Zephyr Box Set 2

by Warren Hately

  “I wish it were as simple as that. And as quick. But it’s not.”

  “So . . . ?”

  “At least I know where they are,” I say. “If it makes you feel any better, I don’t have any particular genius plan for running a prison break either, so this’ll still be flying by the seat of our pants.”

  “Good. I don’t like change,” Shade says.

  And so we finish our unhappy repast and get on with it.

  Zephyr 23.3 “Web Of Misinformation”

  I AM SCEPTICAL to think despite everything that’s happened the FBI has continued its occupation or pre-occupation with the city. Looking back and knowing the pieces of the puzzle I do, it’s obvious the same forces who conspired to kill the power and phones and sanitation also had control of the Feebs’ internal networks before the lights went out, and I would stake my missing body on someone under Earthsong if not Khodorkovsky’s direct command being the spider at the center of that web of misinformation. I think we can all guess who, but let’s not unwrap these presents all at once.

  Back in the cage, I tried and failed to convince Annie Black and the other fucktards to question their dubious orders to detain every parahuman in the city using discretionary powers under the Mirror Act to imprison my fellow fools in spandex – an easier bill to foot against those vigilantes who declined registration as a matter of course. As much as I like the idea of swooping down and politely seeing if the FBI douchebags have had a change of heart, I’m a once-burnt, come-next-time-with-a-shotgun kind of guy.

  So, our barest concession to strategy is waiting until nightfall.

  I vainly think the cover of darkness will give us some sort of advantage, or so I insist to Shade as I try not to dwell on the thoughts of yet more fresh bodies littering the Atlantic. It is really hard to believe a living legend like Sentinel is now a waterlogged corpse, even a decidedly racist, sexist one at that, drifting somewhere in the ocean amid the turds and driftwood. So I focus on the mission ahead, trying to ignore a weird cramping feeling in my lower belly I know only too well from Elisabeth’s endless descriptions and which leaves me ill-disposed to prep for the night’s activities; and perched like two very comely gargoyles on the corner of the Aquaflux Building and with a view over the Hudson, I am sensitive not only to Shade’s unease, but the dizzying array of lights glittering from what I wish was the shadowy domain of Ryker’s Island.

  “You’ve gone quiet,” Shade says in an appropriately somber voice. “That worries me, motor-mouth.”

  I study the lights of the penal isle and try not to snigger at a sudden memory of being ten years old and thinking to call everything a “penal colony” was the funniest thing ever. Shade catches my weirdly contorted look and it catches me in a moment of honesty bordering on female camaraderie. This swinging equilibrium is what I imagine it feels like to be deeply hormonal.

  “I think I’m getting my period,” I tell her.

  Shade bursts out laughing, pretty much wiping her ass with any hopes we could “have the lady talk”.

  “I can’t believe you’re laughing,” I say. “Women are such cunts.”

  “Watch your mouth, Josephine,” Shade says with an even growl, dropping her amusement at the appearance of my c-bomb. “I don’t care how sympathetic I am to your womanly predicament, but –”

  “I’m sorry, was that sympathy?”

  “Well you gotta admit, honey, it’s more than just a touch ironic?”

  “I thought it was us Americans who supposedly don’t get irony,” I respond, wearing the just-munched-a-turd expression I’ve often criticized in other women. “As for sympathy, well. . . .”

  “Yeah? If you’ve got something to say, just say it.”

  “I don’t know you women really know how to be sympathetic, not to a man’s pain. Women always laugh when a man gets kicked in the balls.”

  “Generalizing about ‘all women’ now Joe? I thought better of you.”

  “Yeah,” I sigh in admission of defeat. “Me too. I guess I’m now officially one of those people I always fucking hated.”

  “Don’t worry,” she says with a firm yet subtle chortle. “It’s just PMS. You’ll feel better in a few days. Of course, first you’re gonna feel a whole fuck-lot worse.”

  “I don’t even know how the hell I’m going to do this,” I say. “I just . . . I’m really not ready to start bleeding from my vagina, you know?”

  Shade only snorts.

  “You’ve bled from almost everywhere else, so what’s the biggie?”

  I shrug in another concession. Shade’s logic effectively smothers our heart-to-heart as our eyes drift towards the ongoing light show out in the middle of the river. I feel decidedly unheard and somehow that isn’t at all unusual.

  “So much for stealth, huh?” Shade says oblivious.

  “Yeah,” I say. “Come on. It’s not getting any darker. Let’s go before I need to use the bathroom again.”

  Shade smirks and pats me on the rear as we stand and I stretch with reluctance leaking from almost every pore. Shade’s hand slides down and cups my right butt cheek and I catch her wink before she switches black as the night around us, if not far darker, in fact.

  “Relax, little sister,” she says. “I’m sure we’ll find some pads or something once we’ve freed the others. Windsong’s there, right?”

  I shudder and don’t say anything. As much as I’m keen to liberate my daughter from the FBI’s cuckolded clutches, a part of me’s also been pleased to know she’s safe, even if it was against her will.

  And it’s also saved me from my impending confessional with Tessa.

  I roll a shoulder, limbering up for the shitstorm ahead.

  *

  WE GO IN hard and fast. Shade is cannon-fire from hell and what I lack in my arsenal I make up for with grace under fire.

  There is something bedraggled about the island compound, despite the armed guards on the perimeter watchtowers, and while Shade and I catch them napping, that doesn’t mean they stay asleep. We weave in like moths to the flame, sodium and halogen lights catching our shadows as Shade and I flit like dragonflies through a net of poorly-co-ordinated gunfire. The startled and excited guards blast away forgetting everything they’ve ever been told about lines of fire. In her desperate mid-air balletics, Shade corkscrews off-tangent and takes out one of the boxy, steel-reinforced concrete structures, a shelf of concrete breaking like from a glacier amidst an explosion of dust, the two riot-helmeted goons in it crying for their mamas as they bail out the side exit. Myself, I try to lure a particularly eager older dude with an M16 into shooting a few of his buddies, but the geezer declines, forcing me to sweep around behind the next tower and throw up my hands in a blinding display that throws a camera flash over a dozen miles around us.

  “Jesus, give us some fucking warning next time!” Shade bawls as she hurtles past me and it occurs to me she has no idea where to go.

  “You should be following me,” I yell.

  I abruptly change vector, wondering if they still have rockets in their anti-aircraft defense system. More lights flick on across the grounds, various buildings spilling sleep-startled workers, though it is mostly civilians by their hundreds.

  Hundreds, or maybe thousands.

  “What the heck?” Shade says.

  The Englishwoman flies up beside me as I direct us towards the next complex of interconnected buildings and the initial gunfire fades out. In between the once almost stately buildings are now rows and rows of tents, most of them impromptu – a shanty town of survivors bunkered down here for the past few weeks. I can only hope that means we’re unlikely to face any weapons of mass destruction, so I chance taking the direct route inland across the island to within the inner buttress walls of the main prison building and thus closer to the heart of its systems.

  The arc-light-lit interior is a sea of shitty tents and jerry-rigged structures, tarpaulins and sheets and sheets of cardboard and tin foil and corrugated iron sheets and wooden planks and forklif
t palettes and mesh wire fencing and plastic sheeting, industrial wrap, old newspapers and discarded garments woven into the literal fabric of this post-apocalyptic community. I almost relax my guard on sight of it, but the compound klaxons squawk into life with some glass-eyed bureaucrat’s voice alerting all and sundry to we two nightingales as intruders.

  It turns out more than a few of the survivors pack heat. The whistle-pop of handguns crackle like cheap fireworks and a lazy round clips my elbow and somehow only leaves a rash, me swearing like a cheap hooker as I take that as my cue to drop momentum, plunging towards the gates of White Nine.

  The front doors of the facility are blast furnace shields, but the battleship armor parts miraculously before us to spill a half-dozen figures arrayed in defense.

  Annie Black. Vanguard. Taurus. Heracleon. Siren. And some insect-themed guy in an iridescent, laminated body suit and enclosed head-gear. (The new Grasshopper, apparently).

  By prior agreement, Shade and I head straight for the negotiation. Ever the bully, Shade leads the way, ploughing into Taurus with a glorious body-check that carries them careening along the concrete and into the black interior beyond the open blast doors. With them out of the picture, I channel my flash attack, grinning to see the two female agents and Heracleon by turns clutching their faces or staggering around blindly, giving me the freedom to carry on into Vanguard with a kick to the side of his helmeted head, after which I land on my other pin and continue with a flurry of kicks followed by upper body karate strikes of which the armored agent only manages to block two out of every three. My knee goes into the ribs of his chest plate and makes a noise like kicking a car. Vanguard’s training finally kicks in to overcome his astonishment that someone is actually attacking him. He goes for the close-range power blast, but already expecting that, I keep in close and throw a clothesline and use the roll of my comely hip to pitch him onto his back on the ground. Fucking lightweight.

  The follow-up is either going to be a head stomp or I have the glorious vision of cartwheeling over him and picking him up again as I pass so I can somehow throw him with the momentum of my awesome power, but reality saves me from this confrontation with the unfeasible as the insect guy sweep kicks me legless and moves so quickly he can then jump and kick me three more times in the side as I am flipped silly, hand batting away the last kick as I land awkwardly on one hip and thigh and roll away, a blind sweeping motion of my hand conjuring a plasmatic darkness that deflects my attacker like he’s struck a wall of giant bin-liners.

  Once on my feet I have to move quickly. My ribs feel broken though actually I know what that feels like and that’s why I know they’re not. Smashing noises resound from beyond the blast doors which I sprint towards, trajectory deliberately taking me to where Siren recovers, one hand to her temple, eyes closed as she throws her other hand wide to conjure her psychic net. She may have some resilience as a super-human, but I’m not risking nothing at this point. I vault her like a hurdler, one hand off her shoulder to spin her around as I streak past. I feel a stinging sensation behind my left ear and continue on, flinching and crouching low to protect myself against the unknown attack, and by then I skid on and through into the entry atrium.

  Drawing on memories of earlier tours here, I turn and empty a cascading light show into the terminals and desks behind and beside the doors. The lights dim and something fizzles inside one of a half-dozen visible monitors. The doors reverse their previous motion and hum together with a pneumatic hiss – but not before Annie Black judo rolls through and stands with a hand upraised.

  “Hold it right there,” she yells as diagrams like spider webs writ in ghostly light encircle her outraised palm.

  Any hesitation birthed in that moment goes for wanting as a near simultaneous human avalanche of Kevlar-clad security police pour into me from out of the near darkness to the right, beyond which I glimpse a wide corridor leading into the heart of the main White Nine holding area – or at least the elevators to it. Catching the impending goon squad attack at the very last moment, I basically only manage to swivel into them, landing a lucky blind left cross on the exposed jaw of the first guy trying to ram into me with an electroshock stick.

  Another stick cracks across the back of my skull. A third drives its charge into my hip. The blow to the head isn’t enough to put me down, but I sag and use the momentum of that fall to drop to the ground in crocodile pose, snapping a kick to take out the legs of the guy who failed to do so to me. As he falls to his back, helmeted skull rebounding off the hard tiled floor, I roll over and away and into a kneel and then I’m standing in time to deflect the renewed attack of the first attacker and two more goons and even more behind them, my knife-handed blocks coming so furiously I’m unable to access the split-second quiet place Cusp’s powers require. I can feel the monster tugging like a drugged King Kong in the basement of my soul, but for now my renewed snarl – trading anger for demonic possession and the potentially lethal consequences on the other side – fuels me into a renewed series of lunges. I elbow one guy in the face-plate and he takes out two more in his graceless collapse. A third guy I hurl aside after grabbing him by the chest armor, and in-between blocking two more shock batons I see Shade join the fray as I put my knuckles through another helmed goon’s jawline which snaps into vicious fragments I can only half-regret inflicting since it lets me get my other arm free for the genuflection which summons my darkness. I think of the weird energy creatures conjured against me through the years in my life as Zephyr and instantly the darkness forms itself into Bigby’s wet dream of a giant’s gigantic black rubbery fist which at once fires into the corridor’s open maw, bowling over if not outright flattening the last of the squadron of rushing guards. I’m barely conscious of the fisting’s finale (since my inspired attack did little to the security officers stuck in the cage of ground zero with me), but I‘m unconsciously relieved to see flattened security crewmen lying on the tiles moaning or flopping like fish.

  For one cinematic moment, Shade and I are back-to-back as she karate kicks and ruin’s one guard’s golf game for life and I twist and avoid a sparking baton, redirecting its owner’s wrists to jab into another of the remaining goons straining into the space around us like noodles through a sieve. Then grubby reality hurries in like a needy aunt. The tide of combat forces me and Shade apart and one of the bigger male guards gets on me from behind and puts his arm around my throat as his cattle-prod sizzles into my side causing me to twist and whimper even against my own determination to not give him the pervert’s satisfaction, but it’s not in me, fight it as I might, and I drop to one knee and grasp, trying to clutch him in a moment’s desperation.

  My fingers find the crease of his Kevlar vest and I pull hard – maybe too hard, because the fabric rips along some unexpected seam so I end up pulling the guy’s vest over his head and shoulders pretty fucking hard. He goes straight from playing lothario to getting the shock Happy Rebirthday treatment as he’s suddenly imprisoned within his own clothes, one shoulder wrenched out of place with an audible pop as I withdraw, letting free of the vest with a flourish that propels his momentum head-first into the floor. I kick the guard’s steepled legs out from beneath him and spin and kick out into the chest of another recovering squaddie just getting back at me, and when I finish my arc my heel comes down like an axe-blow on the back of the first guy’s head. His exposed jaw and teeth hit the ground like the pavement scene in American History X (Fred Savage oh my God so good in that role) and I have to look away at this point from the carnage I have wrought, my ladylike demurral convenient for me as I fend off two more attackers, the ground around Shade and I like the aftermath of a terror attack, a trail of about twenty adult men beaten bad enough they don’t want to get up again, and only one guy gone to Heaven or something, so I am grimly pleased with myself as I fend off one more desperate hold attack and fire a suppressed burst of photons into the next guy’s chest plate.

  “You forced me to do this!” Annie Black yells.

 
She prepares to throw on us whatever arcane force it is she’s ensorcelled, but I duck aside from another cudgel swing and yell in reply.

  “Quit the act, Annie, it’s me – Zephyr!”

  Startled, Miss Black does indeed hold it. Even the guys facing off against me hesitate, and as the seconds slowly accumulate, I slowly ease my stance and switch focus back to my former teammate. Shade’s not so easy, a boxer’s stance as she guards my ability to do otherwise. I turn the opportunity to my advantage, or fuck, at least I try to, stepping closer to Annie and including her and the handful remaining troops with their disbelief.

  “Is that all I had to say to get some fucking civility around here? Jesus Christ, alrighty,” I say to Miss Black and wave her down. “Relax, doll. It’s me. Joe.”

  Annie fixes me with her Valley Girl stare, but before she can frame her scalding reply, a stream of hard voltage hits me from behind and off to one side and Holland goes legless and I have to catch myself from a face-plant with the grimy tiles.

  “If you’re Zephyr, than who’re me?”

  The cocky yet familiar voice rings out from the source of the attack accompanied by trademark slow and sarcastic applause as “me” adds, “No need to get up, doll-face. Annie, throw the fucking net on ‘em already.”

  “No!” I manage to splutter. “He’s an imposter.”

  “Annie, don’t listen to him,” my countersuit says and steps more clearly within my range of vision.

  “Him?” I say loudly, drawing Annie’s attention to the alleged Zephyr’s lousy grammar by gesturing up and down my impressive body.

  The silence is crystal. I can’t believe my luck – or I almost dare not.

  “You kind of let slip what you know, Belle,” I say to my surrogate.

  And my eyes pick over me for the first time since I was here last.

  I look a few pounds lighter, but at least I’m still all there. Matrioshka hasn’t discarded me yet like human wreckage as she did with Arsenal. I look upon my missing body with a mixed and palpable sigh heavy with relief and an acknowledgment of the impossible gulf still between us. Matrioshka only grins back at me and winks, scornful of this ploy.