How to Save the World (22 page)

I blinked at her in a daze. The reek of burning metal filled the air. “So you like the uniform?” she asked.

“Wh-­what?” I asked.

“Looks like Audra got your measurements right. Also, you might want to duck,” she said.

I obeyed. My opponent howled as his fist clanged solidly into the bars of the cage, and I used the distraction to drive my shoulder into his stomach, tackling him back. We toppled to the ground and I grappled for purchase. Just one solid punch and I could end this problem, I knew, but that was easier said than done when he was fighting back just as hard.

I could see a red blur darting around the edges of my vision, no doubt Angélica attempting to draw Tamara's fire and distract her from the fact that Sam, Kiki, and Windrider were all coughing as the antidote worked away. I risked a glance at Shark-­Man: he lay in a gray ball on the bottom of his cage.

My opponent seized the opportunity and tried to lever his hands around my neck. I blocked him with my elbow and kneed him hard in the balls. When he curled up like a shrimp, I finally landed the punch that knocked him out.

An instant later, a
pop
shook the floor around me and sparks skittered at the edge of my vision. I gaped at the smoking remains of Jessie's cage door. “Thanks for the assist,” she said, shoving it open. She grabbed the pouch from my belt and hooked it to her own. “Now get the hell out. I'll handle Diesel.”

I scrabbled for the vial still in the slot in my sleeve. “Wait—­the antidote—­”

“I'll be fine. Go.” She ran to join Angélica as the door burst open and a green-­and-­black blur sped inside, followed by Scorch, who spewed flame every which way. No wonder Guy hadn't shown up on cue. I could see Sam rising to his feet, the coughing spell over and his powers obviously returned, which meant I had other priorities. Angélica would assist Jessie and spirit Kiki away to safety, but my priority was to find Elwin Lucas.

Seeing no sign of him, I decided my best bet was the way I'd seen Tamara enter. She had to be coming from somewhere. Hopefully it wasn't the bathroom. I phased my way across the open space to avoid getting hit by any of the heroes and villains crowding on the dance floor. The sound of explosions followed me, which told me Jessie was having a blast.

Tamara had emerged from a door that led down a set of stairs to some kind of basement beneath the warehouse. Instantly, foreboding set in. The walls were scratched and dirty with age and neglect, giving the whole thing a very horror-­movie feel. I crept down a rickety set of wooden stairs lit by a single uncovered bulb with a flickering yellow filament. Fighting upstairs rattled the floor, covering any sound that anybody would make. Dampness clung persistently to the air and it smelled of rot. But underneath that was a very familiar scent that I wouldn't be able to smell ever again without thinking of Vicki's stricken look as the last of her fire died.

Apricots.

Whatever was down here, it was chock-­full of Demobilizer.

“This is just awesome,” I said, thinking of the lair under the business park where Elwin had kept Mobius captive. I reached the bottom step and found a long cinder block hallway awaiting me. It reminded me of something from one of Jeremy's video games, which he'd cheerfully liked to call “the creepy-­ass murder hallway.”

Overhead, something boomed, shaking the floor and sending little curls of dirt raining down from the ceiling. I headed down the hallway at a faster clip. It occurred to me that with the battle for good and evil going on over my head, I was in as much danger from the ceiling caving in as I was from whatever lay ahead. What a cheerful thought.

I reached the end of the hallway and leaned around the blind corner to check. I got the impression of a mad scientist lab: desks full of complicated machines, beakers with bright multicolored liquid, chalkboards full of formulae, an operating table.

Brook.

She stood in the middle of the room, wearing the clothes I'd last seen her in. She spotted me and her eyes went wide. Before I could lunge, though, something on my left moved. I felt a sharp prick of pain in the side of my neck and thought,
Oh, shit.

 

CHAPTER 22

T
he stab to my neck felt like a needle—­I'd had far too much experience with those over the years not to recognize one right away—­so I jumped back immediately. Before it even connected that I'd just been dosed with something, I was already mid-­punch. My fist drove right into cartilage and flesh.

I heard an enraged yowl. Elwin Lucas hopped back, dropping a syringe on the ground. Blood gushed past the hands he'd slapped over his nose. I grabbed him by the collar of his lab coat and yanked him down to my level. “What did you just do to me?” I asked.

He looked absolutely terrified for a split second. The blood dripping off of his jaw and onto his polo shirt helped sell the impression. Until my fingers began to tingle. It spread like wildfire, racing up my arms, pinpricks that covered my chest and neck, gathering behind my cheeks and my forehead. Everything in the room promptly lost all sense of permanence, melting and warping together into some kind of nightmare. Nausea sprang up to tango with the dizziness.

“What the hell?” I asked. When I tried to step forward, I lurched and hit the wall, pain singing up my arm. “What's happening to—­”

Far too late I realized it: Elwin had given me something that even the Mobium couldn't combat. It was the last clear thought I had before an empty gray haze swept in over the limbs-­falling-­asleep sensation covering every inch of my body. The last clear image I had was of Brook.

And the reinforced shackle chaining her to the workbench behind her.

B
eing the once and future Hostage Girl meant I'd woken up in a lot of strange places, usually in various states of debilitating pain and confusion. On operating tables, roped to lightning rods atop skyscrapers, dangling over pits of acid. There'd been one time with an active volcano that I wasn't in any hurry to repeat ever.

But never on a street corner, and barely ever standing on my own two feet. Never standing on my own unassisted, at any rate. And sunshine was rare, too. Even though it was cold—­and by that I meant
cold
. Suddenly I could experience every bit of November in Chicago that I hadn't felt all month. I knew this should feel strange, but I didn't know why.

I opened my eyes and immediately looked down at my hands. They shook with the cold, but there were no shackles.

The same could not be said for Brook.

Still confused and not sure why, I drank in the details: she stood in front of me, her hands bound together with regular handcuffs—­something felt wrong about that, but I didn't know what—­and I was standing outside on a street corner I recognized downtown. There was slush and partially melted ice beneath my boots, and I was still in uniform. ­People walked by me as though this was completely normal.

I tried to speak, but all that emerged were slurred syllables that definitely weren't English.

“One moment,” a voice behind me said. “I need to pay the driver.”

I turned my head, which seemed to sap most of my energy, and saw Elwin Lucas handing a few bills through the passenger window of a cab.

When I turned back, Brook was glaring at me. “His serum counteracts the Mobium. You'll never be able to fight him off. Not without passing out.”

Shit. Brook took a step back as Elwin took his change from the cabbie. The driver shot me a strange look and pulled away from the curb. Elwin Lucas, who'd ditched his lab coat and whose nose looked red and puffy, stepped over to Brook and me. Something inside me struggled, like I wanted to fight him, but my body stood there uselessly. I could taste a pervasive sense of wrongness. Whatever Elwin had given me, it overpowered everything else. I felt like a mindless drone, trapped in syrup.

“Welcome back to the land of the living,” Elwin said. He looked at Brook, whose jaw had clenched even tighter. Her dark eyes were promising a great deal more murder than I found comfortable, given my proximity and the fact that my limbs did not seem interested in cooperating with the rest of me.

“Go to hell,” I said, surprised the words came out coherently.

Elwin grabbed my elbow, giving me no choice but to begin walking, though the very action alone made me dizzy. We were heading toward the Willis Tower, I realized vaguely. The chemical in my blood counteracting the Mobium made it difficult to stay on my feet, much less try to talk, but Elwin pulled me along at a good clip, Brook following behind us. My teeth began to chatter.

Elwin pulled me into the lobby and to the bank of elevator bays, flashing a white badge at the security guards. Though there were ­people around, he yanked me close to his side and I smelled the faint remnants of the apricot scent on him under a healthy layer of fear-­sweat. Whatever he was doing right now, he was almost out of his mind with terror.

In the elevator, he pressed the button for the forty-­seventh floor. He was marching me directly into Davenport. Well, that took a certain amount of nerve.

The three of us had the elevator to ourselves. Elwin turned the front of his body away from the security camera in the corner and subtly lifted up the corner of his shirt. I saw the matte-­black flash of gun handle and wanted to close my eyes. “You're a returning hero bringing back a prisoner and a scientist you captured,” he said. “Deviate from the plan or try to signal anybody, and I shoot Ms. Gianelli. I'm very fast, you know. I spent a lot of time in the Lodi gun range.”

I wanted to despair. All my superpowers, and I was being brought down by a gun.

We reached the forty-­seventh floor and Elwin shoved Brook at me. Thinking of the gun tucked into his waistband, I couldn't do anything but close my hand around Brook's elbow.

She was shaking.

Elwin pressed a keycard into my hand: Kiki's. My stomach sank. Kiki had access to all of Davenport, which meant that if nobody questioned us, Elwin could likely get whatever he wanted. I had to figure out a way around this without getting Brook shot, but my body was barely responding. Whatever Elwin had given me had made me even weaker than my Hostage Girl days.

Relief flooded through me when I saw the security guard in the waystation. After all the crap Marsh had put me through every time I wanted to 'port to New York, there was no possible way he'd wave me through with the wrong credentials. This plan would be foiled before it even got started, and all thanks to the world's crankiest security guard.

Marsh looked up from his computer, took in my uniform, eyed the two ­people flanking me, and waved me through.

“Seriously?” I wanted to ask him as I scanned the badge. If I survived this, I was coming back here and kicking Marsh's ass just for being a pain in mine.

The 'porter took us to Davenport Tower without complaint. In her line of work, I imagined, there were a lot of strange things that needed to be transported between stations. A uniformed hero bringing back a villain and a scientist barely even rated a second look. It made me want to scream, but I couldn't even get my body to do that much. Hell, I thought. I'm in hell. This is hell.

From the look on Brook's face, she'd lived through years of something like this. When I got control of my body back, I was going to either murder Elwin myself or stand to the side and let her do it.

In Davenport Tower, Elwin grabbed my wrist and stepped close. “Take me to Mobius,” he said.

I had no idea what the protocols were, but the first time I'd been taken to the Davenport Complex—­after fighting the very woman who stood in shackles next to me—­Vicki had delivered me directly to Medical. So unfortunately, doing the same to Elwin and Brook wouldn't be seen as unusual.

“Why are you doing this?” I asked, forcing the words out through the hazy barrier that came between my thoughts and actions.

“Money, why else? If Davenport had just paid the ransom, I would've happily handed over the lunatic and the Demobilizer and none of us would be here, would we?” Elwin shoved at my elbow to make me move faster. “I could be on a beach right now.”

“That's it?” I asked.

“What?”

“It's usually that the bad guy wants world domination or something sinister. You just want money?”

“Lodi was a job, not my life's work. I shouldn't be treated like a criminal just because my employer did a few bad things.”

Brook began to shake harder. “You kept me in a cage and experimented on me for years!”

“I was following orders. I'm owed my due.”

“You're owed a kick in the balls,” Brook said, and I couldn't disagree. She looked at me, her own movements sluggish. “I didn't give Tamara Diesel the Demobilizer.”

“Stop talking,” Elwin said.

“They ambushed me. At Wrigley.” Sweat gathered on Brook's forehead as she fought the effects of whatever we'd been dosed with. “I know you won't believe me, but all I want is to find Petra. Davenport can have this bastard.”

Assuming he didn't get away with whatever he had planned.

He put his hand on the gun. “I
said
stop talking,” he said.

Time to distract him. If he shot either of us, we'd bleed out before the drugs wore off and the Mobium could save our lives. “If you're after money, what do you want with Mobius?” I asked, hoping to distract him. Elwin Lucas might be human and amoral and awful, but he no doubt had the same weakness most villains shared: pride.

“Ms. Diesel offered me a lot of money to make more of the Demobilizer.”

“You can do that?” I asked. It was getting easier to talk, but the rest of me still felt trapped in syrup.

Elwin scowled. “I'm working on it. But the Demobilizer is useless if there's an antidote to it.”

“So you want to kill Mobius,” I said, a cold trickle of fear working down the back of my neck. Where was everybody? Why was nobody stopping us? Were they all still at the fight?

“The stubborn idiot won't have shared his formula with anyone and nobody else is smart enough to replicate what he can do.” Elwin's voice took on a boasting note as we made another turn that would bring us closer and closer to Medical. “I'm doing the world a favor. He's a monster, you know.”

“He's not the only one,” Brook said.

Of course we weren't lucky enough to be stopped by the receptionists in Medical. They saw the credentials and the uniform—­Jessie sure had a lot of pull around Davenport that even a knockoff of her uniform got this much respect—­and didn't question my assertion that the prisoners needed to be kept with Dr. Mobius for their own safety.

When I hesitated, Elwin looked hard at me and then hard at Brook. Again, I was being forced to make a choice. Brook was a villain, yes, but she was doing her time in prison and she was trying to turn her life around. Mobius was a villain as well that had done irreparable damage to my life.

Neither of them deserved to die, though.

I needed to stall somehow. But right now, there wasn't a way to do that, not without Elwin whipping out the gun and shooting Brook and now possibly the receptionists. My stomach sinking low, I walked toward the cell where they were keeping Mobius.

The badge let me right through. I stepped in, struggling as hard as I could against the drugs, trying to fight it off—­

“Oh, hey!” Vicki's voice chirped out. “Jessie, you're—­you're not Jessie.”

I'd never even considered that Mobius might not be alone, I realized, even though Angélica had asked Vicki to keep an eye on him. And keep an eye on him she had. Dr. Mobius sat on his hospital bed, peevishly glaring at the cards in his hand, while Vicki sat in the chair next to his bed in her Plain Jane uniform. They had a little tray in between them. It looked like they'd been playing for popsicle sticks, and if the stack next to Vicki was anything to go by, I should never, ever play poker against her.

She rose to her feet when she saw Brook and Elwin, her eyes cutting immediately to the handcuffs on Brook's wrists. It was Mobius's reaction that I found more interesting. He blanched, all the color leaching from his skin. Whether he was gaping at Brook or Elwin, I had no idea.

“What's going on?” Vicki asked. In a move that seemed instinctual, she drew the Plain Jane mask on and stepped between Dr. Mobius and us. To do what, I didn't know. She was as human as Brook and I were at the moment.

“He's gonna kill Mobius,” I said, forcing the words out as fast as I could.

“Gail?” Vicki asked, turning toward me in surprise.

That proved to be a giant mistake.

Without any warning, Elwin yanked out the gun. I shouted, trying to fight off the drugs and race for him, but I wasn't fast enough. He pulled the trigger, aiming right at Vicki's forehead, and from that distance, there was no way he could miss.

He didn't miss. The gunshot sounded like a sonic boom, reverberating off of the walls as I watched in complete horror, unable to do anything. My brain could process it, but everything else froze in shock. He'd shot Vicki. He'd opened fire and shot my very human friend right in the forehead. He'd killed Vicki Burroughs.

Vicki, though, only took a staggering step back and said, “Ow.”

And as I blinked, she shook her head, put a gloved hand to her forehead, and charged. She tackled Elwin hard, grappling for the gun. Her powers, I realized as I tried to force my body to move, to help out somehow. She must have convinced Mobius to make more of the antidote. She'd been shot in the head and hadn't died. She had her powers back!

But for somebody who was supposed to be super strong, she sure was struggling to get the gun away from Elwin. He was a full-­grown man, but he shouldn't have been any trouble for her. I tried to drop to my knees, to grab Elwin's wrist and force the gun out of his hand, but my limbs wouldn't cooperate.

Vicki got a lucky elbow in, making Elwin grunt and drop the gun. I moved toward it, fighting to make my limbs function, but Brook got to it first. She scooped it up, holding it awkwardly since her hands were cuffed, and took a step back. I saw her gaze lock on Dr. Mobius and fear raced through me. “Brook, don't—­”