The Suns of Liberty: Legion: A Superhero Novel (15 page)

     With the absorption unit busy holding harmless the
power of the flame blast, Revolution had no defense against their combined
blow. The impact lifted him off his feet and slammed him through the concrete
wall behind him. He was rising to his feet groggily when...

     Arbor leaped through the hole in the wall, but this
time something came with him.

    
Bulky.

     Arbor and Fang in his bulky armor smashed the Dark
Patriot together with tremendous force. It was like a semi hitting a moped.

     Arbor watched his foe crash though the space, taking
out everything behind him—desks, chairs, computers, filing cabinets—and sliding
limply across floor. Arbor followed like a man possessed. He lifted Revolution toward
him with one hand behind his neck and slammed him as hard as he could with a
right hook. The carpet ripped and the floor cracked from the impact as
Revolution pounded it again.

     Arbor knew he had the advantage now. “Go, take care of
the girl!” he yelled at Fang.

     Arbor wasn’t finished. He lifted his rival up and
threw him through the closest wall, chasing him through the hole. He felt like
a hungry predator, ready for the kill.

     Revolution couldn’t focus. His vision was fading in
and out. He couldn’t stop it. The drugs were swimming in his veins, but they
were too little, too late. He fired the flame blast his armor had absorbed at
Lithium, but his double vision meant he’d aimed at the
wrong
Lithium.

     Arbor just laughed. 

     The world went dark. Revolution lay there no longer
moving, no longer struggling.

     Arbor took it as his cue.

     He lifted the Revolution in his powerful grasp and
raised him above his head, the servos in his armor screaming at full power, and
heaved him at the drywall.

     Hard.

     Revolution ripped through it like it was made of papier-mâché.

     The force from the big man’s throw was so powerful—and
the wall, floor, and furniture so flimsy by comparison—that Revolution simply
smashed right though them with a booming crack, tearing them to shreds.
Drywall, steel, rebar, plumbing, everything in his path, cracked and shattered,
spewing their guts in every which direction.

     Floor after floor he fell, angled toward the outer
wall. Four floors in all. Finally, he smacked into a concrete and steel load-bearing
wall, which stopped his momentum with violent resistance.

     Arbor peered down at his motionless body through the
ragged hole his descent had left behind and grinned like a madman. He bent at
the knees, preparing to leap down the hole and finish off his prey, when a wave
of nausea swept over him.

     A single thought entered his mind.

     It scurried up his spine; he felt his mouth go dry.

     He realized that last time he had faced the Suns of
Liberty the Fletcher girl had shown up to help them. Just about the time they’d
all been beaten.

    
Just like right now.

     What if the intel was wrong? What if she really was
loyal to the Suns? How would he stop her? She could rip him apart with the
flick of her finger.

     He thought about the stories out of Sacramento. What
she had done to the buildings there—demolished them with a wave of her hand! Whole
buildings!

     A cold sweat broke out on Arbor’s forehead. Trickles
of it dribbled down the Lithium mask and coated his upper lip.

     Something just felt wrong. A gut instinct. Just like
back in the jungles of Nairobi. His gut had saved his life in the African
Conflict more times than he could count. He’d learned to trust it.

     And he couldn’t get the Fire Fly’s image out of his
head. She was coming. He knew it.

    
Panic.

     “Come in, come in! Ray! Is there any sign of the
Fletcher girl?”

     There was no reply.
Fuck!

     “Someone answer me! Jesus Christ! Is the Fletcher girl
here? Are we looking for her? Do we have a lock on her energy signature?” He
was practically screaming in the com, but he didn’t care. Hoping she wouldn’t
come was no defense, no plan!  How had he been so stupid not to create some
kind of contingency for her?

     Finally, a response from his communicator, but it
sounded like chaos. A cacophony of voices, arguing. “Goddamn it, focus!” he
screamed at no one. Or everyone. Or
anyone
who would listen. “What the
hell is happening out there?”

     The heart of the building would be the safest place.
As far away as possible from the outside where the Fletcher girl could see him,
find him. His mind settled on a destination.

    
The control room. 

     He needed to get there anyway. They already had enough
footage of the Suns to make their next move. It was time to play their final
card. If the fighting stopped, maybe she wouldn’t come.

     It was a plan.

     As he ran toward the room, toward the center of the
building, he began to feel better. The panic began to subside. The Fletcher
girl wasn’t coming. She didn’t save Revolution from those soldiers in Boston;
she’d only gone after the Man-O-War. She had no loyalty to Stars and Stripes.
She wasn’t a member of the Suns. Yes, this was going to work.

     Time to play his masterstroke...

Ward
saw the big white bulky guy come bursting through a wall on the other end of
the office. He had bounded forward and followed Lithium through the hole after
the Revolution. But now he was back.

     All the while, the girl in black was whizzing around
the room taking shots at both him and Helius. Sophia was doing her best to
blast her out of existence.

     “I can’t hit the damn bitch!” Sophia yelled. And just
then, Veronica slammed into her, sending her smashing through a row of desks.

     Ward leapt after her. It had to be better to stay
together as much as they could. But just as he got to her, Veronica sideswiped
him. Fortunately, he’d seen—or rather heard and felt—her coming, and he tried
to fire a disabling dart at her, hoping it might work on her armor.

     He missed, but it caused her to swerve at the last
millisecond, and Ward only crashed though a single desk—one of the few left
intact. “This is nuts!” he yelled to Sophia.

     “I’ve got an idea!” she yelled back. “Stand behind me,
back to back.”

     Ward shot over to her as fast as he could. Bulky was
gone again. So was the girl in black. She had to be zipping in and out of the
room trying to minimize their ability to hit her, not to mention increase her
surprise factor.  

     Ward was no battle strategist, but as he got to
Sophia, he saw her eyes scanning the exits. Scratch that. The
entrances
.
He could see where Sophia was going with this. “I’ve got you,” he said.

     They stood back to back, both pointing their
respective weapons toward an entrance.

     “Each time she’s zipped in here, she’s made one trip
around the room. I think to get her bearings. Then she attacks. So, as soon as
she comes back, just start firing, high and low. Between the two of us, let’s
just hope we get her,” Sophia said.

     There was no time to utter a reply. Ward heard the
noise, felt the surge of air. She was back.

     They opened fire.

     “Ahhh!” A flash of blue and a scream—that seemed to swirl
around the room. Sophia’s blue ray of power had intercepted Velocity, blasting
Veronica across the room, smashing her though the piles of debris that used to
be the office.

      She lay in a clump across the room from them.

     “Hell, yes! Now that was a good ide—” Ward swallowed.

     Bulky was back.

     “You don’t remember me, do you?” Fang said to him
behind the white bulky armor.

     “No, but I’m going to give you something to remember
me by,” Ward said. He raised his arms and aimed the disabling darts.

     Just as a small eight-pronged harpoon shot through the
opening in the wall from the other side of the room and headed right for the
sweet spot between Ward’s eyes.

     “Look out!” Sophia screamed, and Ward turned.

     But there was nothing he could do. 

     He closed his eyes and waited for the impact—

     Just as a bright blue beam of energy burned the spear
to oblivion right in front of his face. The harpoon dart exploded. Ward was
slammed to the floor.

     Sophia realized she’d hit Ward too! She bounded over
to the professor.

     “Pa—Spider, are you okay?” she said, nearly slipping
from protocol with his name. It was so hard to think of this guy as Spider
Wasp.
He was just Paul.

     “Thanks to you,” he said, bounding to his feet. He
leapt forward to kill Fiddler and—

     Ran headlong into the Revolution.

     “Shit!” Ward said.

     Sophia finally remembered to breathe. Both men were
still alive.

     Revolution wobbled. He was clearly not doing so well.
Ward steadied him. “We’ve got to get the hell out of here,” he said to Revolution.
“I want to kill that son of a bitch!” Ward pointed toward the gang leader
and... blinked.

     Fiddler and Fang were gone.

     “But clearly,” Ward said, looking at Revolution and
the dried blood on Sophia’s face, “we’re not going to last much longer.”

     Just then, Rachel’s voice broke through, breathy and
straining from obvious pain
. “Boys and girls... I hate to break it to you...
but I don’t think the chamber is here. I can’t tell where it is, but from what
I am reading... it looks like the fucker’s off site,”
she said.

     Ward smiled. Hearing Rachel’s voice was a relief. Only
she could make
fucker
sound cute.

     “Stealth!” Revolution said with obvious relief,
perking up. “Are you okay?”

     Lantern’s voice broke in.
“Actually, I have a new
reading on it, sir. Seven floors directly above you,”
he interjected.

    
“I don’t...I don’t think so...hot pants.”
Rachel’s voice was weak, but they could all tell she’d said it as a warning.

     “Lantern, how sure are you?” Revolution trusted
Lantern’s judgment immensely, but he did not want to be fooled a second time.

    
“It reads clean, sir, but so did the other,”
Lantern said.

     Lantern had been highly confident about his find of
the chamber at Freedom Rise. So this second find had to be treated with
skepticism.

     “I understand,” Revolution said, recognizing Lantern’s
own skepticism dripping from his voice, “but Helius was right. We’re here. Might
as well check it out while we can.” Revolution paused for a moment. This was
all on him now. His entire team wanted to leave. Even Sophia had gone back on
her suggestion to search for the chamber. If things went south, it was all on
him. He peered over at Sophia. “Can you lead us up?”

     Sophia winced, shook off the pain and the cobwebs, and
readied her blasters. “As long as that bitch doesn’t show up again.” She
pointed over to where Velocity had fallen, and Ward was horrified to see she
was no longer lying there. They’d stood around and let them all escape.

     Sophia raised her arms, and the bracelets calibrated.
A blast of blue energy ripped through the ceiling above them, making a perfect
car-sized oval.

     Sophia launched herself through the hole and blasted
away at the floor above.

     Ward embraced Revolution from behind and gazed up at
the giant hole in the roof.  “That ought to be big enough.” Ward smiled. “You
know, we keep doing this, we’re going to get a reputation.”

     Moments later, they arrived on the floor Lantern had
designated.

     A large, cavernous empty room.

     Almost.

     In the center sat the Fire Fly chamber. To their left,
the windowed exterior wall of Freedom Rise.

     “We’ve found it,” Sophia said over her com.

     “Stealth, get yourself to safety, we’re done here,”
Revolution said.

     Stealth said nothing.

     “Stealth?” Ward asked.

    
“Sir, she’s in that same room. But she’s not
moving.”

     “Let me go after her,” Ward pleaded.

     “Stay
here
,” Revolution said gruffly.

     Suddenly a crackle of interference came over their coms.
Or it
seemed
to be coming from the coms. Revolution realized quickly
that the sound wasn’t in their helmets; it was coming from inside the room. A
sharp shock of fear ran down his spine.

     The chamber.

    
Was it about to blast them to kingdom come?