“Madi, come in?”
I pulled the radio off my belt and held it to my mouth. “Go ahead.”
“I found the truck. It’s a delivery vehicle parked in sub garage three.”
“Are you sure?” I asked, stopping my progress for a second to focus on the conversation.
“Positive. I tapped into the driver’s cell just as he was leaving. And Madi, the minimum safe distance is five-hundred feet… we don’t have a lot of time.”
“Understood. You did good. Try and make your way out of here, Krisan, you won’t be any more use to me here. Find your Army friends and let them know.”
“What about you?” she asked.
I turned the radio off. I wasn’t leaving. There was no way I was going to let that bomb go off. Either I disarmed it, or I went with it.
“I don’t like your course of action. We can’t die—not yet,” Sara said from behind me.
“Spice,” I replied without looking at her. “I need you to trust me the way I trust you. I don’t have a death wish any more than you do.”
When she didn’t reply I assumed she’d pulled her vanishing trick. “Bingo,” I said to myself. Sub garage three was directly under the center of the dome. It was used for delivery of essential equipment.
Great.
“No time like the present.” I took the guard’s weapon; a plastic pistol with a glowing mag. I had never seen anything like it before. I looked for a logo but all I found was the manufacturer stamp. MarsTech Global IPP-12. I had no idea what any of that meant—I’d never heard of the company or the pistol. I stuffed it in my belt and took off running. There was a stairwell not far from here; I could go up one level, run across the hallway there, and back down and into the garage.
Two minutes later I was pounding down the stairs when the building shook. For a second, I was worried the bomb had gone off, but no, it was something else. Then the sound of gunfire reached me. ISO was assaulting the building—probably in hopes of stopping me. With any luck, Sergeant Farrel’s team would arrive soon and help the police deal with the gang bangers. I had other business to attend to.
Running was starting to wear on me as I crashed through the last door to the garage. I stopped and bent over, hand on knees, trying to catch my breath. I love having these powers and I love making the people who killed my family pay… but this was exhausting.
“Madisun Dumas, get down on the floor and put your hands behind your back,” Mach said from thirty feet away.
Oh fantastic.
The sub-garage was almost empty, and not particularly big. Maybe a hundred feet from end to end and thirty feet wide. A series of bay doors lined the right wall where delivery vehicles would back up and offload their supplies. If I recalled correctly, the Dome was also an emergency shelter and back-up national guard armory. This time of night on a Friday they didn’t have any deliveries. Just the one lone tractor trailer, parked along the left wall waiting to be backed up and offloaded.
Except it had two tons of C4 in it.
“Listen. That truck,” I said pointing at the vehicle, “is full of C4 and it’s going to detonate in a little under two—”
“We know,” Mach said. He wasn’t alone. Seraph stepped out from behind him through a portal of light, followed by Burn. She looked like an angel, with her white robes, pale blonde hair, skin and bright blue eyes. Burn was like other elementals I had heard of; living fire. Heat rolled off him in waves as he moved apart from his team. Maybe he didn’t want to hurt them, but more likely he was going to go for the flank.
Oh snap.
I glanced around, looking for Sara, thinking maybe she could help, but she was nowhere to be seen.
I stood up a little taller. “You remembered me?” I asked him.
A couple of his team glanced at him.
“Yes. I’m sorry about your brother, I truly am. But killing us isn’t the answer,” he said.
Wait, kill them? I cocked my head to the side a bit confused. “Mach, I never blamed you for what happened to Charles. It was his own fault. I’m not here to kill anyone, just defuse the bomb.”
I took a step to the left when Bull came out from a far door. He was seven feet tall with a sculpted muscular body. His dark skin was barely distinguishable from the fur on his bullhead. He snorted when he saw me, stomping one hoofed foot on the ground like he was going to charge.
“It’s no use lying to us,” Seraph said. Her eyes glowed with a golden quality as she spoke, light shimmered off her skin and it was hard to look away from her.
“Don’t let her touch you,” Spice said suddenly from right behind me. I glanced over my shoulder and she was hiding behind me.
“Why?” I asked.
“She can hurt me, Madi, bad. Don’t let her,” she said before vanishing.
I looked back at the team and Seraph’s face turned into a mask of shock, then rage. “She’s evil, Mach, possessed by a demon. We have to stop her!” The Angel stepped forward and a shield of light and matching sword appeared in a burst of light.
“Whoa, just stop, I’m not here to hurt any of you. I’m trying to save—”
Bull apparently took his orders from Seraph because before I could finish, he charged right at me.
“Son of a—” I had no time before he hit me with his thick skull.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Bill fired off his M4 at the two men whose backs were to him. It wasn’t hard to tell they weren’t cops; police didn’t use modified submachine guns to spray crowds. The first one went down silently but the second let out a scream and required a second shot.
The street was chaos. He slammed into the wheel of the pickup truck the two men had hid behind. He didn’t know if they were alive or dead; right now it just mattered that they weren’t moving. He dropped the mag from his rifle and slid a new one home.
“Felix. Sitrep?”
“Is bad a good answer?” Sandy asked over the radio.
It was bad. How could Bill have been so blind to an organization that could field a small army in downtown New Orleans? Last year was the first time he’d even heard about ISO-1. Now they were sieging the Saints’ HQ in New Orleans. Sieging!
“I count five-zero-tangos split into multiple groups. Small arms, and some RPGs. Basically, it looks like St. Petersburg last year during the war,” Felix said.
“Geez man, that’s not reassuring at all. Rico almost died there,” Sandy said.
“Cut the chatter,” Bill ordered. Step one, they needed to regroup. The Dome took up four square blocks; the nearby streets ran parallel to each side in an almost perfect square. They were on the Westside, along with the majority of the assailants. A plan formed in his mind; he’d already called the police and with any luck they would respond soon.
‘Luck wasn’t a plan,’ as his old Drill Sergeant used to say.
“Felix, weapons hot. Make sure you’re not shooting the good guys,” he ordered.
“I’m insulted you think I would.”
Bill shrugged off the comeback. “Sandy, run down the street and see what kind of trouble you can stir up. Zim, follow and support.”
“What are you going to do?” Zim asked.
“Something stupid,” he cut off his comms. It was now or never. He jumped up shouldering his rifle as he did so, and moved around the corner of the truck. The street was alive with fire. The staccato gunfire of the gang and something else—some kind of discharging energy weapon punctuated by bright flashes of blue light.
Bill rushed to the twelve-foot concrete wall that surrounded the Dome just past the sidewalk. The wall itself wouldn’t stop a person but the concertina wire on top as well as the electrified bits would. Ducking into a low crouch he ran as fast as he could. There was a side entrance a hundred meters down; if he could get to it, get inside, he might be able to speak to someone in there and find a way to help the Wraith. There were a lot of ifs in that plan.
CHAPTER THIRTY
My problem was that I didn’t want to kill any of these
people. They were the good guys, maybe not from the same side of the tracks as me, but they did good things.
Apparently, they had no such compunction for me. Bull’s charge slammed into me, sending me flying sideways. I felt a rib crack when he hit and another when I smacked the concrete wall hard enough to leave a bloody streak down with my face.
“She doesn’t seem so tough,” he snorted. Not only did he look like a bull, he sounded and acted like one. He was also frigging strong. I wobbled to my feet. Holding myself up with one hand against the wall I reached into my pocket and retrieved my scarf.
When in Rome.
“If I have to beat the tar out of every one of you to save your lives,” I said as I wrapped the scarf around my face. “Then I will.” My eyes flashed blue and my voice took on the reverberation that only comes when I use my Wraith voice. I had to say, it was pretty cool.
“You think a little blue glow is going to scare us hellspawn?” Seraph asked.
That was just mean.
“Careful,” Mach warned his team, “she’s clever.”
“Clever doesn’t count for crap. What’s she going to do to me, punch me?” Burn asked. He moved forward slowly, letting me regain my strength. Bull approached from the side and Seraph backed them both up. Mach, strangely, held back. I wondered if he believed me but was waiting to see how I handled the situation.
I pulled out the Glock and pointed it at Burn. Only three rounds left.
“Bullets can’t hurt me. My body is made of living flame. You should know who you’re trying to kill,” he said. His face was an eerie replica of a human face, just made from leaping flame.
“It’s not for you,” I said. I aimed up and pulled the trigger. He had a moment of confusion before the sprinkler head above him exploded. Alarms rang and the fire suppression system kicked in, dumping hundreds of gallons of water on the parking garage.
It also had the added benefit of switching the lights to emergency mode as the power was cut to avoid more damage. I ran forward, throwing the gun in Bull’s face as he charged at me again. I don’t think it hurt him but the gun made him flinch, which gave me time to push off the wall and leap over Burn’s kneeling, screaming form as I head right for Seraph.
She charged forward, putting her shield in front of her like a ram and laying the sword on top like a spear. I really didn’t know anything about sword fighting other than the pointy end goes in the other guy.
We headed right for each other. Her smiling face betrayed her overconfidence. I think most people with powers were the same. It’s like they get this tremendous gift then forget how to do anything without it. I can thank Joseph for helping me avoid that particular pitfall.
At the last second, I threw my self backward, letting my feet slide on the wet pavement. I hit the concrete hard but managed to keep my head from bouncing off the floor.
I whipped out the plastic pistol and fired up at her chest as I slid under the shield, taking out her leg and sending her flailing toward me. I slammed one foot in her gut and fired the gun into her chest at point blank range. The pistol had no recoil, but it made a sound like a battery discharging with sandpaper rubbing together at the same time. I heaved her over, sending her flying with her own momentum. Thankfully, it didn’t kill her. She face-planted on the concrete. With the crack I heard from her nose, I wasn’t sure how beautiful she was going to be anymore. However, the pistol did the trick. I rolled over and got to me feet, taking a second to smile at her body as she twitched.
Bull came in at me, keeping me from enjoying my victory. He swung one meaty fist. For a minotaur that was seven feet tall he was stupid fast. I ducked, shot him twice with the cool gun, and rolled backward.
I was dismayed to find the gun had no effect on him. The blue energy danced around his skin before dissipating.
“They don’t work against invulnerable types,” he said with a chortle. I’d call it a laugh, but I don’t think his voice was capable of that kind of noise.
“Spice, I could really use some power right now,” I said under my breath as I backed out of reach of another punch from him.
“Then you’ll have to kill one of them. We’ve spent all the power we accumulated earlier,” she said from behind Bull. “Good job taking out the witch. Maybe kill her? The world could do without her kind.”
“I’m not going to kill any of them, Spice.”
She shrugged. “It’s up to you.”
I made a mental note to research some of this later. Seraph thought I was some kind of demon, and Spice really didn’t like her. Bull jabbed at me again, I batted his fist aside and kicked out. It was like hitting a brick wall.
“My name’s Bull, not Spice. Are you crazy or something?”
I ignored him, spun, and tried for his knee. I might as well have tried to chop down a tree with my foot. He laughed and swung again at me. I wracked my brain for information about the Beast-kin. Their powers manifested differently than the other supers, sure, but they were essentially the same.
Nothing could hurt them… but I knew that wasn’t true. Invulnerable was just a name we applied to really tough people. Stop a bullet with your chest and you were invulnerable. That didn’t mean a train wouldn’t kill the same person.
I stopped and stood up straight. “I give up,” I said raising my hands slowly.
He opened his mouth, too stunned to speak. I snapped the gun forward and shot him in his big fat mouth. Instead of dissipating against his skin, the blue energy funneled down his throat. Blue light flashed out of his nostrils and he choked, stumbling backward and holding his throat as his insides spasmed uncontrollably.
The only one left was Mach. I spun to face him, and he was on me in a second, his thick strong hand wrapped around my throat and his other on my wrist as he flew us against the far wall. He slammed me hard enough to knock the wind out of me.
Unfortunately, I was all out of tricks. I decided I’d try the truth one more time.
“Mach, listen to me. I didn’t set the bomb, ISO-1 did. They bought stolen C4 from Ukrainians and planted it here to make a statement.”
He leaned close to me. He was older than the last time I saw him. Maybe he’d aged or maybe he was tired.
“That’s a stupid plan. A bomb wouldn’t kill me. It might have hurt Bull, but Regenerator and Burn would be fine. The only person it would have a chance to kill…” His eyes went wide, and he looked over at Seraph’s unconscious form.
“It would do two things,” I said to him. “It would show the world they weren’t afraid of you, and it would kill the one person who keeps your team free from outside influence.”
I guessed from the way he looked, that maybe he got it.
He stepped back and let me go. “I thought you were telling the truth. When you didn’t kill anyone, I figured I was right. I truly am sorry about your brother,” he said his head bowing as he spoke. “Not a day goes by I don’t think about it.”
I slid down the wall, regaining my feet. I looked at him for a long moment. Mach was tall, built like a weightlifter, and had served the city for over a decade. Charles died fifteen years before. Why would he be concerned about it still?
“Mach, it really was an accident. I’m being honest when I say I don’t blame you. It doesn’t matter anyway… he would have died with the rest of my family.” I hadn’t realized that until I said it out loud, and when I did, a wave of grief hit me like a fist. I shook it off, not wanting to feel it just then. Not while there was still work to do.
“We can talk about this later. That bomb needs to be disarmed. Can you see to your teammates while I go try to save the day?”
He looked at the truck and then me. “How did you learn all these things?”
I shrugged. “YouTube.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Bill reached the bottom of the stairwell that led to the sub garage—where he believed the Wraith to be. After all, that was where security said the Saints team was. He had two security people in tow, along with Krisan who
he’d run into on his way in.
“Hurry,” she said from the rear.
As strong as the Wraith was, there was no way she could fight her way past the Saints. They were a solid team with some incredibly powerful members.
Bill braced himself for what was beyond the ubiquitous green door with the silver push bar.
Please Lord, let me be in time.
He pushed through the door, yelling while he did. “Federal agent, stand down!”
Then he froze. Krisan broke out in nervous laughter behind him. The two security people froze, jaws open at the sight. Bill should have known. He’d seen what the woman was capable of, but still…
Damn.
Bull, Burn, and Seraph were all down. Unconscious from what he could tell. Mach stood next to the trailer with the bomb in it, while Wraith inspected the door. Bill checked his watch; they had a little over an hour. Which sounded like a lot of time, but not when dealing with a bomb.
“Madi!” Krisan squealed as she ran by, heedless of any danger or the inch of water from the discharged sprinklers.
So that’s her name.
Bill filed it away for future reference. He seriously doubted he could talk her into joining his team, but maybe she wouldn’t mind helping them out now and again.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
I had just determined that the door was rigged to blow if opened and was working on my options when Krisan rushed in—screaming my real name—before wrapping me in a bear hug and burying her face in my shoulder.
“Nice to see you too,” I told her as I returned the hug.
“When I heard they thought you were the bomber I… I…”
I smiled and squeezed her tight. “It’s okay. I’m okay. Mach and I go back a ways, so we’re cool.”
She gave me another hug and backed up. “So how come you haven’t disarmed it yet?” she asked with a smile.
“Oh, I see how it is. ‘Madi, take care of all the crime in Detroit. Madi, stop ISO from destroying New Orleans, Made, disarm all the bombs,’” I said and stuck my tongue out at her.
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