The Wraith- Welcome Home

by Jeffery H. Haskell

  “You’re welcome to jump out whenever you want,” I told her in reply. Her response was lost in a cacophony of horns blasting me from every side as I drove right through a red light, leaving screeching tires and cursing drivers behind. I’m sure they would understand if they knew the reason.

  The clock on the dash told me I had just under four hours to infiltrate the Saints HQ, find the bomb, and defuse it. The HQ was huge, so every second counted. I just hope they counted enough.

  “Do they have a way to remote detonate it?” I asked Krisan.

  “No. The Saints HQ is shielded from electronic signals. Nothing in or out. It will have to be by timer—it’s the only way.”

  If they wanted to kill all the Saints this would be the way to do it. Detonate a massive bomb, collapse the building they’re in, kill some in the explosion, show the world that ISO was above the law. Well, maybe they were. But they weren’t above me.

  “Call Bill. Tell him to get his team down there. I have a feeling ISO is going to make an all-out assault to stop us. We’re going to need help.”

  I ducked instinctively and a round slammed into the windshield, spider webbing the vehicles glass. I slammed on the breaks and turned hard left, sending the car into a slide in the same direction I was going. I focused my vision on the next SUV that chased after us. The tinted windows diminished, and I saw through to the darkened interior. I didn’t stop to think, I just acted. Triggering my shadow step I vanished from the Hellcat and re-appeared on the center console of the SUV. My legs were in the back and my torso was in the front. I slipped my hand under the drivers arm and pulled his piece, a .357 revolver, and shot him in the ribs before I looked back to the Hellcat and shadow stepped again.

  Krisan was screaming when I appeared. Without a driver to fight the slide the car went into a three-sixty spin. I hit the gas and torqued the wheel in the direction of the slide and I was out, shooting forward in my initial direction. The SUV behind me drove off the road and slammed into a telephone pole. Apparently, the passengers hadn’t worn their seat belts. The rush of power in my blood told me they hadn’t lived to learn their lesson.

  “Don’t ever do that again! Oh my God you’re going to get me killed.”

  “I told you this was dangerous,” I said with a smirk.

  “I thought you were talking about the villains, not you!”

  One of the things I loved about the car was how loud it was. Also how tight the interior was. Even without my seatbelt on the seat gripped me like a overzealous boyfriend. Which was great, because the next turn almost slid me into the passenger seat. Krisan screamed the entire time as the tires fought for grip. I spun the wheel, alternating the break and gas, then dropping it down a gear before flooring it. The car found its groove and shot around the ninety-degree turn like it was on rails.

  “See,” I said to her. “That wasn’t so bad, was it?” She shook her head, one hand clamped over her mouth like she was literally holding in the vomit. I wrinkled my nose. “Don’t you dare puke in my car.”

  Yes, I was having a lot of fun. When had I lost my mind?

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  “That’s a gate,” Krisan said as she pulled her seatbelt on. When no one shot at us anymore she’d finally come off the floorboard for the remainder of the trip.

  “You’re very observant; you should be a reporter or something,” I said to her as I pulled my own seatbelt on with one hand and clicked it into place.

  “Then why are you speeding up?”

  “Because I don’t think they’re going to let me in if I ask nicely. Hang on!”

  The engine roared as I shifted up floored it, hitting almost a hundred. I needed to close the distance to the gate without giving the armed guards time to react. At the same time, hitting the gate at a hundred would probably kill Krisan. Thirty feet from the impact I slammed on the brakes and jerked the wheel hard over.

  Alarms wailed on the gatehouse as the four-thousand-pound car slammed sideways into the traffic gate. I didn’t know how fast we were going but it was fast enough to deploy the airbags and roll the car three times.

  We came down on the tires and inside the compound. The Dome had an exterior wall that left a fifty-foot safe-zone between it and the dome itself. Between the wall, the gate, and the armed guards, no one could get to the dome without going through a checkpoint—or at least crashing through it.

  I had my belt off in a second. “Come on, they’ll be on us in a second.”

  Krisan didn’t answer. She looked at me with a dazed expression. Right. I rolled the car and she doesn’t have my abilities. However, with all the airbags and safety systems in modern cars it took more than a simple rollover to cause any real injuries. I reached over, took the seatbelt in my hand, and pulled. The metal broke with a ping. I pulled her out and started running for the dome, carrying her.

  All the lights were pointed at the perimeter, leaving me plenty of places to hide, but I was going to need her help for this. There was no way I could search the whole facility, and with her power to tap into phones she should be able to guide me.

  I heard shouting behind us but no gunfire— yet. All the shadows and darkness melted away as my powers kicked in. There was a loading bay off to our right, with one of those folded aluminum doors. Right in front of us was an emergency exit style door with no outside handle. That worked for me.

  I slid to a stop in front of the door, dropped a dazed Krisan on her butt, lifted up my foot and kicked with all my might. The wall shook as the door blasted off its hinges, banging against the inside of the hallway and knocking a poor security guard down and out.

  “Come on,” I said to Krisan and held out my hand. Clearly, she was waking up as she reached out and took it. I hefted her up and moved as fast as I could with her in tow. I wasn’t so much worried about the guards as I was the other inhabitants of the dome. I seriously doubted ISO had left much to chance. If I had to guess, the bomb was not only rigged on a timer but had some sort of trip circuit and two or three different fail-safes.

  “Tell me about the Saints,” I said as we moved down the hall to the stairwell.

  “Uh, the leader’s name is Mach; he’s strong, invulnerable, can fly, that sort of thing. Seraph is their second-in-command. She’s the one you need to worry about. She’s why they are incorruptible. Her aura prevents any kind of external influence on a person’s mind. She has wings and can wield melee weapons made of light. I think she’s pretty strong and tough too.”

  I tried the stairwell door; it required a security card but had glass in a little window like a school. I punched my fist through it, grabbed the push bar and opened the door from the other side.

  “Uh… you’re bleeding,” Krisan said as I pulled her through the door with my bloody hand.

  “Broken too, at least three knuckles.” Strangely, it didn’t really hurt. I was aware of the pain but it was almost as if it were a distant awareness, like a headache that hadn’t quite started yet. The bones popped as they mended themselves and the tears in my skin knitted together until my hand was just covered in blood.

  “That’s so cool,” Krisan said as I pulled her down the stairs.

  “Take out your phone. See what you can find nearby while I look for a place to stash you.”

  She nodded, pulling out her phone and trying not to trip while she took the stairs three at a time. By the fourth floor down she was breathing hard and we had to stop.

  “Who else?” I asked.

  “Uh, there’s Triage, who can regenerate himself and others, Burn, a fire elemental, and Bull, a beast-kin—you can guess what kind.”

  “Minotaur?” I asked. She nodded. “Cool.”

  “He’s one of the few that works for the good guys. Uh, what’s your plan for dealing with them?”

  I opened the door onto sublevel four, checked both ways, and dragged Krisan down the hallway to the first door. It was locked, for the moment. I didn’t want to leave any trace of my passage so I knelt down and pulled out the loc
k picks Joseph taught me how to use. In a few seconds I had the door open and us inside. I closed it quietly behind us, locked the door, and left the lights off in the room.

  Looking around I could see a bed, dresser, closet and a footlocker. Staff room then, I guessed. “You should be safe here for a little while. Get on your phone and see what you can see.”

  “No signals in or out. Only secure, verified cell phones can access the towers.”

  Dang, I hadn’t thought of that.

  I walked over to the military-style footlocker, pulled the lock off it like it was made of paper and opened the top. Sure enough, boots, belts, vests, and yes, a pair of orange security radios. Perfect!

  I tossed one to her and checked the channels. The pre-set they were on was probably security’s, but when I tried to access it the radio beeped.

  “Passcode,” Krisan said.

  Figured. I turned it to another channel, it let us use it. “Channel two. Let me know when you have something.”

  She nodded. “What are you going to do?”

  I smiled. “Well, two-tons of C4 isn’t easy to hide. I’m guessing it’s in the parking garage, so that is where I’m going unless you tell me different.”

  “Okay, uh, good luck.” She wrapped her arms around me in a surprise hug. I froze for a second, but then hugged her back. For a heartbeat it was like I had a normal life and a friend. Then reality crashed back into me.

  “Stay out of sight. If they find you, just tell them I kidnapped you.”

  “You did,” she said with a smile. “I asked you to let me go and you said no.”

  “You really are a reporter the way you bend the truth,” I said as I closed the door behind me. I hoped that wasn’t the last time I ever saw her, but if I were being honest with myself…

  ***

  Bill swore as he looked at the text from Krisan.

  >>>>Your C4 is at Saints HQ in the form of a bomb, courtesy of ISO-1. Please help<<<<

  He hurriedly typed his reply, his fat fingers misspelling every other word, but he didn’t stop to fix it, hoping that she would understand anyway.

  >>>> Don’t go there let is hassle it… handle it<<<<

  When she didn’t respond he swore again. “Rico, wake everyone up. We need to go in five.”

  His second jumped to his feet, kicking the bunks of the three other squad members who were all sacked out after the afternoons intense fighting.

  “What’s going on?” Zim asked, rubbing his tired face as he stood.

  “Krisan and our other friend found the C4,” he replied as he jogged over to where he stored his kit and started pulling on his combat gear.

  “Great,” Zim replied. “Let’s go get it.”

  Bill pulled the tactical vest around his chest, sealing it up before loading it down with ammo. “It’s in the form of a two-ton bomb somewhere at Saints HQ,” he said without looking at his men.

  “Oh,” Zim said. “That sucks.”

  “That’s putting it mildly. Call the Saints military attaché. See if you can let them know we’re coming. Also, tell them Krisan and The Wraith are friendlies trying to help.”

  “I’ll tell them, but I don’t think they’ll listen,” Zim said as he rushed over to the secure sat-phone they used for all their communications.

  Ten minutes later they were loaded for bear and in the van rushing toward downtown New Orleans on a Friday night. They didn’t have lights or sirens, so they were stuck with traffic, which was bumper to bumper.

  “Dammit,” Bill said checking his watch. She’d texted fifteen minutes earlier and they were still two miles out. He opened the door and stood up on the seat to try and see what the hold up was. Some kind of traffic accident. There were flashing blue lights and a fire truck a half mile away.

  “Zim,” he said without looking at the driver. “Can you get around this mess?”

  “If this were Baghdad, sure. Here? Not without hurting or killing a civvy.”

  That’s what he thought.

  Two miles, full gear; running would be faster.

  “Rico, take the controls, follow when you can. Whiskey One-One, run your butts off. Felix, you have permission to go as fast as you want.”

  The spec-ops soldier didn’t smile, per se, but Bill had known the man for years. He was high-speed-low-drag—he always felt like everyone was holding him back. Before Bill finished the thought, Felix was out the side door and running flat out with his sniper rifle over his shoulder.

  “Zim, Sandy, let’s hoof it.”

  They took off, beating the street in their military boots. Other than their tactical vests that said Federal Agents on the back, they didn’t have any exterior identifiers; they looked like three heavily armed men running down the street in downtown New Orleans, on a Friday night.

  What could possibly go wrong. Bill knew the second he thought it he shouldn’t have. Jinxing himself was certainly high on his list of things not to do before a firefight.

  ***

  Vaas eyed the scene from a nearby building. He wasn’t going to move any closer than half a mile—the distance his bomb maker assured him would be safe. Him, Miguel, and a few of his less expendable men were there; everyone else he sent in an all-out assault on the Saints HQ to stop the wench who… who murdered his brother… from disarming the bomb and ruining their last shot at redemption.

  “Are you sure there’s no way to trigger it now, Miguel?”

  His right-hand man shook his head. “Because of Seraph’s powers we’ve never gotten a person in the inside. They have state-of-the-art jamming and signal security. Don’t worry though, the timer is the best money can buy. It’s also rigged to go off if they try to move it. If they sound their evacuation signal it will go off. Unless they have a demolition expert in there, they have no hope of disarming it. In…” he looked down to check his phone… “in just over three hours the Saints will be no more. Along with half the city’s cops, which is a bonus.”

  Vaas nodded. It was. He didn’t care about the men he had sent to their deaths. They didn’t know there was a bomb; just that ISO was making its move and no one could be allowed to stop them.

  He rubbed his shoulder where it stung from the way she tossed him into the electrical panel. Not that he would ever tell anyone it hurt, or how badly she scared him. He’d dealt with powered people before, but ISO always had the upper hand. People were so easy to blackmail or buy that he had never worried about it. And if they were too honest, well, everyone could die. There were very few superheroes who were all but unkillable: The Protector, that armored woman in Arizona, maybe a couple of others…

  Most could die from a bullet or poison or fire… but it rarely came to that. Most often it was easier for them just to look the other way when ISO moved in. And they had… until Detroit. And now, here.

  He clenched his fist in frustration. He wanted to scream. All his hard work, all the time he spent building this little empire. Now his brother was dead, all his plans were falling apart, and nothing he did made it better. His mother would be so ashamed of him if she knew he let Peter die.

  This woman, this avenging ghost, simply refused to die. It was like she was possessed. When they moved into Detroit they had run up against a man who called himself, ‘The Wraith’ and it had gone badly, or so Vaas had heard; very few ISO people made it out of the city. The Ghost had been one of the lucky few, until he’d gone back the second time.

  He was sure the Wraith in Detroit was a man; but here was this woman raising hell, and they didn’t even know who she was. If they had her name they could go after her family or threaten her friends. Maybe she was the Wraith reborn, reincarnated to come and punish Vaas for his sins.

  Madre Dios.

  Even if everything went well tonight, and that was a big if, odds were heavy that the council would remove him in the next few days. And the Outfit had only one retirement plan.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  This place was a maze of corridors and dead ends. Every time I thought I h
ad the right way, it would turn away and lead into a maintenance area. I was getting nowhere, and running out of time. Sooner or later the Saints would lock the building down and start a floor-by-floor search. When they did that, I was done.

  I needed some intel—the lay of the land.

  “This way,” Sara said from behind me. I spun around, surprised to hear her voice.

  “You’re talking to me again?”

  She shrugged. “You’re not completely hopeless Madisun, just mostly. Follow this hall, take the first left then the second door on the right. It’s a security substation. You better hurry; you don’t have much time.”

  I took off running. I didn’t know what she meant but I suspected. Every second that ticked by, my arms grew heavier and my body ached. Like I had run a marathon or something. The more I used my powers the more I understood them. I gained some kind of energy from killing. The Wraith fed on that energy, sharing it with me. When energized I was stronger, faster, able to heal, see in the dark, hear better, and of course, shadow step. When I hadn’t killed anyone in a while, these powers didn’t seem as reliable. As if the energy in me was diverted. Then when I did use them, it took a while—as in a few deaths—for them to work right.

  I stopped in front of the door she had pointed out to me and pushed my ear up to it. Someone was in there—I couldn’t quite make out who. Well, time to find out. I stepped back and kicked the door open. The metal door slammed against the wall as it pivoted on its hinges and I ran in, heading for the first person I saw.

  He was out of his chair in an instant, but not quite fast enough. I kicked his swivel chair, sending him flopping back down into it. Then I stepped forward and punched him in the throat. His hands flew up to his neck reflexively. I dropped down, punched him twice in the solar plexus then landed an uppercut on his chin as he doubled over. He collapsed to the floor, moaning.

  Monitors, keyboards and other electronic wizardry dominated the wall. It took me a minute, but I was able to pull up a map of the base and—