by Samit Basu
The golden mermaid’s tail curves forward, and a ball of goo speeds towards the tank. The first one hits a crane that comes in the way; the second is on target. The main and co-axial guns are immediately disabled. A third ball takes out the machine-gun. Blind and weaponless, the tank lurches to the right, mowing through half-built walls, and disappearing in a cloud of dust.
Amabie flies low above it. Twin spikes emerge from the mermaid’s arms. With the precision of a sushi chef, Azusa slices the tank’s hatch open. She runs a scan.
As the tank stumbles into a ditch, Sher leaps out of the hatch. Azusa spots a bright blue bundle cradled in his right arm. She zooms in from her tail-cam. A horse’s head bobs wildly as Sher leaps into the dust-cloud, two blue arms wrapped around his neck.
It’s Kalki.
* * *
There’s a fork in the flyover, one branch heading east, another north. Norio spots it too late: he cannot launch missiles in time to break either branch without destroying the SUVs speeding towards it. The convoy divides into two: four cars head east, four others go north. Norio picks the eastern branch, changes his mind, curses, and veers northward.
Clenching his fists, he slows down, and opens distance-cam panels. He can’t see Oni. Raiju’s heading back towards the mall. Baku’s on fire above it. And then he spots Amabie, racing through a construction site. Even at maximum zoom, he cannot see what she’s chasing.
* * *
Hoping for a miracle, Azusa opens her com-link, but the line is blocked. Cursing the day Aman Sen was born, she chases Sher.
She’s amazed at the tiger-man’s grace as he races through the construction site, free-running over walls, body almost horizontal, slowing down only to execute incredible leaps over rubble. But he cannot match the mecha for speed. Her attack controls blink and flash; she has him in her sights. One well-placed plasma-burst from the mermaid’s shoulder-cannons would kill him. But it would also kill Kalki.
Azusa pops the remote control section on her sphere open. She puts on her AR goggles and remote gauntlets swiftly, watching as they generate holograms that climb up her wrists and around her head. Sher has reached open ground now. He’s heading for cover, racing towards the skeleton of a tall building a short distance ahead. Azusa opens up her control sphere and the entrance hatch. The sound of the wind roaring shuts out everything else. She slides out of the sphere, wondering why she hasn’t bothered to put on her armour. Her fingers move swiftly, touching spots on the holo-spheres around her hands.
The mermaid-mecha darts ahead of Sher, and sends a burst of gunfire skidding into the ground in front of him. The warning shots sting the earth. Clouds of dust rise in front of Sher. He slows down.
Azusa stands inside the entrance hatch on the mermaid’s stomach. She blinks as the dust-cloud covers her, and raises her hand. Sher stops. Hovering twenty feet in front of him, Azusa meets his eyes, and some ancient part of her shivers.
“You’ve lost,” she calls. “Hand him over.”
“Never,” roars Sher.
“Kalki!” calls Azusa. “Make him put you down!”
The blue boy giggles and shakes his head.
“You’ll have to go through me,” says Sher.
Azusa nods. She waves, and her mecha descends. Sher sets Kalki down on the ground, and moves forward, keeping himself between the boy-god and Azusa. Azusa jumps down, wincing as she lands on her feet.
“Who are you?” roars Sher. “Why do you want him?”
“It doesn’t matter,” says Azusa.
Her thumb twitches slightly.
Sher crouches, and charges.
Azusa flexes her thumb. And a plasma-blast from Amabie’s cannon hits the tiger-man in the chest. The impact knocks Sher back at least ten feet. His body tumbles, stops, twitches, and is still.
Azusa runs up to Kalki. He seems perfectly happy to see her. The horrible smell of burnt flesh and hair doesn’t appear to affect him at all. She gathers him up and races back to her mecha, her heart pounding. She leaps into her control sphere, and sets Kalki down. The boy is fascinated by the displays around him. Something about his large black eyes fills her with terror.
As she takes off, the mecha lurches, knocking Azusa off balance. She regains control quickly, and Amabie rises into the sky. Then the mecha lurches again. Azusa loads her cam-feeds quickly, checking in every direction.
Sher’s body is gone.
Something pounds on the mecha’s hull, sending loud echoes rippling through the control sphere. Her tail-cam sees it first. It’s Sher, scrabbling at the entrance hatch. Azusa watches in horror as he pounds it again, and the metal dents under the force of his paws.
Amabie rises higher, and spikes emerge from her hands. They swivel and swing through the air, but Sher’s too close to cut. He’s a wreck: his fur is burnt or gone, large patches of pink skin exposed to the swirling dust. Kalki points at the cam-screen, and neighs in triumph.
Azusa gestures wildly, and her demon responds. The mecha twists and turns, tilting as far as it can, but Sher cannot be thrown off – he seems to be clinging on through sheer willpower. They’re far above the ground now. All Azusa has to do is knock Sher off balance – his wounds and gravity will take care of the rest.
Sher claws open the corner of the entrance hatch. He sticks one paw inside, and pulls.
Azusa considers leaving the control sphere and trying to push him off. She can hear him roaring now.
Her tail-cam shows a monstrous black shape racing towards her. Azusa gasps.
Goryo.
Sher rips the entrance hatch open. He tosses the door aside, just as Amabie darts forward. Sher loses his balance. He’s alone in mid-air for a moment, but gets one of his paws to Amabie’s tail as he falls, claws cutting grooves on the mermaid’s body. Azusa tilts her mecha again, but in the wrong direction. She groans as Sher leaps off the tail, landing perfectly on the open hatch. She glances at her tail-cam, and catches her breath.
Norio is here. Sher is in his sights.
He flies up next to Amabie, matching her speed with uncanny precision. He takes aim, and hits the tiger-man with a sonic blast.
Sher’s body wilts, but does not crumble. He leaps inside Azusa’s mecha, looks up, and sees the control sphere.
Goryo fires a plasma burst into Amabie’s open hatch.
All Azusa’s alarms ring out at once. Several of her control screens flicker and die as the plasma burst rips through the mermaid-mecha’s insides. The mecha’s out of control now: it spins and darts from side to side, spewing smoke and fire. Azusa and Kalki roll and tumble inside the control sphere, Kalki shrieking with laughter. Azusa hears Sher pounding on the control sphere’s door. His strength is beyond belief: three strikes, and the door crumbles.
Sher falls into the chamber.
For a second, Azusa and Sher’s eyes meet, and then they’re both thrown against the sphere’s walls as Amabie rolls through the air. Azusa grabs Kalki. As the gaping hole in the sphere where the door recently met Sher rolls towards her, she closes her eyes, takes a deep breath, and leaps.
She feels a sharp pain in her side as she hits the mecha’s crumbling outer wall. The entrance hatch is nearby. A patch of sunlight darts around her, she feels as if she’s inside a bowling ball. She holds Kalki close to her, and turns her body. A blood-curdling roar, and she sees Sher pulling himself out of the control sphere, eyes locked on Kalki. He smells of fire and blood and death.
Azusa leaps for the outer hatch.
And then she’s falling through the sky, the earth rushing up towards her. Kalki clings on to her hand, his mane billowing in the rushing wind as time freezes around her.
A horrifying crash. They land on the ghost-mecha’s head. Norio pulls back sharply as the mermaid-mecha hurtles downward, past Goryo. It spins like a top, sending spirals of black smoke in its wake. Azusa’s body slides towards the edge of Goryo’s head, she has nothing to hold on to, but Norio tilts Goryo slightly, and she regains her balance. Kalki pulls his hand away from hers. S
he panics, but he seems perfectly balanced. He pats the demon-mecha’s head and wriggles in glee.
She hears a thump, somewhere near. She smells Sher before she sees him. She turns her head and sees him clawing desperately at the mecha’s skull-face as he pulls himself up. His paw is burnt and bleeding, it scratches the black demon-mecha’s head.
The tiger-man’s weight throws Goryo off balance. Azusa feels the mecha tilting slowly to the side, and feels her body begin to slide towards Sher. Everything hurts. She scrambles to her right. Kalki’s sliding too, towards Sher, but still out of his reach.
A hatch opens near her head. Norio leaps out, tottering as the mecha tilts. He holds on to the door with one hand. The world tilts crazily, but he has a free hand, and he can save the world with it.
Sher moves closer to Kalki. He roars, a horrible sound full of fear and anger. The mecha tilts further, and Azusa cannot hold on any more. She slides down, and sees Kalki sliding as well. A few seconds, and he’ll be off the edge.
She sees Norio, looking at her, looking at Kalki.
She realises he cannot save them both.
She sees Sher, crouching, preparing to leap at Kalki. She sees Norio, turning away from Kalki, facing her, drawing a deep breath.
He’s chosen her.
All the world to save, and he’s chosen her. She looks into his eyes, and smiles.
Gathering all her strength, Azusa lunges at Sher. She wraps her arms around his neck. His claws screech, and then lose their grip.
They fall over the edge.
Norio lunges at Azusa, but she’s gone.
He grabs Kalki instead, and pulls him into the hatch. He shuts the door and staggers into his control sphere. He searches for the other mechas. He cannot see them.
Norio turns his mecha’s face eastwards and upwards. He sets it on autopilot and sits on the floor, eyes wide open, too numb to even think.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
After the Doom-Dunker had levelled the fourth Madison Square Garden in a fit of pique after being banned from the NBA All-Star Night 2017, SuperPrez Sara Rhodes had personally given a team of super-architects the task of building a new indoor arena on the historical Penn Station site. Her only instruction – it should be the best venue of its kind in the world. Granted, the Lennon Colosseum isn’t anywhere near as large as other several other indoor stadia – Shanghai alone has ten larger – but there isn’t a more high-prestige venue for a rock concert, super-fight, theatre performance or basketball game. Anywhere in the world. And the acoustics put the Vatican’s to shame. A year ago, when the Pre-School Prima Donna Amber-Z sang for a capacity audience of 25,000, she hadn’t even needed a mike.
Jai has been to the Lennon Colosseum once before, for an awards ceremony. He hadn’t done the grand tour then, hadn’t been anywhere near where he is now: under the central court, waiting to take the ramp leading up, waiting for a trapdoor in the court to swing open, for the roar of the audience, now just a muffled buzz filtering through to the basement, to hit him at full strength. He shifts his weight and breathes quick and shallow, like a nervous boxer. It’s been years since he last made a speech.
“Relax,” says N. “You have a few minutes.”
Jai casts a sharp glance at him. The Utopic exec looks even more nervous than he is, ghosting compulsively through posters of star athletes.
Utopic has booked the Lennon Colosseum for the night. The event is supposed to be an invitation-only audition to join the new Unit. They’d planned to call it a reality-show finale earlier, but the deaths of their supers at the hands of Uzma and her acolytes had proved oddly convenient. They haven’t bothered with setting up a grand stage inside the arena; it’s not like they’ve invited the press. The assembled supers sit around a basketball court, sizing one another up, waiting for some leader to appear and tell them what to do next.
Jai looks at the page of notes he’s scribbled and has trouble reading his own handwriting; his hands had been shaking when he wrote it. He wonders whether Caesar felt like this on the eve of a battle. A small holo-screen floats near his shoulder, showing him the stage, and the slowly growing crowd of mostly human-looking figures jostling for seats around it.
Supers have been filing in for a few hours now. N has told Jai there’s no possibility of conflict tonight: all of New York’s official defender squads have been notified about the superhuman influx. And at least one member of every super-squad is secretly or openly a Utopic employee. They’ve been given very specific instructions not to make a mess at the Lennon Colosseum tonight. They’re there, though, hovering in the area, to make sure nothing goes seriously wrong. Superteams are perched on top of the Empire State building, and others are on alert in Koreatown and Herald Square.
A huge police cordon has been set up outside the Colosseum, keeping groupies at bay. Journalists with mikes scurry up and down the street: traffic has been closed off. Every newsfeed buzzes with speculation, and hordes of paparazzi take photos of the unknown supers at the front entrance as the nine-foot-tall granite-skinned super-bouncers from Brooklyn, known as the Twin Towers, check their passes. An incredible assortment of odd-looking people have already entered the arena, and more trickle in even now.
* * *
An Indonesian girl causes considerable commotion on the street as she swoops down from the sky perched on a gigantic pterodactyl.
One of the Twin Towers checks her invite. She’s on the list – the Komodo Kween, reptile controller.
“The bird stays here,” the bouncer growls.
“He doesn’t like being alone,” she says. “And he’s not a bird.”
The pterodactyl snaps at the Tower, and he flinches, a first.
“Where the hell did you find him?” he asks.
“Tonga,” she says. “Why?”
“Never mind,” growls the other Tower, ushering her in. “Just make sure he doesn’t eat anyone.”
* * *
“We’re expecting communications trouble,” says N. “Aman Sen is in New York.”
“Everyone’s instructions are very clear,” says Jai. “And don’t worry too much about Aman. Uzma saw me the other day, before she managed to escape from your clowns. They’re probably far away by now.”
“I was honestly surprised to find him alive,” says N. “His online ghost has caused us a lot of trouble over the years, but we’ve always found ways to beat it. I’d have thought his powers would have grown if he were alive – he’s probably just given up. Maybe our online security’s just too strong for him.”
“We’ll have to ask him when we see him,” says Jai. “I suspect his powers don’t work any more. I’ve seen those stories you’ve put out all over the internet, discrediting the old Unit, and those filthy rumours about Uzma and me. He’d have stopped those.”
“Yes, those were quite juicy, weren’t they?” N rubs his hands together and grins. “Have you read the works of Jacqueline Flowers? Forget I asked, you haven’t. Super-novelist from Omaha. Top ten bestselling books in the world. Writes a novel every day. She’s already done one about you and Uzma and your kinky super-exploits. Do you want to know the title?”
“No,” says Jai. “Forget Aman. This is all happening in the real world, and he’s no threat there. As long as he has no access to your zoos and the people inside them.”
“Our zoos, Jai.”
“Yes. Who else knows where these – our facilities are?”
“The board, us, and about ten other supers. Continent coordinators.”
“Anyone Uzma knows? Anyone she might find?”
“No. In any case, they’ll be wearing protective AR at all times.”
“Good. These ten continent heads – will they be part of the first assault?”
“No.”
“Then we have nothing to worry about from Aman or Uzma. What about that Chinese girl? Wu?”
“In our custody. Sedated. The only missing ones are Jason and Anima, but they’re somewhere in India, off the grid.”
“Let’s
get started, then.”
Movement to his right. Jai lunges before even looking, and finds himself on the floor, on top of a mewling That Guy.
“What do you want?” roars Jai.
That Guy indicates through sobs that he cannot answer this question while Jai maintains his iron grip on his throat. Jai releases him, and That Guy lies on the floor, breathing in huge gulps.
“Well?” asks Jai.
“I’m sorry,” says That Guy. “This is just the most important place in the world to be right now. I usually manage to avoid the more dangerous occasions, but I wasn’t paying attention. There’s this new series on—”
“Give me a reason not to kill you right now,” says Jai.
“Because I’d teleport somewhere else in self-defence and if you were touching me you’d come with me and then you’d miss your meeting,” whimpers That Guy.
Jai gets off him quickly.
“Get out,” he says.
That Guy vanishes.
“Let’s do this,” says Jai.
* * *
One of the Twin Towers disconnects his phone and signals to his brother. They turn and enter the building. Just as they’re about to close the door, a young woman in a red cape and hood slips out of the crowd and runs towards them, waving.
“Who’re you?” asks a Tower.
“Are you wearing AR glasses, or contacts?” she asks.
“We’re closed,” says the Tower. “Try later.”
“Let me in, and forget you saw me,” Says Uzma.
* * *
Jai rises into the court and is greeted with a roar of applause.
In her seat in the last row, in the darkest spot she could find, Uzma is amazed at the sheer enthusiasm all around her – the supers give Jai a standing ovation, banging palms and claws and other diverse limbs as Jai smiles and waves as if he’d been an emperor for years. Jai waits for the applause to die down, and beckons at someone below.
