How to Save the World (3 page)

I raised my eyebrows. “Did you somehow miss the part where I was kidnapped over and over again for four years and never really wondered why?”

Naomi paused. “Okay, point. But something's hinky.”

I wasn't sure I agreed. I'd done my time—­literally—­and even if I had doubts about what I was now, life had reached at least a minor equilibrium. I didn't want to poke at the Jenga pieces and send the tower toppling over. Not for a man who was definitely dead. “Where'd you get all of this stuff, anyway?”

“That's not important.”

“Oh, but I bet it is.”

Naomi's smile showed most of her teeth. “Not revealing my sources. I feel like this is significant. Mobius gave you your powers for a reason, right?”

“Right,” I said. The reason I'd ended up with superpowers was so convoluted that some days I didn't even understand it myself, not even with the enhanced intellect. I'd become the very important but powerless piece in a large game of chess, meant to get Mobius's granddaughter, my friend Kiki, away from a Lodi spy within Davenport. We'd been successful in the end, but it gave me a headache to think about how it had all panned out. Jeremy had been the one to pay the biggest price. “Mobius did it so I'd help save Kiki, sort of. I still don't see why it's significant.”

“I just think it is, that's all. I made copies for you.”

“Really? You aren't worried I'll take them straight to Davenport?”

Naomi just gave me a long look.

“Point,” I said, and took the sheaf of papers she passed over. “I'll look over these. If nothing else, maybe they'll answer questions about the Mobium.”

“Started growing a tail yet?”

“Ha, ha,” I said.

“I'm just saying, it could happen any day now.”

“You suck.” My phone screen lit up with a call from Guy, which was surprising. He rarely called during office hours. “Hold on a sec.” I picked up the phone. “Hello?”

“Gail. Hey. Are you busy? Like, is there anything you can't miss?”

“Uh, not particularly, why?”

“How soon can you get to Davenport Tower?”

I blinked. Davenport Tower was in New York City. “With or without a 'porter? Because I'm not exactly cleared for that.”

“I'll get you cleared.”

“Guy, what's wrong?”

“It'll be easier to explain when you get here,” Guy said, sounding frustrated. “Hurry, though. Nobody's hurt, exactly. Just—­yeah, hurry. See you soon.”

And I was left with a dead call.

“Cryptic,” I said, shoving the phone in my pocket. “I have to go.”

“Is it trouble?” Naomi was already gathering her papers and shoving them back into the file folder. “Superhero trouble? Can I come?”

“Yeah, Davenport would take one look at your credentials and laugh.”

“Their loss. I'll walk you out.”

Which would only give her a chance to badger me, I knew, but whatever. “Let's swing by my desk on the way out. I have a feeling I'm going to need better shoes.”

B
ecause Guy had sounded urgent, I skipped the ‘L' and took a cab. In the Willis Tower—­which I still wanted to call the Sears Tower—­I took the elevator to the forty-­seventh floor and stepped into a lobby I'd once helped decimate with a close enemy and some even closer friends. It said
DARTMOOR INCORPORATED
on a large sign, but this was a Davenport facility. Everything was laid out exactly the same at each waystation, down to the grumpy guard blocking the way to non-­Davenport personnel.

The security guard gave me an uninspired look. “ID?”

“Really, Marsh? We go through this every week.”

“State your business.” He made a come-­on motion with his fingers, holding his hand out for my ID, which I passed over with a sigh.

“I'm going to Davenport Tower,” I said. “Do we really have to go through the whole routine? I'm kind of in a hurry.”

Marsh gave me another unimpressed look.

“Fine,” I said. “Not my business if you want to waste time giving Abbott and Costello a run for their money.”

“State your business,” Marsh said again, reaching for the taser on his belt.

“I'm traveling to headquarters,” I said. “I'm on the approved list.”

Marsh handed my ID back and looked at the screen in front of him. “Step up to the scanner.”

I'd already stepped over, which made him glare at me. I held my palm over the scanner and let it prick the side of my finger.
GODWIN, GAIL
flashed over the little screen, listing my stats. I winced a little at my cholesterol count. The body scan and Marsh poking through my bag took a few seconds longer. I'd already learned to ditch anything he could find remotely suspicious, like the really cool-­looking compact mirror I'd bought. Apparently gold lamé was a terrorist threat these days. Today, he shoved the bag back at me with a dissatisfied look.

“You're cleared,” Marsh said, looking grumpy about the prospect. He handed over the same flimsy badge I wore every visit. “Go on through.”

“A pleasure as always, Marsh.”

Not even a single grunt from him in reply. Rude.

The 'porter responsible for zapping me from Chicago to New York, at least, was polite. 'Porting over long distances always left me buzzing and gave me a small headache, but I was able to pay attention when the receptionist instructed me to head to Medical. Oh, that was not good.

The first time they'd brought me into Davenport, I'd been taken straight there. My appointment had been with Cooper—­a man who, it turned out, was a Lodi Corp spy and was trying to find a way to discreetly kill me the entire time. Which partially explained the reason I always wanted to drag my feet on the way to this department.

The secretaries at the front waved me past. “Kiki said to send you straight in.”

I nodded at them and headed back to Kiki's office. Seeing no sign of her, I moved on to the examination rooms.

Jackpot.

“Gail, hi.” Guy, who was sitting on the cot with his elbows propped on his knees, looked up to give me a tight smile. He, Angélica, and Kiki were all gathered in the room, looking tense. “You made it.”

“With only minimal harassment from my favorite security guard. What's going on?”

I looked at Kiki, as her heartbeat had elevated above the others. She wore her typical uniform—­the white polo shirt that sneered at wrinkles, the dark blue Davenport pants—­but, unusually, her hair was down from its athletic ponytail. It hung over her face now as she sat at the computer, body bowed forward as though somebody had punched her in the stomach. It made me belatedly freeze in my tracks.

“Is Jeremy okay?” I asked. The entire trip over, the only conclusion I had come to was that something must have changed with Jeremy's situation. Why else would they have called me to Medical?

Kiki raised her head, and the sight of her red-­rimmed eyes sent a bolt of fear straight through my gut. “He's fine. Or there's been no change, at any rate,” she said, wiping at her eye with a thumb. “This is something else.”

“Has somebody died?” I asked.

Angélica, who was watching Kiki's face carefully, said, “The opposite, actually.”

Somebody had come back to life? There could only be one culprit, and it sent a curl of fear all the way down to my soles. The instinct to run came on surprisingly strong, considering I was surrounded by multiple ­people that I would trust to save my life in a heartbeat. “It's Cooper, isn't it?” I asked. “He's back?”

“No,” Kiki said, shaking her head fervently.

I breathed out in relief.

“No, it's not Cooper,” Angélica said. “But you won't like—­”

She was interrupted by the hiss of the door opening behind me. Already on edge, I whipped about, my fists going up.

“Oh, roomie! You're here, too.”

I looked up into the face of my mortal enemy as she was dragged into the room by two men in Detmer Prison uniforms. Brooklyn Gianelli—­known to the world as the pink-­and-­white-­clad supervillain named Chelsea—­looked like the time in prison had actually done her some good, if the smirk and swagger were anything to judge by. She had her hands clasped palm-­to-­palm, locked in plastic cuffs of some type.

I turned and looked at my supposed friends and significant other. “Explain,” I said.

 

CHAPTER 3

“L
ong time, no see.” Brook dropped onto a chair and kicked her feet out. How she managed to look completely nonchalant handcuffed and surrounded by security guards, I had no idea. Brook made seeming casual and bored in the face of danger look like a natural superpower.

Except the last time she'd been in the room with Guy, she hadn't looked bored or casual. She'd been doing her best to kill him, since she held a grudge against Guy's older brother Sam, and she hadn't been too picky about which Bookman she'd like to kill. I automatically took a step to the right, planting myself between Brook and Guy.

My ex-­cellmate smiled at me, tilting her head. “The shrinks cleared that trigger right out of me.”

“I don't believe you,” I said. I'd been to Detmer Maximum Security Prison, Brook's current place of residence. Granted, I'd been innocent—­it was a long story, but it boiled down to Rita Detmer setting me up to look like a criminal, all so she could beat me up in the name of teaching me how to save Kiki—­and Brook definitely wasn't. Either way, Detmer was more like a day spa than a prison. Not much focus had been placed on actually rehabilitating said supervillains, which was a shame. Brook, who'd spent years in a cage as Lodi Corp's science experiment, could have used some real therapy. “What is she doing here?” I looked around at the others in the room.

“You'll see.” Kiki looked unsettled; I could hear her heartbeat speeding up slightly, which did nothing to reassure me. Kiki waved a hand to activate the monitor behind her. “This came in this morning. The techs are working on tracing the source.”

A face filled the screen. Somebody had shoved the camera in close, grossly distorting its proportions, but my stomach still dropped. Dr. Christoph Mobius filled the entire screen, wearing a dirty flannel shirt and holding a newspaper. My breath stuttered to a halt in my chest. I had a copy of the same paper on my desk at work. I'd picked it up outside my ‘L' stop that morning.

“You told me he was dead,” I said. “You said that when I blew up Lodi—­”

“I was wrong,” Kiki said in a strangled voice, which made sense. The man on the screen was her grandfather, after all.

On the screen, a gloved hand reached in and poked Mobius's shoulder when his eyelids drooped. “Speak,” said a modulated voice, and I frowned.

“To whoever gets this message,” Dr. Mobius said, glaring into the camera and making sweat spring up on the back of my neck, “this is a ransom video. I demand to speak only to the one named—­must I really stick to this mundane script?” He looked over the top of the camera and presumably at the person behind it. “Why are there so many words? It's utterly banal.”

I didn't flinch when the hand appeared again, striking him across the face, though Kiki did.

“As I was saying,” Mobius said, with a little spittle and blood trickling down his chin, “I will speak only with the one called Chelsea. I believe you can find her in Detmer. Any attempts to contact me made by anybody other than Chelsea will end with me—­Dr. Christoph Mobius—­losing my life.”

This time, Kiki whimpered. I had to look away and remind myself that the man might be one of the worst ­people on the planet, but he was also her grandfather.

“I will be in touch within twenty-­four hours. If anybody but Chelsea answers, there will be—­”

A green-­and-­yellow blast hit the monitor, splitting it in half. Instantly, everybody in the room was on their feet, fists and other weapons pointed at Brook. She stood by the table, one arm up and extended toward the TV. Her chest heaved. She had gone bone-­white and her eyes were suspiciously bright, but I ignored these details to focus on the fact that the whirling vortex in her palm, where her stinging power beams emerged, was wide open.

“Get on the ground!” one of the guards said, surging forward.

I saw Brook begin to turn and dove, tackling the guard to the ground. The beam washed over my back and did nothing but tickle. Of everybody in the room, I was the only one her stinging powers couldn't hurt.

Brook gasped and jumped back, pointing both hands toward the ceiling. “Davenport told me he was dead,” she said.

I climbed off of the guard and exchanged a look with Guy. Anger was par for the course with Brook, but this was something different. This verged on hysteria. If she thought she could get away with it, I imagined, she would be barreling through the wall and flying for shelter.

“Any idea who has him?” I asked.

Kiki shook her head. “All we have is the video.”

Angélica turned to Brook's guards. “You two wait outside until we're done. We've got one Class B and three Class Cs, we're more than capable of handling her.”

They argued, which I felt was foolish—­Detmer guards, traditionally, didn't have superpowers at all.

I tuned them out, sitting down so hard that the chair creaked underneath me. So Dr. Mobius was alive. We'd all thought he had been in the Lodi facility I had blown up while escaping from Cooper. The thought of having killed ­people—­I knew I had, since there was no way the building had been completely empty—­had given me more than a ­couple sleepless nights since. Learning that my creator had been among them had been such a mental minefield that I'd been better off suppressing the feelings, and had done so with vigor.

And now that he was alive and apparently being held for ransom, I
really
didn't know how to feel. I looked at where Angélica and Kiki were arguing with the guards. Brook stood behind them, breathing hard, rage plainly written on her face as she stared at the shattered remains of the TV.

“Brook's not taking this well,” I said to Guy. “Not that I would expect her to. Mobius experimented on her for a long time. Somebody at least should have warned her.”

“It's weird to hear you on Brook's side,” Guy said.

“Cellmates for life,” I said, though I wasn't feeling much humor. Purposely creating new superheroes was illegal. Holding ­people against their will and experimenting on them, as Mobius and Lodi had with Brook, was more than illegal: it was reprehensible. Seeing the last of Lodi hadn't exactly left me heartbroken.

But now somebody had Dr. Mobius and knew that somebody at Davenport would be willing to try to save him.

“Did they send this video straight to you?” I asked Kiki.

Angélica, Brook, and Kiki all turned to look at me in surprise.

“Well?” I asked.

Kiki shook her head. “No, to Davenport in general. Eddie brought me in on this one because of my family ties.”

I wrinkled my nose. The CEO of Davenport Industries and I had a few issues with each other. They involved me telling him to go have sex with a goat, and him taking away my rights and sending me to prison. One time I'd puked on his shoes. It had been a highlight.

“Eddie also authorized Brook's temporary release,” Kiki continued. “She doesn't have to participate—­”

“Let him die,” Brook said. “In fact, find him and I'll take care of it myself. Hell, I'll do it for free and then I'll fly myself back to Detmer for the extended sentence. Happily.”

“What
is
it with that place?” Guy asked under his breath.

I hadn't gotten around to telling him that Detmer was more day spa than prison, but now wasn't the time to get into it.

Kiki cleared her throat. “Lodi was forcing Mobius—­”

“I don't give a damn! He let them do this to me!” Brook said.

“And when he escaped, he took you with him,” Kiki said.

“That doesn't make up for any of it.”

“They can commute your prison sentence,” Angélica said, her voice neutral. Brook knew I had Mobium—­she'd discovered it when I'd proven immune to her angry stinging-­bee beams—­but she had no idea that Angélica did, too. “Dr. Mobius would be a valuable asset. If you or Gail get sick, he may be the only person who could help.”

“Like I give a damn about
Gail
getting sick,” Brook said.

“Right back at you,” I said, and Brook glared at me. “But I've got the upgraded, more stable version of Mobium he probably didn't want to give to Lodi. How long before you start breaking down into itty-­bitty pieces?”

I didn't need superhearing to catch the obscenity Brook muttered at me. “That man should die,” she said. “I want no part in saving him.”

“What if I offer a trade?” Guy said, lifting his head.

“There's nothing you have that I want,” Brook said, shifting her glare from me to him. “Nothing your brother has, either, so don't even try.”

“Not him,” Guy said, and this time the falling sensation in my stomach came from an entirely new source. I was not, I realized, going to like whatever he was about to say. “But Petra—­”

Brook's hands clenched into fists. Petra Bookman, her best friend from high school and Guy's older sister, had been missing a year longer than she had. Everybody had thought Brook was dead. Nobody was sure Petra was. Sam had devoted his life to finding Petra, at the expense of Brook, who'd been kidnapped and had wound up at Lodi Corp when Sam had failed to save her. Since Sam had been the reason she'd been in trouble in the first place, I didn't blame her for hating his guts.

“You want to find her, don't you?” Guy asked. Brook's fists began to shake, but Guy's eyes remained steady on her face.

“Guy,” I said. I really didn't like where this was going.

“You go along, help us retrieve Mobius, and we can look for her together,” Guy said.

Brook's face was completely unreadable.

“Can I have a word?” I asked Guy, grabbing his wrist and pulling him to his feet with my not inconsequential strength. “Outside? In the hallway? We'll just be a minute.”

I figured Kiki and Angélica could handle Brook in her current state. If not, well, we had bigger problems. Luckily, the hallway outside was completely empty of other Davenport staff, including the guards we'd kicked out of the room. I whipped around to look at Guy. “Do you have a death wish?”

He raised his eyebrows.

“Guy, that woman has a berserker switch that could go off at any second and it's definitely tripped by all things Bookman. Isn't that just a tiny bit disconcerting for you?”

“It's not exactly something that gives me the warm fuzzies,” Guy said, frowning. “But she wants nothing to do with rescuing Mobius, and we need her.”

“I barely want anything to do with rescuing Mobius,” I said, “and he held her captive for a hell of a lot longer than he did for me. That doesn't mean you should offer to go on a wild-­goose chase.”

“It might not be a wild-­goose chase,” Guy said, but he didn't look like he really believed the words coming out of his mouth.

“Weren't you telling me Sam lost years of his life looking for Petra?” I asked.

“I'm a lot more levelheaded than my brother,” Guy said. “Are you upset about that or upset I didn't consult you before making that offer?”

“I can be upset about multiple things,” I said, as that was definitely the truth. “But in this case, I'm a little upset you didn't mention to me that you were thinking about working with the woman who nearly killed you, and who did in fact kill Angélica for a little while.”

“She needs some closure about Petra,” Guy said, though he looked pained.

“Petra doesn't even make top ten on Brook's list of issues, and she might never get closure. You might never get that, either, and on top of disappointing both of you, that could send her around the bend again. You do realize that, right?”

“Trust me, if there's one thing I do understand, it's that,” Guy said, and he had a point. He'd had to live with the reality of his missing sibling for all of these years. “But she's not going to agree any other way.”

“Is that such a bad thing? Dr. Mobius is not a good guy, remember?”

“You're just going to let a kidnapped man stay kidnapped, Gail?”

I wrinkled my nose because he had a point. ­People being held captive and ransomed were my own personal hang-­up. “Ugh! Why do you have to be right?”

Guy laughed and folded me into a giant hug.

“I'm kicking him in the nuts as soon as we rescue him,” I said.

“Fine by me,” he said.

I leaned back enough so that I could poke him in the chest. “And if you're going with Brook, I'm going with you. I don't trust her. Not negotiable.”

He gave me a genuinely surprised look. “I thought you were going to, anyway?”

“Oh,” I said, my shoulders visibly deflating. “Okay, then. Be sensible about it.”

He kissed the side of my head. “Always.”

But before we could go back in, I grabbed his wrist. “Wait, do you even know where to begin searching for Petra?”

Guy looked at the floor, not meeting my eyes. “I may have looked into some things over the years.”

“You don't have, like, one of those TV show conspiracy boards with the strings and everything, do you?”

“No. Nothing that extreme. Just some files, and having some fresh eyes on those might help. Brook hasn't agreed yet. I doubt she will, actually.”

I squeezed his wrist. Thankfully, he was pretty much indestructible, as I sometimes had a hard time judging my new strength.

“I'll do it,” Brook said the second we walked back into the room. Her eyes were suspiciously wet and I noticed that a ­couple more pieces of the TV had been shattered. Angélica also looked far more annoyed than she had when we'd left.

I pulled up short. “Seriously?”

“I don't want anything to do with Mobius when we find him. You leave me alone in a room with him, I will kill him.” Her voice stayed deathly calm.

If nothing else, statements like that explained why she was currently in prison.