Sensation: A Superhero Novel (20 page)

The shock and desolation must have shown on my face, because Mouse laid a reassuring hand on my shoulder.

“Buck up, Kid,” he said.  “We’ll fix this, assuming we have time.”

Just then, there came a booming, thunderous pounding on the door to Mouse’s lab, followed by the tortured screech of tearing metal.

Paramount and his crew were coming in.

Chapter 23

“Move!” Mouse shouted, grabbing his computer tablets and rushing to the floor-to-ceiling bookcase on the side of the lab.  “Follow me!”

I missed seeing what he did, but the bookshelf quickly slid right, into a recessed area set in the wall.  Standing where the bookshelf had been a second ago was a monstrous, vault-like door.  As it began to slowly open, I could hear the hiss of hydraulics.

Everyone began hustling inside as soon as the vault door was wide enough to permit ingress.  Mouse went first, and I saw a light come on somewhere inside.  All of the other teens began scrambling in, followed by Electra and Smokey.  I was last.

As I slipped inside, the bookcase shot out from its hidden area, once again covering the vault door.  Presumably Mouse had a remote for the thing, because I hadn’t done anything to put it back into place.  He must also have had one for the vault door, because it stopped opening and slowly reversed course, preparing to close.

Looking around, I noticed that we were in a cavernous chamber.  There were a few chairs and tables – including one where Mouse currently sat on the far side of the room – but the most overriding feature of the room were the containers.  Everywhere you looked there were boxes and crates and bins.  There were even long rows of shelves that appeared to hold various bric-a-brac and miscellaneous objects.  This was clearly a storage room of some type.

Through the bookcase, I heard the door to Mouse’s lab finally yielding and the rhythmic thudding of heavy feet running into the room.

“Find them!” I heard Paramount snarl.  “They’re here somewhere.”

There was an odd cadence established by feet running willy-nilly all over the place, as well as the sound of equipment being knocked over. 

Suddenly, the vault’s hydraulics made a clear, squeaking noise.  It was followed by an “Over here!” from somewhere nearby in the lab.  I found myself trying to will the door to go faster.  I even pressed my back against it and pushed, as well as used my telekinesis to try to get it closed.

That was a near-fatal error.  My telekinesis helped for a few seconds, and then the inhibitor began keening once more. Suddenly it stopped. I tried using my telekinesis again, but to no avail, it was gone.

Right about then, I heard the bookshelf being ripped away, torn up from its moorings.  And just as the vault was about to close, a big, meaty paw thrust its way through, trying to keep the door wedged open.

I didn’t recognize the arm, which was through the opening to about mid-bicep, but whoever owned it obviously had super strength.  The door had stopped closing, and the hydraulics were actually making painful noises as they attempted to seal the vault. 

“Move your arm!” I screamed.

“Make me!” shouted the arm’s owner, someone I didn’t recognize.

Smokey and Electra raced over and added their weight to mine in an attempt to close the door.  Still, even with all three of us pushing, we were losing the battle.

Deciding on a bold move, I made the arm insubstantial.  The inhibitor again started with the noise, while the vault door – now with no physical impediments – actually started to close again, passing through the phased arm.  After what seemed like an eternity but was actually just a few seconds, the vault door closed and locked itself – with the insubstantial arm still sticking through it.

“Move your arm!” I screamed again. “If you want to keep this arm you need to move it now!”

The response was what I assumed to be a blow from his other hand, so powerful that it made the metal of the vault door bulge.  The arm swung deliriously to and fro, with the hand opening and closing almost spasmodically in an attempt to find purchase on something.  Obviously the owner of the arm didn’t realize what had happened - that his arm was now insubstantial - and was trying to find anything on our side of the vault to grab or grip.

Suddenly, the noise from the inhibitor stopped.  There was a bloodcurdling scream of pain and anguish from the other side of the vault, and the arm that had been phased a second ago fell to the ground, solid and twitching and bloody. 

Electra covered her mouth and gasped in horror.  Smokey looked like he was going to be sick. 

“Mouse,” I said, kicking the dismembered arm away, “how’s it coming?”

“I need more time,” was his only response.  His fingers were flying across the surfaces of the two tablets.

The sound of painful screaming on the other side of the vault continued but decreased in volume, as if the person had moved away from the door.  And all of a sudden there was more insistent pounding on the vault.  In particular, the bulge that had been created in the door earlier was getting bigger, as if someone had designated it an obvious weak point and began exploiting it.

I kept my weight on the door, but it wouldn’t be any use for much longer.  Moreover, water had begun seeping in under the bottom of the door and around the frame.
Aqua, trying to get in
.

“Move!” shouted Electra. 

I stepped away, and she shot a bolt of electricity into the water on the floor.  There was a painful yelp that seemed to come from several places at once, and the water withdrew almost too fast to see.  However, the pounding continued, and the bulge was extending well into our side of the room.  Moreover, the frame that the vault sat in was starting to bend and warp as the strength of those on the other side began to prove superior to the metal of the door and its housing.

I threw myself against the door again, determined to buy Mouse every second I could.  Electra and Smokey joined me, but I wasn’t sure it would do much good.  Truthfully, we just needed more weight.  Then I had a thought about where I could possibly get some.

Earlier, I had been asked about using my phasing power to increase my density.  Again, it was something I’d never done before, but the principle wasn’t really very different from phasing.  In fact, it was pretty much the same as when I returned a phased object to its original solid form.  However, instead of just leaving an object as I found it, this time I wanted to keep going, making the object a bit more solid – denser, heavier.  And in this case, the object was me.

It was an odd sensation.  First, I reached out with my mind, the way I would have if I were trying to phase myself.  But rather than become insubstantial, I focused on doing the exact opposite – becoming
more
substantial, so to speak.  I imagined my entire body - my bones, muscle, tissue, sinew - all becoming more packed…more condensed…thicker…heavier…

I wasn’t sure it was working, but then I heard the whine of the inhibitor. That meant I was doing something – hopefully what I intended. 

At the same time, there was a mighty smack against the weakened vault door that echoed throughout the area - like a hammer ringing out against steel - and the bulge ripped open with a metallic shriek.  Through the gap it now provided came a powerful-looking, well-muscled arm.  The door was yielding fast.

The hand at the end of the arm reached around madly, obviously trying to find what, if anything, was helping wedge the door shut.  Electra and Smokey scrambled out of the way, but I stayed put, still trying to keep weight on the door.  I leaned away from the hand as far as I felt I could without compromising my position on the vault.

I looked to see how Mouse was doing.  There was a glowing sphere next to him now, and inside it a vague but recognizable figure: Alpha Prime.  Mouse had found him, but needed more time to dissolve the dimensional pocket.

With greater speed and agility than I imagined, the hand through the door suddenly latched onto my shoulder.   Then it began to squeeze.

“Open the door!” a voice on the other side demanded, as the hand squeezed harder.

The inhibitor was giving off a high-pitched squeak now.  Its logic circuit seemed to be having trouble getting a lock on what I was doing – probably due to the fact this was a power (or an aspect of a power) that I really hadn’t tried before. 

The hand continued its unrelenting assault on my shoulder, and I screamed as I felt bones starting to grind painfully against each other in unnatural fashion.  Smokey yelled at Electra to fry the arm with her electricity.

“I can’t!” Electra answered.  “I’ll electrocute Jim, too!” 

Instead, both she and Smokey beat at the hand and arm ineffectually with their fists.  I don’t think the person on the other side even noticed.  As for me, I was pouring everything I had into a two-fold mission:  continuing to increase my body’s overall density, and – in particular – making my trapped shoulder as dense and solid as possible.

The inhibitor, still unable to get a lock on my power, kept up its insidious whining.  Under my feet, I felt the floor beginning to buckle and crumble as my massively increased density and weight put unwarranted pressure on it.  The pain in my shoulder slowly lessened as my body became firmer, harder.  I could feel my assailant growing frustrated and trying to squeeze harder as the former suppleness of my shoulder gave way to something more compact.

Suddenly, the whining of the inhibitor came to a halt.  The hand continued trying to cause damage, but it was just a bit of a nuisance now.  Looking around, I saw that almost all eyes in the room were fixated on me.  The only exception was Mouse, who worked unceasingly to try to free his teammate.  On his part, Alpha Prime was clearly visible, and I could actually hear him trying to say something.  It seemed to be directed at me, but the sound came through muffled and distorted, making it impossible to figure out what he was trying to convey. 

“Step aside,” demanded a disturbingly calm voice on the other side of the door.  It was Paramount, and at his order the hand and arm withdrew. The sound of his voice gave me an odd chill, and it dawned on me with clear certainty what he was about to do. 

“Get back!” I screamed at those near me, wildly gesticulating. I don’t think anyone realized what was about to happen, but an eerie blue light began to seep in around the frame of the door and the hole where the hand had come through.

“Kid, cover that door!” boomed a loud voice.  It was Alpha Prime, not yet free but finally coherent.

In fact, I had already begun shapeshifting as soon as I realized what was happening, not taking on any particular form but rather just trying to stretch myself high enough and wide enough to blanket the vault door in its entirety.  The inhibitor was making noise again but I ignored it, focusing instead on any place where the azure color was seeping in and trying to cover it.  The blue light was an indicator of the areas I needed to block, but also confirmed my worst fears.

Paramount was preparing to fire his Bolt Blast.  His most powerful weapon. The one that could obliterate anything.

I looked around the room one last time.  I saw a bunch of teens, terrified for the most part and attempting to hide behind boxes and bins.  With Paramount so unhinged, it was unlikely that many on our side would survive this day – me among them.  But I could buy them – buy Mouse – a few more precious moments to hope.  I could see Alpha Prime punching wildly against the sphere that held him while Mouse continued working feverishly without pause. 

I was braced against the door, still trying to stretch my body out, when the inhibitor stopped making noise.  That was it; I’d covered as much of the door as I could.  Sadly, a few slivers of blue luminescence were still coming through when the light suddenly intensified. I closed my eyes, thinking about all the things I’d done, and all the things I’d never do.  How sixteen years just didn’t seem like enough time to live a life.  How I’d never even had a real girlfriend.  How I’d never learned to drive.

Later, I would try to remember exactly what occurred next, but so much seemed to happen almost simultaneously.  The door of the vault seemed to bulge out in my direction for a second, and then just melt away.  It vanished, like dew evaporating in the morning sun.  A cascade of warmth bathed my back, pressed against it like a gentle, soothing massage.  Briefly I wondered if this was the afterlife – whether eternity was simply going to feel like faint, ever-expanding warmth.

“No,” a voice, Paramount’s, uttered in disbelief.  “It’s impossible!”

I opened my eyes, surprised that I still had eyes to open.  I immediately looked behind me, to Mouse’s lab.  As I did so, something slid off my neck and to the ground.  It was the inhibitor.  The back of it had been obliterated by Paramount’s Bolt Blast; with nothing to hold it in place around my neck, it had simply fallen off. 

Paramount was standing about twenty feet away from me, mouth practically agape.  All of his henchmen were behind him.

As I suspected, the vault door was nowhere to be found.  It had essentially been vaporized.  The real question, though, was why hadn’t I been expunged along with it?

That apparently was the thing that was also plaguing Paramount, because he suddenly began firing more Bolt Blasts at me.

“Impossible!” he screamed, while continuing to fire at me. “Impossible!  Impossible!”  

I almost went insubstantial, but then I remembered everyone in Mouse’s secret room and stood my ground.  The Bolt Blasts hit me, but had no effect. 

Oddly enough, it was Paramount’s unbridled rage that bought us more time.  As long as he was firing Bolt Blasts at me, no one who was with him could rush us.  I think this must have occurred to someone else, because several of the people with Paramount tried calling his name, but he didn’t seem to hear them.  Finally, one of the guys behind him – a red-skinned monstrosity with horns and a forked tail called Daemon - placed a hand on Paramount’s shoulder to get his attention.

Paramount angrily turned his gaze on him…and Daemon evaporated from the torso up.  There was stunned disbelief for a second, and then his entire group began scattering like chickens trapped in a henhouse with a fox.