Kurt and Zack had made it through the crowd and were standing behind me. While I had dodged what he threw, Hannegan hadn’t. It was a collar of some sort and it had caught him perfectly, locking around his neck. He was shaking like a cartoon character caught in an electrical current, screaming, and I could have sworn I smelled urine and worse. Zack took a step toward him, but stopped, afraid to touch him as the big man fell to his knees.
I turned back and dodged another thrown collar. I watched it sail by and as I got back up, Henderschott charged at me. I jumped on top of the planter closest to me, vaulting up and running down the side of it toward him. I came off in a running jump side kick, the kind I used to break boards with Mom. I hoped the heavy sole of my boot would protect me from hurting myself on his helmet.
It mostly did. I hit him where his face would be and I felt the shock of the impact up my leg. It hurt, but not too badly. My knee was locked into place and it held. He had been barreling toward me full steam when we hit and the strength of my kick lifted him off his feet, delivering him on his back as I landed just past him. My leg buckled when I hit the ground, but I managed to stagger and recover, keeping my footing as I swung around to deal with him.
He was flat on his back, legs and arms in the air as he tried to rock to his side. “So, who are you really, David?” I said as I took a couple steps toward him. I reached down before he could roll over and grabbed him by the bottom edge of his helmet. I hoped two things—one, that Wolfe hadn’t lied to me, that his skin wasn’t going to unstick to his helmet while I was doing this; and two, that I was strong enough to pull off what I thought I could. “Just some asshole working for the same people as Wolfe, hunting down innocent metas who don’t stand a chance against your superior experience?” I heaved him up and swung him by the head like a hammer at a track and field tournament (thank you, Olympics).
He flew twenty feet through the air and made solid contact with the wall, crashing through the plaster and leaving a massive hole. I knew I had to press the attack now, while he was dazed, or risk getting stomped when he got his bearings again. I didn’t know if he was stronger than I was, but he certainly didn’t take damage like I did, not with his armor on. I stepped through the hole and saw him on the ground against a concrete wall. We were in a passageway only a few feet wide, with lights overhead.
“Or are you just some sick douchebag who got a hard-on reading Iron Man comics as a kid?” I grabbed him by the leg, dodged the kick he aimed at me, heaved him into the air a few feet and brought him down on his forehead. “Were you the kind of guy who got way too excited at the thought of being Tony Stark? You know he’s not a real person, right?” I repeated the process twice more, producing a satisfying clang of his face meeting the concrete before he managed to twist and kick, sending me flying back.
I blasted through the drywall and hit the floor out in the mall. With a cringe, I rolled to my feet.
“You okay?” Zack appeared at my side.
“I’ll be fine once I mash this comic book geek into paste in his own suit.” I rubbed my chest where the kick had landed. “How’s fatboy slim?”
“He’ll live,” Zack replied as I walked to a nearby wall and opened a box containing a fire extinguisher and pulled it out. “What are you doing?”
“I’m on a roll with these things. Shhh.” I held a finger up to my mouth and positioned myself next to the hole in the wall after I pulled the pin out of the spray mechanism. I waited and sure enough, Henderschott didn’t disappoint, sticking his head out of the opening. I jumped out and yelled “BOO!” mostly for effect, and depressed the trigger. Foam shot out, covering his face, the slit for his mouth and the eye holes—which was the point. He staggered back, clawing at his face. I ducked through the hole and went beneath his flailing arm to get behind him. Once I was, I put my back against the wall and jumped as he edged backward toward me, using the strength in both my legs to give him a hearty shove.
He went sprawling back through the wall and landed facedown with a clang, his metal chestpiece landing on the tile floor. He ripped at his mask and I smiled; he couldn’t see a thing because I had covered his eyes with foam. “Looks like you need some glass coverings on your helmet with some little windshield wipers.” I grabbed him by the helmet again and lifted him over my head, slamming him to the ground. Fragments of tile shattered and flew everywhere; I saw Zack dodging away from us. I lifted him again and started to bring him down but I felt him slip out of his helmet on the downward arc.
Henderschott bounced and landed on his hands and knees, his head exposed. His hand came up to his face and wiped the powdery film of the fire extinguisher away from his eyes as he rose to his feet and his hands dropped to his side. His face was scarred, hideous, with scars from his forehead to his chin. One of his cheeks was sunken in, like the flesh had been stolen from it. His teeth were jagged, what of them were left, and his jaw hung at a funny angle.
I cocked my head and looked at him, pretending to appraise. “You know, I liked you better with the helmet. Here.” Without telegraphing I threw it at him, as hard as I could. He didn’t dodge in time, didn’t even get a hand up. The helmet hit him in the nose and a geyser of blood erupted as his head snapped back. He staggered, moaned and his hand came up to his face. After a second of trying to clench his nose with his metal encased fingers I saw him drop one of his gauntlets to the ground. He held his hand over his nose, but it didn’t do much good. He was bleeding badly; it was slick down the front of his armor.
He looked to be unsteady on his feet and I pulled my gloves off one by one, tucking them into my pocket. He looked at me, his eyes watering. In the distance I could hear police sirens. Henderschott heard them too, his eyes flicked around and he turned and ran into the department store to the side of us. I took off after him in spite of a shout from Zack. “Get Kurt out of here!” I yelled back to him. “Pick me up outside!”
I saw Henderschott running through racks of clothing, flinging them aside, metal and fabric all around me. There were shouts and screams as people tried to get out of his way. He was slower than I was but he made good use of the obstacles in the store to slow me down. He heaved a circular rack that was five feet in diameter at me and I was forced to dodge to the side, pulling a stroller with a kid in it along with me.
I landed on all fours, staring at the face of a very scared baby before jumping back to my feet and returning to the chase. I heard a scream of gratitude from the kid’s mom and the beginning of a serious cry from the kid as Henderschott blasted through the glass exit doors feet first. I wondered why he had jumped through them that way until it occurred to me that with his head unprotected he’d get sliced like lettuce if he had plowed through the glass in a shoulder charge.
The window shattered as he broke through it. He landed on his back just outside the door and grabbed a trash can from the sidewalk. I had just rounded the corner and was about to follow him through when he whipped the trash can at me. It was big, looked to be encased in concrete, and it blasted through the windows that hadn’t already been broken between us. I was forced to throw myself out of the way to avoid a shower of broken glass that cut through the air where I had been standing only a moment before, shredding the clothing on the rack behind me.
I picked myself up from the floor and looked up to find Henderschott gone. I ran outside through the glass he had broken, my hands ready to seize him by the face and drown him in unconsciousness, but as the biting chill of the outside air prickled my hands and face, I looked to either side. He was gone. Just in case, I looked up the side of the building. No sign of him.
What there was a very clear sign of, however, was police presence. Red and blue lights were flashing at the entrances and more were lighting up the night at all corners of the parking lot. A car screeched to a halt in front of me, Zack at the wheel and Kurt sprawled out in the back. Zack made a frantic gesture for me to get in, which I did, and the tires squealed as we made our getaway.
Chapter 16
“What happened to the armored guy?” Zack’s hands were clenched tight on the wheel as he steered us through the parking lot and to an exit that didn’t have red and blue lights swarming along the road it led to.
“I don’t know.” I pulled my gloves out of my pocket and slipped them back on. “He threw a trash can at me and when I got back up, he was gone. I guess he hid in the parking lot.”
“Doesn’t matter now,” Zack said, sending me a tense smile. “With that many police officers on the ground, we would have had a hell of a time apprehending him.”
“Not as tough as you think,” I said. “All I needed was another minute without the cops and I think I could have put him down.”
He looked from the road to my hands, now back in their black leather sheaths. “You really would have done it?”
“I would have knocked him out.” I looked at Zack’s earnest eyes. “I think I can do that without killing someone. I mean, I don’t really want to...you know.”
“Yeah.” He turned back to the road. “I know.”
I looked to Kurt in the back seat. He still wore the collar but seemed to be unconscious and presumably no longer electrified. Zack pulled out his cell phone and made a call to Ariadne, filling her in on the encounter at the mall.
When we returned to the campus, we did not head to the garage but instead to the small underground parking area under Headquarters. When we pulled up in front of the door, Dr. Perugini was waiting along with Ariadne and Kat Forrest. When she saw me, the doctor began wagging her finger before the vehicle had even stopped. “You! I knew it was you!”
“I didn’t do it,” I said, shutting the door behind me and opening the one to the backseat.
Perugini’s eyes narrowed. “Why is it that I do not believe you?”
“Isabella,” Ariadne said with excess gentleness. “Perhaps you could make sure Hannegan is all right?”
“I will treat him,” she snapped. “What is this?” She leaned down and pointed at the collar around his neck.
“Some sort of electricity-based capture collar,” Zack said. “It was meant for her,” he inclined his head toward me, “so it’s probably pretty damned strong.”
She poked at it, and Hannegan jerked and screamed, electricity running through his body. I jumped back from the door, leaving him plenty of space to writhe about. He fell out of the backseat, landing on his shoulder and coming to rest in a heap on the curb. Everyone else kept their distance except Dr. Perugini, who stood only a few inches away. “I need to get this off of him.” She whirled to Ariadne. “I need the lab rat.
Ariadne looked taken aback. “Dr. Sessions? Perhaps you remember he was flambéed last night? He’s on leave.”
“Unless you want Hannegan to leave the planet, get me the lab rat so he can get this
maledetto
collar off of him!” She spun back to me. “You! Make yourself useful and pick him up!”
I did. Zack stared at me as I set Kurt down on the gurney and Dr. Perugini strapped him in across the midsection and legs. She jerked her head toward Kat, who had been watching the whole exchange so far without saying a word, looking like someone in far, far over her head. “Can you tell me how hurt he is?”
Kat blinked a few times then stepped forward, laying her hands on his face. She didn’t look quite as tanned as she usually did; in fact, her face had a kind of pallor about it and she looked almost gray. I started to ask if she was okay but I remembered that when last I had seen her she was trying to undo my handiwork on Scott, so I shut up. Her hands hovered over his face. When she withdrew them she appeared to be unsteady on her feet. “He’s hurt, but not too bad,” she said. “Some nerve damage, I think. Maybe some tissue damage to the heart, I can’t tell.” She looked up at us, weary sadness filling her face. “I’m sorry. I can’t do anything to help him, I’m too exhausted.”
“That’s all right, sweetie,” Perugini said, soothing. “That tells me most of what I need to know.” She looked back to Ariadne. “Sessions. I need him now.”
Ariadne nodded and pulled out her phone. “I’ll have him meet you at the medical unit.” We watched as Perugini pushed Kurt inside on the gurney, Kat trailing behind her. Ariadne was on the phone for less than thirty seconds and when she got off, she gave Zack and I a wan smile. “So, it was a trap?”
“I think so.” I answered before Zack did, causing him to blink in surprise. “This guy wanted to stir up enough meta trouble to get the Directorate involved and tail your agents back here so he could find me.”
“How did you know who he was?” Zack stared me down, drawing Ariadne’s attention to me as well.
I almost panicked, then realized that there was an easy answer. “Reed told me this guy was looking for me but he didn’t know when he was gonna show up.”
Ariadne let out a sigh of exasperation. “You could have mentioned this before.”
I smiled weakly. “Trust.”
Ariadne crossed her arms in front of her. “Fine. Give me his name and I’ll see if we have anything on him.” She looked me over. “How are you feeling?”
I thought about it before I answered. “I’m fine. It felt...really good to win a fight for once.” I frowned. “Without getting pummeled to a near-death state.”
“Try and make a habit of that, will you?” She looked back to the door where Dr. Perugini had gone only moments before. “I don’t think
il dottore
is very pleased with you at present.”
“I’ll add her to a list that’s growing by the day,” I said. “I don’t know what it is that makes people so angry with me.”
“Perhaps you insulted her,” Ariadne said with only a touch of irony. I let it pass. I actually did feel good. She turned to Zack. “I’ll expect your report tomorrow morning.” With a nod at me she went back into Headquarters, leaving the two of us alone.
“Anything else you want to tell me about the man in the iron lung?” Zack looked at me with hard eyes as soon as she was gone.
“Umm.” I pretended to think about it. “His name is David Henderschott, he’s a Pisces, he likes long walks on the beach at night, and his favorite drink is a fuzzy navel. He’s also a fan of Streisand movies, and he listens to Nickelback when he’s alone and in the shower.” I snickered. “I might have made a few of those up.”