by Nick Svolos
The troopers saw it coming and dodged out of the way with ease. The shape-changer wasn’t so lucky. Unstoppabull must have weighed a good five hundred pounds, and while there wasn’t a lot you could do once he got all that muscle moving, it took him a while to coax it into motion.
Inertia’s a bitch. So is getting smacked in the kisser with a VeeDub.
Twenty-seven-hundred pounds of Wolfsburg steel slammed into a quarter ton of man-cow. Physics did the rest. Together, they plowed into the back of the fake security van, slid about fifteen yards, and came to a halt. I flew at Pseudonym, serpentining like a maniac to throw off the aim of the stun rifles.
It took a lot more than a hunk of German engineering to put down someone like Unstoppabull, but thanks to Herculene, I knew his weakness. As he shrugged out of the wreckage, I put all my weight and velocity into one punch, straight to his Achilles’ nose.
His eyes rolled up into his head and he staggered back, bounced off the wall of the now-defunct paddy wagon and crashed to the ground. Without consciousness to maintain the illusion, Pseudonym slowly morphed back into his default form. A naked man, maybe twenty years old, lie on the pavement at my feet.
I turned to survey the street for the security guys, but they were gone. I bent down to pick Pseudonym off the ground, and something moving at just under the speed of sound shot by me. It came to a halt about twenty yards away, a black blur with a patch of gold on his left breast.
“Drophim,Conway. Don’tmakethisanyharderonyourself.”
I cursed. That was right, the ERD had a speedster now.
“Look, this guy’s a shifter,” I tried to explain. “He’s the one who framed me.”
“Lastwarning,Conway. Puthimdown. Now.”
Two more ERD members joined him, taking up positions on my flanks. I heard sirens close behind them. Cops and regular FBI agents, most likely. I glanced at the other ERD supers. I recognized Screamstress immediately. In addition to having Lucy Wells’ size and shape, her mask didn’t cover her mouth. Based on the muscular build of the other black-suited agent, I figured him for Forney. There’d be no talking my way out of this one.
I weighed my odds, tried to come up with a plan, and wound up with a big, fat goose egg. I wasn’t going to let them take me without a fight, though, and I couldn’t do that lugging around an unconscious shapeshifter. I dropped Pseudonym to the ground.
Wells walked toward me. To be more precise, she strutted. “Oh, I’ve been looking forward to this for a long, long time,” she said, gloating. She drew a breath, and I covered my ears.
She let loose, but to my bafflement, not at me. She turned her head a few degrees, and blasted the speedster out of the intersection, through the air, and into a brick wall on the other side of the street.
There was silence for a second, and then things just went insane.
Forney stood, gobsmacked, on my left. When he recovered, he flew through the air, passed me by, and slammed a fist into a very confused Screamstress’ gut. As Wells went down like a sack of flour, Forney just stood there, looking around, like he was trying to figure out what had happened. Newly arrived FBI agents turned their stunners on each other.
“Reuben, move! Now!” a voice said in my head. It was a familiar voice, one I’d known since early childhood.
Sinfonie.
A motorcycle pulled up next to me, a petite, helmeted woman in black leathers and an out-of-place trench coat at the helm. I leaped onto the back and held on tight as she sped us away from the chaos.
***
“What the hell are you doing, Sin?” I thought as she whipped her motorcycle around a snarl of traffic and turned left on Crescent Heights.
“Later,” she thought back. “Don’t distract me.”
Considering we were doing about ninety-five miles per hour up the crowded boulevard, cutting between cars, pedestrians, and the occasional baby stroller, I decided to obey her commands and not think too loudly. Cindy had never gotten a speeding ticket in her life. She telepathically convinced any cop she came across to look the other way. While I never envied her abilities or the pain they’d brought her, that little side-quirk always left me downright covetous.
Sinfonie cut down a side street, and then two more, pulled into an alley and stopped. “Left pannier, there’s a burqa,” she said in clipped commands that left no room for debate. “Put it on.” I opened the case, found a blanket of black cloth, and shrugged into it. Getting the head part right took a little work, and it was too short for a guy my size, but Sinfonie had the right idea. Even she couldn’t mind control everyone we passed, and nobody would recognize me in this get-up. Only my eyes showed through, and even those were covered by a dark veil.
After instructing me to tuck the skirt under my butt to keep it out of mischief, she got us moving again, emerging at last from the residential neighborhood onto Fairfax and headed north at a more reasonable pace. Periodically, she’d pull into a neighborhood, perform a series of seemingly random turns and come back out to continue working her way into West Hollywood. Eventually, she pulled into an abandoned construction project off Santa Monica Boulevard. She idled down a ramp and into a darkened garage. The door rolled down behind us as she shut off the engine.
“Now?” I asked.
“Yeah, go ahead.”
“Sin, what the hell are you doing?”
My oldest friend walked through a door in the back wall. “Saving your ass. Thought that’d be obvious.”
I followed. “Dammit, you know what I meant. Showing yourself. They’re gonna start looking for you again.”
“Couldn’t be helped.” She took her helmet off, tossed it into a corner of the nearly empty room, and shook out her hair. She opened a mini-fridge, pulled out a cold pack, and tossed it to me. I applied it to my face. While my borrowed DNA dialed the pain down to a moderate ache, the areas Forney had worked over were still pretty swollen.
I was getting frustrated with Sinfonie’s flippant attitude. She had it all, yet she was throwing it away over me. “This is ridiculous. What are you gonna tell Joe?”
“Don’t be silly.” She smiled, filling a drip coffee maker with water. “It was his idea. Coffee?”
“Yeah. And, wait—Joe signed off on this?”
She nodded as she ground some beans, filled the filter, and switched it on. “Yeah. Your alter ego made the news, and then Helen called. She’s completely freaked out, by the way. So, I decided to do a little recon. I was there when your little playmates busted you out.” She giggled. “You guys were so cute.”
“Yuck it up, sister. So, you ‘reconned’. What’d ya find out?”
“Backdraft’s fingered you as the mastermind behind the whole thing, but he’s been coached. He plays ball, gets a reduced sentence, and works it off in the ERD. A couple of years, and he walks. Good deal for him, or so he hopes. I think he knows they’ll double-cross him, but he’s gotta play ball for now.”
“Let me guess. He’s making this deal with Wells.”
“Bingo. That gal’s got it in for ya.”
“Fer cryin’ out loud,” I moaned, plopping down on a crate of MREs. I looked around. As far as furnishings went, there weren’t any. Just a bunch of crates, duffel bags, and a rolled-up sleeping bag against the wall. “What is this, a safehouse?”
“Mmhmm.” She nodded as she poured two cups of coffee. “Still have a few left from the old days. Not much, but more than adequate to stay off the streets while the heat dies down.”
I took the offered cup of coffee, then took a deep breath through my nose, letting the blessed steam work its way into my sinuses. “I still wish you hadn’t exposed yourself like this. I don’t want to sound ungrateful, but this is gonna have repercussions.”
“Maybe.” She perched herself on another crate and crossed her legs. “If so, I’ll deal with them. Right now, we have another problem to solve.”
“Sin, I’m not sure we can solve this. This is big. It might go all the way to the top, and all I can see is the ground
floor.” My hands gesticulated as I spoke, and I spilled a little coffee. I glared at the liquid on the floor. I hated wasting life-giving caffeine.
“Easy, Rube. Calm yourself. Let’s go through it, step by step.”
“OK, well, first—”
“Shush,” she said in my head. Oh, right. You don’t need to talk when you’re dealing with a telepath.
She rifled through my memories like they were folders in a filing cabinet. It was a weird feeling, having someone else in my head. I kind of expected my gray matter to be fully occupied with my own thoughts, and it always came as a surprise to learn there was so much unused capacity in my skull. I wasn’t sure it was a feeling you could get used to.
She paused at the memory of the infirmary. “Who’s this guy?” she thought, indicating Assistant Director Alvarado.
“Damned if I know. This is the first time I’ve ever seen him. Seemed to be in charge. Play it forward a bit to the exchange between him and Wells.”
Sinfonie controlled my memories like a teenager with a Netflix account. We watched Wells say, “I’ll take it from here, Assistant Director.”
Alvarado nodded. “Good. See that it gets done. No more screw-ups.”
“Yeah, that’s our guy,” Sinfonie thought. “He gets us to the next floor.” She continued playing through my memories, studying Pseudonym’s body language during our conversation after the jailbreak with some interest, and skipped over most of the fight at Wilshire and La Cienega. Finally, she broke mental contact, took a beat to re-center her consciousness, and said, “Well, in my expert opinion as your friend, professional supervillain, and all-around smart chick, you’re screwed.” She got up, grabbed an empty duffel, and started shoving stuff into it. A few day’s rations. Some bottled water. She grabbed a couple of shirts, compared them to me to see if they’d fit, and threw them in, too.
“Hey, wait!” I protested. “We can work the Alvarado angle, right? Maybe we can find out who he’s working for.”
She scooted a box out of the way, exposing a safe. Her nimble fingers worked the combination like they didn’t need her to tell them how to do it. “Sure, and then I can find out who he’s working for, and so forth on up the line. But that takes time, and that, my friend, you do not have. I’m getting you out of the country.”
“What?” I stood behind her as she scooped bundles of twenties and hundreds into the bag. “Sin, I can’t run. You know that.”
She leapt to her feet and rounded on me. She was angry, but her eyes were terrified, on the brink of tears. “You can and you will. Do you know how long a safehouse lasts once you use it? Typically, less than twenty-four hours. Every hour, the odds that some fine, law-abiding citizen notices something out of place and calls the cops goes up. The progression is geometric. Within ninety-six hours, it’s a certainty. That’s how this life works, Reuben. You have to keep moving.” She looked away, stifling a sob. “Dammit, do the smart thing. Staying here lands you in prison or a graveyard.”
I reached out and put my hand on her shoulder. “Sin,” I began, but she shrugged it off. I’d never seen her like this. So worked up. “Look, you know me better than anyone. Do you really think I can leave? Do you think I could live with myself if I did?”
I felt her touch on my mind and I relaxed, let her poke around. She knew, but I could only guess she needed to confirm it for herself. I couldn’t leave. The truth was out there, and Bedlam was going to bury it under a lie. I couldn’t let that happen. If I did, each day of my life would be meaningless. I’d live out my days as a broken thing, cut off from everyone I loved, haunted by the lie I let stand.
Besides, all my stuff was here.
“You’re an idiot,” she said at last.
“I don’t think that’s ever been in question.”
That wonderful mind of hers got back to business. “Alright, fine. We don’t have a lot of time. I think we should start with—” She held up a hand and got a faraway look.
Somebody knocked on the garage door.
“Damn, that was a fast ninety-six hours.” I balled my fists and got ready to go down swinging.
“No, you big dummy. She’s a friendly.” I followed Sinfonie into the garage, where she rolled up the door. Helen ducked under it and came in. With two quick steps, she crossed the room, swept me up in a hug like I was a rag doll, and planted one of history’s tastiest smooches on my lips. I returned it in kind.
When we finally came up for air, reality came with it. “Hon, you shouldn’t be here.”
She gave me that look, the one she gets when nothing is going to change her mind. “And just where should I be? Back home baking cookies?”
“Well, some cookies would be nice…”
She set me down. “Last year I didn’t trust you, and I’ve been regretting it ever since. I won’t make that mistake again. I’m by your side till the bitter end.” She took a moment to appraise the bruises on my face. “My God, what the hell did they do to you?”
“The usual. Tried to shut me up. Didn’t work.”
Anger flashed in her eyes. “Nobody does that to my man. Bring me up to speed.”
We finished off the rest of the coffee while going over what we knew for Helen’s benefit, and she did the same for us. By a hastily-issued court order, The Angels were confined to the Tower. Two ERD agents, backed up by a platoon of FBI agents, were posted at the building to make sure they stayed there. Herculene only escaped because she happened to be out of the building, hunting for clues at Starlines, when the injunction came down. There was an order for her to return to the Tower, but she was ignoring it.
“So, after I called Cindy, I dropped by my place to get these.” She indicated the two duffel bags she brought with her, tossing one to me. “And here I am.”
I looked inside the bag. A green, wide-brimmed steel helmet sat on top, under which I found a very authentic WWI Marine expeditionary uniform. “Holy cow, this is Doughboy’s outfit.”
She nodded. “Yeah. I figured you’d need a change of clothes.”
“Sure, but, I don’t think I can wear this. Wouldn’t be right.” This was another man’s glory. A Marine uniform is something that must be earned. I didn’t have the right.
“Nonsense,” she said. “He’s one of the reasons you’re in this mess, so he can damned well help you out of it.”
“She’s right,” Sinfonie added. “You wouldn’t last an hour out there as Reuben Conway or Captain Stand-In. Too many people looking for those guys. This’ll give you a chance.”
They had a point. I’d need some kind of disguise. It was either this or the burqa. I took the costume and went to the garage to suit up.
As I donned the outfit—proprietary SkinSuit fabric rather than the heavy wool used in the real deal—I found it fit perfectly. Helen’s handiwork. She was a hell of a seamstress, making her own costumes after buying the stuff in bulk. The stronger material would stand up to much more punishment than the original wool could ever hope to, and would be a lot cooler to boot. That girl thought of everything.
I fitted the little domino mask Doughboy wore onto my face, strapped on the helmet and went back to join the ladies. I didn’t even get one step through the door before my brain stopped working.
Sinfonie giggled. “It’s official. You two deserve each other. You’re both insane.”
Helen had brought her own get-up, and I almost didn’t recognize her. Raven black hair cascaded to her shoulders from beneath a wide-brimmed hat. Her brown eyes peered out from behind a ruby red domino mask. Under a full-length charcoal-colored trench coat, she wore a black, V-necked dress that snuggled up to her form like a drowsy kitten. It stopped just above her knees, leaving the rest to my overactive imagination.
“Homina, homina,” my mouth stammered of its own volition, disconnected from any hope of control.
“You’re not so bad yourself, soldier boy,” she said, a playful smirk playing about her lips. She spoke fast, out of the corner of her mouth, like a bantering 1930’s film-noir a
ctress.
I am so marrying this chick.
She sashayed over and wrapped her arms around my neck. “What’s the matter, slick? Cat got your tongue?”
I managed to regain some measure of control over my speech center. “Brain not work so good.” The proximity of her body wasn’t helping matters.
“Do you two need me to leave the room for a few minutes?” Sinfonie chided.
Oh, yeah, someone else was there. That helped shake off my hormone-induced stupor. “So, the infamous Femme Fatale, huh?”
Helen grinned. “Hey, you know how much I love a theme. Besides, I can’t be seen bouncing around out there as Herculene.”
“Do your pearls contain knock-out gas?”
“I’m a stickler for details.” She let me go and stepped back. “Okay, back to work. What’s the plan?”
“I had some thoughts on that,” I said as I took a perch on one of Sinfonie’s crates to explain what I had in mind.
XV
With Femme Fatale clinging to my back, one arm wrapped around my neck and the other holding on to her hat, I flew low over the rooftops of Inglewood. Getting to LAX by air could be kind of tricky if you weren’t in an airplane. It’s illegal to fly into an airport’s control zone without authorization. Commercial airliners are tough birds, but they don’t do so well when their jet intakes suck up a superhuman stupid enough to blunder into their path.
Once we got close to where we needed to be, I swept us skyward and found a good spot on the roof of an office building on Century Boulevard. We settled in to wait for Sinfonie to catch up.
“We’re in luck,” Fatale said. “Archangel says LaBlanc’s plane’s been delayed. Federated Airlines terminal, gate twenty-two.” The Angel communicator in her ear was our only means of communication with the team back at the Tower. We had a couple of burner phones from Sinfonie’s stash, but those were for outbound calls only, and we had to lose them after one use. Tradecraft, Sinfonie told us. It seemed a little paranoid, but she’d been on the run most of her life, so we deferred to her expertise.
