Where There's Fire (Panopolis Book 2) (8 page)

We were within a block of #5; I could actually make out the ruined bronze gate at the front of the property, when Vibro turned up.

“Don’t come any fucking closer!” Four-Arms shrieked at her, his voice breaking in such a high register. “Don’t! I’ll shoot you, and I don’t want to do that, Daya, so stay the fuck back!”

“Prasun.” She reached toward him, her fingers trembling but not close enough to touch. “You weren’t supposed to be involved in this part; I told you to stay home!”

“You don’t get to tell me what to do!”

“I guess not.” She caught my eye and tightened her jaw. “Well, you passed the inadvertent entrance exam with flying colors, Mr. Dinges. Now if you don’t mind letting go of my brother . . .”

Her brother? Well, that explained why he was fighting the paranoia I’d shared with him so hard. “I mind. I’d rather not be shot.”

“He won’t shoot you. Maggot doesn’t want him to.” A whole-body shudder rocked Four-Arms—or Prasun—and for a moment it was a war of wills between the fear I was feeding him and the fear he felt for Maggot. “I promise you’ll get to the boss without any further delay.”

I didn’t trust her, but my brain was pulsing behind my eyes, the pill I’d taken earlier barely holding back the migraine I had coming. If I was going to be good for anything later, I needed to ease off now. “All right.” I stepped back from Prasun, who looked to his sister desperately.

“Daya . . .”

“Go home, please,” she said. “I’ll be there soon.”

“But . . . See what I . . . And the Silverbacks need help—”

“It’s being taken care of. Go home!”

Prasun cast a final glance at me, his expression one of utter betrayal, before he staggered away.

Vibro smiled at me, but it only made her appear angrier. “I thought you didn’t do mind control.”

“I don’t.”

“Then what the hell was that? Because Maggot thought he knew what was going on, but if you can mind control someone, all bets are off.”

She couldn’t have considered this before? “It’s more emotional than mental, and I’d have to be touching him to make it work.”

“Ah.” She glanced down at my trembling hands, then back up. “You know, you made my little brother shoot his best friends.”

I felt bad about that, I did, but I couldn’t be distracted by the guilt churning in my gut right now. “At least I didn’t make him shoot you.”

Vibro studied me for another moment, then shrugged. “Fair enough, I suppose. This way.”

She turned, and I followed her down the street, which had miraculously cleared of rubberneckers since my confrontation with the welcoming committee. She led me along cracked umber paving stones to what used to be the front of #5, and the only wall still mostly standing. Most of the paint had long since peeled away, and the bricks beneath it were pockmarked with burns and bullet holes. The floor inside was nothing but dirt, and at the end of the burnt-out main hall was a makeshift gazebo cobbled together from steel beams and sheet metal.

Underneath the gazebo, in a chair that looked like it had been stolen from the set of Downton Abbey, sat a heavyset man in a white suit, presumably Maggot. Sitting beside him were two Villains I recognized: Eldritch and Corvid. My attention, though, rested solely on the person slumped at Maggot’s feet wearing nothing but his briefs and innumerable bruises, his wrists and ankles held firm in Eldritch’s leathery tentacles. I froze, barely able to breathe until I could see Raul’s chest move ever so faintly. He was alive, if not well, and certainly not mobile. Eldritch had been in the Abattoir for so long that no one remembered what he’d done to get there, but I knew enough to know that when he got a hold of someone, there was no getting away. That didn’t stop me from wanting to go over there and yank Raul out of his grasp.

“Raul—” I finally broke out of my paralysis and started to run forward, but Vibro grabbed my elbow and pulled me back.

“Some free advice for dealing with the boss,” she hissed in my ear. “You act polite, you listen quietly and you prove you’re worth his time. He hates disrespect more than anything, and won’t hesitate to take your rudeness out on your boyfriend, got it?”

Polite. Respectful. I’d worked with the public for years, I could handle being polite. I’d handle anything if it meant getting Raul through this. I nodded jerkily. “Okay.”

“Smart man.” We stopped just within the edge of the shiny metal floor. “This is Edward Dinges, boss.”

“And right on time.” The man smiled, and it was ghastly—the sort of thing you’d expect to see on a body that had been left to molder in a cave for a thousand years or so. “I appreciate your sense of punctuality, Mr. Dinges.”

“I appreciate the invitation,” I said as levelly as I could. Raul rolled his head toward me, and I winced at the sight of his swollen face. His eyes were hazy, surrounded by thick black rings, and his nose was clearly broken.

“Nnno,” he slurred. “No, Edward, you shouldn’t be here, go.”

“I can’t,” I insisted. My heart felt like it was going to split in two and bleed out inside my chest. “I can’t go.”

“Well, actually you will,” Maggot said. “But not before we have a talk. Daya, give the man a chair.”

“You got it, boss.” She grabbed a cheap aluminum folder that had been leaned against the nearest wall and set it down behind me. I sat.

This close I could make out more of Maggot than his bulk. I saw the sallowness of his skin, and the numerous quarter-sized scabs that decorated his hands and neck. I saw the way his head practically lolled on his neck, which was strangely skinny despite the bulky sag of the rest of him, and wondered how this guy was even alive. But his eyes answered that question. I’d looked into the faces of fanatics before. Pinball had been like that. Raul was to a lesser degree. Neither of them had ever come close to matching the intensity of Maggot’s yellow-eyed stare.

“You seem concerned, Mr. Dinges,” he said. “There’s no need for that. I didn’t ask you here to hurt you; I asked you here for the chance to work with you. I’d like us to be colleagues.”

“You’re off to a terrible start,” I said, a little more honestly than I’d intended to. “You kidnapped Raul. You destroyed our home.”

“The pair of you are notoriously insular. How else could I motivate you two to meet with me? I assumed the Mad Bombardier would put up more of a fight. That was before I realized he’s not one of us.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“He’s not Super,” Maggot explained. “Such a high-caliber Villain, I expected him to be oozing with potential, and instead I get a normal, everyday civilian.” He shook his head. “It’s disappointing, but doesn’t mean he’s completely useless.”

“Give me elemental sodium and a chance to piss and you’ll see how useless I am,” Raul mumbled. He got a sharp slap across the face for that, which rocked him so far to the side he’d probably have fallen over if Eldritch hadn’t hauled him back into place. I almost stood up to go to him, but Vibro’s warning hand on my shoulder held me down.

“Pyrotechnic tricks,” Maggot dismissed. “Not real powers. Not like the rest of us have, although I have to say, for a while I thought I’d never get to reach my full potential.” He smiled again. “I was in solitary confinement in the Abattoir when you two blew it to pieces. I’d have invited you here to thank you for that, if nothing else. I escaped then, and so did most of the brethren carrying my little helpers.”

Little helpers . . . “What do you mean?”

Maggot’s eyebrows rose. “You haven’t caught sight of them yet? Daya, show him yours.”

Vibro bent down next to me and parted her lavender hair right above her ear. A white slug about half the size of my thumb rested against her scalp, its circular sucker securely attached to her skin.

“Little helpers,” he repeated. “My maggots. You didn’t think my name was merely fanciful, did you?”

Vibro let her hair fall and straightened up again. I stared from her to Maggot. “They’re yours?”

“Mm-hmm. An unexpected side-effect of my cancer treatments last year.” He smiled thinly. “I was dying of lymphoma. The treatment involved injecting me with parasitic organisms genetically engineered to seek out and consume the tumors. They saved my life, but . . .” He waved his hand at himself. “It wasn’t without consequences. Of course, once the city council realized I’d undergone a rather radical change, they wouldn’t let me be the Mayor anymore.”

“Oh my god.” My jaw dropped. This was Mayor Bell? But Mayor Bell had been a hearty man, vital and cheerful and larger than life. We’d all been surprised when he’d gone down for corruption charges and been thrown out of office so quickly last year. “You had cancer?”

“It wasn’t something my aides thought I should share with the general public, so I took treatments in secret. And afterward, well . . . no Super can have dominion over regular folks; it makes them nervous. So the city council drummed up some charges and put me at the disposal of Dr. Wilhelm Steuben.” Maggot grinned when I flinched. “I see you’ve heard of him.”

“Yeah. I know him.” Dr. Steuben had been the man behind my transformation. He’d changed almost everything about me, and I’d barely spent fifteen minutes in his company. I could only imagine what long-term exposure to that madman would result in. Though . . . I guess I didn’t have to imagine it. I was seeing it right now.

“Did he mention the Experimentals to you?”

As a matter of fact, he had. Very briefly, when speaking to a guard while he was getting ready to torture me, but I remembered. “Something about using them to defend the prison.”

“Something like that,” Maggot agreed. “Experimentals were prisoners, Villains of various abilities, who Dr. Steuben decided to control using me. One maggot for each, somewhere on their bodies. My little helpers are quite venomous, and a bite can kill in under a minute. I control each and every one of them through a psychic link. If an Experimental disobeyed orders, I had to order the maggot to bite. If I disobeyed orders, well . . .” He shook his head. “I don’t need to tell you how uncomfortable the good doctor could make things for a person.”

“No, you don’t.”

“I was his slave. We all were,” Maggot continued. “And then you came along, and with some help from your boyfriend here, we escaped.” He tipped his chin down, and looked at me more directly. “And I thought, well, so many of my fellow Supers have already joined me on the righteous path by carrying my little helpers, why stop there? So I kept them, and as new maggots grew I added them to recruits who’ve proven themselves to the cause.”

“Recruits to what cause?” This was what I didn’t get. “Living in the bliss that’s Z Street? Because it’s not that nice here.”

Maggot shook his head. “It shouldn’t be nice. I’m not interested in nice, Mr. Dinges. Z Street is the embodiment of everything that’s wrong with Panopolis, so why should I sugarcoat it for anyone? No.” He sat back. “There isn’t a single Hero who owns the rights to themselves anymore. The old ones, the Supers with genuine political power, they’ve been almost completely killed off by now. Businesses just want to use the images, the catchphrases, and make a lot of money off of ’em. You think it’s a coincidence that products started featuring familiar faces when the new mayor came to power?

“The tax breaks the mayor offered recently? Those’re incentives to keep businesses from negotiating directly with Heroes. His office gives each Hero a city liaison, a goddamn manager to run their marketing, and most of them don’t say a word because they need whatever benefits they’re getting from the corporations, medical or financial or otherwise. The city gets a cut of the cash, the businesses get more than enough in tax relief to offset their investment, and the Heroes get an annuity, a pat on the damn back, and no chance at real power, no chance to control their own lives.”

Maggot leaned forward. “And us? They can use the so-called Villains as grist in the entertainment mill. They think they can treat the ones they don’t find pretty or useful like vermin because we won’t stay down? Bullshit. This is us taking control of our own destinies. I want to reveal our plight to the world. I want the people who run this city—and it’s not the mayor, son, let me assure you of that—to know they can’t get away with taking advantage of us one moment, then throwing us in the garbage when we don’t suit their interests anymore.” He shrugged. “If that means cracking a few eggs, then I’m prepared to live with it.”

“That’s . . . laudable.” It was fucking terrifying, not because I didn’t agree in an abstract kind of way, but because Maggot was completely serious about “cracking” those eggs. “But how is making a bunch of people into your slaves going to accomplish your goal?”

“Language, Mr. Dinges, what vile language,” Maggot said on a sigh. “I feel like you’re being deliberately dense over this with me. I suggest you shape up, or . . .” He considered for a long moment. “Or I’ll start cutting things off of the Mad Bombardier. He won’t be much of a bomb maker with no fingers, will he?”

No, no, you can’t, don’t touch him, don’t touch him, no no no . . . I wouldn’t be able to reach Maggot and force him to let Raul go before Vibro could get to me, and she was watching closely. “Don’t. Please. I’m sorry.”

He nodded. “I accept your apology, but watch your mouth. Every general needs willing troops, Mr. Dinges. I’ve merely made mine more loyal than they would be otherwise. Soon every powerful Villain in the red zone will be members of the cause, and then we’ll be moving on to the Heroes. That’s where you come in.”

I frowned. “You know, I don’t have a great track record with Heroes.”

“But you did,” Maggot said affably. “In fact, you had one of Panopolis’s greatest Heroes making cow eyes at you for weeks.”

“I was neighbors with his grandmother,” I protested. “We barely knew each other.” Not for his lack of trying, though.

“It’s neither here nor there, really. Before Freight Train can be useful to us, we need to make him vulnerable to us. Everything, from what he wears to what he eats to what he’s allowed to say, is provided to him by GenCorp.” Maggot smiled, the worn yellow nubs of his teeth glinting slickly. “Trust me—I know how the corporations do business with their tools. We need to turn the Heroes against their masters, and Freight Train is the perfect place to start.”