New Olympus Saga (Book 1): Armageddon Girl (38 page)

Chapter Twenty

The Freedom Legion

Atlantic Headquarters, March 14, 2013

Kenneth Slaughter walked into the
Legion’s main communication room, where Daedalus Smith, Hyperia and Meteor were
already gathered. Meteor had flown to the Atlantic Headquarters to serve as a
replacement for Swift and Artemis. If someone tried to attack Freedom Island
again, they might need his help. Under the current circumstances, they might
need more help than was available.

A dozen communication technicians sat
behind large screens covering one third of the oval room. Kenneth nodded to one
of them, and the comm call Kenneth had received minutes ago was transferred to
the largest central screen, revealing the battered face of Doctor Cohen.

“You’re on, Doctor,” Kenneth said.
“Please repeat what you just told me.”

“It’s Ultimate,” Cohen said anxiously.
“I’m afraid he has suffered a psychotic break of some sort. He didn’t exactly
attack me – I wouldn’t be alive otherwise – but he rushed past me as if he
didn’t see me, and I was slammed me into a wall and knocked unconscious for
some time. He was talking about a plot against him from within the Legion’s
ranks. He specifically blamed you, Doctor Slaughter, but he appeared to blame
most of the Legion as well.”

“To that we can add the reports that
Ultimate attacked the Chicago Sentinels for unknown reasons,” Hyperia said, her
dark blue eyes bright with concern. She absently played with her jet black hair
as she continued her report. “They were subduing a rogue Neolympian when he
struck them down and carried her away, also for unknown reasons. The Sentinels
suffered minor injuries, except for Devolution Man, who had to be
hospitalized.”

“I am extremely worried,” Doctor Cohen
continued. “If he has been consumed by paranoid delusions, it may be nearly
impossible to reason with him.”

“Thank you for your help, Doctor Cohen,”
Kenneth said. “We will be in touch.” The therapist’s face was replaced on the
screen by a replay of Ultimate’s attack on the Sentinels. Ultimate’s expression
in the news footage was wholly alien to the man Kenneth knew. That raised his
suspicions. Could John change so much, so quickly? Or was there another factor
in play?

“I’m going to go out on a limb and say
this isn’t good at all,” Daedalus said with his usual flippancy. Kenneth knew
that his counterpart used humor as a tension reliever, but it still never
failed to irritate him.

“Ultimate’s gone bloody barking mad,”
Meteor said, with more than a hint of schadenfreude in his tone. “And you don’t
look very much surprised, Doc,” he added, glaring accusingly at Kenneth.

Feeling like he was betraying John’s
confidence, Kenneth spoke. “Some of us have noticed that John seemed to be
suffering from some emotional problems. Nobody had any inkling things were so
bad, let alone that he could become a danger to others. I still find it hard to
believe.”

“He seems to be dangerous enough. He
stomped on the Chicago Sentinels pretty good,” Daedalus said. “Of course, none
of them is rated higher than 2.8. They never had a chance against him.”

“Do
we
have a chance of stopping
him, if it comes to that?” Hyperia asked. In many ways she was Ultimate’s
female counterpart, immensely strong and nearly impervious to injury. However,
she had always come a distant second to John in terms of raw power. Kenneth found
the PAS system deeply flawed, a facile and largely inaccurate attempt to
quantify parahuman powers, but the numbers provided an easy point of reference.
Ultimate’s number was 3.6. Hyperia was a 3.2. Four ‘points’ did not seem like a
lot until one understood that each point represented a large increase in power.
John was three times more powerful than Hyperia by most measures. “Can we take
down Ultimate?”

“That’s the sixty-four thousand quid
question, isn’t it?” Meteor said sourly. His one fight with Ultimate had not
gone well. “We could bury him in bodies, if it comes to that, but we’ll lose
more people than we did on yesterday’s attacks. Many more.”

“I’ve been making some tweaks to my
Myrmidon Armor,” Daedalus said. “I think I might surprise dear old Johnny if
he’s really flipped out. And we can reactivate Janus and get him here PDQ; he
can probably take down Ultimate all by his lonesome. Even then, it’s not going
to be a walk in the park.”

“We’ll have to find Ultimate first,”
Kenneth said. “His communication implant went dead a few minutes ago, somewhere
in the Chicago metro area. He had flown all the way to the Pennsylvania-New
York border before reappearing in Chicago an instant later.”

“I didn’t know Ultimate could teleport,”
Daedalus commented. He was listening to something via his comm implant even as
he spoke.

“As far as I know, he cannot. We do not
have enough information. In any case, if we must confront him, we need to do it
as far from populated areas as possible, or we risk a humanitarian crisis of
unprecedented proportions.”

“Speaking of humanitarian crisis,” Daedalus broke in. “I just got news from the Pacific branch. Plenty of news and it’s all
bad.”

Kenneth’s expression remained impassive,
belying the turmoil within. Too many things were going wrong at the same time.
Suspiciously so. He listened to the initial reports coming from Hong Kong.
Chasca, a Councilor and one of the most respected leaders of the Legion, was
dead, killed by weapon that could apparently neutralize parahuman powers. Artemis
had been severely injured as well. The investigation had revealed more evidence
that the Dragon Empire had been responsible or at least complicit in the attack
on the Legion. War with the Empire was becoming more likely by the moment.

“We need to prepare for the worst,”
Kenneth said. He was the current team leader, a rotating position that would
have gone to Ultimate the following month, ironically enough. “Daedalus, please
take Hyperia and Meteor and any other active members you need and prepare a
plan to subdue Ultimate should it become necessary. I want to emphasize we must
attempt to communicate with Ultimate before taking any hostile actions. This
could still be a misunderstanding or some form of deception.”

“Sure thing, Fearless Leader,” Daedalus
replied. “Trust me, the last thing I want to do is to go
mano a mano
with ol’ Shiva Incarnate. By the way, when are you going to call the President?
I hope he didn’t have any plans for the weekend, ‘cause he’s gonna be busy.”

“Why should we contact the US President
directly? We’re not a US appendage, much as the newspapers like to pretend we
are,” Meteor broke in.

“Sure, matey,” Daedalus said mockingly.
“But who else are we going to call? The UN doesn’t exactly have a hot line.
Someone’s got to call an emergency meeting of the Security Council. It’s
probably a good idea if it’s not the Legion doing it. Do you want the media
accusing us of instigating the Third Asian War? And our most famous Legionnaire
just wiped the floor with a licensed super-team on American soil. We have to
get in touch with the White House, pronto.”

“Daedalus is right,” Kenneth said,
forestalling Meteor’s angry response. “I will contact the White House and offer
to brief the President or anybody he chooses to speak to me.”

“Better you than me, Doc.” Daedalus said;
he and US President Colletta did not get along. Daedalus’ unwavering support of
the Republican Party and his efforts to strangle the Reform Party in its cradle
had a lot to do with their mutual dislike. Unlike his fellow inventor, Kenneth
had made a point of remaining thoroughly apolitical throughout his career,
which was very helpful whenever he had to deal with the US government. The
choice of messenger would not make these particular news any more palatable, of
course.

Everybody went off to play their roles.
Kenneth could not help feeling those roles had been scripted in advance by
someone else, and that whoever was doing so was no friend of the Legion, or the
world.

Hunters and Hunted

New York City, New York, March 14, 2013

The fateful moment was near.

Mr. Night could sense something momentous
was nearly at hand, an event so powerful it was creating echoes through the
fabric of time itself. His ability to peer into the future was limited at the
best of times, but he could feel the appointed time’s presence like a sudden
variation of pressure announcing the imminent arrival of a powerful storm. Every
precognitive Neolympian in the planet must be convulsing and foaming at the mouth,
overcome by visions forecasting the end of everything they held dear.

That normally pleasant image did little
to amuse Mr. Night. The girl was too close to becoming the ruination of all his
plans. Her capture would make the foreordained end of humanity a certainty. Her
death would make for an acceptable alternative outcome, delaying the inevitable
but only for a relatively short time. But if she escaped, if she was allowed to
roam free and learn, everything he had worked for could be ruined.

Mr. Night looked at his henchmen with a
critical eye. Medved was sitting on a couch that visibly sagged under his
weight, with the Lady Shi curled in his arms like a kitten and whispering sweet
nothings into his ear. Archangel was behind his desk, lost in thought. They
were ready for action, relaxing as experienced warriors do, turning their minds
away from the possibility of death and getting what rest they could. They were
a formidable trio, but Mr. Night was not sure they were up to the task.

The girl had somehow gathered several
champions along the way, including Ultimate himself. The murderous misfits at
Mr. Night’s disposal were powerful and capable, but he didn’t think they were
up to the task. Mr. Night expected to have his own hands full with his old friend
Damon Trent, better known as the Lurker; Damon, the treacherous meat bag who
had learned of Mr. Night’s grandiose vision and devised his own scheme to
thwart it. He needed his three little puppets to take care of everyone else and
capture or kill the girl.

He needed to stack the deck a little,
even if it meant making a few changes here and there.

Archangel was the most powerful of the
lot, but he was also the most unreliable, a man dedicated only to his own survival
at the expense of all else. Trying to improve him was likely to be
counterproductive, not to mention difficult: the Russian’s mind and will were
well protected by an artifact of some sort. Mr. Night was surprised that little
Cassandra had managed to snare Archangel, even at the cost of her own life. The
woman had shown unsuspected depths. He really should have killed her when their
paths crossed all those many years ago. In any case, it would be left to leave
the cherubim the way he was. He would do well enough on his own.

Mr. Night considered Lady Shi. He could
see the brutalized little girl she once had been quite clearly, and the years
of trauma that had broken her mind over and over. What had emerged from that
cauldron of degradation and torment was a beautiful killing machine, but there
were a few too many twists and turns inside that pretty little head. You
couldn’t tell which of her mental building blocks could be altered safely. He
decided to spare her as well.

Medved, on the other hand, was a simple
man. He was happy when things went his way, and angry when they didn’t. He cared
nothing for most people, but when he made a friend or a lover he was
fanatically loyal. He wasn’t an imbecile – few Neolympians were – but he was
not a man given to thought or introspection. That made him an ideal subject for
Mr. Night’s purposes.

“Mister Bear,” Mr. Night said. “Front and
center, if you please.”

Medved rose ponderously from the couch.
“What do you want, little man?” he growled.

“In a very short while, we are going to
face Ultimate the Invincible Man. How would you like to be known as the man who
killed him?”

The massive Slav considered this. His
frown became a smile. “That would be good. Everybody loves him, the pretty man
in his fancy costume. I would enjoy tearing him to shreds.”

“What are you going to do to Medved?”
Lady Shi asked. She wasn’t smiling. The Japanese killer knew enough about Mr.
Night not to trust him when he came bearing gifts. Smart girl.

“Nothing he won’t like,” Mr. Night said
in what he considered to be a reassuring tone. Nobody seemed reassured. Well,
he
was
lying, so he couldn’t blame them for not believing him. “I’m
going to give him power, woman. Far more power than he’s ever known. And you
are going to follow orders like a good schoolgirl and not interfere,
wakarimasuka
?”

Lady Shi tensed. One never knew when the
pretty woman with the sharp smile was going to lose control and start severing
limbs with the fiery throwing stars she conjured with her mind. Mr. Night had
been on the receiving end of one such tantrum some years ago, and it had been a
stressful experience for all concerned. Lady Shi remembered how things had
turned out then; she had not enjoyed the results. She stayed her hand and
silently acquiesced to Mr. Night’s little experiment.

Mr. Night considered the problem. Power
given was power lost, so he was forced to be parsimonious. He examined Medved’s
massive hands and especially his fingers, the blunt digits that could produce
two-inch long black talons capable of shredding steel. Against Ultimate, they
might draw a little blood, inflict some shallow scratches, and no more.
Medved’s strength was but a fraction of the Invincible Man’s. And yet, with a
little infusion of the darkness inside Mr. Night’s soul, things would be
different.

He held the brute’s hands with his own.
Medved grunted as coldness rushed up from his hands and arms into his body. The
darkness found the man’s inner rage and intermingled with it. Mr. Night nodded
in satisfaction. The Outside had found an agreeable place to nest and grow.

Medved took a step back and pulled his
hands away, but it was too late. If he survived the night, the giant’s body and
soul would undergo a number of changes. He was strong, and he might even live
through the process for longer than a fortnight, but he was unlikely to last
much longer than that. The Source and the Outside were opposing forces, and
their interactions could best be described as corrosive. Only Damon Trent had
managed to survive for long under those conditions. It was a pity such a
historical figure had to be sacrificed, but needs must when Mr. Night drives.

The time to act was getting close.