Blackjack Dead or Alive (The Blackjack Series Book 3) (47 page)

He came closer, clasping my face in his hands.

“I lied, you know, about being okay with you killing Mighty,” he said, reveling in the ecstasy as my life energy surged into him.

“I did,” he continued, reenergized as he swam in unlimited power. “It fucking broke my heart when I heard he was dead. You denied me that pleasure and that gnaws at me. I wonder how you would handle it – to have your dreams dashed by some nobody with a cheesy cape.”

Brutal’s eyelids fluttered and he threw his head back, as if in orgasmic bliss.

“My, my. Aren’t we full of surprises, Blackjack,” he said. “So much to feed from.”

Then I remembered Bloodstrike, her ecstasy when she drained me. And Claire, who had more control than either Bloodstrike or Brutal. She could have feasted on me, drained me dry, but she didn’t. If anything she nibbled. At times, she seemed almost scared to do it. Could Brutal have a top limit? And if so, what would happen if he got too much?

“More power than you can imagine,” I said, straining against the agony, fighting to pronounce every vowel. “I was in the presence of a Lightbringer. They made me more powerful than you’ll ever become.”

His smile faded a little and I pressed on, “That’s right. I’ve been to Shard World.” I was unsure if he would know what it meant, but I went on. “Same as Retcon and the Original Seven.”

“Is that so?”

“That’s what has them so scared of me,” I said, groaning, fighting the urge to fade, to surrender to the urge to sleep. “That’s why I’m higher on the list than you. Why they didn’t give a flying fuck about you until I put you on the map.”

Belittling him did the job. Enraged, Brutal engaged his power full-bore, his eyes widening as he saw no limit to what I could give him. We were at the epicenter of a nuclear storm vast enough to be visible across the globe. The sheer amount of energy he was absorbing was astounding, yet I was giving him more than he could handle.

“Yes,” he said, straining, groaning. “Yes!”

I clawed at him, grabbing at his face as the pain became white-hot, blinding, numbing my senses, deafening me to my own screams. He laughed, swathed in unconscionable power swirling through him, seeming to have no limit to his ability to drain me.

“YES,” Brutal screamed, enraptured by the force raging through him. He was more powerful now than he had ever been.

The first crack opened across his right cheek, branching across the smooth shaven skin like lines on a map. He seemed unaware of it, bathed in an illuminated glory, but I saw them, spreading, slices of light streaking from his face. Brutal released me and spread his arms wide, accepting everything I had to give as we floated high above the world. My boots were long dead and I was breathing fire, drenched in our combined energies.

Beams of raw energy spilled from his eyes like beacons, and he regarded me as a god, as a Lightbringer might.

“How are you doing this, how are you still alive?” he said. “Who are you?”

The fissures spread across his face and neck, and slivers feathered off into the wind. His eyes widened as the pain began to envelop him. He was glowing like a burning star, streaming and iridescent. Gravity reasserted itself as he lost control of his power and we were falling. His clothes burned away, along with his hair and fingernails. Every orifice was backlit by bright green light as his body failed to metabolize the energy he had absorbed.

“It’s too much” he screamed, as the first beam of energy transected him like a green lance. “It’s too much!”

His body was a web of cracks and creases, overloaded cells burning as they died. Another small explosion erupted, this time from his leg, the beam grazing my arm as we both flailed, searing the skin. The skin split along his back, revealing a spinal column that glowed vibrant green, his blood evaporating before it hit the air. As the energy tore him apart, pieces at a time, I realized it wasn’t going to dissipate.

He was going to explode.

I looked down and saw a maze of green and grey. There was a city down there, and here I sat with a bomb falling into their midst. I desperately triggered the throttle in my boots to no avail, and he was in no condition to control his descent, even if he wanted to. A few feet separated us, and I didn’t have more than a few seconds, so I pulled my arms in tight, pointed my feet and angled into him. I did too well, sailing past him. I kicked my legs out in front of me, throwing my arms out, barely catching him by the left arm and leg.

He was below me, his screaming dug deep into my brain, the loose energy flaring off his body burning me wherever it touched. I saw the city racing towards us over his shoulder, and I wrenched my hips hard, spinning at the waist and heaving with all of my soul, using all of my strength and momentum to hurl Brutal into the sky. He flew away from me diagonally, the sky big and blue, ready to accept him. The explosion tore open the sky, the force tossing me into an awkward tumbling spin as viridian flames ravaged me.

And it was my turn to fall.

I have to admit a peaceful calm came over me. The flames had bit deep enough that my nerve endings had been scorched away, so there was no pain. I didn’t know how high I was, but I was certain I had already reached terminal velocity, about a hundred and fifty miles an hour. I had passed the point where the curvature of the earth was visible, so it wouldn’t be long until I slammed hard and it would all be over.

Yeah, this was the way to go – out like a light.

I drew my limbs in tight and managed to halt my spin, and got into the typical skydiver’s position, spread eagle, cutting through the air. When I tossed Brutal, my own course had changed, and now it looked like I was over water, just off the coast of some land mass. I had rocketed up as straight as I could, but factoring the rotation of the earth, I must have drifted a few miles East over Vermont, and just at the edge of my sight was the coast with towns like Portland, Biddeford, and Brunswick. My fall would be visible for miles, like a meteor crashing into the water, but no one would see it, and no one would recover my body.

This wasn’t like the fall from the ruined C-17 a few weeks back. Instead of having a parachute to slow my fall, however damaged, I was going to hit the water fast enough no superpower would save me.

I was naked save for a sliver of seared clothing on my body and the remnants of my wrecked boots. I could build anything out of anything, but the leather was blackened and charred, wires melted and useless. I had nothing to work with. My left boot sputtered and flamed, the plasma cell still active and complaining, but without the rest of the device, a busted power supply wasn’t going to be any good.

Closing my eyes, I settled in for the inevitable fall, thinking back to my brief conversation with Mirage on the subject. The sonofabitch had been right to question Nietzsche. Soon I was going to prove his point in spectacular fashion. But in a way, I was right as well; I had met my fate and changed it. When folks would talk about me in the future, they’d remember a guy who died trying, who died standing in the way of bastards like Brutal and innocent folk.

Coach would smile when she heard what happened here and say something about a falling star burning bright, or some such other college football metaphor. I think she’d approve of what I did.

My only regret with Jeff was never having a chance to hash things out with him, to find out whether he was a friend. I’d do things different with him if I had another chance. Hell, just have a fucking beer with the guy.

Same with Epic. Jesus, to even be thinking that…

I guess I’m going to the grave with few friends. The only other guy that would mourn me probably died saving my life back on Utopia, but if he was still alive, wandering the streets of Los Angeles like some mad, homeless person, Black Razor would hear of my death and be truly saddened. Then again, he’d probably confuse me with someone else.

Delphi would just shake his head in disgust, disheartened that I never followed his philosophy; make a living without making waves. I was a bad pupil to him – a bad friend, to him and to Serpentis, who’d cry with sorrow and happiness that I was gone from her life forever.

Apogee would grieve for a while, but she’d also move on fastest than most. She was a resilient girl and some other beau would come around to tickle her fancy. It ate at me that it would end before we even had a chance to get started, but a guy like me, and a woman like her – it wasn’t meant to happen.

As I fell, I hoped they got their act together in the future, got ready for the Lightbringers. I wanted to be there when they came, to thump the first one I saw in the face and remind them that we’re not going down that easy – that we’re not joining their little menagerie without a fight. I guess it’ll fall to other, greater minds. If Jeff turns to it, he’ll think of something. Maybe that’s what the tower has been all this time, a preparation for the inevitable fight where there will be no heroes or villains, just humanity against an unspeakable evil.

Looking down, my track had changed drastically in the past few moments, a heavy crosswind taking me toward the coast. I was drifting so much that I would fall over a landmass. Not that it made much of a difference. A mangled body made for good press, I guess, and bonafide confirmation of my passing would bring comfort to a lot of people. I had a vision of Apogee running until she found me, the only one who cared enough to look, but I didn’t want her to see me like that.

Below there was a small town, nearing quickly. There were people down there, unaware of the crashing lug that was going to fall on their heads. And the plasma cell was unstable, ready to go. I could let it go, rip it from my grasp, but light as it was, it would be more beholden to the crosswinds that were bringing me ashore. And in falling there was no guarantee the thing wouldn’t blow.

I reached for it and turned my back to the ground, just a few seconds from passing the lower clouds in my descent. I figured I had less than two minutes to disengage the device, somehow. My last act wasn’t going to be to kill a few thousand people in the explosion. No, I wasn’t going to have that.

The cell was enclosed, but with a simple twist, I ripped off the cast and looked at the gleaming power it emanated. My brain locked up, and I couldn’t think quickly enough of how to turn it off. The plasma emitter was the obvious idea, but ripping it out would release the plasma reservoir, and when the superheated gas sparked, it would go up like a roman candle.

Actually, that wasn’t a bad idea.

The exploding plasma cell would do what Brutal’s demise couldn’t. In one split second, I’d go and what would land would be a few pounds of ashen flesh to mark my entire travail. Epic and Lord Mighty hadn’t beaten me, not even Apogee the two times we fought, nor had Dr. Zundergrub with all his evil intent. I’d found a way to survive being buried alive, and I’d made a particle accelerator out of scrap in another world. But now a plasma induction coil was going to burn me to a cinder. Superdynamic had estimated my temperature at almost 200 degrees Fahrenheit when I bored through the ground when Castle Black fell. Well, this would easily be a hundred times that much, more than even I could bear.

Yeah, that would be fine. I’d feel the burning pain as the device backfired, but it would fade only seconds later when the plasma ejected and lit me up. I turned back downwards, my fingers ready on the device and I saw I was nearing the small town, a meteor about to flame out forever. I caught a bit of movement to my side, a small plane maneuvering below me, and figured I was below ten thousand feet. My impact was less than thirty seconds away. Other planes flew around me, small Cessnas and Citations, including one two-engine job that was close enough to visually spot my massive flameout. I wondered if he’d report a UFO sighting, giggling on the inside that even in the end, I was going to muck things up.

But beyond the two engine plane, a missile was racing toward me. They were going to shoot me down? What thankless motherfuckers! After everything I had done, all I had-

Wait…it wasn’t a missile. Missiles didn’t pause in midair before changing directions. It left a contrail like one, though. It was a missile, it had to be. The fuckers were making sure I wouldn’t hurt anyone on the surface.

There, farther away, was another. And another.

One was faster than the others, leaving behind a gleaming blue trail. It paused in mid-air, seeming to notice me and raced closer. As it neared, I finally saw that it wasn’t a missile. It was a person.

It was FTL.

He changed his vector to intercept my fall, and while I waited, I saw the others. Superdynamic soared ahead of the pack, Pummel struggling to keep with him, and there were others all around me, dozens of them.

They were coming to save me.

If I made it through having my bones pulverized and my internal organs turned to mush, then I was going to make it through a bright light and a bit of fire. Well, it was actually third degree burns all over my body, including my lungs, my eyeball, even the insides of my ears. I survived the birthing of a mini-star, and later I would find out that Brutal’s grand finale lit the sky for three hours, changing weather patterns as far as Argentina. Airlines rerouted their flights to avoid the maelstrom and there were actual casualties, with five dead when a DC-3 out of Bermuda fell out of the sky killing everyone aboard. It’s a pity, because they were missionaries of some sort, headed to South America with a cargo hold full of donated clothes and canned goods.

At least they pinned that on Brutal and not me.

They took me back to the tower, and the medical lab, where Superdynamic devised a solid-light hyperbaric chamber to help me heal faster. Mirage was on the scene, and rushed over to me in the initial moments after the explosion. He tended to me, still smug. I wanted to tell him that I had proven Nietzsche right, but the burns in my lips and mouth kept me from talking.

I saw a picture someone took of me in the aftermath, some guy with a smartphone who put it on his Twitter account. I was like a charred piece of meat, well done but somehow still alive. I recall the pain of having my raw skin exposed to the elements, but I remember little else of my landing and the immediate moments afterwards.

She came to me, speaking through her tears despite the fact that my ear-ducts were a charnel of cooked flesh. My eyes were also burned, but I could feel her touch. She took my right hand and held it until Superdynamic brought over the Cicada and they settled me in the back of the plane.

I’ve healed nicely; still bald but with bunch of patchy stubble marring my scalp and Superdynamic tells me that Moe is working on writing a letter to the President, demanding a pardon in my name.

Even Epic checked up on me, talking briefly to the doctors and getting a report of my status. I was locked inside the hyperbaric chamber, but we shared a smile before he left. It was a nice feeling to take that chip off my shoulder and toss it away.

In addition to working on the letter (“I’m going through drafts, dog”), Moe occasionally came by the lab with a chess set and played with me, talking about his business ventures, and trying to help me with mine. He livened up the medical lab whenever he was there, and all the nurses and doctors loved him.

I got in touch with Bubu, who almost wept when he saw what I looked like. We talked a little about our new business, which he was already starting up with the help of Sebas and a few dozen others. He was already fighting off investors wanting a piece of the tech, but it was too early. We needed to incorporate and create a corporate structure. He and Annit were handling everything, and for now, I was the only investor we would need. I promised to visit him in the U.K. once I got better.

Ruby kept a close eye on me, as my head doctor, and was fond of saying, “You’re the profession in business,” when she was checking on me. I got to see Templar and Focus and Ricochet, and even Mirage stopped from time to time, though he usually only spoke to Ruby or Apogee about my status.

Jason came to see me once before taking his family back to Connecticut. Just him, the wife and kids he left back in the U.S.. It was a good thing. I didn’t want them meeting me like that. We barely spoke; he touched the glass of my hyperbaric chamber, silent tears running down his cheeks. I added mine to his, and I thought this was his final goodbye, but before he left, I saw him scribbling on a slip of paper. He held it up for me to see, and written in his precise, boxy print was an address and a phone number. He flipped the paper over, revealing a photograph of his family, dogs included. Tears still carved wet streaks down his face, but he smiled as he taped it to the glass, giving me a view of my family.

Apogee rarely left my side those days as I recovered. “The world can fix itself,” she said, the only time Superdynamic asked if she would accompany Battle on a mission.

One day, once I was recovered enough that I could see, and eat, and do most of the rest of the things people do, she strolled into my room with a pair of metal trays from the chow hall. Dangling from her wrist was a plastic bag, and with her was a tech rolling a cart with a huge widescreen TV – maybe 60 inches wide.

“Right there, please,” she told the tech, and brought one of the trays into the feeding slot of my solid-light chamber. She slid it in and turned back to the door as another pair of techs brought in a king-sized mattress. What interested me the most was her clothing. She was wearing a long cotton robe, wrapped tight against her waist.

The first tech plugged in the TV to power and connected a Blu-ray DVD player, while his two buddies placed the bed on the floor beside the chamber, then lay several pillows at the head and a thick, snuggly duvet atop the thing. Apogee directed the whole thing, making sure it was to her liking.

“What do you think?” she said, pointing at the tray of food. I lifted the lid revealing a huge folded omelet. “Peppers, onions, feta cheese and avocado, as per your request. Mine’s got sausage, peppers, onions and bacon.”

“Nice,” I said, reaching for the fork and knife.

The techs finished and Apogee waved them all out. Once gone, she lowered the lights and took off her robe. I was expecting lingerie or nothing at all, but instead she wore panties and a t-shirt that only reached her midriff. It was a black shirt, with me on the front. Something you’d get at a cheapie tourist store, but the similarity was surprising. I was flexing, and above my figure was my name in a brick-like font. Below me was the word, “Badass.”

“Blackjack Badass,” she said, coming to the bed and slipping under the duvet. She sat up and placed her tray on her lap, revealing her omelet. Before eating, though, she used the DVD controller to fast forward to the start the movie.

“You made this,” I said, taking a huge bite of my food. “It’s amazing!”

“Oh, didn’t you know? I’m also a gourmet chef. I have all kinds of interesting qualities,” she said with a playful smile.

“So what’s on tap for tonight?” I asked as the screen went dark and the credits began.

She took a bite of food, and with a full mouth, said, “A Disney classic. Beauty and the Beast.”