The Suns of Liberty: Legion: A Superhero Novel (10 page)

     Ward dried himself off and strolled into his bedroom,
steam billowing out behind him. He pulled out a new pair of boxers and slipped
them on. It was at that moment that he noticed the socks.

     Laid out on his bed. Strategically. They spelled out a
phrase. A phrase that gave away exactly who had put them there.

     They said:
Nice Ass.

     “Okay, Miss Dodge, where are you?”

     Rachel materialized in front of him and for a moment
he was confused. Gone was the invisibility cloak. Rachel was clad in the
tightest white bodysuit he had ever seen. As she came into the light, he saw
just how tight. Ward couldn’t just see the shape of her nipples through the
skintight fabric, he could see every ridge and bump of her areolae. He could
tell that she knew exactly what he was looking at and felt himself blush.

     Which caused Rachel Dodge to beam a
cat-has-cornered-a-mouse-type grin. 

     “Where’s your
usual
next-to-nothingness?” he
said, moving over to sit in a chair in the corner of the room and clearing his
throat, trying to seem unaffected by the sight of her.

     She had a sexy confidence about her that was
irresistible. Rachel had a long, angular face with prominent cheekbones and
full, pouty, blood-red lips. Her dark brunette hair was accented with subtle
blonde highlights. Her figure was thin but muscular and unnaturally curvy.
She’d been an exotic dancer in college. Fifteen years later she still had the
body of a centerfold.

     Ward found her playful spirit very attractive. In
another place at another time, he’d have certainly been interested in her. But
his heart still ached for Alison, even as her betrayal ripped at his soul.

     Rachel was smart, but some part of her tried hard to
hide it. Ward had been around plenty of women of privilege who tried to hide
their obvious talents under a facade of trophy-wife triteness. Similar thing
here. Rachel always downplayed it when asked, but she had helped to make
invisibility a reality—something the intelligence community had given up on.

     “You like? This is just a prototype,” she said. “It’s
not done. It only affects the visual range right now.”

     That’s for sure.
“Show off,” he said, trying to be cool,
but his face was on fire.

     She beamed at the comment.

     Rachel’s invisibility cloak could do more than make
her invisible to the naked eye, or “visual range.” She could move undetected
through nearly all optical sensors. Only the world’s most advanced motion
detectors gave her any problems.

     “You left in such a hurry after Marconi, I just wanted
to make sure you were okay. We all did,” Rachel said.

     “I’m not good company tonight, Rachel. I’m sorry.”

     “That’s okay. I’m here on business, too.”

     “I don’t want to go back to fulltime hours, boss,”
Ward teased.

     “Hmm...aren’t you a chemist?”

    
Oh, boy. Here it comes.
He grinned. “Yeah,
why?” he asked hesitantly.

     Rachel purred and turned on her little girl voice. “I
thought you were supposed to know chemistry when you saw it.”

     Ward managed a laugh. “A guy can dream.” Ward smiled
at her, but then added, “I still need more time.”

     “It’s been three months.”

     “And I’ve helped out. Every time.”

     “Every time we’ve taken on a bunch of thugs, yeah. But
now we’ve got something bigger, something harder. More at stake. A fuck lot more
to lose if we fail.”

     “No more losses for me, thank you.” Ward said,
dropping his eyes, sounding exhausted all of a sudden.

     Rachel stopped the verbal volley for a moment. She
ambled over to his bed, picked up the socks, and began returning them to his
drawer. “We both lost someone close to us,” Rachel said.

     Ward thought about that. “Bailey?” he asked.

     She nodded. “He helped me nail the guys that murdered
my mentor. What seems like a long time ago. Just before the Purge.”

     “Council?”

     Rachel nodded again. “They had to consolidate the
intelligence community before they started the Purge. John’s been...
was
fighting them from the start. Saved my life many times.”

     “But you’re in this business, Rachel. I’m not. It was
a mistake to think I could get so deeply involved. Hell, do you know I still
have headaches all the time? Still end up puking during most of them. I can
tell you, these are not good symptoms to have, three months out. I’m sorry.
It’s good to see you, it’s
really
good to see you,” Ward grinned at her
and cast his eyes down her bodysuit in a way that might have gotten him accused
of sexual harassment anywhere else. Rachel just smirked and struck an alluring
pose for him. “But you can let yourself out in whatever way you let yourself in.”
Ward rose and walked to the bedroom door, snagging one of his serenity darts
from the dresser as he passed by, hoping she wouldn’t follow him.

     Rachel frowned and dropped the pose. “Lantern found
the chamber,” she said.

     Ward stopped dead.

     “Where?” he said, turning his head back toward her.

     “In New York. In Freedom Rise.”

     “Freedom Rise would be suicide,” Ward said with
finality.

     “Letting the Council keep that fucking chamber is
suicide.”

     Ward turned to her. He knew she was right. “Why do you
need me?”

     “I don’t.” She grinned at him. “I
want
you. The
Revolution needs you.” She shrugged, dropped the tease for a second. “At least
just talk to him.” But then she found the little girl voice again. “And then
you can take me to dinner and we can lick our...wounds together.”

     Ward could feel himself relenting. What would it hurt
to at least go talk to the General? “What’s the timeframe he’s thinking of?”
Ward asked her.

     “Soon.” 

CHAPTER 10

S
ophia
woke up sweating. Her throat was dry, painful. She’d had a dream. No, a nightmare.

     Just then, Rachel slowly opened the door to Sophia’s
room and peeked in. The light from the hall illuminated Sophia’s face in the
shadows.

     “Are you okay?”

     “Yeah, of course I’m okay,” Sophia scoffed. “Go back
to bed.” She glanced over at the clock. 3:32 a.m.

     Rachel stepped into the room, and Sophia rolled her
eyes and swiveled her legs out of the covers. Sat on the edge of the bed.
Rachel closed her partly open robe and tightened the tie. Sophia could tell she
was naked under the robe.

     Sophia rolled her eyes.

     “Man-O-War again?” Rachel asked.

     Sophia nodded her head but then froze and looked up at
Rachel. “No.” Sophia dropped her gaze to the floor. “I mean, I can’t remember.”

     Rachel shrugged. “Well, you’ve always been a hell of a
lot tougher than me.”

     “No kidding,” Sophia said, still peering down.

     Rachel paused and grinned to herself. 
Same old
Sophia.
“I’ve not been able to get Bailey out of my head since we lost him.
He’d always been there, you know?”

     “Not really.”

     “I just mean, I can’t get over that night. Maybe if we
both talked about it—

     “Save it. I’m fine. I just had a bad dream. It
happens.”

     Rachel turned to leave. “Okay.” As she reached the
door she stopped short. “Why do you think the Council hasn’t attacked us yet? I
mean, what are they waiting for?”

     “I don’t know,” Sophia said, sliding back under the
covers and folding her arms under her head. “But I think we should take the
fight to them...” Sophia tried to suppress a swallow but couldn’t. “Before they
build another one of those things.”

     “I think we need to get back inside, get more info.
Find out what they’re really doing in there.”

     “I think we already know.”

It
had been over two months since Ward had been back to the new HQ. They were
still rebuilding the old one that Fiona had destroyed. The fact that the new HQ
was in the remains of an old abandoned prison was only one of many factors that
made coming back difficult for him. Since being captured and tortured by the
Council Guard, Ward had come to hate prisons.

     As he strolled through, he saw many Resistance members
he recognized, but it wasn’t until he got to the Science Division that he saw
folks whose names he actually knew.

     In particular, Dr. Leslie Gibbons. She was probably
the most important scientific mind to go “missing” after the Purge that followed
the Freedom Council’s rise to power. Ward had assumed her dead all these years.
Everyone had. To meet her not only alive and well but making breathtaking scientific
breakthroughs was one of the most exciting aspects of his brief period as a
member of the Suns of Liberty.

     It remained one of the most difficult temptations to
resist in trying not to come back. And today was a case in point.

     He saw Leslie from across the big open space of the
laboratory. She was patched into a holographic video feed with a red-haired
middle-aged man he knew to be a former senator from New York named Livingston
Roosevelt, one of the more prominent members of the Resistance. Leslie was
carrying on some kind of political conversation with Roosevelt at the same time
that she and a handful of techs were testing a new weapon of some kind. A
handheld pistol that looked a bit like a drill rather than your average
handgun. The handle and stock looked normal, but it was the barrel that was
different. It had a cone shape with rings of concentric circles that
progressively narrowed toward the opening. 

     Then he noticed one of the other scientists with a
pair of much larger versions of the cone-shaped barrel attached to his hips. One
on each side. Suddenly the cones ignited and the man shot into the air.

     About ten feet and then plummeted straight back down
and landed with a smack!

     “Excuse me, Senator,” Leslie said to the holograph of
Roosevelt. “Still not enough draw into the engines,” she yelled over to the
others, who nodded in exasperation. It looked like something they’d been
working on for a while. “Sorry about that. We’re testing the Vortex engines
today,” she said to Roosevelt and continued the conversation.

     The main floor of the HQ was one big open space. Half
devoted to office desks, and half to a large laboratory. On the other side of
the lab was a closed door that led to the equally huge Hangar where they stored,
among other things,
Stealthhawk-1
and
2
.

     Ward caught Leslie’s eyes as he strolled into the lab.
She beamed a big smile at him and waved him toward the Situation Room: the main
meeting place of the Suns of Liberty. Leslie broke off her conversation with Roosevelt and headed off to join Ward.

     Leslie was tall, elegant, African-American, and in her
midfifties. Ward had gained a tremendous amount of respect and compassion for
the woman. Not only was she the head scientist, she was also the smartest. She
was the civilian leader of the Resistance with, in many ways, just as much
authority as the Revolution himself. And she had accomplished all of this and
held it together after she lost her husband and two sons in a car crash during
the Purge. A crash that almost certainly was no accident but instead an
assassination attempt aimed at her.

     The Council had always recognized the threat that the
nation’s top minds (the ones who were not on their side, anyway) could pose to
them. Leslie was at the very top of that list.

     They hugged their hellos at the Sit Room’s door, and
she ushered him in.

     “So, you just couldn’t stay away, could you?” she said
as they sat at the large oval table in the center of the room.

     “Very funny. I have no idea what I am getting myself
into.”

     “Didn’t stop you before,” Leslie laughed.

     So did Ward. She was right. He’d
really
not
known.

     “It’s not like I haven’t been around.” Ward smirked. “Maybe
you’ve read about there being no more gangs left in Boston?”

     “Well,” Leslie said, pursing her lips, “there’s at
least one more.”

     He knew who she meant. The Freedom Council.

     “My ambitions were always smaller,” Ward said. “I just
wanted to make Boston safe again. We’ve done it. The power’s back on and it’s
safer now than it’s ever been. Retirement sounds better and better.” Ward sat
in his designated chair at the large oval table in the Suns of Liberty Situation
Room. Video monitors on every wall, spitting back images of the Eastern
seaboard, thanks to Lantern.

     Leslie Gibbons stood at the head of the table, holding
a remote that controlled the monitors on the wall. She took in a deep breath
and shook her head at him. “As long as the Council exists, Boston will never be
safe. You know that.”