by Various
He struck it and flung it behind him, flying blindly toward the elevator.
The room exploded in orange fire, and Pan rode a fireball through the open door, smashing into the far wall of the car.
Karasu’s screams were the last thing he heard as he sank to the elevator floor.
FOURTEEN
He didn’t know how long he’d been lying curled up in the elevator car. Pan jumped awake. One time, his mom and dad had left him in the backseat overnight. It had been the last leg home from their camping trip to South Dakota and, despite his mother’s arguments, his dad had pounded down a thermos of coffee and sworn up and down he could make it back home by morning.
It was pleasant, sleeping curled up in the backseat. Dad let him unbuckle his seatbelt so he could lie across the seats, though Mom hated that, too. He would drift off, listening to the rumble of the road beneath his ear and the hum of the engine and the wind outside the window.
He’d awoken afraid of warm sunlight on the hot seat, thinking his dad had fallen asleep at the wheel and crashed in the night and they’d been lying in some ditch somewhere, only to find the car parked in their own driveway.
He’d stumbled blearily into the house to find his parents at breakfast. They hadn’t wanted to wake him. It wasn’t the backseat of their car he’d been sleeping in this time, though; it was the floor of the elevator, and he remembered his parents weren’t waiting for him at any breakfast table. They were dead.
He whanged his head on the railing of the elevator, and then all the pain hit him, the raw burns on his back, the hole in his side, the general exhaustion of the fight with Karasu.
The elevator was stopped.
“Thought I lost you, kid. How you doing?” the Brown Thrasher said, close in his ear.
He curled on the floor in his own blood, not wanting to move.
“PAN? CAN YOU GO ON?”
That androgynous electric voice on the intercom.
“Where am I?” Pan muttered into his gloved hand so the cameras wouldn’t see him speaking.
“Stopped somewhere between the fourteenth and fifteenth floors. The gymnasium’s right above you, and I can make out one target on thermal imaging. He’s waiting there for you. No idea yet what he can do. That last asshole wasn’t War Gods, so could be anybody.”
He sat up and hung his head between his knees.
“Is he dead? Karasu?”
“He’s alive, but he’s out of commission.”
“CAN YOU EVEN STAND?”
He wasn’t sure. Nothing felt broken.
“STAND UP, PAN, AND LET ME KNOW YOU CAN GO ON, OR SLIGHTLY AND THOSE CHILDREN ARE THROUGH.”
Pan coughed and sighed into his gloved hands.
“Are they even alive?” he muttered.
“TI says yes. I got twenty-four heat signatures.”
Christ. Who was this monster?
He blinked his eyes and looked down at the floor of the car, dark with his blood. He found his knife and slipped it into its scabbard, then he pushed his back against the wall and eased himself to his feet. Fresh blood leaked from the wound in his side, but only from the front. Most likely the hot teppan had cauterized the hole in his back.
“THAT’S IT. GOOD. GOOOOOD. OK. GOING UP.”
The elevator car lurched and ascended. That slight motion nearly pitched him off his feet, but he gripped the railing and held on as the floor indicator lit fifteen and the doors dinged open.
The elevator let out to a reception desk, presumably where the gym members checked in.
Pan staggered out of the car. The doors closed behind him.
“I BELIEVE IN YOU, PAN.”
Pan shook his head.
It was easier to fly than to walk, so he allowed himself to float a few feet off the ground, and went around the desk, through the men’s locker room with its banks of gunmetal lockers, and out into the weight training area.
Nobody around.
“He’s on the track,” the Thrasher said.
Pan floated like a blood-spattered apparition doomed to bear the marks of its violent end, past the benches and rows of treadmills to the door marked TRACK.
He pushed through, and came out into an open space that seemed to stretch off around the corners to the left and right. The floors were rubbery and marked with lanes, and the outer walls entirely glass. He realized it was a running track that circled the entire building, affording joggers a commanding view of the entire city as they orbited the tower.
Far across the city, he could see the smoke and fires of Tantrum’s rampage, the flashing of countless emergency responders, and fleets of helicopters probing the devastation with their searchlight beams.
A man in a janitor’s coveralls lay face down on the floor nearby. There was a vacuum on its side next to him, attached to a retractable extension cord running into a space about eye-level on the wall.
Pan went to the man and turned him over. His face had been beaten to a pulp, all the congealed blood and bruises combined with the swelling of his head, making him look like some kind of shambling thing out of one of Tink’s Gutmuncher movies.
“Yo! What up?”
Pan tensed and looked to the right.
Walking leisurely toward him around the bend was a shirtless Mexican man, about twenty-three or so, bald, and tattooed all over his body. His arms were encircled by red and white stripes, and a complicated Aztec pictogram of a dancing figure with an elaborate headdress of green, white, and red plumes covered his chest, with the name Mixcoatl arcing over his shredded stomach. The red and white stripes even covered his face and bald head, and black ink across his eyes gave a domino mask effect. He had a beer bottle in his hand, and stopped a moment to tip it back.
When he spoke, his mouth shined with gold.
“You must be El Niño Eterno, yeah? Pan?”
Suddenly, the man was right in front of him, and the bottle exploded across his face so hard it took him right out of the air and flattened him. He lay there stunned, smelling blood and beer.
“’Sorry. This is a no-fly zone, shorty,” said the man with a gold grin, tossing the broken bottle over his shoulder.
“Another teleporter?” Pan mumbled miserably, rubbing his mouth. His lips were split and dribbling blood.
“He didn’t teleport,” said the Thrasher. “He moved.””
Ah, Jesus. A speedster. Blink-and-you’ll-miss-it speed and sixty-punches-a-minute…molecular disruption, if he really knew what he was doing. Father Eladio had told him speedsters were some of the most dangerous chimerics to face.
“Fuck, no. I ain’t no teleporter. Mi llamo es Rapido, maricon.”
“Rapido Maricon?” Pan said. “Well. That’s very brave of you.””
“Oh! You got a little mouth on you, eh?” Rapido said, peering down at him. “Or what’s left of one anyway. You ready for this, comma, pinche?”
“You are fast. Slow down, pal. Buy me a drink first.”
“Man, shut up!”
Something happened. He wasn’t sure what. Rapido hit him. Maybe six or seven times.
He fell to his knees, coughing up blood.
“Thas’ right, bitch!” Rapido said, genuflecting beside him. “Ain’t so easy to talk shit with a mouthful of blood, is it?”
Pan whisked out his knife, but swiped empty air.
He felt a foot plant in the middle of his seared back, and he was slammed to the rubber floor.
“You got claws, huh, kid? Yo, but Hook says you ain’t no kid. He says you’re older than me. Fuck, homes! That’s gotta suck, right? Yo, you look like, what? Twelve years old. Damn man, so you be chasin’ that itty bitty titty or what?”
Hook?
Pan pushed off the ground and shot down the track, banking fast around the turn.
Suddenly, Rapido was in front of him, and he ran right into his outstretched arm and flipped. Rapido caught him and flung him, and he hit the glass so hard it spiderwebbed. He crump
led to the floor, head ringing like a bell.
“Yo, I said no flyin,’ G.”
“RAPIDO.”
Rapido looked around curiously, cracking his knuckles, as if he could see the source of the voice through the intercom speakers.
“Yo!”
“STOP TALKING.”
“Whateva. You the boss,” he said, throwing up his arms.
Pan sat up and put his back to the broken glass.
Something big suddenly rose into view, and he heard the whir of a helicopter. It was a Vulpes News chopper. It had probably been out covering Tantrum and returned to base only to find the building under siege. Now the crew was trying to get a look inside. They were so close Pan saw the lens cradled in the arms of the cameraman leaning out of the side door.
Rapido raised his muscled arms and grinned for the camera.
“Yo! Look like we famous, kid. You ready to make this happen in front of a live studio audience or what?”
He preened for the camera, strutted, and grinned.
“Go on, Pan. I’ll give you a ten-second head start.”
Ten seconds. He’d take it.
Pan jumped into the air and lit out around the building as fast as he could go, Rapido’s derisive laughter dwindling behind him.
He knew Rapido was faster. That didn’t matter. He was also stupid.
Tortoise and the Hare, he thought.
He shot around the building and soon came back to where he’d entered the track.
Rapido was still standing there, bouncing like a dumb ape in the zoo for the camera.
He turned around and saw Pan.
“Yo, Pan! Time’s up! I’m comin’ for you, bitch!””
Then he was a blur heading around the bend. Showboating. He would circle the building and come up behind at terminal velocity.
Pan had less than three seconds, he figured.
He went to the dead janitor’s vacuum and ripped the extension cord free. Then he flew to the opposite wall and punched below a light ensconced there, found the pipe that protected the wiring, and hooked the plug of the cord tight around it so it stretched across the track from wall to wall.
Then, he returned to the center of the track, standing in front of the extended cord.
No flying, huh? He’d show this asshole flying.
He threw his knife as a blur flashed around the far corner and shot toward him.
It was too fast to see, but as the knife spun off toward the left hand wall, he knew Rapido had quickly, derisively batted it aside.
But the distraction was enough.
“The thing about fighting a speedster,” Father Eladio had told him once, “is if they ain’t careful, they tend to run faster than they can see. You gotta distract `em. Use their velocity against `em.”
Rapido crashed into Pan. He had no idea how fast the guy was going. Enough to turn the rubber flooring on the track behind him into molten tar. Enough to burst through Pan’s body entirely…had he been standing.
Instead, Pan had lifted himself no more than eight or ten inches off the ground. Rather than striking a solid target, it was like Rapido collided with a balloon.
Pan went spinning away, yes. He hit the wall hard enough to black out for a second, his brain rocking in his skull.
Rapido shot straight ahead, a particularly short marathon runner, his neck struck the extension cord stretched across the track. He was running so fast that in less than a half second he had pulled it taut. The instant after that, he decapitated himself. His head spun in the air and bounced off the track, his expression one of strained confusion. Like a table-bound chicken, his body kept on running, and without any mind to guide it, smashed right into the window he’d earlier thrown Pan against.
The weakened window exploded outward.
The speedster’s body hurtled out into space, right into the tail of the news chopper with all the force of an express train. The helicopter pitched and spun violently, and hurtled out of the air, crashing down on the roof of a neighboring five-star hotel.
Pan lay on his back a few minutes, waiting for the world to stop spinning and ringing.
“Nice play, kid,” said the Thrasher. “Little extreme for my tastes, but I knew you could do it.”
The cameraman in the news chopper, though. And the pilot. He hadn’t intended for them to get caught up in that. He sat up and went to the edge of the broken window, booting Rapido’s blinking head off the edge where it spiraled down into the dark. The cool night air whipped at him.
The helicopter was burning on the roof of the hotel, and he could see tiny figures struggling to get away from it.
One of the hook-and-ladder trucks was pulling to a stop in front of the hotel. He should go down there and help.
“Don’t do it, Pan. Concentrate on getting upstairs,” the Thrasher warned. “You jump out that window this bastard might throw eight or ten kids down after you.”
“Those guys in the chopper…”
“I show them as okay. Busted up, but okay. Let the guys downstairs do their jobs. You do yours.”
Pan stepped away from the ledge and rubbed his face to mask his talking.
“You said there were twenty-four heat signatures. Twenty-three kids and…?”
“Either it’s the teacher or whoever’s holding them hostage.”
Pan floated toward the door.
“I DIDN’T LIKE RAPIDO VERY MUCH. HE HAD A BIG MOUTH,” said the deep voice on the intercom. “AND NO HEAD FOR THIS SORT OF THING, OBVIOUSLY. ELEVATOR’S WAITING FOR YOU.”
Rapido did have a big mouth.
Because now Pan had a name.
Hook.
FIFTEEN
Pan watched the elevator’s progress. The floors ticked off. Sixteen. Seventeen. Eighteen.
“YOU’VE DONE REALLY WELL SO FAR, PAN. MAYBE WE’LL EVEN SEE EACH OTHER. I WANT TO SEE YOU. AND I KNOW SLIGHTLY DOES, TOO. I HAVE A SURPRISE FOR YOU. A HERO DESERVES A REWARD FOR GETTING THIS FAR.”
What did that mean?
“Okay, listen Pan,” said the Thrasher. “I’ve got to leave you for a little bit. I promise I’ll be back.”
Pan said nothing. He couldn’t betray himself to the camera, but he began to sweat. Having the Thrasher in his ear like this, it felt like someone was with him. Could he really keep going all alone?
“Things are getting really hairy downtown,” the Thrasher explained. “I’ve got to get down there and help.”
Tantrum. Had A-Frame or Pecos been hurt? Had too many cops or National Guardsmen died? Were the P.O.N.E. guys out? Jesus, he should be there too. What was he doing here when all that was going on?
“Just keep at this. Do your part here. You’ve got to find out who’s doing this. It looks like he’s taking you up to the twentieth floor. That’s the daycare, man. You’re halfway. Get those kids out safe. I will be back. I swear it.””
The hint of an edge in the Thrasher’s voice suggested he wasn’t really sure he’d be back. God, what had happened? He had beaten Tantrum himself. Couldn’t three TCA chimerics and a P.O.N.E. squad do it?
No, don’t get cocky. He knew goddamn well it had been more luck than skill that had won out at the stadium. So, how could he hope to beat a skyscraper full of supervillains when he was half-dead already?
The elevator stopped at twenty, just as the Thrasher had said it would.
“Twenty-three kids, Pan. One teacher. You’ve got this, you hear? You’ve got this.”
The doors opened.
Long, door-lined corridors stretched in both directions, but a sign on the door ahead read VULPES PLAZA CHILDCARE AND DAY SCHOOL.
He tried the knob. It was a cold, amorphous lump; melted hours ago. He kicked the door in.
A pickup area for parents. A reception desk. Bright yellow and orange walls. Rainbow motifs. Balloons. Some kind of mascot that looked like a smiling, cherubic cartoon fox with big trustworthy eyes and a bushy tail in overalls with a puckish red
baseball hat on backwards and colorful patches on the knees. Not the most well-thought-out character to represent a daycare.
Who trusts a fox with their kids? he found himself thinking.
A word balloon coming from the gleeful, winking fox’s lips read: ALL ADULTS MUST SIGN IN.
The wink made the statement unseemly somehow.
Twenty-three kids beyond this room. The Brown Thrasher said they were alive.
He also said there was someone else in there. A teacher, scared out of her gourd, or another of the War Gods? Or someone else?
Pan walked into the waiting room cautiously.
“YOU ALMOST LOOK LIKE YOU BELONG HERE, PAN. YOU DON’T LOOK A DAY OLDER THAN THIRTEEN. THE DAY YOU ‘DIED,’ RIGHT? OH, WHAT AN AGE. THE TWILIGHT OF CHILDHOOD. NOT LIKE THESE. THESE ARE THE BRIGHT NOON OF INNOCENCE. WAIT TILL YOU SEE THEM. THEY’RE ALL SO BEAUTIFUL. HOW CAN THEIR PARENTS STAND TO LEAVE THEM HERE DAY AFTER DAY? LEAVE THEM IN FRONT OF THE TELEVISION, THE COMPUTER? THOSE ARE WINDOWS TO SUCH WICKEDNESS THESE DAYS. I LOVE CHILDREN SO MUCH. IT’S SUCH A SHAME, GROWING UP, WATCHING THE SHADOWS OF AGE FALL ACROSS THEIR BRIGHT EYES, SEEING THE ELECTRONIC GLOW OF THEIR HARDWIRE MOTHERS DIM THEIR DREAMS. I’D KEEP THEM ALL LIKE THIS IF I COULD. I ENVY THEM. TWO IS THE BEGINNING OF THE END.”
Two is the beginning of the end…he recognized that last bit from somewhere.
Pan grimaced. He didn’t want to listen to this creep anymore. Being stuck forever in the ‘twilight of childhood’ sucked, and he couldn’t imagine being a toddler the rest of your life would be much better. The further people got from childhood the less they remembered all the things they couldn’t do, all the places they couldn’t go, all the petty disappointments and restrictions that weighed down on a kid. Patronizing teachers. Adults turning out to be less than they were supposed to be. Promises broken. Bullies. Everything in the past looked better to somebody speeding away from it. When you were idling, watching everybody else pass on, that was the shame.
Anyway, he suspected he wouldn’t like Hook’s plan to keep all children as they were.
“JUST LIKE I ENVY YOU. TO BE YOUNG FOREVER. HOW MANY MEN HAVE SPENT FORTUNES TO LEARN THAT SECRET? AND I FOUND IT BY ACCIDENT.”
