by Lexie Dunne
We reached the forty-seventh floor and Elwin shoved Brook at me. Thinking of the gun tucked into his waistband, I couldn’t do anything but close my hand around Brook’s elbow.
She was shaking.
Elwin pressed a keycard into my hand: Kiki’s. My stomach sank. Kiki had access to all of Davenport, which meant that if nobody questioned us, Elwin could likely get whatever he wanted. I had to figure out a way around this without getting Brook shot, but my body was barely responding. Whatever Elwin had given me had made me even weaker than my Hostage Girl days.
Relief flooded through me when I saw the security guard in the waystation. After all the crap Marsh had put me through every time I wanted to ’port to New York, there was no possible way he’d wave me through with the wrong credentials. This plan would be foiled before it even got started, and all thanks to the world’s crankiest security guard.
Marsh looked up from his computer, took in my uniform, eyed the two people flanking me, and waved me through.
“Seriously?” I wanted to ask him as I scanned the badge. If I survived this, I was coming back here and kicking Marsh’s ass just for being a pain in mine.
The ’porter took us to Davenport Tower without complaint. In her line of work, I imagined, there were a lot of strange things that needed to be transported between stations. A uniformed hero bringing back a villain and a scientist barely even rated a second look. It made me want to scream, but I couldn’t even get my body to do that much. Hell, I thought. I’m in hell. This is hell.
From the look on Brook’s face, she’d lived through years of something like this. When I got control of my body back, I was going to either murder Elwin myself or stand to the side and let her do it.
In Davenport Tower, Elwin grabbed my wrist and stepped close. “Take me to Mobius,” he said.
I had no idea what the protocols were, but the first time I’d been taken to the Davenport Complex—after fighting the very woman who stood in shackles next to me—Vicki had delivered me directly to Medical. So unfortunately, doing the same to Elwin and Brook wouldn’t be seen as unusual.
“Why are you doing this?” I asked, forcing the words out through the hazy barrier that came between my thoughts and actions.
“Money, why else? If Davenport had just paid the ransom, I would’ve happily handed over the lunatic and the Demobilizer and none of us would be here, would we?” Elwin shoved at my elbow to make me move faster. “I could be on a beach right now.”
“That’s it?” I asked.
“What?”
“It’s usually that the bad guy wants world domination or something sinister. You just want money?”
“Lodi was a job, not my life’s work. I shouldn’t be treated like a criminal just because my employer did a few bad things.”
Brook began to shake harder. “You kept me in a cage and experimented on me for years!”
“I was following orders. I’m owed my due.”
“You’re owed a kick in the balls,” Brook said, and I couldn’t disagree. She looked at me, her own movements sluggish. “I didn’t give Tamara Diesel the Demobilizer.”
“Stop talking,” Elwin said.
“They ambushed me. At Wrigley.” Sweat gathered on Brook’s forehead as she fought the effects of whatever we’d been dosed with. “I know you won’t believe me, but all I want is to find Petra. Davenport can have this bastard.”
Assuming he didn’t get away with whatever he had planned.
He put his hand on the gun. “I said stop talking,” he said.
Time to distract him. If he shot either of us, we’d bleed out before the drugs wore off and the Mobium could save our lives. “If you’re after money, what do you want with Mobius?” I asked, hoping to distract him. Elwin Lucas might be human and amoral and awful, but he no doubt had the same weakness most villains shared: pride.
“Ms. Diesel offered me a lot of money to make more of the Demobilizer.”
“You can do that?” I asked. It was getting easier to talk, but the rest of me still felt trapped in syrup.
Elwin scowled. “I’m working on it. But the Demobilizer is useless if there’s an antidote to it.”
“So you want to kill Mobius,” I said, a cold trickle of fear working down the back of my neck. Where was everybody? Why was nobody stopping us? Were they all still at the fight?
“The stubborn idiot won’t have shared his formula with anyone and nobody else is smart enough to replicate what he can do.” Elwin’s voice took on a boasting note as we made another turn that would bring us closer and closer to Medical. “I’m doing the world a favor. He’s a monster, you know.”
“He’s not the only one,” Brook said.
Of course we weren’t lucky enough to be stopped by the receptionists in Medical. They saw the credentials and the uniform—Jessie sure had a lot of pull around Davenport that even a knockoff of her uniform got this much respect—and didn’t question my assertion that the prisoners needed to be kept with Dr. Mobius for their own safety.
When I hesitated, Elwin looked hard at me and then hard at Brook. Again, I was being forced to make a choice. Brook was a villain, yes, but she was doing her time in prison and she was trying to turn her life around. Mobius was a villain as well that had done irreparable damage to my life.
Neither of them deserved to die, though.
I needed to stall somehow. But right now, there wasn’t a way to do that, not without Elwin whipping out the gun and shooting Brook and now possibly the receptionists. My stomach sinking low, I walked toward the cell where they were keeping Mobius.
The badge let me right through. I stepped in, struggling as hard as I could against the drugs, trying to fight it off—
“Oh, hey!” Vicki’s voice chirped out. “Jessie, you’re—you’re not Jessie.”
I’d never even considered that Mobius might not be alone, I realized, even though Angélica had asked Vicki to keep an eye on him. And keep an eye on him she had. Dr. Mobius sat on his hospital bed, peevishly glaring at the cards in his hand, while Vicki sat in the chair next to his bed in her Plain Jane uniform. They had a little tray in between them. It looked like they’d been playing for popsicle sticks, and if the stack next to Vicki was anything to go by, I should never, ever play poker against her.
She rose to her feet when she saw Brook and Elwin, her eyes cutting immediately to the handcuffs on Brook’s wrists. It was Mobius’s reaction that I found more interesting. He blanched, all the color leaching from his skin. Whether he was gaping at Brook or Elwin, I had no idea.
“What’s going on?” Vicki asked. In a move that seemed instinctual, she drew the Plain Jane mask on and stepped between Dr. Mobius and us. To do what, I didn’t know. She was as human as Brook and I were at the moment.
“He’s gonna kill Mobius,” I said, forcing the words out as fast as I could.
“Gail?” Vicki asked, turning toward me in surprise.
That proved to be a giant mistake.
Without any warning, Elwin yanked out the gun. I shouted, trying to fight off the drugs and race for him, but I wasn’t fast enough. He pulled the trigger, aiming right at Vicki’s forehead, and from that distance, there was no way he could miss.
He didn’t miss. The gunshot sounded like a sonic boom, reverberating off of the walls as I watched in complete horror, unable to do anything. My brain could process it, but everything else froze in shock. He’d shot Vicki. He’d opened fire and shot my very human friend right in the forehead. He’d killed Vicki Burroughs.
Vicki, though, only took a staggering step back and said, “Ow.”
And as I blinked, she shook her head, put a gloved hand to her forehead, and charged. She tackled Elwin hard, grappling for the gun. Her powers, I realized as I tried to force my body to move, to help out somehow. She must have convinced Mobius to make more of the antidote. She’d been
shot in the head and hadn’t died. She had her powers back!
But for somebody who was supposed to be super strong, she sure was struggling to get the gun away from Elwin. He was a full-grown man, but he shouldn’t have been any trouble for her. I tried to drop to my knees, to grab Elwin’s wrist and force the gun out of his hand, but my limbs wouldn’t cooperate.
Vicki got a lucky elbow in, making Elwin grunt and drop the gun. I moved toward it, fighting to make my limbs function, but Brook got to it first. She scooped it up, holding it awkwardly since her hands were cuffed, and took a step back. I saw her gaze lock on Dr. Mobius and fear raced through me. “Brook, don’t—”
“They did this to me,” she said. The gun shook in her hands, but it wasn’t pointed at him. “Both of them.”
“Brook, think of—”
I never got a chance to finish that sentence because the door slammed open and guards in Detmer uniforms swarmed in to save the day. They pulled Vicki off of Elwin, shoved Brook and me against the walls, and mercifully relieved Brook of the gun before she could shoot anybody and revoke the deal she’d made for a shorter sentence.
Vicki whipped off the mask, her face and hair sweaty. “About time you boys got here,” she said, breathing hard. She looked at me and held the mask up. “Good thing this is bulletproof, huh?”
CHAPTER 23
It was almost anticlimactic, after that. Elwin was carted away. His plan, I found out later, had been to sneak in, kill Mobius, and sneak back out to continue making the Demobilizer for Tamara Diesel until she made him rich enough to retire to his own private island with lots of security. He might have gotten away with it if Vicki hadn’t been there and if he hadn’t been forced to use the gun.
“Guns,” Vicki said with a scowl. “Definitely cheating.”
Mercifully, it had been obvious that something was wrong with Brook and me. Perhaps out of some heretofore unknowing feeling of gratitude, Dr. Mobius had checked us both over and had declared that we would be fine. I’d protested that, but he pointed out that he’d used the same serum on me once before, the morning he had freed me from my captivity with him, and I’d been fine then. So we weren’t in any danger. Probably.
Sitting still and letting the effects wear off, though, felt like torture, especially since I could barely move or speak. They carted Brook off and left me sitting in a room in Medical with Vicki. As best as we could tell, I’d lost less than an hour to the serum that Elwin had dosed me with, but the battle had apparently raged on for quite some time in my absence, and nobody had noticed I’d vanished. Tamara Diesel had slipped away, off to destroy the world another day, no doubt, but there were plenty of villains on their way to Detmer. And the powers had been restored to the major heroes that had lost them, thanks to Mobius’s antidote.
If there was more Demobilizer in Elwin’s underground lab, it was now property of Davenport Industries, for better or worse. I wasn’t sure that was much better than Tamara Diesel having control of it, honestly. Either way, Elwin was going to prison for a long, long time.
“Man, am I lucky he hit the mask and not somewhere else,” Vicki said as I sat on the cot and stared at her. “Bullet holes don’t exactly go over well in the fashion industry. Nice to know I can still kick ass without my powers, though.”
“But you were bulletproof before you lost them,” I said.
“So?”
“What use would you have for a bulletproof mask?”
“Gail, do you know how much this face is worth? The mask is more than just a beacon of hope to humanity everywhere—it’s extra insurance.”
I had to laugh at that. “I’m glad you didn’t die,” I said.
“Me, too.” She checked her phone. “Looks like your boyfriend’s on his way back. He wants to know what happened to your phone.”
As far as I could tell, Elwin had tossed my phone. Hopefully a search of the warehouse would turn it up. “At this point, your guess is as good as mine.”
The serum finally started to wear off, letting me have some movement back, when the door flew open. Guy burst through, half flying in his hurry to get to me. “You’re okay!” he said, scooping me up and swinging me around.
“Relatively uninjured, too,” I said. “No head wounds or anything. Just drugs that I hope I never see again.”
“You and me both,” he said, and I tugged him down for a kiss that went on until Angélica stepped in and cleared her throat. I felt a spurt of amusement from behind her, which told me Kiki was there and that she’d gotten her powers back.
I glared at her.
“Hey, my plan worked,” Kiki said. She was a little pale, her shirt streaked with dirt. As somebody whose powers were entirely psychic, I imagined she didn’t get out to fight much. “Besides, Jessie was there. My aunt wouldn’t have let anything happen to me.”
I glared harder. Angélica crossed her arms over her chest and stood next to me. Faced with the two of us, Kiki visibly faltered and hung her head. “Okay,” she said. “I won’t do that again. I’m glad you were able to get my message, though.”
“I’ve passed out twice today,” I said. “Just so you know. One of those? Your fault.”
Instead of apologetic, Kiki looked fascinated. Mercifully, Angélica pulled her away before she could start asking questions. Damn scientists. Should I worry that I was now telepathically linked to one? Did that kind of intellectual curiosity rub off? I’d have to figure that out later. At the moment, I had more pressing things to worry about. I felt my sleeve and breathed out in relief when I felt the bulge in the pocket. Elwin had searched my other pockets, but he hadn’t noticed that one.
“Where’s Jessie?” I asked.
“Taking Captain Cracked and the others to Detmer,” Guy said. “Your buddy Scorch said to say hi, by the way. We ran into him at the fight. Why do you ask?”
I fumbled with my sleeve since the serum was wearing off. “The antidote—Jessie didn’t take it,” I said.
“Let me,” Angélica said, reappearing at my side. She pulled the vial out. “Yo, Vicki.”
Vicki caught it, fumbling a little. “Cheers,” she said, and I realized that she actually hadn’t been that upset about Mobius picking Guy to get his powers back. Like she’d been expecting this the whole time. She downed the antidote and I turned to Guy and Angélica in confusion.
“One of the hallmarks of being Raptor?” Angélica said. “No powers.”
“What? But—but—how?” Jessie was a terrifying opponent in broad daylight, and I’d had the misfortune of going against her in an abandoned building by the docks in the middle of the night. And the entire time she hadn’t had any powers?
Actually, it made a lot of sense, given how many gadgets she had. And Angélica had always cautioned me not to hit with my full strength whenever I was sparring with her.
“You knew the whole time,” I said to Guy and Angélica as Kiki crouched over the coughing Vicki. “You knew we had enough of the antidote. Why didn’t you say something?”
“Mobius wanted to hurt us. We had to let him think he was getting away with it.” My incredulity must have shown on my face, for Angélica patted my arm. “Why don’t you take a nap? You’ve had a hard day. Though you might need to wait. Kiki wants a sample of your blood.”
“Of course she does,” I said, already rolling up the sleeve to my uniform.
It would have to wait, though. Apparently, according to Vicki, the only way to celebrate the return of powers was to set something on fire and fly through a wall.
Fitting for Plain Jane, really, but the staff in Medical weren’t exactly happy with us right then.
I took the next day off of work. I had probably been fired, anyway, so it really didn’t matter. Dealing with supervillains and hostage situations one day and returning to work on spreadsheets the next had been a reality for me for four years, but now that I was the one underneath
the mask, it was time for a change. I didn’t want to think about it, so I didn’t. Instead, I focused on the fallout that the Demobilizer had caused. Or rather, I nagged Guy.
“I’m fine,” he said for the fourth time over breakfast the next morning.
I gave him a look.
“Really. I am. What can I do to convince you?”
“You were so happy not to have powers,” I said. “You were, like, making plans for culinary school. It’s the most excited I’ve seen you since you found that new farmer’s market.”
He took a long sip of coffee and flipped the third omelet onto my plate. Whatever Elwin had given me had made me hungrier than usual. I hoped that would go away soon, too.
“You haven’t been happy,” I said. I dug in, but carefully didn’t speak with my mouth full. “I know we haven’t been together that long, but I could tell you were miserable, Guy.”
“It is what it is.” Guy sat down with his own omelet. “But maybe you have a point. I . . . wasn’t happy. I don’t like being War Hammer.”
I looked at him, expectantly.
“It’s that damn chest plate,” he said. “It chafes. I don’t know how Sam does it.”
“I knew it!” I said, pointing at him. “I knew you hated it!”
He laughed a little helplessly. “Well, the good news is that I don’t have to be War Hammer anymore.”
“No? Does that mean Sam’s done finding himself?”
“Yeah, it turns out getting his powers taken away put a few things in perspective for him, too. I talked to him last night.” Guy’s fingers twitched on his fork. He’d finally gotten a haircut, so his hair didn’t fall into his eyes for once. The morning light made his eyes spectacularly green as he looked at me. “He was in Mexico for a while. He said he liked the warm weather. I suggested maybe he should put in for a transfer.”
“Do you mean . . . ?”
“People have been asking where Blaze is,” Guy said. “I think the answer to that is going to be Chicago from now on. Sam can take over my job at Dad’s office in Miami. It’s not like I do anything but fill a desk and look pretty, anyway.”
