“Yeah. We need a way to look at everything here at once. Fortunately, the mall’s already got just such a system in place.” She pointed at a light fixture on the wall. I didn’t see what she was pointing toward at first.
And then then I did. Hidden within the nest of lights was a black globe that obviously housed a camera.
“Of course! You’re a genius,” I said. “There must be hidden cameras all over the place. If we can access the cameras’ feeds, maybe we can figure out where the bomb is.”
“Technically, I’m not a genius. I’m a near genius. Dad had me tested when I was a kid. He was very disappointed I didn’t have a genius-level intellect like him. Not that his brains are doing the world much good.” Neha’s father was Doctor Alchemy, a noted supervillain. Helping to thwart his plans for world domination was the main reason Neha wanted to become a Hero.
“Okay, okay, you’re not a genius. Just a near genius. And overly literal on top of that. Alright Miss Almost-A-Genius, where does that big brain of yours tell you we should look for the hidden cameras’ video feed?”
“I don’t need my intellect to tell me. Experience tells me. Big malls like this usually have a central office where security officers review the camera footage for problems. I know because I got caught shoplifting a couple of times by them.” She must have seen the look on my face because she added, “Don’t look so shocked. I wasn’t always a Hero’s Apprentice, you know. Back when I ran away from home after Mom was murdered by one of Dad’s enemies, I had to do what I had to do to survive. A girl’s gotta feed and clothe herself somehow.”
“You’re a fellow jailbird? No wonder we get along.”
Neha shook her head. “I said I got caught. I didn’t get arrested or go to jail. It’s amazing what you can get away with if you’re a cute girl and you can cry on command.”
Unlike petty larceny, false modesty has never been one of Neha’s vices.
“Come on,” Neha said. We walked for a bit through the shoppers until we came across a patrolling security guard. He had a red jowly face and a short haircut. His belt rode low on his waist. His big belly swelled over it. If he had been a woman, I would’ve assumed he was pregnant. Clearly mall security guards—even of the holographic variety—did not need to be in the kind of shape Hero candidates needed to be in.
“Hi!” Neha said brightly to the man. Overlord had told us to treat the holographic people as we would actual humans as the holographic constructs were programmed to behave like people. “My friend and I are reporters for the local newspaper. We’re supposed to meet the head of security. Mister . . . mister . . . oh my goodness, I forget his name. Theo, didn’t you write it down?”
I caught on in time. I pretended to check my pockets for a non-existent note.
“Mr. Jenkins,” the guard supplied helpfully. Neha snapped her fingers triumphantly.
“That’s right, Mr. Jenkins. Anyway, he wanted us to meet him where you all review the hidden camera video footage. Can you tell us where that is?”
The guard looked dubious. “Are you sure he wanted to meet you there? I thought only security guards were allowed in there.”
“Mr. Jenkins made an exception this one time. We’re writing a story about how you hard-working guards keep everyone safe. It’ll make the front page for sure. It’s long past time for you guys to get your due. The working title is Heroes of the Mall.” Neha’s eyes shone with enthusiasm. She had thrown her shoulders back so her chest was sticking out. She looked at the guard like she wanted to pin the Medal of Honor on him right after fellating him.
The guard stood up a little straighter. “Well in that case, I’m sure it’s all right.” He pointed down the mall’s concourse. “See Macy’s down there? Well, on the third floor, to the right of the store’s entrance is an unlabeled door. If you go through it and down the corridor, you’ll find Room 305 on the left. That’s the video surveillance room.”
“Thank you so much,” Neha said. She glanced down at his name tag. “I’ll make sure to mention your name in our article, Mr. Byrd.”
“Aw, you don’t have to do that.” He hesitated. “But the first name is Douglas in case you should decide to mention me anyway.”
“Douglas Byrd. Got it. We definitely won’t forget.”
Mr. Byrd walked away to resume his patrol. There seemed to be an extra bit of swagger in his step now.
Neha and I started toward the escalators.
“What?” she demanded once we were gliding upstairs. I had been eyeing her suspiciously ever since we’d walked away from the guard.
“You looked at the guard just now the same way you looked at me when you told me our sex was the best you’ve had. I can’t help but wonder if you were lying to me too.”
“Of course I wasn’t lying.” Her hazel eyes twinkled. “The day I told you that, that was the best sex I had that whole day.”
“You’re not funny.”
Following the guard’s instructions, once on the third floor, we made our way to the unmarked door near the Macy’s entrance. Once we were inside the white corridor that lay behind it, the sounds of music and shoppers were left behind as if we had left the mall altogether.
Unlike the rest of the mall which was slick and affluent, this corridor had a rough, unfinished look. We went down to Room 305. I checked the door. It was locked. Using one of my power’s new tricks, I probed inside to see if it was occupied. My powers passed through two holographic constructs shaped like men. Running my powers over them was weird. It reminded me of the slightly clammy feeling I got when I stuck my hand into a heavy fog.
I raised a hand before me, about to force the door open with my powers. Before I could do so, Neha stayed me with a hand on my arm.
“This is supposed to be a stealth operation, not a prison riot,” she said.
“Is that remark a not-so-subtle dig at my jail time?”
Neha smiled mysteriously. “Maybe.”
Her body became translucent and cloudy. In gaseous form, she started to seep into the gap between the floor and the door. In a few moments, she was completely gone.
I heard a muted thump from the other side of the door. A few seconds later, Neha opened the door. She was back in her solid form. Two security guards were behind her. One lay on the floor; the other slumped over in his chair. Both were unconscious. In front of them was a big bank of monitors showing various parts of the mall.
“Knockout gas,” Neha said in explanation of the guards’ unconsciousness.
I dragged the guard on the floor out of the way with my powers. He was even bigger than Mr. Byrd had been, but fortunately my powers were far stronger than my muscles. The chair of the seated guy was on rollers, so him I just rolled out of the way.
When I focused my attention on the bank of monitors, Neha was already examining them.
“To be honest, I don’t know exactly what to look for,” I admitted with my brow furrowed after examining the monitors for a bit. There was simply too much to watch. I didn’t know how in the world actual security guards were able to do their jobs effectively. “Somehow I don’t think the Guild was helpful enough to label something B-O-M-B,” I said, spelling out the letters.
“Look for anything suspicious,” Neha said. “Remember what the Old Man taught us about scanning for a threat in a crowd of people—we’re looking for anything or anyone that doesn’t seem to belong. Someone who seems nervous, who’s dressed inappropriately for the weather or in big bulky clothing, someone who doesn’t take his hands out of his pockets, that kind of thing.”
We watched the monitors like two electronic hawks. After a while, we had stared at the monitors for so long I felt like I would go cross-eyed. I stood the entire time because it was a literal pain in the butt to sit. The stitches in my butt itched. I wanted to scratch, but not in front of Neha. We were close, but not that close.
We hadn’t heard anything from the rest of the candidates in the test. When we occasionally spotted them on the monitors, they looked increasi
ngly agitated. I knew how they felt. I was agitated too. I felt like doing something more proactive than merely staring at a screen. Scratching my butt, while it would make me feel better, didn’t seem to fit under the category of “proactive.” Then again, standing here looking at these monitors seemed like a more effective use of our time than running around like chickens with their heads cut off the way the rest of the candidates were.
Knowing that in my head and feeling that in my heart were two different issues though. Part of me wanted to go back out into the mall and start tearing things apart with my powers in search of the bomb. Overlord had admonished us that an obvious use of our powers prior to the bomb being located was a no-no, though.
Time was inexorably ticking away. If we didn’t find the bomb soon, we would surely all fail this test and be forced to leave the Trials. I knew better than to think Overlord would accept “But we did our best!” as an excuse.
Someone caught my eye on a monitor on the far left. I had noticed him enter the mall earlier. He was a lean white guy who was by himself, wearing a baseball cap, and pushing a baby stroller. He was slowly making his way toward the center of the mall on the first floor.
Many decades ago a guy pushing a stroller by himself would have been weird, but men—appropriately—took a more active role in childcare these days.
Even so, something about the guy and his stroller nagged at the edge of my consciousness. I couldn’t figure out what it was.
We had been here so long, Neha and I had figured out how to zoom in on things a while ago. I hit a key to select the monitor the man with the stroller was shown on, and then used a joystick to zoom in on him. I studied the blown-up footage. Nothing about the man himself seemed terribly unusual. Then I focused in on the stroller. It was one of those strollers designed for the baby to lie flat in it. The sun shield—or whatever in the heck that part of the stroller is called that shields the baby’s head—was up. Between it and the thick-looking blankets covering the kid, I couldn’t see the baby. All I could see was a lump under the blankets. The lump hadn’t moved. The baby was no doubt asleep.
“The collapsible part of a baby stroller that covers a baby’s head—what’s it called?” I asked Neha.
“The canopy,” she supplied absent-mindedly. She was busy looking at a different monitor.
I smiled to myself. I had just known Neha would know. She seemed to know just about everything.
Then what had been gnawing at the edge of my mind hit me like a brick upside the head.
There were thick-blankets covering the kid in the stroller! The man had just come from outside where it was hot and muggy. There was no way you’d cover your kid like that on a day like it was outside. Plus, the lump under the blankets hadn’t budged an inch since I had been watching.
I straightened up from the control panel. Excitement rose in me like a tide.
“It’s in the stroller!” I exclaimed. “The bomb is in the stroller.” I hastily sketched out my suspicions to Neha. She took a long look at the monitor I had been examining.
“Makes sense,” she said. “Let’s go check it out.”
“Shouldn’t we tell the others?”
“Let’s hold off on that. If we’re wrong, we don’t want to pull the others away from the search.”
We hustled out of the room and back into the mall proper. We moved quickly through the shoppers, not running, but not exactly walking either. When we got to the center of the mall that had a huge open area stretching from the mall’s third floor ceiling to the bottom floor, we could see Overlord’s countdown.
We had less than four minutes to go.
Neha and I looked at each other.
“If we’re right, there’s no time left for subtlety,” she said. After a quick running start, she jumped over the safety railing and plummeted out of sight toward the bottom floor.
I loved the fact she was a badass.
Then, a realization hit me like a lightning strike:
I loved her, period.
The unexpected realization made me freeze at the railing. I watched Neha turn translucent as she assumed a gaseous form and floated gently down to the first floor. I was in love with Neha. I now realized I had been for a while now. Since Neha had made it clear she wasn’t interested in any kind of relationship other than a sexual one until we got our licenses, I supposed I had hidden my true feelings from even myself.
I snapped out of my reverie. Had I suddenly wandered into a Lifetime movie? Now was not the time for emotional awakenings or professions of undying love.
I leapt over the railing. I dropped like a stone to the first floor. Since I didn’t have to break as soon as Neha did, I hit the ground on the first floor mere seconds after she did. Some of the shoppers around us stopped and gaped at our sudden appearance from above like giraffes had materialized in front of them.
We ran toward where we had seen the man with the stroller on the camera footage. He soon came into view. His back was to us. As soon as we made visual contact with him, I stretched out my awareness with my powers to probe the baby carriage.
What I felt with my powers was not baby-shaped. It was as round as a softball, but bigger.
I tapped my ear communicator as we ran toward the man. “We’re found the bomb,” I said breathlessly as we weaved through shoppers toward the man. “It’s in a baby stroller on the first floor near New York and Company.”
We slowed to a walk behind the man. Neha tapped him on the shoulder. He turned his head. He was a tall guy with a scraggly beard.
“Y-Y-Yes?” he stammered, looking nervously at us. If I hadn’t known he was guilty of trying to bomb the mall, I would think he was guilty of something just from how he reacted to us.
Without so much as a How do you do?, Neha clipped the guy with an uppercut on the underside of his chin. The man’s eyes rolled back. He slumped to the ground like a sack of potatoes. There was a murmur from the shoppers around us. “Somebody call the cops,” someone said. I ignored them as my mind was fully occupied with the contents of the stroller.
Careful to not move the lump that lay beneath the covers, I gingerly lifted the covers off the little bundle of boom the stroller contained. I was surprised to see the round device under the covers looked identical to the explosive that had nearly taken my head off after the bank robbery I had foiled, only this device was much larger.
Someone dropped from the air and landed next to me. It was Hitler’s Youth. His eyes quickly took in the situation, sweeping in the unconscious man on the ground and the device in the baby carriage.
“Good job guys,” he said grudgingly, like the words had caught in his throat. “I’ll use my wind powers to fly this thing high up into the sky where it can’t hurt anyone.” He stepped forward, reaching out for the device. Neha immediately moved in front of him to bar his path.
“Don’t be stupid,” she said. “It might explode if you try to move it. Kinetic, what do you think?” I had told her all about the recent augmentation of my powers. She needn’t have prompted me as I was already gently roving over the object with my mind.
“There’s a pressure switch under the device,” I concluded. I knew more about explosives than a terrorist thanks to the Old Man’s training. “If we try to move it, it’ll blow.”
I shook my head. That wasn’t the worst part of what I had found out when I had probed the device with my powers. I hadn’t found merely photons and force fields when I had run my mind over the device.
“But that’s not all,” I said. “This thing’s not a hologram. It’s real. If it explodes, it’ll not only kill us, but probably take out half of the Guild complex with it.”
17
“What do you mean, the bomb is real?” Hitler’s Youth said incredulously. By now, all the candidates except Dervish and Glamour Gal had arrived and gathered around us. “Everything except us is supposed to be a holographic projection. You must be wrong.”
“I’m not wrong,” I insisted.
Chance’s brown
eyes turned milky white for moment before returning to normal.
“Kinetic’s right,” she said. “There’s a one hundred percent chance we will all die if we do nothing and the bomb explodes. There’s a ninety-six percent chance a third of the people in the rest of the Guild complex will die if we do nothing.” Her powers allowed her to assess the probabilities of any situation.
“So what do we do?” Samson asked. It was disconcerting to see a big man look so scared.
“Kinetic, can you secure the bomb in the stroller so it doesn’t budge and then fly the entire stroller out of the mall?” Hitler’s Youth asked.
“To what end?” Neha said. “The bomb would still be in the holosuite and still in the Guild complex.” She raised her voice. “Overlord, there is a real bomb in the test that poses a threat to everyone in the Guild complex. We need you to suspend the test and end the holographic simulation so we can get the bomb out of here.”
Overlord remained silent. Nothing happened other than Overlord’s countdown continuing to tick down. I suspected it was programmed to never interfere in an ongoing test.
We had less than two minutes to go.
Dervish and Glamour Girl came running up. Hitler’s Youth rapidly explained the situation to them. We all looked at each other, uncertain as to what to do.
Nobody rushed forward to save the day, though somebody had to do something before we all were turned into hamburger.
Since nobody else had an idea, I guess that somebody had to be me.
Ugh!
“I’ll contain the explosion in one of my force fields,” I said.
Neha looked at me like I had just suggested I would walk on water today and rise from the dead tomorrow.
“You can’t do it,” she said flatly. “The bomb is too big. I’ve seen what you can do with your powers, and you can’t do that.” My feelings would have been hurt at her lack of faith if it weren’t for the fact she was probably right.
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