Zephyr II

by Warren Hately

  And I have no idea about the Paladin building.

  Tessa answers on the third ring.

  “Dad, is that you? I’m in class, you know.”

  “Don’t try and bullshit a bullshitter, honey. Are you near a computer?”

  Tessa gives her best Windsong harrumph and I hear keys tapping.

  “What is it?” she asks, not able to keep the curiosity from her tone.

  “I’m gonna send you a few photos from my phone and an address,” I say as I stand on the roof sixty floors from the streaming carpet of the ground below and drink in the hermetically purified air – another function of the city’s famous auto-bots. “I need you to locate the building and then show it to me on the photos I’ve sent.”

  “Oh great,” Tessa says. “I can’t tell if this is a promotion or not. Am I like your sidekick now or something?”

  “Honey, please. This is important. It’s about grandma.”

  I feel like a bastard, knowing exactly the somber chime this pronouncement would ring. Nonetheless, Tessa stops her whinnying and I take a few panoramic snaps and fiddle with the Enercom phone and manage to send them to Tessa’s cell, the main number programmed in. Tessa says she’ll ring back and I pocket the phone and idly ponder having a cigarette and note my stomach rumbling as a train, ten storeys from the ground, hisses past on its raised platform between stops.

  The text bleeps and I check the data package and bingo, my little girl has circled one of the distant towers in one of the views and I quickly orient myself to find it. The Paladin Corporation does a fine line in real estate – but we’ll have no guarantees this one will still be standing come later this afternoon.

  The phone buzzes and I answer before the hated ringtone can start up.

  “Thanks, babe. I’ll call you when I’m on the other side of this.”

  “Daddy, when are you coming home?”

  I almost laugh at the sincerity of her tone – talk about inappropriate – and yet again find myself taken aback that anyone actually cares, even my own daughter. So I chew off and swallow the first couple of replies and eye the scenery while I play back scenes from our most recent outings.

  “I guess I’ve fallen off the wagon of good dad-hood once again,” I say.

  “I don’t need the self-pity dad,” Tessa replies gloomily. “I miss you. I’m worried. I’m, like, frigging sixteen in about two weeks, and for all I know I’ll be celebrating my birthday in goddamn England.”

  “That’s not going to happen,” I say curtly. “I’ll speak to you soon. We’ll do lunch.”

  “Lunch. Okay. Fantastic. Bye.”

  Feeling I’ve lost that round, I listen to Tess sign off and then it’s just me and the harlequin breeze, the feeling of eternity stretching out in the skies before me.

  *

  THERE IS A blip in the sky. ‘Tis I. ‘Tis I. Hurtling in an arc from where I began atop the Nagatomi Building, I compress my acceleration to the point where the sound barrier doesn’t so much break as simply wither. By the time I hit the black glass plate of the thirtieth floor of the Paladin Building I’m doing something close to 1700mph – close to my upper limit even with a few hundred miles to gradually accelerate.

  At such a speed my natural physiognomy’s enhanced by a friction bubble that wraps like a shield around me, though I have my arms crossed over my face as I hit the glass and it wobbles and explodes and I burst through, smashing office furniture and hallway dividers clear, and then I punch through the first stylish marble and brass-fitted wall and papers and debris and several Japanese workers are sucked into my wake as I pitch lower to the ground and hit the second wall and go through executive bathrooms in a catastrophe of ceramics and plaster and stone cladding and plumbing and I roll over my shoulder and come up in a stance shaking dust and shards of marble from my hair.

  The conference room is as big as a small warehouse. The onyx table is oval, as big as a room in itself, and the Demoness stands from one narrowed end with her lustrous black hair already exploding into action, though for the moment she makes no further visible move. Here on nearly the far side of the building there is a curved wall of ceiling-to-floor windows tinted to evade the afternoon sun. Behind her there is a stylized water feature, just one pivotal section of the exterior wall not given over to glass. Instead, a corrugated surface conjures musical notes from the trickling flow and as the dust clears and Ono stares across at me, this is the only noise in the world until the belated security alarm starts its caterwaul and the startled civilians and armed guards holler madly somewhere close by beyond.

  For a moment the old woman looks lifeless, her face showing something of her true age in the glacial ice shelves of her cheekbones and the deep hollows of her manicured eyes. She wears a costly white blouse and a Genevieve Salander checkered grey skirt, black stockings and heels by Franco Sarto. Her black tresses unspool like ink spills in water, an impossible loom of hair that unfurls around her like a dire flag that seemingly rewrites her appearance as it caresses the monochrome air. Gone is the professional businesswoman and in her place stands a short but shapely black menace in thigh-length leather boots and matching elbow gloves, a cat mask and dark purple bodysuit under a corset of identical black leather.

  “Darling,” she says in her difficult, accented voice. “You’ve come home at last.”

  “You helped kill Tommy Hilfiger and I’m willing to bet you helped kill my mother,” I snarl with barely contained rage.

  Now that I am here and in the thick of it, I have to show restraint not to simply tear the old woman apart.

  “Where’s Arsenal?” I snap.

  The Demoness walks calmly around the curve of the table’s ellipse with her black heels ringing on the marble tiles.

  “I don’t know who you mean,” she says. “Zephyr? I’m glad you found me. Now you can join with us. That’s all your father ever wanted.”

  I stare at the woman and hold up one blazing hand in the hope to persuade her that she comes no further. Dutifully, the Japanese woman halts and puts her hands on hips that no woman her age has a right to make look so sultry and demure at one and the same time.

  “My father was a madman,” I tell her.

  “No,” Ono says, and despite the mask and her angular viper’s face, her expression softens with genuine love. “He is a great man. When he returns, you shall see. It will all be for the best.”

  “What – genocide?” I growl. “There’s nothing you can say to convince me. I don’t know the ins and outs of it, but you betrayed my mother for decades and now she’s dead. It’s your turn to die.”

  “No, my son,” the woman says. “It wasn’t like that. You – you, dear Joseph – were the great contingency plan. Your mother knew that and understood. She gave her life willingly, as we agreed should you ever be discovered.”

  “That’s crap,” I say.

  “We nurtured you in the dark to save you from him, in case he should fail,” she says. “You must understand this.”

  Her voice is urgent, pleading as she steps closer.

  “If that’s true, then why did you have Arsenal kill my mother?”

  My accusation is greeted by a flat silence. Into it, I hear Ono draw a deep breath that emerges as a mournful sigh.

  “Ah,” she says. “So it’s no use then?”

  “Afraid not.”

  “Then it is you who must die.”

  And she turns, walking away as she clicks her fingers and a concealed door slides open just across from where I have torn an immense hole, and tie-wearing, white-shirted security guards crouch there, armed with guns whose names they probably cannot pronounce.

  From the doorway emerges a line of six young people, only one of them with Asiatic looks. Like me, they wear black, though most the costumes incorporate Ono’s evil bruised purple into the color scheme. Several have cloaks and one of the girls, a blonde with a lip ring, wears some kind of bondage biker’s cap. The oldest is about twenty-five and the youngest is no more than sixteen. The yo
ung one, a boy with a spiky black haircut and slitted shades, claps his hands together and begins to bolt toward me.

  There’s not much to do but strike a pose and clench my fists and hope these are some of the runts of the Lennon litter.

  Zephyr 6.13 “The Automaton Look”

  THE YOUNG GUY bounds with enthusiasm into close quarters and I look over the top of his spiky hair-do to see the five other Lennon kids fanning out with a creepy, unspoken precision. Six-on-one was never my favorite odds and the automaton look in my mother’s eyes in the last moments of her life seems visibly echoed here.

  But not on my attacker. The sixteen-year-old sports a nasty grin as he moves like a stocky dancer and then thrusts his hands at me, fingers splayed, the flesh more like charcoal than anything else, and I slap them away at the same time his fingers shoot out into twelve-inch spikes, retracting like a trick of the light as he takes advantage of my distraction to kick me in the knee and then repeat the same move as before. This time a few of the fingertips thrust forward like deadly syringes and pierce the upper chest of my leathers and I feel pain and wetness as they retract, blood in the air, an exultant look on the little bastard’s face.

  “What the fuck is this?” I snap. “Who are you?”

  “I’m Carbon,” the young guy replies. “Get ready to feel some pain, big brother.”

  Rather than press the advantage, Carbon cartwheels back and one of the girls, Japanese-looking, runs forward from the outer formation, a samurai sword held low by her side. A sizzle of electricity runs over my knuckles as I prepare for what looks like a predictable defense, but then the girl explodes into three identical copies of herself.

  Carbon cheers from the back of the boardroom.

  “Ruse,” he grins.

  One of the clone girls comes in chopping high with the sword and I do the only thing my speed allows, foolishly lifting my arm to block with the hope my leather and denser-than-average muscle and bone will lessen the attack. Instead, it fades right through me the same time one of the other copies attacks – the real one, as it turns out – and she puts her boot into the side of my knee and I crumple with an alarmingly girlish scream.

  The illusory copies are a flutter of black and purple before me and another boot sails out of the ether to collect me upside the chin and I am snapped back across the hard floor.

  “Fuck,” I stutter, spitting blood from my cut lip. “This is gonna be harder than you’d think.”

  I pull my cell from its back holster and press the pre-programmed emergency number and roll out of the way of another attack and stand, discharging with my left and playing the shell game – getting lucky this time as the girls to the left and right disappear and the one in the middle yelps prettily and hurtles back.

  It’s only two rings and someone at Sentinels HQ picks up and I’m fortunate perhaps it’s Loren.

  “Seeker. You know that code we were going to set up for an emergency team transport so we could just press one button and not have to actually talk?”

  Her reply is breathless.

  “Yes?”

  “I can’t remember the button, but I need you all, now.”

  And I stash away the cell as a tall young guy steps slowly from the semi-circle of my siblings, theatrically craning his neck and stretching like he thinks maybe we’re in a Bruce Lee movie or something.

  “I’m Hardass,” he says and grins, I must admit, quite handsomely.

  Family resemblance, you know.

  “Cute,” I reply and wipe away blood with the back of my hand that I can’t help but briefly inspect.

  “Yeah,” the tall kid says and lifts his fists. “I’m meant to be called Bastion, you know, because like my name’s Sebastian? Lame, anyway. I’d rather be called what I truly am, and that’s your worst fucking nightmare, buddy.”

  “I don’t know, kid,” I reply tiredly, stalling for time as we begin to circle like streetfighters and he can’t see the drawbridge lowering like from a ghost castle fading into co-existence across the other side of the room and my erstwhile teammates stepping out.

  “I’ve had plenty of nightmares in my time,” I tell him, “but most nights I sleep like a dream. I don’t expect this to be much different.”

  I give a leering grin I don’t really feel and the kid loses his cool and jumps into the air and at me and brings his rock-hard fist down and I bring mine up and into his solar plexus and it’s like punching the side of a mountain, and it’s around that moment a very odd sensation cuts through me and I see several of my arriving teammates stumble as well and then the kid’s punch lands across my cheek, and like a blast from a shotgun, I’m lifted off my feet and spun around and slammed hard into the floor and the world tilts at forty-five degrees as I slap my hands on the cold tiles just to make it still and the fucking kid laughs.

  “That’s a shit,” Hardass says with a whine of genuine disappointment. “She turned on the fucking Leveler.”

  The other youngsters mutter their disapproval too, for whatever it is the witch has activated, leaving me and Mastodon and Smidgeon and some long-haired dude in black and red and showing way too much chest hair crawling around on the ground momentarily like newborns. Not since I fought Quietus have I felt quite so bad, but I manage to get to my shaky feet and Hardass is standing across from me with his hands on his lithe hips, laughing, and I grit my teeth as the weakness passes and make fists and realize belatedly that in the place I reach into to draw out my electrical powers, there’s now nothing but an empty shelf.

  Absolutely. Nothing.

  I’m powerless.

  And again Hardass laughs, right before he kicks my legs out from under me like a swipe from a wrecking ball and I hit the marble hard enough with my face that the tile cracks and my nose along with it.

  “Fuck,” I manage to stammer, and then again. “F-fuck.”

  *

  THE TEENAGE COLOSSUS is about to wail on me when Loren is there in a fantasy-inducing leather cat-suit and matching mask. The ultra-dense fist comes down and she blocks it with a jo or bo or whatever the fuck those Japanese sticks are the cops sometimes use. Hardass or Sebastian or whatever his name is gives a puzzled growl and Loren rises from her concerned crouch like some beautiful synchronized swimmer and delivers the blow from the second baton to the underside of his jaw and its only then that I get what the kid was saying about his name, Bastion, meaning castle or fortress or something, because the stick makes a noise like it would on a brick wall and Hardass barely flinches except to frown, something immobile now about his face I understand later is because he’s dialed up his molecular density so high the subtle parts of his body have trouble functioning. He reaches down and grabs Loren by her long, tawny hair and mutters, “Get the fuck out of here, bitch,” and she yowls, unintentionally in character as she’s thrown across the room. I weakly roll away from the immediate radius of attack and almost straight away another of Lennon’s kids, a guy who in the last five seconds has morphed into a lizard-skinned version of himself with big dangly-clawed fists, one of which he swings at me kind of in slow motion and I duck, weave aside, and slam my fist into his ribs with about as much success as Tony Danza in Rocky having a go at those beef carcasses in the abattoir. It might look good on film, but my wrist feels like broken crockery as the lizard-kid makes an unpleasant hissing noise and grabs me either side of the face and headbutts me to the ground.

  Suffice to say I lay there for a while feeling pretty miserable with myself and floundering to explain the sudden loss of my powers, likewise for my teammates, but seemingly not for Yoko Ono’s shock troops. At least Tom O’Clock, and regrettably, Nightwind, seem to be functioning still, and the third Lennon girl – her head and hands are on fire despite the persistence of her costume and the fact she seems quite happy about it – tussles with the magic robot until he does something to the air around her that not only causes the flames to gutter out but her breathing as well.

  That’s one down, at least.

  Just as I am reco
vering, so too Smidgeon, Mastodon and the new guy manage to get from the ground, though without his ubiquitous shrinking ability it seems Smidgeon is about as useful as a three-dollar bill in a whorehouse and it’s only a few seconds after Mastodon grabs Carbon from behind that the big guy, unfortunately not as big as he might like to be right now, finds himself gasping like a gutted trout after the kid’s elongated fingers have pierced all the way through his chest and out his back. Blood gargles alarmingly from the wound and Mastodon grinds his way slowly around in a semi-circle on the floor seemingly with the lone aim of shooting me betrayed glances as the blood sprays onto the corporate tiles like some deranged Jackson Pollock.

  If this is my clue to step up, I do what I have to do and test the powers again with inevitable disappointment. The blonde girl with the cap sees me standing unmolested and sports a nasty grin that makes me wonder just what made these kids so fucking cruel, though years and years of being exposed to some lying, manipulative, shape-shifting mother figure probably doesn’t leave much mystery.

  The girl pulls a spinning backwards roundhouse kick that sees her impressive high-heeled boot catch me in the side of the mouth and flip me over. I hit the ground again with the same acoustic qualities as before and roll to safety with surprising speed given the incredible pain along my side. My jaw, strangely, is less of a concern.

  “I’m Eclipse,” the girl offers. “Shame I can’t kick your ass the way I’d like, but Spectra’s flipped the switch on your powers.”

  “A fair fight would be good,” I manage to say as I wipe the gore from my mouth. “How the hell do you kids keep yours, anyway?”

  “Now, that would be telling,” the little blonde says in a tutorial voice and lashes out with her gloved fist.

  I weave aside, bat her posture open and bring a heavy left into the side of her gut. The girl lifts off the ground despite my depleted strength and makes a noise like a female tennis player serving an ace. As she comes down again, I grab the wrist I so recently cast aside and drive my left knee between her legs. She makes a shocked sound and slumps and I twist her arm across her body and then back and up, pulling her backwards into me with her own arm strangling herself.