by C. C. Ekeke
His fist rammed into Dynamo’s face, snapping its head back. Hugo darted behind the towering android and charged, peppering him with rapid-fire blows.
Dynamo stumbled forward, shutting off its chest beam. He lashed out with a backhand. Hugo ducked and flowed around him, like he’d seen Titan do when fighting Paragon years ago. Hugo rushed in with quick, compact strikes to Dynamo’s chestplate. The heavy strikes left large dents in the android’s armor. Hugo struggled not to gloat, ducking as the android swayed sideways with a surprisingly sloppy haymaker. Hugo flowed around him again, charging from the other side to attack.
Dynamo abruptly caught Hugo mid-charge with one hand, hoisting him off the ground.
Hugo choked and struggled, feet dangling. Dynamo’s grip was unshakeable.
Dynamo’s set…me…up, Hugo realized in horror. Staring back with lifeless red eyes, Dynamo buried its fist into Hugo’s midsection. Lightning crackled through Hugo’s torso, leaving him gasping. Then another punch and another, relentless piston-like punches. When Dynamo finally stopped, Hugo was wilted and wheezing. Breathing hurt almost more than his sore ribcage.
Dynamo twisted his hips and choke-slammed Hugo to the ground, driving more air out of him.
Then the android hauled a stunned Hugo to his knees and raised his gauntlet, the palm burning bright.
Hugo writhed feebly but couldn't get away. Fear dominated his thoughts.
A thick beam unloaded on Hugo’s chest. It felt like all his bones were on fire while the skin on his chest boiled, the consuming pain increasing each second. Hugo's screams echoed throughout the sewer. Forced to his knees, Hugo couldn’t even defend himself. He felt so small in the face of this colossal agony.
His consciousness flickered in and out. You really thought you could win? The shame of his arrogance crashed down on him. This fight was over. Another heartbreaking truth.
Darkness dragged him closer to its cold embrace. I’m sorry, Mom. Sorry, AJ. At least Hugo would be joining Presley…and Dad…
The energy battering his chest abruptly ended. Then the hold on Hugo released. He pitched forward into grimy muck, gasping for air.
Hugo looked up, utterly confused, muscles trembling in fading agony. Dynamo no longer faced him, its fluid motions replaced by lurching slowness. A silver boomerang was lodged between its hulking shoulder blades. Through his anguished haze, Hugo’s senses detected someone else in the tunnels.
Dynamo took a shaky step forward then staggered back from what sounded like gunfire.
“Huh?” Hugo pushed up to his elbows with considerable effort, seeing what held Dynamo’s attention.
Him. Geist crouched at the entrance of the tunnel’s other end, wearing the mask and trench coat. The Midnight Son cocked some kind of dark-grey rifle and fired again. Dynamo recoiled, raising his gauntlets to fire at Geist. But a glittering electric surge sizzled through its carapace, and Dynamo’s arms went limp.
Hugo’s ears were ringing, but he could hear Geist speaking with someone.
“The hacking boomerang works, Micro,” the vigilante growled like some predator. “But he’s still mobile. Can you permanently override Dynamo’s controls?”
“I’m trying, G-Man,” someone stated on Geist’s comms, chipper despite the situation. “But whoever has control is fighting me hard. I can only buy you more time.”
Dynamo advanced on Geist with an almost drunken stumble. The vigilante backtracked into the shadows. The rifle blasts unloaded on Dynamo ignited the dark enveloping him, briefly betraying Geist’s lithe frame.
“Get up,” he growled under his breath. “You're needed. Get up!”
It took Hugo a second to realize Geist meant him. He pushed up to all fours. Pain cascaded through his limbs and back, and he crumpled. Everything hurt too much. His body. His heart…
Hugo watched as Dynamo, stunned by three more rifle shots, reached for the boomerang stuck in its back. That was the only thing keeping it from killing Hugo and Geist. If the android removed it…
That jolted Hugo up to a knee, even as his body screeched in protest. Hugo tried standing, but fatigue and agony wouldn’t let him. Dynamo had a firm hand grip on the boomerang, tugging as Geist’s rifle blasts forced him back.
Hugo thought about Presley and her crew, massacred by Dynamo. That wasn’t enough to fuel him anymore. Not through the pain.
Titan wouldn’t give up, Hugo realized. He wasn't perfect, but he never quit when a villain needed stopping… And with these powers, Hugo could not quit.
Hugo slammed a fist onto his charbroiled chest. Pain crackled through every nerve ending. He blinked away tears, punching his chest again. Hugo nearly blacked out from the anguish. He used that to force himself up, punching his chest again. Hugo screamed in earsplitting agony, shuddering the walls of this sewer, like at Presley’s. Only this time, his shout rippled the air and knocked Dynamo sprawling forward.
Hugo stared at his handiwork. “I did that,” he murmured.
“Again!” Geist snarled, swaddled in shadows. “Don’t stop.”
“I…I…” Hugo didn’t know how he’d done that sonic scream. It just happened.
“Again!” Geist bellowed. Dynamo rose to his feet, yanking the boomerang from his back.
Hugo thumped his burnt chest harder, nearly collapsing from a tidal wave of pain, and shrieked again.
Another sonic blast erupted from Hugo’s mouth. Dynamo got drilled head over heels until a steel wall stopped its flight. Hugo kept the pressure with endless waves of concussive sound.
Hugo’s sonic scream had Dynamo pinned and helpless for the first time. Cracks spidered across the android’s armor, tiny at first. The fissures grew larger, wider.
Hugo kept screaming, dust and broken pebbles raining down around him until his breath was spent and he couldn’t scream anymore. Hugo swayed, almost falling. But knowing Dynamo was still a threat kept him standing.
Titan wouldn’t quit. I can’t quit until Dynamo is destroyed.
Dynamo pitched forward. His armor was a mess, various cracks revealing sparking circuitry beneath. Yellowish fluids spilled from gaps in its armor. Yet the android struggled to rise, eyes glowing blood red.
Hugo glowered and charged, pummeling every part of Dynamo with jackhammer-like fists. Dynamo stumbled and juddered back, pinned between steel and Hugo’s lightning-fast volley of punches.
“Kid!” a female called. “Catch!” A bow thrummed, followed by a deadly whistle through the air. Hugo spun at the last instant, catching an arrow. An actual arrow. Hugo frowned at the arrowhead sizzling with blue electric arcs. He spied the archer—slender, hooded, and masked. One of the women he’d glimpsed at Dynamo’s mercy. Her companion, a petite black woman with a frizzy afro, stood beside her. The archer nodded.
Hugo studied the arrowhead and understood. He whirled around as Dynamo raised a gauntlet to attack, driving the arrow into its forehead.
The android convulsed, electric forks coursing over its towering frame.
Dynamo’s eyes winked out, as did every illuminated part of its chassis. The android stiffened and collapsed, not even twitching.
Dynamo was defeated. Hugo wanted him destroyed.
He swooped down and wrapped an arm around its neck, flexing to twist Dynamo’s head off like a soda bottle cap. “You’re dead, tin can motherfucker!” Hugo snarled.
“Hugo!” Hearing his name gave him pause. He looked up at Geist emerging from the shadows.
The vigilante was dismantling his rifle into separate handguns. How Geist knew his name should’ve terrified Hugo. But revenge had sunk its claws deep. The vigilante’s face was hidden behind an expressionless mask. But his eyes gleamed with cold judgement. “Listen!”
“We have Dynamo down!” Hugo barked, his voice catching. He was done listening, done waiting. Superhero or not, Dynamo had to die. “I’m ending this now—!”
“Hugo,” Geist replied, his tone calmer. “Listen.”
He grasped then what the vigilante meant. Hugo indulge
d him, pressing an ear to Dynamo’s head and listened. Silence. Anger twisted inside his gut…until something almost inaudible pricked his hearing.
Hugo frowned, focusing on that pinprick with his hypersensitive ear…
“Help! Get me out.”
Hugo released the android and scrambled backward several feet. “What the fuck?”
Dynamo’s body hit the ground with a solid clunk. A person was inside Dynamo.
The black woman and the archer exchanged confused looks. “What happened?” the former murmured.
Geist ignored them. “Is someone inside?”
Hugo nodded frantically. “Screaming for help.” He didn’t know what to think after almost murdering another person.
The black woman’s jaw dropped. “Dynamo’s not an android?”
“No,” Geist answered without turning. He watched Hugo, holstering both guns within his billowing trench coat. “Hugo, pull off the chestplate just above the waist.”
Geist knows my name. Crazy. Hugo numbly complied, tugging the chestplate hard until it came loose. He tossed the armor piece aside.
“Move.” Geist pushed forward and took over.
Hugo backed away. The adrenaline was starting to wear off, pain from his injures exacerbating.
Geist’s fingers travelled fluently across Dynamo’s armor, pressing and twisting several switches. The archer and her companion inched closer in curiosity.
Suddenly, the armor hummed back to life. Hugo, wounded as he was, hopped to his feet.
Geist placed a steadying hand on his forearm. The Dynamo armor whirred, then retracted and shrank back like liquid metal, revealing its occupant.
The archer and the black woman gasped in recognition.
“Oh my God!” Hugo gawked, icy fingers crawling up his spine.
Chapter 39
Quinn’s fear slid away. “Ramon?” Her feet were moving before she even thought to.
The fourteen-year-old paraplegic was dragging himself out of the opening in Dynamo’s armored body. Quinn didn’t understand. Dynamo was an AI android.
“Quinn!” Ramon Dempsey squealed, his voice thick with tears. He slumped in exhaustion on the grimy earth beside the android. “I’m sorry! I tried to stop the suit. But it wouldn’t respond to my commands. And those kids…” Ramon covered his mouth as sobs racked his thin frame. “Oh God.”
Quinn reached the boy’s side, wrapping her arms around him. He stiffened at first before melting into her embrace. Whether Dynamo…or the armor was deactivated barely registered with her. “Are you hurt?” she inquired, checking the boy’s scratched face.
Ray looked so frightened…and haunted. “Just banged up, but…I’m so sorry.” Fresh tears leaked from the boy’s eyes. “I couldn’t control the suit. It got hacked… I didn’t kill those…oh God.” He dissolved in a fit of trembling wails.
Quinn cradled Ramon's heartbreak. Soon her eyes watered again.
Her gaze found the massive Samoan kid sitting a few feet away, head in his hands, smoke curling from Hugo Malalou’s shirtless torso. He stared at Ramon and the Dynamo armor in understandable shock. “A kid’s operating Dynamo?” he murmured in befuddlement.
Therese, standing protectively over Quinn, frowned at Geist. “I thought Dynamo was an AI.”
“No.” The vigilante shook his head. He advanced quickly, trench coat billowing out behind him. “Ramon was always in the suit since he was twelve.”
Quinn shifted her wary eyes from Hugo to Geist. “But why lie?”
The vigilante’s contemptuous glare sent a shudder through Quinn. “How well would the public accept that the Vanguard had a preadolescent paraplegic fighting in an armored suit?”
Quinn considered that and gulped. “Good point.” She watched Ramon sobbing in her arms and rubbed his back. Brilliant as he was, how could Ramon be the killer in this state? Quinn still reeled from this new twist. The android that almost killed her was operated by a child who just claimed the suit had been hijacked. She didn’t know what to believe.
“I almost killed someone…again,” Hugo mumbled, lost in his own misery.
Quinn gave him another wary look, focusing on Ramon. “Ray.” She cupped his chin and searched his tear-streaked face. “What happened at that apartment and here wasn’t your fault.”
“Yes, it is!” he cried, wiping his face with the back of his hand. “I should’ve built better security protocols. I was testing some new tracking systems tonight, and before I knew it, the suit started acting on its own.” He stared off at nothing while telling his story, trapped in horrifying memories. “Someone made the armor massacre those kids…nearly kill you and Longshadow. I couldn’t stop it…” He collapsed into Quinn again, bawling.
She didn’t need a reminder about almost dying a third time this week. If Quinn looked back even a little, she’d turn into a puddle.
“Those kids…” Hugo’s fury drew everyone’s attention. He rose, a frightening tower of chiseled muscle. “They were my friends…my girlfriend.” He wavered on girlfriend.
That almost cratered Quinn, having seen Presley’s death.
“You killed them!” Hugo advanced angrily.
Quinn shielded Ramon with her body. Like that will stop him.
“Stop!” Therese notched another arrow, aiming at Hugo. Again, like that would stop him.
Geist stepped in Hugo’s path, physically smaller but giving him pause. “Hugo.” He gripped the teen’s shoulder. “Back up. Calm down.”
Hugo shoved Geist off hard. “Don’t touch me!” The vigilante got knocked off his feet, splashing several feet away in sewer water.
“You shot me!” Hugo yelled, angrier now. “And how do you know my name?”
Therese drew her arrow farther back, about to fire. Under the mask, her eyes shone with lethal intent.
“You shot him?” Quinn glared at the vigilante struggling up from the sewage.
Therese sighed with well-worn exasperation. “Shocking.”
“He wasn’t hurt…much,” Geist retorted, brushing sewage off his coat in disgust.
“Someone hijacked my suit,” Ramon protested over Quinn’s shoulder. “What happened...What I did…” His youthful face crumpled again as Dynamo’s actions struck anew.
Quinn believed Ramon. Someone else on the Vanguard had set him up to take the fall. There was too much heartache and shattered innocence in this boy to have killed Titan or those six kids. She gave Ramon a peck on the forehead, hoping to ease some of his agony. Releasing him, she rose and made her way toward Hugo, who needed her more.
“Quinn.” Therese tried blocking her, arrow still aimed at Hugo. “Stay back.”
Quinn rolled her eyes, maneuvering around the overprotective archer. “I got this, Therese. Oh crap!” Mortified, she clapped a hand over her mouth. “Longshadow.”
Therese bristled. “Gee, thanks for outing me, Bauer!”
“Sorry,” Quinn mouthed and approached Hugo. In the shadows, Geist tensed.
Quinn waved him off, only to freeze in her tracks. Standing near the towering man-sized boy, she felt like a small child in comparison. She remembered the immense powers at Hugo’s disposal. ‘One of the most powerful supers walking this Earth,’ Geist had said. Quinn gulped, realizing one wrong word and he could explode. But at a glance, she could tell Hugo was a walking wound. Not just because of the grisly charred burns on his broad chest. Hugo’s face was chiseled and matured, a man in every sense except age. But those eyes definitely belonged to a boy, brimming with pain.
Like Ramon, Quinn decided. Titan’s killer had broken these boys.
“Can we talk?” She placed a hand on his forearm.
In the dim lights of the sewer, Hugo frowned. “You’re that Vanguard reporter.”
“Yep.” Quinn smiled. Good, he recognizes me. From the corner of her eye, she glimpsed Geist kneeling beside Ramon. He addressed the trembling boy in gentle tones. The show of compassion was surprising.
Therese remained unmoving, her arrow still traine
d on Hugo.
Quinn refocused on him and his tangible grief. “I’m so sorry.”
Hugo grimaced and stepped back. “How do you know my name?”
“Listen,” Quinn exhaled, hoping she didn’t sound like Big Brother, “Geist and I were tracking your friends for weeks.”
Hugo’s eyes narrowed, darting between Quinn to Geist. “Why?”
“Presley and her crew helped frame Lord Borealis for Titan’s murder,” Quinn explained.
Hugo’s eyes bulged. “No,” he blurted out. “Lord Borealis killed Titan.”
Quinn blinked, confused by his outdated response. So steeped in her investigation, she’d forgotten the rest of the world still believed Lord Borealis was guilty.
Hugo wasn’t finished. “Presley and her crew were into some shady stuff. But helping kill Titan?”
“Four days ago,” Quinn countered, taking great care not to raise her voice, “Vargas and Gabby tried to kill me.” She glanced at the archer who’d saved her, standing with arrow drawn.
“But…” Hugo clutched his skull, sinking to a crouch. “None of this makes sense!”
Quinn squatted beside him, scratching at her bedraggled afro. This poor kid was in for a crash course. “I’ll tell you the short version.”
Quinn abbreviated the last few weeks as briskly as possible.
Five minutes later, Hugo stared off into space, jaw dropped. “My head hurts.”
Quinn had to laugh. “Yeah...”
“But…” Hugo raised a hand, clearly trying to process all this. “How did Presley and the others frame Lord Borealis?”
“They’d watched him at Paragon’s for weeks,” said Therese. She’d lowered her bow, returning the arrow to her quiver, deciding Hugo wasn't a threat. “The night Titan died, they got Borealis drunk.”
“Besides that, we don’t know.” Quinn shrugged. With Presley and her crew dead, only the killer could connect all the dots. But she didn’t say that, out of respect for Hugo’s loss.
Geist turned from Ramon, who appeared much calmer. The vigilante watched Hugo with gleaming, predatory eyes. “We planned on capturing Presley alive to learn the killer’s identity.”