words. Another screen showed shaky video from someone’s cheap Goggle-cam. In it, Christine was kicking a gang banger in the face. I gave her a mental thumbs up and fervently hoped I’d get to see her again.
“She’s on the move,” Condor reported. “Moving fast, Mach Four and still accelerating.” He pounded a fist against the console, denting the metal alloy. “We’ll never catch up.”
“I will,” the Lurker said.
“… reports that Ultimate himself joined the fray remain inconclusive, but somebody disabled the entire roster of the Chicago Sentinels and made off with the young woman who had been fighting the heroes,” a TV reporter said on one of the screens.
Ultimate? Fuck.
Even if Condor let loose with every gadget in his arsenal, trying to fight Ultimate would be like spitting into a hurricane. I looked at the Lurker. Maybe the old mystery man had more tricks up his sleeve than he’d shown so far, and what he had shown was impressive enough. Even so, if Ultimate was involved in this, we were in for the fight of our lives. And very possibly our deaths.
Dying didn’t bother me all that much. I’d been living on borrowed time since that night on a kitchen floor where I’d been choking on my own blood and teeth fragments while my stepfather pounded my face into hamburger. Dying a failure, that bothered the shit out of me. I’d found Christine. She was my responsibility. If that meant I had to figure out a way to take down the Invincible Man, I’d have to think of something.
“I’m going to go get my daughter,” the Lurker announced, and did his spin the cloak trick. Just like that, poof, he was gone.
He didn’t bother taking us along.
Fucking hell.
The Invincible Man
Dreamland/Somewhere Over the Eastern Seaboard, March 14, 2013
John looked at Linda and smiled.
> “Again? You’re insatiable, you know,” Linda said, but her grin matched his. Two years of marriage later, and it still felt like they were on their honeymoon, whenever they could find the time to be together. They were both incredibly busy, but they always made the most of the time they spent with each other.
“Try and break me, big boy,” she said playfully, an old joke that still made him chuckle as he took her in his arms. Their first night, she had wondered out loud whether she would survive the experience. Discovering John’s ability to turn off his inhuman strength at will had come as a relief to her. “I was worried this was going to turn into a tragedy – Titanium Man versus Paper Woman,” she’d said, painting an image that had made him shudder at the time.
As always, he was exquisitely aware of everything about her, from the warm flush on her face and neck as he entered her to the rhythm of her breathing, the racing heartbeat that his thrusting motion matched, the crescendo their bodies built together. Her first orgasm was a brief eruption; he changed his rhythm to match her body’s reaction. Her delighted moans were music to his ears. He was home. Peace and joy enveloped him.
“Holy mother of crap!”
John rolled off the bed and landed in a fighting crouch. A young woman dressed in an outlandish leather costume was standing in their bedroom, gaping at… well, at him. “Oh, my,” she said, her eyes wide.
“What the hell?” he yelled, his erection pointing at her like a gun.
“Should I shoot her, darling?” Linda said steadily, pointing an actual gun at the intruder. She’d reached into the nightstand and grabbed her .15 auto pistol, a Doc Slaughter design that fired several types of ammunition. Linda looked mad enough to spit, and John was pretty sure she wasn’t planning to use the non-lethal rounds in the gun. John’s first impulse was to attack, but the intruder was not making any aggressive moves, so he held off for now. He shook his head at Linda, who held her fire for the time being.
New Olympus Saga (Book 1): Armageddon Girl Page 30