The Indestructibles (18 page)

Chapter 40:

Tested

The mountainside base rumbled with movement as personnel began clearing equipment for transport.
Agent Black observed the activity from a window in the conference room above the main atrium. He marveled at how much work had gone into making this underground base habitable, to make it almost corporate, only to be abandoned because of paranoia. They received orders that morning to move on to a secondary location and to leave no trace of their activities.

      Meanwhile, Rose retrieved the surveillance results of their two-pronged provocation of these new metahumans. She seemed appalled at how poorly events had gone; Black was relieved they hadn't thrown a full-fledged attack at them before testing their behaviors in the field.

      "Project Tinder was a complete loss," Rose began, projecting footage on screen of the raging forest fire the test subject had started. "Her potential as a superweapon was enormous. I'm not pleased we weren't able to salvage anything from her."

      "There's no shortage of pyrokinetics out there," the Lady said.     She wore high heels, was dressed in an elegant tuxedo-styled shirt and skirt, and her hair was pinned back away from her face. If not for the streams of fire drifting out of her eyes, she'd have looked like she was perfectly suited to sit in a boardroom and conduct a project deconstruction. Black wondered if the Lady was mocking them.

      "If we'd been able to use Tinder, she could have been another option for controlling natural disasters," Rose said.

      "Trust me, there's firestarters everywhere, darling," the Lady said. "You'll find another one."

      "She destroyed herself, right? Am I reading these scans correctly?" Black said.

      The death reflected on the screen bothered him. Not softhearted by any stretch, but he would feel better about the whole experiment if they were using older test subjects. Something about these throwaway kids troubled him. Admit it, Black, you were a throwaway test subject once upon a time yourself. Stop empathizing.

      "She overloaded herself. Went supernova," Rose said. "What I'm curious about is this though." She tapped a few keys and cut to footage of the kid in blue and white — the one with the laser-like blast powers — who seemed to be prepping for a massive strike only to be stopped by his partner, the girl dressed in red and gold.

      "Looks like a killing strike to me," Black said.

      "Possibly," said Rose. "Which tells me either he's one to look out for in the future because he's not afraid to pull that trigger, or . . . "

      "Or you might bring him in yourselves," the Lady said. "Don't bother."

      Rose quirked an eyebrow at her.

      "Why not?"

      "Petal, I've made a career out of reading bluffs," the Lady said. "That boy could have killed our girl at any point. He was procrastinating. Waiting for someone or something else to take the decision out of his hands. That's what you want to know about him, not if he's a killer."

      "So he's a weak link?" Rose said. "Funny, from what we've seen he's second only to the girl next to him in terms of power scale."

      "I wouldn't call him weak. I'd say he lacks confidence," the Lady said. "The girl does too, but she deals with it better. Watch her movements. She's cautious but doesn't hesitate to take act."

      "Didn't really work for her here," Black said.

      Rose allowed the video footage to play out. "And I wouldn't want to pose as junior psychologist, but she left her boy here behind after they failed to stop Tinder. Perhaps some infighting?"

      "They're kids," the Lady said. "Adults have infighting. Kids have spats."

      "Don't you think you're underestimating them?" Black said.

      The Lady smiled broadly.

      "I wouldn't undervalue what they're capable of. Just saying their brains aren't fully formed yet. Don't let them fool you into thinking they're more experienced at this sort of thing than they really are."

      Rose switched over to the footage from the Hyde experiment. The showdown in the street between Hyde and the werewolf played out on screen in silence. Rose's body language altered completely; she was now tense and attentive.

      "Relax, Rose. This one is yours," Black said. "Nobody's going to take your werewolf away from you."

      "It's not that," she said. "It's that he's evolving. At the lab he acted completely out of control. Here he's more rational. Still fighting like a berserker, but you can see it from the way he moves, even the transition from human to werewolf — he's getting better at it."

      "What does that mean?" Black said.

      "I don't know."

      "What about the footage from the drones that pursued our lost tech?" he said.

      "That's interesting," Rose said, tension easing slightly from her voice.

      Lighter topic. Get her away from her beef with werewolves, Black thought. "They were older models, cheap hunter killers never meant to take out metahumans, but we've got something."

      Rose called up the grainy eye-camera footage from their robotic drones as they fought the two girls in the apartment hallway. The drones were defeated easily, but as Rose noted, they were really meant to eliminate civilians, not legitimate threats, and anyway, they'd been sitting dormant for so long they were significantly outdated models.

      "This girl," Rose said, tapping the screen as the masked fighter appeared. "She's good."

      "Any indication of what she's got up her sleeves in terms of augmentations?" Black said.

      "Nothing so far," Rose said. "But watch these moves. The other girl has some level of invulnerability so she over-relies on it. She has no reason to develop into a skilled fighter because she's stronger and more indestructible than pretty much anything that comes her way."

      Black watched the footage again and paused the screen.

      "This girl on the other hand, has been training in legitimate fighting styles for years," he said. "I recognize at least a half-dozen schools of martial arts in just these few minutes of footage, and she fights mean. Look at her."

      "You sound as if you like her," Rose said.

      "So do you. We're able to appreciate a cutthroat fighter when we see one, I guess."

      "Maybe she's a mundane," the Lady said. "Every so often a mundane puts on a mask and holds his or her own with the monsters and aliens."

      "You might be right," Rose said. "But what makes me more curious is why all of the drones' surveillance cameras shut off simultaneously when the fight moved outside the building."

      "Some elements of that response were magic-based," the Lady said. "Someone on site employed a very simple spellcasting technique to tinker with the footage. But there's another thing entirely at work, too."

      "You mean technological?" Black asked.

      "Not my field. I'm the magical consultant, you're the cyborg."

      "Well, this is all we have," Rose said.

      "No it's not," the Lady said.

      "How so?" Rose said.

      "They took your Hyde project captive."

      "He's a little jerk anyway," Black said. "We should have dumped him at the start of the experiment."

      "Not what I meant," the Lady said. "Haven't you placed trackers in all of the test subjects?"

      "We have," Rose said.

      "And cortex bombs?"

      A grin crawled across Rose's face.

      "Then darlings," the Lady said. "What you have now are options."

Chapter 41:

Division of What

The Tower, for better or worse, housed an area that amounted to a set of holding cells.
When Jane and Billy followed Doc, Emily, and a worse for wear Titus, down into a deeper section none of them had visited before, they found their captive, the kid Titus had fought, in one of the cells.

      Kate stood guard outside, cutting a sort of nightmare figure. She selected a place between the overhead lighting to stand in maximum shadows and altered her mask to white out her eyes.

      "What's your deal," the kid in the cell said. "Don't talk?"

      Kate remained perfectly still, arms crossed.

      "The werewolf your boyfriend? I bet he is. Bet you go for the weirdos," the kid said.

      Jane waited for Kate to knock his teeth out, but she just stood there, expressionless. Then, when Doc and the crew arrived, she took a few steps away from everyone else, to watch from a distance.

      "It's the freak brigade," the kid said. "What happened to you two? Someone set off a bomb in your pants?"

      Jane forgot that she and Billy were covered in soot with burns and tears littering their uniforms.

      "Can I squish his brain?" Emily asked. "I think I know how to do that now."

      She made a fist with her right hand.

      "Little bubble. Squish."

      "We're waiting for someone," Doc said. "Got a name, kid?"

      "I'm Hyde," he said.

      "Of course you are," Titus said. "I figured it was either that or Kong."

      Doc waved Titus off.

      "Who you working with?"

      "Don't work for nobody," the kid said.

      "Right," Doc said.

      At that moment, the door at the end of the cellblock opened, and the skinniest old man Jane had ever seen walked in. He sported an impressive gray moustache, wore a fedora, and the sleeves of his light blue dress shirt were rolled up. His tie was knotted perfectly, but loose around his thin neck. He carried an old military style rucksack over one shoulder.

      "Gang, this is Sam Barren. An old friend."

      "Pleasure," Sam said. He took off his hat respectfully, revealing a mostly bald head, any hair that remained was predominantly gray.

      "Hello, sir," Jane said. "I'm — "

      "Just code names, please," Sam said. "It's safer that way."

      Doc laughed.

      "Sam is the head of the Division," he said. "He's worked with superhumans and heroes for decades. He's got rules."

      "Former head," Sam said. "You know they shut us down after all that bad business happened. We weren't needed nearly as much as we were in the beginning, anyway."

      "The Division of what?" Billy asked

      Sam roared with laughter.

      "Did I make a joke?"

      "You did, actually," Doc said.

      "We were just called the Division, capital D," Sam said. "But everyone always wanted to know what we were the division of, and so it became an in-joke with law enforcement. 'Call in the Division of What, we have a super-powered problem.'"

      "I think the Division of What is an awesome name. We should steal it," Emily said.

      Sam extended his hand to her.

      "And you are?"

      "Entropy Emily," she said.

      "I'm almost afraid to ask what you do," he said.

      "I make things weird," she said, nodding in a self-satisfied way.

      The rest of the group introduced themselves easily. When Kate identified herself, Sam pointed at her.

      "You, I know about," he said.

      "You do?" she asked.

      "When you first started up I was still keeping tabs on what was going on out there. Heard we had ourselves a do-gooder in town. I was hoping you'd turn out okay."

      Kate nodded, but said nothing.

      "And what do we have here," Sam said, walking up to the cell.

      "Bite me, old man," Hyde said.

      "Heard someone already did that today," he said.

      The old man rummaged around his rucksack, then pulled out a blocky device like an oversized remote control.

      "What's that?" Hyde asked.

      "A neat little contraption I boosted from the Division before they shut us down," Sam said. He winked at Jane. "Always figured I'd need this stuff again. Heard they sold a lot of our gear once we were gone."

      Sam held the device in Hyde's direction and tapped a few buttons.

      "What. What are you doing? What's happening?"

      "Relax, twinkle toes, I'm just scanning you," Sam said.

      "How are we looking?" Doc said.

      "Without that device strapped to his chest, he's just an ordinary kid," he said. "You probably didn't need to bring me in."

      "Why not?" Jane asked.

      "The Division was the group that locked up all the super-powered folks when they were caught," Sam said. "Doc here thought he might have one for transport."

      "Transport where?" Hyde said.

      Jane heard the bravado he'd possessed earlier fading.

      "Were thinking we'd throw you in with the other metahumans," Sam said.

      "Not crazy about that idea," Doc said. "You're giving the amateur access to the professionals. He goes in, makes a few connections, next thing you know he's in the latest league of evil somewhere."

      "Send me there! You can send me there. I'll be fine," the kid said.

      "Nah," Sam said. "You're just a regular little guy without your machine. We can hand you over to a standard prison."

      "What?" Hyde's voice leapt two octaves.

      Billy burst out laughing.

      "Did you attack us just to get yourself locked up with other supervillains?" Billy said.

      "No, I . . . no," Hyde said.

      "So why did you attack?" Kate said, still half-shrouded in the corner. "You were obviously calling us out."

      "I didn't. I wasn't . . . regular prison?"

      "Talk," Kate said.

      "No. No. You know what? I want a lawyer. You can't keep me here."

      Sam pulled a another device out of his rucksack and ran a second scan. The machine beeped twice, loud.

      "That's not the happy fun sound, is it?" Emily said.

      "Doc," Sam said. "I think you've got two problems right now."

      "Why are there always two problems?" he said. "Can't we just once have one problem instead?"

      Sam wasn't smiling, though. He showed Doc the scan.

      "It's okay. They're all fine, everyone can hear this," Doc said.

      "Well, for one thing, he's been tagged," Sam said.

      "Tagged?" Hyde said.

      "You've got a tracking device in you," he said.

      "A tracking what? Where?"

      Titus hopped up on his toes to peer at the screen over Doc's shoulder.

      "Oh man, you don't want to know," he said.

      "Not — not there!" Hyde said.

      "Worse," Titus said. He flashed a very strange grin at Hyde, Jane noticed. Cruel and predatory.

      "That's not the worst of it. This kid has a cortex bomb in his head," Sam said.

      "A what?" Hyde said.

      "We should've known," Billy said.

      "I'm so glad I didn't crush his brain," Emily said.

      "What's a cortex bomb?"

      "A bomb in your brain," Titus said. "Were you one of the lab rats?"

      "I was a supervillain," he said. "I wasn't an experiment. People were afraid of me."

      "Trust me kid," Billy said. "We've seen scarier than you."

      "You were one of their pet projects, weren't you?" Jane said. She leaned in toward the futuristic glass that served as bars on the cell. "You've got to be honest. Tell us."

      "I don't have to tell you anything," Hyde said.

      "Not to alarm everyone, but I'd recommend evacuating the room, pronto," Sam said. "For all we know they sent him as a Trojan Horse. Get him in the building and then blow his brain bomb."

      "Blow my brain bomb?" he said, voice cracking.

      "Doc, I was serious," Sam said.

      Doc pointed at Kate and Titus. "You two, out now."

      "I can handle — " Titus started.

      "Not everything, you can't," he said. "Humor me. Head up to the control center. Have Neal initiate a blast door lockdown on this zone."

      Titus nodded.

      Kate stared Doc down a moment, then left wordlessly.

      "Billy?" Doc said.

      "Shields up, boss, you got it."

      "Sam, you should go with the others," Doc said.

      "Doc, I don't have the gear to disarm a head bomb," Sam said. "This kid is — "

      "I'm working on it," he said.

      "Working on what? Working on what?" Hyde said.

      "Calm down," Doc said. "Were you one of the lab experiments?"

      "I — yeah, there was a bunch of us, a girl in a coma, a girl who set everything on fire, some guy with scales . . . "

      "How many were there," Sam said.

      "Nine, ten. Maybe twelve," Hyde said. "I don't know, they didn't let us talk. I'd see them walking the others around — get this bomb out of my head? I'm sorry! I didn't mean anything. Just trying to be a badass — "

      Jane walked up to the glass and put her hand on the surface. She was deliberately putting herself between Hyde and the others, hoping if he did blow up her invulnerability would protect Doc and Emily and Sam.

      "Stay calm. You don't know what might trigger it," Jane said. "Just take a deep breath."

      "I just didn't want to go to jail!" the kid said. "They bought off my parole officer! Said they could hook me up with these great powers — this stuff wasn't even fun, it hurt like hell every time I used them!"

      "Where did they keep you?" Jane said.

      "I don't know. We were on an island for a while," Hyde said. His eyes were welling up. "Then they moved us — am I going to die? Can you help me?"

      "We're going to try," she said.

      "I don't want to blow up."

      Jane turned back to Doc.

      "I can't have this happen twice in one day," she said.

      "Does anyone else hear beeping?" Hyde asked.

      "Oh no," Billy said.

      "Nobody else hears it?"

      "Sam, Emily, get moving," Doc said.

      "Not just them, Doc," Jane said.

      "What are you doing?" Billy said. "Is there anything we can do?"

      "If we had twelve hours," Doc said, rubbing his eyes. "Dammit. These things. Annie left us a machine but . . . "

      Sam walked up to the glass.

      "I'm sorry, son," he said. "These things aren't designed to be taken out."

      "Can we try to rush Annie's machine?" Emily asked.

      Doc shook his head.

      "It's embedded in his brain. The machine works very slowly to remove it, bit by bit . . . One misstep and it goes off."

      "Help me," Hyde said. "I'm begging you . . . it's getting faster. The beeping is getting faster!"

      "Out!" Jane said. "Everyone out."

      Doc eyed her. She shook her head. Then, leaned in to whisper in his ear. "I can survive the blast, Doc. And I'm not leaving him here to die alone."

      Doc nodded once, slowly.

      "Can I do anything?" Emily said. "Can I help? Doc? What can I — "

      He took her by the arm and grasped Sam on the shoulder with his free hand.

      "You might protect us with one of your bubbles, but you couldn't . . . I'm sorry, Em. We've got to get you out of here."

      Emily turned back to Hyde.

      "I'm really sorry I made those jokes," she said.

      Jane waited until the door closed. She could hear thumps and hydraulic sounds as the hallway was sealed tight. Then she noticed Billy had stayed behind.

      "Get out, Billy."

      He walked up to the cell door and tapped the release button. Hyde ran out, ran for the corridor door, pounded on it.

      "I know what you're doing, Jane, and you're not doing it alone," Billy said. "Kid. Hyde. Come here."