The Legion of Nothing

I stumbled sideways, realizing that Haley crouched underneath the soldier’s punch.

She didn’t stay there. Even as I realized what was happening, she was already punching back—and upward.

Hitting him in the middle of his diaphragm, she’d have killed a normal person with her strength and winded even some of the tougher supers.

He didn’t gasp for air or bend over—much—but as muscular as the Cabal’s oldest and toughest soldiers were, most of them weren’t more than a few hundred pounds, and very few had claws that could sink into marble and hang on.

This guy wasn’t one of the exceptions.

When Haley hit him, he flew backward and hit the wall while still in the air. Even for her, it was a hard punch, the kind of thing I would have expected to see out of Travis.

From the sweat and redness in her face, I could see that she felt it.

As for myself, I couldn’t think of anything better to do than aim my laser at the soldier’s legs, knowing that they’d heal, but that the Cabal’s best didn’t heal as quickly from heat and laser-based wounds.

Beyond that, I could only hope everyone else was doing their part to keep people off us.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Ruthie Shaw stand between one of the Cabal soldiers and Urin, slashing open the soldier’s guts with more speed and strength than I’d have expected out of a white-haired woman in a pink sweatshirt.

The soldier jumped backward ten feet, pulling his intestines back into his body with both hands as the skin and muscles began to knit themselves back together. He’d be back soon enough, but he’d been forced to retreat, if only for a moment. That was better than we’d ever managed the first time we’d fought the Cabal.

Meanwhile, the guy I whose legs I was burning with my laser chose not to sit there and get burned. At the same time, I can only guess that he was feeling whatever small amount of damage I was doing because he didn’t charge me.

He broke the window next to him and jumped outside.

I didn’t doubt that he’d only done it to get time to heal without being burned by a laser, but I still felt a wave of relief.

That wave of relief was bolstered when the soldier that Amy stabbed with her spear finally fell over.

She pulled it out of his chest, his arms falling away from the spear. He stared around him, glassy-eyed, but still breathing. I wasn’t sure if that meant that Amy had taken enough out of him that he was too tired to move or if he was actively dying.

Feeling like I had time, I checked around the room. There had been four of them with the orange glowing giant. Amy took down one. We and Ruthie had each forced one to retreat. Ruthie’s still held his stomach together. Where was the fourth?

I missed my HUD. I hadn’t yet had a moment where I felt comfortable losing my sight while it formed, so I hadn’t commanded it to.

A quick look around without my HUD’s assistance gave me the full picture.

The room had been full of twenty or more servants, guards, and the implied presence of disguised former Cabal members. At least six of them lay on the ground. More were simply gone. I could only guess that the disguised ex-Cabal leaders had taken their bodyguards and left us to deal with it.

As for the “missing” Cabal soldier, he wasn’t missing. Off to the side of what had been the main group of people, he stood in the middle of three bodies and an empty suit of dented plate armor, but he wasn’t going anywhere.

Jaclyn stood between him and the few remaining people in the room. Neither of them moved, both of them watching the other.

I took advantage of the pregnant pause to command my helmet to form. After a moment of darkness, I found myself viewing the world with the Rocket suit’s familiar 360-degree vision.

Noting that the pregnant pause had not yet given birth, I congratulated myself for choosing the right time.

“Rocket,” Haley said, “the orange giant’s coming back.”

Daniel frowned, “I didn’t sense anything,” but he turned toward the window he’d thrown the guy through.

Haley wasn’t wrong. The giant loomed outside the window and stepped into the room, ducking to keep his head from hitting the top of the window frame. I expected the giant to start a psychic scream again, but he didn’t.

The Cabal soldier who’d jumped out of the window followed him in. The other Cabal soldier’s intestines seemed to be inside again. He joined them.

Unsure why the giant hadn’t started to scream, I started to ask Daniel. The man had to have a reason and Daniel had a chance of figuring it out.

Off to my right, Vaughn said, “Shit,” and threw a lightning bolt toward the giant’s chest.