“Do we need three?” Max’s expression darkened. “The plan was to make Constantine release Hannah and get everyone out in one piece. Or,” he cracked his knuckles, “we gear up and enforce our own terms.”
“Not a good idea,” Wisp said. “They have a villain, and we don’t. I’ve seen him in action, remember?”
“I bet he isn’t immune to bullets,” Max muttered, avoiding Wisp’s gaze.
She knew what this meant. Max was the only adult here, and he knew it. Which meant he occasionally knew things better than she did, or at least he thought he did.
“Smoker is the airy Transmuter type,” she said, addressing him in the firm, clear tone she needed to stamp her authority on the conversation. “Good luck shooting someone who’s both incorporeal and invisible. He’s not going to stay put for a five-minute villain monologue, you know? They only ever do that in old movies.”
“Yeah, I get it.” Max crossed his arms over his chest. “So what are you planning to do with a couple of taped-together Smog suits, then?”
“I only need one,” she said, “to break into those warehouses and take pictures for Athena. I don’t have to take the whole drone along, do I?”
The gang met her announcement with silent astonishment. Sara’s mouth fell open, but she didn’t voice the questions that were written all over her face. Luca sat up straight, his air of false nonchalance gone in an instant. Max looked as lost and dazed as if she had just hit him over the head with a brick. Clearly, he hadn’t expected her to aim straight for the dead center, the one place that might very well be at the root of it all. Having just witnessed his brief but passionate rant about the vulnerability of villains, she knew he must be more aware of her mortality than his sister was.
Because really, Evolved like her died pretty damn easy. Even the high and mighty Covenant had only managed to borrow immortality for a time.
It warmed her heart to see Luca get all flustered for her sake. He opened his mouth and raked his fingers through his short curls, visibly groping for the right words to protest her idea. Maybe he cared for her as more than a friend after all.
“Have you gone completely insane?” he blurted. “I thought you were planning to use the masks and clothes as backup for emergencies. Moving through the Smog in a suit made from vinyl and duct tape sounds pretty damn suicidal to me!”
“Max is the crafts expert,” Wisp said. “And the expert said we’d be okay for five to ten minutes if we wear one of these.”
Max gave a slow nod, but scratched his head, shrinking back in his seat.
“Doesn’t convince me,” Luca said, the words sharpened by barely contained anger. “It’s not like Max never screws up. He couldn’t fix the damn coffee maker, and you’re trusting him to make hazmat suits out of duct tape and plastic?”
“Only because I didn’t have the parts,” Max protested.
“The suit doesn’t have to be perfect,” Wisp argued, ignoring the interjection. “Don’t forget that my spheres are holding back the Smog, too. At least a little.”
Luca’s nostrils flared and he shot Max a brief, intense glare before deflating, all emotion draining out of his expression until it returned to its blank default state. “Fine,” he said in a soft, calm voice. “But don’t you think I’ll twiddle my thumbs if you’re going to do something stupid.”
Wisp puffed out a deep breath. She didn’t want to argue, especially not with Luca, and she was going to do her thing anyway. She had picked a direction to take and if she didn’t keep going, Hannah was going to die. Everyone might die. Didn’t anyone realize they lacked the time to cook up elaborate alternate plans?
An uncomfortable stillness settled over the group until Sara piped up with earnest conviction. “Wisp isn’t a normal human, so we shouldn’t treat her like one. If she thinks she can do it, she’s probably right.”
“Thanks, Sara,” Wisp said. “Thing is, this is also our only plan. Unless someone else has a better idea?” Sorry I’m so bad at planning, she almost added along with you guys aren’t a whole lot of help, either.
Despite their apparent disapproval, the guys didn’t protest. Given their lack of firepower and their weak position, good action plans were hard to come by at this point. Big C had the leverage to define the rules of conflict. However, Wisp figured that by pretending to play by those rules for a little while, she’d find the loophole she needed to turn the tides in her favor.
“Okay,” Max finally said. “If we’ve agreed to contact the heroes, then I’ll start working on the camera once we’re finished here. When I’m done, the device will be small enough to carry around in your pocket.”
“Sounds great,” Wisp said. “What about the Smog suits?”
He worked his jaw before responding. “Not before tomorrow night. Sorry.”
“I’ll help,” Sara offered. “Four hands work faster than two!”
If you don’t zone out and poke a few extra holes in the vinyl, Wisp thought with a twinge of worry. She was about to gently ask the girl to please, for the love of Grandma Rosie and her gingerbread cake saints, to focus on resting up throughout the day when Luca interrupted her train of thought.
“I’m still not sure about this idea of uploading image data through an untested link,” he said. “What if it doesn’t actually lead to Athena, but a paranoid UNEOA executive with an itchy trigger finger? Give the wrong person too much to worry about and they might just decide to drop a couple cluster bombs instead of sending heroes.”
Everyone’s attention snapped back to Luca. “Would they actually drop bombs on us?” Sara asked in a small, anxious voice.
“I wouldn’t put it past them,” he said. “Many of the recent news stories were triggered by Evolved powers, and this place is literally irradiated by the supernatural. Too many shocker headlines within a short time frame make people paranoid. Now add these two facts together and think about why the UNEOA might be trigger happy.”
“Uh…” Wisp searched for an argument to defuse Luca’s point and found none. She bit her lip and turned to face Max who, as the gang’s appointed radio caretaker, sometimes caught newscasts everyone else had missed. “Has the UNEOA ever done something like this? Bombed a place because of a perceived threat, I mean.”
Max narrowed his eyes. “Nothing comes to mind. But we know power surges are a thing, and we’re aware of how the Covenant gets an automatic execution order on anyone who surges. Since that’s not the case here, I think we’ll be fine. If anyone of importance classified the Smog as a world-ending threat, they would have bombed the city long ago.”
Wisp bit her lip harder. Max’s perspective sparked a worrying thought: If a certain villain really did cause the Smog to appear on the other side of the wall, how was the international community going to react? What if instead of sending heroes, the guys in charge of the big red buttons decided to take more drastic measures?
She remembered all the telltale signs hinting at the Conglomerate’s investment in Constantine and the city as a whole. Considering the villain group’s rumored reach, resources and political influence, it seemed unlikely that they would spend money on a lost cause. No, this city wasn’t going to sink anytime soon. The rats were coming aboard instead of jumping ship.
Wisp faced her gang with renewed confidence. “I agree with Max. The city is going to be fine. Just to be extra-sauce sure, I’ll think carefully before I take any pictures with this thing, and depending on what happens tomorrow, maybe we find a better solution and don’t have to use it at all. Unless,” she added with a cheeky grin, “the Conglomerate leader shows up in person. That’d be too good an opportunity to pass up.”
“Eep!” Sara squealed and ducked behind her brother. “That’s too scary to even joke about!”
Luca waved a dismissive hand. “Data hasn’t made a public appearance in years. I’d say the odds of him choosing a toxic ruin for his grand comeback are somewhere around zero.”
“Anyway,” Wisp said in an attempt to steer the conversation bac
k on track. “Constantine didn’t give us a time or place for when he’s coming to call in that ‘favor.’ My itchy nose is telling me he’ll show up at our base at a random time, so we can’t prepare. Or maybe he’s sending his thugs instead.”
“Sounds about right,” Max said. “Whoever it’s going to be, they’d better bring Hannah and a damn good explanation for why she was taken.”
“What are we going to do if they don’t?” Luca asked with a dark tone. “We don’t have much in the way of leverage.”
Thinking back to the explosives she had discovered in her father’s stash, but left back at home, Wisp replied without hesitation. “I could blow their headquarters up. Or one of those warehouses.”
“That wouldn’t bring Hannah back.” Sara hugged her knees, a dejected look on her face.
A heavy, painful silence followed. After a long moment of trying – and failing – to come up with a halfway decent joke that would brighten the mood, but not play down the severity of their situation, Wisp decided to lead by example and spread a bit of optimism instead.
“I believe in Athena,” she firmly declared, sitting up straighter on her chair. “She’s one of the good ones. If we do end up contacting her through that drone’s camera and radio, I’m sure she’ll help us out.”
Max raised an eyebrow. “What makes you so sure?”
Wisp spread her hands. “Well, let’s see … oh! I actually talked to her a while back, a bit more than a year ago. She was really nice.”
“You did what?” Luca blurted, clearly dumbstruck.
Wisp squinted and rubbed her nose. “Athena asked me not to tell anyone. One of her drones found me about a week after I showed off my powers for the first time. She wanted to know if I was doing okay, what moniker I wanted, and if I needed help with anything.”
“The Covenant actually asked you to pick an Evolved moniker?” Max looked dubious. “And you said Wisp, of all things?”
“Yeah, well …” Wisp scratched her head. “It was supposed to be short for will-o’-the-wisp or something, which sounded cool in my book. Hey, don’t criticize my English! It’s not like yours is any better, Mr. Maximilian Schelle.”
He snorted at her, but it was exactly the good-natured, humorous kind of snort she had hoped for. Mission accomplished! Even Sara had found her smile again.
“I wonder why she’d ask you not to tell anyone,” Sara said. “That seems a little weird.”
“Maybe it was unofficial and she wasn’t supposed to contact me,” Wisp ventured. “Who knows? She did try to talk me into leaving Dead City, and her arguments were actually a little better than the government’s. She also got bonus points for not yelling at me through a bullhorn from twenty meters away.”
“What did she say?” Max and Luca asked with perfect synchronicity.
“Well…” Wisp paused to look down at the firefly-sized lights that were circling around her right hand in perpetual motion, casting a pale sheen of flickering red gold over her cargo pants and the dirty stone floor beneath them. Five orbs, one for each member of her gang. The number seemed weighty and prophetic. What was it that Athena said?
“You should go where your gift shines brightest.” Wisp spoke the words out loud, pulling them from her memory. “If you stay here, how many will see it and be moved by it? You are one of only five hundred in the world. No matter where you go or what you do, every step you take changes the reality of those around you.” She articulated slowly, imitating the heroine’s stilted, machine translated and overly formal way of speaking. Hearing the words from her own mouth stirred something deep inside her. A sense of connectedness to a greater whole, coupled with a purpose whose meaning had always been lost to her.
Why me? The question she hadn’t considered for the better part of a year bubbled back up again. It was a question neither the heroine nor the UNEOA’s supposedly world-class scientists had been able to answer. Did the actual superheroes – the guys and gals who had been equipped with official titles and cool swag – lay awake at night, racking their brains over the same insurmountable riddle?
Her friends, of course, had no answer for her. They were watching her with avid interest, eager to soak up more details of her incredible, completely fantastical encounter with a real, fully sanctioned, world-renowned superheroine. Or rather, the drone said heroine had sent to communicate in her place.
“That was pretty much it,” Wisp concluded, cutting their expectations down to size. “We talked about other stuff as well, but it wasn’t that interesting and I honestly don’t remember most of it.” She lied about the ‘not interesting’ part, but the rest of it was true. Not even a superpower-enhanced genius would have recalled the details of a conversation from a year before. Or a phone number she’d been too proud to remember.
Luca was first to wake from his heroine-induced stupor. “Sounds like she gave you something to think about,” he said. “I’m surprised she didn’t pull the ‘you’re a kid and this is dangerous’ card everyone else’s been so fond of.”
Sara perked up. “That’s because heroes don’t think like normal people. They’re wiser and better than the rest of us.”
“Uh huh.” Max squinted sidelong at her. “If you say so.”
Except when they screw up, disappear, or stop being heroes altogether. Wisp bit her lip.
“Wise or not,” she said after a pause, “we should start getting ready for tomorrow. We don’t know what C is planning or what time he’ll come knocking. Let’s eat and sleep while we can.”
“Count me in,” Max said. “If you want to get a feel for your shiny new gun, now might be the only chance you’re going to get. I’m not going to interrupt my beauty sleep if you ask for a lesson later on.”
Wisp threw her hands up and shifted on her seat, pushing herself to her feet. “Okay, okay. Sounds fair. Thanks, Max.” Having expressed her gratitude with a straight-faced curtsey Grandma Rosie would have been proud of, she angled her back to him and shaped a finger gun with her hands, then leveled it in slow motion as she turned back around. “If you teach me well, I’ll maybe forgive you for insulting my hips, you bucket-bellied baboon bear.”
“Is that even a thing?” Luca asked with superimposed skepticism, grinning nonetheless.
“I don’t know.” Wisp let her hands drop back to her lap. “It rhymes, though? Come on Max, let’s get started.”
CHAPTER 7
“This is what it means to be a hero. It’s not about killing the bad guys, not about costumes or making an appearance on television. Our prime duty is to protect those who can’t protect themselves, and we need to start with those closest to us.”
-Radiant, in a not too distant future
After a thirty-minute lesson on gun maintenance and shooting without getting smacked on the nose by the butt of her gun, Wisp crashed on a mattress in one of the small stone chambers underneath the belfry. Dreams flitted through her mind in quick succession, each of them haunted by familiar figures. Hannah’s bloodied and swollen visage emerged more often than the others. The red-haired young woman twisted against the fog that crept all around her, crying out for help. Wisp’s outstretched hands never got a hold of her friend. She darted from place to place in a frenzy, searching for a way out of the fog as she chased after the fleeting, volatile shapes of lost friends and family.
Then the fog took on the scent of Smog and the human ghosts melted into it, gaseous forms and smoke-like limbs squirming in futility against the substance that sustained them. Wisp stood frozen, watching in helpless agony as the truth dawned on her with a soul-crushing clarity.
Hannah, Grandma, and her father – the calamity was never going to let them go. They had become one with the Smog, cursed to haunt this corpse of a city for all eternity.
She came awake with a start and hit her head on a protruding stone above her mattress. The pain yanked her the rest of the way out of sleep and scattered the last dream fragments.
The feeling of hopelessness and dread followed her into realit
y, clinging to her like the faint scent of Smog that hung in the air. Her thoughts raced back to the moment before Smoker’s appearance the previous night. Hadn’t the Smog shifted and billowed, assuming a multitude of humanoid shapes as though it was trying to communicate?
No, no, no.
She grasped her head and shook it, shoving the images – dreams and memories alike – deep down. She was sick and tired of being afraid, and she wasn’t about to let some stupid nightmare change the way she perceived the real world. Her father had taught her to rely on verifiable facts and personal experience. Hannah was alive and Wisp’s power had confirmed as much.
“No more ghosts,” she muttered, rubbing her face and sitting up on the mattress. “I’m awake now.”
A shaft of sunlight touched her nose. By the time she made her way to the nearest window, her pulse had calmed down and she felt rooted in reality once again. The late afternoon sun hung low on the western horizon and warmed her face. The Smog swirled around the base of the tower in lazy currents, covering every visible surface in a sea of fiery-orange haze, as if biding its time.
Angry with herself for sleeping most of the day, Wisp jumped to her feet and slipped into clothes from the pile that sat on a chair beside the bed – a pair of camo cargo pants, a sturdy belt, a loose white shirt and her holstered gun. Basically, the stuff from the day before.
The dream had left her with an urge to check on her friends, so she called out to them. “Guys?”
“Everyone’s already up here, sack rat!” Max shouted back.
Too relieved to make a biting retort, Wisp finished strapping the Desert Eagle to her belt and pulled her shirt down to conceal the holster. Then she stepped in front of the window and reached out into the afternoon light, extracting enough luminescent energy to shape a fist-sized sphere. It manifested immediately.
Its color was apricot. Not gold. More red than yellow, and a significant decline from the danger level her firefly spheres had shown her before she drifted off to sleep.
Gift of Light_A Powered Destinies stand-alone novel Page 13
