by Drew Hayes
“Time to pick a direction, folks,” she said, pointing to the several streets, all with at least one squad of robots near the entrances. “As I see it, our best bets are to try and get the hell out of Brewster proper, maybe flee to the burbs, or make a run for the Mordent Building. We might not be a lot safer there, but personally I’d like to die in my own bed, if that’s on the table.”
“Mordent is actually very secure,” Galvanize pointed out. “It’s built to withstand all manner of natural disasters, plus the security is top of the line. Granted, that might not stop all of. . . this.” He waved at the robots bounding about and targeting every Super they could find. “But it’s a far sight safer than being on the street.”
“And what about everyone else?” Bubble Bubble asked. The streets were all but choked with civilians who were barreling out of the fairgrounds, no doubt filled with the same naïve hope as Hexcellent that things would be safer once they were outside.
“We’re probably not authorized to fight these things, but given the situation, it would be hard for anyone to argue that we aren’t acting in self-defense,” Galvanize said. “I’m not the only one who’s noticed they only seem to be going after Supers, right?”
“Sort of.” Hexcellent had noticed the pattern to, though she’d seen it slightly differently. “They’re going after people who mark themselves as Supers. SAA athletes, Heroes, and obviously us. I don’t think they somehow invented a scanner to tell humans from Supers; shit, if they had, they could make billions overnight. I think they’re just going off the markings we’ve put on ourselves.”
“She’s right,” Zone said. “They’ll knock normal folks aside, but it’s only the people in costume or uniform that they target.”
“Okay then.” Galvanize surveyed the layout of the chaos before them, his mind whirling as he tried to put together what little information they had and turn it into a plan for survival. “Zone, take off your shirt. Since that’s where most of your ads are, hopefully you can pass for a normal person once it’s gone.”
“Why only me?” Despite the question, Zone had already begun to strip down. Much as he wanted an explanation, he’d been in more than enough dangerous situations with Galvanize to trust his leader’s orders even before he understood them.
“The rest of us have costumes that are too elaborate; we would never fool them,” Galvanize explained. “You’re going to scout ahead, finding us the clearest route and hiding spots so we can make our way back to the Mordent building. If we see any civilians in trouble along the way, we do our best to save them and bring them along. As long as they don’t stand too close to us, they aren’t likely to get targeted.”
“Yeah, but how do we-”
Hexcellent was cut off as a giant, demonic hand slammed itself into her back and pushed her to the ground. Big Henry stepped in where she’d been standing, raising its gauntlet-like hands over its chest moments before a blast of red energy struck. Big Henry let out a massive roar as its flesh began to pucker and sear. To the monster’s credit, it held out for nearly a full ten seconds before the damage became too great and it disintegrated into a cloud of smoke. Ten seconds, paltry though it was in the scheme of the universe, proved to be long enough for a member of the Cincinnati Cyborgs, one of the very Supers they’d gone up against in the tug-of-war, to slam a powerful shoulder into the robot and knock it to pieces.
Big Henry was gone and Hexcellent rose to her feet slowly, gripping the side of her skull, visibly in pain. Summoners took a healthy bit of mental feedback when their creations were destroyed, and the more powerful they were, the more it hurt. Bubble Bubble was already at her teammate’s, her friend’s, side as Hexcellent managed to slowly steady herself.
“I was going to ask how we chat with Zone, since no one brought comms to a charity event, but that fucker robot just solved the problem for us.” Hexcellent held out her hand and Impers appeared on Zone’s now-bare shoulder, trying not to hook its small claws into his tan skin. “Impers will run relay between Zone and us, so that he can always be scouting.”
“Are you sure you wouldn’t rather have Huggles on hand?” Zone asked. Big Henry was the best they could ask for, but his destruction meant it would take time and rest before Hexcellent could summon him again.
“Huggles is great, but she’s not subtle. I think the more covert we are, the better,” Hexcellent replied. She leaned on Bubble Bubble, a fresh wave of pain wracking her skull. Though she didn’t tell the others, summoning another creature so soon after losing one intensified the pain. There would be time for beers and bitching later. Right now they needed to survive.
“Okay, I’m going ahead,” Zone told them, jogging east in the direction of the Mordent Building. “I’ll find a way past all the robots guarding the exit streets, you three just try and stay safe until Impers comes back.”
Hexcellent chuckled darkly under her breath, eyes taking in the destruction and bloodshed around them. “I could have created a summon with flying powers big enough to carry us years ago, but noooo, I had to be afraid of heights.”
“We’ll make it back,” Galvanize assured her. “I’m sure the Heroes are already taking control of the situation.”
Confident though he sounded, it was somewhat hard to believe him when the sounds of raining debris drowned out his words.
103.
Something was wrong. Owen couldn’t quite put his finger on what, but as he smashed his way through the intersection stuffed full of robots, ignoring their bites, swipes, and blasts, he could tell that there was an element off about the fight. Another man or a younger version of himself would have shaken the feeling off as nerves or fear, but Owen had been in the fire literally countless times during his tenure as a Hero. He’d made a name for himself by being the one they could drop into any situation, and as a result had gained enough experience to learn the value of trusting his intuition, especially when it so boldly grabbed his attention. If something seemed off about the fight, then it was, even if he couldn’t put it into words quite yet.
It certainly wasn’t that the battle was too easy, at least for the Heroes as a whole. Granted, nothing the robots had seemed able to hurt him, but he was just one man. Containing this many threats required the coordination of dozens of Heroes, many of whom didn’t share his invulnerability.
Owen grabbed a robot with whirling blades for arms and smashed it down over his knee, then stomped it to pieces on the ground. Maybe it was that these seemed easier to kill that the previous times he’d faced them. Then again, before they’d been in limited groups and focused on defense. Now, there were so damn many it was nearly impossible to stretch his arm out without smacking one. Perhaps the tradeoff to creating so many had been that they were lower quality; maybe the person in charge had switched tactics and decided to simply try and overrun the Heroes. That seemed viable, though ill-advised. At the rate things were going, they’d manage this first wave in five more minutes, and by the time the next arrived they would have regrouped and prepared.
A Hero in gray and crimson zipped past Owen, so fast they were an unrecognizable blur, leaving a trail of severed robots behind them. No, it wasn’t his imagination; these were definitely going down easier. But why? Numbers would make things more troublesome and might bring down a few more civilians, but they were far less likely to kill actual Heroes. It felt like he was on the right mental path to solve the mystery, but he had no idea where to go from here. So he focused on moving his body instead, barreling through a set of robots hobbled by the gray and red blur to finish the job.
Roughly a hundred feet away, he saw Gale settling down for a landing near a broken streetlight. Seemed like he was almost to his goal, then. Whatever was hitting him as wrong, it would hopefully get resolved when Jeremiah got a lock on these bastards’ signal. If they could shut down the source, the robots’ plan would be irrelevant. Still, he couldn’t shake the feeling something was wrong, so as he punched his fingers through a mechanical torso and hollowed it out, he decided to
check on the lone element he couldn’t directly influence.
“Dispatch, this is Titan. Can I get a location and condition analysis for my PEERS team?”
Even in the middle of this fight, which was no doubt only one incident among many she was dealing with across the country, Dispatch’s reply was instantaneous.
“One moment, Titan, let me see what I can get for you.”
Owen finished coring the robots in his hands and reached for the next nearest one, only to realize it was another Hero in a mechanical suit. He gave a small wave of apology, to which the other Hero responded with a curt nod. It was hard to blame them for being annoyed. There was no way Owen had been the first Hero to see metal and assume it belonged to an enemy. He quickly turned away, grabbing a robot that was taking aim to blast another Hero with an energy beam and placing his hand over the weapon’s muzzle. In seconds, the laser gun had melted to scrap as the beam was unable to escape. Owen quickly dismantled the rest of the bot before it could get its bearings.
“Titan, your team successfully evacuated the fairgrounds under the watch of Kaiju from Wild Bucks. However, once they were out he lost track of them as there were other civilians to protect. Based on satellite imagery, they appear to have slipped away from that concentration of enemies and are currently working their way toward the Mordent Building.”
Owen remembered his first day walking into Mordent, taking stock of the cannons disguised as potted plants and knowing it was only the tip of their security iceberg. “Good. I know we’ve got a lot going on, but if you can, keep an eye on them for me. I want to know when they’re home safe.”
“You will be kept abreast,” Dispatch assured him.
With that as settled as it could be, Owen tore through a half-dozen more robots before finding himself in what was as close to a clearing as he’d seen since the fight started. Gale, Deadlift, Aether, and Jeremiah were all gathered together, polishing off a few mechanical adversaries as he stepped into view. Aether finished hers off last, phasing her arms through its chest and coming out with several components that were, apparently, quite vital to its operation. It was easy to forget just how terrifying phasers could be, given the right talent and training.
“There’s our big fella,” Jeremiah announced. He somehow still looked composed, barely a hair out of place as he whipped the cane-like object in his hand about. With a flick of his wrist it compressed down and he tucked it neatly away in a compartment of his costume. No great shock that a team full of Subtlety Heroes would have fancy high-tech weapons, though from the smoking remains around his feet, it seemed the cane did far more than just make itself portable.
“We clear enough to do this, or do we need to thin the herd a bit more?” Owen asked. The tide had certainly turned in the Heroes’ favor, but the battle was far from finished. He would be damned if he left people hanging when it could be avoided.
“I think this is as good as we’re likely to get,” Jeremiah replied. “Sooner or later the next wave will show up, better to be ahead of the curve. Gale and Aether, please maintain our perimeter. Deadlift, handle any who get past them. Titan, if you would be so kind as to grab me a subject.”
Owen leapt out of the clearing, grabbing a robot that was already short one bladed arm and snapping off the other. He tore off its legs too, just for good measure, and then carried his prize past Gale, who was already calling a fresh blast of wind to surround them. Setting the torso down on the ground, its head still intact and somehow glaring at them, he motioned for Jeremiah.
“You kept the head on?” he asked, pulling a large knife from another compartment. With a single touch of a button on the side, the blade began to glow a fiery red.
“I don’t know what makes these things register as ‘broken’ but being decapitated seemed like a good bet.” Owen rested one hand on the bot’s metal neck, keeping it pinned just in case it had a trick or two up its sleeve.
“You’d be surprised by how many things that doesn’t work on,” Jeremiah muttered. As he spoke, his hands worked quickly, slicing into the torso with surprising delicacy, easily piercing the metal hide to reveal the robot’s inner workings. He may as well have cracked open a pinball machine for as much as Owen could tell, but Jeremiah seemed to have some idea of what he was looking at. After a few minutes of rooting about, he grabbed a dark box that Owen thought looked identical to four others also in the torso and yanked out his strange pen.
“On the very likely chance that this blows us up, sorry about the costume.” That was all the warning Jeremiah gave before plunging his pen into the device. Owen tensed, not because he expected the explosion would hurt, but because it would still be a damn explosion. None came, however. Instead, a pale blue light near the top of the pen flashed on, and Jeremiah let out a long sigh of relief.
“Did it work?” Owen asked.
“Maybe, it will still take several minut- Hang on, what?” Jeremiah touched his right ear, the universal signal for being on comms, and as he listened his eyes grew steadily wider. Worse, the smug expression always present on his face vanished, and for the first time since they’d met, Jeremiah looked genuinely worried. Finally, he dropped his hand and with a single stroke of his knife carved up the innards of the robot.
“Guessing something went wrong,” Owen said.
“Not with the device, per se. With the plan as a whole. They saw us coming, the bastards. These robots aren’t being controlled by a central signal. There are six signals spread throughout the city, relays to act as redundancies and mask the real source.”
“Well then, let’s go find those.” Owen pushed to his feet, ready to charge back into battle.
“No need,” Jeremiah said, rising more slowly and pulling his cane back out. “According to what my team said, one of those signals should be landing right on top of us in less than two minutes.”
104.
“What in the tap-dancing fuck is that?” Hexcellent reached out and grabbed Galvanize by the cape, pulling him up short as she pointed to the sky five blocks north of their position.
So far, their plan had been going surprisingly well. The robot forces were scattered enough that Zone was able to sneak the team around the bigger clusters. Between his scouting and Impers running messages, they’d made good progress in getting closer to the Mordent building. For a moment, Hexcellent had allowed herself to feel cautious optimism about their chances of surviving the day.
This was when, almost perfectly on cue, a giant mechanical monster rippled into view and fell from the sky. Hexcellent didn’t know how something that big had managed to stay out of sight; then again, the pinnacle of her technical expertise was switching the television’s input feeds between game systems. She could tell it wasn’t the only one, though. She could see another appear to the south and fall, and she thought she caught a sliver of one to the east. The one nearby, however, she had a perfect view of, and what a view it was.
The thing had a base built like an insect’s. It hosted a half-dozen ultra-thick legs which supported the towering torso, which in turn sported four arms, each ending in what looked like various gun clusters or cannons. The torso itself was heavily fortified, with smaller weapons mounted at regular intervals. A head was perched on the very top, eight glowing eyes spaced out to give what Hexcellent had to imagine was a 360-degree view of its surroundings at all times. Worst of all, which was saying a lot when one watched a giant mechanical monster shatter the concrete as it landed, compartments just above its legs were sliding open to release more of the regular-sized deadly robots.
“What I wouldn’t give to have been born a tech-controller,” Bubble Bubble muttered, stunned as they watched the river of robots pouring out from the massive mother ship.
“Something tells me if that solved the problem, the Heroes would have brought one in ages ago,” Galvanize said. “Hexcellent, can you have Impers bring back Zone? I’ve got a hunch we need to rethink our strategy. I can’t imagine anything that big would have the capability of focusing just on
Supers.”
“Yeah, not an issue. As soon as I saw the building-sized mech falling from the sky, I figured we’d need to change plays.” Zone hopped out from a nearby alley, Impers riding on his shoulder, leaving a small trail of blood where his tiny claws had sank into Zone’s shirtless flesh.
“So, that thing probably came to clean house,” Hexcellent said. “Which means we need to get the hell away from it, and the troops it has, as quickly as possible. Smart money says this whole block will be gone soon if the Heroes don’t intercept it, and even if they do, that’s not a fight I want to be near.”
“She’s right, we need to focus on speed now,” Bubble Bubble agreed. “Whoever is doing this clearly plans to level all of Brewster.”
Again, Hexcellent felt a tickle in the back of her mind. Why? Unless this was the world’s most patient sociopath at work, it didn’t make any sense. Criminals acted for a reason: revenge, profit, pride, feeding an addiction, there was almost always purpose behind their motives. This, all of this, it didn’t really fit. Maybe if there were a ransom demand or banks being targeted, but it just seemed like random chaos.
Except. . . somehow, it was familiar. She couldn’t put a finger on it, yet Hexcellent was certain she’d seen something like this before. Maybe in her darker days, the ones hidden behind a cloud of foggy, drug-coated memories. It was there, darting about in her brain, always just a few inches out of reach.
“Hexcellent,” Galvanize repeated, snapping her attention back to the moment. “I asked if you’ll have Impers scout for us? It’s too dangerous to send Zone, but your demon might slip by undetected.”
“Yeah, yeah, no problem.” She tried to follow the itch in her brain again, but it was gone, scared off by the rational issues she should be handling. Giving a few quick orders to Impers, she took the demon and tossed it into the sky where it pumped its tiny wings and began to rise.