Please Don't Tell My Parents I Blew Up the Moon (6 page)

Ray knew what to say. “The greatest thing I’ve seen since we became supervillains.”

I shook my head. “Or the most messed up.”

“That’s why it was great.”

Lucyfar clapped her hands. “We are just getting started. I love, love, love hitting these corporate bozos. Hey, can somebody get the door?”

Ray obliged. He stepped up and kicked the door. Metal boomed, and the door bent in the middle, but didn’t open. The dent did let me see around the sides. Criminy, this thing was inches thick! It just looked like your average institutional door with a little push bar.

Tucking one arm over her waist, Lucyfar waved a cautioning finger. “Oh, yeah, right. This place won’t be a complete pushover. Expect some action.”

A black fleur de lis knife appeared in the gap of the doorframe where the lock still held. It wiggled around, but Ray was having none of that. He kicked the door again, leaning forward and bracing himself this time. The hinges came off, and the door fell into the next room.

Oh, wait. If there was going to be fighting, I had better do the one thing I could do! Sliding my one useful invention off my back, I smacked it against the wall next to the doorframe. Hooks dug in, colored lights lit up, and as they flashed, it made several seconds of soft booping noises, almost musical.

Lucyfar leaned way to the side to give it a look. “New toy?”

“I hate being shot at. It slows down bullets.” Probably. I’d kept an image of fast objects slowing down after I built it, and I definitely built it because I was worried about being shot.

Moments like this reminded me that I miss Vera. That she used to neutralize bullets and always watch my back was nice enough, but I missed my silent guardian angel on a personal level.

Maybe Lucyfar thought of me that way. She strolled into the next room, hands clasped behind her head, completely at ease. As the unarmed person here, I had no intention of taking things so lightly. Ray felt the same way, and stepped over the dented door hunched and watchful, like a creeping cat. I followed, slipping behind the corner of a loaded shelf. Claire dawdled.

She might have had the right idea. Past the unwelcoming area, we went straight into a room almost as boring, but in a different way. There was lots and lots of space between the few shelves on the walls and a few tables in the middle. Boxes, tape, forms―shipping supplies―filled the shelves, if gaps bigger than the stacks of folded boxes counted as ‘filled.’ A couple of ugly, flat metal scales sat on the tabletop, a roll of tape, a bunch of markers, and an X-acto knife. Frankly, I felt naked enough I kinda wanted the knife.

Fluorescent lights buzzed in the ceiling. Other than that, the room sat in silence.

“There’s nobody here,” I announced, possibly to hear my own voice.

There were side doors. A really big open doorway led into a storage room that must have taken up most of the building. Boxes with smiling sun logos sat in neat ranks on shelves much better filled than the ones in the packing area. Another door opened into an obvious break room, with horrible little metal folding chairs, a horrible little metal table, a bulletin board covered in posters that weren’t metal but were certainly covered in horrible tiny dull text, and a row of vending machines.

I crept closer, ready to jump out of the way exactly because this place was so dully harmless. Ray shadowed me, maybe for my protection, more likely because he was just as enthralled. I didn’t recognize the brands on any of the machines. You couldn’t have paid me to drink a can of E-Cola, you really couldn’t have paid me to crack open a bag of Pig Chips, and expecting me to pay five bucks for any of these was insane.

But not as insane as the bright yellow and green lines painted in a square around the machines labeled ‘Pay Penalties For Taking Food Or Drink Beyond This Point’, which didn’t even reach the break table.

The shipping and storage area had two other obvious exits. At the far end of the storage room, a big old corrugated garage door led somewhere. Hopefully, somewhere interesting, but at this point I wasn’t even sure the huge smiling sun and black letters spelling out ‘Did You Remember Your Security Pass?’ actually promised excitement.

One wall of the packing room had a door bearing a candy bar sized sign reading ‘Manager.’ The two tinted windows next to the door presumably looked into the manager’s office. Satisfied that she’d spent enough time looking around and smirking, Lucyfar stepped up in front of a window. She smiled gleefully and waved at whoever was inside, then pointed through the glass.

Rasping alarms broke the silence, quacking over and over. Lucyfar gave the mystery person behind the window a thumbs-up.

She strolled back over to us, slapping her hands together as if dusting them off. Then she propped them on her hips and turned her attention to the garage door. We couldn’t actually see the door anymore. Not at all boring thick metal shutters slammed shut over it the moment the alarm blared. Ray and Lucyfar stood watching the shutters. I watched the rest of the room, although my only reward was seeing boxes of ‘After Market Band Aids’ vibrate along with the siren. Claire had wandered into the break room to study the vending machines.

No, that wasn’t right. I stopped looking at her, stared at the manager’s door, and tried to remember what I’d actually seen. Claire had been leaning against the wall, out of sight of anyone who might have charged into the room, with her fists balled up at her sides to match her pout. The pout had to be her power affecting me. Claire was actually charging her static gloves and waiting in ambush.

Muffled but still audible beneath the alarm buzz, Ray asked Lucyfar, “Do you think it would be easier to break down the door, or go through the walls?”

She held up her hand. “Wait for it.”

The shutters snapped open. Two men in grey security guard outfits with smiling yellow suns had been ready for this moment. They had their pistols pointed at us and fired the first round before I could take a step and teleport out of the way.

Despite the impressive echoing pop, the bullets spat out of the guns about as hard as spitwads from a straw, and fell tinkling to the floor.

Ha! “Ah ha ha HA HA!”

Oh, villainous laugh. I had missed you, so.

The guards fiddled with a panel on the wall. The shutters slammed closed.

Hilarity and triumph gave way to begrudged responsibility. For me, at least. Ray and Lucyfar were still busting their guts laughing. I raised my voice―there was no other way to talk with the alarm still buzzing away―and asked, “Can we not stand out in the open and get shot at next time?”

Ray forced himself upright, fighting down giggles like hiccups. The smile he gave me was hardly hysterical at all, and he reached out and took my hand, giving it a squeeze. “I trust your inventions.”

Must not blush. Think supervillain. How to open the door?

I could use the Machine. If there was anything it couldn’t eat, I hadn’t found that mysterious indestructible substance yet. No. I’d keep that as a last resort, rather than risk anyone identifying my most public and glorious invention.

Instead, I went over to the manager’s office and knocked on the door. “Can we talk?”

I didn’t get an answer. I had no guarantee that anyone heard me.

“Can you open the door, Reviled? Gently?”

Bowing, he turned the knob and pushed the door open. Sure, there was the cracking sound as the lock mechanism broke, and the doorknob stayed in his hand, but with the alarm muting everything, the whole process looked downright gentlemanly.

Yikes. The manager was big. Like, almost supervillain big. A little too soft for that, but I still felt like a toothpick and was really glad I had two people with super strength standing behind me. He had short, messy black dreadlocks and almost coal black skin. His undignified yellow shirt with the smiling sun did not look very managerial to me, but his composure did. If Ray and Lucyfar had broken down my door, I’d have panicked.

Wherever Ray got his crazy English accent, this guy had it too. In fact, this guy’s deep voice was immediately familiar. Where―oh, the recordings! We’d met Byron Slade at last.

He sounded more irritated than scared as he spoke into a clunky old landline phone. “I know you’re there, Gertrude. Congratulations. You’ve successfully ducked this long enough for Lucyfar and the Inscrutable Machine to break into my office. At least call the police and claim you got my messages seconds too late.”

Visibly shaking, he put down the receiver and looked up at us from his little rolly chair. Well, looked up at Lucyfar. Sitting down, he was about my height. Seriously big guy. There was no doubt who was scared of who, though. Despite his tight, hopeless expression, he said, “There’s no safe to steal. We’re just an office and shipping location. The alarms are active, company security is on its way, and as an independent facility, our contracted employees know only their own―”

From behind us, the girl receptionist―Jenny?―yelled, “Byron, Gertrude is sticking you with the bag with Corporate
and
the cops. What do you owe her?”

He leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, and ran his hands up over his face. “Jenny and Josef are okay?”

I answered real fast, before Lucyfar could say something crazy. “Sure. Why would we hurt them?”

“You’ll let the others go?”

“No guarantees if they shoot at us,” Lucyfar warned.

“We’ll try not to hurt them,” Ray promised, rather louder.

Byron leaned back and pressed a button. Looked like an intercom, and he talked into it like that’s what it was. “Preston, guys, I’m getting out of here. We’re all getting out of here. Give up. There’s four of you. Even if you open up the locks on the special weapons, you can’t beat supervillains.”

I did some numbers. They were very easy, because they were very small numbers. “Two receptionists, four security guards, and you? For a secret weapons base?” I raised my eyebrows skeptically, although he couldn’t see them behind my mask.

“My staffing numbers―” Suddenly lurching to his feet, he turned around, grabbed the landline phone he’d been using, and ripped it out of the wall. Throwing it onto the floor, he grabbed a sheaf of forms. I had just enough time to make out the title, ‘Enhanced Vigilante Break-In Report’, before he ripped the half-filled-out papers to shreds and put his foot through an ancient box monitor. Byron was lucky he was wearing heavy shoes that shed the broken glass.

Digging in his pocket, he tossed me a ring of keys, cards, and little remotes. “Here. Have fun. Just please destroy the security tapes, okay? I apologize, but Preston’s going to be an idiot.” Again suddenly, he leaned way over and thumbed the intercom button. “Preston, stop being an idiot!” Looking back up at us, he explained, “
Security
is paid enough to be stupid. Assistant managers sure aren’t.”

He was so mad, he barged out past us, and Ray, Lucyfar, and I stood out of his way. As he stomped towards the broken front door, Byron yelled, “You and Josef want to go get hamburgers, Jenny?”

“We were waiting on you!” she yelled back from outside.

“I’m paying! No argument!” Stepping over the broken door, he disappeared around the corner.

Ray cocked a thumb at our newest escapee. “Did we just get them fired, or save their lives? I can’t tell anymore.”

I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, and settled for holding up the keys. “Either way, one of these should get us through the security door.”

How did this thing even open? Ah, there, at eye level―well, for me―a little socket with a round hole. There were three round keys on the keychain. The first one didn’t fit. The second one slid in, and I stood to the side, pressed against the wall.

Ray and Lucyfar just stood there in front of the door! “Reviled, do you want to be a target?!” I hissed at them. I probably should have hissed louder. The alarm was really loud!

They heard me anyway. Ray crouched down like a runner about to begin a race. “I’m the one ambushing them.” There was way too much eagerness in his voice. Criminy. When did Ray get so violent?

When I gave him the ability to beat cars to death with his fists, duh.

I looked over at Lucyfar, and tried, “Lucy…,” but I knew that was a lost cause.

She grinned at me. A faint scraping noise heralded a dozen black knives materializing with their points against the door. I reversed my worries. Now I hoped they wouldn’t kill someone.

Crossing the fingers of my other hand, I turned the key. The door slid open.

I knew what I would see immediately, because Ray stood up, and Lucyfar’s knives disappeared. I looked around the corner. Yeah, no one there.

We had uncovered a short hallway that ended with a big freight lift, like the one in my lair but shinier. So shiny, in fact, that it had SYNERGY’ painted on it in lurid yellow letters on a fluorescent green background. On the left, two windows and a door labeled ‘Security’ opened into the same room. Well, they were all closed, actually. The door looked a lot like the one that had closed off the back rooms, and was probably as solid. We peered through the windows. Unless someone was a genius at hiding under desks, the place was empty of life. Granted, it contained more computers than my dad’s office, but no humans.

On the other side, we had a door into a stairwell, and a bathroom door, with those generic man/woman symbols on it.

The four of us looked at each other. Four? Oh, Claire must have lowered her mind-clouding field. She was getting waaaaay too good at pitching that at ‘I’m harmless, ignore me’ level!

Before I could say anything, before I could even think of anything to say, Ray’s foot shot out. The wooden door burst into three pieces that littered the unoccupied, but now messy lavatory. I probably squealed, but between the bang of the exploding door and the constant WAAK WAAK WAAK of the alarm, I couldn’t even hear myself.

Ray turned to the stairwell door, but I leveled a warning finger at him. “Don’t you dare.”

Claire held up her hand. “I’ll handle it!” Skating backwards around us in a circle, her poofy skirts bouncing and rustling, she unlocked the stairwell door with a key ring I would have sworn I was still holding. One leg cocked behind her, she leaned in and called out, “Helloooooo!”