I could fly.
And if I could fly...
I pictured Gavrikov again, and tried to recall how it felt when I could push flame out of my very pores...
When I opened my eyes...the tip of my finger was on fire.
“Shadows,” I whispered, watching the flame dance.
Well, that's cool, Brianna said.
“What?” Brance croaked, looking up at me from all fours.
I stared back at him. For a second, I'd forgotten he was here. “Nothing,” I said, and patted him again.
Then I slid my hand to the small of his back, where his shirt tail had flopped up during our fall. I patted him there, and let my hand rest on the exposed skin.
He didn't notice until I was already in, erasing his memories of our little fall – or at least of how we survived.
Because I'd just discovered a powerful weapon in my upcoming war against the Network – and I didn't want it revealed until I was good and ready.
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED TWENTY-SEVEN
The White House
Now
They came at me in a rush – Shinyman, Vamp, Metalmind – powers flaring when they had them, fists and fangs flying where they didn't. It seemed their strategy was the old familiar Ray Stanz “Get her!” and boy, did they try to get me.
I sent a blast of flame at Vamp that washed over her and drove her back. She was fastest, so she was in the lead until she caught fire in the face and staggered, pitching back over a colonial-style chair.
Shinyman was next. I peppered his legs and feet with Eve Kappler's fairy blasts, the strands of light cementing him to the ground like he'd stepped on glowing gum with the elasticity and power of hardened diamonds. He tried to lift his feet and failed, unable to get enough leverage to escape my crowd control gambit while I dealt with other problems.
Then there was Metalmind. I could feel her working, every metal object in the room being commanded into her service. She stood with her skinny arms flung wide, a malignant smile on her face as she summoned to her every instrument of death she could get her hands on.
She needed to go first, I decided. “Brianna,” I muttered.
Yeah. Javelin?
“Yep,” I said, and formed an ice javelin out of the moisture in the air, hurling it overhand at Metalmind.
Apparently she didn't realize by the people staggering around the room on fire we weren't playing by Marquess of Queensbury rules, because she stood there, slack-jawed, while my ice javelin found her face. It struck through, punching out the back of her head, and the clatter of metal objects falling where they'd been lifted filled the air over the screams of Vamp and Impervious.
I cast a quick look around to confirm the position of all combatants. Impervious had almost beaten out the flames, but he was looking pretty scorched. Vamp was stopped, dropped, and rolling. Rockrigger was hanging back at the tunnel entrance with Veronika, who was keeping a wary eye on the proceedings. Neither seemed inclined to get involved.
But Shinyman? He was shucking off his shoes, and the bald-headed goon looked pissed.
“You mad, bro?” I asked as he kicked out of my light-web foot trap.
He stormed toward me, not bothering to dignify my taunt with a response.
“Well,” I said, “you need to chill out – bro.”
I lifted a hand and hit him with the full blizzard force out of it. I'd tested my powers in quiet moments, when there was no chance of being overheard or seen by the Network, and I knew the depths of cold I could produce.
They were, to borrow a modern phrase, epic.
If Shinyman had been slowed, then stopped by my light webs, my blizzard force attack did much the same but on a larger, full-body scale. It swirled from my palm like I was the origin of all winter, covering his shiny body in sparkling ice. He slowed, ice forming around him like a pedestal enjoining a statue in action pose. He came to a stop mere inches from my hand, covered over from top to bottom in thick ice with a temperature point that hovered somewhere in the minus 200 range. His eyes didn't even move beneath the translucent crust of ice.
“Anyone seen that really old movie – Terminator 2?” I asked in (nowhere near perfect) innocence. Impervious had gotten his fires put out, and was watching me, trying to regain his composure.
I swung from the waist, nailing the ice statue that had been Shinyman with one of my finest, top-quality, homemade, artisanal, extremely-large-batch punches. I nailed him with all my strength right in the center of the chest and – not gonna lie – it split my knuckles open when it landed.
It also transferred the force of impact to his brittle, iced-up body, and everything – the ice, his steely ass, the whole entirety of it – shattered like he was no more resilient than a glass sculpture.
“Ohgodohgod,” Rockrigger murmured from the tunnel entrance.
“Goddess, if you wanna get all precise and properly worshipful,” I said.
I thought I saw Veronika roll her eyes, but I had no time to respond to it because Impervious charged me again, pain, panic and desperation all present in his eyes. It seemed to me that he was mostly coming at me because he saw no other options, in much the same way that a cornered animal attacks, even if the predator is much bigger than he is.
Impervious was bigger than me, though, as most of my foes were. And, purportedly, invincible, though I'd just shown him the lie of that.
Now...I was going to show him the lie again.
I hit him with a full fire blast, both hands, my eyes, and my mouth all funneling 2000-degree flame at him. It took a lot out of me, but I opened up on him full force, and when I cut it off a few seconds later–
A charred skeleton clattered to the ground, bones falling apart, still smoking.
“Hm,” I mused. “I remember when Achilles-types were really hard to kill. Guess they don't make them like they used to. Or I'm just cooler now. Probably the latter.”
“You little bitch,” Vamp hissed, clearly out of her head. She'd seen me burn, ice, and impale three members of her crew in less than thirty seconds, yet still, here she was, spitting indignation and looking like she was going to charge at any second.
“Look here, Gothic Barbie,” I said, catching her eyes. “I just burned one of your compatriots to death, and I know you're vulnerable to fire. So if you wanna throw down, stupid, let's get this thing over with. Otherwise...put your hands behind your head, get down on your knees, and prepare to be placed under arrest.”
Rockrigger threw his hands up immediately. “I am totally – I absolutely surrender!” He put his hands behind his head and hit his knees like he was ready to pray for all the mercy in the world. “I am onboard for that deal, you don't even have to ask twice–”
I shifted my attention back to Vamp. “What about you? You going to listen to reason, or are we going to throw down, Ultra Blanca Chica? I mean, seriously – I thought I was pale until I met you. I bet you glow in the moonlight.”
Vamp hissed, setting her feet. She was going to charge me, of course, because nothing was easy–
Except when it was.
A blue-flamed fist punched right through Vamp from the back, impaling her through the chest. It glowed and burned, and Vamp had just enough time to look down at it in surprise before the ultra-hot plasma spread through the rest of her body and she burned to ash.
Leaving me with a nice view of Veronika through the falling ash and melting body tissue, staring at me calmly with her blue, lit-up arm.
I stared right back. “Sup?”
She shrugged lightly. “I gotchu, fam.”
I gave her a stony silence for about two seconds, then laughed, stepped forward, met her in the middle, and we hugged. Or I hugged. Not a supreme hugger, that Veronika, but she let me do it. The battle tension bled off, and when we broke – I broke off her, I guess – I said, “Thanks for the text messages. They were a real life saver.”
“I agree, when it came to the one at Andrews, but...” She snorted. “For the rest? Yeah, you looked like you really
didn't have a handle on any of it. I mean, seriously – coming up with a rifle in the middle of that field?”
“That was Harry,” I said. “What was your plan for getting me out of it if I hadn't come up with one?”
“Well, I was going to burn Phinneus's head off his shoulders, but I was trying to wait 'til the last second since you told me to stay undercover with Chapman. Then you popped his brains out the back of his head and I knew I needed to run if I was going to plausibly 'survive' without outing us both.”
“Looks like it worked,” I said, looking around the ruin of the bunker. Four metas dead, one cowering on his belly, hands behind his head, not daring to move, and me triumphant – with my cousin, the spy. “Thanks, Cuz.”
She looked unamused at my familiarity. “What now?”
“I'm going to need Rockrigger to close the tunnel with his dead associates still in it,” I said, “and then he's going to forget all about my additional powers.”
“Consider them already forgotten!” Rockrigger shouted, his voice muffled by being buried in the bunker's carpet.
“Also, he's going to forget our conversation just now.”
“I absolutely will! I mean – what conversation?”
I rolled my eyes. Veronika got it – I was going to steal his memory.
“How do I get out of here?” Veronika asked. “Tunnel?” She frowned. “And what'd you do with the president? Actually – how'd you get in here?”
“The answer to all those questions is the same,” I said, then looked to the far corner of the room and raised my voice. “Greg? Bring him back.”
The president of the United States appeared a moment later, Greg Vansen behind him, a hand on Gondry's shoulder as he re-enlarged him from being shrunken to microbe size.
“That was astounding!” Gondry said, looking around with awe. He turned, thrusting a hand out to Vansen. “That is an impressive power, Mr. Vansen. If you ever want a job, I'm sure the Secret Service could find a place for you.”
“Thank you,” Greg said, in his usual clipped manner – though I could see a hint of pleasure in his eyes, flattered. He turned his attention to me. “If you don't mind, I'd like to get out of here as soon as possible. The president's compliments aside, I'm trying to live on the right side of the law and violating White House air space isn't doing it.”
“My good man, you'll get a commendation for this,” Gondry said, surveying the carnage in the room. “You just saved my life from an assassination attempt – again!” He turned to me, darkly. “Is this the last of them, Agent Nealon?”
“Almost, sir,” I said, giving Veronika a look. “We're almost done now.”
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED TWENTY-EIGHT
Chapman
“Radio silence,” Chapman said, checking the time on his phone again. He dialed Veronika again...
...And again, got no answer.
“How long has it been?” Chase asked. Her face was ashen, and she'd fallen into silence after her initial prediction about it being a trap. The two figures at the hotel – the EMT and the other one, the Sienna stand-in – had lingered about for only moments before getting back in the car and then disappearing somewhere between the cameras on the streets of DC.
“Twenty-five minutes,” Chapman said, stomach churning in cold disbelief. “Devin – have you found them yet?”
“No,” Devin said, breaking out of a silence he, too, had fallen into. He was in the building, just a few floors away, but still they were talking over the vidchat. Chapman looked at his face on the screen – still unplugged from the wall display – and–
Something else was wrong. He knew it right away.
“What is it?” Chapman asked, standing up straight. He'd been leaning on his desk, sitting in the quasi darkness of his office, with only the glow of phones, monitors, and the like to illuminate the room. Heavy blast plating had been moved into place over the window to keep out – well, Sienna Nealon, really – and almost every other security precaution had been engaged.
The place was nearly airtight to assault, he thought. But not bad news, because that...that seemed to keep coming.
Devin swallowed visibly on the screen, looking at the camera. “I...lemme just show you. The, uh...the president is holding an impromptu press conference.”
The option to accept the screenshare came up and Chapman clicked it without thought. The video began immediately, and...
“Sonofabitch,” Chase muttered. She'd come around behind him to see for herself.
“...that the assassins who have been trying to kill me on behalf of this Network have been caught, to the last of them,” the president was saying. He looked composed, mostly, though he was lacking his signature jacket in favor of a dress shirt with rolled-up sleeves, his tie loosened, and a couple days of beard growth covering all the parts of his wrinkled face that his signature goatee didn't already. “We owe this, of course, to the incomparable Agent Nealon–”
Chase mimicked a vomiting noise behind him. He did not turn to see it, or engage with it, though he fully agreed with the sentiment.
There she was, at the president's shoulder, dark hair messy as ever, her own sleeves rolled up, looking none the worse for having been pursued by the entire FBI for the last hours. “Thank you, Mr. President,” she said, and the camera shifted, zooming in on her. “I'm afraid I need to announce another bit of news – the death of FBI Director Heather Chalke earlier this evening–”
“What!” Chapman jerked in surprise.
“No,” Chase whispered.
“–While I'm afraid I can't go into details on an open investigation, Director Chalke was, unfortunately, believed to be a member of this 'Network.' That said, her death was tragic, and a full report will be issued on the circumstances surrounding it in the near future.”
“Agent Nealon!” someone called from the audience.
“Yes, Mike?” Nealon asked, staring right into the press scrum. “Oh, and by the way, thanks to Mike Darnell and Flashforce for their reporting on Director Chalke's involvement with the Network. The photos they published were instrumental in allowing us to point our investigation in the right direction.”
“Dammit!” Chapman shouted, sweeping a bunch of shit off his desk in aggravation. “Devin, the photos–”
“They've got your name on them, yeah,” Devin said quietly over the open line. “Kory's in 'em, too. Though he'd already been implicated. It's shots of the Escapade app – from one of the users.”
Chapman closed his eyes. “How?”
“They're from Kory's app,” Devin said. “And since they're published on Flashforce, by one of their reporters, I'm guessing he got ahold of Kory's phone either when it was unlocked, or someone else knew the password and opened it up.”
“Kory,” Chapman muttered. “Delete Chalke's app and check when it was last accessed.”
“On it. Looks like it was last accessed – she's online now.”
“Boot her,” Chapman said, feverishly preparing a message.
“Done.”
Chapman hit send, now that he knew it was clear.
CHAPMAN: Chalke is dead, and Kory, your own site is in revolt against you. What the hell?
FLANAGAN: Wow. And then there were three.
KORY: I don't know! I'm in the US Virgin Islands searching for a cab right now, okay? I'm a little blindsided myself, and there's no Wifi, so I'm kinda getting the info piecemeal.
Why bother holding back? Chapman let him have it.
CHAPMAN: No newspaper, no control – tell me something. What is the point of you anymore, Kory?
KORY: Just give me a chance to get some damned decent internet and I can get my organization under control, okay? Maybe I shouldn't have left the country.
“Leaving the country was the only smart thing you've done in the last few weeks,” Chapman murmured. Chase was still standing there, watching him, so he looked right at her. “Have you talked to security about the metahuman countermeasures in my office?”
“No
. Should I?”
“They're fairly normal,” Chapman said, directing his attention to her for a few precious moments while he readied himself to tear the bark off Kory. “Reinforced walls. Blast shields over the windows. My office can survive a near-direct hit from a one-hundred-kiloton nuclear bomb. But–”
“Sienna Nealon isn't a nuclear bomb,” Chase said, unimpressed.
“Agreed,” Chapman said. “Which is why I added a final line of defenses at the doors and windows. This is, of course, in addition to the powers I now have – or will, shortly, I hope. They're lethal countermeasures.” He smiled. “An explosive reply should someone try and charge through the door when it's active.”
Chase frowned, her slightly freckled nose wrinkling in disgust. “That's...kinda medieval.”
Chapman nodded, smiling. “As is Nealon. I'm going to activate them in two minutes. You should probably be outside for this. If she comes through the window, those countermeasures will activate. If she chooses some other point of entry or survives the window entry, I'll deactivate the explosives at the door and you can come back in and help me – though I'm not sanguine about your chances.”
“Doesn't matter,” Chase said, jaw set with stiff resolution. “If she comes, I'm standing between you and her. She's not getting another of my principals without the fight of her life.”
“Admirable,” Chapman said. “Still – that's the plan, all right?”
Chase shook her head. “No. I should be in here with you.”
“No one should be in here with me right now,” Chapman said coolly. He had his own ideas about what might be going on here, and in spite of her convincing performance, it had not escaped him that Chase had worked for Sienna Nealon's company in the past. And she'd been around for every major defeat thus far in his campaigns against Nealon. Been there for every plan that had been revealed and circumvented.
Was she a traitor? Maybe. But he didn't want her close right now. No way.
“Fine,” Chase said, breaking eye contact. “If I hear anything–”
Control: Out of the Box (The Girl in the Box Book 38) Page 36
