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Chapter 94 – Sister ActThe family slipped into the new routine surprisingly easily. Maybe it was because Shar was trying pretty hard not to get sent back to the East Coast. Maybe it was because Alex’s mom and dad thought Shar was cute as a button. Maybe it was because Jack read some DHS child psychiatrist into the SRI and she talked with Shar for an hour three times a week over Skype, while Alex’s mom kept an eye on how things went. Alex thought it was pretty sneaky that Jack got Shar the therapy she needed, while even the DHS child psychiatrist couldn’t find out where Shar really was, since the psychiatrist connected to Jack’s IT set-up and then captainmal re-routed the connection internally.
And maybe it was because Alex was trying really hard: she didn’t do anything except take care of Shar and study. Even at night, when she was asleep, she was kind of keeping an eye out for Shar. Or maybe an ear. When Shar had nightmares, Alex woke right up and gave Shar a telekinetic shove to wake her right up. Nothing got burned, so Alex was pretty happy about how that worked.
But not a lot was going on in her life except Shar. Alex did her exercises and practiced her martial arts while keeping an eye on Shar. She cooked dinner or did housecleaning while helping Shar with homework or letting Shar watch TV. She got going in the morning while making sure Shar did, too, and when she dropped Shar off at elementary school she always made sure Shar got into the building safe and sound. Okay, so several times a week she also drove around the block while checking for anyone tailing her or staking out the school, just in case.
On the first Wednesday night, she also had to spend a few hours getting ready for the Thursday meeting. Mostly that meant grabbing still photos off the internet, studying the lighting, and taking photos of herself under matching lighting. Okay, that might have been a problem if she couldn’t manipulate one of her good cameras with an 85mm lens for getting really good portraits, plus four light sources, all at the same time. Telekinesis was really a fun power. Then she spent most of the time taking the internet images and Photoshopping herself into them.
Thursday afternoon during last period, she and Mina went to talk to Wade’s groups. The Science Club and the Computer Club were doing their first meeting of the year in the same room, since there were a lot of guys who were in both. Alex was a little depressed when she saw the room was like 90% guys. There were maybe forty guys, and only six girls, not counting her and Mina. Alex hoped that it just meant that science girls mostly had other things to do in their spare time, and maybe these guys didn’t.
She shoved that thought aside and went walking around saying hi to people. The club presidents finally got around to asking people to be quiet, and they went through the usual ‘first meeting of the year’ stuff everyone had to do. Getting names and email addresses, saying what the meeting schedule was going to be, dealing with the big overlap between the people in the two clubs, talking about what everyone wanted the clubs to be … Alex figured they really just needed everyone to put their ideas down in text messages or a Facebook wall.
But Wade made sure there was time for Alex before the end of the hour. “Okay, everybody, we have a special presentation. All of you know Alex Mack. I guess. She and Mina have something to show us.” Okay, there were about fifty ‘umm’ and ‘uhh’ and ‘errm’ noises in there, too, because he wasn’t good at public speaking, but that was the main thing.
Alex stood up and let Mina get the laptop hooked up to somebody’s LCD projector. She stood just to the side of the projected square on the wall so she wouldn’t be blinded by the light, and she said, “Everyone knows the yearbook for the last few years has been ‘cool clubs only’. And nobody likes that. Even most of the cool clubs think it’s jerky. So this year, we’re putting all the official clubs in the yearbook. Including you. We’ll set up some date this year when you’re meeting, and we’ll get a group photo for each club. But seniors get action photos, and a chunk of you are seniors. I want you to start thinking about a cool action photo that expresses who you are. Like this …” She snapped her fingers, and the room cracked up laughing.
Well, that was what she had wanted. It was Angelina Jolie as Lara Croft, only with Alex’s head Photoshopped on. The next picture was Alex softly front-lit and apparently fiddling with a holographic display that was in front of her. The next picture was her as the girl in ‘Tron’. That also got a few chortles. The next one was her in a spacesuit talking to the HAL 9000. Then it was her playing tic-tac-toe against the WHOPR from “War Games”. Then the next image was her hacking on a laptop the way it looked in “Hackers”. She had a few more examples, so she let Mina put them up while she answered some questions.
Someone asked, “How long did it take you to do these?”
She admitted, “I did all of ’em in Photoshop last night. The only thing I really had to do was take a photo of me in the right pose with the right lighting to match where I wanted to paste my image in.”
Kyle Markson asked, “What if I really want me in a video game?”
Alex said, “Well, we have to worry about copyrights. I don’t know if you can put yourself in N7 armor without Bioware getting grouchy. If you make your own N7 armor, I think that’s okay. And if there’s a chance of getting sued, you know the school will say no. And if it’s a really violent game, or really skanky, the school’s not gonna like it.”
She got through three or four more relevant questions before Helen Kramer asked, “What did you dress up as when you went to San Diego Comic Con? And how did you get tickets?”
Alex stopped and asked, “Aren’t there any more questions about the senior photos?”
“No.”
“We’re done.”
“I wanna hear about Comic Con!”
Alex asked, “How’d you even know?”
Helen said, “Because the TV station aired your coverage on the super-robbery down there.”
“Oh. Right.” Alex explained, “Okay, a friend had the tickets and invited me along. And I was dressed as Kitty Pryde, Agent of SHIELD while I was trying to get the police to take me seriously as a reporter, and boy was that a hassle.”
“Holy crap!” That was Jimmy and Todd poring over a smartphone.
She winced inwardly, because she had a good idea what it was. The two guys started showing people the picture they’d found on Todd’s phone, and Alex was pretty sure it was her as Kitty Pryde. And it was a pretty skintight outfit.
After that, the whole meeting pretty much got derailed. Alex felt kind of guilty about that, even if nobody but her seemed to care. Even Wade and the other guys running the meeting wanted to look at the pictures and talk about cosplay. Even Mina wanted to see the cosplay pictures.
Since she’d stayed at school through all of last period, it was going to be a waste of time to drive all the way home, do some stuff there, then drive back to get Shar, then drive home again. So she just pulled out her English textbook and did some of the readings that hadn’t been assigned. Then she read ahead a little in her calculus book, and she did her studying for Spanish class. Once she was done with them, she put those books away in her locker and pulled out her tablet.
Ooh! Willow had a few things for her to go read on the internet. One was “The New English Canaan” by Thomas Morton. Wow, he really wasn’t like some of the other authors she’d been reading for class. He really didn’t like the religious settlers, and he talked like the American Indians were just better than the British settlers. Alex made a few notes of some of the real zingers he wrote, and she figured she might just drop in one of his quotes on a midterm or something just to show that she’d been doing a ton of extra reading.
Meanwhile, she was making notes when she read anything by Anne Bradstreet, so she was going to be ready when her teacher told them to write their first paper.
* * *
Shar was all red-eyed and sniffly when Alex picked her up. “Shar? Is anything wrong?”
Shar sobbed a little. “It’s just … There’s a picture up on the wall in the room with the pool tables and foosball tables and all that. It looks sorta like Daddy’s grampa’s cabin, where they kidnapped us. And I was looking at it and ’membering the cabin and Daddy, and I got really sad, and I kinda cried a whole bunch. And Petey called me a big baby.”
Alex hugged her. “Honey, it’s okay to cry. It’s only been a few days. You deserve some time to feel really sad a lot. It’s normal.” She paused and added, “And Petey’s a big jerkhead.”
Shar sort of cringed as she admitted, “I kinda told Petey he was a … well, a bad word you told me not to say, and my big sister was gonna beat him up. So he said his big brother would beat you up.” Shar peeked at Alex from the back seat. “Is it okay I called you my big sister?”
Alex couldn’t help grinning. “It’s more than okay. I really like it. Would you rather be my little sister than my little cousin?” Shar nodded eagerly. “Good. I’d like it, too.”
Shar asked, “Can we play Barbies after dinner?”
Alex said, “Sure.”
But after dinner — which meant Shar doing her little bit of homework and helping some in the kitchen while Alex prepared dinner, and then everyone eating together when Alex’s dad got home a little after six — Alex found out what Shar had in mind. Shar didn’t want to play ‘ordinary Barbie’. She wanted to play ‘Terawatt Barbie’. She had a whole story in mind where Petey the jerkhead drank secret chemicals and turned into a giant ugly extra-stupid monster, and then Terawatt and Pyre had to fly in and blast him into a pulp with lightning bolts and fireballs. Shar even made a ‘monster’ for them to fight. It was a pillowcase with a couple toys inside it so it was about the size of two basketballs, one on top of the other, only with stuff jutting out inside the pillowcase. Alex played along, but she sort of felt like she did enough superheroing for real that it wasn’t that much fun to do for playtime.
And she really wondered if lots of little girls were using their Terawatt Barbie dolls to be superheroines fighting bad guys and monsters. That might not be so bad, really. Maybe Mattel ought to come out with a giant spider and a giant blob and an Azure Crush doll for Terawatt Barbie to fight.
Still, just in case, the next morning, Alex called the elementary school and the Boys and Girls Club and gave them a heads-up, and warned them that Petey Johnson and his posse might be giving Shar some more hassle in the near future. The last thing Alex wanted was for Petey and his jerkhead friends to bully Shar to the point that she totally lost her temper and turned them into bully flambé.
* * *
Saturday morning was the first real problem. Alex wasn’t counting Shar’s nightmares, even if she probably ought to. But when Alex needed to turn into Terawatt and go off to her martial arts lesson, Shar wanted to go, too. It didn’t seem to matter what Alex said. Shar didn’t want Alex to go, and didn’t want Alex to leave her behind.
Even though the temperature in the kitchen was rising a lot, Alex’s mom went over and hugged Shar and said, “Honey, she’ll be back in a few hours. She’s not leaving you. She just has to do this by herself because Terawatt’s doing it, not Alex Mack.”
“But I wanna go, too! And I wanna learn how to beat up Petey Johnson!”
Alex asked, “How about I give you some lessons in private?”
Her dad suggested, “How about Terawatt takes her video camera and films some of her workout so you can watch it?”
Shar thought it over for a bit. “Ummm … okay. I guess.”
He smiled. “Good! Because I want to watch it, too. And while Alex is gone, you can help me in the yard, and then I’ll show you some cool chemistry stuff.”
“Okay … I guess …”
And that turned out pretty well, even if it was embarrassing showing her whole family what her martial arts lessons looked like. Shar cheered for her like it was some kind of sports event. And she acted like the forms Alex was doing were amazingly cool. Okay, maybe the sparring did look sort of cool, but that was because she was cheating a lot, with combinations of her powers and her training together. And when the sergeant tried a hip throw on her and she flew out of it and moved into a horse stance, that looked maybe more impressive than it was, because she had totally messed up and should have ended up slammed to the mat instead of making a quick escape.
Her mom gaped. “Alex, that was … really impressive!”
Her dad smiled. “Honey, you’re really doing great. I could never do that.”
Shar jumped up and down. “Teach me! Teach me!”
Alex admitted, “I’m really not that good if I don’t use my powers some. And you all could learn that stuff.”
Her mom hinted, “Maybe you could give us some lessons. Considering what’s happened to us over the past year or two, some self-defense classes might come in handy some day, especially if no one knew we had any training. And Shar really wants to learn.”
Alex figured she really did need to teach Shar, just so Shar had an option between ‘put up with mean jerks’ and ‘burn them alive’. Okay, Alex had only been learning for about half a year, and she totally wasn’t qualified to give martial arts lessons, but she needed to try.
She nodded. “Okay, how about everyone goes and gets changed into something loose. I’m going to move the couch and the chairs in here, and we’ll start with the white belt moves. One of the first really cool katas I’m going to teach you is called ‘obstructing the storm’ …”
“Wow!” exclaimed Shar.
* * *
Alex didn’t even realize there was a problem for another two weeks. She’d just flown home from her Saturday martial arts lesson and she was all hungry for a big lunch. But Ray and Robyn and Nicole and Louis all showed up at her door together. Alex realized something was up.
Oh. And her mom had lunch ready for everybody, so she knew they were coming. How long had it been since she’d had everyone over?
That was when it dawned on her that she’d been saying ‘no’ to everyone about everything ever since she brought Shar home. She hadn’t gone shopping with Nicole. She hadn’t hung with Robyn. She hadn’t been out on a date with Ray. She hadn’t done anything except do school stuff and take care of Shar for … umm … Was it almost a month?
Uh-oh.
She was a bad friend and a super-cruddy girlfriend. And she hadn’t Skyped with Willow or Hanna or Cindy or Annie or Grover except maybe a few times. Everybody probably hated her. Suddenly her appetite was totally gone. And then Willow drove up and came in, so Alex knew everyone was all there together to tell her she was a horrible friend.
She sat down at the table with everybody, and there was a ton of food, and she was so not hungry. She tried not to cry. She really did. She had to sniff a couple times as she stared at her plate and said in a small voice, “I’m really sorry. I’m not a good friend.” Then the tears just started leaking out of her eyes all by themselves even though she didn’t want them to.
And Shar was hugging her hard and saying, “Don’t cry. Please don’t cry.” She just hung onto Shar pretty hard. It was a good thing she didn’t have super-strength.
Ray gently told her, “That’s not why we’re here.”
Willow pouted. “We’re really worried about you, because you’re not getting out of the house anymore.”
Nicole pointed out, “All you do is go to school and go home.”
Alex insisted, “That’s not all I do! I take care of Shar.”
Her mom murmured, “Honey, when we said you needed to take care of Shar, we didn’t mean we wanted you to stop doing absolutely everything else.”
Robyn added, “It can’t be good for Shar, either. She’s got to learn she can depend on your folks … and your friends … and she’s got to have time to make new friends.”
Willow chipped in, “And some of us would like to spend time with just Shar. And with just you. You don’t have to be glued to her 24×7.”
Her mom gave Shar a look. “Look how sad Alex is. Don’t you want to make everything better for her?”
Shar hugged Alex some more and tried, “Maybe I could do more chores?”
Alex’s mom smiled gently. “Honey, you already do fine on your chores, and on keeping your half of the room clean most of the time. I mean, can you spend some of your time playing or reading or watching TV without Alex?”
Shar asked, “Will Alex stop crying?”
Alex hugged her some more and told her, “I’ll stop crying anyway. Really.”
Shar said to Alex’s mom, “I can do anything if it’ll make Alex feel better.”
Alex’s mom nodded. “Good. So how about we let Ray take Alex out on a date tonight?”
“Can I stay up until she gets home?”
Alex’s mom slowly shook her head. “I don’t think so. But you can talk to her all about it tomorrow.”
“Well … Okay.”
It wasn’t until Alex spotted the sneaky look on Willow’s face that Alex realized Willow had somehow orchestrated the whole thing to get Shar to give Alex some breathing room without doing anything that might make Shar mad or upset. Alex wondered if Willow was taking sneakiness lessons from Jack. Or maybe Jack suggested to Willow how to set it up.
So then, after lunch, Alex and Shar and Willow watched one of Willow’s DVDs and Ray and Nicole stuck around to watch, too. And Alex sat in Ray’s lap to watch. It was even one Alex hadn’t seen before. “The Iron Giant.” And there was a fake comic book superhero that the boy loved, and his name was Superman, and he had a kind of stupid costume that reminded Alex of old-timey ‘strongman’ guys in old circus acts, what with the red underwear on the outside and the billowing cape. Alex wondered if that was anything like the ‘Superman’ guy from Selina’s universe who could take a tactical nuke off his face.
But Alex sure didn’t expect the ‘Superman’ comic book character would be important at the end of the story, when the iron giant saved the town by flying up into space, posed like those Superman drawings with both arms forward, and sacrificed himself by crashing into the big missile. The iron giant whispered, “Superman.”
But Ray said, “What would Terawatt do?”
And the missile blew the iron giant to pieces. Alex went over and held Shar while they both cried.
But Willow insisted, “Don’t cry, look!” And they watched the end of the movie with the boy and the one piece left of the iron giant that the boy had. And it started moving. And glowing. And when the boy let it go, it rolled north and just kept going … until it joined up with dozens and dozens of other pieces of the iron giant that were all putting themselves back together!
Alex cried some more, but it was a happy cry. She sniffled, “That’s a great movie. How come I haven’t seen it before?”
Willow said, “It didn’t do that well in theaters. I think it was a bad advertising campaign.”
Shar insisted, “Terawatt could totally stop the bad missile without getting blown to pieces. That movie needed a Terawatt instead of a dorky fake comic book hero who isn’t even real.”
Alex told her, “Maybe they couldn’t get permission to use a real comic book guy, like a Marvel Comics guy. And the movie was made before Terawatt started showing up in places.”
Shar asked, “Can I watch it again while you’re out on your date?”
Alex smiled. “Sure. But you have to talk with Mom about how late you can be up and what you need to do if you’re not done watching the movie when it’s bathtime.”
Shar scrambled to her feet and went over and hugged Willow. “Thank you, thank you, thank you! This is gonna be my favorite movie forever!”
Willow hugged Shar and rested her cheek on Shar’s head. “You’re more than welcome, honey. It’s an aunt’s job to spoil her niece rotten. Even if Jack says I absolutely cannot buy you a pony.”
Shar sniffled some and said, “I wish I could show it to Daddy.”
Willow hugged her tighter. “I’m sure he’d love it, too.”
* * *
Alex had a great date with Ray, who was really nice even though she was a cruddy girlfriend who hadn’t gone out with him for a couple weeks. And maybe they necked in Ray’s car way past Alex’s curfew but her mom didn’t say anything about it. And Shar was sound asleep, cuddled up with the Pikachu plushie, when Alex got inside. But the next morning, Shar asked a jillion questions about the date while they got ready for church, and then at lunch after church, and while they were helping Alex’s dad in the yard, and even while Shar watched “The Iron Giant” again that evening.
And the next week went better, with Shar having a couple of playdates with little friends, and Petey Johnson getting in trouble at school for bullying, and Alex getting to go to the mall with Nicole, and getting to go over to Robyn’s house for dinner, and getting to go out on a date with Ray. Even if every time Alex went somewhere without Shar, Shar would say the Iron Giant line: “You stay … I go … No following.” If Shar wasn’t so darn cute, Alex would have gotten really tired of hearing that.
And Alex’s paper on religious symbolism in the works of Anne Bradstreet came back with a 96, and Nicole got a 91 on her paper, and Mina got an 88, so Alex was happy for them, too. And Alex had the highest score on the Friday chemistry quiz, which got Mr. Hooper to give her a huge smile and tell her she was ‘a chip off the old block’ and got a couple guys like Wade to look at her like ‘oh no it’s the second coming of Annie Mack and there go our grades!’. She was so not the second coming of Annie.
So naturally, there was going to be bad news waiting just around the corner for her. Saturday, when she was flying back home after her martial arts lessons, her tPhone went off. She tapped her earjack and said, “Terawatt here.”
It was Jack. “Tera, I wanted to give you the bad news first. Unless Acid Burn already beat me to it.”
“No colonel, you’re ahead of her.”
“For once. And we both know it’s only momentary. But Joelle Baker just vanished. She was working in the prison laundry one minute, and the next minute she’d gone missing. They went into full lockdown, and even an invisible woman shouldn’t be able to get out of there. And … Oh, crap, this is vanishing act number two. Victor Cready vanished from his cell last night.”
She asked, “Are you checking on every other GC-161 prisoner?”
Jack muttered, “Yeah, that’s why Homer and Jethro were checking on Cready.” He paused and told her, “Hang on, I’m putting you on hold for a second. Acid Burn’s calling me.”
A second later, the line went silent, and then Willow’s AutoTuned voice was on. “… And I’ve got the electronic copy of the prison logs, so nobody suspicious has been to see either of them, and the prison doctors’ computers say both are taking their antidote. Cready cooperates. Baker gets hers intramuscularly because she isn’t cooperating. Oh, wait, something new on their computer network! Baker’s fellow prisoners got interviewed and someone transcribed everything. One, a Patricia Anne Heyers, told the guards she saw a big silvery blob drop down out of an air vent and attack Baker and ‘eat’ her. Nobody believed her.”
Alex groaned. “Great, Danielle Atron grabbed her.”
Jack added, “Probably Cready as well. This looks familiar.”
Alex gritted her teeth. “I really hope this isn’t what it looks like. But if it is, we’ve got a pintsized surprise waiting for them at my house.”
Jack insisted, “I don’t want Charlene involved in this if we can avoid it. Hell, I don’t really want you involved in this sh–… stuff.”
Alex said, “I need to get back to base and give my support team a heads-up.”
Jack told her, “And the DHS is going to be giving all of California a big FYI on Blue Belle and Flamey the Wonder Ouchy, so they know what to look for. And the DHS is going to mobilize some forces. Maybe local cops can’t handle them, but I’m betting National Guard battalions can. Cready may be too tough for an unarmed police helicopter, but I figure a fully-loaded Viper can blast him out of the sky. And Baker may be bulletproof, but I doubt she can handle an Abrams firing anti-tank rounds at her.”
Alex winced. She didn’t like Jo Baker, but she didn’t want her to be blown to smithereens by a missile. And she had been hoping Mr. Cready would turn himself around. But if Danielle had him again, he might not have a lot of choice anymore.
She just told herself that she had beaten both of them before, and she could do it again if she had to. And if Danielle sicked both of them on her at the same time, maybe she could still win. Okay, maybe she needed to think about that one.
Interlude XVIVic Cready was nobody’s fool. He knew damn well what was going to happen to him if he didn’t get some antidote in the next couple of hours. And he knew damn well that Danielle Atron, may her soul rot in hell, wasn’t going to give him any.
She had him locked in a basement with a hottie who was in prison clothes, too. But the hottie was crazy enough to want to get her powers back. What the hell was wrong with that bitch?
He sat on the floor and tried not to think about how long it had been since he got laid. The babe was really tall, maybe four inches taller than him, and built like a brick shithouse, with tits that just wouldn’t quit. Long, sexy brunette hair. A decent face, even if she’d look a lot better with makeup. He wasn’t stupid enough to think that the hotties you saw in magazines and movies looked like that when they woke up in the morning. No, this babe was still hot even without any makeup at all.
And she was probably only twenty or so, maybe twenty-two tops, but definitely not twenty-five. As far as he could tell, she could be under eighteen, even if she was stacked. He’d done plenty of bad shit in his life, but rape and statutory rape were sure as hell not on that list. And he wasn’t starting now.
Not after he’d been in hell for several days. People talked about being in hell, but they didn’t know what the fuck they were talking about. He’d been in hell. He’d been stuck in that grotesque silvery form with no food and no water and no sleep and no breaks. He’d been burned alive, constantly, every second of every hour, every hour of every day, with no relief. He didn’t want to go through that ever again. Not in this life, and not after he died. That meant he had to do something to turn his life around so he didn’t go to hell after he died. And it meant he had to find some way to get out of here and get some antidote before he went up in flames again.
The girl turned and glared at him. “What the fuck are you lookin’ at, perv?”
He said, “You must be kidding me. You’re a fucking Sports Illustrated swimsuit model, and you’re asking me why I’m staring at you? How can you not know why I’m staring at you?”
She growled, “If I want some big ape to lie to me, I can find one who’s better lookin’ than you.”
He just gritted his teeth. He was not going to smack this bitch around. He didn’t hit women. Not unless he had to, like with that Somali bitch with the AK-47 who’d tried to put a dozen holes in him. “Nobody ever said I was Brad Pitt. But you can’t tell me you haven’t gotten to look in a mirror in the last ten years. Sure, you don’t have any makeup on, but I’m not stupid enough to think hot women look like cover girls when they have their makeup off. You’re hot. It’s obvious.”
She glared at him like she wanted to rip his face off. “Look asshat, I know I’m the fat, ugly toad.” She glanced down at her prison coverall-clad body and said, “I mean, I used to be really fat, too.”
He thought about the spare tire he used to pack around, and how he had a six-pack now, thanks to that bitch’s secret superpowers drug. He asked, “Atron gave you the stuff and it did that to you?”
She paced back and forth. “Yeah. Best thing that ever happened to me. It made me strong. I was finally strong enough to do what I wanted. And I wasn’t a great big lardbucket anymore. I just couldn’t take that Terawatt bitch. Fucking pretties with the hottie bodies, they all treat me like shit.”
He finally got it. This was like Tamara Hales from his old school. When Tamara finally got tall and lost all that baby fat, it took her months before she realized what every boy in her form had already spotted. Only poor Tamara got used like the town pump before she wised up. This bint was already hard. He said, “Then don’t listen to me. When you get out of this shithole, go get a makeover and see for yourself.”
She gave him a weird look. “What, you think I’m gettin’ out and you’re not?”
He grimaced. “I got no idea what your powers are, but mine suck. First, I turned into a silvery blob and I couldn’t turn back to normal. I was like that for … fuck, I have no idea how long. They just left me like that and waited around to see what happened. Then they dosed me with the stuff again, and I caught on fire. I couldn’t put it out. And I couldn’t make it stop burning me alive. I was like that for four fucking days before Terawatt kicked my ass and saved me. You can’t imagine what it’s like to be burning alive, nonstop, for four fucking days. I would’ve done anything for that antidote, and that bitch Atron wouldn’t let me have any.”
She smiled smugly. “I got strong. Really, really strong. Spiderman strong. I could flip a car over. Bullets bounced off me. I was … It was awesome. I can’t wait until my powers come back.”
Hell, someone else who still hadn’t learned something it took him a lifetime to figure out. He said, “It won’t matter. Someone’ll stop you. If it isn’t Terawatt, it’ll be someone worse. Maybe you can shrug off a few rounds from an M16, but I’ll bet you can’t shrug off a tank round. Or a cruise missile to the face. That bitch Atron wants us to go rip up Paradise Valley until Terawatt shows up, and then we kill her. If we can. She kicked my arse pretty hard, and you just admitted she stomped you.”
She clenched her hands into fists. “That’s all I got left. Stomp Terawatt. Find Alex Mack and rip her face off. Then I’m gonna kill every cop I can get my hands on until they kill me.”
“That’s it?” he asked. “That’s your big plan? Let Atron use you and then go out in a big blaze of glory?”
She shrugged. “I got nothing to go back to. My mom’s dead, and my dad’s pissed at me, not that he was ever much of a dad, even when he wasn’t doing hard time. I don’t have anybody. I’m a big nothing. I didn’t even graduate from high school. So what does it matter?”
Stupid bitch. “You’re thinking like a mook. Stop thinking small. You’re not the fat, ugly kid anymore. You got the magic superdrug. You could be anything you want now. One of those swimsuit models, or those starlets, or those women who stand around next to the cars at car shows. All you have to do is get out of here and vanish. Take off to someplace without an extradition treaty with America, like Brazil. Start living the good life.”
She stared up at the ceiling. “Even if you weren’t lyin’ your ass off, I can’t. The thing I didn’t tell you? I’m Azure Crush. When I get my powers, I turn blue all over. There’s no hiding that. So I got no choice.”
He told her, “There’s always a choice. Sometimes you just can’t see it for yourself. And sometimes it’s a shitty choice. But there’s always a choice.”
Like right now. He was figuring he had a couple of choices, none of them good. But he could probably get this bitch to kill him before he turned into a blob-shaped fireball again. If he had to. He’d tried breaking out of the place, but the basement windows were solid and made of those glass bricks that were frigging indestructible without a sledgehammer. And the door at the top of the stairs was a steel security door with no handle on his side. Atron had set it all up so he didn’t have much choice. And it looked like Azure Crush didn’t want a choice.
Stupid bitch.
The tiny bathroom didn’t have a door, but it had a toilet and a sink and a really small shower. He figured that was his best shot for now. Especially when he could feel the burning sensation in his hands and feet. He knew what that meant. It was only a matter of time before he started giving off a lot of heat, and then his clothes would start smoldering, and then … agonizing fireball and being burned alive nonstop.
Maybe he could stand under cold running water and keep the fire under control. Maybe. He told her, “My power’s coming on. I’m going to go stand in the shower. Once you get your powers and bust out of here, would you call the cops on me?”
“Hell no,” she insisted. “I want you working with me. I’m not letting that bitch Terawatt pull that shit on me again. I want you blasting her while I punch the shit out of her.”
“Not happening. I’m not flying around burning to death for hours. You have no idea what that’s like.”
She glared at him. “Fine. We can do this the hard way.” She turned away from him, and he saw that her hair on the back of her head was already starting to turn dark blue, from the roots outward. The color just kind of rippled out, like blue was leaking out of the back of her head and dripping down her hair.
She stomped into the bathroom, ripped the shower door off its hinges like it was nothing, and broke the faucet handles off. Then she ripped the showerhead off and twisted the steel pipe into a knot so water couldn’t come out.
She turned and faced him with a smirk. He could see her skin was turning blue. Not a strangling-to-death blue, but a kind of sexy blue. Not that he was seeing her as sexy right then. No, he was seeing her as some kind of monster. Maybe even a really stupid monster, because she was trapping herself in a room with a guy who was about to burst into flames.
He still warned her. “Not a good idea, babe. Once I burst into flame, I’ll be using up all the oxygen in here pretty damn fast. And this whole place will go up in flames.”
“Okay, good point.” She tiptoed up the wooden stairs to the security door at the top of the steps, like she was afraid she might smash the steps to pieces if she was careless. She clenched her teeth and made a fist. Then she punched the door right where the lock would be.
The door ripped open with a screech of abused metal.
She sneered, “Have fun burning alive, asshat. I’ve got people to see, bitches to maim, you know, the usual.”
He watched her walk out of the basement, and he realized he did have another choice. He ran up the stairs and ducked toward the back of the house. He heard the noise as Azure Crush kicked the front door off its hinges.
There. A wall phone. But this was probably an empty house, so the phone was probably turned off. Hell, the water was probably turned off so he’d had no chance to stand under cold water even if the bitch hadn’t screwed him over. He looked at the phone and whispered, “Please be hooked up. Please.” He yanked it from its cradle and listened for a dial tone.
Beeeeeeeeeeep. The phone was still hooked up. Maybe someone up there didn’t really hate him. He dialed 9-1-1 and got an operator. “This is Victor Cready. Escaped criminal Victor Cready. I need cops and a fire truck. I don’t know where this house is, but wherever it is, I’m pretty sure we’re in Paradise Valley or damn near it. Azure Crush just stomped out of here to go injure or kill someone named Aly Mack or something like that, then attack Terawatt, then kill as many cops as she can before she gets taken down. I need somebody to stop her. Terawatt, if you’ve got her. The cops, the National Guard, the fucking U.S. Army. I don’t care who. Just get somebody! And I’m about to catch on fire again, so I need that antidote shit pronto.”
When the 911 operator tried to keep him talking, he just set the phone down so it wouldn’t hang up. He needed those pricks to trace his call. Then he walked to what was left of the front door.
There was no way the locals could contain someone like Azure Crush. The first cops on the scene were going to be dead men. It would be hours, maybe days, before National Guard armored forces were here. And he had no idea if Terawatt was even in the United States now. The last thing he’d seen on the prison TV about her had her fighting monsters in Ireland, Italy, and Japan. Without a superhero, this town was fucked.
“You always have a choice, Vic,” he reminded himself. “Even if sometimes the choices suck.”
He gritted his teeth and pushed. He didn’t have a better description than that. He just knew that was how he summoned his fireballs. He screamed in agony as his hands caught on fire. The silvery crap followed only moments behind, but the pain didn’t stop. If anything, it got worse. The flames ran up his arms, and in seconds he was engulfed in fire. Once again, he was a sickening, inhuman, silver blob that was covered in bright orange flame. Once again, he was being burned alive and he knew it wouldn’t stop. Once again, he was in so much pain he could hardly think.
He flew out past the damaged door and down the street. He smashed into Azure Crush’s back hard enough to flatten himself, but still not hard enough to knock her over. All he managed to do was accidentally set her clothes on fire.
She whirled around, smashing him all the way across the street and into the curb. “What the fuck do ya think you’re doin’?” She ripped off her burning clothes and threw them aside.
It was so hard to make a sound while he was like this, but he tried. “No. You … can’t.”
She grinned ferally. “And you think you can stop me?”
Hell no, he couldn’t stop her. But all he had to do was stall her.
He hit her in the chest with a fireball. She cursed furiously, so that probably hurt her, but she wasn’t damaged. He threw a much bigger one, and she screamed in pain. And surprise. She really hadn’t thought he could hurt her. He threw another, and another.
She threw the front end of a car at him. It smashed into him, knocking him a hundred feet down the street. But he was just a blob. It hurt. A lot. But not nearly as much as the fire did. So he just came back for more.
He threw fireball after fireball at her, until he could hardly see for the pain. Maybe that was why he didn’t spot it when she tore a concrete slab out of that driveway and used it like a bat. He saw something massive swinging at him, and then everything went black.
* * *
She adjusted the knot in her scarf and strode forward with her roller bag to meet the mysterious Mr. Johnstone. Or rather, the supposedly mysterious Mr. Johnstone. As if dressing like a ’60s IBM salesman and using an obvious pseudonym made him mysterious, instead of moronic.
“Mr. Johnstone. I take it you are acquiescing to my demands?”
He grimaced. “My superiors have decided that they need to talk to you directly. We are a very wealthy organization, but fifty billion dollars and your own private island? That’s well outside the sort of payment I would be allowed to authorize. And you are a highly sought criminal.”
She shrugged carelessly. “That’s why I arranged for a diversion, and it’s why I’m interested in my own private island. No one’s going to be expending the effort to look for me here, when there’s a disaster in the making not that far north of us.”
He said, “It won’t be that easy. Our private plane will only go as far as Mexico City. We’ll need to transfer to a commercial jet there, and we’ll need to do it in a public venue. Even in Mexico, you’re a wanted woman.”
She rolled her eyes. “Are you really that dense? I don’t have to walk around like you do.” She put her hand on the rolling suitcase beside her and metamorphosed into her silvery form. Then she poured herself into the suitcase. She reversed the process and told him, “I won’t be there. You’ll just be wheeling a heavy roller bag around.”
He reluctantly nodded. “Very well, Ms. Atron. Welcome to The Collective.”