Don't Read in the Closet: Volume Four (16 page)

of his machine: a little cube traced with glowing

Sincerely,

bits of alien-looking circuitry. A field of cobalt

Bubbles

blue energy formed around it and began to

expand.

Don’t Read in the Closet – volume four 89

We didn’t know what it did or whether it could hurt us, but we

were the good guys. We were going to stop it, no matter what the cost.

****

MY NAME is Photon. Not my real name, of course. You don’t

ever use your real name when it’s your job to fight the schemes of

petty crooks with alien weapons, self-important thugs who got freaked

in super-science accidents, criminal masterminds who slipped into our

world from other dimensions…or any other kind of warped, godlike

beings who come to take what they want from your city, country,

planet, or universe.

I got freaked four years ago when I was just plain ol’ Oscar

Ramos-Gutierrez, standing a post at a secret army base in New

Mexico. I could give you details, but it would sound like I cribbed

them from fifty other stories you’ve heard. Freak accidents that curse

ordinary losers with powers they never dreamed of – and often can’t

really handle.

My power is that I move very, very fast. So fast that no matter

where I am, even in a crowd, I’m alone when speeding. Those battles

you see on TV? The ones that make you wet your pants because major

city neighborhoods get destroyed in two minutes of super-powered

insanity? For me, fighting in them is like strolling through a slowly

animated museum diorama.

I was lucky. Lonely as it is, super-speed can be a nifty power, and

it makes me important. I could’ve been turned into something much

worse. And of course, the alternative isn’t all that appealing either. My

buddy Dano stood next to me when the experiments performed on that

base in New Mexico called down the lightning.

All they ever found of him was ash.

****

THE INJUSTIFIERS had picked a touristy locale near the

government center in Boston. Tons of people were there, trying to flee

from the shops and restaurants. Traffic was already jammed up on

Don’t Read in the Closet – volume four 90

surrounding streets. A major part of my mission would be to carry as

many civilians as possible off the field and away from harm.

I could do it, no sweat, if it weren’t for the damn air.

The speedfield that lets me move fast and makes my body super-

dense while speeding also protects me from the heat of friction. If it

didn’t, I woulda burned up like a meteor the first time I cut loose on a

test run, just from all the little molecules of air scratching against me

as I ran. But the speedfield doesn’t extend far enough from my body to

protect people I carry. They’d be roasted if I ran too fast.

Not only that, but I also had to go slower than the speed of sound

so as not to break stuff. Windows, eardrums, people, historic buildings

– none of them were designed to withstand the kind of shockwave I

could produce.

So as you can imagine, from my perspective I had to go reeeeeeal

slowwwwww as I picked up the people who were light enough to

carry.

And I had to pay a lot of attention to the fight.

Hardlight went after the Perforator, who wore a battle exo-suit

bristling with weapons. I’d have to count the heavy, doppler-shifted

thud-thud-thuds of the Perforator’s chain guns and keep my eye on

lines of disturbance in the air that told me where the bullets traveled.

Part of my job would be to collect any rounds headed for civilians. At

least I didn’t have to worry about my teammates in that regard. We

wore advanced bodysuits that were proof against most kinetic shocks.

The bad guys wore ‘em too, which is why my mission didn’t involve

simply poking their
ojitos
out before the fight even started.

Swiss Miss deployed her army of fist-sized, precision clockwork

men to disable Doctor Malady’s machine. Badboy, another villain,

appeared to be circling around on his skybike as if to run her down

and hurl fistfuls of his “cherry bomb” grenades at Swiss Miss and her

toys. I’d have to make sure they didn’t do any harm.

Don’t Read in the Closet – volume four 91

Miracle Maiden and Superego faced Etiola, who had mind-powers

of fear and dread, plus magic wands that could weaken a hero’s body

or spirit. I hoped to snatch those wands right from her fingers the

instant she called them up from her home in the thirteenth dimension.

And I’d have to shake her up and break her concentration if it looked

like her mind-fu ever started working against Superego.

Adonis set his sights on Doctor Malady, who appeared to be

protected behind that weird field his equipment generated. Adonis

pounded on the field’s surface. I rescued a toddler who was about to

be trampled by people stampeding out of Quincy Market, took two

families out of a head-on car crash on North Street, and returned.

Though the field had deformed under Adonis’s strike, it absorbed his

punch and snapped back. Adonis seemed unhurt by the field, but I

would want to keep an eye out for whatever other dangerous tech

Malady or Badboy might pull out of their asses.

Perforator happened to be standing close to an old man I thought I

could carry. I decided to take a dodge his way to see if I could disable

any of his guns or yank out their ammo. I’ve tried before, and I did

manage to jam a gun once, so it was always worth a try.

I swerved toward him on the way to grandpa, but before I got

close, something hit me.

Something actually fucking
hit
me and all I saw was a blue blur.

I found myself bouncing out of a little crater of crushed bricks,

flailing and trying to land on my feet again and hoping to God I

wouldn’t crash into a civilian. Instead I hit a giant, glowy orange

baseball glove – another of Hardlight’s creations. It wrapped around

me long enough to absorb my momentum and set me upright on the

ground, then vanished.

I grabbed a few bullets out of the air before they got away from

me, while trying to figure out what just happened.

Did Malady’s equipment reach out with some kind of energy to

swat me down?

Don’t Read in the Closet – volume four 92

What were the Injustifiers doing here, anyway, and what was

Malady’s device even for?

Whatever. If our super-strong dudes couldn’t pound through the

device’s field, then once we got Etiola and her mental interference out

of the way, Superego would be able to take as long as necessary to

tune into Malady’s mind and make him turn it off himself. Then I’d get

my answers.

I carried a couple more people out of harm’s way. Etiola’s Wand

of Despair materialized in her hand and I tried to grab it before she

could use it on Miracle Maiden. Again the blue blur hit me. This time

the impact knocked me clear over the expressway, too fast for

Hardlight to react. Nobody caught me this time and I fell into a

neighborhood full of shops with Italian names.

Dammit.

I wore an earpiece that let me communicate with our op

coordinator and the rest of the team. It would speed up their

comments for me to understand, and slow mine down for them.

“Control, there’s another speedster. I say again, the bad guys have a

speedster! Over.”

Now, I’m pretty quick on the uptake, but this time I had to get

knocked down twice before I caught on. I mean, a second speedster?

The science guys always told me I was a statistical impossibility.

Back to the fight. A bullet had come uncomfortably close to a

little girl’s face. Looked to me like it was headed toward the base of a

statue, so instead of plucking the round out of the air, I moved the kid.

As I zipped her to safety, I nabbed one of Badboy’s cherry bombs and

tossed it back his way. Let the Injustifiers’ speedster deal with it. In

fact, from now on, I’d send every one Badboy threw right back at him,

so their speedster would be occupied dealing with the friendly fire.

Fuck him.

Control spoke through my earpiece. “Photon, emergency redirect

to New York. Over.”

Don’t Read in the Closet – volume four 93

Uh-oh. “What’s up? Over.”

While waiting for the reply, I got the girl and her family to safety

and moved Swiss Miss over a bit so Badboy would pass by instead of

ramming into her. It looked like everything else could keep for a

while, so I headed toward the waterfront.

Control replied. “ESB Op. Disable ordnance on lower floors, then

rescue hostages on eighty-six. Over.”

Shit
.

Major McFly and his SWAT team were on that one, a counter-

terrorism op against ordinary, human christofascists. If superiors were

sending me in, it meant they thought the terrorists were going to blow

up the building right fuckin
now
. Snipers would have their kill orders.

And in case the terrorists had dead-man switches, it was up to me to

stop the bombs.

“Redirect acknowledged,” I said. “Defuse ordnance, then get

hostages. Wilco. Out.”

I kept under the speed of sound until I hit the inner harbor. At that

point, speeding up made the water hard like concrete when I stomped

it and I really cut loose. A trail of superheated steam would follow me

all the way to New York.

I circled southeast around P-town, then southwest to come in

under Long Island.

The scene in New York was like King Kong without the ape.

McFly’s SWAT guys hovered in their little flying bucket things, a

cloud of tiny lethal dots orbiting the Empire State Building.

Too late to worry about property damage. I vibrated in tune with

the speedfield so each window and door that I came to blew apart

from the shock as I touched it.

As I cleared bombs from major structural points, I worried what

I’d find up on the eighty-sixth floor. The terrorists were likely using

automatic weapons to mow down their hostages. I wasn’t good in

Don’t Read in the Closet – volume four 94

close quarters like that, where a hail of bullets would be fired at point-

blank range and I wouldn’t be able to move fast enough to save many

people. That’s why I wasn’t assigned this op to begin with. Of course it

was important to save the most lives by keeping the building from

falling, but I didn’t want to think about how many innocent people

would be lost because of my limitations.

I finished with the bombs and made it to eighty-six while the

terrorists’ heads were still mostly human-shaped and they still stood in

poses as if firing on the hostages.

Only there were no hostages.

Civilians had been trapped there. Loose bonds, discarded clothing,

and dropped pens, keys, and personal electronics told me that. But no

more. Just to be sure, I went all the way to the top of the building.

Nothing.

“Control, this is Photon. ESB clear. Over.” I did not add,
what the

fuck?
Down the stairs, out the door, back down 34th street to the

water.

“Roger. Redirect ends. Return to Boston. Over.”

“Wilco. Out.”

Nearly thirty seconds had elapsed. Back in Boston, I had a lotta

fuckin bullets to cope with. Good thing Perforator couldn’t aim worth

a damn while Hardlight hammered him.

I plucked a few of Badboy’s cherry bombs out of the air and

headed for him, planning to stick the grenades into his bike’s tailpipes.

Before I got close enough, the blue blur hit me again.

Just like I hoped.

This time I held on. We crunched into the middle of Congress

Street with the other guy on top of me, cherry bombs bouncing around

us, and for an instant I saw his blue and silver suit’s cheesy lightning

bolt motif. I rolled with the impact to get on top of him and raised my

fist, vibrating it so I’d hit real hard.

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