by Mike Chen
Should she move now? Use her speed to take him out, drag him to the San Delgado Police Department? Maybe she could do it without anyone noticing, without the police arresting her for being a vigilante.
But why hadn’t he stunned her yet? What was he waiting for?
This time, the room went completely black for a good ten seconds. Zoe checked her feet and clenched fists to check it wasn’t some Mind Robber trick; in her peripheral vision, a burst of bright blue blinded her right before the lights returned. She blinked hard, and the Mind Robber was still right there, the tension between them so thick that it practically smelled like burning.
“We don’t have to do this,” Jamie finally said after several more seconds of staring. His hands were still raised.
“I should take you in right now.” Zoe began to move but stopped when Jamie’s hands tensed up.
Of course. He should be afraid of her.
“Please don’t. I don’t want to do anything to you. I don’t want to hurt anyone.”
“That’s nice of you to say. You hurt someone today. She’s in the hospital because of you. What’s stopping you—”
“I know that.” Jamie’s expression broke in a way that Zoe wasn’t expecting. “I know that. I don’t want to hurt people.”
A different kind of silence came between them. They remained still, but the fierce tension broke. Zoe watched as Jamie exhaled, his eyes falling, and though his hands were still up, his posture slumped. With that, her own muscles relaxed by a mere fraction. Something changed.
“You steal their money. That hurts people.”
“From big corporate banks. They’re covered by the FDIC. Come on,” he said, arms finally dropping the Mind Robber pose to wave in exaggeration, “it’s simple, like, law stuff. No one gets hurt from that.”
A scream came from the second floor. Zoe held her ground. Jamie didn’t react, either.
Maybe because he was the one who caused it.
Zoe inched forward, arms back in ready position.
“Whoa, whoa. Come on,” he said. “Don’t make me do something I don’t wanna do.” He took a step back, matching her pose.
“What’s going on upstairs?”
“What?” He looked up at the popcorn-textured ceiling. “I don’t know! Isn’t that the Y’s lounge area?”
Another scream. More yelling. And then the thump of footsteps. All from her enhanced hearing, something that others failed to detect.
“What did you do?”
“I didn’t do anything!” Jamie bit down on his lip and glanced at the meeting room. Zoe’s eyes traced his, and though her angle was off, a few heat signatures in the other room had looked their way. Their standoff was drawing attention.
She better do this quick if she needed to keep her anonymity.
“Okay, seriously. I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said. “Let’s just calm down and talk this through, I’m honestly rethinking a lot of things right now and—”
A voice broke into their conflict, coming in from the other room and down the short hallway. “Fire!” he yelled. “Fire on the second floor!”
The burning smell. It hadn’t been her imagination.
The lights flickered again, this time a quick strobe that seemed to put things in slow motion. Bright flashes of blue burst in and out all through her peripheral vision. When things stabilized, the odor got stronger—but this time, it came with a trail of smoke from the kitchen’s electrical sockets.
Jamie dropped his arms.
If this was some sort of diabolical scheme, he wouldn’t be showing so much concern right now.
Smoke detectors rang through the space. From above, a small mist came down on them, little bursts of water that choked to come out. Nothing that could put out a match, let alone a fire. Voices formed into a huddle, and Zoe tried to force the overwhelming volume down to something reasonable. A look past the short hall connecting the break room with the main space showed Ian ushering people out. She tried to focus, isolating voices past the panic and coughing to hear what was happening all around.
“This shitty place. I knew it was a death trap.”
“That old couch, it’s on fire!”
“The front entrance is blocked!”
“Did anyone call 911?”
She dashed into the meeting space, where people clustered at the room’s entrance. “Let me through, let me through,” she said at full volume, instincts telling her to throw herself into the chaos. “What’s going on?”
Ian came back, arms waving above his head. “It’s no good. Six people got out before the entrance got blocked. A beam fell and caught fire. This place has to be decades behind code.”
Zoe whirled around, only to find Jamie right behind her, eyes closed but face turned upward. “Eight people down here,” he yelled over the commotion. “There’s no one left upstairs.”
“How do you know?”
“I don’t sense anyone,” he said, opening his eyes. “Do you see any thermal...thingies?”
Ian looked at both of them and blinked.
Another look upstairs showed that Jamie was right, and she didn’t see heat signatures floating around up there, though a few barely visible ones stood on the other side of this hallway. So some people definitely made it out. Smoke began to plume in from the staircase off to the side, rolling in and spreading across the top of the room. One man sprinted to the break room before coming back. “Isn’t there a goddamn emergency exit here?” Behind him, another man yelled incoherently, and next to him, a woman started to scream back at him.
A tap came down on Zoe’s shoulder, and she turned. But once she realized it was Jamie, she pushed him away, restraining enough so he didn’t get sent flying across the room. “I’m trying to help,” he yelled over the alarms and voices. Above them, the sprinkler mist sputtered before slowing to a drip.
“I don’t need your help.”
“Everyone calm down. We can find a way out,” Ian said. “There’s a beam in the way. Maybe we can find a way to push it out.”
“Use your strength,” Jamie yelled. Zoe threw him a menacing glare, but she knew he was right.
The idea of getting burned didn’t seem appealing, but dying was certainly worse. “Let me through,” she said, pushing through people before getting to the cramped hallway.
In the way sat a fractured beam, the splinter in the middle of it forming a V. Smoke and heat funneled in from a hole in the ceiling where the beam had collapsed, and beyond it, the small entry of the YMCA had functioning sprinklers on only half the lobby.
But—the Mind Robber was here. What if this was all a trick to trap her, eliminate her? He could be making her use her strength to free them, then stun her until the fire burned her alive.
At this point, what choice did she have except to trust him?
* * *
Jamie knew how to brain-stun people. But could he just get them to shut up and calm down?
It sure would have helped. Half the remaining people seemed like they went into logic overdrive, searching every corner for a magical way out. The other half coped by yelling, though the alarm sirens drowned them out. The yelling could have been at each other, at the city departments who let this building get so dilapidated, the manager for putting in highly flammable old furniture.
Zoe dashed back in and motioned Jamie to come forward. “I’m going to move that beam. It’s on fire but I’ll heal. You try anything and I’ll throw it on you.”
Jamie put his hands up. He knew they’d just about had a battle of extraordinary abilities, but really, this wasn’t the time. How else could he make that clear? “Okay. Can I help?”
“No. Stay away from me. Far away. I don’t trust you.”
“We’re in a burning building. I don’t want to—” He shook his head, deciding not to go there. “Okay. Okay fine. We’ll
wait here. I’ll try to keep people calm.”
Zoe turned and opened the door, then hesitated. She looked at the crowd, including the panicking people and Ian trying to talk them down, then at Jamie. “Actually, one thing. Keep them in here. So they don’t see me doing...” Her hands waved in a short gesture. “Doing my thing.”
“Go. I got it.”
Zoe disappeared beyond the door. One man tried to follow her, but Jamie grabbed him. “What are you doing?” he said, arms pushing beyond Jamie.
“You gotta trust her. She’s going to get us out.”
“How? How is one person going to get us out? What are we doing sitting in here?”
“She’s not just one person.”
The man began yelling at full volume, and though he stood shorter than Jamie, his presence became more threatening. “What the hell does that mean? Get out of my—”
His voice halted and his eyes looked blankly ahead. It was the lightest of brain-stuns, though not the best place for it. However, if Zoe could fly, she could surely carry one stunned man out of a burning building.
A scream erupted down the hall, loud enough to break past the noise of flames and alarms, followed by words clearly from Zoe: “Ow! God fucking damn it!” One look behind him showed Jamie that Ian and the others must have heard it; they all stared at him, wide-eyed, and perhaps Ian just realized that Zoe wasn’t there. He stood and began approaching when Zoe burst through the door.
“It’s clear. But you have to go now.”
Ian nodded, then began ushering people out. There they went, three, four, five people, and no one seemed to notice the one brain-stunned man, probably because the chaos matched the oncoming smoke. Zoe squinted, looking distant—maybe thermally tracking them—and then turned to Jamie. “They’re out.”
Three people remained: Ian, the brain-stunned man, and then another man who had collapsed to his knees, face covered by his hands.
“He’s panicking,” Ian said, a calm group-leader tone still in his voice despite the chaos.
There was one way to get him to settle down.
“Go,” Jamie said, “we can handle this.” Zoe shot him a look, one eyebrow raised, but there wasn’t time to discuss. “Go, now. Trust us.”
“Alright,” he said. He opened the door, yelping when he touched the doorknob. The bright orange of licking flames radiated into the space before he sprinted out, coat over the top of his head.
“He’s safe,” Zoe said. “I think. Hard to see heat signatures with all the flames. But pretty sure. What’s your plan?”
“You carry him to safety.” He pointed at the currently stunned man. “While you do that, I’ll stun that guy over there. Then we run out together.”
“Did you steal that guy’s memories?”
“What? No, of course not. I stunned him. He was trying to chase you. I was protecting your secret.”
Despite the thickening smoke and oppressive heat, Zoe shifted in her stance. Sweaty, dirty and caked in soot, somehow she looked more vibrant than the woman who shared earlier today.
“Thanks,” she said. “I appreciate it.” She tossed the man over her shoulder with frightening ease, as simple as when Jamie picked up Normal, and then she sprinted out at full speed, like a coiled-and-ready horse bursting out of the gate. By the time Jamie stunned the panicking man, Zoe had returned.
“Holy shit, you’re fast.”
“See? I would have caught you today if I wasn’t hungover.”
“Well, lucky for all these people, then. Let’s finish this.” He gestured to the stunned man, whom Zoe picked up. Jamie pulled his sleeve down over his palm and gripped the doorknob to toss the door open, only to reveal that another beam had collapsed. Rather than a hallway, a large wooden X blocked their way, and it was on fire.
7
ZOE BLAMED ALL OF this on daytime drinking. None of this would have happened if she’d avoided doing that.
“You know how you said we don’t have much time?” Jamie turned to Zoe, his expression matching his aura. Weary, defeated, but mildly amused. “We’re out of time. It’s just fire. From top to bottom.”
The man on her shoulder stirred, and she adjusted him enough to maintain her balance as she kicked the door. It tore off its hinges and flew down the hallway, colliding into the beams. Yet the wall of fire still blocked their path, just like what the Satanic magician did to his terrified audience in that one movie she saw a few weeks ago. But the hero in that, a wiry man with a curly brown mullet and an even thicker mustache, found a way out—not through the flames, but via a crack in the wall made bigger by a conveniently placed axe.
As she scanned for any way around, pain seared her palms, a reminder of the debris she’d just cleared minutes earlier. Bruises healed quickly, but burn scars were something new to deal with.
“Well,” Jamie said. “You wanted to catch me. This was one way to do it.”
“Hold on.” Zoe searched the room, eyes darting quickly. Think, think, think, she told herself. If mullet-mustache guy in The Magical Death Show could find a way out, so could she. They were trapped, the path up the stairs blocked and the four walls around them solid. No windows, no emergency exit, just beams and concrete.
Concrete. Of course. The back wall.
Concrete wouldn’t burn. But it could be knocked down. She could be mullet-mustache guy and the axe all in one.
Zoe set the man down on the floor. “Stay with him. I don’t know how long this is going to take.”
“How long what’s gonna—”
Zoe didn’t let him finish. She sprinted full speed and launched herself at the back wall. Her shoulder slammed into it, creating an oval dent and crack lines spidering farther out.
From behind, she heard Jamie say, “Holy shit.”
Pain radiated from her shoulder, but she shook it off. One look around and she knew none of that mattered right now. She took a good dozen or so step backs, then rammed the wall again, then repeated it two more times until the divot became a deeper hole, the cracks giving away to falling chunks. She turned on her hip and started kicking the largest crack, dust flying in her face, mixing with the thickening smoke. “Come on,” she yelled, throwing her foot over and over, then switching over to punches that tore apart her knuckles. Another punch and another punch and finally another, and suddenly her hand exploded through the other side of the wall, fingers touching the cool night air.
Almost there.
Zoe kicked at the perimeter around the hole, loosening and clearing as much debris as possible. Then she ran back from the wall, turned and launched into a full-speed sprint toward the damaged wall. A few feet before impact, Zoe angled her shoulder forward and leaped off her feet. She felt her body’s impact with the concrete: first her shoulder, then her face, then her ribs and arms.
When she blinked, she was face-first on the ground, dust and grime covering her. More importantly, cool air and the sounds of sirens. From behind, a voice screamed out. “Zoe! I need your help!”
Jamie. And the stunned man.
Bloody handprints planted on the ground, and as Zoe pushed herself up, she coughed and spit, her body rejecting soot and debris. “Zoe! Come on!”
She craned to look back at the person-sized hole in the concrete, jagged rebar edges and crumbled pieces scattered around. Inside, Jamie dragged the stunned man, arms around his chest and pulling with each step.
Zoe stood up and stumbled forward, leg catching on the bottom of the punctured hole in the building wall. She hopped over debris, then waved Jamie away. Though she was sore—in some places, screaming with pain—carrying him out while injured was still easier than the whole “smashing through a wall” thing she somehow decided was a good idea. They cleared the broken threshold, and Zoe set the man down.
Jamie immediately collapsed next to him, coughing. “Well,” he said in between coughs and spasms, “nice
to meet you, Zoe.”
Zoe pushed her fingers through her hair and knelt down beside the two men. She tried to laugh, but each breath felt heavy and thick.
“Hey.” Jamie pulled himself up to his knees with a groan. “Promise I’m not trying to be a villain here, okay? But hear me out.”
Fatigue and pain made it easy for Zoe to drop her natural skepticism. “What’s that?”
“I should erase his memory.” He tapped the stunned man on the shoulder. “Even though he was having a breakdown, he might remember something about you or me.”
“Will it...will it hurt him?”
“No, he’ll just have a gap. I’ll leave it at the point when there are a few people in the meeting and they know there’s a fire and that’s it. Ian will probably tell him later he was having a panic attack. Between that and the smoke and the stress, he probably won’t even notice.” They met eyes, and one quick look of approval later led to Jamie doing some weird finger waving. The man didn’t flinch, didn’t convulse, didn’t give any sort of reaction. He simply sat, and then a few moments later, Jamie looked back over and said, “That’s it. It’s done. Let’s bring him up front so the EMTs can take care of him.” Zoe scooped him up rescue-style with her arms but Jamie quickly waved it off. “No, we gotta make it look good. You’re not the Throwing Star, remember?”
They shared a laugh, something that would have felt impossible an hour ago, then propped up the man between them, his arms each over a shoulder. A sharp observer would have noticed that she supported all of his weight as Jamie merely framed his other side, and that the man’s feet floated a few inches above the ground. She carried the load at full speed until they emerged from the alley to flashing red lights and the loud water pumps of fire engines. “Hey!” Jamie yelled. “This man needs help!”
Ian saw them and flagged more EMTs to run their way.
“He’s in shock,” Jamie said through huffs. “He had a panic attack. And the smoke, or stress or whatever. He seems unresponsive right now, but I think he needs just a few minutes.”
