Masks (Out of the Box Book 9)

by Robert J. Crane

  “Whoa!” Captain Frost launched to his feet, disentangling himself from his future conquests with meta speed. I was actually worried he might have injured their necks in the process, but the nasty looks they gave me seemed to say that it was only their pride at being quickly discarded that got hurt. “It’s … you,” he said, giving me a look not unlike that which his cabana girls had just been sending his way.

  “I don’t know why people say that. It’s so vague and general, it fits everyone.” I stood there, riffing in the middle of his awed groupies. “No matter who you say, ‘It’s you!’ to, yes, it’s them. But they might not be the them you’re thinking of—”

  “You’re Sienna Nealon,” Frost said, breaking the stunned silence of his fan base first.

  “See, now that’s more specific,” I said, “and undeniable.”

  “You’re like the great-grandmother of all superheroes,” a young guy said in awe.

  “I’m twenty-four, not a hundred,” I said, giving him an ireful look that he blinked away from. I was blaming the hat hair for this one. And the baggy jeans. And … whatever else I could. I sighed. “Guess I’m not gonna get mistaken for Hit Girl anytime soon.” I smoothed my hair self-consciously.

  “Wow,” Frost said again, coming forward and seizing my hand, pumping it hard while I looked at him warily. “It’s just … such an honor, you know.” He stopped and let go of me. “What are you doing here?”

  I kept a straight face. “I’m here to talk to you about the Avengers initiative.”

  A goofy smile spread across his lips, his eyes lighting up. “Really?”

  “No, not really,” I said, and his face fell. “Can I talk to you privately for a minute?”

  He looked around at his mostly female fans, and I noticed a lot of them were torn between adulation and sudden jealousy, which was directed at me in the form of dagger eyes. “Sure,” he said casually, but he puffed up a little as he did.

  “Great,” I said, trying to convey by tone that I wasn’t that excited about it. The last thing I needed was his happy harpy groupies to boil over while I was questioning him about his tantrum on Wall Street.

  Before we even took two steps, what seemed like fifty cell phones went off in his little trust circle, and I cringed involuntarily at the sudden eruption of volume. Frost did the same, and I could tell he was feeling that one across his meta senses. He reached down into a pouch on his belt and extracted a cell phone. I watched him do it, and he flicked his finger across the screen at lightning speed.

  Not as fast as a dark-haired fangirl, though. “Building fire on West 55th between 9th and 10th Aves!” she shouted breathlessly, bouncing to her feet like she was about to light the bat signal on the roof. I watched a few others wilt like she’d just stolen their candy.

  Frost puffed up even more than when I’d asked to speak to him privately. “Sorry, ladies,” he said, and then turned to a small knot of guys. “And gentlemen,” he amended, then he seemed to get caught up for a second, his lips moving, as he scanned over a couple of people in leather jackets that defied easy categorization. “And you,” he seemed to settled on, “honored fans.” I caught a raised eyebrow or two, but Captain Frost was already moving on. He favored me with a wide grin. “You want to go be a hero?”

  “Sure, why not,” I answered before I had a chance to summon up something appropriately sarcastic.

  “Awesome,” Captain Frost said, and he dodged right past me, leaving me slightly flatfooted as he shot out of the Starbucks into Times Square, and I stood there for a moment longer, uneasy not only because of the proximity of his fans, staring at me, but also the thing he’d just said, about being a hero. Shaking it off, I turned and ran out the door, leaving the doubts behind me and shooting off into the sky, following the trail of ice he left behind that led upwards, after the man in the … the …

  Wait. Was he wearing yoga pants?

  18.

  I caught up with Captain Frost about two blocks away. I could have done it sooner, but I didn’t want to go supersonic in Manhattan for various reasons—busting windows is bad, I’d overshoot my target, I wasn’t sure where I was going, overtaking him would really just be me showing off for shits and giggles, I’m cool enough without having to prove it, etc.

  “Dude,” I said, wind whipping my hair as I came alongside him. He had his hands out like Superman, creating an ice bridge that he rode through the streets like Frozone as he dodged between two buildings, “are you seriously wearing yoga pants?”

  Frost looked back at me, his brow a visible line beneath his cowl. Flecks of ice were shooting up at me like I was caught in conversation with a spitter. “Absolutely. They’re designed for comfort and freedom of movement—and Spandex? Not the thing anymore. And armor is way too bulky.”

  Maybe for the first time in my life, I was at a loss for words. Frost took this as a cue to babble on, ignoring my scornful remarks about his attire. “It’s such an honor to meet you. You’re like … the inspiration to us all, you know.”

  That broke me out of my silence. “Well, at least you’re not killing people all willy-nilly like I … uh … have in the past. So that’s good. That you … weren’t inspired by that part.”

  “You’re a hard-hitting hero for modern times,” Frost said over a sudden gust of wind that ripped down the channel of Broadway. “You do what it takes to save the day. If it came down to me needing to put an end to one of my villains like you have, I like to think I could do it, too, but so far I’ve mostly been taking down lame humans who can’t really do much.”

  I raised an eyebrow at him. “A human with a gun can kill you, you know.”

  “Yeah, but I can make an ice shield fast enough to stop bullets,” he said, blowing off my warning. “I don’t worry about it, much.”

  “Might want to give it some thought,” I said, casting a few pearls out to see if he was a swine. “You know, before a bullet plasters your brains on a wall and takes that possibility off the table.”

  Frost stared at me like he was deciphering my mixed metaphor like a code. “Wait, what table?”

  I ignored him and looked at the buildings around us. “Is this really Hell’s Kitchen?” I asked. “Because it doesn’t look anything like it does on Daredevil.”

  Frost’s face evidenced his confusion at my sudden jump in topics. I had that effect on people. “It’s called gentrification,” he said, catching up.

  “There’s the fire,” I said, pointing toward the billowing clouds of smoke a street ahead. I put on my game face and got ready to descend.

  “You can just put it out, right?” he asked, grinning broadly and vibrating slightly from excitement as we started to descend for our landing. “With your powers?”

  “Uhmm … not really.” I looked at the building, which seemed to be an old brownstone, fire coming out of its window in great, leaping flames.

  “What?” His mouth was ajar, and I wanted to shut it for him. “I’ve seen you use your powers on YouTube, and you can control fire—”

  “Yes, I can control it—sort of,” I said, feeling sheepish. “I could draw it toward me to snuff it out, for example. But if I do that, I’m basically going to pull the fire through, uhm … anyone who might be between me and it. So, if there’s anyone trapped in the building …” I waited for him to get it.

  We were almost on the ground before he did. “Oh, they’ll get burned!” His face fell. “To death. Oh. That would be bad.”

  “Yup,” I said, striding up to the front entrance to the building. There were no flames here, but it did not lack for smoke. “I can pull off some of the fire up at the front of the building, though, maybe reduce the size of the blaze. Gavrikov?”

  I am with you, but be careful, Gavrikov said in my head. This is a dangerous situation, even for you. The building could collapse, and if you are not ready and it explodes—

  “Trust me, I know my weaknesses,” I said as I slipped back into the air and held myself between the third and fourth stories, drawing
the fire out of the front windows and into my hands. It was blazing hot and pretty soon I was sweating even as I drew the flames to me and snuffed them in my palms. I considered myself fortunate I was wearing short sleeves, because otherwise I would have singed them for sure.

  I tried to look into the building where I’d just pulled out the fire, but now there was just smoke replacing it. “I’ll go in this way, you go in the ground floor, see if there’s anyone down there you can get out, okay?” I shouted to Captain Frost and heard an “Okay!” in his mellow voice before I squinted my eyes against the billowing smoke and flew slowly in through the window.

  I flew into the darkened world of the burning building, the smell of smoke overwhelming me. I could hear screams somewhere in the distance, and I hoped like hell they weren’t Captain Frost already getting himself in trouble. They probably weren’t. I figured them for the screams of a full-grown man in absolute panic, and Frost was probably half-grown at best.

  I kept my hands in front of me as I walked slowly through the smoke. The heat was intense, way worse than Minnesota summer, a dry sort of burning feeling rolling across me. I felt a flare-up of fire to my right and raised my hand, drawing it to me, squelching it before it could consume the wall where it was smoldering. I ripped all the nearby heat out of that potential fire zone and drew it to me, then waited, feeling for another.

  I could see another hot zone burning a little farther ahead. I wanted to be sure no one was fallen in front of me, because as I'd just explained to the hero who should have been known as Sleazy Snowman, drawing the flames to me with someone in between was pretty much a death sentence for them. I could see the fire crackling, and I bent low, sweeping out with my feet with every step to make sure there wasn’t someone prone on the ground, overwhelmed by the smoke.

  I could hear the creak of the floors protesting at my weight. “Oh, shut up,” I told them, “it was one burger and one shake. I didn’t even have the cheese fries.” They’d looked good, though.

  The screaming started again, followed by a pounding. I cringed; there was definitely more fire in that direction, and doing this slowly was not helping my rescue effort. I sped up, hurrying to the nearby wall that was on fire and quickly drawing out the heat and snuffing it, leaving the wall smoking behind me as I slid forward into the black smoke, feeling for bodies with my feet as I shuffled, bent low to try and avoid asphyxiation.

  The smoke was so thick it was like swimming in a pond at night. My eyes burned from the touch of the thick fumes, tears streaming down my cheeks. Wolfe, I said, can you just … like … heal my eyes as I go?

  I could hear Wolfe grunt in my head. It’s not damage, Sienna. It’s just irritation.

  “Heal my lungs, then,” I said, and I coughed hard, expelling all the toxic air. I suddenly felt a little better, a little less light-headed, and I knew he’d done as I asked. I avoided saying, “Good dog,” out loud, but unfortunately, I thought it, and he growled in reply. But he didn’t stop healing me, thankfully.

  The thumping was growing fainter, less persistent as I made my way down the hallway. I could see more flames ahead, wrapping a staircase, and I was already tired of being in a burning building. This was why I didn’t become a fireman. Woman. Person. Whatever. That, and yellow isn’t in my color wheel.

  I came up to the open stairway and looked down; the wood was burning madly. “Shit,” I whispered, and hurriedly drew the fire to me.

  It got very dark after I extinguished the fire around me, no windows to shed light through the smoke, and I cursed softly under my breath before coughing heartily again. I heard a knock again, to my right, and I plunged into the darkness in that direction.

  I found a door between me and the noise, and thumped it a few times with my palm. “Anyone in there?” I asked. I tried the handle and found it locked, like anyone sensible would keep their doors in New York City. I broke the lock with a hard twist and pushed against it. It resisted me, like there was something blocking the door.

  “Ah, hell,” I muttered, shoving gently into the apartment. I got the door open wide enough to figure out there was definitely something trapped behind it. I slid down, my body stuck partway in (I didn’t want to shove it with all my strength, cuz that would kill whoever was lying there), and felt down to the floor to see what was blocking me from opening it.

  There was definitely a body there, but it wasn’t human. I felt short fur, like someone had gotten a buzz cut, and when my fingers found a soft belly, I heard the unmistakable whimper of a dog. “You poor thing,” I said, and hurriedly slid the pup around so I could open the door all the way.

  I put the dog on my shoulder and felt steady breathing. I crouched low; I might be able to constantly heal my lungs against the assault of chemicals and smoke from a building burning up around me but that was what made me a special snowflake. I needed to find an exit and get the dog out, or at least search the apartment quickly so that I could be sure that only the dog needed to be evacuated from this floor.

  This was hard. Maybe this was the reason I wasn’t a fireperson.

  “Hello?” I called into the smoke-filled apartment. Smoke-filled, but not fire-filled. Did that mean the person I’d heard knocking was the dog? No, there’d been screams, manly-ish screams. Maybe the person I’d heard screaming was in here, maybe they weren’t. I lit my free hand as a torch and stumbled through the apartment, which was roughly the same dimensions as a refrigerator box, looking for anyone else to save.

  19.

  Jamie

  Jamie made it to the burning building as the fire trucks were pulling up, their sirens wailing in the night, their lights casting red flashes on the buildings opposite, down the alleys that weren’t already illuminated by the fire light. She came in on a hard channel from the top of Freedom Tower, racing at well past terminal velocity. She dropped it in the last hundred feet or so before she reached 55th, sending a channel to the ground to reverse gravity and hold her there, over the street, as she tried to figure out what needed to be done first.

  The front fires were already extinguished, smoke pouring out the windows. The roof, however, was in flames, fire licking out into the night, the brick at the top floor already cracking and crumbling, threatening to fall onto the street below. From this distance, the building reminded her of a doll house in a way, and—

  She blinked.

  It did look like a doll house.

  And that gave her an idea.

  “Never done this before,” Jamie muttered as she pushed herself up above the burning building, into the cloud of smoke. She ignored the urge to cough at first, then adjusted herself so that she was on the edge of it, just outside its billowing reach. She set up twelve channels, small ones, on the buildings around the flaming one, reversing the gravity so that she sat atop a pyramid of wells, balancing her above the buildings with considerably more strength than just one channel alone would.

  “This will be dicey. And fun,” she told herself. “But mostly dicey.” She took a deep breath and then pushed a hand toward the nearest corner of the building.

  It took her a few minutes to set up the channels the way she thought it would require. She’d only had the powers for a few months, but she’d practiced in that time, trying to learn everything she could about how they worked. Her gravity channels were only as strong as whatever they were anchored to; in this case they were anchored to her, and she was anchored to the nearby buildings.

  “Here’s to the sturdiness of the modern building code,” she murmured. A second after she set her plan in motion, she realized that a lot of these buildings probably hadn’t been built to modern codes, but it was a little too late.

  Jamie reversed the flow of gravity on all the channels she’d just tethered to the burning building, reeling them toward her. She could hear brick and wood straining and breaking, and watched carefully as pieces started to fall off toward the street below. She threw wide, weak gravity channels down over the street like nets, and watched as brick and wood was caught in
them, suspended in place over the streets.

  Jamie turned up the power of the channels below, closing her eyes as she balanced many more channels than she’d ever dealt with simultaneously and with more power than she’d ever put out at one time. The top floor of the burning building broke apart in eight pieces, and she slipped a hard edge of gravity like a blade below them to its connection to the rest of the building. That was new, too, though she’d experimented with a gravity blade a few times at the place she’d used as her training ground on Staten Island.

  She pulled the top floor of the building off as neatly as if she’d taken apart a doll house. The flames were visible within, burning in the walls and halls and apartments. There were four or five bright, blazing spots, and she could see them through the smoke.

  “And now for something completely different,” she muttered to herself.

  She set up channels directly to the spots where the fire was burning brightly, circling about a ten foot square; it was plain to her from this distance that the top floor wasn’t fully engulfed yet, that the fire on the fourth was just starting to burn through in these spots, and maybe, just maybe, she could contain it here if—

  “Oh, damn,” she said, as she caught the first signs of motion in the labyrinth of exposed rooms beneath.

  She could see a family, three or four people, one with a cat in their arms, waving from one of the apartments that was yet untouched by the blaze. She reached out and caught them all in a gravity channel, lifting them up, then tethering them to a building down the street. Gently, she slid them down, their screams of terror at being picked up in the air like children crackling through the city night over the sirens wail. She let them drop the last few feet to a gentle, wafting landing.

  Jamie was sweating furiously, and it was getting harder to concentrate. She felt like she had a hundred different irons in the fire, like she was multitasked to the maximum and had almost no concentration left to give. She caught sight of a body in a hall and lifted it, dragged it up, then brought it down on 55th behind a parked ambulance. She saw the paramedics rush toward the fallen form, casting their gaze skyward to her as they did.