"We'll do more than test you," Grunge announced, extricating himself from the melting goo that had been a dragon. "We'll give you a mother of a final exam."
"Emphasis on final," Bobby added. He had flown out of the dragon and hovered above Wager now.
Cipher, Caitlin, Sarah, and Roxy also faced the man. They had him surrounded. It would only take Caitlin a single leap, with her long legs, to bury the needle in the exposed flesh of his neck.
She poised herself.
"Sarah, Bobby, cover!" she called. As one, they loosed a barrage of flame and electricity in the man's direction. When they did, Caitlin moved.
Wager blinked.
And the room fell away.
They stood, suddenly, on a vast plain, miles across. The ground was hard and dry and bare of vegetation, just mile after mile of reddish rock. It might have been the surface of Mars, for all they could tell.
Mountains ringed the plain. It was impossible to tell how tall they might be, or how far away.
Wager stood, laughing, a thousand yards from them.
When he spoke, though, it was as if he hadn't moved an inch away.
"You can't still hope to defeat me," he gloated. "At best, you can pray that I let you survive."
"Sheee," Grunge said. "How'd he do that?"
"He controls reality. He can warp it to his will," Sarah said. "Haven't you been paying attention?"
"Figured it was somethin' like that."
"Like when we went up against Max Faraday?" Bobby asked.
"Very much like that," Caitlin replied.
"How'd we beat him, again?" Grunge wanted to know.
"We didn't, Einstein," Roxy told him. "He killed himself, remember?"
"Right," Grunge said. "You don't suppose Wager will"
"It seems very unlikely," Sarah said. "He's kind of got the upper hand."
"He'd never do that," Cipher agreed. "This is what he's lived for."
"Swell," Grunge said. "Why do the fruitcakes get what they want, and I can't even find a decent skate ramp in Manhattan?"
"We're wasting time," Caitlin said. "We've got ground to cover."
She tucked her head and began to run, her long legs eating up the space quickly. Above her, she saw Bobby, Roxy, and Sarah flying toward Roxy. Grunge and Cipher brought up the rear, running as fast as they could.
When she figured she had gone halfway, she raised her head, looked toward Wager.
He was still just as far away.
The plain seemed to expand as they ran. No matter how far they went, there was no getting closer to him.
She stopped, breathing hard.
"Okay," she called. "Pull up!"
The others gathered around her.
"We're just knocking ourselves out, doing that. It's not working. We need another plan."
"I don't know what the elements are like here," Sarah said. I can try to call up a big momma of a storm, but there's no guarantee that my powers will work in whatever reality this is."
"Worth a shot," Caitlin suggested. She stood with her hands on her thighs, still winded from the pointless dash.
But Roxy tapped her shoulder.
"I think we have something else to worry about," she said. "Look."
The others turned.
The plain between them and Wager was no longer empty.
It came alive. Popping up from the ground were hundreds of warriors, seemingly composed of the same reddish earth. They were seven feet tall, heavily muscled. There was no fine detail—they looked like the beginning stages of a sculptor's project, quickly chiseled from stone.
"Looks like we gotta go through these guys," Bobby pointed out.
"No time like the present," Sarah replied. She lifted her arms toward the sky, materializing thick black clouds overhead. The clouds crackled with energy. Lightning flashed inside the darkness.
Grunge approached Caitlin with one hand outstretched toward her chest. "Kat," he said. "Let me touch."
"Are you crazy, Grunge?" she shot back. "This is not the time—"
"I mean the ring, on your zipper," he protested. Her uniform zipped up near her collarbone, and the zipper pull was a metal ring. "I just want something harder than these guys are gonna be."
Caitlin blushed. "Sorry, Grunge. Be my guest. Just be, you know, careful."
He touched the ring and felt the metal wash over him. "Don't worry," he said. "I'm not gonna try anything."
Sarah began the assault with a dozen bolts of lightning. Warriors of earth crumbled under the onslaught. Bobby followed suit, unleashing a furious barrage of plasma blasts at the stone soldiers. Roxy altered the gravity beneath them, slamming them into one another.
Caitlin, Grunge, and Cipher took a more basic approach, wading into the thick of the warriors and pounding them with powerful fists and fast kicks. Some went down, but there were always more where they came from.
After what seemed like a long time, Caitlin looked between and around the earthen soldiers. Wager was just as far away as he had been, and there were just as many warriors between them. She sucked at a bleeding knuckle.
"This isn't working," she said. "We're not making any progress."
Cipher hammered a soldier with a heavy fist and the thing burst into dust. "You're right," he agreed. "We aren't getting any closer to Wager."
Grunge overheard. "What else can we do?" he asked. "There's so many of these overgrown garden trolls."
"You know what we have to do, Caitlin," Cipher said.
"But we really don't know what it might—"
"We don't know how it'll affect me," Cipher finished. "But we don't have any choice. We don't stop Wager now, who's to say he won't turn his power loose on the whole world?"
"You're right," Caitlin sighed. She unzipped her pocket, removed the second steel cylinder. She unscrewed the cap and slid another hypodermic needle into her hand. "But this is Wager's own DNA. Who's to say you won't become just like him?"
"That's a chance we have to take," Cipher said. "But I didn't start out like him. So we can hope…"
"Hope's all we have," Caitlin said. She jammed the needle into his neck, pushed down the plunger.
Roxy, Sarah, and Bobby joined them. They formed themselves into a circle to hold off the slowly-advancing rock-men. Working together, as a team, seemed more efficient than blasting away at them one by one.
As Caitlin withdrew the now-empty hypo, Cipher clapped a hand to his neck. With a grimace of pain, he dropped to his knees.
"Mr. Joe!" Bobby called. "What'd you do to him, Kat?"
"What he wanted," Caitlin said. "Our last option. I gave him a shot of Wager's DNA."
"But how can you tell what effect that'll have on him?"
"I can't. I just have to hope that, because their body chemistries are so similar, it'll be safe."
Cipher rolled on the hard ground, knees drawn up to his chest. His skin had turned red and blotchy and rippled like a pond someone had tossed a pebble into.
"Doesn't look safe from here."
Sarah touched his arm. "She had to try it, Bob."
"I know, I know. But…"
Cipher cut him off with a long scream. He rolled over to his hands and knees, back in the air. He pushed himself off the ground, stood up. His face was a mask of agony.
He was at least a foot taller than he had been. And wider, deeper-chested.
"Dude," Grunge said. "Remember those ads in the old comics, where the bully kicks sand in a geek's face and then the geek goes all Arnold on him? They coulda used some of what you got goin' on."
"Cipher?" Caitlin asked tentatively. "Are you?"
"I'm fine, Caitlin," he answered. "Better than fine."
"But you're still Cipher, right?" Roxy asked. "I mean, on the side of the angels and all that?"
"Yes."
"No," Bobby cut in. "You're not. You're Joe Monteleone. Whatever happens, don't lose sight of that. You're a decent man, a kind man who got into a bad spot."
Cipher put a huge hand on Bo
bby's shoulder, dwarfing it. He squeezed once, and let go.
"I have something to do," he said simply.
He turned to face Wager. The stone soldiers had paused in their advance. Caitlin figured Wager had stopped them while he waited to see what was going on.
Finally, something the creep hadn't counted on.
"Interesting metamorphosis," Wager called out. "I hadn't thought you could take that much more of the serum."
"This isn't more of it," Cipher said. "It's something else."
"Meaning?"
"You didn't compute the odds right," Cipher said. "You let us get a sample of your DNA."
"Impossible."
"Nothing's impossible, Wager. Only highly unlikely. Isn't that your philosophy?"
"No matter," Wager said. "I still—"
Cipher waved a hand before him and the soldiers vanished.
"Still nothing," he said.
He snapped his fingers, and the plain was gone. They were back in Wager's claustrophobically small lair. The walls were still knocked out, ceiling gone, computer and video equipment a smoldering mess.
Wager backed toward the corner, fear beginning to show on his face. Beads of sweat lined his brow.
"You can't…"
"I can."
Wager gestured to the space between them and there was suddenly a massive energy-man there, crackling and sparking like pure electricity.
Cipher blinked, and he was gone.
Wager's mouth fell open.
Cipher lunged.
He caught Wager around the neck, slamming him back into the wall. "Nooo!" Wager shouted. Cipher let go with his right hand, curled it into a fist, and drove it repeatedly into Wager's gut.
The man doubled over.
Caitlin yanked the syringe from her pocket, rushed to Cipher's side. "Hold him still!" she called.
Cipher did, putting Wager into a hammerlock. Caitlin thrust the needle into him, found a vein. She pressed the plunger.
"Nooo!" Wager called as the needle impaled him. "You can't."
With Cipher holding him, he began to transform. Pounds fell away, muscles vanished. In a few moments, Wager was the diminutive man he had once been.
Powerless and scared.
His lip trembled and his eyes blinked furiously, holding back tears.
Cipher released the man who had been Wager.
"You killed my family," he said. "You made me into … into this. You are evil and you need to die." He cocked a fist.
"P-please," Thomas Carlisle begged.
"Joe!" Bobby called. "He's nothing, now! Leave him for the cops. They can deal with his kind!"
Cipher shook his head. "If there was any justice in this world, my children would be alive."
"You can't believe that," Bobby argued. "Cipher might, but Mr. Joe is smarter than that."
"Shut up, Bobby," Cipher warned. "Even if the police take him, what's the worst they'll do? Lock him away in prison? That's not good enough. He needs to die. And it needs to hurt."
"I won't! Not until I know you're listening. Not until Mr. Joe is listening. You're still inside there, somewhere. And I know you understand mercy and compassion. I know that Mr. Joe respects the law."
Cipher hoisted the squirming Carlisle, ready to deliver the killing blow.
Bobby went on. "I know that Joe Monteleone is no killer!"
Cipher stopped. "Let the authorities deal with him," he said. "My family is gone. I won't bring shame to their memory by killing this piece of human filth." With an expression of deep disgust, he threw Wager to the floor.
EPILOGUE
By the time the police had taken Carlisle and his few remaining thugs into custody and asked their questions of the team, another evening was slipping over the city. They had gone to a coffee shop, and sipped steaming mochas and lattes against the chill. Now they stood on a quiet dusky street. Manhattan was going through one of its daily changes, around them, as lights flicked on and the city metamorphosed from its daytime face to its nighttime one.
"You got the stuff, Kat?" Bobby asked.
"What stuff?" Roxy wanted to know.
Caitlin, still holding a cup of coffee, fumbled two vials from her purse. "Here they are," she said.
"What's that?" Roxy asked again.
"More of the antidote," Bobby explained. "The stuff that counteracts the Gen Factor. And the Gen Factor serum itself. Kat says she can make an antidote for us all. The time doesn't matter, like it did for Wager, because we were born this way." He looked at his teammates. "Any takers? Normality is in our grasp."
They all looked at the vials in Bobby's hands.
Rainmaker had never asked for power over storms and weather, had never dreamed of being able to call lightning from the skies. She abhorred violence, and yet, since becoming part of the team, it seemed that all she did was fight.
She started to reach for the vials, then pulled her hand back. "I guess not," she said. Sarah, after all, had not— would not have been able to—help stop Wager. Or any of the other threats they'd encountered over the last few years. No one person can save the world, she thought. But for a team of superheroes—all in a day's work.
Grunge remembered taking out that purse-snatcher without using his powers. That had been sweet. And he'd seriously freaked out Therese, back at the club, when he'd done the change.
But it had never bothered Roxy. He knew she had it kind of bad for him, even though they were both seeing other people right now. If his power disturbed her any, she'd never have stayed interested in him this long.
He figured there would always be some people in the world who didn't like anything that was different than what they were used to. But those weren't the kind of people—clearly—who could put up with him for long, or who he wanted to spend time with.
His powers didn't take anything away from him, they just added another layer.
Who knew, maybe Michele would be more open-minded.
"I'll pass," he said.
For her part, Freefall had already made up her mind, during the battle with the stone soldiers. She would, she guessed, always be into the party thing. But she had realized that she was also into the family thing. Sure, maybe Caitlin was only her half-sister, but that was more sister than she'd had before. And the others, hot-headed Bobby, self-righteous Sarah, even Grunge, who was just, insufferably… Grunge—were as much a family as the people who had given birth to her. She shook her head.
Fairchild had been mulling this over ever since she had started making the stuff. To be normal again. To be appreciated for her mind, for her intellect, for what she really had to offer. Not to be the body, the center of unwanted attention. It was all so very attractive.
But at the same time, she thought, you really can't go home again. History is a one-way street. No one wakes up in the morning the same person they were the night before.
Any more platitudes? she asked herself. Because you have a decision to make here. And it's a big one. The biggest.
She looked at the tube Bobby held. She had done that. No one else had. The Gen Factor hadn't made her any smarter—but it hadn't subtracted anything, either. She was as intelligent as she was, and the rest of it was just casing. Surface stuff. What did it matter if she was tall and strong and had giant boobs, really?
Maybe she just needed to exercise her mind a bit more. The body would take care of itself.
"Not for me, thanks," she said.
There was a time—not so long ago, in fact—that Burnout would have just gone along with the others to be going along with the others. He was no leader, and he'd come to accept that about himself. He followed Caitlin into battle, followed Sarah into causes, followed Grunge into trouble.
But that had changed, hadn't it? He'd been the one who pushed to find Mr. Joe. He'd been the one, really, who'd been behind this whole adventure, the one who was responsible for bringing down Wager.
And he'd done that by making his own decisions. Maybe it had taken him a long time to start growing up— a
fter all, he was the only one in the team whose dad was the team's mentor, right? How could that help him mature? But he felt like he'd at least started the process, now. And it felt good. He liked it.
He turned to Cipher.
"You got to take this, man," he said. "You're still changing, look at you. Caitlin said that extra dose is going to kill you if you don't do this."
"I don't know," Cipher said. "All this power."
"What good's it gonna do you, you fall over and die?" Grunge asked.
"So you'll be Joe Monteleone again," Bobby said. "So what? Joe's a good man."
"But he's a useless one," Cipher countered. "He's a loser. He means nothing—to anyone, now that his family's gone."
"He means something to us."
"I appreciate that, Sarah. Really. But you guys told me my son died thinking his old man was some kind of secret agent, right. Some kind of hero."
"You were always his hero," Bobby pointed out.
"Not like I was then. Not like I am."
"But Joe…"
"No, Robert," he said. "We don't know how long I have. A year? An hour? There's no telling. But in this form, with these powers, maybe I'll be able to do some good for somebody in the time I've got. I think you've all made a very similar decision in the past few minutes."
"But it isn't going to kill us," Bobby said.
"Better to die doing something worthwhile than live without hope," Cipher said. "You think I have anything to offer, Bobby Lane, let it be that." He shook hands all around, double-checked to make sure the street was clear, and then flew off into the sky to begin the newest phase of his life.
Bobby shrugged. "Guess that's it, then," he said. "No takers."
"You know what to do, Bobby," Caitlin said.
"That I do." He closed his fist around the vials, and concentrated.
The others had to back away from him, while maintaining a ring around him there on the frosty morning sidewalk. His fist began to glow, to radiate incredible heat. But that was nothing compared to what was happening inside his closed hand.
When he opened it again, it was empty. The unimaginable heat he had generated had vaporized both the vials.
Time and Chance Page 22
