Captain Marvel

by Tess Sharpe

  “Scott!” he heard Amadeus’s voice hiss, and he didn’t even look up, just hit the button on his suit and popped back to ant size at the warning. His eyes scrunched up in pain, and his head felt like someone was driving an ice pick in his ear. That damn weapon; he wanted to take a baseball bat to it—soon.

  He looked up just in time to dive out of the way as the sole of a boot came crashing down, laces swinging. To his right, Jella and Amadeus were flattened against the dome, still obscured by her power, staying stock still. To his left were two Damarian soldiers, one of them writing something in a notebook while the other scrolled through his comm.

  “These early morning shifts are killing me,” one said.

  Scott hopped onto the man’s boot, leaping up and grabbing the end of the shoelace. With visceral memories of those rope-climbing tests in gym class in his mind, he scrambled up it— take that, Coach Stafford!—before untying the knot. The laces flapped free, and Scott swung down onto his right boot to untie those, too.

  “Thought your promotion would be coming through soon,” said the notebook holder. “Damn pen.” He shook it, a drop of ink splashing on Scott’s head, the world going blue for a second before he wiped his visor free.

  “That’s what they keep telling me,” the other soldier grimaced as Scott took the opposite laces from both the soldier’s boots and tied them together with a knot that’d make an Eagle Scout weep.

  The pain in his head was making Scott grind his teeth so hard he could taste blood. He wouldn’t be able to hold on much longer. He dashed across the ground.

  Here we go.

  His body shifted, his muscles lengthened, and in an eye-bulging stretch, he popped back to normal size right behind the soldier.

  “Hi,” he said, as the guy whirled around, his notebook dropping to the ground. He punched him—a jab to the solar plexus that had him reeling, gasping for breath, his eyes rolling back when Scott delivered a quick kick to the temple.

  The second soldier lunged toward him. But he went flying, his laced-together boots hampering his steps. He face-planted in the dirt, his forehead bouncing off the ground with a loud smacking sound. Blood trickled down the man’s cheeks, and Scott winced out of pure reflex. He’d feel worse if these guys weren’t such monsters.

  He bent down, stripping the specialized heat glove off one of the soldiers’ hands. Putting it on his own, he pressed his palm to the sensor on the dome they were crouching behind. Its door slid open, and Scott looked toward where he thought Amadeus and Jella were, pointing at the opening as he grabbed the unconscious soldiers and dragged them inside the dark dome.

  When he turned around, Jella and Amadeus were standing there, visible again.

  “That was so clever, Scott,” Jella said. “Your power would be very useful in the spy trade.”

  “Well, once upon a time, I was a thief,” Scott said, trying not to brag. “You and I could trade tips later.”

  “It’s gotta be around here somewhere,” Amadeus said, pulling a glow stick out of his pocket—he had clearly been a better Boy Scout than Scott—and snapping it, activating the light. The neon beam lit the room with an alien glow as they moved deeper into the dome, eyes peeled for any sign of the weapon. Lights suddenly turned on as the floor changed from cement to tile. In the brighter light, Scott could see they were on a railed observation platform that circled the entire dome. Looking down…

  “There it is,” Amadeus said, peering over the railing. “You owe me ten bucks, Scott. I told you it’d be a sphere.”

  Scott stared at a giant glowing orb perched on a sturdy steel stand in the lab below. “I think the technical word for something so fancy is orb,” he hedged.

  Amadeus shook his head, laughing. “I’m still collecting.”

  “Fine, fine,” Scott said as they headed down the stairs that led to the lab. “Jella, you ever dealt with this thing when they were forcing you to spy on people?”

  She nodded. “It’s not anyone’s top priority because they’ve had it so long. But they do regular maintenance.”

  Scott couldn’t exactly tuck the orb under his arm and hightail it out of there like it was a basketball—the thing was car-sized, so you’d need a few people to move it, but he’d imagined something bigger… and maybe with spikes.

  “Do you know its origin?” Amadeus asked, waving his tablet a few inches around the orb to scan it.

  “It’s said that the ancient Damarians mined the contents from inside the suns themselves. But I don’t think that’s actually possible, is it?”

  “Well, whatever’s inside it certainly came from space—the radiation’s off the charts,” Amadeus mused. “No force field or anything protecting it. Maybe a field would block its effects? You know,” his head tilted as he regarded the orb, “it reminds me of their ember bombs.” He reached out, tapping it with the edge of his tablet; when it rang out like glass, his mouth twisted. He looked up, eyes scanning the dome’s ceiling.

  “What are you looking for?” Scott asked.

  “Sprinkler system—all labs have them, even a pyrotech lab. And… there it is.” He pointed to the pipes painted the same gray as the inside of the dome.

  “You want to set off the sprinklers?” Scott asked, not getting it.

  “Yep!” Amadeus said. “Come on. We need to get back up to the platform.”

  But as they turned to do just that, something whizzed past Scott’s cheek.

  “Get down!” he yelled, pushing Amadeus and Jella forward toward the stairs before diving behind an overturned lab table. He chanced a look around it as he heard the soldiers’ shouts and thumping boots approaching. Amadeus and Jella had made it halfway across the room in the first round of bullets. From where they were crouched behind the stairs, out of sight of the soldiers, Amadeus stared at Scott through the gaps between steps.

  “STAY WHERE YOU ARE!” An authoritative voice rang out as soldiers filed along the platform, aiming their guns at Scott. With Amadeus and Jella tucked behind the stairs, Jella could make them disappear at any moment—this was all on Scott. So he slowly stood up from behind the lab table, lacing his fingers behind his head.

  “Okay, okay,” he said, registering six guns pointed in his direction. No Keepers—if any of these goons had powers, they would’ve blasted him with fire by now. Behind his head, he stretched out a finger to his opposing wrist. “No need to shoot me. See? I’m surrendering.”

  Click. He shrank, bouncing down onto the tile, then jumped up and raced across the floor as confused shouts filled the air. Hold your fire! Where did he go?

  Popping back to normal size behind the stairwell, he leaned forward for a moment, panting, his hands on his knees. “We gotta do something, fast. Any ideas?”

  “I need a gun,” Amadeus whispered.

  Jella pulled one out from her long jacket. Amadeus’s eyebrows rose. She shrugged. “Hepzibah gave it to me.”

  “Of course she did,” he smirked. “And we’re lucky to have it. Both of you, back up as far away from the orb as possible.”

  Jella grabbed Scott’s hand, and the air wavered as their bodies and shadows melded into the wall. Amadeus aimed the gun and squeezed the trigger, emptying a slew of bullets into the orb; it shattered, a powerful pulse of energy sending him and everyone else in the room flying backward off their feet as the glowing orange stuff that had been contained in the orb—what the hell was it, magma or something?—oozed across the floor. Alarms blared, lights flashing, and the sprinklers above activated, drenching their heads and the floor. The orange goop sizzled and turned gray as soon as the water touched it, foaming sluggishly.

  Instantly, Scott’s headache disappeared. “Seriously?” he shouted, getting to his feet, his hair dripping in his eyes as he looked for Amadeus. “You just shoot the damn thing and add water, and that’s it? I could’ve done that!”

  But Amadeus didn’t answer. A rumble filled the air… a growl that raised every hair on Scott’s arms as the soldiers’ authoritative yells gave way to panic
ked screams.

  Scott turned slowly, his gaze rising up. Brawn’s fists were clenched, and his thick, flat brows drawn together. The change never failed to punch the air out of Scott’s lungs even now, when he’d spent so much time getting to know Amadeus.

  “Hi,” Scott said, as the soldiers scattered on the platform, regrouping in defensive positions now that a massive green guy who could tear them limb from limb had appeared. “You feeling better?”

  Brawn sniffed, turning his head to focus on Scott. “I was stuck.” He smiled, a toothy, mischievous grin. “But not anymore.”

  He whirled toward the soldiers with the speed of a much smaller creature, his fists raised. Scott thumbed his suit and shrank down, excited to notice no pain, no fuzziness, and they got to work.

  30

  AS THEY huddled together inside the shuttle’s kitchen, waiting for Carol to return, Rhi couldn’t stop staring at Zeke. She reached out and touched his face again and again—gently, because it was bruised, as if the Damarian guards had taken turns on him. When she’d pulled herself up into the transport and he first caught sight of her, she had wanted to cry—and she knew he did, too—but they didn’t have time. And as Ansel’s fire cyclone exploded, Rhi did one of the hardest things she’d ever done—she’d trusted Carol’s words and obeyed her orders. She’d done the thing she knew Carol never would: She stayed at her post, watching her leader go fight Rhi’s greatest enemy.

  She felt torn in two—part of her desperately wanted to be outside helping her friend, but the other part knew she should stay here with Zeke, who was still reeling from the effects of the sonic strip.

  “I’m sorry,” Rhi said again, dabbing at his ears where blood was still trickling. “I’m so sorry.”

  He grabbed her hand, squeezing it, shaking his head. “You saved me.”

  “We still haven’t freed Alestra,” she said. “The baby… She’s going to start showing soon.”

  “We’ll go free her together.” He laced his fingers with hers, gripping tight in promise.

  “We’re going to get her right now!” Carol’s voice burst out as she pounded onto the ship.

  She was back! Her suit was streaked with black, one sleeve sheared off completely from Ansel’s fire. “Zeke, nice to meet you, glad you’re okay,” Carol yelled over her shoulder as she dashed past them straight to the cockpit, and Rhi shot a worried look at her brother.

  “Stay there,” she told him.

  She hurried after Carol, who’d thrown herself into the pilot’s seat and was going through the launch procedure in double-time.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  “Ansel had a backup plan,” Carol said, flipping on the ship’s comm. “Hepzibah, Hepzibah, do you read me?”

  There was a crackle, then, “Loud and clear, Carol.”

  The thrusters lit, and Rhi strapped herself in hurriedly as they lifted off, Carol not even waiting for all the systems to go completely online. “Are you in position at the Maiden House?”

  “Sona, Mantis, and I are, but the Resistance fighters are still an hour away. The caravan got stuck in a sandstorm and had to wait it out.”

  “You three need to go in. Now. Get those EMP patches on the girls’ arms, because Ansel’s sent in a strike team to kill them all. They’re only ten minutes out.”

  “What?” Rhi asked, her heart jolting. “No!”

  “I’m counting on you, Hepzibah,” Carol went on. “The girls need to be able to fight back, even if Scott and Amadeus don’t get the weapon turned off by then. We’re headed to you now, but I’m not sure we’ll get there in time.”

  “They will not touch one hair on their heads,” Hepzibah said fiercely. “Do not worry. I must go.”

  “Fly fierce,” Carol said.

  “And you.”

  Carol’s fingers clenched around the shuttle’s controls, pushing the engine to full throttle as the red and black sand below swirled in the smoke.

  “They can’t kill them,” Rhi said.

  “They won’t,” Carol said, and Rhi wanted to believe her, but she feared she couldn’t.

  “Where are we going?”

  Rhi turned around, saw Zeke standing in the doorway of the cockpit, and her stomach fell. She reached out a hand; he took it, meeting her eyes, blue on brown—like their mother, like their father. “We’re going to fight,” she said. “And we have to win.”

  * * *

  IT TOOK twenty minutes to get to the Maiden House. Twenty agonizing, mind-numbing minutes while her heart pounded out of control and Carol’s knuckles blanched whiter and whiter around the shuttle’s controls. The silence pressed in on them, but Rhi couldn’t bear to break it as the shuttle rocked to and fro, bucking its way through a small sandstorm.

  She used to watch the storms from her sliver of a window in the Maiden House, set high in the wall. If she stacked her table on the bed and stood on tiptoe, some nights she could just catch a glimpse of the lightning and whirls of sand.

  When the way cleared, the storm fading as they flew through it, the Maiden House came into sight. Rhi gasped at the sight of smoke spiraling off the roof in thick black clouds. The electrified fence surrounding the brick building was crumpled and gaping open, as if someone—Hepzibah, most likely—had rammed a truck through it. A Damarian ship was parked in the bay next to the exercise yard—the strike team had already arrived. Rhi’s stomach dropped—she wanted to scream, but she couldn’t.

  She wouldn’t. This wasn’t over. He hadn’t won yet. Not before she tried to… not before she’d done all she could.

  Swearing at the sight of the Damarian vessel, Carol flew the shuttle in a tight loop around the Maiden House, scanning the perimeter. The smoke made it hard to determine where the fire was coming from—the ground floor or an upper one.

  “We’ve got life signs!” Carol called out as the scanner beeped, little dots moving around onscreen, relief thick in her voice. “Lots of them! This isn’t over yet.”

  “What do we do?” Zeke asked, looking from Rhi to Carol.

  “Zeke, you taught Rhi to fly, right?” Carol asked, as the shuttle dove and came to a stop in front of the Maiden House. Gravel crunched under the thrusters as they powered down and folded into the ship.

  “I did.”

  “Okay, you’re gonna be our pilot. I’ve coded the launch sequence into the panel,” Carol said, pointing to the screen. “All you’ve got to do is press this”—she pointed to the cloaking button—“as soon as you see one of the girls come running out. That’ll deactivate the cloaking tech so they can see the ship. And then, once they’re all on board, you pull this.” She flipped open the tab near the bottom of the panel to reveal the emergency-takeoff lever. “When you’ve got all the girls, you take off, no matter what, okay?”

  “You want me to sit here while you fight?” he asked. “No, I need to—”

  “You need to be their getaway driver, Zeke. Like you and Rhi planned originally. Remember?” Carol asked.

  He swallowed. “But Alestra—”

  “She will be with you soon,” Rhi promised.

  “What about you?” Zeke demanded, fixing her with an urgent stare.

  “I’m not leaving without Umbra,” Rhi said. “I can’t.”

  “Rhi… I just got you back…” His face crumpled, and he turned away, trying to gather himself.

  She blinked back tears, unable to apologize for what she had to do. Before she could say anything, there was an echoing boom; the shuttle rocked and shuddered, sending them scrambling to starboard, one of the comms spilling off its hook. Someone was firing at them.

  “Time to draw them away,” Carol said, climbing past Zeke out of the cockpit. “Rhi, you still have the gun Hepzibah gave you?”

  Rhi nodded, pulling it out from beneath her jacket. She squeezed Zeke’s shoulders as she passed him, unable to look him in the eye. She had to focus. For him. For her. For all of them.

  “I love you,” she said.

  “I love you, too.”

/>   She nodded, telling herself that it wouldn’t be the last time she saw him. Then she turned and followed Captain Marvel out into the smoke.

  31

  THEY TORE across the exercise yard as fireballs were falling around them, dodging flames spreading greedily across the gravel and heating the rocks to burning shards. Carol slammed through the double doors of the Maiden House, shattering the glass insets into pieces that crunched under their feet as they descended into the halls of the prison that had been Rhi’s home for a decade.

  Three bodies lay in the hallway, men with heavy tactical gear, totally unconscious, smears of green across their faces. Carol looked down at them, kicking one lightly to make sure he was out, before shooting Rhi a look. But all Rhi could feel was relief—because these men, the way they were rendered unconscious, meant that Mazz was alive. That her implant wasn’t working.

  “What happened here?” Carol asked.

  “Mazz is kind of poisonous. Or her saliva is. She didn’t give them enough to kill them.”

  “That’s handy.”

  The power was out, and only the backup lights flickered down the dim hall. Rhi smelled smoke and heard yelling and loud footsteps above her head.

  “Tell me where to go,” Carol directed Rhi, her hands glowing with power. “Third floor, right?”

  “Yes, upstairs.”

  Rhi took them two at a time, right behind Carol, climbing two flights to the third floor, but they skidded to a stop when they rounded on the corridor.

  A riot of half-burnt vines blocked the hall. Slumped on the ground, tangled in the smoking brambles, was another unconscious guard, this one with a thorn as thick as Rhi’s arm speared through both his arms, trapping him to the foliage. Rhi tentatively reached out, brushing her hand over the vines; they stirred, the thorns sharpened, stretching toward her for just a moment, before pausing as if they recognized her.

  “Tarin?” Rhi whispered.

  The vines rustled, pulling apart to reveal a hole big enough to pass through. She and Carol ducked inside, and what she saw made her heart flip in her chest.