“What will you do, Queen?”
“I will destroy their protectors.”
32
The fluid constricted like a snake, and Dillon saw a white flash. He closed his eyes, trying to protect himself from the pain, and when he opened them, he was floating above a vast city.
The city had towers that touched the clouds, spirals with gold trim, and streets of marble. It sat on an island surrounded by crystal waters.
Dillon watched monsters—deformed men the size of semi-trucks—attack the city. The city was defended by men in Onyx suits. Towers fell in heaps and crushed the citizens. The golden spires melted. Men were torn apart as blood flowed over the marble. The queen sat on a throne of ice as the city collapsed around her.
Next, Dillon saw earth. Great metropolises covered the planet like glimmering jewels thrown on dirt. Battles raged across all the cities, reducing them to ashes. The entire planet appeared to be on fire.
The queen retreated into the chambers beneath her capital, where she was swallowed by the black fluid and encased in ice. He heard what she heard. Centuries marched in front of her, and she absorbed everything, patiently waiting for a time when she would be released to unleash her horror again. The patience was terrifying—the calm resolve it must’ve taken for her to remain motionless for six thousand years, knowing that her time would come.
A few inhabitants had been left from her destruction, and from the ashes, they built the first empires man knew about, and history began from there. All memory of the great civilizations of the past and the technology that led to their ruin had been wiped away.
And man began to repeat the pattern.
The fluid drained into his body, and he sucked in breath, though it took only a moment to realize he wouldn’t need it anymore. The fluid swirled and hardened over the tears and holes in the suit, his body mending along with it.
The helmet repaired itself, and the eyes glowed blue like the ice of the city, tainting his vision. Power ran through him, more power than he had ever experienced. It felt as though a surge of electricity was constantly flowing in his veins.
He sat up and raised his suited hands. The suit had grown, and the muscles of his body were engorged. Energy flowed through him. He held out his hand, and a blue explosion shook the earth as it decimated the ice of the chamber and collapsed the ceiling.
“Oh, man. I’m gonna like this.”
He bent down until his knees were touching the ground, then he vaulted upward. Smashing through ice and stone, he carved a hole through the mountain and burst out of the top into the night sky.
Twisting in the air, he split the clouds. He yelled in ecstasy coupled with adrenaline as another wave of energy coursed through him. He climbed higher, aiming for the moon. He felt the scalding heat of the atmosphere as he crossed into space.
He stopped once he hit zero gravity, his stomach rising and making him nauseated for a moment. He twisted around and faced the glowing blue of the planet. From that distance, he couldn’t see any borders or conflicts. He saw only crystal-sapphire water and green-brown land.
He hovered there, letting the energy build within him. At full power again, he exploded downward, heating up so quickly that he glowed a bright crimson.
Max Brown sat on the hood of his car with his girl, and they stared at the night sky. The Hollywood sign wasn’t far, but it had been vandalized so often that no one was allowed near it anymore. Fences, guards, and cameras prevented people from even getting close. So they sat where they could see it but far enough away that the security guards wouldn’t hassle them.
“I wanna get high,” she said. “You got any pot?”
“Sure.” He pulled a joint out of his pocket and handed it to her.
“Sweet. Where’s your lighter?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t have it in your pocket?”
“No.”
She jumped up and searched the car. She returned and stood in front of him with her arms folded. “Where the hell is it, Max?”
“I don’t know.”
“How can you have a joint and no lighter? That’s like having peanut butter and no jelly.”
“I’m sorry. Maybe there’s some matches or something in the car.”
As she turned to go back, Max saw what looked like a comet falling out of the sky, trailing fire behind it. The force of its descent picked him up like a leaf and flung him off the hood of the car. He sat up quickly and saw the comet headed for downtown Los Angeles. Then an explosion of light covered the city.
“What the hell was that?” she asked.
“We’re leaving.”
“I wanna get high.”
“I’m not getting high with shit blowing up the city. Let’s go.” He jumped into the car and started it.
She climbed into the passenger seat, still whining about the lack of a lighter. He saw a tunnel of light rising into the sky.
A tornado of light, he thought.
33
Dillon was traveling so fast that sight was useless. He was traversing nations in seconds. Maneuvering purely by feel, he knew where he had to go. His senses felt different, as though he could hear the entire planet. And he heard her loudest of all. He headed toward her voice.
In an instant, the voice was gone.
Dillon slammed into the ground, his feet gouging the cement of the street. Windows shattered around him, and cars flew away like toys.
Neanderthal-looking men moved among the rubble and corpses. One of them crushed the throat of an elderly man then ripped his head from his body. They looked odd in modern-day suits with their hair slicked back.
A man on the sidewalk, who didn’t appear to be one of the Neanderthals, noticed Dillon and shouted, “What are you idiots doing? Kill him! Kill him!”
Two of the Neanderthals, including the one who had executed the old man, leapt over cars and landed in front of Dillon.
“You guys rob a Gap or something? Not exactly villain clothes.”
They sprinted at him faster than humans could run, faster than any animal could. To someone on the sidewalk, they must’ve appeared as nothing but shadows. But Dillon could see them. In his eyes, they moved in slow motion, pumping their arms to get to him.
He ducked between them, and they ran past. Dillon turned and shot forward. He slammed into one of them, taking the guy through a building and out the other side. He smashed the Neanderthal’s head into a metal lamppost before flipping backward into the air and hovering.
The other one leapt with an animalistic scream, his fingers curled like claws. Dillon bashed him in the face so hard that the man collapsed to the ground, broke through the street, and banged into the sewer.
Something rammed into Dillon’s back and sent him flying. Knees, fists, and legs came at him from every direction. He blocked with his forearms and shins.
Dillon punched into the Neanderthal’s leg, toppling him. He grabbed the man by the calves and slammed him into the ground and then a building like a doll before spinning and throwing him across the tunnel. While the Neanderthal was still in the air, Dillon rocketed forward and crashed into his ribs, feeling them shatter. The Neanderthal hit a skyscraper and slid down, vomiting blood.
Dillon flew to him and crouched at eye-level. “Where is she?”
The Neanderthal grinned but said nothing.
“Where. Is. She?”
When he still didn’t answer, Dillon smashed his fist into the Neanderthal’s head, causing it to bounce on the cement.
He heard commotion and turned to see more men leaping at him from all sides.
“Uh oh.” He propelled himself upward, as high as the surrounding buildings.
The men jumped after him, but they couldn’t fly. Dillon closed his eyes, letting the energy flow into his muscles and bones. He opened his eyes, the blue light illuminating the blackness around him, and flew high enough that the men on the ground couldn’t see him.
He raced downward and smashed into one, taking
him through the street, the sewer, and into the earth. Leaving the man there, he flew back up and grabbed another one on his way into the sky. Once high enough, he spun several times and threw the man like a discus. The body flew past the city and disappeared over the ocean.
“Better hope you can swim.”
Dillon swooped down and grabbed another man. He flew up into the sky, so high that the city was a dot of white light beneath them. He let the man go. Screaming all the way down, the guy took nearly two minutes to hit the ground. When he impacted with the pavement, the entire street collapsed around him. One of the buildings nearby rumbled as though in an earthquake and toppled over.
Dillon snatched up yet another man and held him upside down, scraping his head against the streets until he fell unconscious. Dillon flung the body so far that he couldn’t see it anymore.
One jumped onto his back and pounded his fist into Dillon’s head. Dillon reached back, grabbed the guy by the collar, and flung him into one of his friends, sending both of them onto their backs.
Dillon grabbed one of the remaining Neanderthals and pinned him against the street. “Where is she?”
“Hra’ ca hodrl il. Hra’ ca ho ril il ah!”
“Do you speak English? Where is she?”
The Neanderthal raised a hand and pointed. Dillon looked and saw a man standing on the sidewalk—he was the one who had ordered them to attack. When their eyes met, the guy turned and ran.
Dillon was on him in an instant, pressing the man against the side of a building. “Where is she?”
“I don’t know.”
Dillon held the guy loosely and rose hundreds of feet into the sky. The man yelped and gripped the suit in terror.
“Where?”
“I don’t know. She said she was going to destroy the protectors.”
“What protectors?”
“I don’t know.”
“Is she talking about the military?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know much for a guy who just ordered a bunch of superhumans to attack me.”
“They’re nothing. If it were up to me, they would’ve stayed buried in the ground where they belong.”
“Who was it up to?”
“Atlantis, my queen.”
“Your queen, huh? You don’t strike me as a six-thousand-year-old Atlantian.”
“I’m a descendent of hers. I was the one who woke her.”
“You did this? Why in the hell would you unleash her?”
“You’ve seen her. Wouldn’t you do anything to be closer to her?”
“We’re all gonna die ’cause you think she’s hot?”
“She’s not hot. She’s perfect. The most perfect woman that has ever existed. I would kill a thousand earths for her if she asked me.”
Dillon drifted near one of the buildings and placed the guy on a small ledge. The man had to press against it flush to keep his balance.
“You can’t leave me up here.”
“Watch me,” Dillon said.
34
Several naval bases were in Southern California. Dillon checked two before he got to the 32nd Street Naval Station, where it appeared as if an atomic bomb had gone off. Aircraft carriers looking like Swiss cheese were tipped onto their sides. Jet parts lay everywhere, and bodies littered the entire base. Like everywhere else Atlantis had gone, fires consumed everything.
Dillon landed in the center of a naval carrier that was slowly sinking. Holes the size of a man had been torn through the hull in about a dozen places. No signs of life anywhere.
“The young one returns.” She walked out of the flames, wearing a white dress that seemed untouched by the blaze.
He realized he had forgotten how stunning she was. The man’s words came back to him: The most perfect woman that has ever existed. “Why so much killing? This was unnecessary.”
“By showing them that I have no morality, I instill fear in them. Fear wins wars.”
“We’re not at war. The world you knew doesn’t exist anymore. One nation doesn’t need to conquer another to survive.”
“We are beings in a constant state of war. That is what we are. All we are.”
“No, we’re more. When the rest of the world banded together to fight you, I think you saw that. It surprised you. You were counting on them not working together. And it resulted in both your destructions.”
She grinned. “You cannot defeat me.”
“There’s only one way to find out.”
Kicking up a thick piece of piping, she struck it with her heel and sent it flying toward him. He held up his palms, and a powerful blast of blue light sent it back to her. She swiped it away like a tennis ball.
She bent and ripped open the carrier’s surface. A deep crack ran between Dillon’s feet. He rose into the air and zoomed into her, the sheer speed catching her off guard. They tumbled over the edge of the deck and into the black water. She struck him with her fist and then kicked his chest.
He flipped backward into the water and launched himself with hands and feet, ramming her in the chest and lifting her up out of the darkness. Whirling her body, he flung it through a carrier. She came out the other side and rammed into another vessel.
Before he could blink, she had sailed back and rammed into him, sending him half a mile away in an instant. He skidded into a street, tearing up the pavement for several blocks. She swooshed down, lifted his body, and slammed her fist into his stomach, sending him backward through an apartment building.
A woman screamed. She was in the shower, trying to cover herself.
Dillon was lying on her bathroom floor. “Didn’t see a thing. Sorry. Nice tattoo, though.”
He jumped out of the building and flung a wave of energy at Atlantis. She fired back at the same time, and the beams met, sending both of them reeling backward. Atlantis was on her feet first. Sprinting, she planted her knee into his jaw and sent him about a hundred feet into the air.
She flew up and caught him with a fist to his chest as he fell, and he bounced up again. On the way back down, Dillon ripped a chunk of cement from a building and smashed her in the face with it. After slamming into a cab, she pulled herself to her feet. He hovered in front of her.
“You’ve grown stronger,” she said.
“I have some friends with me.”
She shook her head. “No. Impossible.”
He lifted his hand. “Take it up with them.”
Dillon fired a blast of energy under her feet. The ground dropped beneath her, and she fell. A moment later, she leapt out of the hole, screaming like a banshee, and chased him into the clouds.
Fists, elbows, and knees flew at a fever pitch. Dillon finally caught her with a fist in the face that sent her spinning backward. Before she could regain stability, he smashed into her again.
She fell lower and wrapped her arms around his legs. She spun him all the way around, gaining momentum before releasing him into the sky.
He flipped over as he flew and sped away from her. She laughed and continued to follow. Weaving in between buildings, flying up into the clouds, and then low near the sea, he raced as fast as he could. Within a minute, they were far over the ocean, with no land visible in any direction. Then the snowcapped peaks and flat white valleys of Antarctica came into view.
Suddenly, she was on his back. They crashed into a mountain and hit the ground with an eruption of ice and snow. He rolled over and struck her twice before she kicked his head, causing him to see stars. On top of him, she pummeled him with her fists.
He felt the power pulsating within the suit and screamed as the burst of blue energy struck her in the torso and sent her soaring through the air.
He crawled to his feet.
The mountain stood clean and white, and he flew for the entrance to the cave with Atlantis close on his tail. He drifted down into the darkness, over the ice bridge, and into the city.
She caught up with him there. Grabbing his head, she pulled back on it. He elbowed her
into a building. She came back swinging with both arms and knocked him spinning through the air. He hit a building so hard that he vomited into the suit.
She smashed a knee into his helmet, causing it to fracture. Reaching down, she clawed at the revealed flesh, trying to rip off his face.
Dillon swung his legs, catching her in the jaw with his heels. He spun and darted for the tower. He got through the walls and to the bottom floor before she caught up to him again.
“Why are you here?” she asked. “Do you wish to die in the ice?”
The remaining black ooze dribbled out of their pools.
Dillon said, “You want me? Here I am.”
She grinned then bent low and dashed at him. Smashing her shoulder into his stomach, she ran through the walls of ice until she hit the mountainside, pinning him there. He wrapped his arms around her head. The puddles of black slithered across the floor behind her.
She looked into his eyes. “And now, you will die, young one.”
“You first.”
The first puddle ran up her leg. She gasped, her eyes rolling back into her head. The second slithered up her back and into her ears, and another went up her nose, filling her eyes with black. Dillon kicked her away, and she screamed as the black fluid engulfed her. The fluid lifted her then pulled her down into the ground.
She disappeared in the space of a minute.
The fluid dissipated and went back to its pools.
Dillon sat down. The pain he had been holding off poured into his body. No one could have that kind of power again. The place had to be destroyed. He pushed himself up to his feet.
The smell of vomit and blood inside the suit made him ill, and he had to open the helmet the rest of the way. He flew out and hovered over the mountain. The icy wind whipped his face as he looked down. The pulsating power of the suit and the black fluid made his bones vibrate. It was like having a hurricane inside his body that could tear out of his flesh at any second. But if he concentrated, he could focus it into a ball of pure force.
His body lit blue, and beams of light shot from him. An electrical storm ravaging him, he shouted as he focused all his energy and concentration downward into the mountain. A beam of pure sapphire light shot into the mountain with a noise like an earthquake. The mountain glowed blue, pieces of it flying off and scattering over the frozen tundra.
Black Onyx Reloaded - A Superhero Thriller (The Black Onyx Chronicles Book 2) Page 8
