Runaways

by Christopher Golden

  “Honestly? I don’t know,” Nico said quietly. Then she leveraged herself up into a sitting position, the Staff of One across her lap. Bleary-eyed and weak, she focused on Gert. “But if you get me a big-ass cup of coffee, I might have a better answer for you.”

  Gert laughed out loud and hugged her. Not too tightly—she didn’t know how hurt Nico might still be, and they had never been the huggy type. Even so, when she stood up straight, she turned and threw her arms around Zeke, who’d been standing anxiously behind her.

  “Oh…kay,” Zeke said.

  “Thank you,” Gert said, hugging him more tightly. “I don’t know how you did it, but thank you so much. We need this bitch in one piece.”

  Zeke hugged her back. It lasted a moment or two longer than it should have.

  Gert heard someone clearing their throat and glanced up to see Chase standing in the open doorway. She fought the urge to jerk away from Zeke like touching him burned her skin. That would only have made it look as if she’d done something wrong, and she knew she hadn’t, although the pinched, hurt look on her boyfriend’s face spoke volumes about how much he disagreed with her.

  “Sorry to interrupt,” he began.

  “Chase…”

  “I’ve found the Masters of Evil. At least I think I have,” he said, gaze locked on her, as if Zeke and Nico weren’t even in the room.

  “The Masters?” Zeke asked.

  “Long story,” Gert said. She started across the cell toward Chase. “Nico’s back. Alive.”

  “I see that,” Chase said. “Look, I just thought you’d want to know. Short version is that Sunstroke didn’t get sprung from police custody. He was never in police custody at all.”

  “But we called,” Gert said.

  “Yeah. The Crimson Cowl must have some people inside LAPD, because they never responded. Sunstroke was never arrested. The S.H.I.E.L.D. base under Los Hermanos was never seized.”

  Gert nodded, halting half a dozen steps from him. “Of course. Sunstroke was there to claim the base for her in the first place. You think that’s where they are.”

  “I’d bet on it,” Chase said, finally glancing at Zeke. “We should get moving.”

  Chase turned and left. Gert called after him but he kept going. She watched through the transparent partition, thinking he would respond to her calling his name, that he’d turn or at least pause, but he didn’t even glance back.

  Her shoulders drooped. “Shit.”

  “Gert?” Nico said, still dazed. “Do you think he’s going to get me some coffee?”

  When Gert turned to reply, Nico had passed out on the floor.

  They were about to start a fight between two groups of super-powered criminals, and then hurl themselves into the middle of it. Gert would have laughed if she hadn’t been so terrified.

  Nico held on to the seat harness across her chest and promised herself she wouldn’t puke. The Leapfrog hurtled forward and she felt bile rise in the back of her throat. Still dizzy and disoriented, she felt like someone had filled her head with cotton and her stomach with rancid chili. She breathed through her nose and kept it together, though barely. The two massive cups of coffee she’d had now seemed like a terrible idea. Her body ached like she’d just done a triathlon and the new skin itched where it had formed over the place where Emilio Ochoa had run her through with his sword.

  The Leapfrog lurched again. Nico gripped the seat belt harder and closed her eyes, then opened them again immediately when she realized that only made it worse. Part of her still felt as if she were in that smoky limbo where the Kurdogrim lived, the weird little pocket dimension where she’d heard them chanting, heard them shouting at Zeke in that language that sounded more like the night sounds of the jungle than words. What did they say? The memory nagged at her. But the more she tried to grasp it, the further it pulled away. She did remember the cold that had radiated out from her wound and the way that gaping, bleeding hole had made her feel more vulnerable than she’d ever felt. She’d felt helpless, knowing that she would die. Now she had to fight.

  The Leapfrog lurched again, then it jerked to one side with a boom and the starboard side of the little ship’s hull brightened with heat and a flicker of small flames that danced along the inside of the metal like droplets of condensation on a glass of water.

  “Chase!” Karolina called from the seat behind Nico. “We can’t withstand too many of those!”

  “I’m doing my—” Chase began, but he swore as he plunged the controls forward and the Leapfrog dropped almost straight down.

  From her seat, Nico saw a blast of fire burn across the night sky. Had Chase not avoided it, the Frog would’ve been toast. They alighted on a building and immediately lunged forward again, this time to the right, and Chase hit the switch for what he always called “the burners,” which gave the engine a boost.

  Screens in the back showed just how screwed they were. Sunstroke, Whirlwind, and Blue Steel were all flying in pursuit. Last time they’d seen Sunstroke, at the fake museum heist, he’d had a broken arm and a bullet wound in his shoulder. Tough bastard, Nico thought. She had to give him credit for that, at least. Where the Crimson Cowl had gone, she had no idea, but she had no doubt they’d be seeing the woman again soon.

  Blue Steel fired some kind of energy blast from both hands, but Chase dodged it. Whatever damage had been done to Blue Steel’s suit seemed mostly repaired.

  “Gert, this was a terrible plan,” Nico said, her words coming out a little slurred, as if she’d been drinking too much instead of nearly dying.

  “We didn’t have time for a good one,” Gert replied. “We all agreed on fast instead of subtle.”

  “I had a good plan,” Molly muttered.

  “A joke about a burning bag of poop on their doorstep is not a ‘good plan,’” Zeke said.

  Molly scowled at him. “Who says I was joking?”

  “You don’t know her,” Karolina told him.

  Allis laughed, but Nico knew Molly had only been half kidding. They hadn’t had time for jokes and they certainly didn’t have time to be clever. Zeke insisted the Nightwatch would still be at the hotel, that it had only been a couple of hours and they wouldn’t be moving from their lair unless they absolutely had to. Given the influence they might wield inside the police department, Nico thought it was possible they’d been allowed to stay, but only possible. The alternative worried her a great deal, especially since they were already 100 percent committed to their plan, as illustrated by the Masters of Evil currently set on murdering them.

  Chase had fired the Leapfrog’s lasers at Los Hermanos Hospital, knocked down half of the place and the fence around it. There’d been fire and smoke enough to alert the whole neighborhood, which would draw the fire department and police, no matter how many cops the Crimson Cowl had on her payroll. The Runaways had just screwed the Masters of Evil out of their new base, and the Masters of Evil were not happy. Nico would think it funny how much they had messed with the Cowl’s plans the past couple of days if not for the fear that they were about to be incinerated or obliterated.

  Gert slipped up to the cockpit and strapped into the seat beside Chase. “Calling the police,” she said.

  “It’s risky,” Zeke warned.

  “Not as risky as the other option,” Gert said.

  Nico agreed. Her brain had been in and out of focus over the past hour, so her recollection of the conversation was spotty, but Gert had argued that they couldn’t attack again unless they were sure the Trumbull Bel Air had been evacuated and that innocent people wouldn’t be hurt on the street below. They’d gotten some answers from official police statements on social media—yes, the Trumbull Bel Air Hotel had officially been evacuated and the cops and emergency services had set up a cordon at a same distance around it. There were at least a dozen police officers on duty to keep people away from the site for the night. All of the glass in the street had to be picked up, and they had to make sure the building didn’t have any structural damage. But ther
e was no way to know if people would be out for a run or walking the dogs or if there might be homeless people around.

  It was the middle of the night. Most people were off the streets. That had to be good enough.

  The Leapfrog descended. A blast of energy from Blue Steel zipped past the cockpit window. The Frog started to judder in the air, engines whining.

  “Hold tight! It’s Whirlwind,” Chase called from the cockpit.

  Nico gripped her harness. She glanced around at the others. Karolina and Allis sat together. Gert hugged Old Lace to keep the dino calm. Molly looked terrified. Zeke stared coolly back at Nico as if to assure her they were going to be okay, but she didn’t know this kid. She wanted the staff in her hand. In the pocket of her tight black lace coat, the thing she’d pulled on to replace her bloody clothes, she had put a thumbtack. That was all it would take to make her bleed so that she could summon her staff. She wasn’t in the mood to cut herself open after having a sword impale her, so the thumbtack would have to be enough.

  “Chase, we can’t die yet,” Nico said.

  “Working on it!”

  She slid a hand into that pocket, found the little plastic thumbtack, and held on to it as the Leapfrog shuddered and began to jerk to the left, as if it had started to slip sideways on the air…or into a whirlwind.

  “Chase!” Gert shouted.

  The Leapfrog began to descend. “We’re here!”

  Nico watched him in the cockpit, saw the way he focused. Through the windshield she caught sight of the hotel. The top-floor windows on this side had been completely blown out, and she shivered as she remembered being in that room. She’d been standing not far from those floor-to-ceiling windows, the open drop to the street, when Emilio had tried to kill her.

  “Do it!” Nico snapped.

  Chase fired the Leapfrog’s lasers. The top floor of the Trumbull Bel Air erupted with small explosions. The walls and windows on the next floor down blew out like a Michael Bay wet dream.

  “Go stealth!” Nico ordered.

  “I guess she’s back in charge,” Gert said.

  “Already on it,” Chase replied.

  He tapped the controls and the Leapfrog vibrated just slightly as stealth mode kicked in. With the ship invisible, he jerked the stick to the right and diverted slightly. A flash of fire fried the sky where they’d just been, and Chase set them down ever so gently on top of the same office building they’d used earlier to get a look at the hotel.

  “You sure the police will hear this?” Gert asked.

  Chase shrugged. “It’s the frequency they were using an hour ago.”

  Gert put on a headset. “Attention, police officers working the Trumbull Hotel site, move farther back from the building. The shit’s about to hit the fan.”

  She clicked off.

  “That’s it?” Karolina called up to Gert.

  “What else do they need to know?” Molly replied.

  Gert tapped a few buttons on the intercom, and suddenly Nico felt a familiar buzz at the base of her brain. It made her even queasier, made her skin crawl, made her want to jump out of the Leapfrog just to get away from it. The aversion signal from the S.H.I.E.L.D. base had been a great invention, and it worked even better now that Chase had tinkered with it.

  “The cops are scrambling back from the barrier!” Chase said.

  Molly clapped her hands together. “Let’s get this done.”

  “Quietly from here on,” Karolina reminded her. “Let the evil grown-ups beat each other up while we sneak in, get Carlos and Tess, and sneak back out.”

  Molly shrugged. “I know I’m usually happy to get in a fight. I like the look on bad guys’ faces when they realize the little girl can kick their butts. But at this point I would like to sleep for three days straight, so whatever makes that happen is okay with me.”

  Nico smiled. She unsnapped her harness and hustled up to the cockpit, kneeling behind Chase and Gert. They were in stealth mode, so it felt like they were spying. She knelt there, the queasiness finally starting to fade in her gut, and she watched as the action unfolded outside. Whirlwind and Blue Steel were flying back and forth overhead in search of the Leapfrog, but Sunstroke had zipped over to the side of the hotel. His armor would be holding everything together, but he had to be in excruciating pain with that broken arm. He hung in the air, flames burning around him, and seemed to be examining the ruined windows and walls. The Runaways had led the Masters of Evil to the fight…now they just had to hope the Nightwatch reacted the way Zeke had predicted.

  Nico watched as a figure appeared inside the penthouse, her hair blowing in the wind as she stood exposed, right at the edge, nothing keeping her from a fall to her death.

  “Zeke,” Nico said, “I see your mother.”

  “Me too,” he quietly replied, and she jumped a little, unaware that he’d come up to stand behind her, half-bent to avoid bumping his head.

  They fell silent then and watched.

  Kathryn Zheng reached out a hand. She seemed to call to Sunstroke, and then she made a fist and pulled back on nothing but air, but it seemed like invisible strings were attached to the fire around Sunstroke and Kathryn was the puppeteer. She dragged at the fire, twirled her fingers until it reached her hand. Sunstroke jerked in midair, then pulled back angrily. She couldn’t take the fire away, not all of it, but Kathryn warped and twisted it with nothing but hand gestures, and then she blew Sunstroke across the street and through the side of a gleaming international bank headquarters. Alarms went off, but they were tinny and distant.

  “I told you she was an elemental,” Zeke said, almost proudly.

  Nico cried out when Blue Steel blasted Kathryn with an energy beam that threw her backward into the darkness of the ruined penthouse.

  “It seems wrong to just sit here,” Chase said.

  “We’re not just sitting,” Allis reminded them all. “We’re waiting.”

  Nico glanced over her shoulder at the girl. Allis remained buckled in, ready for whatever came next. She had a pulse gun that Chase had made and wore it in a holster on her hip, as if she’d been trained for this, as if she knew the first thing about being a hero. Nobody else appeared to have a problem with it. Karolina seemed thrilled to have the girl there. It was obvious they’d hit it off. Nico wanted Karolina to be happy, and if Allis turned out to be quality girlfriend material, she’d be the first one to cheer the couple on. What troubled her was that Karolina acted like she thought Allis would become part of the team. Or that she was part of the team already. When this was over, Nico needed to call a meeting about that. But now wasn’t the time.

  Rosie and Emilio Ochoa appeared on the next floor down, him in black linen pants and a T-shirt and her in a long nightshirt that flapped in the wind. It appeared they’d been sleeping when Chase had blasted the facade of the hotel, but now they stood in the hole blown in the side of the building. Emilio brandished his sword, glancing around, ready for a fight. Rosie pointed at something and Nico glanced over to see Whirlwind arcing down toward them. He’d spotted them, too. Rosie shape-shifted into a massive mountain gorilla, hunched over, so much larger than her husband.

  Neither of them saw the Crimson Cowl materialize behind them.

  “There she is!” Gert said.

  Emilio sensed the Cowl somehow, turned with his sword, and her cloak coiled around the blade and wrenched it from his grasp, tossing it aside. The Cowl grabbed Emilio and leaped out through the hole. The cloak wrapped itself around them as they fell. Emilio vanished from her grasp, then reappeared higher in the air, then teleported again and reappeared standing beside the gorilla inside the ruined face of the hotel. The Crimson Cowl popped out of reality a moment, vanished from the midst of her death-fall, then appeared again beside Emilio. The cloak wrapped around his neck, choking him, throttling him as she dove out into open air once more. This time as she fell, she dragged him with her as if the cowl was a hangman’s noose. Emilio flailed, but didn’t seem able to teleport away.

  The
gorilla roared and leaped out after them. In midair, Rosie shape-shifted. Her flesh seemed to flex for an instant, and then gorilla became hawk, and the hawk flew straight down in pursuit of its prey.

  Whirlwind diverted, heading after his boss. He didn’t see the bald man who appeared in the shadows of the ruined windows of Kathryn Zheng’s suite. The man looked as if he’d just stepped out of a 1950s movie, with a short-sleeved, button-down white shirt, a skinny black tie, and nerdy black glasses.

  “Who the hell is that?” Chase asked.

  “Abernathy,” Zeke said.

  Gert stared. “That’s Abernathy?”

  Even as she said his name, Abernathy stepped out into nothing. Unlike the others, he didn’t fall. His legs moved as if he were walking down a set of stairs, but with every step he seemed to descend a dozen feet. He reached out, made a fist, and smashed it down on the same air that held him aloft. Thirty yards away and twenty below him, Whirlwind dropped.

  Not dropped, Nico thought. He got slammed. Abernathy smashed him with his mind.

  In a single, swift motion, Whirlwind crashed to the street, shattering the pavement next to a police car. Two cops rushed out to cover him, weapons drawn, but a moment later they saw Abernathy descending and aimed at him. With a gesture of his hand, the telekinetic swept them away.

  “Holy crap,” Chase said.

  “Gawk later,” Nico said, tapping his shoulder. “We won’t get a better shot than this. Let’s go right now.”

  Chase nodded, tapped a single button, and grabbed the steering column with both hands. The Leapfrog surged upward, jumped, and seconds later they were settling again on top of the Trumbull Bel Air, right behind that same billboard where they’d parked before. Déjà vu.

  The hatch hissed open. Nico turned to see Karolina and Zeke exiting, with Molly and Allis right behind them.

  “Allis should stay with the Frog,” Gert said.

  “Agreed,” Nico replied. “Try telling her that.”

  Chase touched her arm. “You sure you’re up to this, Nico? You almost died tonight.”

  Nico smiled. She reached into her pocket and pricked herself with that thumbtack and the Staff of One slid easily from inside her chest.