Super: Underground: Book 2 in the Super: Series

by Palladian

  “He went on to say that he’d been able to find one other person who’d talk to him, the ex-girlfriend of another old co-worker of mine. The woman hadn’t wanted to talk to him at first, but when he questioned her whether anyone had approached her, offering to pay her off to leave her partner, she stopped.

  “‘I’ll tell you this,’ she said, and Randy said he’d never forget that sad look she gave him. ‘I never wanted to leave her, but they told me I wouldn’t be breathing now if I hadn’t taken that money. Maybe I shouldn’t have, though. I still miss her.’

  “‘It was about a week later that some shady people showed up to see me,’ he said. ‘They wore trench coats, hats, and sunglasses like the other two had described and explained in detail how unhealthy it was that I’d developed an interest in their business. They suggested I take a permanent holiday somewhere else so that I didn’t catch a cold or something that would be the death of me. I’ve seen them ever since, everywhere I go,’ he said, jerking his head in the direction of one of the nearby food stalls, where I just spotted the shadow of a man in a trench coat, almost concealed behind a support beam.

  “‘Another thing I found out about your co-workers that maybe you didn’t know—most of them are alone. Some are estranged from their families, are orphans, are only children with dead parents, or have elderly parents who probably aren’t much longer for this world, like you. I also haven’t been able to find out anything about these co-workers that you say are gone. They don’t seem to be anywhere, like they’ve dropped off the face of the earth. That usually means one of two things: they’re dead, or they’ve been kidnapped and are still being held somewhere. Look, I don’t have the whole picture here, because I didn’t have enough time. I don’t know what you do, and I don’t know what these creeps want from you, but if I was a young man, I’d get you out of this situation you’re in even if it killed me. You don’t try to isolate someone from everyone they’re close to unless you’re trying to do something bad to them. I worry for you, young lady,’ he said as he got up and put his hat and coat on.

  “I thanked him as he got up to leave for his train and gave him an envelope with his pay in it. He accepted it, but took about half of it out and gave me the rest back. When I gave him a look of surprise, he just shook his head.

  “‘Trust me, you’re going to need it more than I do,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘It looks like you have some powerful people lined up against you, Kate. Good luck, you’ll need it.’

  “I stopped him just before he left, though, realizing he hadn’t said anything more about Neil, and he just sighed. ‘I don’t know anything for certain because I couldn’t find out anything as to his whereabouts. From what I heard from those two who talked to me, though… He trailed off and pinched the bridge of his nose with a thumb and forefinger before he looked at me again. ‘I’m sorry I couldn’t help or find more out for you, but if these people are involved and he hasn’t been found yet, well, I don’t think he ever will be. I’m really sorry.’

  “I just kind of stared after him as he left. I think I knew by then that Neil was dead, because I always knew he would have contacted me otherwise, but I’d tried not to think about that. I sat there for a while before I could collect myself enough to leave, and then I noticed that the shady people he’d been talking about followed me when I left.”

  Kate paused to have a bite to eat, and Lex watched as Casey and Lou glanced at each other, Casey’s face distorted with worry. Lou smiled at her and took her hand, and as Lex watched, the worry on her friend’s face eased as she smiled back at Lou. Kate looked at Lou and Casey before she continued.

  “Glad you two managed it, somehow,” she said, a little grin on her face. “Anyway, I started getting paranoid, especially since the weirdos in the trench coats followed me whenever I left Alpha headquarters. I tried to get as much information as I could, but I couldn’t find out much. Finally, I managed to get a look at my file one day when they had me in for a physical and the doctor got called out of the room and forgot to log out. I figured something funny had to be going on when I got to the notes about some drug I was supposed to be taking, when nothing had been prescribed to me.”

  Lex and Riss looked at each other with tight, angry expressions, Lex remembering how it felt to find out about that. Kate nodded.

  “I see you guys figured that one out, too. Anyway, I was wishing I had Riss along when I went to the library to look up some of the drugs I’d scribbled on my hand from my medical file. MSI came up on the web search, but before I had time to read anything, even more goons showed up. I cleared out of there fast, but I’m sure they knew who was looking, since some of them followed me there in the first place.

  “I got the sense that I’d be next to disappear, since they knew I was looking. The day George mouthed about how I wouldn’t be around much longer, I decided I’d better go,” Kate concluded with a nod. “I had to make sure Victor knew, though.”

  Victor looked up then, smiling. “Since we spent so much time idled because of George, Kate and I ended up doing lots of things to practice our skills and amuse ourselves. We’d already found secret places to leave each other messages, so she let me know what she planned and why. My ambitions in life didn’t include being a lab rat, so I left as well.”

  Lex turned to him. “How did you get away from DC?” she asked.

  Victor shrugged. “We took Greyhound. It was Kate’s idea, and I think it turned out well. No one seemed to pay attention to us when we traveled that way.”

  Lex smiled and nodded along with everyone else, and Casey said, “Well done,” looking at Kate and Victor in turn.

  Kate laughed while Victor gave a grin before turning back to his coffee. “OK, everyone, now it’s your turn,” Kate said with a big smile.

  Lex outlined what happened and how they’d responded, and her other friends chimed in with details she’d forgotten or hadn’t heard. Kate and Victor listened intently through the account of the escape from the M Agency facility, Kate nodding when Riss spoke about the human experimentation evidence she’d uncovered.

  When Casey and Riss talked about what they did to take care of Lex once they’d gotten away from MSI, Kate’s expression turned stony and Victor frowned, drawing his brows together. Finally, Kate broke in as Casey spoke about resuscitating Lex, halting as she went through the story.

  “So you weren’t kidding about almost having died twice,” she said, looking from Casey to Lex and back. After a moment of silence, Lex’s nod the only reply, Kate added, “I’m glad you’re still with us.”

  Lex reached over to squeeze Casey’s shoulder and the larger woman smiled, but it didn’t seem to reach her eyes. “Yeah, I wouldn’t be here now if it weren’t for Casey,” Lex replied. “I’m not physically the same in a number of ways, like why I started dyeing my hair—because now its natural color is white—and my odd new eye color, but I’m alive, so all the rest isn’t much in comparison.”

  Kate shook her head, looking amazed at everything that had happened. Lex shrugged and continued. “I know I’m lucky. From what Riss found out, most of the people MSI experiments on don’t make it.”

  When the four of them went on to describe their break-in to the MSI lab where they’d been holding Lou, even Victor looked incredulous.

  “Wait,” Kate interrupted, waving her hand in front of her. “You mean you took the whole facility down, walked in there, grabbed Lou, and left?”

  “Pretty much,” Lex said, elbowing Riss, who actually grinned at Lex before finishing another bite of her waffles.

  When they’d finished the account, explaining how they’d escaped from where Lou was being held and drove west, the whole table fell silent for a moment before Kate threw her head back and laughed. “You guys take the fucking cake, that’s what!”

  Victor smiled as he glanced at her but kept his own thoughts on the matter. The group’s conversation continued onto other topics, mostly about how everyone had settled into their new lives. Kate and Victor bot
h seemed interested in stories about the band and how their recording and touring had been going. When Kate started talking about how she and Victor had been settling in, however, Lex watched her friend sigh and run a rough hand through her hair.

  “Unfortunately, the only IDs we could find weren’t very good. Victor opened a repair shop, so he’s doing well, but I’ve had a tough time finding work at all, never mind anything I might actually want to do.”

  Casey gave her a questioning look. “What did you do before you got onto the Alpha team?”

  Kate snorted a laugh, but Lex thought she didn’t sound like she found the topic amusing. “That’s the fucked up part. I wanted to go into law enforcement, if you can believe that.” She looked at the ceiling for a moment, and Lex felt a wave of sadness wash over her as she watched her friend blink fast a few times, then bring her face level again to fix all of them with a grim smile. “I wouldn’t touch that profession with a ten-foot pole now, but I think it was my FBI application that got the Alpha team interested in me.

  “These days,” she continued, looking at the table and fingering her napkin, “I’m working at a factory where we sew fake designer clothes. Everyone who works there is either undocumented or, like me, badly documented. Oh yeah, a few ex-cons, too. All really nice people, all of us hardly making any money. I guess it gets me out of the house during the day, at least.”

  Victor shot her a look, which Kate caught, then sighed. “I know,” she said, looking at him, then turned back to everyone else. “Victor’s told me a million times that I don’t need to work there and I should keep looking until I find something better, but with my papers…fuck, I don’t know if I could find anything better,” she finished, shaking her head.

  After a moment, she raised her head and looked at the others. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to tell you all this crap, especially not since you all came back from the dead and just after having met you, Lou,” she said, turning to look at him with a faint smile. “I’m fine, though, don’t worry about me.”

  Lex shot a quick look at her three house mates and received nods and a smile from Casey in return. She cleared her throat before speaking. “Actually, this leads into something we wanted to talk to you two about. Let’s get out of here and we can talk about it in the van. Can you guys spend the night? We can get you back to where you need to go tomorrow, if you can.”

  Victor looked at Kate with a raised eyebrow and a shrug, then nodded. Lex watched Kate seem to think about it for a moment, then turned back to her. “Sure, OK. I have to be back to work early Monday, and Victor has to be back at the shop then, too, so as long as you can get us back by then, it’s fine.”

  “Not a problem,” Lex said, sneaking a look at Casey, who was now smiling broadly.

  Lex waited until they’d gotten on the interstate headed to Phoenix before she took a deep breath and said, “We’d actually like you guys to come and live with us.” Victor gave Lex an interested look and a raised eyebrow, but Kate appeared shocked.

  “So, wait a minute. You all agree about this?” she asked, pointedly looking at Riss in the front passenger seat.

  Riss nodded in reply as Casey chimed in with a “yes” from the back of the van. “We wouldn’t have asked if we hadn’t agreed.”

  Kate looked confused but spoke up again. “Even you, Lou?”

  Lou nodded, looking briefly in the rearview mirror from his position in the driver’s seat. “Yeah. I hadn’t ever met you two, but I trust everyone else’s opinions and they vouched for you. I can see why: you seem like good folks.”

  Kate looked away for a moment, and Lex could almost swear she looked a little embarrassed. “Thanks, I guess. When did you have time to talk about this, though? I doubt you had time to talk backstage.”

  Lex sighed as she dropped her head, then met Kate’s eye. “It was no accident that you came here tonight. Did either one of you see a video of the band on the internet?”

  Victor nodded, and Kate shot him a glance, then spoke up. “Victor saw it, then showed it to me. I didn’t know before now that he’s a music fan, but he insisted that we go to your next show. After I saw the video, I wanted to go, too. Do you think somehow we recognized you or something?”

  Lex shook her head and bit her lip, then spoke up. “My eye and hair color weren’t the only new things I noticed when I woke up, Kate. I ended up with some new things I could do, too. You could say I called you to come.”

  Lex waited with her bottom lip in her teeth, expecting her friend’s anger, but Kate just turned to Lex with a look of wonder. “Really? You’ve got to tell me all about it!”

  “Later, later,” Lex said, feeling her cheeks heating up as she held her hands out in front of her. “First, I want to know what you think about joining us.”

  Kate sighed, then frowned. “I don’t know, Lex. I think it would probably be more dangerous for all of us to be seen together than it would be for any of us to be seen separately.”

  “Maybe, although the bunch of us has never really been seen together before now,” Lex said with a brief nod. “In balance, though, I think the positives outweigh the negatives. For starters, I look different enough now that you didn’t even recognize me, did you?” Kate shook her head and Lex continued. “Casey looks different as well, and I notice you’ve changed your look, too. But maybe more importantly, I think that the talents the bunch of us have together would make it far less likely that we’d get caught and more likely that we could get away if anything did happen.”

  Lex paused to look at Riss with a question in her eye, which Riss nodded in response to. “Also,” Lex continued, with a smile at Riss, “we could help you with some other things. You mentioned you had problems getting good IDs. Riss could set you up with some real ones, and she could get what was owed to you from your Alpha pay.”

  Victor raised his eyebrows and shot Kate an encouraging look, but Kate still sported a dubious expression. “How could we do that and not get caught?”

  “I managed to do it for the three of us,” Riss replied, “so it’ll be easy to do it again, since I know all MSI’s procedures. The accounts for the M Agency and the Alpha team are separate anyway, so that should make it even easier to cover our tracks.”

  Victor shot Riss a smirk as if from one tinkerer to another, which Riss returned with a small, sly smile. Kate watched the two of them for a moment, then shook her head.

  Lex smiled at Kate before she continued. “I also thought we could use a guitar player and a good sound man, so I immediately thought of you two, but I think one of the main reasons I’d like you to consider is that I missed working with you guys and I’d like to do it again. So think about it,” Lex finished, glancing over at Kate and Victor without meeting their eyes, giving a small smile.

  Victor gave Kate a look that Lex couldn’t interpret, and the two of them stared at each other for a minute or two before Kate gave a laugh and turned to face Lex. “All right, the two of us will talk it over.” After a beat to catch her breath, Kate smiled. “Now that I know you guys are loaded, though, I can’t wait to see where you’ve been staying,” Kate said, breaking out into a huge grin.

  Casey laughed in the back as Lex echoed her in the middle seat. “You may be disappointed in the location itself, since the neighborhood isn’t all the great, but Lou taught us to make the inside much nicer than the outside probably ever was.”

  During the rest of the drive, Casey, Lou, and Lex explained a few more details about how they’d arranged things between the current group members, but after a while, the conversations trailed into lively catch-up sessions. After Kate, Casey, and Lex had talked a while, Kate and Riss switched seats so that Kate and Lou could have a chance to talk. Lex felt surprised to see Riss and Victor conversing in quiet tones at one point, tinkering and computers seeming to be the main topics, and after which the two both sported smiles as if happy to have found someone on their own wavelength.

  Once they got back to the warehouse, they all carried the gear inside, and Lou an
d Casey proceeded to give the grand tour to Victor and Kate. Victor said little but looked at everything, especially what they’d done to create the gym.

  Kate expressed her thoughts much more vocally, however. “God, you guys have done a lot with the place! It’s beautiful,” she said, gazing up and around at all the space they had in the main room with all of the musical gear, the dining and sitting areas, and the kitchen.

  Victor shot her a look that almost screamed, “So, when are we moving in?” Kate fixed him with a raised eyebrow and an indecipherable look and followed Lex up the stairs to the first floor bedrooms, Victor trailing the two of them.

  While Victor investigated one of the spare bedrooms, Lex and Kate stood in the hallway near Lex’s door. She said to Kate, “If you guys don’t like this one, there’s another next door that you can check out. They’re not that different, but I think there’s a little more space in the second one.”

  Kate lifted an eyebrow. “Oh, that’s probably the one I’ll sleep in. It looks like Victor’s made up his mind on this one.”

  When Lex gave her friend a puzzled look, Kate just smiled. “It’s not like that between us, though a lot of people seem to think it is.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—” Lex began, twisting her hands together in front of her, but stopped as she saw Kate shake her head.

  “Not that I might not have been willing to try it out if he were interested, but since we’re both into guys…”

  She trailed off with a shrug, and Lex couldn’t help a small smile at her friend’s description of the issue. “I guess that would put a damper on things. Come on, I’ll show you to your room.”

  Once the two guests had been set up for sleep, Riss and Lex headed back to their own rooms. Before they parted, Riss stopped Lex with a look.