CHAPTER 72

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The creature turned, its torso twining in a weirdly serpentine manner as its long legs stretched and danced. Ardia pressed on hard, trying not to give it the opportunity to create distance, to use its long limbs against her. The thing was frightened too. She didn’t know how she could know it. The thing was too alien for any expression on its face to be readable to her. Maybe it was the panic of its movements, the urgency with which it sought to escape.

As it turned, it met with Stryker. Or, rather, it met with Stryker's two hands, clasped together into one massive fist. The blow took it under the jaw and lifted it off its feet. It collapsed in the dust. That blow, from that man, would easily have killed a human being. This thing was dazed, but very much alive.

It wriggled onto its back and screamed. It didn’t scream with its mouth, but with its mind. Ardia and Stryker both felt it as much as they seemed to hear it. A panicked shriek, a call for help.

‘Hyperion! Help me!’

‘Jesus,’ Ardia breathed, stepping back a little as she looked at Stryker.

He was not so startled. He gave a little nod, one of recognition or confirmation. He said, ‘Yup. I had a feeling. There ain’t no taking him alive, Ardia. Things that can do that aren’t safe to capture. We gotta just end it.’

Ardia made no objection when Stryker raised a boot over the creature’s cowering face.

Then a shape burst onto the roof. It came through the air, from somewhere unknown. At first appearance, it caused Ardia no alarm, because it was Homer. It was almost Homer. It was almost the same size, the same ape-like features. The same ridiculous power. But then there were also the differences. The hair was lighter in color and, on that same note, nobody had bothered to cut it away. And it wore a hooded cloak, the hood pushed back from its head.

The newcomer, this Hyperion that the other thing had screamed for, hit Stryker with eye shaking speed. As it hit him, it grabbed him by the back of the collar and the back of his belt and swung him around, again with such speed that neither of them could react, and threw him hard. Stryker flew. He flew twenty yards, over the rooftop they stood on, and over the next one, before he was lost to sight.

‘Oh, shit,' Ardia said to herself, backing up as the strange lizard-thing got to its feet. She could feel she had suddenly gone from a position of power to one of extreme vulnerability. This new ape-man, Hyperion, circled to her left as the other creature circled to her right. They had seen her fight, they knew that she was not to be underestimated.

‘Who are you?' She said, speaking to Hyperion. ‘Are you the one who killed my mother? How many more are there, like you and Homer?'

‘I am not like Homer,’ Hyperion spoke. He had that same massive voice that Homer possessed. His tone was offended. ‘I am the newest version. I am superior to that accident in every way.’

The voice from behind him dripped with sinister intent. It was Homer’s, that booming voice edged with a growling anger, ‘Let’s put that to the test.’

Hyperion whirled to face Homer. The lizard thing instantly became less foreboding in posture, finding itself once again on its own against Ardia. Ardia was aware, from the corner of her eye, that Homer and Hyperion did not move at first. They just assessed each other, staring hard. She had her own problem to deal with and kept the greatest part of her attention focused on the creature.

As though drawn by invisible magnets the two ape-men were suddenly flying towards each other. Two huge bodies, one covered in lightly colored fur, the other shorn of it and looking every bit the man he wasn't in contrast. They slammed into each other, those titanic bodies creating a shockwave that literally sent vibrations through the floor beneath Ardia's feet. They were all teeth and fists and fury, a scene from a wildlife documentary gone wrong.

The lizard-thing chose that moment to move on Ardia. Its distorted winding shape lashed towards her. At the same time, she could feel it pressing, beaming at her, with its mind. The pressure on her own mind was disconcerting. Her balance and coordination did not fail her exactly, but she was suddenly playing with less than a full deck. The things arms lashed at her, more whip-like than fist-like, and a tail she couldn't remember noticing, was suddenly threshing the air around her as well, driving her back. God, but the thing was strong. Inhumanly strong.

She couldn't help but be aware of the roaring battle beyond them, the two juggernauts smashing each other, two mountains battling. And she could see that Hyperion had been far from correct. He was not an improvement in every way upon Homer. Despite their seemingly matched sizes, Homer was stronger, and in no small way. Hyperion's blows moved Homer, they clearly hurt him. But Homer's strikes shook Hyperion to the core. There was no doubt that Homer was the more deadly specimen. What matched them was something she had noticed before, had commented on. Homer did not know how to move. He pressed on Hyperion with all his power and rage. It was a strategy that could never have failed against a man. But against her, then the Golem and now Hyperion, against things that were more than normal men, Homer's overwhelming strength was not necessarily enough. Hyperion deflected and dodged blows, Homer kept absorbing them. Each time Homer struck Hyperion squarely, it seemed like it might be the blow that ended the fight. Hyperion could not deliver such devastating impacts, but he delivered far more blows. As the battle evolved, Ardia began to wonder if Homer would be the one to fall.

She had, in the meantime, found her equilibrium. The lizard thing was unnaturally strong, but for all of its weirdly twisted length, it was not as strong as she was. She pressed the attack upon it, stopped retreating from those whip-like blows, and started to land punches and kicks of her own. As soon as she did, as soon as she showed it yet again that it was at least as vulnerable to her as she was to it, everything changed. The thing found its fear again. When that happened, the psychic onslaught weakened and then failed, returning her speed and agility to her. Then she was driving through it.

Homer found the tipping point in his own struggle, driving his whole body through a punch to Hyperion’s head. Hyperion staggered back, to stand alongside the other thing, his hand covering his face, his body trembling in concussive shock. Then Stryker was shouting, announcing his return as he mounted the rooftop of the next building.

Hyperion and the thing had lost, it was clear. Hyperion put a hand on the other’s arm, weakly he said, ‘Prometheus… now…’

The creature, Prometheus, was visibly trembling in his eagerness for flight. He seemed to swell, as with the intake of a massive breath, and then he screamed. Silently. The cloud of mental anguish was like a rainstorm of broken glass in their minds. Homer and Ardia both fell back, instinctively shielding themselves with their arms. Stryker pushed on towards the four figures, but with effort. He walked with his head down, leaning forward like a man trying to battle his way through a blizzard. Then there was a whiteness, like a nuclear detonation, that consumed their worlds for some unknown time.

When it was gone, so were their two adversaries.

CHAPTER 73

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An excerpt from the diary of Damien Slayer

I lay there for I don't know how long. A faint, cool misty rain started to fall, gradually saturating the metal surfaces of the fire escape, and then my clothes. It was not until the accumulation of water lead to the slow, rhythmic dripping of water to start splashing my face that I sat up.

I had a sensation that the battle on the rooftop had concluded, but I could not have guessed as to whether seconds, minutes or hours had elapsed.

I was beginning to emerge from the haze that the creature had submerged me in. Even as I rose from the mires, tendrils still stuck to my mind, dragging me back in. Penny's face flashed before me each time I closed my eyes. God, how long it had been since I could remember her face so clearly? So many years had gone by. In that time I think the focus of my efforts must have shifted. I mean, of course, she was on my mind. She would always be on my mind. But I think this obsessive thing I do… I think it moved away, at some point unknown to me, from avenging her to simply finding Prowler. It was weird, and it was wrong, but my purpose had become more about him than about her. It was terrible, most of all because I felt that meant that he had won. It's like when the terrorists make you cancel your flight, that's their victory. That's why they do it. They win when they affect you. Prowler had won in some not so small way. He had been the focus of these many long years.

What age was I even? I couldn't really have said without doing the math but I must have been in the ballpark of forty years old. I sure as hell didn't feel it, I still felt like the kid that had fled from his small town in Washington when his girlfriend died and he'd been pinned with it. And had I really been struggling and fighting for her all that time? No. Sadly, and shamefully, I had not. I had been fighting for him. To kill him, sure, not to make him breakfast in bed. But he had been my goal.

Years flashed by as I wiped the murk from the eye of my mind. I remembered doing things. So many, crazy, world-spanning things. And the overwhelming majority of those things had been good. God knows I had helped people, so many that there had to be something good about how I'd burned up the last two decades.

Then one of those people, one of the ones I had helped, came to my mind.

I said her name aloud. ‘Metis.’

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I could see her small withered face in my mind. The whispers of faded brown hair that wafted around her forehead. The distant eyes that seemed blind, but weren't. The girl, or woman, that had caused so much harm but had never meant anything but good.

And I had told the creature where she was. I had hidden The Crucible, found the strength somewhere to tell him a lie, even in my weakened state. But I hadn't found the energy to fight him off twice, to give him two untruths. I know she would have wanted me to do no different. That didn't change the fact that she was in urgent, imminent danger. And it didn't change the fact that it was my fault.

With a hand on the wet rail of the platform, I heaved myself to my feet. I tucked the gun, the gun that had been in my hand the entire time I lay there, back into its holster. Then I turned to descend the steps.

When I turned I saw a vision. I don’t know how she had climbed those noisy metal steps without alerting me. It was a testament to what I had suffered because nobody could sneak up on me like that.

God, but she was beautiful. Perfect skin, beautiful blonde hair. Even with the hair growing wet in the misty rain and sticking to face, she was a beauty. Even with bruises and welts rising, presumably from the battle that had happened above, she was beautiful. She was a beauty because of her skin, her hair, her face, her body. Most of all, she was beautiful because of the fire in her eyes.

‘Damien?' she said to me. I could feel her eyes inspecting me, looking into my face. In her expression, I think I could see a reflection of how badly shaken I was.

‘Yeah.’ My voice was a weak croak.

‘I think we need to talk.’

Like hell, we needed to talk. We needed to move. Metis was waiting, with no idea what I'd sent her way.

I didn’t speak to her much. I knew the ape-thing, the thing that had saved me, was nearby. I could feel him watching. I didn’t trust or distrust him. He had saved me and as alien as he was, I had lived and learned enough over the years to know that appearances could be very deceptive.

She held my arm as she guided me down the fire escape. She was strong. She wasn’t trying to show it but I could tell she was strong. With that realization came another. I could feel it on her. The Crucible. She didn’t stink of it like some things did, but it still glowed off of her.

At the bottom of the fire escape, the others waited. Two of them were priests, which I think was somehow the maddest part of all of it. One of the priests was a big guy, and he glowed of The Crucible as well. It took me a moment to recognize it was Father Stryker.

They took me away in a car. The beautiful woman said she would travel back with someone called Homer. The flicker of several eyes to the rooftops brought me to understand that Homer was the ape-man that had saved me from my fall.

On the journey in the car, they didn’t speak to me much. There was a lot of excitement. Stryker was telling the others about a lab. After a time I realized that they were referring to the facility under the subway, the one that I hadn’t been able to gain access to. There was some regret about having to leave it in such a hurry. As we drove, Razmik made some phone calls to contacts he had in Berlin. These calls were apparently to arrange for the entrance to be hidden from prying eyes.

I knew they would want answers from me. Some of them were hungry for it, it shone out of their eyes. And I would spare them time to talk, to answer their questions. But only as much as I had to before I had strength enough to go to Metis.

CHAPTER 74

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...Initiating Text Communication....

...Searching For Connection...

...Connection Found....

....Decrypting...

UNSEEN: We know where The Crucible is. And we know where Metis is.

ZEUS: Good. Does Troy know yet?

UNSEEN: No, Prometheus wants to tell him in person.

ZEUS: Send me the locations.

UNSEEN: He won't tell me the location of The Crucible. I told you he'd want to save it. He wants to be the one to tell him.

ZEUS: …

ZEUS: And Metis?

UNSEEN: Yes, he told me where she is.

ZEUS: Then tell me.

UNSEEN: Why do you care where she is?

ZEUS: Everything helps.

UNSEEN: You’ll hurt her.

ZEUS: As little as possible, I promise.

UNSEEN: You’ll take her.

ZEUS: Yes.

UNSEEN: You can’t take her. Nobody can take her and keep her. Troy thinks he can take her back, but he’s wrong. I’m sure he’ll do it, I’m sure he’ll capture her but she can’t be kept.

ZEUS: And how are you so sure that he plans to keep her? How can you be sure he won’t hurt her.

UNSEEN: How can I be sure of what you’ll do to her? You want her for the same reasons that he does. She’s my sister.

ZEUS: She’s not your sister. The closest things you have to sisters in the world are here with me. Those others are accidents. And, because we are kin, I promise you that I won’t hurt her more than is absolutely necessary. I can’t do it. If I do then I know I will lose you. You are too important for me to do that.

UNSEEN: …

UNSEEN: …

UNSEEN: And what about the other one? Homer? Is he important as well?

ZEUS: You are both so important. Neither of you can know that until we are united.

UNSEEN: I fought him tonight.

ZEUS: And?

UNSEEN: He beat me. Tonight he beat me. He’s very, very strong.

ZEUS: Yes, I would expect he is. Knowing his paternity then he would have to be. That bloodline is exceptional. It has its little problems, but I need it every bit as much as yours.

UNSEEN: I don’t think you can win him over. There is a sense about him. The way he fought me, the way he stood with that woman. I think that maybe he identifies more with humans than with us.

ZEUS: And you? Don’t you identify more with freaks and mutants than with us? Or are you coming round? Can I win you over?

UNSEEN: ...

UNSEEN: ...

UNSEEN: I’m sending the coordinates for Metis. I’ll speak to you again.

….Connection Terminated….

CHAPTER 75

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They stood in the shadows outside of their hideaway, two figures, waiting. In the blackness, the surroundings were both more and less terrible than they had been in the hard gray light of day. Without the brightness, the gauntness of the trees and the crumbling surrender of the buildings was less apparent. But that blackness also seemed to be a reservoir for terrible things, maybe only memories, that drifted more freely in the midnight air.

Homer stood still, a mountain. Ardia, she was in frequent motion, checking her phone, taking a few uncertain paces.

‘You’re uneasy,’ Homer said. ‘They’ll be here soon.’

Ardia waved a hand in the air, shooing away some thought that buzzed at her ear. She said, ‘It’s not that.’

‘What then?’

She sighed. Her body deflated a little and she turned to Homer, ‘That big one, Hyperion. The one who was like you…’

‘Yes,’ Homer was impassive in his expression but there was something flowing deep beneath his exterior as well.

‘Well, he’s fucked this whole thing up, hasn’t he?’

‘How so?’

‘Well, was he your father? Is he the one you’re looking for?’

‘No.’

‘You’re sure?’

Homer nodded with absolutely no hesitation.

‘How can you be so sure?’

Homer said, ‘I can just tell. He was, this Hyperion, he was my age. Maybe a little older than me. Not old enough to be my father.’

Ardia took a half step closer to him and said, ‘How can you know that? I'm sorry, Homer, but it's not like you grew up surrounded by others just like you. How can you determine an age so confidently.'

Homer did hesitate this time. Then he said, ‘You’ll have to trust me. That one, that was not my father.’

‘That’s not making things any better then, because that one, that one could easily have been the one that killed my mother. It looked every bit like the picture we have.’

‘He,’ Homer said.

‘What?’

‘He. Not it.’ Homer was an unreadable shadow as he spoke.

‘Oh my God, yes, he… I didn’t mean… Homer, you know…’ She had spoken in a rush of embarrassment, then she paused and looked more closely at his unmoving visage. She said, ‘Oh my God. You’re messing with me.’

That rare Homer smile split his face. Where it had previously softened his bestial features, on this new shaven, man-like face, it made him suddenly and fleetingly very handsome. Ardia was a little stunned by how much the smile, massive canines and all, made him appear so appealing.

He stepped closer to her and said, ‘What is your concern?’

‘That our purposes are split now.’

‘That’s not a complete thought.’

‘There are more than one of you, Homer. There’s more than one other individual out there that can fit the description of the one you're looking for and the one I'm looking for. To make it worse, it's pretty clear that the path we're following right now is taking us to something that won't satisfy your own mission. I mean, what are the odds that your father is going to be turning up on the same line as another similar individual to you? In this whole, massive world, what are the fucking odds?’

Homer closed the final distance between them and dropped his huge hands on her shoulders. He looked into her face, trying to contain her gaze and anchor her in the sea of emotion she was currently lost in.

He said, ‘You’re thinking now that our time is done? That father, my human father, and I will move on in our hunt?’

She nodded silently.

‘Ardia… Before we started this I really only had one person I knew, that was a companion. That was my human father. It has been new for me, coming to know others. I never had any expectation of finding someone who was like me. Now there are two of you, you and Stryker. We share something in our origins, I am certain of it. And, I don't have the words… I would prefer to be with you and Stryker and the others. It is less…' He paused and looked up at the night sky, as though the word he sought would fall to him like a raindrop.

He said, ‘Lonely is not the right word, but it is close. It is less lonely now. I will keep chasing my father, yes. But it would make me very happy to help you find your mother’s killer as well.’

Ardia just returned his stare. The rush of words, the touching emotion, from this normally stoic and impassive being was breathtaking. She had no words with which to answer him. As the seconds ticked by without a response she felt him growing restless and she gained a sensation that he had never spoken so personally in his life before.

‘Homer…' she started but stopped as the white headlamps of a car washed over them, pinning their shadows to the face of the ruined building behind them.

The others had returned.

Behind the wheel of the returning car, Abraham saw the two figures suddenly and brilliantly illuminated by the wash of the headlamps.

He saw them standing close together. He saw the hand still resting on Ardia's shoulder. He saw the narrow sliver of space that separated them.

His eyes narrowed.

Beside him, Razmik saw this, saw him stiffen, and said nothing.