Steampunk Time: Cape High Book Seven (Cape High Series 7) (13 page)

"Let's say I believe you," she says, hesitating
, “for the most part.  What is it that you need to change to keep things from changing?"

I need to stop someone from stopping someone from killing my mother.  The words refuse to come out of his mouth, though, because even to him they sound ridiculous.  He runs a hand over his face and then lets out a sigh.  "I need to find a Superior clone," he says.  It's all he can go off of.

"I see.  I should have known that it came from the future," she says.  "We put it in the lot."

"It?" he repeats, his eyes widening before he mentally curses himself for doing too good of a job at creating the fake clone.  "I'm not looking for an it--I'm looking for--a clone," he finishes lamely.

"That's it.  Tatiana destroyed it earlier," she says.  "Really, if it's from the future you would think it would be tougher," she complains.  "Well come on, I don't have all night, you know."

Nico looks at her, inwardly sighing.  "Fine," he says.  "But I'm sure you've got the wrong thing."

"There's no way someone could make it in this time--it probably took months, maybe even years for it to be as good as Tatia said it was."

"Twenty minutes," Nico says without thinking.

"What?"

"I'll give you twenty minutes," he corrects himself quickly, "but it might just be the wrong clone."

"So there's more than one of them?" she asks.

"Aren't there always?"

***

Who
does Tatiana know that could wind up in a norm hospital?  That question is stuck firmly in my mind as she pulls the gremlin into the hospital parking lot.  She unsnaps her seatbelt and gets out, walking around the car as I open the door and get out.  She brings my seat forward and gets Nicolas out, placing him on her hip.  She's not in uniform and she's wearing a pretty hat that covers up most of her hair.  Thing is, she's still over six feet tall and twice as broad through the shoulders as any woman I've ever seen, including the super heroines.  A hat isn't exactly enough to hide her secret identity, I think a bit dryly as I follow her into the building. 

The real question is if someone will mention it--I know I won't.  She heads for the desk in front and smiles at the ladies behind it.  "Hello, I am here to visit a friend of mine--her name is Marilyn Franks.  She was hit by a
Mack truck?"

"Oh--um--" the lady behind the counter says, looking a bit panicked.  "I don't know if she's accepting visitors--"

"She's in room 116," the lady sitting next to her says.  "Just go down that hall.  She's doing amazingly well, I think she was merely glanced, honestly. When we brought her in I didn't even see a bruise on her.  I honestly don't see how else she could have survived it, much less come out of it so well."

She was... hit... by a
Mack truck?  I'm stunned for a moment before I decide that it must be a heroine's secret identity.  How else would you survive something like that?  I look at Tatia, but she doesn't say a word about it.  There's a strange expression on her face as we head down the hall, though.  I think it's worry.  Abruptly she stops right outside the room we're going to visit and turns to me.  "Kitten, if you would watch Nicolas while I go in?" she asks.  Nicolas easily goes into my arms, leaning against me as I head for a nearby bench in the hall.  She doesn't want us going in.  It's smart, I realize abruptly.  With my powers starting to manifest who knows what I would do to the machinery inside.  In fact both Nicolas and my being here is pretty dangerous, isn't it?

I probably should have thought of that before agreeing to come.

***

He has to get out before they try to get blood samples, Mimic thinks as he starts to get out of the bed.  The fact that people keep trying to come in, look at him, and suddenly find some strange thing that they forgot to do will only work for so long.  Even a doctor or two has done it, with a confused expression on their faces each time.  They know that he's not what he seems to be--but they can't figure out mentally what their instincts are telling them.

He swings one slender, feminine leg over the side of the bed only to curse as the door opens.  "I'm fine, I said--" he starts out in Marilyn's voice, only to stop as he realizes who's walking in.  The hat doesn't do much to disguise who she is, after all.  "Tatia?" he asks.

"Oh, Marilyn, I cannot believe that such a thing happened right after we were talking," Tatia says, walking to the chair next to the bed and sitting down.  Mimic swallows, staring at the woman looking so intently at him.  He can feel the earnest sympathy she's emitting, he thinks a bit light-headedly.  It's all for him.

This is the perfect opportunity to take her powers, a little voice whispers in the back of his mind.  She wouldn't think a thing of him reaching for her, in fact she looks like she's going to do it for him at any second.  But... he's not sure he wants to.  This beautiful, vibrant creature is bursting with power and promise.  It would be like defacing the Mona Lisa of supers, he admits silently.

Before he can say anything else, though, a bustle comes from the hallway.  Tatia turns and looks out the door as a rush of nurses race past them.  He can hear them talking quickly about an emergency of some sort--a plane crash or something that has several injured people coming in all at once.

"I must go," Tatia says, standing abruptly.  "I hope that you recover quickly, my friend," she adds, leaning down and lightly hugging him.  She lets go before he can even feel her power, and heads out the door.  "Come, Kitten, we must go."

"Yes, Tatia," he hears a girl say.  Who had she brought with her?  Was it a child?  He can't see them, but he knows the chance is gone.  Now he has a different chance.  He heads for the window, stepping on it still in Marilyn's form and wearing that pathetic green sheet they call a hospital gown.  He jumps.

He's going to get yelled at by that Kunnins man again.

***

"Good job," Superior says, dropping a huge hand on Jason's back.  "Well handled, just enough jarring to get the paramedics called but not enough to kill any of the norms inside."  He's being praised for crashing a plane, Jason thinks a bit blankly, staring at the wreckage below.  They're standing on the roof of a towering skyscraper, several hundred miles away from the wreck, but he can see it all.

He feels guilty.  "I didn't let it hit that hard," he says, almost as much to himself as to the older super.  "But aren't you a hero?  Shouldn't you be the one saving them, not wrecking them?" he demands.

"She was in the hospital visiting a woman that was hit by a Mack truck yet not even bruised," Superior says.  "It was Mimic."

"How do you know for sure?" Jason demands.

"I can't risk it," Superior says grimly, his hand still on Jason's back.  He looks at him thoughtfully, frowning slightly.  "There's a reason you’re in this time, isn't there?"

Jason hesitates.  "
Technico brought me.  Because my powers flare up in my sleep," he admits, thinking about Technico. “He said something about wanting to see how much damage I can do.”

"
He did, did he?” Superior says.  “When?”

"
Yesterday," Jason says, looking at the flocking norms.  So far no one seems to have been hurt too badly.  He sees a scratch on a woman's arm and winces.  It's bleeding, he thinks guiltily.  He'd made a woman--a norm woman--bleed.  Sure, he'd punched Noelle, but that was different.  She's a super from a very long line of very impressive supers.  One punch isn't going to do that much damage!  But for a norm--

"You brought it in on its belly," Superior says in a calm tone.  "They might have been jarred around a bit, but everyone is in one piece--one living piece.  That's a perfect example of the silly super villain work that Mastermental agrees to.  You should be proud of yourself.  Now, I've got a real super villain to take out."

"What about Noelle?" Jason demands as Superior starts forward.

"Go find her, take her back to your training area.  Neither of you are needed for this next part."  Then he's gone, leaving a teen that can't fly standing all alone on top of a skyscraper.  For a moment Jason walks over to the edge of the building, looking down at the ground far, far below.  Then he heads for the door that leads inside.  He's absolutely taking the elevator, he decides.  Manly or not, he doesn't care--there's NO WAY he's jumping.

***

From the shadows of another building,
Technico from the future watches silently as Mimic jumps out the window.  The hospital probably won't notice until it's too late, but that doesn't matter.  What matters is that from where he's crouching he can see another man jump off another roof.

This has all happened before--not exactly, of course, but Superior had found Mimic.  At the time he hadn't been here to stop it.  No, just as now, apparently, he'd been looking at the mocked up Superior robot that would never work, trying to think of an easy way to change Banshee's focus.

This is the most dangerous part of this mission, but it’s the real reason why Technico has come back to this time.  This is why he'd waited for some eighteen years, he thinks as he jumps off his own roof.  To change the future back to the way it would have been had they not come back in time the first time.

Time travel gives him SUCH a headache.

***

"Do not get too close to the plane with Nico
las," Tatia says as she hands the toddler to me as we race towards the fallen plane.  I can hear the norms inside, I realize abruptly, even though they're two or three miles away.

"I don't know what happened," I hear one of the pilots mutter.  "One moment we're flying just fine, then it's like the engine
s coughed twice and gave out--but that's not the creepy part."

"I know," his co-pilot replies in a quiet tone.  I pull to a stop, hugging Nico
las gently as I watch the two.  The other norms are sliding out of the plane on a blow-up slide, but the pilots haven't come out of the plane yet.  "There's no sign of any tampering, but the wheels refused to come down--and the angle that we hit the ground at with no power--it's not natural.  Did you see a super somewhere?  Maybe they caught us?"

"I didn't see anyone, and no one came up on the scanner," the pilot says.  "What in the hell just happened?"

"No one was seriously injured," the co-pilot says.  "And even if we don't have an explanation we'll write it off as supers and faulty machinery."

"Fine," the pilot says.  "Some random super saved us."

"But who?" the co-pilot asks, sounding frustrated.

I know, I think, my mind whirling.  I know what happened.  I just have no clue why.  Why would Jason crash a plane?

***

"I have reason to believe you're the one I'm looking for," Superior says, floating over the woman that had just jumped out of a hospital window.  For a second a look of panic crosses the woman's face, before it's replaced.

"Who are you?" she asks.

"That's not the question.  The real question is who are you?" Superior demands, dropping to the ground.  "Drop the shift, Mimic, or else."

"Make me," the woman says with a grin too wide for her face.  The grin drops, though, as Superior reaches into his back pocket and pulls out a pair of heavy gloves.  "Wait--seriously--are you Superior?" she asks.

"Too late," Superior says as he disappears from sight.  The fist slams into her face, sending her through the wall behind her and skidding into the hall of the hospital.  The shift falls as Mimic is knocked unconscious for a second.  He wakes up and catches himself in a second, but it's too late.  He's lost Marilyn's form and Superior is grabbing him by the throat and throwing him before he can regain it.

He winds up in the parking lot of the hospital, causing shrieks and terror among the norms already there.  Superior comes out of the hospital almost leisurely, floating above his head.  He looks like a vengeful demon, Mimic thinks almost hysterically.  Without the powers of another super stronger than himself, he's got no chance in a one on one fight--not unless he can touch skin.

He forces himself to calm down, examining the super's outfit.  It's a suit, ironically, but that means long sleeves and pants.  Add in the gloves, the only exposed flesh is the face and neck, which even he realizes is pretty impossible to get to.  He needs to get Superior to rip something.  It's a cliche, of course, the superhero ripping his normal clothing, but--

A ripping sound rents the air and he stares blankly at Superior, who is ripping his suit off just as he'd hoped.  Only... that's a full body suit in white, isn't it?  Mimic mentally groans.  Clearly this white-haired Superior came fully equipped to kill him.  "Why are you so intent on this?" he demands, getting up.  "You're the good guy!  You aren't supposed to attack someone until after they've done something bad!"

"Tatiana," Superior says, his eyes gleaming dangerously, "
is my wife."

"Oh."  Not much else you can say to that, he thinks, although the norms all around them look shocked.  "What happened to your hair?" he asks a bit belatedly.  He gets no answer, other than the most powerful super on the planet slamming into him so hard that he goes through the concrete.  The hits are so heavy that he feels his ribs crack and heal over and over again with each punch.  Once they hit his lungs, but the lungs heal before they fill with liquid.