Hero Unit (6 page)

She took a calming breath and started towards
the main doors. After a couple of steps she broke into a slow run
and hammered her way through the main door. The thick, bulletproof
glass flexed around her and tore free of its casing like a piece of
plastic wrap.

To her right she heard people shouting. She
looked into a scene that would have been comical under different
circumstances. There were desks and chairs flying around the room
causing three of the four people in the room to have to duck and
dodge. On top of flying furniture the air temperature was
fluctuating wildly between summer heat and winter chill.

One of the Antis stood out from the rest and
seeing him made Ace sigh. He was big, probably close to seven feet
tall. Ace was pretty sure his muscles had muscles, but he moved
with as much grace as a dancer. He simply let the flying furniture
smash off of him.

Careful with him.

At the sound of the breaking door he turned
and saw her. “It’s the Fifth bitch! Time for me to show her what a
real Fortress can do!” He charged.
Of course he’s charging.
Every last guy like him is dumb as a box of rocks.
Ace stood
her ground and let him run right into her.

He was big, so he was probably used to being
stronger than even other Fortress Class. And since Ace wasn’t he
probably didn’t believe a word about her, despite all evidence to
the contrary. As he crashed into her, like a linebacker, Ace
reversed her kinetic dampening field. She didn’t turn all of his
momentum against him, that would have torn him in half, but she let
just enough bleed back to incapacitate him.

The Anti screamed in pain as the bones and
muscles of his shoulder were crushed by a small measure of the
force he had generated. She watched the downed Fortress Class for a
moment, waiting for his regeneration to stop the bleeding. Well
before he was completely healed she put suppressor cuffs on him.
Moving his arms to cuff him made the damage worse, but he would be
fine.

Satisfied he was taken care of, Ace turned
her attention elsewhere. “You are all under arrest,” she shouted.
Her voice was much louder than the noise being created by crashing
furniture. Exceptional strength was not limited to skeletal
muscles.

Everything stopped once she spoke. The office
rearranged itself back to almost perfect order and the
uncomfortable temperature shifts stopped. The remaining three Antis
looked at her and down at their Fortress and then back to her. They
were wearing identical looks of worry. Clearly they had
overestimated the abilities of their Fortress. She left him on the
floor moaning in pain and walked into the room.

“Put down any weapons you may have and put
your hands behind your heads. Any further use of powers will be
treated as resistance and I will respond in kind,” Ace continued
walking towards the nearest Anti.

He quickly put his hands behind his head and
fell to his knees. Ace put suppressors on him. The other two were
still looking at her, but they looked pissed. They were both women
and it was hard to tell what they could do. Only Fortress Class
Exceptionals had Quirks that identified them easily.

Which is just not fair. Everyone knows not
to piss of hulking brutes.

“Do you really think you’re going to get out
of this?” she asked.

“You have to take us alive,” one woman said.
That marked her as a Mental Class, probably a mind reader if she
knew about Torment’s orders.

She’s the blocker.

“You’re right, but you’ll live with broken
legs,” Ace replied.

That seemed to give them pause. And that was
all Ace needed. She closed on the one she thought was a telepath
and had her cuffed in suppressors and on the ground before either
realized she’d moved. The other drew a gun and fired, clearly more
on instinct. Those bullets that actually hit Ace fell to the floor.
She’d turned her kinetic dampening field back to negation.

“Really?” Ace said and closed the distance
between her and the final Anti. “You have the right to remain
silent.”

The woman made a noise somewhere between a
scream and a whine. Ace also cuffed her. Once she’d finished
reading them their rights she asked, “Are there any others here?”
It was possible that they missed someone.

There was no answer. Ace sighed and radioed
out to Torment. “Four suspects apprehended. They have a Fortress
Class that is going to require medical attention. The other three
are unharmed. All four are in suppressor cuffs.”

“Maniac says the technomancer is-” Torment’s
reply cut off.

“Still loose,” Ace finished and started
looking around. It was going to be difficult to find the last Anti.
The building was huge and if she was cut off from the outside she
would have to go floor by floor until she found something, or she
could ask some questions. Since they had sent her in first protocol
dictated that the others had wait for her to clear the scene before
coming in.

She went to the one Anti that had surrendered
the quickest. “Where is the technomancer?” she asked. Her voice
came out hard. The Anti started shaking and said, “I don’t know. He
was supposed to go after their servers. I haven’t seen him since we
broke in.” He sounded terrified. That was the way she preferred her
Antis; scared to death of her, made life easier.

You’re lucky he didn’t piss himself.

Now she just had to find where the servers
were.

You have another option.

Ace put some distance between herself and the
cuffed Antis. No need for them to know what she was about to do.
She took a deep breath and closed her eyes. Again there was the
sense of natural laws rearranging and changing to suit her. It
wasn’t often that she used her mind powers. There was really only
one thing she could do, find other Exceptionals, but it took all of
her concentration to do it.

Just breathe and focus. It’ll come back
quick.

That she had mind powers was one secret that
only a very select few new, and she planned on keeping it that way.
People were already scared enough by her. If word got out that she
had mental powers, even severely limited ones, people would start
panicking whenever she was around. She had enough to deal with
without adding that in.

Focusing her thoughts she started searching
for the presence of other Exceptionals. It took some work. Her
under-used mind powers reacted like atrophied muscles. It took them
a while to start up. Eventually she found what she was looking for.
In the basement there was an upper tier Fourth. Now she just had to
find the stairs down.

A quick search of the lobby turned up what
she was looking for. Before she went down she cuffed the three
uninjured Antis to their still moaning Fortress. Satisfied that
they weren’t going anywhere she went down the stairs.

The basement was actually two stories down
and it got progressively cooler as Ace descended. She didn’t bother
with trying to hide her entrance. The technomancer would be
expecting her since they had already disrupted her radio. That was
quite the feat since Maniac was doing her best to distract the
Anti.

The door at the bottom of the stairs opened
to a massive room. There was only dim illumination, but there were
plenty of small blinking LEDs in reds, yellows, greens and blues.
It was disconcerting as she looked for her target, like she was
being watched by glowing eyes.

You’ve played DOOM way too much.

Eventually she spotted the technomancer
sitting in a distant corner. He had a laptop across his knees and
his eyes were so focused on it that he never heard her approach.
“Close the computer and put your hands behind your head,” Ace said,
loud enough to be heard throughout the huge room.

The Anti looked at her and she flinched at
the madness in his eyes. It was worse than Technosis. “You dare
oppose me?” he shouted. “Do you know who I am?!”

“You’re under arrest,” Ace replied.

You’ve been waiting for a chance to say that
one haven’t you?

“Human laws have no-” he began, but Ace cut
him off, having heard this particular tirade already. He sounded
just like Technosis. “Have no hold over you, right. I’m here as an
officer of the law. And I can tell you that you are wrong, so
unless you have a way of dealing with me,” he trembled a little,
“you are still under arrest.”

The Anti stared at her, confusion and anger
warring across his face. Ace approached him, taking out her last
pair of suppressor cuffs. That’s when he tried to fight her. He
thrashed and kicked, sending his laptop skittering across the floor
and the rest of the equipment he’d been using was thrown into
disarray. Ace calmly continued reciting his rites as she carried
him upstairs to where the others were waiting.

Chapter
7

“Well, Maniac disabled their fail-safes successfully.
We have the five of them in lockup waiting for interrogation,”
Torment said as she sat down at Ace’s desk.

“That’s some good news I suppose. I just hope
we can get some useful information out of them,” Ace replied still
working on her report. It had taken a better part of the night to
get the crime scene wrapped up. She was starting to get
irritable.

You’re always irritable when you have to do
paperwork.

“The Captain thinks the technomancer is going
to be our best bet. He’s going to get an insanity plea easy. He’s
as bad off as Technosis, if not worse. Do you think Emily would be
willing to help?” Torment said.

That was surprising. Emily was still an Unreg
as far as Ace knew. She had no obligation, or even any right to use
her powers to aid the E.E.D. “I couldn’t tell you for sure,
Torment,” Ace replied. Then she remembered that Emily had said she
was willing to do something. “She has said she is willing to go
over what she learned about the people in her building with us.
Like I said I think there was an HSO operative in her
building.”

“What makes you say that? I read your
message, but I want to hear it directly. I might be able to pick
more out that way,” Torment asked.

Ace knew what that meant, Torment wanted to
relive the conversation as it had happened between her and Emily.
“He, Technosis that is, was her coworker up until about a year ago.
Apparently the HSO nabbed him while he was on vacation,” Ace
replied. As she spoke to did her best to recall the conversation in
its entirety. “She and I both think that someone in that building
was a plant to find disgruntled Exceptionals.”

“Was Technosis disgruntled?” Torment asked.
Ace could feel her looking through her memories. It was a fairly
common process that Torment was using. It was one of the reasons
all E.E.D precincts had a Mental Class in charge. They could
extract more information from the Heroes this way than through
simple questioning.

“He didn’t like Tomahawk and his vocal
position that all Exceptionals had a responsibility to serve
mankind,” Ace replied.

Torment sighed; she and Tomahawk had been
good friends. It was how Ace and Torment had first met. “Tomahawk
angered a lot of Exceptionals with his opinions. I’m glad to see
they didn’t rub off on you.”

Ace smiled. “They did, I’m just not as vocal
about it. People are nervous enough around me; I don’t need to give
them more reason to be.”

“How are you handling that? People’s reaction
to you I mean,” Torment asked. Along with being their team lead she
was also the team psychiatrist. She knew that the way people
perceived Ace had a lot of influence on her.

You’re handling it the best you can.

Ace shrugged. “I don’t really know. Most
people around here are so used to the Exceptionals that I was just
another one on the list to them. Regular people aren’t the problem,
hell even Exceptionals aren’t the problem. Most of them don’t
believe half of what they’ve been told about me. I’m the one that’s
the issue right now. Every time I use my powers I’m afraid I’m
going to hurt someone unintentionally. I even felt bad when that
stupid Anti ran into me earlier. He knew who I was, but he didn’t
believe, or didn’t want to believe it. How is he, by the way?”

“Turbo? He’ll live. His shoulder was pretty
much destroyed, but Moses took care of that,” Torment replied.

“I’m glad to hear it,” she said and then
shook her head. “You see what I mean? He would have killed me given
half the chance, but I feel sorry that he hurt himself because of
my powers. That has got to be the stupidest thing I’ve ever said.”
She was very carefully not gesturing while she spoke. As worked up
as she was even a stray movement could be dangerous.

Torment smiled. “I would call that compassion
Ace, not stupidity. You understand, better than most, just what you
are capable of. And, no, I don’t think it’s fair that you are the
only Fifth; that you are the only one that has to deal with that
much power. At the same time I’m glad that it is you. Because you
are so concerned about others there is less risk of you abusing
your powers.”

“Never again,” Ace said. She’d only done it
once; the day Tomahawk had been killed. Torment knew about that.
Most Exceptionals in the E.E.D knew about that. It was the one time
she had let the full force of her power out in a fit of rage. She’d
leveled an entire industrial park before the Mental Class on scene
had been able to reach her.

I was a big part of that.

“Never say never, Ace. All of us are
vulnerable to temptation. Especially if we think we are doing
something for everyone’s good. If I wanted to I could drive
everyone in this room mad, bend them to my will and make them do
just as I pleased. Even if I thought I was doing it for their own
good, even if I had the best of intentions it matters not. It would
be an abuse of my power and my responsibility as one with power.
The temptation is there for all of us. That’s why the Hero Units
exist. We are the line, the ones who guard even the greatest of
them, from the weakest of us,” Torment said.