The Legion of Nothing

Guessing what was going on, I shouted, “Grain elevator explosion! Retreat!”

Even if not everyone understood the details, they understood “explosion” and “retreat” and Jaclyn wasn’t wrong about how quickly we could move if we had to.

We’d practiced retreats.

The first duty of anyone who could get people out was to grab them. Everyone else’s responsibility was to guard the retreat, if necessary, and get themselves out.

Of course, we hadn’t practiced with this group, but people caught the gist. Daniel grabbed Yellow Mask, Bouman, Dayton, Alex, and one of the Jennys with telekinesis. Izzy grabbed him. Everyone else ran or flew back around the corner—including almost all of the Jennys—all but one.

In my HUD, I saw one of the identical women in a red costume running toward the cloud. I understood why.

The powder, much like flour, could burn. If you had enough of it in the air, you could affect the entire room with the resulting explosion. How much of an explosion you got depended on a number of things including how concentrated the powder was.

Jenny was choosing to explode the powder on her terms instead of how the fungus intended—a great idea in theory.

In practice, I didn’t like it. Why? Among other possibilities what if the explosion now extended into the room where Haley’s team was or caused a cave in?

I didn’t have time to explain any of that. I didn’t even have time to shout, “Wait,” into my comm and hope she heard it.

A stream of flame extended from her finger, hitting the expanding cloud of white stuff.

It didn’t explode.

For a moment, I didn’t get it. Then I did. I’d been thinking explosives because I had a lot of experience with explosives. What I should have been thinking about was mushrooms. What do mushrooms produce? Poison—many different kinds.

“Hey everyone,” I thought into my implant, directing it to the comm system, “I was wrong about the explosion part, but the bad news is that I think we’re dealing with poison—unless it’s just fog.”

That last possibility seemed unlikely.

Then I added, “I hope everyone has airtight costumes.”

As everyone digested that, the nearest copy of Jenny did the obvious. She took off her helmet. Over my helmet’s sensor, I heard her moan and then she fell to her knees.

After that, she disappeared.

Over the comm, Jenny’s icon blinked and she spoke, taking a breath first, “The poison’s fast acting, works on contact with skin, and is hallucinogenic. I wanted to let it continue to work longer, but I wasn’t sure I’d be able to. It took only seconds before I was almost uncontrollably anxious and started hallucinating. I felt like my heart was going to beat out of my chest.”

“We’ve got to get out,” Jody’s words were clipped—too short and with too little space between them. “All of us have exposed skin!”

“That’s us too,” Bouman said.

Prime made a growling noise that made me think of heavy machinery, “We’ll get out with them and then we all come back the moment it’s clear.”

“Go,” I didn’t want to find out what a paranoid, anxious, and hallucinating Prime would be like. The man made up for being vengeful and murderous by at least being rational enough to make a deal.

The group of dots showing Justice Fist and the government group ascended, leaving us. Even though it was for the best, it didn’t feel good. We could have followed them up, but Jaclyn said, “This might be the best time to go forward. They’re not going to expect it.”

Daniel said, “I get better potential futures out of going forward than waiting.”

Alex grinned, “Then let’s go and get this done.”

Stuffing down memories of how Alex’s group and I had attacked Syndicate L and been captured for our trouble, I said, “I guess.”

With that half-hearted agreement, the remaining group got back into position and we all started down the empty level again. This time, though, we couldn’t see ahead of us.

The contact poison in the air obscured everything, but it wasn’t a complete disaster. I’d included sonar and heat sensing capabilities in the League suits and we all had them. Thermal imaging wasn’t much help, but the sonar gave us workable outlines of the room around us.

Except for the speed bumps, the room didn’t have any obstacles to speak of.

As we walked, I asked Amy, “How are you doing?”

Alone of the group, she didn’t have one of my suits, relying on whatever made her the Bloodmaiden and magic.

She laughed, “Not feeling paranoid or hallucinating.”

“Wow. I assume there was no way to pass that on.”

She shook her head, “Not after what I did back there, but I feel it was almost worth it to not have Jody here.”

I snorted, hoping that no one was sharing audio of this conversation with the League channel. I wasn’t, and judging from how Jody didn’t start telling us to go screw ourselves over the comm, no one was—maybe.

We were a quarter of the way down the level by then and still in the middle of the cloud. Before I could note how surprised I was to regret that Prime and Sean weren’t with us, Izzy said, “They’re coming.”

At almost the same time, Haley opened up her comm connection to say, “A birthing chamber mound opened and fungus clones of Prime stepped out. They’re coming your way.”

Tiger growled and then they were on us, bounding out of the clouds to attack.