"Shadowdemon, status," the comm chimed with Neutrino's voice.
"I'm alive," I said, "But I'm in a bad situation."
"We saw," Ixa said.
"Any suggestions?" I asked.
"There are only two ways out of a digestive tract," Neutrino said. "Pick one."
"I'm going to try to get out the way I came in. I'd appreciate some help to get free of her teeth when I make it up there." I knew the force bubbles could be made to fly, I'd seen Omicron do it more than once. Focusing all of my thoughts for the benefit of the psychic circuitry, I swept aside everything but two concepts: keeping the bubble intact and moving it back up the esophagus. The mass of muscle holding the stomach closed was the first stumbling block. A twisted, mucous-lined sphincter, it resisted my efforts at inducing regurgitation. To aid in my efforts, I huddled in close to the gauntlet and made the bubble smaller. With the same pressure over a smaller area, the bubble popped through and began sliding against the waves of muscle action trying to force me back down.
It took all of my willpower to keep from vomiting myself as I was rocked back and forth through the esophagus. The only heartening factor was the fact that I made a little more headway up the gullet each time the waves of constriction slipped past me. Another battery bar blinked out. I was down to two, and the added exertion of trying to force the bubble against the flow of the dragon's throat seemed to be draining it faster than simply holding its shape. The uvula slapped against the bubble and Valeria retched. I crashed against the front teeth, pressed into place by the tip of her tongue.
"I see him!" Jack called.
"Let's get those jaws open," Neutrino said. He wrapped a tether each around her upper and lower jaws, but Valeria refused to budge. Planting a boot on either side of one of her bottom teeth, Jack pushed against the upper jaw. Pam joined him on the opposite side of the dragoness's head. She trembled, but the jaw didn't budge. A block of gold light formed across the back of the jaw and grew vertically. With the added help of Jennifer's construct, the jaws slowly inched open. I constantly urged the force bubble to move towards the largest gap in her massive teeth.
Grinding against the enamel, I popped free, shooting further and faster than I'd planned as I ejected from Valeria's mouth. The others scattered, letting the full fury of the dragon's bite crash down on the construct. It shattered into golden sparkles that soon faded.
"Thanks, Miss Pain. I take it you found the surface?" I couldn't see her, but Jennifer had to have a line of sight on us.
"Cupric scouted the route, I had to haul two injured teammates," Jennifer said.
Valeria's claws clapped closed about Neutrino. He calmly drifted through her hands and stared her down, crossing his arms over his chest. I drifted to the ground and released my bubble as another battery bar blinked out. I had one bar of battery left, not enough for another tangle with Valeria. "Not sure how long I can keep this up," Pam said. "This girl just seems to be shrugging it all off."
"Right," I said, "Ixa, do you think the binding ritual used on the demi-dragons will work for the real thing?"
"Possibly, but you'll have to keep her in one spot," Ixa said.
"Neutrino, hold down her claws if you can," I said, "Miss Pain, hold her mouth shut as long as you can while we tie it."
"Tie it with what?" Jack asked. As a golden bracket formed about Valeria's snout, I fired the line launcher at her horn. She shifted and the grip plate struck her right between the eyes. I hurtled through the air, barely noticing the strain with which Neutrino was pulling on his tethers to get Valeria's claws back to the ground. I bounced off the armored side of her head and rolled on top of the dragon's snout. Massive, plate-like scales were fused directly to the bone and the only thing emerging from below them were keratinous horns. The surface was smooth and felt more solid than steel. I looked up to see both coppery eyes focus on me, the bug she couldn't eradicate. Her expression was one of annoyance more than hate. I looped the cable from the line launcher over one of the sturdier-looking horns along the top of her snout.
"What are you doing?" Pam asked as I threw myself off the opposite side.
"Tying her up," I said, just before Valeria's head jerked back, aborting my loop around her snout. "I might need a little help."
"I see what you're up to," Jack said. Taking hold of me, he flew me around the dragon's snout until we were above it.
"Keep going," I said, judiciously playing out line so that we maintained tension on the cable. Jennifer did her best to keep Valeria steady, but the dragoness was stronger, and kept thrashing about, trying to swat us out of the sky as the line wound about her snout over and over again. "We need to keep this line taut, Stamp I want you to--" I was cut off when one wall of scale slammed me into another. Jack crashed into the ground, creating a small crater and raising a cloud of dust. Valeria's tail hovered in the air above her head as I dangled from her muzzle like a broken leash. I gasped for air and wondered if anything was broken.
The leaf-shaped fin at the tip of her tail lifted me up to eye level with the beast. Still sucking air into my pained lungs through a mouth that tasted suspiciously of blood, I looked into the cross-shaped pupil. Out of other weapons, I raised my left arm and fired a tracer into Valeria's eye. I swear, one of these days I'll use it for its intended purpose. A pinkish nictitating membrane blinked across the orb, trying to drive off the offending mote as her tail slipped from under me. My shoulder blades struck the side of her jaw with more force than I cared for.
Pam landed next to me, planting her feet against Valeria's jaw and holding onto one of her stubby horns. "You all right?"
"I'm alive, that works," I said, a drop of blood trickling from the corner of my mouth. It looked worse than it was; I'd accidentally bit the inside of my cheek when the tail hit Jack.
"Did you think this through?" Pam asked.
"Yes, now put tension on this line," I said. She took hold of the cable and pulled down, bracing her feet against Valeria's lower jaw. Jack drifted up to us, looking a little dazed. "Keep that tail in check," I called to him. He nodded and flew off to seize a convenient handhold. Fully upside down now, Pam looked over at me and smirked, her blue hair dangling loose towards the ground.
"You take me to the weirdest places," she said. I started to return the smile, but the rapid approach of the ground stole my mirth. Pam and I smashed into the hard clay and were dragged along as Valeria tried to scrape us off. In the onslaught of pain, dirt, and friction burns, the safety on the launcher severed the line and let me tumble along in the dragon's wake instead of pressed between her jaw and the earth. As I rolled to a stop, I wasn't so sure that all the blood I was coughing up came from the wound on my cheek.
Inside me, something hard ground against something soft as I rose to my feet. I was coated in a layer of beige clay, though red spots soon soaked through where I was hurting the most. My line launcher was done for, its casing clearly bent, and the arm under it broken bad enough to no longer look exactly straight. I wouldn't want to put weight on it even if the launcher was working. My fingers on my right hand were not terribly responsive, each attempt to move them generating great jolts of pain from my forearm. As the dust started to settle, I spotted Pam further on in a crumpled heap of mostly wing. I couldn't tell if she was even alive.
"Is that all you got?" I yelled. Valeria looked down at me, a growl building in her throat. With the cable and construct still hooked around her muzzle, Jack on her tail and Neutrino pinning her hands, she was running out of weapons. So, Valeria head-butted me. The center of her forehead slammed into my force bubble hard enough to sink me a foot into the ground. She reared back, and her horned head slammed down again, from further back this time. The bubble was driven to the depth of my knees by the impact. "Come on! You can't kill one measly human?" I goaded her. The flickering battery bar told me this was a seriously bad idea, but I needed to keep
her attention away from Ixa until the spell was done.
With a growl that shook the ground, Valeria reared back as high as she could manage and slammed her forehead into the force bubble. The world went black as the battery bar blinked out.
I fell into a bucket along with a load of pulverized clay. Aching all over, I was unable to lift myself up. The dry air burning my nostrils tried to convince my fears that I'd been knocked clear to Hell, but analytical me knew better. I'd landed on the conveyor to the hammermill. Below my feet somewhere was the mine proper. Above me was the now-empty cult guardhouse. I stared up at the red static sky through the hole my force bubble had been driven through. An angry eye with a cross-shaped pupil blocked my view of it.
I laughed at her.
It was the pained, anemic laugh of someone with too many broken bones to effectively fight, but with an unbroken will. As a last, spiteful gesture, I raised my left arm and fired a tracer into her other eye. Even through clenched teeth, her shriek of rage echoed into the conveyor tunnel. A white light flashed as chains reached from the ground and ensnared Valeria. I wish I had a better view, but I heard it was spectacular. That was the thing about Ixa, if given enough time unmolested, she was the most powerful of us all. Of course, no one with half a brain would let her complete her spells if given the chance to interrupt.
I'd been only an annoyance to Valeria, but I'd annoyed her into ignoring the real threat until it was too late. I laughed again, the sort of half-deranged chuckle you let out when pain was causing your brain to shut down. Only little Uth-sk wouldn't let me pass out. So I laughed. The sound of something crawling up the tunnel silenced my laughter. A pair of coppery eyes crested the salt-encrusted bucket by my feet. Staring past a snout that looked almost like a twin of Valeria, the owner of the eyes slithered over the bucket and perched over me.
"Subject Sixteen?" I asked, my voice a hoarse whisper.
"You could call me that," he said. "Or Victor. Both are good." He seemed incapable of making the "th" sound and stumbled over a few sounds from similar tongue positions. I didn't mention the speech impediment.
"You know my friends will be down here shortly," I said.
"No matter," Victor said, "If Valeria didn't kill my brother, tell him I won't spare him a second time." Somehow, the "th" in "brother" didn't cause him as many problems. It still sounded off, and through a static-filled data stream, I wouldn't have noticed the difference.
"I guess that means you'll be trying to leave."
"Not trying, succeeding," Victor said, backhanding me as he crawled past. I wanted to reach out and grab his tail before he got away, to try to hold him until someone arrived to help take him down. I don't know if it was my fear or my injuries, but my left arm simply refused to budge. The leaf-shaped fin on the end of his tail vanished into the darkness. Broken as I was, I hadn't been worth the effort to finish off. In the distance, the red static filling the sky vanished, bringing the stars back. The box showing "Ygnaza transport" reappeared, and another speck was highlighted as "Unknown." The Unknown marker was moving away from the transport fast enough to leave a short streak behind it. Had they managed to get another shot off?
The lack of a boom after it vanished from sight told me that whatever happened, it was distant from where I lay bleeding. Jack peered down the hole I'd made before flying down to where I was. The front of his uniform was torn, a dinner-plate-sized hole ripped over his heart, with a nasty purple bruise starting to form on the exposed skin. From the shape, I guessed it was Omicron's handiwork, but that didn't leave me optimistic for Icerazor. The guy wasn't as durable as Jack. "Hey," I said meekly.
"You look like crap," Jack said.
"Don't pick me up, there's an even chance that my back may be broken."
"Can you feel your feet?"
"Yes, and I want to keep it that way."
"Regular authorities are on their way," Jack said. "Including choppers from Vanguard."
"Leave me to the paramedics then," I said.
"You're not loud enough for them to find you, so I'm sticking around." That obnoxious analytical me wanted to tell Jack that with so many of us hurt, he was needed keeping the cultists from escaping. The rest of me, however, was glad for the company.
"I wish you'd find a decent name, so I wouldn't be tempted to use your real name in costume."
"I think the community is getting annoyed that I'm pulling so many thirty-eights."
"I'm just surprised no one's taken to calling you 'Mister Thirty-Eight'." A contemplative look crossed Jack's face that filled me with dread. "Don't tell me you're thinking what I think you're thinking," I murmured.
"It does describe me, though," Jack said. "How does Mister Thirty-Eight look in headlines?"
"Silly."
"Sillier than Astroborn or Monoman?"
"Possibly not."
"I hear choppers," Jack said, looking up. Our conversation ended as he directed paramedics to the hole I'd ended up at the bottom of. Getting them down to where I was and properly bracing me for extraction took a while. They set up the first unit of donor blood right away, given the puddle I was laying in. I was loaded onto a board and Jack carried me out of the ground. I wasn't the first injured person he'd moved, though most of the time he's called for his fists. As my board was fitted to a stretcher, I saw one of the two choppers lift off and make for New Port Arthur.
I couldn't say who was on board, but Pam was seated on the tailgate of a ground ambulance, giving the paramedics a hard time as they tried to tape a bandage to her scalp. The blood down the side of her face was unflattering, but she'd been far less broken by our run-in with the ground than I was. It figured, she was tougher than I was. Past her, I spotted Xiv. He was awake, but groggy, disconnected. He didn't seem to see me as I was wheeled onto the second chopper. As we took to the air, I once again wished I was capable of sleep.
I had the pleasure of being awake through another surgery as they removed a piece of rib from my lung and returned a few other bones to their proper position. They faked a car crash to cover for my new, unexpected injuries at Leyden Academy. Our escapade in Halite was drowned out within the news cycle by Zsh-ya abandoning his vessel and fleeing on a smaller craft. Quite possibly, the "Unknown" signature I'd seen falling from the sky. Not long thereafter, we had control of his main vessel, and every other government in the world clamoring for a piece of it.
The good news was, it meant Dad got to come home. With Omicron and Masquerade in custody, we got to move back into our old house. From what I heard, Omicron was as judicious with his secrets as ever, and Masquerade claimed he was Shadowboy. Since he also claimed to be Pazuzu, Robyn, Breaker, the Red Death, Morgan, Ayame and the King in Yellow, no one paid much heed to his rantings. "Mister Thirty-Eight" had the number put into the hole made in his suit by Omicron's shot, pretty much declaring that he'd given up looking for a real name. He returned to trying to live the archetype, even as his family thought of him as a worthless addict. Well, most of his family.
"What do you mean you're dating someone else?" Fae asked. "You still owe me a dinner." She plopped the vase of black-and-white roses on the side table as she scowled at me. Her face made it all but impossible for her to not look at least cute, even when angry.
"That was something you declared of your own volition without confirming it with anyone," I said. For a moment, I was afraid she'd try to hit me, but she kept her fists at her sides.
"It's also a little hard to claim that we're dating when we haven't had a successful date," Ixa said from the doorway. She'd come as Stephanie Van der Veer, sporting that gorgeous accent to boot. I waved. "I brought this week's schoolwork," she said, carrying a folder of papers over to my bed.
"Thank you," I said, smiling.
"Our classmates have taken to calling you jinxed," Ixa said. "First your abduction, now this car crash, they figure
you've got the worst luck in history."
"I still get visits in the hospital from pretty girls," I said, "So there is that." Ixa was still in her school uniform, and Fae looked to be sizing her up.
"I'm afraid I can't stay long," Ixa said, giving me a kiss on the cheek. "Have to check on the others," she whispered in my ear.
"Well, you know where to find me."
She rapped her knuckles against the cast on my leg. "With the speed you hobble in this thing..." She headed out of the room.
"Relationships based on lies don't work," Fae said. "You need someone who knows your secret." I fought the urge to smile. Fae "knew" Stephanie was just a schoolgirl. Ixa was aware that Fae knew who I was, but pretended not to, so as to not let on to who she herself was. And this was the least complicated knot of understanding in my life. There's another reason not to be a hero. That, and the hospital stays.
Gruefield 18 (Tarnished Sterling Omnibus) Page 40
