Thrusts of Justice (Chooseomatic Books) Page 10

  You ask the jet’s computer for a status report but find it unresponsive. You check your wristscreen, but it doesn’t respond to your thoughts either.

  Wait a second. That isn’t a “Hey, we’re almost there” siren. It’s more of the “You’re about to fall out of the sky” variety.

  “Octavia! I’m losing control of the aircraft! Is it psychic interference?”

  “There’s nothing!” she says. “I don’t know what’s doing this!”

  You try your screen again, only to find the words SYSTEM SHUTDOWN displayed on it. Your boots and gloves start to decompress, losing their custom fit. “Conrad! You’ve got to take control of the plane!”

  “It’s all computers!” he says. “I’ll have to burn them out and try to create new control mechanisms on the fly!” As the jet goes into a tailspin, he lurches to the cockpit, ignoring the flight stick and jamming his fist directly into the metal dash instead. “I’ve got thrust control!” he says. “Lord, how many backup systems do you have in this thing? Trying to establish steering… Strap in, people! It’s going to be a rough one!” The jet levels out just before crashing, scraping against the ground at full speed and skidding thunderously to a halt amid the sounds of broken landscape and crumpling steel.

  A quick check reveals that all passengers survived the ordeal, including Cosmo the Space Dog. You climb from the wreckage at least a mile from the tower, and see a swarm of armored figures flying toward you.

  “We have to start the graft!” Conrad says. “Who’s it going to be?”

  Without the Nightwatchman’s equipment, you’re just an unemployed journalist on a frozen tundra, and now you don’t even have shoes that fit right. You may have the most virulent DNA, but if you’re taking bets on who might get to the alien machinery in one piece, you’d have to go with the brand new rocket chair and superhuman strength.

  ▶ If you tell them to graft the virus bomb to you, click here for page 147.

  ▶ If you let Tina the Tank take it, click here for page 286.

  112

  You promised a dying superhero that you’d keep something safe. And besides, secret identity shenanigans are part of the job description, right? As you open the door, several more missiles pop out of your shoulder plates and a high-pitched whine starts to come from somewhere in your armor. Just calm down, you think. All you need here is a decent cover story.

  “Warning!” you say. Okay, that was maybe a little too Lost in Space. “The citizen who resides here is under the protection of the Cosmic Guard. Please return to your home and stay there until you receive notice that this area has been secured.” There, that should do it.

  Mrs. Pinkett just stands there, staring. “I know it’s you,” she says. “You don’t think I recognize your voice from when you have people over and stay up all night making sex noises?”

  “That was one time, like three years ago!” Crap. “I mean, danger, Will Robinson!”

  She starts wagging her finger. “I didn’t say anything when you had that cat in there,” she says. For the record, you know for a fact that Mrs. Pinkett called the landlord several times about the cat and tried to have you evicted. “But this is going too far! I’m calling the police right now.”

  If she makes that phone call, your secret identity is as good as blown. Your armor is shaking now, and in addition to the missiles, crackling balls of blue energy are starting to form in the palms of your gauntlets.

  ▶ Screw it. If you just blast her, click here for page 192.

  ▶ What? No! If you believe that being a superhero means even the smallest amount of casual murder is unacceptable, click here for page 205.

  113

  A full-scale alien invasion is just too big to leave in the hands of a small group of superpowered retirees. “Call the Patrol,” you say, “but I’m bringing in backup just in case.” You send a group email to every active hero in your database, and are surprised at how quickly they reply. In less than a minute, the entire Justice Squadron (with the obvious exception of Brain Stem) is landing in the street outside Patel’s apartment. You spot Magnifico, Skyhawk, Megawatt, Coldfront, Gravity Bomb, and — uh-oh.

  The Squadron is accompanied by five members of the Cosmic Guard. One of them looks more or less like the Guardian you saw yesterday, but at least twice the size. The others clearly come from planets very different from Earth.

  “I knew it!” Magnifica exclaims. “You’re in league with them!”

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” you say, approaching the Squadron’s leader. “Magnifico, sir…” Blue energy starts crackling in the palms and various palm-like appendages of the Guardians. “Uh, could I talk to you alone for a minute?”

  Octavia clenches both her fists and emits a grunt, and suddenly Magnifico collapses, falling to the pavement he was hovering above. Magnifica springs into action as well, but the Squadron is ready for her. And they certainly aren’t underestimating her, despite her advanced age.

  You can’t be sure how well she holds up to the attack, because your personal gravity increasing a hundredfold, 500,000 volts of electricity, a barrage of razor-sharp icicles, any number of white-hot plasma bolts, and a smack in the head with a really big mace are more than enough to take care of you.

  THE END

  114

  If you’re going to be a criminal, why not jump in with both feet? The Ox’s armored car idea sounds particularly intriguing.

  “Yeah, it’s like a money buffet on wheels,” he says. “But figuring out when they’re gonna show up and which ones are already loaded with cash and all that is kind of a pain in the ass. There’s a lot more to being a supercriminal than most people think.”

  Apparently there’s quite an art to bank robbery. New York City banks are cake because they’re insured against supervillain attacks, so nobody puts up much of a fight. The trade-off, though, is that superheroes get territorial, and pulling crimes right in their backyard is like daring them to come thwart you. New York, of course, is lousy with heroes. That’s what makes a city like Cleveland tempting: it’s a day trip, and the local fuzz might get a bit bent out of shape, but you’re not likely to have the Phenomenal Three breathing down your neck.

  “In fact,” the Ox says, “we should do another one right here. Two Cleveland banks in one day? That’s crazy. No one will expect that.”

  It’s hard to argue with his logic, and the Ox insists that the best way to figure out your superpowers is on-the-job training. Before you know it, you’re standing in the lobby of the First National Bank of Ohio, yelling at everyone to lie face down on the floor. You feel a little underprepared, but you’re with the Sherman Tank that Walks Like a Man — what’s the worst that could happen?

  A deep, booming voice calls out from behind you. “Hello, Ox. So we meet again.”

  You turn to see Magnifico, leader of the Justice Squadron and widely believed to be the most powerful hero on Earth, floating through the front door and grinning like an idiot.

  “Dude!” you say. “You said we wouldn’t run into any superheroes!”

  “Aw, crap,” the Ox replies. “I dunno, maybe he came looking for me after I knocked over the first bank? That guy frickin’ hates me. There’s two of us now, though. We can take him.”

  Magnifico gives you a glance. “Stand aside, citizen. This is going to get messy.”

  Does he think you’re just an innocent bystander? You take a look at his rippling musculature and think maybe you should be. The whole point of robbing a bank out here in the boonies was to avoid this very thing, and not get apprehended before you even have a chance to figure out what your powers are. Should you just sell the Ox down the river and split? It doesn’t sound right, but you’re a thief now. You’re pretty sure there’s no honor among you guys.

  ▶ If you jump into the fray, click here for page 236.

  ▶ If you turn tail and flee, click here for page 36.

  116

  Seriously, anything sounds like a better plan. “Uh, I think I’ll sit this one out. You don’t happen to have an address for the space dog guy, do you?” Lightning Queen’s body turns translucent, and with a crack of thunder she’s hit by a bolt of lightning and disappears. Wow. It’s probably best that you didn’t volunteer for… whatever that was. It’s late, and you’ve been beaten up pretty good, so you decide to grab a few hours’ sleep in your car.

  You awaken some time after daybreak, find an unsecured wireless network on your laptop, and search the web for any and all references to the galactic police force known as the Cosmic Guard. There isn’t much, so you turn your attention to Cosmo the Space Dog, who seems to have disappeared when the Guardian did 15 years ago. That was the same year the world saw the last of Übermind, self-proclaimed criminal genius. He was of retirement age in the ’90s, and apparently just gave up villainy. His real name is Omar Patel (for some reason you had always assumed he was German), and sure enough, he’s listed in the phone book. After a quick trip across town, you find Patel’s apartment, with a conveniently propped-open window on the second floor.

  What you find inside, though, you’re not sure you would describe as a dog. Lying in a pet bed are the barely-living, ancient remains of a German shepherd grafted to an enormous, pulsing mass of alien technology. It’s super gross. Could this really be the Cosmic Guardian’s canine pal? If it were still alive, the thing would have to be at least 20 years old, so the level of decay makes sense. Looking at it, though, you can’t escape the feeling that the machinery is more alive than the dog is.

  Wait a minute, aren’t you kind of psychic now? You creep into the room quietly (so as not to arouse whatever wrath Übermind might still have in him at his advanced age) and attempt to communicate with the animal telepathically. This mostly consists of putting your fingers on your temples and t
hinking really hard. You get nothing and quickly start to feel silly. Well, last night you were connected to the Guardian by the purple supergoo. You hesitantly poke the machinery with one finger. Ew, it’s warm. Then you let the goo seep from your fingertips, covering the alien technology, trying to find a connection.

  Suddenly you’re in. You sense the same dichotomy that you found in the Guardian last night, but this time you get the impression that the piece of its mind that had once been the dog’s has been completely hollowed out, and filled up with something foreign. The cold, mechanical presence is vast and all-controlling.

  Also, it knows you’re here.

  You retreat from the machine’s presence, deeper into what’s left of the dog’s biological brain. You get a flash of memory — the Cosmic Guardian leaving Cosmo with Omar Patel, explaining to him that as long as he takes good care of the animal, he’ll stay out of jail. What the Guardian doesn’t disclose, however, is that that this task will slowly drain Patel of his free will until he’s not much more than a walking puppet. The Guardian removes a chunk of his armor, which sprouts polymer tentacles and attaches itself to the dog. It’s more than just a piece of equipment, though — it’s a piece of the Guardian himself. It will remain on Earth, feeding on Cosmo’s life force and sending instructions telepathically to various operatives all over the world.

  The Cosmic Guardian: kind of a dick? Whatever those instructions were, you know that you’re not going to find them easily. The machine’s mind will be guarding them, and assuming psychic combat is even a thing, you’re pretty sure it’s a lot better at it than you are. In fact, you can feel it searching for you, trying to root out the intruder in its head. Maybe you should sever the mental link and escape now, before it finds you.

  ▶ If you get out while you still can, click here for page 225.

  ▶ No! This is too good an opportunity to pass up. If you dig deeper into the dog’s memories, click here for page 33.

  119

  After a brief set of instructions from Tinker in Vietnamese, the still-silent Suong creates a cloud of mist, then pulls a small man in an orange jumpsuit out of it.

  “Verminator,” the Cockroach says with a sneer. “How’s prison been treating you?”

  The man looks startled, but quickly recovers. “Awesome,” he shoots back. “How’s your mom?”

  “You leave my mom out of this.”

  “Still attached to the umbilical cord, I see. As if you ever stopped talking about your mother for the six years we—”

  Hmm. You had assumed Cockroach’s differences with Verminator were of a professional nature, but their dispute appears to be a bit more… domestic. Regardless, it’s none of your concern. “We freed you,” you say, cutting Verminator off and showing him the orb. “Now, as payment, you’ll tell me everything you can about this worm.”

  He glares at Cockroach again, but seems compliant enough. “It’s not a worm,” he says. “It’s the larva of some kind of beetle. Whoa — no beetle I’ve ever seen, though. It doesn’t have any insect thoughts, like it’s been emptied out and filled with…”

  He pauses, and looks at the Ox. “Human thoughts. Your memories, to be exact.”

  Verminator relates the story of a young man abducted from the roads of rural Oklahoma and brought to a secret mountain base by operatives of the Crexidyne Corporation. He was offered superhuman powers under the condition that, when the time came, he would betray all of humanity and help deliver the planet to Crexidyne. As a failsafe, the operatives said they could take back the powers any time they saw fit, but that didn’t matter. The young man was eager to accept the bargain.

  A series of painful procedures followed, which, from the looks of things, no one expected him to survive. When he emerged as a hulking giant, all memories of the event were wiped from his mind by a telepath from the Justice Squadron called Brain Stem and some complex-looking machinery.

  “Oh my god,” Verminator says after he finishes his story. “I tell everyone I got my powers from a meteor, but it’s a lie. I have no idea how I got them. This could have happened to me, too.”

  “Nobody knows how they got their mojo,” the Cockroach says. “We could all be Crexidyne experiments.”

  “Not me,” Tinker says. “I don’t even have superpowers. I just stayed in school.”

  Verminator’s story has certainly raised the Ox’s hackles, but the smaller man insists he’s telling the truth even after a barrage of intimidation and very convincing threats of physical violence. If Thorpe’s organization is gathering villains, it’s a good bet they’re preparing to make their move. But if anyone’s going to take over the world today, it’s damn well going to be you. You need more recruits, and remember that the Ox mentioned a supervillain meeting happening in the city tonight.

  He scratches his head. “Yeah, but I bet Crexidyne knows about it, too. It’s like the worst kept secret in villainy, and I know for a fact half those guys freelance for them.”

  You turn to Tinker. “That weapon of yours — can it take down a whole group of Cosmic Guardians at once?”

  It was originally only designed for one — until now there only ever was one — but electrical pulse technology has apparently advanced significantly since the mid-’90s, and in a few hours Tinker has it modified to take out any alien battlesuit in a hundred-yard radius. With Suong’s help, you step from the workshop directly into the basement of a downtown YMCA, where the meeting is just getting started. It seems to be more of a supervillain gripe session than anything else, but a good dozen criminals show up for it.

  As expected, 30 alien beings decked out in Cosmic Guardian armor burst through the door with energy weapons blazing. The villains scatter, but Tinker throws a switch on his device and sends the whole lot of aliens skittering across the floor, convulsing. With the attackers helpless, the villains pounce. It’s a gruesome spectacle, but in moments the Guardians have all been dealt with. There was a Crexidyne stooge in a tweed jacket among them as well, but there’s not enough left of that guy to hazard a guess at his identity.

  That was easier than you anticipated. The new group of villains seems pretty pumped up from their bloody, horrifying victory, too. What next?

  “We should take the fight to Crexidyne,” the Ox says, “and hit ’em before they know what’s coming!”

  Tinker looks at the assembled group. “I don’t know. Who knows how many villains they’ve picked up so far? Maybe we should keep recruiting.”

  ▶ If you take the group you already have and storm Crexidyne while you have the element of surprise, click here for page 264.

  ▶ If you follow Tinker’s advice and continue gathering your army, click here for page 32.

  122

  Supervillains popping out of a dimensional portal? Wow, that’s random (we’ll cop to this one — they can’t all be winners). You power up your suit and immediately engage its cloaking device. Get ready to face the invisible fury of the Nightwatchman, evildoers!

  Alas, a blast of energy hits you square in the back before you can leap into action. What, is the Cosmic Guard just roaming the skies above New York, waiting to receive a signal from the stolen alien technology that powers your equipment? Yep — ever since you kidnapped Moretti, they are. More blasts follow, and you’re quickly reduced to a pile of singed Kevlar and charred flesh. Looks like you’ll never find out what Crexidyne was up to (preparing the planet for an alien takeover) or what will happen to Nancy North (killed by orbital death lasers 15 minutes later).

  THE END

  123

  “I work alone,” you say. You haven’t finished your cocktail yet, so your faceplate is still open and you don’t get that booming echo effect, but it still comes out sounding reasonably bad-ass. “A partner would only slow me down.”