Black Onyx Duology (16 page)

13

Atlantis hovered until the dot of fire disappeared. He had mastered the speed. How few, even of her own people whom she’d taught personally, had mastered that aspect of the armor? It had taken her
nearly a millennia to do it. And even without guidance, that man had managed in a few seasons’ time.

Such a shame he had to die. Excellent soldiers were rare.

Noise erupted behind her, and she turned to see men in green uniforms with machines and weapons. One shouted at her through a contraption held at his mouth. Was that their army? A sudden twinge of pity went through her. If that was the best they could offer, they had not progressed much in the millenniums she had been in slumber.

“Surrender now!” the man shouted.

Lifting her hand, she crushed his head without going anywhere near him. The others began firing projectiles. One of the machines boomed, and a larger projectile barreled toward her. Slamming her fist into it, she rent the thing into pieces. The smaller ones bounced off her with faint pings.

She rose into the air. “Bow to your queen.”

When the men continued to fire their weapons, she clapped her hands. Firestorms swallowed the men, turning them to ash. The machines caught fire and blew apart or melted. The flames rolled through the city, eating everything in their path before eventually dissipating. She settled back onto the ground.

Her servant ran over to her. “Are you injured, Queen?”

“No. But I believe I’ve had enough play. Take me to their king, servant. I will offer them one opportunity for surrender.”

“And if they do not?”

“They will all be killed, and the earth repopulated with our own kind.”

14

Jaime awoke and watched the sunlight dance on the walls for a few minutes. She loved her house. It had belonged to her grandfather, a native Hawaiian, and then had been passed from her parents to her. Her parents were still alive, but they preferred year-round travel to settling down in one place, and since she was the oldest of their children, the house was hers.

After she showered and dressed, she prepared a bowl of cereal and took it out onto the deck. She glanced over at Dillon’s house. He was usually out doing yoga or surfing that time of the morning, but she didn’t see him. Figuring he had slept late for a change, she finished her cereal, enjoying the cool morning breeze.

When Dillon still hadn’t appeared twenty minutes later, she walked over to his house. Opening the sliding glass door, she stuck her head in. “Dillon? You here?”

No answer. She stepped inside and called his name again. No answer.

Walking through the kitchen, she spotted a photo on the wall—James with his arm around Dillon. They were on top of a mountain, their faces cranberry-red from the cold. Dillon looked so happy.

She missed James. Whenever she’d had a problem, she would come over and have a glass of wine with James. He would hear her out and give her advice. More times than she could remember, whatever he said had been exactly what she’d needed to hear.

“Dillon, where are you?”

She checked upstairs and in the bathrooms. No Dillon. He wasn’t in the basement, either. She checked the garage. The suit was gone. She pulled out her cell and tried Dillon’s number, but the call went straight to voicemail. She dialed Henry’s number.

“Hello.”

“Henry?”

“Yes?”

“This is Jaime.”

“Oh, my apologies. I don’t have your number programed.”

“No problem. Hey, have you talked to Dillon lately?”

“Yesterday. We spoke briefly.”

“Did he say he was going somewhere?”

“No, why?”

“I can’t find him, and the suit’s gone, too.”

“Well, if I could traverse around the world in a few minutes, I don’t think I’d be home much, either.”

“I guess so. If you hear from him, can you tell him to call me?”

“Certainly, darling.”

“Thanks.”

She sighed and rummaged through the fridge, finding some Crystal Light. She poured a glass, then flopped on the couch and turned on the television.

A breaking news story had taken over the channel. Underneath a reporter on location was a ticker:

Possible terrorist attack in Beverly Hills.
Vigilante known as the Black Onyx reportedly killed.

The glass dropped from her hand as tears welled up in her eyes.

15

Jaime watched the entire news broadcast then turned to another station and watched a different report. A woman with an unknown weapon had torn apart a section of Beverly Hills, killing hundreds of civilians and police officers. The National Guard had been called. The soldiers were annihilated, their tanks and Humvees destroyed. No one had actually seen the Black Onyx die, but a handful of witnesses had given their accounts.

“He was up in the air, right,” some guy said as the camera cut to him. “And like that chick, man, she shot this like laser outta her hands, man. Shot it just right outta her hands. And it hit the Onyx dude, and it looked like it blew him up, man. Pieces o’ him was flyin’ all over. But I didn’t see where he fell or nothin’.”

The camera turned to a woman whose hair was messy, with bits of ash and splintered wood in it.

“Well, I saw him, yeah. He was flying around. And if you ask me, he’s just as dangerous as that woman, flying around in a suit like that. What if he fell into my house? I have cats, and I can’t be home all the time to protect them. But I saw him, and he was flying, and then she shot him with something… what’s that? No, I don’t know what it was. It looked like a laser beam like you see on those movies late at night.”

Jaime felt numb, as if someone had injected her entire body with Novocain. As one show ended and another began, she felt queasy. She stood to run to the bathroom but didn’t get far before vomiting all over Dillon’s carpet.

Sitting on the floor, leaning against a chair, she put her hands over her face and sobbed.

16

Daniel R. Green trekked through the snow on Mount McKinley with the crampons his grandson had given him for Father’s Day. The cold was biting, and though wrapped up tightly in arctic gear, he felt its sting on his face, hands, feet, and pretty much everywhere else.

The place was beautiful. The trees were coated with white, and the mountain was a deep blue, capped with white and rust-colored dirt and stone underneath the snow.

As he made the turn up a trail heading back to camp, he spotted something black half buried in the snow. He veered off the trail for a closer look and lifted his goggles up onto his forehead.

Two legs were sticking out of a snowdrift. They didn’t look like any legs he’d ever seen. They were covered in some sort of black metal, and large swaths of the metal had been broken or burned away, revealing seared flesh beneath.

He reached down with his gloved hands and dug out some of the snow. The figure appeared to be massive. He tried to move it by shaking it, but he wasn’t strong enough. He continued digging until he found a young man’s face, which was burnt and blue from the cold.

“Hey, bud, you okay? Bud, can you hear me? Hello?”

The metal covering the man hissed, and Daniel jumped back. The casing opened, and the man inside flopped out onto the snow, either unconscious or dead.

The trek back to camp took about fifteen minutes. Daniel retrieved two men and a stretcher, along with the camp doctor. McKinley was North America’s stop on the Seven Summits Tour, the
world climbing event where mountaineers ascended the highest peak on each continent. The base camp was a full day’s journey to the road below, so in case of a medical emergency, a chopper would have to be called. But the storms were raging, whipping snow and frost around the mountain, and taking anything that wasn’t nailed down with it. The chopper couldn’t risk a flight.

“What the hell is that thing?” the camp doctor, a woman named Natalie, asked.

“I don’t know. That’s what he was inside of, and then it opened up, and he dropped out.”

Natalie ran her hand along the suit. “Let’s get him back to camp.”

They carried the stretcher back and set the man up in the medical tent. He was dehydrated, so the first thing Natalie did was give him an IV of fluids. Daniel watched as she checked his wounds.

Purple-black bruises covered his ribs, and Daniel was worried the man might have internal bleeding. Natalie searched for head wounds but only found some burns along one side of his face. In fact, burns were all over his body.

“Infection’s the greatest risk,” she said.

She cleaned the burns with Betadine and bandaged them then gave him another IV of isotonic saline solution. After wrapping him in a sleeping bag and turning on the portable heater, she went back to her laptop, leaving the man to sleep.

“Thanks for doing that, Danny.”

“Hey, I’d want someone to do it for me. Let me know if you need anything. Or if he dies.”

17

Tyler rode the elevator to the top floor of his building. He searched for Atlantis but didn’t find her. One of the secretaries told him she was probably on the roof, so he headed up the stairs.

He had offered her his home, one of the most luxurious in Bel Air, but she had declined, informing him that she didn’t require sleep. Instead, she wanted to read history online in his office.

He knew she’d heard a lot while in her catatonic state. The march of centuries, she called it. But she hadn’t heard everything. She didn’t know what a cell phone was and thought that the television was the greatest invention ever. She liked rock music, of all things, saying that it was barbaric in an intellectual way, so Tyler had given her an iPod loaded with rock and hip hop music.

He stepped out onto the roof and spotted her sitting cross-legged at the edge of the building, earbuds in her ears. He walked over and sat next to her.

“We’ve found one,” he said.

“Which?”

“Miami.” He pulled up a US map on his phone and pointed out Florida. “Here.”

“That was a garrison. I have an entire legion there. Two thousand warriors.”

“With suits?”

“No. There are but a hundred armors left. The rest were destroyed during the Great War.”

“What caused the war?”

“There were some that felt I had ruled for too long. They wished to overthrow me, and war was declared. Unlike your wars, that one was fought
everywhere
. When it was finally over, I had defeated the rebels, but there was nothing left to rule. All my cities had been destroyed, and there were not enough of my people to repopulate the earth.”

“What did you do?”

“I buried my remaining soldiers and retreated to my chamber. The fluid you gave me, we called it M’shu Cara. It means ‘one who falls from the sky.’ If ingested, it prolongs your life indefinitely, giving you great power. In small doses. In large doses, you become… a monster.”

“Is that what happened? You all became monsters and killed each other?”

“Yes. But the Cara only reflects what is already there.”

“When we dig and find your soldiers, what should we do with them?”

“I will be there. They need to see that their queen lives. And I shall wake them.” She looked at him. “But there is something else.”

“What?”

“The young one in the armor lives. I have felt him.”

“I saw him turn into a fireball. There’s no possibility he survived that.”

“And yet he did. You must destroy him. He has power he does not yet recognize. I see him among cold and ice. He is weak but alive.”

“It’ll be done.”

18

Dillon saw the slaughter of millions. The entire planet seemed to be on fire, the sky black with smoke. And death was everywhere. Mothers huddled over children were turned to ashes, buildings collapsed to rubble, and cities were wiped out in an instant. And the screaming was so loud, he thought his ears would bleed.

He woke up and sucked in breath, feeling cold sweat sticking to his skin like glue. Every part of him hurt, and his head pounded. He raised his arm and felt the tug of an IV. He ripped out the needle.

“You still need fluids.”

He looked to his right and saw a woman sitting at a portable desk. He was lying in a tent. “Where am I?” He gasped, his ribs screaming in pain from the effort of speaking.

“You’re at base camp in Mount McKinley. You seemed to have taken a rather nasty fall. Do you remember anything?”

“A fall?”

“Yes.” She came over and placed her hands on his neck then put a stethoscope on his chest. “Deep breath, please.” When he complied, she listened for a moment then asked, “Do you have any inclination to vomit?”

“No.”

“Any headache or loss of vision?”

“Lady, do I look like a guy without a headache?”

“Stupid question, I suppose. Would you like something for the pain?”

“Yes, please.”

She grinned and reinserted the IV. Once the needle was seated, she injected some medicine into the tube. “Demerol. This will take off the edge.”

Almost instantly, Dillon felt lightheaded, and the fiery pain grew to a dull ache. “Oh, man.
That’s the stuff.”

“You don’t remember falling?”

“No.”

“You were in some sort of casing. Like a metal suit.”

Dillon paused. “Where’s the suit?”

“We couldn’t budge it. It was too heavy.”

“It’s here? On the mountain?”

“Yes. About a fifteen-minute hike from here.”

He tried to sit up, but his muscles wouldn’t respond to his thoughts. He collapsed back onto the pillow, a sliver of pain coming up through the thick haze of the drug.

“You need to rest. You’re not going anywhere. As soon as this storm clears, I’m having you life-flighted out of here.”

He studied the woman’s face. “What’s your name?”

“Natalie.”

“I’m Dillon. I guess a thank you is in order.”

“It was nothing. But I’m scared about infection with those burns.”

An image flashed in Dillon’s mind: a red glow and the intense heat of pain, blinding red pain, as though he were flying into the sun. “You don’t happen to have a phone, do you?”

“We have a satellite phone, but it’s out because of the storm.”

Someone poked his head into the tent. “Doc, we got a broken ankle, I think. Kichi-something. One of the Japanese guys.”

“Be right there.” She checked Dillon’s bandages and the IV before standing. “Stay warm and sleep. When you wake up, you can have some ice chips.”

“Can’t wait.”

She grinned then pulled on gloves and a coat and left the tent. When Dillon closed his eyes, the images of death and burning cities were fresh in his mind. And a woman with eyes like fire.