Modern Magic
Page 220
Amelia walked away from him, back toward the punching bag. She placed her hand on it to steady herself as her muscles slackened. She took another swallow of water.
“You’re right,” she said. “Father hasn’t given up hope, but I’m starting to. I’ve been fighting for my father’s dream of a perfect world all my life. But I’ve been to Jerusalem. I helped bring a riot under control in the Old City. You can see it in people’s eyes. The old grudges there can only be satisfied with blood. But Father thinks Rex Monday is supplying arms to the factions there. He’ll do whatever it takes to stop Monday’s schemes. If my sister fails, it’s only a matter of time before my father sends me there.”
“What can you do that Sarah can’t? She is the, um, persuasive one.”
“I can kill people,” said Amelia. “Eventually, it will all boil down to killing people.”
The door to the gym opened. It was Mindo.
“Your father sent me for you,” Mindo said. “A situation has developed.”
“Wow,” said Richard. “You must make the stock holders of Radio Shack very happy, Dr. Know.”
Monitors and instruments filled the room. Along the far wall, a bank of televisions displayed broadcasts from all over the world. In the center of it all was a large padded chair in which Dr. Know sat.
“This is the first time you’ve been to my command hub, Richard,” said Dr. Know. “This is also the first time you’ve called me by that irritating nickname Sarah finds so amusing.”
“Ah, hell. I knew it was only a matter time before I slipped up and said it to your face. I’ll watch out for it.” Richard silently resolved to use the nickname anytime the doctor was in earshot.
“What’s happening, Father?” asked Amelia.
“One of our transports has been intercepted. The prisoner is now missing.”
“When?” asked Amelia.
“One hour ago in Austin, Texas.”
“An inside job, obviously,” said Amelia. “How many people will you need to check before you find a lead?”
“Only three people knew the truth,” said Dr. Know. “I’ve checked them all, and they’re shocked and worried by what has happened. I’ve done a broader search of the area without results. I can’t find anyone who knows about this. Which means—”
“Monday’s involved,” said Amelia. “I’ll suit up.”
“Question,” said Richard. “Who was this prisoner? What’s so important about all this?”
As if in response, one by one the televisions on the far wall tuned to the same broadcast.
Dr. Know turned pale as he saw the screens.
In a dark room, three figures stood. One, Richard recognized from the battle in D.C. It was Sundancer, and she was holding the face of a bound man with a shaved head, pointing it toward the camera. The man’s mouth was covered with duct tape, and his eyes darted nervously around the room. The third figure was a man dressed in a nice suit, with a green hood concealing his face.
“Greetings, Planet Earth,” the hooded man said. “I’m Rex Monday. Welcome to an exciting new episode of Monday’s Revelation. The man my attractive associate is presenting to you is named Anthony Wayne Walters. Two hours ago, he was sitting in an electric chair, sentenced to die for the tragic, pointless deaths of twelve children. Mr. Walters did the prosecution a tremendous favor by videotaping these murders for his own personal viewing pleasure. There is no question of his guilt. There was no last minute pardon. The switch was pulled at the appointed time. But, as you can see, Mr. Walters is very much alive.”
“He’s made a mistake,” Dr. Know said, swiveling around in his chair to face Amelia. “They’re in a television studio in Austin. They’ve killed two technicians, but a security guard is hiding in a closet, listening to them even now. I know where they are!”
“Yeah,” said Richard. “They’re in Texas.”
“On my way!” said Amelia.
“Take Richard,” said Dr. Know. “There’s no time for your sister to get there.”
“Whoa,” said Richard. “Even in your jet, Texas is, what, four hours from here? They’ll be long gone when we get there. What’s the hurry?”
“I’m the hurry,” said Amelia, as shards of metal materialized from thin air around her, wrapping her in armor. She thrust out her hand and grabbed Richard by the shirt. The flowing metal slithered from her hand, engulfing him in seconds.
There was an astonishing boom, then silence.
Richard was blind, deaf, and immobile. He couldn’t breathe, and his heart seemed ready to burst. His efforts to scream only led to a terrible pressure in his chest and head. He felt as if he weighed three thousand pounds.
Then as quickly as it had begun, it was over. The metal that encased him crumbled to dust, and he slumped to his knees, gasping for breath, coughing. He looked up.
He was in a television studio.
Rail Blade stood before him, soaked in sweat, the shards of the armor she had created dropping to the floor around her.
Just beyond her, the hooded man known as Rex Monday grasped at his throat, gurgling, blood pulsing between his fingers with every beat of his heart.
And just beyond him, a single blade, a foot long and razor sharp, hovered in the air, red and wet.
Chapter Nine
Roller Coaster
Sundancer looked pissed. She began to glow, and Anthony Wayne Walters screamed as his face started to sizzle. In the second it took for the spinning blade to reach her, Sundancer had turned white hot. The blade liquefied as it touched her, smearing sloppily against her neck before spinning off wildly across the room. Flesh peeled from Anthony Wayne Walters and his scream died abruptly.
Nobody covered his eyes and crawled away from the terrible scene. Behind him, Rail Blade grunted as she parried Sundancer’s plasma flare attacks with a mirrored shield.
The desk Nobody was hiding behind burst into flame. Sprinklers opened, drenching Nobody, and filling the air with steam. The desk continued to burn despite the water. He scurried in the most direct route he could manage to put as much space between him and Sundancer as possible. He didn’t know what he could do that would be of any use. The steam was burning his lungs. Running seemed practical. He looked around for doors, and found plenty of them. None were marked with a friendly exit sign. They all seemed to be offices or…
“Security guard in the closet,” he said, snapping his fingers. On a hunch he grabbed at a drab beige door and jerked it open. The security guard inside yelped.
“Don’t kill me!”
“I’m saving you, idiot!” said Nobody. Of course, the guy didn’t hear him.
Fortunately, the guard took one look at the flame-engulfed room and the two battling women and decided to make a hasty retreat. Nobody followed the fleeing man through a glass door into a hallway, and outran him to reach the exit door in the lobby. He reached for the door bar and stumbled as his hand passed through it. He ghosted through the door, off balance.
Seconds later, the guard pushed open the door and ran through. Nobody regained his footing and chased after him.
Now safe, he looked back. A pillar of flame rose high in the sky, turning night into day. A steel rail spiraled into the air around the flame, as Rail Blade chased her fiery foe. Across the flat field that surrounded the studio, blue lights flashed as cops sped toward the scene.
Nobody looked at his wrist, at the nice stainless steel diver’s watch he’d picked up on one of his shoplifting excursions. Not even three minutes had passed since the broadcast had begun.
The pillar of flame vanished. The roof of the studio was still ablaze, but the intensity of light dimmed, blending into the night. Looking up, Nobody saw Rail Blade plummeting from the sky, fragments of her red-hot armor sparking away, leaving a glowing comet’s trail. She crashed into the roof, and, from the sound of things, through it.
Nobody ran back into the burning building. The smoke from the broadcast studio had yet to fill the front hall.
“Amelia!” he cried
out, pushing open doors and staring into darkened rooms, searching for one with a hole in the roof. “Amelia!”
He found her sprawled on the carpet in some sort of meeting room. Her armor had fallen to red dust around her, and her body was covered with raw, bloody blisters. Though they were far from the center of the fire, the carpet she lay upon smoldered.
“Amelia,” he said, running to her side. He slid to his knees beside her and turned her face toward him, flinching as he realized it was stupid to move her.
She groaned as she slowly opened her eyes.
“Amelia!” Nobody said. “You’re alive. I’ll get some help. Somehow. Just hang on.”
She grinned feebly, then said, softly, “You’re no good at this, Nobody. You’re supposed to call me ‘Rail Blade’ out here.”
“I’d rather call you an ambulance,” said Nobody, looking around for a phone. Then he remembered the police cars on their way. Dialing 911 seemed redundant.
Rail Blade groaned as she grabbed the seat of a nearby chair and pulled herself into a sitting position. “I’ve lived through worse,” she said, her voice quavering. “My training helps me block off the parts of my mind that feel the pain. We should leave before the police arrive.”
“Are we going to do that metal prison teleporting thing again?” he asked. “I’d rather walk back to the island.”
She shook her head. “Don’t have the strength. Would have done better against Sundancer if I hadn’t exhausted myself pulling that stunt.”
“What did you do, anyway?”
“Earth’s core is one big iron crystal,” she said, gingerly picking carpet fibers from her wounds. “I can tune into it and trigger a magnetic quake, then surf the resulting shockwave. Takes me anywhere on Earth in seconds. I only use it in real emergencies. Father worries that frequent use might cause the magnetic poles to flip, which could be bad.”
She grimaced as she rose, steadying herself against the seatback. “This chair has a steel frame. Sit.”
Nobody sat.
The chair lurched upward, as a single steel rail materialized beneath it.
“Hold on.”
The rail snaked upward through the hole in the roof and they began to rise along it. Nobody felt like he was on the front seat of a roller coaster, only there was no bar to hold him down. He clenched the seat edges with white knuckles.
The studio parking lot was filled with police cars and ambulances. Nobody coughed as Rail Blade steered them into the smoke.
“Sorry,” she said, coughing. “Don’t want them to see which way we’re going. I can’t make it far.”
“Explain to me why we’re running away?”
“I killed Rex Monday on live television,” said Rail Blade. “I guess I should have gone for the cameras first, but I didn’t want to give them time to exit. Monday has some kind of teleportation device. These guys can vanish in a blink. I did what I had to, but it’s still going to be bad PR.”
The rail slowly slinked into the tops of a nearby grove of trees. They’d barely traveled two hundred yards, Nobody guessed. She sat them down in the middle of the grove. She leaned against a tree, panting.
“Take the chair,” said Nobody.
She collapsed into it.
“Just need a minute to catch my breath,” she said. “Left so fast, I don’t have my radio. Can’t call Father for help.”
“I don’t have mine, either,” said Nobody. “Maybe we should turn ourselves in. Or you turn yourself in, at least. You need a doctor. You look like you’re about to faint.”
“No,” she said, jumping out of the chair.
Then her eyes rolled up into her head.
He rushed and caught her before she hit the ground. She was surprisingly heavy. He struggled to place her back in the chair, worried about laying her on the ground with her open wounds.
Before he could decide what to do next, he heard the crunching sound of someone approaching over leaves. He pulled off the sweatshirt he wore and draped it over her. The sweats she had been wearing earlier were mostly burned away, leaving her wearing only a sports bra and tights. The beam of a flashlight glinted across the chair’s metal legs. The crunching grew closer.
A tall, heavyset man entered the clearing. He looked like a former football player gone to pot but still physically formidable. He was dressed in a cheap blue suit with cowboy boots and a string tie. The guy looked around, then walked over to Rail Blade. He checked her pulse, then he took a small radio from his pocket, the type Dr. Know had given Nobody before his first mission.
“Dr. Knowbokov says that there’s an invisible man here and that I should put this radio down then turn around if the little lady here couldn’t talk,” the man said and turned away.
Nobody grabbed the radio and held it to his ear. “Hello?” he said.
“Richard,” said Dr. Know. “Is my daughter alive?”
“Yes. I don’t know how badly injured she is. She took a pretty bad beating, but was conscious a minute ago. I think she’s gone into shock.”
“The man who found you is named John Starkner. He’s the warden at the nearby state prison. Keep close to him. He’ll take Amelia to safety.”
“OK,” Starkner said. “Guess that’s long enough. I’m going to turn around now.”
As he did, Nobody feared the radio would slip from his grasp. It didn’t. Apparently, Starkner no longer expected to see it.
Starkner gently lifted Rail Blade, and carried her through the woods with his flashlight turned off. Nobody followed.
“How did you find us, Doc?” asked Nobody.
“There are still several dozen Soviet spy satellites in orbit over the U.S., most with infrared and a detail resolution of six inches. It was good fortune that one was passing over Texas.”
“Why do you have access to Soviet spy satellites?”
“I have access to every satellite. The Soviet’s built theirs to last, but their security is so primitive I could have hacked them even without telepathic access to the men who encoded them.”
Starkner took Rail Blade to a huge SUV, then popped open the rear hatch with his remote. He gently laid her on a sheet he had spread out there, and covered her with a thick blanket. He went to the passenger side door and opened it.
“Wanna ride, Mr. Invisible?”
“The name’s Nobody.” He climbed into the seat, pulling in his left foot seconds before Starkner slammed the door.
Starkner drove to a plywood shack way out in the boondocks. Nobody stood by helplessly as Starkner carried Rail Blade’s still body from the SUV, up the steps, and onto the rickety porch. The door opened on his approach.
An elderly woman, her hair pulled tight in a bun, stood in the doorway. She wore a white coat, with a stethoscope around her neck. Beyond her, the main room of the shack was brightly lit. As Nobody’s eyes adjusted to the brightness, the interior revealed itself to be a very clean and modern-looking surgical room. The woman wrung her hands and paced as Starkner placed Rail Blade on the table.
“I knew this would happen,” the woman said, sounding frightened. “Did you see the TV? I saw the TV. It’s out. The whole damn world knows Walters is alive.”
“Was alive,” said Starkner. “Old news. It’s Knowbokov’s roof to patch. Right now, this little lady needs your help, Summer.”
“We’re going to prison for this,” said Summer, gently pulling aside the blanket that covered Rail Blade. “Every time we’ve turned a prisoner over to that man, I’ve gone cold in my stomach knowing it could come to this.”
“But you did it anyway,” said Starkner. “Can’t look back now. We have to trust in the big guy to work things out.”
“I don’t believe in God,” said Summer, checking Rail Blade’s pulse.
“I was talking about Knowbokov,” said Starkner.
“Pulse is good,” said Summer, leaning over Rail Blade and pressing the stethoscope against her ribs. “Breathing is steady. Most of her burns are second degree. The best I can do now is clean and
dress them. But she’s going to have some serious pain. I’ll start a morphine drip.” She gently touched a bruised knot on Rail Blade’s temple. “I’m more worried about this more than anything. We need to get her to facilities for a CAT scan or MRI.”
“Knowbokov’s sending a helicopter,” said Starkner. “She’ll get good medical treatment at home. You’ve been to the island. Do what you can for now.”
As Summer worked, she continued to talk. “What will my husband say when he learns the truth? My kids?”
“Maybe it won’t come to that. Knowbokov can pull a lot of strings. It happened so early in the morning, how many people saw it? How many people understood what they saw? I bet Knowbokov will have this buried and the sod patted down by lunch.”
“Do you know what he does with the prisoners?” asked Summer.
“No,” said Starkner. “What’s it matter? How much worse can it be than being dead?”
“I worry about that sometimes,” said Summer. “I went along with this because I wanted to save lives. But what if he’s using them for some horrible experiments? What else would he need them for?”
“Not our cow to milk,” said Starkner.
Silence followed, as Starkner slung his hefty frame into a chair and cradled his head in his hands. Summer continued to work, her lips pursed.
Nobody radioed Dr. Know. “Doc, we need to talk.”
“Has Amelia’s condition worsened?” asked Dr. Know. “She’s doing OK, I think. A doctor here named Summer is treating her. You know her?”
“Summer Pagent. Yes. She assists me in certain projects.”
“These projects involve death-row inmates coming back to life?”
“No. Their deaths are faked. Summer merely declares them dead afterwards.”
“Uh-huh. And why, pray tell, would you be doing something like this?”
“These are men whose lives have legally come to an end. They are society’s waste. I recycle them.”
“Doc, I doubt you have any idea how sinister that sounds to me. Am I fighting on the right side here? What kind of crazy game are you up to?”