Runaways

by Christopher Golden

  For a few seconds, Gert just stared at the door. Her heart was pounding. She knew she loved Chase. On the other hand, she couldn’t deny there was truth in Zeke’s words.

  Blushing again, alone in the corridor, she turned and started back toward the stairs, her mind racing ahead to all of them being jammed together on board the Leapfrog.

  Great, she thought. This isn’t going to be awkward at all.

  Molly perched at the open hatch of the Leapfrog with the wind whooshing past her head. They were mid-leap and Chase toggled the controls of the Frog to keep them on target as the vehicle arced up, up, and farther up—as high as one leap from the tallest building near the Trumbull Bel Air could take them.

  Down below, to one side of the hotel, they could see Karolina begin her light show. From above it looked so beautiful as she zigged and zagged, painting the night with colors. On the street, people would be looking up. Some would be filled with wonder, oohing and aahing like they were at some Fourth of July celebration. Molly knew who those people would be—tourists, mostly. People from L.A. would know better. Whether they’d heard about the Runaways or not, locals would scatter and take cover or at least hurry toward their destination. L.A. wasn’t New York City, in the sense that it wasn’t completely overrun with super-powered individuals. Super-battles weren’t so common here that they didn’t show up on the TV news, but they happened often enough that no matter how pretty Karolina’s colors were, they would be making a lot of people nervous right now. Molly thought that was incredibly sad.

  But she didn’t want to be sad right now. Not when they were in the middle of something so frickin’ cool. And Karolina’s light show would draw civilians away from where the real action was going to be. She turned to gaze at Zeke.

  “You’re jumping out of a ship in midair!” she reminded him happily.

  He laughed, the sound warped by the wind whipping around them. “It sounds pretty crazy when you say it!”

  “That’s because it is!” Molly shouted.

  “Go, go, go!” Chase called from the cockpit.

  Zeke gave Molly a little salute. Very serious, she saluted back, one hand holding tightly to the strap beside the open hatch. The wind howled in. Zeke glanced at Gert, tipped her a wink, and then hurled himself out of the Leapfrog, plummeting toward the neon sign on top of the hotel, hundreds of feet below.

  Molly wondered what it must look like from the outside. The Leapfrog was cloaked, so anyone watching would have seen Zeke just appear as if from nowhere, like one of the wizards at Hogwarts apparating or something. Nico took Zeke’s place at the hatch, the two girls staring down as Zeke got smaller and smaller, plummeting…until suddenly he got much, much bigger.

  Molly liked being strong. She liked being able to defend herself. Being a mutant came with some pretty scary baggage at times—especially if the government found out—but super strength let her be confident and brave. Watching Kurdo-Zeke fall made her a little jealous. She might be strong but she was pretty small, and the idea of being huge and having a giant battle-ax appealed to her very much.

  The Leapfrog dropped fast. Chase controlled the descent and he wouldn’t let them crash, but they were following Kurdo-Zeke down so swiftly that Molly held her breath.

  Down below, Zeke smashed through the roof and Molly swore loudly.

  “We talked about your profanity,” Gert admonished her from farther back in the Frog. “This is one of the reasons you need to go to school.”

  “You think they don’t swear in school?” Molly asked, not meaning to be sassy.

  The subject dropped. They were falling fast and all of them were staring at the big hole in the roof with light streaming up through it from inside. This time it was Nico who swore.

  “That wasn’t me!” Molly called.

  The Leapfrog hitched, retro-power kicking in, slowing their fall, and then they were gliding toward the roof from a hundred feet. Seventy feet. Thirty feet. Below them, Karolina darted over the hotel and flew right down into the hole, joining whatever fight was already in progress. The retros kicked in again. With a hiss, Chase set the Frog down.

  “Move!” Nico shouted.

  Molly jumped out, wishing she had an ax. She led the way, running for the huge hole in the roof. When she reached the edge, she threw herself over, ready for a fight.

  Chase kept the Leapfrog in stealth mode. For half a second, he forgot to seal the hatch, and then he hesitated a moment or two, worried about what would happen when they all came running back and he had to dust off in a hurry. Would the few seconds it took to open the hatch cost them their lives—or at least some injuries?

  Allis slipped up beside him in the cockpit. Beautiful and scared, red hair framing her pale features, she strapped herself in.

  “Wishing you’d stayed behind?” he asked.

  “Kind of,” she admitted. “Also wondering why you closed the door.”

  “Stealth mode isn’t as effective when you can see an open hatch.”

  “But Zeke just crashed through the roof. They made a ton of noise going in. It’s not like we’ve got the element of surprise.”

  Chase grimaced, trying to make it look more like a grin. “That doesn’t mean we want every surveillance camera—never mind eyewitnesses in other buildings—to be able to get a good look at the Leapfrog. They’ll know it was the Runaways who did this.”

  “Karolina just made a very colorful diversion, and if there are any surveillance cameras, they’ll have picked up the whole team jumping down through the hole in the roof. If anybody knows who you guys are, they’ll definitely recognize you.”

  Shifting uneasily in his seat, Chase nodded, keeping that fake smile on his face. Allis might be beautiful, but she also had succeeded in getting on his nerves. Whether they wanted to or not, the girls on his team often made him feel stupid. When it came to tech and code and machines he was smarter than any of them, but he knew he didn’t have much common sense. He didn’t need Allis to remind him. As wrong as he knew it was—and he cringed inwardly at the thought—just this once he’d hoped the beautiful girl would also turn out not to be smarter than him.

  With the sounds of battle and the shouts of his friends coming to him over the comms unit in his left ear, he reached out and hit the switch to open the hatch. It hissed as it rose. He left the Frog in stealth mode.

  “Happy now?” he asked. His comms unit was muted. He didn’t want his conversation to distract the girls in the midst of the assault on the hotel.

  Allis snickered, and Chase glared at her.

  “What?” he demanded.

  “Are you always this much of a brat?”

  He sighed. “Not always.”

  “I guess it’s what comes of being the only guy surrounded by girls, right? I mean, you think they should be making a fuss about you or something, but instead they tease you.”

  “Hang on,” he said, holding up one finger. He thought he’d heard his name over the comms, but it was just Molly shouting for Old Lace, so he turned to Allis again. “Let me ask you a question. Do you think Zeke is good-looking?”

  Allis laughed. “Well, yeah. Of course. But he’s also totally full of himself and a little too pretty. Some girls like that. Others don’t want a guy who’s going to draw more attention when they walk into a room than she will.”

  “And Gert? Which kind of girl do you think she is?”

  Allis rolled her eyes. “You can’t be serious.”

  “I’m totally serious.”

  She patted him on the knee. “Sweetie, listen. The glasses, the attitude…she’s in her head ninety-nine percent of the time. A girl like that sees a guy like Zeke and—if he’s nice to her—she’s gonna feel it. That’s the one percent of the time she’s not in her head. Suddenly she’s reminded there’s this other side of her.”

  Chase wanted to throw up. He felt himself flush but didn’t know if it was with anger, jealousy, or embarrassment at how obvious this all seemed to Allis when to him it felt like she was translating
a language he’d never known anyone even spoke.

  “Well, that makes me feel awesome.”

  “Don’t get me wrong,” Allis hurried on. “Gert loves you. She admires you, too, which isn’t always the case with this stuff. At least not with some of the girls and guys I’ve run into. You go to the beach and you lie in the sun, but that’s not real life. Home is real life. Your own bed and pillow and the way things smell and the comfort of your own space.”

  “In this analogy, I take it Zeke is the day at the beach and I’m the cozy bed at home?”

  Allis patted his knee again. “You got it. Just relax. He’s no threat to you.”

  Chase nodded thoughtfully. He wished he had working Fistigons. Yes, he had weapons on board and could have put something together that would have helped this rescue mission, but not like the Fistigons. They had given him an edge, made it worth the risk of a fight. The others were all more likely to come out alive than he was—even Gert, because she and Old Lace had their psychic connection and the dinosaur was like an extension of her in a battle. Bullets would do real damage, even kill them, but when they worked as a team, they’d always been all right.

  He had to finish those new Fistigons. Not that it mattered tonight. Someone needed to be the getaway driver. He just had to sit here with Allis and wait.

  A frown creased his forehead. “Y’know, Allis, you should really go home.”

  She stared at him, drawing her hand back. “What do you mean?”

  Chase shrugged. “We’re runaways, yeah. But we’re also orphans. We have nowhere to go, and even if our parents were alive, they were legit evil. But the way you were just talking about the comforts of home, something tells me maybe your life isn’t as bad as all that.”

  She glanced away, a pained look in her eyes, and he realized he’d touched a nerve.

  “It’s…it’s complicated,” she said, wiping at the moisture welling at the corners of her eyes.

  “Of course, yeah. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”

  Gert’s voice crackled over the comms. “Chase, you there?”

  He unmuted. “You got me. Have you found Zeke’s friends?”

  “They’re here. But I don’t know if we—Wait! Old Lace, that way! Get that guy! Don’t let him…Damn it!”

  The sound of gunfire erupted, so loud it had to be very close to Gert. Chase started to shout her name and then, knowing how absurd it was, he called for Old Lace, as if the dinosaur could hear him.

  Allis unbuckled herself and started toward the hatch.

  “Where are you going?” he demanded.

  “To help. Somehow. You’ve got to stay here. If you and the Leapfrog aren’t waiting for them and ready to go, they’re screwed. But I’m just a freeloader. Time for me to do my part.”

  Chase glared at her. “Do you have powers you haven’t been telling me about?”

  “Of course not. Don’t be stupid.”

  He unbuckled himself and climbed into the back of the Leapfrog. With the twist of a knob, he opened a panel, reached down, and drew out an old plasma pistol his parents had built.

  “Take this,” he said, “but you’re not going anywhere. You’re staying right here. If you go into the hotel, you’re just one more person we might have to rescue. When they come up out of that roof they’re going to have trouble right behind them. You see anyone who isn’t clearly on our side, you shoot. Can you do that?”

  Allis grinned. “Does this make me part of the team?”

  Chase hesitated, then thought, What the hell? “Tonight it does. Just for tonight.”

  “Tonight’s good!” Allis replied, and she knelt in the open hatch, blaster in hand, and waited.

  Chase strapped himself back in, powered up the Leapfrog’s laser cannons, and waited.

  Nico used the Staff of One to crack a guard across the face and then kicked him in the balls. In an all-out assault on the secret lair of a group of elder-god-worshipping superhumans, there was no room for delicacy. They’d gotten lucky at first. Zeke had marched through the corridor ahead of them, hunched over to keep from hitting his head, and floored the first three armed security guards they’d encountered. Molly had picked up a massive chunk of fallen ceiling and used it to blockade the emergency exit stairs, so nobody could come up that way. The elevator was a problem, but Karolina had taken care of it by fusing the doors together and burning out the electrical system that controlled it.

  Zeke had picked the spot on the roof for their assault. He’d been confident about where the Nightwatch would be holding their prisoners, and now he led the way. He tore off doors and ignored bullets that smashed into his Kurdogrim flesh. Karolina and Molly were right behind him. Molly took out several other guards. Alarms sounded and emergency lights flashed as Nico followed, with Gert and Old Lace bringing up the rear. A roar behind her made Nico turn just in time to see the dinosaur crashing through frosted glass into what seemed like some kind of meditation room full of flowering plants and ergonomic chairs, but the only thing that Old Lace chased out of the room in a shower of glass was a fat orange cat.

  “Old Lace!” Gert called. “Stop fooling around.”

  Men and women in suits came at them, not executives but Secret Service—type security. A massive pair of wooden doors blocked their way at the end of a hallway full of mirrored glass and gleaming brass and esoteric modern art, like someone’s idea of a place rich people ought to live instead of anything resembling a home.

  Kurdo-Zeke was so focused on rescuing his friends that he seemed almost to have forgotten the Runaways were with him. With the strength of his monstrous form, he crashed through those massive wooden doors, sending splinters everywhere. Inside was an enormous penthouse suite, a sprawling room with thirty-foot ceilings, an entire wall of windows looking out onto the city, artfully arranged furniture, and a glowing gold koi pond right in the center.

  “What now?” Nico demanded.

  Zeke pointed to the right, along a corridor. “That way,” he said without turning. “The ‘safe rooms’ are down the hall. Nothing’s supposed to be able to get in. They said the rooms were for our safety in case of an attack, but my mother told me they’d been used to hold prisoners before. That’s where Tess and Carlos will be. If Molly can’t smash the doors in, I’m sure you can figure something out. Get my friends.”

  Gert and Old Lace were still back in the foyer, but Karolina and Molly had caught up with them, both breathing heavy, both glancing around, worried.

  “What are you going to do?” Nico asked.

  “I’m gonna say hi,” Zeke replied.

  For the first time, Nico saw motion beyond the floor-to-ceiling windows, saw that there were sliding doors set into the glass and an enormous terrace outside. Clad all in white, beautiful and emotionless save for the narrowing of her eyes, Zeke’s mother stared in at them from the terrace. She slid the glass doors open and stepped inside.

  “Go!” Kurdo-Zeke growled.

  “Bad idea,” Karolina said.

  Zeke’s mother only stared at her son. For a moment her emotionless mask cracked and her disappointment was plain.

  “Come on,” Nico said, ignoring Karolina’s concern. “Before reinforcements arrive.”

  She ran from the vast, elegant room into the side corridor with Molly and Karolina in tow. A hiss came from behind her and she glanced back to see that Gert and Old Lace had caught up to them. They were committed now. Whatever happened, they were in the middle of it.

  “What about Zeke?” Gert called as they reached a turn in the corridor.

  Nico just waved them all onward. She didn’t want to leave Zeke, but the woman was his mother. If he wanted to face her alone, if he felt confident he could and needed this confrontation, she wasn’t going to interfere.

  The corridor became narrower. There were doors, but just a few, and they opened into ordinary rooms—bedrooms and bathrooms and somebody’s office. They reached another corner. Nico careened around it, feeling each tick of the clock, and bullets tore up the f
loor and wall, one shot so close she felt it passing her cheek. She shouted for them all to take cover and dove through an open door to her right, rolling onto the carpet.

  By the time she glanced into the corridor again, two gunmen—Nightwatch guards—had been disarmed. Karolina had blasted the guns from their hands, and the guards were both backing away as Molly raced silently toward them. They looked confused by the sight of this little girl. At the last moment they realized they ought to defend themselves despite her size, and then they were on the floor with broken bones and probably concussions.

  Nico stepped back into the corridor. She nodded her thanks to the other girls. Old Lace moved past them all, stepping over the groaning guards as if they weren’t even there. They scrambled quickly away from the dinosaur, cradling broken bones but terrified of Old Lace. She gnashed at the air, snorted, and raced up to a pair of doors at the end of the corridor.

  “I’ve got it,” Karolina said, taking aim not at the doorknob but at the enormous locking mechanism just above it.

  Nico squinted against the brightness of the lasers that burned from Karolina’s fingers, strobing in orange and purple and green. The beams tightened and brightened and smoke rose from the heavy lock, but though Karolina bit her lip and a bead of sweat formed on her brow, the lasers would not cut.

  “What the heck is this thing made of?” Karolina said, almost pouting.

  Molly stepped in without a word. She tried the knob first, twisted to yank it off, but she couldn’t snap the metal. Cursing quietly, she made a fist and punched the door, just above the lock. Then she kicked it, and kicked it again. The whole wall shook—the whole corridor shook—but the door would not give way.

  “Nico, this isn’t working,” Gert warned. “If the rest of the Nightwatch come for us—”

  “I know!” Nico snapped. “Let me think!”

  She’d used Open Sesame as a spell before. There were variations on that, spells she might be able to use to open it, but she couldn’t be sure what would work, especially since these doors were more heavily fortified than anything she’d ever encountered.