Sound rushed back, from the moaning of the man she nailed in the balls, to the screaming of another she couldn’t see. The screaming got closer as a man with a black suit, tie, and retro sunglasses stumbled out of the office behind the broken window, his torso covered in blood and glass shards. He flailed around, trying to pull out the piece embedded in his chest. He dropped to his knees, then face planted as he lost the battle with pain and blood loss.
They had been ready for her... they just had no way to know that past a certain point her molecular density became such that she couldn’t be electrocuted.
“Tessa?” she called out. When her friend didn’t reply she took a ground shaking step back.
“Tia, I’m here. Tessa said from behind her. “You okay?”
Tia nodded. “They weren’t as prepared for my powers as they thought,” she said, brushing the dust and dirt from her outfit. “Now what?”
“I’d say question them but...”
Tia smiled. “Sorry, not sorry?”
Tessa laughed. “Yes, that’s how you say it. Let’s get out of here before the cops come. I have another plan for saving our friends.”
Tia let some of her mass go, though not all of it, and followed Tessa out of the building. Sirens in the distance worried her. She wouldn’t—couldn’t—hurt police. If it came down to it, she would surrender. As she followed Tessa, the sirens grew more intense.
Tessa looked over her shoulder with a smile. “Down that alley is a fire escape. We climb up it and over the roof and we’re home free.”
They turned the corner into the alley just as two cop cars passed by, lights flashing, speeding toward the warehouse. Tessa used her powers to levitate herself up and onto the first landing. She unlatched the ladder and sent it rattling to the ground below.
“I’ll meet you up top.” She leaped out into the air and floated up to the roof in a few seconds.
Tia could reduce her mass and weight, even enough to float gently to the ground if need be, but it was much harder than increasing. Almost like she was bailing out a bathtub with her hands.
She turned her internal faucet off and in a few moments was her usual self. As always, when she stayed heavy for more than a few minutes, returning to her real weight left her feeling light-headed but with a bounce in her step.
She climbed up the ladder, pulled herself up to the first balcony then started the trudge up the next five. The last one ended with a small ladder to climb, almost as if she were getting out of a pool. Reaching, she grasped the iron handles and pulled herself up.
Standing a few feet away, looking directly at her, was Tessa.
“What are you doing?” Tia asked.
“Waiting for you,” Tessa replied and launched her mental attack. A wall of force, stronger than anything Tia had felt from Tessa before, struck her in the chest and face, lifting her off the fire escape and dropping her the five stories to the ground.
The last thing she saw before impacting the ground was Tessa’s gloating face.
SIXTEEN
KATE
Gunfire, flame, and red beams of energy shot forth from the group of criminals. From what Kate could tell, nearly all of them had superpowers. How had she not heard of another superpowered criminal organization? The Riot Boys (and Girls) were the last ones that had tried to make a foothold in the US, and the Protectors had handed them their butts.
But these folks didn’t seem like they were interested in knocking over jewelry stores. Drugs and human trafficking were usually the domain of the DEA and Border Patrol. Why did they spend millions of dollars and influence to take down Amelia and the Protectors? They were backing Agent Brown’s crusade against Amelia for sure, but why?
Kate didn’t have any longer to ponder the events; it was time to move. Carlos absorbed the majority of the fire; what didn’t ricochet to the side from his shield, bounced off the rest of him.
She spun, looked up to the roof and teleported. A second later she was fifty feet up and looking down on the battle. Of the eleven people left, not counting Kronk—who didn’t look like he was going to get back up anytime soon—three had guns. The rest appeared to have powers—a fire generator, laser eyes, speedster, and five strong men guessing by how they were taking up positions between the gunners and Carlos.
“Go! Get the merchandise out of here!” Dominguez screamed to the two men and one woman with guns that were firing uselessly at Carlos. The woman ran for the truck full of girls while the men ran for the drug vehicles.
Drugs were a problem, but lives were a bigger issue for Kate. She focused on the running woman and leaped off the roof. After three seconds of falling she triggered her teleportation. The world vanished, only to re-appear with her feet hitting the running woman square in the back. Kate rode her down to the ground with the gravity assist. The woman’s face slammed into the dirt, her nose exploding in a shower of blood as it flattened against her face. Kate kneeled into her back, grabbed a mop of hair, and slammed her head down a few more times for good measure.
Once she was sure the woman wasn’t going anywhere she spun around and teleported to the hood of the first truck. The man with the UZI had just climbed in and was turning the engine over when she landed with a crunch of metal.
“What the fu—” he was cut off as she slammed her bionic arm through the windshield and into his face. She grabbed his collar and pulled him as hard as she could into the windshield. His face hit with a sickening crunch.
Two down.
“Kate, move!” Carlos yelled. She didn’t hesitate, leaping straight up into the air, flipping backward and teleporting to the ground. Crimson beams of heat slashed through the air above her, melting the hood of the truck and striking the wall behind her with an explosive impact.
Kate rolled sideways and around the vehicle that shielded her. The man with the crimson eye beams wore a white button up shirt and jeans. The red beams stopped, and he blinked several times.
He can’t leave them on. Good to know.
She ran right at him, as fast as her enhanced strength would let her. Which was pretty damn fast.
He focused on her as she came at him; his eyes burned bright red and Kate risked one more step before she dropped to the ground in a slide. She was well short of him, but she dropped in time to avoid the laser vision.
With a mental trigger, she teleported right in front of him, carrying her momentum with her. He let out an ear splitting, high pitched keen as her boot struck his man-parts with glass shattering force. He stumbled backward, eye-beams winking out of existence as he dropped to his knees, hands clasped to his privates.
Kate kip-upped, spun and landed a boot on his temple, knocking him aside like a rag doll. His limp body hit the ground hard. It was probably doing him a favor—considering the pain she had inflicted on him.
Kate only had a second to check on Carlos. Not that she needed to.
Carlos slapped one of the “strong-men” aside with his shield, knocking the man through the brick wall that circled the courtyard. He lifted his sandaled foot and slammed another in the chest, sending him crashing into the truck with the smoking hood.
Kate looked for Dominguez; it was all for naught if they didn’t stop him. The rest of these people were just grunts; Dominguez was the one in charge.
SEVENTEEN
Kate slapped Carlos on the shoulder as she ran behind him, letting the Unstoppable Force know she was moving away from the field of battle. In the confusion, Dominguez had slipped out; she needed to find him. Only he knew who was pulling the strings here, and why they so badly wanted Amelia and the Protectors out of the picture.
Carlos dodged to the side for a moment as the speedster came in at him, hurling a thousand metal ball bearings at the Greek-themed superhero. She could see them bouncing off his armor and flesh, but still, they had to sting. Carlos held his hand out toward his spear and the magic weapon flung itself through the air to slap his palm. With the force of an explosion the Protector slammed the spear head into the
ground. Seismic waves of force spread out from him, cracking open the ground and setting off car alarms a mile away. The shock wave hit the speedster like a wall, flattening his nose in a gush of blood.
Kate chuckled as she initiated her teleport up to the roof of the old fort. Mud brick walls that had to be two hundred years old surrounded the place. It looked like something out of an old western. The roof had sheets of plywood laid down to keep it from collapsing.
Now that she was on the roof and not fighting for her life, she took a moment to examine what was outside the walls. A sprawling town, barely larger than a village, with maybe fifty buildings spread out outside the walls. It was big enough that Dominguez could disappear if he needed too.
“Milton, this is Kate, do you have eyes on us?”
“I can, but I’ll need to hack a KH13 and they are on the list Amelia has asked us not to hack. Would you like me to anyway, mum?”
Kate scanned the horizon, trying to make up her mind, hoping she could spot some sign of Dominguez. “What are the risks?”
“The KH13’s are the most advanced spy satellites in the world. While I can access them, doing so could reveal my location. The government currently thinks they have shut me down inside the Spire. They do not know my actual location and this could give them that information. However, you are one of three people who can authorize this. I will do as you ask.”
Dammit. They needed Dominguez but not if it meant exposing Milton. The AI was their greatest weapon and he was most effective if the enemy didn’t know he existed.
“No, Milton, don’t. We’ll find him another way. Can you detect any wireless signals in the area?” she asked.
“Yes, several. Your assailants all have cell phones. The fort you are standing on has a wi-fi network of some kind and there are several more in the nearby town.”
She gave the area one more look, teleporting from corner to corner to see if she could spot him by chance— nothing.
“Okay, start breaking in and scanning them for data. We need every piece of info we can get.”
“I’m on it.”
By the time she returned to Carlos, the fight was over. Winning would be a lot better if they didn’t have to leave so many bodies on the ground, but at least the bodies weren’t the innocent people this time.
“He get away?” Carlos asked.
“Yeah,” she replied as she walked to the truck. “Any of you speak English?” she asked the girls chained to the floor.
They all nodded their heads. One, a tall leggy blonde who couldn’t be more than sixteen spoke up. “We’re all from the states. You’re Domino, right?”
Kate nodded and leaped effortlessly into the truck. The chains weren’t thick, but they were brand new. She could cut through them with her sword but they would still have the cuffs on.
“Muscles, why don’t you hop up here and flex some of those biceps?” she asked with a grin.
Carlos sauntered forward, shaking his head and chuckling at the nickname she used for him. He climbed up, not jumping like Kate did, and examined the situation. “Yeah, give me a second.” He carefully kneeled down and put two fingers on either side of the cuffs of the first girl, an African American whose clothes had seen better days. She flinched when he reached for her.
“Please,” she whispered. Her eyes were wide and red from crying.
Carlos held his hands in a surrendering gesture. Reaching up, he lifted his helmet off, and placed it on the floor next to him. “It’s okay, senorita, my name is Carlos but most people know me as The Protector. Have you ever seen me on the Internet?”
She nodded, looking between him and Kate. “It’s okay, hon, he’s one of the good ones,” Kate said while placing her hand on Carlos’ armored shoulder. He reached up and patted her hand; the little gesture made her heart flutter.
Get a grip. What are you? A child?
To ease the process, Kate flooded the area with the pheromone meant to reduce stress and engender trust. It was the kind of smell that a brain would interpret as coming from a best friend. After a moment the tension visibly eased on the faces of the trapped girls.
“I watched a YouTube video of you fighting that guy who looks like a Rhino. Did you really throw a tank at him?”
Carlos chuckled, a lazy grin that was his signature smile spreading across his face. “I sure did. Seventy-three tons of battle steel, right in his face. That was a good day. But not as good as today. This is what the Protector is meant to do, saving people. It’s a calling that goes back four-thousand years. Did you know that?” he asked her.
She shook her head. Of course, there was no way for anyone to know that. Only Pythia and Carlos knew the whole story—something Kate found annoying, considering Pythia was dead and Carlos was as tight lipped as they came.
He gingerly reached up, careful to only touch the manacles, and pinched either side of them. With no visible effort, he pulled them apart with a ping of breaking metal. The girl smiled at him, eyes wide like a doe and suddenly Kate was more than annoyed.
She was jealous.
Worried that her emotions would translate into pheromones and upset the work they had already done, she stormed out of the back of the truck, her knee brushing Carlos as she passed him.
“You okay?” he asked as she hopped down.
“Fine.”
She hated her answer. It was so stereotypical. Of course, she wasn’t fine! What was she supposed to do, swoon?
Oh Carlos, your muscles are so big and so is your heart, oooh.
She kicked a stone as she walked by, letting her anger vent. She took it out on the few prisoners they had, dragging them none too kindly to the back of the last working truck and slamming them down on the bed.
When that was done, she activated her comms again. “Milton?”
“Here, mum.”
“Is there anyone at the US Consulate in Mexico we can trust to get these girls back to the states?”
“Give me just a moment and I will find out for you.”
She nodded, forgetting he couldn’t see her. He didn’t seem to need her acknowledgment though. She folded her arms across her chest and leaned to one side, biting her lip and trying to shake the unpleasant feelings flaring up in her heart. Why should she be jealous? She and Carlos were nothing to each other. She’d practically ignored him before he became the Protector, and since… well, since then they had flirted back and forth but whenever it seemed like it would become more, Carlos would back off.
He... would back off.
A man. From her.
Insufferable!
She’d told Amelia once that there was a dark side to her powers. A craving, almost like a need to be the center of attention. It had become so automatic, so normal, to be the desire of every man around her that she expected it. When her powers had first expressed it was a nightmare. Every teenage hormone she felt was inflicted on the people around her. Once she gained some control it had turned into something else; a perk. She was in control, always in control.
And here comes a man who had definitely wanted her before but now actively shot her down... multiple times since she started to desire him too. Not to mention resisting her powers. Even the ones she used without meaning too.
“It’s irony, that’s what it is,” she said out loud.
“What’s irony?” Carlos asked from behind her. Kate jumped, letting out a small cry as he startled her. How did a man that large, wearing bronze armor for God’s sake, move so damn quietly?
“Nothing, I’m just thinking out loud. How’s your fan club?”’
His eyebrow shot up. “Uh, well. Angelica wants to make sure we stay with them—”
She knew it was wrong—knew the feelings in her heart were irrational and even stupid. That didn’t stop her from feeling them.
“Angelica? You’re on a first name basis, are you? Tell me Carlos, do you just put on this act for me and Amelia?”
Confusion swept his face as he tried, and failed, to follow what was wrong. “A
ct? Domino what are you talking about?”
Domino. Once again he’d managed to build distance between them. “What’s your game? Come back here and flirt just to lead me on? Is this revenge on the hot girl for ignoring you when you were scrawny? God, if I’d known you were this petty I would never have flirted with you in the first place—”
It wasn't until she looked him in the eye did the extent of the blow she’d just delivered dawn on her. She had always shielded herself from the emotions of others; now she opened herself up to what he felt.
She wanted to take it back. The look in his eyes broke her. She reached out to touch him, her emotions pulling a one-eighty in a heartbeat as the extent of her cruelty was revealed to her.
The shock and pain rolling off of him was almost too much to bear. She’d truly hurt him with her thoughtless words. If she’d opened her powers up before, she would have sensed how much he cared about her, but she was too wrapped up in her own self to think about anyone else.
“Carlos I’m—”
He sliced his hand through the air in front of her, holding his palm open toward his spear. “It’s fine. Milton says there’s a fire in Rome that needs my assistance. You’ve got this, right? Have Milton call me if you need more help.” As he spoke, the spear smacked his palm and he threw it up toward the sky in one smooth motion. The bronze spear disappeared in a second. He held his hand up for a moment more before he flew after the spear like a retreating rubber band, disappearing into the sun just as fast as the spear had.
“I’m sorry,” she said reflexively. He was long gone when the words final came.
EIGHTEEN
Ancient Arsenal (Full Metal Superhero Book 7) Page 8