Kareem glanced back to the window. The X-Racer disappeared. Through the crisp circle in the window, wind instantly whipped their costumes and scattered brochures across the Sunday evening desertion of the observation deck. The Dark Fantastic raised his arm—
—and every hexagon scanning that gallery of the Tachyon Tower deck blinked not to null blue but total black.
I flicked at the controls to bring up another image, but the invading trio was completely blacked out.
Instantly another hexagon seized my attention: One floor upward, a wall shattered inward, and then a woman in shining armor landed on the debris of steel and reinforced concrete—Iron Lass, her black wings transmuting back into her cloak, her twin swords bared for battle. Scanning her surroundings, she dashed toward the vault door, on top of which a sign declared:
CONTAINMENT UNIT X FULLY AUTOMATED FACILITY EXTREME DANGER
ACCESS RESTRICTED TO SECURITY LEVEL INFRARED AND ABOVE
Shoving her swords into the massive metal mechanism, she was showered by sparks and instantly lit up by flashing bullet fire from a dozen angles and splashed by jets of a liquid spray that coated her and everything around her in icicles. Throbbing lights plunged the room into red and purple.
With her armor protecting her from whatever she didn’t deflect with the nearly invisible speed of her swords, Iron Lass leveled both blades at the firing zones, emitting blasts of her own frost and fire until the entire room was a chaos of steaming and flaming destruction.
Vanishing her swords, she pried her way through what was left of the vault door, and I lost visual contact with her—apparently certain wings of the Tachyon Tower had no cameras in them, or required some further pass-code or override for me to access them.
By the time I patched into Iron Lass’s cognistream—
What is this contraption? Like planetarium projectors—seven of them? They almost look like psionic inhibition siphons…but they’d be the largest ones ever built, all clustered and pointed at…is that a person inside that cube? Like a man sitting inside a washing machine! Is he asleep?
~~Ymir’s blood—can it really be?
“Destroyer?”
~~Withered, depleted, a human apple core left in the sun—eyes shuttering open, twin blue suns—
“Menton! But…but I kilt you!”
~~His mouth slowly working, chewing and swallowing, dryly forcing itself to work, as if the man’s emerging from a coma—
“Ah…Professor…Icegaard? Killed me, you say? Your delusions…of grandeur…are as cloying as ever…”
~~Grendelsmuter, Darkalfheimsdottir, to me!
“Surely…Professor…you have no need…of your weapons…against a desiccated corpse of a man…strapped into this…Torquemadan technology?”
~~Caution, Valkyrie—don’t gaze into his eyes for too long at a time—he murdered ten thousand mortals in a single night, feeding upon their minds—
~~Grendelsmuter’s silver light upon the butcher’s face makes him look even paler—
“How in Niflheim didt you get here, villain?”
“I believe, Professor Icegaard…I heard someone call it…Project…Paperclip? Transferred me on the CSV Odessa, if memory serves, from the Asteroid…I don’t know how long ago…You’ll forgive me…My mind’s not what it used to be—”
“Haff you been behindt all ziss? Destroying ze Asteroidt? Murtering Hawk Kink?”
“Me? Hnnnh…hnnnh…excuse my, my wheezing, Professor…it’s the only laugh I have left. I’m flattered, truly, but no…my glory days are long expired…Time to lift me on the pyre. These days…I’m nothing but a humble document…in the archives of power. To be filed, refiled, defiled at the whim of a higher power—”
“Zen be filedt in ze grafe by my power, monster, for now at last you vill die!”
~~Ach, sheisen! My sword—I’ve smashed one of the psionic inhibitors—his eyes—
“YOU WILL LET ME OUT OF THIS ABOMINATION, HNOSSI.”
~~Must…fight him…but I can’t…stop…myself…
“EXCELLENT WORK, WIELDING THOSE BLADES OF YOURS LIKE SCALPELS. THANK YOU FOR FREEING ME. AH…FORGIVE ME IF I DON’T STAND UP…AFTER SUCH A LENGTHY CONVALESCENCE, MY LEGS…YOU UNDERSTAND? AH, I CONFESS, THIS INTIMATE TIME WE’VE SPENT TOGETHER HERE HAS GIVEN ME NOTIONS. WOULD YOU BE A DEAR AND SHARE WITH ME YOUR HEART?”
~~No…my Grendelsmuter—away! Why won’t you away? Ah—no, not through my armor—NOT INTO MY—
Hnossi’s agony momentarily blinded me, shocking me right out of her cognistream. I dialed through every camera I could, then through every OM Meter feed I could locate, until I clicked on to Syndi’s.
“—How ya like me now?”
~~That’s it…sing it with me, asshole!
“How’s it feel being the one controlled, Menton? Oh, what’s wrong, legs weak? That’s okay, you dirty old bastard—dance! Dance anyway! You know this one? Hey! MEN-ton! LEAVE my MOM aLONE!”
~~That’s it, that’s it—right on her goddamn sword, you old fuck!…Look at that…hardly even bleeding. Like a mummified mental Hitler…
“Muzzer! Can you hear me?”
~~She’s so heavy, all this armor…Odin, please don’t let her be dead—
“Can you hear me?”
“Ah…my daughter…you’f…safedt me…?”
“Yes, Muzzer!”
“Such…a gut…girl—”
“Muzzer? MUZZER?”
“She’ll be all right, Syndi!”
~~Who the hell? Chip Monk, Dark Fantastic, and—
“Kareem! Oh, Kareem—why? Why’d you do all this? Why, Kareem? WHY?”
“What’re you talking about?”
“All those, those, those people, Kareem, all those F*O*O*Jsters at the fuh-Fortress—we worked with them! How could you just, just, just kill em all like that?”
“I didn’kill anybody, Syndi. Just hit em with the F*O*O*J’s own knockout gas, that’s all—they’ll be fine!”
“Thank God, Kareem! I told them, I told them, I said you’d never—but why—”
“I had to put em outta commission until I could get here—the stakes are too high to risk them trying to stop us—”
“But what were you trying to do? Take out Menton? Because I just did that!”
“That’s who that is? For real? Shit, couldn’t tell when you got him all youed up like that. Kot-tam, I knew it! I knew it! Yo, ’Tastic, didn’I say?”
“Word.”
“Syndi! Is Menton gonna die?”
“No, I don’t think so—not if we get him to a doctor…”
“How do you know he’s not dying?”
“I’d know—if I want to, I can feel what they feel when they’re HEATed—but he’s out cold…I should let him die—”
“No, keep him alive! We need him to testify! We need the whole truth out on this!”
“Kareem, does that mean it’s all over? I mean, I captured him, right? So now he can stand trial for Hawk King’s murder, Asteroid Zed—”
“No, Syndi—Menton wasn’t behind any of this—well, maybe Zenith, but—”
“What the fuck are you talking about, Kareem? You’re still fixated on Eva? Eva’s not Menton! This is Menton! And she’s not Sarah Bellum, either! Kareem, listen to me: You’ve been under a lot of stress! You’re not seeing things as they really are. You need help! You need therapy!”
“Shut up, Syndi! I know Doctor Brain’s clean!”
“Whu-what? But what about everything you told me at the theater?”
“Yeah, I had my suspicions at one point, but—”
~~Chip Monk’s grabbing Kareem by the arm…
“X-Man, damnation, we’ve got to move—”
~~Can’t let Kareem leave!
“But Kareem, you told me yourself, this elaborate conspiracy theory about how Eva had—”
“I just told you all that cuz I knew you’d sell me out to those freaks the second you got back to the Squirrel Tree!”
“What? You…you used me? Why? For
revenge?”
“For a diversion!”
“So when exactly did you figure out this massive conspiracy, hm? And when were you planning to let me in on it?”
“It all clicked when you said who your mother was—everything fell together: Festus, Asteroid Zed, Menton—”
“That doesn’t make any sense—”
“Who’s the detective here? And besides, the proof is in the kot-tam pudding-pops! I’m tryin to save the planet here!”
“Always gotta be the one saving the planet, Kareem! How could you—just use me like that?”
“Even-Steven!”
“Oh that’s mature!”
~~Dark Fantastic stomps his boot…
“Brother X!”
“Look, I’m not gonna argue with you, Syndi! How long can you keep Menton youed up?”
“I don’know—hours?”
“Good! Get him and your mom outta here, and evacuate the building—”
“Why, what’re you gonna do?”
“We’re gonna blow this entire dome if we have to! Chip, ’Tastic—split up—stay off the comms except for emergency! Find a way to get up to that dimensional research lab!”
~~And now they’re all gone, and I’m alone…
~~Muzzer…
Sibling Rivalry and Oedipal Combat
I switched cameras, clicking through until I could find one of the three invaders.
I spotted Kareem, covered in an Xoskeleton, smashing through a window and crawling out onto the exterior of the building.
I clicked again, finding a dozen camera angles on the outside of the dome from which to choose. And on Dome Camera Ext. 11, I spotted Kareem.
Backlit by the twinkling skyline, he was climbing up the dome with his clawed shadow-gloves, his shadow-cables keeping him from plummeting 150 stories to his death.
But above the whipping wind, I could hear the whine growing until it was like a band saw chewing into fresh pine. Kareem looked up—
“Okay, asshole!” shouted the Brotherfly. “Now you an me are gonna finish it for real!”
André opened his mouth wider than any human mouth should be able to and disgorged a steaming jet-spew of some type of corrosive, digestive juice onto Kareem. Kareem screamed, wiping at his exposed flesh, then reformatted his Xoskeleton to seal itself completely—even over his eyes. With Kareem stuck blind on the curve of the dome, André flew closer, kicking and kicking and kicking into Kareem’s shadow-armor until Kareem was swinging on his tow cables from the impacts, his body and legs whipping side to side. Then one of his feet went right into a camera, and the hexagon went null blue.
Flipping and clicking wildly to find another POV, I hit something that brought onscreen the phrase TACHYON TOWER—UPPER DECK CAMERAS—SECURITY OVERRIDE—ACTIVATED, and then I found myself witnessing an interior shot of Chip Monk and the Flying Squirrel smashing each other into the walls and across the chamber in a hurricane of weaponry and martial arts. In the brief moments when each man stopped to circle his opponent, they hurled fragments of cruelty at each other, horrible claims about disloyalty and hatred and paranoia.
The Flying Squirrel: “So, you’re mixed up with that shine, now? He’s doing for you what I wouldn’t? Wouldn’t Zenith be jealous?”
Chip Monk: “Zenith? The real hero that you murdered, Festus? Not that you’d do it yourself, that’d require you getting your hands dirty! You had your marionette Menton murder him for you!”
The Flying Squirrel: “How dare you question me! Me!”
The two men leapt, clashed, and the Squirrel fell onto his protégé. There was a loud crunch, and then Festus stumbled up backward, gasping, holding his hands in front of him as if to push away the sight of the motionless, costumed body on the ground.
Exactly at that moment, the exterior camera started working again.
André was still pummeling Kareem, but the X-Man wasn’t even trying to fight back. Instead his Xoskeleton was growing something like a fiddler crab’s oversized arm, a massive drill-like tool that chewed a hole through the dome wall until Kareem retracted his device and slipped through the gap.
Using the security override, I dialed up an interior camera view just as André followed Kareem inside the chamber, only to be smashed across the room by what looked like a massive black flyswatter. André careened off equipment, hit the wall, and landed on his side.
Given the angle of his impact, his body’s contortion and his screaming, I guessed his hip was crushed and at least one of his legs was broken.
Sirens were howling, and speakers were automatically chanting All personnel, this is a Level One emergency! Hull breach in the dimensional interface chamber! Initiating full system shutdown!
Behind André in the cavernous technochamber was a huge, radiant iris, a three-story gold-silver blossom whose center shimmered with nebula and stars, vibrating with a disturbing violet luminescence.
Kareem staggered over to André, his Xoskeleton fading to gray and then to nothingness. Panting and groaning, he clutched his side as if his ribs were broken.
“Now listen…you superduper…killer house nigger! I know…you killed…Hawk King!” His chest was heaving. He tried and failed to catch his breath. “Tell me why…kot-tammit! Why?”
“You crazy, nigga!”
“My medu-kem… found dust…from the Blue Pyramid walls…on your costume, André. But you said…you hadn’t been there…since you were a kid—”
“So your logoids are wrong!”
“No way in hell. I also had them…go through Festus’s computers…Big Squirrel Brother…has got the whole city…under observation. Grimhotep…finally decrypted the file I retrieved. Shows you…flying away from the Pyramid the night the King was murdered. With a scepter in your hands. The Scepter of Typhon.”
As his accusations grew in strength, Kareem regained his own.
“So how’d you do it, André? Mind-control him with the scepter into revealing his transmutation phrase…turn him into defenseless old Dr. Rogers in his wheelchair, and then kill him? And then…use the transmutation phrase to turn his body back into Hawk King’s so no one’d know? Why, muthafucka? How much did that son of a bitch pay you?”
André yelled, “Fuck you, man! Ain’nobody pay me! I loved Hawk King! I loved him! He was my hero!”
Kareem put his foot onto André’s pelvis and leaned.
The act—and André’s scream—was so repugnant that even as a trained psychotherapist, it was all I could do to keep myself from turning away.
“I aint fuckin around with you, André!” yelled Kareem. “Now you tell me why you did it, or next time I’m standing up on that muthafucka like you a StairMaster!”
When André’s eyes drifted back into focus, he said, “They were blackmailing me, man!”
“Who? Festus?”
“I don’t know who! Guy came to me, told me he’d tell my aunt Maybelle that I was responsible for my uncle Benteen’s death! It’d kill her if she found out!”
“His death?”
“Because, because my uncle, he…I was in my room one mornin, an I didn’know he was home, an he didn’think anybody else was home, so when he heard somethin in my room he just came up an barged in an caught me changin into my costume, an then he just had a massive heart attack—”
“He caught you fuckin a guy, didn’he, André?”
“What? No—no, that’s not true, Kareem!” said André, or perhaps I should say Andrew, given his speech shift. “Who told you that? It’s not true, whatever you heard!”
“No one told me—I figured it out days ago, after I bugged Doctor Brain’s glasses. Your whole origin story—it didn’t wash. All your ‘womanizing’—I saw the photos from your file of you at those nightclubs. Just cuz Eva doesn’t know what kind of clubs the Meet Market, Bone Dancers, and Peacocks are doesn’t mean I don’t!”
“No, Kareem, please, just…look, don’t tell my aunt, all right? Whatever you think of me, don’t tell my aunt—”
“You’re a kot-ta
m murderer, André! You think I’m just gonna give you a pass cuz you don’t wanna get in trouble with your aunty?”
“It’d kill her, Kareem! Don’t you understand? Just like my uncle—I was trying to protect her, that’s all! She raised me!”
“I don’t let murderers walk for any reason! Let alone the Judas who assassinated the greatest leader we ever had!”
“Oh…sure,” sobbed André, catching himself before he continued. “Fine. High and mighty Kareem. So perfectly just. Judging me! The homophobic, white girl–screwing hypocrite, judging me!”
“This aint about homophobia!”
“Isn’t it? When I went to join the L*A*B when you muthafuckas were recruiting? Remember that? I went down to the QRIB. All I wanted was to protect Stun-Glas. And all your friends, laughing about these applicants you’d rejected, ‘fag’ this and ‘fag’ that, and the Dreadlocker saying how he’d put some ‘battiman’ in the hospital just for looking at him and how he’d ‘put fyah’ on the next one he found!”
“I never talked like that, André—”
“No, but you didn’t fucking stop it, either, did you? Did you have Dreadlocker arrested for confessing to a horrible aggravated assault? Did you kick him out of the L*A*B? Even just fucking talk to him about it?”
X-Man looked down, opening his hands as if he’d left something important in them. “You’re right. André. You’re right,” he said, clearing his throat. “But that doesn’t excuse—”
Kareem was smashed against the wall.
I zoomed back: the Flying Squirrel was reaching into his utility pouches—
And then the monitors inked into blackness.
A Fear-Filled Final Inventory
I couldn’t see anything. Even the eerie light of the dimensional portal had been snuffed out. The Dark Fantastic must’ve entered right behind the Squirrel. I clicked into the Brotherfly’s OM Meter cognistream, but he’d passed out. Festus’s link was still offline. My only means of monitoring was auditory.
Minister Faust Page 34
