CHAPTER 56 - FISHER

An alarm blared in the darkness. It was like he was waking up, back in Geneva, but also different. That was a bad sign, but Fisher wasn’t quite sure why, and couldn’t think to move. Somewhere nearby, there were people shouting, screaming, crying. Somewhere, his face was being pelted with rain and the wind was howling—but it was all so far away, and he couldn’t see, and he couldn’t move.

Something tapped him on the face, and then again and again. “Easy, kitty,” someone said, “I’ve got him.”

Sam?

Something struck him on the cheek then, hard and fast, and it was like it jarred his brain into gear. The shadows gave way to thoughts, and with it came an awareness of things like wet and cold and pain. Fisher sat up, spluttering and coughing, realizing he’d lost consciousness at the moment it truly returned. Sam was there, leaning over him, arm raised and ready to hit him again.

“Well, thank the big guy upstairs,” she said, “your kitty-cat’s not an orphan.”

Fisher gathered up Octopus. The cat was fine—as always, the exception to the rule. “Never took you for a religious person, Sam,” he said, staggering to his feet.

“Ain’t no atheists in a foxhole, and if there’s someone up there, then maybe he’ll start listening to us now.”

Something had blown out the entire command deck. Bodies lay strewn about, and the storm howled through the shattered windows. Sparks spluttered from dangling cables like dying pythons. Southern Cross lay on his back, shredded down to the bone, and somehow still breathing, ribs and lungs exposed. He was invulnerable, wasn’t he? Or supposed to be?

But that was just how the game went—your powers availed you until they didn’t. And, in the empowered game of rock, paper, scissors, the Transcended knew the winning strategy was just to break everyone else’s hands. The air reeked of ozone and Fisher's eyes itched inside his sockets. The Engineer was looking for his staff, and here he was—just what had he hit them with?

“We need to move,” Sam said, teeth grit. “Y’good?”

“Bit dizzy, but I’m okay—everyone else?”

“Banged up but mobile, come on.”

He took two steps before he realized he was worse off than a bit dizzy. Sam got under his arm and helped drag him along. It gave Fisher time to take in the situation. Whatever The Engineer had hit them with—and that was who it had to be—it’d practically decapitated them before the fight began. Aegis and Barrier were shouting orders, trying to regain some control of the situation, but so many people were already dead.

And so are we, Fisher thought.

“Sabra!” Sam shouted, “Hold the door!” She hissed something under each breath, something like move or die, soldier, move or die.

She stood between the doors of the elevator, Leopard behind her, Revenant before her. So, they were all alive—part of him had thought Sam was just saying that. As they passed Revenant, Fisher saw how banged up she was—half her face was missing and her left eye flickered.

“I’m not coming with you,” Revenant said.

Sabra shook her head. “But—”

“There are wounded here who need assistance,” Revenant replied. “Sabra, I’ll be fine. If this building comes down, I’ll survive—you won’t.” This was where one of the two would lean forward and kiss the other ‘for luck.’ But Revenant only shoved Sabra back into the elevator, and the doors hissed closed.

“What the fuck was that?” Jack asked. “What hit us?”

“The Engineer,” Fisher said. “Has to be.”

“What’s the plan?” Sabra asked.

“There is no plan—we go to a shelter, that’s it.”

“So I can fucking sit around and do nothing while people die? No way, Pavel.”

“Now is not the time, Sabra. Even if you had your armor on, it’s suicide to go up against any of the Seven. We find a shelter and we start fucking praying, end of discussion.”

Sabra crossed her arms. Leopard said, “What about Monkey?”

“What about him?”

“If The Engineer’s here for his staff—”

“Then he’s welcome to it.”

“You heard them, didn’t you? Monkey’s at the airport! If he gets away—”

“He’s not stupid enough to try and fly anything in this hell.”

“What about if he’s got The Engineer at his back? What if this is his weapon? What if he knows that The Engineer will chase him to get his staff back?”

The building moaned like it was dying. The lights in the elevator flickered. Octopus yowled under Fisher’s arm. He reached under his jacket and stroked around his scruff. “That’s a good kitty,” he murmured. “Jack, this isn’t up for discussion.”

The elevator came to a stop, and the doors opened into bedlam.

“I bet shelters didn’t save anyone in Shanghai,” Sabra said.

----------------------------------------

“They called this guy Stormcaller in South America,” Jack said. “I think I see why.”

The storm had eased some, but it still felt like the air was more sleet than oxygen. The sidewalk was slippery with melting ice and it was still impossibly dark, but the way was lit by police officers and blue and red strobes. The ground shook. Fisher told himself it was just the thunder.

Right now, there’d be an alert going out for any and all volunteers to engage The Engineer, to buy time for the powers-that-be to coordinate an actual response. It was one of the worst-case scenarios faced by the Functioning World, the appearance of one of the Seven in an urban environment. The typical IESA directive was that of non-interference. Sometimes, if you didn’t bother them, they wouldn’t bother you. Don’t fire unless fired upon first.

That went out the window when there were millions of innocent people trapped due to simple geography. You couldn’t evacuate a city, not realistically, and The Seven could destroy it—or worse—in a matter of hours. If they fired first, you might not get a chance to fire back. That was when you had to kick the monster in the teeth, hard enough that they decided to go elsewhere.

Fisher wasn’t sure it had ever worked. Half the time, it was all over by the time anyone got there.

The nearest shelter was only a few blocks away, but between the stormy fusillade and the fear of the demigod lurking in the dark, the worry of the main battlefront only a few kilometers away to the south, it felt like the longest walk in Fisher’s life. A team of police officers in powered suits waved them through an intersection that was filling with water. The sky was a seething nightmare, the whirling threat of a cyclone, as if the heavens themselves bowed to the sorcerous power of the Seven.

No, Fisher said to himself, don’t think about that, don’t get spooked—it’s just mythology.

That was just how the world worked—facts became accounts became mythology. It was a process as old as humanity itself, like how the Norse had thought that Sol, in all of her flaming glory, drove the Sun across the sky in a great chariot. But it was just a story. The truth was written in science and physics and orbital mechanics.

But the facts of the Seven were hard to pin down. They had emerged, seemingly fully formed and unknowable, as the harbingers of The Collapse, or from the ashes of it or, perhaps, simply during it. The accounts were of world-shaking figures with inscrutable motives and phenomenal powers that defied even the basic-yet-shaky laws of the empowered. Seven men and women who rendered the empowered to them what the empowered were to normal people.

That mythology had one hell of a head start in the form of a multi-decade-long feedback loop. When the skies darkened like this, even the most rational people whispered of sorcery and the harbingers of some final, apocalyptic end. But they had existed for so long, and the world still persisted.

Persisted in certain places, at least. Fisher’s mind went to Shanghai, and the British Isles, and Antarctica, and the many dozens of areas destroyed or altered by the Seven. It was one of the oldest well-meaning lies of humankind, wasn’t it? Surely, people always said the face of the apocalypse, things can’t be as bad as they appear.

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But what if they were?

“How much further?” Sam asked. “I can’t believe I have to point this out, but I’m freezing my tits off over—”

Something crashed through the building ahead of them and into the street, asphalt flying in dizzying arcs. What little order there was in the crowd vanished at the time of impact, and people scattered. Fisher watched Blueshift pick himself up out of the crater, sucking in air, his armor in tatters. One of his arms hung uselessly at his side.

“Back up!” Sam shouted. “Everyone, get the fuck back!”

His opponent was a shadow. A human-shaped hole in the storm, advancing with implacable steps. Blueshift raised his good arm, and the street broke and collapsed and fell away through The Engineer, dragging him with it, dragging him through the storefront behind him, and the skyscraper beyond that. The whole building shook, windows glimmering. Not all of them were dark.

Blueshift, roaring, clenched his fingers into a fist, rain, wind and rain and light bending around his hand.

And then the skyscraper was imploding, the top of it in freefall—and accelerating.

“Hit the deck!” Jack roared.

Sabra stood there, eyes wide, watching the building come down. A city in the middle of the day—how many people had been hiding in there, casualties now of the catastrophic collateral damage from an empowered brawl in an urban environment.

Fisher grabbed her as Blueshift and The Engineer and everything around them vanished into the horrific plume of a building coming down.

“Sabra, move!” He threw her to the side, into an alley, and leapt after her as the second storm, far more physical than the first, crashed into them.

Fisher wasn’t sure how long he lay there. The rain had turned the plume into sludge. It was in his hair, on his face, stinging his eyes. He forced himself to stand up even as every inch of his being told him to stay down and play dead. “Is everyone okay? Team, sound off!”

They all came back affirmative. Octopus peered out from under his jacket. How many lives had he gone through today? Hell, how many had the rest of them burned through?

“I thought the fighting was on the other side of the city!” Sabra said, coughing.

“I guess it isn’t anymore,” Fisher replied, heading out of the alley. “I think we should go back the way we came.”

Fisher paused on the sidewalk, getting his bearings. “Okay, I think we just...” Something boomed through air, and the ground trembled. “We just...” Footfalls, in the direction that Blueshift had thrown The Engineer.

“Oh my God,” Sabra said, eyes widening.

The Engineer stalked up the street toward them, the haze breaking before him, twisting and warping. Viridian light boiled and swirled around his head, like a halo, like the clouds above. He moved like each step was precisely planned and exactingly placed, and menace preceded him like a harsh wind. Fisher felt himself take a step back, and then another.

He was a titan. Ten feet tall at the minimum. His obsidian body, something between sculpted and grown, glimmered under ragged robes made from fine, black mesh—or chainmail. Fisher couldn’t tell where the distinction began between man and clothing, if there even was any at all.

Those were The Engineer’s only concessions to humanity—it was like the rest had been thrown away, even form. Even this far away, Fisher could see the inhuman body under the shawl-robes, the towering build that was skeletal without being a skeleton, and his three arms. Two on his right, one on his left.

But it was his eyes—three dead emerald suns, filled with the same terrible light of his halo, that drew Fisher’s attention, even so far away. Nailed him to the ground. The Engineer drew a weapon, a glaive, as if from the air itself, and he whirled it in a slow arc, the blade glowing green and parting the asphalt as easily as the air.

He said nothing. They never spoke. The question was always if they could at all, or if they simply chose not to. Fisher had never seen one of the Seven in the flesh. He’d never wanted to.

“Contain him!” a woman shouted, voice familiar but impossible. “Push him back into the ocean!”

Defenda Eureka, riding wings of fire, came down on the far side of The Engineer. He whirled, cleaving her in two, armor and all, ash billowing into the air despite the downpour. It was like he’d known she was there, and yet hadn’t noticed her at all, hadn’t broken stride.

Just like—

Something struck The Engineer like a freight train—a fair-skinned woman with brown hair and a hospital gown. His glaive went flying from his grip, and the woman kicked off his shoulder, bounding away into the skies.

It couldn’t be.

“Taurine!” Miss Millennium shouted. “Now!”

She came charging down the street, a horned juggernaut of infinite wrath, with a massive ax in her grip. She caught The Engineer with the blade, sent him flying down the street, back towards the ruins of the skyscraper.

“Is that—” Sabra began.

“I don’t believe it.” It was all Fisher could think to say.

“We should get moving.”

“We should.” But he couldn’t. He had to see. He had to know.

The Engineer crashed into the ruins, and a cape popped into existence with snarling arcs of electricity and a crackling blade of light. The Engineer was already rising, extending his right arm.

His killing glaive returned like a thunderbolt, right into his hands and straight through the electrokinetic, blasting him into ash and particulate. Taurine caught the obsidian giant with a vicious overhead swing, driving him to his knees. She raised her ax high, and Fisher caught a gleam of something—a knife?—in one of The Engineer’s right arms, swinging into the path of her strike.

Taurine’s left arm came off at the elbow.

She fell back, clutching the stump, roaring, the wound black and smoldering and not healing. The Engineer stalked after her, just in time for Millennium to strike him again, evading his glaive by maybe an inch, whipping his head around. The blow rippled out with enough force that Fisher saw it.

Katherine caught herself on the asphalt, shattered it, turning to charge again. The Engineer caught Taurine, buried his glowing knife in her chest, and yanked upward to split her from sternum to shoulder. Practically bifurcated, and still not healing, Taurine was left to stagger in the rain as The Engineer turned to intercept Miss Millennium.

She was on top of him, laying into him, each blow heralded by an impact that shattered windows and blasted the air apart. Surely you could wear him down. There was no such thing as an invincible cape, after all. The Engineer grappled Millennium with two of his arms and, in his third, he held his wicked knife.

It was like Fisher could see the attack play out before him. The way he’d split Taurine open. He wouldn’t miss. He never missed. He wouldn’t miss and Miss Millennium—Katherine—would die.

“NO!”

Someone shouted, their arm raised, hand splayed—and it took Fisher a moment to realize it was him. Something hummed in his skull and erupted in a single glorious note, an electric caress that was haunting in its lost familiarity, one that blazed outward from that spot behind his eyes and down his spine to ignite the stumps of his wrists.

The Engineer’s knife went wide.

The three-armed-demigod seemed surprised, if such a thing were possible. Katherine whirled on her heel to find Fisher, caught his eyes through the haze of sleet and dust. He could only just make out her shock and then her smile.

She was still smiling as The Engineer recovered, whirling his glaive, and struck her head from her shoulders. Fisher’s stomach lurched, and the rest of him collapsed into the pit that formed.

Taurine rose up from the road, grabbing The Engineer from behind, wrapping her remaining arm around him and locking him down with a leg. She was howling, roaring, and maybe even dying. The Engineer reversed the grip on his knife and stabbed backward, blade burying deep into her, again, and again, and again—

“Do it!” Taurine roared. “Take the shot!”

“Supernova!”

The sun returned, the street flashing into blinding daylight as an incandescent golden lance struck The Engineer in the chest. He raised his three hands to the beam, catching it just before impact, halo burning bright. The Engineer was trembling, arms forced back inch by inch, Taurine holding him against the beam, her flesh running like water, igniting. Fisher, shielding his eyes with his arm, caught an impression of a figure, blazing energy cascading from her chest like a-—yes, a goddamn supernova.

“They’re doing it,” Sabra whispered, hands at her lips. She might’ve been praying. “She’s doing it!”

The Engineer went back half a step, struggling against Taurine, losing leverage against Revenant’s beam. His eyes flared bright and his terrible halo intensified, whirling like an accretion disc. The beam fell back an inch, and then another. The Engineer took one step forward. His foot sank into molten asphalt.

He took another.

“Secondary and tertiary heat sinks are melting down!” Revenant called—not to them, to someone else. “All core systems are past the redline—eight point two seconds until catastrophic failure! I’m giving it all I’ve got! Blueshift, now!”

The SOLAR cape was there beyond The Engineer, ablaze with iridic light, good hand outstretched, and light and rain twisted between his hand to the Engineer's left arm. The world shattered and broke along that line, as Blueshift tried to twist the titan's limb by just a few inches, to break his guard—and it wouldn't be enough. The Engineer was gaining ground, and he drew his knife into one of his right hands—ready to throw, to free himself. Fisher raised his shaking hands, hoping—praying. And Taurine, burned and charred and broken, reached for The Engineer’s left arm, and pulled.

The beam caught his hand, sheared it away, and then the rest of his arm—and, at the exact second The Engineer lost his grip and the beam struck him in the chest, he popped out of existence, air and force and light rushing into the space he had just occupied.

Just like that, the battle was over, and the storm was already subsiding into a mild drizzle.

“Did we just...” Sabra murmured.

“I don’t know,” Fisher said. “Don’t jinx it.”

“Okay,” Sabra said.

“Holy fuck,” Sam said, and she just kept saying it.

Taurine lay in the middle of the street, not moving. She raised her remaining arm and gave someone a thumbs up. Fisher turned, and there was Revenant, collapsed in the middle of the street at the head of a river of molten asphalt, steam rising off her and smoke pouring out of her. Blueshift, on his knees, pale and bloody. Fisher looked again to Taurine, and thought of Katherine and the last request she had ever made of him, and went off to help her up.

Everyone accounted for, Fisher thought.

Then, catching himself, he paused in the middle of the street, and turned a circle.

“Wait a second,” Fisher said. “Just where the hell is Jack?”