Just Cause: Revised & Expanded Edition (27 page)

Soon Diego put his finger to his lips to indicate silence. He motioned for her to get down as he moved with the quiet confidence of a cat. Sally crawled after him until the two of them peeked out into a large clearing from under the shelter of a large fern.

Down below, Sally saw several buildings. Most were made of cinderblocks, but the largest was modern, high-tech construction. She thought it might be a power plant of some sort, since a large smokestack belched forth steam into the already-humid air. It had no windows, but she saw fortifications on and around it, machine gun nests with sandbags and razor wire. One contraption looked like it might be some kind of missile launcher amid a forest of radar dishes. She wished Jack were there, because with his knowledge he’d know immediately what she saw. People guarded the fortifications, inattentive until they heard a distant engine.

In a few moments, an ancient bus wheezed into the center of the compound, flanked by three jeeps full of soldiers. The compound became a flurry of activity as uniformed troops rushed from the buildings to take up positions around the bus. People began to get off the bus. They held their hands atop their heads and trudged at the direction of the soldiers, grim and hopeless prisoners.

Several of the soldiers floated into the air and trained guns or pointed hands at the prisoners. Sally gaped in astonishment. As she looked around, she saw evidence of more parahuman powers: a man whose skin seemed to be metallic, and a woman whose eyes had an unearthly glow.

She whispered, “How many are there?”

“What?”

“Parahumans, Diego. How many?”

“I don’t know. Many.”

This was bad news. Based upon pure percentages of population, Guatemala shouldn’t have more than two or three parahumans altogether, and Sally suspected there were at least ten times as many down in that compound. More, if some of those who held guns had less-obvious abilities.

Two men came out of the large building to inspect the prisoners. One was very old, hunched, and skeletally thin. He leaned on a cane. His skin was very dark. The other was Heinrich Kaiser. He affected a slow pace, either out of choice or out of deference to the older man. He stood, ramrod-straight, while one of the men from the jeeps reported to him. He nodded and gave an order. The soldiers hustled the prisoners into the large building.

The compound went into another brief period of activity as troops opened several round hatches in the ground and climbed into underground facilities of some sort. In a few minutes, the compound seemed entirely deserted and quiet.

“What are they doing?” Sally wondered.

Diego’s eyes were wide and sweat ran off his face in rivulets. “Time to go,
señorita.
”

“What’s going to happen? What are you afraid of?”

Diego didn’t have a chance to answer. The ground suddenly vibrated, as if a giant had struck a powerful chord on a subsonic guitar. The vibration made Sally’s feet go numb and her eyes water. Something came from the large building, like a shockwave or a ripple that traveled in an expanding concentric circle. She felt a hard prickling in her skin as it passed over them, like her entire body had been asleep and tingled as it awoke. A huge puff of steam emerged from the cooling tower, rivaling a large cloud overhead in sheer volume.

Diego fell down on all fours to cower like a scolded dog.

She hauled him to his feet. “What just happened?”

“
El fuego, el fuego
,” the boy said repeatedly.
The fire
.

“Snap out of it, Diego!” She slapped him across the face. Hard.

His eyes regained their focus. “
Lo siento
,” he said. “Time to go.”

“Change into the snake and lead the way. I’ll keep up with you.”

Diego nodded, and transformed in a flash of light. Sally hoped nobody saw it or attributed it to anything besides lightning. The jewel-toned Quetzalcoatl spun around, hovered like a hummingbird, and lit out up the side of the hill. Sally scrambled after him as fast as she could go.

Unfortunately, Sally stepped in a hole right at the crest of the hill and went sprawling. In a flash, she was back on her feet but her knee already throbbed. Diego swooped around her like a nervous satellite. “I’m okay.” She waved at him. “Let’s go.”

They crossed the ridge they had come up earlier in the afternoon and a few seconds later Sally limped to a halt by the bike.

Diego kept going. “Diego!” She yelled after him. She took a dozen half-hearted steps in pursuit, but her knee felt like it was full of broken glass. She hoped she hadn’t torn a ligament or something worse.

Okay, how hard could it be to ride a bike?

She struggled to get it upright and back onto the road. It wasn’t a big bike, but she wasn’t very big herself. Moving it proved even more difficult when she couldn’t put all her weight on her right leg. “Son of a bitch, Diego,” she mumbled under her breath. “Shit.”

She wondered why she even bothered with the bike at all. She was a superhero, dammit. She thought about running back to town, gimpy leg or no, but she feared her running would be over for a few days, maybe longer if she really damaged herself. She was still supposed to stay incognito, and it would look very suspicious if someone spotted her limping along the road without any obvious transportation. It would have to be the bike, then.

She got herself astride it, held onto the handlebars, and wondered how in the world to start it.

There was no key that she could find, but maybe she didn’t need one. She’d always seen guys on the X-Games start their bikes by jumping on one of the pegs. She closed her eyes and tried to access the perfect memory that Glimmer had set up for her the night before, but there didn’t seem to be any sign of it. How had Diego started it? Maybe that peg at the end of the arm was it. It didn’t have one matching on the left side of the engine.

She tested it with her injured leg, to see if it even moved. It did just a little. That had to be it. She didn’t know how she was going to manage to jump on it. Her knee already resembled a balloon, and the idea of landing with even a fraction of her weight on it was enough to make her feel faint.

A small voice behind her said, “I’m sorry,
señorita
.”

She turned to see Diego hunched down amid the bushes at the edge of the road. She’d never been so glad to see someone else, and the relief overcame her and her eyes brimmed with tears. “Oh, Diego!”

“I am very scared. Please no be mad.” He hung his head in shame.

“I’m just happy that you came back, Diego. I don’t know how to drive this stupid bike, and I hurt my leg real bad back there.”

“I drive it.”

He stood up and stepped out of the bushes. Both he and Sally realized that he was naked. The moment only lasted for a brief second before he hurried to cover himself, but not before she’d gotten a real eyeful.

“I’m sorry!” Diego was mortified.

“Oh, uh, that’s okay.” Sally turned away from him to save him from further embarrassment.

“I lose all my pants that way.
Mi madre
no understand it.”

“Here,” said Sally decisively, and slipped her own shorts off. Underneath was the bottom half of the bikini she’d bought on a day when she felt particularly brave. Her mother would have called it scandalous for the lack of coverage it provided.

She tossed him the shorts and turned her back, but not before she caught another glimpse.
His girlfriend is very lucky
, she thought, and almost giggled aloud in spite of her discomfort. In a moment, he hopped onto the bike in front of her.

They rode back to town. Every time the bike jarred Sally’s leg, pain shot down to her toes and up to her hip. Diego took her right back to his mother’s bar. Glimmer sat outside the building and watched people pass by. He jumped up when he saw the bike pull up and helped Diego get Sally off it, since she couldn’t straighten her leg or bend it any further. She’d given up all pretenses of being a tough hero, and tears of pain and frustration streamed down her face.

Glimmer and Diego carried her up to her room above the bar. Diego went downstairs to get some ice. Glimmer inspected her knee. “I’m no doctor, but I don’t think it’s broken. Maybe a sprain?”

Sally leaned back on the bed and threw an arm across her eyes in frustration. “A sprain. Great. What the hell am I supposed to do now? I could heal a pulled muscle in an hour or two, but a sprain will take at least three or four days.”

“There’s a technique I can try,” he said. “But there’s a catch. I’m not very good at it, and it’s going to hurt a lot whether or not I succeed. Your call.”

“I thought you said you said you couldn’t use your powers here, that the mystery psi would be able to detect you.”

Glimmer nodded. “That’s true, but I’ve been doing some very light scans around the area, getting a sense of what we’re really up against. I think only direct telepathic contact, like mind-reading or psionic attacks will put up a red flag.”

Sally tried to make sense of this. She’d never understood psionic abilities or the related terminology. “So you can use some of your powers safely, but not all of them?”

“More or less,” said Glimmer. “It’s more complicated than that, but you’ve got it essentially right.”

“And you can do… whatever-it-is… to me safely?”

“I believe so.”

“Then do it,” Sally said. “Before I change my mind or pass out or something. Can’t you just put me to sleep like you did in training?”

“It doesn’t work that way. Psionically-induced sleep isn’t like anesthetic. It’s just sleep. You’d wake up if a dog started chewing on your leg, wouldn’t you?”

Sally wiped tears away. “I hope so. Is it going to hurt that much?”

“Worse, I’m afraid. It’s why I don’t generally use the ability. It’s hard to hurt your friends.”

Sally glared at him. “I’m no good to you stuck here in bed with a bum leg. I forgive you for whatever I’m going to feel. I forgive you in case it doesn’t work. But if you don’t try, I’ll never forgive you, Jay Road!”

Glimmer placed his hands on either side of her swollen knee and closed his eyes. Searing hot pain exploded in her leg. It made white stars erupt in her vision. She let out a yelp that she muffled in the crook of her elbow. It felt like he was digging around inside her damaged leg with a telekinetic scalpel and pushing every cell back into its correct place by brute force. Nausea roiled her stomach. She could not bear to look, out of fear that he had ripped her leg into fleshy ribbons.

Glimmer leaned back and pulled his hands away from her leg. His hair was damp and sweat poured down his face. “Finished.”

“Did it… work?” Her leg throbbed, but compared to the pain of psionic healing it was almost tolerable.

“I don’t know. We’ll have to see how you respond to it.”

“
Señorita?
” Diego stood in the doorway, a plastic shopping bag filled with ice clutched in his hands. “You okay?”

She nodded even though she thought she might faint. “I’ll live.” It felt good to close her eyes. “Where are Jack and Stacey? I need to talk to you all.”

“They’re on their way back here. I’ve already contacted them.” Glimmer sounded weary. “I need to rest. And so do you.”

“But…” Consciousness fled from Sally as if the Quetzalcoatl had flown away with it.

Her eyes flew open and she took a great gasp in surprise. It was dark outside the window. A light burned on the bedside table. She glanced around. Diego sat on the floor next to the bed, asleep against the wall. She looked down at her leg. The swelling was gone. It still hurt, but it felt more like she’d done a heavy workout or run a few hundred miles, instead of the pain of injury.

There was a knock at her. “Yes?”

“Are you decent?” Jack’s voice came from behind the door.

“Yes, come in.”

The door swung open and in walked Jack, Doublecharge, and Glimmer, who still looked exhausted. Stacey sported a fresh suntan, and Jack looked as smug as ever. “Hey, gorgeous, how’s the leg?”

Sally slipped off the bed and tested her weight on it. It hurt, but it held. She jogged in place a few steps to check the mobility. “Seems sturdy enough. Thanks, Jay.”

“Anytime,” he said.

“How about your boyfriend?” Jack asked.

Sally shrugged. “He’s asleep. And you know very well he’s not my boyfriend.”

“He’ll stay asleep,” said Glimmer. “I still think he’s a spy. Induced sleep is the only offensive ability I dare use. We’re better off this way. Sally, are you up to a group mindlink?”

“What’s that?” Sally rummaged in her bag for a pair of sweat pants and a tank top and pulled them on over her bikini.

“Like a séance, but without the dead people,” Jack said.

“It’s how we disseminate the information your brain recorded earlier,” said Glimmer. “And no, it doesn’t hurt.”

Sally yawned. “Oh. Okay. Do we do it for everyone?”

“No,” said Doublecharge. “The rest of us weren’t set up for it. And I don’t have much to share anyway.”

“Me neither,” said Jack. “This town’s full of people who don’t know their heads from their asses.”

“Or they’ve been psionically prepared,” said Glimmer. “I can sense a lot of low-level psionic usage throughout the area. I think this whole town may be a sham.”

“What did you get, Jack?” Doublecharge asked.

“Very little. Nobody seems to remember much about Harlan Washington except that he doesn’t talk to anybody when he comes to town and receives deliveries. Everyone thinks of him as a typically rich eccentric American. It’s been somewhere between a week and a month since he last came into town. Other than that, no information to speak of. How about you, Jay?”

“De Barros checked out of his room four days ago. Nobody has seen him since then. They think he’s left town.” Glimmer sat down on the edge of Sally’s bed. “I think he’s dead.”

Doublecharge asked, “What leads you to that conclusion?”

“Nothing that I could get my mind around,” said Jay. “But he knew we were coming. He was waiting to meet us. The only reason he’d disappear voluntarily is if he was running for his life.”

“Nothing going on at the docks, either. I couldn’t find anyone who’d received anything for Destroyer, and no records either. This entire town’s a blank book. I agree with Jay. Business as usual around here is to avoid drawing attention to that compound or anything related to it.”