New Olympus Saga (Book 2): Doomsday Duet (26 page)

“Oh,
gross
!” Christine exclaimed as she tried to avoid the water sprays, her face twisted in disgust.

“Shit happens,” Face-Off commented. “Be thankful nobody was taking a crap when we came in. No time to wash your hands, let’s move!”

Kyle went first, out the restroom and into a hallway. His helmet projected a 3D digital overlay of the building onto his helmet viewer. They’d made it to the top floor, at least, and the main office was to his left. A couple of Russians standing guard by the office door were beginning to react to their loud arrival. He sent two Taser darts their way just as they started to level their guns in his direction. It was close, but the darts hit before they could open fire. Kyle rushed past their twitching bodies and smashed through the office door, closely followed by Kestrel. He threw a flash-bang grenade into the middle of the room, stunning everyone there. Kyle and Melanie were unaffected: their helmets filtered out the sound and the flash of the explosion. They moved in opposite directions, looking for targets.

Two men and a woman were sitting on three sofas in the center of the room, watched by four gunmen, two of them armed with power disruptors. One of the gunners managed to pull the trigger on his disruptor, but the sneaking beam of darkness came nowhere near close to them. Kestrel’s whip battered the shooter unconscious before he recovered from the blinding flash-bang, and Kyle took down the other disruptor wielder with a Taser dart as he closed in on the other gunmen. Two blows delivered with judiciously calculated strength took care of the last two guards.

“Don’t fucking move!” Face-Off yelled at the snoops, aiming a gun their way. Christine punctuated the warning with a kinetic blast that tore a hole in a wall. A snoop who had risen to his feet sat back down; the rest stayed put.

“You got this?” Kyle asked Face-Off; he nodded. “We’ll cover you, then.” Kyle and Melanie headed out, leaving Christine and Face-Off to the task of interrogating the snoops.

There were shouts coming from below; he heard rushing footsteps as a dozen mobsters ran up the stairs. Kyle dropped two more flash-bang grenades on the oncoming Russians, followed by Taser darts and Condor Claws. The charge broke apart. Unconscious and wounded men rolled down the stairs while those hale enough to move ran back the way they’d come. Mel laughed at the sight and added to the chaos by using her whip on a few of the slower Russians to encourage their retreat.

Four of the men had been armed with disruptors. Kyle made sure they were unconscious with a second volley of Taser darts. Mel jumped down a flight of stairs, grabbed one of the disruptors, and used her whip to launch herself back upstairs. “Here you go, lover,” she said, offering him the weapon. She turned around and destroyed the other disruptors with three sharp whip lashes.

Kyle examined the disruptor eagerly. He’d been itching to get his hands on one of those things since he first saw them in Chicago. The Lurker had destroyed them all, unfortunately, so this was his first chance to take a good look at them. The disruptor consisted of a backpack power supply, a connecting metal cable as thick around as a garden hose, and a handheld rifle-shaped projector. The projector was made of metal and wood and looked much like an ordinary gun, with a barrel, stock, trigger and pistol grip; the only difference was that there was no magazine or ammo receptacle. He turned his attention to the backpack device. It consisted of a canister held in a metal cage, all in a dull black matte finish. He ran a finger lightly over its surface – and jerked it away sharply when a painful tingling coursed through every nerve in his hand.

Whatever the canister held was intrinsically inimical to parahumans. Handling the device was going to be challenging; studying it would be difficult. He looked forward to it, however. Dispensing justice was his obsession, rough sex was his addiction, but learning new things was his beloved hobby. The disruptor wasn’t like any other gadget or artifact he’d seen, and he’d seen – and built – quite a few. Once he got the weapon in his lab, he would…

Mel looked up and moved, knocking Kyle to the ground; a burst of automatic fire barely missed him. The rooftop snipers had come down through a service stair, armed with assault rifles. Kyle rolled away from their carefully-aimed bursts, cursing himself for getting distracted. The hallway had nowhere he could use for cover. Despite his attempts to dodge, he got hit. The high-powered bullets punched through the light armor of his bodysuit; he dully felt the impacts as the bullets smashed through his body. His legs stopped working, and he fell down on his face.

Kestrel heard Kyle’s grunt of pain in between the gunshots. She was on the move, covering the distance between her and the snipers in a series of acrobatic leaps. One of the shooters caught her with a point-blank burst. Four bullets punched through her, shattering ribs and collapsing a lung. They missed her spine, though, and her arms and legs, and that was all that mattered; as long as she could move, she could kill. One of her hands darted forth and her target jerked back, blood spurting from the torn hole where his larynx used to be. The second gunman was the one who shot Kyle. He tried to turn the gun on her but she griped it by the barrel and twisted it away, ignoring the way the hot metal burned her fingers through her gloves. The pain was just another sensation to savor. The man’s scream as the fingers of her other hand stabbed into his eyes was music to her ears. She wished she could make his death last, but she needed to see to Kyle and he would not approve anyway, so she ended the man’s scream and his life quickly, if not really mercifully.

Little Christine will be sad
, she thought as she went to check on Kyle. He was struggling to his knees, hurt but alive. He’d be fine, she decided after taking a quick look at his injuries. She had other things to deal with. The Russians down below were rushing up again, hoping to take advantage of the sniper’s attack. If they’d coordinated a little better, they might have caught them in a crossfire, but their timing was a few seconds off, and a few seconds was all she needed. Her whip lashed out and its tip drove clear through a Russian’s skull.

Kyle forced himself to stand up and join in the fight. He threw another flash-bang and followed that up with a couple of gas grenades. Kyle didn’t like using the sleeping gas devices – the chemicals could be lethal in some cases – but he knew that unless he intervened Mel was going to kill all of them.

“It’s done, Kestrel,” he called out, snapping her out of her murderous haze. They’d hurt Kyle, and for that she wanted to make them bleed, all of them, but she stopped herself. If she upset him, he would sulk tonight instead of hurting her the way she liked.

“Anything you say, lover,” she whispered to him. He put a hand around the back of her neck, first caressing, then squeezing it.

“You shouldn’t have killed them,” he whispered back. “But we’ll deal with that later.”

She shuddered. She knew just what he’d got in mind. “Yes, we will. I’ve been so very bad, and poor Christine will be so upset.”

“Never mind that,” Kyle said. “We should clear the rest of the building, just to be safe.”

Mel started to nod, but froze in mid-motion, her eyes widening as she saw something behind him. Kyle started turning around just in time to see a huge flying figure crash through a window, sending shards of glass flying everywhere.

The new arrival landed in a graceful tumble and vaulted to his feet, facing them.  They recognized him immediately. The massive musculature, the lion-head helmet and the fur-and-chainmail costume would have been unmistakable even if Kyle didn’t know the man personally.

“Hey, Herc.”

“Condor, Kestrel,” Hercules-8 said in a pleasant baritone that didn’t match his rough exterior. The Empire State Guardian took a look around and paused when he saw the snipers’ dead bodies. “This is some mess.”

“Yeah, guess it is.”

“You’re under arrest.”

A small black cat jumped through the window Hercules-8 shattered. It rubbed itself against the Guardian’s leg and meowed loudly.

“Evening, Cat Lady,” Kyle said to the pseudo-feline, who nodded in return. He turned back to Hercules-8. “No can do, Herc. We are on urgent business. You know my track record. You can’t detain us. I’ll be happy to explain why.”

“You can explain all you want, Condor, but you’re still under arrest. The Feds have issued a warrant for you, Kestrel, and your buddy Face-Off. Long list of charges, including harboring a fugitive.”

The information hit Kyle like a physical blow, although he didn’t react visibly to it. “It’s all bullshit, Herc. Listen to me…”

“No,” Hercules-8 cut him off. “You listen to
me
. Vigilantes like you give us all a bad name. You’re coming uptown with us, and you can tell your story to the Feds and the Legion rep. And don’t call me Herc.”

The Empire State Guardians were stand-up guys. They’d been willing to work with Kyle before, even if he wasn’t an officially sanctioned hero. Things were different now. Ultimate’s fall from grace must have shaken them to their core, and now he and his friends had been implicated in it. Kyle coldly realized he wasn’t going to talk his way out of this. Hercules-8 had been a friendly acquaintance before, but the angry glint in his eyes made it clear that was no longer the case.

“Nice kitty,” Melanie said loudly to Cat Lady. Hercules-8 turned his head slightly in her direction, and Condor threw a flash-bang at the feet of the two Guardians. Hercules-8 was blinking furiously to clear his vision when Condor slammed an elbow against his throat, followed by a knee to the groin. The double blow staggered the strongman, and he barely struggled when Kyle grabbed him by one arm and flung him out the same window he used to come in.

“Nasty kitty,” Melanie hissed. The Cat Lady avoided her whip’s strikes and sprang into action. The little cat became a black panther of prehistoric proportions, and Kyle leaped away to avoid being clawed to ribbons. The panther landed and rebounded with unnatural speed, and its second pounce bowled Kestrel over; the two struggling figures rolled on the floor in a tangle of trashing limbs and slashing paws. Kyle hit the panther with four Taser darts. Their electrical charges were too weak to do much more than slow it down, but they distracted it enough for Melanie to kick it off her. She struggled to her feet, favoring her left side. She was bleeding from several deep lacerations. “Really nasty kitty.”

The Cat Lady rebounded quickly and went back on the attack. Kyle met the panther’s charge, using one gauntleted hand to ward off its swipes while he reached for the shock baton in his utility belt with the other. The charge in the baton was much higher than the Taser darts’; the giant panther went into galvanic convulsions and collapsed in a twitching heap, its fur smoldering where Kyle had shocked it. Melanie’s whip wrapped itself around the great cat’s neck and she swung it against a wall with enough force to drive its body right through it.

Hands burst through the floor underneath Kyle’s feet, reaching for his ankles. He barely managed to jump out of their grasp.

Hercules-8 levered himself through the opening he’s made. He looked royally pissed off. “I’m gonna fuck you up, man.”

Melanie’s whip snared one of the strongman’s ankles and she yanked it back, throwing the Guardian forward and right into Kyle’s high kick. Kyle followed the kick with a hammer blow to the back of Hercules-8’s neck. The Guardian was tough, though. Even on his hands and knees, he managed to grab Kestrel’s whip and tear it in two, ignoring the punches and kicks Kyle rained upon him. The strongman got to his feet and his oversized fists lashed out at Kyle, quick boxing jabs that could punch through several inches of hardened steel. Kyle backpedaled away; the shock baton needed several seconds to recharge, so he dropped it while he reached for another gizmo. He’d come loaded for bear tonight; the almost-disastrous fight at the Lurker’s cavern had been a wakeup call.

The muscle-bound Guardian kept pressing his attack. Mel maneuvered to get behind him, holding the remnants of her whip like a fighting stick. Kyle ducked under a punch and slapped a small square box on Hercules-8 chest. He dodged away, but not quite fast enough; one of the Guardian’s massive fists connected.

The world exploded in a burst of light.

Kestrel’s heart lurched when she saw Kyle being flung across the hallway by the force of Hercules-8’s blow. He bounced off a wall and landed limply on the ground. A second later, the directional charge he’d placed on the Guardian’s chest went off. Directional or not, the blast was enough to knock her down. As she leapt back to her feet, she saw Hercules-8 fall to his knees, clutching at the gaping wound in his torso. The big bastard might recover if given the chance, however; she didn’t give him one. Kestrel swung the whip’s handle at his head with all her strength, hard enough to deform the titanium-steel alloy handle and, hopefully, the Guardian’s skull as well. Herc fell on his face. He didn’t get up. He’d probably be okay, but Kestrel didn’t care either way. She kicked him off the building, figuring the six-story fall would help keep him down and out.

The sound of the directional blast going off woke Kyle up. He looked up in time to see Mel finish off Hercules-8 – and to see a man in a blue and yellow costume grab her from behind. It was Vance Voltage, yet another Guardian.  Melanie convulsed helplessly as Vance sent a torrent of electricity into her.

Kyle charged. If the Guardians were here in full force, he didn’t think they could get away. He would do his best, though.

It’s what he did.

Face-Off

New York, New York, March 17, 2013

Being a mind-snoop is a miserable, ungrateful occupation. I knew that much just from watching Cassandra doing her thing. People – including myself – expect miracles from them and get pissed off when they snoops don’t deliver. Sure, they can literally work miracles, but not all the time, and not on demand. So they end up taking a lot of shit from everyone.

This particular bunch looked pretty hard done by. They clearly hadn’t been all smiles and champagne glasses even before we dropped in on their little get-together. The lone woman in the group was skinny and looked like a teenager except around the eyes. She wore a shapeless floral frock, was clearly exhausted, and had been chain-smoking for quite some time, judging from the full ashtray in front of her. One of the male snoops was short and frail-looking, with a head a good three sizes too big for his body, and an oversized face to match. He’d barely noticed our entrance at first, but now he was watching Christine with a look of rapt adoration on his face.