Steampunk Time: Cape High Book Seven (Cape High Series 7) (14 page)

Just because he has regenerative powers doesn't mean it doesn't sting, he thinks, trying to get a hit in.  He needs to touch Superior's face, he thinks, reaching for the uncovered skin.  Before his fingers touch, though, Superior is dragged off of him and thrown into the air.  A man dressed in black looks down at Mimic for a second with a dark expression.  He looks a lot like Superior.

"Run,"
he says before taking to the air after the man he just threw.

"Do you really think I'm going to let you stop me?" he hears Superior bellow at the man that just saved him.  "Mimic is going to die for what he did--"

"No,
Father
, it's what YOU did--or should I say 'Are going to do'?" the man says before slamming into the white clad Superior.

For a moment Mimic just stands there, stunned.  Then, after a moment of thought on how much alike they looked, and the word "father" being used, he runs.

***

"What is this about, Nicolas?" Superior asks as they float far over the city.  Planes fly past, but the father and son ignore them, focused fully on one another.  Nico had made a comment earlier about underestimating him, but Superior never has.  He's just never allowed his son to realize that fact.  Of all the supers still alive, Nico is at the top of his list of most dangerous threats.
  He's also his only son. 

This man that stands in front of him--"You aren't from my time," Superior says, realizing what's going on.

"I'm not," Technico agrees.  "I'm from eighteen years in the future from you.  I'm from a time where my mother is dead."

"It's when she disappeared--"

"Yes, it is.  When you decided that you would go back in the past and kill Mimic.  Do you want to know what'll happen if I don't stop you?  Because I think you'll find it interesting."

"Fascinating
, make it quick, though, I've got important things to do," Superior says, pretending to look at his watch.

"You go ahead and try to kill Mimic," Nico says.  "You can't--his regenerative abilities are
too good.  When you hit him he heals.  So you play nasty.  You take him across the world and toss him into an active volcano.  It almost kills him.  It accomplishes what you want. He's not the one that takes out Tatiana."

"What?"

"We go back to our own time, we drop Noelle off in hers, and you destroy the watch, thinking you've accomplished what you set out to do.  What you don't realize is that the man that released Mimic to kill Tatiana has other options."

"Who?"

"In our case it was Shadowman," Nico says.  "If you go after Shadowman it'll be someone else, then someone else again, and so on--they're intent on taking out the USSR spy.  Each one will be worse than the last one, I’m certain."

"How?" Superior asks in a whisper.
  “How does Shadowman kill her?”

"He slips into her house at night, and as she lies sleeping in the shadows he pulls her heart out.  THAT is why she disappeared on the hospice bed, Father," Nico says coldly.  "If we hadn't come back--if you hadn't interfered, Aubrey would have brought her back.  But you did.  And there's one thing neither you nor I realized in your time--one of the components for the watch won't be brought to Earth until MY time.  You spent the past eighteen years hating yourself for this."

"Then who is it that let Mimic loose?"

"I never found out," Nico says.  "But maybe you'll be able to."  He stops, his eyes widening slightly as he turns to stare at the world below.  "Oh no," he says before racing for the ground so fast that a sonic boom echoes through the air.

***

I put Nico down a good distance from the crash, handing him a toy before turning on the teen heading for me. 
"Why?" I ask Jason.  At first it had seemed like no one was hurt, but that wasn’t the case after the first round of people came out.  There are injured people still on the plane.  Tatia is busy flying people to the nearest hospitals with space for them.  There's broken bones and blood.  There'd been a fire, earlier, but Tatia had put it out.  "Why did you do this?" I demand, my hands in fists as my sides, tears threatening.  "People could have DIED, Jason!"

"They didn't," he says, looking guilty as someone start
s crying behind me.  "I didn't have a choice--"

"You always have a choice!" I bellow, racing forward and slamming a fist in his stomach.  It sends him flying backwards, but I don't even think of that.  I keep seeing a baby being carried away by Tatia--the little one had been younger than little Nico
las, and bleeding!  "I can't believe I considered you a friend!"

He's falling, and for a moment I hear myself thinking, "Good riddance" before he hits the ground, rolling.  I feel guilty for that thought, but I'm also really, really angry and betrayed right now.  "YOU COULD HAVE KILLED A BABY!" I bellow at the top of my lungs before launching straight for him.

The idea of an innocent little baby killed by my best friend makes me feel sick to my stomach.  I'm crying even as he dodges my hit, grabbing me by the waist in an unbreakable hold.  "I had no choice," he grits against my ear.  "Calm down and let me explain!"

The sound of an ambulance's siren echoes through the air and I turn, watching in terror as they rush into the plane and bring out a woman on a gurney.  The paramedics seem to be
worried and I watch in stunned silence as they take her into the back of the ambulance and start doing CPR.  She--

"No," Jason whispers as we see her chest stop moving.  She's not breathing.  She's DEAD.

I scream.  I can't stop myself.  It's like something that's deep within me is welling up all at once.  The lights of the buildings around us flicker, and then die, but I'm too blind to notice.  I'm floating in the air, and I think I'm inside a ball of pressure of some sort--

Then I'm not aware of anything at all.

***

There's only one thought in Jason's head as Noelle takes to the air.  She's taking out all of the electricity in the area, which means there's no way they can use the defibrillator on the woman whose heart just stopped.  Yes, he's worried about Noelle, she's having a breakdown, after all, but this is more important.

He races through the shocked norms, grabbing one of the paramedics and pulling him out of the way so he can place a hand on the woman's chest.  "LIVE!" he roars, forcing the healing into her body.  The body jerks, and he can feel her heart shudder back into action, beating against his hand.

Tears are pouring down his cheeks, but he lets out a laugh of relief.  He takes a moment to look up at the girl floating over their heads.  There's metal pieces floating around her, in fact the plane is starting to shift and jerk, alerting him to the fact he only has so much time.  The norms are stupidly still trying to figure out how to stop her.  He doesn't bother to tell them they won't be able.

Man, he thinks as he runs into the plane, she's high maintenance.  He stops at one of the norms still strapped in, pressing a hand to his chest and checking him.  The man jerks, waking up and looking at him in shock.  "You're good, get out," Jason says before moving onto the next one. 

The plane shudders and he slams his foot down.  The plane goes down, sticking to the ground.  He can feel other metal pieces floating all around them in a whirlwind of danger, but he can't do anything about it yet.  He has to clean up his mess first.

The last thing he wants is for Noelle to cry over him killing somebody, he admits as he heals another norm.  Actually, the last thing he wants, he adds, feeling pathetic, is for Noelle to cry at all.

Stupid, he thinks, but as long as she doesn't figure out how much power she's got over him, it doesn't matter, right?  THIS is why guys and girls can't be "just friends" he decides irritably
, because the girl will probably always have the upper hand.

***

"Kitten," Tatia says as she gets back to the plane wreck.  The poor little girl has lost control of her abilities.  In a way, Tatia thinks silently, it is amazing for such a tiny thing to have so much power.  There are hints of distortion, she notices as the colors around the girl change for a second, flickering as if they were under a light.  There are metal pieces floating around her--except the plane.  The plane makes Tatia confused for a second.  Why isn't it flying?

No, she tells herself as she rushes forward, she has no time for this.  "KITTEN!" she bellows as she finds herself on the other side of the girl, never having touched her.  She does have distortion.  It's small, a bubble, really, that surrounds her, but she has distortion.  What else?

She turns, looking down at the ground as the concrete shudders and cracks.  This is her grandfather's telekinesis in a more simplified form.  This combination--it could destroy the little planet that they live on as the girl grows older.  "Kitten," she says in a gentler tone, "wake up, my precious child." because she's now
positive
that they're related.

"Noelle!" she hears someone shout.  She blinks as a man in
a dark blue uniform races straight through the distortion, grabbing the little girl in a hug.  "Wake up, kiddo," he says, as if nothing about the power she's displaying affects him at all.  "Wake up.  It's okay, sweetheart, it's okay."

The whirlwind of machinery starts falling and Tatia races into action, catching the pieces before they fall onto the watching norms.  She's curious about who the man is, something about him strikes her as
extremely familiar.  For some reason she finds herself glancing at the little boy sitting about a mile away, playing with the straps of his baby bag.  Little Nicolas does not seem bothered by the whirlwind at all, she thinks with amusement as she catches the last of the metal, tossing it into a pile away from the crowd. 

The distortion has stopped
.  The little girl is limp in the stranger's arms.

"Is she--" Tatia asks.

"She's fine," the man says, looking at her.  Her heart jerks as she sees the familiar steel eyes of her child in a full grown male's face.  "Thank you, Tatiana."  He looks at the plane.  "Jason!  We're leaving!" he calls down to it.

"Coming!" Tatia hears a boy call from below.  She watches in surprise as light glints off of the boy's skin as he steps out of the plane.  "Everyone's healed--well, they might need a little sewing up, but they're not in danger of dying--is Noelle okay?" he asks with a worried look.

"She's unconscious.  Let's go."

They race away before Tatia can say anything.

***

Is
the Nico from his future telling the truth?  Superior floats in the air, watching as his son leaves with his great granddaughter in his arms.  Is it his fault that Tatia disappeared in the hospice?  Is it his fault that she died?

His eyes fall on the woman cleaning up the mess and helping with the victims.  When there's an accident people suddenly stop thinking of accents and origins and focus on the more important things, he thinks, a bit disgusted with humanity.  He knows, though, that part of his disgust is with himself.  He'd approached it from the wrong angle.

Rather than kill Mimic, he should simply kill whoever let him loose.

"I--it's my fault," Jason says quietly as the Technico he had grown up knowing lays Noelle on her bedroll.  "I shouldn't have done it--"

"Why did you do it?"
Technico asks him.  He knows exactly what the boy did, it had been obvious when he glanced at the scene.  "I'm not training you to take down planes, kid. I'm training you to get control of your powers."

"Su--Superior said that that Tatiana lady was visiting Mimic--"

"And he used you for the distraction, is that it?" Technico says.  "Sounds like him."

"Isn't he supposed to be a hero?" Jason demands.  "I did my best to make sure nobody was hurt in the wreck, but I'm only fourteen!  I don't have the control my dad has!  Dad would have gotten them down with no problem at all--"

"Stop comparing yourself with Jack, Jason," Technico says, walking over to Jason and placing both hands on his shoulders.  "Don't compare yourself with your dad.  Has he ever asked you to be the same as him?"

"No--but--"

"I didn't figure," Technico says.  "Look, did anyone die?"

"Almost," Jason says quietly.  "But I've got just enough healing ability from my mom to keep it from happening."

"Then you did good," Technico says.  "I'll deal with Superior."

"But why did he use me?  Couldn't he have done something else?  Something that wouldn't threaten people's lives?"

"I want you to remember that question, Jason.  Every single day I want you to remember it," Technico says seriously.  "And by remembering it, you'll turn into the cape I know you can become."

Jason nods slowly, knowing just how big a question it is now.  Before coming to this time he'd always thought that being the bad guy would consist of teasing heroes and playing games--not risking peoples' lives.  But his dad DOESN'T risk peoples' lives, he realizes.  His dad always sets things up to look dramatic, but not dangerous.