“But you couldn’t ID him.”
“Nope. But his picture went in our database, and two days later he popped up dead on the street.”
“So, what—”
The curbside mailbox shattered the windshield into a million tiny flying slivers and hammered Fisher through his seat and into the back of the car. I stared at the blue box steel beside me, and then reflexively ducked and covered my head as we swerved, slid, caught something and rolled end over end. The crunch as we met the tree and wrapped around it ended our trip. I found myself upside down and pinned against the shredded bark, my window gone.
No. No. No. He’s dead. He’s dead. God, please let us have missed everybody.
“Are you commuting now, Astra?”
Villain-X waited in the air above me, back in his black costume minus the hooded facemask. He flared in my infrared vision while my inner woogyness told me there was more to him than there should have been. Like the bodies on the slabs.
I pushed, pealing us away from the stricken oak tree, and pulled free of the wreck. “Dispatch! I screamed. “Code-red, A, two, Rush delivery!” And I launched.
Back arched, fists together, true form, I hit him above his center-of-mass and kept accelerating as we headed back down. He oofed, the air knocked out of him, and then we cratered in the intersection. Chunks of concrete flew into the air. Around us bystanders abandoned their cars and ran. The man under me tried to fly, flipping me as I fought to hold us down, and swung me through the corner gas station and into the brick side of its garage.
I pushed off and flew us through a gas-pump and into the road, digging a trench as I angled us down. My armor-reinforced knee caught him in the gut as he pulled us up, and I spun us again as he wheezed. A round back-hand to my temple rang my ears and I let go.
Kicking me away, he laughed as I smacked down into the street.
“I’m going to eat your eyes!” His voice rasped inhumanly and his own eyes flared red. Sweat dripped down his face and he shook his head. “Nice armor,” he added, sounding normal. “Trying to level-up?”
An eye-twisting blur flashed by me and with a solid smack, Ajax’ huge titanium-headed maul filled my hand. His backup maul; his original weapon lay in pieces on display in the Dome museum.
“Delivered, RushCrashSprintsSifu evacuatingzonenow,” Rush informed me as fleeing bystanders began disappearing around us. Villain-X saw the motion and dove, and I launched to meet him, swung the maul with a scream. The shock of impact almost made me drop it, but he spun away, decapitating a lamp-post and bouncing parked cars aside as their alarms wailed.
“Yes!” I screamed. “You are waxed!” I dropped on him, bringing the maul down to shatter the sidewalk as he desperately rolled away. He kicked again, but I twisted to take it on my cuirass, swung, and the maul rang again as he flew backwards and into an abandoned van. Pulling himself out of the wreck, he took off straight up—burning brighter in my infrared sight.
“Astra!” Lei Zi shouted in my ear. I could barely hear her over the roaring in my head. “The zone is clear—keep him there, help is incoming!”
I launched myself after him, but he didn’t flee; instead he looped around again to dive. Swinging the hundred-pound maul, I took him in the side with a hit that could have dented main battle-tank armor. He screamed, voice inhuman again, and grabbed my weapon hand, crushing my fingers around the maul’s haft. Instead of letting go, I pulled him into knee range and hit the same spot with a crunch. He let go and I back-swung, a ringing strike to his head.
He shook it off. And smiled.
“Delicious,” he said, in that nails-on-chalkboard voice. “You’ll be delicious.” His skin began to blacken and smoke, and my singing euphoria fled, leaving me cold.
“No,” I said. “No. You’re served.” Then he hit me.
I got the maul up, but the hit drove it back into me, throwing me down through the gas station’s weather-roof onto another pump. I lost the maul.
At least I’m keeping him in one spot.
Scrambling dazedly, I got to my feet before he hit me again, hammering me into the ground. I twisted and rolled, throwing us through the corner of the station in an explosion of concrete blocks and glass. Free, I hit the smoking nightmare with a stricken Chrysler, sweeping him out into the street, and dove for the maul.
I grabbed it as he grabbed me and squeezed. My armor creaked, but it was like he’d forgotten I was wearing it.
“Astra,” Lei Zi shouted in my ear. “Take him up and look west!”
Okay… I tried to find west; it felt like any second he was going to crush my torso armor like a beer can, and then I wasn’t going to be able to breathe. My takeoff surprised him, and I pulled us around, away from the Lake.
“Brace for incoming!” Shelly cried. Shelly?
I braced, and heard the missiles before they hit. One missed and auto-destructed ahead of me as the others caught us from behind, the fireball surrounding us. Villain-X took every hit and let go to fall, stunned. I reeled, thrown end over end till I didn’t know where the sky was.
“I said brace!” Shelly complained as I spun in the air, trying to find her.
And there she was, so not Robotica. Okay, Robotica if you welded shoulder-launchers and hip-launchers onto her, covered her in molded tank armor, and put her in huge rocket-boots. Even her forearms were Popeye-huge to make room for weapon systems. In the middle of it all, her robot-head looked tiny.
She launched another volley of missiles, smoke-trails twisting like demented snakes as they bore in on Villain-X and blew him to the ground—right into the gas station entry. Which blew up.
“Oops,” she said as the fireball climbed.
“Oops?” I dove to catch the flying weather-roof before it came down on an apartment block, tossing it into the street before dropping down to find my dance partner.
He found me, rising out of the fire, his black jumpsuit shredded and burning and his unhandsome face made demonic by glowing eyes and bared teeth. He screamed as he climbed. Above me Shelly launched another volley, but I’d had enough; he took Ajax’ maul right between his eyes. Shelly’s smart-missiles swarmed around and past me, reaching out to hammer him as he fell to crater the street.
Atlas wouldn’t have stood up after that, but somehow he got to his feet. “You can’t—”
I hit him, maul first, driving him so deep we shattered water mains and collapsed the street into the flood tunnels below. This time he stayed down, steaming as the water sprayed over us. I stood, panting almost hysterically.
“Astra?” Rush queried. “We’ve got restraints...”
I nodded, gasping, then remembered to speak. “Bring them down,” I said. “He’s safe for now. Blackstone?”
“Yes, my dear?”
Between quick breaths I explained what Fisher had shown me while a blur that might have been Rush twisted our unconscious man into a titanium-wrapped hogtie. “Hang on,” Blackstone said before I’d half-finished. “Chakra and I are coming out.”
“But—”
They appeared in a puff of white smoke as Shelly and the team floater touched down behind them, Lei Zi, Seven, The Harlequin, and Riptide piling out. Shelly locked multiple laser-sights on Villain-X, and Blackstone and Chakra carefully climbed down into the crater while Variforce went to work laying a smothering cover of translucent golden force over the gas fire and Riptide directed water from the broken main to douse the secondary fires.
Chakra calmly knelt beside our fallen villain while Blackstone stood ready to vanish with her at the slightest hint of danger. She touched Villain-X’s forehead and her eyes widened. “He really is burning up inside,” she said. “If he were a normal person he’d be dead now.”
“Can you save him?” Blackstone asked.
She looked up. “It’s a different brand of magic, but if I can clear his chakras it might end the possession.”
“Do it. We need him alive.”
She put her hands on his temples and began a rolling chant, and
he instantly relaxed into what I knew from experience was a coma-like sleep. I turned my back and climbed out of the hole.
Around me, Lei Zi organized the rest of the team to secure the area, assisted by multiple blurs. Rush, Crash, Sprints, and Sifu? Sprints was an obvious call-in from the South Side Guardians, but Master Li? He’d left the Army when service in China had tipped his Buddhism into pacifism; just how bad had things really gotten while I was gone?
Quin examined victims our speedsters hadn’t been able to get out of the way in time. Not many, thank God, and no fatalities. Nobody had been between us and the tree when the car flipped, and Chicagoans knew how to clear a street like nobody’s business. Customers in the stores had evacuated through the back and down the service alleys if the establishments didn’t have their own downstairs shelters.
My feet took me back up the ruined street, back to Fisher’s car, upside down, windows gone, bent in half where it lay by the tree. Sorry, Fisher—I’m sorry. Amazingly, his pack of smokes had been thrown clear, lying intact by the shattered driver-side windows. I bent down and picked it up.
“Kid? Could you give me that? And give me a hand?”
Of course I screamed.
Chapter Thirty Five
Contrary to public perception, the Atlas-types, Ajax-types, and other superhumanly strong and durable breakthroughs, do not pose the greatest danger to national security. By far the gravest threat is posed by breakthroughs capable of unrestricted mobility, able to cross national borders undetected. Shapeshifters, teleporters, force projectors, and others who can avoid detection or interception can deliver an assassin’s bullet, a, bomb, or a weapon of mass destruction to the most secure target, and are therefore capable of doing much more damage than even the strongest Atlas-type breakthrough.
Department of Superhuman Affairs, Threat Assessment 10.4, Summary.
* * *
I got Fisher out of his car before the police and newsies arrived. He lit up a cig and then looked himself over. His suit jacket was thrashed, out at the shoulders so that padding stuck out, sliced by glass and ripped by the pulling I did getting him out, and he didn’t have a speck of blood on him. His hair was mussed.
I’d seen him crushed into his backseat by a flying iron mailbox, and his hair was mussed! How could I have forgotten about the weird moment at the Mercedes dealership? Or his not-real history?
He winked at me. “Later, kid? After we deal with what’s in front of us?”
I nodded reluctantly, listening to the approaching sirens as Shelly clumped over.
“Shouldn’t you be guarding Villain-X?” I asked.
“I’ve got a tag on him,” she said cheerfully. “If he twitches, Blackstone can get Chakra out before I double-tap him again.” She turned to Fisher.
“Hi, I’m Galatea.”
“You’re taller.”
“I’m Galatea 2.0, with heavy combat accessories. We got tired of watching Astra get beat up. Seriously.”
“Hey!” I protested.
Fisher laughed and dropped his smoke, rubbing it out with his foot. “If you girls will excuse me, I’ve got to go and stake out my jurisdiction.” He crossed to where a black paddywagon with DSA markings had pulled up, blue siren-lights flashing.
I blinked when the DSA agents piled out; they were all Platoons in visored helmets and body armor.
“Are you alright?” Shelly asked in a lower voice. I smiled up at her and knocked on my cuirass. “It worked like a charm, one more thing to thank Vulcan for. Why didn’t you tell me you were up?”
“I wasn’t until maybe five minutes ago—I was still hooked into a simulator learning how to use everything. Having nearly infinite computation-cycles helps.”
“So this is you, now?” She was seven feet of blue and white metal; with all the launcher packs, she’d need to turn sideways to squeeze through any door.
“Plus a couple of layers, yeah.”
“Well, smile for the cameras.”
* * *
The police kept the newsies back until the paramedics had removed everyone who needed a ride to the hospital and The Harlequin could make a statement. The Crew actually arrived right behind the emergency vehicles—another sign that things were getting bad. Gantry, Mr. Ludlow, waved at me as he headed for the gas station with a huge widget, obviously ready to plug the leaking underground tank.
Fisher left with Villain-X in the DSA wagon (Chakra kept him from spontaneously combusting) and Shelly-Galatea asked me for a lift back to the Dome to save wear on her boot-jets; grips in her shoulder pieces let me fly with her the way Atlas used to carry Ajax into a fight. Lei Zi cleared us and we caught a lot of camera-flash as we lifted off.
“So?” she asked as we gained altitude and turned east. “Did I rock?”
I sighed. “Power Chick and Awesome Girl, together again, and I can’t believe we ever used those names.”
“Yes! Cause it’s been, you know, so fun riding along to watch you get kicked by everything that came by.”
Wait, what? Hadn’t she been cheering me on?
“So now I can really mess them up for you!” she gushed.
Oh God. A grade-school flashback of a huge grin under a bloody nose nearly paralyzed me.
“Shell…” I said carefully. “This isn’t third grade and you can’t fight for me anymore. You know that, right?”
“Yup,” she laughed, cheer undiminished as we descended on the Dome. “But I’ve got your back now.”
We dropped into the load bay and the ceiling closed. I let go and she landed with bent knees, clumping over to a rack that hadn’t been there before. Robot-waldoes cranked out and started peeling.
“Besides,” she said as launchers and boot-jets and armor pieces retracted onto the rack. “That was just my battle-configuration.” I stared as a smaller Galatea emerged. Stepping out, she pulled off the helmet I’d thought was her head and red hair spilled down. She laughed, green eyes sparkling, and she was Shelly in seriously form-fitting body armor. Tucking her helmet under her arm, she grabbed my hand, still taller than me but not by much. “Didn’t I say you should trust me? Well?”
“…what?” Like I had any idea what to say.
She laughed again, showing perfect teeth. “Muscle-mimickers and skin wrap, just like Rush’s hand. Vulcan never bothered for Galatea 1.0 because her lack of emotion just made it so creepy, but under this exo-skeleton armor I’ve got a gynoid frame that’s just me, looking like the day I…” She dropped the smile. “Got terminally stupid. That’s part of what took so long, making all the synthetic muscles and nerves interface right with my new brain.” She squeezed, and it was her hand, not a robot’s. I lost it and threw my arms around her.
“Hey!” she protested. “Don’t break the chassis! My new bones are tough, but not that tough.”
“Don’t care,” I whispered. “Vulcan can fix you up. Oh my God, you’re… back. Really back. I’ve missed you so much.”
“Stupid, I’m just not a ghost in your head, anymore.” She touched my face with a gloved hand, thumb stroking my wet cheeks. “Together again.”
*****
Introductions weren’t necessary; everybody already knew Shelly as my Dispatch wingman, and as a “quadriplegic shut-in.” Now they simply assumed she was Galatea’s new “remote-pilot”; only Jacky and Blackstone and now Vulcan knew the truth, and Shell could keep the pretense up easily enough. As she explained it, she was effectively a quantum-mirrored dual brain again—like she’d unknowingly been before she died the first time. Her dominant brain was now inside Galatea, but her secondary brain—like a subconscious she could consciously access—remained in the 22nd Century CPU of the Teatime Anarchist’s secret system. So she could continue as before, minus the neural link we’d shared (the links on her side connected her two brains now).
Small price to pay; inside I was bubbling over, shouting Hey! This is Shelly! You’ve heard me yelling at her lots, but you’ve never met! Isn’t she awesome? Jacky smiled when she saw us together.
As the rest of the team pulled back to the Dome we remained on watch; Blackstone ordered the upstairs closed to the public, and we stayed in costume at Defensive Condition Two—which meant full lockdown and an open armory. Even Willis was in body armor, which was truly bizarre.
Fisher showed up as Afternoon Watch changed over into Evening Watch, and disappeared with Blackstone and Lei Zi for an hour. When they came out I had a new assignment.
* * *
“You know this is deeply weird, right?” I asked rhetorically.
“As Shelly—I mean Galatea—would say, duh,” Artemis said. She scanned the streets below from the top of an apartment high-rise while I slowly flew the grid around her position. I’d changed back into my latest unarmored costume because of its chameleon-cloth, and against the dark night I ghosted along as invisible as the breeze.
Wearing the Cape: Villains Inc. Page 24