Sensation: A Superhero Novel (18 page)

It was several hours before we were sure we’d gotten everyone we could out and stabilized as much of the building as possible.  There was lots of bad news. 

Feral had almost every bone broken and was in a coma.  Power Piston was standing too close to a blast zone and was out of commission for at least a month.  A group of teens in the lounge area had suffered from smoke inhalation and minor burns. 

To the extent that a silver lining existed, we were lucky that Feral had a powerful metabolism and was expected to recover.  Also, Esper was not dead; Rune had come floating up out of the rubble with her body in an ethereal bubble (although, as Smokey commented, she initially looked like a charred corpse).  Like Power Piston, she had been caught in the immediate blast radius of an explosive device, but Rune’s magic was sustaining her and would keep her alive.

All in all, a good number of League members were down for the count.  Oddly enough, though, the invulnerable member of the League, Alpha Prime, was nowhere to be found.

There was much speculation about what exactly had happened.  Mouse had asked me to say nothing until he revealed the results of his escapades on his computer tablet: digital transmission of the security footage from League HQ.

**********************************

Aside from the three of us who had been in Smokey’s room, the evidence on the camera probably came as a surprise to all other members of the League.  Our own people had attacked us:  a group of super teens.

It wasn’t just any assembly of teens, though.  It was primarily the tight little clique that made up Paramount’s thuggish entourage.  However, it included not only a bunch of heavies like Goon and Herc, who were generally considered the next generation of super-strong brawlers, but also a number of others with unique talents, like Aqua.  All in all, it was a deadly cartel that you wouldn’t want to meet in a dark alley.

Led by Paramount, they had first gone to the nullifier cells to free the prisoners.  Feral had been on duty; although they had caught him off-guard, he gave as good as he got for a few minutes, but even his preternatural strength and stamina couldn’t hold out against so many forever.  Eventually he’d fallen, but they had kept pounding and stomping him wickedly until his entire body seemed pulped.

Next, they’d gone to Mouse’s lab. Aqua apparently went to liquid form and gained entry via the pipes, then opened the door from the inside. A few minutes later, Alpha Prime came floating in, called down by Paramount per the audio.  While he was talking to his son, Aqua used the TNIP to trap him in a pocket dimension.

It was an odd thing to watch.  First there was just Alpha Prime talking to Paramount.  Then an unusual glow formed around him, in the shape of a sphere.  It came into existence and encased him so quickly that there was no time to react.  Alpha Prime beat against the bubble holding him, but to no effect.  Then it began to fade, disappear.  Paramount laughed as his father appeared to wink out of existence.

**********************************

“At least we know what happened to him,” said Buzz as we watched the footage.

We were currently in one of the League’s auxiliary facilities (a safe house of sorts), one hopefully off the grid in terms of what Paramount’s crew knew about.  They had mechanized medical facilities here, so those who were injured were able to receive treatment.  The rest of us had turned our attention to the security footage.

After trapping Alpha Prime, Paramount had lifted the TNIP en masse and carried it to the garage, where a van waited.  He’d loaded it up and driven off with about half of his crew while the rest of them planted bombs.  In the resulting confusion that followed the explosions, with parts of the building crumbling, flames everywhere and smoke filling the hallways, the remaining rogues had escaped via the helicopter on the roof. 

“So now what?” asked Buzz, after we had watched everything for the second time.  “They’ve wrecked HQ, got us on the run, and gotten rid of our biggest weapon – Alpha Prime.”

“Plus, they’ve still got that transdimensional device,” added Smokescreen.

“Well, they’ve got it, but it’s not much use,” said Mouse.  “It’s slaved to an override on my tablet.”

He held up his computer tablet.  “They need this before they can operate it again.”

“Do they know that?” asked Rune.

Mouse shrugged.  “If they don’t, they will soon enough; the primary screen will be repeating a message that the remote override is in effect.  It won’t take them long to figure out who’s doing it.”

“So what’s our next move?” I asked between bites of a sandwich - my fifth - that I was eating. (I had been starving after racing through League HQ performing rescues at high speed.)

Buzz turned to Rune.  “Any way you can use your magic to get Alpha Prime back?”

“Unlikely,” Rune responded.  “My magic is powerful enough to cross dimensions, but the simple truth is that I don’t know where he is.  There are literally billions of places he could be throughout the cosmos.  I wouldn’t even know where to begin to search.”

“I think I can bring Alpha Prime back,” Mouse said.  “After what happened to Omen and his crew, I made a few small modifications to my own TNIP.  Long story short, any pocket dimension it creates now gives off an energy signature that can be tracked. I can free AP, but we need to go back to my lab to do it; there’s some equipment there that I need.”

“I can teleport you there,” I said.

Mouse clapped me on the back.  “Thanks.”

“I’m in, too,” said Smokescreen.  “When do we leave?”

“Not you,” Mouse told him.  “It’ll just be me and Kid Sensation.  I want you and the rest of the teens who got out to stay here, out of harm’s way.  And I want the rest of the League members to stay here to protect the injured. Just in case…”

He didn’t finish.  He didn’t have to.

**********************************

Mouse spent about an hour going on a scavenger hunt around our little hideout.  The cameras at HQ had stopped working shortly after the explosions began, so - although he believed everything would be fine - Mouse couldn’t swear that his lab equipment would be undamaged.  Ergo, he tried to round up anything he might need in order to be prepared. 

There wasn’t much for me to do but wait.  I tried to find Smokey, but after Mouse told him he couldn’t accompany us, he’d said a quick adios and disappeared.  Finally, Mouse was ready.  We said our final goodbyes (again, no Smokey) and then I teleported us to the lab. 

Chapter 21

I teleported us inside in insubstantial form.  Mouse had stressed that, structurally, he’d designed the lab to withstand almost anything – it even had its own power supply – but it didn’t hurt to be safe.  (How ironic would it have been to teleport inside just as the ceiling was collapsing?)

Mouse, however, turned out to be right.  It was obvious that a number of things had fallen over or been moved out of place due to the explosions, but the lab was essentially intact.  The only really noticeable difference was that all of his monitors that were usually streaming a variety of information were dark, resting in some kind of power conservation mode.  (According to Mouse, the lab had power, but almost everything - monitors, cameras, etc. - had been knocked offline and would probably need to be rebooted to function properly.)

Mouse immediately went to work, plugging his tablet into a nearby computer bank.  Then he pulled a second tablet - along with several other devices, plugs and wires - from a nearby desk drawer.  After connecting several of the devices with some of the other items that he’d brought from the safe house, he put the two tablets side-by-side on a tabletop and then began typing furiously, with one hand on each. 

I could tell without asking that he was seriously multi-tasking, so I tried to remain as quiet and unobtrusive as possible.  I looked around.  The place looked a little odd with all of Mouse’s monitors turned off.  I leaned against a wall and thought about everything that had happened over the last few days.

After a few minutes, I felt my eyes getting droopy.  It shouldn’t have been that surprising; I hadn’t had any sleep in almost twenty-four hours.  I went into Mouse’s bathroom, intending to splash some water on my face. 

The cold water had a little bite but was also refreshing and perked me up a little.  I glanced around the bathroom, not surprised to find that Mouse also had a monitor in here.  However, I was caught off guard when, a moment later, the monitor came on.

Instead of data, the monitor showed a picture – a somewhat nondescript room with a girl tied to a chair.  The girl was blindfolded, but I already knew who it was. 
Electra
.  Two of Paramount’s thugs – Herc and a guy known as HammerHand – stood on either side of her.  They weren’t brandishing any weapons, but they didn’t have to.  They were strong enough to rip someone in half with their bare hands.

A message scrolled across the bottom of the screen:

GO TO THE MAIN CONFERENCE ROOM.  TELL NO ONE.

I took a second to think about it.  I hadn’t even thought about Electra since our angry confrontation earlier.  I didn’t even notice that she hadn’t made it out of the building.  The real question now was, was she in on it?  Of course the message, which continued to scroll across the screen, presaged a trap, but was she part of it?  Fake bait?  Not that it mattered.  I really didn’t have a choice.

I walked out of the bathroom and simply told Mouse that I needed to check on something.  He acknowledged me with an almost imperceptible nod of the head, his focus on the two tablets.

I debated possibly giving him a clue mentally or telekinetically, but it was obvious that they were watching me.  Therefore, knowing that I couldn’t tell him any more, I teleported to the conference room.

**********************************

There was no one there when I popped in.  Maybe they had expected me to take the stairs. 

There was, however, a laptop on the conference room table.  Its screen showed the same scene that I’d been privy to before:  Electra flanked by the two guys.  I took a seat and waited.

            After about two minutes, the door opened and Goon came in, drinking what appeared to be coffee out of a mug.  He was wearing a blue jogging suit and tennis shoes.

            “Before we get started, let me lay out the ground rules,” he said.  “Just in case you’ve got any cute notions of teleporting me somewhere crazy, there’s a scanner in here set to my biometrics.  If it stops reading me as being present in this room before I give the proper signal, our guys will turn your girlfriend into more pieces than Humpty Dumpty.”

            He smiled at me smugly.  “Do we understand each other?”

            “We do,” I said flatly.

            “Good.  Now, you have something we want. The override for the TNIP.”

            “
I
don’t have it.”

            “Of course you don’t, genius; that was a figure of speech.  The only person who could possibly have it is Mouse.  But you’re going to get it from him and bring it to us.  You do that, and you get little Miss Plug-and-Socket back.”

            “You guys have all the muscle you could wish for; you could break down the door and overrun Mouse’s lab in a second.  Why do you need me?”

            “Because you can get close to Mouse without him suspecting anything.  If we try to bum-rush him, he may destroy the override control. Or worse, someone may get hurt.  And truth be told, we really don’t want to hurt anybody.”

            He said this with what he apparently thought was a sincere smile, as if he really expected me to believe him.  Of course, there was no way they were going to let us just walk out of here, even if I did do what they were asking.

            “So,” he said, when I didn’t respond.  “Do we have a deal?”

            “Where’s your boss?” I asked, abruptly changing the subject.  “The one with the brains.  The one who’s calling the shots.  Paramount.”

            Goon frowned, not liking that.  “He’s not my boss.  We’re all in this together.”

            “Well, he’s certainly the brains of the outfit.  Otherwise, why isn’t he here?”

            Goon snickered.  “Oh, he’s around.”

            “No, I mean why isn’t he in here with me?”

            Frowning now, Goon asked, “What are you trying to say?  That he tricked me into coming in here?”

            “Well, he knew better than to come himself, scanner or not. Speaking of which, it sounds like you only need to be present to the extent necessary to give off a biometric reading.”

            While he wrestled for a second with what I was saying, I looked at his coffee mug, mentally bisected it from top to bottom, and then used my teleportation power.

            “What–” he started to say, when all of a sudden hot coffee spilled over his shoes.  He looked at his coffee mug, suddenly noticing that all he was holding was the handle and half of a cup.  It looked like it had been neatly sliced in half with a laser from top to bottom.  Looking around, he saw the other half of the mug on the conference table where I’d teleported it, spilling its contents across the tabletop.

            I looked at my fingernails nonchalantly, trying to appear as though I did things like this all the time.  In fact, it was the first time I’d ever even tried to teleport only a portion of something.  “As I was saying, apparently only enough of you needs to stay in here to give off a biometric reading.”

            Goon looked at me, eyes bulging.  He no longer appeared smug.  In fact, he looked downright nauseous.  (The thought of having half your body – maybe your legs – teleported elsewhere can do that to you.)  To his credit, he recovered faster than I anticipated.

            “This, uh, this, uh, this doesn’t change anything. Do we, uh, do we have a, a deal?”

            I looked back at the screen, to the picture of Electra still tied to the chair.  This time, instead of looking at her, I focused on the room she was in:  the walls, the floor…anything that would give me more detail.