"You know," Bruce said. "The Slayer. The supersoldier assigned to Denver."
Lizzie shook her head. "Never heard of him."
One of the patrons at a nearby table twisted around in her chair, mouth agape. "You've never heard of The Slayer?" she asked incredulously.
The entire coffee shop went quiet.
Lizzie shrugged apologetically. "Sorry, guys. This is the first time I've been back to Denver since the war started."
An older man scooted his chair close to their table. "Everybody knows about The Denver Slayer! Have you been living under a rock?" He was obviously excited to discuss this "Slayer", so Lizzie didn't take offense.
"Actually, I have been living underground."
There was a collective Ohhhh of understanding.
"Seems like he's kind of a big deal around here." She leaned back, drink in hand, and smiled at the small crowd. "Tell me about him."
So many overlapping exclamations started at once that Lizzie winced at the sudden noise.
"Ho, there!" boomed Bruce's huge voice. "Settle down, everybody! She can't hear any of you when you're talking over each other." He turned his attention back to Lizzie when the cacophony petered out. "The government had a secret supersoldier project going before the war. The converted soldiers are called 'Slayers'. When the war broke out, the government assigned one to Denver."
"Why Denver?"
"This is one of the few places that actually won a battle with the demons. We still have people. Infrastructure. Resources. The ARC. Things worth protecting."
"Makes sense. Why only one Slayer for all of Denver, though? Are there that few?"
There were delighted laughs from their dozen or so observers. The joy was almost infectious.
"Because he's a one-man army!" crowed the barista, whipping a small towel triumphantly. The others cheered.
Lizzie chuckled along with Bruce. "You guys have seen him in action, I take it?"
"I've only spotted him jumping from rooftop to rooftop," said one of the bussers, "but he saved The Runners from a whole platoon of Mancubi that had them pinned against a hundred-foot drop."
"Runners?"
"A group of refugees trying to make it to Denver on foot after their vehicles got destroyed. They said the Mancubi had them backed up against the edge of a cliff when The Slayer dropped out of the sky and cut all the demons' heads off."
Her eyebrows rose. She took a sip of her latte. "Dropped from where? Did he parachute down from a plane?"
"Probably. They said he had a jetpack or something."
"Uh-huh." Lizzie was really enjoying his story. It reminded her of a superhero B-movie. "What'd he use to cut the demons' heads off? Plasma sword?"
The busser grinned hugely. "Laser eyes."
She smiled around her metal straw. "Laser eyes?"
"Laser eyes."
She turned her gaze to Bruce. "Laser eyes?"
"Probably a laser weapon of some kind."
"No, no, no," said someone near the back wall. "He's got laser eyes like Superman. My neighbor saw it herself."
Another patron chuckled. "Your neighbor's full of shit. It's a laser-beam weapon mounted on his shoulder."
"I thought the shoulder thingy was a flamethrower," said a mother bouncing an infant on her lap.
"No, no, it shoots icicles," corrected her companion. "The laser is this shotgun-looking thing."
"Bullcrap." A young guy in a corner waved a hand dismissively. "The shoulder cannon sprays super-cooled ice particles, the shotgun shoots flamer rounds, and the lasers – plural – are mounted above his visor."
Bruce winked at Lizzie. Let them have their fun, he seemed to be saying. She winked back.
"Wow," she said. "Lasers, flamethrowers, ice ray-guns, jetpacks. Sounds like a lot to carry. How big is this guy?"
"Well," Bruce said, "I've only seen him from a distance a few times when he's come to pick up ammo from the ARC, but I think he's at least my height."
"Oh no, no, no," said the barista. "He's much taller than that. I saw him standing in front of the Mixom logo on the top of the shopping mall and that thing's at least nine feet tall."
"This guy's nine feet tall?" Lizzie asked, lifting an eyebrow.
"Ten," said a teenage girl who was hugging a venti latte like a teddy bear. "I saw him walk in front of those big double-doors to the Microsoft building, and he was taller than they are!"
"Walk?" her male friend scoffed. "The Slayer doesn't 'walk' anywhere. He's always running or jumping. The guy never slows down unless he's killing something."
"He's only eight feet tall," an old man said grumpily, "and the reason he can carry all that is the power armor."
"Power armor?" Lizzie took another pull on her straw. The coffee/chicory lattes here were really good.
This got another round of noisy exclamations until Bruce had waved them down again. "Yeah, he's got green power armor. Very sophisticated. Looks an awful lot like the get-up from the last live-action Halo movie."
She tried to remember. "Oh, yeah, the whatchamacallit … sounds like 'mole-near'?"
"Mjolnir."
"That's the one. The last movie did add a jetpack, now that I think about it."
"The Army does that a lot: copying futuristic pop culture stuff," Bruce conceded. "Makes the public feel better about how much of their tax dollars are being spent on it."
"Makes sense," Lizzie acknowledged. "Has anybody actually talked to him?"
"No. It's a bit weird: even the ARC personnel don't know his name or rank. It's not on his armor, that's for sure. The Slayers aren't exactly a secret organization, but the details seem to be under lock and key. You'd think with how serious the war is getting, they'd release the supersoldier project info to every country so humanity could have as many Slayers as possible."
"How do we know he's even in the Army, if he's got no military insignia?"
"Well, Director Oppenheim gave him the run of the entire ARC complex, so he's got to be legit. But the only symbol on his armor is this red glyph on his helmet."
"Glyph? Like a foreign language or something?"
"No foreign language I've ever seen. Down in ARC Fabrication, we get shipments from all over the world, and I've never seen anything like this on a crate."
"Here," said an eager young man. He pulled out a pen and scribbled on one of the paper placemats. "My mom saw it once as he ran by. The helmet symbol is red, and there's a gray version on the chestplate, right in the middle."
Lizzie tilted her head, squinting at the crude drawing. "I feel like I've seen that somewhere before."
Bruce laughed. "That's because he drew the Tesla symbol with little flames around it."
"It is not!" the young man protested. "That's the Slayer symbol!"
"It looks an awful lot like Tesla, my friend."
"You think maybe Tesla sponsored the supersoldier project?" Lizzie asked. It wasn't uncommon for mega-corporations to donate money for specific military research. Eventually the schematics for the government's new tech would somehow make their way back to the companies, and the devices would be used in their next "hostile takeover".
"Anything's possible." Bruce spread his hands in concession.
"Has anybody seen his face? What does he look like?"
"Oh that's the best part," said the barista from behind the counter. The smiles on the Starbucks patrons got even bigger. "They're selling Slayer action figures at Lanie's booth over there," she said, pointing outside. "Go have a look."
Bruce had a very wide grin too. "Come on," he urged her. "You'll love it."
As she and Bruce left their empty glasses behind and thanked the staff for their drinks, the coffee shop broke into animated conversations about The Slayer. She got the feeling that trading supersoldier sightings and half-true anecdotes was a favorite pastime in Denver.
"Ta-da!" Bruce gestured with exaggeration to the ten-foot cardboard cutout.
Lizzie had seen the stall from a distance, but had thought they were pre-war promotional items for Halo Eternal, found in a shipping container somewhere, like Cici's rock 'n roll memorabilia.
She stared up at the life-size representation of The Denver Slayer.
"You gotta be shittin' me."
Lizzie met Ayers in the inner vestibule with a dark look on her face.
He carried the black helmet tucked under his arm. Seeing her, his features grew wary.
"I can't believe you've done this," she said stiffly. "I thought we were friends. I thought we meant something to you."
His face lost all expression.
"So. It's gonna be like that? Fine, come hear what you've done." Lizzie angrily punched in the door code.
They were immediately greeted by the echoing chorus of "Another One Bites the Dust" as sung by an enthusiastic but elderly duck with bronchitis.
Lizzie crossed her arms and glared at Ayers. "I hope you're happy."
He pointed at himself questioningly. Who, me?
"Yes, you," she said. "It wasn't me who gave a six-year-old boy a kazoo."
Ayers pretended innocence. I don't know what you're talking about.
"Yeah right," Lizzie said. "It just appeared out of nowhere in his toy box. In a sealed bunker a hundred feet underground."
"Another One Bites the Dust" began again, moving to the back of the cave where there was more room for a child to march around imperiously. Charlie was yipping with excitement. Of course the dog was having a great time following Harry around as the boy danced; he was completely deaf.
Ayers held up the V symbol that he used to signify Vincent.
"Don't try to pin this on an old man. I know it was you."
He shrugged. Think whatever you like.
"Liar," she said.
Ayers shrugged again, removing his gauntlets like he didn't have a care in the world.
Lizzie grumbled unflattering things under her breath.
The corner of his mouth twitched.
Vincent wandered up to them with his firing-range hearing protectors clamped firmly over his ears.
"Well, Lizzie," he said a little too loudly, "did you wrangle a confession out of Wyatt?"
Ayers shook his head twice. No confession, and my name's not Wyatt.
Queen's greatest hit was still blaring from the backyard as she sat down at the picnic table. Ayers gave the distant boy some side-eye and moved like he was going to put his helmet back on to block out the noise.
"Oh no, no, no," Lizzie said. "This is your doing. You have to suffer through it along with us." She checked her watch. "Twenty-one more minutes."
"Well, we've got another hour and a half before the kits need feeding. How about a round of poker?"
"I'm always up for a card game. Ayers?"
Yes.
The kazoo continued to squawk, now punctuated by drumbeats as Harry elaborated on his song by striking an overturned plastic bucket with a soup ladle.
Ayers plonked his helmet and gauntlets on the far end of the table, then mimed taking something away and putting it in a pocket.
"No," Lizzie growled. "We can't do that."
Why not?
"Because we promised him that if he finished all of his school work and all of his chores that he could play with it for an hour. I didn't think he'd actually do all that. But I am a woman of my word, so now I have to listen to this for another twenty minutes. He claims it is 'the only song I know how to play on the kazoo.' "
Ayers pretended to examine the cave ceiling.
"Sadist," she said accusingly.
His mouth twitched again as he sat down. Lizzie scooted a bit farther away, huffing in resentment.
Vincent tossed the box of playing cards to Ayers as he put down the coffee tray and began to distribute the betting candies. He took off the ear protectors and winced at the infernal noise coming from the back of the cave. "Wow, he has actually gotten worse. Now, that's dedication." He chuckled at Lizzie's expression and Ayers's deliberately blank face. "So, Liz, how was your shopping trip?"
Ayers's head turned sharply. Shopping?
"Yeah, I had to go to Denver for supplies."
Ayers stood so abruptly that he bumped the table and the contents jumped. He shook his head vigorously. No. You didn't.
"Yes, I did."
No.
She said firmly, "I'm not going to live the rest of my life underground."
Ayers slapped the box of cards down on the table. "No," he said, with steel in his voice.
Heat scorched up from her chest and over her face. For a moment she couldn't see. "Don't tell me I can't leave the house!" she thundered.
When her vision faded back in, both Ayers and Vincent were blinking at her in shock. She was standing, hands palm-out at her sides and fingers extended like she was a cat about to slash something with its claws.
Harry's kazoo-playing had stopped. She turned her head and saw the boy peeking at her from around the corner of the house, his little face half-hidden behind the protective wall.
Vincent rushed over to him with only one glance at Lizzie. The child came first, as it should be.
"Oh, uh…" She swallowed. "Sorry," she told Ayers. "I, uh, didn't mean to shout … that. Sorry. I'm sorry." She started backing up across the fake lawn. "S-... S-..." Lizzie began losing her words. The green floor covering swam before her eyes.
Ayers caught her gently by the elbows, halting her retreat. She didn't look up at him, and he didn't pull her into a hug like Vincent would have done.
"S-sorry," she managed to get out.
Ayers squeezed her upper arms lightly in acknowledgement.
Lizzie did one of the only mental exercises that had ever worked for her. She pictured the anger, fear, hurt and frustration as a swirling red ball coming at her out of the dark. She caught it with both hands, looked at its contents, and threw it back. It returned from the void immediately, slightly smaller now. She looked at it again, turning it over in her hands, then threw it out into the blackness. It came back a paler red this time.
When the ball had become dull pink and the size of a pencil eraser, she threw the horrid little thing away and it didn't come back.
She opened her eyes.
Lizzie had her forehead resting on Ayers's chestplate as her fingers gripped the gilded edges. The black material was very warm, and comforting. He smelled really good, like leather and something almost cinnamon-y. He was holding her by the shoulders now. Vincent was rubbing her back.
Lizzie sniffed back some unshed tears and said, "Sorry," again as she pulled back from the mercenary. She patted the chestplate as if it had been a pillow.
"Sorry, guys," she said, not really looking either of them in the eye. "I didn't mean to lose my cool."
"It's all right, Lizzie," Vincent began to say.
"It's not all right," she corrected him softly. "People shouldn't yell at each other like that. I never used to." She thought of the medication, safely concealed upstairs in the trunk at the foot of her bed, and reminded herself that downing another pill wouldn't help. Psychotropic medications gradually improved one's mental state over several days or weeks; taking too much at once would reduce her to a drooling zombie.
'Just catch the ball and throw it back,' she told herself. 'Catch the ball, and throw.'
Lizzie turned toward the house, but Vincent was blocking an easy exit, so she tried to step around Ayers to the right. He held a hand out low in front of her. Not enough to be controlling, but enough to say he didn't want her to go.
"Harry's playing with his Legos in the living room," Vincent explained. "You could go inside and join him, or you could play cards with me and Ayers out here."
"I should …" Go to my room sounded too childish, so she said, "... be by myself instead."
Ayers's gentle hand moved back to her shoulder. The silky fingerless glove did nothing to lessen the heat from his skin. He was always warm.
"No, you shouldn't be by yourself," Vincent disagreed. "You should be with your friends. Ayers, would you get us all something to drink? No coffee."
Ayers's armored boots retreated from her view. Her shoulder felt cold without his hand on it.
Vincent turned her to face him. He waited. She looked into his reassuring face for several long minutes. Vincent didn't look away. One of the overhead lights illuminated his thick white hair like a halo.
"I'm not all right," she said truthfully. "I was having a good day, and then I went and lost my shit in front of Mr. Perfect over there."
Vincent smiled a little. "Firstly, everybody's got flaws, Ayers included. And secondly, he's been a marine and a soldier for hire. I'm certain he's seen his fair share of PTSD."
"He comes here to get away from all that, Vin. Not to see variations on the same theme."
"He comes here for us." There was a pause before "us", like he'd been about to say something else. "I doubt there's much that could scare him away at this point."
"I guess we'll see, won't we? Here he comes."
Ayers had three mugs of cocoa with him as he returned to the picnic table. He'd even put those tiny marshmallows in them.
Lizzie gave him a hesitant smile. His eyes crinkled at the corners.
"Five Card Draw?" she suggested as they sat.
"Sounds good to me," Vincent said.
Ayers nodded.
"Great," she responded as Ayers began to shuffle the deck. "Great. Yeah …"
Vincent looked like he was trying to think of something to talk about. Lizzie decided to steer them away from any topic about herself.
She cleared her throat. "So when I was in Denver today, I heard some interesting news. Supposedly there's a supersoldier running around out there called 'The Slayer'."
Ayers fumbled a couple of the cards and bent over to pick up the ones that fell to the ground.
"Oh, yeah?" Vincent asked. "Is she a small blonde woman who owns a shocking amount of clothes for her income bracket?"
"No, sadly, this is a dude. Fashion sense undetermined. I ran into some people at a coffee shop who said he's saved a whole bunch of people, and that the ARC calls him 'The Slayer'."
Ayers began dealing the cards.
"According to them, there's one Slayer for every ARC that's still operational, and the world leaders probably each have one too, like a bodyguard."
"What are these Slayers like?" Vincent asked.
She couldn't help but smile. "Well, the one assigned to Denver is apparently ten feet tall and bulletproof, with armor like the Master Chief from Halo."
Vincent chuckled.
Ayers raised an eyebrow and picked up his poker hand.
"He looks like that movie star who played James Bond for a while. Who's the one, Vincent?"
"I'll need more to go on, Liz. A lot of people have been Bond."
"The blond one. You know." She snapped her fingers repeatedly, trying to jog her memory. "The action-hero guy with the dimples and the wife who's an Olympic swimmer or something."
"Chad Winters?"
"That's it. Chad Winters."
Vincent began to arrange his cards, grinning at the ridiculous story.
Ayers listened intently.
"The way the people in the coffee shop heard it, this group of refugees was trapped on the edge of a cliff by two dozen Mancubi – all Mancubi, mind you, no other species of demons – when suddenly this ten-foot-tall, bulletproof, Chad-looking supersoldier drops down from the sky, flips his visor up and uses his laser-beam eyes to cut all the demons' heads off."
Ayers snorted sarcastically.
Vincent laughed out loud. "You're shittin' me."
"Yeah, that was my reaction, too. But they insisted that's what the refugees said. Ten-foot blond guy with laser eyes and bulletproof armor straight out of Halo. Gold visor and everything."
Vincent and Ayers were shaking their heads at each other.
The old man chuckled as Lizzie scooped up her own hand of cards. "Are they sure he's not an eleven-foot redhead with X-ray vision and an Ironman suit?"
"I know, right? So Ayers, I have to ask you …"
The mercenary looked concerned for a moment. Delta-22 was a very secretive organization.
"Have you ever met a ten-foot-tall soldier called 'The Slayer'?"
Something strange eclipsed his expression. Then he shook his head and gave her a slow smile that short-circuited her thoughts. Damn, if he wasn't the sexiest man she'd ever been this close to. What had they been talking about? Oh, right.
"How about a nine-foot mercenary named 'The Destroyer'?"
His eyes crinkled at the corners.
No.
"An eight-foot 'The Butcher' with telekinesis?"
No.
"Seven? C'mon, there's gotta be a seven-foot 'The Executioner' out there somewhere."
Ayers looked thoughtful, as if he were going through a mental catalog.
"There are some basketball players who are seven feet," Vincent reminded her. "Maybe some of them joined the Army or Delta-22."
"Sure, sure. But do they look exactly like Chad Winters, Ayers?"
No.
"Anybody six feet tall with Mjolnir armor and laser-beam eyes?"
No.
"Tell me there's a five-foot guy who can make toast by staring at bread really hard."
No.
He was definitely struggling to keep a straight face.
"Damn. Too bad. A giant with death-ray eyes would have been straight out of a comic book." She sighed dramatically and scooped up her cards. "Guess we'll have to settle for regular people, then. Ante up, guys. Seven mini jawbreakers." Something occurred to her. "Oh! I bet that's why Delta-22 changed their colors to black and gold, right? The old colors were too close to the Army green that all the Slayers wear?"
Yes.
That strange flattening of his expression happened again. Ayers wasn't supposed to give out too many details about Delta-22. She was probably making him uncomfortable.
"Mystery solved," she declared, letting him off the hook. "Well, you look good in black, so it's no great loss."
His eyes sparkled and he raised an eyebrow. Oh, you think I look good in black, do you?
Lizzie did her best not to blush, and compensated for her embarrassment by taking Vincent and Ayers for every last jawbreaker they had.
