Firedrake Chapter 17

-February 13-
- Atlanta, Georgia, 0946 hours-

Drake stood in stunned silence for a moment, looking at Patriot as he walked away from the shattered podium. Any thoughts he had entertained about the former hero having lost his edge vanished in an instant and his scaled face split wide with a toothy grin. Beside him, Emile began a slow round of applause that was joined by no one else.

“That was brilliant,” Emile breathed as Patriot gripped him by the shoulder - though whether in a spirit of camaraderie or as a need for support was unclear.

“Yeah. Let’s get you the hell out of here before this mob kills you,” Drake added. “This what you needed extra muscle for? In case you pissed off the whole state of Georgia?”

A gunshot sounded from within the crowd and pandemonium ensued. Panicking at the threat, people began trampling one another in a mad rush to escape the potential killing ground.

“You see? They’re already trying for you,” Drake laughed as his wings flexed and he jumped mightily into the air. He gave a near-demonic grin and casual wave to the television camera polite enough to film his leap, then looked for the source of the shot.

Behind him, Patriot leapt from his position to rocket past Drake and dart into the crowd, where he began rescuing those people who were in danger of being killed by the fleeing mob. Emile still stood on the stage, but his arms were raised to the sky. There was a palpable presence around the Frenchman, and people within fifty yards felt their hair rise in response to the power he summoned. The sky began to darken with thick clouds. Above them, flashes of lightning flickered menacingly.

“Great. Make it rain. That’ll help,” Drake snorted, banking slightly left and downward as he caught a glimpse of a handgun in the possession of a member of Humanity First. He forced himself to remember that the protester was a human and checked the strength of the flying tail swipe that could have crushed the man’s bones, using the barbed tip of his tail to slap instead. It was still a forceful enough blow to send the weapon spinning and the protester sprawling. With a chuckle, Drake pumped his wings and gained altitude.

In the crowd, geneboosters who had made their way to Atlanta to hear Patriot speak made themselves known. A thin, pale man dressed in a black turtleneck gripped the sides of his head and held his breath. Concentric waves of energy radiated outward from his position like shock waves after an explosion, knocking flat dozens of those around him. Blood ran from his nose and mouth in response to the forces he unleashed. A cage of flame, springing from the outstretched hands of a teenaged girl with an unlit cigarette dangling from the corner of her mouth, spread to encircle the Humanity First group, narrowly avoiding clipping Drake’s right foot. A seven-foot hand of iridescent blue vapors reached out from the forehead of a laughing Asian woman; a smoky sapphire tentacle that gripped and restrained seemingly at random. Those that it wrapped around fell to the ground, unable to move as the touch of the booster sapped their energy. After the fifth one dropped, a dazzling bolt of focused white light took the woman in the left side of her head, knocking her down and out. The source of the bolt, an African-American man with close-cropped hair, turned his attention to other threats a second later.

“This place is turning into a doom-freak salad,” Drake called as he twisted in the air to avoid the flying form of Patriot. The blue-clad hero nodded. His arms were filled with the limp form of a young woman who had a boot print on the side of her face.

A massive cracking sound rent the air and Drake glanced toward Emile, ready to shout encouragement for the lightning, when a shadow suddenly entered his field of vision. An enormous oak tree was falling his way. Torn apart by a blast of energy emanating from somewhere, it had been split cleanly at the four-foot thickness of its trunk and was now dropping directly toward the crowd. Raising his arms, Drake grabbed at the mass of branches that approached him at breakneck speed. The impact was tremendous. Had he been on the ground, it might have been enough to knock him flat. In the air, though, he had neither stability nor ability to brace himself. He was swatted from the sky as though no more than a gnat, slamming heavily to the pavement. Thick red blood welled from his snout where it impacted, and he felt a front tooth give way. He spat a chunk of crimson-tinged enamel, hoping against hope that the media had not captured that particular image. Slithering from beneath the enveloping tree, he saw that the majority of the citizens had escaped from its fall, and those that had not were still moving. That was good enough for the moment. He shook his head to clear it as more gunshots rang out.

Running police officers answered those shots with ones of their own, turning the street into a deadly crossfire that Drake hurried to vacate. He jumped from the ground, unfurling his wings once more. He felt a slug glance off his flank, and turned his head in an attempt to locate the shooter.

A ray of golden light flashed down from the sky, hurled like a spear from the hands of a white-clad man who appeared to ride a translucent winged horse a hundred meters above the scene. The ray struck a teenaged thug with a bandana pulled over the lower half of his face, his right hand wrapped around the butt of a Colt pistol, blasting him with trip hammer force to the ground. An officer dived forward, knocking away the weapon and rolling the unconscious gang member over to apply handcuffs before the teen could awaken. Several others with the same bandanas scattered and a few managed to escape the pursuing officers.

“Who invited you, slick?” Drake shouted at the rider, rubbing the back of a hand across his sore snout.

“Let them fall before the might of Apollo!” called the rider in response, a wide grin spreading across his face as yet another bolt sizzled into existence in his right hand.

“Yeah, yeah. Where were you when that tree hit me?” laughed Drake. Apollo was another of Hart’s operatives, and Drake was all too willing to let the man continue working his own way. Why he was there was a matter Drake figured he would let slide for now.

At the end of the street Drake saw a group of the US Navy SEALs that had been brought in caught in a pitched battle with a booster larger than Drake and covered in mottled grey fur. It was screaming in a tone that carried even over the automatic weapons that rattled in the hands of the SEALs. Close to where it stood an armored personnel carrier lay on its side, smoke drifting from the engine.

“Yo, Apollo! Grendel’s over there!” Drake shouted, pointing toward the fight. “Do your thing!”

With a nod, the rider planted his heels in the flanks of the phantasmal horse and sailed through the sky in their direction. A bolt shot from his hand, aimed at the furry booster. Trusting in the combined strength of the genebooster and the SEALs, Drake returned his attention to the street below him. It had become a scene from Hell. Bodies lay sprawled everywhere that the booster could see. Some were alive, others not. Horrific powers lanced back and forth across the street, the smell of cordite drifted on the wind, and sirens fought to be heard over screams and gunfire.

Back behind the fallen tree, a bald man in a tan trench coat lifted a submachine gun from within the folds of the jacket, snapped out a collapsing stock, and raised it to his shoulder. The police scattered for cover as the weapon began to roar. A half-dozen running citizens were struck down before Drake could react, and a second later, the stream of slugs played across the form of the ebony-skinned booster who had taken out the Asian energy projector. The man’s body jerked and tumbled, caught in a scissoring tear of bullets. Drake pulled his wings in tightly and shot downward like a rocket, arcing upward as he neared the ground. His hands reached out and grabbed at the fabric of the shooter’s coat, slicing into it with his claws and getting a tight grip. He jerked the man from his feet and lifted him into the air, wings working to counter the additional load. The bald head glanced down, then up, and Drake read the terror in the man’s eyes as he beheld the drastically non-human genebooster who had snatched him.

“What up, slick?” Drake asked, shaking the man none too gently from side to side to emphasize that it was in fact he who was up. The man shuddered and tried to bring up the MP5, clutched in a hand bearing the DNA tattoo that Drake had learned long ago was a mark of Humanity First. Drake simply let go and the man shrieked in horror as he began to fall.

“Not too smart, are you?” Drake called as he reached down and grabbed the man again before he could actually fall any distance. He didn’t exercise any caution to avoid spiking his claws into the flesh that he lifted. The sub gun fell to clatter on the ground below. “Play nice or it’ll hurt. A lot.”

“Goddamned booster freak!” snarled the shooter, causing Drake to spit in derision. The spittle was still colored red, and when he bared his teeth at his prisoner, they were bloody. He was about to make a remark when he saw the man go white with fear as he looked toward the stage. Drake glanced that way to see what had occurred. Emile stood there, outlined in strange silver phosphorescence. His head was thrown back and he was chanting something in French. Beside him was the pale man in the black turtleneck.

The bolt of lightning hit Drake in the middle of his back, but the surge of power played across every bone he had.

-February 13-
-Atlanta, Georgia, 0949 hours-

Patriot dived down from the darkening sky to carry away another pair of injured civilians. He berated himself for having said what he did, but it was time that people knew the truth. Lady Justice had been human just like everyone else. She was not a Goddess and had no delusions to that effect. The constant demands on her time and emotional well-being had killed her long before the anonymous assassin had destroyed her physical body. His knowledge came from deep personal experience, as his love for her had been one of those demands for time and emotional commitment.

For more than twenty years he had looked for the parties responsible for Alicia’s death. This, as much as anything else, had led to the distance that separated him from Shae Ling, as well as her eventual departure. He had become his own worst enemy due to his single-mindedness., and now, in an effort to assuage his own conscience as much as bring Alicia’s killer or killers into the light, he had started this mess. He had expected more than a few problems, which was why he had chosen to prevail upon Colleen Hart to provide additional assistance. His request for Apollo to conceal himself within the crowd had been a practical one, but including Drake had been borne from a desire not only to work with the booster mostly responsible for saving him from the illness which had so nearly destroyed him, but also to stand alongside someone who, to Patriot, represented the new generation of geneboosters - those that would soon replace him.

From the corner of his eye, he saw Emile standing on the stage with his head thrown back, shouting in his own tongue to the gathering storm clouds. Elementaire, he had been called when they were younger and more entrenched in ’the game’ as they called it. ’Elemental’. Gifted somehow with the ability to channel the primal energies of nature itself. His abilities had waned over the years since his retirement, but he was still a potent ally. The constantly-thickening clouds overhead were proof of that. The familiar silver glow surrounded him as his talents kicked in. It had been there in the café, albeit not as obviously, and Patriot grinned as suddenly it struck him just where the winds had come from today. He had felt the gathering power during his speech when the ray of sunlight had illuminated him at a critical point, and he knew then that Emile was watching over him. No one else could have arranged such a perfect image, and even those able would not have had the flair for the dramatic that Emile possessed. He had been not only a partner to Patriot, but a close friend to Angelo Salvatore.

Patriot touched down and released the citizens into the care of an EMS crew that had taken cover behind the engine compartment of their heavy truck, and then turned back in time to see Drake struck down by a bolt of lightning. So close was it that the afterimage seared itself onto his retinas as a streak, and he blinked away blue flashes as the thunderclap split the air. Nearby windows cracked.

“Emile!” he shouted over the echoes. “What are you doing?”

The next bolt took Patriot in the right shoulder, blasting him backward for thirty feet and slamming him into the frame of a parked Honda. The vehicle’s alarm activated, a feeble bleating compared to the jackhammer pounding of pain in Patriot’s body. His limbs trembled as the electricity worked its way through his system. Clenching his fists, he felt the power inside him come to the fore. Jagged pulses of energy danced around his wrists and hands as he stalked toward the stage. In the street, he could see the dragon on all fours, shaking his head back and forth in pain.

Costume shredded by the blast of lightning, Patriot advanced up the steps to the stage, casually avoiding the news crews with practiced ease. Their camera eyes swiveled to follow him as he moved, smoke drifting from the smoldering edges of the fabric. As he reached the top of the steps, he came face to face with a man dressed in black. A turtleneck sweater was up high on his throat, and his face was a mask of hatred. Ribbons of blood ran from his nose and mouth, and there were trickles of it visible at the corners of his eyes. The man looked at Patriot with eyes as flat and devoid of life as any Patriot had ever seen. Behind the man, Emile was sending a shower of hailstones down onto the street, slashing and hammering at the skins of any and all exposed to the downpour.

“Stand your ground, hero,” the man sneered, twisting the title until it was something filthy. Patriot looked down at his own body, stunned to find his forward progress halted. He glared down at the pale man.

“Who are you?” he asked.

The man grinned maniacally. “You may call me China. I am the man who controlled your French friend over there,” he said as he jerked a thumb over his shoulder toward Emile, who was by now screaming his words in a voice gone ragged from strain. The pale man laughed then.

“I am the man who started this riot. I am the man who sends you visions of your past.”

“Alicia,” Patriot whispered, jaw dropping. “It was -”

“Yes. I used your memories to bring you here. I used you to bring this pot of fear and hatred to a boil,” the man continued. He swept an arm expansively across the crowd. “I am the man who will expose you for the fraud you are!” he yelled suddenly, pointing his finger at Patriot as though it held all the authority in the world. His voice rose into a bellow as he did so, and his eyes and nostrils flared wide at the same time. Years of dealing with crazed boosters gave Patriot the experience to sense the impending attack. Unable to move in response, he simply steeled himself and waited.

A green fist larger than a pot roast took China in the side of the head with a resounding smack, sending him sailing across the stage to slide across the flooring. Patriot felt the power restraining him release suddenly and took a step toward Emile, who dropped to the ground, too exhausted by the continual use of his talents to even stand.

“When you have to shoot, shoot. Don’t talk,” Drake said in a slurred Mexican accent. He shrugged at Patriot. “All right, so my Tuco imitation isn’t all that great,” he admitted.

“Yeah? The Muhammad Ali one was pretty decent,” Patriot said with a grin.

“Go check on Frenchie,” Drake prompted, slapping a huge hand on Patriot’s shoulder. He slipped cuffs from his belt and turned to head for the man in the turtleneck.

With a nod and a smile, Patriot turned to aid his fallen friend. He had only taken a couple of steps when he heard the voice of the pale man.

“Take him,” said the voice. Patriot turned to see Drake glaring at him. The look in the yellow eyes was far from the friendly one he had just seen, and there was an audible hiss as his long jaws opened. A roiling gout of flame belched forth from the scaled mouth to envelop Patriot.

-February 13-
-Brooklyn, New York, 1051 hours-

The sudden surge of action had kept Saul and Mick glued to the tiny television, as it had people all over the world. The images wobbled constantly, and it was obvious to anyone watching that the camera operators had abandoned any kind of mount for their equipment, choosing to carry it in order to remain mobile. Still, there was no shortage of gasps in New York or anywhere else when they saw the blast of fire strike Patriot.

Saul murmured in prayer and beside him Mick Ashton followed suit. Both of them had seen the hero sustain a number of injuries over the years - there were in fact several books on the market documenting many of them in graphic detail - but the blast of fire from the mouth of the dragon was so intense it momentarily blinded the camera broadcasting to their station. Both men leaned even closer to the screen, their heads almost touching as they silently willed the image to clear so that they could see what had befallen the hero.

The scene returned after a couple of tense seconds. Saul realized his prayer had stopped and he was holding his breath. He forced himself to slowly exhale as the camera shot widened to display the battle site. The dragon had stopped his attack and the stage was silent. Even those in the street had ceased their battles at the sight of the flame surrounding Patriot. The pictures on the screen as the camera panned slowly from left to right were mirrored by broadcasters across the globe.

Emile lay sprawled where he fell, one hand reaching desperately toward Patriot’s last known position, tears of frustration streaming from his eyes. The shattered podium smoked where stray flame had licked across its splintered edges. Overturned chairs were strewn everywhere, their owners having departed in haste following the initial gunshots. The camera panned back across the stage and Saul caught himself holding his breath again.

Patriot stood, arms folded calmly across his chest. The majority of his uniform had burned away, but not a single hair had been scorched by the blast. He was slowly shaking his head from side to side as though scolding the dragon.

-February 13-
-Atlanta, Georgia, 0952 hours-

“You know, I’ve about had enough of this,” Patriot said in a clear tone. “Just say what you came to say and get it over with.”

The man in black stepped from his position of concealment beside the dragon and pointed again. “I want you to admit to these people the truth about Lady Justice!” he crowed.

Patriot looked puzzled for a moment. His eyes shifted back and forth in confusion, followed by his shoulders shrugging. “Think I just did,” he said. He tilted his head toward the charnel scene in the streets. “You can see where that got me.”

“Tell them the truth!” demanded China, jumping up and down in place like an angry child. Patriot raised an eyebrow and looked toward Drake. The scaled booster’s eyes were glazed and smoke still filtered out from beneath his teeth.

“What truth? I already told them the truth.”

“Dragon-man, go tear the arms off that French bastard over there,” the man ordered. Drake turned toward Emile.

“Wait! Don’t hurt him,” Patriot urged. He extended his hands, palm out. “I’ll do what you want. Just don’t.”

“Fine. Then you get over there and tell all those people just who Lady Justice was to you. Tell them about your affair with her. Tell them how you left her. Then tell them how you killed her!” China demanded, frothing at the mouth as he raved.

“God, man, were you even listening when I spoke? I said as much already!”

“I heard the lies you spun. I heard you cover your own actions with platitudes and general accusations toward the people. Not once did I hear you admit that you struck the fatal blow.”

“Why do you not just force him to say what you wish?” asked Emile in a voice as much groan as speech.

“Because he can’t,” answered Patriot. “They haven’t made the telepath yet that could get a tight grip on my head. That’s why I was able to drop the Mindmaster years back.”

The pale-skinned man glared at him and spoke slowly, venomous anger dripping from every slowly emphasized word. “That. Was. My. FATHER!” he yelled, stepping forward to swing a wild punch at Patriot. The big booster let it connect, scarcely able to feel the blow on his toughened skin. Behind the telepath, Patriot saw a new life in Drake’s eyes as the psychic shifted his attention and rage to Patriot. One of the yellow orbs winked.

“So you want to frame me for Alicia’s death because I killed your father? Sorry, son. You’ve got a lot of balls to try it, I’ll give you that, but that’s just not how it works.”

“I’m not framing anyone,” China said, his voice turning from rage to triumph. “Maybe you shouldn’t be so sure about someone getting into your head.”

Patriot felt his muscles seize up in response to an unspoken command. China’s voice echoed in his head though no words issued from his lips.

“You destroyed my father, hero,” China said again, once more spitting the last word so derisively it hurt. “So I made sure you lost someone you loved as well. You, Manifest, Tsunami. I controlled you all. Who else could have taken her out but those she trusted?”

Images swam before Patriot’s eyes and he was in the alley, staring down at the white-clad body of Lady Justice and seeing her as though through someone else’s eyes. Beside him were the uniformed members of his old team that China had mentioned. The hands that were still clenched at his sides were pulsing with the energy he had long ago come to know as his own. Something about the picture was wrong, but he could not put his finger on it.

“It was you who landed the killing blow, Patriot,” whispered China’s voice. “Think. Remember. It was -”

The projected voice fell silent as a ghastly scream erupted from China’s mouth. Patriot shook off the fuzzy feelings in his head and snapped back to reality. The telepath was being lifted into the air, held in a grip of devastating strength and terrible accuracy by the reptilian booster that stood behind him. Patriot could see long yellow claws tightening their hold on the man’s crotch as a fearsome grin split the scaled jaws wide. With one hand, Drake easily hoisted China nine feet into the air, and then slammed him to the ground. The telepath tried in vain to protect his tortured groin, but his hands never made it that far down as his eyes rolled back and he passed out.

“Looks like he ain’t got a lot now, huh?” Drake asked. He retrieved another set of cuffs from his belt and quickly applied them. Tearing a strip off China’s own turtleneck, he bound the telepath’s eyes as well.

“Think that’ll keep him from using his powers?” Patriot asked as he helped Emile to his feet.

“Aaah, I don’t know,” Drake answered with a shrug. “Keep him from seeing which hand I’m gonna smack him with, though. I’ll get a medic to pump him full of something sleepy and we’ll have him in a DOJ holding cell before it wears off. What about you? You okay?”

“I’ll be fine,” Patriot replied. He smacked his lips as though trying to clear a bad taste in his mouth. There was a faraway look in his eyes. “Just… he just left me with a few things to think about, that’s all.”

The scene in the streets had calmed considerably now that the psychic influence of China was no longer being brought to bear on the frightened citizenry. Police and firefighters were moving in to clean up the damage. What remained of the SEAL sweep team was working its way down the street, subduing anyone and everyone who appeared capable of posing a threat. Apollo was flying away, carrying the body of Grendel draped across the rump of his horse, though whether it was dead or merely unconscious was anyone’s guess.

The news crews moved in, microphones waving before them like the antennae of a thousand insects. Questions were being shouted at a furious pace, and Patriot looked at them with a helpless expression as they demanded some kind of quote from the hero.

“I’ll handle this, slick,” Drake said. “I’m good at this.” He hefted the unconscious telepath onto one shoulder and opened his jaws in a sick grin guaranteed to instill fear as he looked into the cameras.

“I got your quote right here,” he began with a laugh.