Barricade watched from his night perch over the industrial pier as two men in work clothes idled on the top deck of the cargo ship Pentecost II. They weren’t even bothering to hide their weapons, not that anyone else was around. The only noise came from the well-lit power plant across the bay.
The cyborg watched as one of the men lit the other’s cigarette. He switched to thermal imaging and scanned the length of the bulky blue transport moored perpendicularly in front of him. There were eleven more people on the lower levels, including a prostitute. He found the target. The round Russian man was with two others next to a large dark hole in the thermal scan. There was a warm glowing mass at its center.
“Shielded hold on deck four near the rear of the ship,” he advised his team through the radio. “Can’t miss it.”
“Copy,” Psyphire responded. “That will be where they keep the radioactive material.”
Barricade scanned to the bottom of the vessel and squinted. “Looks like they have a rover, a mini-sub. Must be how they move it. Drop the sub at customs, pass inspection, then retrieve the cargo.”
He watched with telescopic vision as Psyphire crept along the dark dock toward the gangplank. He muted his radio and spoke out loud. “Tell me again why you can’t just ‘wisp’ this guy from here. Or whatever the fuck you call it.”
Both of Wisper’s hands were zip-tied to a pipe that ran along the gravel-topped roof. “Ah, yes. Mr. Killjoy. Ever the skeptic. How lucky of you to draw—What did you call it? Babysitting duty.” His frosted eyes danced over the stars. It was a clear night on the Baltic Sea.
“Am I supposed to be impressed?” Barricade had complained to Psyphire in private. He had used those exact words.
“I have no illusion that I will be able to impress someone with your combat experience. I am merely answering your question.”
Barricade continued scanning the vessel with telescopic thermal imaging. The men on board milled about idly as if waiting for something. “Don’t get me wrong, old man. I’ve seen plenty of shit I can’t explain in this world. Shamans and magic and shit. But I’ve also met a few would-be psychics before. They’re all good at figuring out what you had for breakfast that morning or that you had a crazy Aunt Millie. But it’s funny how they can never seem to call up anything useful, or at any time you might actually need it.” He adjusted the focus. The prostitute was riding one of the men on a lower level. The pair was a bouncing mass of orange and yellow.
“That’s because they’re faking it.”
“Right.” Barricade opened his hand and his railgun swiveled over his head on its shoulder mount and stopped in front of him. The capacitors whined as they began to charge. The mercenary looked through the cross hairs of his telescopic sight and watched the red-and-orange silhouette of the couple as the man bent her over. “So what’s your excuse? These guys don’t seem to be wearing tinfoil hats.”
“Wisping isn’t reading minds. And minds aren’t television sets. Or computers. A mind isn’t a projection, Mr. Killjoy. It’s a shadow without light. An anatomy of absence. Do you understand?”
“Not really.” Barricade moved his sight along the ship until he saw a human-shaped dark hole in the image.
Scarab. Her mutated heat shock proteins were continually absorbing any ambient heat. It made her body register as absolute zero on the cyborg’s screen. She was pitch black in front of the dark blue of the water.
He spoke to his radio. “Hey, Lady Death. How about a heads up before you vent this time?” On their last mission together, Scarab had released a heat blast while Barricade was using thermal imaging. The sudden white-hot eruption at close range nearly blinded him permanently.
“Save the conversation,” Psyphire ordered.
“Relax, boss. Line’s encrypted. To the rest of the world, we sound like ambient static. MODUS made sure of that. Ain’t that right, fellas?”
MODUS, working in the car below, didn’t respond.
“Has the target moved?” Psyphire asked.
Barricade swung his sight toward the back of the ship. “No. He’s still by the hold. Looks like they’re waiting for something.” He muted his radio again. “So answer me this. If you can read minds, how did you get captured?”
“Ms. Molotov is quite cunning.”
“You can say that again.” Barricade didn’t need to be psychic to sense that there was more to the story.
Wisper didn’t need to be psychic to sense sarcasm. “She was able to trap you in Ghana, was she not?”
Barricade lifted his head from the sight. He knew it was Ghana. “Yeah, but I’m not psychic.”
“Does that mean you believe I am?”
Artemis lowered his head again. “Maybe. But if you are, then I have to wonder why you wanted to get caught.”
“Ah. Yes.”
“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”
“The others are often frustrated with you. They believe you have ‘trust issues.’”
Barricade snorted. “Alright. I’ll bite. What am I thinking right now?”
“I told you. It’s not that straightforward. A mind isn’t the same as the machine that makes it, just as an ocean wave isn’t the molecules of water. A mind can’t be Googled. It can only be experienced. What you are experiencing now is doubt. About me. About this mission. And something else.”
Barricade watched as the water at the front of the ship turned white and froze solid. The ice spread backward and around the vessel, mooring it to the docks. There would be no escape.
Engine noise.
“Whoa whoa whoa, everybody hold on.” Barricade spoke to his radio. “New players on site.”
He watched a pair of black SUVs stop in front of the ship. Five soldiers in rough fatigues stepped from the cars followed by a woman. A very tall, muscular woman.
Barricade spoke to his team. “Looks like our friends, the Vorgýrim. I think they’re making a delivery.”
“Wait until they’re on board,” Psyphire advised her team from cover.
Barricade watched them unload a metal box from the back of the lead vehicle. “I thought we blew these guys up.”
“We only attacked one clan,” Malady explained from the shadow of her hiding place. “They have a lot of holes.”
Barricade clicked his radio off. “And another thing. For a dude who’s supposed to be blind, you sure get around pretty well. Shouldn’t you have a cane or a dog or something?”
“Moving about is not difficult.”
“How’s that?”
“You have been taught there are five senses and that a sixth is an impossibility. But the truth is there are already more than five senses known to science. You have a little organ in your ear, for example, where tiny crystals tumble over hairs, and as the hairs move, they tell your brain which way is up, which way is down, and how your body is oriented in space. It’s what keeps you from chewing your own tongue and tells you where your limbs are even in total darkness.
“I can’t see the dock. I am blind. But I know from your mind that the ship is there.” He nodded with his oblong forehead. A wisp of hair fell over his crinkled ear. “I know this because you have sense of it. And the door to the roof is behind us, and if I walk through it in a straight line for thirty or so paces, I sense that I can go down, but at an angle. That means a staircase. It curves . . .” He tilted his head as he summoned the knowledge. “To the left. And then continues for three flights. That is the bottom. From there is the street. And we are very, very, very far from the place you think of as home.”
Home. Barricade paused. “And where’s that?” he said softly. He wasn’t even sure anymore.
“South Africa, it seems.”
The cyborg was silent. Then he turned his radio back on. “Looks like the woman with the filed fangs and the white face paint is the leader. Two guys in front of her. Two more carrying a big metal case. One in the rear. All heavily armed. Semi-automatics. Couple grenades. They’re walking up the plank now.”
Barricade looked farther down the pier. Psyphire was creeping closer.
“Attack on my signal,” she said.
Barricade’s weapon beeped softly. “Railgun charged.”
And just like that, it began. The bullets in the rifles of the aft guards exploded when Psyphire ignited their cartridges. Malady climbed up the side of the ship like an insect, acid nails punching holes in the metal. Then she dropped to the deck and spit, erasing a man’s face as he shrieked.
Scarab moved in from the front as MODUS walked up the plank carrying a computer and some equipment.
Psyphire came over the radio. “I’m pinned!”
“I see that,” the cyborg replied.
“So shoot them already.”
The cyborg heard bullets ricocheting off metal in Psyphire’s transmission. She was in trouble. “I’ll only get one shot. Wait for it . . .” In his display, three red shot-lines intersected three targets as they moved aft, converging on the firestarter’s location.
“Artemis! Now!”
The first man was on the upper deck, keeping Psyphire from moving back up the stairs. The other two were on deck below, firing on her in short spurts. She couldn’t get clear long enough to concentrate and disable their weapons.
As they moved—one in the middle slightly faster than the others—the red lines in the cyborg’s display approached a single line of fire. “Come on, come on,” he whispered.
“ARTEMIS!”
“Artemis!” Malady called. “Take the fucking shot!”
“Artemis, you asshole.” Scarab joined in.
Barricade pulled the trigger and the long segmented barrel of his railgun strobed a bright white, launching an iron shell with a core of depleted uranium. It strafed though the air and through the ship in an explosion of sparks. Without stopping, it disintegrated all three targets before erupting out the far side and falling into the sea.
“Boo-yah!” Barricade threw up a hand. “Straight shot, baby!”
The railgun clicked as it retracted. It would take a minute or so for the capacitors to recharge, and the cyborg could only get off a couple shots before dangerously depleting his internal battery, so Psyphire had him tethered to the heavy power pack resting in the ground near his feet. And that was why he was on babysitting duty. She didn’t trust the old psychic to stay put, even in a locked cell.
Barricade turned his head to make sure the old man was zip-tied to the pipe.
“Don’t worry, Mr. Killjoy. My bonds are quite secure. You were very thorough.”
Barricade watched as his team easily dispatched the remainder of the men and moved toward the dark hold.
“Bring him,” Psyphire signaled.
Barricade drew a knife and cut the zip-ties. He pulled his prisoner to his feet. “So if you can’t just read this guy’s mind, what do we need you for?” He leaned the old man backward over the side of the building.
Wisper remained calm. “It helps if you prompt the subject to think about what you want to know. Otherwise it can take weeks or even years to experience enough of someone’s waking mind, at random, to find what you are looking for.”
“Waking? What happens when we’re asleep?”
“Wisping a dreaming mind is like trying to scale a sand dune in an earthquake. There is no solid footing.”
“Ha.” Barricade gave the old man his solid footing back. “Well, don’t worry, old man. We’re gonna get you close. Boss-woman’s got a clit hard-on for whoever we’re after like I ain’t never seen. I almost feel sorry for the unfortunate fucks.”
“Indeed. She is quite relentless.”
Barricade led the man to the door of the roof. With infrared vision, he could see the prostitute’s insides turn ice-cold. He lowered his shoulders.
That wasn’t necessary.
Fucking Scarab.
Psyphire came over the radio. “Artemis, what’s the holdup?”
“Coming.” In the thermal scan, a wave of dark cold extended along the hall in front of his team.
Then blinding light.
“Shit!” Barricade put his hands over his faceplate out of instinct as he shut the thermal imaging off. His eyes were full of spots. He could hardly see. “Fucking bitch did that on purpose!”
Wisper smirked. “Don’t worry.” He took the cyborg’s rubber-lined metal hand. “I can lead you the rest of the way.”
The Vorgýrim, on her knees, squinted at the hybrid specter before her.
MODUS was squatting next to the heavy door of the ship’s radioactive hold, hacking one laptop computer with another. There was a small round portal in the door. Above it, a back-lit radioactive symbol was dark.
“This is just the mobile unit,” Psyphire explained to the incredulous woman. “There are others. MODUS is a hive mind. Permanently fused to become an entirely different kind of artificial intelligence. And the world’s greatest technological wizard.”
The bloodied Russian lying against a cooling pipe in the corner blurted a single loud laugh.
MODUS stopped what it was doing. Both sets of goggle-covered eyes turned slowly and stared at the man. His foot was broken. There was a cut above his eye and he’d sustained burns to his face.
He spat thick red mucus and swallowed the remainder with a snort. “Obviously you’ve never met the child.”
“Who?”
Wisper walked into the room leading the cyborg, whose vision was slowly returning.
“Bitch,” Barricade breathed as he walked past Scarab.
The Vorgýrim glowered. “Your marvels mean nothing. I see nothing but a babbling corpse before me. Roasted on a spit. You’re food to me. We are the scourge. We have plagued mankind since before the wheel. My people will hunt every last one of you like vermin and drain you until you shrivel like dried leaves.”
Psyphire smirked.
“YOU WILL NOT LAUGH WHEN YOU ARE BURNING IN THE PIT!” She screamed. “There are places older and deeper than civilization. In which nameless evil dwells. Evil that we alone tend. Evil that must be fed.”
Barricade walked around Psyphire and stood between the Vorgýrim and the target.
Scarab leaned over the woman. “So we’re to be eaten alive. How wonderful.”
“No. Not at first.” The Vorgýrim searched for any sign of life in the woman’s strange, ice-white eyes. “Not until it is done squeezing, like ripe fruit, every last ounce of suffering from your mind. Until you can produce no more. Until your very soul is dry and desiccated. It will show you indescribable things. Drive you mad. Leave you drooling with hollow eyes. Only then will it finally consume you.”
“That does sound terrible.”
Malady was impatient. “Just kill her already and let’s get out of here.”
The fanged woman glowered as her chest heaved. “You have started a war you cannot win. The Supremacy has awoken the Immortals. They are coming for you.”
“Wait,” Psyphire said to Scarab, who had removed one of her probes from her hair. “The what?”
“We have hunters of our own. Not just soldiers. Not just innocent families, like you slaughtered on the great steppe. Threshkar. The Immortals. Dark souls who’ve suckled the venom of our monsters and emerged from the duzuri, the Sleep of Centuries, changed. Awful. Powerful. They will find you. And you will know.”
“I see.” Psyphire nodded to Scarab, who pierced the woman’s side and froze her heart in her chest.
She yelped, but caught herself. She stared at her murderer defiantly as she shivered and died.
Barricade looked at the woman’s painted face, twisted in anger even in death. He shook his head.
Fucking Scarab.
Psyphire stepped to the heavy Russian man, who propped himself against the bulkhead. “Hello.” She looked down at him. “You are Evgeny Yushenkin.”
“Da.” Evgeny wiped blood from his upper lip.
“There was a blackout recently. In America. New York City.”
“So I heard.”
Psyphire squatted so she was eye level with him. “In the chaos, the nuclear physics lab at City University detected something. A blip that came and went and moved throughout the city. The radioactive signature suggested unusually high levels of impurities, which means it wasn’t American or Israeli. This material came from somewhere else. So tell me.” Psyphire leaned closer. “Make any deliveries to New York recently?”
“We’re in,” MODUS said, two mouths as one.
Psyphire turned her head. “What do you have?”
“Last communication was moments ago. He sent a message to a dummy IP address. Three words: Babochka, they’re coming.”
“Can you find who it was sent to?”
“Not from here. The message was retrieved through a physical port and then unplugged. It could be anyone.”
Psyphire turned back to her prisoner. “Where did you take the plutonium?”
“If I tell you, you have no reason to let me live.”
“Ah, but if you don’t tell me, I have every reason to kill you.”
Evgeny smiled and switched to the pair’s native language. “No you don’t. Young lady, don’t make me give you the lecture about how I’ve been doing this since before you were born. This is not the first time I have been in this position. How do you think I’ve survived working with those bloodsuckers for so long?
“You will not find anything in my computers. What you want exists in one place and one place only.” He tapped his head. “And if you lay a hand on me, you get nothing.”
“We have ways.”
“I told you, this isn’t the first time I’ve been in this situation. Once you go through such . . . experiences”—he looked away—“you take steps to see you never do so again.
“There is a device. Inside my skull. It takes a great deal of pain to trigger it. More than I would ever encounter in normal life. Even if I were in a terrible accident. But there is a certain comfort in knowing, as the tortures worsen, that release is near. And that simple comfort is enough to compel a man to keep his mouth shut, even as you rip the teeth from my jaw. Or whatever you had in mind.”
Psyphire looked to MODUS. The twin closest to the Russian adjusted his goggles and stepped closer. He peered.
“There is definitely a device. We cannot speak to its function without further analysis.”
Psyphire snorted. “It doesn’t matter. He could have had a stack of coins inserted into his skull. It wouldn’t make any difference. The mere presence of something means we can’t take the chance. Clever.”
Evgeny shrugged. “Don’t worry. I am a businessman. You have demand. I have supply. I’m sure there is a deal to be made.”
“What do you want?”
“Your telephone number.”
“You’re not my type.” Psyphire was droll.
“Don’t be stupid. I will encode a message with the information you want. When I am free, I will text you the key to unlock it.”
Psyphire paced back and forth three times. She stopped in front of the heavy radiation-proof doors and scowled. Then she looked up. “I have a better idea. Lock him in the cargo hold.”
Evgeny looked to the heavy doors. He was confused. “What?”
Barricade pulled the man to his feet and toward the radioactive storage room.
“Make it quick.”
“What are you doing? No!”
“You don’t want us to torture you.” Psyphire shrugged. “So we won’t.”
The cyborg opened the heavy doors and a radiation alarm sounded. The yellow-and-black symbol above the door lit brightly. He shoved the Russian in, slammed them shut, and turned the handle. The alarm stopped.
Evgeny stood and pounded on the small, thick glass portal. “Please!” His voice was all but inaudible.
Psyphire cleaned her blue nails as she leaned against the door. She spoke loudly. “I know many things about fire. How it feels. How it breathes. How it grows. I don’t know such things about radiation, but it seems to me the longer you wait, the shorter and more painful the rest of your life will be, no?”
Evgeny’s screams were faint through the shielded glass.
“Tell me where to find the Prophet and we will let you out, clever man.”
“No one knows him. You’re more likely to find Jesus.” Then, before Psyphire could object: “But his people are in New Jersey. Near Newark airport. Let me out and I will give you the exact address.”
Psyphire turned to Wisper. The old man nodded.
“There is no need.” Psyphire turned and walked away. “You already thought of it.” She motioned to the others. “We’re through.”
Evgeny pounded on the glass. “Wait! Don’t leave! Where are you going? I can get you anything. We can make a deal!”
But no one answered.
Minutes later, the fuel tank on the Pentecost II exploded and the ship slowly sank into the Baltic.
Barricade didn’t budge. He stood in the wide hangar near the nose of the sleek, black supersonic jet. He had Wisper firmly in hand. He said one word.
“No.”
The others watched the standoff amid the sound of a passenger plane landing on the runway outside.
Psyphire scowled. “What?”
“You heard me. Ol’ Gray and I aren’t going anywhere until you cut the bullshit and come clean.”
“Is that so?”
“There’s a reason we’ve never had this many of us together at once. A good reason. And if we’re willing to break with that, then something’s going down. Something big.”
“We follow orders, Mr. Killjoy.” Psyphire moseyed forward. “We never know the endgame. Or even if there is one. That’s how it works. That’s how it always works.”
“Nuh uh. Not this time. Not with you. Orders come through Maria.”
“Maria is no longer in charge of Special Assets. I am.”
“What?” Malady stepped forward.
“See?” Barricade said to her. “I told you.”
“On whose authority?” she objected.
“Anders. And the executive council.”
“When were you planning on telling us?”
“I didn’t want our petty rivalries to distract from the mission,” Psyphire explained. “It’s too important. Now get on the damned plane or—”
Barricade drew his side arm and pressed the barrel directly against Wisper’s skull. Two could play Evgeny’s game. “I know you don’t give a crap about me, Veronika. But the old man’s brain is precious cargo.”
“Is that what our conversation on the dock was for?” Wisper asked, unmoved. “Were you validating that the contents of my skull were as valuable as advertised?”
“Stay outta my head,” Barricade warned. He looked to Psyphire. “Your move.”
Psyphire paced. She looked at the gun. With a bullet in the chamber, she couldn’t risk igniting the cartridge. It might hit the old man. And none of the others were close enough. Artemis had waited until he had a strategic position between them and the door. And then there was the less obvious issue: the cyborg was their only pilot.
“Brickbat is dead,” she said flatly.
“Good. We don’t need that defective motherfucker.”
“What about Adevyi?” Malady asked.
Psyphire turned to her. “Et tu?”
“Just answer the fucking question, Veronika.”
“Deadbolt as well.”
All eyes darted to Scarab, but she merely fixed the embalmer’s probes in her dreadlocked hair. She looked like she was calmly preparing to kill everyone in the hangar.
Malady turned back to Psyphire. “And Maria?”
“Maria is alive. For now. She’s in China overseeing the completion of Alpha Site.”
“But?”
“But once it’s complete, Anders will probably have her liquidated. By us. As a test of our loyalty.”
“That ain’t right.” Barricade shook his head. “She found us. All of us. Special Assets is her baby.”
“Maria is weak.” Malady scoffed. “Her powers have faded. If she were half as potent as when she brought us together, Anders would never have been able to oust her so easily.”
“So that’s it?” Barricade asked. “A new overseer grabs the whip and you all line up like good little slaves?”
“Who said anything about a new master?” Psyphire turned to the cyborg. “I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m tired of being a puppet to a bunch of eggheads who got pushed around too much on the playground and are looking to take it out on the world.” She turned to MODUS. “No offense.”
“None taken,” they said in unison.
“A coup?” Malady asked.
“No.” Barricade smiled under his faceplate. “An uprising.”
Psyphire’s eyes flashed with blue flame. “The slaves become the masters. The Founders’ power is their secrecy. And we underwrite that power. We can slip in unnoticed and do the work of twenty men.”
“Fifty,” Barricade corrected.
“A phantom regime without its secret army can do nothing without being discovered. And they know it.”
Barricade shook his head at the firestarter. “Jesus, Veronika. Justin was right about you.”
“Oh? And what did Preacher have to say?”
“You really do want the entire world.”
“What of the machine?” MODUS asked with twin voices. “It goes live in two weeks. After that, they’ll know what you’re up to. You may as well kill yourselves.”
“Us?” Malady asked. “What about you?”
The brothers turned to her as one. “MODUS will survive these bodies.”
“Naw.” Barricade shook his head. He looked to Psyphire. “You had to have realized that. Sooner or later, you have to get around the machine. So what’s the plan?”
“Let me worry about the plan. All you need to know is that there is one. All I need to know is whether you’re in. Or out.”
“What if we say no?” Malady asked.
Scarab looked at the woman in the charcoal cloth. “Don’t.”
The air grew cold.
Malady stepped forward and made claws with her hands. Green venom dripped. “I’m not scared of you, bitch.”
“Oh, stop it!” Psyphire chided. “You’re not doing anything but giving the boys an erection.” She motioned toward the men.
Malady turned. Barricade and MODUS stood motionless, ready to enjoy the cat fight. She scowled and stepped away.
The cyborg holstered his weapon and loosed his grip on the old man, who stayed silent. “So what’s our first move?”
“Complete the mission.”
Barricade scoffed. “Isn’t that what they want us to do?”
“In this case, we have a common enemy. Our former masters’ plans are known, as are their capabilities and timeline. They are not the biggest threat. At the moment. As long as our plans remain secret, we have the advantage. There is . . . someone else. A group about which we know very little.”
“New York,” Barricade said.
“And California,” Scarab added.
“No shit?” Barricade whistled. “They got Fears, too? Who the fuck are these people? The Canadians finally get wise to what happened in the Arctic Circle?”
“Research believes they have ties to the Minus Faction.”
Malady snorted. “And you believe that? Seems a bit of a stretch for a bunch of drug-addled hacktivists. They’ve never been a serious threat. If they had, we would have eliminated them.”
“We don’t know. No one does. In the immediate aftermath of the blackout, Research had every computer at our disposal poring over every byte of data they could get their hands on, both inside our network and out—news coverage, social media posts, weather reports, anything. They figured out why these people have given us so much trouble.” Psyphire paused. “They’re augmented.”
There was silence.
“You mean we’re going after our own kind,” Barricade corrected.
Psyphire looked at him. “Is that a problem?”
“What can they do?”
“You will be briefed—”
“No,” Barricade stepped forward. “If we’re going against augments, I wanna know. How many are there?”
“Based on eyewitness reports, Research believes there are at least four. Plus the leader.”
“Five?” Malady was shocked. “How did Maria miss that many?”
“The better question,” Scarab corrected in her guttural voice, “is who recruited them.”
“Prophet,” Barricade guessed.
Psyphire nodded.
“Who is he?”
“A ghost. A phantom. He doesn’t exist. Anywhere. Research has suggested he’s clairvoyant.”
Barricade turned to his prisoner. “Someone else like you?”
“There is no one else like me,” Wisper answered softly. “I would know.”
“Then who’s this Prophet guy?”
Wisper didn’t answer.
Barricade snorted.
“Could it be Anders?” Malady asked.
Psyphire’s head moved slightly as if she had realized something she’d never contemplated before. She put her hand to her lips and walked in a circle. “Possibly . . .”
“A man with coded backdoor access to the network could appear clairvoyant,” Malady continued. “Everyone’s knows he’s a psychopath. Say he doesn’t share the Founders’ vision. He could be making a play to take over. Not just the executive council. Everything.”
“What about the augments?” Barricade repeated.
Psyphire stood straight. “Before he died, Dr. Fears implanted the artifact in one of them, a young man we know only as Lando Calrissian.”
Scarab’s head shot round as everyone else cursed.
“The Oric?” Malady was incredulous. “Are you serious? Why would Fears let something like that into the wild?”
“Because Digby was an asshat.” Barricade whistled. “That’s a mess. No wonder nobody objected to Maria’s ouster. What about the others?”
“You’ll be fully briefed on the plane. I promise. Provided you’re with us.” She stared at Barricade.
“Oh sure,” he objected. “Pick on ol’ Artemis.”
“You’re the one always making an obstacle of yourself. Barricade. Besides, you’re the god-damned pilot.”
“Fine. I’m in. Just get one thing straight.” He stepped to Psyphire. He bent over until his pointed faceplate was within inches of her face. “Every mission with you, I wear my flame-retardant undies. You try anything, you close your eyes for anything except a blink, I’ll pound your face out your ass.”
Psyphire didn’t budge. Her Russian accent dripped acid. “Like most men, you’re tough on the outside, but all soft and gooey in the center. Like a candy. And metal conducts heat very well, I think.”
He glanced to Scarab, but she didn’t look.
Barricade gave a metallic snort. He passed the dreadlocked woman as he walked to the plane. “Adevyi’s not even buried yet and you’re already fucking someone else.” He motioned to Psyphire. “Now that is cold.”
“If we’re done beating our chests?” Psyphire turned to Malady and waited for an answer.
The living plague stood silently in thought. She looked to Wisper. Then to MODUS. Then she nodded in assent.
“Good. Then everyone strap in. We’re going to New Jersey.”