“Dammit, Rick, why didn’t you say something before now?” Faith began to examine his leg, paying close attention to his foot and ankle where the swelling seemed to be the worst.
“Would it have made any difference?” He winced when she moved his foot up.
“I don’t think it’s broken, but you’ve got a bad sprain here. You’re not going to be kicking any training dummies for awhile.”
“I always thought those bastards would get the better of me someday.”
Despite their dire circumstances, she laughed. “I’m sure you’ll be up and at them in no time.”
He opened his eyes. They sparkled like stars in the near darkness of the shaft. “But, doctor, will I ever play the piano again?”
Faith smiled into the darkness. “Of course you will, stupid.”
“You’re a wonderful doctor. I never could play the piano.”
Faith punched him gently in the shoulder. “Wise-ass.”
“Faith, I’m glad you’re here.”
“I’m not, Rick.”
“You know what I mean.” He raised himself up on his elbows.
She slumped down beside him. “Yeah, I do.”
Outside, the sounds of burning intensified as the fire found a new source of fuel. They could hear timbers falling from the roof to crash against the cement floor. Faith could see a faint, flickering orange glow above, where flames tore into the upper level of the building.
“Rick, do you think we’re going to die here?”
“Of course not. We’re superheroes. We die doing heroic things, not baking to death in an elevator shaft.”
She sniffled a little. “I always liked that about you. You can always find a ray of hope even in the darkest moments.”
“I’m an optimist.”
They listened to the sounds of fire and water for a few minutes.
“I’ve had a crush on you for a long time.” She was glad for the near darkness; it made her admission easier when she couldn’t see his face. “I’ve fantasized about, you know, being with you. What it would be like to get you somewhere alone where nobody would ever know. And now here we are and all I can think about is Bobby.”
“I understand, Faith.”
“Do you, Rick? What you don’t know is how guilty I feel. He’s a good man. God, we’ve been together since I was fifteen. I love him so much, but right now I’m thinking of him because if I don’t, I’m going to give in and do something we’ll regret.” She shivered in spite of the heat.
“It’s not any easier for me, having feelings for someone who’s not only married, but married to a good friend as well. It’s hell working alongside you, knowing how much I want to be with you and that I never will.”
Faith realized she could see his face after all. He looked as miserable as she felt. The firelight from above was growing brighter. She could see flames licking at the top of the shaft. Sooner or later, they’d jump to the grease-coated cable, and then the fire could spread downward and throughout the shaft, and they had nowhere to get away from it this time. She leaned her head onto his shoulder. He put his arm around her and they waited for something to happen to them.
“How will we ever get past this? I don’t want to hurt Bobby. I hate that I’m hurting you, Rick. I hate that I’m hurting. It’s not fair.”
“No, it isn’t. I’m sorry. I wish I had an answer for you.” A loud crash made the elevator shake as something big collapsed outside. “But I think the point is probably moot by now.”
“Rick,” she said, but couldn’t find the right words.
His arm tightened around her shoulders. “It’s okay.”
Tears ran unchecked down her cheeks. It wasn’t fair. She had so much in her life left undone. She’d wanted children. She’d wanted to see Just Cause grow beyond itself. She’d wanted to retire to Arizona like her mother had.
She wanted to see Bobby again.
“It’s getting hotter in here,” Lionheart said in a soft voice.
She felt so bad for Rick. All these years he’d been in love with her, and here they were going to die together like some couple out of a romantic novel without ever having connected. And even now, when their fate seemed to be sealed, he held back from her—a true gentleman to the end.
But it didn’t have to be that way.
She turned his head with gentle pressure. He could have resisted anyone short of an angry John Stone if he’d chosen to. “It doesn’t have to be this way. Not now.”
She took his leonine head in her hands, twisting her fingers into his soft mane, and breathed in the delightful scent of his musky fur. Her lips found his.
He pulled away. “Faith, are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“My leg,” he whispered. “I don’t know if I can.”
“Hush.”
She covered his mouth with hers, and met him part way.
#
“So where are we going?” Harlan asked the two FBI men as the elevator doors closed, taking him away from Just Cause. He hoped it would be forever. “The Pentagon, maybe?”
“Shut up, kid,” said the agent with the shaved head.
Harlan stood in the dim emergency lighting of the elevator and lost himself in a happy reverie. He’d seen the future in the design of the Steel Soldier. Not only did he understand it, he already saw ways he could improve upon it. With a real, high tech lab and brand new machined parts instead of rebuilt junk, Harlan would become the foremost inventor of his era. His name would be among the likes of Da Vinci and Tesla, Edison and Fulton.
They reached the lobby and the agents shoved him rudely ahead. “All right, all right,” Harlan said.
They took him across the plaza to a parking garage where they located their late model, nondescript sedan by flashlight. The one with the shaved head opened the back door. “Get in,” he ordered. Harlan did and the other agent slipped in after him while the bald one climbed in behind the wheel. He started the car and negotiated it through the confines of the garage. Traffic had finally thinned out as people settled in for a long haul without power.
“I’m Agent Simmons and this is Agent Stull,” said the one with the hair. “We’re with the FBI. You are in one motherfucking load of trouble, kid, and right now we’re the only people standing between you and a fucked up prison system that likes to chew up kids like you and spit them out into general population.”
“I’m listening.” Harlan wasn’t the smartest person on the planet when it came to dealing with other people, but even he could tell Simmons was leading up to something.
“The way I see it,” said Simmons, “we’ve got three choices when it comes to you. We could turn you over to a federal prosecutor. We get nice letters of commendation in our files, and you wind up spending the rest of your life toiling away in a lab somewhere to make the world safe for democracy.”
“That doesn’t sound so bad,” said Harlan.
“It’s bullshit,” said Stull from the front seat. “You’re basically chained to your desk. You want to go see movies, date girls? Forget about it. Your ass would belong to the government and it doesn’t care about stuff like that.”
“Oh. What’s the second choice?”
“The second choice is we put a bullet in you and report you killed while trying to escape. Saves us a lot of trouble and probably better for you in the long run than going to work in a government lab.” Simmons pulled his sidearm out and placed it against Harlan’s forehead. “I could pull this trigger right now, go home and fuck my wife, sleep for ten hours, and get up refreshed and hungry for waffles with strawberry syrup. You get my point? Whether you live or die doesn’t matter a bit to me.”
Harlan felt his ass muscles twitching, as if they wanted to run away with or without him. He didn’t think they’d kill him right away; they wanted something from him. He tried to keep his voice steady. “And the third option?”
“Government pays us pretty well,” said Simmons, “but that’s not where the real money’s at. Government contr
actors, now, those guys get all the dough. We’ve got a little business proposition for you. Say that me and Joe here decide to leave our cushy jobs to go into the private sector. Now, Joe’s got a good business sense and I can kick down a door to open a new account. All we need is a product. That’s where you come in, kid.”
“I don’t understand.” Harlan felt lost.
“We want you to go into business with us,” said Stull. “You make the high-tech shit, he sells it, and I run the company. Everyone makes the dough, everyone wins.”
“Really?” Harlan couldn’t believe his ears. “You’d do that?”
“You got a gift, kid,” said Simmons. “I saw that when you fixed that robot. That kind of talent’s worth big bucks.”
“But what do you do about me now? I’m a prisoner, right?”
“Prisoners escape,” said Stull.
“Yeah, we’d be all broken up about it too,” said Simmons. “Maybe we’d even retire.” Almost as an afterthought, he realized he still had his gun centered on Harlan’s forehead. He tucked it away in his shoulder holster once more. “So what do you say? Have we got a deal?”
Harlan considered. Their offer sounded awfully attractive. It would give him the chance and wherewithal to build Destroyer Mark II, and perhaps much later, an opportunity to exact his revenge upon Just Cause. “Sure, sounds good to me.”
Stull picked up the radio handset. “Stull, go ahead.” The agent must have heard a call for him amid the steady stream of babble.
“Joe, it’s Ken back at the office. We just got a tip from an NYPD uniform. He said there are a couple of people in Just Cause uniforms fighting a fire in central Manhattan. He didn’t recognize either one, which he thought was odd, and one of them was using some kind of thunder power. Her description matches that of your suspect.”
“Copy that,” said Stull.
“Son of a bitch, we got her!” Simmons pounded a triumphant fist against the roof of the car.
“Who?” asked Harlan.
“Gretchen Gumm. Didn’t you tell me you know her?”
“Yeah, I met her earlier today. But I thought you guys were going to leave the FBI. Why do you care about her?”
“Because we hate goddamn parahumans,” said Simmons. “And like it or not, she’s a murderer.” His voice grew cold and ugly. “And you’re going to help us take her down.”
“All right,” said Harlan. With the prospect of a bright future ahead of him, he wrote off Gretchen. She wasn’t his type anyway. Too old. Too skinny. Too white.
“Then here’s what we’ll do…”
#
Tommy felt the knot of anger roiling in his stomach like a bad hot dog. Too much bad shit had gone down in the past day. He was at the end of his emotional rope, and needed something positive to restore his faith in the order of the Universe.
If he, Javier, and Irlene could rescue her younger sister, it would go a long way toward ameliorating that growing sense of nihilism in Tommy’s heart.
Without streetlights and landmarks to guide her, Irlene had to circle over Harlem for several minutes until she spotted the junkyard in question. The three heroes spiraled down and hovered over the teetering piles of crushed cars and other junk, unsure how to proceed under such unusual circumstances. What Tommy had thought were headlights of parked cars turned out to be something even more unexpected.
The lights were on.
Reflectors made from highly-polished trash can lids had been attached to poles. Yellowish lights burned at the center of each, illuminating a clearing within the piles. Each light was angled to minimize what could be seen from outside the yard. Within the clearing, they could see bits of machinery and projects that Harlan must have left unfinished.
Javier whistled. “That kid is something else.” He looked sidelong at Irlene. “How did you not know he was doing this shit?”
“I guess I never paid enough attention,” said Irlene. “None of us did. He hated us.”
“Enough to kill your mother?” asked Tommy.
Irlene didn’t answer.
“Let’s get down there.” Javier reduced thrust from his boot jets.
“Hey, wait!” Tommy cried.
Javier set down in the clearing. Bolt guns none of them had noticed swung around and peppered Javier with engine block bolts. Even despite his armor, he crumpled to the ground and stopped moving.
“Shit!” Tommy started to dive down but Irlene held him back.
“Don’t,” she said. “Who knows what else Harlan set up down there.”
“He could be hurt,” he said.
“He’s wearing armor,” said Irlene. “I sure ain’t. How about you?”
“No. Can you carry him out?”
“I can’t shrink him without getting close, and then I could get shot by those gun things too.”
“Then we have to take them out. I’ll find them, you shrink them.”
Tommy created a small dust devil amid the clearing, keeping it well away from Javier. He spun it faster, picking up extra dirt and small debris until the whirlwind was solid enough to attract the guns’ attention. As they fired bolts at the windstorm, Irlene flitted back and forth, shrinking the guns until they were too small to fire their bolt magazines.
Once the defense weapons had stopped firing, Irlene and Tommy darted down to check on their wounded companion. He was unconscious. Because of Javier’s burnished armor, Tommy couldn’t tell if the man was injured or not.
“Hey, wake up, amigo.” He shook Javier.
“Leenie!” cried a juvenile voice. Tommy turned to see a young girl in a thin cotton nightshirt and pigtails running toward Irlene. A stuffed elephant bounced against the girl’s side as she ran.
“Reggie!” Irlene flew to her sister so fast she didn’t seem to cover the intervening distance. She caught up her sister in a tight embrace. “Oh, thank God.”
“I was so scared, Leenie. All the people were yellin’ and breakin’ stuff and I didn’t know where Momma was.”
“But what are you doing here, baby doll?”
“Harlan said we had to leave ’cause it wasn’t safe to stay home. He brung me here and showed me his robot.” She started to cry. “I’m tired, Leenie. I wanna go home. I want Momma.”
Irlene cried too. “We can’t go home right now,” she said. “But you’ll come with me. I’ll take you someplace safe and I’ll stay with you there.” She turned to appeal to Tommy.
“Go ahead,” he said. “I’m glad she’s all right. Get her out of here before something else happens.”
Lifting Reggie as if she weighed next to nothing, Irlene floated up into the air. “We’re going to fly, okay? I won’t drop you, I promise.”
Reggie laid her head on Irlene’s shoulder. “Okay.”
They flew off to the south, back toward Just Cause headquarters and maybe the only safe place left in the city.
“Oooh my head,” Javier groaned. “What the fuck happened?”
Tommy loosened Javier’s helmet. A round dent like a hailstone mark on a car marred the smooth finish. “You got shot,” said Tommy. “This one had your name on it. If you didn’t have a helmet on, you’d have been killed.”
Javier spat out a glob of phlegmy blood. “Feels like I bit my tongue,” he said. “Hurts like a motherfucker.”
“At least you can still feel it. Can you stand?”
Javier struggled to his feet. “A little dizzy,” he said. “Not as bad as a good coke buzz.”
Tommy snorted in disgust. “Can you fly?”
Javier nodded. “Armor systems read functional. Barely, though. Been a rough night. I got enough juice to get home from here.”
“Want me to follow you back to be sure?”
Javier hesitated before he answered. “No. You’ve already done enough for me today. You’re a good friend, Tommy. Better than I deserve.”
Tommy blushed. “Now that’s not true,” he said.
Javier held up his hand. “Yeah it is. I’m an asshole, and I know I’ve got
problems. Lots of people have given up on me, but you still hang around. I guess what I’m trying to say is thank you.” He held out his un-armored hand.
Tommy grasped it in silence.
“I’m going to try to do better,” Javier said. “I promise.”
Tommy smiled. He knew the likelihood of Javier following through was remote, but the man didn’t need to hear that. “Okay, you fly on home,” he said. “Call me if you need me.”
Javier nodded and his sardonic grin returned. “I might need your help, amigo, but it’ll be a cold day in Hell before I need you, you faggot.”
Tommy laughed. “Don’t be so sure. I’ve seen you checking out my ass.”
Javier snorted, ignited his boot jets, and flew away.
The radio crackled. “Just Cause, it’s John checking in. What’s going on up on the surface?”
Tommy grabbed his handset. “Bad things, John. Stay where you’re at, I’m coming to you.”
#
As tired as she was, Gretchen was too restless to doze. She stared at the fire as it consumed the building despite the fire crews’ best efforts. Finally, she slapped her knees in frustration and stood.
“What is it?” asked Shane, whose head had been nodding in slumber a moment before.
“I can’t do this. I can’t sit by and wait to see if the firemen are going to rescue Pony Girl and Lionheart or pull charred bodies from the wreckage later.” She tossed her hair. It felt stringy and greasy to her after spending a couple hours fighting the fire in her own way. “They wouldn’t be resting if it were you and me in there. They’d be doing whatever they could to get us out. And so should I.”
She marched over to the nearest fire truck. Shane scrambled after her. The firefighter manning the pump controls glanced over his shoulder. “Ma’am, it’s not safe here. You need to move back behind the lines.”
Gretchen cleared her throat. “I’m with Just Cause, and I’m here to help,” she said. “Who’s in command of this?”
The fireman turned to look at her and realized who she was. “Oh, right. I remember now. Um, that would be Chief Mancini.” He looked around. “That fellow over there by the ladder truck in the red hat.”
Just Cause Universe 3: Day of the Destroyer Page 25
