When they reached the bottom of the stairs, Ace and Tess marched through the corridor and prompted Sarina to follow. Unlike her, they acted like they knew where they were going. She noticed how the floors and ceiling were lined with the same gray metal, causing the group’s footsteps to echo throughout the length of corridor.
“Aluminum,” Tess murmured, trailing a finger along the length of the hallway. “Explains why Sunny couldn’t hear well.”
“I can now,” the boy’s voice informed from the rear. “And yeah, there’s a third person down here. And they’re nervous.”
“Aren’t we all,” Ace said, dry as sawdust.
Fifteen stone steps and two nondescript doors later, the Nameless found themselves in front of a pair of heavy metal doors. Ace raised a fist to give them a solid rap.
At least you’ve been here before and know what to expect, Sarina thought.
Desperate for reassurance, she reached into her pants pocket to pull out her music player. It wasn’t a gun, of course, but the mere act of holding it calmed her nerves. She slipped an earbud underneath her hair and into one ear, passing the player beneath her t-shirt to hide the wire before slipping the device back into her pocket.
She was now armed. In some fashion, anyway. She still winced when the door ahead of her opened with a metallic screech.
“Come on in!” a male voice boomed from the other side.
Ace gave the heavy steel door a shove and passed through, trailed by Tess and Sunny. Knowing that Jasper was right behind her gave Sarina the courage she needed to follow.
The room they entered was about the size of an average living room. Instead of aluminum, the walls were constructed of haphazard globs of gray stone unlike anything Sarina had ever encountered in nature. The damp space was harshly illuminated by a bare fluorescent bulb hanging from the ceiling, and thousands of bits and pieces of plastic, electronic, and metal junk overflowed the shelves along the walls. The center of the room was dominated by a huge wooden work table, also overflowing with junk, with an assortment of mismatched chairs surrounding it. They had the rugged, dirty look of something most people would throw away.
Positioned at one end of the table, next to a high-backed padded captain’s chair, was an imposing man with a chubby build. Chin-length black curls stuck out from beneath his black skullcap in an unruly mass, and his dark bushy eyebrows hinted at Middle Eastern ethnicity. His pale skin, however, didn’t fit with the rest of his look. Sarina couldn’t imagine that he had seen much sunlight lately.
Since no one else was in the room, she looked over at Sunny. I thought you said there were three of them?
The boy caught her glance and shrugged.
“Ace, you fucker, how you been?” the man wearing the skullcap barked in choppy English. His German accent was as thick as Plentiful’s, but had an undertone of something else with it.
“Trashcan.” Ace tapped the brim of his hat with exaggerated courtesy. “Been a while.”
The chubby man’s small eyes were immediately drawn to Sarina. He parted his lips in a smile that was a little too wide for her comfort. It reminded her of the lusty old men who occasionally settled next to her on the train, ignoring the numerous vacant seats elsewhere.
Jasper took a protective step closer to her, breaking the German rogue’s stare.
“And your new members, huh? Very good. Sit if you like,” Trashcan beckoned them, gesturing to the table. His eyes settled on Sunny as he spoke, and that too-wide grin appeared again.
Ace and Tess exchanged a glance.
They’re worried, Sarina realized as she fingered the music player in her pocket.
Tess made no move to sit. “You know why we’re here. Let’s just get on with it.” She heaved her metallic suitcase onto the table and snapped it open. The raised lid revealed an assortment of small pieces of metal, each one resting within its own velvet-padded indentation.
“I can see you’ve got plenty of aluminum and steel,” Tess said. “But what I got ain’t cheap. Iridium and rhodium. Platinum, too, if you’re wondering. Not to mention a bunch of alloys that you’d never be able to create.”
Plentiful can multiply and reshape any kind of material even if she has just a little bit of it, Sarina remembered. It didn’t surprise her that Plentiful and Trashcan had tunneled out an underground hideout. All kinds of criminals would love to have a ‘chat’ with these guys, she assumed.
“If it’s money you want, we can talk about it,” Tess added.
Plentiful stepped into the room, and let the heavy door slam behind her. The sound resonated with a finality that sent a shiver down Sarina’s spine.
“You already know what we want,” Trashcan replied, the feigned geniality gone from his voice. “We want to join you. You let us join, you get the parts you need. Simple.”
“And tell me why, exactly, you think I would let you join us?” Ace challenged. “We already have a Technician, remember?”
“The Covenant comes down hard on rogues now. We are all dangerous, they say,” Trashcan spat. “Unless we register so we can be watched, they bring trouble on us. We have talked about this before, you and I, but it is worse now than last time. Everything gets worse for us. Unlike you, we have no freedom. We can’t leave our home without fearing an attack on us.”
Beside her, Sarina felt Sunny shift. Poor guy. Everyone wants a piece of him.
“You wanna hide, huh? Like you’re hiding your friend over there?” Ace challenged, glaring at something near the back of the room. “Not a show of good faith, is it?”
Sarina followed Ace’s gaze to a closed door along the back wall. She hadn’t noticed it before because part of it was concealed by a heap of the same junk that cluttered most of the room.
“Our friend is hiding like your Snow is hiding,” Plentiful countered.
“Yeah, Snow’s outside,” Ace said. “You know she’s a shy lil’ thing.”
Trashcan pointed at the door. “Our friend is shy, too. She is why you need to listen. Why we need to join you.”
Ace looked unimpressed. “Oh, yeah? And how’s that?”
“She is in danger. The Covenant will hunt her soon,” Plentiful said.
Join the club, Sarina thought.
Ace’s expression hardened. “What did she do? Kill somebody?”
“Like the way your boy killed somebody,” Plentiful replied impassively. She jerked her chin at Sunny.
Ace clacked his tongue. “Power surge?”
Trashcan’s lack of a response was answer enough.
“What’s her power?”
“We won’t tell.” Trashcan drummed his fingers anxiously against the back of a chair. “Not until there is a deal.”
Ace exchanged another glance with Tess, who shook her head.
He turned back to Trashcan. “Friendly people make deals. You’re not being friendly. You’re hiding someone back there. Planning to backstab us, are you?”
Sarina felt the tension build all around her as Jasper shuffled half a step back to the wall, tugging on her sleeve. Tess moved closer to Sunny while Ace clenched and unclenched one of his fists.
I knew it. Let’s get out of here, please. Sarina slid a hand into her pocket, closing her fingers around her Mp3 player. She ran her thumb across the play switch, ready to press the trigger if necessary.
“Look, even if we wanted to help you, we can’t.” Ace assumed a tone of cool assurance. “We ain’t got no room. Things are more complicated than they used to be. We’re not working on our own anymore, and we’ve got business to attend to right after we conclude this meeting.”
“What business?” Trashcan asked. “Maybe we can help.”
Please, no, Sarina thought. If the two groups weren’t getting along now, there wouldn’t be any end to the bickering if they were on the road together. Trashcan’s creepy smile played in her mind over and over again.
“You can help by making those parts I need,” Tess demanded. “I’ve seen how good you are with schematics. It sho
uldn’t take you more than a couple of hours to make them if you can keep focused.”
“We’ll make the parts, sure. If you take us with you.” Plentiful’s tone said she wasn’t going to budge from her stance.
“I already told you, we can’t—”
“How much effort to hide three more people?” Trashcan interrupted before Ace could finish. Wagging his fingers in Sunny’s direction, he added, “Just a little extra, no?”
“We have our own car,” Plentiful added. “We can follow behind, and take different rooms for work and sleep. Make you all the parts and materials you need.”
They’re desperate, Sarina realized. They’re not going to give in.
“Introduce the girl first and we may consider,” Ace said after a moment.
Tess snapped her head around as if she was going to protest, giving Sarina hope that everyone would part ways before this escalated anymore, but the Irish woman kept her lips pursed tight.
“Very well. Mina!” Trashcan shouted.
All eyes turned to the door at the back of the room. The doorknob turned with dramatic slowness before the door slid open far enough to allow for a single eye to peer through. Sarina braced herself, prepared to face whatever monster had been hidden away in the back room.
Trashcan said something in a language she didn’t understand. When the door opened fully, a mousy, frail-looking young woman in a baggy oversized sweater hanging nearly to the knees of her flower-printed leggings was revealed. Tufts of soft dark hair stuck out from under the scarf she had tied around her head. Overall, she looked normal.
Why keep her hidden? Sarina wondered. She’s a regular girl, like me.
Trashcan turned back to the Nameless, revealing a thin smile. “Mina is a sweet girl. She had much trouble before she found us. Bad people treated her badly.”
“So what’s her power?” Ace asked coldly, revealing no emotion.
Trashcan ignored the question, following his previous train of thought instead. “It’s sad you do not help her. Very sad.”
“That’s not what I—” a gurgling sound from Sunny’s throat interrupted him. The boy stumbled and crashed into the nearest chair.
“Fuck!” Ace hissed.
The room erupted into a frenzy. Ace reached for the gun holsters on his belt, drawing a weapon with each hand. Tess grabbed something the size of an apple from her own belt and ducked beneath the table’s edge, extending her arm. The ball-shaped item floated up and out of her hand, crackling as it charged. Sarina’s vision blurred and the colors of the background bled together. Her vision cleared right away, but the two German rogues disappeared as if they had never been there. Sunny and the mousy young woman vanished together shortly afterward. There wasn’t any sound or visual effects. They were simply gone.
Sarina recognized the power at work here. She had experienced it before, back in Switzerland, when Jasper materialized out of thin air to greet her.
Sunny’s power.
The instant her mind made the connection, her stomach tightened to a small knot.
“Mina’s other name is Mindbender,” Trashcan’s disembodied voice boomed, echoing from every corner of the room. Heaps of junk around the room shifted and came apart to reveal a half dozen miniguns.
5.2 Escalation
Somewhere near Lyon, France
Saturday, the 9th of June, 2012
2:38 p.m.
Trashcan’s weaponry shattered any remaining diplomatic restraint. The room erupted into chaos. Two gunshots pierced the air, echoing like thunder through the underground chamber. A cry of pain came from somewhere, though Sarina couldn’t pinpoint the direction. Tess’s floating orb discharged thin blue tendrils of energy with electrical crackles. While many of those tendrils connected to miniguns, others cut through the air without visible effect.
In the midst of it all, someone grabbed Sarina’s arm to pull her down. She didn’t resist, and dropped onto the cold dusty floor beside Jasper, her heart hammering in her chest. She couldn’t even begin to understand what she should do or where she should go, but something told her the floor was safest, so she kept her head low.
Another shot was fired. Ace darted around the table, knocking over a chair to reach Sunny’s last known position. Sarina barely breathed as he rounded the corner with his gun drawn.
Please don’t let anyone get hurt, she prayed. When Jasper pulled her farther back to the wall, she didn’t resist.
She looked up in time to see Ace stop in his tracks. His knees gave way as if someone had cut the strings of a puppet. He made the same gurgling sounds Sunny had made, and his eyes rolled back in his head before he collapsed to the floor.
Sarina saw what was happening, but she wasn’t able to process it because nothing made sense. Nothing was happening in any logical order so she didn’t know what to do. Sure, she had been on the receiving end of psychological and verbal violence over the years, but gunshots were never involved. Or superpowers. It was all too overwhelming and too horrifying for her to grasp.
“Stay down and hug the shelf,” Jasper said into her ear, angling his body to shield her.
She managed a nod and shrank back to the tall metal shelf towering over her. As her hip bumped against a hard edge, a small hard object pressed into her skin, reminding her of the music player she kept hidden in her pants. She lifted herself up enough to slip her fingers into the pocket and feel her way to the play button. She pressed it.
While she waited for the music to kick in, she peeked over Jasper’s shoulder to see Tess make her way around the table to where Ace had collapsed. She didn’t reach him because she was stopped short as if she had hit an invisible wall. Her body went slack, and her jaw fell open without making a sound. The metal orb she controlled dropped from the air and crashed onto the floor as its blue energy extinguished with a final hiss.
Oh, God. Mindbender is taking us all, one by one. Sarina wanted to run, but her dazed mind couldn’t remember where the exit was. She squeezed her eyes shut to count the seconds until the music played.
The first track kicked in with an upbeat electronic pulse, a generic trance, the first one of seven tracks Jasper had transferred onto her player. Sarina fumbled with the controls to skip to the last track, but she couldn’t get a good grip on the device in her pocket. She stopped short of removing it. The last thing she wanted was for Mindbender and the German rogues to figure out what she was doing. If they took the player away, it was game over.
While she fumbled with the player, Jasper’s arms went slack and dropped away from her. Another puppet whose strings had been cut.
Oh, God, not Jasper too.
Panic restricted Sarina’s throat, and her breath stopped. She opened her eyes and twisted around, looking for the door, but her body refused to rise from the floor because she was paralyzed with fear. All she could do was to keep herself from crying while Crystal Dust filled her ear with upbeat lyrics about the power of friendship.
Track one, not seven.
Do something, she told herself, knowing full well that she was about to be Mindbender’s next victim. She was the only one left. Do it now. But it was too late because she missed her chance.
It only hurt for a second. Mindbender’s attack was like a SWAT team kicking in the door to her mind, throwing everything that made up her identity into disarray. Sarina floated in a black void, losing track of everything and everyone. Even herself. She got better, though. The fear was swept from her mind, leaving her with a strong feeling that everything would be all right. No one was going to get hurt.
“I got all of them,” someone said in a feeble female voice she didn’t recognize. The words were German, marked by the same brusque accent that Trashcan had.
Sarina raised her head to find Mindbender crouching beneath the table speaking to Trashcan. She was glad to see both of them unharmed after the scuffle. Plentiful came into view, her face twisted into a grimace of pain as she stepped out of the corner, pressing her right hand to her bleeding left arm.
<
br /> “Oh, no!” Sarina blurted out. “Are you okay?”
The stringent blonde woman slanted a glance at her. No one spoke up to answer her question, but it was all right. Sarina wasn’t the one who had gotten hurt, so she wasn’t worthy of attention.
Jasper got up from where he had fallen behind her. The relaxed smile on his face told her he was okay. Sunny was also smiling on the other side of the table, rising to stand next to a grinning Tess. Ace casually righted the chair he knocked over before falling.
Sarina’s eyes went to the top of the table, where the Australian rogue had put down his guns. It looked as if he wanted nothing to do with them anymore.
We’re finally done with all the awful shooting. It was a happy thought that lifted Sarina’s spirits. Upbeat dance music filled her ear, painting her mood in the brightest colors.
Trashcan’s gaze landed on Plentiful’s bleeding arm. “We’ll get you fixed up in a minute,” he assured her in German before meeting Ace’s eyes, his gaze narrowing. “How did you hit her?” He transitioned from German back to English. “She moved, and you couldn’t see her.”
“I cheated,” Ace said, smiling with a childish innocence unlike his usual gruff self. Sarina welcomed the change. This new Ace was an improvement over the surly one who she had known before.
“You cheated, eh?” Trashcan muttered. Turning his attention back to Plentiful, who was still clutching her wounded arm, he ordered in German, “Fire up the autodoc.”
Plentiful nodded, pressing her lips into a hard line. She made her way to the metal door from where the Nameless had entered, and waited a second until it slid open to let her pass.
Mindbender collected Ace’s guns from the table, turning each one over before handing them to Trashcan. When that was done, she stepped around the table to kick Tess’s dead energy orb out of the way. It rolled across the uneven stone floor and disappeared beneath one of the shelves.
“Now, who will we get to talk first?” Trashcan rubbed his stubbly chin as he looked the Nameless over.
Superluminary Page 43