DIRE : SEED (The Dire Saga Book 2) Read online

  “FREEWAY,” I said, tearing what I now recognized to be a tablecloth from my mask once more. I got a flicker of the courtroom around me again, a view of Ballista drawing back another spear, and the three remaining FBI agents dragging Martin once more towards the exit.

  Then a blur and a snap, and the tablecloth was over my eyes again. Another spear fragmented off my back, and the forcefield blocked it. Again.

  “THIS ISN’T YOUR BATTLE,” I said, and instead of tearing the tablecloth loose, I hit it with a wide-diffusion particle beam. It went up with a WHOOMF, and my systems chattered angrily at me for putting stress on my force field. The second I could see again, I blew one of the FBI agents into the wall. He hit the ground and quivered, stunned.

  “Actually it kind of is,” Freeway said, his voice coming from the blur that circled the edges of the courtroom. My targeting systems were going nuts, trying to get a lock on him. “I want that young man to have a fair trial.”

  Then my sensors were blocked again, this time by a bright, blood-hued red. I rolled my eyes. He’d flipped my own cape over my head.

  Freeway was a speedster. He could bypass physics, move at high speeds without touching off sonic booms or causing collateral damage to those around him, which was a great help to his hero work. Worse, he was an experienced hero. He’d gone up against all sorts of foes in his career, and not all of them were public record. I doubted I was the first power-armored villain he’d had to fight. In this case, he’d probably assessed the situation, figured he didn’t want to break his knuckles on my steel plate. So he was settling for throwing the equivalent of blankets over me so that Ballista could administer a beatdown.

  Two more spears hit me, and I checked my power readings. Seventy-four percent charge. I could keep taking these for a while, but not forever. I needed to change things up. I thought about triggering the screamers, decided against it. Still too early. Timing would be crucial, here.

  Well. Can’t cover what you can’t reach, hm?

  I activated my armor’s gravitic system, and hovered into the air, casting my cape aside as I did so. It was a further drain on power, but it did the trick, as my vision was uninterrupted for a few precious seconds.

  “A FAIR TRIAL? YOU THINK HE’D GET ONE HERE?” I put my sneer into my armor’s voice, as best I could.

  Ballista scurried behind cover, and across from him, a black-and-yellow blur stopped, materialized into a stocky man. He had a mask with goggles on it, that left his mouth and nose exposed but covered the rest of his face and head. The rest of his costume was more or less a jumpsuit, black with yellow dotted lines, not unlike a street’s pattern. The skin revealed by his mask was a deep, walnut brown. “Listen,” he said, spreading his arms wide. I resisted the urge to take a shot at him, he’d be out of the way before I could bring my arm up. “I know what you went through. I talked with Martin, got his side of the story.”

  I glanced to Martin. “IS THAT SO?”

  He nodded, pulled his arms loose from the two agents left holding him. “Dude’s paying for my lawyer.”

  That gave me pause... which lasted up until I recalled the judge’s crimes. Still, if Martin wanted to go through with it, could I deny him that?

  “MARTIN. CAN YOU LOOK DIRE IN THE EYE, AND TELL HER YOU HONESTLY HAVE A SHOT AT JUSTICE, HERE?”

  He looked up at my mask’s eyesockets, then down at the ground. “I wish I could,” he said. “You got no idea how much I wish I could.”

  Freeway shook his head. “Then what? This?” He swept his arm around to the mostly-emptied courtroom, particle burns on the walls and furniture in bits from my attempts to blast Ballista. Rubble still pattered down from above, from where I’d made my entry. “This is anarchy. The sort of thing that you fought to stop, Doctor.”

  “THE SYSTEM IS BROKEN,” I said. “BETTER TO DERAIL IT HERE, THAN LET ANOTHER BE SACRIFICED TO NO PURPOSE.” I checked the clock, and frowned. Still too early. Monologuing? Headgames? Might tie them up for a bit. It was worth a shot. “AND SO IT FALLS TO DIRE TO FIX WHAT YOU CANNOT. WHAT WAS HAMLET’S LINE? THE TIME IS OUT OF JOINT, O CURSED SPITE. THAT EVER I WAS BORN TO SET IT RIGHT.”

  Martin looked to me in shock. “Whoa. You said “I”? You can do that now?”

  Actually I couldn’t. Due to brain damage, I couldn’t refer to myself using most pronouns, or anything but my proper name. It was a long story.

  “AH, NO, ACTUALLY. IT WAS A QUOTE, MARTIN. SINCE SHE WAS QUOTING, RATHER THAN REFERRING TO HERSELF—”

  The spear took me in the back, and actually rocked me forward a bit, despite the forcefield blocking it.

  “Damn it Ballista!” Freeway yelled, and blurred into motion again. At a speed that beggared thought a pillar of collected chairs and furniture bits started to rise into the air as he tried to build a ladder to me. I simply flew away from it, re-calibrating my targeting systems back to Ballista. We traded a few shots, and I found myself at a disadvantage. With Freeway running interference, and Ballista’s acrobatic skill, I couldn’t land a hit on him. Whereas he was under no such hindrances; my limited room to maneuver in the airspace of the dome meant I had no cover. And there was no one to run interference for me.

  I was losing. My energy reserves were depleting more and more with each hit scored, with the fusion cell at the heart of my suit unable to keep up with the drain. Sooner or later I’d be out, and then I’d have to land, and face them without a forcefield. It was taking time, but they were wearing me down.

  Just as planned. I felt a grin spread across my face.

  And finally my HUD’s alarm chimed, telling me that everything was in readiness. I killed the forcefield, and let the next spear slide full on into my armored chest, knocking me from the sky, crashing down into the witness stand and spreading chunks of it across the jury box. The FBI agents left grabbed Martin and hustled him out of the room, and I smiled to see it.

  “Jesus!” Freeway shouted. “What did you do, Ballista, stop!”

  I chuckled. “ONLY HURTS WHEN SHE LAUGHS.”

  Ballista didn’t break cover. “It’s a trick.”

  Freeway didn’t think so. “Hold still Doctor, we’ll get you help.”

  “YOU’RE A GOOD MAN,” I told him. “SHE’S SORRY FOR THIS.”

  I activated the screamers.

  Short-range sonic resonators, built into my armor’s abdomen. They hissed to life with a horrible, rising whine, that I heard even through the baffles I’d set into my mask. They pulsed and howled through the courthouse dome, working with the acoustics as I’d designed them to. They wouldn’t affect anyone outside the room.

  Inside the room?

  It was like two punches, straight to the inner ears. Nausea, vertigo, crippling migraines, and extreme pain. I saw the heroes double over, as I flipped myself up, ignoring the damage readouts from my armor’s chest plate. I’d lied, earlier. Didn’t hurt at all, even when I laughed. And I was laughing now, not that the heroes heard it. Mocking, deep laughter, echoing throughout the courthouse.

  “AND SO YOU FALL BEFORE DIRE.” I let them have it with the gauntlet tasers, paused, looked them over. Out cold. I killed the screamers. Too much exposure would cause permanent trauma, and I saw no reason to be cruel.

  “NOW THEN. YOU’LL HAVE TO EXCUSE HER, SHE’S GOT A—”

  BIP!

  Huh? That was a strange noise. Feedback from the screamers, maybe?

  “Holy shit!”

  I turned at the outburst, and blinked at the sight before me. A weedy-looking brown-haired man wearing a Hawaiian shirt and a pair of torn jeans? He wasn’t dressed for the weather or the austerity of court. He had a scraggly, untrimmed beard, and a worried look on his face, as he raised a trembling finger at me. “Um. Yeah. Sorry Doc, but I can’t let you go or the future’s gonna suck major—”

  I tased him. He jerked and twitched, and fell to the ground, kicking his heels. I turned off the taser, studied him for a second as he writhed. No hero I recognized. No costume, and the face was unfamiliar. Why h
ad he confronted me? Had I just taken down a civilian?

  He shimmered and faded, body collapsing into blinding light, with an echoing ‘BIP!’

  Nope, definitely a metahuman then. So that’s where the noise had come from. Weird. I checked my chronometer, found I still had about half a minute before the next phase.

  “Not cool, man.” The stranger’s voice echoed around the dome, and I turned, looking for him.

  “WHO ARE YOU? WHAT IS YOUR BUSINESS HERE?”

  “Name’s Timetripper,” he said, and I caught a flash of motion in the jury box. I blew a hole in the low wall around it, heard him curse.

  “AH. A TIME TRAVELER, THEN?” I felt my lips curl back. People like him were the reason I’d erased my old memory, hidden my past from myself.

  “Uh. Yeah. Wow, usually I have to explain this.”

  “THE NAME AND THE EARLIER REFERENCE TO THE FUTURE SUFFICE.”

  “Sharp as always, Doc.”

  He stood up, grinning through his beard. I raised a gauntlet, and hesitated. No, this was a trick.

  I whirled, found a duplicate of him creeping up on me. I tased it instead, then turned back to the jury box... only to find the original gone.

  BIP!

  The acoustics, which had worked in my favor before, now hindered me. I couldn’t track where that was coming from. Well, no reason the same trick that worked against Freeway couldn’t work here. I flew up, surveying the ground below. Could he fly? I doubted it.

  “Gotcha!” A proximity alarm from above, and my visual feed went dark. The armor stopped responding altogether, and I swore to myself, as I checked the logs. He’d been in the hole, of course, the space above that I’d cored out when I entered the building. Just waiting for me to stray near to it... and then what? Had he frozen my armor in a stasis bubble? Transported it through time? Unleashed the uncaring entropy of a thousand years at once, and disintegrated it?

  Well.

  Whatever he’d done, it made me glad that I wasn’t in the armor at the time.

  “Evac,” I whispered, and the gyroscopic harness released around me, letting me slide to the ground unhindered. I slipped the VR goggles from my eyes, and tossed them aside, to fall on the cluttered floor of the basement.

  “Burn,” I whispered once more, and the self-destruct devices in my gadgets beeped, started their countdown. I didn’t stick around to see it, time was nearly up, and I wasn’t in position yet.

  I hit the stairway door at a run, catching it with my shoulder. A dusty hall stretched before me. It was the older section of the courthouse, under renovations for the last few month. It had been child’s play, and the work of a few careful weeks, to infiltrate the contractors and smuggle my tech in bit by bit. Interfacing it with the armor in the orbital drop pod above had been the tricky part. Doing that without anyone catching my signal had been a trial of patience. Once the synch had been established, my harness and goggles let me pilot the suit remotely, act as though I was in it from the start.

  But that part of this deception was over. Now I was depending on the FBI to follow their procedures. While I thought about it, I snagged a blue jacket off its hook, and pulled it on. Simplicity itself to swipe one from last night’s laundry crew, replace it with a cheap knockoff. The name on the back was ‘Wilson’. I knew she wouldn’t be in the team on duty today, and my hair was roughly the same shade. Thanks to a little prepwork, I now matched her style.

  I slid through the emergency exit, ignored the fleeing crowd, and looked around for my targets. If they followed the plans that their chief had detailed in the gridmails I’d hacked, the van would be pulling up right about...

  There. The two FBI agents I’d let escape the courtroom stood at the curb, with Martin between them. I ran to join them. “What’s the situation?” I barked, as the older one turned to look at me.

  “Villain attack! We need to—”

  The stungun concealed in my grip took him in the solar plexus, and he collapsed in a whisper of cloth.

  “SNIPER!” I bellowed, seizing Martin’s arm with my free hand, and hustling him toward the van as it screeched to a halt. The younger one jumped, let go of Martin, and grabbed his partner.

  “Matty? Matty? Oh god!”

  “Call an ambulance!” I howled at him. “Gonna secure Jackson!”

  I ripped the side door open, shoved Martin forward into the van, and climbed in behind him, surveying the interior. One driver, one agent in back, crouched low with an assault rifle. Metal mesh between the driver and the back compartment.

  “Go go go!” I yelled, and the gunner pulled the door shut, as we braced ourselves and the van peeled out.

  “What’s the situation?” The guard asked.

  I stungunned him in the face. He jerked, started to fall, and I grabbed him, pulled him in close as if I was talking into his ear.

  “Oh shit,” Martin said. He started laughing hysterically.

  “Hey! Shut up back there!” The driver yelled.

  I kept nodding my head next to the unconscious agent’s, like I was whispering to him. We made it about five blocks before the driver got suspicious.

  “Hey, Wilson, what happened back there?”

  I turned, face etched into a frown. “Villain attack.” But he was looking past me, and his eyes widened, as he took in the gunner’s slack face and closed eyes.

  I sighed, then let my mouth open into a wide, clenched grin. “And you’re next. Stop the van.”

  “You killed Higgins? Bad mistake.” He reached for the dashboard, and hit the button that would fill the back compartment with teargas.

  My smile got wider. “You guys really should have used more than one van to transport the prisoner.”

  He pushed the button a few more times, swore. But he wasn’t stopping. I shook my head, and pulled out my universal remote, clicked through until I got the right menu. “After all, it was easy to disable your security.”

  He grabbed for the CB radio, and that I couldn’t allow. “Brace yourself,” I told Martin, and followed my own advice as I hit the button on the universal remote.

  The van screeched to a halt, the airbag fired up in the driver’s face, and all the doors clicked open at once. I was moving the second it stopped, whipping around the side of the van, jerking the passenger door open, and jamming my stungun into the visible thigh of the driver as he thrashed and tried to get free. People on the street stared as I punctured the airbag, jerked the driver free, and rolled his unconscious body out of the vehicle. I slid into the now vacated seat, and resumed driving. But not along the planned evacuation route.

  A knock from the back compartment, and I slid it open, keeping eyes forward.

  “Holy shit,” Martin said.

  “Hello to you too, Martin.”

  “Nearly didn’t recognize you, Dire.”

  “That was the point of the disguise.”

  “So, uh, thanks. What now?”

  “Ditch the van at the planned location, switch to a different vehicle, and drive to the safehouse.”

  “And then?”

  I stopped at a red light, turned to grin at him. “Then the real work begins.”

  CHAPTER 2: THE LAIR

  “It's easier than you'd think to move around in public, even after your secret identity's been outed. Most people are bad at matching faces to photos. If you act normal and maybe wear some sunglasses or a hat or something to draw attention away from your face, you've got good odds of grabbing a pizza or whatever without people calling nine one one. Well, unless you're ten feet tall and green. Which is why my life sucks.”

  --Crocagator, during an in-prison interview with Channel Five News.

  Whaler’s Wharf was an older part of the city, back when shipping and fishing had been its major industries. Both ended up falling by the wayside after World War Two, and the infrastructure had suffered as a result. They had never completely gone away, however, and the open air stalls of Fishmarket were still the best place for fresh seafood in the city. A few long-est
ablished factories in Cannery Row still worked night and day to compress tuna and cod into transportable packages, and the great cranes of Dockside unloaded the big ships that found their way past Baltimore and Boston Harbor. On a darker note, though the Tongs of Dragon Street were long gone, eradicated by the Phantasm in the thirties, drugs were still an epidemic. No longer was the district host to the opium dens and speakeasies of a bygone age. Now the junkies chased cheap and dangerous thrills of betameth, and heroin.

  The overall impression was one of surly, stoic decay. Though not as bad as the slums where I’d first achieved consciousness, it was definitely a neighborhood where the money had fled years ago. Many baroque, older buildings were left boarded up, crumbling as time and tide wore upon them, exposed to the sea on the peninsula that jutted out from the southeast of Icon like a sturdy chin. The newer structures were all stainless steel and treated concrete, stained by oil and heavy use. A few nice houses on the southern shore, old colonials with widow’s walks and turrets, and tightly maintained little gardens in their postage stamp yards.

  The lair wasn’t in the residential sections, though. I’d rented a small warehouse through a false identity. It wouldn’t hold up to scrutiny for more than a few months, but I wouldn’t need it for more than a few weeks, if all went to plan. All I truly needed from it was a place to lie low and store my equipment, and it performed that job admirably. It was close enough to one of the wharves that the noise of the cranes muffled the industrial noises my welding and manufacturing gear produced, during the daytime, at least.

  Martin wasn’t impressed. “Shee-it, what a dump. Roaches or rats?”

  “Probably some vermin running around the lower level. Dire doesn’t particularly care, so long as they stay out of the living quarters above.” I slowed the Fjord Nina to a stop, ignoring the rattling from the suspension. It had been one of the cheapest cars I could find from a seller who asked no questions, and ugly enough that I didn’t fear potential theft when I left it out in the small lot behind the facility. Once parked, I hopped out, closed the rusty gate, and shut the padlock behind us. I measured the distance to the docks, nodded. Unlikely to be anyone watching who cared about us.