Wylde (Xi Force Book 3)

by S. C. Mitchell

  Casey shrugged. “Wouldn’t be the first time I’ve been shot at. Let’s go break some of those fancy new laws.”

  Chapter 25

  A newspaper fluttered across the empty street ahead billowed by a stiff breeze. Dark clouds rolled in the sky above, highlighting the glowing, transparent shield that covered the city. The garden district, usually one of the busiest areas of the city. There wasn’t a soul in sight. It felt like Megopolis already was the city of the dead.

  A chill coursed through Dove’s gut as she surveyed the landscape.

  Casey drove with Phaze in the front seat beside him. Dove sat beside Wylde in the back of Casey’s Jeep Cherokee.

  Wylde reached over and took her hand. “You all right?”

  Was she? Undertrained and new to her powers, she was trying to help save one of the largest cities in the world with only a handful of allies.

  “I think so.” There really wasn’t any other option.

  Having John worried about her would only burden him. She needed to keep it together, keep her eyes and ears open, and provide whatever help she could. Kayla and John were the seasoned pros. She’d have to watch and learn on the job.

  And this was her job now. A superhero. That’s gonna look awesome on a resume.

  Quantum, Savior of Megopolis.

  Wouldn’t look quite so awesome on a tombstone.

  Yeah, she was scared.

  “Another one, on the right,” Casey called out.

  The blue uniformed officer stopped in his tracks on the sidewalk up ahead and reached for his sidearm.

  Kayla stood up in her seat, phasing through the top of the vehicle high enough to draw the phase pistol at her hip. The pistol only phased with her when it was in its holster. She pulled and shot. The man collapsed to the ground.

  Police thugs patrolled the city. God only knew what they did if they encountered any civilians. Megopolis had its share of homeless and indigent. Houses of worship, schools, and soup kitchens throughout the city had opened their doors and begged people who had no other place to go to come in for shelter. But they’d only been given an hour.

  Casey pulled into a back alley and stopped the car. “The commissioner’s house is two blocks away. We’d best go on foot from here. I have a feeling the place will be guarded.”

  If they were right, and the force shield controls were there, they’d probably still have to fight their way to them.

  And if they were wrong?

  Dove had no idea what they would do. Did the four of them even have a chance of stopping this?

  ~ ~ ~

  Guards patrolled the grounds and stood on the upper balconies and roof of Commissioner Warren’s two-story mansion. Wylde stooped with the others behind a dumpster in the alley across the street from the big house. “Phaze and I will go first. I can absorb any bullets flying our way and they’ll go right through Phaze. I’ll take out the guards on the front lawn and at the door. Phaze, you take out those guys in the upper floors if you can.”

  He shifted his gaze to Dove. “You and Casey wait until we’ve cleared the guards out.”

  They’d both be heavily outnumbered. This was going to be tough.

  Dove’s brow furled. “My costume is bulletproof.”

  She had the fierce, determined, and oh so sexy expression on.

  He couldn’t help himself. He put his hand against the side of her face, stroking her cheek with his thumb. “Yeah, but your face isn’t, and I kind of like it the way it is.”

  It only took one stray bullet and that scared the hell out of Wylde. But he knew better than to tell her to stay back and let him handle it all.

  Casey caught his gaze, quickly side-eyed Dove, then gave him a quick nod.

  Wylde got the message. Casey would look after her. Taking a deep breath, Wylde shot him a quick smile and nod.

  When they’d parked the car, Casey had pulled a bulletproof vest, helmet, and shotgun from the back of his vehicle. He now looked every bit the veteran police officer he was. The only thing missing was his badge. Dove would be in good hands.

  Wylde leveled his gaze at Dove. “I trust you both to judge the right time, but don’t take too many chances, please. Phaze and I can handle this, and we’ll need you both down the line.”

  Poking her head over the top of the trash bin, Kayla sighed. “I guess you and me are the big kids now. I still wish we had Shade and Z-Bot in front of us to block the bullets.”

  Wylde chuckled. “Remember that time they made us stay behind and charged in, but no one shot back.”

  They’d assaulted a Ghaim compound only to find everyone inside already dead.

  “Yeah, that got weird fast.”

  The bad guys had taken themselves out.

  Crouching back down, she shook her head. “I don’t think we’re going get that lucky this time.”

  Dove suddenly stooped lower to the ground, putting her hand on the blacktopped pavement. “Maybe we don’t have to rush them directly. There’s a tunnel under here that runs toward that house.”

  Phaze patted her on the shoulder. “I’ll check it out.”

  She phased and sank, disappearing into the pavement. Moments later, an overhead door opened down the alley a ways. Kayla stood in an empty garage space motioning them to her. “This way.”

  The garage stood as newer construction against an older building a half block from the mansion. A door in the back of the garage wasn’t an entrance into the building as expected, but instead opened on a flight of stairs going down.

  As Wylde led them in, he ran his hand over the smooth, poured concrete walls and he took a deep sniff. “This is all new construction.”

  Kayla followed at his heels. “A convenient way to move items in or out without anyone being the wiser.”

  Something else lingered in the air and tickled Wylde’s nostrils. Blood, decay, death. Human corpses had been transported down this stairway. “Items or bodies.”

  “Bodies? Ewww.” Wylde could feel Kayla cringe behind him.

  A motion switch at the bottom of the steps triggered as they approached. Illumination came up on a clean, concrete lined tunnel that turned to the right about ten feet in front of them. That would place it right under the alley, aiming toward the commissioner’s house. After the turn it extended another hundred yards and ended in a doorway.

  The door was locked, but Kayla phased through and opened it from the other side. “Well, this is easier than ringing the front doorbell with all those armed guards above.”

  The room beyond, still more new construction, held a dozen six-foot chest freezers. Hairs raised on the back of Wylde’s neck. “I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”

  He opened the closest one and wasn’t surprised to find a body inside.

  Dove glanced over his shoulder. “And . . . I am officially creeped out.”

  He didn’t recognize the corpse in this freezer, but he had a feeling he’d find someone familiar in one of the others. Sure enough, in the fourth freezer, “I found the real Commissioner Warren.”

  At his side, Casey stared down at the corpse. “At least Beth and the kids got out in time.”

  Some of the others contained two bodies. And in one he found three bodies, all kids.

  Goddamn bastards.

  Across the room from the entrance stood another door, and Phaze stood right beside it. “Um, can we get out of here?”

  “Yeah.” Wylde nodded. They needed to keep moving.

  As he opened the door, the strong astringent aroma of antiseptic made him wrinkle his nose. Stainless steel tables, medical equipment, and computers lined the walls.

  He hadn’t been at the zombiebot factory Amber Harris set up down in Coal Town, but he’d seen pictures. There she’d set up eight stations, planning to murder re
sidents from that area to create zombiebots to sell as expendable combatants and sex slaves.

  This setup looked very similar, but the subterranean chamber extended out of sight and must have held close to a hundred steel tables ready for corpses to animate. Evil on a much grander scale.

  “Everything they need once they have Heather’s process.” Wylde tamped down his rising disgust. The bodies in the next room must have been stockpiled to test the procedure.

  Amber had wanted a squad of zombiebots. Red Guard had upped that anti. They wanted an army. “This can’t happen.”

  Kayla was mumbling something under her breath, obviously on her coms unit with the Xi Force base. Then she spoke up. “We have fifteen minutes. Heather refuses to let them murder innocents. They showed her pictures of the first group of hostages they have lined up to kill. They’re all kids.”

  Rage burned inside. These were the kind of people his father had allied with. The organization they’d expected him to work for.

  Dove nodded. “They have the money ready. If we can’t get that force shield down, she’s going to turn herself over. I guess I can’t blame her. I’d do the same in her shoes.”

  Grinding his teeth, Wylde moved out. “Let’s make sure she doesn’t need to do that.”

  ~ ~ ~

  They located a stairway at the other end of the chamber. Dove followed John and Kayla up, staying back with Casey as she promised. This was some scary shit.

  As a young girl, she’d often imagined herself a super-heroine, having all kinds of interesting adventures, saving the world. It would be thrilling.

  She’d thought.

  Those daydreams in no way prepared her for something like this. Those poor kids. They had to be frightened. They needed a hero.

  She pulled in deep breaths, working to center herself.

  The stairway took them up into an older part of the house, what would have been the basement of the mansion. Dust lay caked on boxes and old furniture, and floated in the wan light filtering through the small, basement windows. They’d construct that chamber below without disturbing this level of the house much. Just foot paths through the dust, and clean, new-poured concrete by the stairway down to the sub-basement.

  They followed the trail of disturbed dust to another staircase. This one led up to the main level of the house. John held up his hand to stop them.

  Voices filtered from above.

  “She’s a stubborn bitch. How are you going to coerce her to give up her procedure?” That sounded like Port.

  “Ha.” That was Dr. Wylde, John’s father. “The same way we got her here. We’ll just kill people in front of her until she gives us what we want. Some of those little kids upstairs ought to do it.”

  That Dr. Wylde had no respect for life, even young life, did not come as a shock. Still, it grated. Kids.

  Kayla’s whisper came over Dove’s coms unit clearly. “Quantum, is there anything you can detect upstairs?”

  Why hadn’t she thought of that?

  Extending her senses upward, she probed as far out and up as she could looking for heavy equipment, electrical circuits, machinery of any kind.

  At the very edge of her range something pulsed, drawing an immense amount of electrical current. Capacitors, resistors, electronic components she’d never studied, and shouldn’t know their names, came into clear view, revealing their functions.

  There was more, beyond her sensory range. She couldn’t see or understand the whole of the machine, but she could study enough to follow the flow of electrons back toward her. A heavy electrical cable, much thicker than other wiring in the house, brought power to the machine via alternating current, the voltage switching at regular intervals. A 220 volt line.

  How did she know that?

  The knowledge imparted to her by the Creator seemed limitless.

  The wire ran through heavy piping down toward her. She found that newly installed conduit running behind the staircase, running through the flooring above down into the sub-basement, probably from that new room below with all the medical equipment.

  Beneath the steel piping, plastic coated copper wire fed power to the machine upstairs. She simply needed to command the molecules of the wire to detach from the other molecules, cut the circuit, and end the flow of power.

  Click. Pop. Vroooooo . . .

  “What the . . . ?” Echoed from above.

  In her ear, Kirk’s voice crackled. “The force dome is down. Good work, guys.”

  Dr. Wylde’s voice rose in anger. “I warned them. I warned them. Leonov, kill the hostages. Kill them all.”

  “With great pleasure.” Leonov’s tone was filled with glee. She sensed him changing once again into his hulking creature form.

  Those kids. No. What had she done?

  Chapter 26

  As John and Kayla sprinted up the stairs, Dove used her power to warp one of the basement’s steel conduit pipes, breaking it and sending the end up through the floorboards to wrap around Leonov’s leg. She had to keep him from going after those kids.

  “What? Dove.” He must have sensed her presence as she’d sensed his.

  John’s shout reverberated in the chamber above. “It’s over. Drop your weapons and put your hands up.”

  A nice fantasy, and she couldn’t fault John for trying, but there was no way they’d be giving up that easily.

  Kayla, at his heels, drew her phase pistols as she climbed the stairs. “We just have to keep these creeps occupied until the rest of Xi Force gets here.”

  Dove turned to Casey. “This is going to get ugly. You should go. Get back out the way we came in.”

  He chambered a shotgun shell. “Sorry, ma’am. That’s not in my nature.”

  Brave man. “Then try and find those kids upstairs. Let us do the fighting.”

  He nodded and they bolted up the stairway side by side.

  The large chamber above appeared to have been retrofitted as some kind of command center. Computers, big screen monitors, and conference tables lined the walls of a high-ceilinged room that had to be fifty feet square. Bare studs bore witness to walls that had been taken down in haste to create the vast space.

  People sitting at workstations around the room rose at the commotion. Wide-eyed, opened mouthed, yet a few of them reached for weapons. In the center of the chamber she noted Dr. Wylde, Leonov, and that tattooed woman, Camille.

  John bounded onto one of the tables, then launched himself at his father, who was in the process of changing into his giant spider form.

  Kayla had both her phase pistols out, firing left and right, knocking people out of the fight, in some cases before they could even rise from their chairs. “Port, you son of a bitch, where are you?”

  Beside her, Casey fired off a shot toward the ceiling that sent people scattering for exits as he chambered another round.

  Dove concentrated the air around the four of them, giving them a little extra protection in case someone started shooting back. At the very least it could deflect bullets away from them.

  Then her focus locked onto Leonov, the Destructor. From across the room he growled at her as he yanked the steel pipe from his ankle, twisting it into a pretzel before casting it aside.

  She rose up into the air, analyzing every molecule within range, rearranging atoms to her need. Rage filled her with power. This was a confrontation long overdue. And this time the sonofabitch was going down.

  ~ ~ ~

  Schling. Wylde extended the claws in his gloves. There could be no holding back. The lives of innocents were at stake. He couldn’t think of this man as his father. This was a monster he had to stop at all costs.

  He caught a hanging light fixture and swung around to land on the creature’s back.

  “Johnny, you shouldn’t have interfere
d.” His father sneered as he changed into the giant, furry arachnid form. He bucked, but Wylde held on to the long spiky hairs on the creature’s back.

  “It’s over, bastard. Xi Force is on its way along with the military and police. You can’t win this. Give up. No one else has to die today.” He had little hope his words would do any good.

  “You should be here with me, at my side, not opposing me. You’re my son.” He swung one of his jointed legs.

  Wylde ducked the attack and sliced a line down the creatures back. “No, I’m just an animal.”

  Black goo oozed from the wound, but the leg caught him on the backswing and threw him to the floor.

  People scattered as he landed, crashing into a desk against the wall. Some screamed and headed for the exits, but a few leveled weapons at him and fired. The bullets hit, and sunk in, only to pop out seconds later.

  These had to be the missing Red Guard personnel from the compound. Guards and agents. Deadly assassins that knew how to handle themselves in a fight. Slowly they must have been filtering into Megopolis in preparation for this day. His father’s doing, no doubt.

  The science types and pencil-pushers were running, but the guards were armed, dangerous, and trigger-happy.

  Damn. He hoped Dove was being careful.

  Wylde growled, raising his bladed hands menacingly at the shooters.

  They turned and scattered for the exits.

  Okay, so not as dangerous as he’d thought.

  ~ ~ ~

  Dumph. Port’s signature thud exploded close behind Dove.

  Before she could spin, he fired. The bullet impacted her back. It didn’t penetrate the fabric, but it stung like hell and the impact threw her to the floor.

  She rolled.