by Lexie Dunne
“I know where Kiki is,” I said. I took a deep breath and licked my lips, which had gone dry. “Tamara Diesel has her.”
Vicki rolled immediately to her feet, Angélica’s hands twitched, and Dr. Mobius’s face drained of all color. I looked steadily at him, hoping that Angélica didn’t mention to anybody else that my heart was pounding.
“And I’m not telling you where,” I said, meeting Dr. Mobius’s gaze and holding steady. “Not unless you make the antidote.”
CHAPTER 20
It was a toss-up who looked angrier as we entered the lab: Dr. Mobius or Angélica. Guy, Naomi, and Vicki just seemed baffled. Watching others be kidnapped tended to make me lose my head, and here I was coldly demanding the antidote from Dr. Mobius in exchange for information on his granddaughter’s whereabouts. They knew it was out of character for me, but I was banking on Dr. Mobius not discovering that.
“This is abominable behavior for somebody who prides herself on being a good person,” Dr. Mobius said as he wheeled himself to the front of the lab. He said “good person” with a sneer. “Perhaps you’re no better than the villains you claim to dislike, Miss Godwin.”
“I need seven doses,” I said, keeping my voice even though the back of my throat felt oily. “Five for the hostages—including your granddaughter—and two for . . .” I gestured toward Vicki and Guy, even though I knew Guy didn’t want the antidote.
“I will make six permanent cures for the Demobilizer, and no more,” Mobius said.
“Seven,” I said. “And I’d work quickly, if I were you.”
The sooner he finished, the sooner we could save Kiki, but he didn’t need to know that I was just as anxious as everybody else to rescue her. She’d sent me a mental image of the warehouse interior, the last thing I’d seen before I passed out. Studying it in my mind’s eye now, I could see shelves of crates surrounding the open center of the floor plan. Several cages were on prominent display under spotlights, and each contained a familiar figure. So Tamara Diesel was collecting depowered heroes. To do what with them, I had no idea. She probably wanted to parade them around Times Square and crow about world domination, since Times Square was just about as gaudy as she was. They were all in costume and still masked, so apparently she was still playing by the rules. Heroes and villains respected the mask above all else. But it was only a matter of time before she unmasked or, worse, killed them all.
“How long will this take?” I asked.
“It takes as long as it takes.” Mobius shot me a venomous glare and ducked down to work.
Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Angélica’s temper beginning to bubble over. I didn’t protest as she grabbed my arm and dragged me over to the far corner of the lab, though I did wave at the others to stay put. I didn’t need Mobius getting suspicious.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” she asked in Portuguese. “You’re putting Kiki in danger.”
“Trust me, I know.” My Portuguese wasn’t great, as I’d mostly picked it up thanks to Angélica yelling at me about the dishes. But I could hold a very rudimentary conversation, if necessary.
“And you’re okay with this?” Angélica asked.
“I am definitely not,” I said.
“Then why are you—” Angélica stopped, eyebrows low as she did the math in her head. “This is her idea, isn’t it? She did something with . . .” She wiggled her fingers at my forehead.
“Technically, I think it was my idea, but I was joking.” An offhand comment while we’d talked in Jeremy’s room didn’t mean I was being serious. Knowing Kiki had taken it and run with it only made my stomach hurt. “She didn’t give me any warning. Just: wham.”
Angélica dipped into several other languages to curse. She remained facing me as she did it, though, which sold the act that she was furious with me. I didn’t know how much attention Mobius was paying us, but we had to be careful. “How much danger is she in?” she asked.
“Raptor’s with her, so that’s something. But Kiki told me not to waste this and she has a point. He’s not going to cooperate any other way.”
“I’m going to wring her neck.” Angélica stomped away, muttering under her breath about foolish old men and their idiot granddaughters. I stayed in the corner and kept an eye on Mobius. Whatever he was doing smelled rank, which didn’t surprise me. The man was incapable of being anything but disgusting. Occasionally he would raise his head to shoot hateful looks at me. I didn’t let them get to me; they weren’t as devastating as the countdown clock happening in my head. Every moment this took was one more that Kiki and Jessie and Sam were in danger.
And once we had the antidote, then what? Were we going to storm the warehouse, dose everybody, retrieve our fallen friends? Tamara Diesel no doubt had gathered allies in droves, likely to laugh at the misfortunes of the poor heroes they’d captured. Those were going to be impossible odds.
When Dr. Mobius seemed completely wrapped up in his work, I grabbed an unused tablet and stylus, tracing what I could of the warehouse from memory. Surreptitiously, I passed it to Vicki, whose eyes narrowed. A moment later, she handed it to Angélica, grabbed Naomi by the shoulder, and left. She came back in her Plain Jane outfit, the mask secured as ever at her hip. By that time, Mobius had something boiling that smelled like rotten eggs and Guy was struggling not to gag.
Reaching out mentally to Kiki proved fruitless. I wasn’t even sure I could do it, or if she had been given the Demobilizer already. Had Elwin Lucas created it for them, or had Brook handed it over? I hadn’t seen her in Kiki’s image, but that didn’t mean anything. She could’ve stepped out to kick a puppy or something. Or something bad might have happened to her. Neither option really appealed to me.
“Done,” Dr. Mobius said, jerking me out of my reverie. He finished pouring his concoction into a row of test tubes. I stepped forward, finally giving in to the urgency that had been pushing away at the back of my mind.
I faltered when I counted the test tubes. “There’s only six.”
“Which is how many I promised I would give you.”
My hand clenched into a fist.
“That’s fine,” Guy said. “Vicki can take the sixth dose. I don’t mind.”
Mobius shook his head. “Miss Godwin wants to leverage my feelings for my granddaughter against me? She shall suffer the consequences. This dose goes to the redhead or . . .” He picked up the test tube and let it slip through his fingers an inch.
Instantly all of us lunged forward, and his smile told me he had us exactly where he wanted us. I couldn’t attack him, not without damaging some or all of the antidote, and he knew that.
“Why?” I asked.
“I am not your puppet,” Mobius said. “The girl wants it. He doesn’t.”
“The girl,” Vicki said under her breath, “is a grown-ass woman who would have no problems kicking your ass with or without powers.”
Angélica shot her a look: not the time.
I met Guy’s gaze. It was obvious to me how much he didn’t want to drink the antidote. But he took a deep breath and stepped forward.
“Guy,” I said.
He took the test tube. “For Kiki,” he said, and underneath I heard the silent and Sam.
“If he dies, I’m never telling you where Kiki is,” I said to Dr. Mobius. “I hope you know that.”
“You have a very skewed view of being a hero,” was all he said.
Guy took a whiff of the test tube, wrinkling his nose. He shared a look with Vicki and then with me, tipped his head back, and gulped it down in one go. “That,” he said as he set the test tube on the counter, “was deeply unpleasant. I really don’t recommend—” He broke off to cough and collapsed on the floor.
“Guy!” I rushed to his side. He curled up, coughing, his face even redder than his hair, body twitching and shuddering.
Angélica hauled Dr.
Mobius up by the front of his lab coat. “What did you do to him?”
“It takes a moment!” Actual fear entered the doctor’s voice, a testament to Angélica’s strength. “His body is adjusting to the return of its full abilities. Do you think it’s a simple walk in the park to lose and gain powers the way he has?”
Guy’s body continued to convulse with giant, wracking coughs and he pounded his fist into the ground like he couldn’t breathe. “Call for Medical!” I said.
But Guy stopped coughing and flopped onto his back, sweat soaking his forehead. He gasped, chest heaving.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
He nodded, squeezing his eyes shut.
“And your—how do you feel?”
Guy nudged me back so he could climb to his feet. He clenched his jaw and slowly, carefully, began to hover a foot off of the floor. “I’m a little shaky,” he said, “but my powers are there. Get the rest of the antidote ready.”
“Where is she?” Angélica asked me.
“Chicago.”
Angélica looked first at Guy and then at me. “Got armor?”
“I can get some,” I said.
“Get to the ’porters. Ten minutes.” Angélica looked at Vicki. “Keep an eye on the good doctor until we get back?”
“With pleasure,” Vicki said, glaring at Dr. Mobius. I didn’t miss the way her eyes lingered on the empty test tube, but she gave Guy’s shoulder a reassuring squeeze as he passed.
“You have armor?” Guy asked as we jogged down the hall.
“I have a suspicion there’s something for me back at the apartment.”
“In that case.” Guy scooped me up like it was the good old days, took two running steps, and leapt into the air. It was always strange to fly indoors, but he was faster in the air than he was on the ground. In less than a minute, we were back at his apartment.
A box was sitting on the table, waiting for me.
“What the . . . ?” Guy looked around but there wasn’t any sign that his apartment had been broken into. “How . . . ?”
“Behold the power that is Audra Yi,” I said. Jessie’s assistant-slash-valet was truly a terrifying woman as far as competence went, and I’d learned not to question it. Audra had once offered me her card and had promised that if I ever needed anything, I only had to ask. Kiki had done the asking for me in this case, but Audra probably hadn’t even blinked. Not if Tamara Diesel and her cronies had Jessie in a cage. Kiki had to be the most prepared hostage I’d ever met. It didn’t make it better that she’d given herself up, but I did respect her a little more for it.
While Guy flew up to the bedroom to dig out his own uniform, I opened the box and stared. Last time they’d given me gear for a mission like this, it had been body armor, similar to the tactical gear soldiers and mercenaries wore. This . . . was something entirely different.
This had a mask.
It sent a peculiar feeling through me as I held it up, as I’d only worn ski masks and nothing tailored. People asked what mask I was, what mask I’d taken up, and the truth was none of them. I hadn’t wanted a mask. But here I was, looking down at the advanced microfabric mask in my hands. All along it had been unavoidable. The minute Dr. Mobius had infected me, this was where my path had been leading—and I really did not have time for an existential crisis right now.
I shimmied into the uniform, hands shaking as I tried to hurry. The top was somewhere between bronze and dark gray, shimmering a little as it caught the light, with scale-like pieces that interlocked over the top layer of the armor for extra protection. The pants were dark, the boots went halfway up my calves, and the armored fabric stretched across my torso. It could stop bullets, but it let me move freely.
I pulled the mask over my face. Like Guy’s, it was a full face mask; Raptor’s mask left the bottom of her face bare, but this didn’t have the same design. It did have the little backward tufts near the crown, but nobody would mistake me for the Raptor. There was no logo across the chest.
Guy stepped out of the bedroom and both of us froze. He was back in his Blaze outfit. No more chest piece and helmet and no weapons. Just his black-and-green ensemble that made him look fighting trim, with the scarred boots and the battered mask clutched in one hand.
“Whoa,” he said.
“Same.”
He paused. “Can you even see in that thing?”
“Perfectly,” I said.
“Good enough for me.” He launched himself off of the second floor and scooped me up on the way by. “Let’s go save our friend.”
CHAPTER 21
What was it with supervillains and empty warehouses? Did they get some kind of two-for-one deal on them? Just once, it would have been nice to see some supervillains work out of a five-star hotel or something. Someplace where after everything was done, a massage therapist or two was guaranteed to be on hand.
At least we knew we were on the right path. Tamara Diesel wasn’t trying to be stealthy, but there also weren’t giant neon signs pointing to her lair. The only obvious sign was the smashed security cameras along the road. “So Davenport won’t hack them and spy,” Angélica had said as we’d raced along. I phased a few steps behind her as we darted around abandoned warehouses by the docks, past the disabled cameras. It might have kept Davenport out, but it did us a favor, too. If we could get past Tamara Diesel’s sentries, they wouldn’t see us coming.
Angélica had half of the antidote in unbreakable vials strapped to her thigh. The other two doses were tucked in little slots on the sleeve of my new uniform. I could feel the liquid sloshing as I phased in a pattern designed to avoid sentries. I recognized a couple of the lookouts: Captain Cracked flew overhead on his hoverboard, and Scorch spread the smell of burning as I sneaked past him. Guy flew close to the ground, darting between buildings and sticking to shadows as much as he could. It was kind of a miracle that we weren’t noticed, though, because Angélica wore her uniform from her own days on the front line.
Vicki had told me once that it was red and memorable. She had really failed to impart just how red. Vividly crimson thigh-high boots, pants that were a couple of shades darker, and a top that left her arms bare and was somehow even brighter than the boots. She had black bracers around her rather impressive biceps, but I couldn’t determine their purpose at all. She’d shoved her black hair under a gray beanie that I figured wasn’t part of the original outfit.
She wore red sunglasses and a determined look as she ran. When she launched herself, phasing up to the fourth-story rooftop of a warehouse, I didn’t question it. I followed after her. Granted, I aimed a little low and had to grab the edge to keep from falling off, but I pulled myself to safety and out of sight as Guy landed next to us. Together, we crept to the edge of the roof and studied the warehouse next door. I could see the street signs that Kiki had put into my head from this angle. It gave me an eerie feeling that wasn’t quite déjà vu, but came damn close.
“Thoughts?” Angélica asked.
I moved to pull my mask up; Angélica grabbed my wrist and jerked my hand back down to my side. Right, no unmasking.
“It’s hard to tell from this angle,” Guy said. “The guards seem pretty relaxed. I don’t think they’re expecting trouble.”
“You think we can sneak in?” Angélica asked.
“I think you and Gail might be able to.” Guy tilted his head and I wished I could see his expression under his mask. I imagined he was frowning. “Stealth approach. Try to get the antidote to . . .” He looked to me.
“Sam’s the closest one to the door,” I said.
“If you give him the antidote, he’ll react like I did. That could be enough of a distraction to get it to the others. They’ll be focused on him,” Guy said.
“So we go in, we activate Sam, and . . . what? Brawl?” I asked.
“We brawl.” Guy gestured betwee
n Angélica and himself. “You—”
“Don’t you dare say, ‘Get to safety,’ ” I said.
“You do your best to find Elwin Lucas and get him out of there. Be careful, though, Brook might be wandering around. She’ll know he’d be your primary target.”
“Provided she’s there at all,” Angélica said in a dark voice.
It wasn’t a great plan, but if we could get the antidote to the heavy hitters in the cages, we evened the odds considerably. Raptor alone could fight off Tamara Diesel, given how many times the women had clashed over the years. So we had a chance.
I peered at the building next door. It was weather-worn, years of exposure to the lake water and wind making it smell of mold and mildew. Four stories tall, it was open inside and, if Kiki’s mental image was correct, full of ceiling-high shelves packed with wooden crates. Not only would it smell foul, I knew, but there would be plenty for heroes and villains alike to fling at each other. I’d have to be careful and keep an eye on every axis.
“So,” I said as we studied the challenge that lay before us. “Your brother, your girlfriend, and my weird sugar-mama mentor walk into a warehouse . . .”
Angélica groaned and shoved the heel of her hand into my forehead, pushing my head back. “I’m with her on this one,” Guy said when I looked to him for support, but he sounded amused. “Got any idea how you’re going to sneak in?”
I studied the nearest wall. “There,” I said, pointing to a shattered window near the top. It was about forty feet off of the ground and that wasn’t going to be a pleasant fall if I missed. “If we can land quietly enough, it’ll get us onto a shelf inside. We can sneak around along those until we reach the cages. They’re laid out three on the other side, two on this side. Sam’ll be on the other side if they haven’t moved him.”
“And Kiki?”
“In the cage next to Sam, if I had to guess. It’s empty in the vision she sent,” I said. “Windrider’s on the other side of her.”
