Imelda is staring at me and I can feel her telepathically trying to tunnel into my head, trying to break into my head like she has every other time I’ve been around her. I don’t appreciate it any more than I have the other times she’s done this, so I turn on my repeller field and neural neutralizer. See how she likes that. I swear I’m a half second from hitting her.
Her head snaps back and she blinks a bunch of times and I smile under my helmet. Keep out. That’s what the sign on the door says, lady.
Dreamweaver sees her reaction and knows what happened, “I told you not to,” she says with a shrug and shakes her head as she turns and walks over to me.
Carrying the bags of stuff I took from the compound, and gathering Hit Point and Granite at the other bus, I tell them it’s time to go, and the team walks away from the kids and the busses over to the van. Our job is done.
Chapter 68
I want nothing more than to crawl into my bed for a week, but first we drop off the rest of the team and take Sparks’ body into town to the city morgue. We leave her body on a gurney with a note and get out of there before we’re seen. Sadly, she isn’t the first super to die and be left at a morgue. Once the investigation begins when the students all show back up, we can let them know what she did to save all those kids.
Leaving Sparks is a reminder to us of what this mission cost and, reflecting on the ungrateful science students we saved, I’m not completely feeling like the rescue was worth the cost. It is going to be a while before I even think about saving someone who isn’t important to me again.
Back at my dorm room, we change and I am able to see all the damage that's been done to my armor. The armor weave is damaged and torn in several places and shows burn marks all along one side from nearly being cooked by the fire elemental. It held up, though, as the damage is superficial. The repeller field, however, wasn’t able to keep out all the heat, which I know because I was feeling myself begin to cook in my armor. I thought it would provide more protection from the heat than that, so I make a mental note to add a reengineering of the repeller field. Again. My to-do list for my suit is long and getting longer. My helmet has a pretty good scuff on it. That must be from the tree, or…I’m not sure where it was from now that I think about it. It, the helmet, definitely has some electronics issues that need to be hardened from impact damage. I think I burned out some of the sensors for low light and infrared as well.
Carly, now changed out of her suit and standing in one of the labs with me in her underwear, catches me frowning at my suit. She knows I am giving it the critical stare as she has seen that expression on my face many times over the last few months. “Hey,” she calls to me.
“Yeah?” I respond, without looking.
“Your suit is awesome. You know that, right?”
“I was nearly barbecued last night.” I reply, frowning. Grabbing the upper chest piece, I look at the damage to the material, “It wasn’t strong enough.”
“Are you kidding me? You went toe to toe with a Class 4 strongman who was at least as fast as you are, and who is telepathic and telekinetic. And, you won! You kicked his ass!” She steps up to me and pokes me in the chest, “You should be dead. You know that, right?”
I let what she’s saying sink in for a minute before a grin starts to creep up on my face, “I did, didn’t I?” Then back to critical, “Still, I can make it better.”
“Okay, fine. Make it better. But, you better not go all mad scientist on me for at least a week! Don’t make me kick your butt, because you won't have your suit to save you when I do.”
Setting down my suit, I go over to the woman who is quickly becoming my better half and pull her into my arms, “Baby, I promise. You’ve got my full attention for at least a week.” I know I'm lying. So does she.
“Don’t you ‘baby’ me. I’m going to hold you to it,” she declares, “You’re officially on mad science vacation. And, no superheroeing, either.” I can tell she’s serious, even though she’s stopped resisting me as she wraps her arms around me in return. I give her, or maybe she gives me, a slow kiss. It’s good to be alive.
“Ow.” I’m not sure which of us said it, or if we both did, but it hurts to kiss right now, and her arms around me are pressing on a huge bruise on my shoulder.
Pulling back, I say, “All right. Rain check.”
I grab both of our suit bags and we take them with us. I can’t leave them in the science labs anymore; the science students we just rescued will steal them.
Epilogue
I skip classes on Monday and sleep in until dinner time. Which is just as well; all of my classes are in chaos as the science students show up for classes and none of the professors know they’re supposed to be there. Admittance doesn’t help any as all their records for them are missing. Fortunately for the students, Carly’s telepath friends step up and fix the memories of the professors and the admins.
The science students take care of the school’s computer systems themselves by adding all of their own information back in. I have serious doubts as to the accuracy of what they put back in, though. There's no telling what changes they made to their records when they recreated them back into the school’s database.
I am two months ahead in all of my classes from everyone else. Actually, it is more like a year ahead as I have been receiving one-on-one attention in all of the classes and I haven’t wasted a moment; getting as much out of my professors as I possibly can. I do not get any extra credits for the year, however. What I do get is what I need to test out of the next two follow on courses in my engineering, metallurgy, and advanced math classes over the summer. I’ll be able to start my theoretical robotics, nuclear engineering applications, and advanced manufacturing techniques in my sophomore year.
Unfortunately, being that far ahead doesn’t sit well with my professors, so they make me substitute teach their classes for the rest of the semester. I'm up late grading papers every weekend until school lets out and I can’t get Carly to hang out with me like she does when I am in the science lab working on projects. She says grading papers is too boring and there's nothing I can build for her with a stack of term papers. Nothing she wants, anyway. I have to agree with her, but I'm afraid I created a monster. One with a gleam in its eyes whenever I build her something. She's the perfect woman for a mad scientist. I just know someday she’s going to ask me to make her a doomsday device.
Two weeks after the rescue, the police show up. It took them long enough to figure out something is wrong as none of the telepaths ever did visit them to undo whatever Wagner had done to make them ignore a 200 person missing persons report. They are not ignoring it now, though. The administration doesn’t know what they are talking about and, after they interview a bunch of the science students, they are back to being as confused as they were when I tried to report the missing students in January. But, they don’t give up that easily. They bring in a telepath to scan all the science students who were abducted, except none of them have any memories of being abducted. No one was able to identify Wagner and his crew, or their rescuers. I'm sure the telepath can see their minds have been messed with, but he seems to go along with it. Interestingly, Carly's roommate is present when the telepath interviews take place, ostensibly to observe police interviewing techniques for her criminal law class.
I, of course, stand out like a sore thumb, as I am the one who reported the abductions in the first place. As well as being the only physical sciences student to not be abducted. They interview me for two hours but don’t get anywhere. I have to come up with a story with Carly that makes the whole thing look like a sorority prank. Not that I’m in a sorority. In the end they call in the telepath again and we just stare at each other for a few minutes before he tells them I don’t know anything about the abductions or the rescue. I not sure how he can say that considering he's not able to read my mind, but later Carly tells me the telepath had been told everything by Imelda and her friends, and the guy agreed this wasn’t something non-telepaths n
eeded to spend a lot of time investigating.
When finals week comes around my professors let me in on the fact I have to take the finals with everyone else, even though I have been teaching the damn classes for the last month and they said I didn't have to. It pisses me off but I'm not worried about it. I have the material down pat and ace all my tests, which is a given since they make me grade the finals too. If I ever decide there is nothing left in this world I want to accomplish I think I’ll start teaching at Nova Academy Science Department. The place is full of brilliant minds that have all gone soft.
Our last weekend before summer break I'm hanging out in the quad while Carly crams for some telepathy exam, which is not how I planned to spend our last weekend together. So, instead of getting all worked up about it, I do something about it and talk Carly into delaying her flight home until Monday (school let out on Friday, and her test was Saturday, so I get Sunday). I intend for our time to last me through most of the summer. We spend the weekend in the nicest hotel the rinky-dink little town has, and have a proper goodbye.
I call Mom that night to let her know of the change of plans and she complains about me not coming straight home, but I know she understands. Her little boy is all grown up and has discovered the joys of the opposite sex. Yeah, okay. I did that a while back, but it can take moms a while to come to terms with that particular realization.
Monday morning we're getting packed up and ready to head for the airport, so I turn on the television in the hotel. The president is addressing the nation about some trade agreement with the Chinese that no one cares about, so I pick the remote back up to put it on The Super News Channel. It is the only channel worth watching on the hotel’s crappy channel lineup.
"Wait, wait! Turn it back!" Shouts Carly from across the room.
Okay, geez. I didn't know she cared about international trade or politics. So, I futz with the remote because it doesn't have a "last channel" button. Finally, I have to down channel about twenty times until I find another news network showing the same press conference. The conference is just getting over and the president steps away from the podium and walks off to the right of the stage. The cameras follow him and that's when I see him.
"I killed that guy," is all I can say as I’m in total shock.
Carly doesn't say anything. She's just staring at the screen when I look over to her for confirmation of who I just saw.
"Carly? That was him, wasn't it?" I ask with trepidation. "Carly?"
"They're all wearing hats," she responds in a whisper.
"What?" I snap my head back to look at the T.V., but the talking head at the news network is back on the screen. "Who?" I ask Carly.
"The Secret Service agents. They were all wearing hats," she whispers again.
My mind is storming with conflicting thoughts: Since when does the Secret Service wear hats? How is this guy still alive? Regeneration? Twin? What do I do? After a dozen different questions flit through my mind, I come to a conclusion: I don’t give a damn if they wear hats or not. I don’t give a damn if this guy is still alive. He’s not my problem. Finally I tell Carly, “This isn’t our problem anymore. You may want to call Imelda and tell her the telepaths have a problem they need to fix before he takes over the world.”
Carly stares at me for nearly a minute then, tight lipped, nods and reaches for her phone.
Nova Academy: A Superhero & Supervillain Novel Page 31
