by Lexie Dunne
“Maybe later. What’s going on? What do these guys want?”
“This is where they got caught, so I’m guessing they want revenge. Amateurs. The staff is tied up in the kitchen. B—Guy’s in there. I don’t think the one in the kitchen likes the cold so much. He’s got a parka.” Raze thought about it. “Do you have ice skates? You need ice skates if you’re going to fight Freezer Burn.”
“I don’t suppose you have a pair I could borrow?”
“I wish.”
Wait. “You’re being helpful,” I said, narrowing my eyes at her.
“Of course I am.” She sniffed, clearly offended. “This is my territory. But it’s not like I can fight them right now.”
“Why not?”
“Villain stuff. Don’t worry about it.”
Great. That wasn’t worrying at all. But if I could feel the cold this far away from the building, the kitchen staff had to be absolutely freezing. That needed to be my first priority, so I triggered my comms. “Weird question,” I said, hoping Angélica wasn’t too busy. “My armor doesn’t have ice skates, does it?”
A screen flashed in my eyepiece. I blinked. Apparently it did come with ice skates. Fighting ice-powered villains must be more of a thing than I’d realized. “Thanks,” I said to Angélica. To Raze, I said, “Stay here.”
“If you fall on your ass, make sure I get a clear picture first,” she said.
“Get in line.” I took a deep breath. Growing up in northern Indiana meant ice skating had never been in short supply, but the disruption of my powers concerned me. Especially when I took one step onto the ice and immediately phased straight into a wall.
So much for stealth.
Freezer Burn swung around and spotted me. With a gleeful laugh, he raised his fist and shot a blast of ice straight at my head.
Chapter 10
Luckily, I ʼported three feet to the left. Ice cascaded down the wall behind me. But, because ʼporting and ice skating didn’t mix, my toe pick caught a bumpy patch and I wiped out. I rolled to avoid a second blast.
“It took long enough for someone to show!” Freezer Burn shouted as I scrabbled to my feet, blades chipping at the ice. “We’ve been waiting for ages.”
“Waiting for what?” I asked, glad for the voice modulator.
My question obviously threw Freezer Burn for a loop. “So . . . we can fight?”
“Yes, I get that. But why? You realize there are, like, banks that you can rob, right?”
“You think this is about money?” Freezer Burn asked, shooting a stream of ice that missed my toes by inches.
He was quick, but not as fast as I’d thought. I continued to skate out of range, sussing him out. “Really, I don’t care what it’s about,” I said. “Just stop icing everything. It’s going to melt and get all soggy.”
“No,” Freezer Burn said.
Well, that was enough stalling banter for now. I feinted, ducked an ice blast, and skated hard, pushing off my toe pick and phasing forward on my blade. It threw me faster and harder than I expected. I plowed us full force into the table. Something cracked—his armor—and I whipped away, dodging a swipe from his gloves.
He swung wildly, clipping the flank of my armor. A frosty rime crawled up my side, so cold it felt like flame. I cursed and pried that panel of armor off even as I evaded more ice blasts. When one narrowly missed my leg, I jumped away. Not graceful, but it served its purpose. I skated around a table to give myself a direct line to Freezer Burn.
His eyes widened as I phased again. His arm seemed to come up in slow motion, ice gun pointed right at my face, but I lowered my head and drove my shoulder into his gut. We went flying over a table. He dropped to the ground, but I saw the wall coming and steeled myself.
My body crashed through in an explosion of drywall and rubble.
I landed hard, skidded across the tiles in the kitchen on my back, and raised my head, blinking in befuddlement. The tied-up kitchen staff—and the man standing over them with a gun in his hand—blinked back. Guy, chained to the freezer door, actually gaped.
“Hi,” I said. I looked at the Gail-shaped hole in the wall, through which I could see an equally startled Freezer Burn. We locked eyes, and I distinctly saw the blood drain from his face. “Be right with you,” I told the kitchen staff, and then I smashed back through the hole in the wall, widening it even further.
Freezer Burn turned to run, shooting frantically over his shoulder. Snatching up a chair, I sprinted hard across the slick floor and clocked Freezer Burn with it. It broke across the front of his armor, and I followed it with an elbow to the chin.
He dropped like a sack of ice. One down.
Turning, I saw the man in the parka giving me a wide-eyed look through the porthole window of the kitchen door. I took two running steps on my toe picks, and phased. The door blew clear off its hinges, knocking the man back. My weight pinned him between the door and the freezer. Even while he shouted, I punched through the porthole window and hit him in the nose.
He went down like his friend, gun clattering free. I moved to kick it out of reach, remembered belatedly I wore ice skates, and promptly fell on my side.
“Ugh,” I said. My side ached from potential frostbite, and the fall injured my dignity. I tapped my helmet to disarm the skates and climbed back to my feet. Then I looked at the stunned restaurant workers around me. “Go home. Get indoors and stay there until it’s safe to come out.”
I told the workers as I pulled a knife free and began to cut them loose, “In case it’s not obvious from ice-for-brains and his buddy here, the world’s gone a little batshit crazy.”
“Th-thank you,” said Lowry, the head chef. I didn’t jerk his hands too hard or nick him when I cut him free, though I did consider it. Guy had been complaining about him for a solid six months. He raced for the door, sous-chefs and line chefs hurrying behind him until there was only Guy and Riley, one of the dishwashers, left. When I moved to cut Riley free, he flinched and looked away.
He kept his gaze on the floor as he fled. Weird.
Once he’d left, Guy snapped the rope tying him to the freezer door. He immediately grabbed my shoulders. “Are you okay?” he said.
I didn’t dare take off the mask, not with two villains unconscious a few feet away. “I’ve been better, but I’m okay now.”
“You were out of it when I left you at the Nest. Leaving you behind made me feel so sick, but I had to keep up appearances and Angélica said you would be fine—”
“I’m okay,” I said again. “I’m sorry it took me so long to get here.”
“Don’t be. I’m glad you did, though. I was ten minutes from blowing my cover, and I’ve almost got Riley to trust me.”
I squinted at him. “Riley? Not Lowry?”
“I don’t have time to explain it right now. If I stay too long, he’ll get suspicious and bolt.” Guy gave me a kiss on the forehead of the mask and ran for the door. “Love you!” he called over his shoulder. “I’ll explain later!”
I stared after Guy. What even was going on with him lately? Every time I thought I had an idea about his work troubles, he threw me a curveball.
With the city under siege, I didn’t have time for personal musings or mysteries, though. I tugged cables out of my pouch and bound up Freezer Burn and his buddy, and collected their weapons and any part of their armor that seemed dangerous. I kept an eye out for Raze, but she must have split.
My comms sprang to life as I was attaching a tracker to Freezer Burn’s chest. “Davenport Tower is under attack,” Angélica said without preamble.
That in itself wasn’t unusual. Davenport Tower was one of the tallest buildings in the city. Even without serving as a superhero base, it would be a supervillain magnet. But something in Angélica’s voice chilled me more than Freezer Burn’s ice ray had. I ran for my motorcycle.
As I drove, news feeds scrolled on my eyepiece, filling me in on the attack at Davenport. So that was why Rita Detmer hadn’t shown her face in Chicago. Wi
th decades of supervillainy to make up for, why not go straight for the biggest target in town and take out her late husband’s company while she was at it?
If there was one person Davenport Tower was likely vulnerable to, that would be its former mistress.
The mere thought of facing her again liquefied my innards. The only reason she had ever stayed at Detmer was because she had agreed to. And Detmer itself no longer existed, so what would we do now?
Downtown, I ignored all protocol and parked the bike on the sidewalk near the Willis Tower. A shadow swooped over me. Luckily I spotted Vicki out of the corner of my eye before she grabbed me under the arms and scooped me up.
“Thanks for the lift!”
“No swe—”
The forty-seventh floor blew up.
Well, not all of it. Just the windows on the side that contained Dartmoor, Inc., the civilian front for Davenport’s way station. Glass exploded toward the river. The percussive wave rocked us, knocking me back so that I swung like a pendulum from Vicki’s grip. She actually halted in midair, hovering like she couldn’t believe what had happened.
Then she cursed viciously and flew faster.
We burst through the window. The room had been utterly decimated by the blast, broken furniture and rubble spread around. “Hello?” I shouted, switching my goggles to thermal view to see through the smoke. No sign of anybody fleeing. “Anybody in here?”
“Help!” somebody called.
“I’m on it,” Vicki said, dropping me and flying off. Over her shoulder, she called, “Update HQ!”
I toggled on my comms as I checked out the window for any supervillains that might have done this. “Bad news. Somebody’s firebombed the way station.”
“What?” Angélica asked, her voice unnaturally loud in my ringing ears.
“Plain Jane and I are evacuating people, but the station’s toast. And I don’t see the villain who did this.”
“Police are on their way,” Angélica said.
Vicki raced by, a black-and-white blur with two people over her shoulders. I recognized Jon the ʼporter, thank god. I made my way farther inside, looking for any signs. My stomach clenched at seeing the pristine hallways and medical rooms of the way station so smoke-damaged and scarred. Hopefully not too many people had been in those rooms in need of treatment that the way station provided.
Three people in Dartmoor uniforms rounded the corner, pulling up short at the sight of me.
“Any others back there?” I said.
The woman of the trio, so terrified she’d gone bone white, shook her head. “Most e-everybody was out in the field—”
Thank the Domino for small mercies. I shoved some of the spare masks from my pouch at them and pointed behind me. “Get to the window in the lobby. Be careful. Plain Jane will fly you to safety.”
I ran past them into the heart of the building, pushing aside debris. Nobody answered when I shouted, which wasn’t necessarily a good thing. But my hearing didn’t pick up any signs of labored breathing or trouble. The sensors in my suit continued to spit out readings until I found the remnants of an actual bomb. It had likely been under the gurney that was even now blown to bits and embedded in the ceiling.
Not a pyro villain. Unless it was somebody who liked actual bombs on top of their regular powers.
“New plan,” Angélica said over the comms as I crouched to study the blast zone. “Once you get everybody out of there, grab Vicki and get to the roof. Stay put.”
“Got it.” I hailed Vicki on her next trip by, jerking my head toward the roof. She plucked me up and slung me over her shoulder this time.
“Any ideas who or what did this?” she asked, dropping me to my feet on the roof.
“It was a bomb,” I said. “Not sure who put it in there and I don’t think they stuck around to see it go off. Angélica told me to come up here and wait.”
Vicki reached into her belt pouch, producing the burrito she’d made earlier. At my disbelieving look, she shrugged. “Not like I’ll get a better opportunity.”
“Looks like you’ll have to eat on the go,” I said, pointing at what I suspected wasn’t just a trick in the light heading toward us. It looked like one of those mirages seen on long road trips in the desert, like wavy water in the middle of the air.
The Raptorjet dropped its stealth shields, door hissing open to reveal Angélica at the controls. “Get in.”
In the jet, Vicki strapped herself into the copilot’s chair, leaving me a jump seat in the back. I stripped off my mask, pushing at my sweaty hair. The past twenty-four hours had been a broken carnival ride of prison riots, nanobot poisonings, torture, and supervillains. All on top of malfunctioning powers. No wonder I was shaking.
But I had to keep going, so I ate a crap-cake. This would be an inopportune moment to ʼport five feet outside the Raptorjet.
“Was this Scorch’s work?” Angélica asked Vicki.
“Nah, I dealt with him. Gail said it was a bomb.”
“The police will have to investigate that, since we’re a little busy at the moment,” Angélica said. “Though I’m pretty sure Rita arranged this. If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck . . .”
“It’s the world’s first supervillain finally destroying the country like she promised to do fifty years ago?” Vicki scrubbed her hands over her face and pulled her hair back into a ponytail. “That woman makes me want to wet myself. I was hoping old age would’ve gotten her by now.”
“You and me both.” Their conversation fell off into silence.
I leaned my head against the headrest and stared at nothingness. Was this what it had been like in those first days of superheroism, when the Feared Five had stepped out of a Davenport factory explosion to find that the world had changed and villains had actual, terrifying abilities? Had it always been this chaotic?
“Gail.” Angélica’s voice drew me out of my reverie. “Maybe you should switch to Jessie’s armor. People could use the reassurance that the Raptor is out on the streets, working to make things right.”
“With my track record at the moment, people are more liable to see the Raptor get her ass kicked by Rita.” I chugged most of a water bottle. “My memory’s still pretty hazy, but I think she broke two of my ribs without expending much effort already today.”
Angélica jerked around in her seat. “Your scan didn’t show any broken ribs.”
“Huh. Well, they definitely broke. At least two of them, maybe three.” I’d broken so many bones I’d become an expert.
Angélica narrowed her eyes at me and turned back to the controls. “I wish I could run a full diagnostic. But there’s no time for that. When we get to Davenport, I’m dropping you both and circling around to provide air support.”
“Let’s see what’s waiting for us, then,” Vicki said, waving me closer. I maneuvered up to the cockpit as Vicki called up Davenport Tower surveillance on the holoscreen. At this time of day, the streets surrounding it should have been full of tourists and workers taking their afternoon breaks. Instead, we found a war as supervillains and superheroes went at each other. Bolts from ray guns shot at all angles, blasting the street and nearby buildings, melting streetlights and parking meters, and setting fire to trash cans. I recognized a red cape as belonging to War Hammer, Guy’s older brother, Sam. He fought Strongman, iconic hammer battering at his opponent until Strongman strong-armed him right into a wall.
Vicki and I winced.
“Shakin’ Dave’s not there,” Vicki said, “so if you ignore her—” she pointed at the red-clad figure of Rita Detmer in the sky, shining like an evil diamond as she surveyed the battle below “—we might have a chance.”
“Are you trying to jinx us?” I groaned. Sure enough, the Raptorjet rocked, throwing me into a bulkhead. “Whatever that was, it was your fault!”
“Hold on!” Angélica’s grip turned white knuckled as the jet shuddered again. I saw two glittering fireballs through the window, and grabbed the railing overhead as Angélica flipp
ed the jet.
The fireballs sailed harmlessly by. I kept my grip, swinging my body to counterbalance when Angélica juked the jet to the left.
“Vicki, what do you see?” she asked, voice tight.
Vicki, who’d unstrapped herself to peer through the canopy, punched the top of the cockpit in frustration. “Rainbow Riot!”
“What? She wasn’t even in Detmer, what is she doing—”
“Worry about that later.” Vicki pulled on her mask and back-flipped over the seat, shoving past me. She slapped the button by the hatch and swooped out into the wind.
Instantly, a roar filled the jet and Angélica began to fight the controls. I let go of the railing, let the force tow me backward, and hit the button before I could be sucked out. The jet shuddered and I hit the floor, grunting.
“A little warning would’ve been nice,” Angélica grumbled. I leaned over the abandoned copilot chair, toggling the holoscreen to show the jet’s rear cameras. Plain Jane, stark against the sky in black, fought the most colorful villain in the ranks. Rainbow Riot sent jewel-toned fireballs at our friend, who batted them away like flies.
Angélica toggled the screen back to Davenport. “I need you to assist with the evacuation. Get inside, find Kiki. She’s directing efforts downstairs. And stay the hell away from Rita, if you can.”
“Yeah, she’s already kicked the crap out of me today. My dance card’s full for, like, the next century.”
We descended as I made my way to the back of the jet. Politely, I waited for Angélica to open the hatch rather than doing it myself. Vicki could get away with it; she was nigh indestructible and she didn’t have to work with Angélica. I took a deep breath to suppress the fear shivering its way from the base of my stomach to the back of my neck.
The lights over the door turned from red to yellow. Jessie’s voice in the back of my head reminded me to be patient. Use the adrenaline. Use my head.
The light overhead turned green. The door opened.