She looked up at Nate. He was also looking down at his hands, clenching and unclenching them. He held out one arm and flexed.
“Oh, this will do nicely,” he said. “Very nicely indeed.”
“Oh no,” she heard the female voice say. “This is bad.”
Where had she heard that voice before? She turned to her left to find the owner.
A diminutive redhead dressed in black workout clothes and preposterously large boots stood against one wall. Like Cassie, she alternated between staring at her hands and looking at the others in the room. Her left hand came up to touch her face.
A frisson of terror rippled through Cassie. The woman across the room was her.
The other-her turned to stare at her-her, face contorted in rage. The redhead rushed across the room and clamped her hands around Cassie’s throat. Despite the delicate nature of those hands, Cassie found herself unable to breathe.
“You did this, you son of a bitch. I should have killed you, like I was supposed to.”
Cassie tried to speak, but the woman’s grip barely allowed a rasping croak to escape.
“I... Ca...”
Then the pressure abated. Her doppelganger’s anger gave way to a distant, thoughtful look. Then the angry face returned.
“But I can’t kill you now. Not until you undo this. Switch us back. Put Cassie and me back in our right bodies. Now!”
Cassie gasped for air. Across the room, Nate stood, arms crossed. The helmet tilted a bit to one side and a chuckle rolled from him as his head began to wag from side to side.
“Oh, this is too funny,” Nate said. “The mighty Guardian 175 is now a woman.”
Cassie stared back and forth between the two. The voice was Nate’s, but it didn’t sound right - poisoned with smugness and condescension. Meanwhile the face she now recognized as her own was registering the same confusion. Unfocused green eyes cut to one side as they followed a train of thought. Behind those eyes, her eyes, the mind of a genius was working out the implications of what she now realized.
Nate Gorman’s mind was in her body, and her mind...
“Ballantine, what the fuck have you done?”
Her head, the one atop her proper body, swung to face the chiseled figure in gray.
“Surprise,” the helmeted ‘hero’ sneered. “Ever heard of secondary powers?”
Cassie’s mind spun. If Nate’s consciousness, his mind, had somehow been transplanted into her body, and Martin’s mind was in Nate’s body, then that left only one possibility for her.
She was trapped in Martin Ballantine’s body.
“Oh, hell no. You fix this. Now!”
Martin-as-Nate dismissed Cassie-as-Martin’s demand with a wave of his hand. He began to stroll around the room, keeping them in his sight as he gloated over this victory.
“What makes you think I could do that, even if I wanted to?”
Nate - or rather Nate’s mind - made Cassie’s forehead wrinkle. She made a mental note that it really wasn’t attractive. Cassie moved closer to herself, to Nate. She stumbled a bit. This body was bulkier and heavier than she was used to. She almost tripped and reached out to catch herself against herself. Nate started to back away before catching himself and then her. She supposed she would act the same if their positions were reversed. Nate’s first instinct wouldn’t be to catch Ballantine, even though he knew intellectually that it was her in Ballantine’s body.
“Really,” Martin mused. “Have you never given any thought as to where our powers actually reside? Are they products purely of our minds, or are they in the flesh? Here’s a clue.”
Martin selected a poker from a set of fireplace tools, examining the steel bar for a moment. Then he grasped each end and bent it in half.
“Ta da.”
She saw Nate clench her small fists. He started forward, as if to pummel Ballantine with them, then caught himself. He didn’t have his strength anymore. Ballantine now had that and every other advantage Nate would normally use.
“You know, I like this body. I think I’ll keep it. I’ll be the new Guardian 175. Hey, it’ll be fun to be unstoppable. My original plan is obviously a bust, which is too bad. Once I had united the exos against those idiots in the government, we could have all been free. Well, free under my rule, of course.”
Cassie connected a couple more dots. She knew what she had to do.
“I can stop you,” she said. Martin’s voice sounded odd in her head, divorced from his casual confidence. “I have your powers now. I can swap us back.”
Ballantine laughed. “You think you can master that trick right off the bat? Good luck. It took me years to get it right, and that was with a willing subject. Well, that’s a bit of a stretch. Let’s just say they were ‘on board with the program.’ Regardless, it takes sustained physical contact and I don’t plan to let you get anywhere near me.”
“You won’t get away with this, Ballantine,” Nate said. “We’ll tell everyone what you’ve done.”
Martin laughed. It was a cold laugh, not at all like Nate’s. Cassie edged closer to the real Nate.
“You won’t get the chance. Remember, Guardian 175 was sent here to kill Martin Ballantine. Once that’s done, there’ll be no turning back.” He regarded Nate, his head clearly tracking up and down Cassie’s form. “And after I take care of my old body, maybe I’ll finally get some of that ass after all. I don’t imagine it’ll be able to put up much of a fight against this kind of strength.”
Cassie tried to think, but there was so much to process. She couldn’t trust her instincts, and she didn’t have any of her powers. That thought lit up a possibility. No, she didn’t have her powers. Just as Nate had left his powers behind in his own body, she had left her abilities in her form.
She pressed closer against Nate, taking his hands in hers. Martin laughed again.
“Yes, time to say goodbye, Cassie. I promise I’ll make it quick for you. I can’t make the same promise for your body.”
She looked deep into Nate’s eyes, her eyes - God, this was confusing!
“Let your anger do the work,” she whispered. “But please don’t kill him.”
Her fingers, clumsy compared to the dexterity she was used to, fumbled with the bracelet clasps. The left one unlocked and she slipped it down past the wrist. Nate blanked for a second, then nodded his understanding. The remaining band came free and she palmed them away from Martin’s view. She smiled and nodded back, slipping the bracelets into a jacket pocket. “Fire when ready, Gridley.”
Nate smiled back, a bit hesitant. Then he saw the glow building in those small hands and his smile firmed. He slipped those hands around, hiding them behind and out of sight. Then he stepped around Cassie, positioning himself between her and his body.
“You’ll have to go through me first, Ballantine.”
Ballantine cocked the helmeted head a bit, then shrugged.
“Have it your way.”
He took a step toward the pair as Nate held out his hands, palms out as if calling for Martin to stop. The glow built, throbbing with each heartbeat, but there was no blast, no torrent of energy. Nate closed his hands and flicked them open in a pushing gesture. Martin had stopped, unsure what was happening, but now he began to laugh again.
“Whatever you’re trying to do, Guardian, it doesn’t appear to be working. Now, if you’ll kindly step aside. I’d rather not mess up that pretty face. Not yet, at least.”
Cassie tried to think how she had summoned the blasts originally. It was out of fear, a self-preservation instinct. But Nate wasn’t like her. His instincts were to preserve others, not himself. She thought about how she had called them up on purpose, that day in the underground vault, of the photo of Martin taped to the target, of her rage. She’d tapped into the same deep-seated emotion later, when testing the bracelets. Her trigger then had been remembering what Martin had tried to do to her - not murder, but something else. She’d decided then that Nate could never know the truth about that night. But right now
, their lives might depend on the very reaction she had tried to avoid.
“Nate, there’s something I haven’t told you. About the night you found me. Martin didn’t just try to kill me. He threw me over that rail because his power didn’t work on me.”
Nate looked back at her, alarm and confusion written on his face. She opened the sealed door in her memory, remembering the lust she had sensed in Martin. She remembered his words and the petulant anger that he couldn’t have his way with her. For the first time since that night, she let the fury unspool inside her.
“He tried to kill me because he couldn’t lock me inside my own head while he raped me.”
She didn’t need her empathic sense to feel the shock and anger in Nate’s mind. He had that power now and she knew he could feel her rage. It would be mingling with his own. Unaccustomed to his new empathy, he would find it difficult to distinguish between his emotions and hers. More than ever, in that moment they were of one heart. She stoked his ferocity with her own, doubling and redoubling it. His hands began to flare, white hot and uncontrolled. He looked back at Ballantine and screamed.
She tried to look away, throwing up oversized hands to shield her eyes. The shockwave threw her against the wall near the balcony door. If she had been standing a couple of feet farther to her right, she would have been thrown out the doorway and probably through the railing. The cosmic irony of dying in Martin’s body by falling onto the rocks below wasn’t lost on her.
She blinked, trying to clear her vision but everything was a wash of white with flashes of red. She shook her head only to discover that she had apparently dislocated her right shoulder when she hit the wall. The pain was bearable, but just. The flash-blindness was unnerving. For all she knew Martin could be standing right in front of her, about to deliver a death blow. Instead it was a feminine voice that cut through the fog.
“We need to go. Before he recovers.”
A hand reached into the pocket where she’d stashed the bracelets.
“He’s not... dead, is he?”
“No. Half-conscious, stunned, wary, and half a block away, but not dead. I don’t think we should be here when he pulls himself together.”
He helped her to stand. A bolt of agony shot through her shoulder and she hissed.
“You’re hurt,” he said. “Your shoulder. I can see it. How do I fix it?”
She cradled her right arm, supporting it to ease the pain.
“I’m flash-blind too, but both of those will keep for now,” she breathed through clenched teeth. “Do you think you can carry me? I mean, can my levitation power support us both?”
“Only one way to find out.”
She felt his arms slip around her - one at her good shoulder and the other behind her knees. He started to sweep her up, only to give way under her weight. She sucked in air from the pain as he nearly dropped her.
“Shit. That won’t work. This body isn’t strong enough.”
“How about if I climb on your back and wrap my legs around?”
“Worth a try. Oh. Hey. I’m floating. Hmm, yeah - your levitation works a lot like my flying. That’s a lucky break. No learning curve.”
A slender back pressed up against her. She pinned the injured arm between them and wrapped the other around his neck. After spitting out a mouthful of long hair, she wrapped first one, then the other leg around the slim hips. Martin’s body nearly enveloped the smaller frame. It felt like she was trying to ride a child’s tricycle, but Nate appeared to be supporting both of their weight. He grabbed one leg and the arm at his neck and started moving. She heard outdoor sounds as they cleared the balcony. She also got the impression they were rising.
“God, I’m glad Martin isn’t here to see this.”
Nate’s reaction was a simple “Hmph.” She missed being able to judge his mood. She wished she could feel what she had done to him by revealing the extent of Martin’s depravity.
“Hang on,” Nate said. “I’m going to tap the rocket boots. We need to put some miles behind us.”
Cassie started to say something, but the sudden G forces sent fresh waves of pain through her shoulder. The wind whipped long hair around her face like stinging nettles. She filed another mental note: consider a shorter hair style.
CHAPTER 27
Cassie had no idea how far they travelled or where they were when he finally brought them in for a landing. Nate tapped her legs, signaling her to release their death grip on him. She let them drop and gravel crunched under her feet. There were city sounds in the air, which had a disagreeable chemical smell to it. She was starting to see shapes and shadows, but it was full night now, so it was hard to judge if she was getting her sight back or if her mind was making up crap to fill the void.
“We should be safe here. I haven’t used this location in years.”
“We’re not home? I mean, not back at your building, base, cave?”
“The Lair. Walsh’s name, not mine. And no, I don’t think it’s safe for us there. The Enforcers obviously know about it. Then there’s Ballantine.”
“How could he find your Lair? And later we can talk about how creepy that name sounds.”
He guided her across the gravel. She stumbled several times on the shifting ground, still not accustomed to the strange body she occupied.
“He has my helmet. It has access to all the systems in the Lair that feed me information. And it has GPS. Normally that wouldn’t be a problem because it only works for me. It’s keyed to my individual bio-signature.”
“But he has your body,” Cassie finished his thought.
They stopped and she heard a series of beeps, a code sequence on a keypad. Metal scraped and hinges squealed. He guided her through a doorway and closed it behind, a heavy clang marking it.
“So, where are we?”
“An old Lair. From before I was a Guardian. From when I was an outlaw.”
That brought Cassie up short. She stared at where she thought Nate was standing.
“Outlaw? You? Mister Johnny follow-the-fuckin’-rules?”
He steered her to a chair and positioned her to sit.
“I was framed for my father’s murder. It was right after I Emerged and was trying to hide what I could do. Anyway, a friend found me and helped me straighten it all out. And he helped me to realize what I needed to do with my life. This was his place, as a matter of fact.”
The pieces of Nate’s story fell into place for Cassie. She was there, in the hospital, when Nate was brought in after the ‘accident,’ the one that killed his father. It was all around the same time as the gang uprising a few years ago, the same uprising that had killed a legend.
“Guardian One - Ironhorse. He was your friend, wasn’t he?”
She heard nothing in reply. Maybe Nate was nodding. Maybe he was crying. She suddenly wanted her sight back, badly.
“Alright, let’s do that healing thing now,” he said. “Tell me what I need to do.”
She took a deep breath. Normally, a dislocated shoulder wasn’t hard to fix, even without super-healing powers. Reseating the joint hurt like a mother, but it wasn’t difficult. On the other hand, Nate should probably learn to use the powers he had available. Plus, no pain. Hopefully.
“Look at the shoulder. You said before that you could see it. Can you see it now?”
He pulled up what sounded like a metal stool by the scraping sound. After a couple of seconds, he replied.
“It’s red. Is that what I’m supposed to see? And... wow. I don’t remember much of my college anatomy class, but even I know that round part is supposed to be up against those other bones.”
“Good. Knowing how it’s supposed to look helps. At least I think it does. Now cup your hands gently over the shoulder. Shit! I said gently.”
“Sorry.”
“Now, try to visualize the head of the humerus moving back against the socket of the scapula.”
“The whaterus and the howsula?”
“How the fuck did you get through college
anatomy without learning the names of the major bones?”
“I was a physics major. And I said I took anatomy. I never said I aced it.”
“Okay, whatever. Think about the rounded part going into the indentation. Ready? Go.”
She felt the bones rearranging themselves. The usual emergency treatment was to jerk the arm in a particular direction to reposition the joint. It hurt like hell, but it was over in an instant. That wasn’t what Nate was doing. Maybe he was trying to be gentle with her, but the slow-motion business was torture. She bit back a scream and hoped she didn’t pass out. Then, with a popping sensation, it was done.
“Holy mother of God,” she moaned when she could finally breathe again. “Okay, now, imagine everything healed and healthy and pain-free. Concentrate on that.”
She didn’t so much feel the healing energy enter her shoulder as she sensed the pain leaving her. After a few tentative motions, she swung her arm and decided that it was good enough.
“Your technique needs work, but I think I’ll be okay. Now let’s see about my eyes. I’m starting to see vague shapes, so it’ll probably come back on its own. I just don’t want to wait that long.”
“Okay. I’m looking at your eyes. They don’t jump out as red like the shoulder did. I’m not sure what I’m supposed to fix.”
“Then do the laying-on-hands thing again. Think happy thoughts and concentrate on everything being healthy. Will power.”
He stood up and stepped around behind her, covering her eyes with his hands. “Here goes.”
She saw green. It was like he was holding up a colored lightbulb in front of her closed eyelids. It pulsed - once, twice. She heard him exhale and it pulsed again, stronger this time, then he removed his hands and she heard him step back around to face her. She crossed mental fingers and opened her eyes. At first, everything was blurry. Panic seized her, but then she blinked, and her lenses shifted into focus. Nate stared back at her, worry written on his face. Her face.
“Don’t crease my brow like that,” she said. “It makes me look bitchy.”
He let go of the breath he had been holding as she took a look around the cavernous area. They seemed to be in some sort of warehouse space. It was a holy mess. A cot piled with rumpled blankets sat next to a workbench cluttered with bits and pieces of electronics. On the other side of the room was a small kitchenette. Dirty and scorched pots peeked out from the sink.
Burden of Solace: Book 1 of the Starforce Saga Page 20