“Maybe he’s spiked them with the same kind of mind control serum he used on her. Which means we’ll have to fight them. Is that what you’re getting at here?”
Helena nodded. “Grab a brick, one that is twice the size of your hand. I’ll take Zoe, you go after Ozella and Dr. Hamza.”
“Go after?”
“Yes, Ozella first.”
“You want me to hit Ozella with a brick?” Sam asked.
“I didn’t say this was going to be easy, and I didn’t say this was going to be pretty. If Ozella is under his control, Dinah probably is as well. And we don’t want her attacking us. Try not to kill her, and I’ll do the same with Zoe. Unless you have a better plan?”
Chapter Forty-Seven: Rock Attack!
(When in doubt, fight your teammate?)
Sam Meeko thought shit was done hitting the fan after they were set free by Mister Fist and his small group of holier-than-thou exemplars.
Sam was wrong, dead wrong, and somehow, a night that had started with him getting his feet wet was close to ending with him being drowned in the deep end.
The thing was, even though he knew she could heal herself, Sam was reluctant to attack Ozella.
Who the hell wouldn’t be?
She was nerdy cute, had always been sweet to him, and Helena had just instructed him to bash her head in with a brick.
Sam didn’t know a lot about combat aside from what he’d learned in grade school, but he knew enough to knock someone out with a brick.
But Ozella?
Damn.
His back now against the wall of Dr. Hamza’s home, Sam waited for Helena’s cue to move in. Dr. Hamza was in the other room, a good twenty-five feet away, moving around a gurney with a frantic look in his eyes.
Sam saw Zoe’s ears twitch as she realized they had company, the still costumed tiger girl turning to the blown-out lab and taking off.
“What is it?” Dr. Hamza asked, looking over at the lab to find Helena standing there, Zoe charging to meet her. “Don’t kill her!” he shouted after Zoe, “Bring her to me!”
Sam knew there were only a few more seconds until Ozella and Dinah appeared on the scene, but he wanted Helena and Zoe to be fully engaged before he stepped out of the shadows.
The moment came and Sam slipped toward the closest exit, meeting Ozella head on.
Both of them paused for a moment as the masked schoolgirl looked down at Sam’s brick and back to his face.
“Sorry!” Sam shouted, adrenaline firing as he cleared the distance between them, quickly cracking the brick against the side of her face just as Dinah appeared, a look of horror splashed across the ghost woman’s eyes.
Dinah moved on Sam; Ozella fell to the side, her eyes rolling into the back of her head, and Dinah disappeared almost instantly.
“Oh god,” Sam said as he dropped to his knees and brought Ozella into his arms, a trickle of blood running down the side of her face. “I’m so sorry…”
A blast of energy from Dr. Hamza’s wrist guard cut Sam down, tearing a hunk out of the side of his arm.
Slow-motion kicked in again, and Sam saw that the bones on his right arm were exposed, muscles pulsing around a cauterized wound.
Seeing his own wound caused a change in Sam he wasn’t expecting.
Sure, he was frozen for a moment, his brain locked in ambush mentality as he tried to see where the blast had come from, but he was also searching for a weapon, his hands naturally finding the ground, patting their way up to Ozella’s face, then breasts, feeling the strap of her backpack and flipping her over once he felt…
Instinct took over as Sam heard another blast, this one going a different direction.
His heart screaming in his ears, Sam unzipped Ozella’s red backpack to find a wrist guard, the one she’d taken off a thug back at the port.
Ignoring the pain in his burnt-out arm, he tried to strap the wrist guard on, failing, and dropping the damn thing, trying again.
All sorts of sounds slammed into his eardrums, from cat-like screeches to metal equipment scraping across the floor amidst Dr. Hamza’s increasingly nervous shouts.
Steeling himself, Sam finally managed to get the wrist guard on, slowly laid Ozella down, and crawled toward the room opposite the lab.
At this range it would only take one shot from Dr. Hamza to finish Sam off.
Sam knew this, but he had to do something to neutralize the bastard. His vision blurry, and having no clue as to the weapon’s combat setting, Sam placed his hand on the side trigger.
Once he could stabilize himself, Sam stumbled into the opposite room and drew a bead on Dr. Hamza, who was aiming his own weapon at Helena and Zoe.
Sam’s blast spun Dr. Hamza around, his eyes open for a second and locked on Sam as he tried to bring his arm up.
Nope, Sam thought, blasting him again.
Dr. Hamza cried out as a wave of electricity from Sam’s wrist guard caused him to thrash violently against the floor.
With Dr. Hamza neutralized, Sam turned to the lab where he saw Zoe and Helena still going at it, Helena covered in so much blood that it looked like someone had dumped a bucket of crimson paint over her head.
She was still fighting, though, Zoe was going with her boxing instinct now, fists swinging at Helena as the combat dancer feinted a few punches to throw Zoe off. Helena finally managed to sweep the tiger girl to the ground, the back of Zoe’s head hitting the edge of a partially collapsed table.
Still not noticing Sam, Helena stood over her opponent, wiping some of the blood out of her eyes and spitting over her shoulder. She nudged Zoe with her foot, and when Zoe didn’t respond, Helena collapsed too, landing in a pile of rubble and broken glass.
“Shit…” Sam mumbled, ignoring the pain in his arm as he dragged his haggard ass over to Helena.
He crouched in front of her, checked for a pulse, and did the same for Zoe. Looking back into the other room, he saw Ozella’s legs start to move, the statkeeper regaining consciousness. He was just about to move to her when a hand grabbed his wrist.
Shock spreading through him, he mentally prepared for this hand to belong to Zoe.
Fear in his heart, Sam glanced down to see it was Helena’s hand, that her eyes were open, that her mouth was moving as she licked some of the blood from her lips.
“Ozella is going to wake up soon,” Sam whispered, his mind trying to piece together everything that had happened over the last few minutes and make sense of it. “And she’s going to have a headache when she does.”
“Take me over to her.” Helena lifted her hand and Sam helped the lean combat dancer to her feet. “You took out Dr. Hamza,” she said, nodding to the other room.
“I… I don’t know if he’s dead or not.”
“Doesn’t matter right now…” Helena swallowed hard and winced. “We’ve got to leave. Zoe won’t be out for long, and we’ll need to strap her down.”
“Do you have gear for that?” Sam asked.
“Some of my stretching equipment should work,” Helena said as Sam brought her down next to Ozella. “I’ll handle this.”
“You think it will work?” Sam asked as Helena lightly tapped Ozella’s cheek, blood from her fingers making red streaks on the statkeeper’s face.
“Ozella, sweetie, Ozella, wake up,” said Helena said, her right pupil starting to spin, circles appearing in its center and spreading outward.
Ozella eventually blinked her eyes open, and as she did, Helena took over.
“My head…”
“Call Dinah off,” Helena said just as the ghost woman’s form started to appear. “No, tell her to heal you. Tell her now.”
“Dinah…” Ozella pointed to her head; Dinah got down on her knees and started sucking at Ozella’s flesh.
“We came here to rescue you... Dr. Hamza poisoned you.”
“No,” Ozella said, “Zoe poisoned me.”
“Great,” Sam whispered, throwing a dirty look over his shoulder.
As he became more co
gnizant of what had happened, he was also significantly aware that his arm was barbeque at the moment, his skin tight and stinging, the pain moving over him in waves.
“Your arm…” Ozella said, noticing Sam’s wince.
“Shit, I didn’t even see that,” said Helena, looking at Sam’s wound.
“I can help,” Ozella said in her sweet voice. “And your scratches… I can help.”
“Not here; we need to go.” Helena helped Ozella to her feet. “I’ll call Lance.”
The teleporter appeared a minute or so later, an absolutely disgusted look on his face as the golden sparkles settled and he laid eyes upon Sam helping Ozella stand while bloody Helena carried a passed-out tiger girl over her shoulder.
“Back to my place,” said Helena with a grunt.
“I don’t even want to know,” Lance said, closing his eyes and looking away. “And if anyone hasn’t told you already, red is not your color.”
***
Everything was black, lights flashing in the distance, spiral blips.
Blurred existence, nowhere to turn, nowhere to hide, Zoe tried to cry out, her voice muffled, her arms bound, her feet…
Zoe choked back a sob once she realized she was awake, tied to a chair, something over her face.
Try as she might, Zoe couldn’t seem to bite through the thick piece of leather that was preventing her from screaming. Tensing her claws was useless too. Whoever had tied her up had really focused on her forearms, the straps allowing Zoe to transform yet tightening when she transformed back.
Not able to free herself, Zoe began mentally reconstructing everything she could remember before…
It came to her then, Dr. Hamza poisoning her, everything going black.
The mad scientist had done something to her, and now she was here in his home, tied up and unable to do anything except…
Zoe’s brain kicked into overdrive as she tried to send messages to Sam.
Once that failed, she attempted to contact a teleporter, but no one responded to the message, which was a telltale sign that it hadn’t been received.
She was going to stay in this position, bound, blindfolded and gagged until Dr. Hamza decided to do something about it. And even though she was scared shitless, she knew that she needed to be ready for the moment he came to her, likely to dose her again.
Not wanting to be caught off guard, Zoe mentally went over what she would do when Dr. Hamza approached, coming to the conclusion again and again that the only momentum she would have would be from throwing herself forward and taking him out.
It was her only chance.
So rather than struggle and waste energy trying to wiggle out of her current position, Zoe merely waited, biding her time, hoping Dr. Hamza would come soon.
It was only when she took a breath in through her nostrils and smelled a familiar place that confusion set in.
Zoe was in Helena’s gym.
Chapter Forty-Eight: Time Out
(Sam should have kept his mouth shut. Better luck next time!)
“So we’re just going to leave her like that all night?” Sam asked Helena. He was already lying in her bed, his hands crossed behind his head.
“Have you showered?” Helena asked as she finished slipping out of her exemplar outfit.
“No?”
“You have a heightened sense of smell, yet you choose to ignore the way you currently stink?” she asked as she started folding her uniform.
“I was actively trying not to breathe out of my nose,” Sam said, as she pointed to her bathroom.
“Otherwise you’ll be sleeping in your own bed,” she said as Sam walked past, Helena lightly slapping him on the ass.
The heiress to the Knight’s fortune was still covered in blood, but no longer covered in Zoe’s scratches.
That was the third thing they attended to once they arrived back at her mansion. The first being Ozella’s headwound, then Sam’s fucked up arm, Dinah spending a good ten minutes healing it while Helena and Ozella tied Zoe up in the gym.
Now Sam’s arm was looking as good as new, the only sign it had been scorched being a rim of dried blood. Yep, he seriously shouldn’t have been lying on the bed, but Sam was tired, and falling backwards onto the bed came to him almost naturally.
Not that it mattered anymore.
Helena started the shower and got in first, Sam watching as the blood washed off her body, the water the color of strawberry juice he used to drink as a kid.
It was especially jarring against Helena’s pale skin, the blood running down her back and over the curves of her ass.
“So are you watching or showering?” she asked.
“I thought you wanted to get all the blood off…”
“I’m not the only one with blood on them,” she reminded Sam as he got in, Helena moving back so he could get under the showerhead. “And to answer your original question: yes, we’re leaving Zoe in the gym. I don’t know what to do with her at the moment, but I definitely, definitely do not want to work with her anymore. Not after what she did.”
“I don’t think…”
Helena started cleaning Sam, her hand now on a soapy loofa and scrubbing him down, including spending an extended period of time on his increasingly erect penis.
Sam found it harder and harder to say what he wanted to say.
“You don’t think what?” Helena asked, her fingers cupping his testicles.
Sam cleared his throat, knowing that what he said next could change the dynamics of the night. “I don’t think we should discredit Zoe so quickly. She did something bad, but…”
“She poisoned Ozella and nearly got all of us captured by Dr. Hamza,” Helena said flatly.
“Is that guy even a real doctor?”
“Does it matter?” she asked, dropping the loofa and her hand from his member. Helena turned away from him.
“We should have checked to make sure he was dead,” Sam lamented.
“He probably wasn’t,” Helena said. “Guys like that don’t die easy.”
“Apparently. But regarding Zoe, I want a clear explanation and an apology.”
“An apology?” Helena moved a bit further away from him.
“Hey, come back…” Sam said, his hands coming to her waist.
“Your ex nearly got us killed, she cut the shit out of me—regardless of the fact I’m healed now, it still hurt—and she poisoned Ozella.”
“There’s more to it than that…”
“What? That she doesn’t like her tiger face?”
“I mean, would you?” Sam asked as Helena increased the heat of the water, steam clouding her form. “She used to be a model, you know.”
“So she’s vain? Is that the point you’re trying to make? Because you’re losing this argument.”
“I’m saying that it was a big part of her life, and it was suddenly taken away from her. You still have your company. Imagine if you showed up at a board meeting tomorrow, or whatever, and half of your face was furry, and two tiger ears had sprouted from your skull. And consider this: all of us have received some type of power, and of all our powers, yours seems to be the one that will take the least adjusting to. I can barely eat because of my damn sense of smell; Ozella looks batshit insane at times as she sees whatever it is she’s seeing—I still haven’t figured out the usefulness of that power yet; and Zoe is half tiger. She even has a goddamn tail, which she now has to figure out how to deal with.”
Helena turned to him, a stern look in her eyes. “Do you really want to see this argument to its conclusion?”
“Not really,” Sam admitted. “I know Zoe, and I know that she can be a pain in the ass, that she was being selfish, and it was an incredibly messed up thing to do, but I also know that if any of us found ourselves in a bind, Zoe would drop whatever it is she was doing to come to our aid. We should hear her out. Let me talk to her.”
“You know you’re sleeping in your own bed tonight, right?” Helena asked as she moved closer to him, lifting onto her toes to
kiss him, the water from the shower bouncing off her shoulders.
“I figured as much. But you aren’t too mad at me, are you?”
“Yes, I am mad at you. You just defended your hot-headed model ex-girlfriend who betrayed us. You defended her by appealing to my emotions on how I would feel if I were in her shoes. Furthermore, and this annoys me to no end, I sort of agree with you, even though I shouldn’t, because you’ve laid out a convincing enough argument. And aside from all that, I just want the bed to myself,” she said, giving him another kiss. “Is that a good enough answer for you?”
“Do we have to leave her hooded and cuffed? Seems cruel.”
“Don’t press your luck with me, Sam.”
Chapter Forty-Nine: Ex Communicate
(Forgive and forget?)
Of course Sam Meeko could hardly sleep that night. Tossing and turning, going over what had happened that day, wondering about what would happen tomorrow—like most Centralians aside from telepaths, Sam had little control over what his mind did when he lay down to sleep.
Eventually, he gave up, raising the white flag and letting his mind know that it had won, that he was officially up.
It was early morning now, and Sam felt the heavy hands of not getting enough sleep pulling at the sides of his consciousness. Regardless of how sleepy he felt, Sam knew it would be impossible to go back to sleep, not without speaking to Zoe.
As quietly as possible, he left his bedroom, noticing the light in the study was on. Peeking inside, Sam found Ozella asleep at the table, her head resting on her arms.
“Dinah?” he whispered. The woman with bluish skin started to appear, a soft smile on her face.
She didn’t seem at all upset by the fact Sam had smashed Ozella’s head in with a brick earlier. Still, he felt guilty as hell about it.
“Sorry,” Sam whispered again to Dinah, and for some strange reason, he got the sense that she knew he meant it, that he had struck Ozella because she posed a threat to them saving the overall team.
Sam grimaced at the word ‘team.’
We Could Be Heroes Page 28