The Infinite League Page 13

  “Well, according to your GPS sensor, you’re going in the right direction. Keep flying straight. As you get closer, you should see a panicked crowd. It won’t be hard to miss once you’re there.”

  I had to admit, rushing to the scene without worrying about pedestrians and civilian traffic blocking me off was definitely a rush. Once I had my general direction picked, I began to pick up speed as I flew over the streets. I found that I got the best balance and aerodynamics by stretching my arms out in front of me. My palms were down, and I skimmed over the wind currents, watching the people below looking at me with pointing fingers and screams of excitement.

  When we were married, my husband tried to get me to go water skiing once. The water ski rope got yanked out of my hands the first three times, which my kid found endlessly hilarious. On the fourth attempt, I held on to the stupid rope, but I couldn’t get to a standing position. The result was that I got dragged fifty feet across the water. My face turned red from the wind and water rushing by, my feet bounced helplessly over the surface of the lake, and my tits felt like someone was repeatedly slapping a two by four across them as I bobbed along.

  This is more or less the best way I can describe flying. The gauntlets listened to my commands and pulled me through the air like a strong pair of arms, but it did nothing to really keep my feet up on a level plane like I wanted. The only way to stay horizontal was to fly faster, and let my feet soar behind me as I accelerated. The faster I went, strange as it seems, the easier it was to stay balanced.

  Now I know why Andromeda wore goggles. It wasn’t just to protect her secret identity. It offered protection for her eyes when she was flying. Sadly, one of my powers didn’t include being invulnerable to harm.

  “Andromeda, watch your speed,” warned the friendly voice in my ear. “You don’t want to hit a billboard at a high speed. That would hurt.”

  “Yeah, roger that. I think I see the National Archives building. There’s a lot of folks running around and----shit!”

  “What do you see?”

  “Damn bug hit me in the face,” I complained. “Almost went in my mouth, man!”

  “Lower your face, just look ahead with your peripheral vision,” he advised me. “If you want, I can have the armorer work on designing a full helmet for you.”

  I swear I could hear him smiling on the other side of the call.

  “Okay, I think I see him,” I said, as I got closer to the steps of the archives building. He wasn’t difficult to pick out. He was the sole person standing on the steps. In one arm, he was holding a sturdy frame that housed an ancient piece of paper behind its thick glass. The other hand was pointed at several security guards surrounding the building.

  “I see him, but I don’t see a weapon,” I reported.

  “Blue bodysuit? Yellow helmet that looks like a lightning bolt?”

  “Yeah, that’s right. Who is he?”

  “That’s Shock Daddy,” Fowler said with a definite groan in his voice. “He’s a Beta Level Mech. He created armor that generates electricity. He escaped from the Grey Palace a few weeks ago.”

  Ambassador and DeathTek had a run-in with him recently, but they weren’t able to collar him. The Grey Palace was the informal name of a super max prison in Detroit, specially designed to house criminal Sparks. I’d never been to it before, but as a former cop, I’d heard a lot of stories about the harsh conditions there.

  I tried to lower myself down to the steps of the archives building with as much grace and dignity as I could. I found myself wobbling my shoulders ever so slightly as I tilted from a horizontal flight pattern to an upright pose so I could land gently on my toes. I was afraid that I was going to lose my balance in mid-air and face plant on the steps, like I did the first dozen times I tried flying back at the base. Fortunately for my dignity, I pulled it off better than I expected.

  The man in the costume took a slight step back, and I could see him swallow nervously. The security guards seemed to look relieved to see me land. Like the staff at the hospital, they were buying it. They were totally buying it.

  “Is there a problem I could help with?” I asked as nonchalantly as I could. I was speaking to the guards, but I never took my eyes of the goof in the suit.

  “He’s holding the original Emancipation Proclamation,” said the guard closest to me. “He’s threatening to destroy it if we don’t let him go.”

  “Are the police on their way?” I asked.

  “They’re another five minutes away,” he replied.

  “Okay, clear the steps,” I told them all. “I’ll see if I can talk him down.”

  That felt weird. I’ve never taken charge of a police investigation in my life, let alone given orders to others. I had just been an officer, not a detective. More than ever, the overwhelming reality that I was just a girl playing dress-up lingered in the back of my head. True, I could fly and shoot fireballs, but I couldn’t shake the reality that I was pretty much a hired actress holding a dangerous weapon. This wasn’t playtime anymore, though.

  As the security guards moved away from the steps, keeping other people trying to get a closer look at me from getting too close, I began walking carefully towards the thief.

  “Hi,” I said with a careful smile. “I’m…”

  His eyes flinched in the two seconds of silence that followed. Shit, what was my super-hero name again?

  “I’m Andromeda,” I said finally.

  “I’d heard you were dead,” he shot back, nervously looking around for anyone else that might be here to arrest him.

  “You know, I think they sell reproductions of that in the gift shop. Come on, let’s not make this into a situation. Maybe I can get you a signed poster for your cell?”

  “I’m never going back to that hell hole,” he promised, tightening his grip on the glass frame. I could see tiny little sparks of blue light and energy circling his fingers, threatening to turn the treasure into an explosion of fire and ash. “I’m going to my car and I’m leaving without being pursued, or this goes up in smoke.”

  It wasn’t an ideal situation. I really didn’t want to be the one responsible for such an important piece of history becoming a cinder. He looked nervous, desperate and dangerous. It crossed my mind that I wished one of the super-heroes were here to deal with this nut job. Not an imposter like me.

  I took a step closer, keeping my hands up, and just kept smiling. I wanted to keep him calm.

  “There’s going to be a lot of police here any moment,” I told him. “They’re going to have guns, and they’re going to have a longer range than you do. You aren’t going to be a threat to them.”

  With his free hand, he punched at the air angrily. A bolt of lightning exploded from his fist, striking a car parked by the curb. My jaw dropped as I saw it blow apart in a nightmare of metal and fire and fury. Four people standing nearby were knocked away towards the street, but whoever was in the vehicle had been killed instantly. At least, for their sakes, I hoped it was instant.

  “Stop that!” I screamed at him.

  “Who’s not much of a threat?” he retorted. “Fly away, tinkerbitch, or I’ll light this paper up next.”

  “He’s a mercenary,” Eric suggested, his voice buzzing in my ear.

  “What does that mean? And we need some ambulances over here!”

  “Response teams and back-up will be there soon. Listen, Shock Daddy is a mercenary, just a hired crook. Someone probably hired him to steal that document. He’s not going to just torch it.”

  “Are you sure? I need to know, because he’s about two seconds from turning on me.”

  “Who are you talking to?” the thief demanded.

  I didn’t attack him right after he destroyed that car, he was becoming a little overconfident. Maybe he even suspected I didn’t have the power to take him down. He was starting to walk towards me now. I had to make a decision.

  “Besides, if he destroys the document, he knows he’s going to be gunned down,” Eric told me. “You need to ta
ke him down before he hurts someone else.”

  “I really don’t think I need to be throwing fireballs at the fucking Emancipation Proclamation,” I told him.

  “Offensive / Precison Training, remember? Be precise.”

  I nodded, and took a close look at the guy. The framed document was cradled in his left hand. His right hand was pointed at me, the same hand that tossed a lightning bolt into the car.

  The glass case might possibly protect the document from the blast of my powers, which basically amounted to firing a flamethrower at the guy, but I didn’t want to take the chance. I had already helped destroy one national treasure this year, and I didn’t want to take a chance on another one.

  Offensive / Precision Training. I’d spent plenty of time practicing on focusing my fire into laser thin beams. According to Colonel Bridge, firing a concentrated laser at someone would have the same effect as firing a bullet. The advantage was it would immediately cauterize the wound, and not leave deadly shrapnel in the body.

  I aimed my hand at the shoulder holding the document. If I hit it perfectly, he would drop the frame and probably be incapacitated for at least a few seconds. I could fly over, retrieve the frame, fly it to safety, and then come back and apprehend him without worrying about damaging one of the most important pieces of American history in existence. I pointed my hand at him, and decided that the humane thing to do was give him one final warning.

  “I said, who you talking to?” he repeated angrily.

  “Listen carefully to me. You’re under arrest for felony theft, destruction of property, assault, and I would imagine first degree murder. I don’t want to hurt you, so—“

  I really did have a compassionate, reasonable string of words organized in my head that was calculated to make him see the errors of his ways and surrender his prize without having to shoot him in the arm. It really irritated me that he interrupted my speech by hitting my legs with a shitload of electricity.

  My father always said that I should never be the one to throw the first punch. But he did recommend that I throw all the punches after. Of course, where I planned to shoot him was not something dad would have approved of. But game on, man. I was too pissed to think about being polite now.

  I glared at the man---or rather, the image fluttering between the three men approaching me. I had hit the concrete steps on my arm, my entire body numb from the involuntary cramps and tremors that came from nearly being electrocuted. Eric’s voice was no longer spouting helpful advice in my ear. My ear bud was a smoking piece of damaged electronics on the ground now. It was just him and me. He was standing over me now, and his free hand reached for my head.

  A few years ago, I attended an execution at the Greensville Correctional Center in Virginia. It was one of the few remaining states to maintain a working electric chair, and I had seen the damage it had inflicted on a human body. If this psycho got his hands on my head, I had no doubt what was going to happen.

  I pointed my middle finger at his face, and flashed him a smug grin. A beam of focused heat shot out like a bullet, burning him right across the left temple. Another inch to the right, I could have melted his eyeball. I wouldn’t have dared tried this stunt as a long range attack, but it was easy to be accurate when your target is three inches away.

  To be honest, he was lucky. I could have followed my first instinct and castrated him. But Andromeda had an image to project, and little girls like Abigail looked up to her. I had the power, but I had to be responsible enough to restrain myself. As a former officer, it had been drilled into me long and often about using the minimal amount of force necessary to apprehend a dangerous opponent.

  But I have to admit; it was pretty satisfying to see him clutch his face in what was probably a horrendous amount of pain. He dropped the framed document, and I picked it up. I flew it towards the museum guards before it had a chance to start flipping end over end down the concrete stairs.

  It was heavier than I expected. This vital piece of history was housed inside a sturdy frame of what felt like reinforced steel and bulletproof glass, built to protect the Emancipation Proclamation from anyone that might want to steal or destroy the fragile paper inside. Valuable artifacts like this were given serious amounts of protection, especially in a world where people have such potentially devastating power. It was heavier than I expected, but it seemed lighter in my hands when I was flying. I made a mental note to ask Dr. Progeriat about the physics of weight and flying. But for now, I dropped it in the hands of the nearest guard, and flew back to Shock Daddy.

  He was still on his feet, amazingly enough, but the one eye that wasn’t covered was glaring at me. I had never seen so much hatred pouring from one man’s stare. He didn’t have anything to hold hostage anymore, and he was cornered between a line of security guards, the approaching police, and me. That made him a very, very dangerous human being.

  “Get on your knees with your hands behind your head,” I barked at him. “You’re going back to the Grey Palace, but it doesn’t have to be with third degree burns all over your body. Get down!”

  He wasn’t listening. He raised his hands and pointed them at me. He was going to attack, and he had nothing to lose at this point. He also had nothing to hide behind, so I struck first. I imagined throwing a baseball at him, followed through with the action, and watched a small sphere of fire leave my fingers and burn through the air towards his chest. It hit him center mass, a perfectly accurate strike.

  It knocked him back about an inch. But other than that, it did nothing. I had tried the same attack in the gym dozens of times, and watched my fireballs incinerate mannequins and crates. But the heat and fire seemed to dissipate against his chest, and flutter harmlessly off his shoulders.

  “Eric, fire doesn’t seem to hurt him,” I hissed nervously, before realizing that I had lost my link to the base a few minutes ago.

  The bastard sneered at me, running his hands up and down his chest with a creepy flourish. “You like it? It’s the latest in titanium dipped tri-weave fibers, stretched over a hardened Kevlar body glove. It’s designed to withstand any assault. Bullets, ice, your fire, my lightning, and whatever else you might think about throwing at me.”

  Terrific. He has a fire-proof suit on. But his face isn’t covered, I realized. We already established that when I shot a laser in his face. I called another ball of fire into existence, and prepared to hit him right across the chin.

  But he hit me first. It was a bolt of raw, violent lightning, and it hit me in the chest and knocked me out of the air and off my feet. Every ounce of oxygen left my lungs as my back slammed painfully on the steps, and my brain struggled to interpret the conflicting sources of pain that made me just want to shut down.

  He ran up to me again, preparing to light me up one final time. I couldn’t move, I couldn’t scream for help. I hurt too much to even brace myself for the final painful assault.

  That’s when he fell out of the sky, like a vengeful meteor. With his golden cape trailing behind him, the Ambassador landed between Shock Daddy and me.

  Instinctively, Shock Daddy began firing desperate bolts of electrical fury right into Ambassador’s face. I could see sparks drilling across his forehead, a sensation I wasn’t exactly envious of.

  “If you’re going to hit like a girl, then you’re going to have to stop calling yourself Shock Daddy,” the Ambassador suggested. There was a hideous sound of metal scraping and fabric tearing, and then he tossed the crook aside on the stone steps. When Shock Daddy landed, he had a bruised eye, a bloody lip, and his obscenely expensive armored costume had been reduced to a mess of torn fabric and discarded wiring. His chest and arms were exposed now, shielded only by a grungy t-shirt.

  Unfortunately, his wrist weapons were still working. Shock Daddy screamed something unintelligible, and another barrage of lightning flew from his fingers. It did something I had never seen before. It seemed to hurt the Ambassador, knocking him backwards against the railing of the stairs. The rail crumpled a bit unde
r his weight, while making an awfully useful conductor for the lightning.

  Ambassador had shredded the guy’s armor, but he should have ripped off the clunky steel gloves instead. As he fired his electrical attacks at the Ambassador, some of the sparks bounced back onto his own exposed flesh, causing him to flinch and jolt.

  Shock Daddy was trying to kill the Ambassador, and he seemed to be doing a good job of it. The Ambassador looked like he was having trouble breathing. When he dropped, Shock Daddy would turn on me.

  I could smell burning flesh.

  Then, an idea occurred to me. Some of the feedback from Shock Daddy’s attacks were backfiring into his own body, and I could tell it was stinging him. Maybe if he was one of those naturally enhanced heroes who naturally fired electricity from his fingers, he wouldn’t need that insulated armor. But all of his powers came from technology. And his protective gear had been compromised.

  With that, I knew what my play was. He was no longer paying attention to me, and I used that to my advantage. I flew towards him, stupidly ignoring the risk of electrocution, and grabbed him by the shoulders.

  Like the heavy framed document, he seemed lighter than I expected when I was in the air. I had hit the weights frequently since being drafted into this team of enhanced show-offs, but I was still amazed how easy it was to lift him five hundred feet into the air.

  If only he didn’t struggle so much.

  “You want me to deep fry your skull? You need to put me down, bitch!”

  “If I drop you, you’re going to be street pizza,” I reminded him. “Do you really think shocking me up here is such a good idea?”

  “You can’t carry me forever!”

  “Didn’t plan to, smart guy.”

  It was just three miles away. I picked up my speed, gripping him even tighter around his sweaty shoulders, and flew down Ninth Street. People were staring, pointing, taking pictures, all while Shock Daddy continued to scream in protest. I wasn’t sure if he knew where I was taking him, and I didn’t want to give him a chance to come up with an escape plan.