New Olympus Saga (Book 3): Apocalypse Dance (15 page)

It was all over, he thought as he walked toward his limo, flanked by a small army of bodyguards and protected by the best wards money could buy. He would hole up in his hotel and wait for word of the disaster. The US and the world would need strong leaders in the tribulations to follow, and he would step forward to play a role in the healing process – as well as to point a finger at the Neolympian threat as the ultimate culprit. Then he…

A sudden darkness enveloped him, cutting him off from everybody and everything. His wards flared and died, overwhelmed by a greater power, and between one eye blink and the next he found himself somewhere else, a swampy wasteland with abandoned buildings in the background. He vaguely recognized the place as an old shuttered facility not too far from D.C. – there’d been environmental impact hearings about it – but far enough that nobody would see or hear anything that transpired there.

A man in a black and bronze costume faced him. A gravelly voice emerged through the stranger’s face mask. “Thaddeus Twist. You will tell us where the bomb is.”

He had been discovered after all. So be it. Thaddeus had planned for this eventuality, and his tormentor wouldn’t find him as easy to brutalize as he’d expected.

Hidden under his immaculately-tailored suit, a Sigil of Power inscribed into his skin came to life at his mental prompting. All of the leaders of the Humanity Foundation had acquired those Sigils, a gift from Daedalus Smith; the Neo Genius had managed to reproduce the Imperial marks that granted Neolympian powers to mere humans. The process had several glaring drawbacks, however: for one, unlike real Neos, who became virtually immortal after acquiring their powers, those gifted with a Sigil didn’t live very long after activating them. The real Celestials enjoyed a few decades of power before the toll to their bodies caused them to burn out and die; the copies Daedalus produced were even less durable. Kuo Wei-Fang, the first and only member who had activated his Sigil, had barely survived a fortnight. Thaddeus didn’t expect he’d live out the week.

For now, it didn’t matter. Power flowed through him; his aging, weakened joints became strong again, and he felt more alert, more joyful, more alive than he ever had. He was young, invincible; he welcomed the prospect of a fight with a shocking eagerness. So this was what being a Neo was like; he could almost forgive the freaks’ arrogance now that he’d experienced their power first-hand.

All this transpired in the span of a second. He smiled at the masked man and moved as fast as a pouncing tiger. He’d taken martial arts lessons back in his youth, and his body seemed to remember the old moves. He lashed out with kicks and punches, seeking to kill or be killed.

He was superhumanly fast, strong and durable – and utterly outmatched. The masked man blocked or avoided the flurry of attacks and knocked Thaddeus down with a single punch. Ignoring the pain and the ringing in his head, he tried to rise to his feet, but a stamping kick pinned him to the ground; he felt ribs crack under the impact, and the brief hopes he’d harbored vanished.

“It’s happening soon, isn’t it?” the stranger said in his raspy voice. “Talk. Or suffer.”

“Fuck you.”

“Suffer, then.”

His feet and legs were suddenly pulled, crushed,
rent
by invisible forces. The pain was unimaginable, unbearable. His feet were gone, but the agony was still there, running through the remains of his lower limbs into his body. He dimly felt his bladder let go, the humiliation the least part of his torment.

“When you grind a man into a paste, the best way to do it is from the feet up,” the merciless voice reported in a neutral tone. “It’s going to feel much worse when I reach above the knees. And of course, there is that nerve cluster around the groin area…”

Thaddeus tried to resist. He made it until the rending force crept to his mid-thigh.

After that, he talked. Talked, and died hoping only he’d lasted long enough.

New York City, New York, March 29, 2013

“That’s the place,” Christine said. “Now that we’re close, I can feel the wards.”

Adam had come back with the bomb’s location. He didn’t tell us what he’d done to Twist after he was done talking. I figured the billionaire wasn’t a problem anymore.

The place was a construction site on Third Avenue, hidden behind boarded-up metal scaffolding. Ads for the next big Broadway play (
The Linda Lamar Story: A Musical
) were plastered all over the boards, and I hoped the city would be around for opening night.

“I’m on it,” Ultimate said, opening the side door of the Condor Jet and flying out. Janus and Adam teleported away a moment later. Show-offs. I almost stayed in the Jet and let the heroes take care of the problem. They were going to get all the credit, anyway.

“Let’s go!” Christine said, and we went. The Jet was hovering a hundred feet above the street. It was about nine p.m.; the streets weren’t teeming with people but weren’t exactly deserted, either, and plenty of passers-by saw Ultimate fly out the partially invisible Jet and crash into the construction site, followed by Christine and me. I saw people running, people taking pictures and videoing us, even a few people cheering. “Bomb!” I shouted at them. “Get out of here!” That did it; everyone took off running. Of course, if the bomb went off there was nowhere to run.

The world didn’t blow up as we followed the Invincible Prick into the construction site, so maybe the cavalry had arrived in time to save the day.

Unfortunately the anti-Neo bigots had been ready to receive the cavalry.

Behind the boards, the construction site was a city-block sized hole in the ground, a good forty feet deep. Much of the space was taken up with concrete foundations, iron girders and other building materials and equipment, but a large cleared area was filled with arcane-looking Neo-techy crap, including a big fat metal cylinder, set up at a downward-aiming angle. About a dozen men were clustered around it.

Adam, Janus and Ultimate had stepped into a force-field of Outsider energy. They were struggling through a web of disruptor beams. Ultimate hadn’t fallen unconscious for a change – the tough guy had taken a dive pretty much every time I’d seen him in action – but he was moving slowly through the dark web, as if he was swimming in a pool of molasses. The other two weren’t even moving; they had taken the brunt of the attack when they’d teleported in.

The whole area was surrounded by the disruptor field. The only way in was through it. A frail-looking Asian guy was typing on a keypad on the side of the cylinder, and I was pretty sure it wasn’t his ATM code.

“Fly us through, Christine,” I said, holding her tightly. She nodded and did what she did best. She went from zero to five hundred in a nanosecond, crashed through the disruptor field, which hurt like a motherfucker, and took us to the other side.

We hit another force field, this one a standard energy shield, a few feet away from the bomb.

“It is finished,” the Asian guy said as we hammered at the force field; it went down in a couple of seconds, but that was a couple of seconds too long. The old guy stepped between us and the bomb, and he was Neo strong. I could tell, because when I punched him, I didn’t turn him into exploding hamburger soup, but merely crushed his skull and sent his lifeless corpse flying off to one side. Not that it mattered; if the bomb was about to go off, killing him only sent him to hell a few seconds ahead of everyone else.

While I killed the Asian guy, Christine hit the bomb with a psychokinetic blast.

I wasn’t sure that was the proper procedure to disarm a bomb, but I didn’t get a chance to make a comment about it.

There was a big boom.

* * *

“That’s how those things work,” Christine explained as we extricated ourselves from the ruined building. The explosion had been actually pretty big, demolishing most of a city block, but to us big Type Three Neos it’d been like getting punched in the face – not something we’d like to make a habit of, but nothing to write home about, either. “Nuclear devices are actually very delicate, thermo-nuclear ones even more so. If the explosive shell around the fission trigger doesn’t go off in just the right way, there’s no fission process, and without the fission explosion, there is no fusion process, and no big H-bomb blast. There’s going to be radioactive material scattered all over the place, though; thank God Condor just told me Janus and Dad can vacuum up most of it in a few minutes, so we won’t have a big radiological disaster in our hands. But yeah, I managed to blast it just before the bomb went off, causing the explosives to go off out of sequence, which was enough to disrupt the chain reaction. It was literally a matter of micro-seconds.”

“In layman’s terms, you saved New York City just in the nick of time,” I said. “That’s how the papers and the funnies are going to put it.”

“Call it the micro-nick of time.”

“You’ll probably get the key to the city.”

“You helped, so you’re going to share the key with me, bubba. And shake the mayor’s hand.”

“That whiny bastard? I didn’t even vote for him.”

“And you’re going to be nice to the mayor. I’m hoping for a pardon, or at least the dropping of all charges, and you’re not going to spoil everything by dropping f-bombs in front of VIPs. Do you feel me, homie?”

“Sheesh. Okay. No f-bombs, bossy.”

“And don’t call me bossy; that’s effing offensive.”

“Okay, dear.”

Various, March 29-April 3, 2013

In the comics, they rarely bother with the after-action stuff.

After our friends cleaned up the radioactive material we’d unceremoniously scattered all over Third Avenue, we had to deal with the joys of being debriefed by local, state and federal officials. I kept hoping the New Lurker would teleport us to a nice undisclosed location, but apparently too much Doc Slaughter had stuck on him, because he meekly agreed to surrender himself and advised us to do the same. The Legion did spring for a small army of lawyers who sat beside us every step of the way. We weren’t arrested, handcuffed or mistreated. We just had to answer a lot of questions, over and over, for the rest of the night and well into the wee hours of the morning.

They separated Christine and me very early in the process, but we stayed in touch, thanks to our new bond, which even their tame telepaths couldn’t detect. Too bad for them. When things got boring we made disparaging comments about our interrogators, which got a bit awkward at one point when Christine burst into laughter for no apparent reason. Luckily the lawyers managed to smooth things over.

Not everything turned out well, though. I was an illegal, and I had admitted to using my powers in a variety of ways. There were a few ways around that, although I liked none of them. After consulting with my lawyers, and talking things over with Christine, I made a decision I was pretty sure I was going to regret.

I joined the Fucking Freedom Legion.

* * *

“Repeat after me: I, Marco Martinez.”

“I, Marco Martinez...”

“Solemnly swear to honor and uphold the Freedom Legion bylaws, and the laws and statutes of any and all host countries…”

“… to protect the innocent and seek out the guilty…”

“So help me God; you may enter the deity of your choice, or By My Honor I So Swear, instead.”

“So help me Great Pumpkin…”

Janus did the honors, with Ultimate and Chastity Baal acting as witnesses and co-sponsors. Adam’s membership was in question, so he had to be sworn in as well. So did Christine. The oath cut through several Gordian knots: it exempted us from any previous violations of the Parahuman Registration Act, although we would all have to register; it also pretty much rendered us judgment-proof from any lawsuits related to our little misadventures, although there would be hearings to determine that we weren’t culpable in any of the incidents where we’d folded, spindled and mutilated assorted superheroes, as well as inflicted a good deal of property damage. Above all, the US government would leave us alone, provided we behaved from then on.

Condor declined the honor, along with Kestrel, but he had his own lawyer army, and between that and a good word from the Legion, he was going to skate on all charges. His identity would become public, though, and he’d have to register. I figured he would be okay. If he played his cards right, he would probably join the Empire State Guardians. Hell, he’d probably end up running that outfit.

Lady Shi took a powder shortly after the bomb kind of went off. Condor stayed in touch with her. She got paid and apparently became a semi-permanent guest of his and Kestrel’s. I didn’t ask for details, but what I gleaned about their new relationship made me shudder.

Hiram Hades vanished as well. I couldn’t blame him; deciding whether or not a clone could be held responsible for the deeds of his creator would be one for the legal books, but I wouldn’t have wanted to sit still for the process. Condor had put some of his lawyers to work on Hades’ case, and the legal team had announced the clone would show himself once a determination about his culpability had been made by the courts. That would probably take years.

We were lucky: it only took a week or so to sort things out for Christine and me. We stayed at the Plaza while we waited, and when we weren’t jumping through hoops we ordered lots of room service, made love, read books and watched the news.

Meanwhile, the rest of the Humanity Foundation members were exposed and arrested, at least the ones in countries that held to such niceties; any members in the Dominion (and its puppet countries) or the Empire just disappeared or came down with various cases of death. Some were even allegedly via natural causes, although how one Russian industrialist managed to consume almost a pound of highly radioactive material was never explained. The scandals rocked ‘public opinion,’ which was evenly divided between fanboys grateful for Neos’ saving the world yet again, and those who thought the Great Neo Conspiracy had just claimed dozens of new victims. Most people didn’t give much of a shit, as long as the lights stayed on and you could get a pizza delivered in under thirty minutes.

Daedalus Smith and Mr. Night remained at large, location unknown. Sometimes, late at night, I lay next to Christine, unable to sleep, and worried about them. I like my enemies’ locations known, preferably somewhere six feet under, somewhere I can visit and take a piss on.

There was plenty of evidence to convict the Iron Tsar in an international court of law, and zero interest in fighting a war to bring him to justice. There was plenty of posturing, of course. Some drooling imbecile of a judge in Spain issued an arrest warrant for the Tsar; a day later the judge disappeared without a trace, which made the rest of the internationalist crowd a lot less eager to stick their oar in. I fantasized about dropping by Kiev at some point and seeing if I could open that tin can over his shoulders to find out what was underneath, but now that I was a respectable Legionnaire, that was probably never going to happen.

It was a crazy few days. Good crazy, overall, even if there were times I just wanted to disappear. I managed to do so a couple of times, by the simple expedient of putting on a face and sneaking out of the hotel. I even spent a fun afternoon pretending to be Regis Philbin and showing up on the
Tonight Show
, just for shits and giggles. I knew I hit the big time when a couple of agents, a pitch team from Buck Comics, and a few Hollywood producers showed up at my hotel room around day five or six. I signed a couple of deals and got my first check the day before we were cleared of all charges and were free to go, as long as we went to Freedom Island, that is.

Life would never be the same.

Freedom Island, Caribbean Sea, April 12, 2013

Ultimate waited for me in the sparring ring.

“Oh, Mark, I really don’t like this,” Christine told me for the umpteenth time.

“We’re just going to spar for a bit,” I said casually. “No big deal. It’s all for science. Best way to measure my power level is to have me practice against a heavy-hitter.”

“You two have issues, though.”

“If we do, this is a good way to work them out.”

“I don’t have all day,” Ultimate called out from the ring. He was just as eager for this as I was.

“Okay, go be macho. I hope you know that the whole thing seems rather homoerotic to me. And kinda hot.”

“That’s nice, honey,” I said as I stepped into the ring.

It wasn’t much like a boxing ring. The Legion sparring site was a hundred-yard wide circle with a big energy dome on top, located on a little atoll a few miles away from Freedom Island proper. In short, it was a great place for two super-strong Type Threes to pound on each other without damaging any valuable real state. It was just Ultimate, Christine, Adam and me on the atoll, but there were cameras all around and I figured the little match would end up on a lot of screens. I hadn’t been able to place a bet on myself, because I hadn’t found the local bookies yet. Too bad; I figured I was a big underdog.

Ultimate was grinning, not a big shit-eating smile but a confident, friendly, All-American grin. I copied his face and grinned back at him for a moment before dropping it and returning to my usual blankness. I walked up to him and we bumped fists before returning to our corners. Adam rang the bell for us, and it was on.