Super: Underground: Book 2 in the Super: Series

by Palladian

  “So you’re the one who decided to dog us,” Lex growled.

  Alison sneered at Lex. “What’s it to you?” she asked, but something about her voice told Lex that what Riss had said earlier had shaken her.

  A moment later, however, the thought vanished as a sudden wave of pain washed over her head. Looking up, she saw the smug expression back on Alison’s face as she stared back at the other woman. After a minute of just enduring it, anger rushed through Lex again. She imagined the pain that Alison seemed to be sending her way as a physical entity and pushed it out of her head. The other woman went from looking smug to panicked and fearful as Lex felt the pain subside altogether.

  Lex felt fierce confidence bloom in her as she moved in to engage Alison, but the first punch she threw sent pain shooting up her arm without even touching the other woman. Alison looked smug again as Lex brought up her hand to run it along a curved, invisible surface surrounding the other woman.

  “You’re a complete idiot,” Alison said with a sneer. “Haven’t you ever heard of a force field?”

  Lex just ignored the words as she worked her way around Alison, feeling the force field and trying to find a break in it. She felt frustrated until she made her way around the back, and then she became worried, not having found a way in.

  Over Alison’s shoulder, Lex could see Lou and the ex-military guy exchanging blows. Lou got knocked into a dumpster, and the resulting screech of metal as his body made an impression sounded deafening. The stranger, however, had been knocked to one knee from Lou’s blow, cracking the pavement of the sidewalk. Lex thought they seemed evenly matched enough that the fight could go on for some time. While searching the force field, Lex had heard Lou ask Casey to back him up if needed, but otherwise not to join. Casey helped Victor stand as she watched Lou and the other man fight, itching her other palm against her jeans. Victor looked shaken, probably thrown out of the way of the two other men fighting, Lex realized. Riss stood in Casey’s shadow, but appeared to be somewhere else, deep in concentration. The woman Kate fought had somehow managed to take a hold of Kate’s arm, bent at the elbow and holding it hard enough so that Kate seemed unable to shake loose. Kate kicked at the woman instead, but as Lex watched, she grabbed Kate’s leg and held on. To Lex’s dismay, as her gaze traveled outwards, she realized they’d started to attract a crowd, including people looking out of nearby windows. It’ll only be a matter of time before someone calls the police, Lex thought.

  Her mind reeled as she tried to think of how to address her opponent but thought it over and realized how many of their opponents had been using delaying tactics. A wave of fear washed over her as she realized reinforcements may have already been called. “Fuck,” Lex muttered, “we just don’t have time for this. Orange!” she called in a voice that seemed to penetrate all the chaos going on around them.

  All of her team immediately stopped and drew back from their opponents. Kate looked alarmed for a moment, but tilted her head to the side so that her ear brushed the arm her opponent held. When a glance told her that all five of her teammates had jammed their fingers into their ears, she opened her mouth at the same moment that Alison started saying, “Wait! She’s going to—”

  “Stop!” Lex yelled as loud as she could manage, feeling the sound seem to condense in her chest just before she let it out.

  The silence that resulted seemed unnatural, with the normal sounds of the city still going on at a farther distance. Lex took a long breath out then, turning slightly as she watched the rest of her team start to take their fingers out of their ears. Kate began to struggle to remove her arm and leg from the now frozen woman’s grasp and Lex rushed to assist. When they got her free seconds later, the rest of the team had gathered around Lex and Kate.

  “Let’s go,” Lex said, but then had an awful realization that as soon as the people here got free, she and her friends would be pursued, likely by people worse than police.

  She looked up to see everyone watching her and sighed. Lex didn’t want to exercise the idea that had come to her, but she did want to make sure everyone would be safe. She closed her eyes and sighed again before opening them and speaking.

  “All of you, please go a little way down the street. Try to stop somewhere out of sight of these people here,” Lex said as she gestured at the group they’d been fighting some minutes before. “Put your fingers in your ears and hum, because I’m going to try something. I don’t know if it’ll work, but I don’t want any of you to get caught up in it. Keep your ears covered until you see me walking towards you.”

  All five of them nodded and began to move off, but Lex caught Riss’ arm as the other woman turned to go. “Could you lend me that black hoodie you have in your bag?” Lex asked her. “I thought I saw you wearing it before we went on stage.”

  Silently, Riss took off and unzipped her backpack, then handed Lex the sweater before she walked down the street with the others. Lex watched them until she could see them stick their fingers in their ears and then she turned back to the unmoving circle of people. She circled them, trying to find a spot where they would all be able to hear her but she would be seen at a minimum. Finally, she found somewhere to stand and pulled the hood over her head.

  Looking at the woman who’d said she wouldn’t help Alison, Lex smiled ruefully. “I’m really sorry,” she said in a quiet voice and then took a deep breath and felt the power gathering in her. “Forget us!” she cried, feeling the words pour from her like a wall of sound.

  Lex tried not to look any of the group in the eye as she turned to walk down the sidewalk, but her eyes slid across those of the woman she’d addressed earlier and she felt her stomach twist at the blank look in them now. She tried not to hurry as she walked to rejoin her team, but she put a hand up to them as she approached to let them know everything had been done.

  “Let’s get to the van and get the hell out of here,” she muttered as she rejoined them. “Don’t run or do anything else to bring attention, but let’s keep moving.”

  “Right,” Casey replied, shepherding the group along.

  Casey took the wheel while Lou settled in back, Riss sat in front, and the other three sat in the middle seat.

  “Is everyone OK?” Lex asked once they’d begun moving. She mentally cursed herself for the waver in her voice, but looked at Victor to start with.

  “I’m fine,” he said, looking a little embarrassed. “I just hit the wall a little hard when the big guy tried to smack me. I dodged most of it, but what did hit me sent me flying.”

  Kate, who’d been fussing over Victor, laughed. “I’m fine, don’t look at me,” she said.

  “Lou? How about you?” Lex asked, looking over the back of the seat.

  He nodded in response. “I’m a little beat up, but I’ll be fine. It’s definitely not the worst I’ve ever gotten. I’ll be fine in no time.”

  Casey tried not to meet Lex’s eyes in the rearview mirror. “I’m fine,” she nearly growled. “That guy just grabbed—” she stopped, took a breath, and started again. “He just really pissed me off.”

  Aghast, Lex considered what the man might have grabbed after seeing how he’d leered at Casey just before the fight. “Sorry to hear it,” Lex said, an eyebrow raised. “Riss, you OK?”

  Riss nodded and turned to face the back of the van. “I’m fine, but none of the security cameras in the area will ever work again, and any modern car within a three block area will need to have some of its computer parts replaced before it’ll move again.”

  “Hell, you were busy,” Lex breathed, her eyes open in wonder. Riss smirked in return and turned back to face the front of the van.

  “So, what was that, anyway?” Lex asked as she turned to Victor.

  The man beside her grinned as he took something about the size of a paint ball out of his pocket. “Well, it’s something I’d been thinking about for a while,” he responded. “Some of these little batteries they’re making these days can take a big charge. I guessed that if I could figure
out a way to get them to discharge all of it at once, it could stun most people. Once I figured out how to make it fly through the air, I weighted it so that the capsule will fly with a certain orientation, break on contact, and push the prongs into whatever the capsule hits. Once both prongs contact something, as long as it’s any kind of conductor, the full charge will be expelled.”

  Lex turned the little thing over in her hand a few times before handing it back. “How did you hit that guy, though? He must have been moving amazingly fast: it looked like he just disappeared to me.”

  He chuckled. “Oh, so you noticed? Well,” Victor continued, pulling the goggles off from around his neck, “I built these with a number of capabilities, like night vision, but one of the experimental things I built into them was a sort of movement predictor. Riss helped me out a bit with some of the programming,” he said, looking ahead at the other woman with grin. “The goggles and the gun are wirelessly connected, so the predictor tracked the guy, because he was too fast for me to see, and let me know when I should fire. I wasn’t sure if I’d calculated the speed of my own reflexes correctly or the speed of the gun, but it must have been close enough. I was surprised he didn’t dodge my shot; I think he might have been fast enough to do it, but I don’t think he was paying me any attention.”

  Victor fell silent then, obviously still thinking about the encounter. Kate leaned around him so that she could look at Lex. “You know, I was kind of pissed that you stopped things where you did,” she said, a pout on her face. “Why did you cut it so short?”

  Lex sighed. “We were starting to draw a crowd, people looking out their windows and stuff,” she responded. “I figured it would only be a matter of time before someone called the police, and I was worried that they had other people coming from the labs. Besides, I know no one would want any of us to get hurt.”

  Kate tilted her head to the side, considering. “I guess you’re right about that. Why did you have us go down the block, though?”

  “As soon as they snapped out of it they’d just be after us again, and they’d probably have MSI and the police and everyone else tracking us down, so I did the first thing I could think of,” Lex said, her voice small and unsteady. She could feel all of the blood draining from her face and straight to her churning stomach. “I told them to forget us. And, of course, any bystander within earshot. I have no idea what that will even do to those people.”

  She fell silent then, staring at the van’s carpet, and everyone was quiet all around. After a few moments, however, Lex started to feel hot waves of nausea roll over her.

  “Stop the car, please, Casey,” she asked desperately, her hand over her mouth. She managed to hold it together until the van pulled to a stop at the side of the road and she could pull the door open, and then Lex threw up anything that remained of their long-ago dinner.

  Someone pushed a couple of paper towels into her hands and a bottle of water, and in a few minutes Lex stopped trembling so much and felt ready to set off again. As she came back into the van, however, she saw Casey watching her.

  “Hey,” Casey said, half-turned in the driver’s seat to look at Lex. “You and Riss switch places, emo girl. Come on up here.”

  Riss silently undid her seatbelt and moved to one of the bench seats in the back while Lex moved to sit in the front passenger’s seat. She settled in and took another drink of water, waiting for Casey to have her say.

  The taller woman waited until they’d begun moving again before she spoke. “Look, Lex,” she started, glancing over at her friend before looking back at the road again. “I can see you’re feeling guilty about what happened, but you need to let it go. If anything, you and Riss and Kate are the reason that we got out of here before we got ambushed, and because we all worked together as a team, we got out.”

  “Yes, but I should have—” Lex started, but was cut off by Casey’s strong voice again.

  “Yes, you should have said something sooner about your dreams, but you didn’t know. You won’t do that again in the future. Right?” Casey threw Lex a hard look after her comment, but then she smiled.

  “Right,” Lex responded, trying to return a grin. “I won’t do that again.”

  “OK, so lesson learned,” Casey said briskly. “And I don’t want to see you moping because you think you did something bad to those folks in Seattle, either. They knew what they were in for, and they attacked us first. Hell, when we were on one of those teams we knew we could be up against anything, too.”

  Lex nodded way too many times, looking down at her hands. She heard Casey sigh beside her and then continue speaking.

  “Look, if it’s any consolation, I doubt you permanently damaged them. Your commands wear off after time, right? Who knows: maybe it didn’t work anyway.”

  “If it didn’t, we’re going to have a lot of things to worry about really fast,” Lex said in a low tone, then winced as the pain in her head that had started when her opponent had attacked her started to throb.

  Casey glanced over at her again. “Head bothering you?” she asked, to which Lex nodded. Casey nodded in return. “Well, we’re not going to be able to do much until we get home, anyway. Take some medicine and go in back with Lou and sleep. I’m sure you’ll get some ideas in the morning and we’ll all sit down and figure out what to do next.”

  Suddenly feeling a lot better, Lex nodded. “OK,” she replied, then more quietly, “thanks, Casey.”

  Casey smiled at her as she got up and moved to the back, and Riss gave Lex a nod as the computer genius moved back into the front passenger seat.

  Chapter 32: Best Laid Plans

  They drove straight through until they got back to Phoenix, which took somewhere around a full day. Everyone ended up taking a turn at the wheel or keeping the driver awake. When they finally got home, they quickly unpacked the van, but once everyone had finished, Lex noticed that most everyone else’s adrenaline seemed to have run out around the same time while she couldn’t stop herself from pacing back and forth from the kitchen back into the main room.

  After silence had reigned for several minutes, Lex watched Casey gathering herself to look around at Kate, who had her head on the dining table, Riss slumping in a nearby chair and staring into a corner, Victor leaning his head in his hands, and Lou falling asleep in his chair.

  “Let’s all get some sleep,” Casey said, raising her voice to be heard around the room. “Once we wake up we can spend some time thinking, and then we can meet and talk about it tomorrow night. OK, everyone?”

  The assembled group all nodded or said yes, then filed up the stairs. Lex stayed behind for a moment, biting her lip, before she said good night to Casey and Lou.

  “Hey,” Casey said as Lex turned away. When she glanced back, her friend continued, “You did really well. You should be proud.”

  Lex ducked her head before she turned to walk back up the stairs. “Thanks,” she said in return, the muffled word floating out into the emptiness of the main room.

  Everyone slept in the next day, got up to leisurely eat and work out or think. Lex noticed little knots of people in different discussions during most of the day, but she was too preoccupied with doing her own planning and thinking to dwell on it.

  Finally, sometime after darkness had fallen, everyone started to gravitate to the table in the main room. They found seats, and after a few moments, Lex noticed everyone looking at her to begin. She coughed once, then dove into what she’d thought about saying.

  “OK, well, I guess I’ll start,” she said, trying her best to speak calmly. “I thought of a few options that we could talk about, so I’ll start going through them. Feel free to jump in at any time to add anything.”

  Lex looked around the table, trying to see if anyone else wanted to begin instead of her, but everyone just continued listening. She sighed as she started talking again. “Well, the first and probably most obvious option would be splitting up. We could—”

  “I’m sorry Lex,” Casey said, interrupting. “
I did want to take a little vote right now, though. Is anyone here interested in discussing breaking the team up? Could you raise your hands if you are?”

  Lex and Casey both looked carefully around the table. No one raised a hand; a number of people had their hands carefully placed on the table so their intentions couldn’t be mistaken.

  “Thanks, everyone,” Casey continued with a nod. “Apparently no one is interested in discussing that option. Could we throw that one out and continue with the other options you’ve thought up?”

  “Uh, sure, sure,” Lex responded, ducking her head to hide her smile. “All right,” she continued, “the first couple of options I came up with involve asking Riss to create new IDs for us. I apologize for that because I know it’s hard work, but it might be the easiest way to get away clean. I figure what I did in Seattle is only a delaying tactic. So, the first two options involve getting new IDs and either moving somewhere else here in the States so that we’re not recognized, or going to another country to live.

  “I guess the downside to moving somewhere else in this country is that it only took them a little over a year and a half to find us. True, it seems like dumb luck, but there’s no way to say if there are other people like Alison out there. It’s yet to be determined, but moving to another country might be safer, especially if they have better policies about people like us and Riss is able to get us good papers for living there.”

  Lex paused for a moment as Riss nodded, then continued. “The third option I considered might be the most difficult, but for any of you who are tired of feeling like we’re criminals on the run, I thought we could try to leave the country as our current identities. Maybe we could do it under the guise of an overseas tour and then figure out a way to live somewhere that’s friendlier to us than here.”

  She took a deep breath after she finished speaking and looked around the table. Kate and Victor both looked thoughtful, Casey smiled as Lou met her eye, and Riss nodded.

  “Actually, I have something I’d like to add to the last point Lex made,” Riss said, shooting a glance around the table. “The last option Lex put on the table is the one I’ve been thinking of, and I’ve been doing some research. I really like what I’ve seen in Europe as to their attention to human rights. Their declaration actually talks about the fact that everyone is equal under the law with no exceptions, and that the sort of ‘medicine’ practiced on us is forbidden. I have to admit that I’ve sort of focused on that area of the world after my initial searches turned that up, but I also figured that it would be likely that we could get at least one of the member states interested in keeping us, plus there are a number of them where English is spoken.”