“Jeez, it can’t just be a simple visit, can it?” I sigh.
“Maybe we’re fortunate it fell while you are here, Zephyr,” Wilson says.
“Better not be because you’re here,” Synergy adds.
“Did you bring the boyfriend?”
“No, I’m flying solo,” Synergy replies with considerable chagrin.
I nod and start walking.
“This way is north-west?”
“Yes,” Dr Wilson says, running after me.
I pull the phone from my belt and dial the three-digit code now wired to the Wallachian communications system. Within two seconds, my own phone calls me back and I know I’m on speaker at the base.
“Sentinels assemble,” I say, trying to get the tone right in case Seeker in her zealousness is recording the comm log for the sake of future historic documentation.
“You’re bringing in the Sentinels?” Dr Wilson asks, trotting along beside me and for all the world sounding more like the biggest fanboy than a respected medical practitioner. “I watched the whole launch on E! last night. Fantastic!”
“Well, you’re gonna get a ring-side ticket, Doc,” I say and glance behind to make sure Synergy follows. We might need her power-boosting abilities before this is all over.
We jog up a ramp and enter a big lounge, in fact a massive lounge, more like the reception for an up-market private hospital than America’s toughest prison. The décor is muted indigo and there’s a wall of hip-high windows not dissimilar to the ones in my apartment – my former apartment – except these ones are on a promethean scale. The view betrays the prison’s true character, guard towers and chain fences a postmodern maze between the Astroturf gardens and heli-vac landing pads.
At least the intruders are a team of mostly non-flyers. From the windows, they just look like different-colored blips as they leap or are carried over the closest wall. There are retorts of gunfire. The shots emanate from the nearest tower, which at once disappears in a hellish storm of flames conjured by one of the lead figures. I would recognize Infernus almost anywhere and I wonder if it’s just synchronicity or something else at work that I am here at precisely this moment.
“They’re here for Fuse,” I say with the utmost conviction.
Dr Wilson takes the news in the spirit with which it’s given. I feel verily Napoleonic with the way he nods seriously and disappears to relay the information further afield. Inspired by my own credibility, I don’t even look at Synergy as I address her.
“You might want to position yourself outside where they’re holding Fuse.”
“Zephyr,” the woman replies in an unusually shaky voice. “You know I . . . I can’t hold them back on my own.”
Now I do look at her. I’m not going to miss this show for the world as I wring every speck of humility from the gorgeous, otherwise lofty agent with my gaze alone. Ever so slowly, I nod.
“Let’s hope it doesn’t get to that, then.”
My phone blips. I slap my belt and Seeker’s voice comes through.
“Fortress gate coming through, Zephyr. A little worried about that missile battery,” she says.
“Don’t worry,” I reply. “If the bad guys didn’t trigger the stingers, I don’t think the Sentinels will.”
A medieval castle materializes in the expansive courtyard, occupying and at the same time not occupying the same space as the administrative wing of the prison. My teammates come down the drawbridge as it levers under its own power.
“What the hell is that?” Synergy says in something akin to awe – it’s a red letter day for me and her, it seems.
“Sentinels headquarters,” I tell her. “A quasi-sentient multiverse-capable jump ship crewed by a thousand-year-old intergalactic religious order intent on wiping bad guys from the face of the universe.”
I am only half making this stuff up, though my lip trembles with pride to be able to say it.
“Holy shit.”
I press my fingertips to my mask to check it’s in place and then check my hands in a habit that goes back to the days I wore gloves.
“Time to kick some ass. See you on the flip side.”
“Hang on,” Synergy says and grabs my arm. “Let me synch with you.”
I’d seen the agent do this on the Hell Gate Bridge – and with my fifteen-year-old daughter, of all people.
“Are you sure?”
“Of course I’m sure. Jesus, I want to be some use, you know.” She grins sufficient to show her fine teeth and adds, “Come here.”
I don’t expect the kiss. Long and deep and as great as it is, what comes through it all is not the delicate probe of Synergy’s honey-sweet tongue, but the rushing sensation that is something like all the best drugs in the world delivered safely and all at once. I feel my chest almost literally expand and my hands, by their very nature resting over my erstwhile partner’s fine rear, now clutch her tail like the talons of some mythological beast. Synergy gives a gasp and the flow of ambient cosmic energy from her to me spikes and tapers off. We release each other like lovers recovering from a trembling shared orgasm.
“Holy shit,” I say, echoing her.
“The kiss doesn’t mean anything, OK Zephyr?”
“Sheezus. If you say so.”
Synergy winks.
“Now go get ‘em, tiger.”
The sense of welling power is unbelievable. A grid or lattice of the world seems to impose itself over my view and my hands don’t seem quite connected to my body. I hold one out and the window evaporates in a spray of electrons. Then I float through the aperture as my sworn allies steam into the prison courtyard and the bad guys form up in preparation for our attack.
*
“BAD NEWS FOR you, Infernus,” I bawl over the other sounds of the day.
Half-drunk on power as I am, there’s still enough sense left in my head to puzzle over Infernus’s choice of play pals. Fuse we took out of action, leaving Raveness and the ghostly Quietus. Yet where they once numbered four, now seven costumed freaks take the field.
Three of these I know – and I am hard-pressed to explain their presence: Frost, Gravitas and Thunderbird are in mob employ, or were last time I checked with Sal Doro’s database. Now they line up like the Pittsberg Steelers or something, an offensive line mixing power with enthusiasm. I nod to Frost, who seems to be doing her bit to lower the ambient air temperature. I’m not sure why. And while I catch her eye with a grin, it’s her buddy in the Han Solo gear I remember well from the last time he incapacitated me. Before the Sentinels have even struck a battle order, I swing my two hands together and unleash a torrent of Synergy-inspired sparks on Gravitas. His gravity-bending powers are the first risk and priority, or so I think as I feel a sickening flutter in my chest and the strength goes from my legs and I kneel.
At least Gravitas is a smoking heap. I fall over as Quietus steps from his teleport behind me and grins, surveying the scene, Mastodon slamming into Raveness and Vulcana ploughing into Frost and they all go clattering. In his quasi-military garb, Quietus looks the most mercenary of them all and that’s without mentioning the serial killer sneer.
Infernus and Thunderbird are the flyers. Seeker is no match for either as the first villain sends a jet of flame toward her and the second smashes through on an intercept, knocking the white-clad, semi-ghostly figure from the sky. While I’m pleased my co-captain recovers sufficiently to stop herself crashing into the ground, the disorientating and nauseous feelings surging through me otherwise aren’t very encouraging. I watch as the seventh member of the enemy team – a monstrous but otherwise unknown individual with off-green skin, a medieval-looking pair of three-quarter-length brown leather trews and matching wristbands – charges in and batters Mastodon like a rampaging gorilla, fists raining from above, and the ‘Don staggers back with Raveness hissing like a viper beneath him. I’m surprised to see Mastodon and his rival are roughly the same size and I swear the other guy wasn’t that big a moment before, but then I double over and empty the conten
ts of my stomach between my knees.
“So much for Synergy,” I groan.
Someone thumps into me as I try to make my way up off all fours. It’s Smidgeon, completely unconscious, eyes rolled up into his head. I hope the guy’s not dead, mostly out of the embarrassment it would cause us in the press.
The smell of burning Astroturf rouses me fully and I throw a palm full of lightning into the middle of a Frost-Vulcana-Raveness three-way just to even up the odds (now that’s something I’d fork out for on pay-per-view). The big green guy – who I later learn is an escaped mass murderer and former philosophy professor called Bugbear – thumps down beside me and I grab him by the fringe of longish hair growing around his bald spot and half-drag, half-throw him into the line of one of Seeker’s radiant showers. The otherworldly energy causes the dude to scream and go down, undoing whatever ungodly transformation backs up his powers as he turns back into a weedy fifty-six-year-old with a sallow complexion and extremely baggy pants.
All that said, the fight seems to be going against us.
In the sky over the jail, the self-described “mystic robot” Brasseye hovers, probably thinking he’s quarterbacking us and instead simply avoiding the heat. Infernus sends fire blasts that scorch Mastodon and Connie and it occurs to me for the first time we are one member down.
“Where the Hell is Samurai Girl?” I heckle the floating robot.
“Alicia had band practice,” Brasseye replies.
“You’re kidding me,” I say.
It’s hard to project gross disappointment over the sounds of combat, but it seems worth trying.
“Are you coming down from there or are you filming all this for YouTube?”
I can practically hear the robot hum, contemplative for a moment, but when he comes down, he really comes down, dropping like a stone and at the last moment bringing his big bronze gauntlets down in a double-handed smash. He strikes the earth with strength I didn’t know he possessed and the artificial ground wobbles like jell-o, a concussive ripple travelling out in concentric waves like a cartoon animation that sees almost everyone except the flying dudes topple over.
“What the hell was that?” I ask from a few feet off the ground.
Brasseye shrugs. “It’s what I do, old chap.” He holds his metal fingers up in quote marks and says, “FTW.”
There is nothing natural about that tremor. When I finally get around to hacking Brasseye’s file (okay, maybe I should say reading his file after hitting Seeker up for it for about two weeks straight) I understand Simon Magus’s friend is a hacker of sorts – the robot hacks reality, using his magickal interface to play with the Classical principles of the universe, at least as we perceive it. This time he’s made solids like water or earthquakes conform to the same physics as ripples on a pond or something like that. Either way, it’s a big circuit breaker in the present mêlée and allows us good guys to regroup.
Vulcana drags Smidgeon from the fray and not-too-lightly slaps him awake.
“How’s the arm?” I ask her.
Connie grunts.
“It’ll keep.”
A dozen-or-so prison guards have used the time we bought them to dress in their special powered suits, and they advance in a fringe around us with their Gatling guns at the ready. On the evil side, so to speak, Frost, Gravitas and Bugbear are toast. I still can’t figure out why the Toecutter’s personal henchmen are helping the guys allegedly working for another mob faction, but I guess when you’re dealing with the Eye-ties, confusion and betrayal are par for the course.
“Give it up, Infernus,” I yell.
Now free from Quietus’s sickening spell, I can feel the Synergy effect returning, redoubling my strength. I can feel each knuckle crunch as I make a fist and it feels so good, I can imagine standing there all day doing it. Instead, I force myself to pay attention to my own demands.
“You and me, Zephyr,” the bright red black guy bawls. “You and me!”
Infernus is practically untouched. I happily leap to it, and we go toe-to-toe with our fists raining down on each other, both carrying the energy effects so that my torso explodes with fire bursts every time he lands a blow, while every time he lands one on me, he eats a few thousand volts in return. After a few protracted seconds of this, I pull a judo move and throw him over my shoulder by the wrist. Unfortunately, Infernus puts his boot into my inner thigh and flips me onto the dirt as well and we go crashing together unsuccessfully into one of the bastion’s tall, reinforced concrete walls. Covered in dust and soot, I sock Infernus in the jaw and he tumbles away, and just as I’m about to act on my advantage, the prison guards open up with their guns and the air explodes with bullets and Infernus bursts into flames of his own design, swoops over his comrades grabbing Raveness and Quietus by the wrists, and they disappear over the wall.
Zephyr 5.6 “Like A Hammer Of The Gods”
“AFTER THEM!” I yell and immediately lift into the air and follow the escaping ne’er-do-wells over the prison wall.
At least Brasseye and Vulcana hasten to follow, leaving the others busy trying to subdue Thunderbird and Frost, who eventually escape their clutches leaving Gravitas and the unconscious philosopher-cum-Bugbear to the authorities.
Vulcana rebounds with her usual rubbery abandon and Brasseye flits through the air like the visionary steampunk contraption he is, though soon even he fails to keep up with my top speed. Infernus and his surviving posse have some sort of VTOL craft they pile into, parked on the island’s bank, and it lifts off in a roar of sand and steam and soon leaves the others behind.
So it comes down to just me and the jet hurtling over the city. My money is on Quietus as the pilot, moving the controls smoothly to try and put me off like I’m a guided missile or something rather than a real-life truer-to-kickass superhero. The craft wends and twists its way over the Hudson and then we are belting north, the vaulted architecture of Lloyd-Wright’s fevered imaginings giving way to the four-storey mid-rises of the northern arcologies, the industrial parks, the bustling multi-tier playgrounds and sports complexes and super-malls, the scum-lined beaches, the decrepitude of Boston, 25-year-old promises and their makers still rotting in Hell, the temporary housing precincts that have become vibrant ethnic suburbs – and then the less-than-vibrant trailer parks, the resumed waterfronts, the ancient New England fishing villages buried beneath development that is Lovecraftian only in its proportions. And still I’m no closer to taking the jet down.
I doubt it’s their sense of decency, but it isn’t until we’re over the Maine woodlands that some bright spark on board activates the rear .50 cal machineguns and the heavy shells start tinkling from the under-carriage as I dodge and swerve and make good on my desire not to be obliterated by the tail gunner. Several of the big ballistic rounds spark from my chest and arms, not head-on hits, but good enough to rend long grooves in my leather apparel. In response, I overtake the craft, though it immediately switches vector and leaves me to play tag again even as I throw lightning across its flanks hoping to disrupt the electrics within.
In the end it is ignorance that plays against them. An ignorance of geography.
I know these realms well, having used them for training runs on and off again throughout my career. As we hit what the baddies probably think of as the Canadian border, I drop back, keeping up the appearance of the pursuit without getting too close.
At first it’s just us and the unspoilt alpine terrain. If Infernus and his pals have any strategy for shaking me loose, they’re yet to show it, and now it’s looking too late. There’s a slightly neglected-looking two-lane blacktop below us, snaking through the arboreal splendor with nary a moose in sight.
The lesbian sentries probably can’t believe their luck – or the villains’ stupidity. Whether they tried hailing the aircraft or not, I do not know, nor do I care, but the result is the same once the intruders officially breach No-Man’s Land border. There’s a distant rattle of unexpected surface-to-air heavy machine gun fire and the jet sprouts
smoke and bullet holes along one wing. A moment later and a distant missile array swings into action and two sexy incendiary motherfuckers start hissing their way over the landscape toward us.
With difficulty but no pause, the VTOL craft banks hard to the west and veers across the path of the two missiles, drawing them in as surely as if they had strings attached. Somewhere in all the hilarity I forget to keep sufficient distance and for a few dozen miles it’s my signature rather than theirs that the deadly Soviet tech chooses to follow. I am glad Infernus and the others don’t realize. I race ahead, strafing the strange craft with electrical flash bombs, and the tail guns open up again and manage to destroy one of the pursuing missiles before the other collects the vehicle right in the undercarriage.
Smoke churns from the jet as the air fills with an impossibly painful whistling noise. As the vehicle careens toward the ground, one of the doors break free and Raveness and Infernus fly out, the red figure clutching his comrade, while Quietus, a teleporter and hence probably already gone, is nowhere in sight.
I barely pay any attention to the ship once it hits the ground and explodes in flipping majesty, tumbling through a tree-line and carving devastation in its wake. Instead, with Synergy’s bio-fuel bubbling away inside me only slightly diminished, I pin myself to the other flyer’s tail and keep on them until Infernus basically realizes the jig is up. He drops Raveness to tumble and disappear and possibly come to some fatality among the trees, a gesture of loyalty on the big guy’s behalf since he knows its him I want, and I keep on him right to the point where he lands on a country road beside a faded sign warning about local wildlife hazards.
I inhale the clean air and smile.
“Gotta thank you, I guess, Toby, for gettin’ me out into the countryside.”
“Man, you cut it with that Toby shit. I’m Infernus now. I’m the master blaster.”
“Toby, you’re a masturbator. Even your momma knows that. Why else would she give you such a shitty handjob of a name?”
Infernus draws most of the air available in through his impressive nostrils. He’s a big man, the dark red complexion looking much more like a pigment today than some trick of the light. With the mask in place, the two sweeping pieces either side of his brow resembling horns more than anything else, and apart from a few scorch marks to the ribs he looks pretty fresh.
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