Night Legions

by Jeremy Flagg

  “It’s safe,” he assured her.

  “Don’t mind my disbelief.”

  “I didn’t tell them, Ariel.”

  She raised her eyebrow while massaging her jaw. “The proverbial boy scout didn’t tell his superiors he encountered a confirmed telepath?”

  “I may have fudged the truth a bit.”

  “I didn’t think you knew how to fudge.”

  “You wrestled the gun away from me. You went in and he did the same thing to you. When he heard me coming, he fled.”

  “And how do you know it’s not the truth?”

  “I could hear him.” He touched his temple, then shuddered. “Echoes in my head. It’s not normal, being that close to somebody.”

  “So, you know—”

  “You let him go?” He nodded. “Yeah, I do. I’d be mad, but something about it doesn’t seem to be adding up.”

  She didn’t offer any new information. She didn’t know what he did about telepaths. It was the first she heard of Jonah ever knowing one. She kept her mouth shut, determined to ferret out more intel.

  “How so?” she asked.

  “You’re a telepath, you have the ability to do”—he waved his hands—“whatever it is you do. And you kidnap a senator? To kill? To blackmail? I think he was manipulating the senator.”

  “To do what?”

  He held up his hands again and motioned her to come closer. “I guess we’ll have to ask Franklin.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  2033

  The explosion rocked the entire pier. The building, walls wired with explosives, had been converted into a weapon. Concrete pillars shattered and steel warped as waves of fire swept through the side of the pier attached to the street. Triggered by a wave of robots, explosives erupted. Stone and steel crashed as supports fell away. The fire started to subside, replaced by plumes of smoke and sheets of particles from the vaporized construction.

  A spray of small orbs launched from a the ceiling, targeting the robots in another burst of fire. Jasmine wanted to see the metal men die. It didn’t bother her that the husks of machinery acted as extensions of a man she once knew. They came to terrorize, to capture, to kill. For months she attempted to atone for her past. Save the innocent, that had become her purpose. Every skirmish, every punch, for three months had been about protecting those who could not protect themselves.

  Screeching tore through the sound of crumbling rock. A synthetic attempted to free itself from under the fallen rock as the small rectangle sticking to its neck fired. The thermite flashed white, cutting through the machine’s body. Molten metal dripped to the ground and the head hung limp to one side.

  Protector.

  Dust hung thick in the air, dense enough it created a slowly descending wall. Then blue lights started to emerge through the dust. First one, then two, then a dozen. The light emitted from the chassis of synthetics who were speckled about the rubble, climbing over fallen rock in another wave.

  Dav5d. Jacob. Synthetics. The Warden. The roll call of men threatening to destroy her life flashed before her.

  “No more,” she whispered.

  Somewhere in the back of her mind, her heart, her soul, she sensed something opening, a door, a window, access to a past she tried to stuff away. There wasn’t time to worry, to ask questions about fate, humanity, or the price she’d pay. She imagined the beast awakening.

  With a hiss, rockets launched, small three-inch-long heat seeking devices speeding toward her. Emerging from the industrial mist, tiny rocks rose from the rubble, intercepting the projectiles. Tiny explosions erupted, lighting up what remained of Navy Pier's façade.

  Two women, one with a robotic arm and the other hovering feet above the ground stepped into sight from a cloud of rock dust. The cavalry had arrived.

  “Gun,” Jasmine yelled.

  Torn from the rubble, a pulse rifle sped toward her right hand. The weapon nestled against her shoulder, her eyes dropping to the sight and fingers caressing the trigger like a lover. Against the gun’s aluminum coating, her skin hummed. Its surface skin rippled, synching with the durable metal. Her body converted to aluminum, a durable and agile weapon.

  Chunks of broken concrete rushed past her, slamming into the nearest synthetics. Jasmine squeezed off three bullets, and the skull of one exploded. A synthetic to her right, stepping down off the mound of rubble, fired its own weapon. Ignoring the sting in her shoulder, she returned the favor. The machine's neck contorted and its head fell backward.

  “We need to run,” Twenty-Seven yelled.

  Lasers. Jasmine hated the lasers. As the red dots appeared, she tried to fire before they could. Using their own laser sights as a targeting system, she knocked down three more synthetics before their power cells diverted power to the energy weapons.

  Jasmine cried out as a laser struck her torso, burning through her vest. She blocked it with her left hand, letting the skin turn red and blister. Taking a deep breath, she focused on her bracer, the metal laced underneath it. Platinum. The burn of the laser paled compared to the sudden jolt speeding along every nerve of her body. For two seconds, she wanted to die. After that, the laser did nothing more than annoy her.

  Twenty-Seven stood just outside her peripheral vision. The snap of a rifle ended the synthetic who'd fired the laser. A dozen more lights came into view. Controlling the army, a Child, Dav5d, the man who had spent months observing as she taught the Nighthawks to fight as a unit. Each of the synthetics knew her weaknesses, her strengths, and how to overcome the later by utilizing the former.

  “We need to divide their attention,” Jasmine said.

  Twenty-Seven fired another volley of shots into the dust cloud, snuffing out one light, then two. “How do you—”

  “Ariel, I need you to get me in the middle of the synthetics.”

  Twenty-Seven started to object. Despite the increase in weight from the dense layer of skin protecting Jasmine's body, Ariel grunted her assent, and the world flashed past her. Into the cloud she went, synthetics surrounding her on all sides. Tucking and rolling, she barreled into the first robot, hurling it backward.

  Controlled bursts of fire erupted as she knelt up and squeezed the trigger. The muscles lacing her limbs tightened and adjusted to the weight of her body. When she spun on her knee, tiny shards tore at her pants, but did nothing to penetrate her skin. The first synthetic crawled onto her back, wrapping arms around her throat. Its hydraulics pulled tight, attempting to squeeze the life from her body.

  It was unable to crush her windpipe, and Jasmine listened to a motor start winding in the machine. The high-pitched squeal reached a crescendo and the chest cavity ruptured. With a whoosh, plasma swept over her skin, burning the back of her uniform until nothing remained. The weapon in her hand melted, warping around her fist. Jasmine was flung forward from the blast, skidding along the rubble.

  The ringing in her ears matched the thumping in her chest until she feared the blast robbed her of her hearing. With Jasmine’s cheek against the cool tile of the floor, even eyes failed her as her vision narrowed and blurred. Thump. Thump. Thump. She realized the vibrations rippling around the ground weren’t her own pulse wildly out of control.

  The light threatened to burn her eyes as she stole a glance at the hole blown into the wall of the Navy Pier arcade. Standing atop the rubble, facing inside the massive space, a mech. Where the small synthetics threatened to overrun them with sheer numbers, the mechs housed a whole different arsenal useful for tearing through opposition.

  Ariel stood between Jasmine and the mech. She appeared frail compared to the hulking mammoth. Tiny synthetics took cover as Twenty-Seven continued firing, providing cover from a distance. Ariel had her sights on the single towering war machine, a standoff between powerful beings.

  Jasmine forced her eyes to stay open, needing to watch the showdown. The machine’s right arm, reaching from its second-story-high socket to the ground below, sprung forward at an alarming speed. Ariel’s arms shot up, crossing in a
n X. The mech’s hand slammed into an unseen barrier.

  Ariel's body rose off the ground by an invisible force. A flurry of rocks large enough to be called boulders rose along with her. With a scream, she pointed both hands forward, and the rocks followed the direction of her pointed fingers.

  The mech stumbled. Its left arm fell, bracing to keep itself from rolling down the pile of rubble. Jasmine rolled onto her side, turning enough to see the action. A weapon on the machine’s shoulder spun about, launching a spear at her. The spear broke apart midair into four smaller spikes. Jasmine recognized the non-lethal detainment method, though "non-lethal" might be too forgiving a description. A net draped around her as the spikes sank into the ground. As gears spun and the net tightened, it grew difficult to breathe. If it hadn’t been for her powers, she feared the netting would have torn through her skin.

  The cannons on the mech's shoulder peeled away in a shower of sparks. The hand rose up then dropped as fast as the servos would allow. Ariel's scream didn’t come from fear. Ariel’s sheer force of will wretched the arm, tearing it in half at the elbow. Tossing the limb to the side, Jasmine winced as it skid to a stop only a few feet from her prison.

  Ariel hovered in front of where the machine's eyes should have been. As doors along the side of its torso opened and guns unfolded, she didn’t flinch. The large, rapidly firing guns couldn’t manage to penetrate the dense air in front of the mentalist. When Ariel apparently got tired of the demonstrations, the guns became bent, useless. Jasmine remained in awe of the woman who didn’t need to bat an eye to cause havoc.

  Somebody, a human, skid to their knees behind Jasmine. Something pulled at the netting. She wanted to scream at her rescuer to hurry, but she found herself fixated on Ariel. The mentalist’s hands nearly touched the squat head resting firmly on the upper torso. A charge leapt from the shell of the mech, striking her in the chest and sending her backward into the rubble. Ariel screamed from the pain.

  “Shit,” Twenty-Seven said, trying to free Jasmine. A knife moved along the netting, sawing hard enough to cut rope, but barely scraping through the carbon fiber.

  “You need to run.” Jasmine coughed louder than she expected.

  “To where?” Twenty-Seven spat back. The behemoth turned its attention toward them. The gun sliding out from a panel in its chest wouldn’t kill her, but it’d hurt. Twenty-Seven, on the other hand, she was about to die.

  * * * * *

  “I want to taste your suffering, Angel.”

  Painted in hues of blood red and ripened orange, the sky above the church mirrored the turbulence of Vanessa’s mood. Dark storm clouds swirled, threatening to drop a funnel to the ground below. Lightning danced back and forth, flashing brightly, followed by a deep rumble.

  In the heart of Boston, the church held a combination of familiarity and comfort. Contemplation of the last night spent on the balcony with Dav5d, her hand intertwined with his, left her heart longing.

  Dikeledi was a frail, almost delicate woman. Vanessa wanted to latch on to her limbs and bring the empath’s body down over her knee. She hoped the spine-crushing move would only paralyze the witch, leaving her alive long enough to realize her own impending death. If not breaking her back, Vanessa wanted to feel her thumbs sink into the woman’s eye sockets and hear the wet sucking sound as she pulled them out again.

  “Stop it,” Vanessa said. “I am in control of my mind. My emotions are my own. I—”

  “At your core, you are nothing more than a child, a violent, desperate child. You can try to fight me all you want, Angel.”

  “My name is Vanessa.” The mention of her own name pushed the empath’s emotional manipulation further away. Vanessa had a flash of Dikeledi sitting in the lab, her abilities permeating the air until Vanessa doubted every feeling, every thought. Dikeledi had discovered a way to take her passive ability and weaponize it.

  “Fear has a taste like no other emotion. The moment your tongue touches the underside of a cool spoon, it resembles that. But fear of losing your mind—” Dikeledi started laughing, a maniacal, uncontrollable laugh from her belly. “Losing your mind, that fear is addictive.”

  Vanessa closed her eyes, ignoring the woman’s heckling. “Dav5d. Muriel. Conthan. Skits. Alyssa. Dwayne. Gretchen. Twenty-Seven.” She recited their names until it turned to chanting. With each name she recalled the faces of the family she left behind. “Twenty-Seven.” A human woman shunned, cast aside by society. Vanessa discovered the survivalist during her transformation from Samantha, a scared housewife, to Twenty-Seven, a fighter with a purpose. She drew comfort from the memory.

  Peace. Vanessa wrapped herself in a cocoon of warm memories. The image of them all resting hands on her back, pushing her forward, gave her strength she didn’t realize she required. Vanessa let the sensations pour into her body and gather in her hand. She found herself angry, but not from the influences Dikeledi attempted to thrust upon her. Somebody threatened Vanessa’s family.

  “Dikeledi.” The cry from Vanessa’s lungs clapped in the air. The power pulsing in the tips of her finger turned to light and she let it pour over the woman. Vanessa pushed harder, stepping through an invisible door, leaving the images of the church behind.

  Vanessa found herself in a small kitchen with wooden shelves and a pot on the stove boiling. Dikeledi’s scream from the living room revealed the empath’s horror. Fragments of memories from her mind answered Vanessa's questions. A somewhat transparent ghost of a woman appeared at the stove, stirring the pot. The woman’s bright orange headdress and the vivid yellow shawl with lines of blue and brown wrapped about her shoulders.

  Botswana. Vanessa knew their location. Only a few miles from the local school Dikeledi and her brother Obonye attended at the insistence of their mother. As Vanessa pondered the location of her father, she found a barrier in place, resisting her intrusions.

  Vanessa stepped into the living room to see Dikeledi’s face contorted in anguish. The empath attempted disengage her connection to the memory. Vanessa’s nails bit into her palm as she focused on anchoring her adversary to the room. In the hospital where their bodies remained, she was helpless and unable to fend for herself, but Vanessa had relied on her telepathy long before the Nostradamus Effect ravaged her body.

  “I can taste your fear,” she hissed.

  For the first time since Vanessa had started dealing with her, Dikeledi held her tongue. She tried to seal her mind away, Invisible barricades locking in place. The image of the modest living room started to fade. Vanessa gently blew, letting power caress Dikeledi’s skin. Her concentrated rage decimated the empath’s defenses with no effort.

  The room solidified. A young girl with her hair pulled back in pigtails cried on the couch, her legs pulled tightly to her chest. Stains along the side of the girl’s school uniform had caked with blood that dripped from a gash along her cheek. Her abilities manifested, faint lines of emotion radiating from her body, penetrating the walls, and consuming the nearby occupants.

  A young man, her brother Obonye, walked into the room, belt in hand. Blood dripped from the end to leave red specks on the white tile. The scene had an eerily similar tone to Ivan instructing his father to brutally murder his mother. The disregard for life from both of her captors, was this Vanessa’s inevitable future?

  “You’re safe now.” Obonye’s voice lacked any emotion. The younger Dikeledi had a moment of respite from the anger radiating from her body.

  “My father deserved it,” the elder Dikeledi spat at Vanessa. “That monster deserved to die. I’m glad—”

  “There’s more,” Vanessa whispered.

  The scene morphed to Dikeledi standing in front of metal bars, crying as her brother shuffled to the door. His bruised and battered face emerged from the shadows of a Botswanan prison. Dikeledi’s despair had a sickening bitter taste. Staring at her brother behind bars, the emotion slammed against a nearby guard. A prison guard drew his. The trigger snapped back, and a bullet pierced the officer’s skull, l
eaving him slumped over on his desk.

  Vanessa fought to push back the empath’s anguish. Grabbing the keys from the desk, Dikeledi opened the gate. Obonye resisted, fighting his younger sister, saying he had to pay for his crimes. Dikeledi’s younger self grabbed his head, thrusting her need for survival into him. The primal emotion settled in his mind, and moments later, he had his sister by the hand as he charged from the tiny prison.

  A whirlwind of sand rose from the dirt floor, blurring Vanessa’s vision. As it settled, she found herself in a chapel. Not much more than a teenager, Dikeledi stood at the altar with a gentleman Vanessa couldn’t identify. Vanessa eyed the young man, whose body appeared to vibrate, shaking so much he might slip out of his own skin. A minister spoke quietly, uniting the two in marriage.

  “You forced him,” Vanessa said. “You wanted him so badly, you used your own obsession to manipulate him.”

  Dikeledi smiled. “We are Gods. Those mortals deserve nothing less.”

  Only one man sat in attendance of the ceremony. Seated in the first pew behind the bride, Obonye watched with a smile plastered on his face. Upon closer inspection, Vanessa could see the blur about the man as he attempted to resist his sister’s influence. Vanessa understood now: none of these scenes had to do with Dikeledi’s younger self. The darkness rooted in her mind was the eradication of her brother.

  The older Dikeledi’s eyes were glazed over as she stared at her brother, sitting calmly in the pew. She reached out and touched the side of her brother’s face. Dikeledi couldn’t hold back the tears as they steadily poured down her face.

  “Next.” Vanessa grabbed Dikeledi by the arms and forced her forward, jumping from this memory to the next. She wanted the empath broken, unable to function. If Jacob wanted to destroy her, he’d have to do it himself. Vanessa didn’t want to deal with his puppets.

  Screams assaulted Vanessa. Both versions of Dikeledi shrieked in terror. Obonye hovered over a bloodied body. The knife in his hand plunged again and again into the corpse’s chest. Dikeledi lunged forward, wrapping her hands around her phantom brother’s wrist. She begged for him to stop.