Invasion: Book One of the Secret World Chronicle-ARC

by Mercedes Lackey

  The teen walked up to the dead trooper, and then placed his hand on the trooper’s waist, the only spot he could reach; the metal of the armor glowed red, split and cracked, then started to melt and pool at his feet. The rest of the armor immolated after a few seconds, sending a foul cloud of black smoke into the air.

  “Holy crap!” The kid sounded as if someone had just given him a Ferrari for his birthday. Surely this hadn’t sunk home with him yet. He was still in some kind of video-game world where none of this carnage was real and it could all be restored with a reboot. “This is awesome! I’m a meta!” He turned his head towards John. “Did you see that? I melted him!”

  John finally stood up; his sopping wet shirt and jacket were now covered with equal parts water, blood, and grime. Holding a hand against his ribs, he walked to retrieve his empty and useless pistol. “Yeah, I was there, kid.” It hurt to speak; hell, it hurt to do anything. John had to raise his hand to shield his face against the heat emanating off of the teen.

  “Dude! We gotta find more of these guys!” The kid was practically jogging in place. “Come on! Time to kick ass! What’re you standing there for? Let’s go!”

  “Whoa! These bastards mean business. You can’t just go chargin’ off after ’em; you don’t know how many there are, what kind of weapons they’re using, anything. And what about the people around here? They’re the one’s that’re gonna get killed if you get into some sort of fire fight.” He looked the kid up and down quickly, taking stock of the blazing teen. “No pun intended.” He stripped off the rags of what had been his jacket, torn to the point of being useless and ruined, and never mind the grime. John took a few steps back, noticing steam rising from his wet clothing; the fires the kid was putting off were getting hotter.

  “Oh come on, dude, I melted the jerk!” the kid scoffed. “Like what’s gonna be able to stop me?” John only managed to shake his head, looking down at the puddled essence of what used to be part of the trooper.

  Then something blotted out the sun from above.

  They looked up simultaneously.

  He’d thought the trooper was bad news. This was nightmare. The floating sphere looked like something straight out of a 1950’s science-fiction magazine. It looked mean.

  A moment later his assumption that the round orange holes were gunports was confirmed when it vaporized the top three stories of a couple of buildings just so it could pass. John and the teen both ducked as small bits of debris rained down into the street around them. He envisaged what would happen if a flying meta tried to approach it. If the guns didn’t find their target, the tentacles surely would.

  “What could stop you? How ’bout one of those?” The sphere passed over the street without further incident; apparently, it had more important things to destroy than some residential buildings. “We have to get the hell outta this city, and fast. There’s no tellin’ what other sorta choice horrors those things brought with ’em.”

  The kid balled both his fists at his side. “You chickenshit! We gotta do something! If you won’t, I will!” He whirled and headed off at a run back in the direction the Nazi had come, flames streaming out behind him, like the tail of a comet.

  John cursed everything under the sun, spitting on the ground. Dammit! Stupid kid! He’s just gonna get himself killed…John watched as the kid’s blazing form ran down the street, superheating the asphalt under his every step. The smart thing to do would be to run in the opposite direction of where the kid was. Stay away from the main roads, make his way back to his bolt-hole in the woods, or make a new one for that matter. With this going on, he didn’t much reckon there’d be a lot of priority on chasing squatters out of national parks. But…

  But…

  The screaming in the distance…men, women, children. People like his own folks. And not a damned one of them stood a chance without some outside help. Without some meta help.

  John cursed again. Cinching up his belt, John took off at a sprint after the teen.

  The kid’s trail wasn’t all that hard to follow; John just had to look for the spot fires of rubbish or molten footprints in the asphalt. He could hear the troopers, or at least the end results of their destructive spree. Explosions, screams cut short, the screech of metal being shorn off by concussive blasts: John knew he was getting close. His stomach tightened, and he felt himself break out into a cold sweat. This is going to suck.

  Going to? It already sucked. This was just going to suck personally.

  John rounded a corner into a passage between two brownstones, barely wide enough for him to squeeze his shoulders through. He emerged into a narrow alley just big enough for some dumpsters. Turning right, he saw a small crowd of civilians running and hobbling away; to his left, the kid, crouched down partially behind a dumpster. As he neared the boy, the alley started to feel like a kiln. Keeping his voice down to a whisper, John got as close as he cared to to the fiery teen. “All right, Ace. What’s the plan now?”

  “Get the jump on ’em,” the kid replied, sounding not at all surprised that John had shown up after all. Well that was how it happened in movies, right? The meta makes a speech and the reluctant old coot comes along.

  Of course, usually the reluctant old coot ended up the dead old coot.

  “Fine.” John paused for a moment, gauging where the troopers were along the street by the sound of their steps. “Wait until they’re past us about 30 feet, then lay into ’em. Any way you can shut your fire off?”

  “I dunno how I turned it on, and you want me to shut it off?” the kid asked crossly.

  “All right, all right. Just try to stay behind the dumpster as much as possible; if they spot us in here, though, we’re dead.” Besides the dumpster, there wasn’t any cover, and there wouldn’t be any chance for them to retreat. It was a kill-chute. A rotten place to stage an ambush. If it had been John alone—or John’s choice—

  Well, he wouldn’t have been here.

  Before he could give any more instructions to the kid, the troopers came into view. One, two, three—five of them in all. They were walking abreast, just marching down the street and destroying anything that struck their fancy. They acted as if they didn’t have a care in the world, and in those suits, they probably didn’t. He held his breath as they passed, wondering if they’d spot the kid’s flames. Luckily, they didn’t; probably just ignored it, thinking it was another of the spot fires their attack had caused.

  It didn’t take the armored soldiers long to move down the street; a few strides, and they were in just the right position—

  The kid burst out from behind the dumpster, dashing into the street. “All right, you bastards!” the kid yelled, his voice breaking. “Eat fire!” He grappled with the one nearest him, and his flames went white-hot.

  This was it. Maybe it was seeing the sphere that had changed everything. Maybe it was just seeing the kid…

  I can do this. I can keep the lid on it. And…He had to be honest with himself, finally…I have to. Nothing less is going to stop them.

  John emerged more cautiously, sticking close to the wall. He took a deep breath, concentrating for a moment, remembering his training from years ago—

  A feeling inside of something lurching awake, and a nanosecond of pain, a worse moment of uncertainty, of teetering right on the brink of control and there it was. Fire cascaded down his hands. It’d been a long time since he’d used his powers; getting them started was the hard part, the worst was to try to control them. Now, all he needed to do was…relax. The fire coalesced at his palm, concentrating and building upon itself; a moment later, it leapt from his outstretched hand, lancing out at the centermost Nazi. The fire washed over his armor, turning it red-hot after mere seconds. Before John could get off another wave of flame, one of the troopers on the outside of their skirmish line raised his arm cannon, and fired.

  The shot went wide and down; not very well aimed. Concrete erupted where the beam struck, jagged holes gouged out of the street.

  John dodged anywa
y, as the kid screamed something his mother would have blanched to hear and lunged for the trooper’s arm, letting go of the one he’d grappled with.

  Or, more precisely, letting go of what was left of the one he’d grappled with. The rest abruptly realized they had something more immediate to worry about than John.

  John displaced, running in a diagonal arc to the skirmish line; the human eye followed horizontal and straight-line movement best, so this move would give him an extra half second, hopefully. He relaxed his internal guard more; the fire collecting at his hands surged, setting the elements in the air around it ablaze. A twitch, and a solid beam of fire cut into his original target. The trooper staggered, then fell backwards. His chest had been melted through, almost to the back of his armor. The man inside was instantly cooked. Three troopers were left; the kid was dealing with the one that had shot at John, and the other two were just now coordinating. Both were leveling their weapons at the kid.

  Reflexively, John snapped off a wave of plasma; it blazed forth at phenomenal speed, glancing off of the asphalt a meter in front of the two unoccupied troopers. It arced up at just the right angle to catch both of them at one knee each. The plasma wave sheared through metal and flesh, instantly throwing both of them off-balance even before their brains registered the pain. They both toppled in a heap, their weapons discharging harmlessly into the air. At least I hope it was harmless. They were still threats, though, even though their mobility was gone. John rushed them, gouts of flame shooting forth ahead of him. The downed troopers both writhed as their armor turned into twin furnaces, immolating them. The one furthest to the left managed to fire off a shot of actinic energy before he succumbed to the fire; the bolt of blue-white energy struck a car that John was running by, crushing it and detonating its fuel tank. The blast threw John to the ground, skidding him across the street.

  Once again, as his head impacted the street, John saw stars. This was getting old.

  When his vision cleared, he looked up in time to see the kid shoving his burning hand through the chest of the trooper he’d grappled with, fire now so hot there was only the faintest hint of yellow at the edges of his flames. The hand emerged out the back of the armor. The kid pulled his fist back then. All the joints in the armor must have fused; it still stood upright.

  John picked himself up off of the ground, almost dragging himself up. He could feel a few new cuts, as well as a nice bit of road rash from where he slid on his right arm. By all rights, he should have been numb by now, but…no. No such luck. This was just pain on top of earlier pain, even as his own metahuman body started the recovery and healing process. Resting his scraped and bruised palms on his knees, he looked up to see the carnage that he and the kid had wrought: four troopers lay smoldering on the asphalt, with one still upright in a caricature of life. A long time ago, he might have felt sick to his stomach. But that was—before. When he was just a little older than this kid. When he was plain old John Murdock, and no one wanted to kill him. The kid was taking a step back from the last trooper that he had killed. It was getting hard to look at him straight on.

  “Kid,” John managed to wheeze between his teeth. “You gotta shut it off.”

  “I—can’t—” came the voice from the core of the fire. Then, more panicked, as the core went from white to blue-white, “I can’t! I can’t! How do you turn this off? You got fire. Tell me how to turn it off!”

  Damn it. John looked around, trying to find something that might be able to put the kid out. Something, anything—there! John snapped his hand up, pointing to a fire hydrant. “There! Snap that off, douse yourself!” John jogged over, staying a safe distance away from the new meta.

  The kid lurched for the hydrant, and his hand scarcely touched it before the cap had melted, then the body of the hydrant, then water geysered up out of the stump.

  And turned to steam, flash-boiled before it even touched him.

  The kid was his own fuel somehow. Maybe he was burning the very air. Nothing around here was going to touch the heat—

  “We have to get you clear, get you away from these buildings. Can you fly?” he shouted over the gushing hydrant, the howl of the kid’s own flames, and the noises in the distance.

  “I—don’t—” the kid began, and then shot into the air like a rocket. “Make it stop! Shut it off!” was the last thing John heard before he got too far away to hear his screaming over the cacophony around him.

  The kid became nothing more than a flicker of light in the sky, which quickly changed into a second sun, not because the kid was falling, but because he was, somehow, getting brighter and hotter. His fires were blazing too hot, ramping up too fast—now they really were consuming the very air around him.

  Ah hell! He’s going crit—

  There was another flash, followed by a too-loud subsonic boom. John was blinded for a moment, falling backwards onto the ground; everything seemed to blur around him again. There was a blossom of fire in the sky, right where the kid had last been.

  His heart stopped. Damn it…goddamn it all. His vision swam again, his eyes focusing and unfocusing. He wouldn’t look away, though. He didn’t even know the kid’s name…

  —then—

  Bursting through the heart of the fire flower, another creature of flame.

  Wings of fire that spread across a quarter of the visible sky, human—if a human could be clothed in fire—

  It cradled a still form in its arms as tenderly as a mother would cradle a child.

  It? No—not “it.” He.

  He Looked down at John for one heart-stopping moment. John felt like a bug impaled on a needle. Felt as if his whole life had just been read. Felt—

  He wasn’t sure what he felt. Grief too great to bear, fear, awe—portent?

  But there was no doubt he heard something. A voice, a voice that cut through everything, even though it was only a whisper. It was a whisper that shook him to his roots.

  Live.

  As quickly as the emotions and the whisper came, they were gone. The figure vanished in an instant, almost as if it had never been there. John collapsed backwards again, panting. It was all just too much for him, too much in one day and too fast. Passing out was a relief. Even…a reprieve.

  Moscow, Russia: Callsign Red Saviour

  The troopers clustered in squads of five, coordinating their fire against CCCP metas or the crowd. Each of the CCCP metas had attracted their own squad. The armor of the troopers withstood their attacks; only Chug and Worker’s Champion appeared to be holding their own against the Nazis, toppling them with mighty blows. Yet the troopers climbed back to their feet and grappled with the ultrastrong metahumans again. Red Saviour couldn’t understand it. Worker’s Champion had gained a reputation for tearing apart Panzer tanks in the Great Patriotic War. Either the elder meta’s powers had waned as her father’s had, or this Nazi armor was more than just a metal suit. She glimpsed his eyes, wild with freshly-recalled hatred under disheveled hair.

  People’s Blade seemed no more than a child amongst the giant Nazis. She leapt from one to the next, drawing sparks when her purportedly magical sword glanced off their armored shells. Energy beams licked out at her and off into the sky. Natalya realized that she was using the sword only as a distraction, to engage as many troops as possible, drawing their attention away from the innocents. She would reach a critical mass of adversaries, though, and an energy weapon would find its target, and tiny Fei Li would die.

  Molotok zoomed from one trooper to another, his terrible strength allowing him to at least uproot the giants before they could slay more civilians.

  That was all she saw in the brief moment of respite before the five troopers reoriented on her. Desperate for an escape route, the crowd had followed the militsya’s commands towards Saviour’s Gate, clearing spaces in the square like ripples from thrown pebbles in a pond. The troopers didn’t track the fleeing protesters: she had succeeded in her immediate goal, to her own great peril.

  Energy weapons had eate
n away at the fringes of the crowd, creating a wall of bodies five or six deep. Natalya looked for CCCP where the Nazis had clustered. Her strategy had worked too well: the troopers had closed in on individual metas.

  The mortar they’d spotted had fired, its report unheard in the chaos. A wicked yellow cloud formed over the crowd massing at Saviour’s Gate, stinking of rotten garlic. The wind died just as the plume began to descend onto the square.

  She’d only read about the smell of nerve gas. Yet she knew at once what it was. Their efforts to protect the civilians had only delayed their deaths.

  The square grew silent all at once, as the troopers waited for the gas to descend, unafraid in their sealed suits. The exhausted CCCP metas stared at the cloud in helplessness. Upturned faces of protesters watched death fall upon them.

  She gasped with the inspiration. She looked frantically for Petrograd. His perpetually aloft silver form had come to a halt above a squad of troopers.

  “Petrograd!” Her voice seemed tiny in the silent square. “Petro!”

  He turned his dented helmet head towards her.

  “Mach one!” she called to him, pointing to the cloud. “Now!”

  Petrograd’s armor had been optimized for supersonic flight, but he needed to build up momentum to achieve those speeds. He hesitated; they both knew the limits of his rocket pack. Then, with a crisp salute, he launched into the sky on a plume of exhaust. He banked hard over the Kremlin, trailing white smoke. Flames spat from his rocket pack. Angling upwards, his form shrank to a speck then grew in size as he strafed the cloud of nerve gas.

  A sonic boom could exceed one hundred pounds per square-foot pressure, the equivalent of a sonic vacuum cleaner. Petrograd burned hotter and brighter as he blasted across the square. He was gone in the blink of an eye, too fast for the Nazis to fire upon. The nerve gas followed him up into the atmosphere, dispersing in the sonic boom that battered their ears. It was the loudest sound Red Saviour had ever heard, and it swallowed the lesser sound of Petrograd’s rocket pack exploding and burning him alive. Black debris fell at the end of his vapor trail. She bit back the wail of grief inside her.