by Megan Derr
He pushed to his feet—and fell again, right leg from the knee down screaming in agony. Gritting his teeth, using his powers, he tried again. Managing to stay upright, bolstering his movements with what amounted to a telekinetic crutch, he limped his way over to where the Prince had managed to pull himself up enough to sit with his back to the bridge. To judge from the way his legs were lying, he couldn't feel them.
Leland could just barely read his lips as the Prince said, "You're a real son of a bitch, aren't you?"
"Want me to finish him?" Pink asked.
"No, the Prince is mine," Leland said.
"As you wish, love." A shot cracked out, and Leland turned briefly, saw where Sunrise lay on the ground with a shot in his forehead. Taken out like one of the soldiers the G.O.D. used as little more than fodder. Years of terrorizing. Years of killing. Years of being too powerful to stop. Gone with nothing more than a bullet. "Clear to do whatever you want. Pink, over."
Leland pulled out a scarf he'd folded and tucked neatly into a pocket of his cargo pants before leaving. Kneeling in front of the Prince, he wound it around his throat once and pulled tight—not so he couldn't breathe, but definitely so every breath was a struggle. Knotting it securely, he stuffed the ends into the Prince's mouth. "You probably don't even know who I am," he said as he removed his ear guards. "You murdered my family, left me homeless, and I doubt you remember the matter at all, except that you actually got into a teensy bit of trouble for it."
The Prince's eyes widened, then narrowed.
"Ah, you do remember. I bet the G.O.D. must be furious. If not for your fuck up, they probably would have taken me from my family and trained me up to be one more brainless, obedient lacky like you. Because of you, a 12-level telekinetic that could have been theirs is now one of Dog's greatest threats. Goodbye, Your Highness."
He used his telekinesis to pull the scarf even tighter and did it until the Prince collapsed, face red, then blue, then still. Leland checked his pulse, then rose and returned to the truck, a quiet calm falling over him, like a blanket on a cold, blustery day.
Behind him came another cracking shot, and he turned to see Pink had put his own mark on the Prince.
"Better safe than sorry. Pink, over."
"Copy." In the truck, there was a steel wall welded into place, blocking off the back two thirds, the front third fitted with benches and straps.
"I'll get the locks," Tina replied, and with a few short, tripping chords the heavy-duty locks crumpled to nothing.
Leland ripped out the door as he climbed into the truck. "Base, we've breached the truck."
"Anyone there?" Byron asked.
Stepping over and through the ruined door, Leland slipped into the back of the trailer—and stared in relief and horror.
There were sixteen glass cubicles, each one slightly smaller than a phone booth, with a person in every last one of them. One adult, fifteen children. They were all there.
They all started shrieking when they saw him, recognized him. "Confirmed for Ariadne and fifteen children. We're getting them out now. Prepare the boats. Green, over."
"Base copy."
Leland went over to Ariadne and with barely a thought tore out the locks keeping her in that awful glass prison. He wrenched the door open—and barely caught her as she launched into his arms. "Ariadne!"
"Leland, I can't believe it." She held him tight, sobbing into his arms.
"Come on, we have to get the kids," he said, and swept her up into his arms to get her out of the trailer. Then he went back in and helped the twins finish freeing the children. They swarmed him, screaming and crying and repeating his name over and over. Leland fought back tears and focused on getting everyone out.
Back on the road, he and the twins made quick work of setting up the two swing stages they'd lifted from a window cleaning company and rigged up to take everyone down to the stream.
"Prism to Base, we're moving to the river. Red, over."
Dixie replied with an acknowledgment, then added, "Make it quick. I can't spoof the comms for much longer; they're going to notice any time now."
"Going down now," Leland replied.
"All clear from here," Pink replied. "Rather too easily done, you ask me."
"Save it for when we're all back at base," Byron replied.
Leland finished loading the last two children on the swing stage he was riding on, then climbed on after them. He nodded to the twins as Oberon joined him.
He checked over the rigging, and then they hit the buttons, and down to the river they went.
By the time they reached the waiting raft, manned by Byron, Leland's nerves had just about reached their limit.
He dropped down into the raft and helped the children one by one, then Ariadne as the twins jumped down on their own.
Ariadne froze in his arms, face bleeding of color as she stared past him. "It can't be. Tenney?"
"Ariadne." Byron opened his arms, and she rushed into them, both of them crying.
"Save it for later, Alien Overlord. We gotta move. Our surprise guest isn't wrong—this was all too easy."
Leland gave him a look as they settled in at Byron's command and moved out. Talking over the roar of the wind and water as they fought their way upstream was impossible, so he let the conversation be for the moment.
He hoped they were wrong. They'd killed the Prince and the Magnificent Sunrise, after all. Two of the heaviest hitters in the G.O.D. As much as he hated to admit it, though, something reeked.
Across the raft, Byron motioned for Leland to come and take the controls. When he'd done so, Byron pulled out some strange device and started going to each and every child on the boat, as well as Ariadne.
By the time he was done with them, he'd thrown more trackers overboard than Leland could keep up with.
After another two sweeps and more trackers—some of them chemical by the way Byron gave all of them an injection—Byron took back control of the raft. Shortly after, they transitioned from the stream to the river by way of some nail-biting rapids. An hour later, they came to a stop at a rocky beach, and Leland helped get everyone out of the raft and into the waiting Land Rovers. "How did you get these all the way out here?"
Byron just smiled his faerie smile and got behind the wheel of the first rover. Oberon took the second one, and though Leland ached to be next to Byron right then, he left Ariadne to take the passenger seat of Byron's Rover and climbed in next to Oberon.
They took point, Oberon focused on the driving, Leland looking out for possible threats.
Thankfully, they made it to the new safehouse unmolested—but it was to find Dixie and the others outside waiting for them, packed up and tense. "We gotta keep going. I'm pretty sure if we don't, we're gonna have unexpected company."
"Damn," Byron said. "Come on, then." They climbed back into the Rovers, while Dixie headed for a third one, where Leland assumed Karl, Matt, and Greg were already waiting.
"Where's our guest?" he asked as they headed out, driving at speeds way above reckless to put as much mountain between them and the G.O.D. as they could.
"Coming up fast behind you, love. You'll know me when you see me. Don't throw me off a cliff or anything."
"This guy is giving me a headache," Oberon said. "I vote throw him off a cliff."
"That's uncalled for, after all I've done to help."
"Shut up, English," Oberon snapped.
"All of you be quiet," Byron said over the comms. "Radio silence until I say otherwise."
Everyone fell silent, save for Dixie, who occasionally spoke with Byron about whatever they were doing to ensure the G.O.D.'s tracking efforts would be failing miserably very soon.
Leland held on for dear life as the Rover thrashed through the mountains like a raging bull. "Where the hell did you learn to drive?"
"Lots of places," Oberon said, smirking but not looking away from the road. "Including the military."
"I'm not sure I want to know what military," Leland replied, cl
osing his eyes as they cleared a small gorge, thumping and rattling on the landing.
Oberon just laughed.
Several minutes later, a new noise joined the trip: a dirt bike running hellbent for leather.
Leland glanced out the window and watched as a figure on a dirt bike cruised past him and drew even with the lead vehicle, signaling something to someone inside—likely Matt.
"Is that really who I think it is? How does Matt know him?"
Oberon shrugged. "Got me, but I'm sure we'll find out soon. Now let me concentrate. It just gets worse from here."
Up and through they went, along paths that barely counted as such, and sometimes no paths at all, save whatever route Byron knew that he hadn't shared with anyone else. As the road temporarily eased up, Leland said, "I'm seriously alarmed that you, Byron, and Dixie all drive the same way, and that way is 'completely insane.' Were all your military instructors drunk?"
"Oh, stop your fussing. We're alive and unharmed, aren't we?"
"Alive, maybe," Leland said. "But all your thrashing about isn't helping my leg."
"You'll just have to suffer a bit longer, because now isn't the time for slow and gentle, darling."
Leland rolled his eyes, but before he could give the scathing retort Oberon deserved, Byron came over the comm. "We're about to go into a tunnel. The comms will stop working briefly. Just stay close, follow me, be prepared for a sudden stop."
"Copy, over," Oberon replied.
A few minutes later, Byron led them into a tunnel. The name over it was long faded and broken, so much so that Leland couldn't even make a stab at guessing.
Inside, there were no lights to designate the tunnel, only their headlights.
"This is fun," Leland muttered.
Oberon cast him a brief look before fastening his eyes back on the road. "What happened to you being the quiet, taciturn one?"
"Going a hundred miles an hour on rough terrain and now into a creepy tunnel I can't find my way out of, that's what happened."
"Stop being a baby. You'll frighten the children, and they've had enough."
Leland glanced back, realizing suddenly that he hadn't heard a peep out of the children once, and ordinarily they'd be crying or talking or something.
Instead, they were all fast asleep, as though they had not a care in the world. "Did Byron drug them?"
"Of course."
"I suppose it's for the best," Leland said quietly, and slipped back into silence.
Several minutes later, they came to the promised abrupt stop.
Dixie climbed out of his Rover, which had trailed behind Leland the whole time, and headed past all three vehicles to a bit of wall that might have been a gate or something. Maintenance tunnel? Next to Leland, Oberon looked equally confused, his brows drawn down, mouth flat.
After several minutes, Dixie jogged back to his Rover and they were moving again, turning into whatever tunnel or whatnot he'd just opened. Then they were driving again, the headlights catching hints of some giant space, abandoned vehicles, even planes. Some sort of warehouse? An old base?
Leland was ready to scream by the time they finally came to a halt. Byron climbed out of his Rover and motioned for them to follow him. Dixie made quick work of a second door, which gave way with a hiss of old hydraulics and the groan of parts moving after being sedentary for too long.
Lights flickered to life as they entered, revealing what looked like some sort of enormous sitting room, or maybe community center was more apt. There were sunken circles with seating, pool tables and other amusements, tables and chair, an enormous kitchen area. There was something that looked like a medical station in one corner, and through a door at the far end Leland could see a couple of beds.
"What is this place?" he asked, even as Byron and Greg ushered him over to one of the beds.
Before Byron could reply, Oberon said, "This is Starfall Command."
"Right as usual," Byron replied, though his attention was mostly on Leland as he cut away his pants, and went to work setting, cleaning, and bandaging his broken leg.
"Is that supposed to mean anything to the rest of us?" Tina asked.
Oberon replied, "Starfall Command is an old military defense and research facility. They were primarily interested in securing whatever pieces of the original meteorite they could locate, but also on finding all new ones in space. Starfall didn't last long, though, because it opened for operations in 1947, just two years before the World Board created a single, world-spanning military and appointed the G.O.D. as essentially Commander-in-Chief. Everything relevant here was moved to G.O.D. facilities and the rest was left to rot."
"So how did you find it?" Leland asked, looking at Byron.
"Oh, I've kept an eye on it since it shut down," Byron replied, looking up briefly before bending back to his work, setting the nano-bandaging that would heal Leland's leg in a matter of days rather than months. "I was aware of nearly all the military facilities back then. It was creeping around another such facility that led me to Oberon, only a few years before they all became redundant."
Leland frowned at the words, something nagging. Then it clicked, and he turned to Oberon. "Wait. How old are you?"
"Old enough," Oberon replied tersely, and walked off, vanishing into the bedroom area.
Leland turned back to Byron. "I didn't know he…" Was clearly much older than he'd looked in any of the forms he'd taken since Leland had met him.
"It's a side-effect of the shifting. At lower levels, it's not all the noticeable, but at Oberon's level…" He shook his head, gave the cast a last look-over, and then stood. "We can talk about all this later. Your leg should be fine, now, though of course don't go doing anything too exciting until the cast comes off. Let's get the kids settled. Then we can get to know our new friend here and work out the next stage of our plan." He nodded at Pink, who didn't yet bother to remove his helmet, only followed them back out to the Rovers to help with the children.
Thankfully, getting the children settled didn't take much time or effort. They were all still dead asleep, and according to Byron would sleep for a couple more hours yet, so in no time at all they had fifteen children tucked away in beds and set up sensors that would alert them when the children woke.
Back in the main room, the group scattered across chairs and sofas, all of it dusty and uncomfortable, but better than standing for five more minutes. Leland hadn't been this exhausted in forever, and that was saying something, given how perpetually exhausted his life kept him.
"All right, I've had it with the helmet, Mr. I'm So Mysterious," Oberon said, folding his arms across his chest and scowling at Pink. "Off with it, Scones."
"Fine, but someone should probably hold on to you," Scones replied.
"What in the hell does that mean?" Oberon demanded.
There was a muffled sigh, and then Scones reached up and slowly pulled his helmet off, setting it on a nearby side table that wobbled under the weight.
"You!" Oberon bellowed, and Karl and Dixie barely caught him as he threw himself forward in an attempt to do Scones severe bodily harm. "You're a rat! A worm! You're a flea-ridden Dog!"
"I am no such thing," Scones replied.
"What in the hell is going on?" Leland asked.
"He's the son of Margaux Lachapelle!" Oberon said, the words echoing through the enormous space, making Leland wince. "I'm going to beat you to a pulp and send the remains to your mother. Let me go right now!"
Scones sighed again. "I am not her son by choice, I can tell you that much. I'm definitely not her little spy. If my mother ever figures out I'm Scones, I'm a dead man."
"Lies," Oberon hissed.
"Enough," Byron said. "Oberon, sit the hell down. You too, Scones. Or should we call you something else?"
"I would love a name that isn't hopelessly stupid, but since that isn't possible, Scones will suffice."
"Dearly departed is all you're going to be the moment I'm allowed to do the sensible thing."
Byron pi
nched the bridge of his nose. "Oberon, if he was a traitor, there's no way he would have sniped the Magnificent Sunrise. Or any of the other supers he'd murdered, for that matter."
"No, shit," Scones said. "Sunrise was my mother's favorite fucktoy. When she was here in the States, anyway. She's gonna have to find a new cock to ride, poor thing."
Matt groaned. "Ugh. Scones, quit it. What have I told you about your deplorable sense of humor?"
Scones just smiled, all teeth and glinting eyes.
Eyes that were mismatched, one brown, one blue. He had the pastiest white skin Leland had ever seen, up to and including Byron, with freckles all over and a shock of vibrant red hair that was sweaty and matted from the helmet. He wasn't handsome, exactly, but he was interesting.
He was also tall, at least six feet easy, and while he wasn't built like a wall, he wasn't a scrawny dude either. More like lean, mean fighting machine. Leland scrabbled through his mind for anything he'd ever heard about Margaux Lachapelle and her son.
Everyone knew the name Margaux Lachapelle. She was the C.F.O. of the G.O.D. Paris Division and the G.O.D. representative to the World Council. She was smart, ruthless, and behind a façade of loving mother figure, a cruel and manipulative woman.
About her son, though, Leland had never heard much. Only that she had one, and he'd worked for the G.O.D. for several years, which made sense. Unlike his parents, who were both 6-levels, he was only a 2-level, maybe 3. Not high enough to be a hero, but more than sufficient for the military, which, between his marksmanship, the way he moved, and several other tells, it seemed pretty clear that he'd spent a good deal of time as a soldier.
"Why in the world are you the one murdering super heroes?" Tina asked.
It was Karl who replied, "Probably reasons similar to those that turned me against the G.O.D, only worse. I can't imagine what you've seen as an insider at that level."
Scone's demeanor turned somber. "Just so. My mother raised me to be an obedient little soldier, but… you can ignore the horrible things you see and do and tell yourself you're just following orders, or you can wake the hell up and try to effect change. I chose change, but I'm no hero, just a well-trained killer. So that's what I do."
