Cassie and Trey landed outside J.P.L.’s warehouse facility near Downtown and hurried inside.
Moments later, the Fury and his son arrived.
‘Another trap?’ Moscow said.
‘Undoubtedly,’ the Fury said.
They went in anyway.
They moved through the empty complex, bathed in darkness.
The Fury sniffed the air. ‘That way,’ he said.
They entered a strange-looking room, one with nozzles on the walls.
The Fury of Moscow approached one of the nozzles and touched it, curious.
He didn’t know Cassie was watching him from the adjoining observation room, waiting for him to get close to the nozzle.
She slammed her finger down on a switch—
—and a jet of gaseous nitrogen sprayed right into Moscow’s face, blasting straight down his throat.
The Fury spun. ‘Close your mouth! Don’t let it—’
But it was too late.
The Fury of Moscow gagged, clutching his throat, his face going white.
He dropped to his knees as Cassie’s voice came in over the intercom: ‘Welcome to the Cold Space Lab. This chamber mimics space. That gas is minus 200 degrees. Your lungs are snap-freezing.’
The Fury looked from his dying son to Cassie behind the glass of the observation room.
Moscow writhed on the floor and went still.
‘Yours will freeze, too, asshole,’ Cassie said.
The Fury was gazing at his dead son. He seemed disappointed more than anything.
‘My sons have half my strength,’ he said softly. ‘Your gas won’t affect me. My country tested such things on me. So now it is you and me, and I am twice the hero you are.’
Cassie saw that he was right—the gas wasn’t affecting him. She raced out the back door of the observation room a moment before the Fury came bursting through the glass, shattering it.
* * *
Cassie ran full-tilt through the corridors and hallways of J.P.L., even flew down some of them.
Her plan a failure, she fled into a large satellite-construction hall, running for her life, when she was suddenly bowled over from behind by the flying Fury and they crashed to the floor.
He ended up astride her.
Ripped off her half-broken helmet.
Backhanded her.
Again, the ringing in her ears.
He hit her again.
Dazed, concussed and on the verge of blacking out, Cassie tasted blood between her teeth.
The Fury glared down at her, pinned beneath him.
‘The natural daughter of Cobalt. You’ve never bled from a wound, have you? Never been hit by anyone strong enough to break your superskin.’
He leaned in close and sniffed her lasciviously. ‘I can smell your fear. You reek of it.’
Cassie struggled beneath him. ‘I’m not afraid of you. You won’t win.’
‘Oh, I will win. And you will see me win. I will beat you into subservience, put a rope around your throat, and make you my personal slave, my sexual playthi—’
Whack!
A steel pole slammed into the back of the Fury’s head, wielded by—
‘Get away from my wife, douchebag,’ he said.
Unfortunately, the blow didn’t hurt the Fury at all. It only served to break the pole.
The Fury slowly stood and turned. ‘The husband. Brave. Also foolish.’
He stepped off Cassie and faced Trey.
Trey didn’t back down.
‘I could kill you with a single punch, little man,’ the Fury said.
‘I said, get away from my wife,’ Trey replied.
Cassie groaned, still on the ground, and too far away to save Trey.
‘No!’ she gasped.
The Fury jabbed Trey in the chest with his index finger. Bones broke.
And Trey crumpled to the ground, wheezing, trying desperately to breathe.
The Fury stood over him.
‘I will kill you like an insect—’ he said.
When suddenly someone yanked the Fury from behind, pulling him away from the defenceless Trey.
‘You couldn’t kill me with a whole fucking building, you ugly piece of shit,’ that someone said.
Standing there in the hall was Golden Gary.
* * *
Cassie didn’t have time to process how Gary had managed to come back from the dead.
She just watched in surprise as he punched the shocked Fury, knocking him sideways.
Cassie was on her feet in a second and, seeing the Fury off balance, side-kicked him across the room.
Gary nodded to her. ‘Hey, hotness. Golden Gary’s in da house.’
Cassie saw Trey on the ground, unmoving. ‘Trey!’
But Gary grabbed her arm. ‘We can come back for him later if we survive this. Move!’
Gary hauled Cassie through a side door while the Fury was down.
Seconds later, they arrived in an empty corridor.
Cassie said, ‘I thought he threw a building on you and killed you.’
Gary said, ‘At the bottom of that pit was a sewer outlet. Flew out through it just in time. Came straight here to help you.’
‘Well, I’m out of traps and ideas,’ Cassie said.
‘There’s absolutely nothing else?’ Gary asked.
Cassie thought for a moment. ‘Maybe . . .’
Gary said, ‘Kid, whatever it is, do it. I’ll hold him off.’
‘Gary, you can’t beat him—’
‘I know. But I can give you time.’
Cassie tenderly touched Gary’s cheek and ran off.
Gary remained in the corridor.
He cracked his neck as he eyed the door leading back to the hall.
After a long moment, the door opened.
The Fury of Russia filled the doorway.
‘So, the sodomite returns,’ he said.
‘Sodomite? Really? Your country has a very delightful gay scene, you know.’
The Fury flexed his knuckles. ‘Ready?’
‘Bring it,’ Gary said.
The Fury rushed at Gary . . .
. . . and the fight began.
This time, Golden Gary knew what was coming and he fought awesomely. Fast punches. Quick dodges. Smaller and more nimble, he outmanoeuvred the Fury and was even looking like winning—
—until the Fury blocked a blow and punched him so hard that Gary smashed back into a wall, flying right through it, before he lay still, not moving.
With a grunt, the Fury stalked off in the direction Cassie had gone.
The Fury entered a very dark room. An array of blinking lights flashed and winked around him.
Clang!
The thick iron door behind him slammed shut, closed by Cassie, who was now standing behind the Fury, inside the dark room with him.
Looming over her, almost twice her size, the Fury took in the room around them: thick walls, a yellow-and-black sign on the door.
‘What is this?’ he said. ‘A final lure? One last subterfuge?’
Cassie turned a dial on the wall. ‘Just you and me,’ she said.
A digital counter beside the dial ticked upward in rapid increments: in a matter of seconds 3 became 15 . . . then 30 . . . then 60 ...
A low droning began to fill the air.
The Fury heard it.
‘There is nothing you can do to hurt me. My bones are like steel. My skin is invulnerable.’
‘I know about your skin,’ Cassie said. ‘It’s actually a weakness, but not your biggest one.’
‘And what is that?’
‘You’re used to winning.’
The Fury laughed. ‘It’s so hard when one cannot lose.’
‘Tell me, can you still smell my fear?’ Cassie asked him.
As she said this, she surreptitiously exhaled, expelling all the air from her lungs . . .
. . . while the Fury raised his nose and took a deep inhale, trying to smell.
Cassie eyed the counter. The numbers kept climbing: 70 ... 75 ... 80.
Then the signs nearby: DANGER: PRESSURISED ENVIRONMENT! and DECOMPRESSION RULES IN EFFECT.
They were in the high-pressure test chamber, designed to replicate the extreme pressure of Jupiter’s atmosphere.
The counter hit 90.
Ninety atmospheres of pressure.
Cassie was standing beside her spherical metal satellite.
And in one swift move she pulled the EMERGENCY RELEASE handle on the heavy door behind her and . . .
. . . dived inside the hollow satellite, shutting herself inside it as . . .
. . . the thick pressure door sprang open!
* * *
The reaction was instantaneous.
An instant tornado filled the chamber. Air rushed out.
Loose paper whipped every which way.
Sirens wailed.
Emergency lights spun.
And warning screens blared: CHAMBER PRESSURE LOST – CHAMBER PRESSURE LOST.
The numbers of the counter whizzed downward at shocking speed.
A sudden, massive, catastrophic pressure drop.
And abruptly the Fury convulsed violently as something inside his chest exploded.
It made a truly disgusting sound.
And then a black bloody substance was ejected from his mouth, from deep within him, and the Fury doubled over in apparent pain.
The rush of air stopped.
Paper fluttered to the floor.
And the Fury of Russia collapsed to his knees, genuinely hurt.
He gasped. Coughed.
Cassie emerged from inside the metal satellite, perfectly fine.
She eyed the kneeling figure of the Fury warily.
The Fury gurgled up more lumpy black blood.
‘What—what is this?’
Cassie stood over him. ‘You just inhaled at ninety atmospheres of pressure.’
He glared at her, enraged, tried to stand, but instead toppled over pathetically onto his belly.
‘And your invulnerable skin,’ Cassie added, ‘just kept in nine hundred times your lungs’ usual volume. Your lungs just exploded and because of your skin, the expanding air blew apart every organ in your chest cavity, including your heart. You just vomited it up.’
The Fury seemed confused. ‘No-one can beat me . . .’
Cassie said, ‘You were human before you were superhuman.’
He coughed once more and fell flat onto his face, dead.
Cassie stood over his body and sighed with deep relief.
Cassie raced back to the hall where Trey still lay. She slid to his side and patted his cheeks.
‘Trey! Trey! Can you hear me?’
His eyes fluttered open. ‘Is he . . .?’
‘Yep. I exploded his lungs under ultra-high pressure.’
Trey nodded. ‘Appropriately gruesome death. Nice.’
A sudden groan made them spin.
But it wasn’t the Fury. It was Golden Gary, staggering into the hall, limping and clutching his chest.
‘You got him?’
‘Got him,’ Cassie said.
‘You always were the smartest of us all,’ Gary said with a smile.
‘Here.’ Cassie pulled out her phone and handed it to Gary. ‘We need to get the word out. Can you please connect me to your twelve million followers? That should be enough.’
While Gary did some quick typing on the phone, Cassie dragged the Fury’s corpse into the hall and dumped it onto the floor.
Then she stood beside it as Gary began filming her with the phone.
Cassie looked straight down the lens.
‘People of the world, my fellow Americans,’ she said. ‘You don’t know me because for a long time I stayed hidden. Today I couldn’t hide anymore. My name is Cassie Cassowitz. I’m the youngest child of Cobalt and I just killed the Fury of Russia. You can call me Cobalt Blue.’