“Don’t cut me out,” Bill warned. “I want the Vestige. There will be no exceptions.”
“You will have it,” Austin reassured him. “Wait and see. I told you that Shaun will hand the Vestige over willingly. I’m a man of my word.”
22
Pinpoint
Before I can do anything besides let my mouth hang open, Kimberly grabs me by the front of my shirt and steers me towards the now open door.
“We need to get inside!” she says through gritted teeth. “Now! It’s not safe. Go!”
I try to glance around the brightly-lit street - which is characteristically empty - but Kimberly’s grip on my shirt tightens so much that my collar begins to get tight and chokes me. I step backwards into the house, swiveling to allow enough space for Kimberly to hurry by me, then I close the door and lock it.
The house is quiet, as I expected. Mom must still be out on her date. The only sounds are those of the ticking antique clock on the wall and the hum of the refrigerator.
Kimberly stands with her back against the wall, her hair a mess in front of her face. She brushes it back, but it doesn’t do much to help her appearance. Every surface on her front is smeared with black dust. She looks like she just came from a war zone, and she must have sprinted here because light trails on her forehead, cheeks, and neck appear where sweat has dripped downwards.
Her breathing is hoarse and her chest and shoulders heave with every breath. But, there’s not much time to recuperate because I have questions that need to be answered.
“How did you escape from Austin Spencer’s headquarters?” I ask.
Beginning to breathe at a more normal pace, Kimberly glances up at me with wide eyes, and her brow furrows.
“You knew that I was being held against my will?” she replies.
I shrug.
“Mae saw you using her vision powers,” I explain. “We were going to come rescue you, but we couldn’t figure out where you were. We only knew that you were being locked up.”
“Yeah,” Kimberly says. “I was lucky to get out of there unnoticed. Who knows what they would have done to me if they caught me trying to escape?”
I reach out and put both hands firmly on her upper arms.
“You’re safe now,” I reassure her. “Nobody knows where I live. My address is unlisted because of Dad’s high profile. We’ll get you cleaned up and sorted out. Come on.”
I lead her to the downstairs bathroom where she can wash off. I take out a few towels from the cabinet and ask as I hand them to her, “Where did all that dust come from?”
“I escaped through the air vents,” Kimberly explains. “I almost didn’t make it, but there was no way I was going to be kept there without a fight. The Drone forced me to text my father and tell him that I was staying in the city for the night. He has no idea that I am in danger.”
“We’re all in danger,” I mutter as I step outside of the bathroom. “With those two men teamed up, nobody’s mind or body is safe.”
I give Kimberly a few minutes to wash up, going so far as to grab some spare T-shirts from my room for her to choose from. Her clothes are probably ruined from her climb through the air vents.
It’s a good thing Mom isn’t home right now. I hate to imagine what she would think of a messy girl arriving unannounced on our doorstep, begging me to protect her. I suppose I could make up some story to check off all the required boxes, but it would be too much to come up with a lie during a time like this.
Kimberly finishes getting dressed and emerges from the bathroom looking much more like her normal self. I take her into the kitchen and get her something to drink and sit down at the table.
“I don’t mean to rush into things,” I say, “but, I need to know if you have the address for The Cloak’s headquarters.”
Kimberly finishes taking a sip of her tea and sets down her mug, pressing her lips together.
“I know roughly where it is,” she says. “But, I can’t recall the address off the top of my head.”
“Was it listed on a website somewhere?”
She shakes her head.
“I got it off the flyer at our school,” she explains. “Thinking about it now, I wonder if Austin and The Drone were trying to lure you in. Maybe they thought you were still staying with your grandparents.”
“They might have thought that…” I mutter. Like I told Kimberly, my address here is unlisted for security. Now it seems like I’m not the only one who likes to keep things that way. Doing a quick search online of Virtual Solutions gives me at least five different companies with that name, and many of them are not even in Boston.
I close my eyes and take a deep breath.
“There has to be some way that you can get me that address,” I say. “We need to act fast in case Austin decides to pick up everything and move camp. I already lost him once. I’m not going to lose him again.”
Kimberly thinks for a moment.
“I had their address on my phone. It was entered into the GPS so that I could find my way…” She sits up suddenly. “That’s it! My phone! Here, let me see yours…”
I hand it to her with a puzzled expression on my face and watch as she flips through a bunch of things, entering information where it is needed.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“My phone has a security device in it,” she explains. “I can use another phone, or a tablet, to pinpoint the location where my phone last connected to a satellite. That should give us the exact location of the Virtual Solutions building.”
Another minute or so of waiting and suddenly an alert pops up on the screen. Tapping it brings up a satellite map of Boston with a tiny red flag attached to a cluster of buildings. Zooming in gives us a clear view of a distinct building and, more importantly, an address.
I take my phone excitedly and do a screenshot of the map.
“This is it!” I say. “This is our big break! We can finally turn in The Cloak and The Drone and put them away for good.”
“What do you mean, we?” asks Kimberly as I begin going through my contacts on my phone.
“Me and Mae, of course,” I say, glancing at the time. It’s late. Most travel services are closed up for the night, but there are still options. “You need to be somewhere safe in case something happens. I can pay for a train ticket back to Maine. You’ll be back home in a few hours and your father can alert the authorities in Maine about The Drone’s whereabouts and how he kidnapped you.”
I’m already planning out everything that will happen between now and the moment that Mae and I storm the Spire Tech headquarters. Memories of our botched takedown from months ago are still fresh in my mind.
I have never been more humiliated as an Aberrant than I was when I found out that I had been duped by Austin.
This time, however, the headquarters won’t be a farce. This time they will be real, and we will actually have a shot at justice. This is the big ending I have been waiting for.
But, as I go to head for my room to get ready and call Mae, Kimberly stops me.
“Shaun, you can’t just rush in like this!” Her hand presses against my chest, trying to hold me in place. “These men were able to disguise themselves by controlling my mind - and many other people’s. They’re dangerous. I know I don’t have to tell you that -”
“You don’t,” I tell her. “But, don’t worry. I’ll be careful, and so will Mae.”
Kimberly folds her arms as she watches me hurry out of the dining room.
“That’s what you say…” she mutters.
I could respond, but I’m already putting my phone up by my ear, reaching out to Mae.
She answers moments later with trepidation in her voice.
“Shaun? What’s happening?”
I grip the phone tighter.
“Mae, Kimberly’s here,” I say, plowing through her shocked exclamations. “She gave me the address for Virtual Solutions. The game is over for them now. We attack at daybreak.”
23
<
br /> The Ambush
By the time daylight breaks I am zipping through the glow of morning rays. Dressed in my full Fallout costume, nothing can keep me out of the sky. The data on my visor blips every time a plane is spotted in the distance so that I don’t hit it on accident (this hasn’t happened yet...fingers crossed) and various other things move around.
But, the one thing that keeps my attention is the tiny dot marking the Spire Tech/Virtual Solutions headquarters. This data has been transferred over to my visor by Kimberly, and the signal of her phone is like a light at the end of the tunnel for me.
The end is near, I think as I put on an extra burst of speed, swooping down to avoid a chilly patch of wet cloudcover.
Behind me, Mae struggles to keep up.
“Shaun - you need to slow down!” she calls out, her voice barely audible over the wind thundering in my ears.
I glance over my shoulder at her.
“I can’t slow down,” I call back. “I don’t want The Drone or The Cloak to get away!”
Mae boosts herself through the air until she’s almost matching my speed and looks over at me.
“I thought the point of waiting until the morning was so that we would catch them off guard?”
“It was,” I say. “But, I don’t want to give them too much downtime. They might escape if we wait too long!”
For some reason, the words that Jean Smith, the man whose daughter was killed by Bill Flagrant, keep playing over in my mind.
If you knew where Flagrant was, would you turn him in to the authorities?
I grit my teeth.
The Drone isn’t getting away this time.
We coast downwards, being sure to keep high enough that we are indistinguishable as people from the vantage point of the ground. Within a minute or two, we approach the Spire Tech headquarters.
The building is made almost entirely of glass, though one side is concrete. That must have been where Kimberly escaped from. My visor outlines the broken air vent. I have to admit that jumping out of that vent had to take guts, as high as it is. She’s lucky she didn’t break anything.
There are cars around and people at various points on the sidewalk, but none of those things bother me. With my disguise on, and Mae wearing hers, the chances of us being ID’d is incredibly slim.
In fact, this is the first real daylight mission that the two of us have undertaken as full-blown Aberrants. It would be thrilling if I weren’t fighting back nausea at the idea of what’s about to go down.
I land on the slope of the rooftop just below the broken vent while Mae sets down on the tar below. She puts her hands on her hips as she looks up at me.
“What are you doing?” she asks.
“I’m going inside,” I reply.
I can’t see behind her mask, but I know from her tone that she’s frowning at me.
“The door is over there,” she points, but I dismiss her gesture and levitate up until I’m level with the opening in the concrete wall.
“When I say I want to take them by surprise,” I answer, “I intend to take them by surprise. They probably expect me to walk through the front door.” I position myself so that my head is sticking into the air vent and I look around. Without too much effort I should be able to glide through the tunnel and into one of the rooms below. Before doing so, I turn back to Mae. “I’m going in. You wait out here in case they come running outside. We need to immobilize them and then turn them over to the police.”
“Don’t worry,” says Mae. “I’ve got it. Just try not to let Austin come into contact with your skin, alright? I don’t need to be catching you in mid-air again because you’re hypnotized.”
I nod sternly, then add, “I can say the same to you. No mind games this time.”
I pause for another moment, taking in a breath before things get crazy, then duck into the air vent.
The space is tight so there isn’t much room to breathe, and the air has a dusty, stale aroma, but I can maneuver through the winding, boxy tunnel system easily enough. As I glide through I can see light coming up whenever there is a vent cover in the bottom of the metal enclosure.
I don’t know exactly where Kimberly was locked up, but soon I come across an opening in the vent system. Looking through this opening I see that the tunnel ends in this locked closet-like room. This must have been where she was. It would be pointless to get out in this room since the door looks like it’s still shut and locked, so I backtrack as gracefully as I can and stop at the next grate cover.
I hook my fingers into the spaces in the grate and pop it out of place, holding on tight so that it doesn’t go clattering to the floor. Silently I lower myself down to the floor and find myself in a hallway with doors on either side of me, as well as a corner at the end of this hallway that presumably leads to the official office entrance.
One of those doors nearby must be Austin’s office.
I check the alerts on my visor, searching for any heat signatures. Yet as I scan around there are no signatures through the walls as I thought there would be. There are no silhouettes of people at all.
My heart nearly drops out of my chest as I creep up to the first doorway and listen for movement or any kind of sounds. There is nothing. The area is completely silent aside from any noise that my shoes make on the floor and my breathing.
Could Austin and Bill have escaped already like I feared would happen?
I glance around the doorframe into the room which, by all appearances, is Austin’s office. There are bright windows that allow in sunlight, and the furniture is typical. A large black desk with leather chairs. Some artwork on the walls. There’s even a computer monitor and keyboard sitting neatly on the desk.
But, none of these items look out of the ordinary. They haven’t been moved. They might even be staged to mislead me into thinking that The Cloak and The Drone are still in the vicinity.
Part of me remembers the first time I confronted The Cloak in all his glory, expecting to bring the police down on him only to find that the entire space I stood in was an illusion.
To give myself some confidence I walk boldly into the room and place my hands on multiple surfaces just to see if they are actually there. Sure enough, the desk, chairs, and computer are all physical objects and exist in reality. None of them are illusions brought on by The Cloak.
That’s a good sign. But, then where are the two villains?
I creep across the hall and check the other room, which turns out to be Austin’s workshop, again, finding it empty of people. There are computers everywhere, dry-erase boards of algorithms and data hung on the walls, but no sign of Austin or Bill.
Now my pulse is really racing. This office can’t be that big. There are only so many places to hide.
I resort to investigating the remainder of the headquarters quickly with both hands raised and ready to attack. I check every nook and cranny that I can find, but there is no sign of Austin or Bill anywhere. My worst fears are realized.
They are already gone.
I race outside and down the steps to where Mae stands. On the sidewalk a small crowd of people have started to collect at the sight of Mae’s costume, and when I step into view I hear sounds of amazement. More than a few phones are lifted to take pictures.
Mae stands with her back to me, facing the crowd. She tries to keep them back, but it’s not helping much. These spectators won’t listen to someone unless they wear a police uniform. For them, we are just a curiosity - something to break up their boring day.
I feel like a failure as Mae turns to speak to me.
“Did you get them?” she asks.
I lower my head.
“No. They are already gone.”
“What?” she replies. “Is all of their stuff gone as well?”
“Nothing’s been moved. It’s as if they left in such a hurry that they didn’t bother to cover any of their tracks. Who knows where they are at this -”
Suddenly I see someone in the back of the crowd turn and
start to run away.
My eyes are drawn to them and they widen when they recognize the person running.
“Austin!” I say. Mae jerks her head around to look, but I’m already off, leaping into the air up over the crowd of people watching and make a bee-line for Austin. I’m right on top of him within seconds and tackle him to the ground by his shoulders.
“Where do you think you’re going?” I demand, preparing to wrestle the guy to the tar.
But, something bizarre is happening: Austin isn’t fighting back - or even fighting to flee now. Instead he’s curling up into a ball, whimpering with a phone clutched in his hands.
I disentangle myself from him and get to my feet as Mae comes flying over to me.
“Shaun, stop!” she calls out. “That’s not him! It’s a trick!”
I take a closer look at the person I just tackled and see clearly now that it isn’t Austin. It’s just a random guy who looked like Austin from behind. The young man trembles and holds up his hand as if to ward me off.
“Please, don’t hurt me!” he says.
I step back another couple paces just to be safe, even as the crowd of onlookers rushes over behind me.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” I say. “I’m sorry. I was just trying to protect you -”
A familiar voice echoes around the street - Austin’s voice. It sounds like he’s speaking through some sort of speaker system, though there isn’t one around.
I jerk my head up, searching for him in the windows of the surrounding buildings, but he is nowhere to be seen.
“Protect them?” says Austin from his hiding place. “What are you protecting these people from? Yourselves?” He lets out a forced laugh. “You just tackled a civilian to the ground, Fallout. Not only that, but you did it in front of multiple cameras.”
I grunt. He’s right. There are still many phones aimed at me and Mae, but there’s nothing I can do about that.
As Austin continues to laugh I realize that the sound of his voice is coming from all the phones in people’s hands. He’s using them as some sort of broadcast network. How he’s accomplishing it, I have no idea. I’m starting to feel like I’m in a Mission: Impossible movie where there’s someone watching my every move through all the cameras and speakers in the area. I’m probably right.
The Aberrant Series (Book 3): Super Villain Page 10