There was a very loud – as in thunderous, car windows exploding all around kind of loud – clang, and Day-Glo Man went off in a very high ballistic arc that, if Christine’s calculations were correct, would put him somewhere in Lake Michigan. Or maybe Canada; her calculations were pretty tentative. At least he wouldn’t be plowing through any buildings and obliterating innocent housewives and/or toddlers.
OMG, how many people get killed in these fights?
She didn’t have time to consider things. Lightning struck her from behind, and she found out what sticking your finger in a light socket felt like. Her shields did their stuff, but she still found herself on her hands and knees, twitching like she had the Tourette’s. The shock went away quickly, thank God, and she jumped to her feet and looked for the source of the lightning bolt.
Christine’s new tormentor was a flying woman in a golden string bikini, thigh high boots almost identical to the Crimson Fucktard’s, and electrical arcs crackling all around her. Christine mentally dubbed her Lightning Stripper.
“Surrender or we’ll be forced to use lethal force,” Lightning Stripper shouted. Even her voice sounded electrically-charged.
Lethal force? So when the Hulk’s ugly brother punched me he wasn’t playing for keepsies?
“This is your last chance,” Hoobaskank said, sounding very serious and authoritative, which was weird coming from a woman in a thong so skimpy the whole world would know if she'd missed her Brazilian wax.
“Sorry. Fletchgolas already gave me a last chance, and I blew it,” Christine replied – and by the time she was halfway through saying ‘Fletchgolas’ she blasted Lightning Lassie straight up, hopefully into Low Earth Orbit. She would have said something about the outrageous outfit, but that'd be adding slut-shaming to injury.
Three days before, she would have cowered in her bus seat if some stranger looked at her funny, and now here she was, trading quips with superheroes and blasting them into next week. Having super powers was doing wonders for her self-esteem.
Christine turned around just in time to catch another exploding arrow with her teeth.
Okay, not quite her teeth, but she felt the impact all over her face even through the shield. She hit a storefront, went through the metal bars on the window display, and smashed into a drinks cooler, destroying a few hundred bucks worth of beer in tall cans. Thanks to her shields, she didn’t even get wet, but she was feeling a bit battered, ill-used and very upset. Freaking Crimson Legolas had bounced back a lot faster than she’d expected.
This was insane. They were going to wreck half the city. She probably should have let Le Fletchier handcuff her and be done with it.
Christine came charging out of the store, shields at one hundred percent, but they were waiting for her. Fletch, Mini-Metal and Lightning Slut were all back in action, and they had been joined by something that looked like a cross between several breeds of dinosaur and Billy Bob Thornton and a woman in a blue jumpsuit surrounded in a nimbus of pale light that looked a lot like Christine’s own force field. She barely had time to register their presence when they came down on her like a waterfall of anvils.
Lightning bolts and smoke arrows distracted her until she got clobbered by Day-Glo Boy and Billy Bob Dino, who smacked her back and forth like she was a Ping Pong ball. One smack, two smacks, three. They hurt. She smacked back. She pictured two giant fists closing down on Day-Glo from opposite directions. There was another deafening clang and Day-Glo tottered and went down. Christine blocked Dino-Bill’s next claw attack and gave him a blast in the face that sent him reeling. Her shields shimmered and crackled under more electrical attacks from Storm Skank, which made her miss the fact that Blue Jumpsuit was coming up from behind her with a giant mallet made out of blue energy in her hands. Christine turned around just in time to see the mallet coming down on her –
Ouch.
– head.
Christine found herself lying in a small crater. Water from a busted water main was splashing down on her, and her shields were weak enough that the water was getting through to her. The Power Strangers were coming after her, and everything hurt. Something felt broken on the right side of her chest, and every breath she took hurt like someone was poking her with a knife. Lethal force was on the menu all right. She was about to get zerged into oblivion.
A silver and red blur flashed overhead. Bam. Day-Glo was lying next to her now, and he wasn’t even twitching. Bam, bam, and Mallet Bitch and Fletchorino were gone from view. Lightning Beotch started flying up, and the blur caught up with her. Bam, and she was down too. Dino Bob managed to land a punch on the blur. It didn’t seem to do anything. Bam. Dino went down.
The blur became a tall man in a bright costume, a tall man who could have posed for a Greek sculptor. He loomed over Christine, looking at her with a maniacal grin on his face. She recognized him from Hyperpedia, except in the pictures she had seen of the man, his expression hadn’t looked as crazy as it did now. He was looking at her in a way that made her want to blow a rape whistle.
Bam.
Face-Off
Chicago, Illinois, March 14, 2013
The lights went out.
The only illumination left in the room was the blowtorch flickering over Kestrel’s twisting body. The stench of charred flesh was overwhelming. Boris stood up, the torch in his hand still flaring but no longer burning Kestrel. Her screams died out, replaced by harsh, panting breaths. You could kill her but you couldn’t make her cry.
Cold, unearthly laughter echoed outside.
The radio show producers hadn’t done justice to that laughter. Maybe they hadn’t done it justice on purpose. That sound was not something you wanted in your living room at any time of the day or night, even if you knew it was a silly make-believe radio program.
Nothing sane could laugh like that. Nothing human, either.
“The Lurker’s here!” Blondie shouted before giving out a stream of barked orders in Russian. Boris turned off the torch and everyone trooped out and shut the door behind them, leaving us lying in the dark.
“Mel! Melanie!” Condor said. I had never heard so much anguish in his voice. He flopped towards Kestrel – Melanie Bauer; I’d never called her Mel, and she’d have punched me in the throat if I’d tried. Kestrel grunted, took a deep breath, exhaled. “Let me suffer in peace for a sec, lover,” she said finally, and if her voice wasn’t as steady as it normally was, I couldn’t blame her. She took another breath. “I couldn’t stay in subspace, dammit. Sorry for the screaming.”
“Sorry for…” Condor’s voice broke in a harsh laugh, with more than a bit of a sob mixed in it.
Outside the door, gunfire and the sharper sound of energy weapons started out, single shots at first, followed by long fusillades. Interspaced amidst the gunshots, the laughter continued.
“Those sorry bastards are so screwed now,” Lester Harris said.
“Couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch,” I commented. Someone started screaming in terror and agony, more loudly than anything they had gotten out of Kestrel. The scream died with a gurgling sound that sent a chill down my back.
The buzzing sound that the backpack disruptors made joined the symphony of destruction playing outside. Shit. If they took the Lurker down, we were done. “We have to do something.” I turned to Lester. “We'll get you loose first.”
“How?”
“You are tied up with duct tape. Condor should be able to chew through it. I'd do it, but I can't make a face right now.”
Lester crawled towards Condor, who gnawed through the duct tape binding Lester, and after a few seconds the Lurker's sidekick was free and rubbing his wrists. “I'd love to return the favor,” Lester said. “But how? Those shackles are solid steel.”
“The Russkies didn’t think things through,” I said. “They left their toy behind.”
Kestrel managed to laugh at that.
It took some blind groping for Lester to find the acetylene torch in the dark, and some fumbling to get it working. He�
�d never used a blowtorch before but Condor had, and he talked Lester through it. Lester didn’t even have to cut all the way through the cuffs, just burn through them enough to destroy the circuitry zapping our nervous systems. He did my cuffs first, and he burned me pretty good while doing it, but after what Kestrel had gone through I didn’t make a peep. As soon as feeling returned to my hands, I tore the shackles off me and freed everybody else.
Under the blowtorch’s flickering light, we examined Kestrel. The burns were horrible, and her spine had been damaged; her legs wouldn't work even after she was free. I had no idea how long it would take for Kestrel’s regenerative abilities to repair the damage. She certainly was out of this fight.
“Stop crowding me,” Kestrel said after a few seconds. “I'll heal sooner or later. Now do me a favor, get out there and kill them all.”
“Can do,” I replied. Condor squeezed Kestrel's hand one more time and whispered something into her ear. That let me deal with the metal door on my own, which was good, because I had a lot of energy to burn. One kick and the door buckled enough I could get a good grip on it. I grabbed one of the door's bent corners, braced myself against the wall, and ripped it clear off its hinges. We walked out.
Condor and I found ourselves in a utility tunnel, pipes and cables running all along the walls and ceiling. Emergency lights had come on, illuminating everything in a dull red hue. Above us we could hear the muted sounds of loud Euro-Tech music. We must be underneath some Mafiya-owned nightclub.
“I’ll go left,” I said. Condor nodded and went right.
The tunnel made a turn some fifty feet out. As I rounded the corner, I found Boris’ body. He’d traded the blowtorch for a large machete. It hadn’t done him much good. The blade and the tattooed arm and hand that had been holding it lay six feet away from the rest of him; other pieces were scattered around the tunnel. Much as I’d wanted to kill the sick fuck, I didn't enjoy the sight. There were other bodies strewn around. They were all very messily dead, as if someone had run them through various industrial devices, the kind that crushed, shredded and chipped whatever was thrown into them.
More gunfire rattled further on. I ran towards it.
I turned another corner and saw two Russians advancing slowly and trying to look in every direction at once. One had an assault rifle, the other an A-75. They started to turn the guns towards me.
They never had a chance.
I closed the distance before they fully realized what was going on, grabbed them by their faces and smashed their skulls together. The guy with the A-75 managed to squeeze the trigger before he died, and I got a nasty flash burn on the side of my head. The blast also set the corpses’ clothes on fire. My own clothes, even though they look normal, are highly resistant to fire, so I was only singed a little. The energy rifles really weren’t meant to be used in an enclosed space. I stomped on the smoldering corpses until the flames went out, just to be a good citizen.
Another corner, and lots more bodies. At the other end of the tunnel, I saw a Russian fly towards a wall and bounce off it before landing limply face down. A second later, Condor came into view. We had cleared the tunnel, except for the one corridor between us. Sporadic gunfire was still coming from there.
I backpedaled and picked up the A-75. Its finish was a bit crispy from the back blast, but it was still in working order. They made them tough in the Ukraine. Condor saw me pick up a gun, nodded and grabbed a submachine gun off another corpse. We approached the central corridor from opposite sides, and I took a quick peek around the corner.
It was a very quick peek, since somebody started shooting the second they saw me. I ducked back as gun and blaster fire tore through the corridor, punching holes and blasting chunks of concrete into the wall. I managed to get a good look before ducking, though.
The corridor led to a large storage area. Blondie and half a dozen thugs had made a rough barricade with boxes and crates and were forted up there. I crouched low to the ground holding the A-75 by its pistol grip, and fired a couple of blasts in their direction. The return fire was pretty heavy, but someone started screaming in pain. Even a near miss from a blaster would do serious damage. On the other side, Condor fired a couple of bursts at them, letting them know I wasn’t alone.
This could take a while. The Russkies had too much firepower for us to charge in. And one of their disruptors was still in play. I could see the twisting energy coiling against the wall – and reaching towards me. Luckily there was a limit to how far the energy stream could bend, but I really didn’t like how it seemed to be alive. Just for shits and giggles, I shot the stream with my blaster. The back blast would have singed my eyebrows off if I’d had any, but did not seem to have any effect on the disruptive stream. Oh, well.
A couple of seconds later, the energy stream ceased abruptly. Someone kept shooting short bursts with a regular gun, but they were not being aimed in our direction.
The laughter was back.
I risked another peek just in time to see Blondie shoot at a cloaked figure as it closed in on him. Nobody else was standing. There was a pulse of darkness that swallowed the emergency lights for a second. When the lights came back on, the cloaked figure stepped back and what was left of Blondie dropped to the floor. From the sternum down, Blondie’s body looked like it had been run through a meat grinder. No Type One Neo could survive that. His face was grey and had been twisted into something that you knew could not be alive even without any evidence of injury.
The Lurker laughed again and turned to face us.
His cloak was long and had a hood that shrouded his head. There was something wrong with the cloak’s edges: they seemed to get longer or shorter between eye blinks, and they fluttered as if caught by a breeze that wasn’t there. The Lurker’s trademark Great War-issue gas mask protruded under his hood like some monstrous snout. Unlike the one I'd seen on dozens of magazine covers and trading cards, this mask was covered with glowing geometric patterns that made me queasy if I looked at them for more than a few seconds. The glowing symbols were new, that was sure.
“Lurker. It’s good to see you,” Condor said, sounding a lot less certain than he usually did.
“Condor,” Lurker said, giving him a brief nod. His voice had the same creepy, whispering and echoing undertones as his laughter, like it was being distorted by distance – or as if it was traveling through a medium other than air.
Having performed as many pleasantries as he was going to, the Lurker turned to one of the backpack disruptors the late Russians had been packing. He started disassembling it – and the pieces remained floating in the air as he took the device apart, linked by thin lines of dark light that seemed to create a blueprint around the pieces.
“No, no, this is all wrong. All wrong,” the Lurker hissed. “He's tapping into the Outside, the fool.” More disturbing laughter. “What’s his plan? His plan. My plan. He knows too much. Have to fix that.”
Oh, boy. I glanced at Condor, and he looked as disturbed as I felt. The Lurker was not playing with a full deck, which thrilled me to no fucking end.
The mystery man finished dismantling the back-pack component of the disruptor. A ball of swirling dark energy emerged from it, the same twisting sinuous stuff that had taken us down at the warehouse. The Lurker saw it, clapped his hands in delight and did a little hop. “Pretty.” He sounded like a child – a child who’d shambled back from the dark lake where he had drowned to share something cold and terrible with his dearly beloved.
I don’t creep out easily, but this was doing the job just fine.
“Go get Lester and Kestrel,” I told Condor. “We need to get out of here.” Sooner or later more Russians were going to show up, and if they had more of those disruptors the Lurker was so enthralled with, they might bag us again, him included. Condor nodded and left.
“Ah, Lurker,” I said, and he turned towards me. The blob of swirling lights vanished the second his attention was diverted, along with a buzzing sound I hadn’t quite noticed. The di
sruptor’s pieces clattered loudly on the ground.
“Thanks for the help,” I continued. He said nothing, just looked at me through his disturbing gas mask, his head slightly cocked to one side. “These assholes were after you, and there's probably more where they came from. We need to get out of here.”
The Lurker cocked his head the other way. An eye blink later, he was right in front of me. I was positive I didn’t see him cross the intervening distance. “You were with her,” he said. “Where is she? Is she here? She’s not here. Not here but near. Where?”
I wanted to step away from the whacko in the gas mask – hell, I wanted to run away – but held my ground. Turning one’s back on the insane rarely turns out well.
“Christine?” I said. “You know Christine.” I didn’t like where this was going.
“Christine,” the Lurker repeated. “Where is she? Where is my daughter?”
Chapter Seventeen
Christine Dark
Somewhere over the Eastern Seaboard, March 14, 2013
So cold. Everything hurts. She didn’t want to wake up. Something bad was on the other side of her closed eyelids, and she wasn’t looking forward to knowing what it was.
The universe doesn’t give a rat’s ass about what you want, her brain helpfully whispered. Do, or do not, and all that crap.
Christine opened her eyes and regretted it immediately. She was moving through thin clouds that rushed by at ludicrous speeds. Down below she saw glimpses of the earth below, at about the cruising altitude of a jetliner. Wicked high, to be technical about it. She felt cold, but nothing like she should be feeling that high up. She also was being held at the waist by a very well-muscled arm and hanging face down. They were moving fast, so fast she could see the ground moving below her, moving faster than she'd ever seen from an airliner. Strangely enough, her hair wasn’t even fluttering – and at those speeds her hair should be not just fluttering, but being ripped clean off along with her face.
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