Xana rammed a car with her shoulder. Glass shattered as it skidded out of the way of the backlogged traffic behind it. People on the street clapped as Wink came over the radio.
“Guys!” Her voice was grave. “This is serious. You gotta listen.”
As 911 calls came in from across the city, Prophet sent the team wherever emergency services would likely arrive too late. Within thirty minutes, they had received two simultaneous hits, and Xana split from the others to free a pregnant woman trapped in a powerless elevator. While the others were on their way to rescue a trapped child, Prophet sent a third hit, and Wink and John left Ian to deal with the crying girl while they stopped a small gang of looters in Hell’s Kitchen. Wink’s seizure-inducing oven mitt came in very handy.
But now there was worse news. Everyone stopped as the little genius patched the police band through the radios in their ears. A frantic man with a Bronx accent was panting between hurried words.
“Dispatch. There’s a guy!” Pant. “Dunno, maybe not a guy. Somethin’. It’s totally whacked. He’s punching cars and—and, I dunno, knocking them off the upper Manhattan Bridge. Some with people, I think. He’s screaming like a fuckin’ madman about conspiracies and aliens and shit. I don’ even fucking know. But you gotta send a buncha guys ’cuz we emptied a clip at this mofo and he just put his hands up and they bounced off. He’s got something on his arms, like they’re made of metal.”
Wink clicked it off.
Ian swallowed dry. “I’m closest.”
“Halo.” Wink was serious. “I’ve been keeping tabs on you-know-who. He’s stuck in a car on the bridge—”
Xana took off at full speed. People jumped out of the way of the armored giant as her feet left small craters in the asphalt. She bounded in giant strides through the city. Heads turned as she passed.
“Halo!” John called. But she didn’t answer. “Remember what we talked about. Stay mobile. Don’t get pinned down.” No response. He turned to Wink. “You got eyes in the sky?”
“Coming up now.” Her fingers tapped the keys. Then they stopped. “Oh, wow . . .”
“What?” Ian pressed his radio into his ear. “What do you see?”
“They weren’t kidding. This dude’s got metal arms.” Wink focused the jumpy footage from her drone cam, but the interloper was too far away. There was wreckage everywhere on the outbound upper deck of the bridge. Cars were tilted and turned every which way. At least one was on fire. Smoke drifted into the dusky sky and obscured the drone’s view.
Wink brought the machine down and snapped a still picture of the wild-eyed man looking up at it. He was raving. He punched a prone motorcycle, which flipped into the air end-over-end and smashed the drone.
“Crap!”
“What happened?” John asked.
“Apparently he doesn’t like to be watched. But I got a good shot of his face. I’m accessing the Faction’s encrypted files. Meanwhile, we have two more hits from Prophet: a raging fire in the Village, and somebody’s throwing people off the top of a tower under construction—just off Broadway. The fire department is en route, but the police at the construction site have pulled back after taking automatic weapons fire.”
“How many there?” John asked.
“Just two guys, foot patrol. That building is in the heart of the mess. It’s a parking lot all around.”
“They’re waiting for SWAT.”
Wink nodded. “But SWAT is gridlocked or chasing other emergencies. It’s like someone waited until the worst possible moment—”
“Waitwaitwait.” Ian put his fingers to his face. “You mean someone’s actually throwing people off a building?”
“Yeah.” Wink was solemn. “We’ve got multiple inbound calls. At least three people are reported dead on the ground.”
“So . . . someone’s throwing cars off the Manhattan Bridge while someone else is throwing people off rooftops at exactly the point where the cops are totally booked? Can that really be a coincidence?”
“It’s them.” John whispered.
Silence.
“They’re calling us out.” Their enemies had learned, John realized. They had waited until the police were maximally occupied. Now there would be little to no interference from the authorities, even in the midst of the packed city.
Wink scowled. “How did they even know we’re here?”
John shook his head. “Doesn’t matter now. They’re here. Be ready for anything.” John clenched the arm of his chair. The team was strong when they were together. Now they were being split apart. “Wink and I are closest to the fire. Halo’s on the bridge. Snapjack, go to the construction site.”
“Roger that.”
“Wait. How are you gonna get there?” Wink asked.
“Don’t worry.” Ian looked down at the bicycle he’d “commandeered.” It was a nightmare in pink. It had been left unwanted—banana seat, tassels, and all.
Wink engaged the ambulance’s automatic pilot and the on-board computer plotted a crazy S-shaped route through the city and projected it on the interior of the windshield—first down a sidewalk, then on the wrong side of the street, through unpaved construction, over a mailbox, through a fence, down subway tracks, through another fence, and across the lawn of a city park, all to avoid the gridlocked streets.
“Do not engage.” John was adamant. “Understand? Just observe, see if you can get a visual confirmation that it’s them. If you get there first, stay low and wait for the police. Or us.”
“Roger, Nomad.” Ian started pedaling. His feet moved in tiny circles.
“I mean it!” Cap yelled.
“I said I got it. Relax, man. I said no more hero games.”
“Halo?”
“I’m eight blocks from the bridge.” She was breathing hard. Everyone could hear the sound of her armored boots striking the ground.
John sighed. There would be no talking her out of it. Not with AJ nearby. “Listen . . . Just be careful. We don’t know who this guy is.” He turned to Wink. “You get a hit from the Faction’s files yet?”
Wink switched screens. “Yes!” She read. Her face went blank. “Oh shit. He’s dead.”
“How long until we reach the fire?”
Wink turned to a different screen. “Four minutes.”
“Read it.”
“Bryson Beatty, Asset Code: Brickbat. Former Major in the Royal Marines. Lost both arms in Africa on peacekeeping patrol for the U.N. Let’s see . . .” Wink’s eyes speed-read the screen faster than John could focus. “Later, he volunteered for an experimental advanced infantry project that resulted in his death.”
“He’s pretty fly for a dead guy,” Ian chimed with knees pressed nearly to his chest.
“Obviously it was faked, moron.”
“No shit, genius. But why?”
“They were looking for ways to help infantrymen carry all the fancy gear they have nowadays. They were trying to offset the force of gravity with focused, subsonic sound waves. Oh, Jesus . . .”
“What?”
“They replaced his arms with prostheses! Dude, there are like millions of microscopic vibrating engines inside.”
“Meaning what?” John asked.
“Amplitude amplification. Millions of separate waves in constructive interference at a specific point just microns above his composite skin, mostly around his hands and forearms. He can punch or deflect with enormous force.”
“Like how much?” John asked.
Wink eyes darted across the screen. “I’m not sure. But definitely more than Xan’s ever lifted.” In moments she scrolled through a dozen reports, diagrams, and field notes, absorbing it instantly. “But that’s not all. The program was canceled almost immediately. Exposure to the vibrations caused a bunch of nervous disorders: in Beatty’s case, a complete psychotic break, probably triggered by his preexisting trauma.” She turned back to John. “He’s a total schizo. And it gets worse the longer he’s exposed.”
“Halo? Did you get all that?” Silence. “Halo?” Nothing. “Just be careful. Remember what we covered in training. Agility beats strength. With your power, one good shot is all it takes. Stay loose, stay mobile. This guy’s arms are his defense, like a boxer. Get past that and you got him.”
The ambulance bounced hard over uneven ground before chirping at them and stopping on the grass of a park across the street from a smoldering five-story apartment block. Smoke billowed.
John watched men and women unload from two firetrucks parked sideways in the street. “Looks like the fire department is here. Why did Prophet tag this?”
Wink didn’t take her eyes from the inferno. Past the smoke, at its core, it was bright like the sun. “There are people still inside.”
Xana stopped on the upper deck of the Manhattan Bridge. Regularly-spaced cables stretched down from the suspension lines to the bridge’s outer assembly. The sky was mostly dark. The last light of dusk lit the far horizon. Yellow light came at odd overlapping angles from idling cars and from the periodic flood lamps perched high above.
Vehicles littered the road. A shattered car teetered at the edge after having been propelled by force through the metal fence that lined the roadway. At first it seemed as if no one was inside, but as Xana passed, she saw two women cowering in the back, afraid to move even an inch lest the car fall to the water far below. The big woman reached out with armored fingers and pulled the car onto the road. It was the first vehicular casualty in a snaking line of disaster that wound through the two gridlocked outbound lanes.
Xana could see people across the gap hiding behind cars. She looked at everyone’s face, scanning for AJ or Declun or the young woman she’d seen at the school. She glanced in each car as she passed. Some were fancy. Some were old. Some had flatbeds. Some had only two doors. Some were so small she would never fit. Most were empty. When they were not, Xana yanked their doors free and told the people to run. Regardless of what kept them cowering in their cars, the sight of the armored, face-painted giant was enough to send everyone scurrying toward the shore without argument.
Screaming. In the distance.
Over and over and over. Like a man in pain.
Xana walked slowly forward. She heard a sound in the dusk, like a shattering car, but it took her mind a moment to realize the moving headlights in front of her were still attached to the SUV flying at her head.
The fire raged up eight floors. The streams from the fire hoses seemed to have no effect.
“You can get in through the roof. Here.” Wink pointed to the 3D structural diagram on the lower screen of her command console in the back of the Mast. “It’s a short jump down from the building next door. The east side is still pretty clear, but there’ll be a lot of smoke. You’ll need a breather.” She motioned to the equipment rack above the stretcher.
John shook his head. “That vent’s too small. It’s barely big enough for a kid.”
“Exactly.” Wink pleaded with her eyes in advance of the soldier’s objections.
“You know I can’t do that,” he said softly.
“Look.” She pointed again. “Three people, a big man and two kids. He’s not moving, probably unconscious. You won’t have to force your way in. To either of us. Use me to get into the building, then jump bodies and use the breather and his strength to get everyone out. From the inside.” She held up two small metal disks—magnetic explosives, just like she’d used with Ian on the West Coast, only smaller and with clearly marked buttons. “Please. Prophet says the fire department won’t reach them in time. They’re dying.”
John looked at the little girl. What she was suggesting . . . it was torture. The thought of anything happening to her, of anything going wrong . . . It would be his fault.
John glanced at the three prone shapes on the screen—a large man and two children. The man was on top. His arms were draped over them. He’d gone unconscious trying to protect them from the smoke. The fire was getting closer.
John remembered his conversation with Ian. He turned to Wink. She looked in his eyes, but they almost seemed lifeless now, like he wasn’t even there.
Wink felt a dream wriggle free from the back of her mind. Then she blacked out.
Ian stood with the crowd on the street in the rapidly thickening dark. The last light of the sun left the sky a dusky gray. The first stars were out.
Ian craned his neck and watched a tiny antlike speck get flung over the side. The crowd gasped. One woman across the street screamed. Everyone else was silent.
The dot was falling.
Ian didn’t know what to do. “Cap!”
Nothing.
“Jesus . . .”
More people started yelling. They pointed.
The dot was getting bigger. Then a hush. Everyone listened to faint screaming. It was a woman. She was falling fifty stories to her death.
People covered their mouths and turned away. Others appeared transfixed but tortured.
Ian pulled the small canister of pepper spray from his belt and spritzed.
The man next to him yelped when Ian sneezed and disappeared.
Xana went down on her knees and raised her arms over her head. Wink’s exoframe absorbed the car’s momentum and it fell to the street as Xana flew back.
Screams. There were people still inside. It was a luxury SUV. Could it be AJ?
Xana stood and looked through the shattered windshield.
Not him.
She sighed and walked around to the side. A white man approached from further down the bridge. He had spiky hair and metal arms.
“Are you the one? I’m not the one. I’m the one who knows the one is coming. The one is not two.”
His voice was vibrating. His arms were blurry, as if they weren’t totally real. His eyes bulged. The veins on his forehead bulged. As he approached, Xana could feel the hum of the engines through the air, through the ground. It made his voice sound almost mechanical, like a robot.
He strode down the bridge, moving in and out of the circles of orange light from the flood lamps.
Xana quickly ripped open the car door. The man and woman inside cowered closer together. They were shaking. Terrified. Completely terrified.
Xana held out her hand. “Get out of there!” Then she remembered how her helmet changed her voice to disguise her identity. It scrambled her words. To the people in the car, she probably sounded just like the crazy man. They couple hugged each other closer as Brickbat approached.
He ran forward in mid-sentence and punched.
Xana raised her forearms in defense and hunched to brace herself. She was taller than the man, and considerably heavier, but he was strong. So strong. Before his fist even made physical contact, the shock wave hit and Xana both heard and felt the armor of her forearms crack as her boots carved gouges backward in the road.
“Ow . . .”
The man swung his fist and struck the SUV with the back of his hand. The side of the vehicle imploded and the whole thing lifted into the air and landed with a shudder on the short retaining wall.
Below was the river.
Xana ran forward and grabbed it. She held on as Brickbat walked in a circle, raving in his vibrating voice. His arms sped up. They moved so quickly now they were barely visible, all but gone, just like the man’s mind.
He came at her. Xana shifted, holding the car with one hand and raising the other to defend herself, but the force was tremendous and the uppercut knocked her through the air. For a brief second she held onto the car, but the bumper split and her grip ripped free as she flew over a bus, bounced at an angle off one of the suspension cables, and pancaked the cab of an empty red truck forty yards down the street. Without her to anchor it, the SUV slipped over the edge, door still wide open.
As it fell to the water below, Xana heard the retreating screams from the couple inside. She was about to make for the side of the bridge when she saw the empty city bus knocking cars out of the way as it hurtled toward her. Its entire rear end had buckled from the force of the blow that propelled it.
Xana raised her arms just in time to be plowed.
John had never been in a child’s body, certainly not one as small as Wink. He wondered how she made it through the world being so vulnerable. But after a few moments tumbling across rooftops, he remembered. A child’s body was like plastic compared to his.
If only it had any strength, he thought. Of course, it was one thing to leap from one building to another or squeeze through a vent. Moving the prone man was impossible. He had to be two hundred and fifty pounds, at least.
“Are you okay?” John asked in Wink’s voice. It was muffled by the clear plastic breather.
The two children underneath the unconscious man nodded. A boy and a girl. Black like their dad.
John stuffed Wink’s disks in the man’s pocket, then pulled off the breather and put it over his bearded face. Then he stared. Smoke billowed overhead. Everything was hot. Even Wink’s tiny body was sweating. There was a crack and a boom and the children jumped as a support gave way on a lower floor. John hoped it wasn’t along the exit path they’d plotted.
After a moment, Wink started coughing and the big man blinked and stood.
Ian was in free fall. “Oh Jesus!” His hair whipped about. The pepper canister in his hand flew away in the wind.
A heavy woman in a blue business suit was next to him. She had been screaming and flailing but stopped when Ian appeared out of nowhere. Then she started screaming louder and swatting at him with her arms as the wind whipped by. They were thirty floors up and falling fast.
Ian’s stomach roiled from weightlessness. He never liked roller coasters. Twenty floors.
The woman connected and swatted his face.
“Ow! Jesus, lady, I’m trying to help you!”
Ten floors.
Everyone on the ground watched as the Asian man clung to the large woman, wrapping both his arms and legs around her. He held tight as the pair fell like a rock—down, down, down—right to the street.
Through asphalt. Like ghosts.
Silence.
Everyone waited, confused.
The people in the crowd looked around in shock. What had just happened? They looked at the ground and up at the building, wondering if more would come.
The sound of metal sliding on metal.
A tall Indian man in a turban jumped and moved out of the way. Everyone turned.
The heavy woman in the blue suit emerged from a manhole, arms and legs shaking, hair in front of her face. People pointed and clapped. There were cheers as the Indian man helped her to the street.
When Ian appeared the crowd burst into applause.
Ian dropped to his knees, panting and out of breath. “Crap, that sucked.” People reached down to pat him on the back, but he didn’t move. “Guys? Hey. Listen.” Two deep breaths. “I don’t ever wanna do that again.”
The woman walked over to him. She reached out to take his hand. Her arms were still shaking. “Who—who are you?”
Ian grunted to his feet. He stood proud. “Stargard.”
Someone in the crowd yelled. “Oh Jesus, I think I see another one!”
Ian looked up. It was fifty floors, at least, to the top of the half-finished, tarp-covered building.
“All they have left is a little boy,” the woman breathed.
Ian turned to her. Their eyes met.
He reached around his back, pulled an EpiPen from his belt, bit off the cap, and slammed it against his thigh. Only when he felt the bulge under his skin did he wonder if Wink had modified it to give him a massive dose.
Every sound around Ian slowed to a rich baritone. The whole world seemed to crawl as if time itself were trapped in molasses.
Ian cleared fifty-eight flights in four seconds.
The front of the burning building exploded.
Firemen jumped back and raised their hands to protect their faces. The closest team lost control of a hose.
A large black man appeared at the hole. He was wearing some kind of clear plastic mask. He was carrying three children, one under each arm and one on his back, all coughing violently.
The firemen ran forward. The water from a stable hose arced overhead and doused them all. The big man dropped to his knees just before the firemen dragged him to safety.
The kids kept coughing as the firemen draped heavy blankets over them. Everything was well-lit by large lights on the fire trucks, and both crews were pumping water as a third truck appeared amid flashing lights and a piercing siren.
No one seemed to notice the three armed men clad in blue approaching from the park across the street. They strode right past the idle ambulance, close enough to touch it, and raised their weapons. Wink swallowed. John was still in the back.
The soldiers moved among the frenzied activity. She gasped and turned to the large black man, still coughing and hacking on the ground. “Cap!” she called. She dropped to the ground and shook the man’s shoulder. “Cap, Cap, they’re here. They’re here.”
“Who?” the man asked, coughing between words. “Little girl, my name’s Dennis.”
Wink looked up. The lead soldier, a dark-skinned man, was standing over the other two. They were prone on the ground. He’d put them down barehanded.
Wink smiled.
Xana felt the tears come, but they were choked by the teeth-clenching frustration that gripped her. She was trapped under a bus. She was pinned by a grinning and beautiful woman. The ad on the side was for shoes. Or dresses, maybe. It didn’t matter. It was nothing she could wear anymore. And the beautiful young woman smiled, a giant face pressing her to the ground, mocking her, mocking who she’d become.
Xana heard Brickbat raving in the distance. She heard him smashing things. He was wild but getting closer. He was raving about space dragons and cyborg-zombies and things that scared her more than he did.
She pushed, but the bus was too heavy. Xana shifted and tried to lie flat. She asked herself what Sister Rosa would say. Right now. About this. In Xana’s mind, Jesus was always too busy. He had important things to do. He was someone to emulate, not someone to bother with silly questions. She prayed to Jesus, every day, but for advice she preferred to ask her old teacher, smiling and patient and unwilling to tolerate any laziness.
Xana had been doing it long enough that she knew exactly what the nun would say.
Her body went lax.
She took a deep breath and heard Sister Rosa in her mind, telling her something she had never considered before. Not really. Not in earnest. Even though it had already been said.
God doesn’t make mistakes. That’s what the nun would say. That Xana’s predicament wasn’t some accident, that she was meant to be there. That there was a plan.
Xana had heard it often enough, but she had never thought about what it meant. If that was true, that meant Xana was supposed to be this way. To be big. To be changed. It wasn’t a horrible, inexplicable accident. It was a plan.
But why?
Xana looked at the beautiful and smiling face on top of her.
Maybe so she would be strong enough to push a bus. Maybe so she would be strong enough to save her son.
Xana thought about her battle with Boraro the Disemboweler. She thought about how everyone had stared. She remembered how she had felt, standing there, muscles flexed. It had felt good. She had beaten back Mama Enecio, even if only for a while. And she had helped the people of Figtree. Maybe God had wanted her to be strong enough to do that as well.
Xana heard Brickbat approach, and she decided she was no longer afraid. Of anything. What did she have to be afraid of, really? Death? Xana wasn’t afraid of death. Xana had been living with the specter of death her entire adult life. Death had been standing behind her, ready to strike her down, for as long as she could remember. What was this but a chance to face it on her own terms?
AJ was still out there somewhere. With that madman. And her friends. They were in danger. They needed her. And there were people still on the bridge. And in the water.
Xana stretched her muscles. She took several deep breaths. She placed her huge hands flat against the smiling model’s face. She heaved with a scream.
The bus lifted and bounced and slid back across the road.
Xana Jace stood. In her boots and armor, she was well over eight feet tall. Much taller than the man, Brickbat.
Xana reached over her protective collar, grabbed the wire that looped under her helmet, and yanked. Her radio went dead.
No more lessons. No more people yelling in her ear. Renkist. The McDooms. The captain.
Xana lifted her heavy boot and kicked the bus as hard as she could and it spun out of her way in a shower of sparks.
Xana made fists.
Brickbat stood on the road. The lights from the cars cast him a long shadow. The pair stared at each other. The man’s gibberish slowed and then stopped entirely. A long moment passed.
Then they ran at full speed.
A thunderclap echoed over the dark city.
Ian collapsed. His muscles were beyond fatigued. They burned. He felt like he had a fever, and he knew if not for the Oric he would be dead.
There was a loud noise in the distance, like thunder. There wasn’t supposed to be any rain. Ian turned instinctively but could see nothing through the dark tarps that covered the exterior of the half-finished building. He wondered if that was why they chose it. So no one would see.
He pointed down the bare concrete staircase that wound through the center of the building. “Go.”
He had carried a little boy down to the eighth floor after ripping him from the hands of a uniformed soldier. There were three of them up there, all heavily armed. Ian didn’t recognize the patch on their arm, but it said Alpha Strike. The force of air from his sudden arrival had knocked everyone down, including himself. But he was still moving fast, and he got to his feet, grabbed the kid, and carried him as far as he could.
“Go!” He repeated.
The terrified boy ran for the stairs as Ian struggled to his feet. His muscles were weak, shaking as if every single one of them had fallen asleep from lack of oxygen. He was numb everywhere. He watched the kid disappear down the bare concrete stairway as the tarps flapped in a small breeze.
Then he heard the noises. Soldiers. Coming fast. But how? He’d left them forty floors up.
Ian hobbled to the stairway railing and watched the overly careful child take one step at a time. He looked up and saw lights. The soldiers were rappelling down, jumping back and forth between railings on each level.
“Jesus, these guys are legit.” They would be on him in moments. He looked again at the kid. The boy would never make it. Ian looked around for a way to make noise.
“Guys?” Ian spoke softly to his radio. No response. “I’m in real trouble here.”
He ran to a large white plastic bucket. He pulled out two pieces of scrap metal and turned it over like a drum. He waited until they were close. Then he started banging. “Hey! Hey! Hey!”
Machine gun fire.
“Shit!” Ian ducked. “Guys? This is not”—a bullet ricocheted over his head—“how I wanted to spend my birthday!”
The soldiers appeared and Ian ran though the building as far away from the retreating boy as he could get. When the men came up behind him, he forced the air from his lungs and jumped through a concrete wall. But after running like he had, he couldn’t last but a moment and he gasped for breath as soon as he was through.
Everything burned. He was breathing hard, almost uncontrollably as his body tried to feed his energy-starved muscles.
“Guys.” Still no response. “I can’t just keep,” he panted, “holding my breath.” He’d just moved faster than any human, probably ever. His heart was near its limit. He could hear it in his ears.
“Cap?” he called again. “Maybe.” He huffed. “You were right. About training more.”
Ian collapsed against an interior wall, chest moving up and down. The dark tarp flapped. There was nowhere left to run. He needed to give the boy time to escape.
His chest heaved.
Ian saw a curved piece of rebar on the ground near some scaffolding. It was shaped like a hockey stick. He slid it toward him and stood, panting, with wobbling knees.
The men entered the hollow room from a doorway at the far end.
Ian waved. “Hey guys.” Pant. “Looking. For me?”
The men moved past the scaffolding and then formed a circle around him.
One of them held a device like a portable scanner. “It’s him.” He had some kind of Nordic accent. “The Oric is inside.”
The men raised their rifles and were about to shoot.
Ian stepped on the rebar and racked himself as hard as he could, right in the sack.
The sides of the eighth floor blew out. Debris flew. Rebar poked from concrete. Two uniformed bodies fell to the street amid screams and pointing fingers. There was nothing left of the third.
Ian rolled on the ground panting hard and clutching his crotch. Maybe he shouldn’t have done it so hard. He wasn’t sure he’d ever be able to have children. He rocked back and forth slowly.
After a moment, he heard a single clap.
Then another.
And another.
“Well done.”
Ian shut his eyes. He’d know that voice anywhere.
Deadbolt.
Sparks danced across the swirling silver dragon on the killer’s chest. He had a new sword.
He knelt and turned his head so he could look Ian in the eye through his sleek helmet. “You don’t look so good.”
Ian swallowed and tried to stand. He didn’t make it.
“Oh, don’t worry. You’ll be dead soon. I just need you to do me one little favor.” He leaned close and whispered. “Call your friends.”
Ian screamed as arcs of electricity coursed over his skin.