Ian was screaming into the radio.
Wink looked up at John standing in the dark-skinned soldier’s body. He saw fear in the girl’s wide eyes. No jibes. No sarcasm. It was genuine.
She pulled out her phone and tapped the screen. She shook her head. “Closest we can get in the Mast is about nine blocks, and that’s only if we circle halfway across town and ride subway tracks for half a mile. It’ll take forever.”
The pair listened as Ian recited words he was told to repeat, over and over.
Come get me.
Come get me.
Come get me.
He was being tortured.
“There’s gotta be a way,” John objected.
“Here.” The man Dennis stood behind John, dripping wet. He held up a key at the end of a short chain. Plastic sushi dangled from the other side. “In the garage. Black bike, red stripes. Right up front.”
John looked at the key in the man’s outstretched hand. “Are you sure?”
“Take it, man.” He tossed the key to John. He seemed as though he understood what had happened and didn’t care in the least. Dennis nodded to John in the dark-skinned soldier’s body. His kids stood on either side of him, wet, with blankets over their shoulders. He knelt and pulled them close. “I got everything right here.”
John turned to Wink.
“I’ll get there as soon as I can,” she said.
John took off.
“Wait!” Wink called. She ran to the back of the ambulance. She tossed him the sword. “He’s bullet-proof. Remember?”
Moments later, John was flying down the dark road on the slickest speed bike he’d ever seen.
Deadbolt panted over Ian, who could only grimace and shake under the torture. He could smell burnt hair and the sweet stench of his own charred flesh.
The killer had been amusing himself, but suddenly he stopped.
Silence.
Ian heard nothing.
Deadbolt stood and turned to face the darkness at the far end of the room near the half-destroyed scaffolding.
“I knew you’d come.” The man in black looked over John’s new body, one of the killer’s own soldiers. “That’s a neat trick.”
“So I’ve been told.” John drew his sword. He walked forward obliquely, trying to get closer to Ian.
Deadbolt moved to block him. “You remember me. Don’t you?”
John stopped. The killer hadn’t meant from their last battle. He meant from before. From Malaysia. All those years ago.
“I couldn’t place it at first. After we fought in California. But I had a lot of time to think in the hospital. It wasn’t hard. The list of people who have met me and survived is very short. And I knew.” He paused. “You’re the soldier who took me from my home. You’re the one who turned me into this.”
He pulled off his helmet. It bounced on the floor.
But John was ready this time.
“Look.” The killer pointed to his face. “LOOK!”
John was stoic.
“You see what they did to me!” Deadbolt launched himself forward, sword raised. The dragon on his chest flickered as he threw a bolt, which John deflected with his weapon.
The pair of black blades sparked and clanged as they struck back and forth across each other in repeated blows and parries. John pressed forward, then was pushed back. He dodged a bolt and deflected another.
Deadbolt was ready this time. His attacks were balanced. He didn’t rush as he had at their first encounter. He wasn’t as confidently reliant on his talents. John dodged a swing and saw the black blade miss him by millimeters; then he thrust and parried.
The men struck and blocked and spun through the open construction floor. Every time John got an edge, the man in black threw a little bolt of lightning and John had to move back, or move the sword from offense to defense, and everything reset. After five minutes of constant, mobile swordplay, the two men had made no headway. Both were beginning to tire.
John crouched and held his blade at an angle in front of his body. His adversary’s attack was balanced. He was using both his powers and his weapon. But he wasn’t using the terrain.
John attacked, then retreated gracefully under the ensuing onslaught. He led his opponent back toward the leaning, two-layered scaffolding near the interior of the structure. Workers had been installing wiring in the ceiling, and several light fixtures and heavy rolls of cord were stacked at the top.
Deadbolt threw a blast, then tumbled, forcing John to flip feet-over-head and parry in the air. He landed and sliced through two metal supports keeping the scaffolding aloft. He immediately rammed the lower supports with his shoulder. The heavy equipment toppled the structure, which struck the retreating Deadbolt hard in the shoulder, forcing him to drop his sword and pushing him back.
“GAH!” The killer stumbled and screamed in frustration. His arm hung limp. He sneered. Then smiled. “Clever.” He pulled a small metal device from his padded jacket, like a gun handle with no barrel. “But I am also clever. My work with the schizophrenic gave me a wonderful idea. I figured your real body must be in bad shape if you have to keep stealing others. I figured you had a conscience, that you’d take one of mine, like you did before, rather than steal an innocent. So I had my team outfitted with some new tech. I told them it was a tracking device. I implanted it where they couldn’t see.”
John reached and touched the back of his neck just below his head. There was a recently healed incision.
“I’m going to torture your friend. Right now. Until he shits himself. And then I will kill him. Slowly. Painfully. If you want to avenge his bloody, excruciating death, you’re going to have to come yourself, because there are no more bad men for you to steal.”
John looked to Ian, hunched and panting in the corner. It didn’t look like he could even stand.
The man in black pulled the trigger, and John’s soldier jerked and dropped dead.
John awoke with a start. He was back in the Mast, in his chair, in his own body. Wink was in the driver’s seat. She turned to look at him as soon as she heard the gasp. Their eyes locked.
John swallowed. He didn’t even care about the pain. Not this time. “Ian . . .”
Wink’s lower lip quivered. Her face twisted and her eyes pinched shut. She started to cry.
Deadbolt leaned down. He looked even sicklier than Ian remembered. The exposed conjunctiva around his bloodshot eyes throbbed with his heartbeat, which was quickened. The tattoo on his head was wrinkled. He grabbed Ian’s hands and examined his fingers.
Then the dry, raspy voice. “You’re right-handed.”
Before Ian could nod, the man in black pulled his sword and sliced through Ian’s right forearm.
Ian screamed. He could barely control his breath. So much pain.
Deadbolt clutched the bleeding stub and flexed. Searing bursts of heat tore through Ian’s flesh. He smelled smoke. Deadbolt let go and Ian collapsed, eyes shut tight, jaw clenched. The wound was still seeping, but Ian wouldn’t bleed out. He figured the dragon wanted to torture him more.
The killer feasted with his wild, red, pulsating eyes. He licked his shriveled, narrow lips. He was almost smiling. He lifted the severed hand from the floor and waved it at Ian. It flopped back and forth at the wrist. Then the killer brushed Ian’s own severed fingers across his face.
“There, there. Shhhh. It’ll all be over soon.”
Tears fell. Ian gritted his teeth between angry, impotent pants. “Fucking monster.”
“Fears warned you. The first time we met. He told you there are many nightmares in this world. I am only one.” He leaned close. “And you know what? I’m not even the worst. I woke something the other day, something terrible, something beyond reason, and right now it’s out there on that bridge ripping your friend to pieces.” The killer’s red, bulging eyes flashed with delight. They were greedy for suffering. “The big one can’t save you this time.”
Ian shivered. He was still out of breath. His heart just couldn’t keep up with the damage to his body. He felt cold. Not on his skin, but inside, like he’d lost too much blood. Or was going into shock.
“Oh, I’m sure your traveling friend will return.” Deadbolt stood and looked around. “But as you can see, there’s no body here for him to borrow. So I will take his head.” He leaned down again. He whispered, “And rape the child.”
Ian tasted blood. He spat, meekly and with wet, quivering lips. It was the only thing he could do.
Deadbolt raised his sword with one hand and clutched Ian’s scalp with the other. “I would love to roast your brain in its juices, but my masters still want what’s inside you. They’ll do terrible things if I risk it, worse even than I can imagine. So consider a clean death my parting gift. Goodbye, Mr. Calrissian.”
Ian looked at the black sword above him.
Wink’s face went flat. She stopped crying. She wiped her cheek with one flat smear of her palm. She gritted her teeth.
No.
“Hold on, Cap!”
She hit a big red button on her dash display and an engine, a different engine, roared like an electric dinosaur. Blue light shone from under the hood as the ambulance jerked into motion, flipped a parked car out of the way, turned around, and careened down the road at high speed. People had gathered on the street to escape the dark and stuffy building, and they jumped out of the way of the wailing, flashing ambulance.
John’s chair wasn’t secured. He rolled back as the vehicle jerked forward and hit his head on the bar of the stretcher. The chair toppled and he slid across the floor to the command console at the rear. “What are you doing?”
The ambulance raced parallel with the gridlock, dodged several parked cars and swerved onto a pedestrian walkway. People moved. The digital display in the dash warned in flashing red that they were traveling almost sixty miles an hour. With the little girl driving.
Wink spoke to the on-board computer. “Plot an aerial trajectory with a one-kilometer jump to intersect this exact point.” She touched the screen. She swerved. “Give me the closest launch point for direct intercept on an eight-second burn.”
A pleasant female voice responded. “Plotting . . .”
“Launch point?” John was on the floor in the back, barely hanging onto the stretcher, as his chair moved back and forth in front of him in time with the swerving vehicle.
“Hang on, we’re about to turn!”
“Turn?” John yelled. “You’re gonna turn this boat at—”
Wink spun the wheel to the right as a grappling head and cable launched from the side of the wide-bodied truck. The spiked head lodged itself in the concrete exterior of a building on the street corner and the vehicle moved in an arc at full speed, like a slingshot.
At the peak of the curve, Wink hit a button and the cable detached. The ambulance bounced from two wheels back to four and sped down a long street at 90 mph on a collision course with a jackknifed semi in the middle of the road.
“WINK!” John yelled from the floor.
The little girl tapped on her dash console. Outside the vehicle, two long, narrow revolving doors—one on each side between the front and back wheels—spun open and ejected a red-capped Chinese missile. Both projectiles ignited immediately and streaked down the road. Their paths crossed in midair, leaving an X-shaped smoke trail, before striking the semi.
John felt the explosions even on the floor of the ambulance. The two halves of the now-cleaved truck flipped away, end-over-end, and crashed into the buildings on either side of the street, leaving a clear path amid fire and raining glass.
Wink hit the gas. The deep blue light under the hood shone brighter. 110. 120. 130.
“What the hell do you have in there?” John screamed over the din.
“Plutonium!”
The window display in the ambulance marked an upcoming spot in green. The nice woman spoke. “Launch point in five . . . four . . . three . . .”
John grabbed the bars of the stretcher as best he could with both hands as Wink hit the ignition.
There was a deafening roar. Rocket fuel erupted from three nozzles under the heavy emergency vehicle, which achieved immediate liftoff, flying past the skyscrapers that reflected the light in their glass.
“Wiiiiiiiink!” John yelled.
Everything vibrated like a spaceship on reentry. John felt his teeth might come free. The g-force was too strong for his one good arm and his fingers slipped. John banged his head on the floor and bounced before being pinned at the back. He could feel the skin of his cheeks pressed to his teeth. He was trapped.
Wink’s small frame was forced deep into the driver’s seat. Her eyes squinted shut. For a moment she thought she might pass out.
The ambulance flew like a comet across the night sky, trailing blue-orange flame. People on the ground looked up and pointed at the fireball streaking across the darkened skyline, over offices and church spires and rooftop gardens. Was that a UFO?
After eight seconds, at the apex of the arc, the fuel ran out. The rear nozzles cut a fraction of a second before the front, causing the vehicle to right itself in midair. As the g-force subsided, the heavy truck was carried along only by its momentum. It fell, following the trailing end of the arc plotted in blue on the interior of the windshield, right toward the side of a tarped building.
John felt himself weightless. Anything not tied down floated to the ceiling. He shook his head and immediately regretted it. He had a concussion. Everything was fuzzy. He shut his eyes, but he couldn’t shake the image of the approaching skyscraper. They were going to crash.
Right into a tower.
Ian wasn’t ready to die, but he was ready for the pain to stop, and if that meant death, he was finding it hard to care. Everything hurt. So much. Like a dentist had drilled through his flesh and into every joint in his body. He had no energy to move. No way to escape. His severed hand rested on the ground mere feet from him. A part of himself. Just gone. He wanted it to be over. The suffering. He watched the sword descend.
The rev of an engine.
From outside the eighth floor?
Deadbolt turned in confusion as the bull bars of the ambulance tore through the plastic tarp that lined the exterior. The truck pierced concrete and metal and landed on the floor with a jolt. It bounced forward and smashed into the man with the dragon tattoo, who could only stare in shock at the approaching headlights. The bull bars knocked the man back and crushed him against the far wall.
He immediately burst. Bolts of electricity arced from his body over and over in every direction. Ian watched through squinted eyes as they lit the man’s own internal organs, just as they had Betty Six, and multiple repeating, branching electric arcs danced and bounced over the hood of the vehicle, the wall, the ceiling, then traveled forty stories up the metal core of the building and erupted from the antenna at the top. People all across the dark city watched the strange curving fireworks in awe.
And then it was over.
Deadbolt’s body was smoking. His torso rested limply on the hood of the ambulance. His lifeless, bloodshot eyes stared right through the girl in the driver’s seat, who panted under a deflating airbag.
Wink was unable to move her gaze from the dead man’s red and burnt face. He was looking right at her. He was dead. But he was looking right at her. She started to shiver.
“Wink.” John dragged himself forward with his good arm. His limp legs wobbled behind him. His voice was weak. His felt woozy.
Ian stumbled to his feet, fell, then crawled on two legs and one arm toward the ambulance. “wink . . .”
The little girl was frozen. Her hands shook uncontrollably. Her eyes were lost in the dead man’s gaze.
She jumped when John reached up from the floor and touched her thigh.
“Get outta there.”
She nodded, shaking. She unhooked her seatbelt and John pulled her to the floor as Ian opened the back of the vehicle. He collapsed with his back to the cabinets of Wink’s command console. One of the small screens had fallen to the floor.
“S-see, Moron?” The little girl’s voice was shaking with her body. Her eyes were unfocused. “I told you we needed j-jump jets.”
Ian frowned at his friend. She was going into shock. Her little fingers were shaking. Her lips were turning blue. The eleven-year-old had just killed a man. Then stared into his lifeless eyes.
John dragged himself closer to her. “Wink, look at me.”
The girl was shivering badly. “I feel cold.”
John reached up, pulled a brown blanket from under a strap on the stretcher, and draped it over the child’s back. Ian pulled it tight around the other side. The blood on his single hand smudged the creases. He kept his seeping right arm clutched to his chest.
Wink looked at it, teeth chattering, then up at him without recognition.
Ian could barely talk. His voice was a hoarse whisper. “hang in there, genius.” He was shaking as well. His heart ached in his chest, like it was sore from pumping so hard for so long.
Voices. The static of chatter. But not the police. Whoever they were, they were moving cautiously, quietly.
Ian looked at John. Both men saw fear in each other’s eyes.
“you have to take one.”
John shook his head, then regretted it. He rested it on the floor of the ambulance. “I’m all knocked around. Head’s fuzzy. Can’t hitch.”
Ian stared ahead. “can’t hold my breath another second.” He glanced toward the approaching sounds, chest heaving.
Wink shivered. She looked at Ian, but she had no reaction to his words. She was pale. So pale.
He pulled her to him and held on, one-armed, as John struggled to right himself next to them. The old soldier rested his shoulder against the cabinets of Wink’s command console, facing his friends. He nodded to Ian.
Ian nodded back in understanding.
This was the end.
“Sir!” Someone called from just beyond the walls of the emergency vehicle.
There was hurried shuffling and footsteps. Men were walking to the front of the truck. Flashlights danced over Deadbolt’s corpse.
Another voice, deeper. “Control, asset Deadbolt is dead. Repeat, asset Deadbolt has been terminated.” Then a pause. “Roger, Control. Search the truck.”
A soldier appeared at the open rear of the ambulance. He looked at the shaking, bleeding, immobile trio. “Sir . . .” He motioned.
The man with the deep voice appeared. He had a shaved head and a flat nose. The patch on his arm said Beta Strike. “Well, well, well.” He had an Australian accent. He lifted a large weapon, like a boxy rifle with no barrel. The weapon was capped in a metal plate dotted in screw heads. He flipped a switch and there was a whine. Green LED bars on the bottom traced an increasing charge.
“This is a thumper. It uses focused sonic energy to obliterate . . . well, just about anything fleshy. It takes just a moment to charge the capacitor, then there won’t be a trace of you folks left. After that, we’re gonna go collect Brickbat before he tears the city apart.” He shrugged. “And that’ll be it.”
Ian watched the green bars tick across the bottom of the gun. It was almost full. The soldier pointed it at them and his men stood back.
Wink produced a small blinking box, like a pager, from under her blanket. She held it up with both hands, shivering and silent, like it was show and tell. A red light clicked on and off.
“What’s that?” the man with the deep voice asked. “Some kind of explosive?”
Wink’s head shook in tiny jerks. “Trans-transp-p-onder.”
The red light blinked. A little faster. Then faster still. Faster.
The green bars on the thumper reached the end. The weapon chirped. The man raised it again and ran his eyes down the box barrel, but all he saw was the red light. Blinking.
Faster. Faster. Solid red.
BOOM.
Xana burst through the ceiling and fell with a thud as concrete debris danced around her. Some of her external armor was missing. Her helmet was cracked in a ridge across the top, partially exposing her head. The tips of her hairs poked through. She kicked the closest man into the ceiling, and his carcass crumpled into a stain of red.
She hadn’t hesitated.
The man with the deep voice swung his weapon toward her and pulled the trigger. A wave of compression erupted from the end, like air escaping deep water. The ball of concussive force hit Xana, who raised her arms and was knocked back ten meters. She struck a concrete barrier, then collapsed to her hands and knees, panting. She was down.
“Shoot her!” the man with the deep voice yelled at his men. He swung the thumper over his shoulder and reached for his sidearm.
But Xana had been shot at before. And now her friends were in danger.
She was in no mood.
She pounded the ground with her fists, launching her own body forward through the air like a projectile, arms wide. She tackled two soldiers while the Australian man pulled his pistol.
The armored woman stood and punched down. She connected with the Australian’s shoulder at the crook of his neck. His body crumpled, lumpy and odd, like a falling sack of potatoes. His angled corpse seemed inhuman, more like an octopus than a man.
Xana turned. The first of the tackled soldiers, a woman, sat on the ground pushing herself away. One of her legs was snapped at the knee. The second soldier, a man, struggled to his feet and attacked. Xana grabbed, lifted, and impaled him on exposed rebar. He looked like a skewered fish. He stared at the ridged metal bars protruding from his own chest as his last breath escaped his body.
Xana had no fear. She was acting out of instinct, full-on mother bear. The big woman strode toward the final soldier, who stopped dragging herself and pulled her sidearm. She pointed it, looked at her skewered comrade, then put it under her chin and pulled the trigger. The back of her skull burst.
Xana turned away.
And then it was over. Everything was quiet.
“Everybody okay?” John called. “Xan?”
The big woman pulled off her cracked helmet slowly and with a grimace, revealing the blood-soaked right side of her face. Her eyes were stained as if there were blood behind her lenses. She nodded as her back hit the wall and she slid to the floor with shaking legs. “I—I don’t think I can walk anymore.”
“yay . . .” Ian’s head rested on the ground. He raised his left arm in limp-wristed celebration. He waggled it. “we didn’t die . . .”
John looked around at his unit. At his friends. They were down. Not a single one of them could fight Bugs Bunny if he showed up next. But they’d just faced some of the most vicious and lethal motherfuckers John had ever seen. And they’d won.
He was proud.
So damned proud.