Blackjack Wayward (The Blackjack Series) (50 page)

“Good luck, everyone. Let’s go!”

As we ran out of the alleyway, the others turned away from the White House, and I was the only one running the right way. Already our plan was going wrong. Where the hell were they going?

“Wrong way, dammit!” I said, frustrated, but Mirage just shook his head and waved his arm in my direction; then I saw what was happening. The real Superdynamic and his team appeared, running in front of me. The folks running the opposite direction, headed toward the villains, were an illusion, courtesy of Mirage. But he had excluded me from the illusion, still thinking of me as the bad guy.

“Come on,” Superdynamic shouted, noticing me lagging behind as we ran across Pennsylvania Avenue. “Now, Blackjack!” he called, and I fired my rocket boots, lifting me in the air straight at the most powerful force on the planet.

I had a better mastery over my refitted boots than the original ones, and this pair had better, more refined control surfaces. I rose toward Mighty and hovered a few feet from him. Instead of a straight-up fight, which I knew I couldn’t win, I was going to try to talk to him.

“Mighty,” I said, but he didn’t turn to face me.

“Getting my attention so your friends can enter unopposed,” he said hovering at an angle to me, his eyes steady on the White House area. “That is the best plan you could manage?”

“What happened to you?” I said, noticing he looked different and not just the longer hair that he still had slicked back, and the new beard. He was older, with his face streaked with lines, his hair marred by gray. “Why are you doing this?”

“What do you care, Blackjack?”

“Zundergrub’s turned you, man. You don’t realize it, but he’s done something to you, he’s fucked with your mind.”

He ignored me, continuing with his previous line of thought.

“If your beloved were not in danger, would you even be here? What if I gave you my word she would not be harmed, permanently? Would you then go?”

I struggled with the boots for a second, making a mental note to build a hover setting to the toe controls if I managed to live another day.

“It’s not about her,” I said.

“Oh? You think you can lie and I can’t tell? How about this, stay and fight and I promise you I will kill her.”

“Zundergrub is mind controlling you. Don’t you see?” I pleaded. “You don’t have to do this. You have a choice.”

He finally turned to me, his face breaking into a horrible grin, “You think he has me under his spell, do you? You think I am in his thrall?”

I just stared at him, dumbfounded.

“I have chosen to be here, Blackjack. I came here because I am tired of these petty people, ungrateful for what we have done for them all these years. They don’t deserve the lives they waste. I could level every city on the planet in an instant, but Zundergrub has a better plan. A more efficient plan. Let them destroy each other. It might take longer, but it will be that much the better if they do it to themselves. So much more fitting.”

It couldn’t be. He had gone mad.

Mighty looked down. “They are almost inside,” he said. “Run, little children, while you can.”

“Mighty, don’t do this,” I said. He wasn’t listening to me. A whale doesn’t take note of the krill’s concern before swallowing it whole.

“Templar gets to the President and ports her out,” he went on. “And you’ll have failed in stopping me.”

I knew he was about to fly off, and with his unparalleled speed he’d leave me far behind. All he had to do was find Templar and bring him down, and all our hopes of winning today’s fight would be dashed. I couldn’t let that happen.

Lord Mighty actually looked surprised when I powered my boots and grabbed him by the midsection, pulling him away from the scene. We broke Mach 1, then 2, exploding through the sound barrier, leaving behind a cone-shaped cloud of mist. I carried him farther from Templar and the others and the city fell far below us, yet he did nothing.

“You think you can stop me?” he said, grabbing my head with both of his hands and peeling me away from him. I slowed the rockets, expecting a blow, but he just smiled, and in an instant, he broke my grasp and was gone, all the way to the White House before I could even blink.

“No!”

I swung around and threw the throttle on full, roaring back to the capital.

Chapter Forty-Two

Nearing the White House lawn, I saw Mighty standing in the mid of a crater he had made while landing, holding Templar by the neck. They were amid the wreckage of the West Wing and the West Colonnade, which connected the administrative side of the White House to the Executive Residence. This building somehow still stood, surrounded by a series of potholes, most inhabited by kids in Virginia Military Institute uniforms, wielding rifles.

The others were scattered, thrown about by Mighty’s thunderous entrance. Only Moe opposed him, grasping at the newcomer and cursing at him through clenched teeth. Mighty was faster, and a swift backfist sent Moe flying into the ruins of the West Wing. Moe’s attack did manage one thing, as Mighty had released the unconscious Templar. Keeping the throttle open, I slammed into Mighty, digging my shoulder into his back, burying us both into the ground with an impact so brutal that it cratered the ground and churned thousands of tons of dirt, rock, and debris high into the air.

The ground still shook as I pushed off him, coming to my feet first amid a cloud of shattered earth. Mighty wasn’t expecting the blow, but he was already regaining his senses and I knew I had little time. I looked around desperately, finding Templar lying nearby, his eyes closed and I hoped the kid was just passed out and not dead. I grabbed my teammate and flew out of the depression in the ground. Above, it was chaos. Lord Mighty and I had made a thirty-foot-deep pit that destroyed part of the White House defenses. To either side were continuations of the trenches of wrecked building and dirt where some of the VMI kids hid, firing away at the horde of villains who had figured out they were being fooled and now charged into the fray.

A flyer went over me, spreading his blue flame energy over the area, but a volley of .223mm bullets caught him in the chest and he dropped out of the sky. Another villain wearing heavy armor raked the kids’ defensive positions with auto-cannon fire from his shoulder-mounted weapon. A dominatrix-inspired villainess cracked her whip at Ricochet and Ruby, but by the fact that her aim was terrible, I could tell that Mirage was nearby and his illusions were fooling her. Further down the hill, a big villain – Tauros, I think he was called – was facing off against Apogee, Superdynamic, and Damage, but the minotaur villain shrugged off Apogee’s blows and Superdynamic’s solid light projections. Damage reached out with his devastating gravity powers, freezing Tauros in place, but a pair of ninja-dressed villains dropped from the damaged second floor and attacked him. One almost stabbed Damage but stopped mid-swing, stepping back from the hero. The two ninja then turned like automatons and charged Tauros. Concealed behind a half-standing marble pillar was the final remaining member of Apogee’s Revolution, Dominus, his outstretched hand the only sign that he had taken control of the villains.

Carrying Templar, I ran behind the dominatrix villain and kicked her away. She crashed into a wall, the sound of her bones and skin slapping against the hard concrete making me cringe as much as her death shriek.

“Where’s Mirage?” I asked, approaching Ricochet and Ruby.

“Here,” a voice said, and I felt an invisible force take Templar from me. Mirage was still playing games with me, staying invisible. I was an enemy as far as he was concerned. “Get him up and get him to the President.”

“I know what to do,” Mirage snapped, enveloping Templar’s unconscious form into his illusion. Ricochet and Ruby retreated toward the damaged building, the only clue to where Mirage was.

I looked over at Tauros, who held the lifeless body of one of the ninja, using it as a club against the second ninja who was hanging on his back and stabbing him with a sword. I fired up the rockets and landed beside Tauros, just a few feet from Apogee. Her face was aghast.

“Fancy meeting you here,” I said as I slugged the minotaur in the chest with all my strength. The monster lifted off the ground, flying backward down the hill and coming to a heavy landing against the outer gates.

“Dale,” she said, as a villain powered past me and slammed her down. He was like a cannonball, his whole body encased in flames. I didn’t know who he was, but the villain wrestled her down, and the flames were hurting her. Before I could take one step, Damage turned on the guy, using his powers on the flamer. An instant later, he weighed nothing, like a feather in the wind, and Apogee power-punched him in the face, sending him reeling into the sky.

“Nice trick,” I said, but Damage next turned his power on me. Instead of making me light like he had on Apogee’s attacker, he reversed the ability, making me weigh so much I couldn’t keep on my feet. I collapsed, feeling the blood in my brain heavy, as if it was liquid concrete flowing through my veins.

“I’m on your side, dude,” I managed.

“Let go of him, Damage,” Apogee said and he obeyed, freeing me from his power.

She helped me to my feet, and I let her man-handle me, feeling the thrill of being so close to her.

“He’s a friend,” she said, but before I could say anything, I saw Mighty float from the hole. He scanned the area, bypassing us in favor of Ricochet and Ruby.

I fired my rockets and charged him, but Mighty flicked a flat hand out, like swatting a fly, and caught me just above the temple. My momentum shifted downward, and the thrust of the rockets drove me into the ground, cratering another section of the lawn. Dazed, I didn’t disengage the rockets, angling them downward and shooting out of the hole, then pulling back enough to hover just above it.

“You can’t stop me,” he said, his voice dripping with disgust. Apogee screamed my name and charged, but he caught her punch and squeezed her hand in his, breaking it. She cried out and threw a blow with her left, which he also caught.

I flew at him, grabbing him in a headlock.

“Let go of her!”

Squeezing my massive arms around his neck was useless and he did nothing to stop me, knowing that I couldn’t exert enough pressure to threaten his airflow.

I released my lock, grabbed a handful of his slick black hair with my left hand, and threw punch after punch at the back of his head, but he just weathered the blows. I was hurting him, but not enough to turn his attention away from Apogee. He was about to break her other hand, only seconds away, and there wasn’t anything I could do to stop him. I was like a child trying to bring down a grown man. In a straight-up fight, he would win every time. It wasn’t a contest. I had no chance.

Well, then I wasn’t going to fight straight.

I reached over and bit his ear off.

He shrieked, recoiling, and with just a shrug, sent me reeling back into the ground. Fortunately, he also released Apogee. She fell to her knees, cradling her injured right hand.

All around us, villains were rushing in, but with a wide sweep of his hands and a few volleys from the VMI kids, Damage held them off. Ruby’s sonic powers held another pair of villains aloft, and Ricochet had a villain in a full nelson while Focus punched him repeatedly. A powered armor villain had landed and was blowing his full ammo load at a barricade of VMI kids, when Moe came up behind him and ripped his armor apart. Dominus’ last remaining ninja pawn slashed at any villains that neared Ruby and Ricochet. Behind one of the pillars stood the President herself, flanked by a pair of cadets, opening up with an M16 into a nasty ram-headed villain who was charging her.

I picked up a piece of shattered concrete, weighing maybe two or three tons, and hurled it with all my might at the half-animal villain, taking him out like a pin against a bowling ball. The President looked over at me and I winked.

I then turned my attention to Lord Mighty, who held onto his bloodied ear, wincing in pain. I grinned, knowing there was one thing I could do to get his attention: humiliate him. I also knew my place in all of this. I had to keep him away as long as I could.

“Hey, asshole,” I said, spitting out the piece of his bloody ear in his face.

“You dare....” he said.

I smiled, flashing my bloodied teeth.

His eyes bored into me, unsure how to respond. “Kill,” he said, a deranged look mangling his features.

I looked over at Apogee and saw her eyes filled with tears. Whether she cried at the pain of her broken hand, or because she knew what I was going to do, I didn’t know. I just winked and fired my rocket boots, racing off.

Lord Mighty was on me in an instant, not even two hundred feet off the ground, grabbing at my leg. I kicked his face, sending him reeling, but he was on me again before I could blink. He grabbed my leg, spun, and hurled me.

With my newly modified boots I could fly at several thousand miles per hour, close to Mach 3, but it paled in comparison to the speed that his throw carried me. I turned and twisted, trying to get my feet in front of me to use the boots to slow me down, but a figure raced past me in the direction I was headed.

It was Mighty.

I didn’t feel the next blow, blacking out as a white light exploded near my forehead, but when I came to, I was flying in the opposite direction at roughly the same speed. As my senses came to, I crashed into a building, slamming through walls, masonry, and floors and coming out the other side. I flopped into the street, crushing an overturned concrete truck and finally coming to a rest.

As I rose to my feet, still woozy and not yet fully focused, he hit me again, and again I raced through the air. This time I felt the punch, like the blow of a hundred sledgehammers against my jaw. Tasting my own blood, I smashed through a tall building, crashing up through one floor, then another, my momentum carrying me to the point that I just burst through the other side, flying across the space between it and the next structure. I smacked into that building too, breaking through several walls and coming to a rest after bouncing down an elevator shaft.

I lay on my back a moment, feeling the world about to fade, when Mighty appeared above me, looking down.

“Pathetic,” he said, picking me up and punching me out of the building.

This blow was clearly harder than the others, because I passed out, waking only when my body came to rest against the wall of a ruined building somewhere in Georgetown. My neck was constricted, tightened, and every muscle in my shoulders was complaining. I rolled to my feet, trying to look around, but my head wouldn’t turn, and blood was pouring out of my broken nose.

Ahead of me, a gas station erupted in fire and I figured I had crashed through the mini-mart into several of the pumps before shattering the brownstone I stood in.

I felt a whoosh of air and swung, half expecting him to be in front of me, but just as he’d done with Apogee, Mighty caught my fist mid-blow.

He smiled, I suppose in part satisfied by how much he was hurting me. And I was glad for it. Instead of interrupting Mirage from bringing back Templar, instead of ruining our plan, Mighty was channeling his rage at me, giving my friends time to save the day.

“You’re a coward,” I said, spitting a chunky wad of blood into his face. He recoiled, horrified at my gesture, and crushed my hand before punching me away. I screamed as every bone in my fist was instantly turned to powder, the pain dwarfing anything crashing through a line of cars might have caused. Coming to a stop, I held onto my broken right hand.

“Motherfucker!”

He was right there, picking me up off the ground, and I barely saw his arm cock back before his fist connected with my face with the dull crack of bone. The blow launched me into the air, this time straight up. Again, I blacked out a moment from the ferocity of the punch, coming back to as I soared through the air. My momentum faded and I started falling. I shook my head, trying to clear it, but all I saw was a blur and then I felt another powerful punch take me back up into the clouds. I was flying, but not because of anything I was doing.

Again, my upward motion slowed and I came back down, and again he hit me, this time in the chest, sending me flying high in the air. It was like getting body-slammed by a battleship, and I felt several ribs snap. Doubling over to hold my broken chest, my aerodynamic characteristics went to hell and I started flipping over and over.

Something made me flinch my toe throttle. Maybe it was the fear of imminent death.

I knew he was playing with me, unleashing his rage, but when he realized I had fooled him, when he knew I had drawn him away from the President and given my friends a chance at victory, he would be enraged beyond his capacity for restraint. He would just pop my head off and try to find Templar.

I had no guarantee that Mirage had brought him out of unconsciousness. I had to keep Mighty going.

One thing I had noticed, and I don’t know how this managed to break through the barrage of blows and resonate in my conscious, was that Mighty repeated himself. If something worked for him, he kept doing it.

Looking down, I saw him approaching for a punch, but firing my rockets had upset his plans. Mighty scanned the air for me and raced in my direction once he found me.

I swung and actually caught him, but my hand erupted in pain and I screamed in agony. I had used my broken right hand. I held it against my chest, feeling the tears stream down my face as I fell out of the sky. What my blow had done to him, I didn’t know. The ground raced up toward me, so I turned my feet toward the ground and fired the rockets, slowing my fall to just a minor crash. I landed on a UPS truck, coming to a rest inside the back. My landing was so devastating to the truck that every tire blew, and the roll-up back door flew upward. I tried to move, but every joint complained. My left leg was broken below the knee, maybe both bones, and my right femur was cracked. Breathing was a chore with snapped ribs, and my left ulna jutted out of a tear in my forearm. My right hand was broken, even worse than the first time I had hurt it. I couldn’t see out of my left eye, and it felt like the whole orbital bone had collapsed when I touched the swollen area gingerly.