Masks (Out of the Box Book 9)

by Robert J. Crane

  Uh. Never mind. Again.

  Oh, wait. I remember what I’d done to deserve it. I stole all his memories of our relationship and then somehow he found out about it. Whoops.

  “It’s been down there for at least two minutes already!” Jamie shouted from where she hung beneath me. I could feel the pull of her weight, but Gavrikov’s flight power essentially negated gravity, so really the only problem was just the pressure on my spine where her gravity tether—or whatever—was latched on. “They’ve probably deployed the sub!”

  “If they’re in the water, I can stop them,” Scott said with a kind of confidence that I didn’t remember seeing from him when last we’d crossed paths. It was, however, reminiscent of the Scott I’d known when we’d first met, and he’d been a brash, kind of rude kid who’d had the inside track at the Directorate and I was a smartass loner.

  Good times.

  “You sure about that, ace?” I prickled back at him. “Even a mini-sub has got to weigh a couple tons.”

  “I’ve got this,” he said, reaffirming his current implacable badassness for me. No one understood trying to impress an ex like I did, but he was going over and above, in my opinion.

  “Well, it’s not going to do us much good if you just pull them out of the water, is it?” Jamie asked, her voice a little faded by the wind. She must have realized we were waiting for a fuller explanation. “Unless you think they’ll just talk to the police when we bring them in?”

  I looked down at her, her white and black leotard a nice contrast with the grey and brown city rooftops below. “I got kind of an ex-foreign-military-hardass-merc vibe from the ones I saw carted out of the bank. Having experienced these guys in the past on many, many—many, many—”

  “We get it, you kill a lot of guns for hire,” Scott said.

  “—many, many occasions, most of the higher level ones that could pull an op like this are unlikely to talk. They’ll lawyer up and it’ll be like trying to coax blood out of a seashell.”

  “Nice simile,” Scott said dryly. “And … point taken.”

  “Nice to see you can still be reasonable,” I said, and I could sense the mood behind me darken.

  “I can follow their progress under the water,” Scott said tightly, a moment later, and I realized that whatever he’d wanted to say he’d buried. “See where they lead us, if you think that’s a smarter play?”

  “Well, it can’t be any dumber than ripping their mini-sub out of the depths and shaking it like a can of pop,” I said as we crossed over the wreckage of the promenade below, where the garbage truck had left a wake of destruction as it had headed into the river. People were standing at the end of the smashed railing where it had plunged through, pointing and talking.

  “This is where I get off,” Scott said.

  “Honestly, with all that grabbing and rubbing you were doing, I figured maybe you already had,” I groused.

  “Don’t flatter yourself.” He dropped from my back and caught himself on twin pillars of water, like he was shooting jets to hold himself aloft about ten feet above the Hudson. He swayed a little as he caught his balance, then stood there, concentrating, lowering down to a few inches off the water, before he started to slide over the surface like he was surfing without a board or any discernible waves.

  “That’s … kind of cool,” Jamie said, sounding mildly impressed. I could feel the shift in weight now that he was gone, my world a little pleasantly lighter.

  “He has his moments,” I said grudgingly. However willing I might have been to admit I’d screwed Scott over, I still didn’t appreciate the looming threat he currently represented to me. “Let’s go.”

  43.

  I followed along after Scott as he jetted over the surface of the water, Gravity Gal hanging from me like she was on an invisible swing. He took a clear path, like he was an arrow shot straight, heading south. Jersey passed by on my right and Manhattan’s skyscrapers were to my left as we followed him following the sub. We were really moving, and I had to wonder what kind of sub they had, because it was probably going forty miles an hour or more as it headed past the tip of lower Manhattan. I could see Ellis Island up ahead, and past that, the Statue of Liberty.

  We kept going, the sun hot. My back was aching, and I had Wolfe doing some healing every few minutes just to take the load off. “Any chance you can walk yourself for a bit now that we’re slowed down?” I asked her.

  “Not really,” she replied apologetically. “I can’t establish an anchor on the water. I need a fixed point, or at least something that can bear my weight.”

  “How about the river bed?”

  “Too far down.” She shook her head. “I need to be able to see the point I’m attaching the gravity channel to.” She paused. “I think.”

  “What do you mean, you think?”

  “Well, I’ve never tried attaching a channel to something I couldn’t see,” she said, a little defensively.

  I frowned down at her. “Wait, how long have you had these powers?”

  “A few months,” she said, and that caused me to frown deeper. She must have sensed my surprise because she asked, “What?”

  “Metas manifest in their teenage years,” I said, “and no offense, but … you are not a teen.”

  “Uh, no, obviously,” she said. “Why does that matter?”

  “Because it means your powers weren’t a natural, genetically passed-on phenomenon.” I felt my jaw grow tight as I contemplated that little detail.

  She had turned herself so that she was on her back, swaying in mid-air, looking up at me. “Wait … you’re saying … I’m not a … a natural-born meta?” I nodded, and she got it. “Then … how did I get my powers?”

  “You mean you don’t know?”

  “I have no idea,” she said, and sounded earnest enough that I believed her. “I just woke up one day and I could … well, you know. All this, plus strength and—”

  “Yeah. You got them artificially,” I said tightly. “There’s a serum that does it.” I shook my head. “I thought it was a secret, that it was all … out of circulation.” I felt that headache returning as I recalled the destructive power unleashed the last time some wise guy—by the name of Edward Cavanagh—thought to create a meta army. “I guess we were wrong.”

  44.

  The Verrazano-Narrows Bridge loomed ahead, wide and sweeping, stretching from Staten Island over to Brooklyn. I followed Scott under the enormous span, about a hundred yards behind him. I heard Jamie make a shocked sound, followed by a pained sigh. “What?” I asked.

  “Nothing,” she said, and it was plainly not nothing. “I just … had a busy day ahead of me before all … all this.”

  “Yeah, it’s pretty much a job, this hero business,” I said, like I was old hand. Which I was. “You know, if you wanted to, you could probably go full time like ol’ Captain Frost did—”

  “Pass.”

  I chuckled under my breath, a few flecks of spray left behind by Scott’s water trail catching me on the forehead. It felt good. “What, you don’t think a hero should be directly responsible to their fans?”

  “I think a hero probably ought to do the right thing,” Jamie said with obvious distaste. “Full stop. And the idea of being beholden to … whoever he’s beholden to … doesn’t appeal to me.”

  “Yeah, I’m not super clear exactly how all that works,” I said. “Crowdsourcing or funding or something? The gist I got was that people pay him to be a hero. Tip him when he saves a squirrel or something, I dunno.”

  “I guess I was under the old-fashioned assumption that being a hero was a public service,” Jamie said drily.

  “I probably shouldn’t talk, since I’m on the payroll of an organization that basically makes me a law enforcement officer for hire, huh?”

  “That’s a little different,” Jamie said, sounding like she was backpedaling. “I think, anyway. I assume if you got a call for help that didn’t involve—”

  “Yeah, I help the local departme
nts in Minneapolis and St. Paul out where I can,” I said. “And people, individually, where I can. Some pro bono type work, though that gets a little dicier now, since a lot of states are not necessarily on board with me helping them.”

  “Run into that problem a lot?”

  “Ohio gave me some static when I offered to help them with a meta criminal last month,” I said. “He was an armed robber that was getting bolder, using his powers to—”

  “I heard about that,” Jamie said with a cringe. “How many did he—”

  “Twelve officers,” I said, suddenly a little scratchy in the throat. “Before they brought him down with a police sniper. This job … I think sometimes people either underestimate or overestimate what a meta can do, though when they go over, at least it’s the safer path.”

  “Are we heading toward that boat? Out there past Breezy Point?” Jamie asked as Scott started a lazy turn to the left, a massive container ship the only thing nearby.

  “Ship,” I corrected her. I frowned in the distance, but I couldn’t see a designation on the hull. “And yeah, I think that might be it.”

  It was only a few hundred yards away, probably about a mile out to sea past the bridge. Our approach had slowed, presumably because Scott had sensed the submarine reducing speed in the water. I’d never really thought about his ability to feel things under the water, but then he’d always been a font of creativity in the ways he’d used his powers.

  “Scott,” I said, drawing closer to him so as to avoid shouting over the open waters, “you might want to—”

  Before I could tell him to back off, I heard shouts over the side of the vessel ahead. Sentries appeared from behind the containers on the deck like ants swarming out of a hill, and I immediately broke skyward, figuring that I’d split any fire they sent our way. I saw the submarine break the surface just ahead, cozying up to the side of the ship as Scott zoomed toward it to attack.

  The gunfire peppered the water below as half a dozen rifles opened up over the side. I caught a glimpse of the bow of the ship and a faded name—Tirragusk, Canta Morgana. I recognized the name of the country at least; Canta Morgana was a country in Eastern Europe, and when last I checked, the haven of more than a few soldiers of fortune.

  “You want me to drop you on the deck?” I asked Jamie as I accelerated up. I planned to drop down myself, engage these clowns one on one. I was mourning the loss of the Sig Sauer P226, but I must have left it in the bank after the explosion.

  “I’ll follow you down,” Jamie said, and she swung like a chain above me as I started my plunge from five hundred feet up. I could see Scott with a wall of water in front of him like a shield as he rose to the side of the ship. He swept five gunmen off their feet and then doused the top of the mini-sub with a hard spray as it opened up. Jamie was just behind me, and I felt her tether release from my waist as she got a new anchor on the boat. I figured I’d be joining Scott in the fight in less than two seconds, and Jamie probably a few seconds after—

  A sudden, compressive detonation caused the Tirragusk to explode beneath me, and the shockwave hit me like a god slapping a fly out of the air. I didn’t even have time to see the ship disintegrate before I was knocked unconscious in the air, that weightless sensation of falling trailing me into the darkness of my dreams.

  45.

  Jamie

  Jamie was lagging far behind Sienna when the ship blew up; she’d braced herself against the deck and was on a slow descent, already sending out channels to drive the guns of the guards at the sides of the ship to the deck. She wanted a soft landing, and all the troubles to be wrapped up by the time she got there.

  Well, she thought as her channel to the ship disintegrated when the Tirragusk exploded into a geyser of fire, one out of two ain’t bad …

  The world bucked around her as Jamie was suddenly left with nothing to steady herself against. The shockwave hit and knocked her head over heels, flipping through the air, the rippling surface of the Atlantic Ocean replaced by the clouded sky as she turned end over end. She caught a glimpse of Sienna as she dropped, insensate, the woman’s t-shirt fluttering in the air as she dropped out of the sky.

  Jamie anchored herself to Sienna and turned the power up to full; this was a terrible idea, but it might buy a few seconds, if they were lucky. Sienna’s unconscious form shot right at her, and Jamie loosened the channel’s power once Sienna had achieved full momentum upward. She let the channel extend like a rubber band as she twisted on her fall and Sienna sprang up, like a bungie cord had caught her.

  Jamie twisted as she fell, passing Sienna by mere inches, and thrust her hand out as she turned, her eyes on the Verrazano Bridge for only a second—but long enough to establish a channel between it and Sienna.

  Jamie activated the channel, turning it on low, and Sienna stopped in midair with a very slight jerk. The channel started to reel her, very slowly, back toward the bridge, arresting her momentum downward, as though she had a winch holding her in place vertically, the strength of the channel holding her aloft.

  “Whew,” Jamie said, her own momentum halted by her tether to Sienna. She hung off the woman like a stray piece of string, dangling over the ocean below as the Tirragusk continued to break up, the hull shattered in the middle, any hint of the mini-sub they’d been chasing gone in the wreckage—

  “Uh oh,” Jamie said.

  Where was the agent—Scott—who they’d been following?

  Jamie cut herself loose from Sienna, leaving the slow channel in place to reel her back to the safety of the bridge. The wind hit Jamie in the face as she dove the last hundred feet, sending out eight channels in an attempt to break her fall into the harbor.

  It didn’t work. She still belly-flopped, and it hurt, especially along that last, stubborn bit of stomach fat that had dogged her for the last decade and a half since she’d had Kyra.

  The water flooded her ears, soaked her costume again—it had just been starting to dry, too—and Jamie opened her eyes to see flames glowing from the wreckage of the ship, lighting up the water beneath the surface like an angry dragon had been loosed below the surface.

  Jamie blinked her bleary eyes against the effect of the salty water. It threatened to flood up her nose, held at bay by the air she had kept in her lungs even through the belly flop. She hadn’t dived like that since the time she’d gone to a public pool as a kid, and made an utter fool of herself with a similar maneuver from the top of the high dive.

  She cut through the water with powerful strokes. Ahead, she could see the twisted wreckage of the mini-sub sinking through the darkness below the Tirragusk, the big ship’s keel broken right in the middle and starting to list as the fore and aft of the ship began their descent toward the bottom.

  Jamie looked for dots, spots, little shadows between her and the flame. He had to be in here somewhere. Probably unconscious, like Sienna, but here somewhere, surely …

  Yes! She saw a shadowy figure drifting down, slower than the mini-sub. She thrashed her legs and propelled herself forward, feeling like a shark cutting through the water. Grateful she had decided not to add a cape to her costume, Jamie pushed against the natural drag as she swam toward the cracking underbelly of the Tirragusk as it sank bit by bit.

  She drew closer and closer to the dark figure, her lungs starting to feel the strain like she had while diving for the garbage truck earlier. Did all heroing experiences take a turn into the water eventually, she wondered? Because swimming really wasn’t Jamie’s forte. She’d been a fairly weak swimmer before gaining her powers, though her metahuman strength made it easier.

  The closer she drew to the figure she was chasing, the more sharply defined he became. His head was down, and he was lazily drifting toward the darkness at the bottom of the ocean. His legs were up in the air, lifeless, and she swam hard toward him, grasping him around the chest, dragging his upper body toward her—

  Jamie screamed in shock, the sound muted by the water, bubbles issuing forth explosively out of her mouth. Sh
e could see the face of the man she’d grasped in the light of the burning ship, and while half his was missing, half was not, and she could tell that this wasn’t Scott—at least not the one she was looking for.

  She pushed off the corpse, letting it continue in its downward path as she felt the hard push against her lungs from the pressure of the water. She looked up and realized she was thirty feet down beneath the surface, no shore in sight, and the broken-up husk of the ship was almost directly overhead now. She looked down and saw nothing but shadows, no visible seabed, though she knew it was surely somewhere below.

  A rumble filtered through her water-laden ears, and she looked up to see another explosion, this one finally rending the Tirragusk irreparably in two. The stern end broke off, sinking ahead of her, and the bow rushed through the water at her, no longer held up by the last tenuous connection between the two pieces. Jamie saw the metal hull slipping inexorably toward her, a shadow that blotted out all light of the surface, and as it sank closer her she raised her hands, trying, frantically, to anchor it to something and push it away, but there was nothing—

  46.

  Sienna

  When I stirred awake, it was to a gentle sea breeze rustling my hair. Bright sunlight was shining through my closed eyelids, and once again, I could feel blood dripping out of my ears like warm bath water. When I opened my eyes I could see the red stains on my dark t-shirt glistening in the light, alerting me that my eardrums had probably ruptured. Again.

  “Ungh,” I said, my neck kinked as I looked around. I was floating lightly over an expansive sea, Long Island and Brooklyn stretching off a couple miles to my left, the wreckage of the Tirragusk breaking up a few hundred yards in front of me, split cleanly in two like a giant hand had chopped it right down the middle. I could see fires burning inside the hull, flaming out across multiple decks even as it continued to sink below the waves bit by bit, and a memory of what had happened before I took a nap came flashing back to me along with a rush of fear.