“Epic, what’s the status on decrypting Strungel’s database?”
I have successfully decrypted the entire thing. I have all his notes, work, and prototypes on file. If it helps, he did indeed have a superpower that allowed him to copy your work. I don’t think he knew the formula for your metal, or he would have put it out for the world to use. The satellite was the most interesting thing I recovered. It was wholly original, not based on any of your tech.
“Oh?” Weariness flees my muscles as curiosity floods my system. “How so?”
I will fill you in once you are dressed... and showered...
“Everyone’s a critic...” I smell myself and realize how right he is. “Epic, make a note. Never let Tessa hand me a drink again.”
Note made.
She knows I don’t really drink. Yet I let her goad me into a Tequila. I should have dumped it out when she wasn’t looking.
I’m in the spare apartment I keep on the third floor. This is where Lux would have stayed, but she elected to move in with Tony while she’s on Earth. Convenient for both of us. I don’t know about the legalities of him marrying an actual alien from another planet, but I won’t be surprised if they make an announcement soon.
Thirty minutes later I’m freshly showered and sitting in my favorite wheelchair with my chin in my hands, looking at the screen. There’s a complex array of calculations scrolling by just slow enough for me to scan them, each one containing a piece of the puzzle. Had Strungel’s satellite detonated, it would have killed every single superpowered person on the planet. I don’t know why he thought it would only cut us off from the other dimensions where the powers come from... the shock alone from this much energy being released on this wavelength would kill even ordinary people who weren’t attuned. I don’t know how many casualties it would have caused, but billions isn’t out of the question. All the more reason I’m glad we stopped it.
“So you think,” I say to Epic. “That Strungel’s abilities, were modified by the Gem as well?”
Yes. I think, either knowingly or not, he was serving the entity in the Gem. If the Gem has been here for a long time, why wait until now to attack?
“That’s a good question. Rafael had it for at least thirty years. Who knows who had it before. Do you have a theory?”
Yes. It really is no different than Ericsson.
That name still sends a shiver up my spine and has me looking over my shoulder.
Sorry, Amelia. All I mean is this, Ericsson spent decades maneuvering the world to the place he needed it to be. Why not just run the coup twenty years earlier?
“He didn’t have the tech.”
True, but he could have anyway. He needed people to be in a certain mental place. He needed enough superhero related disasters that when he took over it would be seen as a blessing. It is not like he would be immune to a normal rebellion. No, he needed people to want him in charge.
“Okay, that makes sense. Are you saying the Gem has done the same thing?” I run it through my head a few times. No, not the same thing. Just that the strategy is similar. The Gem is trying to—
“Oh my God.”
I think you see it.
“Ericsson wanted to control all the supers, but... are you saying the Gem manipulated everyone until it could find the right person to kill all the supers and make sure no one else was ever born with superpowers?”
Yes.
“For what purpose? If no one had superpowers it pretty much results in a zero-sum. It’s not like it would really change anything—people are still people and...”
Wait for it.
“Oh. Holy. Crap. It really is just like Ericsson. The Gem, whatever it is, once it’s the only thing capable of granting superpowers, then it would be unstoppable.”
I think that is it. Once Strungel succeeded, nothing could stop the Gem from taking over the world. For what purpose I cannot say. Clearly, the last time Mr. Parker went into the future it was a future without him. A future where he never went back in time and saved his family. Which means something has happened, or will happen, that would not have happened if he was present. Either in that journey or the next.
“We already went back and saved Frank’s family. What else is there...?” Kate, Carlos... they’re going back today. “Epic, call Kate!”
Do you think it is them going back in time that he is trying to stop? How would he even know they were?
“I don’t know, but it’s the only other thing—”
Red lights flash and our emergency sirens kick in. My screens all flicker to life, showing exterior cameras around the Spire. My heart leaps in my throat for a second; the last time this happened was Strungel hacking Artemis and sending an Arrow our way.
Amelia, the FBI is approaching rapidly in unmarked vehicles. Two helicopters are at the edge of our sensors, moving fast. They would not be taking this tactical approach unless they are planning on raiding the Spire. If this is their course, there is a high probability their plan includes your incarceration.
Of course, dang it all. This is the worst timing in the world. I allow myself the luxury of swearing at agent Brown for a second. “Epic, fill Kate in and—”
Our communications are being jammed and the Internet hardlines have stopped responding. All cell traffic is down as well. I cannot contact Kate or Carlos for the moment.
“Milton?”
“I’m here, mum,” he says in his upper-crust British accent.
“Stall them as best you can. Evacuate the building and lock us down,” I tell him. “Order security to cooperate fully. Also, call legal and get them on this situation fast.”
“Right away, mum.” The klaxon for the building’s fire alarm sounds a second later.
What are you thinking?
“We need to warn Kate. Are they in Greece yet?”
No. But soon.
“Luke will be waiting for them. That’s my guess. I don’t know how he knows, but I’m certain he’ll be there to try and stop them.”
To what purpose, though?
“I’m going to assume that if Kate and Carlos succeed, Pythia will be able to help us defeat him. After all, the Gem keeps referring to Carlos as a ‘son of Apollo’, maybe the Gem is tied into the Greek gods.”
That is a possibility. What suit do you want?
“Spin up the flight suit. I feel the need for speed.”
Despite their attempts to jam all communications, my lab is perhaps the most heavily signal-shielded place on Earth. The quantum gate opens to my little pocket dimension. I throw myself in, fall for a half second before hitting the hammock netting. The gateway closes behind me and I scoot around to finish the process. I don’t know what trumped up charges Brown is coming at me with, but they must be pretty good. I still have a lot of friends in the Government, including the President. Of course, with the news media attacking me day in and out, he might think it isn’t politic to support me right now—even though last night in the restaurant showed me a different side of things. What the media thinks and broadcasts, isn’t what people think.
“Epic... initiate!”
It takes less than thirty seconds before I’m deposited out the other side of the quantum gate into the launch tunnel. The HUD shows all systems are green. All four Emdrives are ready at one-hundred percent, as well as the individual ZPFMs assigned to each. Special heat-resistant paint, similar to but more advanced than what they used on the SR-71, coats the flight suit in preparation. This really is the fastest suit I’ve ever made. Theoretically, the only thing that can slow it down is the atmosphere. However, I plan on being out of the atmo long before friction becomes a serious problem.
Panels slide around in place, clicking and whirring as the suit reconfigures for launch mode. “Epic, status?”
They have surrounded the building. Tactical teams are infiltrating. The staff have all surrendered. Security has assured them there is no resistance. Our lawyers are on the way and the three team members on site have been notified of the situation
. I am afraid Tia will be the one seriously disrupted by this, as she is a guest in the country.
Dang. I hadn’t thought about that. “When I get back from saving the world, Agent Brown and I are going to have words. This is just stupid.”
I agree. He may not see it that way. Upload complete. I am with you.
“Awesome. System check?”
We are five-by-five.
Despite what’s going on—the worry in my heart and the way my nerves are firing—this is still the best part of the job. “Punch it!”
The launch tube is one big mass-driver. It fires me at almost a thousand miles an hour before I even hit the air and my own Emdrives over. Epic locks the suit up. Even with the base Animetal improvements, I could still be hurt by a sudden shift. Once we’re in the air, Epic puts a window on the HUD showing me the base.
“Ha. They weren’t expecting that!” I can’t see the looks on their faces, but the craned necks of fifty FBI agents all looking up at once is a sight to behold. Winds buffet me as we plow through the sound barrier, the vapor cone spreading out around the front of us like a shield.
Amelia, I am detecting an energy—
The beam of light sizzles through the air next to me. Alarms scream as the heat from the near miss flashes over the suit. I jerk hard to the side instinctively, even though there’s no way I could dodge something moving that fast.
“What the hell is that?” I ask as I glance at our speed. We just hit four-thousand miles-per-hour and we’re accelerating at a rate of one-hundred miles-per-hour every second!
Unknown. It may be another super.
There are two people I know of who can fly that fast and look like a beam of light... and I’m pretty sure this isn’t Lux.
Aeon.
“Epic, can you broadcast yet?”
Negative, they are using a high-energy pulse to disrupt communications. We will have comms in five seconds.
“Fine, you want to play it hard, we’ll play it hard. Full burn! Let’s see how fast she really is.”
Kinetic shields reconfigure for maximum G protection and the ZPFMs whine as they spin up to full power, dumping everything they have in the Emdrive.
The airspeed indicator lags as we blast past six-thousand miles per hour. We pass the Karman line into space and the blue of the atmosphere vanishes.
She is pursuing. Communications restored. Calling Kate.
“Awesome.” I use my mental connections to the flight controls to edge us over into a curve heading East for Greece. At this speed and altitude, we can be there in minutes.
Kate is not answering, nor is Carlos. There is not any jamming, they are not responding.
“Dang. If they’re already in Pythia’s cave, then we can’t communicate with them.”
Aeon flashes past me again, her ghostly figure within the energy envelope is a perfect picture of a woman. She points back the way we came and holds out her hand with all five digits extended. Then four. Then three.
Oh. She wants to play that game eh? Fine. I don’t exactly have a countermeasure for her but I do have ECM. I grin. I have fantastic ECM.
“Epic, full power on the ECM.”
The HUD flickers as the ECM master alarm flips on and the suit starts pumping out incredible amounts of electronic noise. Aeon visibly flickers and jukes away as if she were punched in the face.
“IR Chaff!”
Similar to my smoke grenades, chaff is aluminum coated fiberglass particles. This version deflects light and radar away from the source, scattering it in a million directions.
Panels in my back slide open and a half dozen packets explode behind me, filling the area with thousands of tiny particles. I pull a hard turn, flipping on my back and pulling ‘up’ toward the Earth. “Empty the cannister!”
Ten seconds of chaff explode out behind me over the eighteen miles we traverse in that time. “Cut power. Go cold. Full stealth.”
The suit reacts immediately. Twin carbon fiber heat sinks pop from my hips, flying off at a right angle from us, carrying away all the residual heat with them. We’re in freefall; if she can find us with no active emissions, miles of chaff, and no heat, then I deserve to go to jail.
Of course, that won’t help Kate. I close my eyes as we fall through the atmosphere, nothing more than another particle of space dust. Please don’t let her find us.
“Epic, can you see her?”
Negative. However, that does not mean she is not there. Just that I cannot find her on passive sensors.
After a full minute and almost one-hundred miles of separation, I feel like we lost her. “Make sure you send her a message when we get back apologizing for the face full of noise. Maybe explain to her the situation. She might understand, though I get the feeling she doesn’t like me very much,” I say with a sigh. I’ve only ever met her once—when she saved my butt in Colorado. She wasn’t in the mood for small talk then either.
Will do. I think it is safe to go active again.
“Roger that, let’s make some noise!” The Emdrive kicks in and within seconds, atmosphere burns around us and we blast through the top of the mesosphere on the way to Greece. The boom shakes me as we pass through the sound barrier and I’m grinning like an idiot. I know there is danger here; part of me is worried about Kate, Carlos, and Luke. But this… this is what I was meant to do.
Amelia, might I remind you we still do not have a countermeasure for Luke. If he hurts himself again, what are you planning on doing?
“I don’t need to stop him, Epic, just delay him long enough and then run away. He won’t hurt himself if it does him no good. If I’m not around to hear it, the tree doesn’t make any noise.”
I am not sure that is a sound analogy.
I pause for a second, a response on my lips, when I get Epic’s joke. “Oh my God, Epic, did you just use a pun?”
It would certainly sound like I did.
Delphi is surrounded by scrub brush and rocky terrain. It actually looks a lot like Arizona. Nowhere near as hot, but if I didn’t know better, I could mistake the two. I scream in like a fireball over the mountains west of Delphi. A trail of fire and smoke follows behind me as friction heats up the air around the suit while I slowdown from thirty-thousand miles per hour to a mere four-thousand.
Once we’re past the communications blackout, a stream of messages pop up on the suit—none from Kate or Carlos. Dangit all. The two urgent ones are from the FBI and our team’s lawyer. The FBI demands my surrender and is adding assaulting a federal agent to the list of charges against me. The one from our lawyer says essentially the same thing, turn myself in before things get out of hand. Well, things might have already gotten out of hand.
“Epic, make sure you’re documenting everything and please forward our findings from Costa Rica to Agent Brown. It should be clear from the footage that Strungel was either wearing or controlling the suit that attacked the PNW team.”
Again, I do not think he will easily believe you. He seems to think you can fabricate anything you need.
“He’s not wrong.” I check the map; only seconds to go until I’m over Delphi. I throw the suit into a hard brake. The drives whine with exertion and I slow down even more. Once I hit five hundred I drop like a stone, heading right for the entrance.
“Anything on sensors?”
Nothing.
The suit slows down further and I flip over, bringing my legs in front to take the impact of landing. The rocky terrain and ruins look exactly like they did the first time I saw them. I hit the ground with a thump and scan the area visually for a few seconds before walking forward. I keep waiting for Luke to leap out of the bushes and tackle me. He doesn’t. I place my hand exactly where Sydney showed me and press down. The ground shakes and the little lift starts down.
I’m amazed at how she hid this place for so long. When my head clears the ground-level a platform slides into place above me, sealing the hole and casting the lift into darkness. Only for a second, though. Eerie blue light fills the room f
rom the small waterfall that provides the place with fresh water. It lights up the area like the sun is shining through it.
My heart stops. I’d hoped I was wrong about Luke. He wouldn’t be here. When I arrived Kate, Carlos, and Frank would already be back from their trip to the past...
Nope.
“Amelia!” Kate screams.
Luke holds Carlos up by his chest piece. Carlos is limp like a rag doll. Luke casts him aside. Carlos slams into the wall and slides down unconscious. Luke springs at me—I cross my arms up in front of me as his massive fist slams into my impromptu shield. I slide back into the wall of the lift, alarms screaming in my ear. The tradeoff of for the speed the suit provides is power. The wall shakes as we hit, and Luke’s distorted face fills my faceplate. He looks worse than he did last time. Veins bulge around his eyes and neck. The crystal blue that used to be so appealing has been replaced with a glowing red the same color as the Gem.
I bring my knee up with an Emdrive assisted motion, hitting his ribs with enough force to drop an elephant. He grunts, staggering to the side, and I take the opening. Leaping past him, I shoot a face full of IP Cannons at him. The sandpaper staccato of the weapons echoes in the room. I take a quick look around before landing next to Kate.
Carlos is crumpled in the corner; he doesn’t have his helmet on and blood trickles from his nose. Oh God. Carlos! I scramble around, landing in front of my friend. “Epic, tell me he’s alive,” I yell.
He is alive, but his vitals are sporadic. He has sustained massive damage to his head and neck. He should be dead.
“Luke, how could you?” I fire up the single particle beam the suit carries. I wish I’d had time to repair my combat suit. I still have the problem of stopping Luke without killing him.
“Luke’s gone, little girl. He was too weak, so I cast him out as Apollo did to me,” the not-Luke says. He’s right—it isn’t even close to Luke’s voice. More like a hollow, haunted sound, as if pure hatred and a bulldozer had a baby. I don’t believe for a second that Luke is really gone, though. He just wants to get in my head, and I won’t let him.
Full Metal Superhero (Book 6): Explosive Arsenal Page 16