With no human features, the creature's face bore no resemblance to anything that might display emotion. Yet Kate saw in its expression something. Relief? Maybe gratefulness? Definitely a flicker of serenity. It reached out to her with its other hand, slowly, almost thoughtfully, then fell to the ground, unconscious or dead. Kate couldn't tell.
She stood over the unmoving body for a moment, the sounds of terror and destruction all around her suddenly absent. And then, sure the alien would not stand up again, she ran down the street, looking for her next opponent.
* * *
Bedlam understood what she was.
Somewhere deep in the parts of her brain that had never been human, the commands were all there. The code. The instructions. The Children of the Elder Star had created her to be a weapon of mass destruction. She was designed with pure malicious intent, to be dropped into an urban environment and to cause pure, unadulterated chaos. Her name was Bedlam for a reason. She possessed the tools to cause untold mayhem, especially in an enclosed, heavily populated environment.
That was what I was made to be, Bedlam thought, but that's not who I am.
She ran down a major street in the City's downtown, faster than a car, her cyborg legs carrying her with the grace and speed of a hurdler, her feet thudding against pavement, cracking and tearing it.
She saw one of the creatures the attack ship had dropped on them, a hunched beast with spines along its back and huge, glowing red eyes—fifteen feet of rage with a parasite clinging to its collarbone. It turned to face her, and she ran faster. The alien, seeing her challenge, plodded directly forward, ready to meet the cyborg head-on.
I'm not a weapon, Bedlam thought, seeing her next move. The targeting computer in her brain identified what she needed—something to strike this charging monster with.
She slammed on the breaks, metal heels digging into the asphalt, and then reached down to grab hold of a parked car.
Without stopping or losing momentum, Bedlam lifted it off the street, and hoped the frame of the car would hold together while she spun it.
The huge alien upon her, Bedlam completed the twisting arc of her attack and swung the entire car like a baseball bat. The back end slammed into the alien's face, knocking the massive creature flat. It hung there for a moment, limbs loose, head thrown backward, before slamming into the street.
"Home run, Bedlam," she said, admiring her handiwork.
The alien coughed and started climbing back to its feet.
"Dammit!" she said, hefting the car and slamming it down on the creature once more for good measure. The bumper fell off in her hands, and Bedlam watched the car roll off the alien and, oddly, land back on its wheels. She made a mental note to look into the brand. Clearly it deserved a high crash test rating.
The alien sat up, still taller than Bedlam even while sitting on its haunches. She looked once more at the bumper in her hands and then reared back, taking aim at the parasite on the being's chest. She swung.
Not a pretty sight, but a perfect swing—the bumper connected with and caught the parasite, hooking into the mindless thing's shell-like carapace. Bedlam's inhuman strength kept the bumper moving forward, and suddenly the parasite was disconnecting from the host body, tearing away, its limbs ripping off like a bug's. The body bounced down the street, pouring black fluid as is rolled, legs fell away, looking disturbing, like something you might eat at a seafood restaurant.
The light went out in the host creature's eyes, its long, powerful limbs spasmed, before falling onto its back and shuddering into unconsciousness.
"Got one," Bedlam said into her earpiece. "How many did we say we saw?"
"Neal spotted about twenty," Titus said.
Bedlam sighed, tossing the bumper aside.
"Back to work then, I guess," she said, once again sprinting toward the action.
* * *
Titus let the fleeing residents run past him. He walked through them, almost invisible, bumping shoulders with strangers, helping an older man up as he staggered to his knees, catching a woman running with her child before she fell. A few blocks away, the ship rained destruction down on the streets, and below it, monstrous foot soldiers pursued the citizens like predators, striking them down as they went.
Titus started moving faster. The crowd pushing into him was relentless, as scared men and women screamed and looked for an escape. Drowning, he couldn't get through them. He heard explosions in the distance, some sort of enormous bang from the direction Bedlam was headed. Too many people, too much noise, he couldn't see…
The monster inside him told him what to do. And, as Titus was often afraid to admit, the monster was right.
He threw his hooded sweatshirt on the ground and willed himself to transform. It hurt, it would always hurt, this violent shifting of cells and molecules, no matter how good he got at it, no matter how smooth he made it seem. He fell to one knee, letting the pain subside. Suddenly he smelled the skin and sweat of aliens, of every single City dweller around him. He listened to heartbeats and distant screaming.
And the people around him began to scream as well, terrified when a three hundred pound werewolf suddenly took shape beside them. The crowds ran even faster away from him, but Titus charged toward the oncoming aliens. One looked like a crocodile on long limbs, another like a hairless bat. Both had controlling parasites attached to them, turning them into biological weapons.
Titus broke free from the throng of humanity and roared at the aliens, who stared him down with deadly silence. The three monsters—alligator, bat, werewolf—circled each other, sizing each other up.
The bat-like alien moved first, lunging at Titus with bony, oversized arms. Titus bounced back, out of reach, but heard the reptilian creature make its move to attack him. The werewolf lashed out with a clawed foot. Talons sank deeply into the creature's parasitic partner and drew gobs of blood. The alligator-alien gasped and hissed before taking a quick step back, clutching the parasite as if to hold in the pouring blood.
The bat-thing attacked again. Claws pierced the muscle of Titus's shoulder. The werewolf roared in pain and surprise, and the alligator-thing took advantage of his distraction to snap with massive, toothy jaws, catching Titus's forearm.
The hurt shoved a nail into Titus' brain, making him angry, to feel out of control. The bat-creature piled on, bony limbs bruised Titus's body as the creature flailed. Titus felt his control slipping and his fear building. His heart thundered, a wet beat in his ears. And then the beast took over.
He barely registered what happened next. Jaws clamped down on the bat-thing's neck, dragging him away, the attack caused the alien to forget its assault and to instead focus on staying alive. Titus shook him like a dog toy and the bat-alien cried out in agony.
The alligator-alien opened its mouth and adjusted its toothy grip on Titus's flesh. The momentary release was all Titus needed to turn his attention on that creature, raking his claws up its belly and sinking them into the softer meat of the parasite's body. Titus dug in his long talons like a child tears into clay, squeezing and ripping. The reptilian alien grew limp and started to convulse, and then the werewolf shoved him away.
The bat-creature clutched its throat, limped towards him, not willing to give up, ready to fight to the death. Somewhere in the back of Titus's mind, his human side felt pity and regret for this warrior from another world. He realized it was hopeless, that all of these creatures ended up destroyed by their melding with the parasites, but still, to have journeyed across galaxies only to perish on the streets of a faraway city…
Still, the monster remained in charge, and the monster had no mercy. With blinding speed, the werewolf leapt at the wounded alien, not attacking the creature's body, but at the parasite controlling it, slashing downward with all of his claws, gutting the bug-plant hybrid, two swipes down, two across, delivering death.
The bat creature fell forward, landing in the werewolf's arms. Monster to monster, they locked eyes. The beast within the wolf recognized only
fallen prey, while Titus, watching, witnessing, saw something else. He saw relief. He saw a feral warrior ready to die.
And then it died, another victim of the Nemesis fleet, another tool discarded.
Titus roared, his voice echoing in the emptying streets of the City, and he raged on, looking for another battle.
Chapter 58:
President some day
You could see the fleet from Earth.
If I don't die, Jon Broadstreet thought, looking up at the blue sky above the City, watching strange shapes, pale and uncomfortably close, hanging there like the moon, this will be my lead in the story.
Nearby, smoke rose. He heard the terrified rumble of humanity and saw the humped back of the aircraft that had crept out of the sky and into their midst, a shelled slug of a thing, created fear wherever it turned.
Broadstreet held his laptop in front of him and watched the screen as Jane's recorded message went live. When she told him that he'd know, that she wouldn't have to tell him it was time to release the recording, he believed her, but he'd no idea she meant it would be this obvious. The City, under attack, suffered a direct assault. Why here, Broadstreet wondered, scanning the Internet and his professional resources for news of attacks in New York or London, Paris or Beijing. Nothing, though, just here, in the City, a single, calculated strike. Monsters at the gates.
Broadstreet had prepped the file to release immediately, on multiple video-sharing sites, and through his own publication's pages. His professional conscience stood at odds with his moral compass—he realized it represented the scoop to end all scoops, the sort of first report that made careers and saved newspapers, but he believed he should have shared it with everyone immediately. No, he thought, it'll be okay—it's the information age, you've put it online, every one of your colleagues and competitors will share it within seconds. It will be ubiquitous. Everyone will see it. Everyone has to.
It took half a second for the video to go live on the paper's website before his editor called him. Broadstreet's phone buzzed in his pocket.
"How long have you had this video?" his editor, a beleaguered and underpaid battering ram of a journalist with the unfortunate name of Butch Dancy, sounded more bewildered than angry.
"Just got it," Broadstreet lied.
"Next time you want to lie, don't show me a video from an overcast day and tell me you just shot it when the sun is out," Butch said. "I'm sometimes smarter than you are."
"I know," Broadstreet said.
"Doesn't matter. Where are you?" Butch said.
"On the roof of my building. I can see the smoke downtown," Broadstreet said. For once he was actually happy to live so far on the outskirts of the City. He could make out the destruction and see the smoke, yet he felt like he was watching a movie.
"Can you get downtown," Butch said.
Tempted—at least momentarily—to tell his boss to get lost, Broadstreet then thought about the Indestructibles—maybe Jane, maybe just her friends, but people younger than he was were risking their lives without a second thought for their own safety.
"I can try," Broadstreet said.
"You know the players. Get the rest of the story," Butch said. "And don't get yourself killed."
"OK. I'll try not to boss."
"And Broadstreet," Butch said.
"Yeah?"
"Good job with the video. Did you wordsmith her at all?"
"That would be unethical," Broadstreet said. "That's all her."
"This kid could be president some day," Butch said.
"Yeah," Broadstreet said, looking at the black smoke continue to rise up from the City's center. "We have to make sure we still have a world left after this before we can start cracking jokes like that."
"Well," his boss said, sounding tired and more than a little afraid. "Let's hope we do."
Broadstreet hung up, then put his hands in his pockets. He pensively gazed at the City, where he'd been born, where he'd grown up, where he'd wanted to become a storyteller and newsman. We all play our parts, I guess, he thought.
He started to close his laptop, but paused, and pressed play on Solar's video one more time.
His own face appeared first, the impromptu opening made him feel self-conscious and unprofessional and amateur.
Broadstreet watched as he stepped away, remembering how he'd crossed behind the camera to zoom in, framing the shot around Solar's head and shoulders. The clouds on the day they'd met made her open-flame colored hair seem brighter, more supernatural.
"My name is Solar, of the Indestructibles," she said. "I apologize for the cryptic nature of this message, but I ask that everyone watching this listen carefully."
On screen, Solar did not immediately brim with confidence. She looked exactly like what she was—a young woman with far more responsibility thrown onto her shoulders than any one person deserved, facing things nobody could be prepared for, whether they had superpowers or not.
"We deal with impossible things all the time, and today is one of those days when one such impossible thing is about to happen. It sounds ridiculous to say it, believe me. But we will soon find ourselves under attack by an invading force. There's no better phrasing to make it less strange."
Solar sighed on screen, brushed her hair from her eyes.
"An alien fleet is coming here. To Earth. And its mission is not one of good intentions."
Solar took a beat, looking into the camera. Broadstreet cringed at his camerawork—he had adjusted the lens and zoomed in closer to focus more on her eyes. She noticed the camera moving and fixed her gaze.
"I know. I know. It's impossible to believe. But it's my hope that you'll never have to see this message, and we'll stop them before they ever arrive. No matter what, we're here for you. We'll be your first line of defense. Those of us who are able will fly into space to fight for you. The others will be here on the ground waiting to protect you. This is our promise."
Solar looked beyond the camera. Broadstreet remembered that moment, when she broke character, gazing at him as if to ask: have I said enough? Have I covered everything? He found himself doing the same thing now as he had when Solar stood right in front of him. He shook his head, regretting that there was nothing at all he could do to make this easier for her.
"We may not make it back. But that comes with the job. And we need to ask something from you. When and if this comes to a head, and the battle comes to our planet, we need you to be good to each other. Help your neighbors. Be kind to those who need someone to lean on. There will be dark days ahead, and only you can make them less so. They're coming to take our world—let's show them that we think this is a place worth holding onto."
Solar exhaled deeply.
"So for now, this is Solar, signing off for the Indestructibles. I hope to see you tomorrow, safe and sound."
The video played out and the screen went dark. Broadstreet closed the laptop and headed downstairs. In the apartment hallways, he heard rushed conversations, the sounds of people packing, the voices of fear. Would they listen? Broadstreet couldn't be sure. When we needed each other most, humanity had a tendency to turn on itself. Maybe not this time, he thought. He headed out into the street in the direction of trouble instead of fleeing from it. He held his camera and notepad firmly in hand.
Maybe not this time.
Chapter 59:
To scar the armada
Doc Silence had been to space before.
All of them had, really, to varying degrees. Some took the journey in stride. Others hated it. In their younger days when they left Earth Doc hadn't been a fan. Traveling between dimensions felt natural to him. Space, however, seemed more like science, and science was too logical to play well with the finger paint style of magic Doc employed.
Sitting cross-legged in the vacuum of space, his old, lightly armored hero uniform fit clingy and tight. Doc gazed out into the darkness, Earth behind him, or below him—that's the thing, he thought, there's no up and down here—and watched the approaching alien
fleet growing large and monstrous before him, moving quickly toward his home.
"How you doin' out there, Doc?" Billy's voice said in his ear.
"I hate space," Doc said.
"You should see Saturn. It'll change your opinion of things," he said.
Doc smiled. Billy's sojourn into the beyond seemed to have given him some perspective. He was curious to see how the young hero evolved after all of this, provided they survived the onslaught.
"I always liked Pluto better," Doc said.
"You would." Billy said.
"Might I inquire, are we discussing a pantheon or planets in this discussion?" Korthos's rumbling voice said. He didn't sound right; Doc suspected the immortal had put the earpiece in backward, something he had been prone to do in their youth.
"Planets, big guy," Doc said. "You ready for your part?"
"I shall rain destruction down upon—"
"You're ready," Doc said.
And so am I, Doc thought, running through the patterns and manipulations he'd need to perform to make this spell work. It was war magic, hard magic, creating something out of almost nothing. Doc wasn't looking forward to it, but, he thought, if it worked, he could at least push their enemies back on their heels a bit before they got to Earth.
He turned his burning purple eyes toward the fleet and held out his hands, muttering inside his mask—sealed by both science and magic to let Doc speak in the vacuum of space—the words to the spell he needed to cast. This was war poetry he spoke, evoking old gods and warriors of myth and song. It was a poem of fire and blood, of fury and revenge, of death, pure mortality, a weapon intended to leave a bloody, ragged scar across an entire army.
The space in front of the fleet lit up into a razor-straight line of bright golden glow as wide as a horizon, becoming a tripwire of light and heat.
Like A Comet: The Indestructibles Book 4 Page 27