New Olympus Saga (Book 3): Apocalypse Dance (8 page)

Chicago, Illinois, March 28, 2013

Mr. Night felt his unexpected guest’s arrival much like animals sense the approach of an earthquake or hurricane, as a subtle shift in the environment that presaged the arrival of something terrible and momentous.

Something dark and murderous had come to Chicago, looking for Mr. Night. He sat up, interrupting his peaceful communion with his masters, as he felt great power probing around his defenses, seeking to pierce the obfuscating energies he’d placed around his office for this very eventuality. Whoever he was, the newcomer’s aura was thoroughly infused with the power of the Outside. Had they decided his failures could no longer be tolerated? Was this a replacement, here to dispose of him?

Without giving any thought to self-preservation, Mr. Night lowered his defenses and invited the stranger in. His Masters’ will must be done, after all. A moment later, he was no longer alone in his office.

The tainted reincarnation of Damon Trent looked at Mr. Night and laughed.

Mr. Night took one long look at the newcomer before he started laughing as well.

Freedom Island, Caribbean Sea, March 28, 2013

“Look, I don’t like this any more than you, but it can’t be helped,” Daedalus Smith said in an exasperated tone. “Unless you want Budapest to start glowing in the dark, I’m going to have to go see what the hell they’ve done to their reactor.”

One of the many gifts the Legion had bestowed to the world – well, mostly bestowed; the licensing and maintenance fees had been
almost
free but still provided billions of dollars in yearly revenues – had been the designs for clean fusion reactors. The reactors provided enormous amounts of energy so cheaply that most countries didn’t even bother to meter its usage and just charged a largely nominal flat fee for the service. The process was clean, efficient and nearly risk-free. Nearly was the key word, of course: the fusion reaction, if improperly calibrated, could emit excess neutrons. Budapest’s main power reactor had started to do just that.

If you need to leave town, a crisis somewhere far away made for the perfect excuse. With a few clicks of a mouse, Daedalus had manufactured that crisis. Changing the reactor’s flux just enough to turn it into a potential neutron bomb had been child’s play. Even better, no normal egghead would be able to figure out how to stop it.

The rest of the Legion’s Council clearly didn’t like the news. “We need all hands on deck,” Swift said. The stupid prick had gotten promoted to Councilor after Chasca bit the big one in Hong Kong; the stupid Peruvian bitch hadn’t named a substitute, so Artemis had picked her hubby in a blatant display of nepotism.

“It’ll take me all of twelve hours to fix whatever is wrong,” Daedalus replied. “I’ll be back long before the trial is over.”
And when I’m back, everything will be over
. “We don’t have a choice, Larry. If the neutron emissions keep going up at the rate they are reporting, the shielding will fail in nine hours. Do you want me to tell the Hungarian authorities to start evacuating their capital because we’re too busy to help put out the reactor we sold them?”

“Daedalus is right,” Hyperia said, which immediately made Daedalus suspicious. Since when had the Strongest Bimbo on Earth picked his side in an argument? She must be planning something. He was itching to pull the kill-switch and have her pretty little head go up in smoke, but that would raise too many suspicions. Best to let her be. If everything went well in the Ukraine, nothing else would matter. “It’s clear that whatever is wrong with the reactor is not something a regular technician can handle. If anything happens while he’s away, I’ve got enough people at hand to deal with it. If we can’t, I don’t think the Myrmidon can make a difference.”

“I wouldn’t go that far,” Daedalus replied, his contrary disposition coming out even when it wasn’t in his best interests to do so. “But I won’t argue the point. I’ve got to go; Doc Slaughter and I designed those reactors, and Doc’s gone, so that leaves me. You know it, so let’s stop wasting time arguing about it.”

“I have to agree,” Artemis said. Her holographic avatar looked distracted. “Let’s vote and move on.”

The tally was 5-3 in his favor. Daedalus squashed a sudden urge to plant a kiss on Hyperia’s mouth. Now he could get to Hungary as planned, and after a bit of tap dancing he’d have some free time to make a quick trip to the Ukraine.

He was looking forward to meeting the girl.

Kiev, Dominion of the Ukraine, March 29, 2013

The itching in her eye subsided at some point during the night. At least, she thought it had been nighttime or the wee hours in the morning, and now it felt like it was morning. She’d lost track of time a while back; there were no windows in her cell, they had kept the lights on, and the continuing misery of being strapped to an x-shaped cross had made the last few hours seem like eternity.

To entertain themselves, she and Mark had talked, about everything and anything for a good chunk of the night. They’d traded childhood stories, focusing on pleasant stuff; after all, they already had enough unpleasant crap on their hands to fill a Victor Hugo novel. He’d told her some hilarious stories about his early days as a vigilante, and she’d described growing up in Jersey with a cool grandfather who’d toured with Bon Jovi (she had to explain who Bon Jovi was, of course) and a cool mother who was nothing like her Earth Alpha counterpart, a.k.a. the Justice Princess.

It had been nice, much nicer than she’d have expected under the circumstances.

None of that was important, though. She could see out of her damaged eye once again. It was time to try to escape.

They’d taken a couple hours’ break to try and catch some sleep. It hadn’t worked.

They broke contact, because things were likely to get intense for both of them, and their link would only magnify their suffering. Christine was once again alone inside her head.

What if that’s the last time you hear his voice?

She gritted her teeth. No time to think of that kind of crap now. Time to make the donuts, as her mother used to say.

While she’d waited for her eye to heal, and taken a break from talking to Mark, she had been contemplating the Word she’d learned. Power. A simple word: the ability to act. It had many other meanings, of course. Power was freedom. Power was directly tied to choice: if you had it, you could choose to use it or not. The worst times of her life had all involved situations where she’d felt powerless. Like, for example, her current predicament. She’d been imprisoned, tortured, treated like an object instead of a person. Sadly enough, that was far from the first time that had happened, even before her foray into Earth Alpha. A lot of it came from being a woman: too many people, and not just men, thought that not having a penis somehow made you something less of a person. Some of it had been her own personality; she’d always avoided conflict, and if that meant losing an argument or being pushed around, so be it. She’d chosen not to exert even what little power she’d had back then.

Things had changed.

She visualized the sigils, the letters or symbols that made up the Word, saw them like glowing signs shining brightly inside her head. To truly understand the Word would take a good long while, maybe months or years. Christine didn’t have that kind of time, so she forced herself to look away from all the meaning locked inside the Word, and used the little bits she’d been able to glean in the previous hours. She turned the Word into a spigot, and turned it on: the Source’s energy flowed into her.

The disruptors reacted instantly, but she’d been ready for them this time, and her shields came online after a brief burst of agony. She visualized a thin membrane between her skin and the tight metal shackles, and pushed the black energy off her. It was still painful; the Outsider-stuff burned her and made her sick to the stomach, but she kept going. Alarms started blaring a second or two after she started the process; she didn’t have a lot of time.

Christine pushed with her mind, and the metal bands around her left wrist shattered. She freed her legs next, and swung from her right arm for a second before she broke the last of her bonds. The disruptors died with the shackles: power flowed unencumbered through her, and for a second she thought she would burst into flames, like she’d managed to do a few days ago, only this time she would burn herself to a cinder, burn like a moth diving into a pool of lava.

Too much!

A surge of panic almost overwhelmed her. She did the first thing she could think of, and released some of the excess energy into a kinetic blast. One of the walls of her cell exploded, shattering like a kicked sandcastle. Luckily the only thing on the other side of the wall was an empty cell. The release helped steady her. She regained control over her power, and the word Power.

All right! Next, I want my Codex back!

She called to the Codex, and the red cube appeared in her hand a moment later. Her little hospital gown had no pockets, so she kept it in a clenched fist; they’d have to pry it off her cold dead fingers if they wanted it back. If only she could wish for Mark and bring him to her, they’d be all set. Just for the hell of it, she gave it a try.

Wishing didn’t bring him to her. He was still in his cell. Crap. Even worse, her jailors were reacting. Disruptor cannon mounted on every corner of her cell were shooting at her. She hadn’t noticed at first, because her energy output had been so high, but now that she’d tamped down on it, she felt the dark energy begin to eat away at her shields.

Couldn’t have that. She crushed the disruptors with a burst of psychokinetic energy, wincing when the weapons released one last blast of Outsider energy. The room was also being flooded with gas, and she was pretty sure it wasn’t the sleepy kind, except in a ‘put doggie to sleep’ way. She turned her shield into a bubble, with a flat bottom she could walk on, and smashed through the door of her cell.

The corridor outside was bright with red emergency lights. A few people in white lab coats were running away. A soldier peeked around a corner and darted back behind cover as soon as he saw her. From the other end, another bunch of uniformed men rushed into action, disruptors in hand, looking like a Nazi production of
Ghostbusters
.

“Oh no you didn’t!” Christine yelled at them and sent a telekinetic wind their way. She bowled over the whole squad and pushed them up against a wall. For a second she thought about turning up the pressure until they were squished, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it. Instead, careful not to hurt them, she pulled the disruptors from their hands, ripping them off the cables linking them to their backpack units, and crushed the gun-looking bits into a big metal ball. When she was done, she let the guards drop to the floor, and as they struggled to their feet she made a scary face and yelled “Boo!” at them.

The guards ran.

Okay, time to go get Mark. He was still in his cell; his escape attempt wasn’t going as well as hers. She blasted a hole on the floor and dropped to the level below. Two killer robots were there, smaller versions of the ones she’d faced in a secret facility in New York not very long ago. They turned towards her and cannon on their shoulder spat plasma in her direction. Her shield caught the hot stuff and kept it at bay. She had no compunctions about squishing machines; a couple of kinetic strikes later, the robots became twin flattened piles of scrap metal.

The bots hadn’t been equipped with disruptors, interestingly enough. They probably didn’t have that many to go around, which made it the first good news she’d had in a while.

She started to head toward Mark’s cell when the whole corridor went dark. Pitch black, actually; she couldn’t see anything.

Mark had told her about that darkness. Baba Yaga was coming for her. Painfully vivid memories of her recent interaction with the Evil Ukrainian Princess sent Christine’s heart aflutter, but also filled her with anger. Time to see what was what.

Fortunately, Mark had also told her how to handle it. Christine turned on her special vision and saw the Bitch of Pinsk just as she pounced on her. The Ukrainian woman was fast! Christine barely raised a shield in time. Claws and teeth lashed out at machine gun speeds, and her defenses sagged under the multiple impacts. Babalena was screeching like a cat on a hot plate: the sound waves were as much of a weapon as her claws, and they would have burst Christine’s eardrums and liquefied her brain if her protective aura hadn’t kept most of the noise out. For the time being, that was; the multiple attacks were weakening her. If her shields went down, Baba Yaga would tear into her with sound waves, talons and teeth.

The best defense was a good offense. A spear of pure force erupted from her shield and impaled her tormentor. The screeching came to an abrupt halt. Christine visualized a huge mace and sent it crashing down onto the Ukrainian uber-bitch, pile-driving her through the floor.
That was for my eye, c-word.
She jumped down the hole after her.

Baby Yaga didn’t look so tough anymore. The darkness dissipated just as Christine landed next to her foe. The witch was back in her human form, struggling to her feet. There was a hole in her torso about as wide as a softball. Christine could see right
through
it. The gruesome sight made her dry-heave once, but she didn’t throw up, and she didn’t freeze in horror at what she’d done. She launched another telekinetic spear instead. Baba Yaga extended a hand: a ring on her index finger glowed red, and a small sphere of energy deflected the attack, making the spear tear through a wall instead of flesh.

Crap
, Christine thought before the ring flashed again and a thin beam of red energy stabbed at her. The beam pierced through her shield, her aura – and her. A burst of hideous pain erupted on her right shoulder, the agony so intense she almost passed out. She bit her lower lip and forced herself to concentrate, thickening her shield even as Baba Yaga drew the beam of light down like an energy sword, slicing into her. The shield grew stronger and pushed back the energy attack; if she’d been a second slower, her arm would be falling off her body just about now.

The Bitch of Pinsk wasn’t done, however. She kept playing the red beam back and forth over the shield, forcing Christine to concentrate on her defenses. The Ukrainian shifted forms again, turning into an old woman, a crone that extended her other hand while cackling with glee.

Next thing Christine knew, a figure made of shadow stuff pounced on her from behind. Fingers of pure darkness wrapped themselves around her neck and squeezed, pushing through her protective aura. She was being choked by a living shadow while Baba Yaga continued pouring energy into the red beam.

Help!

Nobody showed up to help. Mark was still trapped in his cell. She was on her own.

Neos didn’t need to breathe, but they could still be choked unconscious; their bodies responded initially to the lack of oxygen like a normal human’s. Christine’s vision blurred, and she felt her shield weakening, beginning to let through the red beam that would slice her to bits. Her mind groped desperately for a way out. Her protective aura! She made it explode outwards, shredding the shadow construct. Baba Yaga’s emotions changed from sadistic glee to shock. Her ring-beam managed to punch through the shield, however, and another stab of pain flared up on Christine’s left thigh.

She used her fear and pain to fuel her power, and created two flat planes of force, one on each side of Baba Yaga. She smashed them together with incredible force, crushing the Ukrainian woman like a mosquito caught by a hand-clap.

Blood splashed on Christine’s shield. What was left of the target of the brutal double impact no longer looked like anything human. Bones and flesh and internal organs had been crushed and burst apart. Most of the Baba Yaga’s body had been hideously flattened. Only her head and one arm were relatively intact.

Oh my God, what have I done?

What you had to
. Her inner voice had never sounded so cold.

The worst part was, Baba Yaga wasn’t dead. Christine could see the woman’s aura, a nauseating medley of rage, terror and agony, and she could see the Ukrainian witch’s enormous energies rushing through the ruins of her body in a desperate effort to repair the damage. Her healing abilities were amazing; she would have a somewhat functional body in a couple of minutes, maybe even sooner.

Christine had to finish her off.

She was horrified and disgusted by the idea; it would be like stepping on a cockroach with her bare feet. But the worst part was she would be doing it in cold blood. Baba Yaga wasn’t a threat at the moment. She would be again, of course.

Mark wouldn’t have hesitated, but she did. She didn’t finish her off right away. Maybe if she’d had an extra second or two to overcome her scruples and force herself to do it, things might have been different, but she didn’t.

A massive amount of energy seemed to manifest out of thin air, somewhere behind her; she felt it with all of her senses, a change in temperature and pressure and emotion. Christine turned, shields at maximum power, and saw the Iron Tsar standing there: the slit in his helmet was a line of blindingly bright light. She’d read about that unstoppable destructive light.

The Dread Gaze of the Tsar rushed towards her in a torrent of pure whiteness. The world vanished in an apocalyptic flash.