Emergence (58 page)

“So…you’re Dornasian, I take it. Managed to avoid the Varangians…” I said, struggling to rise. I noticed a faintly glowing lichen all over the cavern’s crevices and dozens of disturbingly overgrown, translucent larvae things undulating here and there.

I was sapped. I needed more time. I
really
needed to get the sucker thing off the back of my head. Most villains loved monologuing, so I’d get the demon talking. I looked around, motioned at the surrounds. “So…troglodyte much?”

Dornasian scoffed, was apparently amused. “How droll. You played too many video games as a kid, my friend. I’m a conqueror. And now,” he pointed a clawed finger at me,
“unconquerable
with
you
by my side. My supreme champion.” He glanced at Legato with a toothy grin. She stood impassive, head lowered in a submissive pose. “And it all comes full circle.”

“Full circle?”

“Show the man, my sweet.”

Legato looked at Dornasian, at me.

“Do it,” Dornasian commanded with an edge of irritation to his voice.

She took a breath and removed her Biotiq specs, dropping them to the cavern floor. Her eyes were milky white, the same eyes, albeit rheumier, as the girl from the implanted vision. Then, her body shifted.

Legato lunged to all fours as she grew, her outfit shredding. Bat-like wings jettisoned from her shoulder blades and unfolded. Her head and neck lengthened, the bones and cartilage snapping like firecrackers, while a ridged tail click-clacked from her hind end. Her sinews enlarged into powerful muscles, while horned ridges emerged from the back of her reptilian head.

I staggered back, stunned.
The beast!
The white-scaled monster that had altered my life forever, had destroyed Quintara 311 and all the lives within it. The beast now crouched before me. Within my grasp.

I lifted into the air and bellowed.

Dornasian laughed. “Too late! Oh yes, too late for all that.”

I tried flying forward, fists balled. The voice in my head stopped me, speaking in time with the pulsating presence of the thing on the back of my skull.

it said.

“No.” I clenched my teeth. I reached up to sink my fingers into whatever thing it was that acted as a conduit.

“Do that and you
will
die,” Dornasian growled.

“I’ll…take my…chances…”

I dug my superhuman fingers into the soft gelatinous thing. Blistering waves of pain entered my skull. The thing wriggled. Screeching on an entirely different level of the sound spectrum exploded inside my head.

I was barely aware that the beast…Legato…whatever it was…had surged forward. It snatched me in its jaws and shoved me into the cavern wall, smashing its own snout into the rock at the same time.

Legato’s voice hardly registered above the screeching and pain.

I was bashed into the cave wall over and over. Unbearable pain. Not the bashing so much as my head. An agony so great I feared my sanity was slipping away. And then, something exploded, followed by a sharp wail of pain from my own throat, a sound I had never made in all my years battling hosts of chimeric foes.

Wait. That wasn’t me.

It was the beast that howled. I fell to the ground.

“You slaughtered my wyvern, fucking human!” Dornasian’s bestial roar was the very same one let loose by the falling rider on that day years ago.

I glanced left, saw the beast on its side, a gaping hole in the meat of its ribs.

I looked up and to my right at the Brown Thrasher and Artemis. My friends, posing heroically. Thrash must’ve hurled one of his explosive bird-shaped darts at the wyvern—I believe that’s what Dornasian called it. I didn’t quite care. I was beyond joyful to see them and hoped to hell this wasn’t another illusion. If so, I never wanted this sublime moment to end.

Artemis aimed her cable gun at Dornasian and fired. The tethers knotted around the demonic-looking bastard before he could take a step. He fell to the ground, wriggling and kicking. “No, no, fucking no! I’ll fucking fuck you!”

“Such language,” Artemis said. “Where’d you find this guy?”

I wasn’t quite ready for banter. I sat up. Groaned.

I touched the thing on the back of my head. It pulsed but also quivered wetly and I felt goo running down the back of my neck.
Please don’t let that be my brains,
I thought. “Get…get this thing…off me…” I said.

“How did you find me?” Dornasian rumbled, still squirming in the coils.

“Tracking device, asshole,” Thrasher said, not bothering to look at the demon. He went to a knee and touched my shoulder, leaning me forward. He made a very un-Thrasher-like noise of disgust. “Bleh!”

“Yeah, pretty gross,” Artemis added.

“It’s not my brain, right?”

“Well, you’re still alive and talking, so…” Thrasher said.

“It is Hero, though. Maybe he doesn’t really need a brain.”

“You’re not helping, Artie,” I said. “Can you guys get it off or not?”

Thrasher began fiddling at his utility belt. “I think I have some tools here.”

<…wait…>

The projection was weak, yet it was there. In my head.

“Hold on,” I said, sitting up straighter. I peered to our left.

The beast was gone. Legato was sprawled in its place, on her side in a huge pool of dark ichor which was way more blood than her body could contain at her present size. She was facing us. She reached weakly toward me.

“I…I can remove the leech…,” she said.

“Why would you help me?”

“Don’t you dare!” Dornasian seethed and tugged at the coils with renewed vigor.

“SHUT UP!” Thrasher and Artemis both yelled in tandem.

Artemis extended her arm and shot an iron spike into the wall by the demon’s head. “Don’t you say another damn word, got it? That’s iron, and the next spike is between your goddamn eyes.”

Dornasian stilled.

“I’m dying,” Legato said. “I have nothing…left to…be afraid of. Just let me help.”

I crawled over next to her.

“You sure about this?” Artemis said from behind me.

“Yeah.” The look in Legato’s eyes right before she had transformed and right after Dornasian had commanded her to…something about that look made me trust her now. The vaunted Lord of Monsters held some power over these creatures in life, but no longer in death, and the wyvern Legato was no longer in the demon’s thrall.

She raised her arm, though too weak she no longer had the strength to reach the back of my head. I took her hand and placed it there.

The thing quivered.

I nodded. A deep sadness came over me. My eyes moistened. I felt the leech withdraw, but as it did so, I picked up one last sending.

The leech rolled down her arm halfway and plopped onto the blood-slick, cold ground. It wriggled and went still. Its glow faded. All of the other grub-like creatures in the cavern fell to the floor, and went dark, as well, dampening us all in the bleak green phosphorescence of the lichen coating the stone walls.

Thrasher clicked on an LED from his belt and shined it down on us.

The chimeric, telempathic wyvern named Dana Legato was dead.

#

The three of us stood beside the Brown Bird, Thrasher’s signature stealth wing. He had touched down about a half-mile from the cave, and we had Dornasian contained inside. We’d even loaded the bodies of the two chimerics, who Thrasher knew as Behemoth, the big dead fella with half a head, and the decapitated blonde, a class B chimeric codenamed Flightpath.

“You sure you don’t want to ride with us?” Artemis eyeballed me. “You look terrible. It’s a little scary, not to mention new, to see you this screwed up.”

“I’ll be okay, thanks to you two.”

“I’m glad you never took your locater off,” Thrasher said.

“I guess I’m not as stupid as I look.”

“I wouldn’t say that now.” Thrasher laughed.

We shook hands, then Artemis came forward and gave me a long hug. In all the years I’d known her, she’d never once done that. She saw the look on my face. “Hey.” She smacked my shoulder. “We almost lost Hero today to the bad guys today. That’s worth a hug.”

“Just a hug?”

“Don’t push your luck.”

“See you back on the mainland.” Thrasher ducked into the Bird.

“We’ll drop the demon off at HQ,” Artemis said, then paused just as she was about to get into the stealth wing. “I’m curious. You’re no longer sponsored. Where are you headed now anyway?”

I nodded my head for a second. “I’m gonna go looking for an old friend.”

(They Call Me) Epilogue

Steve Diamond

“Thank you, everyone! I am truly touched by your support and words of love and kindness.”

Kennedy Ross put a trembling hand to her lips and stared out at the crowd assembled before her. They were here, not just for her, but for her late husband. She looked back at the statue erected in her husband’s honor. It was marvelous. Though she was sure Ted would have been a touch embarrassed by it, she knew he would have also been humbled.

“I’m not going to lie to you,” Kennedy continued. “It has been terribly hard without my husband. But, without knowing it, he taught me how to be strong. Every day.”

“Mrs. Ross?” It was a reporter from the DC Herald. Kennedy recognized him as Albert Tanner. She knew all the reporters, and made a point to study up on them.

“Yes, Al?”

He smiled up at her, and she noted the little bit of green spinach stuck between his front teeth. It was a habit of his, Kennedy knew, to eat a spinach salad before attending any press event.
People are so predictable.

“Mrs. Ross,” Albert said, “does it every bother you that the man known as the Human Shield didn’t come into his powers until after he failed to prevent your husband’s death?”

Kennedy knew the question was coming. She’d already answered it a dozen times, but that hardly mattered to the press. She wiped at her eyes, at the tears she’d allowed to gather there, and nodded like this was the first time she’d head the baiting question. Outwardly she let a sad smile develop on her lips. Inwardly she wanted to take that arrogant little piece of sh—

No. This isn’t the time for that.

“Al, of course it bothers me. How
can’t
it? For a long time it ate me up inside. Kept me from running Ross Industries.” She leaned forward on the podium and lowered her voice into a conspiratorial whisper. “But can I tell you all a secret?”

She had them. The media, the whole moronic, parasitic lot of them always wanted to know a secret. She could see it in their eyes. In the way they all unconsciously leaned forward just a touch. Some were even nodding. It would be this way all over the nation when this interview was broadcast. Everyone wanted to know the moral of
this
story.

“What helps me deal with my husband’s death is thinking that maybe, just maybe, Ted was that final catalyst that made the Human Shield into what he is today. How many lives has that man saved in the last eighteen months since he discovered his path? Dozens? Hundreds?” Eager nods everywhere.

“How many times has the Human Shield died for the people he has been protecting?” Kennedy continued. “And yet he comes back like the proverbial phoenix to save another life. And then another. All of that? All of that is because of my husband’s sacrifice.”

She looked back again at the statue of Ted, in the pose of man awkwardly accepting praise: head slightly down, a genuine smile on his face, one hand on his hip, and the other behind his head. It looked just like him. That had been the artist’s gift. While some could fly, or die and come back to life…the commissioned artist could make any piece of art look extraordinarily life-like. Kennedy wished she could study it more thoroughly.

Maybe later…

Another among the press raised a hand. “Yes? It’s Allison James, correct? From the
Port Haven Proclaimer
?”

“Oh, uh, yes.” Allison was still new to this line of work. Kennedy waited for the reporter to adjust her glasses and tuck her hair behind her ear, all before clearing her throat to ask her question. It was the reporter’s habit. A small one, Kennedy allowed, but a habit nonetheless.

“Mrs. Ross, now that you are, uh, back running Ross Industries full-time, have you given any thought to putting your company’s vast resources into the research of the, uh, ever growing population that are developing powers? Also, can you talk about the rumors circulating that Ross Industries recently acquired a controlling share of Biotiq?”

“To answer your first question about the chimerics, Ross Industries is currently occupied by seeking out advancements in the medical arena,” Kennedy replied. “However, in the event that those two areas overlap, we will certainly be involved. As for the rumors surrounding Ross Industries and Biotiq, we are largely philanthropic, while Biotiq is known for questionable business practices when it comes to chimeric research. I have time for one more question. Yes, Miss—?”

“Mrs. Ross,” Albert Tanner interrupted. “Do you feel adequate to run Ross Industries? There are rumors going around that the board of directors are looking to remove you as the CEO. In fact, it is said that Peter Farnsworthy, the Chairman of the Board of Ross Industries, is doing his best to make sure you never make another decision at the company again. Care to comment?”

Kennedy Ross smiled at the insufferable little idiot. “I normally don’t comment on moronic speculation, but in this case, I’ll make an exception.

“Since you have decided to tastelessly question my leadership at the statue unveiling of my late husband—though I suppose I should have expected it, Al, given your historically poor level of reporting—I’ll tell you right now that you are flat-out wrong. Not only wrong, but embarrassingly misinformed. The Board has the utmost confidence in me. So much so that they voted out Peter Farnsworthy as Chairman this morning. Were you aware of that, Al?”