Paranormals (Book 2): We Are Not Alone (11 page)

Cooper raged at them, his words mostly incoherent now. He leaned forward once more, charging around the pool like a pissed-off bull, forgetting Pendler as he bore down upon those he could reach.

Mark fired a one-handed attack as he stepped in front of his partner, but yet again the shockwave glanced off.

Powerhouse ran forward to greet the oncoming rogue, spreading his arms wide. Cooper rolled right into him, forcing Lincoln to take a single step back. The big man grabbed at the bubble, hoisting it off the ground and rendering Cooper harmless ...

... but it didn’t last. After mere seconds, the bubble slipped loose — Powerhouse’s reach wasn’t quite long enough to hold on to the slick surface — and Cooper rolled away from him. Mark rushed sideways, firing a pair of shockwaves that
almost
 knocked the rogue into the pool, but Cooper spun around the edge like a missed putt and did not drop.

“Cover your ears, guys,” Takayasu said under his breath as he tossed another spherical object after the rogue — the device hit the concrete and spun after Cooper like a top. Cooper struck the pool fence again, knocking it over but not passing through it this time, just as the device reached him. Takayasu clicked a remote in his hand, then dropped it to cover his own ears.

A sonic blast fired off, directed upward but still quite loud outside the target zone — a handful of apartment windows shattered around the courtyard. The brunt of the blast hit Cooper; he reacted in evident discomfort, and his force field rippled ... but as with the ampule gas, most of the sonic assault failed to penetrate his bubble.

As Cooper wobbled around for a moment, Pendler appeared again, this time over the third floor railing of the next building over. He fired two more shots from his V9 with equal failure. Cooper looked up in his general direction, his bubble rolling along the metal fence.

“Pendler!” Michael yelled at him, his personal frustration leaking through. “Stop wasting ammo, damn it!”

“I think Poindexter’s got the right idea for a change,” Mark commented as he aimed both fists. “We should just keep hittin’ the guy ‘til he drops.”

Mark fired, and both shockwaves came near enough to the center of Cooper’s bubble to have a real effect, though not what any of them had hoped: The bubble rippled under Shockwave’s attack for the first time, and in a perfect world, he would’ve gone straight through the metal fence on the opposite side. Unfortunately, the fence bent but did not give way fast enough, and under that instant of pressure, Cooper’s force field popped upward, rocketing into the air at an angle that sent him slamming into the underside of the third floor walkway — Pendler cried out and fell back, out of view. Cooper then ricocheted at a sixty degree angle to their left, shattering the stucco just below the second floor of that building. He came back down into the courtyard at a spin, and thanks to the gyroscopic nature of his force field, managed to recover by the time he’d crossed half the patio area, knocking cheap, white plastic chairs in every direction as he spun to a halt near the thoroughfare from which Michael and the others originally entered the scene.

“Goddamn it,” Shockwave muttered. “I hate stalemates like this.”

Powerhouse asked Takayasu, “Do you want me to try and pick him up again?”

“Do you think you’ll be able to get a better hold than last time?”

The big man admitted, “Probably not.”

“Punks!” Cooper roared as he rotated around toward them. As he screamed, spittle foamed up at the corners of his mouth. “Asshole punks, all out to get me, everyone out to take from me, take what’s mine!
My
car!
My
truck!
My
wife!
Mine
!” He devolved into frantic panting, his reddened cheeks puffing as he glared at them with bloodshot eyes.

Mark raised his arms for another two-fisted shockwave, but Michael grabbed his wrist before he could take aim.

“Hold off for now,” Michael told him, “until we figure this out. We don’t need any more property damage here if we can avoid—”

“Oh!” Cooper suddenly came back alive. “You’re worried about the
property damage
?! Like those punks damaged
my
property?! Is that it?!
Is that it?!
”

Leaning away from them, Cooper rolled back into the thoroughfare. His eyes bulging and gleaming with madness, he raised his arms and pumped them downward, straining and flexing his trapezius muscles like Lou Ferrigno on the old Hulk TV show. His bubble rippled again, but this time it appeared to be flexing along with him — expanding around him, it pressed into the opposite walls, cracking the stucco, wood, and concrete on either side of him.

“Um,” Powerhouse said, “could he do that all along?”

Mark growled, “Don’t matter. He’s figured it out now. Shit.”

Drawing another gasping breath, Cooper flexed again. His bubble retracted halfway to its original size, then expanded once more — now both walls and
the ceiling to the second floor walkway cracked, along with the pavement beneath Cooper’s feet.

“What do you want me to do, Lieutenant?” Powerhouse asked. He glanced over to Shockwave. “Anything we can do together?”

In the heat of the moment, Mark forgot his pride and disdain for the younger agent as he admitted, “I got nothing, man. Mike?”

“I’m thinking.” Michael’s fingers danced over the body of his trench coat as he considered his options. If he didn’t come up with something quickly, he’d have to order Powerhouse to run over there and shove him through to the outside; that would tear the hell out of the building, but it would cause more damage to let this continue.

“You like that, punks?!” Cooper continued mouthing off, sounding increasingly out of breath. “You like that?!
Huh
?!” He flexed again, and the largest ripple yet flowed over his force field; the bubble started causing serious structural damage to the building around him.

“Okay,” Michael admitted, “I’m open to suggestions.”

“Maybe ... maybe Powerhouse and I can trap him between us if I fly over the top again and come at him from the other side? Pop that bubble between us?”

“You come anywhere near me,” Cooper yelled, “and I swear I’ll bring down the whole—!” He cut himself off as he flinched in surprise, his gaze shooting up to his right.

The others followed his look; Shockwave spotted the reason first. He pointed and commented with a grin, “Look who finally decided to show up.”

Kneeling with his cape flared out around him (something Takayasu had come to recognize as a deliberate pose), Vortex peered down from the roof of the building.

Michael whispered to Shockwave, “
Davison Electronics
is further away than HQ. Just be glad he got here as soon as he did.” He and Shockwave exchanged a brief, knowing look, then he called up, “Careful with your vortex wave! Don’t try repelling him — he just bounces around like a billiard ball.”

Vortex nodded in acknowledgment but said nothing; he just kept staring at Cooper.

Michael continued, “Think you can try a compression wave from there?”

Vortex shook his head. “I don’t like how tight he is between those walls.”

“Shut up!” Cooper demanded. “All of you, just shut up right now! Or I swear, I’ll bring the whole building down! I swear!” He then addressed Vortex directly. “Why do
you
care?! You’re not with the cops! You’re that vigilante, right?!” Cooper thumped his chest with his thumb. “I’m just standing up for
my
rights here! They all push me around, take from me, screw me over,
and I’m sick of it
!”

“What’ve you tried?” Vortex called down.

Cooper looked confused and sputtered for a moment, during which Michael answered, “Brute force, picking him up, stun guns, gas, sonic; nothing penetrates—”

“I told you to
shut up
!” Cooper flexed again; he was beginning to flounder a bit, and his bubble only expanded a little, but still enough to cause the building to moan in protest.

Vortex held up a placating hand. “Okay, calm down. I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“You don’t scare me, punk!” Cooper retorted. “Nothing scares me anymore! Bullets can’t hurt me,
those
two assholes can’t hurt me! I should’ve done this years ago! Nothing can get through my shield!”

“Nothing, huh?” Vortex needled him.

“
Nothing!
”

Vortex nodded. “And yet, you can
see
me, can’t you?”

Cooper sputtered again. “Wh-what? What’s that supposed to ...?”

Shockwave and Powerhouse exchanged a bewildered glance, but Takayasu got it. “Do it.”

“Wait!” Cooper shouted. “What the hell are you two—?!”

Vortex gestured for him to calm down once more. “Don’t. Move.”

Before Cooper could react or respond, Vortex’s lasers flashed into being, the twin beams shooting from his eyes, through Cooper’s transparent force field, and slicing off Cooper’s right ear.

Cooper screamed, his hands bolting to the side of his head — one of them collided with the ear as it fell, knocking it upward and sending it bouncing against the top and side of his bubble. There was very little blood, but a little smoke sizzled through his fingers.

Cooper’s bubble shrank part way, then blinked out altogether.

Powerhouse and Shockwave descended upon him, but Michael reached him first, slapping a psi-jammer against his forehead. The band snapped into place, pinching his fingers where they clutched at his wound. When he yanked his hand free, the device activated, and Cooper’s whole body went rigid.

“Mark, Lincoln,” Michael ordered, “keep an eye on him. If it looks like he’s—”

Shockwave waved him off. “I got it, I got it, I know the drill.” Powerhouse just nodded.

Takayasu turned back as Vortex completed a somersault from the roof onto the third floor walkway, his cape flaring around him with the same élan as always. As Vortex gripped the railing to repeat the process down to the second floor ...

Heaven forbid he should just take the stairs
.

... Michael noticed that he seemed to be favoring his right arm — not that this did anything to diminish the Olympic-quality grace behind the maneuver.

“Should we detain him?”

Michael glanced over as Pendler approached. “Excuse me, Ensign?” he asked, his irritation clear.

Pendler shuffled, uncomfortable. “I mean ... he’s a vigilante, isn’t he, sir? You keep just letting him come and go—”

“Yes, and speaking of coming and going, what the hell where you doing on the upper floors during the fight?”

Pendler averted his eyes and half-shrugged, avoiding Michael’s gaze. “I was, you know, helping the civilians evacuate. I tried to help where I could.”

“Yes, by firing your V9 at a rogue encased in a force field.”

“Well, the regular cops pulled back, so I, uh—”

“Forget it.” Michael looked meaningfully around the courtyard, at the multi-broken fence, the disarrayed pool chairs, the scattering of stucco beneath the damaged buildings. “Let’s try to get this mess under control. Why don’t you see to that, Ensign?”

Downcast, Pendler nodded and scampered off. Michael saw that Vortex had made it to the ground, and they met on the other side of the pool.

“Thanks,” Michael said as they came together. “I was stumped.”

“You would’ve thought of something.”

“Probably. But you ended it that much sooner. I’m glad you thought of the lasers — you usually prefer to use your namesake.”

Vortex shrugged. “I would’ve compressed his ass if I’d had a clear shot. But lasers are light—”

“— and his shield was transparent. Like I said, glad you were here. Though for future reference, it might help if
Davison Electronics
could design a real-life, hand-held laser gun. You can shoot the stuff from your
eyes
— how hard can a gun be?”

Vortex chuckled and looked around. The few remaining tenants were starting to come out, and the more enthusiastic among them were pointing at Vortex. “I’d better step away now. Gotta maintain the mystique.”

Michael smirked. “Get out of here before someone tries to sue you for this fiasco.”

Vortex laughed, but he was already backing away toward the courtyard exits. “Hey,
I’m
not to blame this time. You guys did all this before I got here.”

Michael looked around again. “Yeah, this has not been one of our more subtle assignments.” He waved Vortex away. “Scat.”

Vortex saluted and took off at a run.

THE SHINING STAR

“Verify all ships have fully powered down their prolight cells. Save all the energy we can, Larr.”

“Understood. All prime fields are minimal, prolight cells powered down, Callin. Veils in place, orbit established.”

“Grand Lord Callin, Lord Larr ...”

“Go ahead, Naltin.”

“Spit it out, Naltin.”

“As you requested, I’ve scanned for convert activity. I regret to inform you that I’ve found
many
readings, particularly in the current hemisphere.”

“ ... damn ...”

“All right ... All right, further analysis: Just how bad is it? How many at Grand level?”

“ ... Numerous spikes indicate Grand converts. One spike is coming through particularly strong right now, from a continent to port.”

“
How
strong?”

“Three active readings, all Grand Level, within very close proximity. It’s almost certainly a convert altercation.”

“Larr, how quickly can we shift orbit to observe?”

“... Already done.”

“Larr, bring up the image.”

“... Magnifying image ...”

“... Compensating for atmospheric interference ...”

“...”

“... Look there. That one. He’s wearing a
cape
.”

“A member of their ruling council? A
convert
?”