Grounded (Out of the Box Book 4)

by Robert J. Crane

  “You’re not certain,” Cavanagh said. “You’re speaking in hypotheticals.”

  “So are you,” I said. “This is human nature you’re going against. The natural desire to conquer, to fight amongst ourselves, to lord it over our neighbors and divide based on our differences. Now you want to give us a whole new set of differences.” I stared right at him. “And you’ve been willing to kill people to make it happen. That tells me everything I need to know about you.”

  “Just like you’ve been willing to kill people to protect the way things currently are,” Cavanagh said quietly. “And that says everything about you. You’ll never change. You’ll always be someone who holds humanity back out of fear.”

  “Fear keeps you from walking off a cliff,” I said.

  “Fear keeps you from learning how to fly,” he said.

  “Enough,” Augustus said, and he shook his head, looking weary of the never-ending argument. “Just … enough.”

  “You’re in the middle of this,” Cavanagh said, “and I’m sorry for that.”

  “You want me to choose, right?” Augustus said.

  “I did,” Cavanagh said. “But that was before I found out that she,” he nodded at me, “was going to end up being the stickler on this. Unfortunately … that means you’re going to have to remain my leverage.” He smiled tightly. “Unfortunate, but … omelet, eggs … you see where I’m going with this? I’m sorry.”

  I heard the door open behind me as the click of a pistol hammer sliding into cocked position at the back of my head sounded loud as an explosion. A half dozen people walked into the room and surrounded us, standing with the glass lab windows at their backs. Metas all, I knew from looking at them, from the way they carried themselves. Laverne may have had a pistol at my back but this was the coup de grâce, the cherry on top—the overwhelming force that Cavanagh needed to put an end to us once and for all.

  47.

  Augustus

  I watched Laverne Dobbins put a gun to the back of Sienna Nealon’s head, and my mind worked fast. “If he fires that, it’s going to set off the gas, isn’t it?” I asked, turning my eyes to Cavanagh.

  Cavanagh was a damned statue, eyes bereft of his typical amusement. “Maybe. But even she won’t survive that shot.”

  “Along with you,” I said. “Along with us.” This whole thing was out of control. Not for a minute was I excited to fall in line with Cavanagh’s plan. It wasn’t the democratization of power that had me bothered. It was the idea you could just take people and fiddle with their genes against their will. Experiment on whole communities and countries? With some drug he’d tested on homeless people that he’d pulled off the streets. “How’d they die?” I asked, solemn, staring right at him.

  Edward Cavanagh blinked. “Who?”

  “Those people who ended up in Flora Romero’s yard,” I said, glancing at Jamal. He was taut like a string pulled to its maximum. My brother was usually a low-key guy, but I could see that being in this situation wasn’t enhancing his calm.

  “Like I said, sacrifices have to be made to pull us forward,” Cavanagh said. “You can’t build a new and better world right there in the old one. You have to clear some space first.”

  Talking wasn’t going to solve this, but hasty action wasn’t going to end it very well for anyone. I knew for a fact that there was no dirt anywhere nearby. Cavanagh had seen to that, and whoever his cleaning crew was, they were good. The minerals in the steel that made up the walls was something unnatural, too, something I couldn’t get any kind of a hold on with my powers. I reached out, and then I felt something I could actually influence and realized exactly how much of a miscalculation Edward Cavanagh had made.

  It was big.

  “You were my hero, man,” I said to Cavanagh, and he cocked his head at me like a dog listening to its master but not understanding. “That day you and Mr. Weldon took a picture with me was the best day of my life.”

  Cavanagh’s expression changed to a pained look. “I’m sorry that has to remain the high point, Augustus, I truly am. I doubt you’ll understand, but by doing this, I’ll be a hero to millions more just like you.”

  That was even more crushing. “So much for being special,” I said, turning my head.

  “Hopefully you’ll be one of the last to die before we change this little world,” Cavanagh said. “That’ll just have to do.”

  I chuckled, mirthless. “I actually am special.” I reached out and felt for what I needed. I caught a glimpse of Laverne reaching back with the gun. He was about to punch Sienna in the back of the head. I locked eyes with Cavanagh. “Maybe you unlocked the power, but I’m going to be the one to use it to stop you.”

  Cavanagh froze. “You think you can outwit me?”

  “Oh, I dunno if I can defeat your stunning brilliance,” I said, drawling. “But I reckon I stand a decent chance against a genius who forgets that the primary ingredient in glass is sand.”

  I blew out the computer monitor screen right into his lower back and hauled on the big windows that surrounded the entire lab room we were standing in. I didn’t have full control over the elements of the glass, but I had enough of a grip on them I could use them clumsily to do what I wanted. I ran a hard channel right through every meta in the room except Sienna, Jamal and Taneshia, and funneled those shards into them. I didn’t pull them hard enough to shred them to pieces, but I watched them all scream and dance as the glass, busted down to fine bits, tore them up in seconds.

  It was messy.

  It was nasty.

  It was like something Sienna Nealon would have done. Except I tried not to kill them. It was tough.

  I paid special attention to Laverne Dobbins, funneling most of the glass I sent his way right into his hand. I heard him scream and the pistol dropped. I watched Sienna take a few steps back from him, clearly unwilling to jump into the grinder I’d created around him. I thought about continuing the process, maybe setting up little cells for each of them in the middle of a sweeping tornado of the glass, but just steering it like I had was taking a lot out of me, so I let it rest and slumped against a counter, took a breath.

  “Damn,” Taneshia said. “That was …”

  “Special,” Sienna said, looking right at me.

  “Always knew I was going to be somebody,” I muttered. “Didn’t bother me that no one else believed it.”

  The sound of tinkling glass reached my ears, and I turned my head to see Cavanagh jump through the window into the next room. “Augustus!” Jamal shouted, and he was leaping after him.

  I shot a look at Sienna. She was staring at Laverne Dobbins, who was clutching a bloody hand and looking right back at her with absolute fury in his eyes. I hadn’t been doing this long, but I had a feeling they were about to throw down. “I got this,” she said, waving me off. “Go get Cavanagh, will you?”

  “I’m all over that,” I said and tore off after Jamal. He and Cavanagh were already out of sight, running through a side door and into the night.

  48.

  Sienna

  “Not gonna lie,” I said, looking at the big man. “I like kicking the crap out of guys like you. Watching your pride fall to new lows as you get beat by a girl? It makes me feel better about the current state of my life.” His hand was bleeding from a dozen cuts, but he didn’t seem to notice that or care. Which was fine by me, because after the incessant frustration of the last few days, I was looking for an emotional release.

  “I don’t think you’ve ever fought anyone quite like me before,” Laverne said. I was all set to come back with a Shirley joke when he started to grow. His shirt started to distend, his sleeves ripping along his biceps as his already enormous muscles bulged with strength. His neck muscles grew neck muscles, and his eyes got tiny by comparison. “You have no idea what you’re in for,” he croaked in a furious voice.

  “Oh no, so frightening, it’s a … it’s a … a Hercules,” I snarked and watched him blink in surprise, his shoulders going slack as he deflated. “
Whatever will I do?” And I launched myself right at him, slamming a fist right into his nose.

  It was such a relief to finally be punching someone in the face who truly deserved it.

  49.

  Augustus

  I was after Cavanagh, running into the night. The ground was a little slick, the exterior lights of the lab reflecting dimly off the hard asphalt surface. I saw a puddle ahead from the rain two nights earlier and saw it rippling from being recently disturbed. I wondered if Jamal or Cavanagh had splashed their way through it on the way by, or if the heaviness of their footfalls had just set it to rippling.

  I could hear them both pounding against the pavement ahead of me. Cavanagh was laughing in the night, an almost gleeful sound, as he tore off at meta speed. I guessed he had been using his own product.

  I saw a flash around the bend ahead and knew that Jamal at least had run around the enormous silo that stood like a hundred-foot cylinder just in front of me. The lightning flashed left, so I sprinted right, trying to catch up with them on the other side. I wasn’t hopeful that Cavanagh was going to do something as stupid as double back around in the circle so he could run straight into me, but I figured if Jamal had the one side taken care of, I’d take care of the other.

  Oh, Jamal. I hoped he wasn’t going to do anything we’d both regret. Though I was honestly more worried he’d do something that only I would regret at this point.

  I sprinted around the giant silo and caught sight of Jamal a hundred feet ahead. He and Cavanagh had really pressed that head start. Or maybe they were just in better meta shape than I was. Either way, I hustled to keep up and watched Jamal shoot lightning at Cavanagh again. It looked like it missed, dragged down to the earth by something, an unnatural curving of the arc of electricity. Beyond the two of them, a helicopter waited in the distance, Cavanagh’s ever-present escape route. Just in case that failed, I guess, there was a brand new BMW sitting just this side of the helicopter.

  Cavanagh halted, spinning around to look back at us. He was only a couple hundred feet shy of the helicopter now. I’d say he was grinning madly, but there was too much calculation in it to call it that. He knew what he was doing, all the way down the line. Jamal threw another bolt at him and it curved away, grounding out uselessly against the pavement.

  “I start to wonder if these powers don’t speak to our personality in a way,” Cavanagh called out to us. “Augustus is the strong, earthy type, grounded. He’s got the heart of an old-school hero. But you,” he pointed to Jamal, “you’re a live wire. Impulsive. Angry. Reckless, jumping like a current from whatever conducts you.”

  “What does your power say about you, then?” Jamal asked.

  “I’m the thing that brings you down,” Cavanagh said. “I’m inevitable. Inescapable. That constant well of unlimited strength. The never-ending thing that you just … can’t escape.”

  “You look like you’re trying to escape right now,” I said, shuffling into place at Jamal’s shoulder.

  “Just angling for a little breathing room,” Cavanagh said. “I like to have some space to work.”

  “You’re not the first maniac to demand some lebensraum,” I said, stepping forward, “But you’ll—”

  He lifted his hands like a conductor. “Shhh … you don’t go crowding a black hole.”

  I felt the world shift underneath me, felt pure force land on my back and drag me down. I watched the same thing happen to Jamal next to me, smashing his lips on the pavement. It was like ten thousand tons landed right on me, and I couldn’t evade it, couldn’t shake it, couldn’t get away.

  “And that, gentlemen, is what heroes deal with—the weight of the world on your shoulders,” Cavanagh said. “Everyone always gives credit to wind, water, earth and fire as the avatars of nature, but that’s so flawed. Modern science recognizes more forces in this world than that, and I’ve got the most powerful at my command …

  “Gravity.”

  50.

  Sienna

  “… And this is reason number eight hundred and twelve why you shouldn’t mess with me.” I hammered big boy one last time in the face, watched his eyes droop, his eyebrow trailing blood down it. He slumped, drool oozing out of his mouth. I’d beaten him into near unconsciousness and let my powers work him into a painful stupor more than I usually did.

  Ahhhh. I felt better.

  “Holy hell,” Taneshia breathed behind me. I looked over to see her standing at a strange angle. I guessed her back was still bothering her. “You just … I mean … that was … is he still alive?”

  “Oh, yeah,” I said, kicking Laverne lightly with my shoe. His face showed zero reaction. I surveyed the others in the room, the ones Augustus had showered in glass. “I think this trap didn’t quite spring the way these guys figured it would.”

  Taneshia looked everything over once, almost comically. “You can say that again.”

  “Come on,” I said, clapping a hand on her shoulder lightly as I passed, “let’s go help Augustus and Jamal.”

  51.

  Augustus

  I could taste the grains of dirt from the asphalt as Edward Cavanagh mashed my face into the ground. I could feel the crackle of the electricity as Jamal started to panic next to me, the faint hints of it running between us. It was weak, and born through the moisture left by the rain days earlier, but I could smell the ozone it left in its wake, like water evaporating off a summer sidewalk.

  The grains of rock were not my friends as they pressed against my cheek. I felt blood well out as Cavanagh pushed me harder to the earth. I’d always heard people talking about the man keeping you down. I’d always tried to ignore that as best I could. Because I was Augustus Coleman, dammit. I was somebody. I was going to make it. I was not going to be denied!

  Now I had a literal man holding me down, and that did not sit very well with me. The weight was getting so heavy that the breath was being forced out of my lungs, oozing out of my lips in a low rasp. I could see his legs as he plied his trade, slowly turning me and my brother to paste. The pain was increasing now, and I’ll admit—I was starting to panic.

  But panic was good. Whenever I’d panicked before in a fight, things had happened. Ideas presented themselves. New options opened themselves up.

  Necessity was still the mother of invention.

  And I was about to show this dude just how nasty of a mother she was.

  I reached out and felt the ground beneath his feet, the pebbles that were tarred into the asphalt beneath him. My guess was that he hadn’t heard about this yet. Laverne didn’t seem like the sort who wanted to share the excruciating details of his failures. And it had definitely been Laverne wielding that shotgun, I was sure of it now.

  I felt my skull start to buckle under the gravitational pressure and squeezed my hand tight as I grasped for those rocks beneath Edward Cavanagh’s feet. I could feel them, I could touch them with my powers, and all I needed to do was apply enough force to—

  Set them loose.

  They exploded out of the ground in a much lower arc than the last time I’d used the power. I was in control this time, and I meant to keep Cavanagh alive. He screamed in pain, and I watched his legs buck as his fancy pants legs shredded under the impact and he hit his knees.

  The pressure on my back released in a sudden, wonderful sense of lightness. I could breathe again in one explosive, joyful intake of air. I gulped down hungry breath after breath, watching the spots fade from my vision as I tried to force myself up on one elbow, then another.

  By the time I looked up, Cavanagh was already to the helicopter. He was hurrying in, the door open. He let it thump closed behind him as he started frantically pushing buttons inside. The engine made a noise as it started up, the rotors slowly beginning to spin, gathering speed as they came around faster and faster.

  “I would have gone for the BMW.” Sienna spoke as she landed, extending a hand toward me. “Need help?”

  I thought about it for only a second before taking her hand and
letting her drag me to my feet. “I wouldn’t turn it down.”

  She helped Jamal to his feet as Cavanagh’s chopper blades spun faster and faster and started to rise in the air.

  “I’m going to smoke this fool,” Jamal said and raised his hands.

  “No!” I said but got drowned out by Sienna, who slapped his hand down. Jamal gave her a look, of course, and she gave it right back.

  “He killed Flora,” Jamal said quietly, and the fury in my brother’s voice was unmistakable even under the sounds of the helicopter engine whirring in the night.

  “And he’ll pay for it,” Sienna said.

  “Damned right,” I said, lifting my hands. “I think the mountain’s about to come to him—maybe settle right on top of his helicopter.”

  Sienna sighed, loudly and comically, entirely for effect. “Boys, boys. There are easier ways.” She shook her head at us chidingly and started walking toward the chopper. Her steps were slow and measured, even as the skids rose off the ground and Cavanagh started to get away.

  “He’s—!” Jamal said, pointing.

  Sienna just waved us off, walking over to the BMW. She ran a hand along its hood, gripped it tight with both hands, and then LIFTED THE WHOLE DAMNED CAR INTO THE AIR. She chucked it right into the helicopter, and I watched the blades slap against the car’s body and frame, shredding it and itself in some glorious destruction that I was hard-pressed to look away from until the shrapnel started flying. Then I ran.

  I was expecting an explosion, a bang, and I ended up getting a whimper. Jamal and I stood back as Sienna floated into the wreckage, the engine of the helicopter already spinning down, trashed. The car was in pieces, part of the chassis laying across the bubbled front of the helo like a Tinkertoy someone had left on top of the contraption.