“Amelia… you’re not planning on another run-in with the law again.” She looks at me with those green eyes slightly out of focus, the way she gets when she’s reading me.
“No, of course not.”
“Amelia…”
“Seriously. Besides, he is an alien. I can promise you that. His vitals are statistically impossible. It is like someone sampled every vital ever and then created an exact average. I promise you, Kate, that man is an alien. Now, we just need to find him.”
“The protesters don’t know?”
I shake my head, “I had O’Brien from security surreptitiously check them out. They were organized and funded by a third party. No one knows who paid for it all. They were happy to be here when they thought they might make the news. As soon as housekeeping brought out the food and drinks, and even invited them in to stay the night, things got decidedly less interesting for them. They left a few days ago. Matahal though, he left a few minutes after I did. I’ve got Epic looking for him. If he surfaces, we’ll find him and when we do I get some answers.”
“I don’t like the tone of your emotions, Amelia. Try not to lose yourself on this quest.”
“No matter what I do, I still don’t get to have my parents back, Kate. I can take out the aliens, blow away Matahal, but at the end of the day… I failed. I have to live with that. Doesn’t mean I’m not going to make everyone responsible for it pay with me.”
19
Epic, try cycling the power at one-point-twenty-one gigawatts.”
Cycling.
The power flows along the superconductor I’ve attached to the suit’s internal mechanism. I noticed when I fired the mass driver in Seattle that the power transfer loss was far higher than I calculated. Not to mention I used too much. Way too much. I was only a few kilojoules from killing myself. I’m trying to find out why. Having unlimited power is only as useful if I can transfer it from one location to another. I also need to rethink shooting fifty tungsten ball bearings at once. The devastation the concussive force caused was a little much. Maybe one ball, much, much slower.
If I fire one at a time and give the barrel more time to cool down I could conceivably fire on the go… or at least not have to brace so much. The sudden spike of recoil is more than the kinetic manipulators can handle without a little help. However, if I moved a few things around—
Pop.
“Amelia!”
I scream, honest to God scream, dropping the tablet I’m using to process the real-time data. The tablet clatters against the tile floor to come to a rest. It’s only matched by the thudding of my heart. I hope the screen isn’t broken.
“I’m sorry, hon. I wouldn’t have teleported in if it wasn’t important. I didn’t mean to startle you,” Kate says.
“Can you grab that for me?” I point to the tablet, still trying to get my breathing under control. “I normally wouldn’t be but I was focusing pretty hard.” I take a look at her as she hands me the computer. In the ten days since she came out of the hospital, she almost looks normal. Her skin is a shiny healthy pink and her eyebrows grew back, even her hair is five inches long. It would take me a couple of months to grow five inches of hair.
“How come you don’t have the news on?” she asks me. The tablet’s fine, thank goodness. I hit the backup button and put it on the table.
“I’m working on something delicate so I put on the ‘do not disturb’ function for Epic.” I don’t know what could possibly be important enough for her to teleport down here instead of texting?
“Epic, turn on the news,” she says.
Which station?
“It doesn’t matter.” The resignation in her voice worries the crud out of me. The UHD TV on the far wall flares to life.
I don’t believe my eyes.
“Has anyone else seen this?” I ask.
“Amelia, the whole world has seen it. They’ve been playing it for the last twenty minutes nonstop.”
The image resets to Florida, where a drone landed about an hour ago. I didn’t know about the drone landing… this one has eight massive legs and a spider-like body. The arch of each leg is a hundred feet high. A pair of fighter jets engage it and the drone launches missiles at them, blowing the multi-million dollar planes out of the sky.
“We need to get the team together. We can be there in twenty—” Kate holds her hand up and points to the TV.
“Keep watching.”
The spiderbot heads for its preprogrammed target, yet another power station. Why did the aliens want to wipe out our power infrastructure? Other than the obvious reasons. They’ve got the tech to come here why does it matter if we have electricity? Matahal might know something, which is all the more reason to catch him.
The sky darkens as we watch and a flaming meteorite burns down from space to crash into the ground with a camera-shaking explosion. The shockwave from the impact spreads out in a circle, picking up debris and dust. The wall of force takes thirty seconds to reach the camera, blowing the man off his feet and knocking the lens back till it pointed at the sky.
“What was that?”
“Just wait,” Kate replies.
The cameraman manages to regain his feet and zoom back in on the action. The dust clears, revealing a figure climbing out of the crater—oh no.
“Behemoth,” I whisper.
“She’s alive, clearly.”
“But… it’s been months!” Does she not need any air? Or food and water? She proceeds to wail on the spider-drone until it’s nothing more than a flaming pile of wreckage, ripping it apart piece by piece. The last shot is her climbing out of the flames covered in the goo they use to lubricate their vehicles.
The camera shifts and she’s sitting in an ambulance, the poor vehicle’s suspension obviously under stress from her presence. The grimace on her face speaks to pain, which I didn’t think she felt.
“Behemoth?” a reporter frantically waves their hand at the former superhero. “Are you going to be surrendering yourself?”
There’s honest sorrow in her eyes as she speaks, “I regret the actions I was forced to take while under mind control, but I still did them. I intend to accept—”
I throw the closest thing I can find at the TV, which is a wrench. The metal crashes into the screen in a shower of sparks and falling glass. I scream again. Long and loud. Frustration bubbles up and I have nowhere to put it.
So I scream again.
“Amelia, it will be okay, hon. It will be okay.”
I shake my head. She killed Sydney. And now, on national TV she’s claiming she was mind-controlled. Captain Freedom was mind-controlled, as was everyone else on his team except Behemoth and Mariposa. In fact, most of the telepaths we identified as working for Ericsson vanished. I assumed they went underground. Which is why I have my pendant, a near copy of Kate’s, on me at all times. It wouldn’t stop Ericsson’s body transfer, but it should stop anyone from messing with my mind.
Just another reason to never leave the lab outside of my suit. Not ever again.
“What else did she say,” I ask her when I can speak again.
“You don’t want to watch it?”
I shake my head. Frustration has turned to anger and I don’t want to trash another TV.
Kate touches my shoulder and warm comforting thoughts flow through me like a drug. Muscles unclench and my heart rate slows. I can think again.
“She says that she will accept any judgment the government sees fit to place on her. She hopes that she can be of use during this alien crisis and that she is at our disposal. Pretty much what you would expect.”
“She told me, Kate, when we were fighting at the old HQ. She told me she wasn’t mind-controlled and…”
“What?”
“Teddy. His wife is in a coma because of her. If he finds out… go.”
She nods and vanishes in a pop of displaced air leaving me alone with my thoughts. She killed Sydney, she killed a lot of people. How the hell did she survive in space for that long? If s
he can do that, then nothing can kill her. Not my new armor, maybe not even my mass driver. Sydney’s spear or I guess the Protectors spear, hurt her… but was it because he thrust it into her? Or because of the spear’s otherworld nature? I can’t bring myself to say magic nature. That’s too much.
I rub my temples, trying to suppress the headache I know is coming. Aliens invading, aliens here, Luke hates me, and now Behemoth. What next? I should never ask that.
20
With all the alien drones, Behemoth’s return, my parents, and my issues with Luke weighing on my mind, it came as a pleasant surprise to have the DOJ call us and request our team as a backup for a prisoner transfer. Right up until I found out that prisoner was Behemoth.
They are moving her from Florida to DC for testimony and they’re worried she might have allies willing to bust her out—if she’s lying, which is almost a guarantee. The south-east team is handling the perimeter while a couple of super-powered agents the DOJ still has, are on the convoy itself.
Me? My dumb butt is in the van with her. Six feet six inches of seething hate and all of it directed at me. I’m not alone, Kate is in there with me, all decked out to the nines in her new costume. Semi-rigid plates of my armor protect her vitals. She has her swords, of course, and all her other weapons. I have to admit, the black and red motif she has going really works, especially since she died a lock of her hair red to match.
I can’t get over how fast her hair has grown. Black wavy locks graze her shoulders now and I would be hard-pressed to tell she’d ever been hurt.
Stupidly, Behemoth is in chains. As if they could remotely stop her. Decked out in prison orange she sits quietly on the far side of the armored carrier. I’m at the rear end and Kate is in the front. Epic has every active and passive scanner max. He’s also monitoring all radio and cell traffic. Plus all the traffic cams for good measure.
She has her sleeves rolled up and I notice a scar on her arm. One clean line six inches long. Good to know my sword left a mark.
“You’re not going to ask me how I survived?” she asks.
The suddenness of her voice startles me. Luckily, the armor keeps me from showing my hand. Kate glances my way, giving a slight nod letting me know she’s reading her emotions.
“You’re indestructible, or something. I don’t really care. I never wanted to kill you anyway. Part of me is even glad you’re still alive.” I have to admit, that’s the truth. I regret ever having to kill anyone. It changed something in me and I’m not sure I liked what it changed. I said they made their own bed, and they did, but still…
“How commendable of you. I tried for months to get back down here. I had to time my jump just so… even thought of you and your big brain when I did it. It took me a while to figure out the movement of the Earth and the moon so I didn’t fling myself into open space. That would have sucked.”
“Yay for you. Orbital mechanics 101, how to escape being stranded on the moon.”
She nods, agreeing with me and ignoring the sarcasm. Her hands flex, tightening and loosening. Kate shifts uncomfortably. If Behemoth planned on attacking me Kate would have us out of here in heartbeat.
“You need me,” she says looking at my faceplate. “I can kill those drones. Nothing can stand before me.”
I snarl, “Not even the Protector. I know, I was there.”
She nods. “That was… unfortunate. I liked Sydney. We even dated once.” That surprised both of us. Kate raised one delicate eyebrow. “Not a lot of guys can… it’s easy to hurt someone when you’re as strong as I am. Syd… well, he was pretty tough.”
Yeah, I bet. “What is it you want, Karen?” I use her real name for impact.
“Not everyone has it so good as your pretty friend here,” she snarls. “Some of us can barely control our powers. Some of us are filled with rage over the things that happen to us. Ericsson showed me what was coming. He showed me the future. He gave me the chance to do something about it. Well, he’s dead and you’re alive. So use me. Let me do something other than rot in jail.”
“Rot in jail? Just because I don’t want to kill you doesn’t mean I think you should live after what you did. The Protector was the best of humanity. He was the ideal. You murdered him. If the government comes to me and asks me to invent something to execute you? Believe me, I will.”
Incoming!
Kate vanishes a heartbeat before the transport explodes. Burning napalm sticks to my armor like glue obscuring everything around me.
“Epic, I can’t see!”
The visor darkens until only the HUD is visible. Epic brings up a wireframe representation of the burning wreckage. I check the driver, dead. Dammit.
“Anything we can do about the napalm on the suit?”
Negative. It will burn until the fuel has expended. I recommend not giving anyone hugs.
“Right. Locate Behemoth.” I do a complete 360 to take stock of our surroundings. The team is clearing the area of civilians and Monica is already dousing the flames from the explosion.
“Kate, you okay?”
“Yes. Epic warned me just in time. Thank you, by the way.”
You are welcome.
“Where’s Behemoth?” I don’t see her anywhere. It would help if I wasn’t on fire.
I cannot see her on my sensors.
“Glacier, can you absorb the heat of a flame?”
“Yeah, give me a sec, I’m trying to keep this shop from catching fire.” We’re in a bad spot to fight back, thankfully, no one engaged us other than with a single missile. One incapable of killing Behemoth, but more than lethal enough for anyone else.
“Coming to you.” I blast off and fly up to take another look around for our prisoner. Nothing. I land a few feet away from our teenage ice princess.
“Here goes nothing,” she says, holding her hands out to me. The air temp drops alarmingly fast. The flames bend toward her, seeking her out as if they were alive. Within a minute the ambient temperature goes from ninety-one all the way down to fifteen. “It’s a lot of heat. I’m not sure I can get all of it.” Frost covers her, the ground freezes at her feet as ice forms around her. “Got it!” She exclaims, dropping her hands and letting out an icy breath. “Might have been easier in elemental form, but there you go.”
The visor clears and I can see again. She got it all. “Thank you. Fleet?”
“Yes?”
“Do a perimeter search for Behemoth, she’s vanished and I want you to look for anything suspicious up to a mile out.”
“On it.”
“Epic, anything?”
I admit to being confused. She is not in the immediate vicinity. Checking further out. Unless she can teleport, I do not understand how she could disappear so thoroughly.
Kate appears near me, swords at the ready, “I can’t feel her anywhere. Not that I have a ton of range.”
“Just the one missile?” Tessa asks. The escort vehicles the team rode in were fine, no damage, not even gunfire.
Fleet slides to a stop before us, skidding in the dirt and leaving a little trail of dust from where he came. “Nothing, Arsenal. No trucks big enough to carry her. No underground tunnels I could find the entrance to, she’s just gone.”
I glance at Kate before taking one last look around, she raises an eyebrow at me. “Now who do we know with teleportation tech?”
21
If I had to guess, I would say Matahal still has access to a quantum teleporter,” I tell the assembled team. “This is both good and bad.” We’re back at HQ, hanging in the Enterprise conference room. It’s late in the day, but I wanted to go over what we know while it’s still fresh. Plus, Kate called in some favors and got a couple of large pies from Bianco’s!
“And you’re saying that this Matahari—” Tessa began.
“Matahal.”
“Matahal guy is an alien who was working for Cat-7 as their chief scientist?”
“Pretty much. From what I put together, he infiltrated Cat-7 in order to hold them back. I th
ought Ericsson had been the one who had their tech self-destruct after they were exposed, but I’m starting to think it was Matahal. What better way to lull someone into a false sense of security than to give them all this tech to fight aliens, only to have it stop working the moment they arrive? Anything based on Cat-7 tech would be as useful as a paper shelter in a firestorm.”
Heads nod around the room in understanding. We’re in hour two of trying to figure out what to do next. Normally I’d just sit in my lab and ponder until a solution presented itself. But… Pythia said I needed to not be me. This is me trying to include others in the chase.
Kate waves to get my attention, “Epic hasn’t had any luck locating him with cameras?”
There are only so many accessible cameras in the United States. I estimate only seven percent of the land mass of North America is under direct surveillance.
“And your satellite?” she adds.
“It’s just one satellite.”
“You own a satellite?” Monica’s expression is priceless.
“Well, Mars Tech global owns it. Technically.”
She shakes her head, “I want a raise.”
“Wait, we get paid?” Tessa asks mockingly.
“Focus,” Kate interrupts before things get too out of hand. I’m smiling though. I was worried the team wouldn’t come together like this, but now… they’re doing great.
Fleet holds up his hand. Of course, he stuffs a slice of pepperoni in his mouth the moment he does. We have to wait the twenty awkward seconds for him to finish eating before he speaks up, “What about Cat-7 facilities?”
“We’ve checked them. The government raided all of their buildings, offices, warehouses, anything and everything they could find. Epic, put up all their properties on the screen, please.”
A long, long list of properties appear. Epic has the database Shai-Hulud downloaded. Everything Cat-7 had on the books and everything they kept off the books in the Cabal. It’s all there.
Fleet walks around to the front of the table to stand in front of the monitor scanning the list as it scrolls by. It still surprises me when he moves at normal speed.
Full Metal Superhero Box Set [Books 1-3] Page 46
