Even Villains Have Interns (17 page)

“Sir, if I could be so forward, I would
recommend breaking a few of the more pedestrian traffic laws. Miss
Delilah entered the building over ten minutes ago, and I didn’t
call until the building sealed itself. We’re unable to reach her,
sir.” Worry underscored Freddie’s words.

Alan’s foot flattened the accelerator. “I’ll be
there in time.” Even if he had to ditch the car and ghost his way
to Chicago.

***

“Miss Samson, what a pleasant surprise.”
Kalydon’s voice dripped with contempt as she stepped inside the
shadowy room. He moved a wrinkled hand and she heard the door seal
behind her with a smothered thump.

Delilah looked around the room, matching the
faces visible in the gloom to the pictures on Kalydon’s Kill Wall.
“My, my, my, the whole gang is here.” She smiled. “What? No chair
for me?”

“You volunteered yourself,” Kalydon reminded
her. “Your blood for the city of Chicago.”

“And names in exchange for the formula,” Delilah
said, stripping off her gloves. “Thankfully I’m young enough that
senility and dementia haven’t set in yet.”

Klaydon growled at the insult.

Her smile grew sweeter.

“Blood first,” said a woman’s voice. She stepped
out of the gloom, revealing obsidian black skin and a shimmering
gold dress. Her hair was white and tied up in a hundred small
braids. “Do you know me?”

“Ayo Naiabi,” Delilah said. “I know your
reputation. Child soldier in Africa, brought to England by an
international charity group, suspected of your boyfriend’s murder
in college but you were found not guilty in court.”

“Murder is between equals,” Ayo said. “One such
as myself can never murder a human, only exterminate them.”

“Yet you cried on the stand and declared you
loved him,” Delilah mocked softly. “Such love, you said. Such
devotion.”

“Like a dog.” Ayo shrugged. “He was my pet, and
when he became unruly I put him down.”

Kalydon thumped his cane on the ground. “Enough.
The blood, Miss Samson. A donation to our work.”

“To your longevity you mean? That
is
what
you use this serum for isn’t it, Kalydon? You keep the Grim Reaper
at bay with these injections, but they’re not working as well as
before.” She brushed past Ayo to sit down in the empty chair.
“That’s why the murders have become more frequent, isn’t it?”

The old man glared at her. “Nonsense.”

“Perfect sense,” Delilah countered. “The formula
first became available in 1985, a product of a villain called Lady
Grimoire. She produced small amounts using her own blood as part of
the Eden Project. Of course that was before she considered a
villain, wasn’t it? She was plain, ordinary Marjorie Thayer, single
mother and biochemist, when she worked for Kalydon Industries.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,”
Kalydon said stiffly.

“Liar.” Delilah winked at him and relaxed.
“Marji was one of your little failures, wasn’t she? You mentioned
her in an interview once. A brilliant scientist who spurned you
because your wealth wasn’t enough to blind her to your other
failings.”

“I have no failings!”

“Hubris being chief amongst your faults,”
Delilah continued as if he’d said nothing. “When The Company was
formed and Project Eden was taken away from her, Marjorie quit. She
left you, went rogue, became a villain. Her black market formula
for superpowers created dozens of one-shot villains. Angry men and
women who thought a single dose would make them gods. What’s funny
about people who want to become gods is that they’re never happy
with that first elevation, are they? No one with power is content.
We all want more. I want stronger powers to be like the other
superheroes.” It was a plausible lie, especially to someone like
Kalydon who lived with the More Is More mentality. “You wanted
superpowers to prove Marjorie, and everyone else who mocked you,
wrong. Ayo wants revenge. Chasten Huntley,” she waved to the
mayor’s social secretary, “wants attention. I bet we could ask
everyone here if they want more power and they’d all say yes.”

Ayo shrugged. “So? We are the pinnacle of
humanity’s evolution. We are the wise ones. The brave ones. The
warriors.”

“No, warriors fight for a cause,” Delilah said.
“You’re power-hungry fools.”

Kalydon stood. Rage radiated off him like a
perfume as he shook. “How dare you,” he said between clenched
teeth. “How dare you challenge me? I have laid low your protectors
of humanity, your so-called heroes. I have hunted them like the
animals they are!”

“And?” Delilah asked calmly.

“I am better than they are!”

“Because you pulled a trigger?”

“Yes!”

She clapped ironically. “Bravo! You are a
tool-using monkey! What a smart monkey.”

Something moved behind her, grabbed her arm and
twisted it up. “Do you know me?” an angry voice asked.

Delilah scanned the room and picked the missing
name from the list. “Winda Leverick? From Boston?”

“Yes.” He pushed her arm to the point of
breaking. “Guess what I took a dose of this morning?”

“Oh, hmm. Let me guess. Mégisti?”

“That’s right. I can rip your arms from your
body, run faster than a train, fly like a bird in the wind. Can
you, little girl with a big mouth?”

Delilah laughed. “Do I need to? I’m exactly
where I want to be.”

“Gag her,” Kalydon ordered. “Get the machine out
here. I won’t waste any more time with her talk.”

Leverick held her wrist tight enough to bruise,
but the Megisti formula had its flaws. That’s why notes mattered.
That’s why old records about dead people were worth reading. The
serum numbed the nerves of the skin; it was the only way for a
normal person to move at high speeds without writhing in pain.
Someone born with super-powered flight or speed wasn’t using
muscle, they were using magnetics, a fact Delilah learned all about
from her mother. But Lady Grimoire’s potion numbed the pain
receptors and pumped extra oxygen into the muscles to allow a
person to move at inhuman speeds.

Which meant that Leverick didn’t feel the heat
rising in the room until it was too late.

Kalydon wiped sweat from his forehead. “What is
that? Who turned on the heater?”

“I feel nothing,” Ayo said.

“Are you feeling well, sir?” Chasten asked,
moving at a speed he wasn’t born to.

Delilah smiled as the floor under her
sagged.

“You!” Kalydon shoved an angry finger in her
face. “What are you doing?”

“Unlocking things,” Delilah said with a laugh.
“That’s my talent, didn’t you know? The ability to unlock things. I
can open doors. Make people tell me their secrets. It’s a small,
worthless, unimportant talent. Not very grand. Not very showy.”

Ayo screamed as the floor under her
collapsed.

“What are you doing?” Kalydon demanded.

“Unlocking the bonds between atoms.”

She wasn’t sure Kalydon had time to register
what she said. It was possible he didn’t even know what she meant.
But he saw the results. One controlled atom bomb going off in his
secret bunker on Wacker Street. After that, he probably didn’t see
very much at all.

Dear Mom.

No matter what you hear, don’t worry about
me. I’m fine.

I love you,

Delilah

Bright lights swam in Delilah’s field of vision.
First little sparks, then pale yellow, then a strobing red and
blue. A fireman in yellow pulled a rock aside. “Are you alive,
miss?”

“I’m fine.” Bruised, possibly with a fractured
ankle, but fine.

Police cars swarmed the scene. She almost wished
she could call them off. There was nothing left to find. The Golden
Hunt hadn’t
been
bombed, they
were
the bomb. In time,
hopefully, someone would find the bunker with the kill wall. She’d
done her best to keep the heat away from the room, but explosions
were such an imprecise science. At least, done her way they were an
imprecise science. A gifted arsonist could probably have left the
room wholly untouched.

In the muzzy-headed way of the lightly
concussed, Delilah knew this was an unproductive line of thought.
There were people. Soon there would be questions. It wouldn’t hurt
to have a doctor look at her ankle or her head. But all she wanted
to do was lie in the rubble and take a nap. Curl up around the
still warm chunks of concrete and sleep for a good twelve hours.
For the first time in over a year, she relaxed completely. Everyone
was safe. The Hunt was gone.

The fireman was carrying her to a waiting
ambulance. News reporters flocked around. It was all a lot of fuss
for one little girl from Texas.

“Delilah?” Detective Morrow pushed an EMT aside
to get to her. “What were you doing here?”

“Following a lead.” She managed to keep the smug
self-satisfaction out of her voice.

Morrow folded his arms across his chest. “You
okay?”

“I’m not dead,” Delilah said. “Just tired.”

“Don’t go to sleep!” Morrow said at the same
time as one of the emergency responders.

An EMT stepped forward. “Could be a
concussion.”

“Maybe one of the falling rocks hit me,” Delilah
said.

Morrow frowned. “Were you in the build—”

“Stop!” An elderly woman in white high heels
picked her way across the rubble, a black wallet with a badge in it
in hand. “Homeland Security. This is my witness.”

The EMT smiled genially. “Sure thing. Let me get
her checked out and we’ll turn her over to you.”

Detective Morrow looked like a fish out of
water. “Homeland Security? I thought you guys disbanded. We don’t
need you here. A building collapse doesn’t make it federal
jurisdiction.”

“A terrorist bombing does,” the woman said with
a snide smile. “It was a bomb, wasn’t it, Miss Smith?”

Old memories of a darker time invaded Delilah’s
peace. “Katrina?”

The woman’s smile grew sharper.

“You need to update your files. The name’s
Samson, not Smith.”

“Either way,” Katrina said. “You’re coming with
me.”

Delilah weighed her options. Morrow would stop
this if she objected. The EMT could be dealt with, and he
undoubtedly had something in his kit that would make her head stop
aching. It was the sight of a green-eyed blond on the other side of
the police cordon that stopped her from making a fuss.
Alan.

Freddie must have called him in. Either that or
he’d ghosted to the national park address she’d sent, found no
Travys, and come back to Chicago to find her. Katrina was reaching
for her handcuffs. Things were a hair’s breadth away from
escalating.

The handcuffs clinked together and it was all
Delilah could do not to laugh. Across the wreckage, she sent Alan a
very firm glare. Hopefully he’d do the smart thing and stay
away.

Katrina didn’t get the joke though. She cuffed
Delilah’s hands behind her back and pushed her towards a waiting
car. Delilah snickered quietly. Things couldn’t have gone better if
she’d written this script herself.

***

“Would you like some water?” The woman asking
Delilah wore a black leather catsuit with a red slash down the left
side and used a tone of menace that turned a drink of water into
the promise of death.

Not that Delilah was going to eat or drink
anything The Company offered, but even if she hadn’t known Lead
Feather’s affiliations, she would have given the woman wide berth.
“I’m fine. Thanks for asking.”

Lead Feather sneered at her. “It’s going to be
such a pleasure to wipe that smile off your face.”

“I’m sure you’ll enjoy trying.” Delilah relaxed
in the uncomfortable chair. Her head was better, although her ankle
still twinged. Running was out of the question, but The Company
wanted to talk and she wanted to get some answers. It was a win-win
scenario at the moment. “Are you going to take these cuffs
off?”

“You wish,” Lead Feather said. “Enjoy your new
bracelets. They’re going to be a permanent feature in your
life.”

The interrogation room door swung open and
Katrina, Company boss, stepped inside. “Lead Feather, what are you
doing here?” she chided. “Get to cleaning up.”

“Yes, ma’am.” With one last death glare, Lead
Feather stepped out of the room.

When Delilah’s mother was a young superhero
working for The Company under the name Zephyr Girl, Katrina had
been a hard-nosed woman with power suits and a Margret Thatcher
haircut. In the decades since Zephyr Girl had ‘died,’ very little
about Katrina had changed. Her dark hair had gone steel gray, she’d
lost weight, and wrinkles had appeared, but on the whole she was
very much like the woman Delilah had grown up seeing pictures
of.

If you ever see this woman, you come get
Mommy or Daddy right away. Do you understand, Delilah? Don’t talk
to her. Don’t follow her. Don’t unlock things near her. Her name is
Katrina, and she is dangerous.

Some children grew up with the bogeyman; the
Smith children grew up knowing The Company was lurking in the dark
to kidnap them. Facing her childhood nightmare now, Delilah wanted
to laugh. A chicken-boned woman with a smile like a ruler wasn’t
scary. She was pathetic. Delilah grinned like a shark. “Katrina,
I’ve heard so much about you. I’m so glad you could fit me into
your busy schedule.”

Katrina’s eyes narrowed into dark gimlets of
fury. “Where’s the formula?”

“Which formula?”

“The one that makes superheroes. The one Kalydon
was peddling and that you were trying to steal when the bomb went
off. It’s out there. Six vials were sold at auction yesterday, but
Kalydon said he had more.”

Delilah leaned as far forward as she could. “Did
you buy those six vials?”

“No. We’re negotiating for the purchase of the
formula.”