Two Relics Battling in a Museum

It was well dark as we left the police station. We boarded a self-driving cab at the end of the block, since although the Atomic Ranger could have flown to the museum faster than we could have driven to it, the Promethean insisted that the Copper Knight must not be confronted alone.

“That was some pretty sleuthing,” I eventually said to Matt. “Dickish, but clever. I’m still not sure how you put it all together so quickly.”

“To survive as long as I have, one must be able to discern the mark of his enemies,” he answered. “I suspected the Copper Knight’s involvement since I learned of the stolen armor, and the crime certainly had his flamboyant signature. Of course, I couldn’t be sure that it wasn’t simply an attempt by some vainglorious no-account to gain my attention until Medusa let it slip.”

“But the Copper Knight was supposed to be dead for, like, a century.”

“He’s been dead for a lot longer than that. Since he put the armor on, in fact.”

“You know what I mean. Dead dead.”

“You may have thought that. What have I always told you? If you don’t recover a body, don’t assume they’re dead. And the Copper Knight doesn’t even have a body to recover.”

“And Medusa? Do you think she can really help with an antidote, or is she purely a ‘vainglorious no-account?’”

“That remains to be seen,” said the Promethean. “I don’t discount the possibility that she has some skill with chemistry. I was just trying to get under her skin.”

“You are an expert at that,” I told him.

“How nice of you to say!”

By the time we got to the Met, the crowds of gawkers had gone home. All that remained of the police and ambulance crews was a lone cop standing behind a line of pale blue sawhorses and glow-in-the-dark barrier tape.

“Officer, anyone inside that building is in grave danger. It must be evacuated,” demanded the Promethean.

“Yeah, I heard all about that,” he said in a patronizing tone. “Listen fellas, I already looked in on them a few minutes ago, had a walk around with the night watch. Everybody in the back checked in. I don’t think there’s anything at all to worry about.”

His statement was punctuated by the muffled report of gunfire from inside the building.

“Maybe you’d like to reevaluate that assessment?” I said.

“Officer, have you anything heavier than that sidearm?” Matt asked.

He hesitated, looking uncertainly back and forth between the three of us and the doors. “I... well, there’s a twelve gauge in the car...”

“Then you’d better stay here and wait for backup!” The Promethean swiveled on his heels and thrust his cane toward the door. “Allen!”

“Already on it!” the Atomic Ranger grunted. The huge bronze doors glowed red and strained as he heaved until they flew open and their shattered locks fell sparking on the cement.

“Uh, hey, I think I’ll hang back, too,” I said. Brawling was never my specialty, let alone against haunted suits of armor.

It would be hard for me to adequately describe the face Matt made at me in return. “If that suits you, Cameron.”

“Fine,” I grumbled, “but don’t mind me bringing up the rear.”

The inside of the lobby was eerily still. It was dimly lit, the only light coming from the overhead reserves and Allen’s coruscating epidermis, but we could see clearly enough to be sure that there were no signs of a struggle.

“Flip a coin?” asked the Atomic Ranger. His fists were clenched and the air around them blurred in a haze as he looked from left to right, pondering in which wing to continue the search.

“The sound of a gunshot will carry, especially with walls and ceilings like this,” I whispered. “He could be anywhere.”

“I think we may assume he made it out of storage,” said the Promethean. “In which case, we may already be too late to save anyone. Damn their thickheadedness in not evacuating! I don’t give such warnings idly!”

He had donned his aether goggles, which gave a droning whine and a series of sharp clicks as they charged. The lenses glowed faintly, vaporous orbs of neon starlight tracing out arcs in the air as his head moved to survey the lobby.

“Probably, he also heard us breaking open the front door,” Allen said, sensibly enough.

“If he knows where we are, maybe he’ll go the other way,” I said hopefully.

“Only if he’s already gotten what he came here for,” intoned the Promethean. “He seeks the Prince’s Emblazoned, and we must stop him from obtaining it.”

I grabbed Matt by the wrist and stared down those eerie goggles. “Why? What’s so important about this armor anyway?”

“Everything. Nothing.” He shrugged. “The important thing is that he values it, and I mean to stop him from having it on the chance that he’s actually right about its power. He may be mistaken about the armor’s significance, but the Copper Knight does not act randomly. Now let’s waste no more time on questions! To the armor exhibit!”

The path to the armor exhibit would take us upstairs and through the open gallery with the petrified crowd. Probably it was just the stress of the situation and not knowing where our enemy might jump out at us, but I was dreading the thought of seeing their horrified expressions etched into stone. Allen took the lead, flying up through the open gallery while I hung back, straining my eyes and ears for any signs of movement, all the while thinking that being in the back was no longer any safer than being in the front. More than once I flinched at what I thought I saw over my shoulder.

“Any sign of his aura?” Allen asked the Promethean once we surmounted the stairs.

“No! His numen is hermetically sealed inside that armor. If it wasn’t, he would have gone to his reward centuries before your great-grandfathers were born. I’m not looking for his aura; I’m looking for traces of…” The Promethean’s voice trailed off.

There were sounds of scuffling metal from the room directly ahead of us, the gallery of the living statues. The hairs on the back of my neck were all on end.

“Oh, hell,” Allen moaned in a hushed voice. He’d set his back against the archway for cover, facing us. Indecision was written all over his face. “He’s in there.”

“Of course he would be.” The Promethean frowned deeply at this development. Of all the nooks and crannies of the museum that we might run into the Copper Knight, this was the worst possible. Here he held the advantage of more than two dozen hostages to stand in our way, making sure that we couldn’t unleash our full power against him.

“On your guard! The Knight is a cagey foe, and a master of illusion and distraction,” the Promethean said to us. Then he turned to address the Atomic Ranger specifically, “Every one of those statues is still a living person. Do not risk harming them, but if you gain a clear shot at the Copper Knight, don’t hesitate to use all your power! Remember, he’s already dead!”

Suddenly, the chamber resounded with metallic laughter. “Is that the voice of the great Don Matteo Mancini? I am overwhelmed with honors this night!”

The sound was uncanny; it held only the faintest resemblance to the timbre of a human voice. It sounded like the product of steam valves and bellows more than vocal chords.

“You are honored indeed,” the Promethean returned defiantly. We still held behind cover of the wall and didn’t dare any quick movements. “And I am accompanied by Amplitude and the Atomic Ranger. You are outnumbered and overmatched. Shall we negotiate your surrender?”

“You never were very funny, Promethean. Too prone to absurdities. I hadn’t any thought of fighting you here; I merely wished to take my prize with the minimum of notice, but I’ll not spurn fate for delivering you into my hands. Now, why don’t you come out in the open before I start decapitating these peasants? They’re not really dead, you know. Not yet.”

Matt girded his loins and stepped through the threshold, revealing himself to thirty pair of sightless stone eyes and a single empty slat in the beaked visor of the Copper Knight. Allen and I followed him in. What else could we do? He had us cold.

“That’s better,” the hideous inhuman voice of the Copper Knight declared. “Now, what’s this? Unarmed? No ridiculous ray guns? You used to be such a swashbuckler; I hoped you’d have brought the sword of Paracelsus.”

“I wouldn’t waste it on you,” the Promethean said. He planted his cane in the ground and spread his feet, eyed the Copper Knight directly. “I notice something else you don’t have: the Prince’s Emblazoned. We three stand between you and your objective, and more allies will join us shortly. If you harm any of these people, we’ll destroy the armor and you. We are stalemated, it seems.”

“I think not!” The Copper Knight drew a long, pale sword from his scabbard. Green tongues of flame swirled along the blade from hilt to tip, and a regiment of ghoulish shadows marched along the walls and ceiling like the blazing of a magic lantern. The burning sword arced above his helm, ready to cave in the stone head of the nearest statue, but the Promethean struck first. He drew a figure in the air with the tip of his cane and thrust it toward the Copper Knight, whose arm was suddenly arrested. The sword shrieked like grinding metal and the flames splashed out, and then the Promethean gave a mighty sideways tug on the cane and the Knight came crashing down.

“Now!” the Promethean cried.

Instantly, the Atomic Ranger soared up above the forest of petrified figures and unleashed a torrent of energy from his wrist-mounted waveguides. The room lit up like noon and a hellacious report shook the walls, the sound of the vacuum tunnel burned through the air by the stream of charged particles collapsing in on itself. Where the Copper Knight had stood only a moment before, there was nothing but a heap of scorched metal and a plume of molten embers roiling in a cloud of vapor.

“Direct hit!” Allen yelled triumphantly. But the Promethean wasn’t celebrating. The whole time he’d been staring at the sight intently with his aether goggles. Whatever it was he saw — or didn’t see — made his mouth drop open.

“That wasn’t him!” he cried. “God in Heaven! He’s switched armors! He’s transferred into the Prince’s Emblazoned!”

“Is that bad?” I asked, bewildered and panicked.

“For you,” answered the bellows-voice, only this time it was behind me. I was sailing through the air before I could even turn around. The landing hurt like hell. I might have even lost consciousness for a second or two. All I know is that when my eyes opened and refocused, Matt was being hoisted in the air by his throat, his enchanted cane splintered on the ground beneath his dangling feet. Throttling him was a gigantic figure in gleaming golden armor that seemed to give off its own faint irradiance.

Directly beside the armored giant, the Atomic Ranger lay crumpled, howling in agony. A long lance gilt with jewels and peculiar red traceries was buried in his shoulder blade. The steel plate creaked as the armored head turned to look down at him.

“You destroyed my Familiar and my blade. You will suffer for that,” the Knight announced. He drove in the lance with the heel of his foot until the tip ripped through Range’s collar bone and anchored him to the floor.

The Copper Knight turned back to the Promethean. “Stalemate broken.”

“I’m impressed, Knight,” the Promethean gasped. He still tried to pry the gauntleted fingers away from his throat, but his strength and his wind were quickly fading.

“My time as the Copper Knight is over. Today, I am the Copper Emperor! With this armor, I lay claim to the Imperial line of the Americas! Anointed with your blood, I will ascend the Western Throne!” He began to squeeze the Promethean’s neck.

I realized it was all up to me to save the day, and the thought made me want to vomit.

Hundreds of rapid footsteps echoed through the gallery, accompanied by a cacophony of slamming doors and stridently shouted orders. Words like “armor-piercing” and “recoilless rifle” were audible.

“Don’t look now, your worship,” I yelled. “But the cavalry just got here.”

Without so much as a glance in my direction, the Copper Emperor toppled one of the petrified visitors on top of me. Fortunately, neither the statue nor my body broke under its weight, but it did break my concentration: the voices and footsteps ceased, and the illusion was through. So much for saving the day.

“Your arrogance astonishes me, Mancini,” grated the Copper Emperor. “You possess an arsenal of miraculous weapons and a small army of paranormal killers, and yet you confront me accompanied only by the musician and this mush-headed glowworm?”

With his free hand, he turned the lance in Atomic Ranger’s side, but there was no reaction from the prone victim. I told myself that Allen must have passed out from the injury; I didn’t dare think he might be dead.

“What a shame! For so many years I had dreamed of killing your entire family before your eyes, and it was much more dramatic than all this. So much for grandiose plans.”

All of a sudden, the Copper Emperor went sprawling sideways, smashed by a flying plinth. I stared in silent and wide-eyed wonder at the scene of one of the statues come to life (or so it seemed), leaping over me and bearing down on the enemy. Rock-slab fists and granite-covered legs as thick as baked hams lashed out at the prone Copper Emperor. The blows dented the metal plates of the cuirass while snapped bolts and tassets clattered to the floor.

Only belatedly did I realize that it wasn’t one of the statues at all. It was Pete Halstein, the luckiest roughneck in the Big Apple.

“Puncture the armor!” rasped the Promethean. He repeated that admonition over and over again in desperation.

At first Halstein hesitated, but then he grabbed the marble plinth with both hands and muscled it over his head.

“No!” cried the Emperor.

But down it came anyway, hitting with enough force to crack the pedestal and gouge a ragged hole in the side of his armored torso. Something pungent and vaporous erupted from the hole and the Copper Emperor screamed in stark, living terror. He clamped his taloned gauntlets over the rupture and pressed with all of his supernatural strength to seal it. Before Hal could land another blow, the Emperor screamed some gibberish, words in a language I’d never heard before. (Matt called it ‘Aklo’ and insists that I not transliterate it here). The result of that strange sentence was that the room was suddenly plunged into darkness. Even the Atomic Ranger’s glowing body and the molten embers of the old Copper Knight armor were swallowed in a shroud of impenetrable shadow.

I heard Hal tumble to the floor with a surprised yelp.

“Lay hands on him before he escapes!” Matt cried hoarsely.

There was a lot of scuffling and scraping, but there was no way to tell what was going on. The darkness was too profound, a gulf of shadow as deep as the ocean. It didn’t even seem that I was still in the same continent with them, let alone in the same room. I lost all sense of direction. Suddenly, I noticed how very cold it had become.

“Who turned off the lights?” I heard Hal yell.

“No one!” replied the Promethean. “This is no mere absence of light, it is light’s antithesis: the Curse of Unlight! Look to your other senses and don’t give in to fear!”

Right then he broke into some gibberish of his own: “Sator arepo tenet opera rotas! Sator arepo tenet opera rotas!”

For an instant, the strength of the darkness seemed to fade and I had the briefest sensation of the return of light and warmth; but it was only an instant and then the shadow came crashing back like the surf at high tide.

The Promethean repeated the incantation more forcefully, but there was no retreat of the night this time. The darkness grew stronger and colder. Still he repeated it.

“Are you having a stroke?” I asked. My teeth were chattering. Even though I couldn’t see it, I knew my breath was coming out as a plume of steam.

“It’s a counterspell, you idiot,” he replied.

“It’s not working.”

“I know that!”

“Isn’t there something else we can do?” Hal pressed. He tried hard to steady the tremor in his voice, but it was clear he was afraid. That wasn’t so bad. I was afraid, too. What bothered me was that the Promethean also sounded afraid.

“Amp, dear boy, I think you may be the only thing that can get us out of this now,” he said.

That was definitely not what I wanted to hear. “What the hell can I do?” I yelled.

“Loud noises can sometimes disrupt witchcraft. We need something terribly loud... and holy!”

“Like what?”

“Think of something!”

“Oh, crap,” I muttered to myself. I took five or six deep breaths and tried to force the gnawing terror out of me, or at least give me enough space to concentrate.

“Hurry, before we all freeze to death!”

I projected the holiest and almighty loudest sound I could think of: the bells of the Cologne Cathedral, all eleven of them at once. The carillon tolled a dozen times until my ears rang, but the dark and the cold and the terror began to falter. I followed with a fusillade of quieter and higher tones: cymbals and wind chimes, sounds that I felt clearer than I heard. I went on until I could see the dim electric overhead lights again and felt the warm air of late April return.

I saw Matt scrambling over the floor toward me, patting me on the shoulder. Hal was shaking his head violently and plunging his rock-sausage fingers into his ears. Both of their lips were moving, but I had no idea what they were saying.

Hal and the Promethean gently lifted the statue off my legs and helped me up. My ears were starting to clear and I could just barely hear their voices over the tinnitus.

“That was some fine work, my boy. Very fine,” the Promethean congratulated. “Are you injured?”

“Oh, I don’t know. I’m a composer and now I’m half deaf. What do you think? And don’t say--”

“Beethoven was deaf.” He waved his hand dismissively and walked away.

“I knew you were going to say that.” I looked uneasily over at the Atomic Ranger as the Promethean stooped to examine him. “Allen. Is he…?”

“He’s still breathing,” Matt said. “No! For God’s sake, do not remove the lance! We have no idea what might leak out. Break it off in the middle that we can move him more easily. Yes, good. Help me lift him. Gently, now!”

As Hal hefted Allen’s limp body, I could see his chest rise and I let out a sigh of relief.

“I don’t know where you came from, but you sure came at the right time,” I said to the stone man.

“I didn’t want to bother with the hospital, and a cop offered me a ride home, but I wasn’t ready for that just yet. Hadn’t worked up the courage, I guess,” he explained. “And then I heard a lot of screaming and banging, so I shouldered my way in through the loading dock doors to see what was the matter.” His gaze became glassy and distant. “After all this, I think I’m ready to go home.”

The gallery echoed with the sound of boots and sharply yelled commands once again, but this time it was no trick of mine. We turned to see a squad of policemen with rifles ascending the stairs. At the front of the column was West Side Siren, fashionably late as before.

“What the hell went on in here? We heard church bells, and--”

The Promethean interrupted her. “The Copper Knight! Was he stopped? He fled here wearing the Prince’s Emblazoned!”

Siren looked as vapid and clueless as ever. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Don’t worry, the whole building is surrounded. If someone got out, I’m sure he didn’t get far,” one of the policemen added.

“I’m not so sure of that,” muttered the Promethean. Still, he had more urgent things to worry about. He inclined his head toward the Atomic Ranger, slumped unconscious in the burly arms of Pete Halstein. “This man needs medical attention urgently.”

“He ain’t the only one,” put in the stone-skinned hero. “Downstairs by the side entrance where I came up there were four guys stretched out. Lots of blood. They weren’t moving, but I ain’t no doctor.”

“We have a team already down there,” the lead cop said. “I got the call over the radio just before we came up here, and…” He shook his head grimly.

“Show me,” the Promethean said. “There may be something I can do.”

“Mister, you don’t get me,” said the cop. “They’re dead. Nobody can do nothin’ to help them.”

“Show me,” he said again, his voice full of quiet confidence that must have made them wonder. “Don’t get the coroner out of bed just yet, officer.”

The cop shrugged. “Whatever you say, mister.” He leaned into his radio: “We need a medevac up on the second floor. One stretcher, pronto!” the cop called into his radio.

The stretcher arrived in short order, and after the paramedics strapped Allen in, Matt gave them specific orders: “Make sure he’s taken to the Metahuman Care Ward at St. Margaret’s Hospital. Insist on Dr. James Bradley. You should take full precautions against radiological contamination. And do not remove the lance!”

With that done, the Promethean went downstairs with Hal to work his magic, the cops fanned out along the gallery, and the West Side Siren slinked sneakily to my side. (Sorry, I just had to).

“Do you want a ride?” Siren asked.

I shook my head and gestured to my ear. “Sorry, what?”

“DO YOU WANT A RIDE? Uh, to St. Margaret’s of course.” Her accent was somehow less grating this time: the partial deafness, undoubtedly. “Unless you’re going to ride in the ambulance.”

“The ambulance? Good God, no! Eww,” I said. “Sure, you can give me a ride.”

She stepped closer. “And how about that autograph you promised me?”

I cocked my eyebrow and studied her, all the while wondering how desperate and low class a person can get. I was about to find out.

I slapped her ass and put my arm around her waist. “Absolutely.” There were probably few advantages of being hearing impaired, so I was going to make the most of them.

And that, Amp fanatics, is the limit of what I am willing to narrate. After a good deal of head-scratching and nail-biting at the hospital, the ace surgeons at the MCW were able to figure out how to patch up Allen and he made a full recovery. He was laid up in bed for a week being a big blubbering baby, but that was no different than normal.

And it turned out that Matt was mostly able to back up his braggadocio about not waking up the coroner. I hear tell that those cops and EMTs just about messed themselves when those room-temperature corpses started warming up after a shot of Dexter Medusa. One later died from surgical complications and the elixir didn’t take on another, but three successful resurrections in five attempts is a record I’d take.

Pete Halstein thought that Matt was just about the greatest guy since Jesus, and as it turns out, Matt was pretty impressed with Halstein, too. If he wanted to, and as long as the petrifaction formula still gave him that boost of strength and dash of flinty invulnerability, he was welcome to join the Challenger Foundation. He agreed on the condition that he got a ‘superhero name.’ After a few duds, he settled on Bulwark.

So that’s it. That’s all the exciting stuff that’s worth telling. Well, maybe there’s one more thing...