Chapter 25:
Insufferable quiet
The silence started to drive Billy insane.
Tendrils of his brain scrambled around looking for his former companion. It surprised him that he hadn't welcomed the newly-found quiet. Dude had read his every thought for so long, had known everything he needed, wanted, worried about, feared, desired. A busybody alien, trying to tell him what to do. Convinced he could make him into a better person.
Good riddance. Get out of my head, Billy thought.
Yet he had never felt so alone.
The powerlessness bothered him, too, looking at Jane, like some sort of ancient myth carved out of stone and fire, or Emily, who held the world almost literally in the palm of her hand. This must be what it feels like for a bird when its wings get clipped, he thought. They took the sky from me.
"You should break out," Billy said, watching Jane pace and Emily pretend she wasn't staring at him. "Just go. You can leave me behind."
"They disconnected your alien, not your brain, Hondo," Emily said.
Jane stopped pacing. She turned her gaze on him, and Billy noticed he didn't see all of her anymore. When Dude was a part of him, he could see particles moving, could sense the waves of heat she emitted, discern the manner in which her skin seemed to glitter like glass in the sun if you looked closely enough. Now, with his ordinary human eyes, she was just a girl, a little too skinny, with a countenance that said she held the weight of the world on her shoulders.
She worries about everything, Billy thought. She always looks so sad. She's not been the same since Doc disappeared.
He waited for Dude to answer back, but nothing came.
Jane crouched down in front of where he sat on the floor, put her hands on his knees. Hands that were preternaturally warm.
"We're not going anywhere without you, Billy," she said. "I'll never leave you behind."
She held up her hand, three fingers. Three times.
"You caught me three times when I was falling," Jane said. "We're going to get you and Dude back together it'll be okay."
"I'm a liability. I'm expendable."
"You're also a drama queen," Emily said, but her usual snark wasn't in it.
Billy looked up at her, and watched the way Emily stared at him — no, not at him actually, but staring at the way Jane knelt down to join him, the proximity of her. He didn't know what to make of it. Emily looked so tiny without Dude's powers flowing inside him. The alien had told him Emily was perhaps the most dangerous of all the Indestructibles if she ever learned what she could really do. But here and now, she was just a kid, undersized, with ridiculous hair spilling around her face.
The suite's door opened with a heavy clunk, and Prevention walked in. She was alone, this time, though Billy was sure they had any number of ways to threaten them if anyone made a move to escape. The agent spoke directly to Jane as if Billy and Emily weren't even there.
"I need you to come with me," Prevention said.
"You're not separating us," Jane said, standing up.
It was strange seeing her in this environment dressed in her Solar costume. Their outfits seemed so ridiculous and pointless here, caged in the Labyrinth. Have we just been playing at hero all along? Billy thought.
"Don't be ridiculous," Prevention said. "I'm not trying to split you up. I just want you to get a look at the evidence we collected at the hospital."
"Then the others can come with me."
"Welcome to leadership, Solar," Prevention said. "Not everyone gets to know everything right away. We're going to discuss it, and then we're going to discuss how you and your friends can help. This is not negotiable. Don't make me play hardball."
Jane looked at Billy, then Emily. Billy nodded. Go on. It's okay. I'm just going to sit here being useless anyway.
"I'll be back soon," Jane said.
Prevention led Jane to the door, but stumbled just for a moment on her own high heels. She gasped. Jane looked at Emily, who didn't say anything, but did stick her nose out at Jane. Prevention, deliberately ignoring Emily walked out, locking the door behind them.
"All right, sunbeam," Emily said, plopping down next to Billy on the floor. "You're going to help us figure out how we're getting out of here."
"I don't see that happening."
"Toot toot. The pity party express left the station yesterday. You are going to use your wonder brain to think us a way out of here."
As if to emphasize the point, Emily pushed her index finger into the center of Billy's forehead.
"Didn't you determine all of twelve hours ago I was the dumbest Indestructible?"
"You're not book smart, but you're more than passing clever," Emily said.
"I'd rather have my powers back and blow the whole place up," Billy said.
"I won't argue your logic," Emily said. "You know, I could probably bubble of float this entire place to the moon."
"With us in it."
"Ah, I see you have found the crack in my egg," Emily said.
Emily kicked her feet out, her oversized combat boots banging heavily against the floor.
"You think this place is bigger on the inside? It seems to be bigger on the inside."
"I think that's because it goes underground."
"I always thought if I found myself in a structure bigger on the inside, it would be more fun," Emily said. "With perhaps a dashing alien with an English accent who would want to take me with him on adventures."
"You watch too much TV, Em."
"And instead, I have a grumpy alien with an American accent. You don't even have a sonic screwdriver."
"I'll work on that," Billy said.
"Please do."
Billy kicked his feet out next to Emily's. She started rocking her feet back and forth like she was keeping time. Billy joined her, so all four of their feet were tick-tocking in unison.
"Think Kate's okay?" Billy said.
"Are you kidding?" Emily said. "She's probably figuring out a plan to murder every single person here until we're free. Never anger a perfectionist vigilante. Assassin Barbie is going to get us out of here."
* * *
Prevention led Jane into a huge, dark room. Agents, with faces veiled by darkness and only illuminated by the digital gleam of their screens, monitored prisoners, while others observed larger screens for world events. Jane spied a different news network broadcasting wherever she looked.
At the center of the area was a glass conference room, an empty space, brightly lit and dominated by a large table. Aside from a few chairs, the only thing visible through its glass walls was an expensive laptop. Prevention gestured toward the glass room and Jane complied.
Once inside, Prevention sat down and spun the laptop around to Jane. On screen was the footage from the hospital, with their mystery person prancing through the facility.
"What do you know about this one?" Prevention said.
"Is Dancer okay," Jane said.
"We underestimated her," Prevention said. "We sent a standard extraction team after her in the City and she was able to evade them. Your friend is still at large."
"She's going to be so mad," Jane said.
"We're prepared to deal with that," Prevention said. "Now what do you know about this person."
"And Fury?"
"The werewolf? He's none of our concern," Prevention said. "He crossed the border into Canada months ago and we haven't discovered any evidence of him since. Either he's dead or he's not coming back. Either way, out of our jurisdiction, not our concern. Can we talk about this now?"
Jane sat down.
"We were just starting our own investigation when you kidnapped us," she said. "We were collecting evidence, but then we got too busy fighting your people in Distribution suits. Where'd you get those, by the way?"
"You have yourself to thank for that," Prevention said. "When you defeated Elliot Smoot last year, he was turned over to the Labyrinth. We were able to have Mr. Winter reverse engineer the suit and make a few improvements."
"Elliot Smoot?"
"Yes. The young idiot who called himself Distribution."
"His name was Smoot?"
"Can we be serious for a moment?"
"I can't wait to tell Emily his name was Elliot Smoot," Jane said. "This almost makes this whole fiasco worthwhile."
"Solar. This person. We think it's a man. Or a boy, at least. And he's making people very sick. What do you know?"
Jane frowned, felt her face grow hard. She thought about attacking Prevention right here and running to save her friends. She could probably find her way back to their chamber. But how would they get out? Where would they go from here? What about Billy? He was right, in a way — he couldn't help them escape. He'd be a liability.
"We don't have anything concrete," Jane said. "We were following up on a lead that he might have been an escaped experiment."
"From the Children of the Elder Star facility you raided last year?"
"Raided is a loaded word," Jane said.
"Attacked? You were the aggressors according to our own report."
"They were experimenting on kids. We put a stop to it. Are you going to hold that against us?"
"It happened in international waters," Prevention said. "And you took out the bad guys. We were happy to let you do your thing that time."
"Good," said Jane. "Do you know where he is?"
"This human plague rat?" Prevention said. "Not exactly. He's been strangely hard to track. He's a ghost. Besides, if we found him we wouldn't know what to do with him. We couldn't send agents in. They'd get sick."
"Which is why you need us."
"Among other things, but yes," Prevention said. "So are you going to play here? Are we going to work together?"
"I have some bad news for you, Prevention," Jane said.
"Oh really."
"Oh yes," Jane said. "The Dancer is our resident detective. She was our lead on the investigation. Ad you went and poked the tiger."
"So you're saying we need to make nice with her?"
"I'm saying it's too late," Jane said. "Dancer holds a grudge. You'll be lucky if you're not in traction after she finds you."
Prevention leaned back in her chair and shook her head.
"Well hopefully we can change her mind," Prevention said. "Because right now we've got someone walking around making a lot of people sick. Some of them have died. And the scariest part is none of them are getting any better."
* * *
There was a knock on the chamber door before Henry Winter entered alone.
"What's the password," Emily said.
"4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42?"
"Dammit," Emily said. "Okay, you can come in."
"You need a new password, Em," Billy said.
"Can't mess with the universe," she said. "So. Dead guy. What do you want."
Winter pointed to one of the chairs with his cane and Emily made a grand gesture allowing him to sit.
"Well, right now Prevention is trying really hard to read your leader's mind," Winter said. "Which means she's too busy to know what I'm up to. So I came to talk to you."
"Because she's a psychic," Billy said.
"Telepath. Slight difference, but important one," Winter said. "Don't let her fool you. She can read minds but she can't predict the future."
"And you work for her," Billy said.
"As if I had a choice," Winter said. "I'm sorry you were struck with the null gun, son. That never should have happened."
"The null gun? Is that the laser rifle Prevention hit me with?"
"The one that severed your connection to your alien parasite," Winter said. "Yes."
"How did that happen? What happened? Is it permanent?"
"That much I can promise you," Winter said. "The gun was designed to temporarily disrupt the connection between Luminae and host. Provided your rider wants you back, he'll be able to return eventually."
'"Luminae?" Billy asked. "What the hell is a Luminae?"
"Sorry," Winter said. "You're right. That's not what they call themselves. It's what humans started calling them, because heaven forbid we don't name every damned thing we see."
"Luminae. That's almost pretty," Emily said.