Making supers 1, p.13
Making Supers 1, page 13
Giselle was already on her feet, eyes wide with excitement.
“You got him?” she asked.
“Sure did. You good?”
“Better than good. He hits like a girl.”
I skirted around the edge of the container and found Scourge’s huge rifle on the ground. I hoisted it up, ignoring just how damn heavy the thing was. My later guesses about the weapon had been right—it was some kind of grenade launcher with rifle-like precision. Overkill for any urban environment, but just about the right size if you were hunting supes. Even if it didn’t kill them, it would mess their day up.
Howls of pain cut through the blaring sirens and flickering lights, and the smoke thickened into an oppressive wave of smog. I hadn’t brought a gas mask, but the masks we wore would give us some kind of reprieve for a moment.
“Time to leave?” Giselle asked.
“Right after we’re done with the siphons,” I assured her. “Come on—we’ve got a facility to annihilate.”
Chapter 17
“Annihilate?” Giselle asked.
“To fuck up beyond all recognition, utterly destroy, or otherwise stick it so far up Pinnacle’s ass that they’re shitting out boot leather for a week,” I clarified. I bent my knees, threw the grenade-rifle back up on top of the container, and nodded to the nearest siphon. “Do you think you can get anything out of their computer systems here?”
“Didn’t bring the right equipment to get into the setups they have here,” Giselle said, with a soft curse. “And those sparkly supes are a handful. Any chance we can catch one of them alive, use them as evidence against Pinnacle? They’ve got to be some kind of experiment, right?”
“My thoughts exactly,” I said, and jumped up to catch the edge of the container. “But we don’t have the gear to take them in, and if we let them out of here, they’ll raise the property prices in the Industrial District by a scenic mile. And we’re trying to fuck with Pinnacle’s publicity, not give them a reason to swoop in and save the day.”
“Surely they’re already on their way?”
“Probably,” I agreed. “Or maybe they want to sit tight and look like the victims. Doesn’t change anything. We’ve got to put down the threats, and hightail it out of here as fast as we can. If you can get anything out of the machines, do it. Otherwise, unhook the sparkplugs, and I’ll take care of them.”
Giselle nodded, flashed me another grin, and vanished into the smoke like a wraith.
I set up on the container, laid the huge rifle out in front of me, and checked it for fingerprint scanners. There weren’t any, thankfully, and I couldn’t help but smile at that. Scourge had his own personal howitzer, but he was arrogant enough to assume that no one would be able to take it from him.
I laid the gun to my shoulder and peeked through the sights.
A dedicated readout appeared around the edges, gauged wind resistance, and told me how many rounds were left in the magazine. Four shots.
A flare of blue off to the right caught my attention, and I swung the cannon around to get eyes on the threat. A naked old guy staggered out of the smoke. He leaned against a steel beam, and a bolt of lightning crackled through the whole structure of the building.
I laid the sights on him with a grimace and pulled the trigger. The whole gun launched back into my body, threatened to dislocate my shoulder, and blew the experiment’s upper torso into bloody, sparking chunks.
Around us, the smoke built up higher and higher, and I hoped that Giselle’s Resilience ability would shield her from the worst of it. Her steady and strangely-calm voice echoed through my earpiece.
“Got another one here, on your ten o’clock.”
I swept the rifle back to the left, found another source of blue light, and waited. More lights winked out above us, but the steady glow of Scourge’s custom scope illuminated a humanoid shape through the smoke.
No wonder he’d been able to pick us out in the dark. His gear, added to his own inbuilt powers, would have made it a shooting gallery. But he hadn’t counted on my Barrier ability, or willingness to close the distance and end him.
The figure ripped itself away from the platform, flinging itself to the left. I couldn’t spot Giselle—probably due to her own abilities—but I had a pretty good idea of the sparkplug’s intentions. I blew the figure apart into a cloud of gore, and did a quick head count.
I could account for three of the conduit-supes, and that left three still suspended in their fields. EMTs, police, and Pinnacle would be on their way by now. Window to escape was getting narrow. We could bail, get away clean, and call this mission accomplished.
But that sounded like the bitch’s way out.
We weren’t superheroes. Far from it. But the businesses in Empyrion had enough to worry about with property damage from the supes, and the employees of those businesses just wanted to go home with a hard-earned day’s pay. They hadn’t asked for electric lunatics on the streets.
I swung the huge gun toward the next siphon, rolled my shoulder to loosen it up, and blocked out the howling noise and the reek of chemical fires.
“Three more,” I said to Giselle.
“Two more,” she corrected.
I peered through the smog, spotted another one of the conduits, and blew the naked experiment apart before the figure even had time to drop to the glassy surface below.
Pulling myself up to my feet, I grabbed the gun up, and slid off the top of the container again. The fucking cannon was heavy as hell, but I tossed it up onto my shoulder and trundled to the exit. I left the huge weapon by the door, made a mental note to take it with us as a gift to Billy, before sprinting back into the chaos of the warehouse.
I pulled the second stolen gun out of the back of my pants, flicked off the safety, and beelined toward the last two sources of light. I leapt over a crate, skidded past the corpse of a guard, and arrived just in time.
Giselle flew away from one of the sparkplugs, smashed into a pile of SilverSky crates, and vanished from sight. The crackling superhuman whirled around, lightning arced from his fingertips, and I raised my shield.
Blinding bright electricity slammed into it a second later, the impact shoving me a few feet backward. Arcs flickered out, and I steadied my handgun on my upraised forearm. I fired three times, two in the chest and one in the head. The living battery dropped like a stone.
I dropped my shield and sprinted toward Giselle, but she’d already lifted herself out of the pile of crates. Smoke curled up off her clothes, and she dusted off her shoulder.
“Ouch,” she growled.
“Damn,” I said. “Keeps on ticking after a licking.”
“Pretty sure that’s how it’s supposed to go,” Giselle replied with a saucy wink.
We whirled toward the last siphon, and my partner smacked my ass as she sprinted past me. Damn, I loved this girl. She’d gone from confident corporate negotiator to a badass in two days. She’d just shrugged off a huge surge of electricity like it was nothing. Scourge’s strikes had knocked her around, but she’d bounced back almost instantly. Even with my own Resilience ability, I hadn’t been quite that tough.
I darted after her, swept around a pile of burning trash, and held my breath as best I could. The thick smoke burned my eyes and made my vision blurry. I hated to think what kind of chemicals were in the air.
I’d worry about it later, once I’d had time to sit down and process everything.
The last of Pinnacle’s experiments hung suspended in the air, trapped by an invisible energy field.
I didn’t wait for Giselle to unhook them. Three bullets tore through their body. I dropped the gun back into the small of my back and tore the batteries free of the unit. Giselle bent over it and accompanying screens for a moment.
A particularly acrid cloud hit my lungs, and a fit of coughing ripped through my chest after a second. My vision was hazy, and if I stayed here for too much longer, I’d be out cold.
Giselle straightened up, hooked my arm with hers, and dragged me through the maze of containers. The fires had crept through the warehouse, and a huge ball of flames flared up behind us as the blaze guzzled greedily on the readily-available fuel.
I managed to angle Giselle toward Scourge’s gun. I tried to hoist it up over my shoulder, but she took it off me, and slung it safely over her back like it weighed nothing. I fought off another tidal wave of coughs as we emerged from the warehouse, and onto the loading ramp outside.
Blue-and-red lights flared ahead of us.
Chapter 18
An ambulance stood at the top of the ramp and backed up to us. Its doors swung open as we approached.
My hand went to the gun at my back out of sheer reflex, but Giselle caught my arm and ushered me forward. I blinked away the tears and muck in my eyes, and saw a broad-shouldered giant with tattoos in the back of the van. He flashed his teeth at me, caught hold of my arm, and strong-armed me into the vehicle.
I wound up on a bench beside the wall as I hacked up half a lung and finally managed to wipe my eyes. Giselle took a seat across from me, while Chuck slammed the doors shut and thumped the roof twice. The ambulance hauled ass out of the loading zone.
I waited until the assault on my lungs passed, pulled off the sweaty balaclava, and rested my back against the wall of the ambulance. I dragged in lungfuls of clean, fresh air. Giselle pulled off her own mask a moment later.
She shook her strawberry-blonde hair free of its ponytail, grinned at me, and glanced up at Chuck. The huge merc had a grin that threatened to split his face open, and he nudged the tank-busting rifle with a foot.
“You didn’t strike me as the souvenir type of guy,” he said.
“Present for Billy,” I managed. “Thought he’d appreciate it.”
“Scourge is down?”
“Permanently. And if the cops go looking through that warehouse, Pinnace is going to have some explaining to do.” I sucked in another breath, and a grin stretched across my features. “Mission accomplished. Dead supe, building in flames, Pinnacle mildly inconvenienced.”
“Mildly?” Giselle asked.
“I think we just took out their backups,” I said. “Their contingency if their bases lose power.” I cleared my throat and met Chuck’s eyes. “They were experimenting on people in there. Giving them electric powers and draining them like living batteries.”
Chuck’s eyes widened. “You’re sure?”
“Positive,” Giselle said. “They weren’t normal supes.”
“Any information? Anything you could pull out of there?”
Giselle shook her head. “It was a shit-show. Whole place was on fire, and all their computers were locked in. I didn’t have the time to break in, even if I’d wanted to.”
“Still,” Chuck said. “I thought you were both goners, for sure.”
“Doubt it.” I laughed. “Where we headed?”
“Back to Billy’s. Gwen’s meeting us there.” Chuck settled down on the bench beside Giselle and shook his head to himself. “Holy fuck, you actually did it.”
“Wait, Billy lives in that storage unit?” Giselle asked.
“You seen the prices in Empyrion?” Billy called, from the driver’s seat.
“Probably gone up, after our visit,” I said.
The guy actually laughed, and I took a moment to just breathe. The crazy adrenaline dump subsided into shakes, a raging libido, and clawing hunger. I’d been in crazy situations before, but the warehouse had taken the cake.
Unhinged superhumans, a half-decent opposition, and Scourge’s cannon had turned the entire situation into a clusterfuck of biblical proportions. I’d chosen well with the Barrier ability, but the last few minutes had been the hairiest.
I’d need to make better plans from here on out, ones that took my resources into better account. The Basement would provide me with more options, and hopefully, a better insight into what the real mission my dad had in store for me.
The ambulance pulled to a halt a few minutes later, and Chuck swung the back doors open for us. Giselle scooped up the huge gun at our feet, slung it over her shoulder easily enough, and hopped out of the van with the feline grace I’d come to expect from her.
I got out after her, and did a quick check of my equipment. I still had the handcannon in its holster, and the stolen sidearm from the loading bay’s rent-a-cop. My clothes were burned and twisted, and half of my shoulder and a good chunk of my chest ached like one big bruise.
Chuck waved us through to the Basement’s secret hideout. The rolling door slid up, and a new face appeared behind it.
He was a thick nugget of a guy with blonde hair, blue eyes, and fiercely intelligent eyes that betrayed nothing.
“Javier?” I guessed.
He tilted his head at that. “Not sure we know each other.”
“Fairly certain you were the wheelman when Bullrush wanted to turn me into a traffic statistic,” I said. “I heard Billy mention your name.”
“Huh,” Javier said. “You don’t miss much, do you?”
“Helps me dodge bullets, most of the time.”
Javier’s eyes came to rest on my vest with a raised eyebrow. “Might need to open your eyes a little more, bud. The two of you look like you’ve been in and out of a blender.”
“More like a toaster,” Giselle said. “The shower better be free.”
The Basement’s wheelman stepped aside, and we ducked under the rolling door. I glanced behind us, but both Chuck and Billy were busy with the fake ambulance. They rolled the markings off the side of it as Javier closed the door down behind us.
I scanned the storage unit for familiar faces and found Gwen at the poker table. A disassembled pistol lay in pieces around her, and she glanced up from her cleaning ritual as we stepped into her little base of operations.
“I’m impressed,” she said, without any preamble.
“Could’ve gone smoother,” I said with a shrug. “But we made it.”
Giselle unslung the massive gun from her shoulder, dropped it on the table in front of Gwen with a smirk, and made a beeline for the half-hidden bathroom at the back of the storage unit.
I pulled out a chair at the table and sat down while Gwen stared at our trophy in complete astonishment. She ran her fingers over the rifle’s housing, unclipped the magazine, and pulled out one of the economy soda-can-sized rounds with deft fingers. She sat it down on the table beside her and tore her gaze away from the weapon to meet my eye.
“Where’d you get this?”
“Scourge,” I said. “He liked his toys.”
“This is overkill, even for him.”
“I’m starting to get the feeling that Pinnacle doesn’t care much about expenditure when it comes to their people,” I said. “Scourge struck me as a wetworks guy. And he loved his job.”
“Past tense,” Gwen noted. “You took him out?”
“And picked up his powers, with a side order of fries,” I said.
I took the revolver from the holster on my hip, set it down on the table beside the massive anti-materiel rifle, and sat back in my chair. I couldn’t quite hide my smug smirk, though.
Gwen smiled. Her whole face lit up when she did, and her blue eyes sparkled merrily as she took stock of me, in all my burned, smoked, and battered glory. It was a remarkable contrast to her attitude toward us at the cafe that morning, and my gut did twisting things as our eyes met and we gazed at each other for a moment.
“What’d you find?” Giselle asked finally.
“First off, it wasn’t half as important as you thought it was,” I told her soberly. “The place was manufacturing batteries of bio-electricity and shipping them out. Don’t know where. I’d have to assume Pinnacle’s own sites, as backups—”
“Bio-electricity?” Gwen cut in.
“Supes. Held up on these big siphons that sucked lightning out of them and into the batteries proper.” I leaned forward on the table with a shake of my head. “I think they’re making them, Gwen. They were manufacturing their own supes, experimenting on the homeless that came through the Outreach Center.”
Gwen let out her breath in a hiss. “You’re sure?”
“It’s a working theory,” I said. “You gonna tell me it’s impossible?”
“I would’ve said so,” she acknowledged. “But then, I’ve never heard of anyone who can drain supes and give their powers to other people, either. All the information we’ve heard indicates that Pinnacle’s members are born with their powers. They manifest in early childhood, and the organization scoops up as many as they can to ‘prevent’ them from being supervillains.”
“That’s what the media tells us, anyway.”
“Point,” Gwen nodded. “Did you drain any of the lightning-rods?”
“I couldn’t,” I said. “Not from a lack of trying, either. Something about them was off. They weren’t all juggernauts. Regular bullets put them down just fine. Which is what has me thinking that they’re new, or at least, not the same as Pinnacle’s stable of underwear models.”
Gwen took it in with a nod. “I’ll see how well it matches up with what we have so far. On the upside, the Outreach Center is history. Billy and Chuck said there was a battalion of cops headed down to check it out, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Pinnacle sends in their own cleanup crew to make it look pretty for the camera.”
“You’re going to take credit for it?” I asked.
She shrugged. “Depends. It’s an inherently weird game to play, with the journalists. Normally we wait for whatever Pinnacle feeds them. If they say it was a random supervillain attack, then we can slide under the radar and keep fighting the information war. If they blame us, or we take credit for it, then Pinnacle’s image takes a hit, and that’ll make it harder to move around for a few weeks.” Gwen made a face. “We stay a step ahead of them, but they sure as shit don’t make it easy for us.”
“So you’re going to take us seriously now?” I asked.
She smiled again, sending my gut into another gymnastic routine. “Oh, definitely.”
