Wayward

by Skye Knizley

  “That’s just gross, dude.”

  She took a breath and screamed, putting all her energy into the cry. Blade took the full impact and staggered away with skin and blood falling from his skin, but he didn’t fall. He shook himself like a wet dog and glared at her.

  “Is that the best you’ve got?”

  “Nope, I just wanted you further away from me.”

  Cadence grabbed the catwalk at her feet with both hands and projected her shield into it, feeling the way the molecules pulsated until she had them vibrating at low frequency.

  “You know what happens to metal when you find it’s resonance frequency?”

  Blade looked at the shaking catwalk at his feet then back at her. “What are you doing?”

  Cadence winked. “Should have stayed in school, bub.”

  The steel between them gave way and Blade screamed in horror as he fell toward the magma below. Cadence turned away just as he exploded into a ball of fire from the intense heat rising from the lava tubes.

  When it was over, she sat on the end of the catwalk and just listened to her own breathing. She’d faced opponents that wanted to kill her before, it seemed like all powered people wanted to kill her, but none had ever acted like it was personal. Who the hell was that guy?

  When she felt better, she stood and backed up the way she’d come, then ran toward the gap in the walkway. It was a fifteen foot jump to the other side, and she landed hard, almost slipping off the side. She picked herself up and continued into the control room, breathing hard and fighting her. Their fight had damaged some of the controls, which coughed and sputtered in the shadows, but most of it looked like it was still doing operating normally. Cadence paused for a moment, then took a breath and unleashed her scream again, going up and down the scale until she found the right pitch. The machines around her failed one by one until the room was dark and the machinery hum she could feel in her feet changed and rose to a more menacing pitch, a tone with a hint of finality to it.

  “That should give Specter something else to think about.”

  She dusted her hands and continued through the control room. There had to be another way out of this joint, and she was going to find it, hopefully before the place blew up around her.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The maintenance corridor ended in a ladder well lit by yellow caution lights. Cadence slithered onto the ladder and climbed two levels before the well ended abruptly against a blank stone wall. She slipped out of the well and into a narrow maintenance crawlway that seemed to be behind and below the fourth level of the base. She could see through the floor into the main corridor, where a squad of guards was standing in front of the elevator. One was speaking into a radio, and she overheard whoever was on the other end say “they’ve split up, we’ve got movement on levels six and seven, Blade has the girl in the generator room.”

  “No he doesn’t,” Cadence muttered. “He’s a pile of ash.”

  “Roger that, elevator on level four is secure, awaiting further instructions,” the guard said.

  He clipped the radio to his belt and turned his attention back to the corridor as if he had nothing better to do than stare at a hallway all day.

  Cadence crawled forward until she was past them and out of sight in a side corridor, then raised the floor grating and pulled herself out into the hallway. She was still four floors beneath the surface and needed to find a way out before the place went boom. She also wondered where Ethan was. It had been at least an hour since they’d separated, was he out or was he still playing cat and mouse with Specter’s most useless thugs? She hoped he was out and waiting for her by the car. Rescuing him would be tricky if he’d been captured.

  “Think positive, Ceej,” she muttered to herself.

  The hallway she was in intersected with the outer ring of this floor, and she hurried that way, no longer caring if the cameras spotted her. Speed was more important, her feet told her that something below was going critical and it wouldn’t be long before warning sirens told everyone else they were in danger of being deep fried.

  The outer ring was much like the sixth floor, with laboratories and holding cells to either side, but unlike the lower floors, some of these were occupied. She passed a lab that was dissecting what looked like a cow, and another that had brains in jars being exposed to different shades of light.

  Why were they doing all these things on American soil? They had labs in Russia, and enough nuclear weapons to orbit Arnold Schwarzenegger around Jupiter. It didn’t make sense they would risk war with the United States… unless they weren’t actually part of the Russian government. Things were changing over there, maybe the power struggle had resulted in Specter becoming a splinter organization. That would explain the incursions and all the secret bases. It also explained why so many of them spoke perfect English. American contractors were more likely to work with the Russians if it wasn’t connected to the government.

  At the end of the corridor was the emergency staircase. She didn’t know how far up it would go, but anything was an improvement. Unfortunately, her danger sense told her it was guarded by the Specter goonsquad.

  She peered around the corner, surprised they looked somewhat more intelligent than the ones she’d first run into; some of them looked like they could hold conversations. That might be her way in, or at least serve as a distraction. She raised her hands and walked toward them, her smile back in place. Smiles always worked. Some of the time.

  “Hi, boys, what’s the sitch?”

  “It’s her! Get her!” One of the guards yelled.

  They raised their weapons and Cadence dodged back down the hallway just ahead of the gunfire. When it stopped and they began to move and reload, she charged them. The first guard raised his weapon and she kicked it aside then punched him in the throat. When he gagged, she pushed him sideways into another guard and kicked the third in the gut, causing him to double over, gagging.

  The fourth fired a burst that hit her armored jacket and knocked her to the floor, but immediately she was up again. In a blur, she vaulted guard number three and wrapped her legs around the fourth man’s throat. As he gasped for air, second guard punched Cadence in the side of the head and struggled to get his gun into play. Cadence was faster, she yanked the gun forward and fired it point blank into guard number three, then twisted and took the fourth guard down with her body weight. She felt his neck pop on the way down and felt remorse, but it was becoming clear these people weren’t interested in letting her go, they wanted her well and truly dead. It was kill or be killed, and Nikki was counting on her.

  With guards three and four dead and the first down for the count, it was just Cadence and guard number two. She straightened and raised an eyebrow at him.

  “So… are we done here?” She asked.

  The guard tossed aside his empty gun and drew a knife from his belt. “Extra shares for me if I bring you in by myself.”

  Cadence rolled her eyes. “Did you see what I just did? I took out your entire armed squad in a matter of seconds with nothing but my bare hands. No powers, just feet and brains. You think that little knife is going to stop me?”

  The guard lunged and she dodged back out of the way, using her hands and arms to attract his knife and keep him away from her body. It was amazing, though she’d fought numerous people with knives, she’d never met one who wasn’t distracted by movement in the heat of the fight. Morons.

  She didn’t have time for this, though. The clock was ticking and she was still at least a hundred feet below ground. On his next thrust, she grabbed his wrist and generated her shield through his arm. Sonic vibrations that could stop bullets cut through his arm in a heartbeat and his hand, knife still held tight, fell to the floor. The guard screamed in horror and pain, then fell to the ground as blood began to run from his stump.

  Cadence tore a sleeve from one of the dea
d guard’s uniforms and wrapped it around the survivor’s stump.

  “Things are going to get even weirder around here, you might want to get the hell out before you bleed to death,” she said. “Put your hand on ice and maybe they can sew it back on.”

  But that was all the time she had. She could hear the pounding of boots and knew more men were after her. She scooped up the guard’s knife, yanked open the staircase door and stepped through. Just as the reinforcements arrived, she rammed the blade into the lock and twisted it, jamming the door shut.

  A guard’s face appeared in the door’s small window and she waved with more bravado than she felt, then ran up the stairs, taking them two at a time.

  ***

  The stairwell was dark and lonely, lit by spinning red emergency lights at every landing. The crimson lights cast shadows that made the walls and metal grating steps look as if they were running with blood. Twice Cadence stumbled on her mad climb to the surface, and on the second she just let herself fall. She was exhausted, cold and frightened. Lying here was as good a place as any.

  When she’d caught her breath, she pushed her back into the wall and took deeper breaths, trying to calm down. The fight had been all instinct and muscle memory. She had no idea how she was able to fight like that, or why it kicked in without her knowing how it was happening, but it did. When she was in that overdrive state, she wasn’t frightened. It was only after the smoke cleared that she began to shake and realize just how close she’d come to dying. It was almost like having two people in her head. One was this war hero out of time who wasn’t afraid of anything, the other was a teenage girl with no higher plans than to go to college and be with her girlfriend.

  “Breathe it out, CJ, you’re fine,” she said to herself. The words sounded even more hollow in the empty stairwell.

  It seemed as if she’d been climbing forever. The levels of the base were far apart, she’d known that when she started climbing, but it seemed as if she was never going to see the surface again. She’d climbed at least six flights and still hadn’t come to a door. If the guards had brains enough to take the elevator, they would be waiting for her at the top and that would be it, Game Over. No saving throw, no last-ditch effort to survive, just tear up your character sheet and roll a new one.

  Except this wasn’t a game, and she wasn’t scribbles on a character sheet, she was human. And dead was dead.

  She sighed and hauled herself to her feet. Sitting here worrying about what was coming wouldn’t save her, only doing something would make sure she saw daylight again.

  She continued the climb at a slower rate, pondering what she would do when she got to the top. Her powers were limited and she definitely wasn’t bulletproof, the jacket had kept her from serious injury but she still felt as if her ribs were broken. She hadn’t bothered to look and see how bad the bruise was, it would go away or it wouldn’t.

  She remembered a phrase from somewhere. “Either it will be, or it will not. Worrying will not change the outcome.”

  The memory was accompanied by the face of an older woman, the kind often called ‘handsome,’ dressed in a gold housecoat and slippers. Cadence briefly wondered who she was before getting back to the task at hand, which she still wasn’t sure about.

  “You will do what you must, my little song,” a voice said.

  Cadence whirled in surprise, but there was no one there, not even a hint of a spirit.

  “Hello?”

  Her voice echoed in the empty chamber, sounding hollow and dead. There was no answer, no hint there was anyone in the stairwell with her.

  “Are you a ghost?”

  The last word hung in the air, bouncing from wall to wall, taunting her. It faded, and she was still alone. She didn’t have the sense there was a spirt about, nor was her danger sense threatening that a metahuman was around.

  “I must be going nuts,” she muttered, resuming her climb.

  ***

  Her body clock told her it was almost morning by the time she spotted a door two flights above. It was painted with a white number two, which meant she’d bypassed the third level entirely. With any luck, the guards would be waiting there, though she didn’t have much hope that was the case. Surely they knew where their own stairs went. Still, the guards hadn’t seemed real bright, she could hope.

  She was ascending the last few steps when the alarms started blaring and the overhead speakers came on calling for a general evacuation of all class N personnel, whatever the hell that meant. Time was definitely running out.

  She ran to the stairway door and peered through. Sure enough, two squads of guards stood in the hallway, weapons ready. A woman dressed in a grey uniform covered by a darker cloak that hid her face stood behind them with an air of boredom.

  “One metahuman, eight white-clad douchebags, one little me, and a partridge in a pear tree,” Cadence sang to herself.

  She stepped back and took a deep breath, then let out a scream that rose through the scale until the door blew off, taking part of the wall with it. The shrapnel peppered the guards and the door crushed several of them, pinning them to the floor.

  Cadence jumped through and zapped as many of them as were still moving before turning to confront the grey-clad woman, who was taking off her gloves.

  “Hi, I think you’re looking for me,” Cadence said.

  The woman pulled her hood back, and Cadence did a double take. The woman was covered in scales, save for the stripe of green-colored hair on the top of her head.

  “Fee nix, I’ve been wai-ting for you,” the woman said. Every syllable was lisped, and her tongue appeared to be forked like that of a large snake.

  “I can’t say I expected to meet a big lizard down here, but why not? Do you think I could go without us trying to kill each other? I don’t have anything against you,” Cadence said.

  The lizard-woman paced back and forth in the corridor. “But I have something against you, Fee nix. You look hu-man. No meta-web, no scales. Why you?”

  Cadence backed away and raised her hands in a gesture of peace. “I don’t really know what you’re talking about. If you mean the cocoon thing, I have no clue if I went through it or not. I can’t remember what happened.”

  “Can’t re-member? No pain? No meta-web? Not fair. Then you break my home? You die!”

  The lizard-woman raised her hands and long, slender claws slid out of her fingers before she slipped into a fighting stance. Cadence kept her hands raised and backed until she was against the wall.

  “Look, lady, I don’t want to fight you. We’re standing on top of a volcano that’s about to go bang, we should run,” Cadence said.

  “I will escape, you will burn,” the lizard said.

  She opened her jaws and coughed. The stream of venom hit Cadence in the face and she recoiled, fighting the sticky, burning pain in her eyes and nose. She felt as if her whole face was melting. She could barely see, and the pain was making her feel nauseous.

  Before she could move, the lizard was upon her, ripping at her flesh with claws and teeth. Cadence screamed and tried to raise her shield, but it hurt too much, she couldn’t concentrate long enough to make it work. What had felt like a reflex action now required more strength than she could muster.

  “You’re stronger than this, girl!”

  It was the same voice she’d heard in the stairwell, the one that called her ‘little song.’

  “Get up and fight!”

  Though it hurt like nothing she’d experienced before, Cadence opened her eyes and punched the lizard woman as hard as she could. It was like punching a wall, but the lizard staggered away, squealing in pain, and that gave Cadence a chance to stand and raise her shield. It flickered into being in front of her and she wiped her eyes again, taking away some of the pain.

  “I said I didn’t want to fight, I didn’t
say I wouldn’t,” she said. “The venom was a nasty trick.”

  The lizard scuttled closer and spat another stream that Cadence blocked with her shield. As the creature circled closer, Cadence lashed out with a shockwave of sound that missed and punched a dent the size of her head into the wall.

  “Not trained, Fee nix. Not good enough,” the lizard said. “Too slow.”

  “You know, people keep saying that,” Cadence said. “And I keep kicking their asses. You’re like, what, the ninth or tenth Specter agent that’s tried to kill me? Little old CJ Phoenix, high school girl from Lobo, still standing.”

  “They were weak, Jaz is not,” the lizard said.

  “You’ll find I’m tougher than I look,” Cadence shot back. “And my bad hair days don’t come with lizard breath.”

  “I will kill you, bitch!” Jaz screamed.

  Cadence smiled. “Come get me.”

  She didn’t know if making Jaz angrier was her best plan, but it was the only one she could think of. Angry people made mistakes, mistakes meant she might get an opening. Jaz was smaller, faster and had natural weapons. Cadence needed whatever edge she could find.

  Jaz jumped and bounced off the wall, propelling herself at an odd angle, claws extended. Cadence dropped to one knee and put her shield over her head to block the attack, then spun a kick at Jaz’s midsection. The lizard woman jumped back out of range with incredible agility and slashed at Cadence’s leg, tearing through her jeans and the delicate flesh beneath.

  Cadence groaned in pain but didn’t slow. She pivoted on her injured leg and pushed her shield into Jaz, which knocked the lizard off balance. In that opening, Cadence dropped her shield and spun into a flurry of punches, kicks and chops. Jaz blocked almost all of them and fell back, giving Cadence breathing room.