“What was that?”
“Just wait,” Kate replies.
The cameraman manages to regain his feet and zoom back in on the action. The dust clears, revealing a figure climbing out of the crater—oh no.
“Behemoth,” I whisper.
“She’s alive, clearly.”
“But… it’s been months!” Does she not need any air? Or food and water? She proceeds to wail on the spider-drone until it’s nothing more than a flaming pile of wreckage, ripping it apart piece by piece. The last shot is her climbing out of the flames covered in the goo they use to lubricate their vehicles.
The camera shifts and she’s sitting in an ambulance, the poor vehicle’s suspension obviously under stress from her presence. The grimace on her face speaks to pain, which I didn’t think she felt.
“Behemoth?” a reporter frantically waves their hand at the former superhero. “Are you going to be surrendering yourself?”
There’s honest sorrow in her eyes as she speaks, “I regret the actions I was forced to take while under mind control, but I still did them. I intend to accept—”
I throw the closest thing I can find at the TV, which is a wrench. The metal crashes into the screen in a shower of sparks and falling glass. I scream again. Long and loud. Frustration bubbles up and I have nowhere to put it.
So I scream again.
“Amelia, it will be okay, hon. It will be okay.”
I shake my head. She killed Sydney. And now, on national TV she’s claiming she was mind-controlled. Captain Freedom was mind-controlled, as was everyone else on his team except Behemoth and Mariposa. In fact, most of the telepaths we identified as working for Ericsson vanished. I assumed they went underground. Which is why I have my pendant, a near copy of Kate’s, on me at all times. It wouldn’t stop Ericsson’s body transfer, but it should stop anyone from messing with my mind.
Just another reason to never leave the lab outside of my suit. Not ever again.
“What else did she say,” I ask her when I can speak again.
“You don’t want to watch it?”
I shake my head. Frustration has turned to anger and I don’t want to trash another TV.
Kate touches my shoulder and warm comforting thoughts flow through me like a drug. Muscles unclench and my heart rate slows. I can think again.
“She says that she will accept any judgment the government sees fit to place on her. She hopes that she can be of use during this alien crisis and that she is at our disposal. Pretty much what you would expect.”
“She told me, Kate, when we were fighting at the old HQ. She told me she wasn’t mind-controlled and…”
“What?”
“Teddy. His wife is in a coma because of her. If he finds out… go.”
She nods and vanishes in a pop of displaced air leaving me alone with my thoughts. She killed Sydney, she killed a lot of people. How the hell did she survive in space for that long? If she can do that, then nothing can kill her. Not my new armor, maybe not even my mass driver. Sydney’s spear or I guess the Protectors spear, hurt her… but was it because he thrust it into her? Or because of the spear’s otherworld nature? I can’t bring myself to say magic nature. That’s too much.
I rub my temples, trying to suppress the headache I know is coming. Aliens invading, aliens here, Luke hates me, and now Behemoth. What next? I should never ask that.
83
With all the alien drones, Behemoth’s return, my parents, and my issues with Luke weighing on my mind, it came as a pleasant surprise to have the DOJ call us and request our team as a backup for a prisoner transfer. Right up until I found out that prisoner was Behemoth.
They are moving her from Florida to DC for testimony and they’re worried she might have allies willing to bust her out—if she’s lying, which is almost a guarantee. The south-east team is handling the perimeter while a couple of super-powered agents the DOJ still has, are on the convoy itself.
Me? My dumb butt is in the van with her. Six feet six inches of seething hate and all of it directed at me. I’m not alone, Kate is in there with me, all decked out to the nines in her new costume. Semi-rigid plates of my armor protect her vitals. She has her swords, of course, and all her other weapons. I have to admit, the black and red motif she has going really works, especially since she died a lock of her hair red to match.
I can’t get over how fast her hair has grown. Black wavy locks graze her shoulders now and I would be hard-pressed to tell she’d ever been hurt.
Stupidly, Behemoth is in chains. As if they could remotely stop her. Decked out in prison orange she sits quietly on the far side of the armored carrier. I’m at the rear end and Kate is in the front. Epic has every active and passive scanner max. He’s also monitoring all radio and cell traffic. Plus all the traffic cams for good measure.
She has her sleeves rolled up and I notice a scar on her arm. One clean line six inches long. Good to know my sword left a mark.
“You’re not going to ask me how I survived?” she asks.
The suddenness of her voice startles me. Luckily, the armor keeps me from showing my hand. Kate glances my way, giving a slight nod letting me know she’s reading her emotions.
“You’re indestructible, or something. I don’t really care. I never wanted to kill you anyway. Part of me is even glad you’re still alive.” I have to admit, that’s the truth. I regret ever having to kill anyone. It changed something in me and I’m not sure I liked what it changed. I said they made their own bed, and they did, but still…
“How commendable of you. I tried for months to get back down here. I had to time my jump just so… even thought of you and your big brain when I did it. It took me a while to figure out the movement of the Earth and the moon so I didn’t fling myself into open space. That would have sucked.”
“Yay for you. Orbital mechanics 101, how to escape being stranded on the moon.”
She nods, agreeing with me and ignoring the sarcasm. Her hands flex, tightening and loosening. Kate shifts uncomfortably. If Behemoth planned on attacking me Kate would have us out of here in heartbeat.
“You need me,” she says looking at my faceplate. “I can kill those drones. Nothing can stand before me.”
I snarl, “Not even the Protector. I know, I was there.”
She nods. “That was… unfortunate. I liked Sydney. We even dated once.” That surprised both of us. Kate raised one delicate eyebrow. “Not a lot of guys can… it’s easy to hurt someone when you’re as strong as I am. Syd… well, he was pretty tough.”
Yeah, I bet. “What is it you want, Karen?” I use her real name for impact.
“Not everyone has it so good as your pretty friend here,” she snarls. “Some of us can barely control our powers. Some of us are filled with rage over the things that happen to us. Ericsson showed me what was coming. He showed me the future. He gave me the chance to do something about it. Well, he’s dead and you’re alive. So use me. Let me do something other than rot in jail.”
“Rot in jail? Just because I don’t want to kill you doesn’t mean I think you should live after what you did. The Protector was the best of humanity. He was the ideal. You murdered him. If the government comes to me and asks me to invent something to execute you? Believe me, I will.”
Incoming!
Kate vanishes a heartbeat before the transport explodes. Burning napalm sticks to my armor like glue obscuring everything around me.
“Epic, I can’t see!”
The visor darkens until only the HUD is visible. Epic brings up a wireframe representation of the burning wreckage. I check the driver, dead. Dammit.
“Anything we can do about the napalm on the suit?”
Negative. It will burn until the fuel has expended. I recommend not giving anyone hugs.
“Right. Locate Behemoth.” I do a complete 360 to take stock of our surroundings. The team is clearing the area of civilians and Monica is already dousing the flames from the explosion.
“Kate, you okay?”
“Yes. Epic warned me just in time. Thank you, by the way.”
You are welcome.
“Where’s Behemoth?” I don’t see her anywhere. It would help if I wasn’t on fire.
I cannot see her on my sensors.
“Glacier, can you absorb the heat of a flame?”
“Yeah, give me a sec, I’m trying to keep this shop from catching fire.” We’re in a bad spot to fight back, thankfully, no one engaged us other than with a single missile. One incapable of killing Behemoth, but more than lethal enough for anyone else.
“Coming to you.” I blast off and fly up to take another look around for our prisoner. Nothing. I land a few feet away from our teenage ice princess.
“Here goes nothing,” she says, holding her hands out to me. The air temp drops alarmingly fast. The flames bend toward her, seeking her out as if they were alive. Within a minute the ambient temperature goes from ninety-one all the way down to fifteen. “It’s a lot of heat. I’m not sure I can get all of it.” Frost covers her, the ground freezes at her feet as ice forms around her. “Got it!” She exclaims, dropping her hands and letting out an icy breath. “Might have been easier in elemental form, but there you go.”
The visor clears and I can see again. She got it all. “Thank you. Fleet?”
“Yes?”
“Do a perimeter search for Behemoth, she’s vanished and I want you to look for anything suspicious up to a mile out.”
“On it.”
“Epic, anything?”
I admit to being confused. She is not in the immediate vicinity. Checking further out. Unless she can teleport, I do not understand how she could disappear so thoroughly.
Kate appears near me, swords at the ready, “I can’t feel her anywhere. Not that I have a ton of range.”
“Just the one missile?” Tessa asks. The escort vehicles the team rode in were fine, no damage, not even gunfire.
Fleet slides to a stop before us, skidding in the dirt and leaving a little trail of dust from where he came. “Nothing, Arsenal. No trucks big enough to carry her. No underground tunnels I could find the entrance to, she’s just gone.”
I glance at Kate before taking one last look around, she raises an eyebrow at me. “Now who do we know with teleportation tech?”
84
If I had to guess, I would say Matahal still has access to a quantum teleporter,” I tell the assembled team. “This is both good and bad.” We’re back at HQ, hanging in the Enterprise conference room. It’s late in the day, but I wanted to go over what we know while it’s still fresh. Plus, Kate called in some favors and got a couple of large pies from Bianco’s!
“And you’re saying that this Matahari—” Tessa began.
“Matahal.”
“Matahal guy is an alien who was working for Cat-7 as their chief scientist?”
“Pretty much. From what I put together, he infiltrated Cat-7 in order to hold them back. I thought Ericsson had been the one who had their tech self-destruct after they were exposed, but I’m starting to think it was Matahal. What better way to lull someone into a false sense of security than to give them all this tech to fight aliens, only to have it stop working the moment they arrive? Anything based on Cat-7 tech would be as useful as a paper shelter in a firestorm.”
Heads nod around the room in understanding. We’re in hour two of trying to figure out what to do next. Normally I’d just sit in my lab and ponder until a solution presented itself. But… Pythia said I needed to not be me. This is me trying to include others in the chase.
Kate waves to get my attention, “Epic hasn’t had any luck locating him with cameras?”
There are only so many accessible cameras in the United States. I estimate only seven percent of the land mass of North America is under direct surveillance.
“And your satellite?” she adds.
“It’s just one satellite.”
“You own a satellite?” Monica’s expression is priceless.
“Well, Mars Tech global owns it. Technically.”
She shakes her head, “I want a raise.”
“Wait, we get paid?” Tessa asks mockingly.
“Focus,” Kate interrupts before things get too out of hand. I’m smiling though. I was worried the team wouldn’t come together like this, but now… they’re doing great.
Fleet holds up his hand. Of course, he stuffs a slice of pepperoni in his mouth the moment he does. We have to wait the twenty awkward seconds for him to finish eating before he speaks up, “What about Cat-7 facilities?”
“We’ve checked them. The government raided all of their buildings, offices, warehouses, anything and everything they could find. Epic, put up all their properties on the screen, please.”
A long, long list of properties appear. Epic has the database Shai-Hulud downloaded. Everything Cat-7 had on the books and everything they kept off the books in the Cabal. It’s all there.
Fleet walks around to the front of the table to stand in front of the monitor scanning the list as it scrolls by. It still surprises me when he moves at normal speed.
“Monica, when you first manifested you said they flew you to a facility up north right? In Canada?”
She nods, “Yeah they thought I would need to be in a colder environment. That’s where we found out I could freeze in place.” She shivers just thinking about it and I can’t blame her. Eternity as a statue isn’t on my bucket list.
“It’s not here,” Fleet says. “When I was in training I was with a weather manipulator and she told me the same thing. A facility up in Whitehorse or someplace like that.”
Epic immediately puts a map of Canada on the other monitor, cross-referencing every facility he knows they have north of the border.
I can find no mention of a facility owned by Cat-7 in Whitehorse. It is not exactly a densely populated province. The total population is only twenty-five thousand.
“Is it possible they didn’t own it?” Kate asks.
“What do you mean?” I reply.
“What if the research facility was third party? Some other company or whatever owned by someone else. Epic, check for any large facilities in Whitehorse. Canada isn’t very big, there can’t be many. Then flash us pictures, if Monica can identify it—”
“I can. That was three months of hell.”
“Then we should—” Before Kate has finished speaking my wonderful AI has pictures of buildings flashing on the screen.
“That one!” Monica leaps out of her seat, pointing at a four-story building that looks about a hundred years old. Whitehorse itself is a barely-there town on the edge of a river. It actually looks like was built in the bed of a much larger river. Scary place to live. And cold.
“No wonder we missed it, the place looks like a haunted house,” Tessa mutters.
“Epic, start surveillance. Fleet, it was your idea, you want to go up north and take a look around?”
He grins, “Of course I do!” He vanishes in a blur of speed and flying paper as the door slams open and he’s gone.
“How far will he get before he realizes it’s cold up there?” Kate asks with a smirk.
“Tessa, take the Emjet and go back him up. Also, yeah, take him a coat.” She grins, throwing me a mock salute before heading out.
“Well, this has all been interesting but if there is nothing else…” I know what Teddy wants, he missed several days with his wife and Kate tells me he feels guilty about it. Add in we’re looking for the person who did this to her… he’s under a lot of stress.
“Of course,” I say with a wave and a smile.
“I’ve got homework to get to, now that I’m back in school.” Monica stands and stretches before heading for the door. “My parents want to have you over for dinner, and soon.”
Once she’s gone it just leaves Kate and me.
“Say it.” She’s had the I’m going to tell you something for your own good look on her face the whole day.
“He left, you know.”
“I own
the building, of course, I know.” Luke left me a message saying he was going home and that it was too painful for him to be around me. She told me to talk to him before it was too late and I didn’t. Now he’s gone.
“It’s not too late.”
“I think it is. Besides, Kate, Behemoth, who we thought for sure was dead… is alive. You can’t know he’s not out there. Waiting for me to slip up. Waiting to…” I’m shaking. So bad I can’t even hold the cup of water I was drinking. I put it down before it falls and bury my head in my hands.
“It’s okay, Amelia. It’s okay.”
“Is it? Will it ever be again?” My voice is muffled from talking into my hands. “He took everything from me, Kate. And he still is. My parents, my life, now Luke. It hurts so much I want to scream but there’s nothing I can do about it and that makes it worse.”
Normally, her presence is reassuring but it isn’t working. Her patting my back and telling me everything would be okay only works for so long. Slowly, without me even realizing it, I’ve put myself in prison. A prison of my own mind.
And I never gave up hope that my parents were still alive. But I’ve given up hope that I’ll ever have them again. That’s when the tears start.
85
My instinct is just to go in and blast the place up. Which I fully intend to do as soon as the Canadian government gives us the okay. This new age of heroes where we get to cross the border is exciting, but it also means waiting for bureaucrats to do a job they don’t want to do. It helps to have a little AI assistance, but time is still on their side.
“Fleet, anything?” I ask. I’m up at ten thousand feet, clear of the air traffic control paths, with my most powerful camera focused on the building. The rest of the team, minus Teddy, is on the ground.
“Negative. No movement.”
“I saw a dude step out for a smoke a few minutes ago,” Tessa adds. “They’re in there.”
The walls of the building are lined with thermal resistant paint and they clearly have a Faraday cage of some kind since Epic can’t find a wireless network to hook into. Despite its decrepit appearance, it’s hi-tech.
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