by Vivi Andrews
She pursed her tempt-a-saint mouth, doubt tracking across her eyes. “What’s in it for you?”
He didn’t try to hide his motivations. She would never believe he gave a shit about the greater good anyway. “I want Mirabelle out of there. I’ll help you catch everyone she’s working with, the entire crime ring, especially the mastermind.” And you can kick his ass into next week with my blessing. “All I need is your word that Mirabelle goes free. She’s all that matters to me.”
“She’s a criminal.”
“She’s a kid.” He ran a hand through his hair, agitated. “What if I swore to you that she would never commit another crime in your city? Help me get her away from that guy and we’ll be gone. Just like you wanted. You’ll never see or hear from us again. On my word.”
“The word of a villain.” But the words weren’t mocking. She was considering it.
Come on, DynaGirl. Take a chance. “Just…help me, Darla. I need you.”
The words sounded awkward coming out of his mouth. He’d never asked anyone for help before. He was discovering he didn’t like it. Maybe next time he’d try chopping off his own arm for fun instead.
Darla stood immobile, one hand still hidden by the door, only her eyes moving, searching him as if she could see his trustworthiness—or lack thereof—written on his flesh.
She could tase him and cart him off to jail. She could slam the door in his face. She wouldn’t need to say no, her actions would scream it. Lucien realized he was holding his breath and forced himself to let it out.
He wouldn’t beg. He’d break into the Crypt again before he begged. Mirabelle’s face as he’d last seen it rose up in his mind. Determined. Fierce. So damn young.
“Please, Darla.”
The word seemed to jolt her out of her trance. She swung the door open wider and stepped aside, resting a modified tranquilizer gun against her thigh. “Maybe you should come in.”
There was a distinct surrealism to seeing Lucien Wroth sitting across her white French country kitchen table. He would’ve looked out of place even if the dainty elegance of her furnishings hadn’t made him look like a giant. Darla studied his fierce glower. Or an ogre.
He shifted nervously, the spindly chair creaking under his weight, and traced the pattern on the soda can she’d handed him after he’d wrinkled his nose that she didn’t have any beer in the house. She’d had to bite her tongue on a reprimand that noon was too early to drink anyway. She wasn’t his mother. She was his partner.
Sort of.
It sounded so foreign, she ran the words through her head again, trying to make them fit into her worldview, but they were hopelessly the wrong shape to find a place in any of the slots she tried.
Lucien Wroth is my partner. Impossible.
She’d never worked with anyone before. Not that she was against having a partner. She’d seen how well it had worked out for her parents and for Tandy’s parents and dozens of other superhero power couples around the world. But Lucien wasn’t her husband. She wasn’t even sure she liked him, let alone trusted him with her life to the extent necessary in a super partnership. Sure, they had chemistry. Undeniable, incendiary, making-her-squirm-in-her-chair-just-because-he-was-in-the-same-room chemistry, but that didn’t mean she trusted him. Without trust she was worse off than if she worked alone.
But he was desperate and she’d been so stupidly glad to see him, she would have taken the flimsiest excuse to invite him to stay. It didn’t hurt that he needed her either. She’d always been a sucker for a damsel in distress—even of the strapping, black-leather, can-punch-through-a-cement-wall variety.
Darla cleared her throat, since Lucien obviously didn’t intend to end his brooding silence any time soon. “Why don’t you tell me what you know so far?”
She actually heard his jaw pop as he unclenched it. A little tense there, big guy?
“I know Mirabelle’s part in things, but I was locked on her, so I probably missed some pieces of the big picture.” He set down the soda with care, staring at his hands as he flexed and clenched them. Darla recognized the gesture from her own attempts to keep from demolishing her surroundings with a frustrated flick of superstrength.
“The table is polymer-reinforced if you need to hit something.”
Lucien’s head snapped up at that. “Must’ve cost a fucking mint.” And what a waste of the precious polymer, she heard beneath the words.
Darla’s chin tipped up a notch, pride making her next words sound even more pompous. “It was a gift. From Trident Labs. I helped them test the polymer, and they were grateful.”
Lucien snorted. “They would be. If you only got a table, you got screwed.”
Since the release of a series of super-related products—the most publicized and profitable being the anti-superstrength polymer—Trident Labs had become a billion-dollar company overnight. Darla decided not to mention her thank-you gift had also included enough stock to let her retire to Monte Carlo whenever the mood struck her.
Lucien apparently decided he didn’t need to test the table’s polymer with his fists. Instead he folded his hands and spoke, his voice low and intense. “To the best of my knowledge, it started a few months ago. Mirabelle was a sophomore in college this year. She seemed to have settled in nicely. Good grades. Good friends. Nothing to worry about, so I thought it was a safe time to take the work trip to Singapore I’d been planning.” At her raised brow, he gave a defensive shrug. “Even spawns have day jobs, Darla. I’m an engineer.”
Darla nearly choked on her soda. She barely stopped herself from blurting, Do all engineers wear black leather and I’m-even-better-than-I-look smirks?
“One of my colleagues in Singapore has been working on a new propulsion system. I wanted to take part in the project, but he wasn’t interested in collaborating unless I was willing to commit to being essentially locked up inside his lab for a year. His security made Area Nine look cozy.” His gaze flicked back to hers. “If you worked with Trident at all, you know how paranoid these guys can be about protecting their patents.”
“So you were totally out of touch. And…” she prompted.
He shook his head, raking a hand through his hair. “I wasn’t totally cut off. I got emails from Mirabelle, and at first everything seemed normal. Then…” Lucien rubbed both hands down his face. “I don’t know what it was, but she just started sounding different. A name I’d never heard before began popping up in her emails. Kevin. Mirabelle hadn’t decided on her major yet—she’s never been very decisive—but all of a sudden she was talking about purpose and callings and what she was meant to do with her life. I would’ve been excited, but there was something off about it. The words didn’t sound like they were coming from her. It was like she was one of those cult members who can only parrot what their prophet tells them. Kevin said became a constant refrain.”
Darla wished he would look up so she could see the fierce glint in his darker-than-sin eyes again, but Lucien stared down at his clenched hands. What would it be like to know those hands would always protect you? Mirabelle hadn’t known what a great deal she had.
“I knew something was wrong, but I…shit, I loved the project I was working on. We were really making strides. So I told myself it was all in my head. Until the emails stopped coming.”
Lucien’s knuckles were white with strain. Darla instinctively reached to put her hand over his, but tucked her hands back into her lap before he could see the comforting gesture. He wasn’t likely to appreciate her touch, considering that same hand had tried to pummel him to pieces only the day before. She shouldn’t have to keep reminding her body they were adversaries, but her instincts were undecided on the subject of Lucien Wroth.
“When I realized I hadn’t received an email in three weeks, I flew home the next day, but she’d disappeared. She wasn’t on campus. She’d dropped out of school and moved out of the dorms. I wouldn’t even have known where to start looking, but she left a note for me in my loft.” He snorted. “It was practicall
y a manifesto. Talking about the cause and finally claiming justice. She said she knew this was the reason she’d been born with the ability to turn invisible.
“I spent weeks scouring old papers and watching every news story, looking for patterns, trying to find evidence of what she’d done so I could track her down and talk some sense into her. I never expected her to get caught. Hell, I didn’t think anyone could catch her. I was so sure she was in hiding, I almost missed the article. A few inches on page six about Demon Wroth’s daughter being connected to a break-in at a bank. A break-in where the paper reported nothing had been taken. I couldn’t find any record of an arrest, but they must’ve caught her because she wasn’t listed anywhere as a most wanted. With her abilities and our history, I knew she had to be held at Area Nine.” He shrugged, the jerky shift of his muscular shoulders far from casual. “You know the rest. She wouldn’t tell me what she took from the bank, and she wouldn’t tell me what this Kevin prick is up to, but it has to be something big or your buddies at city hall wouldn’t be making such an attempt to cover it up.”
“Not everything is a conspiracy, Wroth. Maybe she didn’t get what she went in for.”
“She got it.” His tone brooked no arguments. “I need you to find out what it was.”
“I don’t see how—”
“Call your friend the mayor.”
“I know how to get the information. I just don’t see how that’s going to help us figure out what this Kevin guy wants. Shouldn’t we be looking for his hideout? Evaluating potential targets?”
“You wanna do it your hero way, that’s fine. But we’re doing my way too. Call the mayor.”
“I didn’t agree to help you yet, Wroth. If we’re going to have a partnership, it’s going to have to be more than you issuing orders and just expecting me to fall in line.” She was not a wilting violet, and the sooner he got that through his head, the better.
Lucien studied her, his eyes unreadable. A muscle in his cheek jumped. “Please,” he ground out.
Darla pursed her lips, tempted to push him again until he acknowledged their equality, but she reached for her phone, because honestly it was a good idea. “Fine. But we’re going to have to work out a chain of command if we’re going to be collaborating.”
She thought he muttered something about liking the current chain of command just fine, but she pointedly ignored him, pulling up the mayor’s number on her phone.
Five minutes later, she disconnected the call with a frown.
“The mayor just lied to me.” Shock sent ripples through her brain, and she couldn’t keep it out of her voice. What the hell have we stumbled onto?
The mayor had told her there was no break-in. He’d told her Demon Wroth didn’t have a daughter. He’d told her to take a few days to recover after her recent encounters with DemonSpawn, that the city could do without her for now. The entire time his voice had been too smooth, too forceful, with occasional wobbles and wavers the average ear wouldn’t catch. Never lie to a girl with supersenses, Mayor.
It wasn’t the first lie. What if the statement of condolence to the widows of Lucien’s victims hadn’t been a mistake? Could city hall actually be framing Lucien Wroth? Why?
Lucien opened his mouth, but she held up her hand like a stop sign, the gears in her head spinning frantically, and scrolled through her contacts until she hit pay dirt. Kim Carruthers, intrepid reporter.
Darla would owe her the exclusive of a lifetime, but if anyone knew about the latest conspiracy theory, it would be Kim. The woman was a bloodhound—and her very public on-again-off-again relationship with Captain Justice gave her a soft spot for supers.
“Carruthers,” Kim answered brightly on the fifth ring.
“Kim, it’s Darla. I need a favor. Strictly off the record.”
There was the slightest hesitation. “I can’t kill the DemonSpawn decimation stories, Darla. I don’t have that kind of pull.”
Darla cringed. Would that story never die? Admittedly it had only been a couple days, but still. “It isn’t that. I need the dirt that isn’t fit to print on a break-in a few weeks back.”
“The bank vault?” Kim asked, an odd edge to her voice.
Darla straightened in her chair, coming to attention. “That’s the one. What’ve you heard?”
“Darla, honey…”
“I’ll owe you.”
“I’ll collect,” Kim warned.
“I would expect nothing less. What’ve you got?”
The noise of the newsroom faded in the background, as if Kim were sneaking away to somewhere more private. “Nothing firm. The official report is nothing was taken, but the one print they found was rushed through the system and Demon Wroth’s daughter just up and vanished when they linked it to her.”
“I know that already.”
“Do you?” Kim asked with interest. “Well. In that case, maybe you know this too. They say nothing was taken, but Trident Labs has a safety-deposit box in that vault, and several calls were made between the bank and Trident’s execs on the morning after the break-in. The old man himself was even spotted entering and exiting the bank that morning.”
“Edward Calder? He went in person?”
Across the table, Lucien jerked to attention. “Trident’s involved? Shit.”
“Look,” Kim continued, “the rest is just speculation, but if I was Edward Calder and I had accidentally created a weapon that was almost impossible to use and completely impossible to destroy, I might just put it in a safety-deposit box to keep it from falling into the wrong hands.”
Darla’s breath whooshed out of her. “Apocalyptum? You think that’s what was stolen?”
Lucien paled.
“I can’t be sure,” Kim said hurriedly, her voice lowering as someone called out her name and noise rose in the background again. “It’s just a crazy theory. But if I were a super looking into crazy theories, I would definitely also pay attention to the break-in at Nightwing Manufacturing last night. And I’d probably take a good long look at page three today.” Darla heard another voice ask Kim who she was talking to, and the reporter gave a sassy retort before whispering into the phone. “I’ve gotta run, D. Good luck. I want some good dirt for my exclusive.”
When her phone beeped to signal the end of the call, Darla met Lucien’s eyes.
“Apocalyptum.” The word was a horrified exhalation. “Fuck.”
Chapter Ten
The End of the World As We Know It
“It might not be that,” Darla said, before Lucien could run with the End-of-the-World idea, desperation rushing the words. “It’s just a theory.”
“Even as a theory, it’s pretty damn scary.”
She couldn’t argue with that.
Apocalyptum, also known as the Doomsday Rock, was a byproduct Trident had tripped across in their experiments to create tools for superheroes to use in self-defense. Harder than diamonds, the highly volatile substance could only be triggered by someone with superstrength, but once it was activated, the blast made a nuclear explosion look like a cherry bomb.
Those with superstrength also inherited a certain imperviability to pain and damage—otherwise every time they punched through a wall would be agony. Making a hit was also your body taking a hit, so supers with strength were built tougher and sturdier than others. The single experiment done to trigger just a few grains of Apocalyptum had nearly killed Captain Justice. A full bomb made out of the stuff could take out a city—and whatever super triggered it.
“The call last night was for a break-in at Nightwing Manufacturing. Kim thinks it might be related.”
He frowned in concentration. “Do you know what was taken?”
Darla shook her head. “They hadn’t done an inventory yet when I was there, but they build mostly tech stuff, I think. Laptops, tablets, that kind of thing.” Lucien rubbed a hand over his permanent five-o’clock shadow, his expression slowly darkening as his mind worked furiously. “Wroth? Does that mean something to you?”
&nbs
p; “Someone who knew what to grab could put together a bomb that looked like an innocent computer. If they knew what they were doing.”
“But they’d still need someone with Strength to trigger it, wouldn’t they? If it was Apocalyptum?”
Lucien nodded, but she could see she barely had half of his attention as he puzzled over the possible uses and applications. “Did your friend have anything else?”
“Page three.” Darla slipped into the living room to grab her unread paper. She returned to the kitchen to find him still lost in thought. She resumed her seat, flipping the paper open. The headline at the top of a small article at the bottom of page three screamed Anonymous Threats Against Super Summit. DemonSpawn Suspected.
Darla cursed softly. Lucien glanced up, and she turned the page to face him. He didn’t even flinch at being accused of anonymous threats.
“That’s it.” He tapped the article with apparent satisfaction. “Nearly a hundred supers gathered in one place and Kevin with the one substance that has the ability to destroy them all. Shit, that only gives us three days to plan.”
Ignoring for a moment the fact that Lucien didn’t even appear to be bothered by being accused of all manner of villainy in the papers, Darla countered, “That can’t be the real target. It has to be a decoy or he never would’ve tipped his hand.”
“With any other target, you’d be right, but these are heroes we’re talking about. Consider the unmitigated arrogance of your kind. Anonymous threats will just bring out more heroes.”
Darla considered letting it slide, but… “My kind?”
“Goody-goody heroes who think they’re invincible.”
He said it so simply. As if it was the most obvious thing in the world. Darla fantasized about punching him in the face.
“Being heroic and standing up to evil isn’t something to mock.”
“Evil is relative. It isn’t this absolute concept you like to throw around to excuse your actions. Virtue, wickedness, we all have both sides in us. Like a spectrum.”
