One More Day (22 page)

“So you need to tell me about this formula you were working on. How close is it to being done? Has it been tested on anyone? How is it supposed to work? And why were you so fucking obsessed with me?”

He didn’t answer at first, and I drew my fist back. He flinched.

“Okay! Okay. It was close enough to done, but to be as powerful as we wanted, we needed your sample to incorporate into the formula. It’s nothing to do with you personally. You’re just the strongest super powered person as far as anyone knows, so your sample would have increased the powers of anyone injected.”

“So it was an injection,” I said, reaffirming what David and Jenson had already discovered.

“Yes. I initially wanted something I could distribute as a gas like I did in Midtown, but we all saw how well that worked. That was just a trial. The final product required your sample, and that taught me that it doesn’t work well. As an injection, though…” he gave a nod. “That works.”

“So it has been tested on people?”

“There have been three tests. One was successful. I built from there.” I was somewhat surprised by how openly he was speaking, but then I realized that it fit with what I knew of Dr. Death. He loved to talk about himself. Self-absorbed jackass. And he was probably hoping that it would save him, if he talked. Because I could see in his eyes that he expected me to kill him.

Hell,
I
expected me to kill him.

“You were working with Alpha,” I said.

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“We had partnerships with high ranking members of many teams. Alpha was just one of them. And I think it’s obvious why: it made it very easy to get a wide range of samples. Yours was the only one we had any trouble with, which is why I was ordered to do what I did.”

I opened my mouth to talk, and then I shook my head. “You are such a fucking weasel. You killed my mother while I watched— ”

“You think that was my idea?” he asked, raising his voice. “How often do you see me do something so publicly? I hate behavior like that. So crass.”

I stared at him, and he laughed. Just shook his head and laughed.

“It’s your team,” I pressed. He was going to take responsibility for this. He wasn’t going to weasel out of it.

“It was never my team,” he sneered. “All I ever wanted was a big payday and the ability to work uninterrupted as often as I wanted. I finally had it. I provided the lab and the intelligence. Mayhem kept the super hero teams busy while we worked on other things. I was more than happy to spend all of my time in my lab. I kept meticulous track of the process. It was beautiful. Notebooks and notebooks worth of it,” he said in a wistful voice.

“Isn’t that kind of archaic? I’m pretty sure most of that happens on computes.”

“Computers can be hacked, as we well know thanks to Virus. And I didn’t trust him in particular. He was too close, too loyal to you.”

“He told you where to find my mother,” I realized.

“No.”

“No?”

He shrugged.

I shook my head and tried to re-focus on what I was supposed to be finding out. “Where’s the lab, Death? Where’s the data?”

He opened his mouth, and surprised look came over his face. Then I saw the tip of a sword suddenly poke through his chest. I looked behind him, into the shadows.

“You talk too fuckin’ much,” a too-familiar voice said, rough, just a hint of Scottish brogue. The sword receded, and Connor stepped out of the shadows, dressed, as usual, head-to-toe in black.

I stared as he wiped the blade on Death’s jacket then held the sword at his side. He raised his face, and I knew he was looking at me.

I felt bile rise in my throat.

I’ll try to keep an eye on your mom for you
. Words I’d once taken as evidence that he maybe cared for me. That he understood me. My knees wanted to buckle, and all I could do was stare at him.

“I did give you a chance to be a good girl,” he said. For an instant, I wished I could see his face, to make all of this more real. But in the same moment, I realized how that would just make it all worse, somehow. “But I knew you were too stubborn to take advantage of it.”

I tried to shake myself out of the crazy, panicky feeling coursing through me.

He kept talking. “At the same time, we both know that your mother was the only thing keeping you from what you could be, if you’d get your head out of your ass and wake up. So concerned with making your Mama proud,” he said with derision. “You belong by my side. In every way.”

“You….” I couldn’t finish.

“Me,” he said. “I needed your blood. It was the last step toward making my plans a reality.” He looked at Death’s still form. “Now I have to find a new scientist. Fuck,” he said. “See? You make everything so fucking difficult, Jolene.”

“This is my fault?” I asked. I felt like I could hardly breathe.

“I needed your blood. But I need you, too. The two of us, sweetheart. Just think about how much we could do. Nothing could stand against us.”

“You are insane. You’re fucking delusional. You murdered my mother, you absolute son of a bitch,” I said, my voice rising. I drew my fist back and sent a punch of power at him, and he flew through the house, crashing through the opposite exterior wall into the empty yard outside. I stormed after him. He sprang up and launched at me, swords hissing through the air. I jumped back, then sent another punch at him.

“Impressive,” he said. “When’d you learn how to do that?” I punched again, and he went flying through the air. He bounced back up and stormed toward me, faster than should have been possible. Faster than I remember him being able to move.

And then it hit me. I should have known he was there. The house wasn’t that dark inside, that he could completely stay obscured by the shadows. He’d been invisible before he’d killed Death. The other samples Alpha had undoubtedly sent him would have included Crystal’s sample. Invisibility.

He’d been the success that Death had mentioned.

He swung again, and I flew up into the air.

“Get back here. We’re not done yet.” And then he rose into the air, too, and I wanted to scream. I flew toward the freeway, trying to get some distance to figure out what the hell to do. He was bigger than me. Had a healing factor, which made him really hard to hurt enough to slow him down. Plus he apparently had a crazy soup of a bunch of other powers thanks to Death’s injection.

“Ah, ah, ah. Get your ass back here,” he shouted, his deep raspy voice sending chills down my spine. Not the way it once had. Once, it had been a pleasant chill. Excitement. This… this was terror. “Look,” he shouted. He lifted his wrist to his mouth and said something, just as I noticed that StrikeForce had appeared in the yard where we’d been fighting. And, at that moment, a second team appeared. I was able to make out a few villains I knew of. A Russian guy who called himself “Red Scare,” a guy from Britain known as “Plague” and a chick from Japan that I think was calling herself “Flame” or some shit like that. I looked at Connor.

“I figured they’d want to come and help you,” he said. “They’re becoming a complication I don’t need. But you’re worth the complications you give me.”

“Are you kidding me?” I punched out at him again, and again, and again. He went flailing across the sky. I tried to keep an eye on StrikeForce as I got ready to hit him again. He’d keep healing, but maybe if I hit him hard enough I could knock him out. It would be enough, maybe, to get a dampener on him.

Assuming, of course, that my teammates had remembered to bring one. Or a dozen, based on the crowd he’d ordered into place. How the hell had they gotten there so fast?

Of course. He’d moved them into place, because he probably had Portia or Brianne’s powers too, that same ability to transport.

He flew toward me, brandishing his swords, and I punched out at him. I vaguely noticed news helicopters circling nearby, traffic stopped on the freeway below us. It was raining harder now, fat drops that splattered against my uniform when they hit.

I lost track of how many times I sent blasts of power at him, how many times I ducked his blades. How many times I felt a blade scrape across my body armor. This wasn’t working, I realized with more than a little terror. A quick glance below me, in the lots around Darla’s house, showed, to my surprise, that my team seemed to be holding their own. David was facing off against two of Raider’s people, back to back with Steel, who was in her metallic form and keeping three of the baddies off of David’s back. Screamer was doing her thing, and five of the villains were clutching their heads. As she kept screaming, their agony got worse, and Toxxin went around, easily and quickly putting them down with her powers. Portia and Jenson were taking on Raider (the current Raider, Connor’s ex-wife) and two of her henchmen.

Holy shit. We were winning, I realized. I saw some of the others, including a few of the more powerful guards from the prison, who were going around quickly and efficiently collaring the baddies that lay there unconscious.

I flew away from Connor.

“I’m getting bored with this game, sweetheart,” he shouted. I needed to do something now, while StrikeForce had the upper hand, which, in and of itself, was practically a miracle.

I dove, fast and hard, right at him. He was so used to me hitting him from afar that I think it took him by surprise when I rocketed toward him. I smashed into Connor and he went flying, falling, his swords clattering to the ground on the freeway below. I’d stunned him. Now I had to make sure he stayed down.

I stayed with him, and it came to me. This was when I had to try to use the things Ryan had taught me, all of that wrestling shit I thought I’d never have to use once we discovered how my body compensated for my messed up reflexes. I knew any move trying to hold him would fail, because he was so much bigger than me. But everyone has pressure points. Even him.

And his uniform isn’t padded at the throat, I realized, remembering the way it looked when he rolled it up to kiss me. I shook the memory away.

We landed in a heap on the side of the freeway, and I moved as quickly as I could. I dug my fingers into the side of his neck, hard. Someone with my strength, someone who’s been trained to incapacitate someone this way, even against someone of Connor’s size… It was almost frightening how easy it actually was. He slumped to the ground within seconds.

“Bring one of those collars over here,” I called, hoping one of the prison guards would hear me.

“Oh, shit. He’s down, he’s down,” I heard one of the baddies shouting, terror in his voice. “Fall back. Fall the fuck back. Pick him up.” I looked around, keeping a hand wrapped around his wrist, making sure I didn’t lose contact with him.

“I need a collar,” I shouted as I felt him start stirring. I went to hit his pressure point again, and suddenly, he was just gone. Not invisible, but actually gone. I noticed, almost at the same instant, that the sounds of battle had ended as well. I looked around in a panicked frenzy, then rose into the air to see my team looking confused where they’d been battling. Every one of our opponents was gone.

“What the hell was that?” Ryan growled. “What’s going on?”

“He wanted you guys here. To get ambushed by his people.”

“That was Killjoy,” Jenson said, confused, and I nodded. She stared at me. “Killjoy?” she repeated, and all I could do was stand there, just as confused as she was. Maybe more.

They all looked stunned. Confused. Pissed. And I felt pretty much the same way, with the additional sense of being a complete, absolute fool.

“We better get back. Come on,” Portia said woodenly. We gathered around, and she teleported us to the meeting room at Command.

Chapter Sixteen

Once we appeared back at Command it only took us a second to realize that there were alarms sounding, and we ran out of the meeting room. It was all eerily quiet. No one moving around on the upper administrative floors. We made our way down to the main lobby, and that was where we saw the first signs that something was horribly wrong. The woman who’d taken Jenson’s place at the receptionist’s desk was on the floor. Jenson went over to her, then breathed, a look of relief on her face.

“She’s alive,” she said. We saw more bodies near the prison wing, and I flew in that direction, the rest of the team behind me.

I could see from the blood that these people probably hadn’t made it. The door to the women’s wing stood open, and my eyes went to a prone figure on the floor in front of an open cell.

“No, no, no,” I muttered. I came to a landing next to Marie. Her eyes were open, and she was still. I checked for a pulse, knowing I wouldn’t find one. I glanced toward the open cell. I knew before I looked whose it would be. Brianne. The transporter from Dr. Death’s…. Connor’s team. She was gone.

I looked back at Marie. She’d been kind to me when she’d been my prison guard. She’d helped us stage our little uprising, and she’d become a friend. I gently closed her eyes, then shook my head and took off for the men’s prison wing.

There was more carnage there. My team was gathered at the far end, and someone was sobbing. I raced there, unsurprised, now, to see Maddoc and Daemon’s cells empty. I glanced toward where Alpha and Nightbane were held, and noted that they were both in their cells.