Captain Marvel

by Tess Sharpe

  “I won’t let him,” Carol said.

  “He gets what he wants,” Umbra replied, so hopelessly that Carol’s heart broke for her. What kind of hell had she endured with Ansel?

  “Not anymore,” she said—and it was a vow, an oath. A feeling that went so deep it must become a reality, no matter the cost. “Rhi is safe. She’s waiting for you, but you need to do what I say now.”

  Carol pulled her compact out of her purse, flipping it open to expose the EMP patch tucked inside, and held it out to her. “Put this on right over your implant. It’ll render it inert.”

  Umbra took the patch from her, holding it up to the light. “How can that be?”

  “The Damarians might have better tech than you had when you crashed here, but I’ve got a friend who can’t be beat in the brains or brawn department. The Damarians don’t have a chance.”

  The toilet flushed, the sound making Umbra jump, like she’d forgotten Fern was still inside the room with them. Umbra was still clutching the patch between her fingers, her eyebrows drawn together. “It makes the tracker useless? And the kill switch?” she asked, like she couldn’t quite believe it. “Not just the power blockers?”

  “Put it on, and it will be like the implant isn’t even there,” Carol said, her voice lowering as Fern came out of the stall.

  “All done!”

  Umbra smiled at her, a false, cheerful grimace that made Carol’s stomach ache even as her head turned toward the door, the voices outside growing louder, but then fading as they passed. They were safe. For now… but they needed to hurry.

  “Marson took Jella into an archive room, third on the left,” Amadeus’s voice came over the comm. “I’m positioned right outside.”

  Fern looked up at Carol. “Hello.”

  “Hi,” Carol said, with a gentle smile that she couldn’t hold for long.

  “Why is your hair short?”

  “Because I like it that way,” Carol answered, and Fern frowned, touching her own hair, so tightly wound to hide her pointed ears.

  Carol looked down at the child’s innocent face, thinking of the grim future awaiting her and all the girls from the Maiden Houses. How could she let this kind of injustice stand?

  “Go wash your hands,” Umbra directed Fern gently.

  She hurried to obey, humming to herself as she washed. Umbra walked over to the stack of red towels on the counter and crouched down to help the child dry her hands, then cupped her face.

  “You’re a good girl, Fern.”

  “I know,” Fern replied, making Umbra laugh softly. She looked back up at Carol, something burning in the young woman’s eyes that she didn’t recognize.

  “Like the implant isn’t even there,” Umbra whispered, repeating the words as if they were a magic spell.

  A second too late, Carol realized what she was going to do. One moment, the EMP patch was in Umbra’s hand, and in the time it took Carol to reach forward—No! on her lips—the patch was on Fern’s arm, covering her implant.

  And just like that, the whole damn plan went out the window.

  “Ow!” Fern flinched as the patch activated, fusing with her skin. She tried to pick at it, but Umbra swatted her hand away.

  “Don’t do that! Keep it on, Fern. It’s important.”

  “It stings!” Fern complained.

  “It won’t soon.”

  Carol stared at Umbra, pride wrapped in a shroud of horrific awe filling her body. The girl had just sacrificed her only chance at freedom. Rhi would be destroyed when they came back without her. And for now, President Ansel would win. Would they even get another chance to free her? They’d have to find one. She’d made Rhi a promise.

  “Umbra…”

  The girl straightened, her chin tilting up, pure stubbornness. “She is a child. And her father is… weak, like mine. You don’t understand; you can’t. Please…” Her voice broke, her whole body tense.

  “We’ll cut yours out—” Carol started to say, looking around for something sharp.

  Umbra shook her head. “He reprogrammed my implant personally the day Rhi escaped. The kill switch will activate the second you make the first cut.”

  God, if there was a man who deserved to be punched… it was Ansel. Carol’s fingers curled.

  “You have to go without me,” Umbra begged.

  Change of plans, then. Carol bit the inside of her lip, scenarios racing inside her head as she worked through it with the split-second instincts she always fell back on. Assess. Decide. Execute.

  “Amadeus, you there?” she said, activating her radio.

  “I’m here.”

  “We need to revise and expedite. Scott, get ready to run. Things are about to go dark. Amadeus, on my word, get Jella and defuse her implant. Mantis, as soon as the power goes, get in position near the museum’s gate with the truck. I have a feeling we’ll be making a hasty exit. Stand by.”

  As her team’s affirmatives filtered in, Carol looked down at Umbra.

  “What do you want me to say to Rhi?”

  Umbra couldn’t meet her eyes, but her voice was steady. “Tell her: We do what we must. She’ll understand.”

  She wouldn’t—Carol knew that, and so did Umbra. The only person who didn’t understand the pain that lay ahead was sweet little Fern, swishing back and forth so that her skirt would dance around her ankles.

  “You have to go,” Umbra said quietly. “He’ll be done wooing his donors and want me back soon.” She bent down again, so she was eye level with Fern.

  “Fern, you trust me, don’t you?” she asked, smoothing the little girl’s braids back with a shaky hand.

  “Of course, Umbra. You’re my friend.”

  “We’ll always be friends,” Umbra said, tears shimmering in her green eyes. “But right now, I want you to go with the nice lady. Go quickly. And don’t make a sound, no matter what happens. Your daddy asked her to take you.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “Somewhere special,” Umbra said. “Somewhere wonderful. It’s a surprise.” She placed Fern’s hand in Carol’s, caressing the girl’s hair briefly before breaking away.

  Go, she mouthed.

  Carol wanted to say something. Because Umbra looked so desperate. Because she was giving up everything, right then and there, without a thought for the horrors ahead. But what words could acknowledge a sacrifice of this magnitude?

  She led Fern to the door, and on the landing, she turned, the message on her lips.

  “I see why she loves you.”

  * * *

  CAROL RAN. She swept up a protesting Fern and sprinted down the empty hall in the opposite direction that she had come, away from Umbra and the staircase and the crowds beginning to form on the observation deck. The archive rooms were on the second floor; she needed a different way to get up there.

  “Amadeus, time to blow the power,” she said into the comm.

  No answer.

  “Amadeus?”

  Nothing again. Carol bit back a curse.

  “Scott?”

  Nothing there, either.

  “Mantis?”

  “On my way.”

  “Who are you talking to?” Fern asked.

  “Nobody,” Carol told her, her grip on the child tightening as she raced down the deserted hall, finally opening a door marked SERVICE to find a small staircase leading to the second level of the dome. With a sigh of relief, she took them three at a time as Fern let out a shriek of delight at their speed.

  “Amadeus!” Carol hissed into the comm again, her worry growing with each step. She shifted Fern so the child was on her hip, freeing one of her hands. Galloping up the stairs, she quietly opened the door an inch and looked out.

  The dusty Hall of Archives was empty, its curved walls punctuated on both sides by doors bolstered with thick metal brackets and ancient heat sensors. There were dozens of rooms down the hall, and the corridor reached back so far Carol couldn’t see where it ended—perhaps it curled all around the dome in a spiral. Amadeus
was nowhere to be seen.

  He must have gone after Jella, she told herself, hoping she was right.

  Stopping at the third door on her left, she tried the knob—it was locked. “Tuck your head against my shoulder,” she told Fern, who obeyed instantly.

  Her hand glowing with the brilliant energy of the stars, Carol kicked at the door with the force of her frustration and her heartbreak about Umbra’s sacrifice. Flying off its hinges and skidding across the floor, it slammed into the opposite wall, narrowly missing Amadeus.

  Now Carol knew why he wasn’t answering—Marson had him pinned by the throat against a bookcase. Amadeus’s arms— delivering blows to Marson’s head—kept rippling from human to hulk, unable to stick the transformation as Brawn struggled against the suppression weapon’s effects.

  Carol blasted Marson; he screamed as he reared back and hit the ground hard, his jacket smoking from the beam, his eyes terrified and stunned. Carol kept one eye on the secretary as she stepped over his prone body to get to Amadeus. He coughed, spitting out blood as his body continued bulging in varying spots, green streaking up his neck as Brawn struggled to get out.

  When she chanced a look over Carol’s shoulder and saw him, Fern screamed, so Carol just clutched her tighter. “It’s okay, sweetie,” she whispered, even though it was anything but.

  “You all right?” she asked Amadeus.

  “He wants out,” Amadeus gasped. “And he can’t. It’s making him angry.”

  Behind her, Carol heard footsteps. She whirled, her hand raised to blast, and then immediately lowered it when she saw Mantis standing in the broken doorframe.

  “I sensed Amadeus…” She hurried over to him and pressed both hands on his head, smiling in relief when Amadeus’s entire body relaxed. The green faded from his skin as Brawn receded, Mantis lulling him into a temporary peace.

  Finally back in control, Amadeus spat out another mouthful of blood. “I had to stop Marson—he was hitting her. Jella… how are you doing?”

  Carol looked over to where he was staring. Jella was crouched in the corner, her knees drawn to her chest, her eye puffy and just starting to turn purple.

  “Jella!” Fern wiggled out of Carol’s arms, and Jella rose to her feet and rushed over to her. Fern’s eyes closed in relief as they cuddled close, and Carol thought about how Rhi had said that Jella had been under Marson’s control for almost two years now. Jella and Umbra must have spent a lot of time with Fern.

  “Umbra?” Jella asked Carol.

  She shook her head, and Jella choked back a sound, stroking the back of Fern’s head.

  “Who’s the little girl?” Amadeus whispered.

  “I’ll explain later,” Carol said, hearing an unmistakable rustle of cloth behind her. She pivoted. “You—stay down.” Carol stomped Marson’s chest just as he tried to rise. His eyes widened as he tried to push against her weight, his hands wrapping around her shoe, trying to knock her off-balance with what he thought was his superior strength and weight.

  “Oh, look, he thinks he can throw you,” Mantis’s voice was sharp enough to cut, the mockery dripping off it like blood. She bent down, staring into Marson’s face. He shrank back, his eyes fixed on Mantis’s antennae as if they were poisonous.

  Carol moved away, curious to see what Mantis would do.

  “I heard what you said about the art downstairs,” Mantis said. “How beautiful you thought it was. Would you like to know how the women feel about it?”

  Mantis’s hands closed around both sides of his head. She cradled his skull in a grip that looked gentle—until you saw the blood trickling from her nails down his cheeks. He gasped in fear, caught in her gaze, and his lip began to wobble.

  “That’s right,” Mantis said, her voice deceptively soothing, even as her fingers—and her power—dug deeper into his skin. “Can you feel it? The revulsion? The fear? How your skin crawls? That pit growing in your stomach with each image? How you can’t shake it from your head, even hours after?”

  He whimpered, his eyes skittering to Jella, who was holding Fern close.

  “Can you feel her?” Mantis asked, and Carol could almost taste her power pulsing through the room, magnified by the Damarians’ weapon. She could feel Mantis peeling back the layers that made Marson him, replacing them with every shred of Jella’s fear and pain, fusing them into her captor’s psyche, never to leave. “That’s what you did to her,” Mantis whispered. His face rippled, almost crumpling in on itself like a scrap of foil crushed in a fist. Crushed under her fist.

  His eyes rolled back in his head, and she slapped his face with one hand, never breaking the contact with the other.

  “No,” he moaned, his hands scrabbling up to bat at hers. “Make it stop. Make it…”

  “You didn’t listen when she said no. You never listened. But now you will.”

  He screamed, his fingers coming up to claw at his eyes. She batted them away, so he wouldn’t harm himself. “You don’t get off that easy!”

  “Mantis,” Carol said. “We need to go. We still have to blow the power. Before they realize something’s wrong.”

  Mantis jerked back, as if she’d forgotten Carol was in the room. Her eyes were wild with angry tears when they met Carol’s, and then slid to Jella.

  “What do you want, Jella?” Mantis asked. “I could kill him right now—make him feel it until he scratches his eyes raw. Until he tears his heart out just so it’ll stop beating.”

  “No! Jella, please! Everything I did was to protect you.” Marson trembled at Mantis’s feet, but his eyes slid to Jella, calculating.

  “That’s enough.” Mantis pulled a knife out of a sheath strapped to her ankle, and Marson shrank back as she covered his mouth with one hand and grabbed his arm with the other, sinking the tip into it. His screams were muffled against her palm as crimson bubbled up, traveling in little rivers down his wrist as she carved out his implant, yanking it free with a vigorous flick of the knife. She handed it over to Amadeus, who pulled out a baggie from his pocket to slip it into.

  “Is that all you need?” Mantis asked.

  Amadeus nodded. “I’m good to go.”

  Mantis laid the knife against Marson’s neck. “I know you understood what you were doing. You knew Jella’s pain. The agony of your beatings. The degradation of being used like your own personal spy camera. You didn’t just not care—you liked it.” He began to shake his head, but she pressed the knife deeper against his neck, stilling him. “You can’t lie to me. I see you. And I will kill you right here, right now, if Jella wishes me to.”

  Jella handed Fern back to Carol and walked forward until she was standing next to Mantis. Looking in her eyes and reaching out, she took the knife from Mantis’s hand.

  Marson’s entire body sagged in relief against the floorboards, tears trickling out of the corner of his eyes as he sobbed, “Mercy! Thank you, Jella, mercy! I always knew you were a good girl. I always—”

  Jella’s fingers clenched around the knife.

  “No.”

  As the word echoed between them, she sank the blade deep into her Keeper’s throat. And there it stayed, until he was still.

  24

  MARSON CRUMPLED, crimson spurting from his neck, his eyes going blank in seconds. Carol reached for Fern, only to find Amadeus had already swept her up in the chaos, keeping the child from seeing the bloody scene.

  Jella dropped the knife, and her eyes—eyes that had been dead, now sparking back to life—met Carol’s. “Are you going to punish me?”

  “No,” Mantis said, glaring at Carol as if she thought she’d object. She clasped the girl’s shoulder for a moment as Amadeus handed Fern back to her. “He would’ve hurt more girls if he’d lived, I could feel it.”

  Jella’s eyes widened in surprise at Mantis’s implicit approval, but she said nothing else, pressing her lips to one of the child’s pointed ears and whispering into it.

  “Amadeus, time to blow the power,” Carol directed.

  “On it.”
>
  She touched the comm in her ear. “Scott, the power’s going. You need to get away from the president; meet us in the botanical gardens out front.”

  Scott didn’t answer, but she knew—or rather hoped— it was only because he wanted to avoid suspicion.

  “Take my hand,” Mantis directed, reaching for Jella’s. “I can guide you in the dark.”

  “Here we go,” Amadeus said, pulling out a remote detonator and flicking open the tab to expose the keypad. “Lights out.”

  The air rippled as the electromagnetic pulse shot through the dome, shorting out the building’s circuitry and making the fillings in Carol’s teeth ache. They were plunged into darkness—but only for a second. A whimper broke through the silence—and then, to Carol’s horror, green light sparked and crackled behind her.

  “Jella!” Fern’s voice spiked with panic as lightning danced between her little fingers, spreading up her arms and shoulders. The girl’s eyes widened, terrified. “What’s happening? I don’t like this!”

  “Fern, it’s okay,” Jella set her down, crouching down next to her. “I need you to breathe. Just breathe.”

  “Oh no,” Amadeus said. “Her implant’s deactivated. The stress and her powers…”

  “The weapon?” Carol asked, but Amadeus shook his head in the flickering light.

  “Rhi built up an immunity to it. Fern and the other girls must have, too. Only the implants would keep them powerless at this point.”

  Jella grabbed Fern by the arms, wincing as the lightning sparked over her skin, red welts striping her hands. “Watch me, Fern,” she directed, breathing in and out slowly. Tears trickled down the little girl’s face as she tried her hardest to imitate Jella; in less than a minute, the lightning flickered and then subsided.

  “Good job!” Jella’s voice was full of false cheer as her shoulders sagged in pure relief.

  “We need to go now,” Carol said urgently. She could hear shouting downstairs and on the conservatory deck. People were panicking in the dark. Flame Keepers would be reckless with their powers, suspicious of the cause. Maybe they’d light the whole damn museum on fire—that’d be ironic. “They’ll be looking for Marson.”