The Wraith: Danger Close (Superhero by Night Book 4)

by Jeffery H. Haskell

  “Mrs. Swahilli? My name is O’Brien. I’m head of security for the Spire and the Protectors. Please, come in. I have to say, we’re pretty pleased to have an award-winning journalist of your caliber interested in our day to day operations.”

  Krisan handled it all like she had done this a million times,— which I guess she had. The good looking man opened the door and ushered us through with a smile. I held the camera up to my shoulder using it to obscure my face from the building’s security systems. From our research, they had the entrences and exits covered, but the internal places, like the lunchrooms were not.

  The lobby was every bit as impressive as the outside. A half-moon shaped room with comfortable looking leather couches lining the walls beneath the huge windows that stretched floor to ceiling. In the center, before the elevators, was a security station and welcome center.

  The desk had several photographs of the team in action, as well as a number of their state and federal awards. To the left of that was a wall of handwritten letters and printed out emails. While Krisan spoke with the security people about our badges, I wandered over to the wall.

  There were a number of striking stories in those letters. From little kids saved from a fire by Fleet, to a mom who thanked the team for stopping to speak to her autistic daughter, to the governor of Colorado speaking of the alien probe that almost wiped out their power infrastructure...

  Huh. Aliens. I’m starting to see why she hates them so much.

  “Here you go,” Krisan said standing next to me as she handed me a badge.

  “Dupree, huh?” I asked.

  “It’s a common French Creole name, I figured it would be easier to alter your identity than make a new one,” she said in reply.

  I bumped her shoulder with mine, “Look who’s the criminal mastermind,” I whispered with a grin.

  “Yeah yeah. Come on camerawoman… we have some interviews to do! I have to say, it’s nice to be doing this and it’s going to look great on my blog.”

  I raised an eyebrow at that declaration. “What blog?”

  Krisan glanced down, her cheeks darkening several shades as she blushed and stammered. Which was weird, she was not one to be embarrassed about anything.

  “I’ll tell you about it later.”

  We turned as O’Brien waved us over to the elevator. The next hour was pretty standard; he gave us an in-depth tour of the place, introduced us to several staff. Including a really sweet and awkward young woman named Kara who did the team’s laundry.

  “You know, they put on their pants one leg at a time... just like everyone else... Well, except Lux, she sorta makes her clothes.”

  “Lux...” Krisan used her phone like a notepad and scrolled through her notes in a heartbeat. She did a great job of pretending to look through them but we both knew she didn’t need to. It was her big secret, the thing that gave her an edge over other reporters.

  Her superpower.

  “Yes, the alien princess, Augustina Luciana Maxima?”

  Kara blushed, as she continued to fold towels. “That’s the one, she so pretty and I just love her full name.”

  The interviews went on like that until lunch. O’Brien escorted us to the dining hall, which apparently was open for both the team and the staff. “The team doesn’t have a private place to gather?” Krisan asked him as he showed us the mini five-star restaurant inside the Spire.

  “Of course they can eat in their rooms if they want, or they can gather in one of the four briefing rooms or the rec center for a party or meal. However, most events at the Spire are for the staff as well as the team. Ms. Petrenelli would have it no other way.”

  I bristled hearing her name. I was still pissed about their attempt to manipulate me, but, at least they didn’t try to outright stop me.

  They left us alone for our meal and gave us permission to wander for an hour if we so wished. Krisan immediately ordered a steak and potatoes as well as a glass of expensive-sounding wine.

  She pushed a small business card across the table at me. On it was a single word: Lancaster01

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “Wi-fi password. We’re good to go,” she said.

  “Oh my God, please kill someone,” Spice said from beside me. I’d long since stopped being startled when she appeared, but her sudden outburst was a little surprising.

  “I thought you were happy to work with the heroes, doing things their way?” I asked her from the corner of my mouth.

  “Yeah, but now you’re not working with them and you’re not killing anyone. I’m hungry and you’re eating a dead cow...” she said as I bit into the delicious cheeseburger I ordered.

  I nodded at her. “You’re not wrong.

  “Listen, we get the guys phone, then we can dismantle the organization and I promise you, lots and lots of killing. Okay? Besides, you know how much energy those otherworldly mother fraggers give you. It’s going to be like dessert. Just be patient.”

  I glanced over and she was gone. Hopefully, that mollified her for now. She was learning to be patient; after decades of food just trickling in I was giving her something she hadn’t had, well according to her, in a long time—banquets.

  During the meal I got up and excused myself, heading for the bathroom entrance on the opposite wall. I stepped in and went right to the far stall. Once I was in position I signaled Krisan.

  Since we were inside the building, and they’d thoughtfully given Krisan access to their network, it was only a matter of moments. I shed my camerawoman overalls, revealing the tight black leggings and shirt I had on underneath.The camera went on top of the toilet reservoir and opened up the electronic device and withdrew the retractable baton hidden inside. I wasn’t going to kill anyone, but I also wasn’t going to let them stop me. Out of my cargo pocket, I pulled a thin balaclava that only had eye holes. There was no reason for anyone to see my face if I could help it.

  One of the interesting things we learned from the Spire’s website was that the building has chromatic tinting windows—which is just a fancy way of saying the brighter the sun, the more the windows darken. This feature was computer-controlled, just like the lights.

  I pushed the Bluetooth earpiece in and phoned Krisan. She picked up right away.

  “Almost there. They have an AI in the building that is different than Lockheart’s personal one,” she said. Her voice sounded digitized, the way it does when she’s speaking through her electronic avatar, and not her actual mouth.

  The lights flickered and died. Emergency lighting didn’t come one. I ran, heading for the door. The cafeteria was pitch black, despite the huge windows that showed the desert floor. Those were black as night. I imagined that if you were a computer genius with not one, but two AIs you would assume your stuff couldn’t be hacked, and she wasn’t wrong. I don’t think anyone in the world but Krisan could do what she was doing to them at that moment.

  “You don’t have a lot of time. I can outmaneuver him for a bit, but he’s already trying to get everything turned back on,” she said.

  “How long?”

  “Maybe five minutes. He’s fast though. I’m gonna need to focus. I’ve unlocked all the doors between here and the second spire. You just need to go up to the sky bridge, over, and then down two levels.”

  I’d memorized the layout from both the publicly available blueprints and from every image I could find of the place. I took off at a dead run, slamming through the doors until I hit the stairwell, then I was up them three at a time.

  The building wasn’t empty, hence the baton. I ran into a gaggle of workers who were hanging out under the automatic light at the top of the stairs. I hit the first one, bouncing off of him. He slammed into the wall and slid down, stunned.

  The second opened his mouth to cry in protest when I hit his jaw with a left hook. He spun around and collapsed against the railing. His body started to tip over and I grabbed his pants; none of these people deserved to die.

  The third one, a slight woman with
dark features, tried to land a haphazard forward kick on me. I hit her shin with the baton to block it and she howled in pain, going down. I tossed the man I saved at her and ran by.

  Through the doors and out to the sky bridge. The deck thrummed beneath me as I ran as fast as I could to cover the distance. The whole structure shook with each footfall. I tried not to look down; some genius had decided to design the thing with a see-through floor.

  I hit the other side, hooked my hand on the frame and used it to pinwheel around and head right for the stairs—

  A fist hit me so hard it knocked me backward, tumbling me head over heels to land in a heap in the corner. I was pretty sure a few things broke.

  “Spice,” I muttered reminding her to heal me.

  “I don’t know who you think you are, lady, but you picked the wrong place to break into,” an Asian man said as he stepped forward. He had a weird accent, like he was from Boston, but not quite.

  I started to move and he was one me in a blink of an eye, tossing me across the hall. I hit the wall with a thump.

  “Stay down,” he said pointing a finger at me. He was wearing boxers and nothing else. He must have been taking a nap and heard an alarm or something.

  I rubbed my injured jaw, feeling the bones knit back into place and the bruises heal. I didn’t have time to get into a protracted fight. Speed was my ally here. The irony of fighting a speedster while in a hurry was not lost on me.

  It was clear to me that this was Fleet. I decided to go with the silent routine and use that to my advantage. I started to move, knowing what he would do, but triggered my shadow step at the same time. With the whole building pitch black, I could teleport at will. However, there was a price. Since I was running a deficit it hurt... a lot. The cold washed over me and I appeared right behind him as he ran at me with his super speed.

  He was super surprised I wasn’t there.

  I slashed out with the baton from my awkward position on the floor, putting all my Wraith given strength into it. I was pretty sure this guy could heal fast... well, I was somewhat sure.

  The baton hit him in the side of his knee with a crunch and he screamed as he went down, clutching his knee.

  I used the momentum from the swing to roll over on my front and push myself up. I thought about hitting him again just to be sure but I decided time was more important. There were people on this team that no amount of cleverness would defeat. If any of them showed up, I was sunk.

  He screamed at me while I ran away.

  Down the hall, through the door, and over the railing to fall the two stories instead of using the stairs. I reached out and hit the railing above the floor I wanted to pitch my legs in. I hit the railing with my butt, then the hard tile with my shoulder before coming to rest against the wall.

  “Ow,” I muttered as I pushed my way up.

  “You should have killed him,” Spice said from the door I was heading for. She had on a pair of boxers like Fleet did, and a tank top.

  “Did I wake you from your nap?” I asked sarcastically as I limped through the door.

  “No. But I’m hungry. You should kill someone.”

  “These are good people trying to do the right thing, Spice. No killing.” I didn’t know how to be clearer with her than that.

  She frowned and vanished. I noticed the pain in my hip and side didn’t go away. Great. She was pissed at me. I could only maintain a deficit for so long before she started taking it out on me. While she was much more patient than she had been when we first... merged… pissing her off was still a bad idea.

  I shuddered, remembering how much it hurt to burn to a crisp in the swamps of Louisiana. Just so she could prove a point to me.

  Limping as fast as I could, I found the room where they kept their police evidence. Like any law enforcement agency, it was behind lock and key and only specific people had access to it. For evidence to be used in a court it had to have what was called an ‘Unbroken Chain’ where everyone involved signed for, and handed over, the evidence.

  Whoops.

  I hauled my leg up and kicked the door at the nob as hard as I could. The door exploded inward and the metal jam blasted away as the two-inch deadbolt ripped out of the moorings. I guess she was still giving me strength.

  Inside was a small room with a cage, and behind that was the evidence room. A sign on the cage said, Entrance with Police Escort Only. And another one said All visitors must sign in! No Exceptions.

  “Ha,” I said. I grabbed the cage door and heaved, putting a foot up on the wall next to it for extra oomph. My side ached and my hips felt like they were grinding against each other but I was still flipping strong. The metal pinged as it broke, sending the door banging off the wall and me stumbling back.

  “Whatever you did just set off a series of alarms I have no control over. I don’t think you have much time left.”

  “Rog,” I said with a breath. I was breathing hard as I limped into the evidence room. Everything was alphabetical, based on the name of the person it was seized from. It wasn’t a large room; they didn’t do much law enforcement and from what Krisan told me, these things were regularly transferred to public police stations every month or so.

  “Bingo,” I said as I found the box labeled Torino, Carmine.

  And it was empty.

  “Sonofa—” I growled. “Kris, it’s frigging empty.” No response. “Krisan?”

  “Looking for this?” A voice as sweet as honey said from behind me.

  I turned and looked into the face of Kate Petrenelli, aka Domino. A feral grin formed beneath my mask.

  “I don’t know how you broke into here, but it’s over,” she said placing the cell phone in the plastic baggy down on the counter. “We tried to help you, but you’ve crossed a line.”

  “Spice, you better help me with her powers, if they capture us, there will be no killing.”

  Kate’s green eyes went wide as I spoke, as if she were able to sense the entity within me.

  “I was wrong: you are evil, pure, unadulterated, remorseless evil,” she said as her hands formed fists.

  She vanished with a pop of displaced air and I triggered my shadow step, running forward and appearing where she put the phone down. I heard her grunt from the missed swing where she expected to hit me. I grabbed the phone and leaped for the door, my feet barely hitting the floor as I spun around the cage entrance and shadow stepped into the hallway.

  I would have loved to stay and fight her. Actually, I would seriously consider rescinding my no killing rule just for her and what she did. But it was a losing proposition and I wasn’t in this game for revenge. Well, a little revenge, but mostly justice.

  I ran down the hall to the stairs as fast as I could. The pain spreading out from my stomach like the worst cramps of my life told me that I was running dangerously close to the edge of what Spice would do for me.

  Once I was at the stairs I started leaping up them, taking them four at a time. At the top, I went through and was in their hanger.

  When I was a kid I saw the Saints who couldn’t fly hovering around on those ridiculous air bikes that Cat-7 had provided for the superheroes. I’d always wondered what it would feel like to fly. I guessed it was time to find out.

  There were two sleek black jets with swept wings and four of the hoverbikes parked in the hanger. In fire stations, they keep the keys in the trucks so that in an emergency no one is searching around for the keys. According to Krisan, the bikes are similar. They just require the push of a button to start.

  Since they have an AI who could remote disable anything, concern about them being stolen was low. Besides, who would steal a hover-bike when it was parked next to a superhero?

  No one. Not really.

  The hanger doors were wide open, letting in the Arizona sun and preventing me from teleporting. I had to hustle the fifty feet to the bike the old fashioned way. I didn’t stop until I leaped on the bike, braced my feet on the stands and hit the button.

  ...Nothing.


  “Krisan!” I shouted.

  “Sorry, they escorted me out of the building and I couldn’t say anything. They’re in there looking for you. I told them you went for help and must have gotten lost.”

  “The bike, Kris, the bike isn’t starting.”

  “One sec,” she said. “I’m in the parking area, let me find a spot where I can get their wi-fi...”

  The bike started. I floored it, blasting out of the hanger and into the Arizona sky. That was entirely too much like relying on luck for my taste.

  After all, Luck is not a plan.

  CHAPTER 4

  I ditched the bike in an alley behind a Taco Bell five minutes after I took it. I figured that was about as long as I could risk having it before they would find me.

  I stopped in the fast-food joint and used the bathroom to shed all my clothes and change into the outfit I had stashed there. A summer dress, heels, and a sun hat had me looking like a different person. I looked into the mirror and focused on my features.

  “Okay, Spice, you’re up.”

  My features morphed, not quite changing me into a different person, but taking ten years off my face, firming up my neck and generally giving me the appearance closer to a teenager than a thirty-something camera operator.

  “You’re running me close to empty, Madi. Do you like starving? I don’t, and that’s what you’re doing to me. Using all my powers on demand but not giving me anything in return,” Spice said from the corner of the bathroom. I glanced at her in the mirror while I pulled out some plum red lipstick from MAC and applied it carefully. After that I pulled my hair into a tight ponytail, cinching it at the neck so it hung straight down instead of bouncing around the back.

  “You know the drill, patience will get you a feast. With Carmine's phone, we can find the location of the shipment and then you get to eat. After that, it’s SOP. Work our way up the food chain until we get what we’re after.”