And I immediately thought about what Karen had said about how they had been gassed. What type of an impact would that have had on their lungs?
“Phew,” Justin said. “I…should have never told Bixby that I had younger siblings. I think she’s…assigned me to be Chloe’s…permanent babysitter. Hi, Dawn.”
“Hi,” I replied shyly.
“Sup,” Diego said with a nod.
“Oh…you’re that guy from yesterday,” Justin replied. “I must admit, seeing you smack that Black Hat across the face? Easily the highlight of my month. I’m Justin.”
He reached out his hand toward Diego, who shook it firmly.
“Glad I could be of service,” he said.
“Attention! Attention! It’s time for the show to start.”
We all turned our head to see Chloe standing in the center of the room on top of one of the chairs, her voice raised.
“Shit, she’s probably going to fall off of that,” Justin murmured, before raising his voice. “Hey, Chloe. There’s no show here.”
“Of course there is,” Chloe said, turning back toward us, her lips spread in a wide toothy grin.
And then I noticed something strange about Justin’s shirt sleeve. Something almost…glistening.
“Is that a handprint?” I asked.
Chloe raised her hands high like a conductor and gestured toward Pod One’s table and chairs, parts of which now glowed with the same strange light.
And then the explosions began.
She let out a high-pitched laugh and waved her hands across the wall, a long line of explosions following where she had recently dragged her fingers. Chunks of rock flew into the air. The glass doors cracked, the control panel to the main entryway sparked.
She gestured toward the people.
And then the screaming started.
I turned to Justin, eyes wide. “Your shirt!”
But he was way ahead of me, pulling it off his body, leaving him with a gray undershirt. The button-up exploded in his hands, and he howled in pain. I watched as his palms immediately began to blister. He fell to his knees.
“Chloe!” he choked out. “Stop!”
“Why should I stop?” she asked, her voice high, maniacal. “It’s time for the grand finale.”
And then she turned to the entrance to Pod Two and raised her hands.
The explosion that rocketed out of there was ten times stronger than anything she had produced in the Big Room. I jumped to my feet to what sounded like a cave-in.
She had taken down the walls, maybe even the ceiling.
And Mark was still in there!
“No more cages,” Chloe said.
14
Alex
“Well,” Alan said, turning away from the computer. “We’re in.”
“You don’t exactly sound pleased about that,” I replied with a frown.
“Unfortunately, we have a problem with the hard drive. Most of the data is corrupted.”
“Man, that sucks.” Connor shook his head. “Can your hacker still pull something off of it?”
“He’s willing to give it a try, in person. It’s not a task he’s up to walking me through over the phone.”
“So, this could be everything that we’re looking for, or it could be nothing.” I rubbed the back of my neck with my right hand, then froze. “Wait, you said most of the data. That means you were able to get something, right?”
In response, Alan clicked on a file. A video player immediately popped up, with an image of a woman speaking directly toward the camera.
It was difficult to make out her face, thanks to her white doctor’s mask. Her dark hair was pulled back into a bun. Her eyes were cold, professional.
“Continuing with test 3.5,” she said, holding what looked like a very sharp scalpel.
She stepped away from the camera, revealing her surroundings. Next to me, Alan tensed up.
The footage was of the room that we were standing in, only instead of empty tables, a blond guy around Dawn’s age was strapped to the closest one. It had been adjusted somehow to make it stand completely vertical, the restraints holding him in place. The guy wasn’t wearing a shirt and I could see that his body was glistening with sweat, his face red.
“What are you doing?” he said, as the woman drew close. “What are you—fuck!”
The camera zoomed in on her handiwork as she carefully cut into his chest.
Everything went black. Before I could comment, the camera cut back in again, shooting from the same angle, but showing an empty room.
“Where did he go?” I asked.
“The file is corrupted,” Alan explained. “As a result, the clips may not be in—”
Before he could finish, the video jumped again. We watched as two men dressed in black dragged the same blond guy into the room. He was still wearing a shirt, making me wonder if this had taken place before the first clip. At first, he seemed scared, but not panicked. Then he caught sight of the metal table and began to struggle, pushing against the guys that were holding him.
“No way!” he yelled. “Fuck no. I’m not—”
The camera cut out again, switching to a clip of now three guards struggling with the one guy as he kicked and screamed on the floor.
“Come on!” he cried out. “I’m not going—”
The camera cut again, seemingly picking up around where the first clip ended. The woman in the white mask took a step back from the man and turned to an assistant holding a petri dish. She handed him what looked like a strip of skin.
“What the—” I was cut off as the video changed. This time the woman was sitting back at the desk, speaking into the camera.
“—seems unimpacted by sharp objects. Therefore, we will be attempting a more concussive—”
The camera cut off again, just in time to catch one of the guards swinging a hammer at the blond guy’s knee. The air was filled by a howl of pain.
The camera cut out again, back to the woman at the desk. She raised the petri dish, a familiar grisly sight inside.
“Pain receptors seem to be reacting as normal, but the exoskeleton does appear to be protecting the subject from any internal harm. X-rays will be needed to confirm—”
The camera cut again, this time to a handheld view zooming in on the guy’s chest. I watched as the woman leaned in close to the wound, pulling aside skin to reveal a dark, reddish surface underneath.
It cut again, this time to the man, alone in the room, strapped to that table.
“Jesus,” he said, “Jesus. Jesus. Jesus.”
It was impossible to tell whether he was cursing or praying.
“Turn it off,” I said.
Alan complied, looking—I couldn’t help but notice—a little pale himself.
“Well,” I said, swallowing. “That was…what it was. But this is what we have been looking for, right? Real evidence against SynergyCorp. Put this shit on the news and people will start to look at things differently.”
“Hopefully,” Connor said.
“What?” I turned to him, gaping. “Come on, Connor, that was fucked up.”
“Trust me, I agree with you, man. But what about this video is connected to SynergyCorp? Nothing, right? No logos. No notable faces. They can claim that it was doctored, hired actors set up by one of their competitors. I mean, does anyone even know who this guy is?”
“Mark Andrews,” Alan replied.
“Wait.” I spread my hands apart. “You’re telling me that’s Dawn’s ex?”
“Yes, and there was a fair amount of outcry when he went missing. It was true that he was overshadowed by Dawn’s simultaneous disappearance. It was hard for the media to ignore the irony of someone kidnapping the daughter of a mystery writer. But Mark was also able to garner some attention, mostly based on his looks and his connection to Dawn. People were attracted to the idea of doomed lovers.”
“I can’t believe I’m saying this again, but I am so glad I was busy with a life of crime when that shit-show
was going on.” I shook my head. “But there you go…people in Bailey City, where SynergyCorp owns about, what, a dozen buildings?”
“More than that.”
“—they’re gonna recognize this guy,” I continued. “And then we’ll invite them all down to this suspicious-ass research facility in the middle of nowhere filled with corpses. That should be enough to convince the world.”
Connor nodded but still looked troubled.
“We should take the computer with us,” he said. “Maybe have your guy look at in, see if he can recover a few more videos. I’ll take all of the evidence that I get.”
“I can remove the hard drive if either of you have a screwdriver,” Alan offered.
“Yeah.” Connor reached for his belt. “What kind do you need?”
While the two of them pulled the computer apart, I wandered back toward the metal table, which looked even more terrifying now. Sure, both Alan and Sunshine had implied that Mark hadn’t been the best boyfriend to Dawn, but just because you’re a dick doesn’t mean you deserve something like that.
And I was going to guess Mark hadn’t been the only one who had gone through that.
“Hey, I’m gonna go to check the hallway,” I called back over my shoulder.
“Be careful,” Connor replied.
I nodded, stepped out the door, and headed down the hall. Christ, this place was big. I passed by doors with electric locks that I wasn’t going to open without backup. A defibrillator attached to the wall. Multiple fire extinguishers.
And then I turned a corner and almost tripped over a body.
It was another woman, wearing a worn dress. She had been a redhead too, although hers looked natural, not dyed like the last woman. The level of decomp made it uncomfortable to look at her face, but it was impossible to miss out on the hair, or the bullet holes in her clothes. Several feet away lay an overturned vending machine, its glass front shattered. It made me wonder. The people in here probably all had powers just like Dawn. What had hers been? Could she have knocked over that thing?
Even if she had, it hadn’t resulted in any deaths. It hadn’t saved the other guy, whose body lay just a few paces away. He had clearly been shot multiple times as well.
This hallway was a little longer than the last one, ending in a set of swinging double doors with small, circular windows.
The doors and windows were also peppered with bullet holes.
I stepped forward, pushing the doors open, and swore. The windows were supposed to show you who was on the other side, but they hadn’t been big enough to show me the body now at my feet. This one was a man, with more than his fair share of ink. There was only one bullet hole on him that I could see, but it counted. He had been taken out by a clean head shot.
But by who?
The lights flickered on in front of me, revealing yet another hallway filled with more creepy-ass labs and…a broom closet?
I frowned and reached for the doorknob. Much like the other doors in this building, this one wouldn’t budge, although there wasn’t an electronic lock next to it. I felt the keys jingle at my belt. Reaching down, I pulled them out and tried them, finding success on the third one. Looked like mops and cleaning supplies didn’t require the same level of security as a lab. I slowly turned the knob, so as not to make any noise, then pulled it back all in one go.
And nearly jumped out of my skin.
Because on the other side of the door, right next to the mops and brooms, was a person, a guard, standing in front of me, very much alive.
I tensed up, ready to throw myself out of the way at the first sign of a weapon. And then I realized something very important.
He wasn’t moving.
I took a step forward, taking a closer look at the guy. In a lot of ways, he looked normal. Dressed in a guard’s uniform, complete with serial number, and a black hat. And while he wasn’t an old man, he was far from young, his hair and mustache mostly gray. His face was frozen in an expression of shock that would have been funny had the situation not been so fucked up. His hands were raised, as if in defense. And he was covered in…was that dust?
“Guys?” I called back.
I paused and leaned in closer. Yup. That was dust. Like he had been frozen in time and shoved in a closet. He didn’t even appear to be—
As I leaned in, he jerked in place, letting out a gasp.
I pulled backward, fast, watching as he raised his hands to his chest and pulled in oxygen as if he hadn’t breathed in ages.
“What?” He began, “Who are you? Are you from HQ?”
I held myself very still. The armor I wore now was different from when I had been Faultline, but it was pretty damn close. People in and around Bailey City would recognize the sight. Unless, of course, he had been down here for months.
Since the time that Dawn had been kidnapped.
I nodded slowly, anger sparking at the edges of my vision.
“Finally,” the man said, shaking his head. “The subjects are running amok. I warned them that Asian girl was strong enough to become a problem. You know that one whose hair goes all red.”
I reached back and socked him across the face so hard that he went flying back into the broom closet. He didn’t even have the chance to react to it, just stared up at me in shock. I took a step forward, filled with the sudden urge to reach down and crush the life out of him.
“Faultline, stop!”
Ignoring the voice behind me, I took a step forward, pressing my right hand against the doorframe. The wood splintered—Christ, that felt good! After being the good guy for the last three months it was nice to finally get to cause some damage.
I leaned over and picked up the guy by his throat, my anger burning so hot that I could see more than just the faultlines in the doorframe I had just fucked up. No, I could also see the cracks in his bones, old injuries that hadn’t healed quite right. How much would it take just to shatter them all?
“Drop him, Alex.” Connor’s voice was sharp.
At the sound of my real name, I turned my head in his direction. At the big dumb archer and his stupid moral—
The sight was enough to give me pause. Not of him standing there, bow drawn back, a blazing arrow of light pulled to the ready. No, it was the damage that grabbed me. While the guard had broken a couple things in his past, Connor was a map of past injuries, and the problems went far beyond broken bones.
It was almost enough to break me out of my rage.
Almost.
“We need information from him, Alex,” Alan added, far calmer than Connor.
“Oh, I can get information,” I said, my voice a growl. “I can make this fucker sing.”
Alan nodded. “Good.”
“What? No!” Connor shook his head. “We don’t do things like that. Think about what Dawn would want. Would she want to see you looking like this?”
At the mention of Dawn’s name, I felt a memory tug at the back of my mind, of one of the many times that Dawn had tried to pull me into her world of fictional superheroes.
She had given up on comic books pretty quick. I mean, who wanted to pay four bucks for something you could fly through in a few minutes? So, her next step had been movies and TV shows.
I remember a particularly violent one that we had watched on Netflix, curled up on the couch at her house while her mom was off on some business thing. It was obvious why she had picked this one for me. The main character’s dad was a boxer, and the fights were really good. There was a scene where the main character tortures a gang member for information, and I remember Dawn going very still.
“A little dark for you, Hikari?” I had teased her.
“I so regret telling you what that means now,” she had said. “But…I dunno. It’s always bothered me about this show, and other heroes as well. They won’t kill anyone, of course. At the same time, they have nothing against torturing them.”
“One’s a little more permanent than the other,” I had said.
“I know, but is it
really?” Dawn asked. “I mean, no one’s going to just recover from that.”
We watched as the hero threw the bad guy over the side of a building.
I winced. “Okay. That was a little extreme.”
“It’s more than just that. It robs Matt of his supposed moral high ground.” Dawn shook her head. “I get that in a gritty story like this, the lines between heroes and villains are blurry. Everyone feels like they have a good reason to do what they do. And isn’t it the same in real life? Just look at Calypso. Her mission for revenge—I bet that she felt her reasons behind it were pretty valid.” She paused. “In fact, I know so.”
“One of the drawbacks of getting her literally stuck in your head.”
“Exactly! So, in a world where everyone feels completely valid in their beliefs, it’s your methods that set you apart. Do you respect all life? Do you focus on helping others before taking down your enemies? Every time you make a moral sacrifice, do something like that.” She gestured at the screen. “You move one step closer to what you’re fighting against.”
“Huh,” I said, the conversation ringing a little too close to home. “So, what do you do then? How do you stay on the right side?”
“You don’t move.”
“Faultline!” Connor’s voice cut through my thoughts. “I will shoot you and trust me when I say that this takes a while to wake up from.”
In response, I spun, tossing the guard to the floor. He landed with a grunt.
And the anger that had roared inside of me? Christ, it was still there. The light was so bright that a migraine had begun to form around my eyes, something that normally only happened after using my powers for an extended period of time. I sloped to the side, reaching out with my right to lean against the wall for support.
And then the entire hallway shook.
For a few seconds, no one moved. Connor with his glowing arrow trained on me. Alan’s eyes darted toward the ceiling, as if worried about a cave-in.
And for all I know, it could have been enough. I was in completely new territory. Shaking a room like that—hell, even causing that table to tremble—that’s not what my powers did. I wasn’t an earthquake machine. I exploited existing faults, made new ones. I didn’t have the power to shake the earth.
Silver and Gold (Red and Black Book 3) Page 15