“So which one are we taking?” Lisa asked, looking at me as though she didn’t believe I could actually fly one.
“The small one,” I replied, stepping out into the room and surveying it for guards. Only I didn’t see any guards, anywhere. That was weird, right? “Unless you have a cigar and a team of army men.”
“I’m more of a pipe girl myself,” Lisa Ann replied, moving so close to me, she was like a second skin. For a girl who had shot Stephen in cold blood, she had stuck to me remarkably close. It was sort of like she was worried something bad would happen to her if she lost sight of me for even an instant. At least, I was pretty sure that’s what it was…
It was a little weird because the idea of me being an elite protector was a bit laughable. The last time she’d seen me do anything athletic, it’d been when we were playing badminton and one of the boys had knocked the shuttlecock into my shirt while I swung the racket like a total spaz. If only I could go play them now…
“Really, nothing?” Lisa Ann asked, shaking her head. “I gave that one to you, Abby.”
“What do you mean?” I raised an eyebrow at her as we approached the silver helicopter. I’d never flown one like this before, but then again I’d never done a lot of things I seemed to be an expert on.
“I’m more of a pipe girl? You should have had a witty retort or something.” She reached past me and slid the keycard over the door lock on the helicopter. The silver skin split apart as a hole appeared in its shell.
“Sorry, guess I’m more focused on trying to get us out of here in one piece,” I replied, getting inside and sliding into the pilot’s seat. Lisa Ann took the co-pilot’s chair as my hands flew over the controls. The rotors started spinning, revving up before she even had herself buckled in. Guess I knew how this one worked too. Score!
The helicopter drifted up off the helipad, and while I expected jets or alien UFOs to chase us down, nothing did as I set course for Gabriella’s closest base.
10
The next thing I knew, bullets were zinging through the air, pelting against the silver skin of my helicopter like angry hailstones. I threw us sideways out of the line of fire to reveal one of those army choppers from earlier. Damn… if only I’d had some more explosives, or you know, the forethought to shoot a hole in the gas tank…
The guy at the gun seat took out his cigar and gestured to me with it before sticking it back in his mouth and letting loose another spray of bullets that missed us completely. He was wearing a green bandanna and camouflage pants, but was otherwise bare-chested. He had huge rippling muscles and short cropped blond hair.
“Are they being serious?” Lisa Ann asked as she stared out the window, her mouth hanging open. “That guy looks like an action hero.”
“If it’s supposed to be intimidating, it’s not working,” I snapped, pitching our helicopter around so the front of it was facing the enemy chopper. I pressed a button on the control panel, and a missile spit out the front of our helicopter like a line of dancing fire. It tore through the enemy helicopter’s fuselage before exploding. The force of it was enough to throw me backward against my seat, while the army chopper spun out of sight in a burst of flame and smoke.
“Good going, Abby!” Lisa cried just before the back of our helicopter tore free from the rest of it. Wind whipped around us, ripping everything outside into the sucking void as we spun haphazardly through the air. Flame rippled along the metal as foam sprayed from the control panel in front of me, encasing me in some kind of safety system that was going to keep me trapped inside this tumbling metal coffin.
I wiped the hardening foam from my face and grabbed the emergency parachute from the compartment above my head. I slipped the straps over my arms and cinched them to the snaps on the front of my jumpsuit before releasing my harness and throwing myself from my seat. I landed hard in Lisa’s foam covered lap, and my sudden movement sent the falling helicopter into a spin.
That was also when I realized Lisa Ann was screaming. I smacked against the roof as we tumbled through the air, my sense of balance going out the window as my fingers latched onto her harness for stability.
She looked up at me as I pulled myself down to her lap. The wound on my bicep tore open and pain shot through my arm. I shut my eyes for a second, and when they snapped back open, adrenaline surged through me. I unfastened Lisa’s harness and wrapped a tow strap around her belt.
“Ready?” I squealed, and before she could respond, I kicked off the dashboard, throwing us out of the broken helicopter. She instinctively wrapped her arms around my waist as we plummeted for the space of a breath. It was good because when I pulled the ripcord, we jerked apart with so much force, I probably would have broken something if she didn’t have me in a death grip. Still, searing agony distilled everything away.
“You need to get into a better position,” I squealed through clenched teeth as I grabbed her and hoisted her into a better position. “Otherwise, I think my arm is going to tear off.”
“You’re lucky it didn’t rip you in half,” Lisa cried, maneuvering up my body and throwing her arms through the straps on the front of the pack and buckling them in place. How had she known how to do that? I was about to ask when the cockpit of our helicopter crashed into a swimming pool far below.
Even over the sound of the impact, I could hear the blades of another helicopter behind me. I threw a glance over my shoulder to see one of the agency’s standard black helicopters keeping pace with us as we floated downward. I couldn’t see through the tinted windows, but I was pretty sure I wouldn’t like whoever was inside. Especially because they were probably smirking like jackasses.
“Awesome,” I murmured, annoyed that I’d lost my gun in the dogfight. If I still had it, maybe I could take them down from here…
“Abigail de la Mancha, prepare to surrender. If not, we’ll blow you out of the sky.” The chain gun underneath the nose of the helicopter spun for a fraction of a second. “Do you understand?”
I nodded even though I wasn’t sure exactly how to surrender while hanging from a parachute in midair. Besides, what was I going to do, throw my boot at them?
“Abby, please tell me you have a plan,” Lisa squealed into my ear, voice so high-pitched that I was sure dogs could have heard it miles away.
I was about to tell her I had no idea when a blue blast of energy slammed into the side of the black helicopter, ripping it apart in a burst of sapphire flame. The chopper sort of imploded in on itself, reminding me of Esmeralda’s anti-gravity implosion ring. I threw my hand up to shield my face from the heat of the explosion, only there was no heat, and for a moment, it was totally quiet.
“Um… Abby, what’s that?” Lisa asked, pointing to my right. I shifted so I could look. What I saw made my heart stop in my chest. A huge man in a jetpack with a giant rifle in his hand was coming toward us like a bat out of hell.
He was wearing a sky-blue suit and a motorcycle helmet with big white plates that hid his eyes from view. I expected to see fire shooting out the back of his pack, but there was nothing at all, which seemed odd. Then again, I had no idea how it worked, so for all I knew, it was shooting out gamma radiation.
When he was about three meters away, he waved with his rifle-thing, only now I could tell it wasn’t a rifle. For one, it had a huge amount of tech and dials and stuff on it, and for two, it was actually hooked to his jetpack with some kind of hose. I was pretty sure most rifles wouldn’t need that… Is that what he’d used to take down the helicopter? Did he have an anti-gravity gun? And if so, was that how he was flying? By distorting the gravity around him?
I shook away the questions as he pulled up in front of me and grabbed onto my harness with one meaty hand. He fastened some sort of device to the straps before slicing the parachute away. We fell about a foot before whatever device he was using to hold us jerked us to a stop hard enough for my teeth to slam together. Still, I was glad the fall had been short because somehow my heart had managed to hop its way into my throat.
If it’d been much farther, it might have come out my mouth.
“Thanks for saving us,” Lisa called, looking up at the guy like he was our guardian angel, but I wasn’t so sure we should be thanking him. Even beneath his suit, he seemed familiar. Was he someone from our town, and if so, that would make him a bad guy, right?
“Don’t mention it,” he replied. His voice was muffled by the air and his helmet as he pulled us off in some unknown direction, but I was sure I recognized it from somewhere. Only where?
A moment later, we were sitting on a street corner next to a large van with ‘Joe’s plumbing’ written on the side next to a picture of a guy in a hard hat winking and giving a thumb’s up.
“Get in, and I’ll take you to our safe house,” he said, opening the back door and throwing his jetpack and gun inside. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to hurt you. Hell, you can leave if you want,” he added, pulling off his helmet. “But I wouldn’t recommend it.” He turned toward us, smiling.
“Roberto!” I screamed at the top of my lungs and backpedaled so fast I stumbled and fell on my butt. “How… I thought you were dead.” The last time I’d seen him, he’d been left bleeding and broken in Gabriella’s base moments before we blew the whole place up. So how had he survived?
“I’m not dead,” he replied, staring at me with his intelligent, patient eyes. “Now get in, I’m not sure how long we have before more goons show up. He slid open the side compartment of the van and gestured for us to get inside. “And take off your clothes. I don’t think you’re being tracked, but you can’t be too careful. You’ll find spare clothes inside.
He didn’t wait for me to get up as he pulled open the driver’s side door and jumped inside. Lisa shot me a look, and without waiting for a response, leapt inside the van. I swallowed, not sure what to do. Should I stay here running by myself or go with Roberto? Then a horrible thought struck me… if he was alive, was Gabriella alive too?
“Is Gabriella alive?” I asked, getting to my feet and climbing into the van as it started up with a roar. Thanks for waiting for me…
“No,” he replied, hitting a button on his dashboard. The side door slid shut, locking me inside. A bad feeling swelled in my gut, but it was eased just a little knowing Gabriella was dead. “You saw to that, Abby.”
“Who is Gabriella?” Lisa asked, and I glanced at her. She’d already stripped out of her clothing, and it was lying on a pile on the floor. The van lurched forward, and she tumbled into the seat still trying to pull on a pair of camouflage pants that looked to be just a tad on the big side.
“Gabriella is Abby’s birth mother,” Roberto said, and his eyes bore into me from the rearview mirror. “Now get dressed and toss your clothes out the window.”
The window next to Lisa rolled down, and she tossed her stuff outside even though she was wearing only a sports bra and camo pants. It sort of made her look badass, I’ll admit. Then another thought struck me. Had she really just stripped down in the back of a van like it was nothing?
“I thought Esmeralda was your mother?” Lisa asked, staring hard at me as I slumped in the seat and began pulling off my stolen uniform.
“It’s a long story,” I replied, glancing up at the mirror to see Roberto watching me, but not in the creepy ‘I’m watching you undress’ way. Even still, it made me turn so my back was to him.
“You have time. We won’t reach the safe house for a few hours. There’s some sandwiches back there too if you get hungry.” He shrugged. “Might as well get telling her the story out of the way now.”
11
“I can’t believe everyone in our town has been abducted from their parents,” Lisa said for perhaps the fiftieth time. Honestly, it was starting to get a little annoying. Was this how I’d been? “I can’t believe my parents aren’t my parents.”
“Well, you’ll get to meet your real dad soon, Lisa,” Roberto replied, speaking for the first time in an hour. “After you were taken from Folsom, I was able to reach out to him. He’s going to help us.”
Lisa swallowed and turned so pale that she might as well have been a ghost. “My dad? You mean I’m going to meet my birth father?” Her eyes dropped to her hands as she fiddled with them in her lap. “I’m not sure how I feel about that…”
“It’s a lot to take in, I know,” I replied, reaching over and giving her a hug. “But to be fair, you’re doing better with it than I did.”
“It’s not that, Abby. It means everyone, all our friends are hostages.” She looked up at me, strangely determined. “We have to save them, to get them out.”
“I don’t see how that’s possible…” I trailed off, looking at Roberto for help, but he was staring out at the road, ignoring us. “Besides, I’m fairly certain a lot of them wouldn’t exactly be happy finding out. A lot of them probably like their lives.”
Lisa waved me off, ignoring my point. “What if we made everyone there like you. We could all be super spies and escape.” Lisa looked up at me. “I bet I could figure it out.”
“Lisa, I’m not sure how to even help you do that… And it sounds crazy…” I shook my head. Giving everyone my ‘super powers’ was impossible right? If it was easy, the agency would have a million people way more bad ass than the goons I’d fought thus far.
“You’re what, Lisa, seventeen? No matter how smart you are, you don’t have the background to figure out how to do it,” Roberto said, voice calm. “Abby’s sort of special in that it actually worked. It’s not like she’s the first one we tried this on. In fact, it only worked because her genetics were so similar to Gabriella’s.”
“You just aren’t thinking about it correctly.” Lisa was waving her hands excitedly. “See, the flit works on anyone, right? What if we could make it so that the flit enters you, and instead of it having access to your body to do whatever it wants to do, you have access to its body of knowledge. We’d just need to make some kind of profiles to load into you…” She smiled at me in a way that made my stomach sink. If she managed to do that, would it work? Would it give everyone access to my super spy powers? I wasn’t sure how I felt about that…
“The flit is gone.” I shrugged. “We destroyed the mainframe, remember?”
“Until they rebuild it,” Lisa replied, pulling out her stolen circuit board and staring at it, equations and other complicated thoughts sparking across her eyes. “Either way, I’m going to figure it out.” She shrugged. “I mean, fundamentally, what’s the difference between you practicing to throw a punch or shoot a gun, and me downloading the ‘training’ into your brain? Not a whole lot, I’d wager.” She stared at me like I was exhibit A.
“Well, let’s take a time out from that. It’s time to meet your dad,” Roberto said as he pulled up to a decrepit gas station. It was sort of funny because the G on the sign was burned out so it read ‘as and Sip.’ Lisa’s face fell so far it could have been an Olympic record as Roberto backed the van into a spot behind the convenience mart that boasted all things cold and beer.
“You ready?” I asked, reaching out and touching her shoulder. She looked up at me and smiled weakly before nodding. She stood up in the tiny van and moved past me toward the door and fumbled with the handle for a bit before the door slid open to reveal Roberto. He was still clad in his stylish sky-blue jumpsuit which made me sort of wish he’d changed. He was going to stick out like a sore thumb.
He must have caught me looking at him because he looked down at his jumpsuit and smirked. “Oh, yeah,” he mumbled to himself and shoved one hand in his pocket. He must have done something because the colors on his jumpsuit melted together, morphing so that a moment later it looked like he was wearing a long-sleeved black button-up and jeans.
“Cool!” Lisa squealed, grabbing the shirt and tugging on it. “I need something like that.” She turned and smiled at me. “You could have told me about all this cool stuff.”
“Yeah, next time I’m on the run for my life, I’ll write you a letter.” I turned away from her and stared at a flicke
ring streetlight. I hadn’t meant to sound so bitchy, but it wasn’t fair. I’d been through so much and now Lisa had figured out a way to give herself super spy powers in all of what, thirty seconds? That didn’t seem fair.
It made me wonder what would have happened if she’d been abducted instead of me. Would she be ruling the world right now with the Agency crushed beneath her tiny heel? I shook the thought away. There was no use going down that road…
Lisa stared at me, a curious expression on her face. “Sorry,” she murmured.
“Yes, well great,” Roberto said, ushering both of us toward a beat up jalopy in the corner of the lot. “Time to get the hell out of here.”
“You mean we’re supposed to ride in that?” I asked, eyeing the rusty splotches covering the hood and body of the car. “Does it even run?”
“You should see what’s under the hood,” Roberto replied as he stepped up to the car and tapped the tune to jingle bells on the window with one huge knuckle.
It slid down to reveal a thin Asian man with bleach blond hair and black stubble on his chin. He was wearing a white wife beater and had a gold chain around his neck. It was a little weird because he had to have been over forty, but instead, he looked like he was barely in his twenties.
“Is that my daughter?” he asked, voice light and cheery. “Lisa, is that you?” He was out of the car an instant later, wrapping Lisa in his arms and pulling her into his chest. “I never thought I’d see you again.”
Lisa pushed him away and stared at him. Then she held out her hand. “Hi, I’m Lisa Ann, pleased to meet you. What is your name?”
Her dad stared at her hand like it’d just stolen his best piece of candy. The smile slid off his face and hit the parking lot floor with a wet, gooey splorch.
“Um… Tom.” He shook his head. “Well, that’s what my friends call me anyway. It’s short for Tomofumi.” He swallowed and took her hand, shaking it. “I remember you as a tiny little sprat of a thing, always screaming and crying. You figured out how to crawl out of your baby jumper when you were only a couple months old…” Tears welled in his eyes as he spoke, still holding onto her hand.
Meet Abby Banks VOLUMES: 1-3 Page 24
