How to Save the World (9 page)

Not all of this mattered as much as the truth that had been staring me in the face the entire time, a truth I hadn't even put together. It
couldn't
be a coincidence that Mobius had resurfaced at the same time Naomi had mysteriously found an old journal and files on him. I should have dragged her to see Kiki the instant she'd brought her suspicions up to me. Instead, I'd completely forgotten about her research.

“You've had other things on your mind,” Guy said, drawing my attention back to the train car. We'd changed into civilian clothing, and he had his backpack with the War Hammer uniform inside slung across one shoulder. “Go easy on yourself. Mobius is kind of a sore subject.”

“There's oblivious and there's missing the really, really, really blindingly obvious. She's involved in this somehow.”

“Is she, though? Naomi was always going to look into Lodi, especially after they caused so much trouble. She's curious. It really could be a coincidence.”

“It's Naomi,” I said, which I felt encapsulated my entire point. If there was trouble in my life recently, Naomi Gunn was somehow at the center of it. That was just an undeniable truth, like Shark-­Man's biggest battles inevitably winding up on the Golden Gate Bridge.

“You're not being very fair to her,” Guy said.

“I'm totally being fair. Also pragmatic and realistic.”

Guy shook his head, his lips curving up a little in a small smile.

We disembarked and I looked around automatically, the same way every Chicago resident did, for any supervillain activity. They preferred transit lines because they were always guaranteed an audience. Luck appeared to be on our side: we were able to cross the street and hurry the ­couple of blocks to Naomi's place.

Even better, I could hear her moving around inside. I pounded on her front door.

“You know,” she said when she yanked it open, her toothbrush hanging out of her mouth, “you can knock like a normal person. Really. No reason to scare me out of my damn mind.”

I brushed past her. “Where did you get that information about Mobius?”

Naomi pulled her toothbrush free. “Sure, no, come in. Make yourself at home. It's not like I could have company or anything.”

“I can hear that you don't.” I gave her an exaggerated eye-­roll. I wasn't entirely uncouth.

Guy stepped in a little more awkwardly and smiled politely. “Hi,” he said, giving her a hug. “How's tricks?”

I ignored the formalities and strolled into the main area of her loft. Her TV was tuned to one of the twenty-­four-­hour news channels, but it was muted. I looked away from Vicki's crumpled form on-­screen as Naomi stuck her toothbrush in the kitchen sink and rinsed it off. “What's going on with Vicki?” she asked, reaching for her ever-­present notebook.

“Classified. Where did you get that information about Lodi and Mobius? I hardly believe you dug that up from the local library.”

“Would you look at that?” Naomi pulled a pen out of her ponytail. “That information is suddenly classified.”

“It's important,” I said.

“Mm-­hmm.” Naomi held up the pen, poised over the notebook. Her tilted eyebrow relayed the message easily enough: no information would be shared without a little quid pro quo action. I gave her an annoyed look.

It was Guy, of course, who came to the rescue.

“Naomi,” he said, stepping forward. “Vicki's in trouble. If you have information that can help us figure out what happened to her . . .”

“Trouble how?” Naomi looked from him to me.

I glanced at Guy. He inclined his head the barest centimeter.

“Her powers vanished. She got hit with something and, poof, no powers. I may have gotten exposed, too. Kiki's running tests.” I shoved my hands into my pockets and bunched my shoulders up around my ears. “It's something to do with Mobius.”

“How do you know?”

“Because it was Mobius's kidnapper that did it to her. Or Mobius himself. We can't tell. He might be in on it.”

Naomi held her hands up in a time-­out gesture, eyes wide. “Mobius is alive? Wait—­kidnapper?”

Guy sighed. “Why don't I explain while you take us to wherever it is you found the information?”

“How about you explain and I decide if I'll take you to wherever it is I found the information?”

Guy folded his arms over his chest. “Or, I invite you to come have dinner with Gail and me next week and you tell me now?”

“Deal,” Naomi said quickly, and I didn't blame her. It was almost too bad Guy had become a superhero. If he hadn't, he'd no doubt have a five-­star restaurant I wouldn't be able to afford to eat at. Naomi tucked her notebook into her back pocket and crossed over to the refrigerator, rummaging around in the vegetable drawer until she pulled out a file folder.

I raised my eyebrow at that.

“I live on takeout. ­People don't think to look there until the very end, and by that time, hopefully I've already stopped them. What's going on with Dr. Mobius? How do you know he's alive?”

“A ransom video of him showed up a few days ago. Apparently he's not as dead as we thought, which will make the scientific community happy.” Dr. Lemuel Cooper had been willing to kill to get his hands on the supposedly deceased Dr. Mobius's notebooks. I gestured at Guy, who was much better at summarizing situations—­much less likely to get sidetracked—­than I was.

As was his habit, he broke it down, going over the timeline of Mobius's ransom video, everything that had happened at Union Station, Vicki's lack of powers, and finally the video that the kidnapper had put out, offering the power-­negating powder to the highest bidder. Naomi scribbled the entire time he wrote, and I helped myself to the open bag of chips and a carton of leftover tikka masala from her fridge.

When Guy was finally done, and I'd polished off the carton, Naomi put her pen down and stared at the countertop in front of her. Something was bothering her. I could tell from the way her heart rate had picked up, but she hadn't scolded me for eating her food, either.

Sure enough, my suspicions were confirmed when she finally looked up.

“I think all of this may be my fault,” she said.

I couldn't help it: I turned to look at Guy with my best
told you so
face.

 

CHAPTER 9

W
e took Naomi's car, which was two shaky steps up from a junker and so short on legroom that Guy had to be folded up like an accordion in the front seat. Even I felt a little cramped, but beggars couldn't be choosers at this point, and if Naomi was right, we needed to move quickly.

“I know I wasn't supposed to be looking into Lodi,” she said as she drove us toward Evanston, “but it's frustrating. I really don't think Davenport was doing
any
research, and they should have been because here's this company actively trying to create superheroes instead of manage them. Don't they realize how significant that is?”

“I think it's more a matter of not wanting ­people within Davenport to get the same idea,” Guy said, shifting awkwardly in the front seat.

Naomi switched lanes with all the grace of a typical Chicago driver, which is to say: like an asshole. A car behind us laid on its horn as she cut it off. “That's a ridiculous mentality that will only breed more companies like Lodi,” she said.

“Maybe, but it also prevents Davenport from becoming Lodi itself,” Guy said.

“If you say so.” Naomi didn't seem too impressed. “Davenport is still such a monopoly that if companies like Lodi did spring up, they'd be able to swat them down like the mighty hand of a superhero god that they think they are. At any rate, that's too philosophical for now. I was fascinated because Lodi was there one day, and it was gone afterward. It felt too tidy, you know? No loose ends at all? Come on.”

“So you started digging,” I said, narrowing my eyes at her.

“Mm-­hmm. I found some files that led me to more files that led me of course to more files because if there's one thing that's universal, it's bureaucracy and paperwork. And there was a lot there about Mobius. More even than I showed you, Gail. He was an asset to Lodi. They kept him prisoner for years, working on various inventions that I can't find anything about in the files. But I do know he had an assistant, and from what I can tell, the ‘assistant' was more of a taskmaster, keeping an eye on both Mobius and any test subjects they had.”

“Wait,” I said. “Subjects? As in plural?”

“I think they died and were disappeared in true Chi-­Town fashion.” Naomi tapped her fingers in agitation against the steering wheel.

Seeing as Cooper, one of Lodi's scientists, had been more than eager enough to dissolve me in acid, I wasn't actually surprised. “I see,” I said, the words sticking in my throat. “So the assistant—­”

“I'm just saying: if somebody's kidnapped Mobius and knows a lot about his work, it's probably this guy.”

“Does he have a name?” Guy asked.

“No. I've been doing as much digging as I can, but he obfuscates his name as much as he possibly can. I can give you everything I know about him later, which isn't much. At any rate, back to the matter at hand, I was able to find a file in the records on Mobius that referenced some land that I'm pretty sure Davenport doesn't know about, that Lodi owns.” Naomi waved a frustrated hand and cut a third driver off. I felt proud of Chicago when I heard what the driver shouted at her in response. “I checked it out.”

“By yourself?” I asked.

Naomi snorted. “Nothing's managed to kill me yet.”

“Not for lack of trying,” I said.

Her grin popped up bright on her face. “You're cute when you worry. Anyway, like I was saying, I checked it out. Didn't find anybody, but I did find
something
. And now that I'm thinking about it, our esteemed doctor and his evil assistant—­or whoever the kidnapper is, if it's not that guy—­may have been holed up there and I may have been the fox that startled the pheasant out of the grass.”

“What do you mean?”

“You'll see what I mean when we get there.”

There
proved to be an old office building in a strip mall with the windows boarded up, far enough from any major roads that it had been completely neglected by time. Naomi parked in the parking lot and we extricated ourselves from the car as we looked around. It didn't really look like the site of mad scientist shenanigans, but given that Dr. Mobius had once held me captive in a house in the suburbs, I knew better than to be fooled. I left my senses open as I followed Guy and Naomi into the building, slipping through a board that we pried up from the edge.

At one point, the interior had probably been something boring like an accounting firm or one of those EZ Cash Loan scams that tries to look professional and instead preys on ­people. A few desks remained from its previous life, battered and covered in scratches, gnaw-­marks, and droppings from vermin. An overpowering smell of mold hit my nostrils, inspiring a sneeze or five as I stepped in.

“Lodi sure knows how to keep it classy,” I said, looking around at the mildewed carpet and rot-­stains on the walls.

Guy grinned. “This place doesn't feel like a horror movie at all, no.”

“Right? I like the ambience. This way,” Naomi said, heading toward what had probably been the manager's office, where part of the ceiling looked like it had caved in. I could see the winter sky through a giant hole.

Halfway into the little office, a smell hit me.

“He was here,” I said, lifting my head and looking around. “Mobius. He came through here at some point.”

It made my knees weak. Seeing his angry face on the video was one thing, but scent was the strongest sense tied to memory, and for another awful moment I was back in that house in the suburbs, too weak to fight while Mobius changed my life irrevocably. I turned my head now until I could pinpoint the source of the smell: a crumpled pile of flannel in the corner of the office.

I picked it up and sighed. He'd always dressed like a lumberjack.

“You definitely stumbled onto something,” I said to Naomi, setting the flannel shirt down on the back of the broken-­down office chair. The room had been pretty well looted, but a desk remained. Daylight filtered in through cracks in the boarded-­up windows, catching on the dust motes we'd disturbed.

“The files were on the desk,” Naomi said, opening and shutting drawers when she found nothing inside. “Just out in the open . . . like somebody had been reading them and maybe I'd interrupted.”

“Something about this place feels off,” Guy said, looking around.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“The dimensions don't line up.” Guy folded his arms over his chest and squinted at the interior wall of the office. “I'd have to look at the blueprints to be sure, but this wall feels out of place.”

He stepped over and began prodding the wall around the faded remains of an inspirational office poster.

“You think there's a secret room back there?” Naomi asked, looking eager. I didn't blame her, though her face did go wary a split second later. “Wait, if there's a secret room, somebody could have been watching me the whole time! Why wouldn't they just knock me out? Or worse, kill me?”

“If you had the journo face on,” I said, “they were probably too scared to.”

Naomi stuck her tongue out at me.

“No idea,” Guy said, ignoring my aside. “But you were definitely lucky, if they were watching you.”

“I'm not sure luck has anything to do with it. I may have accidentally set everything in motion by coming here. The timing's way too suspect,” Naomi said. Guy continued to run his hands over the wall, not even straining to reach the ceiling (tall ­people suck). “I find these files out in the open and you confirm that Mobius has been here, and then almost the same day, this guy decides to ransom Mobius? Did I somehow cause this?”

“Wouldn't be the first time,” I said.

“You love me, and you know it,” Naomi said.

Guy made a frustrated noise. “I can't find the catch,” he said. “Step back.”

When he was satisfied that we were far enough away, he took a deep breath and began to push against the wall. I watched the muscles in his back and shoulders strain under the pressure. The entire building seemed to groan; I looked worriedly at the ceiling as dust and debris began to fall. “Uh, Guy . . .”

“Just a sec,” he said, voice ragged. The walls began to creak. Tiny fissures spread out from the corners and the edges of the door. Wary now, I grabbed Naomi's shoulder, getting ready to shove her underneath the desk or shield her if Guy brought the ceiling down. My body could take a few hundred pounds of concrete. Probably.

Luckily, Guy took a step back. “What—­” I started to say, but he startled me by drawing back and slamming his fist into the wall as hard as he possibly could. There was a loud clang, almost like an explosion, and his fist and arm went through the wall, all the way to his shoulder.

“Got it,” Guy said, pulling his arm out. “Help me out?”

The punch had shattered the drywall, making it easy to peel away. It revealed a metal wall behind it, now bearing a nice puncture from Guy's fist. Without a word, we each took a side of the puncture and pulled. The metal groaned but eventually gave way, widening into a hole large enough for me to poke my head through.

It took a few seconds for my eyes to adjust to the darkness. The lair below was open and dim, lit by a strange indigo glow. “Yup,” I said, pulling my head out of the hole, “someone had a secret lair under here. God, I hate secret lairs.”

“You and me both,” Guy said, though Naomi looked absolutely delighted, poking her head through to get a good look. Guy scratched the back of his head. “I don't suppose you saw a way in?”

“Staircase,” I said. I pointed. “Behind the wall right there. I'm assuming there's a secret catch somewhere, but the door's wood if you want to skip the rigamarole.”

“Excellent,” Guy said, and kicked the wall. More dust pattered to the ground, and the door flew off its hinges. I heard it bouncing down the stairs. “I'll go first, if you don't mind.”

“Yeah, sure, ignore chivalry,” I said, and Guy smiled at me.

Naomi followed on his heels, phone camera clicking away, so I brought up the rear, keeping my senses open for any signs of danger or booby traps. The lair wasn't large, but it was decidedly out of place in the middle of an abandoned business park. I looked for any sign that it belonged to Lodi, but unlike Davenport, they weren't really all that big into splashing their name everywhere.

I wrinkled my nose. The lair was so typical. Underground, moodily lit, filled with scientific apparatus crowding the desks that I never had a hope in hell of understanding, equations written on chalkboards. The sight of a mussed cot and the shackles in the corner turned my stomach.

A second cot in the opposite corner didn't contain shackles at all.

Naomi clicked away like a fiend. “Mobius was definitely here, right?”

“Trust me, he was here. The place reeks.” I could smell him most strongly on the sheets of the cot with the shackles. A fireplace in the corner showed evidence of papers that had been burned, likely in a hurry. Destroying the trail. I bent to run my fingers through the ashes. “Looks like they left in a hurry. You definitely upset something with your snooping, Naomi.”

Guy looked apologetic. “I need to call this in,” he said.

“What? No! There's so much here, there's no reason to tell Davenport yet,” Naomi said. “This isn't their find.”

“Supervillains are going to be looking for this place, too,” I said.

“Why?”

I stared at her. “Everybody and their brother is looking for the person who took Plain Jane's powers away. This place is a solid clue. Most of them are dumb as a box of rocks, but some supervillains would be smart enough to track this place down. Until this guy is found and all of the depowering agent is secured, anybody that knows anything about Mobius is going to be stuck at Davenport. That means you and me.”

“Like hell I will,” she said.

Guy raised his eyebrows at me as he stepped away to make the call.

“Sorry,” I said when Naomi whirled on me in indignation.

“I thought you hated Davenport.”

“I do, but this is huge.” I continued to comb through ashes. Luckily, the fire hadn't destroyed every scrap of paper. “To give you some perspective: Tamara Diesel is involved. She fights Raptor, and that's way over my usual level.”

Naomi snorted. “You're Hostage Girl. You don't have a usual level.”

“I
was
Hostage Girl. Now I'm an office worker with superpowers who ended up in a fight against Scorch today.” My stomach rumbled, a reminder that I hadn't eaten the five-­course meal I needed to recover from that. I picked up a half-­piece of paper, rolled my eyes at the indecipherable formula on it, and set it aside for the Davenport techs to comb over later. “Scorch kicked my ass, for the record.”

“You seem fine now, though,” Naomi said.

“Blame the Mobium.” A second scrap caught my eye because it had red pen marks scribbled all over it. As Naomi poked through a filing cabinet, I held the paper up to the light, recognizing Dr. Mobius's handwriting from his notebook. Only one word proved legible. “Demobilizer,” I read aloud. “What do you suppose that means?”

“Demobilize means to remove somebody from military ser­vice,” Naomi said.

I snorted under my breath. “Nerd.”

“You asked. Whatever it means, it's mentioned in some of these files, too.” Naomi pulled out a little wooden box and tried to wedge her fingernails underneath the lid. “Hey, can you get this open? I want to know what's inside.”

She tossed the box. Right as she let it go, her fingers must have brushed against a secret latch, for the lid slid right open. I saw a telltale flash of very familiar blue that made me shout, but it was already too late. The box arced through the air.

“No!” In a burst of speed, Guy jumped right between us and batted the box away. Blue powder exploded where he'd hit the box—­right into his face.