New Olympus Saga (Book 2): Doomsday Duet (15 page)

One of my cheeks caves in, and the spike of pain is the worst one yet. That’s when it happens.

Another punch lands, but I barely feel it. My vision clears up, and I can see his face as he freezes, one fist raised for a blow he never lands. His expression changes, his eyes widen in shock, and his hard-on goes away. The pain and dizziness disappear, and I push him off me. He’s trying to get away from me, scrabbling away, slipping on the bloody linoleum, but I grab him, and now I’m stronger than he is, much stronger. He’s lost his cool; he’s struggling wildly and ineffectually, gibbering in terror. I grab him by the scruff of the neck and smash him head first into the dividing wall between the kitchen and the living room. The first time he doesn’t quite go through the wall, so I pull him out and do it again.

Ma screams when the asshole comes crashing through the wall, what’s left of his head protruding into the living room like a misshapen trophy. She screams again when she sees me coming in, screams in absolute horror. I recoil at her reaction, and I catch my reflection on the mirror hanging from one of the walls of the living room.

My face is gone.

I scream in terror, and my scream comes out loud and clear, even though I have no mouth to scream with. Ma runs into her room, and seconds later I hear a window open and her frantic footsteps as she runs down the fire escape. I turn away from the mirror, force myself to ignore the realization I’m a freak, a monster. I check on the asshole. He shit himself at some point, and he’s not moving, not breathing. He’s done. I want to kill him again, but once is enough, I guess.

The cops are going to get here eventually. I go to my room, throw a few clothes and my copy of
Aces and Eights
into a backpack, and get going.

I never come back.

Chapter Seven

The Invincible Man

Tule Desert, Nevada, March 16, 2013

The arid expanse of dust and rock and its thin covering of scrawny vegetation was desolate enough to make John think of Cassius’ tale. Dead worlds everywhere, and Earth likely to be next in line. He understood why his friend had refused to share his discoveries, but did not agree with his decision. Once they cleared things with the Legion, Cassius and John needed to tell the world. Forewarned is forearmed. If they all worked together, they could change fate. John believed that with all his heart.

“They are almost here,” Cassius reported. John’s enhanced hearing picked up the approaching VTOL aircraft. After a few seconds he saw vessels, flanked by several flying figures keeping pace with it. He recognized Kenneth Slaughter in his Brass Man suit and Daedalus Smith in his Myrmidon armor, Meteor and his signature blazing contrail, and Hyperia, her scarlet costume – one of her many colorful outfits – shining brightly in the harsh afternoon light.

The Legion had come geared for battle.

One VTOL craft landed a hundred yards away from their position; the others disappeared behind some hills a quarter mile away. Four other Legionnaires got out of the single vessel. Berserker, the self-styled avatar of the Norse pantheon, led the way, wielding his deadly battle-axe. Sun Knight was beside him, a recent addition to the Legion who made up for his inexperience with his raw power; his photonic beams could punch through John’s defensive aura, and he was nearly as impervious to harm. The Faerie Godfather looked like a teenage boy but was fifty years old and a master healer who could undo injuries almost as fast as they were inflicted. The last passenger out of the Legion craft was Nebiru, an imposing olive-skinned man clad in Babylonian-style regalia, his head hidden behind a bronze headpiece engraved with mystical signs. The Iraqi-born hero had a host of different pseudo-magical powers, including the ability to interfere with teleportation. John glanced at Janus. Nebiru’s presence would prevent Cassius from creating a gate to escape.

The Legionnaires spread out in a shallow C formation, facing John and Cassius, and stopped a hundred and fifty feet away from them. Kenneth kept walking forward. So far so good, John thought. His colleagues’ deployment was defensive. An aggressive posture would have involved some of them taking to the air and enveloping John and Cassius’ position, surrounding them and exposing them to attack from all possible directions. Their formation showed caution, which he could understand perfectly. This was a very delicate situation.

Kenneth walked up to them and removed his helmet. John noticed several Legionnaires tensing up when they saw what he was doing. Without the protection of his Brass Man armor, Kenneth was terribly vulnerable to attack; removing his helmet had definitely not been part of the Legion’s plan. It was a show of trust, and one John appreciated and understood. A wave of relief coursed through him. He couldn’t imagine a traitor exposing himself so completely.

“Cassius, John,” Kenneth said, nodding at his friends as if they were at a casual get together. “How are you both doing?”

“Fair to middlin’,” Cassius replied dryly. “Just fair to middlin’, Doctor.”

“I’ve had better weeks,” John admitted. “Better years, too.” He paused for a second to gather his thoughts. “I know how this whole situation looks, Kenneth.” He smiled. “I’d have to be crazy not to.”

Kenneth grinned back. “Well, John, I believe that’s the issue at hand. What happened?”

“When I attacked the Chicago Guardians, I was being mind-controlled. By none other than Doctor Cohen.” John went over the therapist’s true identity and his treachery in a few brief sentences. “He was able to overcome my psychic defenses because someone, someone in the Legion, put a device in my cochlear implant to bypass them. There is a traitor in the Legion, Kenneth, and he’s been orchestrating a campaign designed to drive me insane and become his puppet. And no, I didn’t kill Doctor Cohen, although I wish I’d had the chance. When his alleged murder was committed, I was elsewhere, still recovering from a fight that almost killed me. The fight took place on an island in Lake Michigan, an island that blew up last night. I’m sure you heard about that already.”

Doc Slaughter was well known for having a great poker face. His reaction was nearly imperceptible, but John saw shock and disbelief flittering behind his calm façade. Kenneth turned to Cassius. “And you believe this story?”

“There’s more to the story, Ken,” Cassius said. “And that part I believe. It matches quite nicely with things I learned on my little trip.” Kenneth’s eyes widened at that; he had been terribly disappointed and upset by Cassius’ refusal to speak about his twenty-year journey into outer space. “So I figured, in for a penny, in for a pound. He’s not crazy, Ken. A little cracked around the edges, perhaps, but at our age, who isn’t?”

Kenneth took a deep breath and slowly exhaled. “I was afraid of this. You do realize if what you say is true, we face the greatest crisis in the Legion’s history.”

“It only gets worse, Kenneth,” John replied. “There is also the attack on Freedom. I don’t like coincidences like that. I think that’s also the work of the traitor. He, or they, created two massive crises within a couple of days. I think they are meant to distract us from the traitor’s actual goal.”

“Which is…”

“I’m not sure, but I have some suspicions. And that’s only part of the story, Kenneth. See, I met this girl…”

* * *

John was as succinct as possible, but it still took him several minutes to outline his discoveries to Kenneth. By the time he was done, and Cassius had added his own two bits, Kenneth looked as flabbergasted as he ever had. The always unfazed Doc Slaughter clearly needed to sit down and assimilate the information, but since he couldn’t, he worked hard at maintaining his composure. It would have been funny if the situation hadn’t been so dire.

“It appears that we have been thoroughly compromised,” Kenneth said after a few seconds. “The fact that your communication implants – for all I know, all the Legion’s implants – were tampered with narrows the number of possible suspects considerably.”

“Who built the implants?” John asked. Truth to tell, he hadn’t paid attention to those kinds of details. Most of the gadgets and gizmos the Legion used were the creation of a dozen or so geniuses-in-residence, Kenneth being one of them.

“The implants were devised and fabricated by Daedalus Smith.”

“Daedalus?” John asked incredulously. A founding member?

“I think…” Kenneth started to say before he froze. His face twisted in a rictus of agony.

“Kenneth!” John shouted, reaching for his friend.

The left side of Kenneth’s head burst open in a spray of blood and gray matter. Doc Slaughter collapsed limply into John’s arms. A second later, his suit of armor exploded, leaving John holding scraps of flesh and bone that moments before had been part of a living being.

Out in the distance, the amplified voice of the Myrmidon cut through the sounds of the explosion.

“TAKE THEM DOWN!”

Myrmidon. Daedalus. The traitor.

The Legion attacked.

Hunters and Hunted

Baotou, Empire of China, March 15, 1963

Daedalus Smith woke up in pitch blackness, gasping for air, the nightmare that had plagued his sleep for decades still fresh in his mind, a nightmare in which the world burned as unworthy gods killed innocent millions for their sport. His awakening was accompanied by pain, and he remembered. They had broken his arms and legs, for starters, and then a Celestial Warrior had really gone to town on him, using a weapon made of segmented metal bars as a whip. He’d felt his ribs cave in one by one; that’s when he had passed out.

His bones hadn’t healed fully. The pain he was feeling, and the nearly-unbearable itching under his skin, were symptoms of his regeneration abilities working at their utmost to undo the damage. It was almost as bad as the original torture, but he forced himself to ignore it. He was back in his cell, a bare square of stone with no furnishings but a chamber pot. There were no windows or a door: one of the walls was a twenty-ton block of stone that one of the stronger Celestial Warriors would drag in and out of place. It was less a cell than a tomb.

“Welcome to the Dragon Empire, where the fun never stops,” he muttered to himself, and chuckled at his own joke. He was Daedalus Smith, and men like him laughed in the face of death. His sense of humor rarely survived more than five or six minutes after a torture session started, though: it was hard to joke around when all you could was scream. “Fun, fun, fun,” he said, resisting the temptation to sob like a child. He was Daedalus Smith, dammit.

How long had he been there? He had no idea. They had caught him during a night raid, explosions and gunfire waking him up in his tent. He’d reached for his plasma blaster, but someone had rushed in, moving inhumanly fast. The Celestial Warrior had knocked Daedalus’ weapon away and followed up with a punch that had pulverized his jaw and knocked him out for several days. When he’d woken up he’d found himself a guest of the Imperial Dungeons beneath the New Forbidden Palace. Time had lost any meaning after that.

There were periods where he was tortured for what seemed like forever, and periods where he was left in the dark for what seemed like forever. It could have been weeks, or months. His friendly rival Doc Slaughter had a mental clock that let him know the exact passage of time, even while unconscious. Daedalus wished he had that ability. Better yet, he wished Doc Slaughter was in the cell instead of him. Daedalus would love to see how long the blonde giant’s impassive demeanor lasted after going a few rounds with the Chimp torturers.
You’d scream too, Doc, you self-righteous bastard. You’d scream too.

Might as well wish for the strength of Ultimate. There was no point. He had to survive and escape. Had to. The world needed him.

Besides, the big blonde lug was probably almost as tough as he pretended to be. Maybe he wouldn’t scream even after they did that thing with the metal tongs that always made Daedalus go full soprano. That thought pissed him off to no end.

He sat on the cold bare floor, as far away as he could from the ceramic bowl they had given him to do his business in, and had himself a good long think. In this oversized sarcophagus, all he could do was think, eat whenever they remembered to feed him, take a crap in the ceramic bowl, and jerk off. He figured thinking was the most productive use of his time. Despair was not an option. He was too damn stubborn to give in to despair.

He’d come up with and discarded half a dozen plans, and tried to carry out a couple of them. Whenever the door slid open, there was always a Celestial Dragon present, since only a superhumanly strong being could open the ‘door’ to his cell. He’d tried overpowering the guards three times already, and all he had gotten in return was a sound trashing. Granted, after the failed escape attempts he was usually too battered to torture, which was a victory of sorts, but on his third try they had dragged him off to the torturers anyway, and he’d come pretty close to dying as a result. His next step had been to work on his restraints during the sessions, patiently trying to wear off the tough leather straps by working them against the metal frame where he endured his ‘treatments.’ He’d been looking forward to the moment when he would free a hand and grab the chief torturer; he could do a lot of damage with one hand. Unfortunately, they must have discovered what he was doing; two treatments ago, he’d found the straps had been replaced with new ones. Back to the drawing board.

His current project involved faking his death. Doc Slaughter had learned that trick after one of his jaunts to the Orient, where he had studied under Indian fakirs, Tibetan monks and assorted other gooks and spooks. He’d tried to teach some of the techniques he had learned to the rest of the Legion, but Daedalus hadn’t really paid attention. He had better things to do than listen to Doc spouting off about Asian mystical twaddle; it was bad enough to have to have to consult with him on technical matters. As it turned out, not paying attention had been a suboptimal course of action.