“Stay here.”
I teleported west of the hotel, but I didn’t see anything that stood out as I looked for Kara. It was pretty clear she’d been taken, and the guy had gotten away clean.
“We need Jace at the hotel, maybe he can find her.”
I popped back into the room.
“It looks like he took her, Jace should be here in a minute. Aura will get Harmony to bounce teleport him here.”
It might’ve been faster for me to get him, since I didn’t have to wait between teleports, but I wasn’t going to leave my team and Sarita for a second. I didn’t want to make any assumptions, and a minute was fast enough.
Sarita asked, “Why Kara? He’s after me.”
Ella said, “It takes one of your guardians away, and it will split our efforts. Most likely he’d have a lot harder of a time taking out flesh and blood supers, rather than technology. You were too well protected to grab, so he’s coming at us sideways to throw us off our game. Aura, are you detecting any other technology, could he be watching us?”
Aura said, “My scans aren’t detecting other bugs or drones, but given how easily he just shut me down I can’t rule it out. Our stalker seems to be extremely adept at counter-intelligence.”
Jace appeared in the room, which made all of us flinch.
Without the outlet of expected violence, my body felt like it might explode, and it was no longer just my hands that were shaking with the adrenaline overload.
“Thanks for coming,” I walked into the bathroom and grabbed Kara’s brush off the sink, then tossed it to Jace as I came back out. The hair in it should help him focus on her and figure out where she might be. Blood would be a better focus, and it got better results from a super with cognition abilities, but we didn’t have any of that.
Sarita looked like she was on the edge of panic. It was more than clear Kara Simkins was more than a security guard or casual friend, they were close.
I tried to imagine what it would be like if Lia had been taken, and it just made me angrier. This guy was a psycho, and he made us look like idiots. I had no idea what to try if Jace’s power refused to serve up an answer.
Pre and post cog supers didn’t have a simple or reliable power. Sure, he’d pick up something, but it might be her death a week from now, there was no way to make the power give up her current location in that exact moment. I just had to hope it would.
Of course, if it did, that meant she was going through something hellish and life changing in that moment, which was a two-edged sword if there ever was one.
Jace frowned, “She’s in the sky.”
Lia asked, “What?”
Jace shook his head, “She’s in the sky, flying at speed, but I can’t see the object she’s inside. Maybe it’s a stealth vehicle of some kind? I can see where she is, but what she’s inside is invisible. She’s about five miles west of the city, but even if you go to the exact spot you won’t be able to see her, and they’re moving at just below Mach speed.”
Yeah, definitely a mad scientist. And at that speed he’d be out of range before I could even start to look around for the ship.
“Where is he right now and how high?”
I walked over and grabbed Lia, and when he gave me a town, I took off west. I teleport hopped as fast as I could. I went about thirty miles past that spot, and then hovered at thousand feet and formed a telekinetic net on his heading.
Honestly, it was kind of desperate, and chances were that I’d miss him even with a net six tenths of a mile in circumference with me at the center, but if his invisible ship hits the net then I could grab onto it with my mind. I also had to think his invisible ship had scanners that would easily pick up such a large telekinetic field.
If he was paying attention, and he might not be, if we were lucky. I had the feeling his attention was on Kara, and not in a good way. Otherwise, Jace wouldn’t have found her so easily, and in the present. She had to be in serious danger.
The gamble paid off.
Something very big hit my net, far too big for me to stop, but that didn’t stop me from grabbing on with my mind. I weighed a lot less than ten thousand pounds, so I managed to hold on as I was jerked away from my position. It felt like my mind had been stabbed, when I was accelerated to just below Mach speed almost instantly.
Lia caught up quickly, being that was less than half her potential speed.
I pulled on the ship, which had the practical result of me pulling myself toward the ship instead of the other way around, whatever worked.
I slapped it, and I gave Lia a significant look.
She grinned, and flew straight up, and then dropped into a dive setting off a sonic boom, and she aimed herself just ahead of me. She slammed into the hull, which tore open a huge hole and imparted a serious amount of downward momentum.
A quick glance in the hole, and I teleported inside.
It looked like a kitchen, which was a bit jarring. There was even a window right next to the big hole in the hull. This guy had flying invisible ship, that was outfitted like a house. No wonder he was off the radar, it was a mobile mad-scientist lair. And apparently, he had a thing for pop stars.
Lia said, “I feel funny.”
I frowned, and reached out with my telekinesis, or I tried to. Nothing.
“Shit, the ship has a power suppression field,” I got another bad feeling, “Aura?”
No answer, of course his ship would be protected from any electronics that weren’t his own. On the good side, my boyfriend would have a new toy and technology to investigate after we took this asshole down.
The door to the kitchen opened before we could plan how to proceed, and we saw what had to be a security bot. I dove to the side behind the island counter, barely a split second before a one-inch diameter laser fired and cut the microwave in half. Better the microwave, than my body.
Lia said from cover, “This isn’t good.”
I replied with a startled laugh, “Ya think?”
The laser fired again, through the island, and I managed to roll out of it before it burned through my suit. It burned the hell out of my shoulder, one inch to the right I’d have had a hole in my head.
Really not good.
I rolled again, timing it perfectly for the apparent three second fire cycle, then jumped to my feet as the laser cut through where I’d just been. My heart felt like it might pound out of my chest, as I grabbed the bottle of mustard and fired it at the bot by squeezing hard, sending out an arcing wave of mustard.
Yeah, desperate just didn’t even cover that action, but I managed to cover the bot’s eyes before I had to dive behind the counter again and roll.
After the next shot, Lia jumped up on the counter and then pulled herself out of the hole in the hull. What I hadn’t seen until a moment later was that she’d been carrying a butcher’s knife. A moment later the butcher’s knife came screaming back through the hole, with the full strength of a super that could bench fifteen thousand pounds. It whistled through the air and slammed into the bot, absolutely destroying the thing.
“That was a much better plan than the mustard!”
Lia stuck her head in the hole and snickered.
I warily left cover, and I approached the door. The corridor outside was at least fifty yards long, and there were several more doors along it. The place was huge, and I was fairly sure there was more than one deck. We were in the back of the ship, and I had no idea where our quarry was. I turned back. I felt so fragile in that moment, with no powers, but the powers were the least part of being a superheroine. Still, I’d feel better if I had them.
“Lia, can you rip out the engines, or something?”
A male voice said, “That would be inadvisable. Besides, the ship doesn’t have engines, it uses gravity projectors. I’m afraid I missed your entrance, I was… occupied, but you’re now at my mercy, and I don’t have any. Sarita belongs to me, I can’t have you getting in the way.”
Several parts of the floor in the hallway opened
up, and more bots with lasers rose up into the hallway. If I’d had my powers, it’d be simple to smash them, but I didn’t.
The whole ship jumped up and shook, then again, and again. I wasn’t sure what Lia was doing out there, perhaps looking for engineering. One thing was for sure, I was outgunned. I didn’t want to leave without Kara, but I had no choice but to run back into the kitchen, hop on the counter, and pull myself up and out.
My powers rushed back, and I grabbed onto the outside of the ship. The ship itself was completely smooth to my mind’s grip, which meant the gravity projectors he’d mentioned must’ve been inside the ship, probably in engineering.
Another boom and bounce reminded me Lia was already searching, putting holes in the hull, either for engineering or the room that Kara was in so she could pull her out.
Regardless, I reached inside the ship with my telekinesis, and turned all the bots into crushed cans with the power of my mind. They were no match for a super that had their powers. Then I joined in the search, slowly peeling the hull apart every twenty feet or so to look in and see what was there. It was a few holes later, when whatever made the ship invisible finally failed.
The ship was bigger than I’d initially thought. The fifty-yard-long hallway was just the top level, below that the ship was twice as long, and a lot wider. It was probably filled with tons of labs, and who knew what else.
The mad scientist must’ve been momentarily unsure how to stop us from searching room to room from the outside by making holes, but he eventually figured out a way. The large ship went into a steep angle of ascent, and then shot for orbit.
It wasn’t long at all before it got cold, and the air started to get too thin to breathe. I tried pushing down on the ship to redirect its course, but his gravity tech was too strong for me to fight. I had two choices, get in the ship where there’d be oxygen, and I’d be relatively powerless, or abandon Kara to the monster and hope we could catch him later.
It wasn’t a choice at all. I just hoped that had been all of his bots as I slipped through a hole in the hull into a bedroom. Opening the door to the hallway inside almost blew me back out of the hole, but I managed to pull myself through, and the door shut behind me making it airtight.
I gasped in several breaths, and I wondered just how screwed I was. We’d never had any training scenarios that included being powerless, in a mad scientist’s spaceship, in orbit.
I wondered where Lia was, if she’d got onboard like I had, since all our comms were still dead. The ship’s cloak had failed, but we were in space, and out of reach from any other superheroes reaching us to assist.
I was really starting to dislike this guy.
What next?
Chapter Eight
The bedroom I’d gone through was about halfway up the ship, on the top level. The bots were toast, and so far my host was being quiet. Not sure what else to do, I started to check the rest of the doors on that level. More bedrooms, a lot of those, as well as entertainment rooms, a workout room, bathroom, and dining room was all that I found.
No command center, no engineering, and no Kara or Lia.
It was pretty clear by then that the top fifty-yard-long blister on the top of the ship was like… his living quarters. Which meant I had to go down. The problem was I didn’t see any stairs, either he had an internal teleport system to transverse decks, or the access was a concealed door of some kind. Similar to the small holes in the floor that had raised the bots, but which were no longer there.
I’d also had the idea of cutting through, but the bots were complete scrap, and even if I could get my hands on the laser there was no trigger. It was integrated into the bot and controlled by software.
In essence, the top of the ship had become one giant jail cell for me. I was able to see out, and confirm we were in orbit, so trying to escape the ship on the outside and reenter by holing the hull further down was a non-starter. The vacuum of space would kill me.
Or would it?
I tilted my head in thought, it was an insane idea, but what the hell. I took several deep breaths as I chastised myself and wondered at my sanity, then opened the bedroom door with the hull breach. My body was blown out the hole into space, but when my telekinesis came back, I did several things simultaneously.
One, I grabbed the ship to stop me from tumbling away. Two, I used my telekinesis to form a bubble around me, which captured all the air evacuating from the breach. Instant atmosphere. Three, I used my control on the micro-level to keep the atmospheric bubble I’d created warm. The second or so I was exposed to vacuum was uncomfortable, but not too bad, and my super healing took away that slight discomfort quickly.
I smirked, and sort of wished I’d have thought of this solution earlier, it’d have saved me a lot of time and worry. Who knew what that asshole was doing to Kara again, thinking I was locked up in the top level of his ship?
“Lia?”
There was no answer, none from Aura either, but I’d kind of expected that and it didn’t make me any more worried, though it was far from comforting.
I started to turn his hull into swiss cheese again, checking the rooms from the outside, his ship would be screwed by the time I was done. Each time I breached a room, I used the atmosphere that blew out to refresh the air in my bubble, so CO2 wouldn’t become a problem.
Storage spaces, lab spaces, empty rooms, fabrication rooms, and all sorts of other things, but no control rooms or engineering spaces for the actual ship. It occurred to me the control room and engineering just might be in the center of the ship, and not on the outsides at all. It would be the safest and most secure part of the ship.
I bit my lip in thought, and I decided to be thorough. There were two more levels, the ship a hundred yards long, so it took me some time to rip through the hull in every outer room. I bet I was really pissing off our host. On the good side, it was also clear by then that he didn’t have any external weapons on the ship. He’d obviously focused on counter-intelligence and stealth technologies to keep him safe. There’d been internal weapons, but maybe I’d already destroyed them all?
I was about halfway through, when I ripped the hull open, and the air and a familiar raven-haired blur was sucked into my growing air supply.
Lia gasped, “Holy crap, I thought I was dead when the hull opened up.”
I gigged, “Good to see you.”
She shook her head, “I thoroughly checked the bottom level, she’s not there, and neither is he. It’s a circle of the outer hull on the two lower levels as far as I can tell.”
I nodded, “She wasn’t in the upper level either, so let’s check the rest of the mid-level, before we crack open the center like an egg.”
She said, “That’ll be a trick.”
I shook my head, “Not really, the ship isn’t a half mile wide or long, so I can reach the whole ship from outside, with telekinesis. As long as we’re not inside, our powers work. I’ll just keep ripping through bulkheads until we get to the middle.”
She frowned, “What if it kills her, if she’s in a cell of some kind, and you evacuate the air.”
I bit my lip, “I can hold the air in until we’re sure a room is clear, and if it’s not I can free her and pull her to us. That was a good point though. I’m worried about what our host is doing, he’s been very quiet, and he’s got to be working on a way to stop us.”
Of course, plans were what people made, when life randomly changed directions. His next actions threw our plans right out the window.
The ship dove for the big blue marble below us, and it poured on the speed. As soon as we hit the upper atmosphere my much thicker ball of atmosphere started to heat up fast, and the ship itself turned into a glowing cherry. I just held on with my mind and dragged Lia along with me, and I did my best to keep the air cool by slowing down the molecular vibrations.
Boom!
The entire ship seemed to explode, and a firestorm exploded around us, but I was more worried by all the metal flying around us. My telekine
tic bubble was fairly solid, but we were batted away and the large TK net that had been around the ship was torn into shreds when the metal flying off in every direction broke through it, which felt like being stabbed in the head.
We looked at each other in alarm, both thinking Kara had to be dead, but then I felt a much larger piece of the ship hit my frayed and holed telekinetic net, and it was complete instinct as my mind drew the net in around the large piece and repaired the holes. It was suspiciously shaped similarly to the large ship, instead of a jagged wreck like the rest of the ship, but only fifty feet long, twenty high, and thirty wide.
When we were tugged clear of the fire by that piece, I also noticed it was invisible.
“Here we go again.”
Lia tilted her head, and she gave me a what the hell are you talking about look.
“I’m holding onto a tiny invisible ship, fifty feet long, thirty wide, and twenty high. I bet our host blew the rest of his ship in an attempt to escape, and the center of the big ship was the real ship, which is probably just engineering and the control center. I have to admit it’s clever, if he didn’t run into my TK net, which I was about to drop anyway, we’d have never figured it out.”
I reeled us in, which turned out to be a huge mistake. As soon as we reached the distance where the old hull used to be, we entered the suppression field being transmitted from the little ship. I lost my powers, and the air I was holding dispersed, and we started to drop like a rock. Fortunately, I managed to grab onto the ship again when my powers came back, and we were low enough in the atmosphere to breathe.
I was so done with this crap, and beyond enraged with this asshole. I’d wanted to let my boyfriend have a look at it, but I was so over that idea. I applied ten thousand pounds of sheering force and tore open the back of the ship like an eggshell as we were being towed behind it by my mental grip. The command center must’ve been in the front, because I saw a lot of electronics and devices inside which was probably engineering.
Wraith: Origins of Supers: Book Three Page 6