The Suns of Liberty: Legion: A Superhero Novel (19 page)

     The officers ducked for cover, some yelled out warnings—as
if the shot at the tree had been aimed directly at each of them.

     Drayger floored it.

     The van burst out of the bush line, jumped the curb,
flew into the air for an instant, crashed back down on the roadway, and in a
matter of seconds was flying past the line of squad cars.

     “Holy shit!” Ward yelled. “That actually worked!” He
scrambled to the back of the van to watch the cops’ reactions. “I can’t believe
that actually worked!”       

     Ward was now peering back behind them through the
tinted windows. What he saw made him change his tune. “It didn’t work, it
didn’t work!” he yelled, scrambling back from the window. “They’re coming after
us!”

     Drayger was focused on the road ahead. “Well, you did
kind of blow up a building, you know. I just bought you some ti—” Drayger caught
Sophia glaring at him in the rearview mirror, and he shrunk in his seat. 

     “They’re coming,” Ward said again. “Oh shit! Look out!”
he yelled, as he dove for the carpet.

     Bullets strafed the van. Glass exploded inside, shattering
all over them. The van swerved wildly, clipping parked cars, as Drayger tried
to duck.

     He shot back up in his seat. “I need someone else to
drive!” 

     Lantern moved to take over and Drayger slid into the
back.

     The officers opened fire again.

     With bullets whizzing all around him, and unlike the
others, with no protection from them, Drayger raised his hands.

     The gunfire ceased.

     “This’ll only buy us a few moments. They’ll regain
their courage soon enough,” Drayger said.

     Sophia gazed out the windows in amazement at the cops
who had stopped pursuing. “Kid, who are you?” she asked, shaking her head.

     Drayger flashed his wide smile and headed back up to
the driver’s seat. “I’m your newest member.”

Neuro
drove them out of the city without any further incident. Leslie informed them
that the Big Apple Minutemen had been called up and were giving them cover to
get out of the city.

     Of course, that meant that in most cases they were
either being killed, captured, or at least injured. All to aid in the escape of
the Suns of Liberty—a team with immensely more power. The Revolution wondered
about what the Minutemen were going through for them. All in the name of a
terribly botched mission. A mission that was a setup from the start. The only
consolation they could take away was that they had done an enormous amount of
damage to the building and to the drones. But was that worth the lives of these
faithful volunteer Minutemen?

     Their sacrifice was paying off, though. Any pursuers
were few and far between. Each time a black and white came by, Drayger would do
his faith healer thing and the officers would hesitate long enough to lose them
in the pursuit. But this was only going to take them so far, he warned.

     Drayger explained that what he was really doing was
manipulating their fear. He and his research partner had invented a neural transmitter
that could send a signal to stimulate the parts of the brain that controlled
emotions. The most powerful of which was fear.

     Lantern had interrupted the conversation to warn them
that Guard helicopters, X-1 Apaches, had been launched and were on their way.
The Minutemen were relegated to the street; they could do nothing to help them
with a bunch of X-1s. So Revolution had Leslie send a van from the Resistance
to pick them up, and they ditched Neuro’s in a back alley in Scarsdale, near
Saxon Woods Park.

     The drive to Boston gave them time to secretly look up
data on their new friend. Leslie sent the Revolution all the information the HQ
had on Ben Drayger, a.k.a. Neuro, which wasn’t a lot. He was in the Hero
Movement registry, but not much was known about him.

     That was one of many reasons Revolution didn’t order
the entire group back to Freedom Rise to rescue Rachel. Given the tactics of
the Council in the past, they all had to confront the possibility that Drayger
could be a spy. If he wasn’t, his abilities opened up new possibilities. Based
on what he’d already seen, Revolution wondered if Drayger could do the same
thing to the Council Guard that he had done to the police.

     On the other hand, if he was a spy and he used his
abilities against the Suns in the heart of Freedom Rise, the results would be
disastrous. There was no doubt in the Revolution’s mind that they would all be
captured or killed. Lithium and his team had been holding back, settling for a
PR victory instead of a literal one. But a second attack on the Council’s HQ
might not be met with such restraint. 

     He and Lantern had an entire text-only conversation
about it. But Lantern could no longer see inside the building. They decided it
just wasn’t worth it. There was no way to say where Rachel was or if she was
even still there, or worse yet...

     If she were even still alive. 

Arbor
opened the door to the control room to the cackles of insane laughter.  What
the hell was going on? And then he saw.

     It was X-Ray.

     Kendrick Ray sat there with a high-tech joystick in
his hands, remotely controlling a group of five intercontinental Spores as they
ripped apart Minutemen in the streets of New York. Spores were metal orbs
covered in long steel spikes, each of which fired deadly laser beams. The
latest and most lethal UAV drone technology.

     Five separate screens holographed before Ray’s crazed
eyes. The screens seemed to meld into one at times; other times they were
clearly separate. Just looking at it could make you schizophrenic, Arbor mused.

     But not Ray.

     He sounded—and looked—just like a kid playing a video
game.

     Debris was everywhere on screen. It rained down on the
targets in front of the Spores as they fired. The red beams of energy would sear
into a line of Minutemen vehicles and they would rip apart or veer off into a
building or another vehicle. Ray was turning the streets of New York into a war
zone all by himself.

     And he seemed to be having the time of his life.

     He was so detached from what he was really doing. He
took joy in killing because it wasn’t real to him. Arbor killed because it came
with the job. And he was proud to do his job, liked it. But he’d never enjoyed
killing. At least not normally. Sort of depended on the target.

     Ray would probably enjoy killing his own mother if he
could do it with a joystick.

     “Gotcha, suckers! Oh, nice dodge! Take this!”

    
Another massive explosion.

     Ray turned back to Arbor. “Did you see that?”

     Arbor had no idea what he was supposed to be seeing.
It all looked the same to him on the chaotic, confusing screen. Something had
blown up, that’s all he could tell.

     A crackle in his helmet-com saved him from replying.

    
“Colonel Arbor, looks like they left behind a
wounded.”

     A video began to play in Arbor’s visors.

     “How interesting.  I’m on my way.”

     Arbor took the elevator ride down the thirty-odd
floors and entered a room to find Rachel Dodge, fully visible, tied securely to
a chair, her cloak laid out on a table in the corner of the room, her bottom
lip swollen and bloody

     “So, just who might you be?”

     Rachel said nothing to him.

     “You know, we really weren’t supposed to take
prisoners today. I was under orders not to imprison or kill anyone who makes it
on film. At least not if I could help it. Wouldn’t be good for the television
coverage. Just between you and me, beautiful, I thought it was a mistake. I
really wanted to take one of you traitors prisoner at the very least. It’s so
much fun. Maybe your friend Paul, the Spider Wasp, told you what fun it was?”

     Rachel said nothing, but her eyes seethed with rage.
Ward hadn’t needed to tell her how badly he’d been mistreated at the hands of
the Council; she had helped rescue him, and what she had seen had turned her
stomach. It had nearly turned Ward against staying in the Suns of Liberty.

     “Oh well, maybe next time.” Arbor turned to leave the
room—and Rachel felt relief wash over her. But then he stopped short, right at
the door. “On second thought,” he said, turning with a devilish smile on his
face, “you weren’t on TV, were you?”

     Rachel’s heart sank.

     “Nobody saw
you
. So, I’m not breaking any
rules, am I?” Arbor gave her a cold glare and laughed. “You’re going to tell us
exactly how that little coat of yours works. Oh, honey.  You and I can get to
know each other very, very well.”

TRENTON NJ.

FREEDOM COUNCIL DEFENSE RESEARCH CENTER

Eric
Von Cyprus, lead scientist of the Freedom Council Science Division, nodded his
head. “Mr. Tarleton, you’d better get your glasses ready.”

     Bannister Tarleton, CEO of General Defense Industries
and second-in-command of the Freedom Council, flipped open a pair of designer
sunglasses made just for this occasion, and smiled back.

     “Wow me, Doctor.”

     “I could wow you a lot more if you’d give me an actual
budget.”

     Tarleton just frowned at him.

     Von Cyprus sighed and then smiled to make sure his
companion knew he was only joking.
Really, just a joke...

     “Well, of course, we have the main event,” Von Cyprus
said, pointing to the sunglasses in Tarleton’s hand. “But some of our other
projects are proceeding quite well also. You’ll notice the mirrors that surround
this room, for instance.”

     Von Cyprus pointed to the four tall mirrors that were
on each end of the large room. They extended ceiling to floor and took up half
of each wall.

     Tarleton nodded.

     “These are part of our Dark Energy research unit. We
have made some impressive strides there, thanks to this little chamber here.
Turns out it was just the missing ingredient that we needed. But,” he paused,
“I’m not sure how much you want to know about it?”

     “While I would like to know
all
about it, I’m
still required to keep plausible deniability in mind on these little journeys,
Doctor. We haven’t changed the policy that much.” It was clear from his tone he
disapproved of the policy. The previous chairman had maintained a strict rule
of keeping the Council leadership in the dark on major projects so that nothing
could be directly tied to them. Howke had relaxed the rule. But only so much.

     “Yes. Well, the mirrors harness energy. We made them
from an alloy derived out of the glass from this chamber. Let’s leave it at
that. If something goes wrong with the procedure today, these mirrors will save
our lives. Now follow me.”

     Von Cyprus led him out of the large room into a much
smaller hallway that had small closet-sized rooms lining the hall. Each small
room contained holding tanks of various kinds. At the end of the hallway,
Tarleton could see the far exit door out of the lab.

     “Okay. Over here.” They walked a little further, and
in one of the small rooms was a large suit of armor.

     It was a deep golden-brown color with large claw-like
gloves that Tarleton thought could do some serious damage. The helmet had a
gun-like weapon of some kind built into the top right side and big, round, red,
insect-looking eye guards. Von Cyprus always had a taste for the theatrical.

     “You can see this
exoskeleton
is ready. Once we get the chamber
working we should have a sustainable bioluminescence frame suitable for human
testing.”

     “How do you know it will work if you haven’t fired up
the chamber yet? You didn’t exactly knock it out of the park last time,
remember? The Man-O-War overheated...or whatever. That was reckless.”

     “Mr. Tarleton, I am a careful man, despite what you
may think. I take lots of risks, but they are all highly calculated in their
nature. Like speaking to you this way, for instance. I know you’ll tolerate it,
despite your well-known short temper, because of what you are about to see...”

     Von Cyprus moved over one cell to a smaller cubicle
wherein a rat was locked inside a similar looking
exoskeleton
suit, except it was perfectly constructed
for a rat rather than a human being. The rat was inside a clear glass cage that
resembled a fish tank.

     “Once we realized that the chamber in there had
safeguards and firewalls that were going to take us months to break through, we
changed tactics. We could see how the chamber worked; we just couldn’t
make
it work. So we built our own. But we miscalculated. We couldn’t control the
power output. In our haste, we actually thought we had improved upon the
chamber’s design. And thus, the Man-O-War was made with too much power for its
own good. Quite the contradiction!”