West Suburbs, Chicago, 6 PM, October
Rick felt as if he were going to drown. The blood had all left his legs, he was sure. Blood dripping out of his gunshot wound flowed down his chest, stripped of all fabric, and directly into his face, landing in a pool on the floor. He looked up at the floor two dozen feet below to see how much was there, but he was dizzy from blood loss. He couldn’t muster enough concentration for the simplest spell. This might very well be the end. Ironic that he and I7 had fought off a whole army of these Nexer troops in Stevenson, and here twelve had bested them.
Beside Rick, Barry Stills, AKA The American Attitude, hung strung up in the same metal wire. Barry had surrendered instead of being shot, but Rick figured he’d have the same fate in the end. Tim was similarly restrained, and had been rendered unconscious by repeated hits to the head.
Caz was in almost as bad a shape as Rick. He had transformed back to his normal human form after being shot so many times by the powerful advanced guns of the Nexer troops. He was bleeding profusely upside-down. Outside, the sun was setting.
Down below, a few men spoke amongst each other. Rick tried to listen in, but his head swooned. It was hard to make out, but at least they were speaking in English. There was some talk of Milan, which was in Italy, Rick knew. Then something about a shipment not showing, not enough for the others. Just before Rick lost consciousness again, he saw many of the troops Nex up again. That couldn’t be good for them. One dose of Nex could be fatal. daisy chaining doses had to be wreaking havoc on their internal organs.
Caz was lucid. He heard everything the people below said, about the supply being down. About an explosion in Milan that had destroyed the factory. They were supposed to be on the lookout for a dark clothed assassin, a “Ninja”. Caz suspected that he now knew where Aaron was, or at least where he’d been. He didn’t know why his friend had decided to tackle the situation on his own, without telling them, but those questions would hopefully be answered another day.
Caz was coherent enough to change his form, once he did, he and his friends would immediately be subject to high-powered weapons, and while he MIGHT survive, the others wouldn’t. Still, Rick wouldn’t live much longer as it was. He tried to wait until the most tactically appropriate time. Suddenly, there was a knock at the door of the facility they were in. Several of the troops moved off. This was it.
As the troops came to the metal bay door of the warehouse they were hiding in, one looked out the window. “I don’t know them,” he said in a Serbian accent. Another came and looked, and that’s when all hell broke loose.
The metal door buckled behind a boulder weighing at last a ton, and the two troops went flying.
Outside, in plain clothes, were Angela, Syd, and Steven Chen. As soon as the door was gone, Chen made the appropriate motion that caused the Palisade suit to appear around him in seconds. As he did, Angela was already on top of one of the other troops, clawing at his exposed face until all he could do was drop to his knees and hide. Several others raised their weapons, while one went back to the main group to alert them to the danger. Suddenly, those aiming their guns found those guns missing. In an instant, Triumph appeared beside his allies.
“Hello there!” the speedster quipped, then slammed his fist into one of the troops who, milliseconds before, had been across the room.
The troop who ran back into the area over which the defeated heroes hung was also in for a surprise. As soon as the rescuers had been within range, Triumph whispered a message that only the American Attitude could here. His bounds were already loosened, ready to escape when the time came. Once the door blew in, the Attitude was loose and on the catwalk behind where they hung. He armed himself with the weapon of the first guard he found, and began firing into the crowd below. From his vantage point, it was like shooting fish in a barrel, especially considering he could magnify his vision a hundred times.
Caz took his opportunity; transforming once more, Cazmonster dropped upon several hapless Nexer troops. The one directly below him found his head somewhat humorously lodged in Cazmonster’s mouth. A sonic beam from Cazmonster’s speakers devastated all those standing nearby.
As the troops began to fire back, The Wrecker, having faked his last bout of unconsciousness, used his telekinesis to move himself and Rick safely back onto the catwalk. A whistling sound followed which no one could identify, but which was coming from directly above.
As the troops not affected by Cazmonster’s sonic assault began taking pot shots at The Attitude, Triumph flashed into the room and disarmed the majority of them in seconds. Now it was Nexer against heroes, roughly two to one. And that was nowhere near good odds for the Nexers.
Palisade shot several spikes with a chemical he had recently developed. Instantly, those shot passed out.
“What the hell was that?” Syd asked as she called clods of earth from outside in to attack her opponents.
“Antidote to Nex. Pays to be a chemistry student!” Palisade grinned.
Angela flipped acrobatically around the room, attacking one Nexer after another. One got a good solid hit on her, and knocked the vampire hero back into an enclosed area. As the Nexer pressed his attack, he suddenly felt several powerful fingers wrapped around his head. Looking back, he saw a very ominous wolf-like face; Cazmonster flicked his arm back, and the Nexer slammed through the ceiling of the warehouse and into open air.
The Attitude made his way over to The Wrecker and The Adept. “Hey, is he okay?”
“Take over watching him!” Tim shouted. “I’m concentrating!”
Suddenly, a titanium sphere slammed through the ceiling, dropping layers of metal on the unsuspecting Nexers. The sphere itself rocketed into a pile of firearms, reducing them to bits of metal.
“Syd!” the Attitude shouted from the catwalk. “Get up here and check out Adept. He’s in a bad way!”
Syd floated on air, and came to the side of her sorcerous friend. Drawing on the powers of nature, she knitted his wounded flesh back together. “He’s lost a lot of blood,” she said to The Attitude. “But he’ll pull through.”
Down below, the remaining heroes made quick work of the Nexers. Within a couple minutes, the entire force had been disarmed and rendered unconscious, or had fled. As I7 gathered in the central area to figure out what to do with their prisoners, another group entered.
“Gina Walker, Federal Agent!” said a full figured but fit woman with auburn hair chopped short. She held a weapon of unknown type, fanning it through the crowd.
“Well, about time you got here!” Palisade snapped. “Our friend almost died in the time it took us to get here, you could have been here a lot sooner!”
“I like this guy,” The American Attitude said to Triumph.
“Precisely what is going on here?” the agent asked as several of her fellow agents, as well as a SWAT unit, filtered into the room.
“I think you’ll find that these people,” Cazmonster gestured to the defeated Nexer troops, “currently have large quantities of the illegal drug Nex in their systems AND, and are involved in some sort of terrorist takeover similar to the attempt they made in Stevenson a few weeks ago.
“And we...are the INFINITE SEVEN!” Cazmonster pronounced over his speakers with a theatrical echo and increase in volume.
“Ah ha. Well, Infinite Seven, you’re coming with the rest of us downtown!”
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