Legacy (18 page)

Lucas remembered his pain when his father had struck him, and tried to give back better than he’d gotten.

He figured the only way they were going to survive this encounter was if one of them had the strength to go up against the Raptor. The obvious choice was Lucas, but without the enhancements of a supersuit, he wasn’t going to last five minutes against his father.

He liked to think fate had something to do with where his father had tossed him. Shucking his own clothes and getting into the costume, he had hoped the old Talon outfit was still operational, or this would end up being one of the shortest superbattles ever fought.

As soon as he’d slipped the cowl over his head, he could feel the mechanics in the costume come alive. The suit felt
heavier and was more difficult to move in than his own, but he would just have to get used to it. It was certainly better than nothing.

Through the thick lenses in the face mask, Lucas saw what was about to happen. He leapt across the basement and landed right behind the Raptor with hardly a sound.

Lucas noticed the expression of surprise on Katie’s face and saw his father begin to turn. He drew back his fist and sent it rocketing forward with as much power as he could put into it. The blow connected with the Raptor’s chin, knocking him back and across the basement into a small kitchen area.

“Nice,” Lucas said, flexing the fingers of his gauntlet.

He checked to see if Putnam and Katie were all right. Nicolas stared at him with wide eyes, perhaps seeing a bit of his former self standing there.

“Hope you don’t mind,” Lucas said, on the verge of an apology.

Putnam shook his head. “Not at all.”

“You look good,” Katie said with a smile before turning to see where the Raptor had ended up. He had collapsed a section of wall and was now rising.

“But it isn’t over,” she added.

“Keep at him,” Putnam said, pulling himself to his feet, leaning on a broken piece of countertop. “Don’t give him time to catch his breath. Remember, he’s sick, and the suit can only enhance what he already has.”

“Right,” Lucas said.

He started to run, activating the costume’s flight capabilities. He was thankful the suit worked pretty much the
same as the one back at the manor, as the jets in the soles of the boots ignited with a flash, doubling his momentum.

Lucas collided with his father, propelling them both backward. The two of them crashed into the already damaged wall with tremendous force. He heard his father grunt with the impact, and then the Raptor’s body went limp, sliding to the floor as Lucas stepped back.

The boy was elated and turned to give his friends a thumbs-up, but no sooner had he done that than he saw Putnam’s eyes bug and Katie let loose with a shriek.

Lucas turned back just in time to realize what a stupid mistake he’d made. His father was completely awake and pointing a piece of wrist weaponry that whirred and lit up as it prepared to fire at him.

Lucas’s brain told his body to move, but it wasn’t fast enough.

The Raptor fired a single concussive blast.
It’s like being hit with a battering ram
, Lucas thought as his feet left the ground.
No, strike that. It’s like being hit with twenty battering rams at exactly the same time
.

The force was so great that it picked Lucas up, launching him through an undamaged—until then—section of the basement ceiling and into the ceiling of the level above.

He fell to the floor of the first level and lay there unmoving; even with the protection of the costume, he was finding it difficult to catch his breath. Everything hurt, and the super suit was making strange noises. The less advanced technology must have been damaged by that last blast, and Lucas wasn’t sure how much longer the outfit would be able to
protect him. But he couldn’t worry about that now. He had to keep Putnam and Katie safe.

He pushed himself to his feet, and then he heard the sound. It was like the roar of a fighter plane, muffled at first, but reaching full screeching crescendo as the Raptor exploded up through the floor in a cloud of plaster dust and splintered wood.

“I’m surprised you’re still conscious,” the Raptor bellowed over the roar of his boot jets.

Lucas could see that his father was getting ready to strike again. He ignited his own boosters and launched himself at the man, remembering his touch football days, which seemed a thousand years ago. He tucked his head low and plowed his shoulder into his opponent, driving him upward.

Locked in struggle, the two costumed combatants flew about the room, smashing into walls, turning plaster to white powder.

There was a sudden buzz and then a crackle inside his mask, and Lucas feared that something was about to go wrong. But then Putnam’s voice shouted over the static.

“Lucas? Are you there, Lucas?”

Temporarily distracted by the voice in his ears, Lucas let his father get the upper hand. The Raptor managed to get behind the boy and wrapped an arm around his throat, squeezing.

“Busy right now,” Lucas managed. The bracing built into the neck of the costume was affording him some protection, but he didn’t know for how long.

Lifting his legs, he directed a concentrated blast from his
boot rockets that sent them both hurtling across the empty room toward a window that was boarded up. The wood shattered as the two slammed into it, sending them outside, up into the sky above the hospital.

“Are you all right?” Putnam asked. “What was that?”

“Being choked,” Lucas gasped. The braces were starting to buckle, and the pressure on his neck increased.

He bent forward, directing their flight back toward the building. Just as they were about to strike the front of the structure, he spun himself around, allowing his father to take the brunt of the blow. A section of the outside wall shattered on impact, raining debris on the courtyard below, but still the Raptor hung on.

“Listen to me,” Putnam shouted. “I think I got a pretty good look at the Raptor’s armor.”

Lucas tried to focus, but somebody was dropping a curtain over his eyes.

“There are chinks in its design,” Putnam said. “Reach behind you and use the claws on the gauntlet to find a space between the armored pieces. Force them apart. This’ll give you access to some pretty sensitive internal workings.”

Lucas was choking. He tried to move his head around, fighting to release some of the pressure bearing down on his neck.

“Don’t make this so hard,” he heard his father say, his voice cold, robotic. “Let the inevitable happen. You were the closest to perfection, but sadly not perfect enough.”

Screw that
, a voice screamed inside Lucas’s brain. He drove the clawed fingers of his gauntlet back into the belly of the Raptor’s armor. Frantically he searched for a break
between it and the chest plate, but it was becoming harder and harder to remain in the waking world.

His father must have sensed what he was up to and intensified his hold, trying to bend Lucas backward to hasten his death.

“Your life signs are going crazy!” Putnam’s voice suddenly screamed in Lucas’s ears. His voice sounded more and more distant as it began to grow dark.

Lucas knew he was dying and had almost resigned himself to his fate when the pointed tips of his gloved fingers found what they had been probing for. Using the last of his strength, he dug his claws into the space between the two segments of his father’s body armor. There was little resistance, and his father immediately began to struggle.

The Raptor’s grip loosened, and Lucas took in a revitalizing gulp of air. His claws tore through a thick layer of protective mesh, finding a web of wires beneath. With a powerful yank, he tore them free in an explosion of sparks.

He heard the Raptor yell and was immediately propelled away from his armored adversary. Lucas touched down in a stumble, falling to his knees as static erupted in his ears.

“Life signs are better,” Putnam said. “How we doin’, Lucas?”

Lucas looked up and felt his heart leap into his throat as he spied the Raptor, dropping out of the sky directly at him.

He didn’t even have a chance to get out of the way.

The Raptor fell on him with such force that they skidded across the blacktop driveway, stopping only when they hit the overgrown grass island that surrounded a dry concrete fountain.

“Did you honestly believe you could hurt me?” his father raged, raining blow after blow into Lucas’s masked face.

The face mask was taking the brunt of the blows, but Lucas knew it was only a matter of time before it would break and his face would be shattered. His arms flailed as he strained to get out from beneath his foe, and his hands brushed against something hard and unyielding behind his head. The fountain. Lucas reached up and back, grabbing hold and using every ounce of his remaining strength to bring the concrete decoration toppling forward onto the Raptor.

The concrete crumbled as it struck the armored superhero. Stunned, the Raptor fell to the side.

Leaping up, Lucas snatched up a large section of the broken fountain, spun around, and let it fly toward the Raptor, who was just climbing out from beneath the rubble. The concrete connected with devastating force, breaking away a piece of the damaged face mask to reveal his sweating and wild-eyed father beneath.

“That’s right,” the man said, his fevered eyes twinkling. “Show me what you’ve got.”

The Raptor charged, and Lucas braced himself as the two of them collided.

“Show me that I was right about you,” the older man growled, swinging wildly at the boy.

Lucas dodged to the right and left, evading his father’s blows.

“Right about me?” Lucas asked, his anger the only thing keeping him on his feet. He moved aside as a punch flew by his mask. Seeing his opportunity, he took it, driving his own fist into the exposed flesh of his father’s face.

The Raptor’s head flew violently backward, and he fell into the high grass and weeds.

“Tell me,” Lucas demanded as he stood over his father. “Tell me why they had to die.”

“You know why,” the Raptor said. Slowly, he climbed to his feet, swaying a bit as he stood. “I’m dying, and the city needs someone to protect her.”

Lucas shook his head. “That’s not good enough. That’s not good enough to justify murder.”

His father lifted a gloved hand to his damaged face. The entire right side had started to blacken and swell. “It wasn’t murder,” he said. “They just failed to pass the test I presented them with.”

“Test?” Lucas shrieked, stomping forward and pushing his father.

The man staggered back but did not attack.

“Yes, a test,” the Raptor explained. “I hoped that at least one of my children would be strong enough to carry on my legacy. But to do that, they had to be tested.”

Lucas felt as though he was suffocating. He ripped the mask from his face.

“So what was my test?” he asked, already knowing the answer, but hoping—praying—it wasn’t true. He threw his mask to the rubble-strewn ground. “It wasn’t the Science Club, was it?”

Hartwell nodded. “Oh, it was. … They were most definitely responsible for the attack on your home, and for the death of your mother.”

Lucas couldn’t help himself, lashing out again at the old man and knocking him to the ground.

“You told them where I lived … where to find me. Their attack—their attack was my test.”

Hartwell slowly nodded, thick black blood oozing from his swollen lips. “Yes,” he said simply. “I was hoping you’d never have to know about that. You survived everything I tossed at you that day. The men I hired to attack the trailer park had strict orders to kill you if they could, but you survived, son.”

He paused, staring intently. “You passed the test.”

The words echoed through Lucas’s mind, reverberating over and over, but still he could not believe them.

“You killed my mother … to test me?”

“You refused my other offers,” the Raptor explained. “What did you expect me to do? You didn’t realize how important this was to the city. I had to give you an incentive…. I had to show you the depths of the evil that is out there … show you why somebody like me”—he paused and pointed to Lucas—“somebody like
you
is needed.”

From the mask on the ground came the sound of Putnam’s voice. “Lucas? Are you all right? Are you there?”

But Lucas wasn’t hearing anything other than the roar of blood in his ears.

“My mother died so you could get me to do what you wanted,” Lucas said through gritted teeth, reaching down to grab his father by the armored shoulders.

The Raptor struggled weakly, but Lucas could tell that the fight had gone out of him.

“You had her killed to show me about evil?” Lucas screamed, shaking him. “I could have learned all I need to know about evil just by looking in your eyes!”

The rage had gotten the better of him. He didn’t even realize what he was going to do until he was doing it. Straining the servomotors of his exoskeleton, he picked his father up and tossed him toward the Mustang parked in front of the hospital.

The Raptor hit the car with the force of a freight train, windshield and windows exploding in a shower of glass as the vehicle bent around the armored man.

Lucas took deep breaths, trying to calm himself. He stared at the still shape of his father, caught within the twisted embrace of the vehicle, and oddly enough, he began to fear he might have killed him.

That he too might have crossed that terrible line.

The Raptor stirred with a grunt, and Lucas breathed a small sigh of relief.

“You realize I’ll need to deduct the cost of the Mustang from your allowance,” the Raptor quipped.

The metal of the car screeched and groaned as his father tried to extricate himself from the vehicle’s twisted hold.

Too late, Lucas noticed the puddle that had started to form beneath the ruptured gas tank. As the Raptor moved, light flashed and sparks sprayed from beneath his damaged chest plate, and suddenly the gasoline ignited into a sea of fire.

“No!”
Lucas screamed, bounding across the courtyard toward the growing conflagration.

But a tiny voice inside his head told him to let the man burn.