The Great Destroyers

by Caroline Tung Richmond

  It looks like a real nail-biter. The nearby streets have been barricaded by the National Guard, which has sent in at least twenty Goliaths by the looks of it. At least no fighting has broken out yet. Both the American and the Soviet mechas are merely standing there for now, awaiting orders, but I can’t look away. One false move and this could mean war.

  “Wait, who’s that?” I ask, pointing at the corner of the screen.

  A slim figure has sprinted out of the hotel’s side entrance. I can’t see their face in detail, but judging by their height and build, I have a good hunch who it might be.

  “Lidiya,” I whisper.

  She’s running up to the nearest Vostok, just as her KGB-looking bodyguards barrel out of the hotel to find her. They’re already too late. Lidiya’s muscling her way up to the cockpit, shouting something at the soldier inside, and before I can take another breath, she has somehow pulled him out and slotted herself into the thing.

  “She’s making a break for it!” Sam exclaims.

  Leaping over a row of hedges, Lidiya catapults herself onto the street and away from the American forces. The broadcast starts to shake as the cameramen give chase, struggling to keep up with the action. The Goliaths have already sprinted after Lidiya, but the Vostoks move to block them even though they’re heavily outnumbered. The two sides clash on-screen, metal smacking metal, but three Goliaths manage to break free from the tangle. Moving fast, they catch up to Lidiya, and one of them grabs her by the ankle, but she has dealt with moves like this her whole career. She kicks out with her free leg before pushing one of the Goliaths into the others, sending them toppling over like dominos. With a great big leap, she soars so high that even the cameras struggle to follow her, but more Goliaths bolt after her.

  “We have to call down those troops!” I say, gesturing at the TV as if that’ll do anything. “They’re chasing after the wrong suspect!”

  Dad and Sam are still staring at the television until I step in between them.

  “Did you hear what I said?” I say, waving a hand in their faces. “We have to tell Kennedy to stop those Goliaths before they hurt Lidiya.” Or worse, kill her. Khrushchev will have no choice then but to retaliate. “Because we’ll have a real fight on our hands if they do.”

  My father finally snaps out of his daze. “There’s a phone at the nurses’ desk. I can use that.” He looks at Sam and says, “Do me a favor and check on Peter, will you? He’s napping next door.”

  “Right-o, Mr. Linden,” Sam replies.

  “Did I become invisible or something?” I call after them, but they’re already in motion

  “You stay where you are,” Dad cautions as he and Sam disappear out of sight.

  The door has barely swung back shut before I start moving. Who knows how long it’ll take for my dad to get through to the White House? Probably too long.

  We need an in-person confrontation.

  I stare at the IV in my arm and grit my teeth. Well, here goes nothing. I peel up the bandage and remove the needle, fighting back nausea because I’ve never done this before and because it’s disgusting. Once that’s over with and the dizzy spell passes, I search for my clothes, which I find balled up in a bag in the closet. It’s the same uniform I was wearing during the final match—was it really only yesterday?—but I put it back on because it sure beats my hospital gown that gapes open in the back.

  I stuff Sam’s camera into his bag and sling it over my shoulder since I’ll need the proof to back up my allegations. Peeking out the door, I make sure that Dad and Sam are out of eyeshot before I slip into the hallway and locate the stairwell. Down I go, one floor, then two. I grab on to hold the railing because my legs are a little wobbly and the last thing I need is to take a tumble down these steps.

  “Jo!”

  I lurch to a stop and look up to see Peter standing there, his hair messy from sleep. “What’re you doing out of bed? You should be resting!” he says as soon as he reaches me. “Sam and I have been looking for you. The nurses too.”

  “I need to stop the Goliaths.”

  Peter looks at me funny. “What Goliaths?”

  “They’re— Oh, never mind. All you need to know is that Khrushchev and Kennedy are about to duke it out, and we have to stop it!”

  He gapes at me like I might need to go to the psych ward, but I don’t have a minute to spare to explain what has happened. “Let me go, Peter,” I say again.

  “The doctors said—”

  “I’m feeling fine, see? Besides, it won’t matter what I feel like if an international crisis breaks out in an hour.” I have to show the White House that Rushi was behind all of this, not Lidiya. “But I can stop it.”

  I try to move down a step, but my little brother is tall enough and strong enough to block me now. “Peter—”

  “I’m coming with you,” he says.

  “What? No, you can’t.”

  But he holds firm. “What if you collapse on the road, huh? Come on, you can explain what’s happening on the way there. Where are we headed?”

  I can’t seem to make my mouth work. Where has this side of my brother come from?

  “Aren’t we supposed to be in a hurry?” he prods.

  I realize I better get a move on, and we descend the rest of the way together. At the bottom of the staircase, there’s a door that leads into the street, and I turn around in a slow circle as soon as we step outside to get my bearings.

  We’re in luck. A few blocks ahead, I spot the Smithsonian Castle, and beyond that, I glimpse the green strip of lawn of the National Mall. We’re not far from the White House.

  “So what exactly is the plan?” Peter asks as we start walking.

  “We have to tell the president to draw down the National Guard before they kill Lidiya. She’s innocent.”

  “Wait, she poisoned you, remember?”

  “No, she was framed by Rushi. I got it all on videotape too.” I pat the backpack. “We have to show the evidence to Kennedy or whoever else will listen.”

  Peter looks at me like I’m speaking Russian. “Why would Rushi poison you?”

  “Your guess is as good as mine. Right now though, we’ve got a huge fish to fry.”

  I try to pick up the pace, but my body protests. I might not have drunk the full dose of Rushi’s poison, but my legs feel like I’m dragging around tree trunks. Or maybe they feel wooden because I’ve been laid up in the hospital for almost a whole day. Either way, I have to push forward. That is, until I hear footsteps. I barely have time to glance over my shoulder before Sam catches up to us.

  “You haven’t even been discharged!” Sam shouts at me before he points at Peter. “And you! How’d she rope you into this?”

  “Hey, leave him out of it!” I say. I try to sidestep him, but Sam is a wall of muscle.

  “And where are you going with my backpack?”

  “The White House!” I say, frustrated. And I probably would be there by now if these boys didn’t keep interrupting me. “Look, I’m not going to twiddle my thumbs in the hospital when I could be doing something to stop an international war.”

  Sam’s mouth tightens. He blinks at me, then at Peter. “Your sister’s bent, you know that?”

  Peter coughs out a laugh.

  Meanwhile, I plant a hand on my hip. “Are you going to help us or not, Sam? Someone has to show Kennedy this video.”

  Sam pauses a little too long for my liking but finally replies with “I guess so, although you’re going to give your dad a heart attack.”

  “We can ask for forgiveness later. We have to hurry.”

  Washington might not be a large city, but in this humidity and heat, every step feels like walking through soup. But we make decent time since most of the tourists have cleared out. They’re probably racing to the airport to escape Washington after they learned about the showdown at the Manger Hay-Adams. We’re halfway across the Mall now, and I’m trying to think about how I will convince the White House guards to let me in, when we hear a loud commot
ion behind us.

  “What in the—” Sam says.

  The three of us freeze as we watch Lidiya bolting down 14th Street, veering straight toward us until she makes a sharp right that leads to the Washington Monument. A group of Goliaths come sprinting after her in hot pursuit. They’re using their built-in megaphones to shout at her to stop, and one of them fires off a few rounds into the sky, probably to scare her, and then one of his friends joins in.

  Except he shoots directly at Lidiya.

  He must be a poor shot because the bullet flies wide, but I could strangle him. If he keeps this up, sooner or later he’ll find his target and Lidiya will go down. Wars have started over far less.

  “We better get to the White House fast,” Peter says, a newfound urgency in his tone.

  Those Goliaths are gaining on Lidiya, and I’ve got a bad feeling that everything will blow up soon because she isn’t the type to put up her hands and surrender. I’m about to start sprinting, when something catches my eye on the left—a piece of metal shining in the sunlight.

  It’s the Goliath exhibit on the National Mall, the same one that I gawked at when I first arrived in Washington. The mechas are all there, including the two that Sam and I posed in front of for the photo shoot.

  I change course and head toward the mechas with an idea cooking in my head. “We can catch up to Lidiya if we suit up quick!”

  “Hold on, aren’t we going to the White House?” Sam says, confused.

  “Change of plans!” I reply.

  We reach the mecha exhibition and Sam gives me a boost over the fence, but I hit a snag when I try to turn on the Goliaths. I can’t access the power switch without punching in the correct passcode.

  “Can you please explain what you’re planning in that brain of yours?” Sam huffs.

  “We have to stop the National Guard ourselves! We don’t have time for anything else. Didn’t you see those soldiers shooting at Lidiya?” I motion at him to help me. “You used this Goliath before. What’s the passcode?”

  Sam taps a few sequences of numbers into the pad, but none of them work.

  “A little faster, Kealey?” I say to him.

  “I did this a week ago! Give me some room. You’re practically breathing down my neck,” he snips back.

  I’m starting to regret this detour of mine until I notice Peter hovering next to me.

  “Let me give it a try,” my brother says.

  He sounds so sure that I move aside and tell Sam to do the same. Peter approaches the Goliath, but he doesn’t bother trying out different passcodes. He works to jigger open the control panel.

  “Any of you got something sharp I could borrow?” Peter says.

  Sam digs through his trousers. “How about a pocketknife?”

  “That’s perfect.” Peter grabs the thing and flips open the blade, using it to pry open the keypad like a clamshell and expose the tangle of wires inside. With nimble fingers, he isolates a yellow wire from the rest and starts sawing away at it with the knife.

  Sam observes all of this with a mixture of apprehension and amazement, especially when the control panel gives a happy chirp and its lights flash green, sliding open to reveal the power switch that it had been protecting.

  “You’re a gem, have I told you that?” I say to Peter before I motion at Sam. “You take this Goliath. Peter and I will work on the other.”

  While Sam gets suited up, Peter hot-wires the next mecha and I clamber up its frame to get settled into the cockpit. I stow Sam’s backpack by my feet and strap myself in before I call out to my brother that he ought to stay put right here and we’ll come back for him soon. But Peter is nowhere in sight.

  “Peter?” I shout, turning my Goliath in a circle. Where did that kid go?

  A third mecha steps in front of me. It’s one of the 1959 models that’s shorter than my own, but in perfect working order. And right there in the cockpit is Peter.

  I have to blink a couple times. “What are you doing in there?”

  “Coming with you guys,” Peter says. His face has paled a shade. He might’ve spent hours fixing up my Goliath back home, but I can’t remember the last time he actually suited up inside one. He’s nervous, I can tell, but there’s grit in his eyes too.

  But I can’t let him do this. “Out of the question.”

  “Give the kid a chance,” Sam says, but I shush him. This is Linden family business.

  “You stay here, Peter,” I tell my brother.

  “I’m coming,” he replies, lifting his chin like I do whenever I’m feeling stubborn.

  “I said no! Look, it’s real swell that you want to help out and all, but you have to let Sam and me handle this, squirt.”

  Peter’s face shifts. The nervousness there a second ago has already faded and replaced with something else. Something steely. “Don’t call me squirt.”

  Then he pulls a real sneaky move on me.

  He starts running after Lidiya.

  “Peter!” I cry out, but good God, he is fast. I give chase over the soft grass with Sam a step behind me, leaving enormous footprints in our wake. I yell at Peter to stop, but he doesn’t even glance back once.

  “What’s the plan now?” Sam shouts as we sprint side by side.

  “Catch up to my brother, what else? And grab Lidiya before those Goliaths accidentally kill her!”

  We must be quite the sight—a bunch of mechas running loose on the National Mall. A few bystanders scurry out of our way while others snap photos as we cross through the shadow of the Washington Monument and run parallel to the Reflecting Pool.

  “There they are!” I say when I spot the Lincoln Memorial ahead.

  Lidiya has taken a stand on the front steps. She’s fending off four of the National Guards’ Goliaths, taking them all at once. Our forces might have strength in numbers, but she isn’t afraid to show them why she’s ranked number one in the world.

  She grabs one Goliath by the shoulders and tosses him away like she’s flicking a housefly. Then she spins around and trips up another before throwing out an elbow to catch a third in the throat.

  And that’s when the fourth Goliath starts firing live rounds. The rat-tat-tat of bullets pops in my ears, and I’m screaming for Peter to get down. Mecha armor is tough, but it isn’t invincible and I’d never forgive myself if he got hurt. We’re thirty meters away from the action now and closing in fast, and all I can think about is that I have to reach my brother.

  At least no one seems hurt—yet. Lidiya has rammed her fist into the last Goliath, steaming mad that he dared to fire at her. The two of them tousle and start rolling down the white steps of the memorial until Peter jumps into the fray. He manages to pull the Goliath away from Lidiya, right as Sam and I arrive, but by then she’s already on the run.

  Three of the downed National Guard Goliaths pop up to chase her again, but Sam grapples with two of them while Peter takes on the other. The fourth soldier is writhing on the ground and out of commission by the looks of it.

  “Go, go! Peter and I will hold these guys off,” Sam tells me, and that’s all I need to take off running.

  I follow Lidiya around the Lincoln Memorial and toward the Arlington Bridge, which spans the Potomac River and leads into Virginia. Traffic slams to a stop when people see us coming, forcing me to weave through their Pontiacs and Cadillacs. Between my weakened state and Lidiya’s head start, I begin to doubt that I’m ever going to catch up, but I hit a lucky break when she trips while jumping over a Ford F100 truck and takes a tumble onto the road.

  “Stop!” I yell at her.

  In reply, she fires a round behind her, putting her newfound arsenal to use. The bullet flies wide because she has awful aim, but a piping-hot streak of anger sears through me. Why am I helping her again? I have to remind myself that I’m trying to avoid another war.

  Although that doesn’t mean I can’t rough her up in the process.

  Lidiya is starting to tire out after her marathon sprint across the city, and I use her exhaust
ion to my advantage by grabbing on to her left foot. She goes belly first onto the bridge and skids into a blue Buick Electra, crumpling the front bumper.

  As soon as she’s down, I hurl myself on top of her like we’re back in the pit. She tries to twist free, but I headbutt to daze her. Then I do it again for kicks. But Lidiya doesn’t give in. No way. I have to stop her from escaping once and for all, but there’s no cage to box her inside and there’s no ref counting down the time and calling the match.

  But this time I’m going to win.

  Lidiya manages to get to her feet, but she’ll have to take me with her because I’ve wrapped my arms around her neck. Both of us are panting and sluggish, but I guess we’re going to make this a bareknuckle brawl until the very end.

  With a snarl, Lidiya bucks me off and swings around to clip me in the chin, but I absorb the blow and send a yoko geri—a side kick—into her hip. When she stumbles over, I employ a shoulder throw to hurl her onto the road, and I go in for the kill. I flip her mecha over so that I can access her power supply. Her Vostok’s battery sits nestled between the shoulder blades, and I yank hard at its base until it tears away from the main frame.

  The Vostok powers down immediately, its limbs falling slack like a puppet without a master. Lidiya yells at me in Russian, but there’s nothing she can do because she’s lying on the cockpit door. I’ve trapped her.

  “You’re welcome,” I say in between breaths. “I just saved your pitiful life.”

  Lidiya spits at me in reply, and well, let’s say that she should be grateful that she’s stuck in that cockpit instead of standing in front of me because I could launch her into the sky with a one-way ticket to the clouds.

  I straighten to the full stature of my mecha and notice a fleet of police cars and militarized Goliaths arriving at the mouth of the bridge. I put my hands up so they won’t shoot me, and I wait for them to approach. As soon as they do, the words come out of me in a rush.

  “I’m Jo Linden, and I need to speak with President Kennedy right away,” I say, breathing heavily. “Lidiya Federova didn’t poison me, but I know who did.”