“Hands behind your back,” the officer says as he reaches behind him and pulls out a pair of cuffs. I miss what happens next because Kate appears with a pop of displaced air.
Shock sends her eyes wide, right before rage consumes her beautiful features. She glares death at the northwest team. “You’re lucky she isn’t who you think she is or you would all be dead right now.”
The police officer jumps from the venom in Kate’s voice and the fact that she wasn’t there a second before. “Take her to a hospital. I’ll contact you for a statement later, Ms. Lockheart,” the officer says.
I nod, breaking out in sweat as shock rolls over me like an old friend. “Kate,” I gasp, trying to breathe.
“I’ve got you hon. Hang tight. Epic, can you take care of her armor?”
I will.
Kate slips her arms under me and lifts me effortlessly as she stands. I cling to her shoulder, not from pain, but from anxiety and shock. As she turns to teleport us out, I see the officer slapping cuffs on Triple Threat. Behind them, a bystander has his phone out filming the whole thing. Great.
“Amelia, seriously. You haven’t even been home a month. You can’t keep doing this to yourself,” Teddy says with a stern look as he finishes wrapping my leg. He’s placed a temporary splint on it. “Your foot isn’t even fully healed yet. Your body is at its limits for what it can take. You need to increase the number of calories from protein you are getting, and you need to drink more water. Stay off your leg, and that means no armor, not even if the moon falls out of the sky? Understand?”
No armor? Usually, a fracture this bad would require a cast. However, Teddy was able to expend some of his personal energy and accelerate the healing process once the bone was set correctly. It’s a miracle I didn’t need surgery.
“For how long?” I ask. I try not to sound like I’m whining but I fail.
“A week, at least.” He glances up at Kate, who’s standing next to me with the patience of a saint. “I expect you to stay with her and keep her from doing anything stupid,” he says while packing up.
“For a girl in a wheelchair, you manage to have a lot of injuries,” she says to me as Teddy leaves. Once he’s gone I rest my head against her stomach and she runs her hands through my hair.
“It was awful, Kate. They were so mad at me. I know some people don’t agree with me, but they were ready to throw down. If I had armored up it would have turned into a full-on fight, but I’m not sure how this is better,” I say with a sigh. I keep my eyes closed in the hopes that maybe this will all just go away.
“This is better because a local filmed it. It’s all over the Internet. You’ve gone viral my dear.”
Oh no. “Epic, my parents? Are they okay?”
Yes. I evacuated them via Emjet. They have requested permission to come to Phoenix for a few days next week. I believe they are thinking of moving here.
“Amelia, what happened with them? You’re excited!”
“Let’s just say, before the Pacific Northwest Dorks interrupted us, we had a breakthrough.” I tell her all about it, how we hugged and the way it made me feel. Also, how guilty I feel about letting so much time go by.
“It’s normal, Amelia, you’re not acting in any way that is at all worrisome,” she says, patting me on the shoulder.
“Well, that doesn’t change that I wasted so much time I could have had with them.”
She lets out a big sigh. “Stop blaming yourself for everything. Good lord, Amelia. Your shoulders aren’t that big.”
She’s right, I know she’s right. It doesn’t change anything, but at least I know she’s right.
“Off to bed?” she asks, moving behind me to push.
The time in my glasses reads barely ten pm. “Uh, no. I’ve got work to do. Wanna join me in the lab? I can show you all the cool things I’m working on.”
She shakes her head, brushing a strand of black hair out of her face. “I want to see how Carlos is doing before I call it a night.”
“Let me know if he wakes up?” I ask her.
“Teddy doesn’t expect him to wake up until tomorrow afternoon at the earliest.” Kate stops and leans against the door jamb, looking back at me for a second. I think she’s going to say something else, but she just gives me a little sad smile.
A second later she’s gone in a pop. I roll over to the bookshelf and pull the lever. The wall refuses to move. “Epic, something wrong with the door to the lab...”
Nothing is wrong, I am overriding it.
“Epic,” I draw out his name in a long breath. “Please open the door?”
I will once you have had a chicken sandwich and some beans. Teddy has filed his prescription with me and I intend to enforce it.
I glance over my shoulder at the kitchen. Memories of Luke spending time in there making me food flash through my mind and I sigh. I sure miss him. Rolling around, I head for the kitchen, shaking my head and muttering about mutinous AIs the entire time.
I toss my seventh can of Coke into the trash, rub my eyes for a few seconds and then refocus. My food sits half eaten and long abandoned as I yawn while scrolling through all my ideas for dealing with Luke. I’d come in here with the intention of finding the Armory or tracking down Tempus, but I can’t stop thinking about Luke.
Amelia, it has been six hours since Kate left. Perhaps some sleep would clear things up for you.
“I can sleep when I’m dead,” I say with a grin, then wince—that was in poor taste, even for me. “You know what I mean,” I tell Epic with a shrug.
I do indeed. If you insist on staying up, might I suggest you change focus? Perhaps putting your talents to work in a different capacity will help you come up with something to stop Luke?
He’s not wrong, as usual. Everything I’ve come up with will eventually be countered by the entity in the Gem. I can’t contain an F5—no one really can, except for the UltraMax. The only real way they have of holding the F5 strongmen is by gassing them and keeping them in medically induced comas. That doesn’t help me. I want Luke back, not in a coma. If only there was a way to neutralize his powers temporarily so the Gem could be extracted from his possession. He apparently keeps it on him.
I pull up the specs of the belt I designed for Monica—the one that allows her to be human for short periods of time. It’s specific to her, but maybe I could modify it to affect Luke? I shake my head. No, that won’t work. The belt helps her because of the carrier wave that connects her to the ice dimension. Luke doesn’t have such a connection. The origination of his powers is a one-way connection.
I swipe through the air, dismissing the screen entirely and leaning back to massage my face. Once I’ve refreshed my eyes a bit I wheel over to the MK VII. It’s pretty much done—all I need to do is add in the missing kinetic manipulator and the suit will be ready for test drive. I smile. Tempus is going to be in for a big surprise when he tries to use the one he took. I may not be able to control who has what, but the stuff I build all has countermeasures now. If Tempus wants it to work, he’s going to have to come back and talk to me.
Where my MK VI is designed for variable rolls, from close combat, riot duty, containment, heck I even have a natural disaster version, the MK VII is the spiritual successor to my alien armor. While not as powerful as her predecessor in that respect, she carries a Sword O’ Doom, two particle beams, my double-barreled grenade launcher, IP Canons, Kinetic Lance, four tank-missiles, and the rifle-sized mass driver with a fifty-round mag. Not only that, her armor is twice as tough and half as thick as the MK III. I’m gonna wipe the floor with the Armory, then, when I’m done beating the hell out of them, find out where they got their tech from.
“Any luck tracing who hacked Artemis?” I ask Epic, while I go about installing the last kinetic manipulator.
I have traced it through over one-hundred different dead ends. Whoever did this is either better at computers than I am, or they spent a long, long time figuring this out. I am leaning toward the former.
�
��Epic, you’re an AI—no one is better at code than you are,” I reassure him while I attach the super-capacitors to the unit. It isn’t about generating power for me at this point, it’s about moving that power where it needs to go without blowing everything. A series of super-capacitors help me regulate flow and store energy for when it’s needed.
A thought occurs to me. I sit back for a second and chew on it rather than saying it out loud.
I can read you like a proverbial book, Amelia. You have thought of something.
I shrug. “Maybe. Maybe... Epic, what if... well, what if they aren’t better at computers than you? Or a better engineer than me? What if they have a superpower, or a series of superpowers that lets them do this stuff,” I say with a wave of my hand. “Copy my work, hack Artemis, that sort of thing. Some kind of affinity for computers or something? What do you think?”
It would make infinitely more sense for there to be a reason outside of natural science for them to be able to do these things. We do know that the more specialized the power is, the rarer it is. There are more strongmen than acrobats. More acrobats than elementals, more elementals than speedsters, etc. All filtered by their level of power. Less F5s than F4s that sort of thing.
“Let’s assume he or she has superpowers doing this. Start searching the database for anyone who—”
Done. Calhoon Mathew Strungel.
“What? No way. Is it that easy?”
You are correct. Mr. Strungel is listed as deceased. He disappeared shortly after we left to fight the Th’un... Amelia, he worked for Rafael as a contractor. He had access and he has superpowers related to computers, though the database is not specific on precisely what they are.
“Awesome. Let’s put out our version of an APB— start looking for him, the Armory, Luke, and Tempus. We’re going to start checking problems off our list if I have to use a nuke to do it.”
After a good morning’s sleep, and a half dozen cheesy eggs and some toast, I’m up in Carlos’ room waiting for him to wake up. During the night I had a breakthrough about Luke. It’s too early to tell if it’s something I can do, but until I have more info it will have to keep me satisfied. Then I got the call from Teddy that Carlos was going to wake up soon. It’s like he’s a magician or something, Teddy can tell the precise moment someone will wake up, or heal, or anything medically.
The entire team is in the room—they had to turn the AC off because Monica was in her elemental form and whenever she’s around the temp drops a good twenty degrees. Tony and Lux hang back, holding hands and looking on. TK is her usual nonchalant self, leaning against the wall checking messages on her phone. For someone who “doesn’t care” she’s stayed with the team a surprisingly long time.
Kate is next to me, dressed to the nines with an added digit in hotness. She seems hellbent on impressing Carlos, which is so weird. Shouldn’t he be the one trying to win her? It’s like the world has reversed itself. Tempus mentioned something about their future and a part of me wonders if I should have taken him up on his offer. Time travel is a tricky beast. Would knowing the future make it happen—or prevent it from happening? In life there are many instances of trying to avoid an outcome, only to have your efforts to prevent it make it happen. Is there temporal irony? Would knowing Kate and Carlos ended up together keep me from acting like I normally would, thus removing me from making a crucial decision that would have caused them to be together, which would result in them not being together?
I shake my head, no, it’s better not to know. Though it all begs the question of how his powers work. Why does he need a kinetic manipulator? I’ll have to make a note to ask him next time I see him. So many questions, very few answers.
“He’s waking up,” Teddy proclaims.
Poor Carlos. Teddy removed his armor the day before, so now my best friend is in a hospital gown, his hair matted in a hundred different directions and a week’s worth of stubble on his face.
His eyes flutter open and for a second he focuses on Teddy, then Kate, and his whole body relaxes. A lazy smile spreads across his face and he whispers something. Teddy hands him a glass of water which he sucks down eagerly.
“You all are standing around like you weren’t expecting me to wake up... should I be worried?” he asks with a grin.
“Carlos,” I say with as much seriousness as I can muster. I roll forward-looking him in the eye as I go, “we’re all here to support you in this trying time...”
“Trying? I’m fine. I know I got knocked around a bit but I figured the armor would... Amelia, what are you saying?” Worry flashes across his face as he struggles to sit up.
“Teddy did his best, but he just couldn’t save your face, I’m sorry to be the one to tell you,” I say, glancing down at my hands.
“I need a mirror,” he says looking frantically around the room. Kate holds out a compact for him and he snatches it up, unfolding it and touching his face looking for wounds. “I don’t see anything...”
“Like I said, he couldn’t save it. You’re as ugly as ever.”
“Oh, it’s on, Niña.” He tosses the compact at me and I jerk aside. Kate snaps the compact out of the air before putting it in her pocket. The rest of the room laughs as Carlos leans back, tension flowing out of his broad shoulders.
“It’s my favorite concealer,” she says with a shrug. Everyone laughs again as Carlos pulls himself up to a full sitting position.
We spend a few minutes filling him in on what happened. He saved a couple of dozen people, all of whom sent him flowers, cards, cookies, and a ton of other stuff for the week he was out. His room looks more like a florist shop than a hospital.
After a few minutes, the team filters out one at a time, saying goodbye as they go. All except Kate and me. Once Teddy gives him a clean bill of health the Doctor leaves too.
“What happened?” Carlos asks.
I fill him in on the details I left out of the team briefing. As far as everyone else knows, a super hacked the satellite in an effort to take us out. I decided the possibility of time travel might be too much for some people and that little piece of info is between me and my two friends.
“Damn, Amelia. When you make enemies, you don’t go small,” Carlos says.
“You know what I say, go big or go home.”
“Let’s break it down,” Kate says. “You’ve got the press blaming you for everything. We’ve got a super with tech powers, the Armory, and a time traveler. Where are we at with them?”
“Epic?”
Mr. Strungel purchased an abandoned missile silo in the Rocky Mountains. Once I knew who he was I was able to cross reference his location with the trace from the hack. As for the media, I think they are stirring the pot for ratings. There is an anti-superhero attitude in the US, but... it is not nearly as bad as they think. They make money off of fear.
“What about Tempus?” Kate asks.
I have nothing. Mr. Parker is exceptional at hiding his tracks. I have facial recognition running everywhere I have access to a camera, but so far— nothing. He will have to return to us, though, if he wishes to use the tech he stole.
Carlos pulls the sheets off and shifts his legs over the side of the bed. With a deep breath, he hops onto the cold floor, wincing as he steps over to his clothes.
“You couldn’t have given me socks?” he asks as he pulls jeans on under his gown. Once they are on he sheds his robe and reaches for his shirt. The room is suddenly uncomfortably warm. Carlos isn’t much taller than me, but he’s all solid muscles now. I turn my chair away and look at the ceiling while he dresses. Kate does not.
I smack her leg and she looks down at me, her cheeks a bright red. Carlos doesn’t seem to notice as he pulls on his t-shirt, sits down, and puts on his sneakers.
“So what’s the plan?” he asks without looking at me.
“Well...” I drag it out a little, giving Kate time to recover. “Let’s pull in the rest of the team and we’ll go over it with them. I think we can keep Frank Parker out of it for
now, but everything else they deserve to know. Especially if we’re going to take down the Armory.”
“About frigging time, I’ve wanted a piece of those guys since they hurt you,” Carlos says, smacking a fist into his palm.
Thanksgiving is coming up and I really want Luke home for it. Not only because of how good he is at cooking a turkey, but because I miss having normal. Dating Luke has been my little island of ordinary. In a matter of two years, I went from being a girl looking for her parents to one of the most well-known superheroes in the world. Even with all that going on, going out on dates, staying up late watching movies and eating pizza grounded me in a way I didn’t know I needed—until it was gone.
Sadly, nothing I’m doing at the moment is bringing me closer to having him back. The only bright spot here is that when Thanksgiving rolls around I will have my parents with me. I wonder what they will think of November in Phoenix? All those years in Boston then Seattle might make them have unreasonable expectations—like it will rain or something.
I shake those thoughts away and focus on my current situation. The Rocky Mountains loom up ahead. I crossed the Colorado border a few minutes ago and I’m flying as low as I can, with full stealth mode active in my new MK VII armor. Once we had more info, tracing Calhoon became a whole lot easier. He may be either a genius or a super-powered computer behemoth, but he bought property in his own name, including a decommissioned nuclear silo. Maybe he thought no one would ever figure out who he was? I don’t know.
He may not be here, but I would suggest caution all the same. He has proven to be extremely cunning. He worked with Rafael, designed the Armory, and most likely, built the giant robots that plagued the US while we were gone,
“True, but he lacks imagination. All that tech he stole and what did he do with it? He robbed banks.”
Do not fall into the trap of assuming you know his motives. Until we learn differently, let us assume he is a worthy opponent.
Full Metal Superhero (Book 6): Explosive Arsenal Page 7
