How to Save the World

by Lexie Dunne

  “Shut up!” Elwin said. “Shut up, shut up. Bring the money over here. I want to make sure it’s there, and then all of it, it’s yours. You can have it.”

  I stepped over cautiously, ignoring Angélica in my earpiece telling me to keep my movements slow. The briefcase was locked to my thumbprint, but the team leader had showed me how to transfer it over. Elwin had come prepared with his own black duffel bag. I was sure Davenport had more tricks up their sleeve, but I was only a courier and a bodyguard at this point and I didn’t give a damn. That was Elwin’s problem. And Elwin’s problems weren’t mine.

  Until third base blew up.

  And then it became my problem.

  CHAPTER 14

  My instructions from Angélica had been simple: get Mobius, whatever the cost. So when the earth shook and dirt and pieces of grass and tarp flew, I dropped the briefcase and phased forward, snatching Dr. Mobius up over my shoulder. He was frail, like a bag of bones, and I imagined that the impact caused more than a few bruises. Good.

  Elwin yelped and fell backward, landing on his ass and scrabbling away from third base. He raised his hand—­

  “No!” I said, skidding to a stop.

  Too late. He hit the trigger and blue powder erupted from both dugouts and several rows in the bleachers, turning the stadium air Cubs-­blue for a second. It was like some weird, possibly deadly promotional tool. The Detmer guards emerged through the oddly festive explosion in gas masks with matte black goggles and helmets. They rushed toward Elwin, who tried to scramble to his feet and run. I stood there and gaped as he was neatly clotheslined and cable-­tied, all in under ten seconds.

  Angélica appeared at my elbow, having phased over. “You got him,” she said. “Good.”

  “For you, maybe. I don’t think he’s showered in weeks.” Which, coincidentally, was how long he’d kept me unconscious and unable to shower, too. It didn’t smell any better on him than it had on me.

  “Unhand me, you foolish child,” Mobius said.

  “Ugh, I really didn’t miss you.” I scanned the sky for signs of whoever had blown up third base, but Angélica’s body language was relaxed. “Wait, did we do that?”

  “Yes. They wanted the kidnapper to blow his Demobilizer trap.”

  I frowned. “Leaving us open to attack from every supervillain gathered around here?”

  Angélica merely turned and pointed. I had to blink into the sun to see them, but several brightly colored heroes hovered over Wrigley Field, the sunlight catching on their capes and costumes. In an instant, my brain put it together: they’d used me as a distraction, blew third base so Elwin would set the trap off, and now they were waiting for a full-­on brawl.

  “I’m getting out of here,” I said, since I’d already been in one shoot-­out that day and I had no desire to repeat that.

  “Not yet. We still have to get him to the waystation.” Angélica phased over to grab the briefcase and what I assumed were the samples that Elwin was trying to sell. The Detmer guards had yanked his ski mask off, revealing a thin man in his thirties or forties. I jogged by a lot of them, the kvetching Mobius still over my shoulder. The guards had strength in numbers, but once the supervillains arrived—­

  “Wait a second,” I said, stopping before I got to the tunnel where the players always emerged. I did a quick head count. “Is that all of them? All of the guards?”

  “I think so, yes,” Angélica said.

  “If they’re all here, then who’s watching—­”

  A blur of color shot by me out of the tunnel. Brook flew so fast that I could barely track her. I worried she’d go after the limp Mobius on my shoulder, but instead she flew up about twenty feet in the air and looked around. She took in the jewel-­colored heroes to one side, the gathering villains on the other, and for a second I wondered if she was going to fly straight for the villains.

  Instead, she looked toward the ground and something worse happened: her face contorted into a mask of rage so terrifying that all of the saliva in my mouth dried up. She flew straight at Elwin, snatched him up, and bulleted out of there, into the stands and out of sight.

  Everybody stared in shock for a second. Behind me, I heard a whooping sound. The back of my neck prickled with heat as a fireball barely missed me, smashing against the tarp and leaving a melted hole. I whipped around and sprinted for the dugout and safety. I hadn’t seen Scorch among the villains in the sky, but I could recognize his handiwork when I saw it. And now was not a good time for a reunion. Not when there was a sinking feeling in my gut.

  “Brook’s going to kill him,” I said when Angélica dropped into the dugout next to me.

  “What?”

  “You heard what Mobius said. Elwin’s the one that experimented on her. She’s going to kill him.”

  “Oh, shit.”

  “Take this.” I transferred Mobius to her—­let her deal with his body odor—­and got ready to follow Brook and Elwin.

  Angélica surprised me by pushing the briefcase into my hands. “If they get me, I’d rather they don’t get everything,” she said, and took off running with the doctor over her shoulder. I debated crossing the open field, but there was no guarantee I’d be fast enough, not with all of the bolts being thrown around by heroes and villains alike. If one of the supervillains were to get the Demobilizer away from me . . .

  Up through the bleachers, it was.

  I called up the blueprints in my mind and jumped, hauling myself onto the roof of the dugout. Another jump, this one a little wilder, landed me in the stands. I’d been to a ­couple of games with Jeremy, but this was different. The stadium was far too clean now, no overly salty smell of stale popcorn on the air, no overplayed sports anthems on the loudspeaker. While the air lit up with bursts of color from the battling heroes and villains, I ran as hard as I could for the external hallways behind the bleachers. I tried to listen for any sign of Brook and Elwin, but that was a little difficult with the brawl taking place over the field. It was worse than when the Cardinals came to town.

  Finally, I caught the sound of sobbing and ran in that direction, so desperate to get there that I phased into a wall more than once. When I finally reached them, I peeked around the corner first. Brook had dropped Elwin in the walkway by the nosebleed seats. The concession stand behind them looked like even more of a ghost town than the stadium itself. Brook stood over the fallen scientist, her chest heaving. The look on her face would be etched into my nightmares for years. Yellow and green swirled out of her open palm, hovering millimeters in front of Elwin’s nose while he cowered away. Tears dripped down his face.

  Before I turned the corner, I set the briefcase down and slid it back a little. No need to bring temptation in with me.

  “You know, we talk a lot about villains,” Brook said as I approached. She wasn’t looking at me, as her eyes were fixed on Elwin, but she knew I was there. My heart was certainly hammering loudly enough to give me away. “Heroes. Villains. But we never really talk about monsters, do we?”

  “He’ll see justice for his crimes. Don’t kill him.”

  She lifted her gaze from him now, her head tilted. “Do you know what he did to me?”

  “No,” I said. But I had an idea, having been on Mobius’s table myself. “I can’t say I do. But you should let him live. Davenport can deal with him.”

  “Why do you care?”

  Elwin was looking at me, too, his face tear-­streaked and ruddy. He didn’t look very much like a monster, but that didn’t mean anything to me. Sometimes the worst villains had the most pleasant smiles. “Please don’t let her kill me,” he whispered.

  I didn’t say anything because I couldn’t promise him anything. Brook was much more powerful than I was. One blast from her stinging powers would probably burn him to a crisp. By all rights, he had to be the worst kind of human: I hated Dr. Mobius for what he’d done to me, but I’d seen the way t
his man had kept Mobius in his lair, and now he was gaming the superhero world for his own gain. It would be easier if he was dead.

  But I’d already helped kill a man, and it wasn’t something I wanted to repeat or to see happen to Brook. Cooper had been strong and unstoppable. He would have killed several ­people I loved. This man looked like a quivering wreck, black cable tie digging into his wrists and striping the skin around it red and white. He flinched away from the stinging yellow-­and-­green globules swirling around Brook’s raised palm.

  “I don’t really care that much,” I said, keeping my hands high in the air. I’d never been good at hostage negotiation, as I’d been busy being the hostage. “But Davenport’s gonna care if you kill this man.”

  “So?” Brook snorted. “They don’t have a hold on me. I could leave right now.”

  “And get your ass kicked by Tamara Diesel? Trust me, we met earlier and she’s not happy with you.” No way was I telling her about Tamara’s offer to hand over information about the Demobilizer for clemency. “And even then, even if you go back, do you really want to be under that woman’s thumb? I don’t think she’ll help you look for Petra, not like Guy will.”

  Brook’s hand wavered. Just a flicker, but I could hear the way her heart skipped erratically. “I’ll find her on my own. I kill him, the world’s down one scumbag. I don’t see a downside.”

  “Davenport won’t overlook something like that. You can’t find Petra from inside Detmer. You don’t have those kind of connections.”

  Brook snarled. “Stop trying to be my conscience, Gail! Just let me do this!”

  “If I stand back and let you do that, I’m just as responsible.”

  “Then let me absolve you.” Brook whipped around and sent the beam she’d been torturing Elwin with at me.

  It hit me in the chest; I looked down, almost detached from my body. This was the first time I’d really gotten to watch her power at work without being afraid. The pain ray was actually composed of tiny globules of acidic yellow and eye-­searing neon green, all of which popped and spattered uselessly against the front of my shirt. Even though it only felt pleasantly warm and a little tickly, it remained a little scary. Like my skin might start bubbling with pain at any second.

  “Are you done?” I asked.

  Brook shut off the beam and narrowed her eyes at me, no doubt remembering only now that I was immune to her powers. She snarled, her already slippery grasp on her rage clearly losing purchase altogether. But it made her drop her grip on Elwin and sprint at me, which was all I needed.

  I phased out of the way at the last second, grunting as my shoulder smacked the cinder-­block wall hard enough to send pain stinging across my upper arm. When I dodged out of the way of Brook’s pile driver of a punch, my vision went temporarily blurry and my stomach growled.

  How long had it been since I’d eaten?

  Unfortunately, the adrenaline, my own sluggishness, and this realization all teamed up to slow me down. Brook’s punch hit me right in the jaw and sent me reeling backward with little cartoon birdies flying over my head. I shook off the dizziness in time to see her turn and fly back toward Elwin, who’d been trying to scramble away. I lunged and managed to wrap my arms around her calves, struggling to hold on. If she caught him, she would kill him, and I couldn’t let that happen. The world blurred again as I tried to keep my grip.

  Brook kicked out, the blow glancing off my shoulder. I toppled to the ground, landing hard on my left knee. My mouth opened so I could shout for her to stop.

  I never got the chance. From the distance, a thundering boom rattled the walls. Everything heaved and quaked around us, and for a second, I was right back on the floor of a mall, watching the world collapse around me. I blinked and I was back out of my memories and in Wrigley Field once more. Right. There was a supersized battle of good and evil happening over home plate. This, I thought, this was why we were on the sixth or seventh version of Wrigley Field, each more goat-­cursed than the last. Supervillains loved to destroy the place and superheroes didn’t mind helping them out. At least it was the off-­season, I thought as the walls shivered and the floor heaved like the deck of a storm-­wracked ship. Plenty of time to rebuild before we went through the long process of losing the pennant yet again.

  “We’ve got to get out of here,” I said. “Just let Davenport deal with him, Br—­”

  The walls shook again, harder this time. Plaster rained down on me in a dirty shower. From behind me, I heard something skitter: the briefcase with the Demobilizer slid across the floor. Brook’s eyes snapped to it.

  It didn’t take a genius to see where this was going.

  “No!” I said, and the stadium shook harder than ever, pitching me to the side, farther away from the briefcase and from Brook.

  Unfortunately, she could fly. She took a running step and bounded up, easily plucking the briefcase from the ground. When she turned to go after the scrambling Elwin, though, the ceiling rained down giant chunks of concrete. They shattered in the space between Brook and Elwin.

  I gathered up my rapidly waning strength and let the adrenaline push me, kicking off the wall and shooting across the corridor. By some miracle, I reached Elwin right as a piece of cinder block the size of a basketball fell and clipped Brook’s thigh. She drew up short in surprise. I grabbed Elwin by the closest handhold and yanked. We were up on the third level overlooking Clark Street, where there wasn’t a soft landing to be found. Too bad. I jumped with the last of my remaining strength and, holding on to Elwin, tried to phase us both down to safety.

  Luckily, I hit the ground first and nothing snapped, which meant I hadn’t broken his ankle. We landed in a heap in the middle of traffic and I scrambled to my feet.

  The car that hit me luckily wasn’t going that fast, and it missed Elwin completely. But I was getting a little tired of falling on concrete. I rolled and lay in the street, coughing and dizzy.

  The driver shoved his door open. “What do you think this is, some kind of joke? Get out of the street!”

  I wearily shot him the bird as I pushed myself to my feet. Elwin lay in an uncoordinated sprawl. Scanning the sky for Brook and ignoring the annoyed honking of the driver, I tugged him to his feet.

  The car honked again.

  “Hey, jackass, you hit me,” I said. Elwin blinked into the sunlight as I pulled him along, head wobbling unsteadily on his neck. I needed to put as much space as possible between us and the doomed Wrigley Field—­looked like the taxpayers were paying for version eight this winter—­and Brook. I didn’t see her, which meant we weren’t out of the woods yet on the whole murdering Elwin thing, and her having the briefcase full of Demobilizer was bad news. Just about summed up my usual luck, really.

  “Where are we going?” Elwin asked as I yanked him onto the sidewalk.

  “Away. Any more than that is need-­to-­know.”

  “What are you doing? Are you g-­going to hand me over to her?”

  “Not if I can help it.” I gritted my teeth. That hadn’t been my first time getting hit by a car, but it was never pleasant. My ears rang, my vision kept wavering, and it felt like my skull had shrunk a size or three and was pinching my brain between my ears. The fact that Elwin’s voice was the tiniest bit nasally didn’t help overmuch.

  “You should let me go,” Elwin said. “She’ll kill me if you take me wherever you’re planning to go and—­”

  “Not happening. I’m taking you to the authorities,” I said. “Duh.”

  “But—­”

  “Brook doesn’t do things without reason. She’s crazy, but it’s a crazy that makes sense.” I stopped. If Brook was making sense, did that make me the crazy one? I shook my head, which was a bad idea since I’d just been hit by a car. Black started to close in on my vision; I willed it away and focused on walking. “If she wants to kill you, she’s got reason, and right now, my head hurts so much
that I’m not seeing much incentive to stop her. So you might want to stop talking.”

  I continued to jerk him along, grateful he was still zip-­tied and therefore not as much of a problem as he could have been. We drew odd looks from ­people who hadn’t seen the supervillains and immediately abandoned the area, but this was Chicago. Not many ­people were going to react to a five-­foot-­tall woman dragging a handcuffed man behind her, really.

  The ground rumbled. I turned and there it was, a block away—­Wrigley Field imploding in a cloud of concrete dust and brightly colored sparks. Which hero was that again? It didn’t matter, not when my heart was in my throat. I grabbed for my phone. Angélica had escaped, she had to have.

  A crack split my phone’s screen neatly in half. I’d apparently landed on it either jumping down or being hit by the car. When my fist twitched in anger, the phone practically disintegrated.

  “Huh,” I said, shoving both halves back in my pocket. “Figures. New plan.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “Walk,” I said. The Addison ‘L’ stop right by the stadium would be a mess thanks to the implosion. I could flag down one of the heroes that was no doubt on their way to assist in the epic battle still taking place in the sky over the stadium, but that might draw unsavory notice, too. So my best bet was to walk to the Belmont stop and hope the Red Line wasn’t stopped due to this disaster. I needed to get to the waystation and hand Elwin over. Angélica was probably wondering where I was, and I really didn’t look forward to telling anybody at Davenport that I’d lost one of their villains and the Demobilizer at the same time. I looked sideways at Elwin. “You got a phone?”

  He shook his head, nose running in the cold.

  I had to bite my tongue over an aggravated gripe about his uselessness as I pushed him forward. “Walk a little faster.”

  The bars along Clark Street were emptying of patrons enjoying their Sunday afternoon beer, scurrying to get away. As much as I worried that this was adding more targets to the street, it did make it easier for Elwin and me to blend into the crowd. Of course, if he decided to rabbit, he had a better chance of getting away. He made it less than a block before he realized that himself and broke into a run. I snatched the back of his hood, stomach grumbling, and said, “Uh-­uh.”