by S. J. Delos
Talk about adding insult to injury.
Fortunately, I managed to make it safely back, coming down to a stumbling landing on the Paulus Building’s roof. I was so distracted by everything, that I nearly ripped the access door off its hinges by accident. I winced at the screeching metal, then kept a hand placed against the side of my skull, each clop of my boots on the steps echoed loudly in the stairway and my brain.
Once inside headquarters, I immediately went searching for Greg. As well as some aspirin. The infirmary was too far to walk with a mini Behemoth punching the inside of my scalp, so I grabbed the first aid kit from under the sink in the kitchen, dry-swallowing a half dozen little white pills.
Instead of Mister Manpower, I found Richard relaxing on the sofa in the entertainment room watching a basketball game. He sat up when I burst through the doorway, quickly muting the televisions’ sound. Something that bought him a sliver of gratitude from me.
“Karen? Where have you been?” he asked. “Greg’s been trying to reach you for hours.” He shook his head, giving me a disappointing look. “You were supposed to be on duty tonight.”
I waved him off, glancing around the otherwise empty room. “Where the hell is everyone?” I asked.
My trip from the roof had led me through the hangar, the training room, and down the hallway outside the team’s quarters. Other than Captain Awesome, I hadn’t encountered another soul.
“Zip volunteered to fill in for you when you didn’t return on time for your shift. Darla wasn’t happy about you bailing on her and sticking her with the ‘motor-mouth spaz’ as she put it.”
I snorted, which caused me to wince again. “Well, Omega-Girl can just get the hell over it. There are much bigger issues coming our way.” I held out my hands to the side. “Okay, so Joey and Darla are keeping a watchful eye on the city. Where is everyone else?”
The billionaire shrugged. “Out looking for you, I think. Honestly, I was watching the game when they left, so I wasn’t paying a lot of attention.” He jerked his thumb at the jumbo flat-panel screen on the wall. The sound might be muted, but the basketball game was still going on in high definition.
“Yeah, that’s great,” I grumbled. Apparently, my disappearance was worrying enough to send Greg, Sonya, and Alexis out on the hunt for me. Meanwhile, Mr. Moneybags was watching the playoffs. “I’ll get on the com to let the three of them know they can stop searching for me.” I turned, striding toward the door leading to the communications room.
“Three?” he added just before I got out of earshot “It’s only two. Greg and Sonya.”
I spun back around and grabbed the corner of the door frame to keep vertigo from knocking me over. “What about Alexis?”
Richard was watching the screen again. “She’s not with them,” he said in a tone that suggested I should have known that. “She took off on her own about an hour or two before we realized you were missing.”
I stomped back into the room, getting between him and the game. “Where did she go?”
He frowned, leaning leaned to the side, trying to peer around me. “I don’t have the slightest clue,” he said, cutting his eyes up at me for a millisecond. “I only saw her for a moment as she skipped out. On a date, I guess, since she was all dressed up. Makeup, hot dress, everything. I swear, if she was just a little older…” He slid to the side in order to unblock the view. “Anyway, she was wheeling a little suitcase behind her. So wherever she went, she was planning on staying overnight.”
My hands curled into fists all by themselves, the urge to destroy something (or someone) shooting up by a hundred percent. “Why didn’t you stop her?”
“She’s eighteen, Karen. A legal adult able to make her own decisions like the rest of us. As long as she’s not quitting the team or doing something to make us look bad, it’s not really any of my business what she’s doing.” His eyes drifted from the game to me again, this time lingering. “Or yours.”
I planted my hands on my hips and narrowed my eyes at him. “Excuse me? What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
He sighed as he gave up trying to watch the screen. Instead, he looked up at me and crossed his arms.
“Everyone knows you two had some kind of big spat this afternoon. We all heard you yelling at each other. After you took off with your ass up around your shoulders, she stayed in her room for a long time. Sonya said she could hear her crying in there. When she finally came out, she had moved on from being sad to being pretty angry.”
“She’s…”
I felt a hard frown form on my face. I didn’t want to air Alexis’ personal business. Especially with the one member of the team who never seemed to know when to keep his big mouth shut.
“She’s planning on doing something tonight that I think is a gigantic mistake. One she’s going to end up regretting later. I was just trying to get her to see that.”
“We all make mistakes, Karen. That’s what life is all about. It’s how we learn. If Alexis makes a bad choice, then it’ll be something she has to deal with.” He arched a brow. “Let me guess, she told you what she was thinking of doing. Then, rather than provide the support she thought you would give her, you made sure she knew just how badly you opposed her idea. Right? You both probably said something you horrible to each other.”
I didn’t like the direction Richard’s logic was going. Since when was Captain Awesome the voice of reason? “I’m trying to protect her,” I insisted, though it sounded as if I were trying to convince myself. “I’m only trying to keep her from, I don’t know, ending up like me.”
A small smile formed on his face. “That’s going to be a near impossible task since she looks up to you. Hell, she idolizes you.”
“I don’t want her to look up to me. Or be like me, Richard. I’ve screwed up more times than I care to remember. Ex-felon, remember?”
“‘Ex’ being the important part. Karen, we’ve all made mistakes. I’m still dealing with what I’ve done to other people as well as myself.” He gestured at my hair. “I still find that I’ve got to be extra careful when I speak. If I’ve learned anything from having Daniel turn my power against me, it’s that you can’t control the people you care about. Whether it’s with an Enhancement or words. In the end, it never works out.”
My mouth dropped open silently as Richard turned the sound back on and went back to losing himself in the television. I tried to find a hole in his thinking. Find some point that I could throw back at him to show that he was wrong.
But nothing of the sort existed.
I might disagree with Alexis’ decision, but if I really was her friend, I would offer my advice, then be there for her if she needed me afterward. The incident with Martin only reinforced the fact that I lacked any semblance of good sense when it came to my former lover. I trusted that my Lexi-chan was smarter than I had been when I was her age. If not, well, then I guess we would deal with it together.
As friends.
The door on the far side of the room opened, as Greg and Sonya came through. When they saw me standing there with Richard, they froze simultaneously, crowding the doorway like characters from a sitcom.
Greg was the first to recover from the surprise. “Karen? Where the hell have you been? We’ve been looking for you everywhere.”
I frowned, rubbing the back of my neck. I gave Richard a little nod of thanks, then looked over at Greg. “Sorry about that. I didn’t mean to make anyone concerned. I sort of got detained.”
“Detained?” he asked, a note of confusion in his voice.
I nodded. “It’s been an eventful evening, let me tell you. I’ve learned some incredibly disturbing things over the course of it. Seriously disturbing things.”
He studied me for a moment, as if trying to determine if the haggard look I was sure I was wearing was a result of drinking a bit too heavily. After a few seconds, he nodded, glancing over at Sonya.
“Contact Omega-Girl and Zip,” he said. “Get them back here ASAP. See if you can track down
Phantasm on her cell phone.”
“No,” I said quicker and louder than I intended. “I mean… she’s celebrating her birthday.” Hopefully fully clothed. “We can bring her up to speed tomorrow.”
Sonya looked from me to Greg. The team’s co-leader sighed once and nodded at her to follow my lead. She spun around, heading toward the communications room. Greg gave me a Richard an odd look before turning his eyes on me and tilting his head toward the briefing room door.
“Richard,” he said as he walked away. “Just push the white button with the green circle on the remote. That will record the game so you won’t miss a minute of watching your team blow the playoffs.”
I looked over at the billionaire. I never knew he was a basketball fan. “You have a favorite team?”
He shook his head. “No. I have a team I own.” He tossed the remote on the table with a sigh. “But, the way they’re playing right now, they’re not my favorite.”
The four of us assembled in the briefing room, waiting for the other two to arrive. It was no surprise at all that Zip showed up first, sliding to a stop at the head of the table. He stared at us, blinking several times from behind the goggles on his face. A worried expression appeared on his face.
“Uh… am I in trouble for something?”
“You’re fine, Zip,” I said, giving him a disarming smile. “Have a seat. We’re just waiting on Darla to get here.”
Omega-Girl arrived a few minutes later, strolling into the room. She gave me a look, then settled into her chair.
“Okay,” I said. “So, my evening has been rather disturbing evening, and I’m not sure what we should do about it.”
I gave them the Cliff Notes version of everything that happened from the moment I got to the hospital to talk with Jeannie until I awoke alone in the restaurant booth.
Greg’s face remained expressionless throughout most of my tale. However, when I mentioned Martin’s use of the word “safeguard” while he was turning me into an unconscious heap, his eyes widened, mouth opening slightly. There was no mistaking his surprise at the fact Martin was able to shut me down so easily.
“You’re sure he didn’t drug you with something?” he asked when I was finished speaking. “Put something in your drink?”
I shook my head. “I only had the one beer. It never left my hand or sight. He couldn’t have laced it with anything.”
“I could have done it,” Zip chimed in. When we all turned to look at him, he blanched and held up his hands, waving them back and forth so fast they blurred, stirring up a light breeze. “I mean, I didn’t. What I’m saying is that another speedster could have. They’d have zoomed in and out so fast, you wouldn’t have seen them put something in your drink.”
I considered his words for a moment, then shook my head with a frown. “Martin doesn’t take unnecessary chances. Even if he put something in my beer, my drinking enough for it to affect me would be out of his control.” I turned my gaze squarely on Greg. “You know how much he likes to be in control.”
He nodded. “Valid point.”
Sonya turned her head, staring at me. “Karen, what I don’t understand is why you didn’t just knock him out the second you walked over to the booth. You know, instead of sitting down to have a conversation with the world’s most dangerous lunatic.”
The rest of the team looked away. Zip and Sonya were the only ones who didn’t know that my relationship with Doctor Maniac went beyond employer and employee. It wasn’t something that had been deliberately kept from them. It was just that there never seemed to be a good time to let them know their teammate’s history of sleeping with a super-villain.
“As I said, Martin doesn’t take chances. He wouldn’t have sent me a note informing me he was in the building without already having a plan to keep me in check. Trying to attack him or place him under arrest would have been a mistake. If I did anything other than join him at the table, we would be seeing the footage of bodies carried out of the place on the news.”
Greg sighed. “I don’t like that he’s got something that can take you out of a fight.”
Darla nodded. “I agree. It’s bad enough that we don’t know what he did to shut you down, but what’s going to stop him from giving that off switch to someone else? Or selling it to another?”
“I know Martin fairly well enough to know that he would never share something as important as this fail-safe thing with anyone else. Besides, informing his lackeys of the fact that he has a way to control them would be a stupid move. He’s far from stupid.”
Sonya raised her hand. “While I agree that this new threat from Doctor Maniac is important,” she said, glancing over at Greg. “Can we talk about the EAPF’s shady behavior?”
“Yes, please,” Zip added nervously. Not that I blamed him. I’m sure the last thing the speedster wanted was to worry about crooked police coming after him again.
“Doctor Maniac being a threat isn’t anything new,” Darla said, giving me a smirk. “Nor is his constant obsession with you. But if the law enforcement agency we have to work with is keeping secrets or altering our reports, we could be looking at serious trouble.”
I ignored Omega-Girl’s verbal jab to look at Greg.
“We’ve all seen the news footage more times than we can count,” I said, sweeping my arm back to indicate the darkened monitors on the wall behind me. “It already looks like I was more interested in smashing Carbonado into little pieces than trying to save a bunch of elementary school kids. What if that’s the story being pushed by the EAPF?”
“Now that I think about it,” Greg said. “Communications from the EAPF have been brief in recent days. Normally, we get intelligence updates and such from them several times a day. Right before the incident with King Mammoth, the flow practically turned into a trickle.”
Richard stroked his chin. “It is unusual for a group like the Doom Quartet to lay low enough to not at least be a blip on the EAPF’s radar. We should have received some type of notice that they were in the area.”
We shared empty speculation for the next half hour before Greg called the meeting to a close, asking each of us to put out feelers to any members of the EAPF we felt could be trusted. The hope was that at least one of our inside people could shed a little light on the subject.
Greg caught my arm before I walked out the door, indicating I should hang back. After everyone was gone, he closed the door and leaned against it.
“Karen, do you think it’s possible that your special… relationship… with Detective Braddock is the root of this problem?” he asked. “Could the EAPF be shutting us out because you two turned a professional connection into a personal one?”
I drew in a deep breath, closing my eyes as I reminded myself that he wasn’t accusing me of anything. He was merely being the cautious, insightful leader responsible for bringing me into the heroic life.
“This doesn’t have anything to do with Kurt and me or what we do in our off times,” I protested, keeping my voice from raising as best as I could. “Right after we started dating regularly, Kurt met with his captain and made her aware of the relationship.” I shook my head. “Hell, we’ve even been on a couple of double dates with her and her girlfriend.”
He nodded. “I see. Well, if Officer Braddock’s injuries are the result of disobeying orders, there should be an official reprimand from his superiors. It seems rather suspicious to me that the EAPF are the ones preventing him from having visitors, not his doctors.”
“Jeannie seems to think they’re trying to keep him quiet. I mean, it sounds all conspiracy theory, but she’s not that kind of person.”
“Well, we’ll stir the pot to see what we can find out.” He tilted his head, staring at me. “Are you sure you’re okay. After what Martin did to you?”
I shrugged. “Well, I did have a massive headache when I first woke up. Felt like coming off a three-day tequila drinking binge. But it’s mostly gone already. Now, I’m just pissed.”
“I can imagine,” he
said. “All the same, I’d like Sonya to give you a look over. Maybe run a few tests. Just to make sure there isn’t any permanent damage.”
Having been enough of the nerdy blonde’s guinea pig after the radiation incident, the last thing I wanted was another round of scans and tests.
“Fine,” I sighed, letting Greg know exactly how I felt about his suggestion. “I’ll report for lab rat duty later.” I reached around him to press the button to open the door. He jumped to the side to keep from falling backward out into the hall. “Right now, I’m going to pay a visit to my own personal EAPF connection.”
“I thought Kurt was ducking your calls.”
“My calls, yes,” I said. “But he won’t be able to ignore my showing up on his doorstep. Especially if I kick the door in.”
A little amused smirk appeared for a half a second on his face, then the stern expression of “official business” returned.
“Very well, but let’s keep the property damage to a minimum. The last thing we need is your lovers’ spat on the six o’clock news. See what, if anything, he can share about what’s going on within the EAPF.”
“You got it, Boss.” I snapped a salute and headed out the door.
He cleared his throat before I could leave. When I stopped to turn around, he nodded at my clothing.
“Change into your uniform first,” he said. “You need be there as a representative of The Good Guys, not as Detective Braddock’s girlfriend.”
“Will do,” I agreed. “He better do some cooperating or else he’s not going to have to worry about me showing up as his girlfriend ever again.”
CHAPTER 15:
A BIGGER CONSPIRACY
I stood on Kurt’s stoop, readying myself while issuing a cease and desist order to my heart so it would stop slamming so hard against my chest. Unlike most times I visited the brownstone, the rapid pulse had nothing to do with amorous desire and everything to do with anxiety.