The Suns of Liberty (Book 3): Republic

by Michael Ivan Lowell

  She lowered her head, fixed her gaze, set her jaw.

  “I’m coming!” she roared at Lantern over the com, gritting her teeth. She knew Rachel Dodge was behind her as well, but by now she had turned invisible, so it was impossible to say exactly where she was. “Stay behind me, Stealth,” she told her over the com.

  Another explosion rocked the facility. The lights flickered. Sophia saw the ceiling spider-web above her. The cracks ran down the wall right next to her. “What the hell is going on out there?”

  “Grenade launchers. Bouncing off Spectral’s energy field,” Lantern replied.

  “If you’ve got eyes on, tell them to stop. They’re gonna tear this place apart!”

  She could hear Ward coming up from behind. “Spider Wasp,” she called to him. “Disablers!”

  That was all she had to say. Ward sent a thought-command into his suit and felt the disabling darts slither against his skin, loading into his right-hand wrist turret. He kept his paralysis darts loaded into the left-hand turret, just in case. He’d heard who was out there. Disabling darts for the android Spectral, paralysis darts for Lady Rage.

  Check.

  Ward again thought of the Revolution. His felt his face flush with heat as his anger boiled. Scarlett Rage was the one who had killed his friend.

  “Lady Rage,” he scoffed at the name. She was no “lady,” that was for sure. He could think of a few other choice words to call her. Then a thought made Ward swallow hard. He froze in place. “Hey, can’t she just shut us all down before we ever get out there?” he asked the others.

  “We’ve got digital shielding,” Lantern reminded him.

  “Right. Willard uploaded it before we left for Philly,” Sophia said.

  “It will take her at least a few seconds to work past it,” Lantern said.

  “I guess that makes me feel better,” Ward grunted evenly and then dashed forward.

  Sophia reached the entrance at the end of the hall. It opened into a wide foyer. The place had been a warehouse originally, and then later, an HMO medical facility. This room had been the admittance area.

  Two wide, glass doors made up the front entrance. She could see nothing but black night beyond them.

  “Lantern, light me up,” she said.

  Instantly, an aqua-blue overlay of the entire world superimposed in her visor. The night became day. And out beyond the doorway, floating above the lawn, some six feet off the ground, was the robot Spectral.

  Living up to his name.

  His cape was extended and taut, allowing him to hover. Under his left arm was Scarlett Rage, held tight against him, her arms extended outward, pointing.

  At Sophia.

  Sophia dove across the foyer, out of Scarlett’s line of sight, to the other side of the hall. She crossed the span of the vestibule in a split second, crashing onto the floor, skidding across linoleum. All the pain in the world seemed to shoot through her ravaged body at once. She centered herself with a long, pained grunt. She rolled back toward the doorway and blasted a cobalt beam of energy straight through it, shattering the glass, blasting out at Spectral.

  Who blocked it with his energy field.

  But Sophia’s blaster was not like the grenades the Minutemen guards were using. It wouldn’t simply bounce off or ricochet toward the building. Her blasters fired concentrated fusion energy. The worst of the plasma weapon might have been blocked by the shielding, but the concussive power of it was not. It hit Spectral like a freight train. The robot jolted back a good ten feet, and Sophia heard Scarlett Rage cry out in pain.

  Good. Serves you right, bitch!

  Sophia leaped to her feet. It was now or never. With Revolution down, she was not only in charge, she was also the uncontested power-broker of the team. Ward could take Spectral out with one of his darts, but only if he could get through the energy field. And to do that, Sophia knew she would have to blast away at it and hope the android’s shield would short circuit somehow. It was worth a shot, anyway.

  It was their only shot.

  “Ward, come in behind me, I’m gonna try to disrupt that force field. When I do, you get one of those darts through there!”

  Ward took another deep breath through the spear points of pain shooting through his ribs. “You got it!” he grunted. He was now standing across from her on the other side of the foyer, just out of sight of the duo in the yard. He nodded to her.

  And Sophia burst out from cover, aiming the blasters, firing them on full power. The night lit up in flashes of ghostly blue. The sustained barrage from her bracelets activated her helmet-klaxon, warning her that the suit was down to less than one percent capacity.

  Shit!

  But her beams hit home. Spectral was blasted backwards, losing his mid-air balance. It was the first time he’d looked less than regal floating up there, and most importantly, he dropped Scarlett to the ground. That was good, very good. Sophia aimed her blasters at Scarlett and—

  Her visor went dark. The aqua-blue of Lantern’s digisphere faded.

  What the hell?

  Her suit had powered down. Was it out of power?

  No, not yet—

  Scarlett.

  “Damn it!” Sophia breathed. She spun to warn Paul Ward, but super-charged heat and pulverizing force seared into her side, slamming her into the ground. Squeezing the air from her lungs. Mud, rock, and dirt spewed out from beneath her as she slid to a stop. She glanced backwards and saw Spectral’s optical cavities power down. The robot’s eyes doubled as lasers, and he’d hit her with an optic blast. Ward leaped over her, firing his darts, but Sophia saw them simply disintegrate in the force field.

  Ward was out of options. Truth was, he’d only had one. If he couldn’t get through the energy shield, his darts were useless. His mind raced for another idea.

  And that’s when he felt it.

  First, his bug suit powered down. Then, something much worse. He glanced across the lawn and saw Scarlett focusing on him, her arms raised in his direction. His entire body cramped, nausea swept over him, and the next thing he knew he was on his knees. His vision swam, and he fell forward, barely able to put his arms out to stop from slamming face first into the dirt.

  He heard Sophia moan, and he realized Scarlett Rage was hitting her too. “The woman who could kill with a thought” had set her mind on ending their lives, and now there was nothing they could do to stop her.

  Ward’s mind wavered, drifted, and time slowed down. Soon he noticed the duo stepping over him, heading into the facility. The android’s cape billowed over Ward; the woman’s shawl fluttered in the night air. His spirit protested.

  Rachel, Lantern, Drayger. Their faces flashed through his fading mind. So many innocent people inside. They had no way to fend off the duo. Scarlett Rage could kill them all.

  He rolled his body and saw the pair disappear inside the shattered front doors. He wished he could scream a warning, but he couldn’t even speak.

  No one could stop them now.

  CHAPTER 3

  EARTH’S ATMOSPHERE

  SOMEWHERE ABOVE THE PACIFIC OCEAN

  Fiona Fletcher shot into space. It had taken her a full two seconds to leave the atmosphere.

  That’s because she’d hesitated.

  Leaving the safety of Earth frightened her; otherwise, she would’ve done this months ago. Now she had no choice. The Krill’s black shards were still burning into her skin. The pain was unimaginable. Nothing had ever hurt her this bad for this long in Fire Fly form.

  Only moments ago she had been standing atop the snow-covered peak of Mount Everest. It had been the most logical place to go to stop the burning in her body.

  Besides, Becky had suggested it. “Freeze it,” she had told Fiona.

  So she did.

  To absolutely no avail.

  She tried a second strategy. Her mind raced and fell upon the opposite location: the Mariana Trench.

  Deep. Deeper than Everest was high. Cold, dark, high pressure.

  But nothi
ng.

  For a moment she let herself marvel at the bevy of sea life she could see clear as a bright sunny day in this world with no light, and the thought flashed across her mind that she was the only human on the planet to ever see this so clearly. She would have to return to this place.

  Later.

  There was only one other thing she could think of. Don’t freeze them, burn them. What was the hottest thing on Earth?

  The desert. One second later she was in Africa. She teleported to the Sahara Desert. She let the burning sun radiate its heat across her body. And finally, for the first time since the shards had embedded themselves into her shimmering skin, she felt some relief.

  But the shards weren’t healing. The sunlight helped, but it was a pain killer, not a cure. It just wasn’t enough.

  Wait. Why stop there? she thought.

  She peered above her into the rays of the burning star.

  Not the Earth. The sun. The sun itself.

  A stabbing spear point of pain shot across her body, jolting her out of her thoughts, and she’d launched herself into space.

  Now, floating above the face of the only world she’d ever known, Fiona turned toward the sun. Another spasm of agony ripped through her, and she knew she had to try. The sun might kill her, but if she did nothing, the shards would as well.

  She swallowed hard, concentrated on the burning ball of gas before her—the most powerful force in the solar system—and teleported.

  It took her eight minutes. The same speed the sun’s light takes to reach the Earth. She stopped herself one hundred miles from the surface. Even at this distance, it was all-consuming. This close up it was a massive ocean of reds, oranges, and yellows; boiling, exploding, churning across the surface for as far as her eyes could see. The ancients had worshipped the sun as a god.

  Fiona could hardly disagree. It was the most powerful thing she had ever felt. Waves of energy and heat washed over her in pulses of indescribable power. At first, they overwhelmed her senses. She swooned. But then she felt the shards begin to shrink. She was right, it wasn’t the heat that was doing the trick; it was sunlight—the source of all light on Earth—that was indeed the antithesis of the Krill’s strange black energy. And the ultimate source of bioluminescence.

  Fiona gazed directly into the boiling mass of the star and drank in its power. She could feel her own strength expanding. She remembered reading about some of the early experiments into cybergenetic enhancement research where patients would experience a massive surge in their physical power. She wondered if it felt anything like what she was feeling right then. Of course it had always been followed by a surge of blood pressure and eventually massive acute myocardial infarction. And no sooner had she thought that than the shards shrank at speed—and she felt her heart rate jump in response. As if fighting off the shards had kept her system in check, but now that they were gone, the power all around her was simply too much.

  She cursed herself...and the world went black.

  Fiona fell toward the largest object in the solar system. Pulled in by the massive gravitational force. The giver and taker of all life was ready to burn hers away into fiery oblivion.

  Ninety-three million miles away, Becky Collins began to swoon. She’d just been standing in her kitchen, stirring a few sprigs of mint into her latest batch of sun tea, wanting to get it ready for Fiona when she returned. That’s when the nausea had hit her.

  She grasped the edges of the counter, but it was no use. Her knees gave in, and the glass jug slipped from the counter. It shattered in a thousand jagged pieces, two of which were flung like shrapnel into Becky’s exposed shin.

  The slice brought blood immediately.

  Becky was not worried about that. Even as the pain coursed through her leg she thought of only one thing: Fiona. The girl was in trouble. She could feel it.

  Four miles from the surface of the sun, Fiona Fletcher was jarred awake. She’d been dreaming of Becky, and her older lover’s voice had been screaming in her head. Screaming at her. It was her biggest complaint with Becky. She always wanted to mother her. Smother her was more like it. All these thoughts were sucked out of her head when Fiona opened her eyes.

  The red-hot, roiling surface of the sun was closing in. Its power was so great she could feel it in every molecule. Each atom of her being felt as if it would explode, rupturing her in a burst of flame and ungodly heat. She tried to teleport away. To go back to Becky.

  But there was nothing. The sun’s power had her.

  She tried to relax, to just absorb the immense power. That had worked before, why not again? At first she thought it might, but the energy was simply too great to absorb. She began to black out again.

  Time to change tactics.

  I can’t block it and I can’t absorb it. What’s left?

  Her mind raced. The surface of the sun was upon her. This close up it was just one huge mass of oranges, reds, and yellows, all of it boiling, burping, exploding lava.

  Then she thought of it.

  I’m made of light. Why not let it just pass through me?

  Fiona relaxed again and focused on the massive energy simply passing through her ethereal molecules. She tried to block out the heat and focus only on the light.

  It was working.

  But it was working too slowly. The sun’s immense gravitational pull was accelerating her fall into the fires of hell below.

  It was now or never.

  She swiveled her body against the horrific pull of gravity. Finally, she faced out toward the black of space, though even with her powerful full-spectrum eyes she could barely see it, so great was the glare behind her. She focused on teleporting, but this close to the sun even light itself could feel trapped. The stars began to blur, distort, and she realized her body was trying to leave, to return to Earth.

  Against the pull of the sun her body began to rip. Part of her beaming forward, part of her continuing to fall into the burning world below. Had she been anything other than a being of light, she would have been torn apart, then and there.

  But Fiona stayed relaxed. She thought of Becky as her sweet voice filled her mind yet again. She thought of the first time they had met. Fiona scared and alone and raging in pain. Becky had been a calm, soothing voice. Her touch the first human contact that hadn’t harmed her after her transformation. The world was safe with Becky in it. So, it seemed, was the universe.

  Fiona closed her eyes.

  Eight minutes later a beam of light ripped through the fabric of the sky, and Fiona let her body materialize into Fire Fly form from pure light, causing her bioluminescent body to shatter the surface of Lake Tahoe. Sending a gout of foam and water high into the air. Down she sank to the bottom, sending a mushroom cloud of sediment ballooning toward the surface. And there, on the bottom of the lake, Fiona Fletcher, the Fire Fly, curled up into a little ball, hoping the icy water would wash away the burning pain.

  NORRISTOWN, PA

  Ben Drayger’s world was a haze of red and black.

  Delirium, he knew. A visual side effect of the agony his brain was trying to contain. He could hear the explosions outside. They seemed far away, but he could feel the cot he was lying on tremble. His mind wouldn’t let him focus on that.

  There were voices too.

  Talking about him, he thought.

  “What the hell should we do?” said the first voice, a male.

  “Just try to stay low, out of sight” said a second female voice. “Get the IV started.”

  The boom of another explosion ripped through the air.

  “Shit! What the hell is going on out there?” the male asked.

  Drayger glanced up and saw two med techs leaning over him, one male, one female, but they were focusing on each other and whatever was happening outside the small white room they were all in. The door to the room was closed, and they took turns glancing up at the door’s small square window.

  Drayger smelled the coppery odor of blood and the acrid stench of charred flesh.


  A sharp shock of pain swam up Drayger’s leg. It gripped hold of his spine and twisted it. He heard himself moan, though in his mind he was screaming at the top of his lungs.

  The techs looked back down at him.

  “Get it started,” the female said again, peering out toward the hall. “They’re in lockdown out there, but I’m sure the doctor will get here anyway” —she shrugged—“as soon as she can.”

  Drayger’s mind wavered but the flash of silver steel brought him back, and when he opened his eyes fully he saw a steel leg being lifted above him.

  My leg!

  Now he remembered the awful event. The Spore firing on him. His gut-wrenching realization that his leg had been obliterated.

  Drayger’s thin frame shuddered as he thought about losing a leg before the age of thirty. His young, boyish face that was three-quarters jaw and normally housed a wide, easy smile grimaced in lines that seemed to age him. His light-brown hair was matted with sweat against his forehead.

  “Mr. Drayger, can you hear me?” the female asked.

  Drayger’s eyes rolled back in his head, and he did his best to nod.

  “We’re going to attach the prosthesis, but I’m afraid we don’t have the proper dose of anesthesia we need, and we’re not authorized to go outside just yet.”

  Another explosion rocked the room. The lights flickered.

  She reached behind her, and Drayger saw something tan and plastic in her hand.

  “I’m going to place this in your mouth, and I want you to bite down on it if you feel any pain. Do you understand?”

  Drayger tried hard to answer her; he’d clearly heard the word pain. “Ummghmrgh,” he said.