Stone Walls - Part Two

The central yard of Belle Reve Penitentiary was a sodden mudpit, churned by the boots of the dozens of combatants vying for control of the prison, so saturated by the thunderheads above that the chilling rain was collecting in large puddles everywhere. A glistening white floe of ice bisected the yard, starting with a massive ramp that descended from the top of the west-facing cellblocks, ending as a zigzagging slide near the hole that had been blasted in the inner east wall. Three monolithic blocks of ice flanked the frozen slide, each one encasing a single figure while leaving only their heads exposed: Hangfire, Bronze Tiger and Backlash. A thin but effective cocoon of ice had crystallized around the robotic body of Clotty, who lay helpless on his side in the sludge. Near the southern wall, the slagged remains of a transformer continued to steam in the rain, occasionally geysering sparks. The northeast tower of the forbidding metahuman penitentiary had been explosively decapitated, and smoke rose from the jagged concrete and steel.

Arrayed in a rough semi-circle around the rubble of the violated east wall of the yard stood five of the invaders. Shrapnel, a mere skeletal framework of metal fragments, was rapidly gaining mass as his body reassembled itself. Protocol, red white and blue battlesuit spattered with mud, adjusted his haptic weapons systems while surveying the area. Genocide, chrome armor eerily unstained, stood as impassively as a statue beside his LocoForce teammate. Shatterfist, right side drenched in blood, held a hand to the bullet wound in his shoulder but seemed ready to fight on. Hellhound twirled the knives in his fingers menacingly. Opposite the quintet, separated by only a few yards, stood two conscripts of the Suicide Squad: Electrocutioner and Skorpio.

"I don't like five-on-two odds," Valence announced as he stepped up between Electrocutioner and Skorpio, his face, jacket and uniform heavily scorched and mudstained. "Don't get me wrong, I don't really like scumbags doing mercenary work for Amanda Waller to get early parole, either. But … lesser evils and all that, so five-on-three will have to …"

Valence fell silent as a wave of metahuman inmates began to stream out of the gash in the concrete.

All of the prisoners, men and women alike, had been issued baggy orange jumpsuits stamped with the Belle Reve name; some wore the clothing as intended, others had ripped off sleeves or discarded the upper halves altogether, showing white tanktops or bare skin, chests and arms in many cases decorated with a variety of tattoos. Because they had not been in active transport when the structural integrity of their cells had been compromised, none of the inmates wore power dampening restraints. First out of the hole left by the structural damage were a woman with long, fiery red hair who ran at superhuman speed and a man who immediately transformed into a purple-furred cheetah and sprinted in the opposite direction. They were followed by a tall, emaciated man in a pristine jumpsuit buttoned up to its top, a hulking cybernetic brute wearing nothing but orange cut-off shorts, a shortish man with long, wild hair and beard in a filthy jumpsuit, and more and more convicts jostling one another in a marauding charge for the outside air of the yard.

Valence was about to give orders to the Suicide Squad members beside him, but as tactical options raced through his mind, events escalated on their own. Electrocutioner stepped forward to meet the lumbering cyborg, and grabbed handfuls of the titanium wires snaking across pale crocodilian flesh. Jittering arcs of high voltage blossomed from Electrocutioner's gloves, and the cyborg roared to reveal shark-like metallic teeth. At the same time, Hellhound was tackled from behind by a convict who had clearly recognized the crimson and brown leathers and was looking to settle an old score even more important than the promise of freedom. Skorpio took the opportunity to dart into the fray, a slashing green and black blur of toxin-tipped claws, aimed at Shatterfist, the weakest nearby target.

A tear-gas canister burst against the pile of rubble, and the Belle Reve guards who had launched it moved in, their shouts of "Down on the ground!" mingling with the muffled barks of their beanbag guns. A few prisoners were stopped in their tracks by the tear gas, but the majority were either immune to its effects, or fought on with belligerent determination, gagging and half-blinded. Valence recognized the misshapen pink and purple form of Man-O-War trudging across the muddy yard, hoisting a corrections officer up in a fist of stinging tentacles, and tossing the paralyzed man aside like a ragdoll.

"You!" a rough voice called out to Valence. Valence turned and saw a tanned, muscular man with a blond goatee stepping through the dissipating tear gas. His jumpsuit pants were rolled to the knees, and his jacket was sleeveless and fully unbuttoned. "I been thinking about gettin' my hands on you every day I been in here," the man growled.

Suddenly Valence knew the convict; his capture had been part of one of Bad Blood's earliest cases. He called himself Sudden Death.

A detachment of Belle Reve guards in full riot gear stormed down the corridor towards Headhunter, Probe and Bayonet. Probe reacted first, tossing a dart-sized projectile that screamed down the prison hall and caused several guards to stumble, disoriented by the high-pitched electronic aural assault. Bayonet lazily raised a fist and fired a crackling column of dark energy; several prison guards threw themselves to the floor to avoid the beam, but three were slow or unlucky enough to suffer the brunt of its force and went flying backwards in its wake. Headhunter waved a gauntlet and in response a foot of ice condensed along the corridor floor from wall to wall, freezing most of the guards in place. The guards on their feet were only held from the mid-shin down, while those who had gone belly-down on the flooring were almost fully submerged in the ice.

"There will be more guards coming from the same direction, and I'd just as soon not have to deal with them," Headhunter predicted. "Bayonet, go run interference."

"But …" Bayonet began to protest.

"Remember the plan," Headhunter commanded, and Bayonet swallowed the remainder of his objection. With a lopsided grin, he spread his steel wings and flew down the corridor, swiping at guards with his tonfa-like forearm blades as he rushed past them. Screams of pain followed Bayonet's progress down the corridor, as Headhunter and Probe ran in the opposite direction.

Soon Headhunter led Probe into a large room lined with monitors and system terminals for Belle Reve's security systems. Large flat-screens scrolled through real-time readings of the performance of the various computerized counter-measures built into the prison cells, such as the power-dampening cell doors, the atmospheric regulators for convicts that needed to be kept dry or wet or hot or cold, the redundant forcefields for the most dangerous prisoners. Every time the readout scrolled to the analytics for the eastern wing, the screens went from green to yellow and red, indicating massive system failures. Other smaller screens set into the walls showed rotating black and white video feeds from cameras installed throughout Belle Reve. Most of the videos showed chaos in the corridors and the central prison yard, occasionally interrupted with eerily silent and empty corridors, or hypnotic static.

The nerve center of Belle Reve was empty, as the guards manning it had joined in the riot suppression operations, and Headhunter calmly crossed the room and began to type at one of the abandoned keyboards. "Where are you?" Headhunter mused aloud. "Where have they hidden you away in this hellhole?"

Probe reached up to the low ceiling and pushed one of the droptiles up and out of the way. From the overhead crawlspace full of cables he withdrew a baton and a red and white helmet. He slipped off his purple-lensed goggles and slid the helmet onto his head, then snapped the baton to extend it to its full bo staff length. "Should be less worried about Minotaur, and more worried about where they'll hide you," he said, in the amplified tenor of a Checkmate knight.

Headhunter had been bending over the computer workstation, but straightened up slowly and turned around. "Pierce, Pierce, Pierce," Headhunter shook his head wonderingly. "Did you honestly expect me to be surprised when you finally revealed yourself?"

"Not too concerned about it one way or the other," Pierce rejoined.

"Really?" Headhunter said archly. "Would it concern you to know that I fully expected you to infiltrate this operation, and I welcomed it, because it would allow me to keep close tabs on you? Would it concern you to know that you've played right into my hands?"

Pierce widened his stance and turned perpendicular to Headhunter, twirling the staff in slow figure eights on the far side from his enemy while extending the near hand. "Take your shot," Pierce offered, gesturing beckoningly with his free hand. "We'll see who's playing who."

"We certainly will," Headhunter confirmed. "But here's a hint: only one of us really knows what game we're playing in the first place. And here's another," the leader of LocoForce went on, firing a volley of dense cannonball-sized ice projectiles at Pierce, "it isn't you."

For a few seconds, More and Minotaur stared at each other, separated by only a few yards of empty corridor. The muted sounds of klaxons, whooping prisoners and shouting guards and screaming victims on both sides filtered through the thick walls of the cellblock as if from a vast remove. The tableau between the personifications of brawn for both Bad Blood and LocoForce was isolated in its own momentous tension.

More moved first, running towards Minotaur and swinging his right arm in a wind-up circle, the waxy arm sclerites of his Imago disguise blurring like a black helicopter rotor. As he came within reach of Minotaur, right fist still looping through the air, More jabbed at Minotaur's hand with his left fist. The feint caused Minotaur to shift his weight in the opposite direction, and More connected with a bolo uppercut, his knuckles crashing into Minotaur's jaw hard enough to snap his adversary's head back.

"Huh," More cocked his head slightly. "I … honestly didn't expect that to work."

Minotaur turned his head slowly from side to side while massaging his chin. "I must be out of practice."

"Good to know," More grinned. "Maybe less of a challenge, but I …"

Minotaur lurched forward unexpectedly and leaned heavily into a right cross that passed within an inch of More's chin as his opponent jerked backwards, and the momentum of the swing carried Minotaur forward several steps. More clasped his hands together and swung the double-fist into the small of Minotaur's back. Even as the blow connected with the solid mass of muscle, however, Minotaur had stopped himself and pivoted on one foot, sweeping a powerful kick into More's stomach. More staggered backwards, rolling along the wall once his backside struck it.

Minotaur quickly pressed his advantage and charged at More with a running left hook. More braced himself and caught Minotaur's wrist in both hands, then threw himself to the ground on his back and flipped Minotaur over his head. Minotaur skidded several yards down the prison corridor.

Minotaur stood up and laughed. "You let go too early," he chided. "A little more downward angle and you would have smashed me right through the floor."

"I'm trying to keep the collateral damage to a minimum," More admitted.

"Afraid your taxes will go up if they have to rebuild this dump?" Minotaur taunted.

"I just don't want to make it any easier for Headhunter and them to haul you of here," More said. He reached down and grabbed the warped promethium-vanadium door that Minotaur had forcibly removed from his cell, then further twisted the metal into a massive cudgel. "But I'll take advantage of the damage you've already done, and I'll focus all that destructive energy on you. There might not be much of you left to spring after all."

Minotaur laughed again, throwing his head back as he guffawed loudly. "All right, fine," More conceded. "I'm not gonna kill you. I can't even talk that talk. But I promise I will beat you unconscious if that's what it takes to keep you here."

"You don't get it," Minotaur sneered. "You just don't get it."

"Get what?" More demanded.

A convict called Kilaka ran towards the ice slope on the far side of the prison yard. Equus, the giant animalistic cyborg, was clawing his way up the slick ramp, and several other escapees were following, using the man-machine's deep clawed footprints as handholds to scramble upwards. Kilaka was several yards short when two Belle Reve guards intercepted him, riot guns braced against their shoulders and leveled at the metahuman's chest.

Kilaka, tawny-skinned and athletic, with the sleeves of his jumpsuit rolled up to reveal tattoos depicting Vedic symbols and intricate knotwork patterns, held his right fist forward. A weapon of pure spirit-energy coalesced in Kilaka's grasp: a long three-sided knife with a pommel in the shape of a wrathful god's visage. Kilaka raised the spectral weapon overhead and advanced on the prison officers fearlessly.

The glowing three-sided knife began to writhe and expand. The triune blade lengthened tenfold and wrapped itself around Kilaka's legs, while the godhead reared up and sunk its fangs deep into Kilaka's shoulder. Kilaka gave a savage yell of mingled pain and fear, then fell limply to the ground, splashing into a cold mud puddle.

Sojourn's insubstantial spirit-form was just barely visible behind Kilaka, her face twisted with revulsion after manipulating the energies of the evil, ghostly weapon. The prison guards stared for a moment at the young girl, then hurried to block the progress of another fleeing convict. Sojourn watched them go and silently wished them luck. She worried that she had already used up her own allotment of good fortune happening upon an inmate whose powers derived from a spiritual domain that she could counteract. Most of the criminals at large in Belle Reve's yard had no such vulnerability to exploit, and they far outnumbered her physically-oriented allies. Sojourn wanted desperately to help turn the tide of the escapee's riot, but had no idea how she could.

"Dammit, Waller," warden John Economos scowled, stabbing a finger toward the Plexiglas window of the observation room atop the tower, "my men are getting torn to pieces down there."

"The Squad isn't doing much better," Amanda Waller pointed out in a distractedly understated tone.

"No, they're not," Economos agreed angrily. "They're supposed to be helping the guards, but so far they haven't accomplished squat."

Waller ignored Economos for several moments, and when she spoke it was mostly to herself as she stared out the window. "What are they up to?" she wondered aloud. "Kellogg would be pushing the limits of our ability to keep a metahuman restrained, if he weren't such a cooperative prisoner. It wouldn't take much to tip the balance in his favor if he decided to escape. Why bring so many co-conspirators? Why introduce all the random variables of an uncontrolled riot?"

"Why not?" Economos countered. "They live to cause chaos. They love it."

"Not Reinhart, he's all about self-control and getting the job done," Waller parried with a severe frown. "That's why Headhunter is such a sought-after mercenary …" The Suicide Squad's patron trailed off, her eyebrows rising in disbelief. "Oh, hell, that's it."

"What's it?" Economos demanded.

"This is a paid-for operation," Waller said. "But no one would pay Reinhart to break Kellogg free, because Kellogg's only loyalty is to Reinhart. Don't you see?"

"Enlighten me," Economos replied, his sarcasm buckling somewhat against Waller's grave demeanor.

Karnival and Loki grappled with one another's illusions, as the mental attacks renewed themselves from seemingly inexhaustible wells. Karnival's assault imagery had taken on more and more rigid forms, iron golems wielding red-hot jackhammers and flint-winged eagles with diamond-tipped talons, while Loki's psionic nightmares became ever more twisted and turbulent, acidic fogs belching forth harum-scarum abominations with odd-numbered, out of proportion limbs and too many eyes and mouths; occasionally Loki would create illusory victims, always hyper-anguished women and children, to try to rattle his foe further.

Karnival's demonic skull, simultaneously grim yet grinning, bowed slightly, and the illusions of stone and metal champions around him became less well-defined. He brought his hands together, and a flawless sword appeared in his bone fingers, the edges of its blade catching the scant light in the prison yard with impossible sharpness. Holding the sword before him, he advanced on Loki.

As all of Karnival's illusions except the sword continued to fade, Loki mentally increased the intensity of his own deranged storm of phantasms. The sword in Karnival's hands held Loki transfixed, but his mind seized on two facts: first, that with all of Karnival's concentration focused on the verisimilitude of the sword, his defenses were lowered and Loki's opportunity to strike would never be better, and second, that no matter how precisely Karnival recreated the apparition of a sword, it was not real and could not physically cut anything.

Karnival continued inexorably to close the gap, ignoring the slavering cleft mouths full of broken glass tusks, heedless of the insectile compound eyes crying bloody tears, unfazed by the walls of gangrenous flesh closing in on all sides. He moved the blade in a subtle arc, its grooves and point flashing brilliantly, and laid the edge of the sword against Loki's crescent-moon face, near his right eye socket.

Loki actually felt the cold bite of metal beside his eye and immediately lost all capacity for disbelieving in the sword. His utter conviction that the most perfect weapon ever devised was poised to slice through flesh, bone and brain overwhelmed his every nerve ending and his very consciousness. In a paroxysm of fear, Loki collapsed in the mud, insensate.

Karnival staggered backwards, the sword evaporating as all of Loki's mindspawns blinked into nothingness. A strip of thin copper scrap he had picked up to add the tactile edge to his illusory weapon tumbled from his slack grip. As he sank to one knee, Sojourn materialized beside him and caught him by the shoulders. "Are you OK?" she asked nervously.

"I touched … deep inside his mind …" Karnival gasped raggedly.

"That can't have been pretty," Sojourn shuddered.

"It wasn't," Karnival confirmed. "But I saw … something. A secret. We have to tell the others."

"What?" Sojourn asked.

"They're not here for Minotaur," Karnival said.

"They're not here for Kellogg," Amanda Waller said.

"They're not here for me," Minotaur gloated as he lashed out with a backhand that bloodied More's mouth.

"Not even here for Minotaur, are you?" Pierce articulated as realization dawned on him. He had already batted aside Headhunter's initial ice salvo with deft back and forth sweeps of his bo staff, and now he used the pole, braced upright against the floor, to vault past Headhunter and land in front of the terminal the criminal had been accessing a few moments earlier. "Who is it? Who are you being paid to break out of Belle Reve?" Pierce demanded as he traced the data backwards through the screen's displays.

"I'm afraid that's not for you to know," Headhunter mocked, spraying the entire workstation with opaque ice. He followed up by coating the entire nerve center with hard rime, blocking every monitor and viewscreen under a white crystalline shell. "The target liberation will be complete before this equipment thaws out. So why not take that shot at me?"

Pierce's knuckles cracked as he tightened his grip on his bo staff. "Thought you preferred it when we were playing two different games," the erstwhile knight pointed out.

Imperceptibly beneath his blue and white cowl, Headhunter smiled. "For you, I'll make an exception."

TO BE CONTINUED ...

MESSAGES WRITTEN IN BLOOD ...

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NEXT ISSUE: Stone Walls concludes! Do not miss the furious finale!