Free Resistance by Samit Basu Page A

Guy disappears.
    Wingman leads the charge, large black feathers sprouting on his arms and back as he leaps off the hoverjet into the air, shooting in every direction from his plasma wrist-blasters. The hoverjet swivels and heads south, on the eastern bank of the Vltava River, towards the New Town.
    Anima and Jason follow Wingman: the Princess of Power’s green energy field lets her fly, and she whizzes off, back towards the castle, spears of light streaking out before her, barely visible in the bright sunlight. Jason takes a deep breath, and dives off the hoverjet. He does his usual spectacular thing, drawing a sheet of metal off a roof in mid-fall, shaping it into a surfboard, winding his way through roofs and spires as he assembles a cloud of sharp metal around him.
    At Uzma’s signal, Wu steps gently off the hoverbird too, her eyes blank and pupil-less, an eerie glow emerging from her skin as she stands in the air above the rooftops of the Old Town, a tiny, ominous figure. Her body convulses into a spirit dance; dark clouds appear swirling in the sky above her, lightning flashing at their edges.
    “You should go too, Jai,” says Uzma. “I’ll be fine with Ellis.”
    A giant bee-man smashes into the hoverjet’s windscreen at this point, and Uzma screams as the man-bug slides off the glass, leaving an ugly green-red smear behind him.
    “Maybe he should stay,” says Ellis. “We don’t want you assassinated in the middle of all this.”
    Uzma shakes her head and gestures at Jai, and he steps off the hoverjet too, just as it reaches Wenceslas Square. He has no way to fly, but Jai has fallen from great heights innumerable times over the last decade. He breaks his free-fall by grabbing a passing man-locust, and uses the fluttering monster to steer him towards the National Museum’s steps, where he lands lightly, rips his steed in two, and calmly surveys the hordes of screaming tourists and their insect-man attackers. He cracks his knuckles and gets to work.
    Local hero teams have been battling the insect horde since the first monstrous grubs burst through the courtyard of the Kafka Museum in Mala Strana at dawn. Looking around, Uzma sees a few familiar faces – a lot of Europe’s mightiest defenders are here, in very questionable costumes, locked in combat in the air, on the ground, and even in the river. Thanks to them, the insect plague has been contained to a few square kilometres in central Prague; that this is also the most densely populated area in the Czech Republic is unfortunate, but the EU teams have set up a perimeter and are blasting any of the monster hybrids that try to go beyond it to quivering, gooey shreds.
    The real danger, Ellis tells her, is underground. Apart from the ancient warrens of tunnels that run under the old city, Prague’s metro is excellent, and the insect-men have been going for many rides, laying clusters of eggs along the way. But a team of French underground artist heroes, activists who’ve evaded both supervillains and the French police effortlessly for years in the catacombs of Paris, are on the job, and there have been no reports of major infestations anywhere in greater Prague. And if they manage to contain the infestation, the huge swathes of rude French graffiti that have blossomed mysteriously all over the Prague metro will be a small price to pay.
    Uzma flinches again as an exceptionally robust locust-man tries to enter the hoverjet through its sliding door. But Ellis moves faster: he slides it shut, leaving a foot-long stinger twitching and spilling slime over the hoverjet’s interior. Ellis swipes a hand, and the control panel for the hoverjet’s guns appears in front of him. He starts pressing holographic buttons, and stabbing white lights emerge from either side of the hoverjet, fending off more flying intruders.
    “What do you call these damned things?” asks Uzma.
    Ellis speed-reads a few messages on his phone, shaking his head, before turning to