The Suns of Liberty: Legion: A Superhero Novel (26 page)

     “Hold it,” Ward whispered. “Can you distract them somehow?”

     “No. But maybe that ghost-thing can.”

     “Right. Lantern, you catch that?

    
“On it,”
he said back.

     The feed in their HUDs suddenly lifted into the air,
and they knew the Hollow was floating up to the ceiling, keeping its video feed
on the two men. It passed over them and landed behind the two, who of course
were oblivious.

     The Hollow remained invisible. And in this form, it
could do only two things. It could send back video, and it could create and
record audio. Not much of a weapon. But just what it needed.

     “Please help me,” it whispered.

     The Guards both turned toward each other.

     “What?” the Guard nearest the door asked the other.

     “Uh. I thought that was you.”

     “Nah, wasn’t me.”

     The Guardsmen scanned the area but saw nothing.

     “Please, I can’t feel anything. Help me.”

     This time the voice was loud and right behind them, so
they spun. And there in barely visible translucent light was the Hollow. A
perfect replica of Lantern.

     The men looked at each other in shocked bewilderment,
but before they could say anything, they were seized by overwhelming fear. And
then they were seized by darkness—and the fleeting awareness of a small sting
in the small of their backs.

     “Nice shooting. Again,” Drayger said.

     But Ward was already sprinting to the door.

     Drayger followed him and saw Rachel on the other side.
There was a code lock on the door. Ward moaned his frustration.

     Drayger pointed the pistol at it, but Ward waved him
off.

     “I’ve got it.” It was the Hollow. It floated past them
and reached its ghostly hand into the keypad. Ten seconds later, the numbers
lit up and the door opened. Ward charged in, and he and Rachel embraced.

     For once, Rachel Dodge didn’t have a smart-ass
comment.

     “You’re hurt,” Ward said, peering down at her raw
wrist.

     “It’s nothing,” she said.

     Ward grabbed up her cloak. “Let’s get you out of here.”

     They made for the door.

     Rachel glanced over at Drayger. “Who’s this?”

     Drayger shot her a long, appraising gaze that said he
liked what he saw.

    
“Five minutes,”
Lantern’s voice said over the
coms.

CHAPTER 26

V
on
Cyprus was messing with the video reception. He was only the most brilliant
scientist in the country—you’d think he could fix bad reception. Finally the
screen cleared up and he saw the Guard’s battling with the Suns.

     “Shit!”

     He knew exactly what was going on. He looked over at
the metal sleeves he had worn earlier in his interrogation of Rachel Dodge. He
bounded over to them and strapped them on his arms.

    
“Doctor, we’ve got company,”
the Guard commander’s
voice shouted into his ear.
“The Suns of Liberty are on the premises.”

     “I see them on the monitor. I’m heading down there,”
Von Cyprus said, flexing the metal gloves.

    
“No, don’t risk it, just...”
The commander’s voice
trailed off.

On
the other end of the line, a skidding sound caught the commander’s attention.
In the communication room where he and his twenty remaining Guards waited,
something small and metallic slid across the floor.

     “Hang on just a second, Doctor,” the commander said.

     At first, most of those who noticed it thought it was
probably one of the other guys fooling around and they were waiting to hear the
punch line. But a few recognized it for what it was.

     A bomb.

    
Boom!

     The Revolution had tossed the grenade into the room
and waited in the hall. A thick cloud of smoke followed the thunderous bang and
flash of light. Revolution and Sophia stepped through the door. They had both
activated their protective gear that allowed them to breathe underwater or in
toxic air. All twenty of the Council Guard lay knocked out by the gas. The
grenade was really just a high-powered tear gas canister filled with a chemical
agent that would knock everyone out for hours.

     They scanned the room just to make sure everyone was
out and then headed back to the main room to meet up with the others.

     When the five had reunited and seen that Rachel was
little worse for wear, Revolution ordered them to get to work.

     “Destroy it all,” he said. 

     Sophia did the heavy lifting, blasting away with her
bracelets. Ward took up the slack with his disablers. Revolution fired his
cylinder grenades at the far corners of the room to minimize any shrapnel
coming the way of the others.

     As such, it left him isolated and nearest one of the
stairwells. His parabolic hearing caught a sound, and he stopped and turned
toward the stairwell.

     It was then that the Revolution saw something that
should not have existed on this Earth. Long veins of lightning arced across the
room, seeking him out, barely missing. Except they weren’t lightning. In fact,
they weren’t even light. They looked just like bolts of electricity except they
were black as coal. And despite that, they seemed to
glow
. A black glow.

     Being so close to them gave him a chill. His stomach lurched.
Dizziness hit. He thought he might vomit. What the hell were these things?
Where were they coming from?

     Revolution sought out their source.

    
Von Cyprus.

     Revolution recognized him instantly. It was no secret
to the Resistance that he was the head of the Council’s science division.

     The scientist was taking aim for a second time. The
black bolts erupted from the long metal sleeves on Von Cyprus’s arms and snaked
straight for him. Revolution dove out of the way just in time to see the drone
and its building station behind him dissipate from existence, dancing in the
black electricity before burning into nothing.

     The power was immense. Revolution hadn’t seen anything
like it since the Fire Fly.

     The Dark Patriot bounded behind another drone station
at full speed, aiming his own weapon—a concussion grenade—at the scientist. The
cylinder spun out from his own armored sleeve. Unlike Von Cyprus, Revolution
had a laser-guided aiming system. The grenade was deadly accurate.

     At this range, Von Cyprus didn’t stand a chance. The
grenade would kill him for sure.

     But Von Cyprus fired the bolts again, and just before
the grenade could reach its target, the energy detonated the cylinder. The
blast erupted—but then, as if surrounded by a black hole, the force from the
explosion was sucked into some kind of vacuum created by the bolts of
lightning. The blast took Von Cyprus off his feet and threw him to the ground.
He clanged and grunted.

     But he was very much still alive.

     Revolution moved. He sprung forward, sprinting behind
another station only fifty feet from the scientist, using the explosion as
cover. In his 360 cam he saw the others bounding up behind him.

     The cavalry.

     “Stop right there!” Von Cyprus shouted. “I may not be
the best shot, but I don’t have to be. This is a matter displacer. The first of
its kind. Imagine a combination of dark energy and anti-matter working together
to negate normal matter. All I have to do is expand its range and it will
eliminate everything in its path from material existence. Including you and
your friends.”

     “I think that thing’s done for, Eric. Give up and come
with us,” Revolution said. Revolution’s scan wasn’t reading any more electrical
activity coming from the sleeves. He could only hope the impact had taken them
out.

     Revolution shot forward to the next station, and Von
Cyprus aimed the blasters. And just as Revolution had thought—

     Nothing happened.

     He peered back at the other Suns and waved them on.
All five of them stalked toward the scientist, who rose to his feet and scrambled
back, slamming into the far wall, fear gripping his face.

     Ward watched the man frantically attempt to revive the
strange metal sleeves, but they were done for.
This mission is falling into
place
, Ward thought.

     “One minute and twenty-seven
seconds,”
Lantern
warned over the com.

     “Everything set out there?”

    
“Right on schedule, sir.”

     “Goodbye, Eric,” Revolution said.

     “Looks like the only toy you’re going to be playing
with tonight is your own, fucker!” Rachel said, glaring at him.

     With that, they tromped up one flight of stairs to the
ground floor and exited through the front doors.

     Rachel slipped into the flight suit that they had
hastily gathered for her, put her cloak into the now empty backpack, and
strapped on a pair of vortex engines.

     Sophia bear-hugged the Revolution, who did the same to
Drayger. It was an odd arrangement, but Sophia had the power to hold onto both
of them when augmented by the H3 power. She let the bright blue power form a
thin sheen over her entire body and when she grabbed hold of the Revolution, he
could feel it coursing through his own armor.

    
No, she’s not going to have any trouble holding
onto the two of us,
he thought.

     Ward hugged Rachel and found himself disappointed when
she had no snarky or suggestive remarks about his legs being wrapped around her,
or something like that. Then they all blasted off into the air with the far
wall of the hurricane churning right behind them.

     The flight through the eye was easy. Nothing launched
from the facility in Trenton, and no drones from the Delaware were waiting for
them. As they reached the hurricane wall again Revolution wanted to make sure
he knew what was coming at them from the other side.

     “Lantern, status report.”

    
“Big Bird is blown. Chicks falling from the nest,
though. Be careful.”

     Sophia and Ward began to let go of their passengers as
the swirling gusts of the storm gave power to the vortex engines strapped to
Revolution’s, Drayger’s, and Rachel’s hips. Revolution peered over at Sophia.
“Here we go.”

     Ward had kept a tight hold of Rachel and let her body
slide against his until he only had hold of her arm and then finally her hand.
He leaned over to Rachel and lied, “Just do what I do and it will all be fine!”

     They entered the wall of the massive storm for the
second time. It was like crashing through a concrete barrier that instantly morphed
into a high-powered whirlpool. They were whisked in the fury of the storm and
slung into the grey.

     They could hear nothing but the constant roar. Not
even their own screams.

CHAPTER 27

A
giant swirling grey vortex had swallowed them. It was all they could do to just
hold onto each other.

     Finally, they gained their bearings. They formed a
straight line across the sky, crabbing into the wind, as before. Ward breathed
a sigh of relief.

    
“You’ve got bogies headed your way. Too much
static, can’t tell what they are,”
Lantern warned them.

     At that very moment, the wind and rain in front of
them began to glow a ghostly orange. It was so odd they just stared at it.

     And then...

     Something huge flew out of the grey wall of the storm
clouds, flames raging out of the object. It zoomed by, blurred by incredible
speed, shrouded by the foamy grey of the storm. It shot right at them, just
above their heads.

     Sophia shot Revolution a look that said,
What the
hell was that?

     He understood. He did his best to shrug.

     Another zipped by, just below them. Again, just an
orange blur.

     The third one that flew by, just off to their right,
had two glowing red eyes, and they knew what they were.

     Drones.

     On fire.

     In Rachel’s eyes, Ward saw terror. Pure, unadulterated
terror. Maybe it was seeing someone so courageous, so ballsy, if he could use
that term, reduced to her current state, but it broke his heart.

     Ward pulled her closer to him and typed a text into
her visor though a thought-command. “
Just stay close. I’ll keep you covered.”

     “
It’s a date,”
came back over his HUD, and
despite the sharp fear rippling through her, she winked at him.

     Ward felt his face flush.

     Rachel’s flirty gaze distorted. She broke eye contact
and peered ahead. And the face of terror returned.

     The entire wall of the hurricane for as far as they
could see above them was glowing orange. It looked like a massive wall of fire
was headed for them.

     Sophia pulled them. She fired her thrusters on full,
and they dove.

     And dove.

     Fast. Hard. A stomach-lurching descent.

     Just in time to see, feel, and even hear, despite the
all-consuming roar of the storm, an enormous mass of burning debris zoom over
their heads.

     It looked like the entire
Delaware
was on fire
and had just crashed the through the storm above them.

     In Ward’s HUD, another message from Rachel scrolled: “
Aren’t
you glad you signed back up?”

Only
a few miles away, as the roiling storm clouds faded away over the horizon, Clay
Arbor and Kendrick Ray were being utilized to the fullest extent of their
considerable superhero abilities in the aftermath of the hurricane that had
walloped Trenton, New Jersey.

     If by fullest extent one meant a photo-op.

     They were both in costume, perched in the branches of
a mangled tree, right in the middle, not coincidentally, of Liberty Street.

     Arbor was reaching out toward a drenched cat that
looked like it wanted to claw his eyes out and use his brains for a litter box.

     Fortunately for Arbor, those eyes were covered by a
titanium-alloy visor.

     Ray leaned over and whispered to him “I just want to
point out that we are literally rescuing cats from trees now.”

     Arbor said nothing. Instead, he reached up and grabbed
the cat—which had no choice but to comply and fortunately just went limp. He
and Ray scampered down the tree and posed for the photographers.

     A thousand flashbulbs.