Heart of the Storm, page 13
Talk about a hot date.
I dragged Sienna behind a set of boxes stacked head-high to me, and slid another one delicately in front of her to hide her from easy finding. I needed to be mobile to counter what was coming. The warehouse was row after row of boxes, many of them piled to the ceiling, and I could hear the buzz of the quadcopters and the quiet radio chatter being directed through the earpieces of the soldiers sweeping the room.
Whee.
I crept along to the side of the warehouse, knowing I was going to have to keep quiet for as long as possible. Once things went loud, it was going to be party time, but the longer I could keep them from homing in on my position by avoiding a chaotic firefight, the more chance I was going to be able to have to do damage to the vast array of outnumbering forces.
Above me, a corrugated steel roof was providing cover from watching satellites and drones. It was the single thing keeping them from looking down on me and being able to give direction to the guys and drones trying to kill us. It was like a protective shroud keeping hell from raining down directly on my position.
So naturally, I had an immediately intrusive thought about dropping it on my enemies.
But I let that one slide by – for now. Much like the chaos, I needed to keep that one in my back pocket for later.
Reaching the wall of the warehouse, I found an aisle that led back to the open door where Chinese soldiers were filtering in, light blazing in from outside.
Now that...that I needed to put a cork in right now.
I did so with a blast of purple that wiped out the guy coming in, then I used it to shear the door off, then cut into the concrete above the lintel and on the sides of the door. The whole section of wall collapsed in a pile as I ducked back around the crates as the first reports of gunfire cranked off in the aisle, cutting right through the space where I'd been standing mere seconds earlier.
Yee haw. At least two guys down from the collapse, and now the whole warehouse was creaking. That was going to put a kink in their ability to hunter-kill me.
I slid across the next aisle low, and caught sight of two drones floating over a couple soldiers. Operating drones beside these soldiers was an idiot mistake, and one I couldn't help but exploit.
My purple beam hit a quadcopter drone right in the copter blade, causing it to veer down and hit one of the soldiers in the head. It didn't kill him, but the shaped charge blew a second later and hammered him in the jaw with the drone's remains as the charge splattered his comrade against the nearby stack of crates.
The crates tumbled after I'd already slid my way through, and I heard them crash amidst a stream of profanities from the guy who'd gotten clipped in the jaw by an exploding drone. Like getting jacked in the face by a boxer, I imagined.
There was a whole lot of gunfire coming from behind me, where someone – or several someones – were charging up the aisle next to the wall where I'd fired my burst and collapsed the doorway. Aggressive. Ambitious.
Stupid.
They came rushing into the intersection behind me, and I fired six rounds into them across the upper body and face, split evenly between them. My purple beam followed, and suddenly their own mothers would struggle to identify the bodies.
I had a momentary flashback to my time in Hong Kong, and the end of that time. I'd gotten chased through the streets after being darted with suppressant, as my powers began to fade. It had been a game of evasion, where I couldn't really bring everything I had to bear in a proper game of cat and mouse, because I was in the process of becoming the mouse, and quickly. And an army of cats was waiting.
This was a similar situation, except I was already trapped, I was mad, there was little chance of innocent civilians wandering into the fray (unlike Hong Kong) and so I unleashed my inner John McClane and prepared to Die Hard. It was me versus the whole Chinese army in a rail depot, and if I lost, I was going to be dead or screwed anyway.
So I tried not to lose.
But they weren't making it easy on me.
A party of five (not the Jennifer Love Hewitt type) came around the corner, guns a-blazin', a couple of powers lighting off. One guy was immensely swollen, another had a bubble of water the size of a beach ball hovering over his shoulder, and two more had guns in hand. A green laser lit the wall behind them, but it wasn't pointed at me and I couldn't see its user – yet. He was hiding behind the crates.
I tried to take the heads off the two gunmen with a purple blast, but they ducked with insane speed; Reflex types, clearly. Shifting my aim, I killed the Hercules by making him into a true no-neck, then lowered my aim, taking out the side of the bottom-most crate. It toppled over onto the green laser-shooting meta, and I heard a scream beneath the crash of something heavy. I doubted it killed him, but it got him off my back for a moment, which I desperately needed. Because the Reflex-types were charging me.
Somehow these idiots got it into their heads that they wanted to carve me into ribbons, and so they charged, dropping their guns and pulling knives. Reflex-types were fast. Maddeningly fast. Eye-wateringly fast. And they had it in mind to turn me into stew meat.
I had other plans.
Aiming my hand to the side, I blasted the base of one of the stacks of crates, sending it toppling toward the Reflex boys with their knives. They saw it coming and, of course, dodged forward, throwing themselves into forward rolls.
Right into the path of the next stack I blew over.
Even a Reflex type can only move so fast, and they had committed to the forward roll. They couldn't get out from under it in time, and it buried one solidly with a sound of bones breaking and flesh being laid asunder. The second was slightly luckier; it only caught him in the leg, and he let out a terrible cry, his knife skittering across the concrete floor. I caught it by stepping on the blade, and then blasted his arm with purple energy. That power was not full and complete for me, because I hadn't consumed Croftsburg's entire soul, but I'd gotten enough of it that the Reflex type's arm shriveled up and turned black, instantly crisped.
He screamed again, and I reached down and broke his neck with my left hand as I unleashed a three-shot burst at the Poseidon with the water globe over his head. He'd ducked behind a stack of crates, too, but I grazed him on the arm.
“Come along, sir,” I said, dragging the still-dying Reflex type down the aisle behind me. “I have need of your skills.”
It was time to make a retreat from this particular conflict and pop up somewhere else, since I could hear everyone in the warehouse converging on that position. I knew I should have stayed quiet for longer, but alas, closing the door on those guys had made things go loud before I'd wanted them to, yet was an opportunity I simply couldn't pass up.
I drained the Reflex type as I went, his soul leaving his body by the time I'd rounded the next turn. I knew I was now five aisles from where I'd left Sienna, and, judging by the hubbub, they were nowhere close to her. They were shouting now, seeking me, and I was about to give them what they wanted.
I will not help you, the Reflex type said in my head.
“Sure you will,” I said, and started applying liberal amounts of absolute torment.
Something Sienna and I had talked about in the early days of our acquaintance was exactly how incubus and succubus powers worked. I'd been unclear on the details because I'd only ever absorbed that one partial soul, at least from a meta. I'd absorbed quite a few humans, but their wills tended to be a lot weaker than a meta's and they broke like an uncooked spaghetti noodle.
How to apply pressure to the souls in your head was an item of discussion, mostly because my non-blushing bride had been through absolute hell with hers, and I'd taken copious mental notes because I never wanted to go through that with any of mine. Planning for the future even then, I was. Hers and mine.
Well, now I'd just absorbed my first meta soul all the way. Popped my cherry. And you know what?
His screams in my head told me he was ready to cooperate about ten seconds after the torture started. Which was good, because I didn't love the feel of it.
“What's your name?” I asked, threading my way down an aisle. At the end, I could see lights flashing along, bouncing frantically as the soldiers executed a search pattern.
Huang Ming, he said, voice shaking. I didn't think he'd be with us for long.
Bringing him firmly to the front of my mind, I suddenly could understand flawlessly everything they were shouting, which had been a touch muddled before.
Also...the world suddenly slowed way, way down.
We were behind enemy lines, hopelessly outnumbered, and they were going to throw countless metahumans at us. It was just Sienna and me, a succubus and an incubus, and for now, it was just me because my wife was on the bench.
It seemed only fair to turn their numbers against them in the cruelest way possible.
Voices an aisle over caught my attention, and I realized they were shouting signs and countersigns to each other as different squads were crossing each other’s paths, to keep them from shooting each other with friendly fire.
Teehee, as my wife would say.
I came around behind a crew of three on a sweep, bellowed the sign, “Deng!” (Light) and waited for the countersign “Qiao!” (Bridge). They acknowledged me, and barely looked me over.
Because I was still wearing my Chinese camouflage.
“This way!” the squad leader shouted, continuing them along the path they'd been hustling along when I'd moved up on them. Away from me. Their boots slapped loudly against the concrete floor as they hurried away.
Which was convenient for me, because it covered the sound of me breaking the neck of the last guy in line, then the next one, anchoring my grip on their necks as their squad leader ran off without them. He'd be back in a minute, I estimated, so I dragged them both two aisles away and up another three before pausing behind a couple crates, draining them both the entire time.
What's your power? I asked the first, in my head. Didn't even bother with a name.
He screamed, because I was already applying torturous pressure. HERCULES, HERCULES!
Thanks, Eddie Murphy. He was already dead, so I cast aside his corpse. It landed at my feet with a slight rattle from the gear on his belt and the rifle slung around him. And you? I asked the second.
Energy whips, he screamed, not enjoying the agony.
Something moved above me, a rustle of wind, and I saw a guy in a Chinese army uniform fly over me, almost in slow motion thanks to my Reflex powers.
How convenient.
I whipped my hand overhead and a white energy whip came tumbling out like I was some kind of superpowered Indiana Jones. It snaked forward like a laser, but it was like I could steer it with my brain, aided by the Reflex power slowing things down. It reached the man in an eyeblink, and wrapped around his neck with a crackle of energy that blackened his flesh.
The whip contracted and there was a snap like a fuse had just blown. The Chinese soldier gasped; his legs continued to fly forward but the momentum of his head and neck was brought to a cruel halt. I gave the whip a tug and heard another snap, this time his neck, as he hanged himself in midair going less than thirty miles an hour.
He dropped and crashed into the concrete less than ten feet from me, and I drew the whip back into my palm, dragging the soon-to-be corpse to me and anchoring a hand on his cheek to catch his precious soul before he could expire.
Boom. Now I had flight powers.
My feet drifted off the ground a couple feet, and though I wanted to, I didn't have time to pause and admire the fact that in a matter of less than five minutes, I'd done a pretty fine job of catching up with Sienna in the powers department. The CIA had been careful to isolate me from situations where I might be able to pick up more powers, probably because that shitbird David Hayling feared getting a Sienna-like rebel on board.
Then he'd gone and betrayed me to the Chinese, who'd tortured me for months on end.
Well, this was payback, as far as I was concerned.
“Deng!” someone shouted as I came around the corner.
“Qiao!” I whispered back in perfect Mandarin. “Lower your voice, you fools, you'll give us away.”
They relaxed. Which was their first – and last – mistake.
I broke two of their necks the second they turned their backs on me, and got the second two before the first bodies hit the ground. That done, I dragged them all close, like a hug, keeping my grip on two and then letting my bare wrists rest against the back of the side of the necks of the other two.
Hey, I was gonna kill 'em anyway. Waste not, want not, especially when you're facing an entire army.
Powers, I said. Now. It wasn't a request. Now the souls of all the soldiers I’d broken to my will were voices added to my own, and the torment I could muster was multiplied, given voice through my echoing command.
And they complied.
Hercules.
Thor.
Charge-bomber.
Green laser.
“Okay,” I said, “let's go.”
Now I had enough powers to cause real havoc. The Charge-bomber lacked for a quality name, but I had one for it: Gambit type, because it was remarkably similar to the X-Men character in that they could charge up an object and throw it, and it'd explode like a small bomb.
And boy did I have plans for that.
As a squad approached, I ducked behind a stack of crates and ran my hands along one of them, giving it a glow of bright blue before running away in the opposite direction. The crate, which had been one up from the bottom of the stack, blew up with enough force to send splinters of wood into the patrol walking by, and also toppled the other crates down upon them. It stirred up the hornet's nest, sending everyone in the joint heading in that direction, and a barrage of signs and countersigns were called out, though not fast enough, apparently.
Because the shooting started seconds after that.
Teehee, I say again.
The longer I stayed in this place, the more souls I absorbed, but also the more time I gave to the Chinese to pour reinforcements down on us. It was like standing under a waterfall of drones and Chinese army soldiers with metahuman powers; no matter how brave a stand we made, sooner or later, we'd drown.
Still, I wasn't quite done stocking up on powers just yet, so I swooped down on another patrol that was running down the aisle toward the sound of shooting, darting in behind them and zapping them with my newly-acquired green laser, which helpfully decapitated all four without a sound. Having the Reflex powers was a godsend, but pairing them with the instantly-lethal green laser? I had a feeling was going to be quite handy.
I gathered up their corpses in a hot second, and found – to only my slight surprise – yes, I could still absorb their souls. It did take the heart about thirty seconds to quit pumping after a decapitation, so this wasn't an immense shock.
Powers, I said. List 'em.
Fae.
Hercules
Hercules.
Reflex.
Only one new power in this bunch. I would have called it a waste, but I couldn't deny the efficacy of the one I'd gotten.
It was perfectly timed, too, because for the first time in a few minutes, I could hear the quadcopter kill drones approaching.
And now I had more methods to deal with them.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
The light webs from the Fae power were a perfect antidote to annoying, flying kill drones. They came springing out of my palm, expanding as they reached their targets, and hitting with enough force to throw them up against the ceiling or nearest wall, where the impact triggered their explosives. They'd make a loud POP! almost like a slamming door. Which caused the Chinese troops, still shooting at each other on the other side of the depot, to barely pause in their fire exchange.
I drifted up to the ceiling, trying to decide what to do next, shrouded in the darkness of the shadows up there. The power was still out, a self-inflicted wound that was costing the Chinese attackers dearly. From up here, I could see the firefight on the other side of the warehouse growing more involved. I guess no one could tell that I was hovering above them the entire time, watching them shoot each other to pieces.
There's an old adage in warfare: never interrupt your enemy when they're making a mistake. I figured I'd been lucky and I'd been good, probably in unequal measure, but that I needed to get while the getting was – well, you know. I tried to decide where the best point of egress would be, then I'd grab Sienna and fly us out of here, far from the drones, far from the annoying soldiers with their full buffet of powers, far from–
A bullet ripped through my thigh and tore through my concentration, causing me to drop from the sky. I hit a crate on the way down and shattered it, bruising my side and sending me tumbling in a precipitous crash down to the concrete floor below, where I heard something crack that really shouldn't have. My right wrist, I thought, but it was tough to tell through the fuzzy layer of consciousness and the sharp pain.
I was lying flat on my face, nose buried in my forearm (the unbroken one, thankfully), my snapped wrist having saved my face from a full-on impact. Someone moved behind me, and I rolled, thrusting out my broken wrist. Green light flashed, and a very surprised face was illuminated in emerald.
A dead body tumbled onto me, their rifle clattering. I grabbed the face, with my bad hand, muscling the near-corpse off of me, but hanging on as the burning started. I started to get to my feet, and listened to the gunfire on the opposite side of the warehouse come to tragic end. Footsteps were moving, en masse, toward me, echoing off the concrete walls.
“Shit,” I said, grimacing against the pain as I held a dying man in one hand and lifted the other in the direction of the horde of superhuman troops coming my way. The low whine of quadcopter drones was in evidence, too, the sound of all the trouble in this warehouse coming right for me.
Couldn't fly. I just couldn't get my head together, and besides, as if to dissuade me, a bright glow, enough to light up the dark, filled every corner of the warehouse, as if the sun had risen in the far corner. Some damned meta, an apocryphal Aurora type, probably, had turned on their powers.
