Masks (Out of the Box Book 9) (38 page)

So naturally, when a real, honest-to-goodness hero said something truly kind about me, I swallowed my tears, changed the subject and swooped down to help save the day. As one does.

I wanted to believe the best in myself, that I could be a better me—my best possible self, I heard it called—but I had a lot of baggage weighing me down. I swung around the building once, trying to lay eyes on the interior, which was dimly visible through shattered windows and lengthening shadows. I could see the glint of guns within.

Eve
, I said in my head, and felt the reluctant German grunt.
You too, Bjorn. Let’s mess with some minds up in this bizznatch.

What is … bizznatch?
Bjorn asked. I could feel his befuddlement in my head.

You are a bizznatch
, Eve said snidely.

“Working together here, team,” I said, trying to pull them back in line before the bickering started. “We have a limited amount of time, after all.” I almost flew past a window, and then I saw a guy. I zipped around, shot low, and then came surging up like Iron Man or something, right in front of his face when he’d just seen me fly right.

His face didn’t even have a chance to completely show his shock before I blasted him with a light web, encircling him utterly with it, trussing him up like I’d bound him in duct tape. His mouth was covered over, but I could see his eyes, wide and fearful, underneath the light mesh. He had a SCAR assault rifle, but the way I’d bound him, the barrel was shoved hard into his thigh. He fell back with a light thump, rolling slightly, a little like a turtle on its back.

“I’d safety that if I were you,” I said, dodging around him so that I wasn’t in the line of fire. His eyes followed me, frightened. “I mean, you could try and shoot to warn your buddies I’m coming, but it looks to me like your barrel is butted up against your femoral artery, and there’s no way an ambulance would get here in time to save you from bleeding to death, so …” I shrugged. “The choice is yours, mercenary, but if I were you, I’d wait it out and let the cops come get you, because bleeding out is—”

The rifle cracked, and I heard the merc’s agonized grunt as the bullet ripped through his leg, followed by two more. The idiot had held down the trigger, like a moron, and now he was gushing blood all over the place.

“Thanks for nothing,” I said and kicked him unconscious. I probably should have done that to begin with, but unfortunately, my strength is not a thing I have full control over, so he went flying, right over the edge of the open window.

“No killing,” Jamie said, slipping in, lifting the merc back in as she entered. She did a double take at the geyser of blood shooting out from his leg, and her mouth fell open as she looked at me accusingly.

“I did
not
do that,” I said in mild protest, “he shot himself to warn his buddies we’re coming, so—” I waved a hand behind me, toward a nearby staircase, where the sound of pounding boots was audible as bad guys were coming our way. “Might want to get ready to defend against an onslaught of bullets.”

No sooner did I get the words out than three guys with SCAR rifles came pounding down the stairs. I was all set to net the rifles out of their hands, but I was a trace too slow, because their rifles went flying, and then the men themselves came together in one giant crunch, like they were trying to create a rugby scrum, but they did it at top speed. I heard the clunk of heads and the groans of pain as their noggins met, and then all three slumped to the ground, their hands tight to their sides and their backs anchored to one another.

I stared at the bizarre spectacle of their little unconscious huddle. “Did you just—”

“Let’s go,” Jamie said, hurrying across the room and stepping over them.

There was graffiti everywhere in this place. Shattered walls collapsing all around, turn of the last century architecture gone to seed, brick crumbling, creepy old medical equipment left out like whoever had been here hadn’t needed it anymore. The writing on the walls made me think of the most ragged-ass parts of cities I’d been to. We hoofed it down the stairs toward where we’d heard these guys come from, but silently, our feet a little off the ground by mutual, unspoken accord. This was a stealth mission, in spite of the screw-ups that had already happened.

We came quietly out of the stairs on the landing below and Jamie peeked around the corner, drawing a sharp breath. “She’s here,” she said so quietly only a meta could have heard her, and then I listened hard, and heard a below-the-breath cry as a young lady far down the hall tried to hold in a sob.

Captured by armed mercenaries, scared for your life, trying not to show fear or weakness to them? Yeah, that sounded about right.

“What do you think is going to be waiting for us?” Jamie asked, breathing quietly.

“I don’t know, but probably more than just mercs,” I said. “I don’t think they want you walking away from this alive.” It was something that had been bothering me all along, probably because I’d had a few martyr fantasies last year when it seemed to me like everyone—including my own brother—hated me. “It’s not enough that your enemies destroy your reputation and your life. They have to bring you down while you’re ruined and can’t fight back. That way you die in darkest despair, believing the worst of everybody, and uh …” I tried to moderate my tone, “… you know. That you’ll never be vindicated, that they’ll all have taken you for granted, and …” I decided to stop before I outed myself. “It’s the ultimate way to bring down a hero. Tarnish their rep so people think they’re not a hero anymore, kill them while they’re down so there’s no hope of redemption.”

She blinked a couple times, slowly. “I never cared what people thought of me. I just wanted to do the right thing, whether anyone appreciated it or not.”

I felt a certain tightness in my chest. “However this ends, you won’t be remembered like they’re painting you. I promise.”

She smiled faintly, but she didn’t ask the obvious question—
How can you, Sienna Nealon, do anything about that?
Instead, she said, “I believe you.”

And then she ducked low around the corner, and I heard men scream.

I dodged around behind her, following close, hands up, nets at the ready. I wasn’t at my best, but I was still wicked fast, and I peeled off two guys with guns that she missed, coming out of a room below the staircase while Jamie rammed three guys together with gusto like she had on the floor above. They crumpled together, and she sent them flying into the concrete staircase with a thump—but not too hard. I trussed up my two and we swept forward like a tactical team. Well, I walked like a tactical team.

Jamie broke into a run, hurrying toward her daughter like she hadn’t seen her in a year.

“Kyra,” she hissed in a whisper as she hurried through the shadowy darkness of the crumbling hospital. Outside I could see the light of day shining down, but in here, it was like being under the shade of a great pavilion.

“Mom?” Kyra called back. She was bound to a chair, like every hostage in every movie I’d ever seen. She rattled the damned chair anxiously, the disbelief spreading over her face as she took in the fact that her mother was dressed as Gravity Gal. “Mom?” she said again.

“It’s me,” Jamie said, ducking low behind her. I heard a snap, and the ropes that anchored Kyra to the chair ripped as Jamie pulled her daughter to her feet. She wasn’t exactly like a miniature Jamie—the nose was rounder, her hair a darker shade of blond. I didn’t see much resemblance, honestly. Kyra gave me a once-over.

“Is—is that Sienna Nealon?” she asked her mom, staring at Jamie in confusion as her mom grabbed her by the arm in preparation to launch her out the window.

“Literally standing right here where you could ask me,” I said, then looked at Jamie. “Let’s vamoose before this thing goes sidewa—”

“HOLD IT RIGHT THERE!” The shout rattled the walls of the near empty building, and I felt my best possible self take a hit.

Scott Byerly was standing right at the window we were about to fly out of, streams of water propelling him into the building. I looked behind us to try another avenue, and found Guy Friday bulging up, ready to block our exit on the opposite side, and then a final sweep found—dammit—

“Frost!” Jamie shouted as Captain Effing Frost walled up the exit with a solid wall of ice at the far end of the room, where we entered, blocking the staircase and cutting off our retreat. “You—”

“It’s all over,” Scott said, and I was pretty damned sure he was right as I looked back and saw, under the chair—naturally—a bomb, with the requisite timer, counting down from two minutes.

“There’s an effing bomb right there!” Sienna shouted at the chair. Jamie saw it, gawking, trying to shelter Kyra between her and the three metas who stood against them—Friday, Scott Byerly, and Captain Frost.

“Sure there is,” Byerly said, striding forward coldly, closing the circle around them as Friday lurched forward as well. The man looked like a gorilla in a black mask, hulking and intimidating. “Let’s make this fast,” Byerly said, and then lunged toward Sienna, blasting water toward her as she disappeared behind his rush of liquid.

“Yeah, I like fast,” Friday said, grunting, coming at Jamie as she dodged back, Kyra behind her. Frost came at her, too, leering, furious, and Jamie felt trapped. Ice had walled them in on this side, and now these two men were corralling her. She didn’t have a clear line toward anything strong enough to anchor to; at least not anything she felt comfortable anchoring to, not in this collapsing, derelict building.

“Hold on, Kyra,” Jamie said, and looked her daughter in the eye. She didn’t wait for a response. She anchored Kyra to her and then propelled her backward toward the nearest uncovered window using her own weight as a counterbalance. If she could just get her out there, away from these idiots—

“Uh uh!” Friday said, swiping for Kyra. Jamie saw it coming just in time and yanked Kyra back, her daughter’s feet sliding through the dusty debris on the hospital floor, Jamie nearly losing her own footing in the abrupt movement. Kyra let out a scream of surprise and then Jamie grabbed her, forcing her back behind again, sheltering her away from Frost and Friday, both of whom were now advancing on them.

“Just let my daughter out of here and I’ll come with you!” Jamie said, backing up. This was an untenable situation. “There’s a bomb under that chair!”

“Fool me once, shame on you,” Friday said, swelling ever larger as he came for her, “fool me twice, shame on you again. You should be so, so ashamed.”

“I don’t think that’s how that saying goes,” Frost said, pausing, his hands glowing with ice, preparing to throw it.

“I don’t c—” Friday was hit in the face as Jamie slipped a gravity channel between Frost’s hands and Friday’s head, and the growing ice that Captain Frost had been preparing to throw at her and Kyra pelted Friday in the skull instead. Friday whirled around, and Frost was glowing red in his exposed cheeks. “What—the—hell?” Friday asked, his voice furious, his shoulders expanding.

“I didn’t do—It was her!” He pointed back at Jamie.

“Just like the helicopter, huh?” Jamie shot back.

“No, this really was you!” Frost shouted.

“So the helicopter wasn’t?” she asked coolly.

Frost looked apoplectic, and he hurled another blast of ice her way. This she steered off easily, sending it again into Friday’s open eyes, anchoring it to his face so that the big man’s head snapped back, his face covered over with icy fragments like an ice statue. “Stop that!” Frost shouted, his voice high in pitch.

“Mom, what are you doing?” Kyra asked.

“The only thing I can at the moment,” Jamie said, trying to figure out a plan. A bomb counting down, the exits blocked … this was not looking good at all.

“Scott, listen to me—” I said as he shot a blast of water so large it might have cleaned the skin off my bones with the pressure had it hit.

“I have had enough of you!” he screamed, and I got the sense that his issues with me, long festering, were exploding to the surface like … well, like Old Faithful at eruption time.

“Be that as it may,” I said, trying to remain calm as my ex attacked me, “I’m with the NYPD, and Gravity Gal is in custody. She’s saved her daughter, she’s willing to surrender—to you, numbnuts—if we can just step outside and get away from that bomb over there—”

“You’re a liar!” Scott screamed, face red, voice bloodcurdling. He turned his water blast on me and swept away half of Captain Frost’s bulwark against our escape. Unfortunately, Jamie wasn’t anywhere near me at the moment, with Scott, Frost and Friday between us, otherwise I might have snatched her and Kyra up and just made a break for it. “You’re a mean girl, Sienna,” he said, in a perfect imitation of my internet detractors. “An angry, bitter, cynical, toxic person! A bully! You hold all the power!” He locked eyes with me, and fired off another shot, which I dodged, but only barely. “You’re always punching down.”

“I guess you’ve got a type, then,” I said, punching at groin level.. “You know, cuz Nadine—”

He screamed in inarticulate rage and brought his hands together, sending a furious deluge at me that erased the ceiling above me, sending pieces crumbling down in a landslide where I’d been hovering only a moment before. This was going nowhere. “I’m not going to fight you, Scott!” I shouted. I had a lid on my irritation with him, fully aware that if I struck a federal agent, my problems were going to be so-much-bigger, oh-so-fast. They were going to totally Guy Friday on me, from thin to no-win in two seconds.

“I’m going to show the world what you are!” he screamed at me again, his face so red I started to worry about his blood pressure.

“You do what you gotta do,” I said under my breath, and he screamed again, telling me he’d heard me. “Jamie!” I shouted, catching a glimpse of her between Frost and Friday’s hulking back. “I need to swap; I can’t fight this douchebag, he’s a federal agent and I don’t really want to assault him.”

Jamie looked at me in confusion for just a second. Friday looked like he was clawing at an ice mask stuck to his face while Frost looked back over his shoulder like he’d forgotten I was even here. “Oh, great,” Jamie said, “but you’re okay with me doing it?”