Chapter 55:
Like Indy
We look like a triage unit, Billy thought.
He pushed Sam in a wheelchair, the old man complained the whole time about not being able to move under his own power, while Billy himself was still limping and aching all over from his fight with the Improviser.
Or really, with his fight with everyone the past few days, Billy thought. Everyone gets a turn to beat me up.
Meanwhile Emily was uncharacteristically quiet, so much so Billy was tempted to tie one end of her ridiculously long costume scarf to Sam's wheelchair so she wouldn't wander off.
The others will converge on the control center on level one,
Dude said. Billy nodded, sensing that Dude picked up on the gesture.
Working on it, Dude, Billy said. I'm dragging the walking dead with me.
As they turned a corner into the next corridor, they came face to face with a woman in a prison jump suit, tied off at the waist wearing a men's black tank top. She had a makeshift knife in each hand.
The weapons should have made Billy instantly nervous, but instead he found himself fascinated by her face. She could have been anyone. A perfect stranger. Someone from Billy's own family. Her face was so nondescript he wasn't sure if she was a relative, his math tutor, or someone he saw on TV.
She looked at Billy for a long moment, as if confused to see anyone at all in front of her, and then she looked down at Sam.
"Barren," she said.
"Oh you have got to be kidding me," Sam said, tiredly.
"I'm going to cut your ears off and make you eat them," the woman said.
"I'm going to take a wild guess that might be one of the reasons you're in here," Billy said.
"Shut up, boy-band," she said. "You're next."
"Knife, let it go. It's not worth it," Sam said.
The woman lunged at Sam, acrobatically spinning out of the way of a poorly aimed light blast from Billy's hand. She came within inches of sticking her improvised knife into Sam's chest, but stopped, mid-air, and then went flying violently back down the hallway. Her blades fell from her hands, spinning and clattering on the floor. The would-be assassin rolled a few times and then flopped to a complete stop, unconscious, all the way at the end of the corridor.
"Don't bring a knife to a bubble of float fight," Emily said. Then she giggled.
"Did you do that?" Billy said.
"Yeah. Just like Indy," Emily said.
Billy stared blankly at her.
"Indiana Jones? Harrison Ford, God's gift to the movies."
"I know Indiana Jones," Billy said. "You just threw that woman all the way down the hall."
"You missed," she said.
"What the . . ." a new voice said.
Billy, Sam, and Emily all looked up to see Jane, leaning heavily on Bedlam's shoulder, walk slowly around the corner and stare at the prone body of the Knife.
"You messed her
up
," said Bedlam.
"She'll live," Emily said.
"Bedlam?" Billy said.
"Glowstick!" Bedlam said. "So you're not dead."
"Not quite," Billy said. He looked at Jane. "You look terrible, You okay?"
"Just need some sun," Jane said, smiling weakly. Her eyes were bruised, her skin pale and clammy.
"Our favorite house plant," Emily said.
She has depleted her power cells,
Dude said.
She is going to start seeing significant drop-off in her invulnerability and strength soon.
We'll get her outside as soon as we can, Dude, Billy thought. She kept me safe when you and I were separated. I'm not letting anything happen to her.
Jane walked slowly over to Sam and crouched down in front of him, picking his hands up in her own.
"How you doing?" she said.
"A lot better seeing you, sunshine," the old man said. "You got a plan?"
"Yeah," Jane said. "We're going upstairs, taking this place over, and then we're getting out of here."
Chapter 56:
Out of control
Professionally speaking, this had been the worst day of Agent Rourke's life.
His communications team had apparently lost their commanding officer outright with Agent Prevention not appearing on camera anywhere in the building and not responding to her radio or cell phone. A literal hurricane hovered on top of the prison, preventing air travel in and out and making it difficult to send for reinforcements. There were potentially a half-dozen or more escaped convicts from among the facility's most dangerous prisoners still wandering the premises. The team's big guns, the Distribution suits, had been remotely deactivated, presumably by a mole. And there were five or six very powerful and very angry superhumans trying to get revenge on his team for locking them up unfairly.
"I should have joined that Bodyguard to the Stars service when I had the chance instead of the Department," Rourke said, sighing. "What else could possibly go wrong?"
"Agent Rourke?" one of the techs said from his monitoring station.
"No," Rourke said.
"I didn't say what — "
"You're going to tell me something awful. And I don't want to hear it."
"Sir," the tech said.
"Fine," Rourke said. "What is it?"
"We picked up this image from one of the Department's satellite monitoring stations," the tech said.
"The satellites can't pick up what goes on inside the Labyrinth. Winter made sure of that," Rourke said.
"This isn't on site. This is in a small town about three hundred miles south," the tech said.
"I don't see how this is relevant to us not getting killed right now," Rourke said.
"Look," the tech said. He tapped a few keys and the largest monitor in the screen cut to satellite footage.
Someone had written a message in chalk big enough to view from the sky on one of the small town's main streets. The message was so ominous that it took a moment for Rourke to realize nobody was moving in the street. No cars, no pedestrians, no dogs. Nothing. Just one boy in a hooded sweatshirt sitting on a park bench looking like a small dot above an i.
The message read: "COME STOP ME."
"What is this?" Rourke said. "What's happening?"
"We have no other information, sir," the tech said.
"Get people on the ground there now. Contact Department headquarters and get people on site. Where the hell is Prevention?"
Rourke's voice took on a hard edge. His boss had been so determined to bring the Indestructibles under control that they had accomplished nothing else in weeks. Even the investigation on the. . .
"Oh no," Rourke said. "Oh no, oh no. Bring up the map on the plague/virus investigation."
"The map?"
"The map, the one we were using to track its progress," Rourke said.
A second screen lit up, showing the hotspots along the East Coast where the infection situations had arisen. Like a subway map, the little town on the main screen looked like the next logical stop.
"Where is this?" Rourke said.
"It's a town called Kirkland," another tech said.
"Okay," Rourke said. "Gather all the information we have from the hospital investigation. Change of priorities."
"Sir, we've got multiple escaped convicts on the loose," another tech said.
"I know! I know that. We just . . ."
A very loud, very metallic knock clanged against the command center's armored door.
"Sir?" a security agent standing near the door said.
Another knock.
"Open it," Rourke said.
"Sir," the same agent said, sounding alarmed.
"Open the door now, agent," Rourke said.
The agent unlocked the armored door and swung it open. Outside, a large, blue and white robot stood waiting for them, watching through bright red eyes. The device raised its hand and a weapon that appeared to be a very threatening water canon popped up from the back of the robot's forearm. Behind the blue and white monstrosity, more than a half-dozen prison guards were poised and ready for a fight.
"Stand down, agents," the voice of Henry Winter said from within the robot. "The Coldwall suit is designed for nonlethal takedowns, but it's not going to feel good if I have to use force."
"Winter?" Rourke said.
"You can't keep a scientific genius locked up for this long and not expect me to have been tinkering the whole time," Winter said.
"Winter, I need some help here," Rourke said.
"Are you serious?"
Rourke pointed at the screens behind and above him. The robotic suit followed the gesture, looked back and forth between both screens, and then lowered his arm. The faceplate to the robotic suit lifted up, revealing a sweaty and tired Henry Winter inside.
"Is that what I think it is?" Winter said.
"Sir?" another tech said.
Rourke shouted at him.
"What now?"
"Sir, we're getting a report from the military base where the previous plague victims are being treated," the tech said. "Their condition has . . . it's simultaneously worsened, sir. People are coding left and right."
"Sir?" yet another tech said.
Rourke just pointed at him.
"I'm sorry. It's just . . . talk to me, kid," he said.
The tech retrieved another image to display on screen.
The sky above the prison was a maelstrom of clouds and the torrential downpours made a clear image a challenge to find. Lightning arced across the sky like a light show. A shadow appeared behind the lightning, a blocky mass that looked too heavy to be airborne. Like a whale emerging from the murky depths, the massive shape coalesced into a solid form. The Tower, The Indestructibles ship, emerged from the clouds like a titanic monster rising from the ocean's depths.
"That looks like our ride," a voice said from the doorway. "Who brought the Go-Bot?"
Rourke and Winter turned around together to find Billy and Bedlam standing behind the prison guards, who had parted to make room for them to enter the command center. Behind Billy, Jane pushed Sam's wheelchair, looking as though the chair was holding her up as much as she was moving it along. Emily brought up the rear, sauntering like some sort of royal ambassador.
"Jeeves, bring the care around, if you would," Emily said.
"Look at you in your fancy suit," Billy said. "You were holding out on me with that wrist-blaster thing."
"You back to normal, kid?" Winter said.
"As normal as anyone can be sharing a brain with a nagging alien," Billy said. "We having a party in here?"
"Problems, Straylight," Winter said, his voice grim. "Sam, how are you feeling."
"Like you're about to ask me to do something I'm not really in the mood to do, Henry," Sam said. "Talk."
"No," Jane said. "We're not talking about anything until I know the Dancer and Fury are safe."
Kate's voice, sharp with pain, chimed in at the doorway.
"He's calling himself the Whispering now," Kate said. "But we're fine. You look like hell, Solar."
Jane released her grip on Sam's wheelchair. She gazed at her friends, Kate clinging to Titus, exhausted. Both of them had racked up a mess of injuries; the Dancer seemed unable to stand up on her own without Titus to support her.
Jane walked up to Kate, put her hands on both of the other girl's shoulders, and pressed her forehead against her friend's. Kate sent Jane an expression of confused shock, but her own face relaxed when she discerned how weak her teammate was.
"Are you okay?" Kate whispered.
"Thank you for coming for us," Jane said, ignoring the question. "Thank you both."
Jane turned back to Rourke, clearly the man in charge in the room.
"Are you going to try to stop us from leaving," she said, her voice deadly calm.
"As far as I'm concerned, you never should have been here in the first place," Rourke said. "But I'm going to say something really stupid."
"Like I love you?" Emily said.
Everyone in the room — hero, villain, technician, agent, and prison guard, stared at her.
"Frank Sinatra. It's a song. Get it?"
Silence.
"You people are so uncultured," Emily said. "I am alone."
"What's going on, agent?" Jane said, ignoring Emily.
Rourke gestured to the screens again.
"Our mystery plague has struck again, and all of the previous victims are getting worse," he said. "I think whoever is doing this is about to make his final move."
Kate swore viciously under her breath.
"We need a ceasefire," Winter said.
"Call off Prevention and your agents and we'll stand down," Jane said.
"I don't even know where Prevention is," Rourke said. "But as far as I'm concerned she's been removed from command."
"She, um, might be lying unconscious on another level," Titus said. "Sorry about that."
"You knocked my boss unconscious," Rourke said.
"Like you never wanted to do it yourself," Emily said.
"Enough," Jane said. "Everyone, enough. That kid is the one causing all of this?"
She pointed at the monitor showing Kirkland's main street.
"We think so," Rourke said.
Jane nodded.
"Then it's about time we start sharing what we know so we can put a stop to this," she said.