New Olympus Saga (Book 2): Doomsday Duet (34 page)

She was. The gate was a carved circle covered with symbols, much like the one we’d used on our way in. The woman stepped near it and concentrated. Another dark portal opened, and not a moment too soon, because whatever was going on behind us was getting bigger, and it sure as fuck felt like a black hole to me.

“Go!”

Condor and Kestrel leaped through the portal, and Christine and I followed a second later. There was one terrifying moment when I felt the pull of the singularity or whatever it was while we were in transit, in the darkness between places. If we got stuck there…

We stumbled into another room, office space of some sort, perfectly ordinary except for the Outsider magic circle on the floor. Condor and Kestrel were there already. Asian chick came out in an acrobatic roll, and the portal closed behind her with a pop almost as loud as a gunshot.

The earth was still shaking. The lights in the office flickered. Wherever we’d ended up, it clearly wasn’t far enough. What if the singularity didn’t stop growing?

There was one final seismic shock, and everything went still. “Glad that’s over.” I turned to our savior. “Where are we?”

“An office under the Metropolitan Museum of Art,” she said. She looked pretty calm, for someone surrounded by people she’d been trying to kill not too long ago. “I can lead you to an exit without triggering any alarms or alerting the museum’s security. Daedalus Smith has sat on the Met’s Board of Trustees for quite some time, you see. A lot of special features were added to the building at his behest.”

“Why did you help us?” Christine asked her.

“Mr. Night betrayed my Bear. I repay his treachery with my own.”

I glanced at our resident lie-detector; she nodded. “All right, lady. Lead the way.”

* * *

Outrunning a black hole (okay, I knew that couldn’t be a black hole, even with my miniscule knowledge of astrophysics, but it was black, it sucked things into it, and was a hole of some kind; Q.E.D.) had been tough. Getting out of the Met wasn’t much of a challenge by comparison. It could have been a pain in the ass, though. Five people in costumes (well, four people in costumes and one faceless guy in rags) attract a lot of attention, especially when the costumes are well known. Condor had his own (unauthorized) comic book, and there was a large body of adult literature and cinematography devoted to Kestrel; she’d even appeared in person for some of it. If we ran into a security guard or were seen traipsing around Fifth Avenue, the cops would hear about it.

Lady Shi – she’d told us her name and where she was taking us, but little else – led us through several deserted corridors beneath the museum building, and eventually to a utility tunnel and a small underground parking garage with a variety of cars, from a service van to a couple of stretch limos. “Here we are,” she announced. “You can take one of these vehicles, or make your own arrangements. Farewell and good luck. You will need it.”

“What about you?” Christine asked her. “What are you going to do now?”

“That isn’t your concern. I gave you your lives. That’s all you’ll get from me.”

“We’re not going to just let her go, are we?” Kestrel said. She was clearly itching to get back into it with Lady Shi. I think she sensed a kindred spirit there. Therefore, she had to kill her. That’s how she thought.

Me, I like watching a catfight as much as the next guy, but I had other things in mind. “Listen,” I told the Japanese woman. “You have a lot of info we could use. If you come with us, maybe we can help each other.” I didn’t want to do business with a killer for hire, let alone a killer for hire who’d worked with Archangel and probably had been involved in Cassandra’s death, but this wouldn’t be the first time I cut a deal with some scumbag for the greater good.

I was trying so hard to convince her of our good intentions that I missed the sidelong glances Condor and Kestrel must have exchanged. Christine sensed their intent, though, because she tried to warn me. “Uh, Face…”

Condor hit Lady Shi with his shock baton, frying the Japanese woman with enough voltage to power several electric chairs. A moment later, Kestrel finished her off with several brutal kicks. I was too shocked to intervene, not that I would have in any case; you have to trust your partners in crime-fighting. I just stared at them while they made sure they’d knocked Lady Shi well and truly unconscious.

“What the eff are you doing?” Christine shouted. She sounded like she was going to start beating asses any second now.

“Like Face said, she has information we need,” Condor replied while he produced some Type Four restraints and handed them to Kestrel. “This is our only lucky break of the night. Think it through. The base is gone. Whatever that black sphere of death was, it obliterated any evidence or information we might have found in it. Mr. Night is gone – not to mention Janus. If she walks out on us, we’ve got bupkis.”

“I
was
trying to talk her into coming along voluntarily,” I said.

“Hand me a gag and blindfold, will you, Kyle?” Kestrel asked from her kneeling position as she trussed up Lady Shi like a Spanksgiving Turkey.

Kyle produced a couple of leather and rubber devices from his utility belt and passed them to her while he continued arguing with me. “And maybe she would have and maybe she wouldn’t have. Since when do you give assassins a choice, Face?”

I shrugged. Since meeting Christine, of course. Before her, I’d have stomped on Lady Shi myself, because she’d already shown she was willing to betray her employer, and once a traitor, always a traitor, or like the Feebs said, once an asshole, always an asshole, which sounded even better and was just as true. She’d turned on Mr. Night because he’d body-jacked her boyfriend; otherwise she would happily have let us die. Condor was right, and I was being an idiot.

“That was just mean,” Christine said. “She saved our lives! And look at this!” She pointed at the hogtied body on the floor. Kestrel was happily adding a few extra straps that truly weren’t necessary. “That can’t be comfortable at all! She’s not going to help us out willingly now, is she?”

“I’ll explain things to her when she wakes up, try to work out some deal,” I said. “I’m sure we can bribe her, if nothing else. But she is going to help us, one way or another.”

Her eyes narrowed. “You’re talking about torture, aren’t you?”

I shrugged again. “Whatever it takes.”

“But torture doesn’t work!”

“Who told you that?”

“I mean, people will say anything under torture. They will lie, make stuff up so they stop hurting.”

“Yeah, they will say and do anything, including telling the truth. I’m not talking about beating some poor bastard into confessing to a crime he didn’t commit. I’m talking about interrogating someone into revealing information. If you know what you’re doing, damn tooting right torture works.”

“I don’t think I can be part of anything involving torture.”

I didn’t want to argue with her. “We won’t start things off by pulling out her fingernails, okay? As soon as we’re back to Condor’s Lair, we’ll ask her nicely and see what she says.”

“Can’t get back to the Lair,” Condor said. Something in his voice made Kestrel take a break from her bondage session and look at him. “The police, the Guardians and a team of Legionnaires just raided my main base. Computer just let me know. My security systems will keep them busy for a few minutes, long enough for Computer to erase all files and upload herself to her backup server. And don’t worry, my defenses will use strict non-lethal protocols. Nobody will get seriously hurt.” He sighed and dipped his head. “Too many people knew how to find my place. Heroes and law-enforcement both. Now that I’m a wanted criminal, all the old deals are off.”

“I’m so sorry,” Christine said. “It’s my fault.”

“We’re trying to save the world,” Condor said, shrugging. “There were bound to be some complications along the way.”

“I always wanted to travel,” Kestrel commented. “Now is as good time as any. And look, we even got a new playmate.” She patted Lady Shi on the head.

“Don’t start, Kestrel,” I warned her. “All right, we need to get out of here.”

“I have the Condor Jet hovering over the park. Let’s take the service van, drive to a clear spot and we’ll get on board.”

We did. A few minutes later, we were in the invisible plane.

“Where to?” I asked after we’d settled in. I sat on the co-pilot’s seat. Christine was standing behind us, apparently unbothered by the turbulence as the Jet rose in the air. “Not the hunting lodge, I take it.”

Condor shook his head. “Not a good idea, not when Ultimate knows about it. No, I got a place in the Catskills that’s completely off the books. Even if a team of forensic accountants go over Carmichael Corps’ holdings and financials, they wouldn’t find a paper trail leading to it. We should be safe there.”

“I’m sorry again,” Christine said.

“I’ve been an unlicensed Neo for thirty years, Christine,” my pal said as he piloted the aircraft. “Sooner or later the law was going to come after me. Believe me, I’ve been preparing for this eventuality for decades. An army of lawyers will fight the Feds tooth and nail all along, and meanwhile I have a nice selection of hiding places, clean cash, and false identities. At least the hammer came down on me over something important, rather than me busting some criminal with well-connected friends or some garbage like that.”

“Okay. And yes, this is important,” she said, and headed back into the passenger cabin, probably to make sure Kestrel didn’t molest the prisoner.

Condor turned to me. “Speaking of important stuff, when did you become Ultimate Junior, Face?”

“Oh, that.” Christine and I probably should have shared that bit of information with the rest of the gang before we went on the raid. I’d been reluctant to do it, and I wasn’t sure why. “Short version: Christine super-charged me.”

“Nice. Might come in handy, with Janus gone who knows where.”

“Yeah. Think we’ll ever see him again?”

“Not a clue. I’ve never seen someone walk through the kind of Hell we rained down on Medved. Mr. Night now, I guess, if what Christine said is true. And he almost killed Ultimate. So no, I wouldn’t bet money on Janus coming back. I showed him a couple of ways to get in touch with us, though. If he makes it out, we’ll hear from him. Meanwhile, we’re the only people in the world who know what’s going on, and give enough of a damn to put a stop to it.”

“I know. Makes me feel all nice and special, knowing it’s all up to us,” I said.

If this was what a Neo heavy-hitter felt like, being responsible for the lives of millions, I wasn’t sure Christine had done me any favors super-charging me. But I would figure out a way to handle it.

I didn’t know about saving the world, but I knew plenty about not punking out just because the stakes were high.

Chapter Fifteen

Hunters and Hunted

Freedom Island, March 17, 2013

It was amusing to see the hero of the ages bouncing off the walls of his cage like an enraged gorilla.

Daedalus Smith watched the futile struggle from his observer position in the mental construct imprisoning Ultimate’s mind. It was crude psychic prison, but with the Dreamer still out of commission – Mr. Night had nearly killed the poor Kraut – it was the best that he could do. It worked well enough and kept John Clarke from doing anything useful, like waking up. Daedalus didn’t want Johnny to start making slanderous accusations. Some people might listen to them.

From Ultimate’s perspective, he was in a featureless white room, a simple hollow square with blank walls and no doors or windows; the place reminded Daedalus of his accommodations at the Dragon Emperor’s dungeons, minus the stench and darkness. Johnny-Boy had been hammering on the walls for hours. The construct was designed to inflict pain on John every time he struck the walls, but he had kept on pounding on them, ignoring the ever-increasing agony, just as you’d expect from an All-American Hero. Eventually, he might even be able to break free, but it would take him weeks to do so. Johnny didn’t have weeks.

He watched Ultimate struggle for a few minutes, but he hadn’t entered the construct just to enjoy his old friend’s suffering. “John,” he called out, his disembodied voice echoing through the white room. Ultimate stopped attacking the walls. “How’s it hanging, good buddy?”

“Daedalus.” The venom in Ultimate’s voice made the name into an obscenity. “You are a dead man.”

“I believe proper Legion policy would be to try to capture me alive and hold me over for trial under the proper legal jurisdiction. Wouldn’t that be fair? I mean, that’s the deal you are getting. Your trial starts in a couple days.”

“You killed Kenneth.”

“I had to. Luckily I had tampered with his armor and his cochlear implant, just for this eventuality. All my contingency planning paid off: I’ve got plenty of video footage showing you killing the Man o’ Brass, Johnny. It’s going to be a short trial.”

“I am going to kill you,” John said in a matter-of-fact tone that chilled Daedalus a little bit. John had never been this murderous, not even when Hiram Hades went after his family. He was taking the whole betrayal thing very personally.

“You aren’t going to ask me why I did all of this, John? Aren’t you even a bit curious?”

“Frankly, I don’t give a damn. And I figure you will tell me, sooner or later, like all the two-bit villains I’ve dealt with in the past. I just never thought you’d be one of them, Daedalus. I thought you were actually smart enough not to go that way.”

John had a point. Crime didn’t pay, even if you were a Neo. Sure, you could run wild for a few weeks or months, maybe even a couple of years, but sooner or later a more powerful Neo or gang of Neos would come gunning for you in the name of the law. And what was the point? A parahuman with any kind of power and an IQ larger than his shoe size could write his own ticket legally, make as much money as a movie star or CEO, and get all the glory and women and perks he might want. Only the insane or fanatical went into crime, the kind of people who had tastes and drives not condoned by society, or followed some outré political or religious agenda.