Just Cause: Revised & Expanded Edition (3 page)

The Lucky Seven moved into the main hall. Right away, Sally noticed two security officers slumped against the wall, their uniforms blackened around smoldering holes in the chests. She pointed them out to the others. Juliet knelt down beside them, opening her mind to seek signs of life. She looked up toward Trix. “They’re both alive, but fading fast. Can you get them out?”

He nodded, raised his hands, and willed his power to function. Sally’s ears popped as air rushed in around the two victims and gently lifted them as if they were on an air hockey table. He turned and guided them out, leaving eddies of smoke and gas in his wake.

A crumbling sound echoed through the main hall over the crackle of flames. Sally caught a glimpse of motion overhead. Her perceptions shot into high gear and she realized a large chunk of cement was hurtling toward the group. Carousel reached for Spark to shove him out of the way. Sally wrapped her arms around Juliet, strained to overcome stubborn inertia, and yanked her to safety.

Having done her best to protect Juliet, Sally checked on the others. Overhead, Bullet moved with glacial slowness to intercept the tumbling debris, one fist cocked in preparation to smash it into gravel. Tremor dodged upward, and Stratocaster thumbed his volume knob up. Satisfied that there wasn’t anything she needed to do, Sally relaxed her perceptions and the world snapped back up to speed.

Bullet plowed his fist into the cement and shattered it into fist-sized chunks. The others dove away and cried out in surprise.

With a whine of high-powered servomotors, Destroyer stepped through a burning display, a metallic demon. Humanoid but with four arms, the fifteen-foot-tall suit contained a small, angry man who gloated over the havoc of his own creation. All blue metal and chrome, the battlesuit looked like the nightmare of a Japanese toy designer, except Sally knew there was no whimsy at all in the sharp angles. In all the years since his debut in 1977, Destroyer had only ever lost to Just Cause once, and that was in his first battlesuit, built from junkyard wreckage.

“
W
ELL LOOK WHAT
I
’VE FOUND.
S
NOW
W
HITE AND THE
S
EVEN
D
WARVES.
” His voice modulated through high-end speakers into earth-shaking tones. “
I
WONDERED WHEN
I
’D RUN ACROSS YOU SO-CALLED HEROES
.”

“Surrender, Destroyer. We’ve got you outnumbered. Power down your suit and exit it before we peel it off you.” Spark stood defiant despite a tear in the side of his suit. Sally could see a stain of blood on his side and wondered how badly he was hurt.

Destroyer laughed, a mirthless chuckle that echoed off the high ceiling of the main hall. “
I
’VE FOUGHT
J
UST
C
AUSE AND WON TIME AND TIME AGAIN,
S
PARK.
W
HAT MAKES YOU THINK YOUR PITIFUL LITTLE CLUB CAN STOP ME?
”

Bullet and Tremor took up positions over Destroyer. Stratocaster played a low, throbbing riff, building power with each strum of the strings. Carousel touched Sally’s elbow. Sally turned to look, startled; she’d been almost hypnotized by Destroyer’s sheer size. Carousel held out a two-foot-long piece of steel rebar. She must have picked it up from some of the debris. Sally took it, feeling clumsy and awkward with it, and wondered how she’d ever disarm Destroyer with such a simple tool. “What about you?” she whispered to Carousel.

Curved blades like scythes grew from the metal of Carousel’s arms to extend past her hands like deadly ribbons. “I’ll be fine with these.”

“Last chance, Destroyer. Surrender,” called Spark.

“
Y
OU’RE BORING ME,
” said Destroyer, a hint of glee in his voice. “
L
ET’S FIGHT!
”

Destroyer didn’t wait for the Lucky Seven to make the first move. The unit on his shoulder swiveled and a missile the size of Sally’s arm burst out of it to impact point blank on Bullet. Instead of exploding in flames, the missile burst into a sticky, ropy substance that wrapped around Bullet’s arms and legs to cocoon him in less than a second. Destroyer pummeled him with a heavy metal fist the size of a mailbox and sent the enshrouded hero crashing into the ceiling in an explosion of ceramics, glass, and masonry.

Tremor hit Destroyer with a blast of concentrated vibratory energy from one side while Stratocaster launched dissonant power chords at him from the other. The shoulder unit ripped away in the combined blast. Unfazed by the double-sided attack, Destroyer crowed “Suck on this, heroes,” and dropped a small spheroid onto the floor which flashed into smoke when it hit.

Spark yelped as his batteries shorted out. Sparks shot from Stratocaster’s guitar as the internal circuitry melted into so much slag. It must have been an electromagnetic pulse bomb, thought Sally, to have shut down all the electronics.

The guns mounted on Destroyer’s intermediate arms chattered as he fired large-caliber bullets toward them all. Sally and Carousel ran faster than the arm could track after them. Sally glanced up and saw the air around Tremor shimmer as she transmitted vibratory power through it at the battlesuit. Destroyer swung a gun at her and she barely had time to form a wall of vibration waves in front of her to deflect the bullets. Destroyer stepped toward her, firing nonstop, and drove her backward toward the wall.

Sally saw an opening and ducked around Carousel to move in close to Destroyer. Although his intermediate arms were higher than she could reach, he’d stepped close enough to the wall that she could try a maneuver she’d practiced many times at the Academy. She accelerated in the blink of an eye and rushed at the wall on an oblique angle. She stepped up onto the wall and pushed off it to drive herself higher, the rebar raised and ready. Her perceptions fluttered into overdrive as she drifted toward Destroyer. A bullet left the mouth of the gun on a plume of smoke and flame, moving with the gentle pace of a curling stone on the ice. Sally ignored it and stuck the rebar underneath the gun barrel, put her feet against the intermediate arm, and heaved.

Her mass was slight but her momentum was terrific, and she felt the barrel move as she levered it up and away from the firing mechanism. The gun discharged again, but this time a fountain of sparks erupted from it as the bullet lodged inside the barrel and twisted it into uselessness.

Carousel attacked from the opposite side and sliced through the other gun’s firing mechanism with her wicked sharp blades. Destroyer reacted with the cold precision of an automatic, computerized response. His primary arm swung down and caught Carousel across her legs as she retreated. Sally heard a snap that made her feel ill. Carousel screamed in android pain and crumpled to the ground. Sally avoided the opposite descending arm only because she was faster than her friend.

Given a momentary reprieve from Destroyer’s onslaught, Tremor blasted her powerful vibratory energy at the battlesuit’s head. Sparks flew from it in all directions, making a noise like a rotary grinder. Sally tumbled to the ground near Carousel, whose legs canted off in unnatural angles. She grabbed underneath her friend’s armpits and pulled her to safety while Destroyer was busy with Tremor.

“It’s all right, you’ll be okay,” Sally gasped, trying to catch her breath.

Carousel weighed next to nothing. Or maybe the adrenaline gave Sally unusual reserves of strength as she dragged the moaning speedster to safety behind a pile of debris. Sally had basic first aid training from the Hero Academy, but everything she had learned flew away in her panic. All she could think of was to keep her friend warm. Even androids felt shock, didn’t they? She zipped over to a display that hadn’t yet caught fire and snagged the cheap curtains.

“Here,” she said. “I’ve got to wrap you up.”

“Do… do what you need to,” whimpered Carousel. “It hurts. It hurts so bad.”

“I’m sorry.” Sally couldn’t imagine how bad her friend’s injuries might be. She’d never been seriously hurt herself. Carousel’s broken legs terrified her. “Can you turn off your pain sensors?”

Carousel nodded and her face grew serene and calm. “That’s better.”

Sally nodded and wiped away tears she didn’t have time for. “I’ll get you some help as soon as it’s safe.”

“Go get him,” said Carousel. “I wish I could be more help.”

“Just don’t die.”

“Androids don’t die. They just go into p-permanent hibernation.” Carousel managed a wink.

“Well, don’t do that either.” Sally glanced toward Destroyer. Tremor blasted bursts of vibratory power at him while dodging shots from his secondary cannon. Spark tried to cut Bullet free from the goop that enshrouded him. Stratocaster, powerless without his guitar, stayed under cover as much as possible. Juliet likewise could do very little to help in a straightforward combat situation; she couldn’t get close enough to Destroyer to try to shut his mind down with her telepathic powers. Trix was still missing in action.

The Lucky Seven were about to lose the fight.

Sally had to do something, but didn’t know what. “Hey, Destroyer, over here!” She leaped out from cover and brandished her piece of rebar to distract him enough to let Tremor get a telling shot in on his armor suit. He cut loose with a hip-mounted chain gun that swiveled to track her almost as fast as she could run away. Bullets chipped into the floor just behind her with every step. She skidded around a corner and gasped for breath.

Angry tears blurred her vision. She felt helpless and afraid. What good was
running
? After more than ten years of training to be a superhero, she didn’t know what to do. Destroyer had made a mockery of the Lucky Seven and they would be very fortunate if all of them survived.

Sally banged her clenched fist against her forehead. “Think. Think!”

She stepped around the corner just in time to see a device detach from the back of Destroyer’s leg, hit the floor and bounce up into the air, spinning like a top. She dove behind the corner once more as the device exploded with a bang so loud it took her breath away.

Underneath the ringing in her ears, a floor-shaking thrum echoed amid the destruction. Sally staggered to the edge and peeked around the corner. Destroyer had picked up a large case and fired his boot rockets. She wondered what was in the case but had no time for curiosity; somehow, she had to prevent his escape. The others lay sprawled amid the wreckage. She hoped they were only unconscious.

She charged at him, but he sprayed something onto the floor behind him as he flew toward the exit. Sally couldn’t avoid the puddle and lost all her traction. She flipped into the air as her arms and legs pin wheeled. The stuff coated her like oil and she bounced and slid all the way to the front doors. She skittered over shards of glass and steel and her costume shredded against them.

Destroyer burst out of the building. Trix tried to engage him but was slapped aside for his efforts, crashing through one of the few undamaged windows on that side of the building. Sally watched, unable to do anything as Destroyer’s main engines glowed white hot and launched him into the overcast skies like a missile.

Sally watched the bright spark of engine exhaust recede into the distance, and then bowed her head and felt every bit a failure.

Chapter Three

- Parahumans exhibit a common genetic marker.

- The presence of the genetic marker doesn’t guarantee active parahuman abilities.

- Parahuman abilities violate known physical laws.

To summarize: There’s far more that we don’t know than we do know about parahumans.

-“The Origin of Parapowers” by Dr. Matasuko Musashi, 1995

January, 2004

Denver, Colorado

Sally sat in the oversized chair and tried not to squirm. She had only been in Juice’s office for a few minutes, but it felt like hours while he glanced through the pertinent parts of her file. She fumed with each slow and deliberate turn of a page.

Patience was a challenge for a speedster.

She’d debated whether to wear her costume, and even went so far as to discuss it with her mother, who suggested that business attire would be more professional. She wanted to make a good impression on the man whom she’d known as long as she could remember, but the mere idea of a blazer and skirt made her itch and chafe. Her mother even offered to go shopping with her and played the ultimate card of offering to pay for it, but Sally wouldn’t hear of it. She dug through the recesses of her closet and found a pair of slacks she could stand to wear and a silky white button-down shirt. She added a muted navy cardigan and figured she looked good enough for anything Juice could throw at her.

Juice had always looked big from afar when she’d seen him at various events attended by Just Cause. As a Just Cause alumnus, her mother often went and brought Sally along to introduce her to heroes past and present as my future Just Cause member. Now that she sat in front of him, he seemed gigantic. He was the kind of black man who looked stylish with his head shaved, and he dressed in Italian silk and leather. He’d gone to law school and been a part-time member of Just Cause in his early twenties. Her mom swore he was the smartest man she’d ever met.

He leaned his considerable frame back in an expensive chair as he turned the pages in Sally’s file. His build and demeanor gave no indication of his unique ability to absorb electricity and convert it into pure strength and resistance to physical damage. “Hmm…” He looked over the edge of his reading glasses at her. “So you’d like to join the team?”

Sally swallowed and licked her lips, her mouth dry as the air in her hometown of Phoenix. She stammered “Y-yes sir,” and hated herself for it. In the Hero Academy, oral exams had always made her queasy. So did interviews, she was learning.