Black Onyx Duology (15 page)

9

Dillon floated softly onto the beach in front of his house. No one was out at such a late hour, so he sat in the sand and let the waves lap at the suit. He could feel the water, the coolness of it, even through the thick layers of the suit.

The suit was magical; there was no other word to describe it. He was a rational person and thought there must be physical laws that governed its operation, maybe even obvious laws that hadn’t been discovered by modern science, but at that moment, all he saw was magic. He remembered a quote by Asimov saying that technology was just magic, anyway.

He thought about his life. Jaime was right. The suit put her and the kids at the orphanage
in danger. Eventually, someone would find out about it. But the thought of giving it to Henry made him uneasy. Anyone willing to pay twenty million was looking to make it into a weapon, and that didn’t sit well with him. But he had one edge: the suit was bonded to him. It only opened on his command. It was possible that they would never be able to use or study it. And he wouldn’t transfer possession until he got the money.

Jaime came over and sat next to him, appearing like a child next to the gargantuan suit. “Really? You’re just gonna wear that out, huh?”

“I don’t know how much longer I’m going to be wearing it.”

“You’ve been thinking about Henry’s deal?”

“Yeah. I think it’s what I need to do. Not just for the kids. For us, too. We could retire. We’d never have to worry about money again. And you’d never have to worry about me.”

“I don’t want you to do anything you don’t want to do, Dillon.”

“I’m scared they’re gonna use it as a weapon.”

“Of course they’re gonna use it as a weapon, but so would someone else, eventually.”

“Do you know the buyer?”

“The military. The United States military.”

He nodded. “That’s better than terrorists but not as good as a museum.”

“I’m not sure any museum will pay you twenty million dollars for it.”

“If I do this, I want to leave. I’ll set up the orphanage with a trust, but you and I have to go. I can’t stay here with all this.”

“I know.”

“And you’ll come?”

“Yes. I will.” She placed her hand on his chest and kissed the suit where his cheek would be. “Oh, look at this.” Pulling out her phone, she held it up so he could see the screen then played a YouTube clip. The video had been taken on a cell phone. It showed Black Onyx lifting a car into the air and dropping it onto the roof of a building. A few moments later, a man came rocketing down, but Black Onyx grabbed his ankles a few feet before he would have splattered on the sidewalk.

“I didn’t even see anyone else there.”

“This is the twenty-first century, Dillon. Everything’s on camera.”

“Huh.” He stood up. “What’dya say I get out of this thing and into the hot tub?”

“I say yes,” she said, taking his hand and rising.

10

Tyler watched as Atlantis glided gracefully into the restaurant, taking in all the decorations and people. She stared for a long while at a glass encasement that held a waterfall.

“Your table is ready, Mr. Edgar.”

Tyler took her hand, and they followed the hostess to a table by one of the windows that looked out over Beverly Hills. Sitting beside her, he noticed the other men staring and grinned.

“I grew up in this city,” he told her. “This is the wealthy part that we’re in right now. My family was poor, and much of the
time, I didn’t have enough to eat. So I used to come to these restaurants and go through their garbage. They throw away in one night more than a man needs to eat in a year.”

“You have great pain,” she said, looking steadily at him. “I sense it in you.”

“We all have great pain.”

“I can take that pain away, servant.” She placed her hand over his.

“I know. That’s why I’ve been searching for you for so long.”

Noise at the table next to them made him look up. Some teenagers in evening gowns and tuxedos were watching something on a phone.

“What is that?” Atlantis asked.

“I’ll show you.” He took out his phone and opened the web browser. His home page was the
LA Times
. “All of humanity’s knowledge can be accessed on this little device. And you can use it to speak across oceans to someone else.”

She stared at the screen. “What is that?” She pointed at a photo of Black Onyx lifting an SUV into the air.

“I forgot to tell you about him. He’s what allowed me to find you.”

“Who is he?”

“I don’t know.”

“He wears the armor of my soldiers. What does he use it for?”

“So far, he’s just used it to help others. He hasn’t tried to gain power over anyone with it.”

“I must have it.”

“Why? There are hundreds of them buried in the city.”

“No one can be allowed to have one, save my soldiers.”

He shrugged. “No one knows who he is.”

“Then we must bring him to us. You said he helps people. How?”

“He stops them from getting hurt.”

She rose from her chair. Her eyes lit up a deep red, as if they were on fire, and she turned to the people in the restaurant.

11

Dillon got out of the hot tub around ten o’clock. Jaime had already gone to bed, but he’d wanted to stay and get drunk. After one and a half beers, he felt sick, so he just got comfortable on the lounge chair and closed his eyes.

His cell phone buzzed. He reached for his discarded pants and pulled the phone out of the pocket. Checking the caller ID, he saw Henry’s name.

He answered. “You must have some sixth sense about people in fragile conditions who have something valuable to sell.”

“I’m your friend, Dillon, just like I was your father’s.”

The pain of James’s death came tumbling back into him and pulled at his guts. “What do you want, Henry?”

“I was calling to let you know you’ve made the right decision.”

“I haven’t made any decision.”

“Really? I got a text from Jaime, saying we have a deal.”

“She’s really been spearheading this thing, huh?”

“She cares a lot about you. She knows where this will go.”

“And where’s that?”

“I knew a man once in this situation. He was Special Forces, real robust gentleman. He lived in the Virgin Islands, just a little town of roughly one thousand people. The police they had were from a neighboring town, so they could never get out in time for anything. One night, this man stopped a robbery. It felt so good that he decided he wanted to do it again. A week later, he helped recover someone’s car. He became the town’s de facto police force, helping everyone he could.”

“What happened to him?”

“He was shot in his sleep. People don’t want heroes, Dillon. Not really. Not when it’s inconvenient. One day you’re their hero, and the next day, you’re their villain. Don’t fall into that trap.”

Dillon shook his head. “I don’t want them using this as a weapon.”

“That’s exactly what they’re going to use it for.”

“I don’t want that, Henry.”

“You don’t have a choice. Just be glad it’s
our
military. Look, it’s no worse than a nuclear weapon, and everybody’s got those.”

“I guess.”

“I’m right about this. Jaime is right about this. I’ll come by later this week to pick it up.”

“All right.”

“And maybe we can catch some waves?”

“Catch some waves? What are you, from
Leave it to Beaver
?”

“Don’t tease your elders.” He paused. “You’re doing the right thing, Dillon.”

“I hope so.” Dillon hung up and headed into the house.

He felt restless, so he decided to take a run on the treadmill in the basement. He put in earbuds and ran until his legs hurt and all the tension had left his body. After a quick shower, he went down to the kitchen and made a sandwich.

Dillon took a bite of his sandwich on his way to the front room. He sat on the couch, picked up the remote, and flipped on the television.

A news reporter’s worried face filled the screen. “
We don’t know who this woman is or how all this happened, but it appears as though a bomb may have gone off in Beverly Hills.”

The camera panned the scene behind the reporter. Cars were overturned, and several businesses were on fire, with flames licking the sky.

In the center of the street stood a single woman in a black dress.

A crowd was running past her. She picked up one of the men and flung him into the glass doors of a clothing store across the street. He flew through the thick glass, which shattered on impact.

Red and blue police lights blinked in the background. A couple of warnings were given, and an officer shouted for her to drop her weapons. When the woman didn’t comply, the police opened fire.

The woman held up her hands. The rounds floated in the air before spinning and firing back at the officers. The bullets were targeted at their heads and necks, killing almost all of them.

Dillon jumped up and ran to the garage.

12

Dillon hovered over the area. The destruction didn’t seem real. The scene looked like something from a war documentary, with the street being a movie set that’d been destroyed in a fake disaster rather than a real section of the city where people lived and worked.

Bodies were scattered on the ground like loose gravel—so many that Dillon couldn’t count them all. Interspersed with the bodies were severed arms and legs.

Dillon touched down in the middle of the street. All he heard was the crackle of flames from the cars and businesses that’d been destroyed. No screaming, no running, no sirens, or gunfire.

“I’m surprised the armor allowed you to enter.”

Dillon turned to see the woman from the news standing behind him. She was even more beautiful in person. He couldn’t help but stare at her, his mouth agape.

She grinned and put a hand on her hip. “The armor does not allow just anyone to enter. It can sense inside you and responds to what it finds.”

“Who are you?”

“I am Atlantis, your queen.”

“My queen? Did we lose a war or something?”

“You were allowed inside the armor. Only my people are allowed inside the armor, which means you have my blood in you. I have descendants, young one. Thousands of generations before you, I gave birth to your line.” She walked over and ran her fingers down his suit. The material shifted and spun furiously, as though it were excited. “That makes me your queen.”

Dillon gazed at her eyes, which shifted with the flames. “You’re from that city,” he said quietly.

“My city, my empire. I ruled this earth from a throne of diamonds when many of our species still roamed the jungles for food and saw fire as a god.”

“Why did you do this? All these innocent people… there’s no reason for this.”

“I had to illicit your attention.”

“You did this because of me?”

“You are worth a million of them. They are vermin under your feet.”

“They’re not vermin,” he said, grabbing her wrist and removing her hand from the suit. “Surrender now, and I won’t hurt you.”

A smile came to her lips. “You are brave. Very well, if you must die, so be it.” She placed her palm on his chest.

He flew back as if a cannonball had slammed into him. He went through the back wall of a jewelry store, smashed through the counter, and came out the front entrance. He knocked over a fire hydrant before finally rolling to a stop.

He sat up, taking a second to catch his breath and let the burning pain in his chest fade. Then he rose into the sky and propelled himself toward her like a bomb with both fists out, ready to barrel through her. She shifted her hands and shoved him to the side. His momentum caused him to smash through the cement street and land in the sewer.

Lying on his back
, staring up through the hole in the street, he thought,
What the hell just happened?

Dillon hopped out of the hole and grabbed a lamppost from the side of the street. He rushed her and swung the post like a bat. She blocked with her arms, shattering the post. He held up his palms, and an invisible magnetic force fired from them, catching her off guard.

Atlantis flew into a nearby car, which caved in around her. She stood up, throwing off her high heels. Walking to the center of the street, she stared at him, her eyes blazing. Her hands glowed a dark crimson.

A powerful wave of energy shot from her into the road, tearing it up as if an earthquake had occurred. The force slammed into Dillon and knocked him up into the fifth floor of a building across the street. Papers fluttered around him as he lay on his back, staring at a ceiling fan.

He leapt to his feet and jumped out of the building. Landing just in front of her, he came up with a lightning-fast kick, which she parried. He followed with a right punch then spun into the air like a gymnast and flipped backward, his heel catching her jaw.

She swiped at his chest. A searing pain roared through him, and he realized she had torn right through the suit. She clawed at every part of his body, tearing up the suit and the flesh underneath it. She then head-butted him so hard that he flew into a Mercedes and collapsed it, the tires exploding with loud pops.

He lay still a moment and then sat up. He lifted the car and threw it at her, sending her into the storefront of a lingerie store. He raised another car over his head and hurled it like a spear, crashing it into her body. 

Atlantis stood up calmly, straightening her dress.

“Nice dress,” he said.

“We had no clothing in my culture. It is an odd sensation.”

“Really? No clothes, huh? Like ever? Even when you ate? That seems—”

She rushed him. Digging her fingers into the suit, she spun and threw him several hundred feet. He crashed through the side of an office building. Tearing through the floor and desks, he came to a stop in an office. His body screamed in pain.

I could have done something with my life instead of being a punching bag
.
I always liked trains. Maybe I could’ve been a conductor or something.
He sat up and walked to the gaping hole in the wall. His chest and stomach bled where she had clawed him. Atlantis stood in the middle of the street with her hands at her sides.

Okay
.
You’re stronger than I am, but can you fly as high?

Feeling the energy bubble inside his suit, he hurtled forward, tearing apart the carpet and furniture. He shot out of the building and straight into the ground. He came up through the asphalt beneath her, grabbed her legs, and lifted her into the air. She twisted around him like a snake as he flew high above the city.

“Death has little pain,” she whispered then ripped off half the head of the suit.

Instantly, Dillon felt as though he was in a machine that had just been unplugged. His momentum carried him a little higher,
then he plummeted back to earth. He swung back with his elbow and caught her face before twisting around and punching her other side. The blows were enough to loosen her grip.

He spun and flipped her off his back. His flight was out of control, and he banged into one building and bounced off another before stopping by digging his hands into the structure. She hovered above the street, the same knowing grin on her face.

Dillon spit blood. Pain coursed through him. He was pretty sure she had broken his ribs. He let go of the building and soared into the air.

She followed, twirling. A red glow emanated from her body. Dillon flew with everything he could muster.

A beam of pure energy shot from Atlantis and into him. Half of the suit burned, along with his skin. He screamed. Dipping low, he hit a billboard and went through it into a brick building. He zipped past a couple watching television in their living room, then he exploded through the balcony doors and into their garden as he got control of himself. She was too strong. He couldn’t take her. Not yet. His first thought was to go home, but he couldn’t risk her following him. So he went north.

Within moments, he was over an ocean. He continued until he came to forests then mountains with snow-covered peaks.

He dipped low to gain enough altitude to avoid one of the behemoths of stone and ice before dipping again. Eventually, he dropped so low he couldn’t get high enough to avoid one.

Crashing into the side of an icy rock face, he heard the crunch of his suit and probably some of his bones. He tumbled down the mountain. Stone by jagged stone, he flopped, helpless, blood spurting out of his mouth when he tried to scream.

Then blackness overtook him.