The Indestructibles (Book 4): Like A Comet (16 page)

Chapter
25:

Aerial
combat

Emily stepped through Doc's portal and
immediately started plummeting toward the ground. Catching herself abruptly in
a bubble of float, she looked for Jane, and found her, as she often did,
basking in the direct light of the sun, her skin glittering like a diamond as
she absorbed its energy, eyes closed, an involuntary smile on her face. Jane's
hair seemed to come alive, dancing flames trailing behind her as she readied
herself for a fight.

      Doc flew more like Emily, less speed
and more drift, his long coat hanging behind him, fluttering on the breeze. She
couldn't hear his words, but all around him, symbols made of light appeared and
disappeared, spells coming to life as he prepared. It occurred to Emily she'd
never really seen Doc let loose in a battle before. She'd watched him do
amazing things, turn entire buildings into dust or butterflies, but she
wondered what he would do if he didn't have to hold back. Real magic, Emily
thought. I want to see colossal magic.

      The glove on her hand felt heavy
and constricting, her own palm-sweat began to gross her out almost immediately.

      With her non-gloved hand, she
tucked her earpiece more firmly into her ear. Jane's voice was the first she
heard.

      "I count three incoming,"
Jane said.

      "Three what?" Emily
said.

      Doc pointed. Asteroids or ships,
Emily couldn't tell, but three objects were earthbound, burning orange in the
atmosphere, flying in formation.

      "Where's Bruce Willis when
you need him," Emily said. "Or Ben Affleck, I'd settle for Affleck at
this point…"

      Doc hushed her and started saying
something in a language that never existed, words that sounded like falling
snow and breaking icicles. Emily watched as he made a series of gestures with
his hands, then pointed at the falling objects.

      The air below them flashed with
blue light, and a bird the size of an airplane appeared—not a actual one, Emily
realized, but some sort of golem made of ice, a frozen phoenix on a collision
course with the burning objects. The bird flew upward, smashing headlong into
the lead ship with a deafening bang, and the air filled with steam.

      The center object—looking more
like a ship than an asteroid, though its exterior had an organic, almost
plant-like shell to it—began to fall off course, swerving away from the other
two vessels after the impact. Jane dove towards it, leaving a trail of flame
behind her, throwing a fiery haymaker at the ship's hide. Its armor cracked
under Jane's assault.

      "My turn," Emily said.
She aimed her gloved hand at one of the falling ships and willed a wall of slam
at it. She felt the familiar feeling of vertigo as her powers emanated outward,
but instead of the entire ship being knocked off course, she saw a hole punch
right through it, sending cracks and splits all around the circumference of the
cylindrical main body of the ship. Emily pushed again, aiming at the back end
of the ship, and this time not only did she punch a hole straight through the
carapace, the initial cracks widened, cutting the craft in two. Both halves fell
toward the earth, tumbling out of control.

      "Why aren't they defending
themselves?" Doc said.

      "Because they are intimidated
by our awesomeness," Emily said.

      "I think I know why!"
Jane said, her voice rising. Emily banked left to get a better look at where
the solar-powered girl was, and saw her bracing herself with her legs against
the side of the ship she'd attacked so that her hands were free to fight off
two of the bug-like parasites they'd seen on the aliens she and Emily fought in
the desert.

      Emily swooped in to try to help,
but turned back when she saw Jane use her own powers to light her hands on
fire, setting the two parasites aflame.

      "This isn't an attack, this
is reinforcements," Doc muttered. "Emily…"

      "You got it, Doc," she
said, knowing exactly what Doc meant. Emily held out her hand, the one without
the gravity glove, and aimed it at the last, undamaged ship. Engulfing it in a
bubble of float, she watched as the ship stopped falling toward the ground and
instead began to drift lazily in the air.

      "One," Emily said. "Jane,
head's up—"

      She turned her attention to Jane's
target just in time to see something big—another alien, seven or eight feet
tall, held tight by one of the parasites on his chest—jump out of the hole Jane
had made in the ship's armor and tackle her, sending both of them spiraling
into the open air.

      "Are you kidding me!"
Emily yelled as she watched Jane fall, exchanging mighty punches back and forth
with the alien host. The creature seemed to understand it needed to hold onto
her to avoid plummeting into the ground, and kept one hand clenched on Jane's
shoulder while the heroine threw brutally powerful punches into the alien's
belly.

      "Doc?"

      Knowing Jane would survive the
fall—or hoping, at least, given she's really the only actual Indestructible indestructible—Emily
turned her attention back onto the falling ship Jane had broken open. She
pointed her other hand toward this craft and slowed its descent as well,
holding one starship with each hand.

      Bubbles of float, bubbles of
float, I can make more I swear, she thought, looking at the rapidly descending
halves of the ship she'd broken in two.

      In her mind, she shifted the two
ships she had bubbled into the palm of one hand, holding them aloft with the
gravity glove hand while pointing the other at one half of the falling ship.
She reached out, envisioning a third bubble around the falling craft, watching
as it started to spin and drop.

      "Doc, little overwhelmed
here," Emily said.

      He muttered something in that
strange, mythic language again, the sky opened up below them in a perfect
circle of fiery light.

      Emily swore. "What is
that
?"
she said.

      "Pocket dimension," Doc
said.

      "You're kidding me? Did you
seriously just conjure up a
bag of holding
?"

      "Can we talk about this
later?"

      "Dude, you made a pocket
dimension while we're just floating here?"

      "Emily, please bubble of
float those ships into that circle if you don't mind," Doc said. "Holding
that gateway open is harder than it looks."

      Emily deposited the half-ship over
the golden ring of fire and released it, letting the cylindrical shape fall
through. It did not emerge on the other side, but rather disappeared into
nothingness.

      "Please tell me I can get one
of these for the next time I clean my room," Emily said.

      "Em!"

      "Working!" she said.
Emily dropped the undamaged ship into the dimensional rift wholesale, releasing
the bubble of float dramatically. "Bullseye!"

      She maneuvered the damaged ship
over the pocket dimension, splitting her attention as she searched for the
other falling half of the broken vessel, which spun alarmingly close to Doc.

      "Hey Doc, on your right, "Emily
said.

      "Thanks, I'll—"

      Before he could finish his
sentence, another parasite-controlled monster, this one with boney, membranous
wings, crept out from the inside and launched itself at the magician, tackling
him mid-air.

      Doc tumbled into the air with the
alien wrapping its arms around him.

      Emily watched in awe as the wizard
and the alien plummeted toward the ground. The action startled her so much she
accidentally let go of the ship Jane had damaged, and she turned her attention
back to the now free-falling ship in horror.

      "Mistakes have been made!"
Emily said, not sure if anyone could hear her.

      And, almost as if she planned it,
the ship plopped daintily into the pocket dimension just as the glowing ring
disappeared.

      "Hey hey! Look what I did!"
Emily said. "Wait. Where is…"

      Emily looked around, unable to
spot the remaining half-ship she hadn't been able to capture. It was too far
for her to catch by the time she saw it.

      "Um, Titus?" Emily said.

      "What the heck is going on up
there?" Titus said.

      "Stuff and things," she
said. "Where are you?"    

      "On the ground watching
something big and creepy falling right at us."

      "Can you…?"

      "On it. Where's Doc?"

      "Um. You may need to help me
find him, too," Emily said.

Chapter
26:

I
know what they

smell
like

Kate stood with Titus and Bedlam as the
broken starship crashed into the ground in the fields outside the RIETI
institute, leaving a huge crater and kicking up a cloud of dust and dirt at
least a hundred feet high.

      As a unit, the trio approached the
crater carefully, as if all three refused to let one of the others be the first
over the edge.

      "Think anything's alive down
there?" Bedlam said.

      "Yeah, there's something
alive," Titus said.

      "How can you tell?" Kate
said, afraid she already knew the answer.

      "I know what they smell like
now," Titus said, touching his nose.

      "When you say things like
that, I'm mystified why I still find you attractive," Kate said.

      "You think that's tough, try
being crazy about you whenever you bring your gym bag to the Tower after a
workout when I've got a super-human sense of smell," Titus said.

      Kate almost, almost ignored the
quip, but turned one quick but brutal dirty look his way.

      "Wow," Bedlam said, just
watching the two of them. "Just… wow."

      "So if something is alive in
there, we should—" Kate said, when, with a sort speed normally reserved
for horror movie jump-scares, a small arachnid shape scrambled up over the edge
of the crater and darted between her and Titus, skittering with blurred legs
toward the RIETI institute's main building. Kate watched in awe as the
parasite—clearly one of the creatures that had latched onto Rice-Bell and the
others—made it at least a hundred yards away before they could even regain
their footing.

      "Son of a—!" Bedlam
yelled

      Kate glanced at Titus, who was
already throwing off his hoodie and starting to transform.

      "On it," he said, and leapt
into action, fluidly transforming from human to werewolf, loping like the
predatory creature he was and ran down the small alien being. She realized he'd
really come a long way since they first met—he'd been like Bambi in that
monstrous body before, loose-limbed and clumsy, and now he moved like a killing
machine.

      And once he was out of sight, the
crater rumbled again, and something inhuman wailed from within it. Kate turned
to Bedlam, who looked back at her with a resigned frown.

      "Whatever that was, I
guarantee you it'll be something that would've been easier to deal with if we
had a werewolf with us," Bedlam said.

      Kate reached down to her belt and
pulled open a pouch. She withdrew two identical objects—like brass knuckles,
but reflective black, with a power source built into the grip and a button near
the thumb. She slid one on each hand, clenched her fist, and hit the activation
button on both, feeling the hum of electricity buzz across her knuckles.

      The toys she'd found over the past
year in the Tower just kept getting better, she thought. Taser knuckles? I'll
take two.

      She and Bedlam waited for whatever
had howled from within the crater to show its face. Then, partially obscured by
the dust and grime of the crash, a tall, egg-like shape rose up on a stalk, appearing
like the bud of an flower before blooming. It turned to face them, and split
down the middle was a mouth rowed with shark-like teeth.

      "If that thing says 'feed me
Seymour' I'm legitimately going to freak out," Bedlam said.

      "Steady," Kate said,
flexing her fingers.

      Other stalks rose up, one, two,
three, four, moving like spider legs, reaching for them.

      "Oh good, evil flower has
arms," Bedlam said. "You know what would make me feel better?" 

      "If we still had our werewolf
with us?" Kate said.

      "Yeah," Bedlam said. "You
want me go first?"

      "No," Kate said. "I
want to see if this thing can take a punch."

* * *

      Titus lost sight of the parasite
before he reached the main entrance of the institute. Given the choice between
slowing down or smashing through, he chose the latter, knocking the door off
the hinges and letting the thick glass shatter, his silver fur protecting him,
mostly, from the shards. A quick glance showed the little alien creature had
done something similar, breaking a smaller hole in the exit.

      Titus huffed, catching the
creature's scent, and ran down the left-hand corridor to the emergency
staircase. The door had not been damaged, and in the back of his mind where his
human thoughts hung out while Titus let the monster take over, he wondered how
the spider-like thing had managed to open the door like that without hands.

      The trail led him not to the third
floor, where he expected—back to Rice-Bell's office—but rather to the second
floor, where he hadn't been before. This floor was dark, lit only by windows,
humming with machinery as computers tracked the signals coming in from the
field of satellite dishes outside. Titus slunk in, using his arms for balance
like a gorilla, listening, waiting for the alien parasite to appear.

      Instead, the solitary shape of a
young man in an expensive yellow dress shirt and navy pants stood by a
computer. The receptionist they'd met the day before. Only it wasn't just the
receptionist he saw. The young man turned to reveal a parasite latched onto his
chest, small rivulets of blood showing through the front of his shirt.

      "I… I should be scared,"
the young man said. "I'm looking at a monster and I should be frightened.
There's this thing… I think it's eating me. I should be devastated. But I'm
not. Isn't that strange? I'm not afraid."

      Titus moved in closer, cocking his
head, eyes on the young man's every movement.

      "We just sent a signal out,"
the man said. "We. We? I did. I pushed the buttons. I sent the signal. I
didn't understand it. It was just sounds. No message, no images. I don't know
what it said. I don't know how to work these machines, not really. I'm just the
receptionist. What am I doing up here?"

      Titus sized the man up. How does
this work? Titus wondered. Does he gain all of the alien's strength right away?
Did it need time to build up? He still seems partially in control—if I kill the
parasite, is it too late to save the human?

      "You should look out behind
you," the receptionist said.

      Titus heard the scurrying of
insectoid feet and spun around, catching sight another parasite as it launched
itself into the air, legs outstretched as if to grab onto him. The werewolf
snatched it up in one hand and, in a singular movement of animal fury, smashed
the creature against the floor, up and down, again and again, blackish blood
spraying out as he crushed it. Roaring, he dug his claws into the parasite and
ripped it apart, the werewolf part of his brain in a blind red rage at the idea
of being taken the way this young man had been. No one enslaves me, Titus could
feel the wolf's emotions screaming, as it tore the alien parasite limb from
limb.

      Footsteps rang against the floor
as the receptionist ran. Leaving the ravaged corpse of the parasite where it
died, Titus pursued the fleeing young man, pounced on him, bringing him down
like a deer. The man shoved him, far stronger than he should have been, but not
nearly as powerful as Rice-Bell had been. He's not at full strength yet, Titus
thought. Not completely gone.

      Titus shoved the receptionist
against a wall, hearing ribs cracking, grimacing internally as the poor man's
head bounced off the plaster. With his other clawed hand, Titus dug into the
parasite's flesh, rending and tearing. Both human and alien squealed in pain,
the parasite sounding like a lobster lowered into boiling water. Its legs
spasmed, releasing the young man, dropping him onto the floor. The alien
thrashed and howled, but Titus tore it apart as he had the other, black ichor
poured out. He dropped the body onto the carpet and leaned in, muzzle
dangerously close to the receptionist's face.

      The receptionist opened his eyes.
He screamed. Not in pain, but in perfect human terror at being nose to nose
with a three hundred pound werewolf, breathing hot air onto his skin.

      Perhaps he'll live, Titus thought.
Maybe I made it in time.

* * *

      This entire situation is going all
wrong, Kate thought, dodging thrashing vines and desperately trying not to get
eaten by the giant Venus fly trap that had emerged from the crashed ship. She
danced around the plant-creature's waving arms, snapping off electrified
punches if it got too close, her movements quick and graceful but in the end,
useless at putting the creature down.

      Bedlam, in a way almost comedic,
had been unable to dodge the grasping vines and was now hanging from one by her
foot, kicking so hard Kate could hear her cyborg parts whining as they moved.
On the upside, hanging in the air also gave Bedlam a good vantage point to
throw thunderous punches at the plant-creature's jaws. Those punches were doing
some kind of damage, the jaw didn't hang right anymore, as if coming unhinged,
and the shards of alien teeth littered the ground like confetti.

      Kate extended herself in a smooth
leap over an outreaching vine, tumbling out of range. She heard Bedlam cursing.

      "Let me go, let me go, let me
go, let me go," the cyborg said, punctuating each repeated phrase with a
punch. The vine holding her listed at an awkward angle, and Kate's mouth fell
open as she watched the alien suddenly release its grip on Bedlam and drop her
twenty feet to the ground. The cyborg hit the dirt with an ugly bang, but her
response seemed to indicate she wasn't hurt too badly.

      "I hate my life!" Bedlam
said, lying still with both arms held up in the air in a tantrum.

      Kate jumped up onto one of the
vines, using it for leverage, dancing her way along the length of it to get
close enough to throw a series of electrified punches at the base of the
creature's main stalk. This seemed to only anger it, however, as the Venus
flytrap head turned its attention from Bedlam onto Kate.

      Kate bounced back, looking at the
core of the creature, and realized it was never intended to move. It had no
legs, no means of propulsion. Why send a stationary creature like this on an
intergalactic journey? What was the purpose?

      As Kate pliéd over another swiping
vine, she heard Emily's voice crackle in her earpiece.

      "Hey Dancer," Emily
said.

      "Not right now," Kate
said.

      "No seriously Dancer I need
you to move."

      "I am moving," she said.

      "Kate, dude, get your butt
out of there for a second, I have an idea," Emily said.

      "No ideas," she said.

      "Bedlam?" Emily said.

      "What, what, what!"
Bedlam said, throwing punches at the plant's vines as they tried to drag her
back into the air.

      "I need you to move too."

      "Why?" Bedlam said.

      "Just get away from the
thing! Away from the thing! Listen to Auntie Emily and get away from the thing!"

      Kate, suddenly not trusting
anything Emily might have in mind, sprinted out of range of the creature's
vines. Bedlam did the same, tripping over vines multiple times, falling down
onto her hands and knees and then half-running, half-crawling away.

      "What could she possibly—"
Bedlam said.

      And then a delivery van landed on
top of the alien Venus flytrap with a sickening thud, exploding in a cloud of
frozen food products.

      Kate tried to say something in
reaction, but just deactivated her taser-knuckles and put her hands on her
hips, admiring Emily's culinary carnage.

      "Audrey II, you are now
Audrey Goo," Emily said, drifting down out of the sky to stand next to
Kate.

      "I don't even know how to
react to what I just saw," Bedlam said.

      " 'Thank you' works,"
Emily said. "I also accept gift cards."

      It was Titus's turn to chime in
over the earpiece.

      "What was that bang?" he
asked, clearly back in his human form.

      "Emily dropped a meat
delivery truck onto a… never mind," Kate said. "Are you whole?"

      "What? Yeah. I'm fine,"
Titus said. "There was more than one parasite here though, something weird
is going on. Where are Doc and Jane?"

      "Oh no," Emily said.

      "Titus, we're going to need
your help immediately," Kate said.

      "Why?"

      Kate wrinkled her nose.

      "We need you to track Doc and
Jane for us," she said.

* * *