New SHAZAM in Flashpoint World - Chapter 13
Chapter 13: Siberian Welcome Party
The flight to Siberia was a journey across a vast, indifferent canvas of churning grey ocean and then, for what felt like an eternity, an endless, featureless expanse of frozen tundra. The sun, when it was visible, was a pale, ineffective disc in the sky, offering little warmth and even less cheer. Jack flew high and fast, a solitary crimson and gold speck against the desolate landscape, the Speed of Mercury making short work of the immense distance. He was alone with his thoughts, a maelstrom of apprehension, grim determination, and the lingering, absurd echo of his new, self-appointed moniker: Super Jack. The weight of his mission, to rescue a Kryptonian he’d never met from a fortress he’d only seen on a computer screen, in a world that wasn’t his own, was a heavy cloak around his super-powered shoulders.
As he neared the coordinates painstakingly extracted from the Batcomputer, the Wisdom of Solomon cross-referencing his flight path with satellite imagery and topographical data, the terrain below became even more rugged, a chaotic jumble of ice-choked rivers, jagged black mountains, and windswept plateaus. And then, emerging from the white wasteland like a dark, metallic blight, he saw it.
The complex. It was even more menacing in person than it had appeared on the grainy satellite photos. A sprawling network of low, windowless buildings, reinforced concrete bunkers, and interconnected tunnels, all hunkered down against the brutal Siberian elements. Watchtowers, bristling with antennae and what looked suspiciously like heavy-caliber automated cannons, punctuated a triple-layered perimeter fence that shimmered with a faint, blueish energy field. Radar dishes, massive and skeletal, rotated slowly, scanning the empty skies. Plumes of steam and smoke rose from various chimneys and vents, staining the pristine white snow with grey smudges. It was a fortress, cold, brutal, and utterly dedicated to keeping something – or someone – securely locked away.
Jack circled once, high above, a predatory hawk made of magic and borrowed divinity. His enhanced vision picked out patrols marching along the inner perimeter, their forms bundled against the arctic cold, assault rifles held at the ready. Automated turrets swiveled on their mountings, their sensors no doubt already registering his approach, however high he was. This place was buttoned up tight.
A moment of profound, stomach-churning doubt assailed him. What in God’s name am I doing? He was one man – one demigod, granted, but still – against an entire military installation. He had no plan beyond ‘get in, find Kara, get out.’ Subtlety wasn’t really an option, not for someone who radiated power like a miniature sun and whose only infiltration experience involved a creaky fire escape.
He took a deep, steadying breath, the arctic air searing his lungs, though the cold itself barely registered against the magically sustained warmth of his Shazam form. Raw power beats finesse when you’re new, he reminded himself, clinging to the mantra that was rapidly becoming his operational philosophy. He wasn’t Batman. He wasn’t the Flash. He was Super Jack. And Super Jack, apparently, did things the loud way.
Decision made, he tucked into a steep dive, a crimson and gold meteor streaking towards the outermost perimeter fence.
The reaction from the base was instantaneous. Klaxons blared, their mournful, urgent wail cutting through the arctic silence. Searchlights flared to life, crisscrossing the sky, trying to lock onto his plummeting form. The automated cannons on the watchtowers swiveled with terrifying speed, unleashing a barrage of explosive shells.
“Showtime,” Jack muttered, a grim smile plastered on his face, more bravado than actual confidence.
The shells exploded around him, peppering the air with shrapnel and concussive force. He felt the impacts, jarring thuds against his magically enhanced body, but the Courage of Achilles held true. It was like being pelted with very angry, very loud hailstones – startling, but not damaging. He gritted his teeth and pushed through the barrage, aiming for the main gate.
He hit the energy fence first. It erupted in a blinding flash of blue light and a high-pitched whine as his body made contact. The force of the impact was staggering, sending a jolt through his system that momentarily scrambled his senses, but he pushed through, the ancient magic of Shazam apparently more than a match for whatever technology powered the barrier. The fence shorted out with a shower of sparks and a smell of burnt ozone, a twenty-foot section collapsing inward.
He landed, not entirely gracefully, skidding to a halt on the frozen earth just inside the now-breached perimeter, already hearing the shouts of guards, the rumble of approaching vehicles. So much for a subtle entry.
Soldiers in heavy winter gear were pouring out of nearby barracks, their rifles spitting tracers that zipped harmlessly past him or pinged off his chest like angry hornets. He felt a moment of sheer, unadulterated panic. This was real. These were real bullets, real soldiers, not pixels on a screen or panels in a comic book.
Then the Wisdom of Solomon asserted itself, a cool, analytical voice cutting through the noise in his head. Analyze attack patterns. Identify primary threats. Neutralize. Adapt. It also, rather unhelpfully at first, started replaying fight scenes from the Shazam! and Black Adam movies in his mind’s eye. Remember how Asher Angel… I mean, Zachary Levi… handled those Sivana-spawn? Or how The Rock just walked through everything?
He ducked, purely on instinct, as a rocket-propelled grenade shrieked past his head and exploded against a concrete barrier behind him, showering him with harmless debris. “Okay, less thinking, more doing!” he yelled to himself.
He charged forward, a living battering ram. A group of soldiers directly in his path opened fire. He just lowered his shoulder and plowed into them. The Strength of Hercules was a monstrous thing to behold. Men went flying like bowling pins, their rifles scattering across the snow. He winced internally. He hadn’t meant to hit them that hard. He needed to learn to pull his punches, a concept that was utterly alien to him until about an hour ago.
Automated turrets mounted on nearby bunkers swiveled, their barrels glowing ominously. Before they could fire, Jack recalled a particularly dramatic scene from the Black Adam movie. He thrust out his hands, focused his will, and yelled, not the magic word, but just a guttural roar of effort, trying to summon Zeus’s lightning.
A pair of crackling, somewhat wobbly bolts of energy erupted from his fingertips. One went wide, carving a molten trench in the permafrost. The other, more by luck than skill, struck one of the turrets squarely. The turret exploded in a shower of twisted metal and sparks. One out of two ain’t bad for a rookie, he thought, already moving.
He was clumsy. His movements were too wide, his dodges too slow for true finesse, relying more on his invulnerability than actual skill. When he tried to mimic a cool flying punch he’d seen Billy Batson execute in the comics, he misjudged his trajectory and ended up shoulder-checking a watchtower with enough force to make the entire structure groan and tilt precariously. The soldiers inside scrambled to evacuate, wisely deciding that discretion was the better part of valor when facing a flying maniac in a cape.
“Need to work on the landings,” he grumbled, pushing himself off the bent steel girders.
The Wisdom of Solomon was working overtime, feeding him tactical data, highlighting enemy vulnerabilities, suggesting countermeasures based on its vast repository of knowledge – which now, bizarrely, included action movie choreography. They’re flanking! Use an area-of-effect attack! Remember Shazam’s ground pound?
He saw a heavy armored vehicle rumbling towards him, its main cannon swinging in his direction. Okay, ground pound it is! He leaped high into the air – higher than he intended, almost comically so – then plummeted down, aiming to land in front of the vehicle. He slammed into the frozen earth with a tremendous CRUMP, sending out a shockwave that cracked the ground, threw soldiers off their feet, and, much to his surprise, actually flipped the armored vehicle onto its side, its treads spinning uselessly.
“Huh. That actually worked,” he said, genuinely impressed with himself for a moment, before an energy blast from a hidden emplacement seared past his ear, reminding him that he was still in a war zone.
He was a whirlwind of chaotic, overwhelming power. He punched through reinforced steel doors as if they were paper. He backhanded heavy machine gun emplacements into scrap metal. He absorbed point-blank grenade blasts with nothing more than a grunt and a ringing in his ears. His lightning bolts, while still erratically aimed, were devastating when they connected, shorting out power conduits, vaporizing automated defenses, and generally causing mayhem.
He was also, he had to admit, terrified. Every explosion, every near miss, every burst of enemy fire was a fresh spike of adrenaline. But beneath the fear, there was also a strange, exhilarating sense of… competence. Or rather, the illusion of competence, bought and paid for by the sheer, unadulterated might of the gods whose power he wielded. He wasn’t fighting smart, not yet. He was fighting hard. He was taking hits that would have obliterated any normal human, and he was dishing out punishment on a scale that was clearly beyond anything these soldiers had ever encountered or trained for.
He found himself inside one of the main complex buildings now, the corridors echoing with alarms and the frantic shouts of Russian soldiers. He was a bull in a china shop, a demigod in a Siberian meat grinder. He was making progress, carving a destructive path deeper into the facility, guided by a vague sense of where the central, most secure core of the prison was likely to be.
After vaporizing a particularly stubborn security checkpoint with a poorly aimed but satisfyingly large lightning blast that also took out the ceiling lights and set off the sprinkler system, Jack paused for a breath he didn’t strictly need, water cascading around his invulnerable form. The corridor ahead was a mess of sparking wires, twisted metal, and dazed soldiers.
He grinned, a wild, slightly unhinged expression. “Guess raw power beats finesse when you’re new,” he declared to the empty, chaos-filled hallway.
His first real taste of combat was brutal, clumsy, and terrifying. But he was still standing. And he was, undeniably, winning. The Siberian welcome party was in full swing, and Super Jack was just getting started.