GEN13 - Version 2.0 (22 page)

Freefall was clutching her ears, trying in vain to protect herself from the noise. But that didn’t stop her body from spasming violently under Reverb’s vibratory assault.

Under Override’s control, Burnout had taken to the air near the ceiling and was peppering the battlefield with bursts of white-hot plasma. Fairchild saw Lynch leap out of the way of one of his fiery' blasts, scant heartbeats before she leapt for cover herself.

It’s happening again!
she thought with alarm. An aw-

ful sense of
deja vu
crept over her like an icy hand. She could see that this fight was going to end every bit as badly as the ones that had come before. It was the same thing all over again.

The same thing .. .

That’s it!
Fairchild thought.

It all came together in a flash. Knowing their opponents’ strategy meant that they could anticipate it, and turn their own tactics against them. All at once, Fairchild knew what they had to do, and how to beat Gen
¹⁴
. It was just like Lynch had said—the key was in Ivana’s training. She’d trained the Gen
¹⁴
team, but Ivana had never been much of a team player herself. For that matter, neither had her Gen'
³
pets, Threshold and Bliss. The exact same blind spot screamed out in the tactics that Ivana had drilled into Gen
¹⁴
.

Sure, the Gen
¹⁴
kids attacked in pairs. But that didn’t mean they attacked
as
pairs. If they were truly functioning as a team, they’d be complementing each other’s strengths and compensating for each other’s weaknesses. But they weren’t. Every time the two generations of gen-actives had met, Gen
¹⁴
had been fighting tag-team style, as individuals, instead of as a unit.

Not that Gen
¹³
had been doing things much differently. For the most part, they’d been so busy reacting and defending themselves that they’d mostly been fighting as individuals, too ... and getting overwhelmed and outgunned as a result. But every time they did work together—escaping the apartment, the rescue at the interview—they’d always come out on top.

Because if there was one thing Gen
¹³
knew about, it was teamwork.

It wasn’t something they had learned back at I.O., from Ivana and her crew. It came from Lynch’s endless training sessions, from countless battles with enemies far more powerful than themselves, and most of all, from the trust in each other that had grown with their friendship.

The abilities that stemmed from their individual gen-factors made each member of Gen
¹³
formidable. But it was teamwork that made them unbeatable.

“Don’t fight them alone!” Fairchild called to her teammates. “Watch each other’s backs!”

Just as Bogeyman was about to get a lock on Fairchild, she lowered her head, crouched down, and charged to the attack. Bogeyman prepared to duck out of the way of the charge.

But Bogeyman wasn’t the one she was attacking.

Rave was so focused on her mind-bending assault on Grunge that she never even saw Fairchild coming. The three hundred-pound heroine hit with the strength and speed of a runaway freight train. If the impact of the collision didn’t knock Rave out, slamming into the wall surely did.

“Not the most satisfying win of my life,” Fairchild remarked to herself, “but it serves the purpose.”

With Rave unconscious, the world suddenly flooded back to fill Grunge’s senses. He shook his head, his long hair flying, as he took it all in. “Whoa, what a trip,” he muttered, “Speed kills.”

Just then, Grunge spotted Freefall shaking and spasming out of control. “No way,” he growled. Grunge touched his fingers to the thick sole of his high-topped workboot and leaped into the fray with a hearty
“HAlIIlHll-YAA!”

Reverb turned at the sound of the battle cry (as did almost everyone else, actually), just as Grunge struck him in the chest with a flying kick. “Bam!” said Grunge, completing his follow-through to land on his feet. “Who’s your daddy?”

Reverb hit the ground hard, but recovered quickly, rolling with the impact. Even as he regained his footing, he hammered Grunge with a devastating sonic blast... that had no noticeable effect whatsoever.

Grunge grinned and lifted his shoe. “Rubber soles, dude.”

Reverb started as he suddenly realized that Grunge’s skin was jet black instead of its usual color. Nor was it skin anymore. Grunge had become pure rubber from head to toe—shock-absorbent rubber that could absorb the vibrations from Reverb’s blasts.

“Time to go ‘unplugged,’ dude,” said Grunge. With that, he delivered the knockout blow.

Grunge stood over his fallen foe for a minute, enjoying his victory ... but not for long. He howled in pain as a ball of Burnout’s fiery plasma hit him in the back and side, and stuck there like napalm. The heat was intense enough to melt the part of his body where the plasma adhered. Grunge’s rubbery' skin turned into foul-smelling goo in a cloud of acrid, black smoke.

Freefall knew she had to do something. She had to stop Burnout.

Uh-uh,
she corrected herself.
I have to stop Override.

Freefall turned to face Override, who was standing off to the side, immobile, while she controlled Burnout’s body. Before Override knew what was happening, Freefall pointed at the twelve-year-old puppet mistress and sent her soaring up into the cement ceiling, then doubled her normal weight to send her crashing to the floor.

With Override unconscious, the fiery barrage came to an abrupt halt as Burnout seized back control over his body. Without a moment’s hesitation, he turned his power to the place where it would do the most good.

Rainmaker was sprawled on the floor near the wall, dazed, sputtering, and coughing up water from Riptide’s blasts. As though Riptide’s attack wasn’t bad enough on its own, every one of the racking coughs made her broken ribs grind together, sending a fresh wave of pain through her body. Riptide readied another attack, morphing his arms into dual jets of cascading water to batter his helpless foe.

Assuming they reached her, that is.

Halfway there, the jets of water vaporized into steam under the heat of a searing bolt of flaming plasma. Riptide screamed, seconds before Burnout swooped down to finish him off with a roundhouse punch to the jaw. Riptide crumpled to the ground, unconscious, with clouds of water vapor drifting harmlessly in the vicinity of his shoulders. Even once he woke up, it would take time for him to pull himself back together.

As the battle raged on all sides, Gen
¹³
seemed most focused on defending themselves against the most immediate threats. So once he lost his chance to strike at Fairchild, no one seemed to be paying much attention to Bogeyman. That, he reasoned, was an error. For even if he had lost Gen
¹³
’s team leader for a moment, he could go one better.

Bogeyman locked eyes with Lynch.

Lynch had been standing only a few feet away, but he’d been distracted by the chaos around him. Bogeyman didn’t waste any time. The instant he made contact, Bogeyman reached deep into the recesses of Lynch’s soul. He dredged down for the darkest, most terrifying secret fears he could find, then wrenched them up to put them on display.

In the past, Bogeyman had seen many reactions to his efforts. Some had screamed. Some had run. Others had gone mad. Martin Cheswick had thrown himself out of a seventeenth-floor window.

Lynch smiled. A nasty smile.

“Nice try, kid,” Lynch said. “Sorry to disappoint you, but I faced my deepest fears years ago. They’re old friends. Now, it’s your turn to give it a try.”

Nothing like this had ever happened to Bogeyman before. No one had failed to succumb. Nothing in his training had prepared him for something like this.

Lynch started toward him. Lynch wasn’t hurrying. His expression said he didn’t need to. He stepped toward Bogeyman at a deliberate pace.

The twelve-year-old’s normally impassive face went pale. As Lynch loomed over him, Bogeyman turned to flee.

He found Freefall standing behind him. “Aw, c’mon, Mister L,” she said. “Let me.”

Before Bogeyman could react, Freefall leapt a good five feet straight up in the air. Gravity ceased to exist beneath the teen as she did a tight, 360-degree spin, then multiplied her weight as she lashed out with her foot to make contact with Bogeyman’s jaw. Bogeyman went down in a motionless heap.

“Eat your heart out, Michelle Yeoh.”

Roxy stared at the limp form at her feet. Fighting back—not out of fury, but out of simple determination— had left her feeling cleansed. She still remembered every bit of what he had put her through, but it didn’t feel so bad anymore. “Oooh, mondo creepy bogeyman,” she said, not quite keeping the shiver out of her voice. She gave what she hoped was a cool, indifferent shrug. “As if.”

A short distance away, Grunge screamed as Slash’s razor-sharp arm tore through his already-damaged rubber torso. The blade left a wide gash in its wake, cutting clear through half of Grunge’s abdomen. Grunge clutched the loose ends to hold them together.

Slash reared back to finish the job. But before he could deliver the blow, he found himself sailing through the air in the grasp of a force-three hurricane. Rainmaker blew Slash all the way down to the end of the hall. As the blank wall rushed to meet him, Slash raised his arms to protect himself.

However, in the heat of the moment, Slash didn’t realize that raising his arms was exactly what Rainmaker was planning on. Like straws driven by a hurricane, the twins blades met the concrete wall... and plunged straight through. By the time the wind died down, Slash was trapped, wedged up to his shoulders in the solid wall.

Freefall rushed to Grunge’s side. “Pookie!” she shouted. “Are you okay?”

Grunge winced with pain. “This’s really ... gonna... sting ... in the morning.”

Freefall breathed a relieved sigh. If Grunge had been in his human form, either the bums or the gash would have been more than enough to kill him. In his many morphed forms, though, he’d survived worse than this. She couldn’t begin to imagine the pain he must be feeling from the combined attack, but he’d be all right. Grunge just needed time—first some time to put himself back together and switch back to human, and then some more time to recover.

Unfortunately, time was something they didn’t have right now.

Freefall looked up to see Knockout bearing down at them at full speed. Freefall had less than a second to prepare to defend her man.

But Burnout got there first.

“Incoming!” he yelled.

Burnout conjured up a fiery mass of plasma that wrapped itself around Knockout’s head. Knockout fought a wave of panic as she halted her charge and started trying to beat out the flames. Yet, after a moment, she realized what Burnout had already figured out: Her super-strong body was far too tough to be injured by the white-hot plasma.

In fact, Knockout realized, the flames were more of a nuisance than anything else, blinding her so that she couldn’t resume her attack. Still, if that was the case, she intended to make sure that no one else would take the opportunity to attack her, either. She flailed about blindly with her arms and legs, intending to drive off anyone who might be tempted to get too close.

Still flailing around, Knockout started to cough. Yet, even after that, it took her another minute or two to realize, wide-eyed, where the real threat lay.

No, the fire around her head couldn’t hurt her. But it could eat up the oxygen she needed to breathe.

Instantly, Knockout dropped her defensive action and went back to trying to smother the flames with her hands. Every time one bit of the plasma went out, though, Burnout simply added more on. It was a variation on the same attack that Riptide had used on Fairchild back on the street. And it worked every bit as well on Knockout now.

The harder she fought, the faster she used up the oxygen in her lungs.

Before long, Knockout sank to the floor. Her attempts to beat out the flames grew more and more sluggish, until, finally, she passed out from lack of air. True to his name, Burnout let the fire bum itself out around her.

Burnout's intervention had saved Freefall and Grunge from her attack. But taking Knockout out of the picture didn’t leave Freefall and Grunge safely out of the woods, either. Growing Boy had snatched Freefall up in his massive hands and squeezed. The pressure was incredible.

“You ... again?” Freefall said, through gritted teeth, as the air forced itself from her lungs. “Y’know ... you’re starting ... to tick me off... too!”

Freefall tripled Growing Boy’s already considerable weight. Growing Boy looked down, startled, as the flooring creaked its protest before bursting under its burden. Freefall came free as Growing Boy’s hands opened reflexively in surprise. He fell through the floor to the level below. His gargantuan size prevented his entire body from plunging through, but it left him trapped awkwardly at chest height, his feet standing on the floor one story down.

As Growing Boy struggled to free himself, Fairchild leaped up to deliver a powerful haymaker. With a grunt, Growing Boy slumped down, unconscious. The only thing that kept him on his feet was the fact that he was still wedged in the floor.

With her teammates falling all around her, Sidestep had come to the conclusion that she’d better get herself out of there—and fast. Briefly, she considered a handful of possible destinations, but quickly realized that it didn’t really matter. The important thing wasn’t where she was going. It was getting away from where she was.

The air shimmered beside her as Sidestep created her escape hatch. But no sooner had she taken her first step toward it than the portal was disrupted by a massive bolt of lightning that coursed through it from behind. Sidestep recoiled from the blast even as the portal reformed itself.

Moving faster this time, Sidestep started to make a dash for the portal. But she stopped herself when she saw that it was now shrouded in a curtain of flame.

Sidestep turned to face Rainmaker and Burnout. Both were watching her closely. Rainmaker’s hand was raised in Sidestep’s direction, looking ominously like a loaded gun. Burnout stood beside her, his arms crossed, with a confident smile.