New Markets - 02 (62 page)

“Back on one of the beds until we know you can make sure he’s not hostile.”

The group walked to the northeast part of the warehouse, and we found two rows of tables apparently made to hold down supers.  Multiple arm, leg and body bars crossed the tables, and drip bags and breathing machines were by many of them.  Lance and the villains all lay on tables, locked down.

I rubbed my face and walked over to Lance. 

“Why are they all wet?”

“We washed off the paintball goo.  It doesn’t take much of it to stun someone for a while.”

“Okay.”  In a moment I pulled his mindview close and entered it.  No image of him appeared in his main memory chamber.  I looked at each of the doors.  As usual I saw the emotion chamber, although the door was closed.  His subconscious door was also closed.  The memory chamber  was heavily barred shut, similar to what I saw in Chrome’s mind.  In fact, it was obvious that it was done in exactly the same fashion as hers.

The second, smaller memory chamber was open to the right of his main memory door, as with Chrome.  I walked into the room.  The number of floating memory ‘videos’ were very few.  I scanned through them and reviewed his recent memories.  Apparently his most recent memory was of waking and being commanded to obey Arissa.

I focused and summoned up my mental fire around me, and proceeded to blast the few memories in the room until none appeared any more.  I let the flames die off as I walked out of the room.

I looked carefully at the door of the normal memory chamber.  It was locked down with bars from this side – something I had never seen before.  Normally someone who didn’t want me in one of these doors seemed to have the door blocked from the other side.  Either that or it was just somehow sealed to me.

I walked from side to side examining the bars.  Individually none looked overly heavy or strong.  It was the mass of them on the door that appeared imposing.

I glanced at my sides, my golden aura was around me, as usual.  At a thought my golden tentacles emerged from the aura.  I waved them forward and worked at prying off one of the bars.  It took some effort, but one end of the bar came off, and soon the other.  I kept working at it until all the bars were off.  It felt like a hard workout was complete.  My legs were wobbly and I felt sore and tired.

It took more effort to open the door to the memory chamber, but it didn’t feel particularly barred, at least.  Soon I stood in Lance’s huge memory room.   Thousands of videos floated in the room.  The most recent was of his brief waking moments of the mercenary attack on Rael and himself in their back yard a few nights ago.  My heart went out to my friend, and I wanted to give him a hug.

I ran my hand through my hair and slowly walked out of the room.  Once out in the main chamber I reached out and pulled myself through the mindview floating above with the golden tentacles.

Once my vision shifted back to my own I stumbled backward.  Strong hands caught me and held me upright.  I took a deep breath and looked up at Rael’s smiling face.

“Wow, that took you a while.”

I saw how tired I looked in Rael’s eyes.  My eyes were barely half open.  I rubbed my face and leaned against him.

Gatecrasher said, “What did you find out?”

“Arissa barred up the main, umm, memory room.  Then she somehow made a new one.  I think I destroyed the memories in the new one, and got all the bars off the old one, plus got it open.  I think he’ll be okay now, but won’t know until he wakes up.”

“Can you do this to the others then?”

“Probably, but not now.  I feel like I’ve just busted my butt in a really hard workout.  I’m really wore down.”

Rael asked, “Any idea of a way to wake him up?  It would be nice to do it with a bunch of supers here.”

I replied, “Let me see if it is fresh in Arissa’s memory – assuming she doesn’t have a block.”  I looked around for her, and slowly walked to the table with her lying on it.  I realized that she was the only one of them not in spandex.

I said, “Hmm, this blood probably won’t come out of her dress top and bottom.”

The men looked at each other and shrugged.

She had nothing blocking me from pulling her dark mindview up close and entering it.  As with Lance, she wasn’t in her main chamber.  The memory door was open, so I walked over to it.  I looked around in surprise that the place was wide open.

Stepping up to the mass of videos, everything worked as normal for pulling each one up to me, fast forwarding through it, waving it back to its spot and pulling the next up.  I went through a small group of them until I found those of interest.

Arissa had a completely different look to working on someone’s mind.  She didn’t use a mindview at all, and in fact simply saw their memory door in her mind’s eye – which she proceeded to blockade.  Her process of creating the second door seemed simple – although I guessed that her power made it appear easy.

I watched how she summoned her mental whip several times, in the hopes of being able to duplicate the attack.  Then I found the scene where she used an antidote to the knockout drugs.  She kept it in her purse, which was hidden near the tables.  I left her mindview after seeing how to use the inhaler device and where she hid the purse.

I leaned back away from her even more tired than before.  I mumbled and pointed toward the purse.

Rael said, “I think she said over here, hold her for a moment, Firebane.”  He walked away from me and returned shortly.

He emptied it on an unused table and looked through the contents.  The inhaler caught his attention immediately.

He looked at me and asked, “Is this what you said?”

I nodded and blinked slowly.

“Okay, here goes.”  He walked over to Lance.

Agent Willman said, “Are we sure we want to use that?  Look at her, she’s almost asleep.”

Rael shrugged and said, “I’d rather use it than keep waiting.”  He held it up to Lance’s nose and squeezed the trigger.

I shook my head a few times to wake up a bit more and watched Lance closely.  I noticed that Firebane felt very warm as she held me.  Her right hand stayed around my back and on my right shoulder, and I noticed from her mindview that she was breathing deeply with her nose in my hair.  She didn’t think I’d noticed, as if I could miss a large dark mindview with her emotions flowing through it.

Lance’s chest rose sharply, and he took few deep breaths before opening his eyes and looking around.  He groggily looked up with a confused expression on his face as he tried to move.  I ran over, wrapped my arms around his neck and gave him a big hug before I undid the restraints.  He smiled and ever so gently touched my back with his giant hand.

He asked, “What, what’s going on?  Where am I?”

Rael said, “Welcome back, buddy.”  He held out his hand and the two clasped their hands together.  I heard Lance’s thought to be careful with his own hand squeeze.

“So?”

“Dude, it’s a long story – in a nutshell, we were kidnapped, I busted out and saved your sorry butt.”

Hellshock snorted a partial laugh out, and then began coughing.

Captain McCain said, “It’s Thursday afternoon.  You’ve been out a few days, apparently.”

I stepped back a bit to keep him from getting caught up in my hair as well.  I said, “It’s much more complicated that that - Tiger, myself, Hellshock, Firebane and Gatecrasher were all involved in getting you and the others free.”

Lance’s face lit up, “Gatecrasher?!  Rock on!”  He slid off the bed and held out his hand to the experienced hero.

Gatecrasher smiled, stepped forward and heartily shook Lance’s hand.  He smiled and said, “Pleasure to meet you, Spartan.”

Lance’s expression turned sour as he said, “Wait a second, you said it’s Thursday?  Darn it all!”  He banged his fist down on the bed, putting a large dent in it.  I saw him thinking about Anne.

Captain McCain said, “Is everything all right?”

Lance frowned, “Gah, sorry about that.  I need to be more careful.  No, well, yeah, I guess everything’s fine – just a personal matter I messed up.  Hey, isn’t that Silverlash?”  He looked at a woman with silver hair on a nearby table.  I hadn’t recognized her at first, she wore only underwear rather than her normal costume.

Hellshock answered, “It is – she was captured as well.  Black Tiger, how about trying that device on each of the supers that were captured, barring those we’ve fought?”

Rael said, “Good idea, it obviously worked.”  He bumped fists with Lance and then walked around from table to table spraying into each of their noses.

Silverlash sat up and said, “Ugh.  What the?  Where’s my costume?”

Hellshock said, “Oh, I thought that
was
your new costume.  I was going to complement you on it.”

She gave him a sour look and said, “Just wait until the next time
you
are captured and I save your backside.  Dang it all – that thing’s expensive.”

Hellshock chuckled and coughed again, “Gotta keep Turnquist in business somehow, don’t we?  By the way, I don’t think you’ve met some of our new H.E.R.O. members – this is Psystar, Spartan in his spandex shorts, Black Tiger over there, and Firebane here.”

She replied, “Pleasure to meet you all.  I gather that thanks are in order.  Anyone know if my cycle is okay?  Last I know of it was at a crime scene I went to….”

Captain McCain said, “It’s fine, Carson had it brought to HQ.  Come with me with these villains and I’ll get you something to wear – you can ride your cycle home.”

“Thank you.’

Gatecrasher said, “Goldie doesn’t look like she’s ready to work on the chrome woman or Sunspot.  Why did he register, anyway?  His profile said he wasn’t hitting crimes?”

Captain McCain said, “No, he thought all new supers had to register.  He didn’t get the phone or ID, but I set him up in the system.”

I shook my head, “I’m wiped, give me a day to rest – if you take them into a holding area I’ll come tomorrow and work on the next one.  If that goes well I’ll do the next, or wait one more day and get the other.”

Captain McCain nodded, “I’ll handle them, then.  Gatecrasher, would you help me move them?”

“Sure, you want them with these devices on them?”

“Might as well, for now at least.”

The two of them began moving the people on the tables to the outside.

Rael said, “I’m keeping this for now, I’ll bring it to the hospital and wake up Daphne.”

The captain nodded at him and continued on.

Rael looked at us and said, “I’ll meet you guys back at the house, okay?  You going to fly Spartan home?”

I nodded, “Yeah, I’ll bring Firebane and Spartan both back.”

Lance asked, “Are you sure you can handle it?  You look tired.”

I answered, “I feel wiped, but flying doesn’t seem to take much.  Heck, I floated unconscious for what, fourteen hours?”

His eyes opened wide.  “I really need to hear this story.  I’m gone for two days and you get into that bad of trouble?”

I smiled, “It’s been a really busy week.”

Everyone looked about ready to go, but Lance insisted on shaking everyone’s hands (or mock shaking for the non-bricks), including the officers that were on scene.  I found it interesting that it didn’t bother him in the least to walk around only in spandex shorts and feel fine with it.

Rael hugged me and jogged off, his mind was on waking up this Daphne woman he’d apparently gotten into trouble.