“Monica, when you first manifested you said they flew you to a facility up north right? In Canada?”
She nods, “Yeah they thought I would need to be in a colder environment. That’s where we found out I could freeze in place.” She shivers just thinking about it and I can’t blame her. Eternity as a statue isn’t on my bucket list.
“It’s not here,” Fleet says. “When I was in training I was with a weather manipulator and she told me the same thing. A facility up in Whitehorse or someplace like that.”
Epic immediately puts a map of Canada on the other monitor, cross-referencing every facility he knows they have north of the border.
I can find no mention of a facility owned by Cat-7 in Whitehorse. It is not exactly a densely populated province. The total population is only twenty-five thousand.
“Is it possible they didn’t own it?” Kate asks.
“What do you mean?” I reply.
“What if the research facility was third party? Some other company or whatever owned by someone else. Epic, check for any large facilities in Whitehorse. Canada isn’t very big, there can’t be many. Then flash us pictures, if Monica can identify it—”
“I can. That was three months of hell.”
“Then we should—” Before Kate has finished speaking my wonderful AI has pictures of buildings flashing on the screen.
“That one!” Monica leaps out of her seat, pointing at a four-story building that looks about a hundred years old. Whitehorse itself is a barely-there town on the edge of a river. It actually looks like was built in the bed of a much larger river. Scary place to live. And cold.
“No wonder we missed it, the place looks like a haunted house,” Tessa mutters.
“Epic, start surveillance. Fleet, it was your idea, you want to go up north and take a look around?”
He grins, “Of course I do!” He vanishes in a blur of speed and flying paper as the door slams open and he’s gone.
“How far will he get before he realizes it’s cold up there?” Kate asks with a smirk.
“Tessa, take the Emjet and go back him up. Also, yeah, take him a coat.” She grins, throwing me a mock salute before heading out.
“Well, this has all been interesting but if there is nothing else…” I know what Teddy wants, he missed several days with his wife and Kate tells me he feels guilty about it. Add in we’re looking for the person who did this to her… he’s under a lot of stress.
“Of course,” I say with a wave and a smile.
“I’ve got homework to get to, now that I’m back in school.” Monica stands and stretches before heading for the door. “My parents want to have you over for dinner, and soon.”
Once she’s gone it just leaves Kate and me.
“Say it.” She’s had the I’m going to tell you something for your own good look on her face the whole day.
“He left, you know.”
“I own the building, of course, I know.” Luke left me a message saying he was going home and that it was too painful for him to be around me. She told me to talk to him before it was too late and I didn’t. Now he’s gone.
“It’s not too late.”
“I think it is. Besides, Kate, Behemoth, who we thought for sure was dead… is alive. You can’t know he’s not out there. Waiting for me to slip up. Waiting to…” I’m shaking. So bad I can’t even hold the cup of water I was drinking. I put it down before it falls and bury my head in my hands.
“It’s okay, Amelia. It’s okay.”
“Is it? Will it ever be again?” My voice is muffled from talking into my hands. “He took everything from me, Kate. And he still is. My parents, my life, now Luke. It hurts so much I want to scream but there’s nothing I can do about it and that makes it worse.”
Normally, her presence is reassuring but it isn’t working. Her patting my back and telling me everything would be okay only works for so long. Slowly, without me even realizing it, I’ve put myself in prison. A prison of my own mind.
And I never gave up hope that my parents were still alive. But I’ve given up hope that I’ll ever have them again. That’s when the tears start.
22
My instinct is just to go in and blast the place up. Which I fully intend to do as soon as the Canadian government gives us the okay. This new age of heroes where we get to cross the border is exciting, but it also means waiting for bureaucrats to do a job they don’t want to do. It helps to have a little AI assistance, but time is still on their side.
“Fleet, anything?” I ask. I’m up at ten thousand feet, clear of the air traffic control paths, with my most powerful camera focused on the building. The rest of the team, minus Teddy, is on the ground.
“Negative. No movement.”
“I saw a dude step out for a smoke a few minutes ago,” Tessa adds. “They’re in there.”
The walls of the building are lined with thermal resistant paint and they clearly have a Faraday cage of some kind since Epic can’t find a wireless network to hook into. Despite its decrepit appearance, it’s hi-tech.
“If Behemoth is in there… do we have a plan for dealing with her?” Kate asks. I do, but I don’t want to. She seemed somewhat reasonable the other day. Though, I don’t buy her story about being mind-controlled for a second. She’s the one who told me she wasn’t being controlled. What if I’m wrong? I growl in my helmet. Pythia. You can only win by not being you… now I can’t help but wonder what is me? Is stopping Behemoth me? Or letting her work with me, me? Do I even know?
I sigh. Part of the problem is, I don’t. Not really.
“Worse case, I can use my SDF-1 on her.”
“The gun you used in Seattle?”
“Yes.”
“You think it will work?”
Amelia, god you’re an idiot sometimes. “I… yes?”
“I only ask because your sword is supposed to cut through anything…”
I shake my head in wonder. I need people. Especially Kate. She has a way of looking at things I don’t. Can’t.
“Well, worse case maybe you can try your whammy on her and we can calm her down.” She doesn’t respond but I do see her pop from one building to another. Everyone is wearing a thick coat and snow pants up here. Winter in Canada is frigging cold. If it weren’t for the fact that my armor can keep me alive in outer space, I’d be a meat popsicle right now.
We are cleared to go. The Canadian superteam, Maple Leaf, is on the way. The government would like to remind us we have no law enforcement authority here and our jurisdiction is the one building.
“Okay, people. We’re a go. Be ready.”
I bank and roll, flying right toward the center of the roof. Stealth is good and all, but sometimes a point needs to be made. “Max shields.” The power level on the shields lights up a second before I slam into the roof at a hundred miles an hour.
The wooden structure caves in an explosion of beams and splinters. My momentum carries me through all the top floors to slam against the concrete slab of the ground floor. Shields hold steady as I rise and ready my weapon systems.
Now that we’re in the building ECM is going crazy. The dark interior lights up with the staccato roar of machine gun fire. Flashes of light paint the room in brilliant strobes of motion. Bullets freeze inches from impact, their kinetic energy stolen by my shields. The clink of brass hitting the concrete floor is echoed by the bullets themselves.
Nine-millimeter rounds fired at twelve hundred feet per second.
“Lowlight,” I order. The darkness recedes so I can see the room with just the light from the guns and the hole above me. Some kind of entryway with a reception desk and couches. Totally normal, except for the machine gun fire raining down from the hidden gun ports. Turrets?
Four quick zaps with the kinetic lance leave the guns in shambles, their parts strewn about the room. “They have to know that won’t work on me?”
No, but anyone else on the team could have succumbed.
“True that. Everyone, hold back fo
r a moment. They’re playing for keeps. Kate?”
“Here.”
“Make sure no one escapes the building.”
She confirms while I search for the secret entrance. “Let’s use echolocation, I bet they’ve lived the walls for infra-red, but the materials they use will have a different vibration.”
Sound pulse in three… two…
The external speakers I use reconfigure to emit a ping, not unlike a submarine. Epic’s advanced algorithms trace the sound in three-dimensions. The sound echoes off of stone, wood, fabric, and metal in completely different ways.
Enter the room to your left, and hold.
I follow his instructions and as soon as I’m in the room another ping emits from the suit.
There. Right wall, behind the painting of Admiral John Paul Jones.
The caption says, ‘I have not yet begun to fight’. How fitting. “Is it an original?”
No.
“Good.” I reach for my sword, pulling the long black bade out of its kinetic sheath. I love this thing. “Tally ho,” I yell, bringing the blade down. It slices through the painting and the wall behind it. Three more strokes and the wall crumbles behind it, revealing an elevator shaft.
“That’s a long way down.” Range-finding laser shoots down the hole as I look and end up leveling off at one-thousand feet.
Do you want to bring in the rest of the team?
I’d like to, but worry gnaws at me. Who knows what’s down there? Gas? More bullets?
“Domino, the building is empty. I’ve found an elevator shaft that goes way down. Let the Canadians have the building when they get here and then you all retreat to the Emjet. Be ready. If I call, start teleporting everyone to me.”
“Fantastic. Call the moment you need us, Amelia. You don’t have to do this alone.”
“I know and I will. As soon as it’s safe.” Here goes nothing. I step out into the darkness. It’s funny how much falling isn’t like flying. Not really funny. “Let’s see how far this rabbit hole goes.”
23
Turns out, pretty darn far. The floor rushes up at a hundred and seventy-seven feet per second. Epic hits the Emdrive in time to slow us down enough. I only flex my knees a little when we hit. I feel the thud on my back. The sword makes short work of the elevator door, slashing apart in a shower of sparks. I slide it back into its sheath, freeing my hands to wrench the doors open.
The base down here reminds me a lot of the one in Portland. Bright lights, bland paint on the walls and, of course, a half-dozen warbots pointing plasma cannons at me!
I dodge back behind the shaft wall a half second before green balls of superheated gas vaporize the doors. The resulting explosion pelts me in fire and debris.
“Epic, HE grenades, auto fire.” I know from experience they have a cycle rate to their plasma guns and if I time it right, I can take advantage of that.
When the last ball explodes I leap across the much wider hole in an Emdrive assisted move. The puff-puff of my launcher signals a second before I slam into the far wall, still shielded by the shaft. Two far more conventional explosions rip through the hallway.
“Particle beam. Safeties off!” I roll out, arm up, wrist down, firing as fast as I can trigger the beam. Blue silicate rips through the remaining warbots, cascading them in their own secondary explosions. When the dust clears, the hall is a scorched pile of parts.
“Bring the active sensors to full, but don’t fry anyone with it.”
Roger.
We need a panel to access, some way to infiltrate their internal network. I mentally kick myself for not thinking of all this sooner. Matahal is an alien; he infiltrated Cat-7 and the Cabal. Of course, he would have a base off the books. The only question is when I find Behemoth, is she going to be with us? Or against us?
“Do you think the new improvements to the superconductor will hold if we have to use the SDF-1 again?”
I thought they would hold last time.
“Good point. The whole ‘theoretical versus practical’ we keep running into.”
Ideally, we would test it before implementing such a drastic change in the field.
“Yeah yeah, I’m too impatient for that. Don’t you know my generation only has an eight-second attention span?”
Says the woman who has lost eight hours playing Halo.
“Touche. I should program you to lose our arguments every once in a while.”
Then you would have an ego problem. Which you obviously do not right now.
I growl at him and let it go. Confidence is one of my merits. It just isn’t always justified. We come around the corner and find ourselves face to face with a security checkpoint, several uniformed guards and a half-dozen more warbots.
Great.
They open fire the second they see me. Epic blasts us backward, using the Emdrive. I stumble, trying to keep my footing while the hall in front of me explodes in green fire. The wall to our right leads to bedrock. They’re just carving a new hole and I’ve no-where to go.
“I don’t want to kill them, Epic.”
Calculating probabilities.
“Anything that takes out the warbots will set off secondaries. I need to draw them out and tag the humans with the IP cannons.”
Unless they are wearing the vests that make them immune.
“Then AG pods, but I don’t want to kill anyone unless I have to, understood?”
Understood.
“Ooh, I just had a really good idea.” I glance at the wall next to me, placing my palm flat against it. “Sonic pulse, what’s on the other side?”
A large open room with crates in the middle.
“Epic, time to go full electronic warfare. Jam everything.” Panels on my shoulder slide open, ejecting two canisters of potassium chlorate and aluminum-coated fiberglass shrouded in purple paint. The hallway fills with thermal and visual blocking smoke. Epic switches on the electronic warfare suite, filling the area with so much electronic noise it would take a nuclear reactor to sort it out.
“Sorry about the cancer folks,” I mutter. The particle beam makes short work of the wall and I crash through it. Smoke pours through the hole I make, concealing me.
“HE behind me.” I dodge out of the way as he sends a grenade back the way I came. The explosion should deafen and stun anyone in the vicinity. The door leading back out to the hall should put me behind them. With a deep breath, I force it open and leap out. IP cannons roar, filling the hallway with pulsing blue light. Wide angle energy fills the hall in a cone as the emitters go to rapid cycle. Momentum takes me into the far wall and I’m already moving back as I bathe them in energy.
The guards go down in spasms as their nervous systems are overridden. The warbots had already advanced down the hall into the smoke and they take a second to reacquire me as a target.
“Full burn, let’s roll.” I hit the Emdrive and fly down the hall and as soon as we’re far enough, I roll on my back and bring the particle beam across the ceiling. A half-ton of rock and dust crashes through the roof, filling the hall behind me. We land with a thump in front of, what I hope, is the last security door. This one has a panel. I hold my hand out to it and stop just before touching.
“Epic, they had an AI in the space station…”
Yes. However, we used overrides on local control. Engaging the locking mechanism manually and not using the security protocols.
“I know… it’s just… the drones they send down learn. I swear that one in Denver was purposefully keeping me from using the mass driver. If that’s the case, then—”
It stands to reason they would know the trick we used in the space station and be ready for it.
Which leaves us how to get through the door? I put my hand against the cool metal. Metals, minerals, and materials used to create it flash up on the screen showing me exactly what it is made of. All except fifteen percent Epic can’t identify.
It stands to reason the aliens would have to use terrestrial resources to manufacture any tech
they wanted to have here. Beyond the limited amount an advanced scout could bring with them.
“Like my armor, they’ve found new ways to put things together. Not really an alien material, just an incredibly advanced Earth one.”
Correct.
I could burn through it with the particle beam but it would take a while. I glance at the controls, I could Luke Skywalker it and blast them… I like that plan. The particle beam whines, burning through the controls. Sparks explode outward showering the suit in white-hot embers that fall uselessly to the floor.
The door doesn’t open. Fine. Sword out, I set the kinetic field to maximum and I bring the blade down on the thick door. Metal sheers like paper when the one molecule thick diamond edge hits. A few more swings and I’ve cut a v shaped hole through it. Squeezing through, I feel the armor slide against metal as jagged pieces screech from contact. I’m out of breath when I’m finally on the other side.
I think this is what we have been looking for.
I’ll say. “Wow. Is this… is this the alien ship?”
The cocoon-shaped object is a few hundred feet long with a hull like carved rock. I don’t see any engine ports or gun holes, but a thin band of colored metal around the middle separates the top and bottom. As if they put two clamshells made of rock together and glued them to each other with an artificial hull. The only reason I know it’s a ship is the fact that it hovers five feet off the ground. The only thing touching the floor is a boarding ramp.
Doors on the far right open, freeing me from shock. Matahal walks through wearing a lab coat, while several people in doctor’s suits push a hovering gurney with a strapped-down Behemoth laid out, prostrate and unconscious.
That does not bode well.
My brain explodes with the possibilities of having Behemoth in alien custody against her will. Their tech is far more advanced than ours, it stands to reason they could figure out a way to replicate powers and an army of Behemoths… would be unbeatable.
Full Metal Superhero Box Set [Books 1-3] Page 47
