by Lexie Dunne
Chelsea and Naomi disappeared around a corner.
I looked from Victor to Gary. “Um, I don’t suppose you’d be willing just to let me go?”
Victor snorted.
“Worth a shot. When she said ‘take care of the reporter,’ do you know what she happened to be talking about?”
“Not our part of the plan. Don’t care,” Victor said. He’d yet to relinquish his grip on me.
I looked down the hallway. I’d only known Naomi for a grand total of five minutes, and she’d already jinxed me and gotten me trapped in the most inexplicable bank holdup of my life to date. If I had anything to say about things, this was going to be the end of our acquaintance. I could research my answers elsewhere. But that didn’t mean I wanted her to die or anything.
“No, really,” I said. “Any idea at—”
Down the hallway, a scream cut through the air. In a blink, I’d ducked out of Victor’s grip. I sprinted down the hallway. To do what, I didn’t know, but if Naomi was hurt—
Something grabbed me from behind. My stomach pitched as I was lifted off of my feet. I swung hard with my right elbow, the way I’d been taught in the self-defense class I’d taken (it had proved worthless; when your enemies have super-strength and super-speed, you’re better off not even trying sometimes). Pain sang up my forearm as my elbow smashed hard into a solid surface, and ripe cursing filled the air. The arms banded around my middle let me go.
I staggered upon landing, but before I could make it two steps, Gary was in front of me, gun pointed at my collarbone. “What the hell are you?” he asked.
I looked down at my arms, which were shaking. Dr. Mobius had turned me into an addict for some kind of compound I’d never heard of, but he hadn’t mentioned any side effects. And I’d say being able to take down a guy twice my size was definitely a side effect.
“Honestly, dude?” I asked. “Your guess is as good as mine.”
And then I stepped forward and punched him.
I’d always been short and powerless, so I think both of us were absolutely startled when Gary hit the ground, hands over his streaming face. “Sorry!” I said, and leapt over him. I took off running, backward, wincing. That looked like a lot of blood. “Um, put some ice on it and take a couple aspirin, maybe?”
I’d been through the bank a few times during prior hostage situations, so when Naomi’s scream sounded again, I knew it had to be coming from the safe-deposit box vault. I dug into the carpet, trying to push myself faster, and somehow accidentally launched myself forward. I landed, rolled ahead, and jumped right back to my feet, yelping the whole time.
What the hell was going on?
When I reached the vault, I rounded the corner, and it was a toss-up as to who was more surprised when I tackled Chelsea. Naomi, clutching her arm, stumbled free. Chelsea and I smacked into the wall of safe-deposit boxes and backed away from each other.
“All right,” she said. “You’ve got my attention now.”
“Goody,” I said.
“Girl! Girl, look out, she’s got—”
Naomi’s shouted warning cut off when Chelsea raised her arm. I’d seen energy villains use their powers before, but usually they wore the garishly bright suits (they really loved blue and purple, for some reason), and they channeled the electricity through prongs or gloves. Chelsea was far more disgusting: a gaping hole opened in the palm of her hand. I gawked as yellow and green sparks poured out, forming a beam that hit me solidly in the chest.
Every molecule of my being seemed to light on fire. Thousands of bees swarmed over me, stinging every inch of my flesh. I dropped to my knees, my teeth gritted, as green and yellow oozed over my vision, blocking the rest of the color from the world. My heart pounded in my ears, but the pain went on, never ending.
I cried out, and Chelsea lowered her arm. Instantly, the bees disappeared, though I breathed through my teeth. Behind Chelsea, Naomi stared, her mouth gaping open.
“You should be dead,” Chelsea said. “Why aren’t you screaming?”
“What?” It took everything I had to force the word out.
“I just hit you with enough power to take down an elephant.” Chelsea stepped closer, her eyebrows drawing together. She crouched a little, but I stared at the floor, trying to gather what was left of me back. Physically, my skin looked fine. It wasn’t even pink. But inwardly, I knew that at any second, she could lift her arm, and the bee stings would return.
It made me want to shake. I clenched my jaw harder.
I was really, really tired of villains.
“Who are you?” Chelsea asked.
“Nobody special.”
“You can withstand enough voltage to kill an army. You’re somebody.” Eyes as hazel as mine narrowed fractionally as she continued to study me. “What’s your name, again?”
“Gail. What about you? You got a name?”
She sized me up slowly, then nodded once. Maybe I’d earned her respect by withstanding her special brand of bee-sting torture. “Chelsea.”
It figured she wouldn’t give me a last name.
“No handle?” Chelsea asked.
“That would require having superpowers.”
“Pity for you. It means you won’t be able to call Davenport and mop up your little mess. I’ll just have to kill you.”
“Davenport?” Naomi was still panting and in obvious pain, but she straightened at little. “Davenport Industries?”
“Quiet. The grown-ups are talking. Oh, look.” Chelsea tilted her head at me. “She’s thinking about trying to rush me again. How cu—”
I hit her like a linebacker.
I didn’t have a plan. In fact, I hadn’t had a plan since I walked into the bank, other than to talk to Naomi and see if she could get down to the bottom of the mystery of Dr. Mobius. But I had the feeling that if I could just stall, some real hero was on the way to save the day. I had to hold her off for that long. So when we landed, I tried to throw a punch like the one that had taken Gary out of commission. She dodged.
She might have been kind of slim and poised, but she had one weapon that wasn’t the bee-sting zapper: fingernails. And she had no qualms about using them.
“Ow!” I said when she clawed my face. I rolled away and glared. “Knock that off. This isn’t a catfight—if you’re going to try to kick my ass, at least be dignified about it.”
She simpered at me. “Got you off of me, didn’t it?”
“Real funny,” I said, flicking away the blood.
We both climbed warily to our feet and began to circle each other (while in the background, Naomi watched the two of us like we were both incredibly dangerous). I eyed Chelsea’s hands, knowing that if—no, when—they came back up, I was definitely in for some pain if I couldn’t dodge fast enough. Chelsea’s annoyance had clearly bumped up to fury. “What are you even doing here if you’re not a hero? It isn’t your job to stop me. What’s one idiot reporter to you?”
“Nothing, really. I just don’t like seeing people taken hostage.”
Something flickered across Chelsea’s eyes at that: some change that I couldn’t quite pinpoint or describe. It was fleeting—there, then gone. But I’d definitely seen it.
She covered by scoffing. “That’s it?”
“It’s more of a pain in the butt than you’d think.”
“I’m sure.”
“It’s—” I started to say, but something to my left seemed to explode. Drywall flew everywhere, but that wasn’t the problem. I was more worried about the fact that while I’d blinked, Chelsea’s arm had gone up, and that green hole was opening up again in her palm.
I didn’t have time to dodge, so she zapped me again.
This time, I shouted right away. The stinging hit all over, on my eyes, my scalp, in my ears and mouth. It was relentless, an eternity wi
thin another eternity within eons of nothing but agony. I curled up, as if making myself smaller could somehow minimize the pain. It didn’t. If anything, it increased it. I heard mocking laughter—that had to be Chelsea—and my own heartbeat as it thudded into overdrive.
The laughter cut off with a curse, a flash of white, a blur of black. And the pain ended just as abruptly as it had the first time.
But it was already too late. My heartbeat, already racing, didn’t slow. Instead, it propelled me away from the warmth of consciousness and into the coldness of that empty nothingness that had grown so familiar.
Right there in my old bank, facing a new foe, I fainted.
Chapter Eight
“I WAS JUST telling you—wasn’t I telling you? Didn’t I say that we were going to see another one soon? The conspiracy theorists aren’t wrong. And here she is. Heavy little thing, though, for somebody who looks like a light breeze would blow her over.”
“Your conspiracy theorists are a bunch of crackpots. They’re right once out of a dozen times.”
“Once is all I need in this case. Here, Raymond, will you take her? I need to scratch my nose.”
The world tilted, just a little, but not in a terrible way. It was almost comforting, like being wrapped in some sort of cocoon. Except that the moment I opened my eyes, I would realize I was probably somewhere horrible.
Someone, apparently the unseen Raymond, scoffed.
“Need I remind you, Raymond, that I’m heiress to fashion empires galore? I do not juggle rescued victims so that I can scratch this nose, perfect as it is.”
“Victoria Burroughs is heiress to fashion empires. You, Vicki, are a Class A. You’re strong enough to hold her with one arm and scratch your nose.”
Hold it. I knew that name.
Slowly, awareness leaked into the comfort. I was comfortable because there were arms holding me in the damsel position, very much like Blaze always had whenever he’d rescued me. Right away, I knew it wasn’t Blaze—he smelled different, for one thing.
“Anyway,” Victoria-or-Vicki said as I was apparently transferred back to her, “the theorists were right, you skeptic. Unexplained hit-and-run usually means there’s a baby hero running about, new to his or her powers, and here we have our valiant little bank robbery stopper.”
“She doesn’t look like she’s been recently hit with a car.”
“It was a minivan, actually,” I said, and I forced my eyes open. The face that greeted me belonged in the magazines—literally.
Apparently the name “Victoria Burroughs” sounded familiar because it belonged to Victoria Burroughs. The supermodel who had been seen in the tabloids holding hands with my ex-boyfriend and now the same woman who was carrying me in her arms like I weighed little more than a basket of laundry. She stared back, not accusing but definitely curious. Somehow, she was even more stunning in person than she was in the heavily Photoshopped ads behind the makeup counter at my local pharmacy.
“Uh,” I said. “I’m confused.”
“Oh, good, you’re alive.” Victoria Burroughs bent over and set me on the ground.
My head hurt, my body felt like I’d run a marathon without any water, and hunger was an acute ache in my midsection. Victoria remained crouched next to me, but Raymond stayed standing. Pewter-colored curls extended around his head like a halo, and he wore thick, rectangular-framed glasses. He had his arms crossed over his chest.
“Where am I?” I asked. We were in some kind of hallway though I had no idea how I’d gotten there. It was brightly lit and lacking in any decoration that might tell me where I was. Everything about it seemed rather clinical, but it didn’t feel like a hospital. No smell of antiseptic, I realized after a second.
She tilted her head at me, considering something. “What’s the last thing you remember?”
“I was in a fight?” I said. Everything inside my head felt like a blur. She hadn’t answered my question. “I think it was in a bank?”
“Yeah, you seem to have discovered a new villain. And even more than that, you survived her. She packed a punch. So—what are your powers?”
I squinted at her. “Aren’t you a model? And—wait, powers? What powers?”
“Modeling’s the day job.” A dimple popped up on her left cheek when she smiled. Photographers must have been obsessed with it. “At night, I’m, well, that’s complicated to explain.”
Raymond cleared his throat. “They’re expecting her in Medical, Vicki.”
“Medical?” I asked.
“Part of what we were getting to in a minute.” Vicki shot the man an annoyed look, but he only shrugged.
Something occurred to me. “Where’s Naomi?”
They shot me identical looks of puzzlement, which was really weird. “Who?” Vicki asked.
“Naomi—she was with me in the bank, Chelsea was after her. Oh, god, is she dead? I just wanted her help; I didn’t want her to die.”
“Oh, the reporter. She’s fine.” Vicki shrugged. “In the hospital, I think.”
In what universe did “in the hospital” mean fine?
“She needs to go to Medical, Vicki. We’re giving her too much information as it is.”
“She’s obviously not a villain, Raymond.” Vicki cast her eyes to the ceiling, like she was the one sane person in a world full of weirdoes.
“A villain? Me?” My voice squeaked, but part of me wanted to laugh. I was Hostage Girl. I was villain bait, not a villain myself.
Raymond ignored me. “Not our call to make,” he told Vicki.
“Buzzkill. C’mon—hey, what’s your name?”
“Gail,” I said.
“C’mon, Gail.” Vicki pulled me to my feet, and I realized that she must not recognize me. Either Jeremy hadn’t mentioned me, or the transformation from Dr. Mobius’s Super-Addicting Juice had really been more drastic than I’d suspected. But it felt entirely surreal.
Not as surreal as the fact that Victoria Burroughs was a supermodel and a superhero, though. What the hell?
“Can you walk?” Raymond asked before I could take a step.
I shrugged. Whatever Medical was, maybe they would have food. I was more than willing to walk for that. “Sure.”
“This way.” Raymond jerked his head. I followed him, and Vicki followed me, and it took me a stupidly long time to realize they were flanking me like a set of guards. Since neither Raymond nor Vicki seemed inclined to say anything else, it was a silent trek through the smooth, clean corridors. Every door had a flat white panel, a little longer and wider than my hand, at about chest height right next to it, but no signs. It was unlike any place I’d ever seen. The hair on the back of my neck began to rise. Where the hell had I ended up now?
“Ah, here we go.” Raymond stopped and touched one of the panels. Immediately, the screen lit up.
“Ray Goldstein and Vicki Burroughs,” he said to the panel. “We’ve got a bogey with us in need of evaluation.”
Words filled the screen: Identify bogey. Threat?
Raymond shifted slightly to look at me, appraisingly. Behind those boxy glasses, his eyes were centuries older than the rest of him. “Possible,” he said.
The panel beeped once in acknowledgment.
“Only possible?” I said.
Vicki snickered. “Are you a threat or not?”
I opened my mouth to inform her that my track record obviously meant that Gail Godwin was a threat to precisely nobody, but I had a sharp vision of Gary’s shock after I’d broken his nose. And the door opened.
It slid open, silently, like a door in any science-fiction movie. Standing there, filling the space, was one of the most gorgeous humans I’d ever seen. He was tall, and fantastically built if the body beneath the white polo shirt and blue slacks had anything to say about it. His hair was blond, a little shaggy, and his eyes were
a gorgeous shade of blue.
Thankfully, I was able to pick up my chin before my tongue rolled out of my mouth.
“Ray, Vicki,” the god in the doorway said, smiling and bumping his sex appeal through the roof. “Good to see a couple of Class A’s in Medical. We rarely see your type down around here.”
“Can’t imagine why.” Vicki stepped into my peripheral vision to purr at the god. “We bought you a present, Cooper.”
Cooper smiled and stuck one hand out at me, ignoring my melting heart (or just not hearing it). “Lemuel Cooper.”
“Gail. I have to ask: Lemuel?” I asked.
He twitched one behemoth of a shoulder. “My parents are old-fashioned. My sisters are Nancy and Nadine, if that makes you feel any better. Folks generally just call me Cooper.”
Personally, I thought he got the shortest end of the stick of the three of them, but it felt nicer not to say so. Also, I wasn’t sure rational speech was possible in front of him and that stunning smile. Give it time. Five years or so sounded about right.
“So you’re my possible threat?” Those ice blue eyes swept me up and down, like Raymond’s had just a minute before. Unlike Raymond’s assessing glance, Cooper’s check had my heart thudding. “Don’t look like much of a threat. No offense. Little.”
“Yeah, I get that a lot.” I sighed.
“She took out two thugs and took an energy blast straight on,” Vicki said, and I jolted as she propped an elbow on my shoulder. The smile she gave Cooper was pure flirtation, and I almost hated her for it. “We don’t know the villain, and she got away before I could grab her—”
Wait, what?
“—but as far as I can tell, it was at least Class B rated energy.”
“Class what?” I asked.
Vicki frowned. “Oh, right, I guess you don’t know about the class system yet. A Class B—”
“Can be explained after you’ve been checked out,” Cooper said, interrupting her while Ray Goldstein just looked tired. Cooper focused on me. “Two guards and a full hit? And you’re standing to tell the tale?”
