CHAPTER SEVENTY-SEVEN

Chasing Liberty, Part 1

“We can’t seem to shake Apex off, can we?” Jackboot asked.

The four of them were packed tight inside the elevator, with all of them sharing the same look of concern while Hooked on a Feeling by Blue Swede played in the background.

“We’ll have to deal with him eventually,” Thunder answered.

She looked tired. More tired than Sam had seen her since their trip began.

“Let’s hope Achelous wins the god versus monster deathmatch,” Sam replied.

They all stared at him.

“What?” he asked.

The song cutting out abruptly alerted them to the end of the elevator ride.

“Maybe if Achelous went full nuclear on Apex, but”—Farsight repeatedly tapped on the ‘open’ button—“his divine essence was barely possessing that automaton. He won’t hold a beta like Apex for long.”

“He can’t just juice up some more?” Sam asked as he followed Farsight out the elevator and through the gallery’s outer hallway.

“Might be different if he’d possessed one of his devotees, but”—Farsight placed a hand on the front doors’ handle—“a machine can’t contain a god’s essence like humans can.”

“I’m still rooting for Achelous,” Sam insisted as they burst out of the Chicago Water Tower’s front doors.

“Sam, don’t be naïve,” Thunder replied.

“I’m not…I’m trying to be hopeful,” Sam reasoned.

His hope survived up to the moment he heard the explosive sound of breaking glass above him. Sam didn’t even bother looking up because he’d noticed that there was a young boy just a few feet away who hadn’t run away like everyone around him just did.

There was a woman’s cry of, “Jason!” and then Sam was at the boy’s side. He raised his arm so that the near-invisible aura of Bulwark could protect them both from the falling glass and tiles that rained down on them.

“It’s okay,” he promised the frightened boy. “I’ve got you.”

Glancing up, Sam noticed that a section of the tower’s exterior wall had broken off and a chunk of metal scaffolding was on its way down to where he and the boy were crouching. He wasn’t certain a hastily-raised Bulwark could protect them from such a heavy object falling on top of them, but Sam wasn’t overly worried because he had reliable backup these days.

“Cavalry’s here!” Farsight yelled.

While her arrows pierced through the largest pieces of falling glass and tiles, Jackboot’s well-timed dropkick smacked the metal scaffolding out of the way. It crashed into a patch of grass at the nearby park which was thankfully empty of people. Meanwhile, Thunder had shrugged off her civilian clothes, and in full view of the panicking crowd, she urged people to evacuate in an orderly manner.

“There’s no need to panic. We’re here to help,” she promised. “Please leave while we deal with the situation.”

Sam marveled at how a top-class hero had such an amazing effect on civilians. With her mere presence and a promise of assistance, the civilian onlookers quickly turned from a frightened crowd ready to trample over each other to an orderly line of people helping each other get out of harm’s way.

“I wonder if I’ll ever be like her,” Sam whispered.

“Jason!” A curly-haired woman in her mid-twenties arrived to pick her son up from the floor. She whispered a thank you to Sam before she took her son away to join the line of people evacuating the gallery.

“Sam”—Thunder wrapped her hand around his—“we have to go!”

“But the people—”

“He’s after us. He won’t bother with the civilians,” Thunder reminded Sam.

At her words, Sam gazed up once more. There, hiding within the shadow of its interior, Sam saw the large bulk of a man standing by the gaping hole in the wall of the tower’s upper floor.

“He beat a god,” Sam realized.

He couldn’t help but be in awe of the villain’s accomplishment. Even weakened, Achelous’ presence had seemed frighteningly powerful to Sam. To win in a fight against that kind of power, well, it suggested that Apex was more than the beta-level rating he’d been given.

“Come on, Sam!” Thunder urged.

Once they reached the Argo VII’s door, his sixth sense nudged Sam to look over his shoulder. Something big and not entirely human had just jumped off the Chicago Water Tower’s top floor.

“Oh, Sty—”

Apex dropped to all fours on the pavement with a resounding crash that cracked the cement beneath him. Not only did he seem unhurt by the fall, but Apex didn’t even look like the villain who’d nearly drowned Sam in Lake Michigan. He’d changed somehow into a hybrid of man and beast. A fine down of golden fur covered the rippling muscles of his chest and arms which were even thicker now than they’d been when he was human.

But it was the sight of his monstrous face—which resembled more of the lion’s head he’d been wearing than the villain’s scarred face—that sent a shiver rising up Sam’s back. “He’s a freaking polymorph!”

Thunder reached for Sam’s shoulders and then pulled him into the Argo VII, which was when she yelled, “Go!” to Farsight who’d already strapped herself into the cockpit.

“Hold onto something!” Farsight ordered. “We’re getting out of dodge and chasing liberty!”

After quickly maneuvering out of parallel parking, the Argo VII tore through North Michigan Avenue like the devil was chasing after it—and he was. Luckily, traffic was light with barely any cars piling the road as most of the civilians who’d fleed from the gallery had idled on the sidewalk opposite of the Chicago Water Tower. This made it easier for Farsight to navigate the wide road without so much as a scratch on their state-of-the-art school bus.

“He’s gaining on us! Jackboot reported. A second later and he repeated his words in a more bewildered tone, “Bloody Duat, how is he gaining on us?”

Sam and Thunder moved to stand behind Jackboot who was manning the Argus VII’s security rig behind Farsight’s cockpit so they could also see the view from the bus’s rear-view camera. Apex was running—sometimes on two legs, other times on four legs—a mere twenty feet away from the rear of the bus.

“Does this fancy bus have any weapons?” Jackboot asked.

“This baby’s a Mr. Marsday creation. Of course, it’s got weapons,” Farsight replied.

She tapped on one of the buttons on her dashboard labeled Toxa. Seconds later, three canisters fell out of the Argo VII’s rear bumper. These canisters rolled across the asphalt, with each one exploding into a shower of brilliant azure flames once Apex came within their range.

“Holy Zeus!” Sam’s go-to line had been co-opted by Thunder for this occasion. “Please tell me we didn’t just commit a felony…”

“What do you mean?” Jackboot asked.

“The use of Greek fire is banned inside cities,” Sam explained.

“Greek fire…that’s the ever-burning stuff, right?” As he wasn’t part of the Greek pantheon’s roster of heroes, Jackboot’s confusion in its mythology was understandable. However, he quickly rallied and asked, “Can’t we just explain to the police that we were being chased by an evil lion-man and had no choice but to chuck dangerous stuff at him?”

“I don’t think that would fly, Jack,” Sam answered.

“It’s that bad?” Jackboot asked.

“Comparatively, it would be like unleashing one of your Egyptian shape-changing staves into an urban area,” Thunder explained.

“Oh,” Jackboot breathed. “So, it is that bad…”

“Relax, people…no one’s going to know we caused this.” Farsight grinned when she patted the dashboard. “This baby’s got stealth mode.”

Later, it would be reported that these azure flames burned throughout the night while local authorities waited for heroes powerful enough to extinguish the hot fires raging along Michigan Avenue. An investigation into uncovering the culprits brazen enough to ignite Greek fire inside the city would also begin, although Chicago’s law enforcement would never be able to pin it on the Argo VII because its state-of-the-art stealth system kept the school bus invisible to most cameras. As for Apex, the Greek fire that would cause problems for the city in the morning barely slowed the villain down tonight.

It’s that damn Nemean Lion’s fur…it absorbs damage like a heavy-duty sponge, Chiron grumbled into Sam’s ears. Sam would report this to his friends, although he would also add, “I think all that did was piss him off.”

The Argo VII turned left on E. Chestnut, which the bus’s GPS registered was a mostly empty street, making it the perfect spot for Farsight to unleash bronze-tip javelins at the villain chasing after them.

The first of these javelins pierced the asphalt a meter away from its intended target. And, while the second javelin struck Apex on the shoulder, it merely bounced off him. The third and fourth javelins fared no better. They were unable to penetrate the Nemean Lion’s fur.

“Wow,” Thunder said dryly. “That was a waste of enchanted bronze…”

“A lot of money too,” Sam added.

Enchanted bronze javelins weren’t cheap, as he recalled. Quality ones were worth at least a hundred drachmas on the OTC.

“Um, something’s happening to our rear,” Sam reported.

He could see it on the screen; how the panels on the back of the bus had all flipped over to reveal the reflective surface of the bronze mirrors hiding underneath.

“Whoa”—this time, Thunder seemed genuinely impressed—“is that what I think it is?”

“If you’re thinking it’s an Archimedes Mirror powered by the solar panels installed on the Argo VII’s roof then you’d be right,” Farsight chuckled. “Seriously, though, hold on to something.”

The bus’s interior began to vibrate while the temperature in the back compartments rose quickly. Then the cry of a foghorn pierced the night just before ribbons of golden light flared out of the Archimedes Mirror. Like homing missiles, each ribbon of light collided with the lion-man’s body at a single point—his massive fur-lined chest.

Apex’s monstrous form was blown away by the concentrated power of the sun’s rays while the Argo VII shot forward from the recoil of firing the Archimedes Mirror, propelling the bus across a stretch of road at a speed that not even the lion-man would be able to catch up to.