"Of course not. Find someone else."
Teddy didn't know anything about this Ryan, but just the fact that he had been chosen along with the rest of them… Teddy had assumed he was the sort of guy who would step up to a threat like this. It was a bit jarring.
Zaphres, however, didn't seem surprised at all. "Right then. Glitch, send him home. Get that other fellow-"
A loud, piercing wail filled the room, interrupting Zaphres. Teddy clapped his hands over his ears. "What is that?"
"An alarm." Glitch hurried over to a control panel and began fiddling with it; one of the displays lit up with an image of the Earth, possibly seen from a satellite. The image pulled in closer, spinning unsettlingly as it did. It was hard to make out any details, but Teddy thought he saw it closing in on North America, the west coast. Finally the image came to a stop, and the sound died down.
Vivian took a step towards the monitor. "That's LA airport, isn't it?" Teddy was a bit surprised she could recognize it so easily. The place was a wreck. The cause of this was pretty obvious; the place was overrun by strange creatures. They were ants, basically, with oversized mandibles, made of polished gray stone and the size of German shepherds. Their every step left holes in the pavement, and Teddy winced as one of them headbutted a car, flipping it over. There was a man underneath the truck; Teddy looked away but the images that flooded his mind were probably worse than if he had watched.
Isabelle put her hands over her mouth. "An all-out attack? Already? I thought they were rebuilding their forces-"
"This is nowhere close to all out, Isabelle." Zaphres looked up at the screen. "These are the sorcerer's crudest creations, his weakest footsoldiers." Teddy winced as one of them plowed through a steel support column like it wasn't even there. "Mass-produced, mindless automata. I believe our foe is simply testing the water, seeing if I will rise to challenge him again, or whether I am defeated."
"Are the weapons you've designed capable of fighting those creatures?" Vivian's voice was steady despite the carnage.
Glitch threw its arms up. "At full power? A cakewalk. But without any training or experience? You'll be running the equipment at maybe half power, and if we only sent out four-"
Zaphres began talking over the robot. "And once we've sent you in, it is unlikely we can retrieve you in case the worst -"
"Doesn't matter," Teddy said, cutting them both off. He looked up at the monitor. "People are dying. We have to try."
Stephen nodded. "We agreed to fight when we were needed. We're needed. Let's go." He turned to Ryan. "Are you coming?"
Ryan lowered his head, his bangs hanging over his eyes. "I can't," he said.
"Wait a moment." Vivian turned to Glitch. "You said the equipment-"
"We don't have a moment!" Isabelle's vehemence took Teddy completely off guard. Her green eyes were wide, and glistened with a hint of coming tears. "We have to go!" She turned to Zaphres. "Give us the weapons."
"Actually, that's my job." Glitch hurried over to one of the walls, opening a panel. "Zaphres doesn't have any hands at the moment…" It brought back a small tray with five brightly colored boxes on it: white, black, red, blue, and green. Each had a switch on the side. "Press the box to your navel and slide the switch." It handed the devices out to the four of them. When only the red one was left on the tray, it glanced at Ryan, who turned away from its gaze. It sighed. "I should warn you, the activation will hurt. Less so as you become properly synchronized-"
"Fine time to mention it," Vivian said, before flipping the switch.
It really did hurt. Stephen's head throbbed, every muscle in his body shuddered and every nerve burned. He clenched his jaw, trying not to cry out, but he couldn't help shouting. At least he wasn't alone; both of the girls yelled, and Teddy gave a muffled whimper. The burning gave way to pressure, like his entire body being crushed in a vice, then that died down. He gasped for air, only realizing as he inhaled that he had been holding his breath. He glanced around.
One of the other three had fallen to their hands and knees. It was one of the girls but it was hard to tell which because all of them were wearing helmets, along with tight bodysuits. Matching uniforms in three colors-Teddy in blue, the girl on her feet in black, and the girl who was slowly getting up in white. Stephen looked down at himself, holding out his hands. He seemed to be wearing the same uniform in green; the same white gloves and boots, the same golden insignia on the white chest. He reached up to touch his face and found a hard, blocky helmet under his fingers. He felt like he should have noticed that earlier, but there was almost no weight to it, no sense of confinement. It didn't narrow his vision, it didn't make it hard to breath or turn his head. The rest of the suit, too, felt practically as though it wasn't there. It was a bit embarrassing.
"This is a bit underwhelming." Vivian's voice came clearly through the white helmet. "That's a very painful procedure just to change clothes. Do these provide any sort of protection? Are there any of weapons we can use?"
"The suits will provide a high level of protection," said Glitch, "but they're not at full power yet so you'll need to take care. They'll also enhance your speed, strength, reflexes-the pain you felt was from the suit integrating with your muscles and nervous system. There are a variety of other features we don't have time to go into right now-"
"You're right," said Teddy. "We don't. How quickly can you get us to LA?"
"This quickly," said Glitch, and then the roaring sound that Stephen had heard before he first appeared in the dark lab was back. When it stopped, he was standing on a sidewalk in bright sunlight. As his eyes adjusted, he saw that he was at the scene that had been shown on the monitor-LA airport in ruins, people screaming and sirens wailing, large stone bugs crawling about. Some of those bugs had apparently noticed the new arrivals, and were advancing on him and the other three.
None of them said anything at first. They just charged at the nearest creatures and attacked them. The bugs' height was troublesome, and Stephen thought it might be easier to fight something more human-like, or at least human sized. But, thankfully, the creatures didn't seem to be very tough. The first time he stomped on one, it felt more like a clod of dirt crumbling under his foot than any sort of stone cracking. Yet the pavement shattered from the stress of having the bug's head ground against it.
Ten or fifteen seconds of frenzied kicking and awkward stomping was enough for the four teens to reduce that small group of bugs to inert stone. As Stephen looked up, panting slightly, he realized that it had also been enough time to attract the attention of more of the creatures, who were now approaching wherever he looked. He felt his stomach twist. He wasn't afraid, or rather, he'd tucked his fear away in some corner of his brain where he barely noticed it. But he didn't know what to do. He took a tentative step forward, then stepped back. He glanced around, not entirely sure what he was looking for-high ground to make a stand from, a particularly dense clump of bugs to attack, anything that would give him some idea how he should be fighting.
"We should spread out," said Vivian, "but not too much." The quiet confidence in her voice insinuated itself into Stephen's brain, giving solid ground and a clear path to his meandering thoughts. Surveying the area, Vivian continued, "It looks like there's a few dozen of them, at least around here…"
Stephen flinched as Zaphres' voice was suddenly speaking into his ear. "There are a total of thirty four constructs advancing on your position."
"Right. Thanks for that." Vivian bent down to pick up a chunk of one of the ants they had smashed and hurled it at one of the approaching horde. She missed, leaving a crater in the asphalt, and immediately reached down to pick up another chunk.
Stephen followed her example. They all did. He hit most of his targets, usually taking off a leg or two and leaving them limping. The others didn't do so well at first, but as the bugs got closer they crowded together more and it was harder to miss. Isabelle's throws were particularly impressive, often shattering a creature completely and going on to smash into the one behind it.
But as the ants got closer, they went back to their kicking and stomping. There were still too many targets, crowded too close together, to miss, but there were also too many ants to make much headway. More were streaming in from other parts of the airport, it seemed. And Vivian appeared to be having a hard time doing more than pushing the creatures around.
Stephen barely noticed that he was being pushed back until his shoulder bumped Vivian's. He glanced in the other direction, and Isabelle was not far away. Teddy, on the other hand, was still in his original position. No, he was farther away; he was nimbly evading the bugs' snapping mandibles, but he was now stranded amidst in an ocean of the creatures.
"Get over here!" shouted Isabelle, taking a step towards him but backing off as the ants closed in on her.
"I'm working on it!" Teddy replied. But apparently the ants had some intelligence, because as Teddy tried to move back towards Stephen and the others there was always a stone maw snapping hungrily at him.
"Then we go to him," said Vivian. "But carefully. You two face front, I'll watch our backs." The trio fought their way towards Teddy, but it was like wading upstream through waist-high water, and they were being careless. Stephen felt several of the bugs clamp onto his legs, and while he managed to get them off before they could really injure him, the pain was starting to slow him down. He was going to be a mass of bruises from waist to ankles after this. That all-but-forgotten corner of his mind whispered, if there is an after this.
Ryan had not been sent home. Glitch had said putting him back without his sudden appearance being witnessed would take too much time. The battle in LA was the priority, and Ryan's return to school could wait. Which may have been true, but Ryan suspected that what Glitch really wanted was for Ryan to feel guilty and agree to fight. And it was working, sort of. Ryan did feel really bad that he couldn't help them, but there it was: he couldn't. Why these people thought he could was beyond him.
Ryan tried not to look at the screen, but occasionally the voices of Glitch, Zaphres, or one of the four teens drew his attention back. They seemed to be doing okay, at least at first. Then suddenly there was shouting-was one of those voices a bit familiar?-and suddenly it had all gone wrong. He couldn't begin to count the ants now, there must have been a hundred or more. In the ocean of gray, of insect limbs and clacking mandibles, was an island of blue, one of the teenagers separated from the others. The rest were trying to make their way towards him, but they weren't making much progress. Alarms were flaring, and Glitch and Zaphres were snarling at each other in their language. He pressed his hands to his ears, trying to drown it out and feeling like a child as he did so, before he stood up and kicked one of the control panels. Zaphres turned towards him.
"Didn't you say you had someone else who could help? What happened to that 'other fellow' you were talking about?"
Zaphres glanced back at the screen, then back at Ryan. "Yes," he said, far too calmly. "There is another human I think may be able to help." He started to turn back to the screen, as if that was all he had to say about that.
"Well have you tried calling him in? You said you're too busy to send me away, but surely you're not too busy to get help? They're in trouble! You said that you need all five, for them to work at full power, right?"
"Unless you're volunteering," snapped Glitch, its voice sounding remarkably like a violin string being stretched to its breaking point, "shut up."
"Why didn't you bring him here in the first place? Why did you think I'd be able to help?"
"I didn't," said Zaphres, not looking away from the screen. "It doesn't matter right now. The man in question is only compatible with one of the five sets of equipment, and it's already in use. The other four have a little more leeway, so we could work with that, but if we called Benjamin in now he couldn't do a thing."
Ryan stared at the screen. He watched the girl in white twist to one side to avoid being bitten, leaving just enough of a gap for the ants to slide in between her and the other two, cutting her off. It took the other two a moment to notice this, and when they did the boy in green froze, glancing back and forth between the two stranded members.
"Just go," she snapped (her voice brought her face back into his mind, and he recalled that her name was Vivian). "Teddy needs you more. Those sparks can't be a good sign." Just as she said this, a few sparks issued from where one of the bugs was trying to crush her hip. She went on as if she hadn't noticed. "Regroup with him, come back for me." She managed to flip the ant over her shoulders and, stomping on its abdomen to hold it in place, tore its head off.
The girl in black pressed on immediately, and for a moment Ryan thought she was going to leave the other boy behind, that they were all going to be stranded and alone. But the boy in green (he was really big, so he had to be, what was the name, Steven?) managed to follow her closely enough.
The alarms were starting to intensify. Glitch babbled for a moment, not in the alien language but in French (though Ryan couldn't understand it, he was barely passing French after all), continuing in English. "Blue and white, they've isolated the two most vulnerable suits."
Zaphres leaned through Glitch, towards the screen. "Do you think it was intentional, or just luck?"
"Hard to say, sir-Osburnweremidwifetomethree-there's no sign that they've done any sort of thorough scan but they might have…" Ryan stopped listening. Glitch had left the case with the last device on one of the control panels. Ryan pulled it out. How did this work? Over the navel, pull the switch? Oh, and apparently it hurt… Ryan squeezed his eyes shut and clenched his jaw.
Teddy was not screaming. He was very proud of that. He was buried in ant creatures, he was certain his arm was broken, and several other bones seemed to be going that way as well, but he continued to fight as best he could. Really it wasn't much more than squirming. They were everywhere, their jaws gripping every limb like a vice.
Just a few feet away, there was a noise like a firecracker, the sort that explodes more quietly than it ought to and then crackles loudly as the lights flare and sputter. It was the sound of Zaphres' teleporter.
He almost didn't notice it, though; he was too focused on the tingling sensation that felt like it would shake his teeth out of his head. It was like an electrical current going through him, but rather than numbed he felt energized and alive. The ant creatures' jaws were still painful, but the bone crushing pressure was relieved. He tried to jerk his arms from the ants' grip; the creatures were lifted off the ground before being dislodged and falling amidst their cohorts. He sat up, striking at ants with fists and elbows, ignoring the burning pain that lanced through his left arm whenever he hit something. A gloved hand was extended to him; he took it, and a boy in a red uniform hauled him to his feet.
Without exchanging a word, the two of them turned on the ants, smashing a path to Stephen and Isabelle. As they pressed on towards Vivian, most of the ants pulled back, like the parting of the Red Sea. A few still dared to attack, and were quickly crushed.
By the time they reached Vivian, she was standing unsteadily, and Teddy wondered if she had hurt her leg. "Everyone okay?" she asked. "Teddy?"
"Fine," he said, stomping on the head of one of the more daring ants. "And you?"
"Nothing that won't mend," she said, turning around (with a marked limp, Teddy noticed) to face the tide of ants. The creatures milled about for a few seconds, and a few of them began to approach the teens.
There was a blinding flash and a deafening boom. Gradually Zaphres' voice differentiated itself from the ringing of his ears. "-ear me? Isabelle, Theodore, Ryan, please confirm, can you hear me?"
"It's Teddy," he said, looking around. The ruins of LA airport were empty; the ants were gone. "What happened?" But Zaphres ignored him, continuing to ask Isabelle and Ryan if they could hear him, until they each said they could.
Zaphres cleared his throat. "There are no constructs remaining on the airport premises. I assume that the sorcerer chose to withdraw them. You've won."