Nuklear Age (83 page)

Atomik Lad braced himself for an attack that did not come. Rachel squeezed his hand tighter. Tighter. He tried to pull away from her but she tugged desperately at his arm in response.

He looked down at her. “Rachel…what?”

Her eyes were wide, pleading for help. Her mouth gaped silently for air that would not come. Her grip was weakening. He squeezed back to rouse strength into her body from his own.

“Rachel!”
Atomik Lad yelled with a shock of panic cracking through his voice.

The Mall began running away.

Walls grew out of the ground and trapped over a dozen people before they could flee from their Food Court Junction Tables. “I haven’t finished with you…
things
yet,” Nihel growled.

Rachel’s eyes were foggy and unfocused.

“Rachel!” Atomik Lad screamed.She looked him straight in the eyes. For an instant, she was serene. She was beautiful. He knew she wasn’t in danger. She would be fine. But her eyes broke their calm and flashed with terror. Her body spasmed, her neck went limp. Tears dotted her face. It stared into space, wide-eyed and locked in an eternally silent scream.

“Rachel…?” It was a whisper, a plea. He crumpled onto the floor beside her and shuddered in tears. “Don’t do this. Don’t leave me. Don’t leave me.”

Nihel watched attentively. “You mortal things. You break so easily. And in so
many
ways. But asphyxiation has always been my favorite. It’s such a beautiful lesson about your mortality. A living thing, a dead thing. The difference, physically and temporally, is infinitesimal. You are always alive for every single moment until the instant you die. I don’t think anything else illustrates the symmetry of that statement any more than suffocation. It’s rather parallel to your own lives. You suffocate yourselves with material things and then you die.”

A wind picked up from nowhere. Nihel raised an eyebrow.

__________

“Rachel-chan!” Shiro exclaimed.

Angus held him back. “Nay.” His voice was muffled. He was visibly holding back tears.

“He’s right, Shiro,” Norman said. “In fact, I suggest if anything, we take cover.”

“But Rachel-chan! Sparky-san!”

“Trust me,” Norman said. “I know what’s going to happen. I’ve seen Sparky mad before. We’ll
need
cover.”

__________

The wind grew into a roaring gale. Tables and chairs were tossed aside as the last of the innocents who had escaped Nihel’s attention ran away. Atomik Lad stood and Nihel realized it wasn’t a wind. It was a force. Atomik Lad’s feet hovered a few inches from the ground. His hair began whipping around his face. The windows that encompassed Food Court Junction cracked. Rachel’s limp body was unaffected.

“Interesting,” Nihel commented to himself.

Atomik Lad could barely see through his tears. Couldn’t think through his anger. Didn’t want to. A bestial growl rose up from his core. He could feel it washing over him like wildfire consuming everything he’d ever loved in flames of crimson. He could feel it rushing through him, urging him, destroying him and remaking him in its image.

Red. Always red.

Atomik Lad’s body erupted with blood red hate. No control. No limits. He screamed and the Field pulsed with anticipation. The ground under him collapsed like the fist of God had smote it. Chips and shards of tile and foundation hovered in the air around Atomik Lad. They hung for a second and then were blast away. The wall behind him exploded outward and he shot to Nihel beyond speed. Screaming loud enough to crack stone, he punched Nihel with the force of an avalanche concentrated into the single point of his crimson covered fist. Nihel rocketed through the roof and into the clouds. Atomik Lad’s scream bordered on hysteria. He gave chase into the stratosphere and obliterated most of the roof as he passed through it. A massive crater marked where he’d taken off.

Nihel barely had enough time to right himself before he saw Atomik Lad streak up to him like a crimson lightning bolt. His eyes burned red with rage, his face was twisted into the visage of unbridled fury. His veins pumped fire. He was beyond words, beyond reason, beyond morals, beyond all the petty distractions of life. He was pure, focused, invincible Anger. The clarity was perfection, immortality. Nothing was real any more. No pain, no justice, no consequences. Only Anger.

Nihel watched a red blur shoot past him, stop far above for less than a second, and then come crashing down in a punch fueled by rage. It struck with atom-splitting force. Nihel was ejected from the immense aerial fireball and hit the Mall parking lot like a meteorite. Stray cars were scattered like mere pebbles. Fleeing shoppers ran back into the stores to avoid the storm of vehicles. Atomik Lad was upon him again an instant later. His hungry hands clamped around Nihel’s throat before the villain could even open his eyes.

Atomik Lad squeezed hard enough to melt rocks. All around them lamp posts, trees, and car tops were crumpled and wilted by invisible crushing hands. He could feel an elation like the seconds before an orgasm. This was revenge. This was murder. This was madness. This was clarity. A perfect moment where the entire universe aligned to fuel him with its energies. This was the stark inevitability of existence. All that had ever been conspired for this one moment of perfection.

“Enough,” Nihel croaked. His own hand dove through the crimson hurricane and slid his fingers around Atomik Lad’s neck.

Atomik Lad’s body jerked. He became terribly aware of himself, of the moment. His clarity vanished and with it his Field.

Nihel stood, still holding Atomik Lad by the neck at arm’s length. He squeezed, not painfully, just enough to let the ex-sidekick know what was at stake. Atomik Lad didn’t move.

“Won’t you struggle for me?” Nihel asked.

“I’ll kill you,” Atomik Lad stated flatly.

Nihel laughed a bemused little laugh. “Oh little, little Earthim. If only you knew how many times I’ve heard that. Your display was certainly impressive. But, like so many others before you, utterly fruitless.” He squeezed a little tighter.

“Go ahead,” Atomik Lad said while fighting the urge to struggle or gag. “Kill me. Nuklear Man will stop you.”

“Nuklear Man, you say?” Nihel smiled. “Who do you think gave him this?” He pointed to the electron-orbited N on his chest. “Your Nuklear Man is my Arel. We have been Fate’s pawns since the dawn of time. He will bring an end to the old ways. He will destroy your petty little galaxy and liberate us.”

“What?”

“You pathetic…you creatures
never
listen.” He threw Atomik Lad back at the Food Court Junction doors several hundred feet away.

__________

“Is she?” Norman asked.

“Aye,” Angus said, his voice a wavering ghost of sound.

“Can’t not that left the here her on.”

Atomik Lad’s body slammed up against the Plexiglas doors and cracked them into a bizarre kaleidoscope. He slumped dumbly to the ground and woozily tried to stand.

“There’s no time,” the Surly Scot said.

“Angus, we can’t just leave her here!” Norman protested. He bent down to pick her up.

Angus swat his massive arms away from her. “Ah
said
there’s no time! Whoever that bugger is, he just chewed up Atomik Laddie and spit him out! Rachel’s dead. There’s nothin’ we can do about that. Ah don’t like it, ye don’t like it, but that’s the way it is. We’ve got to split up. One o’ us has to fetch Nuklear Man while the others stay here to stall this bastard so he don’t get away. When he’s taken care of,
then
we worry about, about Rachel.”

“I’ll stay,” Norman said.

“Nay, laddie. You’re the fastest one here. Find Nuklear Man and bring him back here, but quick!”

“You sure you guys can handle it?”

“Aye. Ah’ve got more battle experience than both o’ ye put together.”

“Shiro is the stay putting. Powaa is more than heavy when combination.”

Norman paused.

“Go!”
Angus urged.

Norman’s body shifted into living tungsten. Blue threads of magnetic energy wrapped and coiled around him and he took off into the sky.

Angus put his Iron: Hand on Shiro’s Tetsu: Shoulder. “Are ye sure ye want to do this, laddie?”

“Hai.”

They turned around. A thousand cracked Atomik Lads leaned on the fractured glass to support themselves outside. A thousand cracked Nihels approached him slowly, like the personification of inevitability. Shiro’s giant red firecracker style rocket pack revved up. Angus made a minor trajectory adjustment by booting him in the arse at the last second before launch.

__________

Norman looked down as he flew away.
“Shiro?!”

The Tiny Typhoon was magnetized to the Tungsten Titan’s shin. “Nani?!”

__________

“Ah
told
ye Ah owed ye one.” Angus looked at Atomik Lad and Nihel through the broken glass. They moved like cubist paintings given life.

He unfastened his Iron: Bagpipe Thruster pack. He removed his Iron: Gauntlets, kicked off his Iron: Boots, and slid out from his Iron: Armor. Only his Iron: Kilt remained. His body was a collection of scars and tattoos criss-crossing the thick weathered skin that stretched across his tiny frame. He breathed through his broken-several-times nose. Deep, loud breaths like a dragon looming over its prey. He hummed Beethoven’s Ode to Joy. Each measure was a little louder, a little more insistent than the last. His bloodshot eyes were locked on the alien view beyond the glass. He seemed to expand as his muscles tensed. He sang louder with the whole of his throat. Beads of sweat appeared on him. His face was flushed. Veins popped out. He yelled his song now. Each note was sharp and guttural. An Ode to Rage.

__________

Atomik Lad stood. His every fiber protested with aches ranging from piercing stabs to dull throbs. And each one interwove with the others into a rich tapestry of pains. One hand was pressed against the glass door for support. He didn’t expect its texture to be so rough. He looked back on it. It was like a spider’s web spun from refracted light. The Mall’s innards were an indecipherable amalgam of distorted images swimming around. He had to look away to keep his balance.

Nihel was coming.

Atomik Lad let his hand slip. His back hit the glass with a slight crunch. He leaned back heavily to stay upright. The earlier impact had driven away most of the feeling in his legs.

And Nihel was coming.

Atomik Lad tried to find the anger. Give in to it. Reclaim its purity. Become its living and willing vessel again. But no. He was empty. Rachel was dead. What else mattered?

And Nihel was there. He stood before Atomik Lad. The ex-sidekick couldn’t bring himself to look away from the red-black N on Nihel’s chest. The symbol had been one of hope and justice. Atomik Lad should have felt insulted by its presence on Nihel. But he couldn’t bring himself to feel anything.

“You are going to die,” Nihel said without looking down at him.

“I don’t care,” Atomik Lad said.

Nihel’s eyes stared a hole through Atomik Lad’s drooped head. Loose strands of his hair swayed in a light breeze.

“Come now. You disappoint me,” Nihel said. “Entire
civilizations
have have put up weaker oppositions than what you alone did just now. And
this
is how it is to end?”

Atomik Lad didn’t move. “Get it over with. Kill me.”

Nihel let out a deep sigh. “This is why I hate you creatures. You possess the ultimate power, the only true power in the universe, and this is how you use it.” He wrapped his fingers around Atomik Lad’s chin and gently turned his face upward. Their eyes locked for a moment.

Atomik Lad felt Nihel apply pressure to his jaw.

He closed his eyes.

He gave up.

His world exploded.

It sounded like glass shattering.

“YEEEEEEARRRRGHBLBLBLE!!!” Angus roared as he leapt through the glass door without thought or hesitation. It was merely a distraction, an obstacle to be overcome. He sailed through it screaming without meaning. His giant club smashed into Nihel’s face. Atomik Lad felt the fingers around his jaw fall away and he too fell. He watched Nihel stumble backwards a step as Angus spun around, still in the air, and clubbed Nihel in the back of the knees.

Nihel dropped to the ground as Angus landed. Another blood-curdling roar and the giant club smashed into the back of Nihel’s head slamming his face into the sidewalk right in front of Atomik Lad’s feet. Angus raised the great club over his head but it suddenly became unnaturally heavy. It fell behind the Surly Scot with the weight of a freight train. Angus snarled and lunged at Nihel with this bare hands.

The monstrosity snatched Angus out of the air and stood up. Angus clawed and gnarled like a feral thing trying to free itself from a hunter’s trap.

“Now this,” Nihel said to Atomik Lad.
“This
is what I had expected from you. The scrambling, desperate fight against death. It’s so typical of every moment of your lives. You people will fill your thoughts with blather just to convince yourselves that you are not waiting for death. And then, when it’s finally there to take you away from your endless diversions, you fight tooth and nail to avoid it because you’re afraid. Afraid to live, afraid to die. You things bungle through years of blind terror and then you die. Like this.”

In a single fluid motion of beauty, Nihel picked up the massive club, planted Angus on the ground, and impaled him through the stomach with it. It must’ve reached a foot into the ground.

“Angus!”
Atomik Lad screamed.

The Surly Scot bellowed and coughed up blood. His limbs quaked as he reached up to grab at the club sticking out of his stomach. Blood poured from its edges in strong pulses and pooled under him from the exit wound. Blood ran over the concrete devouring it like locusts. Atomik Lad could see Angus’s shivering body reflected in it.

Red.

Just like his parents. Dead memories soaked in blood.

Always red. Reaching out to him. Swallowing him. Becoming him. Killing him. Remaking him. He killed them. He did it. It was his fault they were dead. His fault. He recoiled from the pool as it expanded to him.