Toxicity (Out of the Box Book 13)

by Robert J. Crane

  “I’m not done shopping yet,” June said, turning on her heel and leaving Steve sputtering, dabbing at his face with his sleeve. She dropped the stale nachos right there on the floor, yellow cheese product splattering on the white tile, browned by age and foot traffic. They’d already cleaned out the register, a couple hundred rolled up in Ell’s pocket, making a lump.

  “The cops are here, June,” Ell said, still ducking behind the display, peeking up. He was always expecting to get shot down in a hail of bullets, the chicken.

  “Yeah, and?” She took a Twix bar off the shelf and made a production of studying it. Like she cared about the caloric information. She was young and a meta; her metabolism burned fast.

  “And they could—”

  “Shoot us?” June asked, ripping open the Twix with a crinkle. “And hit poor Steve? Or—” she looked down at the twentysomething woman standing by the drink cooler at the end of her aisle. “What’s your name?”

  The woman stood there, shaking, her eyes closed. She actually had to open them up to figure out June was talking to her. “April,” she said finally, once it had all clicked into place and she’d decided that answering was smarter than not.

  “Yeah, they’d shoot poor April and Steve if they unloaded on us now,” June said, a little sullenly. She’d just started talking to Ell again a few minutes before they’d come in here, and now he was practically begging her to freeze him out again. When was he going to learn?

  “I don’t like this,” Ell said, tapping his finger against a can of Pringles with nervous energy. “I don’t want—”

  “Don’t be such a baby, Ell,” June said. She moved to the refrigeration units and opened one of the doors to swipe a Coke bottle.

  “I’m not a—” Ell started to reply, and then the bell jangled to herald the arrival of someone new, causing both of them to whip their heads around in surprise.

  “It’s humid out there,” the newcomer said. June stared at him in near disbelief. He had sandy blond hair, was tall, and fanned himself by lifting his collar, which was tucked under a nicely appointed suit jacket. “I always thought those people that talked about it not being the heat but the humidity—well, I thought they were full of it, but—I mean, damn. It really is the humidity here.”

  “Who the hell are y—” Ell started to ask.

  But June beat him to it. “I know you,” she said, dropping the sweating Coke bottle and pointing at the newcomer. She snapped her fingers once at him as the bottle hit the ground and thumped, carbonation bubbling up silently at the neck. “I’ve seen you on TV. You’re Sienna Nealon’s ex.”

  The man in the door sighed, looking toward the ceiling. “Yeah. It’s almost like I’m not even a person on my own. No attributes, just a label—‘Sienna Nealon’s ex-boyfriend.'

  “Ex boy toy, it looks like,” June said with a snort. The guy was a meta. But what was his power? Water or something, wasn’t it? Pfffft. How dangerous could that be? Especially now that they were off the beach, June wouldn’t have minded a little dousing to break the sweat forming in the small of her back.

  “June …” Ell said with rising alarm, “… this guy is a cop.”

  “Of course he’s a cop,” June said. If she could have shut Ell’s mouth for him right now, she would have. “He’s in charge of hunting her down, don’t you remember? We saw him on that 20/20 feature on her a couple months ago. I think we were in Charlotte at the time.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Ell said softly, like he was recalling it. He glanced nervously from her to the new guy. “What are you doing here, man?” Like he didn’t know. June just cringed; he was so cute sometimes, but so dumb sometimes, too. That might have been why he was cute. He was like a puppy that didn’t know not to lick the wall socket.

  “I’m here because of you, obviously,” the FBI guy said. “I’m Scott Byerly. And you must be June and Elliot.”

  Elliot cringed further. June took it indifferently, forcing a grin. None of this surprised her, but Ell was still just a little too shy about the attention they commanded. “How do you know our names?” Elliot asked.

  “It’s hard to miss what you’ve been doing, Elliot,” Scott said, favoring him with a knowing smirk. “You’ve kind of made a mess.”

  “Good,” June said, and grabbed the shelf nearest her and turned it over easily, sending chips and cookies raining to the ground in their individual wrappings. “I like a mess.”

  “I’m guessing you’ve never been a janitor,” Scott said with that same smug smirk.

  June boiled a little. What right did this jackass have to get all up in her business? “I’m guessing by that suit that you haven’t, either.”

  “Excellent point,” Scott said, taking her aside in stride. “But it doesn’t change the fact that you two are doing a lot of damage in your little crime spree—”

  “Ooh, damage,” June said, feeling her skin turn hot as he spoke. She reached out and shoved over the next row of shelves, causing Ell to yelp and jump clear as they crashed down, blocking the aisle between her and the FBI guy. “That sounds terrible. I wouldn’t want to cause any of that.”

  Scott stared at her for a second. “Really?” He looked around the store a little theatrically. “Because I wouldn’t mind causing a little.”

  Glass broke behind her and something smacked into the side of June’s head as she turned to look. A plastic bottle of Coke ruptured in her hair, exploding in fizz and sugary water all over her like the tide had rolled in on her at the beach. She gasped in surprised and sweet cola shot up her nose and onto her tongue as she turned away quickly. One plastic bottle after another pelted her—in the ass, the back of the left thigh, her hip bone, her arm. They hit hard enough to leave a bruise each time, some of them exploding and others just glancing off and smacking into upturned shelves.

  “June!” Ell shouted, and leapt into motion. He thrust his hand at Scott and a small tornado tore at the FBI agent, whipping a dozen bags of chips at the man as he tried to dodge and got stuck in the whirlwind anyway.

  “Just get him!” June shouted, trying to get the soda-drenched hair out of her eyes. If she’d been sticky before, this was going to make it so much worse. She threw up a hand, and it belched out a cloud of purple toxin as another bottle struck her in the side of the face and caused her vision to blur from the impact.

  “Get me?” Scott shouted over the howl of Ell’s vortex. “That’s your plan, Ray? Get me?”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” June said, another bottle exploding against the back of her head. She shrieked, because it stung like hell, and she reached out, propelling the cloud of toxin she’d just emitted toward this asshole. She kept it concentrated, because her heart was beating in her ears and her fury was overpowering.

  This sonofabitch? He deserved to die.

  And she sent it right at him, planning to cram it down his throat, knowing that if he breathed it in … she’d get her wish.

  5.

  Scott

  “Uh oh,” Scott said. In his view, any mysterious purple cloud was probably best avoided; knowing it came out of the hand of a woman who’d been poisoning the people she’d run across lately made his desire to avoid it even more acute.

  The problem was, he was trapped in a bubble of wind created by the other one, Elliot. It whipped against him, his lapels slapping against his chest, collar straining as Scott fought against the little tornado created to keep him stuck in the air.

  It was working, unfortunately. Conquering the winds to the sides weren’t impossible, but the updraft keeping his feet off the ground? That one was a real pain in the ass.

  He continued pounding June with the expulsion of every soft drink in the cabinet. They were streaking out of the coolers across the room now, smacking her all about the back of the head and neck as she covered herself and dodged, probably missing one in three. Scott was ready to start sending the beers next, figuring the cans and glass bottles rupturing on her would probably put a dent in her skull and start her
bleeding rather than just piss her off, as he’d seemed to do thus far.

  “You don’t have to do this, kid!” Scott yelled over the wind whirling around him, trying to get Elliot to see reason. He seemed the more level-headed of them.

  Elliot gawked at him, froze, and looked back at June for reassurance or guidance. “Bae?” he called to her. That was interesting, Scott thought, as he maintained his hovering stasis in the middle of the tornado.

  June missed Elliot’s look, however; a beer can detonated against the side of her head and she cried out. For Scott’s money, she was the target to pick. Elliot couldn’t even seem to decide if he wanted to attack without her, which immediately gave Scott a new plan:

  Take out of the brains of the operation, and the body would probably stop flailing.

  He’d been holding back anyway, trying to keep from making too much of a mess in spite of what he’d said, trying to keep this situation from spiraling completely out of control. Unfortunately, he reflected as the wind beneath him surged and turned him around for the first time, that strategy was not going so well.

  Scott had the power to kill them both, of course. He was just hesitant to employ it willy-nilly. He could smash June’s skull using a beer can like a massive bullet, but …

  Then they’d be dead. And they were just teens. They hadn’t actually killed anyone yet, after all …

  He was trying to find a way to vocalize that thought when he spun around again and found the purple cloud that he’d forgotten about in the midst of his sudden attack of vertigo, now only inches away from his face. “Shit!” Scott shouted, and panicked.

  He blew all the bottles and cans in the freezers at once. The Icee machine exploded and frosty syrup came out in a wave of red, blue, green and white. There was only one way he knew to get the hell out of the windstorm, and it wasn’t a subtle one.

  The purple toxin entered his cocoon of imprisonment just as Scott was forming one of his own composed entirely of liquid. The sink in the backroom blew off and water rushed in to join the symphony of liquid he was directing to come his way. It snaked toward him in a multicolored fusion, a rainbow of liquid, and he cast out all the sugars along the way. It colored the floor as it fell out of his stream in a little rain.

  Scott took his last breath a second too late; the toxin flooded in, caught in the whirlwind around him. His ad hoc defense burst through the wind a moment later, warring hard against the direction of the air currents. He resisted its turn even as he coughed, surrounding himself with liquid, the derivative water beneath the soda and Icee combinations responding to his call and dragging the other components and dyes along for the ride.

  “What the hell!” June shouted as he surrounded himself with a liquid wall. Her toxin had caught him off guard, and it shouldn’t have. That had been a dumb mistake on his part, getting distracted. It burned his lungs, felt like someone had lit a match and caught his bad breath on fire all the way down into his chest. His lips even felt scalded.

  Scott couldn’t respond, and he might not have even if he could have mustered something. Instead he just concentrated on breaking his way out of the whirlwind around him, riding the water back to solid ground and then lancing out with it as soon as he was free of his prison.

  He heard glass shatter and screams fill the air. His eyes were squinted tight, lungs still burning, and he touched the ground a second later as his chariot of water set him down. He hacked and spluttered, feeling like he might cough up everything he’d ever had. That lasted a little while, his metahuman healing warring with the dose of purple toxin he’d been dealt, chest on fire with the pain of trying to cleanse itself from June’s poison.

  “You okay?” came the rough voice of Rafferty, and Scott forced his teary eyes open. The detective was standing over him, gun drawn, but looking fairly relaxed considering Scott had been engaged in a bout of metahuman combat only moments before.

  “I … think so,” Scott choked out, looking around. “Where’d they go?”

  “Exited in a cloud of that stuff,” he said, eyeing a purple, pillowy mass of toxin that had splattered on the floor in a puddle. He offered a hand, which Scott took, helping him to his feet. “I take it things didn’t go well.” It was not a question.

  “If they got away, no,” Scott said, breaking into another coughing fit. “Things did not go well.” He looked around through squinted, teary eyes. The front windows of the convenience store were all shattered, and a clerk was standing out front, looking shaken, along with a young lady he figured must have been hostage number two, who looked positively catatonic.

  “At least there were no fatalities,” Rafferty said.

  “Did you see their car?” Scott asked, coughing again. He hadn’t realized he’d been down that long, trying to expunge that awful stuff from his lungs and his bloodstream. Not that it had been easy; the pain had certainly stretched time.

  “They were heading for I-95,” Rafferty said. “We have cars in pursuit—”

  “Call them off,” Scott said, covering his mouth as he coughed again, expelling a bloody mass of sputum. “They’re not ready for this unless you’re going to just try and pick them off at a distance.”

  Rafferty’s face evinced little criticism of that idea. “We’re not authorized,” was all he said, though.

  “Then pull back,” Scott said.

  “And what? Let you handle them?” Here Rafferty showed his skepticism. “Because it went so well before.”

  “I’m not going after them on my own,” Scott said, shaking his head. His lungs still felt like he’d breathed in real, genuine fire. If I wasn’t a meta, I’d probably be dead right now, he thought. “But … I might know someone who could give me a hand …”

  6.

  Sienna

  “It’s this thing I like to do,” I said, pulling my robe tightly closed, staring in disbelief at Mr. 5%, who was leering back at me. I was getting the vibe that this guy was thinking I’d gone after him for a reason other than the one I had. A more flattering reason to him, and presumably how he justified his continued existence to the world. “I like to look people in the eyes when I call them stupid. It’s good manners, after all. Calling people stupid when you can’t even look them in the face just seems rude.”

  “I’m smarter than you think,” 5% said smugly, proving himself wrong in one statement. “I can see what’s going on here.” He ran a hand down his muscular pectoral partially obscured by his shirt. “You got a good look at me. Now maybe you want a taste of the merchandise. And I can oblige you.”

  “Oh, lawd,” I said. I actually felt nausea. “Aren’t you the guy who just insulted his girlfriend for being too fat? And you’re out here chasing me?” I was tempted to let my robe spill open, but that would probably just encourage him.

  “I could see the hunger in your eyes,” he said, supremely confident.

  “I was looking at my plate, trust me,” I said. “Nothing about you appeals to me. Nothing.”

  “Come on,” Mr. 5% said. “Girl your age … you’re not here alone because you want to be.” He eased a little closer to me. “You’re looking for something.” He made a not-subtle motion toward his groin. “I’ve got something.”

  “Something that’s 5% of what an average man has, I’d guess.”

  That made him flush. “You’re gonna be lonely for a long time, chubby,” he said. “And frustrated.”

  “Better alone than 95% unsatisfied—”

  I saw the punch coming a few seconds before it came. He squared off his feet in a way that told me he was breaking off diplomatic contact because he just so flaming pissed at me.

  About time. I had been wondering what it was going to take. I’d been insulting the dumb bastard since we met. 5% of his brain indeed.

  I leaned in, presenting him a tempting target—my lower jaw. I stuck it out just slightly, enough to entice him to swing for me. I’d had a feeling that a guy who would take out his pathetic inadequacies by verbally abusing his skinny girlfriend in public f
or being fat, then chase after another woman who wasn’t nearly as tiny probably wouldn’t have any qualms about hitting a woman for insulting his manhood. Or whatever passed for it.

  He swung pretty hard, and he was a muscular guy. I leaned in, bracing my feet and preparing myself. I tucked my hands behind me and clasped my left one at the wrist in order to restrain myself. This was not a traditional battle against a traditional opponent, and loosing myself on him would only result in his death and my unceremoniously fleeing the island.

  Mr. 5%’s fist slammed into my jaw with all the strength he could muster. It was a pretty good punch for a human, and I could really tell he’d been working out.

  Mostly because when he hit, it broke every single one of his knuckles and caused bones to splinter all the way up his wrist.

  He screamed and dropped right on his ass on the pool deck as I stood there, my robe the only thing moved by his vicious assault.

  “You even hit like 5% of a man,” I said, pulling my robe back together. Fortunately, I doubted he’d seen anything while he was swinging for the fences at my jaw, being as he was first concerned about belting me one and then concerned about, you know, his busted-up hand.

  “What the hellllllll?!” he screamed, rolling around on the pool deck as I headed toward the water’s edge and dipped a couple toes in. It was pleasant.

  I didn’t feel compelled to answer him. He didn’t need to know that I’d just used him to test how hard my new and improved jaw really was. I’d crushed it a couple months ago under a ton of weight in Philadelphia, and when it healed back together, it had done so at a consistency that allowed me to crunch drywall easily and even break marble. (I’d tested both these things against the back of my closet in the hotel room—carefully and minimally, because Ms. Gracie didn’t want the resort to bill her for extreme damages to the room.)

  “What happened here?” One of the pool attendants came racing up, dreadlocks a flyin’.