Emergence (40 page)

Pan jumped into the air and lit out around the building as fast as he could go, Rapido’s derisive laughter dwindling behind him.

He knew Rapido was faster. That didn’t matter. He was also stupid.

Tortoise and the Hare, he thought.

He shot around the building and soon came back to where he’d entered the track.

Rapido was still standing there, bouncing like a dumb ape in the zoo for the camera.

He turned around and saw Pan.

“Yo, Pan! Time’s up! I’m comin’ for you, bitch!””

Then he was a blur heading around the bend. Showboating. He would circle the building and come up behind at terminal velocity.

Pan had less than three seconds, he figured.

He went to the dead janitor’s vacuum and ripped the extension cord free. Then he flew to the opposite wall and punched below a light ensconced there, found the pipe that protected the wiring, and hooked the plug of the cord tight around it so it stretched across the track from wall to wall.

Then, he returned to the center of the track, standing in front of the extended cord.

No flying, huh? He’d show this asshole flying.

He threw his knife as a blur flashed around the far corner and shot toward him.

It was too fast to see, but as the knife spun off toward the left hand wall, he knew Rapido had quickly, derisively batted it aside.

But the distraction was enough.

“The thing about fighting a speedster,” Father Eladio had told him once, “is if they ain’t careful, they tend to run faster than they can see. You gotta distract `em. Use their velocity against `em.”

Rapido crashed into Pan. He had no idea how fast the guy was going. Enough to turn the rubber flooring on the track behind him into molten tar. Enough to burst through Pan’s body entirely…had he been standing.

Instead, Pan had lifted himself no more than eight or ten inches off the ground. Rather than striking a solid target, it was like Rapido collided with a balloon.

Pan went spinning away, yes. He hit the wall hard enough to black out for a second, his brain rocking in his skull.

Rapido shot straight ahead, a particularly short marathon runner, his neck struck the extension cord stretched across the track. He was running so fast that in less than a half second he had pulled it taut. The instant after that, he decapitated himself. His head spun in the air and bounced off the track, his expression one of strained confusion. Like a table-bound chicken, his body kept on running, and without any mind to guide it, smashed right into the window he’d earlier thrown Pan against.

The weakened window exploded outward.

The speedster’s body hurtled out into space, right into the tail of the news chopper with all the force of an express train. The helicopter pitched and spun violently, and hurtled out of the air, crashing down on the roof of a neighboring five-star hotel.

Pan lay on his back a few minutes, waiting for the world to stop spinning and ringing.

“Nice play, kid,” said the Thrasher. “Little extreme for my tastes, but I knew you could do it.”

The cameraman in the news chopper, though. And the pilot. He hadn’t intended for them to get caught up in that. He sat up and went to the edge of the broken window, booting Rapido’s blinking head off the edge where it spiraled down into the dark. The cool night air whipped at him.

The helicopter was burning on the roof of the hotel, and he could see tiny figures struggling to get away from it.

One of the hook-and-ladder trucks was pulling to a stop in front of the hotel. He should go down there and help.

“Don’t do it, Pan. Concentrate on getting upstairs,” the Thrasher warned. “You jump out that window this bastard might throw eight or ten kids down after you.”

“Those guys in the chopper…”

“I show them as okay. Busted up, but okay. Let the guys downstairs do their jobs. You do yours.”

Pan stepped away from the ledge and rubbed his face to mask his talking.

“You said there were twenty-four heat signatures. Twenty-three kids and…?”

“Either it’s the teacher or whoever’s holding them hostage.”

Pan floated toward the door.

“I DIDN’T LIKE RAPIDO VERY MUCH. HE HAD A BIG MOUTH,” said the deep voice on the intercom. “AND NO HEAD FOR THIS SORT OF THING, OBVIOUSLY. ELEVATOR’S WAITING FOR YOU.”

Rapido
did
have a big mouth.

Because now Pan had a name.

Hook
.

FIFTEEN

Pan watched the elevator’s progress. The floors ticked off. Sixteen. Seventeen. Eighteen.

“YOU’VE DONE REALLY WELL SO FAR, PAN. MAYBE WE’LL EVEN SEE EACH OTHER. I WANT TO SEE YOU. AND I KNOW SLIGHTLY DOES, TOO. I HAVE A SURPRISE FOR YOU. A HERO DESERVES A REWARD FOR GETTING THIS FAR.”

What did
that
mean?

“Okay, listen Pan,” said the Thrasher. “I’ve got to leave you for a little bit. I promise I’ll be back.”

Pan said nothing. He couldn’t betray himself to the camera, but he began to sweat. Having the Thrasher in his ear like this, it felt like someone was with him. Could he really keep going all alone?

“Things are getting really hairy downtown,” the Thrasher explained. “I’ve got to get down there and help.”

Tantrum. Had A-Frame or Pecos been hurt? Had too many cops or National Guardsmen died? Were the P.O.N.E. guys out? Jesus, he should be there too. What was he doing here when all that was going on?

“Just keep at this. Do your part here. You’ve got to find out who’s doing this. It looks like he’s taking you up to the twentieth floor. That’s the daycare, man. You’re halfway. Get those kids out safe. I
will
be back. I swear it.””

The hint of an edge in the Thrasher’s voice suggested he wasn’t really sure he’d be back. God, what had happened? He had beaten Tantrum himself. Couldn’t three TCA chimerics and a P.O.N.E. squad do it?

No, don’t get cocky. He knew goddamn well it had been more luck than skill that had won out at the stadium. So, how could he hope to beat a skyscraper full of supervillains when he was half-dead already?

The elevator stopped at twenty, just as the Thrasher had said it would.

“Twenty-three kids, Pan. One teacher. You’ve got this, you hear? You’ve
got this
.”

The doors opened.

Long, door-lined corridors stretched in both directions, but a sign on the door ahead read
VULPES PLAZA CHILDCARE AND DAY SCHOOL
.

He tried the knob. It was a cold, amorphous lump; melted hours ago. He kicked the door in.

A pickup area for parents. A reception desk. Bright yellow and orange walls. Rainbow motifs. Balloons. Some kind of mascot that looked like a smiling, cherubic cartoon fox with big trustworthy eyes and a bushy tail in overalls with a puckish red baseball hat on backwards and colorful patches on the knees. Not the most well-thought-out character to represent a daycare.

Who trusts a fox with their kids?
he found himself thinking.

A word balloon coming from the gleeful, winking fox’s lips read:
ALL ADULTS MUST SIGN IN
.

The wink made the statement unseemly somehow.

Twenty-three kids beyond this room. The Brown Thrasher said they were alive.

He also said there was someone else in there. A teacher, scared out of her gourd, or another of the War Gods? Or someone else?

Pan walked into the waiting room cautiously.

“YOU ALMOST LOOK LIKE YOU BELONG HERE, PAN. YOU DON’T LOOK A DAY OLDER THAN THIRTEEN. THE DAY YOU ‘DIED,’ RIGHT? OH, WHAT AN AGE. THE TWILIGHT OF CHILDHOOD. NOT LIKE THESE. THESE ARE THE BRIGHT NOON OF INNOCENCE. WAIT TILL YOU SEE THEM. THEY’RE ALL SO BEAUTIFUL. HOW CAN THEIR PARENTS STAND TO LEAVE THEM HERE DAY AFTER DAY? LEAVE THEM IN FRONT OF THE TELEVISION, THE COMPUTER? THOSE ARE WINDOWS TO SUCH WICKEDNESS THESE DAYS. I LOVE CHILDREN SO MUCH. IT’S SUCH A SHAME, GROWING UP, WATCHING THE SHADOWS OF AGE FALL ACROSS THEIR BRIGHT EYES, SEEING THE ELECTRONIC GLOW OF THEIR HARDWIRE MOTHERS DIM THEIR DREAMS. I’D KEEP THEM ALL LIKE THIS IF I COULD. I ENVY THEM. TWO IS THE BEGINNING OF THE END.”

Two is the beginning of the end
…he recognized that last bit from somewhere.

Pan grimaced. He didn’t want to listen to this creep anymore. Being stuck forever in the ‘twilight of childhood’ sucked, and he couldn’t imagine being a toddler the rest of your life would be much better. The further people got from childhood the less they remembered all the things they couldn’t do, all the places they couldn’t go, all the petty disappointments and restrictions that weighed down on a kid. Patronizing teachers. Adults turning out to be less than they were supposed to be. Promises broken. Bullies. Everything in the past looked better to somebody speeding away from it. When you were idling, watching everybody else pass on, that was the shame.

Anyway, he suspected he wouldn’t like Hook’s plan to keep all children as they were.

“JUST LIKE I ENVY YOU. TO BE YOUNG FOREVER. HOW MANY MEN HAVE SPENT FORTUNES TO LEARN THAT SECRET? AND I FOUND IT BY ACCIDENT.”

Pan paused, fists clenched.

Had this Hook just admitted to planting the bomb at Perennial?

Hook. The nemesis of Pan in the books. Who could this be? Some higher up studio exec at Perennial he hadn’t been able to find? He had to have resources and influence to be able to have pulled all this off. Engineering Tantrum’s rampage and subsequent escape, taking over Vulpes Plaza. Providing Karasau with that armor. Getting the War Gods together. Who was he? Somebody here at Vulpes? That might make sense.

There had been a line Barrie had written into Peter Pan, about how Hook wasn’t his real name and that revealing who he really was “
would, even at this date, set the country in a blaze
.”” Most people didn’t know that Hook had been a man of influence masquerading as a pirate, too.

He crept down the hall, past a dim classroom, heard a whimper ahead and turned his mind from Hook.

He floated a few inches off the ground. It was quieter. He drifted toward the sound, knife drawn.

As he neared a door marked
ART SUPPLIES
, it banged open and a man in khakis and a yellow polo shirt over a white sweater rushed out, an easel held over his shoulder like a bat. He was Mexican, early twenties, hair trim and neatly combed.

He yelled and Pan had to throw up his hand to keep the guy from smashing him in the head. The folded wooden easel broke into pieces on his arm and the man in the polo shirt jumped at him and threw his hands around Pan’s neck.

Pan twisted and flung him down to the floor.

“Don’t!” a little girl called from the darkness of the art supply closet.

Pan looked back, confused, then down at his attacker, groaning.

He saw the smiling fox emblem on the man’s shirt where an alligator should’ve been.

Pan let his feet touch the floor and backed toward the supply closet. Shrill screams met his appearance.

“Don’t hurt them!” the man on the ground whined, getting dazedly to his feet.

“I won’t. I’m here to get them out of here. Who are you?”

“Mister Zapata?” the unseen little girl called out.

“It’s all right, Melanie. It’s all right,” said Mr. Zapata, apparently the teacher, scrambling over. He reached inside the sizable walk-in closet and turned the light on.

Twenty some kids huddled together on the floor, amid shelves of crayon boxes, paints, and packages of colored construction paper. They ranged from ages five to nine or ten. A few screamed again and hid their faces.

“He’s all bloody!” Melanie whined, running to hug Mr. Zapata’s leg. She was six or so, rusty red hair and a face sprinkled with freckles. Ponies danced on her shirt and pink skirt, and her little legs were encircled by pink and white stripes.

Pan glanced down at his bleeding side and torn gloves. He slid off his cowl.

There was a hush from the children, then they one and all forgot their terror. The little ones came out from behind their dimpled hands, blinking curiously, and the older ones pressed toward him.

“You’re just a kid!” said one of the older boys.

“He’s Pan! I saw him on the news!” said a girl next to him.

“Oh-my-gosh,
he’s hot
,” whispered another behind her hand.

“What, like Peter Pan?” the first kid said, and his expression showed he wasn’t impressed with that.

“He beat Tantrum!”

“Yeah, and he wrecked the baseball stadium! My dad hates you,” said a dark-haired kid, stepping forward and jabbing his hip with one hand. “He had season tickets for the Rogers and they won’t give him his money back.”

“Alright, Donnie, that’s enough,” said Mr. Zapata. He looked at Pan. “You’re really here to get us out?”

Pan nodded. “There’s nobody else here?”

“Nobody,” Mr. Zapata confirmed. “A couple…people……like you, I guess…came in this morning and dragged away Mrs. Kinsey. She’s the regular teacher. I’m the assistant.””

As an afterthought, he put out his hand. “Margorito.”

Pan took his hand, but didn’t give a name.

“The one in charge, bald guy, all in red,” said Margarito. “He could set his hands on fire. He scared the kids, told us all to sit here. Then he shut the door, and I watched him…I guess he heated up the knob or something. It glowed red. I couldn’t even touch it. I tried pouring water on it, but it was melted or something. We’ve been stuck here all day. Lucky there’s a bathroom and the kids had lunches. We heard explosions earlier though. What’s going on?”

“I’m getting you all out of here right now.”

“But what is this? You’re like twelve-years old!”

“No, I’m not,” said Pan, looking him in the eye.

Margarito narrowed his eyes, but then he nodded, accepting the truth of it.

“All right, what do we do?”

“Which way to the emergency stairwell on this floor?”

“Down the hall to the left, past the elevator.”

Pan nodded, replaced his mask, and turned to the kids. “Okay you guys, we’re gonna use the buddy system. You know what that is?”

One of the older girls held up her hand before answering. “It means we all pick a partner and watch each other.”

“Right. So pick a partner, all of you.”

“Do we gotta hold hands?” Donnie asked.