Authors: Nick Kelly
“Crazy, isn’t it?”
He turned surprised that Eva had managed to enter the room without his notice. She’d traded the lab coat for an oversized T-shirt and stretch pants. She offered him a freshly brewed, steaming cup of black tea. “The end of days has been a prophecy for thousands of years, and here we are, right in the middle of it.”
“Some madman’s version of it, you mean,” he replied, accepting the tea.
She nodded. “It’s personal. Maybe that’s why I think the whole world is in the balance.”
“Who knows, kid? None of us woke up a few weeks ago thinking we’d be where we are today. I never thought hiring yer old man would tie us ta all this.” Cat gestured at the screens. He blew out a breath. “The four horsemen? The whole book a’ Revelations? Damn it.”
Eva didn’t reply. She simply sipped at her tea. Cat cursed at his behavior. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean…”
“This wasn’t a mistake, and it wasn’t an accident. We’re here for a reason.” She walked around the back of the couch, intent on the screens before them. “So, this is everything you have on the Metas so far?”
“I think so. I have a guy running invoices and purchase orders for me. He’s really good. Maybe he gets me a name, or an alias, but I don’t think he gets me a real address.” Cat ran a hand through his hair. “It’s frustrating.”
Eva nodded again as she sat next to him on the couch. “We can make assumptions that my father’s former co-worker is the man behind the attacks. We need more. Are you sure this is all you have on these MetaHumans?”
Cat eyed her as she sat next to him. Her behavior was strange. He almost questioned if she might be a Meta herself, but quickly shook it off as he watched her digest data from the files. “If I go over my data, that’s pretty much it.” He shook his head. “I do have this image from the first MetaHuman.” He added the image of the faces on the cross to the holoscreens.
Eva took a sip of tea. “That’s pretty gruesome. Ever seen it before?”
“Ever seen what?” Cat lifted his eyes to meet hers.
“That image.”
He stood, removing any physical contact they shared. “Yeah, yeah, yeah. This image was on the prototype, but I don’t know that it means anything.”
Eva set her cup down. “I’d say that’s a pretty clear image of the horsemen, and the hell we’re all supposed to be paying right about now.”
Cat stopped.
The Horsemen
. “I think I see what we’ve been missing.”
“What?”
He shrugged off her response. The warmth of her body next to him seconds ago had been a distraction. He realized all the details he’d missed about Delambre. He remembered the crushing power against his body for being so close to Emory Blake.
“Too close,” he muttered.
“What?” Eva rose in protest.
“Too close,” he replied. Cat took the images of the horsemen and forced them outward. The faces on the prototype’s image attached themselves to those of the known Horsemen. War, Pestilence, and the Angel of Death all blinked back at him. A new file blinked at him with a question mark for the image of identification. The name stated merely “Famine.”
Eva stopped a step behind him. “What forensics program are you using for this?”
“I’m not. I’m using a PR campaign.” Cat exhaled, mad at what he had missed.
Cat pressed his fingers against the holoscreen, then extended them. The image of each Horseman matched to a different target. War, Pestilence and the Angel of Death immediately found their corresponding MetaHuman. Famine connected with the big question mark.
Eva leaned forward. “I’ve seen those pictures.”
Cat nodded. “If yer gonna build a giant church, you better convince yer customers that the Endgame is underway. Otherwise, you get no congregation.”
“Oh my God,” she replied. “I remember now.”
The drive through overcast skies escorted him west and north along the shoreline. Catwalk passed Santa Barbara, then Goleta. The potholes and brush that had claimed the pavement of Route 101 reached up to grip at him, desperate fingers of the undead. As the brush thickened, Delilah’s desperate words resonated in his head. “Cat, I need you.”
He’d come this way before. He vaguely remembered the path when it was pristine and new. A few years of disarray had set the stage for its decomposition. The 101 gave way to a slighter pathway, a single-lane delivery to the opening arms of an ornate church. What a church it had been or could have been. The builders had copied the architecture of the famous cathedrals of Old England, Wales, and the States’ National Cathedral. Brick, mortar and marble climbed several stories into the air, a ladder to the heavens. Gargoyles stared soundlessly down at him from the corners. Torn and frayed trappings fought for life against the wind.
A sneer crossed his lips. The faded banners ripped left and right, slaves to the weather. Despite the fading colors and the multiple tears through the fabric, Cat recognized the images they housed.
The Horsemen.
They were the once animated and fascinating images of those who would bring about the visions in John’s Book of Revelations. They were beings of mythology. They were beings of legend. They were beings of technology, and Cat had faced most of them in the last few weeks.
Here in the west, under the continuous rain, engulfed in the darkness of self-importance and disregard, the cathedral scarcely contained enough light to honor itself. The mission of its builders had been simple: seek a population to invigorate it as a source of worship and hope. Find the downtrodden people crying for a new beginning and deliver the hope they sought. That mission met instead the imposing cloud of self-righteousness and self-promotion that engulfed this territory and its population. Even before its construction was completed, the church had no prayer of beckoning followers.
It became, instead, the personification of failed religion. It was distant, dark, the hollow shell, which had failed to draw the followers on whom it so desperately relied. Built for hope, the bricks of the cathedral instead piled upward in a hollow denial of faith. The gargoyles, once menacing, now seemed to hang their heads in shame.
The motorcycle drew nearer, rising along the twisted and overgrown pathway. Cat sensed something about the place. He couldn’t have been wrong about his enemy or about Delambre. This religious sadist would have chosen the largest and most obnoxious center of attention he could find. The zealot felt he could resurrect anything or improve on its design. Eva was proof of that. Even if it had failed once before, this maniac obviously felt powerful enough to draw attention to his vision again and again. Cat shook his head. It was also deathly quiet and out of the way. No one would suspect that the MetaHumans were being built in a cathedral. He was sure of it now, that the final confrontation lay within those walls. All he had to do was to outsmart the egotist who’d drawn him here.
Lightning flashed in his peripheral vision. Cat blocked it out for a while before finally stopping the H-S completely. He squeezed his eyes shut and counted a few deep breaths. So much had happened in the past few days. For the first time in months, he had a hard time focusing. The thought of Delambre dead drew his mouth into a sour frown. Eva’s revelation about how much she truly knew rested squarely between his shoulder blades, and Delilah’s words echoed in his skull. The cacophony of voices resonating through his head made him grit his teeth.
The moment of distraction almost proved fatal. A black figure descended on him from the cloud-filled sky, slamming into his side with enough velocity to topple him off the motorcycle. Cat rolled twice, sliding over the gravel and through the brush, nearly tumbling completely off of the side of the cliffs. Debris disappeared into the darkness below. He grabbed at anything he could. Weeds tore to pieces between his fingers. Rocks scattered in every direction. Finally, his hand grabbed a sturdy vine. He heard his shoulder pop as the vine halted his momentum. Suppressing a scream, he looked down. The crest of waves was hardly visible a hundred meters below.
Another peel of lightning flashed through the sky. Cat caught the faint outline of the battered angel circling for a second attack. He made a quick inventory of his weapons. A blast from the shotgun would likely knock him loose, even if he could even draw it in time. So much for a sound defense. He wrapped his left arm several times with a section of the withered roots. His right hand reached to his belt. He snapped the baton to its full length in his right hand. Angelyka gained speed, diving at him again. The moonlight reflected holes in her wings and deep scars along her form. She had not been fully repaired. Her left wing was patchwork.
Blades fired forth from the tips of her wings. Cat gripped the roots and tugged upward. He rolled away from the surface where the blades struck. He pinned himself against the earth. Air rushed by his head. He could hear roots snap as his attacker spiraled upward. She’d come close, but had pulled up at the last second. Angelyka couldn’t take him head-on, and with her first strike a failure, she was choosing distance and speed as advantages.
If he was anywhere near the marksman he was supposed to be, the fight would already be over. Instead, the best he could do was to keep her close, get a hold on her and pound every ounce of venom out of the inhuman bitch bent on his destruction. The cleaner stayed low in the underbrush, hoping the pouring rain and the thick of the weeds would create the static he’d need to obscure his enemy’s view.
The pinpoint direction of Angelyka’s next dive proved his cover wasn’t enough. Cat’s strategy had backfired. The underbrush gripped his legs, slowing him. The Angel’s bladed wings tore through the mesh and skin of his left arm. She lifted skyward again, repeating her circle of flight. Cat leapt backward. He cursed his miscalculation, pulling his legs free from the brush. He sprinted backward a few more meters, and Angelyka shifted her flight pattern. The two combatants gained time to recoup.
The fresh laceration commanded his attention despite his efforts to slow his breathing and maintain focus. He grit his teeth, and though he told himself to relax, his body refused to listen. Angelyka circled for another attack, her red eyes keyed on him. This time, she fired a barrage of blades from a closer distance. Sparks erupted as Cat parried three with the baton, while two others clattered ineffectively off of his armored legs. He forced out a deep exhalation in an effort to balance.
Her powerful right wing caught him in the midsection. The impact slammed him backward and knocked the remaining air from his lungs. He rolled once, twice, again, and again. He skidded to a knee, knocked nearly twenty meters from the angel’s attack.
Breathe. Shockit, Leon, Breathe. At the rate she’s going, she’ll tear you to pieces. Your head isn’t in this game, an’ that’ll mean the death of Delambre and Eva both.
The welcome feeling of fresh air crept back into his lungs. Angelyka was circling, apparently admiring her work instead of moving in for the kill.
Amateur move, bitch.
Catwalk chided himself for his stupidity. He wasn’t back to full health yet, and he was rushing into a fight he couldn’t even analyze. Angelyka was a malicious and miraculous creation. He had barely escaped her last two attacks. Now, he was trying to take her on, wounded. He took small solace in the fact she wasn’t exactly herself either.
Alright, Cat, you were almost full-throttle when this fight started. Now you’re cut, bruised, and probably bleedin’ internally. She hardly has any more wrong with her than what you did to her in the hospital.
The hospital.
The memories flooded his skull. In an instant, he recalled the damage he inflicted on her wing. He saw the fight in the streets, the flight over the police vehicles, the shattered glass as they struck the hospital. He saw Angelyka disappear amidst the swarm of terrified patients. He remembered the fight in the ward. He remembered protecting the two little boys. He remembered the little girl.
The little girl.
Catwalk’s eyes flashed, the yellow reflecting in his helmet, as he rose to his full height. He slammed the baton into the ground, collapsing it and placing it back on his belt. Recognizing the angel’s pattern in the air, he extended a hand, beckoning her with his fingers. Angelyka circled once more to gain speed then launched herself at him.
Cat once again wrapped his left arm in the vines and brush growing underfoot. The rain seemed to change direction. The wind bowed to the malicious angel, admitting her form as its master. Her wings cut through the air, the metallic vibration sounding a challenge. She tore through a length of the underbrush as she neared him.
As she drew close enough to feel her, Catwalk leapt, catching her under the chin with his right arm. She drew upward, as she had done following every attack, and he squeezed her neck between his bicep and forearm. On instinct, she rose higher, seeking to shake her rider loose. Cat clenched his teeth and squeezed.
Then, they reached the end of the leash. Cat’s grip on the roots with his left arm acted as an anchor. He screamed at the sudden pull against his shoulders, but the grip of his right arm caught the angel’s throat. The sudden stop pulled them both backward violently.
A loud crack echoed in the air. It was metal on skin. It was a single beating drum in an open field. It was the neck of the angel in the grip of the cat. She stopped trying to fly higher. She stopped flying altogether. The pair of killers began to plummet back toward the ground.
Cat couldn’t feel anything beyond the searing pain in his shoulder. It was more than he could bear. He couldn’t remember falling, or the impact, or the effect on the angel.
By the time he caught his breath his left shoulder was ablaze. He managed to open his eyes to look for his enemy, but moving his head only amplified the pain. Looking left, he saw the angel prone on the ground, her wings folded over her motionless form. Somehow, his plan had worked. Angelyka’s programming was imperfect, and the thought of avenging the innocent child in the hospital had shown Cat how to exploit it.
Grimacing, he rolled to a knee, his eyes never leaving the assassin. He tried to raise his left arm. He was answered by a white-hot field of pain. He exhaled, paused, inhaled, and concentrated. This time the left arm rose slightly higher before the synaptic refusal. It was muscle, not bone. That was all he needed to know.