He typed on his keyboard, moved more text over from what must have been logs into another window. “Okay, I’m sending what I’ve got to the Feds, but we’ve got to find the League’s records on these guys. If they’re who I think they are, search under ‘dinosaurs,’ ‘evolution,’ or ‘gorillas.’”
Control stopped typing to face him, saying, “Gorillas?”
He nodded. “I know it sounds weird, but if I’m right they’re dinosaurs from a world where evolution turned out differently. The League faced them twice. The first time they tricked them into leaving. The second time they got help from the dinosaurs’ rivals—gorillas from a universe where gorillas are intelligent.”
Control stared at him. “I only read about the first one. The 60s were very strange.”
“Yeah,” the Rocket said. “I was never sure what to believe when… uh… the original Rocket told me that story.”
On the wall screen, the winds stopped and the soldiers began to pull themselves up.
Storm King’s voice came over the speakers. “Hey, at this point our best shot at winning is to electrocute them. Mystic’s not happy with that, but—”
The Rocket interrupted him. “Really?”
The Mystic said, “He’s right. We die in most futures unless—wait. The odds are changing radically. Right now we win practically every time provided we don’t do anything at all right now.”
“Huh.” The Rocket stared up at the screen.
Control turned away from her screen, grinning. “You know why? It’s—”
“Blue here. Touching down in less than five seconds.” She talked with an accent that had a hint of Spanish, but a lot of California.
Unlike the others, her connection carried no background noise along with it. I checked Control’s monitors. The map showed her traveling at five hundred miles per hour—though her speed was slowing.
She appeared in the spybot’s view almost the instant she finished talking, coming to a full stop five feet above the ground.
Tall with defined muscles, light brown skin, and black hair that went down her back, Blue wore a unitard that matched her name. Unlike most supers, her costume had no symbol.
By now, the soldiers were picking up their rifles. One fired, the red beam visible in the alley’s shade.
It hit her, but where it hit, the air blurred, obscuring any details.
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She opened her mouth, making a noise that was less a human scream than all notes at once. The speakers in the Heroes’League’s base crackled as the noise went on.
The soldiers writhed in pain, dropping their weapons, not even trying to get up, only trying to turn around and cover their heads.
Then Blue shot forward, a blur, stopping next to the soldiers and grabbing their guns, backpacks, belts of equipment. She wasn’t the only one. Much of what they had floated away on its own, landing in a pile some twenty feet away from the group.
At the same time, Blue seemed to have a sixth sense about the soldier’s movements. Every time one of them pulled itself up and tried to run for the pile of weapons, she blasted them with sound and they fell down. Or, she moved in a blur to block their way.
In time, they stopped trying and lay on the ground, unmoving.
Control tapped on her keyboard. “The police and National Guard are coming. I don’t know how soon.”
As if he hadn’t heard her, the Rocket said, “Birds have ears, but they hear with their entire heads and have good hearing. Blue’s voice or my sonics might be more effective against them than humans.”
The Mystic’s voice came over the speakers. “I think we’ll have to stick around until the police arrive at the very least. Maybe we’ll have to stay longer, depending on whether they can handle them, or worse, if the gate reopens.”
The Rocket sighed. “Yeah. That’s my big worry. Even with the gate closed, I think we’ll need to call in everybody. With Grand Lake somehow rating their direct attention even though it’s not the capital of anything, I’ve got a feeling we’re not going to get much help. We might have to use the jet to go pick people up.”
The Mystic replied, “Well, at least it’s fast. My advice would be to do it now.”
The Rocket said, “Is that just a guess or is it a prediction?”
The Mystic waited for a moment and then said, “It’s mostly a guess, but I checked the near future just now and calling people in generally leads to better futures.”
Despite the voice only conversation, the Rocket nodded. “Then I guess we’ll have to do that.”
Sirens grew louder over the Mystic’s connection. “I’ll leave that to you. It sounds like the police are here.”
They ended the conversation as more people entered the room.
A circular metal door opened and five people stepped out of it. Night Wolf and Night Cat came first, both in gray and black costumes. His had an abstract wolf’s head on the chest. Hers had an abstract cat’s head. At around seven feet tall, Night Wolf stood two feet higher than Night Cat. He had the physique of a bodybuilder.
The others followed them in. To judge from his skin, the Shift could have been made of wet concrete. He wore a green costume that was darker on one side and shifted to lighter on the other.
Gravity Star stepped out behind him wearing an orange and white costume with an orange starburst on her chest. Railgun walked in next to her—a seven foot tall woman made of molten silver metal.
Railgun shut the door behind them as Night Wolf asked, “How’s it going?”
The Rocket didn’t say anything, pointing up at the big screen on the wall.
It showed the police taking away feathered, bipedal dinosaurs in trucks while words crawled across the bottom of the screen. Under the header of “FBI Alert,” the words said, “Extradimensional incursion: Supers requested to coordinate with authorities in defense. The following US cities are reporting attacks: Washington D.C., New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Grand Lake. In Europe: London, Paris, Istanbul, Moscow, St. Petersburg, Ankara, Berlin, Madrid…”
As it scrolled on, listing cities in Africa, Asia, Australia, Central and South America, Night Cat stared up at the screen. “How did Grand Lake get on that list?”