by Tom Reynolds
Midnight's words are just starting to sink in when I notice the monitor feed has switched to one of the other cameras in the auditorium. The image is sweeping across the crowd. The faces of terrified people with knives held to their throats fill the screen before the camera abruptly stops, right on Sarah's face.
"Aww, what a pretty young thing. Bring her down. If she doesn't bring in the big bucks, no one will, and I'll just cut my losses. Get it? Cut my losses?” The Multiplier says to a completely silent arena full of terrified people. “It's a joke about slashing all of your throats! Jeez, tough crowd."
"Midnight ..." I say into my phone, my voice trembling with fear and anger.
"I'm in. Thirty seconds and I'll have power cut to the entire building. You'll have only a few seconds before the backup generators kick in, but it should be enough time."
"I don't care if it's enough time or not. In thirty-one seconds I'm launching in there whether the cameras are down or not."
"Connor ..."
"No. I don't care. What good is keeping my identity a secret if I can't save one of the few people I care about?" I say into my phone's receiver, trying not to yell but failing.
On the screen, I see one of the copies dragging Sarah by her arm down the coliseum stairs. She's not moving quickly, but she’s also not struggling in an obvious way. She saw what happened to the last person who put up a fight, and she's smarter than that, but the fear on her face is real.
The feed switches to a different camera, and I can see her eyes. I see them scanning the arena, panicked, looking for someone to help her. Looking for me. There's no doubt in my mind that I'm going to save her. Not because I'm confident in this plan, but because I cannot imagine anything other than saving her. I cannot fathom a world where I fail at this. She may be looking for Connor to help, but Connor can't. Omni is her only hope now.
"Ten seconds," Midnight's voice says in my ear.
My eyes are still glued to the monitor, watching Sarah slowly being dragged to what she must think is an almost certain death. For a moment, the idea of grabbing her instead of The Multiplier crosses my mind. I don’t know whether or not I can save everyone in this arena, but I do know I could grab her and be miles away from here before anyone even noticed.
I can't though. Once I go down that path, there's no coming back. I can't sacrifice an arena full of innocent people just to save the one person I care about most. It's all or nothing, and I know that from the second the idea pops into my mind.
"Five seconds."
Sarah trips on one of the stairs, and the copy holding her splits in two, each grabbing one of her arms and holding her up so they can bring her down the stairs faster. They can’t wait get her in front of the cameras and use her as leverage to try to get what they want. Money. Or notoriety. Or outrage. At this point, I'm not sure what it is he's actually after. I'm starting to learn that it's a waste of time to even speculate about the motives of monsters like him.
"Now, Connor!" Midnight shouts into my ear.
The lights in the arena all flicker out a mere second later. There's a slow, dull sound of the equipment around the massive complex grinding to a halt, but I barely notice because I'm already running before the last light has even gone out.
The television monitors turn black, and the last light flickers off. This is it. Without breaking my stride, I flick both fists out to my sides. Before my metabands can even fully materialize, I'm already bringing them up to crash into each other across my chest. There's an explosion of energy as my body is enveloped in crimson. Still running, the suit pours down my body and reaches my legs and feet. As it finishes its job and covers the last bits of my body, I push off on my right leg and everything stops. Everything but me, that is.
At first, I can barely see more than a foot in front of me, and I run toward where I think the floor of the arena is based on memory. My left foot misses a step, and now I'm falling. Time seems to slow down even more to allow me to correct this misstep. Now, even I'm moving in what feels like slow motion. As I fall through the air, about to face plant right onto the concrete steps, my vision finally adjusts. Still flailing in the air, I can immediately see everything in the pitch-dark arena as though it were bright as day. Including and most especially, The Multiplier standing in the center ring, waiting for Sarah to be brought to him.
I catch my footing, and time begins to retain its normal speed for me, but the rest of the crowd is still perfectly frozen in place. They’re frozen in time like statues, with no idea that the next seconds of their lives are either going to be their last or when they’re saved from almost certain death.
Pushing these thoughts and self-doubt out of my head, I focus on my target. He's frozen with the rest of the crowd, a relief considering I couldn't have known for sure if he possessed super speed too. It was a concern I didn't have time to share with Midnight, but one I'm sure he had as well.
I weave in and out of bystanders and Multiplier replicas, finding a central path to the original version. There's nothing between me and the original Multiplier, standing in the center of the ring, completely alone. If I have any hope of breaking his bond with these clones, I have to dig down deep and run faster and harder than I ever have before.
A few feet from him, I begin to see the air ripple in front of me, a sonic boom just beginning to form. I put my head down and aim for The Multiplier's abdomen. It's a strange feeling to actually hope that someone has super strength, but I really, really don't want to run into this guy so hard that he's cut in two. I won’t be responsible for another death, even when others' lives are in danger. And doing it now, when so many of these children have already witnessed unimaginable horror, is not what I want my legacy to be. No, if all goes according to plan, the only thing the audience will see is The Multiplier and his clones suddenly disappear. I'm moving so fast at this point that I won't even be a blur to them.
Contact. I hit The Multiplier hard and wrap my arms around him to make sure he stays with me and isn't thrown to the side by the sudden wave of momentum. My focus changes from him to the emergency doors behind him. That's where we're going.
We reach the outside, and I see dozens of police and emergency vehicles surrounding the building. Police tape has been rolled out in front of them, creating a perimeter to keep back morbidly curious pedestrians, but also the family and friends of those inside, desperately hoping for some positive sign, some hope, that their loved ones will be okay. I'm hoping to be that positive sign, even if they can't see me.
While the intentions of most of these people are good, they've created a problem that I hadn't anticipated: how am I going to get around them? They’re packed so closely together that I don’t have room to weave in-between them, especially not with a passenger along for the ride. My mind is working as quickly as my legs are, but still, I’m running out of ideas, fast. Teleporting is out of the question; I'm not far enough away from the copies yet for it to work. Flying is an option, but I can't fly as fast as I can run. Not yet, at least. I've been running my whole life. All right, maybe not my whole life, but you get the idea. Flying is still relatively new to me. Drastically changing directions isn't an option either. I can't chance even a slight reduction in speed. A quarter of a second might be all he needs to send a message to all of his copies to kill.
Even with time slowed down around me, I'm approaching the crowd fast, and I don't have the luxury of calling Midnight to ask if he has any ideas. There's only one thing I can think of, something I haven't tried yet, but I hope will work. I take three more running steps before I jump as hard as I can. My hunch was right. Before my feet leave the ground, I can see the cracks in the concrete begin to spider web out from the impact point. I launch into the air without slowing down at all.
My ascent continues above the arena itself, and then above even the nearby skyscrapers. The feeling is very different from flying. I can feel the weight and momentum behind my leap and the lack of control. The city shrinks below me as I pass through the motionless
clouds above.
Ever so slightly, the positioning of The Multiplier's body begins to change. I was moving so quickly when I grabbed him that his body hasn’t had time to catch up with the momentum hitting it. Now, his body slowly begins to crumple and drape over my shoulder. He still can't have had the time needed to register what's happened to him, but I don't know how strong his powers are. It may not take very much thought at all, little more than instinct, for him to command his copies to carry out their deed before he's too far away to control them.
I reach the apex of my jump and begin the descent back to the ground below. Breaking through the cloud cover, I see that the city is starting to fade away behind me in the distance, but there's something else too. A pulling. The arc of my fall back to solid ground doesn't feel right. Something is pulling me back toward the city.
It's the copies. It's their link to The Multiplier. They still exist, and if they're still strong enough to pull The Multiplier back toward them, then they’re powerful enough to follow his commands.
Less than a second has passed from when I grabbed him. The Multiplier's brain has to have realized that something has happened, but is still temporarily shocked and confused, no doubt. I struggle to keep moving forward, but it's impossible as the only elements controlling my fall right now are gravity and the pull of the copies. I still can't risk flying since it might slow me down just enough to give The Multiplier the split second he needs.
The ground is coming up fast. I steady myself and prepare for the impact. There isn't time to trip again. No time to screw this up or have it slow me down. Past the tree line, I can see the ocean. That's my chance. The one place nearby where I'm sure there won't be anything to stop me.
I lean forward and prepare to, literally, hit the ground running; there's no room for error. A winding road comes into view below me, and I decide to make it my target as best as I can during this controlled fall. I'm almost there when I can feel slight movements on my right shoulder. It's The Multiplier. He’s beginning to stir now that I've slowed down. This is my last chance.
My feet are already moving when I hit the pavement. They're moving so quickly that they barely even touch the ground. I bear down and push myself down the winding road toward the ocean. Even the sand on the beach doesn't slow me down. My legs and feet are moving so quickly that they’re becoming a blur even to me. Just because I have this speed and strength doesn't mean I'm completely immune to pain, however. My legs hurt more than I've ever felt them hurt before. Lactic acid fills my thighs and burns, and my muscles cramp and spasm. There's no time for that, though.
Hitting the water does not feel any different than hitting the sand at this speed. At a certain point, every surface feels the same, even water. I'm running too quickly to create splashes, but I can still feel the pull of The Multiplier's copies at my back. The pull is stronger than ever, and I hope that means that I’m near the breaking point. I have to be, because I can't bear to think of what will happen if I'm not, and my legs feel like they’re close to giving out no matter how insistently I command them not to.
A rogue wave appears in front of me. I must already be hundreds, if not thousands, of miles out to sea when it begins to loom in the distance, at least a hundred feet tall. For a moment, I consider plowing straight through it, but I have serious doubts about my ability to make it all the way through to the other side with time already beginning to slip away from me and my body screaming in pain at being pushed so hard. The wave is too wide to go around, though, so there's just one other option.
The first few steps up the face of the wave are difficult; I can feel the water beginning to give way beneath my feet as I struggle to scale an object made purely of liquid. The fifth step is where I gain my footing, and before I know it, I'm at the crest of the wave. The pull of the copies back at the circus is stronger than ever. I hit the top of the wave and push off with my left foot as hard as I can manage, hoping to propel myself past any other waves that may be hiding behind it.
Only a few feet into the air and I feel it, like a rubber band reaching its limit and snapping. The pull isn't there anymore, and the momentum carrying me forward is let free. Suddenly, I'm flying through the air many times faster than I was before. Time catches up with me, and everything is moving at its normal speed now, except for The Multiplier and me. We’re both moving at many times the speed of sound.
I struggle to hold onto him as we both hit the surface of the water, immediately skipping off of it like a well-thrown stone, hundreds of feet into the air. Then, we hit the water again. This happens over and over and over. Water enters my lungs, and it feels like this is never going to stop.
When it does finally stop, the new situation isn't that much better. I'm God only knows how far away from land, and I've lost sight of The Multiplier. I begin to panic as I wonder if maybe I underestimated his abilities after all, and he just teleported out of here once he got a grip of what was actually going on. Maybe he simply teleported himself back to the arena. If he did, he'd have to work quickly to replicate himself enough times to regain control of the crowd, now that I've broken the link between his copies and they’ve undoubtedly disappeared, but it’s still possible. He would have to know the arena would be the first place I would check for him, though, and he wouldn't be that stupid, would he?
There's another possibility, which is that he's hurt or maybe even worse. I hit him at top speed, maybe even as fast as anyone could. His metabands should have provided him with enough protection against the impact based on the invulnerability he demonstrated previously, but there's just no way to know for sure.
This monster may be a murderer, but if I'm going to be different from him, I need to do whatever I can to save him. Let a jury decide his fate, or at least, The Agency. I don't need another life on my conscience; I’ve got enough already. He doesn't deserve to die out here in the ocean; he deserves to die of old age after being locked in a cell for decades.
The best plan to find him seems to be getting above the water and using my enhanced vision to try to see where he is. Once I've found him, it should be easy to apprehend him and bring him into Silver Island now that his metabands are presumably weakened. Speaking of weakened metabands, mine have to be somewhat low on energy now that I've run halfway across the world with them, but I should be able to take in The Multiplier, assuming he's even more wounded than I am after being ripped away from his clones.
This all seems like a really good plan in my head, but that's the thing about plans: no matter how good they sound in your head, they don't mean anything when you're not expecting what happens next. In this case, the unexpected element thrown my way happens to be the fact that not only is The Multiplier not dead and very much alive, but he's also not nearly as weakened as I hoped. I find this out by being pulled back underwater just as I'm inches from the surface and about to take my first breath.
Normally, it wouldn't be easy to pull me underwater when I've got my metabands activated. After all, I'm pretty strong when they're powered up, as evidenced by my ability to run across the globe in less than a few seconds. I find out pretty quickly though, that it's easy to pull me underwater when my metabands are low. I'm exhausted, and there are hundreds of hands doing the work.
The Multiplier's copies didn't simply disappear when I thought I broke their connection in the middle of the ocean. They got dragged along with him, and now they're dragging me under the water. I kick at the hands as hard as I can, trying desperately to shake free of their grasp, but there's too many of them. I can't teleport with this much luggage either. If I'm going to beat him, or them, I need to get out of the ocean and back into the sky.
Turning my head up, I can see the sun shining through the placid surface of the water. Fingers are now reaching for my shoulders and arms, scraping at my suit as though they’re trying to rip it right off my body, like that would mean getting a firmer grip to bring me down to a watery death. They're not going to get that satisfaction, though.
The water
around me begins to vibrate and bubble as I summon up the last reserves of my energy. I've got to give this my all if I have any hope of breaking free of what now feels like thousands of bodies dragging me deeper and deeper. The clones seem to realize what's happening, and their grips tighten even further. They're not going to let me go that easily.
The bubbling around me intensifies as if it were boiling, and I know it's time. At first, the water feels like it's fighting against me as I rush toward the surface, but soon, it feels as though there's no resistance at all. The space around me is getting brighter and brighter as I reach for where the water meets the sky. The surface tension of the water explodes as I reach the air and now travel even faster into the early afternoon sky of whatever time zone I'm currently in. I take a deep breath and fill my lungs with air once again. It feels like I haven't taken a single, full breath since I began running at the circus. I realize that it's probably true.
The clones are gripping tight, but they feel lighter and lighter the higher up into the sky I go. Looking down, I can see a cascade of them falling off, losing their grip on the mirrored copy above them and falling into the sea. Even with super strength, it would be hard for anyone to maintain a grip when they've got dozens of bodies clinging to them. They continue to drop. Dozens and dozens of them splash down into the sea until there’s just one left, desperately gripping my ankle.
"Help!" he gasps, choking and coughing water out of his lungs.
It's The Multiplier, or the original, I should say. There's a look of terror in his eyes that I know is real. Even a psychopath like him couldn't act this well. One of his hands slips loose and the other tightens around my ankle as he lets out a desperate scream.
My metabands begin beeping and displaying a red flashing light bar. Reserve power. Time to be careful. I come to an abrupt and sudden halt. The change in momentum causes The Multiplier to lose his grip and continue flying upwards, even though I've stopped completely. Luckily for him, I reach out and grab his throat as he zooms past me. I stop him from continuing his trajectory into the afternoon sky.
