by Ben Langdon
“You’re not kidding.”
“Don’t worry, Dan. I’ll be gone soon and you won’t have to worry about me anymore.”
Chapter 15
The Mad Russian
The dark clouds released the rain in a torrent, reducing visibility and plunging the city into a premature evening. The Russian sat, quite dry and comfortable, in a leather chair below the bustle of the city. His legs were crossed and he held a glass of white wine delicately in his left hand as he watched the street on a video monitor. The room itself was mostly dark, highlighted in the corners with subdued reddish light from hooded lamps. Sima had only just left him and he could still smell her perfume. He swished his glass again slowly, and took a sip. On the screen, he watched as his grandson stumbled out of a hotel looking right and then left.
The Russian smiled. Danya stepped right into the street and was drenched within seconds but he didn’t seem to care about his clothes or his own comfort. There was a desperation in his movements, the jutting chin, his eyes trying to look above the skittering crowds as the people made to escape the deluge.
“You looking for someone, Danya?” he chuckled.
There were other cameras, other vantage points, and as the boy ran down towards the traffic lights the screen flickered and was replaced with a closer view. Pearl’s contacts in Chinatown had been meticulous with the surveillance. The Russian made a mental note to thank her and her shark-toothed nephew.
The boy ran across the road, not waiting for the lights to change. He weaved between a taxi and a cyclist before stepping up on to the curb and grabbing past a group of black coated men.
Miranda Brody was there, like a poisonous flower; surrounded by pretty little things hiding from the rain.
“It is like from a film, yes?” the Russian said, taking another sip of the wine. He heard Halo enter, felt the shift in the energy fields which were getting stronger and stronger every day. Sometimes the Russian felt as if he could stab out his own eyes and still see better than the humans around him. Heat flushed through his neck and cheeks as he thought about plucking out his own eyes, the intensity of the feeling making him pause and turn his attention away from his grandson and the reunion with the celebrity girl.
He closed his eyes, took a measured breath; and pushed aside the violence which swirled in his mind. Halo, ever the quiet observer, remained standing just inside the room.
“You wish to be there,” the Russian said softly, eyes still closed.
“I know my place,” Halo replied. “Timing will be everything.”
The Russian nodded, smiling.
“You learn lessons well, Halo. A true son. And very unlike the boy on our screens, yes?”
Both men looked back to see Dan and Miranda arguing in the rain in front of a fast food place. The girl’s retainers were shielding her with black umbrellas, but her hands were wild, flying in all directions, her teeth flashing white.
“My grandson has perhaps met his match.”
On the street, Luke Ma watched the unfolding drama through dark shades. He counted six members of Miranda Brody’s entourage including two security guards and four assistants. The guards were local. They looked bored by the celebrity’s yelling. Their fists were clenched, waiting for even half a reason to intervene, but the girl wouldn’t let up. Luke knew the type of security gorillas he was dealing with here, and he thought Dan did as well but the fool kept getting in the girl’s face.
The one side of the street was empty apart from his targets, and the traffic dropped off to a slow crawl through the sheets of rain and water covering the road. On the other side, though, there were still groups of shoppers, using the shadow of the skyscrapers to shield themselves from the rain.
Luke looked up from the shoppers towards where his cousin waited. Lily stood with her legs apart, balancing on the awning overhanging a camera store. Her black coat whipped behind her in the wind and Luke realized the storm was coming earlier than expected. A part of him knew the Mad Russian was involved in the build up of energy. There was a madness out there, swirling above them, ready to explode.
But Luke could manage an explosion.
Melbourne was overdue for some action anyway, and Luke was more than willing to be the catalyst. He touched his earpiece and flexed his jaw, the cracking sound clearly audible through his piece.
“Follow my lead,” he said. Lily didn’t respond, but then again, she hardly spoke at all anymore.
He stepped out onto the street, casually throwing off his coat and letting it flap around on the wet road behind him. He stood there with his arms out to each side, the hard black armor strapped to his torso and forearms glistening in the rain. He cracked his neck twice, once to each side, and then stared down an approaching car.
Normally he would operate in the shadows, use his strength and training to do his aunt’s work without most of the world ever knowing about it. But the latest orders were explicit. The Mad Russian wanted to leave an impression on Melbourne. Personally, Luke thought the idea was short sighted; that any exposure now would only hurt their clandestine activities later, but his aunt was not open to discussion. Whatever hold the Russian had on her, it was solid.
And so Luke and Lily were sent out to bring about destruction, chaos and perhaps even a little death. His aunt called them her two little dragons.
The car’s tyres screeched and skidded to the right, but the water across the road didn’t allow for much traction and it slid towards Luke who waited with open arms. He could see the woman’s terrified eyes as she wrestled with the steering wheel. It was a family car. A child’s capsule was strapped in the back but there was only the woman inside.
As it slammed into Luke he forced his fingers deep into its door and the force of the impact pushed him back nearly twenty feet before his own boots gathered enough traction to stop the momentum.
He didn’t wait to let the woman scramble out. He didn’t wait to hear the crowds or even glance towards Dan. Instead, he swung the sedan around behind him, turning like a discus thrower, his fingers gripping the metal and easily lifting the car off the ground. He swung it around three times before letting it go. It sailed up a little before crashing to the street, denting the bonnet before flipping end over end towards Dan and the celebrity group.
Luke grabbed a second car, even as the first was still flipping. It had been driving towards Dan anyway, so Luke only had to swing it around once before sending it careening after the first one.
It was beautiful.
He stood and wiped his hand across his face, the smell of petrol and wet hair in the air and he smiled.
The first car exploded and Luke stepped back in surprise, unsure whether that had been the plan or not, but marveling at his handiwork anyway. The sudden flare of orange highlighted the grey streets, and in the flickering afterglow Luke was impressed to see that he’d hit Dan and the group head-on. A perfect shot.
“Behind you, cousin,” Lily called softly through the earpiece.
At the same time, the road trembled, like an earthquake. Luke turned around, smiling through his three sets of jagged shark teeth.
A bearded man crouched in the middle of the road like he’d just landed. The surface was pock-marked and where the man’s large hands rested, Luke saw the road had shattered. The man stood up. He was wearing a black turban and suit, and as he unfolded himself to his full height, Luke could tell he was a very tall man.
“This is good,” he whispered to his cousin. “Watch me tear this guy up.”
“Who is this man?” the Mad Russian demanded, standing up from his chair, forgetting the wine and turning to face Halo who still stood by the door. “Who is this man who falls from the sky?”
Halo was watching the screens too, but he didn’t know much more than the Russian. There wasn’t any known superhero matching the man’s description and he thought it was too much of a coincidence for a new hero to suddenly surface in the middle of his game. The Russian had only made his move for Dan after being cer
tain any real opposition was out of the country.
“Looks like a Muslim,” Halo said.
“‘Looks like a Muslim’?” the Russian mimicked. “‘Looks like a Muslim’?”
“A Sikh?” Halo faltered.
“You paid to know these things, stupid boy. Find out.”
“But…”
“No but. You go get this man. I put end to this now. Go.”
The Russian’s eyes flashed with white light as he swung his head around the room, from the screens to the desk and then to Halo at the door.
Halo nodded quickly and slipped out of the room, a smile creeping across his face as he heard the sound of shattered glass behind him.
Luke hunched over the lip of the storefront, his gloved fingers thrust deeply into the corrugated iron, holding his place steady. The interrupted shoppers scattered across the street, clutching at their shopping and their children, cries and shouts reaching up to him as he slowly opened his mouth to reveal his triple set of razor teeth.
“Nice punch,” he said, spitting blood to the side, as he looked down at the giant man who was pushing his way through the wreckage of the two cars across the street. “Think I might chew your arm off now.”
The car wreckage merged with the front of the fast food place, all twisted metal and collapsed mortar. Luke dropped to the street again, his ribs a little sore from where the man had struck him, but nothing too serious.
“You won’t find anyone but little pieces, man,” Luke called out. “Who are you anyhow?”
The man straightened up from his search and turned around, his hands holding the second car’s rear door. Luke noticed some movement around the wreckage. The fast food place had people in it too, silhouettes shifting from place to place behind the light of the fire which still licked around the engine of the first car.
“I am Suleyman,” the man said.
“Well, I’m the Card Shark,” Luke said, closing the gap between them. He watched Suleyman closer though, not wanting to be taken by surprise a second time. “And you have stumbled on to something that does not concern you.”
Suleyman placed the door down. He looked sadly at the wreckage around him and then subtly towards the food store. Luke almost missed the glance.
“How many did I get, you think?”
There was a sound through the earpiece he shared with Lily, and Luke cupped his ear to cut through the static. It wasn’t coming from his cousin though. It was closer. The sound intensified, the crackle becoming unbearable. Luke pulled it out of his ear and threw it to the ground after static energy burnt his fingers.
He shot a look past Suleyman into the fast food store.
“No way,” he mumbled. “I didn’t get them did I?”
“You got enough,” Suleyman said. “Four dead that I can tell.”
Luke punched the air and swore, spinning to look back down the street towards Chinatown. He knew that the Russian would be watching, and watching him fail to kill the celebrity or injure Dan in any decent way would be enough to bring shame down upon him. He could already imagine the stony look on his aunt’s face.
“You have done quite enough,” Suleyman said. Luke spun around again and leapt straight at the man, his legs pushing him with enough force to bring them both to the ground. But the bearded man took the fall well, as if he’d had practice, and then threw Luke to the side.
Luke snapped his jaws tight, grabbing the man’s arm worse than any pitbull. But instead of calling out in pain or trying to shake his arm free, Suleyman brought his other hand down on Luke’s head.
A flash of red mushroomed behind his eyes but he didn’t let go.
Suleyman stood up, Luke still attached to his arm, but hanging limp, on the edge of consciousness. His eyes were bulging, he knew, and he wouldn’t last long, but in the last moments he thought he saw Dan.
The kid was stepping his way over the rubble of the cars, the celebrity girl holding his hand and a third person struggling to push aside the doors to the fast food store.
Luke pressed his jaws tighter.
It was good to see Dan again. After all those years.
The Mad Russian sat again in front of the screen, his hands clutching the sides of the chair. There was a burning smell from the leather and he pushed the energy from inside himself down into the chair and further into the bedrock below. His eyes watched the scene a few blocks away. He could see Danya, scratched but healthy. He could see the girl, too, even less injured, and she was getting into a car, so close to escape again.
And the Russian felt anger like the old days, welling inside him.
The air thickened, a blue vortex swirling around him, pulling the interior of the room into the center, transforming it all into energy. The desk, the lamps, the chairs and wine were all consumed by the maelstrom.
He sat like a husk, his mouth open, his tongue thick and close to his lips. He couldn’t stand it anymore, the sense of losing Danya to the world. And the world had already taken so much away from him.
He let his head fall backward and his eyes rolled with the motion, blacking out the room for a moment. When they came back into focus he exhaled slowly. As his body relaxed, the energy in the room centered in his chest and then lower, and finally he pushed it downward, through the chair, into the ground.
A wild thing, it thundered its way towards the streets above, punching through the rock like a wave, unstoppable. The world shook above and below the surface, and the Russian clenched his jaw, tasting blood, forcing it further and further, whipping it into a frenzy of mad energy.
When it erupted from below, the streets of Melbourne were bathed in a harsh, hateful light. It exploded through the streets, through buildings and brought everything undone.
“Yes,” the Russian said. “Now it is my turn.”
Chapter 16
Dan
Miranda was doing well, considering she had just escaped a head on collision with two thrown cars. Dan pulled her up through the broken doors of Birdie’s and down to the curb where Tabitha’s car was waiting.
“Get in,” the cleaner said. Her piggy tails had come undone sometime between Dan and Miranda crashing through the front glass-panes of the shop and then convincing her to help them get out of the city. Dan was amazed how unflappable she had turned out to be.
Miranda stumbled a little and then steadied herself against the car, giving a quick glance over her shoulder towards Sully and the Asian kid who Dan thought was probably Luke Ma. Sully was trying to shake the kid off his arm.
“We don’t have time,” Tabitha shouted. Miranda nodded and ducked her head to get inside. There was a link there, between Miranda and her bodyguard, and Dan wondered whether it might be better for her to stay with Sully rather than risk it with a hopeless guy like him. Tabitha revved the engine and it bunny-hopped forward, letting out a bang from the exhaust.
Miranda fell into the seat and clutched her bag to her chest. Her eyes were looking forward, in shock. Tabitha regained control of her car and lifted her hand to Dan.
“Are you coming or not, Galkin?”
He stepped back, away from the car. Looking down at his hands he saw the bracelet on his wrist glow slightly. The hairs on his arms lifted. He felt a hum growing in his ears and as he turned back to the street he could feel the rising wave of energy unleashed from his grandfather. His fingers spread outward, his palms up. Above him the sky darkened even further and clouds started to flash with lightning, although it was so high up that no bolts could be seen.
The door to the car slammed.
Dan stumbled back to the street, his eyes still looking upward as his hands began to glow. It was as if the energy wave was honing in on him. The ground began to shift and then everything erupted in a white light. A column of energy shot all around him and into the sky, bathing him in electricity. It was like being born, he thought, losing track of everything else around him.
A second later it was gone.
Dan dropped to his knees and cleared his vision.
The ground was jagged, the road ripped up and buildings all around him had been pushed backward by the blast.
Tabitha’s car was gone.
He pulled himself up again and staggered towards where it had been only seconds before, but there was a chasm, a rupture in the street. Canyons criss-crossed all around him, and then he saw the car, its front section jutting out of the ground. Dan got to the car and grabbed for the door, but the rain made everything slippery. A tremor ran through the ground and the car shifted, precariously tilting. It was hard to see how far the fissure went, but darkness spread below.
Miranda’s hands pressed against the window.
They looked at each other. Silent. Rain dripped off his face, but time stopped.
There was movement in the reflection of the window, a sliding object. Dan turned around slowly, his hands still gripping the door.
A tow truck turned sideways as it slid down the street, kicking up a spray as it swept through the flooded intersection. Dan pulled on the car door again, pressing his boot against the outside, his fingers slipping on the handle. The rain kept slamming into him, the wind whipping the trash and grit from the street. The truck lifted on to the curb across from Dan and collected the side of a sports store. More people spilled out on to the streets, part panic and part gawking.
Above him, Dan felt the rumbling of a helicopter but in a second there was a flash and a boom which flattened him against the car. The Russian was taking pot-shots at the media. Dan’s breath fogged up the window and for a moment he came eye to eye with Miranda again. Her palms were still pressed against the glass. She wasn’t screaming, wasn’t losing it like he had feared. She just looked at him with her sad, brown eyes. The car lurched again and sank deeper into the fissure.
His fingers slipped back around the handle. The rain seeped through his t-shirt and jeans and the electricity which hummed under his skin snapped and crackled. He had never been comfortable with using his powers in the wet, always worried that he’d end up short-circuiting his brain or detonating into oblivion like his father.