“Ah yes, that one,” said Azarov, a knowing glint in his eye.
“Wait!” said Talon.
Callus paused and looked at her. “Better be good, sweetheart.”
“How did you know about Chronos?” she asked.
Callus and Azarov exchanged glances and then the two men began to chuckle. The laughter only caused Ink’s anger to boil up and she started pounding on the forcefield.
“Hey! Answer her, you bastards!”
“Calm yourself, Ms. Davis,” said Azarov, his grim countenance quickly returning.
“And to answer your question, let’s just say you should have very good reason to be nervous,” said Callus. “The Kotharians have tolerated the Vanguard presence up until now, but no more. Soon, not even the history records will remember you or your silly little rebellion.” Callus stepped back and gave a final nod to Azarov. “Thanks again for all your assistance, Doctor. We’ll be in touch.”
“General.” Azarov tipped his head.
Callus exited the room and with the door shut, Azarov approached a tray of instruments. The two prisoners could see several bladed weapons lined up on the tray, arranged in perfect sequence. He ran his bony fingers lovingly across them, trying to decide which was best to start with.
“Your escape attempt was certainly valiant, but ultimately doomed to failure,” he said, not even looking at them as he spoke. “We have rules in this place, my children. And those who disobey must be punished. Fortunately, as the General correctly stated, we have no more need of pretense. You have been left to my tender mercies.”
***
High above the night sky, a small plane dropped out of stealth mode ever-so-briefly. The rear hatch on the plane opened and a single figure jumped from the ramp. Glenn Sawyer brought his arms and his legs together, flying head-first towards the man-made island off the coast of Washington. He gave a look back up to where he came from, the plane having returned back into stealth mode and retreating.
He had to make this jump in alone. Not only would it be harder for Cerberus’ sensors to pick up a single man falling through the sky, but they couldn’t risk his part in the mission damaging any of the weapons they’d brought.
As he came closer, Sawyer flipped so he was right-side-up. He held his arms out to either side and concentrated. Waves of distortion appeared around his hands as he summoned forth the electromagnetic energy that was his to command.
Sawyer’s descent slowed. He hovered in the air, gently lowering himself onto the shores surrounding the Cerberus complex. The Garden, they called it. Seemed like a strange name for a special internment camp.
“Stop right there!”
Flashlights shined in his face and Sawyer closed his eyes, turning his head away from the beams. He held his hands out in front of him. “Guys, c’mon. You mind with that crap?”
He blinked and opened his eyes. The lights were still shining on him, affixed to the barrels of two teleforce rifles held by guards clad in Gunsmith armor. They had the guns pointed right at his form, and their owners had their fingers tensing against the triggers.
“Who the hell are you?” asked one of the guards.
“Me? The name’s Pulse.”
He extended his hands. The guards felt an invisible force pulling at their weapons. They looked down at them in surprise, trying to maintain their hold. The weapons shook and vibrated before flying out of their fingers and into Sawyer’s waiting hands.
Looking down at his new weapons, he gave a whistle of admiration. “These are nice. Let’s see how well they work?”
Sawyer pulled the triggers, firing off a volley of bursts. The two Gunsmiths jumped to safety to avoid the teleforce blasts. Sawyer gave a sigh and threw his hands open. The guns hovered in the air and when he closed his fists, they were crushed in the same motion.
Pulse allowed the two weapons to drop to the ground without a care. He extended his hands towards the two Gunsmiths and used his control over electromagnetic fields to bring them out into the forefront. They were frozen in place and Glenn Sawyer looked them both in the eyes while clicking his tongue.
“You boys really should’ve been nicer to me. Pulling a gun on a guy who’s just out for a stroll along the beach isn’t really neighborly. You’ve got no one to blame for this but yourselves.”
He held his hands up in front of him for the two guards to see. They watched with horror, pleading for him not to. But he closed his fists anyway and their armor closed around them, crushing them inside.
The bodies fell to the ground and Pulse walked up from the waterfront towards the facility. He closed his eyes and held his hands out, taking long, deep breaths. Pulse hovered above the ground, moving closer to the facility, hovering above it. He could feel the energy emanating off the entire island. Without a steady flow of electricity, they’d be completely helpless out here.
Pulse’s eyes opened, crackling with raw, electromagnetic power. Every muscle in his body tensed as he summoned forth the power around him. He focused that energy, concentrating on it. He clapped his hands together, unleashing a burst of electromagnetic energy that engulfed the entire island.
Lights throughout the entire facility went dark and Pulse dropped to the ground, exhausted. It would be pandemonium in there. And the sudden descent into darkness would be the signal he needed.
Planes dropped out of stealth mode in the sky, their forces dropping from them. Boats that remained out of reach of the electromagnetic pulse now sped towards the island. It wasn’t long before the forces of the Red Fist appeared on the shores of the Garden. And in their lead was a man clad in crimson armor, who drew a sword and held it above his head.
“Take it down!” commanded the Khagan.
CHAPTER 2
In the cells, the lights suddenly turning off drew the attention of the imprisoned specials. With the power disabled, the forcefields locking them into their cells were dropped. They slowly filed out into the darkened corridor, when they heard shouts coming from one of the guards.
“Back in your cells!” he screamed, raising up his weapon. But when he pulled the trigger, nothing happened. He stared at his gun in stunned silence.
A young woman with platinum-blond hair stepped forward. Her aqua-blue eyes hummed in the darkness and she held her arm forward. A surge of water emerged from her outstretched palm, slamming into the Gunsmith and throwing him back against the corridor.
“The inhibitors are down!”
“Our powers are back!”
“Tear them apart!”
The prisoners went right to work. The guards, seeing that their weapons were no longer of any use, resorted to physical attacks. But the EMP had also rendered the power sources of their armor completely useless and the Gunsmith exoskeletons were essentially dead weight. Most of the guards tried to strip the armor as quick as they could, using the components as blunt instruments.
A burst of wind was felt in the corridors of the cell block as a teenage speedster relieved as many of the guards of their newfound weapons as possible. He then countered with some well-placed blows of his own, weaving past the battling specials.
A middle-aged man tensed the muscles in his body. A rock-like dermal armor formed over his body and he grinned as he drove his powerful fist into the face of one of the guards. He swatted another away with his free hand and pounded a third right into the ground.
Another young woman grabbed a guard by the throat. At her mental command, the guard’s life force traveled from his body into her own and he started to wither. She tossed him aside, her strength now augmented by the energy she’d absorbed and she turned it on another group of soldiers.
Projectile blasts were thrown at the guards, keeping them off-balance. A flood of specials appeared in the corridors. A riot of superpowers and it wasn’t long before many of the guards began to retreat.
The rock-armored man led the charge against them, barreling through walls as they moved up the stairwell to the ground level. Once they emerged onto the ground floo
r, he rushed at the wall, breaking through in only a few blows.
Out in the courtyard, the prisoners saw who was responsible for their liberation. They witnessed as men and women clad in black armor emblazoned with red fists over their chests turned weaponry on the prison guards. But in addition to the ones relying on conventional weapons, they also saw other specials in the fight.
One of them was dressed all in white, hovering in the sky as her aerokinesis tossed about the guards. She threw some into the surrounding ocean, while others were caught in vortexes that sucked all the air from the area until they suffocated.
Another used electromagnetic energy to hurl metal projectiles as the guards. He hovered above the ground, too, concentrating his power on them all.
Another man flew around in black and red armor, mounted on a glider of some kind, and wielding a long staff that unleashed powerful blasts of energy from its tip.
But what surprised them the most was the man who seemed to lead the charge. He was dressed in crimson armor and he wielded, strangely enough, a sword in his hands. He was western, but the facial hair and the armor he sported looked to be from the east. And he had a ferocity that none of his followers could come close to matching.
As the sounds of the battle died down with most of the guards either incapacitated or dead, the leader held his sword up to the heavens. The cheers were silenced and all eyes fell on him. He looked over the gathered followers, paying particular attention to the newly freed specials.
“I am the Khagan. You’ve been liberated from captivity and now, you are welcome to join the Red Fist. Any who does not wish to side with us, so long as you don’t interfere with our mission, will be free to go. If you wish to stay, you will be given the opportunity to exact righteous vengeance for your treatment at the hands of the Kotharians and their human lapdogs.”
He waited for a response. The former prisoners looked amongst themselves. None offered any words in opposition or disagreement. Cheers of acceptance only erupted from the crowd and the Khagan smiled.
“Welcome to the Red Fist.” He pointed his sword at the compound. “Now, I want you to burn this monstrosity to the ground!”
The cheers grew even louder and the specials and the Red Fist charged back into the complex, ready to destroy it and take out any additional staff and guards who remained inside.
***
As the Khagan gave his rousing speech, Zephyr made her way inside the complex. She entered through the large hole the prisoners escaped from and took off her helmet so she could see better in the darkened prison. Zephyr dropped the helmet at the entrance and stalked inside, walking briskly.
She heard the cheers coming from outside and they brought a smile to her lips. For years, she’d served the Khagan, believing he would help usher in a new world order that she’d always knew was necessary. After his defeat and capture over twenty years ago, many thought he would simply become a footnote. But Chloe Grant never lost faith, continued to search for him.
In the process, she allowed herself to be easily manipulated by Joseph Ramsey. Himself a former acolyte of the Khagan, in the end he turned out to be nothing more than an opportunist. Ramsey betrayed the planet to the Kotharians the first chance he got and was rewarded for his role in the invasion by being given the highest authority over the planet that any human was granted.
The very thought of Ramsey caused Zephyr’s hands to tighten into fists. But there’d be time for that later. Right now, she had another job. The Red Fist had contacts inside Cerberus and they conveyed to the Khagan about the research being conducted at the Garden.
Zephyr’s job was to locate that research. Pulse’s EMP would have cut the power but they knew the drives would be protected against such an attack. She continued through the complex and found a stray guard, staring at her with fear in his eyes. He held his teleforce rifle like a bat, but as he raised it in a defensive position, she saw he was shaking.
She rested her weight on one leg and folded her arms, giving him a sneer through her helmet. “Do you really want to try me, kid?”
His breathing was heavy. He looked at her, then back at his weapon. And he decided to give it a shot. Letting out a scream, the guard charged at her and raised the gun.
“Ugh.” Zephyr waved her hand in his direction and a powerful gust of wind slammed him against the wall. He hit his head against the surface and slumped to the ground. The guard groaned as he rubbed the back of his head.
Zephyr pointed up with two fingers and winds hefted him off the ground. He hovered right in front of her, bobbing just a little. Her hands went to her hips.
“I’ll give you one chance to get out of here. Go find another job, work at an agricultural center or something. You’re not cut out for Cerberus. Got me?”
He nodded repeatedly. Zephyr walked past him and with another wave of her hand, he was thrown to the ceiling and then fell back to the ground. Unconscious, but still alive.
Zephyr finally came to the server room. With the electronics disabled, the locks were fixed shut and could only be manually released from the inside. Zephyr placed both hands on the door’s surface and concentrated. She summoned up as much of her energy as possible, channeling her aerokinesis into the door. But it wouldn’t budge.
“Need a hand?”
She spun on her heel, ready to blast whoever snuck up on her. She relaxed a bit when she saw Pulse leaning against the wall, arms folded.
“Thought you were outside,” she said.
“Thought you could use some help. Looks like I was right.”
Zephyr rolled her eyes at the man’s arrogance. But Pulse’s abilities were useful in situations like this. He held his hand out and rotated it, the locks inside the door turning. Pulse moved his arm to the side and the door mimicked his movement, sliding open.
Pulse gave her a smug grin but Zephyr ignored it and stormed inside the server room. It was dark, like the rest of the complex, with technicians all staring at the two specials in horror.
“Let’s get one thing straight,” she said. “You’re all trash as far as I’m concerned, but I’ve got more important things to worry about than you. So as long as you stay out of our way, you get to live. We clear?”
They nodded and Zephyr smiled.
Pulse walked along the wall, his hand held out, using his electromagnetic senses. He stopped and smiled. “Ah, that seems like the one we need.”
When he retracted his arm, a panel yanked itself off the server. The drives came next, hovering in front of Pulse’s face. The data storage capacity of each drive was immense, but they were compact enough to be carried out easily.
“In here.” Zephyr approached him, taking an empty, folded cloth bag from inside the folds of her trench coat. She unfurled the bag and opened it up, then Pulse gently set each of the drives inside. Zephyr pulled the zipper closed.
“Let’s go.”
CHAPTER 3
Fortunately for Azarov, he’d administered sedatives to Talon and Ink. Their prattle was making it difficult to hear himself think, so he shut them up as he prepared their experiments. But before he could begin, all the power in the facility shut down.
The Garden had back-up generators and the fact that they hadn’t come on was enough to convince him that this was more than a power outage. Most-likely an electromagnetic pulse. And that meant this was an attack. Vanguard, he thought to himself. No one else would be stupid enough to attempt an attack like this.
Azarov went to the door to his lab but he didn’t open it. Instead, he concentrated his enhanced senses. His hearing reached out as far as it could and he detected the sounds of battle. Of course, if there was an EMP, that would have disabled the inhibitors as well. It was a clever assault. No matter the attacker’s numbers, they’d have a veritable army of pissed off prisoners ready to tear the place apart.
He listened for a long time, stealing glances back at the two prisoners to make sure the sedative was still in effect. Azarov knew that with any luck, they would remain unco
nscious for another few hours.
There wasn’t much he could do. Escape was out of the question, all the vehicles would be inoperative. The invaders would likely have some means of transport and if he could get to it, he’d be able to escape that way. Or just wait it out.
That would do it. Azarov would go lower, find a place to hide out and wait for the danger to pass. He had no interest in quelling a prison uprising anyway. Just allow the specials and Cerberus to fight it out amongst themselves. Once the dust cleared, Azarov would find a way to reach the mainland, contact Proximo, and return to collect any useful genetic material left lying around.
Before Azarov could put his plan into action, he heard voices. He looked at Talon and Ink again. No, still unconscious.
That’s when the door was blasted off its hinges. A man stood in the doorway clad in black armor with red trim. In his hands was a staff, its tip crackling with orange energy. He walked inside the lab, staring at Azarov and keeping his weapon at the ready.
“Erik, so good to see you again.”
The second figure Azarov knew quite well. A man he once worked for. Azarov clasped his hands behind his back. Claws were beginning to form on his hands and he watched the man with a careful eye.
“The Khagan,” said Azarov. “I thought you were dead.”
“Rumors of my demise have been greatly exaggerated.” The Khagan drew his sword and pointed it at Azarov.
“What is it you want?”
“Revenge for starters.”
Azarov snickered. “Revenge? And how have I wronged you? I gave you what you wanted.”
“Then you betrayed our planet to the Kotharians.”
“I’ve never had any loyalty towards anyone on this rock. Specials, humans, they can rot for all I care. All I ever wanted was the freedom to conduct my research in peace. You understood that once.”
“What’s he talking about?” asked Chronos.
“Later,” said the Khagan.
“But—”
“I said later!” The Khagan’s rebuke came harsh. “You wanted to rescue your friends, there they are. Remember our deal.”
Vanguard: Season Four: A Superhero Adventure Page 11