“You need to tell me about that someday,” I said, turning back to focus on the river. The last thing I needed to do was crash into a log or another boat.
“Give it a decade or two. I have a feeling you and I are going to be together for a very, very long time.”
Then she was gone—like she was never there. I wondered about that. Was she a hallucination? If she was, how did she know things that I didn’t know? If she was in my head, how come she didn’t know my thoughts?
So many questions, so few answers.
The facility was still two hours away. I let the roar of the engines and the splash of the water dull my thoughts and drove. Maybe I would need a better plan when I got there, but my brain needed a rest, even if my body didn’t.
The muddy water seeped far into the banks, past the massive trees whose roots dug deep into the rain forest floor. The water of the river disappeared, flowing under and through the trees.
It was quite a sight, and with my Wraith vision it was even better. I could see the life present everywhere. It was almost blinding.
Finally, my GPS beeped to let me know I was there. The little boat slowed and rocked as its wake caught up with it. I let it drift over to the south side of the river and touch the bank.
I tied the small line off to the nearest branch; hopefully, it would be here when I got back... I hated using that word, but sometimes hope was all I had.
I hopped off and made my way through the thick jungle. Sweat beaded under my clothes and dripped off my brow. Even at night, it was still unbearably hot and humid. Eighty-five degrees at least.
I pulled my scarf off and wrapped it around my forehead to keep my eyes clear. From the coordinates Alvarez gave me, the facility they were shipping the girls to wasn’t far from the river. They used boats to transport the women up here because no one would notice another boat. Plus the jungle grew so fast it would cover up any signs of disturbance within a day or two.
The jungle floor itself was wet and muddy; I had to be careful where I stepped, especially since I didn’t want to trigger any alarms or booby traps. I took a second to make sure my boots were securely tied on and the Velcro strap was tight.
I set a location in my phone so I would know where I’d parked the boat. The last thing I wanted was to come out of this place and have to walk back to town. Fifty miles in the jungle wasn’t nearly as easy as it sounded... and it didn’t sound easy at all.
Once I was ready, I made my way toward the marked location. Phones sure made everything easier, from GPS to communications. Even out in the jungle, I still had a signal.
I moved slowly, keeping my eyes and brain alert as I pushed through the overgrown foliage. The heat cause sweat to drip down, flowing on the crevices and valleys of my skin, pooling wherever it could.
After an hour of pushing through, I had to stop for a minute to take a drink from my water bottle. This was ridiculous. I guess if Alvarez somehow managed to lie to me, then he really pulled one over, because if I was lost, this would be the death of me.
“Somethings wrong,” Spice said from behind me. I jumped a little as she manifested. I glanced back at her; she was in far more serious clothes than before. She looked like a little soldier on patrol in jungle fatigues.
“What do you know?” I asked her in a whisper.
She shook her head... Was that fear in her eyes?
“Madi, turn back. Right now, please.”
Shock rolled through me. The Wraith, the little psycho who was always urging me to kill, wanted me to turn back from the killing?
In a blink, I had my pistol out, loaded and ready as I backed up. If Spice was freaking out then—
The fist came from nowhere. I didn’t see it or feel it until it shattered my jaw in a blow that sent me spinning through the jungle. The ear-splitting roar that followed was impossible to miss.
“Get up!” Spice yelled.
My hands grasped handfuls of dirt as I tried to force my arms to work. The ground shook as something landed beside me. Its enormous foot hit me in the ribs and I felt every single one of them break as I flew through the air then slammed into a tree and to the ground.
I coughed up a gallon of blood as I pulled myself up the wet tree. The thud of something heavy rushed toward me. The jungle parted, but my vision was so fuzzy from the blow I couldn’t make out anything more than a giant gorilla-like form as it struck me.
Then I couldn’t see anything at all as it slammed its massive fist against my face.
Chapter 19
“Am I dead?” I wondered out loud. It was dark—pitch black to be exact. I couldn’t feel, hear, or see anything. Even when I spoke, I only heard the words in my head.
A feeble light approached me in the vast darkness. It coalesced and then Spice was there with me. Wherever there was.
“You’re not dead, but you may soon wish you were.”
I laughed. “You do remember the swamp, right? I can take whatever this is.”
She wasn’t laughing or smiling. She simply shook her head, her hair, dreadlocks to match my own, shook around her shoulders.
“No Madi, you can’t.”
That’s when the pain started.
I screamed, the world coming into sharp focus in an instant of mind-shattering pain. I was in a room, no—a lab—strapped down to a metal bench with my arms and legs spread out as far as the would go. Metal straps held my neck, waist, wrists, and ankles so tight the circulation had stopped long before I was regained consciousness.
The source of the pain was a laser on an articulating arm, burning through my right side, vaporizing skin and tissue while it cut part of my ribs away. Then it stopped to move to a different angle, and I sucked in huge gulps of breath.
Three men in lab coats, masks, and goggles stood in front of machines as they worked. A fourth figure, a woman, supervised the operation. I blinked several times but the monitors displayed a language I didn’t know, nor could I even guess at what it was. The computers themselves didn’t look like anything I had ever seen, in real life or otherwise.
“What are you doing?” I asked between gasps.
They didn’t respond. The laser arm whined for a moment and I knew what was coming. Red light lit up my side again as it drilled into me. The scream that came out of me was unreal. I couldn’t breathe through the pain; it was like someone reached into me and pulled my insides out.
“I’m sorry Madi. I’m doing everything I can to limit the pain, but burns are really hard to heal. They take twice as much power and time to fix. I can’t start until I know they’re done, or we could run out of power and then you would die— and I can’t let that happen, not here,” Spice said.
She was next to me, one cool hand on my forehead helped, a little. She certainly looked concerned.
“What... do... you mean, not here?” I grunted through the pain, trying to hyperventilate myself to deal with it.
“You’ll know soon enough.”
The laser shut off. I gasped, letting out all my air and starting over. The articulating arm whirred as it moved to another location over my left arm.
“Spice?” I said. My heart was slamming inside my chest. I struggled against the restraints, but they didn’t budge. I reached down in me and tried to teleport, but nothing. The bright overhead lights looked almost like sun lamps, which would mean no shadows to step out from or into.
I thrashed against the restraints.
“Madi, calm down and try and think through the fear. No matter what happens here, if you live, you will be okay,” she said.
“If I liv—” I was interrupted by the laser firing again and my words turned into a scream as the beam cut through my arm.
Thankfully, I passed out. My last thought wasn’t If I would wake up, or even what would happen to Spice, but how the hell I was going to kill these bastards with one arm.
Chapter 20
I fully expected to wake up screaming in more agony, and was pleasantly surprised when I jerked awake and slammed into
the padded wall behind me. It took a second for my eyes to clear but when they did, I was no longer in the horror room, but a legit padded cell.
The walls were covered in thick white fabric that bulged from the padding underneath. The only space in the entire room that wasn’t padded was the small recessed window on the cell door. I couldn’t tell where the light came from, but the whole room was lit up like the sun. Not a single patch of shadow or darkness.
As for me, I was wearing a straight jacket; all white with buckles and belts strapped around me, holding my one arm in place behind my back.
My one arm.
Panic flooded through me. They’d cut off my arm. MY ARM! I leaped to my feet, stumbling toward the door. I had bare feet and what felt like cotton pajamas on. I hit the door with my shoulder, trying to force it.
Dizziness washed over me and I slid down the door. I felt weak. Helpless. Like I felt when my family was killed. Like when I woke up from my coma.
“Spice?” I mumbled through a dry mouth. Now that the surge of adrenaline passed, it was obvious they had pumped me full of drugs. It was hard to stand, so I didn’t. I just slumped against the floor, trying to think through the fog.
“I’m sorry Madi. If I thought you could stop them I would have let you, but you couldn’t, not then,” Spice said.
I nodded, not really understanding anything she was saying because everything felt so far away.
So very far away.
“When?” I managed to ask.
“When what?”
“When will you let me stop them?”
She shrugged. “The only reason you’re still alive is they think you have superpowers. I think they want to know what you have, what you can do, so they can try and replicate it,” she said.
“That doesn’t make any sense.” I was no expert, but I did remember two things from school about superpowers. One, it was against international law to experiment on people for the purpose of imbuing them with powers. And two... while it had worked a few times after World War Two, the vast majority of the attempts ended in death for the subjects.
I shook my head trying to clear it. “Can you get rid of these drugs?” I asked her.
“Sorry, no. The only way you’re going to get out of this is if, when the moment comes, I give you everything I have, every bit of stored power plus some I don’t have. Even that might not be enough.”
I nodded, still not understanding. Everything was too fuzzy, too indistinct.
“Rest, Madi. If there is a chance in hell, I’ll make it happen. If there isn’t, I’ll do my best to keep you from suffering,” she said. Listening to her was like hearing a train through a tunnel far, far away.
Then everything went black again.
Chapter 21
“Get her up,” a rough voice said. Even rougher hands grabbed my neck and pulled me up. I opened my eyes, partially blinded by the light as I went from total sleep to wide awake in a second.
Four men, big men with crew cut hair and overdeveloped muscles, surrounded me. They weren’t wearing uniforms, but their white military-style clothing smacked of them. The one holding me, a big African brother, grinned when he saw my eyes had opened.
“Too bad she didn’t have powers after all. I would have had some fun with this one,” he said to his comrades as if I weren’t even there.
“It’s weird, right? All that death and destruction she caused and no powers, not a one,” the one on my left said.
“Hey, they say take her to holding, we take her to holding. I don’t know what they’re going to do with a one-armed test subject, but the quicker we get her there, the quicker we get to lunch. Let’s go.”
They shoved me toward the door and they weren’t gentle about it. Each man had to weight close to three hundred pounds of solid muscle. A normal person, even a well-trained combatant, wouldn’t stand a chance, even with the element of surprise.
What do they mean, no powers?
They shoved me out into the hall, two behind me, two in front. When I didn’t walk fast enough, they shoved a stick into my back. Pain burned through me like fire, lighting up my nerves and causing me to drop to one knee.
“You like that? Then take your time, otherwise...” he shoved it against my back again. I gritted my teeth, refusing to scream on command, even though it hurt almost as bad as that damned laser.
I struggled to my feet, trying to keep up with the two in front of me. Despite my training, the fear of that pain lent strength to my legs.
Doors lined the hall every ten feet, each one with a small window and nothing else. I guessed feeding their prisoners wasn’t high on their priority list, especially since my own stomach growled from how empty it was.
“Where are we?” I managed to ask.
The stick hit me again. I stumbled as the pain struck, but it wasn’t as bad as before. It actually... helped. My head cleared a little, the fuzz went away and I was able to think—as if the pain had burned the drugs out of my system.
“Shut your pie hole. You do as you’re told and maybe you get out of this with your life,” the one behind me said.
Somehow, I didn’t believe him. We reached an elevator and they shoved me against the wall while we waited. The doors opened and they pushed me inside. I stumbled to the back wall and face planted on it. The metal box was like every other elevator I’d ever been in.
They crowded inside with me. The four of them could barely fit as the doors closed.
We went down; I could tell from the way my stomach felt. They ignored me, the four of them suddenly going silent as eight eyeballs looked at the floor indicator above the door.
Ah, the power of social pressure. I blinked a couple of times and looked up at the ceiling. Unlike my room, I could see where the light was coming from. A pair of fluorescent bulbs behind a Plexiglas shield.
“Spice?” I asked.
“I thought I told you to shut it,” the one with the pain-stick said. He turned around and jammed the thing into my stomach. I didn’t fight it, I just dropped to the floor, then pushed off the back wall, inching forward like a worm.
“Are you sure?” she asked from the corner. It was a step in the right direction. Maybe she would trust me... one day. I nodded.
“Okay, it’s yours. If this doesn’t work... it was nice knowing you.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” I said. The pain-stick man pushed it into my back again. I growled as it fired through me. He put his boot on my head and pushed. I managed to put my knees under me, then one foot.
Another huge fist hit my back and I grunted. They started the beating in earnest.
I stumbled to the side and slammed my good shoulder into one, he grunted and fell on top of me. Which was what I wanted. Before he could get up, I crouched low, then with all my granted strength, I pushed up.
The sudden surge of power was phenomenal; it was like Spice knew what I was planning and waited for that moment to give me everything.
All the pain, discomfort, sluggishness, everything vanished. I lifted us both up through the air and three-hundred pounds of flesh crashed into the plexiglass shield, crushing it like a bug and smashing the two lights to little bits of powder.
Darkness descended on the lift and I smiled like the predator I was.
Chapter 22
Power flared through me and for a brief second blue light lit up the interior of the lift as Wraith returned with a vengeance. I hit the floor and ducked to the side, letting the man hit the grating in full force. I kicked out, slamming the emergency stop button with my foot.
A ringing bell drowned out their shouts of surprise. I focused on that place within and stepped through the shadows to the other side of the small lift. My straight jacket didn’t come with me.
I stepped out of the shadows on the other side of the lift. Leaping up and kicking off the wall into a spin, I wrapped one leg around the second man’s throat, hooking my shin with my other leg to secure it in place. With my only arm, I grabbed the light fixture a
nd did my best to secure myself while I jerked my leg like a vise around his neck.
He struggled for a second, but then his neck cracked and his airway collapsed. I let him fall but hung on to the ceiling. He hit the deck with a thump. I could see perfectly, the dark shaft lit up like a parade. The two remaining on their feet had their pain-sticks out and were waiving them where I had been. When they accidentally hit the guy I used to break the lights he screamed in agony.
I dropped down, kicked the one on the ground in the head, spun, and slammed my heel as hard as I could into the one on the lefts groin. He dropped like a sack, holding his privates and howling like a monkey. The last one turned and jammed him with the pain-stick, thinking it was me.
Red emergency lighting kicked in and my last foe could see again. He leaped back against the wall, eyes wide with shock as his friend fell to the ground, mewling like a baby from both sources of pain.
He looked down to the man I killed, his head practically twisted backward.
“How?” he asked as I closed in on him.
He jammed the stick at me and I batted it aside, spinning to close in on him, bringing my elbow around to connect with his temple. He gasped as he fell sideways. I grabbed his wrist; using my body for leverage I turned until his arm snapped at the elbow. He screamed and let go of the pain-stick as the bone splintered.
I took the stick, flipped it into the air and held it like a dagger.
“No, please!” he pleaded.
“That’s what they all say,” I said as I jammed it down into his eye, smashing through his brain in the process. His body twitched as he fell, lifeless. It only took me a second to snap the necks of the other two and finish them off as well.
Their deaths registered and power swelled through me. I shook my head, my locks flying freely about my face.
Superhero by Night Omnibus Page 39
