by Hal Bodner
Scowling while holding my breath, I snapped the cuff. He didn’t bother to thank me.
“We must get to Greene Genes right away!” He waddled past me to the door.
“Are you sure about that? How do you feel if I asked you to take a little stroll through a through a car wash on our way?”
He paused, sniffed at his own armpit, made a face and seemed to consider the suggestion. Then he shook his head, shot me a poisonous glare and trudged up the stairs.
When we emerged from the lighthouse, Doctor Harmon stopped to stand blinking in the murky light. Tears ran down his cheeks and I half expected him to drop to his knees and kiss the ground.
“The sun! I thought I would never see the sun again.”
“You’re not seeing it,” I pointed out helpfully. “It’s overcast. Looks like we’re due for another storm.”
He gave me another poisonous look, followed by an abrupt, “Where’s your car?”
“Car? What car? I walked. Well, I ran actually.”
“I am by no means in any condition to run,” he snapped. “Time is of the essence. You’re going to have to carry me.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
“I am most certainly not kidding. It’s essential I get these samples to a decent lab as soon as possible. Unless you want people to die?”
“But…”
My nose must have wrinkled because he understood my objection right away.
“You try being chained up in a dank dungeon for as long as I was and see how rosy you smell.”
“You could have licked yourself clean,” I offered. “Like a cat.”
With a sigh of defeat and a silent reminder to myself not to inhale through the nostrils, I slung the scientist over my shoulder in a modified fireman’s carry. Once I was sure his bulk was balanced correctly, I broke into a trot. Harmon grunted every time his mid-section jolted against my elbow.
“Do you…have to…be so…rough?” he gasped.
I ignored him.
“Are you sure you don’t want to go to a hospital first? Or to the police? Maybe a quick dip in a Jacuzzi full of bleach?”
“Greene Genes.”
You had to admire the guy’s sense of purpose.
“Oh shit!”
“What now?” I asked.
Harmon was facing backwards, so he had a clear view of what was behind us.
“He’s coming back! Faster, dammit! Run faster!”
I risked a peek. Sure enough, there was a black dot in the sky that resolved itself into Thanatos on his scooter as it loomed closer.
“You’re not exactly a waif-like sylph,” I growled. “The next time Weight Watchers slips one of those free trial coupons under your door, you might want to think things through before you toss it.”
Harmon kicked his feet, presumably to urge me to greater speed. Instead, I lost my grip, and his portly ass tumbled to the ground with an audible “Oof!”
I didn’t bother to collect him; there wasn’t enough time. I spun, prepared to do battle with both my nemesis and my own libido once again.
“Into the woods,” I ordered the scientist.
“What?”
“The woods, you idiot. Hide! I’ll keep him occupied while you escape. The road’s not far. Flag someone down. Promise to buy ’em a year’s supply of air freshener.”
“You want me to walk? I’m not wearing shoes!”
“Walk. Run. Skip. Gavotte. I don’t care. Just…go!”
My urgency finally penetrated and Harmon stopped arguing. He half-limped and half-scurried into the trees. He vanished from sight just in time to miss Thanatos’ far more graceful landing.
“What have we here?”
For a supervillain whose secret lair had been compromised, whose kidnaped scientist had been freed, and whose dastardly plans were about to be ruined, he seemed quite jolly.
“I guess coming along quietly is out of the question?” I asked.
He laughed, and I only just managed to catch myself before I joined in. No matter how attractive he was, I needed to remember that he’d tried to flash fry me without benefit of a pan.
“I was hoping to see you again, Whirlwind,” he chuckled.
“I need to check my schedule. I might be able to squeeze you in for a coffee date. How does the first Wednesday after twenty-to-life work for you?”
“Cute,” he said. “But even as cute as you are…”
In hindsight, my not being prepared for what came next seems incredibly stupid. Not that I’d abandoned all caution; I’d been alert the whole time. From the moment I’d entered the lighthouse, I’d been wary of where I put my feet lest I step on another concealed power grid. Even when I paused before kicking down that steel dungeon door, it was because I suspected that Thanatos might have it wired.
I never anticipated he’d have something portable.
The weapon just appeared. In his hand. Out of nowhere. I didn’t even have time to flinch. I felt a sharp, stinging pain near my collarbone. Half a second later, all of my nerve cells were dancing on hot coals again.
Been there. Done that. Have the memories of lungs full of river water to prove it.
“Sorry,” he said. “I turned up the voltage this time. Just to make sure. I hope you don’t mind.”
I had news for him. I minded.
My muscles turned into Spam, and I remained conscious just long enough to taste the dirt when my face slammed into the ground.
Chapter Eighteen
“Where the hell could he be?”
Gretchen shrugged, her face twisted with worry. “We went to the Tellmore place and found everything just like Bradley described. Except…”
“Except?”
“No Whirlwind.”
“Boogers,” Travis cursed softly.
The two of them had stolen a few minutes away from the chaos surrounding Doctor Harmon’s reappearance by ducking into a storage closet. Fortunately, the Polk Medical Center kept a lot of spare everything on hand and the closets were large, so there was enough space for Travis’s bulk. Unfortunately, there was very little space left over for the police chief. The two were pressed against each other, virtually chest-to-chest. Had anyone opened the door, they would have assumed they had interrupted a romantic tryst.
“You’re sure he’s not at the agency?” Only a faint trace of hope colored her voice; she already knew the answer.
“He told Randy he was napping. ‘Do not disturb upon pain of death.’ You know how dramatic he gets. Randy finally barged in anyway and Alec was gone. I double checked their apartment at Ale Mary’s, and then I called Peter.”
Gretchen winced. “I can’t imagine that went well.”
“I got lucky. His secretary said he was still at lunch.”
Gretchen tiredly scrubbed her face with her hands. “At least we didn’t find a body. Alec is hard to kill so, odds are, Thanatos is holding him somewhere.”
“When Peter gets home tonight and finds Alec missing… Damn! I knew I should have made insulating that suit a priority!”
Travis looked like he was frustrated enough to bang his forehead against the storeroom wall. Fortunately for the wall, it was covered with shelving.
“You had other things to worry about,” Gretchen soothed. “Like saving innocent lives.”
“Alec is innocent, too.”
“He’s only one person. If Thanatos gets impatient or decides to give us another demonstration, your work on the nanoprobes could help dozens, maybe hundreds. You done good, my friend. Besides, the Whirlwind’s been captured before.”
“True. But this business with Thanatos is different. It worries me. No one else ever suspected that electricity was the Whirlwind’s weakness. Even I didn’t know that! It’s like this guy’s got an inside line on information that no one else has.”
“What can I do to help?”
“When Peter shows up, keep him occupied. Use any excuse to keep him from finding out Alec’s missing. Arrest him if you have to.”
&n
bsp; “Arrest him?”
“Well, maybe not arrest him. Maybe you could drag him downtown for…I don’t know…for questioning or something. People died at Greene Genes, Gretch. Pete’s the acting Chairman of the board. There’s got to be some kind of paperwork you can tie him up with for a few hours.”
“I’ll figure it out. Wait!” Her eyes glinted when she thought of something. “Didn’t you once mention a homing device in Alec’s suit?”
Travis grimaced. “I made the mistake of putting it into the earpiece. The kid was always bitching that it didn’t fit and…well…” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a mangled hunk of plastic. “He got all huffy and took it off. Stepped on it too, it looks like.” He smiled, sad but affectionate. “Typical.”
“In the meantime, if we find Whirlwind, we find Thanatos. I’ve got every cop I can spare out looking. It’s just a matter of time.”
“I know,” he replied miserably. “I just wish we had a better idea of how much time we have to spare.”
Chapter Nineteen
When I came to, I had a momentary hallucination that I was in the steam room at the gym. Though I was sweating like a pig, the illusion was foiled because I was fully dressed. In fact, the costume was virtually plastered to my skin by my own perspiration.
It slowly dawned on me that no steam room I’d ever been in had been quite so hellish. True, there was that same “hot air” smell all around, but it lacked the distinctive overtones of toasted menthol and over-heated chemical disinfectant that you find in most gym saunas. I tried to sit up, but the temperature was enervating, and I felt drowsy and weak.
It was only when I struggled in earnest to rise that I discovered that I was pinioned at the wrists and ankles, fixed in place by a very thin, very sturdy, strap around my chest. As the fog evaporated from my brain, I also noticed that my entire body was experiencing a tingling sensation that set my nerves on edge. I immediately understood that, even if I had the strength to snap the bindings, I’d still be caught in an electrical field.
My vision slowly swam into focus, though the electricity delayed that process quite a bit. Eventually, with a disproportionate amount of effort, I was able to turn my head slightly to look around. What I saw was not encouraging.
I was flat on my back at the bottom of a cavernous space, a huge factory with metal catwalks that bisected the open space high above me, crowned by a roof supported by steel beams that shimmered in the heat. I could see, as well as hear, a line of roaring furnaces stretching into the distance to my left. Opposite them, a row of giant cauldrons large enough to hold double-sized portions of elephant stew bubbled and simmered, filled with molten metal.
Oh, great. Roasted alive. Again. How original.
The Aphid had tried it once, without much success. During the process, I’d been in agony. Nevertheless, I’d emerged relatively unscathed except for a weeks-long lingering sunburn that no amount of aloe vera could soothe. If that was what Thanatos had in mind, I didn’t relish revisiting the experience.
Fully alert now, I realized that the throbbing hum that I’d assumed was part of the mechanical process of the furnaces was actually coming from inside my own head. The instant it registered on my consciousness, a headache blossomed. The noise from all the burbling, clanking, simmering, and creaking machinery was trying to convert it into a full-fledged migraine. It was a dull pain, rooted deep inside my skull, accompanied by very strong nausea. I dry-swallowed a few times to keep my gorge down. On my back as I was, trapped and unable to move, vomiting would not have been a good idea.
As if all that wasn’t bad enough, there were an alarming number of abandoned tools within my immediate view. On second thought, they were more like “implements,” as in “implements of torture.” Clamps and shears and picks and other objects with sharp edges were scattered all over the place, as if the workers had dropped them in a hurry and fled. Not being a particularly handy type myself, I didn’t know what most of them were supposed to be used for. But given that they were probably designed to rip through metal and to withstand molten heat, I had no doubt they could be easily re-purposed to cause a great deal of agony to tender Whirlwind skin.
The air was dusty and thick. Everything smelled horribly, horribly hot; that was the only way to describe it. It wasn’t a particularly appealing smell but, looking on the bright side, it was a welcome relief from having to inhale Bradley Harmon’s body odor. I sneezed.
“You’re awake. Good. We can begin.”
Those are not the words one wants to hear when one is vulnerable and tied to a table, no matter how hunky the speaker may be. One prefers something more akin to, “You just lay back, enjoy yourself, and let me do all the work.”
I tried to speak. I’d like to think I would have uttered something noble and heroic, albeit cliched, like, “Do what you will! I’ll resist you to the bitter end!” But the electric current made my mouth feel like it was filled with a wad of couch stuffing, and I couldn’t get my tongue to move properly. All that came out was a garbled grunt.
“Eloquent,” Thanatos observed.
He ran one finger slowly down the center of my chest, across my stomach, and stopped just short of the Happy Place before he moved outside of my range of vision. He fussed with something on a table and, when I heard the clatter of tools, I tensed my muscles as well as I could to prepare myself for impending torture.
“It’s a shame. Splayed out like a juicy side of beef. Seems a pity not to take advantage, doesn’t it?”
His meaning was clear and, to be honest, not completely objectionable. Much to my surprise, I discovered that there was at least one part of my body that was immune to the electric field. Evidently, Thanatos saw it too.
“I hate to disappoint you, but rape is not on the menu.”
Before meeting Peter, I would have been drooling at the prospect. Now though, I was just drooling. Mostly because my saliva glands were screwy from the electricity as well.
“I hope you don’t mind that I had to take off my cape.”
He stepped forward so that I could see him again. There was something about the way he was standing that seemed odd. Then, it hit me.
The arrogant bastard was posing! His back was arched slightly to make his chest seem even bigger, and he was standing with one leg slightly turned out to better display his thigh muscles. The clincher was the way he kept flexing both his biceps, not enough to be overtly obvious, but enough to make his arms bulge. Not that I’d had any doubts since our tete a tete on the water tower, but I again saw how easy it was to be tricked into thinking he wore body armor.
“It sometimes gets in the way when I’m involved in more delicate operations.”
Delicate operations?
I wasn’t sure I liked the sound of that. Being tortured was kind of my stock in trade. Ever since the Whirlwind first came on the scene, one bad guy or another had been trying to kill him, and there seemed to be an unspoken competition to see which of them could come up with the most bizarre, or painful, way to do it. So, it wasn’t like I wasn’t used to the idea. But when he said “delicate operations,” I got this weird feeling, like he was going to extract a few of my internal parts and sell them to Central American organ smugglers.
“Also, it’s muggy in here.”
Muggy? Thanatos was a master of understatement. I’d have chosen words like stifling, searing, and blistering. Although, since it was very possible that my skin and those adjectives might become better acquainted in a very few minutes, perhaps muggy was just a dandy way to put it.
“And the cape doesn’t breathe very well.”
That made two of us.
He ceased his flexing and came closer. In one hand, he held an opened container that looked a lot like a quart-sized paint can.
“I wouldn’t confess this to just anyone, you understand. But I’m susceptible to heat rash.” He winked behind the mask. “It’s a very unattractive condition.”
Who was he kidding? Unattractive? Thanatos could have p
osed for a centerfold even if he’d had leprosy.
He loomed over me and, for an instant, I thought maybe he’d reconsidered the not-taking-advantage part. Sadly, his intentions were much different.
“Look,” he said, and there was a new quality to his voice, a regret that sounded very sincere. “I know you felt the same way I did when we met. Please believe me that if there was any other way but this…”
He stopped. If he hadn’t been a lunatic about to try and kill me, I’d have sworn that he’d gotten a little choked up.
“I’m not evil,” he said. “Not like those others. Not like that old lady who melts people and that crazy guy with the blimp.”
“Captain Dirigible,” I tried to say. But it came out sounding more like “Cuppin’ Thimble”.
“I really need you to understand that. I don’t want you to die thinking that I’m just another bad guy.”
It was kind of sweet in its own psychotic kind of way. However, as I quickly reminded myself, there were many, many other ways of showing someone how sweet you could be. In fact, freeing the hero and letting him live would be, I thought, an excellent way to demonstrate some sweetness.
“The truth is, if there was any way to make this easier for you, I would.”
He dipped his fingers into the jar, scooped up a glob of something, and plopped it onto the center of my chest.
“At least this first part won’t hurt at all.”
He was right about that. In fact, as he continued to cover my chest with the goo, working it over my arms, and smoothing it onto my stomach and lower parts, I found myself thinking that, as massages go, this probably wasn’t a bad one at all. Of course, it would have been a lot more pleasurable if I had some feeling left in my body. With that thought, a different one occurred to me:
What he’d said about the first part not hurting was troublesome.
What about the second part?
Or the third?
As he continued to spread the goo, I tried to struggle. It accomplished nothing other than some sympathetic, soothing noises from him. I think he thought he was helping me not to be afraid of dying. He had no idea how wrong he was.