Footsoldiers: A Super Human Clash Special From Philomel Books (2 page)

Not being a superhuman anymore, Apex had to get there by car. How he did that—in light of what I found out later—I'll never know.

At the meeting, they discussed what they were going to do next. I heard that Apex was pretty cut up about what had happened to Thalamus during the final battle, but this wasn't a memorial service. This was a “cover your own butt” strategy.

The Daltons had no choice but to pretend that they weren't involved in the Ragnarök massacre. They were public figures with no secret identities to hide behind, no “normal lives” that they could return to. Most of the others, though, were a long way from home without passports, civilian clothes, money, or a good excuse for being away for so long.

Max Dalton took care of everything.

He took care of Apex too.

I said before that Apex wasn't a nice guy. This is how I found that out.

I wasn't happy with the way he was running the Footsoldiers. I wanted to go public, make us a household name like the High Command or the
Poder-meninas
. Apex claimed that he wanted to keep the team as it was. Informal, in the background, and out of the news.

Our HQ was a warehouse on the waterfront in Chicago. One day, I was maybe ten miles away when I realized I wasn't going to make the start of a meeting, so I focused my hearing to listen in on them.

I'd never done that before—there had never been the need.

I heard Apex say, “And what say you, Hesperus?”

In her small voice, she replied, “I'm not sure.”

“You are abstaining?”

“For the moment.”

“Thalamus?”

“You already know my thoughts on the matter.”

Apex said, “I would never presume to know
your
thoughts, Thalamus.”

The two of them laughed like that was a good joke, then Octavian said something like, “This meeting is pointless! We should be out there fighting in the arena of crime, not squabbling like vulgarian peasants over trivial matters. The Gods do not care for agendas and the tabling of motions. And we are closer to the Gods than we are to the mortals.”

At that, Hesperus said, “If so, then that's all the more reason to behave like mortals. Because we are
not
Gods. We are people with gifts. That's all.”

Apex said, “The girl is right.” He often called her “the girl” even though she hated it. He went on, “I am sure that Thunder would agree with me, so I will cast his vote for him. That makes three against one, with one abstaining. The Footsoldiers will remain in the shadows for now. Making a press announcement seems so . . . crass. It will make us look like we are seeking fame. That is not what we are about. If the public are to become aware of us, it is better that they do so through our deeds, not our words.”

Now, that annoyed me. Apex knew that wasn't what I wanted. I would have voted for taking us public, letting the world know who we were and what we could do.

I could have thrown my voice then, allowed them to hear my point of view. But Apex's words had really bugged me. I didn't like him speaking on my behalf.

So I shut him up. I was still a couple of miles away at this point, but I didn't want him to say anything else in my name. I blocked the sound of his voice from reaching the others' ears. It was a simple trick, one I used mostly at the movies so I could concentrate on the film without being distracted by people crunching popcorn, crinkling bags, coughing.

At first it was kind of fun listening to the others speculating about what was happening to Apex. Octavian said, “I don't get it. What's wrong, Apex?”

“His voice . . .” Hesperus began. “Apex, nod if you can hear me . . . OK, that's something at least. The speaker in his helmet must be malfunctioning.”

I heard the rustle of paper, and Thalamus said, “Just write it down.”

Then there was the sound of Apex shoving the paper aside. I could hear his boots scraping on the floor, pictured him shuffling about.

“What is this? Are we under some sort of attack?” Octavian asked. There was the spark of panic in his voice.

I was close enough now for the sounds to form an echo-picture of the room. Apex was backing away from the others, gesturing wildly, trying to keep them away.

Hesperus said, “Octavian, hold him. I'm going to get his helmet off.”

The warehouse was directly ahead of me, the skylight open as usual. I arced toward it, dropped through.

Just in time to see Apex whip his massive right arm in Hesperus' direction. The back of his hand slammed into the side of her head with enough force to knock her across the room.

I immediately created a cushion of semisolid sound in Hesperus' path and slowed her down before she hit the wall, then I released Apex's voice.

“What do you think you're
doing
?” I yelled at him. “She was only trying to help!”

“I did not mean . . . That was an accident.”

“That was no accident, Apex! You think I can't tell the difference? I heard your muscles tense as she approached. That was a calculated move.”

He whirled around, glared at me. “
You
did this! You silenced my voice!”

I walked over to Hesperus, helped her to her feet. “Yeah. I did. And you deserved it. But you overreacted, you moron.”

Apex was standing still now, the dark visor of his helmet fixed in my direction. I remember wishing that I could see his expression. You never really knew what he was thinking.

Hesperus pulled away from me. “I'm all right.” She glared at Apex, then quickly turned away. “I don't need this. We're supposed to be a team.” She picked up her ax and sword, then looked back to me, Thalamus, and Octavian. “We have a job to do tonight. When it's over, you have another decision to make. I will not work with Apex again. So it's either him or me.”

She turned away, leaped up to the skylight, and swung herself through.

Octavian followed next, carrying Thalamus, who didn't have the ability to exit that way himself. Physically, Thalamus was actually
weaker
than the average human. That's the thing about whatever it is that makes superhumans—you never know what you're going to get. Most of us looked perfectly normal physically, but there were a few who changed. For some, like Brawn or Metrion or The Hive, the change was so great that there was no way they could ever pass as a human again. Others, like Thalamus and Apex, seemed normal at first glance, until you looked closer and realized that they were just a little too thin or too bulky, or had an unusual stance. But even then you might not be able to tell.

Apex moved to go next, but I stepped in front of him. “I don't want the others to hear this, so I'm stopping my voice from carrying that far.”

“What do you have to say?”

“You hit her. I don't care why. But if it happens again—”

“I am aware of my actions, Thunder. It was an error of judgment.” Then he jabbed his finger at my chest. “But you caused this. You silenced my voice.”

“You told the others that I agreed with you about keeping the team secret. You know I think that's the wrong move. I've told you often enough. But that's not the point here, Apex. You hit one of your own teammates.”

“I intend to apologize to Hesperus when the time is right. But not now. Now we have a mission to complete, and you are slowing me down.”

I stepped back and watched as he leaped for the skylight. Despite what most people thought, Apex couldn't actually fly, but he didn't really need to. He could leap huge distances—well over a hundred yards if he had to. And he was fit, easily the most agile superhuman I'd ever seen. It was like he was able to bend his joints at any angle. Even with all that armor he was incredibly flexible, and had a sense of balance that would make a cat cry with envy.

Once, I saw him run up a vertical ladder without using his hands. Now
that
takes skill.

I followed him out through the skylight. The others had assembled on the edge of the roof, waiting for us.

“So what's the mission?” I asked Thalamus.

“Oh, so you weren't listening in to
that
part, then?”

I was a little taken aback at that. It wasn't like Thalamus to make snide comments. “What's the matter with you?”

“Let's not pretend to be friends, Thunder.” He turned away slightly, almost as though he was dismissing me. Louder—more for my benefit than anyone else's—he said, “My sources report that three known members of the Chaingang have been spotted in different parts of southern Wisconsin in the past two days. The other three can't be far behind. Tonight a shipment of weapons-grade nuclear waste will pass along a route that intersects with what I've projected are the paths of the members of the Chaingang.”

Hesperus shook her head. “We don't do nuclear. We leave that to people like Impervia and Titan who are immune to radiation.”

“She's right,” Octavian added. “I've no problem with going up against the Chaingang in most circumstances, but not in a situation like this. The government transports nuclear waste in secret, and that's the way it should be. The plebeians don't need to know that sleeping dragons are carried through their towns in the dead of night. I say that if we have to act, then we wait until we know for certain that the Chaingang is after the shipment.”

I looked at him. “Plebeians?”

“The common people,” Thalamus said. “The lower classes. As the Roman rulers saw them.”

I sighed. “Man, that Roman emperor act is getting old real fast.”

“Enough discussion,” Apex said. “But Octavian is right. As is Hesperus. We go after the Chaingang one by one, before they can assemble.”

The Chaingang mostly kept out of the press, so you might not have heard of them. Actually, I should put it the other way around: the press mostly avoided reporting on the Chaingang. Much later, a couple of years after we lost our powers, I saw one of them on television: he had inherited his parents' media empire. It's pretty clear now that his parents knew about his bad side and used their influence to hush up his activities.

There were six of them: three guys, two girls and one we were never sure about. His—or her—codename was Spite. I'm pretty sure he was a guy; Octavian was certain Spite was a girl. It was hard to tell because he had a very lean body, no real muscle structure, dressed from head to toe in solid black, and almost never spoke. He was rarely seen too. He had this power that allowed him to teleport, but only when no one could see him. Hence the black costume—it enabled him to hide in the shadows.

The others were Muscle, Torture, and Incendiary—the guys—and the two girls, Vortex and Paranoia. They didn't dress alike, or have any team motif. I believe they called themselves the Chaingang simply because they thought it was an intimidating name.

I'm not going to tell you which member of the Chaingang is now running that media empire, nor am I going to say which media empire I'm talking about. I've no physical proof to back up my story and they'd sue me for everything I have.

We were going after Torture first. Octavian carried Thalamus on his back, Hesperus and I flew, while Apex bounded along behind us, leaping from rooftop to rooftop.

Now, the Footsoldiers weren't like the High Command. We didn't have unlimited funds for equipment or a team of private security guards backing us up like Dalton and his crew. None of us were billionaires, or mechanical geniuses like Paragon. We had no government support. We had to make do with what we could scrounge from others, or stuff we “acquired” in battle.

We were the poor relatives of the bigger teams. I wasn't happy about that, but, hey, it was better than
not
being in a team.

So when we fought, we didn't have dinky little communicator headsets. The only way we could communicate was through me. I could hear the others and pass on messages. Once when we were fighting with Impervia she started calling me Switchboard. I guess she thought that was funny.

Thalamus told us that Torture had been spotted by “one of his sources” in a café in Watertown, which is about halfway between Madison and Milwaukee. Thalamus had a lot of these “sources” but he never revealed who they were or how they got in touch with him. Sometimes the information just seemed to come from nowhere.

I'd fought Torture a couple of times, before the Chaingang had been formed. On the supervillain scale—where you've got Ragnarök and Slaughter at the top end and that dipstick who called himself Cake-Man at the other end—Torture would be closer to the Cake-Man end.

Torture was strong, cruel, and he had a bad temper. That was about it. On his own, any one of us—apart from Thalamus—could have defeated him. That was also pretty much true for Incendiary, the pyrokinetic. Definitely second-string villains. But with the rest of the gang they could be extremely dangerous.

I took the lead, because it had been over a day since Torture was spotted and I was the only one who could track him down. You see, what most people don't realize is that the human body is not silent. Not even counting the voice, every human makes noise all the time. There's breathing, the heartbeat, the digestive system, the creak of ligaments and muscles, drops of perspiration being pushed out through the pores. The scrape and rustle of body hair as it moves and grows. The twin thumps of eyelids blinking.

The firing of neurons in the brain.

All these things combine to give every person a unique sound signature, and when you're a master of sound—like I was—that signature is as distinctive and recognizable as a face.

Now that I knew what to listen for, I was able to pinpoint Torture's location from over thirty miles away.

“I've got him,” I told the others.

From a few miles behind me, Apex said, “Stay focused on him, Thunder. We do not want to lose him.”

“Yeah, yeah. I know how to do my job.”