“We’ll figure something out, but a bank vault is probably not the best place to discuss it.”
Her gaze flicked to the door, sharpening, refocusing. “Did you come without reinforcements?”
“Lucien’s checking out another false-alarm from a motion-sensor across town. We’ve had to split up to cover them all. You wouldn’t believe how often the damn things give a false positive.” Or maybe she would, since bending whoever was monitoring the feed to believe it was a false positive was her best way of covering up her breaking and entering. “Look, just come back to Trident with me for now. We both know they can’t keep you there so what’s the harm in coming back?”
“Fine.”
He didn’t give her time to reconsider. As soon as he had the affirmative, Julian tapped twice on the vault door and the manager who’d been called in to deal with the unexpected reset of the alarm system opened it from the outside. The portly man with a sharp gaze blinked twice when he saw Mirabelle with him in the vault. “How in the—”
“Hero training drill,” she said quickly, and Julian almost flinched at how smoothly the lie rolled off her tongue.
The bank manager—Willetts? Walters?—instantly relaxed. “Oh, good. When I heard the sirens—”
“Sirens?” Mirage interrupted sharply, shooting Julian a suspicious frown.
“Probably just responding to a call nearby,” Julian said to assuage both the bank manager and Mirage. He hustled her up the stairs and through the lobby while lavishing thanks on the manager he was reasonably certain was named Wallace. It was a strange feeling, this need to escape the scene of her crime. He was used to swaggering out with the villain in cuffs rather than hustling her toward the door with a hand on her arm.
Was this wrong? Sure, she needed to be rehabilitated, but should she be charged, booked and sentenced to rehab? It wasn’t like him to circumvent the justice system. He had the most convictions of any super because he always made his captures strictly by the book. Whatever else tonight had been, it sure as hell hadn’t been by the book. Was she somehow manipulating him, even if she couldn’t pull an illusion over his eyes?
Then they stepped out the front door and everything went straight to hell, wiping away all thoughts of the ethics of what he was doing.
Chapter Five: Faster Than a Speeding Bullet, My Ass
Red and blue lights strobed and spotlights blinded him as a bullhorn-distorted voice demanded they put their hands where the cops could see them. Julian felt the muscles in Mirabelle’s arm tense, adrenaline charging up her fight or flight reflex. He didn’t want to let go of her, having no idea how she would react to the situation, but he also couldn’t see the cops and he didn’t want bullets flying before they realized they were looking at Captain Justice in plain-clothes. He could handle a hail of gunfire, but Mirabelle didn’t have the imperviousness of superstrength to protect her and Justice didn’t have the speed to guarantee he could get in front of her before she took a hit. Lucien may be faster than a speeding bullet, but Julian was just screwed.
He released her arm and lifted his hands above his head. “I’m Captain Justice,” he shouted in the general direction of the bullhorn. “The situation is under control.”
“We know who you are, sir, but I’m afraid we have new protocols in place. We’ll need to confirm that you aren’t being controlled by the villain, sir.”
Damn. He’d forgotten about the safety measures they’d put in place after the Mind Bender Kevin had manipulated half the public officials in the city. He’d been in favor of them, but now he just wanted to get Mirabelle away from here. Julian’s eyes were adjusting to the glaring lights and he was able to make out half a dozen patrol cars. He didn’t want to think about how many guns were pointed their way.
“Mirage,” he said under his breath. “Put your hands up.”
She slanted him a look, a sly smile tipping her lips. “I am.”
He felt the air around him shift, like some invisible force was leaning against him and then he saw it, a shadow image superimposed over reality. Mirage, hands held above her head, looking innocent and defeated. That innocence, more than anything else, convinced him the illusion was a lie.
The real Mirage stood, hip cocked, and shoved her hands into her pockets. One of those hands instantly came back out again and she frowned at a small dark object in her fist as if she’d never seen it before.
“What is that?” Julian asked sharply. “Did you take that from inside the vault?”
“Oops.”
Mirage tipped her face toward him and he saw the exact moment her eyes glassed over as the real Mirabelle checked out and whatever Kevin had implanted in her slid into place.
Oh shit.
* * * * * * * * * *
Mirage felt incredible. Pure, clean purpose pulsed through her veins. She knew what to do now. She was strong. She was confident. Confusion was a pale memory. This was who she was meant to be. A god among mortals, twisting fate to suit her whim.
It was so easy to reach out and yank the minds around her into the vision she wanted. She’d been growing stronger. Once upon a time, she’d had to be in physical contact to project illusions or had only been able to hold a few minds at once, but now, now she felt limitless. Free. As if her abilities had progressed beyond the ability to measure, let alone contain.
She ducked behind Justice, letting the crowd see a knife in her hand, see it flash across his throat and draw a sudden gush of blood, see her image fleeing to the south, leaping the stair rail, running. Spotlights tracked that phantom movement, gunfire exploded—suddenly, startlingly loud—all of it aimed unerringly at her other self as that illusory projection ran, but Justice spun, so fast she would have believed he had superspeed and threw her to the ground, shielding her body from stray bullets with his own.
A woman screamed, gunfire cracked, tires screeched as patrol cars took off down the street after her other self.
“What are you doing?” Justice roared, shouting to be heard over the cacophony.
He was so strong. The mighty Captain Justice. So hard above her, his weight pressing her down onto the stone steps. He’d protected her instinctively, without even a second thought. What kind of man did that? He was so dominant, naturally in command, radiating masculine power. God, he’s hot.
So why did she want to push him, to test her powers against his, to see if she could make the unbending Justice bow for her? She was stronger. She knew she was. She could twist him. There was no one she couldn’t break. She’d broken Kevin. Kevin… The name set off an eerie cascade in her mind, a rockslide, her thoughts loose fragments of shale pinging off one another as they fell. Something was wrong. This wasn’t her. Was it?
* * * * * * * * * *
“Mirage.” When she didn’t respond, Julian tried her other name. “Mirabelle!” Still nothing. Damn it. He couldn’t tell what she was projecting, but he could see the effect. Whatever the hell she was doing was seriously fucking with the minds of everyone in range.
He needed to snap her out of it. He gripped her face, stared into her glazed-over eyes, trying to ignore the disturbing speed with which her pupils expanded and contracted, and sent the tiniest pulse of compulsion through his hands. “Why are you doing this, Mirage?”
Her smoky blue eyes focused, then filled with confusion. Her face twisted and suddenly there were tears. “I don’t know.”
“Can you stop?” he asked.
But she was already gone. Pupils cycling, expression blank. The Mirage he’d been talking to in the vault wasn’t there anymore and he had no idea what he would find in her place. He quickly palmed the syringe Eisenmann had given him, lifted it and jabbed it into her upper arm. She didn’t even flinch.
For a second he was sure he’d screwed it up, jabbed it in the wrong place though Eisenmann had said anywhere would work, then she went limp and the gunfire suddenly cut off amid shouts of “What the fuck?”
Julian came quickly to his feet, lifting a boneless Mirabelle into his arm
s, and started down the bank steps to meet the confused fury of the police force.
* * * * * * * * * *
Half an hour later, after more evasions than he normally gave in a year, Julian had a police escort back to Trident and was on his way to the cruiser with Mirage limp in his arms when an all-too-familiar blonde reporter popped up in his path. Kim looked wan, a little the worse for wear, and he took a vicious satisfaction in the idea that their break-up had sucked the life out of her rosy complexion.
“Julian, thank God you’re all right. The blood… That was… I can’t…”
Kim Carruthers, speechless.
He felt a brief flicker of shame at his spite as he realized she was probably half in shock from what she thought she’d just witnessed. The cops had told him it looked like Mirage had somehow slit his throat. It was probably Kim he’d heard screaming. But she hadn’t run to him the second she’d seen he was all right. She hadn’t begged him to take her back. She’d waited until he was done with the cops like a good little reporter, biding her time for the perfect sound bite. And when she’d come forward, she hovered back just far enough to stay out of her photographer’s shot, her recorder held in front of her like a shield to keep him from getting too familiar. As if he could, with Mirage unconscious in his arms.
“I see you’re still here.” His grumble was about the limit of his civility where Kim was concerned. In the last few days, his initial numbness had taken a turn toward anger. It wasn’t pretty, but part of him—probably his wounded ego—wanted to punish her for her indifference, for being able to walk away so easily.
“I leave next week. Just tying up loose ends and catching a few more juicy stories. Never hurts to get a couple more front-page bylines.”
He was shaking his head before she finished speaking. “Not this one. I don’t want this in the papers.”
“Julian.” His name was a reprimand on her lips. “I can’t bury it. You know that.”
“I know that you owe me and I’ve never asked a damn thing from you. I’m asking this. Find a way to keep it quiet.” He dodged around her, making a beeline for the cruiser before anyone else could get in his way. He heard Kim call after him, but didn’t slow, didn’t glance back. Eisenmann had said the tranq would keep Mirage out for three hours, but he wasn’t taking any chances. He needed to get her back to Trident and figure out what the hell had happened tonight.
Chapter Six: Nice Men in White Coats
Mirage woke facing a padded white wall. Again. But at least today she remembered it wasn’t the first time. So that was a plus. Maybe she was cured.
She snorted. Not likely. A girl wasn’t screwed in the head for three months and then magically fixed just because she spent an evening bumping shoulders with some buff, straight-as-an-arrow hero boy. If only life were that simple.
She rolled over and bit back a shout when she realized she wasn’t alone. A dark, hulking form hunched beside her bed. Lucien. Sleeping with his large body wedged into a chair. Just looking at him contorted that way made her spine ache in sympathy.
“Luc.”
He jerked awake at the sound of her voice, lurching toward her with an outstretched hand as if he had to touch her to be sure she was really there—though they both knew her illusions held up to the test of physical contact. Still, she caught his hand and squeezed it hard. He looked like he’d been through the wars. Deep grooves lined his face, bloodshot eyes squinted at her like he couldn’t quite get them open all the way, and his clothing had been slept in at least once. Guilt and helplessness fought for dominance in the hollow ache in her chest. She’d done this to him. No wonder DynaGirl looked at her like she was something stuck on the bottom of her shoe.
“How are you feeling?” His voice sounded like he’d swallowed rocks.
Mirage was tempted to turn the question back on him, but Lucien would just ignore her until she answered him. He never thought of his own welfare when she was in trouble. Their father hadn’t been much of a father, but Luc had more than made up for any lack of protectiveness.
“I’m a little fuzzy,” she admitted. “But at the moment I’m running the show in here.” She tapped her temple. “So, no complaints.”
“The fuzziness is probably the sedative. Eisenmann said it might leave you groggy.” Lucien frowned. “No power hangover? You were burning pretty hot last night.”
Blood. Bullets flying. A woman screaming. The fragmented pieces of last night fit themselves into a sloppy, chaotic image. She sat up abruptly. “Did I stab someone?”
“You didn’t touch anyone, but you projected an elaborate illusion into dozens of minds simultaneously and held it up until Justice knocked you out. Do you feel nauseous? Headache?”
Mirage probed the corners of her brain, looking for the ache that always accompanied overusing her powers, but she felt nothing but waiting strength, the feeling of a muscle well-worked and itching to be used again. “Dozens?”
She’d never been able to do so many before. A few at a time, easy. A simple vanishing act where she erased herself from general awareness, no problem. But a full sensory illusion projected on dozens of witnesses, all with different angles—which raised the difficulty stakes considerably—she should be unconscious, collapsed under a killer power hangover.
Lucien shifted nervously and Mirage’s focus cut back to him. “What?”
“Eisenmann thinks your abilities might be going through a kind of second puberty. He thinks you broke through some kind of internal barrier when you and Kevin… when you…”
“When I broke Kevin’s mind.”
Lucien grimaced, acknowledging with a curt nod what he hadn’t been able to say aloud. “Eisenmann expects you to stabilize at a new plateau, but can’t predict if you’re there yet or if your abilities will continue to grow.”
Her brother looked miserable at the prospect that her powers could grow still stronger. At the moment, she couldn’t blame him. “So I’m becoming a more dangerous weapon and we’re no closer to figuring out how to disarm me or if Kevin had already aimed me and implanted a latent command to set me off at some undisclosed moment in the future. Awesome.”
“We’d like to trace your steps. See if we can get any clues from the days you were missing.”
“I don’t remember anything before the vault.” But from the moment Captain Justice had walked into her life, everything was crystal clear. Even the parts where she hadn’t been herself were coming back with unusual clarity.
There had been a moment, right before he’d knocked her out… he’d done something to her when he asked her what she was doing. She’d felt it push her thoughts into order. It was invasive, unsettling, but had it helped?
“Captain Justice thinks he can help you remember,” Lucien said, his face a study in neutrality. “But it’s your choice. You don’t have to—”
“Yes, I do.” Mirage tucked her knees up and wrapped her arms around them, dropping her chin on top. “Darla trusts him and you trust Darla, right?”
“Absolutely. But if you aren’t comfortable with him in your head—”
“Luc, my head isn’t exactly a fortress of solitude at the moment. If he can clear out a few of the excess residents in here, he’s welcome to come for a visit.”
“This is serious, Belle.”
“Which is why we can’t afford to be squeamish.” She projected an illusion of absolute confidence at Lucien so he wouldn’t see her doubts on her face. The truth was that after Kevin, the idea of another man in her head, potentially manipulating her thoughts, forcing her to his version of reality, terrified her. But the alternative… “Luc, why didn’t you ever tell me I’d lost three months in here?”
His face took on the guarded disappointment that had become so familiar. “I have told you,” he said, soft and cautious, like she would shatter if he said it too loud.
“Oh.” She swallowed around the lump in her throat. “All right then. When can Justice start?”
“He’s here now.”
“
Now it is.”
“Good girl.” Lucien nodded and straightened out of the chair, bending to pat her awkwardly on the shoulder before he slipped out of the room to find her savior. He’d never been awkward with her before. Their relationship had been a lot of things, but never cautious. Now there was a distance between them, the awareness of her madness always the elephant in the room. He kept himself apart from her—afraid of connecting if she wasn’t going to remember it? Afraid her insanity might be catching? Afraid she might snap and lash out at him in one of the moments when those other, unpredictable versions of herself sprang to the fore? Or just afraid of loving her if she was never going to return to the version of her he knew?
Mirage hated that fear. All of it. But she couldn’t blame him for it. Not when she was so afraid of herself.
* * * * * * * * * *
“Just relax. This isn’t going to hurt.”
Julian wasn’t sure who he was talking to more—Mirage, who looked like she was mentally plotting escape routes from the room, or Lucien, who kept shooting glares at him, making it very clear he would happily rip Julian’s arms from their sockets if he harmed one hair on precious Mirabelle’s head. Or at least try to. Since they both had superstrength, it was a coin-flip who would come out on top if it ever came down to a brawl.
They’d migrated out of Mirage’s cell, commandeering a small conference room for their first attempt. Mirage sat at the head of the table, with Julian to her left and Lucien on her right, DynaGirl taking up her post on Wroth’s opposite side. Eisenmann had been called back to the cells to deal with another resident, so at least Julian was spared having his actions scientifically dissected as well as questioned by a demented, over-protective sibling.
Mirage looked younger than ever at the head of the table, though her eyes spoke clearly that she’d never been a child. Her short life had made her ancient in record time. Julian hadn’t given a thought to her youth until now. And only now because she looked so small and fragile, dwarfed by the executive chair and the massive table.
Super Bad (a Superlovin' novella) Page 4