New Olympus Saga (Book 2): Doomsday Duet (9 page)

“So is it mostly Neos being used as launch vehicles?” Christine asked. “Rocket science must have taken a hit. Why bother spending money on propulsion research when you can hire a flying dude to get your stuff up there at a fraction of the cost?”

“Well, there’s always more stuff they need to send up than Neos available to send it. Plus you can’t rely on just Neos; they often have other stuff to do. SpaceX alone does dozens of launches a month. There’s plenty of space systems: old-style rockets have mostly been replaced with contra-gravity vehicles. Those are Neo Artifacts, but there’s a lot of them. There’s also fission-pulse drives, but they’re mostly used for outer space travel; they aren’t safe to use inside the atmosphere.” Christine snorted at that, which meant she knew that ‘fission-pulse drive’ was a nice euphemism for ‘nuclear-explosions.’ “Fusion drives are the new thing; they’ve been getting better and better over the last few years.”

“It’s pretty amazing. I hadn’t even noticed all the space stuff before. I was too busy getting amazed by stuff on the ground. I so wish I could play tourist for a while.”

“We will, hopefully. My offer to be your native guide still stands. And Cassandra said we’d be traveling together. Chances are we won’t be going to any good tourist spots, though.”

We were quiet for a bit after that. For me, it served as a moment of silence for Cassie, wherever she might be now. It felt good to be quiet with somebody else, someone you could be comfortable with.

“Pretty chilly outside,” she commented after a while, rubbing her arms.

I stood up and took off my leather jacket; it had a few holes here and there, spots where that pasty-faced asshole Archangel had hit me with an energy sword earlier that night, but it was still mostly in one piece. “Here.” I draped it over her shoulders; it was way too big for her, and seeing her in it made me smile on the inside.

“Thank you,” she said.

“You’re welcome.”

“Aren’t you going to get cold now? Or are you too tough and macho for the weather to bother you?”

“Actually, Condor taught me how to raise my core temperature at will. I can stand naked in the Artic without feeling chilly. The jacket’s more of a fashion statement, and a way to conceal some body armor.”

“That’s a neat trick,” Christine said. “Can any Neo do it, or is it a unique power?”

“It took me a few weeks to learn it, but any Neo can do it, I think. At least any Type Twos and higher.”

“Awesomesauce.” She looked at me silently for several seconds. “I think I got it.” It’d taken me a couple of months to learn that trick, and she’d figured it out after just looking at me? Color me impressed, assuming she wasn’t talking out of her ass. She closed her eyes, and after a couple of moments I felt heat emanating from her. Color me impressed.

Except she was generating a little too much heat. “Watch it,” I told her. “You’re over…”

Her shirt started to smolder.

“…doing it!” I said just before the shirt burst into flames.

“Holy crap!”

“Fuck!” I pulled my – luckily fire-resistant – leather jacket off her as she ripped off the flaming t-shirt and flung it away. She was wearing nothing else underneath. I handed the jacket back to her, pointedly not looking her way, and stomped on the burning t-shirt until it went out. Only you can prevent forest fires.

I looked at Christine. She looked at me.

We burst out laughing.

“Flame-Freaking-On!” Christine blurted out in between giggles.

“Nice going, Zippo,” I said, and laughed some more.

“I did my Christine-vision thingy,” she explained as the laughter died down. “I saw how you were accessing power to warm yourself up, and tried to copy it.”

“Well, it worked, sort of,” I said. “You ever hear the saying, ‘build a man a fire and he’ll be warm for a day…’”

“’But set a man on fire and he’ll be warm for the rest of his life!’” Christine finished the quote, and we both started laughing again. “You have Terry Pratchett here too?” I nodded. “That’s awesome.”

“Any second now, Condor’s going to lean out a window and tell us kids to keep the noise down,” I whispered to her, and she giggled some more.

“I think he’s too busy playing Pin the Ball-Gag on the Donkey with Kestrel,” she replied, which set me off again.

“Where do you get the oxygen to laugh without a nose and mouth?” Christine wondered. She looked at me intently again with her ‘Christine-vision thingy.’ “Okay, got that.”

“So how do I do it?” I asked her, sobering up a little bit. I hadn’t laughed that long and hard since… Never, really.

“You draw air in through your pores, straight into your lungs. All exo-biological, it’s some form of telekinesis.”

“Okay, but don’t try to imitate it or you’ll blow yourself up like a balloon or something.”

Christine giggled a little bit at that, but the laugh attack had finally subsided. That was a pity; it had been fun while it lasted, and the way her face flushed while she laughed had been… interesting. I thought about saying or doing something, but mentally shrugged and let it be. We’d had a nice moment there; no sense spoiling it.

“I’m done trying to imitate neat tricks for now,” she said. “Nobody said I could become my own personal fire hazard.”

“At least you were able to project the excess heat out of your body, instead of cooking your insides. Rough on your shirt, but better for your guts. Speaking of shirts, come on; let’s get you a new one before you accidentally flash the wildlife.” I opened the door for her. We went upstairs and rummaged through one of the closets near the guest rooms.

“I see Condor likes his Victoria’s Secret catalog stuff,” Christine commented as she looked through the available wardrobe. Most of it was strictly recreational.

“There’s a few t-shirts, too, if you look hard enough.” I said, stepping away and turning around while she changed.

“Here you go,” Christine said, and handed my jacket back to me. She was wearing an official Condor t-shirt with his stylized logo on the front. “Sorry I almost set your jacket on fire.”

“That’s okay. It’s fire-resistant, and it was already a bit crispy around the edges, thanks to that pale-faced freak we killed at the cave. Even if you had burned it into ash, it was worth it.” The memory of us laughing together warmed me again.

She smiled. “Yeah, I needed that.” She went quiet and looked at me for several seconds, her pale blue eyes bright. “Mark.”

“Yeah?”

“Make a face.”

“Why?”

“Because you want to kiss me, and I want to kiss you back.”

A brief burst of some emotion I couldn’t quite recognize ran through me. “Any requests?” I asked her, sounding more calmly than I felt. “I can do Nicholas Cage if you want.”

“Uh, no. I like Nicholas Cage, but I don’t want to kiss him. I want to kiss you.”

My old face had made a comeback twice the day before, both times when I was in pretty bad shape, my powers stripped away or while at death’s door. I tried to bring it back. Nothing happened. I wasn’t surprised; I hadn’t been able to bring it back in over a decade. “Can’t do my face, sorry. Guess I can only get it back if I’m half-dead.”

“It’s okay. How about the one you used when you took me to Times Square on our way to Condor’s?”

That I could do. Our lips met. It was a sweet kiss. That first kiss wasn’t hungry or even particularly lustful. It was the kiss of two people who’ve shared a laugh and a cry and seen each other hurt and tried to make each other feel better. I pulled back after a bit and looked at her; she was smiling. That weird emotion rushed out from my chest again. I thought it might be joy. Might as well savor it, since I had it on good authority it would not last.

“Let’s go to your room,” I said. She nodded. I held her hand while we walked there.

Janus

Charlotte, North Carolina, March 15, 2013

Cassius Jones got out of bed carefully so as to not awaken Javier, who was sleeping soundly next to him. They’d had a very entertaining evening. Javier was flighty and a bit of a flake, but they didn’t call him the Swish Army Knife for nothing. It had been fun, but the lovemaking, the alcohol and the small mountain of Bolivian Marching Powder they had snorted had not been enough to satisfy him. Nothing was enough anymore. The drugs and the booze had worn off, and once again he had been alone with his memories.

Couldn’t have that. He padded softly along the carpeted bedroom floor and quietly made it into the living room of the penthouse apartment. After finding a full bottle of Southern Comfort in the well-stocked liquor cabinet, he stepped out onto the balcony and watched nighttime Charlotte as he took swigs straight from the bottle. For a moment he thought about waking up Javier and actually trying to talk to him. Cassius grinned bitterly and shook his head. Javier was fun, but he was only interested in talking about Javier. That suited Cassius fine, for the most part. A less self-centered partner might have tried to pry things from him, and Cassius had no desire to share. Talking wouldn’t help. Nothing would. He’d better accept it and enjoy the ride, for as long as it lasted.

It’d be nice if he could sleep, though.

Sleep had eluded him ever since his return to Earth. Too many nightmares hovered on the edge of his subconscious, ready to take their toll. Only drinking himself into a stupor brought any measure of relief, and that only temporarily. He chugged down the entire bottle and let the hard liquor warm his insides. Another bottle or two might do him, and then he might be able to steal a couple of hours of sleep. This was turning out to be a bad night. He blamed it on the call he’d gotten a couple of hours ago.

Doc Slaughter’s importunate call had come at a most inconvenient time, but Cassius had disentangled himself from Javier’s arms and answered it anyway. Decades of ingrained duty had made it impossible to refuse a priority call from the Legion.  The news had been troublesome enough: Ultimate, gone rogue, and on top of that, the real possibility of a new war with the Dragon Empire. Cassius had watched the attack on Freedom Island on live TV a couple of days before. The old Cassius would have sprung into action immediately upon hearing the news. The new, not very improved Cassius had listened to the report while polishing off a bottle of bourbon he’d grabbed off the nightstand. The worry apparent in Kenneth Slaughter’s face as he described the new disasters should have moved Cassius. It didn’t.

He’d thanked Doc Slaughter, said he would rejoin the Legion if his help was urgently needed – he emphasized the word ‘urgently’ – and gone back to Javier. The new Cassius found it hard to get excited about anything anymore. Even another war with China made little difference to him. He’d fought two of those already, and in the end neither one had mattered. In the end nothing amounted to a hill of beans. The only things he cared about now were sex, drinking to excess, and otherwise being merry and extracting as much enjoyment from this wretched existence as he could.

Cassius had seen Earth’s future in the stars. Knowing that, nothing much mattered. He would go through the motions, if only because he couldn’t think of anything else to do, but he couldn’t make himself care very much.

For the better part of a century, all he had done was care. As a colored school teacher in 1930s North Carolina, he had done his best to help his pupils while living in a hostile, oppressive reality. Long before wearing a mask, he’d been used to leading a double life – no, a triple life. The life whites expected from coloreds, and the life his people expected of a man. He’d learned to hide his true self early in life. Then he had changed, become a living myth, and his cares and obligations had expanded to include all of America, and eventually all the world. Through wars, disasters and other times of crisis, he’d always managed to feel concern and sympathy for those around him. He had looked out for the well-being of humanity, so fragile and exposed by the rise of Neo-humanity.

He still vividly recalled an angry black man who had confronted him at a rally, many years ago. ‘Black man, white man, yellow man; as long as you Neos are around, we humans are all darkies.’ Cassius had forgotten the man’s name – his surname had been deceptively deprecating: Small, perhaps, or Little – but those words had haunted him for years. He had done his best to avoid exploiting or oppressing humans, but if his mere existence exploited and oppressed them, what could he do to redress their grievances?

Now he realized how petty those concerns had been. Black man, white man, yellow man, Neolympian. The only thing that awaited them all was oblivion.

Cassius looked up. He sensed the fast-approaching figure seconds before it landed on the balcony next to him. He stood up and faced Ultimate – John Clarke, his old friend and colleague.

“Cassius…” John began to say.

“Not here,” Cassius replied curtly. They might wake up Javier, and Javier might throw a tantrum. “Rooftop.” He vanished as soon as the word was spoken.

Teleportation remained an unsettling sensation even after thousands, tens of thousands of jumps over the years. In his mind, he created a gateway between two points; that mental image had prompted him to choose the name of the Roman god of doorways and transitions as his nickname. He moved through the gateway from one point to another. The process was instantaneous – more than that, actually. Careful measuring had shown the arrival point appeared a tiny fraction of a second
before
he created the departure point, something which had caused a great deal of controversy among the physics community. And yet, from his viewpoint, a noticeable amount of time passed between the moment he entered the gate and when he emerged on the other side. During that time he was elsewhere, a dark place outside reality itself. His experiences in that in-between realm had not been altogether pleasant.

He reappeared on the roof of his building; Ultimate joined him an instant later. The two men looked at each other in silence for a few moments. They looked nothing alike, except for their general athletic builds. Cassius was a couple of inches taller, and a tad narrower at the shoulders; he had a neatly-trimmed beard, while John was clean-shaven. And of course Cassius’ skin was a deep mahogany color, while John’s was pale and pink, befitting his English-Dutch extraction. Cassius noticed Ultimate’s costume was torn in several places. His curiosity was mildly piqued, but not enough to inquire or comment about what he saw. John Clarke would no doubt tell him all about it.