Reverb turned at the sound of the battle cry (as did almost everyone else, actually), just as Grunge struck him in the chest with a flying kick. “Bam!” said Grunge, completing his follow-through to land on his feet. “Who’s your daddy?”
Reverb hit the ground hard, but recovered quickly, rolling with the impact. Even as he regained his footing, he hammered Grunge with a devastating sonic blast... that had no noticeable effect whatsoever.
Grunge grinned and lifted his shoe. “Rubber soles, dude.”
Reverb started as he suddenly realized that Grunge’s skin was jet black instead of its usual color. Nor was it skin anymore. Grunge had become pure rubber from head to toe—shock-absorbent rubber that could absorb the vibrations from Reverb’s blasts.
“Time to go ‘unplugged,’ dude,” said Grunge. With that, he delivered the knockout blow.
Grunge stood over his fallen foe for a minute, enjoying his victory ... but not for long. He howled in pain as a ball of Burnout’s fiery plasma hit him in the back and side, and stuck there like napalm. The heat was intense enough to melt the part of his body where the plasma adhered. Grunge’s rubbery' skin turned into foul-smelling goo in a cloud of acrid, black smoke.
Freefall knew she had to do something. She had to stop Burnout.
Uh-uh, she corrected herself. I have to stop Override.
Freefall turned to face Override, who was standing off to the side, immobile, while she controlled Burnout’s body. Before Override knew what was happening, Freefall pointed at the twelve-year-old puppet mistress and sent her soaring up into the cement ceiling, then doubled her normal weight to send her crashing to the floor.
With Override unconscious, the fiery barrage came to an abrupt halt as Burnout seized back control over his body. Without a moment’s hesitation, he turned his power to the place where it would do the most good.
Rainmaker was sprawled on the floor near the wall, dazed, sputtering, and coughing up water from Riptide’s blasts. As though Riptide’s attack wasn’t bad enough on its own, every one of the racking coughs made her broken ribs grind together, sending a fresh wave of pain through her body. Riptide readied another attack, morphing his arms into dual jets of cascading water to batter his helpless foe.
Assuming they reached her, that is.
Halfway there, the jets of water vaporized into steam under the heat of a searing bolt of flaming plasma. Riptide screamed, seconds before Burnout swooped down to finish him off with a roundhouse punch to the jaw. Riptide crumpled to the ground, unconscious, with clouds of water vapor drifting harmlessly in the vicinity of his shoulders. Even once he woke up, it would take time for him to pull himself back together.
As the battle raged on all sides, Gen13 seemed most focused on defending themselves against the most immediate threats. So once he lost his chance to strike at Fairchild, no one seemed to be paying much attention to Bogeyman. That, he reasoned, was an error. For even if he had lost Gen13’s team leader for a moment, he could go one better.
Bogeyman locked eyes with Lynch.
Lynch had been standing only a few feet away, but he’d been distracted by the chaos around him. Bogeyman didn’t waste any time. The instant he made contact, Bogeyman reached deep into the recesses of Lynch’s soul. He dredged down for the darkest, most terrifying secret fears he could find, then wrenched them up to put them on display.
In the past, Bogeyman had seen many reactions to his efforts. Some had screamed. Some had run. Others had gone mad. Martin Cheswick had thrown himself out of a seventeenth-floor window.
Lynch smiled. A nasty smile.
“Nice try, kid,” Lynch said. “Sorry to disappoint you, but I faced my deepest fears years ago. They’re old friends. Now, it’s your turn to give it a try.”
Nothing like this had ever happened to Bogeyman before. No one had failed to succumb. Nothing in his training had prepared him for something like this.
Lynch started toward him. Lynch wasn’t hurrying. His expression said he didn’t need to. He stepped toward Bogeyman at a deliberate pace.
The twelve-year-old’s normally impassive face went pale. As Lynch loomed over him, Bogeyman turned to flee.
He found Freefall standing behind him. “Aw, c’mon, Mister L,” she said. “Let me.”
Before Bogeyman could react, Freefall leapt a good five feet straight up in the air. Gravity ceased to exist beneath the teen as she did a tight, 360-degree spin, then multiplied her weight as she lashed out with her foot to make contact with Bogeyman’s jaw. Bogeyman went down in a motionless heap.
“Eat your heart out, Michelle Yeoh.”
Roxy stared at the limp form at her feet. Fighting back—not out of fury, but out of simple determination— had left her feeling cleansed. She still remembered every bit of what he had put her through, but it didn’t feel so bad anymore. “Oooh, mondo creepy bogeyman,” she said, not quite keeping the shiver out of her voice. She gave what she hoped was a cool, indifferent shrug. “As if.”
A short distance away, Grunge screamed as Slash’s razor-sharp arm tore through his already-damaged rubber torso. The blade left a wide gash in its wake, cutting clear through half of Grunge’s abdomen. Grunge clutched the loose ends to hold them together.
Slash reared back to finish the job. But before he could deliver the blow, he found himself sailing through the air in the grasp of a force-three hurricane. Rainmaker blew Slash all the way down to the end of the hall. As the blank wall rushed to meet him, Slash raised his arms to protect himself.
However, in the heat of the moment, Slash didn’t realize that raising his arms was exactly what Rainmaker was planning on. Like straws driven by a hurricane, the twins blades met the concrete wall... and plunged straight through. By the time the wind died down, Slash was trapped, wedged up to his shoulders in the solid wall.
Freefall rushed to Grunge’s side. “Pookie!” she shouted. “Are you okay?”
Grunge winced with pain. “This’s really ... gonna... sting ... in the morning.”
Freefall breathed a relieved sigh. If Grunge had been in his human form, either the bums or the gash would have been more than enough to kill him. In his many morphed forms, though, he’d survived worse than this. She couldn’t begin to imagine the pain he must be feeling from the combined attack, but he’d be all right. Grunge just needed time—first some time to put himself back together and switch back to human, and then some more time to recover.
Unfortunately, time was something they didn’t have right now.
Freefall looked up to see Knockout bearing down at them at full speed. Freefall had less than a second to prepare to defend her man.
But Burnout got there first.
“Incoming!” he yelled.
Burnout conjured up a fiery mass of plasma that wrapped itself around Knockout’s head. Knockout fought a wave of panic as she halted her charge and started trying to beat out the flames. Yet, after a moment, she realized what Burnout had already figured out: Her super-strong body was far too tough to be injured by the white-hot plasma.
In fact, Knockout realized, the flames were more of a nuisance than anything else, blinding her so that she couldn’t resume her attack. Still, if that was the case, she intended to make sure that no one else would take the opportunity to attack her, either. She flailed about blindly with her arms and legs, intending to drive off anyone who might be tempted to get too close.
Still flailing around, Knockout started to cough. Yet, even after that, it took her another minute or two to realize, wide-eyed, where the real threat lay.
No, the fire around her head couldn’t hurt her. But it could eat up the oxygen she needed to breathe.
Instantly, Knockout dropped her defensive action and went back to trying to smother the flames with her hands. Every time one bit of the plasma went out, though, Burnout simply added more on. It was a variation on the same attack that Riptide had used on Fairchild back on the street. And it worked every bit as well on Knockout now.
The harder she f
ought, the faster she used up the oxygen in her lungs.
Before long, Knockout sank to the floor. Her attempts to beat out the flames grew more and more sluggish, until, finally, she passed out from lack of air. True to his name, Burnout let the fire bum itself out around her.
Burnout's intervention had saved Freefall and Grunge from her attack. But taking Knockout out of the picture didn’t leave Freefall and Grunge safely out of the woods, either. Growing Boy had snatched Freefall up in his massive hands and squeezed. The pressure was incredible.
“You ... again?” Freefall said, through gritted teeth, as the air forced itself from her lungs. “Y’know ... you’re starting ... to tick me off... too!”
Freefall tripled Growing Boy’s already considerable weight. Growing Boy looked down, startled, as the flooring creaked its protest before bursting under its burden. Freefall came free as Growing Boy’s hands opened reflexively in surprise. He fell through the floor to the level below. His gargantuan size prevented his entire body from plunging through, but it left him trapped awkwardly at chest height, his feet standing on the floor one story down.
As Growing Boy struggled to free himself, Fairchild leaped up to deliver a powerful haymaker. With a grunt, Growing Boy slumped down, unconscious. The only thing that kept him on his feet was the fact that he was still wedged in the floor.
With her teammates falling all around her, Sidestep had come to the conclusion that she’d better get herself out of there—and fast. Briefly, she considered a handful of possible destinations, but quickly realized that it didn’t really matter. The important thing wasn’t where she was going. It was getting away from where she was.
The air shimmered beside her as Sidestep created her escape hatch. But no sooner had she taken her first step toward it than the portal was disrupted by a massive bolt of lightning that coursed through it from behind. Sidestep recoiled from the blast even as the portal reformed itself.
Moving faster this time, Sidestep started to make a dash for the portal. But she stopped herself when she saw that it was now shrouded in a curtain of flame.
Sidestep turned to face Rainmaker and Burnout. Both were watching her closely. Rainmaker’s hand was raised in Sidestep’s direction, looking ominously like a loaded gun. Burnout stood beside her, his arms crossed, with a confident smile.
“I’m thinking this would be a good time to surrender,” Burnout said.
Without warning, Sidestep howled out a battle cry as she charged the pair. Rainmaker and Burnout both started in surprise; it wasn’t the reaction they were expecting. Sidestep flung herself headfirst through the air, heading straight at them.
That’s when Rainmaker noticed the shimmering patch of air between them.
She felt like a total idiot. They’d fallen for the trick like a ton of bricks. She wasn't attacking. It was a feint to mask an escape through another portal. Rainmaker called up another lightning bolt, but knew it would be too late . . .
... until Sidestep stopped dead in mid-air. Fairchild had caught her by the ankle.
The extra second was all that Rainmaker needed. Fairchild released her grip. Before Sidestep could even reach the floor, Rainmaker hit her with a mild electrical blast. Rainmaker carefully modulated the bolt so that it didn’t kill Sidestep, or even do any permanent injury. But it was more than enough to shock her into unconsciousness.
That left only Highwire.
The team leader of Gen14 looked as though she didn’t know' what to do next. She hadn’t expected her team to be beaten. She wasn’t prepared to fight all of Gen13 by herself. And with Sidestep down for the count, even her escape route had been cut off.
As Freefall continued to nurse Grunge, the others edged toward Highwire. She launched herself into the air, flipping over the head of a startled Burnout, then ricocheted off the ceiling past Rainmaker, and bounced off the wall to zip around Fairchild.
The evasive maneuver would have worked, too, if not for the tiny snowstorm that Rainmaker had put in her path. Highwire hit the slippery patch of snow that had accumulated on the floor. Before Highwire could even register what was happening, her feet slid out from under her and she landed flat on her back. She tried to scramble to her feet, but Fairchild was already on her knees and pinning Highwire to the ground. There was no way she could match Fairchild’s phenomenal strength. Highwire was trapped, and she knew it.
Burnout and Rainmaker loomed over Highwire now, too. All three of the teens looked at her for a moment, the same thought running through each of their minds. Highwire seemed so small now, much more like a young girl than like the team leader for a gang of multiple murderers.
“Where’s the missile?” Fairchild asked.
Highwire stared up at them with her jaw set and a defiant gleam in her eye. She wasn’t going to tell them anything. On the other hand, she’d be very happy to spit in their faces... and gave it her best shot. The spittle didn’t reach quite far enough.
Fairchild glanced down at the spot of saliva on her tunic and sighed. She looked down at Highwire with more pity than hatred in her eyes. “Ivana didn’t even give you a real name, did she?” Fairchild said. As gently as she could, Fairchild flicked a finger under Highwire’s chin. It struck with a loud THWAK!, snapping Highwire’s head back and knocking her out.
Burnout and Rainmaker stepped back slightly to give Fairchild room as she stood up. “Guess we’ll have to find the missile ourselves,” Fairchild said. “Any idea where to start, Mister Lynch?
“Mister Lynch?’
They looked around. Lynch was already gone.
“Looks like he meant it when he said there was no time to lose,” Burnout said.
“He ran out on us?” Rainmaker said, not quite believing it.
“No,” Fairchild replied. “He trusted us to win.”
“ ‘First priority is the missile,’ remember?” Burnout added.
“Odds are, he’s already on it,” said Fairchild. “We’ve got to find him and help.” She looked over at Grunge and Freefall. “Grunge? Are you up to this?”
Freefall was helping Grunge stretch the loose ends of his rubber body together to make them meet. “I will be ... in a ... minute,” he grunted. “Get that bit... over there ... willya, Rox?”
Once the pieces were fully in contact with each other, Grunge willed himself back to human form. Even as the change began, the molecules that made up his chest and stomach reached out to each other. They started to knit themselves back together, bit by tiny bit. The torn shreds of rubber united to form sinews, blood, and skin. By the time the change was done, Grunge’s flesh and blood body had pulled itself back together into a single whole once again.
With so much damage, though, the change wasn’t easy. Throughout the process, the pain and effort showed itself through the grimace on Grunge’s face. Even after he’d completed the transformation, a blackened burn mark remained where his rubber body had been melted.
One of the benefits of Grunge’s gen-active nature was a healing factor that allowed his body to repair itself far more quickly than normal. On the first day his powers manifested, Grunge had been shot in the chest three times by Ivana’s guards. He still remembered the pain as the bullets tore through his lungs and heart. By rights, it should have killed him. But instead, the wounds sealed themselves up within minutes. He spit up the bullets while they were still warm from friction and body heat.
Yet, Grunge’s metabolism didn’t make him invulnerable. The healing still took time. The more extensive the injuries, the longer the process took. And it was far from painless.
“Gee/,- Pookie, that looks bad,” Freefall said. She reached over to touch the blackened area gingerly.
“AAAH!” Grunge screamed, jumping away. “Don’t touch it!”
“Maybe you should wait here,” Fairchild said, concerned. “Get some rest.”
“What, and miss ... the big ... finish?” Grunge said, wincing from the pain. “You guys know ... you can’t make it... without... the Grunge-man.” He forced a
grin. “ ’Sides, the important... thing is ... it missed ... my tat.”
It was true. The winged skull tattoo on Grunge’s chest was unsinged.
“We don’t have time to argue about this,” Rainmaker said. “Anybody who’s coming, let’s go!”
CHAPTER 14
The team raced through the halls of the vast complex en masse. Some ran. Some flew. With the world at stake, everyone was moving as fast as they possibly could.
“This place is a ghost town,” Grunge said, trying his best to keep pace with the others. “Is it just me, or is this creeping anyone else out, too?”
“Ivana said the facility was decommissioned,” Fairchild replied, showing no signs of getting winded as she ran. “I’d guess her helpers have been ‘decommissioned,’ too.” ~
“There’s, like, a zillion doors here!” Freefall complained, as she sped along without touching the ground. “How are we supposed to know which one’s it?”
“Just look for the signs that say, ‘This Way to Armageddon,’ ” Burnout replied, soaring through the air beside her.
“Mister Lynch is going to want our help,” Fairchild said. “I think he’ll leave the right door open for us.” “He’d better,” Burnout said. “Look!”
The group slowed to a stop as they reached an intersection of two corridors. The two nearly identical hallways branched off in opposite directions.
“Bogus,” said Grunge. “So now what? We split up?” Rainmaker shook her head. “No need. I’d say it’s this way.”
“How’d you figure that?” Freefall asked.
“Check it out.” Rainmaker pointed down one of the corridors. In the distance, they could see signs that said
“RESTRICTED AREA” and yellow and black ones with the international symbol for radioactive material.
“Works for me,” said Grunge.
With that, they were back on their way.
Before long, they overtook their mentor. He was standing beside a sliding glass door and using his fingers to probe the edges of a metal panel that was embedded in the wall.
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