by Pen
“It goes deeper than I’d have expected,” David said.
“That gives me more options for where I come out. There’s more than one exit and none of them are close. I take whichever has the best chance of hiding me.”
David nodded. “Same as League headquarters.”
“I guess,” Larry said, but then the elevator came to a stop. It opened into a big room. All concrete from floor to ceiling, it felt and looked like the inside of a car repair shop, complete with black oil spots that would never clean, two lifts, benches, shelves of parts and tools hanging on the walls.
Looking a little closer at the details caused the car repair shop comparison to drop away. A big table in one corner was covered with metal limbs and surrounded by different versions of the same blocky, gray armor in various stages of dismemberment.
David nodded toward the table. “Do you have a working version?”
Pointing toward the a bay next to the lifts, Larry said, “It’s in the Rhinomobile.”
The Rhinomobile stood next to the farthest lift. Painted gray like a battleship, it had a sloped front and a taller rear, but still stayed low to the ground. It could have been described as egg shaped except that it was all edges—not round. It had sloped flat panels held together with visible rivets.
It had no wheels. Treads ran along the side from the front to the back.
Only advertisements gave it any color. The Pepsi logo covered most of the nearest side. Sprint’s logo covered the sloping front. Smaller logos that were hard to read in the darkness appeared all over the vehicle. One of them came from a Grand Lake pizza restaurant.
David stared at it. “I’m not sure whether it reminds me more of a tank or a dump truck, both of them with a heaping side of NASCAR.”
Larry shrugged. “It’s got better range and speed than my armor. Plus, there’s a workroom in back where I can work on the suit if I have to.”
“The ads?” As they walked closer, David was still staring at them.
“I lost my job at the factory a few years ago. Too many unexcused absences and extra long breaks. You know how it goes with this life.”
They reached the vehicle and Larry opened the hatch. “Someone offered to sponsor me once. Didn’t take it then, but when I got fired . . . Well, I looked at that in a whole new light.”
“I can imagine.” David followed Larry inside. The Rhino suit itself stood across from the hatch, held in place by black straps. Gray, bulky and more than seven feet tall, David had always seen it as a good fit for Larry. He charged straight into problems at high speed and not a lot of problems survived the charge.
Larry gestured toward the right. “You can change in the workroom, if you want privacy. All I have to do is step into the suit. I’d wait till we get moving to change though. I’m kind of inconsistent when I’m accelerating.”
“Got it,” David checked out the workroom. All the tools were either in drawers or strapped to walls. That was good. He didn’t want to get hit by a loose wrench.
They strapped into their seats. As David clicked the last strap into place, Larry pressed a button and the Rhinomobile’s engine roared. Not wasting any time, Larry put it into gear and accelerated, roaring into one of the tunnels that led out of the base.
David could feel Larry concentrating and knew better than to interrupt. He knew it for more than one reason. The Rhinomobile was traveling at more than one hundred miles per hour up the tunnel. Larry had enough space on either side that he felt comfortable, but he could still brush the wall if he got distracted.
Worse, David knew that if he brought up Null, they probably would. He knew it because every time he imagined bringing it up, he saw visions of the crash—the kind that he knew were true visions.
He concentrated, controlled his breathing, and did his best to ignore them just like he was ignoring the small undercurrents of fear and anger running through Larry’s mind.
David knew that Larry’s emotions weren’t dangerously strong—yet, but they’d probably get stronger as they got closer to Grand Lake. He could hardly judge though. If he was honest with himself, he had a little of that too, maybe more than Larry.
Null hadn’t seemed so bad at first.
* * *
Larry
He’d designed the Rhinomobile to handle like a car, so hurtling up through the tunnel wasn’t that bad. Plus, he’d designed the windshield to act like a Heads Up Disply (HUD). Transparent lines on the windshield showed the distance between the vehicle and the walls.
The Rhinomobile shot out of the tunnel inside a stand of trees, exiting the ground from the middle of the foundation of a burned down building. By the time they’d cleared the spot, they’re would be no sign of it. The door would be covered with sand.
Soon after that, Larry drove the Rhinomobile down a dirt road in the middle of a farmer’s field and from there he rolled onto the freeway.
There weren’t many cars on the road at ten at night, so he didn’t even slow down, matching traffic with barely any effort.
David chuckled as they rolled across the ditch next to the road. Without turning his head, Larry said, “This is your best chance to change. We’ll be there in twenty minutes.”
He’d driven this route so many times that even at one hundred and fifty miles per hour, it still didn’t need his full attention. His mind drifted back in time.
Null hadn’t seemed so bad at first.
They’d all been teenagers then. Larry and David had been out in costume chasing a string of burglaries. The press had nicknamed the robber the “Whisperer” because anyone still in the buildings when he robbed them reported hearing frightening whispers but didn’t see anybody.
David had guessed that it was a low level telepath, and he’d been right. What David had been slightly off about was where the Whisperer would exit because the man’s powers obscured his thoughts. That left the two of them chasing the Whisperer down an alley and into what David later described as a “total telepathic blackout.”
Whisperer couldn’t have outrun them. The Rhino suit gave him all the speed he needed, but he’d only made it a few steps into the alley when a short, muscular guy stepped out from behind a dumpster and hit the Whisperer in the knee with a baseball bat.
Thinking back to it now, Larry guessed that Null might have been lying in wait to steal the burglar’s money, but back then he’d appeared to be vigilante with a specialized target—psychics.
It wasn’t as if he kept the money. He’d left it with them. Between that and the man’s immunity to telepathic probes, they’d never had any reason to think he was a criminal.
Over the next year, Null appeared in Grand Lake a few more times, always at about the same time as a problem telepath. Larry never had understood why telepaths ever showed up in Grand Lake. David’s father, the Mentalist was one of the most famous telepaths on the planet. The only reason that ever made any sense was ambition and ego—the same reason supervillains in powered armor showed up to attack the Rocket.
The two cars ahead of him pulled Larry about of his memories. The car in the right lane and the van in the left were traveling at the same speed.
Grunting, Larry went around them on the left side of the highway, throwing up snow behind him. One of the cars beeped, and Larry could see his point. The Rhinomobile was, without doubt, making a mess, but was he blocking the highway? No.
He accelerated, and pulled back on to the road.
The last time Larry saw Null had been as the police took him away—just after the Rocket showed up with David (as his costumed identity Mindstryke) and trashed Null’s powered armor, releasing Larry from captivity. It hadn’t been anyone’s fault. Null had let them know he was in town, but this time when met them, he brought along the supervillain team Fire & Ice.
They’d kidnapped Larry as part of some revenge scheme against the Heroes’ League. Larry had never cared enough to find out more. David had gotten away and brought back help. With Null around, he wasn’t much more than a guy wh
o could see slightly into the future, but that had been enough.
David stepped out of the back and strapped himself in again—now in costume. Larry noted that the navy blue jacket and pants made it look more like a future military uniform than a superhero costume—except for the mask. A silver version of the Greek letter psi appeared the upper left side of his chest.
“You, okay?” David asked.
“Pretty much. Nice costume. Think Star Trek’s looking for extras?”
David laughed. “Not in this style, I’m sure.”
Larry’s mind drifted back. Null had kept him tied in a chair, dripped hot wax on his back, broken the bones in his hand one by one, and then there was the machine. Whatever it was, it inflicted pain. It wasn’t real, but that didn’t matter. It hurt worse than anything else.
All that mattered was that he hadn’t broken. He hadn’t revealed the team’s identities. They’d stripped him naked after disabling his armor, but they didn’t care about him. They’d never even asked him his real name.
* * *
David
The city of Grand Lake loomed ahead. The lights of skyscrapers glowed in the sky—only a few of them. “Greater” Grand Lake held more than a million people, but it was still a second tier city. Chicago, only two and half hours south was much larger.
Still, it was home, and that counted for something.
He felt hundreds of minds within his range, most of them afraid, but driving home to the suburbs. A few of them were headed into the city. They were police, firemen, and medical professionals for the most part.
David could feel the relief as some spotted the Rhinomobile, fear in others. In the rest (mostly emergency workers), he sensed resignation. It was real now. People were going to get hurt.
In Larry, determination overrode everything else. The words, “It won’t happen again,” dominated his thoughts. David hoped it wouldn’t. He remembered leaving Larry the last time. It was the right move. He couldn’t have taken on Fire and Ice by himself as a teenager.
He might have been able get Larry free though, saving him a few hours of pain.
Staring at the windshield, he told himself to stop thinking about it. He didn’t have time for that. Neither of them did. “Hey,” he said. “Do you have a plan for this? We’re going to have to do more than listen to police band and try to beat them to the fire.”
Larry shrugged. “I figured that you’d sense at least one of the fires before it starts. That, or you could sense the future for the city’s biggest danger. I’d figure that they’re one and the same.”
David felt himself frowning. “You know as well as I do what could happen with that.”
Larry chuckled. “Yeah. You’ve told me dozens of times. The problem is that we might find the city’s biggest danger and it might be something else. My bet would be that if it’s not Null and the Dregs, it’ll be connected.”
David could have reminded him of the other times they’d used it. As teenagers, they’d been caught and used as hostages more than once. He didn’t want a repeat now, especially if it pulled his father, the Rocket, and the others out of retirement.
That would be embarrassing. Even more than that, he’d begun to worry that his father might be developing Alzheimer’s.
The factories and office parks on either side of the highway told him that they were less than thirty minutes from downtown. If he was going to start, he needed to start now.
He took a breath and let his awareness expand outward. Human minds with their hopes and dreams, wants, fears, and needs came first, but that wasn’t all. He felt the threads that ran from the past to the future and the ways that they might combine, the infinity of maybes in the form of individual choices becoming the future that he would experience.
He could lose hours or even days following the possibilities before hunger and thirst brought him out of his trance. Here and now, he had only to do one thing—filter it all. An infinity of possibility could be reduced to something much simpler. All he had to do now was to sense the choices ahead and evaluate them unconsciously—to feel them—and at every turn, take the possibility that made him the most nervous.
A green sign hung over the road. It said “Downtown” and “Exit 84.” The thought of continuing made him feel better while the idea of taking the exit caused fear to whisper through him.
In an even tone, he said, “Take exit 84. Turn left when you reach the street.”
* * *
Larry
“Now, we’re getting somewhere.” Larry pulled into the parking lot of a downtown warehouse. Constructed of corrugated metal, it stood next to railroad tracks and trio of brick buildings, none of them younger than one hundred years. If there had ever been greenery outside of weeds growing in cracks, there was no sign of it.
Larry used the Rhinomobile’s thermal sensors to give the spot a quick once over, not seeing anything human shaped in the darkness. The only living thing he saw was scuttling down an alley, and it was either a raccoon or biggest rat he’d ever heard of. He turned to David. “So, where are they?”
David frowned. “I don’t know. We’re using the technique I normally use to avoid danger, but in reverse. Either they’re already here and planning an ambush or they’ll show up at the worst moment possible. That’s why I don’t like doing this.”
Larry shrugged. “It saves a lot of time.”
Glaring at him, David said, “It’s practically a highway to Hell.”
Checking the thermal sensors again, Larry said, “Makes for a great song, though. Are you sensing anything?”
“No,” David’s voice became more intense and softer as he talked. “I’m not sensing anything clearly. Not even you. He’s gotten better. Mental noise used to just stop at the edges of his field. Now it feels like it’s slightly out of range.”
Larry frowned. “Alright then. You told me to go toward the metal building, right? That’s the center of it. So, let’s say I roll the Rhinomobile in through the big door. Do you have a bad feeling when you imagine trying it?”
David stared at it. “That’s too far in the future for me to know for sure, but it’s certainly the center of near future danger. My precognition isn’t great for predicting the best way to do something. More than a few seconds into the future, there are too many possibilities. We’re going to have to think this through.
“If they are here, we’ve lost any chance of surprise. I’d say that we should drive away as if we decided there was no one here and then double back.”
“Not a bad idea,” Larry pulled forward, the Rhinomobile’s treads clacking against the tar covered concrete. As he began to turn away from the building, it struck him that if he accelerated now, he could ram the Rhinomobile through the door before anyone had time to do anything about it.
For a millisecond, he considered asking David what he thought, but if they discussed it, the moment of surprise would be gone. No, he decided, he’d go with his gut.
He pushed the pedal to the floor at the same time David said, “What? No!” The Rhinomobile’s engines growled and then roared as it shot forward, flattening the blue and white “Handicapped Parking Only” sign and then hitting the garage door.
Metal squealed, plastic cracked, and the Rhinomobile hit and then rolled over a car. Larry wasn’t sure, but it might have been a Mercedes Benz.
He hadn’t been paying attention to the car. He’d been paying attention to the men in powered armor—unmistakably the lopsided, misshapen armor of the Dregs.
* * *
David
He couldn’t believe Larry had done it. No, he reminded himself, he could believe Larry had done it. He couldn’t believe he hadn’t sensed it coming.
He knew telepathy wouldn’t work, but he could sense danger coming even if he couldn’t always sense exactly what the danger would be. He hadn’t gotten a peep out of his precognition. Optimistically, that might mean that this was the least dangerous option. Pessimistically, it meant the danger was too far in the future for h
im to sense.
Either way, it didn’t look good for the Dregs at first. They scattered out of the Rhinomobile’s way, some of them jumping into walls to avoid it.
A few of them recovered enough to point misshapen arms at the Rhinomobile and fire. The bullets didn’t make it through—Joe’s first version of the Rocket suit handled bullets and Larry had used his techniques.
Larry pressed a button and canisters shot out of the front of the Rhinomobile, filling the room with smoke. Larry used the moment to push another button and slide a joystick from a slot on the dashboard.
Larry fiddled with the joystick and pressed the red button on its right side. A black ball shot away from the Rhinomobile, floating across the room until it landed on one of the Dregs. At that moment, the bubble broke, covering the the Dreg in swiftly hardening goo.
As the Dreg struggled, Larry fired off more, turning Dregs into gooey statues. For a moment, David believed it might be easy.
The moment didn’t last.
One of the Dregs ran out of the door in the back wall, a massive figure with a lopsided head. Painted gray but with a wide red stripe across the chest, it fell to all fours for no reason David could see. As it fell, David knew something was about to happen, and that it wouldn’t help them.
He only got out the words, “That guy—” before the man’s chest and head appeared to explode with lightning. The windshield adjusted, darkening to protect their eyes, but the crackle and smell of burnt electronics told a different story.
A few lights still glowed on the Rhinomobile’s dashboard, but the motor no longer ran.
Larry swore, and then clicked to loosen his seatbelt, throwing his straps off.
David removed his seatbelt and followed Larry out of the cockpit to find Larry standing in front of his powered armor. “Damn it. If I go out in this thing, they’ll just use another EMP.”
David let the future in—not all of it. He didn’t let it overwhelm him. This was about seeing the forest, not the trees.