Villains Inc. (Wearing the Cape)

by Marion G. Harmon

  “That’s Mr. Moffat.”

  Out of the corner of my eye I saw the guards stiffen, but Tom didn’t react as I walked up to the desk. The atrium was nearly empty. Good.

  “Afternoon, Tom.” I nodded to our dead visitor. “Can I help you, Mr….?”

  “Kitsune. Kit-SOO-neh,” he said, grinning cheerfully and offering his hand. “I was hoping to speak to Blackstone, but I don’t have an appointment.”

  We shook. Warm grip, pulse, all good. And nothing was going to start up here. I made myself smile back. “I’m afraid they gave you the wrong badge. Tom, may we have a gold one?” Can I take this obvious but unknown superhuman downstairs?

  “Of course, ma’am,” he said, handing our guest a new one and accepting the one he’d clipped to his tie.

  “Thanks Tom. If you could let Blackstone know we’re coming, I’d appreciate it.”

  “Of course. Have a nice day.”

  I walked Mr. Kitsune to the elevators, ushered him, in and hit the Lobby button. “Shelly,” I said as the doors closed. “Lockdown, please.”

  “Going down.” We dropped fast as I counted to five and Mr. Kitsune’s eyes widened. Our hard-stop brought him to his knees, and the shaft rang as the titanium hatch above us slammed shut. Extending a hand, I helped him up.

  “Lockdown, Mr. Kitsune, means we’re at the bottom of the shaft, sealed in and not going anywhere without authorization from upstairs. You’re not getting an inch closer to Blackstone until I’m happy, and I’m pretty sure the worst bit is this damn elevator music.” I didn’t mention all of the ways the elevator could neutralize its occupants—some of which could incapacitate me.

  He nodded. “I can see that, and it’s not ‘mister.’ Kitsune is Japanese for fox or fox-spirit.” His face changed, and for a second she was the woman who walked out of the vault. Then she was a younger, red-headed girl with bright almond eyes. “And aren’t you worried that I’m an inch away from you?”

  “Nope. Barlow’s Guide to Superhumans: physical shapeshifting is almost always a solitary power. You can bleed on me if you’re really determined.”

  “There are other dangers,” she said. And suddenly she was Mom.

  Her eyes flew wide when my left hand closed around her neck and squeezed gently. “Hope…” Shelly whispered, barely heard over the blood pounding in my ears.

  “I know I look like Barbie’s kid sister,” I said softly, cold and hard as Artemis. “But I can squeeze until you pass out, and if you don’t change this freaking second I’m going to see what you look like unconscious.” I stopped talking, amazed I wasn’t screaming out the rush of sick rage gathering in my chest. Smile gone, she jerked a constricted nod and changed back into the half-Asian girl.

  I forced myself to relax, loosening my grip till she gasped.

  “You’re crazy!”

  “And you just threatened my mother. Try again.”

  “No! No! I didn’t mean anything by it!” Her voice shook, and suddenly I felt queasy. Cold, I dropped my hand. She took a gulping breath, backing up as far as the elevator car allowed.

  “I just wanted to… it was stupid.”

  “No kidding. Blackstone.”

  She rubbed her throat. “He’s met me, but not this face. I passed him some information on the Outfit before I dropped by the bank last week. Look, they’re after me now—somehow they’re able to find me. But I can tell you all about them, who they’re working for, if you’ll protect me.”

  I looked up at the ceiling. “Blackstone?”

  “Indeed, my dear.” He sounded quite pleased. “I’m aware of the incident to which she’s referring, and by all means we need to speak.” I heard the pop as the shaft unsealed, and we started to rise. Then the lights turned red and siren-wails split the air.

  “SECURITY BREACH IN DOME ATRIUM; INITIATING FULL LOCKDOWN AND EVACUATION.”

  Chapter Twenty One

  It’s not paranoia if they’re really out to get you.

  Astra, Notes From a Life.

  * * *

  Multiple shocks announced the re-closing of the shaft above us as hatches sealed each level. No, No, No! The elevator doors opened onto the empty residence level, and I practically threw Kitsune out into the hall and the arms of a startled Willis as I mashed the ground-floor button.

  “Damnit, let me up!”

  “Astra,” Lei Zi called in my ear. “You are to secure Kitsune, exit through ET-3, then engage as you see fit. Understood?”

  “Secure, Exit ET-3, engage, got it!”

  “I can secure our guest, miss,” Willis offered. “You’ll be needing this?” He handed me a mob-kit and I laughed.

  “Thanks Willis!” I called back as I flew down the hall. Right, left, right, pop hall-panel and crack hatch, down the tunnel and then straight up, ignoring the rungs. I grabbed the latch and twisted, blowing the seals, and popped out and onto the avenue just around the corner from the portico doors.

  Tourists fled in all directions and protest-signs littered the ground. A loose terrier bounded across the grass, barking hysterically. At least I didn’t see any bodies, and I found Gabe and his partner in the portico. His partner couldn’t sit up, but Gabe had pulled himself to his knees. No blood. Picking Gabe up, I gently set him down, protesting, on grass fifty feet back around the Dome, then did the same for his partner. If things went our way, I didn’t want anyone blocking the exit.

  “Astra at the main doors!” I reported. “Outside is clear, going in!”

  “Roger, Astra,” Blackstone replied. “Lei Zi, Rush, Seven, The Harlequin, Riptide, Artemis, Galatea engaging. Watch your tags.”

  Tags? I shrugged, and flew through the doors.

  A storm of bullets met me and I dropped for the floor, trying to see through the smoke. Here there were bodies—our armored team, two of Platoon—crumpled behind their station, torn and burned. No civilians, thank God. The shooters, in black jumpsuits and hooded facemasks, poured auto-fire on me like it would do more than sting. Every one of them had a spectral green tag floating beside him, reading Flash Mob: Redux-type, temp-clones; swing away.

  Tags. “Shelly!” I laughed; she always hijacked my senses to make herself real through our neural link—now she was using the ability to give me a heads-up tactical display.

  “Tagging them as I call them!” she sang out through my earbug. “Green means engage now, blue active, red stay away! Kinda busy!”

  “Thanks!”

  I launched myself into the gunmen, swinging. They went down like dominoes, the hard-hit ones vanishing as they hit the wet floor. The smoke and steam made it hard to count, but I guessed a couple-dozen and there didn’t seem to be more popping up. Some ignored me, shooting downrange away from me, and at the far end of my vision I saw Rush’s blur—two sets: odd, but he had to be pulling civilians.

  I kept swinging until all of Flash Mob was gone, then headed further in.

  And smacked right into the floor. I lifted my head off cracked marble paving, guts heaving, too dizzy to focus. What the hell?

  “It’s about time.” Another black-masked figure rose from behind the shattered reception desk—this one red-tagged Warp: remote attack, vertigo-nausea; fragile.

  Red-tagged. Thanks for the warning, Shell.

  “Don’t fight it,” he said. “And we won’t need to be hard on you.”

  “This is easy?” I wanted to vomit, couldn’t.

  “Easier. You’re not who we’re here for.”

  “Good to know,” I gasped, pulling a flash-bang grenade from my pack.

  “Bright light,” I whispered, counting on Shell to pass the warning as I pulled the pin and threw myself at the desk.

  BANG!

  I landed as the stun grenade flashed a million candela in my hand and beat the air with 150 decibels, blinding and disorienting. Even my ears rang, and my hand stung, but I grabbed for Warp as I fell off the edge of the battered desk. I missed, but Artemis came out of the mist and shot him with both of her elasers, crack crack.

&
nbsp; Her leather catsuit was sliced up, straps and buckles dangling, and somewhere she’d lost her skull-mask, but she was laughing. She helped me sit up, found the glue-tape in my kit, and started wrapping while my stomach settled and the world stopped spinning.

  “You okay?” she asked. I nodded, wincing as she used a couple of strips to securely blindfold Warp; removing it would take away hair. She patted his shoulder cheerfully. “He can’t attack what he can’t see. Move your tiny ass—the tough guys are further in.”

  “Right.” My vertigo fading fast, I launched myself towards the back of the atrium. “Positions?” I queried, and Shelly passed it on.

  “We’re dealing with Tin Man and some kind of clay thing outside of Dispatch,” Lei Zi responded calmly. “Blackstone reports penetration of the main elevator shaft by an Atlas-type. Take it.”

  “Main elevators, on it!” I confirmed. Titanium hatches, and someone was penetrating? I ignored the sizzling snap of Lei Zi’s bolts off to my left, almost drowned by the wailing alarms, and found the elevator bay. The security doors had slammed down, sealing the bay the instant the alarms had tripped, but they’d been ripped aside.

  Someone had forced the doors to the center elevator open, exposing the shaft. The emergency lights had cut out, filling the shaft with darkness, but I could see someone down there; his body-heat lighting him up in the black. The floating green tag read X: Atlas-type, unknown class. Ringing strikes echoed up the shaft as he hammered on the first hatch.

  Anyone that could go through the security doors could take what I dished out: I looked back into the Atrium, then stepped into the shaft and dropped feet-first, helping gravity speed me along. My impact burst the first hatch and flattened us against the second, but the villain I’d landed on recovered faster and heaved, smashing me against the shaft wall. Steel-reinforced ferroconcrete refused to yield, and my half-healed ribs screamed.

  “Stay down!” he snarled. “I’m not here for you!”

  “I heard!” I bounced back up, bringing my head down to smash his masked face.

  He howled but he grappled me, grip like steel clamps, arms like cables. “Bitch! You can’t win!” Unable to break his hold, I flew us into the wall behind him, hammered him with repeated short knee-kicks to his gut and chest, smashed him in the throat with my elbow when he let go. I was screaming.

  “Can’t? I trained with Ajax, you moron! Get! Out! Of! My! House!” He swung us into the opposite wall, but my elbow crushed his nose and now he screamed, launching us straight up. I tried to spin us, but he got me above him and when we hit the top of the shaft my world exploded. I let go.

  Fifty feet down to the second hatch, and it rang like a gong when I hit. Move! I told myself, but I wasn’t listening. One breath. Two. Nothing. The world slowly came back, but he was gone. I sat up, only to whimper and grab my side while the world spun some more.

  “Lei Zi?” I took a breath and tried again, louder.

  “Status?” She sounded mildly interested—like I’d interrupted a card-game.

  “The shaft is clear. Do you need me?”

  The Dome shook and the overpressure blast popped my ears. “Negative,” she said. “Stand down.”

  “Yippie,” I whispered, dropping back. The cool titanium felt wonderful.

  * * *

  Flying didn’t hurt, so I didn’t stay down long. Back up the shaft, the Atrium was a wreck; water covered the floor—Riptide had been busy—and burning bits of Tin Man’s latest mecha-man creation lay about, smoking and steaming. The final concussive explosion had ripped apart the inner wall separating the Atrium from the office section, but it looked like the museum doors were intact. The smell of scorched metal and burned flesh hung in the air, and I found Tom, dead at his post; somehow I’d missed him when I fell over the reception desk. Since he was one of Platoon, I wasn’t sure how I felt about that.

  Lei Zi put me on perimeter-watch as the Dome’s alarms went silent, giving way to the rising whoops of landing emergency vehicles. I went outside to check on Gabe and his partner, waving the EMTs in as they unloaded their gear and came running. Steel Drake and Bolt, two Chicago Guardians and the guys who‘d airlifted the pair of ambulances, trotted up to me.

  “You look hammered, A,” Drake said bluntly. “What can we do?”

  I hesitated, looking around. “Could you check the park? But stand by for airlift.” When I’d taken Kitsune downstairs the Atrium hadn’t been empty—as fast as Rush had moved, there had to be civilian casualties inside. He fired off a salute and they flew up and around. I found Gabe and Officer Ryan where I’d left them, white as sheets and painfully bent from retching spasms, and helped them up. Together we took up positions at the portico doors and watched the incoming tide of emergency vehicles, city police, and newsies.

  Chapter Twenty Two

  Nos Praestolor: We Stand Ready.

  The Motto of the Chicago Sentinels.

  * * *

  A fresh costume does wonders, and by unspoken agreement we all changed before joining each other in the Assembly Room four hours later. Once more Guardians arrived from their precincts, I’d spent my time flying critically injured to waiting trauma centers and then cleaning up the heavier pieces of Tin Man’s contribution. Only two civilians had been killed in the battle in the Atrium, but lots more had been hurt, some badly. The Harlequin, a crackerjack EMT, had saved lives; Rush and his new sidekick—Crash, aka Jamal, the second blur I’d seen and the breakthrough-speedster from the Puccini’s fight last week—had both been amazing, pulling the crowd out of the Atrium before we sealed it off.

  Standing beside Rush, Crash (and what kind of name was Crash?) looked jazzed to be surrounded by supercelebrities. The night of the fight the only impression I’d gotten had been young, black, cool corn-rows. I’d been busy. Seeing him now, he looked like a half grown puppy-dog; lean, angular, hands and feet still a bit too big, with the ropy muscles of a runner. He wore a blue cotton jumpsuit, presumably till Andrew could do up a sidekick costume, and if the fight had shaken him I couldn’t tell. Rush had taken the time to thank me—apparently Quin had considered my request and come to him with the idea of mentoring Jamal as an alternative to the academy. I didn’t say how the deal was going to work, but maybe the new, more serious Rush could do it. I hoped so.

  Artemis looked cool and together as ever, her cuts already gone; obviously being alive again hadn’t compromised her ability to shrug off injuries. Where did she find a ‘blood-donor’ in all the chaos? Lei Zi wore ointment on her burns; she’d gone head to head with Furnace, the psychotic and now deceased pyrokinetic villain who’d tried to burn down the place using bystanders as fuel.

  Beside Vulcan, a banged-up Galatea grinned at me. She’d given me a broad wink when I came in. “Just wait,” Shell had giggled in my ear, and I so wanted to know how she’d convinced Vulcan to let her cybernetically possess his favorite toy.

  “Thank you, everyone,” Blackstone said, nodding to include Dr. Cornelius and Orb in his greetings as we all sat down.

  “As an update, you’ll be happy to know that the most critically injured are now listed as stable. Thanks to the efforts of The Harlequin, Rush, and Crash”—he didn’t stumble over the name at all—“there will not be more fatalities. Thanks to Astra, our attackers were unable to attain their goal; the removal of a new guest from our custody.

  “Unfortunately,” and now he lost his smile, “our guest’s stay was short-lived. When Willis evacuated the residential levels, she made her departure.”

  We sat in stunned silence, and he sighed, folding his hands.

  “While it is highly probable that Kitsune was the bank-robber who’s successful heist last week precipitated events, we are not the police; without a warrant, we cannot detain an individual who is not caught in commission of a crime or a clear and present danger. She was free to go, and she did.”

  Rush swore. “So she waltzes in here, we kick the crap out of the scumbags after her, and she waltzes back out?”

  “
At least now we know what she looks… Well, hell,” Seven said, and we all laughed. It wasn’t a happy laugh, but it helped.

  “The good news,” Blackstone continued, “is that although Villain-X, the unknown Atlas-type escaped, we did capture two of the new Villains Inc.: Warp and Ginsu. The clay monster turned out to be a magic construct, a golem according to Dr. Cornelius, more of Dr. Millibrand’s work. Although some here—” he looked at me and everyone chuckled—“refer to her as the Wicked Witch, I have decided to designate her Hecate. Both Warp and Ginsu are talking to the police at this moment, but Detective Fisher has let me know that they appear to be low-level soldiers at best and won’t be able to tell us much we don’t already know beyond the location of a “lair” that is now empty.”