Chapter 49 – Infiltrator Pt. 6

August 8, 2010 - Happy Harbor, RI

Happy Harbor High School

22:17:10

Apollo burst through the doors of the cafe, throwing one last order to the argumentative speedster over his shoulder.

“Just do it!”

That one is going to be trouble, I just know it…

Drawing another arrow from his quiver, he nocked it and drew it back, sighting the fleeing Assassin in green. He steadied his breathing, and with a deliberate exhale, released the arrow and let fly. A perfect shot, arcing directly towards her fleeing back… but she turned at the last second and deflected it to the side with her sai. He bared his teeth, frustrated again by her skill. Arrow cutting was a technique only master martial artists could perform, and this one did it with contemptuous ease.

“I was hoping it’d be you!” She taunts, stopping and turning to face him from down the block. He couldn’t see any of her micro expressions behind that strange, yet familiar mask. He cannot quite place it; clearly Asian, likely Vietnamese if her green Áo dài is anything to go by. His father didn’t talk about the old country very much, so Apollo can’t be sure, but it looks like some kind of grinning cat spirit. There will be time to research it later, he resolves.

Doesn’t matter. Ignore her jibe, she’s trying to rattle you. She wouldn’t resort to psychological warfare if she wasn’t hard pressed.

Before he could fire another arrow, she turned and bolted in the direction of the secondary location where Dr. Roquette is hidden. She leapt and parkoured her way up the single and two story buildings lining the little seaside town’s main street, leaping from rooftop to rooftop. She made it look easy; of course she did, she’s made everything look easy so far tonight. The cyborg with the hook hand and the spider guy are clearly low rent villain mooks, not real Assassins. The League offers sanctuary to plenty of scum like that; people trading on their powers or tech and getting real training from the League. They work for the League of Assassins, but they aren’t real Assassins.

That’s something you have to be born and raised in, trained from birth, practically.

Cat Mask over there, she’s a real Assassin. He’s spotted a dozen martial arts in her repertoire so far, and she was well equipped. Pulling new weapons out whenever she needed them. Adaptable and determined; she saw through the ruse the second the Martian revealed their cards. She refocused instantly on the objective and abandoned her allies, something the League would encourage. He’s not sure how she knows where Roquette is; the doc ran the trace at the cafe, but she’s following the himbo’s trail perfectly.

Another flash of anger at tonight’s events surges through him, but he squashed it deep down, the same as he has his entire life. He reasserts control, climbing one of the taller buildings that will give him a good sight line as Cat Mask made for the internet cafe where Roquette is. He reached up to the quiver, fingers dancing along the shafts, feeling the notches carved into each nock to select the right arrow for the job. He found his chosen arrow, and nocked it, drawing for a long breath and judging the windage, angle and droppage. Then he loosed.

The arrow sails through the night air and this time it hits the mark; the chimney a few feet ahead of Cat Mask, and out of her reach to parry. She ducks back as it impacts, but is surprised when it blasts a pinkish mist right back at her face. Coughing, she stumbles back, woozy on her feet before slowly falling backwards like a felled tree.

Apollo grins, and leapt down to the next rooftop to swiftly catch up to the Assassin, now that’s immobilized. Landing on her rooftop, he nocked another arrow while approaching her prone form cautiously.

Unfortunately, his caution is insufficient, as she throws her whole body into a leg sweep that takes him off his feet, ending in a low crouch. Apollo crashes onto his back, arrows scattering from the quiver, as his opponent readied herself.

“Mask has built-in filters.” She explains, toying with him. Anger filled him like an electric wave, and he tried to kick at her from the ground while simultaneously kipping up. But she caught his foot and dragged him forward as he awkwardly tried to keep his feet underneath him. Pulling him in, she caught his wrist and put him in a wrist lock with his arm twisted behind him and her forearm at his throat.

Furious with himself and her for getting the drop on him, he struggled vainly to break her hold but to no avail.

“Better luck next time, kid.” She whispers into his ear, and before he can find another method to escape, a sharp blow to the base of his skull puts the lights out, leaving only darkness.

********

“Doc… we’ve got company.” Superboy warned as he stared up at the ceiling and desperately wished for X-ray vision. Wishing for it did nothing, as per usual, but it couldn’t hurt. He had heard at least one pair of very quiet feet pattering across the rooftop of the internet cafe. Dr. Croquette was still busily typing away, even as she heard his warning.

“Uploading now!” She declared triumphantly, one last burst of typing before a final entry. “And by the way, you’re supposed to protect me!”

“I am protecting you! Now, come on!” Superboy declared as he took hold of her arm to get away from the computer. According to the plan, now that the upload was going out to Robin and Aqualass, they only had to deploy it to the Fog. That was their job, however; his was to protect the doctor. A glance at the screen showed the upload progressing agonizingly slowly. Torn between protecting the computer to make sure it finished, and protecting the doctor, he chose the latter. It was the right thing to do, and she could recreate the virus if she had to.

Hopefully it won’t come to that.

Moving the doctor back behind him, he scanned around the room. It was an open plan with long tables holding the computer stations, all of them on now that they’d turned the power back on. The only illumination was the blue screens on the monitors and the dim streetlight coming through the windows. It was a smaller and more defensible location than the cafe was, but there was only him to cover all the angles. He edged back towards the rear of the lobby, when he heard the clack of something bouncing across the hardwood floors.

It looked like a marble rolling across the floor, coming out of the back kitchen that usually served hungry patrons. Then it burst into a cloud of smoke, obscuring the doorway it came from and he braced for an attack. The tension rose as he waited for the inevitable, but then he heard the slightest rustling above them. Glancing up he saw the drop ceiling, and spun around to throw himself around Roquette. With a twang and a hiss, several short bolts impacted against his broad back and dug into Jacket, but he shook like a dog and they tumbled to the floor. Bursting out of the drop ceiling was the Assassin in green, a pistol crossbow in her hand with a magazine feed beneath it. She fired several more bolts, trying to shoot around him or between his legs to strike the doctor.

Superboy did the opposite of his natural inclination to dodge, and leaned into any that were going to miss him. The bolts couldn’t hurt him, but they could hurt Dr. Roquette. Ignoring his natural and memory palace ingrained skills felt unnatural, but Wonder Woman had begun training him to utilize his invulnerability in their first training session. Cadmus had not supplied him with bodyguard training, having much different uses for him in mind.

“Tsk, why did it have to be you, cutie? You’re a very pretty roadblock to finishing my job.” She taunted as she leapt around the room, trying to find an angle around him and occasionally firing a desultory bolt he had to catch or drag the doctor out of the way of. They circled the lobby floor; the assassin leaping and rolling under tables in surprising bursts to find a new angle to shoot from. Superboy met her moves by plowing his way through tables and computer peripherals, sending them scattering, always keeping himself between the doctor and the Assassin. While that kept her from using her agility to find the right angle, it also made a mess and diminished the cover in the room.

After he batted away the tenth bolt from her hand crossbow, he growled and stomped forward to end this game. But as soon as he moved toward her, she leapt up on one table and threw herself into a somersault to flank Dr. Roquette. Superboy had to throw himself back to protect her, snatching up a fallen table to use a shield just in time. Dr. Roquette startled as the table swung in front of her, just in time for three bolts to punch into it, right in front of her face.

Shit, I can’t get close to her! If I leave the doc, she’ll just ignore me to try to shoot her again.

Frustration mounted; this cat and mouse game couldn’t go on. He spared a glance towards the one table he hadn’t touched yet; the one that was still showing the painfully slow upload of the virus. It still needed more time, only two thirds done. With a sinking feeling, he saw the Assassins’ masked face glance at it as well, and her eyes narrowed behind her mask.

She made a move toward the computer and he did the only thing he could think of and hurled the table at her. Nimbly dodging out the way, it didn’t hurt her but it did keep her off her new target, even as the table smashed through the front windows and into the street.

If she wants to play ‘flank and shoot the protectee’, then I can play ‘random bullshit go!’ He decided as he snatched up whatever was at hand and started peppering the Assassin with it. Monitors, computer towers, mugs, chairs, pieces of table; whatever he could grab or kick across the room at her. She dodged it all with ease, and still kept finding new angles of attack to return fire from. Superboy started increasing his pitching speed; both his implanted and earned training stressed control over his massive strength, especially against human opponents. He could do terrible things if he didn’t restrain himself, but he decided an Assassin trying to murder his protectee was good enough and the threat real enough to let loose.

The next chair he threw exploded into splinters as it demolished part of the wall, and he saw the Assassin start taking his missiles more seriously. He hurled a Garfield coffee mug like a big league pitcher and it turned into powder as it smashed into the wall, causing the Assassin to duck the flying shards left over. Superboy grinned when he saw his return fire was working, but he was swiftly running out of handy things to throw at her while still sticking to Dr. Roquette.

The Assassin took the opportunity to launch a fusillade of bolts that required him to twist back and forth to catch them all against his indestructible hide. Then her left hand came up with something else in it and hurled it at him. His super vision saw with clarity it was another of her smoke bomb marbles, but this one was a bright purple. Something about it filled him with dread; then he realized it was the timing. He was stuck between blocking two bolts aimed at opposite sides of him; he couldn’t also intercept the bomb. Forced to watch with awful certainty of what was about to happen as it arced toward him, even as he batted away the bolts.

The smoke bomb cracked against his chest and it burst into a milky white cloud that had a chemical stench. He took a single breath of it and felt his lungs seize up and coughed. It was an awful feeling, like being back on the ventilator and unable to catch his breath. The cloud billowed out around him and he heard Dr. Roquette fearfully stepped back as it continued to spread. He began to feel weak and stiff, falling to his knees as he continued to gasp for breath. With terrible and inexorable slowness, the cloud spread across the room and Dr. Roquette backed herself into a corner, eyes wide with panic.

Superboy fell forward, dizzy and nauseous as the lungful he had inhaled weakened him. His mouth was opening and closing with strangled gasps as he tried to take a full breath but couldn’t. The Assassin walked toward him slowly, right through the smoke without fear or issue.

“Highly concentrated box jellyfish venom, aerosolized in a smoke bomb. I don’t usually go in for this kind of thing but you’re one tough cookie, handsome. It shouldn’t be enough to kill you, so don’t worry. You’ll be just fine… but the good doctor isn’t so fortunate.” She taunted as she reached down and delicately pulled his chin up to make him look her in the eyes. There was a sadistic twinkle in hers, behind the lenses. He glanced towards Dr. Roquette, who was already starting to cough as the first of the poison smoke tickled her lungs. She was crying, staring at him with pleading eyes as she curled up in the corner, smoke curling toward her.

‘You’re supposed to protect me.’ Dr. Roquette’s words echoed in his mind as he watched her terrified reactions, his own breathing stilted but getting better, he thought. He tried to stand, to do something but everything felt muddled and slow, like his body was in another state and he was telegraphing its instructions. The Assassin simply stood and watched, her hand crossbow ready, but content to watch her target die to the creeping doom around her. She was completely surrounded by the poison cloud now, her feet slipping and scrambling as she tried to back her way through the wall to no avail.

Dimly, an idea occurred to him, but his mind was too foggy to consider whether it was bad. He focused on his breathing, on something he had seen in a very old comic book and his poisoned mind thought it was perfectly reasonable to try right now. He couldn’t blow the poison smoke away, there was nowhere for it to go that didn’t endanger Roquette. Superboy had practiced with his super breath a few times, especially since the last mission when he had failed to use it when it would have been clutch. Now he decided to reverse it.

His fingers dug into splintering floorboards as he opened his mouth and inhaled with gale force, instantly creating a whipping wind that dragged most of the air in the room into his super powered lungs. That included all the poison smoke, which flew toward him in a cloud bank before compressing down to get into his mouth. It tasted awful going down, but in a less than a second, the poison smoke was gone, sitting safely in his lungs.

Pain burst through his lungs, throat and sinuses and he realized he had fucked up. Just a lungful had been enough to disable him; now he had all of it deep in his lungs. Fear froze him but it was already done, so he persevered and held on to it. He chose to trust in his powers; Superman had been exposed to every poison in the world and it couldn’t hurt him. He was just as invulnerable, he just had to tough it out.

But even as he kept the poison trapped within him, the symptoms it had delivered returned a hundred fold. He was paralyzed, he couldn’t move a muscle. Every nerve was on fire and his stomach roiled while his gorge rose. He wanted to vomit but his mouth was locked shut from both his will and the paralysis, and briefly he feared choking on his own vomit. What a way to go that would be for the Boy of Steel…

Heads… getting really fuzzy…

He was losing it, and he could feel it happening. He shuddered as he bent over double on the floor, most of his body paralyzed and in agony.

“Well… that was unexpected.” The Assassin noted. “I have to say, handsome, you’re a real breath of fresh air. ’” She cackled to herself as she turned back towards Dr. Roquette. “I guess I just have to do things the old fashioned way…”

Whatever she intended next was interrupted by the beeping of the last computer still standing intact; the one uploading Dr. Roquette’s virus. The Assassin froze, looked at it and then back to Dr. Roquette.

“So you finished the virus… eliminating the reason for your elimination.” She said flatly, then raised the hand crossbow to aim right between Dr. Roquette’s eyes.

“Though not the entertainment value.” She purred, and Roquette shivered in terror, eyes locked on the tip of the bolt aimed at her.

Superboy struggled to stand, to move, to do anything. But his body refused to move, no matter his willpower or the commands he gave it. He was terrified, knowing exactly what Locked-In Syndrome was like, having seen it first hand. His mind raged wildly and impotently, trying to make his useless corporeal form do anything.

No! It can’t be for nothing!

With a shove, the Assassin pushed Dr. Roquette down onto the floor like a schoolyard bully. She still had the hand crossbow aimed at her, but now spoke in a lighter tone.

“Lucky for you, my orders are clear. You live to program another day. After all, doctor, the League may find another use for you.” The Assassin declared, holstering her hand crossbow on her thigh as Dr. Roquette collapsed in relief. With that dread pronouncement hanging in the air, she slipped out the front door and into the night.

Superboy watched her out of the corner of his eye, unable to turn to look, as everything became slowed and distant. It felt like he was at the bottom of the ocean, everything moving slowly against the depth pressure. Then, with glacial slowness, darkness overtook him and he knew no more.

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