by Julie Kenner
“You’re insane,” she said. “Why on earth do you want a pair of women’s shoes?”
“My dear, your shoes are the component I’ve been searching for. The only known component of shoeidium. Very rare, and very fortunate I was in that alley to see your shoes in action. Now I have the final piece in my Miniaturizing Machine.”
“Your what?”
His smile was pure ice. “I think you heard me.”
Yeah, she thought. She was pretty sure she had. “What exactly are you planning to miniaturize?”
“Why, New York City, of course. Small enough to fit in a snow globe on my desk. The ultimate Christmas present to myself, don’t you think?” He held out a hand and waggled his fingers. “Now be a good girl and pass me those shoes.”
“I don’t think so,” she said. She might not be a real superhero like Nikko, but there was no way she was letting this thug carry out his evil plot—no matter how ridiculously comic book it might sound. And with that determination firmly in mind, she turned and started to run in the other direction.
It was a ruse, though, and when he sprinted after her, she stopped cold, then whipped around, letting those fabulous feet do their thing.
The cylinder flew out of his hand, and his head went back with a thwack so loud Lydia was sure his neck must have snapped. Unfortunately, though, his head was still firmly attached.
“You bi—”
“Want more?” she asked, then punched him in the nose, surprising herself, and making her toes tingle with pride in her shoes.
“Little fool,” he hissed, his voice wet and gurgly through his bloody nose. “I need only the shoes. Give them to me and you will live out your life as you are, and not smaller than a flea.”
“I’m thinking no,” she said, even as the air fizzled again. As she turned instinctively toward the new arrival who had teleported inside her apartment, Mr. Evil Genius, with whom she had yet to be properly introduced, dove for his little silver tube. Immediately she launched herself with an amazing Matrix-like kick that she’d seen only in the movies, but it was too late. He zapped her mid-leap, and she froze, her legs in an awkward, painful position as she started her frozen descent.
The new arrival caught her, thank goodness, before she landed in a stiff, painful heap. Not that the thug had her best interest at heart. No, he only wanted her shoes.
“Get them off her feet,” Ruthless said with a quick glance toward the still-frozen Nikko. “And hurry. Time is working against us.”
In her head, she screamed out her protests, but in her frozen state, no sound came out. Not good, and she felt her heart race inside the frozen statue of herself, the tempo increasing as the thug squatted down and started fiddling with her footwear.
Unable to bend her head to look down, she couldn’t tell what was going on, but soon enough, she realized that there was a problem.
“Ain’t workin’,” the thug said. In front of her, the big boss’s face turned an interesting shade of puce.
“Give me those shoes,” he said, pointing the silver cylinder in her face. “Why can he not remove your shoes?”
He pressed a button and all of a sudden, her mouth opened and she drew in a long gulp of air, realizing with a start how shallow her breathing had been when she was frozen.
“WHY?” he demanded, his face shifting from puce to bright red as he bellowed the question.
“I . . . I don’t know,” Lydia answered.
“Want me to cut her feet off?” the thug asked.
“Yes—”
“What?”
“No, wait,” he amended. “The shoes are obviously linked to her. What if that somehow saps her power? No, we’ll take her back with us. Once we are safely in the lair we can surely find a way to remove them. Even if, like Dorothy, the only way the shoes come off is if the owner is a dead little girl.”
Lydia opened her mouth—not at all sure what she was going to say, but determined to give a verbal tongue-lashing even though she couldn’t manage a physical one.
It didn’t matter. Out came the little silver cylinder and—phbt!—her mouth was frozen again. Talk about irritating.
At least this time she was frozen facing Nikko. That, however, was hardly a consolation, considering they were both in deep doo-doo. Being able to see the gorgeous man who now didn’t trust her wasn’t exactly a reason to cheer.
Except . . .
Except there was something about his eyes. About the way they watched her, almost as if they were imploring. She focused harder, or, at least, she thought about focusing harder, because the truth was that as stuck as she was, she couldn’t really do anything. Not even blink.
Nikko blinked.
Mentally, she gaped.
He’d blinked. But . . . but . . .
But he couldn’t. Could he?
And that’s when she remembered: the freeze ray eventually wore off. And yet there he was, still frozen stiff like a statue.
Why?
Not that she had time to ponder that mystery. The boss and his lackey had sidled up next to her.
“Get her between us,” the boss said. “I want us each to have an arm, just in case she comes out of it after transit. Those damn legs are lethal.”
You bet your ass they are, she thought, mentally spitting the words at him.
He pulled another device out of his pocket, the silver cylinder having disappeared. This contraption—a small, red box—had a tiny antenna on top. He let go of Lydia’s arm just long enough to flip a switch, and then, if she could, she would have screamed. Because her body seemed to be dissolving from the inside out.
Beside her, the bad guys seemed fuzzy, too, as if they were also dissolving into points of light.
And just at the moment she realized what was happening to them, something hard and fast slammed into her. “Surprise,” Nikko whispered in her ear, his arms and legs linked tightly to hers.
And though Lydia couldn’t manage the actual movement, inside her head she smiled.
“Well, lookie-lookie,” Ruthless said, his voice sounding foggy and faraway to Nikko’s half unthawed ears. “We got ourselves a stowaway.”
Nikko blinked, his body feeling discombobulated, apart from itself, and though he desperately wanted to look around for Lydia, he found he couldn’t quite make the neurons fire properly to do that. Teleport lag. He’d heard about it; now, apparently, he was experiencing it. And from what he could tell, Ruthless had already adjusted.
Not exactly the way to win the advantage, he thought, wondering if his brilliant plan to enter the lair was turning out to be not so brilliant after all.
“What should we do with ’im?” Ruthless’s flunkie questioned, giving Nikko a poke in the shoulder. Nikko immediately lashed back, then winced in pain. The freeze ray had worn off, but he was still bound tight, and he’d just strained the heck out of his arm by trying to thrust his way out of a pair of Council-issued Outcast binders—cuffs strong enough to hold renegade superheroes at the peak of their power.
“Want me to kill him?” the flunkie continued, sounding perfectly thrilled by that idea.
“It’s tempting,” Ruthless said. “But no. If the shoes are drained of their energy when the girl dies, we may need a hostage.”
“So we’re really gonna off her, then?”
“Eh. I’m not going to go out of my way, but if she’s killed in the machine . . . well, what can you do?”
They carried their conversation out while walking, discussing the details of their plan to hook the shoes up to the contraption—with Lydia still in them—as they exited the room. All the while, Nikko seethed and struggled, and planned his revenge.
Because nobody—nobody—was hurting his Lydia.
And he really needed to save New York, too.
Fortunately for New York, Lydia, and the whole free world, the grogginess from the teleportation lag wore off quickly. Not enough for Nikko to get across the room before the door slammed shut behind Ruthless, but still fast.
Th
e downside, of course, was that he was locked in a small room, his body pressed against a concrete pillar, his wrists bound tight behind him with Protector-rated cuffs, and Lydia in danger on the far side of that door.
The good news was that the tracker embedded in his skin should have been activated during teleportation, which meant that the full weight of the Council ought to descend on this place any moment.
Then again, he’d been here for a few minutes already, and as far as he could tell, an epic battle wasn’t taking place beyond those doors. Either the tracker had malfunctioned, or Ruthless’s lair was somehow shielded. Either way, there was no way for him to remedy the situation with both hands tied behind his back.
Time to do something about that . . . if he could.
He looked around the room, but it was completely empty: not a single piece of furniture, not a single rivet on a wall. Simply the concrete post he was tied to, his arms thrust behind him, and his wrists bound.
The post, however, was somewhat narrow, and if he shifted a bit . . .
Yes. He could still feel it. They’d left his phone in his back pocket. All he had to do was scoot around to the left and see if he could—
Got it!
The problem, of course, was what to do with it now that he had it. Finding the buttons by feel only, he tried the communication feature first, but as he suspected, the room was shielded. The level of shielding suggested by the high-pitched response emitted from his device told Nikko that there’d be no help from the Council unless he could figure out a way to poke a hole in Ruthless’s defense. And that, unfortunately, was a very dicey proposition without knowing the layout.
Which meant that his first priority was to find Lydia and stop the completion of the device, then get her the hell out of there. He would stay behind and try to jam whatever interference device Ruthless had installed.
In the meantime, without communication, the phone was useful only as a weapon, and he was currently running short on ammo, with only two laser powerpacks embedded in the device. He could use one to take out the column he was bound to, but that seemed a bit reckless considering he couldn’t get a good look at the column to judge its density.
Better to aim the laser straight for his bonds. He might blow his hands off, true; but if luck was on his side, he’d simply blow open the binders. And at the moment, Nikko didn’t see another option. Time was ticking down. Lydia was in danger. And as she’d pointed out with such insight, he was all about saving mortals.
He smiled, realizing how well she’d put his own thoughts into words, and how she’d justified and validated his decisions, even if the Council had disagreed.
Yes, she was a mortal. But she was a superhero, too. As much as he was. And right then, he was determined to save her.
He fumbled, trying to get the device in place, and almost dropping it in the process. Then he got the dangerous end lined up with the binders, tugged his other wrist as far away as humanly (well, as Protectorly) as possible, took a deep breath, and pressed the trigger.
A burst of heat, and he winced as pain shot across his wrists, as vibrant as a white-hot flame. But his fingers still wiggled and, more important, he could move them in front of him and look at them.
He was free!
“You’ve still got it, buddy,” he said to himself, ignoring his aching wrist as he tightened his grip on the device and headed for the door. He said a silent plea to Zeus that it would be unlocked, because he really didn’t want to waste his last laser charge busting out.
Fortunately, luck was on his side, and he found himself in a long hallway. He skulked down it, darting into a supply closet and pulling on a white lab coat. Not the best of disguises, but it would have to do. And, it turned out, not a bad choice. Because when he got to the end of the hall and stepped into the cavernous space accented by a centerpiece jumble of wires, cables, tubes and pulleys, he saw that the only other people in the room were clad as he was—as out-of-place dental hygienists or CSI wannabes.
In fact, he realized as he circled the room, the only one not in a lab coat was Lydia. She was in the center of the machine, highlighted from the front by a shaft of light that came from the single glass panel in the otherwise thick, metal-domed room. The light cast odd shadows on her face, making her looked scared and frightened. Not that he blamed her.
He grabbed a clipboard from a nearby table and walked toward her, head high and with purpose in his step. He used the attached pen to bang a rhythm as he walked.
“Don’t quit your day job,” she said, the fire in her voice clear. “I’m thinking evil thug’s flunkie is going to do you much better than percussionist.”
“And here I thought I’d found my calling,” he said, delighting when he saw the fire in her eyes change to a different kind of heat. She’d recognized him. And then his heart sank again when she pulled back into herself, her face turning to steel.
“So do you believe me now?”
“Lydia, I’m sorry. I had no idea.”
She cocked her head. “You do believe me.”
“Of course.”
“Why? Because your little lie detector said so?”
“I believe you, Lydia. And I’m sorry I doubted you even for a second.”
Her expression softened. “Yeah?”
He couldn’t help his smile. “Yeah. But I’m not so sure now’s the time to talk about it.”
She pressed her lips together and nodded. “Right.” She drew in a breath. “So you’re going to rescue me, right? I mean, I’m a mortal and you’re a superhero. And that’s what superheroes do, right?”
There was a new harshness in her words that stung. “Lydia?”
“It’s okay. I know you were only interested in me because—well, because you thought I was like you. And I know it’s absurd to tell you this right now, but I’m pretty attached to this thing, and I don’t think I’m getting out of here alive. So I’m going to do something I never would have done a few days ago, and that’s tell you that I like you. A lot. I’ve probably even fallen in love with you. Or, I don’t know, I think maybe I’ve been in love with you my whole life. But it’s okay. You don’t have to love me back. I get the difference between us. I’m not stupid.”
“You’re acting it,” he said, her words flowing over him like honey. She was falling in love with him.
She blinked. “What?”
“There’s something between us. It’s not going away because you weren’t born a Protector.”
Surprise and hope filled her eyes, and he expected her to shout out joyously that she loved him. Instead, hesitation crowded her eyes. “There’s not . . . it wouldn’t . . .” She drew in a breath. “You have to know, it would never work between us. I’m not like you. I’m a fraud. Without the shoes, I’m a total wimp, and—”
“I don’t care,” he said firmly.
Her smile was wobbly. “Maybe you do and maybe you don’t,” she said. “But I care, Nikko. I do. And I don’t want you to have less of a woman than you deserve.”
“I deserve you.”
“You say that now, but—”
A loudspeaker crackled, and Nikko searched the area for something to throw at it. Not because that would help his mission, but because he was so damn frustrated.
“Touching, touching, touching,” Ruthless’s voice crackled over the speaker. “But I’m afraid you’re going to be dying alone and apart. No time to make up before the end of the world as you know it. Unless perhaps you’d like me to teleport you back to Manhattan? You can live your life the size of bacteria in the snow globe on my desk. No fake snow, of course. That wouldn’t be healthy for my little inhabitants.”
“Do you mean that, Ruthless?” Nikko shouted.
“I—what?” Some of the confidence had left Rex’s voice, replaced by confusion.
Nikko hid a smile. “I said, do you mean that?”
“Eh . . . er . . . what exactly?”
“That you’ll teleport us to Manhattan? Shrink us? Let us live together f
orever.”
“Nikko!”
“I don’t care,” he said to her. “I just want to be with you.” He looked her in the eyes, hoping she was understanding his message. “Come on, Lydia. Toss caution to the wind and come with me.”
“But—”
“She’ll do it,” he shouted to the room. “She’ll do it because she loves me. Let her go, and she’ll leave the shoes behind. That’s my offer, Rex. Take it, or suffer the consequences.”
A snort blasted over the loudspeaker. “You’re hardly in a position to bargain.”
“It’s the best deal you’ll get. You need her shoes, and you don’t know that the machine will work with her in them. Give her freedom. Give her to me. The game is yours for the winning.”
“And how do I know this isn’t some trick?”
“Um, hello? I’m trapped in your lair, remember? Just me and the girl, both of us essentially helpless. And no Council to come to my rescue.” He looked around to illustrate the point, his eyes falling on the dozens of technicians who’d pulled weapons out from under their lab coats and were now pointing them at him.
“It is true,” Ruthless said, thoughtfully. “That ridiculous tracking device embedded in your arm won’t work in here. My exterior walls have all been specially treated to block the beam emitted by your tracker.”
“See? And, honestly, if you’ve done your homework, you should know that the Council isn’t exactly number one on my favorite persons list. The chance to live my life in peace—even inside a snow globe—well, that’s damned appealing.” He frowned, considering. “Guess there’s no chance of you shrinking some of Florida’s beaches and moving them in with—never mind. The point is that you’re the one with the power here.”
“Actually, I believe that honor resides with your girlfriend. You may be happy to negotiate on her behalf, but I have seen no evidence that she is willing to remove the shoes.”
“She will,” he said, turning to look her in the eye. “Come on, Lydia. Throw caution to the wind. Hell, throw your insecurities to the wind. To the sky, even,” he added, glancing up. “We don’t need to worry about saving the world. Just ourselves,” he lied. “Get rid of them and come with me. I want you with me forever. Tell me,” he said, and though the words were a ploy, his heart meant every word. “Tell me you want to stay with me forever, too.”