Blackjack Dead or Alive (The Blackjack Series Book 3)

by Ben Bequer

  The edges of my vision were blurry and closing in tighter, my arms felt like foreign bodies, fixed in place but not particularly compliant as I tried to steady myself. Dislodged chunks of rock and sod rose into the air around me, and I felt my body rise to join them. I hung there boneless, as if gravity had taken a vacation, in suspended animation but for the constant booming supernova that flared around me.

  Amid the initial symptoms of asphyxiation, I felt small internal pops as the pressure changes from her artificial vacuum burst vessels in my nose. Instead of flowing from my nostrils, the blood backed into my mouth, and if I could breathe, I would have been choking, but instead I opened my mouth and let it spill out in a crimson line that floated in front of me. Digging into my rig, I pulled out a flashbang grenade. It went off, a firecracker amid a nuclear explosion. I clawed out my right hand, hoping to get lucky, grasp a handful of clothing or hair and hit her with the glove’s built in Taser, but that she was too fast.

  The pressure in my head was increasing and I felt my eyes and ears about to pop. I dug for another gadget, but instead engaged my rocket boots, full thrust. It was too much to hope I would catch her on a flyby, but enough to clear the eye of the storm. I took a lungful of air, hacking up a wad of blood. My nose was a leaky spigot and freshets of blood flowed from it. I grabbed at the thick tendrils, mixed with snot and particulates and flung it away, most of it sticking to my glove.

  * * * *

  Slamma didn’t let me go, porting to me again, and taking me with her. I shut down the boots knowing what was coming.

  “Here we go, sister!”

  She shouted as we appeared in front of Bamma, our momentum greater now than ever thanks to the power of my boots. The big sister wizened up, using her left arm in back fist style, pummeling me away like a tennis ball off a pro’s racket.

  The blow was powerful, but nothing like what she was packing with her right arm, more of a deflecting motion than anything. Her raw strength was enough to send me soaring though. The blow caught me across the shoulder and chest, and for the first time I was able to weather it.

  I was still soaring at high speed, expecting Slamma to port me back. That was their strategy and they were going to stick to it until I gave out. I had to get ahead of them, to outsmart them. If I let this continue, they were going to whittle me down to nothing.

  When Slamma reappeared, I was ready. She reached out for me, and I grabbed her as she ported us, twisting her in front of me.

  Like a shield.

  Bamma was halfway through her backfist motion, swinging her hips, her fist snapping into us with a hollow crack. Our angle was awkward and we slammed into the ground, bouncing twice before we came to a rest.

  “Sis!” Bamma screamed, running in our direction. I came to my feet and looked over at the other sister, who lay motionless.

  Ignoring me, Bamma rushed to her injured sister and rolled her over. Slamma’s face was splattered with blood and she was still.

  “Oh, Jesus!”

  I glowered over her, ready for rage attack, but Bamma just cried, trying to tend to her sister with one good arm. “Oh, please baby, don’t do this to me,” she said, wiping blood from her face.

  For some reason, I thought of Jason, hoping that Brutal hadn’t followed up with his threat, hoping that he and his family were still alive.

  “Step aside,” I said, moving closer and kneeling beside Slamma.

  Bamma watched me, incredulous, as I checked Slamma’s vitals, finding a faint pulse. She had taken the shot in her chest, probably crushing several of her ribs and puncturing her lungs. Slamma’s breathing was irregular and raspy, and her mouth was tinged with blood.

  “Bubu,” I spoke out loud. “You there?”

  “I’m here, bro. You okay?”

  “I need a tube to a stasis chamber at my location.”

  “What are you doing?” Bamma said, shoving me away.

  “On my way,” Bubu said.

  I sat back. “Your sister isn’t dead,” I said. “But she’s seriously injured. She needs medical help. Did you guys bring a healer?”

  All the anger was gone from Bamma’s face. She nodded, desperate for anything to help her sister. “Veil is with one of the outside teams,” she said. “She can heal. Help me take her-“

  I held my hand up, stopping her mid-sentence.

  “I can place her in a molecular stasis chamber,” I said. “She’ll be okay until we can find Veil.” A second later, the ground opened up near us, revealing what looked like a child’s slide deep into the dark earth.

  “What is that? No, fuck no. No way.”

  “Either that or your sister dies.”

  Bamma shook her head furiously, “No, we find Veil.” She reached forward and grabbed me. “We find Veil.”

  I stood, brushing her off.

  “I feel for you, Bamma. I really do. But either she goes into stasis, or she dies. Veil won’t be here soon enough.”

  “No,” she wept. “You bastard.”

  “Come on,” I said. “We’re running out of time.”

  She caressed her sister’s cheek so gently I almost felt sorry for her, and finally she nodded.

  “Slide her in,” I said. “Bubu, one target for stasis chamber one.”

  “Ready,” he said.

  Bamma picked up her sister and placed her on the slide, “If this is a trick – “

  “Why bother? I could have just let her die, right here,” I said.

  “God help us,” she said and slid her sister into the darkness.

  “Now you,” I said.

  “Huh?”

  “I can’t have you running around,” I said. “I have more of your people to deal with.”

  Bamma looked at me, then to the slide, then across the field where the toy soldiers all stood at attention, ready for the show.

  “What is this all about?”

  “I told your boss,” I said. “I made this to catch Mr. Haha. Now get in, or I’ll throw you in.”

  “Mr. Haha?”

  I knelt down, putting my face inches from hers, “Yes, goddammit! Mr. Haha. I made this whole place as a trap for him and his team. You and you bunch are ruining it all, you understand?”

  She blinked.

  “I really don’t have time to explain it to you. You came into my house and you’re lucky you and your sister are still alive. Now get in the damned hole.”

  Bamma stared into the dark chute.

  “You’re going to go into stasis,” I said. “It’ll be like a nice nap. When you wake up everything will be okay.”

  “It doesn’t make any sense,” she said, sniffing back some tears. I was about to reach forward and grab her, my patience reaching its limit, when she stood and walked over to the slide. “She’s going to be okay?”

  “Yeah, I think so,” I said.

  Bamma nodded and gave me one last look, almost thanking me before jumping into the slide.

  “Bubu,” I said once she was gone. “Re-task the slide back to where it belongs and get the room ready.”

  “They’re coming down, bro,” Bubu said. This was the first trap and despite the damage it had caused, I expected most of the heroes to fall here.

  “Try to catch Coach,” I said, wiping the blood from my chin. “Separate her and send her to the mirror room.”

  “Okay,” he said. “Then what?”

  “Then we take her down,” I said, and broke into a run.

  Chapter Nineteen

  My thoughts flitted to Apogee, and my stomach lurched in worry. It hadn’t been long since Underworld had taken her, but every minute in that hell world of his was like an eternity. When I finished this, Underworld was next. If I had to turn him inside out, I would find her. I shook my head as I hopped a chute to the mirror room, my body a temple of pain with no respite to be had. We had figured things out and now she was lost to me. I was always going to be alone; people would always judge my crimes, not my sacrifices. I didn’t deserve forgiveness-

  “Bro,�
� Bubu rang out over my earpiece. “Focus!”

  “What?”

  “You’re talking to yourself, bro.”

  “What’s going on out there?”

  “The roof is holding,” he said. “But some of the camera drones outside are black. The ones inside the castle are still running.”

  No surprise they would try and blind me, once they understood what the drones were. Now that they were in the castle, it didn’t make much difference. “Coach?”

  “Waiting for you in the mirror room.”

  The mirror room was my take on the final scene from Enter the Dragon, where Bruce Lee took on the main bad guy. I had put some magic touches here and there, of course, and borrowed Superdynamic’s solid-light tech liberally.

  “Bubu,” I keyed my coms, feeling the anticipation of the coming fight.

  “Ready,” he said, his voice terse in my ear.

  I’d built the room to deal with Alacrity, a speedster and Apogee’s nemesis. She’d been locked up in Utopia until the breakout and then joined Haha’s crew. I was pretty sure it was her, but news footage of their activities recorded her a little more than a loose blur. Apogee concurred, and thought the mirror room would be the best way to disorient her. She had taken a test run through it, and though she made it from one side to the other, she had been forced to slow down. Apogee would have the advantage, knowing the lay of the land – land that could shift at the user’s command.

  Now I had to apply the same tactics to Coach, and I had no idea how it would translate. She was by far the most dangerous member of Epic’s team, to the point where I felt like he had been trying to use my own plan against me on the foyer. Keep me talking; give her the chance to sneak one of those tendrils onto me, end of fight. If not for the enhanced optics in my contacts, I’d be in some cage in the back of Epic’s plane already.

  I knew if I sat her down, explained the whole purpose of what I was doing, that Coach would approve. Hell, she might offer to help, especially knowing that Apogee was on my side. But Coach was a pro, she would just as soon take me down first, and then figure things out afterwards, and I didn’t have time to have a discussion as to who was a bigger threat to the world, Haha or me. Not when Brutal was out there, waiting to detonate. The time would come for tea and biscuits, but later. Now I had to take her down as fast – and as gently – as possible.

  “I got a little problem,” Bubu said, making me tense up as the hole to the slide opened up and two people fell into the room.

  Coach slid into the room, followed by Lady Armada, who took a bounce step out of the chute, landing a couple of feet ahead of her.

  “Lights,” I said, giving them a few seconds to spot me across the room before giving them full darkness.

  “Are you alright?” Armada said.

  “My leg,” Coach said, still on the ground. “Blackjack, what the hell are you doing?”

  Armada stood between Coach and I – or rather, between Coach and where I had been. I had moved away and deployed my personal drone to hover closer; in the direction she was expecting me.

  “You shouldn’t have come here, Coach,” I said with a menacing tone. It was more for Armada’s benefit than anything.

  “What’s with the lights?” Coach went on, starting to stand with the other heroine’s help.

  “Enough,” Lady Armada said, and her armor exploded with illumination, as if its polished surface was reflecting a thousand candles. The light from her armor faded after the initial burst, but left the room dim– giving me plenty of places to hide.

  She leapt at the decoy, a solid light construct with built in reactions, jamming the shield into its torso, and following with a stab of the spear, extending her arm and shoulder in a blow that was meant to kill. It pierced the abdomen, the point digging deep, and she added a twist at the end meant to shred the intestines and leak all sorts of toxic fluid into the body. The decoy doubled over, groaning – a sound effect I was providing from my place of concealment – and crumpled to the ground.

  Armada loomed over the decoy’s still corpse, shocked at how simple killing me had been. She kicked it softly, and must have noticed the lack of blood, because she checked the tip of her spear. Finding it clean, she found Coach who scuffling a couple of paces further away, her gaze taking the whole room in at once.

  “It’s a trick,” Coach said, noticing the mirrored walls and hallways. “You do know what happens to Mr. Han at the end of the movie…huh, Blackjack?”

  “I’m sorry, bro,” Bubu said. “I tried getting just her but they were all together.”

  “It’s okay,” I whispered into coms.

  “No it’s not okay. Epic tore through the foam, and there are a bunch of people tunneling through into the foyer. The roof is going as well.”

  “Direct them all to the Waterloo room,” I said. “That will keep them busy.”

  “You can’t hide from us, Blackjack,” Armada said, once Coach was on her feet, stepping away from the other heroine, who seemed to have sprained an ankle or knee on the fall.

  “We don’t have enough stasis chambers, bro,” Bubu said. “We can’t do this.”

  “Move the wall closer to-,” I started, but Bubu was way ahead of me, shifting a mirrored wall to occlude me, allowing me to slip unseen from my hiding place. My drone camera was still providing aerial images that kept Coach and Armada in view as Bubu slid another mirrored wall in front of Armada, creating a dead end hallway with her at the end.

  Lady Armada was supposedly a refugee in this time, stranded here in the aftermath of a battle that took place over two thousand years ago in gilded Rome. She spoke modern English and had adapted to the twenty-first century on some levels, but technology would be her bane. I could see it in the way the mirror’s room’s changing topography disoriented her. She stalked through the maze, flatfooted and rigid, clearly spooked by the occasional images of me Bubu projected onto the sliding mirrors and hard light constructs.

  The silence added to her confusion, an effect of acoustic panels I installed on every surface of the vault-like room. Footsteps were stifled; even the sounds of breathing were muted. Humans were used to a certain level of ambient sound, and without it the mind started filling in the gaps. A sadist in the making, Bubu pumped random noises into the room, and Armada reacted with barely controlled fury, bashing a hard light wall with her shield. It shattered into a pile as it had been programmed to do, leaving a pile of shards in its wake.

  “Where are you?” she roared, attacking another wall, this time a real one, smashing it to bits.

  “Quit playing around, Blackjack,” Coach said. “We don’t have time for this.”

  Another false version of me appeared near Armada, “I know, Coach. I was busy trying to stop a real villain when you came knocking at my door.”

  “Where is Apogee and what have you done to her?”

  “I wasn’t lying earlier. Underworld snatched her into his dimension.”

  The two of them were playing me, and their strategy ended with a dozen tendrils sticking out of my head. Despite her obvious discomfort, Armada circled me, or where she thought I was, trying to maneuver me into an advantageous position for Coach to tag me. I switched through spectrums, settling back on the ultraviolet range because it let me see Coach’s tendrils best. Bubu had boxed her in, but the tendrils probed the room, squeezing through the smallest creases in walls of the maze, hard light and physical mirror alike.

  I tried to keep them in front of me, but it was a good bet Coach could sense something through the tendrils, otherwise sending them out was like fishing without bait. Emanating from the back of her head, they were not psychic projections, but physical manifestations. They skirted the edges in a methodical pattern that would be hard to evade. Playing with Lady Armada was amusing, but distracted me from the real threat in the room.

  Bamma and Slamma had taken a toll, and Armada was at least as strong. Rumor was her spear was blessed by all the Roman gods, or made of super hard steel. Or both. Either way,
I was certain it would pierce my skin. I had a bad track record with edged weapons and tried to avoid them. She was tentative though, the faulty input her eyes fed her kept her from charging and using the short spear to turn me into a pincushion. Instead she stabbed the air, trying to force me towards Coach.

  It wouldn’t take long for her to start bulling through the room, which would overwhelm the hard light projectors and turn my maze to rubble. What neither of them realized was that I had a full view of the room via my drone. Coach favored her leg within Bubu’s hard light box, so I led Armada farther away. She was supposed to be some sort of royalty, and from how angry she had been on the foyer, I figured I could play with her a little.

  “That’s nice armor,” I said popping out of cover within view of both women. A nearby tendril dashed at me and I dove to the ground, dashing to my right, and under a wide slash of the spear.

  The tendril missed and dropped to the ground, almost lifeless. As Coach reeled it back in, I realized how the things worked. She could animate them, fire them off, but once shot she lost control of them and had to pull them back, like a spent arrow.

  I gave Coach my profile and Armada sidestepped left to herd me in tighter. I matched her move, and without realizing it, the heroine put roughly ten feet between us and the mind-bender. “I read somewhere that the boob covers, like those, weren’t such a good idea,” I said, pointing and getting a close enough to her breasts that she recoiled. “A hard blow to the chest, from one of these…” I gestured to my fists, “…could send the hard edge under the breast into your midsection.”

  She swung her spear wide, content that I was retreating into a mirrored wall, when I got a funny idea. “Replicate target,” I said in the lowest voice I could, timing it with one of her grunting shield bashes.

  “Target replicated,” Bubu said, and I backpedaled, slamming into the wall.