Meet Abby Banks VOLUMES: 1-3

by J. A. Cipriano

  “Do you need help?” he asked, raising one bushy eyebrow. That’s where he was going with this? Seriously?

  “No…” I trailed off, and he sighed.

  “You can’t go in the tank with your clothes on. You need to take them off, first.” He shook his head and rubbed his face with one hand. “If you don’t go in the tank, I won’t be able to have the machine fix you. We don’t have time for you to heal from whatever injury you have naturally.”

  “Oh,” I replied, a blush spreading across my face as I started pulling at my boots. It was a little hard because the laces were stuck together with Troy’s blood. Man, I was getting desensitized fast. How long had I been wandering around in bloody clothes without it being a big deal?

  “You can keep your underwear on if you like. I’d kind of prefer that, actually,” he said, turning away from me. I nodded even though he couldn’t see it and pulled off my shirt.

  When I was down to my skivvies, Roberto grabbed me under the armpits and hoisted me into the tank. The gel slid over my flesh like bathwater, strangely warm and soothing. When I was submerged up to my neck, Roberto handed me a mask. It sort of looked like something a snorkeler would wear, only the top of the snorkel attached to some kind of tube that led to a mechanism at the bottom of the tank.

  “I’m going under, aren’t I?” I asked, taking the mask from him and staring at it.

  “Of course, you’re going under,” Roberto said, somewhat snarkily. I really could have done without his attitude. Yup, I was ready for a snark free day.

  Instead of telling him that, I put the mask on my face. It snapped into place on its own, sealing itself over my mouth and nose with a wet sounding squelch that made my stomach twist itself into a pretzel. I sucked in a breath that tasted like cherry bubblegum. Tension eased out of my muscles as I drifted languidly in the tank. I almost didn’t mind when the liquid flowed over the top of my head, and the lid above me slid shut, sealing me inside.

  Roberto’s obscured form stared at me from the other side of the tank’s wall. He smiled, sat down in a small metal folding chair, and pulled out a novel with a strapping, half-naked man on it. A half-snort half-squeal caught in my throat as a yawn exploded from my lips, fogging the mask so I couldn’t see. I moved my hand to wipe it away, but I was so warm and so tired… I shook my head, trying to stay awake, but my movement made the world lurch sideways. I shut my eyes and took a deep, calming breath.

  The low thrum of white noise filled my ears as I cracked my eyes open and looked around. Was this how fish felt? A soft sigh escaped me as my eyes drifted shut again. I tried to open them, but for the life of me, I couldn’t remember how.

  A loud knock woke me what felt like a second later, and I looked around frantically, my heart hammering in my chest. Roberto was standing outside the tank, his knuckles resting on the glass in front of my face. The tank was half drained, the greyish fluid seeping through a grate in the floor. I was still half-submerged in the goop, my body bobbing lazily. I maneuvered my legs beneath me, planting them on the grate and stood. I stretched, a yawn peeling from my throat as the lid opened above me with a hiss. I pulled my mask off and clambered up the rungs on the side.

  Part of me had expected to feel disgusting, or sticky, or even just wet and cold, but I felt pristine and dry. I rubbed my hands together. Even the callouses on my fingers were gone. Whatever that stuff was, I needed the home use kit. Roberto reached out and helped me down. As I stepped onto the cold metal floor, I realized I felt better than I had, well, ever.

  I dropped down to the ground and stretched once more. Roberto held a white towel out to me. That was pretty much when I realized I was standing in front of him in soaking wet undergarments. Fire leapt across my cheeks as I spun around so he couldn’t see me. Granted he was my father, so he wasn’t supposed to be interested in looking at me, but that didn’t mean I wanted him to look at me with my bra and panties plastered to my body.

  “I’m going to put your clothes on the bed. I’ll wait outside until you’re dressed,” he said after a moment. I heard him shuffle around. A door behind me opened and closed with a whoosh. After a few more seconds, I turned and looked around the room. I hadn’t even noticed the door he’d used before.

  I shook off the eerie feeling I was being watched and picked up the towel he’d laid out on the folding chair. I stripped and dried myself the best I could and moved toward the bed. My new clothing consisted of another pair of camouflage pants and some kind of tank top, but instead of being done in the normal jungle green style, these were the color of fallen snow, all grey and white.

  I dropped the towel and pulled on the underwear and sports bra he’d left. I wasn’t quite sure where he’d gotten them from, but I was glad he had. For a moment, I had been worried I was going to be going commando in more ways than one.

  Once I was dressed, I padded barefoot to the door and knocked once. The metal was surprisingly warm. Well that was odd…

  “I’m ready…” I paused for a moment as my insides squinched up. “Thanks for the clothes… dad.” Yeah, the word sounded weird to me too. Truthfully, I didn’t know why I’d decided to say it. Part of it was because I wanted to endear myself to him, but another very small, very annoying part was overjoyed at the idea of actually having a father.

  It was silly, I know, but there it was. I might have been raised by Esmeralda, and for the most part, I still thought of her as my mom, but I’d never had a dad. Understandably, Esmeralda hadn’t talked about my father, and she hadn’t exactly dated. Folsom was weird that way. There were no weird custody battles there. Your parents were either together or one didn’t seem to exist. It was a little weird, now that I thought about it.

  I know being a sperm donor to a test tube baby didn’t exactly qualify for him the job, but I was sort of hoping he would wind up taking it anyway. It was probably naive of me, especially given my current situation and my horrible track record for bio-parents, but part of me was fantasizing about doing father-daughter activities. Though I’ll admit, I wasn’t quite sure what those would be…

  A blush spread across my cheeks as I pushed the thought away. The door opened, pulling itself up into the ceiling with a gasp of compressed air. Roberto stood there, looking at me for a long while. “You don’t have to call me dad.” He shrugged, pink coloring his cheeks. “I haven’t earned that… yet.” He held out a pair of black combat boots. “But I’m going to try.” He smiled, and I swear the only things I saw in his eyes were rainbows and dandelions.

  19

  We were standing in the giant cavern we’d entered originally, only this time Tom’s super-semi was nowhere to be found which made sense. I glanced around, looking for some kind of transportation, but when I didn’t see any, I huffed indignantly.

  “Why did you take us down here?” I asked, glancing up at Roberto. He wasn’t paying attention to me though. He was staring at the pile of crates to our left. “There are no vehicles in sight.”

  He waved his hand dismissively and began clomping off toward the wooden boxes. When he reached the first one, he grabbed ahold of the lid and pushed it up. It came loose with a snap, and he flung it to the ground. It hit the floor hard enough to have made old me jump, but just made the new me roll my eyes at him. What was with the show of strength anyway, was he trying to impress me?

  “My, what big muscles you have,” I said as I sauntered over to him. He tossed me a glance that was half-annoyance and half-amusement.

  “Stand back, Abby,” he replied and waited until I moved back a few paces before gripping the front of the box in his meaty paws. He took a step backward, pulling so hard the muscles in his humongous arms corded with the effort. The crack of snapping wood shot through the air like a gunshot as the side panel tore free of the container. Roberto wobbled, stumbling backward with a chunk of box in his hands.

  Inside the crate was a motorcycle, but not just any motorcycle. This one had huge fat wheels and was bright neon blue. It sort of looked like something a user
might ride in a video game, only way more awesome.

  Roberto steadied himself and tossed his chunk of box to the floor. He grinned at me. “We don’t need a tanker truck,” he said, voice filled with glee. “We have the TRM-7A!” He smirked and pulled the motorcycle free by its black handlebars.

  “Cool name,” I said, taking a step toward him and running my hand over the sleek gunmetal tank. It was cool to the touch, but still it managed to send shivers running along my spine. Was I going to get to ride this? For real?

  “It stands for Totally-Rad-Motorcycle version 7A,” he said, still grinning as he grabbed a helmet off a hook on the side and tossed it to me.

  “That isn’t really what it’s called, is it?” I asked, not sure if he was making a joke. I caught the helmet in my hands. It was heavier than I expected.

  “No, but it should be. I forget what TRM stands for, something technical.” He shrugged and moved to the next crate. In moments, he had ripped apart the next one to reveal another motorcycle, only this one was yellow where the first one was blue. He grabbed the helmet and put it on his head before sitting down on the bike.

  “Put your helmet on, Abby. We’re going for a ride, and no daughter of mine is going to be riding a motorcycle without a helmet.” He was about to say more, but instead, he narrowed his eyes at me and fixed me with one of those parent gazes. Wow, he learned fast. “I know it sounds ridiculous, but you’ll need to be careful. If the TRM overheats, it will explode, so don’t do anything crazy, okay?”

  I nodded as I stared down at the sleek bike. Great, just great. I wasn’t even sure how to ride the damn thing. Now I had to make sure I didn’t make it explode? Was he crazy? Did he even know who I was?

  “I don’t have a driver’s license,” I said before I could stop myself. “I failed the driving portion of the test all three times so I need to redo the written part. I was just going to wait until I was eighteen…” Roberto began laughing at me, and I felt my face heat up. “Hey, it isn’t my fault. There’s this intersection by a school zone, and I kept getting failed for going to slow when all these kids were running around.”

  “Well, I’m pretty sure you’d pass now,” he replied, pressing his thumb against the white sphere in the center of the handlebars. The bike roared to life, smoke and actual flames shooting out the chrome exhaust pipes. “Besides, I wouldn’t worry about the TRM. You’ve had the ability to ride this bike downloaded into your head already. Now let’s go.”

  I hopped onto the motorcycle, and feeling more than a little silly, put on my neon blue helmet. It cinched itself around my skull without me even having to adjust it. Even if I did know how to ride this thing, I was a little worried about not having proper motorcycle gear. Shouldn’t I have pads and maybe a leather jacket? Riding around in a tank top and camo-pants didn’t seem safe. Nor very warm… what if there was wind, or worse, rain?

  Then again, nothing I did was safe anymore. Riding an experimental motorcycle seemed like it was fairly risk free in comparison to our goal… which I wasn’t even sure what it was. Well that wasn’t quite true. I knew what my goal was, to stop Lisa from going insane and killing everyone. But that didn’t mean I understood what Roberto wanted. I stopped and looked at him even though I couldn’t see his face through his black Plexiglas visor.

  “So, what’s your plan?” I asked, crossing my arms over my chest. “Where exactly are you taking me?”

  “To stop Tom and Lisa before they kill everyone and take over the world,” Roberto replied, kicking his bike off the kickstand and bringing it around so he was facing the exit. He tapped out a command on the white sphere in the center of the handlebars. The door began to open, shuddering sideways into the mountain like its gears were in desperate need of oil.

  “Um… why would you want to do that? You’re a bad guy.” The second part slipped out without my meaning it to, but he shrugged it off. Actually, he did more than that. He laughed. Huge guffaws exploded from his throat. He went to wipe his eyes but wound up just hitting his mask with one large finger. I smirked.

  “Just because I’m not a hero doesn’t mean I’m a villain. The last thing I want is for Tom to be in control of the agency’s resources. Make no bones about it. If he’s going in there with Lisa, he thinks she’ll win. You think Gabriella has access to crazy tech, well you haven’t even scratched the surface of what the Agency has.” Roberto turned his head toward me and made a ‘come on’ gesture with his hand. “Tom is way more dangerous than Gabriella. Even she had lines. You might think she was evil, and that’s fine, but everything she did was purposeful and measured because she knew how the Agency worked. Tom doesn’t have any kind of line at all. He’d blow up an orphanage filled with puppies on Christmas morning if he thought it would satisfy his objectives.” He took off out of the room in a screech of rubber. “Besides, wouldn’t you rather have their tech for yourself? I know I would.”

  Of course he would. He was a supervillain, and I trusted him, why? Because he was my father? How naïve was I? Sure, he hadn’t done anything bad by me, but neither had Lisa nor Stephen until they had. I sighed. I was the world’s most trusting sap.

  “Awesome,” I snapped as I kicked my bike into gear and raced after him. It was a little scary at first, but once I’d managed to weave myself past the giant glassy crater outside the doors, it was pretty much smooth sailing. Thank god. “So what you’re trying to say is that if someone is going to plunder the Agency’s corpse, you’d rather it be you? You know because you’re so trust worthy?” I said, and for some reason, I wasn’t surprised.

  “Pretty much,” Roberto responded, his voice booming from speakers inside my helmet. Well that was certainly convenient.

  “So why should I help you, and why did you recruit Tom if he’s so evil?” I asked, even though I knew I was going in there to stop Lisa anyway. She may have been bad, but I was reasonably sure it wasn’t entirely her fault. She’d told me the flit had influence over her, and the flit was soulless. It had to be what had made Lisa go haywire. I had to hold onto that thought, that belief that if I unhooked her from the flit, she’d go back to being my best friend. I may not have been able to save Stephen from the Agency, but this time… this time it would be different.

  “You ever hear that saying, ‘better the devil you know?’” Roberto said as he zipped around a silver Volkswagen beetle. “It answers both of your questions.”

  “At least he’s being honest,” Donovan said, his voice echoing in my head. “You can always trust a scorpion to sting after all.” He exhaled thoughtfully. “Just pay attention to what he’s doing, and he can be useful to you.”

  “Yeah…” I murmured, twisting hard on the throttle and shooting forward after him. Even if he was lying, I’d cross the Roberto bridge later, or maybe never if I didn’t stop Lisa. Either way, there was no use worrying about it now. Especially not when I could really use his help. I’d like to say that I was confident in my super-spy abilities, but after the fight with Lisa, well, let’s just say I wasn’t quite as confident as I was before. Something told me, if I went after her alone, I’d lose. Roberto, on the other hand, had something I didn’t. Experience.

  “Let’s go with that,” he replied, and for some reason I knew he was grinning. “If not, just remember I gave you an experimental motorcycle.”

  “Do I look like someone who could be bought off with a motorcycle?” I asked, a smile I couldn’t stop spreading across my lips. “Get me a pony and we’ll talk.”

  He laughed again. It was the last sound I heard him make before his motorcycle exploded in a fireball. He tumbled off the twisted vehicle, his body encased in weird orange goo. He bounced on the asphalt, spinning haphazardly into the oncoming lane, but thankfully no cars were coming.

  I twisted my head to see one of those huge army helicopters hurtling toward us through the air. The barrel of the chain gun on the side was starting to spin as the muscle-bound behemoth from before turned it toward me. How had he survived?

  I shot one last
glance at Roberto’s goo covered body and kicked my TRM into action, darting underneath the helicopter as bullets ripped apart the asphalt, spraying chunks of rock everywhere. Hopefully that orange goo had kept Roberto from getting killed. If he died… I didn’t know what I’d do. Which yes, I know, was a weird thought since I’d just met him, and he was a supervillain. Still, he was my supervillain.

  The helicopter spun in an arc so the gunner could get better aim at me. I threw the motorcycle into a skid that kicked up a wall of dust as the bullets chewed up the pavement around me. I leapt from the bike and pulled it up on its front wheel as my hands went to the white sphere. I wasn’t sure what I was trying to do exactly, but the next thing I knew, the motorcycle was glowing like an overheated nuclear reactor. Horrible lime green light spilled out of the machine as I revved the throttle and let the bike go. It zoomed haphazardly toward the helicopter before exploding in a geyser of ghostly green flame.

  The shooter leapt from the helicopter as emerald fire slammed into it. The metal crumpled inward on itself before bursting apart in a fireball so bright I had to look away even though my visor darkened instantly.

  The blast threw the army man across the sky. He spread his arms and weird, webbed parachute wings filled the space between his arms and his legs. It caught the air, allowing him to glide to the ground. Evidently it wasn’t a soft landing because he hit with a grunt and fell to his knees. That must have been how he escaped last time…

  I wasn’t sure how long he was on his knees, but it couldn’t have been for more than a second because, by the time I reached him, he was standing. Blood covered his face and chest, soaking through his thin forest green tank top. Burns pockmarked his arms and neck as he took a step toward me, lips twisted into a snarl. “Hey girly,” he said, pulling off his ruined shirt and tossing it to the ground at his feet. “Come along nicely, and I’ll only punch some of your teeth out.”