Bodyguard duty was a lot like patrolling, in that it was ninety nine percent boredom and one percent terror. I used every mental trick I’d been taught to stay aware of my surroundings without tiring myself out from the stress of waiting. A relaxed but full awareness of what was around me so my mind would sharpen at anything out of the ordinary.
I half listened to Sarita’s and Kara’s banter as they got psyched up for the show, but I didn’t participate in it even if I kind of wanted to.
The Limo pulled into the arena parking lot and drove over to the private entrance where the tour bus was already parked.
Aura said in my ear, “Everything is secure.”
I nodded slightly, but I kept my awareness sharp as we left the limo and moved into the arena. I quickly memorized all the faces of her staff, agent, backup singers, dancers, and roadies, as she was joined by a veritable posse on her way to the dressing room.
I let out a deep breath as we reached it, and after clearing the room with Kara we waited outside while she got changed and went through makeup. There was a sense of excitement in the air which I tried to ignore. The concert would be awesome, but at the same time it’d be a huge distraction to resist. Sarita’s voice had a mesmerizing aspect to it which was enhanced in person, and of course the music would be so loud it would be hard to hear myself think, much less stay sharp.
Lia said, “I almost wish this guy would attack already.”
I chuckled, “Yeah, on the other hand, there might not be one at all.”
Lia shook her head, and teased, “You aren’t that lucky.”
I frowned at her severely, but that just made her giggle, and I couldn’t hold it past that as a smile broke out on my face.
It was very chaotic as what seemed like far too many people ran around getting things verified and ready, but I didn’t see any faces I didn’t recognize, and Aura hadn’t made a peep since giving us the all clear.
Sarita came out in a risqué outfit that was alluring with tons of sex appeal, and showed a whole lot of skin, but in the end probably left more to mystery than my super-suit did. The whole group moved towards backstage, where they’d all dance onto the stage together as the band got the music started.
Kara looked both confident and worried as she stood with us. Between her, Aura’s drones, and Lia and my eyes and instincts, we had to hope that’d be enough. Three layers of protection looking out for the unusual.
The sound of the band and announcement as they took the stage, drew screams and cheers from the thousands of people out in the stands, and seemed to shake the building. Distraction just didn’t cover it as a description, but at the same time it wasn’t as bad as I’d feared. There weren’t that many of us backstage, and I knew all their faces.
The most vulnerable part would be someone rushing and jumping up on the stage, but I’d be able to act instantly if that happened, and teleport myself across the stage.
The music was fast, catchy, driving our heartbeat, and her voice was pure and compelling one moment, and then eerily throaty the next. It wasn’t as distracting as I feared, but it did make it very hard to concentrate and maintain a relaxed mind state. My body wanted to dance. The show on stage, the dancers, and the way Sarita moved was almost as distracting.
It was over an hour later when I almost jumped out of my skin when I felt something on my ear, but Aura’s voice told me it was just an insect drone, not a real insect. Perhaps she needed a speaker right by my ear canal to be heard, and the mask comm system wasn’t loud enough.
“There’s been a security breach at the west door to the backstage areas. Two arena guards are down, and I’m tracking the woman responsible for the assault. She’s moving in this direction. Powers displayed are speed and flight, assume she has more. Stand by for more information, running identity checks”
A woman? I hadn’t expected that, based on the stalker letters the threat we were hired for was clearly a man. Given the nature of the threats, he had to be. Which meant this was probably another nut-job stalker and not the one that had driven Kara to hire us.
Not that it mattered, we’d protect her anyway of course. It only mattered in that the male stalker could use this as an opportunity and distraction, that’s what worried me.
Lia and I exchanged glances. Speed and flight could go with a lot of things, strength and toughness like in Champion, or shields and healing like in Angel. She could be bruiser or energy based, which left a huge question mark.
I also assumed she wasn’t running right now, or she’d have reached the stage long ago.
I nodded at Lia, and she repositioned to the west side of the stage while I stayed at the back to watch the other approaches. Kara followed Lia with a determined protective anger on her face, so must’ve been included in the loop by Aura. I brushed off my worry, we were there to protect Sarita, not Kara.
Aura said, “Identity confirmed. Sara Millhouse. She has speed, flight, shields, and sonic energy attacks. She failed to break into the music industry despite her voice, and from my research it appears Sarita may have been a key detractor in that equation.”
Oh, crap. So, definitely not our stalker then, but here for revenge.
Kara responded over comms. I could only imagine Aura put a drone in her ear canal.
“She has talent, but she’s crazy, and thrives on chaos. A drama queen that likes to tear others down. We gave her a chance as a backup singer to get exposure, but it turned out badly, so we had to let her go. That killed any chances of her being signed as lead singer. No one will work with her, because everyone in the industry knows how easy going and supportive Sarita is.”
That was when a screeching sonic pulse rolled over us that scrambled my brain for a moment, before my shields kicked in and blocked it. The whole arena started to scream as the band and Sarita went quiet. Sarita looked unaffected, perhaps she had sonic shields of her own given her powerset.
Unfortunately, Lia had no shields and both her and Kara went down. They were clearly suffering from some kind of vertigo as they fell to the floor awkwardly.
A blur headed toward stage from down the corridor, and I punched out with my telekinesis at about a foot high. Sara’s shields kept them from hitting more than her shield, but her body did flip into the air as I took her legs out from under her. Shields or not, momentum and force were still a thing.
I teleported across the stage mid jump kick, and I released a powerful telekinesis strike as I kicked her in the head from directly above. Sure, I could’ve done it without moving, but it was more satisfying to kick something, plus teleporting around would make me harder to pin down.
She faceplanted into the ground, and I dove down as I pulled out the cuffs, but she rolled away so fast I barely saw a blur. She screamed at me as she came to her feet, but the sound didn’t reach me to her frustration, and I nailed her shields with a stab of telekinesis.
That time it broke through, and it slammed into her solar plexus and sent her flying back against the wall. She obviously wasn’t that strong, short fight.
She laid on the ground, gasping desperately for breath, which was a good place for an enemy to be when their power was in their voice. No breath, no attacks. Her shields were down, and she was done, so I moved over and cuffed her. With the cuffs on, she was powerless and no longer a threat.
Lia and Kara got to their feet, and I could see they had both bled from the ears, fortunately their super-healing had probably already taken care of it.
“Aura, request a city hero team pick her up, and furnish all the video taken of her criminal acts.”
Aura replied, “They’re already on their way,” which told me she’d already done it, and the order had been unnecessary.
I felt good about the takedown, our first one while on the job, but it was disruptive enough that I thought the concert would be over. Turned out I underestimated Sarita’s stubbornness, and she was singing again for a roaring crowd a few minutes later. Fortunately, the damage of Sara’s voice had been confined to
the hallway and stage. The audience had heard it but hadn’t been truly harmed by it. The crowd loved it, the music that is.
We stayed alert, the stalker was still out there, but nothing else happened for the rest of our shift. We were relieved by Gabriel and Ella at three in the morning, back at Sarita’s hotel suite.
Chapter Seven
The next morning, I slept in until seven, since it’d been close to four before I’d found sleep. I shuffled into the kitchen and grabbed a coffee, and joined Jace, Chris, and Lia at breakfast.
Chris said, “I watched the footage last night, couldn’t you have blocked her at the source?”
I shook my head, “Yes and no. A stationary source, sure. I could easily surround in a telekinesis field to stop all sound, but she was a speedster. I was lucky enough to hit her with that TK lance attack when she was blurring down the hallway.”
Lia smirked, “It’s fine, her attack was brutal. My body didn’t know what was up or down, but we’re fine. That’s why there’s two of us, so we make up for each other’s weaknesses.”
Chris nodded, “I knew that, and it makes sense, I just didn’t fully understand why she didn’t block her at the source.”
I nodded, “It isn’t a holding shield, all she’d have to do is walk through it to get outside of it.”
Chris tilted his head, and changed the subject, “How fast do you think you’d be able to bounce across the city using teleport? Like skipping rocks on a pond.”
I smiled and looked up in thought, “I hadn’t considered that idea to get around my distance limitation, but a lot faster than I could fly. I think.”
Chris said, “No one did, not even your trainers. Repeated teleports without a long pause between them causes a buildup of disorientation using technology, which would make you vulnerable when you arrived at your ultimate destination. I just wondered if your power is the same, or if we all just assumed it was and never had the thought to try.”
I nodded, “Only one way to find out.”
Lia sighed, “I suppose you’d better take me with you, to see if it’s different for a passenger as well.”
I smirked, “I’ll be gentle.”
I won’t share her reply to that, it wasn’t very ladylike, is all I’ll say.
Chris snorted.
Jace nodded, “It’s an interesting idea. You might try it up in the air instead of thinking of various teleport points on the ground in the city. That way you can focus on going as far as your power can reach, on a flight path. More direction and distance, as opposed to a hard target? It would be faster, because you wouldn’t have to adjust your mindset or focused target after each hop, at least until you were within one hop range of your destination.”
Chris grinned, “That’s brilliant. I should even be able to get Aura to list the amount of hops based on her half of a mile reach. She could also show a countdown in Amber’s HUD, which would tell her exactly when she needs to shift focus from direction and distance to her actual desired destination.”
“Assuming my mind doesn’t get scrambled on the second jump and we don’t fall out of the sky.”
Jace snickered, “Yup.”
Lia sighed in a longsuffering way.
I giggled.
That’s how I wound up teleport hopping all over the city that morning, with Lia in tow, for our training session that day. For me, it wasn’t a problem at all. Especially up in the sky, where not even the view change was all that dramatic which on its own could trigger disorientation in the mind. For Lia, she had a little trouble with it, until I advised she should close her eyes for the trip.
She didn’t like it, but the effects were much less impactful to my passenger if done that way. There was a moment of disorientation for her when opening her eyes at the final destination, but no worse than the disorientation caused by a single teleport.
In all, the experiment was a complete success. It was clear my powers were better than the technology save the distance limitation. I could cross the entire city in less than four seconds, a single hop every three tenths of a second or so, except the last one which took my mind a full second to switch focus to an actual destination, instead of focusing on a direction and as far as my power could reach in that direction.
It was also clear I needed to up my game in sparring practice. I already used teleport in fights, to escape, evade, or even move in closely, but usually not all that often. I imagined I’d be a nightmare to take down, if I was moving positions instantly several time a second, but that kind of thing would take a lot of practice to make it a fully subconscious effort.
It probably wasn’t necessary either, for most fights, but if I ever faced an energy wielder that my telekinesis shield couldn’t block at all, or a bruiser of sufficient strength to take my shield and me out in a single punch, not being hit at all would be rather important.
The rest of that morning I relaxed and enjoyed the time off before our second and final shift with Sarita and Kara before they left our city. Lia and I went clothes shopping to pick up clubbing dresses for later that night. It wasn’t easy to find a dress with a scandalously short skirt that made the black bodysuit look like tights to preserve a minimum of modesty, because it also needed complete if snugly tight coverage up top to cover the rest of the suit, including sleeves.
In the end, we found some though, light sweater dresses that were skintight and barely reached upper thigh. Mine was a dark blue bordering on black, and Lia’s a bright red. Even better, we could add it to the bill as a business expense.
After lunch, I spent some time with Chris, who was working on a sound analyzer and cancellation addition to the face mask communicators. In theory, if he could get it working, it would give Lia some resistance and protection from sonic supervillains in the future by playing an inverse and cancelling sound wave. Just like the suits gave us minimal protection against other forms of energy attacks. It wouldn’t be a hundred percent effective, but it would dull the impact and allow her to act.
If he got it working, we’d share it with Harmony and Prisma.
It was around one-thirty when things went wrong, I’d never heard panic in an A.I.s voice before. I’ll be honest, it was disturbing.
Aura said tensely, “My drones at the hotel just started to go offline, and I have no idea how that’s possible. I’ve also just lost the connection with the team.”
I jumped up and flew up the basement stairs, literally flew. Lia met me halfway from wherever she’d been, and as soon as I touched her arm, we started to jump teleport to the hotel. It was less than three seconds later when we popped into Sarita’s suite.
We startled them when we arrived, a shield expanded from Ella covering herself, Sarita, and Gabriel. At the same time Gabriel turned in our direction with lightning coruscating around his hands. He recognized us before he fired though, and the lightning around his hands blinked out as he lowered them.
“What’s going on?”
I said, “We’re not sure. Aura lost comm contact with you, and her drones went offline a few moments ago. Aura?”
Silence. I guess our comms were down to. Which was strange, because they were quantum in nature and impossible to jam or block. Which could only mean they were being blocked at the source, and something was suppressing any electronics in the area. An assumption that was given further credence a moment later.
Ella said, “The television just went out too, not a half minute ago.”
I frowned, “Well, the stalker is probably a mad scientist, and he’s good at evading detection. Maybe he has a device to scramble electronics? Stay alert, we have no support right now outside of our own senses.”
Obvious to say, perhaps, but worth noting. Ella expanded her shield further to include us, while Lia went to the window. I stood between Sarita and the door to the hallway, and Gabriel took a position on the other side in case they came from the bedroom door. In essence, we had her surrounded.
Lia looked around and scowled, “Where’s Kara?”
Sarita said, “Picking up a dress at the boutique for tonight. For both of us.”
The tension grew and we were silent for what felt like a very long time after that. My heart pounded in my chest, and my body flooded with adrenaline. All my senses were on high alert, for the slightest movement or noise. Supers were always sensitive to the world around them, more than humans, but I felt like a livewire, having no idea what to expect.
If he had a device to scramble electronics, then he probably had some wicked weapons as well. My mother, Lady Aegis, could absorb the energy from exotic dimensional weapons all day long, but I sure as hell couldn’t. Ella’s shield was good protection though, I hoped.
But… the moment dragged on, seemingly forever, but it was probably less than two minutes later when the silence was broken.
Aura said, “Contact reestablished, reviewing local memory cache on drones. It appears whatever happened had a greater effect than interrupting communications, there’s no scan data, video, or sound for the time of disruption.”
My body started to tremble, as I came to realize there’d be no outlet for all the energy my body had prepared for the incipient and assumed fight that never arrived.
“Do you have eyes on Kara?”
Sarita looked at me with alarm.
Aura replied, “Kara was under surveillance, and in the lobby at time of disruption. As far as I can tell, she is no longer in the hotel. Her watch-phone is also offline.”
“Hotel cameras?”
Aura replied, “They also went offline for the duration of the disruption. Without any data, I can’t determine how it was done or come up with a way to prevent a recurrence.”
Sarita asked fearfully, “He has Kara?”
“We’re not sure yet. What about the drones in the street?”
Aura said, “The ones on the west of the hotel went offline moments before the internal ones, no video was taken of Kara leaving.”
Wraith: Origins of Supers: Book Three Page 5
