Power(4)

Or at least I hadn’t been. Things had changed.

I landed on Frederick’s back as his face hit the deck. I heard his roar of rage on impact and knew that it hadn’t hurt him one bit. I planted another painful blow to his kidney and this time he howled. These creatures were on such a level of strength, their skins so resistant to damage, that they could shrug off bullets like they were BBs and brush aside punches from powerful metahumans like they were wet cardboard being slapped against them.

I drove another fist into Frederick’s kidney and listened to the roar mingled with pain—real pain—and grinned. I was going to turn him into wet cardboard by the time I was done—

I saw a flash of movement out of the corner of my eye and it set my predator’s instincts into motion. Grihm was charging at me, and he looked like a rhino loping its way across the plains. Huge. Powerful.

Well, if the plains were a confined cargo plane’s hold, and the rhino was a subhuman beast barely a step above a wild dog on the evolutionary chart—

HEY.

Oh, hush up, Wolfe, we’re busy here.

Grihm was coming at me without thought, without logic. He was all out on his run, uncaring about what he hit behind me, so long as he turned me into a greasy smear on the deck in the process.

Big and dumb, that’s what these boys were. Just like—

HEY—

SHUT UP, WOLFE.

I propelled myself low, taking advantage of Grihm’s absurd height advantage. He may have been charging at me, but his center of mass was still several feet off the ground. I greeted his left knee with a booted foot. His joint didn’t give out—he was still obscenely tough, after all—but it didn’t have to.

I knocked his damned leg right out from underneath him.

Grihm collapsed, coming down in an absurd triangle, with his ass making up the apex, his feet being one point, head being the other, and the deck making up the bottom of the shape. Well, sort of. I was beneath him, after all, so technically, I guess I was the bottom of the triangle. And since having one of these obtuse, moronic mules landing on me wasn’t in my plans for the day—Shut up, Wolfe, stop taking my insults to them so personally, you wuss—I kicked up and landed a foot in Grihm’s crotch and changed his downward trajectory back to up.

That dumb son of a bitch flipped ass-over-teakettle and hit the wall behind the metal box I’d been trapped in so hard that the plane rocked again. My fingers snapped into the grid on the deck and held fast, keeping me from sliding. Frederick was not so lucky, and I watched him face plant into a cargo pallet. I doubt it hurt him, but it was fun to watch.

A screeching of metal against metal greeted my ears as the plane leveled out. The door to the box that I’d broken open had skidded across the deck, and it came to rest only inches to my right. It was heavy, it was metal, and it was like getting an express delivery of awesome, right to my fingertips.

I watched the Wolfe brothers get to their feet as I stood waiting for them, watching to see which of them would get up first, which of them would be less wounded. Neither of them were significantly injured yet, and even if they had been, they healed fast. I mean, with Wolfe’s power at my fingertips I was pretty sure I’d healed a ruptured liver and kidney in less than a minute. My meta healing was fast, but not that fast. These boys were absurd; not only could they take punishment like nothing else on earth, but even when they did get hurt, they healed from it faster than most people could have even imagined inflicting damage on them.

Fortunately, I was not “most people” when it came to imagining damage. And now I wasn’t even “most people” when it came to actually inflicting it.

Just for kicks, I shouted, “Heads up!” at Frederick as he stumbled to his feet. He was wobbling a little, still holding onto his back like it hurt. I swung the door of the box like I was a WWE wrestler and it was a metal folding chair. I aimed for his face and I heard it hit solidly. I saw at least three teeth fly into the air above the door and Frederick smashed through the cargo pallet as if the wooden boxes stacked on it were Styrofoam packing peanuts. Pieces went everywhere.

And Frederick went through the hull of the plane with a crash that drove us sideways once more.

The lighting in the cargo hold went dim, flickering from the impact. The remains of the cargo pallet hammered into the hole in the side of the plane and wedged there, partially closing it off. There was a roar of air from outside as the pallet tried to work its way out the hole, but it remained lodged in place as the plane centered itself once more.

I could feel the plane descending, and I wondered when that had happened. If the pilot was smart, he’d have started the descent when we first began rocking around. If he was dumb, he’d have started it just now, I supposed.