Superhero By Night (Book 3): The Wraith [Guerrilla Warfare]

by Haskell, Jeffery H.

  The rack of a slide made me look up; the third one had a shotgun pointed right at me.

  Crap.

  The blast caught me center mass, flinging me back ten feet to slam into the ground. It hurt to breathe and the sound I made trying to inhale made me want to puke.

  “You supers are all the same. You think powers give you an edge? Nah darlin’, they take it away from you,” he said. His accent told me New Zealand or Australia—I wasn’t a hundred percent clear on the difference. “I reckon your time is up.” He pumped the shotgun again and pressed the barrel against my head.

  Despite the hole in my chest, my inability to breathe, and the fact that my legs didn’t seem to want to work, I wasn’t in much pain. I had to guess that was Spice’s doing. My arms worked fine, too. In a flash, I grabbed the shotgun and yanked it forward. He came with it since he was attached via a sling. The blast was deafening but it missed my head. He landed on top of me and I put my arm around his neck and twisted. He screamed for a second before it snapped.

  I ran my hands through his pockets until I found his cell phone. “Anytime you want to heal me,” I said as I rolled over. My chest was a bloody mess and I was still having a hard time drawing breath. There were more guys; the bullets kept coming, hitting everything above than three feet high in the room. I had managed to keep my gun, tucking it into the waistband at the small of my back. The yoga pants I wore were tight enough to hold it in place.

  A few seconds later my wounds began to close, the worst ones first—the sucking chest wound—followed by the holes in my thighs. After ten more seconds, I was whole again.

  The shooting stopped. I imagined it was so the shooters could reload—I had a window. Leaping up, I ran for the locker on the far side of the room. Dodging debris and jumping over shattered crates it took me a few seconds to get there. I flung it open, grabbed my go-bag and strapped it over my shoulder. Once it was secure, I hit the switch on the self-destruct and ran for the sewer entrance.

  More bullets peppered the building as I slid to a stop next to the grate. They were too late, though. I yanked the grate up and leaped in, closing it behind me as I fell the ten feet to the tunnel floor. I took a second to catch my breath, then I ran for it.

  The rumble of the explosion caught up with me thirty seconds later, as the C4 I left in the warehouse turned it to rubble. The overpressure shock wave caught up with me, but it was barely enough to muss my hair. By the time I reached the end of the tunnel, I could hear sirens in the distance.

  “I was starting to worry,” Krisan said from the nondescript black sedan we had parked here. It wasn’t new, it wasn’t old—just another Honda on the road.

  “Worry? About me?” I tossed the bag on the hood and pulled off the bloody rags that were the remains of my shirt, then my Under Armour. The trunk had a change of clothes and some baby wipes. I probably needed a lot more than just baby wipes, but it would have to do for the moment.

  “You look like you crawled inside a tauntaun,” she said.

  I stopped and had to think for a second about what she meant. “Funny,” I replied as I pulled on my new Under Armour. It was blue with the silver logo on the back. Over that, I threw on a white button-down shirt before strapping on my clip holster to hold my Walther in place in the small of my back. It’s a large pistol with a five-inch barrel; not ideal for concealed carry, but right then I needed the accuracy more than stealth. I tossed my go-bag in the trunk and slammed the lid.

  I got in the driver’s seat and headed for downtown.

  “What next?”

  “Take this,” I said tossing her the phone. She flinched away, letting it fall on the floor while crinkling her nose in distaste.

  “It’s covered in blood.”

  “Mistress of the obvious. Open the glove box,” I said with a nod. She opened it and pulled out the cheap box of purple latex gloves. Once she had them on her hands, albeit in a funny way where they didn’t quite fit, she picked up the phone. She still treated it like it was a snake trying to bite her. I let her be. Not everyone was as comfortable with the killing and the blood as I was. I still didn’t know how I could do all the things I had to do and not lose sleep over it.

  “You’re special,” Spice said from the back seat. She wore a tank top that said: “Trust me, this won’t hurt a bit.” She looked, sounded, and acted every bit the Spice I knew... and it hurt my heart the same every time.

  “I’m not special, Spice. Special people—”

  “Feel special? No Madi, they don’t. They just make everyone else feel it. Trust me, what you can do doesn’t come along all that often. Joseph couldn’t achieve what you have, and he was a hardened soldier. You are special.”

  I shook my head. The crazy ghost impersonating my little sister thought I was special.

  Awesome.

  “You’re weird,” Krisan said suddenly.

  “What?” I was shocked those words would come out of her mouth.

  “You talk to yourself, but only like half the conversation. Why do you do that?”

  I looked in the mirror, Spice smiled back, sweet and innocent. “It doesn’t matter,” I said to Krisan. “Let’s get you settled and then I need to go hunting.”

  She cocked her head to the side. “Hunting? Can’t you just go buy food like a normal person—oh. Right.” Her cheeks turned a delightful shade of red. “I’ll just dig into this phone and find you some targets, but… uh… about our stuff...”

  “We’re going to have to start over. I didn’t think they would find us that fast, but it’s a small country. Maybe next time we just stay mobile, some kind in of box van or something.” I thought of that old show my dad used to watch late at night. They had an awesome van. Maybe something cool—bulletproof and bomb proof.

  It would need to be a lot of ‘things-proof’ for it to work. Something to think about.

  CHAPTER 5

  Mexico City

  Mr. Van Lo, as he liked to be called, walked out of his office in a hurry. As the manager of the largest bank in Mexico city he had to keep his schedule varied, his routine unpredictable. Being a banker in Mexico City was a lot like what he imagined a sheriff’s life would be like in the old west. Gunslingers and bad elements always coming around, wanting a piece of the pie.

  In his case, the ‘pie’ was access to the biggest bank vault south of the United States. Not that he alone had access; nothing was that simple. It required three keys, of which he only had one. Still, they didn’t bring him in all the way from Vietnam to take chances; he had a reputation as one of the most secure, trusted bankers in the world. In the five years he had run The Bank of Mexico City, corruption had dropped to almost nil. No employees skimming the till, no assistant managers helping the place get robbed, nothing.

  He was quite proud of that accomplishment.

  He left the building at eleven-forty-five—a full fifteen minutes earlier than the day before. He immediately crossed the street, turned left instead of right, and walked two blocks in the opposite direction that he actually wanted to go.

  While the downtown core of Mexico City was relatively safe, it wasn’t safe enough for him to drop his guard, even for an instant!

  He entered the Cafe, ordered a black coffee, and waited while he pretended to look at his phone. What he was really doing was watching out for anyone following him. The same car twice, the same face, the same clothes, anything that would set off his alarm.

  The barista called the fake name he gave her. He collected his coffee and walked back toward the men’s room. Instead of going in, he ducked out the service entrance in the back and headed toward the bank and his true destination.

  Five minutes of brisk walking and looking over his shoulder and he entered the building that housed his goal.

  Vanessa.

  He was married, of course, with two terrific children in private school. He loved his wife, or at least he thought he did. However, in his carefully controlled, completely plotted out life, nothing really made him feel alive
.

  Until he had met her.

  Vanessa was everything his wife wasn’t. She wasn’t interested in his money, or job, or family name. She liked him for him. It didn’t hurt that he was in his forties, as was his wife, and Vanessa was young and hot.

  He had only knocked on the door once when it flung open and she jumped into his arms, her dark hair flying wildly about as she kissed him long and hard. He held her butt as she wrapped her legs around him and he carried her into the apartment.

  They broke their kiss and he smiled. “I’ve missed you,” he said in his broken English. Spanish was just too hard for him to learn, but he knew a little English and so did she, the rest... well they didn’t need words for the rest.

  “I’ve missed you, baby. Kiss me one more time.” His hands roamed her body.

  Something strange happened at that moment. Her soft, delightful skin turned hard, and her lips that were like kissing clouds went cold.

  Mr. Van Lo, the man with the perfect job and family, who took no risks with his finances but was more than happy to step out on his wife, opened his eyes to see himself staring back at him.

  This vision of him still wore Vanessa’s clothes, but everything else... was him.

  “What?” he said. He was too stunned to move, even though part of his brain screamed at him to run.

  “You brought this on yourself. If you were faithful to your wife, this wouldn’t have happened,” his doppelganger said.

  Questions flooded through him, but not fast enough. The image of him brought a blade out and sliced him cleanly across the neck.

  Mr. Van Lo collapsed in an instant, his blood racing out of him. As darkness clouded his vision, he realized his murderer was right. He wished he could see his wife and kids one more time.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  The woman known as Vanessa, now Mr. Van Lo, retreated to the bedroom, leaving the banker to die while she sorted through her clothes. Van Lo did a good job of staying unpredictable, but after weeks of watching him, she knew two things: he liked attention from young women, and he owned three suits.

  The hardest part of the operation, besides spending time with the banker, had been having copies of his suits flown in from Vietnam. They were well made and unique looking. There was simply no way for a local tailor to copy it, let alone as exactly as she would need. Instead, she waited for him to fall asleep and copied the information from the label. Then it was a simple matter to contact the suit maker in Vietnam and have him make her three identical suits.

  Her cover was simple; if he found out she would just tell him they were a gift. But he hadn’t, and the suits had arrived that morning, meaning she no longer had to pretend to be ‘Vanessa’ and could go about finishing the job she was hired to do.

  Since she touched him, many times, she was able to use her powers to their fullest extent, copying him down to the DNA. No test on Earth, or anywhere else, could tell them apart. She pulled on his suit and examined herself in the mirror.

  She never liked copying men, preferring to target women for her identities, but she liked money; this job paid well. Before leaving she transferred everything out of his pockets and into the exact same place in her suit along with his socks and shoes.

  She left the building as Mr. Van Lo.

  With her powers, she could duplicate anyone just by looking at them. If she touched them her image was the perfect replication of her target. If she had prolonged contact, even her DNA matched. She still needed to hear their voice in order for her powers to fully work. The more they spoke, the better. Her powers let her duplicate speech patterns, mannerisms, even small tics.

  What it didn’t do, was give her any knowledge of the target; their mind, or what they thought about things. For that, she had to study them carefully. She disliked rushing— it left her having to guess how her targets would act.

  Mr. Van Lo’s doppelganger entered the bank one hour and thirty minutes after he left. The two security guards nodded to him and, as usual, he smiled back and greeted them by name: Fernando and Riley. Part of Van Lo’s strategy for reducing corruption had been putting a name to every face. While a hardened criminal would have no problem betraying him, an average person would be less tempted if they knew him, liked him even. Which, of course, was what led to her hiring. Her employers had tried to corrupt his staff and weren’t able too.

  It really was too bad he was unfaithful to his wife. Overall, he seemed like a decent fellow.

  In the back of the bank—behind the bulletproof glass, the key card security, and the biometric lock—was his office. He sat down and turned on the computer, which of course was password protected. The image of Van Lo pulled out a cell phone that never belonged to the man and dialed the only number stored on it.

  “Go for Cypher,” the voice on the other end answered.

  “I’m in,” she said.

  “Mimic, is that you?”

  She let out a sigh, which of course sounded like a man. “Yes, you moron, it’s me. Now do your thing,” she said in her normal voice.

  “Right. Plug it in.”

  She pulled the USB cable out of her pocket and plugged the phone into the computer. Cypher hung up the call but used the phone to connect his computer to the bank’s and went to work on his magic.

  Like the shapeshifter's powers, Cypher’s were quite useful. There was no computer system he couldn’t hack, no firewall he couldn’t bypass. It was like he was a living computer.

  “I’m in,” he said over the speakerphone. The blue screen with the generic logo vanished and his desktop appeared. Cypher immediately began copying all the files to his location. That wasn’t required for the job, but Mimic believed in being thorough.

  “You find it yet?” she asked.

  “Still looking. I need five minutes.”

  She shook her head. “Be careful.”

  A knock on the office door made her heart leap. She turned off the monitor, made sure she still looked like Van Lo and said, “Come in.”

  A dark-haired man with a complexion that almost matched, entered the room. His steely eyes scanned the office for threats as he took the seat opposite Van Lo.

  “Yes?” Van Lo asked.

  He returned her stare, now more of a puzzled look. “You called me, sir. You said it was urgent that we meet after you returned from lunch.”

  Mimic pulled out Van Lo’s phone and thumbed through the calendar. Nothing.

  “Right. I just wanted to tell you that you’re doing a fantastic job. Keep up the good work,” she said as Van Lo.

  The man cocked his head to the side as if he were trying to look past Van Lo. “Are you feeling all right sir?”

  She nodded. This wasn’t going well. She’d spent a week following Van Lo around, preparing for this job. She knew the bank and the employees better than anyone, how did she not know who this man was?

  “Yes, just... a stomach bug or something.”

  The man nodded, pressed his hands against his knees and stood up. He was tall—at least six-four—which made him eight inches taller than Van Lo and ten inches taller than Mimic in her normal state.

  He eyeballed the phone connected to the computer, and then the one in Van Lo’s hand.

  Idiot. Amateur. Moron! She yelled at herself.

  He reached into his jacket, where she saw a pistol the size of her head holstered. She didn’t wait for him to draw it but leaped straight up, using her enhanced strength to carry her over the desk and kick him in the arm. It was like kicking steel.

  She flipped back over, her shape morphing to her normal appearance. Short hair, thin, narrow eyes, and not nearly as tall.

  “What are you?” the man asked as he took a step back to clear the gun from his holster. She didn’t answer. She only needed to buy a few more seconds. To confuse him, she focused for a second, her body melting and liquefying as it reshaped to take his appearance. Copying another person just by looking at them never gave an exact duplication, but it was enough to do the job.

  A loo
k of horror spread on his face—it was her moment to strike. She spun around, grabbed the chair and continued to turn, throwing it at him and using her momentum to run for the door. She flung it open and ran right past Mr. Van Lo’s assistant. The assistant screamed behind her as the man with a gun ran past.

  Mimic ran behind the tellers, touched an overweight girl, and then ran for the office area. The bank was huge; it wasn’t a branch but a headquarters. She dodged into the break room, ran out the other side, and took a hard right for the employee bathrooms.

  By the time her pursuer hit the break room she was in the girl's bathroom, closing the stall and stripping the copy of Van Lo’s suit off as she morphed into Marta. Once naked, she climbed up onto the toilet, pushed open the vent above it, tossed in the bundled suit, and pulled herself up. She closed the vent behind her, pushed the clothes to the side and headed back toward the office Mr. Van Lo occupied.

  Mimic found the package she’d stashed there weeks before just in case anything went wrong. A bag with a change of clothes, extra shoes, and a bottle of cheap perfume. Marta had terrible taste in clothes, but Mimic had duped her weeks before just in case this sort of thing happened. She’d chosen Marta because she worked the same days as Van Lo. Since her powers only let her mimic the last person she touched, it was a backup plan that paid off.

  Once the clothes were on, she shimmied her way to the vent overlooking Van Lo’s office. She regretted not finding someone skinnier; though Marta was short, her wideness got Mimic stuck twice while she navigated the small ducts.

  At least the building was old and designed long before high-efficiency cooling made large ducts unnecessary. She found the vent, pushed it open, and let herself tumble out, grabbing the edge and flipping around to land on top of the desk. Thankfully, her strength and agility didn’t rely on whatever form she duped.

  She picked up the phone. “Cypher, you done yet?”

  “Uh, almost... There. Done. Unplug.”

  “Took you long enough.”

  She reached down and pulled the cable, then turned the computer off and walked for the door. She was ten feet past the assistant when the man with the large gun came running back, pushing everyone out of the way as he headed for the office.