by Tom Andry
"From a cell? That doesn't make any sense!"
Gale threw her hands up, "You don't know these super geniuses, Bob. They love to be captured so that they can watch us try to figure out who is doing it up close. They love to see the looks on our faces as we chase all their red herrings, their false leads. They especially love it when they can watch our expressions when they step forward and reveal that it was their plan all along." Gale turned and continued walking, "I see what you were doing in there, Bob. Trying to put him on edge so that he would crack. It looks like it worked, but looks can be deceiving."
I paced after her, my fuzzy slippers sliding on the floor, "Come on, Gale. You can't know he did anything. There is no proof."
Gale stopped and turned slowly toward me, "That doesn't matter."
"Since when?"
Gale pursed her lips and turned and started walking again.
"Since when, Gale?" I called after her, "Since when don't you need proof?" I ran to catch up, "What's going to happen to Ted?"
Gale sighed, "I don't know, Bob. I just don't know."
"Dammit, Gale. I never would have helped you if I'd known I was going to make it worse for him. He's my friend."
Gale stopped again, "Is he, Bob? Is he?"
"Of course."
"But you admit he could have turned, right? He has it in him."
I didn't answer.
"See." She opened a door and took a step in, "If you can't be sure, how can I?"
She entered the door and ushered me in. Inside was a large room full of clothes on racks that stood two high. It reminded me of my drycleaner. Though clothes might have been the wrong word. Most were bits of spandex held together by string. They were separated into groups. Unitards and other full-body suits, legless costumes, armless costumes, arm and legless costumes, costumes that would be considered illegal in many states and even more countries, and capes. Gale motioned for me to follow.
We walked down one of the aisles to the back of the room. The back wall was floor to ceiling shoes. Most were boots of some sort and many were in styles that I wouldn't be caught dead in. Finally, Gale found a section with dress shoes. She pulled out a well-used bundle of papers on a short chain and leafed through them. They resembled the ledger papers I used at EnviroKop. I stifled a yawn. She glanced at the wall and picked a pair of shoes. They were black and plain. Just my style.
"Try them on," she handed the box to me.
I looked at it warily, "They don’t have rockets or lasers or anything, right?"
She glanced back at the sheet of paper, "Nope. Says here that they were made for a social function. Extreme durability and comfort were the design parameters."
I scowled at the size. "They're too big."
Gale frowned, "How do you know? You haven't tried them on?"
"Ted made the feet too small." I glanced at the wall, "Here, these should be closer."
Gale stifled a laugh, "So, you've been wearing shoes too big all this time?"
I growled, "Shut up. They were supposed to be resistant like the rest of my clothes. I didn't have an option."
"Why didn't you just have Ted replace them?"
"We haven't been talking." I tried on the new shoes. They fit but they made my feet look ridiculously small. But I couldn't go walking around in my slippers all night. The irony that I'd just probably sent to prison the one guy who could replace my clothes and shoes, and maybe resize my feet, didn't escape me.
I finished tying the second shoe and stood, "Feels good." I took a step toward Gale, "Gale, seriously, you aren't going to send Ted to Compartment or anything."
"I don't want to, Bob. But it isn't solely up to me. I've got to meet with..."
The lights went out. We were plunged into complete and total darkness. The room we were in had no windows and the door was many yards away. I stepped forward and found Gale's shoulders. She put her hands on my elbows.
"Just hold still for a moment, Bob." She was whispering. What was it about the dark that made people whisper?
A moment later, the room was bathed in a red light. I exhaled a breath I didn't know I'd been holding. Gale did the same. For a moment, we just stared at each other, smiles on our faces, lost in the relief of the moment. The joy of being out of the darkness.
Gale dropped her arms and cleared her throat. She paced quickly down the row of costumes, "I've got to get you back to your suite and figure out what is going on around here."
"Um..." I followed behind her, my new shoes squeaking on the tile, "okay."
When Gale opened the door, we were treated to a scene of complete pandemonium. Supers were running, flying, and sliding down the hall at full speed. Gale pulled one of the slower ones aside and asked him what was going on.
"Breach!" he gasped, "Full containment breach. Everything is offline."
"That's impossible," Gale thundered. She released the junior super and he scampered away.
I looked down at my USB, realizing for the first time that it wasn't glowing. I pressed all the places Ted had shown me, but nothing made it respond. "Gale, my USB isn't working."
She glanced down at her own and cursed. She turned back to me and we both muttered the same word at the same time, "Ted."
I started to run down the hall, but soon found my feet touching nothing but air. Gale sent us hurtling back the way we came. Long before we arrived, she pulled us up short. The door was open. Ted was gone.
She set us down on the ground and looked at me, "Still think he didn't do it?"
I couldn't meet her eyes.
"So," I glanced into the room to confirm that Ted was, in fact, gone, "I don't see any signs of forced entry or exit."
She shook her head, angrily, "Of course not. He probably had something tucked away. Some master key or something." She turned and stormed out of the interview room, "I never should have let him keep that PPP thing on. He could have anything hidden under it. For all we knew, he could have had a gun trained on us the whole time."
I walked out after her, "It was just a questioning. You had no reason to think anything like this would happen."
"Not good enough, Bob. I'm the leader of the Bulwark. Practically the head of the Super State. I can't make mistakes like this."
"Fine," I caught up to her, "so find him. Get him back. Make him undo it. If he actually did it."
"You seriously think he didn't? Don't you think the timing is a little convenient?"
An explosion rocked the building. Dust surrounded us as I struggled to keep my footing.
"What the hell was that?" I gasped.
"I'm not sure," Gale responded, the air around us growing thicker, "but we're getting out of here."
"I don't think so."
The voice echoed down the hall. The few remaining staff that were around us turned and ran. A few passed through walls and out of sight. One turned into a puddle of some sort of liquid and passed through a vent near the floor. In moments, we were alone.
At the far end of the hall, near what should have been an exit to the stairwell, stood a super clad only in a speedo and boots. He was completely bald and his skin was blocky, like he was constructed out of LEGO. He leaned over and tensed and I heard what sounded like a car rolling over loose gravel. When he stood back up, his outline was less blocky. Behind him, the hall was completely caved in.
Gale stepped toward the super, putting herself in front of me. "You don't want this, whoever you are."
"Oh, I certainly do. That bastard had me strung up for hours. Like some sort of manikin. I'm going to rip him to shreds."
I gulped, "Swell. His name is Swell. He can absorb things and shoot them out." Gale nodded sharply and squared her shoulders. I reached down and flipped on my Dampener. I placed a hand on her shoulder, pulling her back, "He can't hurt me." I stepped forward as Swell smiled at me.
"That's right, Bob; go on thinking I can't hurt you. Well, I know all about your little device now. And this?" he extended his arms forward and what could only be described as rubb
le shot out. "This isn't for you." The rubble soared over and landed behind us, creating a mountain of concrete and rock.
"He's trapping us in, Bob," Gale hissed. The wind around us kicked up, but had little effect on the stream of supersonic rubble flying all around us. "Damn it." Gale cursed, "there isn't enough air in here for me to block him."
I glanced around, "The doors. Open the doors." If any of the rooms were as big as that costume room we were just in, it would increase her available air considerably.
I watched as the doors started to disappear inwards, ripped from their hinges with a "thwok!" followed by the sound of rushing air. Every time that happened, the pressure on Swell got stronger. I could see him leaning into Gale's wind. He was trying to block the remaining doors with streams of rubble, but she was moving too fast for him.
He was starting to run out of fuel. His skin was hanging off his body in great sheets. I could see it loosen, but it would be a slow process. I smiled as Gale pushed her advantage, opening two more doors.
Swell reached out and placed one of his hands on the sidewall. I thought it was to steady himself, to keep from falling back under the onslaught, but instead, I saw the wall start to buckle. It was like watching sand pour through a funnel except that it was being absorbed into the super. His smile returned as his feet expanded, rooting him to the spot. The wall next to him started to warp, but he managed to keep it intact so that he could draw up more material. The stream out of his remaining hand turned to a torrent and he started to coat more of the doors with debris.
"The door!" I yelled over the din, "The one to the room next to him!"
Gale squinted and then her eyes widened with understanding. The door to the room that Swell had just made a hole in disappeared and all the air she had at her disposal rushed into it. The wall at Swell's side, weakened from his power, exploded. The torrent of wind slammed into him like a truck. He was off balance, his oversized feet optimized for a frontal attack. He crashed into the sidewall, sounding like a bag of marbles being dropped on a concrete floor.
The stream of rubble stopped and Swell grabbed his head, swaying side to side like a drunk man looking for the bathroom. I felt the air in the room rush toward us and stop. For a moment there was nothing but silence. Just the occasional crack of a rock rolling down one of the many door barricades Swell had created. Then Gale pushed her arms forward and, with a roar, the air in the room assaulted Swell. I could even feel the air from my lungs respond to Gale's power as I involuntarily coughed out what little I had.
Swell cried out, but there was nothing he could do. The blast pulled him from the ground and sent him crashing back through the pile of rubble that he had used to block off the stairwell. Beyond was nothing but sky. Swell had absorbed all the walls in the fight. We ran over to the hole and looked down. The stairway was mostly intact, but didn't start until three stories below us. Swell was nowhere to be seen.
"You think he lived?"
Gale studied the distance through her eyemask, "If he did, he's somewhere at the bottom of those stairs. I'd hate to see what condition he'd be in."
I smiled and then turned to Gale, "I thought he was locked up."
Gale continued to study the ground for signs of the super, "Oh, is that the guy you called me about? Yeah, he was. Here. Whatever Ted did must have unlocked all the doors."
I nodded and looked around. The Super City was in shambles. The red field over Proving Ground was gone, though the blue field over the entire City looked intact. There didn't seem to be power anywhere and I saw more than a few fires burning. It was a mess, pure and simple. I glanced over at Gale. It was clear she was thinking the same thing.
"We've got to get back to the League complex," she nodded in a direction that I supposed was where she wanted to go. "All Level 5s know to get the tippys out if something goes wrong."
I shook my head, "Power's out everywhere but the blue field still seems to be operating. The fact that we're still alive suggests the engines, wherever they are, are still functioning. So, what does it mean?"
"That Ted doesn't want to die?"
"But how could he shut off the power to everything but the one system he doesn't understand?"
She shrugged, "Don't ask me. But my guess would be he's been studying every system he could. He probably knows this place better than anyone. Plus, the engines, wherever they are, are surely on a separate system or he'd have found them." She shook her head, "Why? Why did he have to be so nosy? Why did he have to push it like this? Couldn't he be happy with Level 4?"
"You have to admit, Level 5 would have been in order for what he did with The Raven."
Gale turned to me, "I don't have to admit that. Level 4 was a gift. Look at all that Doe has done and he's only a Level 3. You don't see him complaining about it."
The wind swirled around us and we floated out of the opening in the side of the building. Gale led us slowly toward what I quickly recognized as the League complex. Four buildings, each surrounded by freestanding walls with long, vertical openings at the corners. On the top of each building, supported by the four freestanding walls, were shuttle landing pads. Each pad had no fewer than four shuttles on them. Shuttles launched and passed us as we approached, with others being quickly loaded from the long lines of people exiting each building.
"Good," Gale muttered, "at least something is going right."
The night was black. Wherever we were, the moon had yet to rise. Or maybe it had already set. It had been a long day. The stars helped illuminate the City, but mostly the fires and the occasional red emergency light provided most of the light. Proving Ground was the best lit because of the fires but there had been enough accidents on the streets to get around. Well, if you could navigate the carnage. Supers were on the streets, on top of buildings, looking around. The ones that could were hovering over the city, looking down just like Gale and I.
Gale turned to me, "We're going to have to make a stop first." She moved us toward the top of the blue field and closed her eyes behind her mask. After a moment, she licked her lips and whispered, "Everyone stay calm." She must have used her power over the wind and air to propagate the sound of her voice all over the City as supers and tippys alike stopped moving and started looking around. "Supers are to meet at Area 01. Those assisting in the evacuation of the League personnel are to continue until all non-supers are removed from the City. Supers found fighting or otherwise engaged will be reprimanded harshly up to and including the revocation of citizenship and imprisonment. No super is to leave the City without Bulwark approval. That is all."
Below us, the supers all started moving toward Proving Ground. The tippys on the landing pads returned to boarding their shuttles. We started floating toward the League complex. I could see a few supers on the top, ushering tippys into the shuttles. They were taking their luggage and setting it aside. A few tippys resisted, but the supers didn't relent.
I called out over the rushing wind, "What's the plan?"
"I get you into one of those shuttles and get you, and the rest of the tippys, out of here. Then I find Doe and get him to fix the power. Lastly, I'll organize search parties and find Ted. He's not going to get away with this."
"You seriously think he's still here?"
"He has to be. There is no way to get past the field," she nodded at the blue field that I could barely make out all around us. "We test that thing constantly. There is no way to teleport through it or even fly across it without permission."
"And I'm betting a few minutes ago, you would have said there was no way to shut down the power to the entire City, too."
She stopped our progress and turned to me, "So, what are you saying?"
"I'm saying that if Ted wants to get off this rock, there is probably little you can do about it."
She grimaced, and then we continued our downward trajectory, "Maybe. But we have to look for him. If we determine he's not here, we'll deal with that. But for now, our best bet is catching him before he gets away."
&nb
sp; We touched down on the landing pad. A line of tippys extended from the stairwell to the shuttles. A pile of confiscated luggage was to the side with a few supers walking up and down the line answering questions. At the head of the line was Doe and his super sentry Crush. Crush was piling up the luggage while Doe was helping the tippys on to the shuttle.
When he saw us, he waved, "Gale! Thank God!"
Gale walked over, scanning the progress, "How's the evacuation going?"
"Almost done. Two of the buildings are empty and we're almost done here."
I nodded at the shuttle, "This one looks different than the other one."
Doe nodded, rubbing the dent on his forehead, "We had to take everything we had out of mothballs to make sure we could get everyone out as soon as possible. Luckily the City was over a populous area. I sent down Thunderbolt and Lightningball to secure a hotel. I haven't heard from them, but communication has been down. What happened?"
Gale turned away, "Tinkerer happened."
Doe reacted as if someone had slapped him in the face, "Tinkerer? Golly, I can't believe it. I heard he'd been taken in for questioning but I didn't want to believe he could have done anything wrong."
I shrugged, "I didn't want to either, but it seems to be the case." I turned to Gale, "I need to grab something from my room."
Gale turned to me, "Forget it, Bob. We don't have any extra room."
"It won't take any room. And I'm not leaving without it."
Gale exhaled, her eyes hard behind her mask. I didn't flinch. "Fine," she finally muttered. She turned to Doe, "I'll be right back."
"What?" I exclaimed, "You're coming with me?"
"You're joking, right?" she quipped. "You haven't been here a full day and we've seen a murder, a power outage, and now a full scale evacuation. Hell yes, I'm coming with you. You are not to be out of my sight until I put you on one of those shuttles myself."