The Miserable Ones 5

Freddie held out his arm and I raced over. He caught me in a one-armed hug and jumped straight up.

One midair, his other arm lashed out, seizing a brick pillar and hauling us in and around onto the walkway circling the shower, opposite the gunmen. He grunts as I feel two impacts, these guys are fast and accurate. Well, it's not like normal bullets are going to do more than bruise either of us.

On which note, it's probably a good idea to keep their attention on us.

Freddie whirls which his pistol out and barking. A brick pillar opposite us shatters into its component pieces as a cowboy themed guy- thick blue shirt, white cowboy hat and red bandanna over his face- throws himself back, cursing.

TSEEEEW!

Right into the open where I can nail him.

"Bro!" A second cowboy, dressed the same as the first, charges into the open. Freddie hops up onto the railing, fires a bullet into the brickwork behind him, then rockets across the gap. He collides with the cowboy and they vanish into a rolling tangle of limbs that resolves itself after a moment into Freddie kneeling with the guy in a sleeper hold. Good man.

I run over the long way and cover the door while he finishes up. Then I stun the guy to be extra sure.

"Clear, up here." I call down. "How's your man, Petit?"

"Dead."

"Dead-dead, or dead-until-I-give-him-elixir? You know what, never mind. We'll be right down."

Freddie conveys me down and I see the back of the man's head has been blown out into his helmet. Apparently by a ricochet off the floor. At least one of those gunmen is either good enough to qualify as a superpower or has the devil's own luck. I can't fix this, but I still give it a shot before shaking my head. Never hurts to try.

To help people, that is. In certain circumstances, anyway. I've hurt an awful lot of people trying various things, some of them were even well-meaning.

Freddie and I boost back up to the upper level to provide overwatch while the team advances into the wings. Blocks and blocks of cells, all... empty? Now where did everyone go?

There isn't room enough to pack everyone in one wing, I don't think. Not unless you packed them in cells like sardines in a can. I really, really hope Lock-Up hasn't turned the convicts loose or buried them all in a mass grave.

Suddenly a hail of bullets struck the two of us, doubling me over and making a godawful racket on the metal walkway and railing. I looked up to see a hulking man with a bright red gun, black full-face mask with big red crescents about the eyes.

KGBeast. Anatoli Kyz-something-or-other, unpronounceable. Not Kamazarov. Russia's greatest assassin, trained by a secretive semi-rogue KGB faction called the Hammer, after the Great Politics Mess-Up he went into business for himself. Lost a hand in his first clash with the bat, and where most people would get a prosthetic or maybe a hook, Anatoli designed a custom submachine gun to fit to his arm. With a bayonet.

We'd hired Anatoli once, before it became clear he broke our cherished "no pscyho-killers" rule.

"I got him." Fred stepped forward and leaped up, towards where he was, three levels up.

"Careful! Don't let--" A grenade rattled around my feet, bringing me up short.

WHUMPFF!

The explosion threw me back, and I sprawled across the floor of an empty cell. There was a harsh buzzing, and it and all the cell doors slid closed.

Don't let them split us up. I swear, I was just about to say it.

Takes me a moment to get up. Wet suit and a lot of my coat are shredded, but I still have my pockets full of literature. Okay, a cell door is no obstacle with my... phaser... which is outside the cell, grenades going off in your face not being conducive to holding onto crap. Alright then.

Time for some light reading.

Shadows of Mindor, flip ahead of the point I really want. Clear out all distractions and just read. Got to be able to picture the scene in such detail, reach and one lightsaber.

snap-hiss! vmmmmm- prshshshshsh!

So much for the bars. I retrieve my phaser, pocket the saber in case I need it again.

Freddie is long gone, of course. Anatoli better hope he can run because Freddie is fast and very persistent. No sign of the SWAT-types either.

Okay, so far this is feeling entirely too scripted. These guys had a plan for us if we showed up, unless it was coincidence that someone had their finger on the cell-door button just as I got tossed in. Which seems a lot more unlikely. So what's the next step, and how do I thwart it?

Survive, first. Then rendezvous with your companions.

Right, James. After getting people on their own is the best time for the killing stroke. So step one is to escape the trap and whatever Bolton has that he thinks can kill me. Now what might--

A fire alarm sounds, irregularly placed sprinklers come to life. Odd, but not terribly threatening unless there's an inferno here- A wall on the ground buckles and collapses inwards, and I was so very wrong.

The thing is man-shaped, but much too big, hulking shoulders at least eight feet off the ground and about that wide apart, bone-white flesh and hair. Solomon Grundy, from the nursery rhyme for teaching the days of the week. Originally Cyrus Gold, millionaire businessman/crime boss of the Gilded Age, murdered and dumped in Gotham's haunted Slaughter Swamp, came back decades later as Zombie Hulk to fight the original WWII Green Lantern. Grundy is strong and tough enough to trade punches with Superman, regenerates too, and his mentality runs the rage from small vicious child to Hulk Smash!

And, I recall while firing my phaser at full blast, he absorbs energy.

He charges and takes a running leap up at my level. That buys me about a half second where he's in midair and can't move or meaningfully react. I trust my instincts and hop the railing, dropping one story to the concrete floor. Buying time.

Grundy smashes into the cellblock with a cloud of pulverized dust, bellowing and already scrambling out as-

I smoothly take the reigns from my flighty counterpart, and take deadly aim.

TSEEEW! TSEEEW! TSEEEW!

A phaser really is a magnificent and flexible weapon. And if you cannot harm your opponent directly with one, why, you simply must use it as a tool to manipulate your environment. Such as bringing a concrete ceiling crashing down on a rampaging brute. He closes much of the distance between us before achieving intercept with the plummeting debris.

It shan't hold the beast long, but this too is a form of purchasing precious time. The plan for overwhelming physical force is remarkably akin to that of mystical power, retreat, buy time, and acquire the weapons needed to succeed. Use brute force against mages and magic against strapping roustabouts.

Sadly, a piece of that same debris has shattered and affixed my leg. I ignore the injury as irrelevant, save for the impact to mobility and pull a book of children's fairy tales as quickly as I can, trying to capture Jonathan's love of stories I can help with that and picturing the scene where the axe is embedded in a chimney, voila! A Full Axe.

I absently brush off debris that weighs more than I, feeling my leg twist and snap back into place, even as my opponent beings to rise.

"Now, creature, we shall do this my way." The axe makes me his physical match, and he could never contend with my wit. Advantage, Bookworm.

I rarely say this, but God bless the Irish! They may be stupid, superstitious, half-christian savages, but none can deny they're a people of singers and storytellers. And for a magic storyteller, they make a fine arsenal.

The white monstrosity leads with a clumsy, telegraphed right haymaker that is nonetheless quick and with astonishing strength behind it. I sway around it, slashing with the axe as I go. Strength does not always translate into durability, though the axe grants a degree, and while I am confident that I can heal from most any harm- though who knows what may chance should my head be removed or my brains dashed on the floor?- it can inflict, best not to give it the advantage of my recovery time. I resolve to evade every blow, using my speed, skill and wit to maximum advantage.

First though, my foe is off-balance, and dodging his punch has set me inside his guard. I give him a sharp jab to the side, in the vicinity of the kidneys, ducking the inevitable backhand so I can spring into an uppercut utilizing the explosive force of my entire body and lifting the massive man from the ground.

In my youth, I was a champion boxer at Cambridge, and have many times had need to physically demonstrate my authority. In this new world of magic and marvels, it seems I am a vintage that only improves with age.

Don't get cocky, James.

The beast hits the floor, and instead of scrambling awkwardly to his feet, raises his fits and strikes the ground hard enough to rattle the entire prison to its foundations.

That buys him time to climb to his feet, while I'm struggling to keep my own footing, and he charges again. I dodge left this time, no point in being predictable.

This proved a mistake, as his arm catches me and smashes me into the ground, my axe embedded in his forearm.

Terror. Don't let him get the axe! I ignore it and focus on working it loose while the thing bellows in my face. Disgusting creature.

Then I shoved him upward. Normally, this would be a futile move on anything with such size and weight pinning me to the ground, but especially potent strength changes everything and he flew a hundred feet into the air. Funny how it works when strength is so disconnected from weight.

When he came down, I was waiting and swung the axe at him like a bat, with the flat end, on the calculation the impact would hurt more. He went flying into a wall, shattering concrete and bending steel rebar, and I was upon him in an instant, hopping to avoid his ground-pound.

For the next few minutes of absolute focus, there was no James and no John, there was only me, Bookworm. The impossible man, dancing madly on the lip of the volcano and never quite falling in. I dodged or blocked every punch, and gave as good as I got, my fist as deadly or more than the edge of the axe. Not that a large bladed weapon didn't have some uses, like taking out Achilles tendons. I left Grundy crippled but alive, or undead, as the case may be, before moving on to find Freddie or the team.

As it happens, Freddie was standing over Anatoli's battered and unconscious body and doing brutal things to Steeljacket. The man- don't recall his real name- is a crazed cannibal with fragile, birdlike bones, which he compensates for with some heavy bulltproof armor, which someone helpfully provided him with. But metal armor is nobody's friend when you're fighting Mistborn like Freddie.

"Hey boss. That you, made the ground shake?" He summoned Steeljacket towards him, then sidestepped and clotheslined him.

"Nah, Grundy. Had to get a little rough with him. Still got your radio?"

"Sure." He kicked Steeljacket again and handed it over. "Stay down, or get more of the same."

I pressed the button. "Petit, where the hell are you?"

"Basement tunnels, got caught in a trap door. God, I think half the prison population is down here. We had to shoot several when they tried to rush us."

Blast and botheration. "Are you secure right now?"

"At the moment. Kind of an armed standoff, and we've got wounded."

"Freddie, go bail them out, I'm sure I've got a book with rope in it here. I'll bum-rush Admin before Bolton thinks of anything else clever."

"You sure that's a smart idea, splitting up?"

"No," Here we go, one of the Hardy Boys books I keep for rope, guns, lockpicks and safecracking tools. "but almost nothing we've done since breaching has been smart, and it's all worked out for us. Hate to break the streak." He gives me a look. "I'll be fine. Take the rope and go."

He does, but not without a backwards glance. I pull out a phial of Flying Solution from the Ogre Downstairs and take to the air, liberally blasting ceilings and walls out of the way with my phaser.

Bolton isn't in the Warden's office. But he's close enough to be easily found, running in the halls in his balaclava and modified SWAT armor. I do believe that's against the rules of this place.

"Hello, Lyle. It would make me very happy if you went for your gun."

He whirls with a snarl and freezes when he sees me hovering there with a phaser trained on him. I was worried for a moment he might have pulled a body double and run, but looking in his eyes, I have zero doubt that this is the genuine Lyle Bolton.

I grin despite myself.

"Now, whatever shall we talk about?"

I see the calculation in his eyes, fight or flight or submissions. The chance of death against whatever I'll do to him as a captive.

He chooses... poorly.

At least, I think he did. His hand twitched towards his holster, and that's honestly enough for me.

TSEEEEW!

No more Mr. stun setting.

I wish I could tell you that killing a man for revenge was deeply hollow and unsatisfying. I'm pretty sure I'm supposed to say that. But I'm just not that kind of person. Killing Bolton was a massive load off my shoulders. Sure, other people can and may yet think to cripple me in the same way he did. But he never will again.

Several people, Batman especially, would argue that between my Mo Fuqian and healing, he couldn't have seriously hurt me. By the letter of the law, though, I'm golden. He tried to kill me earlier, he had a deadly weapon, and I called on him to surrender. Boom, boom, boom. I am not morally or legally obliged to preserve the life of everyone trying to take mine, no matter what Batman says. Bolton was gone now, and it was a righteous kill.

It was enough.

================================================================================

After Freddie got the SWAT folks out, we called in some more conventional reinforcements from the mainland, and began the long slow process of lifting the other prisoners out. Somebody wound a plastic milkcrate to serve as a soapbox, and I addressed the assembled prisoners before they were returned to their cells.

"Gotham is officially no longer a part of the United States, and the US Penal Code no longer applies, except where he say it does. That means I could, say, just shoot you all and save myself some headaches, or feed anyone who misbehaves to a dragon. I won't. Probably. Minimum you'd have to really screw-up. But right now, the city is crippled and bleeding, and I don't have time to deal with escapes and such, so keep that dragon in the back of your minds. Likewise, we just don't have the resources to be feeding people who will just sit in cells, or too many to guard you."

I waved an arm.

"In older societies, that would mean bringing back the death penalty for serious and maybe minor offenses. Or banish you to face the mines and guns guarding Gotham. But I think we've moved a little beyond that. So here's what we're going to do. You're going to work for your daily bread, a ferry will carry you to the mainland to clear debris. Work well, behave, and it's pardons all around. Fuck around with us, you'll lose a lot more than privileges. Good day."

Man, being a bloody-handed dictator is way less fun than it looks. Now I need to find someone to run this place, build a system for freeing people, and figure out how to feed the people too sick, injured or such to work without undermining my threats. And what of the most dangerous felons?

Well, I'll figure it out somehow. By which I mean, dump it on Vinny.

God, I'm tired. Not as bad as the night of the Quake, but still.

One more obstacle to get through before home and bed. I heal up Petit's men, three broken legs from the fall, and one got a nasty cut somewhere. Then I get to deal with the mustached man himself.

"What the hell is this?" He demanded loudly.

I stared. "You're gonna have to be more specific."

"We go through all this rigamarole, Browning died, so we could go back to feeding and housing these scum at our expense? We can't afford it! Times like these, we need to buckle down and protect what's important!" And we've moved on to flying spittle. Lovely.

"Sure we can, if with less of a margin than I'd really like. What do you propose, that we just kill them all right here and now?"

"It worked for the headman, didn't it? You going to tell me you put all our lives in danger, just so you could get your revenge?"

Best nip that in the bud.

"I didn't come here for revenge, Lt. I came here to get our prison back, so we can build a functioning society. Which is the exact opposite of one where people get killed with no trial! Bolton shouldn't have gone for his gun-"

He snorted. "Sure. We all believe that."

"Desist, Lieutenant!" I took a deep breath. "I'm sorry for the man you lost, and willing to forgive much on the assumption you're distraught. But don't you dare make insinuations about my motives. If you think that's not what happened, take it to Gordon and initiate legal proceedings, but keep your mouth shut." Can't have the public doubting now, wehn we're barely holding things together. Have I made a horrible mistake here?

Petit... got smug.

"Sure thing, Mr. Mayor." He threw me a finger salute and sauntered off.

I saw red. The stupid- did he have no idea what we'd accomplished, what was still at stake!? Did he somehow imagine that my not wanting to make a scene gave him any form of power over me?

Before I knew it, a book was in my hands. Last Watch, Sergei Lukyaneko. I paged frantically until I found the scene in Tibet, the masked attackers escaping while Anton wonders what that crazy old man is doing- It would cost me, I was sure. I was too mad to care. I gripped and twisted the magic out of the pages, burning as char began to effect my very body, and laid the spell on Petit's retreating back.

I swayed suddenly. Still more exhausted than before. Black spots danced across my eyes. I knew from experience it would take them days to clear, and the city in the bakground had grown noticeably fuzzy. Freddie's strong arm caught me.

"What did you do, boss?"

"Freddie! Ah, how much did you hear?"

"Just the end, what did you do?"

"What makes you think I did anything."

"He was being an ass," Freddie started counting on his fingers, "you read a book, and you almost fell over. What did you do?"

"You know, I'm not a hundred percent sure." Now my temper had cooled a little, I was sure I'd regret this char for days. Probably more than the satisfaction I'd derive from the spell.

Oh well, what's done is done.

"Boss...."

"Yes, yes." Freddie should get a kick out of this one. "The specific terms of the curse I used- translated from Tibetan to Russian to English- is that he should suffer shameful failure the next ninety-nine times he lies with a woman. But now that I think on it, there are a couple of possible interpretations of 'shameful failure.' Too, I don't know how specific it is. Does it apply only to sleeping with women? With humans? Would multiple women circumvent the curse? I assume it doesn't apply to masturbation, but if it does I may have wasted a lot of magic. Take a note, when we have the time and magic to spare, we should really experiment further..."

"No! I mean, no. I think that's alright." There's a funny look on Freddie's face, one I have no idea how to interpret. "You got him good, boss. No need to revisit the idea. In fact, can we not, ever?"

Funny, usually Vinny is the squeamish one.