"Got it in one," Emily said.
"Where is Jane?" Sam said.
"We left her fighting to come get you," Emily said.
"Oh no," Billy said. "Em, bubble of float Sam right now. Jane was running on fumes when we left her. We gotta get back to her right now."
Chapter 53:
Jane versus the colossus
This is like battling a bag of Play-Doh, Jane thought, throwing another punch at the Golem. Her fists sunk into the surface of the creature's body and left outlines of her knuckles, but she didn't appear to do any lasting harm unless she let her hands become engulfed in flames. This seemed to hurt him, eliciting a roar of pain as his clay-like skin dried up and crumbled under her fingers, but every time she managed to do some damage he was able to regenerate almost as quickly.
Worse still, Jane knew she was running out of steam. The Golem wasn't able to hurt her, not really, despite knocking her off her feet several times with those long, monkey-like arms. She delivered more harm to the walls on impact than Golem did to her. But there was less and less strength behind each punch, less heat in her fire-enveloped hands, less velocity in her movements.
The Golem knocked her down the hall, and Jane dug her fingers into the tiled floor, creating four fissures as she brought herself to a stop. She took a knee, stayed there waiting, staring at this monstrosity who seemed to fight without passion, without interest. The clay man didn't even seem to have a goal in mind. He was content to stand there fighting with Jane until one of them finally surrendered.
I wonder if I gave Billy and Emily enough time, she thought. Did they get to Sam? Did some other escapee get in their way?
The hallway resembled a disaster zone, Jane-shaped holes in the walls, chunks of the floor torn up, scorch marks everywhere, clumps of dried clay, pieces of the monster Jane had ripped away with her bare hands were scattered all around.
"If I ever survive this, Emily and I are going to have a little conversation about sharing plans," Jane said.
She attempted to stand, but her legs buckled underneath her, waves of exhaustion struck with intensity. Come on, she thought, I'm not done yet . . .
And then came the mechanical thumping sound. Like someone running.
"Get down!" a strangely familiar voice said, and Jane dropped to her belly. The monster looked at her in surprise, and then fixed his glassy eyes on something else, the source of the voice, footsteps cracking the floor at a breakneck speed.
She was moving too fast for Jane to really get a look at her until it was too late. A blur of chrome and neon mohawk with cybernetic limbs raced past her and slammed into the Golem at full speed, never slowing, never hesitating, the two colliding with a horrific wet thud.
The Golem exploded.
The sound made Jane think of what would happen if someone dropped the world's biggest water balloon onto blacktop from a great height. The
boom-splat
combo was grotesque. Worse, she found herself splattered with clay; wet pieces of Golem flew around the hallway, sticking to the walls and ceiling.
He was still alive. His upper torso — head, shoulders, one arm still attached, the other arm flexing and reaching for the rest of his body — lay on the ground, looking confused and alarmed but otherwise not in any particular amount of pain. Nudging him away gingerly was the cyborg from the laboratory the Indestructibles raided last year. Bedlam. The one who knocked Billy out twice. What was she doing here? Jane thought. The girl was covered in clay herself, and wobbly on her robotic feet. Her one human eye was bleary and blinking rapidly.
"I have no idea why I did that," Bedlam said.
"Are you hurt?"
"All of me," Bedlam said. "Wow. Seriously? All of me hurts. Parts of me hurt right now I didn't even think I still had."
"You okay?" Jane said.
"I should ask you the same thing," the cyborg said. "You look like cat puke."
"I . . . that's really accurate."
Bedlam extended one chromed hand and helped Jane back to her feet.
"How'd you get here?" Jane said. She held onto Bedlam's hand a moment longer than she wanted to, fighting off wooziness.
"Your friends brought me," she said. "I'm here to rescue you. And before you say it, yes, I'm a little short for a Stormtrooper."
"Dancer brought you?"
"And wolf-boy."
Jane smiled.
"Titus came home," she said.
"Yeah and by the way? Totally different guy," Bedlam said. "He's like the kid who went away for summer vacation and came back cool."
Jane looked down at the struggling pieces of Golem.
"Did you kill him?"
"Nah, look," Bedlam said.
Already Golem was reforming, pulling himself slowly back together.
"Did you know he could do that?"
"Not even a little bit," Bedlam said.
"So you just ran into him at full speed and hoped for the best," Jane said.
"This is my general philosophy," Bedlam said. "Where's the rest of your crew?"
"The infirmary," Jane said. "They were going to get a friend."
"Glowstick Boy with them?"
"Straylight? Yeah."
"Just checking," Bedlam said. "Let's get out of here before Mister Bill pulls himself back together."
Jane took a step and wobbled, the room spinning slightly. Bedlam caught her.
"I gotcha," Bedlam said.
"Thanks," Jane said.
"No problem," Bedlam said. "You, ah, have some monster in your hair."
"So do you."
"So gross. So, so gross."
Chapter 54:
Mind reader
Kate was getting frustrated.
Prevention was skilled, definitely talented, maybe even as adept as Kate was hand-to-hand, and Kate just couldn't make contact. They danced a back and forth of kicks and blocks, and it appeared more like an exhibition match than a fight. The older woman stepped out of the way, dodged, blocked, or ducked to avoid every attack. In between, she'd hit Kate with small, infuriating punches and kicks, little taunts poking into nerve clusters on her shoulders or legs or elbows.
It all happened so quickly, so subtly, that Kate knew it was true — Prevention was reading her mind.
"You're excellent," Prevention said, barely out of breath.
She slipped out of the way of another kick from Kate and lashed out at her with a blade made out of fire that she clasped in her right hand, the woman's pyrokinetic abilities apparently extended into creating fire-knives with her mind. The hot blade slipped along Kate's upper thigh, burning her through the armored uniform. As her skin burned Kate gasped quietly at this new, awful pain.
Just another scar, she thought. I'll barely be able to find it among all the others.
"You're cheating," Kate said, trying to distract Prevention. Can she talk and read minds at the same time?
"I'm just using the talents Mother Nature gave me, the same as you," Prevention said. They both took a step back, neither of them moving at full speed anymore. Prevention was clearly less worse for wear, though.
"How is probing into the recesses of my brain not cheating?" Kate said.
"All's fair in love and espionage," Prevention said. "Grow up."
Kate decided to try a different tactic.
"Who are you really working for, Prevention?" Kate said, circling her opponent. "None of this is Department territory. They were never a proactive agency. You're not following their directive."
"I'm following orders, Dancer," Prevention said. "All I'm doing is what I've been tasked to do."
"To shut down the only people doing any good around here?" Kate said.
"It's a different world now," Prevention said. She let her fire-blade extend into sword length to give her more distance between Kate and herself. "You can't just run around doing what you think are good things. You needed to be reined in. You especially."
"Me especially?" Kate said, incredulous.
"Yes," Prevention said. "Everyone else is part of a freak show. The public watched them like a big budget movie. But you . . ."
Prevention slashed her fire-sword in front of her, forcing Kate to back off.
"You're some kind of self-aggrandizing fantasy," Prevention said. "And if you can run around taking down crime bosses, what's to stop every idiot with delusions of heroism from putting on a mask and assaulting people in the street?"
"I never assaulted anyone who didn't deserve it," Kate said.
"I didn't say that," Prevention said. "But there are rules." "Honor among thieves?" Kate said. "We've seen your file. We know you were a black ops agent before you joined the Department."
"Everyone at the Department was a black ops agent," Prevention said. "Talk to Sam about what he did in his twenties, if he's still alive when you see him next."
"Tell me who you're working for," Kate said.
"I don't think I will," Prevention said. "But I can tell you who you think I'm working for. It's not the Children, Dancer. Taking over the Department is too small a thing for those maniacs. You think too much of yourselves. All of you do. You all think you're immune."
"Who is it?"
"I'm working for the good guys," Prevention said. "You should try it some time."
Kate launched into another series of attacks, which Prevention parried easily. At least this time around Kate was able to avoid getting burned again. The wound on her leg was throbbing mercilessly. If this lasted much longer she wouldn't be able to stand on it.
"Did you enjoy being superhuman for a little while, Dancer?" Prevention said. "It must have been addictive having Straylight's power."
"I didn't need it," Kate said.
"You really are relentlessly full of yourself," Prevention said. "No wonder the others can't stand you."
This gave Kate enough pause — why would she say that? She thought — to allow Prevention to slip a leg around and knock Kate's feet out from under her. She landed on the floor, the pain in her thigh flared up again when she landed gracelessly on her backside.
Prevention leveled her fire-blade at Kate's face.
"Don't worry. We'll put you in a separate cell," Prevention said. "I can hear your thoughts loud and clear. We won't put you in the same room with any of them."
"You can read my mind, huh?" Kate said, breathing heavily, propping herself up on her elbows.
"Every one," Prevention said.
"Does that mean you can't read his?" Kate said.
"What?"
Prevention went flying across the hallway as a rampaging Titus appeared behind her and swatted her with one massive paw. The psychic agent scrambled to her feet, raising her fire-sword and creating another with her free hand, waiting for the werewolf to approach. Titus roared loud enough to leave Kate's ears ringing.
"There is . . . absolutely nothing going on up there," Prevention said. "There's nothing but red light . . ."
Titus still held that ridiculous spear in his hand, Kate noted. He pointed it at Prevention and howled again as if challenging her. She turned one of those flame-swords into a whip, a long strand of fiery light that she spun and lashed out at Titus with. The flames came dangerously close — Kate could smell the burning hair — but Titus charged under the rope of flames and raised his spear over his head like some kind of barbarian warrior. For a split second Kate thought Titus was going to kill the agent, tot skewer her on the end of that prehistoric weapon, but at the last minute Titus spun the spear around, blindingly fast like a martial artist, and whacked Prevention over the head with it.
Her eyes rolled back. Her fire-weapons winked out of existence. She collapsed to the floor.
Kate staggered, half-limping, to Prevention's prone body and placed her fingers on the woman's neck. She had a pulse. Still alive. Just thoroughly, thoroughly knocked out.
Kate looked back at Titus. The werewolf was breathing heavy, with jaws open, a low, primal growl emerged from his throat. She looked directly into those feral yellow eyes.
"You can come out now, Titus," she said. "Come on back. We need you."
Titus huffed, growled again, then hunched over, his body shrinking, losing mass, returning to his human shape. When the transformation was complete, Kate stifled a gasp. Titus was covered in bruises, road rash, cuts and scrapes. A brutal black eye rung half his face. His lip had split and a trickle of blood dripped down his chin.
"Being a mindless beast has its privileges, huh?" Titus said.
Kate hopped over to him, her injured leg refusing to properly support her, and Titus slid and arm around her to help her stand. She put her own arm across his shoulder.
"Hey, I . . ." he started, but Kate put her forehead against his, cutting him off.
"What's wrong? Aside from everything?"
"I'm trying to be better," Kate said.
"You're always better," Titus said.
"No," Kate said. "I Just want you to know I'm trying to be better. I'm tired of making too many mistakes."
She felt his hand twitch on her lower back, a flicker of anxiety and worry.
"Okay," he said.
Kate looked over at the prone body of Prevention.
"We'll come back for her," Kate said. "Where's Bedlam?"
"Looking for Solar and the others," Titus said.
"Then we're going to the nerve center of this place," Kate said. "And shutting this place down."
"You and me against the world?" Titus said.
"Okay," Kate said.