Poor Matt. He’s in a no-win situation and doesn’t even know it. Sara keeps quiet and Matt’s left wondering why his friend is keeping him at arm’s length, or she tells him everything and crushes him.
I squeeze his shoulder. “I know I’ve said this to you a lot lately, but you need to give Sara time,” I say. “Let this mess with the King of Pain blow over and I promise I’ll ask her to talk to you.”
“Thanks,” Matt says.
Great. Another promise I might not be able to keep.
Sara slides a hand into the pocket of her hoodie and, as she has throughout the school day, rubs the back of her phone, her thumb anxiously tracing a circle on the casing. She glances up at the classroom clock. One more minute until the laws of this particular land no longer hold sway.
That last minute takes an hour to tick by.
The bell sounds. Sara leaps out of her seat and pushes past her classmates. Once in the hallway her phone comes out. The tiny envelope icon sports a tiny numeral within a tiny red circle: she has one message, from “C.” Possible sighting in MD, the message says, working to confirm.
“Hey. Any news?” Matt asks as Sara joins the group at Carrie’s locker — which, Sara notes, is missing its owner.
“Where’s Carrie?” Sara says.
“I think she’s snogging Malcolm in the stairwell again.”
“Oh. Snogging?”
“I’ve been re-reading Harry Potter. I thought I’d try to work some British-isms into my speech, ay wot?”
“Dude, stop,” Stuart says. “Did you hear from Edison?”
“Yeah,” Sara says. “Which state is MD?”
“Maryland,” Missy says.
“Edison says there was an unconfirmed sighting in Maryland.”
“Man, sounds like he’s hauling ass,” Matt says. “As long as he’s out of our hair, right?”
“Yeah,” Sara says distantly.
“I say that’s cause to celebrate,” Stuart says. “First round of caffeine’s on me.”
“Sorry, I have work today,” Matt says.
“Yeah, I’m going to pass too,” Sara says.
“Aw, come on, come get coffee with us,” Missy says, tugging on Sara’s sleeve. “You’ve spent so much time stuck at home to keep your dad off your back and now you’re not living at home anymore so it’s okay to come out with us again and I just realized what I said and it was wicked insensitive and I’m sorry.”
“S’okay. Seriously, I’ll pass. I’ve barely slept all week and I need to crash.” Sara looks down at herself. “And sneak into my house to get some fresh clothes. I’ve been wearing the same thing for two straight days.”
“Man, after-school coffee ain’t what it used to be,” Stuart laments.
“You could always get a job, you know,” Matt suggests, “join us in the world of the gainfully employed.”
“Crazy talk.”
Matt breaks off at the school entrance to catch the bus that passes by Bose Industries. Stuart and Missy accompany Sara to the edge of the property then split off to head into town. She stands there for a while, watches them until they’re dots in the distance, until they’re out of sight. She lingers a few minutes more, staring down the empty road and wrestling with a vague sense of abandonment.
They’re all moving on, Sara thinks. Carrie, Matt, Stuart, Missy — they’ve all faced their worst days and survived the experience and emerged from their respective crucibles better for it, and Sara wonders: does she have the strength to endure her worst day?
She shrugs to no one.
Throughout the walk home, Sara occasionally glances up at a ceiling of clouds so heavy and dark and gray it could pass as a winter sky, despite the calendar’s insistence that it’s early June. The sky should be blue. The sun should be shining.
A lot of things should be something other than what they are.
Sara turns down Canter Road, her road, and the illusion of winter reinforces itself with a sudden sharp gust of wind that coaxes a violent chill. The wind dies away, but the chill persists, settling into her spine and causing her shoulders to twitch involuntarily.
As suddenly as it struck, the sensation vanishes. It vanishes completely.
Sara’s pulse, slow and steady, throbs behind her eyes. She turns.
“You aren’t scared,” the King of Pain says, his tone curious at first. He bares his teeth in a snarl. “You aren’t scared at all. Why aren’t you scared?”
“I’m through being frightened of you,” Sara says. “You want me? Here I am. Come kill me, but I swear to God, I’m not going to make it easy for you.”
The King of Pain rubs his chin, a contemplative gesture.
“Huh. Good,” he says. “I haven’t had a decent challenge in a long time.”
As a child, Sara heard that snakes had the ability to hypnotize their prey, inducing a stupor so powerful it wouldn’t break even as the snake unhinged its jaw to feed. The prey would stare at the serpent the whole time but never truly see death coming until it was too late. She later learned that snakes possessed no such ability. It was a myth of the animal kingdom.
Even now, as the King of Pain takes her face in his hands, Sara could swear she never saw him move toward her.
“I have such plans for you,” he whispers.
“Do they include getting your ass kicked?” Sara says.
That is when the ground falls away beneath the King of Pain’s feet.
When we learned the King of Pain had targeted Sara, I pitched an idea for keeping her safe that even I had some doubts about.
Sara and I have always had a strong bond, practically from the day we met, and the strength of our bond is evident in how easily we can telepathically slip into each other’s minds. We talk regularly over what we’ve come to call the brainphone, and often over respectable distances. We’ve had many conversations from the comfort of our respective bedrooms, as clear as any we’ve had while sitting on the same couch, and I thought we could use that to our advantage.
I realized right away that the King of Pain’s ability to negate super-powers would prevent Sara from calling for help telepathically. My idea used that to our advantage: Sara set up, for lack of a better term, a direct line to my mind, putting us in constant contact, our individual thoughts intermingling with one another to create ongoing mental background noise. It was disorienting having Sara’s thoughts periodically intrude on mine, experiencing her emotional turbulence as if it were my own, and holy crap the headaches, but I figured it was a worthy sacrifice if it kept my friend safe.
One minute ago, just as Malcolm was dropping me off at work, the connection went dead.
I barreled up the stairs to get to the roof, where I dropped my backpack, threw on my headset, and took off before the comm system had finished booting up. I knew from our mind-link Sara was heading home when the chatter fell silent, but I had no fix on her precise location. She could be anywhere within the two-mile stretch between school and my house, and I don’t have time to waste on a visual search from the air.
Think, girl. If I were a murderous nutball and I wanted to make a grab for Sara, where would I do it? Where along the route would I have enough privacy —
Right.
A few months ago, I was picked up by Homeland Security agents on my street, not too far from my home, along a stretch of Canter Road where there are no homes. It’s nothing but light woodland for a good quarter of a mile, completely out of sight from any houses. It’s a good spot for an ambush.
I’m not talking about the King of Pain, for the record; I mean my ambush.
As I drop, I spot the King of Pain and Sara practically on top of one another, which rules out blasting the guy into next year. There’s no way I can make a shot that precise, not when I’m coming in hot.
Inspiration hits at the last possible second. I drop behind the King of Pain, grab him by the collar of his leather jacket, and rocket back toward the open sky. The plan is to haul him into the commercial air travel lanes, where the thin oxy
gen and freezing temperatures should put him down pretty darn fast. I’m gambling that he won’t use his power-canceling whammy on me, but I think it’s a safe bet. Few people want to plummet to their deaths from twenty miles above sea level.
Unfortunately, my brilliant plan has one critical flaw: basic physics. In trying to lift a full-grown man off the ground at high speed, all I succeed in doing is ripping off three fingernail tips (ow ow ow) as the King of Pain is torn from my grip before we’re thirty feet off the ground.
However, a thirty-foot drop will take the fight out of someone as well as a quick trip into the stratosphere. The King of Pain lands on the sidewalk with a meaty thud.
I touch down. “Are you okay?” I say to Sara, but her attention is fixed on the King of Pain. “Sara!”
She flinches like someone waking up from a nightmare, her face paler than normal. “Yeah. Fine.”
Now, if we were dealing with a normal super-villain, I’d give him a fair chance to surrender. Maybe that’s naïve of me, but I’m one of the good guys. Good guys don’t kick a man when he’s down, right? And this guy is pretty down.
Down but not out. With effort, he pushes up onto his hands and knees, thick blood caking the lower half of his face. I raise my hands to blast him. He looks at me. There’s a fire in his eyes, pure blazing rage, and it causes my blood to run cold.
I hesitate. I pay for it.
The King of Pain gets to his feet — unsteadily, but he gets up. I try to fire. Nothing happens. He charges, his arms outstretched as if mocking me. His hands close around my throat and squeeze. A pressure pushes into my head, like a balloon inflating inside my skull. My legs go out from under me, my knees hitting the unforgiving concrete. The pain doesn’t register. My eyeballs feel too big for their sockets. A gurgling noise rises from my throat. My lungs are paralyzed, unable to draw a breath.
I gasp as air floods into me suddenly. Blood roars back into my head. I swoon, but before I topple over, I’m treated to the sight of Sara jerking her arms as though hauling back on a set of invisible puppet strings, and of the King of Pain sailing through the air in response.
Sara’s powers are back. Edison was right: the King of Pain can’t multi-task.
The King of Pain twists in mid-air, hoping to land on his feet, but he’s no Missy. He hits the sidewalk and skips along the concrete like a flat stone skipping across a pond.
“Stay on him,” I rasp like a pack-a-day chain smoker. “Don’t let him get up.”
Sara advances on the King of Pain as he struggles to rise. She mimes grabbing him by the jacket. Her telekinesis reaches across the twenty-foot gap to seize the King of Pain. Sara throws him toward the woods along the side of the road. He bounces off a stout oak tree. Sara doesn’t allow him a second to breathe. She reaches toward him with her left hand and makes a jerking motion. The King of Pain sails toward her. She throws a palm-heel strike at the air with her right hand. The King of Pain bends in half with a loud WHOOF as the air is violently driven from his lungs. The King of Pain crashes to earth for the final time. I hope.
Please, God, make him stay down.
Sara helps me up. “You okay?” she asks.
My throat spasms painfully when I try to speak. I’ll live, I say telepathically. You?
I’m good. Sara glances over toward the King of Pain. Is he...?
Only one way to find out.
We creep toward the King of Pain. As we approach, he flops onto his back. I almost blast him on impulse.
Wait.
My powers. They’re active again. But that means...
I lean over the King of Pain. Each eye stares off in a different direction. A stream of incoherent noises trickles out of his mouth along with blood and spittle. He’s not faking this. He’s down for the count.
Holy crap.
Sara just took down the King of Pain.
THIRTEEN
“I don’t believe it,” Mindforce says, gazing into the holding cell through a small clear panel in the door. He shakes his head. “I don’t believe it.”
“Believe it,” Concorde says with a measure of pride, but there’s a note of lingering disbelief as well. I can’t blame him; I was there, and I’m convinced the King of Pain is going to jump up, shout “Surprise!” and burst through the door to tear into us like a buzzsaw.
Mindforce shakes his head again and sighs. It’s a weary sound, not at all joyful, triumphant, or even just relieved.
“I don’t get it,” I say. “He was running. People saw him at the New York border.”
“Uh-huh. In one night, a whole lot of people saw a man who spent six years living under the radar, practically invisible,” Concorde says. “Tell me that doesn’t strike you as suspicious.”
It takes me a second to glean Concorde’s meaning: the King of Pain meant for people to see him. God, it’s so obvious in hindsight. He stole a car, drove a few hours, showed his face to a lot of convenient eyewitnesses, and backtracked to Kingsport while our attention was focused in the wrong direction.
“Well. I feel stupid,” I say.
“You’re not alone,” Mindforce says.
“The transport from Byrne should be here soon,” Concorde says. “I asked Pearce to triple the guard detail.”
“Will the inhibitor collar work on him?” Mindforce wonders aloud, and the mention of an inhibitor collar makes me shudder. I had one of those slapped on me once. I didn’t care for it at all — not that I cared for the whole false arrest experience, but feeling completely and utterly helpless is terrifying to me. It’s almost enough to make me take pity on the King of Pain.
Almost. I can’t stress that enough.
“What will happen to him?” Sara says. “I mean, he’s not going to get out on bail or anything like that, is he?”
“He’s connected to nine homicides and two suspicious suicides in almost as many states,” Concorde says. “There’s no way in hell he’s getting bail.”
“We won’t let him,” Mindforce says. “We’ve already talked to the DA, and he’s promised us he’ll do everything he can to keep the King of Pain locked up.”
“And what are the chances he’ll be sent to prison when it’s all said and done?” I say.
Concorde and Mindforce exchange looks.
“The DA plans to take his time to build the case. He’s going to approach this carefully and methodically, and he’ll make sure every last I is dotted and T is crossed,” Concorde says, as if affirming the game plan to himself rather than explaining it to us. “We will not let this case fall apart. We will pin every single death on the King of Pain, because I don’t want this son of a bitch going to prison. I want to watch him march into a death chamber.”
His words hit me like a slap. “You’re going after the death penalty,” I say.
“Damn straight.”
“Good,” Sara says.
“Good? Jeez, Sara, don’t you think that’s a bit harsh?” I say.
“He’s a serial killer, Carrie. He deserves to die.”
The way she says that chills me. He deserves to die. It’s not a knee-jerk, emotional reaction, which I could totally understand. It’s a cold, calculating statement. She knows exactly what she’s saying. She wants the man dead.
“He needs to pay for all the lives he’s taken,” Concorde says. “Frankly, execution is too good for him.”
“I’m not saying he doesn’t need to pay, but you don’t have to be so bloodthirsty about it,” I insist. Concorde doesn’t offer any apologies. “Mindforce?”
Mindforce glances into the holding cell. “The King of Pain is a monster,” he says. “He’s inhuman, and God forbid, if he were to get loose, who knows how many more people would die before we caught up to him again — if we ever did. If we can nail him on even one capital murder charge, I say we do it and make sure he never has a chance to hurt anyone ever again.”
I can’t believe I’m hearing this. I can excuse Sara’s vindictiveness to fear, anger, frustration — this is personal to her, very much s
o. Concorde’s attitude is profoundly disappointing but somehow not surprising, but Mindforce? He’s supposed to be the member of the team who never forgets his humanity or capacity for empathy, but now he’s telling me he wants another human being dead.
I dash out of the detention area, into the hallway, and sink to the floor. I feel sick.
Concorde steps into the hallway and removes his helmet. Edison kneels down in front of me.
“Carrie, look, I don’t expect you to understand because you’re still young,” Edison says, “but this situation is —”
“Oh, we’re skipping over having a rational discussion and jumping directly to patronizing me?” I say with a bitter laugh. “Thank you. Thank you for that, Edison. I’d gotten so used to you treating me with respect I guess I got spoiled.”
“Carrie...”
“I may be young but I’m not an idiot, and I’m not some naïve child who can’t grasp difficult concepts and has to have everything dumbed down — and I’m so sorry I expressed an opinion you don’t agree with, but don’t you dare give me that dismissive you’re still young crap. All three of you are so eager to see the King of Pain on death row, and that bothers me. It bothers me a lot.” I lock eyes with Edison. “Tell me why I should be okay with that.”
“You shouldn’t,” Edison says gently. “You should never be okay with it.”
“But you are.”
“In this case? Yes, I am. I’m not proud, but there you are.” Edison eases all the way down to the floor and leans back against the opposite wall. “That man in there,” he says, nodding toward the holding area, “he’s murdered a lot of people, many of whom I knew personally. I’ve lost friends to him, so yes, my ability to give a damn has been seriously compromised. I want payback, pure and simple, and I won’t make excuses for that.”
“There’s nothing pure or simple about revenge,” I say. “Aren’t we supposed to be better than that? Isn’t that the whole point of being a super-hero?”
Edison’s expression softens, a sadness settling onto his features. “Super-heroes are still people, Carrie, and people are weak. People are petty. People are selfish. People let their emotions get in the way.”
Action Figures - Issue Four: Cruel Summer Page 12