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DAISY LAZARUS
Daisy’s consciousnesscame back to her as she ran ankle deep in waste water. She stumbled with the sudden awareness, but quickly regained her footing when she realized she wasn’t far from where she’d blacked out.
Still in the underground city sewer tunnels. Her sharpened eyesight held out, making her journey easier. Still with the sense of Julius’s despair sharp in her gut, driving her to obsession. He was close. Somehow, she’d managed to fight off her own despair. Maybe it was the foreign blood in her system. She almost choked up thinking her siblings still had her back, even though they weren’t here.
Maybe she’d overreacted after Mary’s and Flint’s sacrifice. Maybe her family would understand and forgive her. Maybe there was nothing to forgive.
With heaving breaths, she tried to fill her lungs but coughed on the miasma of sewer stench. She had the sense to hit her panic button on her Deadly Seven watch. If anything happened to her, they’d know where to find her.
Calm down. Take stock.
She focused on her body.
Sword still in hand. Heart pounding in chest. That sense of being connected through her gifts to the world around her was still present.
Once she focused on her connection, Parker’s borrowed hearing sharpened and sounds surrounding her came into focus.
Traffic overhead. Water trickling underfoot. A stifling breeze blew on her wet ankles. The water drained away somewhere as though a sluice gate had opened. Metallic scraping ahead in the dark tunnel alerted her to the presence of someone. Griffin’s borrowed sixth sense went haywire and shouted at her. Metal. Heavy. Up ahead. She felt the pull of it still simmering in her system. It wasn’t as strong as before, but it was there along with a sin signature she’d recognize anywhere.
Julius.
But he wasn’t alone.
Something else was in the darkness… watching… assessing… waiting. She felt company in the air. In her gut. Before she could uncover it, two beams of light hit her face. She winced, shielding her eyes with her free hand. When her vision adjusted, and she stepped out of the direct beam, her suspicions were confirmed.
The madman himself buckled into a powered mech suit that hardly fit into the tunnel space. He must have stashed it here for his escape. The man had backup plans to his eyeballs. She wished she could say she was surprised, but there were squadrons of these suits developed in the black site base. Some had full robotics built into them. It was where Parker’s arm initially came from.
Julius sat in the cockpit, each leg inside a metal one, each hand fitting inside the exoskeleton arm of the robot. A cage door protecting his torso in the open cockpit. Vulnerable. She should stab there while she had the chance. But wild eyes latched onto her and he pulled it down with a clank. The beams came from spotlights on his shoulders. Without preamble, he lifted the mech-robot hands to point at her.
Attached to each arm was a gatling gun.
Julius roared his fury, vein popping in his forehead, and pulled his trigger.
They say when you stare death in the face, your life flashes before your eyes. You freeze and relive moments of note. From first loves to first kills. Some say these intense moments are ones you missed out on, or moments you regret, or simply times you feel deeply about. But Daisy had spent a lifetime wallowing in feelings, and the only voice she heard now, was Mary’s. Family first.
Those had been her last words to Daisy. Those were the Lazarus family motto. And those would be the words Daisy honored.
Julius had to go, or he would never stop coming for her family. With the full force of this realization, her palms slammed outward. On instinct, she channeled Griffin’s power through her body and connected with metal in the vicinity just like she did with her telekinesis. She sensed bullets hit air, compact space between atoms, and fly toward her, but she also felt the metal itself.
Stop, she commanded.
The kinetic explosion of two forces colliding sent her careening backward as though hit by a truck. Julius stumbled and the mech suit smashed into the wall. Daisy shook stars from her vision and picked up her sword, knowing she had to get him out of the suit.
She didn’t have Griffin’s expertise. Wasn’t sure if instinct would help her further. So far, any time she’d used his gift, she’d fumbled and flung like a child. But maybe that was all she needed. There were other gifts in her arsenal. Electrocuting someone took zero finesse. She plunged her hands into the shallow murky water and squeezed her eyes shut until sweat dappled her upper lip. She gathered electricity. She unleashed, and within seconds, her lightning zipped through the water and up the metal mech suit to fry Julius in his cage. The smell of burning flesh filled the tunnel as he contorted and seized. Tingles rattled her teeth and skipped over her skin, but she kept unleashing until eventually she had to let go, or pass out.
Gasping, Julius ejected himself from the contraption.
Scorch marks covered his body in the places that had touched the metal suit. There was something poetic about seeing him reach for her, seeing the red welts down the side of his face that had leaned against the cockpit cage—the same side of the face her own burn marks were on.
Breathing slowly, Daisy tightened her grip around the katana’s hilt and prowled closer, trying not to puke from both overexertion and the disgusting air.
“Give it up, Julius. Apologize, proclaim your regrets, and maybe I’ll let you live.”
“My only regret was not leaving you to burn in that fire,” he spat as he searched around the fallen mech suit’s skeleton for something.
“Nothing can help you now,” she said, incredulous. “It’s over.”
“It’s not over until one of us is dead, and you’re too weak to make the kill shot.”
