Years ago, I had everything put away into storage under an assumed name. It took time to gather my old outfit and gear, but it was necessary. If I had any chance of beating Detonation, I needed to be prepared. Flexing my fingers in the gloves it felt strangely natural and unnatural at the same time.
The Nanoskin I’d developed was made of a resilient material much stronger than steel yet elastic enough to not restrict my movements. The micro-tech integrated throughout the clothing’s synthetic and natural biopolymers made the suit perfect for combat with other Superiors. My enhanced strength, endurance, and hyper-cellular regeneration made sure I wouldn’t go down easy in the middle of a fight. Oh, the arsenal and gadgets I kept on my hip and in various pouches helped too.
I blew out a breath. “Okay, I can do this. I can be a hero again.” I didn’t sound convincing to myself. Despite the vision, or whatever, I’d experienced earlier, I still didn’t feel the city deserved being saved. That was a problem. If I couldn’t get my mind into the game, I might make a mistake that could cost me my life as well as those trapped by Detonation.
Picking up the face mask I wondered why I should even bother with it. Everyone around the globe knew my identity. The mask hung loosely over the side of my palm. “It’s for my protection, not concealment,” I explained. Slipping it on over my head, the micro-machinery went to work and the material instantly hardened. My disguise resembled an Extreme Motorcyclist’s skull mask, except that my version was filled with useful technology.
An inner display appeared on the tinted goggles giving me an updated status report for the suit. Even after all these years collecting dust, the gear had maintained a small charge. Once I stepped out of the dimly lit storage container and into the sunlight, the solar cells would start collecting energy. Draping the hood over my head to finish my ensemble, I had once again become Night Siege.
***
Detonation was a cold-blooded killer and couldn’t be trusted. If I turned up early to face him, he’d likely destroy the building and its occupants anyway, though he might spare most of the city. His home was here and despite his threats, he wanted to remain in the city where he’d spent his entire life, to rule its criminal underground with an iron-hand. A number of bad guys wanted to rule the world, while others like Detonation were content with just a small piece of it.
Confronting him head-on had to wait until after I got his prisoners out of the building. I rode a motorcycle through the dark underbelly of the city’s sewerage systems to both avoid the escaping outgoing traffic from above and equally for stealth. The bike roared inside the deep tunnels like some great cave dwelling predator. With the headlight glowing on full blast, I zoomed past scurrying things hidden in the shadows that were better left in the dark.
There were stories of creatures living under the city, mutated by illegal dumping of chemical waste from various large companies; one of which was the same pharmaceutical conglomerate that had conducted human testing on me and others. Some of what lurked in that darkness stared back with intelligence and malice, a deadly combination if they somehow became fixated on a particular target. I hadn’t posed any danger to them, so they left me alone, and I extended them the same courtesy.
Several minutes later, I was directly underneath the Panagis Building, staring up at a series of pipes and ductwork running lengthwise across the ceiling. The structure was one of the oldest buildings still in operation in the city. Back in the day, subbasements in buildings were common places to hide the conduits and pipes that provided water, power, ventilation and heat. Much of it was no longer utilized because of advancements in technology and energy conservation.
I performed a fifteen foot vertical leap and hooked my hands around a pair of rusted pipes. The metal creaked and groaned in protest of my added weight, but held in place. Hand over hand I worked my way to one of the large ducts like a kid on a playground’s monkey bars. There was a sealed plating used as an access for maintenance workers. I swung my legs up and kicked the entry open. Climbing into the dark duct, night vision automatically engaged on my mask and I stared into a network of shafts that stretched in four different directions. It was a good thing I wasn’t claustrophobic, the space was compact and confining, though maneuverable as long as I kept low.
“I need a path to the subbasement above,” I whispered into my suit’s onboard AI.
A white computer-generated line appeared ahead of me to lead the way and I began crawling on all fours. After several minutes of working my way through level terrain, the line I was following abruptly turned upward. I rolled over onto my back and stared up the shaft. Maybe sixty yards at the end I could scarcely make out a hatch door. All I had to do to get there was to climb up a smooth metal surface caked thick with a half century of old dust and rust.
There were pairs of evenly spaced holes leading to the top, evidence of a ladder once being affixed to the wall. Would have made things a lot simpler for me if it was still there. As always, I had to do things the hard way. “Great fun,” I grumbled. My voice reverberated through the conduits like I’d shouted across the Grand Canyon.
Standing to my full height, I stretched out my arms from side to side and braced my palms against the metallic interior. Applying some pressure to verify my hands wouldn’t go clean through I was relatively sure the wall could endure my climb. Lifting my legs, I gripped the sides and scaled my way up.
I made it to the top easily enough but at the cost of sounding like a marching band’s drum team going full blast. Stealthy I was not. Planting the soles of my boots against the interior wall, I held myself in place to work on the hatch door. As the access resisted my efforts to open it, the door creaked loud enough to wake the dead. I made a mental note to carry oil from then on, assuming I would live through the imminent battle. Eventually the latch gave and I pushed the hatch open.
Heaving my body up and out, I saw that there was no need to worry about stealth. Four huge turbine fans spun at full power, obviously compensating for the energy field Detonation created around the Panagis. Little good it did. His power climbed incrementally, increasing, with time, to eventually reach critical mass, while the fans had an upper limit. There would be no compensating, only death, unless I could get the people out.
My display showed me the way out of the basement. There were stairs and a freight elevator. I positioned myself behind equipment with a vantage point that gave me a clear view of the stairway door. As I suspected, Detonation had the building on lockdown. There was no way he could monitor the entire building by himself. So he brought in a contingent of his thugs to make sure those trapped inside stayed that way.
A man I recognized stood guard – Zero Point. He could create energy vacuums, taking empty space and filling it with some type of quantum power field, essentially giving nothingness mass. I’d fought him before, several times in fact. It often led to long battles, the decimation of several hundred thousands of dollars’ worth of property damage and lives. Something I couldn’t afford in the building, not with Detonation hovering outside.
Moving toward the elevator, I saw that it too had a guard – Oil Slick. I didn’t have any run-ins with him during my hero days but I was aware of his powers. He had transmutative abilities; his flesh could transform into a black oleaginous liquid. Both Zero Point and Oil Slick were formidable on their own; if I was to fight them collectively, I’d be heading down a world of hurt.
It wasn’t like I had much choice; I was on the clock and time was ticking away closer to the deadline. I’d have to hit them hard and fast and hope for an outcome that didn’t include my untimely demise.
I launched out of my hiding place and charged toward Oil Slick at full speed. He barely had time to register my movements before I was on top of him. I slammed the sole of my shoe into his stomach and felt his ribs cave under the pressure. Instinctively, his defenses kicked in and his body got underway to liquefy. The melanin in Oil Slick’s skin and eyes went from brown to black, but he still hadn’t fully transformed. I c
lutched his throat with one hand, twisted my body, and hurled him like a baseball across the room.
Zero Point seized me within a quantum field. I knew what he intended. He either meant to pull my limbs apart simultaneously or crush me to the size of a golf ball inside the containment field. Oil Slick’s fully altered form careening at him put a damper on his plans, however. Black ooze hit Zero Point full on with the force of a fire hose. Two hundred and fifty pounds per square inch took Zero Point completely by surprise and sent him sprawling backward off his feet.
He hit the ground with a wet slap and skidded another twelve or more feet before he stopped sliding. Oil Slick’s oily form sank deep into Zero Point’s eyes, nose, and mouth. The quantum field that trapped me faded. I had to move before either of them could recover.
I ejected a vile from my utility belt, cracked the seal and lobbed it into the black pulsating mass. It was a powerful anesthetic. In Oil Slick’s gelatinous state, the sedative would have little effect on him, but Zero Point was a different story. The anesthetic spread through the oil and entered Zero Point’s every orifice.
The black mass oozed away from Zero Point’s unconscious frame, forming a large ungainly pool next to him. A bubble formed in the center of it and grew until it stood nine feet tall. It loomed over me. What I imagined were eyes and a mouth molded itself into what was supposed to be a face.
“I’ll kill you for that,” Oil Slick bellowed in a wet, inhuman voice.
I ran in the other direction. There was no way to defeat him by throwing a few punches and the gadgets I carried were not intended for an enemy like him. As expected, he pursued me. Oil Slick was fast – too fast. The only thing that kept me ahead of him was my enhanced speed, though eventually I would slow. On the other hand, he wouldn’t. His liquid body took up every inch of the corridor behind me, while the bulk pushed down its center. It looked as if the dark itself wanted to consume me.
“You cannot escape me,” Oil Slick yelled.
Escape wasn’t the idea. I burst through a metal door and rushed into the room I had entered through the conduits. The explosive sound of the giant turbine fans became the entirety of my world. I whirled around to face my opponent just as he came flooding through the door like a black tide.
“I have you now,” he screamed with that eerie, wet voice.
My reply came in the form of chucking flashbangs in front of him. He reacted instinctively to avoid the small blasts. Though flashbangs weren’t commonly known to ignite paper or clothing, it didn’t mean it wasn’t flammable when it came to vapors or liquids. Oil Slick, in his transmuted form, was defenseless against flames. It wasn’t my intention to set the man on fire. If that happened, he would trigger the very explosion I was trying to prevent Detonation from doing. What I wanted was to get him mad as hell, while at the same time maneuvering to a specific side of the room.
Satisfied with his placement, I stopped my barrage. I whispered to my internal AI, “Hack into the building’s system and shutdown the fans pronto.”
That was step one. Step two would be harder. First things first, I had to make sure Oil Slick was completely enraged. “Oh, are you scared of a little fire? Poor baby.”
He howled and flooded toward me. Okay, he has been properly enraged. I leapt to one side of the room, away from his flowing black mass padding down in front of the center fan. Air shoved at my back, threatening to push me, but I held my ground. Oil Slick’s size seemed to double and he opened his mouth wide enough to swallow me whole, which was likely his intent. He surged forward.
I sprang up above the spinning rotors and landed on a slight ledge housing the turbine fans. The blast of air slowed Oil Slick’s progress as he pressed on in my direction. “Anytime with those fans,” I whispered.
The rotors slowed and then stopped. The room grew eerily quiet except for the disgusting sloshing of my opponent’s movement. No longer deterred by the air flow, Oil Slick slammed his mass hard against the fans and wall. Large buckets of his oily physique were spread across the three fan housings and gushed inside. Oil Slick’s perverted face stared up at me grinning with triumph.
“Turn them back on,” I commanded.
Oil Slick screamed as the gigantic rotors spun. The fans violently wrenched him inside, ripping him asunder as he was distributed across the three individual housings. The more rapidly the blades rotated the faster he was drawn in. His nightmarish wet shrieks will follow me to my grave. Even though his transmuted body was oil, he was still human and as such was never meant to be shredded apart. Bit by bit, the fans spat out black splotches, caking the floor, ceiling and walls, but I knew the smudges would never reconstitute again – Oil Slick was dead.
Running up the stairway I ran into more of Detonation’s henchmen and, one by one, I took them down fast and hard. There weren’t as many as I expected which I suppose was a good thing. The problem was, the floors were empty of the building’s occupants. It wasn’t until I’d nearly reached the top floor that I discovered where everyone was.
On the empty floor just below the top, I’d tapped into the building’s security cameras. What remained of the Superiors had assembled the hundreds of hostages in one area. Smart. Once Detonation was ready to blow the structure, his people could evacuate and lock all their victims on a single floor to prevent them from escaping.
I picked out three Superiors, all minor leaguers. They could handle a crowd of people without powers with little trouble. I on the other hand, might prove to be more troublesome for them. Though I had to be careful, too many innocent bystanders could be hurt if I went in too hard.
After conducting a quick search of the offices on the floor, I managed to find a spare business suit. It was a few sizes bigger than me, but that was a good thing. I slipped the clothing on over my uniform and put on a pair of nerdy glasses. The simple disguise worked for Clark Kent, so I figured what the hell. I didn’t bother with changing my boots. With the number of people taking up tight space on the top floor, I figured my feet would go unnoticed.
Getting on the occupied top floor was easy; all I had to do was knock. The Superior guarding the door on the opposite side yanked it open, blinked with surprise with his mouth gaping wide for a few seconds, and then hustled me inside without uttering a word.
It astonished me that not one Superior bothered at any point to send updates to make sure the perimeter was secure. They didn’t see a reason to since they had the power to make sure the perimeter couldn’t be breached. Well, surprise, surprise, it had been breached. I rocked the guard at the door with a solid elbow to his right temple, followed by a knee to his groin to knock the fight out of him. He doubled over and collapsed to the floor.
Those who witnessed what I did joined in the fray and pounded on him with their feet. Apparently, they didn’t care much for being imprisoned. Go figure. I slipped into the throng and made my way toward the second target. It went much the same. By the time I made it to the third Superior, the commotion from the crowd had drawn her attention.
She was called Dragon’s Breath. It didn’t take a genius to guess what her ability was. Smoke sprayed out of her nostrils and the sides of her mouth as she sought out a threat to target with her powers. She looked nervous and angry. It was only a matter of time before she blew her flames into those closest to her. The mass around me thinned. I glanced over my shoulder. The panicked crowd rushed the exits. In minutes, the first of them would be in the lobby, making their escape outside. If any of them went out the front door, Detonation would spot them and follow through with his threat.
I sprang over the crowd, making myself visible. Dragon’s Breath’s burning red gaze locked onto me. She opened her mouth wide; flames shot forth.
I protected my face with my arms. The oversized suit I was wearing turned into cinders. My uniform was fire retardant and remained relatively unscathed by her assault. Fire retardant, however, didn’t
mean it was fire proof. With enough stress, it would burn away, exposing my skin.
The red of her eyes died and Dragon’s Breath flames let up after a few seconds. She appeared to be winded. Perhaps using her ability was like blowing up balloons, needing to draw oxygen into her body before she could go again. Though her attack had done me little damage, I couldn’t say the same about the surrounding area. The level was in flames, causing the sprinkler system to rain down on everyone, sending the already panicked crowd into a frenzy.
If she used her powers again, the sprinklers might not be enough to control the blaze. Once again I was faced with a terrible decision. Her eyes turned crimson again. Smoke spewed out of her opened mouth and I could feel a wave of heat hit me. My leap placed me within arm’s reach of Dragon’s Breath and I took full advantage of it. I clutched her throat and squeezed, closing off her air passage, leaving no place for her flames to go.
In my haste to save the people inside the Panagis, I’d lost track of time and quickly realized my error when the timer on my suit went off. Dragon’s Breath’s stomach expanded like a frog’s cheeks as the pressure built inside of her. I rushed to the windows and stared down at the ground below. Detonation stood in the middle of the street and turned to face the building.
I glanced at my captive. Her eyes bulged in her sockets in the same fashion as her bloated stomach. “Sorry lady, times up for the both of us,” I said, before taking a step back and hurling Dragon’s Breath through the inch-thick pane glass window.
Chapter Five
Critical Mass
Detonation frowned. With seconds left on the clock, there was still no sign of Night Siege. He’d expected the hero to make some grand entrance, declaring how he was the protector of the city or some muck like that.
“Well,” he said, to the police and news crews brave enough to stay, though they kept their distance. “I guess your hero really is a coward!”
A tangle of murmured voices, coming from where they shouldn’t, caught his attention. He spun around to face the glowing building. A crowd that had come flooding out of the elevators and stairways filled the lobby of the Panagis and rushed for the exit.
Black Power- The Superhero Anthology Page 28