Corpies (Super Powereds Spinoff Book 1) (30 page)

A massive jam of cars stretched before him, most of which were already emptied. The impromptu parking lot stretched up to the section of the overpass where at least a dozen vehicles had been flipped and scattered, creating an unintentional barricade for all the civilians still stuck on the elevated concrete. Some of the cars had caught fire, which meant he had to worry about the slim, but still real, chance of a gas tank exploding on top of everything else. It was bad, but not hopeless.

“Hexcellent, I want Huggles on that overpass. Reports show some people trapped in their cars; get them out now. When that’s done, help clear the debris.  Zone, you and Bubble Bubble start evacuating people from the broken end of the bridge. She can only take so many at a time, which means you have to keep the order between trips. Titan, I want that wall of cars cleared out, at least enough to make a path that I can lead people through. Be careful, but be quick. B.B. might have to chip in on helping keep the overpass up, which will make your exit point the only one we can use. I’m going to help Hexcellent and Huggles get people out of cars and try to organize them as best I can. This is a fluid situation, so be ready to change in a moment if needed.”

Galvanize didn’t waste any more time with words; instead he took off at a dead sprint through the sea of empty cars that led up to the barricade, the others hot on his heels.

Titan was with them, moving carefully to avoid knocking one of the vehicles aside and causing a domino effect. By this point, he was used to the precise way that Galvanize deployed his team, but he was still impressed by it. In his Hero days, he’d have never imagined a team purely devoted to rescue would require such careful coordination; several weeks actually doing the job had shown him how essential it was. More than once it had made the difference in saving someone’s life, which meant it was a skill damned sure worth having.

They all reached the barricade at roughly the same time, though Zone started moving over it first. He leapt up the pile of shattered concrete and twisted auto parts, only needing a single sphere from Bubble Bubble to finish his climb. Hexcellent and Galvanize waited as Bubble Bubble produced an orb that engulfed them and soon began its slow, but steady, trek over to the other side. Her ability wasn’t quick, though it was certainly useful.

For his part, Titan wasted no time once his team was clear. Surveying the warped barricade with an experienced eye, he looked for the spot that could most easily be turned into an opening. He’d have to be choosey, since he had very limited space to accommodate whatever he moved. Add that to the slope of stopped cars descending behind him and it would be all too easy to start a steel avalanche. That meant either just shifting the vehicles or having to try and stack them, both of which had their cons.

With a slam of his shoulder, Titan grabbed the nearest car by its axle and pulled it forward, moving slowly so as not to send the rest of the debris tumbling uncontrolled in all directions. It was akin to playing a very high stakes game of
Jenga
, and as he felt several other cars shudder, Titan would have traded two tons of lifting power for the ability to disintegrate matter. Thankfully, the barricade held, and he squeezed the first car into an open spot near two sports cars. It was a start, but there was still a lot to clear away before he could escort anyone without super-human endurance through it.

“Titan, this is Dispatch.” He heard the voice in his ear as he hefted up a slab of concrete and dropped it unceremoniously on the first car, smashing out the one remaining window but otherwise doing little to the already-battered automobile.

“Dispatch is heard, Titan responding.”

“Titan, you are currently showing in the recently damaged North Brewster area on a rescue operation, and your PEERS team shows as present too. Is that accurate?”

“Sure is,” Titan said. He tried to ignore the growing knot of worry in his stomach. If she was checking everyone’s position, not just Heroes, then it meant something bad.

“That zone has been reclassified from contained to active,” Dispatch said. He wondered how she could stay so calm, even in moments like these. Maybe that was her ability, wherever she was. “The gangs involved in the initial dispute have begun fighting in the streets. Based on information at hand, we have at least four confirmed Supers, with many more suspected. PEERS teams are permitted to remain and continue evacuating civilians at the discretion of their Hero Liaisons, but all active Heroes in the area are to focus on containing the brawl before more destruction occurs.”

Titan let out a long breath as he lowered the car clutched in his hands. Supers fighting in an area already on the brink of destruction meant lives were hanging in the balance. He released the car and looked around, trying to spot where the fight might be going down.

“Give me coordinates, Dispatch. And what’s the containment protocol on this one?”

“With so many civilians already in danger nearby, the DVA has ordered that Damage Class evaluation protocol be temporarily suspended. First priority is neutralization before any more innocent lives are lost. The lives of aggressors are considered low-priority.”

“Understood,” Titan said, and he did understand. In a perfect world, the Heroes could stop people without having to resort to lethal force, but some Supers just wouldn’t go down unless it was in a permanent fashion. It was messy, and hard, and ugly; but it was better than letting innocent people pay the price instead.

Titan listened to the coordinates Dispatch rattled off in his head, then he began to run.

56.

              “Team, I need everyone’s positions. Now.” Titan tapped his left earpiece as he ran, wedging it back into place. Unlike his Hero one, this radio hadn’t been tweaked and updated by every tech-genius to have to worn one in the last several decades, and as such it didn’t quite sit nestled in his ear with the same ease.

“Little busy.” Zone’s voice sounded like a forced whisper, as though he under tremendous physical strain.

“As Hero Liaison I am informing you that we have a hostile situation with multiple rogue Supers, and I need to assess if your position is safe or not. Now sound off, and hurry up with it.” Were there more time, Titan might have bothered with diplomacy, but time wasn’t extending him such luxuries. He had skulls to crack, and it would be a lot easier to fight if he knew his people were clear.

“Holy shit,” Hexcellent muttered in his ear. “Um, yeah, Galvanize and I are on the overpass; right now he’s pulling people free while Huggles cuts off the back of their car. We’re about halfway between the barricade and the part that’s just open air where B.B. is evacuating people.”

“Confirmed,” Galvanize grunted, clearly occupied with his rescue effort.

“I’m lowering my second batch of people to the ground now,” Bubble Bubble chimed in. “Once we land, I’m sending them west, where police and ambulances are waiting on standby.”

“That’s all fine, the disturbance is to the northeast, and I plan to make sure it stays out there,” Titan told them. “But you should be ready to move if-”

“Hang on, you said it’s to the northeast?” Bubble Bubble asked. “Northeast of where the collapsed portion of the overpass is?”

“Affirmative.”

“That’s not good. We had a kid in the first batch of rescues get confused and run off in that direction. Zone went to retrieve her, and he hasn’t come back yet.”

Titan realized he hadn’t heard anything from Zone since he’d made what Titan had taken to be a snide comment. When he replayed the words in his head, he wondered if perhaps there had been furtiveness in Zone’s whisper, as if their missing teammate were trying to speak without calling attention to himself. Then he remembered that Zone, like all the other PEERS, wore a damn costume, which an angry criminal wouldn’t realize wasn’t on an actual Hero.

“Zone,” he called into the earpiece, picking up his pace. “Zone, if you are near the conflict, I need to know. That spot is about to get very hot, very fast, and every Hero dropping in is expecting civilians to be out. Give me some sort of sign, even if it risks you being discovered.”

“We’re here.” This time the words were so thin that Titan wouldn’t have heard them at all if he weren’t specifically listening for them. He bounded across a street; already he could faintly make out the sounds of fighting going on. It had been a rough situation before. Now, it was downright horrid.

“Understood,” Titan said. He stopped his charge a block away from the coordinates Dispatch had provided. Once he was in, things would be sheer chaos, which meant all plans needed to be laid out before he entered the fray. “When you say ‘we,’ I assume that means you have the child with you. You should see me in less than a minute, and I’m pretty sure that everyone there is going to care a lot more about me than you. If you can get clear, do it, and let me know as you go. If you can’t, then get to me. I’ll keep you safe.”

There was no response this time. . . not that Titan was particularly surprised. Whatever was happening a mere block away was more than enough to keep Zone, one of the team’s most mobile members, completely pinned down. It was certainly a shitshow, and since Titan couldn’t suppress it fast enough to get people clear, he’d just slap himself into the center of the storm.

With a mighty burst of power from his legs, Titan leapt up onto the roof of the nearest building, carefully controlling his landing to avoid anything more serious than a few damaged shingles. He’d barely set down before he was in the sky again, heading for higher ground. As the air whistled by him, he spoke, trusting his communicator to pick up the words.

“Dispatch, this is Titan. I’m about to begin engagement, but there’s a civilian and a member of my team pinned down somewhere in it. If there are any other Heroes in the area, please let them know.”

“We’ve got two more en route; I’ll brief them on the situation. Currently, you will be the first to arrive,” Dispatch informed him.

“Well then, at least I get to make my entrance as showy as I want.” He landed on the third building, a four-story number composed of lifeless gray brick. It was an apartment complex, one in which he imagined all the residents were locking their doors and calling the cops. From its roof, he could see the fight below; several people still scrapping while others were motionless in puddles of blood. The brawl had probably started in the alleyway and then spilled into the street as things grew more frantic. Titan saw one man hurling bolts of gray energy, another taking gunfire without so much as a wince, and a third zipping about in a blur. Two others had shifted into quasi-animal forms that looked like a bear and a boar, respectively. The rest probably had some abilities as well, but Titan couldn’t loaf around and wait to see what they were. He needed to get a handle on this situation, and fast.

The whistling sound reached a few of the more attentive criminal’s ears first. It came less than a second before impact, however, which meant even if the bullet-proof thug had taken the time to look up at the noise, it was unlikely that he would have had time to dodge. As it was, he didn’t even see the several-hundred-pound mass that landed on his shoulders and shattered the bones that had born countless attempts at injury as easily as dry spaghetti. The thug let out a strangled cry from the ground, which was heard by almost no one, as all attention was on the massive man who had just dropped out of the air and taken out the toughest person left in either gang. This mystery man took two steps forward and spoke in a booming voice that echoed through the streets like a bomb’s aftershock.

“My name is Titan—yes,
that
fucking Titan—and the next person who moves to do anything besides get on the ground will be broken.”

For a moment, the gangs looked at one another, uncertain of what to do. They had, after all, been fighting each other. Eventually, survival instinct manifested, and all present realized that the Hero was easily the greater threat. Every last one of them charged, and Titan readied himself to make good on his word.

57.

              What Titan had entered in with Elemental Fury was a fight. It required strategy, restraint, planning, and cunning all piled on top of his already-impressive physical abilities. Titan was good at fighting; it was why he’d been able to take down such powerful enemies in the past. He enjoyed a good fight, but what followed after the two gangs merged into a single force dedicated to bringing him down was nothing like a fight. It was a brawl.

Even after all these years, Titan could still feel the adrenaline surging through his veins as he stared down over a dozen opponents, all coming at him together. His fingers tingled. Time began to feel a bit slippery. When it was over, he wouldn’t remember many of the fine details. Those would be lost in a sea of snapping bones and anguished screams. But as it was happening, Titan took in everything without exception.

As he grabbed the bear-shifter’s arm and snapped it in half, he could smell the man’s cologne when he fell, hitting the ground with a painful thud. When Titan caught the speedster’s clumsy punch, he noticed the young boy’s nose piercings just before he drove a foot down and shattered those speedy legs. At the moment that three of the gang members leapt on his back, he caught sight of their terrified but determined faces in one of the few unshattered windows on the street. That moment would stay with him, making him wonder if there was a better way than coming in full force. He almost hesitated, then he remembered that Zone and a child were somewhere in the area trying to stay safe. Titan’s resolve hardened. As he stripped each person from his back and hurled them into the concrete wall, he tried to keep from killing them, but he made certain that none would be rising anytime soon.