Crawling From the Wreckage

by Michael C Bailey

  I stride up to his desk and assume an at-attention, all business stance. “I want to talk to Anzo and Tanith,” I say, “as soon as possible.”

  “Why? They gave up all the intel they had. Do you have a new lead, or —”

  “I want to tell them about our plan.”

  Edison squints at me. “And why would we want to do that?”

  “Because it’s the right thing to do. They deserve to know that we’re putting them in the line of fire, and why.”

  “Carrie,” he says in something that’s half a sigh and half a grumble, “we talked about this already.”

  “I know.”

  “And you agreed to the plan.”

  “I went along with it. And then I had second thoughts.”

  “Which are irrelevant. It’s my call, and I made it; you’re not telling them a thing. Is that clear?”

  “I didn’t come to ask your permission, Edison; I’m letting you know I plan to tell them.”

  “Oh, for — I am not doing this with you again,” Edison says, getting to his feet so he can better chew me out. “I’ve always allowed you to speak your mind because you’re a smart girl and I do respect your opinions, but —”

  “Excuse me? You’ve allowed me to speak my mind?” I say, seething.

  “— but there’s been damn little respect coming back my way, and I am done tolerating your insubordination. Done. We can’t function effectively as a team if you’re going to constantly challenge my orders, or worse, ignore my authority altogether.”

  I toss my headset onto Edison’s desk, then dig my Protectorate ID card out of my belt pouch and flick that at him.

  “What’s this?” he says.

  “You’re right; we can’t function effectively as a team,” I say, “so I’m withdrawing from the Protectorate.”

  “You’re quitting?”

  “I didn’t say that. I’m still Lightstorm. I’m still part of the Hero Squad. I just don’t want to be associated with you anymore. You’re sick of my insubordination? Well, I’m sick of you lying and hiding the truth and manipulating people and your by any means necessary attitude. No, I don’t respect your authority, because you’ve given me little reason to. You’ve completely lost sight of what it means to be a super-hero.”

  Edison leans over his desk. “I’ve forgotten more about being a super-hero than you’ll ever know.”

  “You’ve forgotten, all right. You’ve forgotten that we’re not supposed to just beat up the bad guys and throw them in prison; we’re supposed to be better than them. They’re the ones who break the rules and take shortcuts, not us. They’re the ones who don’t give a damn who gets hurt or killed, not us.”

  “Drake Anzo and Candace Tanith sure as hell didn’t care who they killed — or have you forgotten what they did?”

  “I know exactly what they did,” I say, the terrible memory of Rando and Zip and Magnum’s broken bodies flashing through my mind.

  “Then tell me what they’ve done to earn the tiniest shred of kindness.” He spreads his arms. “Tell me. What have they done to deserve your compassion?”

  It’s a fair question. Honestly, they haven’t done anything to deserve it. They murdered two cops and took them away from their families. They murdered three kids and took them away from their families — and, if indirectly, they drove a good person, someone I came to care about, to throw his life away for the sake of a shot at revenge, and I hate them for it. I want them to pay for all the pain they’ve caused. I want them to suffer. I want them dead.

  It’s not the first time in recent history I’ve felt such raw, burning hatred for someone — and that’s the problem.

  “They haven’t done a thing to deserve my compassion,” I say, “but they’re getting it anyway.”

  “Carrie —”

  “Edison, I was literally in a war. I killed hundreds, maybe thousands of people without ever really thinking about what I was doing. I didn’t let myself think about it. I had a job to do, so I shut down my own humanity and took away theirs so I could do it. That is a dark, ugly path, and I don’t want to go down it ever again. I need to be better than that. I need to see Anzo and Tanith as human beings so I know I’m still a human being.”

  Ever so slightly, almost imperceptibly, Edison’s expression softens.

  “My principles are not negotiable,” I say, “and I don’t need your approval or your permission to do what I believe is right.”

  I cross the office, my head held high. I’m reaching for the door when Edison calls to me.

  “Carrie.”

  I turn. He stands at his desk for a moment, waiting for me to come back to him. When I don’t move, he comes to me.

  “If this blows up, it’s on you,” he says, and he hands me my headset.

  “It won’t. For all their faults, Anzo and Tanith sincerely love one another. They’ll do whatever it takes to keep each other safe.”

  He nods. “That is strategically sound.”

  “It’s like I know what I’m doing or something.”

  ***

  The Plymouth County Correctional Facility is located in the closest thing you’ll find to a Middle of Nowhere in the town of Plymouth. It was built to replace the former correctional facility, which opened its doors in 1994 and celebrated its tenth year of service by getting partially destroyed by an inmate with superhuman abilities. Rather than repair the old facility, the county built a new one farther away from populated areas. After the incident, everyone agreed it would make Plymouthites feel safer if they tucked the new jail somewhere out of the way.

  (Side note: at the time of the breakout, Byrne Penitentiary had long been in the concept phase. After the incident, the state decided to get Byrne up and running as quickly as possible so the local correctional facilities, none of which were properly equipped to handle superhumans, would never again have to face a similar scenario.)

  The current correctional facility embodies something called a “podular” design model that reminds me of Byrne. Individual cells are clustered around a common area, and that entire “pod” is totally isolated from other pods at all times. Inmates in any given pod never interact with anyone outside their own little prison neighborhood — not at mealtime, not in the exercise yard, not in any other shared area like the library or medical center. The idea is to minimize interaction and communication between inmates, which reduces the possibility of a mass breakout attempt and contains riots to one small section of the facility. The connecting corridors can be sealed off at strategic points to restrict movement between the pods and the common areas. It’s an impressively thoughtful design.

  I learn all this and more from the facility’s assistant superintendent, Eamon Drummond, as he leads me through one of the long, wide corridors to a private room reserved for meetings between inmates and their attorneys. He’s quite accommodating, perhaps a little overly so. I suspect he might be trying to impress me.

  “Here we are,” he says, stopping in front of a solid-looking steel door inset with a small window. He nods to the woman guarding the door, who punches in a code on a small keypad. The door unlocks with a soft buzz and a small click. “Let the officer know when you’re finished here. I’ll come get you and take you to temporary holding over in the men’s wing.”

  I thank him and step inside. The room is small and simple, two chairs and a table. A security camera lurks in the corner, peering down at Candace Tanith in her standard-issue inmate jumpsuit.

  “Candace.”

  “I already told you everything I know,” she mumbles.

  “I know. I’m here to tell you something.” I sit across from her. She doesn’t look at me. “Concorde briefed the media on your arrest yesterday.”

  She shrugs: so what?

  “He did that to goad a group of rogue super-heroes known as Vendetta into making an attempt on your life,” I say. That gets her attention. I give her a brief history of Vendetta and lay out Concorde’s plan, sparing no detail, and brace for Tanith’s reaction.
/>
  “Oh,” is all she says, without the slightest flicker of outrage.

  “I promise you, Candace, we’re going to do everything we can to keep you and Drake safe.”

  “Why? We don’t deserve your protection,” Candace says, a tear slipping down her cheek.

  “I say you do.”

  “I was going to be a mother.”

  That catches me way off-guard. “What?”

  “I got pregnant a couple of years ago. Three weeks after I found out, I lost the baby. I thought God was punishing me for all the bad stuff I’ve done. Drake convinced me it was just one of those things, you know? Women miscarry all the time. I believed him and we went right back to knocking over banks. I was the one who shot those cops in Jersey.” She bows her head. “I figured if God hated me anyway, I might as well give Him a good reason.”

  “What about the Wardens?” I say. “Did you also kill them to give God some high octane hate fuel?”

  Tanith recoils as if I’d slapped her. “I didn’t kill any of them, I swear,” she whimpers. “When I realized they were all kids, I begged Drake and the others to stop. I begged them. I begged them.”

  I don’t need Sara or Bart to tell me whether she’s lying; the pain and remorse in her voice are all too real. Candace Tanith saw Massacre was about to cross a line they could never uncross, and she failed to put a stop to it. In her mind, that’s as good as pulling the trigger herself, and it’s going to haunt her for the rest of her days. It feels almost cruel to want her to have a good, long life.

  A cry of pain, cut short at its peak, echoes in the hallway outside the interview room. I’m halfway to the door when it tears free of its hinges with a short, sharp screech of rending steel. A hulking mass of (for lack of a better term) humanity fills the opening. He’s covered head to toe in rust-red plates and scales, and for the life of me, I can’t tell if it’s some kind of battlesuit or his skin.

  “I found her!” he shouts.

  My blast blows him clear of the doorway. He bounces off the opposite wall, a solid slab of cinderblocks painted institutional off-white, leaving a crater.

  “We have to go,” I say, booting up my headset.

  “What’s happening?” Tanith says.

  I grab her by the arm and haul her to her feet. “Stay close and do exactly what I tell you.”

  I peek out into the hall. A burst of gunfire pings off my force field, right about head level. I spread out the field so it includes the unconscious corrections officer. I drag her into the interview room as bullets — no, not bullets; hypervelocity rounds — pepper me. With the officer out of harm’s way (relatively speaking), I step out again and return fire. My assailant, a man in military-style body armor cradling a massive machine gun straight out of Aliens, scurries for cover around a corner. His companion, however — a woman rippling with bulky muscles — stands there and takes my salvo like it’s nothing, a cocky grin on her face. More of Vendetta’s lower-profile allies, I assume.

  Once my comm system is online, I put out a priority alert to the Protectorate and the Squad. Edison responds right away, says he’s en route, but by my best guess, it’ll take him ten minutes to suit up and fly here. The Squad will need at least that long to meet at HQ and get the Pelican in the air. The only thing standing between Vendetta and Tanith is me.

  Alone, isolated, and badly outnumbered. Doesn’t this feel familiar?

  The she-tank charges, barreling through my blasts as effortlessly as she might run through a spring rain.

  “Get ready to move!” I yell at Tanith. I take her frantic head-bobble as a nod.

  She-tank leaps, her fist cocked for a big flying Superman punch. Oh, I’m going to enjoy this.

  At the height of her arc, I fire off a gravity pulse. She-tank’s trajectory takes a hard ninety-degree angle, and she belly flops onto the floor with a satisfying splat. The tile splinters from the impact.

  “Candace, go!”

  Tanith scrambles past me, her arms wrapped protectively around her head, and bolts down the hall toward the nearest door. I follow, spraying energy behind me to keep Mr. Machine Gun pinned down. Tanith pulls on the handle and curses at the door for having the audacity to be locked. I have to shoulder her out of the way so I can blast my way through. I slam the door shut behind us and hastily spot-weld it into place. It won’t hold she-tank or the human armadillo for long, but it’ll buy us time.

  A long corridor stretches before us. A sign on the wall reads MEN’S WING, and there’s a convenient arrow pointing the way. Excellent.

  “Come on,” I say.

  “Wait, where are we going?” Tanith says.

  “To get your boyfriend, and then I’m getting both of you out of here.” Tanith doesn’t move. “Candace, come on.”

  “Why are you trying to save us?”

  “What?”

  “You know what kind of people we are,” Tanith says miserably. “Why are you trying so hard to save us?”

  “Because you’re a human being,” I say. “You’re total garbage but you’re still a human being, and last time I checked, my job was to save lives, so stop arguing and move your ass.”

  Tanith doesn’t get a chance to argue further. One of the tanks (I can’t tell which one) rips the door out of its frame. Mr. Machine Gun pops into view and opens fire. I spread out my shield to fill the hallway. Hypervelocity rounds ricochet everywhere, taking quarter-sized chunks out of the walls, the ceiling, the floor. I throw one blast at the exit at the far end of the corridor, knocking the door open, and lob another Mr. Machine Gun’s way to send him ducking for cover. That should take him out of the equation long enough for me to get Tanith clear.

  That’s the plan, anyway, but as soon as we spill back out into the facility proper, I’m back on the defensive, using my shield to protect Tanith first from an explosive spray of shrapnel and then from a white-hot arc of electricity.

  Oh, no.

  “Hello, ladies,” Skadi says. “Fancy running into you two here.”

  Vendetta may not be full-fledged good guys anymore, but that’s how they see themselves; in their minds, they’re still heroes, so I could have counted on them to refrain from slaughtering civilians and corrections officers. Unfortunately, I’m not dealing with Vendetta.

  I’m trapped in here with Massacre.

  TWENTY-NINE

  Skadi and ThunderStorm press their advantage, hammering me with everything they’ve got. Tanith cowers behind my shield, her panicked squeals piercing through the boom of exploding arrowheads and crack of discharging electricity.

  “Stay down!” I shout. Tanith curls into a ball at my feet. Close enough.

  I drop the shield and send a sizzling wave of energy toward Skadi and ThunderStorm, a wall as high and as wide as the corridor. They barely have time enough to turn around much less run for cover — not that there’s cover to be found. The wave blows them off their feet and hurls them away.

  Tanith shrieks again as the armadillo man barrels in, ready to rumble. She-tank is right on his heels, and behind her, Mr. Machine Gun — and behind him, a woman in pale blue full-body armor. They lay into me with a one-two punch of hypervelocity rounds and a burst of arctic-level cold. It’s all sound and fury signifying nothing, but every new player to the game turns the pressure up.

  “We’ve got them pinned!” ice girl says. “Everyone converge on the southeast wing!”

  “Candace! We need to get to Anzo and dig in!” I say — though that’s easier said than done; I know temporary holding is in this general area, but I don’t know exactly where it is. Okay, let’s use some deductive reasoning. Skadi and ThunderStorm were already here when I arrived, so I must be close to temporary holding, right? Maybe I’ll get lucky and stumble onto it.

  Of course, I could just read the signs on the wall. Duh.

  I shove Tanith down the hall and let loose with another gravity pulse. Mr. Machine Gun, the ice queen, and the two tanks flatten. I catch up to Tanith, blast through a connecting door, then weld it shut. W
e sprint to the end of the hall, up to a heavy door labeled TEMPORARY HOLDING, and start pounding.

  “Hey! Hey! Let us in!” Tanith says.

  A guard, pallid and glistening with sweat, peers out through a small viewing window. “No way,” he says, his voice muffled by the thick glass. “We’ve been ordered into lockdown. No one gets in or out.”

  “No, please no!” Tanith squeals, beating on the door. “Please, they’re going to kill us!”

  The guard scowls, shakes his head, and vanishes from sight. Fine, if I have to force my way in —

  Massacre breaches the hall. Skadi strides through the center of the group, her bow drawn. Mr. Machine Gun levels his weapon at us. The ice queen’s gauntlets flare dangerously, glittering mist drifting from her palms. The lightning-throwing half of ThunderStorm flexes his fingers, releasing a shower of sparks.

  “You, girl, are a huge pain in the ass,” Skadi says.

  “I’ve been getting that a lot lately,” I say.

  “Tell you what. You step aside, let us take care of our business, and we’ll let you live.”

  “Seriously?”

  Skadi laughs. “Yeah, no, we’re killing you anyway. Whether we stop with you, however?” Her smile fades. “You give us one more second of grief, I’ll kill you, and then I will personally slaughter every last man and woman in this entire building.”

  Now would be a great time for a sassy comeback or an ice-cold counter-threat, but I don’t have it in me. When I’m powered up, I don’t tire the same way I do when I’m in my physical form, and not as quickly, but constantly expending energy does take a toll. I’m not exhausted yet, but I’m fast-tracking in that direction fending off Massacre all by my lonesome. I could really use that backup now, guys.

  And, thank God, I get it.

  An explosion rips through the ceiling. The corridor acts as an echo chamber, intensifying the sound and the shockwave. Everyone reels from the blast, myself included, though it doesn’t hurt me as much as it does poor Tanith, who collapses in a heap, her hands clamped over her ears. While I’m glad for the timely intervention, I’m stunned any of my friends would make such a recklessly destructive entrance.