by Lexie Dunne
I took a step back in awe and my heel hit a patch of ice. I landed flat on my back, knocking the wind temporarily out of my chest. When I looked sideways, I saw a flash of gray out of the corner of my eye. I rolled over, elbow dragging through a frigid puddle, right in time to see a man in a gray hooded jacket reach into the post office box where Brook had dropped the ransom payment. A glimpse of the black bag was all I needed.
“The kidnapper,” I shouted before I thought about it. The man, who’d been walking hurriedly with his hood up, broke out into a run. Trusting that my friends had the superfluous supervillain issue under control, I ran after him.
He ducked into the station, probably hoping to lose me in the fleeing crowd. I sped after him, leaping down the stairs four or five at a time and dodging around people. This would have been the perfect time to phase, really. I pushed that hindsight to the back of my mind where it belonged and pumped my legs harder. The kidnapper shoved civilians as he ran by, knocking them into my path. “Sorry, sorry,” I said as I hurtled over them like I was at a high-school track meet.
The man spun—I couldn’t see his face since he was wearing some kind of mesh mask—and knocked a cart over into my path. I skidded and nearly crashed into it. When I made the leap over it, though, a sharp punch hit me right between the shoulder blades.
It knocked the wind out of me again. I landed in an ungraceful sprawl on the hard ground, wrist and back singing with the sting. Automatically, I rolled to the side and a glob of something steaming and yellow hit the ground where I’d been instants before. The acrid scent of burning sewage hit my nostrils.
I jumped to my feet and found myself facing off against the green-hoodied man. And now that I was close enough, I realized I knew him. I groaned. “Toadicus, what the hell?”
Toadicus flicked his tongue over his rotten yellow teeth. “Do I know you?”
“Never mind,” I said, and he shot another glob of goo at me. Some of it hit my mask when I didn’t dodge fast enough. Frustrated, I just spun and ran again. The kidnapper had disappeared deeper into Union Station, toward the tracks. I didn’t have time to deal with a two-bit frog villain who’d kidnapped me for laughs a couple years before.
Unfortunately, Toadicus’s other froglike qualities made him a little difficult to evade. He hopped in front of me. I socked him in the midsection and ducked around him as he grunted and folded forward. My cheek started to burn, so I yanked off my mask.
Toadicus jumped and landed in front of me again by the entrance to the tracks. I saw it in that weird slow motion that happens when adrenaline becomes overpowering: his throat bulged like a toad’s as he readied to hawk another loogie, which would hit me in the face. I didn’t have time to duck. I watched him open his mouth.
A blast of yellow fire hit him directly in the chest and knocked him backward. Yellow goo geysered everywhere as he screamed.
“Thanks,” I shouted over my shoulder at Vicki.
“I’m here for you, mentee!”
I pointed ahead, still running. “Kidnapper!”
“Dammit.” Vicki launched herself into the air, streaking by with a gust of wind. I chased after her. Union Station had several tracks with narrow platforms between them, and there were plenty of escape routes into the train yard. Vicki pulled up short, hovering in the air. “Which way? What’s he look like?”
“Gray jacket, hood, jeans!” I whirled in place, sniffing and listening and doing anything I could to track down the man I’d been chasing. Luckily, I caught a whiff. I pointed. “That way!”
Vicki was a fast flyer, but the Mobium made me almost as quick on two feet. We booked it across the tracks; I leapt clean over them from platform to platform. Three platforms in, at the darkest part of the enclosure, I finally spotted the man, sprinting next to one of the passenger trains. People pressed themselves to the windows, watching him go. “Vicki!”
“Got him!” She put on a burst of speed and slammed into the man, sending him sprawling onto the concrete. As I ran to help out, the man suddenly rolled onto his back and raised his arm. From his sleeve spewed a cloud of thick blue gas that swallowed Vicki temporarily. The smell of apricots spread everywhere.
Vicki dropped to her knees.
And then she began to cough.
CHAPTER 6
“No!” I shouted.
Vicki’s cough rattled like she’d sucked in a truckload of toxic fumes. On her knees, she spun toward me, reaching out. “Stay back,” she said, and her voice was so urgent that I stopped without thinking about it.
Unfortunately, this was the opening that the kidnapper needed. While Vicki coughed and I gaped in horrified silence, he scrambled to his feet and jumped onto the tracks. I hesitated, torn between running to my friend and chasing after him.
Vicki collapsed with a dull thump.
I sprinted forward. The blue smoke had already dissipated, but all I could see was one of the world’s strongest and best superheroes crumpled on the ground in absolute misery. I slid the last few feet on my knees like my old softball days, not caring that it ripped my pants. My brain had gone absolutely numb with shock. “Plain Jane!” I said, only just remembering not to use her real name. I shook her shoulder, and her head lolled limply to the side. “Oh, no. No, no, no, this isn’t happening. Jane, can you hear me? Are you okay?”
There was no way I was yanking off her mask, not in such a public space, but I leaned over to listen. Was she even breathing? I needed to call 911, but the Davenport 911. God, this was the worst time to be on the outs with them—
Vicki surged up with a deep gasp, making me jump. “Jane?” I asked.
“I’m fine, I’m fine,” she said, sitting up. But when she stumbled to her feet, my breath stuttered in my chest.
She weaved like a drunk.
“Just give me a minute,” Vicki said, holding up a hand. “I got it.”
“Are you okay?” I asked, even though it was obvious that she wasn’t.
“Please.” At least her voice seemed back at its normal confidence level. She waved her hand at me. “I got hurt way worse than this fighting Near Death Man. I’m fine. Did he get away?”
“Yeah. I was a little more worried about you.”
“That’s sweet.” She coughed again and it was like my blood had been replaced by ice water. That cough really did not sound good.
“What’d he hit you with?” I asked, grabbing her arm because she’d started to sway.
“Knockout gas, maybe. Whoo. That was a trip. Do you smell apricots?”
Good to know I wasn’t the only one. “Yeah. Maybe you should rest,” I said, craning my neck to look around. She was still swaying and I’d never even seen Vicki winded, let alone drugged. “Seriously, sit down or something.”
“I’m fine,” she said, her voice dropping into a threat.
“I’m going to run back and fetch Guy,” I said. “He’ll help us get out of here.”
“Gail, I’m fine, there’s no need to—”
“Duck!” Kiki’s voice came out of nowhere.
I hit the deck, shoving Vicki away so that she swooped sideways. The glob of yellow goo sailed harmlessly through the air. In an instant, I spotted what I’d missed in my worry: Toadicus hopped full speed down the line of cars, green eyes glowing with anger. I could see Kiki behind him, a frustrated look on her face. Her psychic powers weren’t going much help in a battle.
“Why won’t you just croak already?” I said, feeling for the belt at my waist. My hand closed around one of Raptor’s little throwing blades and I hurled it at his face. He ducked, like I expected, and the minute he righted himself, I slammed my fist into the side of his jaw and knocked him out in one blow. He hit the side of the train with a dull whump.
“I had him,” Vicki said, coughing.
“Sure, but I need to pull my weight around here, too,” I said, and Kiki rushed
up to us.
Before she could open her mouth, though, a fireball exploded behind us. I grabbed Kiki and twisted in midair as the concussive force hit. It threw us into the concrete platform, but my back took most of the weight. We grunted as we landed, our heads cracking together. I groaned.
Scorch, whose black duster had definitely seen better millennia, hovered in the air, smirking at Vicki. “You don’t see Plain Jane around Chi-Town much these days,” he said, his voice gravelly like he’d been chain-smoking since the third grade. “Pity. I almost missed your butt-ugly mask.”
I groaned and pushed Kiki off of me. Some supervillains were definitely better with the banter than the others.
Vicki scoffed, but I could hear her voice shake. She pushed herself to her feet and crossed her arms over her chest. “Still prettier than your face, charcoal-breath.”
“We need to get out of here,” Kiki said, tugging at my shirt.
“I can’t leave her, she’s hurt.”
“She looks fine. Can we—”
Vicki launched herself into the air and wobbled, arms and legs flailing in an uncoordinated mess as she tried to stay aloft. Kiki stared. I stared. Scorch stared.
Vicki’s boots hit the platform. At least her flame powers seemed to be working as she shot a bright bolt of fire at Scorch, who flew easily to the side. He returned fire and Vicki dodged backward, actually tumbling off of the platform and onto the tracks. She caught herself three inches above the ground and tried to charge at Scorch.
Her boots dragged across the tracks.
“Oh, that is not good,” I said.
Kiki still had her hand fisted in my shirt. “She’s losing her power,” she breathed. “Oh my god, she’s losing her power. What happened? What’s wrong with her?”
“No time for that now!” I broke free of Kiki’s grip as Scorch sent another beam of fire at Vicki. She stumbled as she tried to evade it. When I tackled her out of the way of the next bolt, she screamed. Her suit was smoking when I jumped off of her. “Ki, get her out of here!”
“I’ve got it,” Vicki said, but I shoved her toward Kiki, who grabbed her arm. I picked up another one of the throwing blades out of my belt and hurled it at Scorch. At least it made him dodge, giving Kiki enough time to bodily drag Vicki to safety.
Scorch began to laugh, and the sound crawled up each vertebra of my spine, eerily cold. “This is a good day. Doesn’t this feel like a good day?” he said, a wide grin stretching the shiny burn scars on his cheeks. He looked at me, flicking his fingers dismissively so that a fireball hurtled at my head. Since there was no heart behind the hit, it missed.
I flung another knife at his head in retaliation. He burned it out of existence. A cloud of ash floated to the ground. “I’ll deal with you later,” Scorch said, and began to fly off.
“Gail!” I whipped around to see Kiki waving at me, frantically. “You can’t let him get away!”
Oh, shit. Let loose, Scorch would take the news that Plain Jane had lost control of her powers to the supervillain community. It might be temporary, it might not, but either way it wasn’t news we could afford to let out.
I sprinted hard, watching the tattered hem of Scorch’s duster flutter as he flew off, laughing. Instinctively, I pushed off and arced through the air. My shoulder knocked into the back of his knee and I wrapped myself around his boots, incapacitating his legs before he could kick me. Luckily, my dense weight helped: we crashed onto a platform, him cursing the entire time.
I rolled out of the way of a blast of heat and flame. Reaching blindly into the belt, I grabbed a glop of what felt like sticky putty and lobbed it at Scorch’s hand, right before he could shoot a jet of fire at me. The putty expanded and exploded over his arm, throwing him back so he thudded hard onto the platform. I dove at him, trying to wrestle him into a choke hold, but the instant my skin came in contact with his, I let out a cry. My hand sizzled.
He destroyed the Raptor’s antifire gel with another burst from his palm and tried to knock me aside. I dodged and kicked him in the midsection, making him double over. When he sprang back up, I pepper-sprayed him in the face. His high-pitched screech brought a sick sense of satisfaction. The uncontrolled whip made of pure fire, however, made me yelp. I scrambled back and a fireball engulfed the air right in front of me, the force of the blast slamming into me so hard it carried me backward right into one of the station’s support pillars.
The last thing I saw before a black curtain descended over my vision was Scorch’s smirk and red eyes as he launched into the sky.
Oh, hell.
It probably said a lot about me that when I opened my eyes I expected a hospital room. That was how I still felt waking up most mornings, even though my Hostage Girl days were long behind me. Back then, I’d spent a lot of time getting the maximum benefits out of a gold standard health insurance plan. Granted, now I had the Mobium, and it was rare to wake up under the harsh fluorescent lights and to the beeping of the pulse monitor, but old habits died hard.
I really didn’t expect to wake up in Angélica’s gym, though. In the middle of a boxing ring, no less.
“Huh?” I asked, blinking around at me. I was dressed for a workout—if you ignored my torn sweatpants—but everything smelled fried to a crisp and my skin felt like I was recovering from a horrible sunburn.
Jessie Davenport popped into the edge of my vision and my world made even less sense. She raised her eyebrows at me.
“Did you knock me out?” I asked.
“Nope. I put you in there because it seemed like the most comfortable spot in the house.” She frowned. “I always forget how heavy you are.”
“So does everybody else.” Warily, I sat up. “Why am I here? Why are you here?”
“Everybody else is at Davenport and I got the feeling you hate Medical more than I do. I offered to take care of you since it didn’t seem like anything serious.”
I looked around. “Where’s Guy?”
“I’ve been texting him updates.” Jessie held up her phone, and thanks to my keen eyesight, I read six different versions of still hasn’t woken up, breathing normally. “I see you used the fire gel. Good choice, though it only pisses Scorch off. If I’d known he was a possibility, I’d have given you stronger stuff.”
“Uh, yeah.” I was too muddled to want to talk tactics with this random superhero who had taken an odd interest in me. I put my hand to my forehead and winced at how grimy it felt. What had even happened? Why was I here? Why did it feel like I’d run a marathon with no sun protection? And why was my stomach churning so much?
Vicki.
Oh god. Vicki.
It all came rushing back to me in a flood. “Vicki,” I said out loud. “Is she—”
Jessie shook her head tightly, and my heart leapt into my throat at all the different things that could mean. “She’s alive. I’ll take you to see her now that you probably won’t wind up in Medical,” she said.
She broke down the story as she took me to the Loop in a zippy little sports car that cost about three times what I made in a year. By the time we were ushered straight through to the ’porter—Marsh the security guard apparently feared Jessie more than he didn’t respect me—I had a general idea how the fight had gone. Guy, Angélica, and Brook had fought Tamara Diesel and her group off, but Scorch had gotten away with the information that Plain Jane’s powers were on the fritz. We’d left most of Union Station intact, which was unexpected, but the kidnapper had escaped with the money. Davenport was analyzing surveillance now.
I ran my hand over my face. I’d let the kidnapper get away with the money. I’d let Scorch get away with the information. Two gold stars for Gail Godwin.
“You did better than you think,” Jessie said as we walked to Medical together. She kept her hand on my shoulder. “You used your head, you helped get Vicki to safety. Some days that’s all you c
an do.”
From the Raptor, successor to the world’s very first superhero, that felt like a platitude. I’d failed, pure and simple, and the shame of it sat oppressive on my shoulders. “The blue gas,” I said, forcing my thoughts away from that path. “What was it?”
“They’re analyzing that, too.”
Helpful.
“We do have access to some of the best researchers on the planet here,” Jessie said mildly.
“Nobody likes a braggart.”
Jessie snorted.
Medical wasn’t quite a mess when we arrived, but the receptionists definitely looked strained and pale. They practically stood at attention when Jessie walked in. “Plain Jane?” she asked.
One of the receptionists pointed. They looked like they wouldn’t mind if she kept walking and did so in a hurry.
Jessie shoved her hands in her pockets, though. “Has there been any change?”
“Dr. Davenport will know better,” the receptionist said. I blinked. I was so used to hearing her called Kiki by everybody that it took me a moment to figure out who they meant.
Jessie finally seemed to take pity on the poor workers, strolling past them. I saw a couple of the nurses shoot me curious looks—since when did I hang out with Jessie?—but I kept my head down as I followed her. My stomach was a roiling pit of nerves. I hoped Vicki was okay. I had no idea what could be strong enough to mess with Plain Jane, who’d once flown through three buildings in a row without altering her speed in the slightest.
Guy and Angélica were sitting in the hallway when we approached. “Gail!” For somebody over six feet, Guy could scramble fast when he wanted to. He scooped me up in a giant hug, surrounding me for a moment in the smell of sweat and aftershave. “You’re okay.”
