CHAPTER 28 - SABRA

Sabra’s suit snapped up around her like an adamantine carapace. She shook out her arms, then reached up towards the ceiling of the armory. She stretched her fingers out as far as she could and then, after bringing them back to her chest, clenched them into fists.

Something was off. The motions didn’t feel right, like her armor was a bit more sluggish than usual. Maybe her artisanal workmanship was finally unable to keep up with the wear and tear. Or maybe it was just nerves. Either way, she couldn’t tell Fisher.

“Okay, Coach,” she said. “Tell me I’ve got green lights across the board.”

Wires snaked from a port in the collar of her suit to the tablet that Fisher was clutching in both hands. He frowned.

“You’ve got a lot of yellow and more than a few red.”

Sabra smiled. Okay, good. Her suit was in the same condition that she’d left it in, no matter how it felt. Just nerves, then. She set her helmet on her head and her HUD came alive.

“You sure about this, Sabra?” Fisher asked.

“Hey, if Taurine is here, then I might as well take my shot. That’s what we were working towards, right?”

“Sure,” Fisher replied. “At a time and place of our choosing. Not in the middle of a goddamn siege. What’re you going to do, Sabra? Punch Taurine? Punch bullets out of the air?”

“Suit’s practically bulletproof,” Sabra said, shrugging. “So, yeah, I’m gonna punch her.”

Fisher set the tablet down and rubbed at the bridge of his nose.

“How much thought have you put into this?” he asked. “Because I’m not seeing a lot of it.”

She tried not to take it personally. I am because he is, she thought. It was normal to be afraid. She’d been all nerves outside of her armor. But now, there was only certainty.

“I know you’re afraid, Pavel, but I need your help.”

Fisher’s expression darkened, and he leveled a forefinger at her.

“You’re goddamn right I’m afraid,” he snapped. “You should be, too. You have no idea what she took from me. You have no idea how powerful she is! If she’s attacking the Citadel, then we’ve vastly underestimated her—everyone always does!”

“She’s taken a lot from a lot of people. She took a lot from Barnes out there!”

“And you can bring him back?”

“No, but I can bring her in. I can’t do much right now, but that’s all I can do! And I could use whatever advice my coach might have for me.”

Fisher turned away, rubbing at his nose and cheek and jaw, then turned back. “Funny," he said. “I said the same thing.”

He exhaled. “Okay,” he continued, “Okay. Maybe we didn’t get to pick the battlefield, but that’s okay, we can work with this.” He took her helmet in his hands, trying to look her in the eyes—she obliged him.

“Okay, Sabra, listen to me. You’ve faced her before, but she was toying with you. This isn’t a boxing match and you’re not going to win on points. The longer this fight goes on, the harder it’s going to get, and that’s assuming this fight hasn’t already psyched Taurine up enough to put her beyond you. You have to open with a killing blow—head, heart, brains—or you can’t open at all. She’ll withstand the worst of it and regenerate the rest of it, but, while she’s busy healing herself, she’s not pummeling you—that’s the key, that’s how you’ll win. Did you get that? Tell me you’ve got all that!”

“Yeah, I got it!” Sabra said, nodding. “What’s her weaknesses?”

“None that are unique to her, or none that we ever found,” Fisher replied. “So, the same as any other cape—she’s only really got one power and her attention can only be in one place at a time. Remember: there’s no such thing as an invincible cape! If she’s got her attention on healing her wounds and toughening herself up, then that attention isn’t on you. And if you can keep her busy, I can bring in the cavalry.”

Like I’m going to share this victory with anyone.

But she nodded and raised her fists to Fisher. “Better make them some fast horses, because I’m going for a round one knockout.”

His cybernetic hands bumped against her gauntlets.

“Good luck, Sabra,” he said. “Try not to die.”

“Abacus.”

Fisher grinned, but the expression was more grim than amused.

“You keep stealing my lines. You better live long enough to give ‘em back.”

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To find Taurine, Sabra figured all she had to do was follow the trail of destruction.

She went from the armory to the entrance hall, where a set of trucks had ripped through the place like blocky meteors. Bodies lay all around, surrounded by shell casings. Most of them were police but two of them were capes. One was Warden, but she didn’t recognize the one in Star Patrol colors.

In her armor, it felt like she had all the time in the world to study what happened. But that was only a feeling; the bodies reminded her that if she spent her time thinking, then she’d only end up finding more.

Sabra cast her eyes to the elevators at the back of the lobby, and then to the heavy fire door next to them-or where the door should have been, given that it had been cast into one of the trucks with enough force as to impale it.

It didn’t take a genius to know who had done that.

She strode for the doorway and toggled the police net in her helmet. It was an inchoate chorus of words and phrases. But there were only a few she needed to hear. Taurine was heading up the tower. Step by step, Sabra followed.

Taurine’s people found her at the tenth floor. Three men and women with rifles, one flight above her. She felt the bullets before she saw them.

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Sabra cleared the flight in a single burst of her jets, leading with her fist. The first of Taurine’s people dropped, head whipping about, and then scrabbled about to pick up his teeth. The other, she grabbed by his ballistic vest and simply tossed him backwards and down the stairs. She heard a heavy impact and pained groaning.

The third dropped her weapon, raising her hands.

“Tell your boss that Defiant’s coming for her,” Sabra said. “Where is she?”

Taurine’s soldier raised a hand to her ear, gave the word, and pointed the way with her eyes.

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Taurine had made it within sight of the peak of Asclepion’s artificial Olympus. All Sabra had to do was follow the trail, and the long line of bodies. Everyone she passed was just another entry in her tally. One she’d balance by bringing Taurine to justice.

She wasn’t sure how the math worked out exactly, but it felt right.

There had been an entire floor of the Citadel reserved for the custodian of the island—first Demigod, then Sentinel. Now, it was a sanctum without a sovereign. She paused at the doorway. She had never set foot in such a place, and would have happily bet her minuscule savings that less than a hundred people ever had, and it was hard to dispel the silly notion of sacrilege.

But that was a stupid thought.

Sabra took a step past the threshold, and into what had been Sentinel’s office.

It was a symbol of staggering opulence. Sophisticated but strangely homely—like a lounge room in a house owned by someone far wealthier than her. It was all carpet and wood paneling, modern technology built into the decor in such an intimately integrated fashion that it felt apologetic. There was something gauche about it, about the impression it was conveying.

Everything on the island went through the Citadel, and everything in the Citadel had gone through Sentinel. Perhaps that was why Taurine had come. To stand among such a place of history, where SOLAR had cast down the god of Asclepion and put him in chains, like there was some power she could claim.

But he hadn’t been a god, and neither was she.

Taurine stood before the ruins of Sentinel’s desk, the antique wood broken and splintered. She held his golden, battered helmet in one hand, tossing it aside as Sabra approached. “This,” she said, shaking her head. “To think that this is all that there is.”

Had Sabra not been told the extent of how she could change, she wouldn’t have recognized her. There was only the barest suggestion of the woman she had seen at the bank in the features of the figure before her. She was a hulking, horned beast, skin stretched over thick muscles without sex or gender—more humanoid than human. Her curved, sweeping horns were as long as her arms.

“A temple without its god,” Taurine rumbled. “A people without belief. To think I wanted to rule this place. But they would all rather let it crumble than change.” She snorted, turned. “Then there’s nothing to do but help it along. To let it all turn to ash.”

The taste of ash...

“Defiant,” she said, “have you come here to die?”

This isn’t a boxing match, Sabra reminded herself. No referee, no timer. First one to go down wouldn’t be getting back up. No ropes beyond plated glass—and if she ended up on those, she’d be dead in more ways than one.

But there was no apprehension. Just the singsong joy of her greatest challenge yet, and the prospect of so many more.

“If you want to burn this island down,” Sabra said, “then you’ll have to go through me.”

She brought her fists up and settled her weight on the balls of her feet. The suit responded, moved with her. She felt like she should say something. Something about how she didn’t want to fight, about how they could end it if they just talked, at the shared despair for the city, something about how violence would only bring more violence. That was what her father would say.

But she heard herself, her thoughts: better you than me.

Sabra extended her left arm and made a waving motion with her fingers, remembering something she’d seen in an old film. And then, two words.

“Toro, bitch.”

At that distance, she was sure the supervillain’s lips twisted in a smirk.

Taurine obliged her. Her opponent came at her like a freight train, and Sabra surged to meet her.

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Sabra’s father had once tried to teach her about the problem of an unstoppable force and an immovable object. She hadn’t really understood it—how could two forces be so exactly opposed? But she thought of it as she and Taurine slammed home, locked together. Sabra moved to grapple her opponent, but Taurine was doing the same—and she was faster, snaring her left arm.

Sabra heard the systems in her suit whine in protest, something popping as Taurine wrenched her arm aside. Sabra brought her elbow down on Taurine’s shoulder, aiming to drive her down and break her hold.

The first indication that it didn’t work was when Taurine threw her aside, like her thick armor was nothing but tinfoil. Sabra crashed into a bookshelf, falling to her hands and knees. Taurine was already striding towards her. Sabra leapt to her feet and charged to meet her again.

They collided again, catching each other hands-on-hands. Taurine’s empowered musculature against her strength-enhancing armor. She felt like she was trying to push against a mountain, but Taurine wasn’t forcing her back. Sabra clenched her teeth and pushed, shouting. All she needed was to find an inch, then another.

Something gave in the floor beneath her, and that brief distraction was enough for her to find the inch. Taurine stepped back and Sabra hopped forward on her jets, slamming her helmet against the space between Taurine’s horns.

Taurine’s knee took her in the plating at her abdomen, and Sabra felt it give—so much so that it pressed into her skin. The sheer pride she felt as she blunted Taurine’s first jab was ripped away by the impact of her vicious second. She ducked under the third, only for Taurine to whirl and catch her with an elbow to the helmet.

Sabra fell back. Something was wrong. She was supposed to feel powerful, unstoppable—a walking bulldozer. She knew she wasn’t supposed to hold back against Taurine, that to do so would be to die, and yet she couldn’t bring herself to deliver a mortal blow.

Why?

She weathered Taurine’s onslaught on her forearms until a section of her gauntlet was ripped free and opened up her guard in the process. Taurine’s fist struck her visor, straight and true, and dented it with one strike. Cracked her visor with the second.

She couldn’t win this fight. But she didn’t need to prevail in a direct fight—like Fisher had said, smarter, not harder. All she had to do was keep Taurine busy, buy Fisher time to bring in the backup. All she had to do was lead Taurine on a merry chase. A medal was worthless if you were dead.

And she was damn good at running. All she needed was a second to get clear.

Taurine didn’t even give her one, grabbing her by the arm, hurling her up and over her head. Sabra had only just realized she’d hit the floor when Taurine brought her boot down atop her armored chest and the floor gave way, and she went crashing through it, down to the next level.

And Sabra had only just gathered her wits enough to comprehend that when Taurine leapt down atop her, driving her through a whole series more.

When the dust cleared, the first thing Sabra saw was her left hand. One gauntlet had been ripped away and, through the dust and smoke, Sabra tried to make her hand into a fist. Her fingers were strangely uncooperative which, through the mental fog, Sabra put down to the fact that they were all surprisingly twisted and askew.

Hah, she thought. Broke my fingers.

The dust haze was like it had slipped through her helmet seal and gotten into her brain. Thinking was hard. Her thoughts began and ended at her face. Her visor readout was incomprehensible. Awareness crept from her face to the rest of her body in weird starts, like an old stop-motion film. Her dad loved those.

No, her mind was swimming all over the place. Could be a concussion. Sabra grit her teeth and swam against it, worked against the suddenly sluggish mechanisms of her powered suit, and rolled onto her front and then pushed herself to rise.

Taurine stood only a few meters away, glowering and triumphant. Waiting for her. At the sight of her, all the haze receded from Sabra’s mind, as if the challenge of her monstrous opponent was a warm, pleasant dawn.

Sabra drew herself up, swiped her thumb against her visor, set her stance, and smiled.

“Best of three, then.”