Karma Girl

by Jennifer Estep

  “Johnny Angel,” I said in a hard, sharp voice. “Your family needs you. I need you. You’re not responsible for your father’s death. Your father made his choice a long time ago. He knew the dangers. He knew the risks. It’s not your job to avenge him and uphold the family honor. But if you don’t fight Siren, if you don’t try, we’re all going to die. Your friends. Your family. Me. All of us are...going...to...die.”

  For a moment, Angel’s face cleared. His hand slowly went to his jacket, and he fumbled with something in his pocket. Angel leaned over me. Concentrating. Trying. Something slipped from his fingers onto my stomach. I stretched my numb hand out and managed to cover up the lump of cold metal.

  “Siren says, leave her there,” the ubervillain cooed.

  Angel’s eyes widened. Sweat beaded and froze on his forehead, but he didn’t move away from me.

  “Stop stalling!” Siren roared into her microphone. “Get out of there now!”

  With a jerk, Angel straightened. He turned and walked out of the freezer. The last thing I saw before he shut the door was his eyes. They were ice-green.

  Frozen.

  Just like his heart.

  PART THREE

  BREAKUP BLUES?

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  The door slammed shut, and the metal bar on the other side clanged into place. Trapped. I was trapped in an industrial-strength freezer. With fish sticks. Things were definitely not going as planned. Then again, they rarely did in my line of work.

  But what hurt more than my present situation was my heart, which felt as if the Ringer had used it as a punching bag. Johnny had succumbed to Siren’s song. He hadn’t cared enough about me to fight her off. Neither had Hermit or Mr. Sage. I wasn’t thrilled with my team members right now, but Johnny’s betrayal was the one that wounded me the most.

  Oh sure, he was under the influence of a hypnotic ubervillain with more cleavage than a lingerie model. Oh sure, she had a fancy device that could enslave ninety-seven percent of the population. Pitiful excuses, at best. I’d told Johnny that I loved him, and he’d still abandoned me.

  My fingers twitched. But maybe not entirely. Hands shaking, I uncurled my fingers. Johnny’s, Angel’s, lighter lay inside. A spark of hope flared to life inside me. In the end, Johnny had tried to help me. To give me a way out. Maybe I could forgive him, if I got out of this alive.

  My body felt limp and tingly from Intelligal’s power-diluting gas, but I didn’t have time for such weakness. If I didn’t get out of here soon, I’d freeze to death. Even with my fiery superpowers, it would only be a matter of minutes before I was one big icicle. I hated to be cold, and I hated fish. But here I was, trapped with both. Ah, the glamorous life of a superhero.

  “Lulu?” I asked, my voice weak and small. “Lulu, can you hear me?”

  The computer hacker didn’t answer. Not even static crackled in my ear. The thick door must be blocking the signal, meaning I was on my own. Fabulous.

  Somehow, I managed to roll over onto my knees. I could still taste the sickeningly sweet gas in my mouth, mixing and mingling with my blood. With my free hand, I scraped up a mound of frost off the floor and shoved it into my mouth. The ice crystals melted, washing away some of the gas. My head cleared, and I felt a little stronger.

  I kept repeating the process until I had cleansed my mouth. My arms and legs twitched and jerked and spasmed, recovering from the effects of Intelligal’s gas. I crawled to the middle of the freezer and slung my numb limbs around until I faced the door. It was a thick metal door, designed to keep the cold in. Well, not for long.

  My fingers trembled. I grasped the lighter and slowly clicked it. Once, twice, three times. Four, five. Nothing happened. I couldn’t quite grip the cold, slick metal with my weak, tingling fingers. Focus, Fiera, focus! I’d been in tighter spots than this, most notably when Prince Horrid had captured me with plans to add me to his harem as one of his pliant dancing girls. I’d gotten out of that mess. I’d get out of this one too. I was Fiera, for crying out loud. Member of the Fearless Five. Protector of the innocent. Superhero du jour. It was what I did.

  Just when I thought I couldn’t hold it another second, the lighter sparked on. I cupped the tiny, weak flame like it was the most precious thing in the world. To me, it was. Slowly, my hands warmed. The lighter’s small flame fed my own inner power. My fingertips started to glow as the fire inside me rekindled. I concentrated on burning the rest of the limp, languid feeling from my body. High metabolism, help me now.

  My emotions had always fueled my powers, and I grabbed hold of them. I remembered how Siren had tricked us, how she’d turned my friends against me, how the bitch had put her hands all over Johnny. I focused my anger, let it rage through me with the heat of a thousand suns. The fire inside me grew and grew and grew.

  I formed a fireball with my hands. I took careful aim and threw it at the door. It exploded onto the cold metal, making it shriek and groan. Steam filled the freezer. I formed another fireball.

  Then another one...

  Then another one...

  Then another one...

  Ten minutes later, the last remains of the door melted away. I got to my feet, still a little shaky, and stumbled through the melted edges of the white-hot metal.

  “Fiera! Fiera! Where are you?” Lulu’s voice squawked in my ear.

  “Over by one of the freezers,” I said, sliding to the ground.

  A motor whirred, and Lulu stopped in front of me, tires smoking.

  “Where the hell have you been?” I muttered, trying to rub the rest of the feeling back into my arms and legs.

  “I got here as quick as I could. I’m not Swifte, you know,” Lulu said in a defensive tone. Her eyes dropped to her wheelchair and legs. “Not by a long shot.”

  I bit back my angry retort. It wasn’t Lulu’s fault. She’d done the best she’d could. And I had other things to think about right now. Like how to rescue the others and stop Siren’s evil plan to take over the city. “Did you hear Siren? Did you see where they went?”

  “I heard everything, but by the time I got out of the van, it was too late.” Lulu shook her head. “Siren and Intelligal shepherded the others into a car on the far side of the building. They sped away before I could fix a tracker to it.”

  I cursed. This was no time to be sitting around. I grabbed on to the remains of the melted door and pulled myself up. At least, I tried to. My arms buckled, and I wobbled back and forth before falling and smacking my ass against the cold concrete floor. I cursed again, loud and long, hating my sudden weakness.

  “Whoa there, tiger!” Lulu put a hand on my shoulder. “You’re not in any position to be walking around right now. It’s a miracle you got out of that freezer alive.”

  “Well, I can’t sit still. And it’s not like you can carry me out of here. Do you have another suggestion?”

  Lulu patted her lap. “Hop on board the Lulu Lo Express. I can drive us both out of here.”

  “You can’t be serious.”

  “Oh, I am. Henry likes to ride around on my lap all the time.”

  I groaned and put my head in my hands. “Too much information, Lulu. Too much information.”

  *

  In the end, I didn’t have a choice. After a good five minutes of cursing and snarling and trying to heft myself into an upright position, I crawled up onto Lulu’s lap, and she motored us back to the van.

  “Damn, this thing can scoot,” I said, trying to distract myself from the fact I was hanging on to Lulu’s neck like we were lovers.

  I was extremely glad it was after midnight and pitch-black, and that there was no one around to witness my humiliation. I’d never live down the shame. Fiera, member of the Fearless Five, protector of the innocent, reduced to clinging to a wheelchair to get around. Some superhero I was. I couldn’t even stand upright at the moment.

  Lulu beamed and patted the side of the chair. “Of course it can. I’ve got almost two hundred horses in the motor. It tops out at about fifty mi
les an hour.”

  We zoomed to a stop in front of the black van. I slid off Lulu’s lap and into the carpeted interior. The computer hacker strapped herself in the motorized lift and joined me.

  Lulu rustled through one of the first-aid boxes we kept inside and handed me a small, foil packet. “Here. Take one of these. It should flush the rest of the radioactive gas out of your system.”

  I took the packet, which contained a Radioactive Isotope Diminisher, or RID for short. The pills were the invention of some mad scientist who found himself constantly bombarded by radioactivity while he was researching something or other. They were like vitamins to superheroes, and the Fearless Five used them to keep from getting more mutated than we already were. They’d saved our asses on more than one occasion, especially Carmen’s last year when she’d gone up against the Terrible Triad by herself.

  I swallowed the pill and felt the effects almost immediately. My limbs grew heavy and substantial once again, my superstrength returned, and my inner fire flared up to its usual slow, steady burn. I sat up. “All right. That did the trick.”

  “Are you sure you’re okay?” Lulu asked. “We can sit here and rest a few more minutes if you need to.”

  “I’m fine. And we don’t have any time to rest. We need to get our boys back.”

  “How are we supposed to do that?” Lulu asked. “Carmen and Sam are halfway around the world, and Henry and the chief are under Siren’s spell, along with Johnny. We’re a little short of superheroes right now.”

  “Oh, don’t worry about it. I know a couple of people who should be more than willing to help us,” I said. “Let’s go.”

  *

  “Are you sure this is a good idea, Fiona?” Lulu said.

  I put my hands on my hips. “Of course I’m sure it’s a good idea. All my ideas are good ones.”

  I tossed my hair over my shoulder, trying to look more confident than I felt. The truth was I wasn’t sure it was a good idea, but it was the only one I’d been able to come up with. Lulu and I needed help, and this was the only place we were likely to get it.

  We stood outside the closed iron gates that led up to the Bulluci manor. Lulu pressed the button on the call box again. No response. We’d been standing out here for ten minutes, trying to get somebody to wake up and answer us.

  “Oh, screw this.” I took hold of the iron gates and looked over my shoulder. “You might want to move back.”

  Lulu eyed my glowing hands, which were clenched around the metal. “I think I’ll do that very thing.” She hit a button on her chair and zoomed out of the way.

  I ripped open the gate. The iron wasn’t nearly as sturdy as it looked, and the gates cracked off their hinges. I didn’t even have to put any real muscle into it. Part of the surrounding wall crumbled in on itself.

  Since Lulu’s chair could move a lot faster than I could walk, I hopped back on Lulu’s lap, and we scooted up the long driveway. I was getting almost used to sitting on top of the computer hacker. Almost.

  The chair stopped. I climbed off and pounded on the front door, which was embossed with a giant B and another freaking angel wing. “Bella! Bobby! Open up! Now!”

  A light flared to life in one of the upstairs windows. A curtain on the front door twitched, and Bella cracked it open. She wore a pair of short pajamas with white clouds on them. Naturally.

  Her mouth dropped open at the sight of me. “Fiera? I mean Fiona? I mean...oh, you. What’s wrong?” Her eyes flicked to Lulu. “And who is this person with you?”

  I took a deep breath. “Johnny’s in trouble. We need your help.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Lulu and I explained the situation to Bella. She woke up Bobby, they threw on some clothes, and we piled in the van and headed back to Sublime. Normally, I would have knocked them out or blindfolded them to keep them from seeing exactly where we were going, but I didn’t have time. Besides, sneakiness wasn’t my strong suit. That was more Sam and my father’s thing.

  We led Bella and Bobby through the underground garage to the library. It was a good thing I hadn’t used blindfolds, because it was painfully slow going with the two Bullucis stopping every three feet to stare at something else.

  “Come on, come on,” I snapped. “You guys can ooh and aah over the super-duper, supersecret superhero lair later.”

  The two of them picked up their pace, and we reached the library. Lulu wheeled around and plugged her laptop into Henry’s network of computers. The Bullucis stood at the doorway, mouths hanging open.

  “Oh, come in. It’s not that sacred.” I marched over, pulled them inside, and closed the double doors.

  Bella and Bobby cautiously crept farther into the massive library.

  “Please forgive my surprise. It’s just that I never thought I’d be invited in here,” Bobby said, running his hands over the F5 insignia carved into the table.

  “Me either,” Bella whispered. “This is incredible. Look at all the books you have!” Her eyes flicked over to Lulu and her computers. “And the equipment. It’s so amazing!”

  After a few more minutes of staring and sputtering, Bella and Bobby sat down with Lulu and me at the big, round table.

  “Explain it to me again,” Bella said, rubbing her head. “I’m still a little confused. Johnny joined up with you guys to take out the ubervillains, but Siren hypnotized the men.”

  “Right.” I nodded.

  “How was she able to do that?” Bobby asked. “Surely Mr. Sage would have been able to resist her. He’s a powerful psychic in his own right.”

  “It’s that damn microphone she had. It upped her power tremendously.” I drummed my fingers on the table. Sparks flew everywhere. “Nobody could resist it but me, and that’s only because I was a woman. And totally pissed off.”

  “It’s not just the microphone, Fiona. Weren’t you paying attention to Siren? Didn’t you listen to what she said?” Lulu asked. “She told you exactly what she and Intelligal are up to.”

  I shrugged. “Not really. I was more concerned with not being able to move at the time. And in the end, all ubervillains want the same thing—to rule the world. The only difference is the crackpot scheme they come up with to try to help them do it.”

  “Well, let me tell you, Siren’s plan is a doozy.” Lulu typed on her computer. Images began to pop up on the film screen hanging on the wall.

  “Hey, it’s that radio thingy the two of them were protecting so fiercely,” I said, staring at the box with its odd wires and diamond-studded frame.

  “It’s not just a radio thingy,” Lulu corrected. “It’s a voice amplifier and projector. Or VAMP for short.”

  I snorted. “How fitting.”

  “Indeed. Anyway, the VAMP machine is designed to take a sound, like Siren’s voice, and distribute it over a wide area.”

  “Like, say, the whole city?”

  Lulu shot her finger at me. “Precisely. Siren mentioned something about a broadcast while she was rambling. They must be ready to use it.”

  “What happens if they do that?” Bella asked.

  “Siren’s voice will spread out over Bigtime. Not only does the VAMP machine boost the range of her voice, it also ups the power, which is how the others were brainwashed into doing her bidding. It’s really quite an impressive machine. Luckily, I thought to put a filter on everyone’s comm links to screen Siren’s voice, or I probably would have been under her spell too. But if we don’t stop them, Siren will enslave everyone.”

  “Why would she want to do that?” Bobby said.

  “Who knows why ubervillains do what they do? I quit trying to figure out their motivations a long time ago,” I said. “She’ll probably do something totally lame and cliché and hackneyed like get people to bring her all their money.”

  “But wouldn’t she have to keep talking into the machine the whole time to keep people under her control?” Bella asked.

  We looked at Lulu.

  “Not necessarily,” Lulu said. “She could record her voic
e and just loop the recording so that it plays back over and over. The only problem with the VAMP machine is that it’s not quite powerful enough to broadcast Siren’s voice over the entire city. So she’s going to need another power source or a way to piggyback the signal onto one of the radio or television stations.”

  “Then that’s what we need to figure out,” I said. “Where the ubervillains are going to go to unleash their doomsday device.”

  “I’m on it,” Lulu said, hands flashing across her keyboard.

  We sat there in silence while the computer hacker went to work. Bella and Bobby kept shooting furtive looks around at the maps and globes and books. I got up and paced back and forth behind Lulu.

  Lulu glared over her shoulder at me. “You know I can’t concentrate when you flounce around like that.”

  “Well, what do you want me to do?” I snarled. “I can’t sit still, and I can’t crack any skulls until we get a positive location for Siren and Intelligal.”

  “Oh, go eat what’s left in the refrigerator or something. That’s what you usually do.”

  Lulu turned her back to me and started typing again. I resisted the urge to light her hair on fire.

  “Come on, Fiona. I’ll go with you,” Bella said. “Do you want anything, Grandfather?”

  Bobby shook his head. “No. I think I’m just going to sit here and look at everything. If that’s all right with you, Fiona.”

  I waved my hand. “Fine. Just as long as you don’t disturb her computer highness over there.”

  Lulu shot me another dirty look. I just tossed my hair over my shoulder.

  *

  Bella and I walked down the deserted halls until we reached the underground kitchen. I opened the doors on the restocked refrigerators, desperately in need of ten thousand calories or so. It’d been a busy night so far, and tomorrow, rather, today would only be worse. I needed to keep my strength up.

  “How about some cheesecake?” I said, pulling a large pie out of one of the refrigerators. “It’s triple chocolate, one of Quicke’s specialties.” The restaurant delivered a couple dozen of the delectable desserts to Sublime every week.