Chapter 24.2 Neon Boughs

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"Citizens of the deceitful Sovereign..." 

Thanks to those words, the streets devolved from ghostly to frenzied in the blink of an eye. Sobriety was nowhere more engraved than on Stockwell's gaunt and tired eyes that stretched to the sky. Exploiting his mental stagger, Jessica snuck closer.

"How does it feel from this point of view?" she scorned. When Stockwell lividly met her gaze, his mouth opened wide. He reared his head and started running. His drunken sidewalk jaunt, however, led to an immediate stumble.

Dauntlessly, Jessica shoved past random pedestrians. But in seeking to catch the man, she found his bar lackeys in her path. Their interference boiled the veins in her fist and caused her to mindlessly shove against them. 

"Let me go!"

"What's your deal, girl?" one of them barked. A mysterious hand thrust and grabbed him from behind. 

"You should let her go."

Stockwell's companion looked over his shoulder. The crazy hooded woman from before, faster than he could react, punched his nose and sent him reeling onto the ground. She invited the rueful attention of the others. From a fighting stance, she quickly kicked the next assailant's cheekbone. Thus rattled by the mysterious kicker, Stockwell's friends let Jessica slip free.

Her target stumbled, disoriented. At a glance, drunkenness ruined Stockwell's balance, and so she tackled him to the ground with ferocity then swiftly pushed herself upright. When the man's glasses scraped the pavement, his pale eyes tossed in every direction as he began crawling away on his back.

Gait uncompromising, Jessica thrust aside the hoodie and strapped her black glove. She saw enough life in Stockwell's eyes, enough fear. A dropped jaw and a yelp later, he backed into an advertisement pole, where he saw his own face in the emergency hologram – In the playback, he was a resistance leader; in the real world, he was a cowering actor; in both, he was a terrorist. And he froze as the eyes of the Lynx pinned him.

Jessica stopped a few feet from his face, arresting his gawk of terror, and let the anger spill from her mouth. "Why the fuck did you do it?"

"I—"

"Don't even try!" She lurched and pulled the coward's hair into a bundle, making him shriek until his face merged with his own holographic likeness. "Why did you have to murder so many innocent people?" 

"Hey, miss!" a voice yelled from behind. It was NSS, but she didn't care.

"You're gonna confess!" She pushed Stockwell's face into the pavement. "A terrorist's luck doesn't last long!"

Hands over his own head, the shivering actor whimpered, "I didn't know what I was doing!"

"Pretend you're looking at their faces!" Jessica crunched her teeth together at the sorry man beneath. Impatience secreted down her skin, intensified by the arrival of security. They were accompanied by the crazy woman in a poncho, and Stockwell's friends were nowhere to be found.

"I didn't know I would actually kill anyone!" Stockwell rambled on. Head shaking, body rocking, he gasped, "It was supposed to be a regular gig: auto-crew, lights, camera, paid lodging..." The two security officers halted just a few meters away, dubious until one of them inched closer. 

"Ma'am, this isn't a safe place. What is wrong with this man? Is he your friend?"

Jessica ignored everything else and basked in the neon light of rage. Stockwell continued groveling on the floor. Before he got comfortable, without remorse, she grabbed and lifted him by his coat collar. "How did you bypass the countdown?"

"A phone... I didn't know it would blow up a building!"

Jessica let go, and as the sounds of the city returned, the wind brought something else. Chills lifted her watery eyes beyond the web of lights and to the night sky, while Stockwell continued his fetal murmuring.

"I thought the trigger would cut off the broadcast, not... what happened. I was told to stay in my room. Nearby—told to standby."

The mysterious woman's hood came down at that moment, revealing Shannon. In front of Shannon, the two security guards eyed Stockwell's sorry state on the ground. They exchanged glances before one of them unhinged a pair of plastic cuffs and carried them closer to the forlorn wreck of a man.

"Who gave you a detonator in the form of a phone?" Jessica demanded.

If Stockwell answered, she did not hear. An airship dropped from the city skyline then, supplanting the urban panic with a mechanical roar. It hovered in place, a dozen or so meters away, when the beak steered.

Malvis leaned out of the cabin, face scarred on one side with mild sears. He leaped from the deck and onto the asphalt, followed by two Asgard lackeys. Shannon hopped to Jessica's side, and both women stared at the staunch figure prostrate forward. They backed away, slowly. 

"I knew you would find him, eventually," said Malvis, stopping just short of the miserable Stockwell. He looked down, examining him through a lens, then dragged his gaze back. "You are too resourceful for anything less."

Jessica fired a glare, imagining that elusive opportunity to punch the lights out of him.

"Sir, the man below you just confessed to an act of terrorism," said security. 

Since the Emergency Response Channel still fueled citywide excitement, no one paid attention. Ahead of Malvis, his bodyguards stunned the human security duo into the ground. Their bodies shook as the agent trod over them.

"We have to run, Jess," said Shannon.

"Split up, girl!"

"No way."

"They don't want you, Shannon. DO IT!"Jessica snapped. She could feel Shannon's hesitation before they both turned their feet the other way. Neither looked back at their pursuers. For that matter, they couldn't tell if they were being pursued. Jessica ran over the speed of her heartbeat. But even in desperate flight, she sought something, someplace.

Speed. she needed to be fast minus her gravity board. Past the chaotic fray of city lights and fleeing lives, she eventually found the building she meant to find. It was an old-fashioned tower of brick and mortar. Inside, there was nothing but an empty lounge, an unmanned front desk, and another screen playing Stockwell's face. A glance back, beyond the doors, she saw Asgard running. The building just happened to have a set of stairs leading to the roof.

Halfway up the flight of stairs, leg soreness started to kick in. Just a little more, she kept thinking. No more conspiracies, no more running, no more dragging my friends through this nightmare. In tandem with fatigue, hopeful prospects accompanied her all the way to the top, where she found the other side.

On the roof, where she became reacquainted with the night sky, she recoiled at the deplorable sight of Malvis standing in the middle, waiting. White coat under the stars, boots on the concrete, hands behind his back, he stared like a statue. Nothing made less sense than his composure.

"You are the final piece," he began, walking casually. "Your allies—fellow traitors, Sub Terra and the operatives in the city, are apprehended. And what remains shall follow."

Warily, Jessica hung off his every word. Out of a thousand absolutes, she grabbed ahold of one. She would not surrender.

"In simple terms, you have failed, Lynx."

During his oral spit, she heard the door open behind her. Asgard stomped through with a whisper in the wind. Like the chill across her skin, the whisper intensified. Malvis turned, revealing his metallic right hand, and saw what she saw. A fleet of Asgard airships loomed over the dark horizon, en route to the city. Right then, the guards grabbed Jessica and pushed her to the ground. Her teeth bit down, anger retaining the last body heat. Vengeance burned at the forefront of her thoughts, as her cheek scraped the concrete.

"Sooner than I expected," Malvis said, almost in admiration. The flying lights shined brighter with his every second basking. "But there is no Asgard without rapid deployment. Today, yet again, you attempted to sow chaos. Ill-advised but valiant, Lynx. And the flaws have been realized, our militant foothold in the city now sanctioned by law. The convenience of terrorism is evident in the emergency power it affords." Malvis turned, to lay eyes on Jessica once more. "But you already know that."

Jessica's detainers yanked her off the ground, so she could finally see the alien up close. Pride was hatched across both sides of the agent's face, across burn scars and unblemished white, as if the burns had revealed a hidden layer beneath the perfect facade. The two-faced alien removed his glasses. Those distinct red irises only unraveled her distaste, a distaste that very subtly intermingled with satisfaction.

"Now I know what's missing," said Jess. "You need a mustache." Thanks to her position, she could breathe in the city and its many features, a view beholden to its share of skyscrapers. The gigantic billboard lights: All that blue, red, and white; all that red, white, and blue. Behind her, Goliath. In front of her, Malvis and the metal fleet. They had arrived, the howl of their engines casing the atmosphere before she could smile and say, "We're ending this tonight."

A green flare burst in the air, illuminating the rooftop.

Malvis turned and peered at the lone airship above his furrowed brow. It lowered to the edge of the roof, and as its tail swerved, the cabin revealed Valerie, Raptor, and an entire crew of Sub Terrans.

"Cover your eyes!" Valerie shouted.

Jessica broke loose from her detainers, ducked, and covered her face with her elbows. The next moment broke with a bright, chaotic bang that dismantled her other senses. Nevertheless, she would muster the energy to rise again. 

When her vision came to, Asgard and Malvis were writhing on the floor, hands over their faces. A fraction of their pain rung in her ears, but with no time to waste, she ran toward Valerie and her beckoning embrace. Raptor yelled something inaudible from the cabin, and the entire crew hawkishly watched the roof. To their dismay, Jessica tripped and fell. When she hit the ground, she peered back and noted Malvis' hand around her ankle. Now, unlike ever, the Azarean's red eyes inflamed from a human type of rage. That's when the hearing came back.

"HOW?" he cried.

"You've been blindsided!"

One of the operatives fired his weapon at Malvis, but the energy bubble deflected. The move prompted Jessica to cover her ear, so Raptor pressed down on the weapon.  

Relentless, Malvis crawled with one hand and ejected his blade under the other. Jessica dragged her glove across the ground then slapped his neck. The transferred voltage shot him onto his back, and that gave her the opportunity to crawl over his woeful eyes. With the agent temporarily paralyzed, she retrieved a rod from her vest, a little gift from Beelz, and placed it directly over his face. The jitter made it tricky, but a few rapid blinks signaled a successful scan. Request fulfilled.

Jessica stashed the rod and rose to her feet, airship waiting. She leaped from the roof's ledge, into the cabin, where Valerie and Raptor grabbed hold.

"Are you ok?" Valerie said frantically. Jessica balanced herself on the deck, where she inhaled the interior: Red lights, armored bodies, loads of equipment, and conviction. Homegirl, from her neck to her toes, wore the same protective shell as the other operatives. It was a snapshot of battle preparation.

"Let's go, Homegirl!"

Raptor's finger twirl gave the signal. Ascending, the pilots lifted Jessica and the entire crew, to rejoin the fleet of stolen silhouettes across the skyline. Everyone and everything that could be hauled into more than a dozen airships set their course towards the tallest structure in the city: Goliath Headquarters.

"Do you hear that?" Jessica said.

"Huh? What's wrong?" said Valerie.

"Sshhh." 

The confusion carried over to Raptor's toppled brow. For a time, his entire team wore confusion as the sight of allied airships appeared on their flank.

No one spoke.

"It's all over the city broadcast," said the pilot, and he twisted an overhead knob. The playback echoed from the city and rung in the cabin. Before long, Jessica lip-synced to the lyrics.

"Sweet dreams are made of this..."

She closed her eyes and imagined Beth and her friends dancing. Dani's there. She thought about the last time they were together, about the way moments pass and how, every now and again, people unify then part, unaware it will be the last time.

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