Sure, it was easy to tell that Mister Fist was big, or that William Bottorf had batons attached to his belt, or that the MindLenz lady wore a full-face mask that even covered her mouth, but that was about it.
Everything was distorted upside down, Sam not able to focus on the people standing around him. At least they hadn’t full-on tortured him yet; at least he hadn’t woken up with his testicles in a clamp, or his feet in boiling hot water, or perhaps a few of his fingers already missing.
“What do you want?” Helena asked, taking the lead.
“Answers, let’s start with answers,” said the woman codenamed Plume.
“I’ll give you answers if you let us down from here, any answer you want,” said Helena.
Sam tried to interpret the tone of her voice, if she was being serious or not. She didn’t normally capitulate so easily, but then again, they actually didn’t have that many answers and Mister Fist and his crew probably already knew more than Sam and the rest of them considering they had…
Yeah, Sam thought as he examined the woman with the featureless mask. Definitely a telepath.
As Plume considered what Helena had said, Sam tried to fire off a message to Zoe letting her know that they were being interrogated, only to find his capacity for mental messaging completely shut down.
“He’s trying to contact others,” MindLenz informed the group.
Damn telepath, Sam thought again.
I can hear you, the woman’s voice said in Sam’s mind, startling him even further.
“Leave them upside down,” said William Bottorf, the duplicator that had flooded the battle with baton-wielding men.
“Odd,” Plume said, “you are dressed as exemplars, yet you clearly aren’t a registered team.”
A bit congested now, Sam took a deep, calming breath through his nostrils, pulling in Plume’s scent.
Sam’s eyes went wide when he discovered that he’d met her before at one of the Heroes Anonymous meetings, the one where he’d gotten into a dick-measuring contest with the white-haired man named Roman regarding his sense of smell. Plume was Roman’s teacher of sorts, and her name was Ava…
“No way,” Sam said, the thought instantly leaving his mind.
“We need to plug his nose,” MindLenz informed the group. “He’ll pick up our information if not, and I’ll have to keep wiping his mind.”
“You wiped my mind?” Sam asked, unable to remember what he’d just been thinking. By this point, William Bottorf had moved to a wall of supplies and returned with a pair of ear plugs.
“Think this will do?” he asked Plume.
“Give it a shot.”
“Hold still,” William told Sam as his form split into two, a clone helping stop Sam from fidgeting while Bottorf shoved a pair of earplugs into his nostrils. Bottorf clapped him on the back. “Big breath in through your nostrils.”
Rather than protest, and figuring that complying would get them right side up the quickest, Sam did as he instructed, his nasal passages now blocked, his super kickass nose no longer able to decipher smells.
“Good, so back to my question,” Plume said as William Bottorf stepped away. “Where are your papers, and since we already know you aren’t a registered team, hardly exemplars, what were you doing at the Knight facility along the southern border?”
“Same thing you were doing,” Helena said firmly, clearly regaining her composure, “and because you have a telepath, I want to make it clear that we do not give our consent to have our minds read, even if our minds have already been picked apart. I’m sure one of you knows the rights of a Centralian citizen when it comes to abuse by exemplars. Since your telepath already knows our identities, I suggest that she keep it to herself lest she find herself, and your team, in a civil lawsuit that I plan to win. Let us down, and let us the hell out of here.”
MindLenz chuckled. “Too bad she already has two strikes. Maybe, maybe, this one codenamed Ballerina would have more of a platform to shout and sue from had she not already been deemed a low-level criminal.”
“We don’t have registration papers because we aren’t registered,” Sam said. “We’re a new team. And you’ve already figured it out. We were once non-exemplars, and now we’re not.”
“And your powers?” Plume asked, waving a hand at MindLenz to tell her she had it from here.
“Heightened sense of smell,” Sam said.
William Bottorf and his replica laughed. “It’s just funny hearing that out loud,” one of them said.
“It’s not as shitty of a power as it sounds…”
“So your sense of smell is stronger than others,” Plume said, “to be clear.”
“Stronger is an understatement. If you take these earplugs out of my nostrils, I’ll show you just how strong it is.”
“It’s already been classified by one of theirs who got away,” MindLenz said. “Enhanced Orthonasal Olfaction, Psychometry, Memory Reading. His powers were dormant until he was assaulted by Centralian Police.”
“I had a deviated septum that got un-deviated,” Sam added.
“But your friend is different,” the telepath said. Sam heard Mister Fist grunt as the group turned their attention to Helena.
“Hypnosis,” Helena said matter-of-factly. “Mine was triggered by an experimental drug created by a man named Dr. Hamza Grumio. There, I’ve given you plenty of info, so either let us go, or turn us in to the police so I can contact my lawyers.”
“You’d contact your lawyers?” Sam asked Helena quickly.
“Only way we’re getting out of this…”
“No lawyers,” said the woman named Plume.
“Then what do you want?” asked Helena.
“Information,” MindLenz said as she stepped forward. “I’d rather not dig through the mind of a famous heiress. Tell us what you know.”
“We don’t know much more than you,” Sam started to say. “One of our teammates came across some thugs transporting children, well, dead children, their blood drained by vampires. And we followed up on one of the thugs transporting them, which was how we ran into…”
“Stop talking,” MindLenz told him, “I already know that part and have shared it with my team.”
“There’s more,” Helena finally said. “It appears that the same group, operating under the moniker ‘Fang,’ has rented several of Knight Corp’s staging and port areas over the last few weeks. The, um, Knight Corporation rents these areas out frequently, as it brings in quite a bit of revenue compared to residential real estate. I discovered their name because of my access to the documents.”
“Ah, there’s the info we needed,” MindLenz said. “And is the Knight Corporation planning to stop renting these facilities to the Fang group?”
“After one more rental, yes, otherwise the Knight Corporation would be in breach of contract.”
“Even if they are shipping children?” Mister Fist asked. Sam’s ears twitched at his voice, a sense that he’d heard this man speak before.
As Helena spoke briefly on transportation agreement laws, and how the best they could do would be to alert law enforcement, Sam finally recalled a winter festival he’d visited two years ago, where he’d heard Mister Fist speak and demonstrate his powers.
But why did his voice sound even more familiar than that?
Sam shrugged it off (as best he could while upside down with blood rushing to his head), tuning back in as Helena finished her spiel on Centralian corporate agreements.
“So what you’re telling me is that we should be there for this final delivery,” William Bottorf said.
“That would be ideal, yes.”
“Good, then we’ll take that information to heart,” MindLenz said.
“So what now?” Plume asked. “Can we really just let them go? What they’ve done is technically illegal…”
“You could let us come with you,” Sam suggested, the thought coming out of nowhere, smashing against the back of his teeth and escaping his lips. “We could be, like, witness a
pprentices, or something. Sorry if that sounds strange. Being upside down this long is messing with me.”
“Witness apprentices?” Mister Fist grimaced. “That’s the worst idea I’ve heard in a while.”
“Mr. Super Nose and Ballerina want to come with us?” William Bottorf snorted, his clone laughing as well. “And here I thought this day couldn’t get any dumber.”
“My codename is Nosy,” Sam informed him, “and we can be helpful, trust me.”
“They could learn a thing or two,” Plume started to say.
“Absolutely not,” said Mister Fist. “We should be dropping them off at the police station once we finish here.”
“You said there were two other members of their ‘team,’” said William Bottorf. “And what are their powers exactly? Tell me one has explosive burps and the other heightened sweating abilities. Ha!”
MindLenz shook her head. “One is a beast morpher, the other is…” She was quiet for a moment as she sifted through Sam and Helena’s minds. “Weird. The other has a ghost that follows her around and can heal her, plus she sees things.”
“Sees things?” William Bottorf and his replica exchanged glances. “Are you believing what you’re hearing?”
“No,” his replica said in the same voice. “I’m not!”
“Laugh it up, assholes,” Helena said, taking an almost Zoe-like tone, “but if you let me down from here, I’m pretty sure I’ll be able to mop the floor with you and any clone you can shit out.”
“This conversation ends now,” Mister Fist said with finality. “We will let you go this time, and this time only. If we ever catch you at the scene of a crime again, I will personally see to it that you are dropped off at the police station. And we will be in touch once we sort this out; I want to know more about how your powers came about, but we have our hands full at the moment.”
“I still think they should come along,” Plume said as she pulled her red hair into a ponytail. “It would be good experience for them. Can we vote on it?”
“I vote no,” said William Bottorf.
“No,” came Mister Fist’s response.
MindLenz was quiet for a moment, an excruciatingly long moment in which Sam straight up heard the roar of the ocean in his head.
“No,” the telepath finally said, “and we should probably wipe their minds of what has transpired here just in case.”
“We don’t consent to having our minds wiped,” said Helena. “Nothing that happened here incriminated anyone in any way, nor did we reveal, or have revealed to us, any information that could jeopardize your mission.”
“I’m fine with that,” Mister Fist said. “Bottorf, get them down from the ceiling. The teleporter should be here soon.”
Chapter Forty-Six: The Tiger and the Schoolgirl
(Here we go!)
Sam Meeko and Helena Knight’s forms took shape in Helena’s mansion, their eyes locking as soon as their forms finished taking shape.
Nothing was said for a moment as they thanked their lucky stars, Helena taking a seat, Sam silently pumping his fist in the air. And no, he didn’t go with his motto of choice, because he definitely did not feel like a badass.
Not after nearly being turned in to the fuzz.
And most certainly not after hanging upside down for who knew how long.
In fact, even as he pumped his fist, he felt sick to his stomach, the smells hitting him now that he had removed the ear plugs sticking out of his nose.
“I’ll try Ozella and Zoe again,” Sam said as he started pacing, beginning to worry when he didn’t get a response. “What if the bad guys got them? Fang, right? Is that what we should call them?”
“The name works for now,” Helena said. “And to answer your question, I don’t know, really. I’m assuming Zoe slipped away, but maybe they got Ozella. I really hope not.”
“Actually, if Ozella is conscious, she’d be one of the best ones to get,” Sam said, “and I mean ‘good’ as in ‘good for us and bad for them.’ I would hate to see how Dinah reacted if Ozella called her to attack people, especially since no one seems to be able to see her.”
“Good point. And Zoe can hold her own.”
“That she can,” Sam said, trying not to sound too enthused about how much ass his ex could kick. He hadn’t really noticed any jealousy on Helena’s end—Zoe’s yes, but that was to be expected—and he really didn’t want to give her reason to get jealous (if that feeling was even in Helena’s wheelhouse).
“Then where?” he asked. “And why are they not contacting us?”
Helena started looking around the room to see if there was anything that would shed some light on what had happened to Ozella and Zoe.
Sam joined her, occasionally sniffing things, hoping to get a clue as to where they could have gone. Of course, they didn’t find anything in the living room, and it was Helena who finally suggested they check their rooms.
“Which one should we check first?” Sam asked.
“Zoe. If either of them planned something, it would be her.”
“Planned something?” Sam asked.
“Just saying,” Helena said as they turned to Zoe’s room. “Come on.”
Sam didn’t know where to start once he entered Zoe’s room, and he seriously didn’t want to pry just in case Zoe found out (she’d kill him), so Sam went for the first thing he spotted, her tiger hoodie, which was draped over one of the chairs.
He sniffed it, and nearly tossed it to the other side of the room.
“What?” Helena asked, turning to Sam, her eyes narrowing behind her exemplar mask.
“I can’t…” Sam lowered the hoodie, taking a deep breath in and out through his mouth. Once he was clear, he gave it another sniff. “Why would she…?”
“What is it, Sam?” Helena asked, moving over to him.
“Just… dammit. Goddammit, Zoe,” he said, shaking his head at the hoodie. “They’re at Dr. Hamza’s, they must be.”
Helena gasped. “Dr. Hamza?”
“She was there last night, and there’s this as well.” Sam reached into the front pocket of the hoodie, showing Helena the syringe filled with a clear liquid. “It looks like our night is just beginning.”
Helena nodded. “I’ll call Lance.”
***
Lance the teleporter appeared in his PJs, a grumpy yet playful look on his face as he turned to the two dramatically. “You know teleporters sleep, right?”
“And they apparently know the definition of ‘on call,’” Helena told him, a thin smile on her face.
“You two are still out playing hero I see,” Lance said, yawning. “And where are the other two? The one with tiger ears is kind of cute—bitchy, but cute.”
Sam dropped his face into his hand, not sure if he should laugh or ignore the mouthy telepath.
“Being on call doesn’t come with information privileges,” Helena reminded Lance. “Besides, they’re sleeping.”
“Fine, fine, I’ll take you wherever you want to go,” he grumbled, and with that, golden sparkles flashed all around them as they appeared in front of Dr. Hamza’s house. “Happy?”
“Yes,” Helena said shortly.
“And let me guess, you’ll be needing my services in the near future?”
“Probably,” Sam said, “but we’ll try to be brief.”
“Well, good luck with whatever it is you’re getting into. I’ll be sure to save my nightcap until after you two have stopped heroing around.”
Lance flashed away, leaving Sam and Helena standing in the dark.
“How should we do this?” Sam asked. “And seriously, I can’t believe this guy is still alive,” he said, referring to the light that was on inside the home.
“Did you think Dinah killed him?”
“I don’t know what I thought, but whatever it was, I’m still a little shocked that Zoe…” Sam swallowed hard. “She betrayed us.”
“We don’t know all the details yet,” Helena said, trying to sound positive and failin
g.
“Let’s just get to the backyard. Unless he’s fixed it since then, the hole is probably still in the side of his lab. That should give us a pretty easy entry point.”
“I’ll take the lead.”
“Yeah, considering I don’t have a weapon,” Sam said, shaking his hand out.
Mister Fist and his crew made sure to take Sam’s (apparently) unregistered wrist guard away, leaving him without long-range capabilities.
“Like I said, I’ve got this.” Helena took a running start and flipped over the fence, using her hands to balance on its edge for a moment as she judged the space on the other side.
“Not trying that,” Sam said as he scrambled up the side, breathing heavily by the time he made it to the top, splinters cutting into his palms. Sam grunted as he hopped down to the other side, shaking his head at Helena, who was laughing softly.
“You have no grace.”
“Aware,” said Sam. “And we should have just used the gate.”
“It could sound off or something, and blow our cover.”
“Really?” he asked, still catching his breath. “Because it didn’t…”
Helena turned to Sam once he started to speak and pressed a single finger to her mouth, letting him know to keep it down.
“Sorry,” Sam whispered.
Staying in the shadows, they dipped a bit further back into the yard before circling around to get a proper look at what was going on inside. They saw Dr. Hamza moving about, Zoe with him, helping the bastard relocate items from his lab.
“Shit,” Sam whispered as Ozella approached the hole in the wall, looking in their direction and turning away. She looked a little fried, but she was the same Ozella as ever and still in her superhero uniform, although her mask was now missing.
“He’s done something to their minds,” Helena concluded. “No way Ozella would be cooperating that easily. Remember the lizard woman with wings?”
Sam nodded, recalling her transformation and all the shit that went down directly after. If it hadn’t been for Dr. Hamza trying to show her off, his three teammates wouldn’t have their powers.
We Could Be Heroes Page 27