Super: Origins

by Palladian

  Serena continued laughing, and Lex tried hard not to join in. “That's good,” Lex said tentatively, “but maybe you could just put the rest on the edge of the lawns or in the alley behind the building?”

  “You spoil all my fun,” Serena said with a fake pout, then smiled again and turned to Roger. “You ready to do the next one?”

  He nodded in reply. “As soon as you are.”

  Lex watched as they completed the next few floors, then waited as Serena rested for a few minutes before catching a ride down to the ground with her. The redhead waved and disappeared as Lex went to collect Casey, Joan, and George.

  Once she found all three of them and had gathered them back near the pole (reluctantly, in George's case), Lex went through the plan she'd hatched for getting it up on the roof.

  “I thought we could start by having all three of you push the pole upright and lean it on the building. Then, Serena can take either George or Casey up to the roof. After that, whoever's on the ground starts pushing the pole up, Joan takes the middle and pushes, and whoever's on the roof starts pulling. When the person on the ground can't reach it anymore, Joan and the person on the roof work together to get the pole all the way up there, and then the person on the roof pulls it in so that the long part of the pole is mostly on the roof. Do you think that might work, or do any of you have other ideas?”

  “Sounds good to me,” Joan said.

  Casey shook her head. “I think that should do it. Whichever position will work fine for me, I'm not picky.”

  George was silent for a few minutes, staring at the ground and frowned when he looked back up. “There must be a better way to do this.”

  He glared at Lex, but Lex smiled in response. “Come on George, you know the ladies are going to need your help.”

  By then, his expression was aiming for a glare, but a lot of his anger seemed to have evaporated. “Well, since you put it that way, just remember that afterwards. I'll be on the roof.”

  “That's fine,” said Lex, nodding as her eyes slid to Casey, who stood nearby with a neutral look on her face. As their glances met, however, the blonde rolled her eyes and Lex forced her laugh to sound like a cough.

  When Serena and Roger appeared about a half-hour later, the passage through the building completed down to the lobby, the operation to raise the pole began. It started off rocky, the pole teetering in the air for a few moments before the three could lower it to rest against the building. After that, Casey, Joan, and George worked together smoothly to raise the pole the rest of the way to the roof.

  Lex turned to Roger while the others worked. “Could you come inside the building with me? There's one more hole I'm going to have to ask you to make.”

  He nodded in response, so they both put breathing gear on and went inside. The firefighters had cleared the lobby of all furniture, so the only things left to see were the wall-to-wall Persian carpet, the massive front desk, and the carved stone figures in each corner of the ceiling. Since it had a high ceiling, a lot of clear air sat near the floor. When Lex heard a call over her communicator some seconds later, she took her breathing mask off to respond.

  “The pole is on the roof,” Joan announced. “What's the next step?”

  “The three of you should raise the pole up again, but start to slide it into the opening in the building when you get some height. Serena, can you get on the roof and help them once the pole is inside? Look at where it is and tell them where they should move it so that it goes straight to the bottom, OK?”

  “Yes, boss,” Serena's voice crackled over the communicator with a hint of laughter.

  “Keep me posted if you run into any problems,” Lex said. Then, she turned to Roger. “We should keep clear for the moment, but what I want you to do once the bottom of the pole is here is to make a hole of about the same diameter. I'm going to ask the folks on the roof to fit it, and then drive it in a bit so that it sticks. I figure we'll probably still have to have someone on the roof to steady it, but if it's solid on this end, that should help out a lot once people start using it. Make sense?”

  Roger nodded after a few quiet minutes, and then asked, “Have you worked for any other team before? With the way you're running this operation, I figure I should have heard of you, but I haven't.”

  “No,” Lex answered, shaking her head. “I just finished my probation on this team not long ago.”

  “Well, let me know if you ever feel like moving to New York,” Roger said, shaking his head. “We could definitely use someone like you there.”

  A crash interrupted their conversation then, the noise coming from somewhere far overhead. The two of them automatically stepped back a little farther from the hole in the ceiling.

  “Hey, Serena,” Lex called over her communicator, “how's it going up there?”

  There was a soft curse in response, and then the redhead spoke. “It's all right…we just got hung up partway down. Up and back a little to your left, Casey,” Serena said a little more loudly.

  Lex and Roger continued waiting another few minutes, both sets of eyes glued to the ceiling. Lex jumped involuntarily several seconds later when the pole appeared, not quite in free-fall but obviously not completely in control. After a moment to let the noise subside once it landed, Lex asked the three on the roof to wait while she measured the pole, estimated about where it should sit in the center, and stepped back so that Roger could do his work. Since the pole was leaning in at an angle, he had no trouble completing the new hole in the floor. Lex had been about to ask Casey, George, and Joan to try to place it when she heard Serena's voice over the communicator.

  “Are you done with the last one?”

  When Lex replied in the affirmative, Serena continued, “Give me a minute. I've got an idea that should help with what we need to do next.”

  Several minutes later, Serena showed up in the lobby with a few bottles of cooking oil. The redhead opened two, handed one to Lex and began pouring her own bottle around the hole Roger had just finished. She shook her head as it sizzled a little because the edge was still hot.

  “You can hit the pole up,” Serena said to Lex with a grin. “Proper lubrication is very important for an operation like this.”

  Lex blushed and turned away as she started doing what Serena had suggested. After a little while, she couldn't help giggling and looked back at Serena. “Good idea,” Lex said.

  The redhead coughed then, because the smoke had started to get thicker in the lobby. “OK, I'm going back up to the roof.”

  “Thanks for the idea,” Lex said, finishing up applying the bottle she had in her hand.

  “All right,” Lex said over the intercom, “Will someone please move the pole again now? Roger finished the final hole down here, so please line it up with that. Serena, be their eyes as much as you can. Once it's in place, we'll let you know, too.”

  After a few minutes of strained sounds, curses, and directions over the communicator, the pole sat in place and had been pushed loosely into the opening.

  Lex continued, “Joan, I don't know if your suit can do anything like this, but if you could, act like a hammer—fly up and then come down with some force on the top of the pole to drive it in and get it to stick. You probably don't want to use all your weight, because we don't want to crack the lobby floor, but some force would be good. George and Casey, could you hold the pole in place for her?”

  After a chorus of agreement, Lex just held her breath as silence flooded the communication channel. A minute later, she heard a thunk and a grinding noise as Joan drove the pole into the floor further, and then more silence.

  “George, Casey, why don't you take your hands away and see if the pole looks like it's in place?”

  “Lex, it looks OK from up here,” Casey responded after a few tense seconds. “I think we should probably have one of us up here to support it, though, once people start sliding down.”

  “All right, then, would you mind taking the first half-hour or so? George, can you spell her aft
er that?”

  Lex heard affirmative answers, so continued. “Serena, I asked the fire fighters to provide someone to help on all of the floors, so can you start bringing them up to the roof? I told them they could call you if they found immobile people on any floor, so can you stand by for that afterwards?”

  “Yes, chief,” Lex heard by her shoulder, jumping as she saw Serena there. A moment later, she, Serena, and Roger stood outside.

  “Sorry,” the redhead said, “but I figured you could use some fresh air by now. Besides, I don't think you want to be in there when people start coming out.”

  Lex nodded as she took off the rest of her breathing gear. “Thanks, Serena. Roger, do you mind sticking around until we get all the people out, just in case we run into problems?”

  He shook his head. “No, I want to see how it all turns out, now. I've never gotten to see the work any other team does, so I'm curious.”

  Lex nodded for a moment, her mind traveling to how weird it felt that the areas they were allowed to work in had been completely shut down; no people that weren't medics or firefighters, no press, no crowds, and only one other team. She frowned as she thought about it, knowing it probably shouldn't be a surprise given what she now knew. Shaking her head to clear it as she felt the headache growing behind her eyes, Lex excused herself to move over to Riss.

  “Hey,” she greeted the other woman. “How's it going?”

  Riss nodded in reply. “From what I can see, it looks like everything is going fine. The people in the building seemed pretty shy about being anywhere near where you were doing the work. I'm glad the fire fighters have started to arrive on the floors, though, because it looked like some of them got restless. I think they can hear some of the stuff that's starting to fall off the outside of the building.”

  Lex grimly looked over at it, noting a few pieces of trim that had fallen in the front yard. “From what you can tell from the apartment records and the tracking system you and Lily set up, about how many people are we talking about evacuating on those dozen floors?”

  Riss shrugged. “Somewhere around 2,000. There are 48 apartments per floor, and a good number of families living in them. Of course, we've also got to figure that some of the people had guests. So, I figure about 2,000.”

  Nodding, Lex called out on her communicator. “Serena, can you ask one of the firefighters about how long it will take to have a person get down that fire pole we set up? I'm trying to figure how long it'll take to clear the building.”

  Lex waited for a moment as she heard someone talking in the background, then Serena spoke. “They say it probably won't take more than a couple of seconds per person. We're going to start soon, by the way. All the firefighters are in place, and they're explaining to the people what they need to do. They want to start from the top down, OK?”

  “The people on the top are probably in the most danger, anyway, so that makes sense. Let me know when it starts, please,” Lex requested.

  “Will do.”

  “I'll be back in a little while to see how it's going,” Lex said to Riss, reaching over to touch her friend's shoulder. “I want to check in with Lily to let them know they'll probably be getting a lot of people coming their way soon.”

  The other woman nodded and turned back to her computer screens as Lex took a detour to get some bottled water and take some over-the-counter medication against her now pounding headache. She took just a moment to breathe, willing the pain to go away, and then headed across the street to where a number of ambulances waited. The people who'd come out of the first two floors had already been taken to hospitals as needed, and now the emergency personnel waited for the next wave. Lex asked a few of the medics milling around and finally found Lily sitting on the back of a half-open ambulance, drinking an energy drink.

  Lex waved to Lily and said, “I wanted to let you know you'll probably start getting some customers very soon, probably in the next ten minutes or so.”

  Lily nodded. “I heard you doing some crazy things over there. What was all of the crashing around for?”

  “We figured out a way to get everyone out of the building fast, but it did involve partially taking apart the crane next door. Unfortunately, no one could really carry it down from the roof there, so we pretty much had to throw it.” Lex winced as she finished, glancing at Lily to gauge her reaction.

  “I guess I can understand. How will you evacuate everyone?” she asked, returning Lex's gaze curiously.

  “Well, we cut holes through each floor down to the lobby and stuck the pole from the crane in like a fire pole. Everyone's going to slide down and run out of the building. They should be starting soon.”

  Lex could see Lily's eyes widen for a moment before she took another sip of her drink. “Good thinking. It shouldn't take too long to get everyone out, then.”

  “Hopefully,” Lex replied with a shrug. “Serena can take care of evacuating anyone who's wounded.”

  “Good,” Lily said with another nod. “We've been hoping for something to happen. We were starting to get worried that no one else was going to make it out.”

  Lily nodded as Lex turned to go, and she made her way back to Riss' side to sit on the blanket with her friend after getting a little food and water for the two of them to share. To Lex's dismay, she felt her headache getting worse, and took another couple painkillers. She knew there was no way she could take some of the prescription medication she'd been given while out on a job, because it made her feel stupid or so tired that she had to sleep. Trying to distract herself, she smiled as she watched the first streams of people come out the front door.

  The first half-hour passed quickly, and then Casey sat with the two of them, smelling of smoke and eating a snack. Lex could feel her friend looking at her out of the corner of her eye, and after a minute, Lex turned directly to look at Casey and smiled confidently, nodding slightly. Yes, we have a plan. Casey looked relieved then and turned her full attention to her food.

  “So, how was it up there?” Lex asked as Casey finished her snack.

  The other woman shrugged. “Pretty smoky, as I bet you can tell, but the evacuation seemed to be going really well. Serena only had a few people to get out; most of them seemed fine to make it down the pole. By the time George showed up, they seemed to be between a third and halfway cleared out.”

  Lex nodded, calculating in her head. She'd planned to make a move when only a few people were left inside, so that their absence would be unlikely to be noticed immediately and so they could carry out their plan by the time everyone escaped. Calling over the communicator, Lex asked that Serena call in and report the floor she was helping on as she moved downwards. Lex looked up at the other two women watching her.

  “Good,” Lex said, “looks like things are moving along. Not long now, and everything will be good.”

  The other two nodded at her words, suddenly looking ready in a way they hadn't all day.

  When Serena called in and said that they were working on the third floor, Lex looked at Riss and then at Casey and nodded. After that, she pointed to the camera scene on Riss' laptop.

  “What was that? Did that look like someone to you?”

  Riss smiled wickedly. “It looks like someone might be in the basement. Do you think we should check it out?”

  “Definitely,” Casey replied with a wide smile. “I think the three of us should go since everyone else is busy.”

  Riss put on a smaller backpack that she pulled from her larger one and locked all the laptops spread on the blanket. Casey stood, almost vibrating with readiness. Lex called over the communicator.

  “Clara, Riss and I thought we spotted someone trapped in the basement. Since everyone else is busy, we thought we'd go down there with Casey and check it out.”

  “Why does Riss need to go?”

  Lex sighed. “She's going to bring one of her computers down and help us track the person using the security cameras. We'll need her help to find them.”

  “All right, but don'
t take long. I overheard the engineers talking a little while ago and they said the building is really starting to go, so if you can't find anyone in a few minutes, get out.”

  “OK, we will, don't worry,” Lex said, trying to keep a little twinge of guilt at bay.

  The three of them picked up breathing gear and made their way in through the front entrance, explaining the plan to the fire fighters there and getting warnings in response to get back out as soon as they could. They hurried down the stairs into the large basement area.

  Lex pointed to a corner with a video camera as they got there, and Riss nodded, closed her eyes for a moment, and then the two of them looked at the image from the camera on the laptop Lex had given Riss, which now showed just static. Riss pointed all around the basement to let Lex and Casey know that she'd knocked out all the cameras, and the three of them moved quickly to the grate they'd seen on the camera image earlier.

  Riss and Lex stood behind a support pillar as Casey grabbed then yanked the grate up, bolts popping in all directions. The three then made their way down a rickety metal ladder to the rain sewer, which seemed a far distance below. As their feet hit the catwalk, they all took out glow sticks and lit them, then watched as Riss brought up a sewer schematic on her computer. She hit a key and they all watched as a path lit up that would bring them near to Union Station. The three of them studied it for a moment to memorize it. Shortly, they straightened up and waited as Riss began unpacking clothing from her backpack and handing it out.

  As soon as it had all been distributed, Riss quickly changed out of her jumpsuit and boots and stuffed them into the backpack. Lex had gotten about halfway through and Casey had unzipped her jumpsuit when they heard a voice booming above the crackling roar of the fire far overhead.

  “Who would have thought of looking for you down here?”

  Lex froze as she recognized George, but watched as Casey's head turned slightly towards her and Riss, making a sharp movement with her head to keep them back.

  “Everyone else was worried that you were trapped in the basement since we'd lost track of you,” George began. He continued to talk as Casey walked up to him, her jumpsuit still unzipped down to her navel, which caught his attention.