Accelerant

by Katelyn Beckett

  Nate nodded in agreement and I sighed as I looked back at the computer. "It's a house in Renfield."

  "Renfield's like, the size of six people," Adam said.

  I looked back at him as I started in on the yogurt. "Then it makes it easier to narrow down who it is. But listen. I don't think it's a good idea if you guys go. You're too visible. Too obvious. If I go, I can watch for anyone we know in and out of costumes. I have the entire file at my fingertips. You guys don't. Maybe I'll recognize someone that'll give us the information we need."

  They glanced at each other, then me. Adam waved Nate over and they did some goofy football huddle thing for a moment. I finished off my yogurt and left the oatmeal. The way my nerves were humming, it wouldn't do any good for me, anyway.

  What on earth had possessed me to offer myself up for hero work? It was the stuff of suicides, of lunacies. Adam peeked back at me then went back to Nate. I didn't know what they were discussing, or why it was taking them so long. I gave in and popped open the oatmeal container, too.

  Mid-way through, Adam pulled back and sighed. "On one condition."

  "I'm conditional," I answered.

  "You take one of those trackers with you. One of the speaker systems."

  I cleared my throat. "There's no proof or data that states the communication system also tracks where you are at all times. Per Scribe's orders."

  "Don't bullshit me. We know it's there, you know it's there, and you've admitted it before."

  I shrugged and finished the oatmeal. "You want to be able to find me in case I'm caught and disappeared. No problem. I can do that. I'll do you one better than that. I'll swallow a tracker, too. That way, if they pull one over on me? It doesn't matter. I'm still trackable."

  "Will that work? Stomach acids are strong." Nate sounded honestly curious.

  I decided to indulge him and pulled up a schematic to show him just how it would work, why it would work, and the cases in which we'd used it before. There were dozens, though I was hesitant to admit to it. And, given the situation, I wished it was a requirement for them every time they left the building. Given that it was an incredibly over-the-top infringement on their rights as human beings, Scribe had pushed me back when I'd asked him to make the trackers mandatory.

  Still, it would've made the entire problem we were facing a great deal easier if he'd just bent a little bit on it.

  Within the next hour, I sat staring at a heavily coated pill. The tracking blip was somewhere inside it and would settle in my gut for the next three days. It was likely that I would have terrible stomach cramps afterward; part of the reason why Scribe had decided against using them for everyone's tracking. We couldn't have superheroes constantly getting sick after missions, they'd catch on too quickly.

  I looked between Adam and Nate, then sighed and swallowed the damn thing whole. It was the size of one of those small, bouncing balls you get from the vending machine outside the grocery store. At least it tasted like grapes. It was one tiny favor I'd granted myself.

  "Nate's going to work the control panel. I'll be waiting to come to your rescue if you need it," Adam said, offering me one of the surplus taser guns. I looked at it, shook my head, and picked up a baton instead. One was missing.

  "Do you have that other baton on you?" I asked.

  He frowned at the brackets. "Not exactly into collapsible sticks myself. I'll double-check with Nate, but if he doesn't have it..."

  "Maybe Cassie grabbed it so she'd have some way to defend herself?"

  "Possible," Adam said. "Get going. Nate will check to make sure you're online while you head out."

  I left the lab, tapping the coms unit hung around my neck, "Nathaniel can you hear me? Over."

  "Are we going to use radio-speak, 10-4?"

  "That isn't how you use 10-4," I said, amused in spite of myself.

  At least the link-up worked. I walked out to my car, a comfortable hatchback big enough for five, got in and slid smoothly into traffic. The drive wouldn't take terribly long if I didn't run into the endless traffic Yarborough was known for.

  Of course, if someone had rigged my car to explode, I wouldn't get far at all. I pulled into a parking lot and popped the hood, my nerves completely fried. There was nothing underneath, nothing on the engine. If someone had decided to blow me sky high, they'd either done it another way or they'd hidden it so well that I didn't recognize it. Which said a lot, if they managed to pull that off. I did all my own work on that vehicle. I knew it inside and out.

  I got back inside the car and hopped a curb on my way back onto the street.

  Thankfully, the traffic gods were smiling on me. I reached Renfield in record time, always cringing at the name of the place. It'd been an unfortunately named town named after unfortunately named people. Though I supposed the reference was beginning to get a little stale, I preferred the classics. And Stoker never died, in my mind.

  The entire town consisted of six little houses, all in a row. A father and mother had built homes for each of their five children. Over time, the homes had fallen into various stages of disrepair as kids grew up, moved away, abandoned their elderly relatives to the horrors of time. The dead family homestead is one of those Americana things that always moved me and this sad state of affairs was no different.

  I parked outside the first home and made my way through the interior of the first three. Most of the walls were slowly being retaken by the earth around them, plants growing through ceilings and mice skittering around the floors.

  But the fourth house. Oh, boy. The fourth house.

  An entire base of operations sat before me. I wasn't expecting that. The communication panel was even showier than mine was, for which I was ever so jealous. Explained how they were getting around my hunting skills; I was simply out-teched. It happened, but it was pretty rare when it did. Sometimes the Alliance didn't approve my parts or my necessities. When that happened, I bought my own.

  I sat down at the panel and hmmed my way through it. After only a few minutes of playing peck and go, the waiting screen opened with a cheerful, "Good Morning, Wren".

  That didn't encourage me. Wren had rarely been around the Alliance building when she'd been part of it, but she had certainly been on our side. She'd transferred out of the area last I knew, leaving Isabella in the dust. But she wasn't one that I'd gotten to know very well or become very close with. I tried to scan through the information in front of me for some sign of one of the others, but most of it was locked behind passwords I couldn't begin to decipher.

  Instead, I pulled out my phone and dialed my boss.

  "Scribe."

  No kidding. I'd just dialed-. Whatever. "Sir, can I get an alias check on a superhero? You know who everyone is."

  "There's someone you don't know? That's a rarity. Who?"

  I eyed the phone. "Wren? She was a superhero for a little while a few years back. Got transferred."

  The pause on the other end lasted longer than I liked. "Is she back in town, Edwin?"

  My eyes drifted in the direction of the town limits sign of Renfield. "Nope."

  "Why are you asking about her?"

  "Curiosity, sir. That's all. She came up in a conversation and I wanted to know what you knew about her. If it's a need to know basis, I completely understand."

  Scribe sighed, "It's just not safe to talk about on unsecured lines. Come to the hospital when you have some spare time. We can talk about her then, all right?"

  "Yes, sir," I said, polite as ever. As soon as I hung up with him, I wiped the screen of my fingerprints and headed back to my car.

  Together, we sped down the road back toward the Alliance building. I'd go speak with Scribe, sure.

  But I wasn't going to do it without my friends.

  Chapter 11

  I sat in the cramped cell, my head leaning against the stonework. Across the way from me was Isabella. And I ignored her as she chattered.

  "-really am sorry, Sosie. You have to understand, I'm just not always in control
of all this right now. And I tried, I tried so hard. Even Adam's never going to forgive me for all this."

  "Your brother doesn't give a shit what you do," Lexi snapped from Izzy's right. "Shut up and let us get some sleep. None of us want to be here. None of us want to deal with this trash."

  One eye opened to look across the way at Lexi's cell. I couldn't see much of it, but I could watch her shadow sit down and her head turn to, presumably, glare away from the rest of us. Not like she was going to go stomping off when we were all stuck in 5x6 cells.

  Or somewhere around there. Specifics are hard to nail down, but I could lay down and stretch out one way and I couldn't do it the other direction.

  "Talk to me instead, Izzy," Nishelle said. "Tell us everything you know. What's going on. Who's behind it. What they intend to do with us. You were telling us that you didn't really have much to do with this?"

  Isabella sighed. "I may have had a little bit to do with it, in the beginning. Wren said she was tired of superheroes not getting what they were owed. That we deserved better than the paychecks we got and coverage for liability and medical. I mean, how many of us even own cars? Or houses? Nobody should have to rely on the Alliance buildings when they're raising a family but most of us do. It's not until we retire that we really see big money. And sometimes not even then."

  "You agree with her, you fall for her, and then...?" I let the question hang in the air. Nishelle peeked over the separating grille between us. I walked over, reached out, and took her hand through it. Touching her. Really touching her. Knowing that we were really together, even if we were separated by a wall. It was better than nothing.

  There was a longer pause this time. I scowled. "Isabella, we're all stuck. I can't smack you."

  "Not like you'd do any real damage even if you could," Lexi sneered.

  I turned my scowl to her cell. "Fuck off."

  "If only I could."

  She kicked the bars and sent a shard of metal skittering across the floor. The bang brought a stomp from upstairs. Whoever it was, I didn't know. I got the feeling that we weren't just being held by Allison. There were too many footsteps at night, too many whispers, for it to be one person.

  The stomping meant we were supposed to be quiet. If I'd been in control of my powers, I'd have broken my knuckles open beating a message back to them. Hell, I might have been able to pound my way out of the cell. As it was, I was about as useful as an iceberg in Florida.

  "I just wanted to be loved."

  She sounded so crushingly sad. No wonder she'd reacted so poorly when I'd started dating her brother, Adam. "We all do, Izzy. That's one of the primary causes of doing something dumb in life."

  "Like you're one to talk, Strikeout," Nishelle purred across the grille.

  I grinned up at her. "If I don't know it, who would?"

  Isabella sighed again over there. "She's definitely Wren. And Dreamweaver. I should have recognized her. I should have checked the database. Who knows how many other pseudonyms she's hiding under? Either way, she's not just a psychic. She's not just... anything. Cassie, she's dangerous. And she's not okay."

  "Yeah, I think my first clue of that was being locked in here," I said, letting go of Nishelle. "You don't know the schedule, though. Or when she's likely to come in and throw food at us. Or check to see if we're still alive. None of you do?"

  "She puts us in the Dream. Or a dream-like state. I don't know what it is, but you aren't here anymore. You're somewhere else. It's cold and dark, and you can't reach your body," Nishelle said.

  That sure sounded like some sort of Psychic superpower bullshit. I sat back down on my tiny bed and turned our situation over in my head. It wasn't a good one, and there wasn't a lot of promise. The guys had no idea where I'd been taken and neither did I. There was no way to get a message to someone like Scribe or any of the suits back at HQ.

  What could we do? Jump Allison and race upstairs? What if she had an entire fleet of soldiers waiting to gun us down if we tried to escape? We were strong, but without our suits? How much could we take?

  I weighed the options over and over again, but nothing really came together. That happened sometimes. No matter how strong you are, how smart you are, or how fast? There are times when you aren't going to win.

  But that doesn't mean that you have to lose, exactly. You can fail without being a failure. You don't have to fall apart and find yourself on the ground or dead. I looked up at the stairway that was so, so far from us and rubbed my forehead with the heel of my hand. Think, Cassie, think. There had to be some way to get at least one of us out, sneak her away, and put her somewhere the others could find out what was going on.

  Or maybe, just maybe, we could think of a way to free ourselves.

  "Stay on your toes. Everyone. That means you too, Lexi. We stay alert and we wait for her to come. If we can get one of us out and free, we can bring everyone back to ruin this whole mess."

  There was a general murmur of assent. Even Lexi joined in with it, probably just glad to be included with the plan. The whole time I'd been there, she hadn't mentioned Nate once. I'd caught her whispering sweet nothings to Izzy through the grate but it didn't sound as if their relationship was made of the stuff that keeps people together year after year.

  Not that there's anything wrong with a hot, lusting relationship that burns out fast. Just, everyone needs to be aware of it. And it was becoming very obvious that Lexi wasn't.

  When we got out of the mess in front of us, maybe I'd take Lexi aside and talk to her about that. We hadn't spoken in private for so many years, I wasn't really certain where I stood with her. But even as I ran that through my mind, the door above the stairs opened, slammed shut, and steps headed down in our direction.

  I spent years trying to look as good as Allison did. I never got there. She was one of those tall, leggy blondes that took up most of the magazine covers throughout the 80s and 90s. A good hour teasing her hair and she'd have fit perfectly. Her ass rocked the postage-stamp-sized skirt she wore and I had to admit, I wished mine did. Nothing wrong with wearing something that showed off your assets, but I was just a little bit jealous.

  "Are you going to kill us or what?" I asked, peering through the bars at her.

  Allison sighed and looked over at me. "Melody was right. You really never do shut up."

  "I don't. It's a gift. Are you going to kill us or do we have to just sit around here until we die of boredom?"

  "I intend," she said, "to have the others put you down out of necessity. You'll tear up what you must, kill who you must, and then I continue to thin the herd bit by bit. I do that until there's only a dozen or so superheroes left in the world. Then I can do what I need to."

  "Then you sink your fingers into their minds and what, control the whole superhero population? Allison, it'd be easier to just sweet-talk someone like Scribe and get in that way. I mean, you go to the effort of making Isabella do that-"

  She smacked the desk and glared over at me, "That was an accident. I never meant to make her rise so high in the ranks. I intended for her to get killed out on a job some day. Instead, she breaks through the damned control and saves the day instead. It's bullshit, Cassandra. Absolute bullshit."

  "You're really dramatic for someone who's too cowardly to publicly villainize herself," I said, yawning to really drive my point home. "It's tedious. And no one is going to fall for it. We've seen too many people play around with it."

  The others agreed in their quieter ways. I felt Izzy's eyes on me and I shrugged. What could Allison do to us if she wanted us to perform whatever bullshit for her? Sure, there was always torture, but that didn't last. Pain was mutable if you weren't actively suffering from it. How many times over had I learned that in prison?

  I'd been the new girl on the block, the person with the target painted on my back. Being a Blitzer, I hadn't wanted to hurt anybody. They were crooks, thieves, rapists, murderers; the sort of scum that I stopped out on the streets. But it was different inside the prison. It was d
ifferent, because their crimes had already been stopped. They were serving their time. And why was it my right to punish them further when they were already being punished?

  My withdrawal hadn't mattered to the biggest, toughest people in the yard or to their subservients, either. They'd taken me somewhere the guards didn't look, right around a corner, and forced me to knock one through a wall to prove that I didn't want to play their stupid little games.

  After that, most people had left me alone in a direct confrontation. I'd still been jumped and beat up now and again, but everyone gets that behind bars.

  And if I wasn't in prison, where was I?

  The door wrenched open. I prepared myself. I was powerless, weak, tired. I wanted a sandwich and a nap, with Creed's big arms around me and my head on Nishelle's chest. Maybe all of us in Edwin's big bed. Somewhere quiet, comfortable, safe. But what I wanted didn't matter. I wasn't going to get cozy and cushy unless I got out of my cousin's basement which, let's be honest, just isn't the way people think through things.