Hero Engine (24 page)

I think back. Almost all of the structures had burn marks consistent with some kind of explosion. Even the overturned vehicles seemed to be flipped by blasts. And the video only showed Tess attacking, or defending herself from, Cendy and Icesto.

“So she goes home to talk to her parents and gets attacked again. She has to flee because she knows more heroes will show up as reinforcements.” I sit down in one of the chairs and swivel around to the wall of writing. “What about last night? She was definitely the one on the offensive last night.”

“If you knew that one of your fellow officers was doing something illegal, what would you do?”

That one’s easy. “I would report him to my superiors.”

“Now, let’s say you were a wanted criminal for a crime everyone thinks you committed. What would your coworkers do when they saw you? Do you think they would let you stroll in and have a chat with your boss?”

“Probably not. No.” I stare at the wall. Tess’ signature, her real name Samantha Higgins, sticks out. This wall must be the signature of all of the heroes. “But I wouldn’t set the damn police station on fire when they attacked me, either.”

“Yeah, but remember all right, we are going on the assumption that one or more of the heroes are in on this conspiracy, whatever it may be. Cendy and Icestro both attacked Tess with what would have been lethal force. I’m betting the heroes in Seattle did, too. I don’t think it’s too much of a leap to think they were trying to silence her.”

“Okay, and?”

“And, if some or many of the heroes are in on this thing, maybe she thought that destroying the Hive would be the only way to end this. Kill them and stop whatever the plot is.”

I run the scenario through my bullshit detectors, but I can’t come up with a lot of substantial arguments. Ann’s whole representation is completely circumstantial, but we’re not in a court of law.

“So what’s the plot and who is behind it?” That’s the strongest argument I can come up for any of it.

“I don’t know.” Ann puts her hand on the desk and leans forward.

I keep tracing over the names on the wall while the gears in my head search for answers. As it turns out, the gears in my head don’t mean shit when the writing is literally on the wall.

“SON OF A BITCH.”

Ann leans farther across the desk, closer to me. “What is it?”

I stand up from my chair and walk to the wall of signatures. My finger touches the wall just below a name. ‘Пётр.’ “Whose name is this?”

Ann walks around the desk and leans in close. “I’m not sure, but it’s Russian and looks like it’s been there a while.” The signature is much more faded than Tess’. “Could be The Patriot’s. That would be my guess anyway. Why?”

“That motherfucker. Look.” I press my finger under the second letter of the name. The letter is an ‘E’ with two dots over the top. “Two dots over the top of the ‘E,’ just like in those letters. Once you learn how to write your name, it’s probably hard to get out of the habit, you think?”

“So Petr wrote those letters?”

“It makes about as much sense as any of this mess.”

“Why?” Ann runs her fingers over Petr’s signature.

“I don’t know, but we have a bigger problem.”

Ann turns to me, her hand falls away from the name on the wall. “What is it?”

“If you knew who headed the conspiracy and where to find him, what would you do next?”

Ann goes stone still. “I would cut the bloody head off and hope it killed the beast.”

“Exactly. We need a plane here, now.”

We both run for the door. “How are we going to find Vince?” I ask.

“Let’s get up top. If the plane is here we can take it now and fill Vince in later.”

The elevator is still broken. We turn down a hall and I knock into a guy carrying boxes of food. The guy falls in a sprawl of boxed TV dinners. “Sorry,” I yell as Ann rips open the door to the staircase and sprints toward the roof.

We break out onto the roof as a jet lands on the deck. The engine isn’t even done winding down before we are pulling at the bottom of the plane to open it. Ann yanks open the door and sprints up the steps. I follow and pull the hatch closed.

The door to the cockpit opens and the pilot walks through. “Can I help you?”

“Yes,” Ann says, out of breath, “you were requested here to pick us up. Take us to New York City, right now.”

The pilot smirks and looks past her. “Yeah, Lady, I don’t know. Director Larson has called me here for a personal mission. Even if you are the mission,” from behind his aviator glasses he’s measuring Ann up, “I need to hear it from the Director, first.”

Ann opens her fingers wide and then squeezes them into fists. This guy really doesn’t know who he’s fucking with. Her shoulders rise and fall. She speaks with all the calm of a killer. “Do you see that fire extinguisher there?” Ann’s eyes flick to the red canister mounted to the wall.

The pilot nods, still smirking. He thinks this is a game, but it’s not one he wants to play. I’m waiting for Ann to ask him which hand he shuffles with.

“If you don’t get your ass back in that cockpit and fly us to New York right this second, I’m going to take that thing and beat you unconscious with it. I’ve had as much flight training as I’ve had combat, I’m sure I could get us there if you had an accident. But I’d rather this not play out that way, all right?”

Pilot smiles, looks over at the fire extinguisher again. It’s four steps closer to him than it is Ann. “Pft, I’d like to see you try. Now, if you’ll exc—”

His words are cut off by the butt of the extinguisher slamming into his jaw with just enough force for Ann to let him know she’s serious.

“Ow, Jesus Christ, you fucking bitch!”

Ann’s knuckles turn white around the handle of her weapon.

The pilot’s shoulder slump and he turns back toward his captain’s chair.

Ann says, “Call Mr. Larson when we’re in the air if you like, but get us on our way first.”

The pilot slams the door behind him. Seconds later the turbines whir to life.

I take a seat behind the table in the main part of the cabin. The whole plane is identical to the one I rode into the ocean only a few hours ago. Chills run up my spine as I think about the crash. About the entire fucked-up night, for that matter. My fingers go white-knuckle around the arms rests. I might be able to push my mind to a different place, but my body sure-as-hell remembers what happened.

“We need to call Vince,” I say, hoping the distraction will help.

Ann sets down her fire extinguisher and starts toward the desk. The cabin rocks back as the plane shoots forward. She stumbles into a chair.

“Bollocks,” Ann says as she rights herself in her seat. Her complexion has gone a shade paler than normal. Maybe she remembers last night as well as I do.

I tap a button and our usual computer monitor rises up to the surface of the desk. Ann reaches across and dials Vince. The screen shows ‘Connecting’ for a solid minute before Vince’s voice, without a picture, comes across.

“What in the world is going on right now? I just got off the phone with a pilot who thinks you hijacked his plane.” Vince’s voice is as stern as I’ve ever heard it.

Ann clears her throat, but before she speaks I say, “Well, it’s not technically hijacking since the plane was meant for us in the first place…Sir. But that’s not the point, we’ve got an emergency. You need to get everyone you’ve got to New York, right this second.”

“Why?”

Ann takes a couple minutes to put everything together. The whole deal is circumstantial as fuck, but it fits. The cop gut likes it, anyway.

Ann finishes with, “Just listen to us and get everybody you can to NYC right now.”

Vince sighs into the phone. “Fine, I’ll see what I can do.” The connection screen on the computer closes as Vince hangs up.

“What do we do now,” I ask.

I follow as Ann stands and walks to a cabinet at the back of the cabin. She swings open double doors to reveal a small armory. “We get ready and pray to whatever might be up there that we aren’t too late.”

AFTER LOADING OURSELVES DOWN
with enough ammunition to make Sylvester Stallone’s wardrobe coordinator jealous, it only takes a few minutes before a clipped voice comes over the intercom. “We are over the city now.”

Ann looks at the speaker in the ceiling. “Take us to the
New York Times
building.”

Without any more chit-chat from our host, the plane banks.

I scan the weapons cabinet one last time, checking to make sure there isn’t anything I missed. The only items of any real use left are two bulletproof vests. The enemies we are facing don’t shoot and if they do, no amount of Kevlar is going to stop them from killing us.

Ann walks to the front of the plane and opens the door to the cockpit. Our lovely captain scowls at us, but a look from Ann quiets him. He points out the front glass. “There is your building.”

Standing on top of the building are two figures. As the plane gets closer The Patriot and Tess become clear.

“Fuck.” I punch the back of the empty copilot’s chair.

“Do you want me to land on top of the building with them?”

The scene of Tess bringing down our other plane with Granite Fist’s body plays clear as day in my head. We won’t survive that if it happens here.

“No,” Ann says before I can get anything out, “Take us down over there.” She points to a squat building that sits just across the street from The Patriot and Tess.

The pilot grunts. After flipping a couple switches he completes a perfect vertical landing on the roof of a dilapidated pawn shop. We hit the building running.

“There.” Ann points at one side of the roof where the handles of a fire escape ladder stick up.

We haul ass down the ladder and run across the street. Inside the building, Ann makes her way to the desk clerk. “My name is Ann Pretorius, I’m with SHI and I need you to clear this building.”

The clerk—a well-dressed man in his twenties—looks from Ann, to her guns, to me, to my guns. I watch a tremor work its way across his body. People armed-to-the-teeth probably don’t come in shouting demands very often. The guy is paralyzed with what-the-fuck-do-I-do-ness.

I sigh and lean across the counter. “Sir, we think there is cause for worry, and we need you to get on an intercom, or whatever it is you have, and call an emergency evacuation. Okay?”

The clerk’s mile-wide eyes drift over my shoulder and lock on something behind me. This is one of those moments when people’s attention usually sticks on the guy with the guns, so his wandering attention span can’t really be a good sign. I turn to find Flaura standing across the lobby. Miles is next to her, but disappears.

Flaura smiles. The gesture is practiced and cold and does little to hide the deadliness behind it. “It’s okay, Honey, the varsity team is here now, and we will take care of everything.” There is a threat in her voice that I don’t like one bit. The Patriot requesting Flaura be on his team makes me think she’s in this as deep as he is.

“We know,
Honey
,” Ann says. From the corner of my eye, I watch Ann’s hand drift down to the gun holstered on her hip.

“Know what?” The vines across Flaura’s body start to writhe and move. I guess she’s too far away for Ann to stop her powers. Suddenly, I’m glad there doesn’t seem to be much for plant life in the lobby of this building. It’s all just glass and marble.

“We know about the plot,” Ann’s voice is steady. Her palm rests against the butt of the gun. “About Petr having the Engine destroyed and using AHA to do it.”

“Oh, that.” Flaura’s smile becomes genuine and she gives a tinkling bit of girlish laughter.

Flaura’s arm reaches out toward me. One of the larger vines wrapped around her body shoots across the room and slithers around my neck. The pressure squeezes tight, instant and crushing against my throat. Air ceases to be. The edges of my vision blur and darken. I reach for my gun. My arms don’t answer the call. I slump back against the counter.

Somewhere far away, a woman (Ann?) screams. The grip around my neck vanishes. Another scream, this higher pitched. I take a breath. A beautiful blend of the Earth’s own nitrogen and oxygen enters my chest. Along with smog and pizzeria fumes that are New York’s own.

I blink. My vision returns. Ann is by my side. Flaura stands in the same place, naked. The vines that usually wrap her body are piled up in the floor at her feet. She has both hands outstretched like when she sent her vine out for my neck, but nothing is happening. Tears run down the dark skin of her face.

“What’s happening,” she screeches. She doesn’t seem to notice that she’s uncovered, she just keeps moving, reaching, trying to call her precious plants to her will.

“Ann, what just happened?” My hands pull the limp vine completely free of my neck. The rough foliage burns against the raw marks it leaves behind.

“I-I don’t know,” Ann stutters. “She was choking you. Your face was turning so red, she was going to kill you, Jim. So I ran over and grabbed her by the shoulder, I was going to hit her or something but as soon as I touched her, something burned inside me.”

I remember Ann’s scream, or what I think was her scream as I was blacking out.

“All of Flaura’s plants fell off and the one loosened on your neck, but I don’t know what I did.”

My hands rub my face. I try shake the cobwebs loose in my head. What just happened here? I watch as Flaura stands in the exact same place. Tears pour from her eyes and she’s mumbling nonsensical soothing sounds. None of the plants respond to her call.

“Ann?”

“Yes?” Ann is watching Flaura too, a sad pity in her expression.

“Do me a favor,” I say.

Ann turns to me, head at an angle.

“Try to move this plant right here.” I point down at the choker vine on the ground.

“Wha—”

“Don’t ask, just try.”

Ann shrugs. She looks down at the vine and wrinkles her forehead. The vine stands straight up. “What?” Ann’s voice is distant with amusement. The vine dances in the air in front of us. Ann laughs while Flaura wails like the kid who was too short to ride the roller coaster.