Fandemic

by Jennifer Estep

  It was slow going, given all the piles of rubble. Rascal was still so tiny and his legs were so short that he couldn’t hurdle the biggest rocks, and I had to lift him up over them whenever he stopped and gave me a short, commanding bark.

  The longer he sniffed and the deeper we moved into the factory ruins, the more my stomach filled with cold dread and heavy worry. It had seemed like a great plan at the time, using Rascal’s nose to find Frost’s lab. Now, I wondered whether I’d made the right choice—and whether I might have cost the man I loved his life.

  “C’mon, boy,” I murmured. “You can do it. I know you can.”

  If he didn’t, Kyle was dead.

  Rascal kept sniffing and sniffing, and we kept following him, deeper and deeper into the rubble until we’d reached the back side of what had once been the factory. Finally, just when I was about to give up all hope, the puppy stopped and started pawing at a patch of dirt. He looked up at me and let out another, louder bark as if to say, Here he is!

  “Whatcha got, boy?” I asked, shining my flashlight over the spot where he was digging.

  But all I saw were dirt, snow, and rocks—no doors, no tunnels, nothing that looked like an opening at all.

  “I don’t see anything,” Lulu said, echoing my thoughts.

  “There has to be some sort of secret entrance around here somewhere,” I muttered. “We just have to find it. Frost does have Muscular Mila’s strength now. Maybe he’s lifting up a slab of concrete or something like that to get inside.”

  Wynter snorted. “I doubt that. Frost never was much for getting his hands dirty or exerting himself in any way.”

  “Help me look, guys,” I said. “Please.”

  Wynter nodded, and the two of us stepped forward and stared out over the piles of rubble, while Lulu hung back. Rascal let out a sharp, reproachful yip, as though we should have already found the door he knew was here.

  Lulu dusted some snow off a pile of rocks. Then she sat down, pulled her tablet out of her fisherman’s vest, and started tap-tap-tapping on it, her fingers flying every which way across the screen.

  “What are you doing?” I asked. “Put that away, and come help us search.”

  “You have your superpowers, and I have mine,” she said. “Which includes hacking into the city’s power grid. If Frost does have a lab here, then he has to have some kind of electricity running to it to fuel all of his uberevil gadgets. And electricity means power lines, which are a lot easier to find than secret doors.”

  Wynter and I stared at each other. The superhero shrugged and kept scanning the rubble. I did the same.

  Lulu kept tap-tap-tapping on her tablet, murmuring to herself all the while about firewalls and encryptions and other things that I didn’t understand. Finally, she looked up, as if orienting herself with the landscape, got to her feet, leaned on her cane, and took several steps forward.

  “According to the city’s electrical schematics, an underground power line runs through this section of the factory. Now, if I were a maniacal ubervillain who wanted to be all warm and toasty with plenty of lights and still have easy access to my lab, I think I would put a trapdoor or secret entrance right about…here.”

  Lulu poked her cane down into the dirt and snow.

  Snick.

  And just like that, a concrete slab rolled back, revealing a metal tunnel that sloped down into the ground.

  Lulu grinned. “See? What did I tell you? These hands have superpowers too, baby.”

  She waggled her fingers at me and Wynter, then blew us both a kiss. Rascal cocked his head to the side, not understanding what she was doing. Wynter rolled her eyes, but I was just glad we’d discovered the lab entrance. It meant that we were one step closer to finding and rescuing Kyle.

  If it wasn’t already too late.

  But I forced that chilling thought away. Kyle was alive—he had to be. I hadn’t gotten him back just to lose him again, especially not to a villain like Frost.

  So I tightened my grip on my flashlight and squared my shoulders. “Here we go,” I whispered, then stepped down into the darkness.

  Chapter Eleven

  The slow, steady way the tunnel veered down into the ground reminded me of a ramp on the back of a cargo plane. We’d only gone about ten feet down when the concrete slab slid shut above our heads, leaving us in complete blackness, except for the glow from our flashlights.

  “Now what?” Lulu muttered.

  Click.

  Click-click.

  Click-click-click.

  Lights flared to life in the metal ceiling above our heads, while illumination strips curved around the sides of the tunnel walls and ran along the floor, almost like arrows giving us directions. Step this way. There was more than enough light to see by, so I turned off my flashlight and hooked it to the bottom of my vest. Lulu did the same with her flashlight and Wynter’s too.

  We stood still and quiet, but all I could hear was the low, faint, steady hum of the lights. No voices, no screams, nothing else. I didn’t know how far we might be from Frost’s lab, but I wasn’t going to risk the ubervillain taking us by surprise like he had Kyle and me in the park.

  “Put your sunglasses on,” I whispered, pulling my pair out of a pocket on my vest.

  Lulu and Wynter both nodded and did as I asked. I dropped to my knees, fished out the pair of doggie goggles that I’d bought for Rascal at Oodles o’ Stuff, and slipped them on over the puppy’s head. Rascal wagged his tail, apparently liking his new gear.

  I didn’t know what the tunnel might have been used for, maybe some kind of maintenance or to move equipment from one side of the factory to the other, but it was more than wide enough for the three of us to walk side by side by side. After an initial sloped drop of about thirty feet, the tunnel leveled off and ran straight. The air was surprisingly fresh down here, smelling as crisp as it had aboveground. And it was just as cold too. I didn’t know if that was because we were underground or approaching Frost’s lair.

  Every few feet, we would stop, look, and listen, but all I could see was more tunnel up ahead. We’d gone about a hundred feet into the corridor when another louder hum overpowered that of the lights. I listened, trying to figure out what it was, but it sounded like a really large refrigerator.

  Wynter sighed.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “Mysterious hums are never good, in my experience.”

  “Yeah,” Lulu agreed. “Mysterious hums mean mysterious generators, which power mysterious machines, and villains never use those for anything nice.”

  I shivered, my worried thoughts chilling me more than the cold air did. But Kyle was wherever those machines were, so we walked on.

  Eventually, we reached the end of the tunnel. A door was set into the metal wall in front of us, with a keypad off to one side.

  Lulu studied the keypad, then shook her head. “I could rip out the wires and probably bypass it, but I don’t know how much time that might take or what sort of alarms that might set off.”

  “Kyle is running out of time,” I said. “And Frost is bound to realize that we’re here sooner or later, if he hasn’t already. I say we use what Jasper gave us and blast right through it.”

  Wynter and Lulu nodded their agreement. Lulu took hold of Rascal’s leash, and the three of them moved back out of the way.

  I fished around in my vest pockets and pulled out one of the small, cherry-shaped bombs that Jasper had given me. I carefully fixed the bomb to where the door met the metal wall next to the keypad, pulled the stem out of the device, and scurried back up the tunnel to where Wynter, Lulu, and Rascal were standing.

  Pop!

  The bomb blast didn’t seem any larger than that of a small firecracker, and the flames and smoke quickly died out, revealing a slightly dented and open door.

  Wynter, Lulu, and I all held our breaths, wondering if the small explosion had been loud enough to attract Frost’s attention. But the seconds passed, then turned into a
minute…then two…then three…

  No one came to investigate the noise, so Lulu passed Rascal’s leash back over to me, and we approached the door. Wynter carefully eased it open wide enough for us to step through to the other side.

  The door opened up into an enormous factory area filled with metal vats, loose pipes, and other dusty equipment that hadn’t been used in years, except for a large generator in the corner that was lit up like a Christmas tree. Lulu was right in thinking that a generator was the source of that low, ominous hum we’d been hearing. But the good thing was that the hum was much louder here and more of a steady drone. It must have drowned out the noise of us blasting through the door, which meant we still had a chance to sneak up on Frost. More lights blazed up ahead. That was where his lab would be.

  Wynter motioned at us, and we stopped and huddled together just inside the door.

  “Let me go in first,” she murmured. “Just like we planned. I’ll keep Frost busy, if he’s in there. You two focus on getting Swifte out of here and not dying yourselves. Okay?”

  Lulu snapped her hand up in a cheeky salute. “Sir, yes, sir. I will do my very best not to die.”

  “Me too,” I murmured.

  Rascal barked his agreement not to die as well.

  I just hoped that Kyle wasn’t dead already. My heart dropped at the thought, but I forced my fear away. He was still alive, and he was going to stay that way. We would save him.

  Wynter headed deeper into the factory. I made sure my sunglasses still covered my eyes, tightened my grip on Rascal’s leash, and tiptoed after her. Lulu brought up the rear, moving much slower and putting her cane down with care so that it didn’t tap-tap-tap against the metal floor. Despite the steady drone of the generator, Frost still had the supersenses he’d stolen from Radio Randall, and the slightest noise would alert him to our presence, something we needed to avoid if at all possible.

  We reached a series of vats near the center of the area. Beyond the metal containers, the lights were much brighter and tinged with a cold, blue color—almost the same ice-blue as Frost’s costume. Wynter hunkered down beside one of the vats. I dropped into a crouch beside her, and we both peered around the edge of the container, with Lulu and Rascal right behind us.

  Frost’s lab lay before us.

  Vats circled the area like soldiers standing watch, before giving way to metal tables covered with pens, note pads, and plastic, ice-blue binders filled with reams of paper. Many of the tables looked like they’d come straight out of some high school chemistry lab, with burners embedded in the surface. Several of the burners were lit, the flames licking at the bottoms of glass beakers filled with all sorts of strange, bubbling, neon-colored liquids. The generator’s hum wasn’t nearly as loud here, but the air smelled of bleach and other harsh chemicals, and I had to pinch my nose to hold back a sneeze.

  The evil, electrical heart of the lab was a row of laptops lining another table set off by itself, the precious equipment well away from all the bubbling liquid experiments. All sorts of ominous-looking tubes and wires snaked out of the computers, leading to a control panel bristling with knobs, buttons, levers, and blinking lights that had been welded onto the side of one of the vats.

  A large metal ring had been placed over a hook jutting out from the control panel. It would have been nothing more than an oversize collar—if not for the dozens of needles attached to it. Needles that all pointed in and would jab deep into someone’s neck when you snapped the collar around their throat.

  Just like Frost had done to Blue.

  I shuddered. It was exactly the sort of mad-scientist setup that you would expect, and one that I’d seen in photos in the library archives and dozens of times on SNN whenever the Fearless Five or the cops shut down an illegal ubervillain or drug lab.

  But I looked past the tables, burners, and beakers to the most important thing in the lab—Swifte.

  He was standing up against a metal slab, his outstretched arms and legs shackled to it, making him look like a human star. His white costume still covered his body, but he wasn’t wearing his winged mask. Beside me, Wynter sucked in a breath at the revelation of Swifte’s real identity as Kyle Quicke.

  “I should have known,” Wynter whispered, shaking her head. “Nobody can cook that much that fast for that many heroes and villains.”

  We huddled beside the vat, looking and listening, but I didn’t see or hear anything out of the ordinary, not even Frost, puttering around somewhere. Kyle slumped against his shackles, as if he’d already used up all of his energy trying to break free of them and had realized how useless it was. The metal cuffs gleamed like they were made out of pure solidium. Even Wynter, with all her superstrength, would have had a hard time busting out of them.

  Wynter touched my shoulder. “Stay here,” she whispered. “I’m going to get Kyle out of those shackles. Maybe we can slip out of here before Frost comes back, get the Fearless Five to come surround the lab, and force Frost to give himself up.”

  “Be careful,” I whispered back.

  Wynter squeezed my shoulder and got to her feet. Lulu slid forward and took her place beside me, with Rascal huddled next to her.

  Wynter tiptoed around the edges of the lab, moving from vat to vat, being as quiet as possible as she worked her way over to Kyle. I bit my lip to keep from calling out Kyle’s name and letting him know that we were here, that I was here, and that we were going to rescue him.

  Finally, Wynter got close enough to leave the vats behind, and she made a beeline to where Kyle was shackled in the center of the lab. He looked up at the soft sound of her footsteps on the metal floor. His blue eyes widened, then narrowed in thought. He glanced around, as if looking for Frost and making sure that the coast was clear.

  Wynter hurried over to his side and studied the solidium cuffs that shackled him to the metal slab.

  “If I rescue you, does this mean that I get free meals for life at Quicke’s?” she quipped in a soft voice.

  He grinned. “You better believe it. I’ll even throw in free drinks. I know how much you love a good cosmopolitan.”

  “How generous of you,” she quipped back, pushing her sunglasses up onto the top of her head.

  “But how did you find me?” Kyle frowned. “And why are you wearing sunglasses this far underground?”

  “Piper,” Wynter said, leaning down and peering at his shackles. “She was the one who figured out where you were. The glasses were her idea. Now, let’s get these cuffs off you and get out of here—”

  “I’m afraid that’s not going to happen,” a loud voice cut in.

  Frost suddenly appeared by the control panel, his freezoray gun clutched in his hand. I blinked. How had he done that? I hadn’t heard or even seen him… Catwalk, I realized. He still had her ability to move without making a sound, along with Blue’s speed. He must have heard us blast through the door after all and had used his stolen powers to hide in the shadows while Wynter approached Kyle.

  “Wynter,” Frost called out. “So nice of you to join my little party. I was just about to relieve Mr. Quicke of his speedy superpowers. I’ll give you the honor of draining your superstrength out of you next, along with your ice abilities. I’m afraid to say that my own cold powers have been on the fritz ever since I was caught in that horrible explosion here. It’ll be nice to have those back again.”

  Wynter’s hands clenched into fists. “Bring it on.”

  Frost leveled his freezoray gun at her. “With pleasure.”

  He pulled the trigger, and a blast of cold shot out of the end of the barrel. Wynter threw herself down onto the floor, rolled out of the way, and popped right back up onto her feet. Blue flames flashed to life in her palms before morphing into two snowballs studded with long, sharp icicles. Wynter flung her hands out, sending the projectiles shooting out at Frost.

  The spiked snowballs streaked through the air toward the ubervillain—

  And Frost simply stepped out of the way. The snowballs thunk-thunked int
o the metal vat behind him, icicles shattering on impact, but Frost had already used his stolen speed to move all the way over to the other side of the lab, right behind Wynter.

  Even as I opened my mouth to scream that he was behind her, Wynter turned around, as if sensing where Frost was.

  But it was too late.

  This time, instead of using his freezoray gun, Frost waved his hand, just like he had at me in Paradise Park. I knew what was coming next.

  Sure enough, a second later, a burst of intense light filled the room, as though we were standing in the center of the sun.

  Wynter had pushed her sunglasses up on top of her head to examine Kyle’s shackles, and she’d forgotten to put them back down over her eyes. She screamed in pain as Frost used Catwalk’s light power to sear her retinas. I was still wearing my sunglasses, and even with them, the light was almost blinding. Beside me, Lulu winced and hissed, while Rascal whimpered, despite the dark doggie goggles on his head.

  Wynter fell to her knees, screaming and covering her eyes, even though the light had already faded away. Frost circled around and around her, like she was a bug that he was about to squash with the toe of his ice-blue forty-two boot. Then he used his speed to zip over to the control panel and yank down one of the levers on it.

  Wynter must have been kneeling on some sort of trapdoor because the floor opened up beneath her, and she disappeared from sight. A second later, I heard the thud of her body hitting the bottom of a hole, along with a low groan. She was still alive, but for how long? There was no telling what sort of torture devices Frost might have stashed down in that hole.

  Frost stood at the edge of the trapdoor, staring down into the space, but whatever he saw must have satisfied him because he went back over to the control panel and started fiddling with the buttons and switches there. Every once in a while, Wynter would let out another groan, but she was out of the fight for now.

  Which meant that it was up to me to save her and Kyle.

  Or die trying.

  Chapter Twelve