Where There's Fire (Panopolis Book 2) (11 page)

Luke would only make a decent distraction for so long. I needed to get to the Nutrigro research labs as fast as I could. Happily, there were little maps right there on the walls, with everything conveniently labeled and exit routes marked in case of emergencies. Emergencies like a fire, maybe. I pulled the next fire alarm lever, ignoring the burst of paint it left on my hand, and headed up to the second floor.

People started to stream past me and I made myself as innocuous as I could: less rage face, more hapless prole. It was an impression I was particularly good at. I inspected the letters at the bottom of their badges as they went by, searching for Section G, Section G . . . ah, there. I grabbed the hand of a tall woman with blonde braids wrapped around her head like she took her style tips from Star Wars. She glared at me furiously and tugged her hand away until I reestablished the boundary between Inside and Outside Me, and sent her calm, cooperative thoughts instead.

“I need to get something out of Section G. Something for Freight Train.”

“Subject 239,” the woman said in a monotone. “This way.” I followed her down the hall, around two lefts, one right, and three locked doors. The last one led us into the antechamber of a lab, where she pointed at a rack of white biohazard coveralls. “You have to wear one of those.”

Fuck. I probably did, too; I didn’t want to come out of this growing genetically modified Super spore. “Fine. Are you armed?”

“No.”

“Good. Then hand me your badge, please.” Because we’d both need to suit up, and I wasn’t interested in wasting more time trying to control her mood while we did that. If I held her badge, she wouldn’t be able to get back out. After she gave it to me, I let her go.

Ice-blue eyes cleared, and she frowned. Surprisingly, though, she didn’t panic. “Ah. Subject 1147.”

“What does that mean?” I pulled down a suit and stepped into its oversized feet.

“It’s your designation. Every Super that GenCorp touches gets one, even though the prison only had you for a short time.” She tilted her head appraisingly at me. “I see the machine Dr. Steuben was testing for us had some interesting side effects. Mind control?”

“Something like that . . . Wait, I thought that machine was made by Neo Cortex?”

“Neo Cortex is a subsidiary of GenCorp, much like Nutrigro.”

I frowned. “Jesus, is there anything that this company doesn’t have their fingers in?”

“Not much in Panopolis.”

Interesting. If I wasn’t on a schedule . . . This would be easier if I held on to her from here on out though. I finished suiting up, then took—another glance at her badge read DR. WOJCIECHOWSKI, MARIE—Dr. Marie with me into the next lab. “I need some of Freight Train’s straws,” I said. “And also the nearest functioning computer.”

“We refer to them as eating apparatuses,” she corrected me mildly, and walked us back to a smooth steel table with a complicated alembic setup on top and drawers built into the body of it. “Here.” She opened one of them for me and drew out a sealed plastic bag full of those familiar metal-capped straws. “The compound powering them has a half-life of two days in isolation, so they must be kept together as long as possible to achieve maximum use. The nearest computer is the laptop on Dr. Smithson’s desk, there.”

“Very helpful,” I said absently as I examined the bag, then led her over to her colleague’s desk. The laptop was powered up, thankfully. I plugged the thumb drive into the side of it, stood back, and watched the Trojan start to work. The screen went blank except for a bouncing Magic 8 ball and a timer to its finish. Someone was a cheeky little hacker.

“Would you like to know another helpful fact, Subject 1147?”

“My name is Edward.”

“Immaterial. Soon you’ll be an inmate again.” My eyes snapped to hers, and she somehow managed to appear smug without moving her face at all. “A fire alarm in this building triggers an automatic alert to a number of high-powered Heroes, including Freight Train, who lives nearby. He should be here within another two minutes. You won’t be able to escape.”

She’d amazed me right out of anger into astonishment. “You . . . are conniving even while I’m controlling your emotions?”

“Is that why I feel so determined?” she asked mildly. And, shit, I was feeling determined now that I had the straws. “I imagine once Freight Train is done with you, I’ll be feeling amused.”

Freight Train was on his way here. She was right—I wouldn’t be able to get out of the building fast enough to avoid him, or any of the Heroes who followed. I needed a plan. I needed a fucking plan, but first I had to secure Dr. Marie.

Duct tape—every office had it, and this place had extra-strength super scientist duct tape, so it was easy to make sure my hostage wasn’t going to cause me trouble anytime soon. I covered her mouth, padded her ears and taped down a pair of paper towels over her eyes, so she wouldn’t be spying on me either. The few parts of her face that weren’t covered up looked pissed when I stepped back, but I didn’t have time to worry about that. If Freight Train was coming, I needed to decide how to deal with him when he got here.

Freight Train . . . okay, he used to like me. Maybe “like” was too mild a term; he’d been crushing on me hard before I was arrested. I’d wanted to be friends, but he’d wanted to be way more.

He couldn’t touch anyone thanks to his force field, which could only be penetrated by itself. That had always struck me as fishy, honestly. GenCorp could make disposable straws by the dozen so he could eat, but they couldn’t make a device with a big enough force field to let the man experience someone else’s touch? Not very plausible, but Freight Train wasn’t the type to question authority. He was, however, practically dying for some physical affection.

And I happened to have a handful of things that could penetrate his force field.

The alarm cut off. That probably meant the cavalry was here. I emptied the bag onto the table, grabbed the duct tape again and, by dint of using waaay too much of it, managed to make a rough circle out of the straws, barely big enough to fit my hand through the middle. They vibrated with shared energy, making my fingers numb where they held on, but in the center was a void. This might work. Fuck, I hoped it worked.

Crash . . . crash . . . crash . . . That was the familiar rhythmic sound of Freight Train busting his way through the doors Dr. Marie had so painstakingly led me. I took a deep breath, braced myself with a final thought of Raul, and then—

“Wait!” I cried out as Freight Train smashed through the last door. “Craig, please, give me a second, okay?”

“Edward?” Guess he hadn’t been shown any security footage before they sent him in. “Eddie, what— No.” His slack-jawed expression stiffened back to the square, bulldog stubbornness I remembered. “No, you’re a Villain now. Edward Dinges, I’m arresting you on the charges of—”

“I need ten seconds of your time,” I begged. “Ten seconds, enough to try and show you something that will help you understand. Please. If I don’t at least try this, they’ll kill him.”

“Kill who, your mad boyfriend? He’s a Villain,” Craig said, but he didn’t seem as forthright now as he had a moment ago. “Who’s going to kill him?”

“Mayor Bell.”

Craig’s forehead furrowed. “But Mayor Bell is in prison.”

“No, Mayor Bell is in the red zone operating under the name Maggot.” I could still feel his squirming representative behind my left ear. “He’s organizing an army of escapees from the Abattoir that’s determined to come after Heroes, and the companies that sponsor you.”

“Sounds like a Villain.”

“He is what he was made,” I said, more than a little bitterly. While I despised Maggot, the more I saw of this place, the more I understood his hatred of it. “I was sent here to try and find a way to get through your force field. Something that would let him infest you and get you under his thumb. I don’t want to do that, Craig, but I can’t walk out of here empty-handed, not if I want to save Raul’s life.”

“You’re not going to be walking anywhere, Eddie,” he said sadly. “Not for him or anybody else. You . . . Honestly, I don’t get it. What you saw in him. What made him better than me.”

I sighed. “I knew him longer. I knew him better. I could touch him, and he could touch me back.” Craig’s mouth pinched, and I hastened to add, “But you don’t have to go without! Give me a chance here, all right?”

“A chance to do what?”

“This.” I slid the shoddy gauntlet over my wrist, making sure my hand was completely surrounded. Then I reached out and, very slowly, pushed the ring of straws through the force field. I held them in place, extended my fingers, and stroked them gently across the center of Craig’s chest. I felt him—how his heartbeat suddenly leaped beneath my fingertips, the warmth of his body and the shudder of his lungs as he let out a choked breath, almost a sob.

“Eddie . . . you . . .” Craig’s eyes were wide.

I smiled. “Hi.”

“It’s . . .” He stared down at my hand, then back up at me. “How?”

“Not too tough with the right tools, huh?” Gingerly, I pulled back. He watched me go with utter desolation. “It’s just a bunch of the straws you use every day to eat and drink, taped together. It kind of makes you wonder why they haven’t tried it before.” It was such a simple thing to make him happy. The scientists here had to have considered it, and then summarily discarded it as, what, useless? Unnecessary? Unwise? They didn’t care about their Heroes any more than they did about their Villains.

“They’re . . . they told me they’re too expensive to make, too delicate to . . .”

“She,” I pointed at Dr. Marie, “handed these ones to me as a twenty-pack. They can make what you need, Craig. But they don’t, because it’s better for everyone if they can string you along with promises. You’re easier to control that way.”

“Who are they?”

“I’m not entirely sure, although I’m certain GenCorp is involved,” I said, and that was honest enough. “But I think it’s worth finding out.” I headed back over to the laptop and checked the screen—the timer was gone, and the Magic 8 ball read Done! After pulling the thumb drive free, I took a deep breath. Here came the part I wasn’t supposed to do, the part that was completely against the deal I’d made with Maggot.

“I’ll help you, if you want. You deserve better than the life they’ve given you, Craig. There might be something that could really change things for you in here. But first I have to take the drive and those straws and get back to the red zone as fast as possible, because if I don’t, Maggot’s going to kill Raul. If I live through that, we can talk again.”

“I could take the information now,” Craig pointed out, looking at the thumb drive longingly.

So he could, but I couldn’t let him think that. “You won’t be able to decrypt the files. This has to go back to the hacker it came from for that, and I have to deliver it personally.”

“So you’ve gotta get away,” Craig said slowly. “But you’ll contact me later?”

“If I get through the rest of the day alive,” I emphasized.

“You will.” His faith in me was pleasant. “You’re too goddamn tricky to die.” Huh, not so pleasant after all.

Craig glanced back at the tunnel he’d bashed through the building. “You can’t go that way, people will be coming. I’ll take you to the other side.”

“You shouldn’t be seen helping me, though,” I said. “In fact . . . shit. We’re probably already on camera, aren’t we?”

Craig glanced at the ceiling. “GenCorp actually doesn’t have internal surveillance, and I think now I know why. Come on.” He proceeded to back up, then ran at the far wall. He crashed straight through it like tissue paper. “Hurry up!”

“There’s a hallway, like, ten feet to the right!” I yelled.

“Hallways are for people who aren’t Freight Train!”

“How about for people like me, then?” I muttered, following gingerly. I wasn’t at all sure I’d make it outside without catching a piece of masonry on my head, but less than thirty seconds later we were standing at a side door that would let me outside.

“How are you going to explain that damage?” I asked, gesturing behind us.

Craig smiled. “I’ll tell them you mind-controlled me or something. It’ll make you seem tough.”

“Oh, for the last time, it’s not really mind control.” Or at least, he didn’t need to know any better.

“Maybe it kinda is, since I’m not arresting you,” Craig said, more soberly now. “Eddie . . . I’ve . . . I’ve got to know. I’ve got to know what’s going on. Why they haven’t made things better for me.” He kept glancing down at my hand, the one that had touched his chest, and I knew what he was feeling. After all, I could have so easily ended up like him—if I hadn’t learned to control my power, I might have been in his shoes, so close to what I wanted but never able to grasp it. Craig didn’t deserve that kind of pain.

“I’ll do my best.” And I would, though there was no telling whether that would be enough. “You’d better go.” I grabbed his hand and held on, the force field making my skin tingle. He wouldn’t be able to feel me now, but I needed to make the gesture. “Thank you.”

Craig smiled faintly. “Yeah, yeah. Rescue your boyfriend already.” I let go, and he turned and charged off down the hall. I took a second to secure the thumb drive in my pocket, and another few seconds to open the Chap stick tube and rub its contents all over my head and neck. I might as well stack the deck in my favor. It was funny: I’d barely been able to force myself to use it this morning, and now I was practically bathing in it, no hesitation left in me. Raul would be so pleased. Then I straightened my spine, clutched my umbrella close, and left the building.

There were crowds but no cops on this side, and I still had my name tag, so no one stopped me as I pushed through the throng of curious eyes, although a few did ask me questions.

“I hear there’s a Villain in there! Which one was it, did you see?”

“Did he really drive someone mad?”

“No, didn’t you hear? He makes them fall in love with him instead. Then he breaks their hearts. Did he break your heart?”

“Hey, you seem familiar . . .”

Fortunately I was out of the crowd and around the corner before that thought had time to spread. After a block Vibro stepped out in front of me, her expression distant and cold. “Did you get it?”