"Whatever," the energy vampire grumbled as he climbed off Lincoln’s back and wiped dust from the knees of his slacks.
Now McLane knelt down in front of the frozen Powerhouse, arranging himself so that Lincoln could clearly see him. He stared into Lincoln’s face. "I meant what I said, Lincoln. Every word. Now, you’ll be able to move again shortly, and when you do, you will quietly collect yourself and return to your apartment. You’ll wait there until I summon you again. You may even write a letter to your brother and sister if you wish — I believe they wrote one to you before they left for their fun vacation, a gift from Uncle Richard." He leaned just a touch closer and smiled that Devil’s smile. There was heat behind his eyes, offering just a glimpse of the wild man who once assaulted Joseph Davison when things didn’t go his way. "If you make the slightest hostile move toward myself or anyone here, I’ll have them kill you this time, and then I’ll start looking for that first bidder. You can’t indicate whether or not you understand me, but I know that you do."
Lincoln’s face was completely motionless beneath his blue ski mask. That did not, however, prevent the tears from flowing ...
VORTEX
After what seemed like an eternity, Steve finally sat back and stretched his stiff neck and shoulders. The fumes from the dye filled his efficiency apartment — which was basically Alan’s former quarters just off from the main office — but his sinuses had given up their complaints earlier in the evening. A lifetime of habit nearly prompted him to also rub his eyes before he realized that — big surprise — they were not tired in the least. The realization saved him the hassle of having to later scrub the fast-drying dye from his face. Removing the latex gloves that had protected his hands from just such a mess, he appraised the pattern he’d created with no small satisfaction.
Dyeing the material itself had been considerably easier — just dunk and hang dry. He’d spent some time trying to figure out the color combinations that would make a good gold-tone, but eventually the shimmery, metallic fibers woven throughout the fabric had solved the problem. The black portions took virtually no effort at all.
The center design, however, had required a lot more thought and labor. The whole idea was subjective. As a result, he’d spent over two hours doodling with a geometric compass and protractor before finally settling on a spiral pattern he could live with. It twisted further and further inward, with a deliberate half-moon gap to suggest a flare of light and a "center" that was actually off-center. After that, it’d taken a collection of brushes, templates, and patience to sit down and bring his concept to fruition.
Well ... it certainly looks good enough laying there on the table. I guess the only thing left to do is put it on.
Leaving the tunic where it was for the moment, he opted to don the lower portion of the "uniform" first. Stripping off his jeans, he found the uniform pants a perfect fit — snug enough not to snag, yet loose enough not to encumber his movements. The boots were tough but flexible, with just the treads he would need for excellent traction. He’d baffled more than a handful of people over the last week getting this thing properly assembled, and he was pleased that it was going to be worth it.
At least, as far as the outfit goes ...
Mindful of the still-damp pattern on the chest, he pulled the tunic over his head. The gloves came next, and then, with only slightly more difficulty, the cape. He collected the mask in his trembling hands and pulled it on, then drew a deep breath, closed his eyes, and turned to face his full-length mirror.
Shoot, I’m almost as nervous now as I was when we first activated my implants.
And when he opened his mechanical eyes now, what he saw in the mirror caused him to break into a decidedly goofy grin.
"Oh, wow ..." he marveled, awestruck by the ensemble that he’d worked so hard to put together. After striking a few self-indulgent poses, he slowly pulled off the mask. Too bad I can’t show this to anyone—
Then, right on cue as dictated by Murphy’s infamous Law, Alan chose that exact moment to knock twice and then open the door without waiting for the summons he’d allowed for every other single time he’d ever entered Steve’s new home.
"Sorry to bother you, Steve, but I needed—"
"Ah!"
Both men jumped — Steve at the sudden intrusion, Alan at the outcry. Alan’s eyes bugged out as he looked Steve over head to toe and back again — the younger man found himself folding his arms protectively, as though he’d been caught naked.
"By all means, Alan, come on in," he snapped, his sarcasm born more of embarrassment than anger.
"Uh, Steve ..." Alan asked slowly. "What on earth are you wearing ...?"
Steve sighed inwardly, dropping the mask back onto his work table. Oh, well. I knew this would come sooner or later. I guess there’s no time like the present ...
PCA
A short while later, in Steve’s office, Alan finished reading Jeffrey Lawrence’s 5th-grade essay and, very slowly, set it down on the desk.
Steve waited, expectant. He’d pulled his jacket on over his uniform, but otherwise had stubbornly resisted the self-conscious urge to remove it.
"Well ..." Alan said at length. "Now some of your more bizarre requests are starting to make some sense. Unfortunately."
Steve winced inwardly, That doesn’t sound very promising.
Alan toyed with the stapled papers, spinning them idly around in a lazy circle upon the smooth surface of Joseph Davison’s former desk. It was night outside, and Steve imagined that he could almost hear the crickets chirping as he waited in anticipation. Finally, the circles — and the silence — came to an end.
"No," he stated. "Absolutely not."
"I suppose I don’t need to ask for clarification," Steve responded with a disarming smile.
It didn’t work. "This is insanity beyond words, Mister. When I offered you the responsibility of the vortex wave, I did so with the understanding that you would behave as just that: Responsible!"
"Alan—"
"Don’t even try, Steve. This is the most frivolous, reckless, childish, and absurd idea I’ve ever heard! You were supposed to be preparing to join the PCA. I can’t believe you’re actually serious about this. Please tell me it’s all some sort of joke!"
Steve said nothing, merely shook his head. He wasn’t smiling anymore, either.
Alan stood and paced around from behind Joseph’s — Steve’s — desk, where Steve had asked him to please be seated while reading the essay. He’d known that Alan would need to take this news sitting down, but he had hoped things wouldn’t go quite this poorly.
Alan shook his head. "No, this isn’t going to work out at all. You’ll keep your eyes, of course, Steve — you deserve that much. But we’ll have to deactivate the additional functions, at least the weaponry. It will require another round on the surgical table, I’m afraid, but I don’t see any alternative—"
"You’re not taking them."
Alan froze, true anger slowly closing over his usually gentle features. "Excuse me?"
Steve looked up at him from the visitor’s chair, the same chair which Michael Takayasu had occupied nearly three weeks prior. "You’re not taking anything from my eyes, Alan. They’re mine."
Alan stormed forward, placing a forceful grip on Steve’s shoulder. "Now you listen to me, young man—!"
What came next happened too fast for Alan to react. Steve reached up with his opposing hand, twisted Alan’s from his shoulder, stood, slipped a leg behind Alan’s knees and an arm across his chest, and effortlessly tossed him onto his back on the desk. The move was performed as softly as Steve could manage, but it still knocked the wind from Alan’s sails. He couldn’t have moved right away, even if Steve hadn’t kept him pinned where he was.
"You listen to me," he spoke very ostensibly, but his eyes, artificial though they were, betrayed the heat of his temper. "This is not open for debate, Alan. I’ve listened to you and Ardette and every other well-meaning bastard in this damned company go on and o
n for the last month about how much you loved my dad and how sad you all are for what happened. Well, let’s clarify something right now: He was my dad. She was my mom. They were my family. Mine."
He straightened up, pulling Alan to his feet. Alan continued leaning against the desk for support and he was still gasping for breath ... but he was also listening.
"This is more than some ‘childish’ fantasy about revenge. Oh, don’t get me wrong — justice makes up a healthy dose of every decision I make these days. But it’s more than that. The world’s been one messed up place since the Night of the White Flash, and the Paranormal Effect’s making things more and more shitty all the time." He thumped two fingers onto the essay for emphasis. "This kid’s right in more ways than he could ever know. What is it — more than two-thirds of all paranormals go rogue in one way or another? Something like that? Huh?"
Alan could have responded by this point, but he didn’t. He continued listening.
"Well, I for one don’t care for what that says about people. Or for the message that sends to all the Jeffrey Lawerences out there. The Paranormal Effect is still going on, Alan. We have no idea when, or if, it will ever stop — hell, we haven’t even figured out what’s causing it yet. And there are all these people out there, kids or otherwise, who are being taught that when you get an unexpected, new, dazzling power, you abuse it. Either you waltz through a bank vault wall, or you peer through a teenage girl’s panties with your x-ray eyes."
Steve paused deliberately now, almost goading Alan into trying to contradict him. Alan remained persistently silent, which suited Steve just fine.
"The morning my family was murdered," Steve said, his voice softer now, "I was wondering about my place in the world. And now I think I might have found my answers. I could use all the help I can get, but if you won’t go along with this, then I’ll just have to take my chances alone."
Finally Alan responded, but all that came out was a very weak, "Steve ... I would never want you to be alone, but this ..."
Steve smiled and stood very tall. "I may not have exactly gone paranormal, Alan, but I’m the closest thing to it now. And if no paranormal is going to grant Jeffrey Lawrence’s wish, then you better believe that this cyborg is going to tr—"
A buzzing — far more urgent than his intercom — cut him off. Alan jumped right out of his skin, then rushed back around the desk and punched a button. A computer monitor rose from the top of the desk.
"Security alert!" he panted. "The perimeter’s been compromised!"
"Have the authorities been advised?"
"Not yet — we have sixty seconds to determine whether or not it’s a false alarm, then the police, the FBI, and the PCA will be called."
"Disable it."
Alan’s jaw dropped. "What?!"
"Disable it," Steve repeated. "Give me fifteen minutes, then send out the call."
Alan shook his head. "No. Steve, we can’t—!"
"Yes, we can. Give me this chance, Alan. You owe me that much."
Alan looked very skeptical on that note, but when he sighed heavily, Steve grinned and removed his jacket ...
PCA
Waid flash-froze another security guard as her female companion, Zimmer, projected a force-bolt through the reinforced doors. Their third member, Elliott, skimmed over their heads — his bat-wings brushed lightly against Waid’s hair, and she didn’t bother repressing a shudder. She would have preferred to have dragged that big hunk who liked to be called Powerhouse along with her, but McLane wanted him to have time "to give his circumstances due thought." Elliott might be one ugly rogue, but at least he was loyal sans blackmail.
As Elliott fired off the EM grenade to burn out the warehouse’s defenses, Waid and Zimmer waited for the guards’ reinforcements that were sure to come. It only took them a minute to realize that the expected support troops apparently weren’t coming after all, and something about that did not sit well with Waid. She said as much.
"So what?" Zimmer muttered with a shrug — the short, squat woman loved to grumble, mumble, and murmur, treating apathy as though it were something to be proud of, and it drove Waid absolutely crazy. "So they’re respondin’ slower than we thought. You gonna look a gift horse in the mouth or what?"
Waid repressed the urge to flash-freeze her and leave her behind. She gripped her 9mm more tightly. "I’m just pointing out that it seems the almighty Davison Electronics would be more carefully—"
"Ladies!" Elliott called with a heavy lisp — his paranormal mutation left him with a bat-face as well as wings, and as a result he looked and sounded like a severe hairlip. "All clear!"
"Go in and help him," Waid ordered Zimmer. "I’ll keep watching out. Be ready to hustle out here on a moment’s notice."
Zimmer shrugged and disappeared into the warehouse. Waid forced herself to breathe easy and turned her silver eyes back to the surrounding grounds.
I’ll have to talk to McLane about her attitude, she fumed. If she doesn’t start— What was that?!
There had been movement, somewhere to her right. Something dark, glimpsed only in her peripheral vision. The whole area was pretty wide open, but aside from the other research warehouses, offices, and laboratories, there were also storage bunkers and bins and the occasional company car or van. Choosing to err on the side of caution, she flashed her eyes in that direction. If someone were trying to sneak up on her, she could only hope that they were looking her way at that moment, but she figured she had nothing to lose. After all, it took her eyes mere seconds to recharge their paranormal juice, or whatever it was that they did. Even so, she made sure her 9mm’s safety was off.
"Hurry it up, people!" she called over her shoulder while continuing to scan the area. "We might be getting company after all!"
At the last moment, she heard a sound somewhere above her. She ducked just in time to evade a black-booted foot — instead of cracking her skull, it merely scraped across her shoulder. The impact was still enough to spin her around, but she rolled with it and fired both her eyes and her gun in sync.
The figure neither froze nor reacted as though it were shot. It also twisted to the side and back around, coming into a fighting stance barely five feet from her and finally giving her a solid view of who or what she was facing.
And when she did finally see her opponent, she didn’t know whether to shoot again, flash him, or burst out laughing. Her first coherent thought was, If Graham thinks Lincoln is funny, he should see this guy!
Powerhouse’s name might have been straight from the comics, but this guy really took the cake. He wore a full-on super-hero costume, complete with a flowing black cape. It was sort of Superman-esque in style, but darker — it had black in place of red, and gold in place of blue. It also came complete with black forearm-high gloves and full-face mask, and in place of the famous chest emblem was an eye-teasing spiral, like something out of an E. M. Escher drawing.
Then she was back to business. "Nice try, kiddo, but your little fantasy’s gonna be pretty short lived." With that, she flashed him right in his pretty blue eyes.
And Waid was so confident in her paranormal might that she just stood there as Steve blinked at her in mild confusion, then hauled off and kicked her square in the jaw.
As the rogue dropped like a rock, Steve tried to reel in his adrenaline, but it wasn’t easy. His forearm still stung from where the bullet struck, but his uniform had done its job — he was probably bruised, but not bleeding. Whatever that flash from her eyes was supposed to do, he had either been protected by the psi-band he wore beneath his mask, or perhaps by his mechanical eyes themselves. Either way, it was extremely exhilarating to have beaten a rogue without even using his arsenal of visual weaponry.
His inner victory dance was cut justly short, however, when Zimmer emerged from the warehouse, took one look at Waid, and shot a force-bolt from the center of her chest. The bolt missed Steve by bare inches as he threw himself backward to avoid it, and it left him in a terrible position. Off-balance, h
e was unable to avoid the hideous bat-like rogue who emerged from the warehouse over Zimmer’s head and power-dived right into him. Winded, Steve tried to roll back to his feet again.
"I don’t think so," the frightening rogue lisped as he kicked Steve in the side. His micro-chainmail protected him from the worst of it, but it knocked him back down.
Groaning, Waid shook her head, spat out a mouthful of blood, and yelled, "Kill him!"
Producing a nasty-looking knife from his belt, Elliott moved in to do just that.
Steve wasn’t sure how safe he would be from the business-end of an edged weapon, and he wasn’t going to find out. He simply looked up from his position on the ground and fired his lasers. The thin red beams cut through the knife and sliced off half of Elliott’s thumb at the same time.
Paranormals (Book 1) Page 16
