Stills and Downs returned from their search to report. “One hundred footlockers. One was empty, and there was no sign of a body beside it.” Stills glanced around the room.
The man on the floor began to laugh. Not just laughing, thought Scott with horror, but cackling like an insane witch in a motion picture. His whooping laugh degenerated into a thick, bubbly cough that spurted bloody mucus from his mouth and nostrils. Hester recoiled from the grotesque droplets.
“Yah… yah… one lived!” The man spoke in heavily-accented English.
“You speak English?” Scott stepped forward.
“Ya… a little.” The man’s laughter fell into a hacking cough.
“What do you mean, one lived?” Stills eyes narrowed.
“The experiment… it was… success! Thousands die so that one may live. Heil Hitler! We have created… your superman!”
“What the hell does he mean by that?” Downs shouted.
“I think that’s obvious, kid,” said Hester.
“No! He’s… he’s sick or something. Look at him. He doesn’t know what he’s saying.” Downs’ face grew dark beneath the soot stains.
“At ease, Private,” growled Scott.
“We’re supposed to be the only ones. They told us we were the only ones!” Downs raised his rifle like a club.
“Stills,” said Scott. The teleport popped from his spot to reappear directly behind Downs. He yanked the rifle from the boy’s hands. When Downs spun around in fury, Stills cuffed him hard across the face, sending him sprawling. “Stills, stand down,” Scott bawled in his best drill-sergeant’s voice.
Downs didn’t rise from where he had landed in a heap. His voice was racked by sobs. “We’re supposed to be the only ones,” he repeated as he gasped for air.
Scott stalked over to the boy. “We don’t have time for this. On your feet, soldier! Atten-SHUN!”
Months of conditioned reflexes kicked in and Downs jumped up, ramrod straight, tears tracking clean streaks down his sooty face. “Sorry, sir.” He gulped and wiped his nose, and then paused, listening. “Does anyone else hear that?”
The other three soldiers looked around warily, weapons raised. “Hear what?” Scott snapped at him.
“That sort of humming, whistling sound. Kind of like before a steam valve busts.”
Another cackling laugh emerged from the forgotten man on the floor. His flesh seemed to be moving from waxy to almost liquid, like it wasn’t sticking to his bones anymore. “Ya… Messer’s Device… it will pulse again… all will perish.”
Hester started as if he’d been goosed. “Device?”
“What’s pulse?” Downs looked frightened.
“It’s bad, whatever it is.” said Scott. “Stills, take that journal. If anything happens, you get clear with it.”
“But Sergeant—”
“That’s an order, Corporal. Move out, boys, asses and elbows!”
The four men ran for it, back down the hall and through the entryway. They cleared the castle wall and were pelting across the mud for the evergreen forest across the road when a light as bright as day erupted from the castle behind them.
Scott had a sensation of being as transparent as glass, followed by a twisting, wrenching pain. His mind whirled madly as it tried to reconcile the fact that he had just been teleported. Acute vertigo hit him like a right hook and he fell hard onto a rocky surface, retching from the dizziness and the awful sensation.
That’s when he heard the screaming. He tried to focus his spinning eyes. A fiery orange and red blur resolved itself into the largest explosion he had ever seen. The castle had been flung apart by the force of it, and the evergreens had been knocked flat, burning so fast they exploded as the water within their trunks flashed into steam. He realized he was up on the high mountain that overlooked the castle, or what was left of it. He shivered violently, although from the cold or the altitude or the sudden shift in location he couldn’t tell.
The screaming continued and Scott saw Stills writhing on the ground in agony. His left arm was missing halfway through his bicep, as neat as if someone had lopped it off with a band saw. Blood poured out of the stump.
Scott forced himself up to his knees, fumbling for his pack and for the morphine. The world spun around him as he found the emergency kit. He flopped down next to Stills, whose screams had softened to animalistic moans. He ripped off the sleeve of his fatigues and fashioned a tourniquet around Stills’ arm. Even in the darkness, with the angry glow of the fire below, the man had gone deathly pale.
Stills had lost so much blood; Scott was afraid that the morphine would kill him, but he wasn’t a medic and wouldn’t trust himself to alter a dose. In a few minutes the narcotic took hold of Stills and his whimpering subsided.
Scott hunkered down next to him to wait until morning. Neither of them was in any shape to travel, and if Stills was going to die, it would happen in the next few hours. There was no sign of Hester or Downs. Scott was certain they had died down below in front of the castle. The heat from the explosion had been so strong that where there had been mud was now cracked earth with a glossy sheen over it. The forest had been leveled, and what hadn’t been blown to splinters was burning away.
He had a fair idea of what happened. When the device pulsed, it had blown up, like an overheated boiler. In the fraction of a second after the burst, Stills had reached out to Scott, who happened to be right next to him, and teleported them both up the mountainside.
Stills was able to move more mass than himself, since he could teleport with a full pack, but he’d never attempted to move another whole person. His body must have rebelled at the attempt and left part of itself behind. Scott felt fortunate to be all in one piece and to not have any parts of the local landscape impaled through him. Teleporting to an unseen location was one of Stills’ great fears; he was afraid of materializing in the same space occupied by another object. Army doctors had no idea what would happen if he did.
Scott knew that no matter what else happened, he had to get that notebook back to the Allies. He had to tell them what they’d learned at Aufstein, that the Nazis were trying to create their own parahumans.
And he had to tell them that they’d succeeded.
Those Who Came Before: Arrowheads
There were so many doors open for me then. I was young, rich, smart, good-looking, and I lived in New York City—the greatest place anyone who was anyone should live. I could have done anything I wanted to.
What Ichose to do was put on a mask and fight crime withAmerican Justice.
-Adrian Crowley, Dangerous: The Autobiography of Dr. Danger, 1964
August, 1949
New York City, New York
Adrian Crowley crouched in the shadows of the rooftop overlooking the warehouse. He was a tall man, cresting six feet, with an athlete’s build honed from thousands of hours on his private archery range. The tool of his trade rested across his back, a curved piece of yew that hung from custom clips on the back of his quiver.
His costume was piratical in nature; flowing white cotton shirt, dark blue pants tucked into folded-down boots, a dark red sash and a matching kerchief tied around his head, incorporating into it a mask that hid his eyes.
He called himself Dr. Danger; he just liked the sound of it.
He fiddled with a small Geiger counter that he’d removed from a pouch on the side of his quiver. Tiny clicks emerged from it at an elevated rate. He frowned behind his mask and adjusted the dials, but it continued to report that radiation levels were significantly higher than they should have been around the warehouse. It looked like the information from his source was correct. He’d checked the warehouse from three different angles and each time the Geiger counter clicked like a tap-dancing flea circus.
The sound of an engine made him shrink back into the shadows. He replaced the counter into his pouch and watched over the edge of the adjacent building. A long, low Hudson slid around the corner, lights off, engine rumbling just above an idle. Two g
uys got out of the back seat, wearing trench coats and fedoras. Moonlight glinted off the Thompson submachine guns each man held. They looked around, furtive and suspicious, daring anyone to challenge their superior firepower. Then, apparently satisfied, one of them raised an electric torch and flashed it down the alleyway in three quick bursts.
Headlights appeared around the corner and a step-van rolled into the alley, its badly-tuned engine raising a cloud of black smoke. The other man walked past the front of the Hudson to the delivery door of the warehouse and rapped on it with the butt of the gun in a short, syncopated pattern.
In a moment, light streamed into the alley as the door raised against the squeaky protest of poorly-lubricated bearings. The Hudson glided into the well-lit interior of the warehouse, followed by the smoke-belching van. Adrian watched as the door was lowered, leaving the alley once again bathed in darkness. He hadn’t realized until the door opened that the windows of the warehouse had been either covered or painted. Stupid and careless, he thought to himself. Never assume anything. He’d been playing at superhero for almost a year and still felt like a wet-behind-the-ears novice. It had been a lark, the diversion of a bored rich boy who’d inherited his wealth from war profiteering, who’d been slowly dying of terminal boredom until discovering his uncanny knack for archery.
Who’d decided to become a superhero, like those of American Justice. Unlike them, he didn’t have amazing parahuman abilities to bring foes to justice. But they didn’t have his archery skills, or his arsenal of special arrows.
With a seasoned eye for gauging distances, he estimated how far away the warehouse was from his vantage point. Alleys in the industrial part of town were deceptively wide; much more so than they looked. To misjudge distance here was to invite a tumble to the pavement or worse. With enough room for the Hudson to have opened both doors and the men to walk past them, he figured it was ten feet across.
Unfortunately the two sentries remained below, slouching in the alley and smoking unfiltered cigarettes. They would have to be dealt with before he could safely leap across the gap, or else they would raise the alarm. He drew one of the ball-tipped arrows, finding it by the shape of the fletching. He machined the special tips on a lathe in his workshop. Instead of a sharp point, this particular type of trick arrow was tipped with a blunt steel bearing the size of a golf ball. They were heavy and ungainly projectiles, and not very accurate over distance. On the other hand, they were useful for knocking opponents down and out, instead of killing them outright.
Adrian had never killed a man, and didn’t intend to start. The political climate following World War II had been mostly permissive toward vigilantes, especially with the formation of American Justice by parahuman veterans of the War. South of the old Mason-Dixon line, though, vigilantes were lynching colored folks and burning down churches. Because of that, someone was going to make it illegal sooner or later. Adrian hoped to stave off that time as long as possible, and leaving the bad guys alive and hurt but contrite looked pretty good to the general public.
And a good public image was imperative to a guy who dressed up like a pirate with a bow and lurked around the rooftops of New York City.
He lifted the bow off its clips, its familiar weight comforting in its presence. He measured the distance to the men below at about a two-thirds pull. A ball-tip could knock a man out with a nasty bump on the head, or it could crack his skull. It was a fine line, but he’d spent many hours perfecting his techniques. He took careful aim at the first man’s head, using the glowing tip of his cigarette as a reference point.
He released the first arrow. In a blurred economy of motion, he drew a second ball-tip just as the first one struck. As the man dropped like a rag doll, Adrian pulled back on the string a second time. The other sentry was just starting to react to the sudden fall of his partner when he was likewise struck, the impact knocking his hat off into a puddle.
The only sounds from the entire encounter had been the thuds of the ball-tips striking scalps, the crumpling sounds of the men falling, and the clink as the deflected ball-tips bounced to the pavement. Adrian listened intently for a few minutes, making sure that no suspicions had been raised. Eventually, satisfied that he could safely cross the intervening distance to his target warehouse, he took a few running steps and leaped across the alley. Bow in hand, he advanced across the warehouse roof, looking for a way into the building itself. There was a sudden puff of breeze that ruffled the sleeves of his shirt. He stopped, sensing danger.
A long blade slid across his throat.
“Don’t move, archer, and lose the bow.” Breath redolent with garlic washed past Adrian’s face.
“Easy there, chief. You’ll get no trouble from me.” Adrian relaxed himself, preparing to unleash a flurry of kicks upon his attacker. He dropped the bow carefully, glancing down at the blade across his neck. There was something odd about its shape and position. The arm holding the blade was far too short, and even in the shadows, it was plain that the blade was the length of a sword. With a start, he realized that the man was not holding the blade, but that it replaced his arm altogether.
There was only one man Adrian knew about that had a sword for an arm. “Flicker, I’m one of the good guys. We’re on the same side.”
“Let him go, John,” came a voice from somewhere above them. Adrian looked up and saw a man hovering casually in the air, ten feet above them. He knew it was Strongman, of course, but it was still quite a shock to see him flying unsupported. Strongman wore a tight-fitting bronze-colored reflective body suit with red accents, cape, and hood. He’d once explained in an interview that the bright colors made him a better target, and since he was bulletproof, he’d rather that the bad guys shot at him than at his teammates.
The blade was removed from Adrian’s throat—not by it being pulled away, but by suddenly vanishing in a puff of air. Flicker reappeared several feet away. He wore a dark body suit, made out of a material that trapped the light. Where Strongman was bright, Flicker was darkness incarnate. Even the blade that extended from the stump of his upper arm was made out of non-reflecting Damascus steel. His face was also masked.
Adrian stooped down to pick up his bow, checking it for damage. He’d built it to be as hardy as possible, because one never knew when a bow would need to be used as a club in close quarters, but it was always good to check.
“You’re gonna believe him just like that?” Flicker grumbled behind his mask.
“Perhaps,” said Strongman as he dropped to the ground as gently as if he’d been lowered on a crane. “But before you kill him, I’d like to find out more about him.” He turned his attention to Adrian. “We’ve read about you in the papers. It’s a pleasure to finally meet you.”
“You always make your introductions like this?”
“Please forgive John. He’s never been especially trusting.”
Flicker swung his sword blade back and forth. “Yeah, well, he’s wearing a mask, isn’t he? He’s obviously got somethin’ to hide!”
“So do we,” said Strongman.
“Nobody wants to look at radiation scars, Jim. The pirate over there looks like he hasn’t even ever cut himself shaving.”
“The mask is to protect my identity.” Adrian felt sheepish. He’d thought that his first meeting with American Justice would be more… heroic. “Unlike the two of you, I have a private life that I’d rather not complicate.”
“He’s got a point there, John,” came a new, feminine voice. Adrian looked and saw the other three members of American Justice standing by the edge of the warehouse roof. The three newcomers were veterans of the war, like Flicker and Strongman, but they had fought against the Japanese in the Pacific.
Colt, the woman who had spoken, was pretty behind her short haircut and pilot’s goggles. She wore a dark red leather jacket over a stylized ballet leotard and tights. Her heavy black jump boots had thick, knobby soles, and a pair of horseshoes were incongruously slung at her waist. Adrian knew that she could run as fast
as a speeding car and her other reactions were similarly accelerated.
Beside Colt was Flashpoint, the colored man. He could generate powerfully bright bursts of light to blind and confuse opponents. He wore goggles like Colt, but his were smoked. His costume was a set of light gray coveralls with numerous pouches affixed to it. A pair of automatic pistols was strapped to his waist in well-oiled leather holsters.
At their feet sat a wolf, tongue lolling out past razor-sharp teeth. The wolf was called Gray, and was a real-life werewolf. Adrian couldn’t remember for sure, but he thought that the alter ego of Gray was an Indian from one of the southern reservations.
“All right, we’ll concede your identity… for now,” said Strongman. “What are you doing here tonight, Dr. Danger?”
“Working on a tip,” said Adrian. “Someone’s buying uranium, and there’s a group selling it below.”
Colt gasped and glanced toward Strongman. Adrian was sure that either he had shocked her with his revelation, or confirmed a suspicion.
“And you were going to just bust in and start shooting arrows at them?” Flicker sounded disgusted.
“Something like that,” said Adrian. “Last I checked, smuggling was still illegal. I don’t like the idea of somebody else building an atomic bomb. It’s bad enough that the Russians have one now.”
“So you’ve been working the seller’s angle?” Strongman asked him.
Adrian nodded. “It’s a branch of the Mob. I don’t know where they got the uranium…”
“Nevada,” said Colt.
“We’ve been working on this case for a few months now,” said Strongman. “But from the buyer’s angle. We know who’s been trying to obtain the ore, and we think we know why. We just found out the transaction is going to happen here, tonight.”
“Hell, Jim, why don’t you tell him everything?” Flicker scraped the point of the sword across the warehouse roof.
“You know what your problem is, Stills? You don’t trust anybody.” Flashpoint spoke for the first time, his voice deep and mellow like a French horn.
Just Cause: Revised & Expanded Edition Page 28
