Project Northwoods (50 page)

He glared at her. “Yes.”

“So what, Claymore?” She started to circle him. “You’d be fine.”

“Gunslinger, I’ve never felt…”

Julia sneered, feeling like her face would twist right off. “Shut up!” She jabbed a finger at him. “Listen to me, Dylan Samuel York: I. Will. Never. Fuck. You.”

He looked legitimately hurt. Whether it was from the use of his real name or from her staunch refusal to sleep with him, she couldn’t tell. Not that she really cared – her earlier consideration of sharing her bed filled her with enough disgust to banish any empathy. He grabbed her by the shoulders without warning, holding her close. “You love me,” he said softly. She would have laughed if it had been a little less absurd. There were plenty of reasons for this command: fear, anger, lust, but actual compassion was not one of them.

“Let me go,” she growled, glaring at him. She twitched in his grasp, letting her hand fall to the butt of her gun.

“Say it…” He moved in close, pulling her to his face.

Ca-click
. Forward momentum stopped, his eyes went wide. He looked down, staring at the revolver she was now jamming into his ribs. Claymore looked back at her, twitching with undeniable rage. “I do have real bullets, Claymore.” She didn’t break eye contact, despite the fury just below the surface. “It’s regulation.”

“Is everything okay here?” A blond woman in an armored bodysuit which faded from blue into white from top to bottom approached as she adjusted her white gloves. Spiders of stylized lightning on the costume seemed to crackle and spark in the yard’s artificial light in an impressive optical illusion. She looked a combination of concerned and annoyed, like a mother watching over two bickering children. She was about the same height as Julia, perhaps an inch or two taller, but that was due more to her heeled boots than genetics.

Claymore regarded the newcomer with squinted eyes before releasing Julia. He took a few steps backward, hands in the air, then joined the glut of people marching toward Fort Justice. In the distance, shouts and bangs echoed softly. The opening shots had been fired.

“Thanks,” Julia said, holstering her gun.

The woman smiled. “No problem.” Julia waited a beat so as to appear ungrateful. Before she could excuse herself, the woman continued, “Felt like I had to get involved. I lost my daughter recently.”

It was such an odd announcement to make. “I’m sorry to hear that,” Julia responded, hoping that she didn’t sound as confused as she felt. She didn’t look quite old enough to have a daughter, but being Bestowed was usually a get-out-of-aging-normally card.

“Not your fault. Just never know when life’s going to throw you a curve, am I right?” Julia knew all too well that was the case. Suddenly, the other woman threw her hand out. “Electronica.”

Julia smiled politely at the name and took her hand.
Ah. The traitor’s mother. Great.
“Julia Lovelass. Erm… Gunslinger.” Exchanging the alternate identity only was a bit on the old-fashioned side, certainly a relic of the Silver Age.

“Dante’s girl?” Electronica asked. Julia nodded in confirmation and irritation.
Fan-fucking-tastic
.

Before the conversation could continue or Julia could run screaming into the night, whichever came first, a pleasant ding on her earpiece got her attention. She immediately put her hand up to engage it. “Gunslinger, Colonel Morant wishes to communicate with you.” The voice belonged to Overseer.

“Patch him through.”

Colonel Morant’s voice cut through a din of banging and shouts. “I hate to separate you from your partner, but we need you at C-Wing.”

“On my way.” She looked up at Electronica. “I have to get to C-Wing.”

Electronica’s hand immediately went to her earpiece. “Alright, Overseer.” The woman cocked a grin at her and winked as she nodded in time to a conversation Julia couldn’t hear. “Of course, sir.” She slapped Julia on the shoulder. “Race you there.”

Julia turned on her heel and ran toward the colonel. If she hadn’t been focused on getting where she needed to be, she would have rolled her eyes at the woman tagging along with her.

Claymore could not believe that little bitch. He could have any heroine he wanted, at any time, except for her. Precious Gunslinger. How could she say no to him? The very thought of it made bile rise in the back of his throat. He had tried being nice, mean, aloof, supportive, insulting, and complimentary. She was uncrackable, unreadable, which just made him want her all the more. The only real reason he didn’t want her to die was so that she could see the error of her ways. To beg him to have her.

He
would
have her.

Sooner or later, that no would be an enthusiastic yes.

He picked up his pace, running past other heroes. He would be one of the first into D-Wing, with its collection of big-name villains. He didn’t care where he had been assigned, and he didn’t care if the majority of the Bestowed there would be incapacitated from the sleep chambers. He was going to make a name for himself this night, even if he had to grind every last one of those motherfucking degenerates into the earth to do it.

A dot of rain fell on his cheek, the spike of cold exhilarating him.

The crowd of Enforcers around C-Wing was thicker than she expected, but once the outermost group recognized her, they immediately parted before Julia. It was nice to be recognized, but it afforded an unwanted level of familiarity with strangers she didn’t like. Colonel Morant approached her, the insignia on his flak jacket the only indication of his identity. His face was covered with a standard-issue assault mask, designed to filter most biological, chemical, and radiological ordnance. “Overseer informs me that the inmates have managed to barricade and booby-trap these doors, making a frontal attack more risky than I’d like.”

“Why don’t we have our fliers break in through the skylight?” Julia asked, her right hand resting on the butt of her grappling gun. Then, she thought of the schematics and the laser grid which snapped on if someone attempted to break in or out through the reinforced safety glass on the roof. “And what about the system defenses?”

“Overseer says they’re out of commission.” Morant shook his head and cast a glance up at the central tower. “And that’s why we can’t use our flying heroes for this operation.” He once again directed his gaze at Julia. “We need to get them to clear out the central tower, then bring in a tech to restore security.”

She nodded, feeling her pulse quicken slightly. “How did this even happen? This place was supposed to be impenetrable.”

“Overseer’s data is sketchy, especially due to the hard system reboot. All we know for a fact is what he can ‘see’ through the cameras.”

“And?”

He shifted his weight. “The Italian Mob.”

“I thought they had been neutralized,” Electronica said, apparently deciding that she was now a part of the conversation.

“Electronica, you’ve dealt with Mob-designed proximity charges, correct?” The colonel was in no mood to talk about the how of the situation.

“Yes, sir. It’s been awhile since they used them, though.”

He nodded. “Let’s hope they haven’t changed too much.” The mask turned in Julia’s direction. “We need you to get in there and cover her,” he jammed a thumb toward Electronica, “while she short-circuits the prox-charges.”

Julia nodded. “Through the skylight?”

“Through the skylight,” he said matter-of-factly.

Julia silently contemplated the command, then walked through the throng of Enforcers checking and double-checking their weaponry. She cast a glance upwards, squinting as rain droplets stabbed her face. Electronica joined her, looking skyward. Julia removed the grappling gun from its holster and aimed it with both hands. She squeezed the trigger. With a hiss, the hook shot out, trailing the cable line. It didn’t take long before Julia realized she missed her mark, and the grappling hook bounced off the smooth surface of the Fort.

She retracted the cable, humiliated, reddening cheeks shocked with the occasional spear of rain. The hook had to be manually snapped into place, which she did with a grunt of annoyance. She aimed again, both hands on the gun. “You’re over-thinking it,” Electronica said.

“I know what I’m doing,” Julia hissed.

“It’s the old Grapple-Shot 2000, isn’t it?”

Julia didn’t want to answer. “Yes. It was my father’s.”

Electronica smiled warmly. In that moment, Julia saw the mother figure she had so readily dismissed earlier. “Try it one-handed.”

“But the kick…”

“You use that fifty-cal one handed, right?” Now the tone was growing patronizing. Julia aimed one-handed and shot her a look of exasperation. She pulled the trigger and the hook whistled into the air, perfectly arcing where it needed to go, up and over, eventually resting in an unseen crevice between the roof’s edge and skylight. She felt the gun itself gently tug at the cable, indicating it had found a suitable surface. “The 2000’s kick doesn’t need to be compensated for. You just gotta ride it out.”

Julia held her arm out impatiently. “You ready to do this?”

Electronica smiled. “I’ve been waiting my whole life for this.”

I doubt that
, was all Julia could think. The woman grabbed hold of her outstretched arm tightly above the elbow. She had the strength of an iron clamp, but the discomfort would be over in a moment. Julia hit the ‘retract’ trigger, and the mechanism whirred, pulling the two into the air slowly, then speeding up. They picked up velocity, moving terrifically fast up the metal wall before slowing dramatically and eventually crawling to a stop.

Julia stood up, affixing the hook again to its home. “We’re going to have to knock out the three layers of safety glass here.” She nodded to herself, calculating. “It’ll take more than a few bullets, but I think I can…

“Hold on,” came an interruption. Electronica, arms akimbo, looked at the top of the skylights. “You said something about a defense system, right?”

She nodded, walking toward the other hero. The rain was coming down heavier, to the point where she could hear the dull strikes against the surface of the Fort. “It was supposed to be a laser grid that would flare between the layers of safety glass if they were broken.”

Electronica nodded solemnly. She walked toward where the window met the Fort, watching the metal underfoot intently. It took a moment for Julia to realize that the woman’s eyes were closed as she moved. Electronica’s hands twitched and she stopped. She knelt down. “It may be off, but it’s still powered.” She looked up at Julia. “Let’s fix that, shall we?”

She straightened and held her right hand out. An arc of electricity jumped from the building to her hand. It was so quick that Julia was fairly sure it didn’t even happen. But then another jumped, and another. Electronica was drawing lines of blue and yellow lightning from some unseen power source, willing it into an angry, pulsing ball. With a final pop, the bolts stopped coming, the floating orb now the size of a basketball. Julia was so interested in the spectacle that she hadn’t noticed the effect on the woman controlling it: her hair was caught between the static and the wind, wildly dancing in the pale luminance; her skin had gained a unhealthy pallor, due in part to intense mental and physical focus; and her eyes were now black sinks, unblinking despite how close she was to blinding light.

“
Electro-Bomb!
” she shouted, dragging the ball back, up, and then smashing it downward, boring a large hole in the safety glass and sending spidery splinters through the entire pane. Julia was impressed, even if Electronica did look like she was about ready to pass out. “May have overcompensated. And sorry for the… shouting… thing.” She stood up, the color flooding back to her face readily. It was if nothing had happened. “Force of habit, you know?”

“Oh, I know,” Julia answered. Shouting the name of a Bestowed ability or its subset served a dual purpose: first, the theatrical element was usually appreciated by the onlookers; second, naming a specific utilization of the technique, in theory, allowed for the quicker recall of the muscle memory and mental technique required to pull it off.

The rattle of gunshots made the two of them duck down. Bullets whipped by, the adrenaline in Julia’s system making her see them like bright lines of fluorescent color zipping by. “However did they know we were here?” Electronica had a disquieting laugh in her voice.