Action Figures - Issue One: Secret Origins (36 page)

“Oh, please don’t drag me into this...”

“Don’t make promises I’ll kill you for keeping,” Manticore says, but the Foreman is not impressed.

“Please. You’re one man. We’re a national network. You kill me and you won’t be able to show your shiny metal face in this country ever again.”

“Gentlemen, can we posture later?” Archimedes says. “We have a super-team hovering literally outside our window and we have no idea what they’re up to.”

“Unless you have a suggestion to remedy that...”

“I do, in fact. They have a secure com system, but I can piggyback onto it. We can at least listen in on what they’re saying.”

“...Do it.”

I check my cell phone. Nearly five minutes have passed since we killed the last camera and nothing’s happened.

Nina shares our impatience. “This is getting us nowhere fast. I say screw it and let’s hit the place and we’ll apologize later if we’re wrong.”

“I’m not ready to go there yet,” Concorde says.

“Sorry, Nina, he’s right,” Mindforce says. “We can’t risk attacking a civilian property. We need hard proof there’s something—”

“It’s him!” Sara blurts out. “He’s here! I mean he’s there!”

“Sara?”

“Archimedes! I can feel him in the Pelican! He’s in the system!”

***

Manticore grabs two fistfuls of shirt and slams Archimedes against his seat. “Did you hear that? You’ve been made, you damn stupid amateur!”

“I didn’t know the psychic girl was on-board!”

The Foreman shoulders Manticore away. “Archimedes, hack their control system, shut it down! Crash them!”

“I can’t!”

Mindforce breathes a sigh of relief. “Concorde, looks like we’re good, the new firewall you installed seems to be working.”

“Same here,” Concorde says. “All right, people, we have confirmation. We’re going in straight, through the front door. Mindforce, bring the Pelican in, I’ll—dammit, incoming!”

We didn’t need any further proof this was the place but we’re getting it anyway, in the form of four Thrashers rising up to greet us—and Manticore is leading the charge.

“I’ll take Manticore, you get out of here!”

“Hold on!” Mindforce shouts back to us even as the first volley of hypervelocity railgun fire strafes the Pelican, pinging against the hull like hail. “Nina, strap them in!”

I protest instinctively (it’s not like I can grab onto anything in my current state), but Nina manages to get me into a seat at the rear of the Pelican even though it’s pitching like a ship in a typhoon. I’m grateful to her, yet I resent her for unwittingly making me feel like dead weight. Without my powers I’m useless, and it’s cold comfort knowing that none of the Squad can do anything either.

“What are you waiting for?” Matt says. He has to shout over the worrisome clatter of gunfire punching through the Pelican’s tail section. “Fire back at them!”

“It’s a transport! We don’t have any weapons!”

“Don’t suppose you have a rocket launcher in that coat of yours?” Nina says.

So he pulls a rocket launcher out of his trench coat.

“You are my new favorite person in the whole wide world.”

“Heat-seeker,” Matt says, patting the mouth of the launcher, a solid steel tube with a shoulder mount and a bright red trigger. “Think you can give me a target?”

Nina laughs.

“Stuart, be a pal and keep me from plummeting to my death?” Matt says as Nina pops the side hatch. The air pressure shifts and briefly tries to suck us all out of the ship. Stuart grabs Matt by the belt with one hand and with the other digs his fingers into the hull. “The body armor’s too thick, so aim for the head or the pods on the back.”

“Easy-peasy,” Nina says, and she proves it when a Thrasher comes within range and she pitches a plume of fire across the gap, igniting the suit all along its back.

We girl-folk, we press into the hull to avoid getting barbecued by the miniature volcano erupting from the rear of the launcher. Wish Matt had warned us about that, but I’ll forgive him because the missile does its job perfectly: there’s a flash and a boom, and Nina hoots like she’d just won the Super Bowl singlehandedly.

“What the hell was that?” Concorde says.

“Air support to the rescue, baby!” Nina crows.

“We lost one of the—no, two Thrashers,” Archimedes says. The Foreman is unmoved, his mask hiding any hint of concern. “Make that three.”

“S-sir?” one of the techies says. “Sir?”

“I will shoot you dead if you try to run,” the Foreman says. “No one leaves this facility until I give the order. We have too much invested in this place to abandon it. Archimedes, mobilize security, code red.”

“That only puts a dozen or so men—”

“I am aware of that,” the Foreman says, “and so help me, if anyone questions another order or talks back instead of doing their bloody job...”

“Last Thrasher is down,” Archimedes says. “They’re coming.”

“Here’s the plan, so listen up because I’m only saying this once,” Concorde says. “Mindforce, there’s an open bay door on the north face, that’s where the Thrashers came from. Set down there. You’re with me and Nina; we’re going to keep Manticore busy.”

“What about the Squad?” Mindforce says.

“...They’re going in. Carrie, Matt, there are spare com sets in the hold, in the black case near the starboard door, I want one on each of you at all times, you understand?” We find the earpieces and slip them on. “You five go in, find Carrie’s...whatever they are, and get out. No side-trips, no heroics, in and out and gone, you got it?”

“Copy that,” Matt says.

Concorde chuckles. “Listen to you.”

Matt passes out our quote-unquote costumes as
Mindforce swoops around for a landing. “I’m landing with the port side toward the building,” he says, his voice crystal-clear in my ear, as though he were standing next to me. “As soon as I touch down, go. You heard Concorde, stick to your objective.”

“And if anything gets in your way,” Nina says, “don’t hold back, because they’re not going to.”

I’d rather not think about that.

Game face, Carrie. It’s, as they say, go time.

The Pelican drops, and before the wheels touch the ground we’re out and racing across the Thrashers’ hangar and maintenance bay. Two men in orange coveralls cower against a wall as we pass and don’t lift a finger to stop us.

“Hold up,” Matt says once we exit into a wide corridor. He looks at each of us in turn and says, “Superbeast, you’re on point. If anything gets in our way, move it. Psyche, stick with Lightstorm, you’re her shield. Lightstorm, you’re our compass, tell us where we need to go. Kunoichi, you and I are watching the rear. Sound good?”

“Sounds good,” I say, slipping Matt a smile. He’s not such a bad leader.

“Let’s go.”

“The Hero Squad has entered the facility,” Archimedes says, “ground level, through the hangar, heading south. They must be here for the girl’s power source.”

“Track them,” the Foreman says. “I want half the security force placed on level four and half on level three. Tell Dr. Cane he needs to pack our prize and prepare for immediate departure.”

Archimedes dares to ask, “And the rest of us?”

“Sorry, Archimedes, but you’re not that important anymore. Our employer has placed top priority on those stones, at the expense of all else.” His mask shifts in such a way as to suggest he’s smiling underneath. “Once Dr. Cane is clear we’ll worry about you, so I suggest you wish him good luck and God speed.”

The calling, the impulse, whatever you want to call it, it’s pulling me deeper into the building, compelling me to go up. “Stairs. We need to find stairs.”

We find them easily enough. There are cameras on every landing, watching us, following us as we pass. I think we’re all tempted to smash them, but that wouldn’t hide our movement. Instead, Matt flips the bird at one. Classy.

Floor two. Three. Four. The stairs end.

“Here,” I say.

Stuart pushes the door open. The explosion fills the stairwell, echoing off the brickwork, stabbing our ears. Fire washes over Stuart, spills off onto the carpeted floor, setting it ablaze. The echo fades out and is replaced by the rattle of gunfire. Bullets ricochet off Stuart’s skin. A few bounce a second time off Sara’s shield.

“What’s the call, coach?” Stuart says. He makes a gagging sound and spits out a bullet he caught, by dumb luck, in his mouth. “
Yugh
. Gross.”

“Flatten ‘em!”

Stuart, grinning, goes forth to flatten.

“Matt! I mean—oh, I mean Matt!” Missy says. “Behind us!”

Matt and Missy dive out of the way. A spray of
gunfire chews up the wall where they’d been standing a moment before. A half-dozen men in black body armor advance on us from below, the two in front emptying their machine guns. Sara’s shield protects us, but we’re pinned—at least until Stuart clears the hall.

Matt tells us to get ready. He pulls out from his coat a slender black canister. He pulls a wire pin free and chucks it over the shield. It falls into the center of the soldiers.

“Down! Cover your ears!” Matt grabs Sara and pulls her to the floor. I follow his lead.

A high-pitched bang contributes to our morning of hearing damage, but we get off light; the soldiers scream and moan and sway on their feet like people getting off the wildest ride at the carnival.

Missy doesn’t wait for an order. She launches herself over the railing and tears into the soldiers like a buzzsaw, all fists and feet. At the top of their game they might be able to take her, but dazed and disoriented? No way. Six men down and hey, the hallway is quiet.

Stuart leans into view. His clothes hang off him in tatters. “I miss anything?”

“Nothing worth mentioning,” Matt says.

“Dude, why are you yelling?”

“Flash-bang grenade in close quarters. Not my best idea.”

“It worked,” Sara says.

“What’d you say?” Missy shouts.

We step over the half-dozen forms scattered across the floor like downed tenpins and into some kind of lab-slash-medical bay. The feeling that drew me here, it’s gone.

No, not gone; moved. It’s somewhere beneath
my feet.

“There,” I say, pointing at the floor. “Below us.”

“What, it’s moving?” Matt says. “Superbeast. Shortcut, downstairs.”

Stuart interprets
shortcut
as
punch a big hole in the floor
. He drops down into a main corridor, Missy right behind him. “I see him!”

“Get him!”

Him, whoever he is, is well and truly gotten by the time Matt, Sara, and I reach the third floor; Stuart has him pinned up against a panoramic plate glass window with one finger (show-off) but judging by the raw terror on the man’s face you’d think Stuart was about to make a gelding of him. I guess that depends on what happens next.

“You have something that belongs to me,” I say. His eyes drop to the pocket of his lab coat. Matt removes a small rectangular case like you might keep your glasses in. Maybe it’s my imagination (or maybe the blood loss is finally catching up to me), but the case seems to be humming.

I open it. Inside, nestled in a thick padded lining, are two stones a shade of swirling, scintillating yellow I’ve never seen before. My fingers don’t want to work but I make them. I lift the stones out and, through a supreme effort of will, close my fists around them.

They vibrate in my hands, grow warm, then hot, impossibly hot, like miniature suns, their radiance spreading up my arms, consuming my body. My bandages fall away as burning embers. Every inch of me sings. Every inch of me is on fire.

I’ve been screaming the whole time.

The world snaps back into focus.

Carrie?
Sara says.

No.

Lightstorm.

THIRTY-SEVEN

“Lightstorm? Lightstorm? Come in! What’s happening, are you all right?”

Concorde is frantic—understandable, I guess, what with all the agonized shrieking on my part. “I’m here. I’m okay. We’re coming out.”

“Do it fast,” Concorde says.

“Guys, clear out now,” Mindforce says. “Manticore is making a run for it and that’s never a good sign.”

Oh hell no. There is no way,
no way
I’m letting that monster escape.

“Go on. I’ll be back,” I say right before I blow out the window and leap out, thinking as I clear the frame
Maybe I should have checked to make sure my powers are fully functional again
.

No worries: they are.

Good. Because I owe Manticore some pain.

“What do we do with this guy?” Stuart says.

“Let me go, please,” Cane says. “I’m no one important. I run the sick bay is all—I give out aspirin and band-aids!”

“And occasionally sneak crazy-powerful alien weaponry out of the building,” Matt points out.

“I was only following orders.”

“Seriously? You’re going with that?”

“He’s upstairs,” Cane says. “The man who runs the facility, he’s upstairs, with Archimedes.”

“Where is he?”

“One floor up, look for a set of heavy double doors, they’re in there.”

“We need to go,” Sara prods.

“Change of plans.”

“Dude, Concorde will crap a brick,” Stuart says.

“Mindforce will crap a brick,” Sara says.

“Do we really want to let Archimedes slip away again? I sure don’t, not if I want to ever get a good night’s sleep again.” Matt says.

“Huh?”

“Minotaur didn’t find us all on his own. You really think he just happened to run into us in the middle of the city?”

“He’s right,” Cane says. “Archimedes, he tracked you. He can track you wherever you go.”

“You shut up,” Stuart says, poking Cane in the belly hard enough to knock the breath out of him. “But he’s right. As long as Archie’s on the loose he can find us anywhere, yeah?”

“I say we get him,” Missy says. “I know we’re disobeying orders but we had no idea Archimedes was here but now we know he is we can get him and send him back to Byrne because I don’t want to be scared anymore.”

“What she said.”

Matt looks to Sara. Hesitantly, she nods.

“Run,” Matt tells Cane. “And if you’re smart, you’ll run right to the Protectorate.”

“Why,” Cane wheezes, clutching his chest as though warding off a heart attack, “would I do that?”