"Keep biting all you want. You're not getting through that," Midnight says as he comes from around the front of the jet and onto the ramp. "I just finished pre-flight checks. We're ready to take this garbage back to a secure facility where he belongs. He's not going to make for much of an engaging travel companion, but I need you to sit back here with him during the flight to make sure he remains detained."
"But he's locked up. There's no way he's getting that helmet off, right?" I say.
Midnight motions for me to step outside the plane.
"Something’s not right here," he says.
"What do you mean?"
"I'm not sure yet, but catching him was too easy. I wasn't expecting that much of a fight, but this was almost like he let himself get caught.
"There are over a dozen Hammy Hamburgers in this city. Why keep coming back to the same one when you know you're a wanted man? He won't tell me how he got the last head guard off, but if I had to guess, I'd say he had help. At top speed, the flight to the New Mexico compound is only fifteen minutes, but I still don't trust him."
"Got it. I'll stay back here."
Midnight turns and walks to the cockpit. Even though being a babysitter is only a little bit less boring than staking out a fast-food place, it's something. I take my seat on the bench opposite Chomp’s and buckle up as the cargo bay door rises.
* * *
We're only a few minutes into the ride to the New Mexico facility, but already I don't like it. I can tell Midnight doesn't like it either. Everything is going too smoothly, and nothing ever goes smoothly in this line of work.
I'm seated in the back of the jet, still watching Chomp. He's sitting completely relaxed and motionless, but with his eyes fixated on me. Blinking comes about every minute or so.
"Two minutes out," Midnight says over the two-way earpieces hidden in each of our cowls. The cockpit is sealed off completely from the cargo area for security reasons. It has its own public announcement system, which Midnight could use to communicate with me, but he's playing it safe, using the earpieces instead. No need to give Chomp any more information than he needs.
"I've radioed ahead to the New Mexico facility, and they're preparing a cell. They're aware of his refusal to relinquish his metabands, so they're going to skip the usual formal processing procedure to get him secured and into a cell as quickly as possible. They don't like how easy any of this was either," Midnight says through the radio.
I feel a change in cabin pressure and airspeed. We're close and getting ready to come in for a landing. One of the nicer features of Midnight's jet is that vertical take offs and landings are no problem thanks to the main thrusters being on rotating swivels. This comes in handy when you've often got a roof to take off from instead of a runway.
It also means that we can come in high at close to full speed before rapidly descending into the compound, meaning we don't have to worry as much about an attack from the ground. And once we're near the facility itself, we can partially rely on their radar systems for increased visibility. No one is getting close to this thing without us seeing them coming.
"Do you know what my ability is?" Chomp asks.
It's the first time he's made so much as a peep since we picked him up, and it startles me. The jet is slowing to a stop. We're almost there, and he knows it. He's just trying to rattle me before he's put away forever. I ignore him.
"I asked you a question," he states plainly.
"Shut up," I say back, wishing there were windows back here so I could see how close we are.
"That's not very nice. It's that kind of attitude that's the reason no one's ever fully understood me."
"Yeah, I know what your ability is. You can bite through things. We're all very impressed. Right now the only way your ability is helping you is that it’s keeping us from stuffing something into your mouth to shut you up," I say, fidgeting in my seat as though that will somehow make us land sooner.
"But do you know how I'm able to bite through anything?"
"How far out are we?" I ask into my earpiece, ignoring Chomp and hoping for an encouraging answer.
The answer doesn't come from Midnight, but rather from the sound of the additional thrusters kicking in, meaning we're preparing to come down for a landing.
"I can bite through anything because I can control the density of my mouth, you see. That means I can make it harder and heavier than any element known to man."
"Fascinating," I reply sarcastically.
"I'm glad you think so. Maybe if someone with your sense of curiosity had caught me in the first place, they would have realized that the ability isn't just limited to my mouth."
I'm not looking at him when it happens, not directly. My gaze is still pointed at the front of the aircraft, where Midnight is, even if I can't see him. At first I almost don't even hear the sound over the jet's engines. It's the sound of straining steel and popping rivets, as if the jet’s engines are struggling to keep altitude.
"What's going on back there?" Midnight shouts into my ear over the radio.
I turn back to Chomp, but nothing's out of the ordinary. He's still just sitting there, still staring at me, except now with a smirk on his face. That's when I notice it. The bench he's sitting on, it's bowed, bending underneath his weight.
"Umm, I don't know, but we have to land now!" I shout back to Midnight.
"How about I race you there?" Chomp asks.
Before I can react, the cargo bay is ripped open. Air rushes in, sucking everything not strapped down out into the sky. The lights go out, and flashing red emergency lights come on, along with sirens. The jet tips violently to its right side.
My first thought is that we've been hit by a missile, but there was no explosion. I look back at Chomp again, but just as I do, he sinks through the floor of the jet, leaving only a huge gaping hole in the floor in his place. He's out.
There isn't time to think, only react. I dive through the hole after him amid the wailing emergency sirens and flashing red lights.
Head down, I plunge through the dark night sky with my eyes fixed on my target. He's making himself as aerodynamic as possible, and he has a few seconds’ head start on me, but there's no doubt in my mind that I'll catch up with him. It's stopping him that's another story.
"Midnight, are you okay?" I ask into my transponder.
"Don't worry about me. Just stop him," Midnight yells back to me through the noise on his end.
I glance back for a moment to check the condition of his jet. It's in a tailspin, black smoke pouring out from the hole I just dropped through. I consider turning around and getting Midnight out of there, but stopping Chomp is critical right now.
He must have an ejection seat or something along those lines, I think to myself. That's when I see portions of his jet being jettisoned clear. Two at a time, damaged pieces of the jet are ejected from the core until there's little more than the cockpit left.
A twin pair of blade-like wings shoot out from either side of the cockpit area, and it begins to right itself, no longer plummeting toward earth and instead slowly pulling itself up into a horizontal glide.
He'll be fine, and I feel stupid for even worrying about him in the first place. Now back to the problem at hand.
When I turn back to Chomp, I have to quickly readjust my trajectory. He's changed his in the few seconds since I took my eyes off him, and now he's barreling directly toward the New Mexico facility. This is a new power to me, the ability to change the density of your entire body. I've never dealt with it before, and there are a lot of unknown variables. The faster I can catch up and get in front of him, the better position I'll have.
I yell in Chomp's direction for him to stop, but I'm wasting my breath. The only way to stop him is to get in front of him, so that's what I do. I push myself harder to rocket toward the earth as fast as I can and manage to get past him. I prepare myself as best I can for the impact, hoping that if I'm not strong enough to stop him, I can at least knock him off target. If he mi
sses the facility, he'll be out of other options, and he's not going to want to see how pissed off Midnight is that his plane is broken.
Chomp hits me so fast and so hard that everything goes fuzzy. By the time the few seconds it takes for me to regain my bearings pass, it's already too late. My back smashes through the concrete and steel roof of the New Mexico facility. It sounds like a balloon being popped. There's barely a millisecond in between hitting the roof and hitting the ground. We tear through the facility like it was made out of wet toilet paper.
It isn't over yet, though. We're still falling, down through the Earth itself. I feel dirt and rocks pelting my shoulders, but only for a few seconds before it all turns to rock. I'm wishing I'd paid more attention in Earth science so I’d know what exactly we were hitting and how far down it goes.
I just barely manage to reach over Chomp's shoulder and get a look up at the tunnel the two of us have bored through the ground. At the end of it is a pinhole of light, and it's very far away.
"You have to stop!" I yell into Chomp's ear, but it's no use.
His eyes have gone vacant, and I don't think he can even hear me anymore. More earth pelts me on all sides. The pinhole of light isn't visible over his shoulder at this point.
I need to get out of here.
The rocks and debris smash into the back of my head as I struggle to get around Chomp's body so I'm no longer the one on the receiving end. It's pitch black and hot. Even without having paid much attention in science class, I know we're heading for trouble. I'm pretty sure that we're not just going to pop out on the other side of the planet and go get Chinese food for dinner.
Suddenly, there's light and open space all around us. The air is burning my lungs and smells like rotten eggs. Below me I see where the light is coming from: molten lava. Or is it magma when it's still underground? I always forget. Whatever it is, I'm pretty confident that I won't be able to withstand it.
I shout at Chomp one last time. This time I get his attention, but not in the way I'd like. His eyes snap open and he wraps both of his arms firmly around me, squeezing my body like a vise.
"If I'm not getting out of here, neither are you," he screams into my ear over the noise waiting for us below.
"Let go of me, and I can help you," I scream back.
"No, thanks," he says before he pulls me in tighter.
We're both heading for the molten rock and whatever's underneath it if I don't think of something quick. In an act of desperation, I twist my body with all my might and turn the tables on Chomp. Now it's his back that's heading straight for the magma. He just laughs, knowing that it won't matter much who hits first when we both splash down, but he forgets how quick I am.
I have to time it perfectly, but the instant Chomp's back hits the liquid fire, his grip loosens. There's only the blink of an eye between the loosening of his grip and when my body will hit the lava too, but I find it and push myself out of Chomp's hold.
Once it's over, I don't look back. There's no need to. And even with my powers, I'm not sure how much time I can spend down here. Better to focus on flying as fast and as high as I can instead of turning around, just in case.
Without light, I can't find the tunnel we made on our way down. I'm kicking toward the surface like I'm at the bottom of a pool rather than miles underground. Luckily, I can still sense which way is up and that's what I'll have to go by.
The rocks give way to rubble, and the rubble turns to dirt before, finally, the dirt turns into dry desert air. I fill my lungs with it, thinking for a minute there that I almost never had the chance to do it again. The fresh air quickly becomes tainted by the smell of smoke, though, and I turn around to find where it's coming from.
The New Mexico facility.
32
I'm kicking up a small sandstorm in my wake as I rush back toward the New Mexico facility. The roof looks like it's been ripped apart by a giant can opener. The scene is eerily quiet, and for a moment, I consider the possibility that Chomp's impact may have taken the lives of everyone inside.
Then I realize why it's so quiet: we're in the middle of nowhere. This was by design. This new facility was placed in the desert to correct the mistakes made in Silver Island's original design. The reason there are no screaming ambulances or police sirens is because they're all hundreds of miles away. We're all alone out here.
I make my way inside the building using the only accessible entrance: the giant hole in the roof. Once inside, I find chaos everywhere. Dozens of armed guards are running in every direction possible. The small on-site fire department is struggling to put out fires created by shorted out electronics and spilled chemicals.
Rounding one of the corners, I come upon a small group of guards inspecting the damaged cells. The one closest to me is startled when he sees me and fires a round directly into my chest. The bullet stings but is deflected off and rattles through the grates in the catwalk below.
"Whoa, easy. I'm one of the good guys," I say as I put my hands up in the air.
"How do we know that?" one of the other guards asks.
He has his gun trained on me too, aimed right between my eyes, I think.
"If I wasn't a good guy, I probably wouldn't brush off the fact that you just shot me. Get Halpern. He can vouch for me," I say.
"Stand down, officers," Halpern says as if on cue as he rushes up the nearby stairs.
The guards comply and lower their weapons, then immediately return to checking cells.
"I'm starting to think you're bad luck," Halpern says to me, motioning for me to walk with him as we talk.
He's peering into cells as we continue down the hallway, double-checking the guards' work and making sure that everyone who's supposed to be in a cell is in a cell.
"How bad is it?" I ask.
"We're not entirely sure yet. We've got an earthmover inbound to fill the crater as quickly as possible and prevent any further damage to the facility. We're not stupid, though. After Silver Island, this place was retrofitted to be fully compartmentalized. In situations like this, where the integrity of the building has been compromised, all the other sections are immediately sealed off. All the detainees should have already been anesthetized via their metaband restriction devices."
"So basically you just knocked everyone out using the same locks you've got over their metabands?"
"That's correct. If it were up to me, I'd keep 'em all like that 24/7, but these human rights activists are all over us nowadays. They say it's cruel and unusual to keep them constantly sedated. You see this guy?" Halpern asks me as he motions to a prisoner asleep on the steel floor inside a clear plastic-walled cell.
He's older, maybe in his late 50s and unnaturally skinny with a growing pool of drool collecting under his mouth.
"Called himself Skin. You know why? Because he used his laser vision to skin over a dozen people alive using just his eyes. Did it so quickly and cleanly that most of his victims lived for hours before they finally died from shock. But we're the ones who are cruel and unusual for wanting to make sure this guy doesn't get out again by any means possible."
"Has anyone escaped?" I ask.
"No. All of our systems indicate that the majority of the damage occurred in the dining hall area. None of our cells have been breached and motion sensors indicate that every cell is still currently occupied. We're double checking, of course, but from what we can tell, your buddy didn't hit whatever it was he was aiming for."
"What about Keane?"
"Like I told you, we're checking on everyone."
That isn't the response I want to hear, and somewhere deep in my gut, I know something isn't right. I rush toward the section that holds Keane. As I make my way there, I notice that there are fewer and fewer guards. The ones checking cells haven't made it to this area of the facility yet since it's farthest from the hole Chomp put through their roof.
When I find the area, I approach Keane's cell hesitantly, cautiously, until I can see him and make sure that he's unconscious. Not
only is he conscious, he's sitting calmly in his cell with his legs crossed, eyes fixed straight at me and smiling.
I yell for guards.
"Why would you need help from guards, Omni?" Keane asks me. "You know that they're just humans, after all. What could they possibly do that you couldn't?" He stands up and begins to cross the floor of the cell, approaching the plastic wall. "I want to be honest with you, Omni. I think we're close enough that I can be honest, can't I? I mean, I did live inside your little girlfriend's head for quite some time, so I do feel that I know you pretty well, Connor."
He knows who I am. He must have seen it in Iris's mind. This whole time everyone just assumed he could only control others with his abilities but not actually access their thoughts and memories. Stupid! Keane has relied on making everyone believe he is less powerful than he is over and over again.
"I'm sure you've figured out by now that Chomp was under my employ."
"How did you control his mind from that distance?"
"Oh, I didn't control his mind. I might keep some of the things I'm capable of close to the chest, but even I'm not capable of that type of mind control from so far away. No, for that I had to rely on the oldest super power known to man: money. It turns out money can be a fantastic motivator for all sorts of things, even convincing someone to let themselves be caught and then later jump out of a plane, even though all sensible logic should tell you that once you fall you'll never stop.
"But, as I said, unfortunately, I didn't think of everything. I've been funding most of the groups responsible for protesting the use of sedatives on metahuman prisoners of war for quite some time, and I became convinced that they would indeed prevail, or at the very least delay the use of sedatives until I was able to execute my plan.
"Now, however, even if the rest of this prison's population hadn't been knocked out, I doubt I would have had the wherewithal to control them in my current state. It's taking nearly all of my abilities just to keep the sedative from affecting me.
Meta (Book 3): Rise of The Circle Page 27
