Ultrahuman 01 - Ugly

by Niall Teasdale

  They waited for what seemed like an age, but was probably only fifteen seconds. Then they heard Twilight again. ‘Shit… He says he has eight hostages, which he could have. He says he’ll let them all go if Cygnus will take their place.’

  Penny gave a nod. ‘Okay,’ she said.

  ‘Net! He’ll kill you!’ Svetilo exclaimed.

  ‘He’ll try. Look, we need to get in, we need the hostages out. I can get to him a lot faster, and more safely, if I’m in there with him. I can act as decoy for Twilight to blindside him. This is the only way to go where we avoid more casualties.’

  ‘It is not…’

  ‘She’s right,’ Dannon said, his expression one of annoyance. ‘I don’t like this. Why does he want you of all people? This stinks.’

  ‘Maybe the Tonaldos are paying him,’ Penny suggested. ‘It doesn’t really matter right now. We need to get those people out.’

  ‘You heard what he wants?’ the lieutenant asked as he returned.

  ‘Uh-huh,’ Penny replied. ‘Get your people ready to receive the hostages. I’m going in.’ She looked around at Svetilo. ‘No argument.’

  Svetilo scowled at her. ‘It is supposed to be Russians who are stubborn.’

  ~~~

  Penny floated into the mall at a much slower pace than before. If Thermite had been contracted to kill her, he might just try it as she came in. Then he could keep his hostages, job done, and bargain for his freedom. She was banking on him wanting her close up. He would want to see her burn for one thing, and there was his lousy aim.

  ‘Here’s how we do this.’ She looked up to see the bedraggled psychopath looking down from the balcony, a huge, chrome-plated pistol in his hand. ‘You land over there…’ He waved toward his left with the gun. ‘I got a fire ladder here that these pricks can climb down. When they get to the door, you come to me. You try an’ run, I turn you into smoke.’

  Not replying, Penny slid herself sideways and upward, over the balustrade and down onto the balcony. She figured she was about fifteen yards from Thermite, but she would have to round a corner to get to him. From her current location she could see him and the front door.

  ‘All right,’ Thermite said, his tone pleased. ‘You lot, move it. Get out of here before I change my mind and singe your tails on the way out.’

  Someone, a man, ran to the balustrade with some sort of emergency ladder which was fixed in place and dropped, and then it seemed to take forever for the eight people to climb down. The man who had deployed the ladder was the first down, and then waited at the bottom to steady it for the others. He was the last out and he glanced up at Penny with a thankful, worried expression before turning and running toward the exit.

  As he crossed the threshold, Penny walked around the balcony to the front of UltraStyle. Thermite backed away a few steps as she approached, waving with his gun to indicate that she should go inside. There was little light in there; the fires had taken out the power and the only illumination came down through the roof of the main plaza.

  ‘Why did you ask for me?’ she asked as she approached him.

  ‘You’ve been on the news,’ he replied. ‘The bimbo in the swimsuit. I saw you come in earlier, knew you were here.’

  ‘No other reason? I caught your attention?’

  ‘Something like that. Get inside, bitch.’

  Penny bit back a reply and turned, walking in through the open door. She just had time to register the dozen people kneeling on the floor at the back of the shop before he shot her in the back. She felt the sting of the large projectile landing between her shoulder blades, took a step forward, and then turned, glaring at him.

  ‘You lying bastard!’ she yelled. ‘You’ve got more hostages!’

  ‘Yeah,’ Thermite replied, grinning at her. ‘I lied. Lied about why you’re here too. Someone wants you dead. Don’t know why he wants you dead. Don’t care.’ He pushed his pistol into his pocket and raised his hand. ‘I owe him and this clears the debt.’

  Penny glared at him. The shouting had not really been for his benefit and now she needed to delay him as long as possible. There was no way she was going to get to him in time if she moved now, but she had backup.

  ‘Do you remember Red Bank?’ she asked. ‘Little town in New Jersey. You robbed a bank there.’

  ‘Red Bank… Yeah, I remember the heat, an’ the burning bodies.’

  ‘Two of them were my parents.’

  ‘You should thank me then. You’ll be seeing them again real soon.’

  He straightened his arm, preparing to launch a blast at her. Penny tensed, waiting to feel the heat envelop her. And then the point of a sword emerged from the front of Thermite’s chest. He looked down at it, his arm dropping to his side.

  ‘Not today she isn’t,’ Twilight said from behind him as she yanked her blade free.

  Unsupported, Thermite dropped to his knees and then toppled forward, collapsing onto the thickly carpeted floor. Twilight stepped forward and knelt beside him, pressing her fingers to his neck.

  ‘Is he alive?’ Penny asked, her voice flat.

  ‘There’s a pulse. I can make there not be…’

  Penny’s fists clenched. Her head half-turned, indicating the people behind them. ‘No… No, we aren’t killing him today.’ The look she gave Twilight suggested that the civilians were the only thing stopping her. ‘I’ll get some paramedics and cops up here.’ She started toward the door.

  Twilight got to her feet. ‘Take your time,’ she said in a low voice. ‘Maybe he’ll bleed to death before they get here.’

  Penny paused, looking down at the man who had killed her parents. ‘I doubt it. He’s a cockroach. Cut his head off and he’ll keep going.’ She looked up into Twilight’s brown eyes. ‘Thanks. I owe you for this one.’

  ‘No you don’t,’ Twilight replied. ‘We’re partners, remember? Having each other’s backs is what partners do.’

  Part Four: For Ever

  New Millennium City, MD, 30th October, 2013.

  ‘They say he’s going to live,’ Jacob Dannon said. ‘His injuries were severe, but they got to him in time. He’s being transported back to the Fortress where he’ll be put in the hospital facility there. When he’s recovered, he’s being transferred to the Pit.’

  Penny was not entirely sure whether to be happy Thermite had survived, or angry. She had come to the debriefing at Police HQ partially to support Twilight, though the younger woman seemed to have no need of support. It was also to hear what had happened to the man who had killed her parents.

  ‘I’m not too familiar with the Fortress,’ she said. ‘The Pit?’

  ‘Ultra-secure section,’ Twilight stated. ‘It’s a hundred feet under the main buildings.’

  Dannon nodded. ‘Escapees are generally put there when we get them back. It’s considered a punishment as well as being far harder to break out of.’

  ‘How did Thermite get out?’ Penny asked. ‘He’s not exactly the most powerful Ultra in there…’

  ‘He had help,’ Dannon replied, his expression sour. ‘Doctor Ultimate’s been working on the systems at the Fortress. He found evidence that someone deliberately shut down the Neurotronic field in Thermite’s cell and kept it hidden. Whoever it was also arranged for a couple of other prisoners to escape at the same time. The Freak, Dinah Mite, and a man named Jasper Conrad.’

  ‘Why them?’ Twilight asked, frowning.

  ‘The Freak smashed through the weakened walls. He’s still loose, but we’re tracking him. The Union is forming a squad to take him down. Dinah Mite is a low-end Ultra with the power to detonate explosives with her mind. She got them past the mine field, but we grabbed her not far away. Conrad… He’s still in the wind and we’re not sure why he was broken out. He’s not even an Ultra, he was in the Fortress because he’s broken out of Federal prison before. He likes hunting Ultras.’

  ‘Great. Isn’t the Freak usually held in the Pit?’

  ‘Yes. There was a malfunction in his cell’s Neurotronic f
ield, detected this time. They moved him upstairs temporarily while it was repaired.’

  ‘And that was just what someone wanted them to do,’ Penny suggested. ‘No clues as to who did it?’

  ‘Nothing solid. Thermite let slip one name, but we’ve heard nothing about it. Either of you heard of Ghostfire?’

  Penny and Twilight glanced at each other. Twilight shrugged. ‘Not a name I’ve heard before.’

  ‘No,’ Penny said, ‘me neither. Though…’ She frowned as something tickled at her memory and refused to surface. ‘I feel like I should know it.’

  ‘If you think of anything,’ Dannon said, ‘let me know. As for you, Twilight, the stabbing is being viewed as necessary. The hostages are saying they’d have been incinerated if you hadn’t stopped that bastard. No further action.’

  ‘Never doubted it,’ Penny stated, smiling.

  Outside, the partners were preparing to go their separate ways when Penny remembered something. ‘Oh… I said I’d ask, and I said you’d say no, but it’s worth a shot…’

  Twilight raised an eyebrow. ‘That was saying a lot of nothing.’

  ‘Huh. Svetilo has got me going down to Miami to do a photo shoot for a charity calendar. It’s for… Actually, she didn’t say what charity it was for before we got attacked, but it’s some charity or other. A week in the sun…’

  ‘You seriously see me in a bikini?’

  ‘I think you’d look great in a bikini, but I did say you weren’t likely to say yes.’

  ‘I’m not quite ready to hand my identity over to every drooling teenager who wants it.’

  ‘No… That’s what I figured.’

  The black-clad girl sagged a little. ‘For charity?’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘Tell her… Well, I’d be willing to get some pictures taken in costume. Here, not in Miami.’

  Penny grinned at her. ‘I’ll tell her. Maybe she’ll go for it.’

  ~~~

  ‘You know we’re getting well behind on True Powers,’ June said as she flicked through channels on the TV and Penny got ready to go out.

  ‘I’m not really getting into the new season,’ Penny replied.

  ‘Not enough Sally?’

  ‘Yeah, I think that’s basically it. She drove the show. The other characters are good, but with Sally wandering around trying to find herself…’

  ‘It’s not the same show, no.’

  ‘They’re going to turn her evil by the end of the season.’

  ‘You think? How are you getting that from the few episodes you’ve seen?’ June gave her friend a puzzled look.

  Penny shrugged. ‘I guess it’s Cygnus putting the pieces together somehow. Bet you. Evil by the end of the season.’

  31st October.

  Halloween was not what you would classify as a fun time to be a hero. Every two-bit Ultra with a vaguely scary power was out making a nuisance of themselves. Some of them had come in from other parts of Maryland to scare the folks in the big city. There were normals pretending to be Ultras because that was scarier than normal. Penny was rushing from one scene to the next as fast as she could fly.

  There had been someone dressed as a scarecrow throwing pumpkins which exploded into clouds of pepper gas in Friendship Park. She had flattened him with a punch and he had dropped one of his own bombs on his chest and spent the next twenty minutes coughing his lungs up.

  Then there had been the rather more effective villain with some sort of terror field around him. He was marching down a street further north scaring kids out trick-or-treating. The cops could not get near him, but Penny could if she closed her eyes and blew in at top speed, catching him a blow on the side of his head. The police were happy; Penny thought she was lucky she hadn’t killed him.

  The gang of men in werewolf masks she took considerable pleasure in laying out, but it was while she was doing that that she noticed the two men in suits watching her from a black sedan parked near the spot she was lining up the ‘wolf-men’ beside a couple of uniformed officers.

  They possibly thought they were invisible, hidden in the shadows of their car, but she could see them clearly. One black, one white, both clean-shaven and looking like they were going to a business meeting. They had cameras and some other form of instrument with them, and they were watching every move she made.

  With the idiots in masks taken care of, Penny flew upward, swung around a building, and then dropped back down to land beside Twilight. Her partner’s eyes remained fixed on the car and its occupants.

  ‘You saw me then?’ Twilight said.

  ‘I figured you wanted me to see you. I can see in the dark, but I’m no more perceptive than anyone else.’

  ‘Yeah, okay. But you also spotted them. Any idea who they are?’

  ‘I don’t know, but I think they’re UID.’

  ‘Reasoning?’

  ‘They don’t look like mobsters, and I’m not aware of anyone else who’s likely to be watching me. Suits, cameras, some sort of expensive gadgetry… Smacks of UID.’

  Twilight nodded. ‘Yeah. That’s what I thought. After that trick you did at that fire I wanted to know how you’d arrived at your conclusion. Why are they watching you?’

  ‘Why are they using some sort of scanning gadget to watch me?’

  ‘That I don’t know either,’ Twilight said, ‘but I’ll see if I can find out.’

  4th November.

  Jacob Dannon walked up to the front door of the small house he owned in Friendship, lifted his key to the lock, and stopped. He had no reason to think that anything was wrong, but something felt wrong. Maybe he had seen something, or heard something. Maybe it was just gut instinct, or something imperceptible that was tweaking at his subconscious. Whatever it was, he drew his weapon before turning the key quietly and slipping into the front hall.

  He had made it two steps when a light came on in the lounge. Either the intruder was incredibly stupid, or they wanted him to know where they were. Knowing that he should call for backup immediately, he did not and instead swung into the lounge door, the muzzle of his pistol swinging around in its search for a target.

  ‘Glock twenty-two,’ Twilight said. ‘Nice weapon, though I prefer the twenty myself.’ She was sitting on the chair beneath the standard lamp she had turned on, long legs stretched out in front of her, ankles crossed, and hands clasped in her lap away from the pistol strapped to her right thigh.

  Dannon relaxed, and frowned at her, and set the safety on his own Glock before pushing it back into the holster under his armpit. ‘Are you trying to get yourself shot?’ he asked.

  ‘I’ll assume that was rhetorical. Also odd. I think most people would indignantly ask what I was doing in their home.’

  Dannon walked over to sit down on the sofa under the front window. ‘I assume you’ll get to that. I would like to know how you found me.’

  ‘You’re in the phone book. There aren’t many Jacob Dannons in this area, y’know?’

  ‘Right…’

  Her gaze swept the room. It was not exactly full of furniture: sofa, easy chair, coffee table, a big-screen TV with an entertainment centre under it. There were two pictures on the wall, both family photographs, one of which looked like it had been taken with his parents when he graduated from the Academy. It was clean in the way you got when the occupant was rarely in it.

  ‘Nice place,’ she said. ‘Tidy.’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘All right… Halloween night there were a couple of UID agents tailing Cygnus…?’

  ‘You know I can’t discuss any ongoing investigations…’

  ‘So there is an ongoing investigation?’

  ‘Huh…’ His lips curled into a smile which did not make it as high as his eyes. ‘I can’t discuss that either.’

  ‘Okay. Can you think of any reason why your people would be investigating her?’

  He looked across at her for a second. ‘No, I can’t. We do routine checks on new Ultras now and again. Maybe someone decided to give her t
he once-over given that she’s hit the news recently.’

  Twilight nodded slowly. It made a certain degree of sense, except… ‘They were using some sort of scanner on her. Nothing either of us have seen before.’

  ‘There’s an experimental gadget Ultimate came up with. It’s supposed to give us a more objective magnitude rating, but it hasn’t been cleared for full deployment yet. It could have been someone field testing one of those.’

  ‘An Ultra Detector? Something like the thing they put in the Night Lance?’

  ‘More quantitative, but yes.’

  She pulled her legs in and sat up straight, peering across at him intently. ‘That kind of thing could make some people pretty uncomfortable. You know the Tonaldos have got their hands on a Night Lance?’

  He frowned. ‘I didn’t.’

  She smiled. ‘Time to go hunting,’ she said, rising to her feet and stretching, her arms up over her head, chest pushed out. When she relaxed she was pleased to see his Adam’s apple bobbing. ‘I’ll see myself out.’ Then she walked out of the lounge and turned toward the front door.

  There was no sound of it opening or closing, and he got up after a second to follow her. She was gone; there was no sign of her in the hall or on the street outside. It was only then that it occurred to him to ask how she had got in in the first place.

  5th November.

  After the clamour of Halloween the city had returned to normal fairly quickly. Penny was distinctly happy about that. There were no werewolves or pumpkin-throwing madmen in the park. She scanned the footpaths, intently looking for muggers and finding none, and then gained height before heading north.

  Back in history, the fifth of November had been known as Pope Day, and Guy Fawkes Night, and Bonfire Night. It was not really something that was celebrated anymore, not in a couple of centuries, in the US anyway. At first, when Penny spotted the plume to the north of her, she thought someone had decided to launch a rocket anyway. Then the flare of light turned, swinging toward her, and she realised what she was seeing.