He swung, his whole body stumbling forward as he moved, and Donovan sidestepped with ease. The gun lashed out, coming down like a club at the back of Stephen’s head. Stephen turned in a surprising bout of agility and seized Donovan’s wrist with both hands. Stephen’s shoulder snapped upward as he jerked down on Donovan’s arm.
A horrific crack ripped through the air followed closely by a scream that made me turn away as the gun clattered to the ground. Stephen spun, driving his elbow into the other man’s gut as Donovan’s arm fell uselessly to his side, dangling at an unnatural angle.
Donovan bit his lip, rage twisting his once beautiful face into a monstrous mask. “How dare you!” he screamed as Stephen darted forward, all lithe movement.
Stephen unleashed a flurry of blows as Donovan fell backward to the ground, covering himself with his good arm in an attempt to keep himself from getting pounded into oblivion. Stephen’s knee came forward, arcing down and smashing into Donovan’s already hurt arm. Donovan screamed, and his body arced uncontrollably as Stephen’s fist came forward. It crashed into Donovan’s face, and the distinct sound of a broken nose filled my ears.
That’s when Donovan began to laugh. It burbled up from inside him and through his split lips in little gasps of bloody spittle. “Fool,” he said. “You’ve already lost. They are on their way here right now.”
Panic crossed Stephen’s face as he leapt to his feet, turning toward me as the door Donovan had entered through slammed shut in a hiss of compressed air. Red lights began to swivel along the ceiling, casting crimson shadows along the walls.
“Abby,” Stephen said. “We have to go! Now!” He took a step toward me, one hand outstretched.
Donovan surged upward then, the point of a hypodermic needle pressed against Stephen’s throat. It happened so fast that Stephen was already lying on the ground before I’d realized what happened.
“No!” I shrieked, and without thinking, snatched up the gun. I pointed it at Donovan even as tears clouded my vision. “What have you done?”
“What do you plan on doing with that, Abby?” Donovan smirked, one eyebrow cocking upward.
“If you killed him…” I said, trailing off because finishing the statement was too painful. I couldn’t lose both my mother and Stephen to this guy. I just couldn’t…
“He’s just unconscious. Your real mother has plans for him.” Donovan shrugged, taking a step toward me.
“Don’t move,” I said, the gun shaking in my hands as I pointed it at the center of his chest. “Don’t take another step.”
“Oh?” Donovan took another step and grinned at me. Blood leaked down the corner of his mouth, and his tongue snaked out, licking it away before disappearing back into his mouth.
“Please…” I murmured, and he stopped moving for the barest of moments before taking another step toward me.
“I don’t think you have it in you, mon petite,” he said. He was only a few feet away from me now, and I could see his good hand edging upward as the hypodermic needle clattered to the floor beside Stephen.
“Please, Donovan,” I said.
“No,” he replied, and as his hand came up, I fired. The gun jerked in my hands, the sound of it so loud that my hearing dulled into a single point of screeching sound. That’s when everything went all slow motion. Donovan’s body pitched backward in a spray of blood and thicker things as his legs went out from under him.
His body hit the ground in a heap of flesh, blood gushing from the back of his head and spilling out across the floor. Most of his face was gone. I don’t know how it happened exactly, but when the gun bucked in my hand, the bullet must have taken him in the head instead of the chest.
I felt the weapon slip from my hands. It hit the ground with an angry sounding clank, and as I stared at it, the room felt like it was spinning. The only thing I could see as white scrub-clad storm troopers rushed into the room was the gun laying on the ground. It was covered in specks of blood, and as I stared at my hands, I realized they were covered in blood too.
I hit the ground a second later, my stomach emptying itself onto the white tile floor as I tried to simultaneously throw up and wipe Donovan’s blood from my hands… but that was impossible.
18
I was standing in front of my mother. It hadn’t been very long, or maybe it had been. I wasn’t really sure because time seemed really slow. Stephen was lying unconscious on the floor next to me while Gabriella’s chair hovered back and forth.
Donovan’s body had been cleared away, but there was still a red smear where his corpse had been. He had been shoved into the same hole in the floor I’d climbed out of before I had killed a man. It seemed so long ago.
“I didn’t think you had it in you, Abby,” Gabriella said for perhaps the millionth time. “But it’s good. I was worried you wouldn’t have it in you. Worried you were too timid, too innocent to make the hard choices.” Her chair spun, and she stared at me through her visor, lights bright like angry robot eyes. “It’s why I wanted you to kill Stephen before.”
“Okay,” I replied, and the word came out hollow and empty. My eyes left her face and surveyed the room. There were only three people in the room: me, my mom, and Stephen. Still, it didn’t seem like the best odds for escape since Stephen was unconscious and there were a ton of the storm troopers just outside the door.
Besides, they had taken my gun so it wasn’t like I could shoot them. Apparently, that was something I did now. I was Abby Banks, the girl who shoots people.
“Are you okay?” Gabriella asked, and for the first time ever, I heard concern tinge her voice. Her chair slid up next to me, and she reached out with one gnarled, paper-thin hand. Her fingers touched my face. The feeling reminded me of sand paper and old plastic.
“Yes,” I replied, but I wasn’t sure I was okay. I wasn’t sure I knew what okay was anymore. All I knew was there was blood all over me, and it wasn’t mine. It was from the man I’d killed. It was all over my hands and my arms and my clothes. It was sticky, red, and ominous.
“I do not believe you,” Gabriella said, taking one of my hands in hers and pulling me closer. What was with everyone touching me? Did I seem like someone who liked to be touched? I wasn’t.
“Stop touching me,” I said. My voice was so cold, so low, I scarcely believed it was my own.
She pulled like I was a snake, and for some reason, that made me feel better. Was she scared of me? Because I’d shot someone? That didn’t seem right. She had killed more people than me. Oh my god, I was measuring myself based on how many people I’d killed. What the hell was wrong with me?
I swallowed, turning away from her and moving toward the wall. I leaned my forehead against the white plaster, and its coolness spread out through me. It was strangely comforting.
“I never thought I would count myself among a group of people who had killed another person,” I murmured. Tears started to stream down my cheeks as I whirled around, fists clenched. “This is all your fault!” I snapped, pointing one trembling finger at Gabriella de la Mancha.
“My fault?” Gabriella asked. She seemed taken aback at my attitude as I stomped toward her until we were almost eye to visor.
“I would be back home not knowing I was the daughter of someone who nukes cities. What am I going to tell people now? Hi, I’m Abby Banks, and I shot a man in the face and watched him die? When you go to a parent teacher conference are you just going to lead with ‘Hey remember when Rome got nuked? That was me.’ Because we’re working on a pretty screwed up relationship right now!” I snarled. My hands white-knuckled into fists.
“Teenagers,” Gabriella said. Pink colored her cheeks, and for a moment, I wondered if I was embarrassing her. Gabriella shook her head a moment later, her chair squeaking as it lurched backward.
The chair spun and moved toward the door. When it was a couple paces outside, it turned and she raised one stick-thin hand toward me and waved. “Goodbye, Abby,” she said and looked up at a camera in the ceiling. “Prep
are her.”
“What does that even mean,” I yelled as the door hissed shut, and I was left alone in the room with an unconscious secret agent and a blood-smeared floor. I dropped down to the ground and didn’t know what to do. I wasn’t sure what Gabriella meant exactly, but it didn’t sound good, not at all. Was this it? Was this where she finally strapped me down and pulled out my organs?
“Abby…” Stephen hissed, and his voice sounded like it was being dragged over a bed of coals. “Are you okay?”
“Stephen!” I yelped and rushed over to him. He was lying on his side, chest heaving. His eyes had a half-glazed look to them that reminded me of those interviews with the losing boxer who had been punched one too many times.
“You’re okay?” he asked, the words a little less slurred and broken. “Where’s Donovan?”
“Dead,” I said, petting his head like he was some kind of dog. “He’s dead, Stephen. I shot him.”
He shut his eyes for so long that I was worried he’d slipped back into unconsciousness. When he opened them, his eyes had lost that glassy texture, and something else too.
“I’m sorry,” he said, trying to get to his feet, but instead, he just sort of fell over.
“It’s okay,” I said, trying to help him, and as I did so, he threw my hands off.
“No, it’s not.” He climbed to his feet and stumbled forward, crashing into the wall and leaning haphazardly against it. “I should have protected you from that,” he said between huge gulps of air. “I was supposed to keep you safe.”
“I am safe, Stephen,” I said, taking another step toward him.
“But you aren’t innocent anymore. That’s my fau—”
I cut him off with a slap. The sound of it echoed in the room. It stung my hand, and I wrung it out as tears filled my eyes. “How dare you?” I snapped, barely resisting the urge to hit him again.
Oh the hell with it. I hit him again, my fist connecting with his stomach. His eyes bugged out a little bit. “I stopped being innocent the moment you pulled me out of my mom’s restaurant. Now grow a pair and use your secret spy stuff to get us out of here.”
Stephen stared at me wide-eyed, before patting himself down like he was looking for something. “They took the detonator?” he asked a moment later.
“Yes, and pretty much all your equipment.”
“Well… yeah,” he said, and as he did so, I wasn’t sure he was joking. I mean, he didn’t sound like he was joking, but surely… surely he didn’t have a bomb surgically implanted inside himself to escape from underwater super-villain bases. Right?
Or wrong… apparently, because half a breath later, he was yanking off his shirt. The tight black fabric slid off him like he was pulling off a second skin. That was when I noticed the faint faint scar tracing up along the right side of his abdomen. It was so faint that I probably wouldn’t have noticed it if Stephen hadn’t run his fingers over it, trailing them down his flesh.
“Are you enjoying the show?” he asked, voice still partially strained. I glanced up at him, tearing my eyes away from his stomach as heat exploded across my cheeks, down my neck, and over my shoulders.
“Erm…” was all I managed to say as I looked away toward the corner of the room, which was suddenly very interesting. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I added a moment later… and then I started whistling. Seriously. It was the most embarrassing thing ever in spite of everything happening.
Stephen laughed. The sound of it rolled over my skin like warm chocolate, and I almost turned to look at him. But I wasn’t about to give him that kind of satisfaction. Instead, I focused on the fact that there were still armed guards standing just outside the door.
I wasn’t sure what sort of scheme Stephen had in mind as he wrapped the shirt around his nose and mouth, but I wasn’t sure it was going to bypass guards and who knows what kinds of safeguards this place had. I wasn’t dumb enough to think Gabriella de la Mancha, super-criminal extraordinaire, was leaving us trapped in a room that wasn’t all kinds of booby-trapped.
“So do you have a plan to get us out of here?” I asked. I was about to say more, but gas exploded from the vents over our head. It burned along my skin, scalding my throat and eyes as I collapsed to my knees, struggling to breathe. My nose began to run as I fell to the ground and tried to crawl forward out of the cloud.
It was everywhere, just everywhere. Every single breath I took seared my lungs, and it was all I could do to keep moving, keep trying to escape. I looked around for Stephen, but my eyes were so blurry with tears that I couldn’t see anything but giant smears of color.
19
I woke up strapped to a table, which aside from becoming a disturbing pattern, was an altogether unsettling place to awaken. Thick metal bands encircled my wrists and ankles. They were cinched down so tightly that it was making my fingers and toes go all kinds of tingly. Aside from the metal bands, there were also some well-placed brown straps holding me down.
I swallowed, and stared up at the ceiling. My wrists and ankles were rubbed raw, and my muscles were throbbing from pitting Abby Banks flesh against cold steel. It was not very effective… but I couldn’t give up, right?
It wasn’t like Stephen was going to bust in here any second and rescue me… I mean, I didn’t even know what happened to him when they gassed the room. For all I knew, he was dead in that same hole as Chloe and Donovan. The thought sobered me. Not only was Stephen probably dead, but I was on my own. That thought made me feel so empty that I was very nearly hollow. It wasn’t just that, well, I didn’t want Stephen dead, it was that despite his, and everyone else’s, sacrifices Gabriella was going to win.
No, that couldn’t happen. I couldn’t let her win. Not after everything she did. So what if I was the only one left? I was going to get myself out of this. I just didn’t know how… yet. I shut my eyes and concentrated on slowing my breathing. The opportunity would present itself if I was patient. Wasn’t that like a thing?
It felt like I’d been waiting hours when the side of the wall slid open with a squeal of pneumatics to reveal a huge window. A man in a lab coat with a stethoscope draped over his shoulder grinned at me. He was completely bald and was so old and wrinkly that I thought he might be part prune.
He licked his lips as he stared at me, one hand pressed against the glass, and I felt a shudder course down my bound body. He pulled his hand away a moment later, leaving a greasy smear on the glass as he rubbed his head. “Glad to see you’ve finally awoken,” he said, and the words seemed to slither out of his mouth in a flood of saliva. “I’ve been waiting for this moment since the day you were born.”
I was about to reply when the lights overhead exploded into view, flashing with reds and greens and indigos. I found myself mesmerized by them, my head wrenching itself away from the creepy doctor to focus on the lights as though they were the most interesting thing I had ever seen.
“You see, we always knew your mother was going to die. It was why we created you, free from meddling inconveniences like debilitating body degeneration,” he said as the lights began to flash faster and faster. “Unfortunately, the problem is that now we have you, the person in the meat suit, and you’re not exactly suited for what we have in mind. I’m not trying to say that you’re unwanted or anything… Actually, that is what I’m trying to say. So what these lights are going to do is prepare your mind to be erased. Then we can port your mother’s consciousness directly into your brain.”
I shut my eyes, but I could still feel them pulsing just on the other side of my lids. Had what he said been true? Was the reason everything was set up for my biometrics because my mother was going to take over my body? Could she even do that? It seemed a little like science fiction to me, but then again, everything was so unreal. First I had been told my mom wanted my organs, and then I’d been ‘prepared’ to inherit her kingdom, and now this? Was everything just one lie after another? If so, what was the truth?
Only… only I knew the truth. Gabriella wa
s evil, and I needed to stop her. I wasn’t sure how, but there had to be a way, right?
“Please, don’t do this…” I whispered, and my voice was hoarse and dry.
“It will be okay,” he said. He tried to say more, and well, probably succeeded at it, but I couldn’t make out any other words. It felt like my eyelids were melting. Every part of my body was so hot it felt like my skin was cooking off from the inside, like my blood was boiling in my veins.
I tried to scream, but no sound came out of my lips. The lights grew in intensity, reminding me of the time I’d had to stand up in front of my class at Folsom High and give a presentation on robotics with my friend Lisa Ann. She had done nearly the entire project, worked out all the geeky math… but she was way too shy to actually give the demonstration.
“All you have to do is press the button,” Lisa Ann said, handing me a remote the size of a binder. It was covered in knobs and wires. A small pinprick of green plastic was illuminated off to the left of the notebook.
“That?” I asked, pointing at it. “That’s barely a speck of light,” I responded, my finger hovering above it. The urge to push it just to see what the tiny mechanized tyrannosaurus rex would do was so great that I wasn’t sure I could wait.
“Yes,” Lisa said, biting her lip. “I preprogramed the dinosaur already so it should be good to go.”
I tore my eyes from the button and stared up at her. “Are you sure? I don’t want to be up on stage when the thing doesn’t work. I really don’t want to look like an idiot like last time.”
“Abby, it will be fine. This time I worked out all the bugs.” Lisa Ann looked away as she said the words so I knew she was lying like a dog. “If something goes wrong, just turn some of the knobs…” she added hastily.
Meet Abby Banks VOLUMES: 1-3 Page 15
