Superheroes Anonymous (Book 2): Supervillains Anonymous

by Dunne, Lexie

  He hit the ground with a thud.

  The cacophony of gunshots filled the air, echoing off the concrete walls and barking back to my already-hurting ears. I whipped around as five more commandos rushed in, already firing. One turned toward me and in the next instant, Angélica appeared, grabbed the back of my shirt, and phased us out of there. We hit a small mound of rocks together as she miscalculated. Winded and a little dazed, I crawled for the nearest pillar. She followed.

  “Are you ever going to get that under control?” I shouted over the sound of gunfire.

  “It’s been less than a day! Get to the next pillar. I’ll cover you.” She rolled her eyes at me. When she moved, there was a flicker of color, then a soldier to the back of the group lay on the ground, wheezing. I sprinted for cover as his friends all turned to look.

  Angélica was suddenly right beside me again. “How many do you count?”

  “At least twelve, not counting the ones we took down already. This will be fun.” I was a little startled and afraid to find out that I wasn’t being completely sarcastic. Angélica’s brief grin told me she knew exactly how I felt. “I’ll follow your lead, boss.”

  “Thought you might.” She mouthed a countdown, and we split up. Gunshots pinged against the walls and the concrete, ricocheting dangerously as we sprinted. I could hear the shouts of the troops as they set in to follow us. Their footsteps sounded just as unsteady as ours over the uneven ground.

  The perfect way to fight the men from the Lodi Corporation would be to lure them into the maze and pick them off one at a time. Out in the open, we were both vulnerable. I might have the armor, and Angélica might be able to throw herself around in a fight, but ultimately, neither of us was bulletproof. But we also couldn’t leave Jeremy and Kiki, who’d ducked into the control room out of sight, in the open for long.

  Still, with no other choice, we raced for the hallway that led to the rest of the factory. Inside, we banked a sharp left. When the first group of soldiers pounded in after us, we set in on them. Angélica had taught me everything I knew about how to fight until Rita had come along, so it wasn’t surprising that we worked together like a well-oiled machine. When she hit high, I dropped low to sweep a man’s feet out from under him so I could choke him out. The brief, furious scuffle left three soldiers on the ground.

  Angélica raced off in a direction that kept us parallel to the chamber where both Jeremy and Kiki were hiding. I jumped to my feet to follow, and the entire factory shook.

  Distracted, I swung in the direction of where Cooper and Brook were taking on Vicki, Guy, and Sam. That hadn’t been one of my friends, had it?

  “Gail!” Angélica pivoted at the same time as the soldiers rounded the corner between us. Three turned toward me. I saw the gun muzzles swing in my directly slowly, like time had slowed to a crawl. There wasn’t anything for me to hide behind, so I did the opposite. I leapt up, grabbing the wire for the hanging bulb overhead. It snapped, but I was already flying feetfirst toward the enemy.

  I caught the first with the blade of my foot, landing on him when he toppled. The two soldiers on either side tackled me from both sides, dogpiling on top of me. I shoved one with my shoulder, just enough to throw him off-balance, and headbutted the woman behind me in the chin. When she stumbled back without letting go, I fell back on her. I kicked her partner in the chest with both feet and flipped over the woman behind me. She had no choice but to go with me. She plummeted like a rock and hit the pavement hard. I landed with my feet on either side of her and punched her partner.

  The ground shook again.

  Please don’t be Guy, I thought, and turned to check on my fighting partner. Three of the enemy had gone after me, but five had chased Angélica down the hallway. I could see them ahead, two on the ground, three more still trying to capture and shoot her. She phased in and out, bouncing off of the walls, little sneak attacks.

  Which would have worked better if her powers were working right.

  I only saw the inaccuracies, the way she was a few feet or inches off of her mark, because we’d sparred so many times. Three Class D fighters, combat-trained or not, should have been nothing for my old trainer. And for the most part, they were. She took the first out with an uppercut, the next with a combination that echoed brutally in the hallway. The third, though, was proving difficult as I sprinted for the pair of them. He blocked enough of her hits to tell me there was serious training there.

  I could see the sheen of sweat on Angélica’s forehead, the frustration on her face.

  And from behind her, I saw the man with the rifle step into the hallway.

  Angélica couldn’t have seen him as he raised his rifle and aimed. I put on a desperate burst of speed, kicked off the wall to get around the two combatants, and threw myself through the air right as the man opened fire. The explosion of gunfire drowned out all noise, but I felt three bright points of pain blossom across my torso. It felt like I’d been sucker punched by a ball-peen hammer.

  I hit the ground, out of breath, my vision flickering in and out. In a blink, Angélica snatched up the knife from her opponent’s vest and flung it.

  It hit the gunner in the face. Angélica cursed vociferously. A second heavy thud followed as the man she’d been fighting hit the ground at the same time as the gunner.

  Angélica knelt by my side. “You idiot,” she said. “What the hell kind of stunt was that?”

  I grunted and rolled onto my back. Contrary to everything my brain screamed at me, there were no bullet holes in my torso. Instead, the armor Jessica Davenport had given me was scuffed in three places, but unbroken. “Bulletproof, remember?”

  She smacked me upside the head. “I take hits for you, not the other way around.”

  “Yeah, because that worked out so well for me last time,” I said, groaning. We both flinched when the floor shook again. “Help me up?”

  “When we get back to Davenport, I am putting your ass through a wall for this,” she said, but I could hear the shakiness in her voice that she wasn’t quite able to mask. Whether it was from overextending herself so soon after waking up, or from actual fear that I’d been dead, I didn’t know. She pulled me to my feet, and I sucked my breath through my teeth. “Gonna live?”

  “Regrettably, yes.”

  “Good.” She didn’t smack me on the head again, but I could see the desire to do so written plainly on her face. “Can you fight?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then follow me.”

  We had to get through two separate skirmishes to make our way back to the open foyer and the control room. Amazingly, though, there were no more troops waiting for us. Instead, there was only Kiki and Jeremy, both of whom looked pale. “How’s it looking?” Angélica asked, running her arm over her forehead. “Are we ready?”

  “My part is,” Kiki said, casting an uncertain look at Jeremy, “but . . .”

  “But what?” I asked.

  “They messed everything up,” he said. He was kneeling next to the generator, and he ran his hand through his hair several times in agitation.

  “Is it broken? We need it for—”

  “It works, but I won’t be able to trigger it remotely and there’s no time to rig anything up.” Jeremy leaned back like he might actually be ill. “One of us is going to need to be up here to trigger, it and nobody else knows anything about how to work this. It needs to be me.”

  “No way,” I said right away. “You don’t have any healing ability, he’ll kill you without blinking.”

  “Not if the rest of you do your jobs.” I could see the obvious fear, but Jeremy raised himself to his full height. “It’ll be fine. You know I’ve been wanting to play hero for a while. Be nice not to have the rest of you hog the spotlight.”

  “Jeremy,” I said.

  Angélica stepped between us, though. “If we can protect you from Cooper, is it safe for you?”
she asked, looking up at my ex very seriously.

  Jeremy outright squirmed under her gaze. “Mostly. This plan is incredibly dangerous to begin with.”

  “No,” I said. “This isn’t going to fly. Teach one of us what to do, and you get to safety.”

  But Angélica shook her head. “If the man says he can do it, we need to let him. Kiki, is everything—”

  “Guys,” Naomi said in all of our ears, making all four of us flinch as one. “There’s a problem. It’s Brook, she—”

  This time when the walls shook, more than concrete dust was knocked loose. I saw pillars actively shiver.

  “What was that?” I asked, looking nervously in the direction of the other fight.

  “Sam,” Naomi said, her voice subdued. “That was Sam.”

  Angélica swallowed hard. “Is he . . .”

  “No time!” This time it was Guy’s voice in our ears. “We’re coming your way! Get ready!”

  Jeremy swore. “The water! Don’t get any near the generator, and I’ll be okay.”

  All four of us dove for the giant bottles of saltwater that Vicki and Guy had flown in. This was the last step of the plan for a reason: if it dried before Cooper arrived, we were up the creek without a paddle and not even Sharkbait in his really stupid costume could save us then. We scrambled to drench every part of the control room that we could reach.

  “Ten seconds!” Guy said over the comms. I could hear the fight getting closer.

  And then all I heard was gunshots, and Jeremy’s vociferous curse. He was out in the open, exposed up on the catwalk, as one of the soldiers we’d taken out earlier raced in, spraying bullets everywhere. He dropped the bottle of saltwater as he staggered back.

  Angélica hit the soldier with both feet, kicking him back into the wall.

  “Five seconds!”

  “Get out of here!” Kiki threw her water bottle down and grabbed my arm, shoving me out of the control room, toward Jeremy. She slammed the door after me and ran out the other way, out of sight on the other catwalk.

  “Are you okay?” I asked Jeremy, who had managed to grow even paler. We raced for the stairwell where we would need to hide. I hit the stairs first and crouched, Jeremy sliding for home behind me. “You didn’t get hit, did you?”

  “N-no, he missed me, I’m okay.”

  I didn’t get a chance to ask anything else, though, for in that second, Guy burst into the room in a blur of green and black. I could tell from how he was flying that he’d been severely hurt, but there wasn’t any time to focus on that. Vicki followed a half second behind; and then, shouting in rage, Cooper charged in. He didn’t pause before he leapt through the air, latching onto Guy and doing his best to rip one of Guy’s arms off. They grappled in midair, Guy struggling against Cooper’s superior strength. I stopped breathing.

  Guy broke free. Cooper dropped sixty feet through the air, landed heavily on the ground, and leapt again. This time, it was Vicki he aimed for.

  She flicked her hand and blasted him in the face with one of her firebolts. Cooper just shook his head like he was clearing water out of his ears. He landed and jumped again.

  “Now!” Naomi said in our ears, and Kiki stepped into view.

  “Lemuel!” she shouted.

  All three of the Class A fighters swung about. Even though Guy and Vicki both wore masks, I could read the feigned shock in their body language as they took in the sight of Kiki up on that catwalk.

  “What are you doing?” Vicki shouted a little melodramatically. She made a show of waving frantically. “Kiki, get out of here!”

  A look of confusion spread over Cooper’s face, followed rapidly by disappointment, and anger. He took three running steps and jumped yet again. “You,” he said, lurching toward Kiki as he landed on the catwalk. Covered in sweat, his eyes crazy, he stalked forward. Kiki backed up toward the control room. “You did this. Why?”

  “For my grandfather,” Kiki said, and Cooper drew up short.

  “Now!” Naomi said in our ears, and four things happened at once:

  Cooper lunged for Kiki.

  Jeremy and I sprinted for the generator.

  Brook burst in and flew straight for Guy.

  And Kiki threw herself off the catwalk.

  As expected, Cooper overshot, slipped on the water, and tripped right into the control room. Vicki snatched Kiki out of the air three feet before she hit the ground.

  Cooper leapt to his feet, but Angélica phased back onto the catwalk and slammed the door on the opposite side shut, tripping the valve release. Cooper took two steps to the door—and began to claw at his throat. The gas that flooded the room wasn’t combustible, but Kiki had sworn that even Cooper wouldn’t be able to breathe. At least for a little while. Which was why we had the second part of the plan.

  “Now, Jeremy!” Angélica called.

  Inside the control room, Cooper turned red and began to lurch about. Out in the open, Brook kicked Guy in the center of the chest and sent him tumbling back. Vicki, who’d apparently deposited Kiki somewhere safely out of the way, joined in the scrum.

  “Now, Jeremy!” Angélica said again, louder this time. She’d braced herself on the other side of the control room, but none of us was going to be able to keep Cooper in there if he shook off the gas.

  I realized that Jeremy had gone bone white and was staring at the generator. Or more precisely, at the giant plastic bottle of saltwater that he’d dropped. It had pooled everywhere around the generator and under the door of the control room.

  There wasn’t a safe place to stand.

  “Oh, shit,” I said. There was no way that Jeremy could trigger the generator without being electrocuted.

  “What is it?” Angélica said.

  I looked at Jeremy. “Don’t even think about doing what I think you’re about to. We’ll come up with a way—maybe I can—”

  His eyes never left the puddle. “You can ’port, right? That’s a thing you can do now?”

  Desperation flooded me. What good was having a power if it couldn’t save the day? In the control room, Cooper had dropped to one knee, but he’d stopped clawing for his throat, and that couldn’t be good. “Yes, but I can’t control it, so it would never work—”

  “Good, then you’ll survive this,” he said, and he shoved my chest, pushing me right off the catwalk.

  I fell, mouth open in a scream that never came out. Shock coursed through me. I saw in that weird timelessness before gravity took hold, Jeremy run forward in slow motion forward. He stepped into the puddle, flipped on the generator—

  And suddenly I was on the catwalk again, running toward him. It was like racing toward a weird mirror: Cooper on one side of the glass, body taut as the current raced through his body, and closer to me, in the open, Jeremy stuck in exactly the same position. Both of their faces were contorted with agony.

  I leapt over the water and tackled Jeremy right off the catwalk, heart in my throat again. Everything sped up again so that all I could see was the ground rushing at both of us. I twisted in midair so I would take the brunt of the landing. It would hurt, I knew, but that seemed inevitable at this point. I squeezed my eyes shut.

  A split second later, something hit me from the side, and Jeremy was torn away. My trajectory went from a steep plummet to a sideways flight. Either way, I hit the ground hard enough that it pushed all of the air out of my lungs and pounded hard into the earlier injuries from the fight. I lay where I landed, looking up in a daze. Every part of my body hurt, but all of that had nothing on my head.

  I was never ’porting ever again. It just wasn’t worth it.

  “You,” said a voice from over me, and I opened my eyes just the merest slits. I wasn’t surprised at all to see Brook standing over me, vibrating with fury. Blood gushed from a cut on her forehead, but I could see her eyes clearly. They were even more crazed than us
ual. I was a little more concerned about the gun in her hand. Where was everybody? Where was Guy? And Jeremy?

  “Leave me alone,” I said, my voice hoarse. “At this point, you’re just a pain in my ass. Your powers can’t do a thing to me.”

  “No,” Brook said. “But this can.”

  She raised the gun. Abstractly, I recognized it as Cooper’s, the same one that had been meant to kill me. She thumbed off the safety. I didn’t bother to watch my life flash before my eyes, as I knew it always had been and always would be depressingly full of encounters with supervillains. Instead, I lay there, unable to move after my fall, and glared up at her. It was almost peaceful, in its way.

  Clang.

  Brook’s eyes rolled back in her head. Almost predictably, she dropped like a rock.

  Angélica lowered the shovel she’d used to clobber my nemesis and spit on the ground for good measure. “Been waiting to do that all day,” she said, lowering a hand to help me up. “What a bitch.”

  “No kidding.” Sitting up only doubled the amount of pain trying to cram its way into my skull, so I groaned. “Guy? Is Guy okay?”

  “I’m fine.” And like a miracle, he was suddenly there, kneeling right beside me. When he pulled his mask off, his hair was a mess, and he had a couple of cuts on his face, but he was there, and alive. He looked back at me in the same shell-shocked way that told me he was giving me the same once-over. “Angélica just beat me to the punch. Are you okay?”

  “Sort of. Jeremy—where is he?” Panic flooded in. Had I gotten to him in time? Had he landed safely? I looked around, frantic now. I didn’t see him anywhere nearby. “Where is he? Where did he go?”

  “Vicki caught him and flew off.” Kiki ran up, panting heavily. “I think he’s dead.”

  “What?” I said, the word coming out as a screech. My heart stopped beating.