Endworlds - Nicholas Read [24]
“My name’s Lion, little man.” He jerked a finger back in the direction of the river. “How did you do that?”
The smaller boy pushed out his lower lip and shrugged pensively, still processing what he had done. The lethal blast had not come from one of the hand cannons the others wielded. It had come from his own mouth. He may not have known who he was, but he knew enough to know that what he had just done wasn’t normal.
“I . . . don’t . . . know,” he volunteered at last, searching for words that were safe, unsure what might launch from his throat next. Seeing no effect, he relaxed a little. “Maybe . . . maybe . . . it was a delayed reaction to what you fired into it?” He wasn’t convincing himself, so he doubted there was any way his hesitant words would convince the others.
“No, mate,” another older boy countered, also dark skinned. “You went all Merlin on it. I seen you with me own mince pies. You know what that thing was?”
“Selagote,” replied the kid matter-of-factly. The word surprised him as much as it provoked animated discussion among the fighters, and he scowled at the frustration of not knowing how he knew. When Lion raised a hand and the others quieted, it immediately identified him as the leader.
“We call that one a Kraken, because we don’t have real names for them. Just a bunch of types.” His gaze narrowed. “But you—you know its name. Are you from one of the other Longcoat cells?”
The younger boy struggled to remember. He cajoled his own mind, did everything but hit himself in the head. When he spoke again the anguish in his voice all but overwhelmed the confusion.
“Longcoats—what? No, I don’t know. I woke up underwater, swam ashore, found some food, and came across all of you fighting the selagote.”
Even through the dimming downpour, the coated girl who stepped forward flashed a bruised beauty. Her shoulder pad was blue. Sniffers wore blue, their technology designed to track and reveal what could not be seen with normal sight.
Her visor display winked out and retracted under her hood, revealing dripping ringlets of dark brown hair and a mauve burn that snaked downward from her left eye to disappear into her neckline. A metaphorical blowtorch had also burned away the softer aspects of Jax’s personality and roughed them up to match her hardened visage. She had no time for small talk as she addressed the group in her brogue French accent.
“Guys, it speaks like us, but its brain is fragged like everything else that tumbles through the seams. This is no Longcoat. What it was able to do just now, and knowing the name of a creature no civvies ever heard of, it can only mean one thing.”
She stepped forward and pressed metal to the boy’s throat as she began to pat down his pockets. “It’s obvious this one came through, too. We send it back.”
A thickly muscled arm attached to a crimson epaulette and an equally massive body pushed Jax’s arm down.
“That’s right, babushka, blow to hell everything you don’t understand. Come on, give me Rosen’s toys.”
Jax handed over her weapon and several other pieces of equipment to the Russian. So did the others, wrestling the more unwieldy hip cannons together with their mounting belts over to the moose of a young man.
As soon as the handover was complete he pressed a button on his chest and his red shoulder pad winked green. He was the Toymaster now, custodian of the team’s gear since Rosen was gone. Without ever taking his eyes off the young stranger he dropped the items into a flat pocket of his sleeveless coat. One by one they disappeared into the fold of fabric as if they were weightless and devoid of mass.
“They call me Hummer.” He jabbed a thumb at his sternum. “Built like American truck.” By way of illustration the young Russian gunned an enormous shirtless arm. “The nice