by R J Johnson
Tate had dreamed of falling now and again, but he’d always woken up before he’d hit. This time, he’d woken up to find himself still falling. There was nothing that could save him now, he knew. He found himself wishing he had let Javier kill him and dump him over the Pacific Ocean. At least then, Javier would have been stuck dealing with Kline.
Plus he’d have finally gotten some rest.
Watching the ground rush up towards him, he tried to estimate how much further he had to fall. He had to have been falling for at least two minutes, and the ground was getting uncomfortably close.
Suddenly Kline was there, standing next to him in midair.
“Help me!” Tate screamed in terror. Kline sighed, reached out a hand to Tate. Tate grasped it, like a drowning man looking for safe harbor, hugging Kline tightly.
They reappeared on the deck, Tate still screaming as if he was still moving at terminal velocity through the air.
“You can stop screaming now, Mr. Tate,” Kline said mildly.
Tate opened his eyes and saw he still had his arms around his boss. He stepped back, embarrassed.
“I’m… sorry…” Tate began.
Kline waved him off and nodded towards the very angry workers, all of whom were now moving towards them with murder in their eyes. Several of them were holding clubs, sledgehammers and other various ugly weapons that Kline decided he didn’t want to deal with.
“I think we’ve worn out our welcome, don’t you, Mr. Tate?” Kline asked. Tate nodded quickly, still shaking from his experience.
They made their way towards the suburban. Tate hopped in, starting the vehicle as the workers began shooting at him and his boss. Kline ducked under the weapons fire and got into the car as Tate floored it.
Fish-tailing out of the mining camp, they headed back to the airport.
Chapter Forty-Three
Alex and Emily didn’t speak during the drive. Alex had shapeshifted into a wolf hoping the animal’s better senses would help him pick up Collier’s trail, but it hadn’t quite worked the way he’d hoped. It seemed there were limits to his understanding of the stones.
“Utterly useless,” Alex grumbled, pulling his no-longer-canine head back into the Hypertruck. Scott gave him a sympathetic head-shake.
“You have no idea where he went?” Alex asked Emily for the third time.
“I’ve told you, we just left the only place I know of,” Emily said with a huff. “There’s nowhere else.”
Christina was nose deep in her iPhone when her eyes went wide. She leaned forward to join the conversation. “Uh, guys?”
“Look, I know you’re stressed,” Alex continued in a lecturing tone, “but you saw what the man’s capable of now. There’s got to be somewhere, something that he’s…”
“Guys?”
“I love him, but it’s not like I stuck a GPS on his ass,” Emily said.
“GUYS!” Christina yelled, lunging between the two. “I know where he went!”
Alex belatedly noticed the worry on Christina’s face. With a scrunched nose, she peered back down at her phone’s tiny screen.
“What? Where is he?” Alex asked. “How do you know?”
“Because he’s telling everyone,” Christina whispered in horror. She handed the iPhone to Emily who turned it on its side and turned up the volume on the live video onscreen.
“The terrorist group responsible for yesterday’s devastating attack on downtown San Diego has now claimed that they’ve taken control of the San Ellijo Nuclear Plant. Authorities say they are threatening to blow it up and contaminate the entire West Coast with radiation unless their demands are met.”
Alex allowed his eyes to dart over to Emily’s, curious to see if she understood what that meant. She ignored him as tears began rolling down her face again, and he felt horrible for taking pleasure in her pain.
“Oh what in the actual fuck is he doing?” Scott asked his eyes opened wide in surprise. He turned to Christina. “San Ellijo, what kind of nuke plant is it? PWR?”
Christina searched quickly on her iPhone. “Most plants in the US are; I’m betting ‘the boobies’ are no exception.”
Scott giggled at the well-known nickname, then shook it off.
“Is that bad?” Alex asked.
“Technically, no,” Scott answered for her. “PWR’s are self-regulating, but there’s no telling what his stone can do to the reaction. If he unleashed the kind of hell we saw yesterday, then…”
“I’m guessing it doesn’t end well for us.”
“San Ellijo isn’t exactly up to date. If he’s able to put that plant into meltdown with that stone of his…” Scott shook his head. “Jesus, dude, you might as well write off the whole west coast.”
“The explosion is that big?” Alex asked worried.
“To hell with the explosion,” Christina said with a quiver in her voice. “The radiation would spread all across the Pacific seaboard and contaminate most of the world’s shipping lanes. The damage would be ungodly.”
“Then we have to stop him,” Alex declared, looking to Scott. “How far is San Ellijo from here?”
“Twenty minutes,” Scott said, glancing at the instrument panel. “But I don’t know how you expect to get us in there. By now the whole place has to have been cordoned off by the police, Feds, Homeland Security and just about every other alphabet soup organization the US government can throw at him.”
Alex thought about the shapeshifting stone in his pocket and looked at Scott. “I wonder…”
He took out Siobhan’s stone — he still thought of it that way — and closed his eyes while concentrating on Scott. Suddenly, there was a yelp, and where Scott had been sitting was now a pile of clothes where a tropical bird was squawking and flapping its wings in horror.
Emily’s jaw fell to the floor. Christina burst out laughing. Alex couldn’t help but smile.
The parrot waddled back and forth and squawked in panic again, flapping its wings violently and scattering colorful feathers all across the Hypertruck. Alex concentrated again, and Scott reappeared. He looked around in panic, then realized he was stark naked, his clothing sitting in a pile underneath him. He scrambled to put his underwear back on while trying his best to cover his shame.
“Not cool, Alex!” Scott yelped. “And why a bird, of all things?”
Christina was still laughing her ass off. Emily, having recovered from the initial shock, started to giggle a bit herself.
“It seemed appropriate,” Alex said with a smile. “Besides, I wanted to see if I could make something that flew.”
“You couldn’t turn me into a badass dragon like you got to be last night?” Scott fumed, pulling his t-shirt back over his head and zipping up his shorts.
“I think our space was a little cramped for that,” Alex pointed out. “Besides, for what I’ve got in mind, I think we need something a little less conspicuous than a fifty-foot dragon.”
“We still need to get inside,” Christina added. “And with our clothing intact, thank you very much.”
Emily turned to look at her friend. “You don’t need to…”
“I do,” Christina replied. Her sad, brown eyes reflected Emily’s pain. “I know what Max meant to you, and if you’re going in, so am I.”
Emily squeezed her friend’s hand and nodded her thanks.
Alex cleared his throat. “Leave the ‘getting us in with our clothes intact’ to me.”
“Well,” Scott said hesitantly, punching in the destination to the nuclear plant on the computer, “I’ve always wanted to know what it’s like to fly.”
“Emily?” Alex looked at her questioningly.
She looked up at him slowly, finally meeting his eyes for the first time since he’d learned that she was engaged.
“What?” she asked dryly.
“I know I can’t possibly understand what you must be going through, but I think it’s become pretty clear that whoever you fell in love with is not who we met earlier,” Alex said softly. “It�
�s actually pretty clear that whatever these stones are, his isn’t exactly playing well with his psyche.”
“What are you asking?” Emily asked, deadpan. Alex hated her for this; she was going to make him say it.
“I’m saying that when the time comes, are you gonna be okay with me putting him down if I need to?”
Emily didn’t answer. What could anyone say to that? She knew Max wasn’t a bad person necessarily. She wouldn’t have agreed to marry him if he had been, after all, but the plain fact of it was that whoever had returned from Peru, it was not the man she imagined would be her husband. Max wouldn’t care about money the way this man did. Max wouldn’t care about a single failure in Peru; he’d have just moved on to the next project.
No, Maxwell Collier had died in Peru, Emily decided. The only thing left was whether or not she’d be a willing party to his murderous rampage, whether she’d hesitate to stop him from poisoning the entire west coast.
“Emily?”
She looked at Alex and made her decision.
“When the time comes, you let me do it,” Emily said firmly. Alex began to protest, but she held up her hand to stop him. “You can heal me with your stone and protect me with the other one if you need to.”
Alex began to say something, but stopped himself. What else could he say to her that wouldn’t sound like clichéd platitudes about doing the right thing?
The right thing and the easy thing did not meet up very often in the universe they lived in.
The Hypertruck moved up the 5 Freeway as Alex began to go through his plan for getting them inside.
Chapter Forty-Four
Gaining entrance to the nuclear plant had been easier than he thought it would be. The stone had allowed him to cut through whatever security popped up to stop him. The ability to keep the guards’ weapons from firing was especially helpful.
Most of the scientists had fled the facility at the first sign of trouble. Those few who’d remained behind were either dead or dying in the inferno he had sparked during the onslaught. Once inside, it hadn’t taken long for the authorities to come calling for his demands. Beyond a vague threat of turning the entire west coast into glowing rubble, he had decided to let them stew for a few minutes.
It was only now that he was inside that he’ recognized the sheer power at his fingertips. He could feel the slow drumming of the nuclear reactor’s heart, as if it were calling to him. Its siren’s song enamored him.
His feet felt the thrum of the nuclear chain reaction several floors below. So much power. So much energy. As he approached the elevator that would take him down into the core’s most delicate parts, he knew it was not a matter of whether he would unleash hell on southern California, but when.
The doors to Unit 3 slid open, and as he stepped into the hallway, he felt the generator’s call grow even stronger. Two guards at the other end of the hallway didn’t even bother to shout at him, but raised their automatic rifles and tried to fire. Collier’s stone foiled their efforts, and their weapons clicked uselessly in their hands.
Collier grinned and enjoyed the feeling of the power flowing through him. The more he used the stone, the less effort he needed to go on using it. Neutering the guards’ weapons had been as easy as breathing.
One of the guards threw his gun down and charged. The maniacal professor grinned and flicked a finger toward the man, barely watching as he died a hellish death of flame and smoke.
“A little hot under the collar there?” Collier giggled. Puns really were the best part of the gig as a supervillain, he decided.
Suddenly, that thought hit home. He WAS a supervillain.
He looked at the stone, then back at the other guard, who was cowering in a corner praying to be spared. He wasn’t even looking at Collier anymore; he was only mumbling whatever words his religion of choice had taught him for comfort.
Collier stared at the man a moment longer, then turned back to his stone. So much had changed so quickly. All he’d wanted at the start was a little recognition. For being a living, breathing person. For showing that he cared about something more than just living and dying in a world that grew darker with every turn.
The man went on praying. For the first time in the last few days, Collier felt pity and remorse. He thought about the police officers he had torched back at the banks, about the fear and pain and death he’d put them through
He thought about all the children who played on the nearby beaches and how they would be ruined if he followed through with his plan.
He thought of the look on Emily’s face when he had tried to burn her for her betrayal.
And then he thought of the smug, grinning asshole she had shown up with at the small house he’d rented.
He thought of Professor Porter’s fat face telling him that his research was useless, and that it would never lead anywhere.
He thought of every person who said he would never amount to anything. That he wasn’t smart enough, not strong enough, not good enough.
He thought of those people and his eyes narrowed. He summoned a ball of flame and walked slowly towards the guard.
The man saw Collier coming, closed his eyes and prayed again from the start.
Perhaps his family would be okay without him, Collier thought.
Chapter Forty-Five
The roadblocks on the 5 freeway began just before Camp Pendleton. Scott pulled off as directed by the highway patrolman who did a double take at the strange vehicle, but waved him through the roadblock to join all the other traffic turning north.
“I think this’s about as close as we’re gonna get,” Scott said. He drove the truck a few more blocks away from the police activity, then parked next to the beach.
“It’ll have to do,” Alex decided. They piled out of the Hypertruck, and Alex looked over his friends. “Are you ready?”
“’Bout as ready as I’m ever gonna be,” Scott grumbled. “Just make it something that won’t take us long to get over there. It’s still five miles away after all.”
“I’m thinking an eagle or a hawk,” Christina said, balling her fists and doing a little dance in spite of herself. “Something cool like that.”
Alex nodded with a smile. “As you wish.”
Christina smiled and stepped back, drawing in a deep breath.
Alex closed his eyes and reached for the same power he used to transform himself and Scott.
At the sound of a screech, he opened his eyes to see a huge bird swaddled in Christina’s sweater and skirt.
“Oh for Christ’s sake,” Emily said as she moved to help free her friend out from underneath the clothing.
“Hey, I’m new at this,” Alex said.
The eagle struggled free, beating its enormous wings against the offshore breeze. It screeched again happily and took off, circling around them with ease.
“Wow!” Scott said as he turned his head to watch her fly.
“Your turn,” Alex told him.
Scott’s finger shot up, and Alex guessed he was about to say, “No parrot,” but Alex interrupted him by turning him into a rather large macaw.
Emily rolled her eyes. “Can’t give the guy a break, huh?”
“What? He’s already got experience as a parrot; I think it’s the best thing for him.” Alex cocked his head at her., “What about you? Any preferences?”
“Just give me something that can get me over there,” she grumbled. Alex didn’t say anything else and thought of the first thing that came to mind with her.
She shifted quickly into a huge phoenix. Her feathers gleamed with vibrant shades of red and purple Alex had never seen before. Emily the Phoenix stepped out of her clothing and shook herself regally, extending her neck and feeling out new sensations Alex could barely imagine.
He gasped at how beautiful she was. Golden and full of life, the phoenix looked up at the sky above and spread her large wings, beating them against the air and taking off with power and grace. Emily flew around his head, leading Scott and Christina a
s they dived bombed and swam through the air in her wake. Alex supposed they’d be a bit higher-profile than he’d originally planned, but still, it felt strangely appropriate.
He watched his friends fly in the warm sunshine, giving them time to learn to move their new bodies. Then he pursed his lips and gave a loud whistle. The birds looked down on him, and he pointed towards San Ellijo.
They began flocking toward the nuclear plant as Alex gathered their things together. He didn’t get to fly; when it came to getting himself inside, Alex had a much better idea.
Chapter Forty-Six
Colonel Ash advanced on the man guarding the operation’s central command.
“Sir,” the private was trying to explain to him, “this is a critical situation, and we can’t have any non-essential personnel…”
“Can it, Private!” Ash roared. “Do you see my goddamn creds?” Ash shoved his wallet directly in the private’s face, nearly mashing it with the plastic laminate. “Or do you need a closer look?”
“I know who you claim to be, sir,” the private said, biting his tongue. “But I have my orders, and I cannot allow you to cross over to the op center without authorization…”
“How about the entire goddamn federal government?” Ash screamed. “How’s that for authorization?” He pushed past the private, then heard the shuffle and click of the young man drawing his weapon. Ash stopped and looked halfway over his shoulder.
“Either shoot me, or let me go about getting the business of the United States government done,” the Colonel said.
“Is there a problem here?” A man with greying temples stepped away from the conversation he was having and moved over to Ash and the determined private.
Ash took note of the bars on the man’s sleeves. “Finally, someone who understands chain of command. I’m Colonel Nathaniel Ash, a special liaison from the NRO.”
“Lieutenant Washington,” the man said, extending a hand to him. He turned to the private. “You check his creds?”
