Legacy (17 page)

The fluid was a liquid polymer, a kind of glue. He had read that something like this was currently being developed for crowd control, as a way of managing angry mobs. The
liquid was to be sprayed, covering the perpetrators, encasing them in a quickly drying and expanding cocoon.

Which was exactly what was happening to him.

The Raptor became stuck to the floor, his upper body encased in the expanding foam. He could hear the servomotors built into the armored exoskeleton straining to break free of the sticky encasement, but with no luck.

The nozzles of the guns continued to spray him, covering him in layers of the fast-drying polymer prison.

Lying there, glued to the floor of the hospital corridor, he could just imagine his enemies laughing.

Let them laugh
, the Raptor thought as he began to reroute power through the armored suit.
Let them think they’ve won
.

It will just make their defeat all the sweeter
.

“Boo-yah!” Putman yelled as he pumped his fist in the air. “I knew that would be the one,” he said.

Lucas leaned toward the screen, as did Katie. The two were very close, and he could feel the heat coming off her flushed cheeks.

“Think that’ll hold him?” Lucas asked.

“Sure it will,” Putnam said confidently, leaning back in the office chair, throwing his hands behind his head. “That stuff is designed to incapacitate an entire mob. I doubt he’s that strong, even wearing the armor. … Probably pretty close, but not close enough.”

Putnam smiled as he stared at the screen. “I’ve got you right where I want you,” he said, a nervous hand coming up to rub at his chin. “But now what do I do with you?”

That was a good question.

“What
do
you do with him?” Lucas asked.

The man seemed to be thinking. “First off, we’ve got to get him out of that costume … and then we turn him over to the police.”

“The police?” Lucas asked. “You can’t treat him like a criminal! He’s the Raptor, for God’s sake!”

“He broke the law just like any other criminal,” Katie said.

“But—”

“No buts,” Putnam said. “He’s gone over the line, and he has to pay for his crimes. He may have forgotten what it means to uphold the law and to play by the rules, but I haven’t.”

“This doesn’t feel right,” Lucas said.

“He’s a murderer, Lucas,” Putnam said fiercely. “He’s crossed over that line, and as soon as you accept this, you’ll be better off.”

Lucas felt as though he might throw up.

The alarm siren that had been pealing since the Raptor’s attack fell silent.

Putnam leaned forward in his chair and studied the keyboard again. “Now what keys do I push to release the somnolence gas?” he asked, looking to Katie.

“Hold the Control key and then three
Z
s,” she prompted.

“Cute,” Putnam said, preparing to release the sleep gas on the upper level.

Another alarm began to ring, stopping him.

“Oh no.” Putnam rolled his chair closer to the monitor. “You sneaky son of a bitch,” he hissed.

The sprinklers had come alive, streams of water raining
down on the Raptor’s frozen form on the floor above, and on them in the basement.

“What’s happening?” Lucas asked, cringing as the cold water poured over him.

“Aarrrrrrgh!” Putnam cried, typing in another code to shut down the flow of water before the delicate electronics in the basement lab could be damaged.

He didn’t answer Lucas’s question, but the boy got a sense that something was most definitely up as he stared at the screen and his supposedly incapacitated father.

The white foam that restrained him was smoking now.

“Do you see this?” Lucas asked.

Katie, blond hair matted to her head, glasses covered in water drops, moved in for a closer look. She took off her glasses, searching for a dry spot on her sweatshirt to clean them.

“He’s burning the foam!” she yelled at Putnam.

“It’s what I figured once that heat sensor went off,” he said. “The clever SOB figured out the foam was flammable and somehow raised the external temperature of the armor until it caused the foam to combust.”

The entryway of the upper floor caught fire as the foam ignited into a thick, oily smoke and hot orange flame.

“Not good,” Putnam grumbled. “Not good at all.”

The flames continued to spread, the smoke becoming thicker, and soon they lost sight of the villainous hero.

The cameras positioned in the upper levels were malfunctioning. It seemed the combination of heat, smoke, and water was too much for them.

“Dammit,” Putnam barked.

A sudden sound froze them all in place.

Lucas was pretty sure it had come from above, and looked up as jagged cracks appeared in the ceiling. Pieces of plaster began to rain down to the floor.

“Get to the safe room!” Putnam ordered, pushing himself out of the chair and grabbing at his crutches. “Go on. There’s no sense in all of us having our butts handed to us. I’ll make up something … tell him the two of you took off when we figured out he was on his way.”

“I’m not going to leave you,” Katie said.

“You don’t have a choice,” Putnam said, pushing past them on his way toward a chained metal supply cage in the corner of the basement workshop. “Go. You don’t have much time.”

The ceiling was beginning to crumble, huge chunks of plaster falling.

“What the hell is he doing?” Lucas asked, leaping out of the way as a boulder-sized piece of ceiling narrowly missed him.

Putnam had opened the door to the cage and was now inside, searching for something.

“I’m not going to tell you again,” the man said, finding what he was looking for and limping out of the cage.

Lucas wasn’t sure he’d ever seen a gun so big.

It was like the end of the world had arrived.

Lucas leapt for cover as a huge section of the floor above, and probably even the one above that, crashed down through the ceiling into the basement.

Putnam’s work space had started to fill with smoke, the
multiple levels of debris that had fallen through the ceiling continuing to furiously burn. Lucas grabbed Katie’s arm, pulling her away from the fire.

And that was when he noticed something moving in the rubble.

The armored figure rose up out of the fire, shrugging off the sections of burning roof and floor as if they were nothing.

“Hello, Lucas,” the Raptor said, his voice sounding cold and metallic from within the metal cowl. “I’ve come to bring you home.”

Nicolas Putnam wasn’t afraid of death; he’d faced that beast once and lived to tell the tale.

With watering eyes and his lungs filling with smoke, the man lurched painfully toward his friends, high-powered weapon clutched beneath his arm.

He heard the Raptor speak in a robotic voice. It was almost as if any sign of Hartwell’s humanity had gone away completely.

“Get the hell back!” Putnam bellowed, placing himself between Katie, Lucas, and the heavily armored Raptor.

He aimed the gun at his former mentor, marveling at the technology that had gone into the armor’s upgrades
. It’s a real shame when somebody with that much genius loses his mind
.

“Nicolas,” the Raptor said, “I never wanted to believe you were capable of falling so far.”

“You should talk,” Putnam said, keeping the pulse rifle aimed at the man. “We know all about what you’ve been doing … your children, and what you did to them.”

The Raptor slowly shook his helmeted head from side to
side. “You don’t understand a thing.” He fell silent, the smoke swirling around him, the dancing fire reflecting off the armor’s smooth metallic surfaces. “I know how it must look,” he offered.

Lucas moved around Putnam, desperate for a reason to believe in his father again. “Tell them you didn’t do it,” Lucas cried. “Tell them all of this is just a mistake!”

The Raptor lowered his head. “Sacrifices had to be made,” he said, his voice echoing eerily, as if from somewhere down a very long tunnel. “It was all for the greater good.”

He made a sudden movement, and Putnam reacted. He shoved Lucas back and opened fire with his weapon.

The pulse rifle had been designed to take out armored vehicles. He figured it should have some effect against the Raptor’s defenses. The multiple blasts struck the superhero’s chest plate, and he stumbled awkwardly backward, toward a pile of burning rubble.

“Go,” Putman ordered, momentarily taking his eyes from his target.

That was all the time the Raptor needed. He was suddenly there, ripping the gun from Putnam’s hands and hurling it away.

“I never wanted it to be like this,” the Raptor said, wrapping a powerful hand around Putnam’s throat. “Do you think if there was any other way, I wouldn’t have tried?”

Unable to breathe, Putnam witnessed an amazing fireworks display as silent, colorful explosions blossomed before his eyes.

From somewhere very far away, he heard Lucas’s voice.

“Leave him alone!”

And suddenly he was able to breathe again, even though he was falling backward to the floor. But Katie was there—sweet, wonderful Katie—dragging his useless body away as he gulped greedily at the smoky air.

Through the shifting haze he saw that it was Lucas who had saved him, defiantly standing up to his father.

The poor kid didn’t have a chance.

Lucas grabbed hold of the armor, trying to drive his father back.

The Raptor’s battle suit was still hot, and he could feel the flesh on the palms of his hands begin to blister.

It was almost as if his father didn’t want to fight back, allowing himself to be pushed backward. “I don’t know what they’ve told you,” he began. “But give me a chance to explain. … Everything is so complicated.”

“Complicated?” Lucas yelled. “Since when is
murder
so damn complicated?”

He was seeing red. He let go of his father and lashed out, his fist connecting with the front of the Raptor’s mask. He was going wild, his nanite-enhanced strength allowing him to hold his own against the armored adversary.

“Why did they have to die? Did they somehow disappoint you?”

Lucas threw a left and then a right, leaving dents and bloody smears across the front of the Raptor’s cowl.

“Not live up to your expectations?”

He was drawing back, ready to send another blow into
his father’s face, when the Raptor moved and caught Lucas by the wrist.

“If only it were that simple,” the Raptor said.

Lucas struggled to break free, feeling the bones in his wrist snap with the exertion. He cried out as an armored hand swatted him across the face, leaving the taste of copper in his mouth.

“I thought you were going to be the one,” the Raptor continued. “But it looks as though I was sadly mistaken.”

Lucas spat a bloody wad onto the Raptor’s face mask. “That’s what I think of your mistake,” he said defiantly.

If Lucas thought the first slap was bad, the blow that followed was like nothing he’d experienced before. It sent him flying through the air, into the glass display case holding the former Talon’s costume, shattering it on impact.

As he lay there, gathering the strength to get up, he closed his bleeding fingers around the heavy fabric of the superhero costume beneath him.

And had an idea of how they might survive this.

Nicolas didn’t have the strength to stand, and there was no way Katie could carry him.

He hissed at her to run, but she refused to listen.

This man had become like a father to her, replacing the one who had filled her life with nothing but disappointment and sadness. This man had looked beyond her past, seeing the person she really was and the promise of her future. And she wasn’t about to leave him on the floor to die alone.

She watched in horror as the Raptor swatted Lucas
across the room like a bug, and her hopes that he would be their saving grace quickly went to zero.

The Raptor then turned his monstrous attentions their way, making the hair on the back of her neck prickle.

Nicolas squirmed, trying to roll onto his stomach to retrieve the pulse weapon from where it had fallen. Katie knew he didn’t have the strength and decided it was up to her. She reached out, grabbing the weapon with both hands. She hated violence, and the powerful weapon felt completely wrong in her arms, but if it would give them a chance at survival, she was willing to make the sacrifice.

Silently, she pointed the weapon, trying to aim for the damaged areas of the Raptor’s face mask, hoping a blast from a pulse rifle to those areas would do some real damage.

The Raptor froze, his cold eyes studying her through the lenses of the mask. “You disgust me, Nicolas,” he snarled at Putnam. “Bringing a child into this?”

“I’m no child, and we’re in this together,” Katie barked, doing her best to keep the tremble of fear from her voice. “Ever since you murdered the Frightener.”

“The Frightener,” the armored hero repeated. “Yes, I should have seen. … You have the same eyes. … You’re his daughter, aren’t you?”

“Smart as a whip
and
a murderer,” she said, still pointing the weapon. “All the trappings of a real nasty supervillain.”

“Little witch,” the Raptor growled, springing at her.

Katie stumbled backward, firing the weapon wildly, blasting another hole in the already damaged ceiling.

The Raptor’s hand shot out before she could fire again. He grabbed the pulse rifle, bending the barrel before roughly
yanking it from her hands and throwing it to the floor, useless.

Nicolas managed to climb to his knees, struggling to put himself between the girl and the Raptor’s rage.

“Nick, get back!” Katie screamed.

“I won’t—I won’t let you hurt her,” he said to the Raptor, his voice raspy and coarse.

“I wish it had never come to this, but …,” the Raptor began, reaching out a clawed, metal-gloved hand toward Putnam.

And then Katie noticed movement behind the Raptor. Something darted through the smoke, jumping across the rubble-strewn floor.

The Raptor must have noticed the change in her expression and began to turn, but he was too slow.

Lucas, wearing the old Talon costume, was coming up right behind him.