Action Figures - Issue Three: Pasts Imperfect (12 page)

The last time I saw the man
marching behind Archimedes, who I know only as Minotaur, Stuart had pounded him
into the ground with an SUV. He’s abnormally tall and ripped like a bodybuilder
on an all-steroid diet, and his blank, slack-jawed expression suggests the
beating left him mildly brain-damaged. Either that or he’s heavily drugged. I
can’t tell which.

The girl bringing up the
rear is maybe a little taller than Missy. Her dark hair is cut short at the
sides but is long on top, and spills over one side of her face in an unkempt
wave. She smirks at the guards as she passes and, when her gaze briefly falls
on me, I catch a malicious glint in her eyes. She can’t be any older than me.

My God. They threw a kid in
this place.

I glance over at Concorde
and Mindforce. They’re unreadable, as is Pearce, who watches the proceedings
with the detached, critical eye of a man who’s used to being in control of
every last square inch of his domain. This is business as usual for them, and
the presence of a teenage girl among the prisoners, unrepentant killers both,
is an irrelevant detail.

The prisoners climb into the
hearse. Eleven of the guards pile in after them. Captain Dekes seals the
vehicle, the doors closing with a cold, hollow
clang
. Dekes and
Mindforce join the driver in the cab of the vehicle, which revs up with a low,
throaty roar.

“The hearse is sealed and
ready to roll out. Concorde, Lightstorm, over to you,” Pearce says.

“Warden,” Concorde says by
way of a goodbye. “All right Lightstorm, let’s hit the sky.”

TEN

“Concorde, what’s up with
the girl?”

Concorde doesn’t answer. My headpiece
tells me he’s there, flying five hundred feet above and behind me, shadowing me
while I shadow the transport at low altitude — a “staggered high-low
formation,” he called it, intended to provide maximum visual coverage, and to
facilitate the immediate interception of any threats from the sky or the ground
— but he’s not responding.

Right, then, plan B.
“Mindforce, what’s up with the girl?”

“This isn’t the right time,
Lightstorm,” Mindforce says, uncharacteristically terse. “We can discuss her later.”

“What girl?” Matt says from
many miles away.

“The girl in the hearse,” I
say.

“There’s a girl in the
hearse?”

“I’m going to say this
once,” Concorde says. “Can the chatter. We need to keep the channel clear for
priority communications. Everyone stay off the comm unless it’s important.”

“With all due respect,
Concorde, the Hero Squad hasn’t been fully briefed on two of the three
prisoners, and we’re utterly unfamiliar with one of them,” I say. “We’re
unaware of her capabilities. That means, in the unlikely event of an escape
attempt, the Squad is ill-prepared to deal with the threat in an effective
manner.”

I say this knowing Warden
Pearce is on the line, and hoping he’s not going to like the fact that part of
his super-hero escort detail has been kept in the dark. Yes, it’s playing
dirty, but I want to know what a teenage girl could have done to warrant
getting chucked into a supermax.

“Concorde, you told me you
briefed your team,” Pearce says. Thank you for playing, warden.

I have to hand it to my fancy
headset: The sound is so clear and clean I can make out every swear word hiding
in Concorde’s annoyed grumble. “Let’s make this quick,” he says. “You already
know Archimedes and Minotaur...”

“Whoa, hold up. Minotaur?”
Stuart says.

“Minotaur is a low-risk
prisoner. He suffered moderate brain damage from that beating you gave him.
He’s barely functional.”

Called it.

“Oh,” Stuart says. How about
that? Guilt also comes through my headset with crystal clarity.

“The girl is Joyce Morana.
She calls herself Buzzkill Joy. Do you remember the incident at Roxbury High
School last fall?”

“Yeah, there was a shooting,
wasn’t there?” I say, failing to remember any specifics; I was in the middle of
the big move from Barnstable to Kingsport when it happened, and I wasn’t paying
much attention to anything going on in the world.

“It wasn’t a shooting,”
Concorde says. “Buzzkill Joy murdered seven people with her bare hands.”

She
what
?

“She’s strong, fast, and vicious.
Think Kunoichi without a conscience. Handling protocol is simple: If you’re not
invulnerable or a long-range fighter, stay away from her. Questions?” No one
responds. “Good. I want radio silence for non-priority matters from here on
out.”

I actually have a ton of
questions, but not the kind Concorde could answer — like, what would drive a
young girl to kill seven people? I’m tempted to fire up my headset’s browser
and do a little Googling on Miss Buzzkill, but like Mindforce said: This isn’t
the time. Focus on the task at hand, and satisfy my perverse curiosity later.

The courthouse sits in the
middle of the city, surrounded on all sides by hotels, blocks of businesses,
and restaurants. A massive convention center sits to the court’s southeast. Soon
the streets will teem with people heading to work, but for now they’re
relatively empty, which is the point: Fewer people mean fewer potential
casualties should something bad happen. That’s the theme of the day: Try to
predict what could go horribly wrong and compensate for it, and I think we’ve
covered every base short of Godzilla dropping on us from a passing blimp.

Captain Dekes breaks radio
silence. “Worcester Court, this is Byrne transport, on final approach. ETA, one
minute. Security code beta upsilon delta epsilon three.”

“This is Worcester
security,” replies a man. “Copy that, we’re ready to receive the hearse.
Security code omega omicron kappa omicron four.”

“Copy,” Dekes says. “Special
security?”

Nina replies. “Special
security in place, Byrne transport. Security code nu iota eta epsilon five.”

“Copy,” Dekes says, and the
comm falls silent again.

For the final mile I’m to
fly in low, below rooftop level, while Concorde stays high to scan for any
suspicious activity. I descend, catching sight of the Pelican sitting in a
parking lot across the street from the court, then I spot the Squad and Nina at
attention at the side of the courthouse. They flank a pair of sturdy steel
doors that accordion open: an entrance for prisoner transport vehicles. If anything
is going to happen, it’s going to happen now, before the hearse vanishes into
the bowels of the building.

The mini-caravan rounds the
final corner.

“All clear from above,”
Concorde says.

“All clear at street level,”
I say.

“Confirmed,” Nina says.

The hearse rolls up to the
garage doors. Captain Dekes rattles off another Greek alphabet soup security
code. The doors open, the hearse and its companion disappear into the side of
the building, Nina and the Squad file in behind the transports, and the doors
slide shut.

“The hearse has arrived,”
Dekes announces.

Well, that was
anti-climactic
,
I think.

And then someone shoves
white-hot ice-picks in my ears.

Within the confines of the
garage, a kill box of hard, echoing surfaces, the sonic shriek hits with
stunning intensity. Those outside the transports collapse to the cold cement
floor, their equilibrium crippled, their brains on fire. Those inside the
transports, linked to their companions by their comm headsets, fare no better.

“That was almost too easy,”
says the woman known to the general public as Harpy.

“What?” Kobold says.

“I said, that was almost —
oh, for...” Harpy mutters. She taps an ear:
Take your earplugs out, moron
.

“Oh, right.”

“Move fast, Bestiary,” Hydra
says, sloughing off his stolen courthouse guard uniform to reveal his trademark
weaponry, a unit on his back sprouting four mechanical arms, each arm capable
of projecting a heat beam powerful enough to reduce steel to slag. “Minotaur,
you’re up.”

“You heard the man,
substitute,” Kobold teases. “You’re the can opener, so get opening.”

“Bro, you best watch your
teeny-tiny mouth,” Minotaur says, glowering down at his diminutive teammate,
“else I might step on you like you was gum on the sidewalk.”

“Behave, children,” Harpy
says. “Don’t make me yell at you.”

“Cripes, people, can I
possibly get some professional friggin’ behavior here?” Hydra barks. “Minotaur,
open the transport, now! Harpy, find the control for the collars.”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m on it,”
Minotaur says. He runs his hand along the seam where the rear doors meet,
searching for a gap. Finding none, he makes one, forcing his fingers between
the steel slabs. He pulls. The doors creak, yawn, scream. Four case-hardened
deadbolts snap, the pieces tinkling like an off-key wind chime as they rain to
the floor. The bodies inside lie in a tangled heap, flashes of orange speckling
the black and blue mass of uniforms and body armor.

“I went to parties in
college like that,” Kobold says.

“Hey, Archimedes!” Hydra’s
shout barely cuts through the siren wailing in Archimedes’ ears. “Time to
split, buddy. You’re ride’s here.”

Ow.

My dad took me to a
Springsteen concert once. We had sixth-row seats for four hours of blaring rock
music. My ears rang for two days afterwards.

This is worse. It’s like
someone’s blowing a whistle right in my ear — but it’s taking my mind off the
pain racking my body, so there’s that.

I roll onto my back, my
fingers clutching at the pavement beneath me. It’s solid, real, something
stable for my brain to latch onto. The chilly asphalt is like a welcome splash
of cold water, and it calms the nausea-inducing spinning sensation that’s
keeping me from getting to my feet.

“Lightstorm, report,”
Concorde buzzes in my ear. “Lightstorm?”

“I’m here.”

“Are you all right?”

“All right-ish. There’s
pain,” I say, but I was flying low when — well, whatever happened happened, so
I’ll take the pain; it means I’m not street pizza.

“Hold on.” A few seconds
later, Concorde touches down next to me, landing with a drunken stagger-step.
He kneels to grasp my hand and help me up. “Anything broken?”

“I don’t think so,” I grunt
as I stand. The world wobbles, gives a final little spin, then settles back to
normal. “What was that? Feedback on the comm system?”

“Not feedback. I’d know that
sound anywhere: It was Harpy,” Concorde says. A ball of ice forms in my stomach
and my pulse ratchets up to a thousand beats a minute. The last time I
encountered Harpy, she was with —

“Manticore. Is he—?”

“I don’t know. He hasn’t
shown himself, but we can’t assume anything.” He squeezes my shoulder. “You be
ready.”

Easier said than done, boss.
I’ve had three run-ins with Manticore and none of them ended well for me. The
first time, he totally owned me. The second, he carved the source of my power
out of my hands and left me to bleed out. The third time, he dropped a nuke in
the middle of Boston. I’ve gotten a better handle on my powers since then. I’ve
learned how to handle myself, but the thought of going face-to-face with
Manticore again...I’m not ready for that, physically or emotionally.

My headset comes alive with
a cacophony of shouts and noises: the sounds of combat. Concorde calls out for
Mindforce, for Nina, Captain Dekes, anyone, but all we get in reply are grunts,
yelling, cries of pain.

“We’re blowing the door!
Stand clear! Stand clear!” Concorde barks. “Lightstorm, on my mark. Center
seam, full power.”

I take a breath. Power hums
in my hands. My vision narrows until I see nothing but the dark line running up
the center of the garage doors. Amazing what knowing your friends are in
trouble can do for one’s focus.

“Go.”

We fire in perfect unison.
The combined power of Concorde’s concussion burst and my force blast caves the
door in, splitting it down the center, almost ripping it off its hinges.

We charge in. It takes me a
moment to recognize the Bestiary because they’re in someone else’s work
uniforms; Hydra’s heat ray array is the big giveaway (and, since he’s sprawled
out on the floor, apparently unconscious, I’m able to get a really good look at
it). Harpy is curled up nearby, clutching at her throat and hacking like she’s
about to barf up her lungs. Nina has Kobold face-down on the ground in some
kind of hammerlock that’s making the little guy scream like a girl. The last
man standing on the Bestiary’s side is a tall, muscular hulk whose stolen guard
uniform is easily two sizes too small. Stuart’s going to town on him, but the
man’s not going down easily.