From down the street, Torben was still laughing.
“Who is that guy?” Tina asked.
Charlotte was moaning. She tried to get up. Tina shot her a warning finger. Then she noticed the glove on Brendan’s hand and visibly relaxed.
“He’s from an Earth further upstream,” Brendan said, “one even beyond the one on the other side of the gate in the nurse’s pool.”
“So if our Earth is zero, he’s like Earth plus three? Why did she send him here?”
“She didn’t. I did. It was an accident. We were fighting.”
“And did you take all of her toys away?” Tina asked. “We’ll have to shake her down for rings and anything else.”
The cop next to them was reporting the officer down and calling for help on his radio. He then looked at Brendan. “You kids need to get out of here.”
“Officer, I can’t tell you your job, but that guy is dangerous.” Brendan only realized how stupid his words were once they were out.
“Pretty sure we’re all on the same page,” Tina said. She looked down the cul-de-sac. “He’s still taking cover. Your new friend doesn’t seem to want to make himself an easy target. Maybe he’s not bulletproof.”
Brendan looked for himself. Torben was out of sight behind the flipped cop car. Had he been struck by any of the bullets? Or had the police just missed? Whatever the case, Torben was alive and well. The smoke from the house thickened. Behind him, the paramedics and firefighters had the injured cop on a collapsed gurney.
A barrage of gunfire erupted from Torben’s direction, causing everyone to drop. Torben held the red-haired cop’s weapon.
“What the hell,” Tina said. “I thought he just threw things.”
“He’s leaving,” Charlotte said, pointing.
Torben was on top of a car’s roof. He then sprang up across a front yard and landed on a house.
Tina climbed the closest car. When Brendan tried to grab her wrist she twisted away. “I’m going after him.”
“We need to work together,” Brendan said. “He’s too strong.”
“I’m strong here too. It’s like having real powers.”
“And he’s from at least three worlds up from ours.”
Tina reluctantly got back down. They watched Torben jump away as if he could ignore gravity’s hold entirely.
“He’s on the move!” the cop yelled into his radio. “He jumped, heading west. It’s like he can fly!”
The cop was standing and pointing in the direction Torben had been heading. The other cop just stared in disbelief. Even if this Earth had a supers craze like Brendan’s own Earth, nothing could equip these men for what they were seeing with their own eyes. This was the stuff of movie special effects and comic books.
“Hey!” Tina said. Charlotte was opening her pack. Tina snatched it and began sifting through the contents. Charlotte tried to take it back but Tina shoved her away. With her palms up, Charlotte backed off. Tina produced one of the last two drones. She showed it to Brendan and was about to smash it to the ground when Brendan stopped her.
“We can use it,” he said.
Charlotte was watching Tina carefully. Brendan knew that Charlotte no doubt had greater strength than Tina and was showing restraint.
“May I?” Brendan asked. Both girls nodded. He pulled out her tablet. This one had a lock screen. “A little help?”
“201033,” Charlotte said.
The drone interface was identical to the one he’d used before. He got out the second drone and set them both on the hood of the car. They came to life, but their battery indicator bars were red. Fourteen percent. He had one fly up and got himself oriented. Then he sent it in the direction Torben had jumped. There were two similar dead-end streets running parallel to the one they were on. Then a wider boulevard turned away from the center of town. Torben was in the middle of the street, a motorcycle rider and his bike sprawled before him. Torben tilted up the bike and straddled it. He then looked straight up at the drone. He produced the pistol from his waist and fired. Brendan flinched, but Torben missed, and the pistol’s slide remained open. Out of bullets. Torben shot the drone a middle finger.
“Real sneaky,” Tina said as she hovered over Brendan’s shoulder.
Brendan ignored her. “Charlotte, can you think of a way to get the glove hooked up to the drone so we can activate it and send Torben back home?”
Brendan slid the glove off and tried to hand it over.
Tina stiffened. “You’re not touching that glove.”
“We need her help. She’s not going to do anything to us. It’s Torben who’s the problem.”
Charlotte nodded. She hadn’t moved to take the glove. “I’m sorry for what I did, Tina. It was an emergency. Now it’s gotten worse. I’m dealing with this the only way I know how. Sending you away was a mistake; I know that now. But I can’t let anyone stop me from trying to close this all down. Torben will be the first, but there are others.”
“What do you mean others?”
“Just like him. Stronger.”
“He’s on the move,” Brendan said. They both looked over his shoulder at the tablet. He had the drone footage up and they watched as Torben rode his stolen motorbike down the streets of Dutchman Springs. The wind blew his hair behind him. His face wore an expression of pure joy as he weaved down the two-lane street, accelerating past the few cars he encountered.
“Can you keep up?” Tina asked.
“No problem. I set the drone to follow. The only issue will be battery life and range. We need a car.”
“I’m on it.”
Tina headed down to the corner past the emergency vehicles. Charlotte took the glove from Brendan. “I never finished that feature of the glove. I have a second design I was considering trying that could send people back where they belong. Building it or changing this glove will take quite a bit of time, and that’s if it even works.”
“How much time?”
“Hours…days, and all depending on if I can get a lab with tools.”
He set the tablet down. “What are you not telling me?”
“Right now this can send anyone to this Earth. I can also open a gate between your Earth and this one, and that’s all it can do for now. With some work I could also try to set it so it rips open a door to another world I’ve never accessed before, but I won’t risk that.” She considered the glove before putting it away in her pack. “But Brendan, even sending Torben back where he was isn’t the right answer.”
“Why not?”
“Their world has suffered too much. And because he may know how to get to your world. It won’t be enough to return him if he can find the gate in the pool. I didn’t make that gate. It’s fixed there and doesn’t appear to be going away any time soon.”
“You think we need to kill him.”
“I don’t think that. I know.”
A car down the street began frantically honking. Brendan picked up the remaining drone and jogged in that direction.
The back of an ambulance was open. He got a good look at the red-haired cop who had been thrown the length of the street. His head and neck were fixed to the gurney with a shock collar. Red soaked through the blanket of gauze set around his face. As long as Torben was on the loose, more people would be hurt and killed.
Charlotte followed him as he ran to Tina, who was standing in the open driver’s-side door of a small electric car. A man stood in the street nearby, apparently the car’s owner. He took a step towards her and she raised a fist in his direction. He gestured helplessly, but no one was paying any attention. Some of the bystanders were looking at the emergency personnel and the rising smoke. Others were pointing up where Torben had last been seen as if the warlord would reappear at any moment.
“We’ll bring it back,” Tina told the man.
Brendan noticed a large dent in the car’s hood as he climbed into the backseat. The space behind the driver was no more than an afterthought in this model of sub-sub-subcompact. Charlotte pulled
the door closed as she got in on the passenger side. Tina gave her a sour look.
“Get in and drive,” Brendan said.
Tina drove as fast as the little car could go. Brendan kept an eye on the tablet screen with a sinking feeling that Torben’s motorcycle would outpace them in minutes. The drone kept up easily enough, though, as the warlord made his way around the boulevard that circled the academy.
“Where is he?” Tina asked.
“He’s just driving around the school. It’s like he’s looking for something.”
“Or leading us along. Good. I want another crack at him.”
“That’s probably not a good idea,” Charlotte said. “He’s killed plenty of people. Your increased strength here is relative to his big boost coming from his world. Plus now he has a gun. He might have more bullets.”
“How do you know I’m not bulletproof?”
“Because he’s not. The warlords can be hurt and killed. Tougher than most, but not indestructible.”
Tina honked and swerved around a bicyclist riding in the middle of the street.
“Easy!” Brendan said.
“I have the right of way.”
Torben made a turn, running a red light and causing a pair of joggers to jump into some landscaping.
“He’s heading downtown,” Brendan said. Then it clicked. “It’s like he’s orienting himself. There are so few landmarks that he’d recognize from his last Earth.”
“City hall,” Charlotte said.
Tina took a sharp corner. “Heading there. But what would he want there? Is he going to kill the mayor or something?”
“If he can find city hall, he can find where the village would be.”
Tina gave Charlotte a confused look.
“It’s where he was living back on his world,” Brendan said. “He’s not here to raise hell on his own. He’ll want to find the gate from this end, but that seems unlikely, right? How would he know to look inside a swimming pool?”
“There won’t be one there,” Charlotte said. “That gate is only between your world and his, but he may not know that. Or maybe he does, because obviously they’ve sniffed out gates before. It might only be because the gate closest to his village was underwater that he never found it.”
“Maybe he’s trying to lure you out so he can get you to show him the closest gate,” Brendan said. “If he gains control of the glove, he wins and we’re either stuck or dead.”
“Pull over. He’s stopped.”
Torben was up on the sidewalk in front of city hall. He took the time to pop the bike on its kickstand. Several pedestrians were giving him a wide berth. A security guard approached. Brendan brought the drone in lower and suddenly Torben grabbed at it. Brendan got it away just in time. His screen showed Torben staring up at the drone, and then the warlord seized the guard by his shirt. The guard punched Torben, and Torben cuffed the man with a couple of hard slaps and dropped him.
Sirens wailed.
Torben walked up the steps and turned to face the street. He studied the surrounding buildings and ignored the drone flying above him.
Tina got out of the car.
“Wait,” Brendan said.
She ignored him, jogging along the sidewalk in the direction of city hall. Brendan dropped the tablet and squeezed out of the car, hurrying to catch up. Tina jumped up on top of a parked van, the metal groaning under her weight.
“Jerk face!” she shouted.
Brendan made it to the van and looked around the side. Torben just stood there, appearing distracted. But then he noticed Brendan. He picked up a concrete planter box, the dirt and a patch of tiny cactus spilling out at his feet.
“Look out,” Brendan said and ducked. The planter came sailing in, smashing the top of a sedan parked just behind the van.
“You missed,” Tina called. She jumped down into the street and walked towards the warlord. She was laughing, clearly loving this.
Brendan paced behind her. Torben took one of the brass front doors and pulled it from its hinges. The glass shattered into minuscule pebbles. He began walking down the steps and into the street.
“We need to run,” Brendan said.
“Flank him,” Tina said.
Torben stepped between two parked cars and faced Tina. He feinted a throw. Tina flinched, ready to dive aside. Torben looked amused.
Then he moved. In a smooth spin, he hurled the metal door like a discus thrower, launching it straight at her. She anticipated the attack and tucked and rolled. But Torben kept moving. He had the empty gun in his hand and pitched it straight at her. It struck her in the head. Tina went down to the pavement, blood streaming from her forehead. Brendan ran for her.
“Know your place,” Torben said. “Perhaps you’ll realize this is no game.”
“What do you want?” Brendan shouted.
Torben began speaking, but Brendan wasn’t paying attention. Tina was still breathing but unconscious. He hoped the warlord would keep talking. Maybe the police would come. Maybe some helpful neighbor with a bazooka would poke it out of a window and send Torben to kingdom come. But whatever siren he had heard earlier had cut out. The police were undermanned and underpowered for anything like Torben. If a neighboring city had a SWAT unit, it would take time for them to respond. And neighbors and bazookas were in short supply.
Torben blathered on. Something about the strong dominating the weak. Apparently the weak needed to be subjugated as a part of the natural order of things. Tina would have called Torben’s ideological sermon “monologuing.” He wasn’t even looking at Brendan.
Brendan spotted a sapling planted in the sidewalk with palm-sized stones set around its base. He left Tina where she lay, picked up a rock, and checked its heft. Solid.
He threw one as hard as he could. The stone missed, but Torben stopped talking. Then the warlord took hold of a car and peeled its door off. The metal shrieked. Brendan pitched another rock. This one struck Torben in the head. The large man stumbled, put a hand to his cheek. A murderous scowl crossed his face.
Brendan wound up and threw the next rock. And a fourth. He kept picking up rocks and throwing, rarely missing his mark. Each stone felt as light as a tennis ball and his aim felt unusually accurate. He had never been one for playing sports, but the rocks sailed through the air as if fired from a cannon.
Torben raised the car door as a shield and charged. Brendan jumped and found he got some serious air. He leaped a second time as Torben smashed into the sapling, snapping it in half. The warlord turned and flung the door. Brendan took cover behind a mailbox. The door smashed into the box and Brendan didn’t hesitate. He jumped up on a car just as Torben made it to the box, the warlord’s hands missing him by inches.
“I’ll tear your arms off.”
Brendan didn’t doubt it. He had the warlord’s attention now. He had to keep moving. He rolled into the street. Torben pushed one of the cars out of the way and followed.
There was motion to Brendan’s left and a honk. Brendan dove aside as the small car Tina had hijacked slammed into Torben. While the car was tiny, it still weighed more than Torben, and he was knocked backwards into the air, his arms flailing wildly. He landed hard on the asphalt. The front of the tiny car was smashed in, steam rising from the crumpled hood. Charlotte stepped out.
Torben was woozy. He got up on shaky legs.
“Hit him with everything you’ve got,” Charlotte said. “Don’t hold back.”
Brendan looked for something else to throw, but Dutchman Springs was a tidy town. Charlotte charged and Brendan hurried to follow. She was faster. She clipped Torben low at the knees and sent him down. He tried to grab her, but she tumbled past and moved out of his reach. As he turned, Brendan caught him blindsided in a diving tackle.
“Don’t let him grab you!” Charlotte yelled.
But Brendan was on top of Torben. He began punching, driving his fists down into the man’s wounded midsection. Each blow felt like he was swinging a sledgehammer. The power of it made his
head spin. If Torben felt this same sensation, but even more amplified by the difference between this world and his own, this power would be a drug. Torben grunted with each blow.
Then the warlord laughed.
Lightning fast, he caught one of Brendan’s fists and twisted. Brendan felt something pop in his right arm. He screamed. Torben got up with Brendan trapped in his grip. Brendan twisted around but couldn’t get free. The pain in his lower arm was overwhelming and he cried out again. Torben seemed to be drinking in Brendan’s suffering. But then Charlotte was behind him, hefting a blue real-estate newspaper rack and swinging it in a high arc, striking Torben in the back of the head. Torben flinched but didn’t let Brendan go. Brendan’s feet touched the ground and suddenly he had leverage. He kneed the warlord in the gut. Torben grunted and released him.
“Stay out of his reach,” Charlotte said.
“No kidding.” Brendan held his wrist. The pain pulsed up his arm in waves.
Charlotte swung the newspaper stand and smacked Torben a second time. With the third blow the stand broke apart, sending papers everywhere. Torben was bent double, down on one knee. He looked up at Brendan through his tangled hair and Brendan saw nothing but murder in the man’s eyes. But then Brendan noticed something else. Torben was bleeding. The wound in his midsection was still bandaged, and blood now seeped from a small hole below his left shoulder that must have been a gunshot wound. So he’s really not bulletproof. Tough, but still able to be hurt by the police and their weapons. Torben had to know this, and it explained why he’d been avoiding the cops in an open fight. But the cops weren’t there anymore.
Torben got up. He stood between Brendan and Charlotte.
“When I find your school, I’m going to enjoy the slow deaths of everyone you know.”
Brendan watched Torben carefully. He kept himself between Tina and the warlord, but he was ready to spring out of the way if the man tried to grab him again. Torben quickly turned and charged towards Charlotte. He almost got her and she had to leap out of the way, pushing off Torben’s head with her hand as she vaulted over him. But Torben kept running.
The Supervillain High Boxed Set: Books One - Three of the Supervillain High Series Page 40