Well, there it was: As explicit a threat to my life as if Mechano had said he’d slit my throat if I didn’t go along with the Sentinels’ plans. He was threatening Neha’s and Isaac’s lives, too. I knew Sentry showing footage of them had been no accident. Not that I needed to hear Mechano threaten me to know the threat was there. I wasn’t so stupid as to think the Sentinels would simply let me walk out of here with a pat on the back and a hearty handshake if I turned their proposal down.
The Situation Room was quiet as a tomb as my mind grappled with this dilemma. Maybe the Sentinels had told the truth. Maybe there was a massive threat on the horizon I could help thwart. They certainly were right about me being the new Omega host. Cassandra was confirmation of that. If they were also right about an approaching threat, didn’t I have an obligation as a sworn Hero to try to protect the world, even if it meant I would throw my lot in for a while with these manipulative murderers? I could bring them to justice as soon as the threat had abated. I’d be even more powerful by then and be better able to do so. And, Mechano was right: Right now, I had no hard evidence of the Sentinels’ misdeeds. Later, maybe I would have enough evidence to prove their guilt to the rest of the Guild.
Plus, if I did cooperate, maybe Millennium really could use his powers to help me go back in time and save Dad. Maybe I could save Mom, Hannah and Hammer, too. The saber-toothed tiger and the short-faced bear I’d seen had been tangible evidence of Millennium’s abilities. I didn’t understand how saving Dad would work as I likely never would have become a Hero if Dad hadn’t died, but I was no expert on time travel. If the Academy had a class on time travel paradoxes, I missed it.
So, here’s what was in the pro join the Sentinels column: Save the world. Save Dad. Save Mom. Save Hannah. Save Hammer. Don’t be murdered so the Omega spirit would be forced into someone else. Don’t get my friends murdered.
Those were all some pretty good pros.
On the other hand was a giant con: The thought of working with these scheming murderers made my stomach churn and my skin crawl. Why should I reward their bad behavior by doing as they wished? I had no desire to associate further with these scumbags. Dad had been fond of telling me to be careful of the company I kept because you picked up the habits of the people you hung around with. You become who you associate with, came the words of his Jamesism to my mind. I didn’t want to become like these three, who manipulated people like they were merely pieces on a chessboard and sacrificed them like their lives didn’t matter.
No! Screw the Sentinels. I would not join them. These so-called Heroes were nothing but overpowered bullies. As bad as the Three Horsemen, Elemental Man, Antonio, and the other bullies I’d dealt with all my life were, they paled in comparison to these three Sentinels. The Sentinels should’ve been on the Mount Rushmore of bullies. They had killed my father, a good man who did the best he could all his life. He had done nothing wrong other than have a son who inexplicably was chosen to be the Omega. I would not hitch my wagon to these tarnished stars. If the world really was threatened and I was the key to saving it—God help us!—I would have to find a way to deal with it without these three. They weren’t the only Heroes in the world who could help me. Isaac, Neha, Amazing Man, Truman, Athena, perhaps even the other Sentinels . . . there were far better Heroes to associate with. I had a hard time imagining worse.
That all was what I thought.
What I said was, “You’re right. You did what you needed to do to make sure I’m the right person to help you deal with the upcoming threat. I can’t say I’m happy about what you did to my father, but I can understand it. Besides, after this is all over, perhaps we’ll go back in time and save him.” I sighed. “I’ll join you. I want you to help me save the world.”
The room was silent as a tomb again for a few moments. I felt my heart beating.
Mechano’s head swiveled slightly toward Seer.
“His vital signs indicate he is attempting to mislead us,” he said. “Your thoughts?”
Seer’s white eyes burned into mine for a moment.
“He’s lying,” she said definitively. “He will betray us to the Guild as soon as he is able. Though the boy is our best hope to combat the upcoming threat, we will have to take our chances with the next Omega. Hopefully he or she will be more pliable than this one.” Seer shook her head sadly. “Kill him.”
Mechano’s head swiveled back to me.
“A shame,” he said. “I rather liked this one. He is far less sanctimonious than Avatar was.”
His single eye glowed bright red, like an exploding sun.
19
An energy blast from Mechano’s eye hit me like a Mack truck. Though I had my personal shield up already—if you’re foolish enough to walk into the lion’s den, you’d better have your chair and whip ready—the force of the blast was still enough to sling me far across the Situation Room. I slammed against the far wall with a massive, bone-rattling thud.
Mechano’s energy blast continued to push against the spherical contours of my force field, pinning me against the wall. I felt like a bug caught in the pressurized spray of a water hose. The force of it began to push me into the metal wall, like a pressing thumb making an ever-expanding dent in a soda can.
In movies, fights were always loud. Between the soaring soundtrack and the sounds of the fight itself, you could barely hear yourself think when you watched them. It’s understandable they should be loud. Movies were supposed to hold your interest, not lull you to sleep. But real fights often weren’t like movies. There were often sounds of exertion and smacks of impact, but not nearly the kinds or levels of sound you heard in movie fights. Sometimes real fights were so quiet, you could almost hear a pin drop.
This one was like that. The fact it was relatively quiet did not make it less terrifying.
The sustained blast of energy from Mechano’s eye didn’t make a sound, either as it passed through the air or as it pressed implacably against my force field. The only sound was that of the metal of the wall behind me as it crunched and twisted, beginning to warp around me like a custom-made coffin.
There wasn’t much noise, but my other senses were overwhelmed. I felt a mounting pressure all over, but especially on my forehead and chest, like someone had stepped on top of me while I’d been lying down, and he was getting heavier and heavier by the second. The brightness of the sustained energy blast was blinding. It was like being inside a fireworks display. There was the smell of burning ozone as Mechano’s blast cut through the air. The smell was so sharp, I could taste it. Was it a laser? Something electricity based? Something else entirely? It didn’t matter. Whether you were burned to death or shocked to death, either way you were just as dead.
I fought to maintain my shield as Mechano’s energy blast pummeled it with a force unlike any I had ever felt before. I struggled to absorb the massive energy of the blast. I felt like a kitchen sponge trying to absorb all the water in a swimming pool.
“I will find the right frequency to pierce your force field soon enough,” I heard Mechano say over the harsh sounds of metal twisting and rending around me. “Stop resisting, and I will end this painlessly.” My mind was too preoccupied and my teeth were too clenched for me to tell him to go screw himself. My eyes squeezed tight against the blinding light, which still stabbed at them like knitting needles despite being closed. My will started to flag, like an exhausted swimmer who wanted to give into the violent current he struggled against.
Hold on! Just a little longer! I told myself. The absorbed energy filled every cell of my body, threatening to slop over and make me explode like an overcharged battery.
“Stop!” Seer said sharply. “You’re playing into his hands!”
Too late, I thought. The words were barely out of Seer’s mouth before Mechano’s energy beam managed to pierce my shielding. For a split second, my body was bathed in the energy completely unprotected by my force field. I likely would have burned to ash instantaneously had the energy I had absorbed not given
me a tiny bit of protection. Even so, it felt like I had plunged into a vat of boiling oil. Time to go.
With a thought, I reformed my force field that was now useless against Mechano’s energy blast. I turned it from spherical to cylindrical with a tapered end. It went from being like a shield to being like a bullet casing. Using the energy I had absorbed from Mechano as propellant, I shot straight up, faster and more forcefully than I ever would have been able without Mechano’s absorbed energy.
I sliced through the wall I’d been pushed into like a hot knife cutting through butter. I rose like a rocket, leaving a deep groove from top to bottom in the tall metal wall. I punched through the Situation Room’s reinforced ceiling as quickly as a wink, leaving the Sentinels behind. Blurred images of the mansion raced by faster than my mind could process as I punched through one floor of the mansion after another. It was eerily quiet inside my force field despite the pandemonium I must have caused in the mansion. I realized I must be traveling faster than the speed of sound, hence the silence within my personal shield.
The night sky filled my field of vision. I slowed to a halt as quickly as I could without risking turning my internal organs into pâté by stopping too abruptly.
I quickly took stock as I hung high in the night air over Sentinels Mansion. I had gotten the answers I’d sought. I was in pain and hurt badly, but I was alive. When facing people like the Sentinels, I’d count surviving as a victory. The escape plan I had formulated when I first entered the Situation Room had worked. Even though I was apparently the Omega, I had known the moment I laid eyes on the three Sentinels I would be outclassed if a fight broke out. They were simply too experienced and too powerful for me to take them down on my own. I’d known that, if push came to shove, I shouldn’t try to shove back. I should run. He who fights and runs away lives to fight another day.
The problem was, there was no way I would be able to make it from the Situation Room back to the mansion’s front door. I had simply gotten too twisted around in the maze-like mansion. Using my telekinesis to penetrate the walls and ceiling of the mansion to escape were out too, as they had proved immune to my powers. Besides, I had suspected they were too reinforced against possible Rogue attacks for me to pierce them at my usual power level.
That was why I had deliberately let Mechano blast me with his energy beam, to give me the chance to absorb the additional energy I needed to escape. It was like Metahuman judo, using my opponent’s strength against him. I’d cut it closer than I’d meant to, though, in letting Mechano pierce my shielding. Everything on me felt burnt, even my insides. I felt like a charred steak.
I would have to assess my injuries later. This was not over. All three Sentinels could fly. They would be on me like flies on rotten meat in moments if I didn’t do something to stop them.
I had not used all the energy absorbed from Mechano in making my escape. A substantial amount of it remained, making my body tingle and crackle with barely contained energy. I bent over in the air, clenched my fists, and aimed them down toward the hole far below in the mansion’s roof I had just burst out of. I unleashed the energy the cells of my body had absorbed from Mechano. It surged forth from inside me like water from countless breached dams. I channeled it through my arms, down through my fists, and out of my body. A massive bolt of energy, glowing white-yellow, burst out of me like a fired artillery shell. It hit the roof of the mansion. It exploded like a thunderclap. For an instant, night turned into day. It blinded me. The shock wave from the blast hit me, knocking the wind out of me. It sent me tumbling through the air.
Once I righted myself, I looked down at the damage I had caused. There was now a massive gaping hole, smoking and jagged, in the roof of the mansion. There was more empty space than roof, now. Though I couldn’t see how far down the damage extended, I had punched through at least the first few floors of the structure. As I watched, part of the mansion caved in on itself, like a collapsing house of cards.
“Holy shit,” I whispered, shocked and awed by what I had done. Though I had intended to do it, meaning to do something and looking at that something were entirely two different things. Despite all the three Sentinels had done to me, that did not change the fact Sentinels Mansion was a symbolic, almost sacred building. I felt like I had just set fire to the White House.
My nose dripped. I reached up with a shaking hand and wiped the wetness away. Blood. The sight of it brought on a sudden wave of vertigo, weakness, and pain. Between Mechano’s attack and regurgitating all that energy in one big blast, I felt like a runner who’d been hit by a car at the end of a marathon. I needed a nap, a painkiller, and a pretty nurse to tend to me. I wouldn’t have turned my nose up at an ugly one either.
Maybe later. Right now, I needed to get out of here. I was under no illusion that the Sentinels had not survived my attack on the mansion. They had survived far worse in the past. I had just wanted to slow them down.
I started flying south back toward the city as fast as my throbbing mind and aching body would let me. Sentinels Mansion faded into darkness behind me. Though it hurt my head to do it, I send telekinetic pulses out around me, like an airplane in a combat zone checking for missiles. I was not being followed. Maybe dropping part of the mansion on the Sentinels’ murderous heads had done the trick.
I needed to get into touch with Isaac. I had my cell phone with me, tucked into one of my suit’s unobtrusive pockets. I didn’t dare use it. The only thing I knew about cell phone technology was how to spell it, but monitoring cell phone calls struck me as being something it would be child’s play for someone like Mechano to do. Besides, maybe my phone had gotten fried in Mechano’s attack after he pierced my force field.
I activated my wrist communicator instead. Isaac and I had a long-standing agreement to always answer our communicators. Even so, it seemed like forever before he answered his.
“Yo,” came his sleepy voice. “This had better be good. I was having a dream about the cheerleaders for the Astor City Supernovas. Just me and a bunch of bouncing pom-poms.”
“I just left Sentinels Mansion. They attacked me.”
“They did what?!” The sleepiness was gone from his voice.
“I can’t come home.” My tongue felt thick. I was having a hard time speaking. My lips were painfully cracked. Blood trickled into my mouth. “They’ll come looking for me. You and Smoke too, probably. You and Bertrand need to get out of the house now. Call Neha and tell her to make herself scarce.” I was having a hard time focusing. A building loomed up in front of me, taking me by surprise. I swerved to avoid it.
“What in the world have you done?”
“Not winning friends and influencing people, that’s for sure.” I swerved again, narrowly missing another building. “Gotta go. These buildings are cagey. They keep tryin’ to crash into me.” I shut off the communicator, cutting Isaac off.
My brain felt increasingly sluggish. My eyelids felt heavier and heavier, desperately wanting to close. It was as clear as the bleeding nose on my face I needed medical attention. I couldn’t go to a hospital though. In addition to risking exposing my secret identity by passing out in an emergency room, more importantly, I had little doubt Mechano would monitor the area hospitals’ computer systems for new admissions that fit my description. If I had his technological savvy and resources, that was what I’d do. Surely his sensors had picked up that he had injured me before I made good on my escape.
Getting help at a hospital was out. If I survived the night, I’d be sure to befriend a doctor who was not afraid of murderous Heroes and who made house calls. It was a shame I hadn’t already done it. Hindsight really was twenty-twenty.
I needed to hole up somewhere. I was in no condition to go another round with the Sentinels. Even at my best they outmatched me, and I was not at my best. I needed to hide, regroup, recover, and plan my next move. But where could I go? Home and hospitals were out. So was work. The Sentinels surely would look for me there. Besides, I did not want to endanger the workers i
n Star Tower. I could go to Amazing Man’s mansion in Chevy Chase, but there was no way I’d make the flight all the way down there. I was having a hard enough time getting back to Astor City without slamming into something.
Where could I go where the Sentinels would not look for me?
The answer came to me like a thrown lifeline:
Truman.
The Sentinels had not known that I knew I was the Omega. Maybe they also didn’t know I had hired Truman. Plus, Truman was a Hero who had dealt with the Sentinels before. If there was anyone I could go to who could help me deal with them, it was him.
It was the wee hours of the morning. Unless he was working a case, surely Truman was at home asleep instead of in his office. Truman mentioned he owned a condo not far from his office, but I had no idea where it was.
His office it was, then.
I altered my trajectory, making my way toward Paper Street. If it weren’t for the fact I knew the streets of Astor City like the back of my hand thanks to my night patrols, I doubted I would be able to navigate there in the condition I was in. Fortunately, I could make my way there, though I was only faintly consciously aware of doing so.
Before I knew it, Truman’s mid-rise office building came into sight. I focused on it like a drowning man dog-paddling toward a life preserver. Normally, if I needed to get into Truman’s office after hours, I would have landed on the sidewalk, walked to the front door, used my powers to defeat any security systems and locks I encountered, and then strolled into Truman’s office like I owned the place.
This was not normally. I was in no condition to do all that. If I landed on the sidewalk, I was likely to pass out there.
I took as careful aim as my lethargic mind would let me. I fuzzily gathered my personal shield around me. I shot forward.
Omega Superhero Box Set Page 69
