Project Northwoods (21 page)

Escape.

There was no time to think about what happened. She stood, her own burned and ragged suit sloughing off in pieces. Her hair flowed in the draft, catching debris in its mass. She looked through the haze at the ground where Aquaria had been curled. The girl was breathing and didn’t appear much worse for the wear. Zombress had at least been successful in saving her life.

Not innocent.

She gathered the heroine up in her arms and ran out the door. She charged through the smoke, knowing that Dark Saint had at least one escort waiting for them. That didn’t bother her in the least. It was more important to get the girl out of here and wait for Talia to figure out a way to get the data off the USB drive.

Trapped.

She knew that the Enforcers were waiting for her before she had even entered the lobby. She had heard the cars screeching and the sirens wailing long before they had even pulled up. She rounded the corner and leapt from the second floor, coming to a crashing stop in the lobby and shattering the tile beneath her. Every entrance would be blockaded, guarded, or similarly unusable. Someone would have to die for her to escape silently, and what would the fun be in that?

Kill them all.

“Not today,” she muttered as she ran to the security office and kicked in the door. Setting Aquaria down, she whispered, more for her sake than the unconscious girl’s, “Everything will be okay.” Zombress figured it wouldn’t be, certainly not at this rate, but it wasn’t like they could kill her.

Returning to the lobby, she unfastened what remained of her skull tie and used it to put her hair up. “Rogue suspects, walk out, arms raised, immediately. You are surrounded,” a megaphone-enhanced male voice cried out. She didn’t recognize who spoke, but she knew he was an Enforcer, part of the largest segment of the heroic population, typically viewed as a kind of police force answering to the Guild. The fact that they were here was unsettling. Dark Saint must have called them prior to their encounter… there was no other way they would be here this quickly.

“Rogue? Tch,” she mused aloud as she marched with purpose through the empty security checkpoint. She stopped just short of passing through the revolving door. Beyond it, numerous officers were moving between cars, hiding behind doors, and in general, aiming to put as many holes as possible in her before the night was out. She smiled at the quaintness of it all.
Just like the old days
, she thought as she drew a series of symbols in the air, their glowing outlines forming the shape of a sigil roughly three feet tall. She reared back, tightened her fist, and shouted, “Alright, boys!” She swung forward as the charred remnants of her clothing began to lose cohesion.

The revolving door blew outward, fire and mortar billowing out as the remains of the door frame went spiraling down the steps. Zombress stepped out of the smoke, adjusting the sleeves on a freshly-created indigo-and-red outfit. She stood before the heroes in her new suit, as though this was the most casual entrance she could make. She struck a pose. “Hope you’re enjoying the spectacle!”

Down the numerous stairs, she saw the officer with the megaphone turn to his company. “Stall her!”

She rolled her eyes and started drawing another, different symbol. Moments before the gunfire started, she finished and held her open palm to it. “
Elder sign!
” she shouted. The floating glyph flashed as gunfire erupted from below. Bullets slammed into the shield with bursts of golden light, ricocheting into the Guild or just dropping to the ground altogether. When the volley stopped, she put her hand down, the sigil shattering with the motion. She stepped over the pile of bullets. “Do you always shoot your load this fast?”

The lieutenant at street level said something into his radio. Although the words were muffled, she could clearly read his lips:
take the shot
. Her eyes flicked up toward the roof. A glint of a sniper scope caught her eye before the muzzle flash. Zombress bent to the side to dodge the first shot, but the second sent her reeling to avoid the speeding bullet. Momentum carried her, and she planted her hands on the ground, kicked her legs up, and sprung into the air to provide a third projectile a clear path into the pavement. She landed like a cat before springing down the stairs, toward what remained of the door frame. Grabbing the warped metal, she spun and released it at high speed toward the sniper.

When the missile hit its target, she pumped her fist melodramatically. “Boom!” She cocked an eyebrow and regarded the gathered Enforcers. For the first time, she noticed that a crowd of plainclothes heroes had gathered around them. They held back, but shifted with nervous energy as they muttered amongst themselves. “Who is going to be the brave soldier who wants to try to cuff me?” She put her wrists together and made a pouting face.

“Zombress,” the lieutenant began, his voice wavering through the megaphone. “We don’t want any trouble.”

“Trouble?” She put her hands on her hips and began to pace, her eyes not leaving the assembled Enforcers. “You shot at me.” She tried to look innocent. “Unprovoked, no less.”

“Unpro–” the man’s voice cracked. “You blew up the doors to the Heroes’ Guild!”

“Did I?” Zombress looked behind her. “I suppose I did.” Her gaze fell back to the lieutenant, a smile on her face. “But only after you declared me rogue, which I believe is a shoot-to-kill order,” she cooed, cocking an eyebrow. “Unless your emission earlier was premature.” With a thunderous crash of shattering concrete, someone landed behind her. Her lips curled upward ever so slightly. “Arbiter. So good of you to show up.”

Arbiter rose to his full height, righteous fury roiling off of him like waves of heat. “What have you done, Zombress?”

She turned, her smile melting away as she did so. “Well, I figured peace was
so
last decade. I thought I’d give you a sporting run at genocide.” She smoothly took her suit jacket off and let go, the coat turning into an ash and vanishing the moment it left her fingers.

“What have you done?” he yelled louder, as though the pure volume of his voice would break her.

Zombress didn’t flinch. “I’d rather hear your response.” She approached him, slowly. “Someone’s got a secret, don’t they?”

He swept forward with a wide punch, which she fluidly dove and rolled under. Her left heel hit the ground and she swept her other foot around in a wide arc while rising to face her opponent. Arbiter spun and went low with an uppercut, Zombress responding by hopping onto his fist and pushing off, sending her in a backflip away from him.

She landed and fell backward in a roll twenty feet away, finally ending upright as a piercing ache welled in her hand from her brief contact with the hero. Arbiter was already running, but she waited to react until he came at her with a leaping straight punch. She fell onto her knees, bending backward deeply. Arbiter sailed right above her and smashed into the pavement behind where she had been standing a moment earlier.

Zombress rolled onto her back and did a handspring to become upright. The second the balls of her feet hit the ground, she sprinted away from Arbiter as he attempted to grab the back of her neck. She leapt and spun to face him, grinding to a halt where they had first started while leaning forward, beckoning Arbiter to attack with a provocative smirk and wink. Further enraged, he charged her, arm cocked and ready to strike.

Effortlessly, she leapt over him, but he had anticipated the move despite following through with the punch. He stopped just past her as she landed right behind him. Arbiter swirled with another backhand, but Zombress managed to dive beneath it, slamming her foot into the ground. Her foot dragged in an arc as though drawing something in the pavement. She stood upright as another blow swept at her mid-section. The strike was with his off hand, a touch slower but nonetheless dangerous. Zombress jumped, flipping backward over the lateral move, and touched down, heels dragging once more into the ground.

Arbiter roared, wheeled about, and tried to grab her face in his open palm. She leaned backward, deeply, and avoided his grasp. She planted her hands on the slick pavement and kicked up and over, landing in a crouch as her heel continued to cut gouges into the ground. Arbiter, his irritation growing ever more vocal, growled and lifted his leg to stomp down and pin her under his boot. Zombress once again rolled away, his foot burrowing into the pavement as she continued to flip around him. She came to a stop in a challenging, low position.

“Enough!” Arbiter shouted, lunging forward with his fist above his head. The distance between them vanished as he brought his hand down in a crushing blow. In the last instant, she became a black, cloudy blur and the attack merely powdered the concrete of the walkway. He looked up, and Zombress was reclining in front of him, her head on one hand and the other pushing her glasses up lazily, with a thumb on one side and her index finger on the other.

She smiled lazily and leaned forward. “Well, if you wanted to get in between my legs, Arb–”

His hand grabbed her throat, cutting her off. He stood, yanking her into the air. “This time, you’ve gone too far!” he bellowed. She rolled her eyes, which he responded to by squeezing her throat tighter. “Where is Dark Saint? He tried to stop your plan!” He shook her when she didn’t speak. “Answer me!”

Zombress hated to do it, but she had no choice. She had spent this long not touching the bastard, but she had to act quickly. Grabbing his arm for leverage, she swung her body back, then forward, thrusting her foot into his face. It was painful using her neck as a pivot, but she couldn’t risk being dragged away. The blow must have shocked the arrogant Bestowed, for he dropped her, covering his face as his oft-broken nose gushed. She collapsed to the ground, coughing, but she couldn’t waste time recovering. She scrambled to her feet, and then, sure enough, the pain hit her.

She found it just as difficult as always to avoid screaming in agony as her face felt like it was being smashed under a building. Zombress stood, trying to get used to it, ignoring the way the world turned red as individual droplets of water materialized out of the damp pavement and climbed toward the sky. Motionless, defenseless, all she could do was listen as Arbiter stomped his way toward her.

It took a great deal of effort to propel herself up, over him, then plummet downwards toward the sigil she had painstakingly carved into the concrete. She partially collapsed on it, but the golden etches burst to light, even though the first markings she made were starting to fade. Through the blinding protestations of her nerves, she stood up. Arbiter took a cautious step away from her. She cocked her head to the side, wheeled her arms and shouted, “
Song of the Dark Mother!
” The ground produced a bright blob of greenish light, wobbling and quaking before reaching a height of ten feet.

It exploded with a tremendous flash. Zombress was already running when it popped, unleashing a horrific squealing to accompany the bright burst of light which had blinded anyone not looking away. A gaudy power, to be sure, but incredibly effective at making sure no one followed her.

She moved so quickly that her motion was perceivable only as a miasmic haze. Zombress was already halfway up the steps to the Guild, and even Arbiter’s eyes would need a few more moments to adjust. In any case, the distraction had been successful. Provided she was quick, she could grab Aquaria and slip out the back before anyone noticed.

Maybe.

Mollie had never been more aware of her own mortality than she was at this moment.

The threat of deletion had always seemed so comfortably far away, something that happened to unloved gaming programs or ineffective video editing software. At some point, entropy would break down the computer she called home and Arthur would move her to another location, secure and safe and able to continue learning.

He always told her, from the moment he brought her home after saving her from the Guild’s deletion squad, that she could never venture far. That there were people who knew about her and didn’t take kindly to the fact that he stumbled upon a self-aware program. She didn’t care, as the idea seemed preposterous while Arthur was able to keep her safe.

That just blew up in her face, didn’t it?

She entered the Guild’s security computer and, after moving through some folders, came to the realization that something was stalking her as she was trying to find the surveillance videos. Not finding anything of value, she turned her attention to the stalker by copying a piece of her software as a self-deleting cluster bomb, one of her many tools with which she could disarm or destroy an aggressive anti-virus program. A useful skill she had developed through Arthur’s occasional purchase of security programs that she could study, disarm, and destroy. After all, she was a virus. A plucky, talking virus, sure. But most people wouldn’t take kindly to anything of the sort, even if it could provide breakfast conversation and a dissertation on the rise of anarcho-syndicalism.

Whatever was following her had prepared for her defense.