Unexpected Consequences

19. Metal Men and Meerkats

MY ROUTE WAS reversed from the one this morning. Then, I'd gone from Manhattan to Queens, worried about being late to school. Now I changed into my suit and bolted from Queens to Manhattan, worried about how much was going wrong during the time it took me to get there. Every second that ticked by was another opportunity for Lex to wreak irreparable havoc.

When I got there, I was met by a road closed off by a blockade of NYPD and FBI cars. There was some fire, some debris, and unusual quiet. A few civilian spectators straggled out from the buildings that lined the street and were escorted away to safety. I came to a stop at the barricade and stared at the reason for the alert.

Kavanagh stood next to me and asked, "Is that him?"

"I don't know."

The reason for the alert was a metal man—that was the only way I could describe it. The full-coverage suit was made of thick metal, not for easy use but for maximum force—unless it was more flexible than it looked, and it did not look flexible at all. The familiar L logo was on the upper right arm, and the helmet had two slits for eyes, glowing a faint purple. He was taller than Lex, which could easily be explained by extra height in the heels, so it could still be Lex inside, or it could be one of his henchmen. Only one way to find out.

I jumped the barricade and approached slowly. There was a flamethrower attached to one of the arms—that was what caused the alert in the first place. He snapped two metal fingers, and the flamethrower disassembled itself and was tucked underneath seamless, moving metal plates that slid back into place as if they'd never moved at all. High-tech, maybe, but I focused on the elbows, on the shoulders, the knees, the hips—how in the world was this guy going to move?

Perhaps the point was that he didn't need to, because up from his shoulder plate came a machine gun. Someone screamed duck—maybe me, maybe one of the officers, maybe all of us simultaneously as the metal man opened fire, swinging the gun around wildly. The backup ducked behind the blockade, and I ran for cover behind a car that had been left on the closed-off road. I might've been durable, but I didn't know how bulletproof I was, and I didn't intend to find out.

I noticed that my refuge was a black SUV—one of the FBI's. I opened a call to Kavanagh on my mask's intercom and asked, "Are these cars bulletproof?"

"Somewhat. Why—"

Another volley of bullets passed over the blockade, and the noise drowned out whatever he said next. The car I was hiding against shook as the gun swung toward it. I ripped off the door, prayed for good luck, and leapt over the car with it held in front of me. He exhausted his ammo firing against my door-shield while I ran, stealing glances through the rapidly deteriorating window, and slammed the door against him as hard as I could.

There was a loud crash of metal on metal, and he was knocked slightly off balance. I took the opportunity to jump over, grab the gun—it was hot—and rip it off his shoulder. He swung an arm around, and I noticed that the joints in his suit were made of the same pixelating, fluid-like metal that made up Lex's mask. Perfectly, infallibly flexible, even if the metal man's movements were somewhat jerky.

I ducked away from his swing and tossed the gun far out of his reach. The cops and agents stood up again, like meerkats. "Alright," I said to myself, bouncing on my feet. "This shouldn't be hard."

"Don't jinx it."

I laughed—I'd forgotten that the line between my mask and Kavanagh was still connected. "Roger that."

The metal man tilted his head, another feat that didn't look possible in that suit but somehow, he did it. There was only a thin line where a mouth would be, and I almost expected for it to also glow purple as he said something menacing along the lines of I'm going to kill you, in which case this was definitely Lex, but he was silent.