Chapter 44:
Old enemies
The Alley Hawk had to admit — he'd missed having access to Neal and the AI's supercomputer brain.
Hawk had known for years that there were communication relays deep under the Labyrinth acting as backup gateways in the event something happened on the surface, but the vigilante's own computer talents — which were not inconsiderable, despite his reputation as a fists-first thug of a fighter — would never have been enough to hack into the prison's security system. He would have had to fight his way twenty or more stories to a control center somewhere in the higher levels to patch in and unlock the front doors for Kate and her strike team.
Instead, with a small handheld device Neal had created by following the Alley Hawk's instructions, he was able to essentially hotwire his way into the security controls. It took him hours to get into the building, and another hour to reach one of the armored cables running underground, but cutting through the metal jacket protecting that cabling was easy enough, and after that, it was a matter of connecting the right wires to the paperback-book sized device Neal created.
Then came the part that required a human touch. Neal could develop the best code-cracking software on the planet, but once inside, the Alley Hawk had to navigate that security system, making sure he only opened the doors he wanted to, and ensuring that opening was timed to Kate's plan. This used to be the part of the job Hawk hated when he was young. He wanted to get right to the action, right to the fight and finale, but now, there was a sort of Zen feeling to finessing a lock like this.
So focused on finding the command to release the front gates, Alley Hawk hadn't realized he was no longer alone until a familiar voice spoke.
"You're awfully far underground for a bird," a taunting, near-laughing voice said, echoing down the long, amber-lit corridor. The words caused every hair on Hawk's body to stand on end. This was the voice of a maniac he knew all too well.
Alley Hawk knelt down, gently placed the device on the ground, then stood up, equally as slow, and took a cautious, wide step away from it.
Standing casually ten feet away was a man who had tried to kill him more times than he could remember.
"Hello, Roy," the Alley Hawk said to the Vermin King. "I see someone let you out of your cage."
"Were you coming to visit me? You don't visit me much anymore," the Vermin King said.
"You had plenty of company inside," Hawk said, loosening his shoulders, preparing for a fight.
"But you're my special friend," the Vermin King said. Eyes glistening and wet, his pointed teeth gleamed white in the shadows. "I don't exist without you."
"Why don't we walk back to your cell and talk about that?" Alley Hawk said.
"Why don't I eat your liver instead?" the Vermin King said, before leaping with animal speed at the Alley Hawk.
The two fell to the ground, rolling on the tile and kicking up years of old dust. Hawk grabbed a clawed hand and held it away from his face, the taloned fingers reaching for his eyes. The Vermin King snapped at him, his inhumanly wide mouth clamping down on Hawk's armored gauntlet, trying to chew through to the flesh. The Alley Hawk slammed his knee into the creature's skinny ribs, two, three times, until the Vermin King opened his mouth in pain. Hawk threw the Vermin King across the floor, but the creature dragged his claws across the tiles, righting himself back up and charging again.
Dammit, he's fast, Hawk thought to himself, countering bites and scratches, throwing punches when he could. Was I ever this fast? Was I really quick enough to keep up with him? Hawk was struggling, amazed at how his old nemesis seemed to be even quicker than he was when the Alley Hawk had finally captured him years before and put an end to decades of murder and horrific acts.
The Vermin King saw an opening and lacerated Hawk's face with his claws, sending blood running into the Alley Hawk's eye, into his mouth. More scars, Hawk thought, just more scars, and he landed a hard left hook on the Vermin King's jaw, felt teeth cracking underneath his armored knuckles. The creature knocked the Alley Hawk back off his feet, but Hawk took Vermin King with him to the ground, one hand around the monster's scrawny neck.
"You should have killed me when you had the chance!" Vermin King said.
Why hadn't he killed him? Hawk thought, trying to get his fingers around the Vermin King's neck, wondering if he had the strength to crush his larynx. The creature snapped at him with that freakishly wide mouth, all those teeth so close to Hawk's face, stinking saliva flying everywhere. This man, this monster, he killed so many people, did so much harm for so long, and all I did was lock him away, saving him for some nightmare rainy day . . .
Something smashed into Hawk's side and he grabbed it with his free hand. The Vermin King's ratlike tail, slashing around like a whip. Hawk twisted, hard, felt little bones crack like popcorn, and the Vermin King howled to wake the dead.
"You should have killed me!" the Vermin King said, and the Alley Hawk felt those clawed fingers find a weak point in his armored suit, slipping like knives into the flesh below Hawk's ribs; fiery pain lanced up into his brain. Now it was Hawk's turn to cry out, a huffing grunt of agony as he fought back the screams.
This was enough, though, enough to give him that last burst of adrenaline, and the Alley Hawk climbed to his feet, with the Vermin King thrashing like a cat held by the scruff of his neck. Mercilessly, Hawk slammed the Vermin King into the concrete wall, felt a grim satisfaction when that bald, monstrous head bounced off the surface, as his enemy went slack in his arms. He tossed the unconscious villain aside like a rag doll, watched those spindly, grotesque limbs flail.
Hawk put a hand to his side where the Vermin King had clawed him. Dark blood stained his armor from ribs to belt. It hurt to breathe. He fell to one knee, exhausted.
This would be how it ends, wouldn't it, he thought, crawling over to Neal's device. Killed by my worst enemy in a long-lost hole in the ground, where no one would ever find us.
Alley Hawk looked back to where he'd tossed the Vermin King's unconscious body, wondering if he'd really killed him. He never wanted to kill him. He couldn't. In a lot of ways, the monster was the Alley Hawk's fault. This is how it's always been, isn't it, he thought. We just keep escalating. We keep inspiring the worst in people. This is why we all quit. We saw ourselves in our enemies much more than we saw ourselves in the people we saved.
Hawk closed his eyes for a moment, hoping to clear his head, to make the room stop spinning long enough to let Neal's device work its magic and unlock the prison's front doors. When he opened his eyes, the Vermin King's body was gone.
"Dammit," he said.
He peered down the corridor where he'd come from, back toward the cyclopean tunnels leading back the City. He was almost sure he could see the Vermin King's ferret-like body scrambling away in the dark. He wanted to pursue him. He wanted to put an end to this. It would be a good way to die. A death they both deserved.
Instead, he finished his task, launching Neal's program, grunting with satisfaction as he saw a green light flicker indicating the command had been sent to open up the front gates. Revenge could wait, he thought. And when he got the signal from the Tower's AI that his job was done, the Alley Hawk dragged himself to his feet as he'd always done, as he would do until he finally ran out of willpower. He shuffled down the corridor, in the opposite direction his old enemy escaped. There were other ways to the surface, and old scores could be settled later. Right now, there were more important wrongs to right.
Chapter 45:
One door closes
The fight outside, Kate noted, was beginning to look like a cartoon version of Rock'em, Sock'em Robots.
Once Kate and Dude had joined the fray, she, Titus, and Bedlam had worked their way into a rhythm, giving each other a moment to catch their breath while the other two each engaged one of the sentries. The problem, Kate noted, was that even if they were able to ping-pong their opponents back and forth between each other, the suits the sentries were wearing were simply storing up the kinetic energy Kate and the others were throwing at them. For every punch the good guys threw, the bad guys tossed back something stronger.
Kate, meanwhile, had learned that she wasn't limited with Dude's alien abilities to simply throwing laser bolts at her enemies. She was able to use the defensive shield protecting her as a sort of weapon as well, allowing her already deadly kicks and punches to have a superhuman oomph to them. Each blow splashed blue-white light as it connected, accompanied by a thunderous boom.
The shielding worked remarkably well also, she thought. Blows that would have leveled her ordinarily were shrugged off with relative ease.
"I'm beginning to see why Billy is so careless," Kate said.
Why is that, Kate Miller.
"Because he can't get hurt. He's in a suit of alien bubble wrap," she said. "Why be careful when nothing you do can hurt you?"
Kate was engaging the male sentry now, who seemed to have a decent background in close combat fighting. He was smart enough to not let Kate grapple him, where she might be able to find a weakness in the suit. Rather, he forced her to keep hitting him, building up his suit's power and keeping her at arm's length. The sentry took a swing at her and she aimed her open palm at his face, launching a blast of light into his eyes. She kicked him in the center of his chest and sent him flying just in time to see Bedlam pummeling her opponent. Bedlam's target punched the cyborg with enough force to cause her to collapse a police car on impact, yet Bedlam popped back out, laughing maniacally, throwing a running punch at her enemy so powerful Kate was certain she saw the air around them both vibrate.
"She's a lunatic," Kate said.
Some might argue your other companion is as well,
Dude said.
Kate turned her eyes on Titus, who was kneeling on the edge of the battle, soaked through by Valkyrie's pouring rain. With the enhanced vision Dude's powers gave Kate, she could see clearly enough to watch Titus's skin knitting back together from a horrific case of road rash he'd picked up during the last fight.
"This is taking too long," Kate said.
We could try another way inside,
Dude said.
"Is that a hypothetical suggestion, or is that hinting you know another way inside?"
Logically speaking, there is always another way, Kate Miller.
"That is incredibly unhelpful, Dude," Kate said.
She flew at the female sentry, hoping to change things up a bit, and knocked the woman off her feet. Bedlam picked up on Kate's idea and sucker punched the male sentry in the back of the head and then started throwing a series of mechanically enhanced quick jabs at his facemask.
"How much longer we gotta hold these guys off?" Bedlam said. "I'm getting bored!"
As if on cue, Titus pounced onto the male sentry's back and latched on with teeth and claws. Bedlam stepped aside to admire the ferocity of the attack, but Kate could also see the precision of it.
"He's trying to find gaps in the armor," Kate said.
He has been finding gaps in the armor,
Dude said.
I have been watching his progress. It is slow, but deliberate and between his claws and his weapons he is making headway.
"It'd be nice if he could make faster headway," Kate said.
Kate was starting to worry about the Alley Hawk, too. Where was he? They'd decided on radio silence to make sure his activities inside the Labyrinth went undetected, but he'd been inside a long time. Did he get caught? Did something happen? Did he injure himself in those alien tunnels underground before he even got to the secret entrance to the prison he'd been heading for?
The Alley Hawk has always been reliable,
Dude said.
Give him time.
"Stop reading my mind!" Kate said, just as she turned to deflect a glancing blow from the female sentry, who had somehow knocked Bedlam into an armored police transport vehicle which the cyborg was now having trouble extricating herself from. Even though she'd managed to dodge most of the punch, Kate felt it rattle her bones. Those suits are getting ridiculously strong, she thought. I wonder if they max out? Will they burn out if we hit them enough times? Or will they just become so strong that they can break through Dude's shields, tear Bedlam limb from limb, and hurt Titus severely enough his magical healing abilities won't be able to recover?
Kate saw Titus slammed brutally to the pavement, sending a geyser of rainwater gushing when he skidded along the blacktop. Amazingly — Kate was actually stunned at the forethought and agility it took — Titus scooped up his discarded spear from the ground and hurled it straight as an arrow into the air while still prone on the ground, a brutal overhand toss utilizing only his arm strength.
"Where did he learn to do that?" Kate said.
He is very different, is he not?
Dude said.
"Yeah," Kate said, letting the conversation drop when the spear did the impossible, piercing the male sentry's suit at the leg and digging into his thigh. The sentry screamed, as much in surprise as in shock, and he stared at the wound in awe.
Titus roared a challenge at his adversary, who then yanked the spear out of his own thigh and launched himself off his one good leg to tackle Titus to the ground. The men rolled around in the inch-deep puddles, pummeling each other. The sound of those kinetically charged fists thumping into the living flesh of Titus's body made Kate wince. Before she could rush in to help, the female sentry engaged her again.
And then the miracle they were waiting for happened: the gates to the prison began to open with mechanical slowness.
Kate held onto her sentry's wrists, feeling as if the woman could yank Kate's arms right from the sockets with all the built up strength her suit was pumping into her movements. Kate wanted to let go and push the sentry away, but she knew if she did release her she'd be giving up the one advantage she had.
A steady pounding sounded, metal on pavement, and suddenly there was Bedlam standing over her; one hydraulic arm wrapped powerfully around the female sentry's waist and yanked her off Kate.
"We got this, chief," Bedlam said, throwing her a madwoman's wink. For the first time, Kate noticed that Bedlams's eyelashes were deep blue, contrasting strangely with her red mechanical eye and her deep brown human one. "Go on!"
We may not get another opportunity,
Dude said.
"You're going to give me a lesson on not being sentimental?" Kate said, but she watched Titus a moment too long, one big mass of bruise and fur, fighting tooth and claw with an enemy armored in invincibility.
Dammit, she thought. She looked at Bedlam.
"Do what you can," Kate said.
Bedlam tossed her a loose salute and returned to the battle with her sentry.
Kate took a deep breath, let Dude's powers of flight take hold, and darted into the prison in a flash, a streak of light in the darkness.