Blackjack Dead or Alive (The Blackjack Series Book 3) (32 page)

“Doubtful,” I said about to crawl through the hatch when the room filled with bright light and the sound of displaced air. I was half right. Slamma was there, but with her sister, not Epic. I could have run, sealed the hatch behind me and taken my chances, but the time for running was done.

There was work to do.

I stepped away from the door and waited for them.

I should have expected them first. They were a duo long before joining Epic’s bloated crew. Slamma would have the easiest time navigating the crystal snare, and it made sense to grab her sister. One thing I noticed was that they weren’t team players; Slamma wasn’t popping off to bring the others, which would be the end of me. No, they were going to take me down and snatch the credit.

Taking less than a second to get accustomed to the room, I saw Slamma touch her sister’s shoulder, teleporting behind me in a show of light and sound. I rolled forward, anticipating a teleport behind me, but as I came out of the tumble, I realized my mistake. Bamma came out of the teleport ahead of me, her opening punch caught me flush in the chest, turning the air in my lungs to fire as I flew across the room into a storage shed. I pulped the aluminum structure and my flight ended with a couple of skips before I connected with the far wall, embedded in the rough stone.

I spilled onto the ground, intent on springing up, the arrow I needed ready to fire, but Slamma appeared next to me in a flash of light and a pop of displaced air that was akin to a fighter jet breaking the sound barrier. I had the arrow strung, but before I could fire, she touched my shoulder and with a cocky smile, teleported us.

Into Bamma’s waiting punch, a jackhammer shot straight to the stomach. I doubled over, the previous night’s meal churning as I belched up thin wisps of saliva. The effect of teleportation were as nauseating as the punch, my senses struggling to adjust the jarring displacement. I was ready for the tactic, I knew Slamma’s power set, but the experience was more traumatic than I imagined. The floor wobbled as my eyes rolled in their sockets, and I couldn’t get my balance.

Bamma didn’t relent, picking me up by the harness and throwing me like a cannonball back into the storage area. I crossed my arms over my chest, preparing to roll with the impact when the world flashed again. Instead of heading away from Bamma, I was racing toward her. Slamma had ported me to the other side of the room, my momentum carrying into another devastating shot. I fought the urge to vomit from the teleportation and clenched as she teed off on me, throwing everything she had into a double fisted tomahawk chop.

I broke through the floor into the room below, which was cast in darkness. The sensors picked up my sudden arrival and the klieg lights slowly came on one at a time with a loud pop. I dug myself out of the grassy berm and looked up, spotting Bamma and Slamma looking through the open crevasse in the rock almost two hundred feet above me. They appeared in front of me, my already frazzled senses going haywire as they fought to keep up with the constant changes in perspective. It was like hanging upside down and backwards from the world’s most intense rollercoaster.

“You’re pretty tough,” she said and threw a right cross that almost decapitated me. I felt the muscles in my neck creak with the strain, and tried to retaliate, but Slamma reached out and we were on the other side of the room. Instead of landing on solid ground, she teleported us about fifteen feet in the air, then let go of me. I crashed amid a regiment of Napoleonic-era French troops that were still dormant.

“Oh, cool,” Slamma said teleporting next to me, her eyes on the rows and rows of man-sized toy soldiers. “Animatronics, huh?”

I didn’t get to respond as she sent us back to her sister, who was ready with a nasty jab that rocked my head’ sending me staggering. It was a sharp pop right to the mouth and I felt my teeth almost give, my lip split and a splash of warm blood trickle down my chin. She was skilled, following up with an uppercut that spun me into a backward somersault. Mid-tumble, I saw her leap backwards, powerful legs carrying her away from my uncontrolled momentum.

A second later, I felt that gust of air and Slamma had collected me, and we were teleporting again in what must have been their signature tactic. What air remained in my lungs was ripped free as Bamma’s boot squelched my guts against my spine. The abrupt force put an end to my rotation, but sent me straight up, the ascent eerily similar to the effect of lifting off in flight.

I had a second to wonder what would happen if I activated the rocket boots before the ceiling put a halt to anything resembling conscious thought. I felt every muscle in my back spasm at once as the solid rock ceiling shuddered with the impact, dust and pebbles knocked free racing me to the ground. The floor waited to greet me, and I was too groggy to do anything but use my arms to absorb the brunt as I walloped into the grassy plain of Waterloo.

Maybe Apogee was right, choosing a losing battle for the villain, in this case Napoleon, might have been an error.

I was only to my knees when I heard the thump sound of Slamma’s teleportation. A second later, she was on me, grabbing my arm and spinning me over her shoulder with a Judo maneuver I didn’t fully understand. Mid-whirl, she ported away – up into the sky – finishing her spin and sending me flying down at her sister.

Bamma was coiled like a viper, right arm reared back, face clenched in anticipation, digging deep for the power to hurl at me in a haymaker that sent me soaring over the battlefield to the far side of the mile-long room. I slammed into one of the side mosaics, designed to give the impression of a vaster battlefield, colliding with a drawing of Hougomont, and crashing into the grassy floor below with half the wall falling atop me.

Four disparate versions of the world merged back into the one that found me stumbling to my feet, tiles and dust falling to the floor to join the rest of the rubble. No Slamma. Without questioning the momentary respite, I ran, my gait an uneven shamble. Every foot fall was painful, but I needed some distance. Finding a small shadowed alcove, I activated my camouflage and hoped it was effective. The contacts read full power to the suit’s systems; the power systems were wired into the belt and also fed off the reactors in the Asskickers. If it worked, the camouflage would hide me, as long as I stood still. Within the shadows, I should be near impossible to see. This was going on the theory that neither of them had a sensory power, could read minds, or had gear similar to mine. A lot of ifs, but better than getting pasted.

Still no Slamma, something had changed.

I switched the contacts to infrared and scanned the area. I found them across the length of the room, a pair of red points nearly a mile away, and zoomed in. They stood huddled together Slamma’s arm on Bamma who was hunched over. My bow was long gone, but this might still be my only chance to turn the tables, Slamma first, then her Mack truck of a sister. Engaging the rocket boots, I made my way to them.

Bamma was doubled over, cradling her right arm; her sister was leaning over her, concerned.

“I’m not through with you,” I said, surprised by how full of rage my voice sounded.

Slamma turned back to me as I walked up on them, suddenly frightened, and I saw what was wrong. Bamma’s forearm bone, the radius, had shattered, and a slivered shard jutted out of her arm in a nasty compound fracture. A trail of blood stained her leather racer suit, staining the white stripes, and her arm quivered as she fought back the obvious pain.

She had broken her arm on my face.

I laughed.

Bamma clenched her teeth, and swung her left arm at me in a back fist, saying, “I still have one good arm.”

I was fast enough to put both my arms up, but I caught the blow flush. She threw all her fury into the shot, sending me tumbling through the earth, churning up the grass and dirt as I came to a rest.

Two sisters talked a moment as I stood, and then I saw Slamma port again. I expected her to appear next to me, but instead she appeared and disappeared all around me, faster than I could register – or even react to. With every teleportation, the air around her exploded, sending a shockwave in my direction and the aggregate of dozens – maybe hundreds were similar to being teleported, only worse. The light had a strobe effect, adding to the disorientation to create a stomach churning violence. I dropped to my knees, the contents of my stomach escaping.

The worst part was I couldn’t breathe, and it wasn’t affecting her at all. Slamma poured it on, porting even faster, and soon all I could see was a blinding flash before my eyes. She wasn’t just vacating the area of oxygen, choking me to death, the vacuum somehow emptying my lungs as well, and now it felt as if they were being forced out of my body, as if the negative pressure was turning me inside out.

The edges of my vision were blurry and closing in tighter, my arms felt like foreign bodies, fixed in place but not particularly compliant as I tried to steady myself. Dislodged chunks of rock and sod rose into the air around me, and I felt my body rise to join them. I hung there boneless, as if gravity had taken a vacation, in suspended animation but for the constant booming supernova that flared around me.

Amid the initial symptoms of asphyxiation, I felt small internal pops as the pressure changes from her artificial vacuum burst vessels in my nose. Instead of flowing from my nostrils, the blood backed into my mouth, and if I could breathe, I would have been choking, but instead I opened my mouth and let it spill out in a crimson line that floated in front of me. Digging into my rig, I pulled out a flashbang grenade. It went off, a firecracker amid a nuclear explosion. I clawed out my right hand, hoping to get lucky, grasp a handful of clothing or hair and hit her with the glove’s built in Taser, but that she was too fast.

The pressure in my head was increasing and I felt my eyes and ears about to pop. I dug for another gadget, but instead engaged my rocket boots, full thrust. It was too much to hope I would catch her on a flyby, but enough to clear the eye of the storm. I took a lungful of air, hacking up a wad of blood. My nose was a leaky spigot and freshets of blood flowed from it. I grabbed at the thick tendrils, mixed with snot and particulates and flung it away, most of it sticking to my glove.

*              *              *              *

Slamma didn’t let me go, porting to me again, and taking me with her. I shut down the boots knowing what was coming.

“Here we go, sister!”

She shouted as we appeared in front of Bamma, our momentum greater now than ever thanks to the power of my boots. The big sister wizened up, using her left arm in back fist style, pummeling me away like a tennis ball off a pro’s racket.

The blow was powerful, but nothing like what she was packing with her right arm, more of a deflecting motion than anything. Her raw strength was enough to send me soaring though. The blow caught me across the shoulder and chest, and for the first time I was able to weather it.

I was still soaring at high speed, expecting Slamma to port me back. That was their strategy and they were going to stick to it until I gave out. I had to get ahead of them, to outsmart them. If I let this continue, they were going to whittle me down to nothing.

When Slamma reappeared, I was ready. She reached out for me, and I grabbed her as she ported us, twisting her in front of me.

Like a shield.

Bamma was halfway through her backfist motion, swinging her hips, her fist snapping into us with a hollow crack. Our angle was awkward and we slammed into the ground, bouncing twice before we came to a rest.

“Sis!” Bamma screamed, running in our direction. I came to my feet and looked over at the other sister, who lay motionless.

Ignoring me, Bamma rushed to her injured sister and rolled her over. Slamma’s face was splattered with blood and she was still.

“Oh, Jesus!”

I glowered over her, ready for rage attack, but Bamma just cried, trying to tend to her sister with one good arm. “Oh, please baby, don’t do this to me,” she said, wiping blood from her face.

For some reason, I thought of Jason, hoping that Brutal hadn’t followed up with his threat, hoping that he and his family were still alive.

“Step aside,” I said, moving closer and kneeling beside Slamma.

Bamma watched me, incredulous, as I checked Slamma’s vitals, finding a faint pulse. She had taken the shot in her chest, probably crushing several of her ribs and puncturing her lungs. Slamma’s breathing was irregular and raspy, and her mouth was tinged with blood.

“Bubu,” I spoke out loud. “You there?”

“I’m here, bro. You okay?”

“I need a tube to a stasis chamber at my location.”

“What are you doing?” Bamma said, shoving me away.

“On my way,” Bubu said.

I sat back. “Your sister isn’t dead,” I said. “But she’s seriously injured. She needs medical help. Did you guys bring a healer?”

All the anger was gone from Bamma’s face. She nodded, desperate for anything to help her sister. “Veil is with one of the outside teams,” she said. “She can heal. Help me take her-“

I held my hand up, stopping her mid-sentence.

“I can place her in a molecular stasis chamber,” I said. “She’ll be okay until we can find Veil.” A second later, the ground opened up near us, revealing what looked like a child’s slide deep into the dark earth.

“What is that? No, fuck no. No way.”