What if Daedalus’ tampering had only accelerated something that was already there?
This is ridiculous. There’s nothing wrong with me.
He was just being affected by the situation; that was all. The planet was facing an unprecedented threat, and everybody involved in its defense was under constant, massive stress. That would be plenty to unhinge the most stable of minds. Add on top of that the personal stresses of his relationship with Christine, and the sudden revelation that Mr. Night was running rampant with her dead lover’s body, and it was no wonder he wasn’t his usual chipper self.
They were all impossibly busy as well, which didn’t help. Rescuing the orbital shuttle had been an almost welcome interruption of his current routine. In addition to his regular duties, John spent eight hours a day putting thousands of tons of cargo into orbit, along with all Neos capable of moving objects beyond Earth’s gravity well. Weapon platforms, ammunition, the thousands of tiny anti-teleport wards that would be seeded throughout the Solar System to keep the Genocide from striking wherever he wanted, and much more. All part of the war effort.
And still the visions of the future remained grim. That was the worst part. All precogs had been quietly quarantined, and their predictions kept from the public, to avoid even more panic. Their prognostications were universally bleak. They included several charming scenarios: the Earth breaking apart when the Moon was hurted towards it by the merciless Genocide; the world in flames as the alien chose instead to destroy each city individually; after the cities he targeted towns, then villages, and finally hunted down each dwindling group of survivors until none remained. Others had seen a Pyrrhic victory where the last line of defense had finally put an end to the alien, and where a few hundred thousand survivors had emerged from their shelters and found themselves the heirs of a largely barren planet.
They were working as hard as they could, and none of it might matter. That should have bothered him more than his personal problems, but perversely, it didn’t. Maybe it was because worrying about his love life was less demoralizing than contemplating the end of the world, or maybe he’d turned into a self-centered adolescent in his old age.
Either way, it wasn’t good.
* * *
Christine stood at his threshold, looking as upset as he’d ever seen her.
“Come in,” John said. Neither of them was smiling.
They sat down in his living room, not side by side like they were used to, but in different chairs, facing each other, and the new arrangement felt like the beginning of the end.
“What’s wrong?” John asked after a few moments of awkward silence.
She hung her head. “Mark’s alive.”
“Christine, you know his body’s only a…”
She cut him off. “I contacted his mind, okay? Earlier today, while working with Uncle Adam to try and restore my powers. It happened only for a second, and I haven’t been able to reach him again, because my powers are still all effed up, but I heard him, he’s alive, he’s been alive all along, and he was in pain. I’ve been dreaming about him for weeks, about him suffering, being tortured, and it was all true. I should have known those weren’t just dreams, but instead I set them aside. He’s been alive all along, and I’ve been cheating on him like a complete asshole!”
“You didn’t know,” John said. She wasn’t crying; she was too angry to cry, angry at herself and, he was sure, at him as well.
“I should’ve known.”
“You’re not God, Christine. None of us are.” He wanted to do more than say the usual platitudes; he wanted to hold her in his arms, but he could tell she didn’t want to be touched right now.
“This is totally effed up,” she said. She looked up and now he saw tears beginning to form in her eyes; she wiped them off absently as she went on. “Look, until we rescue him, until I can look him in the eye, well, you know what I mean, and tell him what happened, you and I, we can’t, not now, you know? I can’t keep doing this, us, not while he’s still alive.”
“I understand,” John said. He did understand, but he also felt an undercurrent of anger as he said the words, and he saw Christine’s eyes widen as she sensed his emotions with her returning powers.
“I’m really sorry,” she said. “I’m sorry for hurting you, I’m sorry for dragging you into this mess.”
“It’s all right,” he lied, and he tried to keep his anger at bay, and he either succeeded or her powers were still too erratic because she seemed to accept the lies at face value.
“There’s more,” she went on. “Chastity Baal made contact with Lady Shi, and between the two of them they’re working on a plan to take down Mr. Night. I know that means Mark is almost as good as dead, because capturing Mr. Night alive is just not an option. Even killing him is apparently next to impossible, so we’re not going to even try to take him alive. We’re going to go at him all-out. Full lethal force protocols have been authorized by the Council. Awesome.”
“We can try,” John said. “If there is a chance to free Mark, to release his body and soul, we’ll take it. The Legion will help. I will help.” Those were the right words, the right sentiments, the kind of thing a hero would say, should say. And yet, he felt numb, cold, alone.
The gratitude in her eyes helped a little bit.
Not enough, though. Never enough.
Macau, Republic of China, December 14, 2013
Chastity Baal faced a roomful of killers and smiled.
“You should drop your weapons,” she said in Cantonese. The Tong enforcers knew her reputation well – she had grown up in the streets of Macau, after all – and all but one of them did as she said, lowering an assortment of guns and blades to the floor. The sole holdout was young and stupid, a typical case of testosterone poisoning coupled with a teenager’s sense of immortality.
“Fuck your mother!” the youngster roared and fired a burst of bullets from his venerable AK-47. He even did it right, shooting low and guiding the recoil of the weapon in a diagonal motion that would put at least one or two of the three or four rounds right on target.
Back in the old days, Chastity would have been in motion before the youth finished his insult, stepping away from the line of fire while shooting from the hip. She’d favored accurate, small caliber handguns, and she could reliably put a couple of rounds in a man’s throat and forehead – her associate Tommy Leary called that particular shot grouping the ‘Chastity Love-Tap.’
This time, she didn’t bother. She now had the full powers of a Celestial Warrior, after all. Her newfound invulnerability and strength weren’t worth the price she’d unwillingly paid for them. Christine was beginning to work on a cure as her powers returned, but Chastity remained plagued with nightmares. Still, she might as well make use of her gifts.
Two 7.62mm rounds hit her, one in the upper thigh and the other just over her left breast. The deformed rounds ricocheted away; with perverse randomness, one of them bounced right back into the shooter’s face. Howling, the young Tong gangster fired a burst into the floor before collapsing. The remaining thugs recoiled away, terrified of being massacred in retaliation.
“Somebody should see to his injuries,” she said calmly through the gunfire’s fading echoes. The shooter was writhing on the floor; in addition to the wound to his face, which hadn’t been immediately fatal, he had shot himself in the foot with his last burst.
“What do you want, Golden Hair?” the leader of the gang asked, using her old nickname from her days in Macau.
“Tomorrow, you are going to meet with the man who hired you to steal the blueprints for the new space corvettes,” she said. It wasn’t a question, but the man nodded in confirmation. “I and two of my friends are going to join you for that meeting.”
The leader knew her reputation well enough to know there would be no negotiations. He nodded again.
* * *
The meeting took place in a stretch of the Macau docks that was undergoing renovations and thus was largely deserted at this
time of night. The handful of security guards on the site had been bribed away, and now the only people there were the Tong leader and a dozen bodyguards. Four of those bodyguards were not who they appeared to be.
Two of Chastity’s three companions had very little experience with covert operations. One had spent decades out in the public eye wearing outlandish costumes, the literal opposite of covert. The other at least had some experience at being on the run from the authorities, but that was about it. Luckily all they had to do was stay quiet and let their holographic disguises do their work. The last member of the group was as skilled in working in the shadows as Chastity, but she also was a criminal and not a member of the Legion.
Christine Dark (a.k.a. Dark Justice), Nebiru and Lady Shi made an unlikely team for Chastity to lead, but their quarry required an unconventional strategy. It would take their combined skills to bring down the elusive Mr. Night. Christine Dark was there because her innate ability to spoof extra-sensory detection would prevent their target from spotting them. Nebiru’s spells would neutralize Mr. Night’s teleportation capabilities. Lady Shi would be of little help in the upcoming confrontation, but her contacts and psychic abilities had been indispensable in getting them to this point, and the price for her cooperation had been to be in at the kill. Two Legion squads waited some three miles away, ready to pounce once the signal was given, but for the first few seconds, the four of them would have to handle their adversary on their own.
The Tong criminals were doing their best to appear nonchalant, but their acting abilities were barely on par with their marksmanship. Chastity hoped that their quarry wouldn’t be able to sense their fear. A great deal of effort had gone into setting up the trap, and it would be unlikely the Legion would have another opportunity like this one.
The sound of footsteps from a blind alley that had been empty moments before preceded the emergence of a man in an old-fashioned black business suit, and Chastity beheld Mr. Night for the first time. The old man’s face was unsettling enough, but the tingling she felt on the palm of her hand, where Daedalus’ tainted dagger had marked her, was far worse. Chastity had no intention to absorb Mr. Night’s powers and memories. She’d actually left the weapon behind to avoid any chance of contamination.
The Outsider agent got to within twenty feet of the waiting gangsters and undercover Legionnaires before something made him pause. Did he detect their presence, or notice the nervousness of the Tong members? Whatever it was, the time for subterfuge was over.
“Go go go!” Chastity shouted even as she moved. The Tong members scurried away in every direction like so many cockroaches. She closed the intervening distance as a swarm of Lady Shi’s star-shaped energy darts struck Mr. Night. The missiles didn’t seem to do much damage. A moment later, a telekinetic blast from Dark Justice slammed into the Outsider agent from above and crushed him to the ground.
Mr. Night was struggling to get up. Chastity kicked him multiple times with devastating power and precision. Her strength and resilience were now rated at 2.7 in the PAS scale. Even a Type Three parahuman should be feeling those blows.
Mr. Night moved. A fist lashed out at her, too fast to dodge. She blocked it with her forearm; bone broke. Chastity was vaguely aware she was flying through the air before a brutal crash brought her to a halt; the impact had flung her through a warehouse wall. From the hole she’d made with her body, she saw Lady Shi closing in behind a constant barrage of energy missiles, and Dark Justice hammering at the Outsider agent with a multiple energy blasts.
She hoped her companions could hold him long enough for reinforcements to arrive.
Chapter Twenty
Christine Dark
Macau, Republic of China, December 14, 2013
Christine shouldn’t have come.
The problem was, she had the best chance of shielding the team so they could spring the trap on Mr. Night. There were plenty of Legionnaires with anti-scrying powers, including Nebiru, but nobody was sure if they would be enough. Her ability to avoid detection by any and all forms of ESP still continued to amaze and amuse everyone. That made her the right person for the job. And, let’s face it, she’d have volunteered anyways. If anybody was going to kill or capture Mr. Night, it should be her. That rat bastard had set in motion this entire mess, beginning with messing with her father’s head back in 1919, among God knew how many other effed up things.
So she fought the rising tide of horror and pain inside of her and whacked Mark’s body once again, smashing him back into the ground, but not before he smacked Chastity Baal away. Christine hoped the super-spy would be okay. Lady Shi was going after Mr. Night with her energy shuriken, but much as expected she wasn’t putting a dent on him. Nebiru was concentrating in making sure their target – yeah, let’s think of him as a target rather than her dead boyfriend’s stolen body – couldn’t teleport away, and apparently that was proving to be hard enough he couldn’t do anything else. It was all up to Christine. She needed to hold him off until the rest of the Legion’s strike team arrived. ETA was under five seconds.
Mr. Night was on the move in under three seconds.
He couldn’t teleport, but, through Mark’s body, he could fly. And fly he did, avoiding her next telekinetic blast as he headed out to sea. Crap! “Target is airborne,” she reported. “I’m in pursuit.” She was supposed to hit him so hard he wouldn’t be in any shape to fly. Obviously she hadn’t hit him hard enough.
She took off after him at full speed, generating a sonic boom that inflicted a good deal of property damage along the way. Luckily, she could fly way faster than Mark ever had. If Mr. Night got far enough away from Nebiru, he’d be able to teleport once again. Couldn’t have that. She sent a full-force kinetic blast aimed at his side and sent him crashing into the water. No choice but to plunge into the sea after him.
It was dark as heck in there, but her Christine-vision was back, for short stretches at least, and at the cost of a wicked headache after more than a couple of minutes of use, but back nonetheless. The pitch darkness of the water became a collection of grays with bits of color here or there, where fish or even thick concentrations of bacteria – yuck! – showed up against the water. The biggest blob of light – all dotted up with the sickening un-life that was the stuff of the Outsiders – was clearly visible, still moving, more slowly than before because water just didn’t move aside as easily as air, but still moving pretty fast.
No you don’t. She placed a force field ahead of him and he crashed into it, going at a good few hundred knots. She hoped it hurt. To make sure it hurt, she created another wall and smashed him between them, in her now-trademarked double-smack of death. A normal human or even most Neos would have ended up as a smear between the two flat planes of force, but Mark’s inhuman resiliency – the resiliency she’d given him – kept him alive, if not well. She flew/swam closer. The inevitable migraine was already getting started, and seeing the hideous darkness inside Mark’s body was making her sick. She had to…
Kill him. You have to kill him before he gets way.
I know. But could she?
Mr. Night’s color palette changed, and Christine realized he was teleporting away. He’d gotten far enough away, after all. No!
She slammed into him. She was still grappling with him when he took them into the dark place between places.
Uh, oh, her brain piped in, but the rest of her was too angry to care. The first thing she did was to drop her Christine-vision; she didn’t want to see this place through it. She also held on to Mr. Night, and although he was inhumanly strong, he couldn’t break away. She’d wrapped herself in psychokinetic power, blended her shield and her aura and combined them into an invisible suit of powered armor, and when he tried to push her away, he found that he wasn’t strong enough.
“Let Mark go, you fucking asshole!” she screamed at him while they tumbled through the endless darkness.
The insane half-faced smile on his face didn’t change. “He is mine!” he roared back. “He let
me in, freely and of his own free will!”
“Liar!”
“Does it matter? Don’t worry, you’ll be joining him shortly. We’re off to see the Masters! They will show you things, so many wonderful things!”
Uh, oh. That definitely was a tour she didn’t want to take. She kept her hold on him, though, because if they became separated here, she had no idea how she’d make it back. Mr. Night was no longer fighting her. Instead, she felt his energies shifting subtly as he steered them somewhere else.
There was one thing she could try. Mark had cut the connection between them when he felt the Outsider Taint spreading inside of him. But that connection hadn’t been severed permanently. The dreams and the brief telepathic contact proved that. Problem was, she’d been trying for days to reach him again, and she’d failed every single time. Well, this time it was for all the marbles, so she might as well try again. She poured all of her will into reestablishing contact, hoping it would work now that they were at close range.
She felt something, a stirring on the other side of their connection. Mark had heard her. The other thing she felt was a burst of pain in her head, as if her skull had gone all Mount Vesuvius on her. Nothing else to do; she pushed once more.
Everything went poof.
The Darkling Plains, Time Undetermined
Bad. This is a bad place.
As first impressions went, it was downright terrible. Christine landed on some rubble, bounced off it, and ended up half buried in a pile of gray sand, or maybe powdered ash. Everything around her was gray or black, no colors anywhere except for some stains on a wall that were rusty-red like dried blood. The sky was deep gray, almost black, with no sun or stars in evidence.
New Olympus Saga (Book 3): Apocalypse Dance Page 29
