“Go ahead, Surf.” He dragged out my stage name like a child sucking taffy off his fingers.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw Hunter wince. My postcoital bliss was definitely gone.
“Where did Dykovski get all these toys?” I asked. “He was able to capture Linda and activate her plug. He supplied Lamarr with a jet pack. He wasn’t able to do all that with good wishes and chocolate kisses. What did he find or get?”
Outrager shifted his weight from one foot to the other, his gaze darting around the room.
Hunter looked at me then at Outrager and back to me, his right eyebrow lifting just a fraction of an inch. Considering Outrager had had no compunction about sending us to our probable death a few weeks earlier, this had to be something big to cause him such discomfort.
“He accessed a series of Agency caches,” Outrager said, sounding like he was confessing a mortal sin.
“Caches? Agency caches?” Hunter stood up. “What are those? And why wasn’t I briefed about this?”
“Because your super wasn’t an Alpha. There was no need for you to know. The same with the rest of you. Including Surf, of course.” The dismissive tone sent my blood pressure soaring.
Outrager continued on, his tone now a low drone as if he were reading a press release. “The Agency installed caches across the country in case an Alpha needed resupplying without having access to a fully supplied base. Usually used for multi-city battles where we couldn’t have the super disappear for hours at a time.” He sounded like he was describing a day spa. “Nothing too large, just a few rooms to repair and reload for those supers using ammo-based weapons. Some accessories were on hand for emergencies, of course.”
I felt the rumblings of a headache behind my left eye. “What sort of stuff, perchance, would be there for ‘emergencies’? And do you have a record of those he plundered?”
Outrager opened his mouth and closed it. A second later he repeated the motion, this time managing to speak. “He took some very…specialized equipment. Meant, you realize, for use only in extreme emergencies. Extreme.”
“What did he take?” I snapped.
The Agency liaison looked down at a clipboard. “He procured three jet packs, as you know, a tracking/activation device and a special…” His speech trailed off at the end, his last few words indecipherable.
“Let’s start at the beginning. We know about the jet packs. What’s this tracking/activation device?” My voice trembled on the last sentence, my suspicions rising through the fear.
Outrager sighed. It seemed like the sigh of a child caught stealing cookies and trying to sound repentant. “We developed a special attachment to the Guardian wristband.”
Hunter flinched and looked down at his own device again. It’d been dead since we took down the mainframe and destroyed the database holding all of our activation codes. The damned wristband wouldn’t come off and had gotten in the way more than once during our entanglements, a very visible reminder of our past.
“We had a plan. If a Guardian died, we’d have to switch the owner…” He frowned, and I could see the wheels in his mind reconfiguring his speech. “We figured out a way to have more than one code on a Guardian’s brace. All the Guardian needed to do was scan the super’s plug, and the attachment would add the code to the activation brace.”
“How would he keep them apart?” Hunter interrupted. “How would you know which code belonged to which super and so forth? And how many codes could one of these hold?” He looked at his own dead bracelet. “And how the hell is he powering it when mine’s been dead since we took out the base?”
Outrager held up a picture. It showed a small black box, barely the size of a computer mouse. “This was only in emergencies, you understand. The idea was to put the super back under control until the Guardian could return to base and the super reassigned to a different Guardian. Purely as a last resort, you understand.”
Steve let out something between a growl and a snort. I felt like joining him. The depth of the Agency’s demand for total control over our lives seemed to have no limits.
Outrager scratched one ear. “So, ah, back to your question. It could hold up to twenty different codes until retrieved by the base computer and distributed to new Guardians. As to activation…” He flushed a deep red.
I felt a stab of panic in my belly. In all the time we’d been dealing with Outrager, I’d never seen him flustered. Now he looked like a virgin asking his first girl out on a date.
“He just taps in the code, as with all Guardians. Multiple supers, multiple codes, but they’ll all still explode when he hits the button. As to the power, ah, well…” Again the pregnant pause.
“Spit it out already,” Rachael snapped.
Outrager stared at the super for a second, taken aback by her attitude. Away from her captors and bullies, she’d blossomed into a pretty tough young woman.
Despite the circumstances, I smirked.
“The emergency power pack was built to not only keep the wristband going but to provide extra memory space for the codes.” He let out a nervous cough. “It will detonate all the codes and thus all the plugs if it’s removed from the Guardian’s wristband or if the Guardian dies, unless properly hooked up to an Agency mainframe and a shutdown procedure followed. No pulse, automatic activation. Prevents the supers from taking out the Guardian in a mass rush.” Outrager glanced over at me. “Or if the Guardian gets knocked out. Any major disruption of the Guardian’s brain waves indicating unconsciousness and the device activates all the plugs at once.”
My half smile died, replaced by a wave of nausea. “How does the scanning work?”
“That’s where you got lucky, in a matter of speaking.” He tapped the photograph, his short manicured nails denting the glossy surface with half-moons. “The super in question has to stand still and be within twenty feet to be properly scanned. One code at a time under very controlled circumstances. It’s not meant to be done in a hit-and-run sort of situation.”
The headache blossomed with a fury I hadn’t felt in years. “So this is what the bastard was trying to do at Cherries ’n’ Lemons? Lock onto us one by one and blow our heads off?”
Outrager appeared honestly sorry, his tongue flicking out to wet terminally dry lips. “We planned to have the special attachment only used in case of an accidental death of a Guardian in the field, something along those lines,” he stammered. “It was never intended to be used like this, against supers who were behaving themselves.”
I stared at the floor and wondered if I could shoot Outrager through the wires, reach out and touch him long-distance. It took a minute to get my temper under control, but I managed.
Hunter didn’t even try.
“Get this fucking thing off me,” he snarled as he bashed his inoperative Guardian brace against a very expensive black mahogany side table. “Get this thing off now.”
He slammed his hand down again, knocking black wooden chips free. A third strike ripped his skin open, the blood flowing down towards his fingers as he continued to smash the brace against the rapidly deteriorating table.
A few steps had me at his side, kneeling down as another chunk of table dropped away. The rest of the team sat there, frozen in place.
“Hunter.” I touched his shoulder, feeling the muscles flex under my touch. “Hunter, stop.”
The brace came down once more on the table. I glared at Outrager. He stared out from the screen, his expression unreadable.
“Stop.” I slid my hand down to Hunter’s forearm, covering the brace. “Stop,” I repeated in a whisper.
Hunter looked at me. I choked up, seeing the pain in his eyes, the tears about to break free.
“I want this off. I don’t want to be one of them anymore,” he said. “I don’t want to be able to hurt anyone ever again.”
I moved my hand down farther, covering and intertwining his bloody fingers with my own. “We’ll fix it.” I cleared my throat and glared at Outrager. “What’s the range on this? How
close does he have to be to set off a plug?”
“Within a mile.” Outrager seemed relieved to be able to answer a straight question. “Beyond that it’s not likely to work.”
“Likely?”
“It was never tested beyond that.”
I snorted. “We’re not done talking about this. Not by a fucking long shot.”
Hunter took a ragged breath, blinking rapidly for a few seconds before eyeing the screen. “We will talk. And I will have answers.”
Outrager didn’t flinch under our combined attack. He stood still, waiting.
“I want every one of those special attachments accounted for. Every last one,” I snapped at the Agency representative. “All of those caches as well.”
“We have one already,” Outrager answered. “We weren’t prepared for this.” The last few words came out in a whine.
I chewed on my bottom lip, knowing he defined “this” as being the alien invasion, the death of supers and Guardians, and the continued existence of an Agency working for us instead of the other way around.
“None of us were. Get used to it.” I bit back a series of curses dying to break free. “Okay. So he’s got this device. Why the hell is he gathering supers around him? Why not come back to the Agency? I’m sure you’d be able to find him a job sweeping floors or something.”
Outrager looked even more contrite, sending my internal organs into spasms. “Nick had a very…basic disagreement with the way the Agency was run. Thought we were babying the supers too much, thought we should be tougher with you.”
My mind raced back to the training I’d suffered through while learning how to use my powers and the part I’d been assigned in the Agency’s ongoing charade. Military boot camp had nothing on the routines we’d run, the physical tricks and training we’d endured.
“You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“He kept most of it to himself during orientation. A private security expert, we recruited him away from one of the best companies in America. A few grumblings and minor complaints in his file but not enough to send up alarm bells.” Outrager glanced at the clipboard again. “He was due to be moved away from Kit in a few more months and reassigned to another job. One without contact with supers, a demotion of sorts.”
“You couldn’t get him away sooner? How long were you going to let him abuse Kit, among others?” I nodded towards Rachael, who was still curled up in her chair despite her previous brave words. “What were you thinking?”
“Using our resources to the best of their abilities,” Outrager replied. “We couldn’t just yank him off the front line and leave Kit out of the rotation. It would be too suspicious. We had another Guardian in the wings just clearing training and about to take over.”
“Would have, should have.” I pointed at Rachael. “She suffered for your incompetence. And God knows how many more will before we take this bastard down. So stop making excuses and start working for us, not against us.”
Outrager stood up a little straighter, fumbling with his tie. “I’ve got a preliminary list here of what was taken, along with the known caches he raided. It goes without saying that we’ll be very happy to see him taken off the market.” He handed a piece of paper to Jessie.
“Taken off or killed?” Hunter asked. Blood coated his fingers. I didn’t know if we had a first-aid kit in our suite.
Outrager shrugged. “Whatever works for you. And, of course, the Agency’s resources are on call if you need us.”
“Of course.” I tried not to sound sarcastic. “As always.”
“Dude, what’s a 3S?” Jessie turned to Outrager, waving the paper in the air. “Got it here in large red letters like it’s something important.”
Outrager wiped his forehead before addressing me. “Yes, well, it’s a special piece of equipment. Not all caches carried it, thankfully.”
“Thankfully, as in ‘oh, it’s just some bells and whistles’ or thankfully as in ‘oh, shit, the apocalypse is upon us’?” I asked.
“It’s technically known as a Super Suppression Suit. Three S, you see.” He tugged on his tie again. “Specialized equipment,” he repeated.
“And what does it do?”
“It’s basically power armor,” Outrager said. “Turns anyone into a super, in layman terms.”
Chapter Two
My head felt as if it was about to split down the middle like a fat, overripe strawberry. “What?”
“The Agency needed some way to deal with supers in the field if they got out of control, aside from pulling the plugs. So they created a set of power armor that could be put on without help, an automated system instead of human help. Sort of a stripped-down version of Metal Mike.”
I walked over to my chair and sat down again, the headache vanishing into a numb void as I closed my eyes.
I saw Mike wearing the metal suit that turned him into a one-man army. A man equipped with a Gatling gun, the ability to fly and a small nuclear reactor powering it all.
The same reactor he’d overloaded for a controlled explosion in New York City.
Outrager kept talking, ignoring my reaction. “We believe he only has one, stolen from the Nevada cache. They weren’t standard issue for most caches. We’ve already accounted for all the others.”
“What sort of weapons are we talking about?” Hunter moved in to take over the conversation.
“Only three weapons on the suit, max. It was meant to capture supers, not hurt them.”
“Define weapons, please. Lethal or nonlethal?”
“Combination of the two. Flamethrower fed through a backpack, electrical stun netting and an option for nonlethal handheld weapons such as restraint glue. He’d also have one hell of a punch.”
“Flight capability?” I asked, forcing myself back into the present.
“Only for a short distance. Takes a lot to haul that much power armor into the air,” Outrager said. “He couldn’t go too far for too long. Not without stopping to refuel.”
“I never saw him with any armor,” Rachael offered in a soft whisper. “He was tinkering with stuff, but I never saw him put anything on. He was too busy talking to Lamarr and telling him what to do with the jet pack.”
“How is he carrying this thing?” I faced Hunter then turned back to Outrager. “Mike needed an entire posse to get into his suit. How does this thing work?”
“Suitcase armor. Well, more of a large closet.” Outrager shuffled his feet again. “It’s light and portable. He’d be able to toss it into the back of a pickup truck with a little help. Open up the cabinet, step in and activate the automatic systems to put it on. It was meant to be portable and easy to operate.”
“He might have just taken it to take it,” Steve mumbled. “Grabbed everything he could out of the storage area. Probably doesn’t even know what he has.”
“He knows what he’s got,” I growled.
“I’d say that was a good bet,” Outrager answered.
“Good thing he was a Guardian and knew it was there,” Hunter said, the sarcasm sneaking into his voice. “Get Jessie the stats, everything about this suit. Maybe we can use this to locate him and find some way of neutralizing him.”
“Done.”
I studied the screen. “What’s this thing run on?” I didn’t mention the small reactor in Mike’s suit.
Outrager cleared his throat. He knew what I was asking. “Power cell located on the back. No nuclear option.”
I massaged my temples. “That’s a small mercy. I can do without the threat of another explosion.”
“Wouldn’t need that much power, anyway. This suit was more designed for subduing and punishing supers, not showing off for the public and playing the hero.”
I glared at Outrager, a burst of white-hot rage shoving logic aside. “Mike did his job, died doing his job.”
Hunter’s hand landed on my shoulder. The heat burned through my shirt and warmed the skin, chasing away the cold memories.
“That he did. And did well.” Outrager bo
wed slightly, conceding the battleground. “I’ll get that information for Jessie. Excuse me.” He stepped out of the frame.
“Let me start this search.” Jessie spun towards the computer keyboard and tapped out a symphony with his fingers.
Silence filled the room for a few minutes. Peter bent down and whispered something to Rachael, encouraging a smile. Hunter gave my shoulder a final squeeze before returning to stand by the screen, his arms crossed as he watched Jessie work.
“We gotta find him soon,” Steve said, breaking the calm. “Guy got a suit like that, he’s going to use it. If not on supers, on civilians. If he gets loose in some place like Vegas, he’s going to do a lot of damage before the cops take him down or we get to him.”
Peter nodded. “He doesn’t need to recruit supers if he’s got that.”
“He will.” Hunter didn’t turn from the screen. “Man like that, he wants someone to control. That’s what he gets off on, having someone under him. He might have replaced Lamarr already.”
“So soon?” Steve asked.
“Might be.” I shifted in my chair. “If we learned anything from Lamarr, it was that there are still supervillains out there. They didn’t all disappear when we broke away from the Agency.” I paused. “Is Outrager gone?”
Jessie glanced up from the keyboard, lowering his voice to a near whisper. “He’s in the corner, cursing into his phone.”
“Good. I need you to get me the local bus schedule from Vegas to Kensington Grove.”
“What?” The four men in the room responded as one. Rachael said nothing but gave me a questioning look.
“Harris Limox sent me a postcard. I’m going to go see what he wants. By myself.” I held up a hand, stalling the inevitable protests. “He stipulated he wants me to be alone. He’s got something he wants to talk to me about and he’s not going to come here.”
“How do you plan to do that?” Peter asked. “I mean, you can’t just hop on a Greyhound bus and head out of town.”
“Sure I can.” I smiled. “I just pay regular fare.”
“Why would he want to see you alone?” Peter mused. “I mean, why not all of us?”
Heroes Lost and Found Page 2
