Long Hot Summer 5: Savior

by Nicholas Ahlhelm

Annabelle Montalvo sat in an eight by eight white-walled room. She had a bed and a desk, and nothing else. No paper, no pencils, no books, no sign of human life. A large metal door sat across from the dead. Three times a day (or so she assumed), a slot opened on the door and a meal came through.

She counted twenty-six of the meals so far. If her time estimations were correct, she had been in the white room for almost nine days.

Nine days with no human contact, no entertainment of any kind. This was the kind of torture that broke men’s wills. She knew that intellectually. But she couldn’t stop herself from yearning to cry out, to beg whoever was doing this to let her go free.

For the hundredth time in the week plus since she came here, she stood up and examined the solid steel door. She saw no weaknesses in the metal or in the frame. She already spent hours trying to knock it down by brute force. Whoever her captor might be, they clearly knew of her super-strength. The metal didn’t even buckle at her blows.

She sat back down on the bed and buried her head in her hands. She let the tears flow freely down her face.

*****

Lance Larter held the crumpled note in his hand as he looked around the empty lot. Cloaked in shadows by a massive parking structure just a few yards away, at least the spot offered a brief respite from the oppressive July heat.

Still, it was eleven o’clock now and the heat would only get worse as the day continued. He wanted to get this meeting over with sooner rather than later. He looked out towards the streets, but saw no sign of Nightbird. This didn’t surprise him much. She seemed the type to stick to shadows. But he still wished she would show. He needed out of the heat and back to bed. His surveillance on the Church of Hope and Truth’s complex ran from the late evening in to the early morning hours. He didn’t want to miss a minute of it tonight if he could help it.

A blast of energy struck him square in the chest. He lost his footing as he fell back, surprised. Otherwise he was unarmed.

His silver and blue chainmail sheathed his body. He wasn’t sure how it appeared. He thought he needed to summon it.

Apparently it works as an early warning device as well, he thought. And it keeps me alive.

Caliburn appeared in his hand as he tracked down the source of the energy blast.

Four men stood side by side. The largest loomed over the rest, a massive metal-skinned man at least eight feet in height. His face was framed by a square before the rest of his head swooped back in the shape of an anvil.

In front of him stood a scrawny long-haired guy right out of a grunge video. To his left was a dark haired emo kid with some kind of black energy oozing from his chest.

The final man was dressed from head to toe in blue and yellow spandex. A pair of rollerblades extended from his seamless boots. Three spinning blades, much like the wheels of his rollerblades, extended from the wrists of his costume.

“Speedskate, Anvil, get him!”

The skater and anvil-head came at him. Speedskate moved much faster, almost faster than his eye could follow. He brought Caliburn up to defend himself just in time to avoid being sliced by Speedskate’s wrist blades. The skater whisked off and away, just as Anvil barreled in to him.

Only his armor kept him from a very painful death as the metal-man charged right over him. He came up behind Anvil, sore, but not too sore to swing his blade in to the metal-man’s back. Caliburn sliced a line down Anvil’s back. A silvery substance very much like mercury in appearance seeped from the wound. Anvil cried out in pain.

“He hurt me, Trip! He hurt me!”

“Hurt him back! Hurt him like he hurt you!”

Anvil looked at his leader. “I’m not sure. He’s still got the sword….”

“…and I’m not afraid to use it,” Sword said. He waved the blade in Anvil’s direction. The big man backed away.

A blast of black energy caught Sword in the side, just below the arm that held his blade. He dropped to the ground and clutched at his sides.

Speedskate streaked towards him. Sword covered his bare head just as the blades struck. He felt them cut through his chain mail. The undercoat squeezed hard against his ribs, but kept his skin from being torn open.

He pushed away the pain and swung Caliburn wildly at his attacker. Speedskate dashed away.

Trip moved in and raised both hands towards him. Sword held his blade at the ready as he closed distance with his grungy foe.

A wave of vertigo raced through his body. His knees went weak as the world started to roll and shift in his vision. Trip seemed little more than a blurry, brown-clothed blob. Sword dropped to one knee, but it did little to slow the world spinning around him.

He felt the rush of wind as Speedskate moved to strike. He tried to throw his arms up, but no longer could be sure what direction up even was.

He saw the shine of Speedskate’s spinning blades as it closed with his head. His mind focused on the whirling metal. He couldn’t look away.

A red-and-black ball of metal struck the speedster in the chest. It exploded in to a steel wire net. Speedskate cried out in pain as the strings of metal dug in to his skin at high speed. He collapsed to the ground as he became completely entangled in the net.

Another ball streaked down, but this one didn’t explode as it caught Trip in the chest. The skinny grunger cried out in pain as he coupled over.

The waves of vertigo fell away from Sword. His eyes turned to anger as he stood back up and raised Caliburn. Trip clutched at his injured chest as he saw Sword run towards him. Sword raised Caliburn high and brought it down to cleave Trip in two.

The blade stopped an inch above Trip’s head. Trip’s eyes were wide as he stared up at the gleaming sword above him.

Sword drove his chain mail-covered knee up in to Trip’s jaw. The grunger’s eyes rolled back in to his head before he dropped hard to the cement.

Another blast of energy soared wide just a few inches from his skull. Sword turned to stare down the energy-spitter. But the shooter was already in trouble.

Nightbird moved with a dancer’s grace as she brought her boot up in to her foe’s right kidney. He cried out in pain, but she didn’t let up. A right hook to the jaw came next, followed by an elbow to the top of the head. As he staggered back, she brought her foot up and around and cracked him in the skull with a vicious kick. Blood flowed freely from his broken face as he fell.

Sword turned towards Anvil. The giant looked scared as he raised both hands above his head.

“I surrender! I surrender!”

Nightbird looked at him. “That was easy.”

“What the hell? Did you just sucker me in to an ambush?”

“It wasn’t me,” Nightbird said. “You’re lucky I was following you. If I hadn’t been, you would be a smear on this pavement right now.”

“Wait, the note wasn’t from you?”

“Note? What note?”

“Damn it. I’ve been had,” Sword said. “I bet the damn Church sent these scum after me.”

Nightbird nodded. “So what do you plan to do about it?”

Sword looked at Anvil and his fallen allies. With a grimace, he looked back at Nightbird.

“I said I’d give you time, so I’ll give it to you. But it’s ticking away. I’m ready to bring these bastards down.”

Nightbird nodded. “I understand. I have a couple contacts that think they’ve found a way in. I’ll let you know in the next few days how things are going.”

“I’m done playing games, Nightbird. Whether you find a path or not, I’m going in to that place even if it kills me.”

Nightbird said nothing else.

Sirens rose in the background. “I think the authorities will like to see our friends,” Nightbird said. “And I think it’s best for both of us to be gone when they arrive.”

“Agreed.”

Nightbird turned and ran back towards the parking garage. Sword let his armor slip away as he walked towards the street.

My patience is beyond thin, he thought. And Arthur’s life can only hold for so much longer. I need the Oparian Eye, and I need it soon. And no heretics will stop me.

*****

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