Vance couldn’t recall a time when he’d been happier or more optimistic. He returned to his table with the models, only this time he ditched the suit jacket that obscured most of his cyborg body.
A sheer black shirt revealed his muscular steel chest and cybernetic arms. One of the girls, buzzed, giggled as he climbed into his seat. Another model’s mouth hung open in disbelief.
The most brazen of the three dared to stroke his arm. She ran her finger along it, tracing the steel. “Is this a joke? One of your ads? I heard you were into kinky stuff, but this is something else.”
He leaped from his seat, knocking her aside, then shoved her to the ground, before realizing people were staring. The restaurant was packed with Spark City upper class and VIPs from other cities.
He quickly composed himself and helped the fallen model back to her seat. “I didn’t mean to offend,” she muttered. “Just, you don’t even look human anymore. You’re like a hybrid.” The last part came out breathy, as though she regretted the words leaving her mouth.
Vance studied her, making a mental note to have his men stage an accident for her. As he turned to leave, he registered stares of morbid fascination. Someone said, “So it’s true—” too loudly, before being hushed.
These people are nothing. Vance sauntered into the elevator and spoke into his biocuff, “Move up the start time. I want the procedure to start now.”
Singlet banged on Ida’s hotel door. “Showtime,” he said.
Behind the locked door, she pulled on her leather jacket, making sure the two pills were in her pants pocket, ready to grab. She’d been summoned earlier than expected and wanted to be sure it wasn’t a false alarm.
But she reconsidered. This might be her last chance alone. The men might search her. She popped one of the pills, swallowing it with water from the faucet.
They led her down the elevator and through a long fluorescent-lit hallway below ground.
Nancy was right about the vast size and immense ceilings. We must be several levels below ground, she realized.
If Gatz was searching for her, she doubted anyone would know this space existed. No wonder Vance preferred his dirty work to happen far below ground, away from the prying eyes of hotel guests and fancy restaurant people.
Would Gatz even bother to come after me? she wondered.
Her heart raced. She was about to cure a madman of a terminal illness and likely cause the death of thousands of others who would suffer a lifetime of his abuse.
That, or she would fall into a coma caused by a desperate woman who’d been brainwashed by her sadistic captor.
The situation was completely screwed any way she looked at it.
Thirty-Seven
Dark figures journeyed like shadows through underground tunnels cut below the river bed. Lucy tried her best to keep up with the hybrids. Pilar led the way because she knew the underground like no one else.
Gatz said the underground had been built by a former government as a bunker for important officials and businessmen. The network of tunnels and cavernous rooms rested below the city’s sewer system. It must have taken decades to build, all done in secret. How had it been built and how was it kept hidden so long? she wondered.
Only Pilar and her people knew about it. Her kind preferred to live down here, alone and undisturbed. As leader of her clan, she had risked a lot by revealing the tunnels to others. She asked for respect and secrecy in return.
The group made their way through the tunnels toward DremCorp towers. This far below ground, the air was damp, heavy, and smelled of soil. Strong, fortified steel walls held back the deep earth surrounding them.
Once they were close to the first tower, they ascended to the upper levels of the underground, near the sewers.
One of the rat men laid a series of explosives.
Pilar eyed the group. “Now it begins.”
Thirty-Eight
Vance wore an edgy smile and could hardly contain his excitement as he looked Ida up and down. Standing before her, his face inches from hers, she could feel his hot breath and caught a lingering vodka smell.
He reached out a metal finger, brushing it across her face. She shivered. The gesture lasted only a moment, but was enough to make her grab and swallow the second pill as his back was turned.
“What did you just take?” He swiveled to face her, staring with his glowing crimson pupils.
“Aspirin.”
His jaw clenched on one side. After a tense moment, he turned and began checking the machines, including what she assumed was the medical robot that would administer the anesthetic. “Nancy,” he called to his assistant sharply.
She went to his side and they talked quietly, out of earshot.
Ida glanced around. How long before the pills kicked in?
That’s when they felt the explosion.
The floor beneath them rumbled and swayed. Both humans and robots struggled to stay on their feet.
Suddenly an alarm sounded in the underground room and smoke poured in. “We’re under attack. Seal off this room,” Vance ordered his men.
Meanwhile, Ida struggled to get off the floor. Her stomach was killing her. She felt as if acid was eating through her belly.
Vance grabbed her arms and threw her on the surgical table meant for him. “What did you take?” he screamed.
Throughout the building, alarms rang on every floor. The tower was in chaos.
Sixty levels above, the restaurant patrons panicked. As a safety precaution, the elevators had been disabled after the fire alarm sounded. A long line of people snaked their way down stairwells.
On the rooftop terrace, a creature landed with hardly a sound. The owl hybrid crossed the rooftop and opened the door that led into the restaurant.
A bot poised just inside the hallway spotted him and took aim. The hybrid flung a large backpack at it with such force, the bot slammed against a wall. The hybrid retreated, yanking the door shut.
He ran to the edge and leaped off, wings unfolding as he descended into the night sky.
As he soared through the air, the top of DremCorp exploded into a fireball.
In his underground lab, Vance frantically tried to revive Ida. She was burning up with a sudden fever. “Feels like stabbing,” she moaned from a fetal position on the surgical table. Nearby, Nancy watched, a half-smile creeping across her face.
“What did you take? I saw you swallow something. I knew it.” Vance kicked nearby equipment. “We’re speeding up the show.” He ripped open his shirt and shoved Ida’s hands against his neck. “Heal me. Now.”
Tears of pain streamed down her face. Her palms pressed against his flesh, but nothing happened. None of the usual tingling warmth emanated from her hands, unlike what had happened with Paul and Vera and the others whom she’d healed in the war.
“Is it happening?” he asked.
She yanked her hands away, gripped her stomach, and glared at Nancy. “What did you give me?”
Vance swiveled his head. “You gave her something?”
A few steps away, Nancy smiled and boldly faced him. “She’s dying. She can’t help you anymore. It was a lethal dose.”
A cold fury arose inside him. He knocked her across the room with one hit of his cyborg arm. Her head struck the wall, and her neck snapped from the force.
Then he turned back to the table, where Ida lay wracked with pain. “Antidote,” she barely managed to say. Vance leaned down to hear.
J-Man ran over in a panic. “Sir, there’s fire and attacks in both towers.”
“Seal the room. Let the droids deal with upstairs,” he said. Then he hovered over Ida and whispered, “Antidote where?”
“Leg,” she uttered.
He ran over to Nancy’s body, felt along her legs, and discovered the tiny pouch.
He searched inside, but it was empty.
Thirty-Nine
In the hallway outside the lab, five droids slumped on the ground after being pulsified by Gatz. The devices had been working incredibly well.
Mac had been given one to use in the lobby and garage levels to secure their eventual escape route.
Lucy held the third device. Gatz had ordered her to stay by his side at all times. He’d joked that Ida would kill him if anything happened to her, a fate worse than being caught by Vance Drem.
So far, she’d proven to be a good partner after taking down ten droids on their way down the deep stairwells. Not only that, she’d saved him when one snuck up behind them out of nowhere about to shoot.
They approached the room where Ida was being held. Gatz had slipped a tracking pin into her jacket one night when they were drinking. He said he did it to keep tabs on her. Lucy wondered whether it was right to spy on people, but nevertheless, the tracker was serving its purpose now.
What would they would find in the lab? He attached a small explosive pack to the heavy, steel door leading in.
As they scrambled to find shelter from the explosion, the two exchanged a look. “We got this,” he said.
She hoped he was right.
The bomb exploded, and smoke billowed from the open door.
Vance dragged Ida off the table. She fell to the floor, still gripping her abdomen in pain. Flashes of black clouded her vision and her thoughts drifted. Had the poison reached her brain?
She pushed aside the pain as best she could and tried to think. Perhaps it was for the best. Nancy had tricked her, that much was true, but what was the alternative? With me gone, Vance will die too.
Some of the pain she’d been carrying lifted away.
Time to die.
Gatz and Lucy burst into the room scanning for Ida. J-Man and Singlet, who had knocked over the surgical bed for cover, blasted them with gunfire.
Crouched behind a large column, they returned fire at Vance’s men. Lucy spied a woman’s body in the corner. Not Ida. “Can you see her anywhere?” she yelled.
Bullets sprayed the wall behind them. Gatz returned rapid fire at the steel table. “Vance has her. He’s dragging her off to a side exit. He’s getting away.”
From the blasted out doorway, two droids lunged at them. Bullets pierced their steel frames but failed to stop their advance. Lucy aimed the pulsifier at them and pressed down. They stalled in place and fell sideways, inert.
“Cover me. I’ll go after Vance,” she yelled.
Gatz eyed her. “Are you crazy?” He pulled out a grenade. “Let’s try this first. When I throw it, run like hell.”
She nodded.
After another round of gunfire from the men, Gatz pulled the pin and pitched the grenade toward them. It landed squarely where he intended and came to a stop behind J-Man and Singlet’s table.
Lucy and Gatz sprinted in the direction Vance had taken Ida.
The grenade blast was stronger than they’d expected in the large, open room. Lucy and Gatz ducked, covering their heads. Tile and debris rained down from the ceiling. After a few seconds, they climbed to their feet and continued their pursuit. After winding through a short hallway into another lab, they spotted Vance. He’d pulled Ida into a shower-sized, clear container with a door. They sprinted toward it, guns and pulsifiers raised.
“What the…?” muttered Gatz.
The container was connected to a large machine with a myriad of buttons and digital controls. Inside, shielded behind glass, Vance held a pocket-sized tablet. He shouted, “Come no further or she’s dead. If I press this button, molten steel will flood this container.”
Gatz and Lucy halted.
“She’s hurt,” whispered Lucy. “Look at her, she’s in pain.”
On the floor of the container, Ida clutched her stomach and grimaced. On the verge of passing out, she was barely hanging on.
“Let her go,” Gatz called out.
Vance smiled and held up the device that would bring a wave of steel death upon them. “Don’t test me, wolf man.” He turned to Ida and positioned her body flat on the floor. Straddling her, he ripped off his shirt, baring his steel upper body. Then he forced her hands onto his still human, flesh-covered stomach.
Ida regained consciousness and gazed up to find Vance pinning her down. She couldn’t feel anything below her neck. Had Nancy’s poison paralyzed her? Her head lolled to the side, and she glimpsed Gatz and Lucy through the glass.
Her heart jumped. They came.
“Focus!” Vance shouted. “Heal me, or I push a button and they die. We’ll be safe inside the container, but out there, a poisonous gas will fill the room.” He smiled. “My fail safe.”
“No…” she said, twisting to try and see Gatz and Lucy. Outside the container, their eyes were wide, and they carried guns. Everyone else was gone, even the droids. “How did…?” Am I dreaming? she thought.
“Concentrate. Heal me,” said Vance, squeezing her shoulders with his cybernetic hands.
She stared into his blue and maroon eyes. Veins had grown enlarged on the human side of his face. Could she heal him? He would kill her friends…if he lived.
Friends? Ida pictured Lucy, laughing and being goofy. She recalled their fight lessons and how hard Lucy had tried to learn self-defense. The girl had practiced her moves in a hallway mirror when she thought no one was watching.
Ida felt something arise within her. Remembering her late-night conversations with Gatz, tears swelled in her eyes. She would never see him again after having grown accustomed to his strange, beast-like face.
Gatz and Lucy had shown up. For her. They’d risked capture and death to help her. She’d never let anybody get so close to her before.
She resolved to save her friends. She knew what to do suddenly, feeling her power surge from a place deep within her. She dug her nails into his abdomen, finding the area where flesh ended and steel began.
Vance lowered his face close to hers. His metal half seemed cold, inhuman. “Oh, it’s working, I can feel it now. Good girl.”
Ida felt a slow spark inside her belly where the poison had pooled. It became a flicker that accelerated until it became a fierce blaze throughout her body. She could feel the strength of the heat carried through her chest and arms and into her fingers. The combustion inside her flowed into Vance’s body.
She focused all her will, the entire strength of her being on one thought.
Burn.
Vance’s skin turned a shade of crimson and his facial muscles strained. His handsome features contorted into a hideous shell of his former self.
“Die,” she said.
Ida’s entire being, all her power thrust out of her body. She screamed in agony with the force of her effort.
Vance’s pain morphed into fear. His human face went slack, then twisted with spasms. The poison rose within him staining his skin a deep indigo.
Outside the glass, Lucy and Gatz saw a pulsing, white light emanate from Ida’s body into Vance, jolting his body with convulsions.
A massive blue flash flooded the chamber, and it was over. Ida and Vance fell together in a heap on the floor. The controller clattered to the ground, still clutched in his grip.
Lucy ran to the door and tried to pry it open. Gatz pulled her back and fired two shots at the lock, breaking it. They dragged Ida’s body into the open room.
Lucy knelt beside her, tears streaming down her face. “Ida, wake up. Wake up,” she said as she nudged her body.
Inside the container, Gatz slid Vance’s tablet away with his foot and kicked his body. He leaned down to check for a pulse, then yanked his arm away. “Shit!” he yelled. Stunned, he looked at his palm, which had been singed.
He exited the container to find a frantic Lucy trying to revive Ida. She shook her body. “She’s not waking up.”
Forty
Four months later, summer had arrived in Spark City. No longer afraid to venture outdoors, people hiked the wooded trails near the pond again, and enjoyed the nature around them. Attitudes in the city were relaxing after years of dominant rule. Hope had surfaced, finally, and many areas of the city were being rebuilt.
Lucy spent the afternoon in her f
lowerbed. She plucked a small bouquet of lilies and pulled suspect weeds from the soil. Gardening had become one of her favorite activities. It turned out she had a knack for keeping things alive.
She rested a moment and lifted her gaze, tilting her head back to soak in the warm sun. Then she noticed the familiar silver air cruiser soar over the tree tops and start its descent. Right on time, she thought.
Dropping her flowers on the ground, she jogged over and waited for the pilot to emerge as she brushed her dusty hands on her jeans.
Gatz climbed out of the aircraft. “Hey, Lucy!”
“Hi there,” she said as she gave him a kiss on the cheek. He’d grown a thick beard and his fur tickled her nose, causing her to sneeze. He smiled at her, eyebrows raised. “Allergies,” she said, smiling.
She took his arm and they went inside. Ida’s old home—the conservatory—had been spruced up beyond recognition. Gatz glanced around, taking in the polished floors, the many tall plants that lined the edges of the room, and the brightness of the natural light streaming through the repaired glass panes. “You and Vera have done wonders with the place. Truly.”
She smiled and blushed. “Thanks, it’s been fun fixing this old place up. Mom’s gone out for supplies with Paul. How’s running the city going?”
Entering a bright, open kitchen area, Lucy poured him his usual black coffee. “Thanks,” he said as he took a sip from the hot mug. “It’s going.”
“Come on, don’t be so humble. You’re doing an amazing job as mayor so far. It’s incredible how positive and optimistic people are right now.”
“Interim mayor.” Gatz paused. “It’s easy to look good compared to Vance, but I’ll tell you, unraveling his web of corruption is proving harder than I thought.” He clasped his hands. “I have a lot of work ahead. How’s my favorite patient doing?”
The Rogue Spark series Box Set Page 25
