New Olympus Saga (Book 4): The Ragnarok Alternative (13 page)

He’d been turned into an orc, but he wasn’t a Neolympian. The massive shock and blood loss from the double-whammy brought him to his knees, trying to get up but too weak to do so.

The crowd was chanting. It took a bit for Christine to make out the words.

“KILL! KILL! KILL!”

They want me to finish him
.

Christine walked over to the struggling orc. He looked at her with hatred and fear, ready to grab her as soon as she came into reach. She yanked the spear from where it’d buried itself in the dirt after it missed her. A feint got his hands out of the way, and she drove the spear in with one savage motion, cartilage going
pop
when the point pierced his throat. The orc grabbed the shaft with both hands, the stump of his thumb still trickling blood. Their eyes met, and Christine’s empathy got treated to a full blast of terror and despair before he let go and collapsed onto the blood-stained dirt.

Janitors are going to hate me
, she thought just before she threw up.

San Diego, California, July 18, 2014

The auditorium had gone deadly quiet.

“Are you all right?” one of the con people whispered in her ear.

Christine shook her head. The microphone they’d given her was a twisted lump of metal and plastic in her hand. Echoes of the blast of feedback the mike-crushing had caused were still bouncing inside the auditorium. It must have been loud as eff but she’d spaced right through it.

“Sorry, guys!” she shouted. Might as well be somewhat honest. “Just got hit with a bit of PTSD. Fighting evil is great, don’t get me wrong, but it gets to you sometimes!”

The crowd took her words in for a moment. Someone started to clap, slowly and steadily. Dozens, hundreds of people followed suit.

“We love you, Dark Justice!”

And they did. Their adoration washed over her like all-enveloping warmth, and she almost burst into tears.

If they only knew the things she’d done.

Somewhere Over North America, July 18, 2014

The Hypernet feed played the footage over and over: Christine freezing and crushing the mike in her hands. Close-ups of her haunted expression filled his field of vision, projected directly into his retinas by the comm implants.

He had to make sure she was all right.

John almost changed course and headed for San Diego. It’d be foolish to do so; her fit was over, and there was nothing he could do for her, other than make it obvious to everyone that Ultimate was still carrying a torch for Dark Justice. He was due in Arecibo to pick up a dozen satellites and put them in orbit, one of his many duties for the day. Common sense asserted itself and he stayed the course. She’d be fine. If he told himself those words enough times, he might even believe them.

He got a text message just before he arrived to Arecibo, a few minutes later.

That was nasty, but I’m ok now. Wish you’d been here. How about tonight? Xoxo – C.

Be there at nine. That okay?
he sent back.

With baited breath awaiting. Xxo xxo.

People at the Arecibo facility were surprised by how cheerful he was.

New York City, New York, July 18, 2014

“I almost wish I had a cigarette,” John commented as they cuddled lazily in bed. He’d quit that particular vice just as World War Two started. Doctors had begun linking the habit to an assortment of diseases; he might be immune to them, but Ultimate had to set an example. Getting Linda to quit had been much harder.

“I can have a carton of Marlboros waiting for you next time you drop by,” she said, her warm presence against his chest comforting him.

“No, that’s all right.”

I’m already committing something too close to adultery for comfort, he thought. That’s about as much vice as I can handle
.

Christine didn’t notice the twinge of guilt. Doc Slaughter’s ring protected John from her empathic abilities. He wasn’t planning on taking it off any time soon. Without the ring providing a modicum of privacy, he didn’t think he could have a relationship with her. Even this kind of sordid,
sub rosa
relationship. He’d gotten rough with her again, and the mixture of guilt and savage satisfaction he’d felt as he manhandled her had confused and disturbed him. Those emotions were nothing he wanted to share with her. With anybody.

“So what happened at the convention?” he asked her. They hadn’t spoken about it yet; as soon as he came through the window she pounced on him. Her lovemaking had a frenzied quality she’d never demonstrated before.

She’s changed
. And considering how he’d treated her, so had he.

“Oh, it was nothing,” she said. “Well, not nothing. Do you really want the full 411? Or are you just asking to be polite?”

“You know how I feel about you,” he said. He hadn’t used the words themselves, not since before their breakup. He certainly wouldn’t use them while they were sneaking around like thieves in the night, while he pretended to choke her as he drove himself into her. What they were doing now had very little to do with love.

“I know. Okay, you might remember that whole coma thingy.”

“Of course.”

“Well, I’m beginning to remember what happened to me then. And it wasn’t fun. I had to do some nasty stuff to survive.”

“Like?”

“Killed a bunch of people, for starters.” She lowered her eyes as she said the words, but she didn’t sound truly contrite. John was no empath, but his superhuman hearing could sense changes in a person’s metabolism, which gave him a rough measure of their emotional state. Christine sounded sad, but she didn’t feel sad.

“We’ve all taken lives,” he said. Far too many, in his case. He’d only killed during times of war, but the total number of casualties he’d inflicted had been staggering, and not even the knowledge that without his actions those numbers would have been much higher did much to salve his conscience.

“I know, John. It was still nasty. Saw a side of myself I didn’t like one bit. But I don’t really want to talk about it. Maybe when I remember everything, we can get drunk and share tales of woe.”

“If that’s what you want.”

“That’s what I want.”

“I want to come out into the open, Christine. That’s what I want.”

“All right. Tomorrow. Things are going to get pretty ugly, though.”

“Honesty is the best policy.”

“You know what I like about you, big John? The way you can spout clichés with a perfectly straight face.”

“You never seemed to mind before.”

“Maybe I’ve grown up a little since our breakup. Making stupid mistakes have a way of doing that to you.”

“I suppose.”

“I’m on it. I’ll break the news to Mark tomorrow, okay? That soon enough for you?”

“Thank you. I know it’s going to be hard for you.”

“That’s what she said,” Christine said, a sharp edge in her voice. “Sorry, just trying to shield my feelings with humor. Maybe you should slap me around a bit. Show me who’s boss. I think I’d like that.”

“I probably should go.” Suddenly he didn’t want any of this.

“I’m sorry, John.” She wasn’t sorry, though. He could tell.

“I’m sorry too. It’s just a bad situation all around.”

He left her bed, got dressed.

“Tomorrow it will be all over, okay?”

“I’ll be there for you, Christine. Tomorrow.”

He left.

Tomorrow couldn’t come fast enough. But if that was the case, why was he dreading it? Why did getting everything he wanted feel so wrong all of a sudden?

Something wasn’t right, and he had a feeling it was very important he figured out what it was.

Arctic Sanctuary, July 18, 2014

He doesn’t look good. At all
.

Before his ailment, Cassius Jones, a.k.a. Janus, Master of Gates, had been a handsome, athletic African-American man whose kind, understanding eyes and rich, deep voice commanded attention and respect. He’d almost managed to parlay his charisma and accomplishments into the White House back in 1980, and had remained an influential figure before and since. Now, however, he looked crazed, emaciated, his eyes, no longer kind, sunken in their sockets, a feverish, haunted cast to his face. He looked like a junkie who’d missed a few too many fixes, or someone in the throes of some nasty tropical disease, the kind that killed you by inches.

Christine had found him in a specially-constructed strong room, a prison cell designed by Doc Slaughter to contain Ultimate. Its creation had been a challenge of sorts – could Doc build a cage Ultimate couldn’t break out of? With the addition of space-time anchors that made teleportation impossible, the room might keep Janus trapped, in case he turned and became another Outsider minion.

The cell had some dark char marks on its walls. Cassius had been giving the room’s force fields a workout, enough to damage even the self-repairing materials beneath the energy shields. And all the furniture in the room was gone, except for some metal and plastic residue on the floor. The display of wanton destruction scared her.

Christine watched him from the viewing room, separated from his prison by a wall of transparent alloy and layers of force fields that vaguely distorted his outline, as if he was underwater. He’d withdrawn into a corner, sitting on the floor, knees drawn up against his chin, head hunched down, looking like an overgrown child. She couldn’t believe what she was seeing.

It’d been ten days since her last visit, shortly before the big fight in Brooklyn and her recovered memories episode. It’d been too easy to make excuses not to come: she’d been too busy, too traumatized, she needed to think carefully about the things she’d remembered, and so on. Even so, Cassius had looked nothing like this; tired and upset, yes, but still relatively healthy. She’d never expected his condition to deteriorate so quickly. He’d been left unattended for as long as two, three weeks at a time, and he’d been fine.

It’s still my fault
.

“Cassius,” she called to him. He turned towards the viewing screen, eyes bright but unfocused.

“What do you want?”

“I’m here to help you.”

“Don’t waste your time. Just trigger the bomb and end this.”

Four tiny anti-matter shaped-charge bombs had been implanted inside Cassius’ skull. Four people – Adam, the current Legion Council leaders, and Christine herself – had access to the codes that would detonate them. She knew all about the kill-switch option: she’d helped design the bombs herself.

She had her own set of micro-bombs inside her head, ready to take her out if she ever turned bad.

“When did this happen?”

“I don’t know. A day or two? Can’t remember. I locked myself in here and tried to gather the courage to kill myself.”

“Cassius…”

“I tried, but I couldn’t quite do it. I need your help.”

Christine used her comm implant to check the logs. Cassius had entered the cell some three hours ago, which showed his sense of time was all messed up. The destruction of the furniture had not been deemed enough of a development to warrant alerting her or Adam. She’d have to go over the automated systems’ programming, because they had effed up big time. She examined Cassius’ aura, and had to repress a gasp of shock, which would have only made him feel worse. The Taint inside him had spread like wildfire.

And instead of coming here more often and helping him, you spent all week in Pity Party Mode. Not to mention going to a con and playing fashion model
.

Guilt would have to wait, though.

“I’m coming in.”

He glared at her. “If you do, I can’t answer for the consequences.”

The tone in his voice didn’t match the warning. He sounded almost eager for her to come in. And his emotions confirmed it. His rage was at a boiling point, and all he wanted was a target for it. A whipping boy. Or girl.

She went through the multiple doors and force fields anyway, waiting patiently while they cycled and recycled like airlocks until she finally was in the same space as Janus.

“I can help you,” she said. “I remembered just how, a few days ago.”

“I don’t care anymore.” He sounded angry, petulant.

“If you just relax…”

He growled and jumped to his feet, golden energy flaring up all around him.

She’d been expecting something like that, however, and was ready.

Rend
.

It was the nastiest Word in her cosmic vocabulary, the Lurker’s favorite way to dispose of evildoers. It took the fabric of space-time and pulled on it like so much Silly Putty. That in turn generated enormous gravity tidal forces on anything in the stretched-out area. Normal living beings, including most Neos, would be killed instantly; high-powered Neos and other cosmic beings merely took enormous amounts of damage. Cassius could summon and control vast amounts of energy, but every last erg of it was spent to keep him alive during the half-second or so in which Christine folded, spindled and mutilated the crap out of him.

The most powerful member of the Freedom Legion fell limply to the floor.

Phew. That was close
. The effort had left her drained and in pain, but nothing like what she’d endured in Brooklyn. Either she’d overdone it in that other fight, or she was getting stronger every time she pushed herself.

If Cassius hadn’t been out of his mind, using the Word wouldn’t have worked so well. He could have shunted aside most of the damage, which would have allowed him to regale her with a few gigawatts’ worth of golden death beams. She’d bet her life on her ability to take him down quickly, and the odds had been a little too close to fifty-fifty for her liking.

Mark always said that fair fights were for suckers. A real fair fight meant you might as well flip a coin to see who won. This time, she’d counted on Cassius’ frail emotional and mental state, which was cheating, and even then it’d been too close for comfort.

The saddest thing was that the realization she’d almost died in that room didn’t bother her all that much. That wasn’t brave, or healthy.

I’m not sure if my life’s going to be worth living after Saturday
. After she told Mark everything and his feelings about her changed.

Christine shook her head, angry at herself. More Pity Party crap. She’d deal with whatever happened on Saturday, and move on with her life. She’d been through too much to give up, and too many people were counting on her. Including the poor guy she’d almost shredded just now.

Her trip to Earth FUBAR hadn’t been all bad. Well, like ninety-eight percent bad. But she’d learned a couple of important things along the way.

Earth FUBAR, Day Five

The day after the first bout, following a crappy breakfast – runny eggs and bacon, half a loaf of lumpy stale bread and a bowl of oatmeal – two guards had come to get her out. There was another team at the end of the hallway. If she wanted to escape, she’d have to figure out a way to overpower all four of them. They had stun batons and pistols. Even with Snipe’s combat skills, it didn’t look doable.

She’d been issued a bright orange jumpsuit, convict chic. It was a couple of sizes too big, and it made her feel even more vulnerable as she stepped out of her cell.

“Where are we going?”

One of the guards, an older guy, scowled at her and gestured with his shock baton as his only reponse, but his younger partner was slightly less of a d-bag. “Exercise yard,” he said, which earned him a glare from the old bastard and a grateful smile from her.

The exercise yard was a fenced-off section of what had been the sports arena’s parking lot before the dearth of cars made it a waste of space. Gym equipment – weightlifting stuff, some Nautilus machines, and so on – was lined up against one side of the fence. A small door led to it. Five other women were already inside, and a sixth one arrived after Christine was let in. They probably brought them there one at a time, to avoid trouble.  A total of six guards kept watch from outside the fence, all in Watcher hoodies, all looking mean and bored at the same time.

Most of the women ignored Christine. A couple were using the workout machines, looking grim and determined. The one that came last sat by herself in a corner, staring out into space. The laughing woman was capering about, cackling and acting crazy, which pretty much confirmed it wasn’t an act. The last two were talking and staring at Christine.

Under the circumstances, any attention she got was probably not a good thing. Christine contented herself with examining the makeshift gym, feeling no desire to use anything there. P.E. class had never been a fave of hers, and she didn’t think she could really make much headway in self-improvement before she either regained her powers or some a-hole chopped her head off, whichever came first.

“Yo,” one of the two women eyeing her said. Christine turned toward them. Both of them looked tough and roughly similar: five seven or five eight, tan skin, several prison tattoos; this wasn’t their first time behind bars. One had shaved off all her hair, which made her ears stick out and her face look even meaner; the other had her brown hair up in pigtails much like Christine/Nellie had when she first arrived. The childlike hairstyle clashed horribly with the ex-convict’s scowling face.

“Hi,” Christine replied.

“Heard about you,” Pigtails said. “Missed the show, but guards were talking about you.”

“Killed Green-Go,” Cueball added. “He a tough motherfucker.”

Christine shrugged and stayed quiet. If they wanted something from her, they’d come out and say it eventually. If they were trying to haze her or whatever, words weren’t going to change what would happen. Since the guards would have to unlock the door to the yard and then go through one at a time, any fight that broke out would be over before they could do much about it. It’d be kinda crazy to fight each other when they’d be getting all the gratuitous violence they could handle fairly soon, but she’d long figured out that way too many people did the craziest thing without a second thought.

“So you think that makes you hot shit?” Pigtails said. “I killed a champion too, y’know.”

“Cut ‘is throat, ear to ear, she did,” Cueball confirmed, drawing a thumb over her neck to illustrate.

“That’s pretty awesome,” Christine said. “Hope you kill every d-bag they send your way.”

“Yeah,” Pigtails agreed. “Heard you were with Crazy over there?” She indicated the laughing girl.

Christine nodded.

“She ain’t right in the head. Killed her husband, on account he beat her regular-like. Now she laughing all the time. Made it through four fights so far. Crazy lucky, that bitch is.”

“How many for you?” Christine asked. So much for playing the strong, silent type.

Pigtails looked down. “Tomorrow’s my second one. We both killers. Maybe we get lucky together.”

“Hear they’re throwing Crazy in with you,” the bald chick said. “She ain’t so good in a fight, but she a survivor.”

She may be crazy, but she’s smart enough to let the other two contestants do the fighting and dying for her
, Christine thought bitterly.
Not that I can blame her
.

“Where do you hear all this stuff?”

She grinned. “One of the guards. We got an understanding.” She made an obscene gesture with one hand and her mouth that made it pretty clear what their understanding involved. Gross.

“So, when we go out there, fuck Crazy, let that bitch be the first kill, then maybe we can get in on the motherfuker and cut his throat,” Pigtails said, which explained how she’d won her fight. And what Christine could expect from her.

“Don’t worry about Crazy. I’m going straight for the asshole,” she said, trying her best to sound like Mark, which was kinda like having an attack of Tourette’s. “That should give you a clean shot at the motherfucker’s back. Do me a favor and fuck him up before he fucks me up.”

“You wanna play hero, it’s no skin off my nose.”

The two women walked off, seemingly satisfied. Christine gave them a brief aura scan, partly just to see if her powers were improving, but also to make sure they weren’t harboring any ill-feelings – ill-feelings that might get her killed – towards her.

Catching stray emotions wasn’t an issue, but doing an active scan took effort, and some pain. She had to concentrate, squint really hard, and push. For a moment, all she got for her troubles was a migraine, but the pain was soon followed by something that felt like an elastic band breaking inside her head, and everyone’s aura popped up in their usual rainbow display.

Except a lot of these colors were stained with sickening black-eggplant stains, like a swarm of flies over a birthday cake. She’d noticed Outsider corruption before, but under a deep scan it was clear just about everyone was infected to some degree or another.

She looked down.