I caught its wrist. The impact of it jolted down my arm so hard it was all I could think about it. Thankfully, my body was smarter than I was because it somehow succeeded in jerking the other katana free of the creature’s paw and whirling in time to block the swing of another robot.
Before the new one could recover, I threw myself backward through the doorway and rolled to my feet. I slammed my palm against the glowing infrared panel beside the door and held my breath as it scanned me into the system. It had to have been less than a second, but it felt like an eternity as the remaining robots clambered over their fallen brethren, metallic teeth glinting in the low light like monsters leaping from beneath a bed.
I wasn’t sure how I managed to stand there and let it scan me, but I was soon glad I had. The panel flashed green, and my fingers danced across the resulting controls. Just as the closest werewolf crossed the threshold, gouts of superheated flames filled the corridor, reducing the bots to slag in a fraction of a second. The upper half of a werewolf fell to the ground in front of me, the light fading from its cold, robotic eyes.
As I glanced around the room, simultaneously glad nothing seemed to be trying to kill me and feeling dumb I hadn’t checked earlier, I took a deep breath and willed myself to calm down and ignore the little voice chastising me. What if there had been more robots in here?
I shook the thought away and gripped my katana harder, thankful I had a weapon. I wasn’t sure what the weapon was made of, but I knew it couldn’t be normal steel since I’d once used one to cut through a brick wall during a training exercise. The path to my left was blocked with wreckage so I started down the right fork, feeling slightly like I was being herded somewhere, but that was impossible, right? Why would someone be herding me anywhere?
Still, the thought flitted through the back of my brain as I made my way toward the curve ahead. As soon as I turned the corner, there was another guard slouched forward in a chair, blood dripping down his chest from his torn neck. It sort of looked like someone had slit his throat from behind, but instead of using a sharp knife, had used a dull saw.
I knelt down, searching him for weapons but found none. Damn. It was a little unnerving because it meant someone had already taken the guy’s gear. Why would they do that?
I swiped his key card and smacked it angrily against the door. It flew open with a hiss of compressed air to reveal a pitch black room. Darkness seemed to spill into the hallway instead of the emergency light illuminating the threshold. It was enough to make fear well up in my stomach and a cold sweat cover the back of my neck. This was getting crazy. I’d been through this compound dozens of times, but for some reason everything felt different, and well, scarier in the near darkness.
Besides, I had no idea what security protocols were active, and from the look of things, those intruders had managed to take over at least some of the defensive systems. How they’d done that was beyond me, but I was going to find out. Not because I really cared what happened to the agency, but because I wanted to do it myself someday.
I pushed down the feeling of ridiculousness spurred by me trying to save an agency man and stepped into the darkness. The first thing I noticed was how cold the room was. It made me shiver through my sweat soaked clothing.
I’d barely taken three steps inside when the door at the other end exploded open, flinging shrapnel and debris in my general direction. I ducked, turning away from the explosion and shielding my face with my arms. My katana came up as I whirled back around, and just as I was about to throw the weapon at whatever came through the door, flashlight beams split the darkness, revealing a team of three agency men. My arm slowed, and against my better judgement, I decided not to impale the leader through the chest even though he was pointing an angry looking machine gun at me.
“Abby?” said the leader, his voice low and gravelly as he gestured amicably to me. “I’ve brought help. Show me where Chuck is.”
I nodded once, spinning on my heel as the man came forward, trailed by two medical personal dragging along a stretcher that seemed a little too small to fit Chuck’s enormous body. I thought about remarking on it, but decided against it. For all I knew, it was a super spy stretcher with jet propulsion or something.
“You did good, kid,” the lead added, clapping me on the shoulder. “Real good.”
5
“You’re going to have to say that again,” I said partially because I hadn’t been listening as closely as I should have and partially because what I’d heard sounded insane. “I must have missed it through all the crazy.”
“How is what I said crazy?” Chuck asked, raising one blond eyebrow as he watched me carefully from inside his giant fish tank. Instead of responding, I reached out and tapped the glass of the tank.
“Hey, don’t tap the glass,” the medic to my left said, briefly looking up from his clipboard and gesturing with it toward a sign in the lower corner of the tank that read, “do not tap the glass. Fish don’t like it, what makes you think humans would?”
I smirked and looked back at Chuck as he bobbed in the vat of raspberry jelly colored goo and barely resisted the urge to flick the glass one last time. You know for funsies. Still, the disheveled medic had scolded me several times now, and I was starting to think I was getting on his bad side. If I’d learned anything in my short time at the agency’s facility, it was to never piss off the medics, and the lady who served sloppy joes.
I still wasn’t quite sure why their cafeteria was something more akin to a high school lunchroom than not, especially since I knew people had invented awesome food preparatory machinery, but I’d never really received a response on that.
Chuck rolled his eyes as I turned back toward him. “Even if it sounds crazy, Abby. You’re the only one who can save the director from Flash and Bang—”
“Assuming they haven’t just drowned him like an unwanted kitten,” I replied, crossing my arms. “I hear you people do things like that. And besides, why would I want to help you guys? I can throw most of you pretty far, but I don’t trust you to land.”
“Have you even been listening to me?” Chuck roared, and I was slightly irked his breathing apparatus had a speaker attached to it. Usually they didn’t, but I guess when you’re the ranking guy around and you have to be kept in a fish tank full of healing Jell-O to survive, exceptions are made.
“Yes,” I replied. “But I’m not going to do it.” I uncrossed my arms and recrossed them for effect.
“If you don’t save the damn director and get his codes to take the system out of lockdown the place will shut down in three days. Do you know what that means?” he asked, voice so low and calm it made a chill dance along my flesh.
“What?” I asked, looking away from his icy blue eyes and staring at my feet because they were suddenly terribly interesting.
“The power shuts off. If the power shuts off, the life support system keeping your father alive stops working.” His words had an air of finality to them, and as I looked up into his face, I knew he was telling the truth. If it had been anyone else, I might not have bought it, but Chuck had always been pretty honest with me. I guess when you could crush a bowling ball in your bare hands, you didn’t need to do silly things like lie to get people to do what you wanted.
“You’re lying,” I said anyway because I couldn’t deal with having to save the creepy ass director in order to save my father, Roberto. And even though Roberto was a supervillain at his core, he was still my only living relative. I’d had pretty much everyone I knew stripped away from me by the agency and now he was the only one left. I’d be damned if I let him get taken away too… even if I had to save the agency to do it.
Chuck didn’t bother responding to me. Instead, he moved in his tank and tapped something inside I couldn’t quite see. A monitor to my left burst to life showing video footage of Roberto’s unconscious body. He was stuck full of tubes and other gizmos and looked more like a porcupine than not. He was still big, but his body had lost a certain amount of its dens
ity due to inactivity. The sight of him lying there like that made my heart hurt.
The screen split so the top right quadrant showed a timer, and the one just below it had a little bar that sort of reminded me of a power icon on a laptop computer. It was nearly full but as I watched it seemed to dip.
“When that reaches zero, the life support will go caput,” Chuck replied, voice calm. “I’d go after him myself, but by the time I’m better, we won’t have enough time, Abby.” I turned back to him, and he shook his head, a grimace on his face. “Please, Abby. You’re his only hope.”
I fought the urge to swear and scream at him, and instead, nodded as gracefully as I could. Then I turned and walked away from him. As I reached the door, I glanced back over my shoulder to see him still watching me. Good.
“I’m going to the armory to get something big, shiny, and dangerous. Have the files ready for me by the time I’d done.” I felt my face twist into a snarl. “I have some mercenaries to beat up and an evil overlord to save.” I swung back around and kicked the door open. It smacked against the outer walls with a crack like a gunshot. I strode out.
I made it about six steps into the hallway before I collapsed against the wall. I barely noticed the cool press of the metal between my shoulder blades as I struggled to pull in breathes and keep from hyperventilating. I’d wanted to act badass and angry, and I guess I’d succeeded, but was I seriously going to do this?
Flash and Bang had taken out the agency and turned most of the defenses against us in a matter of seconds. It had taken hours to decommission all the overridden systems and now, more than a day later, we were still trying to patch everything together. I was supposed to go after them and stop them, on their home turf?
That seemed crazy. Still, Chuck thought I could do it. If he thought I could win, well I had to trust him, right? I mean he’d been the one training me, after all… I took a deep breath and got to my feet. The armory was just ahead, and while I knew a few grenades had been detonated inside, I was hoping most of the good stuff hadn’t been damaged.
It still looked blown out inside the armory and most of the shelves had toppled to the floor, throwing debris across the ground. No one had bothered to clean it up, but someone had gone through and made a pile of broken weapons, which meant, presumably, the weaponry still strewn across the room was good to go.
I picked up a compact machine gun looking thing, and without realizing what I’d done, field stripped the weapon and reassembled it, confident the gun worked fine. I held it in front of me as I moved toward the back of the room and pressed my thumb to the blackened keypad along a featureless white wall. It beeped and started to slide open before screeching to a halt with a sound that rent my brain and made my teeth hurt.
It had opened only about a foot so it was enough for me to squeeze through. It was dark inside, and I bent down, scooping up a black, steel flashlight and switched it on to no avail. Three flashlights later, I shined a beam into the room revealing what I’d been hoping for. My training suit was inside protected behind three inch thick bulletproof glass.
I pulled myself into the tiny room, and ignoring the claustrophobia threatening to claw its way down my throat moved to the case. It opened as I approached, which was a little scary even though it always had done that previously. Something about biometric sensors, but I was pretty sure it was just for effect because stepping into the room always made me feel a little like Batman.
When I was nearly to the suit, I held my arms out and smirked. “Suit up!” I cried and as the words left my lips, gears began to whir and clank within the room. It was a little weird because that had never happened before. I spun around, gun held up as I backed toward my suit. Before I reached it, I felt something crawling up my legs.
I yelped and pointed my flashlight at the ground to see a puddle of black gelatinous goo oozing up my body. Before I could do anything, it had slithered up over me and settled like a second skin. I screamed. I couldn’t help it, but after my initial fright, I realized the stuff sort of resembled a suit. A translucent film covered my face, lighting up like a HUD in one of those videogames, displaying all sorts of information like the air temperature and my heartbeat.
To my left, I noticed a broken case with a blackened sign next to it. The only word I could make out was “experimental.” I looked down at my suit, and now that it’d stopped moving, it seemed just like normal clothing. I touched it tentatively even though it had covered every inch of my body, pulling at a spot on my stomach. It sort of felt like I was tugging on cookie dough.
Whatever it was, it didn’t seem to be bad. I’d just have to ask Chuck what it was before I left. It was either that or freak out and keep screaming. I was pretty sure that wouldn’t help the situation… much.
I moved back toward the exit, hoping to get out of here, and as I did so, the suit changed so a light glowed on my chest, illuminating the ground before me. Well, that was pretty cool. I tossed one final glance at my training suit and its inherent body armor, vaguely wondering if I should take it anyway, and as I thought about it, the goop stuck to me morphed to look exactly like my training suit.
“Well, that’s neat,” I said to no one in particular and made a mental note not to think about going swimsuit shopping while wearing whatever this stuff was. If it changed to look like whatever I was thinking about, well, I’d keep my thoughts nice and parka-like.
I exited the room and glanced down at the weapons strewn across the floor. I picked up a giant kukri style knife, and as I went to sheathe it, the blade disappeared somewhere into my suit. It was creepy. I grabbed at the spot where it’d vanished frantically, my heart pounding in my chest, and felt something slither up my arm. The next thing I knew, the knife was in my hand, ready for beheading zombies at a moment’s notice.
“What else do they have in here?” I murmured as my heart slowly stopped trying to beat its way out of my chest. “What other nifty things does the agency have hidden away?”
I was about to go and look for more but decided against it. What if I found something way unfriendlier than my superspy suit? Besides, for all I knew, this thing was giving me brain cancer. I settled on grabbing a few more guns and holstering them along with a few grenades, but like the knife, they vanished into whatever spatial pocket the suit held gear in.
I wasn’t sure how much it could fit, but it was neat having weapons appear in my hands. After playing with it for only a few minutes, I swear, I made my way back toward the medical bay. Hopefully, Chuck would know where I could find Flash and Bang. Besides, as cool as my new suit was, I wanted to make sure it wasn’t dissolving my insides.
6
I felt like an evil Bond girl as I stepped into the medical bay. It didn’t help that the doofy medic stared at me wide-eyed. It made me fight the urge to cross my arms over my chest. It wasn’t like it’d stop him from staring anyway. Instead, I made my way up to Chuck and smiled at him.
“Remember me?” I asked, rapping on the glass with one knuckle, much to the ire of the still leering medical person. Good. Screw him.
Chuck turned in his fish tank and stared at me for a long time. “New look?” he asked, noting how I was wearing what looked like skin-tight black leather with a red cobra emblem over my chest. I wasn’t sure why I’d wanted to look that way, but there it was. I was just glad it’d stopped making me look like Lara Croft, and not the Angelina Jolie version.
“So I found a magic suit that seems to change shape at will…” I muttered, pulling at the cobra emblem stretched across my breasts. When I realized what I’d done, my cheeks burst into flames, and I dropped my hand.
“Please tell me you didn’t take the untested, experimental body armor?” Chuck asked, a horrified look on his face.
“Um…” I muttered, biting my lip.
“That stuff will give you cancer and liquefy your insides,” he said, face turning white as a sheet, which was interesting because he was in a vat of raspberry jam.
“Really?” I squealed, try
ing to tear off my clothes as his laughter filled my ears.
“No, not really, but by all means, please strip.” Chuck stared at me smugly, giving me that weird look he did from time to time. It was the one that told me he didn’t find me attractive, but enjoyed giving me a hard time anyway. It was creepy to say the least. Especially because even though he looked like he was barely twenty, he was like eighty years old.
“I dislike you a lot,” I replied, turning away from him and stomping toward the medic who was still staring at me. He looked down at his clipboard, face flushing as I approached. Without making eye contact, he reached out and handed me what looked like an ordinary pink cellphone. The moment I touched the device, it vanished within the suit. I sighed. The whole suit absorbing things I touched thingy was starting to get old.
“No, you don’t,” Chuck called before clearing his throat. “I’ve sent all the relevant information to that phone. Basically, you’ll need to rendezvous with an agency contact named Morris. He’s currently stationed in Athens, Greece. You’ll have to find him because for some reason, he isn’t answering our hails.”
“And why do I need to find Morris? I’m supposed to be going after Flash and Bang,” I said as the phone reappeared back in my hand. I opened an application labeled Morris and a red dot over Greece blinked.
“Morris is a field agent assigned to keep tabs on Flash and Bang. If anyone will know what’s going on, it will be him.” Chuck’s voice was distant sounding as I turned back toward him. “The agency jet will take you to Athens. Just follow the GPS locater we’ve implanted in Morris, and you’ll find him, likely passed out in a bar.”
“It’s going to take like twelve hours to fly to Athens from here,” I protested, the pink phone vanishing back inside my suit. “And how am I supposed to get this through airport security?” I gestured at my ninja suit.
Meet Abby Banks VOLUMES: 1-3 Page 37