The Indestructibles (Book 4): Like A Comet (12 page)

      Its human host fell backward,
burned, terrified, the agony written plain across his face.

      "You…" the man said. Doc
stood over him, waiting.

      "How many more of you are
here? What else have you done? What did you tell them?" Doc said. "We
need answers from you."

      The man just smiled, pain clear
across his face, and rested his burnt hands where the parasite had been. Doc
heard the hiss of his sword being lifted from the ground, and glanced over to
see Bedlam lifting it up. She came to stand over the fallen enemy and pressed
the tip of the sword against the man's neck.

      Doc put a hand on her metallic
wrist, and she hesitated. The man passed away, as though his body failed under
the strain of his own transformation, with a blind smile on his face.     

      "I'll tell you what I know,"
the first man they'd found said. Doc had almost forgotten him, lying on the
ground, looking like half a corpse himself.

      "You made me," Bedlam
said. She flexed her robotic fingers aggressively. "Give me one reason why
I shouldn't pop your head off your shoulders right now."

      "I'll give you two," the
man croaked. "One: without us, you're a vegetable and invalid in a
hospital somewhere, and because of us you're standing beside a superhero."

      Bedlam scowled at Doc. He kept his
expression blank, wanting the cyborg to make her own choice.

      "And two?" she said.

      "That bastard on the ground over
there tried to kill me, and my own…" he paused, catching his beleaguered
breath. "And my own colleagues left me here to die. Don't do the same to
me, and I'll tell you everything the Children knew."

Chapter
17:

Werewolves
and windows

Kate and Titus returned to the RIETI
building under cover of darkness, parking their aircraft in a field a mile
away. He seemed legitimately concerned someone would try to steal it.

      "What if our getaway car isn't
there when we need it?" he said as they crouched in a blind spot in the
facility's security cameras, just beyond the sea of satellite dishes.

      "Do you know how to fly it?"
Kate said.

      "No," Titus said.     

      "Then why would you think
some teenager out for an evening stroll is going to be able to climb inside and
fly away in it?" Kate said.

      Titus glared at her.

      "Don't taunt me with your
logic, devil-woman," he said.

      "You've been spending too
much time with Emily," Kate said, punctuating the comment by breaking out
into a run. He followed close behind. They maneuvered their way carefully
across the field, perfectly timing their sprints based on the movement of
security cameras Kate had absorbed earlier in the day. Getting to the building
was the easy part, she thought. It was a matter of timing. But they couldn't
just walk in the front door, not even with the stolen passkey they had. So Kate
decided they'd try a trick they'd used once before.

      Arriving alongside the building
and pausing in a shadowed corner, Titus shook his head and shrugged off his
coat, handing it to Kate.

      "This is twice you've
convinced me to help you breaking and entering," Titus said.

      "Won't be the last time,
either," she said, watching, as she always does, with mild fascination as
he transformed from skinny human boy to massive werewolf. Metamorphosis
complete, Kate hopped onto his back, wrapping her arms around his thick neck,
and Titus leapt along the side of the building, huge paws grasping at
windowsills and ledges to haul both of them up to the fourth floor and then
onto the roof. At the very top, Kate peered over the ledge, checking for
rooftop security cameras. As she suspected, a building this isolated focused its
security on outside intrusions, assuming no one would be able to get close
enough to get up to the roof.

      They scurried over and Kate handed
Titus's jacket back to him as he transformed back.

      "We left a flying machine a
mile away and you just had me climb us up onto a roof," Titus said.

      Kate threw one of her patented
dirty looks at him.

      "Which we would have had
trouble live-parking on a roof," he continued.

      Kate kept staring.

      "And might have been seen on
camera—want me to tear that door open for you?" Titus said, altering the
topic of conversation and gesturing at the door leading to the stairs into the
building.

      "I've got it," Kate
said, swiping the stolen security card through a reader. The light on the
reader blinked green, and they stepped inside.

      The moved quickly to the third
floor. Kate remembered exactly where Lester Rice-Bell's office had been. The
building itself was empty, offices dim, doors left casually open. One office
remained lit, though.

      "He's still here," Titus
said.

      Kate nodded. They approached the
door and walked in together.

      Lester Rice-Bell sat at his desk,
his back to them, unmoving. He remained in his dark, ill-fitting business suit,
hands on his knees, head up.

      Titus approached the desk
cautiously.

      "Mr. Rice-Bell?" he
said.

      "I knew you'd come back,"
the man said, his voice stronger than before. Stranger. He still did not move,
though, nor turn back to face them. "I knew you couldn't resist."

      "What are you talking about—"
Titus said, putting a hand on Rice-Bell's shoulder across the desk. Moving with
inhuman speed, the older man grabbed Titus's arm and threw him, as if he
weighed almost nothing, through the window behind the desk. Titus's body
smashed through the glass with a horrific thump and crash, and Kate watched as
her companion plummeted into the night sky.

      Lester Rice-Bell stood up to his
full height then, turning to face Kate. His shirt and tie had been undone, and
underneath them, she saw an eerie, spider-like thing clinging to his chest,
segmented, crablike legs holding on like a child. It pulsed a deep, patient
red.

      Kate smiled.

      "Not quite the reaction I was
expecting from someone who just watched me throw her friend out a window,"
Rice-Bell said.

      "He'll be fine," Kate
said, clenching her hands into fists. "And you have no idea how much I've
been wanting to hit someone."

      Rice-Bell looked quizzically as
Kate launched herself across the room, using his own desk for leverage to leap
into the air and kick him in the face. She felt her tungsten-capped boot smash
into his cheekbone. The man staggered, hunching over, but rose again to his
full height and laughed.

      "My turn," he said,
picking up the desk with both hands and swinging it at her like a club. Kate
dove onto the floor, the table passing over her harmlessly, though its
contents—pens, laptop, family photos—poured down, pounding onto her shoulders
like rain.

      The desk out of the way, Kate spun
herself to kick Rice-Bell in the knee, connecting hard where the joint was most
easily damaged. His leg buckled and he dropped the desk—again, just barely
missing Kate—but seemed otherwise unhurt.

      She scurried back a few steps,
looking at Rice-Bell's grossly bent knee, his lacerated and crushed cheekbone.
Both healed visibly in front of her, mending as he walked limping toward her.

      She looked around the room,
surveying potential improvised weapons. Good. This means I don't have to feel
bad if I hit him with…

      One of the fallen objects from
Rice-Bell's desk rolled past her. A glass ball with a family photo trapped
inside, heavy, round, and exactly the right size to fit in her hand. She picked
it up and almost laughed.

      "You don't have any powers,
do you," Rice-Bell said. "That's disappointing. I was hoping for—"

      Before the man could finish, Kate
pushed herself up using all the strength in her legs and reared her throwing
hand back, the weighty glass globe held like a softball. But instead of throwing
it, using the same motion, she brought the sphere down on Rice-Bell's face,
dead between the eyes. Kate felt the thrum of glass against skull reverberate
all the way up her arm into her shoulder. Her fingers went numb. The light in
Rice-Bell's eyes flickered.

      Blindly, he lashed out, catching
Kate with an outstretched arm and knocking her against bookshelves. Kate reached
up and found some sort of award, a wood and metal statue attached to a marble
base, and weaved her way in closer, horrified as she watched the man's nose
reform itself back to its original shape. She swung the trophy at Rice-Bell,
who smirked as he side-stepped her, dodging a blow to the face.

      Instead, the trophy connected with
the thing attached to Rice-Bell's chest, the marble base hooking grotesquely
where the parasitic creature met the man's skin. Disgusted, Kate tugged on it,
instinctually putting one booted foot against the alien creature. The corner of
the award's base scrapped wetly against the parasite's flesh. Rice-Bell
screamed.

      He batted her away again, yanking
the trophy free, his face becoming less human, a mask of rage. His skin seemed
to be changing color, too, growing almost jaundiced, bruised bags forming under
his eyes.

      Seeing an opening, Kate moved in
again, throwing a barrage of punches and kicks at Rice-Bell's head and throat
while hammering at the parasite with her knee. This seemed to only enrage him
more, and Rice-Bell caught her, one unexpectedly strong hand gripping her
shoulder, the other grabbing her upper arm.

      She kicked him three times in the
groin, aiming her tungsten-capped boot with brutal precision. Pain flickered
behind Rice-Bell's rage-filled eyes, but his grip only tightened.

      And then, over his shoulder, Kate
saw a very angry werewolf climb in through the broken window, breathing
heavily, fangs bared.

      "Took you long enough,"
she said.

      Rice-Bell turned his head just
quick enough to be watching when Titus pounced on him, claws flashing lightning
quick, shredding the man's upper body. Rice-Bell released Kate instinctually,
dropping her to the floor. She watched as his body knitted back together
incredibly swiftly under Titus's rampaging attacks, his pale hands dug fingers
into Titus's neck as the werewolf clamped jaws down on the man's shoulder and
shook him like a dog with a toy. Rice-Bell pushed back, shoving Titus toward
the window again.

      "The thing on his chest, Titus!"
Kate yelled, wondering how far buried her companion's rational mind was. She
knew Titus had more and more control over his feral werewolf aspect, but she
also realized trauma made it more difficult to reel the wolf back in, and he
had just fallen three stories through a window. She might be talking to a furry
brick wall right now.

      The werewolf looked at her for a
split second, confused, and Rice-Bell took advantage of the pause to head butt
Titus in the face. Titus roared, more out of anger than pain, and reached back
with one clawed hand to plunge it into the creature on the man's chest, sinking
talons deep into its flesh. The result was almost comical in its
vileness—Rice-Bell began shaking, his body trying to pull back and away from
the werewolf, while Titus's claws were trapped, leaving the werewolf shaking
his arm like a child trying to free itself from a bug stuck to its hand.

      Finally, Titus—or the wolf itself?
Kate saw a dark, inhuman logic in his eyes as he made his next move—reached
down with his other hand and dug those claws in as well, pulling the parasite
apart in two directions. The bug-like thing began to split in half, cracking
like an eggshell, strange, blackish blood welling out with the density of
syrup.

      Titus roared triumphantly and tore
the parasite entirely in half, throwing it away to either side. Kate grimaced
as the halves of the creature landed with wet thumps. Rice-Bell collapsed to
the ground, his body shaking, mouth moving like a fish pulled from the water.

      She ran across the room, sliding
on her knees to the fallen man's side. Kate grabbed his head in both hands.

      "What do you know?" she
said. "Tell us what you were doing!"

      The man stared at her like he was
seeing her for the first time, gasping. He reached out toward the debris they'd
knocked on the floor. At first Kate thought he was trying to grab his laptop,
but she saw something else, a nondescript box, dark wood and smooth, something
you'd hide keepsakes in. He pointed at that, then grabbed her hand, gripping it
tightly, looking into her eyes.

      As she watched the life leaving
Rice-Bell's body, she heard Titus reverting to human form behind her, his
breathing changing from the deep, monstrous hum of the werewolf to his own
pained and labored breaths.

      "Tell me I didn't just kill
that man?" Titus said, kneeling down beside Kate. Titus looked at his
hands, covered in the viscous blood of the parasite, and made a face as if he
might gag.

      "You didn't," Kate said.
She pointed at the still squirming remnants. "That thing did. All you did
was break its hold on him."

      Titus sat down, tried to wipe the
sweat from his face, but caught himself before smearing alien blood all over
his forehead. He rubbed his face against his bare shoulder instead,
ineffectually.

      Kate picked up the box Rice-Bell
had been gesturing to and opened it up. Inside there were handwritten letters
on yellow legal paper. She closed the box and tucked it under her arm.        

      Titus gestured around at the chaos
of the room, eyes wide.

      "What are we going to do about
this?" he said.

      "Call the Department on the
flight home to come in and do a thorough sweep," Kate said. She absorbed
the full scope of the mess incredulously. "And then we figure out what was
so important about these notes."