The Indestructibles (Book 3): The Entropy of Everything (18 page)

Chapter 36:

Well enough to break it

      Entropy Emily and Anachronism Annie drifted out of the sky in a bubble of float, a strange pair of travelers making their way across the night horizon.

      Billy insisted on coming as well, but for subtlety and stealth's sake, they hadn't let him fly. Because Emily didn't appreciate his forcing his way onto the "away team," as she called it, she gave him his own bubble of float trailing a hundred meters back. He hung suspended in mid-air, arms folded across his chest, waiting for Emily to place him on the ground.

      I could have flown here on my own, Billy thought.

     
And we would have lit up the sky
, Dude said.
This way we arrive unnoticed, without commotion.

      A girl sporting neon blue hair and another with neon pink hair just flew across ten miles of sky, Dude, Billy thought. I wouldn't exactly call it a ninja maneuver.

      Billy fell the last six feet, dropping out of the sky at the same time Emily and Annie landed gently on their feet. Emily looked back and laughed.

      "Sorry! Forgot about you back there."

      "No you didn't," Billy said.

      They checked out the low-rise industrial building standing before them, part of a massive, now abandoned, business park just outside the City. An aging and poorly maintained sign,
Futura Industries
sprouted from overgrown and yellowed weeds.

      "Wonder if Fry worked here?" Emily said.

      "Keaton Bohr did," Annie said. "And if we're lucky, we'll be able to find some of his early research."

      Annie tried the front door, but it was locked from the inside. Emily took a running start and kicked it.

      The door held, knocking Emily onto the ground.

      "I'll blast it open," Billy said.

      "No," Annie said, pulling a strangely antiquated gun from her hip and firing. Green energy splashed against the lock, and the door creaked open.

      "You have a gun?" Billy said.

      "More like a . . . blaster," Annie said.

      "It looks like something Jack Sparrow would use," Emily said.

      "I'll take that as a compliment," Annie said. "C'mon."

      The structure inside appeared as if it had been untouched for years. A few tipped over chairs, a ransacked lobby vending machine; otherwise, the building could have been preserved in a time capsule.

      The trio ventured deeper into the bowels of the edifice, past an empty reception area. They encountered a few locked doors that were immediately dispatched by Annie's laser gun.

      "So I've been meaning to ask," Emily said. They sauntered past offices with ordinary names printed on faux gold plates, past a sad little kitchen with years-old coffee still sitting in the pot resting on a dead burner. "What do all your tattoos mean?"

      Annie smirked, then looked down at her bare arms, at the swirling patterns in infinite colors that traced all across her skin. "They mean a little bit of everything," she said.

      "Doc has a lot of tattoos, too," Emily said. "But his do things. They're like, spells."

      "Yeah, he has a different kind of ink than I do," Annie said.

      "He told Jane and me about them once," Emily said. "Like one enables him to become fireproof, another makes sure he never loses his car keys."

      "That second one's a lie," Billy said.

      "Not really," Annie said. "I know there's one near his neck that's a mark of memory. It might not be for car keys specifically, but it is for memory."

      "I could use one of those. I forget my email password three times a week," Billy said.

      They reached a stairwell and elevator. Billy pushed the door to the stairs open and they crept down into the darkness.

      "I can light this for us," Billy said.

     
No,
Dude said.

      "No," Annie said, simultaneously. "Energy signatures. You're here in case we get into a fight. Let's stay mundane if we can."

      She pulled a squat flashlight from her belt and held it aloft.

      "Is that a future flashlight?"

      "It's a Mag-light," Annie said. "I got it at a department store."

      "I was really hoping it was a future flashlight," Billy said.

      "To answer your question, no, the tattoos don't signify anything," Annie said. "Or rather, they all mean something to me, but they don't do things like the ones Doc has."

      "So they're like your scrapbook or something," Emily said.

      Annie smiled. "Sort of," she said. "They do remind me of where I've been and who I am."

      "Seems like an awful lot of work to go through when you could just take notes," Emily said.

      They arrived at a door labeled "Archives." Annie reached for her laser gun again, but Emily just walked in and Billy followed.

      "This isn't intimidating at all," Billy said.

      Cardboard boxes lined the rooms. Labeled in red marker, rows and rows of research containers were stacked on retail-style racks.

      "We don't have to go through all of it," Emily said, bounding off.

      "You really think they'll have anything useful in here?" Billy asked.

      Annie shrugged.

      "No idea," she said. "But it's worth it, isn't it?"

      "Why would they keep hard copies?" Billy said.

      "Some of this information is older than you are," Annie said. "Believe it or not, people used to work on paper. They had books, too, made out of dead trees."

      "Don't mock," Billy said. "You're from the future. Which means I'm technically older than you are."

      Annie chuckled. Her laugh had a familiar mania to it. Something in the back of his mind tickled, as if he'd heard it long before.

      "How do you know I'm from the future?" she said. "I could be from the past."

      "You have Jem and the Hologram's hair. No way you're from the past," Billy said.

      "I could be from the 1980's."

      "Whatever," Billy said. "You find anything, Em?"

      "It would help if you got up and pushed," she yelled.

      "Are you saying you need help?" Billy said.

      "Would he be under Keaton, Bohr, or Doctor?" Emily said.

      Annie walked between the stacks to find her.

      Billy followed grumpily. "I came along as a bodyguard, not to relearn the Dewey Decimal System," he said.

     
Relearn indicates you actually knew the Dewey Decimal System at some point
, Dude said.

      "I was speaking in metaphor," Billy said. "Why you gotta give me a hard time about the little things?"

      "Found his stuff," Emily said. She was pulling boxes down off the shelves using bubbles of float. "What do you think we're searching for?"

      "Whatever looks interesting," Annie said, kneeling down to open one of the crates.

      "What was he doing here?" Billy said.

      "According to Broadstreet's information, Bohr was a renewable energy expert," Annie said. "It was something he came to later in his career. He started out in robotics."

      "Let me guess, he has a bunch of PhDs," Billy said.

      "Couple of 'em, yeah," Annie said. "Anyway, he was an employee until he got fired."

      "Because he was bad at his job?" Emily said, scanning a box of paper printout reports.

      "No. He was too good at it. Figured out a renewable energy source that could replace a lot of our existing technology," Annie said.

      "I'm too good at my job," Billy said.

      "Standing around looking pretty? You could be better at it," Emily said. "So basically he got terminated for developing something that could put his company out of business."

      "Or the company's clients, yeah," Annie said. "If you're in the business of selling something, don't invent the thing that makes the product you're promoting obsolete."

      Billy threw his hands up.

      "Wait. So this guy gets let go and what, a year later he's working with some kind of super villain and has locked Emily in a cage turning her into a weapon?" he said.

      "You'd be amazed the lengths people will go to in order to get back at a boss they're angry with," Annie said. "Though I honestly believe his original intentions were less nefarious. He hoped to build a better world, he just went about doing it wrong. You finding anything, Emily?"

      She waived paperwork in the air.

      "He was definitely working on variations of the Dyson sphere concept," she said. "Big brain stuff. Ideas grew out of his ideas."

      "Wait a minute," Billy said. "So not only did they run him off, they held onto his work?"

      Annie nodded.

      "Depending on your contract, intellectual property reverts—"

      "—See. This is why I'll never act like an adult," Billy said. "Because adults get screwed over all the time."

     
Hearing you bluntly state out loud that you never intend to mature is one of the more upsetting things you've ever done, Billy Case
, Dude said.

      "Big brain stuff?" Annie said. "Is that a technical term?"

      "I learned it online, so it must be true," Emily said, smirking. "So if none of this had happened, I could be living a life of quiet desperation like Keaton Bohr? Watching someone take all my dreams and put them in boxes?"

      "Happens to a lot of people, Emily," Annie said. "Not everyone gets to fly."

      "Well, everyone should get to fly," she said. "Flying shouldn't be limited to a special few."

      "How generous of you," Annie said.

      "What can I say, I'm a woman of the people," Emily said.

      "Are you actually getting anything out of all that paperwork you're looking at?" Billy asked.

      Emily smiled, sorting a few piles of paper, and then held up a page with a familiar-looking spherical design sketched onto it. "I'm getting," she said. "Not enough to build one of my own. But I'm definitely understanding it well enough to break it if I have to."

      "Good," Annie said. "Because that's exactly what we need you to do."

Chapter 37:

And let slip the dogs of war

      "Designation: Fury. It is really okay," Neal said, in the female voice Emily had accidentally changed his settings to. "There is no need to try so hard to fix it."

      "It's fine, Neal," Titus said, sweating and cursing under his breath as he tinkered with the mini-Neal computer they'd brought with them to the new hideout.

      It really wasn't just about the voice itself. Yeah, Titus missed the familiar tone of their artificially intelligent friend, but Titus was more interested in fixing the computer because he couldn't determine how Emily had actually broken it. Returning Neal to his preferred vocalization was really a by-product of Titus's frustration that Emily had basically beaten the computer up until it started working again.

      "It really bothers you the little blue-haired girl figured it out before you did, doesn't it?" Jessie said, sitting on the edge of an overturned countertop.

      "It doesn't bother me that she solved something before I did, it irks me that I don't know what the hell she actually did," Titus said. "Can't I be intellectually curious?"

      "Jealous more likely."

      "I'm not jealous. I'm confused," Titus said. "In the meantime, though. Neal, can you find anything else of interest Broadstreet gave us?"

      "What should I be looking for, Designation: Fury?"

      "Maps, weapon designs, personnel information, something concrete," Titus said.

      "I will do this," the computer said.

      "Maps?" Jessie said.

      "Yeah," Titus said. "I keep thinking, if Emily's going to figure out how to break the . . . Entropy sphere, we should try to locate it."

      "And who we're going to have to get past in order to break it," Jessie said.

      "Yep," Titus said.

      Jessie picked up a USB thumb drive and inserted it into the computer so Neal could start taking in data.    

      "Low tech?" Titus said.

      "Kinda," Jessie said. "But you'd be amazed at how slowly personal technology advances when you're fighting for your life."

      She returned to her seat and continued watching while Titus explored Neal's computer guts.

      "I always wondered why the big guy was so attached to this box," Jessie said. "You don't figure gigantic, scarred-up werewolves care about their computers this much, even if the computer does have a personality."

      "Neal and I are friends," Titus said. "I'm assuming future me is—was—friends with him as well before all this happed. I realize it sounds absolutely bizarre, but I think I'm the one who's most comfortable with Neal back home."

      "The others sometimes struggled with my otherness," Neal said, startling Titus. He'd forgotten he was talking about Neal as if the computer wasn't right there in front of him. "You always treated me the most like a person."

      "Because I know what it's like to be the other," Titus said.

      "Also you are not a technophobe," Neal said. "That helps."

      "Have I—the other me? Have I been distant, Neal?" Titus asked.

      The computer paused, like a human being taking a deep breath.

      "You hide behind a mask," Neal said. "I don't think you speak to anyone very much at all, Designation: Fury."

      Titus looked at Jessie, who waved her hands vaguely.

      "I'm the new girl," she said. "That guy in the other room? He's the only Titus I've ever actually known. But he gets the job done and keeps his people safe. I can't find anything wrong with that."

      Titus nodded, then opened up another hatch on the computer. He reviewed the data spike Broadstreet had given them. He never had an opportunity to investigate it this closely before. A soft, red light pulsed on the surface.

      "Neal, does this light indicate that you're pulling information off the drive?" Titus said.

      "I do not know what that light signifies, Designation: Fury," Neal said.

      "Could you find out?"

      "One moment."

      "You worried about something?" Jessie said.

      "Blinking red lights. Ever see a blinking red light that meant something good?"

      "Stop light?"

      Neal chirped in, sounding sheepish.

      "Designation: Fury. There appears to be some sort of tracking device attached to the drive," Neal said. "It is not embedded within the software. We missed it during our initial examination."

      "We have to get out of here," Titus said.

      "Tracking device?" Jessie said.

      "Get everyone up," Titus said. "Leto! Finnigan! We need to move, we're being tracked!"

      Titus pulled the USB stick out of its port and threw it in the air. Jessie blasted it with a bolt of blue-white light, shattering it.

      Leto walked in, her movement eccentrically fast but not hurried.

      "What's wrong, Titus?" she asked.

      "Broadstreet's portable drive was bugged. We could be looking at another incoming bombing raid," Titus said. "We've got to go."

      Finnigan staggered in, helping one of the younger werewolves who had been sent out on patrol to stay on his feet. A teenager named James, he was bleeding badly from a deep slash in his side, his face pale and eyes sunken from blood loss.

      "What happened, boy?" Finnigan said, covered in the younger man's blood. "Where's the rest of your patrol?"

      "Wiped out," James said.

      Finnigan guided the younger werewolf to the floor, laying him gently on his back. Leto rushed to him and examined the wound in his side. Titus caught sight of other injuries, clearly sustained from a fight. They appeared to be knife or sword slashes.

      "What do you mean? Where are they? Stay with us, lad," Finnigan said.

      "They came out of the dark. . .knew how to fight us. . .silver. . ." James said. Titus watched as the light in the werewolf's eyes flickered and faded. And then he was gone. Older than Titus is now, but only by a few years, a life that wouldn't begin until long into the future. Titus wondered if, because of what they did here, James would never exist at all. If this was his one life, in all the timelines, and if it were now over.

      "They can't all be dead," Jessie said.

      "Hunters," Leto said. She placed her hand upon the bloody face of James and whispered something in a language Titus didn't understand.

      "They can't all be dead," Finnigan said.

      "If it's the hunters, they could be. These children never had to fight real hunters before," Leto said.

      "There's another patrol out there," Jessie said.

      Titus looked at Finnigan. They both jumped to their feet and started running.

      "Find Solar. Both of them," Titus said to Jessie. "Tell them we'll need help. Leto—"

      "I'll find Whispering," she said. "Go."

      Titus transformed, faster than he'd ever done before, tearing his sweatshirt to shreds as he doubled in size. And suddenly he was on the run, the world rushing by, awash in heightened senses, the smell of the blood of his future family in the wind.

*  *  *

      It's been too long, Titus thought, from a quiet place in the back of his mind. I've been caged up too long. Cool night air flowed through his silver fur, every sound, every sight, every scent, a thousand times clearer. This is how to experience the world. The muscles in his shoulders and quads felt fluid and potent as the urban decay around him faded into a blur.

      The smell of blood and metal surrounded him, familiar and unfamiliar, the blood of friends he barely knew, of friends he would someday know. He could hear the fighting already, the roars of pain and fury, the whisper of blades sinking into muscle, scraping across bone. His people were dying.

      Beside him, he could barely make out the squat shape of a red-furred werewolf tearing along as well, Finnigan in full transformation, baying like a tracking hound, calling their enemies out.

      Titus tore into the first of their attackers before the man ever saw him, three hundred pounds of werewolf crashing into a black-clad man, one swipe doing cataclysmic damage to his body. Two more men turned to attack, but Titus, his mind so clear time itself seemed to stop, dispatched both of them. Their silver swords spun in the air and tumbled like falling leaves.

      During moments like this, Titus was never sure if he was in charge or if the beast was. During moments like this it didn't matter. Because, during moments like this, his rage and the beast's were one in the same. This was pure vengeance.

      He saw a flash of rusty red as Finnigan dispatched another black-clad warrior. Titus, his momentum carrying him forward effortlessly, left yet another combatant trying to hold his severed guts together with his hands.

      More screams of the dying echoed and bellowed. The patrol had been ambushed. These men in black knew the damage they could inflict if they could catch werewolves unaware. He heard a shuffle behind him. Another of the attackers, this one moving with greater caution, approached him, a silver katana in his hand. Titus circled him, his opponent clearly more prepared than the others.

      The man lunged, a classic thrust of his sword. Titus felt the silver blade skim along his shoulder, drawing blood, burning in that way that only silver burned, but he let the pain wash over him long enough to force the claws of one his hands up into the man's underarm, tearing apart muscle and tendon. The sword dropped from the man's now useless hand, and Titus sunk the talons of his other hand into the man's neck.

      This violence should bother me, Titus believed, cloudy and safe in the far reaches of the werewolf's mind. What I'm doing, the actions I'm taking, should horrify me. But these men are killers and so am I, we're all killers here at the end of the world . . .

      He spied one of the black-clad men standing over the body of another younger werewolf—Titus didn't know his name, had never learned it—but before the man could plunge a sword into his fallen comrade, Titus was upon him, tearing through his opponent's body armor like wrapping paper. Titus didn't check to see if the prone wolf was all right. No time. And nothing he could do to help him if he was bleeding to death. Nothing he could do but keep killing, destroy them all before they hurt any more of his kin.

      A furious howl caught his attention, and Titus ran towards it, deeper into the urban sprawl. He discovered his future self set upon from all sides by sword-wielding attackers. Whispering held them off like a martial arts master, spinning a long spear—my spear, Titus thought, the one I left in the past—like a helicopter blade, knocking the attackers back, gutting them, cracking their skulls with the butt-end of the weapon. But there were far too many, and the big, scarred wolf was losing ground.

      Titus joined the fray, attacking from behind those who were trying to kill his future self his mind a blur of red anger. Together, Titus old and Titus young fought, howling, roaring. We are monsters, Titus thought. We are beasts. We are fury. We are the Whispering.

      But still they were outnumbered. He heard yips and yells of pain, sometimes in the distance, sometimes close. He knew they coming from his own mouth.

      And then Leto arrived.

      She was unlike anything Titus had ever seen. Taller, leaner, with close, jet-black fur, Leto looked more like a jackal than a werewolf, the head of Anubis set defiantly on the body of a monster. She moved like a ghost among the men in black, a blur of long limbs and golden claws and sprays of arterial blood. One man desperately tried to run, and Leto gestured to him in a movement Titus had seen Doc Silence exercise many times, and a bolt of reddish light flashed from her hand, catching the man between the shoulder blades and sending him sprawling to the ground.

      Her arrival gave both younger and older-Titus a second wind, a reprieve. Together, they finished the fight in a cloud of claws and fangs and glowing eyes. Together they became murder at its most primal.

      And then, as quickly as it started, it was over. The bodies of men and wolves littered the street, splattered blood dripped down walls ten feet high. Finnigan limped in before transforming back into human form. Titus tried to let himself revert back to human shape, but the wolf was too much in control, his blood was too high, he was too close to the edge. Breathe, he thought, breathe and return, let go and come back home . . .

      He caught his future self inspecting him curiously. They stared at each other a moment, and then the elder Titus stormed away, searching for survivors.

      Among the carnage, Leto had changed back to human form as well. She pinned one of the men in black, still alive, to the ground. She drove a long, dark-bladed knife into the soft flesh of his shoulder. It was then Titus focused on the patch the man wore on the sleeve of his shirt, a stylized red rose. All of the attackers had them.