Invasion: Book One of the Secret World Chronicle-ARC Read online

  “Good.” The alienlike metahuman gave her a wicked grin showing small, precise teeth. “I have some frustration to work off.”

  * * *

  Mercurye dug his heels into the air as if it were Astroturf. He did not possess the ability to fly; rather, the ability to stride through the air at incredible speeds.

  He took advantage of this quirk in his ability as the Nazi troopers fired bolt after bolt at him. It had served as a distraction while his surviving comrades regrouped, but more Nazis in armor filled the Echo grounds, adding their arm cannons to the forest of energy beams. Ten became twenty became fifty. He could no longer hold their attention.

  To give himself more time to anticipate the vector of the blasts, he gained altitude, driving his winged sandals against the air. Higher up, still flitting back and forth, he could see the spheroid war machines tearing at the walls of the research building with snakelike tentacles; delivery trucks disgorging more troopers; fire on the roof of the Echo museum. His heart sank.

  The barrage diminished. Below, he saw two glowing forms dashing from trooper to trooper, leaving a wake of uprooted troopers. Blue beams chased the figures.

  Kid Zero. He had recovered and split into his two battle forms, Kid Plus and Kid Minus. Each one could deliver an atomic-powered punch and communicate with the other through a mental link.

  The two Kids moved fast enough to evade the blasts aimed at them. Eager for an earthbound target, the troopers concentrated their fire, often hitting each other.

  Over the din, Mercurye heard a voice call his name.

  He spotted a figure waving his arms from the shattered window of a corner office. He squinted against the glare of the hot summer sun; he recognized the face: his boss, Alex Tesla.

  Mercurye was torn: answer Tesla’s summons or try to draw fire away from Kid Zero’s atomic forms.

  In the second that he hesitated, Mercurye saw Kid Minus—the dark form—trip on a divot in the ground. The troopers wasted no time in descending on him with mailed fists. Their armored shapes enveloped the glowing form.

  Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Kid Plus’s energy aura turn white and expand.

  Without warning, a blinding light erupted from the pileup. Mercurye threw a hand over his eyes.

  A wave of heat hit him. The nanoweave fabric of his pants tensed. His exposed chest hair smoldered.

  Then the shock wave, followed by the immense roaring sound of the explosion itself.

  Carried by waves of sheer force, Mercurye hurtled through the air like so much shrapnel.

  For a moment, a blackness as pure as the white light of the nuclear explosion swallowed him. But a shred of his consciousness remained alert—and furious. These armored barbarians had killed Kid Zero. A boy. His friend.

  Mercurye, who styled himself after the messenger of the gods, had a message for the Nazi horde.

  Revenge.

  Weak but awake, he let his feet skid across the sky, slowing his fall. He arrived at a full stop at the main gate, where a dozen ShipEx trucks with shredded sides had been abandoned.

  Mercurye looked back at the Echo campus. A miniature mushroom cloud reached toward the sky, enveloped by smoke and flames that silhouetted tall armored figures in flight. He judged that the blast had taken a large chunk out of the administration building—including the cafeteria where he had left his comrades—and left a crater in the ground where Kid Zero had fallen.

  “Oi, mate.” The words issued from the ruins of a guard booth. A black-clad glove protruded from the rubble. “Lend a hand?”

  Still aching, Mercurye shouldered the slabs of concrete aside with the remains of his metahuman strength. The man underneath wore a black hood and Echo uniform. His black raven wings bent at unnatural angles.

  “Corbie.” Mercurye hauled the wounded Englishman onto the street as gently as he could. “Where’s your squad?”

  “Dead. Bloody Nazis…came out of the trucks…killed Miranda and the Troll…” Corbie spit, a mixture of blood and saliva. “Played skeet with me.”

  “Can you move?”

  “I can’t bloody fly. I suppose crawling’s an option.” He stared at the column of smoke in the center of the campus. “What was that?”

  “It was Kid Zero.”

  Corbie cursed. “Help me up.” With a supporting arm, Corbie limped over to the guard’s crushed body and took her sidearm. “Just point me in the right direction.”

  A sense of doom came over Mercurye. Small squad tactics he could handle, but this was all-out war, and he wanted guidance too. Even the courage of Corbie would be consumed by the inferno of violence before them. Yet, what could they do?

  Then he remembered Tesla, trying to get his attention before the blast. “Better yet, I’ll take you there.” He gripped Corbie’s uniform and took to the air, legs pumping hard in an airborne sprint.

  In moments they were over the crater. The shattered forms of Nazi troopers lined the sides; Mercurye guessed that the boy’s unintentional suicide bombing had taken out a few dozen troopers, leaving scores more reorganizing on the lawn. A squad pressed into the gaping hole in the building where the cafeteria had been.

  He angled to the left, to Tesla’s office window. They ducked the shards of broken glass that lined the window like jagged teeth. Their booted feet crunched on the debris-strewn floor.

  Tesla was nowhere in sight.

  “Alex!” Heart in his throat, Mercurye scanned the room for a bloody corpse.

  Corbie nudged him. “In there, maybe?”

  A bookcase stood at an angle to its compatriots to reveal a narrow staircase lit by dim fluorescent lights. Mercurye peered down the space between the rails. “This goes all the way down to the subbasement. Some kind of escape tunnel?”

  Corbie limped over to the entrance. “If it is, there are a lot of blokes who can put it to use.”

  “I can find out quick enough.” Mercurye vaulted over the rail, arms tight to his side. There was just enough clearance for him in the gap to drop down past the flights of stairs. As he approached the bottom, he churned his feet to gain purchase on the air. His last step, from two feet above a concrete floor, he took as though stepping off the stairwell itself.

  Beyond the stairwell, a door led to a small room glowing with multicolored lights from consoles up to the ceiling. Alex Tesla stood beside a chair with an elaborate helmet on his head. White noise growled out of a speaker mounted next to a viewscreen on which flickered a stylized symbol of a star over an eye. He twisted dials and cursed between calls of “Uncle! Uncle!” into thin air.

  “We’re not beaten yet,” Mercurye said to his back. Tesla whirled, pointing a needle-nosed, wicked-looking gun that Mercurye had not seen in his hand.

  Fear and doubt played across Tesla’s features. “I thought you were killed.”

  “Helps to be airborne in a shock wave,” Mercurye said. “I’m pretty sturdy.” He looked at the unfamiliar gun more closely. It resembled a prop from a Buck Rogers serial. “Is this your secret armory?”

  “No. It’s…” The doubt returned, and Mercurye recognized the look of a man scrambling for a plausible lie. “It doesn’t matter what you see if the Thules kill us all.” He pounded on the screen. “Come on, answer!”

  Mercurye hesitated. The room offered no exits other than the door he had come through, so his hope for an escape tunnel was dashed. Frustration overcame his deference. “What are you doing? You’re needed out there. We’re scattered all over the place, getting picked off like—”

  Tesla cut him off with a hand. A voice came through over the static. “Metis…can’t…interference…”

  Metis? Mercurye knew that word, but from where?

  “Come in, come in. Please! Can you hear us? Send backup…” Noise drowned Tesla out. He dashed the helmet to the ground with a curse and glared at Mercurye.

  “Did you get through?”

  “I don’t know. The Thules are jamming every frequency, even our secret ones.” He paused, sizing Mercurye up. �
��We have to assume we’re on our own.”

  “Um, yeah…Listen, these Thules—the Nazis—they’re slaughtering us. OpTwos, Threes, all going down. We have two hundred metas in Atlanta. If we can just mount a counteroffensive—”

  “And how do you propose to do that? I can’t even use my goddamn cell phone.” Tesla scowled. “It’s worse than you think. Echo isn’t the only target. They’re torching the Perimeter.”

  Mercurye gaped at him as the words sank in. “The Perimeter? How do you know?”

  “Never mind that. There are too many innocent lives at stake to worry about the Echo campus. Let them destroy it. We need our teams out on I-285.” Tesla shoved the gun into his pocket and began to climb the stairs. Mercurye followed him up the narrow stairway, although he could have floated to the top in a fraction of the time.

  “Okay, how do we do that without radio contact?”

  “That’s where you come in. Mercurye, messenger of the gods.”

  Comprehension dawned. “Oh.”

  Gunshots interspersed with incomprehensible Cockney swearing echoed down the stairwell. An explosion sounded, followed by more gunshots. “That’s Corbie. He must have found some targets.”

  “Then we’ll take a shortcut.” Tesla pressed a hand against a specific spot on the wall. The featureless concrete lit up with a web of glowing blue circuitry; the shape of a door defined itself. As it opened, they heard more gunfire and energy beams.

  “I think we’ve found the front line,” Tesla said, retrieving his gun from his jacket.

  Mercurye missed his sidearm and his caduceus. “Is that little toy going to make a difference?”

  Tesla almost grinned. “You’d be surprised.”

  “Not today I won’t.”

  * * *

  The last time Ramona had seen the rotunda, it was full of gawking tourists. Now, above her, tons of rock and metal lost their support and fell towards her in what seemed to be slow motion.

  “Oh God,” she breathed.

  As if united in thought, the Four Winds rose into the air and extended their arms to the onrushing debris. Wind howled around them; the fall of the wreckage slowed. Ramona stared, transfixed. Could the Four Winds’ combined telekinetic power hold up a building?

  Bare arms wrapped around her waist and yanked. Her sidearm flew out of her hand. Someone moving faster than a human hauled her to the front entrance and let go. She tumbled to a halt next to a pair of legs.

  The owner of the pair of legs helped her to her feet. “We’ve got to get out,” Alex Tesla said urgently. Ramona did not hesitate; she pushed the glass doors—miraculously intact, at least for the next ten seconds—and ran out into the daylight.

  The smoke-free air tasted as sweet as bourbon to her. She turned to see Mercurye hauling his comrade Flak past them. Air whooshed out of the doorway at their heels.

  Ramona threw Tesla to the ground and covered his body with her own, despite the sharp pain in her ribs. The ground floor of the Echo administration building exploded in a deafening roar.

  Dust enveloped them in a daylight-defying cloud. The glass doors they had passed through moments ago showered on Ramona’s back and cut her exposed skin.

  For a moment, Ramona blanked out on everything but the pain from her lacerations. The screams of buried men and women reached her. She could hear a lone voice calling out the name “Kevin” over and over, more distraught with every repetition.

  Lesser pieces of debris continued to hit the ground around them; beneath her, Tesla squirmed and tried to rise. She pressed her hands against the ground to push herself away from him and from the broken glass.

  Mercurye stood over her. He took her hand and lifted her to her feet as if she were a feather. Bloody cuts crisscrossed his bare chest, the blood mixing with dust.

  “I’m okay,” she said before he could ask. The sadness in his eyes was unbearable. “Thanks.” On impulse, she squeezed his hand and held it.

  “Alex,” Mercurye said, “do you still want me to play messenger?”

  “More than ever. We need to concentrate our forces on the highway.”

  “The—what?” Ramona goggled at him. “What highway? The Nazis are right past that pile of rubble.” She pointed at the demolished building and the rising cloud of dust.

  Flak came up behind them. His black face shone with bruises. “I ain’t gonna retreat,” he said wearily.

  “They’re attacking civilians on I-285. The ring of fire.” Tesla brought out a strange-looking pistol. “Our first duty is to the citizens. The campus—we can write it off if we have to.”

  “And what about our people who’re getting wiped out?” Flak said.

  Tesla said nothing.

  “He’s right. Atlanta’s depending on us. We can’t dig a hole and hide in it.” Mercurye released her hand. “We have to do what we can.”

  “I’m not sure I can do anything. I don’t even have a gun anymore—I’m just a detective. Where are the OpThrees? The OpFours? Aren’t there a few in Atlanta? That spooky Greek lady, Amphi-something.”

  “I’ll find them,” Mercurye said quickly.

  “No, you won’t. Atlanta has five million people. Are you planning to go door to door?” Ramona blew air out of her cheeks. “Without radio we’re screwed.”

  Tesla’s jaw dropped. He stared at her.

  “OpFours. I know where one is.” He turned east. “He’s not close. Fifteen miles at least.”

  “Who?”

  “The Mountain.”

  Flak snorted. “The big guy in Stone Mountain? He’s never left his hole where the Confederate memorial used to be—before he smashed it.”

  “And he won’t talk to anyone,” Mercurye said.

  “That’s true,” Tesla admitted. “But he’s also a hundred feet tall. He could tilt the balance in our favor.”

  Mercurye rubbed his chin. “Fifteen miles I can do in five minutes.”

  “With a passenger?”

  He nodded. “Maybe. Yes.”

  “Then you can take me to Stone Mountain before you round up our troops. I’ll order him out of hiding.”

  “No.” Ramona stepped in front of her boss. Tesla raised an eyebrow. “You’re needed here, sir. Besides, depressed men don’t want to be bossed around. They need to be cajoled. That’s a job for a woman.”

  “Like in King Kong,” Flak said.

  “Damn right,” she said.

  Tesla paused only for a moment. “All right. Get to it. Flak, you’re with me.” The two men spun on their heels and raced back into the dust cloud.

  Mercurye and Ramona watched them disappear into the darkness.

  “You ready?” he asked, spreading his arms.

  Ramona straightened. “Take me. I’m yours.”

  * * *

  Ramona pressed her head against Mercurye’s chest, squeezed her eyes shut, and tried not to scream—though in fact she could barely breathe, and every breath she did take cracked her abused ribs. The wind roared in her ears and tore at her hair like a beast with a million claws. Mercurye ran at full speed, nearly two hundred miles an hour, a thousand feet up. She could taste blood mixed with sweat and dust on his skin. Her eyes teared up every time she glanced at his face. It was a mask of concentration and strain.

  She dared not look down.

  The roar increased in volume to a howl straight out of Hell. Ramona tried to breathe through her nose in the air pocket against his chest, but before she blacked out, she felt his arms squeeze her tighter. Then—

  “Hey. Hey, wake up. Come on.” Ramona’s eyes flew open. She lay on hot granite that seared her palms. The sun glared down behind Mercurye’s head, giving him a golden, winged halo.

  “Christ.” She rolled over to shield her eyes. “We made it.”

  “In record time. Congratulations.” He felt her cheeks and the pulse in her neck. “That was equivalent to riding a plane bareback. You’re one tough chick.”

  “Next time I’ll skip the window seat. Help me up.” Ramona sat up painfu
lly and grabbed his hand as her head spun. “Gah…I need a cigarette.”

  “I hear that a lot.” He winked at her and strode to the edge of the abutment. Stone Mountain was a barren chunk of granite shoved eight hundred feet up through the flat Georgian plain by ancient volcanic pressures. In the early 1900’s, the Daughters of the Confederacy and the Ku Klux Klan raised funds to carve the world’s largest bas-relief into the side of Stone Mountain. Unsurprisingly, the subjects of the carving were the heroes of the losing side of the Civil War: Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis, and Stonewall Jackson, all mounted on horseback. Some Southerners regarded as divine justice the emergence of Mountain from the very center of the bas-relief—until he declined to take up where Lee, Davis and Jackson had left off.

  Mercurye peered over the edge at the gaping hole in the mountain where the monument had been. “I don’t see him.”

  Ramona wobbled to her feet. “He’s probably sulking in there. Or asleep.”

  “There’s no ladder. I’ll fly you down.” He scooped her up again and stepped onto air as if it were a staircase.

  They landed on the lip of the cave. The sunlight illuminated the first forty feet; beyond was darkness.

  “Wonderful,” she said. “I forgot my hardhat and lantern. Silly me.” She dug around in her pocket for her lighter. “This will have to do.”

  “Just look for the giant made of stone. You can’t miss him.”

  “Thanks for the ride, handsome.” Ramona stood on her tiptoes and planted a kiss on him.

  To her surprise, he kissed back, pulling her close. For a moment, she forgot about the agony in her chest, the death and destruction in the city, the horror of the invasion, and lost herself in the sensation of his lips.

  They broke. She took a deep, creaky breath. “Wow. Okay, get going.”

  Mercurye nodded at her, his cheeks red with a boyish blush. “Good luck.” He sprang into the air. With a single stride he covered fifty feet.

  “Ramona!” She shouted after him. “My name’s Ramona!”

  But he was already out of earshot.

  The cyclopean tunnel curved to the left, out of the sunlight. Ramona paused for a minute to let her eyes adjust to the dark. Rumor had it that the Mountain had dug his way out of the heart of Stone Mountain, where he had come to life. He was no supernatural creature, though; he had been an accountant, or project manager, or something mundane. No one knew what sparked his horrendous transformation.