Please Don't Tell My Parents I Blew Up the Moon (7 page)

I almost answered myself. Claire hopped up to sit on the stairway railing, and slid down it out of sight. A phantom giggle I was pretty sure she hadn’t actually giggled lingered, an aftereffect of taking a full dose of her power.

In fact, I was still staring, wasn’t I? We all three were. I nudged Ray and Lucyfar. The latter cracked her knuckles exaggeratedly, and marched into the freight lift. “There are four desperate idiots downstairs, Reviled. Shall we take care of them?”

Ray turned enough to whisper, “Stay behind me.” Technically, it was not a whisper, but he kept his voice low enough I barely heard him between siren blasts.

I was going to be deaf by the time we got out of here. WAAK WAAK WAAK
WAAK
!

We didn’t even need keys. Lucyfar hit a button, and the lift slid smoothly down. Ray crouched. Lucy stuck her hands in fake pockets of her formerly skin-tight costume, but her eyes searched every inch of the room below as it came into view. This was a real warehouse, with brown cement floor and walls, pallets, a couple of open, empty wooden shipping crates, and a beat-up forklift. It must have extended down past the end of the building, because our elevator opened up on one side, with the stairwell entrance right in front.

There were doors. A pair of double doors right across from us caught my eye, just before they exploded.

Ray and Lucyfar had serious reflexes. I had a vague glimpse of a machine with three heavy barrels hanging from the ceiling when Ray’s arm hooked around my waist. My gut hurt and my breath wheezed out of me as he leaped upwards, dragging me along. Everything spun. We landed, and I wrapped both arms around the arm that held me and leaned against his shoulder. Ugh, my gut! Cuddling up to Ray was neither exciting nor romantic when I wanted to puke.

Crispy splatting noises echoed from downstairs, like someone flinging batter into a frying pan. Half a second after we jumped, yellow lights burst against the back of the elevator shaft, complete with their own splats. A couple of orange glows like tracer fire produced tin foil crunching sounds instead.

“What were those?!” I asked, more croaky than squeaky.

“Antipersonnel weapons,” Lucyfar answered, as confidently as if that was an answer and meant anything.

Ray knew that I had only been raised by superheroes, I wasn’t actually neck deep in their culture. “Henchmen-hiring villains love them. They ignore regular body armor, cause less accidental deaths than bullets, and most importantly, way less damage to whatever you’re trying to steal.”

Lucyfar tilted her head to the right, and her smile to the left. “Those look like Red Eye designs. Someone managed to reverse engineer and mass-produce one of her guns. She is going to be maaaaad!” Lucyfar dragged out the word, savoring it. Shaking her head, she added a chuckle and an amendment. “She’ll owe me for breaking them all and destroying the notes and blueprints.”

Something moved at the bottom of the elevator shaft. Ray yanked me back again. This time it was only dizzying, and I got a pretty good look at a man in a red painted suit of blocky metal armor.

Orange crinkling lights shot up at us from his rifle. When they hit the ceiling, they crawled over the tiles like electricity, leaving black stains. Black knives materialized and shot down the elevator shaft, producing angry, but heavily muffled yelps.

Several more orange lights hit the ceiling, but we were too far back now. The shots did confirm the security team had more than one of those mad science rifles.

Ray, Lucyfar, and I formed a triangle. Ray yelled past the alarm’s buzz, “Four guards. I saw one in a turret, three with blasters, one of those in power armor.”

Blasters? Really, Ray? I forced myself to not chew him out over that ridiculously inaccurate description. I didn’t know what those guns were, but the mad scientist in me insisted that they worked by some devious technological principle of Red Eye’s discovery, and deserved a bit more respect!

Ah, well. How could I expect people without crazy inventing super brains to understand?

Lucyfar, of course, did not share my objections to this mangling of the beautiful art of technological innovation. She kept discussing strategy with Ray as if he hadn’t done anything wrong. “The hard part is the turret. It can’t be lured into the open, and will have armor and extra defenses. Red Eye is enthusiastic in her excess.” Straightening up, she crossed her arms and gave us a severely disapproving stare. “Of course, the real hard part is that someone promised we’d try not to kill these dufuses. Dufii. Dufates.”

I would have liked to help plan, but it was really hard to think with the alarm going WAAK WAAK all the time.

At which gloriously appropriate moment, the alarm shut off.

Silence. Sweet, beautiful silence.

Well, except for a man’s voice downstairs shouting, “Ow! Help! Get me out of this thing!”

Someone else yelled, “Preston? Preston, are you okay?”

The heavy clang that followed suggested that Preston was not okay.

In the silence, it was much easier to think.

“Two guys left. One distracted,” Ray whispered.

I grabbed onto his shoulder. “Jump down. Go.”

He didn’t question. Ray took two steps forward, lifting me up by the waist to pull me along, and jumped down the elevator shaft.

Two guys in security uniforms. One suit of power armor on the ground. One turret trying to withdraw into the ceiling with a guard trapped inside.

I focused right behind the one guard raising a gun. We were going there.

My view skipped. I heard Ray’s feet hit the floor before I caught up with where I’d teleported us both. Ray, expecting this and with those crazy reflexes, let go of me and spun around in a circle. His kick knocked the guard’s legs out from under him, and Ray bolted forward three steps to grab the other guard’s wrist. That poor fool had been bent over the immobilized power armor, and hadn’t even had time to stand up.

Lucyfar dropped down the elevator shaft, landing in a sleek crouch. She might not be as crazy enhanced as Ray, but a drop that would have broken a human’s legs didn’t bother her. One of her knives appeared, blade pressed against the throat of the guard Ray knocked down. That guy’s gun had flown over by the forklift anyway, way out of reach.

Claire skipped out of the stairwell, jingling keys. “These were useful. There were all kinds of defense controls in the security office to shut off. I also destroyed the security tapes. Check this out!” With the other hand, she threw me an old VHS tape.

I caught it, but I was mostly busy sitting in one place very carefully. Carrying someone else on even a short teleport was not fun. Now all my muscles ached, not just my stomach.

I looked at the tape. Yes, an old VHS tape. I spooled out some magnetic tape, and looked back up at Claire. “Seriously?”

The guy whose wrist Ray held started grumbling. “Ten million on high-tech automatic defenses. Everything else is bargain basement. Even Preston only makes twice minimum wage.” A moment’s reflective pause, and he added bitterly, “Made.”

Quietly, trembling and trying not to press against the blade against his neck, the guard in front of me asked, “Excuse me? Did you say you destroyed the security tapes?”

I yanked the magnetic tape out as far as it would go, crushing it and winding it around my wrist, and pulled. Criminy, this stuff was tough! It stretched and stretched before it finally snapped.

That had taken several seconds longer than the dramatic gesture I’d intended, but the guards still got the point. The guy Ray held sagged, letting go of the rifle so that it clattered onto the floor. “Thank heavens. Okay, we surrender.”

“Yes, please!” Echoed the guard with the knife at his neck.

“I surrender! Please get me out of here?” Called the guard stuck in the turret.

The wearer of the power armor said something I couldn’t even begin to make out.

“It’s that or lie there, stuck, until the cops arrive. You know they’ve just been waiting to bust this place,” the guy Ray held argued.

I didn’t hear the response at all, but apparently the guard did. “It’s your funeral, Preston. Regional’s going to make you a scapegoat, not their one loyal hero.”

The power armor did have a little ‘Preston’ tag on it. It made sense that the armor would go to the security chief. It was ugly, clunky stuff. It looked like some of Mech’s oldest designs, but obviously wasn’t as good if it could be deactivated this easily.

Come to think of it, they did reverse engineering of mad science here, right? How they’d gotten ahold of an old suit of Mech’s armor I had no idea, but that must be a bad copy. Still, it would probably shrug off bullets and whatever Red Eye’s rifles fired.

“Can we run away before the cops arrive?” Ray’s captive asked hopefully.

Ray looked at me. I shrugged and nodded. Lucyfar spread her hands.

The blade disappeared from the neck of the guard in front of me. Ray let go of his guard, and put his shoe on the dropped rifle. When the rifle bent and cracked, that probably made a point.

Apparently, the guards had decided I was in charge, because Ray’s looked over at me. “I know I’m pushing my luck, but can we get Sammy out and take him with us?” He nodded at the turret.

“I’ll cut him loose.” Walking past the frightened guards, Lucy created about a dozen knives, inserting them into every crack I could see in the turret, and some I couldn’t but she could. A metal panel popped off. Something sizzled and groaned.

Yanking on the transparent shield pinning the guard into his cockpit, Lucyfar inquired, “Antipersonnel weapons lab behind you?”

The guard grunted, then gasped in relief as something came loose. “Yes.”

“Your facility has a biolab, right?” Lucyfar heaved on the shield. Something snapped, and while it didn’t come off, it bent way back out of the way.

The guard in front of me pointed at a side door. “That hallway.”

Lucyfar nodded. “Cool.” Fabric ripped, and the guard in the turret slid out of a shredded seat and onto the floor. “You three get out while the getting is good. I guess our good buddy Preston waits for the authorities.”

None of them waited for us to change our minds. They scrambled on all fours, rose, and ran for the stairwell. They didn’t even bother with the elevator. As the door shut behind them, I just caught, “I’m gonna call Mamie. She didn’t ask for this. She just wanted a research job.”

Lucyfar dusted off her hands, while her knives still squealed and sawed inside the broken turret. “Well, I’ve got an inventory to destroy, and a box of angel killing bullets to pick up. You kids go have fun.”

We weren’t letting a line like that just disappear. “Really angel killing bullets?” Claire asked.

Lucyfar shrugged. “Who knows? But if they’re called angel killers, I want them. And I think here is the best place to leave this.” Pulling a card out of her sleeve like a magician, she dropped it into the cab of the mutilated turret. Then she turned and walked down the hall, laughing with distinctly malicious satisfaction.

Curiosity overcame us, of course. I climbed to my feet and peered into the shredded seat, with Claire and Ray looking over my shoulders. The stiff sepia card read in elegant black letters, ‘I’ve made my point.’ The signature was a little black generic man symbol like on a bathroom, but with the arms, legs, and head detached.

“That’s the mark of the Butchered Man,” Claire said, who probably knew the Butchered Man’s shoe size, before and after losing his feet.

“I thought the Council of Seven and a Half owned this place?” The Butchered Man was on that council. He’d hired Lucyfar to attack his own weapons lab?

“Corporate politics, I guess. Those poor saps are just collateral damage to the bosses.” Ray gave a nod back upstairs, and sounded regretful. I admit, that made me smile. He didn’t like to see regular people hurt any more than I did.

Claire’s chuckle was only the slightest bit grim. “Their board meetings must be a hoot.”

Ray gave a snort, seriousness gone. “All in favor, raise your doomsday remotes. All against, open fire.”

His snicker cut off, and he made a zipping motion over his mouth. Good boy, Ray. He had an unmistakable accent we did not want anyone we knew hearing from the supervillain Reviled.

I eyed the side door to the biolabs, and smiled. “Time for what we came here for.”

My smile got bigger with every step towards the door, until it hurt, until it felt like I’d split my face in half. My other aches faded. Finally. Finally, I was here!

I pushed my way into another white corridor, now with yellow smiling suns and slogans I didn’t care about defacing the walls. Pictures flashed through my head. Cells dividing? DNA codes? The map of a city? I didn’t know, or need to know. Words would scare this inspiration off, and I’d put too much work into it already.

We passed side rooms. Monitoring equipment. Whiteboards covered in diagrams. A roomful of caged animals, cats and dogs and rabbits and birds and goats and more. A locked room opposite, with metal grids in the glass to render it bulletproof. More cages in there. The man-sized beast padding back and forth in one pen had two heads.

That left only the doors at the end of the hall. They opened up in front of us automatically into a small chamber like an airlock. The inner door didn’t want to open, even when we were all inside, but that was fine. I knew everything. I knew how to make any machine I wanted. I punched buttons on the security keypad, watching the electrical pulses move back and forth in my mind like waves, combining, becoming self-sustaining, until they broke through a barrier and created what I needed. The keypad let out a despairing buzz, the smoke drifted out, and the inner door opened. It would obey me automatically now.

I could barely see the floor as I floated through a haze of beautiful images towards the tanks and cages and computers. First, I had to prime them, but second, I needed a… cat. All of the pictures revolved around a cat. Where was my cat?

I clamped down on my impatient shaking. We’d just passed an entire petting zoo, right? “Bring me a cat!” I barked at my minions.

Words. Claire’s voice. What did she say? “You’re not going to hurt it, are you?”