The Suns of Liberty: Legion: A Superhero Novel (20 page)

     “Yeah, fascinating,” Tarleton deadpanned. “I know this
already, remember?”

     “Of course.” Von Cyprus blinked, getting back on track,
relieved Tarleton had taken so much interest in his work. “But here’s what you
don’t know. Once we broke through the firewall, we took further precautions.”

     Von Cyprus pointed to the clear glass rat cage in
front of them.

     “You see, we tested all of this on a much smaller
scale first. Both the chamber, and the suit.” Von Cyprus grabbed a small
control unit attached to a cord that was itself attached to the wall of the
tank. “Put your glasses on now.”

     Von Cyprus donned his own pair.

     Then he said to the rat, “Okay, Fink. Get ready for a
jolt, you dirty rat.” And with that, he pressed the button. A small beam of
bioluminescent energy exploded out toward Fink the rat, and he froze in
horror.  The suit he was in illuminated brightly and then faded back to normal.

     “See, still alive.”

     Tarleton seemed unimpressed.

     Von Cyprus pressed another button, and Fink suddenly
glowed with bioluminescence. The next thing Tarleton knew Fink was actually
floating above the bottom of his cage.

     Von Cyprus had control of the suit and flew the rat
out of the cage. Fink passed right through the clear walls just like a beam of
light. He flew Fink about the room, circling the rat around a couple of times.
“On a rat-scale, Fink here is just like the Fletcher girl. He can do anything
she can do, all at my command.” Then he flew him back into the cage, set him
down on the cage floor, and reverted him back to a normal rat.

     Fink tweaked his whiskers frantically but otherwise
went back to doing rat things just as before.

     The men both took off their glasses.  

     Tarleton was standing there smiling. “Anything else?”

     “I know, I can’t wait either. Let’s fire it up.”

     Quickly they retreated back to the chamber. Von Cyprus and Tarleton stood before the large computer console just outside the glassed-in chamber.

     “Okay, Mr. Tarleton, we don’t often have observers of
your stature here in the lab, so we have gone to great lengths for your
protection.” Von Cyprus again pointed to the mirrors that surrounded the
chamber. “Those mirrors I mentioned earlier will kick in should anything go
wrong. They don’t just reflect bioluminescent light, they attract it. You see,
they have a special property called—“

     “Let’s get this done. I want to be out of here before
the weather gets bad,” Tarleton said.

     Von Cyprus nodded and pursed his lips. “Okay, bring in
the exosuit,” he shouted to no one Tarleton could see.

     On cue, two of his assistants wheeled the suit in on a
large square wooden dolly, entered the chamber itself, and set the suit in
front on the opposite end, directly in front of the firing mechanism.

     “Mr. Wilson, please make sure all the degree settings
are correct,” Von Cyprus said. As the assistant finished checking a setting,
Von Cyprus would lock its corresponding lever forward into its engagement
setting on the console in front of him. “Today, assuming it works, we are only
going to charge the suit and demonstrate what it can do. Then we will go about
the business of finding a Compatible,” he told Tarleton.

     “A Compatible? I thought that Compatibles were only
something you needed for the cybergenetic stuff?”

     “It’s the same principle here. It’s only a small
percentage of the population that has a genetic profile that is compatible with
cybergenetic modifications. And we’ve both seen how fatal the effects can be
when tried on a non-Compatible.”

     Tarleton nodded.  

     “Well,” Von Cyprus continued, “it’s an even smaller
percentage of the population that is compatible for bioluminescence. So small,
in fact, that we don’t know what those profiles are, or what separates them
from the rest of us. But I
can
tell you they are just as rare in rats as
they are in humans.”

     “How many rats did you go through?”

     “Let’s just put it this way, there’s going to be a
whole lot of skinny pet snakes on the East Coast this year.”      

     “But if that thing is just a suit,” Tarleton asked,
pointing to the exosuit, “why do you need to have a Compatible?”

     “It is a suit, but for it to work like the Fletcher
girl, we need someone who can biologically interface with it.”

     “Huh?”

     Von Cyprus thought for a moment. “It’s going to
interface with the central nervous system of whoever we use”—he made a stabbing
motion with his hand—“and synergize with their biological energy. That’s the
only way we can simulate what she does. So they don’t need to be one hundred
percent compatible, but they still need to be up there. Makes the possible pool
of applicants larger. Once the suit is working we can start testing it on our
volunteers.”

     Tarleton shrugged. “Fair enough. Let’s get to it.”

     And with that, and with his assistants now cleared out
of the chamber and the doors shut and locked, Von Cyprus hit the switch and a
deep hum of power droned out of the chamber.

     A bright yellow-green laser streaked to life, searing
across the glassed-in enclosure from the powerful cylindrical gun-like device
in the center of the far chamber wall. A brilliant beam of luminescent energy
blasted the suit and fingered across its mass in pulsing strands of chartreuse
lightning.

    
And then it happened.

     The beam had been going for five seconds when a flash
of light to their left stunned them. 

     Von Cyprus and Tarleton both flinched and, even with
their glasses on, covered their eyes.

     When they opened them, the Fire Fly, Fiona Fletcher,
was standing in the center of the chamber just to the left of the beam of
energy.

     They felt their spines turn completely to ice. This
was the woman who had singlehandedly defeated the Man-O-War.

     She locked eyes with Von Cyprus. “Shut it down,” she
said to him. “Or I will.”

     “We’re only charging the suit!” Von Cyprus said.

     “Fine.” Fiona stepped in front of the great beam of
energy and simply held out her palm.

     The yellow-green beam slammed against her hand, and a
spray of luminescence spewed into the air, showering the chamber in its droplets.

     Von Cyprus turned to Tarleton. “You’d better get the
hell out of here. I can’t protect you from her.”

     Tarleton wasted no time in turning and sprinting for
the hallway and the far exit. But when he got to the hallway, he stopped. He
clung to the wall and peeked back around, watching. He could not take his eyes
off of her incredible power.

     Fiona strained and pushed, trudging forward, forcing
the beam back into the firing chamber of the gun. Her palm closed over the barrel’s
opening.

     The gun fell silent.

     When it was done, Fiona turned back toward Von Cyprus. She was pulsing in power. More than she had ever felt. It radiated off of her like
great waves of cosmic displacement. She stalked forward. Von Cyprus could feel each step she took in the core of his body. Like she was walking on his spinal
cord itself.

     But as she passed through the middle of the chamber,
in the exact center of the field of mirrors, she froze. The glow of the extra
energy was reflecting off of them, and as Von Cyprus gawked in amazement, Fiona
staggered back from the energy rebounding across the mirrors. She closed her
eyes and pushed the energy back out with both of her hands. Away from her body,
pushing it all back toward the mirrors.

     She surged forward, breaking free of the energy’s hold,
and the power surged together behind her in a blinding flash of light as a
great
WHOOSH!
pulled the air from the room for a split second before it
all burst into a halo of light and was gone.

     Fiona sighed in relief.

     And returned her powerful gaze to Von Cyprus. “I should have destroyed this when I had the chance.”

     “Hey, no need to do that. I mean, we’re just charging
a suit here, that’s all.”

     “You,” she accused, stepping forward again, “created
the Man-O-War.” 

     “I never meant for that to hurt you. I mean, no
offense, but you attacked it. We weren’t targeting you. I sure as hell wasn’t.”

     Fiona just glared at him.

      And he looked at her, really looked at her. “My god,”
he said. “Look at you. You’re so beautiful, so powerful. You’re a goddess. Why
would I try to hurt you? I worship you! We should be working on all this together.
Help me do it right.”

     Fiona didn’t move. Still glaring.

     Von Cyprus eyed his instrument panel. “I mean, you
have to love the science, right? Your dad was a scientist. So I’m betting you
are just as interested in it as he was.”            

     Von Cyprus raised an eyebrow, moved closer to his
instrument panel.

     She still just stood there, so he got a bit bolder.
“Now. Let’s see. It looked like you had a little trouble with those mirrors.
You want to get back in there and let’s see if we can figure out what’s going
on there?”

     “You tried to kill me.”

     Von Cyprus’s eyes grew big as he remembered the
missile strike. “Oh hey, wait a minute! That was the Council, the military. I
had nothing to do with that. Trust me, I’m your biggest fan!”

     Fiona just frowned and spun back toward the chamber’s
main console. To Von Cyprus, she was just a blur of motion, causing him to
scream and duck behind his own console, afraid she was coming to kill him.

     She stepped in front of the machine, to the center of
the unit, and plunged her hand inside. She paused. Did she really want to
destroy this thing? It had made her the Fire Fly—could it unmake her? She so
desperately yearned to be normal. Her mind raced to Becky, Arcadia, and the
thousands that made the trek to Tahoe every day. They were all counting on her,
believing in her. And the missile strike illustrated that none of them would ever
be safe without her.

     The unit began to tremble and split apart. Light shot out
from the seams. Von Cyprus raised his head above his console and watched in horror
as Fiona raised her arm, and when she did, the entire wall-sized unit raised
with her.

     “No! Don’t! Don’t do it!” Von Cyprus screamed, leaping to his feet.

     It split apart into a thousand pieces. Like a giant
glowing jigsaw puzzle. The pieces began to spin and burn.

     In a matter of seconds, the most-prized weapon in the
war between the Suns and the Council was no more.

     “No...” Von Cyprus wailed and fell to his knees.

     Fiona turned to him. “Don’t do this again.” A threat.

     And then she was gone.

     Von Cyprus was stunned. He stayed on his knees, just
staring at the now empty chamber. Only the uncharged suit remained.

     Finally, a voice broke the silence. It was Tarleton.
He’d seen the whole thing.

     “Start working on the mirrors,” he said.

     Von Cyprus gazed up at the mirrors, and a slow smirk
spread across his tear-stained face. “The mirrors,” he breathed. “She had
trouble with the mirrors.”

CHAPTER 21

BOSTON, MA.

“W
here
the hell is he?” Leslie protested.

     As soon as the Suns arrived back at HQ they had dove
into crisis mode.

     They each took their place at the table in the
Situation Room. Drayger took the seat where Ramsey “Hunley” Hollis used to sit.
Only Lantern was absent—and of course, Rachel.

     They all felt they had to make a move, but none
presented itself. The debate was a somber and gloomy affair.

     Rachel had been captured, they had been roundly
defeated, and many of the Minutemen, who had sprung into action to help in
their escape back to Boston, had been killed or captured. They still had no
firm numbers for either.

     Worse, Media Corp was making the escape seem like the
Suns abandoned the Minutemen as sacrificial lambs to save their own hides. The
whole thing looked like a terrorist attack and was being played again and again
all across the world’s media.

     Precisely the kind of image they did not want.

     Leslie had been fielding outraged calls from members
of COR since the images had started to broadcast across the Web. Among the
twenty-three members who had voted to strike a deal with the Council (virtually
the same twenty-three who had voted against the raid on Freedom Rise), a push
was on to decommission the Suns altogether. An unprecedented digital exchange
was taking place between the COR members. Leslie worried the exchange might
compromise the members’ cybersecurity. Another reason to have Lantern’s
expertise, she’d fumed.