“Show yourself.” Supercollider took several steps forward. He couldn’t tell where the voice was coming from, and was looking in entirely the wrong direction. I kept my gaze locked on the screen, where the cloak around the slip car was subtly distorting visual reality.
“The debt will be paid. Not to worry. You can go home.” Leviathan’s voice was formal, almost courtly. He sounded rehearsed.
“Let him go.”
“Who, the venerable Proton? I don’t believe he wishes to be let go.”
Supercollider’s hands curled into fists. “Let me see him, you goddamn monster.”
Leviathan laughed. Not his warm laugh, but the awful, high-pitched, eerie keening that sounded like a swarm of insects trying to replicate human mirth. It made me cringe. Keller squeezed my knee impulsively.
“You heard it from him yourself—he agreed to my terms. Someone has to set the universe to rights again, and he nobly stepped forward.”
“He owes the world nothing,” Supercollider screamed, swinging his fists. He was a little closer to the camera now, and I could make out his features a bit. His hair was stringy and sweat-damp, his face hollow. He looked like he’d lost a pint of blood. “He gave everything a thousand times over.”
“Ah, but so did she. And they still murdered her, in the end. It’s not fair that she should be gone, and he still remains, enjoying a comfortable dotage. And being an honorable man, Doc Proton agrees.”
She.
“But don’t take my word for it.” Leviathan sounded downright cheerful. “Let Doc tell you himself.”
The door to the slip car opened and Doc was shoved out; it looked for all the world like a portal had been ripped open. Doc fell badly. As soon as he was clear, Leviathan made the car do a sharp lateral leap, moving it fifteen meters away; Supercollider had lunged at the spot Doc had appeared from and missed the cloaked car by a handspan or two.
Doc moaned. Supercollider, gasping in agony, helped his mentor sit up. The older man hissed in pain, clawing at his hip.
“We’re going to get you home safe, sir,” Supercollider said in a hard whisper, crouching over his mentor protectively. It was the most concern I had ever seen him display. He curled his shoulders over the older man’s much smaller frame, doing his best to block out any threats with the breadth of his own body. His hands seemed so big and useless as he tried to handle Doc gently.
Doc was shaking his head. “He said it had to be you or me, son.” He smiled. “He’ll leave you alone after this, and I believe him. It’s only fair.”
Supercollider’s face contorted into an ugly snarl. “He’s taking neither of us.”
“Would you undo the grace of an old man’s sacrifice for pride?” Leviathan’s voice echoed around them. He sounded disgusted.
Supercollider gathered Doc Proton into his arms. He stood, unwittingly turning his back to Leviathan. He walked directly toward the command vehicle that sheltered Keller and me. I could see his face clearly now. His usual expression of bland heroic determination, a particular kind of practiced scowl, was gone. His face was awful, lips curled back from his teeth and his skin waxy. Despite being inside an armored car, I recoiled when he got close to us.
As gently as he could manage, Supercollider laid Doc Proton down. The old man could sit up, but barely, and with considerable discomfort.
“Don’t do this,” Doc said one more time.
Supercollider stood over him, and spoke as if he hadn’t heard. “Don’t worry, sir. This will all be over soon.”
Doc swore and closed his eyes.
What had been a heat shimmer before became a nausea-inducing ripple as the slip car decloaked, and Leviathan stepped out. Supercollider turned, and the two faced each other.
I lunged for the door to the surveillance van.
“The fuck are you—” Keller grabbed for my upper arm.
“Help me get Doc inside,” I ordered. No matter what was about to happen, Doc was useful. He was also a sick old man who desperately needed a cocktail of medication very soon to prevent his internal organs from shutting down, and if these were indeed his last moments, I had enough respect for him that I wanted him to be comfortable. Keller swore and half stood to help me.
By the time I threw the door open, Supercollider and Leviathan were locked in combat. Supercollider leapt up and aimed a punch downward, leaving a small crater where Leviathan had been an achingly close instant before. He’d moved with preternatural speed at an odd, skittering angle, taking a swipe at Supercollider with the blades attached to his gauntlets. Supercollider snarled and grabbed hold of the slip car; I screamed as he threw the odd, squat vehicle at Leviathan, who successfully dodged again. The car hit one of the foam artillery cannons, which exploded like a giant can of shaving cream left on a radiator. Several of the Meat standing too close were immediately engulfed; I could hear their muffled screams. The rest scattered.
You have not seen me fight yet, Leviathan had said the last time I saw him; now, watching him do battle with Supercollider, I understood his bravado. The hero had raw strength on his side, and was fueled by hideous anger, but Leviathan moved like nothing I had ever seen before. He bent in ways I did not expect, and his reflexes were uncanny. One moment he seemed to be a creature made of blades, then he was harder to hold than smoke. I was enraptured.
“We need to move!” Keller yelled.
I snapped out of it, and we made for Doc, both Keller and I doing an awkward, ducking run. Doc looked up at us, wary; he appeared much worse close up, his skin yellow and his lips dry.
“Sir, pardon the interruption, but we’re going to get you inside,” I said, bending down.
Doc’s face crumpled into confusion. “That’s—kind of you?” Keller and I each lifted him by an arm and we got under his armpits, and together we carried him toward the armored car.
He smelled strangely sour. Not unwashed, but ill. His breath up close was all ketones and copper. “Whose side are you on?” he asked us, slurring his words.
“Let’s not worry about that just now.” I looked over my shoulder; Supercollider was too focused on trying to rip Leviathan limb from limb to have noticed us.
“I see.” Doc sounded wary but amused. “Well, at least you have good manners.”
I slid the door open with difficulty, still trying to balance Doc’s weight. He hissed in pain as we dragged him up and into the van. “Sorry, sir.”
“It’s all right,” he lied. He was panting. I helped him sit on one of the bench seats, surrounded by bristling wires and video feeds. Keller slammed the door shut behind us. Proton looked very fragile to me, and I felt his unpleasantly damp forehead reflexively.
A sudden impact into the side of the van threw me forward, and I hit my face on one of the consoles. My already swollen lip started to bleed freely.
Keller bellowed and the two other techs in the van squawked in panic. Then, we heard footsteps on the roof of the van. I turned to look at the feed, but the screen had gone to static; the external camera had clearly been destroyed.
“Get me a visual,” Keller said, and one of the techs managed to call up a feed from one of the backup cameras. There was Supercollider’s boot, his chiseled calf, the sleek machine of his knee, as he walked on top of our vehicle.
“Keller, get us out of here!”
The big man was already diving for the driver’s seat, shoving one of the techs out of the way. I found the seat next to Doc and tried to find a seat belt or harness; I had to content myself with hanging on with my fingernails when the van roared to life and was thrown violently into reverse.
The sudden movement was enough to dislodge the hero, and he was forced to leap down from the roof of the van. A moment later, he was hit in the back and knocked clear across the courtyard. I guessed it had been a blast from one of Leviathan’s god particle cannons. It wouldn’t have wounded him, but it was enough to send him flying away from us.
Doc was almost thrown out of his chair and I threw my arm in front of his chest t
o try and hold him in. He wheezed and gasped in pain, sinewy hands trying to find purchase on the seat cushions.
“You seem nice,” he said, weirdly solemn. “You should get out of this line of work. Too dangerous.”
“Well, you’re retired and yet here you are.” I scanned the inside of the van frantically, trying to find some information about the fight happening outside.
“Suppose that’s fair.”
The van screeched to a halt. “Can we get a visual on what the hell is happening out there?” I hated not being able to see clearly.
Keller left the driver’s seat and clambered into the back with us, his face wet and ruddy. “I’ll try. Hold on.”
The largest screen hummed and then showed us the scene on the field: three foam restraint cannons were unloading on a spot on the ground where Supercollider had fallen. Under the impossible weight of the ever-expanding restraint cushion I could see him thrashing. Leviathan stalked toward him. It was beautiful.
I turned away from the screen then, grinning. I drew a breath to revel in how well Leviathan was doing, to call the fight early. I didn’t see what happened on the screen behind me, but I did see Keller’s face fall, his jaw go slack. I felt that joy grow cold in my chest. Before I could turn back, something again slammed into the outside of the van like a cannonball and the backup feed went to bleating static. I hit my head hard enough that things became hazy and distant for a few minutes. I couldn’t understand anything happening around me; the wailing machinery and too much information reduced everything to an awful noise.
Then, everything else was erased by a terrible, metallic groan, then shearing metal, both impossibly loud. Like a can being opened, the roof of the heavily armored van was torn away; Supercollider had ripped it open with his bare hands.
He stared down into the van through the gaping hole in the metal he’d made, and locked eyes with me. The recognition and burning, awful hatred I saw there skewered me. There was a sensation like a vise grip in my chest and I knew he was going to kill me. He was ready. I had broken him. He had finally abandoned all semblance of propriety and was ready to pick up my fragile, ordinary little body and crush it.
“Oh god,” Doc said. He was staring up as well. He had seen Supercollider’s face too, had read the same murderous intent I had. “No.”
Supercollider lifted me by my hair. I screeched and clawed at his hand, feeling like my scalp would tear free from my skull for those first few terrible inches, every line and knot of scar tissue in my head screaming. Keller made a move to grab my ankle instinctively but stopped, realizing he would make it worse. I managed to lock my hands around the hero’s wrist and take most of my weight, holding myself up in a grotesque kind of chin-up, though it was still horrifically painful.
As soon as my head and shoulders were through the opening he’d torn in the roof of the van, he switched his grip, wrapping one of his hands around each of my upper arms. My shins scraped against the ragged metal as he lifted me out, tearing off strips of skin.
He held me out in front of him at arm’s length, considering. I could feel his fingers shifting on my arms as he thought about tearing them off and dropping my body back into the van. I’d seen murder on enough faces by then to read it well. He decided against quartering and chose to wrap one of his huge hands around my neck. He pulled me closer, my windpipe in the cradle between his thumb and forefinger.
I could still breathe, a reedy whisper of air. But soon he was going to crush my throat.
“You deserve,” he grated out, his breath all adrenaline and acid, “so much worse. But I want you gone.”
I suddenly seemed to have all the time in the world. I thought about Leviathan. I wondered if he was dead too, if that was why I was in Supercollider’s grasp once more. If this was the end, I didn’t want Supercollider to be the last thing I saw; I looked over his shoulder, at the sky.
“Supercollider!” someone called. “We join you on the field.”
Then I saw, for once in their wretched lives, a team of heroes was arriving in the nick of time. They were always showing up in the nick of someone’s time, of course. But this was the nick of my time.
It was three of the Ocean Four (Abyssal was home with the baby, never to return to active duty). Riptide and the Current immediately leapt into the fray, engaging with all of the Meat who were, for the most part, attempting to beat a tactical retreat. Undertow, however, was headed right toward us.
I saw Supercollider’s face take on a trapped, desperate quality. Whatever scrap of control that remained in him, whatever part of him that still cared about being considered a hero, kept him from tightening his hand. I saw it and somehow managed a rictus grin.
He turned, saw my smile, and he dropped me. I hit the edge of the sheared van roof, bounced down the windshield, and rolled onto the hood. I made an awkward, clawing grab but couldn’t find purchase on the armored exterior of the car. I fell off the front, right between the headlights, knocking my head against the bumper as I landed. My vision started to narrow very fast.
The last thing I saw before I passed out was Leviathan, rising out of the crater into which Supercollider must have slammed him. I saw him blast Undertow in the back, sending the young hero pitching forward with an awful gurgling sound, his blue hair catching fire. I thought I saw ribs and vertebrae through the smoking hole in his back, but Leviathan never looked down. Without breaking stride he launched himself toward Supercollider.
I tried to stand but found that I couldn’t. The world tilted and my consciousness winked out, like a screen going black.
“IT’S NOT HIM.”
Greg wrung his hands. “Anna.”
“Watch it with me.”
“You need to stop.”
I didn’t reply. I was still wrapped in a recovery blanket, the crinkly silver material light and enveloping my shoulders. My first cape, I thought absently. I started the video I was watching over again.
Greg changed tactics. “Come on. Let’s just take a break for a while.”
I shook my head. Without taking my eyes off my screen, I took a sip of a coffee someone had pressed into my hands what seemed like ages ago. It had gone weird and watery, but I kept drinking it.
“Anna, please.”
I wasn’t sure what he was pleading with me for, exactly, but I shook my head anyway. “It’s not him, Greg.”
“Okay.” He twisted his fingers together. I felt a pang of sympathy; I imagined the conversation had become very tiresome. “I don’t want to argue.”
“Thank you,” I said absently.
He was quiet awhile; I watched the video sixteen more times.
It was a tiny clip, barely a minute and a half long. Four people in hazmat suits stood around a body. In the background, two Dovecote containment specialists aimed burrowing neutrino guns at the body on the ground between them. Carefully, the four personnel in protective gear maneuvered the body onto a stretcher. The body was covered in the twisted remains of a black suit of armor. One of the four slid a thick black bag over the stretcher, which immediately sealed around the body like vacuum packaging, then stiffened. The stretcher and its cargo were then wheeled, slowly, toward a containment van, and the video ended.
I rubbed my throat, which ached. I could feel the welts where Supercollider’s fingers had dug into my skin. I imagined it was bruising pretty badly. I started the video again.
Greg saw my gesture and latched on to it. “You should have someone look at that. Let’s get someone—”
“No, I’d prefer not to.”
Greg’s voice became shriller. “Fine, Bartleby. Then let’s get you something to eat. And you need to lie down. You look—”
I didn’t say anything. I started the video over again.
“Anna.”
I shushed him. “I might have missed something.” There had to be a clue as to what had happened. Something I had missed on dozens and dozens of earlier viewings. So far, this was the only footage that anyone had been able to recover f
rom the wreck of the command van. I had to find the answer in it; there might be nothing else to go on.
“Anna, please.”
I was suddenly furious. I clenched both my fists around the edges of the emergency blanket, stretching the weird fabric tight across my shoulders. I wanted to spit. I fought it down, tried to breathe deeply, coughed from the rawness in my throat.
“I need to figure out what happened,” I explained, summoning unnatural patience. “I need to know where he is.”
It was Greg who exploded. “He’s there.” I’d never heard him snarl before. He swept his arms out and knocked over a stack of papers and sent my mostly empty coffee cup splashing to the ground, splattering sickly brown liquid as it went.
I turned my chair toward him a little for the first time. The intensity of his reaction caught my interest, briefly.
He leapt up and was pacing. “He’s there. He’s dead. He’s fucking dead. He’s on a slab, in a cryobag. It’s right there. It’s not going to change no matter how many times you watch it. He’s either been incinerated already or is being dissected right now, Anna. That’s where he is.”
There was an eerie pause. Whatever energy had taken him departed suddenly, leaving him cold and empty. I saw it leave him as surely as though he had been possessed by a ghost. He sank to the floor and started sobbing. I watched him for a little while.
“I know it doesn’t make sense yet.” I knew I looked like I was in shock, and I might have been. There was dried blood on my face and huge handprints on my neck and arms. I was shivering with cold and sweating. “But listen to me. Greg, listen to me.”
He was shaking his head, his eyes squeezed tightly shut. He was crying so hard he had stopped making any sounds that were anything like sobs, was just trying to suck air in horrible, choking gasps. A bubble of mucus came out of one nostril and I had to look away.
I turned my face back to the screen. “It’s not him.” I doubted Greg would have heard me if I had been yelling, and I was speaking very quietly.
Greg slowly composed himself and, after a long time, wiped his face hideously on his sleeve and stood. He said a few more things to me, but I was having trouble focusing and didn’t reply. Eventually, he left. The door slammed behind him and I flinched when the force knocked something off the wall. There was the sound of glass shattering, and I turned to investigate.
Hench Page 25