When he saw it, he kicked himself that he didn’t notice it sooner.
The beams are made entirely of that new energy!
At the realization, a new tab appeared on his display amid the perception filters and he could visualize the energy, connected to the turrets and extending into the walls, down to some large turbine far below. Looking to his newfound channels he saw that they were completely empty, scoured clear when he had poured it all into the suit. Some kind of entrainment had yanked every residual amount of the red energy out of him. But what if…
He tried to funnel some of the energy toward the empty center at the base of his spine. The pain dropped by degrees. It was surprising how slowly it was filling in comparison to the sheer intensity of the energy he had been fighting against.
He opened himself more and the beams actually began to bend, concentrating on the internal spinning disk. It began to glow and spin quicker and energy began to cycle along the four paths up and down his legs, then returned to the central disk. It felt like he had a miniature CERN inside of him, except that all the energy was traveling one way—for now.
He pushed forward as the resistance waned, stepping with more surety and speed as the energy filled him. It was nowhere near filling even the smallest section of his pathways by the time he reached the doorway. Mengele was there at a cupboard cramming gels into his mouth.
But that was not what made his jaw drop open.
Chapter Eighty-Five
I Won’t Back Down
Accept party invite? (Y/N)
Gus numbly accepted the prompt.
“Is that Gus?” Harmony pointed. “What’s he wearing? He looks like a Ken doll.”
“Who cares about that? Get in there before the door closes,” Darik said, herding the others inside. BoJack was still kneeling, so Darik hoisted him over his shoulders in a fireman’s carry and moved him to the room beyond.
“Ah, so the cavalry did decide to come.” Mengele turned to face Gus. “I’m a little disappointed in you, really. I thought you were one of those sulky lone-wolf types. I should have known better.”
“Dude! Why is everyone naked?” Harmony asked, taking in the scene. “What’s been going on here?”
Mengele looked down at himself and shrugged. “Hmm. Yes. You’ll have to ask your friend about that, he’s the one who removed my clothes.”
Questioning eyes panned to Gus, who stared back in surprise. “You guys came for me? But why?” Movement at the corner of his eye broke his attention from the Crew. Mengele was slinking toward a small airlock door on his side of the room.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Gus shook himself out of his stupor and began to run towards Mengele.
“You looked like you needed some private time to reconnect. I’ll be on my way.”
Gus lunged and barely managed to grab one of Mengele’s ankles as he did a flip at the last minute. They tumbled to the floor, hitting a nearby tray and knocking over its contents. Beakers and vials shattered on the ground. Mengele quickly regained his feet and gave a disappointed glance at the destruction.
“What a waste. Why must you so-called supers generate so much collateral damage in your efforts? Have you no finesse? You get a couple of abilities and treat the world just like a small child with a new toy hammer.”
“Some things need to be razed to build something better,” Gus retorted, attempting another grapple.
“That won’t be so easy now that I’ve regained my composure a bit,” Mengele chided as he hit Gus in the back with the side of his hand. Plates formed right before impact, thinning the pseudo-skin of hybrid-Nth around him. The power he had felt earlier from Mengele wasn’t there but it was still enough to flatten him on the ground. Mengele backed up and cocked his head to assess his work.
Gus, you can’t let him hit you like that again. He’s activating an ability. I can’t decode exactly what the hybrid-Nth are trying to tell me, but another hit could be fatal! Nick warned.
Thanks, Nick. Long time no see.
Gus pushed himself to his knees and got up on shaky feet.
What the hell was that?
He felt his legs pulse and they quickly regained their stability as some of the red energy ebbed out into his tissues to compensate.
“Unexpected. Yet refreshing,” Mengele remarked and dropped back into a martial art pose, bouncing lightly on the balls of his feet. Almost casually, he raised his left hand as a ton of shrapnel flew at him, stopping as it hit a wall of nothingness and dropping to the floor.
“How is he doing that?” Anastasia gasped.
“Don’t let him touch you!” Gus warned, circling around to the others, waving them back.
“Oh, Gus. How unsportsmanlike of you. Astute, yes. But it will avail you nothing. At the risk of being pedantic, you and your fellows have no chance of defeating me. Look at this poor man, he’s barely conscious and I haven’t even laid a finger on him. Yet.” He waved a dismissive hand at BoJack. “I would implore you all to leave, but I have dealt with too many with your saccharine sentimentality to hope that you would abandon your mawkishness. Let the lesson begin.”
Another salvo of items careened across the room and a thick blue liquid revealed a dome shape surrounding Mengele that ran down the sides, leaving the barrier invisible again.
“Hiding behind shields? Not so tough without your armor, are you?”
“This? This is not a shield.” He gestured at the air around him. “It’s miles of folded space condensed into a single millimeter. Anything that meets the plane expends all its energy as if traveling through the intervening space. I assure you any type of attack will lose potency before it ever reaches me. It’s only by my selective manipulation of that space that makes it possible that you can even hear
