A second later, he wondered if he should mention this phantom voice. A trick on Screamer’s part?
“Thirty one,” she said.
“Thirty one?”
“More uses of my power. I’ve been testing it, straining it, figuring out my limits. I can’t make promises. Might be less. Might be able to squeeze out more. But it’s the best I can give you.“
The numbers clued him in, belatedly.
Dinah Alcott.
“There’s bigger problems,” she said. Her voice was quiet. “In two minutes, everyone but you dies. Seventy-two percent chance.“
He stopped short.
“Golem?” Hoyden asked.
“Solution?” he asked, he raised a hand.
“Can you think in abstracts?”
“Abstracts.”
“You’re… kind of scaring me, Golem my boy,” Hoyden said.
“He’s talking to someone in the comms,” Weaver said. “Tattletale? Not Tattletale.”
“Red means forward, left, attack, team. Blue means back, right, retreat, solo… I can only ask a certain number of questions a day. Ask, I can narrow it down, but it’s less help I can give later.“
One keyword, and he had to figure out what option it led to.
“Blue, Tecton. Retreat.”
“Back up,” he said.
Collectively, they retreated several steps.
A moment later, one small group of the Nine appeared, pushing their way through solid doorways, leaving colored smoke in their wakes.
Each was young. Teenagers. Each had a matching mask, a snarling face, complete with fangs and glowing dots in the dark eye sockets. Their clothing flowed, with hoods peaking above their heads. Each carried a different improvised weapon. A fire axe. A two-handed shovel. A makeshift spear.
“Harbingers,” Weaver said. “Don’t let them get close! Finish them quickly!”
“Color,” Golem whispered.
“Blue.”
He went with his instincts more than anything else. “Retreat! Run!”
Parian’s doll reached out, and the Harbingers slipped out of the way of the hands, dodging by virtual hairs as they spun in tight circles, ducked and rolled. It was like the thing was moving in slow motion, but it wasn’t.
A fire axe and two kitchen knives slid through the creature’s body, severing seams. It deflated explosively.
Foil opened fire with her crossbow, aiming so it was on a path to hit two of the enemies, and the Harbingers dodged the shot.
She’s not supposed to miss.
Tecton shattered the ground, but it didn’t make the slightest difference. The Harbingers didn’t slow down.
They turned to run, belatedly.
Hoyden and Chevalier held their ground as others mounted dogs or took flight. Golem ran his fingertips along the panels at his armor, feeling the connections to the various substances around him flare, touched the one for pavement.
He thrust his hand inside. A small hand, emerging as fast as he could shove his hand inside the panel. He reached for the closest Harbinger’s foot.
The young villain pulled his leg up out of the way, virtually spinning as he stepped to the side, planted the same foot on solid ground, then resumed his forward momentum. No luck. It was like Harbinger could see it coming.
Weaver’s bugs were swarming the Harbingers, but they took to spinning, relying on the movement of their hoods and the flowing black clothes to drive the bugs away, batting them aside. Even the threads seemed to fail to do anything substantial, getting caught up in the approaching villains as they moved.
Like whirling dervishes, they closed the distance.
He thrust his hand into the pavement again, and this time, he created a platform like the one he’d fashioned in Ellisburg. Raising them up off the ground, out of reach.
If there was any difficulty getting down and resuming their search for Jack, he’d deal with that when they weren’t all about to be murdered.
The Harbingers scaled the sides of buildings as if they were running across horizontal terrain. Weapons, fingers and boots found traction in the surfaces, and they climbed with an easy, almost eerie ease, as though they were almost floating.
Climbing faster than the hand was rising.
Three reached the top of the building, and as if they’d coordinated, planned this well in advance, they set foot on the edge of the rooftop and kicked off. They ignored the bugs that plagued them as if they weren’t even there, weren’t binding them with silk.
They flipped heel over head, their backs to Golem, Hoyden, Tecton and Chevalier, the two Dragon’s Teeth. Rachel, Parian and Foil were on the dog’s backs, and Weaver was airborne.
The Dragon’s Teeth aimed containment foam at the three Harbingers. The clones pulled off their flowing jackets with sleeves that almost covered their hands, catching the foam, then landed. One swept the bundle of foam to try to knock a D.T. officer off his feet. The officer hopped up, then struck out at the Harbinger clone.
No use, Golem thought. A mistake. Harbinger caught the arm, almost effortlessly turned around, pulling him in the direction of the turn. A little push, and the soldier fell.
“He’s okay,” Dinah said. “Blue!”
Run, retreat. As if there was a place to go.
Two attacks struck in concert, a kitchen knife and a fire axe, and a heavy piece of Tecton’s armor was decimated, one gauntlet ruined.
No use.
One more landed on the heel of the hand.
Revel opened fire with a dozen orbs, but the enemy avoided them with an almost casual ease. She reprogrammed them, altering the orbs’ properties, and this time they homed in on their targets. The Harbingers dodged them, used the changed trajectories to lure them into nearly striking the D.T. officer and Chevalier. She stopped, hanging back.
Chevalier swung his sword, pulled the trigger mid-swing to shoot at one Harbinger that stood on a fingertip of the reaching hand-platform. Both attacks missed.
The Harbinger closest to him stepped close, almost casually, and drove a paring knife through a slit in Chevalier’s visor.
His good eye, Golem realized.
Nobody had figured out Harbinger’s power, before Harbinger disappeared off the face of the planet. It was an ugly reality that such questions weren’t always answered. The best guess suggested a hyperawareness of space and the movements of their own bodies.
But being able to figure out that Chevalier was half-blind, being able to blind his good eye?
One stepped close, holding a ball-peen hammer in each hand. He closed on Golem, invading his personal space, until their noses were touching.
Golem tried to wrap the Harbinger in a bear-hug, felt only the faint drag of cloth against the metal of his gauntlets, empty air. His intended target had ducked low.
He drove a knee forward. Tight, contained movements, give them as little to work with as possible.
No contact. Of course.
He was rewarded with a swat of the hammer against his mask, shattering one lens. He’d thought he was out of reach, but the boy held only the very end of the hammer between index and middle finger. He tossed the hammer in the air, letting it spin head over end.
Golem struck at the flying hammer, but another strike of the hammer caught his arm. His fingertips fell short, and the handle of the weapon rolled over the back of his hand. The Harbinger caught it, then thrust it forward in the same motion, driving the top of the hammer against Golem’s nose.
“Don’t kill him,” another Harbinger said.
“I know,” was the reply.
They didn’t even sound winded.
None of the others were doing demonstrably better. The remaining D.T. officer was holding his own, but the others were being slowly, systematically beaten.
He’s dragging it out. They’re making this into a game.
No use letting this go on.
He retreated, only to find one Harbinger sticking a foot out, planting a foot on the small of his back. He was
pushed forward, then promptly struck in the abdomen.
Rather than try to defend himself, he tucked his chin to his collar-bone, let himself fall, and thrust his hands into the armor panels for pavement.
Double-thrust, one hand extending from the other, pushing Chevalier off the hand.
Another motion, simultaneous, to bring a hand of stone out of the wall behind Chevalier. It emerged slower, but it formed a shelf, and Chevalier landed on that ledge.
The Harbingers could dodge, but his teammates were valid targets.
Another thrust, this time for himself.
Selfish, maybe, but he couldn’t save anyone if they were interfering with him.
One struck at his leg as he launched himself off the hand. It altered his trajectory, put him on a course where there wasn’t anything nearby to catch himself with.
Two hands, into brick. One connected to the other. While they were new, he could move them. Trouble with having them against the side of his body was that he couldn’t get a full range of movement like he could get with his arms. No matter. He caught himself by the mask, then pulled himself closer to the building.
Another hand, another shelf.
Hoyden exploded, but the Harbingers didn’t get hurt. They spun, spreading the damage around like a person might roll to absorb a fall, ducking and sidestepping to put themselves at the periphery of the effect.
“Scion’s closing in,” Dinah said. “Blue, Golem. It’s still blue. I can’t use my power too many times today, but your numbers are getting worse and the answer keeps turning up blue. Retreat, go right, go solo or go back.“
“Someone needs to intercept Scion,” Weaver said, over the comm system. “We can’t have him get involved.“
“You go,” Chevalier said.
Golem searched the sky, then spotted Weaver at the fringe of the battle, surrounded by a cloud of bugs.
She took off.
Golem grit his teeth. More immediate things to focus on. He tried to launch Tecton to freedom, but the Harbingers intercepted him, driving Tecton out of the way in the same instant the hand appeared.
The D.T. soldier managed to deliver a glancing blow. Golem couldn’t tell if it was intentional or not, because the hit was followed by the D.T. soldier being caught with a length of cloth wound around one wrist.
Tecton stepped in, drawing attention and striking out with his gauntlets, one damaged and one intact. It bought the D.T. soldier some room.
Golem took the opportunity to launch the soldier to safety.
There were others on the ground, approaching.
One of these bastards could probably take us apart. Eight of them, we can’t hurt them, we’re losing time, burning resources.
Tecton glanced at Hoyden. A communication seemed to pass between them.
They struck the palm of the hand, and the entire thing shattered.
Hoyden, Tecton and five of the Harbingers descended with a shower of rubble.
Hoyden and Tecton broke their fall with uses of their respective powers. Hoyden hit the ground to generate an explosion. Tecton punched the earth with his piledriver in the instant he reached solid ground.
The Harbingers didn’t have that ability. A five-story drop. People had died or been seriously hurt after a three-story drop.
Nobody told them that. In the midst of the thin cloud of dust and the chunks of debris, the Harbingers moved without wincing or giving any sign of pain, their black-clothed forms rising from the ground like spectres.
“Talk to me, Dinah,” Golem said.
“Situation’s getting worse. Numbers are getting worse, across the board. I’m not asking any specific questions, but I can sense it, just… the big picture. It’s not working.“
There’s an answer here, and we can’t see it.
“Blue… Backwards, go right, retreat, solo? What’s that last one?”
“Abstracts. Nothing specific. It’s only as meaningful as it helps you come to the right decision.“
He stared at Hoyden and Tecton, surrounded by the eight Harbingers.
“If I leave… how does that change the numbers?”
“Success.”
“Chances for Tecton and the others?”
“Better than they were.“
This was hell, Golem mused. This was the nightmare that had driven Weaver from her home city, drove her to surrender.
The right path, but god damn, did it look ugly.
He bit his lip, then formed another pair of connected hands to launch himself skyward. He reached the apex of his flight, then created a shelf to land on. He did it again, and this time the shelf he created was just at the edge of the roof. He stepped over onto the rooftop, then broke into a run.
“Saving Tecton, red or blue.”
“Golem, we didn’t get a chance to go over this earlier, but you need to know… I can’t ask that many questions. I’ve been saving my power for the last big confrontation. Tattletale said this is the time to act. I used my power twice to answer big questions earlier today. Another three to figure out who I needed to talk to, and that told me-“
“I’m the best partner for you?”
“Right now, yes. Listen. Twenty-six questions left. We haven’t even found Jack. I can’t figure it out.“
He stood on the rooftop, then extended his arms out to either side.
She couldn’t read his mind, so it was only identifying options. Everything to the left of his nose was blue, everything to the right was red.
“Red or blue. Now.”
“Blue. Twenty-five.“
“Jack’s to my left,” he said. He turned ninety degrees. “Again.”
“Blue. I’m- My power’s getting fuzzier.”
Scion.
He looked up at the sky. Weaver with her swarm was there, forming a great wall across the sky, as if to draw attention to herself. Scion was approaching, a ray of golden light streaking across the overcast sky above.
Scion shut down precog abilities.
He felt something knot in his stomach, an ugly feeling, ominous.
“Let’s get as much use out of it as possible. Saving Tecton and the others… Red or blue!”
“Red. Twenty-three.”
He hesitated. “It’s not me going back?”
“No. I don’t think so. I just asked and it said no.”
Break it down. Attack, left for blue. Group, forward for red. “Again.”
“Golem, we can’t waste questions like this. We-”
“Please.”
“Red.”
Group or forward, he thought, assigning colors to each option. “Again.”
“Blue. Somewhere between eighty and ninety percent chance. I- I’m going blind here, Golem.”
Group.
Group, but not returning to join the others?
He went with his gut.
“Tattletale, are you listening?”
“Yes.”
“Reinforcements. Call in the big guns.”
“With Jack close? That’s against the quarantine.”
“Dinah, does it improve our chances, everyone’s chances, as far as this end of the world scenario?”
“Yes. A lot,” she sounded genuinely surprised. “Twenty.”
“Cauldron’s refusing aid,” Tattletale said. “They said it’s because Scion’s presence is blocking their clairvoyant. They’re lying.“
High above, Scion reached a stop, hovering in front of Weaver, who hung in the air in turn, using her flight pack.
Golem tore his eyes away from the scene. He glanced down at the street, where Bitch, Parian and Foil were reinforcing Tecton and Hoyden, backing them up as the Harbingers approached. One Harbinger threw something, and a dog dropped like its heart had stopped.
He shook his head. He could watch forever, but they were better served by having him elsewhere.
The sooner he got Jack, the better.
“Jack is southwest of my location,” he reported. “Heading off solo on precog advisement.”
&n
bsp; He bolted, running. His power bridged gaps between buildings. He set his foot down on the corner of one rooftop, then vaulted himself over a trap that he sensed just a foot in front of him. His landing jarred it into motion, provoking a deadfall, a slice of building that toppled and dropped onto the narrow street below.
Another hand broke a row of spikes that lined the edge of another rooftop.
Once, he’d been fat. Once, he’d been out of shape. Two years and a mission had given him the chance to remedy that. He wasn’t conventionally fit, still had a bit of stockiness to him, but the fat was gone. He had muscle. Running with Weaver had made this doable.
Twenty more precog answers.
“Numbers if I stay on the rooftops?”
“Twenty to thirty percent chance of injury or being taken out of action.“
“If I’m on the ground?”
“Fifty-something. Eighteen questions left.“
Her numbers were getting less accurate, the picture of the situation cloudier.
Too many powerful individuals in the area, too many chances of disaster, too many unknowns.
He set foot on one rooftop that had changed less than most, and the lightning flash was a staggered one, as his feet first touched gravel, then the material of the rooftop beneath that gravel.
The next rooftop wasn’t made of either material. It wasn’t made of brick or concrete.
He created two hands, chaining them together, and extended the hand into the building.
It detonated into a massive cloud of smoke.
He launched himself away to avoid it, but it wasn’t enough. The smoke flowed towards him like a wall, too vast to avoid.
Too vast to avoid so long as he remained on the rooftop. He shoved himself off, created more hands to form a series of ledges that might serve as a staircase.
The smoke still loomed.
He got as close to the ground as he could, then launched himself to safety.
Golem was panting as he rested on the ground. Psychosoma’s monsters emerged from the smoke, one using the same ledges he’d created to descend, the other crawling on the outside of the building. Homeless, to look at them, twisted into monstrous shapes. False shapes. He could deal enough damage and break the effect, and they’d be human again, unhurt.
Simpler than it sounded. If he broke the effect for one, the other would tear the freed victim apart.
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