It went without saying what a ping would do to any of us.
“I see. So can we block it again?” It took every ounce of restraint to keep my voice steady and calm. The scar at the back of my neck burned and itched. It was probably psychosomatic, but…
“Working on it right now. I’m also trying to track it to the source, where he’s transmitting it from.” Another second of anxious silence. “Steve, Peter—get moving. Get Rachael to her feet and get moving towards the northeast, out of town and into the desert. I'm worried that if you stay in one place too long, it’ll be able to lock in on you.”
Steve spoke first. “We’re going.”
“Good,” Jessie continued. “Hunter, you watching all this on the tablet?”
“He better be,” I growled, “and not about to fly me into the ground.”
“Okay. Give me a few minutes,” Jessie said in a singsong tone. “Be right back.”
I tried to sound nonchalant, as if I was used to flying around as blind as a bat. “Hunter, am I going to be like this much longer?”
“Hmm?”
“Hunter. Am. I. Going. To. Do. This. Longer?” My leg muscles ached, threatening to cramp up. “I’m not feeling so good.”
Another long pause. “Okay, get ready to drop the bubble in three, two, one, now.”
The world shot into focus around me as if I’d pulled the lens cap off my personal camera. I was about sixty feet in the air and headed for the training facility at the same angle we’d entered. It was as if nothing had happened over the past fifteen minutes.
“Where’s Lamarr?” There was a copper taste in my mouth. I turned my head to one side and spat blood into the air. This couldn’t be good.
“Just a second, Jo.”
“Hunter, just for the record, I think this invisibility thing sucks.” The silence on the line sent a pang of fear down my spine. “Hunter?”
“Yeah, I’m looking at your vital signs. Let’s not do that again too soon, okay?” He didn’t have to say anything else. My stomach started to cramp up with rolling groans of hunger.
“Lamarr.” I tried to pull my attention off my dwindling strength.
“He’s coming in from the other side of the town. Looks like he’s given up on you for the moment. What’s the status with the rest of you?”
“Rachael’s good,” Peter interrupted. “We’re talking and walking and she’s just fine. Scared shitless though.” There was a slight quiver in his voice, revealing she wasn’t the only one.
“Just do what you can to keep her calm. Get whatever you can about this Controller out of her.” I spat out another dark glob. “Anything.”
I spotted Lamarr coming in, below and towards me. The little bastard hadn’t noticed me popping out of wherever I’d popped to. If he got on the ground, he’d have access to his powers again, and I couldn’t let that happen.
I couldn’t shoot him, and I couldn’t let him get to Steve, Peter and Rachael.
“This is gonna hurt.” I dove at Lamarr, angling to nail him on the right side and try to save my already-aching ribs. My arms flew up in front of my face at the last second to try and take some of the impact.
“Jo?”
“Jo?”
“Jo!”
The last one was from Hunter and the last thing I heard before I smashed into Lamarr’s left side, my forearms taking the brunt of the hit. I heard a yelp from someone other than myself and fell from the sky, totally drained.
My training told me to curl up in a ball and hope the impact wouldn’t shatter too many limbs. I rolled over to put my back towards the ground and considered how a long, quiet time in traction for a shattered spine would give me time to work on my poetry. It’d be nice to just relax and ponder some haiku, catch up on my reading. Maybe dream about sleeping in a soft hotel bed and not waking up until noon and ordering in room service.
I braced myself, puffing the last of the air from my lungs in preparation for impact.
It never came.
Instead I found myself once again inhaling the intense smell of male sweat, this time mixed with leather.
“We’re going to have to stop meeting like this,” Steve rumbled as he swung around, cradling me in his arms. “Hunter’s going to get jealous.”
He placed me on my feet with all the tenderness of a museum curator placing a priceless vase on a pedestal.
I wobbled for a bit and put my left hand out, grabbing Steve’s shoulder.
“Damn,” I wheezed. “That hurt.”
Steve nodded at the building in front of me, the rickety old wooden frame about to collapse with a stiff wind. A large hole punctured the upper part of the wall, shattered pieces of wood still falling to the ground. “Hurt him more. I’ll go pick up the pieces.”
He patted my hand and took a step towards the building, taking his shoulder with him. I did my best impression of a drunkard for a second before regaining control and charging up again. My back muscles screamed, joined by every other part of my body including fingernails, toenails and individual skin cells.
I’d never felt so hollow, not even after the best of the worst workouts Mike had put me through.
A figure shot up from behind the building in front of me, too large to be Steve. He hovered in the air and glared at me.
My heart sank.
Lamarr held his left arm close to his body, pulling it in with his right hand. The jet pack sputtered on one side, and I could see the dent my impact left in the tank. It dribbled fuel, but the damage wasn’t enough to shut it down. He scowled at me, blood dripping from his mouth.
“Bitch,” he roared. “I’m going to rip your face off.”
Steve growled and dug his feet into the sand, preparing to jump towards the rogue super.
“No.” I reached for Steve. “He’ll kill you in the air. Take you up high and drop you.” I shook my head. “He’s mine.”
Steve paused, caught between the urge to protect me and wanting to take Lamarr down.
Lamarr laughed. “I’ll be back for you later, Slammer. After I teach this bitch some lessons.” He licked his lips, smearing the blood around.
I leapt into the air, grabbing at the last of my strength. I shot by Lamarr, relishing his shocked expression. He must have thought I was down and out.
He was only half right.
“What’s wrong, you pussy?” I yelled. My left side ached, the barely healed ribs reacting to the rough treatment. “Can’t take a woman who’ll stand up to you?”
Without waiting for an answer I cut in the afterburners, digging deep to gather as much power as I could from anything and everything around me.
“Where are you going?” Hunter snapped in my ear. “Jo, talk to me.”
“The jamming,” I gasped, unable to form a full sentence. “Update?” My lungs burned as I turned level and headed north, out of the town. The angry scream showed Lamarr was behind me and close.
“I’m downloading the program to Hunter’s tablet right now. He’s on his way to your location via chopper.” The wheezing on the line made me worry about Jessie’s health—until I realized it was my own jagged breathing.
A small forest loomed ahead of me. I twisted left and right, zigzagging between the trees to gain time as I sucked up more electromagnetic waves, grasping like a drowning woman at anything that could give me more power. I saw Lamarr on one turn, too close for comfort.
I dug through old memories, pushing through the exhaustion threatening to shut me down. It couldn’t be too far from here, it wasn’t too far from the town. I bit down on my bottom lip, clearing enough grey cells to remember the way.
“Okay, here we go,” Jessie yelled. “Hunter, activate that jamming program. It should be enough to keep you all secure in a limited area around Hunter’s tablet, about twenty-five miles. Uploading the big sister to the Agency’s satellites right now, but it’ll take more time to get it activated worldwide than we have right now.”
“Just shut those plugs down,” I rasped, “and find th
is Controller asshole.”
“Okay, Hunter’s on the move and you’re inside the safety zone. He won’t be able to do anything now,” Jessie bragged. “Steve, you can tell your girlfriend she’s safe now.”
“She’s not my girlfriend,” came the grumpy response. “But I’ll try. She’s still pretty terrified.”
“Jo,” Peter interrupted. “I’ve got him.”
“Got who?” A tree branch whipped across my face, blinding me for a second and making me grateful again for the goggles.
“I’ve got a lead on this guy,” Peter snapped. “There’s a bunker out in the woods, a hidey-hole for—for Guardians. He’s there.”
“How far from me?”
“Too far,” Hunter cut in. “He’s closer to Steve and Peter.”
“I’m on it,” Steve shouted. “I’ll let you know when to come get the pieces.”
The throbbing in my temples started. “Be careful, Steve. Be careful, we don’t know what his powers are. Other than being a pain in my ass,” I stuttered, unable to gather my thoughts beyond the immediate plan. “Hunter, Hunter, take point. Take command.”
“Jo, what are you doing?” Hunter snapped. “I’m on my way out there right now. I’ll be there in a few minutes.”
“I’m making sure Lamarr doesn’t escape.” I almost flew over the mine entrance before I saw it. The dead branches had nearly covered the opening, the twisted wood blending in with the thick railway ties surrounding the darkness. A lot had changed since Mike and I crept in, so many lifetimes ago. “I meant it. Take care of everyone.”
I heard a sharp intake of breath as if someone was about to say something, but then I was inside the mine and it was dark and shallow and more than a little claustrophobic.
There was a musty smell and the temperature dropped a few degrees, allowing me a bit of relief from the constant heat I’d suffered for the entire fight. I yanked back on my mental throttle to almost nothing, moving forward slowly as my eyes tried to adjust. Ripping my goggles off helped. I let them hang around my neck in case I got outside.
A loud yell came from behind me. I slipped into a side corridor, imagining Lamarr following me in and suffering the same sudden changes. If I was lucky, he’d be unable to slow down and slam into a wall at full speed and take himself out.
I hadn’t felt lucky since we left Vegas.
My feet dragged on the ground, and I stumbled to a stop, the last of my energy gone. I dropped to my knees in the rocky soil. My chest ached and my left side throbbed as a thousand tiny gnomes came out of the walls and beat it with tiny hammers.
Also, I think I was hallucinating. I like gnomes.
“Jo?”
I slapped the link shut in my mind, cutting myself off from Hunter and the rest. I couldn’t afford to be distracted. Steve was there, Hunter was there, and they had the situation under control. They had the Controller and Rachael Hammond to deal with.
I had Lamarr.
“Bitch.” The word bounced off the stone corridors. I got to my feet and crept farther into the darkness, choosing each step with care.
“I’m going to find you and then cut you up so badly they won’t have anything to bury,” Lamarr growled. “That’s after I surf your ass into oblivion for fucking up our plans.”
I thought about asking him about this Controller guy but caught myself at the last minute. Giving my position away was what he wanted, and I couldn’t afford to make any mistakes. Not this time.
The walls got cooler and cooler to the touch as I moved farther in, the jagged chunks of rock helping me pull myself down the corridors in my weakened state. Turn left then right, right then left down into the labyrinth. I had no idea where I was going but knew that the farther I went into the mine, Lamarr would follow.
“Where are you?” He sounded upset.
I stopped at another intersection and cupped my hands around my mouth. “Over here, you idiot. What, you need someone to hold your dick while you pee too?” Without waiting for a response I limped down the left corridor, sucking in as much power as I could. It was like forcing a shredded sponge to hold water. I saw the power dribbling out of me, no matter how much I pulled in. Whether it was the jacket or my exhausted state, I didn’t know and didn’t care. All I knew was that I wasn’t a super in here; I was just plain old Jo Tanis.
And I wasn’t going down without a fight.
“I’m going to…” Lamarr went into graphic description of what he was going to do to me, to Rachael, to the rest of the team, to Mike’s corpse and then started all over again. Not much of an imagination, but he did love to hear himself talk.
I took advantage of the rambling monologue to climb into a small hole in one wall, wedging myself into the slim crack as far as I could. The leather scraped against the rough edges, and I felt one small tear start, with the offending shard jabbing me in the back, but I had a plan. A cunning plan.
Hopefully it was a cunning get-me-out-alive plan.
“Jo, come on. You know you’re not cut out for this sort of work. We’re just actors strutting across the stage with some asshole pulling our strings.” A snicker echoed off the walls. “You and me, we weren’t ever supposed to be on top. We’re the spear carriers, the ones who prop up the real stars.”
I bit back my answer.
“And now we’re the smart ones. The survivors who didn’t run blindly to our deaths like those fuckers wanted us to.”
I could hear his heavy grunting, matched by a grinding noise that had to be his fingernails dragging across the walls.
“I didn’t kill my Guardian, you know. Idiot ran out into traffic to try and help evacuate the people. Got slammed by a car and died right there.” He let out a low chuckle. “Well, sort of. He would have died anyway; I just helped it along a bit with a cement block. I split after that.”
Questions danced on the edge of my tongue about the mysterious third super behind this all. He had found Lamarr, found Rachael and somehow convinced them he could reactivate the plugs.
You didn’t do that without knowing something about the Agency. Maybe he was a super, maybe a surviving Alpha who knew a lot more than just looking pretty for the cameras. He knew enough to equip Lamarr with a jet pack, train him and set out to take my team down.
He knew a hell of a lot.
“I heard Metal Mike talk once. Listened in on a briefing about some big battle, and he was pushing to have the two of you included, bump you up into the pros. He kept on and on, but they decided to keep you back down in the sewers with the rest of us.” The hollow laugh dug at my insides. “Big black fucker wanting to graduate you to the A-level list. You must have been a good lay, Jo.”
The ache in my belly threatened to burst free with an angry growl. This was not a good time for me to be hungry.
On the other hand, I wanted to snap the bastard’s neck. After I danced the Watusi on his belly in stilettos. With extreme prejudice.
“Come on, bitch.” Lamarr was close now, the whiny tone in his voice setting the hairs at the back of my neck on edge. “This is my playground, this is my world. Why you picked this place to be your grave is beyond me, but what the fuck—I’ll oblige you. This is where I rule, girl. I control everything around us, all the stone and all the rocks. I’ll tear a thousand new shafts in a few minutes. I can dump you down a hole so deep they’ll never find your body. Or run so many spikes through your body they’ll ship you home in an envelope.”
Out of the corner of my eye I spotted movement. I held my breath as he drew closer, picking his steps as carefully as I had a few minutes earlier.
“I’ll make it fast, ’kay? I’ll snap your neck. Afterwards.” The grim chuckle brought a new wave of nausea to life, my stomach rolling around. I moved my gloved hand down to my belly and pushed, hard.
Lamarr stopped still, now standing only a few inches from me. I could see he’d discarded the jet pack, out of fuel and useless after our collision. He looked pissed, for lack of a better word. His skin shone in the dim light still tr
aveling in from outside, the sweat running down his neck and into the shiny material under his torn shirt.
That was it. Some sort of insulating material keeping my attacks from immobilizing him. The bastard or his boss had a pretty good brain to figure that one out.
Good thing I wasn’t your typical dumb blonde.
He moved by me with his arms outstretched, fingers dragging along the walls. His left hand skipped over the crack I’d hidden in. Even with the enhanced wiring in the jacket I was nowhere up to even half-strength, and my attack still couldn’t touch him.
Lamarr kept on walking and cursing, his tone rising and falling between pleading and cursing, threatening and teasing.
I slipped out of the opening a few minutes later. If I was lucky, I’d make it back to the entrance and leave him wandering in the labyrinth until I returned with Steve and the rest of the team, making a concentrated effort to keep him contained.
The arm slipping around my throat told me I wasn’t so lucky.
“Bitch,” Lamarr hissed in my ear as he yanked his arm back, tightening his hold. “I told you I’d get you. You thought you’d sneak past me, the guy with eyes in his fingers? What the fuck do you take me for, an idiot?”
“Well, yeah,” I rasped as I clawed at his forearm. The pressure increased on my windpipe, pushing the air out of my lungs. “I sort of did.”
I let my knees go limp, just like I’d practiced a thousand times in training with Mike. Lamarr let out a grunt as I slipped towards the ground, my body weight dragging his forearm away from the crippling hold.
A second later I twisted around towards Lamarr and broke free from his grip. It wasn’t pretty, but it was exactly how it’d gone in practice.
My right fist slammed into his injured left side, adding a bit of a twist with my fingers at the last minute for the heck of it. It was a weak punch, but I put everything I had into it.
Heroes Without, Monsters Within Page 20