by Lexie Dunne
Until her skin flickered and for a brief second, another, much more bloodied woman sat in the chair. Her head was slumped, so at this distance, I couldn’t make out her features. Another flicker and she was Sal again.
Huh.
“Raptor. Sharkie,” Wrestling Maniac said, spreading his arms. I snapped my gaze back to him. “Welcome to our trap.”
“You’re not supposed to say it’s a trap,” Rodrigo said.
The ground shook again, and I did a quick calculation. Three of them, two of us. Collateral in the middle to make us cautious. The odds could be worse, but they also weren’t great. I pushed my shoulders back, ready to launch an attack at Wrestling Maniac. I’d shoot Ack-Man with the stun gun on the way, two birds with one stone.
But Rodrigo said, “You go on, I’ve got this.”
“Huh? And leave you?”
“Please. This isn’t even a challenge.”
Before I could argue, the ground shook again, hard enough to send Sal’s chair tipping over. Her head lolled. Leaving her and Brook for Rodrigo to save didn’t exactly sit well with me, but if somebody didn’t get to Rita before she deactivated the force field, there wouldn’t be anything left to rescue.
“Got it,” I said. When Rodrigo charged, I followed half a step behind him—and phased right at Wrestling Maniac. He grinned, a folding chair appearing in his hands as he saw me coming.
I executed a textbook hairpin turn and whiffed right past him. The back of my neck and my shoulders burned as gold flame arced toward me, but I only threw more momentum into the phase, shooting straight across the room. I crashed through the door and ducked into an automatic roll—only to slam right into a pair of red velvet boots.
Overhead, Rita Detmer laughed.
Chapter 24
Rita reached down, quick as a snake, grabbed a handful of my armor, and dangled me off the ground.
I fired three stun bolts into her chest. She didn’t even flinch. When I lashed out at her, though, she dodged and dropped me. She adjusted her helm with indulgent patience as I danced back, arms held in a ready fight stance. “You certainly took your time getting here,” she said.
“Here” proved to be completely terrifying even without the famous supervillain in the middle of it. That electrical feeling of wrongness grew so overwhelming that nausea crawled an oily path along my stomach and up my spine. It emanated from the center of this very large room, where an octagonal pedestal rose from the floor. In the air, floating over it, was the Provenance, a swirling, screaming round tornado of static and flame.
It had tripled in size from the Provenance I’d seen in the old videos. The pedestal was ringed with projectors that hummed in a way that made my ears itch. A wavering see-through field of bright blue energy surrounded the Provenance, making it seem like a nightmarish snow globe.
“Oh, Gail,” Rita said, and I jolted. She knew who I was. The Raptor armor hadn’t even fooled her. “I’ve missed you. I see you’ve recovered from your time in the Reset Room. I—”
I attacked, hoping to catch her off guard, but she dodged out of the way easily. Her cape swirled behind her as she floated closer to the ceiling, theoretically out of my reach.
I hurled six taser discs at her, one right after the other, but she merely flicked two of them out of the air and languorously pulled the one that hit from her skin, pinching it into dust between her fingers. She sighed. “You’re going to be dull now that you’ve officially joined the club, are you? I must say, I liked Hostage Girl better. I even got you a couple hostages outside, so you’d feel a little more at home.”
Talking as the Raptor was strictly verboten, but she had already figured out who I was, so: “What the hell is your endgame here, lady?”
Instead of answering me with a Villain Syndrome soliloquy I so hoped for, Rita smiled. The temperature in my armor plummeted.
“So it is you after all,” she said.
If I survived this, Jessie was going to have so many lectures on how not to give away my identity. I’d have to worry about that later, though, for the smile dropped away from Rita’s face, leaving a scarily blank expression behind, and she flew at me.
I phased, but she caught me, turned, and flung me through the air. I saw the Provenance hurtling straight for my face. I hit the force field and everything smelled like burning. Pain raced through me; I fell backward and through sheer force of will phased to the ground before I could fall. Right before I hit the ground, Rita snatched my ankle, twisted, and flung me clear across the room the other way. Purple and red streaked by me. She blipped back in between the wall and me, grabbed my arm, and used my momentum to hurl me the other way.
What the hell was she even doing? I hurtled through the air, trying to orient myself so I could phase out of this mess, when the streak passed me again. Rita’s palm slammed hard into the center of my back, pummeling me straight down into the floor. I hit belly first, hard enough to knock the breath from my lungs.
Rita stepped on the side of my mask. “My daughter appears to be a very poor trainer,” she said, as I gritted my teeth. Her boot heel pressed into my cheek, even through my mask. “I expected much more of a fight.”
This wasn’t a fight. This was a bored, evil cat playing with a petrified mouse.
She had a point: Jessie would be pissed off at my lack of tactics. I might be scared out of my mind, but I’d been trained. Time to stop lying on the ground and do my damn job.
“This younger generation of heroes, you’ve all gone soft,” Rita said as I calmed my mind and began to scope the area around me. “And that’s partially our fault—we raised you, didn’t we? But in truth, you shouldn’t have powers in the first place. It’s Davenport that caused it. And my job was always to finish it.”
She was strong, so I’d need to hit hard. And fast, so I’d need to be faster. There was no way I could fight her at normal speed.
“If Davenport hadn’t caused this,” Rita went on, her heel digging in deeper, “think of how many people wouldn’t have had to die. That security guard was the first casualty. And poor Gail Garson’s cameraman. I remember him. He was a dear.”
Yes, I thought at her, staying silent and mentally gathering my strength. Take your time. Keep telling me about the old days. List the people who’ve died in detail.
It would buy more time for others to get here. And for me to come up with a plan. Neither option looked terribly likely at the moment, since I could hear the sounds of fighting and battle cries from the other room where Shark-man fought off Rita’s minions.
“They would all have gone on to live such normal lives,” Rita said. “Victor and Sarah and Gail. My husband. My children. Darling little Nigel most of all.”
It was like a record scratch went off in my brain. Darling little Nigel? He’d been the Cheetah, and the only reason his life had ended was Rita herself. Over the years, Rita and Raptor had engaged in gigantic battles that spanned cities and left craters behind. But her deaths were usually collateral damage. She’d only ever deliberately gone after one superhero: the Cheetah. The resulting photograph, of Nigel dead in the center of Times Square with Rita standing over him, still made iconic photo lists to this day.
So what made him different?
He’d had the power to defeat her, I realized. A precognitive ability would never work against somebody who traveled too fast to be seen.
All of a sudden, I had a plan. A very stupid, very dangerous plan.
“You really are quite the wet rag, aren’t you?” Rita said, looking at her wristwatch. “If you’re playing possum to stall, I assure you nobody is coming to save—”
I twisted, hooking my fingers behind her ankle and yanking hard enough to knock her off balance. In the split second she teetered, I lurched out from under her foot and phased as far as I could go. “Clever,” she said.
I didn’t bother to answer. I sprang to my feet and ran away from her. She sped in front of me and clotheslined me neatly. I tumbled, then swiped back at her, doing everything I co
uld to keep her from tossing me about. She didn’t even have the decency to flinch when I punched her.
When she walloped me across the back, I cried out and stumbled. I let Rita land a particularly vicious kick to the shoulder, which sent spikes of pain up the side of my neck, and then I phased away like I was trying to retreat. She blurred past me to block the door.
I had one quick glimpse of her empty face before I turned midphase, dodging her the way I’d done to Wrestling Maniac. I headed for the opposite wall, arriving in a blink and making another precise turn. Traveling across the city like I had earlier hadn’t required finesse, but this room was considerably smaller. I reached another wall, turned, and—
Rita’s arm swiped across my front. All of the energy I’d been building flew out in all directions. I fell backward, but she also tumbled through the air a few feet. “I see what you’re doing,” she said.
“Uh-huh,” was my witty rejoinder, and I phased again, beginning the strangest game of freeze tag I’d ever played in my life. I phased at random, my only goal to keep one step ahead of Rita. I zipped from one side of the room to the other. The faster I ran, the more every turn felt like fighting my way through Jell-O. Force built up in my bones, wanting release.
I gritted my teeth and ran on. The room began to blur, objects turning fuzzy and indistinct. Colors began to melt together. My vision telescoped, black encroaching on the edges of my eyeballs.
It was, I realized as an unholy amount of weight and power vibrated through my body, going to hurt so much. And I would need to do it soon. My turns were growing sloppier and more difficult, and I could feel all of my veins bulging under my armor. The room had gone completely indistinct, a Gaussian blur settling over everything.
I phased on until the only thing I could see was Rita.
With a scream, I made one final turn, and phased forward to body-slam Rita and unleash all the force into her.
And too late, I realized where she was standing: right in front of the force field generator controls.
Oh, shit.
I hit her like a wrecking ball. All of the energy I’d gathered exploded out of me. For a millisecond, there was a perfect kind of absolute stillness, like we had become part of a painting. We were frozen in time while my shoulder and side struck Rita across the front, my mouth open in a silent scream. The hum and fizzle of the force field was oppressively loud in that suspended moment. My eyes stayed on the force field generator controls, even as I entertained one horrifying single thought: it was too late.
And then time restarted and I unleashed all of the energy I’d built up. It radiated out of my core and ripped through me, leaving nothing but burning agony behind. My armor shattered. Rita slammed into the wall with a crunch, sliding down in a motionless heap.
The shock wave traveled on. It hit the force field, which warped. It obliterated the controls. I landed hard on the ground as shards of metal and circuit board flew in a thousand directions. It sliced past my arms and face. Pain came in waves, bright red against my eyelids.
“Gail? Gail!” Angélica’s voice broke through the haze. “Raptor, come in. Raptor, do you read me? My meters are going crazy. Raptor?”
I tried to wheeze, but no sound emerged. When I sat up, my ribs let out a not-so-short scream. Broken. Again.
Something crackled through the air over me. I turned my head. The force field had been blue, and kind of pretty, around the giant vortex of death. Now the field had become a great deal angrier. Streaks of blue lightning licked the air, emanating from the eight sides of the pedestal base of the Provenance. Bad, I realized. Very bad. The force field was dying.
“Status report, Raptor,” Angélica said, her tone sounding she was repeating herself.
Lightning forked out and hit the wall over the unmoving Rita’s head.
“I don’t want to be alarmist,” I said with great difficulty, trying to sit up again and only managing because my vision temporarily went white, “but you said the Provenance had a fail-safe, right?”
“Has she managed to breach the force field?” Angélica’s voice sharpened.
“Sure, let’s go with that.” The lightning was growing in strength and intensity. It fried the couch, making fire sprout.
Jaw clenched, ribs screaming, right arm useless, I climbed to my feet. Above me, terrifyingly close, the Provenance’s swirling sped up slightly. It definitely looked angrier. This thing was going to blow.
What the hell had I done?
I tasted ozone and instinctively phased out of the way, screaming. Lightning hit the ground where I’d been standing. “Rodrigo!” I shouted toward the other room. “Get out of here! It’s going to blow!”
No answer. Maybe he’d already fled. My earpiece had gone silent. Panic and pain clogged at my throat. The longer I searched, the more furious the vortex grew. Red lights flashed all over the facility. Critical Mass blinked on the screens that still worked.
And then I saw the button.
Right over Rita’s body.
I gritted my teeth and made my way over in a limping run. Every time I put my right foot down, my vision seesawed between white and black sparks.
As I approached, Rita sat up.
Oh, no.
Her helm had been shattered by the hit, half of the cloth ripped away. For the first time ever, I saw actual pain on her face. She turned her head to look at me. I braced for her to toss me around, but she only smiled.
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” she said. “It’s finally happening.”
“Yeah, not here it isn’t.” I edged closer to the button, my pulse jackhammering in my ears.
She smiled, though it quickly became a grimace. “That’s fine. As long as it happens. That’s all I wanted, you know.”
“I thought you wanted the fall of Davenport.” If I kept her talking, maybe she would ignore me trying to reach the button.
“This will be the fall of Davenport.” Her eyes gleamed with mania as she turned her face toward the Provenance, which bathed her in unearthly red and yellow light. “Finally all will be right.”
“Yeah, that’s enough nostalgia for now,” I said, moving a step closer.
“The fail-safe will suck everything in this room out with it,” she said, and I went still. “You’ll never make it to the doorway in time.”
Cold fear flooded me. If I could phase, I’d make it. But I could barely stand, let alone phase. Red lights flashed all over the room and reality struck: if I didn’t hit the fail-safe, the Provenance would explode and kill a lot of people. Including me.
If I hit the fail-safe, I’d still be dead. But a lot of other people wouldn’t be.
Being Hostage Girl and facing my own death so many times had probably given me a warped view of things, but a strange peace fell over me. I’d had a good run of things. And if I was going down fighting a villain, at least it was a proper one like Rita.
She seemed to understand, for she smiled. Lightning scored a burn path over our heads, but she didn’t even flinch. “It was an honor fighting you, Hostage Girl.”
“The name’s Raptor,” I said, and hit the button.
Chapter 25
The force field blinked out of existence. A wall of pure roaring sound and heat crashed over me, making me stagger back, as the full force of the Provenance was uncaged. The very air seemed to vibrate at an intensity that made my body scream.
Giant panels in the wall to my left sprang open, revealing a complicated mess of machines. I didn’t need to understand what it did to know that I should stay away from it, so I took off in the opposite direction, toward the door I’d smashed through earlier. Lightning from the Provenance popped and crackled through the air. It clipped my thigh and I cried out, stumbling and falling to the ground. Determined, I pushed myself to my feet, fighting through the warning klaxons and whirling red lights.
“Warning, T minus ten seconds until launch initiation,” an announcement blared as I struggled across the room.
With every step, the pres
sure and the vibration seemed to grow, until it felt like it would tear me apart. I would never make it in time. Teeth gritted, eyes watering, body screaming, I pushed onward, even with that knowledge. The Provenance grew louder and the taste of ozone became impossibly sharp, making my tongue want to wither. The countdown began as the pressure intensified, shoving down on my body.
By the time it reached one, my vision had telescoped to almost pure blackness. I reached out and grabbed something within reach, holding on for dear life.
When the voice announced, “Zero,” a giant hole in the wall behind me opened.
The room depressurized all at once, fast enough to make me dizzy. I clung to the support beam I’d grabbed as the machine in the wall blew an amazing gust of force at the Provenance. In an instant, it was hurtled out into the water, vanishing with a giant sucking sound like a drain being pulled. My ears popped as I was ripped from the support beam. I shot backward, arms and legs flailing as I flew. I was about to be sucked into Lake Michigan in the path of the Provenance.
This was how I would die.
I braced for impact, squeezed my eyes closed—and something grabbed my ankle.
The shock of a sudden stop made me scream as it abused every single injury I’d sustained. Everything went briefly white as I dangled in midair, pulled by the force but held back by something unseen. The roar built in a giant crescendo that threatened to overwhelm every single one of my senses.
And then it all stopped. My body, no longer held up by the pull of the Provenance, abruptly dropped, swinging downward in an arc as whoever had caught my ankle let out a curse and tried to hold on. The machines died to a stuttering hum. From somewhere, I heard the gurgle of water. It sounded almost pleasant.
“Gail? Gail!” Guy’s voice had never been more welcome to my ears. Distantly, as though he was at the end of a long tunnel rather than right beside me, I felt him pull me up, cradling me rather than holding my ankle. He hadn’t pushed his mask up, and he smelled like gunpowder. “Are you okay?”