Brian shook his head, “No. Even if she did, she’s likely to be an empath, since I’m one of the survivors of Dr. Grayson’s virus she’ll inherit from her mother.”
I nodded, “That helps. In most cases it’s someone you know, but with Sheila’s powers that seems unlikely. Unless, has anyone been avoiding you recently?”
Sheila frowned, and shook her head, “I don’t think so, but I know a lot of people, and I don’t see them all every two days. Is all this necessary?”
Lia said, “Perhaps not, it depends on if Jace can get a vision. If he can’t we’ll need to depend on normal investigative procedures to figure it out.”
Jace returned with their bodyguard, and he had a shuttered look of non-emotion on his face, which couldn’t be a good sign.
Jace said, “The kidnappers are a group of supervillains. Three bruisers, a pure energy wielder, and a gravity wielder. I believe they were going to return her, but there was an issue. She apparently triggered under the stress of being held, and she used her new powers to try to escape. She almost made it, but she was overpowered and knocked out.”
Brian scowled, “Why does that matter, why not just let her go since we paid?”
Jace replied, “She can identify them.”
Sheila shook her head, “What can an empath do against that? She almost escaped?”
Jace said, “She’s not an empath. Far as I can figure, she took control of two of the bruisers, if it wasn’t for the gravity guy who can shield from mental attacks, they’d have gotten her out. At a guess, she’s a very strong telepath, not empathic. That’s not unusual, for third generations to have more advanced powers than the parent they inherit from, and those abilities are related.”
Brian said, “Where is she?”
Jace sighed, “I saw the past, I don’t know if they’re in the same place. They were outside the city, in a wilderness cabin, and arguing about what to do about it.”
Crap, he didn’t even know if she was still alive, is what he was saying. That would’ve been hours ago, and even supervillains reluctant to kill might do so to prevent being identified. Most supervillains did their best not to kill, since they weren’t all murderers, but it was hard to imagine they were still arguing about it.
No wonder his facial expressions were so tightly shuttered, and I did my best not to show my own deep doubts the girl was still alive as well, but of course, the storm of emotions that hit me was impossible to hide from Sheila.
Sheila started to cry, which pissed off and scared Brian. Crap.
“Alright, we’ll go now, no time to waste. Aura, have the other team meet us on route, we need better than two on five odds for this.”
Jace said, “I’ll follow in the car. If they did move, then they might’ve left something behind I can read. The fight was brutal, so unless their energy wielder burned it all there could even be blood.”
A flight path appeared on our HUDs, including a rendezvous point to meet up with Gabriel and Ella a mile or so from the destination.
“Close your eyes,” I smirked as I grabbed her arm.
Lia said, “I hate you,” as she closed them.
I teased, “No, you don’t,” and I started to teleport hop us to the northwest.
We beat the other team to the rendezvous point. I wasn’t quite sure how fast a mile and a half a second was, since I hopped a half of a mile every three tenths of a second, but it was far faster than any supers could fly normally. Somewhere around Mach five I think.
Lia opened her eyes, “You think she’s dead?”
I frowned, “Maybe. I imagine we’ll find out soon.”
We didn’t have to wait long. It was maybe a couple of minutes, before Ella and Gabriel caught up with us. I left out most of it, just briefing them on the three bruisers, energy wielder, and gravity supervillain we had to face.
Gabriel said, “I’ll take gravity, Ella energy for energy, you two take down the three bruisers. Whoever gets done first gets to help the others.”
I smirked, “You won’t have to wait for long.”
Ella giggled, “Overconfident?”
“Playing, it won’t be that easy. I’ll also get the girl out, if…” I shook my head, not willing to complete the if she’s still alive part of my sentence.
We flew the last mile together, even as the slowest flyer there it only took about thirty seconds. The house sized cabin looked like a war zone. There were several holes in the roof, and almost the entire southern wall on the left side of the house was missing.
Aura popped up in our vision, “Life scans are negative. They’re not here anymore.”
I took a deep breath, and flew down to the front door, the others behind me as we went in. There’d been a hell of a fight. There were holes in the internal walls as well, black burn marks all over the place from an energy wielder, and broken furniture.
I let out a deep sigh of relief, when I discovered there wasn’t a fourteen-year-old girl’s body in the wrecked cabin. Of course, they could’ve disposed of her somewhere else, or the energy wielder could’ve incinerated it, but the lack of body kept what I felt was a foolish hope alive in my heart.
There was also plenty of blood spatter for Jace to get a read on our quarry. Whether the girl was alive or not, I fully planned to take those supervillains down. Today. I also struggled with my temper, emotions killed in this business, and the superhero life was dangerous enough as it was.
It was also rewarding, on most days. I couldn’t imagine doing anything else, even if I was blazing a slightly different trail the same desire and need to help others drove me, just as it did my mother and grandmother, and all my family and family’s friends. It was what we did.
I knew I wouldn’t be able to save them all, and I hated myself for already putting a young innocent woman on the other side of the equation. Without a body, there was still hope she was alive, but in my heart, I already believed her dead.
“ETA on Jace?”
Aura said, “Twenty-two minutes.”
I nodded, “Let’s take a look around. Aura, see if you can find fingerprints, or get some DNA from the blood.”
Several drones of various sizes decloaked, and Aura started to run active scans in all the rooms.
Twenty minutes seemed like forever, but in that time, Aura managed to identify four of the five suspects through DNA or fingerprints, though not the energy wielder or their victim. Of course, that meant there was zero evidence of wrongdoing outside of a fight between our supervillains, which they could easily explain away with no physical evidence that Cerise was even here. We needed solid proof to connect them to the kidnapping or they’d still get away with it. Visions weren’t valid in court, and without a court order we couldn’t question them with an empath or telepath.
They had to have made a mistake, we just needed to find it.
Chapter Eleven
Jace smiled when he came out of his vision, which was a bit of a surprise, and a good one.
He said, “They’re in the city, and Cerise is alive. The ones arguing to let her live won the argument. They took her to another supervillain, a telepath, that removes memories for a price. That will happen in twenty minutes from now, so we have time. The only question is what do we do now?”
Lia replied, “Take their asses down.”
I giggled, “Ditto, except if we do nothing, Cerise will be home in what, an hour or two? With a week of missing memories? If we attack now then she could be killed, but if we wait it’s likely they’ll get away with it. Without her memories as a witness, there’ll be no case if we don’t catch them in the act.”
Lia blushed.
Jace nodded, “Exactly. Do we risk her life by trying to take them down, or do we let them get away to remove any risk from the client’s daughter?”
Ella asked, “Can we use the money trail? We have them identified now, so can’t we connect them to the five-million-dollar payoff they demanded? If they don’t all have a brand-new account with a million each I’d be sur
prised.”
Jace tilted his head, “It might be enough for a judge to sign off on a warrant, along with the fight at the cabin. Once we put them in front of a government telepath they’ll confess. It might not be enough though.”
Yeah, that was the sticky part. I was doing this to take down supervillains, make the world a safer place. I felt the same calling my mother and grandmother did, I was just going at it in a different way. In the end though, we were a private investigation and protection firm who worked for our clients. Besides that, I wasn’t all that sure putting her at risk was the right decision… except the kidnapping supervillains’ next victims might disagree with me.
Either way, it felt a little wrong, but our main drive was to defend life and take down supervillains second, at the same time all of life entailed some risk. Chances were that they wouldn’t kill her as their first knee-jerk response, and by then I’d have her out of there.
“We have to let the client decide. Chances are I can bounce teleport her out of there in the first second of the takedown, but I couldn’t guarantee it.”
Jace nodded reluctantly, and said, “Aura, connect me to our client,” as he walked outside the cabin.
We all kind of already knew what their answer would be, as we exchanged glances. They wouldn’t risk their kid to take down the supervillains, or they wouldn’t have dealt with them on their own in the first place. I couldn’t really blame them either.
If there was a doubt that they’d get their daughter back, they might, but it was a sure thing. Their daughter would be home in an hour or two, save a week of memories.
Lia sighed, “I guess I didn’t think that through.”
I grinned, “I’m itching to take them down too, and who knows how often they’ve done this. They’re subtle enough to stay under the radar. I wouldn’t mind taking down a telepath that erases memories for other supervillains too.”
Jace came back in and shook his head, “We’ve been removed from the case. They paid double our fees as a bonus.”
“Does anyone think we shouldn’t try anyway? After the girl gets home, I mean. It’s not all about the money for any of us, is it?”
Ella shook her head, “Let’s try for the warrant, if we don’t get it, we’ll have to let it go.”
No one disagreed, at least no one human did.
Aura said, “I’m not sure that will work. I’ve traced the money, but without Brian Daniels witness testimony that it was an extortion payoff, all we have is him paying them the money, which could be for anything. They may keep their mouths shut with their daughter back, out of fear of reprisal.”
I scowled, she was probably right, and trying to force our clients to do the right thing would backfire on us. Ex-clients, since we’d been fired and taken off the case.
“See if you can find anything else that they’re up to, maybe we can get them another way. That might even be better, because it would keep the Daniels safe from reprisal.”
Or, maybe they’d walk away five million richer and there was nothing we could do about it.
Aura nodded, “I’ll look deeper, but on the surface the five of them look like squeaky clean investors. They actually run an investment group, and even if that is a cover it’s making them a lot of money.”
It was disturbing, but the real world wasn’t a comic book, superpowers or not. Sometimes we couldn’t save everyone, and sometimes the bad guys walked away. These weren’t like the supervillains robbing banks and jewelry stores, or taking hostages, which were straight forward takedowns for the city’s superhero team. They were professional, subtle men of intelligence, who just happened to have superpowers. The only reason they were on our radar at all was because a fourteen-year-old girl quickened and threw an unexpected wrench into their well laid plans.
Without that, they’d still be hidden in the shadows, and we wouldn’t even know about them.
I hadn’t given up on it yet though, and I’d give Aura time to work her magic. Almost everything was online nowadays, and I doubted that kidnapping rich kids was the supervillain group’s only illegal enterprise. Now that we had a reason to look, it was only a matter of time, I hoped and believed.
“Let’s head home. It isn’t all bad news. Cerise is alive and she’ll be fine. Even if Aura can’t find anything else actionable right away, we can keep an eye on them, they’ll screw up eventually.”
Despite my words, and my encouraging smile for the team, it felt like a loss despite the joy I felt at the girl being alive after all, and not dead as I’d feared. Fortunately, no one on my team was an empath…
The clear morning sky brightened as the sun rose in the east. The training that morning was a blast, as all three of them ganged up on me, or tried to. Teleport, kick to the back of Luminescent’s head, teleport, TK punch to slam Red Guardian’s body toward the ground, teleport and tap Lia on the shoulder, teleport, and TK blast all three of them.
All of that in less than two seconds, and it went on for quite a while. It took confidence and being quick in thought. Also no hesitation, no standing still, and never stopping as I kept ahead of them all.
Of course, Lia could take me down with a single punch, Ella could kill me with a single blast of her energy, and while Gabriel was incredibly fast and even managed to tag me once or twice, his lightning wasn’t all that effective against me.
The whole point of that training was for me to learn to use teleporting in my fighting style, constantly stick and move and never stop. Of course, we were all holding back. Ella could send out a huge energy wave, while Gabriel’s lighting could be a lot stronger, and of course I could be taking limbs or lives with my TK attacks, but that was a last option in a life and death situation to defend lives before I’d go that far even with supervillains.
It wasn’t about that though, it was about training my focus and speed, making my teleports in fights part of subconscious muscle memory responses. Without having to consciously pick out my destination each time, I’d move as fast as thought by reflex. Eventually.
It was also sharpening theirs, as they never knew how or from where I’d strike next. Although, Ella knew I’d be using TK against her, hitting her physically would be incredibly stupid, her shield would fry me. My TK shield was more than worthless against pure energy, I couldn’t block it like I could deal with lightning, fire, or sonic attacks.
We gathered back in the living room after a shower and breakfast, all of us pumped up with endorphins and caffeine, but no active cases for the moment. Aura was still digging into the supervillains that had gotten away free. We were fairly sure they were using their business to launder the money, but so far we hadn’t figured out how, or what they were doing with it all.
Aura said, “There’s been a development last night, in the early hours this morning actually. I figured it could wait until after training. China invaded Japan. There was surprisingly little collateral damage, but the government was cleaned out, and several bases were destroyed.”
We all exchanged shocked glances at hearing that.
Lia said, “He’s not wasting time.”
Aura nodded, and brought up the television, “I recorded this just over an hour ago.”
It was Dragonfire. He looked to be in his early twenties, but I knew he was older, just like my grandmother looked that deceptively young. He had on a three-piece suit, and was clean shaven, with black hair and dark brown eyes. He was actually quite attractive, and he had a concerned look on his face.
He started talking, and a CNN world news contributor named Catherine Ward started translating.
“Our campaign in Japan was unfortunate if necessary. I speak to the world, to express my regret at that need. Our forebears were wise, when the nuclear disarmament took place, and large-scale dimensional weapons were banned the world over. We the people, are the weapons and our own protection now, as it should be. Large weapons only lead to needless suffering and death of the innocents that all of our governments are sworn to protect.
“Ironica
lly perhaps, it was the Japanese government’s very fear of the actions I took last night, that led to those necessary actions. I have worked long and hard, for many years, to bring peace and equality to my people. There were many obstacles to overcome to unite China once more into the great nation it is, and the world looked on us and judged us for the violence of the last forty years.”
He paused, and took a deep breath, “Our intelligence community picked up chatter that indicated Japan was not being honest with the rest of the world. Upon investigation, we found their government had been building not just small-scale dimensional weapons tech, but large-scale bombs that make the old nuclear weapons look weak, save the lack of radiation. Weapons good for little else but wiping entire city’s off the map, and for killing millions of people.”
He shook his head, “I believe it was in fear of the newly united China that was coming, fear that they would be vulnerable to us, that they took such a proscribed against course to pursue their own protection. I had no choice but to remove that threat, not only to China but to the entire world. Unlike the rumors suggest, I have no ambition for global domination. I merely wish to lead my people into a time of peace and prosperity. There has been enough war and death in my lifetime, it is time to grow and enjoy the fruits of our labor and many sacrifices. Of our hard-won peace.
“But we had no choice. We can’t countenance a government that will go back on their word, and betray a treaty signed in good faith between all countries. They were a clear and present threat to our sovereignty, out of their own misguided fears of us and our greater numbers. The country of Japan no longer exists. The people will be allowed to flourish, and keep their own great and ancient culture, but for now they are under my rule and they will follow the laws.”
He paused again, and said, “My people are currently gathering and destroying those weapons of mass destruction, and I will furnish the proof of my words and the documentation of their destruction to the rest of the world. I believe I need to make it clear, that I have no ambitions past keeping my people safe, and that we have no intentions past that. But, threats to our sovereignty from other countries who betray their own people, their word, and their very laws, will not be tolerated.
Wraith: Origins of Supers: Book Three Page 8