The armored figure rose up out of the fire, shrugging off the sections of burning roof and floor as if they were nothing.
“Hello, Lucas,” the Raptor said, his voice sounding cold and metallic from within the metal cowl. “I’ve come to bring you home.”
Nicolas Putnam wasn’t afraid of death; he’d faced that beast once and lived to tell the tale.
With watering eyes and his lungs filling with smoke, the man lurched painfully toward his friends, high-powered weapon clutched beneath his arm.
He heard the Raptor speak in a robotic voice. It was almost as if any sign of Hartwell’s humanity had gone away completely.
“Get the hell back!” Putnam bellowed, placing himself between Katie, Lucas, and the heavily armored Raptor.
He aimed the gun at his former mentor, marveling at the technology that had gone into the armor’s upgrades. It’s a real shame when somebody with that much genius loses his mind.
“Nicolas,” the Raptor said, “I never wanted to believe you were capable of falling so far.”
“You should talk,” Putnam said, keeping the pulse rifle aimed at the man. “We know all about what you’ve been doing … your children, and what you did to them.”
The Raptor slowly shook his helmeted head from side to side. “You don’t understand a thing.” He fell silent, the smoke swirling around him, the dancing fire reflecting off the armor’s smooth metallic surfaces. “I know how it must look,” he offered.
Lucas moved around Putnam, desperate for a reason to believe in his father again. “Tell them you didn’t do it,” Lucas cried. “Tell them all of this is just a mistake!”
The Raptor lowered his head. “Sacrifices had to be made,” he said, his voice echoing eerily, as if from somewhere down a very long tunnel. “It was all for the greater good.”
He made a sudden movement, and Putnam reacted. He shoved Lucas back and opened fire with his weapon.
The pulse rifle had been designed to take out armored vehicles. He figured it should have some effect against the Raptor’s defenses. The multiple blasts struck the superhero’s chest plate, and he stumbled awkwardly backward, toward a pile of burning rubble.
“Go,” Putman ordered, momentarily taking his eyes from his target.
That was all the time the Raptor needed. He was suddenly there, ripping the gun from Putnam’s hands and hurling it away.
“I never wanted it to be like this,” the Raptor said, wrapping a powerful hand around Putnam’s throat. “Do you think if there was any other way, I wouldn’t have tried?”
Unable to breathe, Putnam witnessed an amazing fireworks display as silent, colorful explosions blossomed before his eyes.
From somewhere very far away, he heard Lucas’s voice.
“Leave him alone!”
And suddenly he was able to breathe again, even though he was falling backward to the floor. But Katie was there—sweet, wonderful Katie—dragging his useless body away as he gulped greedily at the smoky air.
Through the shifting haze he saw that it was Lucas who had saved him, defiantly standing up to his father.
The poor kid didn’t have a chance.
Lucas grabbed hold of the armor, trying to drive his father back.
The Raptor’s battle suit was still hot, and he could feel the flesh on the palms of his hands begin to blister.
It was almost as if his father didn’t want to fight back, allowing himself to be pushed backward. “I don’t know what they’ve told you,” he began. “But give me a chance to explain. … Everything is so complicated.”
“Complicated?” Lucas yelled. “Since when is murder so damn complicated?”
He was seeing red. He let go of his father and lashed out, his fist connecting with the front of the Raptor’s mask. He was going wild, his nanite-enhanced strength allowing him to hold his own against the armored adversary.
“Why did they have to die? Did they somehow disappoint you?”
Lucas threw a left and then a right, leaving dents and bloody smears across the front of the Raptor’s cowl.
“Not live up to your expectations?”
He was drawing back, ready to send another blow into his father’s face, when the Raptor moved and caught Lucas by the wrist.
“If only it were that simple,” the Raptor said.
Lucas struggled to break free, feeling the bones in his wrist snap with the exertion. He cried out as an armored hand swatted him across the face, leaving the taste of copper in his mouth.
“I thought you were going to be the one,” the Raptor continued. “But it looks as though I was sadly mistaken.”
Lucas spat a bloody wad onto the Raptor’s face mask. “That’s what I think of your mistake,” he said defiantly.
If Lucas thought the first slap was bad, the blow that followed was like nothing he’d experienced before. It sent him flying through the air, into the glass display case holding the former Talon’s costume, shattering it on impact.
As he lay there, gathering the strength to get up, he closed his bleeding fingers around the heavy fabric of the superhero costume beneath him.
And had an idea of how they might survive this.
Nicolas didn’t have the strength to stand, and there was no way Katie could carry him.
He hissed at her to run, but she refused to listen.
This man had become like a father to her, replacing the one who had filled her life with nothing but disappointment and sadness. This man had looked beyond her past, seeing the person she really was and the promise of her future. And she wasn’t about to leave him on the floor to die alone.
She watched in horror as the Raptor swatted Lucas across the room like a bug, and her hopes that he would be their saving grace quickly went to zero.
The Raptor then turned his monstrous attentions their way, making the hair on the back of her neck prickle.
Nicolas squirmed, trying to roll onto his stomach to retrieve the pulse weapon from where it had fallen. Katie knew he didn’t have the strength and decided it was up to her. She reached out, grabbing the weapon with both hands. She hated violence, and the powerful weapon felt completely wrong in her arms, but if it would give them a chance at survival, she was willing to make the sacrifice.
Silently, she pointed the weapon, trying to aim for the damaged areas of the Raptor’s face mask, hoping a blast from a pulse rifle to those areas would do some real damage.
The Raptor froze, his cold eyes studying her through the lenses of the mask. “You disgust me, Nicolas,” he snarled at Putnam. “Bringing a child into this?”
“I’m no child, and we’re in this together,” Katie barked, doing her best to keep the tremble of fear from her voice. “Ever since you murdered the Frightener.”
“The Frightener,” the armored hero repeated. “Yes, I should have seen. … You have the same eyes. … You’re his daughter, aren’t you?”
“Smart as a whip and a murderer,” she said, still pointing the weapon. “All the trappings of a real nasty supervillain.”
“Little witch,” the Raptor growled, springing at her.
Katie stumbled backward, firing the weapon wildly, blasting another hole in the already damaged ceiling.
The Raptor’s hand shot out before she could fire again. He grabbed the pulse rifle, bending the barrel before roughly yanking it from her hands and throwing it to the floor, useless.
Nicolas managed to climb to his knees, struggling to put himself between the girl and the Raptor’s rage.
“Nick, get back!” Katie screamed.
“I won’t—I won’t let you hurt her,” he said to the Raptor, his voice raspy and coarse.
“I wish it had never come to this, but …,” the Raptor began, reaching out a clawed, metal-gloved hand toward Putnam.
And then Katie noticed movement behind the Raptor. Something darted through the smoke, jumping across the rubble-strewn floor.
The Raptor must have noticed the change in her expression and began to turn, but he wa
s too slow.
Lucas, wearing the old Talon costume, was coming up right behind him.
13
Lucas remembered his pain when his father had struck him, and tried to give back better than he’d gotten.
He figured the only way they were going to survive this encounter was if one of them had the strength to go up against the Raptor. The obvious choice was Lucas, but without the enhancements of a supersuit, he wasn’t going to last five minutes against his father.
He liked to think fate had something to do with where his father had tossed him. Shucking his own clothes and getting into the costume, he had hoped the old Talon outfit was still operational, or this would end up being one of the shortest superbattles ever fought.
As soon as he’d slipped the cowl over his head, he could feel the mechanics in the costume come alive. The suit felt heavier and was more difficult to move in than his own, but he would just have to get used to it. It was certainly better than nothing.
Through the thick lenses in the face mask, Lucas saw what was about to happen. He leapt across the basement and landed right behind the Raptor with hardly a sound.
Lucas noticed the expression of surprise on Katie’s face and saw his father begin to turn. He drew back his fist and sent it rocketing forward with as much power as he could put into it. The blow connected with the Raptor’s chin, knocking him back and across the basement into a small kitchen area.
“Nice,” Lucas said, flexing the fingers of his gauntlet.
He checked to see if Putnam and Katie were all right. Nicolas stared at him with wide eyes, perhaps seeing a bit of his former self standing there.
“Hope you don’t mind,” Lucas said, on the verge of an apology.
Putnam shook his head. “Not at all.”
“You look good,” Katie said with a smile before turning to see where the Raptor had ended up. He had collapsed a section of wall and was now rising.
“But it isn’t over,” she added.
“Keep at him,” Putnam said, pulling himself to his feet, leaning on a broken piece of countertop. “Don’t give him time to catch his breath. Remember, he’s sick, and the suit can only enhance what he already has.”
“Right,” Lucas said.
He started to run, activating the costume’s flight capabilities. He was thankful the suit worked pretty much the same as the one back at the manor, as the jets in the soles of the boots ignited with a flash, doubling his momentum.
Lucas collided with his father, propelling them both backward. The two of them crashed into the already damaged wall with tremendous force. He heard his father grunt with the impact, and then the Raptor’s body went limp, sliding to the floor as Lucas stepped back.
The boy was elated and turned to give his friends a thumbs-up, but no sooner had he done that than he saw Putnam’s eyes bug and Katie let loose with a shriek.
Lucas turned back just in time to realize what a stupid mistake he’d made. His father was completely awake and pointing a piece of wrist weaponry that whirred and lit up as it prepared to fire at him.
Lucas’s brain told his body to move, but it wasn’t fast enough.
The Raptor fired a single concussive blast. It’s like being hit with a battering ram, Lucas thought as his feet left the ground. No, strike that. It’s like being hit with twenty battering rams at exactly the same time.
The force was so great that it picked Lucas up, launching him through an undamaged—until then—section of the basement ceiling and into the ceiling of the level above.
He fell to the floor of the first level and lay there unmoving; even with the protection of the costume, he was finding it difficult to catch his breath. Everything hurt, and the super suit was making strange noises. The less advanced technology must have been damaged by that last blast, and Lucas wasn’t sure how much longer the outfit would be able to protect him. But he couldn’t worry about that now. He had to keep Putnam and Katie safe.
He pushed himself to his feet, and then he heard the sound. It was like the roar of a fighter plane, muffled at first, but reaching full screeching crescendo as the Raptor exploded up through the floor in a cloud of plaster dust and splintered wood.
“I’m surprised you’re still conscious,” the Raptor bellowed over the roar of his boot jets.
Lucas could see that his father was getting ready to strike again. He ignited his own boosters and launched himself at the man, remembering his touch football days, which seemed a thousand years ago. He tucked his head low and plowed his shoulder into his opponent, driving him upward.
Locked in struggle, the two costumed combatants flew about the room, smashing into walls, turning plaster to white powder.
There was a sudden buzz and then a crackle inside his mask, and Lucas feared that something was about to go wrong. But then Putnam’s voice shouted over the static.
“Lucas? Are you there, Lucas?”
Temporarily distracted by the voice in his ears, Lucas let his father get the upper hand. The Raptor managed to get behind the boy and wrapped an arm around his throat, squeezing.
“Busy right now,” Lucas managed. The bracing built into the neck of the costume was affording him some protection, but he didn’t know for how long.
Lifting his legs, he directed a concentrated blast from his boot rockets that sent them both hurtling across the empty room toward a window that was boarded up. The wood shattered as the two slammed into it, sending them outside, up into the sky above the hospital.
“Are you all right?” Putnam asked. “What was that?”
“Being choked,” Lucas gasped. The braces were starting to buckle, and the pressure on his neck increased.
He bent forward, directing their flight back toward the building. Just as they were about to strike the front of the structure, he spun himself around, allowing his father to take the brunt of the blow. A section of the outside wall shattered on impact, raining debris on the courtyard below, but still the Raptor hung on.
“Listen to me,” Putnam shouted. “I think I got a pretty good look at the Raptor’s armor.”
Lucas tried to focus, but somebody was dropping a curtain over his eyes.
“There are chinks in its design,” Putnam said. “Reach behind you and use the claws on the gauntlet to find a space between the armored pieces. Force them apart. This’ll give you access to some pretty sensitive internal workings.”
Lucas was choking. He tried to move his head around, fighting to release some of the pressure bearing down on his neck.
“Don’t make this so hard,” he heard his father say, his voice cold, robotic. “Let the inevitable happen. You were the closest to perfection, but sadly not perfect enough.”
Screw that, a voice screamed inside Lucas’s brain. He drove the clawed fingers of his gauntlet back into the belly of the Raptor’s armor. Frantically he searched for a break between it and the chest plate, but it was becoming harder and harder to remain in the waking world.
His father must have sensed what he was up to and intensified his hold, trying to bend Lucas backward to hasten his death.
“Your life signs are going crazy!” Putnam’s voice suddenly screamed in Lucas’s ears. His voice sounded more and more distant as it began to grow dark.
Lucas knew he was dying and had almost resigned himself to his fate when the pointed tips of his gloved fingers found what they had been probing for. Using the last of his strength, he dug his claws into the space between the two segments of his father’s body armor. There was little resistance, and his father immediately began to struggle.
The Raptor’s grip loosened, and Lucas took in a revitalizing gulp of air. His claws tore through a thick layer of protective mesh, finding a web of wires beneath. With a powerful yank, he tore them free in an explosion of sparks.
He heard the Raptor yell and was immediately propelled away from his armored adversary. Lucas touched down in a stumble, falling to his knees as static erupted in his ears.
“Life signs are better,” P
utnam said. “How we doin’, Lucas?”
Lucas looked up and felt his heart leap into his throat as he spied the Raptor, dropping out of the sky directly at him.
He didn’t even have a chance to get out of the way.
The Raptor fell on him with such force that they skidded across the blacktop driveway, stopping only when they hit the overgrown grass island that surrounded a dry concrete fountain.
“Did you honestly believe you could hurt me?” his father raged, raining blow after blow into Lucas’s masked face.
The face mask was taking the brunt of the blows, but Lucas knew it was only a matter of time before it would break and his face would be shattered. His arms flailed as he strained to get out from beneath his foe, and his hands brushed against something hard and unyielding behind his head. The fountain. Lucas reached up and back, grabbing hold and using every ounce of his remaining strength to bring the concrete decoration toppling forward onto the Raptor.
The concrete crumbled as it struck the armored superhero. Stunned, the Raptor fell to the side.
Leaping up, Lucas snatched up a large section of the broken fountain, spun around, and let it fly toward the Raptor, who was just climbing out from beneath the rubble. The concrete connected with devastating force, breaking away a piece of the damaged face mask to reveal his sweating and wild-eyed father beneath.
“That’s right,” the man said, his fevered eyes twinkling. “Show me what you’ve got.”
The Raptor charged, and Lucas braced himself as the two of them collided.
“Show me that I was right about you,” the older man growled, swinging wildly at the boy.
Lucas dodged to the right and left, evading his father’s blows.
“Right about me?” Lucas asked, his anger the only thing keeping him on his feet. He moved aside as a punch flew by his mask. Seeing his opportunity, he took it, driving his own fist into the exposed flesh of his father’s face.
The Raptor’s head flew violently backward, and he fell into the high grass and weeds.
“Tell me,” Lucas demanded as he stood over his father. “Tell me why they had to die.”
Legacy Page 14
