Blackjack Dead or Alive (The Blackjack Series Book 3) (37 page)

Blocking everything else out, I waited, zeroed in on the hip, the leg, the foot. I wasn’t fast or skilled, but if there was something archery taught you, it was focus. I waited until he was a foot from my face, wrapping my mitts around his leg and reversing my wrist, bringing Blackjack 2.0 in an arc over my head and slamming him into the ground with a solid whack. Whipping my arms ruthlessly, I pelted him into the ground again and again. I stopped when I heard a crack, the sound of twigs snapping, and my duplicate lay still.

Letting go of the leg, I bent at the waist, breathing in hard gasps, sweating in thick rivulets that raced down my hairless scalp, stinging the various abrasions that dotted my face like islands on a map.

“You replaced me with a clown in a suit,” I beamed. “That was the best you could do? He’s not looking so great now, is he?”

“You must think I’m lazy or stupid,” Haha said. “Did you really think I would send someone to kill you who couldn’t take a beating? It’s the only tactic you employ.”

I heard movement in front of me, Blackjack 2.0 regaining his feet. There was no wobble to his step, no sway in his gait. He had taken a breather and stood up, seeming no worse for wear. His mask was still in place, and though the armor was dented and scuffed, looked intact. He made a show of working the kinks out of his arms and shoulders, limbering up for the next round.

Without realizing it, I had backed away from my namesake.

"Not so cocky now, are you?" Haha said, his voice dripping with satisfaction.

I knuckled up, "Fuck it, we do it old school."

Blackjack 2.0 switched his stance, his right foot coming forward, his left sliding back, standing on the balls of his feet. He was going to kick me again. I stepped in, fists tucked in under my chin and saw him shift back and throw a straight kick. Closing my guard, I took it hard against my forearms. My entire body compressed against the devastation, but I had leaned into it, attacking like Apogee had taught me, and threw a killer left hook that pulverized every air molecule in the space between us but missed his face. This close, I saw his eyes through the tinted goggles, cold and impassive.

I didn’t think twice, following up with a left jab that he took on the shoulder, my right cross lined up before the left retracted. It connected with a satisfying crack, the armor shuddering with the impact. He flew from me, sluicing into the ground after a few yards and tumbling in a heap until the wall stopped him short, bent into a question mark, his legs curved awkwardly over his torso.

"Your boy isn't up for the-" I paused. Bloodstrike stood over Apogee, a thin lash of dark crimson wrapped around her neck. There was a faint glow surrounding Bloodstrike, and though she struggled, I knew Apogee was on borrowed time. Reveling in her victory, Bloodstrike spread her arms wide, as if preparing to ingest Apogee whole. The glow intensified and Apogee’s efforts faltered.

I engaged the rocket boots and powered across the room and through her, a blow that would have cleaved any other human, powered or not, in two. Tons of rock spilled atop of us as a support beam shattered into a million bits of 3D printed concrete. Since I was doing the maneuvering, I made sure to use the back of her skull as the leading edge as we redecorated the walls. I dug myself out first, chucking massive rocks aside to find the monster. I didn’t care about Blackjack 2.0. Frankly, I didn’t even care about how Apogee was. I was going to tear the blood goddess apart, rip her fucking heart out and-

“Dale,” Apogee shouted, pulling me back as I spotted a mass of blood-spattered black hair and grew more frenzied. “Get away from her.”

She pushed me away hard enough that I lost my footing and fell to the ground.

“Go,” she screamed, her voice dripping with desperation, as she pointed at an approaching Blackjack 2.0. “Thanks, but I got her from here,” she said as Bloodstrike rose, her form weaving through the mound of rubble and reforming intact.

“Oh, my,” the villain said her eyes wide in rapture. She moved toward me, but Apogee interceded. “I want him,” she pleaded to the heroine, almost begging.

“That one belongs to me,” Apogee said, then turned back to me and practically shooed me away.

Apogee didn’t wait to see if I would obey, tearing into Bloodstrike with a ferocity that was downright terrifying. Despite that, the villain still tried to get at me, but there was no way she could body past Apogee’s rage. Herding Bloodstrike away from me, implacable in her assault, Apogee gave the villain no choice but to turn on her.

I was breathing heavily, sweating and bloody, but in that quiet moment, with Apogee facing Bloodstrike on one side of the cavern and Epic dueling the mighty Silverback on the other, I felt my strength return. I felt powerful again, ready for anything.

Blackjack 2.0 paraded over, any fatigue he may have been feeling buried under bravado. A pair of sonic booms rang from the halls of the room, powerful enough that the ceiling above rumbled in their wake. An invisible compression wave was born from it, breaking Blackjack 2.0’s stride as it blew past him at knee level, dissipating before it reached me. I glanced up, thinking that Epic’s crew had broken through, but tremors shook the ground beneath me.

I scanned the field and found the crater Epic and Silverback had created with their fight, deep enough that neither man nor gorilla was visible. Pebbles, grass, silt, and dirt spun in a mini-vortex above the crater, each landed punch spun the vortex faster, a top with its line ready to pull. The various bits of detritus that made up the vortex’s outline started tapering into a tail that drifted into the crater when suddenly it deflated like a balloon, the surrounding air exploding in another crack of thunder as it rushed to fill the space. A man sized hole burst from the lip of the crater and Silverback shot out, flying head over heels through the air and landing in the marsh with a splash of muddy water.

Blackjack 2.0 stood where he had stumbled, watching with me as events unfolded, but when Silverback landed, my doppelganger rushed me. As he came closer, a cold wave washed over me, draining me again. It felt like stepping from a warm cabin into twenty-degree weather, wearing nothing but your birthday suit. A bitter chill rode up my spine, and once again I was depleted. It hit me so suddenly I instinctively moved; stumbling across fallen rubble, but the effect receded. It was as if his draining power worked like an event horizon field surrounding him, with a definitive range. Within it, I was weakened instantly. Outside, the power didn’t affect me. The operating range was about ten meters or so.

I was dipped in artic waters again as he got in tight on me, snapping a right cross faster than I could guard. The bridge of my nose ruptured in a sick, wet crunch that sent me skidding backwards across the marshy surface, my arms flailing in useless pinwheels as I collapsed.

I picked myself up, but he was there, getting a fistful of Superdynamic’s suit and bashing my head in with his fists. He lay into the blows with everything he had, moving so fast I was trying to block the first when the third rocked my head far enough back that I thought my vertebrae splintered. My feet slipped beneath me and he let go, stepping back to throw a powerful kick at my chest. I threw my arms out, blocking most of the kick’s force, but I flew back into the swamp, rolling in the six-inch deep water.

“Come on, Blackjack,” Haha said from somewhere inside my doppelganger, “I honestly didn’t think it would be this easy.”

I had never seen anything like the dampening field, with a range that was so defined, so immediate. Most supers with area of effect powers operated with a varied anima. Even Stygian Black’s darkness abilities were undulating and imperfect. Blackjack 2.0’s power was a perfect circle; working once you had perforated it, not at all before that.

Only a machine worked so flawlessly, and I knew only one device that had a similar effect on supers. “Power dampeners, Haha?” I said, thrashing the pooled water in my rage. “Can’t trust your boy to take me one on one?”

Haha laughed, “Yes, that’s perfect! That’ll be the narrative. I’d forgotten what a natural you were at this.”

I wanted to leap out of the water, ready to fight, but all of the enthusiasm in the world could not push beyond the limitations my battered body was working under. There was no place I could put weight comfortably, so I gritted my teeth and stood, taking care to lock my knees so I wouldn’t fall again.

“You also forget I don’t quit, you stupid robot.”

Now that I knew what the origin of the power was, I understood how it was affecting me; I could almost feel the vibrations turning the balance center in my inner ear into mush as Blackjack 2.0 crossed the distance between us.

“I’m counting on it, Blackjack,” Haha went on.

“You needed to bring a bigger army against me, Haha. And a bigger man than this joke you’re using.”

Haha giggled in glee – reveling in the banter more than in seeing his minion pound me to a pulp – and my doppelganger paused a moment.

“The joke’s on you, Blackjack. I mean, you should see your face. You don’t look so good, buddy. But don’t worry, we’re pacing ourselves. We’re waiting until Bloodstrike kills Apogee, then I expect you to lose it – like you’re used to doing.”

“Come on, you bastard,” I said, flashing a quick look over at Apogee who was just a blur surrounding the blood queen. “Quit talking and start fighting.”

I moved in and threw as powerful a blow as I could, catching Blackjack 2.0 across the jaw and throwing him off his feet.

He took it like a champ and came to his feet.

“Anything you can do, I can do better,” Haha said, and his boy threw the same exact punch, knocking me back twenty feet along the mud. I got up, covered in the stuff and wiped my face, playing that last move back in my head. He reacted to my punch with a move that wasn’t similar, it wasn’t a replicate – it was the exact same thing.

“The suit,” I said as he powered his boots and landed beside me. “The suit is what’s running Blackjack.”

“You’re thinking too much,” Haha said, cackling. “Remember,
you’re
Blackjack.”

“You…you’re mimicking me. That’s why he shoots arrows like I do, that’s why-” I managed, but Blackjack dove in with a powerful straight kick that I avoided by diving aside.

“This thing you’ve made, Haha. What is it?” I said, ducking under a spinning kick but unable to dodge the follow-up sidekick that caught me in the shoulder and sent me sprawling.

I managed to keep my feet but he was relentless, diving in the air and bringing down a brutal heel that would cave in my skull. I slapped the blow aside and threw a punch that caught him in the chest. Despite my sapped strength, it hurt him, knocking him to his knees.

“It’s the suit,” I said. “You’ve built a suit around some dude that looks like me, haven’t you? And you’re in it?”

“Very clever, Blackjack. Very clever. I salute you.”

I looked at my nemesis in a different light, finally understanding. There was some schlep inside a skin-tight power suit – so state of the art Superdynamic would drool just to take a look at it. The suit could emulate my moves, so in addition to having a guy that looked like me, he could also move like me, fire arrows and throw punches like me, except Haha had programmed him with additional commands, fighting combinations he determined would work on me. The last move, the combination of kicks, I’d seen the other guy use them in Amsterdam. It was all in the suit, and Haha was controlling it.

“But you’re here now, Haha,” I said. “Remember how dangerous it was for you to be downloaded in one place?”

Haha’s laughter resounded, this time coming from the speakers of my own castle.

“You mean your little trap, Blackjack?” he said, barely able to contain his laughter. It was strange to hear the voice coming from Blackjack 2.0, yet the man in the suit wasn’t moving at all. “I know about your trap and I have broken through.”

Bubu’s voice filled the room, projecting through all of the speakers. “Bro, he’s taken over the servers.”

“That’s right, Blackjack,” Haha continued. “I’ve taken over your little castle and all the drones. This place and everything in it belongs to me.”

I stepped back, breathing heavily, looking past him at Apogee, who took a strong blow from Bloodstrike and dropped to the floor again. Epic had crawled out of the crater and was engaged with Silverback, who had survived his own crash into the marsh. The gorilla was pounding at Epic’s chest, each massive fist the size of a canned ham.

“In a moment, your lovely damsel in distress is going to be a puddle of goo,” Haha said. “And soon after, you’re going to join her, Blackjack. You’re going to die here, and then you won’t be in my way. Then I’ll have the show I want, with a more willing participant.”

“Not if I have something to say about it,” I was about to say, but my duplicate, Haha’s puppet led with another straight kick, exactly like the last combination he had used. I side-stepped the kick just as Apogee had taught me, and once in range, kicked him. It wasn’t technically perfect, I had done better in practice, but I put my Asskicker right into his stomach. Even with the strength dampeners, the kick doubled him over, and I rolled behind him looping an arm under and around him, locking him in a full nelson.

I reared back, lifting him from the ground and fought against his efforts to break free. He hitched and bucked, but couldn’t get escape my grasp. Then it hit me, the dampener wasn’t affecting me. It wasn’t a full radius effect, only something he could direct in front of him. That’s why the others in this room were unaffected. The madness of the battle prevented me from noticing the brief moments when it wasn’t aimed at me – for example, when I was flying through the air.