Second Guess (The Girl in the Box Book 39)

by Robert J. Crane

  “It's okay, Francine,” the guy said, his own hands up. He offered her a reassuring smile. “We seem to have come to an end.”

  “It's an end,” I agreed, “doesn't have to be yours.”

  “Dude, we already saw his end,” Jamal said. “Pumping like a fiend.”

  “Not helpful,” I said, feeling a little like someone had tapped me in the spine with a hammer. Even the reference to that earlier awkwardness gave me pause.

  “I'm sorry you had to see that,” the man said, hands still up. “We thought we were alone.”

  “Alone,” Reed said, looking around the room, “with only corpses for company. So hot.”

  “We're excited by our cause,” the man said. “Not by what we have to do to achieve it.” He waved those hands in front of us, as if to emphasize he was helpless or something. “Surely you must realize what jeopardy the planet is in right now. This is a crucial moment. We only have a matter of years to–”

  “Please stop,” I said, shaking my head. “Those are politicians' words coming out of your mouth.”

  He cocked his head at me, the picture of utter sincerity and concern. “Do you not think our world is worth saving?”

  “I did, until I saw your naked ass gyrating on Punk Rock Chick,” I said, trying to dismiss him so I could get on about the important business of arresting his ass. Ugh. I thought of his ass again, and flinched involuntarily. Not because it was terrible – it was decent, as asses went – but because the thought brought the color back to my cheeks again.

  “We're filling the air with carbon,” Punk Rock Chick declared defiantly, “and it's going to bake us all alive!”

  “Maybe,” I said, “but if so, you're in a great position for it, being covered in ice and all. Here – let me help you more.” And I blasted a little more “on the rocks,” at her, this time to her mouth to shut her up. When it hit home, her mouth was filled with a giant block of ice, and she grunted at me around it.

  “Oh,” I said, as an afterthought, “and uh...sorry about the brain freeze.”

  She looked at me with wild, angry eyes, started to say something, then moaned, this time in pain. “Awwwwwwww,” was all she got out as she bowed her head in obvious pain.

  “No need for that with me,” said Mr. Composure, his smile not even dimming. “I'll come quietly.” He started to place his hands behind his head. “I'd like to avoid the pain of a brain freeze, because that looks really just...terrible.”

  “Good call,” I said. “Lace your fingers together behind your head, and get down on your knees.” I muttered to Reed and Jamal, “Anyone got metacuffs?”

  “No,” Reed said, sounding strangled.

  “Shit, guess it's frozen hands for you, too, bub,” I said, and felt my hair stir.

  “Uh, guys?” Jamal was perking up next to me. “There's something–”

  The console screens in front of us exploded as one, and I realized my error about a second later.

  Ice was water, just in a different state of matter.

  Water conducted electricity.

  My blasts hadn't kept Punk Rocker from exercising her powers at all; they'd just made it harder for her to focus them without her hands.

  So instead she'd directed them out from her back, or ass cheeks – right into the consoles.

  Kaboom.

  I caught a face full of glass that stung like crazy, and a piece of metal impacted against my rib seconds later, followed by another that shredded into my wrist.

  But those were nothing compared to the next hit.

  Mr. Composure slammed into me at high velocity a moment later, unleashing his flight powers and slamming an elbow straight to my jaw before ping-ponging off of me and sending Jamal into the far wall.

  I came down on the catwalk with a thud, my consciousness already fading as something else blew up somewhere in the complex. Maybe it was close, maybe it was far; I couldn't tell. I was already passing out from the pain.

  “Go, go, go!” were the last words I heard, and I couldn't even tell who spoke them, before I passed out.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE

  Scout

  The hiss of the steam followed AJ's brutal blast against the earthwork. Scout had watched the battle unfold, as blindsided by it as he was, unable to even issue a warning in time. She was on the far side of the fight, the opposite direction of where these guys had come from.

  They'd made their impression in the fight, too. AJ had responded quickly, nailing that earthwork. It was still steaming, but Scout could already see a circle of white-hot glass forged from the heat and the dirt's marriage.

  When AJ hurled his next blast at the curtain of water that was providing a shield for the blond man – what was his name? Scott? That was it. Sienna Nealon's ex. When the blast hit that, the screams that followed were like whispers in Scout's ear.

  Unsure of what to do, but hoping AJ got the best of it, Scout just kept low, kept watch, looking for a way to help. So far she didn't see anything, especially not against an earth-moving meta and a water powered one. But she kept looking, because if there was a way for her to help AJ against them...

  ...Well, she'd take it, regardless of what it entailed. She'd even kill them if she had to. For the cause.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO

  Augustus

  Scott Byerly was screaming.

  I'd been paired with Scotty on a few missions. Worked with him legitimately for years.

  Things I knew about the man?

  His family was richer than shit.

  His old man was a real hardass, and the two of them butted heads all the time.

  He had a way with the ladies, but since Sienna he'd been shy about using all his masculine wiles. This didn't hurt him in that department, surprisingly. Women still flocked after his ass.

  Also, in spite of him being a rich boy, he was tough as nails, and so the fact that he was screaming...

  Well, it sent a little shiver through me, because I knew for Scotty to be screaming, it had to be bad.

  I couldn't see him through the cloud of steam, but the fact there was steam – a whole lot of steam – told me, in general, what had happened.

  Scotty got burned. Either by the plasma or the superheated water. Or both. And if he was screaming...

  I hid behind my mound of earth. The bad guy was just beyond it, twenty, thirty steps. He laughed, toneless and loud. I could feel his footsteps against the earth.

  He was pointed toward Scotty.

  I didn't need to look to know that he was going to focus on Scott.

  Water flooded around my barricade, drenching the earth, all attempt to hold it cohesive done.

  Scotty had lost his shield. Couldn't keep it together anymore.

  Which meant the next plasma attack...would be coming at him with nothing to protect him.

  I thought fast. Earth was my weapon. I could snag the dude's feet, yank 'em from beneath him, maybe. It'd take a second or five, but I could bring him down. Hug him to the ground. Suffocate the fight out of him.

  But I didn't have seconds.

  The mound in front of me bore a circle of perfect glass where the last plasma blast had hit. Glass was just superheated sand, still in the spectrum of my powers...

  And it was just sitting there, three feet in diameter, a perfect circle of glass...

  Totally in my control.

  I flexed my hand and reached out; I could still feel his feet against the soil.

  Grabbing the circle of glass with my mind and my powers, I heaved it with everything I had toward the imprint of those feet against the earth–

  The sound wasn't what I expected. Wet and rich, like a butcher knife hitting a thick cut of meat.

  Something thumped to the ground heavily, and I felt it more than heard it, the impact on the earth.

  I swarmed it with sand; something else hit next to it. I covered them both over in a layer as fast as I could as I came around my barricade and sprinted toward Scotty, trying to conjure another shield to follow me as I di
d so.

  Just in case.

  The steam was scalding, and I turned my dirt against it, throwing a cloud into the air. It absorbed the moisture, clumped, fell to the earth, and I summoned more.

  The cloud faded, splattering to the ground like a rain of mud. I looked at the figure I'd buried in the dirt. Part of it was squirming.

  I'd cut our plasma throwing dude in half somewhere above the waist. His upper body was what was still squirming. His lower...not so much. He was probably screaming, but I couldn't hear it. A flash of plasma flew off into the sky, and I could feel the heat from it as I skidded to the ground next to Scotty's writhing, moaning form, throwing up a dirt block as I did so.

  “Hey, bro, hey,” I said hurriedly, grabbing my friend by the shoulders and giving him a once-over. His normally tanned face was covered in red, seething welts. Second degree burns, easy. On his neck down to his collarbone it was worse, third degree with the blackened flesh, charred and scorched from the transmission of heat through his shield. “Just hang on, Scotty. We're going to get you right as rain, man.”

  “I'm not...rain man,” Scotty managed to get out through gritted teeth.

  I chuckled, peeling his shirt down. It was burned into his skin, so I stopped. “I know brother, I know.” Another plasma burst streaked by overhead, and I felt the heat as it went above my ten-foot barricade of dirt. “But you're going to be all right, you hear me? This is healable, my friend. A little time-out and you're going to be just fine.”

  His eyes were squinted shut tightly. “Oh...okay.” He was clearly in agony. Checking lower, it looked to me like the plasma had flash-evaporated the water and it had blown back on him. Below the belt he seemed more or less okay, his jeans slightly singed but lacking the melted look of his shirt and the blistered appearance of his face. It had caught him right in the middle of the body, like a steam pipe exploding and rushing out on his chest.

  “I'm going to have to deal with this clown first,” I said, clenching my fist. His body parts were partially buried, but I really needed to take it all the way before he launched another plasma burst. “Be right with you, br–”

  Something smashed into the side of my head, lost in the crackling flames of the tanks burning in the background around us. I didn't hear footsteps, didn't hear anything thrown, just felt the solid contact of something hit me hard, hit me fast, and knock me face first into the dirt, as darkness consumed me.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE

  Reed

  Sienna went down as Flyboy smashed into her, colliding at over a hundred miles an hour, up from the zero he'd been at ten feet before. To add insult – and more injury – atop the injury he was already perpetrating, his elbow flew up, nailing her under the chin in a meta powered uppercut.

  My sister was a badass and tough as hell, but she was still human in her capacity to accept traumatic brain injury. Her jaw broke cleanly, her eyes fluttered, and she flew into the wall, legs and arms trailing. She landed in a heap by the door, cleanly out.

  “You sonofabitch!” I shouted, tearing the roof off the place and throwing Flyboy into the air, taking his boost of an attack on Sienna and turning it into a proper launch. He went up, up, and up some more, and I tore off after him through the wreckage of the refinery ceiling, which I was preparing to redirect to turn him into a pureed douchebag.

  Flyboy shot me the winning smile of a man who'd been caught with his dick in the cookie jar but just didn't care. “Oh, I'm sorry – was that resisting arrest? I didn't mean to.” He had control of himself and he was fighting the winds I was directing against him. They were buffeting his hair but not moving him so much as an inch. “Well...maybe I meant to a little.”

  “Resist this,” I said, sending a four-foot section of corrugated metal roofing at him at three hundred miles an hour. I had left off trying to keep the smoke in a circle around the refinery and was devoting all my focus to turning the air around us into a blender with which I could chop this son of a whore into fine pieces that wouldn't smile irritatingly at me.

  Huh. So this was how Sienna feels all the time. Got it. Everything makes sense now.

  Flyboy dodged the piece of roofing, flipping laterally so he avoided the hard edge. He seemed to vault off it with both feet, though I knew he had a lot more strength available in his powers than from using his legs like that. He twirled like a piece of paper caught in a vortex, dodging a ten-foot length of steel support that had held the roof up until I'd ripped it all to shreds. Brandishing it like a knight with his lance, he smirked at me, pointed it–

  Then he shot at me, girder out, ready to impale me, a sonic boom echoed through my bones informing me – just a little too late – that he'd breached the speed of sound.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR

  Scout

  She clobbered the earth mover guy across the head with a length of metal that Scout had found on the ground, probably from one of the tank explosions. It clipped him solidly, sent him to the dirt face first, a trailing length of blood running out of the side of his head.

  That was enough, she deemed, breathing hard, standing over him with the metal club, ready to deliver another if need be. He didn't move, though, didn't stir, just lay there with his face in the dirt next to the other guy, the white guy who was scorched all to hell, and after he moaned in pain, Scout left them both behind and ran for where AJ had fallen.

  She'd seen him take the hit, and her legs shook as she ran to him. Not from the exertion, but from the knowledge of what she'd find. That glassy circle had struck him right around the belly button and shorn him cleanly in two; his legs had fallen one way and his upper body had seemed to somersault before it thumped to the earth.

  He was still firing off plasma blasts, which gave Scout a thrill of hope. She'd found a weapon as quickly as she could and stole up on these so-called heroes – who weren't doing anything to actually save the world – clobbering the black one as he talked about snuffing out AJ.

  But AJ was looking pretty snuffed; he was buried under the dirt, barely struggling when she got to him. She pushed her hands into the thick earth, uncovering his face with frantic motions, shouting, “AJ! AJ!” as she did so.

  She uncovered his eyes, brushing them frantically, still shouting his name. He was squirming, jerking, and he took a deep, gasping breath the moment she got his nose and mouth from beneath the earthen coverage. He panted like a dog, desperate, hungry for air as she got a grip on him beneath the shoulders and pulled him free from the earth's grip.

  He was sweaty and gritty, the grains of sand covering his shirt. Scout grasped him cleanly beneath the armpits, beneath the cloth, hauling him up into her lap, putting his head on her. “AJ,” she whispered now, cradling his upper body, the ruined end dangling into the dirt and wetting it with dark liquid. She looked away because it threatened to make her retch.

  AJ gasped, moaning in pain. “I...ohhhh...Scou...Scout...” His breaths were coming in desperate gasps. “He...look what he...he did, Scou...t...”

  “I know,” she said. Tears were slicking her cheeks. “I know.”

  AJ's eyes flitted in pain, and his breathing did not slow. “You...you...” He raised a hand, thrust it at her. It found her shoulder, rubbing dirt and grit there, his clawlike grip holding her tight.

  Scout's mouth was dry. “What? What is it, AJ?”

  “I...not going to make it, Scout,” he said, and he coughed, blood running down his dirt covered chin.

  She looked him over again, tried to put on a brave face. “No. You – you can–”

  He shook his head, forcefully. Painfully, it looked like, as though every movement was agony. Because it probably was. He'd been cut in half, after all. “Doesn't...doesn't matter, right? Doesn't–”

  “Of course it matters,” she breathed, trying to brush the dirt off his chin, clean the blood off of it. “Of course you matter, AJ. We...” Delicate, wet drops fell from her down to his cheek. “We were going to do this together.”

  His hand tightened on her shoulder, d
ragging its way slowly over to rest on the side of her exposed neck. AJ looked into her eyes, and his breathing started to slow as he forced every word out as the end started to creep up on him. “We...still...can. If...you...” And he left his hand there, grainy, dirt-covered palm against her bare neck.

  Scout stared at him, feeling her heart beat faster. His hand was warm, and smelled faintly of gunpowder. “AJ...no...”

  He dug his dirty fingernails into her. “Please...Scout...” He looked pure fire into her eyes. “For...the cause.”

  The words hit her harder than any punch, harder than she'd just clubbed that superhero. Her breath left her, left her with only three words. “For the cause,” she said.

  There was a tingle in her neck where his hand rested, and she put hers on either side of his face. AJ's smile turned into a pained grin, and he coughed more blood up onto his chin. It was almost black, mixed with the dirt that had entombed him.

  He gasped, then spasmed in her grip.

  Fire seemed to catch at Scout's fingertips, flowing from where her skin contacted AJ's cheeks. She threw her head back, looking up through the black smoke swirling above them and to the clear circle of blue sky beyond. There were lights dancing in her vision and her body tingled all over in the most...delicious way.

  “I feel you...I feel you...” she gasped, her muscles tensing all through her body as she rocked back, barely able to stay upright through the euphoric sensation playing down her every nerve. “...AJ...”

  AJ's reply was a long, staggering groan; not entirely pain, but not bereft of joy, either. His last breaths came so quickly and yet so slowly Scout thought this moment might last forever. She was so warm, so warm...

  He jerked one last time and it was done. Scout's head swam like she'd taken a dive into the deepest pool of joy. She fell back against the fresh earth and smelled it mixing with the smoke that coated her tongue. Lights danced at the edges of her vision and she tingled in all the best ways, ways she hadn't even felt with Isaac...