Resistance (8 page)

“So tell me again,” says Uzma, shouting to be heard above the drone of the hoverjet as it flies speedily over the rotting heart of Prague, “why are we here?”

Ellis makes an expansive gesture. Uzma follows his hand as it moves across the landscape of central Prague; from the smoking ruins of the castle, where ancient gargoyles grimace in the embrace of fast-moving flames, across the sprouting termite hills that used to be the beautiful Mala Strana, over the Charles Bridge, where twin rows of statues stare blankly at petrified tourists and blue-clad guards as they huddle in groups trying to defend themselves against marauding hordes of insect-men, and onwards to the Old Town, where giant bees fly in incredible loops over the shattered Astronomical Clock. The sky is full of buzzing shapes, grotesque amalgamations of human and insect: hands and pincers, antennae and screaming faces, translucent wings and skin overlain with chitin.

“The future. Brought to you by Utopic,” says Uzma.

“There’s no evidence this is their work,” says Ellis.

“Because you’re scared to look hard enough.”

“If they’re involved, we can be sure it was an accident. There is no reason they should do this deliberately.”

“There never is, is there?” says Uzma. “What do you want us to do about this?”

“It’s the end of the world, right?” Ellis is famous for his composure, but the strain is beginning to show. “Prague was completely normal two hours ago. What do I want you to do? Do what superheroes do, Uzma. What else is there?”

Uzma gives the signal, and the Unit makes its move.

That Guy disappears.

Wingman leads the charge, large black feathers sprouting on his arms and back as he leaps off the hoverjet into the air, shooting in every direction from his plasma wrist-blasters. The hoverjet swivels and heads south, on the eastern bank of the Vltava River, towards the New Town.

Anima and Jason follow Wingman: the Princess of Power’s green energy field lets her fly, and she whizzes off, back towards the castle, spears of light streaking out before her, barely visible in the bright sunlight. Jason takes a deep breath, and dives off the hoverjet. He does his usual spectacular thing, drawing a sheet of metal off a roof in mid-fall, shaping it into a surfboard, winding his way through roofs and spires as he assembles a cloud of sharp metal around him.

At Uzma’s signal, Wu steps gently off the hoverbird too, her eyes blank and pupil-less, an eerie glow emerging from her skin as she stands in the air above the rooftops of the Old Town, a tiny, ominous figure. Her body convulses into a spirit dance; dark clouds appear swirling in the sky above her, lightning flashing at their edges.

“You should go too, Jai,” says Uzma. “I’ll be fine with Ellis.”

A giant bee-man smashes into the hoverjet’s windscreen at this point, and Uzma screams as the man-bug slides off the glass, leaving an ugly green-red smear behind him.

“Maybe he should stay,” says Ellis. “We don’t want you assassinated in the middle of all this.”

Uzma shakes her head and gestures at Jai, and he steps off the hoverjet too, just as it reaches Wenceslas Square. He has no way to fly, but Jai has fallen from great heights innumerable times over the last decade. He breaks his free-fall by grabbing a passing man-locust, and uses the fluttering monster to steer him towards the National Museum’s steps, where he lands lightly, rips his steed in two, and calmly surveys the hordes of screaming tourists and their insect-man attackers. He cracks his knuckles and gets to work.

Local hero teams have been battling the insect horde since the first monstrous grubs burst through the courtyard of the Kafka Museum in Mala Strana at dawn. Looking around, Uzma sees a few familiar faces – a lot of Europe’s mightiest defenders are here, in very questionable costumes, locked in combat in the air, on the ground, and even in the river. Thanks to them, the insect plague has been contained to a few square kilometres in central Prague; that this is also the most densely populated area in the Czech Republic is unfortunate, but the EU teams have set up a perimeter and are blasting any of the monster hybrids that try to go beyond it to quivering, gooey shreds.

The real danger, Ellis tells her, is underground. Apart from the ancient warrens of tunnels that run under the old city, Prague’s metro is excellent, and the insect-men have been going for many rides, laying clusters of eggs along the way. But a team of French underground artist heroes, activists who’ve evaded both supervillains and the French police effortlessly for years in the catacombs of Paris, are on the job, and there have been no reports of major infestations anywhere in greater Prague. And if they manage to contain the infestation, the huge swathes of rude French graffiti that have blossomed mysteriously all over the Prague metro will be a small price to pay.

Uzma flinches again as an exceptionally robust locust-man tries to enter the hoverjet through its sliding door. But Ellis moves faster: he slides it shut, leaving a foot-long stinger twitching and spilling slime over the hoverjet’s interior. Ellis swipes a hand, and the control panel for the hoverjet’s guns appears in front of him. He starts pressing holographic buttons, and stabbing white lights emerge from either side of the hoverjet, fending off more flying intruders.

“What do you call these damned things?” asks Uzma.

Ellis speed-reads a few messages on his phone, shaking his head, before turning to her.

“PragueNet’s calling them ‘Ungeziefers’,” says Ellis. “Though given where it started I think they’ll be called Gregors eventually. Quite funny, really.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” snaps Uzma.

“It really doesn’t matter,” says Ellis.

It had all started, Ellis tells Uzma, with Roman Novak, a literature professor, who’d been on one of the First Wave flights a few days after Uzma’s own. He’d turned into some kind of giant insect, disappeared into the underground tunnels crisscrossing Prague, and had never been heard of since.

“So Utopic got him,” says Uzma.

“They claim they didn’t,” says Ellis. “But of course they did, at some point over the last eleven years. More importantly, they knew this was coming. All Utopic subsidiary offices in Prague were cleared out last night. Before you ask, yes, this is Utopic’s doing. And again, there’s no evidence.”

“He must have broken out of whatever zoo they were keeping him in,” says Uzma. “And now he’s come home.”

What had Utopic wanted with the insect-man? Had they planned an army of super-insects? What horrors had they subjected the professor to? Why were they trying to destroy a city they owned large parts of?

Another giant bee-man is caught on the hoverjet’s windscreen, stabbing in vain at the figures seated behind the unyielding glass. Uzma shudders as she watches its horrible torso twitch as it slides off, human hair fused with striped bands of bee fur, now splattering everywhere as the hoverjet’s cannons rip it apart. What other monsters did Utopic have locked away? And what would happen if they all escaped?

Wingman’s communicator comes online, and Uzma watches through his feed as he slices his way through a man-termite infestation on the balcony of a boutique hotel in Mala Strana. He’s a killing machine when he gets going, but with every plasma burst that takes out the wriggling, squirming, utterly disgusting man-grubs chewing their way through the old building, he’s blasting out the walls and woodwork as well: there will be very little left of the beautiful neighbourhood when he’s done.

“Are we just on pest control duty here, or is there something I’m supposed to be looking for?” asks Wingman.

“Is there a central nest?” asks Uzma. “You should work your way towards that.”

“I’ll know when I find it,” says Wingman, as an empty-eyed grub rears up in front of him and gets blasted into a fine shower of bug-bits. He shuts down his communicator and gets back to work.

They’d spent the last week knocking super-heads together. A trip to the Ultradome in Las Vegas, where fake superpro-wrestlers (usually down-on-their-luck supervillains looking for a showbiz career) went through the motions for cheering audiences across the world, had proved satisfying in terms of violence, but fruitless in terms of leads. They’d gone to underground super-combat tournaments in Mexico, beaten up super-warlords in North Africa, and broken up an upper-class British secret super-society of human-hunters in Soho. But no one Uzma had Asked knew where this particular apocalypse was coming from, or who was behind it. What was the point of this sabre-rattling from Utopic? Was the insect invasion just a rogue superbug gone crazy, or was it part of some larger, more sinister plan? If this was what one Utopic creature could do, what would happen the day they threw the doors to the whole zoo open?

Jason comes online. “Uzma,” he gasps, “there’s a problem.”

“You think?” asks Uzma.

Through the swirling shield of bricks and metal Jason’s built around himself, she can see he’s running up the path to Prague Castle, leaping easily over lumps of insect wax that have split the cobbled street. As she watches, a caterpillar that appears to be made of several people sewn together bursts out of an antique shop. Jason leaps and rolls as it charges at him, and his viewscreen tilts and swirls crazily. He’s back on his feet in an instant, and a shower of wood and brick torn from the buildings around him sends the caterpillar scuttling back, looking for shelter.

A series of green power-blasts lights up the street through the cloud of dust, and as Jason looks up Uzma sees Anima arrive, her giant anime eyes glowing and sparkling. A volley of green power-shuriken, and the caterpillar writhes, rippling horribly, and then bursts, scattering bone, blood and insect goo all over the Unit’s heroes.

“I’m waiting,” says Uzma.

“I don’t know where we’re staying tonight, but I’m calling first shower,” says Jason. “Anyway, listen, these creatures – it’s not just eggs.”

“What do you mean?” asks Ellis.

“Well, they’re not just hatching. There’s also some kind of undead scene going on – if they eat your brain and spit into it, you turn into one too.”

“That’s sweet,” says Uzma. “Kill them all, please?”

As Jason disconnects and goes back to carving a path uphill towards Prague Castle, Ellis gets another call. Uzma hears the sound of distant thunder over the noise of the insect-men buzzing around the hoverjet. Looking back, she sees Wu in the distance, bathed in a bright white glow, directing bolts of lightning into rooftops.

They fly low over Wenceslas Square, already largely empty: Jai often has that effect on public places. They see him, a tiny dot below them, surrounded by attackers, and Uzma is filled with horror. Hundreds of bodies are piled up in the square, human, monster, and others that are so mangled it is impossible to tell. Jai is on the warpath, notching up an incredible death count with horrible ease and unearthly joy. These are the only times he’s absolutely free, and Uzma never wants to look into his eyes when he’s done.

“We’re going to have to suppress the casualty figures on this one,” Ellis says beside her. “But all the powers that be are demanding executions – don’t bother capturing the leader alive when you find him.”

“Yeah, he might know things we shouldn’t,” says Uzma. “Killing him is clearly our only option. You know, I find Utopic’s hold over the UN even scarier than what they’re doing here.”

“Do what you think best. We have to bring in the team now – we’ve found the central hive.”

“Where?”

“Under the Kafka Museum. Where we should have started looking, really.”

“Why?”

“Never mind. This is going to be a publicity nightmare, by the way.”

Uzma glares at him. “You think I care about that?”

Ellis shakes his head. “I know you don’t,” he says. “That’s part of the problem. I shouldn’t have brought you here today. You’ve probably saved many lives, but still.”

They send out the signal.

A minute later, the hoverjet shudders as Jai launches himself off the Bata headquarters and lands neatly on the hatch; Ellis slides it open. Everyone in the hoverjet covers their noses as Jai strides in, dripping ooze and blood. He squelches into his seat. There are no words to say.

The hoverjet speeds over the Old Town; the pilot has flown them before, and knows exactly where to turn and swerve. Wu doesn’t even look as the jet spins in mid-air behind her. She releases one final bolt of lightning, shuts her eyes and then lands on the hoverjet’s floor quietly as they draw her in.

Jason and Anima streak over broken rooftops towards the Kafka Museum. Wingman is already there, killing time, shooting monsters. Ellis gets a priority call from New York and retreats to a corner of the hoverjet, muttering into his phone.

The red sloping roofs of the museum and the buildings around it have been covered in river mud and an ugly grey-brown resin. Worker insect-men swarm all over the complex, too busy to gape at the hoverjet as it flies in. Uzma is closer than she wants to be; she sees beasts with human heads and large, grubby white insect bodies, and cannot decide whether they’re worse than the ones with insect bodies and fleshy hind limbs. She doesn’t have to study them too closely, though; the hoverjet revolves, spraying the roofs with bullets, and scores of mutant bodies fall to earth.

In the centre of the museum courtyard, where the first gregors had broken out, is a large crack in the pavement that’s been coated with wax. Maggot-men crawl out of it in large numbers, ignoring their impending doom, slime trailing out of their hindquarters.

Jason, Anima and Wingman fly into the hoverjet.

“Someone has to go in there and grab the main bug guy and destroy all the hive eggs,” says Uzma. “Any volunteers?”

There are no volunteers.

“Well then,” says Uzma, “Jai?”

Jai nods. “The rest of you should stay safe,” he says. “None of you are invincible.”

“Hang on there, friend,” says Jason. “We’ve killed as many of these bugs as you have.”

“Which brings us to an interesting question,” says Ellis. “UN HQ is saying that this mass murder of Prague’s citizens needs to stop right now. We need to find a way to negotiate.”