The Suns of Liberty: Legion: A Superhero Novel (22 page)

     “Wait a second,” said Sophia. She peered over at
Drayger. “No offense.” Then back to Revolution. “But we don’t know anything
about him,” she said, nodding her head toward Drayger.

     “We know he saved your lives,” Leslie said. “And we
know he’ll give us a strategic advantage,”

     Sophia scoffed. “Personally, I don’t need any boosts
of confidence from—”

     “Mr. Drayger’s going. It’s my call,” Revolution said
with finality.

     Drayger beamed a serious shit-eating smile.

     “Neuro is a probationary member,” Revolution said,
turning to the young man. “You prove yourself, you’re in.”

     Ward shot Drayger a thumbs-up. “Don’t worry, kid. I was
on probation once. All it took to get off was a trip to prison, torture, electrocution,
becoming a fly ball for a monster robot, and, oh yeah, watching the woman I
loved get blown to bits right in front of me.” Ward shrugged. “Piece of cake.”

     Sophia snickered and considered leaning over and
giving Ward a high-five, but thought better of it. She was kind of second-in-command
now. Better act the part.

     “He’s just the first problem, anyway,” Ward said,
pointing to Drayger. “There’s no way I’m going to be able to hold on to either
of you,” he said, looking at Revolution and Drayger. “It would take everything
I have just to get myself through. Plus, hurricane-force winds will play havoc
with my wings. They’re fueled by oxygen—sure. But I’ve never flown them in
those kinds of conditions. I can’t even guarantee that they won’t malfunction.
It’s suicide.”

     No one said anything for several moments. Tension hung
in the room.

     “Lantern,” Leslie said finally, changing the subject,
“what do we know about this facility?”

     “Not much. But there are a lot of encrypted signals
coming out of it.”

     “What does that mean?” Sophia asked.

     “Based on what I can observe, either a communications
outpost of some sort or exotic weapons storage. Probably,” Lantern said.

     “Why take Rachel there?” Leslie asked.

     Lantern shook his head. “The cloak? If it’s a weapons
facility, that might make sense.”

     “I just don’t think this is a good idea,” Ward said,
unable to tear his mind from the monstrous freak hurricane. “We need to know
more about what we are going to face. We need to know we can get there without
all dying.  We need—”

     “That’s enough!” Revolution said, and the room fell
quiet. “We survived Man-O-War by the skin of our teeth. Without Fiona we
wouldn’t have. We all know that. The Council got us to walk into the heart of
their fortress and humiliated us. Even COR is losing faith in us. If we don’t
move now the Resistance could crumble.”

     The Revolution turned to the big screen at the end of
the room and stared at the facility Rachel was being held in. “We are going in
through the cover of this hurricane. I don’t care how we do it.” He turned back
to them. “Find me a way.”

     He marched out of the room with his cape billowing
behind him.

     The room fell silent again. They sat there for what
seemed like an eternity. No one could deny that attacking under the cover of
the storm was brilliant. It just couldn’t be done.

     Could it?

     A loud voice from just outside the door startled them
all. “The Vortex engines!”

     Young Willard, Leslie’s tall, lanky assistant, came
bounding into the room.

     “Will, how many time do I have to tell you, these
meetings are confidential.”

     “I know, I know!  I’m so sorry! But...
the Vortex
engines!”
he shouted again. “That’s the answer to our problem!” Willard was
yelling, wild eyed. Almost out of control, they thought. “It’s the answer to
our dilemma!”

     Leslie’s mind shot back to the failed Vortex
experiment.
Not enough draw into the engines
, she had said. “Hurricane-force
winds—they’ll provide all the draw those engines can handle!”

     Willard beamed the broadest grin, as if to say,
Exactly
.

     “Call back the General!” Leslie told him.  

     Ward could barely remember it. She’d told Roosevelt
they were “testing the Vortex engines” the day he’d come in to talk to Revolution
about being in the Suns. It was only a few days ago, but it already seemed like
forever. He remembered the failed experiment in the lab when the guy had tried
to fly with a pair of the engines on his hips. He’d not given it another
thought.

     “Something tells me I’m about to fly through a
hurricane?” Drayger said.

     “Um, not so fast, guys,” Sophia said grimly as she
stared into her RDSD. “We’ve got another big problem.”

     “How big?” Ward asked.

     “Like the size of Delaware.”

CHAPTER 22

NEW YORK CITY

FREEDOM RISE

B
annister
Tarleton beamed. “They performed very well.”

     “I told you they would,” William Howke said.

     “I still don’t know why you didn’t let them just kill
them all. It would have been easy.”

     Howke glanced around the room of aristocratic opulence.
Hardwood floors covered in the finest Persian rugs: royal red, deep gold, and
silver. Intricate hand-carved wooden walls ran along the sides of the great
room. Rare, priceless artwork adorned them. Pure gold and platinum statues,
urns, and planters stood all around. In contrast, high-tech communication devices
were hidden within the room’s various sitting areas.

     A main wall of television screens faced the throne
seat at the very center of the room. Howke’s predecessor, Thomas Sage, was
known to sit in that chair for hours watching the coverage of his company on
the wall of televisions.

     But not Howke. He was a nervous man by nature. He preferred
to pace, as he was doing now. But the coverage he was watching did calm his
nerves somewhat.

     No, that wasn’t true. He wished it would, but actually,
it sent electricity shooting through him. His masterstroke, Lithium’s masterstroke,
had worked just like a charm. Everything was falling into place.

     Captain—strike that—
Colonel
Clay Arbor was
indeed a man he could work with. Tom Sage’s big mistake was keeping a man like
that, a patriot like that, on the sidelines for so long, using him only as a
sideshow.

     Lithium needed to be front and center. He would be—from
now on.

     “Look at that,” Howke said, pointing to the news
coverage. “That’s why we can’t kill them. Not yet.”

     On screen, Media Corp reporters were talking in
excited tones over images of Lithium and the Legion. They profiled each member
of the team: Lithium, Velocity, Fiddler, and Fang. X-Ray was kept out of the
coverage. The images from the day showed them hauling out the bloodied and
injured from the smoking lobby of Freedom Rise. The victims were all just
innocent office workers, targeted by the Suns of Liberty. That’s how the coverage
was spinning it.

     The Legion were the new super team. The
true
super team, unlike the phony Suns of Liberty.

     Of course, no reporter actually said those words, but
the underlying  message was clear.

     Images of New Yorkers filling the streets outside of
Bryant Park protesting the Suns of Liberty splashed across the screens next.
More protests on Sixth Avenue outside the smoking entrance to Freedom Rise
itself.

     “First, we kill their name,” Howke said. And at that
moment the coverage switched to a statement made by Arbor as he looked directly
into the cameras outside the smoking entrance of Freedom Rise, which was framed
perfectly in the background.

    
“He’s always been misguided, but now he and the
Suns of Liberty have taken it too far.  When you attack innocent people just
trying to make a living, you’ve gone too far. We, the Legion, are here to
protect you, and I vow today we will find the Revolution and his Suns of Liberty and we will bring them to justice.”

    
Then the shot cut to Lithium laughing as he signed autographs
for kids waiting to meet him.

     “
Then
we kill them,” Howke said. The gopher
grin was back.

     Tarleton wasn’t known for smiling much, but that
brought a grin to his face as well.

     “Now, the other problem is the Fletcher girl. You find
out from Von Cyprus if he really is close to an alternative and how fast he can
rebuild that chamber. I want Project Krill up and running, but I also don’t
want to have to depend on it.”

     “Already did it. We’ve got every asset we can spare
working on it now.” Tarleton hesitated for a moment and then asked, “How much
do you want to know?”

     “Tom never wanted to know the details. I’m not Tom. I
want to know what it can do. Just don’t tell me what you’re going to do with it
until it’s done, clean, and taken care of. This next step in the process will
need to be precise. Very precise.”

     “I know.”

     “How close are we to getting the data?”

     “Ray’s working on it, but this Lantern guy they have,
he’s good.”

     “But Ray’s better, right? I mean, everyone says he’s
the very best since what’s-his-name?”

     “Yeah, since Diego Alvarez died.” Tarleton was
impressed Howke would know that info given that Tarleton himself had only
learned of it since they’d decided to form the Legion—and Tarleton was the CEO
of the country’s largest defense contractor that actually dealt with Locator-type
technology.

     “Right.” Howke finally strolled over and took his seat
in the center of the room—a sign to Tarleton the meeting had just ended. “I
want the whole world, especially the Suns of Liberty, focused on the Legion.
Then we’ll make our next move.”

Eric
Von Cyprus unlocked the door and stepped into the room, two heavily armed
Council Guardsmen flanking him.

     “It’s all right, you can go. I’ll be fine,” he said to
them, and the two Guards marched back out of the door.

     Seated in front of him was Rachel Dodge, unbound and unharmed.
The collar had been taken off, and she sat in this room that she recognized as
an interrogation room. It looked to be soundproof, and she figured it was also
digitally shielded.

     Von Cyprus was holding her cloak folded over one arm.
In his other was a clipboard with a thick stack of papers attached. He wore odd-looking
metal sleeves that covered his forearms and came down into metal gloves.
Otherwise, he was unremarkable. White shirt and khakis.

     Rachel figured either the steel gloves or the
clipboard were for show, because you couldn’t do both. No way he was shuffling
through those papers wearing the gloves. Was he there to intimidate her, or was
he the real thing?

     “Rachel Dodge,” Von Cyprus read from the papers,
laying the cloak on the floor, taking the chair in front of her. “Ex-CIA. Now,
evidently, an active member of the Suns of Liberty.” Von Cyprus waited for a response from her but was unsurprised she stayed silent. “You weren’t on our
radar at all. But then, I guess that’s your thing, isn’t it?” He dropped the
clipboard to the floor.

     Rachel said nothing.

     “I’m Eric Von Cyprus. I run this place.” He motioned
at the entire facility.

     “Maybe you’ve seen my work? The Man-O-War, for instance?”

     Rachel smirked at him.

     “Oh, that was just the beginning. A trial run, really.
I’ve completed much grander toys than that since then. Now, I’d bet you’d like
to spare your friends from having to play with my toys.” Von Cyprus stepped up almost within reach of Rachel and said to her, “Because mark my words, if they
don’t come in from the cold soon, I’m going to play with them, Ms. Dodge. And
when I play, I play hard and I play to win.”

     Von Cyprus sneered and raised his arms so that the
metal sleeves glimmered in front of her face. “For instance, this toy, I call
my electrosleeves. A bad name for them, since they don’t use electricity at
all. They actually employ a new substance some have called dark energy, but
that’s not entirely accurate. It’s far more deadly than that. I call it black energy.”

     And with that Von Cyprus reached out much faster than
Rachel had expected. He snatched one of her arms in his metal hand.

     Rachel tried to pull her arm away, but at that very
moment a charge of some kind swam through the metal and the scientist’s grip
became amplified a thousand fold. There was no way she was going to break his
clasp.

     “Now, we’ve got a long time to get to know each other.
Let me see if I can make a strong first impression.” The sleeves suddenly shimmered
in the strangest glow Rachel had ever seen. She almost swore there was a black
mist floating around the sleeves, except this was no mist at all. It was
actually a glow. A
black glow
.