“No.” Victor forced a smile onto his face. “And for that, I am truly grateful.”
He walked over to her and let his forehead lean against hers, realizing how much he took her for granted. Ella was the perfect companion, someone always available to offer her opinion or advice, without ever being vulnerable to danger, outside of what he brought upon himself.
“We’ll get through this,” he said.
“I know.”
Kronenberg returned Victor’s call a few minutes later. He explained that he’d been able to track down a bar that Sheila, who was a bit of an alcoholic, often frequented. The address he gave was one that Victor recognized.
“Sammy’s Place? Are you serious?”
“Yeah,” said Kronenberg. “I’m not sure whether she’ll be there tonight or not, but Sammy might know where to find her. It’s an… odd coincidence, Victor. Be careful.”
“I will,” he said. “And Kronenberg… I might not be around much, after this.”
“Don’t get all mopey on me,” said Kronenberg. “Take that energy and direct in a helpful direction. Like writing me into your will, for example.”
Victor chuckled.
“Sure thing,” he said. “Watch out for Lucy, would you?”
“Yeah. Give them hell, buddy.”
Victor stayed on the line until his friend had disconnected, and then turned in the direction of the city. The artificial lights of the buildings and the streets seemed brighter than usual. There’d be even more lights mixed in, soon, police lights, spotlights, and the light of his auras.
“Ready?” asked Ella.
“I was born re-“
Ella punched his shoulder before he could finish, and Victor laughed.
CHAPTER 15
Sammy’s Place was Victor’s tavern of choice for many reasons, most notably that its owner never carded him. It was one of the first stops he’d made on his first visit to Undercliff City. There was a certain charm to it, a rustic quality that most modern bars and clubs hadn’t managed to carry forward into the 21st century.
It was late enough to be rather busy, and Victor was glad that he’d taken the time to scrounge up a disguise on his way there. The sunglasses and blue bandana were both technically stolen, taken from the backyard of a house that looked expensive enough for the owner to not miss either item terribly much.
Victor pushed past a few people standing at the bar and nonchalantly waved Sammy over. It took her a second to recognize him, but to her credit, she made no move to dart for the phone or sound the alarm.
“I’m innocent,” said Victor, in a voice that only she could hear. It seemed appropriate to address that in front of everything else.
Sammy, in her typical stoic style, merely scanned his expression and then nodded after finding something in it to satisfy her judgment.
“I’m looking for someone who could potentially exonerate me,” said Victor. “A woman by the name of Sheila Marth.”
Sammy nodded again, and then gestured to a woman sitting in one of the booths in the back of the tavern. Without needing to be asked, she turned and filled up two mugs of beer, sliding both over to Victor.
“Thanks,” he said. “You’ve always been one of the good ones, Sammy.”
“Don’t do anything stupid, Victor.”
He blinked. He wasn’t sure if he’d ever heard her say an entire sentence before.
“I… will,” he said, after a bewildered second.
The seat across from Sheila in the booth was empty. Victor sat down in it presumptuously and slid one of the beers in front of her.
“Hi,” he said. She raised an eyebrow at him. Sheila was a woman in her mid to late forties. She looked like she’d once been attractive, but her face was filled with stress lines, dark bags hung under her eyes, and her hair was striped with gray.
“And who might you be?” she asked.
“The guy who supposedly killed you and your friends,” said Victor. “But we both know that’s not exactly the truth of it, don’t we?”
Sheila looked as though she was contemplating bolting for the door. Victor acted as though he was dealing with a wild squirrel or deer, and tried not to make any sudden movements.
“Look, I’m not here to hurt you, or to do anything that would put you in danger.”
“I’m in danger just by being next to you!” she snapped.
“You’re in danger just by being, well, alive,” he replied. “Trust me, you’re safe with me around than you would be otherwise.”
“What do you want?” she asked. “I’ll scream if you try anything!”
Victor shook his head and sighed.
This would be so much easier if I actually was evil.
“I just want to know what happened,” said Victor. “And potentially for you to come forward with your story.”
“I’m leaving town,” said Sheila. “If you have any sense, you will, too.”
“Sheila, please,” said Victor. “Just tell me-“
She stood up suddenly, and without thinking, Victor grabbed her wrist. She was going to scream. He could see it in her eyes. She was going to ruin everything.
Victor didn’t have a choice. He bound his onyx aura and entered her mind.
The onyx aura was something that Victor considered to be, under normal circumstances, lower than a last resort. It was an evil thing when used on other people, a form of psychic torture made sinister by the fact that it actually worked. Sheila let out a sharp gasp and fell back into her seat in the booth, and then Victor’s awareness shifted as he began to see the truth of who she was, and what had happened.
He skipped over most of her recent memories to find the relevant one, which spanned a few hours the day before last, shortly before the police had arrived at Victor’s house. She was wearing a white lab coat. She was happy, and moving among her coworkers.
Those are the other people that “I” killed.
The walls and décor of the room she was in were familiar. Victor searched Sheila’s memory and instantly knew the truth. They were in Monteiro Tower, now known as Blue Horizon Tower, and Victor’s former workplace.
They worked in the other research facility, officially, the one I went to. But… they were working on a project here.
He let more of Sheila’s memory play out. She and her coworkers were on one of the sub-levels. It was an open space, with a number of workstations in the center, and large, human shaped pods surrounding the outer walls.
Victor waited, letting the scene continue. They were collecting vital signs from each one. More importantly, there was a person, a research subject, in each pod. A sickening feeling began to coalesce in Victor’s stomach as he realized what was happening.
Annette is creating super soldiers.
He found himself being a little surprised that he hadn’t expected it. It was the obvious approach to take. She could take over the city with a few loyal, nano enhanced, genetically engineered underlings. There was no reason for her not to do it.
Sheila and her coworkers were upset about something. They were all peering at a screen next to one of the pods. One of them got a phone call, and then they were all heading for the elevator.
Victor sped forward through time. They were all leaving a bar, drunk and dressed in casual clothing. Someone was waiting for them in the parking lot. Gunshots went off, and people fell to the ground. Sheila was running away.
He pulled back, letting go of his onyx aura and returning to reality. Sheila was staring at him, her mouth open, and her face twisted in fear.
“What…” She shook her head in disbelief. “What did I just see? What did you do?”
Victor stood up from the booth before she could make a scene.
“Find somewhere safe to hide,” he said. “They’ll find you if you stick around here.”
CHAPTER 16
Blue Horizon Tower was one of the essential buildings in the Undercliff City skyline. It loomed over the city like an emotionless, monolithic tribute to technology
and capitalism. Victor flew up to the roof and landed on it, taking a second to get his bearings before continuing forward.
“This is a bad idea,” said Ella. “You don’t have a plan.”
She was wearing a tight black sweater, along with black jeans, as though she was worried about being seen and needed the clothing for concealment. Victor shrugged at her.
“If you have any better ideas, I’d love to hear them,” he said.
“I hear South America is pretty nice this time of year.”
“You’ll say anything to get a chance to work on your tan,” he said.
The door leading down to the top floor was locked, but that was a mere inconvenience to someone with Victor’s abilities. He melted through the handle using his scarlet aura and pushed his way through.
Back when Eli Monteiro had been in control of the tower, the top floor had included his office and lounge areas. Now, it was essentially abandoned, though it would have been empty regardless in the middle of the night.
Victor made his way over to the elevator and hit the call button. Nothing happened. The button didn’t even light up. He stood there for a few seconds, feeling annoyed and bemused.
“It’s an omen,” said Ella. “You should listen to it.”
He shook his head, and then with a blast of fire, blew open the twin elevator doors. The shaft on the other side was pitch black, and Victor had to bind his onyx aura to see into it.
The elevator appeared to be sitting at lobby level, unmoving. The elevator shaft was clearly not meant to be seen by the eyes of anyone other than the repairmen. Exposed metal framework, with sections of mismatched wall ran up and down the shaft as far as the eye could see.
Victor stepped out into it, binding his diamond aura gently and hovering down. It was a long way to go, and it made him appreciate the size of the skyscraper even more than flying to the top of it had.
It took him a full minute to reach the elevator car’s roof, and he had further still to go. There was a hatch on top of it, and he saved himself time by carefully pulling it open and dropping inside.
Again, the doors were shut. Victor frowned. Even at night, the elevator should have been active for any employees working late and cleaning personnel. He pushed the thought out of his mind and pondered another way to get to the sub-level.
Sure enough, cleverly hidden in the elevator’s floor was another trap door. It was perfectly flush with the floor and he couldn’t for the life of him figure out how to get it open. So in his traditional, nuanced style, Victor bound his scarlet aura and smashed through the floor with a carefully thrown explosive blast.
Finesse is my middle name.
He slowly continued his descent, stopping at each sub-level to pull the elevator doors open and get a peak at what was on the other side. It wasn’t until he’d reached the very bottom that he found a hallway that matched what he’d seen in Sheila’s memories.
Victor slipped through the crack he’d opened in the door and started walking. The lights in the hallway were still on, and the door at the end of it was left open. It didn’t make sense, and he frowned as he entered the main room he’d seen Sheila and her coworkers in and looked around.
The pods were gone. It was as though they’d never been there to begin with. Victor ran a hand through his hair and thought about what that meant. The entire room had been gutted of evidence. There was nothing for him to see.
“You are nothing if not predictable, Victor Anders.” Kiara’s voice, or rather, Annette’s voice in Kiara’s body, came through the loudspeaker in the ceiling of the room. “I must say, I did expect you sooner.”
“You…” He shook his head, trying to contain his anger. “It isn’t going to work, Annette. I will stop you, whatever your plan is.”
“You don’t have the slightest idea, do you?” Annette laughed. “Well, I guess I should give you credit for making it as far as you have. Though, I have to admit, I never really expected the police to do much more than keep you distracted.”
Ella appeared next to Victor and poked him sharply in the ribs.
“Keep her talking,” she said. “I have an idea.”
“Annette, please,” said Victor. “I know what was going on here. I know about the pods.”
“It doesn’t matter what you know, Victor,” said Annette. “You’re too late.”
This isn’t working.
“Kiara,” said Victor. “Kiara, can you hear me?”
It was an impossibly long shot, but Victor couldn’t think of anything else to keep her from disconnecting. He still suspected that a part of Kiara’s consciousness lived inside of her body, alongside Annette. Whether he could get a response from it or not made no difference. He just needed Annette to stay on the line.
“Kiara is dead,” said Annette.
“We both know that’s not true,” said Victor. “All of us know that it’s not true.”
There was a bit of feedback over the connection, sounds that were too distorted for Victor to recognize.
“I’m sorry, Victor,” said Annette. “This is the end.”
“No!” he yelled. “Kiara! Annette!”
The line disconnected. Victor started to swear in frustration when an enormous boom came from somewhere above him, loud enough to make his ears hurt and powerful enough to knock him off his feet. The room continued to shake as he stood up, the ground jerking underneath him in a regular, rhythmic pattern, as though a giant was slamming a mallet into the skin of a bass drum that he was standing on. Victor looked over at Ella, who had a scared expression on her face.
“The building,” she said. “It’s… collapsing.”
CHAPTER 17
Victor flew down the hallway toward the elevator shaft as the shaking grew more intense. Dust and sections of the ceiling fell from above. He couldn’t hear anything, the noise was too loud.
It had only been a couple of seconds since the collapse had begun, but time seemed to stretch out into eternity. Victor threw himself into the elevator shaft and bound his onyx aura as he looked up into the darkness.
The shaft was visibly swaying from side to side. Dust rushed down as a tsunami of building wreckage fell toward him. It almost looked as though he was moving upward, toward the chaos, though he knew that in reality, it was the opposite. He was on the verge of being crushed, or worse, entombed until he could either find a way out, or died of starvation.
“Go!” screamed Ella. “Go, go, go!”
Victor didn’t need to be told twice. He had to beat the building’s collapse up to the ground floor. He could still make it out, but only if he moved faster than the descent of the wreckage.
It was the most terrifying moment of his life. Victor shot up toward the carnage. He was close enough to see through the dust, to see the flames from the explosives that had triggered the collapse, the twisted steel and concrete. Glass hung in the air like tiny, deadly snowflakes. The elevator shaft grew hotter the higher up he went.
I’m not going to make it!
Once, as a child, Victor had been playing with his friend Ricky during the winter. The two of them had built a snow fort into the side of a massive mound of built up snow on the side of the road. Victor had been inside of it when Ricky had climbed on top, and the entire structure had come down on his head.
It’d had been a terrifying minute or two unlike anything he’d experienced before. He’d been unable to move, unable to make any noise other than a hollow, short reaching grown. He couldn’t even get his chest out far enough to take breath, though the snow filling his mouth would have prevented it regardless.
He hadn’t thought about that day much, but now the memories of it came back. Victor reached the beginning of the collapsed wreckage before he made it up to the first floor. He used his scarlet aura to blast pieces of rebar and concrete out of the way, but there was so much of it, and he was weak and up against a building that weighed in the millions of tons.
Ella was flying next to him, leading him through the carnage. All o
f the sudden, she darted to the side. Victor followed, catching a concrete pillar on the shoulder as it fell and flipping into an uncontrolled sprawl.
Faster! I need to go faster!
He put more energy into his diamond aura. He saw the clear glass double doors of the lobby shatter into shards. A section of roof fell in front of him and he dodged over it. And then, quite suddenly, he was outside, speeding across the street only inches above the ground, screaming a terrified scream.
“You’re okay!” yelled Ella. “You’re okay!”
Victor tried to get his feet underneath him and tripped himself. He tumbled into a clumsy, painful, rolling pile, collecting road rashes as his momentum dispersed against the concrete.
The air was filled with dust. People were screaming and rushing out of nearby buildings. Sirens were wailing. Victor was alive.
She did all of that, just to kill me.
He stood up and started walking away from the scene of the tower collapse. He was angrier than he’d ever been in his life.
“Ella!” Victor spoke loudly, not caring about the people moving past him toward the tower’s wreckage. “What did you get? What did you hear?”
Ella materialized in front of him. Her eyes were puffy, as though she’d been crying, and her face was full of relief. It was up to her how she chose to look when she appeared to him, and seeing her like this solidified the extent of the danger Victor had just been in.
“She was on a plane,” said Ella.
“That… doesn’t narrow it down much.”
“The sound we heard before she disconnected was thunder,” said Ella. “She’s headed through the same storm we were just in. And there aren’t that many lanes for air travel in that direction.”
Victor grinned at her.
“Lead the way.”
CHAPTER 18
The two of them flew up into the night sky together. Undercliff City was a bright mass of lights and noise, but it faded quickly into the distance, like anything else. Ahead of them lay a storm, huge enough to look like a ceiling against the sky, tinged with gray and exploding with silver blue lightning, and slowly crawling away from them.
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