.|. COHERENT COMICS PRESENTS ----X----------------------------------------------------------------------- '|` =====, ======== ====. ===. ======= ======= // // // )) //|| // // ===== // //===< // || //=== //=== // // // \\ //==|| // // `===== o // o // // o // || o // o ======= o Superhuman Tactical Resources and Affiliated-Field Experts original concept by Dave Van Domelen development by Marc Singer and Terrone Carpenter Issue #2, "City of Lions" copyright 1995 by Marc Singer; a Legacy House production ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- [Cover shows Dan, Jen, Tony, and Teller in the steel canyons of a sark city. Feral eyes lurk in every shadow. Cover copy reads "City of Lions."] ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- The spires of Singapore slowly rose, towered, and then parted for the _Adelaide_ as she idly chugged towards the city. Though the _Adelaide_ was owned and registered by the decadent capitalist nation of Australia, she was permitted in the Chinese-dominated city since she was carrying meat and wheat and other foodstuffs too scarce on the overdeveloped island city-state. But the People's Affiliated Republic of Singapore government kept strict watch on all foreign traffic, and their port authority's docking computers were even now steering the ship toward its pier. That was fine with the crew of the _Adelaide_, since it meant they didn't have to work. That was particularly fine with the eight crew members who had never worked a freighter one day in their life. Western social theory in 2023 said that race was only skin-deep, a construction of a fearful culture, and that was doubly so for these eight people; while they all appeared to be Malay or Tamil or Maphilindonesian natives of Singapore, they were actually members of STRAFE, the new super-powered espionage agency of the North American Combine. And most of them were going on their first real mission ever. Singapore opened up to them and slid past them, either a dawning utopia or a ghost of its former self, depending on whose rhetoric one believed. Many of the skyscrapers built in the nineties commercial boom still stood, but some were being replaced by mass-produced Maoist office collectives. Jen Kleinvogel, one of the four agents who would actually be executing the mission of removing a defecting Chinese patent official from a convention center, grew curious and activated the language chip implanted in her ear. In addition to giving the chip a variety of languages, STRAFE's Tesla Branch scientists had included an automated tour guide. The _Adelaide_ passed by the mouth of the Singapore river, with a rather sterile park in the distance. Triggered by the visual sensors concealed in Jen's imitation ID bracelet, the Tour.Guide began speaking. Oddly, it spoke in the voice of Dr. Ellen Cortes, Tesla Branch's head; Jen wondered why she hadn't given the reading to someone else. "You are now passing Deng Xiaoping Park," said Dr. Cortes' voice, "formerly known as Merlion park. The merlions, half-lion half-fish creatures, were once the national animal of Singapore. Singapore's name, Singha Pura, meant 'City of Lions,' but there have never been lions on Singapore island, so local legend said they were sea monsters--" Jen didn't think she'd help the team any if she were bored to death. "Fast forward to recent history," she subvocalized. "...the park was renamed and the thirty-foot statue of the merlion was dismantled after the city fell under PROC influence, following the chaos of 1998." Sure enough, Jen could make out a large pedestal with nothing on it; they hadn't bothered to dismantle it completely. "The merlion was regarded as a superstitious and counter-revolutionary symbol by the new Chinese-run government, particularly since Hermes had attempted to summon one to woo the population of Singapore in the time of the Godmarket." That intrigued Jen; that, and the building see saw looming up ahead. "Pursue that link," she said. "Hermes in Singapore. All the gods." "...Singapore was a particularly-contested city in the time of the Godmarket," said Cortes' voice, "because it naturally fell under the providence of several gods of commerce, currency, or crossroads. Legba, Hermes, and many others vied for worshippers here. Hermes attempted to win Singapore's loyalty by summoning a merlion, although it was a creature from his own pantheon, the Chimera, whose lion head and serpent tail vaguely resembled the legendary merlion's. However, the grandest attempt to proselytize Singapore belonged to Mammon, a demon of the Christian Apocrypha..." A gigantic skyscraper filled the skyline now; in the afternoon sun, its long shadow extended into the harbor. The _Adelaide_ slowly chugged across its terminus, into the dark shadows. "Mammon, demon of greed, erected a large temple in Singapore, apparently composed entirely of gold. Learning from the mistake of Phaeton in Chicago, however, Mammon only gave it a goldlike appearance. He topped the structure with his own visage, the angelic face he supposedly enjoyed before the Fall. According to rumor, after the gods departed Earth, the face mystically reverted to its true demonic form." Jen could only see a silhouette of that face now, haloed in gold from the sunlight striking the sides of the building. The many lumps and horns and rolls of fat made Jen glad she couldn't see the real thing up close like this. "In actuality, its reversion was due to a series of Chinese-sponsored vandals and construction crews. Although the Chinese thorougly eradicated the other gods' temples, they chose to leave Mammon's temple standing, as a propagandistic reminder of the excesses and evils of capitalism --" "Tour.Guide off," Jen muttered. She couldn't take any more of this. "Beg your pardon?" said Dan "Grind" Tracey, standing next to her and leaning out over the railing. Actually, he said it in flawless Cantonese, and Jen's chip translated it -- not in the olive-oil tones of Dr. Cortes, thank goodness. Jen subvocally called up her response, then said "Just talking to my Tour.Guide," as best she could in Cantonese. "Didn't mean to do it in English." Dan leaned closer to her. "And something about the Tour.Guide disturbed you?" His gaze was piercing -- it always was -- and Jen just didn't feel she could hide anything whenever she was around him. Somehow, that didn't scare her as much as it should have. "I was just choking on rhetoric," she said. "I can't believe that we're being expected to swallow this 'Evil Empire' stuff," Jen said. "Or endorse it." "Our job isn't to endorse it," Dan said. "It's to protect society enough so that *it* doesn't start swallowing it. But I had a different gripe with the Tour.Guide." Dan had that annoying habit of switching topics dramatically; perhaps he expected everybody else's mind to keep up with his supernormally-intelligent one. "Ask it about paranormals in Singapore." Jen did, and the only reply was a curt "No information on this topic is available" from Dr. Cortes. "It seems a little risky to send us here without *any* information on it," Dan said. "It seems quite impossible that they could have *none*." Dan looked like he wanted to pursue the topic more, but the ship was pulling up to its dock, and the STRAFE agents had to look authentic. They broke apart, Jen taking her position by the cargo lift. The lack of information disturbed her slightly, but not much. After all, Dan Tracey was on the case. And he wouldn't steer them wrong. * * * * After a hard afternoon and evening of docking, registering, and unloading the ship, the STRAFE agents were permitted to leave the ship and enter Singapore. Their ID bracelets marked them as citizens, after all. So by nine p.m. local time the eight agents, most of them aching from their labors, hit the town. Richard Hendrick and the other two Affiliated-Field Experts, men with no powers but lifetimes of skills and experience, steered them through the bustling city. Normally the STRAFErs would have been glad to have them along, but there was considerable tension between these two groups; they'd had a heated training session just a few days before. "Heated" being a pun even below the sardonic Jason Teller, because the session ended when one of Hendrick's men brutally attacked C.J. Brown, the team's pyrokinetic, plunging the training room into flames. Nobody had been hurt, physically. But the rift between the two wings of STRAFE was greater than ever. "This place looks good," Hendrick said as they approached a cheap hotel. The agents filed in and reserved a room. Nothing uncommon about that; space was at a premium here, and eight crewmen on shore leave might easily share one room, rather than getting eight coffin-beds -- much cheaper, and easier to fit companions in overnight. They swept the room for bugs, using concealed Tesla gear that had completely eluded the nosy customs inspectors. No bugs were to be found, but Dan assembled and activated a portable sonic screen just to be safe. The white noise might cause a mild headache, but it would make sure the team stayed incognito. They discussed their agenda in Cantonese, all the better to stay "in character" and avoid slipping into English when they were in public. Everybody used their chips, except Dan and Hendrick, who appeared to know the language by heart -- and Dan, after only studying it for two days, could talk circles around Hendrick. A point which didn't cheer up the AFE commander. "...So that is your part of the mission," Hendrick concluded. "You should find it most easy, since Mr. Lin is most likely not prized by the PROC. Agent Keating and Agent Milken," he gestured to the other two AFEs, "and myself and Ms. Brown will stay here in reserve, to accompany you once Mr. Lin has been freed. Are there any questions to be asked by you now?" "As a matter of fact, I have one," Dan said, not only in smoother syntax but with an authentic-sounding accent. "What do we need to know about paranormals here? What kind of opposition can we expect?" Hendrick was taken aback. He recovered his composure, and said, "I doubt you'll find any paranormals here. Or magic, for that matter. The PROC security shouldn't have any." "Yes," Dan replied all too calmly, "we all know that the Chinese government denies having paranormal assets. Our own government would probably deny having us, but we're still sitting here, and we need to know what we're getting into." "You cocky little brat." Hendrick slipped into English, then corrected himself and replied in Cantonese. "To the best of our knowledge, the Chinese have no paranormals. Official theory is that by the Owens Effect, Maoism stifles magene development." Dan guessed that there were no unofficial theories, or none that would be divulged to him. * * * * Lin Kim Chao, senior patent official for the People's Republic of China, looked out over the balcony railing, watching the drunken conventioneers slowly stumble back to their rooms with their dates or pick-ups or prostitutes in tow. He might have been doing the same as recently as a few months ago, but he had brought his family to this convention. For reasons which even they did not fully comprehend. Lin hoped they never would fully comprehend them, as he did. Lin tapped his fingers on the railing, nervously. The United World man he spoke to, Cook, said the rescue would be coming at this convention. Where were they? There was only one night left. And Lin didn't know if he could face going back to China. Not after... Lin bowed his head so passersby could not see him sobbing. Why did the rescue have to be in Singapore, of all places? Dear ancestors, he thought, dear ancestors. Why the merlions? * * * * Dan, Jen, Tony, and Teller were riding the monorail into the convention center's hotel. They actually only had to walk a few blocks from their own hotel, but this way attracted less suspicion and made tracing them back nearly impossible. Even after midnight, the train was crammed with passengers, for the city never truly slept. "And yet it's still clean," Teller said, obviously amazed. "No graffiti on the train, no nothing. Nobody even thinks about dirtying it." Tony wanted to say "ixnay on the ourist-tay," but his chip couldn't translate it. He settled for "Spare me, you're supposed to be a native, remember?" Fortunately, their wrist communicators were networked with their language chips, so they could speak subvocally at short ranges. Teller, enthralled with his Tour.Guide and its wealth of trivia, continued. "And it's not because of the proccies -- er, the glorious benefactors to the north, either. They've been keeping this city clean for decades. Do you know what they *do* to vandals here?" "Probably a lot less than what they do to foreign spies." "No, man, it's hilarious. They take a --" A loud tone sounded, and Tony said, "We're here." Not a moment too soon. The STRAFErs squeezed out of the monorail. Most of the passengers headed for the strip of bars and clubs, but Dan led his team up to the hotel rooms, pressing the button for the twenty-third floor. Teller chuckled. "Hey, Grind, isn't our friend on twenty-four?" Puzzled, Dan pressed twenty-four. Teller kept smiling, then saw the serious looks on his teammates' faces. His smile disappeared as well. Dan Tracey had just made a mistake. * * * * Four locals, sailors or dockworkers by the look of them, were approaching him. Lin panicked; they looked serious and ready for trouble, and Lin wondered if they'd been hired to finish him off. He started backing away from the balcony, towards the door to his suite. Somehow, the lead heavy got there before he did. "Nice night for a stroll, don't you think?" he said, words heavy with hidden meanings. Lin's whole body trembled violently. This was it. The merlions. The merlions sent them to kill me. The heavy calmly repeated, "Nice night for a stroll, don't you think?" Lin stared back at him, confounded. The female heavy snorted and said, in very poor Cantonese, "I hate all that cloak-and-dagger stuff. Mr. Lin, we're here to help you." Lin sighed and relaxed. Then another thought occurred to him... "How do I know that for sure?" "Because I said the signal phrase," said the lead heavy, "and you answer with the counter-phrase, and we leave... I have to agree with my colleague, it can all get rather silly. So what do you say you gather your family and we get out of here?" Lin snapped to his senses and realized this was his one ticket out of here. He hustled into the suite and started rousing his family. His bags, of course, were already packed. The STRAFE team waited outside in the hall while the Lin family got ready to move. Dan would have rather come at a time when they were all ready -- and the cover of night hardly mattered in this neon-lit, overcrowded city -- but Cook from the UW had been quite specific about when they were to contact Lin. Dan was still worried, mostly because of his elevator gaffe. His worries only increased when five suited, sunglassed Singaporeans came out of the elevator and started walking down the hall towards the team. "Let me handle this," he subvocalized, "they might pick up your accents." As Dan walked up to meet them, one of the men flashed a hotel security badge. "Sir," he said to Dan, "do you mind if I inquire why you and your companions are loitering here? I shall have to ask you to move along." "We were sent here to bring a message to a guest of the convention, and we are awaiting his reply." The same man answered Dan. "There are lobbies downstairs in which you may wait. The guests have asked that you move along." Something seemed very wrong about all this. Who else had seen them to complain about them? Why weren't the other men talking? Dan thought the answer should have been obvious, but it wasn't, and that drove him crazy. "Sir?" the spokesman said. "Sir, are you well? Can you understand me?" "Of course I can," Dan recovered. "I'm afraid I did not see your badge clearly before." A lie. "May I examine it again?" Some of the other men started to shift uncomfortably, and project dirty looks at Dan, but the spokesman was happy to comply. Dan looked at the badge very carefully. Just as he thought -- the serial numbers were all different. Or was he misremembering things again? No, he had to trust himself. Different numbers could only mean one thing. A sloppy illusionist. Subvocally, he said, "Attack." Teller was first, drawing his pistol and pumping tranquilizer darts into the fake security men. They reeled backwards, taken by surprise, but they didn't fall. Dan grabbed the spokesman by his outstretched arm and twisted him into a wall. Jen ran down that part of the hall that had a balcony overlooking the hotel interior; once she reached the sheltered elevator bank, she launched into the air and did a flying ram into two men. Tony stayed by the door, his job to defend and rescue Lin at all costs. Dan delivered two swift blows to the back of the spokesman's neck, driving him to unconsciousness. And then Dan discovered why there was a paranormal illusionist running around Singapore. He was white. They all were. As the spokesman, actually a pale, scrawny man, slid down the wall, the other four goons flickered and distorted, reverting to their true appearances. Four whites, all wearing body armor which had blocked Teller's darts. One of them, a tall Nordic man, rolled his arms outwards and a gust of cold wind blew past Dan. It continued down the hall, gathering size and moisture and shape, until by the time it reached Teller it was a man-sized snowball. Astonished, Teller failed to dodge it and was bowled over. "A cryogenic," Dan cursed, as he spun to avoid another gust of cold. "If only Hendrick had let C.J. come with us!" Speaking of Hendrick and C.J., Dan thought, this was an excellent time to call for back-up if they hadn't come running already. Dan pressed the panic button on his communicator. There was no response. * * * * "Still no contact, chief," said Agent Keating, fiddling around with the interior of his communications gear. "I'm just barely picking up the signal beacons, but I've lost any actual sound. All I can tell is that they're still in the hotel." "Shit!" Hendrick looked around for something to toss at a wall, but realized that everything was too valuable to toss, which just made him angrier. "Any idea what's causing the interference? A jammer?" Keating looked nervous. "Actually, chief, I'd have to revise my previous diagnosis and say that it's not interference at all. It's mechanical failure. This stuff just isn't working like it should." Across the room -- a distance of only twelve feet -- C.J. sank even further into despair. Her friends could be in serious trouble, and she wasn't there to help them. All because she lost control in that damn training session. "I think we should go after them, Hendrick," she said. "Absolutely not. The plan was to stay here unless called for, and in the absence of communication, it's essential to stick to the plan." Hendrick looked like he wanted to say something, but knew he shouldn't... then went ahead and said it anyway. "If you go charging in there now, flamethrower blazing, it'll only make things worse." This from the bastard whose trainers had caused her to lose control in the first place. The only thing blazing was C.J.'s mind, as she imagined Richard Hendrick burning, slowly and painfully. * * * * Dan timed the period between the cryogenic's bursts, and after the next one missed him, Dan rushed in to attack his unprotected face. The sudden move was unexpected, and Dan's blows were accurate and effective, but somehow Dan mistimed his moves. Just as he finished off the Nordic man, one last gust of cold slammed into him. It didn't have time to harden into ice, but it jolted Dan and drove him to his knees. He sank down next to the Nordic man, shivering. Dan could only watch as Jen tried to hold off the other three opponents. There was a woman with superhuman strength, but she wasn't fast enough for Jen and just left a lot of fist-sized holes in the elevators. She only seemed to be a decoy, though, for the other two agents -- men with dark Mediterranean complexions who appeared to be identical twins -- were working from a distance to pin Jen down, firing with silenced guns. Jen's dark antigravity sheath, which normally would have given her some invisibility, was useless in this light, and it was starting to flicker anyway. The twin gunmen fired to either side of Jen, obviously using real bullets. Jen decided the elevator bank was too cramped, it was time to fly out to the large shaft down the center of the hotel. Their cover was already shredded anyway, why not finish it off? But Jen might not have that option; gunfire pinned her on either side. Then she saw something out of the corner of her eye that gave her hope. Jen flew for one end of the bank, the side opposite the one that led to Lin's room, and made a hairpin turn just before she flew into a hail of bullets. She pushed for the other side, flying right into the sights of the other gunman... Jen hoped her timing was better than Dan's... Tony Drake, who had been charging down the hall, collided into the gunman. Jen flew past them, and out into the shaft. Even though she was twenty-four floors up, she could hear the gasps below -- it actually felt kind of good. Tony disarmed the twin beneath him, but the other one was firing. A bullet hit his shoulder, and hurt like hell, but of course bounced right off his invulnerable body. Before the gunman could fire any more, Jen came swooping around from the other side of the elevator bank. She hit the gunman from behind, steered him so she collected the strongwoman as well, and rammed them both into the far wall. At Jen's maximum speed, their body armor was little good against the impact; they both slumped to the ground. Tony downed his twin with a solid punch, then grabbed Dan and started pulling him back down the hall. "You sh-shouldn't have l-left the L-Lins," Dan chattered, "we're here for th-them." Tony smiled. "I wasn't going to leave any dead teammates behind. You said so yourself back on the boat, Dan. Anyway, it isn't like anything else could -- oh, no. No." The Lins' door was wide open, and there was no sign of any of them. * * * * C.J. Brown was still smoldering. This was her first big chance to prove herself, and she was spending the mission cramped in a dingy room with three people who hated her. Of course, her dislike for them was mutual, and just as obvious. She sat in one corner of the room, listening to her Tour.Guide since it was the only escape from her companions. Of course, the Guide wasn't working right either, and every link ended up with Ellen Cortes reciting, none too convincingly, the same spiel about how evil the Chinese were. Or maybe they had designed it that way. C.J. angrily switched it off and slumped against the wall. "Your Guide's doing it too, eh?" said Agent Milken, who was busy cleaning and recleaning his gun. C.J. wanted to snap back at him, but something in his manner made that impossible. Milken continued, "Me, I got pretty sick of that stuff myself." "I'd have thought that 'kill-a-Maoist-for-mommy' stuff was right up your alley." "Don't read my agency's beliefs onto me, young lady," Milken said. He also nodded toward Hendrick and Keating, who were too busy cursing over the radio to pay attention to the conversation, indicating that she shouldn't read their beliefs onto him either. "I never did like the way we slipped right back into the old Cold War rhetoric after '98. It was like we took one step forward and two steps back." C.J. smiled in spite of herself. "There's no way you were old enough to live in the Cold War, Milken." "I wasn't... and my name's not really Milken, either. No, I grew up when the Russians were good guys. Messed up, but good guys. But my older sister told me how much nuclear war scared her when she was little. And the history books were filled with that stuff, before FEMA used the big disappearance as an excuse to start rewriting history books. But everything was cool for a while when I was a kid... and now it's slipped back to the way it was before." He snapped his gun together. "Especially with the Chinese. The Eurasian Union is a commerical and political rival, but the PROC and its satellites, they really freak us out. Because they don't just deny our money and our alphabet and our system of exchange, they absorb our --" "*Milken*!" shouted Hendrick, obviously paying more attention than he'd seemed to, "Keep quiet, will you, we're trying to work here." C.J. switched her chip and communicator to subvocal range and asked Milken, "What is it that Hendrick doesn't want us to know?" "It isn't that he doesn't want you to know," Milken told her, subvocally, "the United World apparently said you *couldn't* know when they gave you this job." "And what is this secret that Hendrick is so graciously protecting?" "The secret," said Hendrick's voice, coming through their chips and scaring several years out of both of them, "is that the missions team is, in all likelihood, completely screwed." * * * * There was no time to lose. Tony had only been gone a few moments. And since the Lins hadn't come down to the elevator bank, they could only have gone -- or been taken -- the other way down the hall. "Jen, f-fly down there and s-secure the other end. Be r-ready for t- trouble," Dan said. "If they haven't g-gone that w-way, we know they're s-stashed in one of these rooms." That would be bad; they didn't have time for a room-to-room search, with real hotel and city security doubtlessly on the way, and the five Europeans able to revive at any minute. Dan took over Jen's task of pulling Teller out of the iceball, while Jen flew down the hall. Tony sheepishly walked over to Dan and said, "I'm really sorry, I thought you guys needed me --" "There's no t-time for excuses. Go help Jen." Crestfallen, Tony turned and did as he was told. Tony followed Jen into the emergency stairwell at the end of the hallway, only to find her clinging to a wall while gunfire streamed up from below. "They're only a little bit ahead of us," Jen shouted, "uh, as you can see." "Who is it?" Tony didn't want to stick his head over the railing and see. Those were assault rifles they were firing, and for some reason Tony's shoulder still felt strange. "They look Chinese," Jen said, not that that means anything. "Listen, I think I can get down there, but I'll need all the help I can get." She pointed to a fusebox on the next landing down. "Can you make it dark?" Jen pulled out a pair of nightvision goggles, signalling her plan to Tony. Loud, bright gunfire was spraying up all around them. "I hope so," Tony said, "I've been trying to cut down to one major screw-up a day." He bolted for the landing, getting winged by a few lucky shots. They didn't hurt him, but they shredded his clothes and his armor mesh underneath, and they stung like the devil. Bullets had never felt this bad; then again, it was the first time the person firing at him had actually wanted to kill him. Well, maybe some of Hendrick's trainers had... Tony pried the fusebox open and started throwing every switch, pulling every wire in sight. He got jolted a few times; his invulnerability notwithstanding, it most certainly didn't tickle. But the stairwell lights, even the emergency ones, went dark. The people below grew confused and stopped firing for a moment, and that was all the opening Jen needed. She hopped over the railing and dropped down the shaft even faster than gravity would dictate. The darkness and her sheath made her quite invisible; only the goggles let her see through both. The troops below never even knew what happened as Jen swooped by and grabbed Mrs. Lin and her daughter. She knew Mr. Lin was the priority, but she just couldn't bring herself to leave behind the two people who had been dragged into this unknowingly. She put them on a lower landing, then rocketed back up to grab Mr. Lin. This time, they knew she was coming, and they would be aiming right at her. But no shots came her way. They all went in crazy directions, mostly downwards, though not in the direction of the Lins. Jen, never one to look a gift horse in the mouth, snagged Lin and flew back up to Tony. "Take him and run," she said, "I'll go back and grab the family." "That way's no good," cried Dan, bursting in from the hall and dragging Teller along with him. "The real hotel security just arrived, and I think they got in a scuffle with our Eurasian friends. We have to go down." "What, through all that gun--" Tony choked his words back. He couldn't hear any gunfire anymore. Borrowing Jen's goggles, Tony went down to check it out. A half-dozen Chinese special-forces types, real ones apparently, lay sprawled on the stairs. The door nearest to them was swinging back and forth, as if someone had just dashed through it, but when he looked through the window he saw nobody. And a few landings down, Mrs. Lin was trying to hush her screaming child. Dan came up behind Tony, stumbling over a few of the bodies and nearly falling down the stairs before Tony caught him. Dan mumbled a thanks and knelt by a body, pulling a small dart from a wound and sniffiing it. "That's cyanide-D," he said, hastily adding, "I think. They sort of cut down on the almond.... Tony, this wasn't one of ours. And the Eurasians weren't using darts." "I g-guess we have a r-really psychotic g-guardian angel," Teller said, as Jen helped him down the stairs. "Who c-cares who k-killed these guys? Lets g-get out of here." "I'm not so quick to dismiss this other presence," Dan said, "but I agree that we need to leave. And our planned quiet getaway is now impossible. You know what that means." Dan led the team down the stairs, where they collected the other Lins. At the seventeenth floor, Dan cautiously slipped out the door to the hotel, then waved the rest of the team through. They picked the nearest hotel room, and Dan and Tony rammed its door open. Tony walked very gingerly after that, since the impact had aggravated his pains where the bullets had hit him. That worried Tony immensely. He only felt phantom pain at the actual moment of impact; he simply didn't *get* lingering pains, because no actual tissue was damaged. But he felt pain now. Teller tranquilized the people in the room, and Dan pulled back the curtains so he could open the balcony door. Seventeen stories below, a swarm of squad cars and urban security vehicles were converging on the hotel. "Damn, this is going to make our escape hard," Dan said. "But we can get the Lins out now." He slid the window open. "Are you up to it, Jen?" "I'll have to be." She got her goggles from Tony and donned them again. "It would help if you tied them to me, just to be safe." Jen stood by the balcony door -- not in front of it, though, for searchlights were already probing up and down the sides of the hotel -- while Dan tried to tell the Lins what they were going to do. His delivery was poor, and they didn't take the news well. Teller virtually had to drive them into Jen's arms at gunpoint, and Tony tied them on for more than just safety. "This is insane," Lin Kim Chao cried as he was strapped to Jen's back. "The drop is more than sixty meters... we must easily weigh two hundred kilograms!" "Nobody said freedom came easy, Mr. Lin," Jen said. She had to wait a few seconds for the chip to give her the equivalent Cantonese terms; "freedom" was one of the many words the Chinese had purged from all the official dictionaries. "And this flight looks even scarier in English units." They finished securing her passengers, and Jen said, "I guess this is it." Dan was scratching his head. "Jen, there's something wrong...." "Well, put that amazing brain of yours to work fast. We don't have much time." Dan shook his head. "I just don't know. Be careful, okay?" Tony stepped forward. "Yeah, Jen, be careful." "Hey, I'm the one who's flying to the safehouse. You guys get out of here in one piece, okay?" Jen activated her power, and the whole cluster of people was swatched in her antigravity sheath. It seemed much weaker, a sort of gray mist instead of a black field. Jen and the Lins rose, wobbled towards the door, and then shot out of the hotel in a straight line that carried them out across the convention center plaza. "Oh, God," Tony said, "that's nowhere near fast enough." "Or invisible enough, apparently," Dan observed. Searchlights were turned up in the air, sweeping very close to Jen. A few tracer rounds were fired upwards... "Guys," Teller said, "we can't do anything. We have to hustle before security, or those Europeans, or more Chinese commandos, or the mystery killers find us." But Dan and Tony weren't budging. They watched, and winced, as Jen made her slow, shaky flight. The Lins should have been well within her weight limit, but Jen was having trouble... Dan pounded his head against the wall. "How could I be so *stupid*?" he groaned. Even when Dan said he was stupid, Tony still felt dumber, because he didn't know what was wrong. "Dan, what are you talking about?" "The supertech has been breaking down, you're starting to feel real pain, I've been clumsy and... and stupid... I must have been, to miss it until now... something in Singapore is inhibiting our paranormal abilities. And here I just sent Jen out to push hers to the limit!" Tony glanced out the window again. Jen made it across the plaza and was heading for the hotel when a searchlight caught her -- her aura had faded to almost nothing. The urban-assault jeeps down in the plaza swiveled their guns around and started firing. Jen plunged out of the searchlight and zoomed towards the ground, a gray comet falling from the sky. She disappeared into the canyons of Singapore, nowhere near the hotel with Hendrick and C.J. She didn't rise up again. "Jen?" Tony shouted into his wrist communicator. "Jen?" But there was no answer. Dan leaned against the wall. "How could I be so *stupid*..." Teller had to shake both of them. "Guys, I hate to be tactless," he said, actually not being tactless for the first time, "but we have to run. There is nothing we can do for them here. Guys, we have to run!" "I agree with your friend's words, in theory," said another voice, in heavily Scandinavian-accented English. "But in practice, I am afraid I must beg to differ." Then the cold hit them. Next issue: Anchors away. STRAFE #2 written by and c. Marc Singer.